Jaze sat in at his desk in his office at the command center, staring at the blank pages in front of him. Each represented a letter that needed to be written; a letter to the loved ones of the deceased. The assassin did not know what to write; what could he say to explain the actions taken by panicked young men offered a way out?

He would have stayed locked in that position until he died if Trixie and Dash had not stepped inside his small office, the latter’s head wrapped in bandages to protect the ugly wound. The pair shared a knowing look when they saw what the Colonel had been doing in here since the fight two hours ago. Jaze leaned back in his chair and waited for one of the two ponies to say something, anything.

“You don’t look so good.” Dash said slowly, “You’re kind pale.”

“It’s just using magic, I’ll be fine.” the Colonel assured the worried pegasus.

“Jaze,” Trixie asked quietly, “how many letters have you written?”

“None, I don’t know what to say.”

“Maybe,” suggested Dash, “you should take a break, let your head clear a little.”

“No, this needs to be done now.” Jaze leaned over the paper once more, determined to write something, anything. And still the pages stayed blank. “Maybe you’re right, I should take a break.”

The cyan gave a short nod, “I knew that you needed one.”

Jaze stood from his and stretched his cramped muscles, “Alright, let’s get out of here for a while. How are you, Dash?”

“Sore, but I’ll be fine.” the flier responded.

“You know what I meant.”

“Oh, about that.” She gave a sniff, “I said I’ll be fine.”

“I know that it it’s a hard thing, but that is the path of a soldier. Are you sure you still want to follow this path?”

“Yes.” Dash’s eyes were shining with determination and resolve.

“I must warn you that killing is the easy part.” The two ponies looked to the assassin in shock, “It takes little effort to kill someone. Far and away the hardest part is dealing with the aftermath; knowing that you are the reason they will not be going home tonight. Are you sure you can handle that?”

The pegasus was suddenly pale and she looked to the floor, “When you put it like that…”

“Dash,” she looked back up to his eyes, “you must not forget these feelings. It is what separates you from those of kill for amusement.”

“I know.” She took a deep breath, “And I also know why you wanted to keep us from fighting.”

“Tell me what you think.”

She gave nod and began in a quiet voice, “Killing is something that you can’t take back. Angry words and even some deeds can be forgotten. But you can’t bring somepony back from the dead; once it’s done, it’s done forever. I don’t know about everyone else, but that leaves me feeling sick inside.”

“It only leaves those who would wish it had happened otherwise sick. And Dash?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t let these feelings stop you from helping others. Don’t kill indiscriminately, but don’t avoid killing when it is necessary.” The Colonel’s face darkened, “Trust me, it will lead to less heartache in the future.”

“I’ll promise you that, if you promise me this: don’t let Applejack kill if she doesn’t have to. She’s one of my best friends and I never want her to feel like this.”

“I promise Dash. If I have my way, none of you will even get close to the fighting.”

Dash gave him a little nod, “Thanks. I’m going to find Twilight and let her know I’m okay. She’s probably worried sick.” The shaky pegasus left the tent, leaving Trixie and Jaze alone. The assassin found it hard to look into his companion’s eyes; he felt that he had failed her. The unicorn made her way around the desk to stand at his side, waiting for him to speak again.

He finally brought his eyes to meet hers, “I just want to apologize again.”

“For what?” she asked in confusion.

“For letting them get you. I should have been more careful. I…”

“Don’t start this again Jaze.” She heaved a sigh, “How could you have known? I told you that it wasn’t your fault. If I had fought back…”

“They would have killed you.”

“Not if they wanted to use me against you.”

“Maybe, but desperate men will do anything they think might help them.” He picked up some files that had been lying next to his desk and tossed them onto its surface, “Look at these. These are the files of all those men that turned traitor. All of them had families except one; wives, children, mothers, fathers, and so on.” The assassin glared at the roof of his tent, “Carn might have offered them safety for their families in exchange for betrayal. They just wanted what is best for their loved ones, same as me.”

The blue unicorn came a little closer and smacked the back of the assassin’s head, “I will keep doing that until you stop tormenting yourself over this.” She gave him a smile, “They made a choice, and they had to pay for it. You can’t say that you are happy it happened like this, but you can say that you had no choice. Stop being so hard on yourself; now take a break, that’s an order.”

This finally brought a smile to Jaze’s face. “Yes ma’am!” he laughed as he turned towards her in his chair, “What would you like to do? Today is your day.”

“I don’t know, what do you think we should do?”

“We never did get to go on our date to Canterlot, would you like to now?”

“But don’t you need to stay near the camp in case something goes wrong?”

“Not really,” he pulled his comm out of his pocket, “I’ll have this on me so Control can reach me if they need to.”

“Oh. Do we have to? I just want to relax.”

“That is more than fine by me, Trixie.” He placed his hand on her shoulder in a gentle and caring way. He could understand wanting to laze around a little after the day’s events.

Trixie looked at the hand on her shoulder and followed it to its owner’s eyes. Jaze was suddenly aware of how close they really were, and with that realization his heart began to pound. In his sitting position, the dusky blue unicorn’s face was nearly level with his. He turned in his seat a little more; their faces were even closer now. He could see a slight blush coloring her face, and he could feel his own face beginning to turn red as well. Just do it, a persistent voice whispered in his mind, just reach out and do it. Slowly, ever so slowly, the assassin brought his face closer to hers.

A knock came at the door, which opened to reveal Sands. “Hey Colonel?” Jaze and Trixie had recoiled from each other at the sound of the opening door, and now the pair was looking away from one another and blushing furiously. Sands, however, was completely oblivious as to what he had walked in on. “I had a question for you. What does being an Angel mean?”

The Colonel tried in vain for several moments to find his voice. “Wh-what do you mean?” he was finally able to stammer.

“I mean,” the young pilot explained, still unaware of his commander’s discomfort, “what do I need to do? How are we different than any other unit?”

“Well, there isn’t much difference I guess. Mostly you will be doing the same things that you did before, now more people will be watching you. Oh, and you will be called on for the most difficult and dangerous jobs around. Can you handle that?”

Dmitri gave a short nod, “Yes sir, I can.” He turned to leave, but stopped and twisted back to look at the still blushing pair, “Did I interrupt something?”

“No!” they replied firmly, in unison.

“Okay, well I’m just going to go now…” he left, shaking his head while trying to figure out what he had missed.

“So, um…” Jaze leaned back in his chair awkwardly, “We never did figure out what we were going to do today.”

“Hey!” Trixie suddenly exclaimed, “Why don’t you tell me more about humanity as a whole?”

“What, like a history lesson?” She gave a nod, “I guess so, but wouldn’t you find that boring?”

“Not at all. Knowledge is power, plus I like to learn.” She pulled a chair over to the assassin’s desk and sat in it as best she could, “Why don’t you start by telling me about this ‘Earth’?”

A slow smile broke across his face, “Why don’t I show you Earth?”

Jaze touched a control on a panel in the center of a dark room. The room was suddenly filled with swirling galaxies. Trixie craned her neck to try and see all the wondrous things the hologram had to offer. The Colonel stood with his arms crossed, watching the child-like glee of discovery on her face, and silently laughing to himself in delight. The stars slowly rotated around the pair, casting their light in all directions at once.

“Is this all the stars?” Trixie asked, still in awe.

“Probably not, most of this is just for show anyway.” He walked over to a dual armed galaxy and reached out to touch it. The stars swirled around them, and suddenly they found themselves in inside the selected galaxy.

“How did you do that?”

“The console there reads where I point and then brings this up for wherever I want.”

“What is this?” the unicorn asked as she slowly walked around the room.

“We call it a star chart; it should be used for navigation, but most of the time it is just used as a really nice light show.” He pointed to a particular star by Trixie’s head, “Poke that one.” When she did, the hologram swirled again to reveal a geocentric solar system. “This is where we are on now.”

He walked near the planet and slowly brought his hands together slowly. The star chart zoomed out to the show all the stars of the Milky Way. He searched through the stars, finally touching one. The chart zoomed in to reveal a solar system with nine planets orbiting a bright white star. He double tapped the third planet from the sun, causing the chart to zoom in on the green and blue planet.

“Is that Earth?” Trixie asked as the planet rotated between them.

“That it is. This planet is where humanity began, and where our heart still lies.” He brought the rotation to a halt and zoomed in a little more. “This planet is our greatest success and our greatest shame. It stands as a monument to just what humans are capable of; both good and bad.”

“What do you mean?”

“This planet gave birth to us, and we nearly destroyed her. Through centuries of the misuse of toxic chemicals, we put holes in the protective layer around the planet. Follow that up with a hundred years of war that changed the face of the planet and we humans found ourselves in a bad situation. The very air had become poisonous and most of humanity was dead or dying. Over the course of the next few hundred years, the brightest human minds tried to develop ways to combat the environmental issues plaguing the planet. And for those few hundred years, humans knew peace, of a sort. Humanity managed to get the air breathable again and the planet slowly began to recover and become green again.” A grin touched his lips, “And then something amazing happened.”

“What happened?”

“Humanity took to space. We established a colony on Mars, the fourth planet in our solar system. From there, we began to try to jump out into space. A way was finally found to make faster than light travel possible and human colonization of space began to take off. No longer would it take several generations to make it to a new planet, just a few short weeks. The next fifteen hundred years were spent with humans grabbing up any land we could.” His face suddenly darkened, “But war is part of human nature and soon we were at each other’s throats again. We should have learned from the past, but humans are too stubborn. When the wars got too violent and threatened to engulf the whole human race again, the Earth Coalition and the StarSide Marines were formed. They were to keep the peace and quell any fighting where they found it. Soon, the Coalition took over most of the governing and we have the government we know today. Earth holds a place in the heart of almost every human alive; she is testament to the fact that the mistakes of the past can be overcome with a lot of hard work.” Jaze finally fell silent, staring at the beautiful planet before him.

“That is quiet the story.”

“I know; I only learned it about ten years ago.”

“What? But shouldn’t this be the first thing they teach in schools?”

“Never been to school, actually. All of my knowledge comes from reading and listening to others. There was not much use for schools where I am from.”

“Can you show me your home planet?” she asked innocently. The assassin gave a nod and zoomed back out to the Milky Way map. He selected another star system; quickly bring up a depressing brown planet. There was only one spot of green and one small ocean on the whole of the planet.

“Here’s the mud ball.” Jaze remarked grimly as he sat down, “Don’t know if it has an official name, but the inhabitants call it ‘Darum’.”

“Why, does that mean something?”

“Yeah, it literally means ‘dry’. There was only about one rainstorm that lasted about a week to a month in an Earth Standard Year. The days were hot and the nights frigid.”

“Did you live in the green area?”

“The plants’ pollen was poisonous to humans. Stay there for more than a minute and your lungs began to hemorrhage. Not a pleasant way to go. But the rains that came out of there let a small band of habitable land grow around it. That is where I grew up, until Admiral Gaston pulled me into space to be an assassin.”

“Can I ask about that, again?”

“What do you want to know?”

“I was just wondering how many people knew about you. You know, that you were an assassin.”

“There were only two people, besides me, who knew. One was Gaston, obviously,” Jaze’s hand went to the necklace hanging around his neck, “the other was Evelyn. She figured out who I was not long after she, Vincent, Shelby, and I were put in a squad together.”

“You didn’t tell her?”

“No, she remembered me from a job I did at one point. Her father led a StarSide Marine unit to quell a rebellion on some backwater. He and the unit were called heroes for their actions. But the rebel group was more widespread than Command had realized; they decided to send a message in the form of a kidnapping. Figured they could get a large ransom to fund themselves or something equally foolish. I was asked to keep Evelyn safe.”

Trixie gave him a sarcastic smile, “So you went from assassin to bodyguard?”

The Colonel’s face was blank, “Not really. The Coalition doesn’t take kindly to threats and wanted to send a counter message. I was ordered to find and kill all those that were connected to the threat.” His hand reached up to his shoulder, “It was… bad. We barely got out with our lives. If Evelyn hadn’t been so tough, I don’t think I would have lived to talk about it.” He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.

“What happened?”

The assassin gave a shudder, “I can’t talk about that now. I nearly did something regrettable that I am still not comfortable with. Maybe one day…” he turned his head away as the memories washed over him.

“Jaze,” a hoof under his chin brought his face back to hers, “you can tell me. I won’t think of you any worse.”

He took her hoof in his hand, “Thank you, but this is something that will take time. Since Evelyn died, I am the only one that knows what happened that day. I never even told Gaston. One day, I might be able to tell you everything. But not today, okay?”

“Okay,” Her face broke into a gentle smile, “but I will hold you to that promise.”

“Deal.” the assassin said with a smile, “When I can, I’ll tell you everything.” Jaze reset the hologram to show the entire galaxy. They sat watching the stars wheel around them for Jaze could not tell how long. His gazed switched between the hologram and the unicorn sitting next to him. Occasionally she would ask a question about a star, and he would try to answer. He looked around, realizing just how many worlds were still out there waiting to be explored. After meeting the inhabitants of Equestria, he wondered how many other races awaited humanity.

Their nice quiet star gazing session was interrupted by the buzzing of Jaze’s comm unit. He took it from his pocket and placed it in his ear, “Control to Colonel Armand, please respond. There is an urgent matter that requires your immediate attention.”

“Colonel Armand to Control, what is wrong?” His voice was nearly a growl; he had hoped that the rest of the day would be less busy.

“Sir, there is an irate Princess here who wishes to speak with you. She says that she has looked everywhere and that you haven’t been seen in two hours.”

“Two hours? That long?” The shocked assassin apologized “Sorry. We lost track of time. Tell the Princess that I’ll meet her at the CC in five.”

“Yes sir.” The Control operator paused, “‘We’, sir? Are you with someone right now?”

“I am, a friend. I was giving her a history lesson and didn’t realize how long it’s been. I’ll be there shortly.”

“Roger that, Control out.” The line went dead as the operator signed off.

Jaze cast a worried look to Trixie, “Let’s go see what the Princess wants; I get the feeling I’m in trouble.” The look of utter terror on his face made the unicorn giggle nervously.