Kevin entered the living room quickly but by the time he got there, a saddlebag-wearing Doc Zed was already across the room by the other interior door.

"Hey, Officer Gloss, is it alright if I pack Kevin a saddlebag?" Doc Zed asked. "I wanna make sure the kid has snacks and water and stuff in case something happens."

"What's going to happen?" Gloss said, eyeing Doc Zed with an eyebrow raised. "I'm not sure that'll be necessary."

"Still, it's never bad to be prepared! C'mon, Kevin!" Without waiting for more of Gloss' objections, Doc Zed whisked Kevin out of the living room and into the now-open door of the kitchen. The door was left open, presumably to show Gloss that they had nothing to hide.

Kevin watched as Doc Zed grabbed a saddlebag from a lower cabinet and then quickly went to work with his horn, cabinets above and below opening and shutting as objects left them and returned. In just a few short moments there were two peanut butter sandwiches on the counter in a plastic bag, as well as some celery, a few apples, a small container of mixed nuts, and a small rectangular box.

"A comlink?" Kevin asked.

"It has my number stored in memory—if we get separated, call me."

"You won't get separated." The voice of Gloss came from behind them, and Kevin looked to see the stallion standing in the door frame. "This whole thing is unnecessary..."

"But is it illegal?" Doc Zed asked, magically tossing the items into the saddlebag. He hoofed it over to Kevin, who used his magic to levitate it into place. It was somewhat heavy, but not too bad.

"Well, no..."

"Awesome," Doc Zed replied, looking Gloss in the eye. "Let's go then, shall we?"

Gloss sighed and stood aside to allow Doc Zed and Kevin to walk through the door frame, waiting until they had passed him before joining their ranks. They walked through that open door to the outside and Doc Zed shut and locked the door behind them as Kevin stood back and marvelled at the height and shape of this tower which, due to the lights and open windows, looked like a marvellous beacon of light in the darkness of the town. Doc Zed winked to Kevin as he removed the key from its socket and placed it back in his saddlebag.

The three started down the road in the dark, Kevin walking alongside Doc Zed with Officer Gloss following them close behind. The town didn't look all that different in the darkness; not even an hour had passed, anyway, and there were still the paper streetlamps intermittently lining the streets. Yet their light was unlike the sunlight, even when it was, as Kevin had seen it before, quickly receding from the sky; there was an eerie quality about these paper lamps and their flickering illumination of the nearly-empty neighbourhood below. It probably didn't help that Kevin and Doc Zed were being followed by a pony whom they didn't know they could trust.

They carried in on silence for some time, the only sounds being those of their hooves clopping softly on the road as well as occasional rustling of the breeze and what sounded like owl hooting somewhere in the distance. Kevin shivered; he was no longer used to the frigid nights of the Continent's surface, having spent so much of the last few years in the sweltering heat of the islands and then in the carefully-controlled microcosms of spaceships.

"It just occurred to me, Kevin," Doc Zed finally said as they crossed through Main Square, "that you never said exactly which path out of town you came from."

Before Kevin could answer, though, the flat voice from behind them spoke up. "We came in through the West Road, main branch. We're going the right direction."

A moment passed. "Um... thank you, Officer," Doc Zed said. Then, under his breath, he mumbled, "I guess." Officer Gloss, for his part, either didn't notice or ignored the stallion's irritation.

Although Doc Zed had taken a slightly different path to get from his tower to Main Square, the next leg of their journey was pretty much the same weave through the western neighbourhood as Kevin had led Gloss through. All the houses looked the same, though; Kevin wasn't sure if he'd just been away from the town for too long or if they had just always been so similar and he just never noticed before.

When they reached that last street that became the West Road, Kevin noticed as he looked out onto the expanse of dirt that, distinctly visible among the darkness of the block, there was a tiny flickering of light just off the path, to the left side. He thought he could see a form in the dark beside it, but his first reaction was to assume that it was a trick of the darkness—that he was seeing things that weren't really there. As they drew closer, however, it became increasingly clear that that wasn't the case.

"Is it just me, or do you ponies see a little bit of light out there?" Doc Zed asked, stopping to point at the flickering with a foreleg.

"Yeah, I think I see something," Officer Gloss said, squinting. "I think there might be somepony right next to it, too. I should probably go on ahead to investigate—could be something dangerous."

"There's no need, Officer—we're all capable ponies here," Doc Zed replied, coolly but with more than a hint of bitterness in his tone. He started trotting faster, and Kevin and Gloss had little choice but to move fast to catch up. In just a few moments, they were close enough for Kevin to clearly make out the face of the pony standing next to the flame that was dancing around in the glass belly of a lantern. He skidded to a stop; Doc Zed and Officer Gloss stayed back behind him.

"Flight? What are you doing here?"

The yellow-coated filly rolled her eyes. "Kevin, I live here. You see that house, behind us? You stayed there for a few weeks, and came over for playdates a whole bunch of times. Please don't tell me you don't remember."

"I—" Kevin started, cutting himself off when he realised he didn't have anything valuable to say.

"You promised me an explanation, Kevin," the filly said softly. "And now where are you going? You're with Doc Zed and some strange pony you were with earlier today and you're obviously leaving town and you were going to do that once again without telling me, without any sort of explanation for the past few years or right now."

"H-How'd you know I'd be here?" Kevin croaked. It was a dumb thing to ask, not the right thing to say at all, but it was all he could think of.

Flight frowned. "I didn't. My mom saw you as you were coming into town and I thought it might be possible you were coming back this way, especially since this is really one of the bigger roads into town."

"Oh..." Kevin gulped. "Well, what do you want me to do?"

"What do I... dammit, Kevin!" Flight whisper-shouted. "I just want you to act like you give a damn about me. I thought we were friends!"

"We are friends—"

"Friends take care of each other and they tell each other things and they actually talk to each other." Flight looked about ready to cry. "I'm not letting you go, or at the very least I'm coming with you."

"Flight, I don't know when we'll be back and—"

"That doesn't matter. I've got my saddlebags here, see? I'm all prepared. My parents don't know yet so I left them a note. That's why I'm trying to be quiet, so they don't hear."

Kevin looked back at Officer Gloss and Doc Zed who were standing behind him, observing the whole scene. "Doc?"

"Now, Flight, I'm not so sure—"

"It's 'cause I'm a girl, ain't it?" Kevin cringed as Flight looked at Doc Zed. "You boys can go off on adventures doing whatever the hell you want and I have to sit here at home with no friends and just my moms to talk to?"

"Officer, surely you can't allow—?"

"Normally, I'd say no. But the filly does have a good point, and it seems like it would do Kevin well to be a gentlecolt and give an explanation owed to his little friend," Gloss said. Kevin felt his stomach twist. "Since I'm an official keeper of the peace, I think it's fine if I chaperone you on this little forest excursion."

Flight beamed at him; Officer Gloss returned the smile, though it looked oddly plastic.

"Alright, alright, that's great and all but we really should get going," Doc Zed said. "I don't want it to be later than twenty-six hundred hours when we get there—I have important business to attend to tomorrow morning and it would not do me well to sleep in."

He started cantering down the path at a quick pace, and Officer Gloss soon fell into step alongside him. Kevin and Flight were left to take up the rear, and the four continued in silence as they passed the clearing between the last houses of Dienna and the beginning of the forest. On either side, the faint tendrils of the tall grasses frolicked around in the light breeze. They were only just barely visible from the last vestiges of the streetlights from the town; the inky black sky above, while peppered with stars, provided no significant light.

"I'm gonna light my horn, if that's alright," Doc Zed said as they reached the first of the trees. "Not being able to see anything would just make this suck all the more." His horn lit up, illuminating the foursome in a burst of cool, bluish light. "Let's see how long I can keep this up for," he said, looking at the light, before starting to walk again.

It wasn't long before Doc Zed started asking Officer Gloss questions about the internal politics of the Southern Territory police, and this break in the silence allowed for another.

Flight turned to Kevin, who looked with his weary eyes into hers, which were so vibrant and full of life.

"You okay?" she asked. "You don't look so good..."

Kevin didn't feel so good, either. His heart was pumping so hard and fast he felt like his chest was going to burst. "I-I'm gonna be fine. Just feeling nervous, I guess."

"What about?" Flight asked.

Kevin let out a nervous, jittery laugh. "I'll tell you some other time."

"Dammit, Kev, you can't say that about everything!"

"I can talk about that other stuff you wanted to hear about, if you really want."

"Please do... it's been so long and I just to know what happened... and why."

So, as they cantered down the path, Kevin did his best to tell the story of what had happened, closely mirroring his retelling to Doc Zed. Certain personal touches were added, though, like the fact that neither of Flight's moms had told her that Kevin was going to be taken to live somewhere else. This elicited quite a bit of surprise in the filly; after that, she seemed to understand more where Kevin was coming from. When he got to the part about being on the ship with the strange orange filly, she stopped him to ask a question.

"Was she pretty?"

Kevin blinked. "Huh?"

"This filly whose ship you were on. Was she pretty? Did you like her?"

"Um... I dunno," Kevin replied. He could feel his face growing hot, though—not that he liked the filly or anything like that, of course, but being asked a question like that was downright embarrassing, or awkward, or something like that, not that he really knew why and of course it didn't have anything to do with being asked this question by Flight in particular, oh no, how could it? "I didn't really think about her like that. Maybe?"

Flight rolled her eyes. "Alright, alright, carry on." So, at her behest, Kevin carried on with the story as he and Flight and the two stallions ahead of them walked deeper and deeper into the thick of the woods.