A person's life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art or love or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.

Loyalty. I'd never really thought about it that much during my life in the stable, but here, in my new life outside, I've come to see how important it is. Everypony in the wasteland has loyalties, and to whom—or what—those loyalties are matters. The wrong loyalties could get you killed. And so could betraying those loyalties.

It wasn't easy to turn my back on Trailblazer. I never wanted to abandon anyone, but I couldn't have avoided it: I'd had to choose him or Starry, and Starry . . . well, I couldn't have abandoned her. I just couldn't. Trailblazer had said he needed me, but he already had his friends. He couldn't really need me; he'd been just saying that. Just some sweet nothing to get me to stay. Starry, though, I could see that she needed my help. I just didn't know with what. But when I looked at her, I saw her like she were a big pile of puzzle pieces that had just been dumped out of the box—not just an incomplete puzzle, but one that was barely started. She was a mess, but I felt like I could find the place where I fit in with her.

We left Primrose behind; left Trailblazer and his friends behind. It hadn't been until much later, when it was all out of sight, that I had begun to realize just how terrifying the whole ordeal had been: those pegasi had shown up and simply massacred all those ponies! There weren't just crazed raiders out here, running around, picking on stragglers and caravans; there were armies who'd do just the same.

Starry was a part of one of those armies—the same one that had assaulted Primrose, apparently. But she was different. She wasn't like those raiders who had attacked me and the caravan. It had to have been like she said: those soldiers had just gotten spooked. It wasn't their fault . . . right?

Right. It couldn't have been their fault. They hadn't opened fire as soon as they had shown up, like they would have if they had wanted to just attack the town. The ponies there must have done something to provoke them. If they'd just gotten along with those soldiers, nopony would have died . . .

If Trailblazer really did want to help everypony out here to get along, then I wished him the best of luck. He'd need it. And he'd probably have better luck without me around anyway.

Starry and I had a long, silent walk after we left Trailblazer behind. Just about when the sun was setting, when the clouded sky turned into a brilliant cascade of red hues from one horizon to the other, we arrived at our destination.

It was a settlement of some kind. The buildings looked like they'd been poorly cobbled together from whatever pieces of salvage could be found; scattered around without any apparent plan, aside from keeping a clear path through the town along an old, cracked, and pothole-ridden road that had lain there for the past two centuries.

As we walked into the settlement, I looked around and realized I'd been there already. Sure enough: as we followed the road into the center of the settlement, we came upon Mum's Diner.

"I've been renting a room here for the last several weeks," Starry mumbled. She sounded tired, like she wanted to simply collapse in bed. I knew the feeling all too well myself. "It might not look like much, but the mare who runs the diner is very nice . . . a bit too friendly sometimes, but she doesn't bite."

"A bit too friendly" was an understatement, but I wasn't worried about that. Chrysanthemum had been kind to me, if a bit strange. Instead, I was simply dumbstruck that Starry already knew this place—already knew Chrysanthemum. I'd have called it luck, but luck would have been coming back to the diner without having to—to kill somepony along the way, or witness that massacre at Primrose . . .

In a daze of near disbelief, I followed Starry into the diner. I saw the same brown earth pony who'd been there the first time, passed out in the same corner. A half-dozen empty bottles lay around his table.

"There you are!" sang a pleasant, familiar voice. I turned my head to see the vibrant green mare behind the counter. Her blue and white mane was as bouncy as ever as she put her hooves up on the countertop and smiled at us. "I was starting to worry y'all weren't gonna make it back."

Starry mumbled something and took up a seat at the bar. Practically collapsing onto the counter, she laid her head down and covered her eyes with her forelegs. "Scotch. Double," she groaned.

Chrysanthemum already had a bottle and a glass floating out in her chartreuse aura. She filled the glass and set it down in front of Starry.

"Leave the bottle," Starry mumbled as she reached out to grab the glass between her shaky forehooves.

I took a seat beside her while Chrysanthemum set the bottle down for Starry and turned to me. "How about you, hon? You look like you could use a stiff drink too."

Watching Starry, her head low, barely lifting the glass off the counter as she sipped from it, I shook my head. "No . . . I'm fine, thanks." There was a quiet pause, and I noticed Chrysanthemum was just standing there, smiling at me. Like she were waiting for me to ask.

I bit. "You and Starry already know each other. You sent me right to where I'd meet Starry. Did you know Starry was there when you told me to go scavenge in that ruined building?"

"You caught me," she said with a wide grin and a chuckle. "My devious plot has been uncovered."

I rolled my eyes. "Why? I mean, you could have just told me who to look for." I added under my breath, "Would have saved us a lot of trouble."

She reared up, putting her forehooves on the counter, and leaned in as she smiled at me. "You already knew who you were looking for. You just didn't know it yet. If I'd told you, it would've ruined your first meeting. It had to be organic, a beautiful first meeting, left to your own natural char—"

"She found me half-buried under debris after I fell through several floors."

Chrysanthemum started snickering, biting her hoof to stifle her laugh. "Seriously?" She looked to Starry for confirmation, who gave a small nod while pouring herself a second glass. "Oh, you poor thing. Well, you made it back in one piece, so that's a win in my book. And hey, you did find who you were looking for, after all."

I blinked at her, confused. I didn't remember her being so cryptic the first time I had met her.

"It's what I do," she said, getting down off the counter and turning to the side to show off her cutie mark: a pair of roses, their thorny stems curled together around their petals in the shape of a heart. "I'm a matchmaker."

"Matchmaker?" I asked skeptically.

"Well, what did you expect? A talent for hitting on cute young stallions?" She winked. My ears blushed.

"Wait. You mean . . . you think me . . . and Starry . . . ?"

Chrysanthemum's giggling stopped abruptly as the lights inside the diner flickered, then went dark. Everypony was quiet for a moment before I heard a resigned sigh from Chrysanthemum. "Well, guess the power's out until I can get somepony to fix the generator again," she said, her face illuminated by the soft glow of her chartreuse magic as she levitated several candles and a matchbox from behind the counter. She pulled out a couple matches, skillfully manipulating them in her aura, struck them, and then lit the candles two at a time while she arranged them around the diner.

"Generator?" I asked.

"Yeah. This old hunk-o'-junk portable spark reactor I picked up in a trade years ago," Chrysanthemum said as she blew out the matches. "Why? You know something about fixing 'em?"

"Well, I used to study the stable's spark reactor during my downtime in maintenance, but I've never actually laid hooves on one . . ."

"They only let the senior engineers work on that?" Starry asked. It was the first thing she'd said since she had sat down. I looked over at her; the flickering candlelight cast a warm glow across her face and made the silver bars pinned to her collar twinkle.

I shook my head. "No—well, maybe. Probably, I guess. But it just never came up. That reactor has run perfectly since it came online two centuries ago. Nopony even really thinks about it anymore. I just spent time learning about it because it looked like a really challenging puzzle, especially if I couldn't actually touch the pieces."

I saw Chrysanthemum's smile shining in the dim light. "Well, here's your chance, then. Come along, I'll show you where it is so you can get to wor—"

"Hold on a second there," Starry interrupted, tapping her hoof on the counter. "Day, always agree on payment before you do work for somepony."

"Oh, Starry, hun, you honestly think I'd try to take advantage of him?" There was a brief pause while Starry gave Chrysanthemum a look that seemed to say "are you seriously even asking that?"

Chrysanthemum laughed. "Well, maybe, but can you blame me? There's so much to take advantage of. Isn't that right, stud?" She winked at me. "But it's true: let's be professional about this." She leaned over the counter in front of me, propping her chin up on a forehoof. "So what's a handsome stallion like you charge for his services?"

My ears blushed. "I, um, I don't know . . ."

"Hmm. Okay, here: you get my juice flowing, and I'll pay you a hundred caps," she said in a sultry tone. "How's that sound?"

Trying to ignore her innuendo, and not really having any idea if that was a fair amount, I glanced over at Starry. She gave a small nod, so I accepted. "Alright. I'll get your juices flow—" I realized my slip, and instantly my face flushed hotly. Starry nearly choked on her drink as she started laughing. "The juice—power! I'll get the power—" I tried desperately to correct myself, but between Starry's raucous laughter and the cheeky grin Chrysanthemum had while she simply stared at me, I knew it was too late to take it back. I slumped onto the counter, hiding my face under my fetlocks. "Just show me where the generator is," I mumbled in resignation.

***

Chrysanthemum showed me to the spark generator while Starry stayed at the bar. It was outside, around the back of the diner. She offered to stay and use her magic to provide light for me, since the sun had finished setting and had cast the wasteland into darkness, but I told her my Pipbuck light would be enough. So she left me to take care of it on my own, leaving behind a set of tools she was letting me borrow.

And then I was alone, really alone. I sat down and, for just a minute, simply listened to the silence. The air was still. There was no sound of fans echoing through air ducts, no mechanical hum or squeals. No other ponies. It was never that quiet inside the stable.

I had the faintest twinge of fear in the back of my head that there might be some kind of monster out there in the darkness. Something stalking me, waiting for the right moment to strike. But I put that thought out of my mind with a shake of my head. The settlement around Mum's Diner was wide open; if those sorts of things lurked around here, they'd have some kind of defenses set up. And Chrysanthemum would have said something. A random attack out of nowhere? Even I wasn't that unlucky.

Taking a deep breath, I turned my attention to the generator. It had certainly seen better days, but it was Stable-Tec, same as the reactor in the stable. This was a lot smaller, and probably never meant to last this long, unlike the stable's reactor, but it had the same basic construction, so I was sure I could figure it out.

It had been easy to dismiss the fear of monsters lurking in the darkness. What ended up being much more terrifying, though, was when I opened up the generator. I realized that, despite all the studying I'd done, this was all new to me. I wasn't sure if I could do it, afraid that if I couldn't, it would mean I'd be useless out here. If I was useless, there wouldn't be a place for me. If there was no place for me, where would I go? What would I do? I wondered if Starry would even still want me around.

The first ten minutes I spent just sitting there, staring at the generator's internals in the glow of my Pipbuck. Then I started worrying what would happen if somepony came out to check on me and saw that I hadn't even started yet. I almost started wishing for a monster in the darkness. But I took a moment to take a few deep breaths and focus on the task in front of me. I could do it. I just had to look at the puzzle. The first step was always to take it apart. So I started taking pieces out, laying them on the ground around me in a careful order, keeping all the bolts and screws and fastenings arranged so that they'd all go back in exactly the same place as they had been.

As I got deeper inside the machine, I started finding where seals had worn out, where belts had gone slack, and other worn down parts. The generator was in bad shape. There were no spare parts to fix it with, so I had to make due with the pieces as they were. Where seals had broken, I replaced the parts without them, fastening bare metal together as tightly as possible in hopes that it would reduce the leakage. I moved other parts by bending the frame they were mounted on in order to keep the belts tight. I did what I could to make the worn out parts fit together as seamlessly as possible.

In the end, after I closed everything up, I realized how silly it had been to be afraid of working on it. It had been my job for years back inside the stable. I had known what I was doing. I had just needed to remember that.

I ran my hoof along the casing, marveling at all the work that had gone into making such a thing in the first place, and then I decided to see if I'd gotten it working or not. The thing squealed, clunked, and groaned when I turned it on. It was a tired, pained noise, far from the steady hum of the reactor back in the stable. But it ran. For a brief moment, I actually smiled as I listened to it running. I'd gotten it to work. Even if it wouldn't last more than a few weeks, if that long, it was better than nothing.

"I can do this," I said aloud to myself, breathing a sigh of relief.

I felt a sense of pride in my work. It was one of the few things I'd actually enjoyed in my stable life. Unlike the other engineers in maintenance, who'd often show up late, leave early, and would only go out on service calls when they felt like it, I spent as much time as I could doing work. It felt good to fix things, to put them back together into a complete whole. Almost nopony else seemed to appreciate that like I did . . .

Satisfied that I'd gotten the generator working, I packed up the tools Chrysanthemum had loaned me and headed back inside the diner.

The lights were back on, and Chrysanthemum had put the candles away. She and Starry were busy trading, so I set the tools down on the counter and sat quietly next to Starry, watching them barter over the assorted salvage that Starry had apparently collected in her bags. In the end, Starry offloaded her collected scraps for a couple bottles of scotch, a few gallons of water, ammo and energy cells for her weapons, and a small stack of caps.

I looked over the pile of things that Chrysanthemum had accepted. "What are you going to do with all of that? How is any of it worth anything to you?" I asked as she carried the items in her chartreuse magical aura, sorting them into several small crates against the wall behind the bar.

"Well, they're not really worth anything to me," she explained. "But they're worth something to somepony. There're some traveling merchants who come through here every so often, and I trade things like this to them for food, water, ammo, and other supplies to keep the town alive. They carry it off with them, and, presumably, somewhere along their routes, they meet somepony that needs this crap." Everything had a place in the wasteland, apparently. Even the seemingly useless pieces of garbage. She finished sorting the salvage and turned to face me, floating out a bundle of caps and laying it on the counter in front of me. "Here's your payment, as agreed. If you ever want more work, you know where you can come," she said with a wry smile and a wink.

"Thanks. I'll, um, keep that in mind," I said clearing my throat. Starry and Chrysanthemum shared a brief laugh, which I tried to ignore while tucking the caps into my saddlebag. Something else she'd said caught my attention, however. "What did you mean about 'keeping the town alive'?" I asked.

"There's no real source of food or water around here. If it weren't for me and this diner, there'd be nopony here," she explained.

"You mean you built this town?"

Chrysanthemum laughed. "No. I only inherited the diner after Mum—that wasn't her real name, just what everypony called her 'cuz of the diner's sign; a tradition I don't intend to continue—passed on. And she only moved into it as a place for herself. But when she started renting rooms for traveling merchants, it became a regular stop for them. Prospectors started putting up their own shacks nearby; there's a few city and factory ruins in the area, so they made their livings by bringing that stuff back here to trade to the merchants." She smiled. "Mum took me in when I was just a little filly, didn't even have my cutie mark yet—not 'til after I started setting up dates between the prospectors." She let out a wistful sigh, looking around the diner slowly. "That's when it became a real community, y'know. I know it doesn't look like much now, but just you wait 'til they all come back with their hauls. You'll see how alive this place really is. Especially when one of the traders come through."

Chrysanthemum chuckled quietly. "Heh. You know, I remember when I was growing up here, there was this one merchant who came through every couple weeks. He traded in guns. Can be a real dangerous business, the way he told it, but he was just the sweetest pony I ever spoke to." She hummed to herself for a moment. "He used to teach me about gun maintenance. Really knew his stuff, that stallion."

"You learned a lot from him?" I asked.

"Only everything I know. About firearms, at least." She smiled proudly.

Thinking about that, I pulled out my revolver and set it on the counter. "You think you might be able to tell me why this didn't fire three times in a row? If it had been four, I'd be . . . well, I wouldn't be here."

"Oh, well, sure, hun. Let's have a look." She lifted the gun up in her chartreuse aura, and I watched as she flipped out the cylinder, emptied the rounds and began inspecting it from every angle. "Hmm. It looks like . . ." she said as she glanced at one of the rounds that hadn't fired. Suddenly the entire gun came apart in her magical grip. Every screw, spring, and a number of parts I had no name for floated in her aura. It was as if an exploded diagram had come to life in front of me. A single piece floated away from the rest. "Yup. The firing pin is worn down. I can fix you up with a spare right now if you like."

I was still somewhat in awe, watching all those tiny pieces hovering in such precise arrangement in her magic aura. "Um, sure," I answered.

Humming quietly to herself, Chrysanthemum turned away, continuing to hold the disassembled revolver where it was while she reached out with her magic to rummage through one of the crates against the wall. She lifted out a similar revolver and stripped it apart, letting its pieces fall back into the crate until all she carried was the pin. She turned back to me, reassembled the revolver with its new pin, and set it down on the counter. Then she put her hoof on top of it and leaned over the counter. "So now that I've serviced your piece." She grinned at me. "Let's talk payment."

"I—what?"

Starry snickered, pouring herself another glass of scotch. "You should always agree on payment before anypony else does work for you, too, Day."

"Well, what's it worth to ya, darling?" Chrysanthemum batted her eyes at me.

I frowned, and looked down at the gun under her hoof, mostly just to avoid eye contact with her. "You're sure it'll work just fine now?"

"Absolutely. I've been fixing up guns for years. This right here is a quality weapon, sure to keep you safe if you use it right."

"Alright then. I'll trade you the gun as payment for your service. I have it on good authority that it's a quality weapon, surely worth your expertise." I reached into my pocket and took out the speed loader she'd sold me the other day. "You can have this with it, too," I said as I pushed it over to her side of the counter.

Chrysanthemum blinked. "Are you sure you want to give up your only weapon? I mean, you didn't pick up anything else while you were gone, did you?"

I shook my head. "I can't use this. It's . . . it's too messy. And I'll be more likely to hurt myself with it than anypony else. And I don't even want to hurt anypony else. Just . . . just take it. I don't want it."

"I can't just take your only weapon," she said with a note of deep concern in her voice as she pushed the revolver to my side of the counter and took her hoof off it. "You can keep it. Service is on the house."

I was silent, looking down at the gun without touching it.

"Hun, you need—"

"I said I don't—" I stopped and lowered my voice. "I said I don't want it. Please. Just take it." I pushed it back across the counter to her.

Chrysanthemum exchanged a look with Starry. With a sigh, she nodded, taking the revolver in her magic and stowing it behind the counter.

The diner was uncomfortably quiet until the silence was broken by the sound of Starry's empty glass setting down on the counter, followed by the dull, metallic clink of a hooffull of caps. "Come on upstairs with me, Day. I wanna show you something in my room."

"Ooh. Sounds like fun. I knew you two would make a perfect couple!" Chrysanthemum snickered.

My ears blushing, I slid out of my seat and followed after Starry. She didn't respond to Chrysanthemum, just headed for the door at the back of the diner and started up the stairs that it led to.

"Don't worry about being too noisy! I'm a heavy sleeper!" Chrysanthemum called after us. I tried my best to ignore her and hurried after Starry.

At the top of the stairs was a short hallway with a couple doors on either side. Starry went to the door right by the landing. I noticed that the door had a half-dozen extra locks installed on it. A quick glance over the other doors in the hallway revealed Starry's room to be the only one so thoroughly secured.

"Don't worry about Chrys," she said quietly while she started unlocking the door.

"Huh?"

"About what she said about us as a couple. She's been trying to set me up with somepony since I first got here." She stifled a short laugh. "You shoulda seen the Steel Ranger she tried to set me up with before you." Starry finished the last deadbolt, opened the door to her room, and walked in. "Not at all my type."

She slipped off her saddlebags and tossed them onto the bed in the far corner, then unfastened her battle saddle and let it drop to the floor. Meanwhile, I stood still in the doorway, my jaw slacked as I just let my eyes wander around the room. Virtually every inch of every wall was covered with various documents—notes, files, pictures, prewar newspaper and magazine articles, blueprints, maps, and more. Some things were marked or highlighted and had barely-legible notes scrawled alongside them. Strings of different colors ran between the pins that held up each document, creating a network of connections that spanned all across the room as if to parody the web a spider might weave if she were in the midst of a fever dream, or psychedelic nightmare, or both.

I couldn't make sense of any of it. My eyes were drawn in every direction at once with no obvious starting point. I almost felt dizzy trying to take it all in. "What . . . what is all this . . . ?" I asked as Starry ushered me inside so she could close the door and lock it.

Starry moved back to her bags and rummaged around them. She pulled out some files and dropped them on the desk that was set up in the corner opposite the bed. "This is what I'm working on down here." She sat down, looking around the room slowly. "I'm down here on a mission to find—well, to find something really important." She hesitated, turning her gaze toward me.

"Before I tell you about it, though, come here. There's something I want to give you," she said as she turned back to the desk and reached into the bottom drawer. I walked over to her while she searched. "Where is . . . I know it's in . . . ah-hah!" She came up with a device in her hoof, holding it out to me. It looked something like the revolver I'd had, but different. Actually, it looked more like a smaller version of the laser rifle on her battle saddle.

"What is it?" I asked, hesitant to accept it.

"It's a magical energy pistol." She saw the look on my face. "I know you don't want to hurt anypony, Day, but please . . . you'll have to be able to protect yourself. And if you're going to be coming with me, I'll need to know I can count on you to back me up."

Sighing, I turned my head away and stared down at the floor.

"It's not like that revolver at all. Look:" I glanced back as she turned it over and flipped a latch. A side compartment opened up, and she slid a small energy cell out of it. "It runs on pure magical energy. You shoot somepony with this, it won't be messy like a conventional firearm. If you're lucky, a single shot can turn a whole pony into a pile of ash in an instant. They won't even feel a thing."

I cringed, chewing on my lip.

Starry sighed. "Look, Day, this will make it easier for you the next time you have to shoot somepony. And there will be a next time, I'm sorry to have to tell you, but you've been out here long enough that you know it's true. If there was a better way to keep you safe, I'd do it, but this is the best I can do: to help you protect yourself. Please, Day, for me? I'll do everything I can to make sure you don't have to use it, but when the time comes, I want to know you'll have something."

"Al—alright," I said, giving in. I took the pistol from Starry after she put the energy cell back in it. She gave me a few extra cells and a quick rundown on how to use the pistol, before I tucked it away in my saddlebag. I buried it at the bottom where I wouldn't be tempted to use it unless I absolutely had to, hoping it would be a long time before I needed it.

"Okay," Starry said, smiling, "now that that's taken care of, let me tell you about my mission here so you can help me out with it." She looked around the room and pointed to a blueprint on the wall above the bed. "Okay so that's—er . . . no." She redirected my attention to the newspaper article on the wall beside her. "So when the—" She frowned.

"You've never had to explain all this to somepony, have you?"

Starry cleared her throat. "Um. Well, no. I haven't. When did this all get so complicated?" She rubbed her chin, looking down at her desk while she tried to figure out how to explain. Then I saw her eyes drift over toward a strange contraption she had sitting on the desk. It looked like some kind of crude crown, but with wires running all around it, and an empty socket at the front. Her eyes lit up. "I know. I can show you where it all started."

I sat quietly, though confused, as I watched Starry open the top drawer of her desk and take out a small glass orb. It glowed faintly with a dim, olive green light.

"This is a memory orb," Starry explained. "It contains a copy of somepony's memory from before the bombs fell. With this recollector," she continued, pointing to the contraption on the desk, "you can view that memory as if you lived it yourself."

"Somepony's whole memory?" I asked, eyes wide.

"Oh, no! Not the whole thing!" Starry laughed a bit. "No. Just a part of it. It's not very long."

She led me over to an armchair. "It's completely safe," she assured me as set the device—the recollector—on my head. "It'll be like taking a nap, okay?" She looked at me while holding up the memory orb in her hoof, waiting for my consent.

I was somewhat skeptical that a single pony's memory from two hundred years ago would explain everything Starry had pinned up around the room. But I was certainly curious to see what all this was about. "Alright." I nodded.

Starry smiled and set the orb into the recollector's socket.

oooOOOooo

There was a flash of light, but it wasn't really a flash. It was more like I had just entered a very bright room after my eyes had been adjusted to the darkness. It only lasted for half a second, and then I saw . . . I saw the sky.

I was inside a building, but it was like nothing I could have ever imagined. There was a large open area, like the atrium in the stable, but it went up much, much higher. There were glass panels along the balconies and along the sides of stairways, letting me see all the ponies moving about. Most of them were pegasi, flying to and fro across the open area. And at the very top of the building was the open sky. Clear, beautiful blue sky with pure daylight—light from Celestia's sun, unobstructed by boundless cloud cover—that shone down into the building. I could feel the warm light on my face.

Except it wasn't my face, I realized, as my vision turned down to the room ahead of me. I was experiencing somepony's memory, and I couldn't move on my own. I was just following along for the ride. Something felt strange about the body I was in. I came to realize I was experiencing the memory of an earth pony mare.

It was an interesting experience: I honestly didn't really feel any differently, only when I really thought about it did it feel weird. But what I really did feel was the lack of various aches and bruises that I'd simply grown accustomed to. For the first time in almost as long as I could remember, I felt . . . uninjured.

Amid the general murmur of dozens of conversations going on around me was the sound of falling water. And as I—or we, or whomever I was inhabiting or whatever—as she moved forward into what must have been a lobby area for the building, I saw a large glass pane behind the front desk. Water ran down it, illuminated from below in a rainbow of hues.

"Can I help you?" asked the mare behind the desk. She was a unicorn with a cream-colored coat and a red and white striped mane that reminded me of a candy cane.

"Yes," my host answered as we approached the desk, "I'm looking for Rainbow Dash."

The secretary levitated a pair of reading glasses onto her face and looked down at a ledger. "Do you have an appointment?"

"Appointment? No, I—"

"Ms. Dash is very busy. You'll need an appointment to see her," the mare said curtly.

Clenching her teeth briefly, my host took a breath and explained, "No, see, I'm supposed to be her new assistant. It's my first day here, and—"

"Oh. I'm sorry. What's your name?"

I felt her eye twitch at the interruption. "I'm—"

My host stopped abruptly as she overheard a dozen voices calling out, "Ms. Dash!" She looked over to see a dense throng of ponies calling out questions as they all vied for attention.

"Never mind. I think I found her," my host said to the secretary before sprinting off to join the crowd.

She had to push and squirm her way through the crowd. The further in she got, the more tightly-packed everypony was. Fortunately for her, my host seemed to have a fairly small build and had a knack for navigating between everypony.

And then I saw her—the ministry mare herself: Rainbow Dash. I knew it was her immediately because it was her that everypony was gathering around, her attention they were all clamoring for. Her brilliant rainbow-colored mane and tail were hints too, as well as the uniform she wore; it bore several pins and medals, and equally as many creases, signs of how much service she had done for her nation, and how much she still did.

Rainbow Dash was a fairly mature mare, but aside from a few wrinkles around her eyes, undoubtedly brought on by stress more than age, her mane and coat were as colorful as they could ever be, and she had an incredible physique. She moved with a kind of grace that wasn't for show—she didn't have a model's deliberate elegance, but instead her movements were those of a trained athlete at the peak of her game. It was the kind of grace that came from efficient, controlled motions, entirely by muscle memory.

And what muscles she had! Not to say she was bulky, of course. Quite the opposite: she was sleek and toned, but I could see the tense, coiled springs that her muscles were. With a physique like that, there was no doubt that she lived up to her namesake.

"Ms. Dash!" my host called out, sprinting over to meet her.

The ministry mare turned her head to look at me—us—my host. The other ponies around her kept talking over each other. How anypony could make any sense of what was being said was beyond me.

"Ms. Dash, hi. I'm—"

"Talk fast, kid. I'm kind of busy, if you hadn't noticed," she said, leveling her magenta-colored eyes at us. She kept one ear turned back toward the others who were still talking.

My host grit her teeth. "Right. Sorry. I'm your new assistant. My na—"

"Assistant. Great. My office is on the top floor. I'll meet you there," Rainbow Dash said brusquely, turning her head back to the uniformed pegasus at her side. "No. I told you, I'm not going to just leave them out there. I never leave my friends behind, and my ministry won't leave its ponies behind either." Her wings fanned out, and he followed suit, the two of them launching themselves into the air and streaking off up the height of the building.

Suddenly, everything was quiet. The other earth ponies and unicorns who'd been crowding around Rainbow Dash slowly dispersed. My host was the only one who didn't move, craning her head up to follow her boss's trail as she soared to the upper floors.

"She's quite a sight, isn't she?" came a smooth, refined voice from behind. My host turned around to see who it was. I was surprised to see, and I suppose my host was as well, that it was not a pony. He had the head of an eagle and the body of a lion. He wore a dark, pinstriped suit which contrasted starkly with the brilliant, glossy, golden feathers of his avian half and the rich, tawny fur of his leonine half.

He was feeding a coin into a vending machine against the wall. With a jerk of his talon, the coin came back out of the machine while its display still registered the payment. He entered his selection and the machine dispensed it, being none the wiser, while he untied the thread from his finger and stuffed the trick coin into his breast pocket.

"Um . . . can I help you?" my host asked cautiously. Her head tilted as she watched him unwrap his stolen candy bar and bite into it with his beak.

"Maybe. But it'll be a while before I really need your help, kid." He flashed a disarming smile. "Never seen a gryphon before, have you?" We nodded. "Don't worry about staring, kid. I'm used to it." He turned to face us, and my host's eyes were drawn to his left wing, which we could now see was bandaged against his side.

"Oh my. What hap—"

"Dislocated my wing the other day. Silliest thing, really: I fell out a window. Can you believe it?" He laughed. "Don't worry about it, though. You know how it is: these things heal up fast. I'm sure I'll be flying no problem by the next time you see me."

My host blinked. "I'm sorry, I have to get going . . ."

"What a coincidence! Me too! Hey, we should go together. It'll make the ride more entertaining."

"No. I don't think you understand: I have to go meet my boss in her office, so I'm just going to—"

"You're going to go find Rainbow Dash. Yes, I know. I happen to be going that way too." He seemed to notice the uncomfortable, perplexed look on my host's face. "I overheard you introduce yourself to her," he explained. "Top floor is a long way without wings, so I figure we could take the elevator together." He jerked his thumb claw in the direction of the lobby, where the elevators were.

"I guess that's alright," my host replied, giving a small nod. There was something odd about this gryphon, and she seemed to have the same feeling about him that I did.

He led the way to the elevators and she followed.

After getting onto the elevator, the gryphon pushed the button for the top floor, and we were on our way. Once the elevator rose above the lobby ceiling, I was awestruck to see that it was a glass elevator, and I could see out into that marvelous, brightly-lit atrium full of shining glass and busy ponies of so many varied and vibrant colors.

Unfortunately for me, my host didn't seem as interested in the view. Instead she turned to look at the gryphon. "So, what exactly are you here for?" she asked.

"Me?" The gryphon paused, as if it hadn't been a rhetorical question. When my host didn't answer after a couple seconds, he continued, "Well, I'm a lawyer, but I don't really do anything glamorous. No, I'm just a glorified file clerk, really; the kind of person nobody will remember in a hundred years."

"And you're here because why?" she asked again, narrowing her eyes.

"Oh, nothing terribly important. Just some arcane technical administration paperwork had some discrepancies on it, and I had to come out here to try and clear it up. Better question is why you're here." He flashed a wry grin while holding eye contact.

"Me? I'm . . . Rainbow Dash's new assistant. It's my first day. That's why I'm here."

"But why? You're after something, aren't you? Trying to find your place?"

My host shuffled about on her hooves uncomfortably. "W—what are you? One of Pinkie's morale inspectors? I already went through a dozen background checks to get this job. Why are you—"

The gryphon held up his hand. "I'm not from the Ministry of Morale. I work at the Central Records Bureau in Canterlot. Relax. I just thought you might want to think about why you're really here. Too often, I find that people just go on about their lives without considering why they are where they are."

The elevator came to stop at the top floor, and the doors opened. My host hesitated, regarding the gryphon's peculiar manner for a moment before stepping out ahead of him. From the top floor, I could see that the building's central atrium wasn't actually open to the sky but had a glass ceiling. The sky above was still as clear and beautiful, though. I only wished I could have had more time to enjoy the view from the balcony, but we kept moving toward Rainbow Dash's office.

As we approached the office, there was a unicorn mare with a deep, scarlet coat and a vibrant, glossy, red mane done up into a bun. She wore a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and had an impatient scowl. She was standing outside the door, tapping her hoof while holding a document folder in her crimson magic.

My host smiled cheerfully at the mare. "Um, hello. Can I help you, Miss . . . ?"

"Scarlet Sunrise. I'm waiting to see Ms. Dash so I can turn in my department's project plan for approval." She narrowed her eyes, looking my host up and down. "And you are . . .?"

"I'm Ms. Dash's new assistant. My n—"

"Assistant. Wonderful." My host ground her teeth at the interruption. "Will you please see if she's in. I've been waiting a very long time." Scarlet looked over at the gryphon, regarding him coldly. "What are you doing here?"

"Just following up on some paperwork. You know that's all I ever get to do," he answered with a pleasant chuckle. "But what a happy coincidence that I should meet you again. And here of all places. I take it that the Ministry of Arcane Science didn't work out for you?"

Scarlet Sunrise rolled her eyes. "Everything with you is always a coincidence, isn't it?" She snorted and didn't respond to him any further. Instead, she returned her attention to my host. "Well? Are you going to see if your boss is in or not?"

"Sorry," my host answered, mumbling a snide "your highness" under her breath. She moved to the door, knocked gently, and tried the handle. It was unlocked, and she peeked inside. "Ms. Dash?" She opened the door the rest of the way and stepped into Rainbow Dash's office. She was probably as dumbstruck as I was at what she saw. "A turtle?"

"Tortoise," the gryphon corrected as he and Scarlet followed my host into the office.

Rainbow Dash was not there. Instead, on her desk, was a turtle, or tortoise, or whatever. On one side were a stack of files in a bin labeled "In" and on the other side was another stack labeled "Out." The tortoise was in the middle, slowly taking one file at a time from the inbox in his mouth, and pulling it down to the desk in front of him. He had a rubber stamp taped to one of his legs, and he'd open the file to the first page, step on it with the stamp, marking it "Approved," then close it, and move it over to the outbox.

Scarlet harrumphed. "Well, at least I know we can get the project started already." She floated her file over to the top of the inbox and then left without another word.

"Well, it looks like my time with you is over," said the gryphon, looking at his wrist, where he was not wearing a watch. He turned to face me directly. "I guess I'll have to meet you again later before I get to find Rainbow Dash. It's been fun meeting you."

oooOOOooo

The memory ended abruptly, and as I awoke from it, I was welcomed back into the present by the feeling of a dozen hooves beating down on my back and sides all at once. The myriad aches and bruises I carried were there to remind me of the world I really belonged in.

I sat up and looked around. It was strange, almost like I'd been in a dream. But the dream had been so vivid that the world around me now felt uncanny. My bruises were an unpleasant reassurance, however, that I was definitely not dreaming. Had Equestria really fallen this far? The past had been so bright, so full of color. Now I noticed how dark and dull this new world was. The stable had been matte gray everywhere, and the wasteland was a dusty brown.

Except for Starry. Her bright, light blue coat was a welcome sight.

She got up from her desk to check on me. "So what do you think?" she asked while taking the recollector off my head and removing the orb from its socket.

"I'm not sure. It was an incredible sight. Some strange stuff. But . . ." I looked around the walls. "I'm not sure what that was supposed to show me."

Starry put the recollector and the memory orb away, then turned back to me and smiled. "Well, the part at the end is the important part: You saw how Rainbow Dash wasn't in her office? And how she had her pet just stamping everything approved for her?"

I nodded.

"Rainbow Dash was never much for actually doing any of her actual duties as a minister. She let her ministry basically run itself. Those documents that were being stamped?" She trotted over to the wall by the bed, and put her hoof on a file folder there. "Most of them were pet projects submitted by her various department heads. They ran all kinds of research and development projects that weren't at all related to the ministry's actual purpose."

"Okay . . . I still don't see what—"

"Some of these projects were really questionable and probably illegal: mind control experiments, gene splicing, turning fillings into surveillance devices." She pointed from one document to another. "All of this was going on without any oversight. But when the bombs fell, and Rainbow Dash decided to abandon what little civilization we had left in the clouds, she went off on her own, like she could fix everything by herself. One of the things she did after all the official records lost track of her was to go around and check on all these projects that got away from her: she made sure they were either destroyed or shut down in a safe way."

"But what does any of that have to do with—"

"Day, I'm trying to tell you: my mission is to find Rainbow Dash."

I blinked. "What? But why? She's surely dead by now, why does it matter where she is or what happened to her?" I stopped for a moment. "And why tell me all this?"

Starry stopped to consider my questions. The excited grin that had grown across her face as she had been explaining everything slowly faded. "Well, I . . . it's my orders to look for her. But she was very important, and finding out what happened to her would be important to the Enclave. She had access to a lot of information and technology. Finding her might help us get access to that stuff. And, well, it would be a nice morale booster for everypony back home if we could announce that we'd found her. Make a big event out of updating the history books, you know?"

"But what do I have to do with all this?" I pressed.

"Oh. Well, it's just that I've been working on this all by myself. I've been out of contact for a while now, since my radio broke, and when I met you I thought . . . that maybe you could help me? And once we find her, I can take you with me back to the Enclave. I'm sure I can pull some strings to get you citizenship." She smiled. "It's safe up there, Day."

I didn't really know what to say to that at first. But then the obvious question came to mind: "Why can't we go there now? Can't we just fly up there?" I asked.

Starry frowned. "It's not that simple. The clouds are patrolled, and passage across them is very tightly controlled. If I tried to fly up there without proper authorization, I'd be shot down on sight. And even then, it's wouldn't exactly be easy to get you citizenship. The Enclave is officially closed to immigration. But if I can come back a hero—the mare who found Rainbow Dash—I'd have some favors I could cash in on."

"Oh. I see." I slouched down in the chair. I'd let myself get my hopes up when she had mentioned taking me to the Enclave. I should only be so lucky.

Starry must have seen my disappointment. "But hey, I'm sure I've been getting close now. And with your help, I'll bet we can finish this up a lot faster. So it won't be too long before I can take you above the clouds."

I looked up at her. She was smiling at me. I forced a smile in return for her. Then I let my eyes drift past her to the wall . . .

And suddenly, everything clicked. My eyes went wide as I realized what she was doing: It was a puzzle! The biggest, most complicated puzzle I'd ever seen! More than that, I saw how she'd managed to assemble this puzzle with so many of the pieces missing. She didn't need all the pieces, like how her cutie mark was a constellation: "You have to see what's not there," she had said. She was able to make the connections between seemingly unrelated places and events.

I had been wrong: it wasn't the weavings of an insane spider, it was a constellation that Starry had covered the walls with. My legs catapulted me out of my seat, and I rushed over to the desk. On the wall above it was a picture. It was her! Rainbow Dash. The picture was worn and faded, not doing justice to her vibrant, colorful mane, but it was her. And all the lines that Starry had strung around the room traced back to her.

"You see it, don't you?" Starry asked from behind me.

I nodded as I followed one string to a document on the next wall. From that one to the next, I asked Starry how she made these connections. She replied, modestly, "It just seemed obvious once I knew what I was looking for." For her, maybe, but I was amazed how, at every step, she'd been able to see where the next one would be, and had found confirmation of her theory every time when she had gotten there.

I continued poring over the documents Starry had arranged around the walls, tracing the lines between each one and the next. What had seemed an incomprehensible work of madness when I had first stepped into the room was now a brilliant masterpiece—a magnum opus in mosaic.

As I followed the threads back and forth across the room, I came to a dossier about Scarlet Sunrise, the mare from Rainbow Dash's office in the memory orb. Following a line from her, I came to a blueprint, page three of twelve. The other pages were missing. This page looked like a design for a massive underground complex. A bunker maybe? It had a lot of above-ground construction for just a bunker. It sure didn't look like a stable, but beyond that, I couldn't really be sure what it was. The only name on the blueprint was the project name: Sunstone.

Starry had left notes tacked to the blueprint: "where? find logistics" and "something to prove? check MAS, MOA records." I couldn't really make sense of it.

"Hey, Starry?" I asked. "What's up with this Sunstone thing?" I turned around to see that Starry had apparently gone to sleep while I was looking over her work. She was, once again, slumped over on her bed in a rather unflattering position: face-down, laying diagonally across the bed with her left foreleg hanging off one side, her left hind leg hanging off the foot of the bed.

Checking the time on my Pipbuck, I saw that it was already well-past midnight. So I decided it was probably a good time to get some rest myself. The armchair wasn't ideal, but there weren't exactly many other options. Still, my mind was racing with thoughts about everything that had happened that day. My third day in the wasteland.

Has it really only been that long since . . . ?

I guess . . . I don't know what I expected to find, what I expected to happen after I was exiled. Up until the stable door closed behind me, it had always seemed like exile and death were the same thing. The only thing I hadn't expected was to keep living—to find a new life outside.

To live to regret what I'd had to do . . .

But here I am, alive, with a place to stay, and with somepony to help me. I'm moving on with my life, and this search for Rainbow Dash actually sounds exciting. It's the biggest puzzle I've ever seen, with pieces scattered all across Equestria. I really think I can help Starry with this. I want to help her, to be a part of this. It's enough to let me just forget about the stable and what happened there. I can't wait for tomorrow, to see what the new day has in store. Next Chapter: Chapter 6: The Masks We Wear Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 49 Minutes