Ivory and I sat underneath a spreading chestnut tree in the little town square adjacent to the fairgrounds, feeling very dumb. Big News was dead and Grapevine had yet to show up, so we sat there in a haze of stupor, neither of us sure what to do. Occasionally someone would stumble upon us and ask what had happened and we would tell them, and be met by the same expression of shock that eroded into sadness and then indifference as they realized they had better things to do than mourn a Germane journalist that they had hardly known. After that, they would up and leave like nothing had happened at all.

I guess nothing really had, if I thought about it. The only ones Big had been an interest to were the Germane government and Grapevine and I, but only for fleeting reasons. Come to think of it, I really hadn’t known anything about the guy. Did he have relatives back in Germaneigh? A wife? Kids? Who would we send the information to, and what would they want to do with the body?

That’s the strange part about death; it makes you realize how much or how little you knew about that pony. I had felt close to Big, but after he was dead I didn’t even know where he was from. Just another link to the case that was cut; another light gone dark. I shuddered as thoughts suppressed and unwanted crept to the front of my mind. Just like Remedy, they said. And they were right. I had thought I’d known him, but then at the funeral I had opened my mouth and . . . nothing. All I could say was that I was sorry he was gone. Sorry; like it was my fault.

They never had found the body--the body they always called it, as if it and the name it had once been attached to were separate things--so what words we could offer was all that was left. And I hadn’t even been able to say something memorable. The rose I had bought from a store on the corner of Joya’s street had seemed like a dull offering of forgiveness for not being able to say more. And then we left the gravesite and he was gone.

“Minty, do you need a moment . . . alone?” Ivory said from where he sat, just a few inches to my left.

I started and was about to tell him that having ovaries didn’t mean I couldn’t take Big’s death any worse than he could, when I felt something drip onto my outstretched hoof. I blinked and realized I’d gone all teary-eyed. I almost laughed; I guess Grapevine hadn’t had as much of an influence on me as I had thought.

I quickly wiped my eyes dry and shook my head to clear it out a little; I reminded myself I still had a job to do. “I’ll be fine,” I said. “Just all of, well, this is getting to me a little.”

He nodded. “Understandable.”

I sighed. “I just don’t know what to do next. He was our only lead, so until Grapevine shows up there’s not much we’ll be able to do.”

“You seem to rely on her guidance quite a bit,” Ivory observed, raising one eye.

“Yeah, I guess.” I shrugged. “She’s the reporter, and I’m . . . not. Her job is to get all the stories, and I take the pretty pictures.” I patted my camera bag reassuringly, where it rested against my flank, slung over the white tunic-jacket-thing Joya had made me wear. “I just think it’s best if we wait to see what she thinks is all.”

Ivory chuckled. “Ornate gave me your file to read when I accepted this case. I seem to remember a certain filly applying for a reporter’s position, not photography.”

My cheeks started to redden. “Well you can obviously tell that didn’t work out,” I said. “I just wasn’t cut out to be a reporter, is all.”

“You and I both know you don’t think that. One does not simply forget what they dreamed and hoped for because of a minor setback,” he said.

“Then what would you have me do?” I grumbled. “Grow a horn and start jotting down on a notepad?” Hide her real emotions until the absolute worst time to show them? I silently added.

Ivory leaned closer to me. “Perhaps go on your gut instinct? I know it’s already speaking to you, and you already have a plan, judging by the look on your face.”

I looked away as quick as I could. Okay, so he was right . . . that didn’t necessarily make me wrong. Having an idea wouldn’t make me right.

“Well?” he said.

“I just figured that, uh, it would be best to check out- I mean check up on someone I met yesterday. His name is Bright Light; he might know what to do.”

Ivory patted me on the back. “See, I knew you had it in you. Now where do you think we could find this Mr. Light?”

I thought for a second. “Does this town have a library?”

It seemed the town did have a library--the problem was that no one seemed to know where it was. We were standing beneath an awning of a brick-borne shop a little outside of the town square, trying to get a word in edgewise with a pony who talked too fast for his own good.

“Now, you’ll obviously know that the first library here in town was built, oh, thirty-five years ago, down on Fifth,” he continued. He’d given his name as Harmonious Lyric, and the sing-song melody that the golden-flanked pony used to speak with matched his name. Not that it was help to us. “It sat there for eight years before another was built across town and that one was named after the current mayor’s son. Then they converted the old one to a school and the new one stood for another ten years before-”

“Excuse me, but we are wanting to know about the new building,” Ivory said hurriedly.

Lyric gave us a look of disdain and continued. “As I was saying, that building stood for ten years until the Great Parasprite Attack, which left most of our town ruined-”

I started to tune him out, rather than try to have my brain process information that I would never again use. The crowd gathered around the barriers leading to the fairgrounds had begun to waver as ponies trickled away to find food or entertainment while they waited for it to re-open. Some went home, but their numbers were surprisingly few.

Most of the shopkeepers seemed overjoyed by this turn of events, and some even threw open their shutters hours before they normally would have, in expectation of good business. One such store, a brightly-colored sweets stand across the way, threw open its door with a clatter of a bell and a chipper shopkeeper to accompany it.

“Hiya, Lyric!” he called.

Mercifully, Lyric quit his rant while explaining the ins and outs of the book collections of the last library and turned to greet the shopkeeper. “Morning, Sweet Tooth,” he said. “Opening a little early, aren’t we?”

“Can’t afford to let all this business pass me by,” Sweet said. He pointed to us. “Who are your friends?”

“Oh, these two? They want to know where the library is.”

“You mean the one on Fifth?”

“No, no, the new library.”

Sweet scratched his chin. “That’ll be the building over off of Mane, right? Next to the Pony Joe’s?”

Lyric shook his head. “They moved out of that place six years ago; that location’s renovated now. It’s the new nightclub, what’s it called . . .”

“The Equestrian Dream?” Sweet suggested.

Lyric nodded. “Yeah, that’s the one.” He turned to us. “You two looking for the Equestrian Dream?”

“No, we’re looking for this town’s library,” I said, a little too loudly.

The two of them snorted and laughed. “Slow down kid, no need to get angry,” Lyric said. “We’re just trying to have a little fun is all.”

“Yeah, it’s not like anypony can find the Equestrian Dream nowadays,” Sweet said, which brought another chuckle out of both of them. When he had called down, he continued, “If you want to find our town’s newest library, it’s two streets down and the fourth building on your right.”

“Thanks,” I grumbled, while Ivory gave them a parting nod.

As we walked away, I could hear them still talking behind me.

“Didn’t the Equestrian Dream relocate to Las Pegasus anyway?” Lyric said.

“You’re asking the wrong pony.”

Ivory and I continued on, moving further into the outskirts of Chestnut Hill. Gathering my thoughts, I said, “See, that was why we need Grapevine.”

He smirked. “How do you figure?”

“She’d have shut them up real quick,” I said. “She wouldn’t have just stood there and taken it.”

“So you’re saying you don’t want to find the Equestrian Dream?” Ivory said with a wink. I gave him a friendly shove and we were turning left onto the designated street before I knew it.

The library was a modern, stone-and-steel building that stood proud over some of the older buildings alongside it. Other buildings would have looked out of place, but this one had the opposite effect: it made the others look inadequate and quaint. A few ponies milled about the steps leading to the entrance, but otherwise the entire location was desolate in the morning light.

We ascended the concrete stairs at a clipped pace and entered the double oak beneath the stone alcove. It wasn’t as nice as Marshmallow’s own library, but quite fancy to service a town the size of Chestnut Hill. The interior was a single, large room that stretched out in every direction away from the entrance and the librarian’s desk in front of it. A bored-looking mare in a high seat didn’t bother asking us our names, but rather waved in a dismissive way in our direction.

“So what now?” Ivory asked once we had cleared her line of sight.

I shrugged. “I don’t know; this was about as far as my plan went. I just kind of . . . expected Bright Light to be here.” I hung my head. “Guess that reporter’s instinct of mine doesn’t plan very far ahead.”

“Don’t worry so much,” Ivory said, placing a clawed talon on my shoulder, “we’ve only figured out that he’s not at the front desk; he could still be anywhere in here.” He smiled. “So it’s best we get looking, don’t you think?”

I nodded and followed him as we made our way methodically around the library’s maze of shelves. Most of them were shoulder high to a pony, but some of them extended almost up to the ceiling, and had ladders attached to them for ease of access. The novels on the shelves stuck out to me more than those in Marshmallow’s had--a majority of them seemed to be actual stories rather than reference materials or famous poems. I mentally bookmarked the place as one to visit later; I’d been an avid reader up until Derbyshire, and I didn’t wish to break the habit.

We made it to the back of the building without luck in the almost-empty rows, but kept looking as we made our way back to the front. Ivory took one side of the row and I the other so that we could make sure as not to miss anything important. Which I almost did anyways when I bumped into a balding pony near the front of the library, sending him sprawling to the floor.

“Sorry, sorry!” I said hurriedly, reaching to help him up.

His response was to take my offered hoof and pull himself up. Without another word, he brushed himself off and left. I didn’t even have time to call back to him that he had accidentally pressed a piece of paper into my hoof.

My reporter side began to click and I examined the slip of paper closer as Ivory came up to my said, having saw the whole commotion from across the aisle. “What was that about?” he said.

“I ran into him by accident,” I said, then held up the piece of paper. “He gave me this and left without saying anything.”

“What does it say?”

I took another look and read, “The Chestnut Tree Cafe: ten minutes.”

Ivory raised an eyebrow. “Well that certainly sounds like a lead,” he said.

“Or a trap.”

“Would that really make a difference?”

I sighed. “Alright, let’s go see if we can’t find this cafe before the trail runs cold.”

Something around nine minutes later, we reached the cafe, feeling thoroughly out of breath. Lo and behold, the little restaurant was only a hair’s breadth away from the chestnut tree we had sat under earlier, presumably its oh-so original namesake. A bitter part of me recounted that all we had done all morning was make a big circle.

The inside was plain in every aesthetic way, but still seemed fairly crowded despite the decorative handicap. Tiny round tables made up most of the central dining area, while a few booths were pushed against the back wall. A bar sat up front, and behind that the cafe’s staff cooked what smelled like every fried vegetable known to ponydom.

Ivory and I looked around for our strange contact, and were made notice by a pony in the corner who discreetly waved to us when we looked at him. We ambled over to him without much of a second thought, and took our offered places at the seat in front of him. Close up, I saw that he was the same bald pony from the library.

When we were fully seated, he began. “I am glad the two of you could make it,” he said in a gruff voice seeping in a thick Germane accent. “WI apologize for the suddenness of this meeting, but time is of the essence now, and lingering in this town much longer could prove dangerous.”

“Wait, slow down,” Ivory said. “Who are you, exactly?”

“My name doesn’t matter,” the colt said. He lowered his voice and leaned closer to us. “Just know that I represent a certain . . . individual that wishes to make his presence known to the two of you.”

“You mean Doctor Chemiker?” I said.

He slapped a face to his hoof and took a deep breath before replying, “Yes, I represent the doctor’s interests. One of which is for his presence not to be known to anypony else, understand?”

My face heated and I meekly nodded.

“So why is he choosing to contact us now?” Ivory asked. “If he wanted to talk, why not at the start of the festival, before Minty and her partner’s seizure by the Germanes?”

“The Doctor wished to wait as long as possible until the investigations had cooled some to make his move, but recent events have accelerated his plans.”

“Big’s death,” I said.

He nodded. “With his primary follower dead, he has extended a hoof of friendship to the two of you, if you wish to take it.” He met our skeptic stares. “To talk, I assure you. Nothing else.”

“And if we don’t come?” Ivory asked.

The colt shrugged. “The Doctor wishes no ill will; no action will be taken against you if you refuse his offer.” He tapped one hoof on the table. “Though I must warn you, the Germane agents will have heard about the death of their primary suspect by now; you may not wish to take your chances with their kindnesses.”

It was a threat as clear as day, though the balding stallion’s eyes showed nothing but a gentle neutralness. Not that his threat wasn’t valid--mostly because it was covered by the very real threat of the Germanes. I had a feeling any generosity they had given us the first time would be as forgotten as the paper I signed to pledge I wouldn’t be doing exactly what I was at that moment.

“Why does he want to see us anyway?” I said cautiously. “The real reason to talk.”

The colt paused, as if the question made him uncomfortable. His eyes danced over the other patrons in the cafe, who paid no attention to our conversation out of a combination of simple courtesy and a lack of interest. “I really shouldn’t say . . .” he said, “but if I had to guess by the way the Doctor has been acting, he is trying to find whatever allies he has left in the city.”

“What about all the rough types at the fair who seemed so adamant on defending his name in the gambling tent?” Ivory said. “There were quite a few of them.”

“Hired muscle isn’t the same. Allies contribute--those brutes can only serve us as guards and to discourage those who are nosier than most.”

“And what makes the Doctor think that we even want to help him?” I said. “He seems like a pretty dangerous stallion to be around--why does he think we’re willing to put ourselves in the same situation?”

“Because I would not be here if he didn’t think so,” the colt said. He shrugged. “This offer doesn’t last forever; the two of you may either come with me now or stay here--your choice.”

Ivory and I shared a look before nodding at the same time. We were met with a smile of approval from the colt. “Then it begins,” he said.

We were led to a steamcar waiting around the corner that was somehow even more battered than any other I had seen before--which was saying a lot. It seemed to be on the constant verge of collapsing and apparently held together only by a silver tape spread liberally across it and the driver’s will.

It squeaked fiercely as we all climbed in, and I briefly had the sickening feeling that I was stepping into a death trap. The balding colt stepped into the passenger’s seat next to the stony-faced driver without such reservations. The machine somehow held together and we rumbled off, leaving a blanket of smog behind us from the outdated coal-burner.

As we headed into the traffic moving away from the closed fairgrounds, the balding colt turned around in his seat to face Ivory and I. “Unfortunately, there are some . . . reservations to you coming with us to Doctor Chemiker’s hideout,” he said.

“Like what?” Ivory said tersely.

The colt held up two black strips of cloth tied into a band, forming what was obviously a blindfold. “I’m going to need the two of you to put these on.” He tossed them to us, and mine landed in my lap.

“If Chemiker trusts us enough to talk to us, then shouldn’t we be able to see where we’re going?” I said.

“Oh, Chemiker trusts you,” the colt said, “but I don’t. Put on the blindfolds or you can get out right here.”

Considering the steamcar had picked up speed and the only thing to either side of the car was hard dirt and gravel, I decided to just go with it. I fumbled with the blindfold in my hooves for a second before remembering my wings and used them to help me put the cloth securely over my eyes. The blindfolds were made of fine material, so the world was entirely pitch black--there was going to be no seeing through the material.

I thought I could feel the colt waving a hoof in front of my face, but I didn’t respond. “Good,” he said. “Now we’ll take you to the Doctor.” The car rumbled around a turn and I could tell by the honking of horns that we were once again in Fillydelphia.

“So why did Chemiker stay in Fillydelphia anyway?” I said. “I mean, if he knows the Germanes are onto him, it seems like he should’ve skipped town.”

“Hey, does it look like I know?” the balding colt snapped.

“It doesn’t look like anything, from my point of view.”

He paused and Ivory stifled a laugh. “Very funny,” the colt said. “All I’ll say is that I told him the exact same thing, and so did a lot of others, but he hasn’t budged. If you’re lucky, maybe he’ll tell you why.”

The rest of the ride was quiet. I had tried, at first, to form a mental map of where we were going by the feeling of the turns the car made, but I was still way too new to the city, so I quickly lost track. I wondered if Ivory was keeping up, but didn’t dare ask him. All that I figured out was that we were heading in the general direction of West Fillydelphia--no surprise there. What better place to hide than where the police didn’t want to look?

We eventually came to a stop, and the driver helped me out of the car while the balding colt vocally did the same with Ivory. The sun was higher in the sky than when we had left, and the pavement beneath my hooves had begun to heat up. We were led, still blind, onto a sidewalk and presumably to the front of a building.

“Can we take off the blindfolds now?” I said.

There was a low chatter between the two, then one of them answered, “Go ahead.”

I tore away the black cloth and blinked in the sunlight. My vision was briefly obscured by the brightness, but it soon settled down. Once it did, however, it left me feeling much more puzzled than before. We stood in front of a clapboard shop, which looked long abandoned and beginning to sag with age. The door, however, was painted a bright orange. An orange so glaring that whether it was in the middle of the day or night, it shone brightly on the street. I only knew that because I had passed it nearly everyday that I had been in the city.

I turned around and, sure enough, Joya’s shop sat right across the street. The shutters were still closed, so that meant Joya was prepping a new display line for today, and would open later. “Oh come on!” I said.

Ivory turned around to see what I was looking at and burst out laughing. “Are you serious?” he said with another chuckle.

The driver and the balding colt looked at each other, then at us. “What’s the deal?” the colt said.

I snickered. “This is the street I live on, genius. That whole blindfold thing was pointless.”

Anger briefly flashed in his eyes, but dissipated once the balding colt took a deep breath. “I suppose it’s better this way--Doctor Chemiker will think of it as a sign of trust.” He walked over to the orange door and knocked in a peculiar rhythm. A moment later, it creaked open. “Are you coming in or not?” he said.

I took a big gulp, took one last look at Joya’s shop--freedom from the whole story if I wanted it--and walked in with my head held high.

The interior of the ruined storefront was dingy at best. There was a table with a few chairs spread around it, several naked mattresses in one corner, and a small woodburning stove in the middle of the room. A few of the beaten ponies from the freakshow tent were milling about, and regarded us with a sense of both familiarity and indifference. We weren’t their problem.

Mr. Baldy, however, they took for someone much more important. Those that hadn’t been on their hooves rose and the bald colt walked among them as if examining his men. Then he gave them all a curt nod and they returned to what they had been doing before, except one gray-blue stallion who saddled up close to Baldy.

“Is the Doctor in?” Baldy asked.

The other stallion grumpily smiled. “He’s been waiting for you to get back; he seems pretty excited to talk to one of those two.” He turned to Ivory and I. “Though I’d never know why.”

Ivory rolled his eyes indifferently and I did too. It’s not like he had helped stop a mayor . . . by failing to stop her in any way . . . okay, well I still had a lot more experience than most under my wing. Not that any of the stallions in the room would care, most likely.

“Right,” Baldy said. “I’ll go back and see which one the Doctor wants. You stay here and watch these two.”

The stallion nodded and Baldy slipped through a door in the back of the room. He shut the door behind him with a resounding thunk.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” Ivory said. “Must’ve been a real bargain.”

“Quiet you,” the stallion said.

“Sorry, was just trying to figure out what exactly all of you are doing here, when it’s only Chemiker that’s wanted for anything.”

The stallion snorted. “You really believe that?”

“Wait,” I said, “so all of you in here are criminals?” It occurred to me as soon as the words escaped my mouth that saying that sentence in a crowded room might not have been the best idea. Luckily for me, all they did was give me a few angry stares before returning to their previous activity of loafing around. Whether it was from Chemiker’s tutelage or personal conviction, I could not tell, but I noticed that a number of them by the mattresses were, in fact, hoof-cleaning steel-and-wood rifles.

The stallion with us seemed to take the comment in stride. “To our former country, we are indeed criminals. Wanted colts, really. But we wear it as a badge of pride.” He nodded to the door. “Doctor Chemiker was one of the first to gather some of us who thought the same way. When our attempts to speak out were silenced by the government, he helped secure us transport to Equestria as a place of refuge.”

“And yet even here you’re still in hiding,” Ivory said.

The stallion shrugged. “Not forever.”

At that moment the door opened and Baldy came back out. He surveyed the room then turned to me. “The Doctor will see you now,” he said without a hint of humor in his voice.

“What about me?” Ivory said.

“You stay here,” Baldy replied. Before I could say anything, he continued, “And that point is non-negotiable.”

Ivory gave me the go-ahead look and I stepped through the door, after which it was shut hard behind me.

The room inside was small, to a point of being cramped. Old dusty bookshelves lined the walls while in the middle of the room was an aged oak desk with papers littered on the top, some new and some old. Behind the desk was a window whose shades were pulled shut, allowing only a few tentative rays of light in, casting the room in a hazy light. In between the desk and window sat a high-backed chair which faced away from me, as if I were stepping into the lair of some half-bit novel’s villain.

“Uh, Doctor Chemiker?” I said cautiously.

The chair swiveled around and my draw dropped. “Hello, Minze,” said Bright Light. Or, well, I guess it wasn’t really Bright Light.

“You, you’re . . .” I stuttered, my brain still not quite comprehending. It was as if the looking glass I had viewed Bright Light through had shattered, and I had stepped through it to the other side.

He smiled. “I know, I know. And before you ask, yes, I am really Doctor Wahr Chemiker, former Professor of Chemistry at the University of Marelin.”

I shook my head. “B- But how is that possible? Ornate--my boss--showed us your picture; you looked so much, uh, not as young! Now you’re . . . not.” In fact, really looking at him, his muscular frame and big, open eyes looked nothing like the Chemiker in the picture. For the briefest of moments, I hoped it was all a big joke.

But Brigh- er, Chemiker just sadly shook his head. “I may look different, but I am the same stallion I always was. In fact, the reason that I am different is why I called you in here today.” He pointed to a rickety wooden chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat, if you don’t mind.”

I took a breath and sat down, and was surprised when the thing didn’t give out from under me. I thanked my lucky stars that Pegasi have hollow bones. “Alright, so . . . why call me in now?” I said, trying to get down to business in an effort to keep my brain exploding into questions. “I mean, you could have just told me you were Chemiker back at the festival, you know.”

He placed his elbows and the desk and brought the tips of his hooves together, where he sat his head upon them in a gesture that made me feel like I was going to be lectured in the principal’s office. “I had to choose my time right,” he said. “I sought you out at the festival--running into you was no accident. I hoped that you would be the pony the world saw you as after the article, but I had to be sure.”

“And was I?” I asked cautiously.

Chemiker smiled. “Even more so. I was going to wait until the right time to reveal my identity to you and your companion, but unfortunately . . . well, you know what happened.”

I nodded. “And then this morning.”

For a moment, Chemiker’s new, younger face seemed to age until it caught back up with him, but then went back to normal. “Yes, this morning. Big was quite the friend . . . he helped me escape Germaneigh, you know. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“He was widely associated with me and being watched by the Germane government. Ask yourself, Minze, what do you think really happened?”

I could draw a clear enough picture myself. The air in the room seemed to grow heavy with the weight of death. Breaking the silence, I asked, “So . . . why me? I understand why you’d want to seek out Grapevine--she’s got connections. But going for me first, well, it just doesn’t add up in my head.”

Chemiker laughed. “Oh, I was never looking for a pony with connections. In fact, the reason you’re here has more to do with my sudden change in appearance than you realize.”

Before I could ask him why--and maybe get him to cut down on the cryptic answers--there was a banging on the door and Baldy rushed in. “You need to come quick, sir!” he said.

“Why? What’s wrong?” Chemiker asked in a measured tone, like a good commander in battle.

“There’s a filly outside who is demanding to be let in. She’s already threatened to blow the door down--we think she may be with the government!”

Chemiker rose out of his seat, but I remained where I was. A gut feeling was gnawing at me, giving me a feeling like I already knew who it was. “Let me guess, she’s a purple unicorn?” I said.

Baldy looked surprised. “Why, yes . . . yes, she is. Do you know her?”

I sighed. “Unfortunately.” I stood up and let them lead me to the front of the building. There, two of the ponies armed with rifles stood a little back from the door, their guns trained on the entrance. A third peered out the peephole.

“She’s still there,” he said.

Chemiker looked to me for confirmation, then said, “Open it.”

“But sir-”

“Do it.”

The buff stallion paused and reluctantly pulled open the door, making sure to keep out of comrades’ line of fire. Grapevine strutted in like she owned the place, as usual. She took in the guns with a look of boredom, and looked as if she had expected Bright Light to be Chemiker.

However, when she turned to me, her face went all funny--in almost goofy, schoolfilly sort of way--and she smiled real big. “Hey Minty,” she said brightly. “Good to see you’re fine.”

I bit my lip and groaned inwardly. Of all the actions to pick after last night’s most awkward kiss in all of Equestrian history, she would choose for her mood to chipper. “Oh, uh, hey Grapevine,” I said. “Uh, how did you know where to find me?”

Grapevine laughed. “Well duh, you’re right across the street from Joya’s. She saw you and Ivory inside; she told me so when I called her.” She looked around. “By the way, where is he?”

“Over here,” Ivory called, leaning against a far wall. “Feeling about as useless as wings on a fish.”

“Wait a second,” I said, holding up a hoof. “Why were you calling Joya in the first place?”

Grapevine rubbed the back of her head and gave an awkward laugh. “Well, I was kind of trying to call and see if you would come bust me out, but Joya said you were busy over here, so I uh-”

“Bust you out?” I said. “You mean, you were in jail again?”

“Well, yeah. Those Germane agents came and got me before I could get to the festival. They told me about Big’s death and interviewed me, but they said that they could see I didn’t have anything to do with it. That’s why I was calling; they said I could go if I had someone come get me.”

“And your friend--Joya--told you exactly where Minze was?” Chemiker said.

Grapevine nodded. “Well, yeah. After I told them that I didn’t have anyone who could come get me, they let me go. So I took a trolley and came here.”

Chemiker growled and rubbed furiously at the space between his eyes. “Do you not realize what you have done?” he said.

Grapevine scratched her chin, then her eyes widened. “They let me go as soon as they heard Minty was at a location that was likely to be yours, so that must mean-”

“They followed you here,” Chemiker finished for her. He sighed. “And now we have so little time to prepare, for they will surely be arriving soon.”

The other ponies in the room cursed and looked worried while Grapevine ground her teeth and hung her head. She turned to me. “I’m sorry, I was just trying to come find you . . .”

What surprised me more than her neglecting her usual reporter’s instincts was her apology, honestly. “It’s, uh, alright?” I said. She quickly returned to smiling, and I swear she managed to draw closer to me than she was before.

Chemiker spoke his forgiveness as well. “What has been done cannot be taken back,” he said. “But now we must prepare for the inevitable, and I fear we have little time to do so.”

As if on cue, we began to hear the wail of sirens and screech of tires that signaled the arrival of the agents and local police right outside of the building. The front windows were almost totally covered in wooden boards except in a few places, so we couldn’t actually see them arrive. What we could do, however, was hear the slamming of car doors and the beat of many hooves on pavement as the ponies outside piled out.

A voice came over a megaphone, “By decree of the Empire of Germaneigh, as approved by Princess Celestia of the Equestrian Empire, you are ordered to hand over the fugitive Chemiker at once. Resistance is futile and will be met with deadly force.”

None of the stallions in the room made a move to hand over the Doctor, but instead rushed to their weapons and drew back into firing positions across from the door. All except for one colt younger than the rest.

With his weapon drawn, he slunk over to one of the windows and spoke through one of the few spaces between the boards. “You’ll never take him!” he shouted. “You pigs don’t have the right!”

In response, one of the rifles outside spoke its roaring thunder and a bullethole appeared in one of the thin boards over the window. Due to some masterful dumb luck, however, the colt remained unharmed. Instead, the bullet found a home in Baldy, standing over near Ivory, where it buried itself in his skull. The body fell to the floor with a sickeningly-wet thump and blood pooled around him. Ivory, for his part, looked more in shock than anything else.

I’d never even found out his real name.

“Away from the windows!” Chemiker shouted, too late. He waved his hooves at his followers. “No guns! Let them come in here as the aggressors, not as defending themselves!” He turned to the stallion who he had been talking to earlier. “Make sure they keep calm.” He paused. “You won’t need to for long.”

Chemiker moved toward the far side of the room and swept away a few scattered boxes to reveal a small door. “Where are you going?” I said.

He threw open the door and turned to me. “Not where I am going, but rather where we are going,” he said. And with that he grabbed my by the hoof and dragged me with him through the doorway and to the other side. Before the door shut, I could see Grapevine try to follow us, but the stallion from before stopped her. I was alone with Chemiker.

We were in a dirty back alley, away from Chemiker’s loyalists and the police. Old trash littered the concrete beneath my hooves, and air smelled stale. Not one to wait around, Chemiker continued to drag me by the hoof through the alley somewhere to the east of all the commotion.

“What are we doing?” I said, trying to keep pace with him.

“We are going to the precise location that we need to be at,” he said.

“Which is where, exactly?”

“You’ll see, in time,” he answered. “I have already planned for this contingency, though I regret that I have so little time to enact it.”

I nodded like I understood all of those words. “Okay, so, what’s the plan?”

“The plan,” he said, stopping himself and I in front of another run-down building, “lays within.” He led me through the wide front door and into a lobby that still had remnants of tile on the floor. From the looks of the building, it had once been a hotel, probably back before the parasprite invasion. The entire inside looked even more beaten down than the other building had been, with virtually nothing clean or undamaged.

Nothing, that was, except for a single icebox--one of the mechanical self-cooling kind, like Marshmallow had. “This way,” Chemiker said, leading me over fallen debris to the icebox. It hummed softly from the large contraption on its back that gave it power.

“Alright, we’re here,” I said, “so now can you tell me what’s going on?”

He quietly nodded his head. “We should have some time before the authorities can find us, and it is imperative you know everything.” He paused to collect his thoughts, then began, lapsing into Germane as he did so. “The Germane Government does not want me--not personally,” he said. “They never have; they only want what I can create. For years I worked tirelessly in a secret lab below Marelin as their head chemist, working with other brilliant minds on a project that we were never allowed to know the full extent of.

“It wasn’t until the end, I think, that we really wised up to what we were creating, but by then it was too late. We had brought to life the weapon the government wanted, and after that we were sent home to ostensibly forget about what we had taken part in. Most did, but not me.” He stopped to take a deep breath before continuing. “It took time, but I managed to find a way to infiltrate the facility with a team of like-minded stallions such as myself. We took casualties, but I made it through to the storage and found our foul abomination. Before leaving, I destroyed all of the original copies of the serum, save two. One I took to give me the indentity you see today, and the other . . .”

He turned and flung open the door of the icebox to reveal a small beaker filled with what looked like purple slime. “This is the sole surviving sample of the Reinstein Serum: half engineered magic, and half modern chemistry. Designed by Germaneigh to counter the Prench threat on the horizon by creating the perfect super-solider to be faster, stronger, and smarter than the enemy.”

I looked at the little beaker of fluid, then back to Chemiker’s new form. To think science could create something so potent was a scary thought. “So this is the very last one?” I said. “Because didn’t you say there were copies? Can’t they make more?”

Chemiker shook his head. “They had been trying in the intervening months between my departure and return to replicate our processes, but had met with failure. Something about our specific technique that they couldn’t get down right. All the copies they made were created by literally copying more of the serum with magic. Without any samples to copy, they can’t create more.”

I sat down on the dirty floor as the gravity situation began to weigh down on me. “Wow . . .” I muttered. “This is just . . . a lot to take in.”

He kneeled next to me. “I know this, and I apologize. Recent events have forced my actions prematurely, but I needed you to know all of this.”

“But . . . why?” I said.

Chemiker took out the beaker and carefully held it in his hooves. “Because this serum is now yours.”

I coughed. “Wait, what?”

“I cannot run from the authorities forever; I’ve known that for some time. So I came here to look for someone I could trust to handle this--to take up my mantle and keep it safe and hidden.”

“But they’ll just come after me when they figure out you don’t have it,” I said pleadingly. “Passing it on won’t stop them.”

Chemiker smiled sadly. “It will if they don’t think it has been given away in the first place.” He reached into the back of the icebox and produced another beaker filled with a liquid that was almost a perfect copy of the other, which he set on the ground. “This compound is similar in every way to the serum, except for the effects--it’s a placebo.”

“And what exactly do you intend to do with that?” I said, though I was already getting an idea that I didn’t want to accept. He seemed to pick up on that, because he didn’t answer but instead gave me a knowing smile.

Outside, the noise grew louder as the police found our hiding place. None came in the door, but we could hear them loudly discussing how to proceed. Some of the voices were in Germane, so the agents were there as well.

“Here already,” Chemiker muttered. He nodded to the camera bag still around my waist. Quickly; open your bag,” he said.

I did, and he carefully placed the beaker with the real serum inside. He closed the flap with equal caution and sighed. “Be sure to take good care of the serum; sometime, someday it may be used for good. Because imagine the future we’ll have if you drop your bag on its side.” He chuckled and said in a mocking voice, “The horror, the horror!” The banging on the doors had begun and escalated while we were talking, so with an abrupt suddenness, he stood up and turned away from me, took a deep breath, and began to walk toward the sound without another word to me.

I guess they were good last words to leave me with--at least they meant something anyway. Goodbyes always seem like such an obligation, and I would have felt a little bit of insincerity from some sort of tearful farewell from him. Instead, I got a bit of sarcasm and a wink.

Doctor Wahr Chemiker threw open the front door to the old hotel and walked proudly into the sunlight. I watched from a crack in one of the windows as he stepped into full view of a semi-circle of authorities who trained their weapons on him.

“You have no chance of escape, Doctor,” one the agents said, a pistol wrapped around his hooves and pointed right at Chemiker’s head.

Chemiker just laughed. “I never thought I did.” With a frightening quickness, he raised the beaker he had been keeping from view over his head and tilted it so it caught the sunlight. Just as expected, the Germanes recognized it for what it was and moved to stop him.

They weren’t fast enough, however, and the liquid flowed into Chemiker’s mouth. He tossed the beaker away where it shattered against the ground. The Germanes suddenly looked afraid of the Doctor, and raised their guns. “D- Don’t try anything stupid,” one of them said.

Chemiker smiled one last time. “Just try and stop me.”

He leapt at the agent who had spoken, hooves outstretched to the colt’s throat. But it wasn’t the agent who fired his gun first, but a young nervous cop who had a hasty trigger hoof. Once the first shot had been fired, however, the dam broke.

I turned away as the gunshots rang out, trying to save myself of looking at the result. I didn’t need reality to fill in the gaps of my imagination. I didn’t want to remember him like that.

My ears kept ringing long after the gunfire stopped.

“Why do ponies make sacrifices?” I said to the open air. I was sitting with my knees to my chest on a grassy hill in the far outskirts of Fillydelphia, far from any other living soul. An evening breeze had picked up, and most of my words were lost on the wind.

“Is it really just a compulsion to be a hero? Do they really think it makes them noble?”

There had been a lot of . . . cleaning to do. Grapevine had kept her distance, at least. Ivory had gone home with Chemiker’s stallions shortly after the Germanes cleared us of wrongdoing and left without checking my camera bag. Gone like nothing had ever happened, assuming their job was done.

Before we left, I gave Grapevine a report for the story--another tale of a fallen hero that would look nice for the papers. Lies, but necessary if I wanted to keep his secret. Grapevine didn’t know the truth, and I didn’t offer the information. To keep her safe, I kept telling myself.

I picked up a pebble and tossed it down the hill, where it bounced and rolled down to the field below. I’d gone with a simple picture, in the end. The bright orange door had been kicked off its hinges when the police stormed Chemiker’s building, and it had hung at a grotesque angle against the front. It fit the story, in a way. That picture would be displayed on the front page of the Chronicler with Grapevine’s story in a couple days. Maybe it’d make an impact, but I didn’t know; I was just a photographer.

The evening air was cold, especially on the granite against my back. The grave we had gotten for Rainbow Remedy was simple; just a headstone with his name. We figured he would have liked it that way. It sat on the hill overlooking Fillydelphia like a silent guardian, a watchful protector. He probably would have liked that more, to tell the truth.

It was then the tears started to come, the ones that had held back in the shock of the situation, like a salty timebomb. “You’re all the same--you think sacrificing yourself clears everything up, but it never does. It just leaves . . . pieces behind, for us to pick up.” I sighed. “Without your help.”

At my feet was the camera bag, and the terrible secret within. The catalyst for everything that had happened--the awful weapon that Wahr had entrusted me to keep safe until the day someone smarter than I could use it for good.

I shivered and brought the bag closer to my chest. It felt warm against my coat, and I sat back a little and closed my eyes. I was content, if for a moment.

But I knew I couldn’t stay there forever, the hour was growing late and the bright lights of Joya’s shop were calling me. Terrible things had happened that day but the city--the world--still lived and thrived. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for me.