"Mercury? Why does that suddenly sound familiar…" I said. My head started to hurt.
"Ah, there goes the Memorical Barrier, doing it's job." Mercury said, smiling.
"You like your fancy words, don't you Mercury." The left one said.
"Oh, shush now, Jade. Your just here because your stuck with me.
"What do you mean by 'Stuck'?" I sakes, rubbing my head a little for good measure.
"Well, my dear, it's all really quite simple. Grey Jade is, well, dead. Hung, in fact. Er, Theft of the crown jewels, was it?"
"Yes." Grey Jade grumbled.
"Good, now after his body was disposed of, I simply found it and…. well, let's just say 'Brought him back to life', shall we?"
"So, you resurrected him?" I asked. A cool breeze brushed past me, making me pull my cloak closer.
"Well, 'Resurrect' is a bit rough, but yes."
We stood there for a while as the breeze brushed past us. I still don't know how Mercury didn't feel cold! Perhaps a heat spell or something?
"Now then, here comes the fun bit." Mercury said, approaching. "Time to crack open that Memorical Barrier."
"Hold on." I said, putting my hoof out and stopping him. "You've mentioned that before, that 'Memorical Barrier'. What is that?"
"Well, the Memorical Barrier is, well, a memory wipe and shield, produced by Princess Celestia and Luna to hide the events of seven months. What it does is it pushes those memories to the far reaches of the mind, and then encases it in a shell to keep it there. Whenever the subject tries to remember that certain event, the magic keeps them out of them. BUT on this large of a scale, enwrapping the whole of Equestria, takes a massive amount of magic, and focus. No living being has such focus as to accomplish such a thing. I'm rambling now, I should stop. The focus required means that whoever is thinking about everything in Equestria can't think about absolutely everything, which is why someponies vaguely remember those memories. Now my question is; Who has that amount of mind-power? And there's only one way of knowing." He concluded.
"And that would be?" I asked, slightly asleep from his lecture.
"Spying on the Princesses, of course!"
I simply sat there,wondering if he was speaking the truth or just pulling my chain.
Well, we best be off then!" Mercury said, turning towards the old dirt road that pointed too the west (The direction of Canterlot). I sat there, gawking after him. Grey Jade walked up next to me, and elbowed me to stand.
"Think about it. We walked here from bloody Night's Edge! the poor place. Did you know that Mercury became a professor at the University of Canterlot and personally taught Princess Luna about the modern age? I guess that's where he got the lecturing part of him. And his glasses."
"Spectacles!" Mercury yelled over his shoulder. He was already quite a ways away from us.
"Eh, Spectacles. They're his tiny glasses that make him seem 'Intelligent'." Jade muttered to me. I giggled at that last remark. We started walking, well more of running to catch up to Mercury. Once we caught up to him we began the general 'Adventuring' dialogues.
"So, where did Mercury learn about the Memorical barrier? And why can't he simply get rid of it?" I asked Jade.
"From what he's told me, he found out about it by reading Luna's mind. When he was teaching her, she left her mind completely vulnerable to a mental attack. Mercury read her mind, and sort of "Patched" it."
"Patched?" I asked bluntly.
"Well, more of set up a temporary mental barrier while he was turned away, using the chalk on the board. The best thing about magic is that you can hide a spell under another one."
The rest of the trip's talk generally revolved around where/when Mercury did something or how he did it. Me and Grey Jade where so caught up in our conversation that we nearly rear-ended Mercury at the gates if Canterlot. This was at roughly 4 in the morning, so no pony was up and around. Except for the guards stationed on the wall, the city was silent, like a library.
"Hellooo-oooo?" Mercury called up to the battlements atop the wall. Two guards responded almost immediately.
"Who goes there?" They said simultaneously. Mercury cast a simple illumination spell to show who we are.
"I believe you know who I am?" Mercury said. The guards went wide-eyed for a moment, and then bolted to the gatehouse. The gate opened about a minute later. A guard stood next to it. He nodded us in.
"Professor Mercury." the guard nodded towards him. "Assistant Jade." He again nodded.
"…Ma'am." He nodded at me. After the gates shut, Jade started chuckling a bit.
"Heh heh, Ma'am." He snorted.
"Oh, shut up!" I said at him elbowing him in the ribs. He acted hurt.
"Owwy! That hurtses me! Heh heh!"
"Shut up, both of you!" Mercury said, silencing us both. "We're in the most heavily guarded city in the country, at 4 in the morning, walking around with a highly skilled unicorn with far too many enemies!"
We walked on in silence for a while, until I broke it.
"So, where are we going, anyways?" I asked.
"My apartment. It's quite near the castle, and I also need to say hello to my wife… boy is she going to be mad." Mercury said, flicking his eyes in my direction.
"Why do you say that?" Jade asked.
"I told her I'd be away for 4 days."
"Yeah?"
"Let's just say I was away for much longer then that." He said, nervously.
"Oh…." I said, itching my foreleg.
We walked on in yet more silence through the dark streets of Canterlot. We passed onto a Hoofer Street, Mercury lead us to one of the taller buildings, which we guessed to be his apartment.
"Here we are, home sweet home." Mercury said, opening the door. It was rather dusty inside the hallway, like it hadn't been disturbed for a very long while.
"Why's it so dusty?" Jade asked, tapping a book on a small shelf. The dust rose in a small cloud before settling upon the ground.
"Nopony really comes or goes from here often, and most of us can teleport or fly out, so there's really no need," Mercury said. He pointed to distinct hoofprints on the ground. "Those belong to falling fields, one of the only earth ponies that lives here."
"So, which room is yours?" I asked, looking up the flight of spiral stairs.
"Number 12. You might hear movement inside, but that would probably be my wife."
Me and Jade walked up the staircase, dust rising with every step. The air got rather musty as you went up, and the dust only made it worse. We reached the floor marked 10-19, and we climbed off. It was even dustier in here then downstairs. I heard a chittering sound at the end of the hall, but payed it no heed. We walked to the door marked 11, on the left, and knocked on the door. There was no answer. The chittering sounded again, but it had gotten the door opened slowly, but there was nobody inside. I walked in.
"Hello?" I asked. I heard something large falling from above and looked quickly enough to see a large frying pan being swung at my face. I cringed and held my wing in front of me.
"Jade!" I yelled, before the pan came crashing down on my head. I was still partially conscious, but I was fainting. I could hear Jade tackle whoever it was to the floor and hold them there while I heard Mercury rushing up the stairs. I faintly saw Mercury arrive and throw Jade off of his wife, who suddenly looked very familiar. Mercury shouted something, but I couldn't make it out.
And then all was black.
Look at me! Not dead yet!