The Foals of Harmony: Equestrian Rhapsody

by Rainy Meadows

Rating: teen
Tags: Main 6, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Romance, Original Character, Spike, Comedy, Crossover
Length: 84805

*Sarcasm mode on* I bet you'll never guess what the title is referencing...

All is not well in the land of Equestria. It doesn't take long for the rest of the mane 6 to find out why Rainbow Dash has been acting so strangely, but that's only the beginning of everypony's problems. Get ready for a tale of love and loss, random humanising, alien invasion... and an enigmatic brown unicorn who seems to know it all.

Rated Teen for action sequences, sexual references, and stuff that might be swearing if anyone could understand it.

Comments contain spoilers.

Published 2012-02-10 06:24:01 UTC
Last updated 2012-04-15 08:04:52 UTC

Chapter 2 - Combine Efforts part 1

I’m just a poor boy
I need no sympathy
Cause I’m easy come, easy go
Little high, little low
Any way the wind blows
Doesn’t really matter to me, to me

“You know, I’m really starting to get tired of all these storms,” said Spike. “Do you think maybe the weather ponies have gone on strike?”

“That isn’t what Rainbow Dash said,” replied Twilight Sparkle. “She said that it’s out of their control. It’s almost like the weather has a mind of its own. Like in the Everfree Forest.”

“You think Ponyville is gonna become part of the Everfree Forest?” asked Spike, alarmed.

“Don’t be silly, Spike,” said Twilight. “I mean, look out the window! Do you see any trees growing in the middle of the street? Are Sugarcube Corner and the Carousel Boutique getting covered in vines and moss?”

“No,” said the baby dragon, examining the scene outside, “but there is a very slow lightning bolt.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Twilight. “Everypony knows that lightning strikes take less than a second.”

“Don’t believe me?” Spike asked. “See for yourself!”

A confused Twilight trotted over to the window and was astounded at what she saw.

On the far side of the Everfree Forest a solitary bolt of lightning was lancing down from the clouds, but at a pace which could be compared to a snail hitching a ride on a tortoise. It inched its way to the ground, growing longer and longer as it reached towards the trees before finally touching down, flashing twice and remaining there, twisting and convulsing slowly.

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” Twilight exclaimed, and she started frantically pulling books off shelves and leafing through them. “All lightning bolts disappear once they’ve struck. Why isn’t this one going away?”

“Why are you asking me these questions?” asked Spike.

“Because I don’t know who else to ask!” Twilight shouted.

The purple unicorn would have been surprised to learn that she wasn’t alone in her apparent bafflement. Near the summit of a nearby mountain overlooking the storm cursed village, the glow of the lightning was reflected off two round metal tubes, which were hovering, surrounded by a sheath of telekinesis, before the investigative eyes of a pony who knew just about everything there was to know about lightning.

He had a theory about why this one bolt had been so slow, and he hoped to high heavens that he was wrong.

The lightning bolt was still inexplicably there the next morning, when the storm had finally blown itself out and left Ponyville in an even worse mess than it had done the last time, two weeks ago, when it was raining sideways and a stray rock had broken Rarity’s window.

The mess went largely unnoticed this time, though. Everypony was baffled by the burning stem of electricity which supported the sky above the ground, like a thin, crackling, pulsating pillar, and the clouds that now swirled around the top of it were beginning to emanate a worrying radiance. However, only one pony had plucked up the courage to investigate and find out what was going on.

The Everfree Forest was truly enormous, and it had taken Rainbow Dash from when she first saw the lightning three hours ago until now to fly, even at top speed, from her cloud home over Ponyville to where the bolt touched the ground, and she was so exhausted by the time she got there that she almost crashed into the grassy stretch between the tree line and the mountains.

She sighed and flopped down into the cool greenery.

‘Never realized three straight hours of top speed flying could be so draining,’ she thought. ‘Not surprising though, considering...’

There was no way she wanted to finish that thought.

Once she had regained her energy, Dash fluttered up into the air and cautiously approached the lightning bolt.

When she was ten feet away from it, her world was filled with blinding white light and she recoiled in agony, clutching at her forehead.

“Aww, son of a-“Dash withdrew a reasonable distance, and then blazed towards the lightning bolt at the fastest speed she could manage. Again, her world was filled with pain and bright light, only this time more so, and for far longer. She smelled burning hair – whatever she had hit, it had singed her mane. Dash hastily patted it out with her hooves.

“What the hay?”

She stopped for a moment, and moved slowly forward with a single hoof outstretched.

There was some kind of shield surrounding the lightning bolt. It shimmered and made itself obvious where Rainbow Dash touched it, but she didn’t touch it for long because it burned like crazy. A pony would have to be out of her mind to try to penetrate this shield; clearly it was there for a reason.

However, a combination of frustration and tiredness had temporarily placed Rainbow Dash in a slightly unstable frame of mind. She withdrew as far away as she dared, and dived at the bolt, both hooves in front of her, wings flapping at maximum capacity.

Seconds later she began to consider she might have made the distance a little too large. If she didn’t slow down soon, she was going to cause a sonic rainboom, and she could already see the barrier in front of her.
Still she picked up speed.

The barrier slicked down into a crackling colour-streaked flow of air that surrounded Dash in a haze of speed. Any second now she was going to-

BLAM.

Yep, definitely too far. Rainbow Dash’s assault on the lightning bolt was halted when she crashed into the shield, just a couple MPH short of a sonic rainboom. It felt like hitting the side of a building, only buildings don’t usually propel you screaming at the top of your lungs into the canopy of a forest, where you come to rest in the uppermost branches of a large fig tree, covered in snapped twigs and leaves.

Dash lifted a small branch away from her face and saw a small monkey staring her in the face.

“What’re you looking at?” she asked, and it scampered away with a squeak.

She looked up into the sky. Her collision with the leaves had carved a neat, Rainbow Dash-shaped hole in the canopy, and through it she could see the lightning bolt, and if she didn’t know any better, Dash would have said it was taunting her.

She sighed, and pressed a hoof to the black hook on her ear.

“Hex, it’s me,” she said into the black bud which extended from her ear to her muzzle. “Can you see-“

“Yes, I see it,” said the pony on the other end. “If by it you mean the pulsating lightning bolt on the far side of the Everfree Forest that for some reason won’t go away. Don’t ‘spose you have a clue as to why?”

“I was kinda hoping you could tell me,” said Dash as she detached herself from the tree. “Seeing as you’re such a wiz with lightning and all and that elecrity stuff you keep going on about.”

“I’m presuming you mean ‘electricity’?”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“No, you said ‘elecrity’. I don’t even think that’s a real word. Or if it is, I’ve never heard of it.”

“That’s beside the point!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash.

“You work in weather control, right?” asked Hex. “Isn’t it – I dunno, your job to know about lightning and clouds and how they work and all that smeg?”

“I don’t know how they work. I just make sure they’re in the right place at the right time. Only it’s been getting out of control lately and we’ve had storms over Ponyville every week for the past ten weeks. Anyway, like I said, you’re the lightning egghead. Any ideas about this thing?”

“I have a hunch,” said Hex, “and this time I hope to smeg that I’m wrong.”

Rainbow Dash finally dislodged enough broken foliage to fly out of the trees, and she began to make her way back towards Ponyville.

“I don’t really like the sound of that,” she said to her friend. “Because I know you’ll be right. You’re always right! You’re like a guy version of Twilight, only you’re not a librarian and you’re somehow nerdier, and I didn’t even think that was possible.”

“That reminds me,” said Hex, “when do you plan on introducing me to your friends? Especially that Twilight Sparkle you keep going on about.”

“What? No!” said Dash. “They can’t meet you! They’re not even supposed to know about you! The others only found out because Pinkie Pie overheard us talking and went and blabbed about it to everypony. Magic is what goes in Equestria. Without it we wouldn’t even have the sun and the moon! Can you imagine how they’re gonna react if you come up with all this stuff that runs on lightning?”

“I’ll DEAL with it!” Hex shouted, and Rainbow Dash fell silent.

“Look, I grew up an outcast,” he said. “My parents were hardly interested in me, and at school my only friends were my cousin and his buddies, and they weren’t all that interested in me either. If I got bullied, it was only because of something they had done. Even the best friend I ever had constantly called me a nerd, albeit in an affectionate way, and only ever to see the look on my face. What’re five more ponies when you take all of that into consideration?”

Dash sighed. “You’re right,” she said, “as usual.”

“So when can I meet them?”

Rainbow Dash looked back at the lightning bolt and the glow that was beginning to swirl in the clouds.

“I’ll bring them to you,” she said, “but only if the lightning thingy gets worse. Deal?”

“Deal. And Rainbow?”

“Yeah?”

“Sorry I shouted.”

“That’s okay. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t shouted at somepony on at least one occasion. So what’s this theory of yours?”

“Well, let me put it this way,” said Hex. “Have you ever read War of the Worlds?”

“Um, Twilight?”

“Yes, Fluttershy?” said Twilight, looking up from her tenth book of the day.

“Oh, sorry,” said the pegasus. “I didn’t mean to disturb you if you’re busy. I’ll just go.”

“You’re here about the lightning bolt, aren’t you?” asked Twilight as she placed the book back on the shelf.

“Yes,” said Fluttershy. “I was hoping you could tell me if you’ve found a way to get rid of it? Only, my cottage is right near the Everfree Forest and all my animals are frightened by the lightning. But I can see you’re busy reading, so I’ll just be on my way.”

“You want the truth, Fluttershy?” asked Twilight as she stepped out into the street to get a better view. “I have no idea what it’s doing there, or why it won’t go away. I was up almost all night looking through my books, and they all say that lightning usually disappears in less than a second. I’m afraid this is completely new to me.”

“Hey girls.”

Twilight sighed and looked to the newcomer.

“Hi Applejack,” she said. “Please don’t tell me you’re here about the lightning as well?”

“Not really,” said Applejack. “Ah was wond’rin’ if either of you had seen Rainbow Dash anywhere. Ah just thought since she’s a weather pony she might be able to enlighten us as to what’s goin’ on.”

“Sorry,” said Fluttershy. “Haven’t seen her all day.”

Suddenly, there was a tremendous flash of blinding white light. It only lasted for a couple of seconds, and soon everypony’s eyes were back to working order.

“What in tarnation?” exclaimed Applejack. The ponies’ eyes wandered to the sustained lightning bolt, and the translucent wave of blue light which was moving towards them at an alarming pace. Twilight could see straight through it, and the wave of destruction it was leaving in its wake.

“Get down!” she shouted as the wave fell upon them.

She lay on the ground with her hooves over her head and felt as though the world was spinning in every direction possible at the same time. It was like being sealed in a barrel as it fell over a waterfall. She even felt as though she were falling, like the ground had dropped away from her and wasn’t anywhere close.

And then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. Twilight cautiously opened one eye, dreading what she might see.
Ponies everywhere were picking themselves and each other up off the ground, and Ponyville hadn’t looked in such a bad state since the parasprite infestation. Massive boughs had been blown off the library and burnt, and a worryingly large section of Sugarcube Corner’s roof had collapsed. Twilight heard creaking above her, and saw a very large branch about to break off the library. She got up and cantered out of the way.

“Fluttershy, you have to move!” she yelled to the yellow pegasus who was still huddled on the ground, shivering with fear.

Twilight looked up: the branch was seconds from snapping and looked far too heavy for her to catch with her magic. And she didn’t dare move forward in case the branch landed on her as well.

She could only watch as the flame-bitten wood finally gave way and plummeted down towards the terrified Fluttershy...

...and as a vivid blue flash ripped through her vision and the branch landed on an empty patch of road.

“You alright, Fluttershy?” asked Rainbow Dash and she clambered to her hooves, having pushed her friend a good ten metres out of danger.

“Thanks to you I am,” said Fluttershy. “I’m sorry I didn’t move. I was just so scared that I didn’t even want to open my eyes. I was worried that there was going to be another one of those – whatever it was. Thank you, Rainbow.”

“What can I say?” said Dash. “It’s what I’m here for!”

“Where have you been, Rainbow Dash?” asked Twilight.

“I was just investigating that lightning over there,” said Dash, pointing. “But I couldn’t really get close enough to have a good look. There was some sort of shield around it, and whenever I tried to get close enough that happened.” She pointed at her singed mane. “Don’t ask me how or why, but it almost felt like it was rejecting me. Like it somehow didn’t want me to go anywhere near it.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” Twilight stated, rather unnecessarily.

“Twilight, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but nothing makes any sense any more. That bright flash? No sense. That weird storm thing we just experienced? No sense. The fact that we’ve had storms every week for the past ten weeks? NO SENSE!”

Twilight sighed.

“You’re right,” she said. “Rather than just asking pointless questions, we need to start figuring out what’s going on.”

“Oh no!” cried Fluttershy.

“What is it, Fluttershy?” asked Applejack.

“Look at Sugarcube Corner!” Fluttershy exclaimed. “Do you think Pinkie Pie was in there?”

“No, silly!” squeaked a relievingly familiar voice. “I was just going to your place to see if you had any eggs because I’d run out and Mr and Mrs Cake are in Canterlot and they left me in charge while they were gone.” Pinkie then noticed the hook over Rainbow Dash’s ear and immediately zoomed over to her.

“What is that thing on your ear?” she asked. “Wait a minute, that’s the thing I saw you talking into a couple of weeks ago when you were being all misty mysterious! Have you been talking to Hex again?”

“Who exactly is this Hex you talked about?” Twilight inquired. “And what exactly is that hook?”

“It’s called an earbud,” Dash explained. “It lets me communicate with Hex when we aren’t together. It’s easier than going all the way up to his shop just to ask him a question.”

“Shop?”

“He sells stuff that uses power from lightning. Something he calls ‘electricity’. None of it uses magic, which I think is rather ironic since he’s a unicorn and everything. He lives near the top of that mountain over there.” She pointed at the mountain which they had visited in order to convince a dragon to take a nap somewhere else.

“Why so high up?” asked Twilight.

“It’s so he can catch the lightning,” said Rainbow Dash. “Also, he says that other ponies are less likely to try and steal his inventions if his shop is so difficult to get to.”

“Finally, something that makes sense!” Twilight sighed.

“Exactly,” said Dash. “Which is why I’m kinda concerned.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, see, the thing about Hex is he somehow manages to never be wrong. He’s always right.” She looked over at the lightning.

“He said he had a theory about that lightning,” she said.

“And he also said that he hoped he was wrong.”

“I can’t believe we’re finally going to meet Hex!” Pinkie Pie chirped as she bounced up the mountain with her friends.

“I’m not sure I get this Hex person,” said Spike, who was seated on Twilight’s back. “What’s he like?”

“Well, you know how Twilight’s practically a walking library?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Yeah?”

“Think of that, only times a billion.”

“Okay,” said Spike, “that’s brainy. I didn’t think there was anyone smarter than Twilight.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” said Twilight.

“I hope we reach the top soon,” said Rarity. “All this walking is going to wreak havoc on my hooves, and I’ve just had a pony pedi.”

“Aren’cha at all concerned about this lightnin’?” asked Applejack.

“What are you talking about?” asked Rarity. “Of course I am! Is there anypony who isn’t? That dreadful light storm or whatever it was made a terrible mess in the Carousel Boutique, there was thread and ribbons and fabric all over the place!”

“I just hope he knows how to make the lightning go away,” said Fluttershy. “I’ve never seen my chickens so terrified. Elizabeak nearly got out of the coop again, she got into such a flap.”

“Such a flap!” Rainbow Dash said. “Good one, Fluttershy!”

“It was?” Fluttershy was baffled for a moment. “Oh, wait, it was, wasn’t it?”

The six ponies and dragon started to laugh.

“We almost missed that one!” giggled Fluttershy.

“Such a flap!” squeaked Pinkie Pie. “Because they’re birds, and birds flap their wings!”

“Thank you Pinkie, that was the joke,” said Twilight.

Despite their good cheer and the occasional light hearted joke, it still took quite a while for them to reach the place where Hex’s shop stood, carved into the rock like a cave.

“Hex’s Gizmoporium, Home of All Things Electrical,” Twilight read on the sign painted above the door.

“Gizmoporium?” Applejack was confused. “What the hay does that mean?”

“Just be glad we’re finally here,” said Twilight. “We’re going to find out what’s going on with this lightning if it’s the last thing we do.”
“It’s so cold up here,” Rarity stated. “Good thing I brought my scarf.” She pulled it out of her saddlebag and draped it daintily around her neck.

“Oh, puh-lease tell me I brought the tiara that goes with this,” she said, and rummaged around in her bag again, before she noticed her friends had gone into the shop without her and quickly hurried into the shop after them.

There was this to be said about the Gizmoporium. It was big. Very big. Perhaps twice the size of the Ponyville library. The space was occupied by shelves, tables, dishes and barrels, and they all contained... stuff. That was the only word to describe it all. Stuff. The barrels mostly contained tiny glass globes, labelled “Light Globes: 5 for a bit“ but there was another which was brimming over with silver sticks that had coloured crystals stuck on the ends. Apparently they were “Sonic screwdrivers, ass. colours, 2 bits”. There was a counter at the far end of the room, and behind it was a sign saying “Free Gift for Every Customer!” and a door, presumably to the back of the shop.

The ceiling was alarmingly high. Hanging out of it was something large and apparently made of metal. It appeared to be an arrangement of tubes and blocks, but here and there was the odd wire and the occasional black panel. A pony wearing a pair of dark goggles hung amongst this jumbled up mess, dangling from a swing and pinning the wires to the tubing and blocks with deadly concentration.

“Wow!” said Spike. “Look at all this stuff!”

“Yep,” said the pony hanging from the ceiling, “that’s the most accurate description I’ve ever heard; stuff.” The voice was strange: it was streaked with an accent unlike anything ever heard in Equestria before.

“Hey Hex, it’s us!” shouted Rainbow Dash.

“Rainbow Dash?” said Hex. He leaned back in the swing to look down at the pegasus, lost his balance and crashed to the floor, where he removed his goggles and they could finally get a good look at him.

Hex was a young unicorn pony, barely older than Twilight or any of the ponies, and he looked a lot scruffier than all of the other unicorns they had ever met. His coat was terracotta, his mane and tail cut short and oddly stringy. It looked like very short dark brown spaghetti, and gave him the appearance of not having washed for a week. His cutie mark was made up of three lightning bolts – one large bolt flanked by two smaller ones – which were blue around the edges, but white in the centre, and his eyes were greener than fresh grass.

And somehow, unexplainably, every pony (and dragon) in the room instantly took a liking to him. It seemed that disliking him would be like kicking Fluttershy. When he saw the group of ponies staring at him, he gave them a nervous smile.

“Let me guess,” said Twilight. “Hex?”

“The very same,” said Hex, pushing himself up off the ground. “You must be the infamous Twilight Sparkle” (pronounced ‘Spahkle) “wielder of the Element” (‘ilimint’) “of Magic and according to my friend Rainbow Dash here, a complete bookworm.”

He deposited his goggles on a nearby table, floated out a pair of rectangular, black framed glasses and placed them upon his face, balancing them carefully on his muzzle.

“And I’m guessing you’re here about that lightning bolt,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind, but do you think you could hang on for a couple of seconds?” He pronounced it ‘sikinds’ and pointed up at the thing hanging from the roof. “It’s just that I was in the middle of pinning the wires to the main body, and I’d kinda like to finish before the day is out.”

Twilight was slightly confused by the way he pronounced the word ‘aeyot‘ and was about to answer when Rainbow Dash cut in with “Sure, we’d be glad to wait.”

“Thanks,” said Hex. He clopped his hooves on the stone floor and the swing dropped back down to him.

“Feel free to browse while you’re here,” he said as he ascended up to the ceiling. “I’m guissing ye don’t heve much money, so because you’re frinds of Rainbow Dash I’ll give ye a 50% diskeyont if ye wanna buy anything. Any frind of Rainbow is frind of mine.”

“That’s very kind of you,” said Twilight. “Rainbow, can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Sure,” said Dash, and she trotted over to where she and Twilight were out of earshot.

“Are you sure we can trust this guy?” asked Twilight.

“Absolutely!” said Dash. “Why, don’t you?”

“Well, I like him,” said Twilight. “I mean, it must be impossible not to like him, but I can’t help but feel like he might be kinda dangerous. Going by what you’re saying he made all the stuff in this shop. What else do you think he might have made? And what’s the deal with that accent of his?”

“Y’know, it’s really rude to talk about people behoind their back.”

The purple unicorn and the blue pegasus stared at the brown colt who was hanging next to them.

“Just thought ye oughta know,” he said cheerfully, and winched his way back up to the ceiling, where he continued to pin loose wires to the dangling mass of metal.

“What is that thing you’re building?” asked Twilight.

“It’s only half finished,” said Hex, “but I’m hoping that when it’s done, I’ll have my very own Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System.”

Twilight rolled the words around in her head. Genetic Lifeform and...

“GLaDOS?”

“That’s the one,” said Hex. “They built one in doymenshin 33, where for some reason they had a fetish for building imminse underground structures of scientific research in unreasonably remote playces. One was in the middle of a desert. A whole load of stuff got smegged up in that place, and I don’t want to go into details. The GLaDOS was in a different one. I’m hoping this one won’t go psycho and try to kill us all with a ‘deadly neurotoxin’.”

“What does this thing do?” asked Pinkie Pie, who was fiddling with a rather complex looking machine. It was a large rectangular box with a sheet of glass over the top, and under the glass was a silvery disc. To the side were two more boxes standing upright, and each had two massive circles in the front, covered by a wire mesh. Pinkie reached out curiously and pressed a button.

“Oh no,” said Hex, “don’t touch that-“

The explosion of noise was so loud it was almost physical. Pinkie screamed and shoved her hooves into her ears.

“WILD THING!!!”

“Somepony turn it off!” shouted Rainbow Dash.

“YOU MAKE MY HEART SING!!!”

“I... can’t!” yelled Pinkie Pie over the unbearable din. “Too... loud... can’t... get... close enough!”

“YOU MAKE EVERYTHING GROOVY!!!”

“Can somepony please do something about it?” asked Twilight.

“WILD THI-“

Because of the limits of her telekinesis, Rarity hadn’t been able to turn off the machine. However, she had managed to locate the correct knob and turn it down to a more acceptable volume, although no spell could stop the ringing in everypony’s ears.

“Thank you... Rarity, isn’t it?” asked Hex.

“That is correct,” said Rarity. “What is this contraption, anyway?”

“A very powerful stireo systim,” answered Hex, “capable of sounds up to 150 decibels. I meant to turn it down, I’m afraid. I’ve been hevving some trouble with bats in the back room, and I was hoping if I made enough noise I’d frighten them away. But don’t turn it off – I like a little music while I work.”

“Oh, if it’s bats you’ve got, I’d be delighted to show them the way out,” said Fluttershy.

“Really?” said Hex. “That’d be great! I’d finally be able to restock my shelves without getting covered in guano. Thanks. Fluttershy, right?”

“That’s right,” said Fluttershy, and she disappeared through the door behind the counter and into the back room.

“Oh my, it’s very dark.”

“I’d take a few light globes in there if I was you.”

Spike scooped up a handful of the small glass balls. Each was about the size of a marble, completely clear except for two small circular patches of metal on opposing sides. The baby dragon tapped one on the edge of the barrel, but nothing happened. He tried blowing on it, but that just made the glass too hot to hold.

“How’re you supposed to make them work?” he asked.

“Drop ‘em on the floor and stamp on them,” said Hex. “It usually works best when you have hooves.”

Curious, Applejack pushed one onto the floor and tapped it with the tip of her hoof. Instantly, it sprang into like; a tiny lightning bolt was suspended between the two discs of metal on the sides.

“Well ain’t that somethin’,” said the orange pony.

“You don’t know the half of it,” said Hex. “It took me ages to get the design right. I only developed one; I made the rist with a simple copying spell.”

“Ooh!” Pinkie squeaked in delight. “It’s so pretty!” She pushed several more onto the floor and activated each one with a tap of the hoof.

“Ye use ‘em, ye buy ‘em,” said Hex. “Nah, I’m just kiddin’. You can have a play with them if ye like.” He stamped one final pin into the side of the GLaDOS, then nimbly leapt down from the swing.

“So what can I do for you ladies?” he asked.

“Hey!”

“And lad.”

“We’re worried about the lightning bolt,” said Twilight. “Spike and I saw it strike last night, but I’ve looked through every book I have about storms and for the life of me I have no idea why it’s still there.”

“And I tried flying up to it to get a close look,” said Rainbow Dash, “but I couldn’t get close enough. There was some kind of shield around it, and it felt like it was-“

“Like it was rejecting you,” said Hex. “Tell me, has Ponyville – it is Ponyville, isn’t it? I just want to be sure – experienced a rush of blue light particles which seemed to distort the gravity?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” said Twilight.

“And afterwards, was the area a scene of mass destruction?”

“If by mass destruction you mean several buildings collapsed and some perfectly strong trees dropped some very heavy branches, then yes, it was a scene of mass destruction.”

Hex’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped in horror.

“Oh no,” he said. “That means I’m right, I’m right again!” He started pacing back and forth between the shelves.

“Hex?” said Dash. “Are you alright?”

“Ye know somethin’?” he asked. “Just once, for once in my life, I’d like to be wrong. I would like to have just one day, one single measly little day, where something happens that causes me to be wrong. Is that too much to ask? Too much to ask that Hex is WRONG?”

“Hex, this is important,” said Twilight. “What. Do. You. Know?”

“I can’t tell you,” he said. “I’m sorry, but you have to go. All of you. You don’t have any experience in this kind of thing, so there isn’t anything you can do to help. So please, I’m asking you as politely as I can to leave.”

“Leave?” said Pinkie. “But we only just got here!”

“I know, Pinkie Pie,” said Hex, “and I already sid I’m sorry, but unless any of ye know how to fend off an alien invasion there’s nothin’ you can do. Now go. For your own sake.”

With his head bowed, he opened the door to the back room, and was greeted with a flock of bats which squeaked and flapped around for a few moments before fluttering out a nearby window.

“Um, I got them to leave,” said Fluttershy. “Have I missed anything?”

“Nothing much,” said Spike, “just us being pushed out the door.”

“It’s not being pushed out the door, it’s-“ Hex looked as though he wasn’t quite sure how to finish that sentence. “It’s something too complicated to explain. So go.”

Without another word, he stepped into his back room and closed the door behind him. This convinced the seven friends that it was definitely time to leave.

“Just one more thing,” said Rarity, and she cantered over the back of the shop.

Throwing open the door to the back room she shouted “By the way, you call that ghastly din of yours music?! I’ve heard better tunes coming from hooves scraped across a blackboard!”

“Well, that was rather rude,” said Twilight as they made their way down the mountain. “How did you meet that guy, anyway?”

“I crashed into his shop,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Ha ha, very funny, Rainbow,” Applejack said, “now how did you really meet him?”

“I already said!” Dash insisted. “I got lost in a thick cloud layer and I crashed into his shop! A mountain doesn’t look like a mountain until you get right up close. From a distance, and when you can only just see properly, it looks just like another cloud. Anyway, I helped him fix the place and he gave me the earbud for my trouble. I was on my way back when I found him.”

“Who’s him?” asked Twilight.

“You know who I mean!”

“Oh, him. Te-”

“DON’T SAY HIS NAME!”

“It wasn’t your fault, Rainbow Dash,” said Rarity reassuringly. “Besides, it looks like you’re not the only one whose having love troubles.”

“What are you talkin’ ‘bout?” asked Applejack.

“Well,” said Rarity, “I can’t have been the only one who noticed that Twilight never took her eyes off that stallion from the moment we entered his shop.”

“What?!” said Twilight. “You’re being ridiculous! Seriously, stop it!”

“Actually, Twilight,” said Spike, “you were kinda looking at him in a funny way. It was almost like you were checking him out. And you only stopped when he’d gone.”

“Oh. My. Gosh,” Pinkie Pie exclaimed. “Twilight has a crush on Hex!”

“No I don’t!”

“And Twilight,” Fluttershy added, “you had this funny look in your eyes. Like you’d never even seen a male unicorn before.”

“Aw, come on, guys!” said Twilight. “I admit I was impressed by his intellect-“

“And his flank!”

“Leave it, Spike! But that doesn’t mean I have a crush on him! Aren’t you more worried that he was talking about alien invasion? What the heck does that mean?”

The bulk of the incomplete GLaDOS hung over Hex's head as he wandered through the stacks of junk and memorabilia from his past life, eventually reaching a long glass case which he opened and lifted out what was inside.

It was a two-foot long stick of metal, painted red all over save for the ends, one of which was curved over at a large angle, the other not so much, and both ends were split into two forked prongs.

Hex weighed the tool in his hooves.

He got the feeling he might need it some time in the future.

NEXT TIME: Combine Efforts part 2

“It’s alive! Everypony get back!”

“Spike, what’re you doing? You’ll get yourself killed!”

“I think it was the most beautiful tune I’ve ever heard.”

“Isn’t there anythin’ we can do?”

“You’ll want to be careful; it could wake up at any moment.”

“Like now?”

“LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU, YOU ELEPHANT-FACED GREEN BASTARD!!!”

Author's Note: Let's make this a little competition, shall we? Anybrony who can guess where Hex is originally from wins! Hope you enjoyed this chapter: as you can probably tell, this story is in a sort of episodic format. I may create a better cover image for this story once I've written more of it. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Chapter 3 - Combine Efforts part 2

Mama, just killed a man
Put a gun against his head
Pulled my trigger, now he’s dead
Mama, life has just begun
But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away...

Spike yawned, very loudly and profusely.

“I don’t see why had to get up so early,” he said.

“Because the lightning bolt is right on the other side of the Everfree Forest,” Twilight Sparkle pointed out. “And we want to get there while it’s still daylight. Look at the sun, it’s almost noon now!”

“Even when I was flying at top speed, it took me three hours to get there,” Rainbow Dash stated. “And another three hours on the way back.”

“I do wish this silly bolt could have struck a little closer to home,” Rarity complained. “Why we have to battle our way through the Everfree Forest is beyond me.”

“D’you think you could quit worryin’ ‘bout your mane for just one day?” asked Applejack.

“Well, sorry Applejack,” said Rarity, “but some of us do have standards, you know.”

“Not to worry, girls,” said Twilight. “We’re almost there.”

Twilight’s optimism didn’t take long to bear fruit. It was only a few more minutes before the trees finally opened up to the grassy plain between the trees and the nearby mountains.

Something was lying on the ground below the lightning bolt. Its angular body was dwarfed by the three enormously long legs that tapered out of the corners. The entire thing was coated in smooth metal of a light tan colour, apart from the ends of the legs which were a darker brown colour and frighteningly spiky. It was terrifying, and the fact that it was completely lifeless did little to reassure the ponies about its presence.

And they weren’t alone. Somepony had beaten them to it.

“Hex?” said Rainbow Dash. “What’re you doing here?”

“Seeing if this thing is dangerous,” said Hex, “and I thought I told you and your friend to stay away. You shouldn’t be here, Rainbow, especially in your condition.”

“My condition?” Dash demanded.

“W-What is that thing?” asked Fluttershy nervously. “That is, if you know, I mean.”

The machine began to hum, low pitched and quietly, but it was enough to make Hex jump back and drop the stethoscope he had been using to listen to it.

“It’s alive!” he shouted. “Everypony get back!”

Slowly, the three legs were steadied upon the sloping ground, and the machine pushed itself up to its full, petrifying height. It rotated to face the ponies, and then started to shoot at them, and they immediately scattered, screaming.

Twilight stayed where she stood and tried to conjure a shield to protect herself and Spike, but her horn spluttered briefly and was silent. So she tried again. And again, and still it didn’t work.

“Twilight, come on! Move!” Spike shouted in desperation.

“Why isn’t my magic working?” Twilight said to nopony in particular.

“GET OUT OF THE WAY!” Hex commanded, and Twilight was forced to abandon her magic attempts and dart around to avoid being shot.

“Twilight! Over here!” Rainbow Dash called, and Twilight galloped into the trees and hid behind a rock.

“What in tarnation is that thing?” asked Applejack.

“And why is it trying to kill us?” said Fluttershy shakily.

“That’s easy!” squeaked Pinkie Pie. “It’s a... a... I got nothing.”

“I don’t know what their commanders call them,” said Hex, “all I know is that people call them Striders. And they are dangerous with a capital D-A-N-G-E-R-O-U-S. The only way to take them down is with some pretty heavy firepower, and last I checked there isn’t anywhere in Ponyville that sells rocket-propelled grenade launchers.”

“Oh no,” Twilight moaned, “What’re we going to do, Spike?”

There was no answer.

“Spike?”

A horrifying thought entered the purple unicorn’s mind. She peered around the edge of the rock, and saw her fears confirmed as her no. 1 assistant was clambering up the Strider’s leg.

“Spike, what’re you doing?!” shouted Hex. “You’ll get yourself killed!”

Spike ignored him and continued to pull himself up the leg until he was sitting right on top of the Strider’s body, which started to whirl around and tried to shake him off.

“Hold on, Spike!” said Rainbow Dash. “I got your back!” She flew up into the sky – quickly, to avoid being shot – and hovered just behind the baby dragon, ready to catch him if he fell.

“Now I’m up here,” he asked, “what do I do?”

“See if you can tear something off!” Hex commanded.

Spike examined the smooth surface upon which he was seated. There wasn’t anything to pull off, but a dark line across one of the triangle’s points suggested that there might just be room for a baby dragon to fit his claws in like this and pull the metal sheet away like that, and within seconds the strider’s inner workings were revealed.

‘That looks important,’ he thought to himself, and tore out a bunch of fizzing wires.

Almost immediately, the Strider seemed to become confused. It twisted and turned, this way and that, and Spike came very close to flying off.

Then the air surrounding its underside began to distort, with a strange sucking noise and a blue light blinking into life underneath.

“WARP CANNON!” yelled Hex. This was the sign for the ponies to scatter once more, but Twilight, who was distracted by one failing attempt at magic after another, stayed where she was and only moved when Hex dived straight at her and they rolled over and over in the undergrowth, just as the spot where she had been exploded and left a huge crater.

Up on the Strider’s main body, Spike located a large box to which all the wires were connected. Instinct told him to rip it out. So he did, and instantly the Strider collapsed and Spike was forced to dive into Rainbow Dash’s waiting hooves.

“Uh, Hex?” said Twilight.

“Yeah, Twilight?”

“I’m grateful for you saving my life, but do you think you could get off me?”

“Oh!” said Hex in realisation, and he leapt off her. “Right. Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” said Twilight. Her gaze wandered to the fallen, now completely lifeless Strider.

“Where did that thing come from?” she asked.

“It’s from another universe,” said Hex.

“What? Wait, wait a minute, back up a moment. There’s another universe?”

“Sure,” said Hex. “Loads of people think there are an infinite number of universes and they’re all the same, but really there’s only a hundred and they’re all completely different. It’s a long story, which I’ll be happy to tell you as soon as we’re out of here.”

“Watcha mean, outta here?” asked Applejack. “What if there’s another of those Strider doohickies?”

“If there were more, they’d have come through by now,” said Hex, as he approached the dead machine which was slowly oozing a dark red liquid which was not unlike blood. “Something tells me Spike’s only killed the scout. By the way, Spike, good work. I’d hate to get caught between you and a barrel of gemstones; that was incredible.”

“Ah, it was nothing,” said Spike.

“No, Spike,” said Hex. “You tore out its battery and shut it down for good. You just did a whole lot of ponies a really big favour.” He looked at the sun.

“You’d all want to get moving if you want to get back to Ponyville before sundown.”

“Are you kidding?” said Pinkie Pie. “We just spent the best part of seven hours getting here. Not even I could manage that twice in one day.”

“Well, you could crash at my place if you like,” said Hex. “It’s closer.”

“YAY!” shouted Pinkie Pie. “It’ll be just like a slumber party! We can tell ghost stories and make s’mores and have pillow fights and...”

“We’d be glad to take you up on that offer,” said Twilight as Pinkie, behind her, excitedly exclaimed “Do you think we could play charades?!”

Twilight opened her eyes and rubbed them sleepily.

At first, she thought it had been the soft early morning sunlight that had woken her up, but then she realised that somepony was playing a guitar. It wasn’t a tune that she recognised, but she listened to it anyway because it was simply beautiful. It wasn’t like anything she’d ever heard before.

She tried to get up and out of the hammock she’d spent the night in, but since she was still half asleep she crashed to the floor. She quickly looked around, but everypony else was still gently snoozing.

‘They deserve it,’ she thought, ‘especially after what happened yesterday.’

There was some kind of door shaped structure that hadn’t been there the day before. Twilight ignored it: obviously Hex had been busy in the night.

It didn’t take her long to discover the source of the music; Hex was sitting in the corner of the shop, surrounded by tools, blueprints and scraps of wire, and he was cradling the guitar as lovingly as he would a newborn foal.

“Hex?”

Startled, the brown unicorn let the wooden instrument drop to the floor.

“Twilight!” he said. “I’m sorry, did I wake you up? It’s alright; I’ll just-just put this away...”

“Have you been up all night?”

“Yes,” Hex admitted. “Usually I have my stereo on, but I didn’t think you or your friends would appreciate having Bon Jovi playing while you were trying to sleep, so I went without. I gave up trying to sleep around five in the morning and thought I’d get on with some designs.”

‘Funny,’ Twilight thought as he stood up, ‘once you get used to it, you don’t really notice his accent that much.’

“That was very considerate of you,” she said. “Thank you for letting us stay here.”

“Like I said, any friend of Rainbow Dash is a friend of mine,” said Hex, “and I wouldn’t want my friends to get all worn out and sweaty. Especially not Rarity; I don’t think she’d ever forgive me if I let her get her mane all messed up.”

He had a very unusual laugh, Twilight noticed. It wasn’t cold or mirthless or callous, and it didn’t make her feel embarrassed or ashamed. Hex had a warm, comforting laugh, and it was very inviting. It made Twilight wonder why she wasn’t laughing herself.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked.

“Shoot.”

“Where do you come from? Your accent isn’t like anything I’ve ever heard before. You’re not from Ponyville, I know that much. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you weren’t even from Equestria.”

“Alright, you got me,” said Hex. “I was wondering how long it was going to take.”

“So where are you from?”

“Well, you know how I said the Strider came from a different universe, and that there were only a hundred when most people think there’s an infinite number?”

“Yes?” said Twilight. She wasn’t sure she liked where this was going.

“Out of all of them,” said Hex, “this one is number 36. I’m from number 1. More specifically, a little place down south by the name of Melbourne.”

“You’re an alien?”

“Yes.”

“You’re an alien,” said Twilight sceptically, “from a different universe, who lives on top of a mountain and runs an electrical shop, building a-a GLaDOS in your spare time?”

“I know,” said Hex. “The side fic just writes itself, doesn’t it?”

“How is that possible?”

“I try not to think about it too much,” said Hex. “When I do, my head starts to hurt with all the memories – the good, the bad and in particular the ugly – and it takes quite a few hours for me to quash those memories again. All I know is that I came back to this dimension because I fell in love.”

“Oh,” said Twilight, trying not to let the disappointment show.

Hex wandered out the door and stood on the ledge outside, and Twilight trotted up to join him.

“I fell in love with this,” he said, and Twilight looked.

The view was spectacular. All of Equestria was spread like great, magical table cloth below her. Yeah, a table cloth, that seemed the best description. Trees were like fuzzy green matchsticks sticking up out of the ground, and the buildings in the various towns were like beetles. She couldn’t see any ponies, most likely because it was so early in the morning.

“It’s...” She searched for the right word, “beautiful.” She couldn't remember the last time she had just... looked.

“Isn’t it just?” asked Hex. “Look, down there, that’s Ponyville, and over there’s Cloudsdale. Canterlot should be somewhere over in that direction and Fillydelphia’s somewhere over there. You can see Trottingham from the other side of the mountain.”

“It’s incredible,” said Twilight. “Not just the view, but how you know so much about Equestria.”

“Well, I’ve been here quite a while, you know,” said Hex. “I thought you were familiar when I first saw you, then I remembered I’d seen you before at the Winter Wrap-Up in Ponyville. And at the Grand Galloping Gala. Thought you were pretty cute.”

Twilight blushed and grinned nervously.

“I thought you looked a bit odd when I first saw you,” she said. “You don’t look like a unicorn at all. You look more like an earth pony who stuck a horn on his head to try it out.”

“I was an earth pony the first time I came here,” Hex explained. “Then in the time I spent away I managed to acquire some powers, and they sort of got translated into unicorn magic. Every universe has its own laws of physics, and they alter you to fit in. My friend was rather alarmed to find she had four legs when she’d spent her entire life with two.”

“Your kind had only two legs? How did they stay upright?”

“You know, I have no idea. I know all this stuff about electrical conductivity and circuit boards and I don’t even know how I stood upright before I was a pony.”

“I have no idea what either of those things are,” said Twilight.

“Don’t worry,” said Hex, “you’re not the first pony to tell me that.”

“That reminds me,” said Twilight. “It must get kinda lonely up here. Do you have anypony? I mean, like a marefriend? That is, if it isn’t too personal a question.”

She cursed herself for that question.

“Well,” said Hex, “there was only ever one girl I had really my eye on, and after her nopony compared.”

They stood in silence as the sun rose higher into the sky, but it still couldn’t compare to the lightning bolt which danced on the very edge of Equestria. Twilight looked down at her home country, and took in every last miniscule detail.

“It’s too big,” she decided. “By the way, what was that tune you were playing?”

“It was nothing,” said Hex. “It’s just this song I know, which keeps going on about a girl who hated her life and preferred dreams to reality. It’s a good song, if a little pretentious.”

“I don’t think it sounded pretentious at all,” said Twilight. “I think it was the most beautiful tune I’ve ever heard.”

Hex smiled, Twilight smiled, and for a moment Equestria was a world of perfect peace.

Not for the first time in her life, Twilight experienced something she couldn’t explain. In the space of only a few seconds something that had been absent in her mind for years and years had suddenly blinked into being. Standing here admiring Equestria’s early morning tranquillity with anypony else would most likely have felt ordinary; just another moment of observation and yet more learning. But somehow, with this particular stallion with the unidentified accent, the electric cutie mark and the unwashed mane, she felt safe. Safer than she ever had in all her life.

She looked at his eyes and saw the dawn sunlight dancing in those oceans of brilliant green. She also saw the reflection of...

“Uh oh!” she exclaimed. “Look out!”

Twilight and Hex fell to the ground and clutched their hooves over their heads as the wave of blue energy washed over the mountain, and once again the world felt as if it was turned upside down, rocked from side to side, twisted the right way up again, then turned inside out and finally returned to normal.

“What was that?” Twilight asked once it was over.

“It’s a portal storm,” Hex explained. “You said there was another in Ponyville – did you see anything come through?”

“No,” said Twilight, “there was nothing, apart from destruction, chaos and mess.”

“Good,” said Hex, “that means it’s not powerful enough yet. See, what you have there isn’t a lightning bolt. Maybe it was a lightning bolt in the past, but that was probably just to gather enough power. Now it’s the very, very early stages of a superportal, and if we leave it as it is, then any day now we might get a visit from... No. No, I don’t even want to consider thinking about it.”

“Thinking about what?”

“Hey Hex, where’ve you got to?” shouted Rainbow Dash from inside the shop.

He stared Twilight straight in the eye, his face wrought with terror and dread.

“The Combine.”

“What’s th-the Combine?” asked Fluttershy. “I mean, if you know, that is.”

“The Combine is a massive empire spanning more than their fair share of universes,” said Hex, “but the place they took the most interest in was dimension 33. My friend and I went there twice; I think she may even have gone back a third time, even got a tattoo inspired by that place, and let me tell you it was nowhere near pleasant. Back then though, I found it fascinating. It’s something I’ve come to regret more than anything else.” He extracted a photo album from a pile of rubble, and laid it open on the floor.

The pictures were... horrible beyond description. Fluttershy gasped and buried her tearful face in Applejack’s mane; Applejack herself couldn’t bear to look beyond the third page. Rarity yelped, covered her eyes with her hooves and refused to see again. Rainbow Dash clapped a hoof to her mouth and hurried away with her cheeks bulging, although probably not due to the horrific scenes depicted in the photos. Pinkie Pie screamed and started to wash out her eyes with a hose inexplicably produced from her saddlebag. Spike outright refused to look in the first place, and resolved instead to watch the superportal from the safety of the window.

“It’s awful!” said Twilight. “So much... blood.” Hex nodded solemnly and closed the photo album, upon which was inscribed the words “NEVER AGAIN”.

“Never again,” he said. “That’s a phrase which I knew wouldn’t hold out.”

“Isn’t there anythin’ we can do?” asked Applejack in a shaky voice.

“I’m afraid there’s only one way to get the Combine to leave,” said Hex, “and that’s to persuade them that this world isn’t any use to them. It’s not exactly easy though. Mostly all they want to do is kill, kill, and kill some more. And if they don’t kill you? They just extract your memories and make you one of them. They nearly did that to me, but they saw who they were dealing with and... changed their minds.”

“Uh, guys?” said Spike. “I think something else is coming through.”

Hex and Twilight hurried over to the window, and sure enough a glowing, bright blue pod had just dropped away from the glowing, swirling clouds that surrounded what was becoming a superportal.

“One of those already?” For what was most likely a very rare moment, Hex seemed confused.

“One of what?” asked Twilight.

“It’s an Advisor,” Hex explained. “They’re the ones that call the shots in the Combine, and you do not want to get on the wrong side of one. On the other hoof, this could be a golden opportunity to show them the door.” He cantered over to the door-like structure, pressed a button on the side, and then the entire frame was engulfed in light. It made horrendous sucking noise, like a vacuum cleaner that had just downed a barrel of extra-caffeinated coffee.

“Right then!” Hex yelled over the din. “In we go!”

“What?” shouted Twilight. “Are you crazy? What the hay is that thing?”

“Before you got to the superportal I set up a teleporter!” Hex explained, so loudly that his voice crackled from strain. “This is a second one! It should take us straight to the sight of the lightning bolt without all that fuss about magic!”

“Are you sure it works?”

“My gizmos generally work, and I have a hunch that this one will too!”

“His hunches are good!” shouted Rainbow Dash. “You should listen to this guy, Twilight, he knows this stuff!”

“Is it meant to be suckin’ us in?” asked Applejack as her hooves started to slide along the floor.

“Yes it is!” said Hex. “It’s automatic: kicks in if nothing goes through within the first twenty seconds!”

Applejack didn’t have time to reply: her Stetson flew off her head and drifted towards the teleporter. It vanished in a flash of blue light when it connected.

“Mah hat!” she shouted. “You get back here!” Without a second thought she galloped into the teleporter and evaporated.

“Applejack! No!” shouted Pinkie Pie, and didn’t hesitate to follow her.

“Oh my,” said Fluttershy, too meek to shout, and carefully stepped into the teleporter.

“This... thing won’t mess up my mane, will it?” Rarity inquired.

“No, it’ll be fine!” shouted Hex, although there was a visible flicker of doubt in his eyes that the white unicorn didn’t seem to notice. She just said “Well, that’s a relief,” and disappeared into the portal.

“My turn next!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed excitedly, and she dive bombed her way through the light.

“I stand by what I said the day I arrived in Ponyville!” shouted Twilight. “All the ponies in this town are CRAZY! Especially you, Hex! I may not have known you very long, but you’re probably the craziest guy I’ve ever met!”

“I’m a scientist!” Hex shouted. “I’d be lying if I said we weren’t all a little bit kaka!” He retreated to the far side of the shop, and then charged at the teleporter screaming “LEEEROOOOOOOY JEEEEENKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINS!”

He vanished.

“Come on, Twilight!” said Spike as he jumped onto her back. “Are we going to go through or what!”

Twilight didn’t see any way out. There was a chance that Hex had been lying, and this teleporter would tear her and the baby dragon to shreds in less than a second. However, she didn’t hold him down as the type of pony to lie to a group of late-teen mares, especially when one of them was...

That was it. She gritted her teeth, pawed at the ground, lowered her head and galloped, screaming, straight at the teleporter.

“Uh, Twilight? Are you alright?”

Twilight hesitantly opened her eyes.

She was lying in the undergrowth on the edge of the Everfree Forest, with the superportal visible through the thinning trees. Spike was standing over her, and the look on his face was a mixture of concern and confusion.

“I don’t see what you were so worried about,” asked Rainbow Dash. “I didn’t feel a thing! Apart from this weird taste in my mouth.”

“Don’t worry about the taste of tin when you go through the ‘port,” said Hex. “It’s quite normal. Along with the erosion of tooth enamel and teeth.” He caught the looks on his friends’ faces and said “Kidding...”

“What is this thing?”

Twilight stood up and joined her fellow Elements of Harmony in their confusion. They were examining whatever it was that had fallen out of the clouds – what Hex had called an ‘Advisor’. It looked like a cocoon, only cocoons weren’t made of metal and didn’t have wires trailing off them. And Twilight didn’t know much about the life cycles of insects, but she was pretty sure they didn’t vibrate. Pinkie Pie placed her hooves upon it and giggled as her entire body began to buzz. When she stopped her mane was even messier than before.

“You’ll want to be careful,” said Hex. “It could wake up at any moment.”

There was a loud clunk.

“Like now?” asked Twilight.

It was, quite possibly, the oddest explosion in the history of Equestria. It carried all the correct characteristics of a good, satisfying, Mythbucker-style explosion, except for the explosion itself. It was just a huge shockwave that suddenly burst out of the pod and sent ponies and dragon flying.

The top of the pod slowly slid back and disappeared, and something rose out.

It appeared to be a cross between a terrifyingly large maggot and an elephant seal. Its’ body was dark green and hung in the sky as if suspended from a rope, and it’s face was waxy and white with a trunk like protrusion hanging from where it’s nose would have been. It had two long, spidery arms fused to its body, with four long claw-like fingers on each one, and all of these features added up to something quite petrifying.

Twilight knew that she should be galloping for her life – that she should get to her hooves and never look back, but she felt as though she were lying on an ocean floor. She could hardly breathe under a crushing, non-existent weight which was pressing down on every part of her body from the tip of her horn to the end of her tail. Instinct kicked in and she started to struggle.

“Somepony...ngh...do something!” she said.

“Can’t... move!” said Hex. “Telekinesis...too strong...”

The Advisor floated a log out of the bushes and held it in front of what could hesitantly be called its face. A long, pink, slimy round tongue extended out from under its trunk and started to stroke the log, apparently feeling what it looked like.

It seemed to decide that the log was useless, and the chunk of wood folded in on itself and was tossed away into the trees.

Then it picked up something else, or more specifically somepony else.

“Hey, put me down!” yelled Applejack, straining against the claws which had wrapped around her body. “What’re you doing? What is that thing? Is it a tongue? Keep it away from me!” Undeterred, the Advisor started to stroke her face.

“Twilight,” said Hex, “do you trust me?”

“Do I have a choice?” asked Twilight, her voice overflowing with desperation.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Hex, “Now, on my signal, channel all the magic you have into your horn – I want you to cause a distraction, see. I know how to stop this thing, but I’m gonna need a moment. And you’re going to have to get me that moment, Twilight. Are you with me?”

Once again, Twilight felt like she was losing herself in the bottomless green oceans that were his eyes. ‘He’s got a plan,’ she thought. ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’

“Yes,” she said, “I’m with you.”

“Good.”

“What in tarnation are you doin’?” Applejack demanded as her Stetson drifted to the ground. “Put me down!”

“I can’t look!” shouted Spike, and screwed his eyes as tightly shut as they could be.

“Me neither!” cried Fluttershy, who was physically shuddering in fear.

“This is completely undignified!” Rarity complained.

The Advisor completed its examination of Applejack and twisted her around as roughly as if she were a ragdoll.

“Twilight, now!” shouted Hex.

Twilight closed her eyes and concentrated. She could feel the power draining from every part of her body like water down a plughole, pouring into her horn which began to glow with pure energy. Easy though it may have looked, she was sweating and straining with effort.

She heard Applejack scream, followed by a thump, and then she felt herself being lifted off the ground, but she didn’t dare open her eyes for fear of what she might see.

“Twilight! No!” shouted Spike.

“Let her go!” she heard Rainbow Dash yell.

“Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh,” Pinkie Pie squeaked, her mane halfway to deflating, “this is one ghostly that can’t be banished by giggling and it’s going to kill all of us!”

Twilight half-opened one eye and immediately wished she hadn’t. The creature was holding her right up against its face, and if it had been breathing she would definitely have been able to feel or smell it. If the Advisor had smelt bad then it would probably have made the experience slightly less terrifying. It was rolling its tongue-thing around her horn, ruffling her mane and leaving her dripping with unspeakable slime.

“Hey!”

‘Oh, come on, Hex!’ Twilight thought. ‘You’re not going to get rid of it like that!’

“LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU, YOU ELEPHANT-FACED GREEN BASTARD!!”

She’d never heard anything like it. The voice was edged with rage unlike anything in Equestrian history, ringed with pride, tainted with fear and streaked with irrepressible defiance.

Twilight was thrown to the ground and landed in a heap next to Applejack.

“What the hay is he thinkin’?” asked Applejack.

“I have no idea!” said Twilight as Hex was plucked off the ground and held in front of the Advisor’s face.

“I’ve met your kind before,” Hex continued, although it sounded more like two people were talking and both were extremely angry. “And you know what? I survived. I know exactly what you are and exactly what you’re capable of doing. You can see into people’s minds. You can read their memories.

“Well, read mine. See where I’ve been.”

“See who I’ve been.”

“And who I’ve known.”

Twilight watched, and at first she thought that the Advisor was shaking, but further inquisition revealed that it was trembling. She stared.

It was... scared.

“And I know you know who she is,” said Hex. “Left you in quite a state, didn’t she? I bet you needed one smegload of regeneration after you encountered her. So here’s how it’s going to work. You’re going to turn on your heels, head back to whatever disgusting, sewage-ridden stinkhole you sprouted from, and you’re never going to come anywhere near this world, ever again. You understand? THIS WORLD IS OUT. OF. BOUNDS!”

The Advisor nodded, visibly shaken to its core. It threw Hex to the ground as if he were a hot potato, then performed a 180° turn, rose into the clouds and vanished. Seconds later, the lightning bolt did as well.

“Hex!” shouted Rainbow Dash. She flashed over to the motionless brown unicorn and began to feel him for signs of life.

“Is he okay?” asked Twilight.

Against all odds, Dash started to giggle.

“He’s asleep!” she declared. “I’m being serious right now; he is actually literally fast asleep! Listen to the guy, he’s snoring! Hey, quick, let’s get him back to the shop. I got an idea.”

Very carefully, so as not to wake him up, a banana cream pie was balanced on Hex’s outstretched hoof. He shuffled in his sleep, but didn’t awaken from his slumber.

Then a sky blue feather reached out, and tickled his nose.

Hex snuffled, but he didn’t wake up.

So the pony with the blue feather tried again, slowly and lightly stroking the barbs back and forth across his muzzle, and he snuffled again and shifted slightly but still remained asleep.

That being the case, the feather went in for a third try.

Suddenly Hex’s hoof shot up like a bullet.

“Oldest trick in the book,” he said as he stood up, “but ten out of ten for the thought and the effort.”

If looks could kill, Rainbow Dash would have been declared a serial killer and banished to the moon for the glare that she shot at Hex through the layers of pastry and cream, and at her friends for laughing their flanks off.

“Oh man, we should’ve sold tickets for people to see the look on your face, Rainbow!” said Hex, and he joined in the laughter.

Dash wiped the cream from her face, but still didn’t break her glare.

“Wait a minute,” said Hex, “how did I get back in my shop?”

“We had to carry you back through the teleporter because you fell asleep,” Spike explained.

“What he said,” said Dash, still glaring.

“I fell asleep?” Hex asked sceptically.

“Well, you were up all night,” Twilight pointed out, “plus you’ve just single-hoofedly seen off an alien invasion. They won’t be coming back, will they?”

“Sure they won’t,” said Hex, “hopefully.”

“What the hay do you mean, ‘hopefully’?” asked Applejack.

“Well,” said Hex, “the Combine might have closed their superportal and gone to try somewhere else, but I fear that the very structure of this universe may have been compromised. I’ve seen something similar before in dimension 63. From now on there’s going to be a crack in the walls of this world – a rift, if you will – in time and space. There’s no possible way to close it, so we can expect that every now and then things are going to come through from other parts of this universe and possibly even others. We can’t stop it happening. The best we can do is monitor the rift and make sure nopony finds out and tries to exploit it.”

He took one look at their blank faces and sighed.

“There’s a crack in the universe and stuff’s gonna come through,” he said in an exasperated voice.

“Why didn’t you just say so?” asked Twilight.

“You didn’t say you wanted me to,” Hex pointed out, and shot her a cheeky grin. “Sorry. My friend always did say no-one likes a smart-alec.”

“I can see why,” said Twilight.

“So what now?” asked Rainbow Dash. “Do you expect us to just go home and forget about this? No way! You might have spent most of your life alone, Hex, but you don’t have to do that anymore. Whatever you do, we’re gonna stick by you.”

“Is that you talking or is it the Loyalty?” asked Hex.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Twilight, “she’s right.”

“We’re stickin’ to you like caramel on a candy apple,” said Applejack.

“I agree too,” said Pinkie Pie, “so long as there actually are candy apples, those things are delicious!” She started licking her lips and slobbering.

“Um, me too,” Fluttershy muttered.

“As untidy as it may sound,” said Rarity, “I for one could not live with myself if I allowed Equestria to be overrun with any kind of beastly off-worldly creatures.”

“Count me in as well,” said Spike.

Hex surveyed the ponies and dragon that were waiting eagerly for his reply.

“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” he deduced. “You’re not going to take no for an answer, are you?”

“Nope!” was the collective response.

“O-okay then,” said Hex. “Well, er, you might as well go back home. If anything comes through I’ll be sure to let you know, so, um, yeah. See you later.”

He walked into his back room, closed the door and waited with his ear pressed to the wood. He heard mumbling and faint conversation, followed by one, two, three, four, five, six...

Six?

He went back into the main shop area and found one pony that hadn’t left.

“You’re still here?” he asked.

“I wanted to talk to you without the others interrupting,” said Twilight. “What exactly did you do to that Advisor? I haven’t heard anypony with a voice like that before; it didn’t sound natural.”

“Oh, it’s just this trick my friend taught me,” said Hex. “It used to be that only her kind could do it, but it’s really quite simple: if you’re in a situation where you get extremely angry and don’t want to use that anger, just bottle it up and store it for later. I may have been giving that thing a good talking to, but I was thinking about an incident that happened when I was only about ten. I don’t want to talk about it. Sorry for using you as bait, by the way, the speech thingy takes me a while to warm up.”

“I understand,” said Twilight. There it was again; that feeling of safety and unexplainable security when she was with him.

“What I did was I allowed it to see my memories,” he said. “The bad ones I would rather have kept repressed. I came to live in Equestria because I hoped it could be a new start. The thought of never having to return is what keeps me going – that and my extensive collection of rock CDs.”

“I’m guessing that after today we’ll probably be seeing a bit more of each other,” Twilight stated.

“I look forward to it,” said Hex. “Was there anything else you wanted?”

“Just one more thing. Why do you give away a free gift?”

“Because,” Hex said, “if you manage to make it all the way up the mountain – bear in mind there’s a high risk avalanche area, a chasm or two, and some positively monstrous slopes – then, my friend, I think you deserve a smegging gift. Don’t you?”

“Hex!”

“Oh, what is it now?” said Hex as reluctantly he re-emerged from his back room.

“Your friend,” said Twilight. “You keep talking about her, but you never mention her name.”

Hex’s mouth twitched with what could have been a smile.

“Her name was Amber,” he said.

NEXT TIME: The Flip of a Coin

“Want to know how I got these scars?”

“Who’s Jinx?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I never said he was a unicorn.”

“What are you talking about? Everypony knows Twilight! And why is it night-time?”

Author's Note: I think everyone now knows what the "Crossover" tag is for. Just to clarify: Hex is not Gordon Freeman. He is a character from a non-FiM, non-fanfic project of mine. Also, this particular story is set between Lesson Zero and Luna Eclipsed, and the first chapter was between Return of Harmony part 2 and Lesson Zero. Hope you're enjoying the story so far and thanks to the two bronies who are already tracking this story: you've made my day!

Chapter 4 - The Flip of a Coin part 1

Mama, ooh,
Didn’t mean to make you cry
If I’m not back again this time tomorrow
Carry on, carry on
As if nothing really matters

Spike paced impatiently back and forth, the sounds of his feet obscured by the padding of his costume.

“Ugh, c’mon Twilight!” he called up the stairs. “We’re going to be late for the Nightmare Night festival!”

He was stunned speechless when Twilight Sparkle emerged from her bedroom. She had hung a bushy false beard from her ears and it dangled loosely over her neck, hiding the clasp of the star-and-moon patterned cloak which covered her body. The same pattern was sewn into the wizard’s hat perched atop her head, and the cloak and hat were lined with bells which jingled uncontrollably as she moved down the stairs.

“Are you that one kooky grandpa from Ponyville Retirement Village?” asked Spike, uncertain how to respond.

“I’m Starswirl the Bearded,” Twilight explained.

Spike just stared.

“Father of the amniomorphic spell?”

Even more staring.

“Did you even read that book on obscure unicorn history that I gave you?” Twilight demanded, feeling her patience trickling away down the plughole.

“Uh...” Spike managed, before there was a rap at the door. “That sounds important!” he said, and dashed over to the door, grateful for the handily timed diversion.

He opened the door and was faced with a ladybug, an astronaut and a princess in a veiled hat. And they all united in a short and simple chant.

“Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite!”

“Hi everypony!” said Twilight when she reached the door. “Great costumes. Happy Nightmare Night, Granny Smith!” she said to the elderly mare who was accompanying the foals.

“I should have been in bed five hours ago!” the apple coloured senior citizen complained.

The foals were pushed aside as a giant chicken with a pink face and bright blue eyes burst through them.

“Enough chitchat!” she squawked. “Time is candy!”

“Pinkie Pie, aren’t you a little old for this?” asked Twilight incredulously.

“Too old for free candy?” asked the hyperactive baker. “NEVER.” She fell silent when she saw her studious friend’s costume.

“Do you like it?” asked Twilight, adjusting her hat.

“Yeah!” said Pinkie. “Great costume, Twilight. You make a fantastic weirdo clown!”

“A clown?!” Twilight demanded as the group disappeared off to another destination. She and Spike made their way out into the village.

“Look at the borders on these robes,” the purple unicorn complained, holding them up for her assistant to see. “These are hoof stitched!”

“It’s a great costume, Grandpa,” Spike said tauntingly, and sniggered at his own joke.

Neither of them noticed that one of the shadows around the library was a little darker than it should have been, almost as if something was lurking there, biding its time, waiting patiently for the perfect moment to emerge...

“Starswirl the Bearded is only the most important conjuror of the preclassical era,” Twilight explained as she and Spike walked through the macabre festivities. “He created more than two hundred spells. He even has a shelf in the Canterlot library named after him! Maybe I should start up a group to teach ponies about history. I bet everypony would love it. Don’t you, Spike?”

“Mhmm, I love it!” Spike was talking indistinctly, possibly because of the enormous amount of sugary treats he had stuffed into his mouth. He was probably referring more to the candy than he was to Twilight’s history group concept.

“Hey look, we’re here already!” Twilight gestured to the arrangement of stalls and sideshow games that had been set up around the village square. A large stage had been set up in front of the town hall, upon which was a band playing catchy, yet at the same time rather spooky melody.

“Should we get something to eat?” asked the student.

Her assistant responded with a loud and satisfied belch. She started to make her way forwards again, but was stopped by an excitable pony in a very realistic Scootaloo costume.

“Twilight!” Pinkie Pie cried excitedly. “Look at our haul! *Squee* Can you believe it? And then we went to Cheerilee’s house and got a bunch more goodies! And then we had to stop and wait for Granny Smith, and-”

CRACK.

She was cut off in mid chatter by a sudden flash and crash of thunder mere metres above her. She squawked in terror and vanished just as suddenly as she had appeared, and the foals who had been with her quickly followed in her wake.

Twilight glared disapprovingly at the black clad, rainbow maned pegasus who was rolling around laughing on top of a small storm cloud.

“Rainbow Dash,” she said, “that wasn’t very nice!”

“Oh lighten up, old timer,” said Rainbow Dash, “this is the best night of the year for pranks!”

“But look what you did to Spike!” Twilight pointed at the choking, gagging dragon-dressed-as-a-dragon next to her.

“It’s all in good fun,” Dash insisted. “Oh, oh, there’s another group over there!” She grabbed her cloud, sped away a short distance, jumped on it again and zoomed away cackling.

Twilight watched her departure, and noticed something in the way she was moving. The vibrant maned speedster barely emerged from behind that cloud if she could help it, plus the costume she was wearing was of an extremely dark hue and blended in almost seamlessly with the blackness of the night.

It was almost as if the weather pony was trying to make herself invisible.

“Thank you everypony!” said the Mayor as the band concluded their performance, “and welcome to the Nightmare Night festival!”

There followed a short cacophony of cheers and applause as Twilight and Spike mingled with the crowd around the stage in the town square.

“Now,” said the Mayor once the noise had died down, “all the little ponies who have been out collecting sweets should follow our friend Zecora to hear the legend of Nightmare Moon!” She spoke the last two words in what was clearly supposed to be a spooky voice, and concluded with an evil laugh.

“The spooky voice might work better if she weren’t dressed like that,” whispered Spike, causing Twilight to giggle.

The stage became enshrouded in a mass of fog, from which the zebra herbalist emerged, dressed in a black cloak and with her mane combed down and bedecked with spiders.

“Follow me,” she said, “and very soon, you’ll hear the tale of Nightmare Moon.”

Twilight and Spike followed the group of foals (and one large, out of place chicken) as they entered the Everfree Forest and-

There was something in the trees.

The purple unicorn broke away from the group. She could have sworn she saw a pony-shaped shadow between the trees, and wanted to see what it was.

“Twilight?” said her assistant. “Where’re you going?”

“I think I saw something,” said Twilight. “You go on ahead, I won’t be long!”

She looked around at the trees towering over her head, and jumped when she stepped on a twig and it snapped underneath her hoof.

“Listen close, my little dears,” she heard Zecora saying in the nearby clearing, “I’ll tell you where you got your fears.”

She whipped around when something flashed through the undergrowth behind her, causing her bells to jingle like crazy.

“Of Nightmare Night, so dark and scary...”

“Hello?” Twilight called to the otherwise still night air. “Is anypony there?”

“Of Nightmare Moon, who makes you wary.”

Twilight could tell the show had begun. Eerie green light was dancing on the nearby tree trunks, giving the surrounding shrubbery a ghostly sheen...

...which flashed as a pony shaped shadow darted across it.

“I’m not afraid of you!” Twilight shouted. “Show yourself!”

“Every year, we put on a disguise to save ourselves from her searching eyes.”

Now she was sure she was being watched. The fur on the back of her neck was standing on end, and she could hear rustling not ten feet away from her, followed by a small yet recognisably masculine chuckle.

“I think I can take you!” the student declared. “I can single-hoofedly subdue an Ursa Minor, so I think I can handle a single pony!”

“But Nightmare Moon, wants just one thing: to gobble up ponies in one quick swing!”

“Why so serious?” asked a voice which hissed like a snake and sent shivers down her spine.

Twilight turned around and found herself muzzle to muzzle with a hideous creature which asked “Wanna know how I got these scars?” and she leapt back in fright.

The pony before her wore a purple overcoat, along with a green vest which matched his mane colour and a yellow and brown chequered tie. This alone would have caused Rarity to have a heart attack, but his face...

He had painted it pure white, with heavy black around the eyes and red on his lips that extended onto his cheeks in a grotesque artificial smile.

He was terrifying.

But Twilight could tell who it was by the voice.

“Hex!” she cried. “You scared me to death!”

“Um, isn’t that kinda the whole point of Nightmare Night?” asked Hex. “You know, to dress up as something out of a nightmare?”

“Well, not really,” said Twilight, “but yes, that is one of the traditions.”

“You look nice,” Hex said.

“You think so?”

“Yeah! You look exactly like Albus Dumbledore!”

“I’m Starswir- wait, who?”

“Oh yeah, I forgot,” said Hex, “different literature in this dimension, right. I suppose the name Harry Dresden doesn’t mean anything to you, either?”

“Not really,” said Twilight. “Look, what is this about, Hex? Why were you following me?”

“I...” Even through the thick make-up, Twilight could tell that he was blushing.

‘Awww,’ she thought, ‘he’s nervous!’ She then wondered why in Equestria she would think such a thing.

“I kinda wanted to give you something,” said Hex, apparently not noticing the hoof he was twisting in the ground. His horn glowed with magic, the same jade hue as his eyes, and something levitated out of an inside pocket of his coat.

It was... beautiful. It sparkled in the light of the full moon like a star, illuminating the trees and glinting off the bells on Twilight’s costume. She shielded her eyes and waited for the glow to die down before examining the brilliant object.

It consisted of twelve different types shining jewels (and a couple of pieces which resembled jewels) in a thin, delicate golden frame, in the shape of two hexagonal pyramids joined together at the base. She recognised a diamond, a sapphire, a piece of obsidian, and some other gems that she made a point to research upon returning to the library.

“It’s amazing,” she said, taking it with her magic. “What is it?”

“The Heartstone of Aetheria,” Hex explained. “Amber gave it to me just before we parted. She told me to keep it safe, and that if I was ever to give it away, it would have to be to someone I trusted with my life. On that note, don’t tell Rainbow Dash about this because I don’t think she’d ever forgive me.” He smiled nervously, and Twilight couldn’t help but giggle.

“I’d better get back to the shop,” said Hex. “It’s not exactly a short trip.”

“I understand,” said Twilight. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And, Hex?”

“Yes, Gandalf?”

Damn that cheeky grin of his, it had no business looking so cute on somepony so freaky...

“Thanks.”

His grin softened into a grateful smile and he said “No problem,” before disappearing into the trees.

“Watcha got there, Twilight?”

Twilight hastily shoved the Heartstone under her pillow saying “Uh, nothing. It’s nothing. Shouldn’t you be getting some sleep?”

“But I’m not tired!” the baby dragon insisted, but reluctantly buried his head under his pillow after a Look from Twilight.

Once she was certain he was asleep, she withdrew the Heartstone and continued to admire it; how whichever way she turned it, it caught the light in a different way, shining and sparkling in the light of the moon, and she could swear it was glowing and felt slightly warm in her hooves.

Somehow, “thanks” didn’t quite cover it.

It was strange how when she had been talking to Hex, all other sounds – Zecora’s narration and the screams that accompanied it, noises of creatures in the forest, the festivities of the Nightmare Night celebrations in Ponyville – had all faded into the background. It was almost as if he and she were the only beings in the whole world, and to tell the truth, she didn’t mind one bit.

Wait a minute, what was she thinking?

Did she want there to only be herself and Hex? Not that it would be a bad thing, of course...

Twilight simply put these thoughts out of her mind as she settled down to sleep, hoof still resting upon the Heartstone.

“What is it? What is it?”

“Come on, this way!”

“But what is it you want to show me?”

“You’ll know when you see it!”

Twilight could tell this was a dream. How could it not be?

She was running down a street after a bipedal creature taller than she was. She could tell it was male by the voice, which spoke with the same unusual accent as Hex. His skin was a sort of tan/pink colour; he wore odd, loose clothes which flapped about his body as he ran, he had hands rather than hooves on his front legs, and he turned around to look at Twilight with big, brilliant green eyes behind black rimmed glasses, underneath a shock of brown hair.

They were very familiar eyes.

The person she apparently inhabited was following this biped down a road lined with shops. Looking into windows nearby confirmed that she too was a male, also with brown hair and clothes slightly too big for her. Him. Whatever.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” asked her host.

“Don’t make me tell you, Jasen!” said the other biped. “It’ll spoil the surprise!’

“Is it that jellyfish we found the other day? Does it have a mate now? C’mon Haydon, just tell me!”

The two young bipeds soon reached a beach. The taller one, the one Twilight’s host had referred to as Haydon, pointed at something in the water.

“There,” he said.

“Where?” asked Jasen. “What am I looking for?”

“Come with me!” Haydon grabbed Jasen’s hand and pulled him onto a jetty, and pointed down into the water at something below the surface.

It was a large, boxy object made of rusting metal, with broken windows in the sides and a large hole in one end. Twilight had no idea what it was, but apparently her host knew full well.

“It’s a car!” he cried excitedly. “There’s a car in the water!”

“Wanna toss?” asked Haydon. “I pick heads.”

“Heads? But you always pick tails! Why do you want to pick heads when you’re always tails?”

Without answering the question, Haydon produced a small silver coin. As he tossed it into the air and caught it on the back of his hand, Twilight realised how young he was. If he were a pony, he would still only be a foal. He probably wouldn’t even have his cutie mark yet! And he was taller than her, so how old was this Jasen supposed to be?

“Sorry,” said Haydon, “looks like its tails.”

“Bastard,” Jasen muttered under his breath. He breathed in deeply and dived into the water.

The cold temperature hit Twilight like a tonne of bricks. Along with the pressure of the water around her, which stung her eyes and made her ears burn, it tugged at her chest and tried to force her to take a breath. She felt and saw her host surface, gasping for oxygen.

“You alright, Jay?” asked Haydon.

“I’m good, Hay,” Jasen replied, “but this water’s bloody freezing!” He took a second deep breath and dropped beneath the surface.

Once again, Twilight felt the water wrenching at her chest. She saw Jasen’s hand reach out and pull his small body through an open window. The inside of the “car” was rather cramped by a pair of rotten chairs, one of which had something underneath it.

Jasen dived down to see what it was, when a loud crunching noise caught Twilight’s attention. She screamed at the boy to leave whatever it was and exit the car, but he didn’t hear her.

The car gave a sudden lurch to one side-

-and Twilight sat bolt upright, choking and gasping for air.

While sucking in great greedy lungfuls of oxygen, she noticed she had not only wrapped herself up in her quilt, but also rolled off her mattress and onto the floor, and during her struggle to free herself she unknowingly knocked the Heartstone under her bed.

“Hello?”

Twilight froze.

Who had said that?

Never mind. She must have just been hearing things.

“Spike?”

“Yeah?” said Spike, halfway through shoving a pancake into his mouth.

“Do you ever feel like you- I dunno forgot something?” asked Twilight nervously.

Spike considered the question for several seconds.

“Nope,” he said simply. “You gonna eat that?” Barely leaving enough time for an answer, he snatched Twilight’s pancake and stuffed it down his throat to join its friends.

“I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean,” said Twilight. “I just feel like something really important just happened. Something... bad.”

“Ipfs frobably nuffing,” said Spike through a mouthful of pancake.

“You might be right,” said Twilight as she stood up, “but I think I need to clear my head.”

“Well if you meet Jinx let me know,” said Spike, “the guy owes me four bits and a sapphire.” It was then that the purple unicorn froze.

“Who’s Jinx?” she asked.

Her draconian assistant stared at her for a few seconds, before bursting out laughing and sending soggy pancake crumbs everywhere.

“That’s a good one, Twilight!” he practically shouted. “Not knowing who Jinx is; what a laugh!”

Twilight tried to shake some sense into her head as she left the library.

Halfway to the town square, she realised something must be horribly wrong. It wasn’t just the fact that the sky was crowded with clouds, when it was supposed to be sunny today: call it a gut feeling, instinct or just a unicorn’s intuition, but something was definitely not what it was supposed to be.

“OOMPH!”

That was the noise she made next because she was so deep in thought, she had lost track of where she was going and crashed into another pony.

“Oh my goodness,” she said as she picked herself up, “I am so sorry!”

“Why don’t you watch where you’re- Oh. Hey there, Twi.”

Twilight stared at the unfamiliar pony who somehow knew her name. He was a golden brown pegasus. His mane was spiky and black, edged with red, his eyes a greyish blue colour, and he wore a loose shirt which was strictly red. His cutie mark was of some sort of metal cylinder with a coloured substance spraying out of the top.

“Uh...” Twilight was unsure how to respond. “Hello?”

“Watcha doin’?” asked the pegasus. “Out for an early morning walk? I dig that. Mind if I join ya?”

“Actually, I-”

“Oh c’mon, Twi!” He was getting uncomfortably close. “This is your pal Jinx we’re talkin’ here! You know I’d keep you safe. If any bastards tried to jump us I’d take em’ down like that.” He stomped his hoof, apparently proving a point.”

“What are you talking about?”

The pegasus, apparently named Jinx, seemed to lose his patience, if ever he had any.

“Fine,” he said, “be that way. But ya know, I’m not gonna say goodbye. You know why?”

He moved in very close to the lavender unicorn, who felt herself cringing away in surprise and disgust as Jinx said “Because that makes it sound like I don’t want to see you again. And you know I’d like to see you again. Catch you later, babe.”

And with that, he flew away, and Twilight was extremely glad to see him go. Maybe paying a visit to Hex would clear things up.

By the time she reached the top of the mountain, Twilight was exhausted. She made a mental note to ask Hex to install one of those teleport gates in the library.

She froze when she saw the sign above the shop.

“Jinx’s House of Awesomeness?” she read out loud, feeling slightly annoyed -insulted even - at the lack of creativity, and cautiously walked through the door.

The shop was absolutely nothing like she remembered. Instead of assorted gadgets and electrical devices, it was piled high with things like skateboards and cans of spray paint, baseball caps and hoofballs.

The pegasus named Jinx was standing behind the counter in the back.

“Hey,” he said. “Hi there, Twi. Guess you just couldn’t stay away any longer, eh?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Twilight said flatly.

“You know,” said Jinx, once more moving uncomfortably close to the purple unicorn. “How you dig me? How you couldn’t stay away from me if you wanted to? C’mon...” He pressed his forehead against hers, “...just one little kiss?”

He narrowed his eyes, presumably intending to be seductive, but that only repulsed Twilight further. She narrowed her own purple eyes, glaring hard into his blue ones, and spoke with a voice as solid as Tom:

“Where. Is. Hex?”

There it was. Just for a moment, the pegasus’ gaze had faltered.

“You’ve done something to him, haven’t you?” Twilight asked. “I know you know him. I can see it in your eyes. Who are you, and what. Have you done. With Hex?”

It was almost impossible to decipher the mix of emotions that flashed across Jinx’s features. There was shock, alarm and surprise mixed together to create some kind of ultrashock: anger was definitely there, and even a little bit of fear, but they eventually settled into an expression of pure, undiluted hatred.

“Get out.”

“I’m going to find out what you’ve done,” Twilight stated, “and I’m going to bring Hex back. I don’t care what anypony says, but you are out of here!”

And with that, she turned and left the shop.

What she didn’t see was the brown pegasus pressing a hoof into his forehead and moaning “Please. Not him. Not now...”

Spike was bored.

Mega bored.

Ultra bored.

He had wondered, when Twilight hadn’t returned as she usually did, if she had gone to visit Jinx – maybe to finally accept his constant and never-ending offers of a date – and decided that maybe he should get on with some chores, but she still wasn’t back.

He sighed and got back to sweeping.

“I don’t suppose you know where Twilight went, do you?” he asked nopony in particular.

“Who?”

Spike turned and looked at the horned owl which had provided the answer to his question.

“Twilight,” he said, “You know, the boss? Most magically gifted unicorn in all of Equestria? The pony Jinx has fancied since they first met?”

“Who?”

“Twi- Awww!” The baby dragon groaned. Hadn’t he made a mental note not to fall for that?

Clink.

While brushing under the bed, his broom hit something metallic.

‘What’s that?’ he thought. He knelt down, reached under the bed and pulled out the object.

Spike had never seen anything so stunning in all his life. It gleamed, glittered, sparkled, shone, glinted and twinkled all at once. The frame of it was gold, but what really interested him were the gems.

He ran a claw across an emerald in one half, and then hesitantly tasted the claw.

Strange.

It had no flavour.

Oh well, surely Twilight wouldn’t mind if he just borrowed it for a while. He put it aside, with the intention of conducting a closer examination when he was done sweeping.

Twilight was lost.

Not physically, of course. She knew Ponyville and the area surrounding it like the back of her hoof, but she felt like her mind had broken into irreparable fragments scattered across Equestria.

She made her way to the area of the Everfree Forest where she had last spoken to Hex.

There was no trace of anypony having ever been there or anywhere near there in fact. Sure, on the ground there were a few strands of white hair from her fake beard, but that was about it.

“Where are you, Hex?” she asked. “What’s happened to you?”

“Twilight, help me!”

Okay, she had not imagined that. It had sounded like he was right behind her! She spun around-

-and found herself alone.

Twilight took a deep breath, trying to blink back the tears brimming in her eyes, and made an attempt to clear her head.

Okay, so this was what she knew so far:

Last night, Nightmare Night, she had met Hex (right here) and he had given her a gift compiled of gemstones, precious metals and other incredible things, and it had been the most beautiful gift anypony had ever given to her. She thought back to the way it had sparkled, and those sparkles had reflected in his amazingly green eyes...

Focus!

Upon arriving home after the celebrations, she had removed her costume and gone to bed, examining the Heartstone further, and then...

She had gone to sleep, and when she woke up Hex was gone and this obnoxious jerkass called Jinx had replaced him. And apparently, he had a thing for her, as if it weren’t the most obvious thing in Equestria at the moment.

Wait a minute...

Of course! The Heartstone must have protected her from whatever – or indeed whoever – had taken Hex! He must have known something about what was going to happen, and he trusted Twilight to bring him back!

In a way it was rather flattering, really.

Twilight put this thought out of her head. She needed to get the Heartstone, talk to Jinx (she shuddered at the thought) and do whatever it took to bring Hex back!

But then she felt... odd, as if she were slipping away...

Well, it had been ages, and Twilight still hadn’t returned, so Spike took out the gemstone-thing for a closer look.

It really was beautiful (although not quite as beautiful as Rarity). It was amazing how whichever way he turned it it’d catch the light in a different way. Spike felt privileged: whatever this thing was, it was truly a phenomenon to behold.

And the whole thing put together must have been worth millions of bits...

WHOOSH.

If what happened to Spike next could have made a sound, it would have gone “whoosh”. He felt like he was caught in another of those portal storms from a couple of weeks ago, but this time, as well as feeling like he was inside out and upside down, he felt like he was the right way up and the right way out at the same time. He screamed soundlessly as his mind was pushed, pulled, stretched and distorted-

-and just as suddenly as it started, it stopped.

The baby dragon blinked his way back into being.

Hang on a sec – why was it night time? How long had that stretchy whirly mind thingy lasted? He glanced at the clock, which proclaimed that it was 11am: exactly what it had been.

Spike ran outside and looked around. There were quite a lot of ponies in the street – of course, it was Market Day! He ran over to where a familiar fruit stand was being set up.

“Applejack!” he called. “Boy am I glad to see you! Have you seen Twilight anywhere?”

“Twilight?” asked the apple pony. “Who in the hay is Twilight?”

Okay. Now Spike was really confused.

Not to mention scared.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded. “Everypony knows Twilight!” He looked up at the moon overhead, the stars that speckled the indigo sky and the cold wind which blew clouds in from the Everfree Forest.

“And why is it night-time?”

NEXT TIME: The Flip of a Coin part 2

“I’m here. Don’t know about the pony bit anymore though.”

“Where’s Twilight? What have you done with her?”

“He was my brother, Twilight. My kid brother. And I killed him.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I. Want. Twilight. BACK.”

Author's Note: It's finally finished! If there's one thing I hate, it's writing myself into a corner: I came up with the idea for this while watching an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures, but once I got started I had almost no idea how to put it into writing - I hope I'm not alone in saying this. Also, this particular episode of Equestrian Rhapsody has given me a good idea of what to draw for the new cover image. Hope you enjoyed this latest instalment, and I want to give another shout out to the bronies tracking this story - you guys rule!

Chapter 5 - The Flip of a Coin part 2

Too late, my time has come
Sent shivers down my spine
Body’s aching all the time
Goodbye, everybody,
I’ve got to go
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth...

“Hello?”

Nothing.

That was all there was to see, smell and feel, and there wasn’t anything to hear besides the sound of her voice, which echoed off...

Nothing.

“Is anypony there?”

Still there was no reply.

She had to be somewhere. She couldn’t have just-just fallen off the map, could she?

“I’m here,” said one amazingly welcome voice, which added “Don’t know about the pony bit anymore though.”

Twilight turned around, and saw...

It was the boy from her dream – Haydon, wasn’t it? Only he was taller, much taller, and he looked considerably older than he had in her dream. He wore some kind of jacket – the same colour as Hex’s coat had been – plus virtually identical glasses, and now she understood exactly why those eyes of his had looked so familiar.

“Hex?” she asked cautiously.

His face split into a huge, warming smile.

“Hey there, Twi,” he said.

“Hex!” cried Twilight. “I’m so glad you’re okay!”

He knelt down and caught her in his arms, and the two shared a tight, relief-filled embrace.

“Well,” he said quietly. “Technically, neither of us are strictly speaking ‘okay’.”

“Why?” asked Twilight, looking around. “Where are we?”

“Limbo,” said Hex. “Welcome to Nowhere.”

It was then that Twilight realised that there was something... off about him. He hadn’t been this solemn when he had seen them off after their first meeting.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Hex. “You could say that. Tell me; is there a new pony in Ponyville? One that seems to have replaced me?”

“Actually, there is-”

“What’s he like?”

Twilight was confused, but she still told him.

“He’s... a pegasus,” she explained. “He’s young – younger than you, at least – and he is got a golden brown coat. His mane is black, with red tips, and his eyes are blue. And I didn’t see much of him, but he was wearing a red top as well. He was kind of a jerk – when I met him he kept hitting on me, and he got really annoyed when I pushed him away. Why? Do you know who he is?”

“Yes,” said Hex. “He...

“He was my brother, Twilight. My kid brother. And I killed him.”

To say that Spike was baffled would have been the understatement of the century.

These were the only things he knew:

It felt like there had been another portal storm, but there was no creepy lightning bolt on the other side of the Everfree Forest and no damage, anywhere.

Everypony he spoke to had no idea who Twilight was, and insisted that he lived alone in the library.

It was night time. It was always night time. Why this was, he didn’t have a clue.

And it seemed to have something to do with the gem thing he had found under Twilight’s bed.

He took it out again, and began to examine it for the fifteenth time that night. He was extremely glad he hadn’t tried to eat it.

‘Why does nopony remember Twilight?’ he thought.

The library was a mess. Spike had never been particularly outstanding when it came to organisation. The place resembled a two-year-old bachelor pad – the type where the garbage isn’t taking out until the pile of bags reaches the ceiling, and you start to suspect there might be something living in there – maybe a family of raccoons which live off half eaten sandwiches and occasionally emerge into the moonlight to search for other things to eat, or invite other woodland creatures into their home.

“Maybe Jinx would know something about this,” Spike said out loud. “After all, he’s the one from another world.”

“Who?”

“Jinx. You know; the pegasus guy?”

“Who?”

“I’m talking about – aw, forget it.”

He walked out into the street as clouds started to boil overhead, rumbling like a bowling alley and flashing like fairy lights.

“You remember when the Combine tried to invade Equestria?” asked Hex.

“Of course,” said Twilight. “How could I forget? You used me as bait so that you could do a voice thing and scare it off.”

“And again, I’m sorry I had to do that,” said Hex. “Do you recall, afterwards, I told you that to actually do the voice thing, I concentrated on a thing that happened when I was ten?”
Twilight thought back.

“I... I think so,” she said.

Hex bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh.

“Jasen was eight,” he began. “That was his name – Jasen with an E. Mine was Haydon, with an O: my parents were never very good at spelling. Thick as thieves, we were. We even formed our own amateur magic act: the Amazing Hexjinxi Brothers!

“Needless to say, we had our differences. While I was fascinated by space and all its workings, Jasen was more interested in being cool and things like that. On my ninth birthday I got a book on astronomy, and he got a skateboard.” His lips twitched as if he were about to smile. “Shortly before... we both went up to Dad and told him what we wanted to be when we grew up. Jasen said he wanted to be a policeman, just like Dad, and to this day I’ve never seen him so proud. And then I said I wanted to be a bookkeeper.

“I’ve never seen Dad so disappointed in all his life.”

‘He needs a hug,’ Twilight thought. She wrapped her hooves around him, and felt him squeeze her back.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

“Are you okay?” asked Twilight.

The teenage human wiped his eyes with a thumb and continued.

“I think I should mention here that we had this tradition thing. If we found something unfamiliar, we would flip a coin to decide who would have to investigate. I would always pick tails, and he would choose heads. Occasionally I would use a double-headed coin, just so that it wouldn’t have to be me.”

“Hex, that’s terrible!”

“Hey, it’s a big brother’s job to lightly torture their younger sibling. I’m guessing you’re an only child?”

Twilight thought about this for a moment before saying “You make a valid point, but it still wasn’t very nice.”

Hex nodded.

“Anyway, we were visiting my cousin Chas, who lived on the coast, and one day I went out looking for a good spot to do some fishing and I saw something, just below the surface of the water. Closer inspection revealed that it was a car – it’s a sort of metal machine thing that we humans use instead of walking. We’re lazy like that. Anyway, I ran back to the house and got Jasen, and we flipped a coin to decide who would investigate. It was one of the times when I didn’t use the double headed coin, because I didn’t want to completely lose his trust.

“Also, this time, I picked heads, but it still came down on tails, so Jasen dived in and started to snoop around in the car. He was still inside when-when...” He wiped his eyes and took a deep breath. “The car was balancing on a reef, and Jasen swimming into it had disturbed it. It fell over, and slid down into the sea.

“They recovered his body three days later, and they said one of the car seats had come loose and trapped him. I-I haven’t even told Amber about this. You can’t tell anyone, pony or otherwise, okay?”

Twilight nodded.

“Haydon...”

She froze.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“The guy who’s responsible for this,” said Hex, standing up, “I think he wants a chat.” He turned and started to walk away into the nothingness.

“Will you be okay?” asked Twilight.

He looked back at her and smiled.

“I’m sorry,” he said jokingly, “have we met?”

He walked through the silence and emptiness, which floated around him in clouds of non-existence.

“Alright, you got me,” he said. “Now would you mind telling me who the smeg you are and what’s going on?”

“Well, such language,” said the voice. “Is that any way to talk to a god?”

“I apologise, your holiness,” said Hex bitterly, crossing his arms, “but if you hadn’t noticed I’m a little smegged off right now. Do you know how long it took me to get my hair good and stringy for Nightmare Night? And I had to leave before I could properly freak anypony out! Or take a shower, for that matter.”

There was a pause, during which his temper continued to rise.

“I can see we’re going to get along famously,” said the voice of his captor.

“You know,” said Hex, “you sound incredibly like some guy I met in dimension 66. His name was... now I know it was a single letter. M? No, was it T? J? No, he was with MiB in dimension 58. S? No, no, Q! It was definitely Q! Is that you, Q, you cheeky smeghead?”

“Who knows?” said the-thing-that-sounded-like-Q, “maybe I could be this ‘Q’ you speak of.”

Some... creature appeared in front of Hex. It looked like one of those flipbooks – the ones with the pages cut into strips and different images on each one, so that you could mix them up and have a rabbit’s head on a dog’s boy with budgie’s feet. The head was only vaguely equine, and bore a closer resemblance to that of a goat. Needless to say, the young man was baffled, and he scratched his head in confusion.

“Well?” said the thing. “Am I?”

“Dude, what the smeg are you?” Hex demanded. “You look like you were made up of spare parts left over from the creation of everything!”

“I can tell we’re going to get along famously,” said the creature, walking towards him. “Allow me to introduce myself: I am Discord, spirit of Chaos and Disharmony. Hello!”

Hex continued scratching his head, baffled.

“And would you mind telling me why me and my friend are suddenly literally nowhere?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s no big deal,” said Discord, examining his talons in a matter of fact way, “I’ve just borrowed your life for a teensy little while.”

“Borrowed my life?” asked Hex, as the chaos god summoned himself a chocolate milk of glass, “what’s that supposed to mean?”

Discord finished drinking his glass and threw away the chocolate milk, which upon contact with what should have been the floor did the Mythbuster’s favourite thing.

“It’s amazing how the little things can affect life, isn’t it?” he said, circling around Hex. “Why, the smallest object could determine the fate of an entire world; a piece of paper, or a lump of metal...

...like a coin, maybe?”

“Hey Jinx, are you here?”

“Back here, Spike! Just finishing off this painting!”

The brown pegasus was at the back of the shop, adding the finishing touches to a painting of him flying through brilliant red flames, an expression of triumph on his face. He stopped spraying and set the can on the floor.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Too much?”

Spike wasn’t sure how to respond.

“You’re right,” said Jinx, “too little.” He picked up another can and started to add orange streaks to the flames.

“Jinx,” Spike said as the pony worked, “what does the word Twilight mean to you?”

“Well,” said Jinx, “there’s Twilight the former time of day, Twilight the horrendously terrible book series, Twilight the even more horrendously terrible movies series, Twilight the Buffy character and Twilight the Marvel Comics character. Why d’you ask?”

“I meant a pony,” said Spike. “Or rather, a unicorn.”

Jinx froze, and looked around slowly.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

It was his eyes that gave it away.

“You’ve done something, haven’t you?” asked Spike.

“What?”

“Where’s Twilight? What have you done with her?”

Jinx dropped the paint can and started backing away from the infuriated young lizard.

“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he said. “I don’t know anypony named Twilight! In case you’ve forgotten, Twilight is a non-existent thing ever since Nightmare Moon took over! What do you want from me?”

“I. Want. Twilight. BACK.”

By this time, Jinx was huddled right up against the wall, and Spike was leaning over him, their noses almost touching. It was at that moment the pegasus noticed something:

“What’s that glittery thing you’re holding?”

In his rage Spike had almost forgotten about the gem-thing. He held it in front of him and said “I found it under her bed. Why? Do you know what it is?”

Jinx got up, walked over to a box and pulled out an identical arrangement of gems in a golden frame.

“This is the Aetherian Heartstone,” he explained. “Amber gave it to me for safekeeping when I left dimension 1.” He looked from the one in his hoof to the one Spike was clutching. “How did-Alright, I’ll tell you everything.”

Spike sat cross legged on the floor.

“Well,” he said, “I’m waiting.”

The brown pegasus sat in front of him, placing the Heartstone between his forelegs.

“When I was a human, living on Earth, I had a brother,” he said, “and his name was Haydon. It was spelt with an O, and my name was Jasen with an E: our parents couldn’t spell if their lives depended on it. I was the cool kid, and he was the nerd. Always had a thing about astronomy, he did.

“Anyways, we were visiting our cousin Chas when he came to me in the middle of a game of swingball, saying he’d found something that we should check out, and when we got there it turned out it was a car, not far off the beach but far enough to be completely underwater.”

“What’s a car?”

“It’s like a metal machine that humans use because sometimes it’s too far to walk. But I digress: we flipped a coin to see who would investigate it. I was a little confused because Haydon picked heads instead of tails like he normally did, but I had been wondering if he was using a double headed coin, so that cleared things up. It landed on tails, and I had to investigate the car.

“There wasn’t really anything very interesting in there besides loads and loads of seawater and a bit of sand, but I thought I saw something poking out from underneath one of the seats, so naturally I dived down to see what it was, but before I could get a proper look the car tipped to one side, the seat came loose and I was trapped underneath it.

“I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. I knew in that moment that I was going to die. And then I heard this voice – it sounded like it was right next to me – and it said ‘Jasen, you don’t have to die here. I can take you away, and you can live your life to the fullest.’ I agreed, and then suddenly it was me standing on the jetty, and it was Haydon in the water.

“There wasn’t anything I could do. I remember feeling like my world had just ended. And there was this-this thing standing next to me, watching the car slip away, and it said ‘Not to worry, I was never here. You don’t have to remember me’. They recovered Haydon’s body three days later, and I remember thinking it could just have easily have been me. But I never remembered what actually happened until now.”

“What does any of this have to do with Twilight?” Spike demanded, getting impatient.

“She reminded me,” said Jinx. “She made me remember what I did! And now you’ve gone and done the same!”

“So what?” asked Spike. “You’re gonna erase me from history as well?”

“No, and Twilight wasn’t ‘erased’,” said Jinx. “It doesn’t work like that: tell me, was there ever a time when she could have died?”

Spike thought about this for a moment. There were quite a lot of times when Twilight had put herself in danger, but only one in particular sprang to mind that explained why it was night-time.

“Well,” he said, “there was the time, not long after we came to Ponyville, when Twilight and the others set out to find the Elements of Harmony-”

“They told me about that,” said Jinx. “Rainbow Dash told me when she was helping me clean up the place (after she crashed into it) that when they found her, Nightmare Moon had smashed the Elements and that unicorn – who you say was called Twilight – was dead. Nightmare Moon had killed her. I guess everypony just moved on and forgot.”

Spike was stunned. Twilight... dead?

“Are you gonna tell me how to bring her back?” he demanded, as more thunder rumbled outside and lightning illuminated the stormy night sky. Jinx sat quietly, looking thoughtful, if only for a moment.

“I have an idea,” he said, “but I suggest we go back to the library: there’s a lot of valuable stuff in here that I’d rather not damage.”

“One other thing before we go,” said Spike as they stood up, “what’s with the storms? Don’t you have weather ponies anymore?”

“If you mean Rainbow Dash, nopony’s seen her for months,” Jinx explained as they stepped out into the wild weather. "There’s this rumour going around that she tried to save somepony but failed, and she hasn’t come out of her house in absolutely ages.”

He looked out at the seething skies, which began to lash them with sideways rain.

“If this Twilight’s really as good as you think,” he said, “then we seriously need to get a move on.”

“Well, I found out how I came to be here,” said Hex as he sat down.

“Do tell,” said Twilight.

“I told you about the coin flipping thing,” said the human, “and it turns out that in the new timeline, the coin came down heads instead of tails, and it was me that drowned in that car.”

“That would explain why Jinx replaced you,” said Twilight.

There was a slightly awkward pause, in which both of them waited for the other to talk.

“I don’t blame him,” said Hex eventually.

“What do you mean?”

“My brother for wanting to live: I don’t blame him. I know that if I was eight years old and about to die, I would have done anything – anything – to live a little longer. Also, he did it because that Discord bloke sorted it out for him.”

“Wait, wha- DISCORD?”

“Yeah, you know him?”

“Know him?” Twilight had never been more astounded in all her life. Discord? HIM?! Of all the- “He stole the Elements of Harmony and tried to take over Equestria! He almost destroyed our friendship! Applejack became a chronic liar, Pinkie became a total grump, Rarity hoarded a boulder she thought was a giant diamond and named it Tom, Fluttershy was really cruel and Rainbow Dash abandoned us! And worst of all, he got to me and I have never felt so alone in my entire life. EVER!”

Hex was quiet for a moment following this outburst.

“I think I get the picture,” he said. “Oh smeg.”

“What?”

“I just realised something,” said Hex, his expression quickly transitioning from one of comprehension to one of outright panic. “What’s Rainbow Dash’s main job in the weather patrol?”

Twilight thought about this for a second.

“Well, mostly she just clears away unwanted clouds-” she began.

“And what do you call it when there’re loads and loads of backed-up weather with nopony with the ability of Rainbow Dash able to handle it?”

Realisation struck the purple unicorn like a tonne of bricks.

“Really, really dangerous!”

“Exactly!” said Hex, as he leapt to his feet and started pacing, waving his hands in the air around the level of his head. “Rainbow finds that pegasus on the cloud, she takes him back to her place, only I’m not there to give her medical supplies and he dies without her being able to do anything about it. Chances are that with her sense of loyalty she wouldn’t get over it very quickly – she’d probably become a complete recluse – and the weather gets backed up over as many months, and before you know it-”

“Ponyville is at the epicentre of a perfect megastorm!” Twilight finished for him.

“WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!” they both shouted together.
It took a few seconds for that particular vocal phenomenon to sink in, and when it did Hex came out with “That was smegging weird” and this gem of wisdom was followed by another, even more awkward silence.

“What can we do?” Twilight asked eventually. “We are trapped – literally – in the middle of nowhere, and the only thing with the power to get us out of here is an insane god of chaos.”

Hex slowly walked over to her and sat down again, crossing his legs as if he were an obedient schoolboy.

“This is one of those times when I think ‘What would Amber do?’” he said. “Knowing her, something completely insane: she’d probably charge in screaming and kick something in the face. And if it didn’t have a face, she’d find one to kick it in, and if she still couldn’t find a face she’d kick it somewhere else. Or punch it, depending on what mood she’s in.”

“Wow.” Twilight couldn’t help but be impressed. “Was she really like that?”

The teenage boy’s face, despite the circumstances, split into a wide smile, which the purple unicorn considered was actually rather cute.

“Yes,” he said, “yes she was. If something wasn’t going her way... let’s just say she’d make sure it was. I recall when we were cornered by a troop of Daleks in dimension 63 – they’re these sort of cyborg thingies with eyes on the ends of stalks – and it was lucky for both of us that Amber had a pack of chewing gum and a paintball gun. Where they came from, I still don’t know. She was kinda like Pinkie in that respect. Another time, she realised she was outnumbered, so instead of fighting back she ducked every attack and made the bad guys hit each other.” At this point, he leapt to his feet and started enthusiastically acting out the scene.

“I’ve never seen anyone move so fast!” he cried, and Twilight couldn’t help but laugh. “One of them tried to punch her, so she ducked like this and he hit one of his mates! Then another tried to grab her, but she hit the floor like this and slid between his legs like this! Then she jumped up, ‘coz another tried to kick her, and ended up booting his mate right in the nuts!” By this time, his lavender friend was laughing uncontrollably. “It was HILARIOUS! Then she jumped up, and backflipped over two more, and they headbutted each other ‘coz they were both going for her at the same time! I told Justin he shouldn’t have been worried-”

“Wait a minute,” said Twilight. “Who’s Justin?”

“Amber’s boyfriend,” said Hex. “Well, husband now, but- hang on. Did you think Amber was my girlfriend?”

“Honestly,” Twilight said, “yes.”

“Our relationship was more of a ‘best friend’ type thing,” Hex explained. “She had a little brother and sister, but they were only kids and kinda immature. I guess I was kinda like a brother to her – a guy friend who was slightly more than a guy friend without it being... you know.”

Twilight had to force herself not to sigh in relief.

“You must miss her,” she pointed out.

“Every day,” said Hex. “She was the first real friend I ever had apart from Jasen. But we keep in touch. I send her a letter every second month to let her know how I’m doing, and she sends a reply every other month. It’s this little routine we have. Or should I say had?”

Another slightly awkward pause.

“Hex?”

“Yes, Twi?”

‘How am I supposed to do this?’ Twilight thought. ‘Do I just... come out and tell him? Do I work it into the conversation, just dropping hints here and there? Should I tell him at all?’

“What’s wrong?” asked Hex. “I know my human shape must be a bit unnerving to you, but you should know by now that I’m still the same old Hex. You know you can tell me anything.”

Her heart leapt at these words. ‘That’s it,’ she thought, ‘I have to tell him.’

“I...” She struggled to get the words out. “I kinda have a cr-”

FWOOSH.

And just like that, she was gone.

“Twilight?!” Hex shouted in alarm. “TWILIGHT!!” He sat down, and in a despondent voice added “I never got a chance to tell you...”

Had anypony been watching Ponyville’s library at that moment, they would have seen the windows glow briefly, as an explosion of light rocked the hollow tree, and they would also have potentially heard two loud thumps coming from within.
As the metaphorical dust began to settle, Spike and Jinx forcibly detached themselves from the bookcases, both still clutching their respective Heartstones.

“Did it...” Spike struggled to get the words out. “Did it work?”

“Did what work?”

The baby dragon’s face lit up like the sun and he zoomed over to embrace the speaker.

“TWILIGHT!” he cried joyfully. “I’m so glad you’re back!”

Twilight was stunned speechless. One second she had been talking to Hex, trapped in the middle of nowhere, and now-

“Wow.”

Oh, great.

“Are you Twilight?” asked Jinx, pulling himself to his hooves and walking over to her. “Course you are. I don’t know how I managed to forget you. You’re... dammit, you’re hot.”

Rather than talking, Twilight pulled back a forehoof and slammed it into the side of his face with as much speed and force as she could muster. He fell to the floor, rubbing his face and staring at her in shock.

“What did you do that for?” he demanded.

“Firstly because I’m sick and tired of you hitting on me all the time!” Twilight shouted. “You’re the LAST kind of pony I would want to date! And second, because of your selfishness you’ve put the whole of Ponyville in jeopardy! Maybe even the whole of Equestria!”

“What are you-?”

“BECAUSE of you,” Twilight shouted him down as he tried to reply, “Rainbow Dash isn’t taking part in weather control anymore! Aren’t you wondering about this massive storm?” She indicated outside, where the sky was just as dark as it had been before due to the thick layers of rumbling, crackling cloud. “And now Ponyville will most likely be destroyed because you made that stupid mistake!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear!”

“You don’t know what I’m talking about?” By this time, the purple unicorn was livid and almost glowing with irrepressible rage. “You don’t remember the choice you made? To switch places and have your brother die instead of you? I’ve never known anypony to be so selfish in all my life!”

“I WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD!” Jinx shouted, so loud that the glass in the windows rattled. “AND I WAS DYING! WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE IF IT WAS YOU, TWILIGHT? WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE?!”

The atmosphere in the library became suddenly still, the only sound being the rumble of thunder and occasional crackle of lightning.

“I’m sorry, Jasen,” said Twilight, deciding that she may as well use his real name, “but you were meant to die.”

“Meant to?!” cried Jinx. “In what way was I meant to die? I was only a kid!”

“Didn’t I just say I was sorry?” asked the purple unicorn. She pointed out the window and said “Look out there! It’s absolute chaos! And if there’s enough chaos Discord will be able to return! So what’s it going to be, Jasen? Are you going to let Equestria be destroyed, or-”

“I GET IT, ALRIGHT?!” Jinx bellowed. “If I die, my brother comes back and everything’s a-okay!” He sighed.

“Look,” he said. “It’s not the dying that bothers me. It’s that... what would Haydon think of me? I don’t think I’d be able to face him if I-”

“He forgives you, Jasen,” said Twilight. “He said so himself. He doesn’t blame you for what you did.”

The teenage pegasus wiped a hoof across his nose, before smearing it on his bright red top.

“How can you be so sure?” he asked. “I’m pretty sure you don’t know him like I do. You can’t know what it was like to be with him.”

“No,” said Twilight, and then added:

“But I think I’m starting to.”

It wasn’t that Hex could hear the voice, per se – it was like seeing a picture of a famous celebrity, like Morgan Freemane, and automatically reading any text next to it in his/her voice. You just want to shout “GET THE SMEG OUT OF MY BRAIN!!!” or at least something similar.

‘I wonder what it would be like to have my life narrated by Morgan Freemane,’ said one of the random thoughts that crossed the boy’s mind every other minute or so. ‘I bet it would be awesome. That guy has the kind of voice you want to hear narrating everything. Heh, I wonder what it would be like if he narrated Pinkie Pie’s life...’

He considered this for a moment or two, before laughing so hard that he rolled around on the not-floor, gasping for air, clutching his sides and wiping his eyes with his thumb.

Once he had finished laughing, it started again.

“That was one of the most interesting thoughts I’ve ever seen,” said the voice of Discord. “Like I said before, I can tell we’re going to get along famously.”

“Look, will you just keep out of my brain?” asked Hex, and felt like a complete numpty (and made a note never to introduce that word to Pinkie) for speaking to nothing. “My head, my thoughts. That’s how it goes.”

“Interesting.”

“What?”

“Do you often talk without moving your lips?”

Hex smacked a palm into his forehead. Of course, the smegging telepathy! How could he have forgotten?

“Occasionally,” he said in his mind.

“I am a god of chaos over 1000 years old,” Discord stated plainly, “which means that if I want it to happen, there’s a good chance it will. Care for a chocolate milk of glass?”

“No thanks,” said Hex, “but I think I’ve found a way to keep you out of my head.”

His face split into a grin which could rival a dairy farmer for cheesiness as he lay back with his hands behind his head. He could feel the Draconequus prying around in the deep depths of his thoughts, and grinned even wider at what was to come.

“No,” said Discord desperately, when he saw what the boy was planning. “Not that! ANYTHING BUT THAT!”

Now Hex’s smile was nothing short of evil.

“About three things I was absolutely positive,” he quoted inside his mind. “First, Edward was a vampire.”

“MAKE IT STOP!”

“Second, there was a part of him – and I didn’t know how potent that part might be – that thirsted for my blood.”

“THE PAIN! IT BURNSSSSS USSS!!”

“And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.”

There it was. That was the deal sealer. Hex felt all traces of the chaos god leave his mind as he curled up into a fresh bout of laughter. That was what happened when you use telepathy to insert quotes from the worst love story ever written into the mind of a god, and brand them there forever.

‘He’ll never get it out of his head!’ Hex squealed internally. ‘That was way more fun than when I did that thing for Sheogorath in dimension 16.’

‘I kinda miss Twilight already. Not that crappy thing I was quoting, but... that incredible mare. Or is she a filly? Never been certain about these things. What is she; 17? A bit younger or older, maybe?’

‘But whatever she is, she’s just...’

He never got a chance to finish that thought. At that moment, he felt like he was being pulled downwards by a rope tied around his lower intestine. It was an extremely strange and uncomfortable feeling, and one he was not in a hurry to experience again.

Nothingness rushed past him at the speed of light. It was mostly white, but here and there it was streaked with colours – a blue here, a red there, a rather sickly shade of green over to the right – and in the colours there were...

Faces?

And one, in particular, caught the young man’s attention.

This was a blotch of strong, vibrant red. An unforgettable face was imprinted upon it – that of an innocent young boy with blue eyes and brown hair. Hex reached out to touch it as it zoomed past, seeing that his fingers were becoming brown and furry and retreating into his wrist.

“I’ll never forget you, Jasen,” he said out loud.

And then, just like that, he was back.

When the glow died down, Twilight took her foreleg away from her eyes and her face lit up in joy.

“HEX!” she cried, and tackled him to the ground in a tight embrace.

“Whoa, affection overload,” said Hex, and carefully pulled her off him. “What happened?”

“We touched both the Heartstones together,” Twilight explained. “It’s how Spike and Jinx brought me back. I just touched the one you gave me to Jinx’s and thought of you. It wasn’t that hard.”

“Touching the Heartstones together or thinking of me?” asked Hex, and before Twilight could answer he got up and said “It’s a beautiful day!” in a suspicious tone and started to leave.

“I thought he’d be happier,” Spike stated simply.

The purple unicorn found him seated outside, admiring the admittedly gorgeous weather.

“Rainbow Dash certainly isn’t letting her situation get in the way of her weather jobs,” said Hex.

“Hex-”

“I mean, you gotta give the girl credit.”

“Hex-”

“You know, while I was in limbo I think I drove a chaos god insane-”

“HEX!”

That got his attention. He turned around with an innocently inquisitive expression on his furry brown face, which fell as he saw his friend and he said “I know what you’re going to say, Twilight, so just get it over with.”

“Why didn’t you tell anypony about your brother?” Twilight asked.

“How would you feel if you were in my horseshoes?” said Hex. “How would you feel if you were responsible for Spike’s death? I know he’s sorta like your little brother.”

“I’d feel guilty, sure,” said Twilight, placing a comforting hoof on his shoulder. “But you should learn to forgive yourself, Hex. Otherwise you’re just gonna be stuck in the same bubble for the rest of your life. And anyway...

“Jasen didn’t blame you for anything.”

His green eyes penetrated her purple ones, and sparkled as he smiled. Twilight then found herself pressed against his body, his hooves wrapped tightly around her in a comforting embrace.

“You have no idea how much that means to me,” he said quietly.

Twilight said nothing. She simply returned the hug, as the security of their friendship began to slowly grow stronger.

NEXT TIME: Breakaway

"Dude, you gotta listen to me. It's more important than anything!"

“I... I remember everything.”

“You remember me?”

“What’re you going to do now I'm back?”

“I don’t know. I- honestly, I’d never even thought about it.”

Author's Note: Okay, I'm not entirely sure if that's how weather really works, but even so I have to say that Hex's Twilight quoting scene was the most fun I've ever had while writing. And I've been writing for a while. I wasn't too sure how to present this story - I feel like this particular chapter may have been a bit rushed - but I'll leave that to you, the reader, to decide. Let me know what you think in the comments below; give clap2times a comment buddy, I think he's starting to get a little lonely!

Chapter 6 - Breakaway

Mama, ooh,
I don’t wanna die
I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all...

She opened her eyes.

Darn it. Still the middle of the night. And she wasn’t even tired anymore.

She thought back to that dream – that damn dream – the one she’d been having almost every night.

It always started with her flying through the early evening, the sky stained orange and pink with the dimming light of the sun, the clouds around her almost seeming to glow. It was beautiful and serene, and she soared freely through the atmosphere without a care in the world.

She had just met the most unusual pony who could have existed. He had apparently spent his entire life ostracised by his friends and family, and was now a prodigy with everything to do with... to do with... darn it, what was that word again?

Elcrickety?

Heck, the guy had even built himself a dog. A dog, for pony’s sake!

And then, she had looked down, and seen a misshapen mass lying on a cloud. Slightly closer inspection revealed that it was a pony, and when she had flown down to investigate she had found that it was not only a badly wounded pegasus, but actually none other than-

And then she would wake up angry.

She forced the covers off her body and set her hooves down on the smooth floor, easing herself out of the bed, and navigated her way through the cumulous tower to the bathroom. Turning on the light, she examined herself in the mirror.

Looking back out at her was a young pegasus mare, mid-to-late teens, with a coat as blue as an afternoon sky. Her rose tinted eyes sparkled in the light of the bare bulb which dangled from the ceiling, which shone upon the full spectrum that framed her nervous face. And if the mirror had only been a little larger, it would have revealed that this young mare had a small bulge emerging from her abdomen.

Her face contorted with anger as she twisted around and bucked the mirror with as much force as she could muster, and it fell with a tinkle of glass into innumerable razor-sharp shards, strewn all over the floor.

She hated being pregnant.

There was so much she couldn’t do anymore! It meant she had to be really careful and slow whenever she was so much as sculpting a cloud into shape, and don’t get her started on all the stunts and things. Rainbow Dash was a pony with a serious need for speed, and she couldn’t get that speed because she had a baby inside her!

It was so-so frustrating. It almost made her want to scream! And not only that, but she was just so... so...

...alone.

So Dash resolved to do what she always did when she felt frustrated, or upset, or any kind of negative emotion, really.

She walked back up to her bedroom and opened the window. Standing on the windowsill she teetered for a moment, before launching herself out and into the cool night air.

This was how ponies were meant to fly. For so long, Dash had committed herself to travelling as fast as possible, even if it meant breaking the sound barrier, the light spectrum or both, and she had almost forgotten what it was like to simply enjoy the feeling of the wind under her wings, supporting her body as if she were weightless.

She flew in a loop-de-loop around a cloud, her tail streaming out behind her like no superhero’s cape ever could, before landing on it, lying down and surveying the scenery. She could see all the way out to Sweet Apple Acres, where there was some sort of campfire going on. She could just make out the shape of Applejack, and two smaller forms with her, and another paler pony with a dark mane approaching from one side. The mane and tail appeared to be meticulously styled – Rarity, of course.

“Well hello cutie.”

Dash saw the shadow fall across her, and felt the stallion – stallions – land on the cushy surface of the cloud. She looked up; there were two of them, both rather dark and thickly built, and they were leering down at her horribly.

“What’s a pretty mare like you doing out here alone at this time of night?” one of them asked. “Could be a lot of nasty things happen to a cutie such as yourself.”

“Now missy,” said the other, “we can do this the easy way... or the hard way.”

Both stallions snickered at the joke, but stopped abruptly when Dash slammed a forehoof into the face of the first one. The other responded by shoving her onto her back, pressing her into the surface of the cloud, and pinning her there with his forehooves on her wings. Beads of fearful sweat started to break out on her forehead.

“I guess it’s gonna be the hard way,” he said. “Now you’re gonna swallow what we give you to swallow, and after you swallow mine you’re gonna swallow my buddy’s, ‘coz you done broke his nose and I think he oughta have something to show for it.”

“HEY!!!”

It was a loud, clear and above all familiar voice which roared the word into the night. A third pegasus stallion – this one looking and sounding considerably younger than the other two – leapt down from a cloud above and shoved the stallion pinning Dash to the side and almost off the cloud. This newcomer had a distinctly pale coat, which seemed to shine in the moonlight, and a dark mane which fell limply across the side of his face, concealing his eye.

He pushed Dash’s attackers to the edge of the cloud and said four simple words:

“BACK... the buck off.”

“Hey slow down, buddy,” said the one with the busted muzzle, “we was just having a bit of fun.”

“It’s were, you illiterate dick,” said Dash’s saviour. His coat looked blue, and his mane and tail black in the dim light, and with his back turned she got a clear view of his cutie mark: some kind of lightning design...

“Now you listen here and you listen hard,” he said through gritted teeth. “You are never, EVER to come near this mare or any other mare again. DO YOU HEAR ME?! NEVER!!”

Princess Celestia herself could not have poured more anger into her words. Dash had to admit; she was impressed.

“Okay, okay!” one of the attackers whimpered. “Hey, you know, you look kinda familiar-”

“BUCK OFF!!”

The two stallions yelped and flapped away into the night.

Nothing else happened for a moment. The young stallion stood with his back to Dash, who stared at him in alarm and confusion, before he asked in a much softer, gentler voice “Did they hurt you?”

“No,” said Dash. “I-I think you got here just in time. I... thank you.”

“Well,” said the stallion as he turned around, “I had to make things up to you somehow.”

Dash gasped in shock.

The moonlight glinted off a pair of flying goggles resting atop his head – that alone was surprising, as not a lot of pegasi saw the need for goggles – but it was nothing compared to his eyes. They weren’t the calm, deep, oceanic green of Hex’s eyes, or the steady syrupy sap green of Applejack’s; these eyes were the bright and twinkling kind of green that seemed to shoot right through her heart and pierce the essence of her very soul.

And she knew those eyes.

Memories hit her mind like a tidal wave. She almost found herself clutching her head as they poured and settled into her brain... memories of fear, relief, and above all of love...

“I wouldn’t blame you if you never wanted to see me again,” said the stallion in a resigned, sad and above all guilty voice.

“S...” Dash struggled to get the one simple word out of her mouth, “S-Soar-”

She would never forget that one moment, when everything clicked into place.

“Soarin’... you’re Tearaway?”

For a short while, neither of them spoke. The enormity of what was happening needed time to sink in. It was ages before one of the pegasi plucked up the courage to speak.

“I know I’m probably the last guy you want to see,” Soarin’ said slowly, “but I just want you to hear me out, okay?”

He saw the look in Dash’s eyes – a mixture of shock, horror, confusion and fear, with only the faintest traces of recognition.

“Are you...” he began, “You remember me?”

“Of course, I...” Dash tried to pull herself together. “I remember everything.”

There was a pause which would have won the Equestria’s Most Awkward Pause award by a landslide (if such a thing existed, anyway). Soarin’ broke the silence by saying “I understand completely if you hate me, or want to punch me, or if you never want to see me again. I came back because... well, it’s a long story.”

“We’ve got all night,” said Dash.

Then she punched him in the face.

He didn’t cry out or anything like that; he didn’t even rub his cheek where her furious hoof had collided with it. Her anger was perfectly justified and understandable, and he knew that as he knew that the sun would rise in the morning.

“HOW COULD YOU LEAVE ME?” she said in an unintentional impersonation of Princess Luna. “AFTER EVERYTHING I DID FOR YOU-YOU BASTARD!! HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO ME?!” She stopped, panting for breath, and resumed her rant in a softer voice which seemed to hit even harder than the shouting.

“When I found you on that cloud you were almost dead,” she said as tears rolled down her cheeks. “You know, I could have left you there, I-I could have left you to die! But I-I took you back to my place, because it was closer than the hospital, and I fixed you up as best I could – I had to get medicine from some dude I hardly knew – and I-I never gave up! I never gave up on you, Soarin’! I gave you an extra blanket when you were cold; I-I stayed with you during the night in case you got worse or needed anything else, I...”

“I loved you, Soarin’. I loved you like I’ve never loved anypony before. And then as soon as you were better you just left. As soon as you told me you loved me you just-just left. How could you do that to me, Soarin’? How could you just abandon me like that?”

Soarin’ tentatively picked himself up, but couldn’t help but feel like-

“There’s something else,” he said. “Something you’re not telling me.”

‘Horseapples!’ Dash swore internally. 'How the hay am I supposed to tell him- I just gotta go for it. Just gotta tell him. He’ll understand, won’t he?' So she took a deep breath, and dived right into the metaphorical deep end.

“I-I’m pregnant, Soarin’,” she said, wrapping a forehoof around her stomach. “And it’s yours. I... I’m having your foal.”

Now it was his turn to look shocked, horrified, confused and afraid at the same time. Despite herself, and thanks to the look on his face, Dash almost found herself laughing.

“You-you... what?” He couldn’t believe his ears. Rainbow Dash... pregnant? With his kid?

“But that’s not important right now,” said Dash. “Why did you leave me, Soarin’? After everything I did for you – I mean, I saved your life, I thought we could be together – why did you have to go?”

Again, a pause, as the Wonderbolt tried to figure out what to say.

“Before I tell you,” he said, “I have to ask: what’re you going to do now I’m back?”

“I don’t know, I-” it was Dash’s turn to work the right words onto her tongue, “honestly, I’d never even thought about it. But I want answers. NOW.”

“Then you better get comfy,” said Soarin’. “It’s gonna be a long night.”

Ten years ago...

This was it. This was the moment he had been waiting for. It felt like his whole life – all nine years of it – had been leading up to this moment.

Ticket clenched firmly between his teeth, he pushed his way through the crowd – manoeuvring around baby carriages and ducking under pony’s legs – until he had a front row seat.

He felt his mother and father step in behind him, knowing he would want to share this moment – this one moment – of perfection.

“Fillies and gentlecolts!” cried the announcer. It was time! “Please join me in welcoming our beloved Princess Celestia!”

Her royal highness descended onto her waiting balcony and waved at the cheering crowd, her pastel coloured mane and tail billowing in a breeze which wasn’t there and making her look even more majestic than she already was.

But he hardly even noticed. He hadn’t come here for the princess.

“And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! Please give a warm welcome, performing in their hometown of Cloudsdale for the first time in three years... the WONDERBOLTS!!!”

YEESSSS!!!

See, this was what pegasi were meant to do! Gravity, shmavity, flying RULED! The way the blue-clad ponies dived and careened through the air as if they were rockets, leaving trails of crackling smoke behind them – how did they DO that? It was the most incredible thing in the history of everything EVER! And the way they-

“Oomph!”

He found himself knocked to the ground.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!” the guilty filly shouted over the approving roar of the crowds. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said as he got up, “I’m fine!”

Both foals turned their attention back to the Wonderbolts.

“Aren’t they amazing?” said the filly after a while.

He took the opportunity to examine her properly. She was a pretty young thing – golden yellow in her coat with a fiery two-toned orange mane, and eyes the colour of pie crusts. Mmm, pie... Oh, right, and she didn’t have her cutie mark yet, just like him.

“Yeah!” he said. “They’re awesome!”

“I’m gonna join them one day you know!” the filly declared. “I’m gonna be the best Wonderbolt in Equestria!”

“You want to be a Wonderbolt?” he asked excitedly. “The same with me! I wanna do the Super Speed Strut and the Filly Flash – even though I’m not a filly – and the Buccaneer Blaze and-”

“Do you always talk so much?” asked the filly.

“I love talking!” he declared. “But not as much as I love pie!”

“You’re funny!” the filly giggled, and she held out a hoof for him to shake. “I’m Spitfire, by the way!”

“Nice to meet you Spitfire!” he said, shaking her hoof. “I’m Soarin’, but I think I might be Tearaway as well, because I’m always getting in trouble at school and they say I’m a real tearaway, whatever that means!”

Introductions over with, the filly and colt turned their attention back to the Wonderbolts, who zoomed and zipped through the sky to the raucous applause of the crowd below.

“I’m gonna be the best Wonderbolt there ever was!” Spitfire declared.

“Me too, Spitfire,” Soarin’ said, “me too!”

“That was the best birthday present EVER!” the colt shouted, leaping into the air just to prove his point.

“Well, I’m glad you liked it, kiddo,” said his father. “Took me five months to save up enough money for those tickets. I had to work double shifts at the rainbow factory for weeks.”

“But it was worth it to see the look on his face,” said the colt’s mother. “And I noticed somepony made a new friend!”

“I sure did Mom!” Soarin’ cried excitedly, jumping again into the evening sky. “Her name’s Spitfire, and she goes to flight school but she’s in a different class which is why we’ve never met before! She says if it’s alright with her mom and dad I can go round to her house next week! Can I Mom? Can I Dad? Can I can I can I?”

“Slow down there, sport!” said his dad. “You know Lotus; I think his teachers may have been right: he really is a tearaway!”

It continued like that for a little while: Soarin’ narrating his own ecstatic aerial manoeuvres, his parents chatting about what they were going to do next year for his birthday-

“Hooves in the air and put your wings where I can see ‘em.”

It was a griffon. He was extremely large and tough looking, his talons sharpened to razor sharp points and his face criss-crossed with scars and bald patches where feathers had been pulled out.

“Gimme your bits,” he said, “and nopony gets hurt.”

“Please,” said Soarin’s father, “just calm down...”

“Soarin’, fly away,” Lotus commanded.

“What? But Mom-”

“Just fly! Get outta here! Fly, Soarin’! Fly home as fast as you can!”

So he did. What was meant to be the bestest day of his life quickly descended into one of panic as the young colt leapt into the air and zoomed into the night.

Oh cud...

THUNDERSTORM!!!

“I’ve never been so scared in all my life,” said the present day Soarin’ in a contrastingly soft voice. “I thought I was going to die that night. But somehow – I-I’m not really sure – I managed to get back home. And when I looked at my flank...”

He cast an eye upon his cutie mark; a winged lightning bolt.

“I knew I was meant to be happy,” he continued. “I mean, I just got my cutie mark, right? Cue the cake and confetti cannons! But then, Mom came home a few hours later, and when I asked her where Dad was she just... looked at me, and...”

“Oh my gosh,” said Dash. “Soarin’, I’m-I’m so sorry.”

She would never forget the way he looked at her. His normally jubilant and piercing green eyes were overflowing with sorrow and shame. Again, silence filled the air, but this time Dash was deep in thought. Yeah, this guy had left her without saying goodbye and all, but his dad died on his birthday. And on the same day he got his cutie mark. Just... OUCH. Compared to that, even the drug thing seemed kinda, well, understandable.

“After that I sorta shifted my focus to getting into the Wonderbolts,” said Soarin’. “Me and Spitfire, we got real close. She was a good friend; somepony to talk to and confide in. As I was growing up I began to have rows with my mom – nothing major at first, but once in a while it would get so bad that the neighbours would call the cops. I guess I blamed her for what happened to Dad – either that or I blamed myself and didn’t want to admit it.

"‘Few years ago – I think I must’ve been about fifteen or sixteen – Spitfire and I started the tryouts for the Wonderbolts, and one of the captains... let’s just say he acted kinda ‘inappropriate’ towards her. And when I went to confront the guy about it, he was doing more salt than I’d ever seen in my whole life. Huge blocks of the stuff in piles around his couch! And when I threatened to expose him he-he said he’d let Spitfire and me into the Wonderbolts right there and then if I let it go...

“What would you have done, Rainbow?”

Here was more food for thought. On the one hoof, he could have declined and exposed the guy for drug use, but on the other hoof he could have gotten himself and his best friend a free ride into the greatest aerial flight team that ever lived.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she was supposed to be angry with him. Fuming, even. Enraged. Seething! And loads of other words that all meant the same thing. But right now, all she could feel was pity. She wrapped her hooves around his body and held him close, feeling him do the same to her. It seemed like time could have stood still at that moment – two young reconciling pegasi embracing atop a cloud on a beautiful, star-studded, moonlit night – and nothing could have spoiled it. Nothing.

“I spent the next couple of years in a haze,” Soarin’ went on. “Mom got sick – real sick – but I was too high on salt to have noticed. I don’t even remember what she had – that stuff can really mess you up if you take too much. Sometimes I would get these-these wild hallucinations. Stuff like ponies in the street puking rainbows and armies of hammers marching through the city to heavy guitar music. But things started to look up last year.”

“Why was that?”

Soarin’ looked down into Dash’s deep pink eyes.

“Because of you,” he said. “At the Best Young Fliers competition, you were magnificent. I mean, sure you messed up a little – who doesn’t? – but that Sonic Rainboom, and the way you saved me and Spitfire and Misty, was just- I don’t even know how to say it. I saw you, and I thought ‘what happened to me? I used to be like that – I idolised the Wonderbolts and everything – but then I joined them and...’ I guess you sorta became my inspiration.”

‘I inspired a Wonderbolt,’ Dash thought. ‘Sweet.’

“I thought you said Lotus was your wife,” she said.

“Umm,” Soarin’ looked so awkward it was almost funny, “well, I might’ve just said that to make you jealous, um...”

Neither of them laughed. This was just too awkward.

“You were saying?” asked Dash. “I don’t really see what any of this has to do with you abandoning me.”

“Well,” said Soarin’, “things got worse on the night of the Grand Galloping Gala...”

“Look Mom, I don’t have time for this!” said Soarin’. “I’m gonna go round to Spitfire’s place, okay?”

“You spend too much time with that filly,” said Lotus. “She’s been nothing but a bad influence on you ever since you first met!”

“What? No!” Soarin’ insisted. “Now you’re just being crazy.”

“Oh really?” said Lotus. “Well, I would think this was crazy.”

She took out a small, hauntingly familiar bag.

“Take it,” she said. “Go on, take it!”

Soarin’ knew that there was no backing out of this one. He took the bag off his mother’s hooves.

“Would you mind telling me what’s in there?” asked Lotus in a voice so calm it was frightening. The young pegasus opened the bag and guiltily examined what lay within.

“A few small cubes,” he said.

“And what are they cubes of?” Lotus demanded.

Soarin’ shrugged and said “Some sort of crystal thing- how the hay am I supposed to know?”

“Because I found in your room,” said Lotus. “Under your bed when I was doing the dusting. Along with this which fell off as I took it out.” She dropped a label on the ground – a label which read PROPERTY OF SOARIN’. DO NOT TOUCH.

“How could you do this to me, Soarin’?!” she cried. “Ever since you started on this Wonderbolts business you’ve gone nowhere from downhill-”

“You call it downhill,” said Soarin’, “I call it escape!”

“From what?!”

“FROM YOU!”

“I beg your pardon?!”

“YOU HEARD ME!” Soarin’ roared. “Why can’t you just get off my case, Mom? I’m not a little colt any more; I can take care of myself! I didn’t ask you to go rooting through my things! Hey, you know what? Screw this! Screw you!” He flew up to his room and grabbed his flight suit and goggles.

“Where are you going?” asked Lotus.

“Spitfire’s place!” Soarin’ bitterly replied. “Maybe there I won’t have some old bag hanging over my shoulder all the time!”

“And when will you be back?”

“Don’t bother waiting up, Mom! We’re going to the Grand Galloping Gala, I told you last month, remember? And I’m not gonna be back before sundown, you know why? Because I’m not a little colt anymore!”

All he’d ever wanted was to make her proud, and she was only ever angry. Who the hay did that mare think she was to tell him how to live his life and who to hang out with?

He dropped off the cloud and zoomed away into the atmosphere, popping a cube of salt into his mouth as he went.

He got back around three in the morning, and the house was eerily silent.

“Hey Mom, I’m home,” he said. “Gala was a total bust – there was this-this pink thing singing about poking things and flying cake and pie and I think I mighta had too much to drink but there was this really hot filly who saved my pie and...”

By this time, she would have said something.

“Mom?”

Still no answer.

“Mom, you awake?”

He felt himself becoming dangerously sober. It was too quiet. Too still.

Soarin’ slowly made his way into the house. She wasn’t in her bed, or in the kitchen.

Oh, thank Celestia! She had just fallen asleep on the couch.

“Look, Mom, I’m sorry about earlier,” he said. “You were right, I was wrong. I ditched the salt when the tap dancing penguins showed up, ‘coz they were really freaky!”

Even though he was right behind her, she didn’t respond.

“What is this, the silent treatment?” said Soarin’. “Look, what else can I say?” He walked over to where she was seated, and-

“Mom?!”

Ponies didn’t sleep with their eyes open. Or without breathing.

“Mom, no! Please, just wake up! WAKE UP!!”

“The doctors said she had a stroke,” Soarin’ explained. “I... I never got a chance to apologise.”

He sniffed and wiped his nose on a hoof.

“You really thought I was hot?” Dash asked.

The remorseful young stallion somehow managed to smile.

“Hottest mare I’d ever seen,” he said. “The next few weeks are the ones I remember the least. I’d quit salt, sure, but then I started on the hard apple cider. I tried my best to keep it hidden from the tabloids and everything – some days I would just stay in the house and eat pie all day, and do nothing but work out the next day to make up for it – but one afternoon I got so pissed I thought it would be a terrific idea to fly all the way to Gryphonvale, and guess what? I flew right into a thunderstorm.

“Next thing I knew, I was in your house. I’d never known anypony to care for me the way you did. I don’t know if I could ever repay you or thank you enough. You... you believed in me, something nopony had done since my dad died. And I loved you. I loved you more than you could ever believe. And I still do. I... I love you, Rainbow Dash.

“The moment you fell asleep that night, I knew I’d made a mistake. I’d let you love me, trust me, done all the things Mom had (and more, obviously). And ponies that get close to me... it never ends well. Dad was killed by a crazy griffin. Mom had a stroke. Who knows, you could’ve been struck by lightning or something! I didn’t want you to get hurt, so I... when you fell asleep, I flew as fast as I could back to my place and mixed up a salt serum, and I injected you with it even though I had no idea what effect it would have on you. It’s one of the biggest regrets I’ve ever had and I am so, so sorry, Rainbow!”

By now, he was sobbing unashamedly and uncontrollably. Rainbow Dash gave him as comforting a hug as she could, but still felt that it may not be enough.

“You’re not a bad pony,” she whispered soothingly. “You just made some bad decisions. I knew I was right not to give up on you...

“...ya li’l tearaway.”

Soarin’ pulled himself away in shock, his piercing green eyes connecting with her own orbs of pure rose. She was... smiling.

What else could he do but smile back?

“But wait a minute,” said Dash. “Why did you wait until now to come back?”

“Oh well,” Soarin’ said, “that’s where it really gets confusing...”

24 hours earlier...

That. Sucked. ASS.

Soarin’ knew he should have enjoyed that. According to Spitfire, it had been one of their best performances yet. The Filly Flash, the Buccaneer Blaze – all of them were awesome moves, and great fun to pull off...

...and yet, the young stallion couldn’t help but feel like he was missing something.

Or somepony. He knew who it was, of course.

He had made a lot of mistakes in his life, but Rainbow Dash had been the biggest. Their relationship was like one of those Mane Austin novels: he loved her, she loved him, but it just... couldn’t happen. She had been willing to give up her dream – her dream to become a Wonderbolt – if it meant she could be with him.

And he couldn’t let that happen. The last time a mare had given her life to him...

It hadn’t ended well.

“Oi!”

Just like this.

Soarin’ stopped walking abruptly and looked at the heavy-set stallion approaching him from within the nearby alleyway.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Your bits,” said the stranger. “Gimme your bits and you won’t get hurt. And don’t even think about flying away!”

Soarin’ looked down the length of his body.

“Do I look like I’m wearing saddlebags?” he asked. “Look, I’m tired, alright? I’m tired, hungry and I’m REALLY not in the mood for a mugging right now! So why don’t you just buck off, alright? Go ruin somepony else’s night.”

The stallion paused in his advance.

“Hey you look kinda familiar,” he said. “Are you-are you a Wonderbolt?”

“Wow, you’re observant,” the blue-and-yellow clad pony said sarcastically. “Was it the mane that gave it away, or was it the Wonderbolts standard issue uniform and flight goggles?”

“You are!” said the would-be mugger. “You’re-you’re Soarin’! Wow! Can I have your autograph? This is incredible: I’ve never mugged a celebrity before!”

He then flew backwards as a frustrated hoof slammed into his face and sent him sailing through the alley until he hit the solid cloud wall at the back.

“And you’re not about to start tonight,” said Soarin’. He walked over to his attacker, cast a careless eye over his bleeding muzzle, and stared him right in the terrified eye.

“Now do yourself a favour,” he said in a voice as solid as diamond, “and BUCK OFF!”

The petrified stallion leapt to his hooves and galloped out of the alley and out of sight.

So it had gotten to the point where the most exciting part of his evening was traumatising muggers. Hoo-bucking-rah. ‘You really are living la Vida loca, aren’t you?’ he said to himself. He turned around and left the alley.

A few metres down the street, something else caught his attention.

He turned around and looked back into the alley he had just left. At the far end was an expanding ball of light, glowing like the sun. A gale rushed through the narrow passage, disturbing the litter strewn around the place and teasing Soarin’s swept back mane. He shielded his eyes against the blinding white light which pulsated and crackled with lightning, and a rushing noise reminiscent of something charging up...

WHOOSH.

The light and wind simultaneously evaporated, and a stallion galloped out of the alley, eyes closed, screaming his lungs out. He drew to a halt when he opened his eyes and saw Soarin’, whose jaw almost hit the floor.

This guy was... this guy was badass. His limp mane replaced a patch over his right eye, and fell carelessly about the rest of his face, which bore not only a steady coating of late night stubble but also a Band-Aid over his muzzle. A bloodied bandage wrapped liberally around his neck was mostly covered by the tattered remains of a Wonderbolt’s uniform, which in turn was hidden beneath a thick, tough-looking black vest. And he clearly didn’t give a buck about his fetlocks.

He turned a piercing green eye upon the stunned Wonderbolt.

“Soarin’, good, right time,” he said. “Dude, you gotta listen to me. It’s more important than anything!”

“Are you-” Soarin’ stammered, “-are you me?!”

“Yes,” said the other Soarin’, “but don’t worry; you aren’t gonna look like this for at least another seventeen years.”

“Seventeen YEARS?”

“But that’s beside the point! Listen, dude, you gotta go back to Rainbow.”

“What? But I-”

“No buts! You have to go back to Rainbow Dash. She needs you.”

“No she doesn’t,” Soarin’ said flatly. “She’s got her friends – those ones she kept talking about, who live in Ponyville – I’m pretty sure she’ll have got over me by now.”

His future self then caught him by surprise by pinning him against a nearby wall, forehooves pressing deep into his chest.

“See, this is why I quit pie,” said his future self in an irritated voice. “You-”

“I QUIT PIE?!” roared present Soarin’ in horror.

“Yes,” his other self said flatly. “’Coz it just replaced the salt and the cider. I’m you, okay? Trust me! And I’ve only got a few more seconds to tell you that Rainbow Dash NEEDS you right now. More than you could ever imagine! I should know, ‘coz when I was you I remember me coming back in time and telling myself this!” He paused for a moment, and said, more to himself than otherwise, “You know, that sounded a lot less confusing in my head.”

“Doesn’t everything?”

“Shut your pie hole and listen. I’ve only got a few more seconds!” His body started to crackle with electricity. “Rainbow Dash is going to need you in times to come. Hex and Twilight can help, but not as much as you can!” He started to glow as he screamed his final words: “A WHOLE LOTTA HORSECRAP’S ABOUT TO HIT THE FAN!”

And with a second, shorter rush of light and wind, he was gone.

“Umm... future me?”

As tentatively as possible, Soarin’ prised himself out of the small rut he had made in the side of the building behind him (which was understandable, this being Cloudsdale where everything was built with – you know – clouds?) and slid down into a sitting position.

That had quite possibly been the weirdest thing that had ever happened in his entire life ever.

So...

He had to find Rainbow Dash again. That much was obvious. What wasn’t obvious was how he was supposed to get to looking like he’d just walked through a raging battlefield.

His other self had also mentioned not looking like that for seventeen years, which was relieving... kinda. What wasn’t relieving was that apparently, he quit pie. PIE, for pony’s sake! He-he lived on pie! How was he supposed to just give it up?

Not that it was a problem. Soarin’ knew full well that he could quit any time he wanted. He just didn’t want to. That was all.

And who the hay were Hex and Twilight?

Obviously it was going to be a sleepless night. Again.

Soarin’ took off and flew over Cloudsdale until he found his house. He could barely get the front door open because of all the junk piled in front of it. Mind you, he never had been good at cleaning. That had all been left to...

Never mind.

He removed his uniform – keeping his goggles, without which he would be blinded by wind – and left it, along with a note, in a place where Spitfire would easily find it when she came calling. Which she would, of course.

Then came the part he really liked.

He left the building – not really caring whether the house was locked up or not, who would want to rob a place so messy? – and jumped off the cloud upon which it was positioned.

For several seconds he did nothing. He spread his hooves wide and enjoyed the feeling of the wind rushing past his face and body as he plummeted into gravity’s cool invigorating embrace, before he angled himself into a dive, extended his wings on either side and glided noiselessly through the atmosphere.

This was how ponies were meant to fly. From the moment he became a Wonderbolt, Soarin’ had committed himself to travelling as fast as possible, even if it meant breaking the sound barrier, the light spectrum or both, and he had almost forgotten what it was like to simply enjoy the feeling of the wind under his wings, supporting his body as if he were weightless.

And that wasn’t just because he had been salted out of his skull for most of his career.

But now he was going to set the record straight.

This time, he was going to be there for the mare that needed him.

He wasn’t going to fail again.

NEXT TIME: Hello, Goodbye

“Oh my gosh! Is that Soarin’? From the Wonderbolts?”

“Darling, something must be done about your TERRIBLE coiffure, and I refuse to take no for an answer!”

“Let’s just say that when you meet her, you’ll be in for a surprise.”

“Huh? What kind of surprise?”

“Ah ah! Spoilers, my friend. Spoilers.”

“You know what this calls for...?”

Author's Note: Took me quite a while to work out how to present this one-

Pinkie, do you mind? I'm trying to write my thoughts on this chapter and how it turned out-

Well, you're going to get plenty of dialogue in the next chapter, okay? You see the first quote up above? Chances are people read that in your voice.

Yes! Now will you please get back behind the fourth wall?

Sorry about that. So there you have it. Dash's lover exposed. As I was trying to say before Pinkie interrupted me, I wasn't sure how to present this one; I've never been good at conveying emotions. Constructive criticism would be appreciated. And yes, I do imagine that salt would be sorta like the Equestrian version of cocaine or marijuana or however many drugs you can come up with-

I'm not even gonna...

Chapter 7 - Hello, Goodbye

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?
So you think you can love me and leave me to die?
Oh, baby
Can’t do this to me baby
Just gotta get out
Just gotta get right outta here...

There it was.

Ponyville.

He had seen bits of it when he had been in Dash’s house, but now it was time to get a proper look. It was a quaint little place – the sort of place for ponies to come from, not to go to – and a far cry from the classical columns and spirals of Cloudsdale, or the looming marble towers and cobbled streets of Canterlot.

Not that Soarin’ was very taken in by the scenery, because he was so exhausted he was almost falling out of the air.

Why hadn’t he waited until the morning to leave? Maybe the combination of salt and cider had somehow lowered his IQ. He needed a place to sleep – somewhere sheltered where there wasn’t any chance of Rainbow Dash finding him.

That was a big damn tree...

Too tired to dive properly, Soarin’ simply closed his wings and let himself fall (a stupid idea; he almost hit the ground) and then caught himself, before flapping up onto a sheltered window ledge and curling up, mustering his willpower for falling asleep.

“Twilight?”

“Hmph?”

“Twilight, wake up!”

The purple unicorn groggily forced her two-tonne eyelids open and glared accusingly at her assistant.

“What is it, Spike?” she asked. “Isn’t it a little early to be getting up?”

“Well, I just got up,” Spike explained, “and there’s a guy on the window ledge outside.”

“Come again?”

“There’s a guy on the window ledge!”

Twilight forced back her bedcovers and lifted herself off the mattress. She examined all the windows there were...

...and yes, there WAS a guy on the window ledge! The same window ledge where Spike had been sitting jealous when she had first shown Owlowicious to her friends.

We’ll see about that.

She opened the window and screamed “COMFY?”

Talk about a rude awakening! The stallion leapt into the air in shock, wings and legs stiff as planks, and again almost hit the ground before he recovered, and hovered just outside the window.

“What the hell?” he demanded. “What did you do that for?”

“I think I should warn you that I am the personal student of Princess Celestia,” said the purple unicorn who had awakened him, “and I do not take kindly to perverts, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“What? I’m not a pervert!” shouted the stranger. “I was just looking for a place to sleep and your window seemed like the best bet! I didn’t even know anypony lived here, okay?”

“Get outta here!”

Soarin’ completely lost his focus: he fell right off the ledge and crashed to the ground. Next thing he knew, another pony was leaning over him. This one, like the other, was a unicorn – a young one, not quite a stallion but older than a colt – with a terracotta coat, brown hair and quite possibly the greenest eyes the Wonderbolt had ever seen. Seriously man, they were just-just green. Greenness intensified. It was like they went right through green and out the other side into some sort of ultra-green. Even though the guy was wearing glasses, they were just so... GREEN.

“Peepin’ Tom, eh?” he said in the strangest accent Soarin’ had ever heard. “I think I should warn you; that girl in there knows more magic than you could ever know, so if you perv at her again you’re gonna smegging regret it.”

“I’m not a perv!” Soarin’ shouted. “I just needed a place to sleep for the night and I was exhausted!”

“Then why not sleep on a cloud?”

“It gets cold on clouds! They’re made of water, for crying out loud!”

The unicorn looked considerate for a moment.

“I guess that makes sense,” he said, and held out a hoof to help him up. “Name’s Hex, by the way, and that in there was Twilight Sparkle.”

“What’s her problem?” asked Soarin’.

“She can be very... insistent,” Hex explained. “Why were you so tired as to have to sleep on her windowsill? What were you, flying all night or something?”

“Something like that,” said Soarin’. “I came to Ponyville to look for somepony.”

“Who?”

“You’re probably heard of her – a mare named Rainbow Dash? Though she probably won’t be very happy to see me; it’s been four months, after all.”

Hex stared at him for a moment, apparently working something out.

Then he punched the pegasus in the face and sent him flying to the ground for the second time in as many minutes, this time with a small trickle of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away and said “What the hell, man? Why did you just punch me?”

“You really want me to tell you?” Hex shouted. “She was crushed when you left – heartbroken! It was two whole months before she actually spoke to anypony again! And that’s not the half of it.”

“You know her?”

“The smeg I do!” He telekinetically grabbed Soarin’ and dragged him up to eye level.

“Now listen you smegging dick,” he said. “You’re gonna find Rainbow Dash, and you’re gonna set things straight with her. And you’re gonna do that ASAP, you hear me?”

He froze.

Soarin’ froze.

Both young stallions looked around.

Even though it was early in the morning, there were still ponies in the street. And every single one of them had stopped what they were doing, and were staring at the unicorn and pegasus in alarm.

“Um...” Hex said slowly. “This... isn’t what it looks like...”

This didn’t do anything to deter the staring, so Soarin’ found himself dropped to the ground and had to pick himself up, and not long afterwards everypony stopped staring, much to the two colt’s relief.

“Look,” said Hex. “All I’m saying is that it wasn’t a very good idea for you to abandon her like you did. You should make things right with her as soon as possible if not sooner. And...” he gave a small smile. “Let’s just say you’ll be in for a surprise.”

“Huh? What kind of surprise?”

“Ah ah!” The brown unicorn tapped his muzzle knowingly. “Spoilers, my friend. Spoilers! Even though the readers of this fic found everything out in the previous chapter.”

“What?”

“Never you mind.”

Soarin’ walked through Ponyville deep in thought.

He hadn’t expected a warm reception. How could he? The population of Equestria were all used to seeing Soarin’ the Wonderbolt, Soarin’ the alcoholic, Soarin’ the closeted salt addict. The only way anypony could recognise him was when he wore his flight suit – his skin-tight, uncomfortable flight suit which tore when he so much as lifted a hoof and chafed like nothing in the world.

All he had was his flight goggles, although they were admittedly rather conspicuous. Pegasi rarely saw the need for eye protection, but that was probably because they never-

“OOMPH!”

‘Dammit, why didn’t I look where I was going?’ Soarin’ thought.

As he picked himself up, he got a good look at the pony he had crashed into. It was a mare, about the same age as him if not a little younger – a unicorn with a pure white coat and a painstakingly styled mane and tail. Her cutie mark was a trio of fancy looking diamonds, not unlike the glimmering jewels which were now scattered all over the ground and spilling out of her saddlebags.

“Oh man, I’m so sorry!” he said, and started to gather them up. “I should’ve been looking where I was going – I’m such an idiot!”

“Oh no, that’s quite alright!” said the mare in a fancy accent. “I was just gathering these gems for an ensemble I have to finish. And I would have had to if that silly sister of mine hadn’t created that ridiculous picture of hers, and- oh my goodness, what IS the matter with your mane?”

Soarin’ forced his eyes upward, trying to get a look at his swept back hair. Try as he may, he couldn’t even see his fringe, let alone anything else.

“It’s... messy?” he tried.

“Not just messy, my dear!” The mare produced a mirror out of... somewhere. “Why, that has to be one of the worst kept styles I have ever laid my eyes upon. And trust me when I say that I have seen some simply despicable manes in my lifetime!”

Soarin’ studied his own reflection for what could have been a lifetime, but failed to find a single fault in his hairstyle. All the Wonderbolts had their manes like this – it wasn’t supposed to be a rebellion against fashion, it just got blown that way because of all the flying! When you’re travelling at almost the speed of sound you don’t waste time worrying about what your hair’s gonna look like when you’re done – well, maybe the mares would, but that was totally beside the point!

“Um, well, thanks for the tipoff, but I really have to get going-”

“Darling, something must be done about your TERRIBLE coiffure,” said the unicorn, producing a hairbrush from... wherever, “and I refuse to take no for an answer!”

She advanced on Soarin’ with the brush prepared and a smile creeping across her face.

Five seconds later...

“OW! Hey, watch where you’re- YAH! That hurts! Why- OW, why are you being so- GAH so rough?! You’re- OWWWWW! You’re pulling my- youch my mane off! Please- OUCH! Please stop it!”

“Oh for goodness sakes, my dear, could you try not to be so melodramatic?”

“But you- YOWW! I feel like- ah! Like you’re gonna rip- rip my skin off!”

“Well, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as painful if you simply took a little more pride in your appearance.”

Soarin’ quickly realised that there was no way he was getting out of this situation unbrushed, so he sat on his haunches and let this unicorn he didn’t even know brush his mane for him, keeping a frown firmly fixed on his face for the entire duration.

Finally, after what could have been an eternity, she was finished, and held up the mirror for him to see.

“Finished!” she sang. “What do you think?”

He stared.

And stared.

And stared some more.

And when he was done staring, he started staring.

His mane, which had once been untidily piled up on top of his head, now hung limply across the side of his face and down the back of his neck. It was the same mane style as his future self had possessed, but if he wasn’t going to look like that for seventeen years then surely he had no reason to worry.

But still...

“Um,” he said, “it’s... new.”

“I must say that it looks rather befitting,” the unicorn said proudly, “and dare I say that you do look wonderfully handsome. I just know your lady friend is going to love it!”

“I don’t have a lady friend,” Soarin’ admitted, and quickly added, just in case; “But I hope to have one! P-pretty soon, actually, so I’ll be on my way! Er... thanks, I suppose?” He grinned in what he hoped was a grateful fashion and hurriedly turned around with the intention of winging it.

“Just one moment.”

‘Aw horseapples,’ Soarin’ thought, ‘here it goes!’

“You do look extremely familiar,” said the mare. “Are you some kind of celebrity by any chance?”

“Um... no,” said Soarin’. “You must, uh, have me confused with somepony else. Gotta fly!”

And he zoomed into the air before she could say anything else.

Dammit, he forgot to ask where Rainbow was!

He flew up into the sky and sat down on a cloud.

Right now, Soarin’ was only sure of these particular things:

He had been inexplicably visited by himself from the future: an extremely badass himself from the future (although he would have preferred to have seen both eyes, because only seeing one was rather disconcerting)

His future self had told him he had to go back to Rainbow Dash, because apparently she needed him more than he could imagine

And he still loved her.

He lay down on the cloud and tried to think.

Maybe it was just salt withdrawal, but he was really starting to get tired. What time had he gone to sleep last night? It had definitely been some time in the morning – maybe 1am if not 2am – and when the hay had he woken up?

Aside from the random grooming from that mare – which had taken absolutely AGES now that he thought about it, so long that he had completely missed breakfast – he was a mess. Not just on the outside, but inside as well. His mind was a warzone; on one side, presumably his better side, was the part that was still crazy about Rainbow and wanted him to spend the rest of his life with her – the other side was the great big red arrow that pointed right back to Cloudsdale, and more specifically to his home, at the stash of salt and hard cider under his bed that he hadn’t touched for months.

The cider would probably have gone flat by now, and maybe even have leaked into the salt. Soarin’ dreaded to think what both of them combined would do to him so he tried his best to forget-

-wait a minute.

What. Was. That. SMELL?

He inhaled deeply, his nostrils flaring as the mind-numbingly spectacular scent seeped its way in and drew him off the cloud.

It was coming from the apple farm down below. He followed his nose, and it led him to the farm house, where a familiar looking orange Earth pony was setting a pie on a window ledge to cool (even though seriously: who DOES that anymore?).

Maybe...

Maybe he could just snatch it and fly away. Surely nopony would miss just one pie, right?

No! His future self told him he quit pie!

Then again, that wouldn’t be him for at least seventeen years...

“Likin’ the smell?”

“EEEK!”

He cowered on the ground with his hooves over his head, terrified that he had just been caught about to steal this mare’s pie.

But she was... laughing?

“Well, ain’t you just a big ol’ scaredy pony?” she said in a Southern accent. And it definitely wasn’t a mare – at least, not quite yet.

“I’msosorry!” Soarin’ jabbered. “Iwasn’tgonnastealyourpie! IjustmissedbreakfastandIwasreallyhungryand-”

“Simmer down, Sally!” said the mare. “Y’all are gettin’ yerself in a flap fer no good reason. Ah’d be happy ta let you have the pie!”

It was this particular sentence that made Soarin’ perk up considerably.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yep!” said the mare. “It’ll be four bits.”

Oh horseapples.

“Um...”

“What’s the problem? Ain’t got no money?”

“Well, see...”

“Not to worry! Y’all can just work it off!”

Soarin’ liked the prospect of not having to pay for the pie – especially since it was now past lunchtime and he was absolutely starving – but didn’t like the idea of having to work.

“Um,” he said, “define ‘work it off’.”

Applebucking.

So... much... applebucking.

Soarin’ hadn’t even known the word existed up until now. And he didn’t see why a whole new word had to be invented just to describe it! All you did was buck a tree, for Celestia’s sake!

That mare – she had said her name was Applejack or something, a name hauntingly similar to the cider which had landed him in Rainbow’s hooves in the first place – had yet to tell him to stop. She’d disappeared not long after, apparently setting up some race thingy for tomorrow. The sun was setting, for crying out loud! He’d been out here kicking trees for hours! Surely he’d done enough to pay for that pie by now... hadn’t he?

Here she came. And she was laughing.

“Y’all look like ya could drop dead any second!” she said.

“Funny,” said Soarin’, voice quavering from exhaustion, “’coz that’s... exactly... how... I feel!”

And she just laughed some more. This was downright humiliating.

“It’s okay!” she said eventually. “You’ve done more than enough to pay fer that pie. Thank ya kindly, er... Ah’m sorry, Ah din’t catch yer name.”

Now here was a conundrum. On the one hoof he could lie, and give her a fake name – that nickname his teachers had given him when he was a kid would make a good substitute – but on the other hoof he could just tell her the truth and get it over with.

“Soarin’,” he said, opting for the second choice. “It’s Soarin’.”

The look on Applejack’s face was absolutely classic.

“The Soarin’? Of the Wonderbolts?”

“Yeah, but don’t tell anypony, okay?”

“Ah swear Ah won’t, but oh mah goodness!” She was beyond shock and into full blown disbelief. “If mah friend Rainbow Dash were here she’d be over the moon by now!”

“Wait a sec,” said Soarin’. “You know Rainbow?”

“Uh, sure,” Applejack said sceptically. “Why do you ask?”

‘Oh horseapples, what do I say now?’ he thought desperately. ‘Do I just tell her I’m the colt who broke Rainbow’s heart, or do I tell her the whole story from scratch, or both?’

“I...” he said. “I’m the guy who-who broke her heart.”

Applejack’s expression of confusion was quickly transmuted into one of comprehension, and then to one of anger.

“You’d better explain yerself before Ah call mah brother out here,” she growled.

So Soarin’ told her everything. He started with the evening of his ninth birthday and finished at the night he left. By the time he was finished the sun had completely set – the farmer’s expression, over the course of his story, had gone from anger to sympathy, and then from sympathy to shock and back to sympathy again, finally became the face of understanding.

“Ah-Ah’m so sorry,” she said. “Ah guess... Ah guess if Ah were you and everythin’ you’d gone through happened to me, then Ah woulda done exactly what you did.”

Soarin’ smiled.

“You have no idea what that means to me,” he said gratefully.

“But ya still broke Rainbow’s heart,” Applejack said firmly, “and Ah can’t bring mahself to forgive ya ‘til you set things right with her.”

He nodded and said “That’s what I plan on doing. I’ll see you when I see you.” And with that, he flew up into the clouds, found one that looked particularly comfy and settled down on it.

So how was he supposed to go about it? He definitely couldn’t just go over to her house and expect to be let in, and there was no way he could approach her on the street. Would she even be on the street?

This was all too much, and he was just too tired to think about it properly. He rolled over, pulled part of the cloud over his head, and seconds later fell into a record-breakingly deep slumber.

Pain.

So much pain.

He felt like every part of his body was on fire. Forcing his two-tonne eyelid off his eye, he examined his surroundings and found himself in a cold, dark cave, the only light coming from the tiny window in a thick metal door in front of him.

He was lying on the floor, curled up a foetal position, most likely because of the pain in his abdomen, where it was the worst. It felt like he had been bucked in the stomach repeatedly for hours on end, and punched in the face at the same time. He had never felt more horrible in all his life. Right here, right now, Soarin’ wanted to die.

The door opened and two frighteningly large ponies threw a third smaller one into the cave before slamming the door shut again. The light fell upon the tearstained features of Rainbow Dash, and Soarin’ was horrified to see her beautiful face covered in cuts and bruises with a black eye and a bloody tear in one of her ears.

She dragged herself over to him and wrapped her forelegs around his body. He winced in pain, but returned the embrace, and felt her shoulders shaking as she sobbed into his chest.

“I don’t know if I can do this much longer,” she wept. “How long have we been here?”

“I... I don’t know,” Soarin’ responded. “A few days, maybe a couple of weeks?”

“What if nopony comes for us?” asked Dash. “Nopony knows where we are. Do you think... Do you think they’ll kill us?”

“No,” Soarin’ tried to sound reassuring, “no they won’t. Twilight, the others, they’ll find us long before then. We’re gonna be okay, I promise. We’re gonna be okay!”

“Do you... Do you Pinkie promise?”

She looked into his eye, fresh tears gathering in her own.

“Cross my heart and hope to fly,” said Soarin’, “stick a cupcake in my eye.” He touched a hoof to the empty hole on the right side of his face.

Then he hugged her tightly, feeling her sobs and tears running down his chest, and did nothing to hold back as he himself began to helplessly weep.

When he woke up, it was dark.

The moon was hanging overhead in a star studded sky. He couldn’t have asked for such a peaceful night as tonight.

But that dream...

It was just a dream, right? Right?

It had felt so vivid, so... so real. He remembered the cave, feeling more pain than he could have thought possible, and a hole where he was pretty sure his right eye should have been.

Was that why Future Soarin’ had worn his mane over his face like that? Was that a vision of the future? Was he going to one day find himself and Rainbow battered and bruised, held captive by an unknown enemy, and secretly longing for death?

He shivered in horror.

Wait a sec...

There was talking going on down below him. He detangled himself from the cloud and looked carefully, so as not to be seen, over the edge at what was going on.

He could make out two thuggish looking stallions, one standing back with a hoof over his muzzle and another pinning a mare to the cloud.

It was Rainbow Dash.

She was just as beautiful as ever, if not even more so than the last time he had seen her. Sure, it looked like she had gained a little weight, but that was beside the point. He had finally found her.

And Future Soarin’ had been right: she did need his help.

It was now or never.

“HEY!!”

That was then. This is now.

Soarin’ was the first to awaken from a thankfully dreamless sleep. He lifted a hoof to his face, shielding his eyes from the bright sunlight, and it was then that he remembered where he was.

He looked down, and saw her. She had yet to awaken.

She was so adorable when she was asleep. Was it any wonder that he had fallen in love with her? His eyes travelled south, coming to a rest on the small bulge in her abdomen.

“Hey,” he whispered. “Anypony in there?”

Naturally, there was no answer.

“It’s me,” he said, gently placing a hoof on Dash’s stomach. “It’s your dad.”

Still nothing. He felt like a complete idiot, but then again, he also felt like this was something he should have done a while ago.

“Listen, kid,” he said. “If I had known about you – if somepony had told me you were in there – I would never have left your mom. I would have stayed with her and never left her side if she needed me. But it’s okay. We’re back together now. The three of us; we’re...

“We’re gonna be a family.”

And he could have sworn, at the mention of the word “family” something pressed against his hoof. For the umpteenth time in as many hours his eyes started to water uncontrollably.

“Soarin’, are you... are you crying?”

Dammit, she had woken up!

“I think the kid just brohoofed me,” said Soarin’, and he and Dash sniggered.

“I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t the most adorable thing I’d ever seen in my whole life,” she said. “You’re right: we’re going to be a family.”

There was a pause, during which the pegasi simply smiled at each other.

“HI!”

Poor Soarin’ almost leapt out of his skin in fright as something pink erupted through the surface of the cloud. But it was okay, it was gone...

...for less than five seconds.

“Hello!” it cried, popping up once more, and then “Hi Dashie!” as it came up for a third time.

Dash smiled.

“Hey, Pinkie Pie,” she said. “What’re you doing out here?”

“Oh, I’m just really happy!” said Pinkie. “Know why? ‘Coz the author let me have some dialogue! Isn’t that great, Dashie?”

“What the hay is she talking about?” asked Soarin’.

“I do not have a clue,” Dash admitted.

“Who’s your friend?” Pinkie asked, again exploding through the cloud. “Oh my gosh! Is that Soarin’? From the Wonderbolts?”

“Yes,” said Soarin’, confused as to where that bouncing noise was coming from, “yes I am.”

“OHMYGOSH!” Pinkie shouted. “You know what this calls for...?”

She disappeared below the surface of the cloud yet again; yet again there was a bouncing noise and she popped up, this time with a cry of:

“A PARTY!!!”

“No, Pinkie!” Dash said quickly. “You can’t tell anypony Soarin’s here, okay? Just bring the girls and Hex to the library and we’ll introduce him there.”

“Sounds good to me!” cried Pinkie. “See you in the next chapter!”

And with that she stopped appearing in the cloud. Soarin’ looked down and saw her dragging a trampoline away to Celestia knows where.

“Who the hay was that?” he asked.

“Just Pinkie,” said Dash.

“She called you Dashie.”

‘Dashie’ blushed.

“Oh, hey, I almost forgot,” she said.

“Forgot what?”

Soarin’ suddenly found his head pulled forward as the spectral haired speedster locked her lips with his. It was, by far, the most loving, passionate kiss that any two ponies could have share. Soarin’ wrapped his hooves around her body, holding her as close as he possibly could, and when they broke apart for sheer lack of breath Dash had a mischievous glint in her eye.

“That,” she said, smiling. “That’s what.”

She punched through the cloud and fell into the air, loop-de-looping around and hovering just above her lover.

“Come on,” she said, “I’ll take you to the library and you can meet my friends.”

And with that, the two pegasi flew together, out of the cold clutches of loneliness and despair, and into a new day which yielded togetherness, loyalty, and love.

NEXT TIME: A Thousand Miles

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Relax, it’s bound to work. It’s me, isn’t it?”

“Okay, Mister Techno, where in Equestria are we?”

“Twilight, something tells me we aren’t in Equestria anymore.”

“How do you know?”

“Look at your hands!”

Author's Note: Hopefully I can write this without Pinkie adding her commentary this time. As usual, for her there is a revolving door in the fourth wall. Hex should know: he's the one who installed it! I'm really pleased with the reception this story has received, by the way. Your comments appease me- sorry, slipping into insane ruler mode there.

...

Chapter 8 - A Thousand Miles part 1

Nothing really matters
Anyone can see
Nothing really matters
Nothing really matters to me...

“Hex?” Twilight ventured. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

The brown unicorn crouched on the ground, his muzzle mere inches away from the bolt he was telekinetically tightening in the newly constructed teleport gate which rested on the outside of the library.

“What’re you talkin’ about?” he asked. “You’re the one who suggested that we have one at the library in the first place. What, have you forgotten that already? I don’t like the idea of my friends having to trek up a whole mountain if they just want a chat, and I certainly don’t want to have to hike down whenever I want to visit you. Do you?”

“I know,” said Twilight, “but what if it malfunctions?”

“Relax,” said Hex. “It’s bound to work. It’s me, isn’t it?”

If one of her other friends had said something like that, Twilight would have instantly given them a harsh berating for being so full of himself/herself, as it was more than likely completely unnecessary.

But somehow, for a reason she couldn’t explain, Hex was an exception. All those little gizmos and gadgets he made almost always worked flawlessly, so he had every reason to expect this one to work as well. He was, as Rainbow Dash had stated, always right. Not to mention good looking, with his crazily scruffy mane and tail and eyes that sparkled like brilliant emeralds...

Twilight was positive now that she had a crush on him. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could learn from looking in a book, even though naturally she had ransacked the entire library trying to find information about the development and sustainment of pony relationships. It felt like... like if anything ever happened to him, anything bad, like if he got sick or really badly hurt, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she didn’t do something for him.

She watched him as he worked, humming a jaunty, happy sounding tune as he connected each wire and tightened every screw and bolt, his nose less than a foot away from the metalwork as he squinted in concentration with his eyes riveted solidly on the expanding teleport gate.

It was almost as if he did this every day.

Which of course, most likely, he did.

Celestia knows what he got up to in that shop of his. He had been spending more and more time up there, working on that GLaDOS of his. Recently, he had told her exactly what it was: a sentient supercomputer capable of independent thought and decision making, based around one of the same design and name in one of ninety nine parallel dimensions. It had been driven nuts by a woman’s personality being forcibly uploaded into it, and had killed almost everyone in the facility it inhabited with a horrible neurotoxin. Not to mention being uploaded in a potato and replaced by the biggest moron ever to have existed... and defeated twice by the same mute.

Hopefully, he had added, this one... wouldn’t do that.

She had to mentally force herself, as he carefully constructed this most recent technological creation, not to stare at his flank.

‘He’s so clever,’ Twilight found herself thinking. ‘I used to think I knew more than anypony, but he’s done and seen things I’ve never even dreamed of! And yet, he doesn’t act like it. He’s so... humble, and he’s definitely the last guy I could see Rainbow Dash making friends with.’

“Done!” he said, and took a step back. “Now to test it out.” He activated his ear bud and said “You ready for us, Rainbow?”

“Ready and waiting,” said the waiting Rainbow Dash from her position in Hex’s shop. Without looking around she said “Don’t touch that,” and Soarin’ quickly withdrew a curious hoof from a dog kennel – which had two glowing eyes protruding from within its darkness.

“Right,” said Hex, and he handed his ear bud to Twilight. “If it works, Rainbow will let you know. Here goes nothing!”

He pressed several keys on a pad by the side of the gate, which flickered into life, first with a miniscule bead of blue light at its centre, followed by an explosive rush of light which engulfed the entire gate in an aura of blueness. The terracotta scientist took a deep breath, smiled to himself, and confidently stepped through the teleporter.

Twilight waited for Rainbow Dash to confirm he had arrived.

After five full minutes, she started to get worried.

“Are you two having a make-out session or something?” Dash asked eventually.

“You mean he hasn’t come through?” said Twilight, the familiar poison of panic seeping into her mind.

“No, he hasn’t!” said Dash. “What’s going on down there?”

“I told him something might go wrong!” cried Twilight. “It’s been five minutes and he hasn’t come out yet! I’m going in there and getting him out!”

All rational thought was dismissed as she tore off the ear bud, ignoring Dash’s desperate reasoning, and dived headfirst into the teleporter.

It was dark.

Very dark.

And dusty, and messy.

As his senses one by one returned to him, Hex sat up and rubbed his head, examining his surroundings.

He wasn’t in Equestria anymore. That much was obvious. Equestria was a place of bright pastel colours, cool green grass and clean, tidy buildings. In this place, the colours seemed a lot darker, earthier and more realistic. While everything in that place had a generally happy and harmonious tone, this place seemed more edgy, threatening and frightening.

‘Wait a sec,’ Hex thought, ‘I know this place.’

He stood up, and was immediately aware that he was considerably taller than he had previously been, plus he was apparently physically incapable of manoeuvring properly on all fours. It was a lot easier– a smeg of a lot easier – to stand on his hind legs.

This place was familiar... but how?

He looked around. It appeared to be the remnants of some sort of lab. Up above, right ahead of him, was a balcony-type area with an arrangement of computers on it. On the wall was some other sort of computer type thing – he didn’t want to go into detail, for the patience of the readers – and the other wall was a blank sheet of solid steel and a small control panel with a switch on it.

He did know this place. If he looked behind him, he would see a raised platform, with blue lights and stuff and guard rails surrounding it and if he looked up he would see a big, bulky lump of machinery with some broken cables and an arm thingy pointing at where the platform would be if it were raised about ten feet into the air.

But he looked back all the same, and was stunned by what he saw.

Lying on the platform, leaning unconsciously against the guard rails, was a girl in her late teens. Her hair was long, reaching down past her shoulders, and shone blue in the dim light, with stripes of pink and purple. Her form was slim and slender – she wore a lavender shirt with a mini skirt of a slightly darker shade and dark tights, with neat-looking black ballet flats. Around her waist was a belt with a large decorative buckle, and an image on it of a magenta 6-pointed star surrounded by five smaller sparkles.

She was... beautiful.

“Twilight?” asked Hex carefully. “Is that you?”

As she groaned and her eyes started to open, he walked over to her and knelt down until he was at eye level.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

In truth, Twilight felt as if she had just tap danced her way through a sonic rainboom before sprinting to Canterlot and back. She opened her eyes and found herself face to face with Hex, who had somehow reverted to his human form.

“I think so,” she said, “although I notice you’re human again.” She looked around.

“And we aren’t in Ponyville anymore,” she stated.

“You got that right,” said Hex, as he glanced at their surroundings once more.

“Okay, Mister Techno,” said Twilight, “where in Equestria are we?”

Hex gulped and said “If I tell you, do you promise not to freak out?”

“I promise.”

“Twilight...” He gulped again, obviously terrified of what he was about to say, “something tells me we aren’t in Equestria anymore.”

“How do you know?”

“Don’t believe me? Look at your hands!”

“Hands? I don’t have...”

Twilight trailed off. She had been raising her front hooves to show him that they still were, and always had been, front hooves, but-but they weren’t hooves anymore. Instead she had these big fleshy claw-like things on the edge of her drastically shortened forelegs.

“What the-” How would YOU put it into words? “Hex, what the hell has happened to me? I look like- I look like you!” She looked down at her chest. “And what’re these for?” she asked, grabbing her- Hex had to look away, face redder than an angry raspberry.

“Well, they’re not for that, I assure you,” he said, and Twilight lowered her hands.

Hex straightened up, standing on his hind- his only legs and held out a hand, which Twilight gratefully took, and he helped her onto her feet. She wavered for a moment, having spent her whole life on four legs, and found it easier to lean on her friend’s shoulder.

“Thanks,” she said.

“What’re friends for?” asked Hex with a smile. Twilight also took note that he was wearing exactly the same clothes as he had been the last time she saw him as a human.

“So what is this place?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you,” said Hex, “but you have to promise not to freak out. Do you promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye,” said Twilight mimicking the motions of the infamous Pinkie Promise. Hex stared at her blankly for a moment, and then he explained where they were.

“I told you that there were a hundred parallel dimensions,” he said, “and that Equestria was the thirty-sixth. We’re in the thirty-third now. And... I hate to tell you this, but this is where the Combine come from.”

Twilight only just held true to her Pinkie Promise.

“We’re in a different DIMENSION?!”

“Yes,” said Hex. “Dimension 33. Get it? Two threes. Double the three. Three and then another three. I hope this drives a point home, Valve, you dicks.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“No-one,” said Hex quickly, but he made a mental note to send an angry email to a certain gaming company as soon as he returned to his beloved technology. He practically dropped Twilight, and she had to lean on the wall, when he hurried over to the balcony area... thingy, clambered up onto it, and kicked a window.

Twice.

Three times.

On the third its reinforcements gave in and it shattered, landing in a mass of fragments on the steel walkway outside. He took off his leather jacket, wrapped it around his hand and brushed away the shards which remained in the window frame before looking outside.

“Smegging hell,” he said. He turned around, pulled his jacket back on, and helped Twilight up onto the balcony. She looked outside and gasped in horror.

The building they were in was in the centre of what could have been a city, but it had been demolished almost beyond recognition. Where there had once been buildings there were now massive piles of dust, bricks and rubble, and at the centre of it all was the biggest building she had ever seen. It was a gargantuan steel structure which loomed over everything, with the appearance of an explosion having taken place on top, and it was at the centre of a circle of swirling clouds which crackled with thunder and glowed blood red.

“Do I want to know?” asked Twilight.

“No,” said Hex, “you don’t.” He climbed out of the window onto a fire escape.

“Where’re you going?”

“Come with me and I’ll show you,” said the boy simply. He helped Twilight out onto the fire escape, and the two of them started to navigate their way through the city.

“On the outskirts of the city is a resistance base,” he explained as they climbed over rubble, through heaps of concrete dust and under collapsed Striders – Twilight really wasn’t dressed for the occasion. “If you see a little black thing with glowing blue lines and a red button on it, pick it up, because that’s a battery, and we’re gonna need as many of them as possible.” As he spoke, a small glow caught Twilight’s eye, and she picked up a small black box-like thing.

“Like this?” she asked.

“Good job,” said Hex, and he pocketed the battery. “The teleporter in the lab back there is broken, but the place we’re heading to has one of its own which, with luck, should still be in working order. If we get enough batteries, and use the energy from a portal storm (and there’s bound to be one pretty soon) to power it, it should generate enough energy to get us home.”

“Wait a minute,” said Twilight, and she stopped in her tracks in the middle of what could have once been a square. “You mean you want us to go all the way across the city, to a place which may or may not still be standing, on the off-chance that a portal storm of all things could send us back home?”

“I know,” said Hex, “it’s a crazy idea, but it’s the only one we have. It’s either that or-”

He was cut off when a formerly dormant heap of rubble exploded, and something terrifyingly tall and gangly climbed out.

“-or get shot to smithereens by a Strider! RUN!!!” he screamed.

Twilight was amazed by how quickly she had adapted to walking on two legs. It felt as if she had been doing it all her life, like it had come naturally to her, like deep down inside her there had always been this tiny speck, an infinitesimal speck, of humanity.

‘Maybe Lyra isn’t crazy after all,’ she thought.

That was when Hex grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her behind a massive hunk of black metal, and the two of them stayed there until the strider had long since passed by.

“Those things are everywhere,” said Hex as he got up. “I remember because it was in the game. We’re gonna have to be quick.”

“The what?”

“In the dimension I come from, this is a world situated entirely within a game,” said Hex as they continued through the rubble. “Amber had this thing she called the Pratchett theory, which states that all stories are true, and just because they aren’t true right here doesn’t mean they aren’t true anywhere.”

Twilight thought about it, and considered that it actually made a lot of sense.

“Also, may I congratulate you on a startlingly quick adaption to the human body? It took me ages to get used to having four legs instead of two.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Twilight. “It’s like I’ve been doing it all my life.”

“Oh smeg. FIREFIGHT!”

Hex grabbed Twilight and pulled her under cover once more. Deafening explosions and spatters of cracking noises filled the air, as well as some strange chirruping noises which were quickly and flawlessly silenced.

Slowly, so as not to attract attention, the two teenagers peeked over the top of their makeshift shelter.

In the street below was a waging war. There was a the remains of a building, what could have once been a hospital, and outside it was a platoon of men in black armour, with creepy glowing eyes, shooting at two other people who were too far away for their physical features to be made out, but it appeared to be a man and a young woman. They soon disappeared from view.

“Oh man,” said Hex. “I almost forgot what gunfire was like. I remember I thought this would be cool in real life, but instead it’s just... loud.”

“What do we do now?” asked Twilight.

“We can’t let ourselves be seen,” said Hex. “If we’re spotted, we’ll either be killed or shipped out of here on the next train and lose all hope of ever getting back to Equestria. We’re gonna have to move quickly and quietly. Follow my lead.”

Without another word, the former purple unicorn followed her brainiac friend through the ruined streets and destroyed buildings of the city, hiding from view whenever they saw anyone else. Twilight soon lost all track of time – it could have taken them minutes, hours, or maybe even years to navigate a route through this hellhole and she wouldn’t have noticed.

It was a strange mix of emotions that swirled around in her head at the moment. The most prominent and obvious one was, of course, fear – fear for herself and her life, and for Hex, who was apparently the expert on this place. She knew that if anything happened to him she would be done for; there was no way she could find a way through this crazy place alone, what with Striders everywhere and the stuff he called “gunfire” which judging by the volume and the way the people in the street had reacted to it, was definitely a force to be reckoned with.

“Make sure you stay close,” said Hex. “I don’t like the way this place is going.” After a pause, he added “You know what? Let’s be on the safe side. Take my hand.” He offered it to her as if expecting her to shake it.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Take my hand, go on! Or do you want to get lost and zombified by a headcrab?”

‘I have no idea what either of those words mean,’ Twilight said to herself, but even so she placed her hand in his and locked her fingers around those belonging to him.

He didn’t say anything: he simply gave her a small yet thoroughly cute smile and started once more to lead her through the ruins.

Twilight had to turn away so that he didn’t see her smile, or her face flush brilliant red.

‘Does he know?’ she thought. ‘Does he know how I feel about him? I know I have a crush on him – it’s the only explanation for how he always make me feel safe and warm inside, like the world could be destroyed around us and I wouldn’t mind if he was still with me – at least, I think that’s a crush... The moment I get back to the library I’m turning it upside down until I find the information I need-‘

‘Wait a sec. The world has been destroyed around us!’

“Hex?”

“Yeah?” he said, without looking around.

“Can I... can I tell you something?”

“I already told you that you can tell me anything,” said Hex, “but I’m afraid we really don’t have time. That place,” he pointed at the massive tower with the swirling clouds overhead, “could blow at any moment, and we really have to get moving if we ever want to get home.”

As they continued on, Twilight gathered the courage to ask something else.

“I know I might have asked this before, but do you miss your home?” she said.

“You mean the shop?” asked Hex. “Of course! Even if we’ve only been here... smeg it, how long have we been here? Anyway, I’d like to get back and continue working on my GLaDOS-”

“No,” said Twilight, “I mean your old home. Your universe.”

Hex paused in the middle of climbing over a burnt out car which had been shoved roughly into a hole in the ground, blocking it completely.

“Not really,” he said, resuming his leading. “Well, maybe a bit. Well, not so much. Well... yeah, kinda. I miss Amber and my friends, even if one of my mates – well, his sister friendzoned me.”

“Friendzoned? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that word in a dictionary.”

“It’s slang. It means... let’s see, how can I put this? Say, hypothetically, there was a guy you really, really liked. Like, as a crush. Now let’s say, and bear in mind that this is purely hypothetical, that you asked him out with the intention of it being a date, but he didn’t seem to understand it and thought it was just a hangout between two friends. And then you told him that you meant it as a date, and he laughed and said that you were funny in an instance of what we call ‘comically missing the point’. But you decide to humour him, because you’re friends, and so you laugh and he laughs and you die a little inside.”

For a moment or two, neither of them spoke. Twilight took in every word – in particular the word ‘crush’ – and not long after he finished talking, she started sniggering.

“Yeah,” said Hex with a chuckle, “I guess it is kinda funny!”

It wasn’t long before both of them were roaring with laughter the likes of which neither of them had experienced before.

“Seriously?!” Twilight managed to choke eventually. “Dying inside? That’s hilarious and all, but actually rather illogical.”

“Well,” said Hex, “how would you know? Have you ever been in love?”

Oh. HORSEAPPLES.

What was she going to say here? She could lie, and say that no, she had never had those kind of feelings for another pony, or she could tell an even bigger lie and say that she fancied some other stallion in Ponyville – or in Canterlot, maybe? Which would be easier? Then again, a guy as smart as him would most likely see through a lie like that as if it were wet rice paper.

Should she continue hiding it?

Or should she just... tell him? Like she had tried to when they had both been thrust into nowhere?

“It’s alright,” he said, “I guess that was the wrong kind of question, eh?”

“Uh,” said Twilight, “yeah. Sure.” Phew...

“But enough about me,” said Hex. “I want to hear more about the incredible young mare who plucked up the guts to face down both a god of eternal night AND a god of eternal chaos!”

“You want to hear about that?” asked Twilight. Darn it; that sounded more nervous than she’d hoped for.

“Well, if they’re tender subjects...”

“No, no, it’s quite alright.”

“Then what’re you waiting for? Spill ‘em!”

“...and after that Princess Celestia had a new stained-glass window installed in Canterlot Tower, and that one showed me and my friends defeating Discord.”

“Smegging hell,” said Hex. “I mean, I knew the guy was obnoxious, but I didn’t think he’d be that cruel! Seriously? There’s a word for that sort of thing where I come from, and that word is ‘mind rape’.”

“I wouldn’t call it that, exactly.”

“Why not? It’s accurate enough.”

By now, the two teenagers had lost all concept of time. Hex had successfully led them both out of the worst of the city, and now they were travelling along the banks of a horribly dirty river.

‘Dirty’ was the understatement of the century. That stuff was bubbling. Twilight wondered whether she should ask exactly what was in there – so far she had recognised at least four different chemicals – but every time she thought about it, her courage failed her. It might be safer to leave it, but still...

Her friend followed her disgusted gaze to the oozing sludge, and shook his head in distaste.

“Not even the River Ankh was that gross,” he said.

“What was that?”

“The River Ankh. Runs through the twin city of Ankh-Morpork in dimension 41. It’s the only river in the multiverse where you can draw a chalk outline on it. Seriously, the only thing that classifies it as a river is the fact that it moves ever so slightly faster than the land. It even catches fire if it’s a particularly hot summer.”

Twilight eyed the slow moving... ick.

“Yep, that’s one word for it,” said Hex, “ick.”

She stopped and stared.

“Did you just read my mind?” she asked.

“No,” said Hex.

“That’s a relief.”

“But I did hear your thoughts. You know I said when we first met that in my time away from Equestria that I got some powers and came back as a unicorn? Those powers were telepathy. I think I actually drove Discord insane because of it!”

“Really? How did that happen?”

“Well, see, he was poking around inside my head...”

Twenty seconds later...

Twilight didn’t think she’d ever laughed so much in her life, not even earlier when he had explained the concept of friendzoning. The idea that there was a book/movie series with her name had seemed uncanny – creepy, even – but after finding out how Hex had utilised it-

She would never look at vampires the same way again. That much was for sure.

“Hey,” she said, drawing to a halt, “is that it?”

The two of them had reached a massive dam, similar to the one which held back the reservoir over Ponyville, although the one at Ponyville hadn’t been lowered by the Combine apparently drawing water out of the Earth’s oceans and rivers. There was still water down below, but Twilight doubted it would be deep enough to break their fall should they have to jump.

Down below, just around a small bend in the river, was an abandoned power station, or at least the remains of one.

“Yeah,” said Hex. “That’s where we’re headed. Jeez, how long have we been here?”

Twilight looked up at the sky. By now they had moved far enough away from the city for the swirling red clouds to no longer be visible, and she could only just make out the sun behind the yellow smog which was apparently the clouds. She raised a hand to shield her eyes, but...

“I have no idea,” she said. “Normally I’d be able to tell how much time has passed by how much the sun’s moved during that time, but while we were in the city I couldn’t see the sun. We must have been here for hours, though, because it’s starting to get dark.”

Indeed, the sky was beginning to grow dim as the sun lowered itself towards the horizon.

“I’m guessing the sun and moon aren’t controlled by alicorns in this place?” Twilight asked. Hex just raised a quizzical eyebrow at her and smiled again.

“I’m surprised you didn’t have a complete mental breakdown,” he said as they started to make their way down the bank. “You should have seen Amber’s expression when we first went to Equestria. If I had known she was going to pull a face like that I would have sold tickets!”

“Well, if it’s you, then I’ve rather come to expect weird things to happen,” said Twilight, “what with the Combine trying to invade Equestria, Discord trying to use your past to make a comeback-”

“And me driving him crazy.”

“-and I don’t think you had anything to do with it, but last week Applejack’s sister got this weird disease called cutie pox. Random cutie marks appeared all over her body and she was forced to act out what they represented.”

“I guess we should be glad she didn’t get a murdering cutie mark,” Hex pointed out.
He was in mid laugh when all of a sudden he lost his footing. He slipped on a particularly wet patch of earth and started to slide uncontrollably down the bank, before regaining his footing halfway down.

“Whoa,” he said, “didn’t see that coming.”

“Are you alright?” asked Twilight.

“I think so,” said Hex, “and right now I’m trying to work out if I could climb back- WAH!”

He slipped again, and only just managed to catch himself. Twilight quickly examined the bank; it was very loose, and looked as if it could crumble at any moment.

“Hang on!” she said. “I’m gonna try and pull you back up!”

“Are you crazy?” demanded Hex. “This thing could collapse at any second!”

Twilight knew that – her rational thought was somewhere in the background, screaming at her to see sense – but Hex was her friend (even though she was beginning to wish he was something more) and there had to be some way to help him.

There had to be!

And so it was that one of the most intelligent young women in the history of Equestria forgot all common sense and started to slide down the tall bank towards her friend.

“Yep,” said Hex, “you’re crazy.”

“Okay,” Twilight said when she was about a quarter of the way down the bank. “Take my hand and I’ll try to pull you back up.”

“I already said I’m surprised at your fast adaption,” said Hex, “but are you really sure about this?”

“I don’t really see any difference between these and my forelegs- WHOA!”

As she reached down towards her friend, Twilight’s other hand slipped on a particularly sharp rock she had been hanging onto. Thankfully Hex was able to catch her, but that didn’t stop the white-hot pain which shot up her arm like a lightning bolt.

“Are you okay?” asked Hex. “I think I told you that it was a bad idea.”

“I’m alright,” said Twilight, “but... don’t panic, but I’ve kinda cut my hand open.”

Hex’s face contorted uncontrollably as his mind raced at a thousand miles per hour.

“Okay,” he said, “here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m going to let you go, and you’re going to have to slide down to the bottom of the bank. Got that?”

“Are you crazy?!”

“No I’m not! There won’t be any Combine troops down there, and hopefully no hostile aliens. I’ll be down in a snap, I promise.”

“Pinkie Promise?”

“Yes! Whatever! Just trust me, alright?”

Twilight searched for insincerity in his brilliant green eyes, and failed to find a single trace.

‘It’s okay,’ she thought, more to reassure herself than anything else. ‘Everything’s gonna work out.’

She let go.

NEXT TIME: A Thousand Miles part 2

“Oh smeg. These guys are bad news.”

“Then could you breathe a little quieter please?”

“Did it hit you? Twilight, were you hit?”

“That music... it was enchanting.”

“How long were we gone? I’m guessing it was more than a few hours...”

Author's Note: Yet again, I was worried that this chapter was a little rushed. I had to hide the fact that I was writing it, because I was supposed to be working on a journalism assignment (I got it finished though!) and a majority of this was improvised because I forgot how I planned it. Again, if any Valve employees are reading this, I hope you take the bloody hint and get to work before all of use lose interest!

Plus, I managed to make an author's note without Pinkie Pie coming through the fourth wall!

Not that it would be a bad thing of course...

Chapter 9 - A Thousand Miles part 2

Any way the wind blows...

“You know,” said Hex, “you should consider yourself lucky that rock was so sharp. You sure it was a rock?”

“Positive,” Twilight replied, wincing slightly as the disinfectant stung the cut in her hand, “and in what way am I lucky it was so sharp? I would have preferred it wasn’t sharp at all.”

“Well, think of it this way,” said Hex as he discarded the piece of cotton he had been using to clean her cut, “if it had been just the slightest bit sharper or more blunt, it could have torn your hand to pieces. As it is, you’re just got an extremely neat wound which, if you bear with me, I will get around to bandaging. But yes, you’re right: if the rock had been completely and totally blunt, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

He started to gently wrap a bandage around Twilight’s hand, looping it around her palm and wrist.

Once again, she looked around at the room they were in. Her friend had explained that once upon a time, it had been a laboratory, and indeed she could see the remains of a desk, plus a teleporter identical to the one which had been in the lab in the city. The batteries she and he had collected on their little trek were now piled in one corner. Hex had done some fiddling with some wires, and said that all they needed to do now was wait for the right moment.

Speaking of the devil, he secured the bandage with a tight knot and asked her how it was feeling.

“Much better,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You’re the protector of Equestria,” said Hex, “but that doesn’t mean nopony can protect you.”

Twilight was sure her heart skipped a beat or two.

“So how did you get to be telepathic?” she asked.

“Umm,” said Hex uncertainly, “that’s kind of a long story, and it’s actually a bit embarrassing to talk about.”

“I want to know,” said Twilight, “and I promise – Pinkie Promise – that I won’t tell anypony.”

“What is a Pinkie Promise, anyway?” asked Hex. “I’m guessing it has something to do with a certain hyperactive party planner. What’s with the actions though?”

“I don’t understand it,” Twilight said, “but I do know that you’re trying to change the subject.”

He bowed his head and explained everything.

When he had been living in his home dimension, one of his friends – an older boy by the name of Scott – had been killed in a rescue attempt gone wrong. A javelin had gone straight through his chest and he died in his girlfriends arms. After that, they had given him a warrior style funeral and travelled to dimension 101. It was the Outer Dimension, the Land of the Dead, where people who were killed before their time went for judgement; afterwards they would either be reincarnated, sent to their home as a ghost, or forward to heaven or hell. It was a place where your fears would become reality, and you would be tested to almost beyond the edge of sanity.

Hex and his friends had gone there to retrieve Scott, but one by one, they all got lost. When they had, an evil entity named Deluminata (literally “taker of light”) had entered his mind and convinced him that since he was the only one with no real magical ability, he was useless, and looked down upon by all his friends. She had offered him power...

“...and if you were me, would you have accepted?” he asked.

Twilight thought about it. With a past like Hex’s – rejection by his parents, loss of his brother, and ignorance from his old friends – she could easily see why he would jump at the chance for a little more power.

“So she gave it to me,” he continued. “I am telling you, I have never felt more awesome in my whole life. I felt like I could lift the oceans into the sky, spit the sun cold, or even listen to Justin Bieber without dying from a fatal brain haemorrhage! I felt like a god. I was a god. But then...

“I saw Amber. I saw how disappointed she was that I hadn’t been able to resist Deluminata, and she had liked me just the way I was. And I told her, I said ‘All I ever wanted was to be like you guys’ and you know what? She kicked Deluminata out of my body and gave me telepathy. Did I mention Amber had some epic powers of her own? I feel like I should have.”

“Yeah,” said Twilight, “you should.”

“That’s about it,” said Hex. “And I still feel kinda guilty for letting that thing into my mind. I guess I was insecure about not being like everyone else, so I would do anything to make it that way.”

“I like you the way you are,” Twilight said, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder, “the goofy green-eyed geek who drives us all insane with his weird lingo and constant use of a swearword none of us have ever heard before. What does ‘smeg’ mean, by the way?”

“You know, I have completely forgotten!” said Hex as he started to snigger. “I just picked it up when we went through dimension 8 and it’s stuck with me ever since!”

“Well don’t say it too much,” said Twilight, “otherwise it’ll rub off on me.”

The two of them sniggered for a moment, the formerly tense situation quickly becoming one which was soft and light hearted, with fear of the wilderness which was the outside dissipating into nothing.

“Hey, could you let me have a second alone?” asked Hex. “There’s just something I want to do for a moment.”

“Of course,” said Twilight, “you can take all the time you need.”

He got up gratefully and left her alone in the lab with her thoughts.

With all that the guy had been through in his life, it was a miracle that he hadn’t undergone a complete and total mental breakdown: his brother and one of his best friends both dying right before his eyes, a trip into the Land of the Dead, getting taken over by an evil... thing...

Wait a second. Was that guitar music?

And... singing?!

“It’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart...”

It was beautiful.

“Without saying a word, you can light up the dark...”

Twilight got up and walked over to the doorway Hex had disappeared through. She considered walking in on him, but thought better of it, and decided simply to listen.

“Try as I may I could never explain
What I hear when you don’t say a thing...”

‘It sounds almost like something Zecora would say,’ Twilight thought, and she smiled quietly to herself.

“The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There’s a truth in your eyes saying you’ll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me wherever I fall...”

‘Solace in silence,’ thought Twilight. ‘That’s what it’s about. Two ponies, obviously in love, who don’t need to say anything to make their feelings apparent. If only me and Hex were the same...’

“And you say it best
When you say nothing at all.”

‘I knew he was smart, funny, cute, and a really good guitarist, but this is something else entirely!’ Twilight cried in the privacy of her head. She was now completely positive he was telepathic, because as well as the guitar she could make out other instruments as well: there was a piano, some drums holding up the beat and the rhythm, maybe even a bass guitar in there somewhere, and they all combined to make a song which was indescribably spellbinding.

“All day long I can hear people talking out loud
But when you hold me near, you drown out the crowd
Try as they may, they could never define
What’s been said between your heart and mine...”

Where had he got the guitar from in the first place?

“The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There’s a truth in your eyes saying you’ll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me wherever I fall
And you say it best
When you say nothing at all.”

Next there can an instrumental section. Hex’s melodious voice was replaced by a flute, which copied the melody of the song’s chorus. And again, the effect was nothing short of amazing.

And then his voice pierced the air once more, carrying with it a tidal wave of emotion which could have washed away a world war if implemented correctly.

“The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There’s a truth in your eyes saying you’ll never leave me...
The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me wherever I fall
And you say it best
When you say nothing at all.”

With a few more notes plucked out of those magical strings, the music faded into obscurity. Twilight turned the corner and leaned casually on the wall.

“Looks like you should have had a guitar for a cutie mark,” she said.

The poor guy almost jumped out of his skin as her voice snapped him back into reality from whatever fantasy world he had drifted off into.

“That music,” Twilight said as she approached him, “it was enchanting.”

If anything, Hex looked taken aback.

“I’ve heard that song called lots of things,” he said, “but I have to say ‘enchanting’ is a new one.”

“I’d never heard anything like it before,” said Twilight, and she sat cross legged on the floor in front of him. “And while you were playing, I thought I could hear other instruments as well. Was it some kind of extrasensory influence to enhance the overall quality of the music?”

He raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Sorry,” she said, “I get scientific when something interesting is happening.”

“Music isn’t something you get scientific about,” said Hex. “It’s a case of ‘if you feel like it should happen, make it happen’. Like, I have no idea where this guitar came from,” he gestured to the wooden instrument he cradled in his hands as gently as a newborn child, “but I felt like playing it for a bit, so I did.” He smiled.

“And yes, it was a telepathic trick to make it sound better. Also, I don’t mind about what you said – you’re cute when you’re scientific.”

Twilight gave a nervous smile and blushed furiously.

Something went “clank” around the corner.

The two teenagers leapt to each other’s side, and carefully looked around the wall at the armed, black clad men with weird glowing eyes who were snooping around in the corridor on the other side, pushing away massive chunks of concrete which were strewn here and there, and had obviously fallen out of the ceiling at some point.

“Oh smeg,” Hex whispered. “These guys are bad news.”

“I saw them in the firefight earlier,” said Twilight. “Who are they?”

“They’re Combine foot soldiers,” explained Hex. “Not the toughest bottles in the wine cellar, but not strictly speaking the weakest either. If they find us, we’re cheesed.”

“Then could you breathe a little quieter please?” asked Twilight, before saying “Cheesed?”

“It’s like getting creamed, only it takes longer and is generally more complicated.”

Twilight gulped, and instantly regretted it: what if one of the soldiers had heard it?

Apparently, one of them had. He made some kind of signal with his hand, pointing in the direction of the two frightened former ponies, and then they started to fire.

“That’s exactly what I was worried about!” said Hex. “And I don’t think there would be any guns lying around here!”

“We need to get back into the lab,” said Twilight, and she indicated the heavy metal doors which stood gaping wide between them and salvation. She moved as if to make a run for it...

...and promptly leapt back at a fresh volley of gunfire.

“Maybe not!” she yelped.

“Were you hit?” demanded Hex. “Twilight, were you hit?”

“I don’t think so,” said Twilight, “it was just-”

She stopped.

And stared.

The decorative belt buckle that now showed her cutie mark had a dent in it: a small groove carved neatly into the left half in a shape which had obviously been carved by a bullet.

“My cutie mark,” she said in a small, slightly resigned voice. “One of them hit my cutie mark!”

“Well, in this world it’s just a belt buckle,” said Hex, “and when you become a pony again it probably won’t show up-”

“Pass me that guitar,” said Twilight.

“But you-”

“Pass. Me. That. Guitar. And that big piece of pipe.”

Without another word, Hex handed the girl the wooden instrument and the length of metal piping which had been lying next to it.

Several years of travelling with a fierce, magically-oriented young woman had taught him that right how he should be shoving his fingers as deeply into his ears as he could and screwing up his eyes, tight as possible.

He waited until the gunfire stopped before tentatively looking around the corner.

“Holy SMEG!!” he swore.

Twilight stood panting in the centre of a circle of unconscious Combine foot soldiers, the splintered remains of a guitar neck in one hand and a bullet-dented pipe in another. Her hair was a mess, her shirt had a rip in one sleeve and her tights had laddered, but otherwise she was unhurt. The same could not be said for the soldiers, one of whom had a very large splinter sticking out of his chest.

“You know,” said Hex, “I’ve come to expect this sort of thing from magic users when they receive a very *ahem* personal injury, but that was extraordinarily out of character for you.”

“I united the Elements of Harmony and led them to victory over the Mare in the Moon and an ages-old god of chaos,” said Twilight. “I think I know how to handle a few guys with guns.”

Hex just stood and stared for a few seconds, still allowing the enormity of what had just happened to sink in.

“Remind me never to touch your cutie mark,” he said eventually.

“Never touch my cutie mark.”

“Thank you.”

Outside, there was a crash of thunder and lightning that could be heard even this far underground.

“Is that it?” asked Twilight. “Is it time for us to go home?”

“Yes,” said Hex, “although I have to ask you never to disrespect a guitar like that. Ever. Again.”

“Fair enough,” said Twilight, “on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

Twilight looked nervous for a moment, as if working out the correct way to ask this next question. In the end she settled for:

“What’s your full name?”

“My full human name?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll think it’s stupid.”

“But I want to know!”

Hex led her back into the lab, and started rapidly fixing the batteries to the teleporter, which started just barely flickering into life.

“Haydon Arthur Baxter,” he said, “but I’d prefer it if you call me Hex.”

‘Weird,’ Twilight thought. ‘That’s actually a very unusual name. But I suppose to humans something like Twilight Sparkle would be as unusual as it gets. I’ll have to ask him about it once we get back.’

‘It actually kinda suits him though. I wonder where the Arthur part comes from.’

“There,” said Hex as he straightened up. “Now hop in. I programmed it to automatically teleport us away at the same time as the portal storm hits, and like I said earlier it should give us enough energy to transport us to Equestria.”

Twilight obediently stepped into the teleporter. After a few more seconds of fiddling around with wires, buttons and knobs, Hex followed suit, and the guard rails closed behind him.

“What if it doesn’t work?” she asked fearfully.

“There’s a good chance it’ll work,” said Hex as the platform started to rise, “but if it does fail then it’ll fail catastrophically.”

“Define ‘catastrophically’.”

“Well, we could be torn to pieces by conflicting gravitational fields, or evaporated along with the city outside and much of the surrounding countryside, or we could be sent to the other side of the multiverse.”

“And you’re telling me this now?!”

“If I told you before you never would have agreed to it! It’s too late to back out now so we’re just gonna have to cross our fingers and hope for the best.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Twilight, “because if you aren’t, I’ll be sending you to a whole new world! A world called PAIN!”

Then it hit.

The two young humans held onto each other for dear life, screaming as they felt the effects of the portal storm take hold: in their minds, they were turned upside down, inside out, left, right, and every other direction possible, and all at the same time.

The teleporter reached the crux of its charging...

...and everything went white.

Twilight Sparkle opened her eyes and groaned as she had never groaned before.

She was lying on a hard, rock-like floor, and directly in front of her was a large window displaying a night sky, the moon hanging like a great mystical orb in a sea of twinkling stars.

So... was this Equestria?

Her head was pounding like a drum. She raised a hoof and started to-

Hold on.

Hoof?

“YES!!!” she screamed in delight, feeling excitement and joy which she hadn’t felt since the day she got her cutie mark. “Hex, it worked it worked it worked it worked! We’re back in Equestria and we’re ponies again!”

The unicorn in question sat up groggily and rubbed his head.

“Well, what do you know,” he said, “it worked after all!”

“Thank you so, so much!” cried Twilight, and without a second thought she grabbed him and kissed him on the lips.

His eyes bulged and he stared at her in shock.

Twilight then realised what she had done, and sat back with a blush tainting her face a rather pretty raspberry colour rather than its usual lavender. At least, it was pretty in Hex’s mind.

“Nice to know I’m appreciated,” he said, his face turning an equally heated shade of dark pink.

The purple unicorn helped him onto his hooves, and closer inspection of their surroundings revealed that they were in fact back in the Gizmoporium, but something seemed a little off. The entire place and everything in it was covered in a steady layer of dust, as if nopony had been there for a considerable amount of time.

“Did my teleporter really do that?” asked Hex.

“Maybe we were gone longer than we thought,” Twilight speculated.

“Yeah,” said Hex, “maybe.”

“But it’s still good to be back home,” said Twilight. She walked out of the shop and stood on the ledge that nature had hewn into the side of the mountain. It wasn’t long before her terracotta companion joined her.

It may have only been a few short hours, but she had missed the feeling of the breeze on her face, teasing her eyelashes and dancing through her mane. She took a deep breath, savouring the familiar taste of her homeland, and let it out in a satisfied sigh.

Her friend, for an undiscernible reason, did not look so happy.

“Hex?” she said. “Are you okay?”

“I just remembered,” he said, “why I came to Equestria in the first place.”

It suddenly hit Twilight that of all the things she could have asked, that was the one thing that had slipped her mind completely. She suddenly felt thoughtless, and admittedly a little bit dim.

“When we were finished,” said Hex, “once everything was over, and Amber had decided to give up the whole adventuring endeavour, she looked at me and she said ‘Hex,’ she said to me, ‘how many dimensions are there?’ And I said a hundred, there’s always a hundred dimensions in the multiverse’. And she looked at me, and she looked really sad as well, and she said ‘But how many multiverses are there?’ And it made me realise that when you get right down to it, things like this – things like sitting outside in the cool night air, making conversation with one of the best friends you’ve ever had in your entire life – things like that just pale into insignificance. This could be the only multiverse there is: it could just be this one, and only this one, in the whole of reality. But on the other hoof, there could be millions out there. Billions! And next to that, what’s one hundred? I came to Equestria for a new life, away from all of that, but what just happened to us, seeing you act so much like Amber around those Combine soldiers... it made me remember.”

By the time he had finished, he sounded more miserable and despondent than anything Twilight had ever heard in her life. She put her bandaged foreleg around his shoulders and gave him a small hug.

“It makes you feel rather insignificant, really,” said Hex. “Like nothing really matters. But-but then I look at people like you, Twilight, who would just take it in stride and live their life as it comes. I envy you, Twilight Sparkle, more than you’ll ever know.”

“You envy me?”

“Yes! Aside from the occasional callout to battle a god or two, your life is as peaceful as it gets! I mean, I tried to open a show to sell gadgets, but it’s basically just a place for me to put all the stuff I don’t need any more. You’ve got a library, for smeg’s sake!”

‘I’m not going to mention when I got turned into stone,’ Twilight thought, ‘or when one of my best friends broke the sound barrier as well as the light spectrum – come to think of it, my life is nowhere near as peaceful as I would like.’

“You’d be surprised with what I have to deal with,” she said instead.

“Yeah,” said Hex, “I guess I would.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke a word. They looked out at the sleeping Equestria, utterly still in the silent night, with the only noise being the occasional chirp of a cricket or hoot of a hunting owl.

“Teleport gates will be depleted,” stated Hex after a while. “It’ll be days before they’ll be able to transport anypony again after we used them to cross entire dimensions.”

“You really think I’m one of the best friends you’ve ever had?” asked Twilight.

“One of the best,” said Hex, “if not the best.”

Twilight was glad of the darkness: it meant there was less chance of him seeing her blushing.

“Come on,” she said as she stood up, “everypony will be worrying about us.”

“Rainbow?”

She looked around at the mention of her name, and was joined at her position at the window by the stallion who had stolen her heart.

“You’re not going to give up, are you?” he asked. “You’re going to stay here until they come back. You’re going to stay here even if they never come back.” After a pause, he added “Aren’t you?”

“They’re two of my best friends,” said Rainbow Dash. “You know, if it weren’t for Hex, you wouldn’t even be here right now. He gave me the medical stuff I needed to take care of you.”

“But it’s been ages!” Soarin’ pointed out. “If they were gonna come back, they would have by now, don’t you think?”
Dash hung her head in such a forlorn fashion, it was next to impossible to stay angry at her. The Wonderbolt placed a comforting hoof on her shoulder and pulled her into a hug, which she seemed more than happy to return.

“TWILIGHT!!!”

It was an ecstatic cry of joy which reverberated off the windows and could possibly have been heard in Cloudsdale. The two pegasi were amazed that such a small dragon could make such a loud noise.

They looked each other in the eye, both asking themselves and each other the same silent questions, while downstairs...

“Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh I’m so glad you’re BACK! Rainbow Dash was right; I should never have given up hope, ‘coz we all wanted you to return and now you’re back!”

Twilight awkwardly tried to detach her assistant from her neck.

“I’m glad we’re back too, Spike,” she said, “but why are you being so... clingy? We were only gone for a few hours.”

“Hang on,” said Hex, as the baby lizard stood blushing before the two unicorns. “How long were we gone? I’m guessing it was more than a few hours... please don’t tell me we were gone for a week.”

“You weren’t gone for a week,” said Spike, and it was obvious he was restraining himself from another tirade of joyful exclamations, but at the same time suddenly nervous.

“Then how long were we gone, Spike?” asked Twilight.

“Um,” said the dragon, “it was actually...” He trailed off into mumbling.

“How long, Spike?” asked Hex.

“Sepf mmf.”

“How long?” the two unicorns said together.

Spike gulped.

“Promise you won’t be mad at me?” he asked, and after they nodded he said “It was kinda like six... months.”

Twilight and Hex’s eyes widened in shock, and both of them gasped in horror.

“Six months?!” Twilight demanded.

“Of course, time dilation, light speed theory GRRRRR!!!” Hex whacked himself repeatedly on his forehead, shaking his glasses off his nose, before whispering “I am such an idiot,” in an extremely frustrated voice.

“But then-but then-” Twilight struggled to find the right words. Six whole months? What had- how much happened since then? “How could this have happened?” she asked. “It only felt like we were gone for a few hours, but you’re saying it’s six months?”

“Time must pass differently depending on which dimension we’re in,” said Hex. “I must’ve never noticed before because Amber’s ship has this time regulation thingy but I just- I can’t believe this! Seriously? Six entire months?”

“That’s what I said!” said Spike. “Everypony was saying that since it had been so long you weren’t going to come back! Where have you been, anyway?”

So Hex and Twilight explained their adventure in dimension 33. As they talked, they became aware of two more presences – an exhausted-looking Soarin’ and a heavily pregnant Rainbow Dash – who listened intently and drank in every word. They made a brilliant audience; they gasped and stared in horror when the destruction of the city and the battle within was detailed, they wiped their foreheads in relief at every near miss that the two of them had with the Combine, and Spike looked as though he was about to explode with anticipation when Hex described how Twilight had risked her life to try to save his. All of them cringed at how she had acquired the bandage around her foreleg.

“You’re gonna be alright though, aren’t you?” Dash asked nervously.

“I would have been a lot worse off if Hex hadn’t been there,” said Twilight.

“I think it was kinda stupid,” said Soarin’, and then said “Ow,” when Dash punched him on the shoulder.

“Wow, what an awesome story! I think my favourite part was how Twilight took down all those soldiers ‘coz you were right, it was mean of them to shoot your cutie mark! Even if it was only a belt but still, it’s your cutie mark, it’s like-like what makes a pony a pony!”

Where the smeg had Pinkie Pie come from?

“Anyway, YOU’RE BACK!!! Now we can throw a great big super-duper spectacular Twilight-and-Hex-have-finally-come-home party! And you’ve got SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much to catch up on! When it was Spike’s birthday he turned into a great big giant monster, and he almost destroyed Ponyville and he–”

Spike tried to hide his rapidly reddening face.

“-and then we all went to Canterlot so we could be in the Hearth’s Warming play and it was so awesome and fun and I got to eat a gingerbread house! And then it was the zap apple harvest and you should have seen them Hex they were RAINBOW LAZER APPLES!!! And then-”

“Hey, Hex.”

He looked around and saw Twilight approaching from the library’s open front door.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Are you not enjoying the party?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Hex, “I like a party as much as the next pony. It’s just that... well, I told myself that Equestria would mean a whole new life for me, but it’s starting to feel like my old life is trying to drag me back. Do you think that’s the first time I’ve experienced a time skip?”

There was a pause, during which Pinkie loudly announced that it was time to play Pin the Tail on the Pony.

“How’s your hoof?”

“It feels a lot better than it used to.”

“Let me take a look.”

Carefully walking on just three legs, Twilight made her way over to her friend and held out her bandaged foreleg. He removed the bandage and revealed the cut, which had dried out to a dark reddish-brown colour.

“Oh, that’s looking fine,” he said. “There probably won’t even be any scars or anything. Give it a few weeks and you’ll be back to your old bookwormy self in no time.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” said Twilight. “I know that if it hadn’t been for you, I would have died in dimension 33 and nopony would have known where I was.”

“Are you forgetting that if it wasn’t for me we never would have gone there in the first place?” asked Hex. “I’ve made you – both of us – miss a whole 6 months of our lives. Do you know how much we could have got done in that time?”

“It’s in the past now,” Twilight said reassuringly. “And I don’t blame you for anything. It wasn’t your fault your teleporter malfunctioned, was it?”

It worked, and the scientist started to smile.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Twilight,” he said, “you’re way too good for me.”

It was at that moment that Pinkie appeared at the door and said “Hey guys! You wanna play Pin the Tail on the Pony?”

“Sure!” said Twilight, and she started to head back into the library. “Hex are you coming?”

His smile transitioned into a full-blown cheesy grin.

“Why the smeg not?”

NEXT TIME: Papa Don’t Preach

“Oh, no no no no no. That was just my Pinkie Sense, and it’s telling me that there’s going to be a major doozy!”

“Is it... Is it over?”

“Oh freddled gruntbuggly! Thy micturations are to me-”

“Whoa. What’s been going on down here?”

“Pfft. As if anything exciting could happen in a library, of all places.”

Author's Note: In case you're wondering "Why don't Hex and Twilight just cut the tension already?" how would you act if you really, really liked someone, but you didn't know whether you actually loved them or not, and they didn't know and hadn't said if they felt the same? I've never really been good and conveying emotions, so I hope you can bear with me on this. I've also run out of relevant Bohemian Rhapsody lyrics (I didn't include the opera bits because I have no idea what they're going on about) so from now on the chapters are going to be named after songs which give a little clue as to what's going to happen, even though this actually started with Breakaway. Stay tuned for Pinkie Pie reading the third worst poetry in the universe!

Chapter 10 - Papa Don't Preach

Pinkie Pie stared down at the chequered board in front of her, massaging her head with her hooves. Her face wore an expression which was a mixture of confusion, disbelief and complete and utter bamboozlement.

“But it doesn’t make any sense!” she cried. “And that’s me talking! How is this even possible?”

“I think I told you as soon as you suggested this, Pinkie,” Hex said smugly, “I haven’t lost a game of chess since I was seven.”

Pinkie didn’t know how to respond. She looked first at the veritable swarm of white pieces on Hex’s side of the board, and then at the single black pawn on her side. Then she examined the board itself: all she had left was her king and a pawn, both of whom looked rather lonely and positively terrified in the expansive ghetto of black.

Hex tauntingly nudged a bishop one space closer to Pinkie’s lone pawn.

“Your move,” he said, and then sat back on his haunches in smug satisfaction.

Nervous sweat poured off the party pony’s face in buckets, but then she noticed something the inventor had apparently missed. A wide grin split her face as she used her pawn to take one of Hex’s rooks.

“Ha!” she cheered triumphantly. “What now, Science Guy? I don’t suppose you’re about to admit... defeat...”

She looked on blankly as the brown unicorn, without so much as glancing at the board, replaced her pawn with his queen and the white pawn joined his fallen comrades.

The normally hyperactive party planner was stunned into silence. But... she could still win this! He still had to take her king, and she was sure as hay he wasn’t about to do that in a hurry!

She pushed the white piece to the left, but Hex shook his head and pointed out that if she made that move, it would be directly in line with one of his bishops.

So Pinkie moved it right instead, and her bespectacled friend shook his head again and indicated the pawn that was now threatening it. No matter what direction she moved the king Hex would always remind her that the board was swarming with his own troops.

Eventually she admitted defeat, and reached out a bubblegum pink hoof and tipped the ivory-painted wood carving onto its side, where it rolled around rather despondently and only stopped when it bumped into one of its black counterparts.

“OH YEAH!” Hex shouted as he leapt into the air, hooves thrown up above his head in celebration. “Who’s the chess champion of Equestria? Haydon Arthur Smegging Baxter, that’s who!” He launched into a victory jig, completely ignoring the other ponies that had been milling around the park, going about their daily lives, and were now staring at him in shock and perplexity.

Despite her landslide of a defeat, Pinkie Pie couldn’t help but laugh. ‘This guy might even be able to out-random me!’ she thought. ‘I wonder if I could beat him at-’

She cut herself off in mid-thought as a mass of shivers ran through her body from her nose to her back hooves and the very tip of her tail, shaking her clean out of her seat.

Hex stopped dancing, and this time it was his turn to stare.

“What the smeg was that?” he asked. “You need a jacket or something? ‘Coz I’ve got-”

“Oh, no no no no no,” Pinkie said. “That was just my Pinkie Sense, and it’s telling me that there’s going to be a major doozy!” She stopped talking as she was once again apparently gripped by a large case of the shivers.

“At it’s gonna happen... at the Library!” she declared. “We gotta get there fast!”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Hex said. He telekinetically grabbed her tail and stopped her from speeding away, in order to say “What?!”

“What do you mean, what?” asked Pinkie, giving him a cute quizzical smile.

Hex searched for the right words. ‘What the smeg are you going on about’ seemed inappropriate, as did ‘What the smeg is Pinkie Sense’ and ‘How does that make any smeg-buggering sense’. So instead he just settled for “Pinkie Sense? What’s that?”

“Oh, nopony told you?” asked Pinkie, just before she gave another massive shudder, and when that was over she said “It works like this: I get different twitches and shudders and they tell me stuff’s going to happen. Like, if my tail’s twitching, it means stuff’s gonna start falling, and if my shoulder’s achy, it means there’s an alligator in the bathtub.”

Hex raised an eyebrow and gawked at her.

“Precognitive muscle spasms?” he said. “That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever!”

“You know, it’s funny,” said Pinkie, “that’s almost exactly what Twilight said, only I got a completely new kind of Pinkie Sense *shudder* that one, actually, and I knew it was going to be a major doozy, but when we got to Froggy Bottom Bog to see if Fluttershy was alright we all got chased by a great big hydra, but that wasn’t the doozy: the real doozy was when Twilight said she believed in the Pinkie Sense!” After finishing this particular spout of talking, she looked at Hex with a massive grin and expected to see some kind of comprehension.

He just said “What?!” again.

Pinkie Pie growled in frustration.

“Just follow me!” she almost shouted. “There’s gonna be a major doozy and it’s gonna happen at the library!” She started shuddering again, and Hex was forced to push her several feet forward before she regained control of her legs.

Rainbow Dash looked up from her book for just long enough to let out a small grunt, as if of pain.

“You okay, Rainbow Dash?” asked Spike, from his position precariously balanced on top of a ladder with a stack of books in one claw.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Rainbow Dash. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

She then returned to her book – a particularly immersive tome she had borrowed from Hex entitled The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Normally Dash wasn’t one for reading anything that didn’t involve treasure hunters, but this one contained action-packed stories about all kinds of different alien races from a place the brown unicorn had claimed was real, although she had cringed at one particular section of poetry.

It had to be the most... uh, let’s just say “unusual” piece of writing the vibrant-maned speedster had ever read.

‘I just hope Pinkie never gets her hooves on this,’ Dash thought to herself, ‘I think even Twilight won’t be able to shut her up.’ She could just picture it – the eternally energetic baker jumping around endlessly chanting such words as Oolon Colluphid and Babel Fish (as if the whole “chimicherrychanga” ordeal hadn’t been enough).

And that was only the third worst poetry in the universe.

“Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning,” she whispered to herself, and giggled internally.

She found her thoughts wandering away from the Hitchhiker’s Guide and to Canterlot, where the stallion of her dreams and the father of her foal was taking part in his final derby before finalising his resignation from the Wonderbolts.

She remembered the almost indecipherable mix of emotions she had felt when Soarin’ had returned to her: relief that she wouldn’t have to search anymore; joy, obviously, because of his return; anger and resentment, obviously, because he had left her...

...and then she had learnt why, and all she had felt was gratitude, and sympathy, and guilt which stained her conscience like a glass of red wine.

“Watcha reading, Dashie?”

‘Uh-oh,’ thought Dash.

“Pinkie,” she said, “I know what you’re thinking, but please, please don’t read that out loud!”

“Why?” asked Hex inquisitively. “What book is iiiOOOOHH NO PINKIE PIE DON’T READ IT ALOUD!”

“Oh, what harm could it do, party pooper?” asked Pinkie Pie. She cleared her throat, took a deep breath and started to read.

“Oh freddled gruntbuggly! Thy micturations are to me-”

Dash clamped her hooves over her head and rolled into a foetal position.

“As plurdled gabbleblotchits in a lurgid bee-”

“Findahappyplacefindahappyplacefindahappyplace-” Hex was chanting over and over.

“Groop I implore thee my foonting turlingdromes-”

Spike teetered dangerously and toppled off the ladder, landing amidst a heap of books, virtually tearing his ears off and moaning “MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!” But unfortunately, the party pony didn’t seem to hear.

“And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindle werdles-”

Dash rocked back and forth, desperately humming to herself in a fruitless attempt to block out the terrible noise.

“For otherwise I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with-”

Hex started rhythmically banging his forehead against the nearest wall, punctuating each bang with a quiet “ow”.

“My blurglecruncheon, see if I don’t.”

Trembling in trepidation, Spike slowly lowered his claws away from his burning ears.

“Is it...” He struggled to get the words out. “Is it over?”

“Hmm,” said Pinkie Pie. “Well that’s not a very nice thing to do to somepony. Dashie, would you rend somepony in the gobberwarts with a blurglecruncheon?”

Dash flinched and cried out again. “Pinkie!” she exclaimed.

It was at that moment that a certain other unicorn started to descend the library stairs, and stopped when she saw the carnage.

“Whoa,” she said, “What’s been going on down here?”

“I’ve been reading Dashie’s book!” Pinkie said. “Wanna hear? Ahem. Oh freddled-”

“NO!” Dash yelled, and slammed a hoof into her excitable friend’s muzzle. “Pinkie, just-just DON’T, okay?”

“Okay!” Pinkie squeaked through a mouthful of hoof.

“Um...”

All eyes fell upon a lightning-flanked scientist who lay with his forehead against the wall, propped up on his hind legs with his messy brown tail sticking up into the air.

“Can somepony come over here and give me a tug?” he asked, trying and failing to keep the shame out of his voice. “It’s just that I was, um, banging my head against the wall to try and escape the universe’s third worst poetry and, uh, it’s really embarrassing, Twilight, but... well, I um, seem to have er, embedded my horn in your wall.”

There was a moment of silence as everypony took in what Hex had just said, and the current predicament he had gotten himself into.

That silence was shattered by deafening laughter.

“Ha ha, very funny guys,” said Hex sarcastically. He propped his hooves against the woodwork and tried to prise himself out, but much to the further amusement of the three gathered ponies and the baby dragon, he only wore himself out and got a splinter in his left hoof, which he pulled out with his teeth.

Luckily for him Spike managed to calm himself for long enough to say “Sorry! Here, let me help!” And between sniggers he started to dig away at the wood surrounding Hex’s embedded appendage.

The terracotta unicorn again tried to pull himself free, and his strength combined with a telekinetic tug on his tail from Twilight resulted in him flying out like a cork from a champagne bottle and crashing into a bookcase, shaking several free, which then landed on top of his head.

“Just so everypony knows,” said Hex, with several pages impaled on his horn, “that – and this – are the single most humiliating things ever to have happened to me.” The flatness of his voice, combined with the seriousness of his expression, only served to increase the hilarity further, right up to the point where Pinkie Pie gave another violent shudder.

“Okay, would somepony care to explain that to me?” asked Hex, indicating the shivering confectioner. “Pinkie is under the impression that she possesses extrasensory bodily functions.”

He was met with two blank stares and one of comprehension.

“You mean Pinkie Sense?” asked Twilight. “Word of advice: don’t try to analyse it.” She held out a hoof and helped the confused inventor upright.

“Why the smeg not?” he demanded. “It makes about as much smeg-buggering sense as an artificial intelligence being somehow become sapient and rambling non-stop about wanting to go into space!”

“Trying to work it out will just drive you crazy,” said Rainbow Dash. “It did for Twilight when she first heard about it!”

Unfortunately, the brown unicorn had grabbed hold of a thread and wasn’t abandoning it for love nor money.

“A twitchy tail means things will start falling? Achy shoulder means there’s an alligator in the bath? Full body shudder means a doozy? I’ve seen a lot of ridiculous things in my time (not to mention some rather smegging awesome things as well) but this just takes the cake.”

“Uh, Hex?” Spike ventured.

“In fact, you know what? This doesn’t take the cake! The cake is a lie! This takes the entire bakery! That’s the bread, the buns, the fruitcake, the pudding, the cookies, the muffins, the cupcakes, the brownies, the lamingtons, the pies, the pasties and the hedgehog slice-”

“He-ex!” Pinkie tried, but saying his name in a sing-song voice didn’t make any difference.

“This has to be the most unheard-of thing I’ve ever heard of! What next, an itchy hooves means the sky’s about to fall on our heads, or-or it’s about to start raining herring or that ponies are going to die out and the ants are going to take over as the dominant species?”

“Hex!” Twilight tried to interject, while Pinkie thought to herself: ‘He’s so wrong: itchy hoof means a baby filly’s just been born.’

“You know, I remember when I actually got a proper look around at some of the planets in dimension 64, and it turns out some of them really were just disconnected blocks floating around in space, but you know what? That doesn’t even come close to comparing to this!”

‘Okay, this is getting old,’ Rainbow Dash decided. She cast a quick glance at her friends, who were all apparently thinking the same thing as she was. Twilight cast a cursory look around, and then mouthed “Three, two, one...”

“HEX!”

Dash’s groan of pain was drowned out by the shout.

Hex looked at the three mares and the baby dragon and asked “What?” at which point the laughter resumed, albeit at a slightly softer level than before. The bespectacled inventor blushed.

“Sorry,” he said. “I tend to gush like that when I’m angry.”

“That’s nothing!” said Spike. “You should have seen Twilight when she first found out about Pinkie Sense!”

“Oh, I can’t have been that bad,” said Twilight.

“Can’t have been that bad? Your mane and tail turned into fire, your coat went white and your eyes were like rubies!” The purple reptile started to drool involuntarily at the mention of rubies as Pinkie shuddered again.

“See, that’s exactly what I was talking about,” said Hex, and silenced himself before he launched into a second stream of successive complaints.

“That one means there’s gonna be a doozy,” Dash explained.

“And my Pinkie Sense is telling me it’s gonna happen right here!” Pinkie cried. “In the library!”

“Pfft,” said Spike dismissively. “As if anything exciting could ever happen in library, of all places.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Twilight, recalling the very first time she had set foot in Ponyville’s library... and was greeted with a montage of streamers, confetti, cupcakes and one particular pony that would not shut up.

“I remember the first time I found out about Pinkie Sense,” said Dash. “I was practising some stunts, you know, just being – ngh – being awesome, and then I lost control and crashed outside Sugarcube Corner. Then Pinkie came along and told me her Pinkie Sense – agh – had predicted I was going to-”

“Rainbow, are you alright?” asked Hex. “You kinda sound like you’re in pain.”

“What do you mean?” said Dash. “I’m perfectly- GAH!” Her shrill scream coincided with her wrapping a foreleg around her stomach and clutching it tightly.

“Oh my gosh!” cried Spike. “Oh my gosh! OH MY GOSH!”

“I think I just figured out what the doozy is!” Pinkie squeaked.

“When did it start?” Hex asked, supporting her on his shoulder. “Rainbow Dash, when did it start?”

“I-I don’t know!” Dash was breaking out in a cold, fearful sweat. “A-a couple of hours ago?”

“Then there’s no time to get you to the hospital,” said Hex. “We’ll just have to do it here.”

“WHAT?!” Twilight shouted. “Hex, this is a library, not a delivery room!”

“Would you rather it became a morgue?” asked Hex. “What other choice do we have?”

Twilight sighed.

“You’re right,” she said. “Pinkie, I need you to find us as many towels as you can, and plenty of hot water.”

“Got it!” said Pinkie with a salute, and she charged off to... wherever Pinkie charges off to, I don’t know.

“Spike, send a message to everypony to let them know what’s happening,” Twilight commanded.

“Will do!” said Spike, and he picked up a quill and a piece of parchment.

“But-but where’s Soarin’?” asked Dash. “He should be here.”

“Make Soarin’ top priority, Spike,” said Hex. “And try not to make it sound too panicky.”

“Not too panicky. Got it,” said Spike.

He dipped the quill into a nearby inkwell and wrote:

Soarin’,

RAINBOW DASH IS HAVING THE BABY RIGHT NOW!!!

Spike.

“Yeah,” he said, “I think that should do it.”

He rolled it up and incinerated it with a familiar green flame, and the message whooshed out of the window and into the sky. The sender then rushed at top speed out of the library in search of everypony else.

“Are you sure about this, Hex?” asked Twilight, as she and he helped Dash up the stairs to the upper level of the library. “Delivering a baby isn’t like fixing one of your broken gadgets-”

“Why the sudden lack of trust?” said Hex. “Believe it or not, I actually helped deliver my cousin Emily. Aunt Saskia wasn’t too happy about the midwife being unable to keep away from morphine for a few seconds at a time. Mind you, I was a little nervous, but how hard can it be, right?”

“Oh, that makes me feel so much better,” Dash said sarcastically, and yelped again as her body was hit by the painful shockwaves of another contraction.

“Just relax, Rainbow,” said Hex. “We’re gonna get you through this.”

In the capital city of Canterlot, an older pegasus stallion, blissfully unaware of the events transpiring in Ponyville’s library, was sucking on the straw of a strawberry smoothie with a frown fixed on his pale blue face.

To say that Soarin’ had a bad morning would have been the understatement of the century. The derby had gone off without a hitch – he had finished fourth, but that was beside the point – and afterwards he had said his farewells to the rest of the team and spent half an hour sitting on a cloud overhead, trying to figure out what to do next; would he have time to go and grab a pie before the next train back to Ponyville?

He decided to check the timetable, and found that there wouldn’t be a train until four o’clock in the afternoon, so he decided to go and get a bite to eat.

Upon arrival at his favourite bakery, he had found it was in the process of being robbed.

Buck that.

So he had trailed all over Canterlot in search of a place to get a decent pie, and maybe something to-

No, he’d sworn off drinking ever since Dashie had rescued him.

Dashie. It was hard to believe that such a generally weird pony had come up with such an adorable nickname. Soarin’ loved it: she blushed every time he used it on her, and she was unbelievably cute when she was blushing.

However, by this time it was lunchtime, and almost every eatery in Canterlot was fresh out of pie. The only ones left were the ones he didn’t like – stuff like rhubarb and vegetables. Who in their right mind puts vegetables in a pie, for buck’s sake?

So instead he had settled for a smoothie, and again a rather thickly built pony made an attempt on his money, and again Soarin’ had given him a solid talking to which had ended with the pony running off in terror.

Then, on his way through the streets, a window cleaner had dropped his bucket on Soarin’s head.

He hadn’t complained, even though he seriously wanted to.

In the end he had settled for a strawberry smoothie at a cheap cafe uptown. Every now and then a posh pony with his or her nose in the air would pause, look at him, and then walk away muttering something in disapproval. At one point, a unicorn couple – he a grey bloke with a dark mane, glasses and casual but fancy looking clothes, she a yellow lady with a mound of purple mane and equally fancy clothes – had stopped and stared at him in utter disgust until he had asked them what the buck they were looking at, at which point they had walked away with their snouts to the sky, occasionally uttering some stupid complaint or other.

After that, Soarin’ had just gone back to his smoothie.

He had grown to be thankful of Rarity’s impromptu grooming, unnecessary as it had felt at the time because as well as the clothing one of the easiest ways to recognise a Wonderbolt was by their manestyles, which all had the look of a beehive in a tornado. Certainly, none of them ever wore it limp on their faces during a show...

...but that wasn’t important right now.

It was the waiting. It was killing him.

Rainbow Dash could go into labour any day now. He wanted to be there when his kid was born. It wasn’t that he still felt like he owed her for leaving her alone for four months, it was just-just one of those things, you know? One of those things where you HAD to be there.

And the next train to Ponyville didn’t get in until four in the afternoon.

It was maddening!

He sucked, depressed, on his rattling straw as it probed the bottom of the glass for the last dregs of smoothie. So what if the noise made all the posh ponies stare in distaste? All of them – every single one of them – they needed to lighten the buck up!

So Soarin’ sat there in front of his once again empty smoothie glass, occasionally despondently fiddling with his mane or goggles.

“Yo waiter,” he said eventually, “could you get me another smoothie?”

The waiter looked from him to the glass, and back again several times.

“Did I bucking stutter?” Soarin’ demanded, slamming a hoof on the table. “I said another smoothie! I’m paying for them, aren’t I?” And to the ponies in the street who had stopped and stared he yelled “And what the buck are you all staring at?” and they suddenly lost interest.

As the waiter deposited a fresh smoothie in front of him, Soarin’ was hit on the head by a scroll which had materialised above him and let gravity take control.

“What’s this?” he said quietly to nopony in particular.

He laid the parchment on the table and read it.

Then he reread it.

After that he turned it over, but there was nothing on the other side.

Right... now?!

“Holy buck,” he swore quietly.

Without another word, the pale pegasus darted into the air. He almost forgot to pay for the smoothies, but he was in a hurry, so he upended his bag of bits over the cafe and yelled “KEEP THE CHANGE!”

The waiter started gathering up the coins, and then somepony said “Hey, everypony! Free money!”

Up above, Soarin’ pulled his goggles down over his eyes.

“I’m comin’ for you, Rainbow,” he said, and made like a bullet in the direction of Ponyville.

*knock knock knock*

“It’s open!”

The door of the library was pushed wide open and the Element of Generosity entered the building. She looked worried, considering the circumstances, but also uncharacteristically flustered.

“I came as soon as I got word,” she said, “although obviously I left time to gather a few supplies first. Heaven knows how long this should take.”

“Have you spit yer bit or somethin’?” Applejack demanded. “Or best friend is in the middle of havin’ a baby, and all you c’n think ‘bout is how yer mane’s gonna look?”

“Oh no, it’s not for me!” Rarity insisted as she set her saddlebags in a corner. “Foalbirth can be an extremely exhausting experience! I don’t want Rainbow Dash to come out of it looking like she’s been through a war, the poor thing!”

“And you would know this... how?” asked Applejack.

Rarity’s voice transmuted from one of haughty insistence to one of shock.

“I don’t much care for what you’re insinuating, Applejack,” she said.

“Um, girls?” Fluttershy murmured. “Do you really think this is a good time to be arguing?”

As soon as she had finished talking, another scream pierced the afternoon air and made everypony in the library cringe in discomfort.

“I just wish there was something else I could do,” Spike complained. “I feel so useless.”

“Oh, don’t be so sad, Spikey-wikey!” said Pinkie, giving the baby dragon a noogie, “I feel useless as well, but I’m not letting that get me down!”

Suddenly, she dropped him, and he landed on his head, spines embedded in the wooden floor.

“Why the hay did you just drop me?” he demanded.

“My hooves are burning, my hooves are burning!” she cried.

“Well, c’mon! What does that mean?” asked Applejack.

“I don’t know,” said Pinkie. “The only other time my hooves were burning was during the Best Young Flier’s Competition, when Rarity was falling and Dashie was about to do a Sonic Rain-”

BOOM.

A few minutes earlier...

Soarin’ had never flown so fast in all his life! The freedom was unlike anything he had ever experienced before! The intense speed, the adrenaline rush, and the wind whipping his mane into deadly dreadlocks... he liked it. A LOT.

Heck, he hadn’t even flown like this on the night he’d got his cutie mark! But of course, back then, he had been desperately loop-de-looping and darting around thunder clouds and lightning bolts in a frantic attempt to reach his home before the griffon that was attacking his parents could catch up with him and hurt him. It was what his cutie mark represented: flying like lightning.

Things were different now. That was ten years ago; he had been only nine years old at the time – exactly nine years old, in fact.

Uh oh...

It was his old enemy, the sound barrier. A vapour cone was forming around the hooves he had thrust forward to pierce the sky and increase his speed. If he lost momentum now, if he slowed down even in the slightest...

Rainbow Dash would never forgive him.

Even though they were covered by thick flight goggles, his eyes started watering uncontrollably. A crack ran across one of the lenses and clouded his vision. At this speed it would only be a matter of time before they shattered to smithereens.

Any second now. Any second the vapour cone was going to solidify and propel him all the way back to Canterlot. It was either that or- wait, what was going on? The cone was smoothing itself out, crackling with electricity and streaked with colours of the rainbow-

BOOM.

The sonic rainboom coincided with Soarin’s goggles finally giving way: they splintered into nothing and the elastic flew away to wherever Pinkie Pie kept her laws of physics, and he couldn’t do anything except shoot through the sky like a rocket powered bullet, screaming as he had never screamed before.

In the library, Pinkie was lifted off her haunches by the most violent tail-twitch she had ever experienced.

“Quick!” she cried. “Somepony open the door!”

Spike ran over to the library door and pulled it open, just for a blue blur to bowl him over and take in Pinkie Pie and Applejack on its route to the back wall of the library, where it smashed into the bookcase and ended up in a heap of pony and dragon.

“What in tarnation was that?” Applejack asked nervously once she was sure it was over. She picked up her hat and, with a shaking hoof, positioned it carefully atop her head.

“WHEEE that was FUN!” Pinkie shouted as she erupted from the heap of books. “Can we do that again?”

“Can we not?” asked Spike, almost falling out of the heap.

“Are you all okay?” asked Fluttershy. “That was quite a crash.”

“Yes, it most certainly was,” said Rarity, and she started placing the books back on the shelves. “One would almost think it was- Soarin’?!”

“Hi girls,” said Soarin’ weakly. He had dark imprints on his face where his goggles had pressed into his skin, and a small cut on his muzzle from out-of-control elastic.

“Hey!”

“And guy. What’s...? What’s goin’ on?”

From upstairs, there came a torrent of enraged shouting.

“No, YOU listen! If you hadn’t given me that medical stuff I wouldn’t have been able to get him better and he WOULDN’T have gotten me pregnant! No! No, get off me, Twilight! Let me GO! I’m gonna kill him! I’m gonna tear his guts out and wear them as a scarf! I’m gonna tear his cutie mark off and bake his blood into cupcakes! Let me go! LET ME GO!!” This was followed by another scream of pain.

Hex appeared at the top of the stairs, saying “Whew, I need a breather.” Then he saw the new arrival.

“Soarin’!” he exclaimed. “Holy smeg, I can’t believe you made it here so quickly!”

“How’s Rainbow?” Soarin’ demanded. “I wanna see her!”

“Of-of course,” said Hex. “Come on. I think we’re getting close.”

He turned and disappeared back upstairs, and the pegasus stallion leapt to his hooves – wobbling slightly in dazed dizziness – and followed suit.

“Rainbow!” he cried when he saw her, and galloped over to where she lay, supported by Twilight.

“Soarin’!” she said joyfully. “Thank Celestia you made it!”

“Of course,” he said, taking her hoof in his, “I wouldn’t miss this for the world, I- I love you.”

Rainbow Dash smiled gratefully up at him, and locked her lips with his in a kiss which showed nothing but how deeply the two cared for one another, and when they broke apart all they did was gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes. This concentration of affection was broken when Dash once again winced in pain.

“Okay, Rainbow Dash, just relax, you’re doing fine,” said Twilight. “Just keep breathing.”

“You’re almost there,” said Hex, “now push!”

It was extremely discomforting for the four ponies and the dragon downstairs to hear their friend screaming, obviously in more pain than could ever have been imagined, and to know that there was nothing they could do about it.

“Oh my goodness,” Fluttershy said eventually, “I’m so worried!”

“Me too!” Pinkie squeaked. “Like, what if it gets stuck or something?”

“What?!” exclaimed Spike. “You mean like, stuck halfway so she’ll be a pony and a half?”

“She din’t say ‘pony and a half’,” Applejack pointed out.

“Well, you did!” said Spike. “You just did, just then!”

“Will you all please be quiet?” Rarity asked in a polite but firm voice. “All of us are frightened for Rainbow Dash. We should consider ourselves foolish if we were not. But-”

“Oh my gosh,” said Pinkie, “I think I feel a combo coming on!” Her back end shook violently as her tail twitched out of control, then her knees knocked together with alarming volume, followed by her ears flopping down over her eyes and back again. Spike took note of this and darted under a table.

“What the hay does that one mean?” he demanded.

Just then, an ear piercing wail split the tense atmosphere, and everypony turned their eyes towards the stairs.

“It’s the opposite of itchy hoof...” Pinkie said weakly.

NEXT TIME: Total Eclipse of the Heart

“Rainbow Dash was wondering if the rest of her honorary family would like to meet their newest member.”

“He’s perfect.”

“Oh my... gosh.”

“EEEEEE he’ssoadorable!”

“So... what should we call him?”

Author's Note: Eeyup, it's a boy! The next chapter will introduce the first of the Foals of Harmony-

[Hey! She said it!]

Yes, Mr Griffin, this series will be called The Foals of Harmony-

[Did you hear that? She said it again!]

...Anyway, I hope you liked this chapter - even though it may have felt a little rushed - and the next one is going to be a breather chapter; a little rest from the non-stop drama and action in this story. I'm just wondering if I could get this fic a recommendation on TV Tropes. Also, to all those reading this, do you think you could do a little advertising for me? Just mention it to a few friends, and let them know what you think of it. If you do, I will be most grateful.

Chapter 12 - Holding Out for a Hero part 1

Night had once more descended upon Equestria, bringing with it eight full hours of silence, darkness and peace. The moon hung in the sky like a great white ghost, illuminating the world with a dim, cold light which could not compare to the daytime fires of the sun's, and the stars glittered in their thousands as a cool breeze rustled the leaves of Ponyville's public library.

Inside, on the upper floor, a young purple unicorn and her small draconian companion were slumbering peacefully through Princess Luna's beautiful night. For Twilight Sparkle, it had been and long and hard day of studying; ever since her little trip to an alternative dimension she had shown a particular interest in theories of other universes, and was considering writing a dissertation on said theories and how what she had seen and experienced had been either confirmed or, quite frankly, 'busted'.

Spike, however, was exhausted for a completely different reason. He had spent the entire day running around the library, grabbing book after book for the pony who had dubbed him her no. 1 assistant, and now he was about ready to just slump in his bed and snore until the sun rose and he would awaken to yet another day of fetching books, doing chores and running errands.

BANG BANG BANG.

Or so he thought.

BANG BANG BANG.

"Get that for me, would you Spike?" asked Twilight, turning over in her bed.

"Why would somepony come to the library in the middle of the night?" asked Spike, but he still complied. He took a candle, lit it with a yawn, wandered down to the lower levels and pulled open the library door.

He was faced by a trio of tall, hooded ponies, staring at him with unseen eyes.

"Hey," said Spike, "who are you? What do you-?"

BLAM.

Twilight was shocked into a state of full wakefulness by the explosion, and her eyes grew to the size of saucers as she listened to the sound of books falling off shelves and piling up into a heap upon the library floor. Her first thought would normally have been that she would have to reshelve and reorganise them - she hated it when somepony messed up her hard work - but there were more pressing matters at hoof. Someone had forced their way into her library, and by the sounds of things they weren't afraid to cause harm.

She knew for a fact that the windows were all locked: she had barred them herself before retiring to bed, and there was no hope of escape down the main entrance, plus she didn't know if she could gather enough energy for an emergency teleportation. Besides, what if there were more of them outside? And where would she even go?

An idea hit her. She could use that spell she learnt last week! It was simple enough, and there was no danger of it drawing any unwanted attention.

She closed her eyes and concentrated, just as a voice shouted "Unos! Guard the door! If anypony comes this way, make sure they don't evade you."

"On it," replied Unos, and a pair of large hooded ponies appeared in Twilight's bedroom.

"Look, Dos, she isn't here," one of them said. "Let's just get out of here."

"What, and lose our pay?" said the other. "She's still here, Tres, I can feel it. Besides, do you really want to find out what the boss will do to us if we come back empty hooved?"

"Good point," said the one apparently called Tres.

Suddenly Dos cried out and fell to the floor. When he stood up, he had a steady trickle of blood streaming from his nose.

"You're right, she is here!" said Tres, just before he too was felled by a blow to the face and pulled himself, bleeding, to his hooves, only to receive a kick in the stomach.

"This is going nowhere," said Dos. "Unos! Get a smoke grenade!"

Down in the library, the final hooded pony pulled out a small translucent ball and stamped on it with his hoof, and seconds later the entire building was leaking smoke. The three intruders had pulled on gas masks, but a certain lavender unicorn could not stop herself from coughing. She lost her concentration and reappeared in the centre of the library.

"Sedate her, quick!" shouted Unos. He leapt upon Twilight and pinned her to the ground, and quickly slid a ring over her horn which was instantly clipped into place. Twilight tried to teleport out, but for some reason her magic was useless and it made her horn ache.

"What are you doing?" she demanded as she struggled. "Where's Spike? What have you done with him?" Her watering eyes wandered to a pile of books in front of a now empty bookcase, poking out of which was the tip of a purple, pointed tail.

"Spike?"

Before she could say another word, something pierced the skin on her flank, and she was overcome with blissful darkness.

"Okay, let's move out," said Unos. He picked up the unconscious unicorn, slung her across his back and the three intruders galloped out into the silent night.

“Ha! Oof! Ah! Ha! Hi-YAH! Loop-de-loop around and WHAM!”

Rainbow Dash landed on the bridge, her sky blue face painted with a smug, satisfied grin.

“What’d I say?” she asked. “Ten. Seconds. Flat. I’d never leave Ponyville hangin’!”

She chuckled at the sight of two pale blue pegasus colts staring up at the now empty skies with their jaws unhinged.

“Ha! You should see the looks on your faces!” she said. “You might want to close your mouths before a bug flies in.”

Soarin’s mouth snapped closed, but Lightning Strike started giggling and rolling around on the ground.

“Wow,” said Soarin’. “Looks like you really are the fastest in Equestria.”

“Oh, come on,” said Rainbow Dash as a blush crept over her muzzle. “I bet there’re some of your Wonderbolt pals who are faster than me.”

“No way!” Soarin’ objected. “Do you know how many pegasi there are in this world who can pull off a Sonic Rainboom twice? It was hard enough for me to do it once, for crying out loud! Not to mention the fact that you totally saved my pie at the Gala last year.”

Dash heard him, but she didn’t seem to be listening any more.

“Rainbow? You okay?”

She was staring intently at the tree which was Ponyville’s library, her eyes slowly narrowing in suspicion. She scooped up Lightning Strike in her forelegs and said “Something’s wrong,” before flying towards the library.

“Rainbow, what is it?” asked Soarin’, but Dash didn’t respond until they were outside the library.

“I’ve heard of silence in the library,” she said, “but don’t you think it’s a bit too quiet in there? Something is definitely wrong.”

Soarin’ looked at the library. She was right, but it wasn’t the silence which was making him uneasy; it was the fact that the door was ajar, and smoke was leaking out and tangling in the leaves above.

“You’re right,” he said, and positioned his two-week-old son on his back. “We better check it out.”

The two lovers cautiously approached the open door, but before they could get to it, it burst open and a massive cloud of lung-wrenching smoke poured out and engulfed the young pegasus family.

As Rainbow Dash coughed and flapped her wings to try and clear some of the smoke, she became aware of a small creature running out and collapsing not far from the door, coughing like there was no tomorrow.

“Spike?” she asked. “Is that you?” Further fanning revealed the hunched, bent-double-coughing form of a rather bruised and battered baby dragon.

“Spike!” Soarin’ exclaimed. “Dude, are you okay?”

“I *cough* I think so,” Spike responded, then curled up in another coughing fit.

“What happened?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“I *cough* don’t know *cough, cough*,” rasped Spike. “Somepony *cough* came to the library *cough* in the middle *cough* of the night. The *cough* the last thing I remember *massive, lung wrenching, spluttering cough* - alright, I think I’m okay now – is I opened the door and there were these creepy looking guys there. Next thing I know, I’m lying under a heap of books *final, half-hearted cough* and the library’s full of smoke.”

“What about Twilight?” asked Soarin’. “She’s okay, right?”

Without another word, Spike scrambled to his feet and ran so fast into the library that even Lightning Strike was impressed, even though he could only show it by giggling.

“Twilight!” Spike shouted to the smoke laden air of the tree’s interior. “Are you here? Are you okay?” He blinked rapidly as his eyes began to water and he started to cough again.

“I can’t *cough* see a thing in all *cough* this smoke!” he pointed out.

“Already got you covered!”

A Rainbow Dash-coloured shape zoomed into the library and started to round up the smoke in a dull yet visibly multicoloured tornado, which was then ushered out the door and dissipated in the open air.

Without the smoke, the full extent of the library’s damage was now visible. The podium that had held a carved wooden bust had fallen, and the bust had a nasty looking crack in it. Book after book was piled at the foot of one of the bookcases, which had the appearance of being smashed with a dragon shaped hammer. To top it all off, the floor was covered in scratches and scrapes, all quite obviously hoof marks.

“Wow,” said Soarin’ when he saw it. “Quite a mess you got here. I haven’t seen this much chaos since Rapidfire crashed into the crowd during the performance at the Summer Sun Celebrations a couple of years ago.”

“You think it’s bad,” said Spike, “you’re not the one who has to clean it all up.”

“Guys!” Rainbow Dash sounded worried as she emerged from the upper floor. “Twilight’s not here! All I could find was this.”

She dropped a single scrap of parchment, which had two words scrawled upon it in what was clearly very hasty writing:

HELP ME

“T-Twilight...” Spike stroked the scrap with a single claw as tears gathered in his wide, fearful eyes.

Soarin’ and Rainbow Dash both exchanged a worried glance. This was unquestionably far more than they would ever be able to handle on their own. They needed backup. Now.

“Oh, my poor little Spikey-Wikey!” Rarity hugged the baby dragon so tightly that he almost choked (but seeing as it was Rarity he didn’t really mind). “You must have been simply petrified!”

“Well... not... really...” Spike tried to say, but instead he wheezed and started coughing again. The platinum unicorn released him and started blushing.

“What exactly happened, Spike?” asked Applejack. “Ya weren’t too clear first time round. All ya said was ‘smoke, Twilight, strange guys, gone!’ and then ya choked again. It musta bin a might smoky in here if y’all were still chokin’ than long after.”

“It was,” said Dash. “I couldn’t even see my own hoof in front of my face!”

“Sorry,” said Spike. “Twilight and I were woken up in the middle of the night when somepony knocked on the door, and when I went down to see who it was, there was a group of creepy guys there. I think there were three of them, but I couldn’t see their faces. One of them hit me with something – must’ve knocked me out – and when I woke up I was underneath a massive pile of books. When I got out the whole place was full of smoke, and... and Twilight was...” He started to tear up again.

“We couldn’t find her anywhere,” Soarin’ added, “and all Rainbow could find was this note. By the looks of it, I’d say she was terrified.”

“Well, we don’t need to worry!” Pinkie Pie piped up. “I highly doubt they killed her. After all, why would they go to so much trouble if they could have just killed her here?”

When everypony stared at her she said “What?”

“That was... actually really smart,” said Fluttershy.

“Well, there is a lot you guys don’t know about me,” said Pinkie. “Wait a second. Where’s Hex?”

“I went up to his shop to find him, but he wasn’t there,” Dash explained. “It was like he’d just vanished.”

“You don’t think he was kidnapped too, do you?” asked Rarity, her Shakespearean mind already conjuring up an overly theatrical response should that indeed be the case.

“I don’t think so,” said Dash. “I mean, there weren’t any signs of a struggle or anything. Not like there was here.” She stroked one of the scuff marks in the floor, which was in the shape of a worryingly large hoof.

Meanwhile, Soarin’ appeared to be deep in thought. He kept looking from the note to the stairs, and then at Spike, and at the marks carved into the ground. Suddenly, he reached forward and pressed the baby dragon’s face into the parchment scrap.

“Soarin’, what the-” Rarity began, but he silenced her with a quick “Shush.”

“Augh- what the hay are you doing?” Spike demanded after wiggling out from the ex-Wonderbolt’s pressing hoof. “What are trying to suffocate me or something? What the hay?”

“I’m not trying to suffocate you,” said Soarin’, “I’m just wondering if you could pick up Twilight’s scent.”

“Her what?”

“Her scent, so we can track her down!”

“What do I look like a bloodhound to you?” Spike almost shouted in protest. “There’s no way I could-” He cut himself off, and started sniffing the air.

“Wait a second, got something!” he said, and still sniffing, he ran out of the library and into the street.

“Ah have no idea how that worked,” said Applejack as they all followed him, “but Ah suppose we all should be thankful that it does.”

“You’re welcome!” said Pinkie.

The six ponies (and one oblivious sleeping baby being carried by his father) followed the small lizard as he ran through the main street of Ponyville with his nose in the air. The crowd in the street stopped and stared as he ran past, sniffing as hard as he could, and wondered why in the world he was being followed by a group of rather desperate looking young mares, plus a stallion holding a baby colt.

“This way!” Spike commanded, and he started to lead his friends away from Ponyville.

“Where in Equestria are we going?” asked Rarity. “I hope this isn’t going to turn out to be some wild goose chase.”

“Let’s hope that’s exactly what it is,” said Dash, “because hopefully that would mean Twilight is safe. I swear, if anypony’s laid so much as a hoof on her I’ll smash them to a pulp!”

With the spectral speedster listing the various ways she would end anypony if they hurt her friend, the group continued to follow Spike until, quite suddenly, he stopped at the foot of the mountain just outside Ponyville.

“Why’d you stop?” asked Soarin’.

“Well, it’s either stop,” said Spike, “or go down... there.”

He pointed a trembling talon at a dark hole in the base of the mountain – a cave which none of them had noticed before. Rather than going straight in, it seemed to be aligned in a slightly foreboding downwards direction.

Applejack poked her head in and said “Uh, howdy?”

Uh howdy... uh howdy... uh howdy... came the echo.

“We-w-w-we have t-to g-g-go in there?” Fluttershy stammered.

“Twilight definitely came this way,” said Spike. “And the trail leads straight in there, so I-I guess we’ll have to.”

“Into a cave?!” Rarity seemed aghast and the very prospect of returning to the underground, which was understandable considering that the last time she had been inside a cave it had been as the prisoner of a band of idiotic canine gemstone hunters.

“What’s so bad about a cave?” asked Pinkie, walking over to the mouth of the tunnel. “It’s just like being inside, only it’s a lot darker and scarier and WHAAAA!!!” This last word was because she had been about to step in, only to discover that the downward slope was deeper than she thought and she ended up toppling wildly down it, limbs flailing like crazy.

“PINKIE!” her friends cried, and they rushed over to the cave.

“Pinkie, are you okay?” asked Spike.

“Say something!” Rarity called.

After a small pause, there was the sound of an over-energetic baker saying “You know, it’s surprisingly clean down here.”

“Well then,” said Rarity, “in that case...” And with that, she too descended into the roots of the mountain. Applejack and Spike were quick to follow suit, trailed by a seriously frightened Fluttershy. Dash paused, and turned to Soarin’.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Don’t you want to help Twilight? Let’s go already!”

“Not you, Soarin’,” said Dash. “I... oh Celestia, how can I say this without making it sound bad? I need you to stay behind. Somepony’s gotta look after Lightning Strike, and if you come down then nopony else will know where we are.”

Soarin’ looked disappointed, but said “I understand.”

“If we’re not back by sunset, send word to Princess Celestia, okay?”

“Received and understood,” said Soarin’. “Good luck.” And he gave a small salute before watching with a pang of guilt as the mare he loved plunged down into the unknown.

Rainbow Dash’s landing was considerably softer than everypony else’s. In her fear Fluttershy had neglected to even open her wings, let alone try to fly, and of course how could she expect the others to soften their falls in the slightest?

It was pitch black in the cave; nopony had any idea how far down they were, but it was far enough for the entrance to be almost invisible to the naked eye. By the feeling and sound of it, Applejack was the first to recover.

“Everypony okay?” she asked.

“If by ‘okay’ you mean completely and totally blind,” said Spike. “I can’t see a thing!”

“Here,” said a voice in the darkness, “let me do something about that.”

There was the sound of a hoof tapping on something glassy, and not long afterwards a tiny ball hovered over to the pile of ponies. It was a transparent globe, with a miniscule lightning bolt suspended inside, and it was supported on a pair of dragonfly-like wings.

“Whoa,” said Dash, reaching out to touch it with her eyes filled with admiration, “cool!”

“I for one was surprised they even worked,” said the provider, “seeing as they completely snub the laws of physics and totally ignore everything I previously knew about electricity. But I suppose magic is as magic does. Just funny that way.”

More of the tiny balls of lightning illuminated the features of a young brown unicorn wearing a short jacket the same colour as his coat, his black rimmed glasses framing startlingly green eyes which were devoid of their usual jubilance and jokiness.

“Hex?” said Dash. “What’re you doing down here? Is this some kind of prank? Was Twilight in on it?”

“If she was, then it’s the first I’ve heard about it,” said Hex.

“What she means to say,” said Rarity, “is how in the world did you come to be in this dreadful hole, and while wearing such an utterly unsightly piece of attire?”

“Well, it could be that I was outside taking some star charts and I happened to look down and see three rather bulky stallions carrying an unconscious purple unicorn into this ‘hole’,” said Hex sarcastically, “but then again, I could be mistaken, and also this jacket isn’t a fashion statement; it’s a precaution.”

“Precaution against what, exactly?”

The scientist’s eyes took on a dark, almost evil sheen, as if to say ‘You shouldn’t have asked that. You really shouldn’t have.’

“Because some ponies just want to watch the word burn,” he said, and he turned and started walking away down the tunnel. After a few steps he looked back.

“You guys coming or what?” he asked.

One by one, the ponies (and dragon) pulled themselves upright and started to follow their eerily serious friend into the darkness.

It was dark. That was the first thing she noticed. Dark. And cold. And extremely uncomfortable.

Twilight tried to set herself upright, but her hooves were bound and it was impossible to stand. She just ended up crashing back down to the freezing floor, and earned herself a bruise on her shoulder.

The last thing she remembered... a band of thugs had forced their way into the library, and Spike had been lying under a pile of books... there was smoke everywhere, and she’d tried to get away, but...

And then she woke up properly.

Somepony had left her, hog tied, in some kind of dungeon. That’s what it felt like, at least: there was something, maybe a bag, covering her eyes and she couldn’t see a thing. So she tried to talk – to ask if anypony was there, and if so where in Equestria was she – only to find that there was something over her mouth as well, and she couldn’t make a sound.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t hear anything.

“...completely unharmed?”

“Well, naturally she struggled – I mean, I would have thought her nothing but foolish if she didn’t – but apart from that I can safely report that she is in top physical condition.”

There was the sound of punching and something falling over, followed by a distinctly feminine cry of “STUPID! She needs to be weaker, much weaker, before we’ll be able to do ANYTHING with her, you IDIOT!”

Twilight couldn’t help herself; she let out a small, fearful whimper, which was audible even though the gag and the sack that was covering her head.

She heard hoofsteps drawing closer, and desperately tried to shuffle away from whoever was approaching her, but found her sight suddenly restored as the sack that had covered her head was suddenly whisked away. Instantly, she wished she had it back.

Towering over her was the most terrifying pony she had ever seen – more terrifying even than Nightmare Moon, and you can’t get much scarier than that. She was an alicorn, sure, but nowhere near as majestic as Princess Celestia. Her horn was sharpened to a lethal, needle-like point, and it appeared that a vast majority of her feathers had been pulled out of her wings. Her coat was deep red, the colour of blood, and her tattered mane flowed with stripes of red so dark they were almost black. But all of this paled to insignificance behind her...

...her eyes. They were almost dragon like in physical shape, appearance and feeling, and Twilight had never seen a more vivid red in all her life. It bored into the darkest depths of her soul, and brought back memories of some of the dreams she’d had as a filly: the ones where waking up felt like the best thing in the whole world.

She shied away in horror, or at least made an attempt.

“What’s the matter?” asked the alicorn. “You scared? Take a look at that boys; the little pony’s scared!”

The frightening spectre was joined by not one, not two, but eight large stallions in cloaks which seemed to be made of pure blackness, and every single one of them laughed at the purple unicorn who was now sweating with fear.

“So this is the famous Twilight Sparkle,” said the alicorn, and she stroked her captive’s cheek with a blood coloured hoof. “I have to admit, I thought the most magically powerful unicorn in Equestria would be considerably older. You’re no more than a child. You aren’t even as old as little Haydie!”

‘Haydie?’ Twilight tried to think as she was laughed at again. ‘But-but she couldn’t- she knows Hex?!’

“I’m sure he must have mentioned me at some point,” the alicorn said, and she started to walk in circles around her prisoner. “After all, I am only the most terrifying thing you’ll ever see. LOOK AT ME!!” She snapped her head down, her face mere inches away from Twilight’s, and looked her straight in the eye. “Aren’t I SCARY?!”

‘She’s-she’s insane,’ Twilight thought. ‘Completely and totally insane!’

“As I was saying,” the alicorn continued, “my name is Deluminata. The Taker of Light, if you wish to be poetic about it. I’ve been watching little Haydie ever since before he was in nappies. I have to say, I was very disappointed in him. No one pushes Deluminata away after all she’s done for him. No. ONE!!”

She paused, continuing to stare into Twilight’s eyes, as if waiting for her to respond.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Cat got your tongue?” She telekinetically tore away the tape which had until then been over her prisoner’s mouth.

“Where am I?” Twilight demanded. “What do you want with me? How in Equestria do you know Hex? Why can’t I use my magic? Do you know what Princess Celestia will do when she find out you kidnapped her star student? How did-”

“Honey,” said Deluminata, “hush.”

Twilight was stunned by the calmness of her tone. How could she...?

“Look,” she said, trying and failing to withhold her fear as those brilliant red eyes penetrated the fabric her mind, “all I want is to go home! Just tell me what you want from me and I’ll be happy to give it to you!”

“Oh, I know that, Little Miss Purple,” Deluminata said as she straightened up, “but I hardly think you’ll be willing to give up what I want...” She descended into a cacophony of wicked sounding laughter.

“Wh-w-what do you want with me?” asked Twilight, even though she was dreading what the answer might be.

“I’ve heard your voice for less than a minute and I’m already tired of it,” Deluminata stated, and she slapped another strip of tape over her prisoner’s mouth before adding “You’ll find out what I want with you soon enough.” She turned to her cronies and said “C’mon boys. We got construction to do.” And with that, she and the stallions vanished in a small poof of black smoke.

Twilight took this opportunity to examine her surroundings. It was a small cave, rectangular in shape, not unlike a dungeon. In the roof there was a pony-sized hole, covered by a metal grate, and from this hole there came a dim green light which barely provided enough luminosity for proper vision, and the dullness made her eyes hurt.

She started to struggle, straining frantically against the ropes that bound her, but she may as well have tried to eat her own head considering how difficult it was. She was simply tied too tightly, and eventually gave up and slumped against the frigid stone floor.

She closed her eyes, willing the situation to change, hoping against hope that this was a nightmare and she would wake up safe in her bed, or maybe that the ring on her horn – presumably what was restricting her magic – would break and fall off.

As she closed her eyes, a single tear expelled itself and rolled down her cheek, leaving a long trail of despair in its wake, and dripped onto the floor where it formed the beginnings of a small pool.

In all her life, Twilight Sparkle had never felt so helpless.

“I’ve never seen him so... dark,” said Rainbow Dash as she and her friends followed Hex through the tunnels.

“Does he even know where he’s going?” asked Spike.

“I can hear you, you know,” said Hex, “and yes, I do know where I was going. I’ve only been exploring these tunnels for a few hours but I think I’ve got them pretty much figured out.”

“Darling, I simply cannot withhold myself any longer,” said Rarity, “what is that thing that you’re wearing made of?”

“I’m not really sure I should say with Spike around,” said Hex.

“Why?” said Spike. “Whatever it is, I can take it!”

“Umm...” For the first time since he had found them, the terracotta scientist looked nervous. “It’s... made of... leather.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s... skin. Animal skin.”

His friends all stopped and stared at him in horror.

“W-what...” Spike looked almost too scared to ask. “W-w-what k-kind of animal was it?”

Hex gulped, and squeaked a quick response.

“What was that?”

“It’s... drm lfm.”

“Didn’t quite catch that.”

“Good gravy, boy!” Applejack shouted as she lost her rag. “What in tarnation’s the problem?”

Hex let out a growl of frustration before facing them all with eyes filled with fury.

“IT’S DRAGON LEATHER, OKAY?!” He bellowed with such high volume that the rock was trembled as if in fear. “THIS IS A JACKET! IT IS MADE OF LEATHER! LEATHER FROM A DRAGON! IT IS A DRAGON LEATHER JACKET!! A JACKET MADE OUT OF LEATHER FROM A DRAGON!! GOT THAT?!”

His friends did not know what to be more stunned by: the fact that he was wearing dragon skin or the sudden outburst of rage which was normally only found around the resident party pony when somepony broke a Pinkie Promise. Pinkie herself had retreated to a much duller shade of her usual colours; her mane and tail had deflated and hung limply against the side of her face.

“Look,” said Hex, “where Amber comes from, they have dragons, okay? And those dragons used to be servants of the gods, so they had to be really tough. And when they die, not a single part gets wasted. Once you remove the feathers, dragon skin is indestructible. It’s a defence mechanism that works even in death. For that reason, dragon skin is used as armour, OKAY?”

“Hex, just-just calm down,” said Dash, with tears brimming in her eyes as she approached the enraged unicorn. Pinkie too was on the verge of crying, and Fluttershy had already descended into quiet sobs of fear, and was currently being comforted by Rarity, who in turn was being hugged by a petrified Spike.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked the fearful blue pegasus. “I-I’ve never seen you so... angry.”

Hex sighed, as if attempting a less frightening way to vent his anger.

“I’m... I’m scared, alright?” he said, and it definitely showed in his voice. “I know... I know we all want to find Twilight. I know that-that if she was here, she’d be reassuring us all with some anecdote or other, but...” He buried his face in is hooves, and when he raised it again it was becoming clear he was about to shed tears.

“I-I’m scared of what we might find,” he said. “I mean, I- she could be dead. She could be dead for all we know.”

“Don’t say that!”

“Why not?” the scientist demanded. “We’re all thinking it. Everypony’s thinking it! She could be dead or-or in pain and there’s every chance that she’s scared out of her life and there’s nothing we can do about it!”

He paused in his ranting, taking deep shuddering breaths in a forced attempt to avoid crying like a baby.

“Why are you so worried about her all of a sudden?” asked the deflated Pinkie. “I mean, you’re right – all of us are scared – but... but instead of fetching all of us first, you came down here by yourself.”

“As unlikely as this may sound, I do believe Pinkie Pie has a point,” said Rarity. “Hex, you witnessed the abduction of our friend and decided to attempt a solo recovery, but why?”

“Ah ‘gree wit’ Pinkie and Rarity,” said Applejack, “although Ah never thought Ah’d hear mahself sayin’ those words.”

“Um, guys?” Fluttershy murmured, “I don’t think we should-”

“Yeah!” said Spike. “And how come you’re always so... happy when you’re around her?”

“There is a lot of stuff you don’t tell us, isn’t there?” said Dash. “So what’re you waiting for? Twilight’s not getting any closer to us you know-”

“I love her, okay?!”

He didn’t exactly shout the words, but they had the right effect. For the second time that day, everypony had been silenced by something Hex had said.

“I’m nuts about her,” he confessed. “All day, every day, I- I can’t stop thinking about her. And it’s not a crush; I know crushes – I’ve had a few, been the subject of several, and I never want to go there again. It’s like... It’s almost like I-I’ve grown accustomed to her face. She... she almost makes the day begin. I feel like my life didn’t begin until I met her. I know... I know I was- well, alright before I met her, and I know that I could easily go back to being that way but the thing is...”

He trailed off, and looked at his friends again as his voice started to crack.

“...The thing is, I don’t want to,” he said, and smiled as if it was some hilarious joke. “I’ve never felt this good in my entire life. And I... I don’t want it to end. I want to be with her. I mean, it-it hurts, but... it’s kinda like a good hurt. I feel like every moment with her is a dream and-and if every moment with her was a dream, then I wouldn’t EVER want to wake up.”

For a while, nopony dared to speak, for fear that whatever they said would just make matters worse.

“Wow,” Dash said eventually. “That was... deep.”

“Yeah,” Spike added, “really deep.”

“And...” said Hex, “and there’s something else: I know who it is that’s kidnapped her.”

Twilight may have been scared at first, but most of her fear had been replaced by a different emotion.

Anger.

This pony – Hex had mentioned him once, and said that she was awful – who in Equestria did she think she was, kidnapping the prized student of Princess Celestia? Not only that, but to prevent her from using her magic; for Twilight that was like if somepony had blinded her, or taken away her heartbeat.

Something was going on up there. She could tell by the shadows that passed through the dim light shining through the grating overhead. With great difficulty (due to the position she was bound in) she shuffled across the cold stone floor until she was directly underneath the hole.

She could just about make out the shapes of Deluminata’s servants walking calmly back and forth overhead, and there were the obvious sounds of construction going on. Plus, if she strained her ears hard enough, she could make out muffled conversations about... something.

Then she tried to shrink back as the blood coated alicorn appeared above her, and smiled down upon her captive.

“It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again. HA!” Her own words launched her into a torrent of insane laughter.

“You know,” said Deluminata, “we’ve got quite the little project going on here. You wanna see?”

She paused, as if waiting for Twilight to answer.

“I said do you want to see?”

And then there was another pause.

‘Does she expect me to answer with this tape over my mouth?’ Twilight wondered. ‘What kind of crazy mare is she?’

“I’ll show you anyway,” she said, and in a flash Twilight found herself out of her dungeon and in...

The cavern was tremendous. It must have been at least as large as the ballroom in Canterlot Castle. And towering overhead was a massive cylinder of glass – or at least, half a massive cylinder of glass. The stallions were hovering apparently unsupported around it while stacking curved sheets of glass into place and sealing them into their positions. The whole thing must have been able to hold an entire sea. Despite everything, Twilight couldn’t help but be rather impressed.

“Well?” Deluminata ripped the tape away from the purple unicorn’s face. “What do you think?”

“I...” Here, she had an opportunity. This mare was obviously completely out of her mind, so maybe – just maybe – she could take advantage of it.

“I think,” she said carefully, “that if I wasn’t tied up, I could get out of here without any problems.”

She felt the shocking red eyes turning in her direction.

“What was that?” her captor demanded.

“I said that I think if I wasn’t tied up like this, then I could escape,” said Twilight, and she allowed herself a smug smile, “and I could get out of here with no problems at all.”

“Even with your magic blocked?”

“Even with my magic blocked.”

“OKAY!!”

‘Huh?’ thought Twilight. ‘I thought it would be harder than that. She’s... she’s gotta be up to something... if she’s got enough of her mind left in there for proper planning...’

‘This plan is almost as crazy as she is, but I hope it works. If it doesn’t...’

Less than a second after finishing that thought, Twilight felt the ropes dropping away from her hooves. She stretched out her legs, which snapped back into motion with an audible cracking noise, and rubbed them where the ropes had chafed at her skin.

Then she stood up and started to run.

With her freedom of movement restored, her levels of confidence shot through the roof. She could see an exit – a dark tunnel set into the wall nearby – and galloped towards it at top speed.

Later, she would regret it.

Later she considered that it was highly suspicious of neither Deluminata nor her cronies to make an attempt to stop her.

But right now, she felt free to-

WHAM.

-to run into what felt like solid rock. Once the stars had all faded away, she sat up on her haunches and saw that the tunnel was...

Twilight stood up, and felt it with a tentative hoof.

It was just an illusion, and behind it was a solid rock wall.

How could she have been so stupid?

Something wrapped around her neck and she was dragged, choking and gasping desperately for the air she urgently needed, back to where Deluminata had hardly moved a muscle, and the purple unicorn was roughly dumped, wheezing for oxygen, into the centre of a circle that had been formed by the insane alicorn and her crew.

“Looks like you thought wrong,” Deluminata stated. “I think I should’ve told you that the only way to get in and out of this place is by teleportation. You can’t just run out of here, and you certainly can’t get out with your magic blocked.”

She stepped out of the circle, and the dark coated stallions closed in around the terrified young prisoner.

“Boys, she’s all yours,” said Deluminata. “And take as much sweet time as you need...”

“...Because you’re going to enjoy this.”

NEXT TIME: Holding Out for a Hero part 2

“She was allowed a drink from the fountain of youth, in exchange for her sanity.”

“What’s that you’re drinking?”

“This? Red Bull. It’s an energy drink from where I come from.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but... bottoms up, Pinkie.”

“They were- th-they were... hurting her...”

“Kill me! Take what you want from me and just-just KILL ME!!”

Author's Note: Yeah, I'm probably going to go to hell for this. This is the first part of the finale. I don't know how long it's going to be, just that it's going to be spread out over several chapters. If you're reading this, I guess you've gotten over the annoyance of the trick spoilers from the previous chapter's author's note. I was worried that Deluminata may be viewed by some of you as a Villain Sue (bear in mind that she barely had any marbles to lose in the first place) but again I'll leave that to you, the reader, to decide.

Chapter 13 - Holding Out for a Hero part 2

WARNING: Reader discretion is advised. This chapter is not recommended/suitable for readers under 12 years of age.

“Deluminata is the daughter of the most dangerous and evil creature in the multiverse,” Hex explained as they navigated the tunnels. “I won’t go into detail because it’s not relevant right now. Suffice it to say that she is the most terrifying thing you will ever meet. She was allowed a drink from the Fountain of Youth, in exchange for her sanity.”

“She put her own prettiness before her mind?” asked a reinflated Pinkie. “That’s crazy even by my standards!”

“Well, I never!” Rarity said indignantly, and when her friends all stared at her she quickly added, “Not that I would ever stoop to that level, of course.”

“My friend Amber was subdued and kidnapped by her,” continued Hex, and as he talked he produced a silvery cylinder, “and just because she could, Deluminata had her blindfolded with a cloth woven out of poison ivy. And as we were escaping, she killed my friend Scott by throwing a javelin through his chest.” He opened the cylinder with a hiss and took a swig of whatever was inside.

“A javelin through his chest? That’s- that’s just- that’s just awful!” cried Fluttershy.

“Tell me about it,” said Hex. “He died before any of us could do anything. But, um, he got better. Long story, no time. Anyway, I think Deluminata had some sort of thing for me. She told me she’d been watching me since before I was born, and she saw me getting increasingly jealous of Amber – I had a lot to learn about being a good friend – and she offered me power. Lots of power. And when she gave it to me... I won’t lie; it was incredible, even though she still insisted on calling me Little Haydie. I literally felt like a god. I understood why the people of Earth had lived in fear of smiting for centuries, and if my friends hadn’t been there I’m pretty sure I would have destroyed the universe. Because let me tell you right now, guys: I. Have. Seen. Some. SMEG.”

He paused, as if waiting for his friends to give some response, but when nopony did he took another swig from his can and sighed.

“And again, I’m not going to go into detail,” he said, “because right now we have a job to do. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m gonna save Twilight if I die in the process.” He finished this phrase with another sip from the can.

Thankfully, the others seemed to understand. He wouldn’t have to repeat himself.

“I know this might sound like a dumb question,” said Spike,” but what’s that you’re drinking?”

“This?” said Hex, examining the can. “Red Bull. It’s an energy drink where I come from. It makes you feel all wide awake and stuff, but if you’re not used to it – well, you don’t wanna know. Hey!”

This last word was because the baby dragon had snatched the can out of Hex’s telekinetic grasp. He walked over to one particular mare and carefully held it out to her.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he said, “but... bottoms up, Pinkie.”

“Spike, are you completely and totally out of your baby dragon MIND?!” Hex demanded as the party pony took the can and looked it over.

“No, I’m not!” Spike protested. “If she’s fast enough, she can run through the tunnels and find Twilight, and then she can come back and tell us where she is and if she’s okay!”

“And why can’t I do that?” Dash objected. “I’m the fastest thing in Equestria! Aren’t I fast enough to-”

“No ‘fense, Rainbow Dash,” said Applejack, “but this is Pinkie Pie we’re talkin’ ‘bout.”

Dash thought for a second and said “You make a good point.”

With the speed of a slug with a broken foot, the party planner raised the can to her lips and tipped it upwards, letting the cool liquid spill into her mouth and down her throat. For several moments everypony (and dragon) held their breath as Pinkie slowly drained the contents of the can, eventually letting it clatter to the ground, the final dregs spilling out upon the cold stone floor, because there’s always just a few drops the drinker missed, isn’t there? Always!

She licked her lips.

“Hmm,” she said, “not bad!”

Despite what Hex had said the drink would do, Pinkie Pie appeared to be completely and totally unaffected. At least, the universe hadn’t exploded. That in itself was reassuring.

“Um...” The brown unicorn carefully pulled something else out of his jacket: a small compass with no markings, but a golden needle which pointed towards the wall. “This... should... help you find your way. It’s how I’ve been finding my way around.”

“Thanks!” said Pinkie. “And don’t worry; I’ll take excellent care of it!”

When everypony else stared at her, she just said “What?”

“Do you not feel any... different?” asked Rarity.

“Nope!”

“Ya don’t feel... faster?” asked Applejack.

“Nopey-dopey-lopey!”

There was another pause. This one ringing with awkwardness.

“Well actually Hexie, now that you mention it, I do feel just a little bit YAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!!!”

“Everypony stand back!” commanded Hex, and everypony else was more than willing to comply.

“Wowzathat’sgoodstuff! OhmygoshI’veneverfeltsoenergeticbefore! ThisisthecoolestthingeverandlistentomeI’mtalkingsoFAST! Thisissoawesome! IneverrealisedhowmuchfuntalkingcouldbeandnowIfeelsoCOOLIjustwanttoRUNandRUNandRUNandRUNandRUNandRUN!!!”

“Then run!” said Hex. “Run and find Twilight! Tell us if she’s okay!”

“YOUGOTITHEXIE!!!”

She vanished in a rush of pink.

“Spike,” said Hex. “What. Have. You. DONE?!?”

“I-I dunno!” the baby dragon stammered. “I had no idea what would happen-”

“Exactly! For all we know the universe could have exploded! Pinkie’s already fast and crazy and what-the-smeg enough as it is, and now you’ve given her Red Bull?! If she gets back, and by some incredible miracle the universe hasn’t destroyed itself, then I might just consider forgiving you.”

It was barely half a minute before Pinkie Pie was back, and for the second time that day she had dulled and deflated, but this time there were horrified tears flowing unchecked down her monotonous cheeks. She could not have looked more traumatised if she’d just read Cupcakes, Sweet Apple Massacre and Rainbow Factory in succession.

“They were...” she tried to say, “Th- they were hurting her...”

She took a few short breaths in an attempt to avoid crying, but it was quite plainly fruitless.

“They-they had her... o-on the ground...” she moaned in between sobs, “and they... she was b-b-bleeding and... and they were... they were all s-s-smiling at her... but-but the worst part was... was one of them... one of them was... he was... mounting her...”

Without a word, Hex walked over to the horrified confectioner and pulled her into a hug.

“I’m so sorry!” said Spike, and he was suddenly frantic with fear and regret. “If I had known- I had no idea, I-I’m sorry, Pinkie! I swear to you, if I had known- I’m just so sorry!”

“And *sniff* and the other worst part,” Pinkie managed to say, “was that-that there was this mare – I-I think she must have been that-that Deluminata you talked about, because she was just standing there, just-just watching, and it was so-so scary...”

For a while, nopony said a word. The only sound was Pinkie’s strangled sobs, echoing through the rocky tunnels, and Hex’s heavy breathing as he tried to avoid doing the same.

“Okay,” he said eventually. “Let’s just find Twilight, and get the smeg out of this place. These tunnels give me the creeps.”

And so they all resumed following the bespectacled scientist through the caves, but now that they understood the limits (or lack thereof) of the cruelty of the purple unicorn’s immoral captors, morale had slipped to an all-time low.

Twilight Sparkle wanted to die.

Never in her life did she think she would feel so...

...horrible.

The pain was unlike anything she could ever have imagined. The way... the way they had... had taken it in turns... to hurt her...

First they had punched her. That hadn’t been so bad. Alright, she was going to have a black eye the size of a hoofball, but that would heal with no problems (although she considered studying healing spells).

Then they had kicked her; bucking and thumping her over and over all over her body. A couple had even taken the opportunity to stamp on her legs, and she surely had a broken ankle or two.

These in themselves would not have been so awful. She would still be horribly injured, but at least she could have kept her courage.

But then...

Then they had... one by one they had...

...mounted her...

And the entire time, Deluminata had stood there and watched. She didn’t show any emotion at all, except for mild interest, as if she watched this kind of thing every single day...

...eight times...

...and then they each had spat on her face, and when it was finally over they bound her again and put her back in her dungeon, materialising her several feet above the ground just so she would fall.

They had bound her with barbed wire.

The landing had pressed the thin, sharp metal deep into her legs, and the pointed prongs carved mercilessly into her stomach. Every time she moved in the slightest – every time she even breathed, for pony’s sake – tidal waves of pain were sent rippling through her entire body.

‘Somepony,’ she thought, ‘anypony, please... help me...’

Her entire body was caked with dirt and dried blood, stained with terrified sweat, and her tears carved thin grooves through the layers of filth that otherwise clung to her face like glue. She felt dirty: not just physically, but emotionally and mentally. These horrible stallions – surely the paragons of all things evil – had stolen her innocence without a second thought. She wanted to scrub herself all over for an entire month, and even then she would still...

...still be praying for it just-just to...

...to end.

Her friends would find her. They just- they had to. These ponies – they were going to kill her. That much she knew now.

If only she hadn’t been so damn stupid...

Her body shook with silent sobs, the barbs on the wire tearing her sullied skin and sending even more agony shooting into her like the shockwave of a sonic rainboom.

‘Please...’ Maybe if she though loud enough, somepony would hear her. ‘Please, HELP ME!!!’

Maybe Hex, with his miraculous telepathy, would pick up on her.

Hex.

He was going to find her. He was going to save her. He and the others, they had to. They had to! She didn’t want to die knowing they hadn’t tried for her. Twilight would quite willingly have died at that moment if it meant that she could see his geeky excitable grin just one more time-

-but would he even want her now? Would anypony want anything to do with her now that she was...?

She wanted to struggle, to try anything physically possible to free herself, maybe pull the ring off her horn, the ring which was blocking her magic, the one thing she relied on almost as much as oxygen, but she couldn’t without sending herself into paroxysms of anguish.

Instead she concentrated, pouring as much magic as possible into her horn. Maybe she could overload it, and it would break by itself and fall off and she could get out of this nightmarish hellhole. But it was useless – just an invitation for more pain – and she relaxed her magic and her body. Cause for yet more horrendous hurting.

It was useless. Everything was useless.

She tried with all her heart not to breathe to heavily. It meant she was out of breath, but then again, it was better than...

‘Somepony,’ she thought desperately, ‘help me... Hex...’

It was just-just too much! She couldn’t take it anymore: the pain, the fear, the anger, the-the HORROR...

She let out a scream which would have been deafening were it not muffled by a thick strip of tape, and descended into agonised sobs, her hot tears cleansing her face of grime and blood.

A shadow fell across Twilight’s body. She turned her reddening eyes upwards, to the dimly lit grating above, where Deluminata loomed over her like a blood coloured tower of physical monstrosity. She saw and perfectly understood the purple unicorn’s mind-boggling agony, and smiled down evilly upon her.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Need a tissue or something? You know, you could just use your magic to- oh wait! You can’t can you?” She once again laughed maniacally, making the entire gigantic chamber ring and echo with terror and insanity.

Twilight didn’t shrink back this time. What good would it do?

“You know, I think we’re almost ready for you up here,” Deluminata said, presumably looking at the softly glowing giant glass cylinder, or at least something quite near it. “In fact... yes, we’re definitely ready for you now! You want to come up?”

She telekinetically peeled the tape away from her prisoner’s mouth – slowly, so as to add to the pain.

“Kill me!” Twilight screamed. “Take what you want from me and just-just KILL ME!!”

“Oh no, we can’t possibly do that!” said Deluminata. “You won’t be able to help us if we just kill you!”

“But what do you want from me?! TELL ME!!”

In a flash, she was back in the chamber with the glass thing, and was again materialised above the ground just so that her captors could see the tears of pain running down her face, and this time she let out a small, helpless yelp, which set the eight stallions laughing again.

Then one of them walked confidently up to her and removed the ring from her horn. Instantly she tried to teleport out – to free herself and escape, and run back to her friends – but it still just made her horn hurt. There was a small flicker of dark pink light, but that was about it.

“Oh, didn’t you know?” Deluminata asked mockingly. “That clip wasn’t just blocking your magic; it was repressing it as well. Your magical ability is now in a secluded part of your brain that even you can’t access, and it won’t come until it’s called.”

She turned to her darkly clad cronies and asked in the tone one might use for ordering a sandwich “Shall we get started?”

In obedience to her suggestion, one of the stallions – they all looked the same, and Twilight didn’t know all of their names – placed some sort of hat-like device on the purple unicorn’s head. It had a tall, hollow spike which fitted neatly over her horn, and it was buckled so tightly beneath her chin that she almost started choking. The hat thing was connected to an assortment of different coloured wires, which all ran over to a machine, with some sort of pipe stretching out of it and pointing into the now completed glass cylinder.

On the machine, a switch was flicked.

If you want to replicate at home what Twilight felt at that moment, then just follow these simple instructions (not recommended for children under 3 years of age):

Take a wide metal band and wrap it around your forehead: above the eyes, but below the hairline.

Using whatever comes to hand pull the metal band as tight as it will possibly go.

Then, still wearing the torturingly tight metal band, hire a professional wrestler – the strongest one you can think of – to slam your head in a car door.

And finally, go to the nearest railway line, lie on the ground with your head on a rail and just wait...

Twilight felt like the top of her head could explode at any moment. The pressure just built up and up, without any kind of release or relief-

-and inside the spike over her horn, she heard a simply stomach churning crack.

And then it was over.

With eyes more puffy than Disney Princess sleeves, she looked over at the glowing cylinder, which was now partly filled with a shimmering, silvery liquid exactly the same shade of pinkish purple as her magical aura.

Then the device was removed, and she stared and moaned in horror as the shattered fragments of her own horn clattered uselessly to the floor and rested by her chin.

“Shame,” said Deluminata, “you had such a pretty horn.”

She walked over to Twilight and rolled her onto her back, her bound bloodied hooves pointed towards the ceiling.

“Good news,” the insane alicorn said, “we don’t need you anymore. We’ve got what we needed. You know what that is?” She indicated the giant vat, in which the silvery substance had started bubbling ominously, before leaning down until the terrified young mare could taste her breath, and saying “It’s your magic. Your own magical power in liquid form! Isn’t that wonderful? It’s just so-so simple! Magic! As a liquid! And now that we’ve got yours – the power of the Element of Magic herself – I’ll be able to drain others! So many more others! I’ll get so much magic I won’t be able to see! And then I can see my Mummy again!”

“Please,” Twilight whispered, because it was too painful to speak any louder, “please... just end it. You’ve got what you wanted. Kill me. Get it over with. Please... kill me!”

Deluminata raised a ponderous hoof to her chin and turned her eyes upwards, apparently weighing her options, before looking down at her stricken prisoner and simply saying “Nah.”

“Then... then what?” asked Twilight, her voice cracking in fear. “What’re you... what’re you gonna... gonna do to me?”

The blood coloured alicorn smiled evilly, the dim green light glinting in her penetrating scarlet eyes, and in a flash Twilight found herself in total darkness. She had to blink several times just to make sure her eyes were still open, and she hadn’t been knocked unconscious, although she was almost definitely heading in that direction.

If she thought more logically, and not allowed panic to cloud her judgement, she could have done something. She could have even escaped, and told somepony about what Deluminata was doing. Bringing her “Mummy” back? Twilight didn’t want to know what that would entail.

And now, in blinding darkness and complete and total solitude, she knew she was going to die. She would never see her friends, her brother, her parents, the Princesses – anypony – ever again.

She would never see Hex again.

“I’m sorry, Spike,” she whispered tearfully into the empty air. “I’m sorry, Rarity. I’m sorry, Fluttershy. I’m sorry, Pinkie Pie. I’m sorry, Rainbow Dash. I’m sorry, Applejack.”

Twilight took a deep, shuddering breath, the wire cutting into her flesh and tearing away her fur and she tearfully spoke one final name, the name of the pony whose brilliant, kind, smiling face had almost restored hope to her horrifying situation:

“I’m so sorry, Hex.”

She passed out.

“Pinkie, how’re you holding up?” Hex asked in a kind, quiet voice. “Are you doing okay?”

“They’re... they’re going to kill her,” Pinkie murmured, at just about hearing level. “I-I just know it, they’re going to kill her!”

“I don’t know how many times I have to say I’m sorry!” Spike said again, tears once more brimming in his eyes. “If-if I had known what they were doing to her, I never would’ve made you do that! I never would have given you that drink; I’m sorry, Pinkie!”

“It-its okay, Spikey-Wikey,” said Pinkie, trying to sound like her ordinary, bubbly self, “you couldn’t have known.”

“Those BASTARDS!!!” Rainbow Dash shouted. “When I get my hooves on them I’m gonna tear them limb from limb! I’ll rip their manes off! I’ll tear their tails out! I’ll-”

“Ya’ve already said so a million times, Rainbow Dash,” Applejack pointed out. “Now Ah have to admit, Ah’d be lyin’ if Ah said Ah’m not just as ‘fraid as everypony else – Ah’m prayin’ inside that Twilight’s still alive – but shoutin’ and cryin’ ain’t helpin’ her! We just need to concentrate on trackin’ her down and findin’ her as soon as possible!”

“But-but I’m so worried!” said Fluttershy. “If this Deluminata is really as horrible as you say, how do you know she won’t do anything to us? I mean, if she really is so crazy, she could kill us all on the spot!”

“Darlings, I do not wish to sound heartless,” said Rarity, “but I do believe that you all need to simply calm down. There is no logical reason for us to be frightened right now.”

“What?!” Dash demanded. “Rarity, how can you be so cold? We have every reason to be scared! Twilight could be-”

“Dead, I know,” said Rarity, “but there is no point in dwelling on fantastical possibilities. Although I admit that her demise may not be so fantastical considering the circumstances, we simply cannot allow our imaginations get the better of us in this situation. The most that we can do right now is to remain calm and simply hope for the best.”

“I hate to say this Rarity, but you might be right. And anyway, I don’t think Twilight’s dead,” said Hex, “because if she was, we would have felt it. When I was travelling with Amber I learned that having friends is like adding to yourself, and if one of your friends is killed then it feels like part of you has been killed. Is everypony following me?”

“Well, duh!” said Pinkie. “You’re the one with the magic compass, how could we do anything else except-”

“He means, do we understand what he’s saying,” said Dash, “and yeah, I think we do.”

“Well, do any of you feel like a part of you has died?”

Everypony stopped and thought for a moment – even Hex, although he was the one who had asked the question in the first place. Eventually they all came to one conclusion:

“Um, not really.”

“Nope!”

“Nah.”

“I-I can’t say I have.”

“I don’t feel it.”

“And neither do I.”

“Exactly!” said Hex. “Either I’m lying desperately to myself about the gravity of this situation, or Twilight’s gonna be okay. Well, alive, at least.”

“Wait a second,” said Pinkie, whose mane and tail had regained a little of their curl, “this is the place where I saw... there’s a crack! A great big crack in the wall right over here, come and look!” She hurried a short way down the tunnel, and everypony saw that yes, there was a crack in the wall. It was long, but thin, and bent into a strangely grotesque shape – it looked almost as if the wall was giving them a little, dim green smile – and one member of the group (a certain brown unicorn) was a little bit worried that somewhere in the universe a TARDIS may have recently exploded.

He knelt down and looked through the crack, sighing in annoyance as everypony (and every dragon) piled up around him to get a good view.

On the other side was a massive chamber, more or less the size of the ballroom in Canterlot Castle. At the far end was a gigantic, dim-green glowing vat, which was partly filled by a liquid with a strange glue-like viscosity, which shone and shimmered with the same colour as Twilight’s magical aura.

“What is that stuff?” asked Spike. “It looks gross!”

“If I didn’t know any better,” said Hex, “I’d say it was magic. Raw magic in liquid form. And it’s the same colour as Twilight’s magical aura, so that must mean... holy smeg.”

“What?” said Dash. “That’s Twilight’s magic? But there’s loads of it! And that thing – it’s huge!”

“Still not worried fer Twilight?” Applejack asked the platinum mare beside her.

“That is not what I said,” said Rarity, “but... I must admit, poor Twilight’s chances are beginning to look increasingly slim.”

In front of the giant vat there stood a tall pony with a coat the colour of blood. Her mane and tail flowed with shades of red so dark they were bordering on black, and luckily, she had her back turned.

“That’s her,” said Hex. “That’s Deluminata. It must be.”

“That’s the pony I saw watching...” Pinkie trailed off, obviously terrified of finishing that sentence.

“As a humanoid she had freaky red eyes and hair the colour of blood,” said Hex. “I guess she has that as a pony as well.”

At that moment, the blood-coloured mare turned around and looked almost directly at the crack in the wall, and everypony quickly shied away in case they were sighted despite the size of the crack.

“What’s a humanoid?” asked Spike.

“Something that’s shaped like a human, but isn’t,” explained Hex.

“It’s something that’s shaped like a human, but isn’t shaped like a human?” Spike asked, obviously confused.

“No,” said Hex, “something that’s shaped like a human, but isn’t human.”

“Do you think she saw us?” asked Dash.

“I really, really hope she didn’t,” said Hex, “because if she did then we’re completely and totally boned.” He turned around and looked through the crack before saying “Nope, I don’t think she saw us. Let’s try to find a way in.”

“But-but Hex...”

“Yes, Pinkie?”

“What’re we gonna do if Twilight is dead?”

Once again, silence reigned in the tunnels, save for the occasional commands of the insane alicorn in the massive chamber.

“I... I don’t know,” said Hex. “If-if Twilight really did die, I-I’d be lost. I’d... I’d most likely- I’d probably feel how-how Rainbow Dash felt when Soarin’ left her and she didn’t-”

“Oh, you had to bring that up,” said Dash.

“It seemed like the most relevant thing, okay?” said Hex. “It’s just that- honestly, I- I don’t know what I’d do if- I’d probably die too. I’d... I’d rather die with her than live without her.” He sniffed, removed his glasses and wiped his eyes with a shivering hoof.

“My goodness,” said Rarity. “Hex, I knew you were a lot of things, but before today I never knew you could be so romantic.”

“There is a lot about me you don’t know,” said Hex. “Like for example, I don’t like the entire concept of Feng Shui, George Lucas, racism, sexism, stereotyping, homophobia, spiders, George Lucas, school, homework, schoolwork, George Lucas' ancestors, the Twilight Saga, Nazis, Twihards, brony haters, fan girls, all other kinds of superstitions besides Feng Shui, Kristen Stewart, cliché super villains, Vegemite flavour chips, the Beatles, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, bullies, bodybuilders, Stephanie Meyer, anyone even remotely related to George Lucas, that smegging Glee show, Adele, getting eaten, headcrabs, the Combine, Corruptors, mosquitoes, Combine mosquitoes, headcrab mosquitoes, Combine headcrab mosquitoes, technical screw ups, the cavemen responsible for George Lucas' ancestors, Endermen, Creepers, Kristen Stewart, people who walk really slowly in front of me and block the entire path, shoplifters, Chihuahuas, religious fanatics, conspiracy theorists, or the stereotype that all Australian people call everyone "Mate" and are obsessed with shrimps on barbeques and cricket.”

After a while Spike said, rather unnecessarily, “That was a long list.”

Hex nodded.

“And it’s always getting longer,” he said.

“Um... Hex?”

“Yeah, ‘Shy?”

“What’s that?”

She pointed at a hunched shape, which was slumped next to a wall further down the tunnel, barely illuminated by the light globes which hovered around the huddled group.

Hex reached up and tapped one of the buzzing balls of lightning, which started floating slowly towards the shape, which was sitting in the centre of a pool of dark, reddish liquid.

It was a pony.

“Holy smeg,” Hex swore.

“It can’t be!” Spike bit his claws fearfully, saying, “It’s not, it can’t be!”

The brown unicorn stood up, walked over to the unconscious pony, examined him/her, and bowed his head, tears running down his face.

“It’s her,” he reported. “It’s Twilight.”

“NO IT’S NOT!” Spike screamed as loud as his tiny lungs would let him. “It CAN’T BE! It CAN’T!!”

“Don’t believe me?” asked Hex. “Come and look for yourself.”

The baby dragon took a deep breath, walked over to his scientist friend, and looked where he was pointing at the unconscious pony’s flank.

There, almost invisible behind caked on layers of dirt and dried blood, was a magenta six pointed star, surrounded by five smaller sparkles, on a coat which was only just recognisable as pale purple.

“Is...” He tried to keep his composure, a task which was becoming increasingly difficult. “Is she...”

Hex reached out and felt her neck, and everypony held their breath as he waited.

“Smeg,” he finally said. “She’s alive.”

He held Twilight close, weeping helplessly while hugging her and stroking her mane.

“She’s alive,” he moaned. “She’s still alive!”

NEXT TIME: Holding Out for a Hero part 3

“Oh my gosh! She’s waking up!”

“We were all so worried.”

“We thought you were gonna die!”

“Hex? He was the first one down here?”

“Yeah. And you won’t believe what he told us...”

Author's Note: Just so everyone knows, I found this chapter almost impossible to write. Twilight is my favourite pony, and I felt horrible for writing this, so please know that I really, really regret it and cut me some slack. Please just let me know what you think in the comments. Again... I'm so sorry.

Chapter 14 - Holding Out for a Hero part 3

“...only three o’clock in the afternoon, so we’re not even getting close to sundown.”

“That’s a relief.”

“You know, Ah-Ah know this is gonna sound awful, but... Ah hope Twilight doesn’t wake up. Ah mean, she’s been through so much, and Ah don’t want her to remember what happened to her.”

“It’s okay. I gave her some industrial strength painkillers, so she wouldn’t be uncomfortable or anything. But I’ll tell you something right now: I do not want to know what they did to her. And another thing is that when (or if) she does wake up we can’t force her to tell us what happened to her. We have to let her tell us in her own time-”

“Oh my gosh! She’s waking up!”

“No, careful everypony, don’t crowd her. Give her space.”

Twilight felt... cleaner somehow. And she couldn’t feel any pain anymore. And even though she was tired – no, exhausted – in a way it was almost blissful. It was like a massive weight had been pulled off her shoulders. It was so... so amazingly relieving.

She felt a hoof gently stroking her mane out of her eyes and held it close, not wanting whoever it was to stop, and not wanting to let it go.

“Twilight?” asked a familiar, masculine voice with an unusual accent. “Can you hear me?”

She opened her eyes, and was met with the brightest, greenest ones she’d ever seen.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I can hear you.”

“Twilight, you’re okay!” She felt a tiny pair of scaly arms wrap around her neck and hug her close. “We thought you were gonna die!”

The purple unicorn weakly embraced her no. 1 assistant with a freshly bandaged foreleg, wishing with all her heart that she didn’t have to ever let him go again and that this moment could last forever, as a joyful tear worked its way down her cheek.

“I thought I was gonna die too,” she whispered.

She followed the terracotta hoof on her face to its owner, who slipped her a half hearted, lopsided smile. It was by a long shot the most welcome face she had ever seen.

As consciousness worked its way back into Twilight’s mind, she became aware that a majority of her body was wrapped in warm, comfortable bandages. And all of her friends were here with her. They had all come to help her, just as they had when she was facing down Nightmare Moon, and she knew, just as she had back then, that they weren’t going to abandon her.

“Are you okay?” asked Fluttershy. “We were all so worried.”

“I... I’m a lot better now that I know you guys are here,” said Twilight. “I just- I can’t believe you all came here to save me. Thank you.”

“’Course we came ta save ya!” said Applejack. “Ain’t we the first proper friends ya ever had? Give us one good reason why we’d just leave ya’ll here and forget ‘bout ya.”

Twilight managed a weak smile. Normally, at this point, she would have winced in pain, but astonishingly she couldn’t feel anything.

“I gave you some industrial strength painkillers I picked up in dimension 63, in case you’re wondering,” said Hex by way of explanation. “They’re the strongest painkillers in the multiverse. I guessed you would need some, seeing as when we found you, you were beaten up worse than an overused piñata and tied up with barbed wire.”

“And that was just so absolutely dreadful,” said Rarity. “Darling, your injuries were simply appalling! I am one hundred percent positive that if we had discovered you just a few minutes after that exact moment you would have most certainly perished.”

“I don’t know how to thank you guys,” Twilight said croakily. “You... you saved my life.”

“Well actually, it was this guy,” said Dash, pointing at Hex. “He’s the one that beat us to the punch. He was down here hours before we even knew you were gone.”

“Hex? He was the first one down here?”

“Yes,” said the brown unicorn, “and he’s also right here.”

“Yeah,” said Dash, “and you won’t believe what he told us-”

“I think we should focus on getting out of here,” said Hex, cutting off the spectral maned speedster. “Twilight, do you think you can walk?”

With his and Spike’s help, Twilight managed to lift herself onto her hooves, and took a few tentative steps, but her legs wobbled dangerously every time she put the slightest amount of weight on them and she came very close to collapsing like a pony-shaped sack full of jelly.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no you can’t’,” said Hex. “It’s okay, I can carry you.”

“Are you sure?” asked Twilight. “I wouldn’t want to-”

“It’s no trouble, really!” Hex insisted, and the purple pony found her body wrapped in a bright green aura as she was positioned lengthways on her brainiac friend’s back, and then they set off again.

“Twilight,” Pinkie spoke for the first time since announcing her friend’s awakening, “if you don’t mind me asking... where’s your horn?”

Obviously terrified of what she might find, Twilight reached up and felt her forehead, and was horrified when she could only feel a cracked and jagged stump just above the level of her coat.

“It broke,” she wept. “Deluminata, she drained my magic and it just-just shattered almost like it exploded or something, and then she said something about seeing her mother again and-”

“Remember, Twi,” said Hex, “you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

Twilight sniffed and wiped her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said, and she wrapped her hooves around his neck in as manageable a hug as she could from this slightly awkward position, from which she couldn’t see his blush.

“You’re welcome,” said Hex. “And let’s hope that Deluminata can’t bring back her mother, because she is considerably worse.”

“In what way?”

“She’s sane.”

“How is that worse?” asked Dash.

“Yeah!” said Pinkie. “Everypony knows that crazy ponies are oodles scarier than not-very-crazy-at-all ponies. All the bronies and pegasisters who saw the second-to-last episode of season one and the third episode of season two should know that.”

“I’m not even gonna- The problem with evil people when they’re sane is they’re more likely to know what they’re doing,” said Hex. “If they’re sane, then they’ll probably be better at planning things, and in the long run will turn out to be worse. If the bad guy’s nuts, then they’ll mostly act on impulse, and not really put together a very good plan. That’s probably why she... hurt you, Twilight.”

There was no response.

“Twilight? You okay?”

“I think she’s asleep,” said Fluttershy. And she was right: the young purple mare was now snoozing gently upon Hex’s back, snuggled unknowingly against his dragon leather jacket.

‘She’s so adorable,’ thought the teenage inventor, and he smiled quietly to himself.

“Why are you smiling?” asked Pinkie. “Did you think of a funny joke? Ooh, ooh, tell it! Tell it! Tell it! I bet it’s hilarious! Is it the one with the chicken that crossed the road? That one’s sooooooo funny! Or is it-”

“Pinkie, shush!” Hex whispered. “I’m just- I’m happy, alright? Twilight’s going to be okay, and we’re going to get out of here. And anyway, all the jokes I could tell wouldn’t be original, but I do admit that I know quite a few and they’re all pretty good.”

“Really? Tell one!”

“Okay then,” said Hex. “What looks like half a cat?”

“Oh! I know! It’s-” Pinkie stopped, and looked thoughtful for a moment, before saying, “Umm... I dunno. Do any of you guys know?”

“Can’t say,” said Applejack. “Nothin’ really comes ta mind.”

“I must say that the answer escapes me right now,” said Rarity.

“Um, I’m sorry,” said Fluttershy, “but I don’t know.”

“I’m not the dumbest pony in Equestria,” said Rainbow Dash, “but I haven’t got a clue. What about you, Spike?”

“Eh, I got nothin’,” Spike admitted.

“Seriously?” asked Hex. “None of you know what looks like half a cat? I have to say, I’m a bit disappointed.”

“Well, the rest of us don’t come from alternative universes!” said Dash. “Now tell us: what looks like half a cat?”

Hex smiled, almost evilly.

“You’re gonna be so smegged off that you didn’t guess it,” he said.

“Come on, then!” said Rarity. “Tell us!”

“Seriously,” said Hex, “you are all going to be sooo smegging angry when I tell you!”

“Oh for cryin’ out loud, would ya just tell us?” Applejack demanded. “What looks like half a cat?”

The terracotta scientist’s face split with a massive grin.

“The other half!” he said.

At this answer, virtually everypony slammed a hoof/claw into her/his face and groaned, except for Pinkie Pie, who being Pinkie Pie practically exploded with laughter.

All except for one particular pony, who hugged Hex close as if he were her old Smarty Pants doll.

“...and he says ‘I can see your house from up here’!”

This time, it worked, and everypony burst into raucous laughter, although it kinda ruined the moment when Pinkie finished laughing about four minutes after everypony else.

“Mmph...”

Everypony fell silent, and Hex looked to the pony he carried on his back.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” he said. “Have a nice nap?”

“Best I’ve ever had,” said Twilight. “Where are we now?”

“This is where we came in,” said Dash. “I’ll just fly up and let Soarin’ know we’re okay.” And with that she took off up the almost vertical tunnel, thankful to finally be able to stretch her wings.

How long was this shaft? It felt like ages before she finally surfaced, and enjoyed the feeling of the sun on her face, even though it took her quite a while to get used to the bright light after spending what felt like hours underground in dark tunnels. She rubbed her face, trying to get her eyes to start working properly again.

“Rainbow!”

Wait a minute. Was he-

“Rainbow, up here!”

She flew up to a cloud where her coltfriend was perched, a snoozing foal by his side, and when she reached him he pulled her into a tight hug.

“I’m so glad you’re safe!” he said. “I was so worried!”

“Soarin’,” said Dash, “have you been waiting here the whole time I’ve been down there?”

“Of course!” he said. “I didn’t want to move too far while this one was asleep.”

“How is he, anyway?” Rather than picking him up, Rainbow Dash simply scooped up the portion of cloud that Lightning Strike was snoozing on so that she didn’t wake him up. It was like an extremely fluffy blanket.

“Would you believe me if I told you he’s been asleep the entire time you’ve been gone?” asked Soarin’. “He’s inherited your laziness. Anyway, did you find Twilight?”

“We did, but she’s in a pretty bad shape – she can hardly even walk,” Dash explained. “Normally I would ask for help getting her out, but... what is it?”

Then she heard it: the panicked panting of a pale yellow pegasus (try saying that ten times fast) as she hurriedly flew up to them.

“Fluttershy?” asked Dash. “What’s wrong?”

“Twilight!” the animal carer cried. “She just disappeared! She didn’t run away or teleport or anything, she just vanished into thin air!”

Slowly, as if terrified of what they might find, the three pegasi turned and looked down at the cave, which was still as pitch black as it had been the first time they had found it.

“What the hay’s going on down there?” asked Dash in a frightened voice.

Back here again?

She had been returned to the giant chamber with the enormous vat of liquid magic, only this time she had landed teetering dangerously on the edge of the glass container, and came frighteningly close to falling in.

Twilight had misinterpreted how thick this glass was: it was wide enough for her to stand comfortably with little or no danger of falling off, but unfortunately the same was true for the insane alicorn who faced her on the other side of the gargantuan vat.

“Shame,” said Deluminata, “I was rather hoping you would fall in.”

“But why?” Twilight knew that the alicorn was insane, and therefore completely beyond reason, but she had to try, right? “Why did you drain my magic? Why do you need unicorn magic to bring your mother back? Surely there has to be some other way.”

“But there isn’t!” Deluminata cried ecstatically, and she telekinetically yanked Twilight across the width of the vat, and held her almost nose to nose. “This universe has the highest concentration of magical power in living beings in the entire multiverse! They don’t even have this much power in little Haydie’s dimension, and in that place there are people – there are people all over the multiverse in fact – who have been touched by the gods. The GODS! And they don’t even come close to the amount of magic in this world. And you, Twilight Sparkle...”

Suddenly she twisted around and bucked Twilight in the chest, sending her sailing across the mouth of the gigantic cylinder and crashing into the edge of the wall of the far side, and she quickly twisted around and scrabbled at the ledge, trying to find some grip. Needless to say she was tremendously relieved when she was able to hoist herself up, but by the feel of things she definitely had a rib or two broken. That had been one hard buck. Surely not even Big Macintosh could pull off a kick that solid.

“The Goddess of the Sun was impressed with your raw magical ability,” said Deluminata, and she started to walk around the rim of the vat towards Twilight, who kept trying and failing to pull herself to her hooves. “The Goddess of the SUN!! I mean, for crying out loud, I didn’t know whether to be alarmed or disappointed, because rather than being impressed that mare should have been scared out of her horseshoes. You have the kind of power that could easily tear this whole multiverse asunder. Or should I say... had!” This launched her into yet another bout of maniacal laughter.

It was at this moment that Twilight realised; there was no way out of this. She was trapped on either side by a deadly plunge to certain doom – one into a shallow pool of her own magic, which considering how concentrated it was would surely kill her – and the other to a solid stone floor.

And she was being approached from behind by the most terrifying thing in the entire multiverse. There was no doubt about it.

She was going to die.

“But I don’t get this,” said Deluminata. “Why don’t you just wave your magic little horn and make everything alright? Oh, that’s right, you don’t have one anymore!”

“No...” Twilight moaned weakly – she felt like maybe a lung was collapsing, “please... no...”

“What’s the matter?” asked Deluminata, and she sounded horribly close. “Is the little pony scared?” She punctuated the word ‘scared’ with a stamp on Twilight’s hind leg, and the purple pony was once more gripped with paroxysms of pain as she felt the bones shatter. She gritted her teeth, but refrained from screaming.

“No, it’s okay,” said the alicorn in a voice tainted with counterfeit friendliness, “you can scream all you like. Not even my little buddies will be able to hear you. They aren’t here anymore. Haven’t you noticed that the magic level in this thing has gone up?”

There was a pregnant pause, during which Twilight ground her teeth in an effort not to give Deluminata the scream she so obviously wanted.

“Fine then, don’t look,” said the blood-coloured mare. “If you had looked, you would have seen eight rather ugly splats of black in that pool of purple, which used to be rather pretty.” She bent down until she was once again nose to nose with the agonized purple pony.

“Just like your eyes,” she stated. “And your eyes are beautiful.”

She pushed Twilight towards the edge, and Twilight could only hold on by her hooves to prevent herself from falling into the concentrated magic.

“Please...” she wept, “let me go!”

“Are you sure?” said Deluminata. “It’s a very long way down – far too long for a pony such as you to survive. But you know... that’s rather what I’m counting on.” She stamped on Twilight’s left hoof, and the purple pony yelped and pulled it away.

“The fact is, Little Miss Purple, is I’m not sure I got all of your magic,” Deluminata continued as she raised her hoof for the final blow. “And do you know what that means? It means you’re too powerful to live!”

And rather than slamming her hoof onto Twilight’s, as the student had expected, the alicorn smashed into her forehead, exactly where her horn had been. This momentarily stunned her, and sent her plunging into the purple liquid below. There should have been some kind of splash, or an explosion as she fell beneath the surface.

Instead, it merely went gloop.

Deluminata stood there and watched the gently bubbling mixture for a moment. Then she leapt off the edge of the vat and gently flew down to the solid stone floor, before striding confidently away.

Today, Twilight Sparkle.

Tomorrow, the world.

But... wait a minute.

Behind her, the purple mixture had started to throb with deep pink light. It had been gently glowing before, contrasting with the dim green of the vat itself, but now it was as bright as the moon, and growing brighter all the time.

You may find it comforting to know that in the last few seconds of her life, Deluminata regretted everything and may have been bordering on sanity.

Then she drowned in magic.

A third pony, this one a bespectacled brown unicorn with extraordinarily green eyes and an electric cutie mark, was galloping frantically through the stone tunnels.

‘They really should be collapsing or something,’ thought Hex as he ran. ‘Just to add to the drama. If this was dimension 2 this place would totally be collapsing – but then again, I could just ride out on my giant flying motorbike and there wouldn’t be any problems.’

‘Grrrr, FOCUS! Got to find that bloody crack!’

He checked his compass again, and it pointed left: straight at a solid wall. So he kept running until he found a left turn, and then turned left again, and finally he found the crack he was looking for. He looked through it and saw...

...nothing.

Even the gargantuan vat was gone.

“But-but how?!” he thought out loud. “There’s nothing in there- but- what- where could she have-”

He became aware of a purple glow behind him and slowly, dreading what he was going to see, he turned around, and his jaw almost hit the floor.

Standing before him was Twilight Sparkle. One of her hind legs was bent at an impossible angle for it not to be broken, and she was covered in small cuts which made it look like her skin had been stretched and she had almost exploded. Plus, she was drenched from head to hoof in the same thick purple liquid which had been in the vat. Her eyes were glowing pure, blindingly white, and protruding from her forehead was a wispy white spire, like the ghost of a horn.

“Holy smeg,” Hex swore.

The purple pony closed her eyes and bowed her head, the light from her forehead growing brighter and brighter all the time...

...and suddenly they were outside, at the base of the mountain, surrounded by their friends.

Slowly, they lowered their respective hooves/claws away from their respective faces and stared in shock and horror at the horribly injured young mare that now stood before them, whose strength then failed her and she would have fallen to the ground had a certain multicolour-maned pegasus not zoomed forward and caught her in the nick of time.

“Oh my gosh,” Rainbow Dash whispered, “oh my gosh, oh my gosh!”

“Is she...” Spike trailed off, unable to bring himself to say the word, while Hex galloped forward and pulled Twilight out of Dash’s hooves.

“Smegging hell,” he swore. “She’s hurt. Badly. We need to get her back to Ponyville right now. And I need somepony to go up to my shop and get something for me.”

“What do you need?” asked Dash.

“When you go up there, you’ll find some tubes of glowing green stuff, and I need you to bring me one of them.” At that, and still holding her son, the weather girl whizzed towards the summit of the mountain.

“Hang on a sec,” said Soarin’. “Since when were you the boss?”

That might have been the wrong thing to say. For the second time in his life, the young stallion found himself nose to nose with the enraged brown unicorn.

“Since I was the only pony with the technology that could save Twilight’s life,” said Hex. “OKAY?!?”

“Okay!” Soarin’ squeaked weakly.

Hex didn’t say anything else except “Follow me!” before he turned and started galloping in the direction of Ponyville, and more specifically the library. By the time he got there he was obviously exhausted, but still had the strength to carry Twilight upstairs and lay her on her bed, while everypony else waited in the main library area. When Dash arrived with the green vial, the brown unicorn took it without a word, and smeared the substance on Twilight’s forehead where her horn used to be.

After that, he just waited. There was nothing else he could do.

There had been less tension in the library when Rainbow Dash had been giving birth to Lightning Strike. At least then there had been some sound. Right now, there was nothing.

As Dash had said earlier that day, ‘silence in the library.’

Well, not quite.

Spike was hugging Pinkie Pie, whose mane and tail had deflated again, and silent tears ran down her cheeks. Applejack was comforting a gently sobbing Fluttershy, and the Rainbow Dash family was huddled together, Lightning Strike still snoozing gently.

They all looked up when a stranger entered the library. She was a young unicorn mare with a coat of pink tinged with gold, and a long sheath of pinkish-purple mane, held back by a black headband with some kind of gold writing on it, which contrasted with a tail which was short, scruffy and black, with streaks of pink, blue, orange, green and purple. She wore a golden vest trimmed with something fluffy and white – her cutie mark was a pair of shining crossed knives – and she surveyed the room with brilliant blue eyes.

She was beautiful.

“I’m searching for Hex,” she said. “Do any of you know where he is?”

Applejack indicated the upstairs with a nod of her head, and the young mare walked past and disappeared.

“Who was that?” asked Dash.

“Ah dunno,” said Applejack, “but she obviously knows Hex. Whoever it was, she ain’t got no ack-cent. Strange thing if ever Ah heard it.”

Upstairs, Hex heard the hoofsteps and felt the newcomer sitting down beside him, but he didn’t need to look or ask who it was. He already knew.

“Hi Zeph,” he whispered with a cracked voice, “how’ve you been?”

“Not too bad,” said the newcomer. “Just came to see how you were doing.” Her sapphire eyes fell upon the unconscious young pony in the bed.

“Who’s this?” she asked.

“Just a friend,” said Hex, “although...”

“You wish she were more than that?”

“Yeah.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment, the pony addressed as ‘Zeph’ trying to work out what to say in order to not sound like an absolute bitch.

“I remember when I first met Justin,” she said. “I thought he was gonna be like every other guy who tried to win me over: arrogant, self centred, and basically obsessed with only picking me up because of my looks-”

“-and then it turned out that he was actually a really nice guy,” said Hex, “who’d had a whole load of not so nice things happen to him. How is he doing, Zephyr? How is everyone?”

“Not too bad,” said Zephyr. “Y’know, recovering. But it looks like Deluminata made a comeback.”

“Just when we thought we’d locked her in the Land of the Dead forever,” said Hex. “ Guess you can’t keep a bad guy down, eh? She drained Twilight’s magic – that’s this one’s name, Twilight Sparkle-”

“What? Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“That’s hilarious!” Zephyr exclaimed, but when Hex gave her an incriminating glare she said “Sorry.”

“She drained her magic and tried to kill her,” said the scientist, “and if it hadn’t been for us – me and the ponies you saw downstairs – she would have definitely succeeded. And Twilight, she-she would never have known...” He sniffed and wiped his eyes, and found himself pulled into a hug.

“She would never have known you loved her,” Zephyr finished for him. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

Hex nodded weakly.

“If I were any other person I’d say that you were being unbelievably sappy,” said his friend, “but I’m not any other person, and I’m definitely not that heartless. On the contrary, I have two.”

Despite himself, the brown unicorn smiled.

“I know,” he said. “I was with you for about three years. You were the best friend I ever had.”

“Were?”

“Alright, you are the best friend I’ve ever had.” He pulled himself out of her hooves.

“Why are you here, Zephyr?” he asked. “What did you come here for?”

“To make sure you were doing okay,” said Zephyr. “Don’t you remember? I said I’d come and check on you after eighteen months. How could the biggest nerd in the multiverse possibly forget that?”

“How many times?” said Hex. “I. Am. Not. A. Nerd!”

“You do know I only call you that to see the look on your face, right?”

“Well don’t!”

After a moment of giggling, the two unicorns snapped back into the moment, and eyed the comatose Twilight carefully.

“I won’t get involved this time,” said Zephyr. “I’d have to be a complete idiot if I didn’t know this was personal. Deluminata tried to kill the girl you loved, and you’re going to deal with it yourself.”

“Too right,” said Hex, and they embraced again.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut this short,” said Zephyr. “Dimension 1 isn’t gonna take care of itself.”

“Fair enough,” said Hex, and the pink mare stood up and started to glow at the tip of her horn.

“It was nice to see you, Haydon,” she said.

He waved to her as she vanished, and she did the same.

“Same to you, Amber,” he said to the air.

Everypony looked up as the brown unicorn descended the stairs, looking considerably more relieved than he had when he had gone up. Nopony asked what was on their collective minds – the situation seemed far too serious for that.

“I did what I could,” said Hex. “She’s in a coma, but I think she might just make it.”

Still, nopony said anything, but Pinkie summed it up rather nicely by running over to him and hugging him tightly, and he did nothing but hug her back. And the way he breathed... there was no doubt that he too was on the verge of tears.

It was warm. Wonderfully warm. And comfortable.

Was this what death was like?

Was this heaven? Or was it hell, leading her into a false sense of security before bringing her confidence crashing down?

It felt like she was in a bed. A comfy bed, just like her one at the library. And... and she wasn’t alone.

She opened her eyes.

In front of her, relief sparkling in his brilliant green eyes, was a terracotta brown unicorn with an unbelievably messy mane and a coating of several day’s worth of stubble on his cheeks and chin.

But... how?

Then she remembered: the vat, the alicorn, the massive drop into her own concentrated power...

She tried to leap up, to run away, to escape from this world which was so against her, but gentle hooves pressed her down into her bed and hushed her into silence.

“Careful,” said Hex. “Week-long comas can make a pony kinda stiff. Nanites can only do so much.”

Even though her instincts told her to flee for the stars, Twilight laid back in her bed and tried to get comfortable again, but it was to no avail. All she could think about was the events that had transpired underneath that mountain.

“I’m sorry,” said Hex. “I’m so sorry!”

With emotions overwhelming her mind like a tidal wave, Twilight threw her hooves around her friend and helplessly wept as for the first time in her life, she felt completely and totally lost.

NEXT TIME: Holding Out for a Hero part 4

“I really thought I was going to die down there.”

“But-but why? Why would anypony do something like that?”

“I don’t know! I just- I don’t know!”

“If she can’t get her power under control, she’ll tear herself apart!”

“Could you... sing for me?”

“When she was just a girl...”

Author's Note: Again, this chapter was extremely difficult to write. I have never been in a situation similar to this, neither do I know anyone who has, so how are you supposed to convey emotions such as these?

Here's a little contest for you: the next chapter is going to feature another song by the silken voiced Hex. See if you can figure out what it is before the time comes. Not too long to go now, just hang in there, 'coz we're almost at the end of the story!

And you guys are gonna love what I've got planned for a sequel...

Chapter 15 - Holding Out for a Hero part 4

“Twilight?”

The young purple mare slowly pulled the bedcovers away from her face to reveal her violet eyes, almost as if she was afraid that the small lizard in front of her was about to bite or otherwise attack her.

“I- we just thought we should tell you-” Spike began.

“You’ve got visitors,” said Hex. “We told them – or tried to tell them – that you weren’t really in a fit state to see anypony, but they were rather, shall we say, insistent.”

“Would you like to see them?” asked Spike.

Twilight didn’t say anything: she simply nodded.

“Okay,” said Hex. “We’ll be downstairs if you need anything.” He led the purple dragon out of the room, and soon Twilight found her vision filled by three pegasi, two large and one incredibly small, and all in shades of blue.

“Hi Twilight,” said Rainbow Dash. “How are you?”

“Rainbow told me about what happened down there,” said Soarin’. “We came to see how you were doing, although to look at you, I’d say you weren’t doing all that well.”

“Soarin’!” Dash gave him a punch on the shoulder.

“What? It’s true!” Soarin’ pointed out. “Wait, Lightning, what are you...?”

Without a word (which was possibly because he hadn’t progressed beyond incoherent babbling yet) the tiny colt climbed onto the bed and looked at Twilight’s face, before walking over to her and giving her a hug – well, as much of a hug as he could when he was only a little larger than her head.

She hugged him back, and once again Dash and Soarin’ exchanged a look which illustrated their thoughts: this was completely beyond them.

It had been exactly one week since Twilight had woken up, and a full fortnight since the incident under the mountain.

Hex had tried to assure himself that she would be alright, but after the second day of doing nothing but strumming his guitar and trying to focus on his GLaDOS, he agreed to stay in the library and help Spike care for Twilight until she was able to function on her own again.

But so far, she was showing no signs of heading that way. Since she had come out of her coma she had yet to complete a full night’s sleep without some kind of terrible nightmare, or say more than a sentence’s worth of words to anypony, or even eat a proper meal’s worth of food. She had become almost a complete vegetable, barely able to look after herself or even move from her bed – if she did move from her bed it was most likely to curl up and cry in the shower, which was something she sincerely hoped Spike and Hex didn’t know about – and with the loss of her horn she had never been more vulnerable in her entire life.

Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, easily the most sensitive of the Element bearers, had found themselves unable to see their friend in such a terrible state, so Applejack had volunteered to take them on a little excursion to Appleloosa, a place she had apparently been meaning to revisit for quite some time.

Rarity had wanted to go as well, but for quite different reasons which involved a little crush and a lot of denial on both her and Spike's behalf.

Soarin’ had finally moved in with Rainbow Dash, and the two now lived with Lightning Strike in Dash’s cloud house. Dash had resumed her job at weather control, Soarin’ had resumed contact with his friends in the Wonderbolts, despite showing absolutely no signs of rejoining their ranks – everything was going swimmingly for the young family.

But even so, for everypony it was next to impossible to believe that something so horrible had happened practically on their doorstep, and to one of their best friends. It was beyond thought, and yet none of them could get it out of their heads.

One in particular – a certain bespectacled unicorn – had been acting rather strangely of late. It was almost like he’d had more than his fair share of experience with this kind of thing.

“I saw it all the time when I was travelling the multiverse with Amber,” he explained to Spike after the pegasi had gone. “There were worlds where society had taken an arrow to both knees, and girls of all ages were used like-like- I don’t even wanna talk about it.”

“You keep talking about this Amber girl,” said Spike, “but you’ve never actually told anypony what she’s like.”

Hex sat down and leaned casually against a bookcase.

“She was... indescribably brilliant,” he said. “She was like all our friends rolled into one: she was honest (sometimes to the point of it being brutal), completely loyal, absolutely and unbelievably beautiful, cared a lot about things that didn’t want to kill her – even though that made it a rather small list – knew everything there was to know about the multiverse, incredibly energetic and... let’s just say, if you weren’t listening to what she was talking about you had a better chance of staying on topic because she would come out with some of the randomest smeg I have ever heard in my life.”

Spike scratched his head with an eyebrow raised in confusion.

“Seriously,” Hex continued, “I remember when we were in a spaceship which was dangerously low on power and could fall out of the sky at any moment, and she asked me how many Batman villains there were. I think there was the Joker, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, the Riddler, Rha’s Al Ghul, the Penguin, Two-Face, Catwoman – although she was more of an antihero – Scarecrow, Carmine Falcone, Mr Freeze, the Black Mask, Bane and the Red Hood, although those are the only ones I can come up with off the top of my head, and the Red Hood wasn’t originally a bad guy. Y’know, come to think of it, it’s a wonder Batman has any time off considering how many baddies he has to fight on a daily basis. No wonder he’s always so angsty, I mean-”

“Hex, you’re getting a little off track.”

“Sorry, sorry. That’s the most interesting thing about Amber: she was contagious.”

“What? Contagious?!” The baby dragon scrambled away from his unicorn friend with a cry of “Ewwww!”

“No, no, no!” said Hex, laughing at Spike’s plight. “I don’t mean she was sick or anything, I mean- smeg, how can I put this? You know how if you hang around somepony with a really strong accent, like Applejack or Rarity, you actually start to pick up on it?”

Spike nodded, interest piqued.

“Amber was kinda like that,” the brown unicorn explained, “but it was more than just the voice, it was... everything. In the first couple of weeks I was with her she completely changed my view of the world as I knew it. I started to see it like she did: massive, beautiful, exciting. And I really, really wanted to be part of it. But I also saw the dark sides as well, the parts which were like dreams come true.”

“Dreams come true? That doesn’t sound so b-”

“The kind of dreams where upon waking up, you never want to sleep again in case it continues.”

Spike’s face became one of apprehension and horror. He understood perfectly – he’d had a fair few of those dreams in his lifetime – one particularly nasty one involved a giant cabbage and some sort of whirring knife thingy. Another had included some kind of mud and everything turning blue, and in yet another he had been (prepare yourselves, this is gonna be nasty) middle aged. Yuck!

But by far the weirdest dream he’d ever had was when he was some odd creature called a vampire, shaped like a tall almost-hairless ape with a short blonde mane which was always slicked back, whose “look” had been stolen by a famous musician – Willy Eyeball or something. Curiously enough he was always in some kind of rivalry with another tall almost-hairless ape vampire thing with dark hair with the same name as Fluttershy’s pet bunny, but Spike didn’t want to go into too much detail because a) he didn’t really like Angel and b) the dream was too weird to think about for an extended period of time. Plus, it was almost completely unrelated.

“Look,” said Hex, “the point is that I perfectly understand how Twilight’s feeling. She’s feeling like she’s alone, completely and totally alone, like if she ever told anypony what happened they’d push her away for allowing it to happen. She feels like nopony can help her, no matter how hard they try...” He paused, wiped his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing.

“And it’s eating her up,” he said. “It’s killing her inside. She feels like she might never be happy again, like her entire life has been ripped out of her hooves, ground into dust and tipped into the sea right in front of her eyes. And there’s... and there’s nothing, nothing, she can do about it. Nothing.”

By now, both he and Spike were holding back tears, and knew they couldn’t keep it up for long.

“But-but why?” asked the little dragon. “Why would anypony do something like that? How could anypony make Twilight feel that way? How-how could anypony- Twilight’s incredible! She’s the best pony I’ve ever known, she’s like a sister to me! How could anypony just take her life and-and just destroy it? Like it was nothing? She means everything to me! EVERYTHING!!”

“I don’t know!” said Hex. “I just- I don’t know! People like Deluminata, ponies or not – they don’t care how they make others feel. You try to reason with them, and what does it get you? I’ll tell you: a big nothing! They’re like sponges; they take, take, take and drain others of their love and emotion. And you know what? There’s no way to stop it until after it’s happened. And I hate that! I hate it with all my heart, do you hear me? I HATE IT!!”

By now he was standing up, practically screaming at Spike, before realising his mistake (i.e. terrifying the poor kid) and sitting back down on his haunches.

“Oh, come here.”

And at that, the baby dragon gratefully ran into the brown unicorn’s open hooves, and the two of them sat weeping helplessly in the library for smeg knows how long. All they knew was that by the time they were spent, Celestia’s sun was dipping below one side of the horizon, and Luna’s moon was cresting the other.

“You know,” said Spike, “you could probably take a break. Go back to your shop for a bit. I *sniff* I could probably look after Twilight by myself.”

“You’re kidding, right?” said an incredulous Hex. “I told you before, Spike, and I’ll tell you again that there is no possible way you’ll get me to leave Twilight until she’s in a fit mental-”

“I know, I know!” Spike interrupted. “It’s just- you’re always doing things for everypony. You pushed alien invaders out of Equestria single-hoofedly, and helped Twilight when you were in the same world those aliens come from. You even helped deliver Rainbow Dash’s kid, for crying out loud! When was the last time somepony did something for you?”

There was a pause as Hex tried to work out how to not sound ungrateful.

“Wow,” he said. “You know, that is incredibly thoughtful of you, Spike. I’ve met a lot of dragons, but I think out of all of them you might just be the nicest.”

“Oh, come on!” said Spike bashfully, and then added. “I said come on.”

“Don’t push your luck,” said Hex with a smile as he stood up. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should take a little time off. But if anything goes on with Twilight, and I mean anything, you let me know, okay?”

Spike raised a stiff claw to his forehead with a determined smile on his face.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Hex, and he copied the salute, albeit with a lot more (and taking a rather confusingly long time) swirling of his hoof. “I’ll be in the shop if you need me. Got a lot to catch up on, you know.”

What Hex had neglected to tell Spike was exactly what he had a lot of to catch up on. And that...

...was sleep.

In the time that Twilight had been unconscious, he had not even dared to close his eyes in case she came round. He had lived on a diet of apples, crackers and the occasional can of Red Bull, which he would shove out of sight if Pinkie ever came in. Smeg knows what would happen if she got her hooves on some of that stuff ever again.

The duration of the past week had also been rather short on rest. He had yet to complete a full night’s sleep without Twilight waking up from some terrible nightmare and needing to be calmed before her control over her magic was completely lost.

But when he did sleep, he would dream about her.

He considered himself lucky that he had “borrowed” some blueprints for a dream recorder in the same world where he had picked up the word ‘smeg’ because these were the kinds of dreams where he never wanted to wake up.

There was a good chance he would dream about her again tonight, so he placed the metal ring around his head, connected up all the appropriate wires, turned the monitor on and lay down in his hammock.

Oh, of course!

He forgot the music.

So he tipped himself out of his hammock and landed with a small clop on the stone floor. Upon reaching the stereo, he instead turned his attention to the tall stack of CDs which stood next to it.

“LMFFO? Nah, too disco-ey,” he thought out loud. “New Foals on the Block? Who put that there? My Magical Romance? Not really in the mood for the Black Parade or the Bringjoys right now. Hmm... Think I might use this one.”

He took out a box marked ‘PRINCESS’, with a picture of a stallion on the front with the most epic moustache he had ever seen, and inserted the silver disk into the stereo before pressing the play button and relaxing in his hammock as the lyrics started wafting through the shop. He even sand along a little.

“Pressure,” he muttered, “pressing down on me, pressing down on you, no mare has more. Under pressure that tears a nation down, splits a family in two, puts ponies on streets...”

Screw sleep. As the chorus came closer he ripped off the dream recording headset, leapt out of his hammock and whipped out the air guitar.

“IT’S THE TERROR OF KNOWING WHAT THIS WORLD IS ABOUT,” he yelled, “watching some good friends screaming LET ME OUT!! Tomorrow gets me higher. Pressure on ponies, ponies on streets...”

He lowered his head, tapping his hoof in time to the bass riff.

“Jumpin’ around, keep my brains on the floor, these are the days it never rains but it pours...”

Dear sweet smegging Celestia this song was awesome!

“IT’S THE TERROR OF KNOWING WHAT THIS WORLD IS ABOUT,” he yelled again, louder this time, “watching some good friends screaming LET ME OUT!! Tomorrow gets me high, high, HIGH...”

Upon the final cry of the word ‘high’ Hex raised his front hooves into the air and stood on his hind legs. Unable to balance, he fell forward onto the stone floor and started snoring. He had fallen asleep in mid song.

He was woken up a few hours later by a frantic beeping.

“Owww,” he moaned. “Nice idea falling asleep on the stone floor, Hex. You must study under... oh smeg, what now?”

The teleporter was bleeping: obviously somepony wanted to come through. He got to his hooves, staggered a few paces forward, and fell flat on his face just short of the gate. Then he got up again and fell over.

Following this failure, Hex just reached up and turned the teleporter on, and was almost blinded by the whitish-blue light which lit up the shop like a lightning bolt. For a few seconds nothing came through, and he reached for the off switch, but it flickered for a moment and...

“Spike?” said the scientist. “What’s wrong?”

“I was wrong, that’s what!” cried the baby dragon. “I thought I could handle Twilight on my own, but she’s having a nightmare and I can’t get her to calm down! If she can’t get her power under control, she’ll tear herself apart!”

Hex turned his horrified gaze to the teleporter, and jumped through just as it closed, landing on the dusty ground outside the library. The building’s windows were ablaze with white light, tinted purple, mostly emanating from the upper floor. Without a second thought he galloped inside, one hoof held over his eyes, and made his way upstairs.

Twilight was laying on her bed, convulsing in a foetal position, her eyes wide open and glowing with pure whiteness as they had when she had taken Hex out of the tunnels under the mountain. The bed sheets were wrapped around her body – smeg knows what was going on in that dream of hers because of that.

The brown unicorn galloped up towards her, forcing his way through the magical field, until finally he was close enough to touch her.

“TWILIGHT!” he screamed. “YOU HAVE TO CALM DOWN!”

She couldn’t hear him over her massive amounts of fear. Straining with all his might, Hex pulled himself towards the bed and ripped the sheets away from her, and she seemed to settle a little now that her limbs were free – at least, the fiery glow died down a little – but then she started thrashing around wildly.

So instead, Hex pulled himself towards her, grabbed her by the shoulders and pressed his horn to her forehead.

Within seconds, he had entered her mind, and by smeg was it a mess. It was like a Jackson Pollock painting had been put in a washing machine on Spin. He searched around until he found what he was looking for: her emotions.

She was scared beyond belief, which naturally went without saying, but...

Ashamed?

Twilight was ashamed? It looked like- it almost looked as if she blamed herself for what happened. She... she blamed herself for getting kidnapped, tortured, brutally beaten and having her magic drained. And worst of all, she blamed herself for being a burden to her friends. Hex could see that she was afraid of opening up about what happened in case they worried about her even more than they already were. She was killing herself in there, for crying out loud!

“I’m sorry,” Hex whispered, “but this is going to hurt.”

When Twilight woke up, it was to a pounding headache.

She thought back to the horrible dream. She had been in the chamber under the mountain, Deluminata standing over her and laughing as her cronies closed in, but then...

Then something had happened.

“Twilight?”

She looked into the eyes of the pony who had suddenly appeared in her room, and she could see that they were filled with horror, sadness, and above all, understanding.

He... he knew. She could- she could tell him.

“It’s okay,” he said as he embraced her, “you can tell me, it’s okay.” He rubbed the back of her head in a wonderfully comforting fashion, and she placed her hooves around him and drew him close, not wanting to let go.

"I..." she said quietly, "I've-I've never felt so lonely in my life. I thought... I really thought that-that I was going to die down there."

Hex said nothing. He simply held her closer and softly stroked her sweat soaked indigo mane.

"And I thought-" She sniffed and wiped her nose with a hoof. "I thought, what if you didn't find me? What if nopony came for me and I was just abandoned here? Or worse, what if-what if they caught you too?"

"It's okay," Hex said quietly to the despairing unicorn. "I promise, they are never going to hurt you again."

Twilight sat up straight and looked into her terracotta companion's brilliant green eyes.

"You really believe that?" she asked. "Because what if they come back? What if-"

"What if my coat were pink polka dots?" Hex asked meaningfully. "Listen to me, Twilight Sparkle, when I tell you that neither Deluminata nor any of her minions are ever going to hurt you ever again."

"But if-"

"She's gone, Twilight. And if anypony else wanted to hurt you, they couldn't, because..."

He trailed off.

"Because what?"

Hex looked thoughtful, almost nervous for a moment before he spoke in a voice which bore complete conviction and total confidence:

"Because I. Won't. Let them."

The lavender unicorn saw her reflection in those vivid green orbs, and suddenly it hit her like a ton of bricks.

'He knows,' she thought. 'He knows how I feel about him. The way he's looking at me... there's no doubt about it. I mean, I've read about ponies feeling like this but-but I never thought I would feel this way.

'Does he... Does he feel the same way about me? As I do about him?'

'Does he... love me?'

The building tsunami of emotions overtook her mind, and she collapsed, sobbing once more, into Hex's waiting hooves, and he seemed more than willing to receive her.

She thought back to the time she and her friends had spent the night in his shop. When she had walked in on him, playing a guitar and creating the sweetest song she had ever heard.

"Hex," she said quietly, "could you..."

"Yes?"

Twilight was quiet for a moment.

"You'll think I'm stupid," she said.

"Twilight, you have an entire library's worth of knowledge stowed away in that head of yours," said Hex. "You're practically the complete opposite of stupid."

Well, it's now or never, Twilight thought to herself.

"Could you... sing for me?"

Hex stared at her.

"I'm sorry," she said quickly, "I know, it was a stupid idea-"

"I don't know why you'd think that," said Hex. "You know I would do anything for you."

Do anything for you. Twilight rolled the words wistfully around inside her head. There was something about the way he said it...

Then he began.

"When she was just a girl
She expected the world
But if flew away from her reach
So she ran away in her sleep..."

Twilight listened. She recognized the tune: it was the one he had played on his guitar early on in their relationship. When she had first experienced that feeling of trust and security. It felt almost like the song was meant for her. The tune was indescribable in its beauty, and the lyrics entered her mind and seemed to be describing exactly how she felt at that very moment.

Dreams of paradise...

Less than four minutes later, it was over. Hex breathed out slowly and carefully, so as not to disturb the now peacefully slumbering unicorn who lay in his hooves. He had never seen anything so adorable in his life.

'She knows,' he thought. 'She knows how I feel about her. The way she looked at me... there's no doubt about it. I mean, I've heard about people feeling like this, but I never actually thought I would feel this way.'

'Does she... Does she feel the same way about me? As I do about her?'

'Does she... love me?'

He thought back to when he'd first felt this way. The first time he had experienced this feeling of trust and security when she was around. It had been Nightmare Night, hadn't it? When he had admired her costume? No, it was that night they had all spent at his shop...

Come to think of it, he couldn't remember when he'd first started feeling this way. It felt almost like he'd loved her from the moment they'd first met.

Carefully, so as not to disturb her, he laid her down on the mattress and rested her head upon the pillow. He considered leaving, and going back to his shop via the teleport gate, but he ran the risk of waking her up. And if there was one thing Twilight Sparkle needed right now, it was a companion. Spike was presumably still in the shop, and he wouldn't know how to work the teleport gates (which was why Hex had installed the bleeper thingy in the first place).

So instead, the equine scientist gently lay down next to the young mare who was the object of his heart's desire, hooves still wrapped around her torso, and levitated the quilt over them both.

But before he did, he planted a small kiss on her forehead, just below her fractured horn.

And as he lay down to join her, Hex could have sworn he saw her smile.

Ten hours later...

This was it. This was the moment he had been waiting for.

It had taken so long – oh, so long – and now, at last, it was finished. Finally finished!

His own GLaDOS!

All he had to do know was to press the button and turn it on. Sweet, sweet victory!

“Hey Hex!”

He almost leapt out of his skin.

“Oh my gosh, sorry!” said Twilight. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” said Hex, “yeah, I’m fine, you just made me jump. What’re- How did you get up here without-?”

Twilight smirked and gave the side of her head a knowing tap.

“I’ll never be able to comprehend how incredible you are,” said Hex. “I notice you’re out of the library. What’re you doing here?”

“Well, I...”

‘She’s so cute when she’s blushing,’ he thought, ‘and I’m not afraid to think that.’

“I just wanted to thank you,” she said. “What you did last night, I-I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make it up to you. Even if you left poor Spike up here all night. Poor little guy was scared out of his mind when he came back.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” said Hex, “and just so you know, you’re very welcome. It’s just that- well, you know, I just wanna see you happy and, well... um...”

‘He’s so cute when he’s blushing,’ thought Twilight.

“Anyway, um, how’re you doing?” the scientist asked. “You’re looking a lot better than you were.”

“Again, I have you to thank for that,” said Twilight. “I was afraid that if I told anypony else what had happened, they wouldn’t understand, and I’d just be even more alone than I already was. But I have to know what you did.”

“I call it a Mind Sweep,” Hex explained, “because I ‘sweep’ your mind and uncover the problem. I probably shouldn’t have done it though, it was an invasion of privacy and-”

“No, it’s okay,” said Twilight.

“I mean, I did consider seeing how you felt about me, but like I said, it would be an invasion of your privacy, but-”

“Hex, it’s alright,” said Twilight. “You saved me from myself. Again, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay you.”

He didn’t say anything else on the subject – he merely smiled.

“What’re you doing up here?” Twilight asked. “I noticed you finished your GLaDOS... or maybe, I’ve never seen one before, so I can’t really tell.”

“Nah, it’s finished,” said Hex. “I was just about to turn it on.”

“Oh, can I watch?” asked Twilight ecstatically.

“Sure, why not?” The brown unicorn led his purple friend over to a big red button, because it’s always a big red button, reached out, and slammed it into the wall.

Instantly, everything flickered into life. Hundreds of tiny lights flickered with newfound illumination, innumerable wires buzzed as electricity ran along them for the first time, culminating in a small camera like box which turned towards the two ponies as if looking at them, like a newborn baby looks up at its mother, wondering what the smeg was going on.

“It worked!” said Hex. “I can’t believe it! It worked!”

“There’s no need to sound so surprised,” said Twilight.

“But-but I never expected it to actually work,” said Hex. “These things never do! I mean-”

“What’s the matter, little Haydie? Too much for your itsy bitsy human brain to handle?”

The two unicorns turned and stared in horror.

“No,” said Hex, “no, it-it can’t be...”

“Why not?” asked the GLaDOS in the voice of Deluminata. “I thought you had travelled all over the multiverse, little Haydie. You should know that I, of all people, would be able to come up with a failsafe if I ever met an untimely demise.”

It paused, waiting for either Twilight or Hex to answer, but both were stunned speechless at this horrifying new revelation.

“I have a riddle for you,” said Deluminata. “What’s dead, and dead, and dead all over?”

“YOU!!!”

The teleport gate suddenly exploded into life, the suction dialled up to 11, and it pulled the two unicorns through and spat them roughly out the other side. When they looked around, they found themselves on the far side of the Everfree Forest, at the spot where the Combine had tried to break through.

“Twilight, are you okay?” asked Hex.

“I’m alright,” said Twilight as she picked herself up. “How about you?”

“Couple of scratches, but nothing too major. Mostly it’s my pride that’s hurt.”

“How?”

“I should’ve known that Deluminata couldn’t be just killed, like any ordinary person. She’s the most horrible thing in the multiverse; of course she’d have a backup plan! How could I have been so stupid?!”

“Hey, hey!” Twilight put a hoof on his shoulder in the hopes that it would be comforting. “You had no way of knowing that was going to happen, no way at all! We’ll find a way around this, we’ll...”

She trailed off.

The ground was not supposed to be shaking. Or glowing. Or...

...or cracking.

At the spot where the super portal had once stood, a massive fissure was spreading out and consuming the grassy ground. Twilight and Hex both tried to move, but they were paralysed with fear, and found their legs completely unresponsive.

Under their hooves, the earth started to crumble and fall away. Twilight managed to get back to safety, but Hex wasn’t so lucky. He tried to follow her, to get to a more solid area of ground, but the elements had conspired against him and he would have fallen into the rapidly growing hole, had he not managed to hang on by his forelegs. He dangled precariously by his elbows over a crackling, electric blue ball of light, which had... things just visible inside it.

“Hex!” Twilight galloped over to him and held his forelegs. “Hang on; I’ll try to pull you up!” She concentrated, trying with all her might to summon up her magic once more, but it had been a miracle that she was able to teleport into Hex’s shop, and she knew she had no hope of succeeding in telekinesis.

Hex looked over his shoulder, at the terrifying hole of death, and gulped.

“I have an idea,” he said, “but you’re not going to like it.”

“What is it?” asked Twilight. “Tell me, quickly!”

“This is happening because I gave the GLaDOS control over the rift,” he explained. “Right now there is one smegload of power going through it, and if we overload this thing then it’ll shut down.”

“There’s a ‘but’,” Twilight said. “There’s going to be a ‘but’ isn’t there?”

Hex nodded, his face painted with shame and regret.

“At the moment,” he said, “the best way to overload it, would be... would be if a unicorn, even one at the most basic magic level, were thrown into the works.”

It took the purple pony less than half a second to work out what he meant.

“What?” she said. “But-but- no! No, Hex, you can’t! You just- you can’t!”

“If it means you’ll be safe,” said Hex, “then I’d be willing to give myself up. I’d be willing to die if it meant you would live a full life.”

“No, you can’t!” Twilight cried, tears leaking involuntarily down her cheeks once more. “If you do this, then I’m going with you!”

“Twilight, that’s highly illogical,” Hex pointed out. “Please, just- please, don’t make this any more painful than it is already. I... I’d rather die than see you suffering. And if the Combine takes over Equestria, you will suffer.”

“But I’d rather die with you than live without you!” said Twilight. “Hex, I...”

“...I love you.”

Once again his brilliant green eyes connected with her deep violet ones, this time brimming over with sorrow and lament.

“With the Combine,” he said slowly, “there’s one rule: Don’t stop. Don’t think. Just run. I’m gonna have to do this, but I’m doing it for you, Twilight. And I want you to know, before I do, that I’ll be thinking of you, because...”

He didn’t finish that sentence. Instead, he pulled himself up until he was level with Twilight, and pressed his lips against hers. She was only too glad to reciprocate the motion as she cradled his face in her hooves with her eyes softly closed, their muzzles dancing in perfect synchronicity as they finally expressed the feelings that both of them had kept repressed for far longer than either of them had wanted, both knowing that this would be the last moment they would ever have together, and both wanting to make it as special as possible...

...and then, all too soon, it was over.

Twilight opened her eyes, and found herself facing thin air. She couldn’t bring herself to look over the edge, but knew that she would never see that incredible brown unicorn again.

“No...” she whispered, and descended into helpless, heartbroken sobs.

Overhead, clouds swirled in the sky and crackled with thunder, before a single lightning bolt lanced down with a deafening CRASH and struck the massive hole at its core. The clouds surrounding it started to glow and pulsate with vivid blue light as more lightning branched off like a gigantic, terrifying tree of pure, concentrated electricity.

Twilight’s despair was temporarily overridden with fear, and she leapt to her hooves and galloped away into the Everfree Forest.

It hadn’t worked.

“Haydon Baxter, in the flesh, or should I say, in the fur.”

Hex opened his eyes. He was being... pulled away? And in front of him was a pony – a strange stallion, white in his coat and black in his mane and tail, with aqua coloured eyes which almost seemed to glow, and a formal looking pinstripe suit with a red tie. No cutie mark, which was creepy. It was... the G-Man? No, he was a pony now, so G-Stallion? G-Colt?

“I have taken the liberty of relieving you of your magical powers for the time being. It was never really yours to claim. As for the new physical structure, I think you’ve earned it.”

G-Colt seemed to work.

“The world of Equestria is under the Combine’s control for the time being, thanks to you. Quite a nasty piece of work you managed back there; I am impressed.”

The scientist tried to respond, to tell him that he had to go back – it was the only way to save Twilight – but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t even open his mouth.

“That is why I am here, Mr Baxter. I have recommended your services to my... employers, and they have authorized me to offer you a job. They agree with me that you have limitless potential.”

‘I remember this,’ thought Hex. ‘He’s going to give me a choice.’

“You’ve proved yourself a decisive young man, so I don’t expect you’ll have any trouble deciding what to do.”

‘What did I say?’

“If you’re interested, just step into the portal and I will take that as a yes. Otherwise, well, I can offer you a battle you have no chance of winning... rather an anticlimax after what has just come to pass. Time to choose.”

True to his word, a portal opened behind him and he stepped through and vanished.

Hex sighed.

‘I’m sorry, Twilight,’ he thought, and followed in the G-Colt’s wake.

“Wisely done, Mr Baxter. I will see you up ahead.”

Dear Princess Celestia,

It is with great sorrow that I must inform you of my knowledge of Equestria’s current situation. Our fair country has been invaded by a ruthless alien race known as the Combine. I know this because... because I know whose fault it was.

His name was Hex, and he was the most incredible young stallion I will ever know. Over the course of several months, I have grown to develop feelings for him – feelings which I never thought existed outside Rarity’s romance novels. I loved him. I loved him with all my heart.

Hex has taught me that you should always make the most of what you have at the time you have it, because you never know when a good thing is going to come to an end. Especially when that good thing is the best thing you have ever experienced.

He sacrificed his life so that we might continue ours, but unforeseen circumstances have led me to believe his attempt to prevent the Combine’s invasion has failed. I don’t know what they are going to do to Equestria, but judging by what I have seen of them, it is unquestionably not going to be pleasant. My recommendation is that a warning be issued to the public, although as I stated before, I have no idea what the Combine will do.

My only hope is that this letter reaches you before they do. As always, I await your quick response.

Your faithful student,
Twilight Sparkle.

Credits - Equestrian Rhapsody: Coming Soon...

EQUESTRIAN RHAPSODY

Credits:

Twilight Sparkle...............Tara Strong

Rainbow Dash/Applejack...............Ashleigh Ball

Pinkie Pie/Fluttershy...............Andrea Libman

Rarity/Lightning Strike...............Tabitha St. Germain

Spike...............Cathy Weseluck

Hex/Haydon Baxter...............Dwayne Cameron

Soarin'...............Matt Hill

Deluminata...............Ellen McLain

Written by Rainy Meadows

This has been a non-for-profit work of fanfiction.
No copyright is intended.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is property of Hasbro
Half-Life is property of Valve

Special thanks to all those who favourited this story and/or gave it a positive rating.

COMING SOON: The One Free Stallion

“We now have direct confirmation of a disruptor in our midst; one who has acquired an almost messianic reputation in the minds of certain citizens. His figure is synonymous with the darkest urges of instinct, ignorance, and decay. Some of the worst excesses of the GLaDOS incident have been laid directly at his feet. And yet unsophisticated minds continue to imbue him with romantic power, giving him such labels as the One Free Stallion, or the Cleanser of the Hex. Let me remind all citizens of the dangers of magical thinking. We have scarcely begun to climb from the dark pit of the evolution of our species. Let us not slide backward into oblivion, just as we have finally begun to see the light. If you see this so called Free Stallion, report him. Civic deeds do not go unrewarded and likewise complicity with his cause will not go unpunished. Be wise. Be safe. Be aware.”

Author's Note: Finally, it's finished! It only took several months of development and writing, but it's finally finished: the first story in the Foals of Harmony. You can probably tell what the next one's going to be. Unlike some other Half-Life 2/MLP:FiM crossovers I've found, this one is going to adhere more closely to the gameplay, but like some other Half-Life 2/MLP:FiM crossovers I've found, it will be told from a first person perspective. I will not say any more about it due to spoilers. Also, I want to give a shout-out to clap2times for being the first brony to track this story. Thank you. Thank you, everypony!

EXTRA - Wonderbolt Father to Spectral Speedster's Child?

THE FOAL FREE PRESS

EXCLUSIVE: Wonderbolt Father to Spectral Speedster's Child?
By Gabby Gums

Ever since the shocking pregnancy revelation of Ponyville's most famous weather patrol worker, there have been many theories and rumours as to who the father could possibly be.

But recent photographs may indicate that the father may be none other than the Wonderbolt's most infamous member.

"Rainbow Dash is so totally in love with Soarin'," says an anonymous source close to the pegasus pair.

"I think they make a cute couple, and they definitely both deserve happiness."

The entirety of the town of Ponyville was rocked several months ago when Rainbow Dash publicly announced that she was with foal, but refused to reveal the identity of the baby's father. However, new images such as the one printed in this article show that the father of the unborn child may in fact be none other than Soarin', famed co-captain of the Wonderbolts.

Following unconfirmed rumours of alcoholism and salt addiction the previous year, Soarin' has been noticeably absent from the tabloids, and word on the Cloudsdale grapevine was that this absence was due to the young stallion entering rehab and getting much-needed treatment for his drug and alcohol abuse.

But now it would appear that the youngest stallion ever to be accepted into the Wonderbolts is not only the spouse of Rainbow Dash, but also the father of her foal.

"I don't really want to cause any trouble," says a close friend of the rainbow-haired stunt pony, who requested that her identity remain unrevealed "but, um, Rainbow Dash says Soarin' is the baby's father, and she's been my friend for years - since we were fillies at flight camp, actually - so I believe her and, er, the rest of our friends do as well."

It is unknown at this stage if the relationship will develop further, and any rumours of wedding bells on the horizon have yet to be verified.

Author's Note: This isn't technically a part of the story, but it seemed kinda relevant and I got the inspiration from when I watched Ponyville Confidential for the umpteenth time. And I know Dashie doesn't look pregnant in the picture, but it's the best one I could find and it's still pretty cute.

And anyway, what if it was shopped and the image was actually fake? Like, with that picture of Princess Celestia gorging on cake, did Featherweight really fly all the way to Canterlot for that snap? This calls for a discussion... which can take place in the comments, if you're interested.

Chapter 1 - Miss Misty Mysterious

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality
Open your eyes
Look up to the skies and see...

Isn’t it annoying when you wake up far too early, and try as you may you can’t get back to sleep?

You close your eyes and try your best to drift off, but it’s too late: you’re wide awake and there isn’t anything you can do to change that fact. The sun is already completely up, and the light penetrating your eyelids is only further persuasion to get out of bed and begin the new day.

But you don’t want to get up and out of bed, because you’re so cosy and comfortable, and you feel like getting out of bed at the moment could be compared to walking into a blizzard with no clothes on.

That was exactly how Rainbow Dash felt at the moment. She was awake, sure, but she definitely didn’t want to be, so she dragged her pillow out from underneath her head, pressed it over her muzzle, and with a groan she rolled over in her bed.

At that moment, she sensed that something was wrong. Surely that space wasn’t empty last night...

“Tearaway?”

Dash groggily lifted the pillow from her face and scanned the area, her magenta eyes taking in every last detail on her endless Wonderbolt posters and memorabilia.

“Hey, Tearaway, you here?”

No answer.

Reluctantly, Dash tried to get out of bed, but her legs and wings weren’t quite awake yet and she rolled off and onto the floor. Cursing something dreadful, she clambered to her hooves and heard something crunch. Lifting up her hoof, she saw the remains of a glass syringe.

‘How the hay did that get there?’ she thought to herself.

“Come on, Tearaway,” she said. “This isn’t funny, where are you?”

She cantered out of the room, looking around and shouting his name.

“Tearaway, where are you? Tearaway?”

Dash frantically searched her entire house, inside and out. She was certain that the amount of noise she was making was sure to wake up all of Equestria, but right now she didn’t care. She’d give anything to see his...

What colour where his eyes again? She couldn’t recall.

She darted around corners and uprooted the kitchen, looking under and behind couches, searching for a flash of that...

Great. Now she couldn’t remember what colour his mane was. Or his coat, for that matter. But at least she knew what his cutie mark was. It was a – a lightning bolt, wasn’t it? Or maybe it was a cloud...

‘Perfect way to start the morning, Rainbow,’ she thought. ‘Your new coltfriend’s disappeared and you haven’t got a clue what he looks like. What was the deal with that syringe, anyway?’

Rainbow Dash may not have been famed for being a genius, but she knew how to put two and two together.

“He drugged me!” she shouted. “He suckered up to me and he drugged me! And I totally fell for it; I can’t believe I actually thought he was an alright kind of guy! So much for gratitude. After everything I did for that little parasprite, he knocks me out and bunks off. Well, I’m going to find you, Tearaway.”

She walked over to a window and looked out at the broken cloud canopy, with Canterlot just visible in the distance and Ponyville right below her.

“I’m gonna find you if it’s the last thing I do,” Rainbow Dash declared.

Two months later...

If anypony had been outside that night, they would have seen a lilac-coloured unicorn pony with pink and purple strips in her indigo mane and tail galloping frantically through the streets of Ponyville, panting for breath and positively saturated in rain. Thunder rumbled through the clouds over Equestria, and lightning struck down relentlessly and unpredictably from the skies.

‘The weather teams really outdid themselves this time,’ thought Twilight Sparkle to herself and she dashed past Sugarcube Corner. ‘Anypony caught out here in this kind of storm would probably drown. Oh wait, that means me!’

There was the library, right up ahead. Shelter from the horizontal rain and a warm bed lay only across the street. Not wishing to spend any more time in the torrential downpour, Twilight teleported straight into the centre of the library and almost collapsed in exhaustion.

“I’ll be home before the storm starts, Spike, I promise,” said a voice behind her, bathed in bitter sarcasm.

“Sorry, Spike,” said Twilight as she turned to face her no. 1 assistant, “I was so busy helping Fluttershy with her animals that I must have lost track of time. I didn’t mean to stay out so late; didn’t I tell you not to wait up for me if I was delayed?”

“It’s not that,” said Spike. “Who do you think has to clean up?”

Twilight looked down at the spreading puddle around her hooves. Her horn glowed briefly and she and the floor were as dry as a bone.

“Oh,” said Spike, “right, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Twilight said politely. “Did anybody stop by while I was gone?”

“Only Pinkie Pie and Applejack,” said Spike. “They were looking for Rainbow Dash – something about a promise to make cupcakes and not seeing her for several days.”

“Really?” asked Twilight. “That’s kinda weird. Fluttershy said that her animals had never been calmer than they have been over the past couple of months, and that’s because a full eight weeks have passed without Rainbow Dash swooping down and terrifying them with one of her stunts.” She walked over to the window and watched another lightning bolt lance down from the duvet of clouds which covered the sky, striking somewhere near Sweet Apple Acres. “I hope she’s alright.”

“Oh relax, Twilight,” said Spike. “This is Rainbow Dash we’re talking about here, remember? The first and only pony ever to successfully pull off a Sonic Rainboom? The fastest and strongest of all ponies?”

Twilight sighed. “You’re right,” she said, and glanced at the clock on the wall.

“It’s late, Spike,” she pointed out, “you should probably get some sleep.”

“As if!” Spike said objectively, “I’m not in the least bit-“He missed out the last word because it was cut off by a snore; he had fallen asleep right there on the stairs.

“No, Spike,” said Twilight, “I guess you’re not.” Leaving the baby dragon to sleep, she approached the ‘L’ section of the book shelves and pulled out the first book she found about lightning.

“Lightning Strikes: Everything You Need To Know About Storms And Other Weather Phenomena,” she read. She opened the book to the section on lightning and started to read.

“Lightning is the name given to the discharge of atmospheric electricity in or between clouds and the ground, usually occurring during a thunderstorm...”

Up in the sky, in a house floating far above the insanely violent weather, a young sky-blue pegasus pony with a rainbow coloured mane was sobbing quietly into her pillow.

“Phoowee!” Applejack exclaimed the next morning when she saw the mess the storm had made in the streets of Ponyville. “We’ve sure got our work cut out fer us!”

“Speak for yourself!” said Rarity as she left the Carousel Boutique. “That awful gale blew a rock straight through my window! All of my best dresses are simply saturated in rainwater, and Sweetie Belle spent the entire night under my bed, hiding from the thunder. Why did they have to schedule a storm for last night?”

“Truth be told, Ah have no idea,” said Applejack.

“There y’are, Sweetie Belle!” said Apple Bloom, emerging from behind her older sister to see her friend cowering beneath Rarity, glancing nervously up at the sky. “Let’s go find Scootaloo and start cleaning up the street!”

“Yeah!” said Sweetie Belle, and this called for a chorus of:

“CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS STORM MESS CLEANERS YAY!”

And with that, the two little fillies sped away and out of sight.

“As long as Ah live, Ah’ll never understand those two silly fillies,” said Applejack.

“The feeling’s entirely mutual,” said Rarity. Her eyes wandered to the sky and she caught sight of a familiar face.

“Rainbow Dash, darling!” she exclaimed. “We were beginning to worry about you!”

“Agreed,” said Applejack. “Long time no see, Rainbow.”

“Oh,” said Rainbow Dash, “hi girls.” Slowly (and most unlike Rainbow Dash) she flapped down the ground and stood before her two friends, and it took less than a second for them to see that something wasn’t right. The normally fiery and over-confident pegasus they knew had been replaced by what looked like the most dejected creature in all of Equestria. She was pale as a sheet, slightly green in the cheeks, and her eyes were red and puffy as if she’d been crying lately.

“Are you alright, Sugarcube?” asked Applejack. “You don’t look so good.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Dash, but she caught sight of her reflection in a nearby window and shuddered.

“What do you mean, you have no idea?” asked Rarity. “Look at you! We need to get you straight to the spa, pronto!”

“Sounds good,” said Dash, resisting her unicorn friend’s attempt to push her along the ground, “but I’m afraid I’ve got other stuff to – oh no! No, no! Not again!” Her cheeks bulged; she clapped a hoof to her mouth and sped away into the clouds.

“Now Ah can’t have been the only one ter notice somethin’s up with her,” Applejack said.

“You’re telling me,” said Rarity. “I mean, did you see her mane? She was a total shambles!”

“Yes,” said Applejack, “and then there’s the fact that Rainbow never cries, and yet looks like she’s done nothin’ but for the past month! And was Ah mistaken, or did she look like she was about throw up just as she left?”

“Of course I noticed!” said Rarity. “I’m no fool! We need to figure out what’s going on with her. She looked as if she could break down at any moment.”

Once she’d cleared up her little digestive problem, Dash made sure she was well out of hearing range.

She’d never felt so angry in her entire life. Of all the things that could have happened to her, this was the WORST. POSSIBLE. THING. And this was no Rarity Drama-Queen overreaction either. This was serious. Deadly serious, and it was all his fault. If only she could just remember what he looked like, it might not have felt so offensive, but as it was, it was something for which she would never, ever forgive him as long as she lived.

What would the others think of her if they ever found out? Dash dreaded to think of what they would say to everypony else if she told them what that bastard had done to her, what he had gotten her into. And worst of all, there was no possible way of turning back. Not here. Not now. Not ever.

Her anger had reached a new physical peak. She felt as if she could scream at any moment.

So she did.

“TEEEAAARAWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY!!!”

A couple of hours later there was movement in the bushes on the outskirts of the Everfree Forest. But this was no ordinary movement, this was movement of the bushes. Or rather, a single solitary bush.

The pony responsible for the movement had seen a certain blue (in more ways than one) pegasus landing nearby, and pressing a hoof to an ear which had something black hooked over it. A stick of black extended out from the hook, and was tipped with a black bud, and then the rainbow maned pony began to talk, apparently to nopony.

‘And they have the nerve to call ME crazy,’ the spy thought to herself. She shuffled closer, until she was just within earshot. She shivered – obviously, there was going to be a real doozy later today.

If Rainbow Dash had been paying attention, she would have seen a nearby bush suddenly sprout a pair of Groucho Cutie-Marx glasses surrounding a pair blinking baby-blue eyes. The wearer leaned in closer to get a better listen.

“...they found out? You know how they fuss over things; especially Twilight, she won’t be able to keep away from those damn books of hers!”

There was a pause, presumably to allow the out of sight converser to reply.

“No!” said Dash. “No, nopony can ever find out, do you hear me? This is my problem, and I’m gonna deal with it by myself.”

Another pause. The eavesdropper shuffled in as close as she dared.

Dash sighed, and a smile somehow worked its way onto her lips. “You’re a real good friend, Hex, you know that?” she said.

‘Who the hay is Hex?’ the spy asked herself, and watched as Dash sniffed and quite obviously wiped away a tear.

“Okay, I’ll see you later then, and remember: not a word to anypony.” She pressed the black hook again and the stick retracted – only a pony with keen eyesight would have noticed the strange device hanging from the pegasus’ ear.

“Numbskull,” she said affectionately, and started to head out of the forest, passing the bush in which the eavesdropper was concealed.

“Hey Pinkie Pie,” said Rainbow Dash.

‘How in Equestria did she penetrate my cunning disguise?’ Pinkie Pie asked herself, but Rainbow Dash had frozen when she realised who she’d been talking to. She turned on her hooves and pinned her energetic friend against a tree, scattering twigs, leaves and the glasses all over the place.

“How much of that did you hear?” Dash demanded, her furious muzzle centimetres away from Pinkie’s.

“I-“

“You can’t tell anypony about this, you hear?” Dash furiously prodded the pink pony in the chest. “NOPONY!”

“But I don’t even know what you were talking about!” Pinkie squeaked. “Why were you talking to the air? Sometimes I talk to the air, which is strange, because the air never talks back so why would I talk to it?”

“I wasn’t talking to the air, I was – I – you wouldn’t understand!” Seeing the fury in her eyes, Pinkie squeaked fearfully.

When she saw how terrified her friend was, Rainbow Dash released her and retracted until she was almost in another bush.

“I-I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to scare you, it’s just...”

“What?” Pinkie chirruped cheerfully. “And what’s that black thing on your ear, anyway? Is it a fishing hook? Are you going fishing? You forgot your fishing rod! And the lures, where’s your lures?” Pinkie gasped. “Are you going to catch dinner for us?”

Dash’s bottom lip began to wobble uncontrollably, and she departed at top speed. Pinkie Pie was certain she heard a sob as her speedy friend disappeared.

“No way,” Pinkie said to herself. “No wonder she’s being all Miss misty-mysterious, Rainbow Dash has a secret! Wonder what it is?” She looked around at the empty air surrounding her, apparently waiting for a reply, and when none arrived she just said “Thought so,” and bounced off merrily back towards Ponyville.

“Not too fast now Angel Bunny, you don’t want to get a tummy ache.”

The small white rabbit looked up at the demure yellow pegasus in front of him, and promptly pushed the half eaten carrot away.

Fluttershy gave a little giggle and said “You really should eat more than that, don’t you think? It’s not playtime yet. I know you want to run, but just three more bites.”

Angel turned his nose up.

“Two more bites?”

The bunny eyed the carrot, but still refused to eat any more.

“One more bite?” Fluttershy pleaded. “Pretty please?”

Suddenly there was a tremendous crash, and every chicken in the coop outside went nothing short of hysterical. Angel dived for cover under the couch.

“What was that?” Fluttershy wondered aloud. She opened the door to see the extent of the damage. The outlook was grim: a whole section of the wire fence had burst wide open, and there was straw strewn all over the ground, not to mention the chickens which now ran amok around the garden. But if Fluttershy listened hard enough, she could just about make out the sound of someone crying. She wandered closer; it was coming from the chicken shed.

“Fluttershy! Fluttershy!”

“Oh,” said the pegasus, “hi Pinkie Pie.”

“Fluttershy!” said Pinkie. “I just met Rainbow Dash in the woods and she was talking to the air, and then she pressed me up against a tree and told me not to tell anypony, which I think is weird and I got this shiver which means my Pinkie sense is telling me there’s going to be a major doozy-“

Fluttershy held a hoof to her lips for silence, motioning towards the shed, and she and her hyperactive friend cautiously approached the little wooden hut. As carefully as defusing a bomb, Fluttershy looked around the edge of the doorway, and saw a blue pony with a rainbow mane curled up in the corner, shaking with sobs and slowly creating a miniature sea of tears on the plank floor.

“Rainbow Dash?” Fluttershy asked. “Are you alright?”

“Do I look alright?” Dash demanded, and her friend recoiled fearfully.

Dash wiped her muzzle on her foreleg and wiped her foreleg on some nearby straw.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I-I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“That’s okay,” Fluttershy said, “you didn’t mean it. Do you want to tell me what’s upsetting you?”

Contrary to making her feel better, this question only made Rainbow Dash more frustrated.

“Why do you have to be so-so nice, Fluttershy?” she asked. “It’s not like I deserve your kindness. I don’t deserve anypony’s kindness, least of all yours, or Pinkie Pie, or Applejack, or Rarity or Twilight or...” She trailed off, and wiped her muzzle again.

“Would you like to tell me about it?” Fluttershy inquired patiently.

“That’s just it!” said Dash. “I can’t tell anypony about it! It’s something I have to do alone and-and I-“ She couldn’t finish. She buried her face in her hooves and began to cry. Fluttershy walked over to her and patted what was supposed to be a comforting hoof on Rainbow Dash’s shoulder.

“It’s okay,” said the kindly yellow pony. “Would you like me to leave you alone?”

Dash sneaked a tear-ridden glance over her shoulder, and nodded.

“Okay,” said Fluttershy, “you can just stay right here. I won’t try to move you if you don’t want to.” And with that, she left the chicken shed and the sobbing form of the Element of Loyalty.

“I think we should leave her alone for a while,” she said to Pinkie Pie. “Now, what were you saying?”

“Well,” said Pinkie, and took a deep breath in preparation for a very long sentence: “I saw Rainbow Dash flying into the Everfree Forest so I thought ‘that’s kinda weird’ and so I disguised myself as a bush and I followed her and when I got there she was talking to the air – well not really to the air she was talking into this black hook thing she had on her ear – and when she finished she found me and she made me promise not to tell anypony about it but I didn’t know what she was talking about and I came here because I hoped you and me and Twilight and Applejack and Rarity could come up with a solution or something to make Dashie feel better.”

Fluttershy could feel the lack of punctuation and knew that this was urgent.

“I agree,” she said. “Something tells me that this can’t wait another minute. Come on, Pinkie let’s go find the others. They’ll know what to do.” They started to head towards Ponyville, but Fluttershy stopped and said “Oh, wait a minute.”

She cantered back into her cottage and knelt down on the floor next to her couch.

“Angel,” she said, “I have to go to Ponyville for a while. Do you think you could take of Rainbow Dash while I’m gone? I promise I won’t be long.”

Angel nervously looked out from under the couch and nodded.

“Thank you,” said Fluttershy. “And don’t worry, she’s a pushover.”

“Isn’t it kinda lazy to get your younger sisters to clean up the street for you?” asked Twilight as the Cutie Mark Crusaders zoomed around the street picking up twigs and detritus which had blown down during the storm.

“Nah,” said Applejack, “they think they’re gonna get their cutie marks from it, so Ah’d hate to stop them. Besides, look at how much they’ve cleaned up already!”

Twilight had to admit that the street outside the library was considerably tidier than it had been first thing this morning.

“That reminds me,” she said, “have either of you two seen Rainbow Dash?”

“Not since this mornin’,” Applejack told her. “She came down from the sky looking more than a little worse for wear, and flat out refused to give an explanation.”

“I think ‘a little worse for wear’ would be a major understatement, Applejack,” said Rarity, trying and failing to mimic the apple farmer’s accent. “Oh, she was a right mess, Twilight, you wouldn’t believe! Her mane looked as though it hadn’t been washed in weeks, and her eyes were so puffy and she just looked so ill that I tried to take her to the spa for a little beauty treatment, but she departed in a hurry and I swear she was about to vomit as she left!”

“Why were you asking for her, anyways?” asked Applejack.

“I was wondering if I talk to her about the storm last night,” said Twilight. “I’ve never known it to rain like that before, and the way the lightning was coming down you’d almost think it had a mind of its own.”

“Come ta think of it, Ah did find it strange that the weather’d be so fierce,” said Applejack. “You think if the weather ponies were to arrange somethin’ like that, they’d at least make it pretty short, not sweat it out all night.”

“Something tells me that it wasn’t actually made by the weather teams,” said Twilight. “I know it might sound strange,” but I think it was something else that made that storm. Don’t ask me to explain how, but it just felt... unnatural.”

“I’ll tell you what’s unnatural!” said Rarity angrily. “All my best dresses were completely soaked when my window broke, it was simply dreadful! I’ll have to do so much work to make up for it, I’ll be surprised if I get any sleep tonight!”

“Twilight! Rarity! Applejack, come quick!”

“What is it, Fluttershy?” asked Twilight.

“Oh Twilight, Rainbow Dash just crashed into my chicken’s shed,” said Fluttershy. “And she’s so upset, I don’t dare to go near her.”

“I saw her in the woods!” Pinkie Pie piped up between shivers. “It looked like she was talking to the air, and it was weird, ‘coz it seemed like the air was talking back, but she had this black hook thing on her ear and it looked like she was talking into it, but I couldn’t hear anything and my Pinkie sense is telling me there’s gonna be a doozy-“

“Whoa, there, Sugarcube,” said Applejack, “calm down. Now, tell us what’s going on.”

“I tried to ask her what was wrong, but she said she can’t tell anypony about it and I don’t have any idea what she’s talking about,” said Fluttershy. “And that means it’s really, really serious and I didn’t know what to do.”

“We saw her earlier today,” said Rarity, “and a right mess she looked as well.”

“We know, Rarity,” said Twilight, “you’ve said so about fifteen times already.”

“You know what I think?” asked Pinkie Pie. “I think Rainbow’s gone crazy! Crazy Rainbow! ‘Coz after I saw her talking in the woods she told me the same thing she told Fluttershy, which was that she couldn’t tell anypony, and I asked her what she was talking about because it looked like she had this really weird fishing hook on her ear, and I wondered if she was going fishing, but she flew away before she answered and she was crying!”

“That settles it,” said Twilight. “Rainbow Dash obviously needs our help. C’mon girls, let’s go find out what’s going on with her.” And with that, the five young mares cantered away from Ponyville.

“Hey!” shouted Scootaloo as she fanned some leaves off the street with her wings. “We finished the street, don’t you want us to do anything else?”

“I’m bored,” said Sweetie Belle. “Whoever heard of a street cleaning cutie mark anyway?”

“What shall we do now?” asked Apple Bloom.

After five seconds hard thought...

“I got it!” declared Sweetie Belle. “Let’s go fix all Rarity’s dresses that got ruined in the storm!”

“I like it!” said Apple Bloom.

“That’s a great idea!” said Scootaloo.

“CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS DRESS MENDERS YAY!”

This wouldn't end well.

Twilight didn’t know what to expect from her fast and apparently distraught pegasus friend, so she looked inside the chicken shed as slowly as she dared to find...

Nothing.

“She’s not in there,” the purple unicorn declared.

“That’s odd,” said Fluttershy. “Where could she have gone?”

“And in such a dreadful state, she’s bound to have stuck out like a sore hoof,” Rarity pointed out.

“Ooh, she’s playing Hide-And-Seek!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed excitedly. “Where is she? Is she under the hut? Is she in the cottage? Did she burrow through the ground to the centre of the earth?”

Everypony else just stared.

“Panic’s over, guys,” said Applejack, breaking her friend's haze of confusion by pointing a hoof up at a nearby cloud she said “She’s right there.”

A sky blue hoof and a scrap of rainbow tail were just visible, hanging over the edge of the cloud which was just large enough to hold a pony.

“Rainbow Dash?” Twilight asked nervously. “Are you alright up there?”

Wordlessly, the hoof and tail were withdrawn.

“Look,” said Twilight, “I know you’re upset, and I don’t blame you for wanting to keep it to yourself, but you know, if you only told us what the problem is then I’m sure we’d be able to help you.”

“You can’t!” shouted Rainbow Dash. “You can’t help me. Nopony can help me!”

‘Isn’t Applejack the one who’s meant to be so damn stubborn?’ Twilight said in the privacy of her mind.

“You won’t know if anypony can help unless you let them try,” she pointed out. “So why don’t you come on down from that cloud and let your friends help you, because there can’t be nothing we can do about whatever it is that’s bothering you.”

“That’s just IT!”

In a rush of colour Rainbow Dash zoomed down from her cloud and looked Twilight right in the eye, causing her to recoil, alarmed.

“You always try to understand things, Twilight Sparkle,” Dash growled, “so understand this: there is nothing that anypony can do to help me at all. So I’m asking you as politely as I can to LEAVE ME ALONE.”

“What about Hex?” asked Pinkie Pie. “Can’t he help you?”

Rainbow Dash stared.

“How the hay do you know about Hex?” she asked.

“Well, duh, I overheard you talking to him in the woods! Isn’t there anything he can do?”

“Wait a minute,” said Twilight. “Who’s Hex?”

“None of your business!” Dash shouted rudely. “Now please, do the world a favour and all of you, LEAVE ME ALONE!!” And with that, she turned and flew back up to her cloud.

Applejack opened her mouth to shout something, but Twilight just told her to leave it.

“What do we do now?” asked Fluttershy.

“Well, there’s no way we’re going to get an answer out of her by asking,” said Twilight. “So we’re gonna have to make her tell us. I’m sorry girls, but for Rainbow’s sake, we need to get tough with her.”

Out of earshot, resting on her cloud, Dash said to nopony in particular;

“Where the hay are you, Tearaway? I need you.”

She didn’t know how long she was up on that cloud or if she fell asleep. All Rainbow Dash knew was that one moment it was daylight and her friends were discussing something below her, the next she’d been harnessed to her cloud by a length of rope and was moving involuntarily through the sky.

“Hey, what the- Applejack, what are you doing?”

“Sorry, Sugarcube,” Applejack said indistinctly as she galloped, “but it’s for yer own good.”

“Where are you taking me?” Dash demanded. “Can you at least tell me why you’ve lassoed me to the cloud? Let me go! What do you want with me?” But despite her protests, Applejack didn’t say another word, so Dash decided to struggle, but all that achieved was tightening the noose around her stomach which pinned her wings to her sides, preventing her from flying.

It wasn’t too long before she was greeted by a familiar, nay unwelcome sight (equine pun unintended); the ceiling of the Sweet Apple Acres barn. The lasso around her waist was loosened and she struggled free, kicking the cloud out of existence in her anger.

“What the hay is going on?” Dash demanded.

“We aren’t letting you leave here unless you tell us what’s going on,” said Twilight firmly.

“The hell you are!” shouted Rainbow Dash, and she started circling her friends at high speed, whipping up a strong and terrifying tornado. Rarity’s mane was blown way out of control, Applejack lost her hat, and the beams of the roof structure creaked rather threateningly before Twilight was able to conjure up a strong enough telekinesis field and drag the infuriated pegasus into submission, and Dash was roughly dumped onto the ground and pinned there by Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, who shivered violently as her supposed ‘doozy’ came closer.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Rainbow,” said Fluttershy meekly.

“You still don’t get it, do you?” asked Dash. “This thing, not even I can do anything about it!”

“Well, we won’t be able to see about that unless you tell us what the hay’s been goin’ on with you!” said Applejack. “You turn up after two months looking like you crawled through a pigsty in a hurricane, and you expect us not to want to find out why? So come on! Spill the beans! What’s the big secret?”

Rainbow Dash sighed. She knew she’d have to tell them all sooner or later.

“...I’m pregnant.”

The resounding result was as she’d expected: Applejack’s face fell, Rarity gasped in horror, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie leapt back in shock, and Twilight simply stood where she was in stunned silence.

“How can you be-“

“Please!” said Rainbow Dash. “Please, just-just let me explain.”

Twilight looked around at her friends, and received a nod of approval from each one.

“Go ahead, Rainbow Dash,” she said.

Dash sighed with relief. This was going far better than she’d expected.

“A few months ago,” she explained, “I found a young pegasus stallion not far from my house. He was in a really bad shape – his wing was twisted, two of his legs were broken, he had this horrible cut on his muzzle – I don’t want to have to draw you all a picture. So I did what anypony would do; took him back to my place.”

“It was ages before he woke up, and it was obvious from the smell on his breath that he’d been drinking like crazy. I think-I think he told me that his name was Tearaway, and I knew that if I hadn’t found him he would have died for sure. I remember he explained to me that he’d got drunk, too drunk to fly, and accidentally flown into a thunderstorm and crashed.”

“It was weeks before he was able to walk again, let alone fly properly, but over that time, I-I got to really like him. Hell, I would even go as far as to say I...”

“Loved him?” asked Twilight, and Rainbow Dash nodded.

“Then one evening,” she continued, “I found him wandering around the place screaming his head off for someone called Lotus Breeze. He was out of his mind – he was going to fall over the edge and he wasn’t even trying to flap his wings. I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t found him and pulled him back in, he’d have fallen off and plummeted to his death. I’d expected him to be at least a little angry at me, but instead he just- I dunno, broke down in my hooves. He told me that Lotus Breeze was his wife, and that she’d died alone at their home, which was when he’d fallen off the wagon and started drinking.”

“That was when he kissed me, and he told me that he’d loved me from the moment he’d first set eyes on me.”

“Long story short, we ended up spending the night together, and when I woke up he was gone and the son-of-a-parasprite had drugged me so that I wouldn’t remember what he looked like. And now he’s gone and I’m...”

“Pregnant?” Twilight suggested.

Rainbow Dash charged forward and threw her forelegs around the purple unicorn in a hug which was both chokingly tight and extremely tearful.

“Oh Twilight, I’m so sorry!” she bawled. “I didn’t want to push you away. I didn’t want to push any of you away! I was just so scared of what you all would think of me that I didn’t want anypony to find out!”

“It’s okay, Sugarcube,” said Applejack, pulling the sobbing pegasus into a loving embrace. “Ah’d be lying if Ah said Ah din’t have things Ah din’t wanna tell nopony.”

“Some Element of Loyalty I am,” said Rainbow Dash. “I’ve been nothing but rude to you all day, and all any of you were trying to do was help. Especially you, Fluttershy. I’m sorry I destroyed your chicken coop.”

“That’s okay,” said Fluttershy, “I can easily fix it.”

“Perhaps now you can let us wash that dreadful lank mane of yours,” said Rarity.

“Would you like that, Rainbow?” asked Twilight.

Rainbow Dash took one look at her unwashed multicolour locks.

“Yeah,” she said, “I’d like that.”

“Good,” said Twilight, “and you shouldn’t worry. You’re going to be a mother, and that isn’t anything that a pony can do alone. You’re gonna need all the help you can get.”

“Face it, Rainbow,” said Applejack, “there ain’t no way you’re getting rid of us in a million years.”

“Dear Princess Celestia,

Unlikely as it may sound, I’m writing to you from the barn of Sweet Apple Acres, where your very own Best Young Flyer Rainbow Dash learned that if something seems hopeless, and even if help appears to be completely beyond reach, friends will always be there to help you, no matter how serious or hopeless the situation may seem.”

“I wonder whether it’s a colt or a filly!” Pinkie Pie bounced up and down excitedly as Rarity tipped warm water over the head of the pegasus who was sitting in a tub dragged out from the farmhouse. “What are you going to call it if it’s a boy? And what if it’s a girl? What do you think of Desmona?”

Rainbow Dash giggled at her friend’s boundless energy.

“Pinkie Pie,” she said, “I don’t know how I would have got by without you. Sorry about getting so up close and personal earlier.”

“Aww, that’s alright, Dashie!” Pinkie squealed. She hugged her sky blue friend, but leapt back almost instantly because she was sopping wet.

“My Pinkie sense stopped,” she said. “I think I’ve figured out what the doozy was.”

“Enlighten us,” said a smiling Applejack, “what was the doozy?”

There were no surprises as to what Pinkie Pie screamed next:

“WE’RE GOING TO HAVE A BABY!!”

Twilight looked on fondly at the scene.

“Your faithful student,

Twilight Sparkle.”

‘That’ll make a good report,’ Twilight thought. ‘If only I could persuade Spike to stay awake long enough to write it down.’

She wandered out of the barn and into the cool night air. It was peaceful and quiet...

Too quiet.

The sounds of her friend’s laughter seemed to fade into the background as a light rustled the leaves in the nearby orchard, but the sound hardly seemed significant compared to the apparent, almost fake stillness in the air. Even the clouds refused to move from their present position. Somewhere in the distance, thunder grumbled as a storm brewed somewhere over Fillydelphia.

‘Who exactly is this Hex that Pinkie and Rainbow were talking about?’ Twilight thought.

There was a storm coming, and this one was going to be one hell of a doozy.

NEXT TIME: Combine Efforts

“No, but there is a very slow lightning bolt.”

“I’m presuming you mean ‘electricity’?”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“I have a hunch, and this time I hope to smeg I’m wrong.”

“You’re right. As usual.”

“Well, let me put it this way. Have you ever read War of the Worlds?”

Author's Note: Well, there you have it: the first chapter of Equestrian Rhapsody. I apologise for any faults that you, the readers, may find; this is a chapter I wrote in a single day, and it's undergone a LOT of edits since then. Please let me know what you think in the comments.

Chapter 11 - Total Eclipse of the Heart

WARNING: This chapter is not recommended for those with weak hearts, unless you want to die of a heart attack from D’AWW overload. Don’t say you weren’t warned!

Without a word, Hex passed the newborn foal over to his mother, who stroked his face with a trembling hoof.

“Oh my... gosh,” she whispered.

The baby’s coat was pale blue, identical to that of his father, and also like his father his mane and tail were both navy blue. However, this navy was complimented with strips of brilliant red and yellow, and he looked out at the world with deep pink eyes just like his mother’s.

“He’s adorable,” said Twilight. “I mean, I know that all babies are cute, but...” She trailed off, feeling that these kinds of comments were not really necessary in a situation such as this.

“Twilight,” said Hex, “I think we’d better let these three have some time on their own, don’t you?”

“You may be right,” said Twilight, and the two unicorns left the new pegasus family alone on the upper floor of the library.

When they got downstairs, they found five pairs of eyes staring up at them in nervous anticipation.

“Well, how’d it go?” asked Applejack. “They doin’ okay?”’

Hex smiled.

“It’s a colt,” he announced, “and he’s absolutely adorable.”

This was met with smattered applause from the assembled crowd, much to the brown unicorn’s apparent surprise.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

“What do you mean, what’s that for?” asked Twilight. “You were fantastic, Hex. I bet any other pony would have freaked out completely if Rainbow Dash suddenly went into labour. I know Spike did.”

“What?” said Spike in angered protest. “No I didn’t!”

“Spike,” said Hex, “I bet that if we hadn’t got you to round everypony up you would have just stood in the library for the rest of the day saying ‘oh my gosh’ over and over again, because you were certainly heading that way!”

Everypony else laughed while Spike turned a furious shade of red.

“How’s Rainbow Dash?” asked Fluttershy. “C-can we go and see her?”

“I dunno about that,” said Twilight as she sat down with her friends. “Celestia knows how exhausted she must be. Soarin’ too. I don’t think anypony’s ever flown all the way here from Canterlot alone before, or made a Sonic Rainboom in the process. I think we should leave it until tomorrow morning.”

“You should have seen the disarray he caused in your library, Twilight,” said Rarity. “He slammed Applejack, poor Spikey-Wikey and Pinkie Pie into the bookcase over there!”

“Huh,” said Twilight, “I was wondering why it looked a little disorganised.” She immediately got to reshelving the bookcase.

“So Hexie, what does the baby look like?” asked Pinkie, excited as she usually was. “Is he blue, like Dashie, or blue like his daddy? Ooh, with a pretty mane? Does he-”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, back up,” said Hex. “Did you just call me Hexie?!”

“Sure!” said Pinkie. “I give all of my best buddies nicknames, like Dashie and Jackie!”

“Jackie?” Applejack raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Ah never heard ya call me that.”

“Well no wonder, silly, because I just made it up!” Pinkie squeaked happily.

“I for one believe that Rainbow Dash is extremely fortunate to have found a stallion who was willing to surrender his career to be with her,” Rarity commented. “Heaven knows that my romantic endeavours have thus far proved entirely unsuccessful.”

“Well if you ask me, that jerk deserved every bit of cake he got,” said Spike, and grumbled “Messing with my Rarity, why I oughta-”

“What was that?”

“Nothing!”

“You don’t have anything to worry about, Rarity,” Fluttershy said meekly, “I’m positive you’ll find a stallion who’s right for you. That is, if it’s what you really want, after all...”

“Thank you darling, that is most uplifting,” said Rarity, “but unfortunately I daresay that all of the most eligible males in Equestria either already have lady friends of their own or are otherwise uninterested in a personal, intimate relationship on that level. I fear that even if I search every corner of the world I may never find the right stallion for me.”

“Oh yeah?” Applejack said slyly. “Then would ya mind explainin’ the looks y’all kept shootin’ at mah crazy cousin that time we all went out to visit him in Appleloosa?”

“Wh-what are you talking about?” Rarity stuttered quickly as her friends started giggling. “I-I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You’re blushing!” Pinkie sang, as her fashionista buddy glowed like a tomato.

“I have by no means in my life had those kinds of thoughts about Braeburn, of all ponies!” said Rarity objectively. “He was simply far too motor-mouthed for my liking! Not to mention that dreadfully unfashionable hat and vest that he insisted on wearing for the entire duration of our stay – one would think he would clothe himself more formally for a visit from his own family – and of course it must be taken into account that he had the most spellbinding eyes and oh, sweet mother of Celestia, that MANE! Those glossy, careless golden locks that perfectly framed that oh so astonishingly handsome face...”

She trailed off. Everypony was staring at her.

“Y’know, he is single,” said Applejack with a wry grin.

After a few seconds more of awkward silence, Pinkie Pie burst out laughing, apparently for no reason other than she could. When nopony else joined in, she hid behind her forehooves and muttered a quick “Sorry!”

Hex cast another cursory glance upwards.

“You know what I think?” he said. “I think Rainbow Dash and Soarin’ are gonna make a great mother and father. I know I would have wanted a mother and father like them when I was growing up.” After another moment of thoughtful silence, he got to his hooves and said “Well, best be making tracks,” before starting to head for the door.

“Huh?” said Twilight. She glanced around, having finished her reshelving, and ran over to him as he reached the exit with a cry of “Hex, wait!”

“What is it?” asked the inventor.

Twilight gulped – carefully, in case anypony else saw it.

“Stay here tonight,” she said. “In the library.”

“Really?” asked Hex. “The new family’s already upstairs, where are we going to sleep?”

“There’s... always the couch.”

“You say ‘the’ implying that there’s only one.”

By now you could have roasted an egg on the unfortunately mortified purple unicorn’s face.

“I was kinda thinking we could... share,” she said. She fleetingly looked at the rest of her friends, all of whom were watching the unfolding events with unfathomable fascination.

“Okay,” said Hex.

“What?”

“I said okay! Besides, Dash and the kid are probably gonna need somepony to keep a proper eye on them during the night.”

Twilight smiled in a mixture of gratitude and embarrassment, and then to the surprise of everypony in the room (Hex especially) she stood up on the tips of her hooves and kissed him on the cheek. Everypony else in the room gave an appreciative “Ooooooh!”

“I knew it!” Spike shouted. “I knew you fancied him! You’ve liked him ever since you first met!”

“You what?” Twilight and Hex demanded at the same time.

After that they could only stand there and blush while their friends all laughed at their misfortune, Twilight making a mental note to take away Spike’s ice cream privileges for the rest of the week.

Even though it had already been hours, Soarin’ could hardly believe what was happening.

He had a son.

The tiny colt yawned and looked up at his father with his big rose coloured eyes, which shone like flawless rubies in the soft orange light of the setting sun outside.

He had a son.

“Hey,” said Soarin’. “Hi, little guy! It’s me! Your dad!” He nuzzled the foal’s stomach, causing him to giggle delightfully, and the infant pegasus hugged his father’s muzzle with his tiny pale blue hooves. Soarin’ couldn’t help but laugh himself.

He had a son!

“Well, damn if that isn’t the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Rainbow Dash, her voice noticeably strained with exhaustion. She placed a hoof on Soarin’s shoulder and leaned on him, tickling her son with her other hoof.

“You should get some sleep,” said Soarin’, “after everything you’ve been through. You deserve it, and I don’t want you forcing yourself to stay awake just because of me.”

Dash yawned.

“You... really think so?” she asked.

“I know so,” Soarin’ said, and his lover settled herself down upon his shoulder, sighing contentedly.

“He’s perfect,” the stallion remarked. “You know, it’s-it’s hard to believe that a guy with a life like mine – my parents dying with nothing I could do, alcoholism, salt addiction – could be the father of somepony so...” He trailed off, unable to find the right words to express his joy.

“Rainbow?”

Her eyes were closed, and her breathing had become slow and quiet. She was clearly in as deep a slumber as any new mother could be. With her asleep upon his shoulder, Soarin’ turned once more to the infant he cradled in his hooves.

“I never wanted any of that, you know,” he said. “I know... I know you probably can’t understand a single word I’m saying, but I promise you, I’m not gonna let you have the life I did. I’m gonna- I’m going to be there for you, kid. You and your mother are the best things that have ever happened in my entire life, and I-”

The baby reached up and placed a hoof on his father’s muzzle, effectively shutting his mouth. The ex-Wonderbolt found himself tearing up against his will, and he smiled more blissfully than he ever had in his entire life.

“I love you,” he said. “I swear it. I love you and Rainbow Dash with all my heart, and I’m gonna be there for you!” The baby gurgled happily and started giggling. It was the single sweetest thing any new father could experience.

“We’re gonna have so much fun, you and me,” he said. “Me and your mom – we’re gonna teach you how to fly, and how to do stunts, and it... it’s going to be amazing. You... you are going to be amazing.”

“He sure is.”

Soarin’ turned to the sleepy young mare that was resting on his shoulder. She gazed back up at him lovingly through her exhausted rose-coloured eyes.

“I thought you were asleep!” he said.

“I never thought you could be so adorable,” said Dash, “but you’re right. He – we – are going to be amazing together.”

The stallion couldn’t help but smile, and he passed the infant back to his mother, who took him and cradled him, and gently gave him an affectionate nuzzle. The baby reached up and hugged his mother’s face, as he had done to his father beforehand, and Soarin’ reached over and stroked his tiny mane, which just made him smile all the more.

“So,” he said, “what should we call him?”

“I don’t know,” said Dash. “In the past hour I’ve gone over a billion names in my head, but none of them seem to sound right.” She looked at her lover. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Well,” said Soarin’, “there is one that I can’t get out of my head, but... nah, you’d think it’s stupid.”

“Try me,” Dash said, smiling mischievously as if she was daring him to disappoint her.

So he told her.

She was quiet for a moment, running the name around in her head and trying out the sound.

“I like it,” she concluded. “And... and it suits him, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” said Soarin’, “it actually does. I just- it came into my head, and now I can see what he looks like, it-it really does suit him.”

Dash hugged her child close, making it clear that she loved him with all her heart. The stallion of her dreams wrapped his hooves around her and kissed her on the forehead, before looking back at their baby.

“You were right,” said Dash, “he is perfect.”

“And it’s thanks to you,” said Soarin’. “You’re the most incredible mare I’ve ever met, Rainbow Dash.”

“And you’re the most incredible stallion, Soarin’.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

When Twilight woke up the next morning, it took her a moment to remember what had happened yesterday, and why she was lying on her couch with a terracotta hoof draped over her body.

And when she did remember, she blushed so furiously that she had to get up in case the heat from her face accidentally set her friend’s coat on fire.

She saw him lying there, dead to the world; glasses askew, every hair in his mane standing almost vertically, with a small dangly string of drool slowly dripping down from the corner of his mouth and almost touching the fabric of the couch. She giggled – quietly, so as not to wake him up – and used a handy tissue to wipe away the drying drool.

He had been so incredible yesterday; so calm and together despite the panicky situation when he was usually so energetic and...

Twilight wasn’t really sure she had a crush on him anymore.

It seemed to have almost gone beyond that. She had looked through every book on emotions that the library had in store, and now she was absolutely convinced about one thing:

For the very first time in her entire life, Twilight Sparkle was in love.

Ever since she had first met Hex, she’d had this... feeling about him. Like he was special. It had turned out she was right, of course – he was an alien from one of ninety nine alternative dimensions, and a rather handsome one at that – but it was more than that; a different kind of special.

She could see now why Rainbow Dash had befriended him: he seemed to have a certain charm about him, an aura of charisma which was hard to resist. She’d liked him from the moment she’d seen him, obviously, and she was pretty sure everypony else had too, but it wasn’t until recently that she’d started to not just have feelings about him, but feelings for him as well.

But that wasn’t really too important right now.

Twilight then cast her eye around the rest of the library, and shoved a hoof into her mouth.

She had to try very, very hard not to laugh. Spike, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy and Rarity had steadfastly refused to leave the library while Rainbow Dash was still there, and so now they were all strewn haphazardly around the main library area – Pinkie easily taking home the Most Unusual Position award for balancing on her head with her back leaning against a bookshelf. Fluttershy was curled up on a table, cuddling Spike like a soft toy, Applejack was laid on her back near the stairs, and Rarity was slumped over the farmer, stroking her mane affectionately.

“Ooh, Braeburn,” the fashionista cooed in her sleep.

It took all of Twilight’s self control not to burst out laughing, so she allowed herself a quiet giggle and decided to leave it at that. Rarity would have one heck of a surprise when she woke up!

As quietly as was possible, she climbed the stairs up to the second floor of the library, and what she saw almost made her heart explode.

Rainbow Dash and Soarin’ were huddled together, fast asleep, supporting their newborn child between them. Rainbow Dash had her muzzle buried deeply into the side of Soarin’s neck, and the stallion himself was smiling in the way that clearly said ‘I’m okay with this’.

Their son was curled up in a tight ball, snoozing gently between his mother and father. Again, Twilight summoned up herself control, but this time to not squee so loudly she brought the whole building crashing down.

Behind her, she heard the telltale *click* of somepony taking a photograph of the scene.

“I’ve seen stars explode,” whispered Hex, “I’ve seen planets made up of nothing but unconnected rocks, I’ve raced on dragons and giant flying motorbikes, and I’ve even piloted a spaceship which basically looks like nothing more than a blue box (which was bigger on the inside) but I have never, ever, in all my years, seen anything as adorable as that.”

“They must be so proud,” said Twilight, “and with everything that’s happened in both their lives, I think they deserve a little bit of happiness.” She looked at the camera he was supporting before him in a bright green glow.

“One thing I learned during my travels,” said Hex, “is that you never know how long a good thing is going to last, so you’ll want to make the most of it while it’s happening. I wish I’d known that when I was a kid, but then again, I might not be here today if I had. I... I’d never have met you.”

For a moment they did nothing but admire the cuteness of the three pegasi as the sun grew ever higher in the sky outside.

‘I wish I knew what he was thinking,’ Twilight thought, and hoped that Hex wouldn’t see her looking at him out of the corner of her eye. ‘When I was living in Canterlot, I never made time for any kinds of relationships, whether they were with classmates or with colts, or even colt classmates. I wonder what exactly I was missing out on...’

“You never expect it to happen, do you?” said Hex.

Twilight looked at him and said “What do you mean?”

“Stuff like this,” said Hex. “You never expect it to happen. I mean, we all knew it had to – Dash couldn’t just keep getting bigger, could she? – but still, you never expect it to just... happen, do you?”

She knew what he meant. If you expect something to happen, and keep waiting for it and letting the anticipation build up, that just makes it all the more shocking when it does. It was like undertaking a dare to sleep in a haunted house for a night: you know that there’re ghosts there, and you stay awake all night just in case, but that just makes it scarier when/if the ghosts did show up.

Not that Twilight believed in ghosts, of course. She was far too sensible for that.

Mind you...

In the time she had known Hex, she had started to call into question everything she had thought she knew about the supernatural. She knew for sure now that aliens existed, having almost been killed by them more times than she would like to count, and if they were real, who was to say that ghosts and zombies and things like that were as out of the question as she had previously believed? It was like the guy had waltzed right up to her with a pin and popped the bubble she had been living in since she had started studying under Princess Celestia.

“You know,” she said, “I’ve never met anypony like you, Hex. You’re like me – intelligent, obsessed with science, kinda antisocial – but at the same time, you take all of that in stride and turn it into something fantastic.”

“You...” the lightning-flanked scientist seemed to be working out what to say. “You really think I’m antisocial?”

“You live on top of a mountain with a dog that you constructed yourself,” said Twilight, “how can you call that anything except antisocial?”

“Hey, that was just a project!” Hex objected. “During my travels through the multiverse, I kinda wanted a companion who wouldn’t call me a nerd every few minutes, and so I built the Canine Artificial Intelligence or CAI for short. I considered calling him K-9 but that name was already taken by a dog in dimension 63. I do admit that he behaves exactly like an ordinary dog would – I have to take him out a couple of times a day to get rid of the waste produced from his fuel supply – but apart from that he’s just a robot.”

“Shhh!” Twilight raised a hoof to her lips and pointed at the slumbering pegasi who, thankfully, had not been awakened by the annoyed unicorn’s rant.

“I really admire you, Twilight,” he whispered. “I’ve done a lot of things in my life (I think I said that already) but I could never do half the stuff you do.”

Twilight smiled and said “I could say the same about you.”

“Hey,” said Hex, and now he sounded mischievous, “did you see Applejack and Rarity on the way up?”

“Of course!” said Twilight. “Who could miss them?”

“It’s just that when I was coming up here, Rarity was lying slumped over Applejack, sucking on her ear and occasionally talking approvingly about somepony called Braeburn.”

And then...

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!”

...said Rarity.

“APPLEJACK!” she cried as she tried to clamber as far away from the farmer as possible, “WHY DID YOU NOT TELL ME THAT I WAS SALIVATING UPON YOUR EAR?!”

“Well, Ah dunno if you noticed, but Ah was asleep!” Applejack pointed out. “And Ah couldn’t tell ya y’all was suckin’ mah ear because Ah was asleep!”

“What the- Fluttershy?!” Spike hurriedly leapt out of his captor’s hooves.

“Oh my, I’m so sorry, Spike,” said Fluttershy, “it’s just that I usually sleep with Angel Bunny, he gets so scared of the dark.”

“You guys looked ridiculous!” said Pinkie. “And it was sooo funny because Fluttershy was hugging Spike sooo tight and it was sooooooo adorable and Rarity was cuddling Applejack and it was cute and hilarious at the same time because she was asleep and dreaming which meant she thought that she was cuddling Braeburn!”

“What? Pinkie!”

“What? You did! And it was so super-duper cute I thought my heart was gonna explode!”

“What in smeg’s name has been going on down here?”

All eyes turned to the brown unicorn who had poked his head out at the top of the stairs, and everypony tried desperately to regain their composure and act like nothing had happened.

“Do you always sleep like that, Pinkie?” Hex asked. “It’s actually rather, well, bizarre. I’d almost go as far as to say unnerving. I don’t think I’ve ever met a pony who slept standing on their head.”

Pinkie giggled.

“Silly!” she said. “You can’t stand on your head because then you’d have to take it off and you can’t take your head off because it’s attached to the rest of you! Except if you were a magician of course, then you could cut ponies up and they would be absolutely fine!”

Hex just stared.

“Anyway,” he said after a while, “Rainbow Dash was wondering if the rest of her honorary family would like to meet their newest member.”

“REALLY?!” Pinkie shouted, and she zoomed straight past the bewildered Hex.

“EEEEE he’ssoadorable!” she squealed from out of sight. “Come and look guys, come and look, quick! Quickly!” Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy and Spike took this as their cue to follow their overly excitable friend to the upper floor of the library and meet the new baby.

Rainbow Dash, with dark shadows of fatigue circling her eyes and a contented smile playing on her lips, was holding her son in her hooves as Soarin’ tickled his stomach, causing him to giggle in the cutest manner possible. Dash looked up, her exhausted pink eyes illuminating as she saw her friends.

“Hey guys,” she said. “Everypony – and Spike – I’d like you all to meet my son, Lightning Strike. Pieface here picked the name.” She gestured affectionately to Soarin’, and to the baby she said “Lightning, I want to introduce your aunt AJ, aunt Rarity, aunt Fluttershy, aunt Pinkie, aunt Twilight, uncle Spike, and your uncle Hex. I know, it’s a lot to take in, but... you’ll get used to it.”

“Well Ah’ll be,” said Applejack. “Soarin’, he looks just like you!”

“Indeed,” Rarity added, “he does seem to favour you in an extraordinary fashion.”

“Except for his eyes!” Pinkie chirruped. “They look just like Dashie’s, all pink and rosy and shiny! And his mane is prettier as well and oh my gosh he’s just so CUTE!!!”

“Lightning Strike,” said Hex. “That’s an interesting name. How did you come up with it?”

“I dunno,” Soarin’ confessed. “It just sorta popped in there.”

“I’m just asking because I heard of a guy named Lightning Strike,” the scientist explained. “He was a fighter, one of the best around in his dimension; that is, until he got betrayed and killed and his kid had to take up the task.”

“That’s not gonna happen to our Lightning,” said Dash. “He’s gonna have a good life. The best there is.”

It was at that moment that Pinkie Pie exploded up between her friends and the happy couple, sporting a party hat on her head and a large cake balanced on one hoof.

“You need to celebrate your birthday, Lightning, ‘coz you were just born yesterday!” she cried ecstatically, and waved the cake in front of his face saying “Quick, blow out the candles on the cake, which is easy, because there are zero candles! You are zero years old after all!”

“Simmer down, Sally,” said Applejack, and she dragged the peppy pink party pony back by her tail. “Don’t wanna scare the kid on his very first day in the world, do ya?”

“He’s...” Fluttershy had been keeping quiet for the entire time she was there, as if she were searching for the right words to express what she was thinking. “He’s just... perfect.”

The words had the right effect, as everypony was plunged deep into thought while Lightning Strike gurgled happily.

“You said it,” said Dash. “Perfect.”

“Spike, are you okay?” asked Twilight. “You haven’t said a word all morning.”

The dragon in question had not taken his eyes off the baby the entire time had been in the room, and it could not have been clearer that he was in need of a tissue if there was a big neon sign over his head reading “THIS DRAGON IS CRYING!!!” in flashing multicoloured letters.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” he said, hurriedly wiping his face. “It’s just- I had something in my eye, and-”

“Something in your eye, huh?” said Hex. “Then tell us: which one?”

“Huh?”

“Which eye do you have that something in?”

“Oh, well, it’s-”

But it was too little, too late: everypony had already cracked up laughing.

It was such a wonderful moment, Twilight thought later. All of them gathered together in one place, not a care in the world between them.

And the night before, she had kissed Hex.

Well, on the cheek, anyway.

He was clearly starting to get suspicious of her, and she knew exactly what the reason was. All she had to do now was to wait for the correct moment, and seize the opportunity as soon as it arose...

In hindsight, she shouldn’t have been so quick to drop her guard.

Because if she hadn’t, every detail of what happened next could have never even transpired.

NEXT TIME: Holding Out for a Hero part 1

“Hey, who are you? What do you-?”

“Sedate her, quick!”

“Spike! Dude, are you okay?”

“Look, all I want is to go home! Just tell me what you want from me and I’ll be happy to give it to you!”

“Oh, I know that, Little Miss Purple, but I hardly think you’ll be willing to give up what I want...”

Author's Note: If you are reading this, then I can only assume that you managed to avoid dying of a heart attack, so good on you for survival skills! As you can probably tell, the dark tag is about to come into effect... because