My Little Amnesia: Ignorance Is Bliss

Chapters

That Thing In the Water
The Kiss of Moderate to Severe Burning
Feeling the Burn
Brennenburg
To Make Her Feel Better
Hour of Revealation

That Thing In the Water

My Little Amnesia: Friendship is HORRIFYING!

Chapter 1: That Thing in the Water

What would ponies say
if they could have genetic perfection?
If they'd been told they had been born
Designer-fashion-quality hearts
beating with common blood?
"No finances required",
the scientist says
At the sight of their pocketboooook...
"You deserve to be cured
of what makes you impure."
"With the right tool in hand
and in hoof
Let's take a peek inside
And see what what we can do
To make you NEW..."

- Terrible version of Repo's 21 First Century cure, created to avoid copyright issues.

Twilight Sparkle was a normal pony, though of high-ranking, what with being the Princesses' student and all.

So when she woke up in the morning- she was quite sure it was morning, her internal sense of of time was tightly wound and spot-on- and as it was as dark as evening, she was a little confused.

Twilight felt something under her covers and looked in them to see a glass vial on her mattress with light blue liquid dropped from its tip. Twilight put her hoof to her chin in thought, discovering to her dismay that the same liquid was on her cheek.

"Is there some holiday I don't know about going on? With longer nights and whatever this liquid is?...Did Princess Luna turn evil and back into Nightmare Moon again? Spike, get up, something's weird is going on...Spike?"

Writhing out from the snare of her covers, Twilight sat up right to see her pet baby dragon and assistant was gone without a trace. No Spike sleeping in late inside the comfort of his basket- there wasn't even a basket!

Oh no...what if somepony had kidnapped him!? What if they had taken him away and had started doing horrible things to him!?

"SPIKE!" Twilight shouted. The drawers and other bedroom items around her room rattled, as though disturbed by her volume.

Twilight, disturbed herself, made her way out of her bedroom and tried to get to the library's primary entrance.

The entire building was dim and half-lit in a weak, pitiful lighting, as though all light sources had lost the will to live, but couldn't bring themselves to snuff out completely.

Twilight was unnerved. That wasn't rational. This was her home- her library! Books adorned the shelves and walls and the shelves on the walls. Books were Twilight's favorite thing in the world. As long as they were there to comfort her, she could keep a clear head-

What was that!?

Twilight whipped around, expecting to see somepony with a spear or something, a robber, or any other sort of pony she didn't want to see right now, but there was nothing there. And she had only gotten a few steps' worth out from her bedroom, too... it would be easy to skip right in back in there and wait for somepony to rescue her...

No, no, Spike can't wait. Neither could she.

"Spiiiiiike?" Twilight called out.

This time, Twilight knew there was something there. It made a noise. It was a displeased noise, but she could just barely tell that was what it was from it's groaning deepness.

"Be quiet, please..." Somepony's voice asked that sounded like Fluttershy's.

"Fluttershy!?" Twilight exclaimed. "Is that you? Oh, please tell me it's you! Something weird is going on!"

Fluttershy didn't answer. Not even with another plea for Twilight to be quiet.

"...Spike? Spiiiiiiiike?"

"Good!" Rainbow Dash (?) shouted from somewhere Twilight couldn't see. "Yes! Keep MAKING those sounds."

"Rainbow Dash?" Twilight questioned, starting to back away towards the bedroom. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?...Rainbow Dash?"

No answer again.

"Somepony?" Twilight whimpered. "Please? I don't want to be alone..."

Twilight stopped, took in a deep breath, and pressed onward to get to the library entrance.

She managed to reach the top of the stairs that led to the next floor down of the library.

Then, her vision began flashing the same light blue as the liquid she'd found on her bed. It hurt. It hurt eyes to have the flashing go through them. It hurt her head to see all this lights going off, and she wasn't how, but it also hurt her body. She couldn't fathom why it affected her body the way it did, just that it hurt. It hurt. It hurt.

"Ahh..ahh...AAAAAH!"

Shrieking in pain, her eyes covered in blue, obscuring her vision and putting her into a panic, Twilight covered her eyes as if it would stop the PAIN, stumbled, and collapsed.

Twilight's internal clock was no good to her now. After being out for so long, Twilight lost her sense of time. She was an on-schedule type of pony, but that could only do so much good.

Waking up, Twilight was incredibly frightened. It wasn't that she had a temporary vision loss before blacking out. It wasn't that her eyes had suddenly flashed the color of whatever mystery fluid was on her bed.

It was that when she came to, she hadn't been moved from where she had passed out. A kidnapper would have dragged her, tied her up, leave a knife embedded in her chest, or a lover's calling card, something!

... Wait, why would she think of that last one about the card?

"Unneeeh..." Twilight whined, not sure if she wanted to even MOVE at all anymore after that. Remembering her assistant could be in trouble was the only thing giving her the courage to press forward...or maybe it was stupidity to not give up. The jury is out.

Twilight looked down at the stairs between her and escape. They looked...aged. Brittle. Like they would give out the moment she stepped on.

"...They're just stairs."

Twilight reached out a hoof and cautiously put on the first stair. When it didn't COMPLETELY CRUMBLE beneath her, Twilight felt safe...well, she didn't feel safe at all, but she felt...OKAY with going down the stairs.

Each one and every one made a loud, obnoxious creak as she stepped on them. And being a four-legged creature, Twilight got the JOY of stepping on some of the stairs more then once thanks to her hind-leg.

Despite the constant, unrelenting creaking of the staircase, Twilight made it down and felt a brief moment of reprieve.

"I made it! I made it! Now I just have-"

BRAACK-BROOM-BROOSH!

The staircase collapsed behind her and fell into itself, going from a creaky staircase to a useless pile of planks and plaster.

Twilight was in disbelief. It was perfectly fine while she was walking on it, but she gets to the bottom and totally falls apart? RRRRRAAG!

Oh, well. She was on the first floor now. She could get to the door and find somepony for help! That was nothing between her and the door but distance- a mad dash for freedom and-

Something would happen, certainly.

Twilight tensely took brisk steady steps forward to get to the door. Thankfully, nothing happened, thought Twilight felt extremely like she had made a dash she would've tripped some sort of tripwire that didn't detect slow steps.

Twilight put her hoof on the doorknob and...TRIED to turn it. The doorknob and subsequent tumblers weren't turning and tumbling.

"Open, you!" Twilight shook the doorknob vigorously, trying to get it to work. She backed away from the door, charged her horn, and proceeded to blast the door with the strongest magic blast she could muster.

SPOOM-PFOOOM.

Smoke from the blast slithered away from the door, revealing it to be utterly unscathed.

Twilight was upset at her failure. She never failed. Ever so slowly, she let out a scream that later began to escalate in volume, going from a quite sigh of frustration into a scream of rage into the heavens.

"...aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

"RAAAAAUUUUUUURRRRH!" Something deep roared in response to her misgivings.

Twilight stuffed her hoof into her mouth, realizing she had upset some sort of beast somewhere.

"Hello?" She questioned, for the all good it would do. "Who's there?"

Turning away from the door that had somehow been made unable to be open, Twilight looked for the source of the noise.

Up ahead, over in the corner of the room, the entrance to the library's basement was open.

Twilight signed. Why was she doing this? Why was she going TOWARDS the basement and not running away screaming for help like the sensible pony she was?

She was lonely, and it was dark. After a certain point, even the company of a ravenous, flesh-consuming Tartarian spawn was better than no company at all.

Twilight made her way down the basement's stairs, certain they would crumble like the ones to her bedroom did the instant she stepped off them.

When she got to the basement proper, Twilight found herself stepping a liquid. She hoped it wasn't something nasty. Using her horn to light the room, she found it was the same liquid from the beaker on her bed.

...No, no, wait. It was just water.

"Hmm." Seeing it was just water, Twilight moved forward and to her displeasure, the basement had been flooded. There was enough water to reach her LITTLE PONY KNEES...

Something started splashing to her side, and when she turned to see it, her vision flashed red, similar to earlier. She was knocked to her side, but still conscious.

Now with her body half in the water, her right eye was obscured by water, but her left one- or 'top one', given the position she was in, wasn't. Either way, she could still make out something splashing in the water barreling away like a rocket-powered piranha...and it swerved around and came straight for her.

"AAAHH!"

Twilight quickly got out of the water and back onto the bottom stair of the basement. Wait, this one hadn't collapsed?

Don't look a gift pony in the mouth, Twilight. She thought to herself.

Twilight looked back to the water. The splashing had stopped, and there were no ripples in the water, leading Twilight to believe the thing in the water had quit moving.

"Hmm..."

Curious, Twilight put her hoof in the water.

The splashing began again, heading straight for her hoof.

Twilight pulled her hoof out.

The splashing stopped.

Twilight put her hoof in.

The splashing began again.

Twilight pulled her hoof out.

It stopped.

Twilight kicked at the surface of the water, not quite putting her hoof in there.

The splashing half-began again, but quit, seemingly aware of a false alarm.

Twilight, realizing she was 'safe' as long as she was out of the water. Still lonely, she started chatting to whatever Pit-Spawn was in there.

"Are you lonely, you little...piranha...ghost...torpedo...thing? I'm lonely. I can't find my assistant, or my friends. Do you know what that's like?"

Twilight wasn't really expecting an answer, but it was stress relieving that she was at least talking to something ALIVE.

Of course, it was perfectly fine to talk to inanimate objects. It was when they talked back that there was a problem.

Twilight signed and lied down on her fours on the stairs.

"Hide and seek, hide and SEEEKK..." Pinkie's voice wailed ghostly from wherever the voices had been coming from.

"Pinkie!?"

"Twilight, come out! You'll like what I have planned!"

Twilight wasn't so sure about that... hmm, go up and see Pinkie's plans, which could easily involve something unpleasant to her, but enjoyable to Pinkie, or stay here and talk to the Pit-Spawn waiting for an answer that'd never come?

Decisions, decisions...

Twilight missed her friends, though, so she went up the stairs.

"Pinkie?" She asked, popping her head out ahead of the rest of her. "Where are you?"

"Over here!"

Twilight saw Pinkie sitting on her haunches over by one of the library's many shelves, just sitting there waiting.

"Come on, Twilight! I have something I want to do with you over in the other room!"

"What is it?"

"I don't know! That's why I wanna do it!"

Before Twilight could even try to explain to Pinkie why doing something that she didn't know what it was made for a bad idea, Pinkie turned and headed down the alley made from the library's bookshelves.

Twilight shook her head. Knowing Pinkie was going to cause trouble one way or the other, she got off the basement stairs and followed after her.

Although tall and imposing, the rows of bookshelves were easily navigable, and Twilight found Pinkie waiting for her by an open door leading into what Twilight could only assume was a room of the huge Ponyville library she didn't know about.

"In here!" Pinkie said, gesturing to the room. Twilight humored her and obliged, going inside.

Pinkie entered the room and closed the door shut behind both of them.

"So, what did you want to do, Pinkie Pie?" Twilight asked, looking around the room. There was a bed and what Twilight could assume was a empty liquor rack.

"Get on the bed!" Pinkie instructed.

"Uh, okay..." Twilight was uneasy, but crawled onto the bed and lied down on her belly.

"Now wait there..." Pinkie started fiddling with the liquor rack, as if looking for something. She put her hoof to the side and slapped it, causing a secret panel to drop out the side.

There was a knock on the door to the room.

"I'll get that." Twilight said, getting off the bed. She didn't want to upset Pinkie by getting off it, but she also didn't want to keep whoever was there waiting.

Approaching the door, Twilight pulled it open...and she never would've expected who- or what was on the other side.

Pinkie Pie was right there, some sort of horrible black film or-or crust covering her eyes, bandages around her ankles, her neck having been shoved through some sort of wheel, and dried blood caking to her chest, making a mantle like the barding of the Canterlot Guard.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Twilight moved away from the horrific thing, allowing her to see as the Pinkie she entered the room with lunged forward with a knife in her hoof where Twilight just was- but the knife lodged into the second, disfigured Pinkie instead.

The disfigured Pinkie scoffed and neighed. "That's not how you do it, Silly Filly!" Disfigured Pinkie proceeded to take the knife out of her chest and and stab it back in slightly to the left. "THAT's how you do it."

The normal-looking Pinkie Pie stuttered and stammered at her reflection's callousness about being STABBED in the CHEST.

Twilight, now having had a moment to adjust to the second Pinkie's appearance, realized the first one had been meaning to stab HER.

"Pinkie Pie...Pies! What is going on!?"

The two Pinkies pointed at each other. "She's a phony!"

Twilight glared, not in the mood for a 'spot the imposter' game.

"You gotta believe me, Twilight!" The normal-looking one said. "I'M the real Pinkie: This one's horribly mutilated!"

"That proves nothing." Twilight said starkly.

"She was trying to STAB you!" The disfigured one said. "And not in the good way!"

"Good way?"

"Plus, I don't even know what 'mutilated' means! So HA!"

Twilight glared at them. She used her magic to pull the knife out of the second Pinkie's chest and put it in her own hoof.

"Okay, I have the knife now, understand? I'm going to ask you both questions, and whoever I decide isn't the real Pinkie...gets the knife. Got it?"

Both Pinkie's nodded.

"Okay..." Twilight blew on her fringe. "Where were you born?"

"Ponyville." The normal one said.

"A rock farm!' The grotesque one exclaimed.

Twilight laughed. " Hahahaha! Well, that was easier then I thought. Everypony who's talked to Pinkie more then once knows she was raised on a rock farm."

Twilight threw the knife into Fake Pinkie's chest.

"The Princess will learn... about... this!" Fake-Pinkie promised as she began to bleed out and fell down. Exactly why the Princess would know, and why this would supposed to upset them was a mystery they would deal with later.

"Come on, Pinkie Pie." Twilight instructed to her mutilated friend. "If you're here, the rest of our friends must be here too."

"Okay!" Pinkie Pie said as Twilight left the room. Before she followed, she looked at her doppelgangers' corpse and the knife inside. She pulled the knife out and stabbed it back into herself, then merrily, HAPPILY bounced out of the room after Twilight.

"What are we going to do with your copy's corpse, Pinkie?" Twilight asked as Pinkie joined her in the hallway.

"We could feed her to that thing in the water in the basement." Pinkie suggested. Twilight gawked at Pinkie's callousness, and that she apparently knew about the thing in the water.

Author's Note

You may have a slight moral issue as to how easily Twilight causally murders the fake Pinkie.

And that's perfectly fine, you're entitled to that feeling.

However, just keep in mind that she presumes it was a Changeling, right? So, while that may not make it forgivable for some of you, it should at least be 'understandable' that she would do that.

The Kiss of Moderate to Severe Burning

Twilight and Pinkie...

Gyaaah!

It has hard for Twilight to look her friend in the eye. Whatever black film that was covering her eyes made it look like they'd been gouged out, but the little red pinpricks said otherwise. The wheel on her neck was a cart wheel.

But anyways, where was she? Oh, yes. Pinkie was actually disconcertingly enthusiastic about feeding her doppleganger to the thing in the water. The water-thing. Twilight was against the idea out of principle. It was mean to feed somepony, even a Changeling somepony, to a Pit-Spawn.

After much back and forth, they eventually compromised and set her doppleganger's corpse up against the walls of the basement staircase. The agreement was that if the water-thing was willing to climb out of the water for it's prize, it could eat the corpse.

Twilight felt so wrong lifting and moving a corpse like that. She was a librarian, not a gravekeeper! It wasn't her job to lift bodies! Eeeeuck.

After splaying the body up against the wall, Twilight felt the need to reiterate her unease.

"I still don't like this idea, Pinkie!"

Pinkie pfffted.

The two of them sat at the bottom of the stairs, trying to think of their next move. Pinkie Pie pulled the cart wheel off her neck- the way Pinkie typically did spatially-impossible things. She put the wheel in the water, goading the thing inside.

"Hey, Pinkie Pie? What happened to you, exactly?"

PInkie stopped waving her wheel. "I don't want to talk about with you."

Twilight latched onto Pinkie's word choice. With you. So perhaps somepony else could pry the secret from her?

Twilight took another look at the fake Pinkie's corpse. Twilight wasn't normally vindictive, but she held a bitter grudge against the Changelings for their role in her brother's wedding. They had nearly ruined her life, her brother's life, her friendships, and quite nearly the city.

So, in a pang of anger, she slapped the corpse across the cheek.

She regretted it instantly. It felt very different from slapping a live pony. The warmth had drained from the Changeling's face, it felt cold to the touch. It was like slapping a piece of frozen meant, which was far from the most pleasant thing in the world.

"We should find Fluttershy." Pinkie suggested, pulling the cart wheel out of the water and and pulling it back down on her head.

"And the others." Twilight added. Though Fluttershy should probably be their first priority. Followed by Rarity. Then Rainbow Dash and Applejack. The latter two didn't get stress breakdowns quite as easily as the first two.

Pinkie adjusted the cart wheel on her neck.

"Pinkie, could you get rid of that knife?"

Pinkie whined. "But it feels sooo good!"

"Okay, okay."

Twilight wasn't okay with it AT ALL, actually. What had happened to Pinkie that she ENJOYED having a KNIFE in her chest?

"Let's find Fluttershy." Twilight said, more to remind herself than anything.

Twilight and Pinkie climbed up out the basement staircase and set out to find their shy, meek friend. The library was large enough, but in the unnatural, ever-creeping darkness outside, it seemed even larger.

"Where should we start? Where CAN we start?"

"Well, how did I find you?" Pinkie posed the question.

Twilight reflected. "By... you wandering into the wine cellar just as the Changeling was about to stab me...so what, we just find a Changeling who's pretending to be Fluttershy and have her try to stab me just in time for the real one to show up and save me?"

"I like the way you think, Twilight! But I don't think that will actually work. How about we split up and check back into the basement every half-hour?"

That was reasonable enough. As long as they both went in every half-hour, they could know when something was wrong if they didn't come in. Eventually, they would find Fluttershy, and, it would be a good strategy for them to do when it came time to find the rest of their friends.

"I'll go that way." Pinkie pointed over to a hallway and clopped towards it.

Twilight looked around and saw a spiral staircase. She whimpered, not wanting to go up after that staircase to her bedroom collapsed. But what choice did she have, really?

To go up another staircase? That didn't solve the problem, it just traded one with another.

Twilight sighed, hung her head, and trudged up them.

"Don't make too much noise, now, darling." Rarity's voice warned her from afar.

"Rarity?" Twilight questioned. "Are you there? Can you hear me?"

"I'm sorry, Twilight, dear, I can hear your voice and hoofsteps ...but I can't make out what you're saying exactly. Just mind my warning and you should be fine! See you soon!"

Twilight nodded, though it escaped there was no point in it. She continued up the stairs and stopped when she heard a menacing, hideous roar that caused red to creep around the edges of her vision. The interior of her vision that wasn't getting red creep set into was getting blacked out, making it so she could barely see, and the roar seemed to reach through her ears and into her brain, drilling the fake safe harbor of insanity directly into her skull.

"AAAAAH! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME!? WHAT DID I EVER DO TO YOU!? Just-just tell me what you want, please!"

Once the roaring had stopped and her vision could go back to normal, Twilight realized she was crouching down and wondered just what it was that had made her freak out like that. Granted, the roaring was - let's stop pretending, here- the roaring was hellish. But it didn't...warrant whatever THAT had been about.

Twilight whimpered. There was a throbbing pang in her head. It was like her sanity was being drained down an unplugged sink, and ever so slowly, she had to watch it fall and slip away, able to realize that was her very sanity being drained, but unable to do anything about it..

Twilight rushed up the stairs, and when she made it to the top, she stopped dead. She was expecting the stairs to collapse behind her...they didn't, but that roar...

"F-Fluttershy?" Twilight called out. "Applejack? Somepony?"

Don't make too much noise now, darling... echoed in Twilight's head.

Twilight gulped at Rarity's ominous warning echoing in her head. She quieted her voice to a whisper.

"Fluttershy, Applejack...somepony..."

"Twilight, come here!"

Twilight darted her eyes around the room. There was a pale yellow hoof gesturing at from what Twilight could only hope was a closet.

"Flu-" Twilight hushed herself. She rushed over to the closet and crept inside. Fluttershy was there, wearing an Oriental green white flower-pattern dress with matching sandals and straps along her legs.

"Fluttershy, are you okay?" Twilight whispered, looking over Fluttershy's clothing.

"Why are you whispering?" Fluttershy questioned.

"Rarity said to be quiet!" Twilight's second whisper was strained, as she was worried that Fluttershy not being quiet would alert...something to their presence. She had no real what, just... something big and scary and nasty.

"Okay." Fluttershy nodded her head. "What's going on?"

"I was, uh, hoping you'd know."

"Oh, I'm sorry..." Fluttershy turned her head away.

Twilight looked around in the empty closet. "Why are you hiding in here?"

Fluttershy seemed saddened by the question. "Didn't you see Rainbow Dash? She's gone completely nuts."

Well, far as Twilight was concerned, the very library itself had gone nuts. Anypony inside would have to suck it up and just deal with the stressing insanity. If she had to deal with bloodcurdling, soul-freezing roars from thin air, then so did everypony else.

Twilight 'hmm'ed and put her knee on the wall of the closet, causing a mechanical panel to reveal itself, and retract. A chute dropped out, and a shiny light-blue ceramic orb rolled out. Twilight looked at it and gasped.

"I don't understand." Fluttershy murmured. "What's the big deal?"

"This is a Memorb! It records a pony's memories and allows you to experience them the way they did." Twilight explained. There was a small design flaw: say a pony deliberately mis-remembered something...but Twilight was confident. "I bet we can find out just what happened to the library with this thing! I'll just use my horn here..."

Twilight touched her horn to the orb. The effects were near-instantaneous. Twilight felt like she was being sucked into it.

Slightly disoriented, Twilight felt herself being put in another pony's point of view. She was in an enclosed room with a shivering Canterlot guard, with his white fur and gold armor.

"G-get away from me!" the guard exclaimed. He backed away.

Twilight wanted to tell the guard she wasn't going to hurt him, but she knew she was in somepony's memory. Anything she said, only she would be able to hear.

"Don't be like that..." A soft, sincere voice asked of the guard in a coo.

Wait, was that Fluttershy's voice?

The pony whose memory she was experiencing started getting closer to the guard.

"No!" The guard stammered. "Get away from me! I-I have a wife!"

"Oh! I'm sorry." Fluttershy -if that's who was- apologized. "Here, I'll go get somepony else whose torture is less... prone to contact. I'm sure- "

"He's lying." Somepony with a deep, dark, yet still very much feminine voice boomed at Fluttershy. "Continue, Fluttershy."

It was Fluttershy!

"No, no, please..." the guard stammered.

"Oh, quit your whining." Fluttershy scolded the guard in a very un-Fluttershy manner. "Buck up, and pucker up."

Fluttershy closed her eyes, which made it impossible for Twilight discern whatever happened afterwards.

But based on the sounds of the guard's muffled screaming and something sizzling, Twilight was perfectly all right with that.

Feeling like she had just been ejected from the orb in a most nausating fashion, as though the finished orb had spat her out after swallowing her on accident,, Twilight wobbled around slightly.

"What did you see?" Fluttershy asked.

Twilight held up the orb in her hoof. "Well, um...this is your memory, Fluttershy."

"Mine!?"

"Yeah. I think you did something to a guard."

"How could I do something to a guard? They're so big and tough and I'm so weak and fragile."

Twilight raised an eyebrow at Fluttershy's putting-herself-down. Granted, Fluttershy was weak, but she wasn't usually so...open about it. Come to think of it, Fluttershy wasn't very open at all.

"You know what, Fluttershy? I think you should see the memory yourself...see if you can explain it to me."

Twilight gave Fluttershy the orb and blasted it with her magic. Fluttershy's eyes became dazed and glossy, as if entranced.

Is that what Twilight looked like when she was using it?

After a minute. Fluttershy shuddered and blinked. Her eyes now clear, she drew away from the orb. Twilight reflected that didn't take long. Of course, there wasn't much memory to experience in the first place...

"I'm sorry, Twilight. I don't remember that." Fluttershy apologized.

"Ah, it's okay. We'll find out what happened somehow." Twilight looked at the closet door. "And...we'll need to come out of here eventually."

Twilight and Fluttershy exchanged glances. The latter gulped. Twilight slowly creaked open the door, and the two of them stepped out. Both ponies darted around the room, searching for signs of danger.

"All clear on my end." Fluttershy said.

"Same here." Twilight said. "Where's Rainbow Dash?"

"Didn't you hear me!? I said she went crazy!"

Twilight stepped back, taken aback by Flutttershy's irritability. What had changed all her friends so much? Twilight looked around, then stomped her hoof, having made up her mind. "Take me to Rainbow. Maybe I can talk some sense into her."

Fluttershy scoffed. "You can try. Come on. This way."

Fluttershy led Twilight into another room on the floor they were in. Until now, it had escaped Twilight that she needed to go back to Pinkie and let her know Fluttershy was okay, but finding Rainbow Dash needed to be taken care of as well.

Fluttershy eventually brought her to yet another part of the library Twilight didn't know was there. The pegasus pointed at the door. "She's in there...somewhere."

Twilight nodded, pulled open the door, and stepped inside. The room was a very long hallway with a couple of round doors, and dimly lit, as well.

"Gee, maybe we should go back for Pi-"

THHHuuunk. The door shut behind Twilight.

"Flutttershy?" Twilight exclaimed, rushing up to the door. "Did you close the door?"

"Nope!"

"Then can you open it?"

Twilight saw and heard the doorknob rattling on her end, but...

"I can't get it to turn!" Fluttershy said from the other said.

Twilight pounded her hoof on the door in frustration and signed. "Okay. I'm going to find Rainbow Dash. You go to the basement and wait for Pinkie Pie."

"Will do!"

Twilight separated from the door and started making her way down the hall. One door was slightly ajar, where the others weren't. Twilight logically presumed if she were to find something, it'd be in there.

She cautiously creaked the ajar door open the rest of the way. "Rainbow Dash? Anypony?" once inside, Twilight saw a table, a large wooden cabinet, and some beaker full of pink fluid resting on the table.

"Hmm..." Twilight approached it closer, curious as to the purpose of what was clearly a potion. "Hmm."

Twilight levitated the beaker up with her magic.

Twilight's attention was distracted when she heard the cabinet creak. Twilight whipped around at the noise. The cabinet wobbled and creaked and then fell over on her, breaking her mental concentration over the beaker. Pinned down under the heavy furniture, Twilight was helpless, unable to use her magic to keep the beaker from falling and shattering onto her snout. She was yelping for help, so the pink liquid inside had no trouble splashing down into her throat like a solid lump. Once she realized what happened, Twilight tried to spit it out, but it had already got too far down for her to do much.

Once she accepted her faith and swallowed the liquid, Twilight calmed down, and could focus enough to magic the cabinet off herself.

Twilight decided it would best to leave the room, before any more surprises happened.

When she creaked the door open and took a step out, she heard a most unwelcome noise.

'Splash'.

Twilight's eyes widened as she saw the hallway had been flooded with water.

She looked to her side, with the futile hope what she saw wouldn't be what she was expecting.

Something splashing in the water, coming straight for her. That carnivorous thing in the water, if not, a second one of them.

Twilight did what any pony would do in her position:

She ran.

She ran as fast she could, the splashing beast in the water never too far- or rather, not far enough for comfort- behind her.

Twilight started breathing heavily, thinking she would run out of space to run before escaping it.

She was seemingly proven right when she found the end of the hallway.

Backed up into an corner, Twilight backed against the wall. The water-thing was splashing closer and closer. It was going to knock her down and eat her alive, she knew it.

Then something miraculous happened.

A huge dark blade with a awkward corner came swinging down from nowhere and smacked straight into the thing. A horrible shrieked emitted from it as it drew its last.

Twilight took in a deep breath. "Thank you so much!"

The blade drew back into the corridor it had appeared from. Then metal hoofsteps began to thunk near her. A hoof clad in studded metal appeared before anything else.

Twilight started breathing heavier.

Her rescuer wasn't quite whom she was hoping to see. It was Rainbow Dash- or a Changeling, but mutated, which made Twilight pray it was the ladder. Tiny bone-like structures were stuck to her legs and torso by pins. Metal plating was covering her hooves, chest, and one of her eyes. Her left front hoof had been replaced by the blade that had struck down the water-creature. Twilight didn't think she could cope if this monstrictoy of metal was the actual Rainbow Dash.

"You're welcome." She drawled in a raspy, scratchy dry voice that made it clear she was about to do Twilight what she had done to the water-thing.

The chase was on again. Only this time, Rainbow was the pursuer.

Rainbow Dash charged straight at Twilight, who ducked, causing the nightmarish blade to lodge into the wall. Rainbow Dash now held up by having to pry her sword out, Twilight got a head start to gallop to the other end of the hall.

"I will find you!" Rainbow Dash promised. "I will KILL YOU!"

"I don't doubt that." Twilight muttered as she ran.

"DAAAaH! GET AWAY!" Somepony screamed. Somepony quiet...somepony whose name was Fluttershy!

"Fluttershy!?" Twilight cried out.

"I fooooound yoooou!"

Right. Twilight couldn't worry about Fluttershy right now. Had to worry about herself first. Run first. Perhaps it was selfish to worry about herself when Fluttershy needed help.

But she wasn't much good to Fluttershy if she was dead, now was she?

Twilight ran back into the room with the cabinet and closed the door behind her. She opened cabinet and hid herself inside. Twilight tried to calm her breathing. If she breathed too heavily, then Rainbow Dash would hear, open the cabinet door and...well, it was obvious what happened from there, right?

"She really has gone insane..." Twilight muttered herself. "...No. No. Don't rule out that she's a Changeling just yet." She reminded herself.

Twilight heard the sounds of clinking and clanking. Rainbow Dash hadn't come into the room yet, so... Twilight stepped out of the cabinet and back into the hallway. She heard something clinking still, like wind chimes.

"HAA-CCCK!"

Looking up, Twilight saw Rainbow Dash suspended to the ceiling by chains that had dropped out of it from a trap door. The chains were wrapped around her neck and wings, restricting. She lifted her blade and struck it against them, but all that did was produce a few sparks that nearly singed Twilight's eyebrows.

"..You know what?" Twilight asked herself. "If those chains weren't there, she'd have probably killed me by now, so I'm not even going to question where they came from."

Happy with that and slightly in denial, Twilight trotted her way back towards the entrance to the hallway.

She didn't see as the struggling Rainbow Dash...went limp behind her.

Getting back to the door, Twilight saw the doorknob had somehow been burned clean off. Some sort of sizzling green ichor was all around it, burning through all it contacted.

Twilight was fairly sure she didn't want to touch it.

A vibrant green eye poked through the hole where the doorknob used to be. "Twilight? Is that you?"

"Fluttershy? You're okay!"

"Yes. I'm fine. There was a Changeling who took my form and locked you in here so a Changeling that was pretending to be Rainbow Dash could kill you. But don't worry. My doppleganger can't hurt you now, Mis-." Fluttershy cut herself off.

Ah! That was a Changeling as well! No wonder why she was acting so un-Fluttershy like. Twilight was much too relived the at possilbity of Rainbow Dash having still been sane to notice Fluttershy's slip of her tongue.

"Here, let me open the door for you." Fluttershy offered.

The door opened from the other side, and Twilight stepped through to see Fluttershy. She was still wearing an Oriental dress, but it looked much more expensive and had less straps. She was also wearing sandals. Her hair was done up to look like a Lotus blossom.

"I gotta admit, after seeing Pinkie and Rainbow Dash..." Twilight shuddered. "I was expecting you to be mutilated too."

"Oh, I AM mutilated!" Flutttershy assured Twilight, as much of an 'assurance' as it could reasonably be called. "It's just internal. Look." Fluttershy pointed to the corner of the room.

Over in the corner, the Changeling that taken Flutttershy's shape and locked up Twilight in the hallway while lying about not being able to open the door, was on her side, down on the floor. The same green ichor that was on the doorknob was eating away her neck, bubbling and boiling away the flesh.

Twilight grimaced and looked to Fluttershy, who looked back with a down expression.

"I did that with a kiss."

Twilight was flabbergasted, though also a little impressed. However Fluttershy had gotten this...ability, for lack of a better word, it must have taken a lot of research!

"Come on." Twilight gestured for Fluttershy to follow her. "Let's go find Pinkie Pie."

Back in the room's corner, the ichor finished tearing through the false Flutttershy's head, causing it to separate from her body and roll away.

"Ugggggh!"

Twilight and Fluttershy went back to the basement, where the Changeling Pinkie's front leg had been dipped into the water and consumed by the beast residing within.

Pinkie eventually found them. Fluttershy reacted rather well the the knife, blood, and cart wheel on the Earth pony, consider how senstive she was usually was. Twilight chalked up to a delayed reaction from all the stress that was bound to come, or perhaps Fluttershy had seen worse after her animals got into a particular rough fight with each other.

"You found Fluttershy!" Pinkie exclaimed. "Rock on!"

"Yeah. Now we just need to find everypony else." Twilight said confidently. Then she turned her head and said, a little less confidently, "Including Spike..."

"Ah, cheer up!" Pinkie said, resting a hoof on Twilight's neck. "I'm sure he's fine."

Twilight wasn't so easily convinced. "I sure hope so...Aaah!"

Twilight spasmed and tucked her back leg in, her tail beginning to rise in the air.

"Twilight? Are you okay?" Fluttershy asked.

"Yeah, I'm..." Twilight spasmed again, her tail becoming stiff. Her eyes widened as she made a deduction.

"Oh...no, you know what? I swallowed a pink potion while I was in the hallway." Twilight grimaced as her body began tucking in further on itself. "I'm starting to think...it may have been aphrodisiac!"

A ludicrous notion, as not even a land of magical talking ponies was aphrodisiac a common thing. It was a myth. A pony tail. A story to scare little foals into behaving. But given how Fluttershy's apparently had some of...acid-producing kiss now, Twilight wasn't willing to rule anything out at this point.

"Oh my!" Fluttershy exclaimed. "What can we do?"

"Well, I have one of three options." Twilight started to explain, having read the theoretical effects of the surprisingly real aphrodisiac. "Either one of you can mount me, somepony can make a neutralizer agent...OORR I can be cooked to death by the heat of my own arousal."

Fluttershy and Pinkie stared at her with dumbfounded expressions.

"Correction." Twilight realized with an exasperated sigh. "I have one of two options."

Feeling the Burn

Twilight took in a deep breath, the aphrodisiac spiking hard in her systems.

Still, she was impressed, and getting more curious. Whomever had developed the aphrodisiac must have done a lot research and known a lot about chemistry to bring the aphrodisiac from fiction to reality. Were they perhaps the same pony whom 'gave' Fluttershy her acidic kisses? Maybe they knew more about what happened in the library?

AAAH!

Curse words if she didn't want to have it out of her system, pronto!

The longer she looked at either Pinkie Pie or Fluttershy, the more attractive, more curvaceous and voluptuous they looked. Twilight would occasionally try to cover her eyes with her hooves to stop the mind games the potion was playing on her systems,. But she would always end up having to remove them to discuss their next course of action with her friends, and the illusion of two mares getting increasingly attractive by the minute would start playing again.

"We should do about something the aphro-aphro...the thingy." Fluttershy reasonably concluded. They couldn't risk finding Rarity while Twilight was dozed up on it.

"Yeah!" Pinkie agreed with an gung-ho smile. "...How do we do that!?"

"Come a little closer..." Twilight rasped, supporting herself on the wall to try to distract herself from the warm burbling going on in her tummy. It wasn't effective, if her beckoning hoof and 'come hither' gaze was anything to go by.

"What else did you say we could do?" Fluttershy squeaked. "Something to...neutralize it?"

"Yes. Something for me to swallow that will neutralize the ingredients in the aphrodisiac." Twilight smiled and blushed, her Cutie Mark edging rubbed up against the wall. "But I don't see why we would need it when I have you two here with me! Heehee..."

Fluttershy and Pinkie exchanged worried glances at each other, off-put by Twilight's behavior.

"I'll go to the kitchen and make a cure-all." Fluttershy said. "Just like Mama used to make! One sip of it, and no ailment will go uncured!"

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Will it work on the aphrodisiac?"

"I don't know...but what else can we do?"

Twilight nodded.

"Pinkie, stay here and keep Twilight from doing anything too...you know." Fluttershy motioned for Pinkie to move away so she could whisper something without Twilight hearing. "The more she gives into it, the more of the neutralizer Twilight will need. Don't let her do anything!"

"Right!" Pinkie saluted. Fluttershy ran up the stairs out of the basement, leaving Pinkie to guard Twilight from herself.

"...Wait a minute! FLUTTTERSHY! I DON"T ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO KEEP TWILIGHT FROM DOING!"

"Come closer, Pinkie." Twilight instructed. "I'll show you..."

Pinkie took a step towards Twilight, then stepped back, remembering Fluttershy's instructions.

"Wouldn't showing me mean that you'd do the thing that Flutttershy wants me to keep you from doing?"

Twilight shifted her eyes. "Yes." She pressed her hooves on the wall, trying to keep herself distracted from the constant spiking going on in her body. "Ooooh..."

Upstairs, Fluttershy stepped into the main hall of the library out of the basement.

"Now, where was the kitchen?" Uncertain, Flutttershy turned to the left and headed that way until she found a door. Opening it, she was greeted another section of the library with more rows of books and some cabinets.

"Mmmhh..." the petite pegasus was supposed to finding the kitchen, but she felt like she would find something she needed inside one of those cabinets... like an certain ingredient of some sort.

Briskly stepping inside, Fluttershy started pulling the cabinets open, and was disappointed when the first one she pulled was empty. As was the second. As well as the third. She made progress on the fourth, though!

A note. A white piece of paper with black ink scribbled on it in a thick font with hoofwriting like it was from a thousand years ago. Fluttershy began to read it. The date had been ripped off; it was clear it was somepony's note or journal entry, but the seams in the paper were no doubt from having been torn.

It read:

My sister has, today, gone out on an expedition. She was set for some faraway castle in a land of twilight. She writes that the castle is like no other she's seen. I hope she's faring well...

"Hmm..."

Fluttershy winced she suddenly heard a scuffling noise, like somepony moving very fast through the library.

"Who's there!?" Fluttershy looked around, expecting a shadow to rush through her vision, but no such thing happened. "Is somepony there? Um, my name is...Fluttershy and my friends and I could use your help finding out what happened here...hello?"

Fluttershy whimpered. She continued searching through the cabinets and eventually found some exotic plants. Plants from far-off lands no pony should ever put in their mouth for foreign toxins and other potential agents could be waiting within.

Fluttershy scooped them out of the cabinet with her muzzle and began chowing down.

"Nom nom nom nom..." Gulp! Fluttershy chewed right through them and swallowed without hesitating. She wiped her mouth with her hoof to remove the trace of the plants taste from her muzzle.

"This won't help with with the neutralizer any...but I needed some of those." Fluttershy murmured, looking down between her front legs at her stomach.

Fluttershy made one last double-check to see if she could find who was there. Failing at that, she left the room and decided to find some stairs in search of the kitchen.

Back in the basement, Twilight was trying to seduce Pinkie.

"Come on, Pinkie! Don't you want to have your way with me? Now is the perfect tiiiiime!"

"I have my way with you all the time, Twilight!"

"...You really don't know what that phrase means, do you?"

"Nope, and I intend to keep it that way!"

She was failing miserably and rather spectacularly, due to Pinkie's lack of knowledge about this kind of thing.

Twilight whined. The aphrodisiac was getting hotter amidst her stomach contents. Her Cutie Mark was going to start sizzling any second now, burning because its hunger was going un-sated through its channel of Twilight's body.

"Pinkie..." Twilight whined. "I really need somepony to do unspeakable things to do me or I'm going to start burning!"

Yes...from the books Twilight had read, one effect of the aphrodisiac was to get hotter and hotter until the pony burned up...unless they had some good old-fashioned lovin' on beforehoof.

Pinkie gazed on. It almost looked like she knew something Twilight didn't...

"You know, Pinkie." Twilight said. "I thought you were a party pony."

Pinkie gasped dramatically. No pony questioned whether or not she was a party pony! She was Pinkie Pie! THE party pony! The party-partiest pony in Equestria! "I AM a party pony!"

"Really?" Twilight said. "Then why won't you come over and party with me?"

Pinkie was, understandably, starting to get creeped out. She backed away slightly. "You're starting to freak me out a little bit, Twilight..."

"Ooh!" Twilight complained. "I'm sorry, Pinkie Pie...I just- ... AAAAAAAH I WANT IT SO BADLY!"

Twilight's eyes were seized by a pink glow the same color of the aphrodisiac she had swallowed. She dashed up the stairs and lunged to grab Pinkie. Pinkie, demonstrating the cartoon physics she was so well-known for, jumped over Twilight and landed on one of the lower stairs away from the unicorn. Twilight then did her own demonstration of the same cartoon physics and jumped after Pinkie. Pinkie jumped back up the stairs into her original spot. They did this back-and-forth for a while, until Twilight was finally fed up with it and grabbed Pinkie by the tail in mid-air with her telekinesis.

Twilight giggled like an immature school girl and levitated the upside down, increasingly worried Pinkie in front of her. "Heeheehehehehe!" Twilight cupped Pinkie's cheeks and rubbed them, wanting to make sure Pinkie was as excited as she was. She kissed Pinkie, savored it for a moment, drew back...and then French-kissed her passionately.

Pinkie flailed her front legs about and made muffled noises of protest from the intrusion of Twilight's tongue. Thinking quickly, Pinkie pulled her cart wheel collar off and smacked Twilight's horn with, disrupting the unicorn's focus. Twilight rubbed her struck horn sorely, giving Pinkie ample time to run up the stairs.

"COME BAAACK!" By now, it was easily obvious Twilight had yieled to the drug within her. "All I want is a little sugar...hhmmm hmmhmm heehee! Okaaaay...a LOT of sugar!"

Twilight reared herself up and began to chase after Pinkie. It was a little funny that not too long ago, Twilight had been subject to one chase after with another thing in the water and the fake Rainbow Dash. Now she was the chaser, with Pinkie as her would-be victim.

Fluttershy found the kitchen, eventually. It was up the stairs she had chosen- which was most fortunate.

"Okay!" Fluttershy said to reassure herself. "I found the kitchen...now I need..." she went over to the kitchen cabinets and started pulling out the ingredients she needed. "A pot..." CLANG. "Some measuring cups..." clink-clink-clink-clink! "and of course, some working water and a source of heat!"

"Hmm..." Fluttershy drew her neck up to look at the library's oven. She checked the knobs on it and the burners were still working. "Ah!"

As she was looking around for the sink, she couldn't help but notice that one the overhead cabinets attached to the wall was slightly ajar. Had it been that way before?

Curious, Fluttershy pulled open the rest of the way and was greeted by the sparkling shimmer of a Memorb.

She picked it up with her wing and shook it slightly, trying to make it work for her. She wasn't a unicorn, so she had no magic to activate it. But maybe it would respond to pegasi magic?

Although, were that the case, how would Fluttershy harness it to activate the device?

"Mmmh..." Fluttershy shook it even harder in her wing, eventually shaking so hard and fast she dropped the sphere, which rolled away from her and hit one of the ground-level cabinets.

The Memorb began shimmering.

Fluttershy smiled, the sparkle of magic lighting up around her face. "That'll work!"

She leaned in closer to the sphere and wrapped the ankles of her hooves around so it would put her in its mystic trance. Fluttershy was subject to the same 'being sucked in' sensation as Twilight had been. She was also put into a first-pony view of the memory recorded within the orb.

The first thing Fluttershy saw after the orb had completed its transaction of her to the memory was Twilight Sparkle's brother, Shining Armor. He was standing in marble, like the castle at Canterlot.

"Come on, Twiley." Shining said, nudging at the door. "Don't you want to know what the big important task the Princess has for you is?"

A shudder escaped from the mouth of the pony Fluttershy was 'occupying'.

"I'm sorry, Shining." Twilight apologized. "I just really don't want to know what's in that thing. I can feel evil radiating from the other side."

"That's ridiculous!" Shining said. "Come on!" He barged the door open and bade his sister to follow him.

Twilight did so with reluctance, her hoofsteps echoing on the grand palace marble. Inside the room was a red carpet that led to a table and chair. On the table, clenched in a sculpture of a claw, was a brilliant, beautiful orb much larger then a Memorb. It was a different shade of blue, much lighter then a Memorb. It was also covered in strange gold adornments.

Twilight approached it, her face's reflection becoming visible in the glass. She reached out her hooves to grasp the orb, and then drew back the instant they touched it.

Twilight breathed heavily, turned around, and raced towards the door to the room as if hanging on for dear life.

"Shining, I'm sorry. But I can't do this task for the Princess! That orb is evil, and the further away it is from me, the better!"

"But Twiley-!" Shining attempted to object. "You're the only one who-"

"I don't care!"

Twilight stomped out the door and slammed it behind her.

"Oh my." Fluttershy murmured once the illusion ended. An impertinent task now stood before her.

"I need to destroy this Memorb right away."

Fluttershy looked around, trying to find something she could use to utterly remove the Memorb from existence. She looked through and saw a number of different kitchen utensils, none of which would serve her purpose. She put the orb down and started shuffling through the cabinets, eventually finding a glass bowl, to contain the leftover fragments in, and a meat tenderizer to smash it.

Putting the bowl on the table while the water continued to heat up, Fluttershy dropped the Memorb into the bowl. She raised the tenderizer, its handle firmly gripped in her mouth.

The door to the room swung open. "What are you doing!?"

Fluttershy's eyes widened in surprise as she dropped the tenderizer. "Pinkie!? What are you doing here? You need to be guarding Twilight!"

"I couldn't handle anymore of it..." Pinkie muttered.

"Oh." Fluttershy cooed. "Surely it's not that bad, is it?"

Rather than Pinkie, a shout from Twilight downstairs was the answer to Fluttershy's question.

"PINKIE PIE! COME BACK! I just want to taaaste yooou...really thoroughly!"

Fluttershy tilted her head, incredulously. "That bad?"

Pinkie glared, as if to say, "What do you think!?"

Fluttershy picked up the tenderizer off the floor in her mouth and raised it.
"What are you doing!?" Pinkie demanded, darting forward and shoving Fluttershy away from the bowl. "Let ME do that. You need to work on the cure-all!" Pinkie snatched the tenderizer away from Fluttershy.

Fluttershy nodded. While she began mixing ingredients into measuring cups, Pinkie went to work, striking the tenderizer onto the Memorb until it cracked, causing a silver goop- the memory- to leak out into the bowl. She hit and hit again until there was nothing left in the bowl but silver goo with shards in it.

Pinkie picked up the bowl, and went over to the trash can to scrap the glop off into it.

"Pinkie...come baaaack." Twilight moaned to herself. "You're so sweet, and bubbly, and...naive." Twilight giggled to herself, thinking about what she would do to Pinkie if she found her.

In her arousal, her senses had been heightened. Enough to be able to smell that wherever Pinkie and Fluttershy were in the library, they were no longer on the same floor as her.

"Hmm..." Sniffing around to try to find them, Twilight smelled what was probably the worst possible thing for an aphrodisiac-fueled mare to smell.

A stallion.

"Heheheh!" Twilight giggled, imaging how she would get the stallion to help her once she found him. She sniffed and sniffed the air until she pinpointed the direction of the stallion. Up the stairs. The same stairs Fluttershy and Pinkie had gone up, but she didn't know that.

Walking up them, Twilight got something that was even better than what she could've hoped for. A Royal Canterlot Guard.

In her state, Twilight didn't notice that his lips had been quite clearly burned off. He didn't seem happy to see her, snorting, huffing and scraping his hoof.

"Hello, Mr. Guard pony! Can you help with this problem I'm having?"

"I won't help you with anything, you-you butcher!"

Twilight frowned, but not because of he was calling her names. She frowned because she could tell from his demeanor he wasn't going to help with her little problem.

Sssss...

Twilight looked back at her Cutie Mark. it was starting to sizzle, letting off smoke wisps. It wouldn't be long before the rest of her body joined in, filling the library with the sound of her cooked flesh popping and blood boiling. Just as she was thinking about it, her hooves started doing the same, lighting up with a tingling sensation of light burning.

"Please!" She begged the guard. "I've swallowed some aphrodisiac, and you can clearly see it's starting to burn me!"

The guard raised an eyebrow. "No, I can't. Besides, aphrodisiac is a myth."

"That's what I thought, too!"

The guard snorted and scraped again, charging forward. Twilight prepared her magic and blasted him aside, throwing him against the wall and knocking him out.

As she walked up the staircase past him, Twilight took another glance at the guard. He was unconscious, so Twilight could easily...

However, smelling the scents of Pinkie and Fluttershy, Twilight decided to go for targets she was more intimately familiar with.

Fluttershy poured some honey into the pot from a ladle. She turned the burner off and smiled at Pinkie. "We just need to wait another minute and it'll be ready."

"Great!" Pinkie smiled back. Then there was knock on the door.

"Who is it?" Fluttershy asked politely.

"Twilight."

"Oh, Twilight...TWILIGHT!?"

"It's okay!" Pinkie said. "I locked the door behind me! She's not gonna be able to get in!"

The doorknob began rattling, caught in the glow of Twilight's magic. Fluttershy glared at Pinkie, who chuckled nervously.

Twilight pulled the door open, her entire body sizzling with smoke, the blood vessels in her hooves popping.

"One of you...get over here. NOW." Twilight demanded. Pinkie meekly approached, as if succumbing to some training regime that had been up til now, buried. Fluttershy held her leg out to stop her.

"GRAA!" Twilight shouted. She charged forward and tackled Pinkie to the ground. "We'll need to remove THIS!" Twilight tore the knife out of Pinkie's chest and threw it aside.

"Twilight, wait!" Fluttershy interjected.

"Yes?" Twilight's tone made it clear she wasn't going to wait any longer than she had to.

"Take me instead." Fluttershy offered, unwrapping her kimono and dropping it to the ground.

Twilight seemed interested, but hestiant. "Are you suuure?"

"Yes..." Fluttershy answered weakly. "I'm...sure."

"Okay!" Twilight abandoned Pinkie for her new, more willing quarry, pouncing onto Fluttershy and pushing to the ground. She kissed the same way she did Pinkie earlier, and started rubbing Fluttershy's Cutie Mark with her hind-hooves. Pinkie could only helplessly stare as one friend kissed another. There wasn't any deep violation yet, but it was only a matter of time.

Fluttershy's head started jerking. Pinkie, knowing Twilight was distracted, walked towards them and looked over Twilight's shoulder.

Fluttershy was doing two things at once. Returning Twilight's kiss while jerk her head toward the direction of the stove.

"Oh!" Pinkie shouted in realization. She zoomed over and grabbed the cooled pot by it's handle, then tapped Twilight on the shoulder for her attention.

"Yes?!" Twilight snapped, tearing away from Fluttershy. Her hips were were bucking up and down through the air, just from the anticipation.

"Drink this!" Then, without Twilight's permission, Pinkie put the pot lip to Twilight's lip and tilted it upwards so Fluttershy's concoction would go gown Twilight's throat. After a few gulps, Twilight raised a hoof to show that Pinkie could stop. Twilight grabbed the pot with her own hoof and drank the rest all on her own.

Once she finished it all, Twilight dropped the pot to the floor and sighed. The pink glow dissipated from her eyes.

"Thanks, Pinkie." Twilight said. "And thank you too, Fluttershy." Twilight rubbed Fluttershy's cheek. "For being so willingly to give yourself to me like that to save Pinkie...and putting up with me like that while I was... you know...you're both wonderful friends."

Fluttershy and Pinkie both smiled in appreciation of Twilight's appreciation.

"Although..." Twilight said uncertainly. "Standing here, on top of Fluttershy...I feel like I've been here before, and we should...never mind." Twilight got off Fluttershy and shook her head. Her eyes widened as she remembered seeing a guard while she was drugged.

"Oh my gosh! I just remembered! I saw a royal guard while I was drugged!"

Pinkie and Fluttershy got worried looks.

"A royal guard?"

"Yeah. I think I left him unconscious on the stairs. I don't think he'll be happy to see me after that..."

Fluttershy put a hoof on Twilight's shoulder. "We'll deal with him. You stay here and rest while the cure-all works."

Twilight nodded, happy that the cure-all worked. As she watched them go, she didn't notice their choice of words.

"Deal."

Back in the basement, the Changeling Pinkie had disappeared, quite possibly because it had somehow been so sunk into the water that she was totally devoured by the pit-beast within.

Dim light assailing his vision, the guard woke up. For a highly-trained, military individual, he seemed immediately frightened by the situation he's in. Hanging upside down from a chain above the water. He had no idea what was in the water, but if was anything from the butcher mare, he didn't want to know.

"Oh, good. You're awake." A low, mockingly friendly voice greeted him.

His eyes shrunk in shock. "No. Not you. Not again."

Fluttershy put her hoof on his back. "What's wrong?" She cooed. "Are you not happy to see me?"

"You kinda burned my lips off." The guard reminded her.

"I did, didn't I?" Fluttershy admitted. "Of course, if you hadn't come here, I wouldn't have had to." Using her powers of flight to make an illusion, she crawled on him like a black widow satisfied after eating its mate alive. The guard was overcome with the fear that her acid was going to be poured into his eyes.

"Please don't pour more acid on me."

"Oh, I won't." Fluttershy assured him.

She twisted his neck upwards, turning so far it was almost painful.

"I can make more things than just acid."

Fluttershy opened her mouth, a deranged, hungry look in her eye. She opened her mouth, and a glowing pink liquid flowed out into the guard's mouth. The guard whimpered, Without his lips, there was nothing to keep the aphrodisiac from seeping through the gaps in his teeth. His eyes began glowing pink as the drug took hold.

Once Fluttershy was done, she swallowed to regain some lost air. The guard whimpered and flailed his unrestrained hind legs.

Fluttershy, seeing that he was at her mercy, smiled.

"So, lover-boy, are you ready for me?" Fluttershy asked confidently.

The guard, drugged even worse than Twilight was at her worst, nodded. "Uh-huh."

"Are you suure?"

"YES!" The normally stoic, calm, trained to be fearless guard screamed, flailing. "YES, I'M READY!"

Fluttershy chuckled, ready to have her way with him.

"We had been perfectly content to wallow in our own misery, and then your group came along..." Fluttershy grumbled angrily as she lowered herself onto him, not even giving him the decency to be unchained during his violation.

Pinkie opened the door to the kitchen and trotted in.

"Hey, Pinkie." Twilight greeted. "How are things with the guard?"

"Oh, um...I don't know. Fluttershy told me to leave them alone." Pinkie answered.

"Mmmh..." Twilight looked around the kitchen, hoping for there to be a book she might have misplaced to take her mind off things and calm herself down. She was completely oblivious to Pinkie's longing, mourning stare.

If only you knew... Pinkie thought to herself, tilting her head. If only you knew, Mistress...

Brennenburg

Twilight drew circles in the floor, anxious and uncertain and doubtful and...other...stuff of that nature. Drawing up her courage, she dared to raise her neck and ask the question on her mind. "Pinkie, where's Fluttershy? She should be back by now..."

Pinkie grimaced. "Uh, she's uh...wait right here!"

"NO!" Twilight shouted, a little louder than she meant to. Pinkie parked herself on her haunches like a puppy trained by its cruel owner to be spineless.

Pinkie put on a forced smile. "Yes, ma'am..."

Twilight raised an eyebrow at Pinkie's behavior. "O...kay. Where's Fluttershy?"

"Right here." Fluttershy answered, stepping into the kitchen. She looked very...refreshed.

Twilight nodded. "Right. Now, we need to find Rarity."

Twilight, Fluttershy and Pinkie darted their eyes about the room.

"Where do we start?" Fluttershy said fearfully.

Twilight put a hoof on her chin, trying to think. What possibly clue in this forsaken library did they have to figure out where Rarity could be? Now only that, but she could be in a secret room Twilight didn't know about, like the wine cellar... then Twilight realized she did have some hint; Rarity had talked to her from the staircase where she found Fluttershy...both of them.

"Back to the foyer..." Twilight instructed, suddenly realizing that would bring her close to where she swallowed the aphrodisiac. She gulped, losing her confidence. "I...heard Rarity while walking up the stairs. M-maybe we can find her there."

Fluttershy and Pinkie nodded. "Lead the way."

Twilight approached the kitchen door.

"Mistress..."

Twilight stopped and turned around. "What did you call me?"

Pinkie and Fluttershy looked at each other, obviously trying to come up with an explanation for her unusual addressing of Twilight.

"Never mind." Twilight said, dismissing it. It could wait. They needed to find Rarity.

The three of them exited the kitchen and climbed down on the stairs.

Twilight stopped suddenly. Her horn was starting to tingle, and her vision was getting blurry.

"No." Twilight insisted, stumbling, holding her head in her hooves. "No, please, not again."

Twilight wobbled around and lost her balance. Fluttershy reached her legs out under Twilight's own and supported her.

"Uhhhh...!" Twilight whined, her eyes rolling. Feeling something in her hoof, she raised it to examine it and identify the problem. The blue liquid from her bed was leaking from hoof like blood.

"AH!" Twilight shouted. Panicking, she flailed out of Fluttershy's supportive grasp, but stumbled back into it when she couldn't get footing.

"What's...going on?" Twilight questioned. She turned her equine-articulated neck around to look at Fluttershy's eyes. "What's happening to me? What's WRONG with me?"

Fluttershy offered a glare of sympathy, but that was all she gave. After a moment's notice, Twilight's episode passed, and she was able to stand on her own hooves again. "Come on." Twilight insisted. "The longer Rarity waits, the more likely something could happen to her."

Fluttershy and Pinkie nodded. The three of them continued down, toward the foyer, and made their way across it. As they walked, Fluttershy and Pinkie couldn't help but notice how Twilight would stop abruptly. Briefly, too, but it was there.

"What's wrong, Twilight?" Fluttershy asked, always caring about her friends and their feelings.

"What's wrong?" Twilight repeated. "What's RIGHT? My library's falling apart, I don't know where my friends are. As much as I don't want to admit it, something terrible has probably happened, we need to go near that staircase, the opposite side of which had that awful aphrodisiac waiting for me, and..."

Twilight broke down, falling to the floor and crying.

"I still don't know where Spike is."

Fluttershy and Pinkie wrapped themselves around her and nuzzled her.

"We're sure he's fine." Fluttershy whispered.

"How can you be!?" Twilight exclaimed through her watery eyes. "How do you know that- that he hasn't been hurt, or worse!?"

"I just am." Fluttershy replied with a kind, assuring smile. It made Twilight feel a little better, seeing Fluttershy so confident of something. If she had that much faith, it must've been at least partially true. Her wracked mind at least partially stitched back together, Twilight led them up the stairs at last, but stopped halfway up them.

"What's up?" Pinkie asked.

"There's something...off." Twilight said. "It's like...a memory is returning."

"Oh? Did'ja forget something?"

"No, that's just it." Twilight answered. "I don't feel like I'm remembering something...I feel like something I never forget has been suppressed, and that suppression is starting to weaken."

Fluttershy and Pinkie got worried expressions on their faces. "You should probably, um..." Fluttershy muttered. "Like, try to keep the suppression...I don't know...going?"

Before Twilight could ask why, why, why in the wide-wide world of Equestria Fluttershy recommended that, Twilight felt herself being overtaken by something and pounded her hoof into a stair. After a few good thwacks, the stair and three others gave way and folded into the floor, revealing a ladder hidden inside the stairs. Leading to a hidden room, no doubt.

"Ah!" Twilight exclaimed. "Clever. Who designed the library?"

Pinkie glared. Twilight really expected them to know that?

The trio began taking their turns onto the ladder, beginning on their dark descent into whatever was waiting for them on the other end.

Once they managed to climb (or fall, rather) all the way down, the first thing they noticed was a lit candle. Going by appearances, it was there for visitors so they could see the light switch.
Twilight flicked it.

Neutral-colored light turned, filling the room. The moment it was illuminated, Twilight wished she hadn't switched the switch. The room was made of gray bricks, like a dungeon made for prisoners.

"I found Rarity!" Pinkie exclaimed.

"Where!?" Twilight exclaimed in response, whipping around. She was more than slightly disgusted at what she saw.

A pulley-like device was attached to the wall, leading to a zip-line on the ceiling. Following it along it's path led them the sight of Rarity.

Hanging from the wall, alive, but in such an embarrassing position she probably wished she wasn't. She was covered in black leathery straps from hind hoof to horn. There was even one on her eyes and mouth, serving as a gag and blindfold.

"Oh my." Fluttershy whimpered.

"Disgusting." Twilight spat, filled with contempt for whomever put her friend through this. They best hope she never find out who it was...

"I don't understand." Pinkie said. "What am I looking at?"

Twilight shook her head and whinnied dismissively at Pinkie's lack of knowledge. "Come on, we need to get her down-"

The light flickered. A pop of electric static escaped from the light bulb to warn was about to happen. The light shorted out completely, drenching them back into darkness.

"Well, that's just great!" Twilight griped, annoyed. Quite understandable, given her situation. "Girls, we need to-MPH!"

Somepony kissed Twilight on the lips in the darkness. When Twilight tried to break away, two extremely pointy, sharp incisor-like teeth that stabbed into her lips, one on the top, one on the bottom, keeping her right where she was, thank-you-very-much!

Why me? Twilight thought. Although there was this bizarre feeling welling up inside from the bite. Particularly when she felt her own blood seeping out of her lips. So bizarre...

Then she felt something being poured into her mouth. It felt warm, and familiar.

Oh, no, no, no. No. Not this again. Dear Celestia, not more aphrodisiac! Had Twilight not suffered enough to appease whatever demon was behind the reason she was going through this torment!?

This aphrodisiac also tasted different this time, like it was...oh dear Celestia, please don't be stronger! Please, please don't be-aaaaah!

Twilight started kissing back. She wrapped her hooves around the neck of her assailant. Once she started returning the affection, she felt something like leather straps and chains being lassoed around her hindquarters. They were jerked, and brought her to the floor on her back. She whimpered, feeling the effects of aphrodisiac again already.

Then she felt something like three intertwined tails crawling up her her hind legs, getting rather close to her feminine parts.

"Oh, please, Celestia, make it all end." Twilight begged under her breath. Without Fluttershy's cure-all mixture, she would need that tail to keep crawling on it's merry way if she didn't want to burn alive, but it was still embarrassing. She would give anything at the moment for the body spasming, the embarrassment of the situation she was in, the ominous sense of dread, to just-just go away.

Once the tail-thing reached its destination, Twilight just...completely went totally out. She spasmed, that taunting, mocking light blue flashing in her vision.

Twilight nuzzled into her pillow, a content smile on her face. Despite the BOOM-crack of thunder outside and the nonstop downpour seemingly intent on going down in history as the poorest downpour ever poured.

Letting out a yawn, Twilight stretched across her bed and rose up halfway. Blinking her eyes to clear them of sleep, she stretched her neck and got out of the bed. These last few days had been nice. She had been studying under Celestia directly again, playing with Shining Armor and her foal-sitter (also now her sister-in-law) Cadence. Sure, she loved playing with her friends in Ponyville, but it was nice to go back to the good-ol' days every now and then.

Before she returned back home to Ponyville, Celestia wanted Twilight to accompany her on an architectural expedition. She hadn't said where to, just yet, but Twilight knew that was because she forgot to mention the name. Not out of any malicious plan Celestia had for her.

Exiting her hotel room and hotel, Twilight stopped by the market to purchase some breakfast. Apple fritters, yum!
As she trotted across the street, freely letting herself get soaked by the merciless rain. Much to the bewilderment of the coat-wearing noble ponies. Living out in the country had made Twilight understand Canterlot's worst rain was nowhere near as bad as Ponyville's best.

As she sat there, nomming on her fritter (which she had enchanted to keep dry), she hear the plop of hooves approach her.

"Twiley, what are you doing without a coat?"

Twilight smiled brightly at the sight of Shining. Her B.B.B.F.F. "Oh, well...Ponyville's rains are a lot worse than Canterlot's, so I kinda don't care."

"You can't be out without a coat." Shining said, like he didn't understand a word Twilight just said. "Here, take mine."

Twilight appreciated her brother's generosity, but as he took off his coat and wrapped it around her, she was a little irritated that he didn't really seem to grasp her explanation. She digressed. "Thank you, Shining."

"Come on." Shining said as Twilight finished her fritter. "I hear you got an assignment with the Princess."

Twilight levitated a napkin and wiped her cheeks. "Mh-hm!"

"I'm not letting you go on it."

Twilight was so baffled at Shining's statement her magic stopped from flowing her horn and completely dropped the napkin. "What? Why?"

"Twiley, haven't you heard the stories about Brennenberg?" Shining questioned.

Twilight tilted her head. "Is that where we're going?"

"Yeah. She didn't tell you that?"

"No. But she was doing a lot of things at once when she said she wanted me with her..."

Shining shook his head. "Don't go on the expedition, Twiley. The only reason I haven't talked the Princess out of is because she's the Princess."

Twilight became concerned, but also disappointed and slightly frustrated. It had been a while since Twilight and the Princess had spent some quality time together, and she was looking forward to doing so on the trip. "What stories?"

"Ooh!" Shining shivered, but that could've been because he was out in the cold rain without protection. "I get nervous just thinking about them...they say before it collapsed, creatures made of sewn together leftover FLESH roamed the place!"

Twilight's worry and disappointed were exchanged for skepticism and disbelief. "Really? Leftover flesh?"

Shining nodded worriedly.

Twilight was a researcher. She dealt with information. Made out of flesh was not much information, and also scientifically impossible. "What else can you tell me about these creatures?"

Shining seemed confused. "I, uh...what do you mean?"

Twilight started grilling him with questions. like "What color are they? How many eyes do they have? What do they do?"

"I don't know!" Shining exclaimed as his answer to all of them and any others Twilight could come up with on the spot.

Twilight chuckled. "Well, B.B.B.F.F., if you can't tell me anymore other than that they're made out of flesh, I don't have any reason to believe you! It easily be a story somepony in a tavern made up."

"But...but..." Shining stammered, still clearly against the idea of letting Twilight go. But he also didn't have the details or facts he needed to convince Twilight of the same.

"We're supposed to leave today." Twilight informed him. "I need to go check on preparations."

Twilight turned and started walking down the street. Shining raised his hoof to stop her, but he had nothing to say.

As she walked through the rain, still wearing her brother's coat, Twilight's confidence was challenged suddenly by her tendency to worry. What if the stories were true? What if they were creatures cobbled together from cropped-off pieces of cadavers? What ELSE would be there? She would have to ask Celestia once she got there.

Once she got there, she was assured slightly by how smooth things were going. The wagons she and the others going on the trip would be using were outside and packed.

She entered the room to see that a few more crates were being packed before their left. Scalpels and brushes and other things for delicate extraction of sensitive artifacts being lodged into boxes. The Princess and her fellows were standing around conversing while the servants finished packing.

"Princess Celestia?" Twilight said.

"So then my astronomer said-hmm?" Celestia turned her neck at he sound of her name. "Twilight Sparkle! Not a minute late, as always. We're almost ready for departure."

Twilight smiled, but it was a creased smile that gave away she was uncomfortable.

"Twilight Sparkle, what's wrong?"

Twilight fiddled with hooves. "Shining told me a story about Brennenberg about creatures made out..." Twilight beckoned for the Princess to come closer, so as not to unnecessarily startle the other architects. "Of flesh!" She whispered.

Celestia smiled kindly. "I know the stories are frightening, Twilight Sparkle. But our friends over at the castle have reported no such things. If it makes you feel any better, they also know that who or whatever terrible thing that was at the castle has since moved on."

Twilight felt a little better. If Celestia wasn't afraid of anything, what was there to be afraid of?

A short while later, the servants announced everything as ready. Twilight, Celestia and everypony else all climbed into their selected wagons.

As the long and winding trip began, Twilight continuously shifted between panicking if her brother's stories were correct, and relaxing from her mentor's assurance.

They hit a bump on the road, and Twilight's keen memory let her know they had passed the turn they would've had to make if they were going to Ponyville. Some hours later, she could tell the same for Fillydelphia.

Twilight figured that they had to be getting close to Brennenberg when the steady whir from the wagon's wheels became not so steady and began to slosh through mud.

"We'll be at the entrance to Brennanberg shortly." Their driver informed through the window. "In the meantime, you can enjoy the sights of the town."

Twilight took him up on his offered and leaned against the window. She saw stone buildings that were disheveled in appearance and somber in tone. She couldn't shake the feeling something awful had happened which caused all the residents to evacuate.

The wagon hit a rock. The driver said that rocks in the way made it impossible to go any further. They would have to go out and continue on hoof.

As everypony all made their way out of their wagons, Twilight wasn't comforted by the sight before. Rocks and a muddy pathway were nothing to be afraid, but there was a wooden sign planted some paces ahead of them that did nothing to ease her fear.

It read:

WELCOME TO BRENNENBERG

TURN BACK NOW.

Twilight looked up at Celestia, and the Princess could instantly tell what was on Twilight's mind.

"I'm sure there's nothing to fear." Celestia assured, but she sounded...fearful wasn't the right word. Apprehensive? Cautious! Cautious was the word.

Once Twilight stepped over the rocks, her horn was beset by alien presence. She had no idea what it was, and would prefer to keep it that way. Through her horn, it was making every physical part of her body practically scream at the non-physical parts in heart, in spirit, in mind, to GET THE TARTARUS AWAY FROM THIS PLACE.

"Princess." Twilight cried, gripping her teacher's leg for support. "Princess. We shouldn't be here. We should leave, now."

Celestia chuckled and smiled. Wrapping a wing around Twilight, she stroked her student's mane. "My faithful student, don't you think we if we weren't supposed to come here, our friends and allies would've denied us permission?"

"I...guess not." Twilight admitted. Her horn tingled again, rocketing into full-on panic mode. "So!? We need to turn back! There's something...Tartarian waiting for us here!"

Celestia looked down, almost disappointed. "Twilight Sparkle, there is nothing to fear, and it displeases me you would let your brother's story get to you so easily."

"This has nothing to do with stories!" Twilight exclaimed.

"Twilight, if there is anything here, I will protect you." Celestia assured. "I promise."

Twilight looked Celestia in the eyes. In those powerful, purplish eyes that showed no doubt and held no fear. That were absolutely certain in their ability to keep that promise.

The expedition pressed forward, where every so many steps, Twilight would gloss over more signs with messages that continued off the first, and than each other.

SERIOUSLY, DID YOU NOT READ THE SIGN? TURN BACK!

HORROR AWAITS THOSE WHO GO FURTHER!

DISCARDED FLESH AND BONE!

ONLY DEATH WILL BRING YOU PEACE.

The last sign they saw before reaching the ruins proper read: ARE YOU STILL HERE, YOU IDIOT? FINE. IT'S YOUR FUNERAL. HOPE YOU HAVE LIFE INSURANCE.

Twilight, or indeed, anypony, hadn't the faintest vaguest notion of what a 'life insurance' was, but they didn't pay much mind to it, Celestia giving brief, but well-worded speeches that kept their courage high. An excellent demonstration of her fitness to lead, to be sure.

But they had finally reached their destination. Brennenberg. What was left of it, anyway. Jagged bits of broken window glass jutted out from the enormous field of collapsed stone. Twilight, once again, got a feeling. This one was that if they shifted all the stones away, they'd find a gate to Tartarus beneath it all. But they weren't here to find a gate to The Pit.

...Were they?

"Shift through the wreckage for anything that's not a stone brick. We have no idea what treasures or lost knowledge could be hiding here." Celestia instructed. Everypony spread out across the immeasurable stone expanse. Celestia remained close to Twilight Sparkle, and nuzzled her every so often to assure her protege there was nothing to be afraid.

Twilight stepped on something. She lifted her hoof and levitated it up to see what it was. It was discolored, and flapped in the wind... it almost seemed like...

"Discarded flesh!" Twilight exclaimed, dropping the patch of skin. She turned to run for the hills, only to run straight into her mentor's chest.

Celestia bent over and stroked her mane. "Now, now, Twilight. So there's a patch of skin lying around." Celestia raised her head to look at where Twilight had tossed the skin and frowned, like she wasn't that certain of what she was about to say. "That doesn't mean the creatures Shining Armor mentioned are still here. It could easily have been a sample for research purpose."

Twilight pouted. "Who needs a tissue sample that big?"

Celestia shook her head. "I don't know. You see, Twilight, nopony really knows much about who or even what was in Brennenberg before it collapsed. Perhaps the inhabitants were particularly large."

Twilight breathed a little easier. Large inhabitants would make for large tissue samples...perhaps the creatures that lived her were just educated, but carnivorous. Like respectful griffons or dignified sea serpents.

Twilight shifted through the stone, eventually finding something that her cry.

"What's wrong?" Celestia asked.

Twilight held up two pieces of glass in her hooves. She put them together, revealing them to be a broken inkwell.

Celestia cooed sadly, understanding Twilight's tears now. "Here. I'll hold onto that for you." Celestia levitated it away so Twilight could focus on finding more things.

Finding a piece of old paper sticking out, Twilight meticulously began shifting the rubble around with her magic so she could pull it out without damaging it. Once the coast was clear, she levitated to her snout to read.

"Amnesia mixture..." Twilight read out loud. "Huh." Scrolling down the page, Twilight found it was a recipe for the Amnesia Drink mentioned. There were a few parts missing, so she turned the paper to Celestia and asked for anypony who found anything that might've been a piece to add to it.

Twilight kept digging around, fear mostly forgotten. Or at least put on a constrained leash that prevented her from flipping out for no reason. As she shifted stone and moved shards, her eye was caught by a blue shimmer, poking out from the seeps between the stones.

"Uhhhh..." Twilight groaned, unable to look away once she had looked at it. Call it what a pony will, entranced, hypnotized, captivated, persuaded, drunk. Twilight immediately start digging with her bare hooves, not even considering using her horn, and didn't stop until a the source of light stood revealed. A large light-blue orb with patterned with gold ornamentation.

"Twilight?" Celestia questioned, worried about Twilight's silence during the ordeal. "What have you found?"

"Uh...huh?" Twilight shook her head. "Oh, um...this!" Twilight held the orb up proudly.

Celestia eyed it curiously. "What is it?"

"...I don't know!"

"Here, why don't I keep it?" Celestia offered, extending a hoof. Twilight gave it to her, then got a sudden chill up her spine.

Celestia seemed entranced by the orb's shimmer, even more than Twilight had been. She brought it to her neck and nuzzled it in a motherly way.

A hellish, blood-curdling bone-rattling soul-freezing roar came from absolutely-frickin' nowhere. Everypony froze, but Celestia curled her wings around the orb protectively.

"CHANGELINGS!" One of their companion's shouted.

Everypony either curled in a fetal position, or got ready to fight. "Where!?"

"I'm talking about you, you monsters!" He shouted, pointing at them, a deranged look in his eye. He charged at them and headbutted one aside before bucking the other down. He then narrowed his gaze onto Twilight and charged. "I'll never let you take Canterlot!"

Twilight froze, unsure of what to do.

The stallion headbutted her, knocking her down, then reared his hooves up and stomped them down on her cheeks, causing her lips to bleed.

Celestia tossed the orb aside and blasted him with her magic. It tore right through him, sending blood everywhere- onto the ruins, his coat, and Celestia's hooves and Twilight's muzzle. Twilight instinctively tried to spit it out, but after she hocked a loogie of blood, she brushed over her lip tentatively.

"That...actually tasted..." Twilight cut herself off, realizing what she was about to say.

Celestia, her charge now protected and the deranged colt subdued, turned to the others. "This expedition is now on hold. We need to get Twilight and this poor stallion to a medical facility."

The others nodded, and set to work trying to slap together a stretcher for the colt.

As Celestia and Twilight trotted to leave, they found some sort of florescent green webbing matted around the ruins, blocking them from the exit. Celestia and Twilight looked at each other for ideas. After a quick "Hmm", Celestia held up the mysterious orb they found. It flashed, and the green web disappeared. The same thing that made that roar made a disappointed shriek, like somepony was abusing its favorite toy.

Twilight and Celestia made their way back to their wagons, where Twilight constantly fiddled with her hooves, unsure of everything and anything.

"...Princess?" Twilight asked.

"Yes?" Celestia answered, barely turning to look away from the orb in her hoof at her.

"Why did you use that spell on that stallion?"

Celestia removed her gaze from the orb to look at Twilight. "What do you mean?"

"There are lots of spells that can incapacitate somepony without hurting them like that...why didn't you use one of them?"

Celestia pursed her lips. "It...it's this orb. Something about it draws me to it. By the time I realized you were under attack, I could barely think straight."

Twilight eye the orb warily. "Maybe we should get rid of it."

"Yes." Celestia agreed. "Maybe we should..."

Twilight began trying to levitate the orb out of Celestia's hoof, but the Princess held her grasp firmly. Eventually, though, Twilight pried it free and tossed it out the window of their wagon, where it presumably sunk into the mud.

Celestia smiled at her student, happy Twilight would do something like that for her. The moment of triumph quickly passed, though, as Twilight still had something on her mind.

"Um...Princess? When you used that spell on our companion, some of the blood got into my mouth."

"Oh my. I'm so sorry."

"I forgive you." Twilight said quickly. "But...I..."

"Don't be afraid to speak your mind, my faithful student."

"It tasted good." Twilight confessed.

Celestia's eyebrow shot up. Whatever she thought Twilight was going to say, she wasn't expecting it to be that. She looked outside the window, where they were finally going away from Brennenberg.

"Well...all I can say, Twilight Sparkle, is that you refrain from acting like a vampire, okay?"

"Okay..." Twilight muttered.

There was a knock on the window that separated Celestia and Twilight from the wagon driver.

"Hey." The driver said, sliding the window open. "One of your architect buddies said to hoof this over to you." He produced a stack of papers which he offered to Twilight. Twilight took them and began glossing them over. It was a quick, cursory glance, so she didn't pick up much. Words that appeared often, though, were "Daniel" "Alexander of Brennenberg" and a variety of chemicals for a number of potions she'd never heard of before.

There were also mentions of something entitled "The Shadow". Not a very creative name, in Twilight's opinion...she was ready to put the papers down and file them away for later study.

"Uhhh..." Twilight grunted, coming to. The light had somehow been turned back on. She could see Fluttershy, Pinkie standing to the side of her, and Rarity in front of her. They must've somehow got her down while she was out. The straps on Rarity's face had been removed, but the ones along her body had stayed.

"How are you feeling, darling?" Rarity questioned.

Twilight rubbed her head sorely. "Like somepony stuck a needle in me and tried to drain my bodily fluids...and failed miserably." Twilight felt a twinge in her hoof, then bolted upright. She could see that damned blue liquid on her belly, her thighs and a little bit of her forelegs. She was certain she had bled it out while she was zoned.

Twilight sighed and pulled herself up, happy Fluttershy and Pinkie had got Rarity down, however they did it.

"All right. Now we need to find either Rainbow Dash or Applejack-what's that?" Twilight pointed at a corner in the room.

Rarity, Pinkie and Fluttershy turned to look at it. It was a scroll, neatly folded up in the corner. Fluttershy whispered something to Rarity. Rarity whinnied as if offended and whispered something harsh back.

Twilight didn't notice their silent bickering and magically pulled the scroll over to herself. Unfolding it, she read it.

Hello, it began in a writing eerily similar to hers, but just different enough to assure it wasn't herself that wrote it. Perhaps a relative wrote it?

I'll bet you're wondering where Spike is, aren't you? Well, you may be tired of hearing this by now if you went through all the steps up to now correctly, but Spike is safe. He's in the hooves of somepony who will take good care of him.

Now, I'll bet by now you tried to get out of the library and found the door locked, and your magic didn't work on it either. It's been enchanted.

To get out, you need to find the paper titled "Brennenberg Explosive Compound". The enchantment won't stand up to the compound.

But before you do that, you should go to the lowest level of the library. Recently, a complex lock was put on it that will require a combination of magic and machinery to remove.

Just follow the directions on the note. After all, have they steered you wrong yet?

Anyways, have you seen any chains suddenly falling out of the ceiling? Go the next floor up from you did, if you have. There should be another note there.

Twilight frowned. This letter...this letter was mentioning the steps she followed, and the notes...but she hadn't read any notes or followed any steps. Unless the stairs count. Was that it, maybe? That she followed the stair steps? How did that make any sense?

Twilight looked up at the ceiling where the hidden entrance they fell through was. "How are we going to get back out there?"

"Might I suggest something?" Rarity said. She bit on one strap and pulled it off. Twilight became afraid.

Minutes later, they Fluttershy wrapped in one of the straps, with the other straps tied around each other to make an even longer strap. Twilight, Pinkie, Rarity all grabbed on and waited for Fluttershy to lift off and take them out of the room.

Once they were back onto the staircase, Twilight closed the hidden passage they found up.

Twilight looked up the stairs. She gulped. "Okay...the note said to go wherever I found chains appearing from the ceiling, and I found those up here in the hallway."

Twilight proceeded on up.

Her friends stayed behind to talk without her hearing.

"Rarity!" Fluttershy snapped. "You were supposed to burn that note!"

"I was going to!" Rarity exclaimed. "But every time I tried to move, the straps would pull on me, and ooh, it would feel so good..." Rarity cut herself off.

Fluttershy shook her head. "Oooh, Twilight's going to learn what happened..."

"We can't let her do that!" Pinkie said. "Right?"

"No." Rarity answered.

"We need to figure out something." Fluttershy said. "But what?"

Rarity cupped her her hoof and hmmed. "I know! We'll get something for her to cut into..." Rarity looked around. "But what? She won't do it on us."

"A Changeling!" Fluttershy exclaimed. "They're still in the library somewhere, and Twilight doesn't like them."

The three of them shook hooves. "Then it's settled."

"We're were going to find a Changeling and trick Twilight into operating on it. Messily. It will be glorious."

To Make Her Feel Better

Twilight was almost up the stairs when she realized her friends were no longer with her.

"Girls?" Twilight called from atop the stairs. "Are you coming?"

"Er, about that..." Rarity shouted back. "We're going to go look for something. Is that all right?"

"NO!" Twilight shouted, her eyes shrinking in horror. "IT'S NOT! DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE! I don't want to be alone... DON'T LEAVE ME!"

Her last repeat of the sentence came out as more of a dark command than a desperate plea.

"We'll...be right up there." Rarity assured her, sounding like she had just been schooled.

Twilight's hyperventilation stopped when she saw that her friends were climbing up the stairs towards her, as promised.

"I'm sorry, girls..." Twilight apologized, scuffing her hoof. "I just...I though you were going to leave me, and something just... snapped in my head."

"It's fine, darling." Rarity patted Twilight on the side of her neck. "Who knows what you've been through when we weren't looking?"

Twilight smiled, slightly reassured.

"Now... Pinkie, Fluttershy and I were hoping to get something for you." Rarity explained. "And we want to be a surprise, okay, darling?"

"A surprise?" Twilight questioned. "How can you think of getting a surprise at time like this!?"

"Read the note again, darling." Rarity said sweetly. "It says Spike is fine, doesn't it?"

"That's true...but I still don't know anything about ANYTHING what HAPPENED here!" Twilight exclaimed. "What about Rainbow Dash, though? And Applejack?"

"They're tough, Twilight. I'm sure they're fine." Rarity patted Twilight's hoof. "Now, what say we go get that surprise for you? It'll make you feel better, I assure you."

"I...okay, I guess." Twilight sighed. Rarity could tell she couldn't care less about any 'surprise' or what not.

"Could you close your eyes, darling?"

Twilight whimpered and backed away. "I don't want to...every time I close my eyes, I can hear screaming."

Pinkie and Rarity frowned while Fluttershy whimpered sympathetically.

"And..." Twilight added. "It's...not always screams of pain."

Everypony made uncomfortable noises and scuffed their hooves.

"Well...either we leave you alone, or you close your eyes, darling." Rarity explained.

Twilight took in a deep breath. "Fine, but this better be worth it."

Twilight closed her eyes. She heard a gurgling noise come from somewhere, but when she tried to open her eye, Rarity swept her hoof over to keep it shut.

"Oh...what's that smell?" Twilight wanted to know as a delicious, intoxicating aroma began to wiggle up her nostrils. "It's so nice... makes me think of a picnic...with all our friends." Twilight started to wobble without realizing it. She felt one of her friends throw their hooves around to support her, and she could barely make it out muttering.

As she was prone to do, Twilight started to worry. "Girls? Girls? What's going ... ooon..."

Twilight blacked out...again.

Twilight was hesitant to open her eyes when she came to. Given everything that happened to her so far, she wasn't sure she wanted to see what was in the room. So she felt around with her hooves, trying to gauge where she was before she dared to open her eyelids.

"It's okay, Twilight Sparkle." Fluttershy's soothing voice attempted to calm her. "You can open your eyes."

Twilight did, with some reluctance. She decided she should've listened to her common sense instead of her friend.

Wherever in the library she was, there were desks, Fluttershy, a table full of surgical tools, another table full of potions, and what else but a ratcheted operating table with a Changeling's corpse on it? On the potions, there were beakers of yellow, pink, green, blue and brown colors. With the tools, there was a scalpel, some tongs, syringes, and a saw.

"Fluttershy, what's going on?" Twilight demanded.

"Um, we're trying to get you tooooo- I mean, um...this Changeling swallowed a Memorb before it died! We need you to use your knowledge of science to cut him open and get it out!"

Twilight crawled to her hooves and approached the table. Fluttershy handed her a scalpel. Twilight faced the Changeling's corpse and stared at it blankly.

Why is there so much death around me?

"...Fluttershy?"

"Yes, Misst-Twilight?"

Twilight stabbed the scalpel into table. "What's really going on? First, Rarity knocks me out. Then I wake up in here, supposedly to dissect a Changeling who swallowed a Memorb? Its jaw isn't big enough to do that!"

Fluttershy shifted her eyes around the room, then put her hooves together with her big, pleading eyes. "Oh, please just cut it open. We'll explain everything to you...when we're ready to."

Twilight glared, but she couldn't make out the room's exit, if it even had one... although, that could just be because of the unnatural dim lightning. So she cooperated and picked up the scalpel.

Twilight looked at the Changeling corpse in front of her. She had no idea what she was supposed to be doing. For some reason, though...for some, Celestia-knows-what reason, she found herself gripping the scalpel with both her hooves. Her hooves stabbed into the Changeling's wither, and dragged the knife down in an oblique line. Then they did the same to the other wither until both lines met at the end. It was almost like her hooves knew what she was doing when her head didn't.

"I..." Twilight choked out. "I feel like I've done this before, but I can't remember...ah!"

Twilight dropped the scalpel and put her hooves on her mouth, feeling like something was coming up out of her throat. Taking her hoof away, she saw that damn blue liquid on her hoof that been drooled out of her mouth.

"Ooooh!" Twilight whined, starting to cry. She didn't even realize her tears were also the mysterious blue liquid as well. She fell over to her side, but she landed on Fluttershy's chest rather than the floor. "Fl-Fl-uttershy! Wh-what's wrong with meeee?"

"You asked us that already. We don't know."

"I...I need to know, Fluttershy. Where's Spike? Where are Rainbow Dash and Appejack? What's the explanation behind that paper we found near Rarity!?"

Twilight cried and sobbed and wailed and sniffed. After a moment, she noticed the table full of chemicals and realized there was a cylinder of aphrodisiac on it.

"W-what's on that table?" Twilight asked Fluttershy.

Fluttershy looked at the table. "Oh, um...some aphrodisiac, some-what did you call it? Um...that brown one is a knock out potion. And..."

"Wait..." Twilight instructed. "What did you say?"

"That brown one is a knock out potion?" Fluttershy questioned.

"No, no. Before that. You said that I called it a knock out potion?"

"...Yes." Fluttershy squeaked liked she just admitted to a highly embarrassing secret she had been trying to desperately hide.

Before Twilight could ask any more questions, her vision flashed red, hearing that hellish, destabilizing roar again. Twilight ducked under the operating table and began to sob and babble incoherently.

"No. No, go away. I'm sorry. No! I didn't realize...you can have it back. I'll find it. I'll give it back to you. I don't care about it anymore. It is yours, isn't it? Yes...I'm sorry. You can have it back."

Fluttershy was starting to get concerned. "Twilight Sparkle?"

Twilight poked her head out from the under the table with a very disturbing smile on her face. "Wait just a moment, Fluttershy." Twilight lifted her hoof in the air and made petting motions. "There, there. See? You're not some sort of beast. You just want your stuff back. Understandable. Totally understandable. You can have it, okay? Just give me some time to find it."

Twilight started to crawl out from under the table and stood up.

"Twilight?" Fluttershy questioned. It was little concerning how Twilight's demeanor had changed. She had gone from hesitant and crying, to total meltdown, which made perfect sense and was logical progression. But now...now she looked like she like she was ready to get out of this mess, regardless of whatever she had to trample under her hooves, of what beast she had to beat into an inch of its life.

"Fluttershy!" Twilight barked like a well-focused highly trained military pony. "We need to go the floor the chains dropped down from and see if we can find any more of those papers. Where are Rarity and Pinkie Pie?"

"Just outside the door." Fluttershy pointed. So there was a door, after all. They exited the room and found Rarity and Pinkie waiting anxiously for their return.

"Well?" Rarity demanded. "Did it work, Fluttershy? Is..."

"No." Fluttershy answered.

Twilight rolled her eyes and snorted disapprovingly. "Whatever you're talking about will have to wait. We need to investigate those chains."

Rarity, Pinkie and Fluttershy all just hung back, all of them caught off-guard by Twilight's sudden take-charge attitude.

"Did I stutter?" Twilight questioned. "Move!" She started gesturing with her hooves to demonstrate her orders as she gave them. "Up! The Stairs!"

The quartet struggled their way out of the corridor they were in, which led to the stairs just before the room Twilight was saved by the chains.

Going up the stairs and into the door Fluttershy had melted the knob off, They passed the Changeling Fluttershy's body on the way. It appeared something had made off with its head while leaving its body alone.

Sloshing their way through the flooded hallway, Twilight led the group and held her hoof out for them to stop.

Rarity was confused. "Why-"

"Be quiet!" Twilight snapped, her eyes glaring at the hallway like she was accusing it of something.

Splashes came forward at them. Twilight shot out a blast of magic, causing a dying shriek to echo in the hall.

"Okay. We should be -relatively- safe now." Twilight gestured for them to follow as she kept going through the hallway until they found the dead end where the Changeling Rainbow had been hung. It wasn't there, though. From the hole in the ceiling, whatever had strangled it had also took up through the floor to its perch.

"Somewhere around here..." Twilight muttered. "We should find...something." Twilight raised her voice and shouted at the hole in the ceiling. "Hello!? Is anypony up there!?"

The girls were alarmed by the sound of metal hoofsteps clanking and chains rattling as they tossed about.

"M-maybe we should run away screaming." Fluttershy delicately suggested.

Twilight sharply shot her down. "No. This is MY library, and I intend to take it back."

The clank and clinks were getting closer now...

"Oh, hey guys!"

Looking up, they all could see Rainbow Dash peering through the hole in the ceiling. Twilight shuddered, losing some of her regained confidence at the sight of her butchered friend. Pinkie's cart wheel and Rarity's leather straps had nothing on Rainbow Dash.

Sharp metal blades were attached in a collar around her hooves. Her wings were tattered and flayed, with metal messes of similar construction around them in a metal shell. Chains hung out from her pores, ending in both links and cuffs. She also had the film on Pinkie's eyes on hers.

"I gotta admit, you got here just in time." Dash said with her usual bravado. "I had almost run out of ideas to pass the time with this Changeling's corpse."

Twilight was a little taken aback. "You were having fun WITH A CORPSE!?"

"I was..." Dash rolled her eyes. "Here, let me come down."

Dash flapped her wings, still functional despite their obvious mutilation. She flew down to meet them.

"So, what do you want to do next, Twilight?" Rainbow Dash questioned. "Time for lunch yet? Or maybe you wanna go see Shi-"

"NO!" Everypony behind Twilight shouted at Rainbow Dash.

Dash raised an eyebrow. "O...kay. What's goin' on?"

"I'm trying to figure out what happened to the library. Where all this aphrodisiac and -other questionable liquids- came from, and how to fix it!"

"What happened to the library...?" Dash repeated in confusion. "Oh, man! You mean really did take- I thought you were joking!"

"Thought I was joking about what?" Twilight demanded.

Rainbow Dash flew up towards the hole. "I need to get rid of those papers!"

"What papers!?" Twilight demanded. Before Rainbow Dash could completely disappear, Twilight grabbed her by the tail with magic and pulled her down.

"I want to see these papers, Rainbow Dash." Twilight informed her with a hard glare.

Rainbow Dash closed her eyes in defeat. "Fine, but you're not gonna like what you see!"

Twilight released Rainbow Dash from her magical grip. Rainbow Dash flew back up the hole, then flew back down with at a tiny stack of scrolls in her hooves.

"Here." Dash fluttered over and gave Twilight the papers. Twilight lit up her horn with magic and started reading the one on top of the stack.

Brennenberg Explosive Compound.

Twilight didn't bother reading any further than that. She was going to find Applejack before doing anything involving escape. She shifted the papers, putting the top one on the bottom and beginning to read the next. She was extremely scathing towards the contents of each one.

"Blah blah blah, "I know, Daniel." "The Warding ritual was not something of a sane mind... cold-hearted murderer, no better than them. "I see only death in the Orb's Darkest Shadow.'"

Twilight shuddered and moaned, sounding taken in by something. "Oh, yes. That's what Daniel called you, then? Do you like that name?"

Everypony turned to each other, concerned about the way Twilight was talking to absolutely nopony.

"Awww. You don't like it?" Twilight cooed. "That's sad. Do you have a real name? Or at least something you'd prefer to be called?"

Rainbow Dash clinked her way over to Rarity and whispered in the leather-bound marshmallow's ear.

"Uh...has Twilight gone crazy? Crazier, I mean?"

"I'm starting to think as much." Rarity confessed. "She's been so much worse since her little drink." At 'drink', Rarity's lips twitched in irritation. "I much preferred her before the raid."

"Yeah!" Pinkie agreed, Fluttershy and her joining in the conversation. "She was a lot more fun with the all the tools and dissections!"

"I miss being put under while she..." Fluttershy was muttering when Rarity held out her hoof for silence.

"Quiet! I think Twilight and her friend are on Applejack..."

Everypony hushed themselves, eyes slinking to the left to pay attention the conversation they had abandoned since their friend was acting crazy.

"No, I-I'm sorry. I will get it back to you, I promise. I just need to find my friend Applejack first. Yes, I understand you're tired of waiting, but- what? What does that mean? "

Twilight whimpered, lip a-quiver. "Uhhhn... Please don't hurt my friends."

Twilight heard that horrific, destabilizing roar again. The one that brought absolute fear and panic upon a pony's mind. The one that reduced a pony's ability to think rationally to dust, and ability to fight back against a threat to a fine powder. But this time, the other girls heard it too.

They all fell to the floor, covering their ears with their hooves while their eyes turned still with worry and moist with fear. Quite possibly with the fear of death itself.

It was ironic, that all of them had been doubting Twilight's insanity over the last few hours, but now they were all turning to her as the only thing that could carry them through this fit of madness overtaking their minds.

"Twilight, darling, what's happening!?" Even in the midst of a panic, Rarity worked her speech tic into her sentence, darling.

"Yeah, what's going on!?" Likewise, Rainbow remained harsh in her tone.

"QUIET!" Twilight shouted at them.

The roaring stopped, almost like it was obeying Twilight's request.

"Seriously, though," Dash said, standing up uncertainly. "What was that?"

"The Guardian of the Orbs!" Twilight explained.

Rainbow and Pinkie glanced at each other.

"As in...the Memorbs, darling?" Rarity asked.

Twilight sputtered and scoffed. "What? No! The Orb! We need to find it! It's in the library somewhere around here..."

Twilight turned around and put her hoof over her eyes to stare down the hallway, trying to find a good starting point to being their search for the mysterious Orb.

Before Twilight could dictate her friends on their hunt, though, Fluttershy noticed something and pointed up at the ceiling. "Umm...girls? What's that?"

Everypony looked up. What they saw was absolutely scarring. Up in the hole in the ceiling Rainbow Dash had descended from, there was some sort of...material. It was red, spongy, and resealed the ceiling, making the hole impassable whether they went up or down.

The substance had a similar destabilizing effect as the roar they had all just heard. It was clearly stretchy, and a very dark shade of red. It could have easily been the ground-up flesh of previous victims, but it also looked like could've just been really rubbery spider webbing. So...was it previous victims' ground-up flesh, or not? The ambiguity of it was more terrifying than anything. Even the idea they could all be staring at the amassed collection of consumed ponies or who knows what else the Shadow could've ate.

Twilight wobbled for a few minutes, hooves shaking as her resolve was challenged again.

"No!" Twilight shouted, pounding her hooves to stabilize her legs. "NO! This-is-MY LIBRARY! AND I-WILL-NOT-GIVE...IT...UP!"

Twilight turned around, looking back the way they came.

"Come on!" Twilight made a hoof gesture for them to follow her. "We need to find the Orb, and I have an idea where it could be!"

"Oh? What's that, darling?" Rarity questioned as the group march their way down the hall. Their heads all kept looking at the corners of the room, thinking the Shadow's fleshy residue would somehow follow them through the building.

"Whoever brought the Orb would've wanted it protected and hard to reach. Or even somewhere no pony would think to reach. So...the first place we're going to look for it is in the basement!"

"Eeer..." Rarity squeaked nervously.

"What?" Twilight snarled, getting tired of all her friends' questions. The time for questions was over. Now was the time for cold, hard, brutal action.

"Which basement, darling?"

Twilight halted. "There's more than one?"

"Well, yes! You knew- We thought you knew that." Rarity caught herself mid-sentence. Like several other things today, Twilight would question it later.

"Hey!" Pinkie yelled. "How are we going through all the water in the basement, though?"

"It should be fine." Twilight replied. "After all, I know how to deal with the KAERNKS now...that's weird, how I do know their name?"

"Ooh!" Fluttershy squealed, fascinated by the prospect of a new animal. "Kaernk? What's that?"

"It's a meat-eating predator from the same...place as the last pony to have stolen an Orb." Twilight explained. "Oh! I know how I know it! I learned from the Guardian while we were talking without either of us realizing it!"

"You keep talking about the Guardian." Rarity pointed out just as they were reaching the stairs. "Who is he, really?"

"Well, he's more of an 'it'." Twilight corrected. "He, uh...guards the Orbs. You remember that fleshy stuff we saw in the hallway earlier?"

"Oh! Twilight!...what a ridiculous question! Nopony could forget something that traumatizing so soon after seeing it..." Rarity muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing!"

"Anyways, that stuff's from it. He's angry, he's upset, and with good reason. I have something of his. I don't know how I have it, but I have it, and he wants it back." Twilight explained. "We don't have anything to fear from it...as long as we can get its Orb back to it."

"You say that like this "Guardian" is one of your drinking buddies!" Dash exclaimed. "And not some sort of horror from Tartarus who's probably going to kill us?"

"Relax, Rainbow Dash. We can get him- oh, slip of the tongue. His- did it again-stuff back to him!"

The gang were in the foyer now, where the entrance to the library was located. The entrance to the library...and their exit from all this dread and horror.

"You know..." Pinkie suggested. "We have the formula for the Compound now, right? We could blow up the door and get out of here right now!"

Twilight stopped and took a good, long glance at the door.

"We could leave all this behind." Rarity said. "We could run away now, and never have to look back."

Twilight continued staring at the door, adjusting her gaze slightly left to look out the window. Somehow, the hazy fog of evening had been lifted, and the sun was shining brilliantly outside.

Brilliantly...beautiful. Warmly. Invitingly. Beckoning her out, to wash her hooves of this mess.

"It's your call, dear."

Twilight frowned, thinking of all the good memories she had of her friends in out in Ponyville. All the fun times they had together.

Then her eyebrows furrowed, thinking about her new...friend(?) the Guardian, and how it wanted its Orb back.

"No."

No pony seemed to be expecting Twilight to choose that.

"We still need to find Applejack, and give the Orb back to the Guardian." Twilight reminded them firmly. She pointed her hoof like a tense canine's nose. "Down into the basement!"

They all trotted their way down the stairs, extremely nervous. But Twilight's leadership was inspiring. Once they reached the bottom, they didn't need Twilight's signal to stop while she PURGED the water of Kaernk predators.

Twilight stepped into the water and waited for the Kaernk to approach. It wasn't long before she heard the tell-tale splash. Whipping around with speed to match, well... a predator, Twilight blasted the splash with her magic, causing another shriek as the Kaernk breathed its last.

Everypony stomped to applaud and cheered.

"Yeah!" cried Dash.

"You did it, Twilight!" cheered Rarity.

"Way to go!" exclaimed Pinkie.

"Thank you, thank you!" Twilight said jokingly, bowing. "It was nothing, really."

"Um...actually..." Fluttershy said.

"Oh, honestly, Fluttershy!" Rarity groaned with exasperation. "Can't you be positive for once!?"

"Oh, I'm sorry." Fluttershy apologized. "It's just that, well...there's another one in the water."

"WHAT!?" Chorused through the room. There was indeed, another Kaernk splashing its way through the water, intent on making Twilight its next dinner. Twilight blasted it and killed it before it could make reach her and take a bite.

But it was only the second of many, as more and more splashes were approaching Twilight, surrounding her. Now, her friends were in a panic.

"TWILIGHT!" Rarity shouted. "GET OUT OF THERE!"

"I-I can't!" Twilight realized. There were encircling her, and there was no opening between them large for her to swim through. She started waddling backwards in her fright, which only served to let her know how the deep the water really was.

Too deep.

"Oh! I can't watch!" Rarity covered her eyes. Then she uncovered them. "Well, I really don''t want to watch, but I need to see what happens next."

What happened next...none of them could have saw coming. The Shadow roared, once again causing them to experience a temporary mental breakdown. The is-it-previous-victims-flesh-or-not residue starting forming on the walls, manifesting from absolute nothingness. It trailed down the walls, into the water and...

And started sucking it up like a sponge, pulling all the Kaernks away from Twilight and reducing the water level. It dipped down, and down. The Kaernks' splashing became increasingly more frantic, flailing and trying to escape.

The water eventually got so low that there was nothing left but a few small puddles on the floor. The walls, meanwhile, were now completely covered in the Shadow's residue. The fleshy mass was pulsating now, the caught Kaernks' trying to punch through and escape their trap.

"Uhhh...what just happened?" Rainbow stammered once the entire thing was over. Whatever just happened was way too weird to accept.

"The Guardian helped!" Twilight explained.

"But why?" Rarity added.

"Think about it: You're missing something of yours, and you can't get it. But you can help the ponies who can get it. So, you do, and they get it for you!"

Twilight looked around at the now mostly dry basement and found what was quite possibly the best thing she could ever hope to see right now.

"The Orb!"

Twilight rushed over the the center of the floor. There was a gold stand there with the top shaped in a owl's talon. Gripped firmly in was a sphere much larger than a Memorb, a cyan color with beautiful gold ornamentation.

"I saw that thing in a Memorb!" Fluttershy whispered to Rarity.

"Oh? Tell me what happened, Fluttershy."

"You..." Twilight rasped venomously to the Orb. "I don't how, but this is somehow all your fault! Everything- somehow- can be traced back to you! Words cannot explain how glad I am that you're about to be gone!"

The fleshy substance seem to stretch down from the wall and sneak up on Twilight...

"Twilight?" Fluttershy peeped. "You should- you should really look behind you!"

Twilight didn't seem to hear her, content to stay completely still.

"Twilight? Twilight? TWILIGHT!"

The organic substance started wrapping around Twilight's hooves, crawling up her legs, reaching over Cutie Mark and starting to cover her totally in the substance. Her friends were so disgusted, alarm, and scared they couldn't do anything but stand there with their jaws shaking and legs trembling.

Then...the residue started to pull back, retracting, recoiling off Twilight. And she was...perfectly fine. The Shadow's substance completely left her body, but the Orb had gone. Disappeared into thin air. Poof! Gone, baby, gone.. without a trace.

Twilight took in a deep breath. The Guardian wasn't going to trouble them any more. She turned around, mentally preparing herself to proudly locate Applejack and fix this mess once and for all.

Only to see Rarity, Rainbow, Pinkie, and Fluttershy all standing in front of her on the basement's floor.

"Girls?" Twilight questioned at the "this hurts me more than it hurts you" looks on their faces. "What's going on?"

Rarity cleared her throat. "Fluttershy's...told me of an experience she had with a Memorb. And from it, we've all concluded we need to quit beating around the bush with you."

"What do you mean?"

"We know where Applejack is...and, I'm sorry, Twilight, but this needs to be done."

Rarity turned her head over her wither and bit one of the straps on her back and whipped it across Twilight legs, making Twilight fall down to her side. Rarity whipped it again to wrap it around Twilight's legs and bind her.

"Girls?" Twilight questioned. "What's going on? Why are you doing this?"

"This is for your own good, darling." Rarity said coldly. "Fluttershy?"

Fluttershy approached and put her hooves on Twilight's cheeks before kissing her.

Twilight wanted to know why Fluttershy was KISSING her, but she couldn't talk very well with a pair of pegasi lips on her own.

A thin liquid started dripping down Twilight's mouth. It tasted like seasoned geraniums and spiced mayflowers. She tried to pull away, but a pair of incisors stabbed into her lips -one in the bottom, one in the top- keeping her locked in place, and her mouth connected to Fluttershy's.

Wait... Twilight thought to herself. This is exactly what happened in the room where we found Rarity! Did- did Fluttershy make me drink aphrodisiac? ...Oh, dear Celestia, did my friends all violate-

She couldn't finish that thought, as she fell unconscious. But just before she collapsed completely, she realized that was the first time she had seriously thought about her beloved mentor since she had woken up in her bed...

Hour of Revealation

Twilight groaned as she woke up. The longest, loudest and most pained sounding groan she had made through the entire night up to now. She opened her eyes.

She was in a room. The room didn't have any potions or dissection tables or corpses around, so that was at least a nice change of pace.

It was slightly balanced out by the fact she was hanging from the ceiling by black chains with her back arched to the floor in a suggestive position. The room she was in had a slightly sunken floor, covered entirely in shallow water that swirled around ominously, seemingly with nothing to move it.

She whimpered, jerking her hooves to tug at the chains in hopes of finding a weak link in them. She was unsuccessful, however.

"Girls?" The bound mare questioned, forgetting that her friends had to be the ones to put her in this position to begin with.

"Oh! She's up!" Twilight could barely hear Rarity exclaimed from another room. She heard the creak of a door, and could see her friends pouring in the room from a wall.

Applejack was with them.

She wasn't quite as bad as Rainbow Dash in her bodily dis-figuration. She was more near Pinkie's level, having a hatchet stuck in the back of her neck and the black film Pinkie and Rainbow had on her eyes. Her legs were covered in bruises and cuts, but those actually looked like they would heal if the proper first aid was applied. Other than that, she looked relatively the same.

"A-Applejack?" Twilight managed to choke out.

Applejack took her hat and brought over her chest. A nervous smile was on the farmer's face, but she attempted to be cordial. "Howdy, Twilight. How are ya?"

"I'm scared." Twilight admitted, tugging gently at the chains to illustrate her point. "What's happening? What's going on?"

Applejack seemed ready to answer, but Rarity stepped in. "Well, you see, Twilight Sparkle...you recently took some of what you called an 'Amnesia mixture' so you've forgotten the events that have transpired over the last week or two. We've decided we need to remind of some things you forgot without telling you every thing you forgot."

Twilight narrowed her eyes. "And hanging me up from the ceiling with huge, black chains helps with this...how, exactly?"

Rarity sighed. "It's to keep you from doing anything too rash, darling."

Twilight was starting to get frustrated. "Anything too rash? What do you mean by that!?" Twilight took another look at the chains on her hooves. She gathered energy in her horn and blasted one, but it took the hit like a trooper and didn't come off any worse for the wear except for a little smoke and rattling.

"Arrgh!" Twilight swore. Enchanted to be magic-proof! Or at least magic-resistant. Either way, she should've known. Given how well her friends knew her, and how much her magic was an integral part of her personality, they would never make the oversight of not accounting for her magic.

"Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy." Rarity commanded. "Fly up there and start our plan."

"Plan?" Twilight questioned. Under normal circumstances, Twilight liked plans. But these circumstances were not normal at all, and she found the idea more terrifying than assuring.

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy flapped their wings and flew up to Twilight. Twilight alternated looks between the two of them before Rainbow flew down underneath Twilight's back while Fluttershy fluttered herself above the unicorn's stomach.

"What are you doing?" Twilight questioned.

"Soft stuff." Fluttershy replied.

Twilight's mouth and brain stopped working for a minute before she could make her question form.

"...What do you mean, soft stuff?"

Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash hugged her, wrapping their wings around Twilight and each other to keep them all held together tightly.

"What's going on?" Twilight repeated. "What are you doing!?"

A luminescent blush formed on her face when Twilight started to feel Rainbow's nose burrowing it's way into the back of her neck. Fluttershy rubbed Twilight's chest with her hoof, gently stroking through Twilight's fur.

"Seriously, girls, what...are...you...eh-heh-heh-heh." Twilight let out a airy chuckle, suddenly starting to enjoy the feeling of being nuzzled. "What? No!" Twilight flailed about, shaking the chains. "I am not enjoying this!"

Rainbow and Fluttershy looked to each other.

"Well, we'll just have to fix that, then. Won't we, Fluttershy?"

"Oh, yes." Fluttershy agreed, nodding her head.

"What?" Twilight exclaimed. "What does that mean?"

Fluttershy took in a deep, deep breath before swinging her head down and blowing a raspberry on Twilight's stomach, eliciting a giggle.

"S-stop! Hahaha! S-stop it!" Twilight flailed and struggled again, continuing to tell herself she wasn't enjoying this, even though she was actually starting to get used to it...and like it. Her denial was more to tell herself than her friends.

Twilight felt an absolutely cold shiver down her back when she felt something wet slip across her neck.

Was-was Rainbow Dash licking her?

Twilight sighed, shivering from the bizarre pleasant feelings she was getting. A drip of the light blue liquid escaped from her eye as she got the feeling she had been through this before - or at least something similar to this.

Fluttershy removed her mouth from Twilight's stomach and wiggled around to readjust herself.

Fluttershy stuck her tongue out slightly, barely visible in the corner of Twilight's eye, taunting the unicorn with the knowledge her friend was about to do something else to her.

Fluttershy pushed out her tongue as far as it would go and started licking Twilight's neck as well, giving Twilight a breathtaking sensation as the two pegasi proceeded to work together to coat her neck in saliva.

"Girls..." Twilight murmured, so taken by the alien feeling surreality of the predicament she was in that she could barely make any other word besides the one.

Fluttershy stopped her licking and rose up to admire Twilight's face for a moment.

"Mm. Um...Rainbow Dash?" Fluttershy questioned as she rubbed Twilight's cheek with a hoof. "I've, um...kissed her twice already. Would you like a turn?"

"Sure!"

Dash and Fluttershy separated from Twilight and flew around, switching places so that Fluttershy was on Twilight's back and Rainbow was on her front. Rainbow licked her own lips in anticipation before kissing Twilight's, shoving her tongue down Twilight's and slurping the roof of the unicorn's mouth.

"Mmnf..." Twilight groaned. She was starting to become, well...desensitized to the ordeal she was in after so long. Closing her eyes, Twilight brought her hoof down and started to seductively rub the base of Rainbow Dash's wing.

"Rarity, Ah think she's warming up to it." Applejack observed.

"Excellent!" Rarity exclaimed. "Bring her down, you two!"

Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash separated from Twilight again, flying away from her. Twilight reached her hooves out, not wanting them to leave. They started fiddling with the chains and eventually manually forced them to unlock. Twilight was prevented from hitting the floor by the pegasi's quick reaction, and they carried her gently to the floor.

Rarity smiled lecherously.

"Now we can get to the real fun."

Rarity, Pinkie and Applejack approached Twilight and the pegasi, circling around as they looked for the best place to be.

"Girls?" Twilight repeated. An excellent question, given her entire vocabulary had been reduced to the one word.

Pinkie and Applejack sat down on their bellies to the side. Rainbow picked up Twilight and weaseled her way under Twilight's back, serving as a sort of bed while still being in a position where she could lick Twilight's neck.

"Uhhhhn...?" Twilight groaned, eye following Rarity nervously as her white opposite walked around them all in predatory circles.

"This is what we used to do, darling." Rarity explained. "Can you remember? All of us, lying together..."

Applejack and Pinkie stuck out their tongues and start licking Twilight's Cutie Mark on both sides, making her shiver and moan.

"Ooooh!"

Rarity chuckled. "Well, that's good...but, I think we can do better."

Rarity reared up and flailed her hooves and brought them down on Twilight's withers with a thump before taking her own turn at kissing Twilight. She was a lot less...rough than Rainbow, Twilight thought to herself.

But she didn't realize, until it was too late...that Rarity was on top of her, Rainbow below her, and Applejack and Pinkie Pie besides...so, where did that leave Fluttershy?

She wasn't sure what Rarity was doing when she felt her white opposite's hind legs rise upward...until she felt a tongue on her stomach that started to trail down.

What in the...? Twilight thought to herself. Is Fluttershy licking my stomach? What's she doing there? Oh, tell me she's not-

Twilight felt a very particular feeling.

She IS! Twilight realized with horror. No! No, Fluttershy, stop! Get out of there! I don't want-Ah ha...haha...ooooh...ahhhh...

Suddenly, flashes of memories came flooding back to Twilight. She remembered. She remembered lying in bed with all her friends, each one in turn, letting them do atrocious things to her. She remembered lying on her back with Applejack on top of her, preparing to give Twilight a good rutting. She remembered Rarity turning around submissively so Twilight could whip her Cutie Mark with a leather strap like the ones they found on her. She remembered Pinkie underneath her hooves, moaning longingly as Twilight drew a knife across her chest. It was then Twilight realized her friends weren't trying to hurt her, or scare her; they were trying to make her feel good.

"Mmmh! Mhh!" Twilight protested, eventually causing Rarity to move her lips away from Twilight's.

"Girls!" Twilight exclaimed, the blue liquid leaking from her eyes. "Girls, I'm starting to remember some things! Keep going, girls! M-m-m-m-m-m-make your Mistress... feel g-guh-goooood."

Everypony heard their Mistress speak, and eagerly heeded the call. Applejack and Pinkie drew back their tongues, then proceeded to gnaw and nip on Twilight's haunches affectionately. Rainbow Dash followed suit, replacing her licks on the back of Twilight's neck with bits on the side of it. Fluttershy put her hooves on Twilight's stomach and started pumping her tongue, going in and out of Twilight like a piston.

"Oh my... oooh yeees...." Twilight moaned. "That's it... that's it, sweeties, right there... ooooh." Twilgiht laid her neck back, content to just let everpony do as they wished.

"AH Ha ha...ha haaaa ooooooh." Twilight moaned and contracted. "OooooOOooooOOOoOOOHoooHOOO!"

Oh, sweet... Twilight thought, her body bucking. How does a pony feel this way without exploding!?

She was about to discover that no, ponies do not feel this way without exploding.

Her breathing got extremely sharp and shallow, and her hind legs were flailing from the feeling. An intense pressure was building in her stomach that needed relief soon...

"Fl-Fluttershhhy!" Twilight exclaimed, suddenly regaining her voice. "I feel like I'm going to explode! I-I-I'm not sure I c-can hold it!"

Rarity chuckled. "Darling, like many things, you've forgotten what you used to tell us. If you need to let it flow...then just..."

Rarity bent her neck over and whispered into Twilight's ear.

"Let it... go."

"I- I don't want to defile Fluttershy like that..." Twilight murmured.

"You won't." Rarity assured her. "Can't you see how hard she's working? She wants it. It's reward to her, not a punishment. Let it go. Relax. Release. Relax...and release... fill her with your love."

Twilight opened her eyes and looked down, seeing Fluttershy lick her while looking up at her pleadingly, begging to be granted the honor of release. Fluttershy stopped for a second, a second that Twilight found the most tortuous second in the history of torturous second, so as to coax Twilight that it was okay for her to let go.

"She wants it, Twilight! Give it to her!"

Rarity's assurances and whispering eventually got to Twilight, and she gave in. Eyes rolling to the back of her head, she took in a deep breath for a scream she knew was coming. Her belly rose up high in the air as she tried to suck up all the oxygen around her.

"Fluttershy! Girls! Girls! Fluttershy! OOOOOOOOOOHHH!"

Twilight screamed and released, scissoring Fluttershy's neck with her hind legs, forcing the shy pony to taste every, last, heated, drip-drop of her love as it was pa-pumped out of her from Fluttershy's licking.

After she was done, everypony drew away from Twilight, and she rolled over off Rainbow Dash onto the floor. Her eyes were spinning like drunken helicopter blades, and she felt like...like a deflated balloon. Like a fire hydrant broken and smashed up beyond repair. Like a pot of boiling water with a leak in it. Like...well, like a lot of things. But most of all...

She felt amazingly satisfied.

Twilight's head remained dizzy for a good long while after that, though she was conscious. She could vaguely make out being picked up and carried out of the room.

"Are you still with us, darling?" Rarity asked.

"Yes..." Twilight sputtered out. "Barely, but I'm here."

"Very good. We're going to clean you up now, is that all right?"

"Yeah...sounds great." Twilight's thoughts drifted to the insane rush of feeling she had received just a few moments ago at Flutershy's hoof (...er, tongue) as she was carried over to the bathroom. How did a pony do that survive that kind of experience? And how, exactly, did Fluttershy of all ponies make it happen!? Her hoof trailed down her stomach, half-wanting to re-capture the moment...but thought better of it, given how exhausted she was. Besides, she was certain it wouldn't be the same as it was with her friends.

"That was...amazing, girls." Twilight muttered.

"You're welcome, darling."

"Another thing, Rarity?"

"Yes?"

"Make the room stop spinning!"

Rarity chuckled. "Terribly sorry, Twilight, but that's out of my control."

Twilight groaned, burying her muzzle into the shoulders of whoever was carrying her and covering her eyes. "We should...do this...more often." Twilight panted.

"We used to!" Rarity replied. "But then the raid happened..." Rarity covered her mouth with her hoof, realizing she had just let something slip.

"Raid...?"

"Nothing, darling. We're almost at the restroom. Let's get you cleaned up, hmm?"

Twilight heard the creak of her bathroom door, and smelled all the bath soaps and colognes inside as she was carried over to the large wooden tub. She opened her eyes a little more, and could see Fluttershy (everypony else left the room) fiddling with the faucet, trying to get it to work. She managed to turn it on, albeit at the expense of blasting a stream of water into her face before she wrestled into the tub. Twilight giggled at the sight of her friend's hair being disheveled from the blast.

"I'm glad you're happy, Twilight." Fluttershy said.

Twilight sighed contentedly. "Why was I not happy, again?"

"It's better if you don't remember." Fluttershy assured her, stroking Twilight's mane soothingly. Twilight, still reeling from her high, responded with the same, trailing her hoof through Fluttershy's mane. Her soaked, heavy mane...

"You made me feel so good in that room..." Twilight murmured.

Fluttershy smiled. "Well...that's good to know."

Twilight happily stroked Fluttershy's mane before a nasty thought wormed its way into her head. Why should she get to feel so good while her friends were left out?

"Come on in." Twilight gestured to Fluttershy . "The water's fine."

Fluttershy tilted her head. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, you made me feel so good in that room." Twilight repeated. She reached over and started trying to undo the straps on Fluttershy's dress. "It's not fair that you - and everypony else- doesn't get that experience."

"Oh! Oh, my...well, I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Twilight, but you don't need to do that."

Fluttershy pulled away and re-did her straps. "Really."

Twilight moaned disappointingly. "Are you sure? Why not?"

"Yes, I'm sure." Fluttershy nodded. "I'm sure Rainbow Dash or somepony would do it to me if I asked..."

"Wha-really?"

"Yes...I mean, you trained us so well, after all...oh my!" Fluttershy covered her mouth with her hooves. "I shouldn't have told you that!"

"Trained you?" Twilight parroted. "What do you mean, 'trained you'?"

Fluttershy whimpered and stepped back.

"Fluttershy, what happened!?" Twilight demanded, slamming her hooves on the edge of the tub.

Fluttershy whimpered and started backing into a corner, startled by Twilight's outburst.

Twilight mentally facehooved. After all the time they had known each other, she should've known better to get aggressive with Fluttershy. She gently tried to coax the pegasus back to here. "Fluttershy, come back here...I didn't mean to lose my temper with you."

Fluttershy hesitated, but complied, crawling back towards the tub. Once she was in Twilight's reach again, Twilight cupped Fluttershy's hoof and pulled her into a kiss. For some reason, Twilight didn't question why she was so open about being affectionate with her friends.

"Now...can you tell me what happened? And remember, it's fine if you don't want to."

Fluttershy looked away, before looking back to Twilight. "Not by myself. I want everypony else around."

"Okay. Okay." Twilight comforted her. She playfully poked Fluttershy's cheek before drawing her hoof back and swimming away from the edge. "I'll get cleaned up, and then you and everypony else can sit down and tell me what happened, okay? Does that sound nice?"

Fluttershy nodded.

"Now, hand me that soap, if you would be so kind?"

"Of course..."

Twilight and Fluttershy stepped out of the bathroom, a towel draped over the former's back. Steam from the water hissed out behind their exit. As they stepped out, Fluttershy stepped aside suddenly.

"So, um...are we going to get the others?" Fluttershy scraped a hoof.

"Ye-." Twilight suddenly had an idea. Fluttershy wasn't comfortable with talking by herself, but that didn't mean the rest of her friends would be. She might get more lucky if she tried to approach, say, Rarity, on a individual basis before gathering the whole group for questioning. "No. I want to see if anypony else would like to tell me anything."

"Okay...I'll wait right here, I guess. Um, if that's okay."

Twilight patted Fluttershy on the back and nuzzled her before heading away. "Now, where did the others go?"

"Um...they went to the guest rooms you made for them, I think. They're all next to each other, and just over that way..." Fluttershy pointed her in the direction.

"Excellent. Thank you, Fluttershy."

"You're welcome, Miss-Twilight."

Gotta remember to add that to my list of questions... Twilight thought to herself. She made her way towards the hallway, where exactly three doors on each wall, six in total. Twilight imagined that since she slept in her own room, so one of these ones had to go unused. She started to remember about Spike...for some reason, she felt assured that he was in a safe place.

Possibly safer than here with her...

Twilight frowned. Why would she have that thought? She took a look at each door, and went first into the nearest one on the left side. She knocked politely on it.

"Come in!" Rarity's voice beckoned her from the other side.

Twilight anxiously pushed the door open. The room was actually quite pleasant, the way she would've like her guest rooms to look for their guests. There was a table, a fancy bed with lace on the pillowcase, and some petty decorations in the corners to keep it from being one bland color. Rarity was lying on her back on the bed.

There was some weird device on her stomach. A small wooded plank, with a metal pulley attached, dangling a needle over her ... that swung down towards it, without making contact, before lifting back up.

"Oh, darling!" Rarity exclaimed. "I'm so sorry, I didn't see you come in." Rarity put the device on the drawer next to the bed. "What do you need?"

Twilight pursed her lips. What did she need? She needed...answers. She needed to question all those things that she said she would question later, as it was now later.

"When Fluttershy and I came out of the room with the Changeling she was trying to get me to dissect...you tried to ask Fluttershy if I was...what?"

Rarity's eyes widened, a worried grimace on her face. "Ahh...eer, that is..." Rarity signed. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath to calm herself.

"We were trying to get back to normal."

"Normal!?" Twilight responded. "How is dissecting Changelings normal!?"

"It's normal for us, darling." Rarity calmly explained. "It's truly a shame, you don't remember..."

"Don't remember what!?" Twilight demanded, stomping a hoof. "Rarity, tell me what happened!"

Rarity glared, her blue eyes sparkling like emotionless diamonds. "Darling...forgive me, but I don't know what happened in full, and what I do know, I'm not willing to share." Rarity rolled over onto her side. "I no longer wish to talk about this!" Rarity added when Twilight raised an objecting hoof. "Now, if you would like to come here and have a little fun..." Rarity raised her tail and spanked her round, shapely Cutie Mark... "That, I would be much more willing towards..."

Twilight moaned quietly, hoof outstretched. She approached the bed and climbed up, getting close enough to rub Rarity's chest. Rarity chuckled confidently and purred, fluttering her long, sharp eyelashes...

"...No." Twilight shook her head, taking her hoof off her friend. "Tempting, Rarity...very tempting. But I need to talk to the others."

Rarity looked disappointed. "Very well. I was never your favorite, I know."

"Favorite?"

"No matter what I did, I could just never match Fluttershy's skill, or Pinkie's enthusiasm, or... Applejack's muscles!" Rarity scoffed, waving a hoof and clearly thinking more of her own complaints over what she let Twilight hear.

Twilight left the room and went to the door opposite, knocking on it. "May I come in?"

"Sure!"

Pinkie Pie. Hmm...

Twilight opened the door slowly, fearful Pinkie would be doing something even worse than what Rarity was doing.

Pinkie's room had a knife holder on the drawer, holding a variety of different kitchen knives for multiple different cuts. At least, that was their intended purpose. Pinkie was drawing them out and hurling them at the wall, where a dartboard had to sit and take the beating.

"What'cha ya need, Twi?" Pinkie happily asked.

Twilight looked at the dartboard, where a selection top-notch sharp instruments were sticking out. And if Twilight said something Pinkie didn't like, she could easily throw one of those at Twilight...

Twilight cleared her throat. "Um...why is there a cart wheel on your neck, and why do you enjoy being stabbed?"

"You don't remember?" Pinkie questioned, leg arched in mid-throw. Her leg dropped, the knife in her hoof clattering against the floor, while her eyes drifted downwards. "Oh...that's right. You don't."

Pinkie picked the knife back up and threw it, like trying to ignore that last turn in the conversation.

Twilight shirked, feeling like she had let Pinkie down somehow. "I-I'm sorry, Pinkie Pie...um, can you tell me what happened at the library that caused everypony to be so mutilated?"

"I can...but why should I?"

Twilight was a little confused by Pinkie's uncooperative behavior. "Uh...because I'm your friend, and I deserve to know what happened?"

Pinkie gave Twilight a hard, cold glare. She stabbed the knife she had drawn into the table, making Twilight wince.

"You were my mistress, and you left me behind. You left us ALL behind, because of your stupid brother."

Twilight was shocked, but that quickly turned to anger. "You can't talk about Shining Armor that way!"

Pinkie huffed and growled, baring her teeth. She pulled the knife out of the table and threw it, where it stabbed into the door. Twilight got the distinct impression she had been aiming for the door, so she closed it and left...then she opened it back up and pried the knife out, tossing on the floor, before leaving for real.

Twilight nervously held the doorknob for a moment before she went on the next door. This time, she went for the middle door on the left.

"Oh! Um...come in."

Twilight hesitated. Fluttershy had said she wasn't comfortable talking without the others... she weighed how much she wanted to know versus her confidence in her ability to make Fluttershy feel comfortable without the rest of their friends.

She went in. Fluttershy was stroking her own mane, holding a picture of her pet bunny, Angel Bunny.

"Oh, Fluttershy..." Twilight moaned sadly, not even realizing she was talking. "I'm so sorry...you must miss him so much."

"Oh, Twilight!" Fluttershy snapped, the picture flying from her hoof. "You startled me...do you need something?"

"I want to talk about what happened." Twilight said determinedly.

Fluttershy whimpered. "Twilight, I already told you I didn't want to-"

Twilight ran up up to the bed and grabbed Fluttershy's head in her hooves. She nuzzled the pegasi's nose. "Fluttershy, would I do anything to hurt you?"

"...No." Fluttershy said after a moment's pause. "Most of your punishments were usually...Oh!" Fluttershy crawled away and bury her face in her hooves on the bed. "I wasn't supposed to tell you that!"

Twilight frowned. She tapped at her chin, trying to think of what the best response would be. "And why were you not supposed to tell me that?"

Fluttershy lifted one hoof off an eye.

"It's okay." Twilight assured her, lying down and stroking Fluttershy's mane. "You can tell me anything. I won't get mad."

"You won't?"

"Yes. I promise." Twilight held her hoof against her chest.

"Okay...um, well...me and everypony else didn't want to tell you anything, because we all really wanted to go back to the way things were..."

"Oh?"

"Yes...in fact, we're all in our beds now because we thought that if we... " Fluttershy stopped and raised her head. "Okay...if I...um...well, you know." Fluttershy stuck her tongue out and swung it side to side. Twilight got the feeling the seductive lowering of her eyelids was an unintentional reflex. "You'd go back to normal."

"Why does everypony keep talking about me going back to normal?" Twilight questioned. "I'm still the same pony I've always been!"

"Erm...you, um, changed." Fluttershy explained. "And then that became normal...to us."

"Oh." Twilight paused to think over anything she might be able to coax out of Fluttershy. "Anything else you can tell me? Pinkie said something about Shining Armor."

"No. I'm sorry." Fluttershy got up and walked away from the bed, her wings and dress trailing elegantly behind her. Twilight got the message. This discussion is over.

She left the room and turned to the center one on the right side. Just opposite. She knocked on that one, but there was no response. She knocked on it again, a bit more loud this time. Then again very loudly and forcefully, and when even that didn't get a response, she went in without being invited.

Inside, the room was empty, but she was going to guess it Rainbow Dash's, as there was a poster with a Wonderbolts logo on the wall. She closed the door and went to the next room over- far door on the right side. She was going to knock, there was a pink note posted on the door.

No need to knock.

It had the same hoofwriting as the weird note she found near Rarity. Since it said there was no need to knock, she went in.

This room wasn't a bedroom. Twilight presumed it was an unused guest room, since there were six rooms and only five of her friends, and as such, had been re-purposed.

Metal instruments and glass vials of aphrodisiac, knockout potion and something else. were stood on the table. Things like needles and pins and metal spheres. There was a few of each attacked to the ends of chains, and similar devices to what Rarity had on her. Rainbow Dash was fiddling with one of them.

"Oh...hey, Twilight." Rainbow greeted nervously. "How you feeling?"

"Fine." Twilight answered, eying the device Rainbow was messing with. "What are you doing?"

"Just playing around with your totally rad..." In something completely unprecedented, Rainbow stuffed her hoof into her mouth at what she was saying. (That was sarcasm, by the way.)

"My rad...?" Twilight asked in a note.

"Uh, well..."

Twilight pouted. Feeling something overtake her, she trotted towards Rainbow Dash, making sure to shake her hips and whip her tail as seductively as possible. Rainbow flushed at her approach. At her touch.

"Now, Rainbow..." Twilight said sweetly, rubbing a hoof on the pegasi' cheek. "What could be keeping you from telling me anything about something of mine?"

"Well, uh..." Rainbow stammered.

Twilight got frustrated. She looked at the table, and got a terrible idea. It was awfully rude...she was going to levitate the aphrodisiac and threaten to use it, but she wasn't going to actually use it!

"Rainbow Dash, tell me what these are, or I'll use that aphrodisiac on you."

Rainbow chuckled, smiling nervously. "Well, uh, funny you say that, Twilight. You know, you invented that aphrodisiac because you wanted -what was it you said?...'To push the limit of pleasure in the pony body.'" Rainbow explained, which made Twilight flush instead.

"Wha-really? Really!?" Twilight repeated, unable to believe that she had been the one to bring such an awful substance from fiction to fact.

"Yeah...you know, you read books about it saying that it burned up ponies from the heat of their arousal, but you didn't want anypony to get hurt, so you made it that it stimulated the brain to make ponies think they were burning, so they'd get even more desperate and...willing. Pretty..." Rainbow smirked warily. "Pretty smart, huh?"

Twilight blinked. She did this? She made this thing? She brought this awful thing to life!? Although, at least what Rainbow said explained why the Guard Twilight saw while doped up on it didn't see her body burning.

"...Hey, are you still going to make me drink it?"

Twilight didn't answer, instead leaving the room. As the door swung behind, Rainbow Dash picked up the aphrodisiac and looked at it curiously, trying to decide if she wanted a sip or not.

There was only one room left now. The door to the right on the left side of the hallway. Her hooves wobbled as she approached the door, her confidence having suffered a hit from what Rainbow Dash revealed.

"A-Applejack?" Twilight stuttered out. She had to be in there, given that she already saw all her other friends in the other rooms.

"Yeah. Come in, Twilight." Applejack answered.

Twilight opened the door. Applejack's was very Applejack. No decorations, a basket of apples on the table next to the bed, and there was hay stuff into the bed. Applejack was under her covers, and seemed hesitant about something.

"Hey, Twi." Applejack greeted. "You want a spot?" Applejack patted her covers.

"Sure." Twilight crawled on the bed and wormed her way under the covers. She nuzzled Applejack's neck and rubbed the farmer's belly.

"You feelin' okay?"

"No...I still don't know what happened here." Twilight answered. "And everypony just gives a little tiny detail. Something about Shining Armor from Pinkie. Something about Rarity not being my favorite..."

Applejack guffawed. "Yeah...for all those romance novels she reads, she's not so good at the actual loving."

Twilight gnawed her lip. "Say, how do you deal with lying down with that hatchet in your neck?"

"Ah'm used to it...c'os, you know, it's been stuck in there for so long."

"Hmm."

Twilight laid there quietly, her hoof trailing up and down between the farmer's stomach and chest. She felt rather at peace with the farmer in the hay-stuffed bed. Like she could be open and honest.

"...Applejack?"

"Yeah?"

Applejack rolled over, and Twilight had to lock eyes with her.

"What happened in the library?"

Applejack frowned. "Wut do you mean?"

"I mean, why is everything so trashed? Why is everypony so cut-up and enjoying things like-like having knives in their chest!? Why did I make that aphrodisiac?"

"Well, uh...ya see, Twi, this weird, uh...thing...happened..." As she spoke, it was clear she had no confidence in what she was saying.

She bolted upright, putting her hooves on her head, and screamed. "AAAAAAHH! RARITY, AH CAN'T TAKE NO MORE! Come on, Twi!" Applejack leaped off the bed and charged the door, turning around and bucking it straight off its hinges.

"Applejack? What you are doing!? Where are we going!?"

"To tell you the truth." Applejack spat. "C'mon!"

Twilight nervously threw the covers off herself and followed after her friend. As they were galloping down the hallway, everypony poked their heads out of their doors to see what was causing all the commotion.

"What is going on out here!?" Rarity cried.

"Applejack's gone crazy!" Rainbow Dash answered.

"Um...she's leading Twilight down the hallway...isn't there where we keep Shi-"

"My goodness, Fluttershy, you're right! AFTER HER! STOP THEM!"

Everypony bolted out their room and took off down the hallway after the two.

"Where are we going, again?" Twilight repeated her earlier question.

"The library's biggest basement." Applejack answered. "We should find everything y'all need to know in there."

"Applejack!" Rarity's shrill, angry voice shouted behind them. "Stop this at once! We all had an understanding!"

Twilight looked over her wither to see the Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Pinkie chasing after them.

"An agreement was made not to tell Twilight what happened!"

"To Apple Buck wit' yer agreement! Ah'm not goin' to lie to mah friend!"

"You don't have to lie!" Fluttershy objected. "You just have...not tell her everything."

"Applejack!" Twilight exclaimed at Applejack's language, ignoring the chase scene unfurling around her.

Applejack ignored her and pressed on, hurrying up her pace to make sure their friends didn't catch up with them. Unfortunately, Applejack was tied with Rainbow as the most athletic of the group, so Twilight found herself struggling to play catch-up.

"Applejack, I can't keep up!"

Applejack signed and whinnied. "Fine." She skidded to a stop, turned around, grabbed Twilight's neck with her mouth (which made Twilight moan) and lifted the unicorn up onto her back before resuming her pace.

"Applejack..." Rarity huffed behind them, no doubt exhausted from trying to catch up with Applejack. "Stop. Please. You know what will happen to Twilight... She barely held herself together doing it once!"

"What?" Twilight questioned. "Is Applejack going to do something to me?"

"Yes..." Rarity whimpered. "Please stop...how is she going to handle realizing it twice?"

"Ah'm telling the truth, one way or another!" Applejack snapped.

Twilight saw downwards stairs ahead of them. Applejack rushed down them, Twilight jostling on her back.

The stairs led to a fairly normal room for the library. A circular room with the stairs far enough back to not be obtrusive, and two large wooden doors with rounded tops ahead of the stairs.

The wooden doors, however, were covered in locks and gadgets and doo-dads and chains. Twilight climbed off Applejack's back and went up to examine them.

"It's like that note said..." Twilight realized. "The door is locked, and will take a combination of magic and machinery to unlock it..."

"Darling!"

Applejack narrowed her eyes as Rarity came down the stairs. The others probably wouldn't be far behind.

"Darling, I beseech you, whatever happens, do not go into that room!"

Twilight looked between Rarity and Applejack, expecting them to make their cases in favor of/of not going into the room.

"Darling, darling." Rarity cried. "You don't need to know what's in there. We can be happy if we stay on the path we're on now."

"Happy?" Twilight questioned, not noticing that Rarity was getting closer to her.

"Yes..." Rarity said breathlessly, cozying up to Twilight. "We can go back to the way things were before the raid. Before everything fell apart."

Twilight really didn't know what to make of this. Rarity's tail curled around Twilight's hind leg, and Twilight dismissed it...

But then Rarity's tail curled under her belly and shot up her entrance with an extreme amount of force. Twilight squealed and fell over on her side, looking, and very much feeling, like a cow wanting to be milked.

"There, see? Isn't that nice?" Rarity said soothed her, lying down and re-inserting her tail into Twilight and wiggling it.

"Oooh...yes." Twilight answered, moaning, her eyelids lowering. "Very nice..."

Rarity climbed up on her, wrapping her hooves around her lavender opposite's back and touching their necks to each other. Twilight was genuinely enjoying it, until Applejack walked over, back into her line of sight.

"So, uh...are we gonna just forget about that whole 'telling ya the truth' thing?"

Twilight stared, hips wiggling from Rarity's ministrations, truly conflicted about what she wanted to answer. Did she want to give up- or in, rather, and just let the mystery of the door fade away? Or did she want to reject Rarity and find out what was causing all this ruckus? A back-and-forth went on in her head for quite some time.

"...No." She decided at last. "No, we're not. Get her offa me, A.J.!"

"Can do!" Applejack charged forward, tackling Rarity and throwing her off Twilight. As Rarity was removed, her tail went flying out of Twilight's... leaving the most ticklish sensation as the tail's tip waggled out. Twilight grunted, trying not to fold against the feelings of pleasure, and the oh-so-tempting idea of letting Rarity put her tail back in...

Maybe a little further, too...and faster. No. NO! I've got to focus! What's in that door?

"All right..." Twilight walked up to the door and put a hoof on one of the locks to inspect it.

"Twilight! Don't!"

Rainbow Dash dropped down from the air in between Twilight and the door. Twilight froze when Rainbow pointed her mutilated wing tips at her. Luckily, Applejack pulled the hatchet in her neck and smacked Rainbow in the face with the flat of it, knocking Rainbow out.

"How are we going to get through that door?" Twilight wondered. "This is an extremely complicated system, and I don't have all the steps to unlock it all..."

"Ah got an idea." Applejack answered, holding her hatchet. She raised it up and started smashing wildly at the locks, chopping them off one by one until there was no way for the door to remain closed.

"I guess that works..."

Applejack 'sheathed' the hatchet, putting it back in her neck and stepped away from the door. "Go on, Twi."

Twilight raised her hoof towards the door. It shook as she got closer, but she certainly wasn't going to back down now, of all times, when two of her friends had been incapacitated in the name of getting her in there.

Twilight shoved the door open and entered the room. Applejack entered behind her and shut the door quietly, locking it on the other side.

"Twilight!" Fluttershy's voice pleaded from the other side of the door. "Please don't go any further in there!"

"I'm sorry, Fluttershy, but I'm finding out what happened, one way or another!" Twilight answered. "I've come too far to turn back now, and you can't make me!"

Fluttershy's acid leaked and Rainbow's wing tip stabbed through the door, startling Twilight and Applejack. The wing tip withdrew, then stabbed it in a different place, trying to break the door down.

"Twilight, use yer magic!"

Twilight narrowed her eyes. Her horn lit up, and she made a metal sheet form on the door. There was a clang, and they could hear Rainbow scream "DAAAHOOOOW!" from trying to stab the door again, unaware of the metal on the other side.

Twilight felt a pang of guilt for causing her friend to hurt herself, but she dismissed it. Turning around, she proceeded down the stairs into the basement.

This basement...this basement was dark, dim, and more then a little unsettling. It was light by eerie candles with that weird creepy blue. There were black, metal tables with all the metal instruments, surgical tools, and potions Twilight had seen on the other tables and then some.

She stopped, seeing a light in the certain of the room that much lighter-pink even- in the middle of the room. She rushed forward, unknowing of Applejack's uneasy glare.

Twilight slowed down when she was actually in the light. Looking up at its source in the ceiling, she saw a stained glass window. She couldn't be sure, but it seemed to depict her mentor, Princess Celestia, inside the Guardian's Orb, literally bending over her back, her eyes gazing upwards like she was being driven to insanity.

Looking around the room, Twilight saw similar stained glass portraits scattered on the walls in a circle, with the one in the ceiling forming something of an epicenter.

They each had one of her friends one them, with their limbs spread eagle, hanging in the air. One showed Fluttershy with what appeared to be her stomach torn open with needles poking at it. The next one showed Rarity twitching as leather straps were pulled on her body. Another showed Rainbow with her normal wings outstretched...with metal sticking out of them like they were in the process of turning into the metal blades they were now. The next two showed Pinkie and Applejack being stabbed and slashed by knives and axes.

Applejack walked into the light with Twilight. "Wut do you see?"

"I see...I see all our friends being mutilated." Twilight answered, horrified. "I see Fluttershy with her gut torn open... I see..."

Twilight saw something on the other side of the room she really wasn't expecting to see, but she was all too happy to see.

"Shining Armor!?"

Propped up on an operating table and restrained by metal cuffs, with pieces of vacuum-like machinery pointed at his chest and uncomfortably close to his groin, was Twilight's B.B.B.F.F., Shining Armor. It was obvious he was tired and drained of energy, and that he hadn't eaten anything in Celestia knows how long.

"Oh..." Twilight whined, eyes turning watery. "Shining Armor..."

She dashed through the room and start rummaging throw the drawers on the tables' sides.

"I know there's a shot of adrenaline in here somewhere...wait, how do I know that?"

"Uh..."

Twilight shook her head. "Never mind!" She found the syringe full of the liquid drug and bounded over towards the table. She grabbed his wither and stabbed the syringe into his armpit, pushing it down to inject him with it.

"Please be alive, please be alive..." Twilight prayed under her breath.

Shining's eyes shot open, and he took in a gasp as he took in what must have been his first breath of fresh air in days.

"Shining..." Twilight exhaled, crying from the good news that he was alive. "You're alive."

"AAAAH!" Shining screamed and started flailing in his restraints. "GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU MONSTER!"

"M-monster!?" Twilight parroted, elation at his survival turning into depression from his rejection. "Shining Armor, it's me! It's Twiley..." Twilight stroked his fur, trying to calm him down. Shining quit flailing and panicking long enough to look at her. That look he gave her...it was like this had been the first he had seen her in years.

"Twiley?" Shining questioned. He sighed with relief. "Oh, thank goodness it's you...it was awful, Twiley..." Twilight patted him to assure him he could keep talking. "There was some sort of monster that was...you, but it wasn't you."

"A Changeling!" Twilight pounded the table in anger. "I'll find her, Shining. I'll find every single-"

Shining shook his head. "No, no...it wasn't that. It was something else..."

Twilight pouted. If it wasn't Changelings that had replicated her, then what was it?

"Uh, you know, Twi..." Applejack, bringing her hat over her chest solemnly. "Y'all left a bunch of notes in the drawers in here."

Twilight lifted the latches on the bed's restraints. Shining rubbed his hoof sorely while Twilight started rummaging through the drawers. She found a huge stack of documents in one drawer, and one note next to a rather bright Memorb in another. She pulled one from the large stack and read it. It had that same similar-to-her's writing.

On Fluttershy.

I'm quite happy with the way Fluttershy came out. Looking at her, you'd never know she'd been operated on, but I have surgically altered her digestive system so now, she can produce multiple fluids according to my needs. My knock-out potion, my aphrodisiac recipe, and a sticky sap to hold ponies in place. I wanted to add more, but I ran out of room for the glands. Hehe! There is one slight setback, though. Now that she makes all these things, she needs to eat foreign plants which are normally toxic to ponies to produce them. Shouldn't be a problem, though. I can just alter it further until she can eat them safely!

Twilight was not at all happy with the note's contents. It said Fluttershy had her digestive system altered, and that stained glass window of Fluttershy was probably a testament to that. And whoever wrote it wrote like they were happy about it. She didn't like the idea of somepony altering her friends' bodies... She put the note down and picked up another one.

This one was the same thing, except with Rainbow Dash. And the one after that, Rarity, and the one after was on Pinkie.

On Rainbow Dash
For Rainbow Dash, I decided to go the route of metal replacements. Metal blades sticking out of her body at various points, perfect for pricking and poking. She tries to tell me it isn't her thing, but I've seen how tightly she squeezes those cuffs on her ankles. She likes it. I've made plans to replace her wings, since the wings are one of her most movable parts of her body.

On Rarity
I'm trying to experiment with what to do in the bedroom. I think Rarity would appreciate the finer details of bondage. Fluttershy and Pinkie wouldn't get it. It's more then just "strapping somepony up and then making love" with them. It's about power. It's about control. I've got her covered from horn-to-hoof in straps, and every time she twists her body the wrong way- or the right way, she'll feel it pull on her, ah-hah... sensitive areas.

On Pinkie Pie
Pinkie's so enthusiastic, it's hard to decide something for her. I've decided to keep it simple...for now, at least. I've dulled her nervous system to so that things that would cause pain will instead bring pleasure. You know what? I don't like limits, so I think I'll do the same for Applejack. And everypony else, so I don't, say, confuse my little lovers while in the throes of passion and accidentally stab Fluttershy thinking she has Pinkie's enhancements.

Twilight held the last note in her hoof, eye twitching from the sheer audacity of it, talking about being the 'throes of passion' and stabbing Fluttershy like it was nothing. She put the note down and went back to the other drawer. The one with the Memorb. The note on it said something that was actually somewhat assuring.

This Memorb is different. Most show you one memory from the perspective of the pony who experienced it, but this one is enchanted differently. It will show you multiple memories from a third-person view. It should explain... everything.

Twilight was rather re-assured by the note's emphasis on 'everything'.

"So...y'all gonna go through that Memorb there?"

"Of course! Why wouldn't I? It's going to tell me what happened isn't it?"

She closed her eyes and activated her horn, touching it's tip to the Memorb.

Applejack looked on at as Twilight was held into the Memorb's trances.

"Why not?...Because y'all might not like what ya see..."

Twilight felt like she was falling into water. It looked like she was falling through a starry sky. Eventually, she landed on what she presumed was a wagon's passenger room.

She saw herself and Princess Celestia sitting opposite each other, The Shadow's Orb curled in Celestia's hoof like a protective mother.

"...Princess?" Her past self said.

"Yes?" The Princess answered.

"Why did you use that spell on that stallion?"

Celestia looked away from the orb. "What do you mean?"

"There are lots that can incapacitate somepony without hurting them like that...why didn't you use one of them?"

Her proud mentor looked embarrassed. "It...it's this orb. Something about it draws me to it. By the I realized you were under attack, I could barely think straight."

Twilight opened her mouth, before remembering she was in a memory.

"Maybe we should get rid of it?" Herself suggested.

"Yes...maybe we should..."

Herself began trying to remove the orb. Against the Princess' resistance, she succeeded and tossed it out the window. Celestia flashed a proud smile that made Twilight feel good, even this had to have happened in the past.

"Um, Princess? When you used that spell... some of the blood got into my mouth."

"Oh my. I'm so sorry."

"I forgive you! But I...it tasted good."

Twilight put her hoof over her mouth. Blood had tasted good to her!? That's ridiculous. That-that's insane!

Before she could shake her hoof at her past self, she fell through water and stars again, this time landing in her library. She was studying a book, and Shining Armor was there.

"Ha!" Shining laughed about something said prior to the moment Twilight had been returned to. "Well, anyways, Twiley, the real reason I came over was that the Princess had a BIG, IMPORTANT task for you." Twilight became suspicious of her brother's emphasis on those words.

"Ooh! What is it!?" Her past self jumped and down in excitement about the opportunity to make the Princess proud. "What, What?"

"She needs you to study this...thing from you got from your expedition in Brennenburg." Shining answered.

"Thing?" Herself asked uncertainly. She shifted her gaze.

"Hey." Shining called at her obvious discomfort. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Herself lied. "It's just that this 'thing' better not be what I think is..."

Present Twilight fell again...

This time, she was with Shining Armor, walking through the hallway of the Canterlot palace. She looked like she would rather be anywhere but here.

"Come on, Twiley. Don't you want to know what the BIG IMPORTANT task the Princess has for you is?"

Herself shuddered. "I'm sorry, Shining. I just really don't want to know what's in that. I can feel evil radiating from the other side."

"That's ridiculous! Come on!" He shoved the door opened gestured for his sister to enter. Herself did so reluctantly. There was The Shadow's Orb, held in a gold sculpture of a claw. Herself went up, touched her hooves to it, then withdrew from it and bolted out of the room.

"Shining, I'm sorry. But I can't do this for the Princess! That orb is evil, and their further away it is from me, the better!"

Shining objected, reaching a hoof. "But Twiley! You're the only who-"

"I DON'T CARE!"

Twilight's jaw dropped, unable to grasp how she could reject her brother so rudely. She understood that she was upset, but Shining had never been like that to her...well, he had once, but he wasn't exactly in his right mind that time.

Twilight saw herself stand at the edge of the hallway, looking at the door to The Orb's room. Somehow, she knew that herself was planning on stealing it.

She heard a distorted whisper that...actually somewhat sounded like her voice, but it was, like, playing over itself, if that makes sense. It was probably what was going through her mind at the time of the memory.

"I can't believe this...I care about The Princess enough to get rid of that orb, and she goes behind my back back to Brennenburg and digs it out of the mud."

Twilight was shocked- again- by her language, and her harsh words, but she was more accepting of these ones. She had thrown that orb because she cared, and for The Princess to go out and retrieve it was a betrayal of their bond.

Twilight fell again...

She was right back in the same place she was, in Canterlot's castle. She saw herself wearing a coat much too big for her, walking quietly though the castle like she wanted nopony to know she was there. Herself went into the room with The Orb. and Twilight poked her head in the door to see herself trying to stuff The Orb into the coat. That explained why she was wearing such a large coat, then.

Herself turned around and galloped out the room and over the corridor. To her own (forgetting nothing here could affect her physically) and her past self's horror, Celestia's huge, terrible shadow rose from the corner of the room. Herself went even faster just from the sight, and that was before the Princess spoke.

"Twilight Sparkle! I know it's you! Return that orb to me at once!"

Present Twilight fell down...

This time, she saw herself standing The Orb on it's pedestal like in the basement where she found it in the present day.

The world shifted again, and she saw herself arched on of her many tables in the library with a pile of letters and tears in her eyes, Spike belching flames out time after. Herself whimpered sadly.

"Wow." Spike remarked, reading the letter he had just belched up. "Why is the Princess sending you such mean letters?"

Twilight's head dropped to the table, still crying. "There's this Orb, Spike...I need to keep it away from her, and she's just trying to bully me into giving it back."

"Why can't you give it to her?"

"I-I just can't."

Spike scratched his head.

"And...I know she's just under the orb's influence, but these letters..." Herself picked up a letter up. "They still hurt."

Twilight walked over to her past self and read over her own shoulder. Regardless of what kind of mess she was in, reading over her shoulder was an interesting experience.

The letters were terrible. They were really designed to hit Twilight where it hurt. In her academic record, in her mishaps, saying the Princess was ashamed to have a terrible student like her...

"I...I need some help with this." Herself said, stepping away from the table.

The world shifted again...

Still in the library, herself was holding a letter in hoof, still crying over its content.

"Now, darling." Rarity said, patting her back to comfort her. "You've told us the Princess is clearly obsessed with this Orb. You can't let them get to you."

"I know, but...it's everything I've ever been afraid of." Herself answered. She let go of the letter, and it floated through the air as it fell down.

"...Rarity?" Twilight questioned. "Would you...come down to the basement and help me with some...stress relief?"

"Stress relief?" Rarity responded. "Well, I can understand that you might need some of that, but, what do you mean, darling?"

The world around her shifted again...

This time, she was in the deep basement Applejack had led her to. Instead of Shining Armor on the operating table, Fluttershy was there. Herself was arranging surgical tools and pads.

"This...this is some really weird 'stress relief', Twilight. Um, if you don't mind my saying." Fluttershy squeaked out.

"Oh, I know, Fluttershy." Herself spoke in an eerie tone, loading a syringe with a clear fluid. "But it'll all be okay."

"Uh..." Fluttershy whimpered as Twilight's past self approached with a needle in hoof. "That needle looks awfully sharp..."

"Yes it is."

Present Twilight was horrified as her past self stabbed the syringe into Fluttershy without hesitance, fear, or remorse. Fluttershy let out a pleasured squeal, her eyes rolling into the back of her head, before falling unconscious.

Past Twilight rubbed Fluttershy's Cutie Mark tentatively. "You like my pleasure tranq, Fluttershy? Of course you do...otherwise, you wouldn't be sleeping so soundly right now. Now, let's get to work..."

Past Twilight raised a scalpel, and began cutting into Fluttershy, making incisions around her stomach until it was barely attached. Giggling madly, Past Twilight lifted the skin of Fluttershy's stomach up like a lid on a trash can. "Let's see what I can do with this..."

Her eye twitching, Present Twilight was so mortified she didn't even notice the Memorb take her to another memory.

This one was a little different. This one didn't have her in it at all. It had Shining Armor, stepping into a discussion where the Princess waiting.

"You wanted to see me, Princess?" Shining asked.

"Yes..." Celestia answered.

Shining stepped into the room, and stopped at the sight of the Princess' company. "Princess! There are Changelings in the room!"

"There is no need to point out the obvious, Captain." Celestia told him bitterly in a very -un-Celestia-like fashion. "These Changelings are mercenaries with no loyalty to their Queen. They obey only the highest bidder."

"Okay." Shining said. "...Why are they here?"

"You are going to take your men and them on a raid."

"Oh my." Shining murmured. "Where are we raiding that's so dangerous it warrants Changeling mercenaries?"

Celestia raised her swan neck and glared. "Twilight's library."

Shining sputtered at the idea of raiding his sister's library. "WHAT!? Princess, I can't do that to Twiley!"

Celestia stomped her hoof. "Shining Armor, your sister has stolen something from me and refuses to return it."

Shining didn't notice, but Celestia's exposed eye flashed the dark red of The Shadow's residue.

"I WANT THAT ORB! Now,...go forth, and obtain it, through force if necessary."

Twilight saw everything around her flash, and she got the feeling she was nearing the end of the trip through the Memorb.

It was back in her library. The lighting was dim, and Shining Armor was in his full armor, pink chestguard and all. He was breathing heavily and looking everywhere, like anything could pop out from anywhere at any moment. He heard a pained scream and put his hooves on his head. Twilight recognized the look in his eyes as the one he used when he failed his Guardsmen...his soldiers...his friends.

"Shining?"

"Twiley!"

Shining Armor ran up to embrace his little sister, but Present Twilight, observing the memory from the future, couldn't shake the feeling something was off about her past self...

"Oh, Twiley, it's horrible!" Shining whined into his sister's breast. "First, The Princess sends me to raid your library with a bunch of Changelings-for-hire, then, when we get here, your friends...they've all been mutilated, Twilight! They attacked the Changelings and my Guards, and...and I just don't know what to do!"

"Shush now." Past Twilight told her, stroking his mane. "It'll be okay."

Then, Past Twilight did something that utterly shocked her future self. Cutting into Fluttershy's stomach was nothing compared to this.

Her past self raised a syringe and stabbed her brother with in the chest- her crying, distraught, panicked brother. Shinining instantly went taut and started sliding down off her to the floor, looking at up at her with a "How could you?" look.

"It'll all be okay." Her past self assured him as his eyes closed.

And the worst part of it was...

She sounded completely sincere about it.

Twilight was dropped into another memory before she was ready to move on, and she saw herself, Fluttershy in her dress and floral manecut, and Shining Armor in the operating table like she had found him in the present.

"Hand me that syringe." Her past self instructed Fluttershy.

"Yes, Mistress." Fluttershy obediently picked up the syringe and handed it over to herself. Past-her pointed the syringe at Shining Armor's body, raised up to stab the liquid drug into him...

...Any time now.

Her past self's hoof shook.

"Mistress?" Flutttershy questioned. "Why aren't you operating?"

Her past self threw the syringe away and twirled around, grabbing Fluttershy's neck and shaking her.

"Fluttershy, what's wrong with me!? What happened to me!? I used to be a good pony! I used to be nice! Now..." Her past self broke down crying- and her present self could tell that probably wasn't the only she was breaking down right now. "Now, I'm willing to torture and experiment on my own brother..."

"There, there. It's all right." Fluttershy soothed her.

Past Twilight shook her head. "No. No, it's not." She looked at Fluttershy and put her hooves on Fluttershy's face. "Fluttershy, what did I do to you?...To everypony?"

"Well, um..."

Now, Twilight was brought to Zecora's hut, with her past self in a traveling cloak, Zecora, and Spike there.

"So, can you do it?" Twilight answered. "Can you take care of Spike? Can you keep him safe...from me?"

Zecora nodded. "I will do as you ask, but may I inquire why you need an undertaking of this momentous task?"

"I...I've become unstable, recently, and I can't guarantee Spike's safety." Her past self answered, looking at Spike with Spike looking back.

"I don't like this..." Spike said. "But I understand why you're doing it." Spike hugged her. "I'll miss you, Twilight."

Twilight hugged him back, and a tear escaped from her eye. "I'll miss you, too." She let him go and pushed him towards Zecora, who also hugged him. He need as many as he could get right now.

"Now." Twilight pulled out a tattered paper. "These are the ingredients for the Amnesia Drink. Can you get me all the ones I can't get in Ponyville?"

Zecora eyed the paper and nodded. "I can get you the ingredients for this, but it occurs to me your potion recipe has an incomplete list."

"I know." Twilight answered. "And yes, I know it's dangerous to make and drink a potion when you don't have all the ingredients, but I can't...cope with that the fact I nearly..." Twilight broke down, Zecora catching her before she hit the floor. "OH, SHINING ARMOR! I'm so sorry..."

Another shift, and this was it... Twilight was sure that this would be the Memorb's last memory to show her.

Her library, in her bedroom, Spike's basket nowhere to be found. She was sitting at her desk, with the vial of glowing light blue liquid in her hoof.

She lifted to her mouth and proceed to drink it, chug it, suck it. Her eyes flashed the light blue of the Amnesia Drink, and she stumbled out of her chair. She wobbled back and forth, before stumbling towards her bed. She reached for the mattress, and crawled under the covers, and only after she had safely closed her eyes, did she let go of the vial, where it rolled under her sheet and dripped onto her bed...

Twilight was returned to the present, a clear image of everything in now clear in her mind...

She had gone to Brennenburg with the Princess and got rid of The Orb, but Celestia went back and got The Orb anyways. She stole The Orb from the Princess, and then Celestia tried to get her to give it back by telling her all the things she dreaded hearing... so she went to her friends for relief from the stress of keeping The Orb away, which involved drugs of her own making, experiments on their body, and sex that was anywhere from 'good' to 'fantastic'. Then Celestia sent Shining and the mercenaries after her, and when she and her friends beat them all down and tied them all up, she couldn't cope with having done that to her brother.

That explains why that Changeling was so insistent that the Princess would hear about their murdering her...

That explains why the note's hoofwriting was similar to hers. Because it was hers, except she had developed some sort of...alter ego, so she wrote just a little bit differently.

The door fell down, Fluttershy, Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie having found some other where to break through. They rushed down the staircase towards Twilight.

"Oh, Twilight!" Rarity cried. She noticed the freed Shining Armor. "Oh, um..Twilight, we can explain! Uh...the, uh, Changeling Queen came back and brainwashed Shining Armor and-"

"No, no!" Pinkie objected. "It was Discord!"

"Stop." Twilight held out her hoof. "Stop. Stop, all of you. I know what happened."

Everypony closed their eyes and hung their heads.

"How..." Twilight questioned, turning to Rarity. "How could you let me do that?"

"Do what?"

"You know! The...the experimentation, the drugs..."

"Well..." Rarity said quietly. "You obviously need some stress relief, and we figured everything we eventually work itself out between you and the Princess, so we didn't complain. We thought you would stop."

"And..." Fluttershy added. "By the time you we realized you weren't going to stop..."

"We didn't want y'all to." Applejack finished.

"We started calling you "Mistress", since, for all intents and purposes...you were our Mistress." Rarity explained. "Having intercourse...making love. It...it wasn't a big deal anymore. It was just what we did. Although, I'm still bitter you never gave me anything more than a B..."

"What?" Twilight snapped.

"On our performance...? In bed?"

"...I gave you grades, on your performance in bed, like little schoofillies!?"

"Eeeyup." Applejack confirmed. "A, B, C, D, and F."

"You always gave me an A plus." Fluttershy boasted, blushing slightly.

"A." Applejack answered.

"A here." Rainbow added.

"I got an A, too!" Pinkie exclaimed.

Rarity scoffed. "Wha-I'm the only one Twilight never gave anything more than a B to!?"

"Rarity, Ah think we have more important thangs to deal wit'." Applejack forcefully insisted. "Anyways, you left yerself a bunch of Memorbs and notes throughout the library, so after you took the Amnesia, you could find them all and fix things...but we didn't want y'all to fix things, so we burnt every note and smashed every orb we could find."

That would explain the note near Rarity...it was part of a set that her friends had destroyed, because they had been afraid of her not going back to the way they wanted her to be...

Twilight just realized something she really didn't want to know. At some point between her theft of The Orb and the raid, she had to have made one of her friends intercourse with one another while one or both was under the influence of aphrodisiac.

"So, wut do y'all wanna do now, Twi?"

Twilight looked between her friends, between Rarity and Shining Armor.

"Shining?"

"I...I just want out of this hell-hole." Shining answered. "Pardon my French..."

"Okay." Twilight closed her eyes. "Where's that paper? The Brennenburg Explosive Compound?"

So, eventually, everypony came to a truce to any potential problems between Shining Armor and the rest of Twilight's friends. Once Twilight had made the explosive compound, they would blast the door, and once they could re-connect with the outside world, then they would figure out what to do about any remaining Guards or Changelings in the library.

In the foyer, Twilight bade Shining Armor to follow as she carried the container of Compound towards the door. For some reason, she wanted her friends to stay back.

"I'm really glad you came to your senses, Twiley." Shining said.

"Yeah...I am, too." Twilight told him.

The two siblings sat down on their haunches, and Twilight placed the Compound down and activated it.

"I can't wait to let Cadence know I'm all right."

"Yes..."

"And, since The Shadow-" Twilight grunted. "Sorry, The Guardian, took his Orb back, that should mean the Princess is better, right?"

"Hopefully..." Twilight muttered.

"You know, I took my journal here with me...I found it while we walking, but it's missing a page on how worried I was when you went to Brennenburg."

Her friends, staying in the back of the room, had been silent until now, but now they noticed a rather distressing thing.

"Uh, Twilight?" Applejack spoke up. "Y'all realize yer supposed to step away from the Explosive Compound, right?"

Twilight and Shining looked at her, Shining's expression worried, Twilight's emotionless.

"Yes...I know."

Everypony gasped.

The blinding flash and deafening boom left Twilight's friend unable to make out anything, and when they could hear and see again, they saw smoke lazily floating all around what used to be the door.

When the smoke cleared, Shining and Twilight were still there, alive, but covered in scorches. The library's main entrance had also been utterly obliterated. Shining stumbled back and forth, taking one last horrified look at what had become of his little Twiley before dashing out the door, never wanting to return here again.

Everypony else rushed up to Twilight to check for signs of life, as Twilight had been lying down instead of standing up.

"Darling?" Rarity cooed.

Twilight slowly opened her eyes with a groan. "...I'm alive. I survived that...I wasn't...supposed to survive that. I was supposed to...go to the Elysian Fields with Shining Armor. We were supposed to die. We-well, him, I'm not sure about myself anymore...but he was supposed to go to Paradise."

Twilight put her hooves together in prayed and looked up at Rarity.

"Rarity, please, please...please. just...tell me it's over."

Rarity looked to Applejack, who nodded. "Go on, Rarity. Tell her."

Rarity smiled sweetly at Twilight, grabbing one of her hooves and patting it. "It's over, darling." Rarity bent down and gave Twilight a sweet, gentle kiss. "Why don't we carry you up to bed?"

"The stairs collapsed." Twilight answered literally.

"Well, I'm sure that shouldn't be any problem if Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash work together."

Rarity was quite right. With the two pegasi working together, they easily carried Twilight over the broken stairs. From there, they carried her into her bed and tuck her in before going back down and bringing everypony else up to bid and kiss her good night.

"Good night, Twilight."

"Good night, Fluttershy."

"Good night, Egg-head."

"Rainbow!" Rarity scolded. "Not a good time!"

"Sorry."

"It's fine. Good night, Rainbow Dash."

"Yes, well...sweet dreams, darling."

"Don't let the beg bugs bite!" Pinkie saluted. "I mean it, don't. Those suckers really hurt. I should know!"

Applejack was the last of them to say it.

"Sleep tight, Twilight." She put her hooves on Twilight's chest. "Ah know it's more than a little early, but ya just went through a lot, and a good nap never hurt nopony."

"Thanks, A.J..." Twilight muttered before rolling around and lifting her covers over herself.

"We'd best leave her be, y'all. Let's get goin'."

The five of them left the room, not really sure what they would do from here, or where they would go. Would they try to reclaim their old lives, or...encourage Twilight to continue her experiment with how much pleasure a pony body could receive?

"Well, there being no objection, I say we go back to our rooms and catch some sleep of our own." Rarity said.

Everypony muttered agreement. Fluttershy and Rainbow began ferrying them down the stairs, but when they went to pick up Rarity, Applejack heard a clink.

"Something wrong, darling?" Rarity asked.

"Actually, yeah. Ah'm gonna go check on Twilight..."

Applejack opened the door to Twilight's room and gasped.

Twilight was lying upright, still awake. Held in her hooves was the vial of Amnesia Drink she that was leaking on her bed when she woke up.

And there was still a little left in it.

Applejack re-actively reached her hooves and lunged forward, but it was too late.

"TWILIGHT, NO! DON'T!"

Twilight lifted the vial up to her mouth and proceed to drink and chug and suck up every drop left in there. When the vial had been completely dried out, Twilight's head jerked, her teeth chattering like she had a shot of espresso. She fell backwards onto the bed, the vial rolling away from her hoof onto her bed.

Applejack rushed to the bed and put her hooves on her. "Twilight...why?"

Rarity came into the room. "What's going on in here?"

Applejack looked at her, crying slightly. "There was...there was still some Amnesia Drink left in her vial and she- she took it, Rarity!"

"Oh my." Rarity exclaimed. She went over to the bed, opposite of Applejack. "Well, I suppose we'll just have to explain everything to her again when she wakes up. Hopefully, it'll turn out better without Shining Armor here..."

"Yeah..." Applejack agreed, looking down at their mistress. "Can y'all promise me one thing, though, Rarity?"

"What's that, darling?"

"That we'll be honest."

Rarity was genuinely unsure of what to say, but then she looked at Applejack's eye.

"To honesty." Rarity said, extending her hoof for Applejack.

"To honesty."

"Thanks...girls."

Applejack and Rarity were surprised, and they looked back at Twilight, who they thought was sleeping.

"You're all..." Twilight rolled over. "Wonderful...friends."

"Mmm." Rarity and Applejack smiled. They both leaned over and nuzzled Twilight's cheeks before going to the door, giving one last glance towards her.

"We should git to bed." Applejack encouraged.

"Quite right."

They turned to leave, hoping to get a good's night rest.

After all, they had a big day tomorrow of sex, torture and ungodly bodily experimentation to do.

Together.

As friends.