My Little Amnesia: Ignorance Is Bliss

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...