The Rift appeared in Ghastly Gorge sometime around its sixty-third millionth birthday, give or take a few centuries. Since most ponies just tilt their heads at that until the math falls out of their ears, I usually say I was one year old when it happened. I dunno what happened to the days when ponies respected time on a geological scale, but I’m guessing I missed them by an eon or two.
I won’t lie. It was super spooky at first—the Rift, silly! I’m talking about the Rift. Yeah, math can get spooky too, especially when it shows up in Papa’s ledgers every April. But the Rift is in a spooky class of its own. Imagine a jagged, glowing scar, stinking of ozone, big enough for two full-grown dragons to pass through side by side (though they said they didn’t make it), and you’ll start to get the idea.
It didn’t take long for some Royal Guards to come out and take a look at it. Once they knew they weren’t going to go blind after touching it or gain weird cravings for eggplant souffle, they decided to send some ponies in to investigate. That’s when things got real scary. To us, they came back out looking perfectly normal only a few seconds later, but they collapsed as if they’d been gone for years—decades, even, which is exactly what they told us had happened. I heard they were given nice pensions and relocated to the countryside, but any foal born without a lemon in their mouth could tell you those ponies could’ve used a regulation A-7 “Welcome Home!” party, too. The Pan Equestrian Defense Corps really should have hired me on sooner than they did, and just because they didn’t exist back then doesn’t give them a good excuse for why they didn’t.
Princess Celestia authorized an order to seal the Rift up, but whatever dome or containment they tried building over it crumbled into it like so much old marzipan within days. They finally settled for posting sentries around it after ponies started using it as their garbage disposal. Turns out the Rift made these really cool light shows depending on what you threw in there, but that came to a halt after some smarty-Marty got curious with jawbreakers, fish sauce, and ten pairs of hosiery.
For the next two years, the Gorge stayed Gorge-y and the Rift stayed Rift-y, and Papa’s ledgers kept filling with math. Most ponies figured nothing would come of the Rift at all, and soon forgot about it like a month-old party favor.
What we forgot afterward was what rifts were in the first place. If you rip a hole in your jacket, the snow’s gonna come through and give you the chilly billies.
Two years passed before Stranger broke through the Rift, and boy was he a tough snowflake.
***
Did you know my mane’s not this curly on its own? I know, I was surprised to learn that, too. I’m really jealous of other ponies who get bed mane, since I get whatever the inverse of it is pretty bad. It flows over my shoulders in floppy ribbons and shines like one of Rarity’s mirrors from the moment I wake up, and it takes fifteen minutes of brushing, blow-drying, and power tools before I can get to that cotton-candy-y appearance everypony loves so much. I don’t mind the occasional stranger taking a taste, but so far I’ve yet to find somepony who enjoys the flavor of hair.
Still, though: pink coat, pinker mane, eyes the color of copper sulfate pentahydrate, and three balloonies on each patootie. Ponies look at me and see happiness, and that’s exactly what I want to give ‘em. I also help out cows, griffons, diamond dogs, minotaurs—any reasonably-sized, non-meaniepants-dragon types around here, really. Extensive personal research has shown they possess the ability to feel joy just like ponies do, and there’s nothing that nudges positive feelings toward the surface more than warm muffins and hot coffee. So I’ll bake up a storm, slip on my dog tags, and go out there every morning with a Sugarcube Corner breakfast cart in tow, trading bit chits for light bites, quick sips, and a little gabble.
Outside, you can see what Ponyville used to be in every street corner and avenue, every fountain without a statue and every bench draped with somepony shifting beneath a bunch of old newspapers. The thatch-roof houses have metal patches, and the bridges with their curlicues and little hearts haven’t seen new paint in almost ten years. Flowers no longer grow just in neat, manicured beds but anywhere they can set down roots, and hawkers sell street food from carts pieced together from scrap and fragments of kaiju bone. Herald was the only one to attack Ponyville, but the scars it left behind after we called in the dragons were large enough to make new roads out of even if they passed through somepony’s home.
I’m walking through what used to be a parlor in a two-story home when I see my first customers of the day. “Morning, Grizelda! Morning, Gilda!” Of all the people to run into first thing in the morning! “That defense of Sydneigh yesterday was textbook crazy!”
Grizelda waves me off. “Thanks, Pinkie. Just doin’ our job, that’s it.”
“Our job, Sis, is takin’ down kaiju.” Gilda, on the other hoof, looks so grumpy that I expect a tiny thunderhead to appear over her head any moment now. “Nags in blue totally stole our KO.”
Grizelda and Gilda are North Eyrie griffon twins—lions in the rear and eagles up front, with purple-tipped feathers and fringes and intense yellow eyes. Even when they’re apart, however, it’s pretty easy to tell them from one another: Grizelda comes to my parties and Gilda finds a corner to sulk in.
“Our job is savin’ the world.” Grizelda’s told her sister that so many times that she forgets to be bored or exasperated, which is a really funny word somepony came up with when you’re at your wit’s end with something. “And there aren’t any pilots out there better for the job than us two. Could I get a seitan scramble, Pinks?”
“Coming right up!” I dive into my cart. There’s nothing that gets my nose tickly like the smell of burned, simulated muscle tissue. “Hey, Gilda, you want one too?”
“I’ll bag something in the Everfree.” Gilda huffs and turns to her sister. “I swear, Griz, you’re gonna wake up a lame little pony princess one of these days, the rate you keep eatin’ their food.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Grizelda laughs, tossing me a chit. “Our food’s horrible.”
I wouldn’t say I dislike anyone in the PEDC, but Gilda is kind of a, well, butt. I hope she doesn’t discover the “Hug Me!” sticker I put on her back for a very long time. She leaves with her sister and doesn’t bother waving back.
No sooner do the griffons turn out of sight do I hear another voice off to the side. “Per-imeter secure, Captain. We are clear to proceed.”
I could pick that nasal tenor out of a choir of slightly less nasal tenors and a cowpony. Soarin and Spitfire emerge from a side street in their flight jackets and approach my cart. Soarin’s this tall, gangly blue pegasus who looks like he could use another hour of sleep but never takes it, and Spitfire’s as radiantly gorgeous as her name implies.
“Wonder how long those songbirds’re gonna harp on our KO.” Spitfire’s chuckle is pleasantly husky and gets me to join in. “Honestly? That monster would’ve seen us diving if they hadn’t distracted it so well.”
I dig into my cart for their usual orders: a pineapple muffin for Spitfire and—what else?—a slice of apple pie for Soarin. He’d take the whole thing were it not for Spitfire looking out for his weight, but a pegasus like him’s going to have a voracious metabolism.
“The four of you really do make a good team!” I tell them. “I heard all of you even hit four sig-nines in the Harbour.”
“What can we say?” Soarin loops a leg over his CO’s withers, who gives him a lopsided grin in return. “I hope there won’t be a next time, of course, but I’m sure your friends’ll get to four the next time they deploy. I’m sure you could get there easy, too!”
The look Spitfire skewers him with is audible. It still isn’t enough to keep my ears from folding just a teeny bit, but I’ll forgive him. The last thing I’d want to do any day is deal with a Spitfire stare.
“Thanks for stopping by,” I tell them, taking their payment.
“It’s a pleasure as always, Pinkie Pie.” Spitfire begins leading Soarin away while he turns his focus on pie paradise. “Be sure to say hi to Rainbow Dash for me!”
And that’s that. Spot, Fido, and Rover tell me they just finished a thirty-hour welding job and are heading back for bones and beds. I come across Big Macintosh on his morning deliveries—Sugarcube Corner is always his first stop, he assures me. And I manage to catch Gustave in the street and let him know that his cantine work’s really helped the mood around here, but he really shouldn’t substitute meat for the seitan.
The only soul I meet and don’t exchange words with doesn’t need mine. She has a dark gray coat and an even darker, straight-cut mane, and you’d never guess from the gentle lid of her eyes and her quiet steps that she’s heading for CENTCOM. We find each other on the street and hug each other, one sister to another, and I let Inkie go on her way.
My supplies are just about out by then, and I turn onto the final street to Sugarcube Corner when I see them for the first time.
One’s a purple unicorn with stripes in her dark blue mane, and the other’s a... huh. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was a dragon. But he doesn’t have wings, and he’s a lot more fun-sized than your average dragon. He’s also a smidge on the chubular side, but I think it makes him look cuddly. That’s not the air he’s giving off right now, though. I don’t know what’s going on with his friend, but he’s talking to her and waving his arms around like a lot.
“Come on, Twilight!” he whines as I draw closer. “You’ve run into how many ponies today and you still won’t ask them for directions?”
“For the last time, Spike, we have maps!” The unicorn called Twilight snaps back. She whips one out of her saddlebag and unfolds it layer by layer. Gee, I’ve met trolls with bedsheets smaller than that. She flattens the map out with a snap like thunder and begins to walk away.
“Um, excuse me?” I call after her. “Do you need help?”
The back of Twilight’s head dips ever so slightly, but she keeps on walking. It takes Spike clamping onto her foreleg to stop her as he points in my direction. “We’ve got company,” he tells her.
I trot a little faster after Twilight. With the Welcome Wagon back at Sugarcube Corner, I already know I’m going to have to go super over the top with this one to make up for the missing cake and confetti. Maybe I could help her with directions after all. When I’m sure she’s not looking, I pop up behind the map and fold it back up for her, a quick task for anypony who’s worked with puff pastry more than twice in their lives.
“Hi there!” I say, beaming as I press the map against her chest. “I’m Pinkie Pie, and it’s really great to meet you! Ponyville can be a bit of a big place for first-timers, but I know everybody here, so we can get you going to your destination in no time!”
Ponies don’t always say “thank you” when I do something nice for them, and that’s fine—they can be Grumpelstiltskins all they want if that’s what makes them happy. This Twilight, though: If they had known about this glare of hers beforehoof, the Royal Engineering Corps could have dug the Canterlot-Ponyville Express tunnel five years ahead of their four-year schedule.
What I’m trying to say here is: wow, she’s mad.
Just as her mouth opens to speak, however, she snaps it shut. Then her pupils contract. Her brow furrows, and she leans in closer as if I had a little muffin left on my muzzle from this morning. Oh, shoot, I do. I flick it off, but she still keeps staring at me as if I was the muffin this whole time.
With a sudden cry—something like “Wraglp!”—her horn flares to life with one magenta aura, and another hauls Spike off his feet and onto her back. The moment his rump touches down, she’s off like a shot between the buildings.
That’s funny. I’m usually the one with the wild exits in the stage directions. Frowning upon this new development in the universe, I look down and see she left her map lying on the road. Into my tail it goes until I can give it back to her later.
I’m sure we will meet again, this Twilight and me. How can I say I know everybody in Ponyville now if I don’t know who those two are? This is my professional pride on the line!
Minutes later, I park the breakfast cart in a shed next to Sugarcube Corner, and it’s not long before I find who I’m looking for inside. Well, I’m still looking for Twilight, but the four mares in the corner booth are waiting for me to join them and it’d be rude of me to turn them down. On most mornings they trade jokes and arguments, but the way they’re hunched together today makes me wonder as I slide into my seat.
“Howdy, Pinkie.” Applejack speaks for the rest of the gang and smiles. As far as leaders go for us, Lil’ Miss Hard Country there’s our touchstone, and I know a good touchstone when I see one. It’s the hat. Definitely the hat.
“How were morning rounds?” Drawing a lock of her gorgeous purple mane over her shoulder, Rarity takes a sip of her cappuccino and dabs her muzzle with a napkin.
“Awful!” I cry.
Utensils clatter on plates. We are far from the only group dining in Sugarcube Corner this morning, but now we’re the only one talking. On cue, Mrs. Cake swings by with a cinnamon bun the size of my head and leaves without a word.
Fluttershy gulps and fiddles with her dog tags. “What happened?”
“Oh, you know, the same old, same old. Mom met Dad, Mom decided his rock farm had a little more corundum than the others, and then things crystallized between them—”
“She means what happened this morning.” Rainbow Dash puts a hoof to her mane, one as colorful as her name would suggest.
“Ohh.” I tell them.
Rainbow smacks the table a little hard, considering it hadn’t done anything to her at all. “I think I ran into her earlier!” she exclaims. “I felt kinda bad for knocking her into the mud, but she totally blew me off when I tried to help her out.”
“I remember her too,” Rarity says. “I was gardening outside the Boutique earlier when she storms past all disheveled. Thank goodness I’m a quick shot with a hose and brush.” She looks up and pretends to blow smoke from the tip of her horn.
“And I saw her on my way into town,” Fluttershy adds. “Well, I more got in her way. She bolted off before I could, which is kind of impressive when I think back on it.”
Applejack taps her chin and makes a thoughtful noise.
“You’ve seen her too, then,” I say. It’s not a question. These are: what are the chances that the five of us, all in different areas of town, saw this same mare within the space of an hour or two? What was she up to? And what does she like eating for breakfast—she’s got to have an appetite after walking around that much.
“Did she mention anythin’ ‘bout a message to y’all?” Seeing a bunch of “no”s on our faces, Applejack continues. “Tried my best to be friendly with her when I saw her chariot land outside the eastern orchards, but she just said somethin’ like needin’ to meet with Marshal Mare.”
“She said nothing of the sort to me,” Rarity says. “Couldn’t she have sent a telegram?”
Fluttershy twirls a lock of her pink mane. “Maybe she just wanted to be sure the Marshal got the message in person?”
“I’m not convinced she knows how we do things out on this farm.” Applejack swirls her cocoa mug as if it contained something more intoxicating. “She can’t just up and expect to meet with the Shatterdome’s ranking officer on the spot ‘less she’s got some kinda royal appointment.”
“What do we do?” Fluttershy asks her.
Applejack’s about to answer her when we hear the bells. Descending tritones roll in from the towers stationed along the edge of Ponyville, and we all have a silent moment of thanks. The all-call’s going out for every PEDC hoof and hand to report to the Shatterdome immediately, which anyone would rather hear over the signal indicating a new breach from the Rift.
“We should probably find her before she gets herself into trouble.” At a glance from Rainbow, we all start clearing out of the booth.
“Wait!” I cry. My cinnamon bun’s gone untouched this whole time. What’s a mare to do in a case like this aside from popping it in her mouth all at once? It settles in my stomach with a nice plop, and a few moments later we’re outside the bakery.
The streets weren’t exactly empty before we left Sugarcube Corner, but they really fill in as the five of us make our way toward the nearest elevator. Buffalo, zebras, even a deer or two find places in the throng, while those with wings zip overhead. Their flapping turns the sky into a strobe light for those of us below. This kind of atmosphere all but begs for someone to start a mosh pit, but even I know when to hold my parties.
“Everyone seems unhappy,” Rarity says, gazing about her. Many of those around us are swapping glances and murmuring to each other, asking if anyone knows what’s going on.
“What’s the big deal?” Rainbow has a super huge frown on her face. “Hephaestus went down only yesterday. What are they calling an assembly for?”
I suddenly remember the promise I made earlier. “Oh, Dash! Spitfire told me to say ‘hi’ earlier. ‘Hi!’”
Rainbow nods, but doesn’t make much of it. I guess she really has something on her mind.
“Y’all don’t think this has anythin’ to do with that Twilight figure, do ya? I mean, it must’ve been at least fifteen minutes between when Pinkie ran into her to right now.”
Applejack brings up a solid point. The diamond dog next to me seems to agree, but I have to duck before he clips me while he turns his head. His underbite is amazing—you could literally eat off of it, or use it as a chair. “Who’s Twilight?” he asks in husky Equestrian.
I launch right into it. “Oh, this mare who’s new to Ponyville because I know everybody here, and I didn’t know her then. We’re kind of looking for her. If you see a lavender unicorn with hot streaks in her blue mane, and she’s walking with this adorable little dragon at her side, she’s probably the one we have to thank for all this.”
“I should find this unicorn?”
“If you can!” I nod until I hear that funny rattling noise nodding tends to make if you do it long enough. “She acts like she wants to be left alone, so make extra sure you give her some company and make her feel welcome if you spot her walking around.”
The diamond dog puts his paws together and bows. “I will, Miss Pinkie.” I duck his jaw of justice once more as he shoulders ahead in the crowd, his head craned above the rest. “Where are you, Twilight? Come now to Tablejaw, yes?”
The others just blink at me, but I know better than to have doubts over a diamond dog’s ability to find anything you ask them for.
The ride into the Shatterdome is loud and shaky, almost as if the cage with us and a hundred others isn’t so much descending as it is breaking its fall against the walls of the shaft. Applejack and Rarity just stand in place and don’t seem to notice, while Rainbow tries her luck hovering above everypony else. I stand next to Fluttershy for support until we crash to a halt some two hundred meters below the earth.
The elevator spills us into a soaring, painted metal hall with buttresses the size of redwood trees braced along the walls. The space echoes with the clomp of hooves and talons on the floor and thousands of conversations cascading off of one another. Moreover, the air is warm and humid like the inside of a croissant, and I spot several ponies taking out hooferchiefs as we all filter toward the assembly hall. The girls and I are soon able to split off from the main rush, though, as the identity spells imprinted on our dog tags let us into a side elevator that’ll take us right onto the stage.
And what a stage it is! It’s large enough to host a game of hoofball and has two sets of heavy double doors a hundred meters in height in the back. Large crimson banners bearing the crossed-wing insignia of the Pan Equestrian Defense Corps hang in pairs on either side of the pony-sized podium at the front. Not a single piece of litter blows across the stage, even as PEDC personnel file in from the very back of the hall, a full quarter mile off.
For a while, it’s just the five of us up there, standing a little ways off from the podium. Spitfire and Soarin join us a little later and take a spot next to Rainbow Dash, and Grizelda and Gilda come stand next to me. Then all the technicians and handlers from CENTCOM arrive, too, and I give Inkie a little wave. She doesn’t enjoy being up on stage much. Neither do I, but only because bursting into song and dance is looked down upon here. Doesn’t stop me from flipping through my mental playlist for that one song both minotaurs and pegasi can sing with equal comfort, though.
I get so caught up rifling through my collection that I almost fail to notice the whole assembly hall go silent. Hoofsteps ring out on the stage to my left that echo off the high ceiling. Approaching the podium is an older mare with a wavy gray mane and a coat as earthy as her tribe, and eyes the color of the ocean gaze out from behind gold-rimmed spectacles. She walks with poise in a jacket so starched that I could have baked it myself. No medals or ribbons adorn her lapel, no bands of rank circle her epaulets. Her only other accessory is her white collar, and the tie she wears that looks like a head of broccoli.
Marshal Mare takes the podium.
“Fillies and gentlecolts.” Her voice possesses a most lovely trill for a mare in administration. “I need not remind you of the heroism our pilots showed yesterday in their defense of Sydneigh.”
A roar erupts from the audience. Gilda is the only one who grits her—say, do griffons even have teeth? She snaps to before I can get a closer look. Meanwhile, Grizelda, Spitfire, and Soarin take a step forward and offer modest, much-deserved bows to everyone in attendance.
“Indeed,” Marshal Mare continues, and the audience settles down. “But we must not forget the hours leading up to the engagement, or any other engagement in the past. Nothing less than consistent training, maintenance, and vigilance gave us the chance to take that monster down one week before the solstice.
“And I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you all to stay in that state of readiness.”
The assembly hall actually cools a little. A swell of murmurs passes through the audience, and I can sense the grimace on Applejack’s face.
Marshal Mare turns impassive. “It seemed we were in the clear before. For the first time in a year, no kaiju emerged from the Rift on the autumnal equinox. The winter solstice was no different. And we wrapped up winter in time for spring this year, and we began to hope.”
Fluttershy shies away by the smallest of margins.
“Hephaestus’ arrival can only mean one thing,” said Marshal Mare, and this time the assembly hall really fell silent. Even she doesn’t like the taste of her next words, but she’s more hesitant to spit them out in front of everybody. “The Summer Sun Celebration must be cancelled.”
I almost tear out of line just as the audience begins voicing protests, but a hoof and a talon cross my chest before I can go anywhere. Grizelda I expected. Rainbow Dash, though? Her eyes are pleading with me, but for what I don’t understand. That ends up not mattering, as my tongue slips away from my brain.
“You’re shutting down the year’s biggest party?”
Hooves fly to my mouth, but mine get there first. Up at the podium, Marshal Mare turns this terrifyingly slow half-circle toward me, and the light bounces off her glasses so I can’t see what’s behind them.
I had to say it. I’m the senior morale officer for the Ponyville Shatterdome. But to call what I just did unwise would be like baking a cake in the sun without a pair of properly-rated oven mitts. It’s possible, but it’s gonna hurt.
“We’ve received reports,” Marshal Mare begins, her voice as thin as a piano wire held against my neck. “The kaiju have learned they’re predictable, and they hoped to catch us off-guard. But we cannot ignore how the most powerful of them emerge during the summer solstice, either.”
“Where are you receiving these reports from?” asks Rarity, who’s just as surprised at speaking out as the rest of us are. I can understand why she did, though—why would Marshal Mare hold back this information from those who could benefit the most from it? If I can ask clients for one days’ notice on any custom cake orders, she could definitely let her pilots know about theirs ahead of time, too.
Really, the only reason she could conceivably neglect to mention cancelling the Summer Sun Celebration was if she only got the news this morning...
“Found her!”
Tablejaw’s triumphant exclamation saws through the air as the eyes of the assembly hall converge on him. Held aloft in his paws is one lavender unicorn, struggling. Her dragon companion hangs from Tablejaw’s jaw, kicking more air than fur.
“What is the meaning of this?” demands Marshal Mare, turning her scary stare on him. She’s totally looking the wrong way, though. If I’m about to face a court-martial, I might as well go there for something fun, so I slink past Grizelda and Rainbow Dash and slide into the podium next to the Marshal.
“Hi, everybody!” I wave out to the audience. I still have it; shouts and cheers of “Pinkie!” race back to me.
“First off, Marshal,” I begin, turning her way, “I’m sorry for interrupting you, but when there’s a newcomer in town then it’s my job to make them feel at home, right?”
Oh, yeah. That look definitely means we’ll be talking later—but she yields the podium. I turn back to my flock. “Everyone? The beautiful mare Tablejaw’s holding against her will is Twilight. She just arrived from Canterlot this morning with a message for the Marshal.”
There’s a moment where everyone goes still. Marshal Mare forgets to stare holes in me, my friends let their jaws hang in the air, and the little guy holding onto Tablejaw’s jaw stops kicking. It’s Twilight, though, who turns her head like an owl to look at me, her eyes as big as any self-respecting night-flying predator’s.
“So, if you have any questions about upcoming kaiju attacks or how she’s enjoying our little corner of Equestria, I’m sure she’d be thrilled to answer them,” I say. “So come on, everybody! How about we welcome Miss Twilight the Ponyville way? Hooray, Twilight!”
I jump up and clap my hooves together like I’ve never clapped before, cheering and whooping, bouncing around—the whole package. It takes me a while to realize that the other noises I’m hearing aren’t coming from other people, but from myself in echoes. Ten thousand pairs of eyes are staring at me as if I’d just turned into Orochi.
It’s Twilight’s reaction I’m most concerned about. I can feel the heat blazing from her face as she turns her mountain driller glare on me for the second time that morning.
She’s mad again. ...Oh! I dip into my tail for a moment and come back out with her map. “Here you go! You dropped this earlier in your attempt to escape me.”
If it was even possible, Twilight’s face turns even redder. Just as I remember she’s probably starving and hasn’t had anything to eat all morning, I notice a storm of magenta magic curling around her horn.
I don’t even have time to duck out of the way.
Never scream “kaiju!” in a crowded place. Never point a horn at another person. Never offer anyone oatmeal in broad daylight unless you’re hollow and feel nothing for their well-being. I’m serious. Chancellor Puddinghead got his name after somepony dropped a bowl of it on his noggin.
Whether Twilight’s aware of the rules we have here in Ponyville or not, she’s got the townspeople talking. Their voices reach me from hushed conversations back on the surface, while black-vested PEDC security patrols comb the streets for the unicorn who, in sight of gods and mares, vanished from the assembly this morning. I’m not sure what they’re expecting to find, given she more or less did that by exploding in Tablejaw’s paws.
“Once again, Pinkie, she didn’t explode.” Rarity’s trots behind me with the rest of the girls as we pass by the town fountain.
“The story sounds better if I say it that way,” I call over my shoulder.
“I can relate to that,” Rainbow Dash says.
“Story?” is all Rarity has to say.
One day, she’ll understand.
Anyway, I had to go over and count Tablejaw’s icky, callused paws with him a few times to prove Twilight hadn’t hurt him when she disappeared. He calmed down after I pointed out he was about to throw his third bystander into the air, though the griffon was less understanding of it all.
The five of us take a left on Stirrup Street toward the north end of town. Once a whole oak tree, and now half an oak tree with its second story whacked off by Herald’s visit, the remnants of the Ponyville Library wait for us at the end of the road. I’ve always liked the dark red paint on its front door, so it’s good that something about the place is still in one piece. The town librarian disappeared during the attack, and no one stepped in to take her place, so the books inside haven’t known the touch of hooves for a very long time.
“Thanks for coming with me, girls,” I tell them on our way over.
“We just wanna make sure you’ll be safe ‘round the new arrival,” says Applejack. “No tellin’ how many handles that pony can fly off of at once.”
“I bet she’s the type of pony who thinks meeting other ponies is scary and stressful,” says Fluttershy. “Maybe if you took all that off first, it won’t frighten her.”
A cymbal drops from my one-mare orchestra. The next time I see Fluttershy, she’s hiding behind a chimney on one of the roofs overlooking the street.
“Maybe Fluttershy’s onto something,” Rarity says, prodding noises out of the bass drum. “A welcome like this would be overwhelming for lots of ponies.”
I sigh. If they want Twilight’s third impression of Ponyville to be boring because I couldn’t play my trumpet and tuba duet, let them have the credit. “Suit yourself,” I say, stashing everything.
Rainbow starts scratching her head. “Where do you even put all that?”
We reach the front door of the library. The sign overhead hangs from one hinge, but it doesn’t fall on any of us as we filter inside—well, as inside a place with eighty percent of its ceiling missing can be. Splintered rafters litter the circular floor where they fell years ago, while a few feral blossoms poke their heads into the air on tiny green stalks.
“You sure she’s here?” Applejack whispers. Even the shelves around the room seem to lean into our conversation.
I’m about to answer her when we hear hoofsteps on the other side of the door across the room. AJ snaps one hoof out to the side and the other to her mouth, just as the hoofsteps stop. Without a word, the five of us creep toward the door.
“You think they’ve stopped looking for you by now?”
Fluttershy clutches her chest, but the husky voice behind the door gets nothing else from the rest of us.
“I hope so,” says another, opening the door. “If I don’t have to talk to another pony in this crazy place ever again, it’ll be too soo—nnaaah!”
“Aaaah!” Fluttershy yells.
“Aaaah!” yells Twilight.
“Aaaah!”
And so on. Twilight stands in the doorway while her mane gets frizzy and everypony screams. I join in ‘cause screaming is fun, but soon everypony’s gone quiet and looking at me.
“What?” I ask.
“You!” A whiff of magic tugs my chin to face Twilight. Her eyes have become two different sizes, and one of them is twitching. I wonder whether she’s about to disappear on all of us again, only her jaw goes slack and her magic fizzles. Her cheeks redden. “You…”
She breaks her gaze from me and looks around at the others, and her lips mouth numbers to herself. Her ears flatten against her head. “You…”
“All right,” snaps Rainbow Dash, walking front and center. She’s not going to headbutt her, is she? Dashie, headbutts are bad!
“What’s your deal?” she demands. “Just who are you, coming into Ponyville and telling us to expect a bunch of kaiju in the coming week? What are you after—whoa!”
That last part comes from Applejack taking Rainbow’s tail in her teeth and hauling backward, hard. “Easy, partner,” she says. “You’re yelling at a filly here.”
Twilight’s on her rump with her hooves asplay, and she gapes up at us. Rainbow’s the shortest one among our group, but she still has Twilight beat by a few good inches or so. As she is now, Twilight barely reaches halfway up the doorframe.
Applejack slips over to her and sits down next to her. “Twilight? How old are you?”
Twilight turns on her, but she doesn’t have the same tunnel-boring stare I got earlier that morning. “Why do you care?”
“She’s seventeen.” Her dragon assistant—Spike. There we go—Spike walks out from behind her and pinches the bridge of his muzzle. “It’d be nice if you all went a little easier on her, though. This is her first time outside of her ivory tower in years.”
“He’s joking,” Twilight cuts in. She sighs and drags a hoof along the floor. “How did you find me?” is all she asks after that.
“Ooh! I can answer that.” I reach into my tail and give her the map she left with me earlier. After she unfolds it into something the size of a cart, I put a hoof on the central northern part of the map, right on top of this vuilding. “You had this place circled like a gazillion times with big letters saying ‘GO HERE’.”
Twilight’s eyes fix on her map. “Oh.”
Wind passes through the leaves overhead.
“Are you looking for something here?” Rarity volunteers. “We could help.”
“Help?” Twilight’s ears perk at that, but she cringes at the same time. Her eyes dart between the five of us. “Help. Yeah.” She takes a deep breath and lets it out slow, though her voice is still a little shaky after that. “Asking five ponies on the PEDC’s active jockey roster to help me find a book that hasn’t been cared for in over ten years. Why didn’t you think of that before, Twilight?”
That tone of voice at the end—! “That’s sarcasm!” I blurt out, bouncing. “Rainbow Dash, didja hear that? I got what sarcasm was for once!”
Rainbow flies up to an empty branch and drapes herself over it without another word.
“What Pinkie means to say,” says Rarity, stepping in front of me, “is that we’d be happy to help, though we should probably note that she’s been relegated. It’s just us four for now.”
Twilight looks around Rarity’s shoulder at me. “You’re not a jockey anymore?”
“I like my new job more.” My answer comes with a balloon I pull out and blow up just for her. It has “You’re Neat!” printed on it.
“Don’t you worry none ‘bout her reading, though. Between the seven of us here, I’m sure we can race through this ol’ oak for whatever you’re lookin’ for.” Applejack helps Twilight to her hooves, and dusts the filly’s flank with her tail in a big sister kind of way. “What’re you looking for, exactly?”
Twilight looks over at Spike, who shooes her on with both hands. She nods at him. “It’s called The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide. They’re something of an old mare’s tale, so the Archives don’t collect much about them and none of my local bookstores have it in stock.”
“The Archives?” Rarity rolls that around on her tongue for a bit.
“No, I said The Elements of Harmo—”
Too late, Twilight. Rarity’s already gone. “The Royal Archives. You’re from Canterlot?”
“That’s right! Twilight’s the student of Princess Celestia herself!” Spike scampers over to her and does a little flourish with his hand as he bows. When he comes back up, his smile is kind of wobbly, as are his knees. “Whoa.”
Rarity doesn’t seem to notice the little guy as her eyes fix on the horizon. “Princess Celestia’s…” She gasps and dips her head toward Twilight, making sure her horn’s pointing well upward. “What are the rest of you doing?” she hisses. “Have some propriety.”
Twilight edges away from Rarity. “I-I-I don’t think that’s necessary at all. I’m just her pupil. I’m not royalty like that jerky Blueblood.”
“You know Prince Blueblood?” Forget stars. Entire galaxies light up in Rarity’s eyes.
Spike raises his hand and opens his mouth, but something stops him before he can say anything. He turns on the spot and stomps back over toward Twilight with smoke seeping from his nostrils.
“Searching!” I say, clapping my hooves together. “We’re searching for a book, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Fluttershy nudges Rarity just enough to bring her back to Equestria. “The question is, where do we start looking?”
My tongue pokes out in thought. “Under ‘E’, maybe?”
Another breeze passes through the leaves.
***
“Huh. That was easy,” Twilight says. The book floating in front of her horn has a gold-embossed unicorn head on a jewel-studded leather cover.
Rainbow Dash locks me in a nuclear noogie. “Yeah, that took like two seconds flat. Quick thinking, Pinkie.”
“Whee!” I wrap my forelegs around Rainbow’s barrel and hurl her across the library. Twilight reaches the other wall about the same time Rainbow does, so she almost drops her book as twenty others fall to the floor with Ms. Go Fast Bird Horse.
“Why do you need this book, anyway?” Rarity asks her. “Seems odd that somepony like you would need to read up on old pony tales.”
Twilight sets The Elements of Harmony on a podium so we can all gather around it. “Nopony really knows what the Elements are,” she tells us, flipping through the pages. “I just wanted a quick refresher course—ah! Here we are!”
Twilight takes the book off the podium and turns around. Oh, goodie! I always know when it’s story circle time. I look around and find enough cushions for all of us that aren’t too dusty or mildewy from neglect as Twilight begins to read aloud.
As all seemed lost, and the two regal sisters lay before the Tyrant’s hoof and claw, six lights descended from the twilight sky.
“Oh, hey. That’s my name.” Twilight’s ears fold as she looks up from her reading. “Eh heh…”
Three lights imbued each sister as the Tyrant gloated, and so it was that the fledgling kingdom of Equestria gained its first and most important means of defense. Desperate, the Tyrant magnified himself until he towered over the trees and hills.
Twilight turns the book out so everypony can see a gold-foiled monster breaking the earth beneath his mismatched hooves. The two ponies flying up to fight him are no bigger than the stars in the background.
Incorruptible and pure, the lights burning within the sisters proved too great for his malice, and he was sealed permanently into stone.
The lights became manifest, and they named themselves to the sisters upon their victory. The elder inherited the Elements of la-dee-dah, ooh! Okay. Mind’s wandering. Rainbow Dash’s eyes are starting to do the same. Maybe we harmonize well. Hey, Dash! Look this way if you can hear my voice in your head!
Oh, you’re scratching your cutie mark. Shoot, now you’ve got mine all itchy, too. Wait. Did we pull it off? Lemme guess what you’re notthinking about right now. You’re definitely not thinking about Spitfire, and that one night the two of you reallywent to the tank and woke up the next morning in the loft of Applejack’s barn. Don’t worry; no one’ll ever know about the rake trick ‘cause you’re still not thinking about it right now.
Gee. You’re being kinda quiet. Like, more quiet than normal. Everything all right, Blinkie?
… Blinkie?
Sorry, what was that, CENTCOM? You’re breaking up. For a second, I thought you said you picked up another signatu—
The conn-pod jerks sideways without me. A metal piston snaps from my harness. The right side of my body goes fuzzy—no feeling, no hearing, no light, just static. Metal shrieks and tears. Sparks pummel us from above. There’s too much light, it’s surging in through the breach, we’ll drown in it—
It gets quiet.
“We’re okay, girls!” Blinkie yells, looking at us. Her console blares and blinks red. “We can still fight! We can still wi—”
Another screech, like the world’s ripping itself to pieces. Sparks, stone and shadow—a claw, ringing, distant screams—it’s got Blinkie it’s got Blinkie
“NO!” My eyes shut to the darkness that’s already there.
I open them, and I’m somewhere else. Twilight’s reading from a book. Well, was reading. The same wide-eyed look everyone else has finds my eyes as bookshelves and broken walls drip back into my world again. Air touches my coat. I’m sitting.
“I…” Twilight hooks a hoof behind her neck. “I guess that’s one way to react to Princess Luna transforming into a night-time terror and unleashing forty-meter golems on the unsuspecting kingdom.”
“It’s a bit of a story,” Applejack tells her, not once breaking eye contact with me.
Twilight nods. She sets the book aside and sits down with the rest of us. “Well, it turns out that Princess Celestia was able to marshal five of the Elements of Harmony to banish Nightmare Moon from Equestria. But since the sixth still resided within Princess Luna, the others wound up following her into exile.”
“And now you believe,” says Rarity, “that the kaiju in Equestria are linked to this Nightmare Moon myth?”
“Nightmare Moon’s not a myth.”
Applejack holds her hooves up. “Easy, sugarcube. It ain’t that we don’t believe you. You’d think that a pony like the Princess’d mention having a sister at some point, right? I always figured Princess Luna was just an old bedtime story.”
Twilight’s ears flatten back. “She’s not.”
“Did you ever ask the Princess about her sister yourself?”
Everyone turns to Rainbow Dash at first, but the pony who asked that question is hiding behind her. Fluttershy’s never opened herself this much to a strange pony before.
Twilight snorts. “Only every day for the past month,” she says. “When I say she’s my teacher, she doesn’t actually answer much. Most of the time, I don’t mind finding the answers for myself with nothing but a nudge or two. This time, she sends me out here instead, and I don’t even last a single day before somepony calls a mob on me.”
Pony eyes come in all colors of the rainbow in Equestria, but the purple in Twilight’s glare hits home so hard that I might need a new place to stay afterward.
“I-Ink—?” I bite it back just in time. “Innnn case you’re wondering, I’m really sorry about that. Yeah. That’s all I was gonna say.” Whoo. Saved it.
“Here’s the deal, then.” Twilight leans her head forward, and everypony follows suit, including me. “What if I told you I can prove I’m right?”
“I’m game,” says Rainbow.
“Me too,” says Applejack.
Rarity smiles. “Count me in.”
“If it’ll help us,” says Fluttershy at last.
All eyes converge on me again. This shouldn’t even be a hot seat question, but I swear I’m sitting in a metal chair left out all day in the Mild West. “What’ll it take?” I ask her.
Twilight floats a scroll out of her saddlebag and flattens it on the floor between all of us. “This,” she says, tapping the paper and the sketches on it. “You give tours, right?”
***
“Of course I give tours!” I say, throwing streamers and confetti in the air.
“Whew. That’s a relief.” Rainbow Dash snickers with Fluttershy. “You really weirded Twilight out back there when you turned and walked out of the library without saying a single word. Ha, good thing we followed you, huh?”
A blush crashes over Twilight’s face as she hunches behind her scroll of parchment. I bet she’s taking notes on how wonderful Ponyville is. For the record, I really like it here. No other place in Equestria gets as much mileage out of insurance policies than we do.
“Hey, Twilight,” I say. “Have you seen a Jaeger up close before?”
Twilight hesitates. “One. Aegis Forte.”
My jaw drops. “Really? That one was my favorite!”
“It… it was?”
The raspberry I blow echoes in the long, buttressed hallway leading to the hangars. “Sure! Heavy Jinx may have rolled off the line first, but Aegis Forte was the world’s first sign that it wasn’t about to go without a fight.” I pull up and let fly a pair of right jabs, for emphasis. “And Shining Armor and Mi Amore Cadenza harmonized so well together, you know? They put out three sig-nines when they KO’ed Orochi. Three.”
I don’t hear anything back from Twilight, which doesn’t matter—we arrive at the doors to Hangar 04. “If that old Jaeger was the last you’ve seen up close… you might want to brace yourself.”
Twilight jumps when I look at her. Having ridden on her back the whole way here, Spike slips off and holds her foreleg, rubbing it twice. The look they share threatens to get my guts all twisty, but Twilight faces back forward and gives me a lopsided grin. “This is where you keep Country Belle, correct? Class IV Jaeger, thirty-nine meters tall, armaments—”
“Shhhhh.” I put a hoof on her lips and massage them around. “Shh, shhshhshhhhh. Don’t spoil it for yourself.” The doors behind me open with a hiss, two-ton stone slabs that roll out of the way on well-greased tracks, and the seven of us step through into the hangar.
Twilight doesn’t brace herself. Most ponies don’t the first time they enter a Jaeger hangar, because they don’t expect to do so thirty meters above the bottom floor. Even pegasi will take a moment before they trust their weight to this metal grate walkway, but the view doesn’t get any better than from up here.
Imagine a city. Okay, imagine a neighborhood square. Lots of buildings, friendly people, sunshine, songs, the works. Inclusive. Cozy. A social center of gravity, where outside worries can’t come in.
Imagine all of that, ball it up into the shape of a pony, and call on it to kick kaiju butt when it comes a knockin’. When Stranger broke through the Rift and levelled half of Fillydelphia, nopony felt particularly big or able to help much. Building the Jaegers did more than just giving those monsters something to fight.
Building the Jaegers put us back together again. No one struggles alone, not even in the Jaegers themselves. The burden of moving one, much less fighting in one, rests on the shoulders of two jockeys, working in ninety-nine-point-nine-plus percent harmony.
No one goes lonely in this world.
“Well, Miss Twilight?” As Rarity saunters up to join me at the railing, she looks back at Twilight with an inviting smile. “She is élégante like me, wouldn’t you agree?” she asks, primping her mane with a hoof. “Look at the lines of her neck and body—how they flow together like silk.”
“Oh, can it, Rare,” Applejack says, chuckling while she drapes her hooves over the railing, too. “You see those legs there? Ain’t nothin’ in ‘em but grit and gumption. Sturdy as the earth ponies what designed her. Give ‘er a place to stand, and she can buck the moon into space like a cue ball.”
Rarity’s ears have folded flat. “Yes, quite charming. Belle’s a dancer, Twilight. Pay no mind to Applejack’s braggadocio.”
“She’s a scrapper. She’s colored after me, see? Green eyes here, green visor there. Coat’s a few shades darker, but I’m not a pony to complain ‘bout a paint job.”
I sneak on over to Twilight and bring her to the rail. “Sorry,” I tell her. “They get like this.”
“I’ve read as much,” she answers, giggling. “Applejack I can see, but Rarity? How is she from here and not from Canterlot?”
I frown. “Have you been outside of Canterlot before?”
Twilight continues giggling to herself until she realizes I’m still looking right at her. “Oh. You’re asking.” She rubs the back of her head and looks away. “Um…”
“You hafta realize she’s still getting used to the idea of there being other ponies besides her,” Spike chuckles, leaning against Twilight. “She’s doing really well for her first time outside the city, wouldn’t you say? Poo!”
Hmm. Spike and I haven’t talked much, but I suspect that last word of his has less to do with a weird punchline boys say than it does with Twilight burying her elbow in his stomach. There’s just so much I don’t know about dragons. “Don’t you worry!” I tell Twilight. “You’ll meet tons of different ponies and other people now that you’re out here.”
“What a relief,” she huffs. “Any chance we could take a closer look? See her heart, maybe?”
“I’m afraid that won’t be happenin’ tonight,” Applejack says. “Rarity and I might drive the ol’ girl, but the hangar crews’re gonna be busy installin’ some new circuits or somethin’.”
“And it would be horridly gauche of us to stride into the middle of their operations for a look-see,” Rarity says. “Perhaps things are different with Distant Petrichor?”
Rainbow Dash folds her forelegs across her chest. “Pffffft. It’s the same excuse as always with those goons.”
“Calibrations,” Fluttershy clarifies.
“You’d think they could wait, but no.” Rainbow sticks her tongue out.
“Yikes.” I rub my hooves together, thinking. “I’m sorry, Twilight. I’m sure we could still pop into the next hangar over if you wanted to take a peek, right?”
“Distant Petrichor’s only the most intense Jaeger ever,” Rainbow boasts, taking to the air. “Fastest flying machine to ever blast outta Cloudsdale Crashyard. You gotta see her, Twilight.”
Twilight hides her mouth behind a hoof. “Well, when you phrase it like that, how can I not?”
“I like this one. Can we keep her?”
All of us laugh as we make our way over to Hangar 05. Dash leads us through the air, gesturing this way and that with her hooves as she rambles on, with Fluttershy walking just below and to the side of her. Twilight hangs in the back with me.
Spike might have been joking earlier, but that doesn’t make what he said about Twilight any less right. She laughs and nods at the right moments, her note-taking parchment long since put away.
I do feel kind of bad for her. She told us about how she could prove the kaiju attacks and the legend of Nightmare Moon were connected if she got to see Jaegers up close, but all four of them are going to be in repairs for a while. I don’t know what it is she needs to see, exactly, but maybe… just maybe…
They said they were working on repairing it for combat again. And Celestia knows there’s a bright class of cadets graduating from the Jaeger Academy who’ve spent years readying themselves to become jockeys. I’ve been so caught up in my new job that I realize it’s almost been a year to the day since I’ve visited that hangar, and nopony’s asked me to return.
“Hey, Twilight?” I say, raising my voice above the popping sound. “You know, in case you’re still up for it after we see Distant Petrichor… there’s a chance you might be able to see another Jaeger. I’ll even take you to see her heart. What do you say? Twilight?”
I turn to the side. There’s nopony there.
Did she fall behind? Walkway’s clear in that direction.
Maybe she moved ahead? No, it’s just the other girls.
“Uh oh,” I say.
The others turn around.
“Pinkie Pie?” Rarity asks. “Where’d Twilight go?”
***
“Another round, Joe.”
“I dunno, Pinks. You’ve been goin’ at it pretty hard tonight.”
“Give it to her, Joe. And another for me as well.”
Rainbow Dash understands. There are some nights when the only solace you can find is at the bottom of a mug of Joe’s Super Slammin’ Cocoa Jamboree. I’ve had three.
“She didn’t even get to see our Jaeger.” Rainbow sniffles and lays her cheek on the Formicanter countertop as another mug of cocoa slides into her hoof. She starts rolling her other hoof in the air. “It’s like… it’s really tearing me up inside, ya know?”
“There, there, Dashie.” I lean over and pat her back while the only other patron with us at Joe’s cart fails to stifle a snorggle—that thing where a pony snorts when she can’t giggle. That’s a thing, right? “At least we know she didn’t fall off the walkway, which would’ve been weird if she did that without making some kind of obvious noise or screaming.”
“I know,” Rainbow says into the counter. “I was sweeping the hangar for her with you and the girls for over an hour. We just got out here five minutes ago.”
“The night is young,” I say, knocking back a huge swig of cocoa.
Joe looks up from wiping the counter next to Dash’s face. “Sorry ta butt in, but lookin’ for who now?” he asks in his gorgeously burly baritone.
I set my mug on the counter and sigh. “Oh, Twilight.”
What follows is the unmistakable sound of a rag shattering in Joe’s hoof. “Twilight?” Joe blinks, wide-eyed. “Purple filly, ‘bout yay tall, streaks in her mane and smart as a slap on the haunch?”
Rainbow and I sit up at the same time.
“Yeah, her,” she says. “Why?”
“She comes to my Canterlot shop all the time.” Joe points behind us. “And I think that’s her lil’ dragon buddy comin’ to bowl my cart over.”
“Gaaaangway!”
We whirl in our stools just in time to see ponies diving for cover in Town Hall Square. All we see of Spike are the two trails of green fire leaping up behind him. My hooves find Rainbow’s.
“Pinkie Pie! Rainbow Dash!” Spike powerslides to a stop an inch away from setting my tail on fire. He jumps up and down, and his bright green irises are little points in his eyes.
“Uh…” Rainbow Dash tosses me a sidelong glance, but before she can say anything else, Spike starts up again.
“You gotta—help,” he gasps, arms everywhere. “It’s bad—real bad. Twilight—sh-sh-she-she did something, I dunno what but—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down, kid. Deep breaths.” Rainbow Dash pauses and looks at herself as little grinding noises come out of her ears. “What am I saying? Spit it out!”
Spike grabs her hoof with both claws. “T-Twilight’s in trouble,” he says, trying to rip her out of her seat. “And she might be in even more trouble and I don’t want her to get into trouble which is why I came to find you girls instead of the paramedics—and I’m dumb because a paramedic is probably what she needs most right now.” He slaps his forehead while sparks fly from his teeth. He looks back at the both of us. “Look, could you please come hurry? Oh, and hey, Joe—go ahead and put these ladies’ drinks on my tab.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I tell him.
“Twilight gives me a stipend.” Spike jumps again like somepony just kicked him. “Twilight needs help! C’mon!”
Rainbow Dash and I gallop after the little dragon, leaving Joe behind to look at the pretty green fires creeping in on his cart.
“All right, spill it,” Rainbow says as we take an elevator into the Shatterdome. “Where’d you and Twilight disappear off to before we could show Distant Petrichor to you guys?”
“I…” Spike bounces around the cage as it slams past an outcropping in the shaft. “She just kinda held me back and teleported away while the rest of you weren’t looking.”
“Sounds like her, all right.”
“Well, next thing I know, we’re already staring at your Jaeger, Rainbow Dash. Pearly white, blue visor, refractive wings, right?”
Rainbow Dash sticks her leg out to catch Spike before he completes another trip across the cage. “What the—? We were right there. If she couldn’t wait, why couldn’t Twilight just tell us to hurry up to the other hangar?”
Spike peels himself off of Rainbow’s leg. “‘Cause that wasn’t the hangar she wanted to see at all.”
The elevator crashes to a halt at the bottom floor. Most all of our bones do, too.
“What?” Rainbow Dash peels Spike off the floor and flips him onto her back.
“Look,” he says, waving us down the hallway to the hangars while his eyes rotate back into alignment. “Twilight told me not to tell anypony this while we were coming here from Canterlot. She wasn’t gonna leave the capital just to tell everypony more kaiju are on their way through the Rift.”
“Why’s she here, then?”
“‘She wants to drive a Jaeger, and she thinks she can do it alone.”
Rainbow Dash snorts. “Then she’s dumb. We’ve only got four left, and all of them have jockeys—” Her rant breaks off as she looks my way.
What I’d pay to see the looks on our faces right now.
One moment, we’re barely halfway to Hangar 01’s doors. Rainbow Dash punches it with me riding in her slipstream. I don’t even see the doors to Hangar 05 scream by, nor does Rainbow Dash stop for them. Though Ponyville Shatterdome houses the last four working Jaegers in the PEDC’s service, the diamond dogs had built it for more.
We skid to a stop before Hangar 06.
“Ow! Hot!” I cry, blowing the smoke from my hooves as best as I can manage.
Rainbow Dash slams her hoof on the access panel. The doors clunk and hiss and begin to roll into the walls. We don’t even wait for them to open a quarter of the way before hurtling on through into near-total darkness, a single work lamp on the hangar floor thirty meters below the only source of light beyond.
“Twilight!” Spike tears off for the lamp our hooves hit the floor. Hidden cables snag at his feet, and he almost replaces his eyes with bolts when he hip-checks a tool cart and tumbles along the concrete. “Twilight!”
She lies in the center of the lamplight like a carpet. One of her hooves lies stretched out, however, inches away from a gigantic—
“Spider!” I yell. Crush it crush it crush it—wait. My hoof skids to a stop moments before I can smash the thing to pieces. It has six legs, which disqualifies it from being a spider as a matter of course, but the legs are flat, hinged, and made of metal with circular contacts at their tips. They all connect to a central hub, which feeds into a cable snaking away from the light.
“C’mon, Spike, she’s fine. Help her up.” Rainbow Dash stands behind Twilight and hefts her into a sitting position. Twilight doesn’t complain, though her eyes skew away from each other.
“You sure ‘bout that?” Spike asks.
“Harmonizing’s rough, but it’s not going to fry your brain unless you’re trying to pilot a Jaeger solo.” Rainbow Dash looks over at me while she tries to rub some life into Twilight’s head. “That’s a training helm, right? I haven’t seen one since we graduated from the Academy.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Which means…” I whisk over to the edge of the light and return with a bucket, placing it below Twilight’s muzzle just as her cheeks bulge out.
Spike frowns at me. “What’s that for?”
I motion for everyone to look away. The little dragon hears why a few moments later.
“Oh,” he says.
Twilight eyes re-center, and she accepts the glass of water I carry around in my tail for moments like this. Her breaths get shaky while her hooves get quaky, kind of like how I get when there’s a doozy happening in my near future.
“All right, Miss Princess’ Pet.” Rainbow comes around and puts both hooves on Twilight’s shoulders. “I… I don’t even know where to begin with you. Skipping out on Distant Petrichor’s one thing. Breaking into Pinkie Pie’s hangar’s another. What were you thinking?”
Twilight stiffens so quickly that, for a moment, I almost whip out a gurney. But Twilight doesn’t go into a seizure. She goes into the complete opposite of one and starts babbling Rainbow’s ears off. “I was right. Nightmare Moon is not a myth. See that? See that over there? I just harmonized with a kaiju’s heart.”
Rainbow’s eyes travel with mine from the training helm along the cable, stopping at a superterminal hooked up to all kinds of monitors and gauges. Another cable running out of it ends in a probe jabbed deep into an inert crystal the size of a diamond dog.
“What?” Rainbow says.
“Yeah, what.” Twilight throws her hooves into the air as her voice drops into a boyish register. “‘But Twilight, it isn’t a brain. How’d you harmonize with something that wasn’t a brain?’ How’d we know you could harmonize three jockeys at once?”
The bottom drops out of my stomach as she glances over my way.
“We didn’t, but we tried anyway. Not trying meant losing. You hate losing, right, Rainbow Dash?”
“Twilight.” Rainbow Dash shakes her a little. “Get to the point, Twilight.”
“Waiting. You hate waiting, too.” Twilight cackles a little. Just a teeny little bit. “I saw beyond the Rift. The kaiju coming through there and messing everything up on this side? They’re not random monsters like everypony believes they are. They’re created, just like the ones from the Nightmare Moon legend. Go on. Ask me. Ask me how they’re created.”
“How are they created?” I ask.
“I’m very glad you asked!” Twilight slips out of Rainbow Dash’s hooves and rears into the air. “The Elements of Harmony make them.”
Rainbow Dash takes a moment to answer. “You’re kidding.”
Twilight shakes her head. “See that heart over there? That’s the seed from which the rest of the kaiju grows, just like how you can dip a stick into a supersaturated solution of sugar and get rock candy overnight. But instead of sugar, it’s the energy given off by the Elements themselves.”
She looks from me to Rainbow Dash to Spike to me again with her hooves in the air, chest heaving with every breath. “No?” she asks, coming back down on all fours. “Nothing? After I just routed enough power to run a Jaeger through my brain and lived to tell about it?”
“That’s the thing I don’t get,” says Rainbow. “It’s like you’re saying these hearts have memories.”
Twilight stands aghast. “Hello? I just harmonized with one,” she roars. “How else do you think I could’ve seen all that? They’re all connected together! Do you know what this means?”
“Ooh! Oooh!”
“Pinkie Pie, you don’t have to raise your hoof. But would you like to answer?”
“Sure! And the answer is ‘I have no idea!’”
The smack of Twilight’s hoof on her forehead echoes through the hangar. “We have a way to beat these things once and for all,” she explains. “All we have to do is take back the Elements of Harmony, and there’ll be no more kaiju.”
“All we have to do?” Rainbow throws Twilight’s words back at her and closes in. “Kid, look. That’s crazy. I thought the Elements of Harmony were supposed to work out for us. Why would they be making all these monsters for us to fight against, huh?”
“I don’t know,” Twilight says, backing into the superterminal. “I just—”
“How would we even get them back if they were real?” Rainbow’s in her face now. “No one’s ever made it to the other side of the Rift. Those who’ve tried spent a hundred years trapped in their heads.”
Twilight sinks to the floor and closes her eyes. “Rainbow Dash, please—”
“I’m still talking,” she shouts over Twilight. “And you think you can just waltz right into the place where all the kaiju come from and steal away their power source without a fight, huh? You thought you could do that? Alone?”
“Rainbow Dash! That’s enough!” My cry falls on closed ears.
“Didn’t the Princess teach you anything in Canterlot?”
Twilight’s eyes bolt open at the same a giant shiver races through my body. Before I can yell “Doozy!”, Twilight rockets upward.
The crack of hoof on chin echoes through the hangar. I only have a second or two to grab Rainbow before she flips around in the air.
“Lemme go, Pinkie!” She’s all feathers and fight and it’s all I can do to hold on. “I’m gonna kill her!”
“Don’t you ever say that kind of thing about Princess Celestia!” Twilight yells back, levelling a hoof at the both of us. “She’s more than a teacher! She’s more than you could ever know!”
Her eyes go wide a moment later. She looks at her hoof, the one she clobbered Rainbow with, and brings it to her mouth. Her other hoof finds the superterminal as she backs around it, never once taking her eyes off the struggling pegasus caught up in my forelegs. I often dream about punching holes in the clouds and having one for a bed, but days like this make being an earth pony from a rock farm worth it.
“I’m sorry,” Twilight whimpers. She hesitates, but keeps backing away when Rainbow answers her with a snarl. “I… I… just thought you could help.”
“Get outta here!”
That’s the last I see of Twilight—plucking her little assistant off his feet before she vanishes for an exit. I give her a few minutes before I let Rainbow go, not to give her a head start—with Rainbow Dash, those don’t matter—but because it takes me that long to convince her there’s a bigger issue on our hooves.
“Oh, mare.” Calmed somewhat, Rainbow walks with me over to the kaiju heart Twilight had just finished harmonizing with. Remember when I said earlier that the crystal had been inert?
“That’s great,” Rainbow says, yanking the probe out of the heart. “She broke it.”
The both of us look up at the big, black frame of the Jaeger looming overhead.
They told me they were fixing her. And they had. My Jaeger.
Evil Enchantress.
