Ponyville Rim

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.