A shadow in the light

Rainbow Dash punched right through the hollow tree door, neglecting the fact that she was surely flying too fast to stop before meeting with a fully stocked book shelf, each shelf neatly standing multiple coloured books with titles she never really noticed or bothered to look at besides the "Daring Doo" series. She planted her back up to the flat books with a loud thump sliding down to the ground while an avalanche of novels, dictionaries and encyclopedias buried her.

"TWILIGHT!" She hailed while removing the books from above to reach the bright light above. She entered the light of day to come face to face with an upset purple pony standing near the newly shut door.

"What in the name of Equestria are you doing Rainbow?" Twilight gritted her teeth in frustration. "Do you know how long it took me to organize those books?"

"We have bigger problems than your books Twilight!" Rainbow stated flying towards Twilight seemingly ignoring the mess she had left in her wake. "That new guy... Umm"

"You mean Shadow?" Twilight interrupted.

"Yeah him, he just used his freaky magic to turn Pinkie into smoke and make her disappear!"

"And you know this how?" Twilight asked skeptically. She hadn't completely left out the notion that Shadow was in fact evil, however she also recalled times when Rainbow came up with crazy theories or stories, announcing them without a thought beforehoof. An example of this would be when she woke everypony up in the middle of the night stating Nightmare Moon was back destroying everything before Applejack caught her and held her down long enough to explain it was just a bad dream. "Your past outbursts suggest you're just making this up again,"

"I SAW IT WITH MY OWN TWO EYES!" She screamed in Twilight's face, snorting out her nostrils.

"Are you sure?"

"YES! I'm absolutely one hundred percent sure!" She finalized.

"Okay, okay, I believe you, just give me a moment," Twilight placed a hoof to her chin standing as still as undisturbed water, calculating the best route of action. "Hmmm," Being the only sound relieving the silent and awkward tension.

After pacing for a full one minute, Rainbow finally lost her extremely short patience and groaned in Twilight's thought ridden direction. As Twilight was a pony of the mind, Rainbow was a pony of action. All she could see was that thinking about the problem wasn't going to solve anything.

"Well?" The exclamation interrupted Twilight's focus long enough for her to respond aloud.

"I'm not really sure what to do, you know what Pinkie can be like, maybe it's all just a mistake." Twilight tried to explain but unfortunately had difficulty arguing for a better scenario than was described to her.

"Sure, If it was any other pony, they would get scared, but they wouldn't turn Pinkie into dust because of it!"

"Look, we need to talk to the other girls before we come to any conclusions," Twilight put simply. She was unsure of herself and even though she usually took charge she wanted more opinions before taking action on such a serious topic. "After we have a group meeting, only then will we do something about it. You go get Applejack and Fluttershy, I'll get Rarity and we'll meet at Sugar Cube Corner,"

They both rushed through the magically opened door, Twilight galloping at a decent pace toward the Carousel boutique with Rainbow Dash accelerating ahead of her towards Sweet Apple Acres and would reach her destination in ten seconds flat.

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At a table in the now empty Sugar Cube Corner, Rarity followed Twilight through the bright doorway into the sweet smelling store. The two attended to a table with a nervous looking yellow Pegasus in ownership of a pretty pink bouncy mane and tail, accompanied by Applejack as well as Rainbow hovering impatiently above them. As the two unicorns sat at the table Rainbow landed to join them refraining herself from complaining about their tardiness.

"Okay, Rainbow did you tell them why we're all here?" Twilight asked.

"Of course!"

"Ok, so what are we going to do, or what can we do? Applejack, what do you think?" She requested.

"Ah dunno Twi'. I haven't talked to him fer all that long. He seemed kinda shy, bit like Fluttershy over here" She gestured over to the yellow Pegasus who lowered her head not wanting an ounce of attention.

"Umm, if you don't mind me saying, could I suggest something?" She requested with a smooth innocent tone.

"Go ahead sugar cube"

"Maybe they were just playing a game, I know I like to play games with Angel bunny," She smiled trying to make her statement seem more plausible than it sounded. When the other four gave her a sincere and understanding look, she knew she had been defeated. They wouldn't outright turn her down, although they did understand where she was coming from. The scenario painted before them wasn't the most pleasant to think about.

"I wouldn't think that such a stallion would play games, especially with Pinkie no less" Began Rarity. "He is a pony who likes to get straight to the point and although I am certainly a good judge of pony, I still don't understand what motives he works under. Especially with that creepy look, I mean he almost fooled me into thinking he was a mare, only his voice was clear enough to distinguish. And why is his coat all black? Couldn't he dye it a nicer colour? Red wouldn't be so......." She ended her rant realizing the look she was receiving from Applejack. "Oh sorry dear. Please go on,"

Rainbow Dash slammed her hoof hard on the pink wooden table with irritation, shaking both the table and the ponies sitting at it, widening eyes in shock.

"I think we should march right in there and get some answers! She enthusiastically proposed. "We obviously don't know what we need to and the only one with the answers are Widow!"

"Shadow," Twilight interrupted.

"That's what I said! We can take him head on, and don't forget we have the elements of harmony on our side too!" Adding in the information that the five of them were backed up by the elements changed each of their expressions from one of thought and worry to confidence in each of their abilities. All except Fluttershy whom dared not break off Rainbow's inspiring speech.

"As much as I don't like to roughhouse, I will do what must be done."

"I'm with ya there Rarity, if he hurt Pinkie pie then he'll have ta deal with us as well," Applejack encouraged, placing a hoof on Rarity's back.

"For once I must say that Rainbow's right! We can't just sit here while Shadow could be doing Celestia know's what! Dark magic is a frightening art as you all should know by now," Twilight looked over to Fluttershy who had refused to say a single word during most of the meeting, only watching the smooth table top and waiting patiently yet cautiously for herself to be addressed. "Fluttershy, are you okay with this?"

Fluttershy raised her eyes from the table slightly to give a reply to the unicorn.

"Umm, if everyone else is doing it then I guess so," She let her eyes wander to the rest of the group to receive approval of her answer. Twilight smiled slightly as the confusion to what they would do was over and they could now plan ahead.

"Then it's agreed, we take the elements with us and force Shadow to tell us what happened to Pinkie, and if worse comes to worse, we use our elements to take him out! Even without the element of laughter we should be able to do that,"

They all rushed out the door of Sugar Cube Corner and headed towards Twilight's home, four of them ready for action and one little shy pony further behind giving chase, a little hesitant at the recent decision.

"Oh my, this doesn't sound good, not good at all,"

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Not even bothering to slow for the door, the black unicorn zipped through the solid door with his smokey 'being' and right through the floor up to the second level. Ignoring his exhaustion as a result of running from the other side of town as well as just using an advanced spell, Shadow swung wide open his cupboard doors with force that cracked the hinges and continued to open his drawers throwing every book he could find onto the floor behind him. As quickly as he had collected them he ran up to each one and with his smelly sweaty mane over his face began to flip through every one of his books in pursuit for answers.

"No.. No... No... No... No... No... No" Was all the sound made besides the turning of pages. He flipped through chapter after chapter in one book with no luck and moving onto the next without even a second lost. Book after book was taken into his dirty hooves and each was thrown about, scattered on the floor. One after another, Shadow came up empty hooved without the answer to his problem.

"Please please please please please please" He ranted frantically searching through his very last hopeful spell book. "No... No... No... No... No... No... No... N wait, wait, wait, YES! Shadow body slammed onto his bed finally allowing a second to breath. "For Luna's sake," He ushered to himself, sitting up at the same time bringing the page to his face. Reading the words carefully he 'ah huh'd at every fact stated. Finally he organized his thoughts into one place, allowing the confusion to go away. 'So basically I've just sent her to my personal dark storage place and all I need to do is go there and get her back, that shouldn't be too hard. I remember Luna teaching me this a while ago.'

Sliding off the bed Shadow swiftly cleared the unused books from the floor and stood in the newly open space. With a little more effort than usual, caused by his previous exhaustion, Shadow built up magic in his horn and formed the spell in which would take him to his personal storage place.

With the light from the window literally dimming even though the sun was high, the dark shadows developed into almost a pure black colour causing everything to become almost invisible. A purple glow shone brightly below Shadow's legs and smoke accumulated around the floor surrounding him and blocking vision of the wooden boards beneath. The smoke didn't burn with heat, but felt like cool air sitting just above the ground. Suddenly black purple tentacles reached up from below him and grappled onto his body tugging him slowly into the floor that he could no longer feel beneath him. The tentacles  were smooth yet firm as they disappeared into the ground along with Shadow.

A single blink after he saw the world blacken above him, Shadow found himself in a completely black body of space. Still able to breath within the 'nothing', he compelled his body to move and it did so.

'That crazy disaster should be here, but why can't i feel her? Don't tell me she evaporated already! No that can't be right, that would take days, she's only been here a few minutes there's no way she was dissolved in my room already, what in the name of Luna is going on?' Shadow thought with bewilderment. 'Well if I can't find her here then maybe, just maybe I used a different spell, that's the only logical explanation right now!'

Shadow relieved the tension within his horn, causing the spell keeping him there to be undone. To take him back to the real world again, a bright light shone from above his head sucking him forcefully through into the warmth and leaving the cold empty vasts of space behind.

Being thrown at a wall hurts, almost as much as being thrown upwards hitting the back of your head on the ceiling, only to peel off and crash on the floor face first. Blood dribbled out of Shadow's nostrils wetting the floor in a rose red puddle. Slowly  sitting upright, he tried to make up and down of what had just happened before a yelling voice outside his cottage belted his already ringing ears.

"WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE SHADOW! COME OUT AND EXPLAIN TO US WHAT YOU'VE DONE WITH PINKIE!"

The voice was obviously Twilight's but Shadow couldn't bring himself to answer. He wasn't certain of what he had done anymore, crossing off the list the one spell he was sure he had used. He was cornered without a way out.