~3~

Parts.

Parts falling apart.

The skyway collapsed.

All the doom and gloom took a carrot cake edge, because the fact was, I felt kind of happy. Which was a little weird, because I also felt kind of bad. I felt like I'd felt like that before. Also, I felt like I hadn't felt that yet. Holy Solstice, I realized something. Holy Solstice, I was an idiot. It didn't take a vast cognitive capacity or a mindset finely honed for action to realize what was going on. Holy Solstice.

It made perfect sense.

FlimFlamCo. Everseal was the most useful compound ever, and the most enraging. The tube read "Stick it with Everseal and it's Never-free!" I didn't get it. When I ripped my leg from the latch, however, leaving behind a swath of bandages and no small amount of fur; through bleary eyes I made a more apt slogan: FlimFlamCo. Everseal! If you're stuck, you're fucked!

At least a dozen turrets popped out. And me without a rocket launcher.

He rolled his eyes. "What're you going to need a rocket launcher for?"

The moths riled into a red cloud overhead as DD slammed the door of the utility tram shut. Almost on cue, my earseeds came alive with the husky voice of the Writ, "Like mares on a morning charge. You will rile snow into blizzard..."

Double Down was a surprisingly considerate pony. I was glad he was here.

Double Down was a lousy smart aleck. I couldn't wait for him to be gone.

Walkways zig-zagged up, underlining rows of pneumatic doors interrupted in no particular pattern by sections either blown away or rusted into uselessness. Moss hung all over the walls of these lower laboratories in coils and springs, fed by the water drizzling out of ancient air purifiers that, after long and abusive centuries, still rose and fell in breathy wheezes. In the humidity, my bandages felt like a wet, full-body diaper. Yeck. I didn't want to climb one level of those ramps, and we were going to have to climb them all.

I was more freaked out by how not freaked out I was, which, of course, sent me into a minor freak-out. I blanched. He knew, and I knew he knew. Worse, I couldn't get Berry Tart out of my head. The train of thought made the situation exceedingly more awkward. "Dandelion" and "sandwich" were right up at the forefront of my mind with "bombs" and "rescue".

"What are we going to do now?"

"Kill Trixie. What do you think?" Whaddayathink?

I froze next to a Generosity Inc. automated makeup dispensary. DD made it to the corner before he turned around.

"What?" he asked.

Dammit. Did she really deserve that? She was a pony after all. What was she trying to do, anyway? A thunderstorm raged in that patchwork grey jelly sitting under my flattened-back ears, and I could tell by his tone he suffered from no such condition.

"She's... she's a pony. Mostly."

"She's a problem."

"Is that how you deal with problems? Shoot them?"

He looked up and to the left, hummed, then looked back. For a second, something passed over his face. A shadow outside of cold levity, something that made me think he wasn't just as single minded as the gold-eyed stallion. Then, he smiled. "Yeah."

Fail safe spell, huh? I could use one of those. Then again, I made it this far. I didn't fail safe, but I failed sturdy.

When I ambled back into Twilight Sparkle's office, or what I assumed was Twilight Sparkle's office by the still magically glittering name placard, it nearly made sense. By 'it', I meant the whole situation. The windows facing purple-veined stone. The building's layout. This place used to be halfway above ground, and this wing of the building had been at ground level. I shuddered thinking about the magic it would have taken, but somepony had buried it. Driven it into the ground like a nail. It would have taken a Solstice-tier level of power, and that thought shook me.

Had Solstice himself done this? What other pony possibly could?

Also, by 'the whole situation', I meant my accident, my lost memory, and my trip into Super Trixie Fun Time. Why did it... speed along synaptic reconnection... seem almost so clear now? So threateningly lucid? It just didn't quite click. Oh well. Did I just giggle?

"Stop laughing," he barked, "You're going to give us away!"

#Booting Arcane Speed-Targeting Reticle Assistant (ASTRA)

The twin shotgun barrels spun up, and not a moment too soon. I knew they would.

"You have to work on your shooting, and your cursing."

"What do you mean?" I huffed, "My swears were pretty good."

"Your swears? Frostsprite's ever-expanding asshole, lady. You're a menace to the language."

"Oh yeah? What do you suggest?" I raised an eyebrow.

"How about this one," his voice rose, "Hydra's foreskin!"

I chuckled.

He grinned back. "Y'know. Get creative."

>> Experiment #4 - Windigo Containment Grid
>> Contributing Staff: Comet Tail, Moondanc*r, Twin]*^shine, Pipsqueak (PH), Sw*&^&* ^@$%*
>>
>> REPORT ~11: As noted in the disastrous initial trials, Windigos produce a monolithic negative emotional return; and res*@ting thermal transference; that we cannot replicate. Even the Pr(&dj*s herself cannot reproduce the sustained cond777ion rate of a single Windigo for mor____ ___(__ew moments. Thus, we were unable to create a cont*#^ment device, magical or technological, that could ov3rc0me the field of a single Windigo, let alone several. There was simply no power so&#(&$ *(ng enough to withstand that level of energy fluctuati}{{}wh#t(a##l0v3ly!!@t3@p@rty&* ......
>
>
>..... ...research teams were lost.

This plan was going to take manepin reflexes, speed, agility, guts, and a discernible level of firearm awesomeness. Possessing none of those things, I had to play to my strengths. Dumb luck and science. Huzzah.

"It's all messed up," I groaned.

The moth bull-shot the locker right into me. I tried to turn and leap, but it was a blur of mean red intent and while my mental dials were all cranked up to eleven, and consequently I'd known it was going to happen, my body couldn't catch up. My ribs buckled between the locker and the wall. It's wings slapped along the sides, showering me in dust and glass. It's legs scrabbled upward. Through the cacophony of tittering clicks and thuds, I cobbled together its most likely plan. It was going to come over the top and stab me in the brain.

Whatever kind of pony this Twilight Sparkle was, she didn't like to direct from afar. She liked being right in the science. Her office nestled firmly between the main test floors. The crux of the action. The office looked like a big library. Just big. Not cavernous. Trixie's office was bigger.

Smashed picture frames and bric-a-brac littered the floor. Piles of decrepit books rotted amongst the bomb-making materials Sleetsweet and company had drug in. The shelves now housed labeled piles of chemicals, stabilizers, and wires. A healthy dose of wreck had made its way in here, but nothing like the rest of the facility. No signs of moths either. This section of the compound had managed to protect itself.

"What's all messed up?" DD asked.

Somepony had to hole up here and assemble the rest of the bombs. I picked out two someponies who didn't have to taste everything they picked up.

“Oh Hobby-wobby-kins, you made some really good bombs. Yes you did. That's a good boy.” DD said, poking a hoof at the underside of Hobble's chin. He yanked it back when Hobble snapped at it, and the two shared a long, sardonic glance.

The odd stamp filled back up with life and color:

"Approved by the Joy Bureau. Officially fun."

My blind jabbing not only didn't get me electrocuted, it knocked the last circuit bar into the receptacle. It sizzled, popped, and flashed; and I barely managed to yank my foreleg out as I tumbled back into the chair amidst the pleasant aroma of singed pony fur. The middle of the desk split like the amazing stapler, and from the gap rose a terminal screen, which casually switched on with a friendly "bweep", as if it hadn't scared the crap out of all of us, even startling Abridged into jumping into my lap. It hurt, but I was too enthralled to be distracted. Or aroused.

"Welcome back, Director Sparkle."

I lined the ASTRA up on the top of the locker as best I could while that red, barbed proboscis snaked between the bent shelf and the wall, stabbing down toward my head. Soiling my parka looked like a likely course of action.

>
>
>> With the i^*&^09on (e t7e sympathy return circuit (SRC), we can now field a con^^in*&ent a8p@ratus with long-term fe__*__lity. Field architecture was based off the standard teleportation restriction matrix developed by Saddle Arabia f(&#& 867 #m@d8@wg5 s __ing the war. The confinement horizon is powered using the thermal conveyance perpetuated by the Windigo itself. As such, all th(&* Hd1hwe&&*Y^cient .............. ^..^... the reaction. Current production model is .....
, and, according to my calculations, should be (#)1337__n(&. The vast amount of space the magical field requires is the prohibitive parameter, and remains the primary barrier to employment.
>
>>Where does one keep hundreds of angry demi-gods?

~~~~~~~~~

I had barely been able to fit the saddle cannon rig around my bandage's gibbosity, but I did, and I now limped bravely ahead with two auto-shotgun barrels I could scarcely control. They plugged into an aperture on my jack, and a nifty little targeting software bundle blipped up in my eye, my silver eye anyway (my blue eye ignored technology as much as it ignored logic). Aiming was a combination of instinct and finesse. I had neither. Luckily, the spell matrix assisted. A little.

So there Double Down was, following slightly above and behind me, because he was terrified I would put a cone of scatter-shot up his flank. Pish-posh. I scored an amazing hit on a light fixture that dared to squeak unexpectedly. Perfectly accurate. Only took four shots.

"I can't see anything right?"

I finally got at the terminal, which was, in trend with the rest of the place, mostly slagged. I still knew what to do. My brain hummed along on the edge of a laughter wave that didn’t seem to break. I could fix this.

I realized Trixie was puppeting us. She had everypony cocooned in a semi-circle around a stage made of junk. It looked like a party. A party? Why would I think that? Oddly enough, it did kind of look like a party. Or the start of some sick stage show. The mothicorn walked up casually, her wings folded behind her like a cape. She said nothing, because her look said it all.

“We have to save him," Abridged pleaded, "he’s really cute.”

"We have to save him," Double Down added, "he never lit my cigarette."

If she really was the mare from the recordings, Assistant Director Trixie Lulamoon, she'd been in a hole with no company but moths for fourteen hundred years. Given the same circumstances, I don't know if I'd be much better off.

I was sweating bullets. Double Down sat across from me, his cloak gone, tying off the wires. He wiped his crest and smiled.

"You're obviously stringing us along."

I gaped at him. Dammit. This was not the time. I flailed for words.

"What are we really doing?" He looked so calm. Not a steely, fervent, soldierly calm, but something else entirely. He was still grinning. I almost wanted to grin too. Or hit him. And hit him.

"Defusing a bomb."

"That's not what I mean, and ya know it."

One spherical eye squeezed into the crack. I thought into the trigger, and the shotguns thundered.

The lights flickered on revealing the fourth most horrifying thing I'd seen in wonderful, sunny Tailahasse; a severed head suspended in a jar of fluid. A severed pony head! Wait, almost a pony head. In the second before my stomach took off in a distinctly rearward direction, I took in enough of the greyish, carapace-like skin, smooth horn, and slate-blue eyes to make my brain want to chase after it.

“The cunt skag is that?” I screamed, wheeling backward.

“The what is that? The what? I swear, if the moths don't kill me, I'm going to laugh myself to death.”

“The head!” I replied, trying to ignore his mocking nonchalance.

DD leaned in and doffed his hood, revealing an unexpected shock of orange mane. “No idea. It looks like a bug pony or something. All about bugs here, I guess.”

~~~~~~~~~~

>>Great. Well, I have some documents that might interest you.

I started reading. The first document was a heavily redacted archeological report alluding oh so vaguely to something very old found beneath Baltimare. The second was an acquisition report signed by Nurse Heartspark. The third was an internal missive from the Church of Life regarding the archeological sample. The last and final was the detailed report from my surgery.

>>As you can see, Doctor Helix was oblivious to what he was doing.

No. Whatever it was, he'd put it inside my head!

>>How about my proposal? I'll arrange everything, you just need to go where I can't.

Making a joke was all I could do to keep from crying. "You know, you'd make a great secretary."

>>Maybe.

~~~~~~~~~~

Thwack!

Thwack! Thwack!

No pink lightning here. These turrets used good old fashioned bullets. This reinforced my self-evaluation that I was not an action pony, and with every metallic thwack I sunk deeper behind the divider and deeper into the realization that I didn't want to be here and I wasn't very good at this.

I did this. I got everypony into this. But now I was going to get them out. I owed them. I owed Peel. Big time. Maybe not a carrot cake, but her life, at least.

"Specificity, lady. Like what?"

The bones in the labs looked different. Yellowed. Brittle. The ones upstairs glistened white, like they'd been prepped for a museum. These had actually decayed.

I jabbed a hoof toward the slightly rusty set of saddle cannons topping off the pile. The pair of threatening boxes called to me on some primal level. "What's that?"

"It's a rocket launcher," DD replied, "and you're not touching it."

"But it looks... powerful."

Lozenge: destroying history one office at a time! The timer sped to zero, and on a scale of one to ten, the ensuing explosion was a hydra's foreskin cunt skag supreme. DD and I fired through the window like a pair of living bullets, fire eating the wall behind us, and if it hadn't been for the pile of lab junk two skeleton unicorns had made into an unsuccessful barrier, we would have skidded all the way out the front door and taken one hell of a splat some fifteen stories below. Unfortunately, I landed on something that seemed to be breathing, and... Hello!

“Get your snat outta my face,” he grunted, trying to sweep me off.

I bristled and kicked back into his chest. “Don't call it a snat!”

"Like time," I gulped.

"Oh, it is a screw job. This whole thing's a screw job. And what you did, with the bomb? Either you feel guilty about being party to the screw, or, on some subconscious level, you realize how deeply fucked you are and took the only way you could to get out from under it. Which one is it?" He leaned in on me. I shrunk down.

He didn't trust me, and he was right not to. Still, he was pretty nice, and I liked his mane. "Neither."

"What? You were just going to give up?"

Again, in that place on the border of elation and unease, I squeaked, "I was. Not now."

He gaped at me for a second, no doubt trying to tally whether or not I was messing with him, then did a little blink. I felt bad about that blink. It looked more like a wince.

Free of the brakes, the tram rocketed down the skyway. The steering controls groaned in protest, but held. Why? Because Everseal was awesome, and rapidly becoming my favorite non-drug liquid. The track did not hold up. Why? Because Trixie was a world class bitch and blasted the pillar out with a roaring shower of... fireworks. Big, explosive fireworks.

Abridged had managed to restore copies of The Egghead's Guide to Running (a signed original), Predictions and Prophecies, and a faded poster with military letters that practically marched across the bottom: "ADMIRAL SEA SWIRL WANTS YOU! JOIN THE EQUESTRIAN ROYAL NAVY!" A skeletal leg hooked into the bottom of the jagged frame, the rest of the pony piled beneath. He'd been writing something; whatever it was now lost to time. He'd also yanked the damn thing crooked. I straightened it.

Abridged squinted and craned her face in. "Wait, I think I can get what he was writing, too." Her horn lit up again, enveloping the paper in a wispy white haze. The writing started to regenerate.

"...they will live a life of contention..."

Climbing off of the jerkwad, I saw the turrets outside the window slump inertly. Goody. Now we would get into that back lab. Not two steps later, I heard the scuttling of tiny legs. DD game me a look. I gave him one back. A pony more artistic than I could write volumes about what was said in those looks. I'll just say, we both knew Trixie had screwed us. Again.

"What do you mean, like time?" he replied, and I caught the first bit of apprehension I'd ever heard in his voice, no doubt from hearing the quick southern turn in my own.

"I could blow up at any time," I said.

"Are you coming on to me?" Double Down replied, expressionless.

Jerk. Wait, no... Yeah. Jerk. I snorted and turned away.

"I'm seeing it out of order!" I practically shrieked.

The orbus of when blew out in every direction

"I'm seeing time out of order!"

~4~

Time stopped bounding and bubbling in disheveled and erratic torrents.

It slowly leveled, flowing in clean, smooth succession like water from a spigot.

"Oatmeal? Are you crazy!? That's my husband!"

The pink pony and her purple friend giggled at each other across the coffee table, their hooves over their mouths. They looked like two ponies free and satisfied, their laughter ringing out unburdened and unconcerned. It was like me hanging out with BB and Syntax, except without us secretly disliking each other. Just being next to them made me feel better.

The purple one giggled. "It's actually funny, when you hear it all at once."

Just being next to them... and where exactly was next to them?

"I know, r..." The pink one stopped mid-sentence. Her eyes slowly honed in on me. "...Cheerilee? How'd you get here?"

"Cheerilee? Oh," I replied, still having enough Laughter to not devolve into shock. In fact, I felt like my Laughter had been kicked up in potency inside my veins. "You got it all wrong. Cheerilee was my progenitor. I was cloned from..."

"Pinkie, who are you talking to?" the purple one asked.

"One-eyed Cheerilee, of course!" Pinkie chirped, pointing a hoof at me.

"Actually, m-my name's Lozenge, and I'm a what about having one eye?"

"I don't see anypony," Not-Pinkie said in sardonic disbelief.

I recognized Not-Pinkie's face. It looked big-bigger-realer than the tiny one in the corner of the visitor's map, but it was no doubt the same. She even had the same spiky little crown. Wait! My eyes deceived me; did she have a horn and wings? I knew it was a hallucination now. There was no alicorn but Solstice! Blasphemy!

Pinkie hopped off her confetti and balloon patterned couch and walked toward me. My body reacted immediately to her proximity. My veins sashayed under my skin. My brain literally vibrated. It felt like my blood wanted to jump out and dance. She moved her face up only and inch from mine. I tried to move, but couldn't. This close, she didn't look so free and unconcerned. She had bags under her eyes. Stress creases lined her cheeks. Still, those shocking blue peepers maintained constant mirth. She simultaneously looked like the least and most worried mare I'd ever seen.

She leaned in so close I could see my reflection in those big, clear, sharp-blue rings. In them, I saw the gaping hole where my left eye should be. It didn't look injured. It was just not there.

"I-I don't think she can see me," I gasped, my voice mousy and small.

"Who? Twilight?" Pinkie replied.

As if it wasn't all mindbendingly confusing enough, the door opened and Trixie walked in. Not half-moth Trixie. Her body had been restored to complete marehood, one side reflecting the other in perfect sleek blue and silver symmetry. Frankly, she looked stunning.

"Twilight, I was just talking to... who in Tartarus is that?" she cried with an extra layer of disgust, "where's her eye!?"

Her voice sounded kind of nice when it wasn't menacing and insectile. Her manners, however, hadn't much changed.

"Who is everypony talking about!?" Twilight shouted back.

"Why are you trying to kill us?" I yelled at Trixie, adding to the cacophony of shouting mares.

"Kill you? I've never seen you before in my life!" she yelled back, looking genuinely hurt. Her lungs seemed to be roaring along as fast and heavy as mine.

"Kill her?" Pinkie cried.

"Why is everypony yelling?" Twilight yelled.

"So I said, Oatmeal?" Pinkie chimed in.

Twilight screwed up her face, but didn't lower her volume, "Pinkie, you just told that one!"

Never seen me before? How the...? I'd really lost it. This wasn't fun anymore. I had to stop this before something went totally haywire, and I had a pretty solid grasp on how to do it. I strained to close my left eye. Everything warped and twisted again, taking on a pale blue edge. The room went silent. Pinkie blinked and cocked her head. Trixie gasped. Blasphemous Hallucination Twilight stared between the two rapt mares in utter confusion.

My eye resisted. I strained harder, finally forcing it shut.

A screeching whoosh came down.

Pinkie, Twilight, and their confetti world vanished.

Trixie Lulamoth appeared.

Author's Note

That's as confusing as it gets.