Cracking the Elements of Harmony

“This is now a state of crisis.”

Princess Celestia spoke to what remained of the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony. Any illusion that Fluttershy’s death was the result of Pinkie’s madness was now shattered, and Celestia’s first order, after receiving word from Ponyville on what had happened to Rarity, was to call together the Bearers. Despite Twilight’s lifeless gaze, despite Rainbow Dash’s tears of anger and despite Applejack’s noticeable fright, she spoke as if the ponies in front of her were the Royal Guards, and she was sending them off to battle. Only Spike was missing from the picture, but nothing – not even Celestia’s pleas – could get him to leave his post.

“I believe that someone or something has set its sights upon you.” She paced in front of them and looked at them, showing nothing but determination that she would defend them, as she would all her subjects. “Which is why you are now confined to the castle until we can eliminate the threat.”

The force field that had kept Discord isolated was now once again expanded to the whole city of Canterlot. Shining Armor was straining himself to maintain the pink bubble until the threat passed – whatever it was. In light of all that had happened, he had no time to fully discern the stark contrast between the happy occasion that was once the cause for this exact struggle and the brutal circumstances that warranted it now. Patrols were combing all of Equestria for any strange happenings and as the surviving Elements went to visit Rarity, Twilight was talking with Pinkie Pie.

“Don’t you see Pinkie, you had nothing to do with this. Why won’t you understand that?”

Pinkie Pie hadn’t changed her attitude toward what had happened. Twilight had told her what had happened to Rarity; Pinkie Pie shrugged, turned her head back to the wall of the cell in front of her and muttered something, than went back to scraping the floor of the padded cell aimlessly. Both her front hooves were wrapped in dressings, but the scars on her face were healing nicely. She had been placed in a normal cell when she was first brought to Canterlot and the injured hooves were the result of the newly developed habit. The padded cell, they thought, would minimize further injuries.

“As long as you keep saying that you did it, Celestia can’t let you out of here. She can’t.”

When Twilight first broke the news regarding Rarity, she had tears in her eyes and a barely contained sadness in her voice, but Pinkie’s reaction soon turned that sadness to anger, then to disbelief. After shouting had failed, Twilight had all but given up. She was in no state to perform the complex magic required to bring Pinkie Pie back, and even if she were, there was no indication that Pinkie was affected by the same type of condition that Discord had once inflicted upon all of them. She was not visibly different, apart from the deflated mane, and there was no sign of malice, but to herself. There was only one thing that Twilight could now do.

“I brought you something, Pinkie. I had a long argument with Celes-“ Twilight stopped and gently smiled, silently berating herself over the trivial matters she was about to burden Pinkie with. “Actually, never mind. I’m sure you have more important things to think about right now. Here you go. I hope it helps.”

Twilight smiled again, this time hopefully, as she looked at Pinkie. Much to her surprise, Pinkie Pie looked away from the ground and turned her head back to Twilight. Upon seeing the necklace that once held her Element of Harmony lying on the floor, she did something that surprised Twilight. She looked her straight into the eyes, tears forming in her own, and smiled. The she said, with a voice jagged from all the crying, and her missing teeth playing with the acoustics, “Hanh yuu.”

Before Twilight could move, Pinkie lowered her gaze onto the necklace and looked at it intently. The gentle smile was growing, ever so slightly, so that it would have been invisible to any random pony, but Twilight knew Pinkie well enough and she noticed it. She also knew, from the way Pinkie was losing herself in the golden indentation that once held the blue gem, that there was little point in saying anything more.

Everything is going to be all right, she thought to herself as she turned and went out of the cell. The Royal Guard closed the door and escorted her out of the dungeon underneath the castle. I have to get out of here.

“Ah hope you can hear me, Rarity. Ah hope you know we’re here for ya,” Applejack said between heavy breaths that accompanied her tears as she stroked Rarity’s hoof with her own. Rainbow Dash was standing motionlessly by the door, wings tensely outstretched. She had kept the door open as the nearest escape route at what she was expecting to see. She was not expecting this.

Rarity was lying in a hospital bed in the castle’s infirmary. Several tubes were inserted into her body, mouth and nostrils, and more tubes went below the cover, all connected to containers above and below the bed. Fresh blood, plasma, medicine, and others that the two visiting ponies either didn’t know or didn’t wish to name. Next to the bed, gems slowly released the magic that had been placed in them, so that the doctors didn’t have to be present at all times. Her body was wrapped in bandages, from the hooves to her scalp, with only the mane and tail giving any sign of who was sleeping on the bed. At places, a pinkish hue had formed in circles from the blood that would take days to stop flowing even as the magic of the best doctors was constantly working underneath the bandages to repair the damage. There was only one more color – that of a brownish yellow discharge that was seeping to the surface of the bandages that had been placed over her eye sockets. The infection from the loss of her eyes, they said, was severe.

Every now and again, a twitch shook her body and every time it happened, Applejack responded with a twitch of her own as it fiercely ignited any hope that Rarity would wake up. She had been told by the doctors, as they all had been, that Rarity would never wake up. The damage to her brain tissue was too severe for any form of sentience to reappear, the body lying wrapped in bandages in front of her living in a vegetative state, courtesy of the brainstem that was spared any damage. Rarity would display signs of the sleep cycle. Her heart would pump blood. Her lungs would draw air. But she would never wake up. She would never gasp for air and clutch the tubes in shock and defense. She would never hear or speak again. There would be no thoughts forming in her mind, the only sign of activity from the brain being the repetitive, mechanical firings of neurons that maintained the vital functions.

Applejack knew all this, but she refused to acknowledge it. She had already lost one friend to a brutal enemy; two she couldn’t accept. Rainbow Dash was shaking gently, yet rapidly. She had hated Pinkie Pie when Fluttershy died. It wasn’t merely the act itself that filled her with hate and contempt, or the countless questions that appeared in her mind as soon as she saw what had happened. It wasn’t the absurdity of seeing Pinkie Pie confess to it in tears, with sheer truthfulness and self-loathing. Deep down inside her, it was the way in which it was done that had really broken her spirit. The attack had followed no code of honor and no moral justification. She would have understood if a conflict between the two would have gotten out of control and if Pinkie would have killed her out of perceived righteous anger, not that she would have ever had the grounds for that. She would still have hated her, but she would at least understand on some level why she had done it. But to turn on somepony without warning, to do what Pinkie had done and then to merely confess without explaining, that was the complete betrayal of loyalty to any standards of life that Rainbow had ever heard of. And then she discovered she was wrong.

There was simply no way for Pinkie to know that Rarity would visit Fluttershy’s cottage. There was no way to prepare the trap effectively in the short amount of time that Pinkie had before the other arrived on the scene. It wasn’t Pinkie that had so grotesquely hurt Rarity, which meant it probably wasn’t Pinkie that had killed Fluttershy. And she knew by now that it couldn’t have been Discord either, not with Rarity anyway. Somepony or something was targeting them and her first response was to blindly focus on what was in front of her that day when Fluttershy died, to stand up for her dead friend by doing everything in her power to hate the one she thought was responsible. And she was wrong. In her effort to protect Fluttershy, she had betrayed Pinkie Pie. Betrayal. That word hurt her more than any injury she had ever sustained. Any yet, there was one creature in the castle who was hurting more than anypony – or anyone – else.

Spike was sitting on a chair on the other side of the bed, holding Rarity’s hoof. He didn’t cry or shake or twitch, even when she did. He held a constant gaze to meet her eyes, even if they weren’t there, and gently slid his thumb up and down the same spot over and over again. They had tried to keep him out, the doctors and the nurses, but after hours of trying, they gave up. Even Applejack surrendered, when she realized that he had seen Rarity long before anypony else. He had seen her in a state much worse than how she was now and he was the one who sent the message written in her blood to alert them all.

Spike had done his service. And his crying. He had cracked a few teeth from the spasms that accompanied the initial outburst. It had started the moment that what he was seeing, in the cellar, registered in his brain. And after a brief moment of clarity, when he had no energy left to cry, he sent the message and waited. After he was taken out of the cottage, and the shock passed, he spent hours crying and vomiting, Twilight using every grip and trying every magic she knew to subdue him. Now he was just wondering. Wondering about Rarity. Wondering if, had he followed her to the cottage sooner, instead of waiting in blissful ignorence for the few hours that he did, he could have been able to save her.

“But I have to go!”

Dusk was enveloping Canterlot, and Twilight was once again shouting at Shining Armor. He put his hoof to his forehead to stop the headache before it had a chance to spread. He loved his sister, there was no doubt about that, and he was well-versed in dealing with pressure, especially from her, but this time it was different. The force field he was maintaining was in his hooves alone, as Cadence took it upon herself to relieve the misery of Ponyville after such a brutal event and the lack of a known enemy made her presence unnecessary for the time being. A powerful burst of magic that their combined love could create was useful for dispelling enemies, but that was precisely what it was. A single burst. Without Shining’s constant concentration, the field would fluctuate dangerously. At the same time, he was still responsible for everything the Guards were doing. Those two factors alone were causing the headache, and now Twilight, who he knew had just lost two best friends and was bravely coping with the emotions that were going through her, was demanding of him to break his oath to Celestia and disobey the order that had confined the Elements inside the castle walls.

“Twilight, I-“

“NO! You don’t understand!” Twilight shouted back in pure anger. “You have to-“

“No!”

He returned the reply in the same manner in which it had arrived. It was the way she said “You have to,” as if his actions up until now, and the risk that came with them, had meant nothing she , that caused a spike of pain in his head that released his anger. On the inside, he immediately felt a pang of guilt over the harsh tone and the brutal expression he had just used, but with all the other issues occupying his mind, it was beyond his control. That single word held in it the pent-up frustration of the past few days and he had focused it on the one pony who was in need of help more than him. He saw Twilight recoil in fear as she had never seen him in a state like that before, but at the same time he knew that, partially at least, the manner of his response was the only way to break through her emotional barrier and speak to her reasonably. Instead of apologizing, he softened his expression only a fraction, now looking at her as an older brother should look a disobedient little sister, before he spoke again.

“You don’t understand. You cannot leave this castle until we put an end to this… madness.” He finally relented, and his eyes turned sad. “You’ve lost two of your friends and we still don’t know who did it and I can’t allow you to go out looking for danger. I can’t lose you, Twiley.”

“What if ah go?”

Twilight and Shinning turned in fear despite the familiar voice. Applejack was standing in the doorway, leaning gently on it, although that was not the sole sign of fatigue. Dark circles were slowly forming under her eyes, and her fur wasn’t quite as smooth as it usually would have been. It was not her appearance or the fact that she was there that scared Twilight and Shining. It was the fact that they had been discovered.

“How did you-“

Applejack cut Twilight off when she walked into the room and said plainly, without joy or malice, “It’s just like you to sneak into a classroom after hours. Nopony else would ‘ave done that.” She turned around to close the door. “We got mighty worried when you didn’t show up, so ah went t’ look for ya.”

Before the door closed completely, a blue hoof blocked them. Applejack, still looking at the other two ponies in the room and completely immersed in what she had planned for this confrontation, merely jerked her head around to see what was holding up the door. Twilight closed her eyes in anticipation of the battle that was about to commence, and Shining Armor opened his mouth in surprise at how easily the hiding place was discovered. Rainbow Dash firmly pushed the door ajar and walked in. She looked directly at Twilight with an unyielding look in her eyes.

“I should go.”

“You don’t even know what this is about.” Twilight had regained her composure in no time at all, thanks to the sudden need to form coherent arguments and to rationally explain to the intruders that she alone could do what she had wanted to do. She looked at Applejack next. “Neither of you do.”

“No,” Applejack replied first, “Ah don’t. But ah take it yer planning to go out of Canterlot for whatever reason and ah can’t allow you to do that.” Twilight raised a hoof in objection, but Applejack wouldn’t give her the chance to talk. Not for now, anyway. “Yer a princess Twilight. Celestia will know you’ve left the moment you walk out the door. Trust me, she’s keepin’ an eye on ya. But you can just say ah went to sleep. Or that ah want to be left alone. She’ll trust you.”

Twilight stared at Applejack in surprise and awe. For the first time that she had known her, there was nothing she could say to counter any of that. The logic behind it was sound, and Twilight wasn’t used to arguing on emotional grounds. Even if she tried, she knew Applejack would win the debate. So she just stared, as did Shining Armor. As did, much to everypony’s hidden surprise, Rainbow Dash. She was still looking at Twilight with the same stare, despite their eyes not meeting. Even Applejack was prepared for a comment from Rainbow, but when none came, she continued.

“So why don’t y’all tell me what is it yer tryin’ to find, and ah’ll go find it.”

Seeing she was now facing not one, but three ponies, Twilight relented. Momentarily, she looked at the ground to gather her thoughts, then looked back at her friends and explained.

“Pinkie didn’t do it. I know it.” She spoke slowly, with measured, quiet words so as not to be heard and to let the listeners know of the full meaning of what she was saying. “They found a book at the Sugarcube Corner – what was it?” She looked back at Shining.

“Magic for Pegasi and Earth ponies - Transformation enchantments. If I remember correctly.”

“Right. Only I went to the library here, and they still have the same book. And they didn’t lend that one out!” She nervously put a hoof in front of her mouth at the gentle raise in her voice, then continued in a quiet manner. “I know there wasn’t one in the library in Ponyville. So Pinkie couldn’t have gotten it there.” For the first time, she showed a hint of doubt, as her eyes darted to the ground and back up again. “But there is someone we know who does magic but isn’t a unicorn.”

Applejack gasped. Rainbow remained motionless.

“Are you sayin’-“

“No,” Twilight adamantly said. “I’m not saying that. But I would like to talk to her. Whoever brought that book to Sugarcube Corner must have taken it somewhere.”

“And that’s why I’m saying we should let the Guards bring her in,” Shining Armor started, but soon corrected himself. “I will order the Guards to bring her in.”

Twilight looked at him, only this time not in anger or determination, but as if pleading for her life. Her tone of voice reflected that.

“Don’t. If whoever did this sees Royal Guards flying toward her, he’ll know we’re onto him. And if she…” Twilight weighed whether she should say what she intended to say. The words would swing the argument far in her favor, but the implications of her truthfulness and trust would remain forever. She looked Shining in the eyes. “If she did have something to do with this, she’ll run. And then we’ll never find her.” She couldn’t allow him to say anything, so she answered the question before he could ask it. “You know they can’t make a quiet entrance and I can because everypony thinks we’re trapped in Canterlot.”

“And that’s why ah should go.” Twilight turned to Applejack, fearful of another reasonable explanation that would force her to send her friend into danger. “They’ll miss ya. Ah can smuggle myself out of Canterlot, go through the Everfree, and come back in a few days.”

The logic was sound, but there were finally mistakes that Twilight was preparing to use as a doorstop to Applejack’s charge. A few days was a few days too many. The thought that Celestia could be fooled for a few days while Applejack was away was more than wishful thinking. The whole journey didn’t inspire confidence, either. Applejack would have to board a train, somehow got off in Ponyville without being noticed, traverse The Everfree and repeat the journey in reverse. The number of danger zones, where there was a possibility for detection, was simply too great. And seeing as how the train was now the only civilian transport allowed in and out of Canterlot, that was the only way Applejack could travel.

“That’ll take forever.” Rainbow Dash intervened, still looking as determined as before. She pointed at Twilight and banked her head in disapproval of her plan. “You can’t go.” Then she turned to Applejack with a similar expression. “It’ll take you days to get there and back and Celestia’s no idiot.” Then she looked back at Twilight and said in a voice that didn’t leave room for a debate, “I’ll go.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and looked away before she whispered, “And you don’t think anypony will notice you?” She turned to face her. Rainbow Dash was already convinced she was going to be the one sneaking out of Canterlot, but Twilight couldn’t allow that to happen. “I think they’re watching the skies quite a lot more than trains. It’s easier to fly in than to get past the checkpoints.” Behind her, Shining Armor was slowly nodding at that theory. Twilight shook her head to point out the impossibility of what Rainbow was wanting to do. “And you don’t think they’ll see you?”

Rainbow’s proud stature dropped ever so slightly. That was something she hadn’t considered, as her mind had prioritized the act of going over the details of how to go. She looked around in confusion.

“Maybe, if you put an invisibility spell-“

“I can’t do that.” Twilight said with the same tone as Rainbow had so confidently spoken in before. “And even if I could, it would only last to the field.”

As Rainbow’s shoulders and head slumped forward, Applejack took the charge. She stepped forward, and said directly to Twilight, “So it’s settled. Ah’m goin’.”

“We’ve been over this, Applejack, you can’t go,” Twilight plead. “It would take too long.”

“I’ll get her there.”

Shining’s subdued voice resembled a shameful confession, said in a whisper, yet it cut through the room faster than any scream could. The three mares looked at him, and for a moment, the whole room went quiet. Rainbow Dash was wondering and hoping that, perhaps, he had meant her, rather than Applejack. Applejack was taken aback by his willingness to aid her in breaking one of Celestia’s orders. The same thought was going through Twilight’s head, only it wasn’t the only thing on her mind. Faint traces of anger and jealousy over the fact that he had chosen to help Applejack, but had refused to help her, were mixing in with the surprise. Shining kept looking at Applejack.

“There’s a Chariot leaving for Ponyville in two hours. It’s going back at first light tomorrow.” His voice was still revealing how much he was sacrificing by offering this. “I can get you on it. Both times.”

“Can’t you do that for me?!” Rainbow Dash let out a genuine scream and the others were quick to shush her.

“I could, but I won’t.” The rediscovered fortitude took the mares by surprise. He pointed at Rainbow. “How long do you think it would take for you to be seen by somepony? All of Equestria’s crawling with Guards. And even if I get them away, anypony in Ponyville could recognize you at any moment.” That he was saying those word in the tone of a teacher rebuking an audacious student, made him appear even taller and wiser than he really was. “Do you have any idea how much I’m- we’re risking by doing this?” He noticed he had confessed his fear of being caught, but hoped the mares hadn’t. He turned to Twilight. “You can’t go. You have to stay here.” Finally, he looked at Applejack again. “You’re the only one who can hide behind a large hat and some old clothes.”

There was nothing more left to discuss. Twilight looked at Shining without saying a word. She had picked up on the broken word and, for the first time since the wedding, she was genuinely afraid for him. She had wanted him to somehow make her an exit in the force field, that was all. She never wanted to force him into such a sacrifice, both of his oaths; to Celestia and to himself, but she also knew better than to say anything now that he had made his decision. She motioned to Rainbow Dash to leave, and soon Applejack and Shining Armor were left alone in the classroom to work out the details of her escape.