The Modifiers

“Exactly what is ‘fate’?  Do you think it really exists?  I mean, we’re pretty sure we have a decent grasp on what it is, but…what if it’s not how you usually think about it?  What if it’s…”  Sweetie Belle appeared to be struggling for the right word, and she looked down at the ground as she tried to collect her thoughts.  “What if it’s only manufactured?  Does it still count as fate, if somepony is behind the scenes, controlling your every move?

“I know this isn’t the kind of thing that somepony our age usually would ask, and I know by the look on your face that the first question you’re gonna ask is why we’re mentioning all this.  You might not like the truth, but Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, and I are all still scratching our heads.  We’re at a loss, and we hope that you’ll be able to handle this info as well as we did.  You see, it all began about a week ago…”

“Almost done cleaning those dishes, Sweetie Belle?” Rarity asked, popping her head into the kitchen doorway to check up on her sister.

Sweetie Belle was standing on a short wooden stool in order to reach the top of the kitchen counter.  She had just finished cleaning off a plate, taking it out of the sudsy water and rinsing it; quickly drying the plate off with a cloth already soaked from drying so many previous dishes, the filly looked into the cleaned piece of white porcelain, using it as a mirror to look at her sister behind her.  “Almost done, Sis.  I still don’t see why you couldn’t have done it, though,” she grumbled, and loudly clacked the plate on top of the stack she had going on the right of the sink.  “With your horn, you’d have gotten it done way faster than me.”

“Perhaps, but I’m busy with other things,” Rarity replied.  “Besides, since you’re staying here for the weekend, you’re going to help out with the chores.”  The unicorn disappeared from view, going back to work on her dresses in the other room.  When Rarity was out of sight, Sweetie Belle mumbled something underneath her breath.

“I’m gonna be late!” the filly complained loudly as she vigorously rubbed the next dirty plate, filtering her frustration into cleaning power.

“For what, exactly?” Rarity asked from the far side of the adjacent room, having overheard her sister since she had been talking so loud, she was practically begging for a response.  “Are the Cutie Mark Crusaders going to try something new today?”

“We try something new every day in an attempt to discover our talents!” Sweetie Belle declared, shooting a hoof out from the bubbly sink water and into the air for emphasis, not that Rarity could see her pose from the other room.  “Each day brings forth a new challenge we must overcome, like the professionals we are!”

“Is that so?” Rarity chuckled as she snipped a small piece of ribbon for the dress she was half done with.  “Don’t worry, you and your friends will figure it out soon enough.  It just takes time, Sweetie Belle—”

There was a loud clacking sound, and Rarity’s head jolted around to see a small white blur dash from the kitchen to the front door of the boutique.  “That was the last plate, Rarity!” Sweetie Belle called out while swinging the door open.  “I’mgonnabelatesoIgottahurryseeyalaterIloveyoubye!”  Before Rarity could open her mouth, Sweetie Belle was out the door, slamming it a little too hard behind her and promptly yelling “sorry!” from the outside before taking off for Sweet Apple Acres.

Rarity glanced at the door with a small smile.  “That girl just can’t stay in one place for more than a second,” she said to herself while shaking her head.

Sweetie Belle was only ten feet out the boutique when she heard a familiar voice calling out behind her.  “Hey, wait up, Sweetie Belle!  I’ve been waiting here for you for twenty minutes!”

Sweetie Belle skidded to a halt and turned around to greet a little orange pegasus rolling up to her on a scooter, hauling a small red wagon right behind and wearing a helmet for protection.  Scootaloo nodded back to the fancy-looking building she had just been laying up against.  “I rang earlier, but your sis answered the door and said you had some chores to do first.”  She rolled her light-purple eyes in annoyance.  “It’s, like, nine thirty—how many chores do you have to do, anyways?”

“Sorry, Scootaloo,” Sweetie Belle apologized with an awkward half-smile, “When I sleep at Rarity’s, she lets me sleep in, so I wake myself up usually.”  She shrugged slightly.  “I woke up only half an hour ago.”

“Well, hurry up and hop in!” the pegasus replied, pointing to the red wagon she was towing, “Apple Bloom’s probably wondering where the heck we are by now!”

Sweetie Belle grinned and leapt into the wagon, and Scootaloo immediately took off through the busy morning streets of Central Ponyville.  “What’re we gonna do today, now?” Scootaloo asked to the unicorn she was pulling, “Or did we even make any plans?”

“I thought the first thing we were going to do was watch Rainbow Dash perform those tricks she was talking about…?” Sweetie Belle replied, confused.

Scootaloo’s eyes widened at the realization.  “Oh, crud, we were!”  The filly’s wings fluttered with as much power as they could muster; Sweetie Belle had to grab onto the edges of the wagon as Scootaloo propelled into top speed.  “We can’t keep Rainbow Dash waiting!  We gotta get to Sweet Apple Acres!”

The thin lip on the wagon’s side barely grazed one of the ponies walking through the street that hadn’t heard Scootaloo’s yelling to “make way!”  He looked down, shocked, at the thin horizontal burn-mark left on his side, and then glared up at Sweetie Belle, who had turned around to see if he was all right.  Scootaloo hadn’t seemed to notice what happened.

“Slow down, Scootaloo!” Sweetie Belle cried, “For crying out loud, it’s not like anything big is gonna happen there, anyway!”

“OW!  What was that for?”

The stallion awoke from a newspaper being swatted against the side of his head.  He looked up and saw his fedora-donned boss glaring down at him, with his face cast against the beginning sunset—or ending sunrise, the sleepy stallion wasn’t exactly sure what time it was.  There was a very stern expression on his boss’s burgundy face, emanating authority despite the fair amount of age; the dark circles and slight bags under his eyes were quite prevalent.

“Now’s not the time for sleeping, Advocate,” he cautioned, “We still have a lot of work to do.”  He cocked an eyebrow at his subordinate lying on the park bench.  “Don’t tell me you’re starting to lose your edge?”

“Sorry sir.”  The golden-yellow unicorn named “Advocate” sat up from the bench and grabbed the fedora at his side, placing it back atop his head.  “But I must admit that I can feel the years slowing catching up to me.”  The yellow stallion showed age as well, but not near as much as the burgundy male standing next to him.  There were slight wrinkles underneath Advocate’s ruby eyes, and whether his white mane was from birth or from old age, one couldn’t exactly tell.

The maroon stallion looked at his subordinate with bemused teal eyes.  “We’ve been working at this for over a millennium.  With only another decade or so to go, now’s the time that you begin to lose your edge?  Come, Advocate, we’ve work to do.”

The yellow stallion got up from the bench and followed the other as they both walked down the dirt path of the park.  “I’m very sorry Skipper…I know that I haven’t even been working at this as long as you or the others have, and yet I’m getting weaker than them much faster…”

“Hm, yes, I suppose you’re right…” Skipper mused.  “You’re one of the few we’ve allowed in after the initial plan took effect.  You’ve only seven hundred years under your belt—why are you the one that’s losing his edge, then?”

“I never could get hang of temporal spells, sir,” Advocate reminded with a defeated shrug.  “If anything were to be the cause, I’d say that’s it.”  Unlike his other colleagues, Advocate struggled to keep his old body from deteriorating too fast.  Skipper had perfect control over himself, but he chose to stay in his aged look—he preferred it that way.

The boss hummed to himself.  “Perhaps…perhaps…  All water under the bridge now though, so let’s continue with the plan.  Only another decade, and we can retire with our heads held high.”

Advocate nodded, his white mane tickling his forehead as his head bounced up and down.  “So, I take it there’s been a new modification in order?”

Skipper tossed to his subordinate the paper that he had smacked him with earlier, and Advocate grabbed it in midair with his magic, enveloping it in a golden aura.  He opened up the paper and looked at its contents; the only part of the paper that was the actual Equestria Daily was the front and back pages, concealing the instructions on the modification inside.  “I see…I take it this modification is to speed up the Id’s development?”

“Yes, but hopefully it will also branch out to the Ego and the Super.”  Skipper looked back at Advocate with stern eyes.  “I was going to have you handle it, but seeing as how you appear to be losing your edge…”

Advocate let out a frustrated sigh.  “Sir, I can take care of it myself.”

“I could just as well have Delegate take care of it,” the leader advised.  “Are you POSITIVE that you can do this without messing anything up?  This modification is a bit vital, and modifying Loyalty has proved before to be a tad bit…tricky.”

“Nothing we haven’t handled before, sir.”

“Nonetheless, I still think it’s best that I have Delegate head this, alright?  Nothing personal, it’s just that I feel you aren’t up to the task.”

He may as well have punched Advocate in the face.  “Y-Yes sir…”

Skipper stopped dead in his tracks.  “Delegate,” he stated to the open breeze.

A split in the air appeared to Skipper’s right, like someone quickly opening a horizontal zipper.  Just as quickly as the rift appeared, it vanished, leaving in its wake a smug-looking, older unicorn male who was wearing a fedora over his pink fuzzy mane; a large toothy smile was spread across his face.  “I take it you want me to handle it, sir?” he said confidently.

“Quit being so hasty,” Skipper said flatly.  “You look a bit flushed.”

“Haha, I’m red, ‘flushed,’ I get it already,” Delegate said, brushing off the joke.  “You’d think after a thousand years, you’d get tired of cracking that one.  Anyways—I take it you want me to handle the new modification?”

Skipper nodded his head.  “Yes.  Advocate, if you would?” he said to the yellow unicorn behind him, pointing to the newspaper he was levitating.

“Oh, of course.”  Advocate handed the paper to Delegate.  “Careful though.  Loyalty’s involved.  She’s been a hassle in the past.”

“Meh, we DID prime her to be a difficult mare to deal with.  Nothing I can’t handle, old man,” Delegate joked to the yellow stallion.  The aged target of the joke wasn’t very happy with the insult, and gave a silent snarl of anger at the red unicorn.

“Quite honestly,” Advocate brought up, “of all of us, why have YOU modify Loyalty?  Shouldn’t Ambassador handle this, since he’s more experience in that field?”

“Delegate thinks a lot like Loyalty, so I figure it would be easier for him to handle the modification,” Skipper replied.  “Ambassador is better for the generalities and the…miscellaneous, I suppose.”

“And if you’d have gotten a better grip on your own spells, you could be handling this yourself and not losin’ your edge this badly, ya old man,” Delegate repeated at Advocate, wearing a sly grin that practically begged the ‘old man’ to punch him in the face.

“Yes, anyways…” Skipper began, ignoring the two’s discussion, “Delegate, this modification is very specific.  Loyalty must be kept in her house—and make sure you get it done after she wakes up, but before the Trio make it to her.  It’s vital.”

Delegate’s faced scrunched at the direction, and he gave another glance at the latter half of the instructions in the paper.  “But I’m supposed to cover the entire house, Skipper,” Delegate said somewhat nervously, “Won’t the freeze be a bit obvious to anypony that may pass by?”

Skipper smiled.  “Everyone in town’s been modified to go about other business.  No one will even come close to that house, save the Trio—which is why you must be very precise.  We’re toying with chance here, but it should only last thirty seconds; you really think you can’t do that?”

Delegate huffed at his leader’s suggestion.  “What’re ya talking about?!  Of course I can do it—count on me!”

“Tomorrow morning.  Don’t screw up,” the maroon unicorn instructed.  “Let’s go, Advocate, we’ve other things to take care of.”

There was a quick cut across both Skipper and Advocate, and in another instant they slipped through a gap in the air and vanished, leaving Delegate to look over the paper in silence.

“Explain t’ me why we’re doin’ this again?” Apple Bloom asked from the back of the wagon speeding away from Sweet Apple Acres.  “Why aren’t we doin’ somethin’ t’ get us our cutie marks?”

“We promised Rainbow Dash we’d watch her perform those new moves!” Scootaloo reminded her friends as she continued to pull the wagon on her scooter.

“You promised Rainbow Dash,” Sweetie Belle remarked.

“Hey—if we’re lucky, this’ll get us our cutie marks!” the orange filly said optimistically.

“Doubt it, since all we’re doin’ is watchin’ Rainbow do some tricks in the sky,” Apple Bloom replied with a sigh.  “What would a cutie mark for somethin’ like that even look like—somepony’s hindquarters sittin’ on the ground?”

“You can’t have a picture of a flank on your flank!” Sweetie Belle retorted.  “How would that even work?”

“Rainbow Dash said that she would show us a couple tricks too if we sat around and reviewed what she did, so I think it’s worth it,” Scootaloo shot back at the two.  “Look, I can see Rainbow Dash’s place over this hill—let’s hurry up!”

Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom didn’t really want to go, but they figured they may as well; the thought of learning some cool moves from Rainbow Dash herself was a very tempting thought.  Scootaloo had agreed yesterday that they would sit and watch Rainbow perform various new stunts she was trying out—the cyan pegasus preferred that the CMC watch, in case she were to royally screw something up.

Scootaloo came to a screeching halt in front of Rainbow’s floating cloud house, just outside the outskirts of Ponyville.  “Rainbow Dash!” the orange filly yelled up at the cloud’s base, “Raaainbow Daaaash!  We’ve arrived!”

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle jumped out of the wagon and stood on either side of Scootaloo.  Apple Bloom looked up at the house as well.  “Rainbow Dash?” she asked, “You up there?”

There was no response.

The three fillies looked at each other uncertainly.  Sweetie Belle took a deep breath and shouted, “RAINBOW DASH!  ARE YOU THERE!?”

They heard a mare yelp from inside.  The CMC stood quietly as they waited for another sound, or for someone to come out.  Thirty seconds later, a tired-looking Rainbow Dash slugged out of her house and looked over the edge of her cloud yard.  “Oh, hey girls…sorry, musta overslept.  Gimme a minute or two, and I’ll be out and ready to go, okay?”

The girls replied “okay”—the orange filly more enthusiastically than her two friends—as the rainbow-maned pegasus climbed back into her house.  They stood still for a minute, staring up at the house and waiting for Rainbow to come out.

“Ah’m gettin’ bored,” Apple Bloom said.

“Don’t you have any patience?” Scootaloo said to the apple farmer.  She looked around the surrounding area, her eyes eventually landing on a nearby tree.  “Here, we’ll just go and investigate that tree over there while we wait for Rainbow Dash, okay?”  Without waiting for a reply, she ventured to the tree to climb up it.

The other two shrugged to each other and followed suit, going several yards to the side of Rainbow’s house to copy Scootaloo.  The tree had a few stray limbs near the ground, just enough for the three to reach if they stacked themselves on top of each other.  “Cutie Mark Crusader Tree-Climbers!” Sweetie Belle said enthusiastically as Apple Bloom climbed on top of her head and made a reach for the bottommost limb.

In no time at all, Apple Bloom had gotten on the branch and brought up Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo; the little pegasus still couldn’t fly, but her wings gave enough lift to allow her friends to pull her up easily enough.  They continued climbing the tree’s stair-like branches into the thick brush at the top.  Glancing back out at Rainbow’s house, they still didn’t see her outside.

“Wha’s takin’ her so long?” Apple Bloom said in a hushed whisper, naturally taking on the role of a wildlife watcher, since the tree gave such good cover.

“She’s not gonna know where we are when she comes out,” Sweetie Belle giggled.  “This’ll be funny!”

Scootaloo gave a sly grin.  “We’re gonna prank the prankster!  Now if only she’d come—”

The filly’s sentence cut short when she and her friends all saw an older red stallion suddenly materialize out of nowhere, right beneath Rainbow’s house.  The CMC’s eyes widened to their breaking point in surprise.  Who the heck was that, and where did he just come from?  None of them said a word as they watched—they couldn’t tell for sure if he was a unicorn since he had a funky-looking hat on his head, but the fact that he just teleported suggested he could use magic—though, it hadn’t looked like regular teleportation.  Instead of showing up in a flash of light and color like they’d seen Twilight Sparkle do before, this guy just…it was like he had popped out from a hole in the ground, without so much as a sound.

The stallion looked around nervously in all directions, his own expression of fear rivaling that of the CMC’s.  After seeing no one else around, he sighed in content.  “Phew, I thought I was late for a minute there…the boss woulda tore me a new one…”  He shivered at the thought, and braced himself into the ground, looking up at Rainbow’s house.

Without so much as batting an eyelash, a radius tore around the stallion, enveloping the immediate area in a colorless cylinder that reached up to the cloud-house’s tip, turning everything inside the barrier ash-gray.  The rainbows running down and about Rainbow’s home turned into a streaming collage of neutral tones.  It was as if a color removal filter had been placed around the house—save for the pink-haired, blazing-red stallion standing at the center of the barren section of land, who now stood out like a sore thumb in the middle of all the gray.

Even if any of the CMC had wanted to say something, they were too awestruck—and too fearful—to say a word.  They continued to watch as the capped stallion vanished in a split second, the only thing remaining being a thin black horizontal line where he had stood, which also disappeared in an instant.  The girls all jolted their heads upward to see the stallion again, now at Rainbow’s front doorstep, and he proceeded to walk inside.

Scootaloo wasn’t going to wait and watch any longer.  She leapt out from the top of the tree and started fluttering her wings as hard as she could to lessen the impact of the two-story fall to the ground.  Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle attempted to grab her by the hind legs before she could get out of their reach, but they failed to get a grip on the pegasus.  “Are you nuts, Scootaloo!?” Sweetie Belle said in a hoarse whisper as the angry filly continued her descent.

“I wanna know what the heck he’s doing to Rainbow Dash!” the pegasus replied to her friends above.

Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom looked at each other.  “She’s gonna need backup,” Apple Bloom said weakly.  Sweetie Belle nodded, and the two began to run back down the branches, skipping every other branch in haste to get to the bottom.

Scootaloo hit the ground with a small thud but quickly regained herself, and she looked behind her shoulder to the other two who were almost at the bottom of the tree.  Tossing out logic and reasoning, the angry orange pegasus glared at the edge of the gray barrier, daring herself to take a step inside; she hesitated though, and decided not to.  Instead, she looked up at the edge of Rainbow’s house and shouted, “Hey, YOU!  COME OUT WHERE I CAN SEE YOU!”

Delegate had just finished modifying his target, and was standing outside Rainbow’s front door when he heard the high feminine voice shriek at him from below.  The voice made his blood run cold—he knew that voice.  If that really was them down there…

“W-We know you’re up there!” Apple Bloom added nervously.  “We saw you!  Don’t try an’ run away from the Cutie Mark Crusaders!”

‘Oh, SHIT, it is them!’  Delegate’s mind was racing at this point.  He couldn’t leave until he dispelled the freeze, but he couldn’t dispel the freeze without going back down to the ground where he had first set it up…

“HEY!” Scootaloo yelled again, “Red Guy!  Show your face!  What’re you doing to Rainbow Dash?!”

A thick drop of cold sweat ran down the unicorn’s red face.  “Sir…” he said softly, “I do believe I’ve lost my edge…”

Just then, from the same place the red stallion had materialized beneath Rainbow’s house, ten other hatted ponies appeared in a circular cluster around the center of the gray zone, all of them still showing their color, and looking extremely upset.  They all turned and looked at the three small fillies standing just outside the gray-color border.

The pony closest to the trio—a burgundy, teal-maned stallion that looked well over half the age of Granny Smith—looked at the three with mild disdain.  “Well…” he began, “I do believe this complicates things.”  He started walking towards the CMC, the same angry-bored look on his face.

Fear shot into the three fillies, and they all turned to run away from the group, and the stallion coming towards them.  They would have used Scootaloo’s scooter ride had the thought not even crossed their minds; they abandoned their gear and started on foot.

“Who are they!?” Sweetie Belle screamed to her friends as they ran over the hill they’d first come from.  The three were practically treading air, they were running so fast.

“You expect me to know!?” Scootaloo shot back at the unicorn.  She turned away from Sweetie Belle to look straight ahead again, only to see the same maroon pony from before blocking their path—somehow, he’d gotten ahead of them when they weren’t looking.

“Please girls,” he said in a cool, commanding tone, “Calm down, for your own sake.”

Apple Bloom looked around at the sparse forest on either side of the path, and saw a gap in the trees to their left.  “This way!” she shouted to the others, and without a second thought they turned and made a bolt for the cover of the leaves.

The stallion closed his teal eyes and shook his head slowly, letting out a heavy sigh.  “Surrogate,” he stated evenly.  A second later, a fedora-wearing unicorn mare with a silver coat and dark-blue mane shot out of a slit in the ether.  She stood next to Skipper and waited patiently for his instruction.  “Try to calm down our little cherubs.  You being a woman, you may be able to do it better than me.”

The mare nodded and looked toward the CMC, who were almost out of sight in the trees.  “Of course, sir.”

Sweetie Belle dared to look behind her, and saw that the hat-wearing ponies were out of sight.  Her throat was getting dry from sprinting so hard, but she managed to say, “Hey girls, I think we lost ‘em!”

“Now’s not the time to stop running,” Scootaloo advised.  “C’mon, we gotta get to Ponyville as fast as we can—they can’t do anything to us in front of a bunch of other ponies!”

They took a sharp turn to the right, dodging the occasional tree trunk that tried to slow down their marathon to town.  Scootaloo and Apple Bloom were much more used to the demanding task of running so hard, but Sweetie Belle was starting to lag behind.  Her throat was beyond parched, and her legs felt ready to give out any second.  “Girls…I-I’m not sure if I can make it all the way.”

“Tha’s quitter talk, Sweetie Belle!  We aren’t quitters!” Apple Bloom yelled to the unicorn filly ten feet behind her and Scootaloo.  “C’mon, you can make it!”  She slowed down a bit, just enough for Sweetie Belle to catch up next to her.  “We can make it together—c’mon!”

Scootaloo kept a watchful eye on the area ahead, making sure no hat-wearing ponies suddenly popped out of nowhere.  Out from between the light tree-cover, the filly could see the tops of several buildings in the distance.  “We’re almost there, Sweetie Belle.  Don’t give up now!”

Then suddenly, a silver mare appeared several yards ahead of Scootaloo.  The filly didn’t even see the mare come through the slit in the air—she had only blinked her eyes, and upon opening them, there the mare was, standing ready for her and her friends.

“Girls, please—”

“Detour, detour!” Scootaloo screamed to the two behind her, bringing their attention to the woman ahead of them, “Bank right, bank right!”

The three of them didn’t even make eye contact with the mare as they made a beeline through the trees, the sight of Ponyville getting closer and closer.

The mare brushed away a few stray strands of blue from her eyes as she turned to her left, keeping a watchful eye on the fillies running away from her.  “Girls, you can’t keep running forev—”

“Shut up!” Scootaloo shot back at her, giving a single second to look eye-to-eye with her enemy before continuing on running straight ahead.

Surrogate rolled her eyes.  “Sir, they’re almost in Ponyville.  They aren’t listening to reason,” she said out loud while standing alone in the forest.

“That only means we’ve been conditioning them properly,” Skipper replied to the air, walking out of an alleyway on the outskirts of Ponyville, a section of town next to a lightly-packed forest.  “I never expected them to give up without a fight.”

“So,” Delegate said nervously, back at Rainbow’s color-robbed home, “does this mean the entire operation’s been compromised?”

Advocate was walking down the dirt path along with half of the group that Skipper had brought.  “I’m afraid only time will tell, but I can assure you it would’ve been best if this had never happened in the first place, Delegate.”

The red unicorn’s fuzzy pink mane slightly deflated, landing flatly against his head as he whimpered in fear.  “Skipper, I ask that you don’t force my retirement earlier than expected.”

“That all depends on how this turns out, you fool,” Skipper replied calmly, his eyes still closed as he stood in the middle of the road at the Ponyville outskirts.  “Hopefully Ambassador can cut this memory out of their heads before it’s too late.  I would like to speak with them first though, if only briefly.  I never have had an opportunity to speak with our little Trio before.”

One of the unicorns with Advocate spoke up.  “Are you sure that’s a good idea, sir?  If you were to speak with them, it would only strengthen this memory.  I’m not confident in my current ability to remove it from their minds—you talking with them certainly wouldn’t help me out at all.”

Skipper’s stark face twitched slightly.  “If you don’t think you can remove the memory at this point, Ambassador, you’re probably right.  And if that’s the case…” his voice was sounding increasingly strained, “…then I have nothing to lose, now do I?”

“We’re almost there!” Apple Bloom encouraged to Sweetie Belle, who was very dehydrated and to the point of collapsing.  The earth-pony wasn’t even sure if her friend had heard her; the unicorn looked like she was in some kind of exhausted trance, focusing only on the houses closing in on the distance, and nothing else.

Scootaloo was fighting against her own body now, which also wanted to quit and simply lie down.  “Yes, just…about…” the houses of Ponyville were only ten feet away.

“…MADE IT!”

The orange filly made a leap for the border between trees and buildings, but just before she entered the outskirts, there was a loud cracking noise, and the entirety of Ponyville immediately turned the same ash-gray as Rainbow’s house, all color seeming to burn up and away into the atmosphere, leaving behind nothing but the shades between deep black and stark white.

Scootaloo tried to angle herself away from the gray world in midair, but she fell in anyway.  Closing her eyes and bracing herself for anything that may happen to her, Scootaloo prepared for the worst.  But all she felt after a second was her flank hitting the ground.  Carefully opening her eyes, Scootaloo looked around; the entire world around her was gray, even the soft grass she was sitting on.  It all felt the same…it just looked so different.

“Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom yelled from the edge of the border, just outside.  Scootaloo turned around in a daze and saw her friends looking worried at her.  From inside the gray filter, the view spread to make the outside world look as depressing as the inside of it.

“I…I’m fine,” Scootaloo said, shaking off her dizziness.  The two on the outside didn’t hesitate to follow in and meet up with their friend after seeing that there was nothing to worry about.  Scootaloo noticed that her friends didn’t turn gray as they passed through the border; for that matter, she wasn’t gray, either.

Apple Bloom looked at the dead world around her.  “What’s goin’ on?  Ah don’t understand…”

“Well, we certainly don’t expect you to understand, Apple Bloom.”

All three heads darted to the old maroon stallion standing at the opening of the alleyway they were sitting in.  He didn’t show any real expression—he was practically emotionless.  “My name is…well, I suppose I’ve forgotten my name from long ago, but you can call me ‘Skipper.’  At least, that’s what everyone I know calls me, and that’s sufficed for this long.  You can call me whatever you want, though.”

“Who are you?!” Scootaloo immediately demanded.  “What are you doing?  What happened to Rainbow Dash!?”

Skipper’s face scrunched slightly.  “…Rainbow…Dash?  Oh, yes, that’s the given name of Loyalty, isn’t it?  Sorry, we don’t usually use the informalities when we address ponies.”  He gave a small, reassuring smile—not that it was very reassuring to any of the three he was talking to.  “She’s perfectly fine, Scootaloo.  Nothing to worry about.”

“Then what the heck was that one guy doing to her house?” Sweetie Belle replied in a raspy voice, still drained from the running.  “What’s with all this gray that you guys keep making?”

“What, the freeze?  It’s to hold everything in place while we modify a living being, or an area where a living being is involved,” the stallion replied indifferently.  “If you were to take a look around here, you’d notice that time has effectively stopped.  Unfortunately, we never have found a way to do this without the color change…so inconvenient…” he sighed to himself.

“Modify?” Sweetie Belle replied, “What are you talking about?”

Skipper raised an eyebrow.  “Are you sure you want to know?” he asked powerfully, intimidating the three fillies.  “Wouldn’t you rather be left with these unanswered questions, instead of learning the entire dark truth?  Are you even sure any of this is real?” he added, tilting his head in close to the girls.  “What if this is nothing more than a very convincing dream?”

“We wanna know th’ truth,” Apple Bloom said firmly, stomping her hoof on the ground as she did so.

“There’s no going back.”  There was a hint of malevolence in the stallion’s voice, and it made the CMC shrink lower to the ground.  Sweetie Belle, gaining a sudden wave of confidence, stood up erect and stared into Skipper’s teal eyes.

“The truth,” she commanded.

Skipper scowled at the little unicorn and moved a step back from her.  “Sleep tight, girls,” he said as he took off his fedora, and with a glow of his horn they blacked out in seconds, not giving enough time for them to even realize what was happening.