Chapter 12

A rainbow blur shot through the shattered window from which the humans had left in a shower of loosened glass. The air was heavy with traces of magical energy, Chrysalis was gone, and Rainbow Dash had returned empty-hooved.

That did not bode well...

Applejack tensed and took a step away from the prostrate Princess and her friends, eyes flickering from the window to the where the Queen had disappeared, a dark scorch-mark the only evidence of her departure.

Where were the aliens? Where was Raymond?

Dash skid to a halt before her, hooves spread readily and wings flared in an aggressive display. There was murder in her darting, maroon eyes. Metal clattered against stone as she spat something silver and red to the floor.

“Where is she?!” Rainbow howled, her usually carefree smirk twisted with ugly rage. “I’m going to carve out her bucking heart!”

“Chrysalis is gone my little pony,” wheezed a tired goddess, “and now, for the sake of the city, you must get to the Elements.”

Rainbow snarled. “Fuck that, Princess.” Rarity and Twilight flinched, staring at their friend in awe. “I’m not turning that skinny street nag into stone, or making her all loveable again. I’m killing her, and that’s final.”

The Princess winced, and tilted a sorrowful eye toward the blue mare from her position on the ground. “They’re dead?” Dash froze, stone-faced, and suddenly Pinkie was sobbing. Tears streamed like geysers from her clenched eyes, and when Fluttershy went to comfort her, she batted the yellow mare away.

“Rainbow, where are they!” Applejack yelled, taking a step toward her blue friend. “Where’s Ra—” Something cold bounced off her hoof and skittered on the courtroom floor. The farm mare looked down to the marble at her hooves and her heart stopped.

“No,” she denied vehemently, turning away from the blood-streaked weapon Jer constantly fawned over when she brought ‘Bloom and her friends over to visit. The blue pegasus quickly picked the blade from the ground and tucked it under her wing, wincing at the look Applejack gave her. “No no no no no!” the orange pony told herself lie after lie, voice rising into a gurgling wail. “Yer lying!”

Whomever she was accusing, herself of Rainbow, Applejack didn’t know.

“They’re gone,” Dash growled, “disappeared, dead, I don’t know… but I’m gonna find out.” She stalked toward Twilight, who sat next to the prone body of her mentor. “Where’s the bug, Twilight?”

“Rainbow,” the lavender mare murmured, eyes hazed with uncertainty, “You can’t ki—”

“I can and I will!” Dash yelled, skidding forward on a powerful flap of her wings. “No one hurts my friends and gets away with it. It’s what Jer would’ve done if he was still here!”

“You don’t know that!” Twilight returned, tears growing in the corners of her violet eyes. “Please… I don’t know where she went… and we need you.”

Their empty words flowed through Applejack like a brook without the babble. Heated argument and desperate entreaties sifted past, around, inside; there and yet not; conveying meaning without value.

Raymond Schaffer was dead, and she didn’t feel.

This man found her oldest friend in the wildest of places, saved her sister from a lonely eternity in stone. He had made her feel so safe and happy and aware. She owed him so much—both of them—and she felt nothing.

Hollow of the chest.

Empty of the mind.

Raymond Schaffer was dead and Applejack knew she needed to feel something… but she didn’t.

Dresses were cast aside, and the farm mare was dimly aware of tearing her own gown away. Hooves clattered against marble, and she knew a set of them were hers. Through the doors and into the hall Applejack galloped with her friends. She ran away… because she felt no grief.

Sunlight: they were outside. Wispy chunks of magic wafted on the breeze, tinkling like glass on a chime. The farm mare heard screams in the distance—explosions and roiling, green flame. She didn’t stop; couldn’t stop running, following, going.

A familiar, tan shape loomed in the courtyard. Applejack avoided it with her eyes, not recognizing the shifting shadows among wheels of blackened metal and rubber. If she ignored it, then it never was. Nothing to feel. Nothing wrong?

“Rarity! What’s going on?!”

“Oh dear, girls, just… j-just stay here! Don’t move or leave for anypony. Do you understand?”

“Sis! Sis! Where ya goin’? Applejack! Where’s Jerry? Where’s Raymond?”

Applejack didn’t hear. She chose not to. There was no ‘Raymond’—there never was.

The courtyard was gone, replaced with endless stairs and rushing mountain wind. This path was familiar: she’d walked it as a bridesmaid not two hours ago. It seemed like a thousand years had passed since then. Magic… the wind was rife with it. Energy sifted through her fur, brushing against pounding muscles and shifting bone before drifting away—an itch on the run.

The stairs were gone, replaced with cobbled streets, smoke, and panic. Twisting and turning she galloped, following twitching, flowing tails and clopping hooves among the stone buildings of upper Canterlot. It was here, streaking through the shops of the Market District, that Applejack found herself again.

Dead. The humans were dead.

Chrysalis killed them.

Applejack felt her soul tear in half and had to struggle not to collapse, falling behind her pack of friends as they sped away toward the Royal Armory. Skidding and slumping, the orange mare watched them disappear around a saddle outlet and cried. She cried for the creature who helped bring her sister back. She cried for the man who went through so much pain for his people, but cared enough to endure even more for her family in their time of need. She cried for an alien, but most of all she cried for a friend: somepony who listened to her, comforted her and smiled for her.

Now she would never see that smile ever again, and it hurt.

Dazed and alone in a river of panicking bodies, she almost didn’t acknowledge the oxygen-sucking explosion of green fire erupt right next to her. Sharp chunks of stone peppered the side of her face and she flinched, blinking away tears and backing from the smoking crater that spontaneously grew from the street in a searing blast of green flame. The smoke shifted, and a shadow crawled from the jagged new pothole.

It was sharp and crooked and broken, but crawled with the malevolence of a being that felt no pain. Bulbous blue eyes glinted like searchlights in the black void of a moonless night—the carapace of a changeling warrior. The creature hissed and scuttled forward, lunging with a pair of wicked, curved fangs.

Applejack didn’t think. She swung her body around, still sobbing silently, and kicked outward. Her back hooves connected with a sickening crack. Something gave, and the orange mare’s ears flopped downward from an onslaught of agonized screeches.

Not looking back, she bucked again. There was another splintering crunch, and then silence.

A relative silence, of course, considering the panicked screams of frantic city-folk. Despite that, it was silence nonetheless, and it made Applejack sick. Turning to see the result of her hoofwork, she felt her gorge rise before she even caught sight of the body. Her eyes skated around a growing puddle of thick, green blood, and the mare forced her nausea aside, asking herself what Ray would’ve done. The thought of the human brought fresh tears to her eyes, but she ignored them.

She shifted her gaze with a new determination, glaring at the crumpled form of the invading warrior. Its snout was caved in, protective carapace splintered and thrust inward from the force of her kick. Cloying, green fluid leaked from the changeling’s snapped neck, flowing back into the pothole from whence it came. A cracked fang lay at Applejack’s hooves.

Another sentient being lay dead by her hoof, and Applejack felt no remorse. Nothing, not even nausea, fazed her. Watching the tears crawl with gravity’s soft caress down her cheeks, nopony could have imagined it, but, once again, Applejack was an empty mare.

Glancing down the street, where her friends disappeared, she watched more changelings streak from the cloudless sky, crashing into cobblestones, homes, and ponies alike in a maelstrom of neon flame. Applejack watched and asked herself: “What would Raymond do?”

The answer was simple.

A ghost of a smile twitched at the corner of the orange mare’s lips, and she slowly began trotting after her friends. Flame and speeding black armor flashed to her left, and Applejack lashed out with her hooves. There was a gruesome snap, and nothing more.

What would Raymond do?

He would do his job… and anypony that got in his way would regret it for the rest of their short lives.

Screams echoed into the courtyard from the city below. Not the “Oh, Mommy! Look at the Royal Guards” kind of screams, or even the barely frightened “Nightmare Night” level wails. These were cries of unimaginable pain and terror and fright.

Squeals of the damned.

“Scootaloo! Stay here!”

“Yeah! Ya heard what Rarity said! We gotta stay here an’ wait!”

Scootaloo crept away from her friends, away from the dark, oily underbelly of Jer’s jeep and into the nuptial courtyard. There should have been a party going on right now—post wedding dancing, drinking and dining—but the green expanse was empty.

Smoke rose in plumes across the city, filtering through drifting eggshell-bits of magic that descended like wispy, pink snow upon a burning world. Pink mist fizzled from a fallen hunk of the magic precipitation nearby, and the bandstand near the hill’s edge had collapsed: punched inward by a black creature falling from the sky, wreathed in emerald manalight. The changeling was gone now, but the stage remained—splintered and broken.

Jerry was going to play there today: “For the Italian Knockoff,” he said.

The orange pegasus crawled cautiously toward the wooden structure, keeping as low to the ground as possible. If she rounded the side closest to her, she’d be able to look downhill on the distressed city below. She didn’t know why, but seeing Equestria’s shining star in flames was the most important thing on Scootaloo’s mind… besides Jer… and Ray…

Her humans.

Scootaloo’s eyes narrowed and she quickened her pace, scootching across the grassy yard with renewed fervor. She was dimly aware of a pair of ponies following behind her, but she paid them little mind. Her thoughts turned to the men who housed her as she scanned the sky for buzzing soldiers. Where were they? She’d seen them thrown through the stained glass window depicting the birth of the Minotaur Confederacy—something Cheerilee covered near the end of the year, so it was, surprisingly, still fresh in her mind—and then nothing. She and her friends were carried outside by the mob of wedding guests fleeing the ceremony gone wrong.

They had been lucky: thrown under the humans’ vehicle. If they hadn’t rolled underneath, the three fillies surely would have been trampled. Luck mattered little at that point, however. What mattered was the fact that Jer and Ray weren’t back for their weapons yet. Applebloom had found them. Two rifles, strapped against the vehicle's mud-encrusted axle with some kind of magnetic bands.

It had been nearly an hour, and the guns were still there. The humans had yet to arrive, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders were alone.

Scootaloo wanted to know why. The hill they’d climbed to reach the court building had been steep, but not nearly steep enough that if she’d fallen down she couldn’t scramble back up within a few minutes. Jer should be there. Ray should BE there!

But they weren’t.

The bandstand passed by silently, and Scootaloo approached the low, stone wall that marked the end of the courtyard. With one last glance up to the sky—and a quick scan for bird droppings upon the stone blocks—she hopped atop the granite wall with a sharp flap of her wings.

The world fell away.

Scootaloo was suddenly face-to-face with a yawning chasm, punctuated by the shingled roofs of shrunken buildings and tiny, dollhouse ponies. Her body lurched forward, and she felt gravity tug her over the edge.

A hoof slipped, and any semblance of balance was lost. Scootaloo locked up—the “Filly Freeze”—and now she was going to die. The pegasus filly briefly wondered why she hadn’t seen her life flash before her eyes. She assumed she missed it, and another, shrill scream rent the air among its fleeting, panicked brethren.

The sky burned with noise and light and rushing wind and a sharp pain in Scootaloo’s flank snapped her backward, cracking her skull against the cliff-side. The world popped, and all she could feel was blinding pain racing from her brow to her spine, ending where her tail met her flank. Scootaloo felt herself pulled upwards, and with a Herculean effort, she turned her throbbing head to look over her withers.

Applebloom strained under a sky of blue, green, black and pink, Scootaloo’s tail clamped firmly in her jaws. Suddenly Sweetie was beside her, underdeveloped horn sparking out of fear. The white unicorn sprawled forward and grabbed one of the pegasus’s hind-legs. In one final lurch, Scootaloo felt herself pulled upward, scraping her stomach on the outer edge of the wall up to her chin before she fell on her back, staring into the tempestuous sky in disbelief.

“What the hay, Scootaloo!” wailed a clearly agitated unicorn, appearing above and blocking out the raging air overhead. “You almost DIED! What were you doing?!”

The dazed pegasus stared past her friend, into the battle above, and listened to the wheezing sound of Applebloom breathing from beside her. Was her tail still in her mouth? A quick twitch of the flank later, and Scootaloo once again was in possession of her entire being.

Her body was a castle; the grass, her foundation; the sky, her—

“SCOOTALOO!” Sweetie practically screamed, livid, frightened tears in her eyes. “What’s wrong with you?!” Suddenly, the pegasus lurched upward, latching onto her yelling friend. Sweetie Belle squeaked and collapsed under Scootaloo’s weight, and both of them slumped onto Applebloom, whom was still wheezing like a fish out of water.

“I… I… I’m alive!” Scootaloo whooped, still crushing Sweetie within her forelegs.

“Of course ya are! Now gerroff!” Applebloom mumbled exhaustedly. “Ah can’t hardly breathe.” The other two fillies obliged sheepishly, Scootaloo taking the opportunity to kiss the ground at her belly while Sweetie helped Applebloom get up. The grass was soft as silk and the tingling aftertaste was absolutely magical. Scootaloo was never taking grass for granted ever again…

“What the hay were you doing jumpin’ up on the edge a’ the cliff like that?” Applebloom puffed, still not quite recovered from lifting a pegasus nearly her size from certain death.

“I didn’t know!” the orange filly exclaimed.

“That you were jumping, or that there was a cliff?” Sweetie asked, skeptical.

“The second one. I thought it was just another hill like the other side, so I was gonna look down and see… where Jerry… was…” Scootaloo’s eyes widened. “Oh my Luna, JERRY! RAY!” She tried to jump back over the low stone wall, but Applebloom just barely snatched her by the tail again.

“Dnt yuh drrr, Scrtler!”

“Let me go!” Scootaloo tried jumping again, only to be tugged back by a sharp pain between her flanks. “They fell,” she sobbed, “we have to help them, they fell!”

“What the hay do you mean, they fell!” Sweetie yelled, scrambling to put herself between her orange friend and what to her probably seemed like prospective suicide. She clutched Scootaloo’s forelegs, mane frazzled and eyes equally wild, and planted herself against the stone bulwark between them and the rest of the capitol below.

Still straining towards the edge, the pegasus sobbed openly. “Jerry. Ray,” she mouthed, not caring that her friends finally saw her cry. “The Queen threw them out the wi-window, and… and…”

Scootaloo broke down, tiny wings drooping at her sides. The tension in her tail let up immediately, she was drowning in a pair of orange eyes and yellow fur.

“Are ya sure?!” Applebloom intoned, holding Scootaloo at hooves’ length and giving her a frightened stare. “Ah didn’t see anything like that, and mah sis an’ her friends came out just fine!”

Broken glass and screams: heart wrenching screams, not from the humans but from Pinkie and Applejack and Rainbow Dash and… and…

“I’m… I’m s-sure,” Scootaloo wailed. “They’re… gone.” Flashes of fire under a full moon tore a path through the pegasus’s memories, punctuated by a long, agonizing shriek. “Gone.” She shoved Appleboom away and hugged the ground, curling up into a shuddering ball of fur, feathers, and tears. Her friend made no further move to comfort her, letting slip a low moan and slumping to her haunches a few inches away.

“N-Now hold on, girls,” Sweetie squeaked. “What about the others?” Scootaloo joined Applebloom in voicing her sorrow, their cadence of moans filling the courtyard. “Girls, stop a second! Think! If they came out, maybe Twilight and Rainbow saved them with magic or speed or something! Don’t you think they would be doing the same thing you are if they were dead? They were our friends for Luna’s sake! They could just be unconscious, laying on the… court… floor? Scootaloo wait!”

Sweetie was gone, left behind near the collapsed bandstand. The courthouse loomed ahead under a burning sky, and Scootaloo could hear her earth pony friend’s hooves pounding in rhythm with her own. She cursed herself for not thinking of it before! Twilight was the most powerful unicorn in Equestria: she must have done something to save her bipedal guardians. She MUST have.

Panting, the orange filly climbed the tiered steps to the courthouse door and tried to pry it open. With a little help from Applebloom and a lot of strain, she was able to to get the massive ceremonial gateway open wide enough to peek inside.

The courtroom was in shambles. Broken glass littered the aisle, mingled with torn dresses, trampled flowers, and what looked like a small pool of drying blood in the center of the once immaculate chamber. To Scootaloo’s horror, the room seemed empty: completely and utterly empty. Tears threatening to return, she backed away and allowed Applebloom a look inside.

Humanless as the courtroom-turned-dump was, Sweetie was still right; she couldn’t just pronounce them dead. Not until she saw the bodies. Scootaloo just had to figure out a way insi—

“Oh. Mah. Stars. Scootaloo, come look!” Applebloom’s urgent whisper broke Scootaloo away from thoughts of sneaking inside, and she scrambled past her friend to get another look indoors. “On the ceiling.”

Scootaloo turned her gaze up toward the vaulted, ba-coltish ceiling and paled. Sickly green and pulsing, a gigantic cocoon hung like a chandelier in the center of the room. Inside, she could just barely make out the body of Celestia, Life-Giver and Stewardess of the Sun. The royal mare was alive, staring straight down at them with a frantic, even fearful expression and mouthing—no… screaming—something from her oozing prison.

“Wha… Howwhat?!”

“She’s tryin’ tah tell us somethin’…”

“I know, but what?” Trying to read her ruler’s lips, Scootaloo got as far as “look behind” when a shadow loomed above her, obscuring afternoon sky and causing her to freeze in fear. It was over.

Slowly, the orange filly turned to face her demise.

She would not cry, nor would she beg, she decided. Scootaloo would fight, just as her surrogate parents would have wanted.

The small pegasus faced her fate...

... and it was something rather unexpected to say the least.

The Armory loomed. Buildings weren’t meant to loom: it was unnatural.

It loomed in the smoke-filled sky—an unnatural structure lost in unnatural times—as six unnatural mares closed in. Nearly a quarter mile of streets left to cover, Pinkie ran after her friends in a daze. It was not the happy “s’mile-high” daze she usually experienced, but rather a frightening, smoky depression… a remnant from her foalhood.

Changelings fell from the sky, trying to hinder their progress toward the Elements, and every time Pinkie caught sight of one her vision tinged red.

“What do you mean the cannon has no lethal setting?!”

Rage: another childhood folly.

“It’s just for decorating. It’s just for decorating. It’s just for decorati—”

“Snap out of it! Mare the buck up and kill them!”

“No! It’s wrong!”

Broad and lumbering, yet lithe like wispy, black smoke, a changeling warrior skid in front of the pink mare, effectively cutting her off from her friends and blocking her path to the armory. Not missing a beat, Pinkie “reached” a pie from her mane, shoved the piping-hot pastry into the changeling’s snarling muzzle, and darted around the buzzing soldier, quickly catching up to the others.

“It isn’t murder anymore: it’s vengeance. They killed your monkey, remember?”

“HE’S NOT DEAD!” Pinkie screeched, hysterically angry for the first time in ages. Her voice carried, and Rarity glanced back from her position at the front of the herd in worry. Pinkie kept running, plunging blindly forward after her. “Shut up, shut up, shutup shuddup shuddup!”

“Darling, look out!”

Suddenly, her hoof caught on a loose cobblestone, and in one, swift jerk she was on her back. Angry buzzing bombarded her ears, and when she opened her eyes she was met with a pair of irate blue lenses. The changeling—her changeling—covered in fluffy lumps of banana cream pie snarled, baring a pair of gleaming, sickle-shaped fangs, and Pinkie began to panic.

“Oh my Luna I’m going to die oh please no please not yet I don’t want to die I have so much left to do I have to find Jerry I can’t die yet no no no no no No NO NO NO!”

*CRACK*

The giant love-sucker reeled backward, snout crushed and splintered in a rain of black fibers. Recovering, it snapped its attention back to the mare beneath its hooves, splattering her with thick, green blood. With a furious screech, it lunged forward again, snapping at Pinkie’s exposed throat.

Roaring like a madmare, she gave the insect another head-butt, eliciting a sharp crunch of shattering exoskeleton. Afraid to die, Pinkie’s body granted one final burst of strength, and she caved in the creature’s face with her forehead. One glittering fang soared through the heady air, and Pinkie, face covered in a sticky mixture of changeling blood and her own crimson fluids, stumbled to her hooves.

Rainbow and Rarity were with her in an instant. “Oh Goddess, Pinkie! Are you okay?! Oh buck, Pinkie—buck—you’re bleeding!”

“Twilight! Get over here!”

Pinkie shook her head, spreading flecks of blood around both her friend’s coats as they tried to stabilize her: “Girls… no time… gotta go f-find Jerry.” Avoiding looking at the victim of her murderous fear, the pink mare broke into a shambling trot after Twilight, Applejack and Fluttershy—Rainbow and Rarity no far behind her. In a daze, she made it to the foot of the Armory steps before her friends had to help her.

One, two, three, four, five… counting hurt; moving hurt; thinking hurt!

But Pinkie made it.

Magic-spattered marble gleamed in the afternoon sun, and, changelings cleared away by Twilight and Applejack, they were free to enter the huge, classically crafted building.

Wordlessly, Rainbow bucked the massive iron gates inward, and the six mares galloped, trotted and limped inside. Vaulted ceilings soared high above—just like in the courthouse—but windows were scarce, leaving Pinkie and her friends reliant on magic-fuelled lamps fixed to the cold, stone walls. A quick flash of Twilight’s horn illuminated the entire hall, and Pinkamena was able to make out some of the architectural details she remembered from when she last visited: during Discord’s Return and the Technical Week of Delicious Weather Patterns.

Long, spidery cracks along the east wall from a fallen pillar.

Black soot-stains dotting the ceiling from the Great Siege of Canterlot over seven hundred years ago.

The end table in the far corner where she left her apple-pecan-banana-fudge cake yesterday while exploring—it was getting runny, dripping all over the place.

Celestia’s personal vault, virtual tomb for all things powerful; only able to be opened by the Princess herself…

Wait…

“Twilight?” Pinkie wheezed, no longer supported by Rainbow or Rarity. Her lavender friend seemed oblivious, quickly pacing toward the magical safe without giving the injured earth pony a second glance.

“Okay girls, here are the Elements. Now all we have to do is get… in Celestia’s… vault…” Twilight trailed off, staring, perplexed, at the purple doors adorned with a single, small hole in their exact center: a hornlock. She slumped to her haunches, jaw unhinged in disbelief.

“Egghead. What are you doing? Let’s move already!” Rainbow Dash yelled, whizzing in front of the staring unicorn and looking her straight in the eye. “What’s the hol—Twi? Hey, Twilight?” Perplexed, the blue pegasus dropped to her hooves and waved a foreleg in front of her bookish friend. “Hello? Snap out of it, Twilight!”

Applejack trotted carefully forward, took one look at Twilight’s expression, and punched her in the side.

“YELP!”

“Twi, what’s the holdup?”

“S-Sorry,” the purple unicorn stammered, rubbing her foreleg sheepishly. “I-uh I… We?” She shook her head and glared at the safe. “We can’t get into the armory.”

“What?” Rainbow deadpanned.

“It’s Celestia’s private vault! Only she can get in an—”

“Hey, Fluttershy? Which one was your Element again?”

“The… butterfly?”

“Oh! Here ya go!”

Twilight’s eyes bugged out, and crystal butterfly set in a gold necklace made its way to Fluttershy’s hooves. The lavender unicorn too a closer look at the safe and saw that the door was slightly ajar. “Pinkie?! How?”

“The door was open,” the pink mare giggled as she limped back toward the vault, slipping quickly inside the cracked doorway. Her voice echoed from the magically-reinforced walls inside: “Duh!-uh!-uh!-uh…”

Rainbow looked at Applejack, Applejack looked at Fluttershy, who looked at Rarity who looked at Twilight… and everyone broke out into smiles.

Everything was going to be okay…

And then came the buzzing.

Rainbow Dash was scared. She was afraid to admit it, but it was definitely so. Jer’s knife hidden under her left wing, she stared down the descending swarm with all the venom she could muster... until they changed.

Green manalight roiled in the shadowy twilight of the Armory amidst the screams of her friends, and out of the flashes appeared not a pack of changelings, but Applejack; and Rarity; and Pinkie—murderous hunger in their eyes. Rainbow tightened her wings against her sides, praying they wouldn’t notice her concealed weapon. They were fake, and she would cut them if they came any closer. They weren’t her friends. They weren’t!

So why didn’t she attack?

A buzz in the crowd, and suddenly she was surrounded.

“Dashie!”

Rainbow whipped her head left and right, scanning the growing mob for her friends—her real friends—but was alone in a sea of furious, starving replicas.

A Rarity stepped forward with a growl, sauntering coldly around to Dash’s right.

They’d come in from all sides, surrounding the armory in an ocean of black chitin.

She was close, outside Rainbow’s line of sight but close nonetheless.

The front doors—the ones she had kicked down with her own two hooves—became a sluice gate for the changeling flood. They were trapped in seconds.

A white hoof dragged down Rainbow’s left flank, stopping directly above her cutie mark.

Pinkie hadn’t gotten the Elements in time, and she was dragged from the vault by her mane, no longer puffy and unkempt, while Rainbow and the others watched. They couldn’t do anything. They were at the mercy of the changeling horde.

Rainbow Dash was shaking now. Changeling Rarity’s hoof was sliding dangerously close to forbidden territory, and the crowd of impersonators slowly grew. Rainbow tensed, preparing to reach for the knife with her muzzle when the errant hoof stopped. The changeling tittered, and the blue pegasus was momentarily relieved.

Blinding pain exploded in the back of her head, and suddenly she was on the ground. Changelings, forgoing their disguises, hitched her up by her forelegs, lifting her bodily into the air. Rainbow struggled, but the cold itch of foreign magic made her freeze. Pressure formed at the back of her neck: a changeling horn—sharp, sickle-shaped, chitinous bringer of death.

Helpless. Rainbow Dash was helpless and afraid, and she hated it more than anything in the world. Hot tears streaked her muzzle, and a sharp tug signaled the beginning of the procession.

The march to the gallows.

She still had Jer’s knife—her only hope at that point—but couldn’t reach for it without drawing her guards’ attention. All she could do was follow along to their new destination and hope they didn’t kill her immediately upon arrival. Unless…

Unless death would be a mercy at that point…

Rainbow shuddered violently and received another blow to the head for her trouble. She was bourn outside upon fly-lace wings and lifted high above Canterlot, buzzing through the chaos and smoke of the capitol skyline. Canterlot castle jutted through the chaos before her, casting shadows on the Equestrian citizens panicking below.

Ponies ran back and forth—the size of ants—trying to escape roving packs of ruthless invaders. Foals were cornered in the streets; mares and stallions surrounded and drained of their affection by force, bodies falling like limp rags on the cobblestones. Rainbow didn’t want to watch, but she couldn’t look away.

The city was dying and all she could do was watch, because struggle would only be the end of her. Besides… Scootaloo was down there—somewhere. Rainbow was never going to leave her alone: not again. She would survive for her sake.

Her guard detail passed through a cloud of smoke flowing from a burning diner on the street below. It choked her, but all she could manage was a dry, rattling cough. A flashback of the day Twilight had taken them to face a sleeping dragon niggled at the back of her mind. She remembered her blind bout of righteous anger then and snorted weakly.

She never learned, did she? Buck, no…

The changelings shifted, and the world spun and jilted and turned until Rainbow was staring down at the courthouse, yawning doors open, nestled on the breast of the “fashionable heights” of Canterlot. She had been scheduled to do a private rainboom for the royal newlyweds above that building. They would have cheered, and, seeing the sheer magnitude of Rainbow’s awesome skill, Scootaloo would have forgiven her, and Jer would have written an amazing rock ballad in her honor before… before…

But—Oh Celestia!—he was dead.

Rainbow clenched her jaw, forcing such useless thoughts to the back of her mind. She may have been helpless at that moment, but, hopefully, she could change that, and thinking about the man whom she’d just began to know wasn’t going to help. Her fate was approaching: she would mourn later.

Buzzing forward, she was carried through the great threshold of celestial justice, into the odd half-light of the main hall. Several more windows had been shattered, and colored glass littered the aisle, the ceremonial wedding carpet scuffed and torn and drenched in green goop dripping from… the ceiling?

“What on Terra is THAT?!” Rainbow’s shifting gaze had latched upon a glowing green chrysalis. Green excretia flowed ever downward from small vents near the structure’s tip, forming a mound of gook directly beneath: center aisle, where Rainbow had stood not an hour ago as a bridesmaid. The walls looked vaguely transparent; if only she could get a better loo—

“PRINCESS! Oh! G-Goddess! What are you doing to her!? Come out here and face me, Chrysalis!”

Twilight: screaming. There she was, surrounded by changelings in the front of the room. They must have gotten there ahead of Rainbow’s group… for once she didn’t really care about being in second place. Now what in Tartarus was she screaming about?

Rainbow’s group alighted next to Twilight’s, and the blue pegasus was released. Three changelings continued to keep watch of her, however: two at her sides, and one hovering behind, presumably aiming its horn at the back of her head. Buzzing echoed throughout the great hall.

The Elements Bearers were assembling: one by one.

“Ah! There you are, dears,” a simpering voice reverberated throughout the courthouse. “I was wondering where you went.” Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings, strode purposefully from behind the jury stand, fanged muzzle held high. She smirked haughtily, insect wings twitching at her sides, and slid into the light of the main room, one dazed Shining Armor and a hoof-bound Cadence dragged behind her in the grip of her fiery magic. Somehow the Queen looked even taller now, sharper, and the slash Jer made on her foreleg had all but disappeared. Rainbow felt anger swell in her chest, murderous rage channeling through her body to skin pricked by cold metal: Jer’s knife, pressed firmly to her side.

Today, the bug would die.

“What have you done to her, Chrysalis?!” Twilight screamed, pointing a hoof accusingly at the pupae hanging from the ceiling. Rainbow squinted at the thing, trying to see inside, but couldn’t. The cocoon was becoming opaque, turquoise shell slowly growing where there was once green resin.

“Oh, she’s simply taking a nap,” Chrysalis sneered. “After a time, she will wake up as one of us: perfectly normal. Your precious ruler will be fine.” The black queen slid closer to the lavender unicorn, tilting her jagged horn dangerously. “You on the other hand… you and your friends will feed me, and then… then you will die.”

“Back the buck off, Nag,” Rainbow growled, glaring hot death at the threatening creature. “Don’t make us kill you.”

Chrysalis switched her focus away from Twilight, staring at the blue pegasus incredulously for a second before bursting into a fit of smug laughter. “You? Ha! You kill me? I’m the Queen of the Changelings and I’ve taken over the most love-enriched country on the planet! You’re going to kill me?! There’s only one mare doing the killing around here, and that’s—”

The doors exploded inwardin an indescribable concussion of sound and shock and splinters, rocking off thousand-year-old hinges and flying through the air like giant wooden birds—right over Twilight and Rainbow’s heads. A disgusting squeal and crunch behind the rainbow pegasus signaled the untimely end of one of the changelings in her guard detail. Dash could attack at any moment she pleased… but was transfixed by a second explosion—a blinding flash accompanied by a deafening bang in the center of the room.

The chamber spun, and four dark figures appeared in the doorway: two impossibly tall… familiarly tall. One of the larger figures broke away from its companions, colliding with a staggering Chrysalis with a furious roar. The Queen fell, screaming as tiny comets whizzed across the spinning, smoky room, racing amongst the sound of hail beating a tin roof, and changeling after changeling shattered, spraying green blood into the thoroughly crowded air.

Twilight’s and Pinkie’s guard detail bolted toward the new threat, but were torn apart right before Rainbow’s eyes, dropping and skidding across the once pristine aisle-rug, staining it with vibrant blood and bits of black carapace. The tallest figure stepped out of the sunlight streaming through the crumbling doorway, coalescing into a recognizable, scar-faced human, still clad in one Rarity’s suits: now torn half to shreds and dotted with burns and green blood.

Raymond strode down the aisle calmly, spraying fiery hail from a boxy device cradled in his arms. It happened quickly, too fast for anypony—or anychangeling—to move. One moment Ray was in the doorway; the next, he stood over a restrained Chrysalis, scuffed dress shoe lifted high above her head.

There was a loud crack, and then silence.

The two changeling soldiers still guarding Rainbow flinched, and hugged her sides. She couldn’t open her wings.

Suddenly, grating, raspy laughter broke the deathly silence.

Up came Jer, wobbling to his feet from where he had tackled Queen Chrysalis—new self-proclaimed ruler of Equestria—to the ground, a single, crinkled insectoid wing in his hand. He giggled throatily, looking at the torn limb he held with a twisted smile.

“I fucking love my job.”

Author's Note

I thought I knew what I was doing. I didn't.

But now I do! This was originally meant to be longer, but I've decided that making you guys wait more would kinda suck.

Next chapter, things are going to start getting rather heavy.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to rant in the comments: I welcome it with an open heart and an intoxicated frontal lobe.