Five Feet

Twilight smiled as the Rainbow Power of the Elements swirled around her -- around her friends. Energy pouring from her, tingling and sparking violent and satisfying within her veins, trembling hooves flaming with life, she craned her neck around to look at the five mares that had gotten her here, to this point. Their manes flowing and bright, eyes twinkling in the light surrounding them, smiles on their faces. These ponies were the Elements of Harmony. These ponies were her friends, through good times and bad, and it was through the power of that beautiful friendship that they were able to be gifted with this power.

And now, they had a job to do with it.

Turning her head back around to face the dark lord Tirek, tall and imposing within a great wall of darkness and chaos magics which leaked from every pore and fiber of his darkened being, Twilight smiled, a large display of teeth and gums and cockiness, as her eyes exploded in a shimmering wave of pure white light.

The Rainbow swirled around them, all of their friendship filling them to the brim and fighting to beat down Tirek, and at once, everything was perfect. Twilight could feel Tirek crumpling down, pushed back to Tartarus where he belonged. She could feel her friends celebrating, she could feel as the world was set right once again.

--She could also feel when, in a blast of chilling and striking cold, a sharp stabbing crack of pain shot down her spine and wired upwards in a disgusting, wiggling squirm into her chest. Into her heart and core, spiraling upwards in a coiling wave into her horn. -- But only for a second. Less than a second. Short enough that Twilight simply thought that it was nothing, just something coming from the fact that she'd sort of been beating up her body and filling it with magic all day. Nothing to worry about, now that Tirek was done with and Equus had once again been saved, right?

She didn't even stop to think about where that line of thought could send her.

Twilight's nerves were frayed.

A checklist hovering in the air beside her, shimmering magenta magic popping from her horn as she read it over, Princess Twilight Sparkle trotted down Main Street. Carts and booths opened up at either side of her, ponies mulling about them with jingling bits and the clattering sounds of hooves against stone and dirt, Twilight set her eyes against any and all as she went past, quill flicking as her vision moved.

It had only been less than a week since the defeat of Tirek, and the rise of Twilight's new castle, and things had been filled to the brim with meetings afterwards. The Elements of Harmony banding together at the central throne room, Twilight and her friends had discussed and decided upon a new program within the young Princess's kingdom, one that would hopefully spread more magic than ever before in Equestria (or at least in Ponyville, anyway) -- friendship counseling. Twilight, her friends, and several helpful volunteers around town would speak to ponies about their lives and help them with personal problems, maybe just give them a friend or a pony to talk to.

Of course, the system wasn't the most efficient as of now, many ponies and young foals vying for Twilight's attention, and until Twilight could sit down and think though a foolproof one, she settled on checking off the meetings already held over the last few days.

Twilight's wings twitched and fluffed in the breeze crawling across her coat as another check was added to the list -- Roseluck -- a smile shining on her face before twisting into a grimace and a shake of her head. The paper suspended within her grasp trailed onwards, text and check-boxes scripted in orderly rows down even to the back of the scroll, several more scrolls laying in her saddle packs -- these ones not lists, but official documents needing signing, schedules, and due dates of certain projects and papers to be completed, as well as scrawlings and beginnings of diagrams and charts to be used when brainstorming a functioning system -- and telling of much of the population of the cities of Ponyville and Canterlot. Twilight smiled at it with a huff, her work, but...

Twilight shuddered as a chill flew down her back and her wings itched like crazy, and her head shook as her mouth crawled with a strange itchiness. Her stomach cramped and sloshed her hooves tingled with a cold that shouldn't have been there, everything coming to a complete stop as her wings twitched at the exact same time. A few ponies stopped to look at her, confused and concerned, but with a quick raise of her hoof and a gentle trot away, all of the attention was back to the market stalls again.

"Well, whatever this is sure does have some perfect timing," Twilight muttered, foreleg being brought up to rub at the tingling in her cheeks, numbing and filled with warmth. "I guess it would be nice to see Zecora again... maybe she'd even be able to help out at the castle when Cheerilee's away?"

She shuddered as another shot of cold went down her back and struck her wings, lavender feathers ruffling and pricking up -- and as her eyes moved over the scrolls filling her saddle packs, unsigned, largely unorganized or even stacked properly even now. Her ears perked with the tick of a clock, that hand crawling down and down and down, daylight burning down to the horizon...

"Or, then again, maybe not." Twilight frowned, the magic in her horn flaring slightly as to tick that final box and fold her list up to be put away. Saddle packs opening with a pop and the paper slipped inside atop the most recent flowchart made with Applejack's help, the alicorn suppressed a sigh, wings twitching and lifting in preparation for a quick flight home. The new library she'd gotten was filled with books and new information, more than Twilight and Spike could sort through and make inventory for so far -- maybe if she got this paperwork done early she'd be able to look for a diagnosis herself. Of course, before that could be done she would have to finish the alphabetization, but she was confident with both Spike and Owlolicious' help at least a chunk of it could be done before the baby dragon's bedtime -- and once she figured out the organizing method already in place it would be a piece of cake!

Twilight smiled at that, flapping her wings and lifting herself into the air, watching as the market ponies got smaller below. A new vigor lifting her upwards, a cool breeze crawling over and tickling her coat as she once again thought of all the new resources available to her, her wings flapped, pegasus magic singing in its element. It was nice, she had to admit, being in the sky. She wasn't exactly Rainbow Dash, and she still had a lot of work to do when it came to turning and endurance and flying in general, but just being up there in the wind and silence was relaxing after a long day filled with noise and other ponies. Being able to just move and be.

Twilight stretched out her pinching muscles, legs moving outwards and front hooves moving up as to rub at her aching and shivering horn still tingling with magic and pressure, and craned her neck back in the wind. Making sure to glance downwards at the cluttered road below one last time, and smile at a few ponies waving their goodbyes, she scrolled over the packs across her withers, ensuring all clasps were secure and no stray papers were ready to flutter away before she could ground herself once again. Hind legs bending back, wings stalling to drag up her pegasus magic for a calm trip home, Twilight hovered for a second to take everything in.

And that was when everything went wrong.

Another chill flew down Twilight's neck, her wings cramping and her horn tingling as a wrack of pain throbbed over her body. Her magic wavered and thinned, sending her down into a free fall -- until, with a pop and stab shooting through her forehead and withers, magic sparked within her. A fire roasting in the pit of her stomach and her eyes slamming shut with a squeal and clenching of teeth, she shot forward.

Dizziness hit Twilight as she felt the world spin around her, her body flying in magically flaring donuts as her wings fell completely from her control, and she felt herself spiraling. Raising up. Spiraling. --Until, with a pressure forming over her cheeks as her mind went blank, she felt a cone of magics spark out of her horn and wings with a pop and form around her as she built speed...

"Are you feelin' alright, Dash?"

Rainbow Dash, a sheen of sticky sweat coating her body as a stab hit her wings and they resisted against her magical pull, just hung backwards and smiled with a grunt through another throb. Letting herself lower towards the ground ever so slightly as she fought a growl which rose in the back of her throat in a thick sting, she looked up at Cloud Kicker hovering above her.

"Ah yeah, I'm fine. Just all of that workout at the Academy, y'know? A little rest and I'll be back to my A-game in no time."

Cloud Kicker, Weather Team uniform tight against her body as she quirked her head and turned against the breeze whipping at her mane, just shrugged. Wings fluttering quickly as to catch back up with the rest of the team, many of them hovering several feet away, looking back at Rainbow with squinted eyes and frowns, she sighed and diverted her attention towards the sky.

"Okay, if you say so... I guess if you're not feelin' it then you should take a rest. We're gonna go on ahead, so if you don't think you can catch up I'll try to talk it through with the boss."

"Thanks, Cloud."

And with that the pegasus zoomed forward and disappeared with the others into the near distance, Rainbow Dash sighing heavily as, with a roll of her shoulders and a gentle hoof to her back, she lowered to the ground. The short grasses of Ponyville's outskirts tickled at the bottom of her hooves as she straightened her forelegs and touched down with a thud, and Rainbow Dash screamed at herself, head shaking. Hey, she had been telling the truth! --even if she really didn't want it to be that way.

Her wings had been aching for a few days now, around the same time as both the defeat of Tirek and yet another day of training at the Academy for her, and she'd just been slowing and hurting more and more ever since. She didn't know what the hay was wrong with her anymore -- by now, even with the strain of fighting another villain, she normally would have recovered and gotten back to the point where she could at least do her job or keep up with the slower ponies on her weather team. But now, even after taking a couple days off to help Twilight with her counseling over at the castle and to let Fluttershy look over her wings for any unnoticeable sprains or fractures in her wings, her condition was only worsening, her flight speed ticking down day by day. Heck, she wouldn't be surprised if she couldn't even keep up with Bulk Biceps any more!

Turning her eyes downwards as to scroll over her wings and pat at her unkempt and twitching feathers with a hoof, Rainbow Dash took a second to allow a little bit of panic -- what if she never got better, or the Wonderbolts didn't want her anymore, and she couldn't keep her job in the Weather Team?! -- before pulling herself back again, smile pulled tight over her face as she started a gentle trot to town. She would be fine. She just needed more time to rest. Nothing could keep Rainbow Dash down!

As the road underneath her feet slowly turned from grass to dirt and bits of stone, that mantra filling her head with a buzz and the stabs of flaring, white pain dulling over her wings, Rainbow Dash felt that smile turn real, her head shaking happily. In no time the awesome Rainbow Dash would be back on the scene, twisters at her hind legs and lightning at her front ones -- and now that she learned how to work at her worst, working in tip-top condition would be a breeze! A legend! All she had to do was kick back, maybe try to go help Twilight some more and--

It was around that time that an explosion cracked overhead, a shock wave barreling outwards as Princess Twilight Sparkle performed a Sonic Rainboom.

Twilight landed with a heavy thud upon her balcony, the wood and crystal splintering underneath her hooves as her legs shook and wavered with a shock. Tumbling slightly to the side, her stomach flipping as sour bile rose at the back of her throat, Twilight struggled to breathe as the noise of a tiny dragon thumping up the stairs filled her ears -- as well as the sound of rustling paper, saddle packs unclasped by speed and impact and spending all of her scrolls and parchment fluttering in the breeze. Already some of the documents had floated down to the street below, and as a few pieces, charred and smoking, landed at Twilight's hooves, it was all she could do not to cry out.

A few seconds passed, Twilight's vision wavering in front of her and everything dulling to a dark gray for a bit every time she blinked -- that was a lot of magic to use in such little time, and her magical system was pulled thin as it struggled to readjust herself.

"Woah, Twilight!" Spike cried, bursting through the door, all of that purple and green in front of Twilight wiggling in her vision. "What in Equestria happened to you?! What's going on?!"

"Nothing, Spike, I just..." Twilight murmured, hoof brought up to rub gently at her throbbing and magically-dried horn which now steamed at her forehead. In a fuzzing and blurry haze she noticed a spark of flaring, white pain shoot through her wing-bones, and she winced as her thoughts cleared and she realized that this wasn't just the sting of magical backlash. "I did a... a..."

Twilight's eyes popped open, light searing at her corneas as she looked upwards to a cloudless sky. Forelegs still shivering and numbed as her mouth filled with a familiar itching, she quirked her eyebrows and gave her head a little shake, the wind tearing at her mane feeling like a cool crawl at her scalp while she accepted Spike's offer of a dragon to lean on. All of her thoughts racing forward, memories of her flight coming to her all at once, she stood for a second, eyes itching with a burn, thinking.

"A Sonic Rainboom."

"You did a what? But just yesterday it took you hours to get to Canterlot!"

Her wings, now almost completely numb as her muscles pinched and twitched, fell limp to Twilight's sides as she lowered herself to the ground, Spike's claws guiding her the whole way. She still shivered with a shooting chill running from her neck to the base of her tail, a tingle of warmth in her cheeks, but she did her best to focus through it and think this through. Spike was at her side, concerned and scared, and she needed to find out what was wrong, for his sake.

"I know, Spike. That's just what confuses me. All of a sudden I just... lost control. It was almost like when I had the other princess' magic a few days ago, and I'm confident that everypony got all their magic back when the Elements activated."

Her vision wiggled again, Spike turning to a strange blob, but she could still see him lift a claw to his chin.

"Well, are you positive? Maybe just a tiny bit was left over. Oh, or maybe you're having another magical spike?"

Twilight shook her head. "No, that doesn't really make sense either. I guess it's possible, but Cadence talked to me about her ascension, and she said at this point I really shouldn't be having them."

Twilight, frowning and staring upwards to the sky as she thought over Cadence's old words once again, stretched out her hooves in front of her with a pop, tongue flicking over her lips as she realized that the high-speed winds from her Rainboom had just tore at and dried her throat with a sting -- and that she really did think better whenever she had tea to calm her. And whenever she hadn't recently crash-landed upon a bed of crystal after using up more of her natural magic than she had in what felt like years.

Twilight, scrolling her eyes about the place and confirming that all of her parchment paper had been completely burnt up by magic, sighed and dredged up a mental checklist as to what her options were. Checking through box after empty box with a familiar flick of her imaginary quill, both she and Spike silent the entire time, she reached the end of the text, each option crawling down to the back of her brain -- until she got to the last one.

Sighing and flaring her horn in an experimental spark of levitation magic, and wincing only slightly as a sweating heat crawled down her forehead in an itching tingle, she frowned and looked back to Spike. Standing after stretching a bit, and picking up the burnt remains of she and Applejack's most recent chart by hoof to ensure she used no more magic than necessary, she looked to her assistant. What she was doing was sort of last resort, simply because of how much her body still ached, and all of a sudden she wished she had the magical endurance of Celestia to get her through this -- but she guessed it had to be done.

"Well, so much for getting these papers done," she muttered, limping to the nearest door against a stab at her spine. "Spike, come with me and draw the blinds. I have a magic scan to run."

Spike ran up behind her, clawed toes and scraping scales scratching against the broken crystal with a squeal, and Twilight's burst of vigor nearly melted away as his concern brought a cold wind ripping into her coat with a shake.

"Twilight, you just crash landed! After doing a Rainboom! You can't do magic now!"

"Trust me Spike, I'm not in love with the idea either. But this has to be done. If this is magic, then it's become a problem, and the sooner I figure out what's going on, the batter." She chuckled. "Maybe then we might actually get some work done around here."

And then Twilight started down the stairs in a wobbly gait, one hoof gripping onto the right railing for dear life and her neck craned downwards at the ground beneath her, ensuring each hooffall would be a somewhat stable one and there was no immediate tumbling in her future. Gently tip-tapping her way downwards as Spike, feet thumping by in a purple flash as he surge forwards, she just reached the bottom of the crystalline, shining steps as all light was snuffed from the main throne room below. Waddling to the center of the room, pale and wavering near-candle light from an entrance-level illumination spell slowly but surely guiding the battered lavender alicorn to her own Elemental throne, she sat with a thump and began preparing for her next spell. Not wanting to strain herself too badly after her ordeal, or (Celestia forbid) accidentally hurt Spike if another bout of magical backlash hit her, she closed her eyes, clearing her mind and freeing herself from the room, from her throne, and very mind and world.

As she was positive the meditation techniques had calmed and steadied her well being and magical systems, the appendage at her forehead no longer steaming or being filled with flares of the searing white pain of a stressed magic core, she flared her horn. It was to be a simple spell at first, let her physically see magic present in a specific area as requested of the user -- and in this case, that restricted area was not a room, but her own body, an area small and manageable for her state.

The spell started up with a quick spark, and Twilight smiled for a second -- as she realized with a soothing sag of her withers that the pain in her horn had dulled to a slight, ignorable itch -- before steeling herself with a clench of teeth and a screw of her face. Head twisting down to look over her magic and figure out what was wrong with her, she knew exactly what she expected. Like what Spike had predicted, maybe, a large shot of her own purple, a magical spike which came from her alicornhood -- or a few flecks of yellow, midnight, and baby blue left over from a few days ago.

What she didn't expect was a blinding shine of rainbow.

"No. This..."

Twilight shook her head, blood running cold. A lead weight dropped in her stomach, hooves chilling like ice.

A base layer of purple like normal. Everywhere, flashes of other colors on top of it -- a wavering and muted blue, a creamy yellow, a mint green... sky blue and dark green and blinding yellow and gray and Celestia, there was red -- so red, like roses, like Roseluck--

"This doesn't make any sense. This can't be happening..."

And they weren't just colors, they were familiar colors, with sounds of voices echoing in Twilight's ears and the murmurs of market stalls and trotting hooves echoing in her ears. She saw their faces, every one of them, and five colors shone brighter than the rest so bright they hurt--

"I-I must have cast the spell wrong, I--"

-- And she realized that even though a few other colors were a little brighter too, the ones of Lyra and Roseluck and Blues -- the ponies she was having counseling sessions with--

Twilight heard Spike say something to her, but she had teleported away in a sparkling pop and shimmer of magic before she could digest the meaning of his sentence.

-- it was still *cyan** that shone the brightest.*

Her hooves sweeping her forwards across the dirt road beneath her, her horn popping with a ray of light, Twilight widened the effect of her spell with a twinge in the muscles at her head. She galloped through Main Street, market stalls cluttered and jingling with the tinking of loose bits and the stomps of ponies at either side of her, ponies stopping in confusion and concern as she tore past with a rip of wind. A fire in her chest, a gallon of ice in her stomach, Twilight looked around. Really looked.

All around her were colors of magic, muted more than usual. Darker than usual as the ones inside herself flared -- Roseluck's same shade of red was darker and duller than Twilight would have ever expected her cheery aura to look. Lyra and BonBon, sitting together, their colors darker. Everypony she had seen this week, everypony she happened to pass -- dulled and strange compared to how bright those colors should be, slowly graying and dying like Discord and Tirek had come through again. Like something had been taken from them.

Twilight resisted a scream or a cry, of confusion and fear and anger, as she went past, as she looked at all of them. She ran and ran and ponies looked back at her but she kept going and going and looking and looking--

Something slammed into Twilight with a heavy thud, sending her sprawling backwards with a grunt and flicking outwards of limbs. Her head spinning as she laid on the ground, wings cramping and pinched at their place underneath all of her weight, she struggled to sit back up, eyesight wavering as the world righted itself once more. Shaking her head and squinting her eyes together before looking up again, Twilight licked and swept at her desert-dry muzzle and mouth, shiver racking at her bruised body as a fiery itch filled her mouth.

As Twilight came to and looked up, a blinding string of ethereal light attacked her senses, filling her eyes and jaws with a crawling, scratching heat. Magic rolled from the pony before her, a cloud of misting energy drawn outwards faster than Twilight had ever seen before, twisting in, striking her chest, spiraling into Twilight's horn with a chill -- into her magical system.

And the pony it was coming from was Rainbow Dash.

Twilight teleported away before the pegasus could say anything.

Twilight sat at the outskirts of Everfree forest, tall, dewy grasses tickling at the skin underneath her coat of fur. Her chest heaving up and down as she panted and her horn twinged with a burning, electrical shot, she looked down to er chest, to the several magics swirling inside of her. She frowned, her mind blank, and after a second, her horn flared into a bright magenta flame.

Sweat covered her brow as the spell was compounded and squished into a smaller and more confined area, and as the spell flipped through all the other colors present, focusing in tighter to Twilight's magical core, it was all she could do not to collapse at the strain -- and at the sight.

At her core, hidden under purples and blues and pinks and rainbows, was red. A deep, rusted and angry red, twirling and spiraling with an inflamed swirl of fiery, explosive oranges mixed with subtle swirls of cutting, bloodied silver. The magic barreled about inside her, crackling and shuddering freely in blasts of hellfire, and in a split second, Twilight understood. Twilight knew.

Inside of her, somehow, something sat. Something red. Angry. Fiery. Hungry. Hateful. Something absolutely

Tirek