Mare-Do-Well: Regeneration

by Mark Garg von Herbalist

Rating: mature
Tags: Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Original Character, Trixie, Shining Armor, Pinkie Pie, Sex, Mare Do Well
Length: 280782

Trixie, Pinkie Pie and Shining Armor risk everything to protect Equestria from government corruption and a powerful, home based terrorist organization seeking the nation's absolute destruction.

Technically completed, but is now going through much needed edits and rewrites.

Stay tuned for the edits! :raritywink:

Set ten years after the Changeling attack on Canterlot, Equestria faces a new threat. This time it is not from supernatural beings, but from its own citizens. Social degradation and political strife have become the norm for what was once the city on the hill, and there is no end in sight. However, three lives -a disgraced magician, a weary captain, and a lost Element- will risk everything to save Equestria.

Revised with the help of Cade YYZ
Rated Web 17- For strong violence, language, and sexuality throughout. All involving colorful ponies. You have been warned.

Arc 1- Fully Edited
Arc 2- Fully Edited

Have some music

Published 2012-05-24 09:54:03 UTC
Last updated 2016-08-03 17:51:58 UTC

ARC 1- END of the OLD -Cover-

Arc 1- 1 (Justice Is Absolute)

Ten Years Later...

Trixie is jolted awake by a sudden bump. She raises her head and peeks out from behind a bale of hay and sees that the wagon she snuck on has traveled into a town called Barnville; knowledge of this courtesy of a worn sign saying: "Welcome to Barnville!"vwith the words faded, the paint chipping, and a picture of a happy farmer with devil horns and red eyes crudely painted on. Just from the sign alone she can tell that she's in for a rough stay at Barnville. However, one thing that strikes her as odd, besides the creepy sign, is that the town looks almost exactly like Ponyville, only all the colors have been sucked away and the roads are muddy with pockets of icky water in the most inconvenient of places. Even the sky is dingy! The sun is hiding behind a thick layer of clouds that are the color of corpses and the sky is so gray that it’s difficult to tell where the clouds end and where the sky begins.

When the cart pulls to a stop, she quickly hops out of it and ducks into the safety of an alley. Her normally well-kept light blue coat and silver tail and mane have suffered years of neglect and are now covered in thick, crusty layers of dirt and other things she’d rather not talk about. Trixie did do her best to stay clean, but it seemed like the farther she traveled from Ponyville and Canterlot, the dirtier everything became.

The ever so pleasant ponies Ponyville thought she had a bad attitude, well they’d go into a state of comatose from the horrible mannerism that the ponies of Detrot deliver. And the water? It’s sparkling clean in Canterlot and clear in Ponyville, but past the Everfree Forest, near places like Stalliongrad and Fillydelphia, there were times she wondered if the sewage treatments plants were leaking. Those ponies are so blinded by their utopian lifestyle that they haven’t realized that Harmony only exists near the capital of Equestria. The farther ponies are from Celestia’s presence, the more distant the ideals of Harmony become.

Some thunder rumbles in the distance and the former Great and Powerful Trixie looks up and feels some rain patter against her face. She frowns and looks down at her hooves; her once beautiful coat now reduced to an indescribable mess. Trixie sighs and folds her forehooves over each other and lies in the mud under the cover of a cheap tarp. However, a strong gust of wind rips the tarp away and carries it down the muddy road. Trixie scoffs “Figures” and curls up, not even caring that polluted rain is soaking her and pushing her tattered mane over her face. She thinks that maybe with some luck that she’ll melt away into the nothingness, just as her father had predicted, and just as the ponies of Equestria see her as.

A nothing.

Trixie blinks some tears away and tries to think about something good. Anything will do for her at this moment. Such as, the mud is comfortable and the rain is giving her a free shower. A comfortable mud bed and a free shower against her loss of wealth, fame, image, and basically everything she had.

“Now what’s ah sweet lil’ mare like ya doin’ out here in tha rain for?” asks an eerie voice that is obviously trying to come off as friendly.

Trixie looks up and sees a slender pegasus stallion with a sickly green coat and a yellow tail with no mane smiling down at her. He is wearing a ratty poncho that covers most of his body and his teeth are crooked and rotting, his eyes are also yellow and to top it off, his nose is constantly twitching. Trixie remains silent as she looks at the strange pony, in her prime she would be repulsed by the stallion’s nose-burning bad breath, but nothing surprises her now. Trixie looks away from him and at the watery mud she’s lying in, she doesn’t want to give him the benefit of an answer. The stallion simply chuckles lightly and lays down in front of her and tries to get a better look at her face.

“Do I scare ya? Sorry if I do. Years in the mines at Shattered Hoof Quarry did ah number on mah lungs and looks, if ya know what I mean.”

Trixie closes her eyes and wishes for the stallion to go away. But just like everything else, it doesn’t go her way, the stranger persists with basic chatter that no one in the right mind would care about.

Then her unwelcomed visitor suddenly extends his hoof and says, “Mah name is Sunshine Cloud, I was ah big fan of yer shows Miss Great and Powerful Trixie.”

Trixie stares dumbfounded at him. “You-you know who I am-I mean who Trixie is?” She then mentally kicks herself after asking that dumb question.

“Darn right I do,” snickers Sunshine “and I see ya still got that charm of yers.”

Trixie’s blush is hidden behind the mud caked to her face, but she’s still glad that she’s finally recognized after a decade of being alone! She can almost squeal like a happy little filly about this turn of events!

Sunshine pulls off his poncho and gently puts it over Trixie, and, as if to enforce his affection, he extends one of his wings and uses it as umbrella to cover her head. Trixie looks at the wing and notices that they aren’t like normal pegasi wings; its slightly deformed and some of the fathers fall loose just by the rain droplets splattering against them.

“What happened to your wings?” asks Trixie

“That ol’ pieces o’ junk? I haven’t gotten the slightest clue,” chuckles Sunshine. “I was workin’ in the quarry when there was this explosion and next thing I know, I’m flyin’ tail over hoof and I see black. Woke up in the hospital next day and the doctor told me they had t’ amputate one wing, but they left the other on. Now it’s just there as an umbrella for the pretty mares”

Sunshine then proceeds to leading Trixie to a pub named “Cloudsdale Rejects Pub”. Like the rest of Barnville, its poorly kept; the walls are covered with grime and vulgar graffiti, the ceiling has only Celestia knows what plastered on it, and there are thick trails of muddy hoof prints all over the worn floor. There’s also a lot of miserable ponies hunched over the bar counter and tables drinking hard cider and licking blocks of salt. Some are so drunk or dehydrated that they have collapsed on the floor or passed out at their tables. Despite the sad scene, Trixie still wishes that she had the bits to buy herself a drink and a meal.

Trixie’s stomach growls and her mouth waters when she sees a platter of fresh hay bacon and a pitcher of cider carried out of the kitchen in the mouth of a pegasus more. The mare has a scarlet coat and fiery colored mane and tail and is also wearing a simple, but well kept, poncho. The mare flicks her tail against the face of another mare that gave her a quick feel, then she gives the other patrons a murderous gaze and those looking at her are quick to turn their heads from her.

Trixie watches the mare slide the plate of hay bacon in front of a mysterious earth pony stallion sitting in the corner. He is older than most of the ponies in the room and is surprisingly well dressed in a brown trench coat that is covering a dark suit, and a fedora of the same color as the coat. The stallion has brownish-gray fur with a fading black mane and tail and black spots that surround his eyes and muzzle. After the mare unenthusiastically sets the plate down the stallion gives her a few bits and she takes them and heads towards Sunshine. When she reaches Sunshine she gives Trixie a dirty look before ignoring her completely.

“Gray Muffin is back,” says the mare coldly.

“He won’t cause any trouble,” assures Sunshine. “By the way, Scarlet, this is Trixie Lulamoon. Trixie, this is mah sister, Scarlet Cloud.”

Trixie extends her hoof and says: “How do you do?”

Scarlet looks at the hoof with disgust and then glares at her brother. “As if you need more tramps.”

Trixie looks down and strokes the muddy floor to hide the pain, that statement was like a rusty knife plunged into her heart.

“Now, now, Scarlet, what have we talked about with that language of yers,” Sunshine says firmly while hugging Trixie around her neck sympathetically.

Scarlet scoffs and walks back to the kitchen with her nose in the air. When she is out of sight Sunshine sighs sadly and rubs Trixies mane, saying: “You’ll have t’ forgive mah sister. She’s ah bit grouchy most of the time.”

Sunshine looks at Gray Muffin, he’s eating his hay bacon but is also keeping an eye on his surroundings as if searching for possible assassins.

“Why don’t ya get cleaned up and I’ll get ya somethin’ t’ eat.” Sunshine says in a darker tone. He then pecks Trixie on the cheek and gently nudges her towards the rickety stairs. Trixie feels a shiver run up her spine because of it, but she pushes her uneasiness aside and proceeds up the stairs to find the shower. As she quietly walks up the stairs she tries to keep her mind focused on the warm shower and the desperately needed food, but she also wonders what Sunshine plans on doing with her. Out of her years of horrendous traveling, she has quickly figured out that nobody does anything generous out of the kindness of their hearts. There is always a trade off, and as grateful as she is for Sunshine’s help, she still doesn’t know what he wants in return. Trixie snaps out of her thoughts when she hears Sunshine confront Gray Muffin. She partially ignores the conversation, but when she hears Gray Muffin speak, she stops and peeks down the stairs to see what the two stallions are talking about.

“Still mad about what happened that night, are ya?” teases Sunshine.

“I’m always mad at you,” remarks Gray Muffin harshly; his voice is raspy, like his vocal cords suffered through a traumatic injury of some sort.

“Ahhh, I see. Why are ya here, Mr. Muffin?”

“You know why I’m here.”

“Nope, can’t say that I do.”

“Where are they?”

“Where are who?”

“The slaves.”

Trixie gasps and takes a step back, luckily the pub is loud so no one heard her. But now her heart is beating rapidly and her trust in Sunshine is completely destroyed as those last three lines echo in her mind. She wonders why would someone demand Sunshine to tell him where slaves are, and she’s also wondering why “slave” was mentioned in the first place. She knows slavery had been outlawed in Equestria for three hundred years.

Sunshine laughs while taking a seat in front of Gray Muffin and helping himself to some of the hay bacon. “Mr. Muffin, I am ah gentlecolt. I treat mares and stallions the way they deserve t’ be treated and I help everypony around here get by in someway.”

“You're garbage," growls Gray Muffin.

Sunshine flashes an unnerving smile at Gray Muffin and says in a feigned friendly tone: “Jus’ remember whose town this is.”

Gray Muffin grumbles: “I should kill you on the spot and be done with it." before nibbling on a slice of hay bacon.

“Oh come on, Mr. Muffin, ya really shouldn’t be so rude in mah house. Besides, what would yer boss say if ya took matters into yer own hooves?”

Gray Muffin and Sunshine have a brief, but intense, staring contest that ends with Gray Muffin growling like a timberwolf and leaving. Before he leaves, though, he stops in the middle of the doorway and turns his head to look at the pub’s customers, specifically at Trixie. He leaves as soon as Trixie shrinks away and when the door shuts behind him, Sunshine starts heading towards the stairs.

Trixie instantly runs in the bathroom, which was luckily easy to find, locks herself inside, and pretends to be showering. The only window in the bathroom is above the bathtub, so she climbs inside the tub and tries to open it. She hadn’t realized how hot she put the water on, though, and almost jumps out because the temperature blisters her skin under her coat. But she persists. She tries to open the window, occasionally flinging her wet mane out of her face, but she can’t open the window. It is built solidly into the wall.

“Oh no. No. No no no no no no!” whimpers Trixie as she frantically bangs against the window with her hoof.

Nothing happens. The window doesn’t even budge or show any signs of taking any damage. Then there is a light knocking on the door followed closely by Sunshine’s creepy voice. “Trixie, how are ya doin’ in there, darlin’?”

Trixie’s heart stops and she stares at the door. When Sunshine knocks again, she whimpers and her whole body trembles and she feels like she’s going to vomit. She’s too terrified to care about the boiling water splashing against her hide.

When the doorknob shakes, Trixie whimpers. “I-I’m doing fine, thanks!”

The doorknob shakes again and Trixie sinks into the tub, silently praying to Celestia that he won’t break the door down and attack her. There is a slight pause before Sunshine asks: “Why is the door locked?”

“I like my privacy,” says Trixie while wiping a mix of nervous sweat, tears, and scorching hot water off of her face.

“Ahhh, I can’t say I blame ya there. Listen, I jus’ realized that I forgot t’ put soap in the bathroom. I just bought a new batch since I ran out earlier. Now, if ya want, I can send Scarlet in t’ hand ya the new soap and she can help ya wash up."

“No, that-that’s quite alright. I-I’ll just rinse myself off.”

Trixie tries to open the window again, this time with her famed magic, but this “famed magic” turns out to be worse than pitiful. Her horn sputters pathetically and her stomach growls to reminder that her energy is too depleted for her to use even a simple levitation spell. She curses herself for being so stupid as to allowing an obviously creepy pony to do this to her.

“Nonsense,” says Sunshine theatrically, “a pretty mare like yerself must always look her best. I’ll get Scarlet, she’ll get ya cleaned up, and we’ll have ah nice dinner!"

Trixie hears Sunshine’s hoof steps fade, and when she no longer hears him she quietly opens the door and peeks out into the hallway. She doesn’t see or hear her captor anywhere. In fact, she doesn’t hear anything except for the howling wind and the rain banging against the walls. Trixie can also hear the wood creaking under the weight of a couple of ponies casual walking about. She puts her ear to the floor, an old trick she learned when she resorted to theft to snag food, and hears Sunshine and Scarlet having a conversation amongst themselves downstairs.

“Why don’t you just kill him and get it over with?” asks Scarlet.

“He hasn’t tried to kill me yet so I’m returnin’ the favor,” replies Sunshine.

“That's stupid! He's interfering with everything!”

Trixie has to put a hoof to her mouth to cover her gasp when she hears an echo of hoof colliding with skin and metal clanging to the floor over Scarlet’s yelp.

“DON’T YELL AT ME! DON’T YA EVER YELL AT ME!” screams Sunshine.

Trixie hears Sunshine aggressively screaming at Scarlet as she desperately tries to apologize, and while they are distracted Trixie makes a move to run to the door, but when she’s halfway down the stairs, Scarlet slides across the floor, still wearing her poncho, and her head bangs against the door with enough force to shake it and leave a crack. Trixie stops and backs up the stairs, and she shrinks down when she sees Sunshine walk into view foaming at the mouth with his eye is twitching. Curiosity is what keeps Trixie in her spot as she watches the horrifying scene unfold.

Scarlet scrambles to her hooves and holds her forehooves together like she’s praying and continues apologizing to Sunshine. Sunshine puts his forehoof under Scarlet’s chin and lifts her head up so that she’s looking into his eyes. Then his expression softens and he hugs her tightly while stroking her mane.

“I’m sorry, Scarlet,” whispers Sunshine, “ya know I get worked up over some things. But can ya do me ah favor and help Trixie clean up?”

“Ye-Yeah, I’ll go do that,” whimpers Scarlet, an expression of pure fear on her face.

“I’m gonna fix dinner. How does ah salad sound?”

“...Sounds nice.”

“Good. Run along now, we don’t want to keep her waitin’.”

Trixie scampers back into the bathroom, locks the door, and pretends to be cleaning herself once again. A minute later the door opens up and Scarlet walks into the bathroom with a key in her mouth. She sets the key on the sink and briefly steps out to bring a bucket of shampoo and other body care products. Trixie and Scarlet stare at each other for a moment before she closes the door. She eyes Trixie suspiciously, and Trixie realizes that Scarlet knows that she had watched what had happened but did nothing to help.

“If you’re going to sneak around, you really shouldn’t do it with wet hooves,” says Scarlet matter-of-factly as she sticks her hoof in the water to test the temperature. She is quick to pull her hoof out and swear about the water’s insane temperature, then she stares at Trixie like she’s a weirdo. “By Celestia! How are you not cooked in that water?”

Trixie struggles to come up with a coherent answer but Scarlet dismisses Trixie’s babbling with a wave of her hoof and jumps in the tub with her without taking off her poncho. Trixie flinches as the area is splashed with the steamy water while Scarlet bullies her way behind Trixie in the tub. Trixie is about to scold Scarlet for her behavior, but ends up wincing when the pegasus starts scrubbing off the grime that has covered her body with hard, painful strokes using  what feels like a heavy duty scrubber. Each stroke makes Trixie wince and when Scarlet uses the shampoo and conditioner, she scrubs with the same force and same brush. However, despite the painful ordeal, when she’s done, Trixie’s shine from her years as a performer returns. It makes her feel younger, special, and a lot like the Great and Powerful Trixie again. Then came brushing out the knots. Trixie hears Scarlet grunting with annoyance as she brushes her mane and tail. Trixie lets out a tiny wince or yelp when she feels some of her hair get ripped out, but when the brushing is done her mane and tail regain the curl that she had before.

“Feel better?” asks Scarlet grumpily while tossing the disgusting scrubber and hairy brush back in the bucket.

“Much better,” replies Trixie softly with a slight quiver in her voice.

“We should head downstairs, my brother is waiting.”

Trixie nods and follows the pegasus downstairs, and prepares herself for the worst.

When they walk into the dining room, which is in a room sealed off behind the kitchen, they see a rickety old table with three chairs around it, and in front of each chair is a plate with salad on it and a cup of water. In the middle of the table is a big salad bowl and hanging above it is a cheap chandelier. Sunshine is sitting in the middle chair, facing the doorway, and when he sees the two mares walk in her smiles and stands up and helps Trixie sit. Scarlet refuses to take off her soaked poncho, though, which irritates Sunshine.

“Scarlet, take off yer poncho," orders Sunshine as he adjusts Trixie’s seat, prompting her to smile nervously.

“Do I have to?” whines Scarlet.

Sunshine sits down on his chair. “It isn't polite t’ wear work attire at the table, especially if its wet. Now take. It. Off.”

Scarlet reluctantly takes it off and hangs it up at the hook, and that is when Trixie sees that Scarlet doesn’t have a cutie mark. When Scarlet sits down, she glares at Trixie, and when Trixie looks away she glares daggers at her brother.

“Happy?" grumbles Scarlet.

“Very. Now, let us eat!” says Sunshine with a broad smile.

They eat in silence for a couple of minutes before Sunshine decides to get a conversation going. The conversation goes as smoothly as it can for a few minutes, which during that time frame Sunshine manages to convince Trixie to do her “third pony talk”. He starts to get really creepy after that.

“I betcha ya’re wonderin’ about mah scars,” says Sunshine slyly to Trixie.

“You already told Trixie about your wings,” says Trixie carefully; she doesn’t want to let Sunshine know that she’s terrified right now.

“Mah wings, yes, but not about the scar over mah cutie mark.”

Trixie, against her better judgement, leans over her chair and sees that there is a grotesque scar that completely covers the area where Sunshine’s cutie mark would be. She cringes and sits back in her seat, trying to forget what she just saw.

“Mah sister, as ya know, still doesn’t have her cutie mark. It’s quite tragic,” begins Sunshine casually, “but the other fillies and colts made fun o’ her at our school in Cloudsdale. She came home cryin’ to mah... our... our parents every day about the bullies and so we decided it was best t’ move to Barnville. They needed pegasi for the weather, we needed t’ get away from Cloudsdale. It was perfect. But mah sister still got bullied, and so one day, when I was workin’ in the blacksmith’s place, I brought all her bullies with me for a lil’ trip, jus’ t’ show how things are done.” Sunshine takes a bite of his salad before he continues his story with a mouth full of half chewed leaves, flowers, and hay. “The lil’ fillies and colts were excited ‘cause of all the stuff and I told them I would tell them ah secret. They wanted the secret, they didn’t know what the secret was about, but it was ah secret nonetheless. At the end of mah li’l tour, I brought the kids t’ the back, and this colt named L Roy said ‘What’s this secret ya were talkin’ ‘bout?’ and I said ‘Watch’. And I took ah hot slab o’ metal and burned mah cutie mark clean off!”

Trixie chokes on some salad she was trying to eat as the mental image of Sunshine’s insane action invades her mind.

“They all screamed and cried and I told them that if I can burn off mah cutie mark without hesitation, then what makes them think that I won’t hesitate to burn theirs off! I told them that if I found out that any one of them said ah word to mah sister about not havin’ her cutie mark, I would drag them back to the blacksmithin’ place and burn theirs off!”

“He got fired and grounded for a year the same day,” says Scarlet dryly.

“I did, but they never bothered her again. Can ya guess what the secret was?” Before Trixie can respond, Sunshine answers his own question. “Good luck guessin’. I completely forgot what it was.”

Sunshine laughs and claps his hooves, and Scarlet rolls her eyes. Trixie forces herself to smile, hoping that the smile will prevent Sunshine from doing something terrible to her.

“Trixie finds this salad delicious. What’s in it?” says Trixie in a poor attempt to hide her uneasiness.

“Oh, now ya flatter me, darlin’,” chuckles Sunshine. “It has mah own special recipe that mah friends and customers love.”

Trixie nods and looks at Scarlet for help, but she eats her salad like it was any normal day. Trixie eats a bit more salad and then tries to convince Sunshine that she has to leave.

“This food was great, and Trixie is grateful for the shower, but she really must be going," says Trixie anxiously.

Sunshine shakes his head in mock disbelief. “Oh but Trixie, where ever will ya go?”

“I-Trixie travels, so she’ll find a place to go. She always does,” replies Trixie, eyes shifting between Sunshine and Scarlet.

Sunshine’s smile fades and Scarlet quietly gets up and blocks the doorway like a deadly drone, and Trixie shrinks in her seat and her ears droop as she watches Sunshine stand up.

“But if there is anything Trixie can do to repay for your kindness she will gladly do so,” says Trixie meekly and desperately.

Sunshine’s smile returns and walks over to Trixie with his tail swishing.

“Anything, eh?” Sunshine says in curious and sensual tone.

Trixie nods, but she’s not liking what his tone is implying. Sunshine runs his hoof along Trixie’s back, making her shake and whimper, and her takes extra care to feel her curves. When he gets good feel for her freshly cleaned pelt he grins, licks his lips, and stares at her cutie mark.

“Well, ya could spend the night here. That would mean the world to me and mah sister,” whispers Sunshine lustfully.

Trixie gulps and tries nodding while her body shudders from his touch, but it comes out more as a subtle head motion. “You sure that is all Trixie can do for you?”

“I’m positive!” replies Sunshine with a sudden burst of energy and pulling away from Trixie, grinning, “Scarlet, darlin’, could ya prepare the guest room for the Miss Great and Powerful Trixie!”

Scarlet leaves without saying a word and Sunshine’s smile twists into a frown when he notices that Trixie has yet to touch her water. “Yer cup is still full...”

Trixie stares at the water. “Oh, Trixie apologizes, she just wasn’t that thirsty.”

Trixie then looks up and smiles reassuringly, but that doesn’t do anything to ease the apparent emotional pain Sunshine is in.

“That water is filtered five times, and I have ah unicorn who specializes in cleaning sanitize it even more,” says Sunshine.

Trixie levitates the cup to her mouth hesitantly. “Look, Sunshine, I appreciate what you did, but I can’t stay.”

“Where are ya goin’ t’ go?” asks Sunshine, “Ya got no money, no home, no pony here knows ya, and I can’t let a jewel like you sleep outside in the muck."

“I’ll find a way.”

Sunshine sighs. “Well if that’s what ya want, I can’t really stop ya now can I?”

Trixie once again finds herself forcing herself to smile and nod. Sunshine also nods and then drinks the water from his cup in a single gulp.

“Could ya at least have a drink before ya go?” begs Sunshine, “The water out there is like drinking shit.”

Trixie sighs and slowly sips her water. After she is done drinking the water she immediately feels tipsy and her world starts spinning. She tries to move her legs, but they collapse under her like a tower of jelly. Trixie fights to stay awake, but her eyelids feel like they weigh ten tons each and with every blink everything becomes darker. The last thing she sees before blacking out completely is Sunshine standing over her, grinning and saying: “Let’s get ya t’ bed.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Trixie wakes up in a comfortable, queen sized bed that has a basic set of sheets and pillows. Normally she would want to remain in the comfortable bed, but the room she’s in has no windows and no other furniture, and has only a single, overpowered light bulb hanging in the middle of the ceiling. The only way out of the prison is a thick wooden door with a trio of bolt locks on it. The whole layout makes her mane itch and her body tingle with uneasiness.

Trixie jumps out of the bed, gallops to the door and tries to unlock them, but they’re locked from the outside. She tries using her magic to unlock it, hoping that her meal had replenished some of her magic, but her horn sputters and shoots out pathetic sparks. When she tries again, nothing happens. Trixie strains herself to get some of her magic to work, but all she gets is a headache and tears. She starts hyperventilating and hastily pacing in circles as she tries to figure out a way out of her room.

“No, no, this can’t be happening,” whimpers Trixie under her breath. “This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. Why is this happening?”

She hears a trio of deadbolts unlocked and the door creaks open. Trixie backs away as Sunshine trots in the room with Scarlet standing in the hallway. She furrows her brows and she stomps her hoof as hard as she can.

“What did you do to me!” demands Trixie

“I gave ya an antidote.” says Sunshine casually as his sister closes the door behind him. “Ya were traveling for so long in the wilderness that ya probably caught somethin’ nasty.”

“I blacked out!”

“For only five minutes. Ya must’ve been real sick. Poor, poor Trixie. Luckily good ole Sunshine is here to take care o’ ya, right?”

“Why is my magic gone!”

“Oh that? That’s not permanent, it’s merely a side effect that tha medicine has t’ clean yer system,” says Sunshine with a casual wave of his hoof.

Trixie’s heart skips a beat when she hears the door locks click again and sees Sunshine smile with his tail flicking.

Trixie growls and aims her horn threateningly at the deformed pegasus. “Why not take me to a hospital.”

The two ponies find themselves in a standoff, and Trixie still tries to get her magic to work while Sunshine smiles lustfully, thinking it’s cute the way she’s struggling.

“Hospitals are expensive, darlin’,” coos Sunshine.

“Health care is free!" retorts Trixie.

“Don’t mean much if our hospitals are outdated."

“Where did you even get the drug?”

Sunshine laughs and stomps like it was funniest thing he’s heard in a long time. “It’s not a drug! It’s a crop here in Barnville. We call it the healin’ ‘shroom. It’s ah ‘shroom that fixes jus’ ‘bout anything, at the expense of flight loss for pegasi, magic loss for unicorns, and loss o’ energy for earth ponies. Side effects last only ah day.”

“You put it my water without my knowledge!” screams Trixie.

“DON’T YELL AT ME!”

Sunshine stomps forward with his wing expanded in a threatening manner and foaming at the mouth. Trixie, now fearing for her life more than anything else, scrambles backwards and falls on her back. She quickly rolls on her hooves and continues to back away from Sunshine. His one wing continues to flap threateningly and his nostrils flare as his eyes narrow and twitch with aggravation.

“I helped ya outta the muck! I cleaned ya up! I fed ya! And ya repay me with SCREAMIN’! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YA!”

Sunshine foaming eye twitching continues until he realizes that Trixie is whimpering and shaking in the corner. He calms down and wipes the drool from his mouth while his one wing falls down to his side shamefully.

“Sorry, darlin’,” sighs Sunshine “I get ah lil’ worked up over some things.” Then he extends his hoof to stroke Trixie’s silvery mane, but she scampers away to the other corner and he smiles reassuringly. “It’s okay, Trixie, I would never hurt ya. Yer too precious t’ me”

Trixie shakes her head, sniffling and eyes red and shining from crying. “Just let me go, Sunshine, please!"

Sunshine ignores Trixie’s plea and approaches her, his unquenchable lust for her becoming more and more apparent as his drooling and lip licking becomes more active. Then, as he smiles and licks his lips hungrily, he says in a clearly lecherous tone: “Yer a beautiful mare, ya know that right?”

His one wing expands again, this time in such a way that Trixie recognizes as a sign of wanting. Her eyes widen and she shakes her head while trying to find a way past him, but he matches every step she takes and with each step he takes is one step closer to her. It’s like a game to him.

“When I was visitin’ Canterlot and I saw ya performin’, I loved how ya glowed like tha moon. I followed ya around, from Canterlot t’ New Yoke City and even traveled t’ Ponyville t’ see ya perform.”

Sunshine chuckles and flaps his wing excitedly. Trixie is now backed against another corner and can only slump down helplessly as Sunshine walks towards her with the drooling, rapist grin taking up his whole face.

“Please, just-just let me go...” begs Trixie quietly, trembling and crying.

“I loved how ya upstaged those pretties in Ponyville,” continues Sunshine. “And I was so eager t’ finally have tha courage to ask for yer autagraph, but then I had t’ leave back to Barnville since mah father needed mah help with the weather. But when I heard the accusation of ya bein’ fake, I knew that they were LYIN’! They were all lyin’ because the Great and Powerful Trixie IS unbeatable! And they knew, oh yes they knew, so they did the only thing they could do t’ destroy you. They made ya out t’ be ah villain!!!”

Trixie closes her eyes and sobs while begging Sunshine to let her leave, but her plea falls on deaf ears. She smells and feels Sunshine’s warm, smelly breath brush across her coat and push some of her mane away. Trixie whimpers and trembles harder, knowing that this is the end and that no one is coming to save her.

“And their crimes, these rumors, against ya made ya feel worthless didn’t it?” whispers Sunshine. Trixie slowly opens her eyes and sniffles, but doesn’t give a response, and Sunshine leans next to Trixie’s ear. “I’ll make ya feel valuable again.”

Trixie shakes her head and begs and sobs when she feels Sunshine’s tongue slide up her cheek and to her ear. “Please, Sunshine, just please let me go!”

Sunshine whispers, “No can do, darlin’. We need each other.” as he nips Trixie’s ear.

Trixie screams and pushes Sunshine back with as hard as she can. Sunshine stumbles back and Trixie makes a mad dash to the door, but he jumps on top of her and presses her head against the floor. Trixie’s hooves scratch against the floor as she tries to squirm her way out from under the deformed pegasus, but he does very well in keeping his prize pinned underneath him.

“Don’t fight it. Don’t fight it.” says Sunshine between his excited panting. “It’ll only be more painful for both of us if ya do."

Trixie screams for help and Sunshine puts his forehoof under Trixie’s chin and forces her to look into his sick eyes. She tries to fight back again, but he pushes down harder on her and wraps his hoof around her neck and pushes her head against her chest. Now her head can’t move and her only escape is her closing her eyes and thinking of something other than her being raped. But she can’t think of or hear or feel anything other than Sunshine’s perverted eyes, his panting, and his icky coat and muscles.

“No pony is comin’, Trixie,” Sunshine says through his eager, heavy breathing.

Then he presses his lips against Trixie’s and forces his tongue into her mouth. Trixie’s eyes shoot open and she sobs and kicks her limbs wildly as the slimy muscle swishes around her orifice to get as much of her as it can. After what seems like hours, Sunshine pulls away, leaving a trail of saliva between the two, and Trixie collapses to the ground, shaking, sobbing, and gasping for air.

Sunshine climbs off of Trixie and she quietly begs through her tears as he traces her spine with his hoof and stops above her tail.

“No pony is comin’. It’s jus’ us, darlin'.”

Trixie tries to fight her way out, but Sunshine strikes her on the cheek and she cries out in pain as she feels her lip split and a fresh bruise form on her face.

“Stop fightin’ what was meant t’ be!”

oooOOOooo

Scarlet casually cleans the pub, not caring for the struggling she’s hearing from her brother’s special room. She grudgingly wipes remains of salt bricks, hay, and spilled drinks from the tables with a damp rag. When she looks up at the ceiling, though, she scowls and wonders how the unpleasant gunk got up there. She flies up and tries to scrub it off, but the rag she’s using proves to be useless against the gunky menace.

She presses her hooves into her sides and glares at the thing, mumbling:“Great.”

Scarlet glides to the kitchen to get the needed cleaning supplies for whatever is on the ceiling. Scarlet carelessly tosses the rag in a bucket of brown water and opens up the janitor’s closet to search for the said supplies. As she searches the closet she doesn’t notice a shadowy figure walking up behind her. When she finds a spray bottle of what she wanted she smiles to herself, then the same figure rams her head against the wall, leaving a gash on her head and knocking her out cold.

The figure adjusts his fedora and coat, and walks towards the source of the struggle.

oooOOOooo

Trixie, now with a bloody lip and a bruise across her cheek, keeps her eyes closed as she feels Sunshine climb on top of her again, and press himself against her backside. She sniffles and twitches when she feels Sunshine move her tail out of the way and his nasty mouth nibble at her ear. She has given up on calling for help or fighting him. He was right, no one was coming for her, and her attempts to fight back without her magic led to her getting beaten, so she can only hope that her fate will be quick.

“Oh don’t cry, Trixie, I’ll take care o’ ya,” says Sunshine gently while wiping tears from her eye. “I’ll be yer friend. Yer one friend in Equestria. How about some cooperation between friends, eh?”

Trixie reluctantly raises her backside, sobbing quietly, in the hopes that her cooperation will prevent more harm from falling onto her.

“That’s it. Good girl.” Sunshine’s tail flicks excitedly as he places his forehooves on either side of Trixie and presses them against her to keep her locked in place. “It’ll be fun for the both o’ us an’ ya know it.”

Suddenly, the door is kicked off of its hinges and Gray Muffin stomps into the room with his mental crosshairs locked on Sunshine. Sunshine jumps away from Trixie and glares at Gray Muffin. Trixie opens her eyes and shrinks to the ground, not moving from her spot. She’s too terrified to move.

“What the hay are ya doin’ here Muffin!” yells Sunshine.

Trixie watches the two stallions circle each other, each ready to kill each other and each preparing to do so in a different manner. Sunshine is snorting hot air and flapping his one wing threateningly, while Gray Muffin is calm and collected and watching Sunshine’s movement’s carefully.

“ANSWER ME!” screams Sunshine.

“We found the slaves,” replies Gray Muffin casually.

Sunshine’s eye twitches. “So, ya found some of them. Big deal.”

“No, we found all of two hundred of them,” Gray Muffin says, and then his eyes narrow. “We also found your stash of bits and graves of those you and your scumbag friends murdered.”

Sunshine shakes his head and laughs nervously. “There’s no way ya-”

“All four of your prisons have been found and burned to the ground with your twenty rats chained to the furnaces and doused in cooking oil. Your three million in bits is now ours, and now Roar Shock has given me the order to kill you.”

Sunshine pales after hearing that and his wing falls down in defeat. He looks down at the floor and a small amount of tears glisten in his eyes. He takes a deep breath and then looks at Gray Muffin with begging look. “...What about Scarlet? Did he order her t’ be killed as well?”

Gray Muffin cracks his neck and then scrapes his hoof against the ground like a bull would when getting ready for a charge. Sunshine’s eye twitches and he screams furiously and flaps his wing as he charges Gray Muffin. With a swift, fluid strike to the chest by Gray Muffin, Sunshine stumbles back while the sounds of bones breaking echo in the room. Then Gray Muffin does a quick spin and bucks the pegasus in the chin, sending him flying into the wall. The force of the kick is strong enough to break some of Sunshine’s teeth, and after he hits the wall he leaves a huge crack in it. Sunshine slumps to the ground and spits out the loose bits of his teeth and smiles pleading at Trixie, his mouth dripping with blood. Trixie stares at Sunshine as he extends his hoof.

“Trixie, darlin’, would ya mind givin’ me ah hoof?” asks Sunshine.

“Get away from her!” snarls Gray Muffin.

Gray Muffin stomps Sunshine’s ribs and Trixie hears more bones snap. Sunshine howls in pain, and then Gray Muffin bites down on the pegasus’s tail and flings him through the wall of the room and into the hallway. Sunshine slams into the wall with bits of wood all around him and coughs painfully and spits globs of blood out of his mouth while struggling to stand up. Gray Muffin orders Trixie to stay in the room while marching towards Sunshine. Sunshine clumsily gets up and tries to buck Gray Muffin, but the earth pony side steps the attack and stomps on one of Sunshine’s forehooves. It snaps near the joint, causing his bone to pop out of his skin in the back, and Sunshine screams in unbelievable pain and thrashes on the floor. The older stallion then bites on Sunshine’s ear and drags him towards the edge of the stairs, leaving a trail of blood behind him. When he gets to the edge of the stairs he releases Sunshine and walks behind him. Sunshine tries to negotiate with Gray Muffin by telling him that there is no need for violence, but the earth pony ignores him. He gives Sunshine a hard kick in the rump that sends him flying over the first few steps, and then tumbling, face first, down the rest of the way.

Trixie shakes as she pushes herself to her hooves with her tail between her legs, and pokes her head out of the room. She follows Gray Muffin as he walks down the stairs and when she reaches the stairs she sees Gray Muffin standing over a mortally injured Sunshine. His legs are twisted the wrong way and his already deformed wing is snapped near the bottom, and the bleeding from those injuries are making a thick pool of blood. If he isn’t killed on the spot he’ll surely die from blood loss

Sunshine coughs and wheezes, and his destroyed legs slide lazily along the floor while his blood soaks his body and floor.

Sunshine looks at Gray Muffin with unmistakable fear. Gray Muffin stares down at the pegasus and paces around him, saying: “There is only black and white.”

“No... No, wait ... Wait a minute...”

“There is never gray.”

Gray Muffin stops by Sunshine’s head and puts his hoof over his neck.

Sunshine shakes his head, whimpering: “Mr. Muffin... please, mah sister...”

“For Justice is absolute.”

“NO!”

Trixie gasps and shrinks back when Gray Muffin brings his hoof up and slams it down on Sunshine’s neck. His neck pops open and showers Gray Muffin’s hoof and the ratty floor with blood. The older stallion then looks up at Trixie. She’s staring, horrified at what she just saw, and slumps to the floor. She can’t believe that she was almost raped and witnessed an execution in the same day.

“You-you-you...” stammers Trixie.

“Did what I had to do,” grumbles Gray Muffin as he rubs his hoof on the floor to get the blood off. Gray Muffin then steps to the front of the stairs as Trixie walks next to him. “The afterlife will not be kind to the likes of him.”

“He... You killed him.” whispers Trixie.

“And he drugged you, tried to rape you, and sold hundreds of kidnapped mares and stallions as prostitutes while murdering dozens of ponies,” Gray Muffin looks at Trixie and she shrinks back. “What did you want me to do? Hug him and give him counseling?”

Trixie looks at Sunshine’s lifeless eyes and the blood pool seeping its way towards them. She feels her dinner swelling up and she turns around and pukes on the stairs. Gray Muffin silently walks towards the kitchen and Trixie, after she’s done puking, sees Gray Muffin leave and she hurries after him.

“Wait, where are you going?” asks Trixie meekly.

“Home,” replies Gray Muffin bluntly.

“Aren’t you going to hide the body... or something?”

“No.”

“Who are you?”

Gray Muffin stops and looks at Trixie with great annoyance. “You already know who I am. I saw you eavesdropping on my conversation with Sunshine.”

“B-but what do you do? Are you a hitpony or-or a... what are you?”

“If I was a hitpony you would be dead too."

“But-”

“We’re done here.”

Gray Muffin leaves without another word and Trixie remains standing, alone, in the pub kitchen. She looks at the gory scene, and then at the swinging door from where Gray Muffin left. She contemplates on whether or not she should go after him. If she stays, then she can tell the Local Guards what happened. How Sunshine had tried to rape her but Gray Muffin saved her by brutally executing him. But she’s also afraid that the guards will arrest her because they think that she did murdered Sunshine. And besides, even if they do believe her, the Local Guards would go after Gray Muffin and toss him in the dungeons. That would be the worst “Thank you” gift of all time. But then again, she’s also wondering if her rescuer is a criminal since he was ordered to kill Sunshine and apparently took three million bits.

When she hears heavy knocking on the door, and the Local Guards demanding someone to open the door, Trixie makes up her mind.

“Gray Muffin, wait!” hollers Trixie.

And she gallops after her hero.

Arc 1- 01- Sunshine -ADDITION-

Arc 1- 2 (Think Twice)

Trixie runs into the muddy alley and sees Gray Muffin disappear around the corner. She runs after him, and when she turns the corner he turns around, slams her against the wall and puts his other hoof over her mouth. She struggles and tries screaming, but it’s muffled and she might as well be almost completely silent with the hard rain pouring around them.

Gray Muffin looks over his shoulder and then back at Trixie. “I’m going to release you, but you need to stay quiet or I will leave you at the mercy of the guards. Are we clear?”

Trixie nods her head quickly and Gray Muffin releases her. She watches his movements carefully as his hoof falls from her face, then he puts his hoof to his mouth and makes a “Shh” sound as he peeks around the corner. While he’s scanning the area Trixie gags and wipes off the mud that was pressed into her face. Gray Muffin spots a couple of the Local Guards searching the alley for hoof prints, but that’s a lost cause since the rain is washing away everything. He motions Trixie to follow him and she obeys without question. Trixie is led through a maze of alleys and abandoned buildings, and it amazes her that the old stallion is able to keep them both hidden from the swarm of ponies searching for them. When they get to a bridge over the murky, misty river running past Barnville, Gray Muffin peers over the edge while Trixie anxiously watches the guards scurry about.

“Over here,” whispers Gray Muffin.

Trixie looks over her shoulder and sees Gray Muffin motioning her to come to him. She trots towards him and sees an old boat covered with banged up metal plates and a faded symbol in the shape of a wrench in a lightning bolt painted on the side. There are a couple of unicorn mares wearing all black, full body suits looking at them, too, as well as other ponies wearing similar garb working on different parts of the boat in almost total silence.

Gray Muffin nods to the boat below. “Jump.”

“You-you want Trixie to jump?” stammers Trixie.

“Did you just... Never mind. Either jump or I throw you.”

Some guards shout indistinctively and both ponies turn their heads and see a small army running towards them. Gray Muffin turns to Trixie and yells for her to jump. Trixie closes her eyes and jumps over the edge with Gray Muffin immediately jumping after her. Instead of feeling cold, murky water or a hard deck like what Trixie had been expected, she feels invisible hands grab her and gently lower her on the rough wooden floor on the boat. She opens one eye and sees that she’s safe on the boat, and that a green, magical mist evaporates from her and her other eye opens when she sees an orange one around Gray Muffin fade away. The unicorns quickly give them rubber boots and when Trixie sees that everyone is wearing them, and that Gray Muffin is putting them on like his life depends on it, she slides them on without question.

Gray Muffin runs towards the driver and orders him to get them out quickly. Trixie looks up and sees the Local Guards running on the bridge and ordering them not to move while aiming their weapons at them. Then she hears a whirring sound followed closely clicks and groans, and she watches in wonder as the back of the boat splits open and a tesla coil rises from the back. Then turbine engines on a ball-and-joint system on each side of the boat roll out and the boat lifts itself out of the river, splashing the guards with the murky water. The Local Guards scream and cower away from the vehicle, some even run away. Trixie can’t blame them though, she’d probably be one of the ponies screaming and running if she saw something like this rising out of the water. When the headlights on the vehicle flicker on, she can only imagine them looking like giant glowing eyes of a monster.

One of the ponies on the deck tosses Trixie a rope attached to a rubber coated bar. She stares at it like an idiot for a couple of seconds before the pony that tossed her the rope says: “Tie yourself to the pole, you idiot!”

Trixie awkwardly ties the rope around her body, and for good measure she also wraps her hooves around the bar and holds on tight. The ship lurches forward with a thunderous BOOM and Trixie eyes are forced shut as the wind pushes against her face. If she shrieks or screams or makes any sounds, she doesn’t hear it over the rushing wind and crackling electricity.

A couple of minutes later the pilot lowers the speed to a level where ponies can walk around comfortably. Trixie doesn’t need to open her eyes to know that her mane is a mess, she can feel it plainly. Trixie opens her eyes and tries to push the loose clumps of hair down, but it is fruitless, so she decides to leave her mane a mess and check out the tesla coil. She can feel her fur and hair stand up as she approaches it, and as cool as it is to look at, she knows touching it is out of the question.

“Do you like it?” asks Gray Muffin with a barely noticeable hint of smugness in his voice.

Trixie nods. “It’s amazing.”

A small, satisfied smile flickers across Gray Muffin’s face and he turns around and orders the crew to do some technical stuff that Trixie doesn’t catch. Trixie continues staring at the tesla coil in a trance like state. The way the electric currents visibly snake around the coil and discharge in the sky is artistic in its own way. When her eyes start hurting from looking at the bright light she peeks over the edge and watches the trees pass under them. Another wondrous sight to behold after escaping an unpleasant fate.

Trixie then frowns when the image of Sunshine’s lifeless eyes flash in her mind. She knows that Sunshine was vile, but she still can’t believe that Gray Muffin killed him, and the brutality of the execution was so horrifying that she almost forgot about what almost happened to her.

“Something bothering you?” asks Gray Muffin suddenly.

Trixie eeps and jumps around to look at Gray Muffin while clutching her heart. She tries fixing her mane casually in a poor attempt to act like nothing is wrong and says, “Trixie’s fine.”

“Third pony talk again?” teases Gray Muffin rudely.

“Well... er... it’s a force of habit.”

“I take it you are relaxed, then.”

“Um... kinda. But-”

“Don’t talk down to my ponies, Trixie. You only get one warning.”

“What happens if Trixie wastes her warning?”

“Then I’ll kick you off.”

Trixie’s eyes widen and can clearly picture Gray Muffin stopping the ship and kicking her off without hesitation. So she acknowledges his statement with a rapid nod. Gray Muffin returns the nod and turns around to do something else, but Trixie stops him and asks, “Actually, can we talk? Preferably somewhere private.”

Gray Muffin stares at Trixie for a couple of seconds before motioning her to follow him. She follows him down into the bowels of the ship, which is incredibly crowded with beds and technology, and he leads her to the very back. Trixie looks around nervously, and when she hears something suddenly scrape against the wood she jumps and expects something other than a stool being pulled out by Gray Muffin.

Gray Muffin points at the stool. “Have a seat.”

Trixie sits down and tries to think of how to tell her rescuer that she is grateful for helping her escape, but doesn’t approve of the killing. While she thinks about this, Gray Muffin looks at her intently, like he’s trying to read her mind.

“Mr. Muffin, what you did was heroic.” Trixie says as she looks down at the rough floor.

“I was just doing my job.” Gray Muffin says humbly while pulling out a stool for himself.

“But Trixie is a little bit concerned about your methods.”

Gray Muffin sighs and sits on his stool. “You do not approve of me ending his life?”

“Why did you have to kill him?”

“Why are you upset that I killed him? He did something horrible and yet-”

“Okay, I get it!” says Trixie irritably with a wave of her hoof. “But the way you did was... it was horrible.”

“He was scum and deserved more than what he got.”

Trixie tries to think of something to say, but Gray Muffin rambles on and on and on about how he did what he did for something called the Greater Good and that by killing Sunshine he saved the lives of untold number of ponies from horrible fates.

“But couldn’t you have tied him up and left him for the Local Guards or something?” Trixie says uneasily.

Gray Muffin shakes his head. “The system is broken. Ponies cannot rely on the Equestrian government to protect them anymore.”

“And let me guess, ponies can count on you. A pony who murders and steals.”

“You were saved by us, were you not?”

“Um... I guesses so.”

Gray Muffin leans forward. “Trixie, you must understand that there are ponies out there that do not want what is best for others. They are fueled by vice and want nothing more than to destroy what it means to be Equestrian.”

“I’m not following. I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Ponies like Sunshine exploit the desperate, such as you, for a promise of somepony taking care of them. They are taken in, cleaned up, and then sold as slaves. Drug dealers flood the streets with narcotics and poison the minds and bodies of the youth, promising them an escape from the Tartarus that Gray Area Logic wrought unto society. The corrupt schools and politicians and media moguls fuel this by teaching foals that there is never a right or wrong answer, only a convenient one. Those who believe in True Harmony are quickly silenced by the sheep who are dumb enough to believe their shepard’s demonizing campaigns. Which, unfortunately, is nearly everypony now.”

“But what about Princess Celestia? She can fix this, right?”

Gray Muffin scoffs. “Celestia endorses Gray Area Logic, and because of that, more ponies such as you, have become victims of injustice.”

Trixie looks down to ponder Gray Muffin’s claim. “And Princess Luna?”

“She sees the line between right and wrong clearly and understands the symbolism and strength behind True Harmony,” replies Gray Muffin proudly, but then he sighs and also looks down. “But I fear that she doesn’t have the power, nor the influence, to make the changes. And even if she did, she fears what might happen should she get a position that holds as much power as her sister.”

“Is she afraid she’ll turn into Nightmare Moon again?”

“Possibly.”

Trixie nods and tries to think of something to say. As grateful as she is, she still doesn’t like the fact that Gray Muffin killed Sunshine, but given his obvious conspiracy theory type paranoia she knows there will be no reasoning with him on that matter. However, she believes that he did have a point when he labeled her as a victim. She thinks about Sunshine’s hooves all over her, his nasty tongue in her mouth, and how he wanted have his way with her in a prison.

“I don’t want to be a victim anymore,” whispers Trixie, shaking and tearing up as the horrible event plays back in her mind.

“Really,” says Gray Muffin with some skepticism.

“What Sunshine did to me was horrifying and I don’t want that to ever happen to me again... Can you help me?”

“How.”

“You can... um... Oh, I know! You can train me!”

“Train you? You criticize me of my ways a minute ago, and now you want me to train you?”

“Please! I-I can’t let that happen to me or anypony else ever again!”

“No matter how hard you try, there will always be a victim.”

“But one less if you let me join your group!”

Trixie jumps off her stool and approaches Gray Muffin with a pathetic, pleading smile. Gray Muffin only shakes his head in disagreement and when Trixie is right in front of him she sits down and her pleading smile broadens while making a small, squee noise.

“No.”

Trixie forces her smile to stay, but her ears droop and her eyes lose the hopeful glint. Then her smile twists into a pout.

“Why!” whines Trixie.

Gray Muffin frowns.“Because I know you won’t be able to handle it. If you didn’t want to see your violator killed, what makes you think you’ll be suitable to fight for justice?”

“Trixie can handle anything you throw at her!”

“No third pony talk.”

“But it’s true! You underestimate the Great and Powerful-” Trixie sees Gray Muffin glaring at her and she smiles sheepishly while shrinking down. “Me.”

“No, you overestimate yourself, Trixie. Trust me when I say our group is not for you.”

“Hey! Trixie-”

“Third pony.”

“I’ve been through a lot over the years and I need this!”

“No, you want what has not been offered to you.”

“But I-you-you saved me without breaking a sweat! I-I want, no I need to be like you if I want to-”

Gray Muffin snarls and immediately leaves the room. When the door slams shut Trixie cringes and looks down with her ears drooped and body sulking, realizing that she said something stupid.

“Smooth, Trixie. Real smooth,” mumbles Trixie to herself.

Trixie runs to the deck and sees Gray Muffin walking around and checking on the working ponies. He gives approving pats on the shoulders and praises, and occasionally fixes a small problem before moving on. Trixie tries to get his attention by calling his name, waving her hoof in front of his face, and walking in front of him, but he ignores her each time.  Finally, after a good fifteen minutes of badgering on Trixie’s part and Gray Muffin checking, double checking and triple checking the double checks, he stops in front of the tesla coil and stares at it. Trixie walks next to him and tries to get his attention once again.

“Gray Muffin, did I say something to hurt your feelings?” she asks.

“You said something arrogant, and your word choice was very childish,” replies Gray Muffin harshly.

“What did I say?”

“You said you needed to be like me. But if you knew who I was, who I am, who I plan on being, you’d think twice about your words.”

Trixie is silent for a moment as the words seep in, especially the last part, but knowing that she had obviously struck a sore spot with her rescuer she tries to make amends. “Look, I’m sorry for what I said, I wasn’t thinking. But the thing is, I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I am tired of running and begging and-and I’m just sick of everything! I am disgusted at what I had become just so I wouldn’t starve... And you look like a pony who has no fear.”

“No pony lives without fear,” says Gray Muffin, and then he turns to Trixie and she looks down to hide the shame in her eyes. “And I had wealth, and a family, and it was all taken away from me because of the choices I made. You built up a false world and when your lies were discovered you became what you are now. But I was saved from my darkness by becoming a pony who could do whatever it takes to ensure that no pony suffers from the injustice that I had faced.”

Trixie looks down and scrapes her hoof against the rough deck as his words sink into her.

Gray Muffin steps towards Trixie. “Trixie, you can never be like me, but if you truly want to become a better pony and fight injustice, then the ponies I work with can help. But know this, they never do anything halfway. Commitment is lifelong, there is no backing out. Do you understand?”

Trixie looks into his eyes without waiver. “I understand.”

“I am going to ask you again. Do you understand the gravity of what you desire?”

~~~~~~~~~~

A few minutes later the airship lands in a clearing in the forest and Trixie is levitated off of the ship and gently lowered on the grass below. Gray Muffin is also lowered next to Trixie and he escorts her away from the ship, near the tree line.

“Do you remember what I said before I killed Sunshine?” asks Gray Muffin sternly.

“Trixie thinks so,” says Trixie hesitantly.

“Repeat it.”

“What?”

“Repeat what I said before I killed Sunshine.”

Trixie looks at Gray Muffin, and then at his ship. She takes a deep breath and goes on to reciting what Gray Muffin had said before he crushed Sunshine’s neck. “There is only black and white. There is never gray... For justice is absolute.”

Trixie gets nervous and starts sweating profusely while stepping back when Gray Muffin doesn’t say a word of recognition or disapproval. Finally, after what seems like an eternity of silence, Gray Muffin nods approvingly.

“Good, now, if you really want what you say you must do two things. First, you must find the manor that resides in an abandoned dragon cave with a waterfall on either side of the entrance. Second, once you find it, you must repeat my final words to Sunshine and they will let you in. If you don’t they will kill you,” instructs Gray Muffin.

“Wait, aren’t you taking me with you?” asks Trixie.

“No.”

“Why!”

“I think it’s obvious.”

“...A test?”

Gray Muffin does a subtle nod and walks back to the ship. Trixie tries to ask him for a general direction, but he ignores her and after he’s pulled back on he orders the ship to leave. Trixie shields her eyes from the dirt and blades of grass kicked up by the vehicle’s turbine engines and when the ship is above the trees, it speeds away and disappears from view within a matter of seconds, leaving Trixie alone in the field. She looks around the clearing and paces in circles for a few seconds before deciding her best choice is following the ship. She takes a deep breath to collect herself, and then boldly marches into the forest.

~~~~~~~~~~

Trixie had been trekking through the forest for hours, she had traveled all night and the day is now reaching afternoon. During her walk she had asked anyone she came across for directions to the manor Gray Muffin described, but the responses were either: “I don’t know”, “You’re crazy”, “Turn around and go home”, or “If you blow me I’ll tell you”. Needless to say, the pervert that said that lost his front teeth after Trixie bucked him in the mouth.

When she finally reaches the area with abandoned dragon cave Gray Muffin described, the first thing that she notices is that the waterfalls cascade down and have created a mist at the bottom that shrouds the base of the mountain. The second thing that she notices is that the mountain is very steep and the waterfalls had made it slick and almost completely flat in certain spots. So, not only is she tired from what seemed like days of walking, she’s also starving because all she had to eat was grass and fallen leaves, and to top it all off, she must climb up a slick mountain with her bare hooves.

‘This is going to be fun,’ thinks Trixie sarcastically.

Trixie walks into the mist and shivers when the freezing dew clings to her coat. She instinctively shakes the water off, but she feels like a water magnet because as soon as she shakes the dew off, twice as many attach themselves onto her. She grits her teeth and tries to ignore the numbing cold, but ignoring it goes right out the window when she falls in neck deep frigid water. She’s briefly submerged, but quickly rises back to the surface and gasps for air and coughs out the numbing water. Trixie frantically searches for any way out, but she can’t find any, so she does the only thing she can do. Swim blindly until she reaches the mountain.

After swimming out of the freezing body of water, Trixie pulls herself out, curls up on the ground and shivers uncontrollably while her teeth chatter so hard she’s afraid they’ll break. Trixie then rubs her hooves together and creates a spark from her horn. When realizing that her magic has returned, Trixie laughs with relief and quickly gathers as much wood as she can, dries them up using her weak magic to do so, and then creates a small fire. Trixie sits by the fire for an indefinite amount of time before her bones and muscles no longer feel frozen, and when that happens she sucks up her uneasiness and braves the mountain. As she climbs, she's constantly bombarded by the water cascading down, and the slick rocks cause Trixie to slip and slide more times than she can count, and the bruises she gets from those are equal in number. It also doesn’t help that every step she takes makes her muscles and bones scream and beg for her to stop.

It takes Trixie at least six hours to reach the cave, which thankfully has a flat entrance and some natural stairs made from intermingled tree roots and stone. She has to use the last bit of her strength to climb up the stairs, and when she’s safe inside the cave’s mouth she rolls on her back, panting heavily and ready for a much needed nap. Trixie can’t even tell the difference between her sweat and the water from the waterfalls, and frankly she doesn’t really want to think about it.

Trixie looks to her side and smiles victoriously when she sees the manor. Its built directly into the cave with an elegant network of small towers and wooden tubes connecting to the main household, and the main household entrance has a giant set of oak doors with a wrench inside a lightning bolt etched in them. She then groggily wipes sweat and dew off of her face, forces herself to stand and proceeds to approaching the manor with the grace of a three legged pony with crooked eyes. As she walks her mane gets a small itch and her eyes shift between the towers of the manor. Trixie stops walking and looks around, but doesn’t see anything, so she continues walking, but this time with more caution. After reaching the doors she takes a deep breath, waits a minute to recollect her miniscule energy and then knocks on the door. All it takes is one knock for the door to open. It groans in protest as it grinds across the stone floor, making a nasty scratching sound that hurts Trixie’s ears.

When the doors fully part she sees a dark hallway with small pockets of light made from weak torches. She swallows her fear and walks inside while mumbling “There is only black and white. Never gray. For justice is absolute.” quietly, over and over again. When she’s a few paces in the door suddenly seals itself shut and Trixie turns around just in time to see a unicorn mare levitate a rectangular stone slab hiding in the ceiling in front of the door. The mare has the same color scheme as Gray Muffin, only her hair is darker, longer and combed to the side to partially cover her eye, and she doesn’t have his black spots. She also has a stone for a cutie mark and Trixie can’t help but laugh at the inside, thinking how much it would suck to have such a cutie mark. The unicorn, after finishing putting the boulder in its place, stares at Trixie murderously, and Trixie continues to walk down the hallway with the unicorn closely following her. She looks at each of the torches and sees that they have the same design on them as the door.

“Keep walking,” orders the unicorn.

Trixie gives the unicorn a dirty glare. However, when the unicorn charges her horn and the rocks on the floor break apart and reform to a dozen small sharp blades, Trixie instantly apologizes and practically runs down the hallway. The urge to laugh about the unicorn’s cutie mark is also tossed very far out the window.

Finally, after walking for five minutes down the hallway of Tartarus with the murderous unicorn trailing her, Trixie enters a large extravagant room brightly lit with electric light. Sitting in the back of the room on a simple wooden throne is an armored pegasus stallion with a lightning bolt as a cutie mark wearing a fancy cape that has a pin with a similar symbol holding it together. Standing next to the pegasus is Gray Muffin, wearing his usual outfit. The pegasus stands up and walks towards Trixie while spreading his wings. Trixie doesn’t have the strength to stand, so she collapses on the floor and can only watch as the pegasus approaches while his wings retract to his sides. She looks at Gray Muffin and pleads with her eyes for him to help, but he merely shakes his head.

“Who are you!” booms the pegasus’s voice.

“There is... there is only black and white. There is never gray... For-for justice is... absolute,” says Trixie weakly, she’s on the brink of passing out.

“Who are you!”

“I... My name is Trixie... Trixie Lulamoon.”

“Why have you come!”

“I... I came to... I came to learn how to defend myself and become... a better pony... and to learn to fight injustice so... so that no pony will suffer what... what I have suffered through.”

“Who told you about my residence!”

Trixie nods towards Gray Muffin and then briefly loses consciousness, but when her eyes snap open she’s staring right into the eyes of the pegasus, and he doesn’t look too happy to see her.

“I’ve heard of you ‘Great and Powerful Trixie’. You are an egotistical, lying, tramp.” sneers the pegasus.

Trixie looks down to hide her shame, even though she knows it’s hopeless. It seems everyone that knows about her can only think ill of her.

“I was,” whispers Trixie sadly, but then she looks at the pegasus with tears in her eyes, begging him to accept her. “But I...I don’t want to be that... I don’t want to be that pony anymore.”

“So you want to fight the things you once were?” inquires the pegasus.

“Yes. Please accept-”

Roar Shock kicks Trixie away and she yelps while rolling across the floor. A sharp pain shoots throughout her side and she struggles to stand while coughing painfully; the coughing makes the pain in her side spike.

“Since you want to fight injustice and evil your training starts now!” yells the pegasus.

“You can’t be-!”

Trixie is rammed in the chest by the pegasus at lightning speed and she skids across the floor and bangs her head against the wall. Now she has a horrible ringing in her ears on top of the smart pain she’s feeling in her side and on her head. She also feels a warm liquid trickle all over the back of her head and down her neck. Trixie once again looks at Gray Muffin for help, and she does see him walking towards her, but she doesn’t know what he’ll do since he’s taking his sweet time to get to her. However, she knows one thing is certain: this guy will kill her unless someone stops him!

“Evil waits for no pony!” snarls the pegasus.

He stomps Trixie’s gut and she cries out while curling in the fetal position.

‘There-This can’t-Oh dear Celestia!’ cries Trixie’s thoughts.

Trixie hears Gray Muffin say something, but with everything fading around her she doesn’t understand a word he says. She looks up and sees her attacker bringing his hoof up, slightly distracted by Gray Muffin. The final moments of Sunshine play in Trixie’s mind again, her eyes widen and her horn suddenly bursts into action. Her horn acts like a giant cannon as a telekinetic blast hits the pegasus in the chest and rockets him backwards all the way into the ceiling. He bounces off of the ceiling and lands belly first on the throne. The throne shatters into mere splinters of what it once was and he is covered by falling debris made up of loose rocks, timber, and lighting fixtures.

Trixie is surprised that she was able to do such a feat, but that doesn’t stop her from pushing herself up and going on the defensive, even though her energy is borderlining nonexistent. Her eyes dart around the room as more ponies of all types wearing armored outfits step out to confront her, but everything is fading into darkness at a faster rate now and she can just picture herself getting slaughtered. Her ear twitches when she hears the ground rumble and her ears droop and her jaw drops when she turns to the source. The unicorn that led her to the throne room is levitating a large, spiked mace made out of pure stone into her grip. Trixie knows she’s a dead mare now.

The unicorn's eyes narrow and she grits her teeth as she positions herself for a charge. Trixie, relying on what has to be pure adrenaline, uses her magic to grab a table and hold it in front of her as a shield.

The unicorn charges Trixie and is about to swing the mace against the table, but before she can, Gray Muffin steps forward and yells: “Terra, stop!”

The unicorn, Terra, looks at Gray Muffin, bows and lets the mace fall and crumble to the ground. Upon impact, the stones melt into the ground, leaving only small bumps to let others know of the manipulation the unicorn used on the ground.

Gray Muffin helps the pegasus out of the mess and whispers something to him and he nods and tries to make himself look presentable while he limping towards Trixie. “Trixie Lulamoon, I am Roar Shock, head of this organization. My faithful student, and closest friend, Gray Muffin, has advised me-”

Trixie’s eyes roll back and her vision blacks out as she collapses to the floor, completely unconscious. The last thing she hears is the table she tried to use as a shield fall and break next to her.

oooOOOooo

Roar Shock immediately orders a medic and Gray Muffin runs to Trixie’s side and checks to make sure she didn’t die on the spot. He breathes a sigh of relief and silently thanks Luna when he sees her chest rise and fall slowly.

“She’s going to need a good rest. Call Redheart and get some Healing Mushrooms,” says Gray Muffin to Roar Shock.

Roar Shock nods and limps out of the chambers while Gray Muffin supervises the medics putting Trixie on a stretcher and follows them to the infirmary. When they put her on the bed Gray Muffin pulls up a stool and calmly waits for her to wake up.

Arc 1- 02- Justice Is Absolute -EDITED-

Arc 1- 3 (Master or Sir)

“And that is why you should buy this blender,” says Pinkie Pie happily while pushing a large futuristic blender towards Nurse Redheart

Redheart smiles nervously at blender, she’s not really sure what think of the blender, and truthfully, it was the last thing she was expecting. Redheart had let Pinkie Pie in after she spent a good minute frantically knocking on the door, thinking it was something important, like Rainbow Dash breaking her wing (again), or Rainbow Dash spraining all her legs (again), or anything to do with Rainbow Dash hurting herself in some way, but she was mistaken. Apparently Pinkie Pie is trying to start a company and she’s using blenders as her base selling product. The blender that Pinkie Pie is trying to sell to her has forty two settings, forty two speeds, and has a radio with forty two channels. And, according to Pinkie Pie, it can walk. That part slightly disturbs Redheart.

“Ms. Pie, this blender looks... um... nice.”

Pinkie Pie’s puffy mane and tail deflate. “You don’t like it, do you?”

Redheart cringes and tries to reiterate what she had said, “I-I didn’t say that! It’s a nice blender, and I’m sure it has a lot of uses, but I didn’t get a price. How can I buy something that has no price?”

“You’re just saying that so my mane and tail can inflate.”

“No! I mean, yes! No, um uh, but-uh I mean, I want you to be happy, but um-”

There is a hard rapping on the door and Redheart excuses herself and goes to check to see who’s at the door while silently thanking Celestia for the distraction. She peers through the peephole and takes back the thanks when she sees the last unicorn she wanted to see.

Terra.

Terra knocks on the door again and Redheart tells Pinkie Pie that they’ll have to cut their session short.

“Ooh, do you have company?” asks Pinkie Pie, her mane and tail explode to their original puffiness as a huge grin stretches across her face. “Maybe they’ll want a blender!”

“Yes, Ms. Pie, I have company, and no, I don’t think they’ll want a blender.”

Redheart opens the door and Terra walks inside without wiping her hooves on the welcome mat first, not that they were muddy or anything, but Redheart still finds the gesture rude. The nurse coughs obnoxiously and points at the welcome mat on the front door. Terra rolls her eyes and wipes her hooves on the mat and then steps inside again.

“We need you back at the Citadel.” Says Terra bluntly.

“HithereI’veneverseenyoubeforeareyounewhereI’mPinkiePiedoyouwanttobefriendsordoyouwanttobuyablender?” says Pinkie Pie as she jumps uncomfortably close to Terra.

Terra stares at Pinkie Pie, trying to comprehend what the obnoxious pink pony had just said. The only thing she really caught was something about buying a blender... and she does need a new blender. She looks at the most amazing blender she had ever seen and gets the feeling that the beautiful machine is calling out to her.

“How much for the blender?” asks Terra without thinking.

Pinkie Pie grins. “Three hundred bits.”

“Deal.”

Terra pulls out a bag of bits and tosses it Pinkie Pie, and in return, Pinkie Pie hands her the blender. Redheart’s jaw drops and she stammers gibberish as she tries to comprehend what just happened.

Pinkie Pie giggles and she wraps her hoof around the nurse’s neck. “What you just saw was a satisfied customer.”

“But she didn’t-you didn’t-Nothing happened! She just bought it!” stammers Redheart.

“I know a good blender when I see one,” says Terra says defensively. “Now, if you’ll excuse us whatever your name is.”

“The name is Pie. Pinkie Pie. But you can call me Pinkie, or Ms. Pie, or Pinkie Pie. But never Pinkamena”

“Uh huh, well Pinkie Pie, me and Redheart need to have a private conversation. So scoot.”

“Scooting!”

Pinkie Pie literally scoots out of the house and when she’s out, Terra closes the door with her magic and peeks out the window to make sure Pinkie Pie is out of sight. When Pinkie Pie rounds the corner she closes the blinds and turns to Redheart.

“Who’s the unlucky one this time?” asks Redheart dryly.

“A mare you should be familiar with. Trixie Lulamoon,” replies Terra casually.

“Oh... her.”

“I have my orders to come over here and retrieve you so you can fix her up.”

“Well I can’t go.”

Terra’s eyes narrow. “Why not?”

“Ponyville is my responsibility. And on top of protecting it, I have to help run a hospital to keep my cover, and even if I find the time to leave, the trip will take two weeks, both ways, not including the days I need to treat the patient.”

“Redheart, you seem to forget that my father is a genius. He’s already expanded and improved his fleet, and you have to come, once you’re in, there’s no getting out.”

“I’m not denying my duties to the League, what I’m saying is that I can’t go because of the situation I’m in.”

Terra lies down on the couch and casually inspecting her new blender. “Yeah, you sure handled Eclipse very well all those years ago.” Despite Terra’s tone being cold and resentful, Redheart still can’t control the glare she’s giving the unicorn. “But now that he’s taken care of Ponyville is an easy place to guard, Redheart, and even then there is Mare-Do-Well to help keep the vandals in check.”

Redheart scoffs. “I hate to burst your bubble, but Mare-Do-Well hasn’t been seen ever since that fiasco ended ten years ago.”

“Uh huh, well you’re still coming. Whether you like it or not.”

“What am I supposed to tell the hospital? ‘Sorry, I have to go. Trixie had her flank kicked in a hidden mansion so I have to fix her up’?”

“We already took care of that. They are very sympathetic when you have a funeral to attend.”

Redheart’s jaw drops. “You told them somepony in my family died!”

Terra smirks. “No. We said you had a funeral to attend with no specifics. However, they will be wondering about the funeral so I suggest that you get your story straightened out before you return. And the trip will take about a half a day of flight, so you’ll be back quickly.”

Terra hops off of the couch and magically opens the door and flashes a cocky smile at Redheart.

“After you, madam.” Terra says in phony Canterlot accent.

Redheart sighs, gathers her gear in her saddlebags, and leaves with Terra. They walk for about half an hour before they meet up with a group of ponies guarding a steampunkish ship that strangely looks like a dragonfly.

“What’s with the blender?” asks one of the ponies.

“None of your business!” snaps Terra.

The pony mumbles an apology and when all the ponies are on the ship, it shoots out sparks that make it levitate off of the ground, and speeds off into the sky, soon disappearing into the clouds.

And hiding in the forest, with a pair of binoculars, watching the ship speed away, is Pinkie Pie wearing a safari outfit. She lowers her binoculars and rubs her chin quizzically while mumbling,  “Interesting...”

She then pulls out a pen and notebook from her pocket and scribbles some notes down before purposefully falling out of the tree and landing with perfect accuracy in a fluffy bush.

~~~~~~~~~~

A little over an hour later, Pinkie Pie finds herself back in Ponyville and orders herself a strawberry milkshake from the Sugar Cube Corner. She’s still wearing her safari outfit and has yet to shake the leaves off, but no one is questioning why Pinkie Pie looks like a messy safari pony. To them, she’s just being Pinkie Pie.

Pinkie Pie sits at a covered table outside Sugar Cube Corner, and watches the ponies chat amongst themselves as they enjoy the spring weather. She sips her milkshake and goes to studying the picture she drew of the dragonfly ship she saw Redheart get into.

“EXTRA! EXTRA! TERRORIST ATTACK AT CANTERLOT ROYAL GUARD HQ!” shouts a mare while tossing out a stack of newspapers to a newspaper kiosk out of the back of a vehicle that looks like a small steampunk train with a flatbed on the back.

The casual conversations turn into confused, energetic chatter and the ponies crowd around the stack of newspapers. Pinkie Pie gallops to the stack, buys one of the few remaining copies of the newspaper and brings it back to her table. According to the paper, a Royal Guard lieutenant that was accused of a list of corruption charges had been killed by a bomb delivered to him in the form of a gift box. The blast blew him to pieces, gutted the office, and injured the two guards outside his door, and now the pony that delivered the package is being hunted by the Royal Guards.

Pinkie Pie’s mane and tail deflate and she rubs her head in disbelief. That was the twelfth terrorist attack against Equestria in a year, and while it may not be the worst of the attacks, the attacks are getting more ambitious.

Then a light bulb turns on in her head. She finishes her milkshake within a matter of seconds and curses under her breath as her brain freezes while knocking the cup in a garbage can with pinpoint accuracy. She then shakes the brain freeze away -which does nothing, but helps her feel better- and she runs into her room in the Sugar Cube Corner with her copy of the newspaper in her mouth. Once in the safety of her room, she spits the newspaper on her plush bed and rummages under her bed, tossing aside everything from party supplies to rubber chickens, and cookbooks to a book called Business Building for the Mentally Inferior, until she comes across what she wanted. A plastic tub with thumb tacks, glue, scissors, and pens and highlighters, a book with snippets of newspaper articles, and a board that has the map of Equestria with pictures and notes tacked to it.

She pushes the map against her wall and goes on to dissecting and storing the useful parts of the article. She then goes on to adding her findings to her maps and connecting the dots. All the dots being dated and marking the locations of attacks over the years against crime lords and corrupt government officials. At first the attacks were just against one target, all criminals, and the deaths were far and few in between, but that all changed after a crime lord named Eclipse was thrown out of a window from his loft in Canterlot. Then the attacks escalated to total war on the criminal underworld. Thankfully Ponyville hasn’t been touched by these attacks and remains relatively peaceful, save for the random wackiness every few days that throws the town in chaos for a day or two.

Pinkie Pie stares at the map intently, looking for more correlations between the recent attack and past attacks. All of them have something to do with criminals and corrupt government officials, most have been killed in the public or have their bodies left in public areas, and those that are hard to reach are usually blown to pieces by a crafty explosive. The final similarity between all of them is that strange flying vehicles have been sighted near the sights of the attacks. Like, for example, the most recent attacks in Barnville and Canterlot had a flying boat and ponies did report a “flying delivery truck” shortly before the attack in Canterlot.

And now one of those strange ships has shown up near Ponyville.

=**********=

Trixie struggles to open her eyes. It seems that everytime she opens them they slam shut on her. Each time she tries, her eyelids get a little farther up and her vision clears just a bit more. Finally, after an exhaustive, literal eye opening experience, she is able to see clearly. The very first thing she sees is Gray Muffin, sitting on a stool with his eyes closed and his head bowed. To Trixie, it looks like the old stallion is sleeping, and just to make sure she extends her hoof to poke him.

“Don’t touch me,” grumbles Gray Muffin.

Trixie retracts her hoof, and immediately regrets it because of the sharp pain that shoots up her hoof and forces her to bite back tears. She swears under her breath and notices Gray Muffin lifting his head to look at her.

“Did you enjoy your nap?” asks Gray Muffin.

“It was... pleasant?” says Trixie hesitantly.

“That sounded more like a question. than an answer.”

“Well Trix-” Gray Muffin’s eyes narrow. “I  would have enjoyed the nap better if I wasn’t nearly beaten to death.”

“Roar Shock is like that. He believes the best way to train somepony is to test them when they least expect it.”

“Do you think that is the best method?”

“It has proven to be effective.”

“Are-Am I going to be experiencing a lot of those... um...”

“Blitz Training Sessions? Yes, you are. But not now. Now you need to rest and heal.”

“How badly am I-yeeeoow!!!”

Trixie had shifted in her spot and the pain returned, except this time it surged all over her ribs and now her head is throbbing and feeling like it’s ready to explode. She whimpers and slumps back in her bed while Gray Muffin towers over her.

“This sucks,” moans Trixie.

“I warned you,” remarks Gray Muffin instantly.

“It hurts to breathe.”

“Then stop breathing.”

Trixie glares at Gray Muffin as he walks towards the exit.

“There will be a specialist coming to help you heal, shortly,” he says casually, his voice echoing plainly off of the walls. “In the meantime, your orders are to stay in bed until you are excused by the nurse”

“Got it,” grumbles Trixie.

“And when you are out of bed you are to refer to me either as ‘Master’, or ‘Sir’.”

“Can I call you Master Muffin?”

Trixie chuckles at her lame joke, but quickly winces and clutches her side while mumbling colorful words as the pain returns as a nasty reminder of her condition. Gray Muffin looks over his shoulder and holds back a smirk before leaving the room.

Trixie huffs painfully and decides that while she’s bedridden she might as well look around the room. She lifts her head to get a better view of the room, but the throbbing in her head shoots down her neck and she winces again and slumps in the bed. However, she does catch that she is in an infirmary and that most of the beds are empty, except for a couple of ponies lying in the back in full body casts. The room also appears to be carved directly into the mountain, and electrical lightning and strategically placed heaters give the room figurative and literal warmth.

Trixie tries to relax in her bed, but with the growing pain over taking her body it’s next to impossible. She groans and tries to think of anything to keep her mind off of the pain, but when she does, her physical pain is replaced with emotional pain as she remembers the Hell she narrowly escaped from. Just when Trixie is ready to scream out of sheer aggravation, the door to the infirmary swings open and Trixie hears Terra walk in with someone else.

“Redheart, it’s not our place to question father, alright?” says Terra irritably.

“I’m just worried is all. This organization has changed a lot over the past ten years,” says Redheart sadly.

“Sorry to spoil your fantasy, but nothing ever stays the same.”

Terra, and a white earth pony mare with a pink mane and tail, whom Trixie is guessing is Redheart, steps in front of Trixie’s bed and in a sweet voice says, “Hello, Trixie, my name is Nurse Redheart and I’m going to be treating you of your injuries.”

Redheart walks next to Trixie and gently runs her hoof over her body to get an idea of the extent of the injuries, but Trixie’s mind is thinking that Redheart is doing something else entirely.

“Just what do you think you are doing!” snarls Trixie as she bats Redheart’s hoof away.

Redheart arches an eyebrow. “My job.”

“Feeling up Trixie is your job!?”

“Wha-what! Oh dear Celestia, no! I’m checking the extent of your injuries!”

“Use an X-Ray machine. Don’t touch me.”

Redheart face-hoof’s and Terra walks up to Trixie with a murderous look in her eyes, which is nothing new for Trixie when it comes to her.

“Listen here, you little tramp, get over yourself and let Redheart do her job or I will use these rocks to hold you down!” yells Terra.

Trixie is about to chew out Terra for calling her a “tramp”, but when she notices that Terra some mushrooms poking out of the pocket of her saddlebag. Trixie levitates one out and holds it up to her eyes, and Terra makes no objections to Trixie’s actions.

“What is this!” demands Trixie.

“It’s a healing mushroom found in the fields around Barnville,” replies Terra coolly.

Trixie pales and throws the accursed fungus away from her as far as possible. Then she scrunches up on the back of her bed, which sends an ungodly amount of pain throughout her body, while pointing at Terra threateningly. “You are not giving Trixie any of those abominations!”

“The mushrooms will help you heal quicker,” says Terra sternly.

Terra and Trixie spiral down into a heated argument that eventually draws Redheart in. All three ponies bicker amongst themselves with Trixie wanting healing magic to fix her, Terra wanting Redheart to fix Trixie with the Healing Mushroom, as ordered, and Redheart wanting to do things her way, which does not include the Healing Mushroom. They only stop their bickering when the infirmary door flies open and Gray Muffin stomps in with and odd device around his forehoof. The odd device latched around his forehoof has little tesla coils around the bottom and crystals running up the edge of the device, stopping short of his elbow.

“What’s going on!” growls Gray Muffin.

Terra points at Trixie accusingly. “Trixie is being difficult.”

Trixie scoffs and gives Terra a dirty glare, but it only gets worse when Redheart backs up Terra’s statement. Gray Muffin looks at Terra and Redheart, and then at Trixie.

“Is this true?” asks Gray Muffin in a sinister tone.

“Well... um I-I-I wouldn’t um-” stammers Trixie nervously while pushing her forehooves together.

But Trixie doesn’t get the chance to finish her sentence because Gray Muffin shoves the hoof with the weird gauntlet into her chest and she gets the shock of her life. It’s enough to make all her fur and hair stand up and have her collapses on her bed, completely unconscious, and slightly smoking. Gray Muffin then orders Redheart to fix Trixie as ordered and leaves without saying another word.

Terra watches him leave while Redheart stares at Trixie with her jaw dropped and eyes bulged.

After a minute of awkward silence, Terra finally says: “Damn.”

Arc 1- 03- Think Twice -EDITED-

Arc 1- 4 (Can't Stop)

Trixie wakes up a few minutes after being zapped by Gray Muffin. Or was it a few hours? Or perhaps it was a day? Trixie doesn’t know how long she had been unconscious, and it doesn’t help that she’s underground without a clock in sight. But despite those things, Trixie feels a whole lot better now, like she had been given a new body. However, now she has a weird aftertaste in her mouth that reminds her of tingly dirt.

She tries to stand up, but is yanked down by leather straps on her hooves. Trixie’s heart races and she tugs harder and harder on the straps, straining every fiber in her muscles to do so. Finally, after much strenuous and desperate tugging, the leather snaps, sending Trixie stumbling off of her bed and landing flat on her back. Her head cracks against the rocky floor, momentarily filling her vision with blinding white light and is quickly replaced with a blurred vision. She blinks her vision back into focus and rolls to her feet while frantically looking around the room as horrible, unintelligible whispers quickly fill her ears and echo in her brain.

Trixie sits against the wall and puts her hooves over ears, begging the whispers to stop, but her begging only fuels their intensity, and makes some of them clearer. Some are sad, others are begging, while most are angry, one even sounds furious.

“The Great and Powerful Faker!” sneers a whisper.

“Please, leave me alone,” begs Trixie.

“Trixie, what happened to you?” asks one of the sad voices.

Trixie grits her teeth and shuts her eyes tight, squeezing tears out in the process. “Leave me alone.”

“You, Trixie, my own blood! You barely showed up to my funeral!” snarls the furious voice.

“Please, Trixie, talk to me,” begs another voice.

“Leave me alone!” screams Trixie.

“I’ll make ya feel better again,” whispers Sunshine right in her ear.

[[[[OOO]]]]

Trixie shrieks and jolts up. Her eyes dart around the room, expecting to see Sunshine, but all she sees is a startled Redheart.

“Oh my goodness, are you okay?” Redheart asks worryingly.

Trixie calms down enough to rub her head, all while ignoring Redheart’s attempts to figure out what had happened. The nurse had asked her what she had dreamed about since she was apparently mumbling in her sleep, and waking up screaming added more to her list of concerns. Trixie nervously wipes the sweat off of herself to the best of her abilities and silently thanks Celestia that she doesn’t feel any pain when doing so. However, she muscles tenses up when she suddenly feels a cool rag dab the sweat off of her forehead.

“It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you,” assures Redheart with a kind smile.

“How long was I asleep?” asks Trixie uneasily.

“Let’s see here... I’m going to say about fourteen hours.”

“Fourteen hours!?”

“Give or take a few minutes.”

Trixie is about to say something, but she notices that she has the same weird aftertaste from her dream. When she tries getting rid of the taste by scratching her tongue against her teeth, she notices the satchel of mushrooms Terra had earlier is resting on the ground. Empty.

Trixie jumps off her bed and threateningly approaches Redheart. Redheart takes a step back, but more for personal space than out of feeling threatened.

“What did you do to me!” demands Trixie.

“Trixie, I suggest you calm down, or I’ll have to resort to restraining you,” says Redheart calmly.

“You gave me those mushroom, didn’t you!?”

“I didn’t want to, but orders are orders. At least your good as new.”

“So, you’re finally awake again,” says Gray Muffin suddenly.

Trixie and Redheart look at Gray Muffin with startled expressions, they didn’t even hear him come in and now he’s standing almost directly in front of them, wearing his trademark garb, and a saddle with something balancing on his back. Redheart quickly recovers from the surprise and bows politely, and Trixie follows her lead, not wanting to get in trouble for fear of getting electrocuted again.

“Trixie, stay here. I need to have a word with Redheart, and when I return we will commence with your training.”

Trixie nods, and Gray Muffin escorts Redheart out of the infirmary. When the door closes Trixie takes a seat on the chair and looks around the room in a feeble attempt to try to contain her nervousness.

oooOOOooo

In the hallway Gray Muffin escorts Redheart a comfortable distance away from the infirmary and hands her a profile kept in his saddle as well as the decent sized box he was carrying.

“You haven’t been paying attention to your duties, Redheart, and because of your laziness Ponyville has succumbed to corruption,” says Gray Muffin, disappointment clear in his tone.

Redheart opens up the profile, and after seeing the picture her blood drains from her face and she slams it shut.

“Sir, you can’t be serious!” cries Redheart.

Gray Muffin’s eyes narrow. “Do I look like I’m joking.”

“But she’s a good mare!”

“Your inability to protect Ponyville led it going under Eclipse’s control ten years ago, and now your naivety has led to Ponyville’s corruption.” Gray Muffin growls and wraps his hoof around her neck and drags her close so that their noses are almost touching, and ignores Redheart’s whimpering and trembling. “You will not fail Ponyville again. She needs to go. That is non-negotiable.”

Gray Muffin releases Redheart and she exhales slowly while lightly rubbing her hoof against the rocky floor. Gray Muffin then pops the box open with his hoof and nudges it towards her. Inside the box is an earpiece attached to a backpack that has a folded down antenna, a mechanical rectangle and a pamphlet for a funeral service held for a cat named “Mittens”.

“Your new gear and proof of your funeral attendance.”

“Do I really have to?” asks Redheart softly

“Justice is absolute.”

Redheart sighs heavily and after wiping tears from her eyes she reluctantly picks up the items and profile without further protest and trots down the hallway with her head down. She briefly stops to look at Gray Muffin in a silent plea for him to reconsider, but his cold stare and subtle nod says enough.

oooOOOooo

Trixie is still sitting in her chair, trying to keep her mind busy, when Gray Muffin walks in the room she hops out of the chair and approaches Gray Muffin with as much enthusiasm as she can muster.

“So, what’s the first lesson?” asks Trixie, trying to mask her nervousness with a cool attitude. She fails miserably.

“Get me a cup of coffee. Decaf and half a cup of low fat cream with one of those little umbrella things to go with it. Using no magic,” orders Gray Muffin.

“...Are you serious?”

“Now, Trixie.”

Trixie blinks a couple of times, she doesn’t know if this is a stupid joke or if he’s serious. But when Gray Muffin leans closer to Trixie so that their snouts are practically touching, and repeats “Now, Trixie.” in a harsher tone, she gets the message and gallops out of the room. But when she’s halfway down the hallway she skids to a stop with the realization that she doesn’t know where to get the coffee. Trixie groans and reluctantly walks back to the infirmary, where Gray Muffin is standing, and looking directly at her with an odd looking smirk.

“Where, exactly, do I get the coffee?” asks Trixie coyly.

“Follow me,” says Gray Muffin, slightly amused with Trixie embarrassing herself.

Gray Muffin leads Trixie down the hallway, towards the cafeteria, which, like the rest of the facility, is not that glamorous. It’s another one of those rooms that looks like it had been gutted out of the mountain, and then had the essentials to a cafeteria built in. However, it’s crude appearance does intrigue her.

Gray Muffin nods towards a setup with basic coffee and tea machines and other essentials for the perfect morning drinks. But there is something intimidating about the coffee machine. Maybe it’s the way the dark liquid bubbles, or the way it hisses, or maybe it’s because she has to use the obviously hot device without using magic.

“Do you need instructions?” teases Gray Muffin.

‘Wow, he’s going to town isn’t he?’ “No, I can handle this coffee machine all by myself,” says Trixie, her voice dripping with annoyance.

“Lie down.”

“What?”

“Lie down. Now.”

Trixie lies down on her stomach, completely confused as to why she’s doing this. She hears the coffee pot pop out of its little shelter in the machine and then feels its hot bottom sear her coat, causing her to scream in a mix of pain and shock.

“Your tone was unacceptable,. and I told you to address me as ‘Sir’,” says Gray Muffin, “now you’re going to have to stand up with the pot of coffee on your back.”

“What happened to the ‘Master’ option?” retorts Trixie.

She instantly bites her tongue, and she can just picture Gray Muffin raising an eyebrow. But instead of getting a smack to the back of the head or any other form of physical punishment like she’s expecting, she gets something much worse.

“Because of that tongue of yours, you’re going to have to do it four times.”

“What!” squeaks Trixie

“Now it’s eight.”

“Are-are you-”

“Sixteen.”

“But-”

“Thirty two.”

Trixie, finally figuring out to keep quiet, starts to slowly stand up, and tries her absolute best to keep her legs from shaking, but her luck goes against her as her legs shake violently, and with it, the coffee pot. Enormous beads of sweat trickle down her forehead as she tries to hold back a nervous whimper. She looks over her shoulder to see how the coffee pot is doing, but Gray Muffin tells her to keep facing forward. When she’s standing up, Gray Muffin tells her to stop, and then he pours himself a cup of coffee. After setting his coffee on a table he orders Trixie to lie on the ground. She complies, and goes down just as slowly as she stood up, and when she’s done with that, her mentor nods approvingly.

“Good job, Trixie, it took you two minutes to do one set. Thirty one more and we’ll be done.”

Trixie groans and bangs her head on the ground, making the coffee pot fall over and stain the floor and her coat with the burning, brown liquid. Trixie whimpers when the hot coffee burns her skin, but she's too exhausted to move.

“That’s unfortunate, looks like we’re going to have to use the tea kettle instead.”

Trixie’s ears droop.

~~~~~~~~~~

Over an hour passes before Trixie finishes her odd exercise, and the exercise had left a burnt scar on her back, so Gray Muffin has taken her to a “special spot” that is located outside of Roar Shock’s chambers. Apparently Roar Shock has something that will help heal her burn, and he went inside to get it, leaving her alone to rest.

Trixie breathes a long sigh of relief as she plops down on a pile of cool hay. Her legs are sore and the spot on her back where the kettle was is still burning. Barely a minute passes before Gray Muffin returns with a mirror in his mouth and a syringe hanging around his neck like necklace. Trixie spots Roar Shock looking at her skeptically before the door closes, and when she looks at the syringe around Gray Muffin’s neck, she raises her eyebrow, and then reluctantly shifts into the sitting position.

Trixie points at the syringe, asking: “What’s that?”

“Medication created by Roar Shock,” replies Gray Muffin awkwardly due to the mirror in his mouth

“No offense to Roar Shock, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of pony who would make medicine.”

Gray Muffin holds up the mirror so that Trixie can see the burn from the tea kettle exercise. She immediately looks away at the sight of the grotesque, charred skin.

“There is a lot you don’t know about Roar Shock, and when the day comes where he trusts you, he will show you his secrets,” says Gray Muffin cryptically.

Trixie stifles a laugh, but then she feels the syringe stab her in the back and she yelps, and then glares evilly at Gray Muffin.

“What was that for?” growls Trixie.

“Would you rather I keep you untreated?” asks Gray Muffin smugly.

Trixie tries to think of a witty response, but when she feels fresh skin grow and the scabs fall off, and then new fur grow in the burnt spot, her mind goes completely blank. Gray Muffin holds up the mirror to show her the results. It’s like she hadn’t been injured at all!

“How did ye-How did he-Whaaat!?” stammers Trixie with an amazed smile stretched across her face.

Gray Muffin smiles proudly as Trixie smiles and attempts to inspect the miracles of the medicine. A couple of seconds later, he walks back to Roar Shock’s room. Trixie doesn’t notice, though, she’s too busy spinning in her spot trying to get a better view of her back.

“Never underestimate Roar Shock, Trixie,” says Gray Muffin darkly while pushing open the door, “the last pony that did had a closed casket funeral.”

That last part makes Trixie stop, and her smile fades away. She stares at the door for a little while, and then sits on the hay and her ears droop. Her good mood had been murdered, and now she’s wondering who the poor soul was the underestimated Roar Shock. When Gray Muffin walks out, Trixie cautiously approaches him.

“How long have you known Roar Shock?” asks Trixie carefully.

“I’ve known him all my life,” says Gray Muffin after a brief pause.

They walk out of the waiting area and down the hallway. She stops for a moment to watch a small group of earth ponies watching a zebra demonstrate some exoctic fighting manuevers on another zebra in a gym. After watching the quick demonstration she gallops after Gray Muffin and tries to figure out more of the leader of the organization she joined... the organization she doesn’t even know the name of. Trixie mentally bashes her head against the wall for being so stupid.

“I’ve got more questions, if that’s okay with you,” says Trixie.

“I might have answers.”

“Okay, first question: Who was the pony that underestimated Roar Shock? And second question: What is the name of this group?”

Gray Muffin stops and arches an eyebrow at Trixie. “You just now ask what the name of this group is? I told you that you were jumping into something you didn’t fully understand and I was right.”

“Oh c’mon! I just want to know two little things and you bite my head off!”

“If I bit your head off that would be cannibalism.”

“That was an expression! A very common one at that!”

“And you still don’t know how to control that tongue of yours!”

“Can you just pretty please answer my questions.”

Gray Muffin huffs and takes Trixie to the gym where the earth ponies are training with the zebras, which consists of all of them ganging up on one zebra while the other watches with a bag of popcorn. So far all the ponies are getting their flanks kicked and the other zebra is laughing while tossing out random words of advice. Gray Muffin leads Trixie to the farthest seat and they sit down to watch the training session.

“The first question is one that Roar Shock doesn’t want me talking about. The events leading up to it haunt his dreams to this day, and what he did to the pony that caused him the pain would send chills down the spine of even the bravest of us.” Gray Muffin says bleakly.

Trixie nods, not wanting to divulge further in that subject if it makes someone like Gray Muffin uneasy.

“As for the seconds question,” says Gray Muffin, slightly brighter, “this group is called the League of Justice-”

Trixie snorts a laugh and Gray Muffin shoots her a very nasty glare, and she quickly apologizes and asks him to continue.

“The League of Justice has been around for a long time,” continues Gray Muffin, “since before the Lunar Revolt, and we’ve always been the ones to defend the defenseless. We have been fighting crime and corruption since our creation and vowed to carry on, no matter what. However, Roar Shock has seen the flaws in our traditional ways and has changed this group for the better. Criminals and corrupt officials now live in fear of us because our fight to destroy all that is evil has become more effective and dangerous for them.”

“So I’m guessing I’m going to have to uh... to take a life, huh?”

“I warned you of what was ahead, but you didn’t listen. At least you’ll be killing evil ponies. When you’re ready of course.”

Trixie nods and silently watches the zebras show the recruits how to do something called Fallen Ceasar Style. Even though the zebras are moving slowly so the recruits -who are still recuperating from their injuries- can see how the maneuvers work, she still finds the tactic terrifying. Especially when the zebras explain the effects of well placed hooves with the proper amount of force. Gray Muffin also watches the zebras explain Fallen Ceasar Style, but he looks bored watching them.

As the two silently watch the zebras guide recruits into attacking dummies, a  thought strikes Trixie. Now that she’s part of this special group, no one will mess with her, and she’ll be fighting evil. Although the thought of killing is still uncomfortable to her, she has a feeling that she’ll get used to it and probably get brownie points for the afterlife for stopping evil ponies. She’s never been the religious type, but she’s wondering if this is the chance of redemption she has been praying for, for all the years she’s been homeless. It certainly seems like it.

Trixie smiles and relaxes in her seat, prompting Gray Muffin to give her a quick glance before he also relaxes in his seat. She sees a bright future for her, and she’s certain that Gray Muffin, despite his dark characteristics, is the mentor she’s been searching for, and needing, since her mother passed away. However, if they do the coffee pot/tea kettle exercise again they’re going to have some issues.

=**********=

Pinkie Pie is literally tossed out of the Town Hall of Ponyville by a couple of oversized stallions, with the Mayor standing between them, looking worse for wear. Pinkie Pie sits on her haunches and holds her forehooves up pleadingly.

“Please, Mayor, you have to listen! You’re in danger!” says Pinkie Pie frantically.

“Pinkie Pie, there have been no threats made against me, or Ponyville, and the Town Hall is clean. So do everypony a favor, and stop with the conspiracy theories!” says the Mayor angrily.

“But they never make threats or give any warnings! They just do it!”

“Oh for the love of Celestia, where’s Twilight?”

And right on queue, Twilight Sparkle, unicorn extraordinaire and proud student of Celestia, gallops to the Mayor with Spike following close behind her, both of them are panting and sweating from their run. Twilight is carrying a saddle bulging with scrolls and other trinkets while Spike is carrying a backpack that probably has adult magazines in it. Over the past decade, Spike’s gotten bigger and he has an odd walking style where sometimes he’ll walk on two feet or on all fours, and his tail and snout have grown too.

“Sorry I’m late Mayor,” says Twilight in between heavy breathing, “I just got back from Canterlot. The train was late and the Guards were searching everything and everypony to find the one responsible for Lieutenant Shield’s death.”

“‘Murder’,” corrects Spike.

Twilight is too tired to roll her eyes, so she just gives her number one assistant a quick, irritated glance instead.

The Mayor merely dismisses Tara’s reason for being late with a wave of her hoof. “Yes, I heard about what happened. It’s tragic, but I’m glad you’re here. Pinkie Pie is losing it.”

“I’m not losing it!” snaps Pinkie Pie, her mane and tail now flat.

“Pinkie Pie, please,” Twilight says sternly while holding up a hoof, then she smiles nervously at the Mayor. “I’ll have Spike take Pinkie Pie home, and I actually have a note from my brother addressed to you. Perhaps we should discuss this inside.”

The Mayor looks at Twilight skeptically when she summons the scroll, and after a moment of awkward silence, she nods and motions Twilight to follow her. “I’m sure I know what this is about, we can’t be too careful nowadays.”

“Funny, that’s what my brother said!” chirps Twilight.

She giggles awkwardly and when the Mayor looks at her unamused, her awkward giggling fades away and ends with her clearing her throat.

“Let’s get inside,” says Twilight sheepishly.

“Yes, let’s,” says the Mayor unenthusiastically

“Spike, take Pinkie Pie home. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Spike does a cheesy, two fingered salute. “Sure thing, Twilight.”

When Twilight, the Mayor and the guards walk inside the Town Hall, the doors slam shut and Spike and Pinkie Pie stare at it for a few seconds before looking away. Spike looks at Pinkie Pie while she looks at the ground.

“Are you okay?” asks Spike carefully while putting his hand on her shoulder.

Pinkie Pie pulls away. “No, I’m not okay! Nopony is listening!”

Pinkie Pie stands up and shuffles back to the Sugar Cube Corner with Spike following close behind. She rambles on and on about a mysterious organization attacking the criminal underworld with extreme prejudice, and she talks about what she had found with just newspaper clippings and how she believes that the Mayor is the next target. Her ranting causes some heads to turn; most were quick glances, but other struck up a brief “What’s she talking about?” conversation with other ponies.

“Why do you think the Mayor is a target for... assassination?” asks Spike uneasily, he’s fully aware of all the stuff that has been happening, but he still has a hard time believing that something horrible like an assassination can happen in Ponyville.

Once outside the Sugar Cube Corner, Pinkie Pie stops walking and looks into Spike’s eyes, making him slightly uneasy when he sees the genuine fear in her eyes.

“They think the Mayor’s corrupted,” says Pinkie Pie, her voice trembling a little bit.

Pinkie Pie leads Spike to her room and when she pulls out her map and scrapbook of newspaper clippings, Spike facepalms and grumbles something under his breath about Pinkie Pie turning into Twilight. Pinkie Pie pushes the map against the wall and as Spike half-heartedly studies the map, Pinkie Pie opens up the scrapbook to show Spike her findings.

Pinkie Pie starts flipping through the pages. “This organization has been around for a very long time. Like thousands of years long time.”

“So this is an ancient group of assassins? Sounds like something you’d read in a book.” says Spike unconvinced.

“Well they’re just as real as the ponies outside, Spike, and they weren’t always assassins.”

There is a loud banging noise, making Spike jump slightly and when he turns around to see what made that noise, he sees Pinkie Pie searching through a large encyclopedia in the middle of the room.

“Some of their largest operations took place during the Lunar Revolt. Then they had little spikes during famines, wars, and general times of chaos.” Pinkie Pie closes the encyclopedia and leaps towards her map. “They didn’t kill anypony, or at least they didn’t try to kill anypony. Their targets were specific, like high ranking meanies in the criminal underworld.”

“Right... so what makes you think this same group is responsible for all that is happening now?” asks Spike while sitting down like a dog, and scratching his ear like one too.

Pinkie Pie frowns at Spike’s careless attitude on the situation. “A lot of stuff, but these ponies followed a pattern, and because of that pattern I was able to track them all the way to their origins from Pre-Lunar Revolt to now. Do you remember what happened to Eclipse?”

Spike thinks for a moment. “Yeah, how can I forget that guy. Last I heard he got tossed out of his loft in Canterlot. The newspapers wouldn’t stop talking about it for weeks!”

“Do you remember what he was accused of?”

“Besides trying to take over Ponyville ten years ago?”

Pinkie Pie’s eyes become half lidded and her ears droop; she’s not impressed with Spike’s answer in the slightest sense.

Spike chuckles nervously and scratches his chin while searching his brain for anything related to the deceased criminal lord. When he comes up with nothing, he shrugs silently and Pinkie Pie turns the pages in her scrapbook until she reaches a ten year old, small article that talks about a mysterious fire at the home of a small business owner in Fillydelphia. The summary of the small article is that three dead pegasi were found in the ruins of the fire; a mare, and two fillies. The owner and his third child were nowhere to be found and presumed to be dead. Eclipse was the prime suspect of the tragedy.

After finishing reading the article clip, Spike mumbles: “Oh man...” as he rubs his forehead.

Pinkie Pie stares at the map, specifically, at all the attacks the mysterious group has made. “Eclipse’s murder was a declaration of war, and not just against criminals, but against corrupt government officials. And he wants everypony to know what happens when they are on the wrong side of the law.”

“But isn’t vigilantism... you know... illegal? Especially this kind?”

Pinkie Pie sits on her bed and nods in agreement. “Yeah, but whoever this guy is thinks that they are doing Equestria a favor.”

“So how do you plan on stopping this guy?”

“What makes you think I’m going to stop him?”

Spike smirks. “C’mon, Pinkie, I’ve known for a while now. You got all this stuff, and you obviously got the smarts to track this guy down and you aren’t the kind of pony to sit around while that nut is on the loose.”

Pinkie Pie smiles devilishly at Spike and her mane and tail inflate to their cotton candy look. “Oh, Spike, you do know me.”

“So what’s your plan? I’m sure Twilight can help.”

“No, Spike, I don’t want any of my friends getting involved.”

“But they can help.”

“The less they know, the better. This guy means major business and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if any of you guys got hurt because of me.”

Spike walks over to Pinkie Pie with the scrapbook in his claws and gently tosses it on the pink pony’s bed. “But I know or at least have an idea of what you plan on doing. So you might as well use my help.”

Pinkie Pie drags the scrapbook closer and taps her chin a couple of times. “Well, there is one thing you can do...”

=**********=

Fluttershy is sitting in her living room, reading the depressing newspaper while her radio plays some soft orchestral music. She needs the soft music to help calm her down. With all the attacks going on, she’s afraid to go out of her cabin, and barely has enough courage to walk around Ponyville. At least in her cabin she feels safe, and has Angel and the other animals to keep her company.

“We interrupt this music session with a message from Princess Celestia,” says the radio suddenly.

Fluttershy glances at her radio for a second before resuming her reading.

“Hello, my little ponies, this your Princess speaking,” says Celestia, her voice retaining its calm, motherly tone. “I know many of you are scared about what is happening and I cannot say when the attacks will end. But  I promise you it will all be over soon. Every branch of the Equestrian government is working in full cooperation with each other in finding those responsible.”

Fluttershy turns the page and reads a blurb about Shining Armor’s response to the most recent attack. He’s calling for a massive joint operation with every level of the Equestrian government to find the terrorist leader, but they don’t have a name and finding those who work for this particular group is like chasing shadows. Or so the rumors go.

“But we cannot let these terrorists divide us. We must remember that a united Equestria is a strong Equestria. We must be strong.”

There is an energetic knocking on the door and Fluttershy approaches the door, suspicious as to who would be coming by her cabin at this time of night.

“We must remember what it means for harmony to reign.”

Fluttershy takes a deep breath and then opens the door. Her eyes widen when she sees who’s standing in her doorway with the always present smile. “Oh, hello Pinkie Pie. What are you doing here?”

Pinkie Pie greets Fluttershy as she bounces in the cabin. Fluttershy peeks out out of sake of putting her paranoia to ease before closing and locking the door. When the door is locked she turns around and sees Pinkie Pie going through her closet.

“And above all else...”

“Um... are you okay, Pinkie Pie?” asks Fluttershy while cocking her head.

“I’m fine, I just need to grab something real quick,” says Pinkie Pie cheerfully.

Pinkie Pie’s smile broadens and she pulls out her Mare-Do-Well costume, looking just as good as when she and her friends retired their costumes.

“We must be vigilant.”

=**********=

Nurse Redheart walks inside her house and wearly locks the door behind her. She carries her stuff up to her room, moves her bed out of the way, then puts everything in a hidden safe built into the floor. After locking her gear in her safe, and pushing the bed back in place, she goes to her kitchen to make some tea, despite her body telling her to take a nap instead. But before she can get the water prepped, she hears a frantic rapping on the door.

“That better not be Pinkie Pie...” says Redheart wearily to herself.

She reluctantly opens the door and her eyes bulge when she sees Twilight’s number one assistant standing in front of her, panting and sweating.

“Redheart! Ye-You gotta come quick! There-There’s a uh a poor pony who’s hurt really bad and-and needs your help!” says Spike urgently.

Redheart doesn’t hesitate to follow Spike. They oddly run through the alleys, like Spike doesn’t want to be seen with her. Redheart’s gut is telling her that she’s being led to a trap, but she pushes aside the doubt since Spike is a trusted member of Ponyville. Besides, why would he lie about someone being injured? However, Redheart’s nagging doubts become more vocal when she realizes that they are on the outskirts of Ponyville, and when they are in Whitetail Wood, she skids to a stop and orders Spike to stop. He immediately stops and looks at Redheart innocently.

“We’ve been running for a while now, and I’m starting to think that this whole injured pony thing is fabricated!” accuses Redheart.

“You’re right, I made it up,” admits Spike.

Suddenly, a familiar masked purple vigilante drops out of a tree and lands next to Redheart. Redheart jumps back and prepares herself for a fight.

“Mare-Do-Well,” sneers Redheart.

“Spike, leave, I got this under under control,” says Mare-Do-Well in an obviously disguised voice.

“You sure?” asks Spike.

Mare-Do-Well nods and Spike hesitantly runs away without another word. When Spike’s out of sight, and his footsteps fade away, the two ponies start circling each other, each of them ready to pounce in an instant.

“I think I know why you’re after me, Mysterious Mare-Do-Well,” says Redheart coldly.

“Good, then our talk will be quick.”

“What makes you think I’m going to talk?”

“Intuition.”

Redheart scoffs. “Wow, great answer there. Bravo. Bra-vo!”

“I know that you’ve been given an order to assassinate the Mayor.”

Redheart stops walking and glares at Mare-Do-Well. How this vigilante wannabe figured out her mission is beyond her, but that just adds to the number of threats she has to deal with now. There’s no telling how much she knows.

“You aren’t a killer, Redheart, I am begging you, don’t carry out the order. Ponyville is one of the few places where your organization-”

“It’s not my organization!” snaps Redheart. Redheart prepares to charge Mare-Do-Well, and she braces herself for the coming attack. “Ponyville was my responsibility and I let things slip up, and now I have to fix it!”

“Redheart, don’t try it.”

Redheart charges Mare-Do-Well, and she gracefully side steps the charge and does a flip that defies the laws of physics, and she lands on Redheart’s back. Redheart crumbles to the ground with a grunt, and then feels a hoof strike her on the neck, and then she feels all of her muscles become lax with the inability to move. Now she starts panicking, if she wasn’t paralyzed she’d be shaking right now.

“You can’t stop us, Mare-Do-Well,” chuckles Redheart anxiously as she’s turned on her back. “You may have captured me, but they’ll just send somepony else. And after they deal with the Mayor, they’ll come after you for meddling with our business.”

“Tell me where your boss is!” demands Mare-Do-Well.

“Not going to do it. As much as he has changed, I will never give him up.”

“Ponies are dying! Doesn’t that mean anything to you!”

“Of course it does! I’m a nurse for Celestia’s sake! The last thing I want to see is a dead pony!”

“Then why continue to work for him?”

“I have no choice... commitment is lifelong and besides... it’s for the Greater Good.”

Mare-Do-Well steps off of Redheart, and she tries once again to move. She can move a little bit, but not enough to do any difference, they are more like twitches. She sighs with relief, knowing that the damage isn’t permanent.

“I’m handing you over to the guards,” says Mare-Do-Well, “and maybe while you’re there you’ll think about how expensive this ‘Greater Good’ is.”

The last thing Redhart sees before her world goes dark is a boot to her face.

Arc 1- 04- The War On Corruption -ADDITION-

Arc 1- 5 (Eyes on Target)

Riiiiiiiiing. Riiiiiiiiing. Riiiiiiiiing. Click.

++++++++++

Trixie runs into one of the public bathrooms and empties her stomach contents in the closest toilet. The stomach acid burning her throat and the taste of regurgitation leaves a very unpleasant feeling in her mouth. She shakily wipes her mouth and flushes the toilet, watching the tannish water swirl away into only Celestia knows where, but at least it’s not going to be near her.

Trixie moans and wipes her sweaty mane out of her face, she didn’t think that she was sweating that much until her hair stuck her hoof and she had to use her magic to pull it off. She grimaces at the fact that she’s a sweaty,  stinky mess and she closes her eyes and rests her head against the toilet lid. The nice cool toilet lid that is her nice cool pillow that will cool off her head and-

Trixie’s eyes open up and her brow  furrows. She can’t believe that she had just allowed herself to sleep on a toilet lid after puking.

“Wow, I guess training with those zebras was too much for a tramp like you,” mocks Terra.

Trixie silently stand up and turns to face the unicorn that has been giving her trouble ever since she got here. Terra has a smug smile on her face and is gently rubbing a couple of stones together while sipping a what looks like an amazing smoothie. Smoothie aside, Trixie remembers the good days when she wasn’t called a “tramp” and how she would embarrass any pony that had the guts to call her one, or have a strapping stallion take care of the problem. But she’s too tired to get in a confrontation with Terra, and even if she wanted to, she knows the news will make its way to Roar Shock which will only tick him off and cause more trouble. Just thinking about an angry Roar Shock makes Trixie shudder.

“Did Gray Muffin send you?” asks Trixie.

“Is that a serious question?” says Terra as she raises an eyebrow.

“Is that a serious answer?”

Terra’s eyes narrow and she approaches Trixie while morphing her rocks together to form a sleek blade. Trixie takes a step back into the stall and charges her horn defensively, hoping and praying that she won’t get stabbed to death in a bathroom.

“Listen here, tramp, I don’t know why Father would allow somepony like you in with us,” says Terra harshly. “If you are on a soul searching quest, take it up with the church and maybe if you’re lucky Celestia will take five seconds to hear you cry.”

“What is your problem with me!” cries Trixie.

“I don’t like how a fake skank like you thinks that they can waltz in here and be one of us. Once you’re evil you’re always evil.”

“Oh right, and once you’re pure, you’re always pure.”

“Once you’re better, you’re always better is more like it. Do yourself a favor and go hang yourself. The world doesn’t need you, and the League of Justice definitely doesn’t need you.”

Terra stabs the wall behind Trixie, making her yelp and slightly cower. Terra chuckles evilly, yanks the blade out of the wall and then leaves the bathroom. Trixie slouches on the floor and tries to calm her nerves enough so that she can actually move. She accomplishes this a few minutes later, and after washing sweat off of herself as best as she can with faucet water she leaves the bathroom. Once in the hallway she takes a couple of steps before Gray Muffin calls her. Trixie stops walking and turns around to see her mentor casually walking towards her. From the looks of it, he had just finished a brief conversation with Terra, most likely an assignment since her walking went from a smug piece of dung to that of purpose and determination.

“You’ve been sitting in the bathroom for ten minutes,” states Gray Muffin matter-of-factly.

‘Well no duh, Captain Obvious.’ “Sorry, sir, I just got tired,” says Trixie apologetically, although some of her annoyance does slip out.

“I see. Would you like some rest?”

Trixie is taken back by this and her mind goes blank for a second. She’s not sure if she heard the old stallion right, and if she did -which she’s sure she did- she’s wondering if he was feeling okay. That entire sentence seems like an anomaly to her. Gray Muffin offering something in the open without anything in return is unheard of!

Trixie sputters words to form a sentence, a sentence that Gray Muffin cannot understand for the life of him.

“You’ll have to repeat that. I don’t speak retard,” says Gray Muffin bluntly.

“Ye-Yes, sir, that-that would be great,” stammers Trixie, still in disbelief of what she had heard.

Gray Muffin’s tail suddenly wraps around one of Trixie’s hind legs and tugs it back, and as she stumbles to catch herself, he uses one of his front legs to trip her. She lands on the ground with a thud and she lets out a pathetic grunt. And while the hallway spins Gray Muffin pins her to the ground by pressing his hoof against her chest.

“If you want to rest, you’ll have to strike me three times,” says Gray Muffins.

Trixie rolls her eyes. ‘Of course,’ thinks Trixie bitterly, but then a concern crosses her mind and she asks: “But what if I pass out from exhaustion?”

“Then you’ll get your nap,” replies Gray Muffin in a barely noticeable teasing tone.

He helps her up, and right as Trixie is about to thank him, he strikes her in the chest, causing her to gasp in pain and stumble back, and then he bucks her against the walls.

After falling to the ground Trixie coughs and gags and clumsily pushes herself up. “Are we seriously doing this now?”

A swift kick to the face, and the bloody nose that follows, answers her question.

“That’s it,” growls Trixie.

Trixie blocks another one of Gray Muffin’s attacks, then she rolls away from him with surprising agility and grace, then rams, and pins, him against the wall.

“There’s one,” huffs Trixie.

“That isn’t a hit, that’s a pin,” says Gray Muffin smugly. He then headbutts Trixie, and as she swears and puts her hoof over her face, he pushes her back and kicks her in the side. She falls to the ground like a sack of potatoes. “That was a hit.”

“You’re too hard,” whines Trixie.

“The task is simple. Three strikes.”

Trixie pushes herself to her feet, and with an enraged scream she charges Gray Muffin. When she leaps in for the tackle he does something she doesn’t expect. He lies down on his his back and when she is over him, he uses his hooves to fling her clean over him and she lands on her back a good dozen or so feet away from him. Add in the sliding distance and it’s about twenty feet.

‘What the hay was that!’ wonders Trixie angrily while wincing from the burning pain in her back. ‘Fine, if we’re going to do tricks, then trick it is!’

Trixie groans and tells Gray Muffin that she can’t move, which isn’t too far from the truth. Her bones and muscles are aching, and any more punishment and she’s sure she won’t be able to move. And then she’ll have to deal with those cursed mushrooms again. She closes her eyes and pretends to go limp as she hears Gray Muffin walk towards her.

“Are you seriously trying to fool me?” asks Gray Muffin.

Trixie suddenly opens her eyes and uses her horn to blast Gray Muffin. The blue beam she shoots out hits him in the chest and sends him flying backwards into the ceiling. There is THUD and he belly flops on the floor, motionless.

Trixie laughs victoriously, albeit with some strain, and she clumsily stands up. “Ha! Take that!”

But then she hears Gray Muffin growl and he stands up while giving Trixie the most sinister glare she’s ever seen. Her ears droop and she takes a step back while stammering about not knowing she wasn’t supposed to use magic. As Gray Muffin walks towards her, she walks backwards, and with each step she takes she cowers further into the ground.

“You-you didn’t say anything about not using magic!” says Trixie defensively, now almost lying down on her stomach.

Gray Muffin is soon towering above Trixie, and she’s too scared and shaky to move. She closes her eyes to prepare for either a tongue lashing, a pummelling, or both.

“That’s one,” says Gray Muffin in a surprisingly calm voice.

Trixie opens one eye and sees Gray Muffin smiling proudly, and after taking a few paces back he motions Trixie to stand up. Trixie gulps and stands up, she’s still worried about will happen next since she doesn’t trust his smile.

“You are a unicorn, Trixie, not using your natural gift is like a pegasus refusing to fly, or an earth pony refusing to use their legs,” says Gray Muffin. “You still have to strike me two more times before I allow you your rest. However, I want you to try something different.”

Trixie takes her eyes off of Gray Muffin for just a moment to think what else she could do, that proves to be a big mistake. When she looks back at her trainer, he’s practically in her face and he tackles her to the ground. They both roll over each other down the hallway like a ball, and when they come to a stop, Gray Muffin is on top of Trixie and he has her head pinned so that her horn is away from him.

“Never take your eyes off your target!” growls Gray Muffin.

Trixie’s eyes dart around the hallway to see if there’s anything she can use against Gray Muffin, but the hallway is completely bare. Then Trixie gets an idea that is sure to work. Her horn glows and Gray Muffin is covered in her magical mist, but her plans are shot to dust when he strikes her horn at the base, and sends a horrendous amount of pain that surges through her head. The pain can be compared to a stallion getting kicked in the gonads, and to make it worse, her magic disappears.

‘What the buck!’ screams Trixie’s thoughts.

“Know your target’s weakness and strike there every chance you get!” instructs Gray Muffin.

Trixie bites back her tears and cries, and comes to the conclusion that since her magic is gone (again), she’ll have to resort to dirty fighting. To her relief, Gray Muffin is in the perfect position, and so is her hind leg. Trixie kicks Gray Muffin in the crotch and his eyes bulge, and he groans while rolling off of Trixie.

Trixie gets to her feet and after taking a couple of deep breaths she proudly says: “That’s two, right?”

Gray Muffin nods and gradually gets up, wincing in the process. “Fighting dirty, are we?”

“One more and I get my nap.”

Gray Muffin nods and is about to charge Trixie again, but stops and stares down the hallway with an irritated scowl. Trixie is almost skeptical of his scowl, but she looks over her shoulder anyway and sees Roar Shock gliding towards them. He lands next to Trixie but completely ignores her and walks towards Gray Muffin with the proud pegasus trot. Trixie swears that pride is genetically built into pegasi, because just about every single one she’s met has had some sort of ego problem.

“Let me guess, I’m late,” says Gray Muffin dryly.

“They are fully charged and won’t be testing themselves,” remarks Roar Shock.

Trixie cocks her head and tries to figure out what charging thing needs testing.

Gray Muffin nods and looks at Trixie. “I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to cut this session short.”

“So do I get my nap?” asks Trixie cautiously.

“What.”

“Do I get my nap, sir?”

“No, you struck me twice. I said three times. Go train with the zebras in the Arena.”

Trixie huffs and kicks imaginary stones away as the two stallions walk away, talking quietly amongst themselves. She doesn’t want to go back to the Arena with the zebras, last time she was there the two zebras -named Wazza and Adanz- made her puke! Somehow a well placed hoof to her side made her stomach uneasy and thus resulted in her vomiting in the toilet. Why anyone would want to make their target puke rather than knock them out is beyond her. Aside from the puking nightmare, they also tried to show her Fallen Ceasar, and it was by far the most painful thing she had experienced. But, nonetheless she must return to the Arena to train lest she wants Gray Muffin to zap her again. As she heads towards the arena she silently prays to Celestia that the zebras aren’t there.

~~~~~~~~~~

After getting “lost” for a few minutes -loosely speaking-, Trixie finally walks into the training arena, and lo and behold Celestia did not answer her prayers. The two zebras, who she swears are clones, are meditating on the mats with a circle of candles around them. The smoke rising from the candles are colorful and they give off sweet smells that make Trixie’s nose tingle. But she doesn’t want to interrupt their meditation, she heard that interrupting a zebra’s meditation could possibly be deadly due to them experiencing what some have described as “mindbuck dreams”.

Trixie sits down outside the circle of candles and impatiently watches the two. She doesn’t know which zebra is which, all she knows about them is that they are both brothers, can make anyone puke if they desire it, and can take on a small crowd of ponies.

“You have come for more training, yes?” says one of the zebras.

“Not because I want to,” says Trixie wearily. She sighs as she tries to relax, being that she has yet to get her rest, and she’s also trying to prepare herself for a world of hurt the zebras will deliver to her.

“You sound tired, are you weary?” asks the second zebra.

“You have no idea,” laughs Trixie.

The zebras open their eyes in unison, making Trixie all the more uneasy about them. The first zebra stands up and walks towards Trixie; she is about to stand up but he orders her to stay seated. Trixie forces herself to stay seated, and watches the zebra nervously as he paces around her.

“But we already trained, yes?” says the zebra.

“Yeah, but I was ordered here,” says Trixie quietly.

“I see, Adanz, what shall we go over with Trixie, this time?”

The other zebra, Adanz, silently stands up, and then he cracks his neck and approaches the two. “How about a balancing exercise, Wazza.”

“Very good idea, get the rods will you.”

Trixie watches Adanz bring out a roll of rods and set them up to make some weird cube looking thing that has the width of a pony, but stands a dozen feet tall. Wazza smiles proudly at his brother’s handy work, and then he grabs a ladder and pushes it next to the odd thing and orders Trixie to balance on it.

“You can’t be serious,” scoffs Trixie.

“You’re right, four is too much,” says Wasswa. Then he removes one of the legs and smiles at Trixie. “Three legs to balance on is better, yes?”

Trixie groans and climbs on the ladder, then, using gut wrenching precision, she stands on the monstrosity. She shakes and whimpers as she tries to keep her balance, and for some reason it looks like everything is ten times higher than it’s supposed to be. The zebra twins look like ants and the candles are merely dots on the floor. Trixie starts hyperventilating and shaking, thus making her wobble and the weird thing she is balancing shake to the point of collapse.

And collapse it does.

The whole thing crumbles to the ground and Trixie’s screaming comes to an abrupt end when she lands on her face. Her groan is muffled since her face is pressed into the mat, but it’s still a loud groan. Thankfully the zebras are nice enough to help her up.

“That was pointless,” moans Trixie while tenderly rubbing her face. ‘Is my magic back, yet?’

“Of course it was, we just needed a laugh,” giggles Wazza.

Trixie levitates a rod with ease and lets it drop to the ground a second later with a small, satisfied smile.

‘At least my magic is back,’ thinks Trixie with relief. Then she realizes what Wazza said and she glares at him while he and his brother chuckle at her misfortune. “Ass.”

The two zebras stop laughing instantly and stare at her hatefully. She looks at both of them and shrugs while asking what the big deal was.

“We’re part donkey,” says Wazza.

“I hope you’re happy,” sneers Adanz.

Trixie’s jaw drops and she stammers “Oh-oh I am so sorry, I-I had no idea you were-you were part donkey. You don’t look anything like donkeys!”

“Are you saying that we look nothing like our ancestors?” asks Wazza accusingly.

“Typical intolerance towards our kind” says Adanz while shaking his head sadly.

“What! No! No, I-I didn’t mean it! It has been a long day and it was just a slip of the tongue,” says Trixie defensively.

“She said such horrible things to get back at us for making her puke, didn’t she?” says Adanz sadly to Wazza.

“Indeed she did, brother. Come, let us leave her intolerance behind with some orange juice,” says Wazza.

The twins start walking away and Trixie stammers a massive wave of apologies, and just when she’s about to collapse from loss of breath due to how many desperate apologies she spewed out, the two zebras stop and turn to her... grinning. Trixie cocks her head and wonders why they are grinning.

“We were only joking with you, silly pony,” says Adanz.

“Only donkeys see other donkeys as attractive,” says Wazza, grinning from ear to ear.

“So... you aren’t mad?” asks Trixie carefully.

“No, of course not! We are full blood zebra! Would you like a hug?”

“No that won’t be necessary.”

Wazza and Adanz urge Trixie to loosen up and give them a hug as a way for them to apologize for messing with her. They emphasize this by standing on their hind legs and spreading their front hooves out. It only lasts a couple of seconds before they go back on all fours, but it still amazes Trixie that they were able to do that. After a minute or so of playful badgering Trixie finally gives in and goes to hug the twins. That turns out to be another big mistake.

~~~~~~~~~~

Trixie stumbles out of the Arena five minutes later, having to use the wall for support. Her mane and tail are ruffled into a knotted mess, and she is covered in fresh bruises and plagued with the new aches and pains that come with such bruising. She limps down the hallway and each step she takes she has to fight the urge to say “Ow”. When the demented twins walk next to her, untouched and grinning, they try to strike up a conversation with her to see what she had learned from the horrible exercise.

“So what did we learn today, my little pony?” asks Adanz teasingly.

“Never trust a zebra when they want a hug,” says Trixie angrily and sarcastically.

“She has a good point, Wazza.”

“I guess you’re right, brother,” says Wazza, “but did you learn anything else other than racial paranoia, Trixie?”

Trixie stops walking, and swiftly strikes Wazza in the side. He grunts and stumbles back, then his face turns into an odd tint of green and he gallops down the hallway. Adanz points and laughs at his brother’s misfortune.

“I finally remembered that move,” sneers Trixie.

And while Adanz is distracted with laughing at his brother, Trixie grabs the back of his head and slams his face against the wall, knocking him out cold. Then Trixie continues limping down the hallway.

“I really need a drink,” grumbles Trixie under her breath.

When Trixie finally makes it to the cafeteria, she searches for anything that can serve as an alcoholic beverage, but all they have is juice, milk, and water. She curses under her breath and pours herself a shot of apple juice, or at least the amount that’s in a shot glass in one of their cups. The way she sees it, if she can’t have alcohol then she might as well pretend that she’s having some. She downs her drink and slams the cup down, and then she pours herself another one and gulps it down just as quickly as before. She repeats this silly act a couple dozen times before she gets bored, and disappointed for the lack of wanted drinks, and smacks the cup away. She really wants her nap! But she doesn’t know if she can take one since her so called training was just her getting her butt kicked by the zebra twins and Gray Muffin told her that she needed to strike him three times yet she only has two. She decides to play it safe and buck Gray Muffin in the mouth.

She marches down the hall, demanding every pony she comes across to tell her where Gray Muffin is. Most didn’t know, but a couple of pegasi told her that he’s testing something in the “Birdcage” and doesn’t want to be disturbed. However, Trixie’s persistence gets them to tell her where the Birdcage is. She wastes no time in finding it, she is determined to hit Gray Muffin!

When Trixie reaches the entrance to the Birdcage, she finds that the door is unguarded and easily pushes it open, then her eyes nearly pop out of their socket when she sees the Birdcage. The Birdcage is another hollowed out room shaped into a dome that is hundreds of feet high and round with the floor being at least a hundred feet deeper than the entrance. There is a flight of stairs, but they don’t look trustworthy, leaving the only safe way down to be a cargo elevator. The Birdcage also has weird bars, rings and tunnels hanging from from the ceiling. Trixie also notices that there are scorches, scratches, and small craters littering the walls, ceiling, and floor. Even some of the things hanging from the ceiling are damaged.

Suddenly there is the whining of a small turbine engine, followed by a small boom and a blur zooms straight into the ceiling, and whatever it was that zoomed up lands gracefully on one of the bars. Trixie squints her eyes and realizes that the something is Gray Muffin wearing a full body jumpsuit with two turbine engine jetpacks latched on his back. The turbine engines have gems lining up on the sides of the engine, and the jetpack is clasped around his chest, which also has a large, glowing gem in the center.

“How’s the acceleration?” yells Roar Shock.

“Better!” yells Gray Muffin.

“Well play with it some more!”

Trixie gasps when Gray Muffin jumps off the bar without activating his jetpack. And when he falls a few dozen feet the gems glow and his jetpack activates. Trixie is speechless as she watches Gray Muffin skillfully fly around the auditorium in his dual jetpack. Sure it leaves an icky trail of fiery smoke, but his twists and turns leave amazing patterns in their wake. It’s like watching the Wonderbolts perform, except with two Wonderbolts performing ridiculously close to each other in perfect harmony. Tixie gasps yet again when Gray Muffin runs along the wall with the jetpack still going, and then he jumps off of the wall and spirals down to the ground. Right before he hits the ground he pulls up in such a way that would make a skilled pegasus jealous. She hears Roar Shock laughing and stomping on the ground in applause while cheering on Gray Muffin. That weirds out Trixie, every time she’s seen Roar Shock he looks like he want to murder someone or destroy something, but here, he’s laughing like a foal and cheering.

Gray Muffin turns off the jetpack by pressing his hoof against the gem on his chest when he’s a safe distance above the ground and runs to a stop. Roar Shock flies next to him and eagerly helps him remove the jetpack.

“I can’t believe it actually works!” says Roar Shock excitedly.

“Was there ever any doubt?” asks Gray Muffin smugly.

Trixie takes a step back after hearing her own phrase, certain that it wasn’t said out of sheer coincidence.

“I wonder if Trixie enjoyed the show,” says Gray Muffin loudly as he looks up at her.

=**********=

Terra walks up to the Ponyville Guard Station wearing a simple disguise. She has her mane tied into a ponytail, is wearing a simple business dress with some slender glasses, and has her cutie mark covered up by a fake one in the shape of justice scales. She’s also wearing a fancy saddle. Terra walks inside confidently and approaches a bored stallion earth pony guard with a brown coat, silver mohawk shaped mane, and a police badge for a cutie mark. His name tag says “Vigilance”. He looks bored filling out all the paperwork at his table and disgusted by having to use a pencil to do so.

“Hello there,” says Terra sweetly, “I’m Justice Scales and I’m here to see my client”

Vigilance looks up from his work and studies Terra, not to check out her looks, but to see if she’s fooling with him.

“Who’s your client?” asks Vigilance gruffly.

“Nurse Redheart,” replies Terra while levitating a folder out of her saddle to show him Redheart’s file.

“The new one?”

“Yep.”

“Let me see your cutie mark.”

“Excuse me?”

Vigilance sighs irritably and grumbles about how he knew that the new law was stupid. After his grumbling he walks out from behind his desk and stands in front of Terra. Terra looks up at the buff pony and finds herself on a sudden hairtrigger from his imposing figure, despite his age.

“The ‘Special Talent Act’, signed in by Princess Celestia and put into full force this Monday states that ponies are assigned to their careers by their cutie marks. I need to check your cutie mark and verify that you are, in fact, a lawyer. Shouldn’t lawyers know this?” Vigilance says suspiciously.

“Oh certainly, my apologies, sir. I just got in from Canterlot so my mind is somewhere else,” says Terra politely as she turns to show him her fake cutie mark.

Vigilance looks at her cutie mark for a few seconds before he asks to see her credentials. After showing him all that he needed to see, he leads her down to the sparkling clean hallway to the dungeon and explains that Redheart is being charged for conspiracy to assassinate the Mayor.

“Has this all been proven, or is my client a victim of the state’s witch hunts?” asks Terra accusingly, playing her act very well.

“Lady, I just hold prisoners. How they get in here is none of my concern,” replies Vigilance with a roll of his eyes.

oooOOOooo

Redheart is sitting on her cot in her prison cell, too worried to be bored. The cot shouldn’t even count as a cot in her opinion, since it is just a slab of wood with a thin layer of hay over it, and a ratty blanket and pillow to go with it.

The solid slab of oak that the guards call a cell door is pushed open and Redheart glances over to see who’s visiting her. Not to her surprise Vigilance is one, but it takes her a moment to realize that the other is Terra.

“Oh great,” mumbles Redheart.

“Aren’t you happy to see your lawyer?” asks Terra.

“Sent by the state or a friend?”

“Yes.”

Vigilance looks at Terra with even more suspicion now, and Terra smiles innocently at him.

“Could you be a dear and give me and my client some space?” asks Terra sweetly.

“Sure, just knock when you’re done,” says Vigilance.

“Thank you.”

Vigilance leaves and locks the door behind him. When Redheart hears the door lock, she hops off her bed and cautiously approaches Terra.

“What are you doing here,” demands Redheart.

“We got your signal, so I was sent in to -oh how should I say this?- fix the problem,” says Terra snobbishly.

Terra levitates a couple of stones out of her saddle, and casually spins them next her head. Redheart carefully watches the rocks spin and when she asks Terra to put the rocks away, she thankfully complies without an argument.

“So, how’s Pinkie’s blender working?” asks Redheart casually

“That blender is working miracles. I haven’t had smoothies as good as what that blender made in a long time,” says Terra blissfully.

“So you got your money’s worth, eh?”

“Yep, but enough about me. How are you holding up?”

Redheart chuckles and sits on her bed while Terra casually paces around the room

“C’mon, you and I both know you aren’t that nice,” says Redheart.

“I came here to check on you, didn’t I?” remarks Terra.

“You aren’t that kind of pony. Why are you really here?”

Terra walks towards Redheart with a very strange smile until their noses are practically touching. The nurse can smell the mouthwash in Terra’s warm breath, and the way that the unicorn is looking at her is unnerving on every level. She may be smiling, but that smile reminds  Redheart of something evil, plotting something just for the sake of causing trouble.

“I think you know,” says Terra quietly.

Redheart just stares at Terra awkwardly, and after a minute of silence, Terra sighs and folds her glasses away.

“I want to know where you’re keeping our property,” says Terra disappointingly.

“Bust me out and I’ll show you,” says Redheart.

“I can’t, I’m disguised as your lawyer, remember?”

“So.”

“So, I can’t compromise this disguise. What if I need it for later?”

“Fine, keep that stupid excuse, but what makes you think I’m going to tell you if you aren’t going to get me out?”

“The mission depends on you telling me where your stuff is.”

Redheart sighs and looks around the cell for a few seconds before bringing her focus back to Terra.

“How can I trust you?” asks Redheart harshly.

“We’re on the same team, Redheart,” sneers Terra.

“That doesn’t make you any less of a psycho”

“Look, just answer the question, and I swear I will do what I can to get you out, as long as it’s beneficial to our covers.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“Good, because if you don’t get me out of here then I’m going to be sent to Singsong and I don’t know how long I’ll last in there.”

Redheart instantly covers her mouth with her hooves, regretting what she had said, and Terra stares at her suspiciously, then her suspicious stare turns into a threatening one.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asks Terra threateningly.

“Nothing!” snaps Redheart.

“Did you let something slip?”

“I’ve been interrogated for twelve hours without any sleep, Terra!”

Terra snarls viciously and slams her hoof over Redheart’s mouth and then pushes her down on the cot with enough force to crack the wood. Redheart whimpers as Terra presses harder against her mouth; she’s sure that if Terra presses any harder her bones will crack.

“Don’t use my real name!” growls Terra. “How much do they know!”

Terra releases Redheart’s mouth to let her speak, but still keeps her pinned.

“Nothing, I swear,” says Redheart anxiously, on the verge of tears.

Terra’s pulls out her stones and forms them into a blade and then presses it against Redheart’s neck. Readheart begins sweating profusely, and her heart beats so fast it feels like it’s going to pop when Terra traces the knife over her jugular.

“Terra, wha-what are you doing?” whimpers Redheart.

“How much do they know,” repeats Terra in a low, dangerous tone.

“They don’t know anything! By Celestia, how many times do I have to repeat myself!”

Terra searches Redheart’s face for any signs of deception. A few seconds later she releases Redheart and apologizes, then tries to justify her actions by claiming she only did that because she doesn’t want the Royal Guards to figure out about the League of Justice.

“I don’t want to hear it,” sniffles Redheart with a wave of her hoof, “Just get the stuff, and get me out of here. We need to have to have a word with Roar Shock about your state of mind, too.”

Terra nods and says: “I understand, just tell me where the stuff is so we can get this done and over with.”

“It’s in a safe, under my bed, the combination is one, four, zero.”

“That’s a stupid combination.”

“Well that’s where the equipment is. If the Local Guards haven’t found it yet, then it should still be there.”

“‘Should’?”

“It will be there. Happy?”

“Very.”

Terra suddenly lifts up Redheart in a bone crushing embrace and the nurse gasps as she feels a sudden sharp pain in her back. Terra then twists the blade in Redheart’s back and gracelessly tugs it out. Redheart tries to scream, but all that comes out is a weak gasp. While Redheart panics and struggles to call for help as blood fills her lungs, and Terra throws her on the cot like a piece of garbage. Tears roll down Redheart’s cheeks as her grunts and gasps become weaker, and the blood fills up more of her lungs. The doomed nurse’s cries for help might as well be nonexistent compared to Terra’s gentle shushing noises.

“I’m not sorry it had to come to this, Redheart. You’ve compromised enough already,” says Terra sinisterly into Redheart’s ear.

The last thing Redheart sees before her life fades away is Terra pulling a blanket over her head. After the blanket is pulled over, Redheart closes her eyes for the last time.

oooOOOooo

After adjusting the blanket over Redheart’s body, Terra casually adjusts her glasses and suit, then she bangs on the cell door to let Vigilance know that she’s done. Vigilance looks at her suspiciously as she walks out, and when he’s about to check inside the cell she clears her throat, thus distracting him for a moment.

“Care to show a lady out?” asks Terra with an innocent smile.

“After I check on the prisoner,” says Vigilance while peeking inside the cell.

“Why would you need to do that?”

Vigilance looks at Terra, eyes narrowed and hoof scuffing the floor. “Why don’t you tell me, Terra.”

Terra’s eyes narrow and she swiftly slits Vigilance’s throat, killing him instantly. She catches his body with her magic before he can hit the floor and drags him inside the cell. She then unceremoniously dumps his body next to Redheart’s corpse and leaves their bodies to rot. She even goes as far as breaking the key in the lock before leaving the station.

Once Terra leaves the station, she immediately goes to a public bathroom in a bus station to clean the blood from her rocks and remove her disguise. When her disguise is removed and tossed in the nearest dumpster, Terra casually walks to Redheart’s house. She sneaks past some locals and goes to the backyard. She checks the backdoor to make sure its locked, and upon seeing it locked, she scoffs and morphs her stones into lock picks. After making sure no one is around to see her, she picks the door open, then strolls inside like she owns the place and quickly finds the safe. After unlocking the safe she removes its contents, and leaves through the backdoor Redheart’s house without any delay, being sure to lock the door, too. Then she puts on the communicator in the box and strolls down the cobblestone street of Ponyville.

While she casually walks down the mainstreet of Ponyville, she checks out the construction sites of the booming town. More specifically a towering skeletal structure that will easily be the largest building in Ponyville. She nods approvingly and walks around some more. Along the way she passes Filthy Rich and his daughter, Diamond Tiara at the electronics store. She’s whining about wanting to get a backpack radio, and points to Terra as an example. The poor pony behind the counter looks like’s about to lose her temper, though, despite Filthy Rich’s best efforts. Then she walks towards the Sugar Cube Corner and to buy herself a smoothie.

“One banana smoothie, coming up,” says Mrs. Cake; she turns to the kitchen. “Hey, Pinkie, we got one banana smoothie!”

“Be done in a jiffy!”

Terra is surprised to recognize the voice, and when the pink pony that sold her the blender trots out with a banana smoothie balanced carefully on her freakishly poofy mane they both lock eyes. Terra takes the banana smoothie and drops some bits on the counter while sipping it and staring at Pinkie Pie carefully. To Terra, it looks like she’s about to have a seizure.

“Something wrong?” asks Terra while arching an eyebrow.

“Pinkie, please go help Carrot with the dishes,” says Mrs. Cake with a nervous smile.

“Okie dokie lokie,” says Pinkie Pie slowly, still trembling as she slowly backs away and eyes Terra suspiciously.

“I’m sorry about that,” says Mrs. Cake with a nervous chuckle. “She’s our best employee and isn’t normally like this. Just a lot’s been going on.”

Terra smiles and walks away without another word. And she keeps on walking, enjoying the growing colorful town and the ponies learning to drive the revolutionary steam powered motorized vehicles. Well, revolutionary by the public’s standards. Terra merely chuckles at how primitive they are compared to her father’s work. Then she comes across another place she needed to be. The giant tree house that also serves as the local library.

Terra strolls inside and is greeted by a purple unicorn and her dragon assistant that she recognizes as Twilight Sparkle and Spike; courtesy of constant newspaper coverage. Terra politely returns the greeting and heads towards the reference section. Along the way Spike comments on how cool her radio pack is, which Terra is quick to remember her manners and thanks the purple dragon. Then she starts searching for a map of Ponyville.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” asks Twilight eagerly.

Terra smiles with feigned awkwardness and turns to the lavender mare. “Well, I was looking for an updated map of Ponyville, the tourist maps are gone.”

“Oh, let me get that for you.” Twilight’s horn glows and a folded map is bathed in a lavender mist and carried to them. “There you go, a fully updated map of Ponyville.”

“Oh thank you, can I keep this?”

Twilight beams. “Of course you can. I got hundreds of those things.”

“Twelve, actually,” corrects Spike.

Twilight sighs and gives Spike the “Really?” look, and he just shrugs like he has no idea what he did wrong. Terra, on the other hand, giggles excitedly and puts the map in her saddlebag.

“Thank you, Twilight, I don’t care what they say about you, you’re pretty cool.”

Terra turns and leaves, and Twilight smiles and waves farewell to her.

oooOOOooo

When the door closes, the visitor’s words seep in and Twilight’s smile twists into a frown and she looks at Spike.

“What do they say me?” asks Twilight suspiciously.

“What do who say about you?” asks Spike, genuinely confused.

“You know they and what they say about me.”

Spike scratches his head. “Yeah... I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

oooOOOooo

Terra snickers as she quickly trots down the road while activating the radio pack. When it’s on, she puts on the headset and uses her magic to turn the dial to the appropriate channel.

“Hey Daddy, it’s me, I just got to Ponyville, and I’m on my way to the inn right now. I should be back home sometime tomorrow. Is that okay?” says Terra in a bubbly voice.

There’s a couple of beeps on the other end and Terra grins and thanks Daddy, and hangs up. Terra then checks in at an inn for a one night rental at the highest room, using the excuse that she likes to have a good view of the town. The mare in charge leads her to her simple room while barely saying a word. The room only has a bed and a radio, but the best part of the room is that it has a perfect view of the front of Town Hall. And that is where Ponyville will be declaring who won the position of mayor. Which is tomorrow.

Arc 1- 05- Fun In The Infirmary -EDITED-

Arc 1- 6 (The Beginning of the End)

Shining Armor is at the Royal Guard Train Station, overseeing a hundred Royal Guards being loaded up on a train painted white with Celestia’s symbol on it. The Equestrian government had finally made it mandatory for all guardponies to be equipped with a brilliant invention called a “battle saddle”. Spears are a thing of the past as ballistic weapons have replaced them, and proven to be more effective in just about every occasion. Their only downside was that they were hard to handle. But with the invention of the battle saddle anyone can control their choice of weapon with a simple, yet effective, bit that acted as a joystick. It took the largest retraining in Equestrian history, but basically everyone agreed that it was worth it. And the thing that the soldiers like the most about the new saddles is that they can easily switch out their weapons. Shining Armor heard the newer batch of Royal Guards joke about how they would like to see the terrorists try to pull off any attacks now that they have battle saddles. However, Shining Armor would like it if the terrorists just surrendered, but that’s just as likely as the sun suddenly imploding.

The train station has been seeing a flurry of activity recently when Shining Armor drafted up plans to fortify cities where the violence has dramatically increased, or where important events, like elections, are being held. He, Celestia, and a few other high ranking officials have also crafted a plan that would slowly replace Local Guards patrolling their state borders with the Royal and Night Guards. The Royal and Night Guards are better trained and more reliable than the Local Guards, anyway, so it was an easy choice for Celestia to make. However, when being forced to give up nearly twenty thousand of his guardponies because their cutie marks said they were better at gardening than protecting, it makes the task more difficult than it should’ve been. On top of that, the news of their growing presence is not being taken too well by most, especially in the small towns like Ponyville, which is a place he’s going to personally.

About forty five minutes later, Shining Armor finds himself watching the scenery zip by the window in a blur, listening to the casual conversations taking place between his soldiers. The conversations are built around basic questions, like what they plan on doing when their tour is over, or which celebrity they’d marry if they got the chance, or if anypony  has heard of the fatal poisoning of dozens of griffins in Detrot. The last part butchers the good mood on the spot.

A few hours later, and the train comes to a grinding halt at the Ponyville Train Station. As the soldiers hop out with their jumbo battle saddles and gleaming gold armor, they are met with suspicious gazes. Most of the soldiers ignore them, but some of the recruits thought that now would be a great time to hit on the locals, obviously forgetting about Shining Armor’s presence. But after a quick scolding, the rookies regain their senses and head towards the temporary base being set up.

=**********=

Terra is sitting in her rented out room, caressing the mechanical box found in Redheart’s safe. She watches the soldiers march into town and she chuckles softly while levitating the box over her back. When it is above her back, it splits open in the shape of a saddle and wraps around her back and chest, and when she a pushes a large button on its chest a cannon with gems on the side attached to a rod on a ball-and-joint system slides out from the side. A multi-jointed appendage also pops out from the robotic saddle and she grabs it in her mouth like a bit. She tests the cannon by swinging it around on its swivel and charging the cannon without firing it. The cannon makes a satisfying humming noise, and an electric orb appears at the end with the crackling and popping sounds of powerful energy. Then it all goes silent. Terra pushes the button again and the cannon retracts to the suit and she spits out the bit, which also retracts to the suit, and she smiles at the chances she’s getting to test such a powerful weapon.

=**********=

Pinkie Pie silently goes through her journal of doodles for ideas while trying to listen to the happy-go-lucky party music she’s famous for blaring at basically every event. But the music is almost completely silent to her, her mind is too busy going places that no mind normally goes to. She heard about Redheart and Vigilance’s murder, despite the Local Guard’s best efforts to keep it quiet. Pinkie Pie is certain that it was the unicorn who bought her blender is the assassin, her Pinkie Senses nearly made her lose it at work when she saw her in front of Mrs. Cake the other day. She’s certain that it was the same organization that Redheart worked for that ended her, and they never leave a job unfinished. She hopes she can find and stop the new assassin before anyone is hurt.

Pinkie Pie looks out her room window a moment to watch the Royal Guards marching in the street in uniformed formation with their new battle saddles. She sighs depressingly and goes back to her journal, more specifically, her plans for a better Mare-Do-Well outfit. Armored and more high-tech than the simple jumpsuit that the current design has. It will still hold the same color scheme and basic design, but the way she has it planned out is that cuirass and leg pads will, of course, provide the protection, but will be equipped with little gel pads that help break the falls and reduce trauma. As for the jumpsuit in general, it would be made with reinforced stitching, like wearing a sandwich of material. Bottom, regular cloth; middle, chainmail; top, regular cloth again. The cape will also be more suited for gliding and made with memory fabric, rather than flapping around. She likes the cape and figures it will be better if it served a purpose rather than just a piece of decoration. The only downside she sees for the suit is that it’s expensive. Incredibly expensive.

=**********=

“Spike! Spike! Get up!” yells Twilight excitedly.

Spike groans and groggily rolls out of his bed while his massive jaws open as wide they can with his tongue flexing as he yawns. Once out of bed cracks his back and reluctantly walks down the stairs while rubbing his eyes.

“So much for my afternoon nap,” mumbles Spike.

Twilight teleports in front of Spike with a very large, excited grin, making him scream and jump back. He clutches his heart and glares at Twilight as she stares at him with that admittedly adorable grin she gets when she’s so excited she can barely sit still.

“Don’t do that!” scolds Spike.

“Guess what, Spike!” says Twilight, completely missing the anger in his tone.

“Uh... a stallion finally asked you out?” guesses Spike.

Twilight’s smile instantly disappears and her ears droop and she looks down, pouting. “No, but that would be nice. Seriously, I followed every step down to the letter in all the dating secret books and books on how to get a stallions attention.”

Spike mumbles: “Uh huh.” while scratching an itch on his ear like a dog.

“And what do I get? Mares hitting on me!”

Spike stops and looks at Twilight with big eyes as his leg slowly drops. His interest has been peaked and his hormones can’t help but picture Twilight and another more -like Rarity for example- making out in the library.

“Go on,” say Spike while leaning forward, eye ridges raised in anticipation for what's next.

“I mean, don’t stallions like strong, independent, intelligent mares?”

Spike frowns in disappointment and leans back. “Obviously not.”

“What?”

“What?”

Twilight eyes Spike suspiciously and he smiles innocently, doing his darndest not to let his nervousness show. A few seconds into it and Spike doesn’t know if he’ll be able to keep up his innocent smile. He kind of feels like Applejack when Pinkie Pie practically interrogated her at her own barn that one day she forgot about her birthday. Speaking of forgetting about things, Spike forgot that-

“Today’s Election Day!” says Twilight happily and completely unexpectedly.

‘Speak of Discord.’ “Yeah, silly me. I forgot about that,” says Spike with a yawn.

“Are you still tired? I let you have a nap in the middle of the day.”

“What can I say? I’m still a baby dragon at heart.”

If Spike hadn’t helped Pinkie Pie catch Redheart before she carried out her attack, then he’d be in a completely different mood. Like uptight, worried, and very jumpy, but at least the threat is locked away in jail so now all he has to worry about is the cramps he’ll get from Twilight’s checklist. He doesn’t really mind, he’s actually used to getting the cramps, but he really wishes that Rarity wasn’t touring Equestria with her new line up. He’s glad that her years of sleepless nights, sweat and tears have finally paid off, but still, he has more fun with the fashionista than Twilight in most cases. Plus Twilight is more willing to let Spike go if Rarity needs or wants Spike’s help. They share a fondness in ice cream, too.

“Spike, snap out of it.”

Spike blinks and looks at Twilight with a duh expression. “Huh, what? What’s wrong?”

“You were zoning out. I was saying we need to help organize the reading of the results and then we have to say our greetings to Shining Armor. Oh, I’m so excited to see him again! It feels like it it’s been forever!”

“Right. Organize and say ‘Hi’ to big bro and then sleepy time. But, Twilight, I got a quick question.”

“Sure thing, Spike. What’s on your mind?”

“Oh nothing much, I was just wondering if we could grab some ice cream or something before we do anything today.”

Twilight giggles and walks out the door with Spike following close behind.

“Oh Spike, we already relaxed today. We have work to do. But I promise that we’ll get some after all this is over” says Twilight lightheartedly.

Spike pretends to be crying as he closes the door behind him, this actually makes Twilight turn around, worried that she actually made her assistant cry. But when she sees him grinning at her, she rolls her eyes amusingly and holds back a laugh. The good mood is ruined, though, when they start walking through Ponyville. Spike gets a nervous feeling when he sees what the Royal Guards are doing. Even though Redheart had already been arrested, the Royal Guards are forcing ponies living near the Town Hall to leave their homes and other buildings to inspect the places for anything unusual. There are protests, but the Royal Guards won’t have any of it. They quickly shut them up with harsh language and threats of arrest for not cooperating. Twilight also seems concerned about this, but she refuses to question why her brother is allowing it to happen.

“What the heck is going on? Didn’t the news say that the would-be assassin was arrested?” asks Spike worryingly while staring a group of soldiers guarding a scarred family while another inspects their home with the grace of a manticore.

“Spike, I know this looks bad, and I’ll talk to Shining about it later, but he doesn’t do anything without Princess Celestia’s permission and she always has a good reason for what she does,” says Twilight.

Spike is unconvinced, but it’s no use in trying to convince Twilight that what’s going on is a cause for concern. Just implying that Celestia could be in the wrong is enough justification for her to chew you out and then ignore you for a week.

=**********=

Shining Armor is overseeing the Royal Guards setting up the command center for their temporary base. He’s really tired, not due to lack of sleep, but for the lack of help. He knows his position calls for a lot, but some of the fresh Royal Guards seem to lack common sense, and oil and water get along better than the Local and Royal Guards.

“Shining!” squeals Twilight happily.

Shining Armor instantly turns around to see Twilight bouncing towards him with Spike and a couple of Royal Guards casually walking behind her. He laughs and they hug each other in a tight embrace. Spike stands back and tries to look cool with his arms folded across his chest. The duo had shown up at the temporary base and with their high prestige they were able to get inside easily and got a personal escort to Shining.

“Aren’t you supposed to be doing homework?” teases Shining Armor.

“I thought I’d take a break,” says Twilight with the same teasing tone.

“That is not like you at all. You’re getting lazy.”

Twilight and Shining Armor share a chuckle, and then Shining Armor excuses himself so he, Twilight, and Spike can talk without being in the presence of the other soldiers. He leads them to the cafeteria, which isn’t much, just a bunch of fold up tables and chairs. The food is not even out yet. After taking a seat in the back, Shining Armor asks where the rest of her friends are since they’re almost always together.

“Well Rarity finally got her big breakthrough and is now showing off her lineup with other fashion designers around Equestria. Last I checked she was in Detrot and she already got a deal with three big clothing stores to sell her stuff in,” says Twilight proudly.

“Oh that’s nice,” says Shining Armor with a smile. “What about the others? Rainbow, Applejack, Fluttershy, and Pinkie?”

“Rainbow Dash also had a big breakthrough. She’s off training with the Wonderbolts,” says Spike.

Shining Armor grins and can imagine the joy Rainbow Dash got from getting that acceptance letter. He remembers when he was accepted into the Royal Guard he fainted from the immense joy, that almost made the Royal Guard change their mind, but that’s another story. The Captain wonders if Rainbow Dash fainted when she got the letter; despite all the claims the colorful pegasus makes, she can be quite the drama queen.

“Well if anypony deserves to be a Wonderbolt, it’s her,” says Shining Armor cheerfully.

“Yep, and Applejack actually went to visit her cousin, Braeburn, and Pinkie Pie is trying to start a business selling blenders. Speaking of Pinkie Pie, we haven’t seen her all day, have we Spike?” says Twilight.

“She’s probably trying to keep Fluttershy company. You know she’s almost living in complete isolation because of what’s going on, and Pinkie Pie doesn’t like seeing others alone,” says Spike casually.

Shining Armor sighs and looks down. “Yeah, can’t really blame her for being afraid.”

There is a moment of silence before a Royal Guard approaches Shining Armor and informs him that the temporary command center is fully functional now. Shining Armor thanks the Royal Guard and then looks at Twilight and Spike.

“Sorry, guys, I gotta cut this conversation short. Duty calls,” says Shining Armor.

“Oh it’s alright, Shining, me and Spike have some work to do too,” says Twilight sympathetically.

“Oh the joys of hand cramps,” quips Spike.

The three chuckle and go their separate ways.

=**********=

A group of four Royal Guards march up the stairs to the inn where Terra is staying. Before kicking out the caretaker, she told them that she was staying there and they just wanted to tell her that the inn will be off limits for the duration of the reading of the results. When they enter her room they find her staring out the window in a trance like state.

“Ma’am, we’re going to have to ask you to...” begins the lead Royal Guard.

The Royal Guards notice the odd saddle she’s wearing and they aim their weapons at her nervously. When she turns around and gives them a devilish smirk, they take a step back, it’s like her very presence sucks all the goodness out of the atmosphere.

“Ask me to do what?” asks Terra in an evil playful tone.

She pushes the button on her chest and the cannon pops out, and before the Royal Guards can fire two rocky daggers fly forward and impale two of them in the neck and then her cannon shoots the third in the chest with an electric beam. The beam burns through his armor and his organs easily and is dead before he hits the ground. The surviving Royal Guard is so terrified that he drops to the ground, whimpering, as Terra walks towards him. The knives are yanked out of the corpses and float next to her.

“Please don’t kill me,” whimpers the Royal Guard, obviously fresh from camp.

“Base to Team Four. Is the inn clear? Over,” says a pony on the radio.

“Tell them that the inn is clear and that you are requesting to stay to keep a high ground,” orders Terra.

The Guard nods and after taking a gulp he says into his radio: “This Private Hayseed. The inn is clear... And base... Bass is requesting we stay in the inn.”

“...Why? You’ll get your cider when this over. Over.”

“Um well-well the inn has a-has a uh great view of where the reading is and-and we um we would like to use it our advantage to-to keep watch... Over.”

A minute passes before the radiopony makes contact again. “Captain Armor says it’s a good idea. Also, Hayseed, is it?”

“Yes, sir. Private Golden Hayseed.”

“Private Hayseed, relax.”

“...Yes sir.”

“Base out.”

The radio clicks off and Terra smiles and rubs her hoof across Hayseed’s cheek in smooth strokes. “That’s a good boy.”

“Wi-will you let me live?” asks Hayseed pathetically.

Terra taps her chin. “Hmm... nah.”

Before Hayseed can say another word, Terra stabs him through eye and then pushes his corpse away.

=**********=

Back at the temporary base command center, Shining Armor is using his magic to put on a battle saddle with a radio pack attached while giving out orders. The reading of the results is in just an hour and he needs his soldiers to have the area quarantined. The Local Guards are also involved in the quarantine, but they seem... off. Shining Armor doesn’t really know why they are so off, but he’s guessing that it has something to do with the large number of Royal Guards in their town without royalty to guard.

Thirty minutes later, Shining Armor heads out with his escort to the Ponyville Town Hall. When they get there, he can tell Twilight and Spike had been busy. The whole Town Hall courtyard is decorated with exquisite decor that would make Rarity proud. There is even an orchestra band playing upbeat music to keep the crowd lively. The ponies that arrive have to undergo an extensive and embarrassing search by the Local and Royal Guards, which leads to a lot of disgruntled civilians. Shining Armor sees Twilight and Spike coordinating a last minute touch up, the Mayor and the two other candidates sitting patiently for the main event, and a purple blur jumping across the rooftops. After seeing the purple blur he instantly contacts the pegasi patrolling the sky.

“Sky Patrol, do you see anything on the roofs?” asks Shining Armor through his radio.

There is a few seconds of silence before he gets his answer. “Yes sir, we’re seeing civilians on the roofs with cameras and Hail said he saw a purple thing dart into an alley.”

“Get the civilians off the roofs and find this ‘purple thing’.”

“Yes sir.”

=**********=

Pinkie Pie, now wearing her Mare-Do-Well costume, ducks under a motorized wagon to escape the Royal Guard Sky Patrol, it’s a very tight and uncomfortable fit. Her reason for hiding is that she knows that they would find her suspicious for wearing a full body costume and sneaking around during a major event. And if they catch her, then she’ll more than likely be detained, which she can’t allow to happen since there’d be a big commotion and while the Guards are distracted the new assassin could strike. Also, she needs to get closer to Shining Armor so she can signal that she’s not an enemy.

When she sees the Sky Patrol leave her general area, she crawls out from under the vehicle and sneaks around the town to find a good spot to get her signal out. After short while of sneaky searching she does find a good spot on the roof of newly built flower shop. The spot has a good line of sight of Shining Armor, and even from afar she can see how tense he is.

Pinkie Pie does a quick check to make sure she’s alone, and after finding out that she is, she pulls out a slingshot and a ball covered with sticky goo that has a note attached to it.

“Sorry about this, Shining,” says Pinkie Pie to herself.

oooOOOooo

The event has already started and Shining Armor is waiting in the back, scanning the crowd for any suspicious activity. Then he feels something sticky smack against his head followed by Guards swearing and laughing. Shining Armor takes a deep breath and yanks off whatever hit him with his magic and sees a note tied at the end of it. He ignores the snickering and reads the note quietly.

Hey Shining,

You and I are on the same team so please keep your guys off of my back.

Sincerely,

Mare-Do-Well

P.S.

Sorry about the goo, but a paper airplane just wouldn’t work and a slingshot has better range

Shining Armor groans, he remembers when Twilight talked about how she and her friends dressed up as a masked hero to teach Rainbow Dash a lesson, and how they donned the costume again to fight back Eclipse’s criminal empire. He knows it’s Pinkie Pie that’s dressing up as Mare-Do-Well again. Rainbow Dash hates the costume, Rarity and Applejack are away, he’s looking at Twilight right now, and Fluttershy is too cowardly to do something like this. Besides, only Pinkie Pie would use a slingshot to shoot someone with a sticky ball that has a note on it to get a message across.

“Sky Patrol, ignore the purple figure,” orders Shining Armor over his radio.

“Um, you sure about that, sir?” asks a Sky Patrol.

“Yeah, she’s a friend.”

“...Roger that.”

The Royal Guards around Shining Armor stop their giggling and cock their heads, curious about his sudden change about the “purple thing”, and Shining Armor looks at them.

“What?” asks Shining Armor coolly.

The guards murmur different phrases that translate to “Nothing.” in unison and continue to look around to make sure sure everything is okay. Shining Armor sighs and looks at the stage where the candidates, Twilight, and Spike are. As he observes the group he notices that the Mayor’s posture looks a little too confident.

“And the winner of this year’s election is... the Mayor!” says Twilight triumphantly.

The crowd stomps the ground in applause and the Mayor walks towards the podium with a Trixie class smug smile to give her acceptance speech as streamers and confetti float down around her. Shining Armor watches the crowd suspiciously, and then time seems to slow down when he sees a faint glow coming from the top floor of the inn. He doesn’t think, he acts on pure instinct as he runs towards the Mayor and Twilight with his horn charging.

=**********=

Terra charges her cannon and grins from ear to ear when the Mayor walks in the middle of her mental crosshairs.

“Have fun in Tartarus,” snickers Terra.

Then she fires.

Arc 1 -06- Commitments -ADDITION-

Arc 1- 7 (Stone Reaper)

“Get down!” shouts Shining Armor while shoving the Mayor and Twilight to the ground.

The Mayor screams in protest but when Shining Armor puts up the rosy colored shield that covers the stage and an electric beams explodes against it a split second later, she almost goes comatose from fear. A barrage of electric beams hit the shield and Shining Armor puts the Mayor over his back while easily maintaining his shield, and he also stands in front of Twilight and Spike defensively and orders everyone to get inside the Town Hall. The shots continue banging against his shield, and he orders his troops to converge on the inn.

“They said it was clear!” says Shining Armor through gritted teeth, and then through the radio he shouts. “They’re in the inn! Take them out! Take them out!”

The Royal and Local Guards on the ground unload at the inn’s top floor with their battle saddles. The barrage of dozens of battle saddles and the civilians screaming creates a deafening mixture of noises. The Royal and Local Guards have trouble approaching the inn because of the stampeding crowd, but the Sky Patrol easily swoops towards the inn while firing their battle saddles.

oooOOOooo

Terra casually aims her cannon at the incoming Sky Patrol, uncaring about the bullets whizzing past her or the splinters of wood they kick up. When she shoots at them, some of the electric beams burn through a few chests and a couple of wings and limbs are shot off. She watches the pegasi drop from the sky, dead or injured, with a vicious smile. Then she shoots a few more soldiers, forcing them into what little cover they can find, and spots Shining Armor putting the Mayor into the safety of the Town Hall.

oooOOOooo

Shining Armor pales when he sees how quickly the soldiers are being wiped out. Then his paled expression turns red from his blood boiling and just when he’s about to bark out another order, more of those electric beams tear through the wall, sending chunks of burning wood bouncing off of his shield. The Mayor and Twilight shriek and cower behind Shining Armor while he remains steadfast.

“SOMEPONY GET THAT BUCKING ASSHOLE!” screams Shining Armor over his radio.

oooOOOooo

Terra gallops out of the room, cutting down any soldier that dares to cross her with deadly electric bolts and precise throat slitting. To make her getaway all the quicker she blows a hole in the wall of the lobby that leads directly to the alley. Right when she’s about to make her escape, someone dressed in a full body suit, mask and large fedora consisting of different shades of purple has the audacity of ramming her to the ground. Terra loses her concentration and the rocky knives fall to the ground as she slides across the alley. When she gets up she’s rammed into the wall, punched a couple of times in the face, and then kicked in the chest with unnaturally quick reflexes. Terra tries to block, but the assailant once again shows off her skill as she ducks under her in a purple blur and uppercuts her. The uppercut sends Terra flying off of her hooves and she skids down the alley, but she shrugs off the pain and alley dust and glares at her assailant as she approaches her.

“Who the hay are you supposed to be?” sneers Terra, her teeth red with blood.

The assailant’s insane speed makes it impossible for Terra to block her as she’s tackled to the ground again. The purple figure keeps Terra’s back pressed against the pavement, and the unicorn can see her eyes narrow in her reflection on those ridiculous bug-eyed visors this pony has.

“I’m Mare-Do-Well,” she says in a disguised voice.

“Pleasure to meet, you, Mare-Do-Well. You’re going to die now,” says Terra.

She shoots Mare-Do-Well in the chest with a blast of magic and she hears her purple nemesis scream in pain as she is launched dozens of feet in the sky. Terra is about to shoot Mare-Do-Well with her cannon, but after seeing her land on her back on the roof of a motorized wagon, crushing it, she thinks otherwise. Especially when Mare-Do-Well doesn’t move.

“Well that was disappointingly easy,” grumbles Terra, tenderly touching her busted lip with a hoof a second later.

When Terra hears more guards coming, she picks up her knives and runs down the alley while contacting her ride.

“Ground to Sky, we have a major problem” says Terra as she circles the knives around her head like two deadly satellites.

“So we hear,” says the radiopony. “You made quite the mess, Terra.”

“It would’ve been better if that prick hadn’t put up a shield.”

“You started a stampede!”

“Oh boohoo, stop your crying and pick me up at the abandoned warehouse.”

“Roger that.”

oooOOOooo

After he seeing Pinkie Pie in her Mare-Do-Well costume go towards the inn, Spike bullies his way through the charging crowd to get to her. He hears Twilight calling him, but her voice is quickly drowned out by the screams. Spike runs inside the inn and the first thing he sees are the mangled bodies and then the giant hole in the wall leading to the alley. He takes a deep breath, clenches his fist and runs to the alley. When he sees Pinkie Pie struggling to crawl out of a smashed motorized wagon he runs over to help her out.

“Pinkie Pie, are you okay?” asks Spike as he picks her up and gently sets her on the ground.

“I’m fine,” says Pinkie Pie while wincing quietly and cracking her back.

“Where are the Guards? Where’s the assassin?”

“I don’t know. I blacked out, but if she’s going to escape with an airship then it would have to be somewhere isolated.”

“There’s the construction and abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the town.”

“Only the abandoned warehouse has a good spot for landing a craft.”

“Okay, I’ll go stop the assassin-”

“No, Spike.”

“And you get yourself taken care of.”

“Spike!”

Spike doesn’t let Pinkie Pie finish, he runs down the alley towards the abandoned warehouse. The chaos of the stampeding crowd and the soldiers trying to calm them down and help the injured doesn’t make his run any easier.

When Spike finally makes it to the abandoned warehouse he gets an uneasy feeling in his gut. Abandoned places always have an ominous feel to them, even during the daytime, and this one is no different, especially since an assassin with a futuristic weapon is in there. And he knows the assassin is nearby because a piece of the chain link fence surrounding the place has a hole burnt through it where the edges are still glowing red hot. Spike takes a deep breath and goes through the hole. As he approaches the main building he picks up a steel bar and grasps it tightly like a baseball bat. As soon as he hears the assassin’s voice he tightens his grip and tries to keep himself calm.

“What do you mean you’re having problems?” says the assassin.

Spike takes a double take, that voice sounds familiar.

“Well shoot them out of the sky, you morons! Terra, out!”

Spike gasps when he realizes that the assassin is the mare with the cool communication device that was at the library yesterday. Suddenly, the ground shifts under his feet, causing him fall on his face. Then he’s grabbed by a magical force and launched into the ceiling and then smashed into the ground. Luckily Spike is a dragon, otherwise his bones would’ve been shattered. At the most they are bruised, but it’s still high on the list of the most painful thing he’s experienced.

Spike groans and his eyes shift up to Terra’s sick, twisted smile.

“Hey I know you!” says Terra excitedly.

=**********=

Shining Armor had put the Mayor, Twilight and the other candidates in the protection of a dozen Royal Guards that were ordered to take them to their temporary base. And now that those two are on their way to safety, he turns his attention to his troops. The radio is clogged with frantic chatter of his soldiers trying to call for help to ease the panic or to bring down what they are describing as a “huge, robotic dragonfly” that is shooting at them.

Shining Armor wants to scream right now. A unanimous mail said that there would be an attack, but no one was expecting anything remotely close to this. They were not prepared for robotic dragonflies or weaponize electricity! Those things should not have even been possible!

Shining Armor snaps out of his rage induced trance and tries to figure out where the assassin is heading. He gathers a group of six Royal Guards as his personal hunting party. They will find and bring whoever is responsible to justice one way or the other. Thankfully Pinkie Pie, still dressed as Mare-Do-Well, drops by, looking worse for wear but refusing medical attention, and tells them that she has reason to believe that the assassin is heading towards the abandoned warehouse on the edge of the town. Shining Armor doesn’t waste a beat to order his soldiers to follow him as he runs after her, and they obey without question.

=**********=

Terra laughs as she knocks Spike to the ground again. She recognizes the dragon as the famous Twilight Sparkle’s number one assistant, and the nice guy that complimented her on the radio pack. Earlier Spike tried to bring her down with a crude weapon, but that was something a barrage of well placed strikes couldn’t take care of. Normally Terra would kill anyone who had the guts to attack her, but there are two reasons why Spike isn’t dead. One, he’s a dragon and they are ridiculously hard to kill, even if they are young. And two, since her ride is facing some problems with some pegasi guards they are running a little behind, she thinks she might as well pass the time somehow. Plus, she hardly ever gets to toy with her prey.

“Twilight Sparkle’s number one assistant thinks he can be a hero,” mocks Terra.

She grabs his head with her magic and slams it against the ground, he grunts and spits blood from his mouth. He’s regretting ignoring Pinkie Pie and is now hoping she’s on her way to stop Terra.

“Does your mommy know your out playing cops and robbers?” continues Terra in her demeaning tone.

“She’s not my ‘mommy’,” growls Spike.

“Ohhh, I see. Your marefriend then. Does Rarity know your cheating on her with a naughty librarian?”

Spike screams as he breaks free from Terra’s magical grip and he tackles her to the ground. He has her on her back and throws in a few amazing punches before he tries strangling her. But as soon as he tries strangling her, she stabs him in the side and watches with a satisfied smile as he rolls off of her with one of her blades sticking out of his ribs. He gasps for air while clutching his injury and Terra giggles as she slowly pulls the knife out, enjoying the sounds of his painful cries.

“What’s the matter? Are you hurt? I’m sorry if you are in pain, but my ride out is facing some problems with our flying friends, so I’m just trying to kill time,” says Terra.

“You-you are-you’re a monster,” pants Spike.

He throws a punch, but Terra jumps away, seething.

“Monster? MONSTER!” screams Terra.

Terra kicks Spike on his injured side and when he’s on his back she stomps on his gut and stares into his eyes with a vicious snarl and a knife almost touching his eye. Spike gulps and his eyes shift around the room, hoping to see Pinkie Pie come in and beat this psycho to a pulp. But he sees no sign of her, so he knows he’ll have to keep her talking to buy time.

“I am no monster!” claims Terra. “I am a soldier! A soldier fighting for the very soul of Equestria!”

“Wa-wow... I-You are sure making me sympathetic,” says Spike sarcastically.

“I wouldn’t expect a weakling like you to understand. It’s too bad you had to interfere with our business, you seemed like a nice dragon. But nopony can stop what is coming. Not you. Not Mare-Do-Well. Not even the goddesses can stop us.”

‘That’s right, keep talking.’ “Wha-what are you... talking... about?”

“For too long we have let criminals and the corrupt rule Equestria, the time has come to purge these fiends from existence. And anypony who tries to stop us will die. Just. Like. You.”

Spike realizes that he can’t wait for Pinkie Pie any longer, so he swiftly swipes his claws against Terra’s face, leaving a trail of nasty cuts from her cheek to her forehead and ruining her right eye. She yelps and stumbles back, and Spike tries to crawl to his feet while Terra screams and thrashes on the ground. A moment later, she stands up with wobbly legs and a newfound fury.

“You bucking scaled freak!” exclaims Terra.

She grabs Spike with her magic and throws him through one of the walls. Terra then runs to Spike while forming her rocks into the blade and when Spike attempts to punch her, she stabs him in the hand, in between the knuckles and through the wrist.

oooOOOooo

After splitting up to try to find Terra, Pinkie Pie hears the commotion of fighting and her heart races as a lump goes in her throat. She can’t find Spike! She knows he’s in danger, every fiber in her body is telling her that. And her worst fears are confirmed when she hears Spike scream painfully. Pinkie Pie frantically calls for Spike when she hears his screams over Terra furious shouts, but then there are three electric shots and Spike’s screaming go silent. Pinkie Pie’s calling becomes more frantic and she runs even faster to the point where her feet are barely touching the ground.

“Spike! Where are you!” yells Pinkie Pie as she slides around a corner.

Suddenly Pinkie Pie’s senses buzz and she barely dodges a blood soaked blade flying towards her. It’s a good thing she dodged it too, since the blade had enough force to get impaled it into the concrete wall behind her. She then hears a demented chuckling and sees Terra step out of the shadows with her electric cannon charging and another blade floating next to her.

“Spike! Oh Spike, where art thou!” laughs Terra, her face is soaked in blood from the scratches and punches, and one of her eyes is closed. But the eye that is open has a clear look of psychotic evil.

“What did you do to Spike!” yells Pinkie Pie.

The blade is yanked out of the wall and lunges at Pinkie Pie. She dodges the blade and it circles around Terra before coming to a stop next to her head.

“I should’ve known you were playing dead. Silly me. I’ll be sure to cut your head off this time,” snickers Terra.

“WHAT DID YOU DO WITH SPIKE!” screams Pinkie Pie.

“You should’ve heard him begging for his life.” Terra mimics a cry, and then flashes a toothy grin. “Does Twilight know you got her number one assistant killed?”

Pinkie Pie screams and charges Terra, and the psychotic unicorn smirks and urges Pinkie Pie to come closer under her breath. Right when Pinkie Pie is jumping toward Terra, she launches both of her blades at the pink pony. But Pinkie Pie, much to Terra’s surprise, bats the first blade away, jumps on the second, crushing it under her hoof, and punches Terra’s injured eye. As Terra shrieks painfully, Pinkie Pie bucks her into a rack of old supplies. The rack falls over and forms avalanche of old supplies that creates a deafening ruckus and covers Terra with the junk. Pinkie Pie watches the pile for a few seconds for any signs of movement. When there’s nothing Pinkie Pie turns to look for Spike, but stops dead in her tracks when she hears the ground cracking and a loud rumbling noise radiating from underneath it.

“You thought a kick would stop me?” snickers Terra while rising out of the pile on top of a levitating rock platform.

Pinkie Pie takes a step back and her jaw drops as she watches Terra rise up with more chunks of stones floating around her that have been ripped out from under the floor. The stones are shaped into saw blades and then shot at her like a machine gun. Pinkie Pie runs down the warehouse, dodging each of the crude saw blades and making them shatter against the ground or crash into each other. When she reaches what she’s guessing is the supply room, given all the old cleaning supplies and tools and other random things, she locks herself inside and desperately searches for anything to use against Terra. She yelps when the blades impale the metal door. Thankfully they don’t go through, though.

Pinkie Pie sighs with relief, but that relief dies in a heartbeat when she hears more shouting from what sounds like Royal Guards, followed by a mix of ballistic and electric shots, screams, and then silence.

oooOOOooo

“Damn guards,” grumbles Terra.

Terra turns away from the group of now dead Royal Guards that Shining Armor assembled. All of them have parts of their bodies charred, like their chests, sides, and she even got a couple of headshots.

“Now where was I?” mumbles Terra. “Oh yeah. Mare-Do-Well, I hope you made your peace!”

Terra charges her cannon and blows down the door and a large area of the wall around it, showering her with burning dust and chunks of debris. She coughs and shakes the dust out of her mane before cautiously stepping into the hole.

“I know you’re in there, Mare-Do-Well!” yells Terra.

She shoots a volley inside and gets a satisfied smirk when she sees little explosions and pieces of the ceiling collapse.

“It’ll only go faster if-”

Suddenly a gunshot rings out and before Terra’s mind can comprehend what the noise was, the cannon explodes, covering the bad side of her face and a good portion of her body with electric fire. Terra shrieks and thrashes on the ground as the electric fire burns through her coat and melts her flesh down to the bone. On top of feeling her skin and muscle drip off, she also feels an armored hoof go down on her neck. She looks up, and despite her being almost completely unfocused due to the immense pain, she can make out Shining Armor standing above her with the rifle on his saddle aimed down at her head. His heavy breathing and the furious tears swelling in his eyes show that he really wants to execute her. The only reason he’s not, though, is because it would go against everything he believes in. That, and the Royal Guard Charter says execution is unacceptable under any circumstances.

“Resist arrest, I dare you” says Shining Armor darkly.

“Oh-oh-okay-okay big boy. Ye-You want-you want me to. You want me to, huh?” chuckles Terra through pained gasping.

Shining Armor furrows his brow, he does not like the way she’s laughing at him. Terra’s horn glows and a piece of stone shoots clean through the bone of the leg that is holding her down. Shining Armor screams and collapses to the ground, and Terra, through some unholy energy, clambers on top of him and uses the same rock to bash his horn until it cracks, despite his best efforts to fight her off.

“Ha-ha-how-how do you like that! How’s THAT for resist, huh!” screams Terra’s horribly distorted, scratchy voice.

Terra is just about to stab Shining Armor in the eye, but a metal bar hits her on the side of head, and everything goes white for a couple of seconds with a loud ringing echoing in her brain. And just when things are going back in focus, she sees the bar going in for another swing. When it connects with her head everything goes dark.

oooOOOooo

After Terra falls to the ground like an old ragdoll, Pinkie Pie drops the bar, goes back on all four hooves and clumsily puts Shining Armor over her back. She carries him out of the warehouse and runs like the wind to a medical station that was hastily set up at the temporary base. Every cot is taken by victims of trampling, or Guards injured by Terra’s weapon. Pinkie Pie sets Shining Armor down by a doctor and runs off before she could be questioned. As she runs through the crowd she hears ponies murmuring “Is that Mare-Do-Well?” and other similar phrases.

She runs all the way back to the warehouse, and after the longest five minute search of her life, she comes across Spike. He’s completely motionless and Pinkie Pie panics as she runs to him.

“Spike! Spike! Can you hear me!” says Pinkie Pie desperately.

She carefully turns Spike over and pulls off her mask and listens to his breathing. It’s still there, barely, and when she sees the extent of his injuries she sobs and hugs Spike tightly. He has three large, circular burns on his chest, he’s covered with cuts and bruises, and has a nasty stab wound in his hand. His fresh wounds are bleeding uncontrollably, soaking the ground around him in blood.

“Oh Spike, I’m so sorry,” sobs Pinkie Pie quietly.

Then she feels Spike’s arm weakly wrap around her neck and he gradually opens his eyes and uses a lot of his precious energy to smile at her.

“How’d we do?... Did we get her?” asks Spike weakly while trying to make a humorous tone.

Pinkie Pie chuckles quietly. “Yeah... yeah we got her,” she says softly.

“That’s good... I... I think I’m ready... for a nap.”

Spike closes his eyes and goes limp, but he’s still breathing. Pinkie Pie dons her mask and carries him to the medical area. She wants to find a good spot to put him, but when she sees Twilight crying over her brother, who’s insisting that he’s doing fine, she feels a lump in her throat and tries to find a spot where she wouldn’t have to face her friend. She knows she won’t be able to stand seeing Twilight more broken than she already is.

“Spike?” says Twilight in shock.

Pinkie Pie finds an open cot, and aggressively pushes doctors and the injured aside just to get him that spot.

“Spike!” yells Twilight, Pinkie Pie can hear the tears in her voice.

Pinkie Pie lays Spike on the cot and runs without looking back. Twilight’s wailing is enough for her to know what her friend’s reaction is. She doesn’t want to be around to see her cry, knowing that this was her fault, and even if she wanted to stay, she wouldn’t know how to comfort her.

~~~~~~~~~~

A few hours later, Pinkie Pie finds herself sitting on her bed, staring at her map in a trance like state, still wearing her More-Do-Wel costume, minus her mask and hat. Her mane and tail have deflated and she’s sore all over. Her eyes are red and puffy, and her coat is wet from her crying because of the fate she had thrown on herself and Spike to save a life. But she failed. Despite all her best efforts to save a life, dozens of ponies were killed and dozens more injured. The Mayor is still alive, but now that she thinks about it, she thinks she should’ve just let them kill the Mayor. After all they do target criminals and corrupt government officials and it would’ve been just the Mayor that suffered and not Spike or the hundreds of other. But because the Mayor is still alive they will be back and there is no telling what they will do ensure that their target is killed or what acts of retribution they will carry out against the town. And to make things more bleak, the room is unusually quiet, with only sound being a ticking clock to remind Pinkie Pie of Redheart’s threats.

“You can’t stop us, Mare-Do-Well. You may have captured me, but they’ll just send somepony else. And after they deal with the Mayor, they’ll come after you for meddling with our business.”

As that phrase echoes in Pinkie Pie’s mind in sick loops, she down at the junk on her floor and realizes that Redheart was right. These ponies are willing to do anything to accomplish their goals, and now that she had sabotaged their mission and killed one of their soldiers, they will be coming after her in full force. She doesn’t need her Pinkie Sense to tell her that her end is near. She lifts her hooves up to her face and the image of her bashing Terra on the side of the head with a metal beam flashes across her mind. She can’t scrub the image of the bloody face and the sick smile that accompanied it from her mind. It’s like Terra didn’t even care that she was gravely injured. She had an objective and she was willing to kill anypony-

No. Anyone.

“Spike! Oh Spike, where art thou!”

Pinkie Pie sniffles and lets her hooves drop to the floor. She can only imagine the fear that Spike had felt when Terra attacked him, and the bodies... all those bodies. All the lives that Terra ended without hesitation. She can vividly hear Terra’s demented laughter and taunts. Even the smell of smoke from her weapon still lingers in Pinkie Pie’s nose. Pinkie Pie is in such a distraught state that she doesn’t hear the gentle knocking on the door, but when she hears a familiar voice call her from the hallway she snaps out of it and checks to see who it is through her peephole. It’s Twilight, and her coat and mane are a mess. Her eyes are red and soaked in tears, her whole body is shaking, and she’s sniffling. She looks like she had an emotional breakdown and is on the verge of having another one.

“Twilight...” is all Pinkie Pie can say as she opens the door a crack. She knows what happened, and she wants to apologize, but she doesn’t know how to.

“Pinkie Pie, I have bad news,” says Twilight, still in the hallway, she takes a deep breath and says: “Spike’s dead.”

Pinkie Pie lowers her eyes.

“He died in the medical camp. The doctors said there was nothing they could do.”

Pinkie Pie lightly bangs her head on the door, tears swell up in her eyes and she feels the weight of the world coming down on her. She had just gotten one of her friends killed; a friend that was like a brother to Twilight.

“I-I’m sorry, Twilight,” says Pinkie Pie between her sniffles, “it should’ve never happened... It all went wrong...”

“Wha-What do you mean?” whimpers Twilight, it sounds like she’s about to break down.

Pinkie Pie lets Twilight in her room, and her jaw drops when she sees what Pinkie Pie has been doing, and when she sees Pinkie Pie wearing her Mare-Do-Well costume she clenches her jaw and breathes heavily while smoke rises off of her.

“I only wanted to help,” says Pinkie Pie quietly, “I... I never wanted him to get involved. But he did it willingly... He died a hero.”

“You dragged him into this?” asks Twilight accusingly.

“No... I mean ‘yes’, but he-he helped me catch the first assassin and-and he went after the other one.”

“You got Spike KILLED!”

Twilight’s mane and tail suddenly burst into flames and her coat turns white hot. A burnt ring forms on the floor and the little bits of paper are burnt to ash and fly around her. Twilight then uses her magic to slam Pinkie Pie against the wall with enough force to leave large cracks in it and bits popping out. Pinkie Pie whimpers and shuts her eyes while turning her head away from Twilight, she can’t stand the fire in her eyes.

“LOOK AT ME!” screams Twilight.

Pinkie Pie reluctantly opens her eyes, sniffling and whimpering, as the fire gets more intense. Parts of the floor start catching on fire and the temperature is making Pinkie Pie sweat nearly to the point of dehydration. Even her own fur and costume is starting to singe from the intense temperature.

“WHY DID YOU DRAG SPIKE INTO THIS!” yells Twilight, every tear that rolls down her cheek quickly turning to vapor.

“I-I tried-I tried to stop him but he-he wouldn’t-” sobs Pinkie Pie

“BECAUSE OF YOU HE’S DEAD!”

“Twi, I’m sorry!”

“SORRY WON’T BRING SPIKE BACK!”

Twilight throws Pinkie Pie to the ground and presses her hoof on her chest. Smoke and the stench of burnt clothing and fur rise up, but Pinkie Pie doesn’t make any attempt to break free. She can accept the burning pain on her chest, but the emotional pain is too much for her.

“Twilight, I-I’m sorry,” stammers Pinkie Pie, “I-I was only-only trying to do what was right”

“Don’t even bother coming to Spike’s funeral,” snarls Twilight.

“What! Twi, please!”

“Don’t you ‘Twi’ me! Consider our friendship over!”

Twilight releases Pinkie Pie and returns to her normal form, breathing heavily and sweating. She exhales and wipes her sweaty bangs out of her eyes, and then leaves the room without another word. She slams the door shut with her magic, making Pinkie Pie cringe, and she reluctantly looks out the window to watch Twilight stomp away. The ponies she stomps past are smart enough to move out of her way, and when Twilight is out of sight, Pinkie Pie slumps down by her bed and continues sobbing to the point where she is hyperventilating.

“What have I done?” moans Pinkie Pie.

When she’s able to get her breathing under control, she bites down on the Mare-Do-Well pin and yanks it off with a hard tug, causing the cape to fall to the floor in a jumbled mess. Then she spits it into her hoof and holds it up to her eyes. She grits her teeth and throws it to the ground, and angrily watches it bounce and roll to a stop under her map. Then she pulls off her outfit less than gracefully and throws it in the trash bin. After doing that she lies on her bed and closes her eyes for what seems like a few minutes, but when she opens them it’s dark outside, with the only noise being crickets chirping and the occasional vehicle driving by.

Pinkie Pie slides off her bed and walks towards her dresser, where her phone, which looks like a candy machine, is resting. She picks up the phone just fine, but when it comes to dialing the number she wants, she’s so nervous she almost hangs up. However, she stops herself from doing so and rapidly dials the number and sits on her bed with her head down. The number she dials goes instantly to voicemail.

“Hi, you’ve reached Octavia. Sorry I’m not available at the moment, but if you leave your name and number I’ll call you back as soon as I can,” says Octavia, her years in Canterlot have given her the ‘Royal Canterlot Accent’.

The machine beeps and Pinkie Pie takes a nervous, deep breath before she leaves her message. “Hey, Octavia, this is Pinkie, we haven’t spoken in a while and... and I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for not being a good sister to you and... and I love you.”

Pinkie Pie hangs up, takes another deep breath and dials another number. Every ring makes her stomach churn and sends another tear down her cheek. And just when she’s about to hang up, an old stallion answers.

“Who’s this?” asks the stallion gruffly.

Pinkie Pie doesn’t answer, she doesn’t know what to say.

“If you don’t talk, I’m going to hang up,” threatens the stallion on the other end.

“Hey daddy, it’s me,” says Pinkie Pie.

“...Octavia?”

“No, dad, it’s me... Pinkamena.”

There is an awkward, heavy silence that passes, and then Pinkie Pie sniffles. This gets her father talking.

“Pinkamena, what’s wrong?” asks her father worryingly.

“Nothing’s wrong... just... I just want to apologize,” says Pinkie Pie, stifling a sniff.

“For what?”

“For leaving... and missing all those birthdays, and not being there when you needed me after mom-”

“Pinkamena, there’s nothing to apologize for. You lived your life.”

“But I-”

“I don’t want to hear it, young lady. I live on a rock farm, I can’t get hurt, remember?”

Pinkie Pie forces a chuckle while her father genuinely laughs at his joke. She then wipes her nose and stares at the ceiling, trying to get herself to smile at the sound of her father’s voice. At least she’ll be speaking to one member of her family until her end.

“Now tell me, what’s wrong,” her father says sympathetically.

“I wanted to surprise you this year on your birthday. You know, get Octavia and be together as a family for at least one more time,” says Pinkie Pie, she breathes heavily and wipes her eyes.

“I guess I am getting old, and it would’ve been nice if it was an actual surprise.”

“I guess I let the surprise slip.”

“I’ll pretend that I didn’t hear it. But what’s bothering you?”

“I just lost a friend, probably all of my friends actually...”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. What happened?”

“I was only trying to do the right thing and... and now I don’t think I’ll be able to get our family together for your birthday.”

“You’re not making much sense. Why don’t you come down to the rock farm so we can talk about it together, face to face?”

“No, dad, I don’t want them to hurt you. Just know that I love you, always have... Do you love me?”

“Pinkamena Diane Pie, I will always love you no matter what, you hear?”

Pinkie Pie nods and whimpers softly. “I guess that was a stupid question.”

“What did you mean when you said you didn’t want ‘them’ to hurt me?” asks her father.

“I have to go. I love you.”

“Pinkie-!”

Pinkie Pie hangs up and when the phone starts ringing she quickly disconnects her phone, and then she slouches against the wall and closes her eyes. She just wants to sleep now. Maybe it’s all just a horrible nightmare, and everything will be back to normal when she wakes up.

=**********=

Trixie takes a deep breath and listens to her surroundings. She is blindfolded with a thick piece of cloth that won’t allow even the smallest rays of light in. The zebras are trying to teach her to listen to her surroundings, and she can understand why they are doing it, but she really, really wants her heart to calm down. Its beats sound ten times louder than normal and it feels like it wants jump out of her body and run away.

Suddenly, a very blunt object is smacked against the back of her head and she falls into what she’s guessing is mud.

“You’re too busy worrying,” says  Adanz (or is it Wazza?).

Trixie pushes herself out of the mud. “I can’t see a thing!”

“That’s the idea, silly pony,” says Wazza (or is it Adanz?).

“But Gray Muffin said I should always keep my eyes on the target!”

Trixie is striked two more times, once in the leg to make her lose her balance and the other to her side. She once again falls in the mud, and she has a sudden urge to bust some zebra gonads when she hears the two laughing at her painful misfortune.

“Your mentor is wise in the ways of combat,” says Adanz or Wazza.

“But there are times when your enemy is a shadow or your eyes fail or deceive you” says Wazza or Adanz.

Trixie spits out some mud, it tasted more foul than last time she got a mouthful of the wet dirt.

“I was a magician, I know deception,” says Trixie irritably before scratching her tongue against her teeth to get the taste out.

“You know deception in the art of entertainment, not in the art of combat,” says Adanz or Wazza.

“Now, little pony, sit still, stay quiet, relax and listen” says Wazza or Adanz soothingly.

Trixie sighs and sits still. Very still. She hears Wazza or Adanz telling her to relax, but he’s too far away to strike her. When Trixie still can’t get herself to relax, she hears Wazza or Adanz humming a zebra... lullaby? What ever the zebra is humming is so relaxing that she feels her muscles slack, her breathing and heart rate slow down, and everything becomes clearer. She hears and feels everything, from the gentle humming of machinery to the separate grains in the mud, and even the light from the light bulbs feels warmer. Then she hears it. Soft, almost inaudible steps coming towards her, quickly. It’s like the feet are gliding over the floor and she can hear the assailant jumping. She shifts her position slightly, turns towards the source and shoots out her forehoof. She feels it connect with the attacker’s body and he attacker gaks and splashes in the mud next to her. Trixie smiles when she hears Wazza or Adanz stomp the ground and cheer.

“Excellent job! You may remove the blindfold, Trixie!” says Wazza or Adanz cheerfully.

Trixie uses her magic to yank off the blindfold and sees Adanz lying on his back in the mud with a red spot on his neck. Trixie instantly feels sorry for him and apologizes while helping him up with her magic. He clears his throat before talking.

“There is no need to apologize,” says Adanz while rubbing his throat .“You did well, hopefully next time my brother won’t have to use the lullaby to get you to relax.”

Trixie looks at Wazza, and he smiles broadly while walking towards them.

“That was amazing. Can you teach me that lullaby?” asks Trixie hopefully.

“You’re interested in putting ponies to sleep, yes?” teases Wazza.

“N-no, I just think it’ll be helpful for future exercise. Relaxation and all.”

Trixie smiles and makes a small squee sound and Wazza and Adanz stare at her for a few seconds before looking at her, then they look at each other, then back at Trixie, and then at each other once again.

“I hate it when ponies make that noise,” says Adanz.

“Yes, the adorableness is hard to resist,” says Wazza, then he looks at Trixie. “Yes, I will train you in the art of zebra lullabies, but you must not rely solely on soothing music to keep yourself calm. You must train your body how to relax without external influences.”

Trixie nods her head excitedly, and then the door opens and Gray Muffin walks in the room, looking like he’s ready to explode. All three take a step back as Trixie’s mentor approaches them, and the closer he gets the clearer the fires of hate in his eyes are.

“Is something wrong, sir?” asks Adanz with worry.

“Trixie, wash up and meet me outside Roar Shock’s chambers,” orders Gray Muffin, his gruff voice snappier than usual.

Trixie nods and as she leaves Gray Muffin tells her to resist the urge to eavesdrop on his conversation with the zebras.

Trixie goes to the showers, and while she washes the surprisingly resilient mud off of her coat she ponders on why Gray Muffin would be so furious. Sure, she’s seen him angry before, but last time she saw him as angry as he is now he stomped a pegasus to death. Even then, that comparison doesn’t do justice to what she had just seen. The scene replays in her mind and she shudders. Trixie closes her eyes for a second to feel the warm water cascade off her face in an attempt to purge the unpleasant scene from her mind.

“Ya look good with a wet mane, ya know that right?” says Sunshine, his voice echoing in the shower.

Trixie’s eyes shoot open and she looks over shoulder to see his shadow on the wall behind her. At first she thinks her eyes are playing tricks with her, but when the wings flap she shakes her head in disbelief and points at him with a shaky hoof while backing up against the wall, shaking in pure fright.

“You’re dead! I saw you die!” Trixie says, her voice quivering.

“I never died, darlin’,” chuckles Sunshine, his shadow getting bigger.

Trixie screams and shoots a bolt of lightning at him from her horn. The bolt strikes the shadow and it disintegrates, leaving a burnt spot on the wall. Trixie collapses to the ground and sobs while covering her face with her hoof.

“Hey, are you okay?” asks an earth pony mare that just entered the shower room.

Trixie runs out of the shower room without a word. In the hallway she slumps against the wall, wipes her wet mane out of her face and her eyes dart around in search of Sunshine. When she doesn’t see or hear him anywhere she takes a deep breath and forces herself to stand up.

“Pull yourself together, Trixie,” she tells herself.

To emphasize the point she’s making to herself, she slaps herself across the face and then shakes her head. After that, she walks towards Roar Shock’s chambers, trying to look casual, but with the way the others stare at her she knows she is failing miserably. She reaches Roar Shock’s chambers right as Gray Muffin and the zebras do. Gray Muffin opens the large doors without hesitation and all four of them enter the huge, dimly lit room. Trixie looks at the zebras and sees that they have grim expressions on their faces, and when she looks around the room she sees all the gizmos Roar Shock has built, some finished and other not, and a wall with nothing but projected pictures of some costumed hero wannabe and the Mayor of Ponyville.

“Um, Gray Muffin, sir, where’s Roar Shock?” asks Trixie hesitantly.

“Working,” snaps Gray Muffin, then he turns to the group. “The attack on Ponyville was a failure. A major failure. We lost one of our ships, two of our ponies died in the crash and Terra is missing. Presumed dead.”

Trixie’s jaw drops and she looks at Wazza and Adanz, they merely nod at Trixie, further enforcing Gray Muffin’s claim.  Gray Muffin steps towards Trixie, and she instinctively takes a step back.

“What happened today will lead the Equestrian government will do whatever it takes to shut us down,” continues Gray Muffin, “but this will not stop us from fighting injustice. Your first test, Trixie, is to kill Mare-Do-Well.”

“Wait, what? Why her? Isn’t she on our side?” asks Trixie, horrified by the sudden task.

“Her absence proved she does not have the interest of what is right in her heart and mind. And she was the reason why Redheart was captured, and intercepted messages reports that Shining Armor and Mare-Do-Well engaged Terra before her disappearance. She is as much an enemy to us as the criminals.” Gray Muffin turns to the projected images. “Once we figure out Mare-Do-Well’s identity you, Trixie, will kill her under the supervision of Wazza and Adanz while I will eliminate Mayor Mare.”

Trixie gulps and nods her head. She doesn’t like how Gray Muffin worded her assignment, it sounds like he wants her to kill someone like it is a normal school assignment. That alone is creepy and she wonders if this is how he treats all of those ponies that Roar Shock has put on the League’s hit list. She knows that this is going to be her big test, but she also feels like her assignment is strongly influenced by a thirst for vengeance.

“What happens if I fail, sir?” asks Trixie carefully.

“If you die, you get a funeral. If you fail to kill her and still live then Wazza and Adanz have their orders to finish her. Further action depends on the circumstance of that failure,” replies Gray Muffin almost immediately. Then Gray Muffin looks at the zebra twins and their eyes snap to him. “Train her hard, double shift for the week.”

“What,” says Trixie in a pathetic squeak.

“It’s for your own good, Trixie, I will not have any more of my ponies die. Not under my watch. Dismissed.”

The zebras and Trixie bow and leave Gray Muffin in Roar Shock’s chambers. Trixie looks behind her and right before the door slams shut she sees Gray Muffin’s shoulders sulk and he bows his head. After the doors seal shut Trixie looks at Wazza, and all three cringe when they hear Gray Muffin scream in rage and break something.

“Wazza, what did you and Gray Muffin talk about after I left?” asks Trixie as she looks at the door.

“I’m sorry, Trixie, but we have strict orders not to tell you,” says Wazza grimly.

“We must not falter, I’ve only seen him this way once and it was a terrifying sight,” says Adanz.

“Right, come, Trixie, we must teach you how to relax.”

Trixie nods and follows the zebras back to the arena. She knows she’s going to have a hard time with their relaxation lesson with Gray Muffin in a state that even terrifies Wazza and Adanz.

Arc 1- 08- Lessons -EDITED-

Arc 1- 9 (End of the Old)

“Hey there guys, DJ-Pon3 is back from her break with some news! It seems that the Ponyville Weather Patrol has finally let out the big storm that everypony’s been waiting for, for what? Two months? Yeah that sounds about right. What do you care though? Well, you should care since the Canterlot Weather Patrol is going to be assisting our friends down there, and that means nature will have to do it! The horror!” The disc jockey fakes a horrified scream before laughing her tail off and resuming her business. “Okay, kidding aside, I know you guys are a little shaky about what happened in Ponyville. Frankly, I’d question your sanity if you weren’t since my buddies down there told me that Ponyville turned into a warzone! Which brings me to my little preachy bit before I play you the music you guys all love so very much. In this time of unrest you do not want to get rid of your friends or distance yourself from your family. Us ponies need to stick together. United we stand, divided we fall kinda thing. Sorta like what Celestia was talking about. And I’m saying this because that party pony we all love had a falling out with that dorky bookworm. We all know the news, Twilight is accusing Pinkie Pie of being responsible for Spike’s death -rest in peace you lovable lizard- and it does make one wonder why, but c’mon, Twilight, this is Pinkie Pie! One of your oldest friends and I know you’re hurt, believe me I know what it’s like to lose a friend in a horrible way, but everypony knows that Pinkie Pie would never do anything to harm anyone. So, my suggestion, talk to your friend, figure out the truth before you lose her. If you haven’t already. Remember, children, its hard to build up trust and make friends, but its easy to break it. Now, who’s ready for some TwoRepublics?”

+++++++++

Pinkie Pie silently watches the fires of the bakers oven in the basement of the Sugar Cube Corner; she keeps her attention dedicated towards the oven, ignoring the howling wind and rumbling thunder. The lights from the fire dances along the wall, stretching and contracting Pinkie Pie’s shadow and the shadows of other objects. Her mind races through all the things she had, all her friends, her family, her parties. All of which she won’t be seeing for a while, probably ever again. The more she thinks about it the more she realizes that she’s been betrayed. And not only her, but Spike as well.

They would rather remember Spike as a child than a hero, and her being the reason why he died than finding the truth. They only wanted to see half the truth. No, not even half the truth. They didn’t want it, it wasn’t good enough for them. To them, Spike would always be “Spikey-Wikey” and Pinkie Pie would be the reason why he died. She tried to defend herself, but Rarity became an emotional train wreck and nearly killed herself with alcohol poisoning . When Rarity recovered with the worst hangover of her life she blackballed Pinkie Pie from her shop because she was told by Twilight that Pinkie Pie was responsible for Spike’s death. When Pinkie Pie came by the Boutique to explain what had happened, Rarity nearly cracked her skull open with a sewing machine. And After Big Mac and Fluttershy were put in the hospital because of the attack used to get to her, she and Applejack’s friendship took a nosedive and landed on a solid rock. The attack against Big Mac and Fluttershy made Applejack believe Twilight’s story and the only ones who continue to stand by her are Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie have a strong bond and Fluttershy is too kind to abandon anyone. She’s also the only one who actually listened to Pinkie Pie and held her when she cried, but the most damning of all is not being allowed to Spike’s funeral.

Not being allowed to her friend’s funeral. Not being allowed to her brother’s funeral. She had to break into the cemetery to leave a rose at his grave after Twilight left and spent nearly the whole night there, apologizing and wishing him the best of fun in Paradise. When she returned to her room in the Sugar Cube Corner that same day she had been expecting Twilight to send her a letter of some kind. Any letter would’ve done, but all she got were bills and a message from Octavia saying that she got the package. They were able to actually talk for a good four hours that day too.

But it was after the funeral that Pinkie Pie had realized that day that her friendship with Twilight and the others was never real, it was conditional. Just like everything else. Everything is conditional; friends, love, parties, loyalty. She’s sure Rainbow Dash is only sticking by her because she feels bad, and Fluttershy is Fluttershy. Seeing anyone hurt is painful for her. But the others, they didn’t listen to her. They refused, and most ponies would say “Screw them!” to anyone that would betray them like how she had been and leave them to their fates, but Pinkie Pie can’t do that. Despite all they did to her in the past week she refuses to let Ponyville or the others suffer any more losses for her actions.

Pinkie Pie sighs heavily and then leaves the Sugar Cube Corner and disappears into the storm, knowing what fate awaits her.

oooOOOooo

Twilight arrives at the Sugar Cube Corner fifteen minutes later and sees that the glowing neon sign says “CLOSED”. She curses under her breath but continues nonetheless. When she’s at the door she frantically knocks on it. She can barely hear the Cakes talking, it sounds like they’re having an argument of some kind, though, and not a casual “You open it” talk. Twilight shakes the thick layer of rainwater off her coat, not that it did much since the rain droplets returned with twice their numbers anyway.

“Mr. and Mrs. Cake! It’s me, Twilight! Can you open up?” yells Twilight over the wind.

The argument intensifies and her ears droop when she gets the feeling it’s about her and not just about turning a potential customer or weary pony away. A few seconds later the door is yanked open and Mr. Cake pokes his head out, he looks like he’s not in the mood for visitors but he still steps aside and opens the door further so Twilight can enter.

“Get inside, it’s wet out there,” says Mr. Cake in a low, saddened tone.

Twilight walks inside and thanks him without hesitation, but she quickly notices Mrs. Cake’s harsh glare and her leaving the room in a huff.

“I’m going to check on the kids, you talk to her,” says Mrs. Cake moodily.

“Please don’t give them any more milk or cookies, I already gave them some before they went to bed,” says Mr. Cake.

Mrs. Cake nods and disappears up the stairs, and Mr. Cake turns to Twilight and forces a smile while motioning her to have a seat at one of the tables. Twilight silently sits down and Mr. Cake sits across from her.

“Would you like some hot chocolate or anything?” asks Mr. Cake.

“No, no I’m fine, I just came to talk to Pinkie Pie. It’s really important that I talk to her,” says Twilight with haste.

Mr. Cake shakes his head and Twilight gets a new wave of sadness. She had been wanting to apologize to Pinkie Pie when she saw the note and umbrella hat; those two struck a massive sore spot in her that made her cry herself to sleep almost every day of the week. But she can’t apologize to Pinkie Pie because the Cakes won’t let her. She guesses that it’s a reasonable response since they don’t know that she wants to apologize, and the Cakes are like Pinkie Pie’s parents, so of course they wouldn’t want to let Twilight near her.

“But it’s important I talk to her...I want to apologize for the way I’ve been treating her,” says Twilight desperately. “Can you at least say I was here to apologize?”

“Nope, I’m afraid not,” says Mr. Cake sadly.

Twilight’s eyes narrow and her nostrils flare. This is getting ridiculous. They now know why she wants to talk to her and they still won’t! What’s their deal? Do they have a grudge against her now?

“What do you mean you can’t!” demands Twilight.

“Twilight...Pinkie’s gone,” says Mr. Cake.

Twilight’s annoyance is instantly replaced with panic and regret for jumping to conclusions. Just like what happened between her and Pinkie Pie.

“Wha-What do you mean gone?” stammers Twilight, her eyes are now getting a little misty.

“She left about fifteen minutes ago. I’m sorry, Twilight,” Mr. Cake says apologetically.

=**********=

A vehicle that looks like a delivery van and wings with large propellers makes an awkward landing on the slick grass just outside the Ponyville construction site. It’s headlights illuminate only a dozen feet in front of it before the hard rain envelops everything in a wet darkness. After the vehicles and propellers come to a stop, the propellers fold down and the wings fold against the side of the flying van. Once all that is done the truck cautiously proceeds forward.

Inside the vehicle, Trixie, Gray Muffin, Roar Shock, and the zebra twins are patiently waiting for what’s to come. Wazza is driving the vehicle while Adanz is being his guide; he has a map in his possession and is quietly giving instructions on where to go. It’s mostly quiet, save for the zebras chatter and the hypnotic sounds of the wipers rubbing against the windows.

All of them are wearing plain hooded ponchos and Gray Muffin is wearing a saddle with a cannon attached to it that is covered by his poncho, making him look more bulky than he actually is, and his trademark suit and fedora. Trixie glances nervously at Gray Muffin and he gives her a quick, reassuring smile before staring off into space.

“How do you cope with it?” asks Trixie.

“Cope with what?” asks Gray Muffin while looking at Trixie out of the the corner of his eye.

“You know... taking lives?”

“Call it what it is, ‘killing’. And I don’t cope, I forget about it.”

“So you forget all of it?”

“No, we always remember our first kill. It is monumental to us and depending on who you kill, it could be a powerful message”

Trixie nods and looks out the front window. She can barely see anything, the buildings are silhouetted in the storm and there isn’t a soul in sight or a store open. She doesn’t even know what the time is, but she guesses that she has nothing to worry about since the ponies she’s with are calm as can be. Besides, she also trusts Gray Muffin, Wazza, and Adanz with her life. She doesn’t really hold that connection with Roar Shock, though, but only because she hardly sees him and when she does he looks like he wants to kill her. Granted, Gray Muffin has that same murderous look most of the time, but it’s never directed towards her. Plus Gray Muffin always takes the time to explain his actions to her with a Blitz Training Session whereas Roar Shock only does a blitz strike and then leaves before she can do anything about it.

“How nervous are you?” asks Gray Muffin, completely derailing Trixie’s train of thought.

Trixie gulps. “Very.”

“That’s good. When you’re nervous you plan everything, just don’t let your emotions get the best of you. It’ll only draw things out and make it more painful than it has to be.”

Wazza stops the van behind the construction site and turns it off.

“We’re here,” he says casually.

Everyone throws up their hoods and hops out of the van and starts walking towards the construction site, all except for Gray Muffin. He goes in the opposite direction. Trixie watches him walk away and he looks over his shoulder and nods at Trixie and she returns the nod. Then she, the zebra twins, and Roar Shock continue their walk, leaving Gray Muffin to his assignment. She gets an uneasy feeling looking at the construction site. The building towers above them like a skeletal monolith and Trixie can only make an inaccurate guess as to what it’s supposed to be; all she really knows is that tonight it’ll be someone’s grave.

“Celestia forgive me,” whispers Trixie.

=**********=

Twilight stammers and taps her hooves on the floor in a nervous dance while trying to think where Pinkie Pie went.

“You sure she didn’t say where she was going?” asks Twilight frantically.

“Not a single word, she just said her farewells and left,” says Mr. Cake worryingly.

“Did she take anything?”

“Nope, she mailed or sold her stuff and whatever she didn’t mail or sell she tossed.”

Twilight groans and smacks herself on the head, demanding herself that she thinks harder about where Pinkie Pie went.

“C’mon, Twilight, think! Think! Think! Think!” says Twilight irritably.

“Oh, Pinkie did say one thing before she left,” says Mr. Cake sheepishly.

Twilight gets a burst of hope and gets uncomfortably close to Mr. Cake, making him take a step back, and she smiles broadly and hopefully with a glint in her eyes.

“Yes! What did she say?” ask Twilight eagerly.

“She um... she said to tell you not to follow her,” replies Mr. Cake while looking down.

Twilight’s smile and glint fades and her ears droop. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry, Twilight,” says Mr. Cake sympathetically while placing his hoof on her shoulder “but Pinkie Pie just doesn’t want to be found... Especially by you.”

Twilight nods and turns to leave, but then a light bulb turns on in her head. A bright light bulb. Pinkie Pie doesn’t want to be found. Found as in locate. She doesn’t want Twilight to find her. Twilight as in unicorn. Unicorn as in magic. Magic as in spell.

“I got it!” blurts Twilight suddenly.

Her sudden outburst makes Mr. Cake jump.

“Got what?” asks Mr. Cake curiously.

“I’ll find her and I’ll bring her back using the Locating Spell! Spell number sixty two!”

“Um... Ms. Sparkle-”

“Shush, I need to concentrate.”

Twilight closes her eyes, sits on the floor, takes a deep breath and blocks out everything. A light purple mist oozes out of her horn as she focuses solely on the memories of her and Pinkie Pie like a movie stuck on fast forward; from the very beginning from when they first met, to defeating Nightmare Moon, to the parties, their adventures, defeating Discord, more adventures, and goofy fun. Then it goes into the roller coaster of emotions as the ups and downs of life becomes more defined, especially in the past ten years. When it goes to Spike’s death, his funeral, and the arguments between Applejack and Pinkie Pie and her just standing by, watching it all happen while Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy are the ones trying to resolve the argument, it becomes almost too painful to watch. But then it all stops when she sees what Pinkie Pie sees, a dark skeletal building building soaked in rainwater.

Twilight’s eyes snap open. “I know where she is.”

Before Mr. Cake can formulate a response or a question Twilight’s horn lights up again and she disappears in a ball of bright light, leaving a small burn mark on the floor.

Twilight appears in the construction site in the same ball of bright light that violently pushes water and loose materials away, she doesn’t know where she is in the place, but she knows she’s close to Pinkie Pie. When the chill from the rain sets in Twilight shivers and shakes the dew off her coat and proceeds with search for Pinkie Pie.  She doesn’t have to look far, however, for Pinkie Pie is in the other room staring out the window, waiting for something or someone.

“Hey there, Twilight,” says Pinkie Pie sadly without looking at her.

Twilight stops in her tracks and Pinkie Pie turns around; as soon as she turns around lightning flashes behind her, lighting up the place like a camera flash, followed by the rolling thunder. Both mares look at the storm in all its terrifying beauty for a couple of seconds before looking back at each other.

“You shouldn’t be here,” says Pinkie Pie sternly.

“What are you doing here, Pinkie?” asks Twilight as she carefully approaches Pinkie Pie.

“I’m doing what I said I would do in the letter. I’m going to make things right.”

“Look, Pinkie, I don’t know what you’re up to, but let me help-”

“What do you care!” Twilight takes a step back, she also thinks she deserves that for how she had been treating her friend for the past week, but no one is ever prepared for it. Pinkie Pie exhales and looks down. “Twilight, Spike’s death was horrible, but he wouldn’t listen to me, just like you.”

Twilight looks down and Pinkie Pie glances up, they both ignore the roaring wind and heavy rain that is soaking them and the construction site.

“Pinkie, I’m sorry...” says Twilight softly.

“I tried to explain how he died a hero, but you wouldn’t listen,” continues Pinkie Pie angrily “Just like how Rarity and AJ wouldn’t. None of you guys listened to me!”

Twilight steps forward and extends her hoof pleadingly. “Pinkie, please stop! Stop whatever it is you’re going to do and come back with me to the library. We-We can talk it over. All of us. You, me, Applejack, Rarity-”

Twilight’s desperate attempt at persuasion is interrupted when Pinkie Pie shouts “No!” and stomps her hoof on the floor. Twilight stops talking and Pinkie Pie marches over to Twilight with a furious glare and each step being just as angry. “You guys had your chance to talk, to hear my side, and I told you. Oh how I told you so many many many times what has happened and yet none of you can look at me or cared to hear me out! I thought you guys would know that I would never purposefully put any one of you in danger! But I! WAS! WRONG!”

Another bolt of lightning flashes by and Twilight cringes while sniffling and blinking tears out of her eyes. Pinkie Pie, on the other hand, lets her tears flow freely and paces around Twilight; the unicorn refuses to move and accepts every form of verbal abuse Pinkie Pie throws at her.

“Friends listen to friends! No matter what! Didn’t you learn anything about friendship after all these years or were you just pretending so that Celestia wouldn’t blast you to the moon!”  accuses Pinkie Pie.

“Pinkie, please stop,” whimpers Twilight.

“Well it doesn’t matter anyway, because it’s all over for us and all the fun we had, all those memories, I put them in the bakery’s oven and burned them.”

Twilight’s jaw dropped and Pinkie Pie nods her head quickly and jumps in front of Twilight and looks her in the eyes. Twilight’s ears droop and her legs buckle, and Pinkie Pie looks down at her with anger and sorrow. The mare takes a moment to collect her thoughts before continuing with her rant.

“Yep, I burned our memories away. The only token of our friendship left is that umbrella hat, but you still don’t believe in ‘simpleton superstition’, do you? So what remains of friendship means absolutely nothing, doesn’t it?” sneers Pinkie Pie.

“I-I-Pinkie, please just come home,” begs Twilight.

“The photos of us and the gang, all burned into little itty bitty ashy crumbs. I burned my Gala dress, the Mare-Do-Well costumes, and all the little nick-nacks that I was given over the years. Our friendship is dead-”

“Pinkie Pie, please-”

“So there is no reason to keep reminding myself of you fakes!”

Another bolt of lightning and rumbling thunder passes; those final words stabbed Twilight’s heart like a rusted barbed dagger. Twilight closes her eyes and quietly apologizes for what she did, and when she opens her eyes she can’t tell if Pinkie Pie had accepted her apology or not. The pink mare simply stares at her, lips quivering and hyperventilating.

“You were my sister, Twilight. I loved you,” says Pinkie Pie, her voice quivering and choking on tears. “I-I-I loved you and-and Spike with all my heart and-and he’s dead and you turned everypony against me.”

Twilight cries and looks down, shaking her head; her apology is barely heard over the storm. Pinkie Pie takes a minute to get her breathing under control, and when she does, she flicks her wet mane out of her face and puts her hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. Twilight can barely look at her, knowing that she drove Pinkie Pie, one of her oldest friends, into doing something that will more than likely lead to her getting hurt... or worse. She just can’t stand the idea of seeing another one of her friends hurt, especially if she’s the cause of it.

“Twilight, if our friendship has ever meant anything to you... then... then I need you to Pinkie Promise me that you’ll stay out of what’s going to happen. No interference at all,” says Pinkie Pie.

“Pinkie, what are you going to do?” asks Twilight again.

“Pinkie Promise me and I’ll tell you.”

Twilight takes a deep breath and does the Pinkie Promise, word for word, motion for motion, and when she finishes Pinkie Pie chuckles softly and nods approvingly. Then her gaze turns serious and she scans the area intently.

“When I said I was going to make things better I meant it,” says Pinkie Pie. “The ponies I’ll be fighting are the ones who killed Spike and all those soldiers, and hurt Big Mac and Fluttershy and Shining.”

Twilight pales and shakes her head in disbelief.

“I refuse to let anypony else get hurt because of me. It all ends tonight for me.”

“You can’t be serious! Those ponies are dangerous!” says Twilight in a mix of anger and sadness.

Pinkie Pie forces herself to smile at Twilight. “Twilight, relax, it’ll all be sunshine and rainbows in the end, you’ll see. They will be stopped because I have a plan.”

Before Twilight can respond, Pinkie Pie suddenly tenses and shoves Twilight into cover behind a stack of building materials. Twilight digs her hooves into the floor, but the water makes it impossible to get a good grip and Pinkie Pie is a lot stronger than she lets on.

“Stops squirming, they’re here,” hisses Pinkie Pie quietly. Twilight stops resisting and shrinks behind her cover. Pinkie Pie looks at Twilight sternly while pointing at her. “Remember, you Pinkie Promised to stay out of this.”

Twilight nods reluctantly and watches Pinkie Pie go into the middle of the floor. In spite of the heavy downpour outside, the only thing Twilight can hear is her heavy breathing and heartbeats. She sees four ponies in ponchos walk up and they have a conversation with Pinkie Pie that Twilight can’t make out, but when one of the ponies steps forward and pulls down her hood Twilight gasps at who she sees. Trixie. Twilight can’t believe that Trixie, a showmare, a high maintenance pony with a knack for blowing things out of proportion, has turned into a killer. However, Twilight does notice that while the others look tall and proud, Trixie is sulking and has her head down.

oooOOOooo

Pinkie Pie flicks her wet mane out of her face again and studies each of the ponies in front of her. They all look like they are ready to pounce, save for Trixie, she reminds Pinkie Pie of the student being egged on by the cool kids to hit the new kid on the block. Only this time “hitting the new kid” is replaced with murder.

Pinkie Pie smiles at Trixie. “It’s been awhile hasn’t it, Trixie?”

“I’m sorry, but I have never met you. I only heard of your deeds... and great parties,” says Trixie, obviously disturbed about what she has to do.

“Yeah, I do make awesome parties, but it’s been awhile since you’ve been to Ponyville. Too bad you had to come here under these circumstance.”

Trixie nods in agreement and Roar Shock steps forward, wings flapping slightly to shake the rainwater off.

“I’m glad you arrived, I would’ve hated to have to track you over Equestria,” says Roar Shock.

“No point in running from your fate, is there?” remarks Pinkie Pie.

“True, true. Now the rules are this: everything goes and we will not interfere. Only one of you will live, and if you, Pinkie Pie, are the one to live we’ll just kill you anyway. Nopony is to interfere and if you brought help then they will be killed with extreme prejudice. Sound fair?”

“Fair enough, let’s do this.”

“Good.”

Roar Shock flies to a higher level and the zebras take the stairs and meet up with him so that they are looking down at the mares. Pinkie Pie shakes herself like a dog to get rid of the ever growing layer of rainwater while Trixie levitates her poncho off. She releases it and  it is blown away by the wind and gets stuck on a random piece of equipment. Then they start circling each other.

oooOOOooo

Twilight peeks at the tense scene from the safety of her cover, she wants to stop this madness, but she made a Pinkie Promise and she can’t run lest she wants to be caught by the others, and there is no telling what they will do to her. For the first time in a very long time, Twilight finds herself frozen in fear.

=**********=

Gray Muffin marches towards the towering structure of the Town Hall, it has been boarded up from the damages it sustained during Terra’s failed attack. Not a soul is in sight and that is just the way he likes it. The lights from the building are far and few in between, but when he sees light shining through the curtains of the Mayor’s Office, his marching turns into an eager trot. When he is close enough he sees two Royal Guards standing under the balcony roof in a pitiful attempt to stay dry, but with the crazy wind they are still getting wet.

Gray Muffin slows down his trot and his eyes narrow at his targets. The two Royal Guards stare at him suspiciously and inch forward when he doesn’t show any signs of changing course. He sees them talk to each other and then one of them shouts: “This area is off limits! Turn back now!”

He keeps walking and the control bit slides out from under his poncho and his cannon charges up.

=**********=

Pinkie Pie and Trixie continue to circle each other, both of them on a hair trigger. Pinkie Pie looking content with her fate while Trixie is still nervous. She doesn’t want to take a life, especially the life of an Element, but she has no choice. She has to do this to finally become a part of Roar Shock’s family. She has to do it because it’s for the Greater Good. And most importantly, she doesn’t want to fail Gray Muffin. She can’t fail. She won’t accept failure ever again. In this moment, and probably for the rest of her life, “Thou shall not kill” will mean nothing.

=**********=

The Royal Guards become increasingly nervous by Gray Muffin’s approach. They ready their weapons and move closer to him.

“Hey, are you deaf!? I said this area is off limits!” yells the same Royal Guard.

Gray Muffin keeps walking towards them, each step becoming heavier and more determined. The Guard that told him the area is off limits calls in Gray Muffin’s approach while the other one hesitantly marches towards him and stands directly in front of him, blocking his path.

“Turn back now! This area is off limits!” repeats the second Guard.

Gray Muffin stops walking and glowers at the second Guard, saying: “I know.”

Then in the blink of an eye Gray Muffin’s hoof smashes the Royal Guard’s voice box. The Guard crumbles to the ground, gaging in pain, and Gray Muffin snaps his neck with a single stomp and then shoots the other Royal Guard in the chest with his cannon. After that, he strolls inside the Town Hall.

=**********=

Pinkie Pie and Trixie stop pacing around each other in perfect harmony, and Pinkie Pie smiles at Trixie. There’s some sadness in her eyes, but Trixie also notices that Pinkie Pie is content with what’s about to happen. Gray Muffin told her one time that sometimes when “scum” knows their end is near they’ll just accept it and not put up a fight, but on other occasions, they are content because they have a plan that they think will save their hide from death. Pinkie Pie’s content look reminds Trixie of the latter.

Trixie’s eyes narrow and she runs her hoof against the concrete in preparation for a charge while Pinkie Pie remains still.

“Let’s give them a show they won’t forget,” says Pinkie Pie shrewdly.

Trixie momentarily loses focus as the memories of her being a showmare return to her in an emotionally painful flood. Trixie, after snapping back to reality from her two second escape, nods her head and-

Trixie’s mind goes blank as she sees her world spinning, feeling no ground beneath her hooves. She lands on her back with a loud thud and groans. Then she rolls to her feet, only to be tackled again! Trixie shakes herself off and tries to buck Pinkie Pie, but she dodges the attack and kicks Trixie into a drywall. Trixie quickly recovers and runs towards Pinkie Pie while charging her horn.

‘How fast is this mare?’ wonders Trixie irritably.

It’s like Pinkie Pie is teleporting around her! Everytime Trixie tries to zap her or buck or or touch in anyway, shape or form, the pink mare dodges it and counters her with a well placed hoof. A dozen jabs later, Trixie feels the effects of the constant tiny attacks building up, making her slightly sluggish, and then Pinkie Pie jumps on her back and pushes her to the ground. Panic starts overtaking Trixie as she fears that Pinkie Pie will be the one to end her, and not the other way around. While Trixie tries to squirm her way out from Pinkie Pie she swears she sees Sunshine’s shadow slide along the wall with a cackle, and she also thought that she saw Twilight watching them in the safety of the shadows. But before she can think about it, Pinkie Pie wraps her hoof around her neck in a strangling maneuver.

“You’ll have to kill me eventually,” says Pinkie Pie eerily into Trixie’s ear.

“Get off of me!” growls Trixie.

Trixie pushes herself up and falls backwards, squishing Pinkie Pie between her and the concrete floor in a desperate attempt to get her off. When that doesn’t work, Trixie channels some energy through her horn and burns Pinkie Pie’s hoof to the point where it looks like a smoking, burnt hot dog. Pinkie Pie cries out in pain, releases Trixie and waves her hoof around madly. Trixie goes for another attack, knowing that Pinkie Pie will be easier to hit now, but Pinkie Pie somehow manages to jump out of the way. And she does the same for the next attack. And the next one. And the next. And the next five ones.

“Stay still you damn hamster!” yells Trixie.

Trixie’s face turns red from anger and she grits her teeth as her lightning attacks get more severe. Pinkie Pie does a series of jumps and hops to dodge the attacks that get her to the high ground, and once having the advantage she knocks over a stack of lumber. The lumber falls directly towards Trixie, and as she jumps out of the way, she’s body slammed by Pinkie Pie. Trixie is disoriented by the sudden impact, and while her vision is screwy she feels Pinkie Pie bite down on her tail. Trixie’s eyes widen and the image of Gray Muffin throwing Sunshine through a wall by his tail plays back in Trixie’s mind. Sunshine’s shadow becomes more defined and Trixie shudders at the sight of the approaching specter.

“Oh that’s not ah good sign, darlin’,” chuckles Sunshine.

Then there’s a sharp, painful tug at her tail end and Trixie is once again in the air. While falling she takes a deep breath, aims, and fires a lightning bolt from her horn at Pinkie Pie. Pinkie Pie jumps out of the way, as usual, but the bolt does hit a fuel tank. The tank explodes and lights up the area with oily fire. Not exactly what she was hoping for, but she’s okay with that. When Trixie lands she slides across the floor and barely stops herself from falling off by grabbing on to a cable, stopping when she’s halfway over the edge. Trixie chooses not to look to see how far she would’ve fallen as she keeps her focus on pulling herself up. Once back on the floor she cautiously looks around for Pinkie Pie with her horn ready to fire.

When her opponent is nowhere to be found she stops, takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes and listens. Everything is amplified; the crackling of the small fire, the howling wind, the pattering rain droplets, fluttering plastic sheets, and quiet and swift steps coming towards her. Trixie’s eyes snap open and she bucks Pinkie Pie in the gut as she jumps in for a tackle. Pinkie Pie gasps and falls on her back, coughing for air. Trixie then levitates Pinkie Pie with her magic and slams her into the ceiling and back down to the floor.

Ceiling. Floor.

Ceiling. Floor

Ceiling. Floor.

Ceiling. Floor.

After the fifth time of slamming Pinkie Pie into the ceiling and floor she stops and stares. Pinkie Pie is bloodied and not moving, the ceiling and floors are cracked with blotches of blood on them. Trixie glances over her shoulder expecting to see Roar Shock and the zebras. She was correct in her expectations, they are watching her and they look pleased, but then Roar Shock’s approving smirk twists into that of concern. Trixie’s ears twitch when she hears a groan and she turns around and sees Pinkie Pie standing back up.

Trixie’s jaw drops and she stammers incomprehensibly, and Pinkie Pie makes a cocky smile and wipes some blood from her face.

“The party’s not over just yet, Trixie. Are you ready for some surprises?” says Pinkie Pie ominously, putting a creepy amount of emphasis on “surprises”.

Then some metal tubes roll out of place and clatter to the floor not too far from where the two mares are. Trixie’s eyes shift slightly to see what that was and Pinkie Pie uses that to her advantage. In half a blink of an eye Pinkie Pie and Trixie are rolling over each other on the floor and the brutal fight resumes.

=**********=

The Mayor shrinks behind her desk, shivering with fear while the exchange of gunshots and dying screams of the Guards echo down the hallway. Then it all suddenly stops. The two Royal Guards in her office look at each other nervously and back at the door. They don’t hear anything outside,there is only dead silence. One of the Royal Guards shifts his position slightly and the other creeps forwards with his weapon at the ready. Then he steps on a loose floorboard.

He doesn’t have time to cringe as a thin beam of electricity burns through the door and strikes the Royal Guard in the throat. He gags and falls to the ground, pushing his hoof against his injury and falls on his back while firing. The bullets from his weapon travel up the door, along the wall, and into the ceiling. The other Royal Guard orders the Mayor to get down and he sprays the door and walls with bullets. He breathes heavily while waiting for a response, but the response never comes. Not even a thud from a body falling. Then he hears a whirring sound, his eyes widen and before he can finish reloading the door is reduced to burning splinters, and the Mayor watches in horror as a bright light strikes the Royal Guard and sends him flying backwards on fire. The Mayor yelps when the corpse crashes against her desk with pieces of the door; then Gray Muffin stomps in the room, cannon smoking and powering down.

The Mayor backs up, crying and stammers incoherently as Gray Muffin walks towards her with murder in his eyes. She’s soon backed against the corner and slides to the floor crying and silently praying to Celestia that someone will save her.

“You-you-what happened to you!” stammers the Mayor.

Gray Muffin is silent as his weapon retracts and his muscles tense.

"Please, this isn't you!" cries the Mayor.

“There is only black and white. Never gray. For justice is absolute,” recites Gray Muffin.

Then he lunges at the Mayor and she screams in terror and puts her hooves up defensively.

=**********=

Trixie jumps away from another one of Pinkie Pie’s insanely fast attacks and shoots a lightning bolt at her. She sidesteps the attack and kicks a small tool cart at Trixie. It slides across the floor and hits Trixie’s legs, causing her to roll over the top and land on her face on the floor, leaving a nasty feeling in her legs and head. She blinks the stars out of her eyes and is flipped on her back by Pinkie Pie, and the pink mare puts her hooves on the ground on either side of Trixie’s head, trapping her. Pinkie Pie and Trixie are both breathing heavily and are covered in cuts and bruises, and while Pinkie Pie looks down at Trixie, her blood drips from her face and splatters on Trixie, but in spite all the damage she’s taken, the pink mare is still going strong while Trixie can feel herself getting worn out.

“Playtime’s over. You have to stop them,” says Pinkie Pie hastily. “Push me off.”

“What?”

“Zap me!”

Trixie shoots a bolt of lightning into Pinkie Pie’s chest, sending her crashing into a scaffold. The scaffold splinters on impact and covers Pinkie Pie in debris. Trixie runs over to Pinkie Pie and brings her hoof down on her, but she blocks it surprisingly well.

“Trixie, you are close to them. You can stop them,” whispers Pinkie Pie urgently. “I’m pushing you off now.”

Before Trixie’s mind can comprehend what Pinkie Pie told her, the Element of Laughter pushes her off, jumps to her feet, and while Trixie tries to regain her footing Pinkie Pie tackles her and they both fall over the edge of the floor and land on a series of scaffolds multiple stories high. The scaffold they landed on snaps loose and and falls on another one, and both mares frantically try to escape the cascade of falling materials. Pinkie Pie’s maneuvering is surprisingly graceful as she hops from one piece to another, but Trixie’s, on the other hand, is average at best. She’s sliding down and using the collapsing scaffolding to her advantage, but she’s also being slowed down by the pieces of junk hitting her while Pinkie Pie is virtually untouched. When they both land on the floor, four stories below where they originally were, Trixie lands awkwardly and trips over herself while Pinkie Pie lands with the grace of a pegasus and disappears somewhere. Trixie shakes the disorientation away and her ears droop and her muscles lock as she sees an avalanche of debris falling towards her. Her senses return just in time right before she’s about to be crushed by building materials and tools. She closes her eyes and shoots out a spell that pushes all the materials away from her in a blue shockwave. She opens her eyes and watches with a mix of pride and wonder as the tons of construction materials are pushed completely back and crumble to the ground or tumble over the edge dozens of feet where she’s standing. The noise is so loud that surely the town would be woken up by the ruckus.

Pinkie Pie cheers. “Wow! That was cool! But we’re not done yet!”

“Oh yes we are,” sneers Trixie.

Trixie whirls around shoots Pinkie Pie in the chest with her lightning without hesitation, sending her skidding across the floor with a trail of smoke and coming to an abrupt stop by the edge. Trixie marches towards Pinkie Pie with every intention of ending the fight on the spot, but when Trixie is a couple of paces away she stops and feels remorse for her victim. Pinkie Pie’s legs shift weakly on the floor and she manages to smile at Trixie as she stands over her, with her hoof above her neck. Trixie glances at the zebra twins and Roar Shock when she hears them arrive, and sees that they are watching her intently.

“Promise me you’ll stop them,” whispers Pinkie Pie.

Trixie looks back at Pinkie Pie, and she repeats her request.

“But I’m the one who has to kill you,” says Trixie quietly, confused as to why Pinkie Pie is trying to get her to stop her new family.

“Funny, isn’t it?” chuckles Pinkie Pie painfully. “But if you don’t stop them, then more ponies will die.”

“Evil ponies.”

“No, no, innocent ponies. Your boss is paranoid-”

“He’s doing what is best for Equestria!”

“He may want what’s best for Equestria but this is not how to save a nation. He... He’s paranoid, vengeful, and he... he has become the very thing he vowed to fight. More ponies, innocent ponies, will be hurt if you don’t stop him.”

Trixie looks over her shoulder again, they are starting to get impatient, especially Roar Shock.

“I will never betray him!” says Trixie in an angry whisper.

“But you have your doubts. Otherwise I would’ve been dead by now,” says Pinkie Pie slyly.

Trixie reels back and brings her hoof up to Pinkie Pie’s neck, but she hesitates to bring it down, which gives Pinkie Pie enough time to trip her and pin her to the ground. Trixie struggles and charges her horn, but Pinkie Pie flicks the nerve spot on the base of her horn that makes her magic die out. The mind numbing pain that Trixie felt last time that happened to her returns, making her swear loudly and painfully.

‘Oh you have got to be kidding me!’ screams Trixie’s thoughts.

“You pray every night for a chance to redeem yourself, don’t you?” says Pinkie Pie in a hasty whisper, she takes breath, eyes shifting up to the three observers before continuing, “I won’t be able to continue, so it’s up to you to stop them. Stop them before it’s too late!”

Trixie uses all of her strength to push Pinkie Pie off and then she bucks her in the side. Pinkie Pie stumbles towards the edge, and she looks over her shoulder to see the pile of garbage a good three stories down. She looks back and Trixie and gives her pleadingly.

“Please, don’t let them hurt the innocent,” begs Pinkie Pie softly.

Trixie hesitates before she kicks Pinkie Pie off the edge. Pinkie Pie doesn’t make a sound as she falls over, and Trixie barely hears anything over the storm. Trixie takes a deep breath and cautiously looks over the edge and sees Pinkie Pie lying on top of a pile of garbage, eyes closed, still as a corpse.

“What were you two talking about,” demands Roar Shock.

Trixie squeaks and turns around to see Roar Shock, Wazza, and Adanz approaching her. Roar Shock looks suspicious while the other two look content.

“She was begging for her life,” says Trixie hesitantly.

“You never let them beg for their life. Waiting to kill them will only give them the opportunity to strike, as you have witnessed first hand,” lectures Roar Shock with some suspicion in his tone.

=**********=

Gray Muffin walks out of the Mayor’s office, his hooves and poncho drenched in blood with splatters of it on his face and hat. He turns around to marvel at the gruesome scene where the Mayor’s barely recognizable body lies in the middle of the floor. Her blood had seeped out and soaked itself into the carpet and is spreading further along the floor. Also, all the bottles of alcohol have been smashed and the room is not only covered in the Mayor’s blood, but her collection of alcohol as well. Gray Muffin aims his cannon at a puddle of alcohol and shoots it with his cannon and a large wave of hellish fire instantly spreads throughout the office, engulfing the corpses and the furniture in a matter of seconds. Gray Muffin walks away from the office calm as can be, shooting a surviving Guard along the way out.

=**********=

At the construction site, Roar Shock sees the light from the fire at the Town Hall shine like a beacon in the storm, and the others easily see it when they realize what he’s looking at.

“Time to go,” says Roar Shock sternly.

He turns around and is suddenly shot in the chest by a beam of fire. He screams and flies into a wooden pillar, nearly snapping it in half on impact. He falls to the ground, coughing painfully with thick, black smoke rising off of his chest, and Trixie, Wazza, and Adanz dive for cover as more beams of fire shoot over them, blowing off chunks of the construction site in rapid succession.

“YOU KILLED SPIKE!” screams their attacker.

Trixie instantly recognizes that voice to be Twilight’s and she gets a mix of emotions that run through her like a demonic plague. Mostly anger, but when she sees Twilight marching towards them, fur hot white and her mane and tail replaced with fire, she feels more fear than the time she was locked in with Sunshine.

“YOU KILLED PINKIE PIE!”

Trixie ducks as Twilight shoots another beam of fire in her general direction. A blistering sensation washes over her and she feels some of her fur and hair burn away from the heat. The beam that Twilight shot impacts the wall not too far from where Trixie is, and covers her and the zebras in a cloud of burning smoke and debris. The construction site groans and a piece of it collapses on itself, sending more choking dust to cover them. Trixie coughs and blinks the dust out of her eyes, and over Twilight’s enraged screaming she hears Sunshine’s chuckle.

“So this is tha pony that ruined yer life, eh? Feisty one,” chuckles Sunshine.

Trixie looks around for a couple of seconds before spotting Sunshine’s shadow standing not too far from her in front of Twilight. The furious glow from Twilight fiery form gives him an ominous glow. Trixie stands up and marches towards Sunshine and Twilight with a newfound vigor and determination to avenge herself. She hates them both! She needs both of them to die! Both of them made her miserable and she wants to give them a dose of Roar Shock’s Justice!

“Trixie, we need to go!” yells Adanz frantically over the earsplitting sounds of debris falling.

Trixie ignores Adanz. She continues her approach with her nostrils flaring and she feels her magic returning in small sparks. Sunshine chuckles and walks towards Trixie.

“Are ya seriously goin’ t’ try t’ attack me?” mocks Sunshine.

“Your already dead,” growls Trixie, now her eyes are glowing and sparks are shooting out of her horn, “but there is no reason why I shouldn’t kill you again!”

Sunshine laughs and Trixie levitates a chunk of wood that looks like a stake and launches it at Sunshine. It goes right through his chest and out the back. It has no affect on him, but she does hear Twilight scream in pain.

“I’ll always be with ya, darlin’,” says Sunshine.

Then he disappears into a mist, putting Twilight in Trixie’s line of sight. Twilight has the piece of wood in her shoulder and she yanks it out with her magic, then burns it to cinder while glaring at Trixie. Trixie smiles smugly, the glowing in her eyes become so intense that her pupils are hidden behind the glow. A dark cloud forms above her head and bolts of lightning strike around her to create a barrier between her and Twilight. The memories of how Twilight ruined her replay in Trixie’s mind and the closer she gets to Twilight the stronger the urge to kill her gets.

===

Trixie, as a little filly, was sitting on her bed in her plain bedroom, staring at nothing in particular. She’s sniffling and her eyes are red from all the crying she’s been doing lately. She had recently tried to get enrolled at the Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, she had practiced nearly everyday for hours on end with a tutor and when the time came... she failed. Apparently her best was bettered by another foal; a foal that arrive late nonetheless.

“Eclipse, you’re not listening to me! She’s just a filly!” cried her mother.

“A filly that I invested in! A filly that failed you! Me! And herself!” screamed her father.

===

“Hello, Twilight, remember me,” sneers Trixie.

Twilight and Trixie start circling each other, not caring that the construction site is falling apart around them. Both of them are glowing with raw, furious power, are too angry to cry and would love nothing more than to burn each other to charred skeletal remains.

“It’s been awhile hasn’t it,” chuckles Trixie madly while the bolts of electricity scorch everything they touch around her.

“Not long enough for a nopony like you!” growls Twilight as a small flare shoots out of her mane.

===

“Now that brat, Twilight Sparkle, will become somepony great!” said Trixie’s father angrily.

===

Trixie furrows her brow and charges her horn with so much energy that it creates a blinding ball of light that tears apart whatever it touches. Twilight takes a step back, but also charges a fireball through her horn.

===

“And Trixie, my own daughter...”

===

Trixie shakes with anger and clenches her teeth to the point where they might crack under pressure.

===

“Will be a nopony.”

===

“I AM NOT A NOPONY!” screams Trixie.

Trixie fires a beam of lightning and Twilight and she shoots a thick column of fire back at her. Both attacks collide in the middle, creating a mixed explosion of fire and unstable energy. The resulting shockwave sends both mares flying backwards with burning chunks of cement, wood, and other building materials as well as building tools. Trixie flies out of the construction site, feeling nothing but rage. Pain does not exist for her, and she barely feels the impact of the ground. When she stands up she laughs madly while burning debris rains down around her and watches with glee as the construction site collapses into a hellish inferno. There is no way Twilight could survive that!

She had beat her rival at last!

“I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE!” cheers Trixie

===

“Watch in awe as the Great and Powerful Trixie performs the most spectacular feats of magic ever witnessed by pony eyes!” Trixie said boastfully while standing on her hind hooves, signaling a barrage of colorful fireworks

The crowd cheered, oohed, and awed at the spectacle and a smug smile spread across Trixie’s face from all the attention she’s getting from these Ponyville simpletons. There was no way she was a “nopony” now. She had proven her father wrong at long last. She was special. She was great!

===

“WHO IS SO IGNORANT AS TO CHALLENGE THE MAGICAL ABILITY OF THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE!” yells Trixie.

Trixie paces in circles, laughing maniacally. She shoots a bolt inside a random restaurant and its gutted by the resulting explosion. No one can challenge her now! She beat the Element of Magic without having any special training, and Twilight deserved it.

“Trixie, that’s enough!” barks Gray Muffin.

Trixie turns to Gray Muffin, he’s boldly marching towards her with his cannon sparking and charging for an attack.

“If you do not stop I will be forced to shoot you!” yells Gray Muffin over the chaotic noises.

“YOU DARE CHALLENGE THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE!” cackles Trixie, then her voice turns to a low, terrifying rumble. “How cute.”

Gray Muffin is suddenly wrapped in magic and he’s lifted in the air and then smashed to the ground. He clumsily shoots at Trixie, but she deflects the attack with a small shield, sending the shot off in a completely direction. After doing that, she uses her telekinesis to fling Gray Muffin in the air. She wants to see her challenger splatter on the ground for his defiance. Anyone who has hurt her, or tries to hurt her, should die a horrible death. That is justice!

oooOOOooo

Gray Muffin watches Trixie staring at him with pure, uncontrollable rage, knowing full well that he must get her under control immediately. And when he notices that he’s dropping he prepares himself for a world of hurt, but luckily Roar Shock swoops under him and he lands on the pegasus’s back. Roar Shock buckles under the sudden weight change and skids to a rough stop on a roof that ends with both ponies rolling end over end of each other and coming to an abrupt stop when they hit a giant air conditioning unit.

Gray Muffin quickly scrambles to his feet, shakes the pain away, and runs to the edge of the roof with his cannon ready once again. He aims it at Trixie, but with all blinding light she’s generating and the debris being flung around she makes for a hard target.

“What are you doing?” groans Roar Shock while getting to his feet.

“I have to knock out Trixie before she causes too much damage,” says Gray Muffin urgently.

“No, we have to go!”

“We aren’t going anywhere!”

Roar Shock turns Gray Muffin around so that they are face to face and he puts his hooves on the earth pony’s shoulders.

“No! She’s lost in that state! Shooting her will only cause more aggravation and do more harm to the town!” says Roar Shock.

There is an explosion and both look over the edge and sees Twilight and Trixie are now battling each other in the street with unrelenting fury.

“The amount of energy to knock her out is more than what the cannon can provide!” says Roar Shock over the ever growing chaotic sounds of the battle below.

“I stopped her with brick last time! A brick!” growls Gray Muffin.

“You’re not thinking! That was when she was in the early stage! You know better than most how this kind of magic works!”

Gray Muffin aims his cannon at Trixie again, but Roar Shock pushes it down as soon as he fires, causing the beam to break through the roof’s edge and leave a small crater in the ground. Roar Shock swears and waves his hoof around as smoke rises is off of it. Gray Muffin gets a twinge of regret that is quickly overshadowed by annoyance.

“Why did you do that!” demands Gray Muffin.

“We need to go! Wazza and Adanz are waiting for us!” says Roar Shock urgently.

“And leave her here? NO! I will not leave her here on her own in this state!” says Gray Muffin as he charges the cannon again, except this time it whines in protest and the alarm goes off while a little red light beeps frantically. But Gray Muffin completely ignores the warning signs. “I won’t let Trixie destroy Ponyville or herself!” yells Gray Muffin desperately, then in a quiet whisper he says “I can’t.”

“Then you leave me no choice,” says Roar Shock quietly.

Gray Muffin is too distracted to hear Roar Shock, he’s focused on putting a stop to Trixie’s rampage. But when he feels a hoof bash the back of his head he loses all focus and a second later another hoof goes down on his face and he loses all consciousness.

oooOOOooo

Roar Shock picks up Gray Muffin’s limp body and flies towards Wazza and Adanz with great haste. When he gets there he carefully straps Gray Muffin to his seat and orders the zebras to take off.

“What about Trixie?” asks Wazza worryingly.

“She’s lost. We can only hope that whoever she’s fighting can knock her out without killing her. Now get us out of here!” orders Roar Shock.

“What will happen if Trixie lives, sir?” asks Adanz while preparing the ship to take off.

“More than likely she’ll be taken into EIB custody and interrogated. But if we stay here, we’re dead and our cause will be lost!”

Adanz and Wazza nod and put the ship at full speed without another word. They watch the fires of Ponyville shrink away rapidly, and soon the fires are nothing more than tiny dots.

=**********=

Trixie is pushed against the wall of another building by another one of Twilight’s fire beams. Upon impact, the wall cracks and the energy being released from Trixie’s horn scorches the wall and the surrounding area further. She stands up and glares at Twilight as she marches towards her with two orbs of fire next to her. Trixie grits her teeth and runs towards Twilight while charging her horn for another attack.

===

Trixie watched in amazement as Twilight picked up the sleepy Ursa Minor sucking on the enormous, metallic baby bottle. Just doing that required a lot of hard work and concentration. And on top of that, she had soothing music playing using just wind!

Questions, angry questions, run through Trixie’s mind as she watches her life flush into an abyss. Why didn’t Twilight challenge her on the stage and use this? Why did she wait until there was an Ursa Minor stampeding through Ponyville?

Why?

Why!

WHY!

Then it hit her. Dominance. Twilight upstaged her when she tried to enroll at the Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. She became the student of a goddess. A GODDESS! A spot that she and her parents fought tooth and hoof to get and they chose her! Leaving her with inept teachers. Now Twilight is showing off all that Trixie was supposed to learn in the most humiliating way possible! Not only was she banishing an enormous predator, but she’s saving a town in the process.

===

“YOU RUINED ME!” cries Trixie furiously.

“YOU KILLED MY FRIENDS!” screams Twilight.

The two launch their attacks at each other, creating a brilliant, deadly show of lights from the orb created by both attacks colliding. The orb grows and rips apart the ground, sending pieces of burning pavement in every direction possible. Then it explodes, covering both of them in dust and debris, but that doesn’t stop them. They go at it again, launching every attack they muster with unrelenting fury.

Trixie screams in rage as she shoots a massive beam of electricity at Twilight. Her rival surrounds herself with a magical shield and Trixie’s attack swirls around it, somehow mixing with the fire. Trixie keeps firing at Twilight, though.

“FIGHT BACK!” screams Trixie.

===

Trixie hadn’t expected to run into Twilight at Ponyville, but she pretended not to recognize her! She thought that all the times she purposely bumped into her when they were fillies at the libraries and parks, she would at least pretend to be content with seeing her. But no! She pretended to be scared of her and then used the town-is-in-danger reason to show off in front of the whole town in ways that she cannot compete!

===

“FIGHT BACK, YOU COWARD!” screams Trixie again, this time angry tears pour out of her eyes and roll down her cheek, only to be ripped off and mixed with the energy.

Trixie wails and sends another attack at Twilight. Twilight’s protective shield sucks up Trixie’s attack and gets bigger and bigger with each strike against her. Soon, the jumbled mass of fire and electricity towers dozens of feet in the air, burning and shredding everything in its path into tiny bits. Then it explodes.

The sphere around Twilight shoots out with a deafening BOOM and the energy flies out in a large circle that slices through every building it touches like a chainsaw against a stack of papers. Trixie is blasted off of her feet and carried away by the explosion as well as everything ranging from burning splinters of wood to automobiles. Trixie bounces and skids across the ground, leaving a trail of bloody dots and lines in her wake. When she comes to a stop she’s back in her normal state, broken physically and mentally.Trixie coughs out blood and tries to stand, but finds that she can barely move and that her bones feel broken and cracked. All she can do is look around.

As Trixie looks around she sees a burning mushroom cloud rising into the sky and sees what’s left of the burning building around her collapse into burning heaps. Her body trembles and she bites back the pain as she pulls herself on the ground in a pitiful attempt to move. Her head snaps towards the sound of a building crumbling and watches in horror as a flower shop crumbles into an inferno. Then she looks up at the sky and sees that it’s dark red with fire, creating a sickly pseudo-daylight. She hears ponies shouting, some are shouting orders while others are screaming for their loved ones.

‘Did I do this?’ wonders Trixie.

Her vision is starting to fade away now and her heartbeats get weaker.

“Trixie,” says Twilight bitterly.

Trixie rests her head on the ground and helplessly watches Twilight, her fire fading away, limp towards her with an angry stride, despite the horrible stab wound in her shoulder and the amount of energy she used during their fight. Trixie whimpers and looks down in shame. Her rival is like a goddess and took leveling a town to figure it out. She doesn’t know what Roar Shock would think for her causing the death and misery of untold number of innocent ponies. Same with Wazza and Adanz. But worst of all, she knows she has disappointed Gray Muffin. He had always been strict and repetitive when he taught her that the League of Justice was built to protect the innocent. Now she razed a town. She knows she’s a monster in their eyes now.

The noise is starting to fade and Trixie’s vision is becoming more blurred, but she does notice a red pool sliding out from underneath her. Blood.

“No... No, no, nonono. Oh please Celestia no,” cries Trixie weakly. “I-I don’t want to die... Don’t let me die. Please.”

“I guess I was wrong about you,” says Twilight in a mix of anger and sadness.

Trixie whimpers, then closes her eyes and lets everything slip into the cold darkness. She had been beaten by Twilight once again, this time there is no telling how many lives she ruined because of it.

===

“Twilight Sparkle will become somepony great! While Trixie, my own daughter, will be a nopony.”

Arc 1- 09- Expendable -ADDITION-

Arc 2- 1 (Singsong)

“We interrupt this program to bring you important news from the Royal Equestrian Government. Approximately five hours ago Ponyville faced another devastating attack by the terrorist organization known as the League of Justice. The Mayor and forty three Royal and Local Guards were killed, and civilian casualties are unknown at this current point in time. It is reported that Ponyville faces over fifty million bits in damages and has left hundreds homeless. Equestria is now under Martial Law by Royal Decree until further notice. Complete cooperation with the Royal Government is strongly advised. Thank you for your patience and may Celestia Bless Equestria”

++++++++++

Trixie walks through the mess that was once her father’s loft. She’s careful to step over shattered glass and splinters that were once his exquisite collection of dishes and furniture. The howling wind blows through the gaping hole in the glass patio doors, pushing up the expensive curtains and blowing away light pieces of garbage. Trixie looks down at the marble floor and sees a streak of dried blood stopping just shy of about ten feet from the patio door, or what’s left of it anyway. She remembers how she felt joy upon hearing her father had “passed away” and how she had shown up late at the funeral. She arrived just in time to see him buried and that was so she could show her last and greatest way of showing how much she hated him. But now that she’s looking at the blood, the smashed furniture, holes in the wall, and broken photos she’s overwhelmed with grief. She wants to cry from what she’s seeing.

‘How could any pony do this?’ wonders Trixie sadly.

Then the memory of her kicking Pinkie Pie off the edge of the construction site flashes by and Trixie closes her eyes tight and tries to get rid of it. It works, but Pinkie Pie’s voice echoes in her mind.

“Don’t let him hurt the innocent.”

That phrase replays over and over in her mind and every time it’s repeated Trixie’s shuts her eyes tighter and grits her teeth. After the tenth time of that phrase being repeated Trixie’s eyes shoot open and she screams “STOP IT!” and a small shockwaves shoots out from her. Her voice and the sound of the shock wave echoes in the dead silence of the loft and Pinkie Pie’s voice stops instantly. Trixie slumps to the floor and stares at the bloody streak. She takes a deep breath, wipes a tear from her eye and then looks up to see what’s outside. The loft has a great view of the capital of Equestria; the tall buildings that shroud the older, smaller structures light up the sky with tiny dots from their windows, and a single zeppelin flies in lazy circles over the Royal Palace. She then looks at the full moon and finds its beauty mesmerizing. Luna has done a great job with the night sky tonight.

Trixie walks towards the patio and notices the railing is splintered where her father had hit it before tumbling to his death. She gulps, hesitantly walks towards the edge of the patio and looks down. Trixie doesn’t know how high she is, all she knows is that she’s on the very top floor and the building stands easily thirty stories high. The passing vehicles look like glowing ants and the ponies walking around for a casual nightly stroll are barely visible dots that can only be seen when they pass under the streetlights.

“Still thinking about ending your life?” asks a familiar voice.

Trixie knows who it is, so she doesn’t give them the benefit of her looking at him.

“Are you going to show yourself this time?” asks Trixie crossly.

“I’ve already shown myself to you,” replies the shadowy figure calmly.

“Your just a shadowy thing. Show yourself in your true form.”

“And what if I told you that I can’t?”

Trixie looks at the shadow stallion as he steps forward, but even with the moonlight shining down on them, she still can’t make out his features, other than he’s a unicorn with an average build.

“Then I’ll call you a liar,” says Trixie irritably.

“But it’s the truth, I cannot show you my true form,” says the stallion.

“Enough with the games, I’m not in the mood.”

“I’m not playing games with you.”

Trixie grumbles and slumps over the railing to watch the dots below do their thing. The stallion walks next to her and stares at the heavens. The two silently listen to late night noises of the city and enjoy the wind blowing around their bodies, but even in the oddly peaceful silence Trixie can’t help but think about what happened at Ponyville. The more she tries not thinking about what she did the more vivid the recollection becomes. She remembers all the colors, the textures, smells, and worst of all: Pinkie Pie begging her to stop Roar Shock before he hurts innocent ponies. But Trixie can’t understand how Pinkie Pie can ask her of such things when she knew that she was the one to murder her. She doesn’t understand how Pinkie Pie can ask her to betray the very ponies that helped her. Worst of all, she doesn’t understand how can she protect the innocent if she destroyed Ponyville.

“I took a life... I took lives. Lots of innocent lives,” says Trixie, her voice cracking and thin streams of tears rolling down her cheek.

The stallion looks at Trixie, and she sniffles and blinks tears out of her eyes.

“I... I thought-I thought it was the right thing to do. She was a threat for the Greater Good, wasn’t she?” says Trixie, thicker tears are now rolling down her cheeks.

The stallion puts his hoof on Trixie’s shoulder. “Trixie, you must ask yourself, if you’re trying to save somepony or a civilization, what good is it to kill? How can you save a soul if you don’t give them the chance of redemption?”

“I don’t... Maybe... Maybe someponies don’t deserve it. Ponies like me!”

Trixie collapses on the patio and cries into her hoof and the stallion sits in front of her. The pain is too much for her to bear. All this death is haunting her in ways she never thought possible. She never really thought about how her mother had died in the hospital with her; she had tried to suppress that memory. Trixie was glad to hear of her father’s death, but now she finds herself wanting him back, despite him being a complete ass towards her. Then with Sunshine, his lifeless eyes and bloodied, mangled corpse is forever burnt into her mind. Now she’s a killer, like Gray Muffin and Roar Shock and the others. She murdered a good pony and ruined the lives of hundreds more. It seems that death follows her wherever she goes and Trixie’s years on the road gave her great insight on how much she was a jerk, but now she feels she went from being a jerk to a monster.

Trixie can’t form coherent words as her weeping and heavy breathing make it hard to talk and breathe. The stallion gently shushes her and hugs her, and Trixie shakes in his embrace as she buries her face in his shoulder. She doesn’t understand how her new family is able to take lives so easily and now she’s scared not only for herself, but for them as well. The Royal Government will no doubt be going after them in full force now and she left them to take on Twilight. She’s probably captured and in a hidden prison somewhere.

Trixie continues sobbing and shaking, and looks up at the shadowy stallion with her eyes red and coat soaked in tears; his features are still nonexistent. This only makes her feel worse, her only source of comfort in the Hell she had built herself has no face.

“Wha-Why can’t I see you?” sobs Trixie.

“I don’t know,” says the stallion softly and achingly.

Trixie lips quiver and she cries into his shoulder once again. The stallion tightens his hug and gently rocks her back and forth while whispering “Everything will be okay.” in her ear while stroking her mane. But Trixie doesn’t think so. In fact, she know so. She knows she’s been forsaken, ever since birth she had been the target of Celestia and her games of torment. And she only made it worse for herself. The one chance she gets at having a fatherly figure she ruins by destroying half a town; and now she doubts that she was even doing the right thing to begin with. Gray Muffin said the first kill was the hardest, but now that she thinks about it, he was right when he told her when he said that she would think twice about him if she knew him more. She saw the anger he carried with him and has become numb with killing, like killing comes as easy as breathing for him. Trixie doesn’t want to be like that. She can’t. But now she thinks it’s too late for her; she already killed the Element of Laughter and almost completely destroyed Ponyville for the sake of revenge. Trixie can’t help but believe its all downhill for her now now. She has become a villain. A villain with no value.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” whimpers Trixie quietly.

“I know,” whispers the stallion.

He tightens his hug around her and Trixie feels a newfound sense of warmth and comfort on the cold patio. She snuggles against the mysterious stallion’s warm embrace, never wanting to let go. She doesn’t know who this pony is, why he’s like a shadow, or why he’s in her dreams, but she feels safe in his embrace. She feels loved.

[[[[O]]]]

She wakes up in a pitch black room and feels the warmth and comfort disappear from existence and become replaced with nothing but cold and fear. Trixie stands up, feeling the slight pinches of pain all over her body. She winces as she paces around the room, trying to get a feel for it while asking if there’s anyone with her; all she can hear is her heavy heartbeats echoing in her ears and her panicked breathing. As her eyes adjust to the darkness she can make out the walls and the floor, but the details are minimal at best. Then she sees something dark out of the corner of her eye shift in the corner. She squeaks and jumps to face the black thing and aims her horn at it. She trembles when an eerie cackle echoes in the room.

“Who are you!” demands Trixie.

The shadow figure stands up and one wing expands while a pair of red eyes open up and glow like burning smoke in the dark. “You should know, darlin’, we are friends after all,” snickers the thing in Sunshine’s voice.

Trixie screams in terror and falls backwards on the cold concrete floor and pushes herself in the corner. She loses her breath and shakes violently while trying to get her horn to work, but she’s only getting pathetic sparks and a splitting headache.

“Oh no! Now what!?” screams Trixie.

Trixie is sure fate must hate her, since she’s always having her magic taken away from her in some odd way! She shakes even more when she hears the clip-clops of Sunshine’s hooves against the floor and watches in horror as the lustful red eyes approach her. Trixie hears Sunshine panting like a dog over her thumping heart and raspy breathing as he anticipates what he’s about to do to her.

“Stay back!” orders Trixie shakily.

“Or you’ll do what? Zap me? That’ll be fine, I like it rough,” says Sunshine lustfully.

Suddenly a bright light turns on and Sunshine’s shadow vaporizes into nothingness and Trixie holds up her hoof to shield her eyes from it; but they prove to provide minimal protection. Her eyes feel like they had been burned out of their sockets and the aches and pains all over her body are not making this unpleasant situation any easier to cope with. When her eyes adjust to the intense lighting she lowers hoof and scans the room for Sunshine. He’s nowhere to be seen, but she is able to get good look at the room she’s locked in. The room is six by eight feet and is almost completely bare, made out of rusted concrete and has a single ceiling fan in the middle with a fat light bulb in the middle. The cell does have a cot and a toilet and a sink with a mirror in the corner, all of them are anchored directly into the building. On each of the corners are large light bulbs that are pointed at the middle and the only way out is a solid steel door. Trixie aims her horn at it attempt to fire, but something happens where the magic gets to the tip and then retreats back inside her horn at full strength. Trixie screams in pain and collapses to the floor, then she tenderly rubs her horn while biting back her tears.

As she rubs her horn, her hoof rubs over a ring at the base of her horn. Trixie’s hoof stops over it, and her eyes widen as she tries to get an idea of what it is by rubbing. What she gets is that it is a solid ring of some kind. Obviously magical since its doing a fantastic job of suppressing her magic; that and it also gives her hoof a very nasty, uncomfortable zap when she rubs it for too long. After getting zapped Trixie yelps and yanks her hoof away. Then, while her hoof is yanked away, she brushes against something else that she just now realized is latched around her neck. She runs to the mirror and her jaw drops when she sees what has happened to her. She has visible bruises all over her body and her horn has a ring around the base as well as something that looks like a dog collar clamped around her neck. The collar has a small ring poking out on different parts and the number “03231” painted on it.

Trixie swears and smashes her hoof against the mirror, leaving a massive spider web crack on it. Then she swears again and smashes her hoof against it again and again and again, and she keeps smashing it until the shards of glass fall and break against the sink and floor, cutting her hoof in the process. Trixie whimpers and slumps to the ground, and a couple of seconds later, a series of locks click, some gears turn and the thick door scratches against the floor as it slides into the wall, making a horrible grinding-screeching sound. The sound hurts Trixie’s ears and yet the mares that walk in do not appear to be affected by the noise at all. Both of them are Royal Guards, unicorns, and behind them is an escort party of six more heavily armed Royal Guards. One of the mares pulls out a chain clamps it on Trixie’s collar with her magic.

“Time to go,” says the mare that summoned the chained collar.

She gives it a quick tug and Trixie lurches forward.

“Don’t try using your magic either, we have your horn cuffed as well,” says the second more.

Trixie gets another hard tug, this time it’s strong enough to almost make her fall on the floor, but luckily she catches herself and follows the hostile escorts down the hall without any resistance. As they walk she notices that they are passing more solid steel doors with numbers painted on them, like “A-23”, “A-24”, “A-25” and so on and so forth. She also hears the Equestrian national anthem playing over an indistinct message by Celestia’s voice over the intercom. Its most likely a recorded message given that the message sounds like it’s repeating itself.

While walking down the hallway Trixie’s mind races as to how she can escape. She’s collared, that stupid ring is hindering her magic, and she’s surrounded by heavily armed guards. She comes to the conclusion that escape will lead to certain death, so she sighs quietly and looks down at the concrete floor. Trixie counts her steps, not paying any attention to the emotionless guards or the soulless environment she’s walking through. She hadn’t been expecting everything to be so gray, given Equestria’s reputation of having just about everything obnoxiously bright and fluffy. The group must’ve been walking for at least five minutes, going through twists and turns and checkpoints, before coming across an elevator guarded by two more Royal Guard unicorns.

“We’re here to deliver Prisoner oh-three-two-three-one to Director Brisk Wind,” says the mare holding Trixie’s collar.

Trixie glares at the mare, it’s bad enough they have her shackled and paraded around like she’s some kind of trophy prisoner, but now they have given her a number. The guards look at Trixie and she switches her scowl to them. One of the guards simply nods and turns around to pull down a lever, which makes the elevator door open. The elevator door actually is actually made up of three doors, the first being the standard slide to the side one, and the second was a gate that the other guard pulls up using a pulley, and the third was another sliding door that required another lever pull to open.

Trixie looks down and tries to contain her chuckle, but a little bit escaped as a sickening weird scoffing noise. Everyone glares at her and she looks up, doing a horrible job of holding back a grin.

“I’m sorry, but that’s a little excessive don’t you think?” asks Trixie lightly while pointing at the door with a subtle hoof motion.

“Less excessive than claiming to ban an Ursa Major,” remarks one of the guards at the elevator. Trixie’s grin is instantly replaced with a murderous glare. Now it’s the guard’s turn to hold the smirk. “Oh how the mighty have fallen.”

Trixie is pulled inside the elevator, but before going in she gives the guard a quick tail whip to the face. This makes the unicorn holding her collar jab Trixie in the side, hard. Trixie grunts and stumbles to the side a bit, but due to the compact space in the elevator she doesn’t go far, and it’s only her and the two unicorns that picked her up that can fit inside. When they are snug inside the elevator the multiple doors seal shut and it slowly descends the structure. As they go down Trixie looks around the elevator while her two guards remain stoic. The elevator is dimly lit and more like a cage than an elevator now that Trixie is able to get a better look at it. The lights from the elevator shaft lazily slide past them and each pathetic ding indicates when they go down a floor. After a dozen dings, the elevator comes to a jolting stop, making Trixie stumble for a second in her spot, but the others barely flinched. Trixie quickly recollects herself and when the doors open she’s once again in the presence of a group of heavily armed Royal Guards.

The escorts lead Trixie outside where the rosy colors of dawn color the sky and give the towering prison walls an interesting hue. Trixie looks around nervously and sees the Royal Guards replacing the Night Guards on the walls and in the guard towers. The unkempt courtyard is bare of all activity and the way the barbed chain link fences surround and cut pieces of the courtyard into sections makes Trixie’s heart waver for fear of there being no escape from this forsaken place. The escorts move her through passages made up of the fences towards a medieval type structure in the back with a large clock tower overlooking everything. The windows to it are barred and an Equestrian flag is hanging down from the bottom of the clock and going down about five stories. Above the main entrance to the little castle, which is a couple of large steel doors, is a preserved engraving that says: FORT SINGSONG.

They stop in front of the door and talk to a guard on the other side via intercom and a few seconds later there are a series of clicks and the door open up. It groans and grinds against the pavement as it opens and the first thing Trixie notices are the dozen guards patrolling the lobby floor. Then she spots a dozen more on the upper level, some of them looking at them suspiciously and aiming their weapons towards them. While they go through the lobby, Trixie can’t help but marvel at its beauty. It’s like a diamond in a pit of mud. The brightly lit lobby has a polished tiled floor that has the Equestrian seal painted on. There is also a massive stylish mural of Princess Celestia raising the sun and the moon with towns during the day and night on their respective sides. Trixie also notices that the Equestrian national anthem is softly playing over the intercom, just like wherever it is she came from.

The group keeps walking towards their destination in silence. They pass through a few more checkpoints and walk down more hallways, passed more steel doors. Except, unlike the lobby, they are carpeted and the walls are painted brown and the lights are not as bright, yet they are still warm. Trixie guesses that they are trying to give off a warm, comforting feel, but all she feels is worry and sickness down in her stomach. She knows something is up and the unicorns mentioned a “Director Brisk Wind”; the name sounds familiar, but she can’t pin where she heard it before.

A couple of minutes later, Trixie is led inside a rectangular room that has an elderly pegasus mare surrounded by four unicorns wearing all black. The pegasus has an ice blue coat with a fading blue mane and tail with light gray streaks running through them, and her cutie mark is a scroll and hammer crossing over each other. The room, like the hallway, is carpeted and in warm natural colors, but Trixie also notices a one way window on the wall and four standing rings on the floor. The guards also have cuffs and chains hanging around their necks. Trixie gulps and is tugged further inside the room.

“Director Brisk Wind, we have Prisoner oh-three-two-three-one,” says the unicorn holding Trixie’s collar.

Trixie glares at the unicorn again and the pegasus steps forward with a small, victorious smile.

“There’s the mare of the hour. How are you doing, Lulamoon? Did you enjoy your cell?” Brisk Wind says in a mocking tone.

Trixie is silent, but her glare is enough to show everyone that she wasn’t amused by Brisk Wind’s so called joke. Brisk Wind snickers and orders Trixie to be cuffed to the floor. The Royal Guards cuff Trixie’s legs to the floor in a way that her back is to the door; Trixie tests the chains and finds that they barely give her enough room to move her hooves. She glares at Brisk Wind and the pegasus flashes a smile and approaches Trixie. When she’s in front of Trixie she tsks as she shakes her head in disappointment, then she glances at the unicorns that brought Trixie in and excuses them, and after they leave she turns to her guards.

“Bring those doctors over,” orders Brisk Wind, “we don’t have much time and so much work to do.”

Two of unicorns salute and leave without a word while the other two stay behind, stone still and eyes ice cold.Trixie looks over her shoulder to see the two ponies in black leave and when the door closes and the locks click she looks at Brisk Wind. Brisk Wind sighs and runs her hoof through her mane.

“It always amazes me how some ponies want to see the end of Harmony,” she says dramatically.

Trixie sits down and continues staring at the pegasus, she’s sure that Brisk Wind took some theater courses because she’s acting like a thespian. Brisk Wind paces in front of Trixie as she continues her small opening speech.

“All this order and Harmony that Celestia has worked so hard to build and maintain, and yet you come along and destroy half a town. And for what?” says Brisk Wind.

Trixie remains silent and looks down, she doesn’t know if that is a rhetorical or if she should answer that. If it’s the latter than she doesn’t have a good answer anyway. Brisk Wind frowns from the lack of answers she’s getting.

“That wasn’t a rhetorical question,” says Brisk Wind harshly.

Trixie reluctantly looks at the pegasus mare but still remains silent; now that she knows she has to answer the question she genuinely doesn’t know what to say. All the answers she thought of, both snarky and genuine, were flushed away. Brisk Wind studies Trixie’s face and her impatience becomes more and more visible with each passing second. Her calm, collected exterior shifts into that of narrowed eyes, gritted teeth and a furrowed brow. Trixie also swears her colors darken too.

“Do I have to repeat myself?” growls Brisk Wind.

Trixie shakes her head and Brisk Wind starts pacing around Trixie impatiently, as if thinking that the answer is somewhere tattooed on her body or hidden on her scars.

“Then answer the question. Why destroy half of Ponyville? Why declare war on Harmony?” demands Brisk Wind.

“We-We... I-I um uh,” mutters Trixie quietly.

“Speak up, Lulamoon, I cannot hear you.”

Trixie forces herself to look at Brisk Wind as she leans towards Trixie’s nose; her nose wrinkles when the smell the the strong minty mouthwash Brisk Wind used burns her nose. Brisk Wind wraps her hoof around Trixie’s neck and pulls her head forward so that their foreheads are touching.

“I said speak up!” yells Brisk Wind.

Trixie cringes and her ears ring from the yell and she starts shaking as Brisk Wind’s gaze becomes more intense.

“We were-We were trying to saving Ponyville” whimpers Trixie.

“Salvation through annihilation, is it?” sneers Brisk Wind.

“We-We want to protect Harmony. Protect Equestria.”

Brisk Wind searches Trixie’s face and when she looks away, Brisk Wind forces Trixie to look at her. Trixie squirms but that only makes the situation worse for her.

“LOOK AT ME!” barks Brisk Wind.

Trixie’s eyes lock on to Brisk Wind’s. She does her best to keep herself from shaking, but her body won’t stop trembling.

“Chaos begets Chaos. Harmony begets Harmony,” says Brisk Wind in a quiet, menacing voice. “War is Chaos. Vigilantism is Chaos. Chaos defies Harmony and your group has not only declared war on the criminal underworld but on us as well. You have declared war on Harmony, Trixie Lulamoon, and I would have loved nothing more than to leave you to bleed to death in Ponyville.”

The door opens up and a few ponies walk in, but Trixie is too terrified to look away from Brisk Wind to see who entered.

“But national security policy dictates that I get every ounce of information from that pathetic little brain of yours.”

Some stuff is being set up now, and from the sounds of it, it is medical equipment judging by the sounds of vials clinking together and ponies murmuring medical stuff to each other.

“And besides, a very important pony wants to have a quick word with you before we begin.”

Brisk Wind steps away from Trixie and Shining Armor limps into Trixie’s line of sight. He still does an amazing job of keeping his Royal Guard Captain’s uniform polished and his mane and coat clean, but his movements are sluggish. Mostly due to his injury, but the large, dark bags under his eyes suggest that he’s running on minimum sleep. Shining Armor and Brisk Wind acknowledge each other with cold glances and forced nods. When Shining Armor looks at Trixie he exhales and begins his interrogation.

“Do you realize how much trouble your in?” asks Shining Armor wearly.

Trixie nods, whispering: “Yes.”

"So you know you can stay in Singsong Prison because of your affiliation with the League of Justice?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, that’s good. Now, Trixie, I’m going to be honest with you, things are not looking too good for you; you are being accused of murdering Pinkie Pie in cold blood and being an accessory to acts of terrorism.”

Trixie looks down, regretting losing control of her emotions. She’s that if she had left when Adanz told her to then she wouldn’t be here and probably only get lectured for being sloppy. She wonders how she’d fare with her life behind bars, and then becomes even more uneasy when she realizes that she’d lose all sense of privacy and will have to put in a two hundred percent effort to not drop the soap.

“But we can strike a deal that can lighten your sentence and possibly get you out and put you in protective custody,” continues Shining Armor. Trixie frowns and looks up at Shining Armor skeptically, she’s sure she knows what they want. “Tell us where Roar Shock and his base of operations are and we can end this bloodshed.”

Trixie looks down to contemplate on this. She knows that the League of Justice targets only bad ponies, sure their methods are extreme but... but they are also killers. She’s seen what they are capable of just from all their bragging of successful attack like the poisoning of an entire mafia in Detrot or killing corrupt government officials in their offices. But they are only doing what the Equestrian government can’t or won’t do, right?

Of course they are! Just because she can’t stomach what they do doesn’t mean she should betray her new family does it?

No. They are flawed, yes, but they took her in and helped her! She can’t betray them. She won’t! She has to protect Gray Muffin and Wazza and Adanz. She has to protect her new family! She’d be willing to have life behind bars if it means not giving them up.

“Not going to happen,” Trixie says defiantly.

Shining Armor sighs and looks down while Brisk Wind arches an eyebrow.

“You sure about that answer, Lulamoon?” asks Brisk Wind skeptically.

“You can’t make me talk,” says Trixie, still holding her defiance.

“Oh I have a way of getting ponies talking.”

Shining Armor glances at Brisk Wind as she motions the cart of medical equipment forward. A unicorn mare wearing a nurse hat opens up the cart and levitates a syringe out for Brisk Wind to see. The pegasus taps her chin and nods approvingly at the selection.

“That’ll do,” says Brisk Wind casually.

The Nurse walks towards Trixie with the syringe and she and Shining Armor get a look of concern when they notice the thickness of the needle and the brown, semi-pulpy liquid in the container. Trixie shifts uneasily as the Nurse prods her body to search for a good vein to use.

“You see, the benefit of being the director of the Equestrian Investigation Bureau is that I get privileges. Lots and lots of privileges,” explains Brisk Wind.

The Nurse finds a good spot and positions the needle over it.

“What are you doing, Director?” demands Shining Armor.

“Interrogating,” replies Brisk Wind coolly.

The Nurse inject Trixie and she feels the pulpy liquid shoot inside her veins and dissolve inside her bloodstream. Then she gets a very uneasy feeling, like someone is pushing down on the point of injection with sharp tenderizer. She grunts and stares defiantly at the ponies in the room, then she cracks a cocky smile and chuckles while holding back most signs of pain.

“Was that all? I thought the EIB was better than this,” Trixie says snidely.

“Oh, cocky are we? That’s okay, the EIB is always prepared. Nurse, inject her again,” orders Brisk Wind.

The Nurse nods, pulls out another syringe and injects Trixie again. This time it feels like a dagger had stabbed her in the point of injection. The unexpected increase in pain shocks Trixie and makes her scream in pain and fall to the floor. But it doesn’t stop there, it also feels like the imaginary blade is being twisted too.

Brisk Wind smirks. “The Sanitatem Fungus, also known as the ‘healing mushroom’, found in the region around a nice town called Barnville, is very useful. It can heal injuries, remove abilities, and if ground just right it can become a poison or overload your nerves with false senses of pain.”

Trixie grits her teeth and glares at Brisk Wind; she takes deep, painful breaths of air and pushes herself to her feet. The Nurse and Shining Armor’s eyes widen, and the Nurse glances at Brisk Wind. The EIB Director looks surprised as well, but she quickly hides her surprise and nods towards the Nurse. The Nurse gets another syringe ready and Trixie continues her defiant glare.

“You can’t-You won’t make me talk,” says Trixie through gritted teeth, the pain is clear in her voice.

Brisk Wind smiles. “I’ll admit, Lulamoon, I’m surprised. Most ponies could only go through two before saying they’ll talk, but you’re still clinging to your false sense of hope. It’s no matter, though, I will break you. Me and Captain Shining Armor will get what we want, but the question is: How much pain are willing to go through to hide these fiends?”

Trixie swishes some saliva around in her mouth and spits a glob of saliva on Brisk Wind’s face. Brisk Wind is stunned and a few seconds of hostile silence later, Brisk Wind wipes the spit off her face, and then she smacks Trixie across the face with her forehoof with enough force to knock her off her feet. Trixie grunts and pushes herself up, her hooves are still shaky from the pain she’s in, but she’s determined not to break. The slap had left a fresh, bright red bruise on her cheek.

“Inject her again!” orders Brisk Wind viciously.

Shining Armor shoots Brisk Wind a dirty look, which she ignores, and the Nurse injects Trixie with another dose of the fluid in a fresh syringe. Trixie feels the fluid slither into her body and spread out, just like the previous ones, then she feels the pain. This time it feels like someone stabbed her in the point of injection with a blade and the blade is spreading open like a flower right under her skin. Trixie shakes and grunts painfully while Brisk Wind glares at her and Shining Armor stares at her in worry.

Trixie’s sweat shines her body under the light and her shaking becomes so bad that she begins swaying back and forth. Shining Armor runs over and kneels next to her so that she doesn’t fall over.

“Trixie, you can end this. Just tell us where they are,” says Shining Armor desperately.

Trixie shakes her head while keeping her mouth clenched shut. Brisk Wind motions the Nurse to get another one ready and stares at Trixie, she’s determined to break her prisoner.

“You are fighting a losing war, Lulamoon. Your pain will end right here, right now, if you tell us where the League of Justice is,” says Brisk Wind casually.

“You-You’ll have to-to try harder,” stammers Trixie agonizingly.

Trixie is yet again injected with whatever it is that the EIB made. Trixie trembles violently, the only reason she hasn’t collapsed is because she’s leaning against Shining Armor for support. Trixie takes a gulp of air, then goes back to hyperventilating while biting back every urge to scream and cry. While she’s barely able to hold back her scream, she can’t hold back her tears. They stream down her cheeks, mixing with the thick beads of sweat dripping off her mane and face. Shining Armor shakes his head disbelievingly and looks at Brisk Wind, hoping to see some sympathy, but the pegasus is unfazed, her gaze is still cold and demanding, and she orders the Nurse to inject her again.

“You can’t be serious!” yells Shining Armor.

“It’s necessary, unless she wants to talk,” says Brisk Wind, still holding her casual composure.

Shining Armor looks at Trixie and holds her head up with his hoof and so that they are eye to eye. Her shaking is enough to vibrate his hoof and her suppressed whimpers are starting to break through.

“Trixie, please just tell us what we need to know!” begs Shining Armor.

Trixie shakes her head and quietly says: “I won’t.”

Then Trixie feels another needle go inside her and the foreign fluid rush inside her body, followed by the illusion that her bones are breaking into splinters and her muscles are shredding. Trixie is able to hold out for another few seconds before the pain becomes unbearable. She cries out and almost collapses to the ground. Luckily Shining Armor catches her before she hits the ground and gently lowers her to the floor. She weeps uncontrollably and her whole sweaty body is trembling violently, and some of her sweat and tears make their way to Shining Armor’s uniform. But he doesn’t care, he sees a pony that is in immense pain, caused by the very ponies that are supposed to be the good guys. But there is no stopping Brisk Wind and the EIB operate as a separate entity from the Royal Guard so there is nothing Shining Armor can do, except beg Trixie to talk.

“Trixie, please, for the love of Celestia, tell us where they are,” whispers Shining Armor urgently.

Trixie sobs for a few more seconds before she looks at Shining Armor with quickly fading determination in her eyes. She sniffles gulps back tears and shakes her head.

“Again!” barks Brisk Wind.

“No!” shouts Shining Armor.

The Nurse ignores Shining Armor and injects Trixie with another dose of the chemical. Trixie screams, spasms, and curls up the floor. When she’s done thrashing she can barely move, and Shining Armor continues to beg her to talk.

“Captain, I think it’s time for you to leave,” says Brisk Wind.

“I’m not leaving her here with you, Director,” growls Shining Armor.

“Very well, at least step away from her so that my ponies can work.”

Shining Armor exhales and reluctantly steps away from Trixie while Brisk Wind approaches her while ruffling her feathers. When she’s towering above Trixie, she looks down at her trembling, huddled, sweating figure with disgust.

“Look at me, Lulamoon,” orders Brisk Wind.

Trixie continues trembling and winces as she tries lifting her head, but she gives up a second later and rests her head on the sweat soaked carpet. Brisk Wind furrows her brow and her jaw tightens for what she’s seeing as a lack of respect from her prisoner.

“Look at me!” yells Brisk Wind.

She stomps her hoof against the ground, hard. All noise seemed to die as soon as she yelled and stomped, all noise except for Trixie’s labored breathing and whimpering. Trixie looks at Brisk Wind out of the corner of her eye and the pegasus towers above her so that she can look down on her like the scum she thinks she is.

“Where are they. Where are the ponies you work for,” demands Brisk Wind.

“I won’t tell you,” whispers Trixie, agony and one last shred of determination not to tell being the only things clear on her mind.

Brisk Wind nods to the Nurse and she pulls out another syringe and Trixie tries to move, but what she had just endured has almost completely paralyzed her from pain. And even then, the chains still hold her in place and her horn is cuffed, so she can’t do anything except watch them.

“Tell me where they are!” screams Brisk Wind.

“That’s enough!” barks Shining Armor.

“You have no jurisdiction here, Captain! Nurse, inject her again!”

The Nurse steps closer and Trixie’s whimpering and subtle thrashing do nothing to faze the Nurse. When she’s injected again, she feels a horrible, indescribable pain surge through her body. Her eyes snap wide open and she feels her lungs struggling to work as her throat closes off. Then her eyes roll to the back of her head, her vision blurs into darkness and she passes out.

Arc 1- 10- The Beginning of the End -EDITED-

Arc 2- 2 (Sweet Freedom)

A tape recorder clicks on and the tapes inside start spinning, creating whirring sound.

A stallion on the other end takes a exhales and takes a moment to collect his thoughts before speaking into the microphone of the device.

“This is Shining Armor’s audio journal entry number... four hundred and... fourteen. Date is day one hundred and eighty in the year twelve After Luna’s Return. Where to begin?... Where to begin?...” Shining Armor says wearily.

There is a moment of silence, followed by paper rustling and Shining Armor grumbling something about his horn and leg killing him, and then he mumbles some colorful and very hateful words regarding Terra.

“Equestria is going to crap. There, I’ll just say it. Nothing fancy, that’s the job of the politicians. Director Brisk Wind finally got Trixie Lulamoon to talk after a week of interrogation using only Celestia knows what. That mare is going to be scarred for life now, I just know it. But now we know where Roar Shock and the League of Justice where the League of Justice are hiding so we’re preparing an invasion of their headquarters and.. and...” Shining Armor sighs depressingly. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what Equestria this is, but it’s not the one I remember growing up in. Everything-Everypony is changing for the worst. Cadence is worried about me.” Shining Armor chuckles uneasily. “Not that I can blame her; I’m worried too. Anyway, Twilight has been given charge of the area around Ponyville by Princess Celestia. She’s going to be coordinating rebuilding efforts and all the works. Hopefully that’ll help her. She hasn’t been the same ever since Spike’s death and I actually had to come down to Ponyville to get her out of her room after Pinkie Pie died. That poor girl needs her friends more than ever now, because I can’t be there for her, I have-I am responsible for the safety of millions. And it’s not getting any easier since the Royal and Night Guards are having trouble with the Local Guards about jurisdiction and the small town ponies refuse to recognize the Martial Law. And... And Director Brisk Wind had somehow convinced Celestia to build -no create- another government agency called the ‘Civilian Defense Agency’. Apparently she’s been working on it ever since she became director of the EIB. But what the hay is that supposed to be, anyway? She said it was to help find terrorists, but I’m looking through the layout of this new agency right now and...”

Some papers rustle and Shining Armor sighs once again.

“And I don’t like. Not one bit. I mean, this thing-this agency is evil to say the least. I hope Celestia-”

The door creaks opens up and a tired clop noise approaches him.

“Shining, what are you doing?” yawns Cadence.

“I’m just doing some work, honey,” replies Shining Armor patiently.

“Work can wait, you need to get to bed. You need your sleep.”

“And I will get my sleep when I’m done. I promise.”

Cadence walks closer and gives him a quick kiss before leaving.

“Don’t stay up too late, Equestria can’t afford to have its champion be sleepy in a time like this,” says Cadence.

The door closes and Shining Armor resumes his recording.

“Well my fantastically beautiful wife just ruined my train of thought. I’ll have to think of a punishment for her later,” jokes Shining Armor tiredly. “But all joking aside, I fear that if... Never mind, I’ll be here all night if I go that route. I-Equestria needs a hero, and soon, or else we’ll be destroyed. But it can’t be me. I can’t be their hero anymore. How can I lead the mightiest army in the world if failed to protect Canterlot once.... and I already failed Ponyville and the Mayor, and I can’t be there for Twilight. And I’m failing Equestria everywhere I go. I couldn’t stop Brisk Wind’s torture, and... and...” Shining Armor sighs heavily, sniffles and then wipes his nose. “And...I don’t know-I don’t know if I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stop what Brisk Wind did. Some stallion I turned out to be.”

There is a few seconds of somber, pregnant silence.

“I don’t think Celestia and Luna can save us, either. Guess that means there’s no point in praying for their deliverance, huh?”

The tape recorder clicks off.

++++++++++

PRISON REPORT

Date: 181-12 ALR

**Prisoner Name:* Trixie Lulamoon*

Prisoner Number: 03231

Cell Number: A-18

Report:

Trixie Lulamoon was engaged in a fight with six inmates in the courtyard; all of whom have been hospitalized by the injuries inflicted by her. Multiple fractures and broken bones for all of them and Trixie barely has a bruise on her (NOTE: The bruises from interrogation make the extent of her injuries from the fight hard to determine). According to the guards stationed, she acted in self defense, but she’s already assaulted twenty inmates over the course of the three weeks she’s been here and all twenty have been taken to the infirmary.

Trixie Lulamoon has also attempted suicide in her cell again and has reported what she has described as a “bucking ugly pegasus stallion with one wing” named “Sunshine”. No records show any such pony in the facility. Sessions with Dr. Wave have led her to believe that Trixie Lulamoon is suffering from Paranoid Schizophrenia, Dementia, and possibly Night Terrors, and has recommended extreme actions to be taken for her wellbeing.

Suggested Course(s) of Action:

Solitary Confinement

Prescription Strength Anti-Hallucinogen drugs, and other medication should the need arise

Intense therapy sessions

++++++++++

In a small day care center designed like an old west saloon, a group of foals are crowded around a pair of saloon style swing doors, waiting in anticipation for the arrival of a mare that has kept appearing and disappearing right before their very eyes. The teacher watching the children can only smile at how easily the kids are amused, and how they are oblivious to the azure hooves that aren’t covered by the door. The teacher is an earth pony mare with a white coat and a rusty red mane and tail, with the mane tied into a bun, and her cutie mark is a piece of chalk.

“Wheeere’s Trixie?... Here she is!”

Trixie, as a young teenager, pushes open the swing doors, wearing her star studded pointy hat and cape, grinning at the group of little foals. The group giggles, cheers, and awkwardly clapping their hooves together, and then Trixie pulls herself behind the doors and closes them. The foals stop clapping and stare at it, some sniffle and others wonder out loud where she went.

“Wheeere’s Trixie?” teases Trixie. The foals eyes widen and sparkle with anticipation. “Here she is!”

Trixie pops out yet again and the foals cheer and clap as loud as their little bodies can. When Trixie lies down on the ground to take a breather, the foals crowd around her, begging for more of her amazing disappearing act.

“No, I’m sorry, but I already did that fifty times, and I’m tired so I must sleep to regain my disappearing powers,” says Trixie playfully.

Then she curls up on the floor, closes her and pretends to snore. The foals inch closer to her and poke her all over her body; from her face, to her sides, and her cutie mark. Trixie is using every bit of willpower she has to stop from giggling, especially when they poke her cutie mark. Every time they poke her cutie mark there’s a surge of tingly, ticklish feelings that radiate from the mark and it takes up her whole leg. However, in spite of all her best efforts to pretend to be unaffected, her leg still makes a small kicking motion, which makes the foals giggle.

“My dog does the same thing.” The foal pokes Trixie cutie mark and her leg jerks out before retracting just as quickly. “See?”

“She’s ticklish,” whispers another foal.

‘Oh no,’ thinks Trixie while trying desperately to hold back her smile.

“TICKLE ATTACK!” yell the foals.

Trixie bursts into a laughing fit that makes her face turn a shade of crimson as the little hooves rub all over her body, overwhelming her with dozens of tickling sensations in dozens of spots. She’s soon on her back, flailing her hooves in the air and struggling to breathe through her laughter. Her hat has fallen off and was picked up and worn by a filly, but the hat is way too big for her, though, so it ends up covering most of her head, so she has to tilt it so that she can see. The foals continue their relentless tickle attack against Trixie, ignoring her begs to make them stop, not that she could be understood easily since she’s laughing and speaking at the same time.

The teacher walks over to the group and gently shoos the kids away from Trixie. Trixie is grinning from ear to ear, still lying on her back, breathing heavily and sweating from all the laughing and flailing she had done. She looks at the teacher and nods a “Thank you” and the teacher smiles and helps her up.

“Sorry about that, Trixie, these foals hardly had anypony to entertain them until you came along. They just can’t get enough of you,” says the teacher apologetically.

“Oh no, it’s alright, I love entertaining these little guys,” says Trixie while levitating her hat back on her head.

The filly that was wearing the head pouts, but a quick rub on the head from Trixie is enough to lift her spirits. As soon as Trixie rubs her head, the filly gasps, her eyes widen, and a huge smile stretches across her face. Then she squeals happily and runs towards a small group of other fillies that are preoccupied with dolls now.

“Girls! Girls! The Great and Powerful Trixie touched me!” says the filly.

The others look at her in disbelief; but it’s not the kind where those in disbelief think claim is idiotic, but the kind that says that they can’t believe the luck of their friend surpasses theirs by lightyears.

“No way!” gasps another filly.

Trixie chuckles at how excited the fillies are about a simple touch. The teacher grins and looks at Trixie proudly.

“Well, that says a lot about you” says the teacher.

“Yeah... You know, I could get used to being called ‘The Great and Powerful Trixie’” jokes Trixie.

“Well don’t let it get to your head, you know how pride is.”

“Oh relax, Ms. Aural, this is me we’re talking about. Trixie will always be Trixie and there is no changing that.”

Ms. Aural chuckles uneasily as she heads towards her desk to give Trixie her pay for the evening. “Sorry, I guess I didn’t hear the humor in your tone. Which is sad, since I spend my life around a bunch of pranksters.”

The two mares look at the kids playing with each other for a couple of seconds before Ms. Aural hands Trixie the bag of bits. Trixie levitates the bag of her head and thanks her for the pay. Ms. Aural smiles and leads Trixie to the exit of the day care center.

“Will I be seeing you here tomorrow?” asks Ms. Aura as she holds open the door.

“Same time tomorrow, just like it has been for the past month... That is unless I get detention again,” replies Trixie with a smile.

The two laugh and say their farewells. Trixie steps outside to the cobblestone streets of Canterlot and takes a moment to breathe in the fresh air consisting of freshly watered grass and newly bloomed flowers. She also feels the warm rays of the sun warm herself; the inside of the day care center is at least ten degrees cooler than it is outside, and Trixie loves the warm feeling she’s getting. After taking in the wonderful feelings for a few seconds, she takes a deep breath, opens up her eyes and begins trotting down the street. She cheerfully greets the vendors and passerbys along the way, but then someone, or something, catches her eye in an alley. She stops and looks down the shadowy alley to see a familiar, featureless unicorn staring at her. She instantly recognizes him for some reason, as a very gruesome image of her father’s destroyed loft flashes in front of her eyes, followed by her crying in that thing’s shoulder. But oddly enough, Trixie doesn’t feel anything but content with a dab of curiosity. She steadily approaches the shadowy figure and all noise becomes more faint the closer she gets to it. She opens up her mouth to speak, but it talks first.

“You need to wake up,” he says.

Trixie closes her eyes to blink-

[[[[O]]]]

And when she opens her eyes, still expecting to see the Harmony she had experienced, all she sees is the solitary confinement cell. The cell she’s sitting in is cramped, it’s a little over half the size of her normal cell, but it’s not a problem, when she sleeps she’ll be back home where all the pleasant things of life lay in wait for her.

This is going on the fourth day that Trixie has been in solitary confinement and doped up on drugs for everyone’s protection. Trixie’s eyes are dilated and she has a stupid smile plastered on her face as she sways back and forth in her spot, smack dab in the middle of the cell. She can’t think of anything except for sunshine and rainbows... and she loves it! The shadowy thing she saw before waking up is easily forgotten for the euphoric feeling that makes Trixie forget about all her troubles. She doesn’t care that her mane and tail are a mess, or that there is a scab ring around her eye, or that she’s covered in nasty bruises, including a poorly healed split lip. She just feels so happy right now it seems like she’ll never become angry ever again.

Also, for the past four days, whenever she took the pills Sunshine didn’t make an appearance, and every horrible thing that has happened seemed like it was only a distant nightmare. Today is no different. Whatever pills they gave her, she loves it and wants more. They provide an amazing escape from this not so cheerful place.

She doesn’t care to acknowledge the solitary cell door opening, she’s having too much fun imagining all the goodness. And she doesn’t mind the guard that walked in and clips a chain on her collar, or how he nudges her up. She gets up with no protest and willingly follows the guard down the hallway, humming a happy tune to herself, with other guards surrounding her. When they get outside and walk through the passages on the outside of the courtyard, the prisoners leaning by the fence jump away from Trixie and those that are passing through with guard escorts scoot as far away from her as possible.

The guards lead Trixie to the Visitor Room, a long room separated by a wall with thick glass panels showing what’s on the other side. Trixie is brought to the very back where an odd visitor is waiting for her. She is an earth pony mare with mint green coat, a wavy pink mane and tail, and she’s wearing a flower necklace and a flower clip in her hair. Trixie giggles at the amusing sight and pushes a small button on the floor that turns on the intercom for their spot.

“You look funny,” giggles Trixie.

The earth pony smiles and turns on her side of the intercom.

“Genetics, gotta love it,” she says lightheartedly.

“So, who are you? Do you want to be Trixie’s friend?” asks Trixie hopefully.

“Actually, I am a friend of yours, Trixie. And you got some friends in high places.”

“Hmm, I don’t seem to remember you, though.”

“That’s because I became your friend right now, silly. My name is Minty Sprinkles, I’m an associate of Princess Celestia, and I have fantastic news!”

Trixie’s eyes widen and her grin broadens and she puts her hoof against the window as she leans closer to it.

“Do you have candy? Trixie loves candy!” says Trixie, her mouth practically drooling from the thought of having those delectable sweets dissolving in her mouth.

“Even better. Freedom,” says Minty with an amused grin.

“Never heard of it. Is it a bubble gum?”

“I’m not talking about candy, Trixie, I’m talking about freedom freedom. Like a bird flying through the clouds or walking down the streets of Canterlot to buy your special somepony a gift kind of freedom. I’m talking about making new friends freedom.”

Trixie’s hoof slides off the window while she snickers and shakes her head in disbelief.

“You’re funny, Minty. Haven’t you heard? This is Singsong Prison!” says Trixie theatrically while waving her hoof around to emphasize. “Nopony gets out of Singsong!”

“Not easily, Trixie, that is until now,” says Minty while giving a quick wink. “You see, whoever this friend of yours is, had a very long talk with Celestia and for whatever reason the Princess is like ‘Gee, maybe Trixie isn’t all that bad’ and sent me over to pick you up and take you home to Canterlot.”

Trixie laughs again. “Oh Minty, I don’t know you that well, but I think you’re lying.”

“Wow, they must’ve given you some strong stuff,” says Minty.

“It’s not strong. It’s awesome! Trixie feels happy. So, so, sosososososo soooooo happy right now.”

Trixie looks at one of the guards that brought her in, he looks confused by Trixie’s otherworldly bubbly attitude. Her grin widens and the guard shifts uneasily in his spot while glancing at the other guards nervously, they’re only solace is a shrug.

“Do you feel happy?” asks Trixie.

“I’m never happy,” blurts the guard as he snaps his attention to Trixie.

“Oh, do you want a hug?”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“Pretty please.”

“No.”

“Pretty please with a cherry on top.”

“No. Go talk to Misty.”

“Minty,” corrects Minty.

“Whatever. Go bug her.”

Trixie looks at Minty, still smiling. “Soooo, Minty, if I’m out what kind of freedom will the Great and Powerful Trixie get?”

“You’ll get a lot, but I’ll be acting as your caretaker and you’ll be forced to stay in a designated housing unit under my supervision for a while. After all, you did do some bad things and Celestia doesn’t trust you all the way. You’ll have to build up her trust,” replies Minty casually.

“I like trust, trust is good. Trust is very good. Just like candy. Do you like candy? I like mint candy.”

“We’ll buy you all the mint candy you want, how’s that sound?”

Trixie squeals joyfully and claps her hooves together. “Oh yay! This is great! I get candy! Lots and lots of candy!”

Minty motions Trixie to push the intercom button and she quickly pushes the intercom button.

“Do you want Trixie to repeat what she said?” asks Trixie.

“Nah, I can read lips. But, the process to get you officially out will take me a few hours, so sit tight and soon you’ll taste the freshness of sort-of freedom. Which is better than the no freedom you’re getting.”

Trixie nods her head quickly, still grinning from ear to ear, and her messy mane bobs up and down with her head motions. Minty smiles and tells her hang tight and then she leaves. After that, the guards take Trixie back to her solitary cell and she waits patiently for her freedom bringing mare to come and get her. She grins in anticipation for the freedom that Minty is promising her.

That, and some mint candy.

~~~~~~~~~~

A few hours later, Trixie is still sitting in her solitary confinement cell, scowling at the dreaded steel door holding her in this prison in a prison. The drugs have worn off, leaving Trixie feeling empty and hateful. She had been here for three weeks and already she succumbed to the will of the state. After the interrogation at the hands of EIB, she has started wondering how much force it would take for her hoof to crack EIB skulls open, and how long she’ll take beating Brisk Wind before decapitating her. Brisk Wind made Trixie betray her family, and now she’s all alone in Singsong; her only family more than likely being massacred by the Guards and EIB while she sits helplessly in her cell.

At least Trixie has plenty of scumbags to beat up. She’s already beat up twenty inmates (one almost to death apparently), mostly in self defense. But there was that one time an inmate thought it would be funny to feel her up in the shower room. Trixie thinks that must’ve been the inmate she almost killed, it wouldn’t surprise her considering that she did slam the pervert’s face to a shower knob and then stomped on her a dozen times. Now she’s considered to be a psycho by the prison psychology office.

Trixie feels the pain from the bruises she’s sustained over the weeks seeping out and spreading all over her body. She huffs and uncomfortably shifts in her position in an attempt to distract her from the discomfort while still keeping her eyes focused on the door. Trixie is also feeling very doubtful of this “Minty Sprinkles” character; she’s weird and Trixie doesn’t believe her story for a second. She’s curious as to why Celestia would suddenly semi-pardon her. Did she miss the part where she almost destroyed Ponyville, or did that just go over her divine head? Trixie starts to wonder if Celestia is toying with her. There is a reason one of her nicknames is “Trollestia”, after all.

Trixie shifts her position again and continues to stare at the door, waiting for the grungy steel barrier to open and for the guard to drag her along that damn leash of theirs like she’s a dog. Trixie looks at the floor and realizes how dirty it is. The worn concrete is rusting in spots, giving it a bleeding look, and the cracks in the wall and the sounds of water rushing through the pipes add to the dread she’s feeling. And it doesn’t help that the weak light bulb is constantly flickering on and off.

She wants those pills, they’ll take her out of this Hell in no time.

“Ah, don’tcha worry, darlin’, yer still pretty,” says Sunshine.

The voice came from behind her, but Trixie is used to his presence and the way he sneaks around her, so she doesn’t jump, rather she glances over her shoulder. She would like it a whole lot better if he didn’t show up. Like when she took those pills.

She needs those pills.

“Looks won’t save me here,” snarls Trixie.

Sunshine chuckles and moves next to her, he’s still a creepy shadowy presence with red eyes, but at least she can make out some of his original form.

“Ya don’t fear me now? That’s good, Trixie, that means you an’ me can finally be friends,” says Sunshine eagerly.

“You’re annoying,” snaps Trixie.

“Oh don’t be like that.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Leave. Me. Alone.”

“Oh, Trixie, you need a friend. That faceless freak in yer dreams is not yer friend. He’s taunting ya while I’m here with ya always, ready to show ya some love.”

“LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Her horn spurts out some magic and a massive headache that feels like someone had smashed her horn and skull with a sledgehammer instantly follows. Trixie swears and collapses on the floor and rubs her horn while sobbing angrily from the intense pain she had just suffered.

“I hate this place! I hate you! I hate my life!” screams Trixie, her cracking voice bouncing off the grungy walls.

“Aw, there there, darlin’, I’m here for ya,” coos Sunshine.

Sunshine lies next to Trixie and puts his wing over her lovingly and scoots closer to her. His body rubs against Trixie’s like a large ice cube, leaving a shivering wet feeling in the area he rubbed against. Trixie instantly stands up and moves away from Sunshine.

“Why won’t you leave me alone!” demands Trixie.

“I love ya, that’s why,” says Sunshine while standing up.

“No, your obsessed with me! Big difference!”

“Last I checked obsession is ah strong love for somethin’ or somepony.”

Sunshine melts into the ground, and his shadow blob moves along the floor and pops out of the wall next to her. Trixie glares at him, refusing to give him the satisfaction of flinching, twitching, or showing any signs of discomfort, other than anger. Sunshine smiles broadly and moves in front of Trixie. She scrunches her nose when she smells his horrid breath.

Trixie really needs those pills. She can’t stand Sunshine’s presence.

“And I love ya, Trixie. Always have when I first saw ya,” says Sunshine softly, his red eyes flaring after saying “I love ya”.

Trixie is about to say something, but the cell door opens and a guard walks in with the chain; there’s a small group of guards waiting outside for him to come out with Trixie. He walks through Sunshine and the deformed pegasus disappears into a mist. When the guard leashes Trixie he leads her out and the guards escort her out of the solitary confinement area.

Trixie’s mind goes blank as they lead her to the releasing area. First, they give her a quick wash that makes her sparkle. Well, almost sparkle, she would be if it wasn’t for the large amount of bruises she had sustained from her short stay, but at least her mane and tail got their natural curl and shine back. After they wash her up, they remove her collar and the cuff on her horn with plenty of unicorn guards watching to make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid. And when that is taken care of they give her a month’s supply of her prescription drugs that were issued to her by Dr. Wave, and then they take her to Minty, who is waiting for them on the outer section of the prison. Minty is alone and beaming at Trixie, which makes Trixie feel all the more uncomfortable and suspicious.

“Boy, you look grumpy for somepony who just won their freedom,” Minty says while cocking her head slightly.

“The circumstances are suspicious to me,” says Trixie coldly.

“Yeah, the circumstances are odd, but at least you’re getting your freedom right?”

Trixie is silent and Minty moves next to her and playfully nudges her side with her elbow. Trixie scowls and inches away from Minty after she does that.

“Riiiiiight?” says Minty playfully.

“Yeah, I guess so,” grumbles Trixie.

“Good! My cart is outside. Next stop is Canterlot!”

Trixie scoffs and follows Minty outside. When they step outside, Trixie figured she’d be overwhelmed with the size of the open landscape in front of her and the joys she’d get from being set free. But everything is suspicious to Trixie and she absolutely hates the way Minty is being so bubbly over nothing! It’s bad enough that she doesn’t trust her own freedom, but the only thing she knows about the mare that set her free is that she’s colorful and obnoxious. That makes her claim hard to swallow.

Minty leads Trixie towards the parking area and points at masterpiece of modern individual pony travel and says: “Tada!”

Trixie’s jaw drops when she sees what she’s going to be riding in. It is a massive vehicle that Trixie recognizes to be a Mini-Train, Cart Class.

The front of the vehicle has a scaled down train engine and the triangular piece that they have on the front with the exhaust pipe directed towards the back, and positioned behind it is the driver carriage. A rectangular, polished wooden cabin with a slanted window and a black roof covering it. Hanging down from the roof are the window wipers and large headlights, and behind the driver carriage is a truck bed that is five feet long. Also, the tires are fat. Very fat. And the windows have curtains on the inside!

Minty opens up the passenger door and in a comically fake Canterlot accent says: “After you, Ms. Lulamoon.”

Trixie looks inside, expecting it to be cramped, but it’s surprisingly spacious. The chairs are tailored to that of a pony, and are fluffy as well, and the dashboard is made of wood and has a very basic assortment of tools in front of the driver seat. There is an orb on the dashboard designed to fit snugly with the space beneath the hoof on the left side, a lever on the right, and in the middle are gauges that show the speed, fuel, and engine temperature and pressure. There is also a giant keyhole and a button for a horn.

Trixie climbs inside and the first thing she notices, besides how comfortable the seat is, is that there is a hole for her tail to go through. Trixie looks over her shoulder to make sure her tail isn’t going somewhere that it shouldn’t, then she looks over at Minty and sees her tail is also poking out the back of the seat as well. Minty then starts the vehicle by shoving her key inside the big keyhole and she presses it down with a click. It takes a couple of presses because it kept popping back up, but when she gets it work the vehicle rumbles and belches thick black smoke out the back. Then it moves forward, slowly at first, but it gradually picks up speed and soon they are driving away from Singsong Prison at speeds that would leave a pony galloping at full speed in the dust. Minty is using precise hoof motions on the orb to steer the vehicle and keeps the speed steady using the lever to increase or decrease the speed.

Trixie is like a filly in a candy shop as she presses her face against the window to watch the lines on the paved road speed by them in yellow blurs and moves around the inside, touching everything that she can touch (including messing with the curtain). All suspicion had been tossed out the window as soon as they started moving, and Minty is having fun watching the Great and Powerful Trixie’s reactions to this new experience.

Minty grins at Trixie and cheerfully says: “Having fun, Trixie?”

Trixie is speechless, so she just nods her head quickly while grinning from ear to ear, and  Minty also nods and continues looking down the road.

“Now, Trixie, before we do anything we have to do two things. Thing one, Princess Celestia wants to talk to you. Thing two, we gotta get you a job. Luckily for you, I know a cool guy that’ll get you one,” says Minty.

Trixie nods, she’s still marveling at how fast they are going and not really in the mood for a conversation. She just wants to watch everything zip on by. It’s an amazing sight!

Time speeds by Trixie as she watches the surrounding area disappear from view. She even goes as far as rolling down the window and poking her head out to see what they left behind. The cool wind flying through her mane makes her forget about all her troubles and she closes her eyes and listens to the cool wind rush past her ears. When Trixie’s had enough pulls her head inside and smiles broadly at Minty, without rolling the window up. She loves the fresh air rushing in.

“This is amazing!” says Trixie happily over the rushing wind.

“Yep, sure is. Flim and Flam do know their vehicles.” says Minty, matching Trixie’s optimism.

“I want one of these! How much did this cost?”

“Oh this thing? Psh, about seventy five thousand bits. Nothing big”

Trixie’s smile fades away. “Are-Are you serious? Seventy five thousand bits and it’s ‘nothing big’? How much do you make!”

“Oh, I make about forty thousand bits a year, but I have a payment plan and a warranty on this baby.”

“What do you do, Minty?”

“I told you, I’m an associate of Celestia.”

“But what about that new law that restricts ponies to employment based on cutie marks?”

“That? Oh please, that thing is a joke. There are so many loopholes in that bill that it makes a polka dot shirt with the dots cut out cry. I’m Celestia’s ‘Candy Associate’”

Minty giggles at the lame joke and Trixie arches an eyebrow. She’s grateful that Minty got her out, but she is one weird pony.

“So if you’re Celestia’s ‘Candy Associate’, shouldn’t you be getting her candy?” asks Trixie.

“We are,” says Minty simply.

Trixie stares at Minty for a moment, and then a horrible idea bullies its way to the front of her mind.

“...Wait a second. Are you saying... Are you saying that I’m Celestia’s candy?” asks Trixie uneasily.

Minty’s eyes widen and her jaw drops as she stares at Trixie. She can’t believe that Trixie would even think of something like that!

“What!? Ew no! That is-Just no!” says Minty in disgust while shaking her head hysterically. “That sounds wrong. We just had ‘Release Trixie’ in the list of things relating to getting candy at the candy store. You said you like mint, right?”

“Um... I guess so,” says Trixie quietly, she’s embarrassed to have even thought of something like that and even more so when she saw Minty’s reaction.

“Cool!”

“But-”

“I’m going to say your a mint gum type of pony. Am I right?”

“...How did you know?”

“Intuition.”

Trixie slumps in her seat, the weird pony is slightly creeping her out now. Minty smiles reassuringly at Trixie as they pull towards the bustling city of Canterlot with lines of more vehicles moving in and out.

“Sorry if I’m scaring you, my perception scares my friends sometimes,” says Minty.

“Who are your friends?” asks Trixie curiously.

Minty shrugs and slows down as they enter the crowded metropolis, where there are speed limits posted for all to see. Trixie looks at the towering skyscrapers and the zeppelins displaying patriotic messages floating above them. The sun shines off the polished windows like hundreds of tiny stars, and she realizes that most to the buildings are actually built from inside older ones! The first few stories are made of marble, brick, wood, and any other old building material, and then sprouting out of them are the steel monoliths. Sort of like architectural sleeves for buildings.  It looks very odd to Trixie, and she wonders who the genius was that decided to start a trend like that. It doesn’t look cool, it looks tacky, at least to Trixie, anyway.

Then Trixie realizes that Minty never answered her question. Well she did, but not verbally, and she can tell that the colorful pony is trying to keep a cheerful attitude.

“Minty, you didn’t say who your friends were,” says Trixie, she doesn’t want to prod too much but curiosity is getting the best of her at the moment.

“Oh they’re just normal ponies, nothing special about them. We all work for Princess Celestia in some department or whatever, but we talk and hang out whenever we can,” says Minty, sounding slightly agitated.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to prod.”

“Oh, it’s not you. It’s this moron who isn’t driving at the speed limit!”

Minty honks her horn and pokes her head out of the truck to glare at the car in front of them. It’s a small, blocky vehicle with a polished wooden frame held together by metal trim, and on the back is a boiler engine spewing out polluted steam; just like most of the other vehicles Trixie has seen so far.

“Hey buddy, the speed limit’s forty! Start moving or go in the slow lane!” yells Minty.

A mare pokes her head out of her vehicle and shakes her hoof at them. She shouts: “Buck you!”, then pulls her head back inside and continues on with her turtle speed

Trixie cringes as Minty’s eyes narrow.

“Oh she didn’t,” sneers Minty.

“Uh, Minty are you okay?” asks Trixie uneasily.

“I will be in a moment.”

Minty starts speeding up and soon the front of the truck is bumping up against the little car in front of them. Minty cackles psychotically and Trixie’s ears droop and shrinks down in her seat while shifting her eyes side to side nervously. She swears that she’ll book it if Minty squishes the car in front of them. When she hears metal grinding against metal she shrinks down even further and prays that nothing will happen.

“Hey, lady! Looks like you better speed up!” yells Minty.

The little car suddenly shoots forward and weaves through the other cars, making some of the vehicles swerve out of the way and ponies jump to safety. Horns honk and insults are thrown out almost instantly and Minty sighs with relief and her smile returns as she looks at Trixie. Trixie is scrunched in the seat and staring nervously at Minty while trembling fearfully.

“Don’t worry, no pony was hurt,” assures Minty.

“You sure about that?” asks Trixie nervously.

“Yep. Oh there it is!”

Minty swerves into a parking lot, throwing Trixie out of her seat and making her fly into Minty’s side. Minty does another sharp turn and Trixie yelps as she slides into the passenger door. Then Minty yanks the speed lever all the way down, bringing the massive vehicle to an abrupt stop in front of a candy store that looks like a giant bonbon. The sudden stop makes Trixie lurch forward and her face collides with the windshield. Trixie whimpers as she pulls away from the windshield and then she glares at Minty while holding her nose. But she cocks her head and forgets about the pain when she sees the odd building that they are in front of. Minty eagerly hops out of her truck and trots to Trixie’s side.

“C’mon, Trixie, we gotta get some candy for the Princess,” says Minty enthusiastically.

“But-But what-Do I have to?” stammers Trixie childishly.

Minty opens Trixie’s door and gives her a stern stare. “Yes, you’re my responsibility and I have to keep my eye on you at all times. Now get out and help me buy candy.”

Trixie points at her face and says: “But I look like I just got mugged!”

“No, you look like a badflank. And nopony messes with a badflank unless they’re a badflank themselves, now hop out!”

Trixie groans and reluctantly gets out of the truck and walks inside the candy store with her head down. As soon as she steps inside she feels the temperature difference as the owner has the air conditioning put on at full blast. Trixie actually gets a small shiver from the huge temperature difference. The two are unenthusiastically greeted by a unicorn mare with an aquamarine coat and cyan mane and tail that has white highlights. She’s wearing a clown outfit and looks extremely displeased about her job.

“Hi, welcome to Bon Bon’s Bon Bon Land. Home of bon bons and other yummy candies,” says the unicorn in a tone that is begging for someone to switch out with her.

“Thanks!” says Minty cheerfully while hopping past the poor unicorn and snagging a store basket.

“Um... Enjoy your day,” says Trixie quietly while keeping her head low.

“Thanks,” grumbles the unicorn under her breath.

Trixie follows Minty through colorful crowded aisles overrun with eager foals and aggravated parents, and stallions complaining about finding the perfect candy for their picky mates. Minty easily finds what she’s looking for and grabs a dozen or so bags of chocolate and caramel candies and puts them in the store basket she had grabbed earlier.

“Princess Celestia loves chocolate and caramel,” says Minty cheerfully.

“So I’ve noticed,” mumbles Trixie.

Then Trixie feels a poke on her back and she looks behind her to see a colt staring at her. He has a white coat and brown spots with a brown mane and tail that have a lighter shade of brown streaks. He’s also smaller than most colts his age.

“Sorry ma’am, but I was just wondering if you were okay since you got bruises all over you,” he says in a Trottingham accent.

Before Trixie can answer, the colt’s mother lightly pushes him away with her hoof. His mother is a chubby earth pony with a brown coat, white spots, and a curly white mane.

“Pipsqueak, what have I told you about talking to those kinds of ponies,” says the mother sternly, she has a really thick Trottingham accent

Trixie frowns at the mother and wonders what she had meant by “those kinds of ponies”. It’s obviously not a good thing, and while the two ponies have a small argument Trixie inspects herself. Sure she’s covered in bruises and scratches and has a horrible scar ring around her eye, but shouldn’t that buy some sympathy? Or do they just think she’s some kind of druggy?

“Awww but mother!” whines Pipsqueak.

“One more word and you get no candy for your birthday!” snaps his mother.

Pipsqueak huffs and walks away with his head down. Trixie shakes her head sadly and turns around to follow Minty, but doesn’t see her anywhere. She walks around, trying to keep her nerves in check and she calls out for Minty, but gets no reply, except for a scrawny employee telling her where the mint section is.

“I don’t want mint!” snaps Trixie, this makes the employee cringe. “I’m looking for a pony named Minty Sprinkles. She looks-she has a bright green coat, pink hair, a candy cutie mark, kinda obnoxious. Have you seen her?”

“Lady, this is a candy store. Everypony is obnoxious,” says the employee dryly.

“And the Worst Employee of the Month Award goes to you. Get outta my way.”

Trixie shoves the employee aside and searches for Minty in the maze of crowded, candy filled aisles. Along the way she passes the manager’s office and doesn’t think anything about the three shadows in the room at first, but when she hears someone threaten another, she stops and sneaks up by the door and listens in.

“Look, Bon Bon, you’re a nice mare, and me and Grim like you a lot, but the point is you haven’t paid Gilda in what... four months?” says a female with a light Stalliongrad accent.

“Sounds about right” grumbles a male with a ridiculously deep voice.

“Look I’ll pay Gilda, alright! I just need more time!” says, whom Trixie is guessing is, Bon Bon; she’s trying to be brave, but Trixie can hear the fear in her voice plainly.

“Four months is a long time not to pay and now your asking for more time?” says the female.

“Yes, I have employees to pay and stocks to -you know- restock.”

“Look, Bon Bon, I’m a patient griffin, a very patient griffin, and the only reason why Gilda hasn’t had this place shot up is because I said: ‘Look, Gilda, Bon Bon is a good mare, she’ll pay up’. And Gilda said: ‘Winny, get her pay by the end of the week or she’s dead’. It’s the end of the week and I can’t protect you any longer.”

There is a moment of silence and Trixie leans closer to the door and hears uneasily shuffling.

“But Sunday is the end of the week,” says Bon Bon nervously.

“No, Friday is,” says the female, Winny.

“But I base all my schedule on Sunday being the end of the week.”

“And we use the Griffin Calendar when doing griffin stuff, which includes you. So we’ll be seeing you tonight. Don’t leave town, we’ll make your death slower for you and some random friend of yours if you do.”

Trixie quickly backs up and pretends searching for some candy as the door opens up with two griffins walking out; one male and one female. The female is slender and has red tips on her head feathers with red eyeshadow. The male she’s with is buff, most likely a steroid user, and is wearing an eyepatch with a huge bald spot on the top of his head. They look at Trixie suspiciously as she casually turns a box of  gumballs in her magical mist. She looks at them and smiles uneasily as the male griffin steps forward to confront her, but Winny grabs his shoulder and shakes her head.

“Leave her, Grim, she’s just looking for candy,” she says, then quietly says: “Besides, she looks like a badass, and remember what happened last time you fought a badass?”

Grim glares at Winny and she smirks and pats him on the shoulder.

“Let’s get out of here, Gilda’s waiting for us” Winny says casually, then she looks at Trixie and politely says: “Enjoy your day, ma’am.”

“You too,” says Trixie, forcing herself to smile politely.

Winny and Grim leave Trixie, but Grim looks over his shoulder at Trixie suspiciously before disappearing around the corner to the lollipop aisle. When they are out of view Trixie tries to peek inside the office, but the door is slammed shut from the inside. Then Minty shows up out of the blue with her little mouth-held cart filled to the brim with candies. She sets down on the floor and grins at Trixie.

“There you are! I was looking all over for you! You are one sneaky mare, I’ll be sure to keep both of my eyes on you from now on. What’s that you got there?” says Minty.

Trixie looks at the box she’s holding and smiles nervously while putting it back. “Oh it’s nothing.”

“You sure?” asks Minty.

“Yeah... Can we go now?”

“Sure thing, we got what we needed anyway and Princess Celestia is awaiting your presence in her court for the little chat she wants to have with you.”

Trixie nods and follows Minty to the checkout lanes. It only took them twenty minutes to get checked out, and the whole time Trixie felt the eyes of the customers and employees looking at her with a mix of suspicion, worry, and the occasional pity. Trixie keeps her head down and tries to avoid eye contact, but she keeps seeing that colt, Pipsqueak, giving her a quick glance while he and his mother shuffle through the checkout lane. When he and his mother are done checking out he gives Trixie one last quick look before leaving the store. When it is Trixie and Minty’s turn up to check out the cashier tried poorly to hide her annoyance by the impossible amount of candy Minty had managed to stuff inside, and the price for all that came up to be sixty seven bits, tax included.

Once the duo is outside, Minty takes a deep breath, smiles and then looks at Trixie.

“Ready to talk to a goddess?” asks Minty excitedly.

“Let’s just get this over with,” mumbles Trixie.

“Okie dokie lokie!”

Minty helps Trixie inside and when she gets inside and starts her cart, Trixie stares at the glamorous white towers of the Royal Palace that overlook Canterlot like a benevolent, yet terrifying, entity. But Trixie doesn’t care about the imposing features of the palace, she just wants some answers as to why she was suddenly released. And now was the time to get some.

Arc 1- 11- The Stone Reaper -ADDITION-

Arc 2- 3 (Investigating the Investigators)

“Gooooood afternoon, Canterlot! DJ-Pon3 here to bring you the news about what’s going on in Equestria! I know, I know, you’re all thinking ‘But DJ, we could care less about the news! Give us some music!’ and I say to you: Relax. You’ll get your music. We’re going to spice things up a bit from the regular schedule to introduce some new rising stars. Including: Three Barns Up, Ghostie Hunter, some Firefly, Dissipation and Chain Link Park. But news comes first!”

DJ-Pon3 clears her throat and for dramatic effect shuffles papers in front of her microphone.

“Let’s see here. First thing’s first, the Martial Law that’s in effect is to be taken very seriously. I’m serious guys, don’t screw around with the Guards, they’re on a hair trigger here. Secondly, the terrorists responsible for the attacks on Ponyville have been, I quote: ‘Eradicated with extreme prejudice’. End quote. That’s right! Those guys that have been terrorizing our beautiful nation have been taken out by our brave mares and colts in armor. Be sure to give them a hug and a big, generous thank you if your special somepony wears armor. They deserve it. However, that’s not to say that the terrorists are out for the count. So be careful and vigilant when helping our guardians. Thirdly, this one is interesting, there is a rumor that Shining Armor is doing a full investigation into the Equestrian Investigation Bureau. This little investigation is definitely ruffling Brisk Wind’s feathers. Let me see if I can find a quote from her in this messy pile of... of... huh, so that’s where my snack went. And here it is!”

DJ-Pon3 clears her throat before she talk again, this time she’s using a poor impersonation of Brisk Wind’s voice. “‘I’m sure Shining Armor is a nice colt with the best intentions, but there are places for brawns and there are places for brains. Our ponies protect the citizens of Equestria using brains while Captain Armor’s ponies use brawns. We do not try to understand why the Guards do things their way and they should not try to understand why we do things our way’.”

DJ-Pon3 makes a drawn out whistle, followed by a seething sound, and when she talks again, she’s using her normal voice. “I don’t know about you guys, but Brisk Wind sounded snappy there.” DJ-Pon3 makes a feisty cat hiss, then she chuckles. “Okay, I got one last piece of news for you before I give you guys your daily dose of music. The Rehabilitation Program is in full swing! Yep, you heard me right! Under a plan crafted by Brisk Wind herself, the Rehabilitation Program will take jailed ponies -that are still serving their sentences, mind you- and reintroduce them into society by rehabilitating them to be better ponies. Send me a letter or give me a call about what you guys think about this move. But not now, now is the time for music!”

++++++++++

Shining Armor limps into a large, brightly lit, crowded room with ponies doing analytical work. They had recently assaulted the League of Justice’s headquarters, and thanks to what Trixie had shared, their victory was quick and decisive. He couldn’t join because of his injuries, even though tradition said that Captains of the Royal Guard always joined their troops in major battles. But apparently a doctor’s note, a long and painful argument with the misses, and a scolding by Celestia overruled that tradition. But now that the battle is over, the teams of analysts back at the Royal Guard Headquarters are analyzing the flood of audio recordings and notes. There is a lot that they have to go through, crowding the room to near suffocation levels with large tables that have tape recorders playing back audio recordings, tables with ponies comparing notes -and in some cases, deciphering horrible writing-, and then there are the ponies with the most mind numbingly boring of jobs: organizing and storing all the data. Because there is so much activity going on in the already stuffed room, Shining Armor had ordered the air conditioning to be put on at full blast. The cool rush of air being pushed down from the ceiling from the giant fans doesn’t do much, but it’s enough to keep the analysts from falling asleep due to heat fatigue. If anything, the sudden brushes of cold air might jolt them out of their boredom induced trances.

Shining Armor sighs heavily and limps through the rows of analysts, occasionally listening in to what they are saying, but mostly to see if they are doing their jobs. Some of the analysts glance at Shining Armor and realize how weary he is. His movements are even more sluggish, the bags under his eyes are more defined, his eyes are distant, and now his mane and tail are not  as well kept as his uniform, which is still kept in pristine appearance.

Shining Armor had arrived at the analyzing room, much to the dismay of Cadence, because he needs to see what his soldiers went through. He couldn’t be there for them so this is the least he could do. Besides, he got an urgent letter regarding an audio recording that had something to do with Roar Shock. Just that name alone makes Shining Armor twitch with anger. He believes Roar Shock to be the catalyst of all the chaos that’s going on in Equestria, and he sincerely hopes that the terrorist leader is dead, but the one who analyzed  the recording, a new mare named Aural Wave, sounded very nervous in the letter she sent. So he’s guessing that the news regarding Roar Shock is not as good as he’s hoping it will be.

When Shining Armor gets to the very back of the analyzing room he enters a smaller room where Brisk Wind and Aural are waiting for him. Aural is an earth pony that has with a buttery coat and a green mane and tail with red streaks, and her cutie mark is a megaphone in a circle.

Shining Armor and Brisk Wind exchange cold glares as he enters the room, and as soon as the door closes he looks at Aural.

“What did you find?” asks Shining Armor.

“I don’t think Roar Shock is dead, sir,” says Aural uneasily.

“Okay, now that Captain Armor is finally here you can play that tape.” Brisk Wind says moodily.

Aural nods her head quickly and presses down on the play button. The device clicks on and tapes make a whirring noise as they spin. A few seconds later the audio plays. It’s jumbled at first, but Shining Armor can make out someone talking, and it gets clearer after a good twenty seconds have passed.

“So this is the Bird Cage, huh?” snickers the soldier using the device, pot shots of gunfire can be heard in the background.

“Oh man, just look at the size of this place,”  another soldier says in wonder.

“Okay, you know the drill, get inside and clear it out.”

There are jumbled responses that acknowledge the order, some are professional but most are childish at best. They hear the soldiers stomp down the steps while orders are being casually said. But Shining Armor jaw tightens when he hears something that sounds like turbine engines whirring to life. It’s faint at first, but it gets louder and the soldiers start swearing and firing blindly at whatever is making that noise. Then he hears familiar electric shots, explosions and soldiers screaming in pain and fear as metal groans and snaps, causing whatever was shot to collapse.

“Take it out!” barks the soldier with the recorder.

The soldiers shouts are incoherent over the gunfire, explosions, and feedback on the device. Shining Armor finds himself inching closer and getting more and more nervous as the electric shots continue to tear apart the troops. Then there is another explosion and what sounds like the engine sputtering and whining in protest followed by a loud banging noise and more objects collapsing to the ground. The soldier that shot down the mysterious attacker is congratulated as the soldiers move in.

“Flank it! Flank it! Make sure it’s dead!” shouts the same soldier.

The crackling fire and sparks are barely heard over the thunderous hoof steps that dominate the sound from the recorder. When they reach whatever it is they shot down, they gasp and murmur in confusion at what they’re looking at. Shining Armor’s ears twitch when he hears the engines sputter their last breath. He knows this is not over and he has a gut wrenching feeling that’s telling him what happens next will be horrible.

“What the hay is that?” wonders one of the soldiers.

“I don’t know, it kinda looks like an alien robot or somethin’,” says another.

“Well I think it’s dead, it’s not moving,” says the soldier with the recorder.

One of the soldier’s kicks the “machine”, making a dong noise.

“Dibs on that tail blade,” jokes a soldier, obviously fresh from camp.

The soldiers get into a playful argument about who gets what for their trophy. Then a stallion in the background shouts something in a mix of fury and anguish. The soldiers swear and the chaotic shooting returns with orders being barked and over the soldiers swearing.

“Up top! Up top!”

“Their flanking us!”

As the group listens in, the blood drains from their face when whatever it was that the soldiers shot down gets back up. The pieces of this “machine” whir and click, and it stomps on the ground, surely leaving prints where it stomped judging from the deafening banging noises that it made when it got up.

“Oh shit! That thing is back up!”

“Kill it! Kill it!”

“Our bullets aren’t working!”

There is muffled voice that screams for whoever the assailant is to take cover; the name said was hard to understand over the chaos in the room. The surviving soldiers continue firing and shouting and one by one they die with agonizing screams mixed with wet slices or bone crushing blows. A minute later, there is mostly silence. Shining Armor listens in carefully as he hears someone painfully and weakly gasping for air mixing with that of muffled panicked, grief stricken breathing.

“I-I’m sorry, Shock... I-I’m sorry... I thought they killed you,” whispers the fallen weakly.

“Stay with me, okay?... Look at me. Stay with me... Stay with me, you’re going to make it,” cries this thing, most likely Roar Shock, softly. “No, don’t close your eyes. Look at me.”

Shining Armor is sure that Roar Shock removed his helmet when he hears a hissing noise, followed by a pop and metal clanging to the ground.

“See? Look at me. You see my eyes right?... Yeah?... Good. Good. You’re going to make it, okay? I’m going to get you out, I just need you to stay awake and look at me,” says Roar Shock, his voice sounds gruff and scratchy without his helmet on, but the listeners can picture the tears flowing from his eyes just from his tone.

His fallen comrade whispers something that no one can understand except for Roar Shock, and they can hear him sob and whimper and beg his friend not to go.

“No, no please. Please don’t go. Oh please, Luna... No. Not him too. Not him. Nononono. Oh no. Luna, no!” sobs Roar Shock.

There is more sobbing and begging, and the soldier with the recorder groans and shifts in his spot. His breath is labored and painful at first, but something happens where they hear his breathing change to sporadic fear and hear his hooves desperately scrape on the ground to get away. The metallic stomping and the terrified begging and agonizing screaming sends shivers up the spine in everyone’s room. Roar Shock shouts something indiscernible and the soldier howls in pain as the tail blade stabs him; the screaming is brought to an end by what sounds like multiple, furious stomps. Everyone in the room cringes as they hear bones snap over the furious screaming and mechanical stomping; the audio is so horrifying that it brings Aural to tears. When the gruesome execution is finished, heavy breathing is heard on the other end, really close to the microphone. Roar Shock sniffles and and brings the recorder up and starts speaking.

“I tried to save Equestria from the vermin and corruption that have violated my home, our nation, our lives! And rather than helping us you interfer. Rather than fighting for what is right you do this! You come into my home, spill the blood of my FAMILY! MY SISTERS! MY BROTHERS!... I now see that Equestria is beyond salvation... You may have won this battle, but you will lose this war... Justice is coming for all of you.”

The audio abruptly ends and Shining Armor stares at the tape as it lazily slows to a stop, then he glances up at Brisk Wind and sees that she looks worried for once. Aural also looks like she’s ready to puke from the anxiety she’s feeling, and when Shining Armor looks at her she starts talking.

“When the soldiers got there, they found the whole team dead and the tape recorder was in poor condition. There was nopony around, except for the fallen soldiers and some fallen terrorists,” says Aural anxiously.

“What about the pony Roar Shock spoke to?” asks Shining Armor.

“We’re still identifying the bodies, but I’m guessing he took the body with him to give him a proper burial.”

Shining Armor dismisses Aural, and when she’s gone he turns his attention to Brisk Wind; her icy blue coat is paler than usual and her eyes are transfixed on the the slowly spinning tapes.

“We need to tell Princess Celestia that Roar Shock is still alive,” says Shining Armor sternly.

“I’ll tell her the news, you don’t look so well,” says Brisk Wind, she’s still staring at the tape recorder.

“I think we should both tell her.”

“Captain, look at you. You look like you’re about to collapse on the job.”

“Now is not the time for naps, Director.”

“How can you even think straight when you’re running on an hour of sleep?”

Shining Armor furrows his brow, she does have a point, but he doesn’t trust her. He trusts diamond dogs more than he trusts her. Brisk Wind looks at Shining Armor, expecting him to answer her question, even though it sounded rhetorical in nature to the Captain.

“Director, I appreciate your concern for my well being, but this is a matter that pertains to national security on the highest levels and I must be present to tell her,” says Shining Armor as patiently as he can muster, which at this point is not much.

“I understand that, but you are in no condition to meet Celestia,” says Brisk Wind sternly. “Go home, go to your wife, and sleep. You’ll feel and look much better and you’ll think clearer.”

“Fine, I’ll go home.”

Brisk Wind smiles.

“But only if you give me the files I requested,” says Shining Armor abruptly.

Brisk Wind’s smile is instantly replaced with a large frown and her eyes narrow to that of slits.

“Are you serious,” sneers Brisk Wind.

“If I’m going to be relaxing at home then I might as well do some work,” says Shining Armor coolly.

“That’s not how relaxing works! When you relax, you go home and you sleep! You don’t go asking for more work! Especially when that work is an investigation that Celestia doesn’t want you doing!”

“Technically she didn’t say she doesn’t want me doing it, she just doesn’t like the idea-”

“Which means you don’t do it.”

“Of me doing it because she-Director, in this time we must be cooperative and our departments must be open to one another!”

“You’re unbelievable! Cooperation doesn’t mean investigation!”

“Right, cooperation means we’re open to one another. You show me what you have and I’ll show you what I have and together we can get Roar Shock.”

“And what could you possibly have that will be of value to me?”

Shining Armor smirks and limps out of the room without saying a word. Brisk Wind stares at him, not convinced that he has something, but when the door closes something snaps in her mind and her wings extend from excitement. Maybe he does have something after all. And if he does, in fact, have something that she doesn’t, then she wants it. And she wants it now.

Brisk Wind hastily pushes open the door and marches with determination after him. As they weave their way between the rows of working ponies, Brisk Wind tries to hold her dignity even though she’s borderlining begging Shining Armor to tell her what he knows. When they are near the exit, Brisk Wind flies over Shining Armor and blocks his way out. Shining Armor stops and yawns for the first time in hours while Brisk Wind ruffles her feathers to show the she is in charge now. She will get those mysterious files one way or the other.

“Captain Armor, you will tell me what you know right this instant!” orders Brisk Wind.

“Give me your files then,” says Shining Armor tiredly.

“Fine, I’ll send them to your office, but I want what you know on my desk no later than tomorrow.”

“Deal. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to tell Celestia about the threat.”

Shining Armor winces and his horn sputters pathetically as weak magical sparks shoot out the tip and magical fluids trickle down through the unhealed cracks on his horn. Brisk Wind is briefly covered in the rosy aura of his magic, and she shifts slightly to the left of the doorway, but not enough for the unicorn to pass. His attempt to move Brisk Wind only leaves him with a skull splitting headache and the fond memory of him at the hospital being told to keep magic use to the bare minimum. Shining Armor grumbles and rubs his horn, it has a throbbing sensation in it now, and this time it’s Brisk Wind’s turn to smile smugly.

“Oh, it looks like that horn of yours is giving you a nasty headache, you really need to rest,” says Brisk Wind sardonically.

“You don’t say,” Shining Armor says in a tone that matches Brisk Wind’s.

Then, with a quick motion of his good forehoof, he slides Brisk Wind out of the way and she scoffs hatefully with the massive amount of disrespect she had just received. Shining Armor limps down the polished hallway, doing his best to marvel at the beautiful snow white pillars and the gold trims they have, as well as the stained glasses that depict epic stories of Equestrian history. Then, of course, there is the tiled floor, which is polished so well that he can see his reflection on the artistic rendering of Celestia’s power. However, all that great sight seeing is hard to enjoy when one is stalked by a narcissistic pegasus.

“Captain Armor, stop walking this instant!” orders Brisk Wind.

Shining Armor looks over his shoulder, still limping, and watches Brisk Wind fly after him with a fire in her eyes. She lands next to him and matches her trot with his limp; Shining Armor doesn’t give her the benefit of eye contact.

“The deal was I give you what you want and you go home and sleep,” says Brisk Wind angrily. “So if you go to with me to tell Princess Celestia about Roar Shock then I will declare our deal null and void.”

“Who said I was going in pony? I’m going to my office to write a letter to the Princess, addressing the situation, and then I’ll send it and be on my way back home,” says Shining Armor; he yawns again after finishing his sentence.

“That wasn’t the deal!”

“No, the deal was I wouldn’t accompany you to Celestia’s chambers in exchange for information on both of our accounts. I won’t be going physically but I will still tell Celestia, via letter, of what’s going on because that is the responsible thing to do. Why don’t you want me in the chambers with you anyway?”

“You’re giving Celestia a letter is telling her what she’ll already know is just plain stupid, Captain. And for the record, I don’t want you with me because you look disgraceful and lack of sleep leads to ponies saying and doing stupid things. I, myself, and fully awake and functioning at peak capacity so my thoughts are clear.”

“Well luckily for you I won’t be seeing the Princess face to face, she’ll only see my typed message.”

Brisk Wind stops dead in her tracks, her jaw drops in disbelief and she makes a small, pathetic “Huh”-squeak hybrid. Jealous thoughts buzz in her mind like a swarm of angry bees as she wonders how Shining Armor is able to get a typewriter when she, the Director of the EIB, has to go through a stack of papers just to get a new coffee machine. Shining Armor, on the other hand, smiles again and continues his limping. Another small victory for the Captain of the Royal Guard.

“I’d love to stay and chat, Director, but I have a letter to type and I don’t want to keep you from your duties,” says Shining Armor, still holding his complacent tone.

Brisk Wind grits her teeth and trembles with great anger and annoyance as she watches Shining Armor hobble away from her. When Shining Armor is a dozen or so paces away from the angry pegasus, she whines and sporadically stomps her hooves like a filly throwing a temper tantrum. She absolutely despises the amount of unfairness she’s receiving. She knows he’s getting the good stuff just because he’s married to Celestia’s niece!

By the time Brisk Wind done throwing her fit, her mane and tail have lost their well kept look and the strands of hair are now all over the place. She also finds herself sweating with the loose strands of her mane hanging down in front of her eyes. She takes a deep breath and slowly breathes out through the nose while closing her eyes. When icy blue pegasus opens her eyes, she wipes the strands from her line of sight and then glances at her side to see a couple of Royal Guards staring at her. She knows that they want to laugh at her behind their stoic, stone still expressions. Brisk Wind opens her mouth to say something, but ends up scoffing and taking flight instead; she’s simply too aggravated to walk or talk.

=**********=

Shining Armor walks into his grand office for the sole purpose of typing the letter to Celestia. His office has a great view of Canterlot, and before the population boom that led to the towering steel buildings dominating the view he would enjoy staring out the window to look at the elegant buildings. But now he only sees huge, not-so-elegant buildings and zeppelins floating in designated paths with their messages displayed for all to see. Plus, with all the combustion engine vehicles driving around the once white city now has a layer of smog over it that gives the place a slight gray tint to it.

Shining Armor sighs and closes the curtains, blocking the view and all sunlight and leaving his only source of light to be the crystal chandelier hanging down from the decorative ceiling. He’s glad to finally have a fabled typewriter in his possession, even though it forced him to get another desk since the device took up just about every bit of space he had on his original desk. The typewriter would be a metallic eyesore for ponies of high standards like Rarity; but confound the enormous hooves! They are the reasons why the buttons are so big in the first place! And the big size does make it a bit awkward to use since some of the buttons require him to lean forward a smidge to push. Then there’s the ink cartridge, the cartridge is like a blocky bulge on the typewriter’s backside and has already leaked on him twice, leaving a dried puddle of ink that dripped down the back of the desk and stained the carpet. But despite its aggravating flaws, he can see why earth ponies and pegasi would want to own a typewriter. It’s a horrible experience writing with your mouth, and Shining Armor found that out the hard way after trying to sign his doctor’s contract after he was submitted to the hospital to fix his horn and leg.

Shining Armor sits down in his velvety seat in front of the typewriter and stares at it with one word on his mind.

Sleep.

But he refuses to sleep, and even if he wanted to, he can’t. What happened to him and in Ponyville cannot be allowed to happen to anyone else. And what he saw happened to Trixie is also completely unacceptable. He rubs his eyes as he recalls the nasty experience at the hospital; from hearing Twilight begging the doctors to fix him up, to Cadence being brought to tears when he was transferred to the Canterlot Royal Guard Hospital, and, of course, the healing spells that turned out to be just as painful as his original injuries. But even after the healing spells were performed, his horn or leg didn’t mend all the way, and his horn feels pressure just by lifting a piece of paper. Then there is the incident where he just stood by and watched Brisk Wind torture Trixie for answers. The screams still haunt him and the guilt for not doing anything to stop it is part of the reason why he can’t sleep. Cadence so far thinks his insomnia is work related, and she’s right since he was “working” to find answers as well, but he can’t let her know what he allowed to happen. He sincerely hopes that his investigation into the EIB will bring closure to Trixie and whoever else fell under Brisk Wind’s horrible actions.

Shining Armor grumbles under his breath about his “stupid horn” as he levitates the sheets of paper into the designated slot in his typewriter. He’s about to push the first, jumbo sized button on the typewriter, but stops and bites his lips to think for a moment. Then when he realizes what he has to do his ears droop and he walks over to a large picture of him, his parents, Twilight, and Cadence hanging up on the wall. He nudges it aside, opens up a decent sized safe, and uses his teeth to pull out a stack of paper wrapped in a brown wrapping paper and tied together with thin string. He carries it back to his desk and pulls the string off, which leads to the brown wrapping paper to roll open, making a crackling sound in the process, and reveals the stack of papers on the inside. They are labeled:

Equestrian Investigation Bureau

-Testimonies/Complaints-

Shining Armor smacks his lips together and looks at the typewriter and realizes that he’s going to be in his office for a while. Cadence is going to kill him.

He’s about to type again, but he’s once again distracted. This time it’s by a light rapping on his office door.

“Door’s open,” says Shining Armor as he starts his letter.

A unicorn mare walks in with a basket of files levitating above her head and she informs him that they are all the files he requested. Shining Armor gets out of his seat, takes the basket in his mouth and thanks her with a quick nod. After she leaves he goes back to his desk, puts the basket down, and sits in his seat to continue his letter. But as soon as he sits down he gets a sudden surge of unbelievable comfort. The comforting feeling is so amazing that he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and relaxes. His body might as well have sung him psalms proclaiming how merciful he is, since his eyelids have been feeling like they have the weight of Equestria pushing down on them and the rest of him felt ready to fall apart into a messy pile. And now that he has closed his eyes, his whole body is washed over in a blissful, relaxing sensation.

When he opens his eyes he feels like someone smacked his cheek with a board, his mouth feels dry, and his cheek pressed against the desk with an embarrassingly large puddle of drool originating from where his mouth is and seeping over the end with droplets splattering on the carpet below. When he lifts his head up, his cheek refuses to leave the desk for a moment, giving him an awkward tugging feeling. He stands up, shakes himself off and opens up the curtain to find none other than a cloudy night sky and an almost completely dead city.

Shining Armor sighs, rubs his eye and heads back to his seat, then he goes back to staring at his typewriter. Cadence is definitely going to kill him.

Arc 1- 12- Fallout -EDITED-

Arc 2- 4 (Fancy Answer)

What is society? (10 pts.)

Society is a machine, each piece in a machine plays a pivotal role and needs to work together in perfect harmony in order for the machine to work. One wrong piece and it could all break apart, and it is the responsibility for those sitting on the highest echelons of power to maintain such harmony. The beauty of the machine is that if there is a broken piece then it could be fixed, just as if there is something broken in society the government can fix it. Whether it is unfair wages or blatant bigotry, the Equestrian government can come in and fix what is wrong in a quick and effective matter. Criminals can also be fixed if we give them the chance and may become even better citizens than before. They can even become more loyal to the state for the acts of mercy that was shown towards them. Essentially, sometimes the broken piece can be fixed into something better. However, some things cannot be fixed and must be removed before they bring society down with it. This, of course, are the threats of poverty, gross inequality in income, corporate greed and power, and misguided traditional bigotry. In order for society to function at its peak with social and economic equality then it is the job of the government to be society’s guide and to take the necessary steps to ensure that it can reach a new golden age.

Brisk Wind, you strayed from the question again. Political Theory is not for another two months, please schedule an appointment with me so we can discuss ways to keep you focused on the now, not the later.

-Sincerely, Mrs. Quill

++++++++++

Brisk Wind had been talking to Princess Celestia in the palace courtroom for over two hours already. When she first arrived she told the news of Roar Shock’s survival, and just as she had suspected, Celestia did not take the news lightly. The alicorn demanded to know how their number one target escaped, but Brisk Wind did not have an answer for her since it was Shining Armor’s operation. The EIB Director had been expecting Shining Armor’s letter to appear in front of the Princess since he said he would explain his side of the Roar Shock issue, however, when the letter didn’t arrive after an hour of talking she became fairly certain that Shining Armor passed out on his desk. Then she hoped that the ink cartridge for his fancy typewriter leaked all over his face. Brisk Wind then went on to explaining that if Celestia puts in the recommended funding for the newly formed Civilian Defense Agency then they would be able to apprehend Roar Shock and bring him to justice before he can do more harm. After another hour of talking to Celestia about the benefits of increasing funding for the CDA and EIB they went on to discussing the Rehabilitation Program, the EIB’s landmark program, and more specifically: Trixie’s release.

Which is something Brisk Wind did not know about until now.

“But, Princess, the Rehabilitation Program was not meant for ponies like Trixie!” whines Brisk Wind. “It was meant for criminals like petty thieves and beaters!”

Celestia sighs and gently sets her cup of tea down on the arm of her throne, and then she leans forward and stares at Brisk Wind intently. “When you designed the program, you meant for it to help criminals become better citizens, correct?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” says Brisk Wind with a curt nod.

“Trixie is a criminal, correct?”

“No, Your Majesty, she’s a terrorist.”

“Terrorists are criminals and should be treated as such.”

“No, terrorists are enemy combatants who do not follow the laws of warfare!”

“Trixie is a criminal, Director, and will be treated as such for your program. But due to the nature of her crimes she will not be placed with just any parole officer, she will be placed under the care of somepony I trust.”

“Who?”

“Somepony I trust more than you.”

Brisk Wind narrows her eyes as her jaw tightens while Celestia relaxes in her throne. Suddenly, Brisk Wind gets an idea and to prevent herself from exploding due to the mixed bag of emotions she’s feeling right now, she exhales to calm herself down and then she flashes a sly smile at Celestia.

“I think I know what you’re doing, Your Majesty.”

Celestia raises her cup of tea using her magic. “Oh, and what is that?”

“If Trixie is a success with this program than we can expand on it! I don’t know why I didn’t see this before!”

Celestia sips her tea, smacks her lips, mumbles dreamily about how good the tea is, and then she smiles at Brisk Wind as she continues her talk.

“I mean, now that I think about if Trixie is able to be fixed then that will show Equestria that we, the ever so benevolent guardians of peace and Harmony, can fix anypony and anything!”

“Bingo.”

Brisk Wind smiles and says a quick apology for her doubt as Celestia sips her tea. The sun goddess momentarily frowns when she realizes that her tea cup is almost empty, but that doesn’t ruin her mood for long, she has plenty of servants to fix her tea.

“There’s no need to apologize, Brisk Wind, I actually enjoy it when ponies such as yourself question my judgement. It shows that you care about my actions. Now why don’t you run along and send Trixie and Minty Sprinkles in,” says Celestia.

“Who’s Minty Sprinkles?” asks Brisk Wind.

“The mare with Trixie that looks like she was born from a box of crayons.”

“Oh. Of course, Your Majesty.”

Brisk Wind turns and trots towards the large, exquisite double doors, her echoing footsteps being the only sound in the courtroom again. That, and Celestia’s quiet sipping. When Brisk Wind pushes the doors open Trixie and Minty turn to her and she instantly puts on an innocent smile as walks towards them with a charming sway.

“The Princess will be seeing you two now,” says Brisk Wind kindly, however, anyone with working ears could hear the phoniness in her tone.

“Cool, thanks!” says Minty happily, then she gently nudges Trixie forward. “C’mon, Trixie! It’s time to talk to the most powerful being in all of Equestria!”

Brisk Wind watches the two walk inside the courtroom and when the enormous doors close her devious smile returns and she walks away, humming a joyful tune to herself.

oooOOOooo

Trixie’s jaw drops as soon as she enters the grand courtroom. The place is so huge that it can easily fit hundreds of ponies, and the large, decorative, storytelling stained glass color the rays of sunlight in cheerful colors. The polished tiles on the floor also tell a story, probably multiple stories, but a good portion of them are blocked by the thick, velvety rug that stretches from the base of the throne all the way to the double doors. Trixie can’t see the details of the throne just yet, but she does marvel at the white pillars and their golden bases, she can only imagine at how expensive it was build just one pillar. The unicorn’s eyes then glance up at the line of enormous glass chandeliers hanging down from the ceiling.

Celestia chuckles. “Like what you see?”

“Uh huh,” says Trixie softly, she’s so lost in the beauty of the courtroom that she barely heard Celestia.

“Oh she loves it!” says Minty enthusiastically. “Just look at her face! I mean it’s exactly like everypony else that walked in here for the first time!”

Trixie’s eyes glide towards Celestia and is once again stunned by beauty. The slender alicorn is easily the tallest pony in Equestria. Probably all of Equus! Her snow white coat has a small glow to it and her light, multi-colored mane and tail flutter freely from what has to be pure magical energy. Even her posture is majestic! The way she sits and the way her magenta eyes stare at them show that she’s in charge, but more like a mother than a dictator. However, the thing Trixie finds the most astonishing about Celestia is the armor she’s wearing. The golden, gem studded armor is laced with gorgeous leafy patterns that add to her shine and makes her figure look all the more beautiful.

Then Trixie feels a hoof go under her chin and push her mouth shut.

“That was an interesting two minutes,” says Celestia, grinning playfully.

“What?” says Trixie, completely confused by what just happened.

“You were staring at Princess Celestia for two minutes, and kinda drooling,” giggles Minty, “and I would know because I counted.”

“Are you...?”

Trixie looks at both of the ponies, they are both smiling and trying to contain their laughter. Celestia is having a considerably easier time compared to Minty, who appears to be ready to burst into a laughing fit judging by the way her cheeks and puffed out and how red her face is.

Trixie cheeks and the tip of her ears turn a shade of crimson as the effects of complete, burning embarrassment take over. She bites her lips and looks down while gently running her hoof along the soft rug; she just wants to curl up in a hole and possibly stay there for about... forever. She finally meets the most powerful being in Equestria and she drools in her presence like a mentally retarded pervert.

Celestia is either quick to forgive or forget Trixie’s awkward behavior as she turns her attention to Minty. “Minty Sprinkles, are you up to the task of being Trixie’s parole officer for the needed duration of the Rehabilitation Program?”

“Of course I am,” replies Minty.

“Do you swear to uphold the law and guide Trixie to become a better citizen of Equestria for one full year?”

“Yep.”

“And Trixie Lulamoon, do you swear to obey all of Minty Sprinkles’ orders within reason and rule of law for the duration of one full year in the Rehabilitation Program?”

“I do.”

“Do you swear to write me a letter every day chronicling what you did?”

“...I... do? Yes, yes I do.”

Celestia smiles and finishes her tea with one more tiny gulp. “Okay, that is all. You two are dismissed.”

Trixie’s jaw goes slack and she stares at the Princess with a mixed bag of annoyance and confusion. After all the Hell she’s been through she can’t believe that all she gets is a thirty second oath! An oath that didn’t even sound cool! It was absurdly lame on every level and she didn’t even get an explanation as to why she was released in the first place!

Trixie’s turns to Minty in hopes of getting an answer, only to find her turning tail and casually strolling her way out of the courtroom. Trixie struggles to form a coherent sentence, causing the other two to look at her with raised eyebrows. When Trixie is able to piece together the nonsense she just received she glares at the Princess.

“That’s it?” Trixie asks, her voice trembling with annoyance and rage.

“Yes,” replies Celestia. “Why? Were you expecting something more?”

“You’re damn right I was!”

Trixie marches towards Celestia with a fire in her eyes and the alicorn simply sighs and makes her cup of tea disappear in a puff of golden mist. She knows Trixie’s going to go on a rant. She’s seen this thousands of times during her reign, and Luna also had a habit of going on a massive rant about simple things before she turned into Nightmare Moon.

“I want answers and I want them now!” demands Trixie furiously, her voice echoes in the empty courtroom and Minty runs up to Trixie’s side and tries to push her out the door.

“Okay, that’s enough, Trixie. It’s time to go,” says Minty uneasily.

Trixie shrugs Minty away and approaches Celestia with even more determination for answers. Celestia, however, rubs salt on the wound by keeping an amused smile and looking down at Trixie as if she were a toddler having a funny tantrum.

“I want answers NOW!” repeats Trixie with greater authority.

“Well I can’t give answers if I don’t have questions, now can I?” remarks Celestia.

Trixie growls and her ears flatten, deep down she knows Celestia is right about the “question” thing, but she should already know these things! One is simply not released from Singsong and then offered -no, told- to see the ruler of Equestria, only to take an oath that didn’t sound like an oath. Especially when said released prisoner is someone like Trixie, who joined a vigilante organization that was labeled as terrorists and then nearly leveled a whole town from pure, bloodthirsty rage.

Trixie can feel her horn charging and her muscles tensing up, and it doesn’t help that Celestia is still acting calm as can be. Trixie is practically daring the alicorn to try something, anything, just to give her a reason to zap that ridiculous smile off her face.

“You already know what my question is!” yells Trixie.

A bolt of lightning flashes out of her horn and strikes the floor near Celestia. Celestia sighs and rolls her eyes as she recalls how Luna used to pull stunts like that before her transformation.

Minty gets in front of Trixie again and tries desperately to calm her down. “Okay, Trixie, you need to relax. I know things have been stressful but-”

“Shut up!” snaps Trixie, then she turns her attention to the smug goddess that toyed with her since birth. “You-You-You know what questions I have, Your Majesty.”

Trixie made sure to make her tone for “Your Majesty” as scornful as she can muster. Celestia sighs again, stands up, and looks at Minty with a cool smile. “Minty Sprinkles, can you please wait outside while I have a word with Trixie.”

Minty looks a bit uneasy for leaving, but she nods and hurries out of the room. Trixie is sure to keep her eye on Celestia and the smugness of the deity is only making her more and more upset. Trixie’s horn glows brighter and-

She’s suddenly levitated off the ground and then slammed on the floor. The impact makes a loud banging noise and sends a shock of pain all throughout Trixie’s body. When her eyes stop rolling she watches in horror as blue mist is literally sucked out of her body and collected into an orb above Celestia’s horn and is slowly absorbed into her. Watching the blue orb disappear is like watching a star get sucked into a black hole. Trixie suddenly, feels weak and tired, but not enough for her to pass out, just enough for her to be next to helpless. She also finds that her muscles have relaxed and her horn is no longer threatening to shoot out bolts of lightning.

“Now that that is taken care of we can have a decent conversation,” says Celestia while sitting on her throne with the fading orb of blue haze next to her. Then, without even a flicker of further movement on her part, Trixie feels her legs being cuffed to the ground. When she looks around and she sees that she is, in fact, cuffed to the ground with chains made of pure energy. Then Celestia decides to have more of the pure energy chains wrap around Trixie’s body and tug her to the ground so she’s lying on her stomach, unable to move. “Trixie Lulamoon, like to think I’m a patient deity, but lately my patience has been running thin.”

Trixie’s ears droop as stares at the sun goddess, the motherly figure is now gone and the dictator has shown herself and her tone is a grim, threatening one as she explains what she had to do.

“I have been forced to take extreme measures to combat this Chaos. Some I’m not too proud of, others have proven to be valuable, such as the Rehabilitation Program, which is what you’re part of. However, regardless of personal feelings I am doing what is necessary to keep Equestria from falling apart,” says Celestia, then she  gets up and walks towards Trixie. “Tell me, Trixie do you believe in mercy?”

Trixie thinks back to what Gray Muffin had said during one of their training sessions.

===

Gray Muffin knocked Trixie to the ground and brought his hoof down on her gut, knocking the air out of her and forcing her body to curl up while she gasps for air. Gray Muffin then paced around her while lecturing her on her mistake of showing him mercy after she accidentally kicked him in the eye during a sparring session.

“Mercy is weakness. Compassion is flawed. Evil relies on Good to be merciful and compassionate towards them. Those who think we should take the time to have tea and muffins with those who harm the innocent think it will make them better, when all it does is give them another moment to strike,” he said harshly.

Trixie looked at Gray Muffin out of the corner of her eye and saw his eye is swollen shut from her kick. He grunted and looked at the zebra twins and ordered them to train her harder, and then he looked at Trixie.

“On our next sparring match I want you to fight me until one of us collapses. No mercy.”

Trixie nodded and allowed her head fall back on the mat as Gray Muffin walked away.

===

Trixie smirks. “Depends on who its towards.”

“In this case, it’s for you.”

Trixie looks up at Celestia’s glowing figure and feels the magical chains slither off of her and disappear into the ground. Trixie is taken back by Celestia’s statement; she has no idea whether or not this is some kind of trick question. Celestia knows what she did, what she’s capable of and had more than enough control over her in Singsong. Is Celestia asking her if she deserves mercy? Trixie doesn’t know what she deserves. All she knows is that she needs answers, and if she doesn’t deserve answers at least get some out of common decency.

Celestia is now pacing around Trixie, which now that Trixie is next to the alicorn she feels completely unnerved by her vibrant body. Sure, the mare is beautiful, but after seeing what she did without so much as blinking and the way her body is constantly shining and her mane and tail are constantly moving, she’s terrifying. Add in the fact that standing next to Celestia makes Trixie feel small and insignificant and she gets the feeling of wanting to run out screaming. However, Trixie holds fast, partially because she’s too scared to move and partially because she would never forgive herself for passing up an opportunity to get some easy answers.

“Do you think you deserve mercy?” asks Celestia.

Trixie looks down at the floor, she still doesn’t know if she deserves mercy or not.

“Do you think that after destroying a peaceful town and assaulting two of the Elements, one of which is a daughter to me, you deserve any mercy at all?”

“I don’t know what I deserve,” whispers Trixie sadly, “I just want answers.”

Trixie looks at Celestia, her eyes are now moistening because she just wants the truth and all she’s getting is a lecture about something she doesn’t know if she deserves.

Celestia is silent as she sits back on her throne. This time Trixie’s shoulder buckles and she looks down as tears trickle down her cheek and splash on the floor. Celestia’s expression softens and becomes slightly uncomfortable when she notices the tears.

“I’ve been through so much, always wanting something I could never have,” sniffles Trixie, “and for once I just want one thing to go right. Just please answer my question with a straight answer.”

“What is your question?” asks Celestia.

“Why me?”

“Why you?”

“Of all the murderers, rapists, thieves, and other lowlives in Singsong or other prisons you picked me to be released. You picked me to be reintroduced into society even though my actions are horrible. Some might say I am beyond saving... And I think you and I are some of them. So, why me?”

A heavy silence takes over as Celestia looks down on Trixie’s tear soaked face, she’s surprised that Trixie is able to hold her gaze, given her lack of energy. Celestia exhales and decides to return whatever energy she hasn’t sucked up yet back to Trixie. With a simple spell, the ball breaks apart into an energy stream and returns to Trixie through her chest. Trixie instantly feels an electric surge throughout her body as her energy returns and her drooping stature is stiffened to her full height, or as high as a pony gets when sitting up straight. Her first reaction is to thank Celestia, but she wants to hear the answer to her question first before she starts saying her thanks.

“Trixie, you were chosen because of potential. Nothing more, nothing less,” says Celestia cryptically. “Now wait outside while I have a private word with Minty Sprinkles.”

Trixie’s mind snaps again. Her tears instantly dry up, she grits her teeth, and her muscles tense up again as she take a couple heavy steps towards the self proclaimed leader of Equestria. She is sick of these games! She’s sick of not knowing what’s going on, or what happened to her family, or why she was chosen to be released! She’s sick of being in the dark, period!

“But I killed one of the Elements of Harmony! And I hurt I don’t know how many ponies when I tried to kill Twilight Sparkle! And-And now your just letting me go!? I don’t see how that makes any SENSE!” yells Trixie furiously while stomping the floor.

Celestia’s eyes narrow and she stands up and expands her wings threateningly while approaching Tixie with menacing hoof steps echoing off of the walls. “First off, Trixie Lulamoon, I’m not just letting you go!” booms Celestia’s voice in a way that is hardly ever heard from the goddess. “You will be under the strict supervision of Minty Sprinkles at the designated apartment and you’ll be writing me a letter every day telling me what you did! Secondly, your crimes are great and originally you were going to be exiled to a far away, deserted island where nopony could find you! But I needed answers as to where your organization was located! Equestria is my responsibility and I will NOT let it succumb to any more violence!”

Celestia wishes that the unicorn would just accept that her grace -and a “recommendation”- are what freed her. She doesn’t understand why Trixie is so hesitant to accept her road to freedom. Any other pony would jump at the chance, especially if that pony came from a Singsong prison cell.

While Celestia is fuming, Trixie shrinks down under the realization that she had just kicked over the hornet’s nest.

A moment later, Celestia takes a deep breath and gives herself a few seconds to calm down. When she is calm she starts speaking again, this time in the motherly voice she’s known for. “Thirdly, a friend, a pony whom I trust very much, sees something in you and has begged me to release you under the Rehabilitation Program. I didn’t want to, but she insisted and has yet to fail me. But nonetheless, my decision to put you in the Program is very unpopular to say the least, so do not make me regret this.”

“But just don’t understand why you would even consider letting somepony like me have a second chance. I killed the Element of Laughter and-”

“Trixie, stop right there. I know what you did and like I said, my original decision was much more severe than what you faced in Singsong. But one thing you must understand is that you did not kill the Element of Laughter.”

“What?”

“You merely killed its host.”

Trixie cocks her head quizzically, she is now more confused than ever right now. She knows she killed the Element of Laughter. She remembers feeling her hoof connect with Pinkie Pie’s chest and watching her fall to her death. She remembers how lifeless she looked when she checked on her. And if Pinkie Pie was the host then how can the Element of Laughter still be alive if it has no host? Now she really wishes she paid attention in school when they talked about the Elements of Harmony, but her teacher was so boring and mono-toned that only a dedicated egghead could stay awake for his classes!

Celestia sees the confusion plastered on Trixie’s face plain as day, so she tries to come up with a simple way of explaining how the Elements work. “The Elements are more than flesh and blood, Trixie. They are beyond the comprehension of a normal pony, but for the sake of simplicity we are going to go with ‘symbols’. The Elements are symbols for the pieces of Harmony. Pinkie Pie, the host of Laughter, was only its physical incarnation. You may have killed Laughter’s host, but Laughter will always be around, even in the darkest of times. Laughter is a symbol and symbols do not die. They may change, but they will never die. But the question is not about what happened to Laughter or why you did what you did. Trixie, I need to know if you are you willing to change for the better.”

Trixie takes a moment to ponder the words, and a few seconds later she bows and says: “I will change, Your Majesty.”

“Rise, my little pony,” says Celestia with a wave of her hoof, “there is no need to bow before me. We are beyond that age.”

Trixie quietly stands up, but still keeps her head down to avoid eye contact with the deity.

“Trixie, do not disappoint me. Write me a letter every day for the duration of your rehabilitation, and I will know when you’re lying in your letters, so don’t try it. If I feel that you are ready, are trustworthy to live on your own without us watching your every move, then I will release you. If I feel that rehabilitation is not working then I will send you back to Singsong. Or if I determine your failure to be really bad, then I will exile you to that remote island I was looking at earlier. Are we clear?”

Trixie nods her head, quietly saying: “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Glad to hear. You are dismissed, but bring Minty Sprinkles in, I want to have a word with her before you leave.”

Trixie quietly leaves the courtroom with her head down. When she enters the hallway, the first thing she notices is a ring of unicorn Royal Guards keeping an eye on her, and the second thing she notices is that Minty is laying by one of the windows... reading a phone book.

Trixie opens her mouth to say something, but when Minty turns the page, the page making a crackling sound in the process, she gives off a vibe that says she’s in deep concentration. Trixie opens her mouth again, and closes it again a second later. The earth pony is really involved with her reading. When Trixie opens her mouth to speak for the third time, Minty suddenly slams the phone book shut and hops to her feet, making Trixie jump and miss a heartbeat.

“Looks like I’m up,” says Minty. “Did you and Celestia have a nice talk?”

“Uh...”

“Didn’t sound nice, but don’t take it personally. She’s been under a lot of stress lately, and between you and me, I think she really needs to find an alicorn coltfriend.”

Before Trixie can reply, Minty stretches herself out like a cat, making the unicorn arch an eyebrow. There is a small series of pops that comes from the colorful mare’s back and she sighs blissfully while her eyes roll to the back of her head and her tongue rolls out. Her body relaxes a little too much for a couple of seconds, too, giving off the appearance that she had just killed herself with a stretch.

“Oh that felt good,” moans Minty, then he sees Trixie staring at her with a grossed out expression, so she smiles reassuringly. “My back’s been killing me lately, so I gotta stretch it out every now and then.”

“Why not see a chiropractor?” asks Trixie.

“I am. I have an appointment scheduled in six months.”

“Why not get it sooner?”

“You know how the system works, silly.”

“But-”

“I’d love to stay and chat, but I gotta goddess waiting for me. Oh and don’t mind the sudden number of guards watching you. Safety reasons and all.”

Minty walks away, humming a happy tune to herself, and Trixie looks around at the unicorn Royal Guards watching her with piercing eyes and stone cold expressions.

‘Oh great,’  thinks Trixie dryly.

Trixie sighs and looks at the phone book Minty was reading earlier to see if she can find Bon Bon’s address. The book is enormous to say the least, and when she runs her hoof over it she instantly hates the rough feeling the paper has against her hoof. She decides to use magic, and as soon as her horn glows the grayish magenta the Royal Guards tense up and light up their horns while aiming the barrels of their battle saddles at her. Trixie glares at them as the pages of the phone book gradually turn, filling the silent hallway with the familiar sound of rough paper crackling. Trixie silently flips through it and gets more and more agitated as the guards continue to stare at her.

A few seconds later she slams her hooves down and shouts: “Stop looking at me!”

“No,” says a Royal Guard bluntly.

Trixie groans and slams her head on the book under the realization that her search for Bon Bon’s residence will be met with annoying, scrutinizing eyes of drones called Royal Guards.

oooOOOooo

Minty enters the chambers and bounces towards Celestia. When she’s a respectable distance away she stops and beams at the sun goddess. “What can Minty do for you, today, Princess?”

Celestia smirks. “You can remove your disguise, Pinkie Pie.”

Minty sighs in mock sadness and removes the pink wig to reveal a puffy, darker pink mane. “How about I just take the wig off?  I kinda dyed myself after the fall with some really strong stuff, so my coat will be like this for a while. Oh well, at least I like it. Do you want to hear the story behind my new cutie mark?”

“Pinkie Pie, we don’t have much time.”

“It all started when I built this cool doohickey thingy to help me paint a cutie mark over my newly colored body...”

Celestia blinks as she listens to Minty, a.k.a. Pinkie Pie, explain how she used an intricate system of mirrors, pulleys, levers, switches, and paint brushes of all sizes to get it right. Pinkie Pie also laughs about how many trial runs she went through while trying to keep herself “dead”.

“Okay, Pinkie Pie, that’s enough. I need to know something,” says Celestia sternly.

“Ask away, Princess.”

“How, exactly, are you going to keep Trixie under control? She did almost destroy Ponyville when she tried to kill Twilight Sparkle and she did lose her temper today.”

Pinkie Pie dismisses Celestia’s worry with a wave of her hoof. “Oh please, Princess, you give me too little credit. I’m smarter than I look and act.” Pinkie Pie taps the side of her head with her hoof. “Besides, I’ve planned everything.”

“Pinkie-”

“I didn’t plan five moves because that’s too little. I didn’t do ten because that’s normal. I planned twenty moves! There’s no way anything is slipping by Auntie Pinkie. Maybe that’s why Twilight never wanted to play chess with me. Either that, or she thought I was too much of an mush brain to be a challenge, which is odd because the Manehatten Institute of Technology begged me to join their institution. Which proves I am not a mush brain. I wonder why everypony forgets about that letter?”

Pinkie Pie looks down to ponder why no one seems to remember when she got that odd letter from MIT, but Celestia interrupts her thoughts when she asks Pinkie Pie a simple question: “So, have you improved your Pinkie Senses?”

Pinkie Pie nods. “Of course I did! But it’s far from being perfect, it’s only a general prediction and I base all of my predictions on facts and things I spot when I pretend not to care. Well, predictions based on events anyway. Stuff that happens soon, like instant to twenty minutes, is when I get the good twitches.”

Celestia smiles at how much Pinkie Pie has grown under the guidance of Twilight. “So I take you’ve learned a lot from Twilight, then.”

“Yep, and it all took off after somepony thought of the MMMM would be a great midnight snack,” says Pinkie Pie proudly while puffing out her chest, then she stiffens. “But my survival must be kept a secret. If anypony finds out I’m alive then those guys might go after my father or sister or my friends again. I can’t let that happen.”

“Your secret is safe with me, Pinkie Pie, but even then, the League of Justice has been defeated. They are weak and depleted, their threat to Equestria has been brought down to the bare minimum, and with every level of the Equestrian Guard and EIB hunting them there will be nothing left of them very soon.”

“You’re giving too little credit again, Celestia. You may have won that battle, but every bone, muscle, nerve, cartilage, and hair in my body is saying its not over. They will be back and this is something me and my friends cannot handle. Heck, even your agencies are in over their heads. Just look at what happened to Ponyville!”

Celestia opens her mouth to counter Pinkie Pie, but the pink -now minty green- pony continues.

“But Trixie has been with them, she knows the ins and outs of their group.”

“Wait. So you’re using Trixie to fight the League?”

Pinkie Pie cocks her head and stares at Celestia, dumbfounded by her ignorance. “Uh, no. WE are. What else did you think I meant when I wrote that I wanted to guide Trixie to become a better mare so she can save Equestria from an impending doom in my letter?”

Celestia shakes her head while putting her hoof to her head. “Pinkie Pie, the Rehabilitation Program is not designed to make heroes. It is designed to turn criminals into good citizens.”

Pinkie Pie pops up next to Celestia, making the alicorn flinch, and nudges her in the ribs with her elbow while giving her a sly smile. “And what better way to make a good citizen than to prepare them to save a nation from an organization that wants to destroy them, hmm?”

Pinkie Pie hops down in front of Celestia as the goddess grumbles and rubs her temple with her hoof, which admittedly only makes her more uncomfortable since the ridges at the bottom of her armored shoe scratch against her divine skin.

A moment later she says: “I’m in no mood for this. Okay, so Trixie, the one who destroyed Ponyville and technically killed you, is going to save Equestria?”

“That is correct,” replies Pinkie Pie.

“How can you-”

“Pinkie Sense.”

“I’m going to need you to do better than that.”

“Pinkie... Sense. You ask ponies to have faith in you and now I ask that you have faith in me. It’s only fair.”

The two stare at each other in total silence; Celestia’s mind is completely blank due to Pinkie Pie’s insane plan, and Pinkie Pie’s unwavering grin isn’t helping her think any better, either.

After what seemed like an hour of silence, Celestia sighs and looks down. “Fine, I’ll accept that, but Trixie will find out who you are eventually, and there’s no telling how she’ll react when she does.”

Pinkie Pie pretends to act snobbish as she inspects the hoof Trixie burnt during their brawl; she’s glad she was able to cover the injury to near perfection. “Well I’ll be sure to be her friend so that when she does find out she won’t be too upset. Maybe just a little upset since I’ll be tricking her for a while, but if we become friends then she won’t take it as hard.”

Celestia lets her hoof fall and she nods, she’s still skeptical of Pinkie Pie’s optimism but is deciding to give her the benefit of the doubt. Celestia is about to dismiss Pinkie Pie, but then another thought crosses her mind. The party animal never answered her first question.

“Pinkie Pie,” begins Celestia.

“Yeah?” Pinkie Pie says while putting her wig back on with minimal difficulty.

“You never answered my first question.”

“Just trust me, Princess. I have everything under control.”

“Fine, I’ll say that I trust you, even though this plan of yours is ridiculous, but I will not cease any operations against the League or any other threats against Equestria, and I will adjust operations as I see fit.”

Pinkie Pie finishes putting on her wig. “And Trixie will operate as her own separate entity under my guidance. Got it?”

“Be sure to tell me what her ‘alter-ego’ is if she gets one so I can alert the agencies.”

“Oh she’ll have one, and I know for a fact ponies will get a kick out of it. I can just see it now,” Pinkie Pie moves her hoof across her face like she’s summoning words, “‘The Dark Mare. Scourge of the Underworld’, or hang on a sec. How about-”

“One wrong move on her part and I’ll have Shining Armor or Brisk Wind take her away. Clear?”

Pinkie Pie frowns and drops her hoof. “Only if I’m arrested as well.”

“What?”

“She is my responsibility and any fault on her part would be mine as well, so where she goes, I go. Deal?”

“You... Are you serious?”

“Deal?”

Celestia hesitates. “Deal.”

Fantastic! I’ll see ya around!”

Before Celestia can reply, Pinkie Pie bounces out of the room while saying some more colorful and random farewells. After the doors slam shut Celestia sighs and sulks in her seat, hoping that Pinkie Pie knows what she’s doing and wishing that deities could get vacations.

oooOOOooo

Trixie is able to find Bon Bon’s address quickly, and since she lives in her candy shop it’ll be easier to come to her aid. The only problem is slipping out of Minty’s grasp and getting to Bon Bon before the griffins do, but since she got some free time she decided to look through the book to see what else Canterlot has to offer. For one, the population is now close to two million ponies, leading to a massive civilian phone number section, and due to the population boom there is plenty of businesses to look at. She’s mostly interested in the magic shows that are hosted, and there is one in particular that catches her eye. It’s a dark, page sized, extravagant advertisement for the “Greatest Magician in all of Equestria”. The advertisement has a picture of stallion unicorn-zebra by the name of “The Magnificent Monte Fountain”. He has a grayish blue coat with faint stripes, a white mane and tail with streaks of red, and a pair of cards as a cutie mark. He also has a cocky smile and is for some odd reason wearing a top hat and a black cape with a fluffy white trim that has a clip in the shape of a card spade holding it together.

This is Monte Fountain character is a pony Trixie wants to meet just to see how good he really is, but she can’t help but scowl at the fact that he looks like he’s ripping off her old appearance and name.

‘That jerk is totally ripping me off,’  thinks Trixie’s accusingly.

“What are you looking at, Trixie?” asks Brisk Wind curiously from behind.

Trixie slams the phone book shut and whirls around to see the Director of the EIB staring at her with a suspiciously kind smile. Trixie’s eye twitches from seeing the mare that gave her a week’s taste of Tartarus. She holds back every urge to pounce on her and beat her face to a bloody pulp like the scum she is. Trixie forces herself to smile, and the smile is so horribly fake that even a blind pony can tell it was fake.

“Hello, Director, fancy seeing you here. I thought you left.”

“I never left, Trixie, I just wanted to go for a walk. It’s a beautiful castle, after all.”

“Oh really? I hadn’t realized. It’s hard to enjoy certain things when your torturer is in the same building as you.”

Brisk Wind chuckles and walks towards Trixie, still holding that phony smile, and Trixie’s eyes narrow and she peers into Brisk Wind’s eyes. She’s begging Brisk Wind to try to attack her just so she has a reason to zap that demon seed into oblivion. Not that she doesn’t have one, she actually has a week’s worth, but it will better if Brisk Wind throws the first punch, just like Gray Muffin had taught her.

===

Trixie once again found herself on the ground, this time with a faceful of the blue mat they train on and a mouth full of blood with a few loose teeth. Her jaw felt like it had been cracked, which wouldn’t surprise her if it was, and her ears were still ringing from the force of the kick that sent her flying across the mat after she tried to charge Gray Muffin. She then felt Gray Muffin press his hoof on her back and push her to the ground. She squirmed as she felt his heavy hoof press her body to the ground with an uncomfortable force.

“When you’re meeting your enemy head on, always let your opponent make the first move. You will be able to tell a lot about their method of attack from doing so,” said Gray Muffin. Then he released her, walked towards the end of the mat and turned around to face her as she pushed herself up. “Now I’m going to make a move against you. I want you to block and counter accordingly.”

“And if I don’t?” asked Trixie with a wry, bloody smile.

“Then the dentist will have to shove your teeth back in your mouth.”

===

Trixie snaps out of her trip down memory lane when she hears Brisk Wind talking to her.

“Trixie, what happened was regretful, and I can only ask for your forgiveness,” says Brisk Wind dramatically, and to emphasize, she sniffles and looks down; but then she looks up with a hopeful glint in her eyes. “But let us resolve our quarrels like civilized ponies and move on from the past.”

Trixie smirks and in a threatening tone, she whispers: “Why not resolve this outside?”

Brisk Wind is about to say something, but before she can, Minty runs up and wraps her forehooves around their necks for a hug.

“Hey guys, how’s it going?” asks Minty cheerfully.

“Fine,” says the two mares in unison; however, Trixie’s is more of a grumble.

“That’s good. Hey, Brisky-”

“‘Brisky’?” mutters Brisk Wind under her breath while cocking her head and arching an eyebrow.

“I just want to thank you for allowing Trixie to-”

“I’m right here, you know,” says Trixie irritably over Minty.

“Go into the Rehabilitation Program. As her parole officer I know she’ll do fantastic.”

Minty puts a lot of emphasis on “fantastic” and switches her gaze to Trixie. Trixie shrinks back a bit because it feels like the colorful mare’s eyes are boring deep into her soul and searching for all of her sins. Which at this point in her life it isn’t too hard to find.

“Right, Trixie?” says Minty in a cheerful, yet oddly creepy, tone.

Trixie gulps and nods her head quickly while Brisk Wind pulls away from Minty.

“Look, Ms. Sprinkles, I don’t know who you are, but the Princess must have a lot of faith in you if you have been hoof selected by her to be Trixie’s parole officer,” says Brisk Wind.

“Why are-I’m right here!” whines Trixie.

“But we are all friends here, all wrongdoings have been forgiven. So if you need anything, and I mean anything, just give me a call at my office, okay?”

“Sure thing, Brisky. Thanks!” says Minty happily.

“Don’t call me Brisky!” snaps Brisk Wind as her wings expand threateningly. There is a moment of awkward silence, and Brisk Wind smiles apologetically and turns to Trixie. “As for you, Trixie, behave yourself and I know we’ll be good friends.”

Brisk Wind smiles and shakes hooves with Minty, and when she tries to do the same for Trixie, Trixie closes her eyes and sticks her nose in the air, away from the pegasus. Brisk Wind sighs and shakes her head while making a tsking noise. “You’ll come around eventually. After all, the government is your friend.”

Brisk Wind walks a short distance away and then flies off as Minty waves. When Brisk Wind is out of sight, Minty hums lightly to herself and starts walking towards the exit. Trixie scoffs and follows her parole officer down the lavish hallway in silence. Trixie is in no mood to talk, especially after getting a screwed up answer from the one being that could clear things up for her. Also, Minty is starting to annoy her again with her bubbly attitude, but above all else, she’s just anxious to get this day done and over with. She knows Bon Bon is in danger, but she can’t do anything to help unless she wants to make a mad dash for the little shop and get sent back to Singsong. Then Trixie starts thinking about ways she could get back into contact with Gray Muffin or Adanz and Wazza. Now that she’s out of Singsong she needs to do some catching up and she won’t be leaving Canterlot unless she gets some help.

“Whatcha thinkin’ ‘bout?” asks Minty.

“I just want this day to end,” replies Trixie grumpily.

“Well it’s almost over. We still have to meet your designated employer.”

Trixie glares at a couple of passing the Royal Guards. “Who is this guy anyway?”

Minty’s smile widens. “Oh, you’re going to love him! He’s one of the most influential ponies in Canterlot, treats everypony like an equal, isn’t snobby, isn’t-”

“Minty!”

“You’ll be working with Fancypants! Isn’t that great!”

Trixie stops and her eyes widen, and Minty stops walking and stares at her. That name sounds very familiar to Trixie, and her time as a traveling magician has kept her out of the loop of just about everything to do with life, except for magic show related stuff, but that was mostly so she can upstage her competition; and when things went downhill she only cared about survival. However, that name has always been at the back of her mind, occasionally rearing its head up when she had a great performance. But she can’t remember who he is for the life of her!

Minty sees Trixie struggling to remember something. “You okay there, Trixie?”

Suddenly, a very small memory comes to Trixie and she whispers: “‘I’m going to be famous one day’.”

“What?”

===

A teenage Trixie walked out of the day care center she’d been working at for the past few weeks with her new bag of bits. She hummed happily to herself, but her humming turned into a squeak as a strong gust of wind blew by and yanked off her pointy hat. She turns around to try to catch it, but the wind carried it around the corner, by the deli. Trixie ran after it and skidded to a halt when she saw her hat covered in a golden-yellow mist, floating in front of her face.

“I believe you dropped this, ma’am,” said a slender stallion wearing a dirty cap. He has a light azure mane and tail and eyes with a light gray coat and a trio of crowns as a cutie mark. He’s slender, probably in his early twenties, looked like he hasn’t had a decent meal or bath in a while, and he was wearing a sign around his neck that said: “WILL WORK FOR FOOD”.

Trixie stared at him as he gently lowered her hat on her head. She’s speechless for a second, but when her manners kick in she smiled and said: “Thank you very much.”

Then she handed him some bits from her bag.

He didn’t hesitate to put the bits in his hat.

“Anytime, ma’am. I’m just doing what any good citizen would do.”

Trixie laughs. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“Oh ye of little faith. Repent and see the goodness of the world!”

He flailed his hooves around like the stereotypical crazed preacher and Trixie couldn’t help but laugh at his antics.

“Well, thank you for saving my hat and for the show.” Trixie said, then she gave him more bits, which he once again gladly accepted. “I didn’t catch your name, by the way.”

“Oh, my name is Fancypants.”

“Fancypants? No offense, but you don’t look like a... well, a fancypants.”

“Oh, but you see, wealth comes in more than just bits, Miss...”

“Trixie. Trixie Lulamoon.”

The two ponies shook hooves and Fancypants smiled at the amazing turn of events.

“A Lulamoon, eh? Well, Trixie, maybe we’ll run into each other again in the future when I’m famous.”

Trixie smirked. “You plan on being a celebrity?”

Fancypants nodded. “Yep, just you watch, I’m going to be famous one day. But first, I’m going to buy a much needed sub sandwich. Thanks for the bits, Trixie, and be sure to tell your mother that I love her music.”

Trixie smiled and nodded as Fancypants walked into the deli, whistling one of her mother’s tunes to himself.

===

Minty, waves her hoof in front of Trixie’s eyes, saying: “Hellooooo, Equus to Trixie.”

Trixie snaps out of her trance and stares at Minty while making a mental note to cool it with the flashbacks. Then she smiles at Minty and says: “I’m fine. Let’s go meet Fancypants.”

Arc 1- 13- The Mission -ADDITION-

Arc 2- 5 (Memoria)

Brisk Wind pushes open the simple double doors and marches into a long, rectangular room with nothing but unicorns sitting at oak desks, using their magic to write or move objects around. The room has a dozen rapidly spinning ceiling fans, each with their own sets of lights, to cool the room; and in the back is the seal of the EIB. It is in the shape of a circle with olive branches on either side, in the circle’s interior is a hexagon with a basic gem color coded to each Element of Harmony, and in the middle of the hexagon is an eye.

Brisk Wind closes her eyes and sniffs in the smell of ink and parchment and enjoys the symphony of quill pens scratching against said parchment. She then opens her eyes and smirks when she sees how hard her paper pushers are working and casually trots to her office, expecting to find Shining Armor’s end of the bargain sitting on her desk, wrapped in fancy wrapping paper with a golden bow. But what she finds instead, is her that imported desk is bare, save for the photo she keeps out. Brisk Wind frown and sits on her fluffy spinning chair and stares at the photo in silence. It’s an old one with her and a dozen pegasi sitting in front of a simple building that has a Cloudsdale Orphanage sign hanging behind them with the staff next to the group on either side.

“Still mad about how nopony took you in?” a stallion with a deep voice asks.

Brisk Wind glances up from the picture and sees a huge stallion unicorn, roughly the same age as her, with a tan coat and a dark blue mane and tail and a cutie mark of a key over an eye, standing in the doorway. He’s also wearing a stuffed saddle with an EIB badge hanging around his neck. She instantly gets the feeling of excitement from his presence, but his words also felt like a stab wound. It makes for a nasty swirl of emotions that makes Brisk Wind sick.

Brisk Wind pushes the picture down so she doesn’t have to see the ghostly faces. “Who wouldn’t be, Lock?”

“You should burn that picture so you aren’t constantly torturing yourself, but aside from that, we should hurry this up, Rye is very impatient.”

Brisk Wind frowns. “Your coltfriend can wait. Close the door.”

Lock steps inside and uses his magic to close and lock the door and then pulls curtains shut so no one can see inside the office through the door’s window. Brisk Wind stands up and watches the stallion approach her desk while he takes out some files from his saddle. Brisk Wind can’t help but stare at Lock’s solid muscles and how well groomed he is, even his tired eyes look amazing to her. Brisk Wind continues to stare at him and wishes that there was no one else outside so that she can fulfill some workplace fantasies she’s been having ever since she first laid eyes on him. Her mouth becomes dry and her heart rate increases while Lock approaches her, but in her state of ogling, she fails to realize that her wings are slowly expanding.

Lock looks at Brisk Wind and sighs when he sees the lustful look in her eyes and the way her wings have opened. “Director, we’ve been over this before. My barndoor doesn’t swing that way.”

Brisk Wind looks down at the folder to hide the blush taking over her face. “I wasn’t thinking about you. I was thinking about somepony else.”

“Who?”

“Jealous?”

“No.”

“Okay then. Drop the questions and show me what you got.”

Lock stares at Brisk Wind and she forces her wings down to her side, which is painfully strenuous to say the least. When her wings are down, Lock uses his magic to flip open the folder and turn it so Brisk Wind won’t have to look at it upside down. Brisk Wind smiles when she sees the picture of a mare, dead in an alley. She has been stomped to death and her blood is sprayed all over the brick wall and seeped all over the ground. Next to the gruesome picture is a profile of the nurse that injected Trixie with the toxin during her interrogation.

“Nurse Goldheart was fatally robbed in an alley today on her way to visit her parents in Canterlot by a drug addict.” Lock states, his tone implying that it was anything but that.

Brisk Wind tsks. “Poor, poor, Goldheart.” Then she looks at Lock hopefully. “Please tell me that her damage has been contained.”

“Her apartment was searched and everything she had against the EIB was removed.”

“Burned?”

“Shredded. Then burned.”

“Excellent.”

“What now?”

Brisk Wind disappears under her desk to open up a safe and puts the folder in the said safe. “The usual. Find who’s been talking to Captain Armor and take care of them. And do try to keep the fatalities to a minimum. It’s suspicious enough that a whistleblower suddenly died.”

“As much as I am flattered in your confidence of my abilities, I will still need help in this matter.”

“Get ahold of some of your friends to help you.”

Lock nods and is about to leave but Brisk Wind pokes her head out and tells him to wait. He stops and stares at her as she walks up to his side, giving him that longing, sensual smile while her wings expand a bit again. He rolls his eyes, but is silently grateful that pegasi are easy to read when it comes to the wanting feelings.

“Director, I told you that I don’t go that way,” grumbles Lock.

“I just need you to do a special favor for me,” says Brisk Wind in a sultry tone. “It won’t take long at all.”

“I’m not sleeping with you, Director.”

A flicker of disappointment crosses her face, but is quickly replaced with a small smile. “No, not that. But if you could check out a ‘Minty Sprinkles’ for me it will make me feel so much better.”

“EIB?”

“No, somepony else. She’s been hoof selected by Celestia herself to watch over the recently released Trixie Lulamoon, and I want to know everything there is about this newcomer. Got it?”

The two are quiet for a few seconds before Lock and nods his head and leaves without saying a word. When the door closes her wings expand to full length and Brisk Wind groans and sits back at her desk, slams her head on the table, and sadly says: “All the good stallions are either gay or have no faces.”

=**********=

Trixie hops out of Minty’s truck and eagerly follows her as she walks towards a blocky, two story building that has Fancypants’ cutie mark painted on the front door. The building is painted in a simple white with gold trim, and it has plenty of windows and a radio tower propped on the top. There is also a large sign posted on the top of the building that says: FANCY ENTERTAINMENT in an old western style font and border.

Minty leads Trixie inside and the unicorn instantly feels welcomed in the building. All the colors are warm, the seats in the waiting room actually look comfortable and there are up-to-date newspapers stacked neatly on the table. There is even some cello heavy music playing and Trixie stops to listen to it while Minty walks up to an earth pony mare who has a light orange coat and a yellow tail and mane with a scroll as a cutie mark. She’s sitting behind the front counter that has “RECEPTIONIST” etched on the front. Minty greets the receptionist and they have a talk for a minute or two before Minty pulls out her badge and asks for Fancypants.

oooOOOooo

After Pinkie Pie showed her badge the receptionist, whom she has learned is named Penny Chart, the receptionist instantly went to work to see if Fancypants was available.

Pinkie Pie smiles as she listens to Octavia’s crown jewel. When it comes to music she finds that she’s better at singing than writing music, while Octavia was born to write music. The music appears to be entering one of the high points, when things get really energetic. However, despite the music being “energetic” in terms of Canterlot/cultured pony taste, Pinkie Pie still finds the music boring. She more prefers the mind-numbingly loud and energetic party music with DJs and lots of bright lights and balloons. But, over time, she has grown quite fond of the country party music the Apples had.

===

“No, you’ve done enough already, Pinkie,” sniffled Applejack while gently stroking Big Mac’s mane. He was lying in a hospital bed, unconscious and covered in bandages and paper thin blankets. It was dark outside, too, and the room’s only light was a weak lamp next to the hospital bed and the full moon shining into the room, like Luna was personally watching over Applejack’s brother.

“AJ...” began Pinkie Pie sadly.

Applejack glared at Pinkie Pie, through her angry gaze, her eyes shined in the light from the tears and she sniffled while clenching her jaw. Pinkie Pie stopped herself from talking and looks down while nodding, then she turned around and leaves the hospital room.

“Yer gonna be okay, ya hear?” said Applejack softly.

Pinkie Pie looked over her shoulder and saw Applejack putting her stetson on top of Big Mac’s head and forcing herself to chuckle, but the gesture doesn’t wake him up, which only makes Applejack whimper and put her hooves on her brother.

Applejack took a deep breath, wiped her nose and cried softly. “Ya remember when ya bought me that hat for mah birthday?...”

Pinkie Pie felt a huge lump in her throat bully its way up and her eyes swell with tears. She sighed, looked down, and left the hospital room, she wasn’t welcomed to stay anyway.

===

“Ma’am, are you okay?” asks Penny Chart.

Pinkie Pie realizes that she had been crying a bit and she quickly wipes tears from her eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine. Is Fancypants available?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Okay, tell him that a ‘Minty Sprinkles’ and a ‘Trixie Lulamoon’ are here to see him.”

Penny Chart looks past Pinkie Pie and sees Trixie minding her own business. She cringes when she notices the how bruised Trixie is, but still goes to tell Fancypants the news.

Pinkie Pie momentarily looks over her shoulder to make sure Trixie is staying put, thankfully she is, and when the receptionist leaves to grab Fancypants, she scratches her head to destroy the annoying itch she’s getting from the wig. While she’s scratching her head she notices a flyer for a pony named “Monte Fountain”. She cocks her head as she studies the picture and is quick to realize that this pony is ripping off Trixie’s old look. Something Trixie will not take too kindly to.

“Wow, I finally get to meet Fancypants again, after all these years!” Trixie says, barely able to stand still.

Pinkie Pie pushes the flyer in the garbage can and smiles at Trixie. “So, how do you know Fancypants?”

“Oh, he saved my hat when I was just a filly, so I gave him some bits and he bought himself a sub sandwich. He said he would be famous one day and now look! He is!”

Pinkie Pie smiles and leans over the counter to see what’s taking the receptionist so long. She can hear the receptionist and Fancypants talking, and then there’s a third voice.

A very familiar voice, sounding like she had just finished crying.

Pinkie Pie’s eyes widen and she slides off while looking down, whispering, “Rarity?”

Pinkie Pie sees the receptionists leading Fancypants to the lobby with Fleur and Rarity by his side. Rarity’s purple eyeshadow has been ruined by her tears and is still sniffling, but other than that, she is still able to keep her gorgeous appearance. Pinkie Pie feels a lump go up in her throat and her eyes water up as she sees her friend-

===

“You got spike killed!” screamed Rarity while throwing one of her sewing machines at Pinkie Pie.

Pinkie Pie barely dodged it in time, but a part of her was tempted to stay there and let the device hit her in the head as Rarity had intended. Maybe they would’ve listened to her side if her skull cracked and she started bleeding all over the floor.

Rainbow Dash flew in front of Rarity and jabbed her hoof into her chest, threateningly. “Don’t you DARE throw ANYTHING at Pinkie!”

“Or you’ll do what!”

===

No. Not her friend, she refused to listen, just like Twilight, and just like Applejack when Big Mac was almost killed. Pinkie Pie’s lump and tears turn from sadness to rage and she has to look away lest she wants to break down in tears from the reminder of what she lost for trying to save a life. A part of her wonders if Rarity even cared that she “died”. Probably not since she was the scapegoat for the death of her future husband.

When Pinkie Pie turns around, she sees Trixie is now sitting on one of the chairs, eagerly flipping through a newspaper, and she suddenly remembers how Rarity was an emotional wreck for when Trixie changed her hair into some kind of green, unholy, rats nest of a mess. So Pinkie Pie wipes her eyes, takes breath of air, does what any other pony would do. She runs in front of Trixie, blocking her entire body from Rarity’s line of sight, which means she has to stand uncomfortably close to her. It will spare everyone from a nasty mare fight, and Pinkie Pie has already seen what two ticked off unicorns fighting each other can do.

Trixie looks up and leans back in her seat while staring at Pinkie Pie with a lot of concern and discomfort. “Um... Minty? What are you doing?”

“I just like the way you smell, Pixie Dust. You smell really nice.”

“I’m not-”

“You smell niceeeeeeee,” Pinkie Pie says, putting a lot of stress on the “-ice” part so it sounds like steam hissing, “Pixie Dust.”

Trixie looks side to side nervously and flashes an uneasy smile while her ears droop and she sinks into her seat, “Um, thanks... I guess.”

Pinkie Pie glances to her side when she hears the door open and sees Rarity leave with Fleur, and then she breathes a sigh of relief and walks away from Trixie when the door closes. She wipes fresh tears from her eyes and looks out the window to watch Rarity and Fleur disappear around the corner. The lump in her throat is still there, but it gradually dissolves and all it takes is another deep breath and a slow exhale to break it apart into nothing. She then smiles, scratches the annoying itch, and turns towards Trixie, who’s now looking creeped out by what just happened. She does a quick nod and heads towards Fancypants.

“That was close,” says Pinkie Pie to herself.

oooOOOooo

Trixie stares, wide eyed, at Minty as she goes to talk to Fancypants. She has no idea what possessed Minty to act that way, and she knows she doesn’t smell nice. But when doubt seeps in, Trixie sniffs herself and instantly scrunches her nose and scowls when she smells an odd stench. Whatever soap the guards used when they washed her made her smell like something other than a freshly bathed pony. It is truly indescribable.

Trixie is about to ask Minty why she acted so weird around her so suddenly, but that all flies out the window when her brain registers Fancypants’s presence. Her eyes get little sparkles in them and she can’t help but smile. The stallion has aged very well, granted he has small crows feet around his eyes and his mane and tail have small streaks of gray running through them, but if he just does a bit of touch-ups he’ll easily look twenty years younger. When Trixie sees his tuxedo and how well it’s taken care of, her jaw drops even further and her eyes grow bigger because his attire makes him all the more handsome. She also loves the way he’s not afraid to wear a purple bow tie and how that monocle makes him look more sophisticated.

Then Trixie cocks her head slightly. ‘Wait a second, a monocle? Does he even need a monocle?’

“Oh my goodness! What happened to you, Trixie!?” asks Fancypants horrifyingly.

“What...” says Trixie, sounding like a brain dead stoner.

Fancypants is next to her in the blink of an eye and inspecting her bruises and adjusting his monocle. Trixie tries explaining that it’s no big deal, but he won’t hear any of it. He nudges her off of her seat for a more thorough inspection. Trixie starts feeling more and more uncomfortable as he inspects her body with prods and leaning in closer to inspect bruises and scabs. The discomfort soon turns into agitation as the constant questions ring in her ears and the constant brushes and prods from his hoof bring back the horrible memory of what happened to her in Sunshine’s room.

Trixie closes her eyes and grits her teeth. “Stop, please.”

But closing her eyes only makes it worse. As soon as her eyes close she sees Sunshine’s room clearly, like she’s standing in it. Everything looks the same, the bed, the light bulb, even the floors and walls. Trixie hears Fancypants say something, but she can’t understand him since his voice has become faint. While Trixie strains her ears to hear better, she sees her shadow on the floor grow and pull itself out of the ground to form a wispy figure with red eyes.

The thing smiles and in Sunshine’s voice it says: “Wow, everypony thinks yer pretty, darlin’. Looks like I got mahself some competition, eh?”

Trixie’s eyes shoot open and she screams: “GO AWAY!”

Fancypants instantly stops and Minty makes a low, drawn out whistle.

Trixie breathes heavily as she looks around the room; everyone looks surprised by her outburst, and she feels herself trembling. She looks down and sees her hooves are trembling violently and some tear drops splatter on the thin carpet. She bites her lip and breathes through her nose while forcing herself to stop crying.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap,” Trixie says quietly a minute later. “I... I don’t know what came over me.”

“No, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have been so careless,” says Fancypants apologetically. “Why don’t we go into my office to discuss your rehabilitation and forget that this happened.”

Trixie nods and follows Fancypants with Minty close behind her. Before leaving the lobby Fancypants tells Penny Chart to hold all his calls and notes, and to let anyone coming to see him that he’ll be busy until further notice. The walk to his office was quick and when Trixie and Minty walk into a brightly lit office, Fancypants closes the door and motions them to have a seat. They sit without saying a word and Fancypants sits in a the chair behind his plain desk.

“Trixie, it has been a while,” says Fancypants.

“Yes it has,” says Trixie with a small smile.

“I just want to apologize for my-”

“Oh, that’s not necessary.”

“Yes it is. It was inappropriate what I did, but I was just so worried when I saw your condition.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Pants, she’s under good care so she won’t be getting any worse,” says Minty confidently.

“Just Fancypants, Miss...”

“Sprinkles, but you can call me Minty Sprinkles, or Minty. Whichever you prefer.”

“Ms. Sprinkles, I haven’t seen Trixie in such a long time, and it pains me to see her, or any pony, in such a state.”

Trixie sighs heavily and rolls her eyes, she feels like she’s being treated like she’s not in the room again and she doesn’t appreciate it. Not. One. Bit. Trixie lets the other two talk to each other about the technicalities while she scans the room. She’s fairly certain that Fancypants spends a lot of time outside of his office because it is as bland as an office can be. All Fancypants has is his desk, a locked filing cabinet, and a clock hanging on the wall. It’s not even a fancy clock, it’s just a simple black and white clock with lines instead of numbers to tell the time. Then Trixie’s gaze moves to Fancypants, and notices that the eye the monocle is over has a slight, grayish mist in his pupil.

“Excuse me, but what’s wrong with your eye?” Trixie asks while pointing at Fancypants’s eye.

Fancypants is silent for a moment, then he casually pulls off his monocle, breathes on it and cleans it with a rag tucked in one of his pockets. When he’s done cleaning, he puts the monocle back on and blinks a couple of times before giving Trixie a warm smile, saying: “Cataracts, my dear.”

“Cataracts?”

“An optical medical condition. Anyway, Ms. Sprinkles-”

“Aren’t you going to get it fixed?”

“I’ll be sure to have my managers take good care of her when she’s working.”

“Thanks, I would be there, but I can’t be everywhere at one,” says Minty with a grateful smile.

“Hello... Fancypants. Your eye,” says Trixie impatiently.

“It’ll get fixed when it’ll get fixed. No worries,” says Fancypants patiently. “Now, Ms. Sprinkles, I’m going to have to ask you to step outside for a moment so me and Trixie can get the last of the paperwork sorted out.”

Minty stares at Fancypants suspiciously. Trixie’s eyes dart between the both of them as they continue to stare at each other. She is about to say something, but Fancypants is the first to speak.

“Is there a problem, Ms. Sprinkles?”

“Trixie is my responsibility, and I don’t want her to be working in a field that-”

“I take care of all my employees, Ms. Sprinkles.”

“Let me finish. Thank you. I’ll now continue. Trixie is my responsibility, and she’s been through Tartarus and back in just the past two months, so I want to be very clear-” Minty looks at Trixie, and she looks back at her, then she looks at Fancypants again. “That what she’s been put through has put her on a hair trigger. If any of your employees has ever been accused of sexual harassment, I suggest you keep them away from Trixie, and if you don’t keep an eye on her she will wander off. Believe me, I almost lost her in a candy store.”

“What! No, you left me and I had to look for you!” Trixie says defensively with a slight whine.

“Celestia trusts you for this program, so please don’t do anything stupid.”

Fancypants chuckles. “Oh, Ms. Sprinkles, I didn’t get to where I was by being careless. You have nothing to worry about, I promise.”

“If you say so, but keep in mind I’ll be watching.”

“I thought you couldn’t be around when Trixie works.”

“There’s more than one way to watch somepony.”

Fancypants bites his lip and looks down as beads of nervous sweat roll down his head, trying to think of other ways he can be watched. Minty, on the other hand, smiles, looks at Trixie and says: “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone.”

Trixie groans as her ears droop, and she blushes and face-hoof’s while Fancypants says something about being married. Minty giggles and walks out of the room, and when the door closes, Trixie still keeps her face covered, not wanting to look at Fancypants while her face is still red hot.

oooOOOooo

Pinkie Pie steps away from the doorway, presses her ear against the wall, and listens in to the conversation between Trixie and Fancypants.

“So, it’s been a while...” says Fancypants.

“Yes it has,” mumbles Trixie.

“You can stop hiding your face.”

“I’ll wait until I’m back to my normal colors.”

An awkward silence passes and Pinkie Pie presses her ear harder against the wall. She can hear uneasy shifting, and guesses that it was Trixie that did the shifting.

“Are you going to tell me what happened to you?” asks Fancypants suddenly.

“I’d rather not talk about it,” says Trixie quietly.

oooOOOooo

Fancypants nods and relaxes in his seat. “Fair enough, we barely knew each other from the beginning, anyway.”

Trixie looks up at Fancypants and smiles sheepishly. “Well I did give you the bits every week to buy yourself a sub sandwich. So we’re acquaintances to say the least.”

“Indeed.”

“Well...” Trixie says while looking around the room nervously. “You’re famous now, huh?”

“That I am, and you were too for a little bit.”

“Yeah, but I kinda got carried away and... well...” Trixie points at her face and forces herself to smile while chuckling nervously. “This is what happened.”

Fancypants sighs sadly. “I’m sorry what happened to you, Trixie. I wish I could’ve done something as a way to repay you for your kindness, but, if it makes you feel any better I admit that I got a little bit carried away with my celebrity status too.”

“You? You, of all ponies, let fame get into your head?”

“Going from nothing to everything in a few short weeks has quite an effect on ponies, but after meeting a beautiful mare I ‘snapped back’, I guess one would say. Seeing the way that mare and her friends partied and had a grand old time made me realize how suffocating I’ve been after my rise to fame.”

He adjusts his position in his seat before continuing with his monologue.

“Sure I had what I always wanted. Money. Fame. A beautiful wife to call my own. But I spent so long trying to fit into Canterlot society that I became a stick in the mud. A bore. I think it was that day when those mares from Ponyville arrived that I started to realize that money only rents happiness.”

Trixie frowns at the mention of “Ponyville”, but when Fancypants looks at her she’s quick to replace the frown with a smile. “Wealth comes in more than just bits, right Fancypants?”

“Precisely, my dear. Where did you hear that from?”

“From you, when I gave you some bits for saving my hat.”

Fancypants is silent for a moment before making a “hm” sound and mumbling  “Interesting” while pulling out a simple folder that has a few sheets of paper in it.

“Now then,” says Fancypants as he flips it open, “with the Special Talent Act your choices are severely limited. However, even without the said law your choices would still be limited since all you’ve ever done were magic shows.”

Trixie looks down, she’s not sure if her specialized, yet severely limited, experience in the working field is a good or bad thing.

Fancypants, seeing Trixie’s discomfort, smiles kindly and pushes the folder to her. “But, the good news is that I can get you a position with one of my branches as an Entry Level Employee.”

“What will I be doing, exactly?” asks Trixie. She looks down at the application for a position labeled “Invisible Pony” and rolls her eyes at that title, thinking: ‘Lovely.’

“Simple, you’ll be delivering production equipment and help the crew set them up, unless they say otherwise.”

“How long will the work days be?”

“Depends. I try to keep them at eight hours, but sometimes things happen where ponies work as long as twelve hour shifts. I compensate them accordingly.”

“How much?”

“Seven bits an hour, plus another three for every hour worked overtime.” Fancypants smiles and hands Trixie a quill pen. “That, and I also provide free lunches and everypony is paid on a weekly basis.”

Fancypants falls silent as Trixie quickly fills out the application; the only sound in the room being the pen scratching against the paper and the clock ticking. When Trixie is done filling out the application, she gently sets the pen down, puts the application back in the folder, and gives it Fancypants. After getting the folder back, he puts it in his file and stands up and extends his hoof for a shake.

“Thank you, Trixie,” he says happily, “I’ll have it all processed by the end of the night. Come here tomorrow at ten in the morning and I’ll introduce you to your field manager and team.”

Trixie shakes his hoof, smiling and once again being so filled with happiness that she can barely stand still and is giggling childishly. “Thank you, Fancypants. You have no idea how much this means to me.”

“Oh I think I have some idea. Now run along, Trixie, and be sure to get those bruises checked out.”

Trixie nods, says her farewells, and is about to leave the room, but she stops and turns around. “You promise to take care of that um cataract thingy in your eye?”

“Good day, Trixie.”

“Right. Good day, Fancypants.”

oooOOOooo

Pinkie Pie hears Trixie approaching the door so she quickly backs up and when Trixie walks out, she pretends to be admiring something splendid. Trixie looks at Pinkie Pie quizzically, and then stares at what she’s staring at. Then back at Pinkie Pie. Then the object again.

“Um... what are you looking at?” asks Trixie.

“This magnificent paint job,” says Pinkie Pie casually.

“Yeah, because they did such a great job painting the wall white.”

“They sure did.” Pinkie Pie looks at Trixie. “So, what did you two talk about?”

“Oh, um I start working at ten in the morning, tomorrow. I have to show up here so he can introduce me to the team.”

“I see... Hang on a sec.”  Pinkie Pie sticks her head inside and loudly says: “Hey Fancypants! When does Trixie work!?”

Fancypants swears and clutches his heart, and then he gives Pinkie Pie a dirty stare. “Trixie works tomorrow morning at ten.”

“Here?”

“Yes, and then she’ll be leaving with the team to do some work.”

“Okie dokie lokie. Remember what I said.”

“I will.”

“I’m serious.”

“Good day, Ms. Sprinkles.”

Fancypants then uses his magic to slam his door shut and Pinkie Pie jumps away just in time. If she reacted a split second later then she would’ve had a face full of door, but right as Pinkie Pie jumps away she feels a crick in her back return. It wasn’t too bad, just extremely uncomfortable. Pinkie Pie grunts and stretches out her back and sighs with relief when the crick disappears after hearing the satisfying pops. She then looks over her shoulder and sees Trixie looks grossed out again.

“Sorry about that, Trixie, but it would make for an uncomfortable ride if I didn’t do that,” says Pinkie Pie.

“What happened to your back, Minty?” asks Trixie

The two mares start walking down the hallway and Pinkie Pie’s mind races for a good idea, but most are ridiculous and unbelievable, all except for one.

“I fell when I was trying to fix something,” says Pinkie Pie, despite her best efforts, some sadness managed to creep into her tone.

“Oh, that sucks,” says Trixie while looking down.

“It’s no biggie. We gotta make one more quick stop and then I’ll take you to your apartment.”

Trixie nods and quietly follows Pinkie Pie down the hallway.

=**********=

“It doesn’t matter if it’s for national security!” says an angry mare with a country accent over a dial radio, “The fact o’ the matter is that the Royal Government has no right t’ take over farms! Do you city folk even realize how important farms are t’ us earth ponies? Farms are more than just property to us!”

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to-”

Octavia sighs and clicks off her radio and then runs her hoof through her messy mane. Normally she would keep her mane well kept, even if she was relaxing at home, like she’s trying to do now, but now is not the case. She’s been working around the clock to write a new symphony for the annual Gala at the request of Celestia, and all she has to show for it is a blank sheet of high quality paper and an unopened box of pens and ink.

Octavia sighs, closes her eyes, and lets her head fall on the aged table. Her brain is completely dead. Or on lockdown. Or maybe it died because it’s on lockdown. Whatever the case is, she’s worried that the most important event in her life could go to waste because her mind decided to stop working. Octavia lifts her head up and blows some of her dark mane out of her eyes, but it doesn’t do much except for shift slightly out of her vision.

“I need a drink.”

Octavia hops out of her seat and walks into her fine living room to grab a cool bottle of wine to encourage her gears to work. She purposefully drags her hooves across the thick, wavy carpet to get that soft feel under her hooves that she loves so much. Plus, she’s also secretly fascinated by the way her hooves leave dark streaks in the grayish carpet when she drags them across it. As she walks towards her wine cooler she figures she might as well put on some music to help her think as well. Alcohol and classical music has worked well in the past, so this shouldn’t be any different.

Octavia goes over to her phonograph set and pulls out a record of one of her idols, the late Braille Lulamoon. She pushes the large speak out of the way, carefully sets the record on the turntable, and with even more caution, adjusts the arm of the device. There is a brief crackling, but soon heavenly music fills Octavia’s apartment and she feels all of her troubles melt away. She smiles with newfound relief and continues to her objective. It doesn’t take her long to find her desired beverage, and after pulling it out she grabs a wine glass and pours herself a drink. She’s about to take a sip, but notices the box that Pinkie Pie mailed to her before her murder sitting in the back corner of the living room, collecting dust. As much as Octavia wants to open it and see what’s inside, she made a promise to never open it and to give it up when the time is right. And the attached note also made it very clear to keep the box sealed and to give it to an agent of the Royal Government by the name of Minty Sprinkles. Thankfully Pinkie Pie was kind enough to give a very detailed description of the said pony.

Then Octavia’s eyes tear up and she sniffles as she stares at the box, remembering the last phone call that she had with her sister. They talked for nearly four hours, trying to catch up on lost time, but her life was hideously boring compared to Pinkie Pie’s. Octavia sighs and looks at her glass of wine, wishing everything was back to normal. Ever since the Changeling attack on Canterlot, nothing has been the same, and as far as Octavia’s concerned, Queen Chrysalis had won. She wanted to steal the love from Equestria, and now it’s all going away. Even the Elements of Harmony are breaking apart, starting with the death of Laughter.

Octavia closes her eyes and tries to think of the good times on the rock farm, or good times in general, with her parents and Pinkie Pie, but all she gets is a reminder of how it ended.

===

Octavia and her father stood at the front of the funeral procession for Pinkie Pie’s funeral. Her father was wearing an old, dark suit and saddle with an umbrella attached to it to shield him and Octavia from the rain. Octavia is wearing a lavish, black dress and is staring at the pink casket with balloons carved on the side and the Equestrian flag that is being carried by a group of four Royal Guards. Watching the casket get lowered is a line of Royal Guards standing at attention with Shining Armor, wearing a cast over his leg and horn, standing in the middle with Twilight by his side. Even Celestia was there with her head bowed, but her sister was nowhere to be seen.

Everything was almost completely silent to Octavia, she barely heard the sobs, or the heavy rain droplets pattering on the casket or the umbrella. Some lightning flashes in the distance and her eyes automatically snapped to the bright flash of light it caused, but her gaze drifted back to the coffin when they started lowering it.

Octavia looked around and saw just about everyone was under an umbrella. Fluttershy, Big Mac and Applejack were sharing an umbrella that was attached to the saddle on the stallion’s back. Big Mac has his hoof wrapped around Fluttershy’s neck as she cried into his chest. Fluttershy was barely able to stand because of how hard she was crying and eventually she and Big Mac had to lie down and the yellow pegasus’s sobs turned into wails. Applejack didn’t make any attempt to get under the cover of the umbrella, though. She kept her head bowed and her eyes closed. Her lips were moving, though, and Octavia guessed that the farmer was saying a prayer of some kind.

Octavia felt a lump in her throat come up, and she took deep breath to try to break it down while her father gently put his hoof on her back.

“I’ve should’ve been there...” said Rainbow Dash quietly, her voice trembling.

Octavia looked to her side and saw Rainbow Dash with Soarin and Spitfire, all three are wearing their formal Wonderbolts uniform, watching the casket get lowered into the ground. Rainbow Dash’s tears and trembling became more severe as the creaking from the gears continued. Soarin put his wing over Rainbow Dash’s back and said something that Octavia couldn’t hear, but whatever it was, it made Rainbow Dash look at him with a mix of grief and rage.

“You don’t understand... I failed her,”  said Rainbow Dash before leaving the two pegasi’ side.

Octavia sniffled and tears swelled up in her eyes as the suffocating lump reappeared in her throat. She looked at where the casket was, but all she saw was the pulley network and the stallions turning the wheels to lower the casket further in the ground.

“Don’t touch me!” snapped Rainbow Dash.

Octavia glanced over her shoulder and saw Rainbow Dash flying away, leaving Twilight looking down at the grass. Then she noticed Rarity staring at the casket, but she didn’t know what she saw. Rarity looked like she didn’t know if she should be angry, sad, or content with what she was seeing. When Rarity noticed Octavia staring at her, she opened her mouth to speak, but closed it and moved somewhere else instead.

The stallions that lowered Pinkie Pie’s casket into the ground started pushing dirt into the grave and Octavia walked towards the edge and watched the damp dirt fall on the soaked flag, slowly covering the casket with the clumps. Octavia kept herself composed as best as she could, but even with all her willpower she was still shaking as she awkwardly pulled out an old photo of her and the family before she left from her dress pocket using her teeth. She took a deep breath and then dropped it inside the grave. She watched the picture land perfectly in the middle of the seal on the flag. It was covered by dirt a second later.

Octavia dropped to the ground and cried into her hooves, not even caring that she’ll get dirty or soaked. Her whole body shook, her eyes became red and puffy and her sobbing was momentarily blocked out by the rolling thunder. The rain stopped bashing her a couple of seconds later and she felt a hoof touch her shoulder. She looked up and saw her father looking down at her. At first it didn’t look like he was crying, but upon a closer observation, Octavia saw thin streams of tears running down his cheek. He laid down next to Octavia and hugged her tightly as she cried into his shoulder.

===

Octavia nurses her wine until it is nothing at all while staring at the only thing left of Pinkie Pie. When she finishes her wine she has a brief mental argument on whether or not she should have another glass. She chooses to leave her glass empty and get back to work. Octavia is about to head back to her workplace, but is stopped short by a sporadic knocking on the door that reminds her of a hooligan doing a knock-knock-ditch game. She carefully approaches the door and peeks through the peephole and sees a very colorful pony standing in front of the door with someone else behind her. The colorful pony is freakishly similar to who Pinkie Pie described as the one who would take the box.

The visitor knocks on the door again with even more enthusiasm and says: “Octavia, I know you’re home. This is Minty Sprinkles, Royal Government Agent.” She pulls out a badge from seemingly nowhere and holds it up to the hole.“You see that? Of course you do, you’re right in front of the door. Looking right at me. Open up please.”

Octavia opens the door a smidge and the colorful pony by the name of Minty smiles at her and the other pony she’s with is looking impatient, but when Octavia realizes who the other pony is her eyes widen and her jaw drops from surprise.

“Is that Trixie?” asks Octavia.

“Sure is,” says Minty. “Hey, Trixie, you got a fan.”

Trixie turns around, looking hopeful. “I do?”

“I’m not a fan, I just recognize you,” says Octavia.

Trixie’s ears droop and she looks down, mumbling: “Oh.”

“Octavia, I understand you got a package from the late Pinkie Pie shortly before her passing.”

“Murder,” growls Octavia.

Trixie shrinks behind Minty and visibly becomes more nervous at the mention of “Murder”, making Octavia eye her suspiciously, and Minty bites her lip and nods apologetically. Octavia also notices that the colorful mare has shifted in her spot uneasily and that there is a pain in her eyes.

Octavia is hesitant, but the visitor matches Pinkie Pie’s description with one hundred percent accuracy and had the identification to prove she is, indeed, Minty Sprinkles. She steps back as Minty and Trixie step inside the apartment. Octavia looks at the box nervously and back at Minty, then glares at Trixie. She’s transfixed on the soft music being played from her phonograph.

“Me and Pinkie Pie talked for quite some time before her murder,” says Minty as she walks around the room, marveling at the furniture and decor. “She had a lot of good things to say about you, Octavia, and she also said that she gave you a package.” Minty then points at the box and looks at Octavia. “Is that the package?”

“Well, um... Don’t touch that!” says Octavia angrily while marching towards Trixie.

Trixie instantly retracts her hoof from the phonograph and steps back, almost tripping over herself, as Octavia checks the device to make sure nothing is broken, or that none of the records are misplaced. After finding out that nothing is wrong, she sighs with relief and then glares at Trixie murderously, making the unicron’s ears droop and sulk next to Minty. Minty, on the other hand, inspects the box and smiles when she sees no signs of tampering, save for the part where the note was pulled off.

“Would you two like a drink?” asks Octavia, her tone being less than hospitable.

“I think we better go,” says Trixie uneasily.

“Oh, I would love one!” says Minty a little too enthusiastically.

She looks around and sees the confused looks on Trixie and Octavia’s face, and she shrugs and smiles innocently. “What? A mare as high up as you has to have some good taste. Do you have punch?”

Octavia arches an eyebrow. “No, I only have wine and cider.”

“Cider it is! C’mon, Trixie, have a seat.”

Minty ushers Trixie on a spot on one of Octavia’s couches, much to Trixie’s annoyance, and Octavia goes into her kitchen to grab extra glasses and some cider.

“This is some nice music you’re playing. Who’s the composer?” asks Minty.

“My mother.” “Braille Lulamoon,” says Trixie and Octavia in unison.

Both mares look at each other and Minty smiles and relaxes on the couch, positioning herself so that her back gets the most comforting experience possible.

Octavia carefully sets the cups on the tray, and after doing so, she says: “Your mother was very talented. It was tragic how she passed so soon. She had so much potential.”

“It was tragic,” says Trixie, her eyes narrowing at the harsh tone Octavia used on the matter.

“Well at least Braille left a nice legacy,” says Minty, then under her breath: “I really like this couch.”

Octavia pours cider into the glasses and carefully carries the tray out and sets it on the coffee table in front of them. Trixie uses her magic to grab her cup while Minty snatches hers and gulps it all down. She then smacks her lips and grins at Octavia, who is repulsed by the childish behavior.

“This is some good stuff. What is it?” asks Minty.

“Sweet Apple Acres Cider,” answers Octavia.

“Oh very cool, I’ll have to be sure to buy myself some time.”

“Indeed, you should.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, this is just out of curiosity, but what did you think of your sister?”

Trixie gingerly sips her cider as her eyes shift between the two earth ponies. Minty looks genuinely interested while Octavia looks like she just lost all of her vocabulary. Her mind has once again died on her. She doesn’t know what to say about Pinkie Pie. The most they’ve ever spoken was the few short days before her death, and even then, it was all over the phone.

Octavia sighs. “I wish I could tell you what I thought, but in all honesty, we drifted apart, and I couldn’t get in contact with her until recently. And even then, it wasn’t enough to determine her real character. But from what I heard, she was a good pony.”

Minty stares at Octavia and they fall silent, the only sound is the soft music being played from the phonograph. Which Octavia can’t help but hear that it has a tragic tone to it, like fate is trying to get into her head. Octavia also notices that Minty had forced herself to smile and is now sipping at the nothingness in her cup. Minty is also trembling a bit and eventually sets the cup back down and avoids eye contact with Octavia.

“Would you like more cider?” asks Octavia.

“No, no I’m fine,” replies Minty, her voice trembling slightly. “It’s just that, like you, I didn’t know Ms. Pie very well, and,” Minty smacks her lips together looks at the ceiling for a moment before bringing her gaze back to Octavia, “well, when I talked to her, she spoke very highly of you. She thought you were very accomplished and she also wondered if you -you know- got those birthday cards she had sent you.”

Octavia looks down at her carpet, caught off guard by the question. She remembers how she got those cards, but now regrets hiding them and never opening them because they weren’t up to par with the standards she had developed. She also didn’t want her new friends to see them since she’s seen first hand how they treat those who do not live up to their standards. But in spite of those things, she had grown so fond of the Canterlot lifestyle that she had tried to forget her roots, just so she can build a fantasy that she never lived the hard life on a rock farm. She had achieved a new, fantastic lifestyle in Canterlot and wanted to hold on to it in anyway she could.

“We spoke quite a bit about the arrangements... It’s like she knew she was going to die,” says Minty.

Trixie looks at Minty and then at Octavia, seeing the glare on the gray mare made her ears droop again and she shifts uneasily in her seat. Octavia knows that Trixie had something to do with what had happened, her not-so-subtle actions are betraying her with every second that passes. And she really doesn’t like that someone involved with her sister’s murder is being chauffeured by this government agent. However, Pinkie Pie did say that Minty is trustworthy, so maybe they have something planned. Hopefully something horrible.

“During one of our meets, before she mailed you the box, she wondered why you never answered your phone or returned her calls,” continues Minty. Octavia looks at Minty, feeling guilt over take her now, but Minty persists, ignoring the discomfort she’s putting Octavia in. “I don’t know if you couldn’t or wouldn’t get in contact with her,” Minty sighs heavily and blinks a couple of times, “but know this: she loved you, she couldn’t stress that enough before she died.”

“Did you try to save her at least?” asks Octavia, now completely overwhelmed with guilt and grief.

“It’s my job to keep ponies safe, to keep Equestria safe. I did what I had to do.”

Octavia looks down to hide her guilt and grief, but  she’s certain the others can see it plain as day. She wouldn’t be surprised if there was a rain cloud hanging above her head right now. But when the last part of Minty’s answer answer seeps in, she looks up, confused and expecting to see Minty and Trixie still on the couch. What she sees instead is Minty carefully balancing Pinkie Pie’s box on her back and Trixie holding the door open with her magic.

“What did you mean by you did what you had to do?” asks Octavia as she approaches Minty. The two sentences together didn’t make any sense to her. One on hand, it implies that she did everything she could to save her sister; but with the second one... It just doesn’t make any sense to her.

“I meant exactly what I said,” replies Minty while walking towards the door. Then she turns her head slightly and smiles, saying: “We’re grateful for the hospitality, the cider was good, that couch was awesome, but now we have to get going. Lot’s of work to do in such little time.”

Octavia still doesn’t understand what Minty meant, but she guesses that she won’t get any information out of her unless she straps her to a seat and interrogates her, but she knows that will be suicide, especially with the way things are going in Equestria right now. However, now that Octavia thinks about, she can’t help but wonder if Pinkie Pie was involved in some kind of government operation. Equestria is going to crap, she gets ridiculously specific instructions, has to hand over a mysterious box to an agent who never mentioned what department she’s part of, and to top it off: Pinkie Pie nearly talked her ear off before she died. It’s just like what Minty said: it’s like she knew she was going to die. However, there is still one thing that she wants to know,and she hopes to Celestia that Minty will at least be kind enough to give her a straight answer.

“Wait. Did she say anything to you before she died?” asks Octavia.

Trixie looks at Minty as she stares at Octavia. The colorful pony sighs heavily and asks Trixie to hold the box for a moment. After Trixie levitates the box off of Minty’s back, she takes another deep breath, blinks some tears out of her eyes, and then she approaches Octavia.

“She did. Two things actually,” says Minty softly. Minty then pulls Octavia in a tight embrace and sniffles. For Octavia, it feels very intimate the way she’s being hugged and can feel the agent’s hooves rub her back in a comforting manner; it feels like she doesn’t want to let go, and Octavia hesitantly hugs her back. Minty squeezes tears out as she shuts her eyes tight and whispers: “She also said not to worry, Octavia, it’ll all be sunshine and rainbows in the end.”

Minty reluctantly releases Octavia and smiles sadly while Octavia looks down at the ground, stunned. That phrase is something Pinkie Pie had always said after she got her cutie mark when things looked bleak. No other pony would say that. They would say something generic,  like: “It’ll be okay” or “Don’t give up” or “Look for the silver lining” or some other horribly generic, get-well-soon card quote thing.

Octavia’s eyes start to swell with tears, her lips quiver, and she gasps for air as a suffocating lump pushes into her throat. She looks up at say something, anything, to thank Minty for giving her the message, but she sees the door closing, leaving her alone in her apartment. Octavia curls up in the middle of the floor and cries into her hooves, her only companions now being her alcohol and music.

oooOOOooo

Pinkie Pie looks over her shoulder at Octavia’s door and wipes her nose while blinking tears out of her eyes. It’s eating away at her that she has to keep her fate a secret, especially when she was hugging her sister, but deep down she was also hoping that Octavia would at least recognize her voice. But after the conversation, it became painfully apparent she knows she didn’t, and that is just as painful to her as playing dead.

“You okay, Minty?” asks Trixie.

Pinkie Pie nods and looks at Trixie, forcing herself to smile. “I’m fine. Let’s get you to your new home.”

As much as it hurt for her, she knows it’s best that Octavia thinks she dead. For now.

Arc 1- 14- Challenged -EDITED-

Arc 2- 6 (Vigilante Begins)

The elevator dings and its doors lazily slide open to reveal a bright hallway, its walls are colored in white with gold trim, it has sky blue carpet with white squares, and there are large windows that show an amazing view of Canterlot. Most of the great view being possible because the apartment complex is resting on the crest of a hill. There are at least thirty rooms, all of which have suns and bolded numbers on their doors, and the one that they are heading towards at the back, where the complex curves, with “505” written on it.

Trixie quietly follows Minty out of the elevator, her parole officer is carrying the box on her back again along with the bag of candy, and she has a small bounce in her steps. When they reach the door, Trixie takes a moment to look out the window. The orangish colors of the setting sun give the bustling city a peaceful hue. The noise of the traffic is dying down and she notices that the zeppelins she’s seen earlier are being replaced with ones that are glowing. Trixie still can’t believe how much Canterlot has changed, or Equestria in general. During her travels, she noticed difference, but she never comprehended it until now. Then Trixie notices a huge construction site on the outskirts of the city. She can barely see it, but she knows it’s a construction site by its skeletal appearance.

“Hey, Minty, what’s that over there?” asks Trixie while pointing at the distant site.

Minty unlocks the door and looks at what Trixie is pointing at. Then she smiles and says: “That is the Celestial Spire. It should be done in about a year.”

“What’s it for?”

“Not a clue. It’s probably going to be a monument of some kind.”

Trixie and Minty walk inside the apartment.

“Well that was helpful,” says Trixie sarcastically.

“I do my best to be helpful,” says Minty with a smug smirk. “But in the meantime, we have an apartment to explore!”

Minty shows Trixie the living room first. Its a decent size with dark gray carpet, a ceiling fan, and a glass table with some cushions around it as well as a stand with a dial radio on it. Then Minty shows Trixie the kitchen and dining room area. The kitchen has all the basics, but only one pony can fit in there comfortably, and even then, for that one pony it’ll still be somewhat cramped. The dining room is next to the kitchen, and has a wooden table with cushions surrounding it, and to top it off, there is a very bright lighting fixture directly above the table. Trixie is then taken to the bathroom, once again, it is simple. It has all the necessities, nothing more, nothing less, and has just enough room for one pony. And finally there are the two bedrooms, both of them are square rooms with a small closet, single bed, and a window with a curtain.

“Um, Minty, why are there two rooms?” asks Trixie quizzically while pointing at the rooms with her hoof.

“Because I’m going to be living with you, duh,” replies Minty as she comes out of the other room, the box and bag of candy no longer with her.

Trixie pales and her ears droop down while her jaw drops. As “Because I’m going to be living with you” echoes in her mind her legs start to wobble due to the sudden, not so exciting news of her having an obnoxious and painfully bright pony as her roommate. Now she knows for certain that Celestia and the whole universe is against her. How is she supposed to save anyone or be an agent of justice if she’s always working and being under the hawk like supervision of the Royal Government?

“Roommates, huh?” says Trixie, trying to smile brightly, but her wobbling and twitching eye betray the smile.

“Yep!” says Minty, grinning from ear to ear.

“Oh-kay.”

Then Trixie faints.

“Trixie, wake up,” says Minty, her voice is surprisingly smooth this time and has an echo to it. But the command does not register in Trixie’s brain, and Minty tries again a couple of times before leaving. A moment later, piercing cold water splashes all over Trixie and Minty yells: “WAKE UP!”

Trixie screams and jumps to her feet, teeth chattering and her soaked body shaking. Her mane is matted over her face, so all she can see is hair, lots and lots of hair. She wipes some of her mane away from her eyes and sees Minty carelessly tossing an empty bucket down the hallway. She really wants to sock Minty in the jaw right now, and when Minty turns around and sees Trixie’s angry, red face, she smiles innocently.

“I had to get you up somehow.”

“You didn’t have smelling salt?” says Trixie through gritted teeth.

“Nope, I tried waking you up the nice way, but the great news was so great that you fainted so badly that I had to splash you awake.”

After shaking herself as dry as she could, Trixie decides to explore the room in a feeble attempt to calm her nerves. All it takes is one stare and two second closet inspection to see all that the simple room has to offer. Minty sighs and leans against the doorway, her smile now gone.

“Look, I know you’re eager to go out on your own and all, but you’re terrorist. Or, technically speaking, an ex-terrorist. Celestia is just worried that you might do something bad if we left you on your own, so to keep an eye on you we had this apartment set up,” says Minty sympathetically.

Trixie tests the bed, as soon as her hoof presses down on it, the springs squeak and groan loudly in protest, and she can feel the lumps in the mattress too. At least the sheets are comfortable.

“But it shouldn’t be too bad. We have a great view of Canterlot and we’re on the top floor so we don’t have to deal with anypony thumping on the floors. Oh, and Trixie.”

Trixie turns around and Minty tosses a bag of mint gum at her. Trixie catches it with her magic, but all train of thought is destroyed when her brain breaks from trying to figure out how Minty tossed her a bag of mint gum from thin air.

“I’ll be in my room if you need anything.”

Trixie nods and Minty leaves the room. After hearing Minty close her door, Trixie sneaks up and presses her ear against the door to see if she can get an idea of what Minty is doing. She hears the box being cut open and some stuff being taken out, but then it all comes to an abrupt end. Trixie strains her ears and presses harder against the door, but then Minty suddenly opens up the door and Trixie yelps in surprise and almost falls over. The only reason why she didn’t is because Minty catches her with a hoof and sets her up straight with a teasing smile.

“You sure are a nosy pony, aren’t ya?” teases Minty.

“I just... Yeah, I guess I am,” says Trixie while smiling nervously. She peeks over Minty’s shoulder and sees more random things, like hoofball pads and buckets of black paint. That only fuels her curiosity.

“Well, before this gets any more awkward I will close this door, resume my mysterious business, and you will go back to your room and be bored for the night. Sound good?” Trixie nods and Minty grins while gently pushing Trixie back, saying: “Okie dokie lokie, then. See ya in a few.”

When Trixie is far enough away, Minty slams the door shut and Trixie huffs and sulks back into her room. She stares at the bland living space for a few seconds before her mind starts working on how she will save Bon Bon without Minty interfering any more than she already has, or without her getting-

“I’ve got it!” says Trixie proudly while stomping her hoof proudly.

“Got what?” asks Minty from the shelter of her room.

Trixie cringes and looks behind her. “Nothing! I was just talking to myself!”

“Oh, okay then!”

Trixie sighs with relief and yanks the pillowcase off of the pillow with her magic. But then she remembers that she doesn’t have scissors to cut it, and she doesn’t want to ask Minty for any since she working on “mysterious business”. Trixie sighs, puts the pillow back in its case and tosses it in the corner. Then she yanks off the drabby blanket with her teeth while simultaneously using her magic to pull off the bottom sheets. Trixie tests the blanket by wrapping it around her body, mostly to keep her cutie mark hidden. She finds that the blanket is comfortable, but thick, but it does amazing in hiding her cutie mark. She then uses the sheet to wrap around her face, covering everything but her eyes, giving it a small tent at the top where her horn is. Trixie thinks the cheesy costume will do for now, though, since it’s doing its job nicely. The blanket is covering most of her body, save for her limbs, neck, and head, and the sheet is covering her facial features. No one should be able to identify her easily.

Trixie tests her movements in her cheap disguise, and smiles at the fact that it works great. The only problem is that it feels a little stifling, but it’s not enough to do any harm. Now all that’s left is her trying to sneak past Minty, which shouldn’t be too hard since she’s distracted. But when Trixie looks out the window, her heart starts racing and she becomes increasingly uneasy. It is almost completely dark now, and she has to hurry with no interference whatsoever.

oooOOOooo

Pinkie Pie finishes painting one of the leg pads from the set of hoofball pads she bought. She gratefully spits out the foul tasting paintbrush and studies the now black pad for a couple of seconds before gently pushing it off to the side. Then she hears quiet hoofsteps, the front door slowly creak open and click when it shuts. Pinkie Pie stands up, cracks her back, and then goes to the front door and peeks through the eyehold. She barely sees the door to the stairwell close.

‘Okay, what are you up to, Trixie?’ wonders Pinkie Pie while she grabs her keys.

After grabbing her keys, she leaves the apartment, and patiently listens to the boring elevator music as the elevator descends to the ground floor. Thankfully it was fast, but she wasn’t expecting anything else since the complex is only five stories high. When it opens up at the lobby she walks out looking calm as can be, and even nods to the mare sitting behind the receptionist desk, but the mare is too distracted with her Playmare magazine to give her any notice. Not that she can blame her, since the star of the issue is Soarin. There is nothing hotter than a stallion in uniform after all.

Pinkie Pie looks out the lobby window and sees Trixie disappear into an alleyway, and she sighs, trots to her truck, and starts it up without wasting any time. Then she carefully pulls out of the parking lot and begins her silent pursuit.

=**********=

Bon Bon stuffs the last of the small bags of bits in her safe; she had emptied all of her savings and other financial resources to pay back Gilda, which she barely had the four thousand bits. Now the safe is so stuffed that it can’t close properly, but she doesn’t mind since it’ll make the transition easier. However, with what is about to happen, she won’t be able to give her employees an adequate paycheck for a few weeks.

“Hey, Bon Bon, the place is locked up and I’m heading home,” says Lyra wearily, still wearing the ridiculous costume she wore earlier when greeting customers.

Bon Bon turns around quickly to hide the bulging pile of bits, and she smiles at her long time friend, but her smile is ruined by the nervous sweat coating her head. Lyra takes off her costume and puts it on a rack, rambling on and on about how annoying and dumb customers can be. Bon Bon merely pretends to listen, but Lyra is quick to catch on to Bon Bon’s distracted state.

“You okay there? You look a little sick,” says Lyra with worry.

“Oh, I’m fine, I just had some bad food,” assures Bon Bon, she can’t tell Lyra that she’s dealing with a crime boss at the moment. When she gets home she’ll explain everything to Lyra over some Sweet Apple Acres Cider.

“Where did you eat?”

“Uh-”

“It was that dang donkey restaurant wasn’t it?”

“...Yep, sure was.”

“Dang it, Bon Bon! I told you donkeys are dirty, and now you got food poisoning because they can’t keep their stupid place clean. You should sue.”

“I’m not going to sue a bunch of donkeys for something that didn’t sit well with my stomach.”

“It didn’t sit well because they cooked the food wrong. Did you know I saw bugs in their kitchen?”

“Lyra, I’m not suing- Wait, a second? Why were you in their kitchen?”

Lyra smiles nervously while shifting her eyes up at the ceiling. “You need any help finishing up?”

Bon Bon shakes her head and escorts Lyra to the backdoor. “No, it’s alright, I just got one more thing to take care of. But we’ll need to talk tonight.”

Lyra stops and looks at Bon Bon with a teasing, and oddly hopeful, glint in her eyes. “So, you are gay! I knew it!”

Bon Bon’s jaw drops and her face becomes flustered, and she stammers: “Wha-What! No! Dang it, Lyra, how many times am I going to have to tell you that my barn door doesn’t swing that way?”

Lyra smiles mischievously and pulls Bon Bon closer to her so that the sides of their head and she waves her free hoof towards the sleeping city. “One million. Or until you get a coltfriend. Either or. Getting a coltfriend shouldn’t be too hard, though, considering that there are many good looking stallions out there and one hot mare in my loving embrace.”

Bon Bon tugs away from Lyra, and her unicorn companion snickers at how uneasy she made her. Then Bon Bon shakes her head, forcing herself to smile and walks outside with Lyra. There is a moment of silence as they enjoy the weather. Bon Bon does love how warm it is outside, it’s a great contrast from the refrigerator that her store is. But alas, her bliss is ruined when she sees predatory eyes staring at her from the alley. Lyra doesn’t see them, though.

“Go home, Lyra. We’ll talk about what I wanted to over some cider,” says Bon Bon nervously.

“Can you give me an idea what you want to talk about?” asks Lyra with an arched eyebrow.

Bon Bon’s ears droop and she looks down to avoid her friend’s gaze. “I made some mistakes with some finances.” Lyra’s quizzical stare turns into a stern one and Bon Bon looks at her with a reassuring smile. “The problem will be taken care of tonight, but it’ll make for some financial hardships for the store. I’ll get more into it later over when I get back.”

Lyra stares at Bon Bon for a few more seconds before nodding and reluctantly heading home.

“I’ll be home soon!” yells Bon Bon.

“Take your time, there’s no rush!” yells Lyra back, some concern heard clearly in her tone.

When Lyra disappears into the darkness of the city, Bon Bon sighs and runs her hoof along the pavement while looking down. She hears a series of flapping wings followed closely by paws and talons landing on the pavement in front of her. She looks up and sees Winny and Grim walking towards her with four other griffins behind them. They all basically look the same to her; all of them have a different shade of brown and the males are larger than their slender female counterparts. But one of the males is ridiculously dirty, covering his white feathers with brown streaks, and is losing feathers, and another female griffin is wearing a polaroid camera around her neck. Bon Bon swallows some spit and puts on a brave smile while approaching Winny.

“Hey, Winny, I got the money,” says Bon Bon.

Winny looks at a male and female griffin to her right and points to the front of the store, saying: “Lace. Stake. You two guard the front parking lot.” Then she looks at the sickly griffin. “Nasty Hick, cut the power and when you’re inside, break the lock so it doesn’t open.”

The griffins nod and go their separate ways, and Bon Bon looks at them nervously before looking at Winny. “None of that is necessary, Winny. I’ll give you the money and then we’ll just forget about everything.”

“Let’s get inside and get this over with,” says Winny. Bon Bon nods and leads them to her office, along the way she hears Winny say: “Is your camera good, Rane?”

“Of course it is,” says Rane, Bon Bon can clearly see the grin the griffin has.

When they are in the office Bon Bon points to her safe and looks at Winny, but she doesn’t make any move towards the safe. Instead she stares at Bon Bon, her eyes glistening.

“You’re a good mare, Bon Bon, you always have been,” starts Winny. Bon Bon’s blood drains from her face and her heart feels like its going to explode as the thumping increases tenfold. “You just made some mistakes, like all of us do, and this mistake is going to cost you more than just money.”

“What are you saying?” asks Bon Bon, eyes swelling with terrified tears.

“I told you that Gilda ordered you dead unless you have the money.”

“And I have it.”

“She changed her mind. She wants you dead, with or without the money.”

Bon Bon shakes her head in disbelief, and she slumps on the floor. “This can’t-How can she do this!” Then she looks at Winny in desperation. “You don’t have to kill me! I can leave town and never speak a word of this!”

“Sorry, Bon Bon, but Gilda-”

“Look, I have the money, alright! It’s in the safe! Just check!” sobs Bon Bon desperately. She looks at the griffins for any signs of mercy, but Rane is fidgeting with her camera, Grim is shifting impatiently in his spot, and Winny is just staring at her. “I have Gilda’s money! Winny, you know-I told you I would get it and I got it! Nopony has to-You don’t have to do this!”

Winny stares at Bon Bon as she cries and begs them to check the safe, even telling them that the safe is unlocked and they can just take the money and leave. But when Bon Bon notices Winny tapping her talon against the carpet and trying to look stern, but is betrayed by the noticeable amount of regret in her features, her trembling becomes more severe and is barely able to push herself into a corner.

“N-No! No! You-You can’t be serious!” sobs Bon Bon. “Winny, please!”

“I’m sorry, Bon Bon,” says Winny solemnly while flexing her talons, then the lights shut off, covering the entire store in a blanket of darkness, “but I have my orders.”

oooOOOooo

Trixie sneaks behind a parked motorized wagon that is across the street from the candy store. She strains her eyes for any signs of movement inside the dark building, but sees none. She tries to sneak across the street, but stops herself when she sees a small flash of light from the very back. The worst case scenario plays out in her mind and she goes from sneaking, to running as fast as she can. Despite how fast she’s running, her hoof steps barely make a sound against the pavement, and the closer she gets to the candy store, the more defined the two griffins guarding the entrance become. Fortunately for her, they are somewhat distracted with smoking.

Trixie slides to cover behind another parked motorized wagon and keeps her breathing under control. She crawls on her stomach and looks under the vehicle and sees that the griffins are even more distracted than before. One of them is holding out a lighter to light the other griffin’s cigarette.

“Thanks, Lace,” says the griffin with the fresh cigarette.

“Don’t mention it. What’s taking Winny so long anyway?” says the other griffin, Lace.

“Nervous?”

“Sort of, I thought I saw something across the street, earlier.”

Trixie narrows her eyes as she prepares herself for an attack while the other griffin stares at Lace quizzically.

“You sure?”

“No, I haven’t been sleeping well and-”

“Oh boohoo. Stop your whining and keep a lookout for this ghost of yours.”

“Fuck you.”

The griffin snickers while Lace rolls her eyes, and that is when Trixie takes the initiative to strike.

oooOOOooo

Nasty Hick is casually walking around the store, ripping open random bags of candy and popping the delectables in his mouth and chewing obnoxiously loud. His wet smacks echo loudly in the building, and when he gets to the front counter he breaks open each cash register to see if there’s money in them. All twelve of them were empty. Nasty Hick swallows a mouthful of gumballs, making for a brief, unpleasant feeling, before scanning the area again, completely bored out of his skull.

“Why did we have to cut the power!” whines Nasty Hick loudly.

“Because! That’s why!” yells Rane.

Nasty Hick rolls his eyes while carelessly cutting magazines with his talons. “Gee, and everyone thinks I’m a moron.”

Nasty Hick is about to cut another magazine, but restrains himself when he sees that it’s a fashion magazine with some very beautiful mares on front looking really good in their dresses. The griffin giggles and grabs the magazine, and when he starts flipping through the pictures he gets a lot of perverted thoughts that he has no shame in having. He can’t explain it, but while most other griffins have their attractions set on other griffins, his have always been set on ponies. He thinks it has something to do with the way they feel; they’re all soft and colorful, unlike his race which have a severely limited color range and are almost always born with freakishly hard muscles. Plus he doesn’t like beaks, talons, or paws rubbing against him, and hooves have always felt good to him. That, and last time he tried getting a massage from a griffin he had to get stitches, so that scarred him for life.

He flips another page and gets a new found urge to take the magazine in a bathroom and pleasure himself when he sees a picture of Fluttershy and Rarity at last year’s Gala.

“Oh, Fluttershy, why did you have to quit your modeling career?” says Nasty Hick sadly.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he swears he sees a figure in a cheap costume pounce on Lace and Stake beat them senselessly. He drops the magazine and cautiously approaches the window. After approaching the window, he looks outside and sees both of them on the ground, unconscious, with no signs of the attacker anywhere. He swears under his breath and runs towards the back where the others are.

Winny is digging through the safe and putting bags of bits into another bag being held by Grim while Rane is sort of standing guard. She’s standing outside the door, but has her focus on a polaroid picture in her grip. Nasty Hick is about to say that they have a problem, but when he sees Bon Bon lying on the ground with deep gashes in her neck, and Winny’s talons soaked in blood, his blood drains from his face and his whole body sulks.

Rane looks at Nasty Hick from the corner of her eye. “What is it, Nasty?”

“Dammit, she was right. She did have the money,” says Winny regretfully after tossing the last of the bits in the bag. Then she runs her bloody talons through her head feathers and sighs while looking at Bon Bon apologetically. “Well, sorry about that Bon Bon. Hopefully the afterlife will be kind to you.” Then she sees Nasty Hick staring at her, his jaw practically to the floor. “What’s wrong, Nasty?”

Nasty Hick snaps out of his trance. “Sorry, but we uh we have a slight problem.”

“And that problem is what?” asks Winny while tying the bag of bits.

“Something probably killed Lace and Stake.”

“And you left the door undefended!”

“Well I had to tell you!”

“We’re leaving!”

The griffins hastily march towards the front door, and right when they see it, someone, or something, lands on Rane’s back, pushing her down on the floor, hard, breaking her camera in the process. The others turn around instantly and Nasty Hick gets a hoof to the face, knocking his world into a swirl and making him land on his face. A few seconds later, his vision returns to normal and he scrambles to his feet just in time to see Winny running out and taking off into the night.

“Wait for me!” cries Nasty Hick.

But before he can leave, the attacker rams him on the side and he’s pushed off of his feet and both of them crash into a rack with enough force to knock it over. The deafening sound of metal and hundreds of packets of candy crashing on tile makes Nasty Hick’s ears ring, and when he tries to get up, he feels himself being lifted off of the ground and then tossed into another rack. This time he hits it back first and feels a horrible pain shoot throughout his wings and back, and when he lands on his head on the tile, his world goes dark.

oooOOOooo

Trixie watches with a satisfied smile as the griffin she threw across the store slumps to the ground while the rack collapses behind him. She knows Gray Muffin would give her a nasty slap on the back of the head for making such a ruckus, but-

“You damn mule!” screams Grim.

Trixie barely has enough time to dodge Grim’s slash, and when he tries to go for another one, she rolls out of the way and quickly bucks his hind leg. He howls and collapses to the ground, and when he tries to swipe at her again, she jumps up and lands on his talons. She hears his bones snap and he screams in pain once more.

“I’m gonna kill you, you piece of-!”

Trixie shoots him in the chest with a telekinetic blast that sends him flying into the wall before he can finish. Upon impacting the wall, he leaves a huge crack in it and falls to the ground, knocked out. Then Trixie whirls around and bashes the griffin she landed on earlier in the beak when she tries to get up. The griffin’s beak cracks and she makes a weird, painful squawking noise as she spirals to the ground. When she tries to get up again, while clutching her beak, Trixie brings her hooves on her back and is smashed into the tile. This time she stays still.

Trixie takes a deep breath and is about to search for Winny, but stops when she hears heavy breathing and awkward footsteps mixed with flapping. She turns around and her eyes widen behind her makeshift mask. Grim is half flying, half running towards her with a limp and murder written all over his bloody face. Trixie uses her magic to throw a gumball machine at his head. It hits him right where she wanted and the machine breaks, showering him and the floor with lots of little gumballs, but Grim still gets back up, albeit with great difficulty.

“Oh for the love of Celestia! Will you stay down!” growls Trixie.

“I refuse to lose a fight with a pony!” yells Grim.

Grim then launches himself at Trixie with blinding speed, and tackles her to the ground. They both roll over each other, end over end, claws shredding the outfit and slicing into Trixie’s skin, sending small streaks of burning pain all over her body. Trixie bites back the urge to scream and when she winds up with her back pressed against the tile, near the window, she uses her momentum to push Grim off. Grim flies over her and goes straight through the window. It is at that moment that all the lights in the building flash on with eye burning intensity and an ear busting alarm shrieks to life.

oooOOOOooo

Grim pushes himself to his feet, grumbling very colorful words under his breath while shaking shards of glass out of his feathers. He doesn’t care that the candy store is acting like a enormous light bulb, or that its making enough noise to wake up all of Canterlot, he just wants to kill the pony who’s responsible for making what was supposed to be a quick, clean job a disaster. He’s about to go inside, but when he hears a vehicle screeching to a stop behind him, he turns around and sees huge headlights glaring at him. Grim tries to shield his eyes from the blinding light, but it doesn’t do much. However, he is able to make out a silhouette of a pony approaching him.

“Who the hell are you?” growls Grim.

The pony is silent, and when Grim tries to figure out who the newcomer is again, a hoof suddenly shoots out in blinding speed and strikes Grim in the throat. He feels his voice box break and he gaks and falls to the ground, clutching his throat with his good hand. Then the mysterious pony stomps on his head and he blacks out.

oooOOOooo

Pinkie Pie grits her teeth as she jumps through the hole in the window and walks through the mess that is now Bon Bon Land. While she looks at the mess Trixie made, she wonders how Trixie could have possibly passed any course that League gave her. Pinkie Pie swears she would give Trixie a big fat “F” with a puke face sticker if she was her student and did anything like this during training.

Pinkie Pie carelessly walks over the carnage, crushing pieces of candy under her hooves and stepping over the limp griffins while keeping her eyes locked on the back, where Bon Bon’s office is. While doing so, she feels her puffy mane and tail deflate under their wigs and her veins throbbing from the hot blood rushing to her face.

oooOOOooo

Trixie is sitting on her haunches, jaws agape behind her mask, staring at Bon Bon’s corpse in the corner of the office. Bon Bon’s neck had been slashed and her body is lying in a thick pool of blood that is seeping all over the office floor. Trixie is so stunned at the sight of seeing the gruesome scene that she loses all touch of her surroundings. She doesn’t hear anything or feel the floor beneath her, she doesn’t even comprehend the rest of the area. It’s just her and the corpse.

“I was too late,” chokes Trixie.

Trixie is suddenly tugged off of her back and slammed on the floor with her head pinned between a pair of hooves. After the ringing dies down and her vision returns to normal, she sees Minty glaring down at her. A very, very, very pissed off Minty.

“What are you doing, Trixie!” yells Minty. “Are you purposefully trying to get yourself caught?”

“I-I’m not Trixie. I’m somepony else,” stammers Trixie.

“Really!” Minty pulls down the cheap mask with her teeth, revealing the rest of Trixie’s face. “Because you look an awful lot like Trixie to me!”

Trixie scrunches up and her ears droop as she tries to explain her situation. “Look I didn’t kill Bon Bon, I was trying to save her! It was the griffins! They’re the ones that killed her!”

Minty steps off of Trixie and forcefully makes her stand up. When Trixie stands up she looks away from the gruesome scene while Minty does the exact opposite. She goes inside the office and immediately starts searching the place for what Trixie can only guess are clues as to why the griffins went after Bon Bon.

“The guards will be here in less than five minutes,” says Minty. She opens up a roster and skims through it for a few seconds at speeds that surprise Trixie before slamming it shut and putting it back where she found it. “We’re leaving right now.”

“Aren’t you going to-”

“No.”

Trixie stares at the mess, wanting to figure out who the griffins worked for and why they killed Bon Bon, but when Minty bites down on Trixie’s tail and tugs on it hard enough to feel like it’s almost getting ripped off, she snaps out of it. But not without yelping and nearly jumping out of her skin of course. She turns around and glares at Minty while defensively tucking her tail away as best as she could. However, upon seeing Minty’s glare, she surrenders. The glare her parole officer is giving her makes it look like her colors have darkened, specifically around the eyes, and any pony with any sense would know that the looks she’s giving off would mean a world of pain for any smidge of defiance.

“Get in the cart. Now,” orders Minty.

Trixie quickly nods her head and gallops past Minty. When she’s in Minty’s vehicle she can’t bear to bring herself to look at her, and when she hears Minty get inside and slam the door shut, she cringes and shrinks down into her seat. She shrinks down even further when the engine roars to life, it sounds like even Minty’s vehicle is mad at her. Then Minty, using less than graceful driving skills, speeds out of the parking lot and disappears into the darkness of the sleeping city.

“Trixie, let’s be very clear,” says Minty angrily, her furious stare locked on the road in front of her.

‘Oh boy, here we go,’ thinks Trixie dreadfully, preparing herself for a tongue lashing while resting her head against the window.

“If you want to go out and fight crime, more power to you. Heck, I’d gladly give a costume so you won’t have to use bed sheets.”

Trixie rolls her eyes. ‘Sure you do, Minty, sure you do.’

“But you have to understand that I worked hard to get this sorted out, and you and I are on thin ice as it is. So if you screw up, I screw up. If you go to Singsong, I go to Singsong. Got it?”

Trixie glares at Minty. “You worked hard to get this sorted out?”

“I did.”

“Okay, stop the cart!”

Minty suddenly swerves into an alley and puts the brakes on,  and Trixie yelps as she lurches forward, her face colliding with the windshield. When Trixie pulls her face away, she glares at Minty as she shuts off the vehicle. It’s just them and the darkness of the city now.

“Cart is stopped, now what?” says Minty while glaring at Trixie.

“What do you mean you worked hard to get this sorted out?” demands Trixie.

“I meant exactly what I said.”

“Oh, that answer again.”

“Yes, that answer again.”

“Can’t you just be clear with me?”

“Okay, fine, I’ll be clear. What you did was reckless and stupid on every level-”

“Hey! I tried to do things all ninja-ly-”

“And you were lucky that I arrived when I did-”

“But things just didn’t go as well as I had hoped!”

“Because if I didn’t then the Guards would’ve seen you staring at a corpse and would’ve arrested you on the spot! And then you would’ve been sent back to Singsong along with me!”

“Well maybe I’m not some kind of bucking emotionless killing machine like Gray Muffin, Minty! Maybe I actually freeze up when I see a corpse! Maybe if you hadn’t been doing what you had to do, Pinkie Pie would still be alive and I-!”

Suddenly, Minty has her hoof around Trixie’s head and she smashes it against the dashboard, leaving a nasty crack under her head and a ringing in her ears. Trixie grunts and squirms and is really tempted to use her magic against Minty, but again, those damn eyes are saying its better not to try it. To Trixie, they look like they’re glowing in the dark like a predator.

“Listen here, Trixie,” says Minty in a low, dangerous tone, “Pinkie Pie is dead because she wanted to be, okay? If you didn’t kill her then the ponies you worked for would’ve gone to the four corners of the world and killed anypony that stood in their way to get to her. That includes friends, family, and any strangers she met along the way.”

Trixie grunts and tries to shift her position, but Minty puts more pressure on, forcing her to stay still.

“You are not the only one with misery as your company! You do not get to play the ‘Poor Me’ card because everypony has one! If you knew what I had lost, what I had sacrificed, and all the lives that have been affected because of my choices then you would think twice about you being the only one miserable!”

Minty releases Trixie, but she keeps her head on the dashboard, she’s too afraid to move. A couple of seconds later, Trixie gets the courage to push herself back into her seat, and after doing so she looks at Minty, still afraid of what will happen next.  Minty then restarts the vehicle and slowly leaves the alley after a small army of Night Guards rush past them in their vehicles.

“You aren’t the only one who’s dead inside, Trixie,” says Minty. She’s still angry, but Trixie can hear her voice cracking to where it sounds like she’s ready to break down.

After that, the ride back to the apartment is in near total silence. No words are exchanged, the radio is kept off, and the only noise was from the engine rumbling and the sound of wind rushing past them. In any normal situation, one might have fallen asleep because of how peaceful everything appeared, but the two mares are too upset to care for sleep or notice the beauty of the night.

When they reach their apartment, Trixie walks straight to the bathroom while Minty goes into the dining room. In the bathroom, Trixie stares at herself in the mirror and scowls at the pathetic reflection of herself; her mane is a mess and she has new scratches to add to her collection of bruises. Then the image of Bon Bon’s corpse seeps in and she grits her teeth while trembling and pressing her hooves on the sink.

“I failed,” whispers Trixie angrily, now hyperventilating with tears running down her face. “I failed... I failed. I failed. I failed. failed. I failed. I failed. I failed.”

Trixie closes her eyes and bows her head, trying desperately not to cry, but she’s failing miserably. She sobs quietly and forces her eyes to stay shut, not wanting them to open for any reason.

“Ya should’ve killed them,” says Sunshine.

Trixie sniffles, and reluctantly opens her eyes and looks in the mirror to see Sunshine’s shadowy face and demonic red eyes covering her reflection. She grits her teeth and starts to shake with a mix of anger and fear. She doesn’t understand why he won’t leave her alone, and is starting to believe that he became a demon after he died. A demon that retained his obsessive fanboy-rapist personality.

“I’m no murderer,” says Trixie, her voice trembling.

Sunshine chuckles. “Funny, I said tha same thing when I started mah business. And I’m sure Mr. Muffin and yer pops said tha same thing.”

“And all of you are dead.”

“I am not dead, darlin’. If I was dead then I wouldn’t be with ya, now would I?”

“You’re dead.”

“Am not.”

“You’re dead!”

“Nope.”

“You’re dead!”

“No I’m not.”

“You’re DEAD!”

“I’m as alive as you are, darlin’.”

Trixie screams "YOU’RE DEAD!" and smashes her hoof against the mirror, right in between Sunshine’s red eyes. Her hoof goes straight through the mirror and destroys the shelves of the medicine cabinet hiding behind it, cutting herself in the process. The shards of glass cascade down and bounce off and shatter against the sink, and with the glass, comes the containers of pills and shelf parts. Trixie breathes heavily and slumps to the floor, fresh tears swelling in her eyes.

“Just leave me alone,” sobs Trixie quietly.

“Trixie, ya need t’ wake up. Equestria is dying, and sooner or later ya’ll have t’ take a life if ya want t’ live. If ya don’t, ya’ll wind up like that poor little mare. Besides, yer a killer. Ya killed Laughter after all,” says Sunshine, his voice echoing in the bathroom.

“I... I... I didn’t... I had to,” sniffles Trixie.

“Yer no longer an entertainer, yer a killer. Ya watched me discipline mah sister and ya watched Mr. Muffin murder me an’ ya killed Laughter. It’s all murder.Three murders, Trixie. Accept who ya are and ya won’t fail.”

Trixie stares at the bits of bloody tipped mirror, sobbing. She can see her tear soaked face in the bits, all crying and looking at her, telling her that she had failed. And because of her failure, an innocent pony had died at the hands of the wicked.

Then Trixie notices the container of pills that her psychiatrist at Singsong prescribed to her to combat the hallucinations. She uses her magic to bring the container to her, drops it in the bowl of her hoof, and stares at it. Such a simple, small thing, and yet she felt happy when she took them. She didn’t have to deal with Sunshine and the realities of the Hell she built seemed nonexistent.

“Tryin’ t’ escape reality, eh?” chuckles Sunshine.

Trixie eagerly opens the container with her magic and pulls out one pill. That’s all she’ll need for it all to go away, even if it is for just one night. Trixie pops the pill in her mouth, closes the container, and uses her magic to toss it away. It’s not like she can put it in the medicine cabinet, anyway. She then uses the faucet water to help swallow the pill, not even bothering to use a cup or anything, and when it’s down the effects are immediate. She can instantly feel all of her pain, emotional and physical, melt away and be replaced with pure happiness. Trixie grins from ear to ear and her whole body relaxes as her eyes dilate and her breathing and heart rate returns to normal. But when she looks at the mess she made she puts on a comical pouting face.

“Wow, did Trixie do this?” wonders Trixie out loud. “This cannot stand!”

oooOOOooo

Pinkie Pie is sitting in the dinning room, writing down everything she saw in the roster. Granted, the pen isn’t tasting so good, but she doesn’t care right now, partially because she doesn’t have a typewriter so she has to deal with it, and partially because it’s better than tasting a pencil. She heard Trixie’s commotion earlier, but decided to do nothing about it since she had more important things to do rather than giving Trixie a hug. Things like figuring out who ordered Bon Bon killed and why; she knows it’s the least she could do since she knows she holds most of the blame for Bon Bon’s death.

Pinkie Pie suddenly stops her writing and her ear twitches when she hears Trixie singing and glass being swept up. She turns slightly to face the doorway when Trixie half walks half dances in with a broom and a dustpan full of broken glass with her hoof bandaged. Her eyes are also red and puffy from her crying, yet she has a giant grin, so it looks like she was crying for joy.

“Sweep-a-dee-doo-dah! Sweep-a-dee-ay! My, oh my what a wonderful day!” sings Trixie in a very bubbly, yet horrible singing, voice, making Pinkie Pie raise an eyebrow. “Something for a rhyme here! Sweep-a-dee-doo-dah! Sweep-a-dee-ay! My, oh my what a wonderful day!”

“Trixie, what are you doing?” asks Pinkie Pie.

Trixie dumps the glass in the garbage pan and bounces towards Pinkie Pie with a huge grin on her face, leaving the broom and dustpan by the garbage can. “Hey, Minty! Trixie kinda broke the bathroom mirror when Trixie was sad so Trixie cleaned up the mess and now the bathroom is clean and Trixie is happy.” Trixie takes a deep breath and smiles again while brushing some loose strands of her mane away from her face. “Wow, that was a mouthful.”

“Sounded like it, why don’t you go to bed? You have work tomorrow.”

Trixie gasps. “You’re right, Minty! You’re absolutely right! Trixie shall go to bed and enjoy her beauty rest, for tomorrow she shall be employed!”

“Wait! Before you go to bed, take my blanket. I’ll wash yours since you kinda ruined it.”

“Oh how sweet of you Minty. Did you know you’re my favorite pony?”

Pinkie Pie can’t help but get a small smile as goes to her room to grab the sheets. After grabbing the sheets and carrying it to Trixie’s bed, she starts working to make it more suitable for a pony to sleep on.

“And who is your least favorite?” asks Pinkie Pie while adjusting the sheets.

Trixie taps her chin for a couple of seconds. “Well that would be a toss up between my father and Twilight. They’re both mean. Well actually for my father it would be he was mean since he’s dead now, and Twilight is still mean since she ruined my life when I was starting to get it good.”

“Yeah, Twilight has a way of ruining things,” says Pinkie Pie darkly, her eyes narrowing at the mention of her former friend. Then she realizes what Trixie said about her father and she asks: “What happened to your father, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“He died, duh,” giggles Trixie.

“I know, but how did he die? If you don’t-”

“Some pony broke into his loft, beat the crap out of him, and then threw him out the window.”

Pinkie Pie stops working with the sheets and she carefully asks: “Trixie, what was your father’s name?”

“Eclipse. I’m glad he’s dead. He was a meanie.”

Pinkie Pie’s eyes widen, wondering how she could have possibly missed that critical piece of information. Now she wonders if Roar Shock knew of Trixie’s origins, and if he did, why he would accept her in his ranks, but as her mind races, Trixie interrupts her train of thought with “Tallyho!” as she jumps on her bed. Pinkie Pie takes a step back as Trixie bounces on the bed for a second, laughing like a giddy school girl. Then the azure unicorn scrambles to her feet and pace in circles on her bed like a cat looking for a good spot to lie down. When she finds her spot, she spends another minute or two shifting her position before yawning obnoxiously and closing her eyes while pulling the blanket over herself with her magic.

“Nighty night, Minty!” says Trixie happily from under her covers.

Words elude her for the proper response, so Pinkie Pie looks down and sulks back to the dining room. Once there she is tempted to sit down and finish her work, but with the new revelations and seeing Trixie like that fills her with conflicting emotions and questioning Roar Shock’s intent with her. She knows Roar Shock is still alive, she can feel it, but she doesn’t know if he wants to do anything with Trixie or if he even knows that Trixie is related to his greatest enemy. But when it comes to seeing Trixie smiling, on the one hand, it’s nice to see a smile, on the other, it was a drug induced happiness so it shouldn’t count. Plus, she kind of scared Pinkie Pie with how easy she was able to talk about her father’s brutal demise. Then there is the fact that Pinkie Pie wants to figure out who murdered Bon Bon and why, but her need to write down everything she saw in the office and roster is being replaced with the sudden urge to bake goodies.

Pinkie Pie sighs, closes and pushes her notebook away, and starts taking out ingredients and baking ware as quietly as possible. Baking has always helped her think, and tonight should be no different.

Arc 1- 15- Power -ADDITION-

Arc 2- 7 (Casinos, Griffins & Super Suits [A])

Trixie, as a teenager, is sitting on top of an earth pony colt the same age as her with an amber coat and a dark auburn mane and tail with a sunflower as a cutie mark. The colt is lying on his back, smiling a big toothy smile while Trixie shifts her position and rubs one hoof over his chest while the other goes on the floor to keep her up. The two are on the top row of some bleachers in a dark and silent gym. The gym is not completely dark or silent, though; there are dim lights hanging from the ceiling with the full moon shining through the decorated windows, and the two lovebirds’ giggling is covering the gentle humming from the generators.

“You have a funny name, you know that right?” giggles Trixie.

“What can I say? My parents have a great sense of humor,” he says, then he looks to his side at the stairwell of seats and chuckles nervously. “Wow, we kinda picked a bad spot.”

“I thought you wanted to be a Royal Guard, Sunny,” teases Trixie with a seductive smile while leaning closer to his Colt’s face; as she leans closer to him her mane tickles his shoulder, making him giggle and shudder. “Shouldn’t Royal Guards be fearless?”

“Last I checked Royal Guards are supposed to act fearless. So I guess you can say that we are magicians of emotions. We can make them disappear.” He puts a lot of emphasis on “disappear” and Trixie laughs and playfully punches his shoulder. “Hahaha.... ow.”

“Did I hit you too hard?” asks Trixie, genuinely worried that she hurt him.

“Nope,” replies Sunny with a wince. Then with a fluid swipe of his hoof, Trixie loses her grip on his chest and she eeps while falling on his chest. He then hugs her tightly and rubs his hooves against her body in gentle strokes, making their tails flick in excitement. They both laugh quietly and exchanging quick pecks that quickly turn to passionate kisses, and soon they become so aroused that it hurts to hold back. After a minute of heavenly kissing passes, Sunny says with a sultry smile: “So, Ms. Great and Powerful Trixie, since my parents are gone for the weekend, I was thinking that you and me can go over to my place and have-”

[[[[O]]]]

“CUPCAKES!” yells Minty right in Trixie’s ear.

Trixie screams, flails her hooves in the air, and falls out of her bed, right in front of Minty with the lower half of her body still on the bed, tangled in sheets. She silently curses Minty for ruining a nice dream; but when she thinks about it, the dream is based off of a memory, and her father did break into the house and ruin any chance of a future with Sunny. So Minty ruined a dream that started out nice but would’ve ended up bad. Trixie forces herself to stop thinking about the dream and focuses on how to get herself untangled. After she manages untangle herself using comical squirms and use of magic, she feels small pin pricks of pain all over her body and tries to inspect herself to see how bad it is. She doesn’t see much, but from what she can see, Fancypants will more than likely face-hoof since the new bruises and semi-healed scratches are obvious. When Trixie takes a step forward she feels her muscles tighten up and her walk turns into a limp.

‘Today is going to suck,’ thinks Trixie grumpily while making an agitated wince.

“Yeah, maybe you should try wearing pads next time,” remarks Minty; she’s balancing a tray of a dozen cupcakes with vanilla, chocolate, and mint icing on her head.

“Well why don’t you give me those pads you were painting?” grumbles Trixie irritably, then she sees the cupcakes, more specifically, the green frosting spiraling up in a perfect twist and has to swallow her saliva lest she wants it to ooze out of her mouth. “Can I have one?”

“Of course you can, silly. That’s why I brought them in here.”

Trixie snatches one of the cupcakes with mint frosting on it using her magic and upon biting into the pastry her body shudders from the holy taste on her tongue, but that feeling doesn’t last too long. She remembers how angry Minty was with her last night and was concerned about her saying that she wasn’t the only one who’s dead inside. After finishing her cupcake, Trixie comes to the conclusion that she owes Minty an apology.

“Hey Minty, about last night-”

“Apology accepted,” interrupts Minty while trotting out of the room with a small bounce.

Trixie is frozen for a moment, not sure what to think about what had just happened, but after her muscles decide to work again she walks after Minty, and along the way she passes her room and sees that the stuff is no longer in view and when they get into the kitchen Trixie’s eyes widen at the scene. The whole place is covered in flower and sugar and other baking materials with towers of dirty dishes in the sink. Not only that, she also sees dozens of carefully wrapped cupcakes, cakes, muffins, and a pie of some kind. Then she notices a very detailed picture of Bon Bon’s office with everything labeled and sheets of paper with numbers and names on them.

“Did you do all this?” asks Trixie, amazed beyond comprehension at what she is seeing.

“Took me all night, but yep, I baked and drew and labeled and wrapped and then woke you up,” says Minty. She then she pushes a small plate of cupcakes with mint icing towards Trixie, grabs her keys, and starts towards the door. “C’mon, Trixie, I gotta get you to work. Take the cupcakes with you.”

Trixie nods, carries the plate with her magic, and winces with the first few steps, but after those few steps come and go, the pain subsides. When they reach the elevator they have to share it with an older earth pony stallion with a grayish amber coat and a gray mane and tail with three bags of money for a cutie mark. The tie on his suit is carelessly put on and his suit is a mess, along with his mane and tail. The two mares look at him as he whistles casually, occasionally glancing at the two. Trixie thinks nothing of it, but Minty gets an evil smile and she leans towards the stallion and says: “Hey, Filthy, you probably want to tone it down next time you and ‘Misty’ do your little shindig. You two kept me up all night with your thumping and screaming.”

Filthy Rich’s whistling instantly stops, his whole body stiffens, and his face quickly turns redder than a red delicious apple as he looks at Minty out of the corner of his eye. Trixie’s eyes also widen and she looks at Minty, who appears to be enjoying herself a little too much. When the door opens up to the lobby the stallion bolts out of the apartment complex and disappears into the crowd of ponies making their commute to work.

“What the hay was that all about? Do you know him?” asks Trixie while stepping out of the elevator.

“I recognized him as one of the business-stallions whose financing the Celestial Spire. But those two were part of the reason why I couldn’t get any sleep. You’re lucky that you’re a heavy sleeper; it was like listening to a porno and honestly very distracting,” says Minty casually.

“Okay, I don’t-”

“I mean it went on for hours. Just when I thought they were done they went at it again!”

“Minty!”

“What? I’m just sayin’...”

Minty and Trixie step into the parking lot, and sudden morning sunlight makes Trixie squint her eyes and her head drifts up to look at the clouds. They are far and few, but what little there is are white and fluffy, adding a sense of peace to the morning rush. They walk towards her mini-train in silence, Minty has her bounce, appearing to have calmed down from last night’s incident, and Trixie is too busy munching on her minty cupcakes to speak. In fact, she’s enjoying them so much that she doesn’t care that she has frosting and crumbs all over her face. When they get in the vehicle and start their trek to Fancy Entertainment. While they wait for the traffic to clear up so they can actually go through Minty turns on the radio. It has a slow rock song playing.

“And tell me how I'm supposed to feel,

When all these nightmares become real;

'Cause I don't know-”

The road clears up and Minty changes the channel before driving through. Once again, it is rock.

“So now I reap what I have sewn,

And any rapture I had shown has bled dry

And I walked the streets alone,

Accepting pain I'd never known,

As you died, you died-”

Minty mumbles something under her breath and switches the channel again. Trixie watches her madly switch through the channels, each one playing a different song; from metal to rock and rap to country. After she switches the channel for what seems like the umpeenth time, another rock song comes on.

“As the music dies, something in your eyes

Calls to mind a silver screen and all those sad goodbyes

I'm never gonna dance again

Cause guilty hooves have got no rhythm

Though it's easy to pretend-”

“What is up with this music?” wonders Minty out loud. She presses her hoof, hard, against the radio and the channel changes to a mare getting worked up over something, and from the way she’s talking, it sounds like she’s on a roll. Trixie stares at the radio while munching on one of her last two cupcakes while Minty keeps her eyes on the road, occasionally looking down at the radio.

“...The ideals of this nation -of Love and Tolerance and Harmony- have been twisted into an unrecognizable monster! How can we, as decent ponies, live with ourselves when Love and Tolerance means to blindly accept everything, and Harmony means *ONE** view? Oh, don’t correct their mistakes! Don’t discuss why you think their lifestyle is wrong! Doing so is intolerant! We have become so-”*

Trixie watches Minty get an annoyed look as she changes the channel; she’s guessing that Minty isn’t a big fan of politics. The next pony up sounds like he’s in more control of his emotions. Trixie is on her last cupcake now.

“...The Lunar Revolt was not about night versus day, that is actually a gross simplification and so far from the truth that it is disgusting. It was a war about the survival of an idea -a revolutionary idea. Many historians thought that this idea was lost when Celestia retook control of Equestria, but near Rambling Rock Ridge archaeologists recently uncovered an army of statues with the variety of everyday life during that time period, and very well hidden was a copy of the fabled ‘The Lunar Republic’-”

“Boring,” says Minty comically, and once again she changes the channel, and this time it’s a familiar voice.

“Gooood evening, children, DJ-Pon3 here for some quick news and music! First off, last night somepony donned a costume and kicked the crap out of a gang of griffins-”

Minty instantly shuts off the radio, saying that there’s nothing good on, and Trixie sighs depressingly while leaning against the window. She did want to hear what this “DJ-Pon3” pony had to say about her take on the whole mess, but apparently Minty doesn’t want to hear about it. Not that Trixie could blame her since she did make a mess out of everything. But curiosity be damned!

“Hey Minty, can you turn the radio back on?” asks Trixie nervously. Minty looks at her and a few seconds of tense silence pass before Trixie nods towards the radio. “I just want to hear what DJ-Pon3 has to say.”

Minty sighs and it takes her another thirty seconds to reluctantly turn the radio back on.

“...So whoever you are, I stand behind you, and anypony who is sick of the criminals running the show here would stand behind you too. And Bon-Bon, rest in peace, we’ll miss you and your delicious candies. Now on to some music!”

Minty turns off the radio again and Trixie looks down and her whole body sulks, what DJ-Pon3 said added to the guilt of failing to save Bon Bon.

“Don’t worry, Trixie, we’ll find who killed Bon Bon,” says Minty as she pats Trixie’s shoulder.

Trixie looks out the window as they pass a couple of Royal Guards overseeing a group of four ponies in prison garb cleaning off some graffiti on a large Celestia sculpture that said “LONG LIVE THE NIGHT!” with a moon as the “O”. A few minutes later they pull up to the Fancy Entertainment parking lot, which is nearly filled to the brim with motorized wagons and a two wheeled vehicle that reminds Trixie of bulky, mechanical bicycles. Minty is kind enough to tell her that they are another Flim and Flam invention they call the “Bee”.

“The bee?” says Trixie quizzically while looking at one of the strange vehicle.

The vehicle has thick wheels and little boiler engines in the belly of its main part. The back wheel looks like a thick tire, but the front is shaped like a ball, and it has a large light on the front and a couple of smaller ones on the back as well as a radio antennae. Also, from the looks of it, the pony lays down on it and sticks their forehooves in a couple of slots to control it. Trixie is really impressed by the way it looks and finds herself thinking: ‘Screw the mini-train, I want a bee.’

“Yep, the bee,” says Minty, now wiping the crumbs and frosting from Trixie’s face using a random rag she had found, “those things are all the rage with the younger crowds. I personally like this baby better. No one screws with a mini-train, and one wrong move with a bee and your corpse will be mopped up off the road.”

Trixie grimaces. “Thanks for the visual.”

“No problem, now let’s get you to work.”

Trixie and Minty walk inside and are immediately greeted by Penny Chart and a blast of cool air.

“Hey, Penny, Trixie here needs to check in,” says Minty while patting Trixie on her back.

Trixie suddenly finds herself with cold hooves as Penny Chart tells Trixie to follow her. Minty is about to follow them, but she’s stopped by Penny Chart and informed that she can’t follow them because she isn’t technically an employee, but assures her that Trixie is in good hooves. After that assurance Minty smiles and says her farewells and leaves before Trixie has a chance to say anything. Trixie sighs when she sees Minty walk outside and then practically run to her vehicle and zoom away.

“Follow me, Trixie,” says Penny Chart lightly, obviously forced.

Trixie follows Penny Chart to a smaller room that has a machine that looks like a box with a slot for a sheet of paper to go in. Connected to it is a clock, and next to the device is an area of the wall where slips of paper are tucked in neatly in their own slots, and each paper has someone’s name on it as well as little numbers on them to show when they arrived and left. Trixie also notices the Flim-Flam seal at the bottom of the main part of the machine.

Penny Chart pushes a button on the ground and a fresh slip of paper pops out of the wall, next to Trixie. She then pulls it out with her mouth and scribbles Trixie’s name on it.

“This is your time sheet; you’ll need this to determine how much you get paid” explains Penny Chart. “If you forget to sign in or sign out it’ll be bad for you. If you forget to sign in, you don’t get paid for the hours worked, unless you can get someponies that are not on your team to vouch for your presence. If you forget to sign out, we’ll pay you for a full work day but without any of the overtime pay, even if you did work overtime.”

Trixie nods and Penny Chart puts the slip of paper in the slot of the machine, and it is sucked up and a horrible, screeching and shredding sound echoes in the room. Trixie cringes and her ears fold down in a feeble attempt to block out the noise.

“Don’t worry about that!” yells Penny Chart over the noise. “It shows that the Stamper is working!”

When the Stamper stomps, the slip pops out with a little ding and Penny Chart pulls it out and puts it in Trixie’s slot, labeled with her name and “505” next to it. Trixie cocks her head at the odd coincidence, but she doesn’t have the time to wonder about the statistical possibilities of that happening because Penny Chart nudges her down the hallway.

“Fancypants told me to bring you to his office when you get checked in,” she says.

Trixie nods and when they reach the blandness that is Fancypants’s office, the old stallion is on wearing headsets connected to a bulky communications device with his back turned to the door.

“...It would be great to spend an evening with her and her friends. There is that party at the Palace in a week so-”

Penny Chart clears her throat and when Fancypants turns around she says: “Trixie’s here, I’m off to my desk.”

“Thank you, Penny Chart.”

Penny Chart leaves without another word and Fancypants turns around while Trixie stands in the middle of the doorway, listening to his conversation and feeling like an idiot.

“Sorry, dear, an employee had a quick message,” says Fancypants. A few seconds later he chuckles and sits in his seat, saying: “Well I can’t wait... Fleur, I have to go now... I love you, too... Bye.”

Fancypants hangs up, sighs dreamily and then he smiles at Trixie, but that smile instantly disappears when he sees Trixie’s condition and she shrinks down slightly as Fancypants jumps up.

“Oh for the love of Celestia!” cries Fancypants. “What did I tell you about those bruises of yours?”

“To get them taken care of,” drones Trixie.

“Right! And you come back with more bruises and scratches?”

“I punched a mirror and uh tried to do a backflip off my bed.”

Fancypants stares at Trixie and she tries to smile innocently, but the beads of sweat rolling down her head are a dead give away she’s lying. She knows that he knows that she’s lying too, just by the way he’s staring at her, jaw slightly open and head tilted. Then he shakes his head and turns around, mumbling: “You’re a horrible liar.”

Trixie looks down, ears drooping and making small a whining noise. Fancypants then makes his way to the hallway and tells her to follow him so she can meet her team. So Trixie quietly follows him to the back of the building where a large mini-train and a few chubby motorized wagons are waiting with ponies casually waiting to get their tasks. He takes her to a group of eight: four unicorns, two pegasi, and two earth ponies. There are only two stallions in the group, too, a unicorn and a pegasus. The group is casually conversing amongst themselves and immediately stop when Fancypants bangs his hooves against the pavement.

“Ladies and gentlecolts, I would like you to meet your new team member, Trixie Lulamoon,” says Fancypants while tugging Trixie closer to him as she tries to shrink behind him. She lets out an annoyed grunt and looks down at the ground while Fancypants continues with his introduction. “Now, I expect you all to treat her with respect and train her appropriately for your line of work. And Hank.”

“Yeah,” says the male unicorn, looking bored and tired;  he has a gray coat with a short, sky blue mane and tail combed to give the bedhead look, and his cutie mark is a five point star with circles at the ends of each point.

“Since you are in charge I expect you to make sure she’s treated with respect, got it?”

“Sure.”

“Good.”

Fancypants then pushes Trixie towards them, and she digs her hooves in the pavement because she does not like the way they are looking at her. The situation reminds Trixie of those books she read where a new kid at a school would be overwhelmed by parental love in front of a group of bullies whose life force seemingly depended on making others miserable. After Trixie is pushed nearly hoof to hoof in front of Hank, she smiles nervously while Fancypants pats her on the back.

“Have fun, Trixie,” he says casually. Then he walks away and disappears inside the building.

As soon as the door slams shut Hank says: “Okay, listen here, Trixie, we all know about you, so none of that ‘Great and Powerful’ bullshit here. Here, we are a unit -a pyramid unit, where I’m at the top, and Crispin Creme is my second layer.”

“That I am!” says the male pegasus proudly while puffing out his chest and expanding his wings. He has a white coat with a red and blue mane and tail, and his cutie mark is a cake. After expanding his wings the mares ooh and awe at him while flashes a big toothy grin at Trixie. Some wind blows by, making his mane and tail flutter like he was the pony version of Fabio.

“Those three unicorns -Dusty, Starlight, and Opal- are the third layer of my pyramid. The fourth layer is made up of the other three. The two earth ponies are Cinder and Clover Field, and the pegasus is Clockwork.”

“So does that make me part of the fourth layer of your ‘pyramid’?” asks Trixie with a bit of a snarky attitude to make herself feel better.

“Nope, you’re the new layer. Number five. Basically all of us get to boss you around. So if Clover Field wants you to pick flowers-”

“Oh that’s me!” giggles Clover Field, she has a dark green coat with a puffy, light green mane and tail and a clover as her cutie mark.

“You pick those damn flowers. If Cinder wants you to burn the flowers, you burn them with a smile.”

Clover Field whines and looks down while Cinder glares at Hank, completely unamused by his horrible joke. She has a charcoal coat with white spots all over and her mane and tail reminds Trixie of Spitfire’s, only bleached. Her cutie mark just so happens to be a campfire, too.

“Got it?”

“Yeah, so what’s next?” says Trixie, trying to keep herself calm from the increasingly creepy field manager.

“We’re off to the Card Casino to help set up Monte Fountain’s show. We’re on a tight schedule, so no lollygagging, no trying to upstage anypony with your ‘Great and Powerful’ shenanigans, and for the love of Celestia’s plot stay on the work site.”

Trixie nods and the group piles into their respective vehicles. Trixie shares on of the chubby motorized wagons with Clover Field, Cinder, and Clockwork. Clockwork naturally has a clock as her cutie mark, and she has a sandy coat with a red braided mane. Unlike Cinder, who appears to hate life, and Clover Field, who won’t stop smiling, Clockwork seems content with what’s going on. A couple of minutes of awkward silence pass by before Clover Field decides to have a conversation with the newest member of their team.

“So, how did you banish the Ursa Major?” she asks with a giant, eager smile.

“Um, didn’t you hear that I didn’t do that?” says Trixie with a twinge of annoyance.

Clover Field thinks for a moment. “So what did you banish?”

“Nothing,” grumbles Trixie. She rests her head and looks out the window to watch the cars and buildings zip past.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I didn’t banish anything! It was all a lie, and because of that my life was ruined, so drop it!”

Clover Field looks down and sniffles while Cinder pats her on the shoulder.

“So what did you do to get here?” asks Clockwork a few seconds later.

“What do you mean?” asks Trixie while casting a curious glance at the pegasus.

“This little setup was designed by Fancypants, Celestia, and the EIB to help minor criminals on probation. Like Cinder was charged with third degree arson after she burned down a cabin.”

Cinder grumbles colorful words under her breath.

“Clover Field stole some fertilizer from a gardening store.”

“I had no choice! My flowers were dying!” cries Clover Field defensively.

“And I broke into my ex’s house to get my clock back. So what did you do?”

Trixie struggles to think of a good answer. She can’t tell them that she razed a town or murdered the Element of Laughter -which she’s wondering why nobody seems to know or care- , nor can she tell them that she was part of a militaristic vigilante organization that assassinated Ponyville’s mayor. She looks at the others and sees that they are all staring at her expectantly, and leaning in a little to add to the peer pressure.

“I got charged for assault,” says Trixie quietly. Trixie figures it’s not too far from the truth, she did get into a lot of prison fights after all, which led to her being tossed inside a prison of a prison.

“I should’ve known, you look like you’re part of a fight club,” says Cinder.

“Well I’m not.”

“I never said you were, I just said you looked like it.”

Trixie scoffs and rests her head against the window and ignores the the others for the rest of the trip. After about thirty minutes of driving through horrible traffic they reach the Card Casino. While driving around to the back Trixie stares at the oddly designed building. It is easily a dozen stories, has two large cards crossing over each other with the front door -which looks to be a revolving door shaped as cards- in between both cards, and on the edges of the buildings are giant spotlights. Then there is the tower on the roof that reminds Trixie of a cigar, which adds another ten stories to the building.

The convoy pulls around the back and stops in front of the garage. Clockwork gives Trixie a white hat with “FE” stitched on it in blue thread; she puts it on without question since that’s what the others are doing. When she jumps out the group is quick to assemble and she finds herself working with the same ponies she was riding with, but before she can get to work Hank whistles her over to him. Trixie grumbles under her breath and walks towards Hank, wondering if she screwed up already. Which she did.

“Trixie, I don’t know how to say this, so I’m going to put this as simply as I can,” says Hank irritably. “You cover your horn with your hat.”

“What?” whines Trixie, she looks past Hank and sees the other two unicorns have their horns exposed and wearing their hats like gangster wannabes. “What about them? Their horns are showing!”

“You cover your horn with your hat.”

“But it’s uncomfortable! And you’re not even-”

“You cover your horn with your hat.”

Trixie opens her mouth to protest, but decides it’s best not to, so she grumbles and uses her magic to adjust her hat so that her horn is completely covered.

“Better,” growls Trixie.

“Much,” says Hanks while walking away from Trixie.

Trixie sticks her tongue out and then stomps back to her group. They are unloading some boxes and smile gratefully at her when she uses her magic to help them carrying the boxes out.

“So, where do we take these things?” asks Trixie grumpily.

“To the backstage,” replies Clockwork.

Trixie carries her fair share of boxes to the backstage and sees that it’s already cluttered with building material and ponies running around setting up stage props. As Trixie weaves her way through the crowd, following Clockwork, she notices that the stage crew is doing tests on the floor to make sure that it twists, turns, and shifts up and down correctly. She also hears ponies shouting about fog machines and lights. When they finally get into a clear spot in the very back, the group carefully puts their boxes down and starts unloading. They unload all kinds of overpriced stage gimmicks, like multi-colored cloth and mannequins, and clothing, flyers, and lots of napkins with Monte’s arrogant smiling face plastered on them. Trixie chuckles when she sees this. She remembers her early years when she had an ego problem, but she was never dumb enough to put her face on a napkin since ponies would be using them to wipe crumbs off of their dirty mouth. That would be like someone using her mane as a rag.

Suddenly Crispin lands in front of the group on top of a crate, specifically in front of Trixie. Trixie yelps and jumps back and puts her hoof to her chest to calm her racing heart. The others also flinch, but smile and get hearts in their eyes when he flashes his toothy smile. Some wind blows past him, giving him the Fabio look again, but a moment later the wind stops and a couple of earth ponies push and drag a giant fan away.

“About time that dumb thing works,” says the pony dragging it under her breath.

“Ladies,” says Crispin charismatically, “I just want to say you are doing a fantastic job. Keep up the good work and...” He looks at Trixie and finally realizes her condition and frowns. “Wow, are you part of a fight club?”

“No,” says Trixie flatly.

“Oh... Well anyway, you’re all doing good. In fact, you’re all doing so good that if you can get this all taken care of within three hours I will treat you gals to dinner! How’s that sound?”

The girls all gasp and get eager smiles, and Trixie is particularly surprised by Cinder acting like an obsessive fangirl, but overall, she’s not impressed with what’s going on. Trixie blocks out the conversation and continues to unpack the odd assortment of stuff, and a couple of minutes of flirting later the pegasus leaves with his grin even wider than before. Trixie ignores the gossip and even tells them to leave her alone when they try to ask her if she drools over Crispin. A few minutes later, there is yet another distraction, but this one is even more obnoxious than Crispin.

“No! No! Nononononononono! Nooooooooooooooo!!! What are you doing!?” yells a stallion.

“Putting up the lights like you said, sir,” whimpers Dusty while she shrinks back, ears drooping; she has a gray coat with a messy brown mane and tail and a broom as a cutie mark. The pony that is yelling at her is none other than Monte Fountain himself; he’s wearing his show outfit and looks at though he’s ready to blow a gasket.

“I said red lights, these are green. You see the difference?” sneers Monte while holding up the color sheets for the lights. “This is red. Reeeeeed. And this is green. Greeeeeen.”

“But you-you said the green lights are supposed to be up front and the red in the back.”

“I said no such thing. You’re just an idiot. How am I supposed to-” Monte sees Trixie staring at him and when he flashes an evil smile at her while shoving the colored card back to Dusty she quickly goes back to work. “Oh-ho! THIS is too good! Too, too good!”

Monte hops on a crate and cranes his neck. Trixie tries to ignore him, but she can feel his eyes on her and hear him laugh cynically over the banging, sawing, and the other chaotic sounds of the work site.

“You there!” shouts Monte.

Trixie tries to ignore him as she unloads a string of colorful light bulbs; but this is no easy task. He keeps shouting at her with: “Hey!” or “Hey you!” or “You there!”.

He repeats those three phrases for another thirty seconds before he yells: “Equus to the mare ignoring me! I demand your attention!”

“Are you talking to me?” asks Clover while pointing at herself.

“No, I’m talking to the one who looks like a pile of crap!”

“Oh. Trixie, he’s talking to you.”

Trixie’s ears droop and she sighs heavily while pulling out streamers. She tries to continue her work, but she lets out a yelp as she’s suddenly lifted off of her feet by Monte’s magic and dropped in a small throne right in front of him, his ever widening grin doing an amazing job of creeping her out. But what makes Trixie even more nervous is that no one seems to care that she was just taken against her will by the creeper. Monte puts his hooves on the arms of the chair and drags it closer until their bodies are uncomfortably close, making Trixie shrink back and sweat nervously.

“How are you doing, Trixie? You remember me?” asks Monte; Trixie can smell a mix of mint and alcohol in his breath.

“No,” says Trixie as she squishes herself further into the throne’s cushion.

“I didn’t think so, I was in the crowd when you upstaged my brother.”

“I-”

Monte puts his hoof over Trixie’s mouth and shushes her; her eyes widen and her muscles tense up and when Monte’s smile grows wider she starts trembling.

“I will say I admire your skill in the art of showponyship, Ms. Great and Powerful Trixie. You are still a ‘Miss’, right?”

Trixie nods her head quickly and Monte copies Trixie’s head motion.

“Oh good, very good. I’m going to need you to stay here for a moment while I grab Hank. Sit tight... I’m serious. Don’t. Move. From this spot. At all.”

Monte does a dramatic spin, his silky cape brushing against Trixie face, and after adjusting his hat he trots away screaming for Hank. Trixie shifts in her seat and a minute later, when she tries to move, Monte’s hoof goes over hers, making her scream and jump in her seat, and Monte slides into view with Hank standing behind him.

“Found Hank, and he said I could borrow you for a minute,” says Monte cheerfully.

Trixie looks at Hank nervously, he simply nods his head and walks away to do whatever he was doing earlier before Monte’s interruption. Monte tilts the chair so Trixie slides out and he escorts her to the back of the audience area. The place they are at is brightly lit and has red carpet with casino game symbols stitched all over the floor in seemingly random locations, and the seats are all black with the tables being blue and each having their own little lamp. The back wall is lined up with booth that also have the little lights, and Trixie can’t see what the second story of the audience area holds, but is guessing that it holds more tables judging from the lamps poking above the railing. When Trixie sits in one of the booths, the seat lets out a wheezing noise and she feels some air brush against her coat as it escapes from the chair. She looks at her spot quizzically while Monte laughs and slides next to her coolly; he has the same thing happen to him.

“So, Ms. Trixie, I noticed you look a little,” Monte waves his hoof around to point and the difference bruises and scratches on Trixie’s body, “crappy.”

“Gee, thanks,” says Trixie while scowling and moving away from him.

Monte chuckles and levitates his and Trixie’s hats off of their heads and sets them down on the table. Then he whistles at a colt wearing a vest that is walking by. When the colt approaches their table Trixie’s jaw drops. Pipsqueak is working in the casino! She’s baffled that Pipsqueak is standing in front of her since she swears that there are laws in place about kids working in casinos.

“Oh, how do you do ma’am?” says Pipsqueak politely while bowing slightly.

Before she can reply, Monte butts in. “She’s fantastic. Give me and Trixie some of that Dr. Dew soda that you foallies love so much.”

“On the rocks?”

“With the umbrellas.”

“Lemons?”

“Limes.”

“Got it.”

Monte smiles proudly as Pipsqueak walks off, then he smiles at Trixie.

“It’s so nice to see the pony who upstaged my brother in town face to face.”

Trixie looks down and bites her lip, but Monte laughs and pats her shoulder.

“Relax, I’m not mad. If anything, I’m grateful for what you did, but surprised that somepony with your looks and status allowed yourself to fall so far from grace. After you upstaged my brother I knew we would’ve made a great team, but you disappeared for a while, and I was sad. And now here you are! It’s like Celestia has personally delivered me a gift in a golden box with a gem studded bow... thing.”

“That was stupid,” says Trixie bluntly.

“And I regret saying it. So are you interested?”

“In what?”

“A partnership. What else?”

“What do you mean?” asks Trixie suspiciously.

“You aren’t that dense. I know you want to work for me to get your fame back. Heck, you disappeared for ten years and then you show up working an entry level job. I know a mare like you, who grew up with her world on a silver platter, hates that. So we team up and I help you help yourself. How’s that sound?”

Trixie narrows her eyes, saying: “You said I looked like crap earlier.”

Monte shrugs. “Truth hurts. Anyway, a pony with your talent -your knack of wooing crowds- is too much to waste. Ten years has left a void in the magic show industry that could not be filled easily. In your fifteen minutes of fame you managed to sell more seats than the top ten career magicians combined.”

Trixie finds herself smiling and feeling her pride swell up from remembering those days, and Monte also flashes a smile; and it only gets bigger when Trixie leans forward, pressing her hoof down on her work hat. But she knows what game Monte is playing, she’s seen it almost every time she upstaged a magician. She would upstage someone, they would get mad, and then try to play cool and convince her to work for them. The methods are different, but the intent is always the same. Unfortunately for Monte, he is absolutely horrible at this art.

“You need me to help you get sales, don’t you?” says Trixie coolly.

“Think what you want, but I think that it is always tragic to see a young star crash and burn. I can help you rebuild your reputation. You can get your old life back, with all the fame,” replies Monte dramatically.

He shows her one of his napkins, and again, she has to stifle a laugh. Then he waves his hoof around to show off the magnificence of his casino.

“Fortune. Respect.”

Pipsqueak returns with a try in his mouth. The tray is holding two cups clear, carbonated, caffeine heavy drinks with equal sized cubes of ice in them and little umbrellas and lime slices. He carefully puts the tray down and nudges the first cup to Monte, and when he gives Trixie her cup he smiles at her before trotting off to do his other duties. When Pipsqueak is away, Monte snickers and scooches closer to Trixie.

“And any stallion you want.”

Trixie stares at him uneasily, moving away from him again, and he smirks and nods towards a couple of mares polishing the tables.

“Or mares if you go that way.”

Trixie pulls her hat closer to herself, and when Monte sees this he frowns.

“Sorry, but I can’t,” says Trixie, her tone basically slapping Monte in the face, then she puts her hat on. “This is what I do now, and I refuse to be used by anypony for any reason.”

“Trixie, I have contacts here in Canterlot and in Detrot, Stalliongrad, and Fillydelphia. You can get your life back with my help,” says Monte desperately. “Plus, the group I’m with can easily put a stop to whoever is turning you to a bucking bag.”

Monte points at all the scars and bruises at Trixie, and she does a quick inspection of herself. She never really thought of herself as looking like a victim of anything, not ever since Minty told her she looked like a “badflank” and when Winny told Grim that she looks like a “badass”.  But as much as she would like to get her life back she also sees that Monte is adding a new level to his begging. She knows he’s trying to manipulate her into his servitude by promising her a chance for a better life. Just like what Gray Muffin said about scum the day he rescued her.

Trixie is silent for a couple more seconds before a small smile flickers on her lips and she puts her hat back on, being sure to cover her horn.

“I’m sorry, Monte, your offer is generous to say the least,” says Trixie, now sliding out of her seat, “but I’m not interested in becoming your indentured servant. Plus, I already have a job, and that is helping you prepare for your next show. I’m sure it’ll be great.”

Monte scowls and also slides out of his seat and towers above Trixie. She never realized how tall the zebra-pony was until just now; he’s almost two heads taller than she is.

“I see you dropped the third pony talk. Not really like you.” he says in a threatening tone.

“And how would you know what I’m really like?” retorts Trixie, her tone matching his.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie’s life was all about the stage, and to drop your title and third pony talk is dropping the last bit of what made you great.”

Trixie grabs her cup of soda and drinks half of it one go, and when she’s done she smacks her lips together and smiles at Monte. Monte, however, is flabbergasted, and gets grossed out when she burps. Trixie giggles and beats her hoof against her chest to get rid of the rest of the carbonated bubbles in her throat.

“Thank you, Magnificent Monte Fountain, for now the scales have fallen off of my eyes and I can see clearly,” says Trixie sarcastically after making a few comical faces when releasing the pressure in her chest.

“You were being sarcastic, weren’t you?”

“Yep, now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work. Thank you for the soda, though.”

Trixie walks off and she hears Monte laugh, any attempt to conceal his anger was a complete and utter failure. But Monte’s anger makes her smile, that’ll teach him to try to use her and to rip off her stage outfit.

“Go ahead and throw your life away!” yells Monte. “If you want to stay a plebeian fine by me! But don’t crying to everypony when you realize that you lost your only chance to get out!”

Trixie continues to walk, her victorious smirk getting more and more cocky, and she stops when she’s a few paces away and looks at the stage. Monte is right, it would be nice to get everything back and for her to be a force to reckon with in the entertainment industry. Then Trixie chuckles softly when she remembers her first time going on the stage.

===

“Ladies and gentlecolts, today we have a something special in store for you. I’m sure you all are weary of the same ole ponies coming up here time after time again and again,” said an energetic announcer.

Trixie watched the crowd nervously from the safety of the backstage; she’s wearing her star studded cape and hat that she wore to her small time gigs. The small, dimly lit stadium was tightly packed with aristocratic ponies whose presence is only known because of the small lamps on their tables. Trixie took a step back and grabbed a garbage can to hurl in. She’s so nervous that she lost all of what little she had for lunch. Her legs trembled, making it hard for her to stand, because she knew her father was in the crowd somewhere, along with Ms. Aural and a few other friends. And now they were going to see her embarrass herself.

“Oh Celestia, what have I gotten myself into?” moaned Trixie. She heared the audience laughing as the announcer did whatever it was he was doing.

“Trixie, ya there?” called the announcer.

“Oh crap!”

Trixie ran out to the stage, dropping her hat along the way, which upon realizing what had happened, she skidded to a stop and put her hat back on, the burning spotlight following her every move. Some of the crowd chuckled and when Trixie was in the middle of the stage, she had to sit down lest she wanted to fall over. For a moment both sides just stared at each other in total silence, only broken by a stallion making an obnoxious cough.

“Um... hi,” said Trixie quietly, her voice being magnified by the microphone hanging down from the ceiling.

That was quickly followed by the screeching noise of the microphone acting up, making Trixie cringe and some of the audience swear or laugh. Trixie gulped and started trembling violently while her sweat soaked her body and attire. Then she took a deep breath, stood up, and walked towards the edge of the stage and pointed a shaky hoof at the first pony she saw, which was a mare sitting next to a stallion. More than likely they were a couple.

“You there,” she said, trying to sound confident, but her quivering voice gave her away. The mare she was pointing at pointed at herself and Trixie nodded her head. “Yes, you. Come on up to the stage with... Trixie! Yes, come up with Trixie.”

The mare, looking nervous, leaned closer to her companion and said something, but he just chuckled and pushed her towards the stage. The mare is a unicorn with a grayish-purple coat and a purple and white mane and tail with three stars as a cutie mark.

“What is your name, ma’am?” asked Trixie.

“Just call me Mrs. Sparkle,” she said with a nervous smile.

“Okay, Mrs. Sparkle, I -Trixie noticed that you’re with your...”

“Husband.”

“Your husband? How long have you two been married?”

“Close to twenty five years.”

“Nice, well congratulations. I’m sure you’re husband gives you lots of flowers.”

Mrs. Sparkle smiled and nodded. “Oh yes he does. He loves giving me flowers.”

“Well, Trixie thinks it’s time to return the favor.”

With that being said, Trixie took a deep breath, closed her eyes and then she sat on her haunches and stretches her forehooves out. They glowed a light magenta and a cloud of the same color appeared in front of Mrs. Sparkle. Mrs. Sparkle’s eyes widen and she took a step back as something began to appear in the mist. A moment later, there was a flash of bright light and a fat bouquet of roses appeared in front of the old mare and lands in front of her. Trixie picked it up with her magic and handed it to her. The crowd cheered and stomped their hooves on the tables, making it sound like a stampede was going through the stadium.

“There you go, Mrs. Sprinkles,” said Trixie, her confidence swelling to levels she’d never felt before. Trixie looked at the crowd and her smile broadened as she bowed, and the only thing that her mind could come up with was: ‘They love me!’ and it was screaming it.

===

“Hey, Trixie, you probably want to snap out of it,” says Pipsqueak.

Trixie looks to her side and sees Pipsqueak looking at her. Trixie then looks at the stage again and is thankful that no one seemed to have noticed her staring off into space. However, when she sees Hank glaring at her she cringes and makes her way to the backstage with Pipsqueak following her for some reason.

“Why are you following me?” asks Trixie.

“I have to grab something from the backstage,” replies Pipsqueak coolly. Trixie rolls her eyes and tries to ignore Pipsqueak for the sake of avoiding more trouble with Hank, but the colt figures that he might as well talk to her since she’s right there. “So did you hear about what happened last night?”

“No, I was at my apartment breaking mirrors and doing backflips off of my bed,” says Trixie, immediately mentally kicking herself for saying something so stupid.

“...Yeah, okay. Um, well last night somepony kicked the crap out of five griffins at Bon Bon’s candy store! It was right across the street from where I’m living so the Night Guards woke up me and my mum and asked us all kinds of questions. Rumor says that the pony disguised herself with bedsheets and was unicorn.”

Trixie bites her lip and hurries her pace towards her group.

“They said she was a hard hitter, since the griffins had a lot of broken bones when the guards found them.”

“What makes you think the vigilante was a ‘she’? What if this pony was a colt who read too many comic books or something?”

Pipsqueak stops and taps his chin for a moment before nodding, completely seeing Trixie’s point. “I guess you’re right, they didn’t see the pony’s features after all, and only a crazy pony would dress up and try to take the law into their own hooves.”

“Look, Pipsqueak, it was nice talking to you, but I have to get to work.” Trixie looks at Hank again and sees him walking towards her with a very angry scowl. Trixie’s ears droop and she looks at Pipsqueak pleadingly. “I’m serious, I’m already in enough trouble for zoning out, so we can talk about this kinda stuff later.”

“Suit yourself, at least you showed some interest, the only ones who really care are-”

“Pipsqueak!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll see you around, Ms. Trixie.”

Pipsqueak walks away and Trixie knows it’s hopeless to avoid Hank, so she sits down and waits for the inevitable tongue lashing. Hank walks up to Trixie and glares at her, then he sighs heavily and runs his hoof against the stage floor while Trixie looks down, biting her lip.

“We need to talk,” says Hank angrily.

Trixie’s whole body sulks and she tries to hide her shame by looking down. The rest of the day is going to suck, she just knows it.

=**********=

Monte marches out of his elevator and onto the very top floor of the casino; it has a circle of crystal chandeliers around the edge and his carpet has squares with card suits in the middle. There is also a few patches of waiting areas that consist of a couple of seats by polished tables, and to keep the visitors entertained he has classical music playing. He also always has at least six guards, all ex-military unicorn stallions, guarding his floor. Most of the visitors come after his show to get his autograph or something, and there’ll be days where he just might take a mare or two into his abode to show them a good time. However, today is slightly different, his guards -which are all wearing black suits and sunglasses- are keeping an eye on a pony wearing a full gray cloak and keeping their head down.

Monte stops and looks the visitor quizzically and silently hopes it’s not a fangirl or fanboy trying to get his attention.

“Who’s this?” asks Monte.

“She wouldn’t say, all she said is that she wanted to talk to you about business,” says one of his guards.

Monte walks forward and kneels down so he can look under her hood, and when he sees who it is he stands up, saying: “Let her in, she won’t be any trouble.”

“Sir?”

Monte shoots him a nasty glare and the guard immediately nods and they step away from Monte’s visitor. The visitor stands up and quietly follows Monte into his room. His room has an entire wall made up of windows, giving him a great view of the Canterlot skyline and letting in an abundance of natural light which does great in warming up the place. He also has thick, wavy carpet that is white with small black spots peppered all over, and all of his furniture is oversized, abstract, and related to a casino setting in some way. Even the coffee table looks like a flattened roulette table!

“Have a seat, my dear,” says Monte while he walks over to a wine cooler.

The visitor sits on the couch and quickly removes her cloak, sighing with relief while doing so, and Monte pulls out a pair of wine glasses and carefully pours the wine in the glasses. When he’s done he puts the bottle back and walks back to his visitor with the glasses being held up by magic.

“It’s a little hot to be wearing cloaks, don’tcha think?” teases Monte.

“I didn’t want anypony to see me,” says Octavia as she adjusts her mane.

Monte gives Octavia her wine glass. “So, what’s this visit about?”

“I need to speak to Gilda about a job.”

“I don’t know Gilda.”

“Everypony knows you’re in with the griffins.”

“Speculates, Octavia. Everypony speculates that I’m in with the griffins. The griffins love this place, they only come here because they want to unwind and enjoy a good show. I only do my job, who comes and goes is none of my business.”

Octavia sips her wine and her lower eyelid twitches slightly. The wine tastes horrible, but Monte seems to love it; he’s already almost done with his glass.

“What if I told you that if the job is done right I’ll give you ten percent extra on top of what Gilda gives you,” says Octavia slyly after she successfully suppresses the urge to hurl.

Monte’s ears perk up and he grins while rubbing his hooves together excitedly. “You know me well, Octavia.”

“So will you tell Gilda my message.”

Monte slides next to Octavia, getting so close where their bodies are touching. Octavia shifts nervously in her spot, but Monte looks excited and curious about getting some extra bits along with something else.

“I have to know what the message is first,” says Monte while his eyes trace the curves on Octavia’s body.

“I want to her to grab a couple of ponies,” says Octavia as she slides farther away from Monte.

Monte winces and leans back while Octavia stares at him, worried that she might have scared him off.

He takes another sip of his wine and then says:  “A double kidnapping? Octavia, that kind of job isn’t cheap. I mean to hold somepony ransom-”

“I’m not interested in a ransom. I want Gilda to grab these ponies and bring her to me so I can kill them myself.”

Monte is sipping the last of his wine when Octavia told him that, and he spits out his wine, leading him to cough and hack painfully for a few seconds before finishing off with a wheeze. After that small show ends he manages to recollect himself.

“Okay, first off, who are these ponies, and what did they do to you to want them killed. Secondly, what you’re asking for is a very special order. It requires planning, lots of money, and you to have a steel gut to do a double murder.”

“The first is Trixie Lulamoon, she murdered my sister, and the other is Minty Sprinkles, she allowed it to happen and is now chauffeuring her around.”

“I... Wait, you had a sister?”

“Her name was Pinkamena Diane Pie.”

Monte puts his glass on the coffee table and chuckles while rubbing his hooves together. He mumbles something under his breath and then looks at Octavia, still trying to keep his smile. But when Octavia’s stare becomes more stern his smile disappears.

“Are you serious?” asks Monte in disbelief.

“Very.”

“Your sister was the Element of Laughter?”

“And Trixie killed her and Minty was supposed to protect her, but she didn’t... she did what she had to do, which was allow my sister to be murdered and show Trixie the sites.”

“Well that’s rough. I’ll tell Gilda about this job you’re offering, but first, do you have the money for the starting fee?”

Now it’s Octavia’s turn to be surprised. She scooches farther away from Monte, nervously saying: “I wasn’t aware there was a starting fee.”

Monte lips twist to suggestive smile and he moves closer to Octavia. “Think of it like those postage stamps. I’m the letter and the starting fee is the postage stamp needed to get the letter to Gilda. Usually I charge one hundred bits for this.”

“I had to walk through the bad part of Canterlot to get here, so I have no money with me.”

Monte snickers and his horn glows and a moment later the locks to his front door click. Octavia gulps as Monte puts his hoof on her chest provocatively and gently pushes her on her back. Octavia scrunches her body and stares wide eyed at him while he crawls on top of her.

“Well,” he says, licking his lips, “I’m sure we can think of an arrangement.”

Arc 1- 16- End of the Old -EDITED-

Arc 2- 7 (Casinos, Griffins & Supersuits [B])

Gilda Grizelda, Equestria’s most powerful crime lord, is sitting in her office behind her large oak desk with the glass door to her patio all the way open to let in the warm, afternoon breeze. The office has a few filing cabinets and a huge safe built into the wall, and it also acts as a bedroom. She has a sofa with a blanket tossed carelessly on it, a  phonogram-radio hybrid, a small fridge filled with beer and snacks, and a freshly polished electric guitar. Gilda also put up posters of her favorite rock bands on the wall and has a bulky telephone on the ground next to her table.

Currently Gilda counting up the bits she received from all those that owed her money. Some had to be coaxed into paying up while others were put down because of their inability to pay. All the bits she had counted so far have been neatly stacked in little towers that vary in sizes, and so far she’s counted ten thousand bits. While she’s counting her change she’s listening to some rock music from her radio.

“Applewood is plastic

But easy on the eyes

The Big Palace is fantastic

But cuts you down to size”

Her phone rings and Gilda ignores it, she wants to finish counting her money.

“They’ll treat you like a doormat

Expecting you to fail”

The phone continues ringing and Gilda sighs irritably and puts on the headset.

“Says across your forehead

Integrity for sale”

Gilda turns off her radio and twirls the phone cord in her freshly manicured talons.

“Who’s this?” Gilda says, being sure to make her annoyance known to the whole world.

“It’s Monte. Did you miss me?” says Monte in a teasing tone on the other end.

She hears him say something to someone, and whoever he’s talking to is quick to says “Buck you!”. To Gilda, it sounded like a very upset and angry mare.

“What do you want, Monte.”

“Well, I just had a nice conversation with a pretty little mare, and she wants to place an order of some of your top notch services. Double order actually.”

Gilda grins and turns around to marvel at the gleaming Canterlot skyline. “Oh really. Is she looking for a cleanup crew?”

“Actually a delivery.”

“A double delivery?”

“Yeah, she wants to take care of the packages herself, though.”

Gilda sighs heavily and runs her talons through her freshly groomed feathers. She hates it when she gets commissions like this. When she hears her door open she turns around sees Winny walk in with a stallion unicorn wearing a nice saddle trailing her. Gilda holds up one talon to let Winny know to hold on a second, and then she turns around to look at the beautiful scenery again.

“Okay, whoever this gal is, you tell them I want to meet them so we can lay down some ground rules. Before we meet, make sure she knows how we do things in my town because from the sounds of it, we’re dealing with a dweeb who’s got something to prove,” says Gilda sternly.

“Oh I wouldn’t go as far as calling her a dweeb, but she definitely has something to prove,” says Monte casually.

“Okay, whatever. We’ll meet on Tuesday at ten after noon at the abandoned train station. Tell her if she’s late there’s no deal. I don’t care if she’s a minute late. And if she brings anyone other than you I will kill her and whoever else she brings and then it’ll be your hide. Got it?”

“Don’t get your pretty plumage gunked up, I got this.”

“You better.” Gilda then hangs up and turns to Winny and the pony she brought in. She immediately recognizes the stallion and she sits back in her seat to start counting her money again. “What do you want this time, Lock?”

Winny steps aside to let Lock go to Gilda. He walks forward and levitates a list consisting of names, pictures, and addresses from his saddle and puts them in front of Gilda. “I am in need of some assistance, Gilda.”

Gilda stops counting and pulls out a pair of reading glasses from her desk and puts them on. After she puts them on she glares at Lock and Winny to make sure they aren’t showing any signs of being amused from her visual handicap. When they remain stoic she drags her talon down the list, looking at each name carefully and when she’s done she looks at Lock.

“If this is a hitlist, you better have won the lottery.”

“No, it’s not a hitlist; these ponies have become problematic with the EIB and their operations and need to be told to stay quiet. The EIB will pay you in the usual manner,” says Lock coolly.

Gilda pushes the list away. “Not my problem.”

“It is since you’re connected with us.”

“Not by choice.”

“Still connected.”

Gilda ruffles her feathers and stands up, and her talons dig into the table, leaving gashes in them, but Lock shows no signs of being intimidated. “Listen here, you son of a bitch, I’m already pulling more than my fair share helping you and your agency clean up your messes. And I don’t have your funding and I already lost a lot of good griffins in Detrot.”

“You have my condolences, but that doesn’t excuse you from your task.”

Gilda sits down and starts counting her money again, but rather than doing that to see how much she has, she’s doing it to keep herself from pouncing on the agent and ripping his throat out. Lock can see her anger plain as day too, given that her predatory eyes are honed in on him and her muscles and talons are flexing and twitching eagerly under her fur and feathers. However, Lock can’t help but smile on the inside at the idea of a griffin with reading glasses is threatening him with her gaze.

“Do you at least know who poisoned my griffins?” asks Gilda in a low growl. “I would like to turn them into a big dinner.”

“No, all we know is that they were poisoned with a fungus of some kind,” says Lock.

Gilda slams her fists down, causing the table to shake and the towers of bits to fall to the ground like jenga towers in an earthquake. “Well that’s just fucking great! What’s the point of this cooperation if I’m doing all the work and losing my guys and your doing whatever the hell you guys do!”

“Take it up with Brisk Wind, I’m just the messenger. As for this list, don’t kill anypony on it, just scare them into not talking.”

Lock turns around to leave, but Gilda calls after him and when he turns around she walks up to him, eyes narrowed and feathers still ruffled. When she’s directly in front of him, she takes off her reading glasses and pokes him in the chest, hard.

“I won’t be doing anything without a tradeoff,” snarls Gilda.

“Amnesty for your services, that’s the tradeoff,” says Lock coolly.

“I won’t be doing anything for you until you get Winny’s group out of the dungeons.”

Lock sighs and looks squarely in her eyes. “Listen here, you work for us, and you being an asset means we have to take care of you. But we have to keep our connection a secret, so that means we will not be releasing any of your griffins. The most we can do for their freedom is deport them back to Altai. However, what we can do is figure out who this masked vigilante is and get them out of the way so they won’t interfere with your business any further.” Lock turns around and walks towards the exit. “Don’t worry, Gilda, we have everything under control, we just need you to play your part.”

Winny looks at Gilda and Gilda motions her to see Lock out. Winny nods and walks away, and when she’s out of the room Gilda slams her door shut. After staring at her door, fuming, for a few seconds, she stomps towards her desk and grabs the list. She looks it over and counts at least two dozen names, one of which is Trixie Lulamoon.

=**********=

Pinkie Pie’s mini-train grinds to a halt outside of a two story building in the shape of a block with tubes of neon lights on its edge with a neon light sign on the front that says: “Klumsy K’s”.  The parking lot is almost completely dead, save for the front row of vehicles used by the staff and half a dozen other vehicles. The building is eerily silent as well. When Pinkie Pie hops out of the vehicle she grabs her saddle, carelessly puts over her back, and upon entering the building she finds that it has a clever mix of techno and contemporary design. While Pinkie Pie waits patiently for a patron she listens to the music being played over the radio. It’s a simple, yet catchy, techno tune.

“Welcome to Klumsy K’s, is it just you this evening?” says an earth pony mare wearing an apron that has “Twilight Twinkle” on her name tag. The waitress has a pale purple coat with a light pink mane and tail that have purple and blue streaks through them, and her cutie mark is a blue gem surrounded by stars. Her appearance and name reminds Pinkie Pie too much of Twilight, but she hides her agitation, not wanting to be rude to the mare because of some genetic coincidence.

“Nope,” says Pinkie Pie while forcing herself to smile at the recolor clone, “I’m actually here for someone.”

“Don’t you mean somepony?”

“He’s an ibex.”

“Oh. Well we haven’t had any ibex’s come in yet.”

“He’ll come, I’m just here early. Can we get a booth in the back, preferably on the top floor.”

“Of course, follow me.” Twinkle grabs a couple of menus and leads Pinkie Pie to the stairs. “So, who’s the lucky ibex?”

Pinkie Pie ignores Twinkle, upsetting the mare slightly, while scanning the near empty building for any signs of trouble. When they get up the stairs she spots Soarin looking out the window, nursing a pie and a mug of cider. It looks like he’s waiting for someone. Twinkle leads Pinkie Pie to the farthest booth and sets the menus in front of her. Pinkie Pie slides in and quietly thanks her while rummaging through her saddle.

“Would you like anything to start off while you wait for your date? Some cider and a small salad perhaps?” asks Twinkle.

“That’ll be great, thanks,” says Pinkie Pie while placing her notebook on the table. “What kind of cider and salad do you have?”

“Well we have Sweet Apple Acres Cider, Double F Cider, Green Bean Cider, and Dr. P’s Cider.”

“I’ll take a Double F.”

“Okay. For salad we have tossed flower salad, Canterlot green salad, fruit salad, and nutty salad.”

“Hmm... I’ll take the Canterlot salad.”

“Okay, I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

The waitress leaves and Pinkie Pie quietly flips open her notebook to her Mare-Do-Well design and studies it for a few seconds before her eyes move to Soarin. He’s still staring out the window, occasionally looking away to nibble on his pie and sip his cider. He looks nervous, too, like he’s eagerly waiting for whoever it is to show up, but is also dreading the moment for fear of screwing up something. Pinkie Pie snickers at how cute the scene is and Soarin immediately looks at her, now looking like he’s going to be sick from anxiety. Pinkie Pie is quick to look at her notebook while Soarin stares at her for a couple more seconds before doing a quick wing preen.

A couple of minutes later, the waitress returns and slides Pinkie Pie’s appetizer order in front of her. Pinkie Pie thanks her and after she leaves Pinkie Pie looks at the cider. Its foaming at the top and has the fresh smell of apples and citrus and it has an odd brown color to it. Pinkie Pie sips it and tastes a mix of apples and citrus that leaves an interesting tangy aftertaste on her tongue. Pinkie Pie smiles and takes another gulp to get more of the great flavor. Then she moves on to the Canterlot salad; it’s a mix of flower, grass, carrot shreds, hay bits, and nuts, and even lettuce! Pinkie Pie once again finds herself smiling and digs in. She takes a big bite out of the salad and chews it carefully to see if she likes it. It’s okay, the amount of flavors is hectic on her tongue, but it’s not nasty.

“Ms. Sprinkles I presume,” says a male with a heavy ibex accent.

Pinkie Pie looks away from her salad at an ibex walking towards her with a pressed suit and an expensive saddle strapped to his back. He has gray fur with black hair and a black goatee. Twinkle is also behind him.

“You presume correctly, Ink Well,” says Pinkie Pie. She motions him to have a seat and when he does, she relaxes in her seat. “So, how was the flight from Bernese?”

“Hectic.” He looks at Twinkle. “I’ll have some coffee and apple pie, ma’am.”

“And I’ll have some more of that Canterlot salad.”

The waitress nods and walks away. Pinkie Pie watches her leave and momentarily looks at Soarin again. He’s drumming his hooves on the table and sweating nervously; she can tell by the way his blue coat is shining in the sunlight. It amazes her how he can perform death defying stunts without hesitation, yet when it comes to waiting for someone he looks like he’s about to hurl.

“The zeppelin port security is nothing like Bernese,” says Ink Well, now pulling out a folder. “Ponies here are paranoid, do they honestly think someone will be dumb enough to take down the same vehicle they are flying in?”

“I think our fear is justified. You’ve heard what’s going on here, right?” says Pinkie Pie.

“Yes, it reminds me of what my father said about Equestria when he visited twenty years ago.”

“And what was that?”

“A gilded society cannot last.”

Pinkie Pie raises an eyebrow while the ibex smirks and opens up the folder to show Pinkie Pie a chart. She pulls it over to her while saying: “I think that statement is horribly inaccurate. Equestria is over a thousand years old whereas others were lucky to last six hundred.”

“Ah, you seem to forget that the Altai Empire is almost as old as Equestria.”

“Nine hundred and eighty seven. Equestria is still older and has had only one civil war compared to Altai’s ten.” Pinkie Pie looks up from the chart, which consists of all the materials for her dream suit and costs for each part. She’s not surprised about how much it all costs. “Is this all, or are there hidden fees?”

“Ms. Sprinkles, where I come from it is considered dishonorable to have hidden fees.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“No, there are no hidden fees. All together, this suit you are requesting is three hundred thousand bits. The price includes the labor fee.”

Pinkie Pie traces her hoof down to look at each of the materials and does some quick math. Ink Well’s price is one hundred percent correct, but the problem is that she cannot afford it. However, she knows a certain pony in her custody has a fat inheritance waiting for her.

“I don’t have the money for this, but I will soon enough,” says Pinkie Pie while pushing the folder back to Ink Well.

Ink Well furrows his brow and puts the folder away. “How soon is soon enough, Ms. Sprinkles? Iron Will doesn’t like waiting for things, especially when he doesn’t know how long he has to wait.”

“Three months, four at the most.”

“I see. Well that should give us plenty of time to make the necessary adjustments and do those motivational seminars.”

“I heard they kinda sucked.”

“Well it’s all a matter of opinion. But apparently he believes that it works; he won’t stop talking about some pony named Fluttershy. He claims that she wasn’t satisfied yet he knew the program worked since she stood up to him.” He notices Pinkie Pie smirking and he clears his throat nervously. “Look at me, I can’t seem to stop talking for some reason.”

“Funny, I was told that I didn’t know how to stop talking in my early years.”

“You seem average in terms of conversation, Ms. Sprinkle.”

“Well, what can I say? Ponies change.”

“Indeed.”

Twinkle drops off the food -a full pie for the ibex and a bowl of salad for Pinkie Pie- and both of them thank her, and she leaves after giving them their bill. Pinkie Pie looks at her bill and sees that she owes them twenty bits. Pinkie Pie sighs and drops twenty bits on the table and pushes it to the edge, away from her food. Ink Well does the same thing, but he only drops off fifteen bits.

“Back on subject, are you positive we can only do this in Bernese?” asks Pinkie Pie before taking a nibble out of her salad.

Ink Well swallows a huge piece of his pie and then says: “The materials are easier to obtain in Bernese, and it will be easier to construct what you are requesting without the Equestrian government looking over our shoulders.”

“The Bernese government actually lets you build,” Pinkie Pie looks at the picture in her notebook, “these kind of things.”

Ink Well grins. “Weapons and armor are our specialty, Ms. Sprinkles. Unlike Equestria, Bernese has been fighting for its right to exist since its inception. We may have been conquered by other empires, but we always did what was necessary to regain our freedom.” Then he takes another bite out of his pie and after he finishes eating his mouthful he says: “When you requested me down, me and Iron Will had assumed you already had the money. But since you don’t, how do you plan on obtaining the necessary amount for this order?”

“Trust me, I’ll get it... legally.”

“I see,” he finishes his pie. “Well I guess I will be heading back to my hotel then, Ms. Sprinkles, since we finished what needed to be discussed. I have a seminar to attend anyway. Enjoy your day.”

“You too.”

Ink Well packs up his things and after nodding politely to Pinkie Pie he leaves. It takes Pinkie Pie a couple of minutes to finish her salad, but when she’s done she also leaves, being sure to give Soarin a polite nod on the way out. When she reaches the stairs her Pinkie Sense gives her a little buzz and she barely dodges a pegasus mare galloping up the stairs... a pegasus mare with a cyan coat and a rainbow mane.

“Whoops, sorry about that,” says Rainbow Dash while gracefully dodging Pinkie Pie, tail brushing against her chest.

“It’s okay,” blurts Pinkie Pie, instantly biting her tongue and hurrying down the stairs. She hears Rainbow Dash’s hoofsteps stop and feels the pegaus’s eyes on the back of her head as she quickens her steps.

oooOOOooo

Rainbow Dash watches the minty colored pony speed walk down the stairs. She blinks a couple of times, swearing that pony she bumped into sounded exactly like Pinkie Pie, and she also looked ridiculously similar to her dead friend as well. Rainbow Dash closes her eyes and shakes her head to clear her mind before approaching Soarin. She’s certain Pinkie Pie’s death is screwing with her own mental state now and makes a mental note to talk to a shrink later about seeing dead ponies.

“Snap out of it, Dashie,” mumbles Rainbow Dash. She sits in front of Soarin and looks out the window to watch the mare from the stairs go in her vehicle, which Rainbow Dash admits looks awesome. “Heh, that pony’s got great taste.”

“Who?” asks Soarin while glancing out the window.

“Just some pony with one of those mini-train things.” Then she sees pie crumbs all over his mouth and she smiles teasingly. “First date and you’re digging in without me?”

“Sorry,” says Soarin shamefully while looking down.

oooOOOooo

Pinkie Pie watches Rainbow Dash and Soarin talking and laughing in their booth. A smile flickers across her lips, she’s glad to see genuine, not drug induced, happiness. Soarin must’ve told Rainbow Dash a great joke, because she she leans against the table, laughing hard while Soarin appears to be chuckling. Pinkie Pie swallows some tears when she wishes she could be there, possibly pull a prank. No that would be too mean. She wishes she could be at the Sugar Cube Corner, waiting to hear Rainbow Dash talk about her date with her idol. She then shakes her head to get her mind back on track. She has to convince Celestia to allow Trixie to have her inheritance so she can get that suit. A part of her feels like absolute crap for manipulating everyone, particularly Trixie, but she reasons she has no other option. Equestria is under a threat that most ponies do not see, and she has to stop it. Admittedly she’s not sure what Roar Shock is planning, but that makes it all the more important that she finds and stops him, and given her severely limited resources she has to take every opportunity there is.

Pinkie Pie’s mini-train rumbles to life when she pushes the key in, and with it the radio. She waits a few more seconds to watch the scene before pulling off into the road. She drives in total silence, even her mind is blank. She tries to think of ways to figure out who killed Bon Bon, and she’s fairly certain it was Gilda who ordered the hit, but she wants to find absolute proof so they can apprehend her and have her tried in court for her crimes. But the more she tries to think about proving Gilda ordered the hit, the more she thinks about the good old days, when she and her friends were blissfully ignorant about the dark side of Equestria. Pinkie Pie suddenly grits her teeth and swerves into an alley, making some motorized wagons swerve out of the way and honk, and some of the drivers shout very colorful obscenities. Pinkie Pie drives until she reaches the edge of the alley, eyes swelling with tears, and slams to speed lever down to zero. The vehicle jolts to a stop and Pinkie Pie closes her eyes and rests her head on the steering wheel while whimpering and banging her hoof on the dashboard.

===

“So, if you could date anypony, who would it be?” asked Rarity while shifting her position on a cushion.

Rarity and Pinkie Pie were at Twilight’s house for another one of her sleepovers. She had become addicted to sleepovers, which Pinkie Pie couldn’t blame her since sleepovers were fun and Twilight was constantly under stress from her studies of friendship and whatever else she could get her hooves on. They were waiting for Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack to show up, but they figured they would kill time by playing a game Rarity liked to call “Who Would You Date?”. Pinkie Pie told her that the name was boring and tried to get her to change it to “Who Would You Do Fun Stuff With For the Rest of Your Life?”. That was shot down by both of the unicorns instantaniously.

“Twilight, why don’t you go first?” said Rarity with a teasing smile.

“Wha-Why? You go first,” said Twilight, her purple coat getting a shade of red around her cheeks.

“Ooh, somepony has a secret!” teased Pinkie Pie.

“You have to say it, it’s the rules, darling,” said Rarity while inching closer.

Twilight sighed, and she sweated nervously for a few seconds while her eyes shifted side to side, worried that the someone she’ll mention might hear her secret desire. Then she mumbled a name, but Rarity couldn’t hear what she said, so she leaned closer, straining her ears while Pinkie Pie gasped obnoxiously.

“Oh wow!” said Pinkie Pie, “Does Derpy know you’re eyeing her stallion?”’

“Time Turner? You have a crush on Time Turner!” laughed Rarity. Then she tapped her hooves against the floor while squealing like a little filly. “Oh wow! That is so cute!”

“But he’s married to Derpy, and he prefers Dr. Whooves over Time Turner,” said Twilight quickly. Then she looked down, ashamed. “I feel bad about this crush.”

“Oh relax, darling, everypony has a crush. For example, I would love to date Fancypants, but I can’t since he’s married.” Pinkie Pie laughed and Twilight stared at Rarity, horrified by what she heard, and the fashionista smiled innocently. “What? A mare can dream, can she not?”

“I guess your right,” sighed Twilight. Then her ears perked up and she looked at Pinkie Pie. “What about you, Pinkie?”

“Joe,” replied Pinkie Pie simply.

“Joe?”

“Yeah. You know, Donut Joe. The stallion with all the donuts, knows how to make great filling, bakes great cakes, has an amazing talent of making cities out of pastries. Oh, last week he even invited me to help him make a city out of cupcakes and muffins! We called it Cakeiffintopiaville! It was fun! I had fun! He had fun! We both had fun after that and had fun all week doing fun stuff!”

Before there could be any reply, the door flew open and Applejack wobbled in with a stupid smile on her face, big bags on her eyes and dazed.

“Guess who’s drunk!” she yelled, then she fell over in the doorway, laughing, and making a sickly burp that sounded like she was going to puke.

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy also fly in while Twilight used her magic to carry the drunk farm pony to the bathroom. Applejack giggled something about the magic tickling her.

“You’re a silly pony, Applejack,” laughed Pinkie Pie.

“So I saw this big ole stall-eon with a-” Applejack’s sentence is cut off when Twilight locked herself inside the bathroom with Applejack.

When the door closed, Rainbow Dash -also looking a bit tipsy- and Fluttershy sat down next to Pinkie Pie and Rarity. Rainbow Dash was about to say something, but when they heard Applejack hurl and Twilight scream in disgust, she fell on her back, laughing hard.

“Oh my goodness, I hope she’s going to be okay,” said Fluttershy with worry.

“AJ will be fine,” said Rainbow Dash as she wiped tears from her eyes. “So what did I miss?”

“Why are you drunk?” asked Rarity rudely.

“Because I can! Pinkie!”

“Yo!” said Pinkie Pie while straightening herself out in a quick, jolting motion; this made Rainbow Dash laugh again.

“Tell Rarity I’m not that drunk.”

“Okie dokie lokie.” Pinkie Pie turned to Rarity. “Hey, Rarity, Dashie isn’t that drunk.”

“Thank you for the update,” said Rarity dryly with a roll of her eyes.

“No problem.”

“Well, Rainbow Dash, since you aren’t ‘that drunk’, would you like to play a game?”

“Is it ‘Spin the Bottle’?” asked Rainbow Dash suspiciously.

“Please don’t let it be spin the bottle,” begged Fluttershy; her pupils shrunk to dots, her ears drooped, and then she hid behind her mane and scooched back, worried that if it was ‘Spin the Bottle’ they would rig it to where everyone kissed her again.

“No, it’s not Spin the Bottle,” assured Rarity. “In fact, I don’t think we’ll even be playing that game this time.”

“Well crap, I brought this bottle for nothing then,” said Pinkie Pie disappointingly while stroking an empty soda bottle in her hooves. She then shrugged and tossed it away, landing perfectly in the garbage can behind her. When she saw the others staring at her she just shrugged. “What?”

“Nothing, dear,” said Rarity before looking at Rainbow Dash. “If you could date anypony, who would it be?”

“Are you seriously asking me that question?” asked Rainbow Dash sharply.

“You have to answer the question, Dashie, it’s the rules,” said Pinkie Pie in feigned sternness. “If it makes you feel any better, Rarity chose Fancypants, Twilight chose Dr. Whooves, and I chose Donut Joe.”

Rainbow Dash snickered and looked at Rarity with a wolfish grin. “Wow, you and Twilight are players. You two better be careful, you might fall into the horny fashionista and naughty librarian stereotypes.”

“Dash, don’t be so vulgar!” snapped Rarity.

“It’s a fantasy dating game, what'd ya  expect? Tea and muffins?”

“I like tea and muffins,” interjected Fluttershy quietly.

“I thought you liked juice boxes?”

“No, I love juice boxes.”

“Does Big Mac love your juice boxes, Ms. Shy?”

Everyone fell silent and stared at Rainbow Dash quizzically as the colorful pegasus snickered and swayed to the side a bit before catching herself. After catching herself she decided to curl up on one of the cushion rather than fight to stay sitting. While Pinkie Pie thought of what that joke was supposed to mean, she swore she heard crickets, and the only thing she could really think of is: FAIL.

“...I don’t get it...” said Fluttershy after an awkward fifteen seconds passed by.

“You don’t get a lot of things,” retorted Rainbow Dash.

“I don’t get it either,” said Rarity while scratching her hoof against the side of her head, “and I’m ashamed to say I’m no stranger to adult humor.”

“My joke is just too awesome for you to understand.”

“Well, Dashie, you’ve avoided the question long enough,” said Pinkie Pie as she wrapped her forehoof around Rainbow Dash’s neck and brought her closer for a hug while making a weird, suggestive smile. Rainbow Dash smiled nervously at her and tried to wiggle away, but earth ponies are very strong, and Pinkie Pie was no exception. Pinkie Pie tightened her hug until both of their bodies are squashed together; she could smell the alcohol in Rainbow Dash’s breath and on her coat. “It’s time for you to start talking, so we can do this the easy and boring way, or we can do this the hard and fun way.” When Rainbow Dash tried to remain vigilant in keeping her secret, Pinkie Pie smiled suggestively and said: “Is it me?”

Rainbow Dash shook her head quickly and started blushing.

“Is it Applejack?”

Rainbow Dash shook her head again and tried harder to break free, but this time Rarity helped Pinkie Pie by holding Rainbow Dash with her magic. Rarity got a devilish smile and sat in front of Rainbow Dash.

“How about me?” asked Rarity.

“Oh hay no!” snapped Rainbow Dash with an angry scowl.

Rarity frowned. “Well that tone was uncalled for.”

“How about Fluttershy?” asked Pinkie Pie.

Fluttershy glared at Pinkie Pie, which admittedly freaked out the pink pony, but Rainbow Dash gulped and shook her head again, and Pinkie Pie continued with her generic interrogating.

“Twilight? Big Mac? Roid Rage? Thunderlane? Redheart? Flim? Flam? Derpy? Cheerliee? Spitfire? Soarin?”

As soon as Pinkie Pie said “Soarin” Rainbow Dash’s wings expanded to their fullest, knocking Pinkie Pie over. Rarity laughed and Fluttershy covered her smile with her hoof.

“Oh I knew it!” exclaimed Rarity, “I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! I see you ogling him every time we’re at the Gala! Oh I can’t wait to tell him!”

“No, don’t do that! Why are you guys picking on me!? What about Fluttershy!” cried Rainbow Dash, “Make her tell us-!”

“Big Mac,” the others said in unison, even Fluttershy, although hers was barely audible over the Rarity and Pinkie Pie.

“Ooh, I can’t wait to see you two date!” squealed Rarity joyfully.

“No, I won’t be dating anypony! I’m not the dating type!” said Rainbow Dash as her cheeks flushed bright red.

===

“GET OUT OF THE THINGY!” yells a harsh, male voice.

Pinkie Pie’s eyes snap open and she realizes that she had fallen asleep, and she looks to her side and sees that she forgot to lock her doors as well and now a gang of ponies are trying to steal her vehicle. She spots a large earth pony stallion staring at her, holding the door open, with two mares, a pegasus and a unicorn, standing behind him. The stallion has a sickly green coat with a mohawk dyed orange and is wearing a dark vest of some kind with a skull tattooed on his shoulder. The pegasus has her purple mane tied to a ponytail and has a blue coat while the unicorn has a creamy coat with a light blue mane and tail.

Pinkie Pie sighs, wipes the crust from her eyes and stares at the gang leader. “Are you serious?”

“Does it look like I’m joking?” sneers the stallion.

“Well for a second I thought you were since your trying to hijack a large vehicle in the late afternoon, and no pony in their right mind would wake up somepony they are stealing from. Also, ‘thingy’ ? If you don’t know what this beautiful machine is, why are you trying to steal it?”

“We aren’t trying to steal it we are stealing it!”

“Oh,” says Pinkie Pie like it was a casual misunderstanding, even yawning at stretching herself out a bit, “well if that’s the case I better get out, then.”

Pinkie Pie is a little clumsy when she gets out, and the three ponies take a step back, but the three hijackers are quick to find out that she was messing with them. As soon all four hooves are on the ground, she strikes the unicorn at the base of her horn, making her scream in pain and collapse to the ground, pressing her hooves against her horn. Then she bucks the pegasus in the jaw, causing her to flip end over end and land on her face on the pavement. After doing that, she slams the stallion’s head against the cart and he crumbles to the ground. All this taking no more than five seconds. When Pinkie Pie hears the team leader moan, she pushes him on his back so that she’s looking down at him. His mouth is bleeding, probably from a few loose teeth, and he starts shaking as he looks up at Pinkie Pie.

“Please don’t hurt me!” cries the stallion while putting his forehooves together.

“Stay there,” orders Pinkie Pie. The stallion nods his head quickly and Pinkie Pie approaches the unicorn, who is now trying to stand up, and she knocks her out; after doing that she walks back to the stallion. “Now, what is your name?”

“A-Arbor,” stammers the pony.

“Arbor, I want you to listen very, very, very closely,” says Pinkie Pie. “I want you to go home, with your friends there, and I want you three to reflect what happened today, got it?”

Arbor nods and Pinkie Pie also nods her head, smiling. Arbor also smiles and they both start chuckling, Pinkie Pie has a quiet chuckle while Arbor is forcing himself to follow suit.

“You got it?” repeats Pinkie Pie, smiling.

“Yeah, yeah, I got,” says Arbor, forcing himself to smile.

“Good. I also want all the bits you guys are carrying.”

“What?”

“And your vest.”

“What!”

Pinkie Pie’s eyes narrow and that is enough for him to scramble to his feet and collect all the money that his little gang had and he gives it, and his vest, to Pinkie Pie. After confiscating the bits and the vest she hops back in her vehicle and waves bye to them while driving off to her apartment to do some much needed research on Bon Bon’s murder. Along the way, she give a homeless pony all the bits and the vest.

++++++++++

Dear Princess Celestia,

As you know, ‘Operation: Balefire’ was a success; it was a hard fought victory, but a victory nonetheless. We estimate that we had eliminated 90+% of their fighting force and are currently tracking down the rest in the unpopulated areas while Director Brisk Wind is investigating the populated areas for more of said terrorists. However, records show that two major figureheads are still alive and currently on the run. The first being their leader, Roar Shock, and the second being one of his Lieutenants, Adanz; I have attached detailed profiles of both of the terrorist leaders to this letter. We are currently working through the testimonies of the soldiers that participated in the operation and captured enemy combatants as well as cross referencing fallen enemy combatants to clarify if, in fact, Adanz is alive. However, the evidence pointing towards Roar Shock’s survival is overwhelming and I strongly believe that he fully intends to carry out his original plans against the Solar Empire of Equestria. All government agencies need to be open towards one another if we are to contain and eliminate this threat as quickly as possible.

Also, after the successful assault on the League of Justice’s headquarters we discovered technology that surpass ours by decades, possibly a century. We have sent their vehicles and weapons to the Ironhide Weapons Facility in Haven for further testing. What we have discovered will revolutionize technology if we are able to reverse engineer what they constructed. I am recommending that you put more funding into the Research and Development Department for such a task.

And my request for a full investigation of the Equestrian Investigation Bureau still stands. Director Brisk Wind has been more open in releasing some of the requested files, however I’m very certain that she manipulated the copies in some way and is keeping the originals stored. As Captain of the Royal Guard it is my responsibility to protect Equestria from threats, both foreign and domestic, and I sincerely believe that the EIB is in violation of multiple, basic pony rights, and therefore, poses a threat. Again, I have listed grievances against said department and Director Brisk Wind to the letter, and this time I am requesting you actually read it instead of dismissing it as “paranoia”. The bolded grievances are the ones I witnessed firsthoof while the others are testimonies given to me by agents of the EIB and other witnesses (names will not be disclosed for safety purposes).

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Cpt. Shining Armor Sparkle

++++++++++

Shining Armor’s ear twitches when he hears a soft melody seep into the room, and when his brain registers how sweet the music is, a smile stretches across his face and he shifts his position under his silky blanket bringing his fluffy pillow closer to him for a loving hug. Then his eyes open and he stares at the lavender pillow and swore for a moment that he was hugging his sister, but after the momentary panic attack ceases he pokes his head up and squints at the beams of sunlight poking through the curtains of his room. However, despite the comfortable bed and soft blanket, he still can’t get over the fact that there is a pillow that has the same color scheme as Twilight. He doesn’t even remember Cadence buying the pillow, and he knows he would never buy a purple pillow. If he’d buy any pillows they would be blue, or white with a blue pillowcase.

Shining Armor decides it’s best not to think of the pillow, so he stretches himself out and carefully climbs out of the bed, making sure his bandaged hoof is the last to land on the carpeted floor, which he realizes is different. Last he checked, the carpet was red with little trails of white going around the floor to make intricate cubes things. Now it is green. Nothing more, nothing less. It is plain green, and frankly, he thinks it looks ugly.

The stallion sighs and looks at himself in the mirror propped up on a dresser that is not his. He doesn’t even care that his mane looks like a manticore licked it or that his eyes have sickly bags under them. He wants to know who’s house he’s in and why he’s not in his house! Shining Armor glares at the radio next to the bed, the smooth music now pissing him off, and uses his magic to shut it off. He swears under his breath and rubs his horn when a small tinge of pain makes its unwelcomed appearance at where his horn was nearly snapped off. After his pain subsides he limps out of the room and sees... his living room.

Shining Armor looks back in the mysterious room and then back at the living room, completely confused as to what is going on. Everything is where it should be. There is the large oil painting of his parents, him, Cadence, and Twilight over the fireplace. Photos of him and Cadence over the years. The expensive furniture is exactly where they were placed when they were brought in, and even their expensive radio-phonograph hybrid is looking as good as when they first bought it.

“...Guards are still searching for any leads regarding the masked unicorn who played a major role in the murder of local shop owner, Bon Bon,” says the mare radio host in a Canterlot accent.

Shining Armor ignores the radio and limps towards the kitchen with every intention of finding Cadence and asking her why he was in a room he’s never seen before. Upon entering the kitchen, Shining Armor is once again blindsided. His sister is sitting at the dining room table with Cadence, and both of them are talking quietly while drinking some kind of tea with a fresh pot of coffee simmering on the back counter. The smell of coffee is enough to jolt Shining Armor awake, even his ears perk up from hearing the wondrous sounds of the machine working its magic.

Twilight is the first to see Shining Armor staring at them, and she beams, gallops towards him and hugs him, careful not to touch his injured hoof. “Shining, I’m glad you’re awake!”

Shining Armor smiles and returns the hug. “Jeez, you make it sound like I was in a coma.”

Twilight giggles and leads him to the table, but when he tries to go for the coffee, she forces him to sit down using her magic and grabs the coffee for him. Shining Armor sighs heavily and looks down, feeling worthless. Cadence sees the uneasiness in his expression and moves next to him and hugs him with her wing, he smiles at her while Twilight puts the cup of coffee in front of him. The smell of coffee and the fluffy feathers rubbing against his back are enough to make him at ease. He closes his eyes and his stiff body feels like it melts as he slouches over from the great feelings he’s getting. He completely forgets about the odd room and all the troubles for the time being; it is just him, his beautiful wife, and his amazing sister, and, of course, his coffee.

“Did you sleep well?” asks Cadence, leaning over to see if she can look into his eyes.

Shining Armor smiles and looks at his wife. “It was good.” Then his smile turns into a curious frown. “But can you explain why I was in a room I’ve never seen before?”

“Oh, that was me,” says Twilight with a nervous smile. “I arrived at Canterlot early this morning to see Rarity and Celestia, and you as well. With all the stuff going on I figured you’d be in your office and I was right. But you were sleeping and your assistants told me you’ve been there for almost the entire week, only leaving for lunch. So I called a cab and brought you home before I went to see the others.”

“And the room?”

“Like that when I dropped you on the bed. Cadence told me she wanted to test the bed so we decided it should be you to hold that honor.”

Shining Armor looks at Cadence, who was smirking. “Okay, Cadence, now can you explain why we have a new room with horrible carpet?”

Cadence sighs in mock annoyance. “Oh Shining, I can’t believe how dense you can be at times.”

“And how dense was I this time?”

“Actually, I can’t really blame you this time. You’d been working so hard and you’re barely home as it is. But then again, this is a whole room we’re talking about.”

“Cadence...”

“That room was the study, but we never used it so I turned it into a guest bedroom. How was the bed, by the way? I special ordered it from the Smoky Mountain Mattress Company.”

“It was comfortable.”

Shining Armor sips some coffee and immediately regrets it. He doesn’t know which one of the two mares in front of him did it, but they somehow managed to ruin a cup of coffee beyond salvation. He even feels slightly poisoned by it! And when he forces himself to swallow it he gets the urge to cry for allowing something so foul into his system, but neither Twilight or Cadence seem to notice his disgust. Either that, or they just don’t care. Then he looks at the miniature grandfather clock hanging on the wall... it says it’s three hours after noon. His eyes grow to the size of saucers and the irritancy of waking up in a strange room and having bad coffee completely flies out the window and is instantly replaced with panic.

“I’M LATE!” yells Shining Armor frantically while slamming his forehooves on the table with enough force to shake the table to stand up. Needless to say that was the worst call he made regarding his physical health in a while. He swears even louder and slumps in his seat while rubbing his damaged hoof with his good hoof. He also closes his eyes, bows his head, and bites his lip to keep the tears at bay.

Twilight and Cadence cringe and Twilight immediately wraps his hoof in a some kind of magical purple blob thing that numbs the pain while Cadence rubs his shoulder. He doesn’t want to look at them, though, despite their kindness; he just feels too stupid right now. First, he completely misses out on a room redecoration, and now he probably just added a fresh crack to his bone.

“Relax, Shining, I told Celestia that you need some time off and she gladly gave you a week,” says Cadence in her best soothing voice, which admittedly makes Shining Armor relax a little.

“We should call a doctor, though, to see if you hurt yourself,” says Twilight, controlling the blob so it massages his hoof.

“I did hurt myself,” says Shining Armor dryly.

“You know what I mean.”

“Can’t you just use one of your seventy-ish spells to fix this?”

“I may be the Element of Magic, but I would feel more comfortable if somepony who’s actually trained in medical magic came by to check up on you.”

“I’ll call Dr. Oath,” says Cadence eagerly.

Shining Armor groans and when Cadence is out of the room he slumps towards the table and reluctantly drinks whatever coffee wasn’t spilt. Thankfully it wasn’t much, which gave him a reason to push the cup away. However, now there is a huge mess on the table, like a pool and streak of blood leading up to a victim; only the blood is coffee and the victim is a cup of coffee that deserved death.

A couple of seconds later, the silence between Shining Armor and Twilight becomes awkward, leading to Twilight looking away and Shining Armor to look at the blob covering his hoof. As good as it feels, it’s also a bit unsettling since it reminds him of an alien he read in a science fiction book when he was living in the barracks.

“So...” begins Shining Armor, Twilight looks up and he gives her a warm smile, “how is it Ponyville? Are things getting better?”

Twilight sighs and looks at the floor, visibly upset. “No,” she says glumly, “we’re still trying to fix the damage done from Trixie’s rampage, and Applejack is being stubborn as a mule.”

Shining Armor’s smile fades away. “What do you mean?”

“Well, after Celestia signed the Equestrian Farm Enhancement Act Applejack flipped her lid. She’s refusing work on ‘Government Acres’ and is even getting the civilians riled up.”

“‘Government Acres’?”

“Yeah, that’s what she’s calling Sweet Apple Acres now that it’s in control of the state. I’m glad that Celestia sent in more Royal Guards, though, because after EFEA was signed the Local Guards created a blockade to prevent the agents from reworking the farm for the better. Thankfully the Royal Guards were able to clear them away before anypony got hurt.”

“The Royal Guards were involved?”

“Well, yeah... you didn’t know?”

“No, I wasn’t told about this or what had happened at Ponyville,” says Shining Armor, his vein throbbing and face turning red from anger by what he had just heard. He’s supposed to be getting news of everything regarding the Royal Guards, especially if the news is about troop movements and potential clash with Local Guards. If they did clash with the locals, he can’t even begin to imagine how he would try to justify it how or why it happened since he would not have known anything about it.

“I thought you knew, they are your ponies after all,” says Twilight, her ears drooping slightly at the news that her brother didn’t know what his soldiers were doing.

“Well, I know what me and Celestia will be talking about today,” grumbles Shining Armor.

“But the Princess-”

“I know what the Princess said, Twilight, but this is unacceptable. The Royal Guards are my responsibility as well as your protection. If what you said is true, then I cannot afford to take any chances and if I have to chew out a goddess for using my soldiers without my knowledge then so be it. Is there anything else I should know about Ponyville.”

“But you need your rest, you’re going to work yourself to death!”

Shining Armor’s eyes narrow and he leans forward while Twilight shrinks back a bit. “Twilight, is there anything else I should know about Ponyville?”

Twilight is silent, but her uneasiness is plain as day, given by how much she’s sweating and fidgeting in her spot. Shining Armor continues to stare at her, and he can hear Cadence talking to someone over the phone; he can’t hear exactly what she’s saying, due to her voice being muffled, but he can tell by her tone that she’s almost done. He really needs Twilight to answer the question.

“Twi-”

“Princess Celestia requested that I allow an Equestrian Investigation Bureau hub to be built in Ponyville,” says Twilight quickly. The news makes Shining Armor’s eyes widen and his body tingle with uneasiness. “She also requested that I have a Civilian Defense Agency hub built there as well.”

This time Shining Armor’s coat becomes even more pale and his jaw drops. He can’t believe what he’s hearing! Celestia knows how he feels about the EIB and he’s already fought tooth and hoof to convince Celestia that CDA is tyrannical. She obviously did not take his warnings seriously, and now he doubts she’ll take his recent letter seriously.

“I accepted both requests...” says Twilight meekly.

“You did what!” yells Shining Armor, completely horrified by what Twilight said.

“Shining, with their presence Ponyville will be safer-”

“No they won’t!”

“And Celestia promised more funding will go to the repairs if I allowed them in.”

“Twilight, I can’t believe you!”

“It’s not like I have much choice! Everything is falling apart and you and I both know that we must make sacrifices to keep Equestria safe!”

“The ponies you are allowing in will not make make anypony safer! They are more dangerous than any crime ring or terrorist network! And if Applejack is getting civilians riled up over a farm takeover how do you think they will react when they find out that they are being spied on?”

Twilight doesn’t respond, so Shining Armor leaves the dining room, and Twilight’s ears perk up and she walks after him. “Where are you going?”

“My room.”

Shining Armor stomps to his room with a fire in his eyes and slams the door shut. Then he goes to his dresser and pulls out a sheet of paper and a quill pen with his magic. He ignores the pain in his horn as he furiously scribbles a simple note, and when he’s done he slams the pen down and reads it over and prays that Brisk Wind will understand his message.

Director Brisk Wind,

Stay away from my sister. This is your only warning.

-Shining Armor

Arc 1- 17- Memories of the Departed -ADDITION-

Arc 2- 8 (Vile Ponies, Vile Inception [A])

“Hey there everypony! DJ-Pon3 here for a weekly wrap up of what’s going on in the Big Palace! But I’ll reading some fan mail first, and we’ll be starting with...”

Some paper rustles and DJ-Pon3 clears her throat.

“‘Dear Vinyl, will you date me?’ Sorry, buddy, I’m too busy keeping the music and news flowing to date. Next we have: ‘Dear DJ, enough with the political stuff. Play the music!’ Okay, first off, normally I don’t care for politics, but what Equestria is going through is too important to be ignored, even by a political hating filly like me. Secondly, screw you! I’ll run my station how I want to!”

More rustling.

“Okay, lots of mail... Lots and lots of mail... More mail than usual... Tsh-tsh-tsh, okay, I’ll read this last one before I play some music from Fifty Bits’ new album, ‘All Things Fall’ , which I know you rapping fans will love! Anyway,” DJ-Pon3 clears her throat, “‘Dear Ms. DJ-Scratch’ -aww, that’s cute- ‘Are you going to do more news on the mysterious vigilante? My foals love hearing you talk about her.’ Well, missy, the vigilante thing has been going on for a week so I don’t really have much on her, but I will say this: If you see anypony dressed up in sheets and beating the crap out of some of those a-holes ruining our streets, give them some bits and a slice of cake if you can spare it. Luna knows she needs them if she’s using bed sheets!”

++++++++++

Pinkie Pie whistles cheerfully to herself as she cleans a ski mask with blood specks on it the sink of a grungy bathroom that has a flickering light and walls and stalls covered with vulgar graffiti. Her whistling drones to a stop when she finishes her cleaning and then she admires her new green color. A few seconds of admiration later, she adjusts her wig and when it’s in the proper place she smiles to herself.

“Show time,” she says.

Then she puts on the ski mask, adjusts a cloak that hides her fake cutie mark, and steps out of the bathroom and into a ransacked bar. Nearly all the tables and bottle are broken, covering the ground in shards of glass, splinters, puddles of alcohol, and all of the attendants are unconscious and tied to pillars. The sign on the entrance had been flipped to “CLOSE” and all the blinds were closed, and to make things a bit more secure, Pinkie Pie blocked the back entrance with a fridge. Pinkie Pie walks up to one of the griffins tied to a pillar and pats her cheek to wake her up. The griffin stirs, but is still unconscious; a quick jab to the cheek fixes that. The griffin swears and her eyes shoot open, and when she sees Pinkie Pie, she struggles to break free, but she’s tied in such a way that it’s almost impossible for her to move.

“Calm down, I’m not going to hurt you,” assures Pinkie Pie.

“Right! You just beat the crap out of me and my gang and tied us to poles!” snarls the griffin.

“We’re going by criminal terms here. We all know ‘hurt’ means ‘kill’ in your world.” Pinkie Pie sits in front of the griffin and forces her to look at her. “Now, I have some questions for you. They are very simple and only need simple answers, and if you’re good I’ll give you a cupcake. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds stupid!”

“First question, who put the hit on Bon Bon?”

“No one!”

Pinkie Pie punches the griffin on the side of the head, and her captive squawks painfully as her head jolts to the side with a gash over her eye. Then Pinkie Pie brings the griffin up to look at her again.

“What the fuck!” cries the griffin.

“I forgot to tell you, everytime you lie to me I’ll smack you. Also, if you lie to me three times, you will not be getting a cupcake,” says Pinkie Pie. “Now, who ordered the hit on Bon Bon!”

“Oh shit, are you Bon Bon’s mom?”

“What? No! Do I really sound that old?”

“...Kinda.”

Pinkie Pie sighs heavily and makes a mental note to check her mane for signs of graying. Before she can dwell too far into her age problem she brings her focus back to the griffin. She grabs the griffin’s head with both of her hooves and holds it in place so she is forced to look into her eyes.

“Who. Ordered. The hit. On Bon Bon?” demands Pinkie Pie.

“Look, I’m just-” Pinkie Pie raises her hoof for a strike. “It was Winny who carried it out!”

SMACK!

The griffin grunts as the hoof collides with her beak, this time leaving a crack in it. The griffin coughs and spits blood out and Pinkie Pie brings the griffin up again. Now the griffin is crying and begging Pinkie Pie not to hit her again.

“I don’t care who carried it out, I want to know who ordered it!” says Pinkie Pie angrily. “You know what the difference is right? Carried, as in delivered, like delivering a cake to a house. Ordered, as in the one who ordered the cake to be delivered to the house. I want the one who ordered the hit!”

“What?” Pinkie Pie raises her hoof again. “No! Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me! It was Gilda! She ordered Bon Bon to be killed!”

“Why?”

“She fell behind on her payments, that’s all I heard!”

Pinkie Pie rubs her temple with her hoof. “So let me get this straight, Gilda had somepony who couldn’t pay get killed?” The griffin nods. “And how did she plan on getting the money owed by Bon Bon if she was dead?”

The griffin opens her mouth, but quickly closes it as she ponders Pinkie Pie’s question.

“You know what, never mind, I don’t want to know,” says Pinkie Pie, “just tell me how to find her.”

“You can’t.”

Pinkie Pie punches the griffin again, and when the griffin slumps over in her bondage, she lifts her back up again and punches her again. Now the griffin is sobbing and swearing in her native tongue, face completely covered in blood, and Pinkie Pie doesn’t bother adjusting the griffin this time, she just lets her slump.

“What did I tell you about lying to me,” says Pinkie Pie dangerously. The griffin remains silent and Pinkie Pie sighs and drags a stake that was once a part of a table leg towards her. “I don’t think you’re taking me seriously.”

“What!” cries the griffin. “You fucked up my face! Why wouldn’t I take you seriously?”

“You lied to me twice already.” Then she strokes the stake, saying: “So we’re going to try this again. You tell me another lie and this stake is going into your leg.”

The griffin’s eyes widen as large saucers when she sees the crude stake, and when Pinkie Pie leans forward, pressing the stake into the griffin’s leg, the griffin starts thrashing in her spot. The pressure applied isn’t enough to draw blood, but she has it positioned so that all she needs to do to impale it in the leg is a quick thrust.

“Are you going to lie to me again?” asks Pinkie Pie in a threatening tone.

~~~~~~~~~~

A few minutes later, Pinkie Pie walks out of the bar and goes to her mini-train. Then she pulls out a box of cupcakes and cookies with a little bow on the top and walks back inside the bar. The griffin is still there, paralyzed with fear and the stake is shattered in front of her paws. Pinkie Pie puts the box of goodies in front of the griffin and then she grabs one of the rags used to clean the dishes and approaches the griffin again. The griffin flinches when she presses the rag against her her head to clean the blood off.

“Thank you for telling me what I wanted to know, although all this could’ve been avoided if you cooperated from the start,” says Pinkie Pie apologetically. “What is your name, by the way?”

“Blair,” says the griffin quietly and shakily.

“Blair? Okay, Blair, now that this ordeal is done and over with, I need you to quit this business you’re in before you get yourself killed. You’re still young and have a long life ahead of you.”

“What?”

Pinkie Pie unties the griffin and nudges the box towards her. “Take these, go home, and rethink your life.”

The griffin is too stunned to move, so she can only watch Pinkie Pie leave the bar. After Pinkie Pie leaves the bar, she heads straight for her mini-train and speeds away into the night without looking back. A few blocks down, she slows down to a casual driving speed and takes off her ski mask. A few minutes later, she finds herself waiting at a red light, and to pass the time she reaches behind her and pulls out another box. This box is a simple cardboard box and when she opens it up she smiles at its contents. Then she realizes that the light is green and she speeds down the road in search for Trixie.

=**********=

Trixie ducks behind a dumpster in a grungy alley next to a spray painted mural of an all white, winged crescent moon with its points facing downward. She’s about to move, but shrinks back when a patrol vehicle passes by, shining a light in her direction. Luckily the dumpster shields her from the light, and when the vehicle passes, she makes a mad dash across the street by a small, single story, building with a radio tower on it that has “86.5 Scratch FM” painted on the windows. There are radios playing a tune on the window display, which the windows have steel grates over them, as well as the door. Trixie also notices that the station appears to be acting as a home, too.

“...That was some good music wasn’t it?” says DJ-Pon3 from the radios pushed against the window, “But now that that is done and over with, I’m going to be finishing off with the usual.”

Trixie looks around to make sure no patrol is coming before she approaches the window. As she peers through the window she can make out all kinds of radio equipment and faint glow from the back room with someone’s shadow along the wall. And another thing she notices is a navy blue flag with the same symbol she saw in the alley stitched to it hanging over more equipment.

“And that means the lecture and then some lullabies. Let’s face it, in this day and age, we all need a lullaby to help us sleep and a lecture to help us think. Don’t worry, tonight's lecture will be soft, and these will just be words of encouragement more than anything else. ”

Trixie forces herself to leave before she gets too wrapped up in what DJ-Pon3 has to say, and as she snakes through the grungy alleys it hits her: 86.5 Scratch FM is the station that’s been encouraging her to “fight the good fight” all week and calling for others to support her! Trixie makes a mental note to figure out a way to thank Scratch FM for their moral support and a few minutes of aimless traveling later, she comes across an odd scene.

Pipsqueak is standing in front of a gang of eight mares, one of which is a pegasus perched on top of a motorized wagon to act as their lookout. Pipsqueak is wearing a basic saddle that appears to be empty, but the mares still want it for some reason.

“Just give us what’s in the saddle and you can go on home to your mommy,” says the lead mare, she’s an earth pony with a silver coat and a crazy mane that has obviously been dyed to look like rainbow puke. Her cutie mark is hidden by a thick, pink poncho, which looks to be the gang uniform.

“C’mon, Teaspoon,” groans Pipsqueak, “we’ve already been through this.”

“That was last week!”

“Yeah, and you took everything so what makes you think I would have anything now?”

“You little-”

"Hey!” yells Trixie at the top of her lungs.

The gang and Pipsqueak look at Trixie, and then Teaspoon glares at the pegasus.

“Some look out you are,” growls Teaspoon.

“I didn’t see her!” whines the pegasus defensively.

Trixie marches towards the gang, clearing her throat and grumbling to herself to get a perfect disguised voice. The whole time the gang is staring at Trixie, Pipsqueak cautiously inches to the safety of a dumpster.

“Eight fully grown mares against one colt? You must be proud,” says Trixie in her disguised voice, which is really gruff, raspy, and-

“You sound like you have throat cancer,” remarks Teaspoon, making her gang laugh.

Trixie stops and figures that they do have a point, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are picking on a colt with obvious growth problems. She looks at each of them and one word can accurately describe all of them: Butch.

“Great, I walked into a gang of violent lesbians,” mutters Trixie in her normal voice.

“What was that?” says Teaspoon while turning her head slightly and leaning in closer. “You got something to say about me and my gang?”

“Yeah,” says Trixie, back to her disguised voice, ‘Man, this voice sucks.’  “I see a group of cowards who are so afraid of a little colt that they have to gang up on him. You must really suck.”

“The only things we suck at is... um... SHUT UP!”

“Wow, even your insults are horrible. Why don’t you go home to have a pillow fight or something. Nopony needs to get hurt.”

Teaspoon laughs and points at Trixie and the others laugh as well. Trixie’s eyes narrow and she scrapes her hoof along the pavement as her gut is telling her she better prepare for a fight.

“Now why would we listen to you?” laughs Teaspoon. “You’re covered in bedsheets!”

“Either you leave or I leave you as bloody pulps for the guards.”

The gang stops laughing and make “Ooh”s while waving their hooves around like they are cheap ghosts. Teaspoon, however, glares at Trixie and wipes her snout.

“Look, whoever you are, just get on outta her and me and my gang put that shrimp in his place, or else we’ll break your legs and make you watch us beat him to a pulp.”

Trixie’s blood starts boiling and she takes a threatening step forward, which must’ve given off a vibe that she’s not messing around because the whole gang takes a step back.

“Last chance,” threatens Trixie.

Teaspoon laughs nervously as she scratches her hoof against the pavement. “Oh I love this guy.”

“Gal.”

“Whatever.” She turns to the crook closest to her, saying: “Take care of this clown, please.”

The mare hesitates, but she does end up charging Trixie at full speed. Trixie watches every step of the attacker, and Pipsqueak’s eyes widen when it appears that she’ll just take the punishment of the potential head butt, but at the last second Trixie turns around and bucks her attacker full on in the maw. She feels her hoof connect with the attacker and can feel, and hear, the bones break underneath her crushing blow. The mare can’t even cry out properly as her face is destroyed; she sails through the air and lands on her back on the pavement with another sickening crack. The rest of the gang stares at her, eyes wide and jaws open, as Trixie’s victim lies on the ground, sobbing with a bloody, destroyed face, barely able to move.

Teaspoon takes another step back and points at Trixie, stammering: “Wha-What are you waiting for? Kill her!”

Five of them reluctantly charge, but the pegasus flies to the safety of an apartment balcony and watches the scene unfold. Trixie and the five mares charge each other, and the first of the five mares reers up to crush Trixie’s skull with her forehooves, but Trixie tackles her to the ground. Before the others can react, Trixie smashes her target’s voice box and she instantly clutches her neck while gagging and curling up. Then Trixie jumps out of the way as the second brings her forehooves down, but instead of hitting Trixie like she had planned, she ends up stomping her fallen comrade’s gut. Then Trixie bucks the mare’s front leg and it bends backwards at the lower portion; the attacker shrieks and falls to the ground, trying to cover her injury with her other hoof. Trixie hears another criminal scream and charge her and next thing she knows, someone is on her back with their hooves wrapped around her throat. Trixie gasps for air and pushes herself up so that she’s standing on her hind legs, then she lets gravity take over. The choker is sandwiched between Trixie and the pavement, and Trixie smiles under her cheap mask when she hears a cracking noise and the mare grunt painfully. However, that smile is short lived as another mare stomps her in the gut. All of the remaining air in Trixie’s lungs is pushed out and she coughs painfully and twists sporadically to get her choker off as the attacker relentlessly tries to stomp her to death, each stomp sending a surge of sharp pain around her gut and sides. When the stomping mare brings her hooves up for another stomp, Trixie turns just in time for the hooves to land awkwardly on her choker’s side. The pony choking her cries out in pain and Trixie hears her bones snap like twigs, the pony releases her and Trixie levitates the one that stomped her off of the ground and throws her into the brick wall behind her. She screams as she flies back, but her screaming comes to an abrupt end when she hits the wall and lands on her face on the sidewalk with a nice blood splatter on the wall. The pony that was choking Trixie earlier crawls on the ground, gasping for air and coughing out blood, but a quick hoof to the head is enough to put an end to her noise.

“Hooooaaaaaahhh!!!” yells the remaining attacker.

Trixie turns around and sees the remaining attacker is a unicorn that is spinning a bunch of knives around her with magic while making weird cat sounds and flailing her hooves like an idiot. Trixie shakes her head sadly and her horn glows to make a small storm cloud appear above the unicorn. The unicorn stops with her antics and looks up, only to be zapped with a huge bolt of lightning that leaves her on the ground with singed fur and unable to move, except for slight twitches. When that is done and over with Trixie turns to Teaspoon.

Teaspoon looks up at the pegasus and Trixie looks up to, just in time to see her fly away, and she swears that the pegasus looks familiar. She doesn’t think too much about it, though, because the criminal is beyond her reach and she still has to deal with Teaspoon, who is now bolting down the road.

“Oh no you don’t,” growls Trixie.

She runs after Teaspoon, ignoring the pain in her abdomen, and quickly catches up with her. When she’s in range, she takes a flying leap and lands on top of Teaspoon. Both ponies roll end over end of each other, and stop when they hit a motorized wagon. The vehicle shakes a bit and Trixie does her best to ignore the worsening, splitting pain in her sides, and she also reminds herself to take some more of those pills when she gets back to help ease her pain. The good dreams will be a plus, too, after seeing all the blood and popped out bones.

Teaspoon clambers to her feet and attempts to buck Trixie, but Trixie dodges the attack and Teaspoon’s hoof ends up going through the wooden door of the vehicle. Teaspoon stares at Trixie with horror as she sees her front hoof heading straight for her face. After Trixie’s hoof collides with Teaspoon’s jaw, she yelps and falls to the ground with her teeth knocked loose and a hoof covered in splinters from the door; the door now having a huge gash in it from when the leg was awkwardly yanked out from the force of Trixie’s blow. She coughs and spits out blood and teeth and stares at Trixie.

“Wha-Who are you?” she says, her whole body trembling and drooping in defeat.

“Somepony better than you,” says Trixie gruffly; then she knocks her out and drags her body to the others. When they are all in a pile she closes her eyes and launches a ball of bright light from her horn. At first it’s nothing special, but when it explodes in the sky like a firework, lighting up everything, it serves as an unignorable signal for the guards. Trixie then turns to Pipsqueak, he’s hiding behind a dumpster, too terrified to move, and she says: “Let’s get you home.”

Pipsqueak nods and follows Trixie through the maze of the alleyways. As they walk Trixie ignores the soreness all over her body, and the silence between the two becomes awkward to say the least. The only real sound in the city now, aside from the approaching sirens, are the clip-clop sounds made from their hooves meeting the ground. The whole time they are walking Trixie keeps herself on high alert for trouble; during the past week she’s been doing this she had come across a few gangsters, but they were never in groups as large as Teaspoon’s and they usually scattered after she took down one or two of them.

“So...” says Pipsqueak uneasily, “what brings you around these parts?”

“What kind of question is that?” asks Trixie, being sure to keep her voice disguised, which is now hurting her throat.

“Yeah, that was a dumb question. So what’s you’re name?”

“I wear a disguise for a reason.”

“I know. I was just wondering what your superhero name was.”

“My ‘superhero name’?”

“Yeah, you wear a costume and fight crime, you must be a superhero.”

Trixie rolls her eyes, it is quite clear that someone reads too many comics.

“I don’t have one,” she says, then she winces and leans against a wall to get a breather. She’s coughs painfully, and to add salt to the wound, each cough feels like a stab to her side.

“You okay?” asks Pipsqueak, stopping to help Trixie.

Trixie waves him away. “I don’t need your help, I’m fine.”

“I don’t know, that fight looked brutal, like changelings in a gladiator match or something.”

Trixie stares at him for a moment before she shakes the thought of gladiator changelings out of her mind and proceeds to walk down the alley.

“So, where do you live anyway?” asks Trixie.

“I live across the street from Bon Bon Land, I’ll show you the house and maybe mum can fix you tea and crumpets!” says Pipsqueak excitedly.

“No.”

“Awww, but it’ll be a token of gratitude for your services.”

“No.”

“Oh, I get it.” He gets a sly smile and nudges Trixie in her side playfully, he doesn’t catch her wince. “Tea and crumpets are not a snack for the Dark Mare. You would want something like cider and hay bacon.”

‘If only.’’ “Look, I appreciate the offer, but I can’t because if I have tea and crumpets then I would have to take off my mask, which would defeat the purpose of this disguise.”

“You’re wearing bedsheets, though.”

Trixie stops and glares at him. “So!”

Pipsqueak also stops and looks at her apologetically. “Sorry, Miss, or Mister-”

“‘Miss’.”

“Miss. Sorry Miss, but with those bedsheets you kinda look like those bigots who wear those sheets to scare zebra immigrants with the burning totem pole things. You should try-”

Trixie’s jaw drops and she angrily points at Pipsqueak. “I am not a racist! And those ponies wear white sheets! This is not white, it’s more of a dark brownish color!”

Pipsqueak cringes, then his ears perk up and he stares at Trixie quizzically. “You sound familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?”

Trixie’s jaw locks shut and she starts sweating nervously as she realized she dropped her disguise voice to chew him out. She quickly clears her throat, sending another surge of stabbing pain in her side, and says with her disguised voice back: “No, and I don’t know you either.”

Pipsqueak’s expression shifts from suspicion, to curiosity, and then to pain, ending with him nodding his head subtly and walking ahead of Trixie with his head down. Trixie watches him and feels a twinge of regret for being harsh with him, but she can’t risk letting anyone know who she is. She shouldn’t even be outside without Minty’s supervision unless she’s at work; and even if she wasn’t on parole, she’d be breaking the curfew law, which reminds her...

“I guess I’ll lead you to my mum’s place, then,” Pipsqueak says quietly.

“Why are you out past curfew?” asks Trixie.

“Why are you out past curfew?”

“I’m doing a service. What are you doing?”

Pipsqueak hesitates. “I was at the park, fell asleep, and woke up past curfew so I tried to get back home before I ran into trouble. It obviously did not work very well.”

Trixie doesn’t believe him, and as much as she wants to prod him for the truth, she can’t since they arrived at a basic duplex with flowerpots on every step of the staircase and a lovely welcome sign hanging on the front door.

“Well, this is where I live,” says Pipsqueak while walking up the stairs, but before he goes inside he turns to face Trixie. “Thanks for your help, Dark Mare.”

Trixie smiles behind her mask and does a courteous nod. When Pipsqueak goes inside, Trixie instantly hears his mother shouting “Where have you been!?”, followed by Pipsqueak going with his fell-asleep-in-the-park excuse. Trixie doesn’t stay to eavesdrop on their argument, though, she has to disappear into the alley to avoid another patrol that was rounding the corner. She sneaks through the alleys, occasionally stopping to cough and wheeze for air.

~~~~~~~~~~

After an hour or so of aimless travel, she finds herself at one of the city parks, complete with trees in full bloom, cobblestone pathways, small playgrounds, and a fountain with a statue of Celestia posing on the top with the Bearers looking up to her with wonder. Trixie suddenly finds herself weaker and she hastily walks towards the fountain and is barely able to grab the edges. The tip of her hooves go in the water and she closes her eyes as the cool air and the calm trickling of water fills her with a sense of peace. However, that sense of peace is ruined when Trixie coughs again, this time pulling off her mask and spitting blood into the crystal clear water. She gets a sickening feeling as she watches the blood spread out and then she feels the pain in her side strike at full force. She grunts and slumps to the ground, cursing herself for allowing those scumbags to get those hits on her. She knows Gray Muffin would chew her out for it, and he wouldn’t have allowed himself to be touched, and now that she thinks about it, he would’ve executed all of those criminals instead of leaving them as pulps to be arrested.

Trixie closes her eyes and really wishes she had some of those pills to help her combat the dread and pain that is overwhelming her mind and body. She lightly bangs her head against the fountain and when she opens her eyes a few seconds later she sees that she’s under the Pinkie Pie statue like its her own guardian angel. Then she hears a vehicle pull up and she peeks past the fountain and sees Minty’s vehicle stopping just shy of the fountain; apparently she didn’t believe in parking spots and thought it was okay to drive on the grass.

“There you are,” says Minty happily with something on her back, “I just drove by a small army of Night Guards and paramedics loading up some of messed up gangsters. They pulled me over, but luckily I had this little baby with me.“

Minty giggles and holds up her badge.

Trixie smiles wryly. “I might’ve had something to do with that.”

Minty is about to say something, but when she sees the blood in the fountain she slides next to Trixie and starts inspecting her. When she touches her ribs, Trixie winces and bats Minty’s hoof away.

“That hurts!” snaps Trixie.

“You’re going to a hospital,” says Minty sternly while helping Trixie up.

“We can’t go to a hospital, it’ll be too easy to connect me to the thingy I did.”

“Your late night vigilantism?”

“Yeah... that. Ow.”

Minty stops and thinks about it for a second, then she helps Trixie into her vehicle and has her lay down. After Trixie is as comfortable as she can be, Minty drives down the road seemingly without direction, and a few painful minutes later, Trixie passes out.

[[[[O]]]]

“This is my life!” cries Trixie furiously; she throws a bottle of wine at a unicorn stallion standing in front of her; he has the same color scheme as hers, but with pudgy mane, and his cutie mark is a hammer and scroll crossing over each other. The unicorn ducks as the bottle flies overhead and shatters against the wall behind him, leaving a red splash all over like a little pony had splattered. “You did nothing for me!”

“I did nothing? I did nothing!? I gave you everything! Food! Shelter! A chance to be somepony great, and what do you do? You squander it with you stupid shows!” screams the stallion. Trixie tries to throw another bottle at him, but his magic overpowers her and he throws it to the ground next to her. Upon shattering Trixie jumps away to keep the wine from staining her coat or from getting cut by the broken glass, and while she’s distracted the stallion pushes her to the ground and presses his hoof against her chest; any attempts at resistance are quickly crushed. “I tried to help you! I tried to get you to the best school I could afford, but you failed and let the Sparkle’s take what was rightfully the Lulamoons. You failed all those exams in the academy. You failed yourself and the Lulamoon Family.”

Trixie closes her eyes and sobs, and when the stallion releases her she curls up on the floor, not wanting to see him or the accursed mansion that they are staying in. The stallion shows zero signs of remorse as he walks away, leaving Trixie to cry on the floor. A few minutes later she hears a thump and the floor shakes next to her head, she opens her eyes and sees a suitcase in front of her and the stallion behind it. Trixie sniffles, wipes her eyes, goes into the sitting position, and stares at it blankly.

“Get out,” says the stallion, “you have no place left in the Lulamoon Family.”

Trixie’s jaw drops and a new bubble of anguish rises up in her throat. “Father?”

Her father’s eyes narrow and he lifts her and the suitcase up with his magic and tosses her out of the mansion, into the cobblestone road. Some other ponies in suits look at Trixie and then stare at her father, completely horrified with what he did. And as Trixie awkwardly gets up her father trots outside and one of the guards, an earth pony mare, approaches him.

“Eclipse, don’t you think-”

“Shut up!” snaps her father, then he glares at Trixie, she shrinks under his gaze. “You want to be a traveling magician? Fine, go be a nopony! You won’t matter wherever you go, and you’ll find that out the hard way when you fail and no pony helps you, and don’t go crawling back to me when you do!”

Eclipse turns tail and marches back into the mansion, using his magic to slam the doors shut. Trixie looks at the guards for help, but they all either look at her with pity or look away, some even pretend to go on patrol. Trixie grits her teeth and stomps on the ground, prompting more tears to roll from her eyes.

“Fine! I don’t need you!” she yells tearfully. “I don’t need any of you! Trixie will be better than all of you!” She then turns to the mansion and sees her father staring at her out of the safety of one of his rooms. “I hope you die a horrible death!”

Eclipse looks down slightly, and some of the guards take a step closer to Trixie and she glares at all of them, breathing heavily and eyes red from the crying. She picks up her suitcase with her magic and walks towards the gate, making sure to give each guard a taste of her wrathful gaze. The guards step aside and a couple of them push open the steel gate, which she eagerly trots through, and blindly goes down the road.

“Trixie will be great. Trixie will be powerful. Trixie doesn’t need anypony. Trixie just needs herself,” mutters Trixie to no one in particular.

She continues her walk down the road, it is all but dead with the only life being the trees planted along the sides. Normally they would give shade, but the sun blocked by a thick layer of gray clouds, and when a strong wind blows through the trees, Trixie shivers and puts on her stage cape and continues her trek.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie will matter, he will see, oh yes, he will see.”

An hour of walking later and she comes across a covered bus stop; she goes inside for shelter, and her timing couldn’t have been more perfect. As soon as she goes there is a rumble of thunder and rain starts falling; the pattering noise that the rain makes against the cover is peaceful, but the chilling air and being disowned by her own father kills the mood for her.

“You’re too late, the last bus came and went thirty minutes ago,” says a familiar voice.

Trixie looks up and sees the Shadow Stallion again; she furrows her brow and pushes her suitcase against the edge of the bench.

“Well, it looks like Trixie is going to be enjoying a nice bench for the night,” she says angrily as she curls up next to her suitcase.

The Shadow Stallion steps inside, strangely not wet from the rain. “You do know that your father loves you, right?”

“Sure he does, that is why he disowned me.”

The Shadow Stallion takes a seat next to Trixie and looks straight ahead at the mountains; or at least Trixie thinks he’s doing that, it is kind of hard to know where someone is looking when they have no face.

“Why don’t you have a face?” asks Trixie sharply.

“It is the way I was created. Nothing more. Nothing less,” answers the stallion.

“That is a really dumb answer. Can I at least get your name?”

“Custos.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“It’s the name that was given to me and a name I’ve held since the inception of time.”

Trixie chuckles and shakes her head, now looking at the pouring rain.

“Wow, creepy,” she says mockingly.

Custos has no reply, he just sits there in total silence, and Trixie sighs and sits up to look at him directly. She opens her mouth to say something, but the question she wanted to ask disappears, leaving her with a blank brain, so she frowns and lays against her suitcase. A few more minutes of silences passes before Custos turns to Trixie.

“You do know that your father loved you, right?” he says.

“What?” says Trixie while glancing at him irritably out of the corner of her eye.

“Your father. He loved you, its just-.”

“Didn’t we talk about this a few minutes ago? Oh yeah, we did, and I said no ‘loving father’ disowns a child!”

“If you could only see-”

“Him fight for his life? That would be nice.”

“...Are you sure?”

“Oh yeah, I would love nothing more than to see him squirm and beg, I think it’ll be great. He’ll deserve every ounce of it.”

Custos is silent, but a couple of seconds later he gets up and stands in front of Trixie; she stares at him defiantly, but she’s secretly terrified that he might do something to her, and when his horn glows her fear becomes uncontainable.

“What are you doing!” demands Trixie while frantically backing away from Custos.

The glow from Custos’s horn engulfs the whole bus stop and blinds Trixie. When she can see again she’s in her father’s Canterlot loft, and just everything has been destroyed with the utmost brutality. Trixie can feel that most of her bones are broken, her breathing is labored to the point where it’s almost impossible to breath, and the overall pain is so unbelievable that she just wants to scream, but she can’t. What she can do, however, is raise her hoof, which is bloody and shaking, towards a dark figure wearing a cloak that is towering above her. The only problem is that she’s not doing it. Some lightning flashes and all she can see from the figure is his eyes, filled with nothing but hatred and a burning desire to see the pony under him suffer.

“What’s going on!” yells Trixie, terrified by what she’s seeing.

“P-Please... d-don’t...” begs her host.

“Father?”

Her father’s weakened heart starts racing and Trixie feels tears wash the blood from his face in little streaks as the figure towering over him just stares. But she also feels more than just fear, she also feels... regret? The regret is overpowering every other emotion and Trixie is quick to realize that the tears are not from fear of death, but from regret. Eclipse turns to his side and stretches his hoof out towards a picture nestled in a broken frame; a picture of him, Trixie, and her mother at the hospital the night Trixie was born. Eclipse looks overjoyed and Braille, while tired, is smiling down at a sleeping baby Trixie.

“There is only black and white,” says the figure ominously.

The picture is smashed and Eclipse cries out as if he just saw his family murdered in front of his eyes; but due to his near death condition it comes out more like a weak whimper trying to scream. His vision, as blurry as it is, becomes even more so from the tears to where Trixie can barely see anything.

“There is never gray.”

The attacker slides the picture out of reach, and he kicks Eclipse on his back, shattering some ribs and making Eclipse cough out blood. Eclipse gasps for air as he turns to his stomach and tries to crawl towards the picture again. The barbaric growl from the attacker is enough to send a shiver down even the bravest of the Royal Guards, and in the blink of an eye there is a back-breaking stomp and Eclipse stops moving, hoof outstretched towards the picture. She can still hear him breathing heavily and whimpering.

“For justice is absolute.”

[[[[O]]]]

Trixie wakes up screaming and flying into the sitting position; she tries to calm her racing heart by putting a hoof over it, and she wipes sweat off of her face and mane with a shaky hoof.

“It was just a dream,” whispers Trixie with little to no relief.

“Trixie!” calls Minty.

She looks at her blanket and sees that it’s covered in her sweat, then she realizes that she has a tingly taste on her tongue. She scratches her tongue against her teeth to get the taste out and she becomes even more panicked when she tries to levitate the blanket off. Her horn sputters, but doesn’t work.

“Oh no,” whimpers Trixie. When Minty bursts into the room Trixie jumps off of her bed and scrambles into a corner, crying and pointing an accusing hoof at Minty. “What did you do to me!”

Minty skids to a stop and carefully approaches Trixie, saying: “Trixie, I-”

“You gave me those mushrooms, didn’t you!”

Minty approaches Trixie and when she tries to run out of the room Minty grabs her and hugs her, tightly. Trixie immediately slumps to the ground, crying into Minty’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Trixie, but I had to do it,” she says softly over Trixie’s sobs while gently rubbing her back, “if I -if something had happened to you I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”

Trixie’s body shakes as she cries, remembering what Sunshine did, and tried to do, to her, then unwanted memory of the pain she endured from Brisk Wind’s torture with those plants return as well. Minty continues her attempts to comfort Trixie with a warm embrace and soft strokes while apologizing. A minute later, Trixie pulls away from Minty, tears soaking her face, and hurries to the bathroom. Once inside, she closes and locks the door and pulls out the container from the medicine cabinet, which now has plywood instead of a mirror covering it that has “You’re Beautiful” written on it in marker.

Trixie has trouble getting the cap off without her magic and ends up breaking the container in half by smashing it against the sink. The pills fly out and a good portion roll down the sink, much to Trixie’s panicked dismay, while the rest scatter all over the floor.

“No, nonononono, please no!” cries Trixie desperately while frantically trying to prevent the pills from falling into the sink’s abyss. She manages to save a few and pushes them over the edge of the sink so that they fall to the floor, and she drops to the ground and literally licks two off of the floor and swallows them dry. The dry pills taste horrible and sickly feeling of wanting to puke surges up instantaneously, but with the way her throat closes up, she highly doubts that that will happen. Trixie slumps to ground and coughs violently into her hoof. A few seconds later, it all ends like someone flipped a switch. Her throat relaxes, the coughing fit goes away, and all despair is replaced with bliss.

Trixie smiles broadly and relaxes by the bathtub. “Wow, Trixie feels so much better now.” She picks up the broken container and holds to her chest, her blissful smile growing bigger. “Trixie loves you, pills, Trixie loves you all.”

Trixie gets up a moment later and heads back to her room with a skip in her step, and she stops dead in her tracks when she sees a box at the foot of her bed. She cocks her head and cautiously approaches the box, and when she’s towering above it she opens it up to see a costume inside. She giggles “Oh cool” as she eagerly takes them out like a child opening her gift on Christmas morning. The costume’s jumpsuit and cape are dyed dark purple with messy stitchwork all over them, and the cape is being held by a simple clip. The pads are hoofball pads that have been painted black and there is a large fedora that has been stitched around a bike helmet as well as durable goggles worn by pegasi; and to top it off, it has a black apparatus of some kind that goes around her muzzle.

After putting on the suit she does with some difficulty she does a test run by galloping around the room, jumping on and off her bed and fighting invisible ninjas. When she’s done she stands proudly on the edge of her bed, puffing out her chest and sticking her nose in the air like the boastful mare she used to be.

“The Dark Mare cometh,” she says in a fake threatening voice, which is muffled by the apparatus around her muzzle, followed by a cackle. Then she looks over the edge of her bed and imagines herself on the rooftop of one of Canterlot’s gleaming skyscrapers. Trixie grins and turns around so that her back is to the edge of the bed and-

oooOOOooo

Pinkie Pie is now slouching on her bed, completely dumbstruck about what had happened. She hadn’t known Trixie would react in such a way after finding out she was fed the healing mushroom that she had stolen from a clinic, which, in itself, took forever to find a clinic that even had them. Pinkie Pie is trying to figure out a way to apologize to Trixie for her mistake, however, with Trixie running around like a filly on speed and a sugar rush in the other room, it makes it a little difficult to think. That and Pinkie Pie is fairly certain that there are quite a few ponies who are clutching pillows around their ears and gritting their teeth, thus adding to her worry that she’ll be getting a “friendly reminder” to tone it down by the staff and neighbors. But Pinkie Pie’s every last bit train of thought disappears when she hears a THUMP, a few seconds of silence, and then Trixie groaning: “Ow.”

Pinkie Pie immediately jumps off of her bed and runs into Trixie’s room and sees that her roommate it lying on the floor, on her back, and wearing the suit that she made. Pinkie Pie is about to help her up, but stops when Trixie starts laughing, which makes it hard for Pinkie Pie to not laugh because the sight of a vigilante clad in menacing armor, laughing like an idiot, is something one does not see every day.

“They can’t call me a liar now!” laughs Trixie.

Pinkie Pie walks over and helps Trixie sit up. “What do you mean?”

“I told Fancypants that I was covered in boo-boos because I punched a mirror and did a backflip off of my bed.” Trixie pulls off her helmet, apparatus and mask with some difficulty and smiles at Pinkie Pie. “And now I have punched a mirror and done a backflip off of my bed.”

“...Did you say ‘boo-boos’?”

Trixie’s smile turns from that of amusement to a sly one. “Maaaybe,” she says in a drawn out, singsong-y tone.

Pinkie Pie sighs and stands up with Trixie, and while Trixie talks about how amazingly comfortable and flexible the suit is, she starts to wonder what exactly is in those pills that Trixie takes.

Trixie pulls off her helmet, analyzes it for a couple of seconds, then tosses it on her bed.

“This suit awesome! Why didn’t I get this earlier?” asks Trixie while bouncing around Pinkie Pie in such a way that it reminds her of the Cutie Mark Crusaders when they were adorable little fillies. Or herself when she first met Cranky Doodle.

“Well, you see, I was going to give it to you earlier, but I ran into some snags,” says Pinkie Pie shamefully. Her whole body sulks when she thinks about all the time that had been wasted and the risks Trixie took due to these complications.

Trixie starts chasing her tail, saying: “What was wrong with it earlier?”

Pinkie Pie watches Trixie spin in circles and when the unicorn stops, she wobbles in place, making a sickly moaning sound. Trixie then coughs and gags like she’s going to puke, even going as far as keeling over with her tongue hanging out, and just when Pinkie Pie is about to grab a bucket, Trixie swallows the puke. Pinkie Pie cringes in disgust and Trixie’s eyes widen she she realizes what she had done, but that’s doesn’t kill her mood by any means.

“So, the Great and Powerful Trixie demands to know what was wrong with the previous suit!” says Trixie using her degrading tone from her years as a showmare. Trixie bursts into a laughter a second later and falls on her back, kicking her hindlegs in the air while clutching her gut with her forehooves. “Wow, I sound funny. Do you think the Great and Powerful Trixie sounds funny?”

Pinkie Pie arches an eyebrow, her concern now reaching new heights. “Um...”

Trixie stands up and dismisses Pinkie Pie’s “Um” with a theatrical wave of her hoof. “Of course Trixie does. How crappy was the last suit?”

“I had to get those pads replaced and reinforced because when I tested them they kinda didn’t last long. But, these ones are more durable,” says Pinkie Pie, and to emphasize her point, she punches Trixie’s chest with enough force to make her skid backwards. “I also did some work on the cape, but I don’t think its a good idea to test it out right here.”

Trixie laughs and looks down at the chest pad.

“I didn’t feel a thing!” says Trixie happily, then she looks at Pinkie Pie with a challenging smile. “We should wrestle.”

Pinkie Pie cocks her head. “What?”

“Yeah! It’ll be fun! Trixie gets to test out this super cool suit and you get to be a good friend and punch me!”

“Um... I don’t think friends punch each other. I mean punching like what you want, because when I punched you that was to show you how well the suit is. Besides its late -or technically early, and we-”

Trixie lowers herself like she’s a predatory feline ready to pounce, she even has the swishing tail down! “C’mon, Minty, you know you wanna do it.”

“I don’t know, I might hurt you or something.”

“Scaredy cat.”

“No, I just-”

“I triple dog dare you to wrestle!”

Pinkie Pie smirks and cracks her back, one cannot turn down a triple dog dare, after all.

“Okay,” says Pinkie Pie, now shaking any tight spots out of her body, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you when I have you pinned.”

“That’s why we have rematches,” says Trixie with an eager smile.

“Okay, fine, we’ll do best two out of three.”

Trixie jumps to the sitting position and claps her hooves together.

“Yay! You make an awesome friend, Minty!” cheers Trixie.

Pinkie Pie’s smile fades and she looks down, a motion that Trixie is too excited to notice.

===

“Sooooooo, is that a yes?” asked Pinkie Pie hopefully while bouncing next to Applejack so the farm pony could see her with her peripheral vision.

Applejack sighed and bucked one of her apple trees with the usual amount of force that shook all the apples loose. All the apples landed in the buckets around the trees perfectly and she started loading each one on a steam powered cart with a decent sized flatbed that had more than its fair share of apple filled buckets.

“Sooooooo, is that a yes?” repeated Pinkie Pie.

“Look, Pinkie, Ah’d really love t’ help ya out an’ all, but Ah already have t’ help Twi with her spell thingamajig, Dash with her practicing, Fluttershy with disciplining Angel, and Rarity with her dresses,” said Applejack; she looked like she wanted to puke after mentioning she had to help Rarity with dresses, but this made Pinkie Pie grin from ear to ear.

“AJ helpin’ Rarity, eh? What will you to be doing? Will you be trying on different dresses?”

“No.”

“Making dresses?”

“No.”

“Is it something athletic and you guys are just using dresses as an excuse?”

Applejack glared at the pink pony while pushing one of the baskets farther back. “Ah’m just tryin’ to explain to Rarity the ‘fashion’ of us simple folk since she’s lookin’ fer rustic ideas.”

Pinkie Pie snickered and gobbled up one of Applejack’s apples in one bite; the farming mare did not take too kindly to that.

“Dang it, Pinkie! How many time do Ah have t’ tell ya not t’ eat mah apples!” scolded Applejack.

“Oh relax, you’re just as uptight as Rarity when it comes to your apples,” teased Pinkie Pie. “What’s the big deal anyway? It’s only one apple.”

“Well that one apple is life or death!”

===

“En garde!” shouts Trixie with mock ferocity as she charges Pinkie Pie. Pinkie Pie quickly side steps and rams Trixie on the side, thus knocking her over to her back. Then Pinkie Pie stands over Trixie and holds her down with her forehooves. Trixie laughs: “That’s one!”

===

Pinkie Pie stared at Applejack, completely shocked by her words and now feeling like a jerk for eating that apple. Applejack climbed in her vehicle and Pinkie Pie hopped in the passenger seat.

“Ah’m sorry fer snappin’, Pinkie, but finances are tight fer me and mah family,” said Applejack with genuine regret.

“What do you mean?” asked Pinkie Pie. “I know you said you were trying to save some money, but you look like your well off.”

“Ah don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because Ah don’t and that’s final.”

“Don’t make me go into a tangent about cherrychangas again.”

Applejack looked down, and when Pinkie Pie opened her mouth to unleash the cherrychangas Applejack is quick to explain her situation. “Ah found a great place fer Apple Bloom t’ go to so she won’t be stuck on this here farm. She can get a proper education and go somewhere and do somethin’ meaningful with her life.”

“Oh, that’s nice. What school is it?”

“The Smoky Mountain Architect Academy, but Ah still have t’ pay fer the expenses of Granny’s funeral, and Big Mac is payin’ some hotshot from Canterlot t’ fix the problems he and Cheerilee have. Sixty bits an hour is the cost, Ah believe.”

“Wait, Big Mac and Cheerilee are having problems?”

“Eeyup.”

“They don’t need a somepony in a suit with glasses to tell them how to fix their problems, what they need is a party! Yeah, a party to remind them how much they love each other!”

“A party won’t fix this one. This whole thing with him and Cheerilee has driven mah brother to drinking and now I have to help him pay for rehab after he-”

“Ooh, I didn’t realize he was drunk when he did that.”

“Big Mac is terrifying when he’s drunk, so Ah have t’ do this before he hurts himself or any other pony.”

“So the rumors are true about what he did to Vigilance with the stool...”

“Anyway, add that to the repair costs, maintenance, employee payments, the dozen and a half bills and new taxes, and the one thousand pages o’ regulations and mah family is left with crumbs. So fun and money is something Ah need, but don’t have a whole lot of right now. Every apple counts.”

When Applejack finished her venting Pinkie Pie noticed Applejack is trying to hide the tears in her eyes. Pinkie Pie quietly pulled out a bag of bits from seemingly thin air and plopped them in front of Applejack.

“What is that?” asked Applejack while raising a brow.

“My chess tournament winnings,” replied Pinkie Pie. “Why didn’t you tell any of us that you were having this much trouble?”

“It wasn’t yer guys’s concern; this is mah problem, and it wouldn’t be right t’ bring others into a problem that ain’t theirs... and when did you play in a chess tournament?”

“When I visited Donut Joe in Canterlot when he needed my help in making one of his cities. I got to make little marshmallow ponies; complete with all the clothings and everything! It was hard making the little sugar dresses, but it was worth it.”

Applejack smiled. “Sounds like it was quite a sight. Did it taste good?”

“Oh yeah! It was like a eating a rainbo-ohhh nevermind, rainbows are spicy. It was like eating all of the candies in the world baked inside all of the pastries in the world and then mixed inside a mixer that put in all the flavorings of the world and it was so good that I hallucinated from its goodness.”

“Say what now?”

“By the way, that’s yours.”

“What is?”

Pinkie Pie pointed at the bag of bits. “That is.”

Applejack stopped the vehicle and pointed at the bag. “That bag of how many bits?”

“Two thousand three hundred and fifty four. It was originally three thousand, but I bought some gifts for all of you guys and a vet visit for Gummy.”

Applejack continued to stare at the bag of bits, eyes wide and mouth watering from the idea of all the bills she can pay with two thousand three hundred and fifty four bits. Pinkie Pie saw Applejack’s trance and she giggled and tossed it in her lap, snapping the farmer out of her trance. Applejack looked at the bag of bits and a moment later shook her head disapprovingly.

“Ah’m sorry, Pinkie, Ah can’t accept it,” said Applejack apologetically. “It’s yer money and-”

“I’m using it how I want to, which is helping a friend who needs it more than me. Besides, a nonexistent business can wait, mortgage payments can’t,” said Pinkie Pie firmly.

“But-”

“Take the money or I’ll slap you to last week!”

Applejack’s eyes widened and she leaned back as if she was afraid Pinkie Pie had such devastating powers to breach the space and time continuum with a mere slap. Pinkie Pie then pulled Applejack in for a hug, Applejack is uncomfortable at first, but then she loosened up and returned the hug. A moment later she starts crying, and tightened her hug and Pinkie Pie did the same. She closed her eyes and patted Applejack on the back as her friend trembled in her embrace and her tears trickled down to her coat.

“Thank you,” Applejack said softly, “you have no idea how much this means t’ me.”

===

Trixie tries to tackle Pinkie Pie again, but she once again uses her waning, yet still superior, speed and agility to move out of the way. However, the sudden bursts of movement caused a bit of pain in her back which is only made worse when Trixie jumps on her. Pinkie Pie buckles under the sudden weight, but manages to push Trixie off. While Trixie flops on the floor like a fish out of the water, Pinkie Pie pounces on her and pins her down again.

“That was two out of three, time for bed, Trixie,” says Pinkie Pie sternly.

“Awww, but I don’t wanna go to bed!” whines Trixie.

“But you have to, you have to go to work tomorrow.”

“But I’m not tired!” Trixie throws a hissy fit by banging her hooves on the floor and pouting. “This is fun! Aren’t you having fun?”

Pinkie Pie sighs and reluctantly releases Trixie from her pin.

===

“You want to talk about the good old times?” asked Pinkie Pie.

Applejack pulled away and wipes her eyes of tears while sniffling.

“Like what?” she asked.

Pinkie Pie shrugged. “I don’t know... Some of our whacky adventures; like the time we fought all those changelings.”

Applejack smiled. “Or when we took a trip to Los Pegasus.”

“And we swore to never let you near a casino ever again.”

Both of them laughed, remembering the good times they had at the casinos; such as Rainbow Dash trying to count cards (leading to them being kicked out), Applejack trying her hoof at Palomino Hold ‘Em (which lost them all the money Fluttershy won), Rarity and Pinkie getting trashed, and Twilight being too scared to try any of the casino games because none of them were in her favor. Then they talked about how broke they were after their horrible gambling spree and how Fluttershy managed to convince a bus driver to take all of them back to Ponyville free of charge.

“Do you know what Fluttershy said or did t’ get us back t’ Ponyville?” asked Applejack, chuckling to herself as she remembered Fluttershy pulling of a saucy look that made Rarity jealous.

“Can’t say I do,” replied Pinkie Pie coolly while leaning in her seat, “but she was one happy little filly for a while.”

“Ain’t no denyin’ that.”

The two shared another laugh, and then they fell silent. Both of them stared at the seemingly endless supply of apple trees and the beautiful sunset, which was giving everything a more peaceful feel to it. Add that to the warm, summer breeze and anyone could fall asleep on the spot. It was moments like what they’d experience now that reminded Pinkie Pie why Applejack liked to sleep outside. Another few minutes of peaceful silence passed before a thought struck Pinkie Pie’s mind.

“Hey Applejack,” said Pinkie Pie suddenly. Applejack looked at Pinkie Pie and she looked back at her. “Do you miss it?”

“Miss what?” asked Applejack, genuinely confused about the question.

“Playing hero.”

“‘Playing hero’?”

“Yeah, you know that whole Mare-Do-Well thing? Do you miss it?”

Applejack scoffed and looked back at the sunset, saying: “Nope.”

“Really?”

“Pinkie, it may have been fun fer you guys, but it wasn’t for me.”

Pinkie Pie sat up and leaned closer to Applejack. “Why not? You did great when we did that whole thing with Dashie and was awesome when Eclipse came to town.”

Applejack sighed and shifted her position so that she could start the vehicle. “Well fer one, we made Mare-Do-Well to mess with Dash, and Ah never really forgave mahself fer that. Ah mean, what kind o’ friend does that t’ another friend?”

Pinkie Pie looked down to ponder Applejack’s remark.

===

Trixie lays on the ground for a couple of more seconds before she gets a devilish grin and prepares herself for another pounce. Pinkie Pie merely tsks and wipes her nose with the hoof that Trixie burnt during that fateful night.

“Are you seriously going to try it?” asks Pinkie Pie.

Trixie nods. “Oh yeah, and you’ll soon feel the wrath of the next great hero!”

Pinkie Pie goes in the sitting position and spreads her forehooves out. Trixie charges Pinkie Pie and with one swift swipe to the unicorn’s head from an injured hoof she goes down like a sack of potatoes.

===

“And another thing,” continued Applejack, the vehicle now rumbling to life, “Ponyville got all screwy with the sudden accidents when we put on those costumes. It was weird and every time Ah think about it Ah get the shivers.” To make her point Applejack shudders for a second before regaining her composure. “Thirdly, we never thought about protecting Ponyville, it was all t’ mess with Dash. Sure her attitude reminded me of the Great and Powerful Trixie, or whatever she called herself, and we had t’ take care of it, but what we did was... awful and downright rude, to put it lightly.”

Applejack started driving towards the silo where she stored all of her apples.

“And finally,” she said, raising her hoof for a second before putting it back on the speed lever, “Ah woulda liked t’ have somethin’ more than a towel between mah noggin and a hoof, like a suit o’ armor worn by Captain Equestria or somethin’. Especially when Eclipse-”

“What do you mean ‘towel’?” asked Pinkie Pie.

“Yer jumpsuit didn’t feel like a towel?”

Pinkie Pie shook her head in exaggerated movements. “Nope, it felt like I was wearing somepony else’s skin.”

“...That’s creepy.”

===

Pinkie Pie leans over Trixie and pokes the side of her head, prompting an obnoxious snore from her. Pinkie Pie pokes her again and again and again just to make sure that Trixie is, in fact, sleeping.

“Okay, let’s get you to bed,” says Pinkie Pie while standing up. She tries to wake up Trixie again, except this time with a shake, but all that does is make her mumble something about mint gum. Pinkie Pie sighs and drags Trixie to her bed, she doesn’t bother taking the costume off, though, and when Trixie is tucked in, she heads back to her room and slouches on her bed.

She stares at the doorway as if expecting someone to walk in, and the more she stares the tighter her jaw and the wetter her eyes become. She never really thought about Applejack’s words that day on the farm, she just figured that the farmer was being pessimistic, but now that she thinks about it, Applejack was right. Mare-Do-Well was never a hero; her very design was for humiliation, they never had the intention of protecting anybody from anything, only to break down Rainbow Dash.

“What kind o’ friend does that t’ another friend?”

Pinkie Pie presses the sides of her head with her hooves, closes her eyes and whimpers. Now that she thinks about it, she wants to save Equestria using a lost soul who doesn’t even know what she’s being conditioned for while using an idea that had a vile inception. Pinkie Pie starts trembling and she shakes her head, not wanting to remember all those nights she had to comfort Rainbow Dash for what she had only viewed as a prank. She understood why she was upset at first, but never grasped the severity of it until just now.

“What kind o’ friend does that t’ another friend?”

Then the memory of Spike bleeding all over her returns, as well as the pain that Twilight and Rarity went through. She can hear both of them crying and Spike’s heavy breathing, she can practically feel his blood on her back, and the heat from Twilight’s fire, and the shockwave from the explosion in Ponyville.

Pinkie Pie’s eyes slowly open and she looks at her hooves, hyperventilating, expecting to see blood on them. She starts to tremble and rock herself back and forth while her lips quiver and tears pour out of her eyes.

“You may have captured me, but they’ll just send somepony else. And after they deal with the Mayor, they’ll come after you for meddling with our business.”

Redheart and Vigilance, both murdered in a jail cell, soon to be joined by dozens of others.

“Spike! Oh Spike, where art thou!”

She can almost feel the pain and fear Spike felt when he was being murdered in the most brutal way imaginable by Terra. Her sadistic laughter rings in Pinkie Pie’s ears, making them fold and she presses them harder against her head in a feeble attempt to stop the laughing.

“You’ve done enough already, Pinkie.”

Pinkie Pie curls up on her bed, and starts sobbing as she strokes her tail. She knows she’s responsible for Shining Armor’s condition and the hundreds killed and injured, all in the name of defending a Ponyville icon. All in the name of protecting Ponyville from harm. When she closes her eyes, though, she realizes how she only made it worse. Everything she did led up to  Big Mac and Fluttershy almost getting killed and the explosion from the Trixie and Twilight’s magic that nearly destroyed the town, ending who knows how many innocent lives. Pinkie Pie pulls her pillow closer to her chest and buries her face in it, her weeping is muffled by the pillow, but its still heard all throughout the apartment.

“I’m sorry,” whimpers Pinkie Pie while scrunching up, ignoring the pain she’s putting her back through, because as far as she’s concerned, she deserves every last bit of it. “I’m sorry... I’m sorry... I’m sorry...”

She closes her eyes as tight as they can go in hopes that doing so will replace the nightmare with something more peaceful. Something like a memory of her and Joe working together to make one of those pastry cities or the fun times they had when they went to those bakery trade fairs. But all she gets is a sickly combination of dread and regret as the memory of what she did at the bar to find Bon Bon’s killer takes over. The feeling makes her so sick that she wants to puke.

She tightens her grip on her pillow, now drenched in her tears and sweat. “Please forgive me.”

Arc 2- MARE-DO-WELL RETURNS -Cover-

Arc 2- 8 (Vile Ponies, Vile Inception [B])

Shining Armor blinks tired tears out of his eyes and scans the ballroom. The ballroom has probably close to two hundred ponies in it, all in their own enclaves. Politicians in one area, talking like they know how businesses operate because the visited a restaurant. Celebrities in another, thinking they know everything about politics because of an opinion article. Businessponies drifting between the groups, trying to lobby for favors or strike up endorsement deals. And finally, the military personnel, staying in their own happy corner and rejecting anyone who tries to get them to support their campaigns, buy from them, or convince them to come to their next show. Through the clumps, Shining Armor can see the tables of food and beverages lined up along the walls, and the enormous windows show off the silhouette that is the Canterlot skyline and the glowing zeppelins that float around them. The constellations of the night sky and the lights peppering the skyline add some comfort to the disguised prison they call a “Pre-Gala”. Shining Armor looks around a little bit more and easily spots the not-so-subtle Night Guards watching over the entrances and exits as well as patrolling and watching the party from the second level. The whole layout reminds Shining Armor too much of a prison redecorated to look fancy and fool the prisoners into thinking that they have freedom.

Cadence sneaks up behind Shining Armor and does a surprise hug, making him jump and stumble a bit. Cadence laughs and Shining Armor follows suit after his racing heart returns to its normal beats.

“You scared me, Cadence,” laughs Shining Armor.

“Oh relax, Shining, no pony is out to get you,” teases Cadence.

“That’s not necessarily true.” Shining Armor looks past Cadence and sees reporters scurrying about, trying to get some scoops. “There are those reporters. Completely merciless little-”

“Soooo, have you seen Luna?”

Shining Armor lazily cranes his neck to search for the alicorn, but he doesn’t see her anywhere, which he finds odd since nighttime is her element and Celestia told him that Luna would be at the party.

“Nope,” says Shining Armor, “can’t see her anywhere.”

Cadence sighs sadly and rubs her hoof on the tile. “That probably means she’s in the library, which means she wants to be alone. I guess that’s a good thing, though. We don’t want another one of her exploding cakes again.”

Shining Armor sees a mare with a simple, yet admittedly beautiful, dress and a hat with a notepad tucked in it staring at him. She has a yellow coat and a well groomed red tail and mane, and Shining Armor recognizes her as Quill Pen, a reporter for the New Yoke Times. When Quill Pen starts approaching him Shining Armor wants to disappear into the crowd and possibly hide under a table for the rest of the night. But he knows reporters have an unnatural ability to find anyone, so trying to hide in a ballroom would be useless.

“Hey Cadence, why don’t you go to Twiley and see how she’s doing?” says Shining Armor while pointing at Twilight’s group. She’s with her friends, Rarity and Rainbow Dash, both looking good in their dress and military uniform.

Cadence looks at Shining Armor with feigned suspicion. “And what will you be doing?”

“Taking one for the team.”

Shining Armor reluctantly heads towards Quill Pen and when Cadence sees the reporter she just rolls her eyes and walks towards Twilight’s group. When Shining Armor reaches Quill Pen she opens up her mouth to say something, but Shining Armor cuts her off.

“Before you ruin my sanity, let’s move over by the wall.”

“Sure thing, Captain Armor,” says Quill Pen with a sly smile.

They walk over by the wall and Shining Armor sits down on one of the expensive seats that was lined up against it. Quill Pen takes the seat next to him and pulls out her pen and notebook with her magic.

“So,” begins Quill Pen innocently, “the citizens of Equestria have a lot of questions and I am here to ask them.”

“You don’t say. How many questions are there?” asks Shining Armor wearily as he strokes his injury with his good hoof.

“I promise they’ll be quick and seeing that your condition is a little questionable I won’t ask the hard stuff.”

“What the hay is that supposed to mean?”

“You know, you’re hoof and horn is ruined and Director Brisk Wind said that you’re an insomniac now, which we all know insomnia screws with the brain. So I’ll try to keep them simple.”

Shining Armor is speechless. He doesn’t think he’s ever faced such a blatant insult in his entire life! He remembers the barrage of insults he got on a daily basis during his training, and as painful as they were to hear, they were completely necessary for the program. However, this was just downright disrespectful, and what makes it worse is that Brisk Wind is telling news agencies that he’s not fit for “tough questions”. The urge to just up and leave to give Brisk Wind a piece of his mind just became dominant emotion.

“So, Captain Armor, we’ll start with something simple. Ponies are wondering how you are faring with your injuries sustained after your engagement with the League of Justice,” says Quill Pen.

“You talking to me is making the pain worse,” quips Shining Armor.

Quill Pen frowns and scribbles something down on her notepad that he can’t see while mumbling under her breath. When she’s done, she forces herself to smile as she goes on with the next question.

“There has been reports of increased violence in the rural areas regarding locals and Royal and Night Guards stationed at their towns. What is your response to such acts?”

“That question is too vague for me to answer, but know this, my soldiers have a right to defend themselves, so if they feel threatened they will act accordingly.”

Quill Pen scribbles down his response, and taps her chin with her pen for a couple of seconds like she’s thinking of something. Then she scratches off something and goes on to write something else down.

“Okay, I got another question,” says Quill Pen, turning to a fresh page on her notepad now.

“Oh goddess,” sighs Shining Armor while face-hoofing.

“You made it public that you oppose the Equestrian Investigation Bureau and the newly formed Civilian Defense Agency. Care to explain your position?”

Shining Armor looks away from Quill Pen and into the crowd, he wants to unload everything about the EIB and CDA right then and there, but they would be there all night and his request for an investigation is still pending so he’d just go off of almost pure speculation.

While Shining Armor thinks of a response for Quill Pen’s question, he spots Brisk Wind talking to the Flim Flam Brothers about only Celestia knows what (if she even knows what goes on outside the reports). Brisk Wind sees him with the reporter and flashes a very smug, victorious smile at him that says: “Gotcha”.

“Captain Armor, you still there?” says Quill Pen mockingly.

“I oppose the EIB because of their violations to basic pony rights, and I oppose the CDA because it is an organization that would make tyrants proud. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to have a word with somepony,” says Shining Armor angrily.

Before Quill Pen can respond Shining Armor gets up and marches towards Brisk Wind; any sane pony would feel like the Captain’s gaze would be boring into their soul, but not for Brisk Wind, she just smiles.

“Good evening, Captain Armor,” says Brisk Wind with a smile so fake that Shining Armor wants to buck her in the face right then and there, “I saw you talking to that lovely reporter over there.”

Shining Armor nods politely to the Film Flam Brothers and says: “Gentlecolts, if you’ll excuse us for a moment.”

“Certainly,” says Flim.

“We’ll leave you two to yourselves,” says Flam.

Then they both bow politely to Brisk Wind and walk off, only to be pestered by Quill Pen ten seconds later. Shining Armor then escorts Brisk Wind to the exit of the ballroom, and he leads her to a secluded balcony. After that, he closes the balcony door and turns his glare to the narcissistic pegasus in front of him. Not even the cool night breeze can cool his temper.

“What the hay is wrong with you!” shouts Shining Armor.

“Nothing’s wrong with me, you’re the one with the bad hoof and horn,” remarks Brisk Wind.

“You are trying to discredit me in front of the press!”

“Oh, is this about Ms. Pen? I merely told her that you were facing some problems and that she should go easy on you. We did talk for a little bit and she seemed nice. Believe me, if I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have allowed her near you.”

Shining Armor scoffs. “For some reason I think you’re lying through your teeth.”

Brisk Wind smirks and walks uncomfortably close to him.

“Captain, you and me are on the same team,” says Brisk Wind. “We need to trust each other and-”

Shining Armor quickly pulls away from her.

“How can I trust you when you won’t give me the files?” growls Shining Armor.

“I did give you the files-”

“Ruined files!”

“Just like you gave me what you had.”

“What you gave me was covered in coffee stains and black bars!”

“Did I mention how grateful I was for those files?”

Shining Armor shakes his head. “You’re evil. I’m starting to wonder where your loyalties lie.”

Brisk Wind frowns. “My loyalties are to Equestria and the principles of Harmony, Captain.” Then Brisk Wind smiles again, brushes past Shining Armor, and playfully flicks her tail underneath his chin, making him grumble. “But I can understand your concern, my methods are strange in the eyes of a pony such as yourself.”

“I have this thing called ‘morals’, you should try getting some. They’re free and easy to use.”

Brisk Wind pushes open the doors. “I can see why Cadenza fell for you, you can be quite charming even when you act like an ass.”

Shining Armor doesn’t give Brisk Wind the benefit of eye contact, instead he walks over to the edge of the balcony, saying: “You better not send any reporters near me or my family, you got that?”

Brisk Wind laughs and turns around with her hoof over the door. “No worries, Captain. Why don’t you stay out here? Maybe the cool air is just what you need to cool off. We wouldn’t want you to take your stress to affect your marriage after all.”

Shining Armor glares at her and when she closes the door, he sighs and folds his forehooves over each other and slumps against the balcony railing, looking at the skyline of the home he no longer recognizes. A few minutes later, Shining Armor reluctantly heads back inside; he and the guards salute each other as he walks down the glimmering hallway. He remembers when he was in training how his drill sergeant had told him and his outfit that the whole palace is supposed to be a symbol of Harmony, and he believed it, but now that he’s looking at it, he can only think of a changeling. They look beautiful when in disguise, but once they reveal their true nature they turn out to be ugly sons of bitches.

Shining Armor stops to look at the mural along the wall dedicated towards Celestia and the Harmony she brought. All the towns and cities look peaceful, the flags of the regions wave proudly in the sunlight, and every pony is looking up to Celestia as the one true source of everything. Now that he looks at it, it makes him sick to his stomach.

“...I don’t care what they are saying! I know what I heard and saw!” says Rainbow Dash furiously while storming past Shining Armor with Soarin trailing her.

“Look, I know what it’s like to lose somepony special, but you can’t be obsessing over her like this! It isn’t healthy!” says Soarin, desperately trying to get Rainbow Dash to calm down.

Shining Armor watches the two argue as they hurry their steps and when Rainbow Dash rounds the corner he swears he hears her say something along the lines of: “Pinkie is not dead!”

Shining Armor stares at where the two left, unsure if he heard right, and right as he’s about to go after them Cadence calls him. He turns around quickly and sees Cadence walking towards him with a look of concern and two Night Guards by her side.

“Cadence, shouldn’t you be enjoying the party?” asks Shining Armor; he looks over his shoulder, hoping that Rainbow Dash and Soarin are within hearing range. They aren’t.

Cadence guides his head so that he’s looking into her soft eyes. “Shining, please just come back inside and enjoy the party.”

Shining Armor sighs. “I want to enjoy the party, believe me, but I need-”

“To go inside and relax.” Shining Armor opens his mouth to protest but Cadence puts her hoof over it. “That’s an order.”

Shining Armor tries protesting once more, but due to the hoof covering his mouth it comes out as an unintelligible, muffled mess. Cadence sighs and walks behind Shining Armor.

“Cadence what are ya-okay then...”

Cadence has started to push Shining Armor to the door by pushing against his backside, and the stallion’s cheeks turn slightly red as he dug his hooves into the tile. But due to how ridiculously flat and polished the surface is the only thing he managed to accomplish was a loud screeching noise that quickly became painful for the ears. And to add to his embarrassment, he can see the Night Guards smirking, and one is even fighting a losing battle to keep his chuckle in. While Shining Armor tries desperately to stay away from the claustrophobic party using physical means he also tries to sweet talk his way out, which fails miserably on his part because Cadence wouldn’t have any of it.

“Shining Armor Sparkle, you will go to that party and you’ll like it!” says Cadence, annoyance seeping in her tone.

“And if I don’t like it?” asks Shining Armor.

“Then you’re sleeping on the couch.”

Shining Armor sighs in defeat and reluctantly opens the door with Cadence by his side, he motions her to go first while saying: “After you Mrs. Mi Amore Cadenza Sparkle.”

Cadence beams and walks inside with a proud trot and nose in the air as a mockery of Equestria’s elite class.

“Thank you, Captain Shining Armor Sparkle,” says Cadence, still grinning.

Shining Armor can’t help but smile as he closes the door behind him, and while he’s trailing Cadence his eyes drift to her flank, which she seems to pick up almost immediately. She stops walking and Shining Armor, being too distracted with the view, bumps into her. He blinks and tries to act innocent by humming to himself and looking around the room, but he can feel Cadence’s smile on him.

“You’ll get some if you behave,” says Cadence slyly.

“Get what? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Shining Armor innocently.

Cadence giggles and brushes her tail under his chin before she heads towards Twilight and Rarity. “Don’t play Mr. Innocent with me.”

“That’s Captain Innocent, to you.”

Shining Armor follows his wife to the other two as she chuckles, smiling to himself at the thought of some quality time with her if he “behaves”. While he thinks about what she meant by that, he involuntarily picks up the conversation between Rarity and Twilight; they are too distracted to see him or Cadence approach them.

“...Anyway, I could’ve sworn that I saw Trixie not too long ago with Fancypants,” says Rarity as she uses her magic to spin a little umbrella in her drink.

“Really?” says Twilight, looking pretty grumpy at first, but at the mention of Trixie her grumpiness dissolves to barely contained anger. Shining Armor suspects her former attitude has something to do with Rainbow Dash storming away, but he doesn’t prod, he’s too captivated by Rarity’s claim.

“Yes, the poor thing looked awful and I honestly pitied her, but the pony she was with called her ‘Pixie Dust’, so I could’ve been mistaken.”

“Who’s Trixie?” asks Cadence.

Rarity and Twilight both turn to Cadence and she and Shining Armor take a seat. Shining Armor wanted to tell her that Trixie was a terrorist, but Twilight beat him to it.

“Trixie was an obnoxious showmare who had a hard time grasping reality,” says Twilight, immediately taking a sip of her drink afterward.

“‘Had’?”

“Trixie was apprehended by the EIB under charges of terrorism a few weeks ago and hasn’t been seen since,” says Shining Armor.

“Allegedly,” states Rarity.

“You said her name was ‘Pixie Dust’,” says Twilight while rubbing the shoulder Trixie stabbed with the stake.

“Ponies could change names. Maybe she’s trying to lay low.”

“Why would the EIB release a terrorist?”

“Can we please change the subject,” pleads Cadence while wrapping her forehoof around her husband’s neck and bringing him closer to her so that their bodies are pressed together. “Shining needs to relax, and talking about showmares turned terrorist doesn’t help him any.”

“Thanks, Cadence,” says Shining Armor with a subtle hint of annoyance in his voice.

Rarity gasps happily and puts her hooves on the table, saying: “I-de-a!” Everyone at the table looks at her and she giggles for a moment. “We should talk about fashion!”

The girls all voice their agreement on Rarity’s idea, but Twilight is approving of it for the sake of changing the subject while Cadence is eager to hear what the master of fashion has to say. But Shining Armor flat out says “No” which causes him to be the focus of three pairs of stern eyes that are demanding he listen to them talk about dresses. He caves in almost immediately.

He sighs. “Fine.”

Cadence and Rarity cheer and immediately get into a conversation about dresses while Twilight listens and throws in an opinion every so often. While Shining Armor listens to one of the most boring conversations of the year a waitress walks by carrying a tray full of wine glasses with her magic. Shining Armor takes one of the glasses and downs it one gulp. Then another waitress walks by with the same tray of wine balanced on her back, and Shining Armor repeats what he did with the previous waitress. And the same thing happens at least a dozen more times, with each glass making him more woozy, his vision more blurry, and everything becoming increasingly hilarious. But no one seems to notice the incredibly stupid smile plastered on his face or how much he’s wobbling.

He tries to focus on Rarity to hear what she’s talking about, and from what he can tell, it has something to do with a dress mishap. “So then I had to tell her that the armscye was too tight and that the midday collar-”

Shining Armor suddenly laughs obnoxiously loud and points at Rarity, causing heads to turn to him. Rarity raises an eyebrow, Cadence face-hoofs to conceal her embarrassment, and Twilight’s lavender fur pales.

“She said ‘midday collar’!” laughs Shining Armor.

“Oh no,” groans Cadence.

“I fail to see the humor,” says Rarity dryly.

The crowd murmurs and watches the scene unfold while some of the Night Guards carefully approach him. Quill Pen runs closer to the scene and gleefully scribbles down what she’s seeing while Brisk Wind walks next to her, smiling at what she’s seeing. As she walked towards Quill Pen she gave each of the waitresses that passed Shining Armor a small bag of bits, and when she is next to Quill Pen they exchange smiles and watch Shining Armor make a fool of himself.

A few seconds later Shining Armor sees Brisk Wind and he wobbles towards her with drunken rage completely overtaken any lighthearted feelings. His eyes are having an extremely hard time focusing on his nemesis and the ground seems to be shifting under his feet

“You... You. You. Youuuuuuuu,” slurs Shining Armor, while pointing at Brisk Wind... or one of her three clones. “You’re a-you’re a bad-mean pony.”

“Shining, I think you had a little too much to drink,” says Cadence worryingly.

Shining Armor chuckles and looks at Cadence, saying: “I didn’t have too much to drink. I had too little!” He then turns back to Brisk Wind. “I have had just enough to... I have had just enough of this fine-fine-fine... fine ole... fancy cider stuff to work up the courage to tell EVERYPONY how much of bitch you are!” The crowd gasps and Shining Armor looks genuinely confused while Brisk Wind looks amused. “What? We were all thinking it. Ms. Quilly Penny write that down. Director Brisk Wind is a big fat bitch!”

Quill Pen points at herself. “Are you talking to me?”

“Well duh!” Shining Armor laughs and almost falls over, thankfully Cadence, now fuming, catches him. “Thanks shmoopy doo, I’ll have to privately thank you under the covers.”

The crowd groans and quietly express their disgust with the Captain’s implied vulgarity with one another. The only two who didn’t seem surprised and upset by what Shining Armor said are Brisk Wind and Filthy Rich, who made his way next to Brisk Wind and has a sly smile; he also appears to be a bit tipsy.

“Ooh that’s a hound dog,” says Filthy Rich, then he looks at Brisk Wind and momentarily checks her out before he grins from ear to ear and extends his hoof. “Hi, I’m Filthy Rich.”

“You’re not my type,” says Brisk Wind instantaneously, her smile also disappeared along with Filthy Rich’s. His eyes actually tear up and he looks down, sniffling, while Brisk Wind looks at Shining Armor again, her smile returning to its former, smug-y glory.

“Ya know somethen,” slurs Shining Armor while levitating another glass of wine with his magic; Cadence immediately tries to yank it away which quickly devolves into a tug of war between the two that ends in Cadence’s victory and Shining Armor scoffing in a sickly puking noise. “Ya know somethen... when I was just a little colt in the Royal Guard I heard that the earth pony soldiers said-had this little quote thingamajiggy thingy that they would say before their little battles.”

“Okay, time to go,” says Cadence sternly.

Shining Armor laughs and stands on his hind legs and wraps his forehoof around Cadence in a cheap hug while quickly downing Rarity’s drink, making her gasp like she had just experienced one of the most insulting things ever.

“They would say: Eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow we die! BE MERRY EVERYPONY!”

Shining Armor cheers like his favorite hoofball team won the Equestrian Cup and falls backwards on the table, smashing it under his weight and sending the empty glasses flying into the crowd. The crowd gasps and backs away while the Night Guards pick up Shining Armor and carry him out with Cadence, Twilight, and Rarity trailing close behind. They are trying to shield their faces from the crowd, which they mostly silently stare at Shining Armor, completely baffled by his antics. Brisk Wind smirks and waves to the leaving group and the only one who noticed this demeaning act was Twilight, and she gave the icy blue pegasus a threatening glare that had zero effect on her.

The awkward silence is broken by Filthy Rich’s stomping ovation.

“Bravo! Bravo!” he exclaims, all eyes turn to him, but he doesn’t care, he’s too drunk to. “That colt knows how to party! Whoo!” Filthy Rich then looks at an attractive pegasus mare with a yellow coat and a black mane and tail standing next to him, looking a little concerned for her wellbeing, and he smiles and extends his hoof. “Hi, I’m Filthy Rich.”

Arc 2- 01- Maud -ADDITION-

Arc 2- 9 (Betrayals [A])

“Good morning, Canterlot!” says DJ-Pon3 enthusiastically over the radio. “Today is going to be a busy day, busy-busy day. Especially for me since I got all kinds of mail asking me about my opinion on Captain Shining Armor getting trashed at the Pre-Gala a couple of days ago. We’ll talk about that, don’t worry, but we also have to discuss other things like Princess Celestia ordering the discovered copies of ‘The Lunar Republic’ to be destroyed. Yeah, her baby sister is not too happy about that. And speaking of Woona, she’s ‘acting up’ by the elite standards by getting involved with us commoners by partying and talking with us! The horror! But I also got a warning for the Vigilante. Vigilante, if your listening, word on the street is that Gilda is gunning for you, and if I know our griffin, then she’ll use every lowlifer and guard in her pocket to get your head. Which brings me to my next point.” DJ-Pon3 clears her throat. “If any of you betray the Vigilante I swear to Luna I will rain down an unholy firestorm straight from the ninth ring of Tartarus! I’m not playing, I will buck you up! Now, who wants to hear some ‘3 Barns Up’?”

Click.

++++++++++

Pinkie Pie shuts off the radio and takes a seat at the kitchen with the daily newspaper, The Canterlot Times, in her mouth. She spits it out next to some bills and flips it open to the front page story, titled: “Cpt. Armor Disgraces Himself In Drunken Frenzy. Princesses Furious”; there is a picture of the drunken Captain sitting down with an ice pack pressed against his head taking up almost the whole front page. Shining Armor may have embarrassed himself a couple of days ago, but Pinkie Pie has a feeling that the news will keep him in the spotlight until his reputation is unsalvageable. Pinkie Pie shakes her head sadly as she reads the article, which was written by none other than Quill Pen, the renown journalist who has a knack of humiliating ponies to the point where their lives are ruined. Pinkie Pie recalls at least four politicians who resigned because of her articles; add in celebrities, business owners and military officials and Quill Pen’s whole career is based around ruining lives through journalism.

The oven dings and Pinkie Pie hops out of her seat and carefully takes out a tray of a dozen freshly baked cookies and sets them on the counter to cool off. The heavenly scent makes her mouth water and she just wants to pounce on the delectables and eat them all. But if her years at the bakery taught her anything, it was of ways restraining oneself. But that was one of the things she was never really good at, and she proved that to herself when she snagged a cookie and ate it in one bite. As Pinkie Pie chews the cookie she comes to the conclusion that she is disappointed with how they came out. She swallows it and says: “Perfect.” with a big smile. She’s going to have to put frosting on them later to make the perfection better.

After that, she walks back to the table and flips through the newspaper once more while, passing over sports articles, entertainment reviews, the opinion column, and so on and so forth. She does stop to read a short article that talks about Applejack becoming increasingly more vocal about the government seizing control of the farms, but whoever wrote the article thought only to write two small paragraphs before ending it on a sloppy note. Then she comes across another article that talks about a mass murder in Stalliongrad at a place called “Rocky Hoof Miner’s Shack”. The listed casualties are a dozen griffins, ten civilian ponies with criminal backgrounds, a corrupt judge, and four dirty guards and one creeped out Local Guard that got an anonymous phone call to report it in. Pinkie Pie rereads the article over and over again, and each time she rereads it she becomes more and more shaken. Especially when the reporter explained how the listed dead were slashed at their throats or had multiple stab wounds.

Pinkie Pie’s thoughts are interrupted when she hears the shower start, and her mind goes blank when Trixie starts singing one of 3 Barns Up’s new songs. She cringes and looks at the bathroom door while Trixie continues her abominable singing. Normally she wouldn’t care if someone was singing, but if Trixie wants to continue singing in their apartment she’s going to need lessons.

In a desperate attempt to block out the horrible singing and to cheer herself up, Pinkie Pie reads the comic section of the newspaper and then tries her hoof at some crossword puzzles. The puzzles aren’t too difficult, but they still bring a smile to her face as she scribbles in the letters. However, the farther into the puzzle she goes, the smaller her smile becomes and the bigger her frown gets. When she’s finished, she’s scowling at the rough, marked up parchment; not because she’s mad at her work, but because it’s serving as a reminder of what she threw away all because she didn’t want to leave her (fake) friends behind. And as a sick joke on the universe’s part, there is an advertisement for the Manehatten Institute of Technology complete with the “Start Your Future Today!” type of picture that has a smiling mare holding a diploma in her mouth while standing on a pile of bags of bits. Pinkie Pie grumbles and shoves the newspaper off of the table, bangs her head on the table and just leaves it there, giving her a fantastic view of the wood’s natural patterns.

A few minutes later, the shower stops and Trixie’s horrendous singing with it, and the azure unicorn comes out a couple of minutes later still damp with her silvery mane and tail retaining their natural curl and smiling brightly. Her eyes even have a sparkle to them that closely resembles Rarity’s whenever she got a high class customer.

“Good morning, Minty,” sings Trixie, making Pinkie Pie jolt upright in her seat. “Ooh, goodie. cookies!”

“Trixie, don’t-” starts Pinkie Pie. Too late, Trixie is already digging into the cookies. “Eat the cookies. Crap.”

Trixie turns around with cookie crumbs around her mouth while chewing on a cookie and holding another in her magical grip. “Something wrong?”

“I didn’t have a chance to put frosting on them. But they taste good bland anyway, so eat away.”

“Cool, thanks!” Trixie eats the cookie and Pinkie Pie’s ears droop while her eyes become half lidded; it is quite obvious that her roommate did not pick up her sarcasm. “So, Minty, what are you going to do today?”

Pinkie Pie looks at the bills unenthusiastically. “I have to run some errands.”

Trixie trots to the living room and turns on the radio. Pinkie Pie hears Trixie switching the stations on the radio, going from rock to country, country to rap, rap to pop, and pop to rock. She leaves it on the rock channel and starts singing along to a song called “Cloudsdale Castaway”, and again, Pinkie Pie has to restrain herself from giving spontaneous singing lessons.

“WHOEVER’S SINGING, SHUT UP!” yells a stallion from behind the wall where the radio is.

“HEY, BUCK YOU, BUDDY! THIS IS MY APARTMENT!” yells Trixie while placing her forehooves on the table where the radio is an leaning as close to to the wall as she can.

“I’M NOT YOUR BUDDY!”

“AND YOUR NOT MY BOSS!”

“JUST STOP SINGING!”

Trixie inhales for what could possibly be a disastrous musical number, but thankfully Pinkie Pie’s quick hooves shove the last of the cookies in Trixie’s mouth, effectively shutting her up.

“Okay, Trixie, time to get you to work,” says Pinkie Pie as she gently escorts Trixie to the front door.

“That guy was a jerk,” huffs Trixie, mouth still full of chewed cookie.

“Well, some ponies just don’t like horrible singing.”

“What?”

“I said: ‘Some ponies need to get to work, pronto’.”

Trixie’s eyes widen and gets a sudden burst of energy as she points to the door with one hoof placed over Pinkie Pie’s neck in a half hug. “You’re right! We must not falter, Minty, for the Great and Powerful Trixie’s employment is on the line!”

‘Stupid pills,’ thinks Pinkie Pie with a roll of her eyes.

“Away!”

And Trixie bolts out the door, soon to crash into something judging by the sounds of a cart falling over with all its contents spilling on the floor and one very ticked off mare swearing over Trixie’s apologies.

~~~~~~~~~~

Nearly an hour later Trixie hops out of Minty’s vehicle and says her farewells before trotting inside Fancy Entertainment with her supply of mint gum floating beside her in her magical aura. She goes through the necessary procedures at her workplace. She clocks in, greets Fancypants, gets told how much she sucks by Hank via body language and verbal tone, and plays the role of a sardine when stuffed in a steam-powered vehicle with Clover Field, Clockwork, and Cinder. A long, drawn out wait later, the group arrives at the Card Casino for another fun filled night of hard work and Monte’s harassment.

Fast forward four hours, and that is how long Trixie’s group had been slaving and wanting to bash Hank and Monte’s skulls in. Their verbal whipping spares no one, and their annoying urgency to get the zebra-unicorn’s show prepared is making Trixie’s daily dose of happy pills less effective. Also, ever since Trixie was force fed those mushrooms, leading to her bruises and cuts to disappear, she had been getting a lot of unwanted attention from both genders hitting on her. But Monte’s version of giving her attention was the worst of it; over the past couple of days he’s used her as his test subject for his so called magic. And today is no different.

“Now just hold still,” orders Monte.

Trixie is sitting in the middle of a circle of decks of cards that have lines connecting each of them to form a pentagram. Trixie personally finds the symbol creepy, but Monte has repeatedly called it “cool”. Monte closes his eyes and his horn glows, and with it, all the cards. The cards rise up one by one and as Trixie looks at them her pupils shrink and she finds herself cowering in fear as the bladed cards rise up around her like demented petals of a flower. Soon she is completely encased in a bubble made up of the creepy, bladed cards, which she notices that the suits, numbers and faces having an occult twist to them.

“And here. We. Go.”

The stage suddenly opens up and Trixie lets out a surprised yelp as she falls down, landing on her back on a mattress where a couple of security guards and crew members are. The cards fold away and she hears Monte triumphantly shout: “And she’s gone!” over a weak applause. Monte pokes his head down, flashing a mean spirited smile.

“Did I scare you, Trixie?” teases Monte.

“Yes!” snaps Trixie. “What the hay are you doing with bladed cards, anyway?”

Monte taps his chin. “I dunno. Maybe because they’re cooler than silly fireworks.” Trixie’s eyes narrow and he chuckles. “Not that I’m taking a jab at your short lived fame or anything.”

“You’re an ass.”

There’s an aggravated scoff and Trixie turns to her side to see a scornful female donkey walk away muttering colorful words. Trixie groans and face-hoofs, now wishing she had brought her pills instead of gum to help her cope with the bad day this is turning out to be. Suddenly the mattress buckles as the hybrid lands on it, next to Trixie, grinning.

“You really should be more sensitive,” says Monte. Trixie tries to walk away from Monte, but his persistence to annoy her is boundless. “My offer still stands, too! And I think it’ll be great for you since you look a million times better, you’ll surely draw crowds with just your looks alone.”

Trixie tunes out Monte when he mentions providing her with “protection”. She knows she can take care of herself and that Monte is throwing a fit because he can’t get what he wants. When she’s out of the Card Casino underbelly she heads back to her group, eager to have a daisy sandwich that’s being handed out by Fancy Entertainment’s catering crew. But, naturally, something goes wrong where she finds herself stuck in place by magic.

“Monte, I swear to Celestia,” starts Trixie angrily while turning her head, “that if you are holding meeeee-ohh... Hi.”

“Hello, Trixie Lulamoon, I am Agent Lock N. Key of the Equestrian Investigation Bureau. I have a few questions for you,” says the large stallion unicorn with his EIB badge hanging around his neck. He has four other unicorns, all mares, surrounding him and all possessing EIB badges.

Lock releases Trixie from his magical grip and she looks past the agent and sees Montes laughing and having a good time at the expense of Hank. She looks back at the agent and smiles nervously and in the back of her mind she wonders if the EIB is onto her late night vigilantism.

“Something wrong, officer?”

“Agent.”

“Right. Agent. Sorry.”

The EIB agents lead her to a secluded table in the back of the audience area and Lock pulls out a folder, flips it open, and shows her sketch artist pictures of her cheap costume. Next to the sketches are the familiar faces of ponies and griffins she hospitalized.

“We’ve been searching for somepony that has been referred to as ‘Vigilante’ by DJ-Pon3; a name that quickly caught on,” says Lock, carefully studying Trixie’s facial expression. He shows more sketch pictures of her newer costume. “We believe that this is the same pony in a more upgraded costume. The funny thing is, is that whoever this pony is has been compared to the fabled Mare-Do-Well.”

“Cool story, but what does that have to do with me?”

Lock’s eyes narrow. “Do not play us as fools, Lulamoon. A few days ago a group of thugs were battered by somepony wearing the former suit. It was reported that they got a few good hits, and a short time after a clinic was robbed of a single healing mushroom, and you return to work cured of all bruises and scars.”

Trixie chuckles nervously. “Maybe I had a really good night’s sleep.”

“A pony we interviewed about the incident said he recognized the Vigilante’s voice, but couldn’t pin where he heard it before.” Trixie looks out of the corner of her eye and sees Pipsqueak, looking a bit shaken, staring at her, and when their eyes meet he scurries away. “Look at me, Lulamoon.”

“Look at me!”

Trixie’s eyes snap to Lock’s, she’s now visibly terrified as the memory of her torture flashes through her mind, and subconsciously rubs the area she was was punctured by the needles.

“Are you fulfilling your obligations to the League of Justice, Lulamoon?” asks Lock, his gaze becoming more threatening by the second. “Not that it matters, anyway, since you’d be the last of your pathetic organization and we can easily bring you back to Singsong. That is if, in fact, you are roaming the streets at night.”

Trixie gets an uneasy feeling in her stomach that makes her want to puke. “What do you mean last of-”

“The League of Justice is dead, and if you are breaking your parol contract the last of it will die with you in Singsong.”

The news of her being the last of the League of Justice not only puts a rock in her stomach, but all she can imagine is everyone she knew -the same ponies and zebras that helped her- lying dead somewhere. And she didn’t know! She struggles to figure out how this was kept from her, or why the public doesn’t know about. She’s certain the public doesn’t know, anyway.

“Are we done?” asks Trixie, her voice barely audible over her efforts to swallow her tears.

“Of course,” says Lock, a smile flickers across his lips while he puts the files away, “just stay in town in case I have more questions for you.”

Trixie nods, slides out of her seat and walks away with her head down, now feeling too sick and broken to care for a sandwich.

oooOOOooo

Lock watches Trixie sulk towards the stage and he smiles to himself. Trixie was ridiculously easy to read, making the interrogation the easiest he’s done all year.

“Why didn’t you use your magic on her?” asks an agent.

“I didn’t need to. Her body language told us everything we needed to know,” answers Lock.

He gets up and heads towards the exit with his escorts. Once outside they are greeted by the warmth of the sun and Lock takes a moment to take it all in. When a shadow of a zeppelin flies over he looks up to watch the graceful vehicle glide past him with the Solar Empire’s propaganda decorating its side. Then, just for the heck of it, he looks at the Celestial Spire in the distance and watches barely noticeable dots flying around and the cranes guiding steel beams to their respective places. When his sight seeing is over he enters a black motorized wagon that is designed like a limousine with the EIB seal on the side.

“Well?” says Brisk Wind while shifting her position to allow the stallion more space.

“Our suspicions were proven to be correct. Trixie has been interfering with Gilda’s business,” says Lock.

“Oh, that makes things easier on us, then. But what about Minty Sprinkles? What do you have on her? You said you’d tell me after this little field trip of yours.”

“I know what I said.”

“And?”

Lock sighs, clearly annoyed by his findings. “She’s a ghost. Her personal records have been completely fabricated, using characters and locations from novels and cookbooks. The only solid thing we have are her purchases and, of course, her friend here.” Lock and Brisk Wind look at a cuffed and gagged Ink Well. Lock uses his magic to remove the gag and when Ink Well is finished coughing and swearing in his native tongue, Lock speaks. “Ink Well, we know you and Minty Sprinkles talked, but we want to know about what.”

“I am a Bernesenese citizen! You have no right to do this!”

“Our nation. Our rules. Now speak.”

“This is not Equestria! This is Tartarus!”

Lock and Brisk Wind look at each other as Ink Well rants about tyranny and other kinds of mumbo jumbo associated with political paranoia. Brisk Wind orders the driver to take them away over Ink Well’s verbal assault and after a few minutes of driving Brisk Wind orders the driver to stop. They are now over an empty bridge arching over a river and when the vehicle stops Lock uses his magic to show Ink Well the plans for the advanced Mare-Do-Well suit he had been carrying with him. Ink Well stares at the picture and smiles while Brisk Wind narrows her eyes.

“It’s a nice picture, isn’t it?” says Ink Well.

“You do realize that vigilantism is considered a form of terrorism in Equestria, right?” says Brisk Wind sternly.

“Only for those who have wronged others,” retorts Ink Well, his tone matching Brisk Wind’s.

Brisk Wind stares at Ink Well and her eyelid twitches and her jaw tightens. Then she takes a deep breath, scooches past Lock and pushes the door to the limousine open. After that, she bites down on Ink Well’s ear and drags him out, ignoring his screaming and swearing, and when he’s in the middle of the road she stomps on his side. He howls when his ribs snap under her hoof.

“We wrong no pony!” screams Brisk Wind. She stomps on him again. “We protect Harmony from-” another stomp. “Lunatics like you!” Lock steps out and levitates a pistol from his holster and Brisk Wind forces Ink Well to look at her. Despite his bloody condition, he still gives the pegasus a defiant glare. “We know Minty Sprinkles ordered the suit! What is she planning!”

Ink Well laughs, coughing out blood a moment later. “What’s the matter? Scared that her actions will bring down your little empire?”

“My ‘little empire’ is going to perfect Harmony!”

Ink Well laughs painfully. “You? Perfecting Harmony? Ha! You’re doing anything but that! Hell, you aren’t even a guardian, you are a terrorist.”

Brisk Wind growls and yanks Lock’s pistol out of his grip with her mouth and then unloads the clip in a sloppy spray all over Ink Well’s body. When the clip is empty she spits out the pistol and stares at the corpse on the ground, breathing heavily and not even caring that his blood is circling around her hooves or has splattered on her uniform and face. She takes a deep breath and wipes her sweaty mane back before looking at Lock. Despite his best efforts, a little bit of his shock manages to break free.

“Who are we?” asks Brisk Wind in a dangerously cold tone. Lock looks at her with a blank expression while carefully cleaning the bloody dots and slobber off of his pistol with a rag. Brisk Wind’s eyes narrow and she stares directly into Lock’s eyes with the fires of Tartarus in her. “Who. Are. We?”

“We are the Equestrian Investigation Bureau,” says Lock quietly and cautiously.

“And what do we do?”

Lock gulps. “We protect Equestria and the ideals of Harmony from threats that reside within.”

“Exactly.” Brisk Wind looks at the corpse. “We are not terrorists. We are the defenders of Harmony, and that will never change.” She looks at Lock again. “Toss him in the river.”

Lock nods, silently uses his magic to toss Ink Well’s body over the railing of the bridge and then he goes inside the limousine where his boss is waiting. When he’s inside Brisk Wind orders the driver -whose trembling with fear- to drive as she awkwardly wipes the blood from her hooves using the rag Lock used earlier. It actually takes Brisk Wind to give the order twice for the driver to actually starts driving.

“You didn’t see anything,” says Brisk Wind in a threatening tone to the driver.

“Yes ma’am,” says the driver, her voice shaking with fright.

“And Lock, can you be a gentlecolt and help me get the blood off of my hooves?”

The question is more of an order, and Lock is not interested in being crippled in a limousine, so he quietly uses his magic to guide the rag into wiping the blood off of her hooves. Brisk Wind is apparently ticklish there, too, which made the whole ordeal awkward and terrifying at the same time. When the blood is off of her hooves, Lock tosses the rag out the window and an increasingly uneasy silence takes over for the rest of the trip back home.

“Octavia has a vendetta with Sprinkles and Lulamoon, right?” says Brisk Wind casually. Lock nods. “Excellent. We’ll deliver them to the griffins as a sign of good faith, have Octavia kill them, and then we’ll investigate their murder and reveal that they were vigilantes. That will give a nice public service message to the ponies out there that being a superhero is bad for your health.”

“Technically they aren’t superheroes,” points out Lock.

Brisk Wind rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean. Besides, the griffins were going to scare Trixie into not talking to Captain Armor anyway.” She chuckles as if she had just heard an amusing joke and she steps out of the limousine with a dreamy look in her eyes. “It’s going to be a great day when all of this is over.”

=**********=

Trixie’s eyes look up at the stall door as Clockwork lightly knocks on it. She hears the pegasus say something, but she can’t hear it over the thoughts swirling in her mind about the League’s fate; the sniffling doesn’t help her case, either.

“Trixie, you’ve been in there, crying, for an hour,” says Clockwork with concern, “can you please tell me what’s wrong?”

“No,” moans Trixie.

“Why?”

Trixie wipes her nose and tears from her eyes. “It’s complicated.”

“Did you break up with somepony?”

“No.”

Clockwork hesitates. “Did somepony die?”

Trixie looks at the door and feels a new bulge bully its way up to her throat, and next thing she knows, she on the ground sobbing hysterically and so hard where she’s finding it hard to breath.

“Trixie, I’m coming in,” says Clockwork over Trixie’s wailing.

Trixie would say something about the stall being locked, and would use magic to keep it locked, but her crying and the miserable thoughts accompanying it are making it hard to speak or concentrate on even the simplest of magical tasks. However, the pegasus already knows that the door is locked, so she simply flies as high as she can and nimbly climbs over the stall like a feathered bug. When she lands on the toilet with as much grace as she can muster, she scoops up Trixie’s huddled and shaking figure and hugs her tight. Trixie instinctively hugs the sandy colored pegasus back and cries in her shoulder.

Clockwork gently rocks Trixie back and forth while stroking her mane and telling her that everything will be okay in a soothing voice. Trixie cries harder and soon her eyes run dry of tears, and her sobs are reduced to wailing and a tight hug, begging for comfort.

“I wasn’t there,” whimpers Trixie, prompting Clockwork to shush her and stroke her mane in a more gentle fashion. “I’m never there.”

===

Trixie stood in the back of a crowd gathered around a casket being lowered into the ground. Despite the weather being warm and nearly cloudless, despair was what hung in the air over everyone. Everyone but Trixie, that is. Trixie held no shame in letting her smile spread across her face. He was finally dead. Eclipse finally got what he deserved. While his friends and family wallowed in sorrow, she stared with a glitter in her eyes. The tombstone had a picture of him looking pristine as usual and the grave was put next to her mother’s.

Trixie could hear the priestess talk over the cranking gears, something about Celestia watching over Eclipse’s soul or something, but she knew the truth. There was no Paradise for Eclipse, only Tartarus, which meant Tirek will be watching his soul from now on. The thought of eternal torment made Trixie snicker, which drew some looks towards her, but they gradually returned to watching Eclipse’s coffin disappear.

When the service ended, Trixie found herself staring at the grave, and the priestess approached her. She was a snowy white unicorn with a blonde mane and tail, and she was wearing the appropriate white and gold robe and a tierra with the sun on it.

“You were late for the funeral,” said the priestess hesitantly.

“Really? What gave you that idea?” said Trixie sardonically.

The priestess frowned, but not out of anger, out of pity for Trixie. “Look, Trixie, I know-”

“You’ve always known and yet you did nothing except do one of your fancy talks.” Trixie waved a hoof around, mimicking the priestess’s voice as rudely as possible. “Oh don’t you worry, Trixie, Celestia has a plan for you. Everything happens for a reason. It’s just a test! Just pray!”

Trixie slammed her hooves on the ground and glared at the priestess as she stood hoof-to-hoof with her, but rather than standing her ground, the priestess shrunk back. Trixie forced herself to smile, her anger clear with her raspy breathing and trembling body.

“I prayed. I prayed to Celestia, and what I got in return was more of these stupid tests! I lost my mother! My home! My name! EVERYTHING! I barely made it Canterlot as it is, and I only showed up because I wanted to see my father buried! That funeral was the greatest gift to me, but I would like to thank the pony who killed him since our fair Goddess of the Sun is too pure to kill.”

The priestess looked down and Trixie sneered and walks away while giving a sharp tail whip to the priestess’s cheek, making her squeak and jump in her spot.

“You can tell Celestia I’m done with her tests.”

Trixie stopped by her father’s tombstone and bucked it right on the picture, shattering it. The priestess made a whiney protest, but that didn’t stop Trixie from snickering and walking away without looking back.

===

“Trixie, I... Come here.” Clockwork hugs Trixie tighter and rubs her head against Trixie’s. The disgraced magician is uncomfortable about that intimate gesture, but she’s more concerned about the air being squeezed out of her.  “It’s going to be okay,” purrs Clockwork, “I promise.”

“See? Everything will be okay, Trixie. She promises,” says Sunshine in an eerie echo.

Trixie gasps and pulls away from Clockwork, then she pushes open the stall door and frantically looks around for the demented entity. She barely hears Clockwork asking her what’s wrong over her racing heart and panicked breathing. Trixie pushes open every stall door and when she looks in the garbage can, Clockwork grabs her and looks her in the eyes with worry.

“Trixie, what’s wrong?” asks Clockwork worryingly.

“You didn’t hear him?” asks Trixie, her colors draining and her whole body shaking.

“Hear who?”

“Sunshine! I... I have to go.”

Trixie doesn’t give Clockwork the opportunity to say anything as she runs out of the bathroom and zips through the employees of the casino and Fancy Entertainment, out of the casino and into the busy streets of Canterlot.

She doesn’t know how long she has been running, but when she reaches her apartment her body wants to shut down right then and there and sleep because her lungs are burning, her muscles are sore, and her bones feel like they’re ready to snap at any moment. However, with Sunshine’s twisted chuckle and taunting ringing in her ears, passing out is not an option. And even if she wanted to, she wouldn’t, it would only leave her trapped in whatever sick world he has in store for her.

Trixie bursts into the lobby and frantically pushes the button to call the elevator, sweating and panting from the amount of energy she exerted and from the fear plaguing her. She whimpers and dances nervously in her spot as she watches the numbers of the elevator go down seemingly slower than usual. When it dings open, Filthy Rich steps out with the pegasus he met the night Shining Armor got trashed; both of them are smiling stupidly with their manes and tails ruffled and their clothes sloppily put on. But their smiles are replaced with shocked expressions and they yelp when Trixie uses her magic to throw them out of the elevator.

The elevator shuts and Trixie whimpers as the lights buzz and flicker on and off.

“That wasn’t very nice,” says Sunshine, his voice echoing and his appearance being known with every flicker of a shadow. “Ya really need t’ be more considerate.”

Trixie closes her eyes and shrinks in a corner while covering her ears and begging Sunshine to go away. When the elevator doors open on her floor, Trixie runs out and wastes no time in going to her apartment. Upon entering, she runs straight to the bathroom, leaving her front door wide open, and grabs her pills from the medicine cabinet. As she struggles to focus her magic on grabbing the pills, her mane gets a crawling feeling like she’s being watched. Her breathing becomes shallow and her heart races as she slowly turns around to see Sunshine standing in the doorway, grinning, looking as hideous as he was the same day she first met him. His sickly green coat, yellow tail, and lustful eyes and smile are all there. Plain as day. Solid as a living pony.

“Hello, darlin’.”

oooOOOooo

The elevator doors to Trixie and Pinkie Pie’s apartment floor lazily slide open and Pinkie Pie walks out with some mail in her mouth, two of which are personal invitations to see Princess Celestia and Shining Armor immediately. Pinkie Pie is already dead tired from all the work she had to do, such as getting the paperwork for passports, scheduling places to stay in Bernese, and making sure that they actually get to Bernese without any interference. But thankfully Ink Well was able set up a way to get there place for her and Trixie to stay, all she really had to do was offer extra money.

Pinkie Pie’s body starts getting an uncomfortable buzz when she sees the door to her apartment open. Not knowing what to expect, she puts the mail by the door, and cracks her back and shakes away the weariness in her. Then she jumps in and sees Trixie in a complete mess by the toilet. Her azure coat is ghostly pale and soaked in tears around her face, she’s trembling, and her mane is a sweaty mess. And the worst of it, she’s digging into her pills like mint candy.

Pinkie Pie’s jaw drops and she’s in front of Trixie in the blink of an eye, wrestling the pills away from Trixie; luckily for her, Trixie is too much of a mess to concentrate on her magic. But that still doesn’t curb her crazy behavior.

“NO! I NEED THEM! I NEED THEM!” screams Trixie through her sobs as Pinkie Pie pushes the pills away from Trixie, causing some of them to spill to the floor.

“You don’t need them!” says Pinkie Pie, trying to yell over Trixie. The distraught unicorn’s crying and thrashing, and all around brutal behavior to get those pills scares Pinkie Pie, so she does the only thing she can do. She hugs Trixie and lets her cry in her shoulder, while gently rocking her and shushing her.

“He’s going to get me!” sobs Trixie, still trying to get to the pills.

“Who’s going to get you?” asks Pinkie Pie; she closes her eyes, thinking that she won’t be able to handle seeing her friend like this.

“Sah-Sunshine! Sunshine... He won’t leave me alone. Why can’t he just leave?” whimpers Trixie. Pinkie Pie sniffles and rubs Trixie’s back, but before she can say anything, she feels Trixie tremble and she hears her mumble: “He’s always there. Always... Always... Always. I NEED THOSE PILLS!”

Trixie lurches forward, catching Pinkie Pie off guard, and she almost grabs the pills that spilled on the floor, but Pinkie Pie is able to get control of her again.

“HE’S GONE WHEN I TAKE THOSE PILLS! LET ME HAVE THEM!” screams Trixie furiously, returning to her vicious behavior. “I NEED THEM!”

Pinkie Pie holds fast, though, and a fast moment of thrashes, screams and insults later, Trixie breaks down into sobs and unintelligible speak; all Pinkie Pie can really get out of it is: “They’re dead!”, and she’s certain she knows who Trixie is referring to.

“I know,” Pinkie Pie says softly while stroking Trixie’s mane and letting her cry into her. “I know.”

Pinkie Pie closes her eyes and leans against the wall, still hugging Trixie, and tears roll down her cheeks as she thinks about all the friends she lost and how she had gotten Spike and so many others killed. Pinkie Pie gulps back her tears and opens her eyes, which are now bloodshot from her silent tears, and looks down at Trixie. She whimpers, closes her eyes again and bangs her head against the wall; now her tears are flowing freely with Trixies. A short while later, Pinkie Pie takes a deep breath and softly sings:

“It's true, some days are dark and lonely

And maybe you feel sad

But I’ll be there to show you that it isn't that bad.”

Pinkie Pie’s hug turns more loving and protective; Trixie is still whimpering and shaking.

“There's one thing that makes me happy

And makes my whole life worthwhile

And that's when I talk to my friends and get them to smile.”

Pinkie Pie looks down, Trixie is still shaking and burying her face in her chest. Pinkie Pie tries to make Trixie looks at her. It doesn’t work.

“I really am so happy

Your smile fills me with glee

I give a smile, I get a smile

And that's so special to me.

'Cause I love to see you beam, beam, beam

Yes I do

Tell me, what more can I say to make you see

That I do

It makes me happy when you beam, beam, beam

Yes, it always makes my day.”

Pinkie Pie strokes Trixie’s mane again, her soft singing seems to be calming the wrecked unicorn down, so she continues.

"Come on everypony smile, smile, smile

Fill my heart up with sunshine-shine-shine

All I really need’s a smile, smile, smile

From these happy friends of miiiiiine.”

Pinkie Pie shifts her position, and she can feel Trixie relax.

“Yes, the perfect gift for me

Is a smile wide as a mile

To make me happy as can be

All you have to do is smile

Smile

Smiiiiiiiiiiile.”

Trixie stops trembling, but is still sniffling and mumbling to herself; however, Pinkie Pie is glad that she has calmed Trixie down this much and continues to hold her. She sighs and bows her head so that it is resting on the top of her friend’s head, humming the Smile Song. She doesn’t care how long it takes, she’ll stay with Trixie until she feels better. Princess Celestia and Shining Armor are just going to have to wait.

=**********=

Shining Armor levitates a folder with the Wonderbolt seal on it and checks its contents. Needless to say he’s very surprised by what he’s seeing. He knows that the pony in front of him has immense talent, and even though she had some problems adjusting to the military structure and taking orders, she quickly got that fixed. Now with her skills on top of military discipline she has been personally recommended by the Wonderbolt higher ups to test the newest piece of technology, courtesy of the team that reverse engineered Roar Shock’s technology. Although his body language is calm and collected, inside he’s prancing around like a colt on a sugar rush. For once something is going right! Out of all the witnesses for his case against the EIB dropping like flies, him getting scolded by Celestia and Cadence for getting drunk, and the bad press, he’s finally getting favorable results from Research & Development. And on top of that, the Wonderbolts handed over their “most promising recruit to date” over to him on a silver platter with next to no questions. He also seemed to have gained some popularity amongst the grunts, too, because apparently he knew how to “party hard”.

Shining Armor puts down the folder, looks up at the mare in front of him and gives her a warm smile.

“It’s been awhile hasn’t it, Rainbow Dash?” says Shining Armor.

Rainbow Dash gets a small smile and nods, but even though she’s in the presence of an acquaintance she’s still nervous; and her nervousness is apparent by her constant shifting and the little beads of sweat rolling down her neck and face. In an attempt to lighten the mood Shining Armor turns back to the paper to look at her achievements.

“Well Rainbow Dash, I have to say that you have an impressive record,” says Shining Armor. “Your scores are in the top ten percent range in just about every section, and they clocked you as the fastest flier in Equestrian history. Probably the fastest flier in the history of the world.”

Rainbow Dash’s smile shifts to a slightly smug one as she relaxes in her seat. “Yeah, I’m pretty awesome.”

Both of them exchange a chuckle, and when she is comfortable being in his office after a casual conversation, Shining Armor has to admit that when he’s actually close up to the pegasus he can see why both genders go after her. Not only does her colorful figure make her stand out in a non-obnoxious way without even trying, but her toned body fits perfectly with her uniform. When she wears her Wonderbolt uniform she gets the perfect mix of badassery and attractiveness.

“So,” says Shining Armor, trying to keep himself from staring at the Element of Loyalty for too long, “now that we are comfortable, let’s get down to business.”

Shining Armor takes a sip from a glass of water he’s keeping by his typewriter.

“Right. So, what’s next?” says Rainbow Dash.

It is at that moment in time that the water he’s drinking decides to take a detour. Shining Armor’s eyes bulge and he coughs up the water, dropping his cup in the process. Rainbow Dash cringes and shrinks back in her seat with her nervousness returning with reinforcements. Shining Armor beats a bubble out of his chest, and when that’s done and over with he leans over, wheezing.

“Oh man! I’m sorry, I don’t-I didn’t mean to make you freak out!” cries Rainbow Dash, now seating like a hot pig.

“It’s fine,” wheezes Shining Armor with a wave of his hoof.

“Please don’t get mad!”

“Rainbow... relax...”

“If I screw this up the others would never forgive me!”

“Airmare Dash, it’s fine!” Rainbow Dash stops, but is still worried sick, while Shining Armor repositions himself. “It’s fine. The water just went down the wrong pipe is all.”

Rainbow Dash nods and tries to keep her cerise eyes locked on him, but she finds that very difficult to do. She can’t help but wonder if she said something... wrong, and for that her eyes keep shifting away from the Captain. Shining Armor, on the other hand, is trying to figure out why fate had decided to embarrass him in front of the pretty mare. Not that he’s ogling her or anything, he’s just wondering why all the embarrassing stuff happens to him when pretty mares and ponies of importance are around.

“You okay?” asks Rainbow Dash uneasily. When Shining Armor doesn’t respond due to him trying to fix himself back to par, the hopeful pegasus frowns sadly and sulks in her seat. “If this is a bad time we can reschedule... or something.”

Shining Armor gets himself back to his normal, proud appearance he smiles casually at Rainbow Dash.

“No, it’s fine,” says Shining Armor, he even chuckles to alleviate the newfound stress between them; but alas, his chuckle doesn’t put the cyan pegasus at ease. “I’m going to ask you some questions, and I need you to answer them truthfully, okay?”

Rainbow Dash nods. “Yes sir.”

“Good. Question one: Are you willing to push yourself above and beyond for the protection of the Royal Family, their subjects, and the Solar Doctrine, the supreme governing document of the Solar Empire of Equestria?”

“Yes sir,” says Rainbow Dash, straightening herself out and trying to show off her pegasus pride by puffing out her chest and ruffling her feathers.

“Question two: The Chrysaor Program requires supreme loyalty to the Program and to the Royal Family. Are you willing to spend your life serving the Royal Family, the Solar Empire Royal Guard, and the Chrysaor Program?”

Rainbow Dash hesitates before she nods and says: “Yes sir.”

~~~~~~~~~~

After nearly an hour of questioning later Rainbow Dash leaves Shining Armor’s office feeling beat, and her nervousness about everything that has happened doesn’t make her feel any better. She’s certain she botched the test, and she knows for a fact that Shining Armor wasn’t impressed when she explained her favoring bull rushing tactic of fighting over slow and time consuming takedowns. Plus, she’s still shaken up about Shining Armor’s reaction to choking on his water, and noticed that he had a funky look the whole time that became more evident when he nearly died from a drinking accident.

Rainbow Dash shrugs it off and makes a mental note to not let Soarin choke on water. Instead of walking down the hall, she decides to take the faster method and fly. Once she’s by the elevator she waits impatiently for the elevator to arrive. She finds herself tapping her hoof on the tile and wishing that there was a balcony nearby so she can just fly out, but there isn’t. It’s like working in a tomb. When the door finally opens, Rainbow Dash pushes back her claustrophobia and is about to step inside, but familiar faces are there; one being a unicorn she never wanted to see again, and the other being the minty green pony she ran into at Klumsy K’s.

Rainbow Dash unfurls her wings and glares at Trixie with clenched teeth. “Pinkie, what are you doing with this little snot!”

Rainbow Dash doesn’t realize how pale Trixie is at the moment, but her words nearly gives the unicorn a heart attack, and the green pony also pales and her eyes widen while trying to push Trixie out of the elevator; but she has to strain herself since Trixie is digging her hooves into the floor and is trying to close the elevator door by frantically hitting the emergency close button.

“I’m not Pinkie Pie, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says frantically as she shoves Trixie out of the elevator. Trixie is quick to hide behind the earth pony like a pathetic foal, complete with the drooped ears and shakes.

“I never said ‘Pie’!” says Rainbow Dash, grabbing the pony and looking into her eyes, now ignoring Trixie completely. She can see her reflection plainly in her eyes -the eyes that she knows belongs to Pinkie Pie-, and despite seeing her friend alive and well she’s still pissed off. “What’s the deal, Pinkie!?”

“I’m not ‘Pinkie’! I’m Minty Sprinkles! Candy Associate of Princess Celestia!” says this so-called Minty Sprinkles while showing off her badge.

Rainbow Dash tightens her grip on Minty -no, Pinkie!-, veins now throbbing and her blood boiling.

“Enough with the games, Pinkie!” Then she finds all her anger evaporate and sadness take over. She starts sniffling and shaking, and her voice cracks and grip softens, too. “It’s me, Pinkie. It’s Dashie... Your friend.”

Minty sighs, releases herself from Rainbow Dash, and then she puts her hoof on the pegasus’s chest and gently guides her backwards into the elevator.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not your dead friend,” she says.

Rainbow Dash sits in the elevator, staring at Minty-Pinkie in complete horror and sadness. Has it really come down to this? Has she really renounced everything, even her own name and friends, for what has happened!?

Rainbow Dash tries to push her way out, but the earth pony holds fast, and her desperation increases tenfold when her friend pushes her into the wall and hits the express button to the basement floor.

“Pinkie Pie, ya gotta listen to me! What happened was not your fault!” says Rainbow Dash desperately. “It was not your fault what happened to Spike, okay? Please stop this! I’m begging you, please!”

That seems to have struck a sore spot as she sees Pinkie Pie’s eyes glisten in an instant.

“Goodbye, Rainbow Dash,” says Pinkie Pie, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Pinkie, no!”

Pinkie Pie steps back and the doors slide shut before Rainbow Dash can put a hoof in it.  Rainbow Dash screams Pinkie Pie’s name and when the doors click shut and the whirring and clicking of gears fills the void while Rainbow Dash tries to stop the elevator, but express really did mean express. The elevator picks up its speed and shows no signs of slowing down, and Rainbow Dash screams in a mixture of sadness and frustration as she watches the numbers on the dial drop. Then she swears, punches the wall and slumps to the corner of the elevator and then buries her face in her hoof. A few seconds later, her wings sulk and a small whimper escapes her lips.

oooOOOooo

Pinkie Pie stares at the elevator for a couple more seconds before she wipes her face and looks at Trixie. She’s still looking petrified about what had just happened, and the gathered crowd doesn’t help either of them relax.

“I seem to be running into a lot of old faces in this city,” says Trixie nervously, traumatized by the event.

Pinkie Pie nods her head in agreement and wipes the tears out of her eyes.

“Let’s go see what Shining Armor wants,” says Pinkie Pie

oooOOOooo

Shining Armor stares at the photo taken of him and Cadence when they went to the Crystal Kingdom for their honeymoon. He is wearing his uniform while Cadence is wearing a flowing dress, and they are both smiling lovingly into each other’s eyes while the Crystal City shimmers behind them, adding to the glow they have. He smiles as he remembers the good days, where they laughed and snuggled every chance they got. He remembers how they played games, talked about their day, smiled. Or how she was kind enough to give him back massages every day after work, bringing both of them to smile. The smiles they shared on a daily basis was enough to make him believe in love and the goodness of the world.

He misses the days when ponies smiled and where being a Royal Guard meant protecting Royalty from something as asinine as a pony getting a little too excited. He remembers how ponies smiled and had a great time even after the Changeling attack. He remembers how fear was really just nervousness. Nervous about a job interview. Nervous about a date. Nervous about being in a new place, alone, only for it all to go away with a welcome wagon (in the case of Ponyville, the welcome wagon was apparently a real thing). He remembers it all.

Ponies were honest.

Ponies were kind.

Ponies were generous.

Ponies were loyal.

Ponies were laughing.

All these things were the magical elements that held Equestria together, but what is left now? Liars, haters, thieves, backstabbers, and tears, all disguised to be something better than what once was in a twisted world where everything is believed to be okay because the old morals were not appropriate anymore. Ten years, and it all went to shit.

Shining Armor places his hoof on the picture and traces Cadence’s smile; he wants to smile, but he can’t help but remember when the Equestria he knew started dying.

===

Shining Armor pushed open the door to Celestia’s chambers and cautiously stepped inside to see both, the Princess of the Day and the Princess of the Night, staring at him. Luna was silently fidgeting in her spot and Celestia’s eye shadow and liner were smeared down her cheeks. She had been trying to stay strong by not shedding tears about what had happened, but now that they were out of the public’s eyes and the funeral was over, she’s letting loose.

“Shining, I’m glad you were able to answer my call,” said Celestia, her voice trembling. Luna put a wing over Celestia’s shoulder, but remains silent while Shining Armor stepped forward and noticed a pegasus mare standing in the back, looking stern. Celestia craned her neck and motioned the pony forward. “Brisk Wind, there is no need to shield your presence from Captain Armor.”

Brisk Wind smiled smugly and walked forward, immediately giving Shining Armor a bad vibe. Something about her didn’t sit well with him, but before he could put any thought into it, Celestia spoke.

“Shining, this is Brisk Wind, she’ll be heading the Equestrian Investigation Bureau,” she said, glancing at the newcomer.

“I’m sorry, Princess, but I don’t-”

Shining Armor fell silent when Celestia levitated a thick binder with the EIB seal on it up to him. He used his magic to take the binder and started flipping through the pages. So much stuff was packed into this department that it was hard to comprehend the scope of this sudden agency. Extensive undercover operations, counterespionage, general investigations, protection of government officials, the list went on and on and on.

“Princess, I mean no disrespect... but what is this?” asked Shining Armor as he held the binder up.

“An abomination,” mumbled Luna.

Brisk Wind and Celestia shot her a terrifyingly harsh gaze that made the Captain cringe and Luna avert her eyes.

“Luna please!” snapped Celestia tearfully. “I do not need this from you! Especially now!”

Brisk Wind turned towards Shining Armor. “The recent terrorist attacks have been tragic, and I have been trying to push through a more effective means of protecting Harmony with this gem I call the Equestrian Investigation Bureau. Sadly it took Blueblood’s assassination for Celestia realize that this is what Equestria needs for it’s survival.”

Celestia sniffled and walks towards the balcony to watch the skyscrapers rise in the drabby weather. Their skeletal figures matched the rain clouds covering the sky, and even though they were an eyesore now, everyone knew that when they were done, they will truly show the might of the Solar Empire of Equestria. However, despite the bright future that many were predicting, the most recent terrorist ruined Celestia. It was no secret that Blueblood was a world class jerk, but Celestia still loved him deeply and was so distraught about the shooting that Luna had to raise and lower both celestial objects for a week.

“If I had just listened to the warnings he would still be here,” whispered Celestia.

Brisk Wind walked over to Celestia and rubs her back with her hoof lovingly, but Shining Armor found something sinister about her “comforting”. Like she was only acting like she cared about Celestia’s wellbeing.

“It’s okay, Princess,” cooed Brisk Wind, “we’ll find the sniper and bring them to justice. No matter what.”

Luna watched the two for a few more seconds before she looked at Shining Armor, her facial expressions showing how worried she was about the matter. Shining Armor opened his mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t leave his mouth, so he went back to looking at the EIB binder. It had the Royal Seal stamped on it the message: “Effective Immediately by Royal Decree”. He opened the binder and looked at another stamp on its inside cover. “Royal Decree 505”.

“Tia has poisoned Equestria,” said Luna quietly, clearly devastated by her sister’s actions.

Shining Armor looked up and saw Luna shuffling out of Celestia’s room with her head and flowing mane down. When the door closed behind her, Shining Armor looked at the binder and then at the devastated Sun Goddess and the newest member of, and possibly the biggest threat to, Equestrian politics.

===

Shining Armor puts the picture down and stares at the Equestrian flag he has in his office. He wants to believe in Equestria, and the ideals of Love, Tolerance and Harmony, but what he’s seeing makes him believe that Luna was a prophet. Equestria was poisoned, and now he fears its nearing its end. One thousand years and the Equestrian way of life will finally die, and from the way things are heading, it’ll go down in flames.

There is a knock on the door and Shining Armor wipes his eyes and tells whoever knocked that the door is open. One of his assistants walks in with two ponies behind her, she introduces them as Minty Sprinkles and Trixie Lulamoon. When Shining Armor sees Trixie he’s so surprised at how much better she looks that his eyes widen, this seems to make Trixie a little uneasy, though. But Shining Armor can’t help it! It looks as though she’s never been injured at all! The scars are gone, bruises are nowhere to be seen, and her curly mane isn’t a mess. The only thing that is really wrong is that she’s pale... very pale. Also, her expression hardens into something that reminds Shining Armor too much of a pissed off Manticore.

But looks and pissed off expressions aside, Shining Armor is glad that she has answered his call. Now all he has to do is see if she’s willing to cooperate with him for his investigation into the EIB.

“Is this about the EIB?” asks Trixie, her voice quivering slightly.

“Yes, Ms. Lulamoon, this is,” says Shining Armor, standing up to meet the two mares. “And you must be her parole officer.”

“That is correct, Captain. You can call me Minty, or Minty Sprinkles, whichever you prefer,” says the mint green pony, forcing a smile.

Shining Armor notices that, aside from the clear anger, Trixie looks saddened, as well as her parole officer.

“Is everything okay?” asks Shining Armor.

“It’s fine,” says Minty, “I have to see Princess Celestia on important business. Take care of Trixie till I get back. Cool. Thanks. Bye.”

And with that, Minty leaves before Shining Armor can say anything and when the door shuts behind her, the remaining two ponies take their respective seats. Trixie can’t bring her eyes to him as she takes a seat, though.

“You watched,” says Trixie in an angry, low voice.

Shining Armor sighs sadly and leans forward to try to look at Trixie’s eyes. “I know... and I know no amount of apologies will fix what I didn’t do, but I can fix this. I can help you if you’ll let me.”

Trixie is silent, so much of her anger and sadness is radiating off of her that is can make anyone in the same room uncomfortable. Shining Armor waits for Trixie to answer, but she doesn’t, she keeps her head down and eyes locked on her hooves. A moment later Shining Armor gets out of his seat and sits on the floor next to Trixie. She turns her head away from him.

“Trixie, please, let me help you,” begs Shining Armor. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye, the negativity almost drives him to leave the office right then and there to think about how much of a horrible pony he is. “Please... let me make this right.”

oooOOOooo

After Pinkie Pie leaves Trixie at Shining Armor’s office, she heads towards the throne room to meet with Celestia. As she walks by the storytelling windows, she notices that unicorns that bear some sort of shield as a cutie mark are encasing the windows in magical shields that shimmers for a few seconds before becoming completely invisible. She momentarily stops to look out the window to watch three of those fancy zeppelins float by; they are like a gliding snake, they all fall in line perfect harmony, and each one has the seal of Equestria on it and containing different bolded quotes:

Peace Through Love.

Power Through Tolerance.

Progress Through Harmony.

“Alright, let’s give it a go!” shouts a maintenance mare to a pegasus.

The pegasus salutes, disappears into the ceiling, and a moment later there is a crackle and the Equestrian national anthem echos in the halls of the palace. It is soothing the way it is played, but it also reminds Pinkie Pie of the music sirens play to lure their victims to their watery graves. Soothing, yet deadly.

She continues her trek, nodding politely to the guards, maintenance crew, and other castle employees along the way, and when she reaches the massive double doors she stops and stares at one of the last ponies she wanted to see. Rarity.

Rarity is sitting down, waiting patiently for someone, and when she sees Pinkie Pie she nods politely at her. Pinkie Pie returns the nod, silently thanking Celestia for her disguise’s effectiveness, and takes a seat across the hall from her former friend. Rarity stares at Pinkie Pie and she looks away, trying to look at anything other than her former friend. A moment later Rarity gets up and takes a seat next to Pinkie and continues her staring.

Pinkie Pie tries to ignore the high maintenance unicorn beside her, but the constant staring is making it increasingly difficult for her to stay focused on not paying any attention to her. Finally, after a couple of minutes of awkward silence on Rarity’s part and silent aggravation for Pinkie Pie, the fashionista decides to speak.

“You look familiar,” says Rarity. Pinkie Pie’s heart skips a beat and she starts to become nervous, fearing that Rarity has seen through her disguise. “I think I saw you at Fancy Entertainment with Trixie.”

Pinkie Pie breathes a mental sigh of relief, but upon Rarity mentioning Trixie, she finds that her heart had once again skipped a beat and she’s back to being nervous; but even moreso now than before. It is no secret that Rarity can get emotional when her good looks are compromised, and when Trixie destroyed her hair... well preventing Rarity from going after the magician with a giant pair of scissors was a chore in itself.

“Who’s Trixie?” asks Pinkie Pie innocently.

“You never heard of the Great and Powerful Trixie?” says Rarity skeptically, being sure to put a generous amount of venom in her tone when mentioning Trixie’s title.

Pinkie Pie taps her chin, pretending to think. “Nope, can’t say I have,” she says while glancing at Rarity, then she looks at the door to see if Celestia’s guest of honor has come out yet. “You must be thinking of Pixie Dust, ponies have been mistaken her for whoever this ‘Trixie’ is.”

Rarity skepticism grows. “Ah, yes, I heard you mention her by that name. But I just wanted to be sure that I was hearing right. The poor thing looked like a mess when I saw her, though.”

“Yeah, she just got out of an abusive relationship so I’m helping her get back on her hooves.”

“Oh, that’s mighty generous of you. We need more ponies like you on this day and age. It seems like decency and friendship is a thing of the past.”

Pinkie Pie’s jaw tightens at Rarity’s words and she scuffs her hoof along the floor, doing everything in her power to keep herself from strangling the fashionista as thank you gift for her “friendship”.

Rarity sees Pinkie Pie’s body tense and her eye twitch slightly, so for safety reasons she scooches away a little.

“Are you okay?” she asks with concern.

“Just peachy,” says Pinkie Pie irritably, “I just have a bug in my eye-and it’s gone!” Before Rarity can say anything Pinkie Pie turns to Rarity and pokes her chest with her hoof. “You’re Rarity right?”

“Pardon?”

“Rarity Belle? Fashion extraordinaire? Element of Generosity? Best friends with former supermodel Fluttershy? Subject to lots of raunchy rumors?”

Rarity blushes furiously at the mention of “raunchy rumors” and tries to hide her face from Pinkie Pie; but even though she’s doing her best to hide her guilt, everyone can see it plain as day. Pinkie Pie flashes vicious, victorious smile at her successful on-the-spot revenge.

“So you are Rarity Belle, that-” Pinkie Pie is interrupted when the massive doors to the throne room swing open and Twilight walks out, looking smug and proud, and walks up to the two. Pinkie Pie hears her alias being called in so she skips out on her original, on-the-spot, mentally-torture-Rarity plan and leaves it at: “Is awesome. By the way, I heard that Madam Stitches just came out with a new line of sewing machines.”

Rarity’s embarrassment dissipates in an instant and she gets a huge smile with sparkles in her eyes as she leans closer. “Really? You must tell me what they are! You must! You must! You must!”

Pinkie Pie smiles. “I don’t remember the name of them exactly, I just know that they are durable. Like really durable. So durable, in fact, that they won’t break.” Pinkie Pie leans closer to Rarity and her innocent smile turns wicked. “Even if you throw them at somepony’s head.”

Rarity’s smile disappears and her ears droop while her coat turns almost pure white from her blood draining from her face. Pinkie Pie turns around and walks towards the chambers, being sure to give Twilight a tail whip to the face as she walks past her, replacing her smug attitude with anger in the blink of an eye.

Twilight glares at Pinkie Pie. “What was that for?”

Pinkie Pie ignores her and looks at Rarity over her shoulder.

“Tell Fluttershy that a fan of hers says ‘Hi’ for me,” says Pinkie Pie before the chamber doors close behind her.

Once the doors close, Pinkie Pie takes a deep breath and approaches the goddess sitting in her fancy throne. Pinkie Pie is a good dozen or so feet away from Princess Celestia when the alicorn raises her hoof and orders her to stop; Pinkie Pie complies and bows.

“Your Majesty,” greets Pinkie Pie, mustering up as much politeness as she can.

“I just talked to my Most Faithful Student, and I had to lie to her,” says Celestia sternly; the tone in the Princess’s voice makes Pinkie Pie wince.

Pinkie Pie stands up. “You sound upset, Princess.”

“That doesn’t begin to describe my mood.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“For starters you can cut your charade and tell your friends that you aren’t dead.”

Pinkie Pie’s eyes narrow and she steps forward while pointing an accusing hoof at the doors behind her. “You mean your surrogate daughter and her horny friend? Sorry, but I think you’re mistaken. They aren’t my friends anymore, they are just a bunch of fakes.”

“So you have one argument and-”

“You weren’t there!” cries Pinkie Pie while stomping her hoof on the tile with tears clouding her vision. “You don’t what they did! How they treated me! They sucked as friends!”

Celestia steps forward and Pinkie Pie finds her body naturally shrinking back as the alicorn towers over her. “That doesn’t excuse you for playing dead and turning a shell of a pony into your own little puppet! And for what reasons do you do these things? Is it for this ‘threat’ that hasn’t made so much as a peep ever since our victory?” Celestia leans down and glares at Pinkie Pie. “You have managed to convince me to lie to my Most Faithful Student, a pony whom I consider to be a daughter, and all of Equestria just so you can play your little games with Trixie, and I don’t appreciate it!”

Pinkie Pie looks at Celestia defiantly. “Princess, these are not some games we play, the things Trixie does are to help her-”

“You’re going to get her killed!”

“Prepare for what’s coming!”

“And what price are you willing to pay for your paranoia?”

“It’s not paranoia!”

“It is paranoia!”

“I’m trying to save your kingdom!”

“Equestria is fine! It does not need to be saved by you or your puppet!” Pinkie Pie falls silent as Celestia looks down at her. “What you’re doing now is not right and will lead to dire consequences! And you slipping up is not helping your game! Did you know that the EIB is asking questions about ‘Minty Sprinkles’?”

“What?”

“How about knowing that Rainbow Dash knows that your alive? Or that Rarity has already seen Trixie?”

“Celestia, I-”

“I don’t want to hear it! You’re not only toying with your friends, your family and with me, but you are puppeting the life of somepony who thinks she has freedom! Cruelty at its best.” Pinkie Pie winces again and Celestia starts pacing around her, her voice getting more and more angry by the second. “What will you do when your past catches up, hmm? Will you fake another death? Find another drifter to manipulate? The Elements of Harmony trusted you to be Laughter and the only joke I’m seeing is the one your playing on the lives of others!”

With that, Celestia stomps her hoof on the tile in front of Pinkie Pie, making a deafening BOOM that echoes in the throne room and hurts the earth pony’s ears. Celestia stares at Pinkie Pie, waiting for an answer, and when she doesn’t get one, she snorts and goes back to her throne and watches Pinkie Pie look at the floor in silence.

“You have two days to tell your friends you aren’t dead.”

Pinkie Pie’s full attention snaps back to the Sun Goddess. “What! But Princess-”

“Either you tell them, or I tell them! If you tell them then I’ll see to it that Trixie Lulamoon is pardoned of her vigilantism and I’ll make sure your back is properly taken care of ahead of schedule.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Trixie Lulamoon will be punished to the full extent of the law and you’ll have your turn for surgery docked two months. The choice is yours.”

Pinkie Pie glares at the Sun Goddess and her jaw tightens as she stands up.

“So let me see if my ears are working right,” says Pinkie Pie dangerously. “You -the benevolent, thousand year ruler and master of the sun- is blackmailing me -a loyal subject doing everything in her power to save your kingdom- into announcing my true identity, even though it will put Octavia and my father at risk from the very same ponies that are plotting Equestria’s destruction?”

Celestia nods, still holding her harsh gaze, and Pinkie Pie scoffs and starts pacing in circles.

“Unbelievable,” she mutters; she stares at the princess with eyes that would bore into the soul of any normal pony. “Unbelievable! Just please, pretty please, tell me that if I do this ‘willingly’ you’d at least let Trixie have her inheritance.”

“No,” says Celestia sharply.

“No?”

“Eclipse Lulamoon was a criminal, so the money in his inheritance was obtained by illegal means. Think of us taking Trixie’s inheritance as a means of us reclaiming our property.”

“That’s five million bits you’re stealing from her!” yells Pinkie Pie furiously while stomping on the ground. “Since when are you a dirty, grubbing, diamond doggy thief, huh?”

“The money was obtained unlawfully! Anything purchased by Eclipse Lulamoon and his associates must be reclaimed by the state, as stated by the Solar Doctrine. Any piece of property or sum of bits that was in Eclipse’s will was never his to begin with, therefore it wasn’t his to give to Trixie.” Pinkie Pie opens her mouth to speak, but Celestia interrupts her. “Before you say anything about my actions being cruel, take a look at yourself. We are merely taking back what is ours, while you are manipulating a lost soul for your own gain.”

Celestia’s horn lights up and Pinkie Pie watches the double doors gradually swing open out of the corner of her eye. Then Celestia stands up and approaches Pinkie Pie once more, her stern demeanor becoming impossibly more imposing.

“Our conversation is over. Tell your friends that you are alive themselves and this madness will end and nopony else will suffer from your mistakes.”

Those last words stabbed Pinkie Pie in the heart and all she can think about is Spike dying on her back.

“I think I’m ready... for a nap.”

Those words -Spike’s last words to her- bring tears to her eyes and the painful memory causes her legs to give out on her and make her sit on her haunches. Pinkie Pie’s eyes are wide and now have tears flowing freely and trickling down to the floor, her jaw is agape and she’s breathing heavily, like someone punched the air out of her. Celestia’s stern gaze melts into that of shock when she realizes what she had just said. Celestia, now guilt ridden, steps forward and tries to put her hoof on Pinkie Pie’s shoulder.

“Pinkie, I-” starts Celestia.

Pinkie Pie slaps the hoof away, crying quietly. “You’ve made your point.”

oooOOOooo

Celestia looks down, whole body sulking, as Pinkie Pie silently leaves the throne room, and when the doors shut, she sighs heavily and slouches on her throne, no longer caring about her “royal appearance”.

A minute or two of moping later, the door opens up again and a couple of her Royal Guards step in -one donned in armor for high ranking officers and the other just being a lowly recruit- and bow when they’re a respectable distance away.

“Your Majesty, the found copies of ‘The Lunar Republic’ have been destroyed, as per your orders,” says the Royal Guard donned in officer armor. The guard is an aged unicorn with an average build and an amber coat with a dark brown mane and tail with streaks of gray running through them. His cutie mark is a shield with a sword through it.

“Thank you, Major Fuller,” says Celestia, mentally breathing a sigh of relief of having some good news while turning her head to keep her tears hidden.

“Are there any other orders for me to tend to?”

“The throne room is off limits for the rest of the day,” says Celestia quietly; she stands up, spreads out her wings and her whole body becomes encased in a warm glow, although the despair in her tone contradicts the said glow. “I’ll be in my quarters for the rest of the evening. I do not want to be disturbed.”

And with that, she disappears in a flash of light that can easily be compared to a tiny supernova, momentarily filling the throne room with blinding, colorful light. And when all the light is gone Celestia is nowhere to be seen.

=**********=

The very first thing Shining Armor does after getting home from work is he locks himself in his home office where his audio recorder and safe of records lie. He clicks the device on and watches the tapes spin with a comforting whir, then he sighs and opens his mouth to speak, but closes it and shuts off his recorder. A moment passes before he tries again.

“This is Shining Armor’s journal entry...” he proceeds to saying rest of the intro before he falls silent for a moment. He takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. “Today was a train wreck. An act for the state to take control of the media was introduced to the Solar Council. The ‘Media Neutrality Act’ is what it was called, and Luna was upset -very upset- about this, and it led to a nasty argument between her and Celestia. Luna has always been the emotional one, but I... I’ve never seen her -or Celestia- like this. Not since Blueblood’s assassination anyway. I was actually called to personally escort Luna out, but she teleported away before I could arrive.”

Shining Armor pauses and looks at another photo of him, Cadence, Twilight, and of her friends at their wedding. When the picture fails to give him a sense of comfort he turns back to his audio recorder.

“On a somewhat lighter note. I interviewed Rainbow Dash for the Chrysaor Program and that mare has some issues. She has the base qualities that Major Fuller, Celestia, and I are looking for in the Program, but jeez, she freaks out easily in an interview. For instance, I choked on some water and she thought it was her fault. I’m just hoping that when the psyche tests come up that she’ll be well enough to pass. It would be a shame not to have her in because of... stage fright? I remember Twilight -no, Rarity- talking about how Rainbow Dash has stage fright. But speaking of Twilight, I haven’t seen much of her; she’s heading back to Ponyville today while Rarity is going to go to Applewood. I blame my job and workaholism for not seeing enough of her.”

Shining Armor’s ear twitches when he hears the floor creak and he looks behind him to make sure that no one is behind him; unfortunately for him, Cadence is there. His blood drains from his face when he sees her levitating a cup of coffee and a cup of tea. After that horrendous morning where he felt like he was poisoned by his precious drink he’s compelled to not drink anything coffee related offered by Cadence.

“See? I told you didn’t need two offices,” says Cadence with a warm smile and levitating the cup of coffee to him. “Aren’t you glad we turned the other office into that guest room with the horrible carpet?”

Not wanting to be rude, Shining Armor thanks her and takes the cup of coffee, hoping that it doesn’t taste like death this time. When he sips it, it doesn’t taste bad, but not good either. That means that it was Twilight who destroyed his cup of coffee that fateful day. He makes a mental note to never let Twilight touch anything coffee related ever again.

“You okay, Shining?” asks Cadence. “You look a little... sick.”

Shining Armor sighs, puts his cup of coffee down. “Just a weird day at work. You really should talk to Luna, Cadence. I think she needs some comforting.”

“I’d love to, but we’re not that close, unfortunately,” says Cadence as she sips her tea. “She keeps avoiding me.”

“You do the same, too.”

“I just don’t want to be a victim of her pranks again.”

“But isn’t she family? Couldn’t you forget about the bubble wrap or the cannon to talk to her?”

“Yeah, but I find her archaic way of talking a little aggravating. It’s like she’s stuck in the past, and when you add in how weird she can get... well it makes it a bit hard to be around her.”

Shining Armor arches an eyebrow as he listens to his wife complain about her relative. A relative that won a beauty pageant, even though she was an audience member.

“I mean, one moment she’s all intellectual about political philosophy and the next, she’s acting like a child,” complains Cadence.

“This is coming from a mare who does those rump bumps with Twilight whenever you two see each other and always wants me to play games meant for foals,” says Shining Armor with a teasing grin.

Cadence frowns and pokes Shining Armor in the chest with her hoof, saying: “Hey, those are fun and nonlethal.”

Shining Armor holds up his hoof defensively and Cadence continues on with her list of grievances against Luna. Most of them seem reasonable, but a part of Shining Armor can’t really blame Luna. After all, there is no telling how one will act after being stuck on a gray, floating rock a million miles away from any contact for a thousand years. However, there are two stories that make him laugh every time. The first is about Luna launching Cadence from a canon and miscalculating where to put the pillows. Due to Cadence’s weak flying she couldn’t do much but land in a pond that desperately needed cleaning. The other is about when Cadence and Celestia tried to stop Luna from abusing the power of bubble wrap. Apparently it was a traumatic experience for everyone and led to bubble wrap being banned in the castle and Luna being banished to the moon for a month.

“So, how was work?” asks Cadence suddenly.

Shining Armor finishes the last of his mediocre coffee.

“Well,” begins Shining Armor while setting aside his cup of coffee, “aside from coming to the throne room post-sibling argument, interviewing Rainbow Dash for a special project, and finding a witness brave enough to testify against the EIB... boring.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss my work.”

Cadence puts on a cute pouting face, complete with the bambi eyes and drooped ears.

“But I’m your wife and you love me a lot,” whines Cadence playfully.

“Yeah, I know,” sighs Shining Armor, “but I have to deal with classified information, so I can’t talk about it.”

“But you never talk about your work, and I’m worried that you bottling up all that stress is going to make you snap.”

“I don’t ‘bottle it up’, I got my hoffy-dandy recorder right there.”

Shining Armor smiles reassuringly as nods towards his audio recorder and Cadence frowns.

“That’s not what I meant,” she says sadly. “I meant that we don’t spend as much time together as we used to.”

“What can I say? Duty calls,” says Shining Armor with a shrug.

“...Would you talk to me if I gave you a massage?”

Shining Armor’s ears perk up and he gets a raging blush in an instant. Cadence smiles proudly at her easy achievement, but Shining Armor quickly folds his forehooves over his chest and looks away with his eyes shut. But his blush doesn’t go away, it actually gets worse.

“Nope, not going to do it,” he says.

“But it’s been years since you last got a massage,” says Cadence seductively. “You know you want it.”

Shining Armor feels shivers up his spine, and he opens one eye to see his wife grinning at him with bedroom eyes, prompting his hormones to spike and beg him to jump her. The only reason he isn’t though, is because he still has some control over his body. Besides her mane isn’t wet; if her mane was wet then it’d be a whole other ball game. Wet manes and mares in uniforms have always been long time fetishes of his, and his wife is irresistible with the former while the latter is something that is best left for imagination.

“I-I know, stammers,” Shining Armor, “but you won’t get anything. Besides, I’m not in the mood for a massage.”

Cadence frowns, gets up with an annoyed sigh, and leaves without another word.

“You... Are you mad?” asks Shining Armor pathetically, ears drooping.

The door slams shut and Shining Armor whines and starts banging his head on his desk.

“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

When he’s done banging his head, his word is spinning, his head feels like it’s going to crack open, and he hears water running over the ringing in his ears. Shining Armor groans and rubs his head, now feeling stupid for nearly giving himself a concussion. That is the last thing he needs, especially now that he actually has an undeniable victim of the EIB. He needs to be at the top of his game! He needs to stop staring at his wife and her soaking mane!

Shining Armor’s jaw drops as he watches his wife walk into his office with her eyes half lidded and a devilish smirk on her face. Her candy colored mane is soaked and hanging over her shoulders and partially covering her eye. She flings some of the wet mane out of her eye, splashing a little bit on Shining Armor, who can now barely sit still, and walks towards him in a very provocative sway.

Shining Armor gulps when Cadence’s wet, pinkish body rubs up against him as she sits on his lap. He personally finds the position awkward, but he doesn’t think about it much since his wife’s eyes are locking on to his, and how can he resist them? Also, he can feel the excitement build up between them. At long last they will have some quality time together! But even though every fiber in his body wants to go at it, his mind is doing a great job of convince him to build up the moment.

Cadence pushes herself into Shining Armor, soaking his uniform with her mane and body, and they rub their noses together. The battle between mind and body is quickly going into the body’s favor as Shining Armor feels the blood from his brain go to the more private part of his body. That and his hooves are trembling slightly.

“How about now?” whispers Cadence.

“Tell you now?” says Shining Armor with an eager chuckle as he finds his forehooves acting on their own accord, stroking the voluptuous curves on his wife. Even his hindlegs are rubbing against her flank, more specifically, her crystal heart and gold laced cutie mark. These motions make his wife quiver on her spot on his lap and biting her lip to stifle a moan, bringing a smile to his face. “But I don’t want to.”

“Oh really?”

Then Cadence presses her lips against Shining Armor’s and pushes her tongue into his mouth. Shining Armor’s eyes widen from the sudden and yet pleasant intrusion, but relaxes since he’s loving it. His wife’s tongue tastes like strawberry taffy to him and the way she’s moaning in his mouth is making his body tremble and resisting the primal urges all the more painfully difficult.

A minute or two -or three, or four, who knows?- of snogging later, Cadence pulls away from him, leaving a thin trail of saliva between the two. Both of them are panting and blushing, and Shining Armor’s heart is beating way too fast for him to sit still. He hugs his wife and she lets out a squeal and giggle and hugs him around his head. She closes her eyes and moans as Shining Armor presses his mouth against her chest and leaves a trail of loving kisses from her chest, up to her neck, and eventually to her lips. Then his tongue jolts into Cadence’s mouth. Cadence lets out a surprised moan and her eyes open while wings unfurl a bit, but, just like with Shining Armor, she relaxes and lets her husband’s tongue explore her mouth.

After hungrily making out for an unknown amount of time Shining Armor pulls away, both of them panting harder and flushing brighter than before, and he and Cadence smile at each other.

“How about now?” says Cadence, putting on her best sultry voice between her panting.

Shining Armor uses sheer willpower to tap his chin and think about the appropriate response. It doesn’t take him long to find one. He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Nah”

“So, that’s how we’re going to do it, huh?” Cadence slides off of Shining Armor and uses her magic to push him to the ground. Shining Armor tries to stand up, but gives up when he feels all four of Cadence’s hooves press against his back, hard. He winces as he feels her hooves dig into his back and he looks up at Cadence, she still has her irresistible wet mane bedroom look. “Maybe a massage will make you talk.”

Shining Armor feels her press her hooves against his back and it feels like someone is grinding weights against him. It’s painful at first, but the pain subsides and a relaxation takes over. His body goes slack and he stretches out his hooves while resting his head on the floor; his eyes become half lidded and his tongue lolls out. He hasn’t had a massage in a while and although her hard pressing and kneading is painful at first, they are quickly replaced with a relaxing feeling that makes his muscles feel like jelly and gives him a floating feeling.

“Best... interrogation... ever,” he says dreamily.

“Mmhm,” says Cadence, her smile becoming more devilish as she continues her four hoofed kneading. “Wow, you’re as twisted as a pretzel.”

Shining Armor glances at Cadence out of the corner of his eye with a fake unimpressed look. He’s really surprised that he’s managed to hold out so long, but knows that it’ll be worth it in the end when he can move from his massage.

“Really?” he says. “Out of all the metaphors out there you just had use the most common and lamest one there is?”

“Well what did you want me to say?” asks Cadence in a teasing tone. “‘You’re as twisted as Chrysalis?’?”

“...That would be an interesting metaphooooor-kay then.”

Cadence had used her magic to turn her husband on his back and is now using her magic to take off his uniform and carelessly toss it away. When Shining Armor is in his birthday suit Cadence lays on top of him and grins as she looks into his adorable blue eyes. Her tail flicks playfully as she licks her lip, loving the way he’s bright red face is staring back at her and how his thumping heart is the loudest part of him. When she strokes his chest, he shudders and she smiles.

“Comfy?” she asks in a sultry whisper. Shining Armor nods and she puts on a cute pout face. “Will you tell me about your work now?”

“Nope, nothing you say or do will get me to talk,” says Shining Armor, his eager smile stretching to the max; but his body is telling him to screw the talking and show the lady a good time.

“Not even more of this?”

Cadence presses her lips against Shining Armor’s mouth, sending electric shivers up his spine. That does it. The dam crumbles and all the hormones flood his mind and take over his whole body. He growls hungrily and turns Cadence on her back, making her let out a loud, surprised yelp, and when she’s on her back he traps her between his hooves.

“You’ve been asking a lot of questions, Mi Amor. Are you a spy?” says Shining Armor.  Cadence opens her mouth to speak, but can only let out a moan as Shining Armor presses his lower body into her and drags his tongue across her neck and into her mouth. She wraps her forehooves around his neck and keeps him locked in her mouth while her hind legs are pointing straight up.

Shining Armor pulls away and Cadence gasps: “Yes.” Another deep kiss. “Punish your spy!”

Shining Armor dives right in. His wife shuts her eyes and her moan is lost in his mouth. When he drags his mouth away from Cadence’s and goes down her neck her moan practically turns into a scream. He leaves a trail of kisses on her neck and down her chest, and when he gets lower he feels his wife press her hoof against his shoulder to guide him lower while encouraging him to go lower between her pants and moans.

Then his ear twitches when he hears the door creak open over Cadence’s moans and when he looks up he immediately swears and gets off of Cadence. And she looks up and also gasps and blushes, and she scrambles to her feet. Shining Armor quickly positions Cadence so that she is lying on his lap to cover the part of his body his sister should not be seeing. This makes it uncomfortable for both of them, especially Shining Armor, and they both try to act like they weren’t about to have sex in the office. However, both of them know that it’s a lost cause since they are covered in each other’s sweat, are panting, have ruffled manes and tails, and Shining Armor’s uniform is all over the floor.

“Twilight, what are you doing here?” asks Shining Armor, trying -and failing- to hide his panic.

Twilight’s purple coat gets a noticable shade of red around her cheeks and ears and she stammers: “Oh... sorry... I was, um, going to say my farewells before heading back to Ponyville... but... um... you guys look a little busy, so I’ll just leave this here and be on my way. Bye!”

Twilight tosses a wrapped box on the floor and slams the door shut. Shining Armor and Cadence stare at is as they hear Twilight scamper down the stairs, and when they hear the front door close they both release breathes they had no idea they were holding. Shining Armor slumps over Cadence while her whole body goes slack. The mood has been butchered and there is no way for them to get it back. All of their arousal is gone for the night. Heck probably gone for the rest of the week... or even the rest of the month.

“Well that killed the mood,” grumbles Cadence as she fixes her mane, looking very annoyed about the incident.

“Yeah,” agrees Shining Armor. Then a disturbing thought crosses his mind. “Shouldn’t’ve Twilight heard us?”

Cadence’s eyes widen and she looks at Shining Armor and he looks at her, matching her shocked expression.

“You wanna go by tickets for Monte’s show?” asks Cadence quickly, preferring not to think about something that would make an awkward moment even more awkward.

“Now that’s a fantastic idea!”

And the loving couple gets up and they quickly -and awkwardly- leave the office, forgetting to turn off the audio recorder.

Arc 2- 02- Singsong -EDITED-

Arc 2- 9 (Betrayals [B])

Honesty Missing!

Applejack & MacIntosh “Big Mac” Apple

disappear from Ponyville Estate

__________________

By: Featherweight Light

__________________

PONYVILLE--- Ponyville has once again been struck with a tragedy. Two staples of the Ponyville community, Applejack and MacIntosh Apple, disappeared late last night from their home with little to no clues of their whereabouts. The Local Guards are coordinating a search effort with the citizens of Ponyville and the Equestrian Investigation Bureau to search for the Apples.

“Rest assured, the EIB is doing everything in its power to assist Ponyville and to find the cherished members of their community,” said Director Brisk Wind. “Apple Bloom Apple will be taken into EIB custody until we can find a suitable home for her or until her relatives are recovered.” Unfortunately Ponyville’s list of missing has grown over the past week. The Whooves also went missing a few days ago and their daughter, Dinky Whooves, was also taken into EIB custody. Despite best efforts by the Ponyville City Council and the EIB, paranoia has taken a hold of the once peaceful town.

“I don’t like it,” said somepony who wished to remain anonymous. “I don’t like the EIB here. I don’t like whatever that CDA hub is. And I don’t like that ponies that speak out against the Royal Government disappear within the next couple of days.”

The Apples and Whooves worked closely together to protest the increase in Royal Government mandates. More specifically on the issues of nationalized farms and the Special Talent’s Act, which led to Sweet Apple Acres’ change in management and encouraged Derpy Whooves to resign her position as head of the Ponyville Post Office and taking over management at the Cloudsdale Bubble Factory.

Continued on Next Page

++++++++++

Pinkie Pie rereads the newspaper article for the umpeenth time, every word sends a shiver up her spine, and the whole thing stinks worse than a dead fish rotting in a septic tank. On top of the uneasiness she’s getting from the article, her mane is also itching and her body is getting tingly.

Pinkie Pie looks over her shoulder  and sees Trixie’s door is still shut. Ever since she found out about what happened with the League she had been an emotional wreck. She didn’t go out yesterday night to beat up any criminals or stop vandalism, she just kept herself locked in her room, mumbling about some pony named Sunshine and how she’s “never there”. Pinkie Pie is also certain Trixie is suffering from a withdrawal, her whole body had turned pale and her eyes keep shifting. On top of that, she’s been a roller coaster of every negative emotion there is. One minute she’s weeping, the next she’s screaming (mostly about Sunshine), and other times she’s cowering in the corner.

She isn’t sure what happened between Trixie and Shining Armor, though, and every time she asked in the past twenty four hours, she got a nasty tongue lashing and was told to mind her own business. That usually followed by Trixie crying and begging for someone to hold her. In an attempt to keep Trixie calm, Pinkie Pie kept the radio turned to Scratch FM. Right now a hardrock song by Ghostie Hunter was being played over the radio.

As the music plays, Pinkie Pie knocks on Trixie’s door.

“Trixie, you okay?” asks Pinkie Pie.

No answer.

Pinkie Pie opens the door and sees Trixie staring at the Mare-Do-Well costume, eyes red and coat soaked in tears. She looks at her for a second before looking back at the armored costume.

“You okay?” asks Pinkie Pie.

Trixie sniffles. “Do you believe in ghosts?” she asks distantly.

“Of course I do.” Pinkie Pie sits next to Trixie. “Why?”

Trixie shakes her head, and then she closes her eyes and starts trembling. “I... I don’t know. I hear Sunshine, but ghosts don’t go away with pills.” Trixie forces a chuckle. “I’m going insane.”

“Trixie, it’s going to be alright, okay?” Pinkie Pie hugs Trixie, but she continues staring at the costume. “It’s going to be sunshine and rainbows in the end, you’ll see.”

“Sunshine,” says Trixie in a low growl.

“And rainbows. Whoever ‘Sunshine’ is, will soon disappear and you’ll be left with something a million times better than a warm summer day. You’ll see that all good deeds are rewarded, whether it’s in this life or the next. You’ll see.”

Trixie tenses up and grabs the armored costume in her hooves, and she scowls at it.

“That is what Pinkie Pie told you to say to Octavia, right?” says Trixie.

Pinkie Pie’s heart starts racing, and the itching and tingling gets worse.

“That’s right,” says Pinkie Pie carefully.

Trixie looks at Pinkie Pie and she releases her and steps back as Trixie stands up, fuming. “That pegasus thought you were Pinkie Pie... but I killed her. I watched her die... and now I’m wearing this suit... Her suit.” says Trixie; Pinkie Pie tries to say something, but Trixie talks over her in a dangerous voice that demands answers. “Why did she call you ‘Pinkie Pie’?”

“Mistaken identity,” says Pinkie Pie quickly, her mane itching, and not because of the wig.

Trixie’s eyes narrowed and she levitated the suit next to her.

“Who are you, really?” she demands, eye twitching and horn flaring. “‘Candy Associate’? Shielding me and yourself from that high maintenance slut? Brought to tears by the mentioning of Spike?” Trixie leans forward and through clenched teeth she says: “Who. Are. You.”

“I am Minty-”

“DON’T LIE TO ME!”

Trixie throws down the costume and takes a threatening step towards Pinkie Pie, and she backs up, feeling nothing but sheer terror upon seeing Trixie’s wrathful sparks and her grinding teeth. Pinkie Pie holds up her hoof defensively and tries to talk some sense into Trixie; now the itching in her mane and the tingling in her body is becoming too painful to ignore.

“Trixie, I need you to calm down.”

“Calm down? Calm down! YOU USED ME!”

“It’s not like that!”

“Then what is like, huh? Tell me, because I would really like to know!”

Pinkie Pie bites her lip and looks down, trying to think of an answer. Should she tell her that the ponies she thought were dead were not? Or should she tell her that she’s training her through an extremely unorthodox method to combat the said ponies?

“Trixie, I’m trying to help you,” she says meekly.

Trixie scoffs and runs her hoof through her mane. “Help? Yeah, that’s what they all say. Help. Help. Help. Help. Help. The ponies on the road were glad to help after I gave them a blowjob!”

Now Pinkie Pie’s body is really acting up. She’s practically dancing in the same spot and her eyes are darting to every noise there is. Was she hearing flapping? Cars pulling up? That can’t be right, it’s curfew. Her Pinkie Sense is going crazy now.

“Trixie-”

“Or how about little private shows? Yeah, fan-fucking-TASTIC!”

Pinkie Pie runs towards the window and sees three EIB vehicles outside the apartment with ponies hopping out, all unicorns, wearing armored suits and carrying weapons. Then she notices a griffin land next to a unicorn stallion, they talk for a couple of seconds before the griffin flies off.

“And now I’ve been PLAYED LIKE A FOOL by Sunshine AND YOU!”

Pinkie Pie grabs Trixie and looks her in the eyes. “Trixie, I know you’re a little upset right now, but-”

“UNDERSTATEMENT!”

“We need to get out of here! Like right now!”

Trixie bats Pinkie Pie’s hoof away. Pinkie Pie winces, the hoof that was batted away was the one injured during her fight with her. But pushing all pain aside, she looks out the window again and sees a griffin flying towards their window. And it’s picking up speed.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” sneers Trixie.

“GET DOWN!”

Pinkie Pie tackles Trixie to the ground and a griffin armed with a small gatling rifle flies through the window, showering both ponies with shards of glass. When the griffin skids to a stop, Pinkie Pie scrambles to her feet and rams the griffin into the wall with enough power to leave it stuck in it. For good measure she punches it in the gut and as it keels over she socks it in the head, knocking it out cold. Trixie looks freaked out with no signs of anger now.

Pinkie Pie turns to Trixie and yells: “RUN!”

Another griffin flies through the window and tackles Pinkie Pie to the ground. The griffin is punched in the throat, and as it gags and falls off, Pinkie Pie bites down on its tail and swing it into the bed. The bed snaps and the griffin becomes still.

Pinkie Pie then pushes Trixie towards the front door, but the unicorn didn’t need much convincing. She bolts towards the door and both of them run into the hallway, only for the elevator door to slide open and four EIB ponies to march out with their battle saddles aimed at them.

Pinkie Pie bites on Trixie’s tail, throws her back inside and then slams the door shut while Trixie uses her magic to push the fridge in the way. Soon after there is thumping and the door starts cracking and the fridge tries to move, but Trixie’s magic is holding it in place.

“Trixie, do your super form thingy!” orders Pinkie Pie. She runs into her room and is greeted by two more griffins. They are quickly acquainted with her hooves. After taking out those two, she grabs one of their small gatling rifles with her mouth and runs out.

“I can’t!” cries Trixie.

Pinkie Pie spits out the weapon. “What do you mean you can’t!?”

“It only works-” the fridge starts getting pushed back by magic and Trixie yelps and tries harder to keep it in place while Pinkie Pie pushes against it. “It only works if I’m mad!”

“We just got sold out! That doesn’t make you mad!?”

“No! It’s makes me scared!”

“Oh so me lying to you ticks you off, but getting sold out makes you scared!”

Trixie strains her magic to keep the fridge in place.

“Now is a bad time to argue!” whines Trixie.

“Unbelievable!” cries Pinkie Pie. “You got defense mechanisms! Use them!”

“What do you think I’m doing!”

Pinkie Pie growls and when bullets tear apart the door and barely miss Trixie, she pulls the unicorn down. Pinkie Pie’s hair has flattened under her wig and her pupils have shrunken, and to Trixie, Pinkie Pie looks like she’s snapping.

“Being difficult!” says Pinkie Pie angrily. She dives for the small gatling gun, puts it in her mouth, and while she’s still on the floor she turns on her back and pulls the trigger with her tongue, spraying the wall and door with lead. The agents outside swear and some bodies drop, but Pinkie Pie doesn’t know -nor does she care- if  they were shot or just diving for cover. What she does care about, though, is the pain in her mouth. She angrily spits out the smoking weapon, mouth now bruised and bleeding. “Aaahow! Jeez, how can anypony shoot with their mouth!”

An EIB agent pokes her head through the hole, and Pinkie Pie quickly jumps on top of the fridge and slams the agent’s face against it. It leaves a nice, bloody dent in the said object and the agent falls to the ground without a peep. When that’s done, Pinkie Pie jumps off of the fridge, runs into the kitchen and grabs a fire extinguisher.

“I toss you, you shoot!”

“What?”

More bullets go through, and one grazes Pinkie Pie’s shoulder, leaving a gory gash. She swears and falls to the ground, trying to put pressure on her injury. Blood seeps out from under her hoof and more bullets go through the door and wall, making both of them lie on the floor while covering their heads with their hooves to shield themselves from the flying splinters. Soon the door is nothing but mere splinter hanging from hinges and the wall is nearly useless. The two trapped ponies can see the EIB agents outside, and show their respects to a fifth one that had just arrived; the newcomer is a stallion, and he doesn’t look too happy about the situation.

“Be careful! They’re supposed to be alive!” barks the stallion.

Pinkie Pie grits her teeth in response to her pain and throws the fire extinguisher through the gaping hole in the door. The agents’ eyes grow to the size of dinner plates when Pinkie Pie yells “Shoot!” and when Trixie fires, the wrath of an exploding fire extinguisher in unleashed. All the ponies are blasted off of their feet. Some crash into the destroyed wall, almost going through it, and the sound of glass shattering suggests that someone is now in free fall.

Pinkie Pie bites back her pain and limps towards the hole. She looks outside and sees the EIB agents are unconscious and that the window in the hallway is gone. She hops out of the room and looks out the window to see an EIB agent on his back inside a motorized wagon five stories down. He fell through the roof and looks as good as dead. Pinkie Pie runs back inside and snaps Trixie out of her trance.

“Put the suit on and let’s go,” orders Pinkie Pie.

Trixie nods and puts on the armored costume without any protest -keeping the helmet clipped around the back of her neck- and follows Pinkie Pie out. Pinkie Pie winces with each step and when they enter the stairwell she can only think of colorful, profane phrases as she looks at the flight of stairs. Walking down those is going to hurt, plain and simple.

“You okay, Minty, or whoever you are?” asks Trixie uneasily.

Pinkie Pie snickers and tries to look at the bright side of the situation as she looks over the railing; she found only one good thing about the situation. “I’ve had worse.”

oooOOOooo

Lock’s ears twitch when he hears the stairwell doors shut, and he groans and opens his eyes to see the mess. His agents are all sprawled out, unconscious, with one of them more than likely dead. He looks behind him and sees the window, or what’s left of it, and when he looks outside he brings the count up to two. Lock then levitates his pistol while arming his battle saddle and walks towards the door with his already deteriorating calm demeanor fading quicker. When he opens up the door he doesn’t see his targets anywhere, but he does see a trail of blood.

Lock smirks and begins his pursuit.

oooOOOooo

Trixie watches in wonder -and fear- as Minty beats a group of three griffins easily; she shrugs off the scratches and bullet grazes like they were nothing. And one of the things that freaks out Trixie the most is that she seems to be enjoying beating her targets to bloody pulps. The aftermath of the battle between Minty and their assailants is like a scene from a horror movie. The lights are flickering on and off and the walls and floor are splattered with blood and damaged by the innumerable amount of bullet holes, cracks, and indents. Littering the floor with griffins and ponies of all shapes and sizes, bloody with limbs bent at angles that they should not be bending. As Trixie watches Minty beat the last of the griffins into a coma it sinks in how fast her parole officer is. She’s ridiculously fast. So fast, in fact, that it seems like she’s...

Teleporting.

Trixie’s jaw drop and shakes uncontrollably as she backs up slowly as Pinkie Pie ruthlessly finishes off a griffin. The griffin’s squawking is brought to a sudden end when Pinkie Pie brings her hooves down on its head. There is a crunch and the griffin’s limps stiffen for a moment before going slack. Then Pinkie Pie turns around and looks at Trixie, face and body covered in scratches, bullet grazes, and her blood as well as her victims’.

“You look sick,” says Pinkie Pie eerily between her heavy pants.

“No... No... I-I killed you! I saw you die!” cries Trixie fearfully.

"I fell trying to fix something."

“I did what I had to do.”

Pinkie Pie starts walking forward with a sway, her creepy smile growing with each step.

“Is there something I can do to help? A party perhaps? Parties make everypony feel better,” she says.

Trixie backs up into the stairwell door, and her heart feels like its going to explode from how fast it’s beating and from how much she’s sweating from fear, she’d probably turn into a mummy. Her ears droop and she lets out a little whine when the lights above Pinkie Pie’s head flickers off for the last time, yet her blue eyes are still seen clearly in the darkness.

“Now that’s how ya do it!” cheers Sunshine, appearing next to Pinkie Pie when the light flickers. “That’s how ya kick ass!”

“Pinkie Pie... is that... that can’t be you,” whimpers Trixie.

“Maybe a game? Games are just as fun as parties,” says Pinkie Pie, snickering a second later. Trixie shakes her head while slowly backing away and Pinkie Pie pouts.”You aren’t a boring old drag queen like Twilight are you?”

“Twilight has a way of ruining things.”

“Or Rarity? Bleh. Those two are sooooo uptight.” Pinkie Pie sits on her haunches and nuzzles her bloody cheek against her hooves, poorly mimicking Rarity’s voice. “So much fashion. I must sew clothes, darling. Lot’s and lot’s of clothes are needed for my new line up: Pinkie is a Meanie.”

The lights flicker again and Pinkie Pie stomps on a mare that had the misfortune of groaning. The sickening stomp quiets the pony, and from the sounds of bone crunching under her hoof, she probably ended her life.

“And Twilight and alllll of her studies,” continues Pinkie Pie, now hoping on each of the bodies that she could land on while doing a poor impression of Twilight. “How many ponies would it take to subdue Pinkius Piecus? Must do more research. More. More. More studies and notes. Lot’s and lot’s of notes!”

Pinkie Pie stops and looks at Trixie, she’s trembling and whimpering: “This can’t be happening.”

Sunshine’s chuckle echoes in the hallway. “Oh, it is, darlin’.”

Pinkie Pie grins and cocks her head. “We are friends, right?”

Trixie blinks, but that gives Pinkie Pie enough time to knock Trixie through the door and on her back in the stairwell. She winces as her back collides with the hard concrete, and when her eyes get back to focus she sees Agent Lock approaching them from the top of the stairs, keeping his weapons trained on them.

“Well, are we, Trixie?” asks Pinkie Pie, her crazy eyes locking onto Trixie’s.

“Pinkie Pie, snap out of it!” cries Trixie as she looks back at Pinkie Pie.

“Silly filly, ponies can’t snap. You need fingers to snap. Minotaurs have fingers, they can snap.”

“It’s over, Minty and Trixie, give up,” says Lock.

Trixie looks at Lock, overwhelmed with fear. “Lock, that isn’t Mmmph”

Pinkie Pike puts her hoof on top of Trixie’s mouth and puts her bloody hoof to her mouth while shushing her.

“You’ll ruin the game, Trixie,” snickers Pinkie Pie. Then she looks at Lock, smiling; her insane smile makes him take a step back. “Hey there, do you wanna play a game?”

“I want you to surrender,” says Lock as he aims his weapons at Pinkie Pie.

Pinkie Pie snickers and gets up and cracks her back. Trixie remembers how she kicked her off the edge and how she landed on her back on a pile of garbage. When Pinkie Pie crawls off of Trixie, she approaches Lock and Trixie gets on her feet and runs. Not even two seconds later she hears them fighting... and then gunshots... and then a body rolling down the stairs... and then silence. Trixie turns and stares at the door, her heart is threatening to burst out of her chest and her vision clouded with tears. She watches a silhouette of a pony appear in the foggy stairwell glass and she takes a step back as the shadowy figure stays there. Then the door is bucked off of its hinges and it slides across the floor and skids to a stop in front of Trixie. Lock steps into the hallway, panting and face and neck sleek with blood, and he glares at Trixie with his weapons trained on her. Trixie’s eyes bulge and she dives into the hallway curve as bullets tear apart the area she was at moments earlier.

“Get back here!” yells Lock furiously.

Trixie scrambles to her feet and runs down the hallway, listening to Lock’s determined gallop after her. The way he’s trailing Trixie reminds her of those cyborgs in the science fiction books whose only purpose is to kill. Trixie runs faster and right as she’s about to go through the emergency exit, Lock fires a short burst from his weapons, most of the bullets miss, but a couple graze her and one tears into her leg. Trixie screams and falls to the ground, and when she tries crawling away, leaving a trail of blood in her wake, Lock stomps on her back. She cries out as she feels the hoof crack her vest.

“Give up, Trixie, there’s nowhere for you to go. It’s all over for you,” says Lock.

He kicks Trixie on her back and presses his hoof down on her chest. She gasps and she feels the air get pushed out of her. Trixie then notices that Lock has an unprotected part of his body.

“I was -I was trying to help!” cries Trixie painfully, shifting her legs and wincing when her shot leg gets a surge of pain in protest for moving it.

“Vigilantism is terrorism, Lulamoon, and for that you- GRRRK!”

Lock falls over and curls up, holding his precious gonads, and Trixie gets up and bites back her tears as she limps towards the door. However, Lock pounces on her again! Her body is squished between him and the floor, and she starts screaming and thrashing as the thoughts of Sunshine trying to have his way with her invade her mind.

“No! Nononononono! No!” sobs Trixie, panicking even more when she feels Lock press against her. She can’t hear what he’s saying over her shouting.

“Ooh, now that’s kinky,” snickers Sunshine as he walks in her line of sight, grinning. “A hero and an officer of the law, t’gether fer some steamy fun. Mind if I join?”

Trixie screams and pushes herself on her hind legs and lets herself fall backwards. Now Lock is pressed between her and the floor, and the helmet in his face isn’t making things any more comfortable for him. Trixie soon finds herself weightless and the ceiling panel taking up her whole vision, followed by splinters scratching her face and her landing on her back. Trixie groans and blinks blood out of her eyes, wishing that she had just put the stupid helmet on.

“Get up and fight, Trixie,” urges Sunshine. “I wanna see some action!”

Trixie groggily pushes herself to her feet, only for magic to lift her up, slam her back into the ceiling, and then get tossed into the wall, leaving a pony sized spider web patterned crack in it. She coughs out blood as drywall and other bits of the wall and ceiling fall around and over the ringing in her ears and thumping heart, she can hear Lock demeaning her.

“So, this is the one who killed Laughter and destroyed half of Ponyville? Pathetic.”

Lock stomps on her side and she cries as she curls up; the armor did next to nothing on his stomp. The power of his stomp has cracked the suit and left her ribs cracked.

“We just got sold out! That doesn’t make you mad!?”

“No! It’s makes me scared!”

Trixie grits her teeth and ignores the burning pain in her legs and the poking feeling in her chest as she stands up. Lock goes for another kick, but she blocks it and uses a telekinetic blast to knock him into the wall. He quickly gets back up and when he tries to shoot her with his battle saddle she zaps it with a lightning bolt, blowing the weapon clean off, and then jabs him in the jaw with a powerful hoof that knocks him off of his feet.

Lock gets back to his feet and tries to use his telekinesis to knock Trixie back, but Trixie was also thinking of the same thing in regards of Lock. Both unicorns grunt and strain themselves as their telekinesis meet in the middle, their magical aura mixes into a disgusting colored blob and pushes anything in their range. Debris is pushed against the floor, walls, and ceiling, and the hallway groans and fresh cracks snake out from every solid surface around the magical blob.

Trixie grits her teeth and closes her eyes for concentration, trying to think of anything she can use against Lock. And when she opens her eyes she sees her opponent diverting some of his magic to aim his pistol at her.

===

Trixie laughed victoriously as she knocked Gray Muffin to the ground with a well placed buck to the noggin. He shook off the pain with ease and smiled proudly at Trixie.

“Very good, Trixie, those double shifts are proving to be effective,” said Gray Muffin proudly.

“So, what’s next?” asked Trixie.

“Distractions.”

BOOM!

Trixie was covered by a dust cloud and was disoriented by a ringing in her ears, and the shock also made her wobbly. Then she got one, two, three  quick jabs one final kick in the chest that sent her skidding backwards on the mat. Trixie moaned and tried to get up as her mentor walked out of the dust cloud like a demon of vengeance.

“When in doubt, improvise and create a distraction,” he said. He extended his hoof and Trixie took it, only to be smacked across the face, leading her to fall flat on her face on the mat with a bloody mouth. “Also, never trust your target to help you.”

===

Trixie steps forward, much to Lock’s surprise, and with an enraged scream she flicks her magic to the ceiling, which guides Lock’s magic up with it. The result is the ceiling exploding outward, and then collapsing on top of both of them and covering everything in debris and dust. Lock loses all concentration on his magic and brings his hoof to cover his nose and mouth, coughing sickly, while Trixie ignores the burning in her lungs and eyes from the aftermath such a maneuver and charges Lock. Lock blinks dust out of his eyes and when he sees Trixie leap for him, he tries to bring his hooves up for a block, but Trixie knocks his hooves away and then does one, two, three quick jabs and one final kick that sends him skidding backwards on the messy floor.

Much to Trixie’s surprise, Lock doesn’t stay down long. While Lock coughs and recollects himself, Trixie puts on the helmet, and when Lock sees Trixie glaring at him from behind the pegasi goggles he snickers after spitting blood from his mouth.

“I’m impressed, but that still won’t won’t save you,” sneers Lock.

Trixie charges him with her horn sparking and he quickly yanks out his pistol from the debris with his magic and fires three shots. The first shot grazes her shoulder, the second blows a hole in her hat, chipping off a piece of her horn, and the final bullet rips through her hoof, squirting the area with her blood. Trixie screams in pain as she tumbles end over end and lands on her face, but not without zapping Lock first. The bolt of lightning strikes him in the chest and sends him flying backward, black smoke rising off of his chest, and he falls to the ground with a grunt. Trixie sobs out of anger and pain as she pushes herself up; her whole body is wobbly from her injured hooves and the blood from the scratches on her face are oozing through her mask. Even her horn is seeping grayish magenta magical “blood” from the chip.

Trixie stares at Lock, he’s lying on the ground, motionless, and the reek of burnt flesh and cloth is leaving a bad taste in her mouth. Trixie is about to make sure that Lock won’t be getting up anytime soon, but the door opens up and the EIB agents from her floor rush in while two more griffins break through the windows to the hallway. They waste no time in shooting at her.

Trixie shoots off a couple of lightning bolts, which proves to be a horrible idea as it leaves her feeling like someone shattered her skull with sledgehammer-chainsaw thing and leads to her getting more grazes and another bullet in her leg. Trixie limps into the emergency exit stairwell as her enemies continue to shoot like madmen. When inside the stairwell, she gets a surge of crippling pain that causes her collapse, and she instinctively crawls away as bullets shatter the glass and tear the door dozens of new holes. Trixie then rolls down the stairs, adding fresh bruises and damaged bones to her list of injuries, and when she lands on the floor she limps outside. As soon as she gets outside she sees genuine EIB covered mini trains she almost collapses from shock; the EIB is going all out to get her now that she’s a “terrorist” and testifying against them. Shining Armor was right.

===

“Trixie, I’m grateful for what you told me, but I have to warn you, if the EIB found out that you talked to me then they will come after you,” said Shining Armor as he put the tape of their recording in his safe.

“Why not convince Celestia shut them down if they are targeting innocent ponies?” asked Trixie, not really caring, she just wants to get out. “You are the Captain of the Guard, after all. Isn’t that the next best thing to Royalty?”

“I tried, but she won’t listen. She’s been really reluctant to let me do an investigation into them. Especially after the Pre-Gala.”

“So, you’re doing this behind her back?”

“... Just be careful. If they come after you, run and hide. Don’t tell anypony -even Minty Sprinkles- where you’ll be going. I’ll come find you.”

===

Trixie doesn’t hesitate to listen to Shining Armor’s advice as she turns tail and limps down the road, leaving a bloody trail behind. A part of her wants to stay and fight, but her intelligence is telling her that she’s as good as dead if she fights them in her condition. Even if she wanted to, a damaged horn is keeping her from going “super” and blood loss is making her weak. They already killed Minty Sprinkles, or Pinkie Pie, her friend. They killed her friend and now they’re going to kill her unless she can get out.

oooOOOooo

Lock once again finds himself groaning and under a lot of pain. His chest feels tight, his jaw hurts, and probably infected with something since Minty Sprinkles turned into a cannibalistic freak in their fight on the stairs. He reminds himself to see a doctor about any infections; pony mouths are disgusting after all.

He’s helped to his feet by his agents. There are two griffins standing around, looking bored, too.

“Sir, the Night Guard is on their way with SWAT,” says one of the agents.

“Where’s Trixie?” demands Lock, grunting in pain as he shrugs an agent away.

“She got away,” grumbles one of the griffins.

Lock growls and looks at the agent that told him of the Night Guards. “When will they arrive?”

“Less than ten minutes,” replies the agent.

Lock sniffs, wipes some blood off of his face and then turns around and shoots both of the griffins in the head. The agent jumps back and he looks at all of his agents while the griffins crumble to the ground with holes in their heads and bloody circles splattered on the wall behind them.

“Kill all the griffins. Alibi is that we were trying to save the residents of Apartment five oh five, Trixie Lulamoon and Minty Sprinkles, from Gilda’s muscle and things took a dive for the worst. Leave it at that,” orders Lock.

“But aren’t we working with the griffins to help-”

The agent doesn’t finish her words as Lock emotionlessly executes her on the spot, splattering her blood on the faces of the others. The surviving agents jump back and stare at Lock with horror as their comrade lies dead in front of them. Murdered by their superior.

“That’ll be your fate if you mess up. Got it?” growls Lock.

The agents nod and reluctantly follow Lock outside when he orders them to follow him. Outside the griffins and agents are sealing up the EIB truck and Lock whistles for everyone to give him their undivided attention. The griffins and agents look at him and Lock aims his pistol at the nearest griffin and fires without hesitation.

oooOOOooo

Trixie leans against a dumpster and thinks of passing out right then and there. The pavement is comfortable anyway. Then there is a single gunshot. Then there are more gunshots and her ears stand up as she uses the dumpster for support. The gunshots sound like a small battle, and as quickly as it came, it went.

Trixie slumps to the ground, her legs feel like jelly, the pain in her horn makes her want to crawl in a hole and die, and she feels like she’s going to be sick. All that fancy talk of Brisk Wind offering to extend an olive branch took the express flight right out the window. But as much as she would like to mope and think about how her situation sucks, she knows she can’t stay. And when she hears the sirens and sees the lights of Night Guard vehicles speeding towards her, she disappears into the alley, leaving a bloody smear on the dumpster.

=**********=

Vinyl Scratch, a.k.a. DJ-Pon3, a.k.a. “Tenant Who Needs To Pay Rent”, is sitting inside her sanctum of music, listening to a 3 Barns Up song and projecting it for all in range to hear. All of the radio equipment a pony could possibly dream of is stacked in this dimly lit room; no pony’s radio is safe from her scanners, no music update is left unchecked, no news left unheard, no pony without entertainment from Canterlot all the wall to Dodge City. But not only is there every bit of radio equipment on the market in her possession, she also has an overabundance of reminders of who her sponsors are. Ranging from posters from energy companies, to figurines belonging to toy lines, and empty bottles of alcoholic beverages and energy drinks. And to finish it off her decorations, she has a gift from the Lunar Society. Its a navy blue flag with the white, upside crescent moon with wings hanging on the wall behind the equipment.

“Now if I could just win the damn lottery,” mumbles Vinyl Scratch lightly as she takes a swig of Double F beer. It’s true she has a lot of money, but keeping the station up to date with every bit of information is expensive; from maintaining contacts with other stations, to scheduling talks with agents to see what’s going on with celebrities, and, of course, keeping her scanners a secret from the government. All that leaves barely enough money money for rent and food.

When the song ends, Vinyl Scratch wipes some of her mane out of her bright red eyes and leans towards the microphone.

“You guys liked that, didn’t ya? Of course you did. These guys are rocking out the music industry! But now it’s time to stop rockin’ and time to put you guys to bed.” Vinyl Scratch flips a switch, puts the dial to “Loop” and sweet, soft music starts playing over the radio. The music is so heartwarming, so soothing, that she almost passes out right on the spoty. “Here’s a lullaby called ‘Hush Now’, sung by the one and only Fluttershy. Sleep tight everypony.”

Vinyl Scratch yawns and climbs on her flimsy cot and pulls her ratty blanket over herself and shuts her eyes for a good night’s sleep. Then there is a weak knock on her door, and at first she thinks its her imagination, but when the weak knocking persists, getting weaker by the knock, she gets up, grabs a bat with her magic, and approaches the door. She looks out the peephole and sees no one, but the knocking continues. That is when the DJ realizes that it’s coming from the side door.

“Side door, huh?”

She puts the bat away and after digging through a field of styrofoam cups, crumpled paper, and half eaten sandwiches she levitates a double barreled shotgun from under her cot before cautiously approaching the side door. The knocking stops and Vinyl Scratch peeks through the peephole to see... nothing.

“So, they wanna play that way, eh?”

She puts on her glasses and flings open her door with her shotgun at the ready. She doesn’t see anyone around, but she does notice bloody hoofprints on her door and when she looks down and her jaw drops. Lying on the ground, covered in blood and bullet holes, is the one and only Vigilante.

Arc 2- 03- Minty Sprinkles -ADDITION-

Arc 2- 10 (Midnight Massacre)

“Oh boy, we’re pretty high up,” says Applejack nervously over the chilling wind while peeking over the edge of the upgraded Griffin Chaser, peddling her part of course, with Pinkie Pie up front and steering with undefeatable determination.

“Of course we are, silly,” says Pinkie Pie. “Have you ever heard of a pegasus that was afraid of heights? I mean pegasi live on clouds and if they were afraid of heights they wouldn’t be much of a pegasus; they’d be like a tofu pegasus, and tofu is nasty.”

“So yer saying that a pegasus that’s afraid of heights is nasty?”

“And bland. Just like tofu.”

“And what if Ah told ya that Fluttershy was afraid of heights?”

“Fluttershy is a special, tasty kind of tofu. Oh, goodie! Here we are!”

The clouds part like curtains to reveal Rainbow Dash’s towering household; the Romanic architecture and rainbow waterfalls give it a warm, welcoming appearance. Pinkie Pie and Applejack peddle faster and the Griffin Chaser ascends to the uppermost level where Rainbow Dash’s room is. The balcony is conveniently wide open, giving both mares a clear line of sight into Rainbow Dash’s messy room. They can see the pegasus’s body rise and fall underneath her Wonderbolt blanket with each snore; but her tail is poking out from under the blanket, occasionally twitching with a sleepy giggle.

“Sure, I can do both,” says Rainbow Dash sleepily, followed closely by a yawn and her shifting her position.

Pinkie Pie snickers while Applejack shivers and rubs her hooves together to try to get warmed.

“I wonder what she’s dreaming about,” giggles Pinkie Pie.

“Can we hurry this up? It’s kinda chilly up here,” says Applejack, getting a sudden spasm to shake the shivers away a second later.

“Sure thing, Jackie! Do you have the lasso ready?”

Applejack gets a devilish smile and unclips her rope from the side of the Griffin Chaser.

“Ah got it right here,” she says with a small bit of cruel playfulness in her tone.

“Excellent,” says Pinkie Pie, matching her farming friend’s tone. She pulls out a megaphone, turns it on to the maximum volume and aims it at Rainbow Dash. “GOOD MORNING RAINBOW DASH!!!”

Rainbow Dash screams and flails under her covers until she’s standing upright on her bed; her mane and tail are plagued with the effects of early morning bed-head, and her wings are outstretched from the surprise of Pinkie Pie’s obnoxious morning greeting. Rainbow Dash’s eyes dart around the room until they focus on the two mares on the Griffin Chaser, then her eyes turn to angry slits and she buries herself under her covers in such a way that it looks like a mole digging into the dirt.

“Way to ruin my nap, you guys,” growls Rainbow Dash from under the sanctuary of her covers.

“BUT DASHIE, TODAY IS A VERY SPECIAL DAY AND WE NEED YOU ASAP!!!” says Pinkie Pie, the determination to get Rainbow Dash matching her volume.

“Go away!”

Pinkie Pie sighs and puts the megaphone away, then she looks at Applejack and says: “Do it.”

“One grouchy pegasus comin’ up!”

Applejack carefully twirls her lasso so that it doesn’t get caught in the propellers, then she skillfully throws it over Pinkie Pie’s head, again being careful not to get it caught in the Griffin Chaser’s propellers, and it goes around Rainbow Dash’s tail. With one quick tug, the lasso tightens around the colorful tail and Rainbow Dash is yanked out of her bed and dragged across the floor. Rainbow Dash swears and tries to grab anything her hooves can get a hold of before remembering she has the gift of flight. She tries to fly away, but the rope is on her good and tight and is quickly subdued by Applejack and Pinkie Pie through an airborne hogtie.

“Let me go!” orders Rainbow Dash, ferally thrashing in her bondage. They have to tie her to the Griffin Chaser since her resisting is making it hard for Applejack to hold her and help pilot the vehicle. Rainbow Dash screams and calls for help, causing some of the ponies down below to look up and wave with giant smiles on their faces. One of which was teenage Scootaloo; she finally got her cutie mark, which is helmet on a flaming wheel. “Scootaloo, get help! I’m being kidnapped!”

“Hi Rainbow Dash!” hollers Scootaloo, waving enthusiastically to the cyan pegasus.

“Get help!” cries Rainbow Dash desperately. “Help!”

Scootaloo gallops down the road. “See ya around, Dash, I’m late for practice!”

“No, don’t go to practice! Get help!”

It takes them another few minutes to reach the big, red barn that serves as a staple for Sweet Apple Acres; the whole time having to deal with Rainbow Dash’s protests and threats. The Griffin Chaser lands in front of the barn and Applejack unties Rainbow Dash just enough so that they can take her off of the aerial vehicle, then Applejack carries her to the barn and pushes the door open while Pinkie Pie locks her prized possession to a tree. Once she’s inside she closes the door and the whole barn becomes pitch black.

“What’s going on here!” demands Rainbow Dash.

“Will ya just relax, already,” says Applejack irritably.

“Relax? Relax! I was kidnapped by you lunatics at only Celestia knows what time!”

“But Dashie, we had to become lunatics so that way we can congratulate you on your latest achievement!” says Pinkie Pie while carefully searching the darkness for her angry friend,

“And what achievement is that?”

Suddenly, the barn is lit up by colorful flashes of light that match Rainbow Dash’s vibrant color scheme and confetti falls from the ceiling like raindrops in a storm. The light show illuminates the tables of punch, cider, and pastries like cakes, cupcakes and cookies as well as wafers with bowls of pudding next to them.

“SURPRISE!!!” shouts all of her friends and a dozen extra guests from Weather Patrol and around town.

Rainbow Dash screams and backpedals from where she was, but since she’s still tied up in rope, she ends up tripping over herself and lands on her back with an “Oof”. Applejack chuckles nervously and quickly apologizes before undoing her work. Once Rainbow Dash is free she scrambles to her feet and is about to chew them out for scaring her, but her scowl turns into a wide eyed “Oh my gosh” look when she sees the giant banner that says: “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DASHIE!”.

Twilight walks up to the three with the cake levitating in front of her, smiling brightly too. The cake is huge and covered in blue frosting with lightning bolts all along the sides. There is also a cluster of lit candles on the top.

“Happy birthday, Rainbow Dash,” says Twilight happily. “Ready to blow out your candles?”

“Today’s my birthday?” asks Rainbow Dash while cocking her head in confusion.

“Uh, yeah. Don’t tell me you forgot about your birthday.”

“Well, technically today isn’t Dashie’s birthday since she was born on a day that only shows up on leap years,” says Pinkie Pie matter-of-factly. Everyone goes silent and stares at her, and her response is a big smile and a hug for the birthday mare. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate your birthday!”

“Um, thanks. But you said you had to congratulate me on my latest achievement, and-”

“Turning another year older is an achievement.”

Rarity steps forward, saying: “But keep in mind that it also brings you one year closer to getting gray hair. Luckily for you, I can get you great products that will help you keep your magnificent colors.”

Rainbow Dash frowns and says: “Gee, thanks.” while subtly inspecting her mane for any signs of fading. Thankfully it was just Rarity being Rarity.

Twilight laughs nervously and uses her magic to use a rag to wipe sweat off of her face; she then pushes the cake closer to Rainbow Dash. “Can you please blow out the candles, now. The wax is getting all over the frosting.”

Rainbow Dash takes a deep breath and blows out all but one candle, which she blows out a split second later, hoping that no one saw that blunder. The ponies cheer and stomp the ground in applause, and Pinkie Pie stands on her hind legs and shouts: “LET’S PARTY!”

The guests cheer once more and the celebration goes in full swing. The music is blaring so loud that ponies have to shout just to hear each other speak, the food and drinks quickly vanishes in the stomachs of the guests, and everyone is generally happy.

Pinkie Pie does her part in the party, such as dancing with random guests, refilling glasses out of the blue, and “accidentally” pushing Fluttershy into in Big Mac when she was walking by him. The depressed, monster sized stallion was helping himself with some cider in a lonely seat and when Pinkie Pie’s so called mistake made the shy pegasus practically fall on his lap they both blushed and pulled off a classic romance movie scene where it’s love at first sight. When that ordeal was taken care of, Pinkie Pie made her way to Rainbow Dash.

“So, Dashie, how are ya liking the party?” asks Pinkie Pie, the enthusiasm in her tone is enough to make anyone around her smile. Anyone but Rainbow Dash, that is.

“It’s good,” says Rainbow Dash, forcing herself to smile, but Pinkie Pie can hear the sadness in her voice.

Pinkie Pie’s smile fades away and she wraps her hoof around her best friend in a sympathetic hug. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Wonderbolts?”

“Haven’t responded yet.” Rainbow Dash clenches her teeth and looks down at the floor to hide her aggravation. “It’s the same thing every year. Whenever I go to try out, something either happens where they get knocked out, my wing gets broken, they all mysteriously get food poisoning, or they find somepony ‘better’. Maybe I dreamed too big or something.” Pinkie Pie hands Rainbow Dash a mug of Applejack’s famous cider, and the birthday mare chugs it all down in a matter of seconds. Pinkie Pie is quick to refill it while Rainbow Dash continues with her depressing chatter. “I mean I just look around and-” Pinkie Pie hands her the refilled mug. “Thanks. I look around what do I see? Everypony else having their whole world handed to them on a silver platter. Applejack’s farm and the Cakes’ are growing into even bigger businesses. Rarity has shops and deals popping up left and right. Twilight’s got her own little whatever in the royal court because of her fantastic connections. Fluttershy has her vet now. And what do I get?” Rainbow Dash chugs the cider in one sitting and wipers her mouth of the leftover foam. “The same old crap, just a different night. Is it seriously too much to ask to join the Wonderbolts? I mean I’ve been training my whole life for them and I’ve been going to their tryouts every chance I could! And I get rejected. Every. Single. Time!”

Despite Rainbow Dash being close to tears, Pinkie Pie still smiles, and in a provoking tone, she says: “So, all you’re asking for is some Wonderbolt love?”

Rainbow Dash nods, unaware of Pinkie Pie’s tone or smile, and says: “Yeah, but I guess it’s too much to ask for, though.”

Pinkie Pie giggles, hugs her best friend in a loving embrace and points at the barn door. “Well, Dashie, it’s as the old saying goes: ‘Ask and you shall receive’.”

And right on queue, the door flings open theatrically and Scootaloo walks in with pride radiating off of her as she escorts two very important pegasi wearing military uniforms. Soarin and Spitfire. The music grinds to a halt, making a comical scratching sound, and all eyes fall on the trio as they walk inside. The Wonderbolts nod politely at the guests, and Soarin slows down for a moment when he spots a freshly baked apple pie, but Spitfire nudging him with her wing brings him back up to speed. Rainbow Dash’s eyes become dilated from all the positive and hopeful feelings that are taking over her whole body, and when the three pegasi are in front of her, her tongue decided now was a great time to stop working so she can only sweat and shake in her spot.

“Here she is, the one and only Rainbow Dash,” says Scootaloo proudly while flashing a toothy grin and pointing at the subject.

Soarin reaches into his side pocket and pulls out an envelope with the Wonderbolt insignia on it and hands it to Rainbow Dash. It takes Pinkie Pie nudging Rainbow Dash in the side for her muscles too unlock, and the pegasus is quick to take the letter from Soarin with her mouth. Her cheeks burn red from being so close to him and for having their mouths so close together, and her blush doesn’t go unnoticed; Spitfire grins and winks at her while Soarin shifts his gaze nervously, also flushing a little.

Once Rainbow Dash is holding the envelope, Soarin says with a huge, albeit nervous, smile: “Welcome to the Wonderbolts, Rainbow Dash.”

The crowd bursts into a deafening cheer and applause and Rainbow Dash’s eyes and smile widen to impossible levels and she cries tears of joy. In fact, she’s so happy that she faints, and when she hits the ground-

[[[[O]]]]

A piercing slap goes across Pinkie Pie’s face, waking her up completely, and she blinks the daze away and focuses her eyes on the group of upside down griffins in front of her. Pinkie Pie also feels trickles of blood seep out from her previous injuries and the new scratches on her cheek. She looks down and wants to puke when she sees a puddle of her blood underneath her head.

The griffin that slapped her smirks and turns to Octavia and Winny, saying: “That woke her up.”

Wait. Octavia?

“Octavia?” groans Pinkie Pie.

“Hello, Minty Sprinkles,” says Octavia coldly.

“What’s going on? Who are these guys? And why am I upside down? Where’s Trixie?...” Pinkie Pie looks around, realizing that she’s trapped in a chain cocoon and in a grungy, abandoned warehouse that still has mostly empty racks and random pieces of garbage here and there. “Why-What’s going on?”

“Trixie bled to death an alley, unfortunately. So now it is just me and you,” says Octavia in a tone that sends shivers up Pinkie Pie’s spine. Then she grabs her head and forces her to look at her eyes. “You did what you had to do, remember?”

“Octavia, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” says Pinkie Pie, sniffling and tears mixing with her blood.

“LIAR!”

Octavia’s hoof strike’s Pinkie Pie in the jaw, splitting her lip and more than likely cracking some teeth. Pinkie Pie grunts and awkwardly spits blood out of her mouth as sobs and begs her sister to listen.

“Octavia, please!”

Octavia strikes her again, this time Pinkie Pie starts spinning, and the more her world spins the stronger her need to puke becomes. And she does puke out a bloody mess, and a tooth falls loose too, making the griffins laugh and taunt her.

“She trusted you!” screams Octavia.

“Octavia, please just listen-”

Octavia growls, grabs a metal bar with her hooves and swings them against Pinkie Pie’s side. She cries out in pain as she feels and hears her ribs snap. Pinkie Pie sobs and tries to get Octavia to listen to her through her labored breathing, but she won’t hear any of it.

“She trusted you and you fed her to the timberwolves!” yells Octavia over Pinkie Pie’s desperate begging, and then she turns to the griffins, wiping some of her sweaty mane out of her eyes. “A fitting punishment would be having these griffins beat you to a pulp before I put a bullet in your head.”

The griffins look eager to go along with Octavia’s plan, but Winny steps forward, looking pissed.

“Octavia, that is enough!” barks Winny, “It is bad enough we’re tarnishing griffin honor with this,” Winny motions to Pinkie Pie, “but I refuse to let you use my griffins for something as barbaric as turning a pony into a pinata! Just kill her already so we can go home!”

“Aw, c’mon!” whines a griffin.

Octavia’s eyes narrow, she points at Winny and in a dangerous tone says: “They are not your griffin’s, they are Gilda’s. Also, I am employing you to make Minty Sprinkles suffer for what she did to Pinkie! Now either you let them beat her to a pulp or I’ll pay each griffin separately to do so!”

“Octavia... I’m... I’m...” whimpers Pinkie Pie weakly.

“SHUT UP!” Octavia looks at Winny. “Well?”

Winny ruffles her feathers and flexes her talons, but the prospect of getting paid individually for beating their victim pleases the other griffins to where they eagerly step forward. Winny points at them and barks an order in her native tongue, the griffins stop and one shouts back in their native tongue as well, and soon all the griffins are having a massive argument. Them versus Winny. The argument only stops when Lock limps in with his agents, blood caked on his face and neck.

“The area has been secured, nopony will be able to sneak up on us,” says Lock, then he glares daggers at Pinkie Pie. “Not that anypony is coming for you anyway.”

“Agent Key, your services are no longer required, I’ll give you the bits tomorrow,” says Octavia, casting a quick hateful glance at Pinkie Pie.

“My business has yet to conclude with this pony, and she will not become a bucking bag until I’m finished with her,” says Lock while approaching Pinkie Pie with his escorts trailing him. “So, Minty Sprinkles, it looks like tonight me and Director Brisk Wind will finally be getting the answers we seek.” Lock uses his magic to lift Octavia away and set her behind Winny. When he’s directly in front of Pinkie Pie his eyes lock onto hers and kneels down so that his horn is touching her bloody forehead. “You’re like a ghost, finding anything on you was nearly impossible, but now you’re here and I can finally figure out who you are before Octavia has her revenge.”

Pinkie Pie’s only response is a heavy, shaky sigh of defeat. She can barely understand what anyone is saying, and her Pinkie Senses seem to be the only things working properly. Her whole body is tingling and shaking, and her eyes keep drifting to the different weapons and potential weak spots for the targets. She uses what little energy she has left to strain her neck to look up. Pinkie Pie notices that they chose a very poor spot to hang her in, the chains are wrapped around a rusted steel beam that is poorly connected to the ceiling. Pinkie Pie grunts and tries to ignore Lock’s speech as she weakly wiggles and swings in her cocoon, hoping that she could just wiggle it enough to break free.

“So now you won’t talk? That is fine, I do not need to hear you to figure out who who you are,” says Lock, his horns sprouting a small orb at the tip that sends pinpricks up Pinkie Pie’s spine and around her forehead.

A small beam shoots out of Lock’s horn, straight into Pinkie Pie’s forehead, blinding her and filling her with immense pain. It feels like someone took a chisel and hammered it into her brain and then shot shards of ice into it to be blended. Pinkie Pie screams and thrashes and sees everything from her life go in rewind from today all the way back to the night she died.

===

Pinkie Pie groaned and opened her eyes just in time to see a giant fireball roll out from the construction site, launching burning debris and equipment all over the place. Pinkie Pie’s eyes widen when she saw a burning table saw and wooden beams fall towards her. She rolled out of the way just in time to avoid getting splattered. The burning splinters flew in every direction upon impact and the blade from the table saw bounced past her, almost slicing her leg. Then she saw Trixie fly backwards, out of the construction site, and land on the ground with a sickly crunch.

At first Pinkie Pie thought she had died, but when Trixie got up, much to her amazement, she saw that the unicorn’s eyes were glowing. Then the construction site collapsed and Pinkie Pie was knocked off of her feet as a burning cloud of dust and debris engulfed her.

~~~~~~~~~~

She woke up a few minutes later to what sounded like artillery shells going off and when she clawed her way out of the rubble with an intense pain in her back, she saw bright flashes of light dot the night sky, just barely past the rooftops. Every now and then there would be a flash lightning or a beam of fire with a small explosion at the end. Pinkie Pie’s ears drooped at the horrendous scene and when terrified ponies galloped past her, screaming, she climbed out of her rubble prison and slid to the ground. Or, more accurately, slipped and bounced towards the ground like a fleshy slinky. When she landed on the ground, face first, she groaned and pushed herself to her feet and watched the blood drip from her body in morbid fascination for a few seconds before a shockwave from a powerful, colorful explosion blew her backwards, into the rubble. She winced painfully as she slumped to the ground, some of her tangly hair getting yanked out in the process, and when she got back up, she shook her head in disbelief.

“What have I done?” she said, her voice cracking and tears pouring down her cheeks and mixing with the blood flowing from her head injury.

She stared at the fire and listened to the screams and cries as the dust kicked up from the explosion lingers in the sky. When she got up to leave, an intense, sharp pain in her back brought her to collapse to the ground, sobbing, and making her puffy mane and tail deflate. After what seemed like an eternity of painful waiting, she bit back her tears, forced herself to stand, despite the agonizing protests from her whole body, and she limped towards away with her eyes focused on the Royal Palace.

===

Lock gasps and pulls away. Both he and Pinkie Pie are breathing heavily; Pinkie Pie is sweating and trembling, eyes closed and her body ready to shut down at any moment. Lock, on the other hand, is surprised by what he saw; his eyes are the size of dinner plates and his heavy breathing is due to shock. He wipes the sweat from his mane and stares at Pinkie Pie, feeling something he hasn’t felt in a long time. Remorse.

“Impossible,” whispers Lock.

“What did you see?” asks Octavia. Lock is too shocked to speak, which only makes Octavia all the more impatient. “What did you see!”

Lock swallows some spit and looks at Octavia, but before he can answer all the lights go out, blanketing the whole building in darkness. The agents get into a defensive position, horns glowing and levitating pistols and SMGs, and Winny shouts orders to the griffins while they cock their battle saddles and call each other to see if they’re okay.

There is an eerie silence that fall on the warehouse and Pinkie Pie, now as alert as her battered body can be, strains her eyes to see what’s going on. The agents look nervous and Lock, Winny, and Octavia inch closer together as Lock raises a pistol with his magic and Winny arms her battle saddle. As the silences becomes more intense the voices become nervous; Pinkie Pie swears she can hear individual heartbeats and fluttering wings. Suddenly there is a pained squawk and something metallic and fleshy crashes to the ground. All the griffins and agents swear and start shooting blindly in the dark, their muzzle flashes acting like flickers of sunlight that illuminate parts of their body.

Pinkie Pie gets a burst of adrenaline and starts shaking in her chains, desperately trying to get them loose while the nightmarish flickers, whizzing bullets and tracers, and painful screams send her senses on overload. When she does manage to break free she lands in her blood on her head, disorienting everything with a blurry, double vision and a ringing in her ears. Pinkie Pie also feels a spike in pain on her side and neck, and as she struggles to free herself from the chains, she coughs out a glob of blood, which feels like another stab to her side. When the chains are off she wipes the blood and puke off of her mouth with a shaky hoof and hobbles towards her targets. Through her blurry vision she can barely see the silhouettes of griffins and unicorns falling one by one.

They are getting knocked off of their feet or out of the air and falling to the ground or on objects with bone crushing velocity by a mysterious, winged pony. The barrage of gunfire mixed with agonizing screams and bullets ricocheting off of metal or breaking off pieces of the walls make Pinkie Pie’s heart race and her breathing even more painful as she hyperventilates. But when she sees her three targets, pain and fear disappear. All that remains is rage.

The battered pony’s hobbling turns to a walk, and from a walk, to a trot. And soon, in spite of all her body’s demands to tell her to lay down and rest... she charges. If she wasn’t nearly dead she’d be screaming in rage at the trio next to her. She has been betrayed again! No one listened to her! No one tried to listen to her! Just like when she tried to explain her gift to Twilight, or with the parasprite infestation, or when she tried to tell them about what happened to Spike. Now her own sister is trying to kill her and the ponies that were supposed to protect Trixie murdered her!

Unforgivable!

Her mane and tail deflate, her eyes shrink to that of pinpricks and her vision turns blood red as she gets a crazed, bloodthirsty smile and maniacal laugh. It is time to punish some bad ponies and griffins. It is time for Pinkamena to come out and play.

Winny and Lock are too distracted to see or hear her charge them, but Octavia sees Pinkamena leap towards them. Octavia screams and makes a mad dash from the psychotic pony and when Lock turns, he swears and turns his weapon towards her.

Before Lock lock fire his pistol Pinkamena jabs the base of his horn with enough power to shatter it. His painful scream causes Winny to turn his head just in time to see Pinkamena buck him in the chest, sending him crashing into, and knocking over, a rack of old materials. Winny tries to shoot her, but the crazed pony somehow avoids most of the bullets and goes to destroy her beak with a single punch. Winny clutches her beak, sobbing, and before she can hit the ground, she’s bucked into the wall. After impacting the wall, she falls to the ground, completely still and silent. Then a bullet tears into Pinkamena’s shoulder and she grins maniacally at the source, which is Lock; he’s barely standing from how much he’s trembling in pain and fear and he has his pistol in his mouth.

Pinkamena laughs. “Oh, does the little pony wanna play!?”

She charges him again and to Lock’s horror, when he pulls the trigger all there is, is an ominous click.

Lock pales and Pinkamena uppercuts him in the jaw at the expense of an intense burning pain in her shoulder that she shrugs off with ease. She cackles as she hears his teeth shatter and he falls to the ground, mouth filled with blood and destroyed teeth. Pinkamena jumps on top of him and starts pummeling him, despite his best efforts to fend her off.

“You’ve been a bad pony!”

She punches him across the face, shattering his jaw.

“You were mean to me!”

Another punch to the face; this time right in the eye. She can hear his bones crack around the eye socket and feel his eye break.

“Just like Twilight!”

She grabs the sides of the head and slams it down on the pavement with a sickening crack. He weakly pushes his hoof against her head while making a begging gurgling noise.

“And Rarity!”

She slams it down again; his hoof drops and the pupil to his good eye expands in shock.

“And Applejack!”

She slams his head down again and he stops moving and breathing, and the life leaves his remaining eye.

“And sweet ole Tia!”

BANG!

Pinkamena is knocked backwards as a searing hot objects tears through her. She lands on her back with a thud and gasps for air. She can hear the gunfire and squawking fading away; in fact, everything is fading away. Her hearing. Her vision. Her sense of touch... And warmth. The only thing that she seems to hear is her heartbeats and ragged breathing. She presses her hoof on the area where she was shot and holds it up to her face, giggling by what’s she’s seeing. Her blood, lots of her blood, on her hoof.

Octavia walks besides her with a pistol in her mouth and looks down at Pinkamena, trembling from fear, but still determined to finish her off.

Pinkamena chuckles psychotically and painfully. “S-Sa-So thi-this is-this is how it ends, huh?” She removes her wig with her bloodsoaked hoof, to reveal her now flat, dark pink mane, and she cackles. “Go on, Inkie, d-do it! Pull the-pull that trigger!”

It takes Octavia a moment to realize what she had done, but when she does, she feels her whole world crash and burn around her from the guilt of her crime.

===

A young Octavia, no older than eight years old, was standing on top of a pile of old books, stretching her hoof out towards a yearbook belonging to her parents. She was not really interested in the pictures of her parents, per se, though they are nice to look at, she was more interested in seeing the marching band. She loved all of the instruments they played and the uniforms they were wearing. Every time she saw those pictures she got a burst of curiosity and her imagination ran wild with all the beautiful music that can be created with such fine instruments.

While Octavia stretched her hoof out to the limit, even standing on the tip of her hind legs, she grit her teeth and urged herself to go just a bit further. Her outstretched hoof touched the end of the year book and she beamed.

Success!

Then she suddenly lost her balance and she wobbled in place, whimpering, for a few seconds before everything came crashing down. The middle books in the stack she’s standing on popped out, making her fall to the ground and dragging the yearbook with it. The yearbook bounced off of her head, making her wince and rub the point of impact tenderly.

Failure.

As Octavia rubbed her sore head, she looked at the yearbook and sees that it opened up to a page of a mare playing a cello. At first she was too captivated by the beautiful instrument to notice that her hoof was rubbing against something sticky, but when she does realize it, she froze. Octavia started fearing the worst. Had her skull split open? Was she rubbing her brain? Is she bleeding black?

She stared at the black stuff stuck on her hoof, confused as to what it is. Then she sees a spilled inkwell lying on the ground in front of her, staining the worn floorboards with the sticky, black liquid. Octavia’s eyes teared up as she thinks about the spanking she’ll get for making such a mess. In an attempt to keep her flank safe, she tossed the empty container in the garbage can and used the crumbled paper from the said garbage can to soak up the menace staining the floor. It is right at that time Pinkie Pie bounced in, singing one of her freakishly happy songs, but Octavia was cutting her some slack since she’s the first of the three to get her cutie mark.

“Hey, Tavi!” giggled Pinkie Pie. “Whatcha doing?”

“Nothing!” blurted Octavia.

She slammed herself down on the paper to conceal the mess, making Pinkie Pie stop and look at her curiously. Then she smiled devilishly and pointed at her.

“You got a little something on your face there,” said Pinkie Pie in a sinister, playful tone.

Octavia brought her hoof up to her face to feel it, and realized that she’s been tricked by her sister! Now her inked hoof had left a large, inky hoofprint on her cheek. She grew red around the face and trembled with anger.

“That was mean!” cried Octavia.

“I’m so telling daddy that you made a big mess,” giggled Pinkie Pie.

“No! Please don’t tell! He’ll spank me!”

“Maybe he’ll change your name to ‘Inkie’. That’d be so cool! Our names would rhyme! Pinkie-Inkie-Pinkie-Inkie-Pinkie-Inkie-”

And on and on Pinkie Pie went, repeating “Pinkie-Inkie” over and over again as she jumped around her sister, ignoring her sister’s begging and crying. Then her father walked in, looking tired and angry.

“What is going on here?” growled their father; then he sees Octavia covered in ink and looked as though he’s about to blow a vessel. “And what the buck happened to you, Octavia!”

Octavia pointed an accusing hoof at Pinkie Pie.

“Pinkie threw ink on my face!” accused Octavia.

Pinkie Pie stopped jumping and chanting and glared at her sister as her mane and tail deflate.

“Did not!” cried Pinkie Pie defensively.

“Did to!” snapped Octavia.

“Did not!”

“Did to!”

“Both of you are grounded!” yelled her father with a stomp of his hoof.

The sisters groaned and looked down, sniffling, in perfect harmony.

===

Octavia’s jaw drops and she slumps to the floor, crying and covering her mouth with her hoof, and hardly able to talk with the suffocation her crying is bringing her.

“What’s the matter, huh? You-You wanted Minty and you-you got-you Minty! Now pull the trigger!”

Octavia sobs and presses her hooves on top of the injury she inflicted on her sister and cries over Pinkamena’s insane laughter. “Pinkie, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Please for-”

“No!” cries Rainbow Dash.

Before Octavia can react, Rainbow Dash tackles her to the ground from the air and they roll over each other, and when Rainbow Dash gets the upper hoof, it all ends for Octavia. Pinkamena can hear Rainbow Dash ruthlessly beat Octavia to a pulp while Octavia sobs and screams “I’m sorry!” over the crunches of hooves breaking bones.

“So much... blood,” chuckles Pinkamena weakly, stretching out her hoof towards her eyes, ignoring her sister’s rapidly weakening and increasingly more painful screams. “Looks like... Laughter is really... dying... this time.”

Pinkamena snickers and her eyes focus on her bloody hoof without a care in the world. Everyone dies eventually so she sees no point in resisting. Might as well smile in the face of death.

Octavia, now barely audible, whimpers: “Please-”

Rainbow Dash brings her hooves down on Octavia with one final sickening crunching sound and she falls silent. Pinkamena grins as she extends her hoof like an invitation to be helped up to the strange being in front of her. Rainbow Dash turns and runs next to Pinkamena, completely unaware of what she’s reaching for as Octavia lies motionless on the ground.

“It’s okay, Pinkie, I gotcha,” sniffles Rainbow Dash while carefully embracing Pinkamena. “Please don’t go. Stay with me.”

Before Pinkamena’s vision is in almost total darkness and she feels Rainbow Dash grab her like how a mother would grab her injured child, and hears her crying before blacking out completely.

“Stay with me. Please.”

===

Pinkie Pie hugged Octavia outside the Rock Town Train Station, both of them were crying softly and nuzzling each other one last time before Octavia set off for the Royal Academy of Music. Pinkie Pie released her sister so she can hug her parents and other sister. Her mother practically squeezed the life out of her while her father gave her a soft hug before handing her her suitcase and cello. Her other sister also gave a halfhearted hug just because she wants to look tough.

“Hey, we’re leaving in two minutes!” called the conductor to the nearest door pony.

The message was relayed by the ponies at the train doors and Octavia smiled nervously at her family while a unicorn used her magic to pack Octavia’s luggage in the storage cart.

“Well, this is it, I guess,” sniffled Octavia, the overwhelming, life changing event bringing fresh tears to her eyes.

Pinkie Pie nodded, putting on a brave smile. “Just don’t forget about us simple ponies, Inkie.”

Octavia chuckled, and wiped her eyes before giving Pinkie Pie one last hug.

“You know that’ll never happen,” said Octavia, her voice cracking.

“Pinkie Promise?”

“Pinkie Promise.”

“Let me hear you say it.”

Octavia giggled and took a deep breath before reciting:

“Cross my heart

Hope to fly

Stick a cupcake in my eye.”

She even did the crossing heart, flapping hooves, and sticking a hoof to her eye to solidify her promise. Both sisters laughed and her normally stoic father and sister couldn’t help but crack a smile while their mother cried hysterically about how cute that was.

Pinkie Pie released Octavia, saying: “I’ll hold you to it. Now go on and show those sticks in the mud how to really play music.”

Octavia smiled, did one last round of hugs, and barely made it on the train before the door closed. A moment later she poked her head out the window and waved goodbye to her family as the train drove past them. Pinkie Pie waved and stayed on the loading area until the train was out of view. When it disappeared into the sunset, her puffy mane and tail deflated and she sat on the floor, sniffling and eyes glistening with tears.

“Goodbye, Octavia.”

===

~~~~~~~~~~

A couple of hours after the deadly brawl Winny groans and pushes herself to her feet. Her whole body is aching and when she tries to move her beak she immediately screams, clutches it tight and falls to the ground sobbing. She feels the pieces of her beak get pushed down by her talons, making her cry even harder and kick her legs wildly. After what seems like an eternity of crying and attempts to move, she is finally able to limp towards the exit. But she trips over something and falls to the ground in a warm, sticky puddle. She’s able to fall on her shoulder to prevent more damage to her beak, but she starts trembling when she realizes that she fell in blood and that the body she tripped over belongs to Octavia’s. Winny whimpers and scrambles backwards, only to slide into more blood and trip over another body. This one is Lock, or at least it looks like Lock.

Winny starts hyperventilating and limps as fast as she can towards the exit, being sure to keep her destroyed beak clamped with her talon. She goes through the warehouse blind, tripping over bodies occasionally. She doesn’t know if they are dead or not, and right now she doesn’t care, she just needs to get out and warn Gilda about what happened. She pushes against the door and is greeted by the cool night air, and the sound of a safety clicking off.

Winny freezes in her tracks and stares at a group of ponies wearing armored body suits painted black with a red wrench inside a lightning bolt on her vest. There is one familiar unicorn mare standing in the front of the crowd next to a zebra buck, levitating a revolver aimed at the griffin’s head. Winny closes her eyes, sobs quietly and slumps to the ground. She knows it’s all over.

A few seconds of heavy silence later, Winny opens her eyes to look at the mare in front of her and stands up, then reluctantly lowers her talon so her final moment will be her standing like a proper, proud griffin.

“Ja-Just kn-know... that Ah-I’m sorry... for everything,” says Winny in a pained whimper; the talking alone brings more tears in her eyes and she almost brings her talon up to give her one last bit of comfort before the inevitable.

“‘Sorry’ won’t bring her back,” says Lyra, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Winny nods in understanding and when Lyra pulls the trigger and the bullet goes through Winny’s skull and her blood, brain, and bone splatter on the door behind her. Winny slumps to the ground, and Lyra sighs heavily and blinks tears out of her eyes before holstering her pistol. Her lips tremble as she looks at the lifeless body of the one who murdered her lifelong friend. After what she had done seeps in, her legs give out and she falls to the ground crying in her hooves.

Almost immediately she feels a comforting hoof go on her shoulder, but she doesn’t look up, she keeps her eyes shut tight and trembles at the thought of what she had just become in not even a second’s time. She can hear other sets of hooves carefully go past her and into the warehouse; methodic gunshots follow seconds later.

“Is-Is-This is for life, right?” says Lyra softly while wiping her nose. Another gunshot makes her cringe, prompting the hoof to give her a light, comforting rub on her shoulder.

“It is,” says the zebra. “But you did good. Roar Shock will be proud of you. Very proud.”

Arc 2- 04- Day One of the Rest of Her Life -EDITED-

Arc 2- 11 (Looming War)

“Society goes through many phases, how fast they go through these phases can never be determined except by the will and courage of its citizens. Society is born from spiritual faith. They rise out of the bondage of their slave masters and embrace the common faith of the land to form a unified force that holds the common good on the highest pedestal. Out of the spiritual faith comes the courage to do what is right by their brothers and sisters, and the courage to defend their homes and neighbors from those that threaten them; whether it be foreign or domestic. From their courage comes liberty, something that is more valued than spiritual faith. Liberty brings the ability to have agency over ones own lives, and with that comes the spark of responsibility and a means of defense against those who wish to repress the lives of the commoner. From liberty comes prosperity, as those who wish to lead their own lives without the shackles of predestiny gives those the courage to build vast wealth using the power of free enterprise to leave for their families and friends and for the commoner to use to better their lives. However, once a civilization becomes wealthy, it loses ambition, it becomes complacent as they do not feel the need to strive for a higher level. From their complacency comes apathy, which leads to the corruption of all that the civilization has been founded on. They will twist their morals and hide behind lies claiming to be truths if it means not having to work or fight, for it would destroy the comforting lives their parents have left for them. With this apathy, the sense of community is lost. No one will believe in their neighbor, or their spiritual foundation, rather they will put their faith into the corrupted state they have built out of their apathy. From their dependance of the state will come the loss of what made the civilization great. Any means of freedom will be twisted to that of free food, free homes, free lives, but at the cost of predestiny. Those who dare to fight will be deemed crazy and become an enemy of the established order, and will be brought to madness. From their madness will come blind rage fueled by the hatred of the state and anyone who supports it. Their rage will bring forth terrible actions, bringing the suppressed to support the tyrannical state in exchange for protection, thus solidifying the state of slavery. From the ashes of slavery freedom is born. From the ashes it will return.”

-The Lunar Republic, Chapter XXI “The Cycle of Freedom”

++++++++++

Brisk Wind stares at the photos given to here at the warehouse crime scene; a dozen of her agents... dead. A dozen griffins... dead. Octavia... dead. And Lock... dead. Bringing it up to twenty six people dead in the old Flim Flam Cider Warehouse. The pictures are gruesome, all of the victims were beaten and then shot, but even if they weren’t shot there is a good chance they would’ve died from their other injuries. She had heard that Rainbow Dash had arrived, screaming for help at the Canterlot Royal Hospital with Minty Sprinkles bleeding to death in her hooves. But she highly doubts that Rainbow Dash could take out a two dozen people; especially if half of them are griffins. It is obvious that Rainbow Dash had help, and Brisk Wind had called Major Fuller as soon as she heard about Rainbow Dash and informed him of what she had done.

When she looks at the mess in the pictures her vision turns red as she wants to make those responsible suffer, especially for what they did to Lock. He got the worst of it and she almost puked when she saw his once beautiful face destroyed beyond recognition. His horn had been completely destroyed, parts of his skull were poking out, and then someone had the audacity to shoot him in the head even though it was quite clear he was dead. Whoever was responsible for the massacre was obviously soulless. But not only is she worried about losing her top agent, she’s worried by what Gilda would do. She lost her lieutenant and over twenty of her griffins. Then there’s Shining Armor, she knows he’ll be poking his head in her business.

Brisk Wind sniffles and closes the folder with all the crime scene photos and then she looks at the orphanage photo. She scowls and pushes it in the garbage can, then she slides out of her chair and looks at all those working on writing their letters, organizing and doing other boring paper pushing jobs. After observing her workers for a minute she goes back to her desk and stares off into space, wishing she had a clock or something to look at.

“Sorry Lock,” she says quietly.

Her ears perk when she hears a knock on the door, and when she looks up she sees nothing but blinds covering her office door window. She quickly straightens herself out and hides the files before looking at the door again.

“Door’s open,” says Brisk Wind with a wave of her hoof and reclines coolly in her seat. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

“Oh really?” asks Fancypants rhetorically with a rude tone as he walks inside the pegasus’s office. “I guess that means you have a fantastic explanation as to what the hay happened!”

Fancypants slams the door shut and Brisk Wind frowns and ruffles her feathers as she stands up, but Fancypants doesn’t falter as he stomps towards her desk.

“You were not who I was expecting,” says Brisk Wind coldly.

“Too bad, you still have a lot of explaining to do,” says Fancypants, his tone matching hers.

“I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

“You come to me for help with your program, then you harass one of my employees to where she leaves in tears, and then she goes missing after her apartment is shot up by your agents! That warrants for an explanation!”

“Who said-”

“Do not take me as a fool, Director. Where is she.”

Brisk Wind exhales and approaches Fancypants and has to crane her neck slightly to look at his eyes. Her eyes narrow and she pokes him in the chest hard enough to make him stumble back a bit.

“Let’s get something straight here, Fancypants, you work for me. I will not be questioned on what I do, especially by somepony like you.”

“Brisk Wind, I swear to Celestia if you did anything to Trixie I’ll-”

“You’ll do what? End me?” Brisk Wind snickers and walks back to her table, regaining her proud demeanor as she flaps her wings slightly and gives her tail a quick flick. “Fancypants, you are one of the few I actually like. It would be tragic if I had to bring you in for something you tried so hard to bury. Your reputation, your marriage, your friendships, all destroyed with one simple revelation.”

Fancypants pales and Brisk Wind grins as she sits down at her chair. As she stares at him with that evil smile of hers, he starts shifting in his spot uneasily and sweating nervously.

“What are you talking about?”

“Just because you run away from your past doesn’t mean its no longer there.” Brisk Wind ducks down behind her desk, opens up her safe, and pulls out Fancypants’s file. “It would be a shame if one of the more popular citizens of Equestria was arrested for being a muscle for Eclipse.”

Fancypants growls and points at Brisk Wind threateningly. “You told me I was cleared of that!”

Brisk Wind sighs dramatically. “Look, I’m not really in the mood for your thespian-y drama. Why would I clear you of your wrongdoings when I can hold them over your head, just in case something like this happened? I had thought I wouldn’t have to resort to such measures, but I was wrong.”

Fancypants’s jaw tightens as he scuffs his hoof against the floor, but Brisk Wind shows no signs of intimidation.

“You work for me, Fancypants, not for yourself or anypony else. Just. Me. Now there will be no more questions regarding Trixie or my activities or I will destroy you. Clear?”

Fancypants glares at Brisk Wind for a few more seconds before letting out a heavy sigh and leaving, slamming the door shut on his way out. When Brisk Wind hears Fancypants’s hoof-steps fade away her smile disappears and she rubs her temple.

“This is going to be a bad day,” grumbles Brisk Wind.

Then there is a dinging of a bell. Brisk Wind grumbles and pushes a hidden button on her desk and a communications contraption rises out of the floor. It is large enough so that a pony can sit or stand in front of it comfortably, and it has a headset hanging on the side on a little hook, a wire that disappears into the floor, and a dial with numbers on it that has a pedal used to select the numbers. Brisk Wind puts on the headset, still mumbling to herself.

“Brisk Wind.”

“Our partnership is through,” growls Gilda on the other end.

Brisk Wind’s blood boils in a matter of seconds and she clenches her teeth while ruffling her feathers.

“I told you never to call me on this number,” says Brisk Wind in a low, yet very angry and dangerous tone.

=**********=

Gilda scoffs and tightens her grip around her phone while looking at the griffins in her office, all of them are arming their battle saddles and other weapons that don’t require a saddle, ready to go and fight the world with pure griffin rage. Then she glances sympathetically at Blair, she still has her face bandaged and she’s shaking as she loads a double barreled shotgun, but she has determination in her eyes. Monte is also sitting next to Blair, sharpening his bladed cards with a whetstone with the help of his magic; unlike the other griffins, he’s actually wearing cheap barding and looks as though he’s about to wet himself.

“Why would I care what a backstabbing bitch like you wants?” sneers Gilda. “I’ve done everything you wanted and yet you still killed my griffins!”

“Let me remind you who you work for, Gilda. You work for me!”

“Not anymore!”

“Gilda, there is still a chance-”

“I’d rather die than spend another day as your slave!”

There is a pause on the other end, then in an eerie, cold tone, Brisk Wind says: “That can easily be arranged.”

=**********=

Brisk Wind slams the headphones back on their hook and pushes the button to retract the phone. When that’s done she pushes another button on her desk. There is a slight crackle before she gets a response from the other end.

“Andromeda,” says the mare on the other end.

“Andromeda, prepare your strike team. We’re bringing in Gilda Grizelda.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Now?”

“Just do it!”

Brisk Wind releases the button and wipes her snout. Then she secures her files in her safe and goes to her wall. She pushes another button and the wall slides open to reveal barding with the EIB insignia on it and a large revolver hanging next to it with a box of ammo beneath it. She puts on the barding, checks the revolver and ammo, stores it in her barding and leaves her office with her wings outstretched, steps heavy and fire in her eyes.

=**********=

Trixie Lulamoon, magician extraordinaire, is enjoying reading a review about her show in the New Yoke Times in the comfort of her easy chair in her show wagon. The wagon itself is nothing too fancy, it has the necessities for a small living quarter and enough space for her to store all of her eye-popping, jaw-dropping, all around entertaining equipment. Even with all of her fireworks, sparklers, smoke bombs, and random knick-knacks she still has enough room to move around comfortably.

Trixie snickers to herself as she reads the review; whoever wrote the review is saying that it was one of the best show’s she (or he) has ever seen. It has everything she’s looking for. The review loved everything about her presentation, especially with the third pony talk, and is hoping for more of her shows in the future. Trixie’s snickering soon turns into a giddy giggle and kicks her legs excitedly as she rereads the article. She then uses her magic to carefully tear the article out and stick it in her stash of other articles praising her for her undeniably amazing achievements. As she peels the page away she notices another article titled “Gilda Grizelda Makes Fluttershy Cry!” with a picture of a griffin with light purple tipped feathers and eyeshadow. She also looks ticked off from all the negative attention.

Trixie shrugs and reads it because she really has nothing better to do, and besides, she needs to rest and what better way to put herself to sleep than by reading a boring article? Dragging the show wagon is strenuous work, even with some magic that lightens the load. However, being a traveling magician does have it perks, such as choosing one’s own schedule and having to pay no property taxes.

Trixie gets bored while reading the newspaper since it seems like a filler article, and is about to toss it aside, but one name stands out. Twilight Sparkle.

Trixie’s eyes narrow and she leans in closer as if bringing her nose to the parchment will make her see Twilight. That mare that stole her future, and always ignored her whenever they passed by each other in parks or in other public areas or played stupid when she asked for help. The mare that got everything handed to her on a silver platter was now getting more attention than ever before. First, taking her spot in Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns; something that the Lulamoon Family fought tooth and hoof to get... something that she blew. Then being personally trained by Celestia herself while she gets stuck with the supposed next best thing. Add in the fact that magic comes so easy to Twilight that she is a literal physical representation of it while Trixie is but a traveling magician. A magician without a mother and a father who disowned her with all of her possessions in her cart.

Trixie scoffs and tosses the newspaper to the ground and folds her hooves across her chest to keep that pompously smug ass named Twilight out of her mind. If any pony deserves to be smug it’s Trixie! She built up everything herself! Nothing was handed to her on a silver platter!

“Stupid Twilight,” grumbles Trixie under her breath.

Then an idea strikes her. She’ll head over to Ponyville and prove to Twilight and all of Equestria that she, the Great and Powerful Trixie Lulamoon, is better than Twilight! She does have raw experience under her star studded cape while Twilight has, what, books? Experience trumps paper, after all. Upstaging Twilight will be her greatest feat, because if she can beat Twilight, then she can prove to everyone that she is the best and not some studious bookworm.

Trixie finds herself giggling at the thought of getting revenge on Twilight after all these years of shadowing her. It is going to be-

There are three unexpected knocks on her cart door that disrupt Trixie’s train of thought. While Trixie glares at her cart entrance, wondering who would disturb her at such an hour, the knocking continues shyly. Finally, after a third round of knocking, she sighs and approaches the door, and when she answers it she sees a worn out mare wearing a cheap saddle. The mare is panting heavily and dripping with sweat, but one thing that surprises Trixie to where she’s speechless is that the pony in front of her is one she hasn’t seen in years.

Trixie laughs and jumps out of her cart, saying: “Ms. Aural! What a pleasant surprise!”

Ms. Aural tries to smile, but her heavy panting makes it difficult. Trixie invites Ms. Aural inside, and she gladly accepts. Once inside, Trixie lets her sit on her chair while she hands her a cup of water. As Ms. Aural drinks the refreshing beverage, Trixie notices that she hasn’t aged well; she has noticeable crows feet and her mane is frayed and graying, plus her once beautiful coat is fading. When Ms. Aural notices Trixie staring at her, she is quick to avert her eyes to her lovely stash of fireworks.

Ms. Aural smiles and says: “It’s been a while, Trixie.”

“Yes it has,” says Trixie with a small, nervous smile. She doesn’t know what to say to her old friend or how they should begin to catch up. It’s been years since she saw a familiar face... well a familiar face from her childhood anyway. Most of the familiar faces she’s seen were magicians she upstaged trying to get her to work for them.

“I see you’ve made quite a bit of an impact,” says Ms. Aural, nodding towards the box of newspaper clipping.

Trixie chuckles nervously and uses her magic to close the box.

“Um, yeah, I guess you can say that,” she says nervously. “So, you look... nice?”

Ms. Aural sighs. “There no need to pretend, Trixie, I know what I look like, and nice isn’t one of them.” Then she reaches into her saddle and pulls out an envelope with her mouth and stretches her neck to Trixie. “Thith ith for you.”

Trixie levitates the envelope out of Ms. Aural’s mouth and brings it close so she can read it. As soon as she sees who it’s from though, she scowls and throws it the garbage can. Ms. Aural’s whole body droops as Trixie glares at her.

“Is this some kind of joke?” growls Trixie.

Ms. Aural shakes her head quickly. “No, Trixie, your father gave me that note personally and-”

“If he wants to talk to me he can find me himself!”

“But he told me-”

“What? What did he tell you? That he misses me or that he disowned me?”

Ms. Aural blinks tears out of her eyes as she looks down, sniffling.

“Trixie,” begins Ms. Aural quietly, “I know you are still hurt by what your father did...”

Trixie holds up her hoof to silence Ms. Aural. “You can stop right there, Ms. Aural. I don’t need your pity.”

“But, Trixie, if you’ve only seen what I have-”

Trixie stands up and points accusingly at Ms. Aural, making her shrink in her seat and whimper.

“How much did he pay you?” asks Trixie through gritted teeth.

“N-nothing,” stammers Ms. Aural. “He-he begged me to find you and-”

“How much?”

“He didn’t pay me anything.”

“HOW MUCH!”

“NOTHING! HE PAYED ME NOTHING!” Ms. Aural jumps to her feet, tears rolling down her cheek and breathing heavily while trying to keep herself from breaking down in front of an old friend. “He knew you wouldn’t give him a chance so he-”

“Maybe he should’ve thought about me not giving him stuff before he disowned me! But I didn’t need him anyway!” Trixie waves her hoof around the cart at all of her possessions. “You see this? This was all me! I did it myself! He took away my home so I built a new one! He took away my fortune, so I made my own! He thought I was a failure, but I’m not!” Trixie slams her hoof on the ground and points at an elaborate promotional picture that rolls down from the ceiling of herself, looking smug and ready to take on the world. “I am not a failure! I am not worthless! I am the Great and Powerful Trixie!”

Ms. Aural’s jaw drops and she shakes her head as she backs away from the picture like it’s cursed.

“Trixie, what happened to you?” whimpers Ms. Aural.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” sneers Trixie. “I, the Great and Powerful Trixie, proved to my father and his goons, and all those mules at the Academy, that Trixie is not worthless! That Trixie is no failure! That Trixie is better than all of them!”

Then Trixie throws the newspaper article regarding Gilda and Fluttershy at Ms. Aural, and she eeps while jumping back and shrinking under Trixie’s harsh gaze.

“And once I, the Great and Powerful Trixie, defeat Twilight Sparkle, all of Equestria will know that you do not need to be trained by a goddess to master magic!”

Ms. Aural stands up and looks at Trixie pleadingly.

“Please, just read his note,” begs Ms. Aural.

Trixie shoots a small bolt of lightning at the note, burning it, and all of the garbage with it, in a matter of seconds. While Ms. Aural watches the garbage can burn, Trixie gets a menacing shadow cast over her, and Ms. Aural trembles even more and nearly has a heart attack as Trixie glares at her.

“I think you better leave,” says Trixie dangerously.

Ms. Aural opens her mouth to say something, but when Trixie uses her magic to open the door, she closes her mouth, nods, and quietly leaves. Trixie scoffs, slams the door shut when Ms. Aural is outside and then tosses water on the fire she made. It makes a hissing sound and smoke covers the interior of the cart, forcing her to open her door again to let it out. As the smoke escapes into the cool night, Trixie pokes her head out to make sure Ms. Aural isn’t anywhere to be seen. When she doesn’t see her anywhere she mumbles “Good riddance” and goes back inside, but when she turns around she screams and jumps back.

“I hope this is a lesson for you,” says Custos, standing in the corner.

“Wha- How- What are you doing in my cart!” demands Trixie, horn glowing and ready to zap the intruder.

“It’s your dream, how I got in is entirely up to you.”

Trixie’s horn dies down and she sits down at her chair and flips open a newspaper to read any article that will distract her from the mysterious pony in her show wagon. She’s in no mood for arguing or his cryptic shenanigans. Custos sighs and stands in front of Trixie.

“You have a knack for driving away those who care about you,” he says.

Trixie flips a page, mumbling: “Trixie doesn’t need anypony. Trixie is doing fine all by herself.”

Custos silently scans the small living space; it barely has enough for her to sleep in and most of her possessions are for her to use for her shows. Nothing personal is found, except for her star studded hat and cape. Custos shakes his head and looks at Trixie, she’s still fighting to ignore him by using her newspaper.

“Do you really want to die alone?” he asks.

Trixie throws down her newspaper and stares hatefully at Custos while jumping to her feet. But despite her gaze, the stallion does not flinch and he has no face to read, so Trixie has no clue if she’s having any emotional impact on him at all.

“I never said that!” says Trixie angrily with a slight whine.

“You’re father believed he didn’t need anypony, and he was alone and dead before he was murdered.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

“It does when you understand that there is more than one way to die.” Then a glowing orb appears above his horn glows. Trixie charges her horn for a lightning bolt, but the light emitted from the orb blinds her and gives her the feeling that she’s been shot all over, making her scream in pain and collapse to the ground. “It’s time to wake up.”

[[[[O]]]]

Trixie jolts up in her bed, soaking in sweat and gasping for air; her vision is fuzzy and spinning, and her hearing is muffled, but one thing she does notice is a voice being projected off of some speakers and someone sitting in the room with their back to her speaking into a microphone.

“...So, I hope that music woke you guys up, I know it worked miracles for me, especially after last night’s fiasco,” says the mare working the radio equipment. “Anyway, I looked in my trusty little hat and it said I should play a single by Shattered called ‘March into Nothing’. Bleak, I know, but I drew it from a hat, so don’t hate me for chance.”

Some electric guitars start playing over the speakers, and a few seconds in the singer, a stallion with a pleasant voice, starts singing some incredibly depressing lyrics. Trixie groans painfully and gingerly touches her horn, releasing a wince when her hoof brushes over the chip, which has some cheap gauze taped over it. She looks around the room she’s in and instinctively scrunches her nose when she sees all kinds of stuff that point to a health hazard. There are empty bleach bottles, crushed lime, old food and bloody rags scattered all over the floor as well as empty sewing kits and used lottery tickets. However, despite being in the hazardous bedroom she’s relieved that she didn’t wake up in a jail cell after nearly getting killed again.

Trixie groans quietly again and rubs her eyes, and while lowering her hoof she realizes that there is a colorful blob of stitches where she was shot, making her pale and want to puke. She looks all over her body and sees little stitches here and there that closed up scratches she didn’t even know she had, but every move made her want to cry.

“Well good morning, missy, did you enjoy your nap?” says the mare from the room.

Trixie’s eyes bulge and her jaw drops as she stares at the pair of big red eyes the unicorn in front of her has. She’s only seen red eyes like that on predators and pictures of albinos; both equally creepy.

"This is why I wear my sunglasses,” grumbles DJ-Pon3 as she approaches Trixie, noting the stare with a frown. She then levitates Trixie off of the cot and gently lowers her to the ground. Trixie has to sit because her legs give out almost immediately. It doesn’t take long to switch out the sheets and when that is done and over with, she levitates Trixie back on the cot and puts a new blanket over her before sitting in front of her, glaring. “What? You’ve never seen an albino before?”

“N-No I haven’t,” stammers Trixie shamefully.

The pale pony grins and lightly punches Trixie in the shoulder, making her wince. “Relax, I’m just messing with you. I know the chances of meeting a pony with my condition are slim to none. So, what do you think of your stitches?”

“You suck at stitching,” says Trixie weakly; although she said it in good fun, she’s actually grateful about getting patched up, even if the job is subpar.

“Well excuuuuse me, Princess, but you’re the one that knocked on my door, bleeding all over the place with the EIB and Guards looking for you,” says the pale pony, completely missing Trixie’s playful tone.

Trixie closes her eyes and sinks in the cot, not wanting to remember that horrible night. Everything just suddenly crashed and burned with little to no warning; sure she knew Lock was on to her, but him using a criminal organization to bring down was just insane. And now, after getting betrayed by the EIB and Minty getting killed, here she is, dying in a radio station. She’s hoping that this is all just a horrible nightmare, and wants to cry because of the amount of pain she’s in, especially around her horn.

“Thanks for your help, DJ-Pon3,” whispers Trixie painfully, wanting to go back to sleep if it means escaping the agony.

“No problem, but you can just call me Vinyl or Vinyl Scratch. DJ-Pon3 is my work name,” says her rescuer with a small smile.

Trixie smiles, but it goes away in an instant and she regrets shifting her position in search for a more comfortable one as pain takes over her whole body.

“By the way, you owe me,” says Vinyl Scratch in a deadly serious tone.

Trixie shoots her a hostile glare. “What! What kind of rescuer tells the rescuee that you owe them?”

“The Canterlot Fire Department and Royal Guards do that with our tax money. As for you though,” Vinyl Scratch pokes Trixie in the chest, making her wince, “you owe me bleach and a shitload of lime.”

Trixie stares at Vinyl Scratch with eyes wide open and shock and confusion all over her face. The DJ doesn’t want bits, or her to take out some competition, but bleach and lime instead? Now Trixie is really confused.

“Don’t you want bits instead?” asks Trixie carefully, and wincing when her body tells her that it was a painful mistake by the pain in her chest.

“I used all my lime and bleach to clean up your bloody trail and to keep those guys off of our back. And don’t even get me started on all the disinfectants I had to use on you and those threads.”

“Did you sleep?”

“On and off, but you kinda took my bed, covered it in blood, and then almost died on it, so I slept in my chair.”

Trixie is silent for a moment before another idea question pops into her mind.

“Hey Vinyl, how much of the trail did you... you know... clean up?”

Vinyl Scratch grins and in an innocent voice, says: “Not too much, just up to the nearest sewer cover. Then I popped that sucker off and ran back here. Oh man, If only I can see their faces now.”

Vinyl Scratch snickers and walks to her radio room when the music stops and is replaced with dubstep. A few seconds later, the dubstep stops and Trixie sees Vinyl Scratch take a quick swig of what looks like cider before speaking into her microphone.

“Good afternoon, Canterlot!” she says with all the charisma in Equus backing her. “I’m back from my break and I’m sure you guys are eager to hear about the amazing Vigilante. Well I got some news for ya. It was Gilda and her griffins bribing two vans of EIB agents to get Canterlot’s hero!”

Trixie groans and covers her eyes with her hooves when she sees Vinyl Scratch smile and wink at her.

“But don’t you worry, the Vigilante is alive and well! That’s right folks, the crooks lost her when she escaped to the sewers!” Vinyl Scratch chuckles. “Have fun down there, boys and girls, but you’ll never find her.”

Vinyl Scratch cackles and then says something about playing some music before Trixie blacks out.

~~~~~~~~~~

When Trixie wakes up a few hours later, she’s greeted by something steamy and smelling like a slice of Paradise at the moment. She opens her eyes and sees Vinyl Scratch levitating a bowl of soup in front of her, and when she glances out the window she notices that it’s almost evening. Then she looks at Vinyl Scratch and sees that she has a curious smile stretched across her face. A very curious smile. A smile that demands Trixie tell her a story.

Trixie tries to grab the soup with her magic, but a sharp pain in her horn kisses that notion goodbye; so she takes it with her hooves, whimpering quietly, instead. Vinyl Scratch’s smile fades away and she sighs sadly as she looks at the ground.

“That really sucks about what happened to your horn. I don’t think you’ll be able to use magic to your full capacity ever again,” says Vinyl Scratch quietly.

Trixie sniffles and sips the soup; as simple as it is, it does taste good, like a warm bowl of some much needed comfort.

“So, what happened over there?” asks Vinyl Scratch carefully.

“What do you think? I got betrayed,” grumbles Trixie tearfully before taking another sip from her bowl of soup. Then she sighs and puts down the soup and looks down to hide the tears in her eyes. “And it cost me everything.”

Vinyl Scratch takes a sip of her cider. “Yeah, life’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

Trixie nods and both mares continue to sip their drink and soup in silence, listening to whatever track her radio equipment decides to play next. A couple of minutes later, Vinyl Scratch sighs loudly and looks at Trixie.

“So, are you going to tell me what happened?” asks Vinyl Scratch.

Trixie glares at Vinyl Scratch, but when the the pale unicorn shows no signs of wavering she looks down once more.

“It started with an argument...”

When Trixie explains everything, from her argument with Minty Sprinkles, to her fighting her way out of the complex and almost getting killed by Lock, Vinyl Scratch’s jaw is to the floor. Trixie stares at Vinyl Scratch and when she waves her hoof in front of those freakish red eyes, she snaps out of it.

“Sorry, I’m just surprised you survived Lock,” says Vinyl Scratch like she doubts what her ears had heard.

“Why? He was just an agent.”

Vinyl Scratch shakes her head, stands up, and runs out of the room, making Trixie question what she just saw.

“Couldn’t be more wrong, there, missy,” says Vinyl Scratch quickly from the other room. Then she walks back in with a New Yoke Times newspaper article about Lock written by Quill Pen. It is nothing special, just a blurb. “That AIDS magnet was a cold blooded killer.”

“What?”

Vinyl Scratch sighs and rubs her forehead, mumbling something. Then she suddenly looks up at Trixie and shoves the article to her face.

“Lock Nermal Key, a.k.a. ‘Lock N. Key’, was dishonorably discharged from the Royal Guard after he beat a prisoner to death in their cell for ‘interrogation’.” Trixie takes the newspaper with her hooves and starts reading the short article while Vinyl Scratch continues with her explanation. “Lock was one of the investigators for the assassination of Prince Blueblood, and the suspect beaten to death was-”

Trixie’s jaw drops and she lets the paper fall to the ground as new tears swell in her eyes. She stares at the picture of the victim next to Lock’s face, wanting to scream and beat Lock to a bloody pulp. The victim of Lock’s cruelty was an old friend that she chased away from her show wagon all those years ago. Ms. Aural.

“No... can’t be,” whimpers Trixie, lips trembling and her whole body shaking, bringing her more pain.

“A day care center owner. Lock claimed that the victim attacked him in her cell when he tried to get answers on some overtime investigation.” Trixie lowers her face in her hooves and starts sobbing. Vinyl doesn’t seem to notice, though. “But the kicker is that there was a rumor that she knew who the shooter was.”

Trixie looks up, tears soaking her coat and eyes bloodshot. “And Lock killed her?”

“Yep, on the next day, too. But guess what happened next? Brisk Wind investigated Lock and claimed that the evidence pointed to ‘workplace accident’, so Lock was dishonorably discharged and after doing his community service he joined the EIB.”

Trixie sniffles, completely dumbfounded by what she had heard. “Wait, so the EIB just let him in?”

“Well Brisk Wind certainly wasted no time in giving him the position of Lead Investigator for the EIB.”

Trixie mumbles something incomprehensible, and Vinyl Scratch once again shakes her head and grabs Trixie by her shoulders and makes her look into her eyes. Trixie can’t help but get freaked out by how red they are again.

“So do you understand how lucky you are? You’re very lucky,” says Vinyl Scratch sternly.

“Losing everything is lucky?” retorts Trixie sharply.

“You still got your life don’tcha?”

Trixie nods subtly, there really is no argue with that. Vinyl Scratch excuses herself and leaves to switch out some tracks. When Vinyl Scratch is out of sight, Trixie’s hooves tighten around the bowl and begins trembling.

“I have to take down Lock,” mutters Trixie angrily over the music, staring at her bowl of soup. “I have to take down Gilda. They all need to pay.”

First, Ms. Aural, then Bon Bon, and then Pinkie Pie and who knows how many others that suffered from Lock and Gilda’s partnership. Then there’s also Brisk Wind, Trixie knows that pegasus had something to do with what happened to her and Pinkie Pie. There is no way that two vans of well equipped EIB agents and the Lead Investigator would team up with the griffins without getting her attention. She knew and did nothing. Just another reason why her torturer needs to go. The whole thing makes her want to scream, but all she can do is cry quietly. She squeezes her eyes shut so she doesn’t have to see her angry and sorrowed tears fall in her soup, or see the Hell that seems to follow her wherever she goes.

“It’s not fair,” whimpers Trixie weakly.

Vinyl Scratch walks back in with two bottles of Sweet Apple Cider floating next to her a few minutes later and sees Trixie crying quietly and mumbling to herself. She pops off the lids and hands one to Trixie, and when Trixie opens her eyes she gratefully takes and gingerly sips it. Vinyl Scratch quietly takes a swigs from her drink, watching Trixie cry without knowing what to say or do. She’s already done all that she can, but she feels like she needs to do more.

“Do you know anything else about Lock and Ms. Aural?” inquires Trixie as she wipes her nose.

“You knew Ms. Aural?”

When Trixie nods Vinyl Scratch also nods and looks up while tapping her chin with her hoof to think. A moment later she looks back at Trixie, her brows furrowing like she just remembered some bad news; this doesn’t sit well with Trixie.

“Well,” starts Vinyl Scratch uneasily, “I don’t know if I’m remembering this correctly, but if I am, Ms. Aural was arrested by Lock N. Key himself at her home and he personally interrogated her and her husband, the now Major Glimmer Fuller.”

Trixie stares at Vinyl Scratch, the anger and need for retribution growing stronger by the second; she really wants to beat Lock to a pulp. In fact, a big part of her wants to kill him for what he did to Ms. Aural and Pinkie Pie.

“I need to bring down Lock and the griffins,” says Trixie quietly and with a determined edge.

“Oh I don’t think so, missy, you’re shot to shit, attacking Gilda will be suicide. Lay low, fix yourself up, and then you can break some beaks,” says Vinyl Scratch, taking a sip of cider afterwards.

Trixie grits her teeth as a wave of pain surges throughout her body from hopping out of her cot. Vinyl Scratch tries to get her to lay down, but Trixie shrugs her off with a grunt and starts walking around the small abode in search for her costume. As they walk around Vinyl Scratch calls Trixie crazy and tells her she needs to rest up before she does any more crime fighting.

“I can’t do that,” says Trixie as she searches high and low for her costume, “Lock and Gilda killed my friend. They almost killed me. And I’m certain Brisk Wind had something to do with this, too. They need to go down and if I’m going to die doing it, then so be it.”

“Do you have a death wish or something?” says Vinyl Scratch irritably as she trails Trixie. “Look, I know that you’ve been through a lot recently, but you can’t expect to take on Gilda and Lock and Brisk Wind -whom may I remind you commands the EIB- in your condition!” Vinyl Scratch grabs Trixie and turns her around. “Look, I know Minty was your friend, but-”

“Minty wasn’t Minty,” says Trixie, her eyes narrowing. “She was Pinkie Pie. The Element of Laughter.”

Vinyl Scratch does a double take. “What?”

Trixie expression softens and she sighs and shrugs Vinyl Scratch away. “She was Pinkie Pie... but wasn’t. I don’t know, it was terrifying what she had become. If you could only see her eyes, it was the eyes of a psycho. Somepony who took pleasure in beating others to a pulp. She just... she just snapped and... I don’t know. But now she’s dead, I’m sure of it... and she died protecting me. That is why I have to do this... nopony else should have to suffer at the hooves of those degenerates, and I have to make up for my failure to protect her.”

Vinyl Scratch looks a bit skeptical of Trixie’s claim, but nonetheless gives in and walks outside. She returns a minute later with the bloody and tattered costume floating above her head in a magical grip. Trixie doesn’t hesitate to put them on, although she does need some help from Vinyl Scratch since the amount of pain she gets from twisting too much is close to unbearable. When her costume is fully on Vinyl Scratch takes a step back and flashes a small, warm smile.

“Well, the Vigilante stepping her crusade, eh?” teases Vinyl Scratch sadly. “Although, you kinda left out the part about ‘Minty being Pinkie’ when you told me your story.”

Trixie sighs. “She was obviously in hiding and had been keeping an eye on me for some reason. I wanted to keep that part out, but I obviously let that slip, so please do us both a favor and keep the Minty-Pinkie thing a secret.”

Vinyl Scratch reluctantly and solemnly nods. “No problem.”

Trixie is about to leave, but Vinyl Scratch calls for her and she turns around to watches her rescuer open a drawer, pop open a container and levitate four gold gel pills to her. Trixie takes off her helmet and holds out hoof, letting the pills fall in the bowl of her hoof. Then she looks at Vinyl Scratch quizzically as she mumbles about regretting her decision later.

“What are these?” asks Trixie.

“Pain pills,” replies Vinyl Scratch, masking her nervousness and guilt with a small smile, “it’s to help with some problems I have, but they are really strong and should keep your pain at bay. But these are the only ones your getting so don’t come crawling back for more.”

Trixie stares at the gel pills for a moment before shoving them in her mouth. Like Vinyl Scratch said, they don’t treat her injuries, but they do a good job of making them feel like bruises rather than poorly stitched bullet holes. Trixie coughs and falls on the floor, though; eating four pills dry is not a pleasant experience, and hearing Vinyl Scratch snicker makes her blood boil. But Trixie knows she has bigger fish to fry than socking someone in the jaw for laughing at her misfortune.

“You’re supposed to drink water with those, you dumbass,” snickers Vinyl Scratch in a desperate attempt to lighten the mood.

Trixie puts on her helmet again and glares at Vinyl Scratch through her goggles, but she knows that the DJ has a point. What she did was really stupid and she deserved to be laughed at.

“C’mon, I wanna show you something,” says Vinyl Scratch. She leads Trixie outside to show her her motorcycle, or as the Flim Flam Brothers labeled it, “the bee”. The color scheme for the DJ’s bee is white with blue bolts on the side and her cutie mark on the back, and while Trixie is gaping at it Vinyl Scratch climbs on. “Get on.”

Trixie climbs on without second thought and wraps her hooves around Vinyl Scratch as best as she can. There’s no time to think. Only react. Besides, Trixie wants to take down Gilda, Lock, and Brisk Wind for what they have done to her and Pinkie Pie. She knows if she can bring down Gilda and expose the EIB, then crime and corruption will take a major blow in Canterlot. The prospect of her taking down a criminal organization and exposing a corrupt agency brings a smile to her face; she’s sure that it would make her mentor proud if he were still alive. However, one problem does come to mind.

“Where are we going?” asks Trixie.

Vinyl Scratch coolly puts on her sunglasses and prepares the throttle. “I’m going to take you as far as I can to Gilda. Once you’re there, you’re on your own.” She looks over her shoulder at Trixie. “Look, it’s not too late, you can still-”

“No time. Just drive,” orders Trixie.

Vinyl Scratch sighs. “Okay, but if you really want to take down those three you’re going to need my help. Get me anything that can be used as proof of Lock and Brisk Wind’s partnership with Gilda, then give them to me and I’ll send it to my contact inside the Royal Guard. I know Captain Armor will have a field day with them.”

Trixie grins evilly and nods, the anticipation for getting her revenge is so great she can barely contain it; heck, the excitement alone is enough to cover the last of her pain.

While Trixie is thinking about her sweet revenge, Vinyl Scratch puts the bee in full throttle and Trixie immediately screams and tightens her grip as the vehicle lurches forward; but her scream can’t be heard over the roar of the engine pushing itself to the limit. The duo speed off into the distance, swerving around a corner and breaking just about every traffic law, causing other vehicles to swerve out of the way and honk angrily.

So Vinyl Scratch speeds down the street, recklessly weaving between vehicles and taking shortcuts, thus making Trixie both excited and nervous. The exhilarated feeling she’s getting from the ride, like the noise from the wind and vehicles rushing past her and having a couple of bugs splatter on her visor, nearly makes her forget about her mission. She really wants to own her own bee now, just so she can do something like this everyday; minus the part about her taking down crime lords and corrupt officials of course. Road trips on her very own bee will be a plus when all this is over.

After driving through the city for a good twenty minutes, they finally screech to a stop in an alley that has a perfect view of where Gilda resides. The building has a blocky base with onion looking domes on the corners and one enormous tower in the center that has a domed roof. There are also four towers surrounding the building and all are connected by bridges with every dome being gold plate. The sight makes Trixie’s jaw drop, but Vinyl Scratch looks unimpressed by it.

“Looks pretty, but Gilda and basically every griffin in Canterlot lives there,” explains Vinyl Scratch.

Trixie climbs off the bee and continues to inspect the building; it is surrounded by a wall of some kind with the only noticeable way in through a gate guarded by some griffins.

Trixie takes a deep breath and looks at Vinyl Scratch. “Well, this is it then. Thanks for the ride and for patching me up.”

“You can thank me by coming back with me,” says Vinyl Scratch, forcing herself to smile.

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. ‘Fight the good fight’ and all. Man, you didn’t even try to convince me to take you here, so if you die I give you full permission to haunt me.”

Trixie chuckles. “And if I live.”

“What’s this ‘if’ stuff? Of course you’re going to live! You’re just a stupid, crazy pony for doing this so soon.”

Trixie chuckles again and bumps hooves with Vinyl Scratch and she turns to leave, but stops herself and turns to look at the albino before she has a chance to speed off.

“Wait, I have a request,” says Trixie. Vinyl Scratch stops the motor and looks at Trixie. “When you do your next broadcast about me, do not call me ‘Vigilante’,” Trixie hesitate, wondering if she’s requesting the right thing, “call me ‘Mare-Do-Well’.”

Vinyl Scratch smirks and nods. “Got it Mysterious Mare-Do-Well.”

Vinyl Scratch speeds off and when she rounds the corner Trixie takes another deep breath and turns around to stare at the towering structure in front of her. Then she marches forward.

=**********=

The elevator doors slide open with a ding and Shining Armor steps out of the cramped space with his two guards and into the brightly lit Canterlot Royal Hospital Hallway. The polished tiles reflect the warm lights, though the polished tiles are hidden underneath the innumerable hooves of ponies rushing to wherever they need to go. Shining Armor looks at the passing doctors flipping through pages, jotting down notes, or conversing with other doctors. He can barely hear himself think over all the noises of the chaos in the hospital.

Shining Armor levitates two reports from his saddle; one is about a surviving soldier whose base was attacked and the other is about Pinkie Pie. When he got the message of Pinkie Pie being in critical care he nearly fell out of his seat and rushed to the Canterlot Royal Hospital as fast as he could. Although he wants to tell Twilight about the news he just wants to make sure that Pinkie Pie is well enough to talk before he allows any visitors. Also, as far as he’s concerned, if Pinkie Pie is alive then Roar Shock will send someone to kill her, and he can’t let that happen. She already died once and he’ll be damned if she dies again.

An aged unicorn stallion with a caramel colored coat and a neat, brown mane and tail wearing a lab coat over a suit with a pair of glasses walks up to Shining Armor. He also has a heart monitor as a cutie mark. The two exchange their greetings, the doctor being Dr. Heartbeat, and the doctor leads Shining Armor to where Pinkie Pie is. Unlike the rest of the hospital, the area she’s in is almost completely dead and actually looks depressing, despite the warm colors and lights and the lovely paintings along the wall. Shining Armor sees only one other pony is in the hallway. Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes are on the door, but her stare is distant, and her whole body is drooped. Her eyes are bloodshot and have bags under them from hours of crying and sleep deprivation. Even her vibrant mane and tail are messier than usual. Shining Armor wants to forget about professional appearances and hug Rainbow Dash right then and there and tell her that everything will be olay.

“I’ve known Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie from when I was living in Ponyville,” explains Dr. Heartbeat, “and I honestly never thought I would see any of them like this.”

Shining Armor looks at Rainbow Dash and when he calls her, her only response is a lazy ear twitch.

Dr. Heartbeat shakes his head sadly. “Rainbow Dash has been like that the entire time she’s been here. When she came in here in the early morning she was screaming and covered in Pinkie’s blood. After we sprayed her down, she’s been silent and staring at the door. She won’t talk to anypony or eat anything.”

Shining Armor sighs and turns to Dr. Heartbeat. “I want to see Pinkie Pie.” The doctor nods and Shining Armor turns to the two guards. “You two stay out here and guard Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie with your lives.”

The guards acknowledge his order with a “Yes sir” and salute and he goes inside the hospital room with Dr. Heartbeat. The room is basic with just a cot, a radio and a ceiling fan spinning in slow circles. There are no windows in the room either, so it’s like walking into a prison hospital room. Shining Armor’s ears droop down and he gulps back tears as he approaches the former Happiest Mare in Equestria. A pony he barely knew, but knew that she was a good pony from what he’s heard in the news and from what Twilight told him; saving his wedding was a huge plus, too.

“Will she live?” asks Shining Armor as he carefully approaches her.

Pinkie Pie has tubes in her nose and mouth, has sensors taped to her coat, and most of her dye has been scrubbed off, but her pink coat still retains a bit of green shade. Her bruises, stitched cuts, and the grotesque, poorly healed burnt hoof and bandages over her broken ribs makes Shining Armor wonder how much pain she’s in. Or how anyone can say someone looks peaceful when they are in a coma. He wonders if she can hear the constant beeping, hissing, and clicking the machines keeping her alive are making.

Dr. Heartbeat shrugs. “She’s in a coma right now, but if she’s in it for too long we’ll have no choice but to pull the plug.”

“Why?”

“Hospital policy. Space is limited and medical supplies are running low from thefts and other unforeseen circumstances.”

Shining Armor glares at Dr. Heartbeat. “You’re going to pull the plug on an Element?”

“If she’s in a coma for too long, then yes. I would have no choice, it is policy.”

“That’s bullshi-” Shining Armor stops himself with a heavy sigh. “That’s not right! You keep her alive as long as it takes! I don’t care if it takes decades, you’ll do it!”

“It doesn’t matter what’s right or wrong, Captain. What matters is that we have the resources to maintain a hospital. We cannot divert so much attention or resources to one individual, regardless of their position.” Dr. Heartbeat puts his hoof on Shining Armor’s shoulder and looks him in the eyes. “But I promise you, sir, I’ll fight tooth and hoof to keep her alive as long as I can.”

Shining Armor sighs and walks outside with the doctor trailing him. He looks at Rainbow Dash and steps aside.

“Rainbow Dash, you can see your friend,” says Shining Armor.

Rainbow Dash stares at him, wondering if she heard right, but when Dr. Heartbeat makes room for her to enter and Shining Armor nods towards Pinkie Pie, she slowly gets up and walks inside. When she’s inside Shining Armor turns to Dr. Heartbeat.

“I have some other matters to attend to, but make sure nopony else finds out about Pinkie Pie,” orders Shining Armor.

“Why?”

“Trust me. It’s for the best.” Then he looks at the two guards he came with. “I’ll send relief your way as soon as I can. Orders remain the same.”

The guards nod and salute, and Shining Armor walks away, looking at the report of the next hospitalized pony he needs to meet.

=**********=

“WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

Pinkie Pie, glowing from her perfect health, jumps off of a giant rubber ball and launches herself into the air, closing her eyes and grinning from ear to ear as the wind rushes past her ears. When she lands, she lands in a field of flora made up of everything, from candy canes to bonbons and lollipops to gumdrops. It is all there and waiting for her to consume with gusto.

Pinkie Pie does lick up some gumballs and chews them obnoxiously before moving on to gnawing on a banana flavored taffy tree with sugar coated leaves; but while she’s doing that, something so amazing happens that it makes her stop and stare with wide eyes and a huge, toothy grin. The clouds are made up of pink cotton candy. She giggles excitedly as she climbs to the top of the taffy tree to get a closer view of the wispy treats hovering in the sky. When she reaches the top, she balances herself on her hind legs and extends her forehooves commandingly towards the sky. She’s about to say something, but stops, thinks for a moment, then beams and reaches down and pulls out a random candy cane staff. Once that is in her grip she resumes her authoritative stance.

“By the power invested in me, I command thee to rain chocolate milk!”

Pinkie Pie’s command is met with instant gratification. Tubas echo with deafening magnitude as the clouds rain down thick droplets of tasty chocolate milk. She leans her head back and opens her mouth wide with her tongue hanging out, gladly drinking up the chocolatey goodness. When she’s had her fill she leaps off of her tree and lands perfectly in an enormous pile of popcorn. But this pile of popcorn is a special pile. It has more than just the classic butter; it has caramel, cheddar, chocolate, spicy, and healthy popcorn in it, leading to a fantastic mixture of the best snacks in the world.

Pinkie Pie eats her way out of the popcorn pile and when she pokes her head out she sees another amazing feat in the slice of heaven she’s in right now. Her eyes and grin widen to impossible lengths as she crawls out and sits on the ground to stare at the amazing feat.

“I can’t believe it,” says Pinkie Pie in a joyful whisper. “It is a field of muffins!”

Pinkie Pie cries like a warrior ready to eat every pastry in the name of her queen as she charges the field. She gobbles up chocolate muffins, banana muffins, blueberry muffins, strawberry muffins, and muffins made up of cookies. Every type of muffin imaginable is the field of muffins, and snaking through the field is a river made up of strawberry milkshakes.

Pinkie Pie skids to a stop by the milkshake river and stares at in wonder; dumbstruck by the beauty of the thick, frothy pink drink. She’s also dumbstruck on how she’s supposed to drink it. She thinks for a grand total of three seconds before deciding to screw the thinking and sticks her head in, sipping as much of the threat as she can.

When she’s had her fill she sighs blissfully and falls on her back on a random patch of grass that has grown strategically behind her. She looks at the clouds, loving the way they come in many different shapes and sizes; strangely some of them look like her friends doing some kind of activity. One cloud looks like Twilight reading a book with Spike when he was a baby, another looks like Rarity sewing, and the one that looks like Applejack looks like she’s bucking apple. Then there’s Fluttershy sitting with her animals, and Rainbow Dash flying proudly.

Pinkie Pie frowns and shifts her position so she doesn’t have to look at the clouds. While shifting her position the ground rises up and turns into the bed she had at the Sugar Cube Corner. The bed is complete with the fluffy sheets, soft pillow, and warm blanket that covers her without her having to raise a hoof.

She sits there for an unknown amount of time, watching anything but the clouds, but no matter how hard she tries, she can’t stop seeing those fakes that she had called her friends. She hears them thank her for her parties, for cheering them up, or accepting her random acts of goofiness with laughter. She also swears she can hear Octavia’s cello in the warm wind. Pinkie Pie huffs and turns to the other side of the bed to change the view, but instead of seeing a never ending field of muffins or taffy trees, she sees her Element of Laughter necklace floating in front of her, glowing.

She stares at it and the jewelry stares back at her. They continue to stare at each other for a few more seconds before it floats over to her and rests in front of her face. She sits up on her bed and stares at it some more. A minute later she picks it up and gently runs her hoof over it, smiling. It brings tears of joy to her eyes as she feels all that is good fill her up. All the joy from laughter, from making others happy, and from being selfless in helping others find happiness flood back to her.

Pinkie Pie chokes back her tears and hugs the necklace tightly like its her baby, and bows her head while shutting her eyes. The bed silently lowers into the ground until she is sitting on grass again. She continues to hug her necklace, not wanting to let it go for fear that she’ll be miserable again without it.

Then she hears faint noises, like some ponies are conversing with each other in the sky. Pinkie Pie clasps the necklace around her neck and stands up to stare at the clouds. The faint noise continues, getting louder every second until she can tell, without a doubt, that someone is speaking.

Pinkie Pie stares up at the clouds as the voices echo, blocking out all other sound and thought. The voices are muffled, though, and soon only one voice is left, and whoever is talking sounds like they are breaking into tears. She can hear the sniffling over the muffled words, and as the voice continues it becomes clearer.

“...I just... I don’t even know if you can hear me. They say ponies in comas can hear when somepony is talking to them. If that is true, then we need to talk... I just only wish it wasn’t like this.”

Pinkie Pie sits on the ground, tears swelling in her eyes. She knows that voice, and the pain she’s hearing is her fault, she just knows it.

“I’m sorry, Dashie,” whimpers Pinkie Pie as she looks down on the ground, tears trickling down her cheek. When the tears land on the grass, their green color darkens and spots start rotting away.

“If you can hear me, promise me you’ll stop blaming yourself for what happened. Spike made his choice, and we all... we... I miss you. You have no idea how much I can use one of your party’s right now. Or Fluttershy. She can really use somepony like you to cheer her up.”

Pinkie Pie chuckles and wipes her eyes as she looks back up at the sky, hoping that she’ll see the face of her best friend. But all she sees are gray clouds swirling around the cotton candy ones, battling each other for dominance of the sky.

“You know, I want to stay mad at Twilight, Rarity, and Applejack for how they treated you, but I can’t. If you could only see what I see you would know that they are sorry. Twilight hasn’t been the same ever since you faked your death and Rarity has been nearly working herself to death. I know Applejack feels like crap for how she treated you, and-”

“Airmare Rainbow Dash,” interrupts another voice; this one belongs to a stern stallion.

Pinkie Pie gets worried and looks around the clouds for any sign of this newcomer, but she doesn’t see them or Rainbow Dash anywhere. The only thing she sees are the darkened clouds moving in with greater speed and becoming more aggressive with her happy, cotton candy clouds.

“Major Fuller, what are you doing here? And who are they?” asks Rainbow Dash, angry panic in her voice.

Pinkie Pie puts her hoof to her mouth and slumps to the ground, she can picture Rainbow Dash going defensive with how pegasi expand their wings to make themselves look bigger. Some thunder rolls in the distance and the dark clouds become dangerous storm clouds, overtaking the cotton candy and blanketing her world in gray.

“Dashie, please don’t do anything stupid,” begs Pinkie Pie.

“They are with me, and you need to come with us immediately,” says Major Fuller harshly.

“I’m not leaving Pinkie’s side!” growls Rainbow Dash.

“Airmare Dash!” There is a stomp that makes a deafening boom, making Pinkie Pie shrink herself to the ground and her ears ring. “You will report back to base with me this instant or face more charges!”

There is a pregnant silence, and the gray clouds start taking over and the chocolate rain turns into icy cold water droplets that freeze on her coat. Pinkie Pie jumps up and down, waving her hooves, trying to get their attention.

“Dashie, just go! I’ll be fine!” yells Pinkie Pie over the rolling thunder and pouring, hoping and praying that something will happen outside to get their attention.

“Do you really want to throw away all that you worked for, for a seat by a vegetable?” says Major Fuller senselessly.

Pinkie Pie hears Rainbow Dash scream and there is a lot of commotion that she can only guess is fighting, judging from the yelling and sounds of stuff falling to the ground. She then hears an order for the guards to hold Rainbow Dash down and when the turmoil ends there are multiple ponies breathing heavily and her friend is sobbing.

“She’s not a vegetable! She’s my friend!” cries Rainbow Dash. “I thought somepony like you would understand the values of friendship!”

Another moment of silence.

“Duty trumps friendship. Get her out of here,” orders Major Fuller in a low growl.

“Pinkie, I’ll always be your friend! No matter what!” yells Rainbow Dash over the other ponies yelling at her to shut up.

Then the door clicks shut, the freezing rain turns into a freezing sprinkle, and all Pinkie Pie can hear are the beeps, clicks, and whirs of the hospital machines working to keep her alive. Each time the machines make a noise there is a slight color fluctuation in the clouds, like a ball of color is exploding in them. A couple of seconds later, she hears and feels Major Fuller’s warm breath. The feeling part creeps her out to no end.

“Hey, buddy, can I get some personal space? Jeeze,” says Pinkie Pie moodily while inching back from, and trying to push away, the invisible foe.

“So,” says Major Fuller ominously, his voice sounding like it is coming from a celestial intercom, “Laughter lives, eh? Dash was a fool to assume that a pony in your condition could hear her. What can a pony in a coma do, anyway? Besides waste space and bits? Nothing. We should’ve realized you were alive when the Elements of Harmony did not reset, but once word gets out of your survival your game will finally end.” Major Fuller chuckles and Pinkie Pie feels an invisible hoof pat her cheek, mocking her condition. “If you ever wake up you’ll see what Perfect Harmony is. Sleep tight, Laughter.”

=**********=

Shining Armor steps into another hospital room, this one being more pleasant than the one Pinkie Pie was in. There is a window showing a great view of Canterlot and the beautiful hue that is being cast over it by the lowering sun. The dark gray stallion in care is resting on a bed, thankfully not hooked up to tubes, and he looks okay, minus the missing leg. He’s wearing the dreaded, paper thin gown and looks ashamed for the helpless position he is in.

Shining Armor politely nods to a couple of nurses changing out some flowers, and when they leave he approaches the wounded soldier.

“Private Moon Dust, I am Captain Shining Armor, how are you today?” says Shining Armor, trying to keep the poor stallion’s mind off of his situation; although he thinks he butchered that attempt.

Moon Dust looks at Shining Armor and tries to smile. “I’m alive, sir.”

“I guess that makes you lucky, then.” Moon Dust nods and Shining Armor pulls out the report. “You were stationed at Fort Macintosh in the Macintosh Hills. Your first assignment out of Night Guard Basic.”

“Yes sir. I was with the Sixty Second Expeditionary, we were going to relieve another group.”

“The Thirty First.”

Moon Dust nods. “Yes sir. It was supposed to be a simple task. Guard the base, restock passing soldiers. Make sure the locals don’t do anything stupid.” Moon Dust whimpers and looks away from Shining Armor. “But that didn’t last long.”

“Private, I know it is painful, but I need you to tell me what happened.” Moon Dust looks at Shining Armor and despite his stern look, he’s retaining the features of a concerned father. “Just tell me everything you remember and we’ll go from there, okay?”

Moon Dust takes deep breath closes his eyes and thinks for a moment to get his story straight. Shining Armor can see that the Night Guard is suffering from revisiting what he had barely survived by the way his body trembles. A few seconds pass by before the Night Guard gulps and slowly opens his eyes, body still trembling and eyes glistening.

Moon Dust takes another deep breath and says: “We were getting ready to switch out our shifts...”

===

On the outskirts of the town Haven in the Macintosh Hills, a small base named Fort Macintosh was constructed help supply every guard that came through the region in their efforts to keep control on the quickly down spiraling situation. The building stood four stories tall, was painted white with gold trim and had a thick, reinforced brick wall around it and it had a radio tower on the roof where the Equestrian flag flew proudly. The only way in was by a gate with a basic security checkpoint. Inside, the floors were polished and the interior was brightly lit. Battle saddles were neatly hanging up and other military equipment and all the ammunition was stored away in their proper areas. If it weren’t for all the military gear the place could’ve passed as a small, well kept warehouse.

In the upper level of the main area in the interior, Moon Dust and a couple of other Night and Royal Guards were casually talking amongst themselves about their daily lives, wishes, and funny stories from their childhood. Down below a Night and Royal Guard were also having a casual conversation.

“Hey I need to take a leak,” said the Night Guard on the ground level.

“Too much to drink?” teased the Royal Guard.

“Hey cut me some slack, I have a weak bladder!”

Both guards laughed and when the Night Guard was almost to the bathroom, the lights flickered off. All the guards tensed up and aimed their weapons blindly in the dark. Some swore and someone shouted for someone to get the maintenance crew to fix the power. Moon Dust’s vision adjusts slowly but surely and could make out the shadowy figures of his brothers in arms. They were carefully moving around and calling out each other’s names. Then Moon Dust’s ears flicked when he heard something whirring. He couldn’t describe it, but it sounded... electrical. It sounded alien to him.

“Do you hear that?” asked Moon Dust to the Royal Guard next to him.

The Royal Guard nodded and suddenly swore and aimed his battle saddle at something that had glowing eyes with no pupils, electricity enveloping its ankles, and glowing gems along its limbs. The light generated from the whatever that thing was showed it had a metallic body in the shape of a pony and it had a large, sleek blade at the end of its large tail, like a scorpion.

“Jumper, move!” shouted Moon Dust.

Jumper, the Royal Guard down below, turned around as the machine struck him on the head with its hoof. His helmet was dented and burnt from the powerful electric currents and his skull snapped loose from his neck. Then the machine turned its attention to the Night Guard Jumper was conversing with and shot him with an electric beam. The Night Guard’s scream was brief as the shot burnt through his armor and chest with ease and left a hole in the wall behind him. The other guards unloaded everything they had on it, but the dings and sparks coming from the suit showed that bullets were having minimal effect on it.

“Keep shooting!” shouted one of the Royal Guards.

Then a pair of turbine engines activate on it and the glow gave it a demonic red hue as it charged towards the guards on the upper level. It carelessly flew through the railing, showering the guards in front of it with chunks of cement and bent metal, and while they were disoriented it stabbed a Royal Guard with its tail through the side and shot another in the head with its cannon. It then threw the corpse impaled on its tale at a Night Guard and while he dodged it, the machine shot him twice, once in the chest and once in the head. The surviving guards scream, swear, and shoot madly at whatever the thing is was it marched towards them with no worries about its safety.

It knocked down another guard and crushed his head with its hoof and then it shot two more guards. After that Moon Dust runs for cover and takes potshots at it. The bullets continued to bounce off harmlessly, but he was determined to try to stop it. The machine looked at him and he took that as a sign to move. He jumped away from the shot and ran from the barrage of electric bolts and the shards of debris it kicked up, and kept running until one of the electric beams shot through his hind leg. He screamed in pain as he feels the electric bolt burn through his bone and muscle and come out clean on the other end, burning it completely off. He crumbled to the floor and whimpered as he drags himself to cover while the machine marched towards him. Then it kicked him over the railing like he was a piece of garbage, and the last thing Moon Dust heard before connecting with the ground and blacking out were the terrified screams of his squadmates and the electric shots from the monster.

===

“When I woke up, I was on a medical cart to Canterlot, sir,” says Moon Dust quietly.

Shining Armor pats the injured soldier on the chest. “Thank you, Private.” The soldier nods and slumps back in his bed as Shining Armor turns to a doctor in the room that had entered when Moon Dust was explaining what had happened. “Keep me posted on his status.”

Shining Armor salutes Moon Dust and leaves the room when the doctor acknowledges the order. In the hallway Shining Armor looks through the list of all that was taken from the station, which was some weapons, armor, and ammunition and barely any medical supplies. However, one thing does catch his eye and surprises him to the point where he stops walking to inspect it more closely. He rereads the base information, reminding him that the purpose of the new base was to supply soldiers to help them keep the peace in the Macintosh Hills. The base was also close to Barnville and after the state took control of the farms they relocated all the harvested healing mushrooms to the said base. From there, the special fungus would be delivered to hospitals all over Equestria. All of the mushrooms were gone.

“Weapons... Armor... Mushrooms,” murmurs Shining Armor to himself, wondering why they would go for a weird combination. Weapons and armor are pretty self explanatory, but the healing mushrooms? Sure they have their uses, but he just finds it odd that they would leave most of the medical kits, weapons, and armor behind and take all of the mushrooms.

Shining Armor ponders their motives as he makes his way down the hallway, still reading the report and thinking about what Private Moon Dust said about the attack. As he passes some patients waiting in the lobby, he hears one of them complain about food poisoning from a donkey restaurant. Shining Armor pauses and looks at the unfortunate soul. She looks like she’s going to die, as her coat is literally green arounder her face and she’s has a bucket of puke next to her. Her friend isn’t helping, either, as she’s constantly berating her for eating at a dirty restaurant.

Then it hits him! Shining Armor swears under his breath and bolts out of the lobby, causing heads to turn and patients and doctors alike to converse with each other briefly in confusion about what they saw. Shining Armor runs all the way to the Royal Palace, and goes through all the checks like a paranoid pony on speed and gallops down the hallway to the throne room. He tries to push open the doors, but all that happens is a very nasty shock created by a forcefield that made itself known by glowing a bright yellow where he hit. The shock leaves a tingling feeling all over his body and the scent of burnt hoof tingles his nose. He tries again, ignoring the pain, but they don’t budge, and when he uses his magic he gets a magic backlash that makes him scream and swear painfully as it feels like someone took a hammer to his horn. He swears again and bangs on the door, screaming for Celestia or someone on the other side to open up, but all he gets is an archaic response from behind.

“Tia is refusing to see anypony,” the voice sadly.

Shining Armor turns around, panting and sweating slightly, and sees Luna staring at him, looking like she’s deprived of sleep. He briskly walks to Luna, levitating the report next to his head for her to see.

“Princess Luna, it is important that I see your sister. Right. Now,” says Shining between his huffing, wiping sweat off of his brow afterwards.

Luna shakes her head, looking down. “We’re sorry, but Tia does not wish to be disturbed. Even if We wanted to, We cannot for Our sister has put up a powerful shield that We cannot break.”

Shining Armor groans in frustration, then shoves the report to Luna’s face, not caring for formalities at the moment. He would prefer it if Celestia saw the report, but Luna is the next best thing.

“Your Majesty, do you see this?” Luna nods. “We need to talk. Somewhere private.”

Luna nods again and spreads her wings, a moment later both of them disappear in a flash of dark blue light and reappear in Luna’s study. It is a large and circular room that has no ceiling, but has a magical shield covering the top, giving the room a great view of the evening sky. The room also contains bookcases circling the wall and towering all the way to the ceiling. No shelf is left unfilled with scrolls and book of varying subjects. Shining Armor also notices an enormous telescope pointed to the sky with a star chart taking up at least fifty square feet, and in front of the chart is an oak table with more books, scrolls, parchment and pens with inkwells. Luna carelessly kicks aside some parchment on the ground to clear some space for Shining Armor and herself, but Shining Armor is too tense to sit down.

“Your Majesty, I-”

Luna interrupts him when she raises her hoof and distantly says: “We do not wish to retain titles of royalty. Call Us Luna, please, Captain Armor.”

Shining Armor blinks and refrains himself from releasing another groan. ‘Is the entire Royal Family losing it!?’  “Fine, Luna, forgive me for my tone, but-”

“You are forgiven.”

Shining Armor huffs and looks down to hide his annoyance; it’s bad enough that the ruler of Equestria is locking herself in the throne room, but now the only other pony he can talk to about the matter is acting like she’s doped up on drugs she got from a pity party, and interrupting him nonetheless. He doesn’t have time to be interrupted!

“Are you alright, Captain Armor?”

“No, I’m not alright, I just got the report of an attack on one of our outposts in the Macintosh Hills, and a survivor described Roar Shock as the one responsible and he stole all of the healing mushrooms but left behind nearly every weapon and bullet! So, I’m worried because I have no idea what he’s going to do and both you and Princess Celestia are-” Shining Armor finishes with an aggravated grunt.

Luna stares at him solemnly for a few seconds, watching him catch his breath from his small rant, before looking down. Upon seeing the Princess of the Night’s reaction, Shining Armor sighs and steps forward to bow apologetically.

“Forgive me, Your Maj-Luna, I’m just worried about the safety of Equestria.”

Luna looks up slightly. “We accept your apology, and We ask that you forgive Us for Our distance. It has been a trying few weeks.” Shining Armor opens his mouth, but Luna extends her hoof and speaks before he can say a word. “Please, let Us see the report that has frightened you, Captain.”

Shining Armor hands Luna the report and as she skims through it in complete silence, he watches her, amazed at how absorbed she is in it. However, despite how amazed he is by her concentration, he wishes she would hurry up so that she can present a solution or muster up enough courage to bang on the throne room door until Celestia opens it. When she gets to the list of stolen items, her gaze freezes on the chart where it shows how many mushrooms were stolen.

Luna’s eyes widen. “Oh no.”

“What? What’s ‘Oh no’? Is it as bad as I think it is?”

“Worse.”

Shining Armor steps forward, more terrified than ever now and slightly trembling as the possibilities play in his mind. All of which lead to Equestria dying a horrible death. Luna returns the report to Shining Armor and goes to a section in her library labeled by a flower. She skims through the scrolls and books until she pulls out a scroll that has a basic shadow silhouette of a mushroom on it. She searches through the scroll until she comes to what she wanted, and after that she goes to her board and uses advanced mathematical calculations at speeds that would make Twilight glow from envy. When she figures out the answer to her problem she pales and slumps to the ground, covering her face in shame and mumbling something that sounds cryptic in nature to Shining Armor.

“Princess-”

“NO ROYAL TITLES!!!”

Luna’s Royal Canterlot voice has pushed back loose parchment, pens, and Shining Armor and messed up his mane while leaving his ears ringing. All he can really do is blink and stare at Luna, wide eyed, seeing as his hearing is momentarily destroyed. Luna glares at Shining Armor, eyes red and shining with tears, and she slides to the ground, covering her face again.

“Fate is cruel,” whispers Luna, eyes glistening with tears. Shining Armor asks what she means and she reluctantly pushes the scroll toward the Captain. Luna speaks as he reads it. “Before We became Nightmare Moon We crafted the Sanitatem Fungus to help everypony. It was meant to heal all sickness and mend all injuries, but no matter how hard Our efforts were, there was always a price. Unicorns lost magic, pegasi lost flight, and earth ponies became weary. We were only able to bring the effects down to one day’s cycle, after that, all other attempts to rid of the effect were met with failure.”

Shining Armor looks at Luna. “Brisk Wind mentioned that the mushrooms could be used as a toxin. I’ve seen what they can do in the right conditions, but can they really kill?”

Luna nods, averting her eyes farther from Shining Armor. “If an expired Sanitatem Fungus is ingested then it will kill whoever eats it, and the amount stolen is...” Luna shakes her head, whimpering, and covers her head with her hooves, as if she is blaming herself for what has happened.

“Luna, what is it?” asks Shining Armor, laying down in front of her so he can see her blue eyes.

Luna looks up, sniffling. “Its enough to poison all of Canterlot twice.”

Shining Armor’s jaw drops. “So Brisk Wind was right! But how can they possibly poison Canterlot? They just can’t slip expired mushrooms into dishes and expect ponies to eat them!”

Luna shakes her head and looks at the board. “They don’t have to. They can ground them up into a powder and put them in the water supply.” Luna turns to Shining Armor, shaking in her spot as she uses her magic to pull down a map of Equestria. “If the data is accurate, then there will be enough of the poison to wipe out Canterlot, Ponyville, Los Pegasus, and every town in between if the poison is carried by the currents.”

Shining Armor stares at the map, mind in a complete panic as he thinks about the aftermath of such a large scale attack. Millions would be killed alone, and among them would be his sister and wife. But the hysteria of entire towns -three of which being major locations- being wiped out from a toxin and the government’s inability to protect them would surely drive the nation over the edge. He can’t let that happen. He won’t.

“Luna, we need to see your sister right now. This is too urgent for you two to be moping around. The fate of Equestria is at stake!”

Luna shakes her head and looks down. “Even if we tell Tia, there will be no stopping it. The Stars were right, and it took me until yesterday to realize it,” Luna looks at Shining Armor. “This is how Equestria dies. It has been planned by the Stars for over a millenium, and the fault lies on Our shoulders.”

Shining Armor’s eyes narrow. He will not accept defeat and he honestly can’t believe that Luna is acting this way. He knows Luna has been going through a major depression for the past few weeks, but this isn’t like her. It’s like she’s given up on the home she has been fighting to save. Then there’s the self-blame thing she’s doing. He doesn’t even want to know where that came from! But it appears that now that Luna has an audience she’s ready to give a confession.

“It started over a thousand years ago, during the Equestrian Civil War when I asked the Stars to aide me. We only wanted to save Equestria from Tia’s rashness,” continues Luna sadly. “Her obsession of Harmony has led to its perversion, yet Our attempts to end the corrupted Harmony have only caused more pain and misery.” Luna looks at Shining Armor, her lips trembling and more tears rolling down her cheeks. “We only wanted to help Equestria, but instead We have become the catalyst of its downfall. Nothing works. Not the blade. Not the courts. We’re sorry, Captain Armor, but Equestria’s fate has been sealed in stone. There is no stopping it. Just accept that Equestria will die for the sins of my past.”

Shining Armor takes a deep breath, and steps back while glaring at Luna. “Teleport me to the throne room.”

Luna hesitates, but complies anyway. In a flash Shining Armor disappears and reappears outside of the throne room, refusing to believe that he cannot save Equestria or that it’s time is running out by the decree by some all powerful beings.

Shining Armor approaches the throne room door and slams his hoof against the door as hard as he can. Prompting the shield to give off an explosive response that leaves him lying on his back with thin smoke rising off of him. He clambers to his feet and tries again, hoping that Celestia will listen. No response, only more pain from Celestia’s shield. He growls and slams his hoof against the tough, elegantly carved wood again, this time with enough force to make it sound as if a cannon is going off in the hallway. The shield tries to push him back, but he holds fast, despite the burning and horrible tingling sensations.

BANG!

Another zap, another grunt of pain, but no quitting. He can’t let Roar Shock win. He can’t let him kill Twilight or Cadence or the millions of other ponies.

BANG!

He gets zapped again. Why won’t Celestia open up!? Doesn’t she realize that everything she has built is at stake!?

BANG!

He can feel his hoof peeling from the burns of the zap, and his bones and muscles ache from trying so hard to keep him steadfast. He’s not going to give up, though. He’ll keep knocking until this so called goddess opens the door.

BANG!

Is she deaf!? How can she not hear the explosive knocks or sense her shield is being assaulted?

BANG!

He screams at the door, demanding it to open as if the pieces of wood in front of him will obey his word. Nothing.

BANG!

Nothing again! Some ruler the Goddess of the Sun is turning out to be! She can’t fight Night Mare Moon or Discord, she loses to a changeling, and now she’s locking herself away as her kingdom burns because of the will of one self-righteous pony who thinks he’s doing the world a favor by killing millions.

BANG!

Shining Armor closes his eyes and grits his teeth as bangs on the door harder until he feels like the zapping will make him explode. He can’t understand why Celestia won’t open the door. Her kingdom is at stake. Everything is at stake! His desperate knocking almost brings him to tears as his attempts to get Celestia to realize what is happening go unnoticed by all except for a couple of janitors waxing the floor and a couple of Royal Guards rushing to see what the commotion is.

“CELESTIA OPEN UP!”

When no one answers the door he slumps down and slams his hoof against the door one last time before sliding to the ground. His body trembles from pure, hate filled rage and the returning pain in his hoof and the thought of losing everything he spent his life protecting brings tears to his eyes.

“Damn you, Roar Shock!”

Arc 2- 05- Candy -ADDITION-

Arc 2- 12 (Mare-Do-Well Returns [A])

“...Shining Armor’s audio journal whatever entry whatever date. I don’t care. I don’t even know the date. I don’t know Celestia. I don’t know Luna. I don’t know Equestria. I don’t know anything anymore.” Shining Armor sighs depressingly. ”This is not Equestria, anymore. This is Tartarus. Celestia isn’t Celestia anymore, she’s somepony else who has become so afraid that she’s micromanaging everything, and using the EIB and CDA to do so. I... I don’t know what to say anymore. This is becoming too much. Between Brisk Wind and the EIB and CDA, to the surge of disappearances and Roar Shock, Pinkie Pie waiting to die in a coma, and the goddesses choosing to mope rather than fight... I can’t... I want to save Equestria... but I don’t know if I can. I mean what point is there in fighting if even our goddesses quit?... Nevermind. Stupid question... I can only hope that Pinkie Pie wakes up soon and that Brisk Wind doesn’t do anything stupid. I swear, there’s more to her than we know. I just... nevermind. I’m done.”

Click.

++++++++++

“Private Sparkle, a word with you, please,” said an old unicorn wearing an officer’s uniform whose tag said "Fuller". Despite his intimidating appearance and his rough voice, he still radiated trust and surrogate fatherhood.

A young Shining Armor in his enlisted uniform and mane cropped to regulation, excused himself from other recruits celebrating their graduation and approached the elder unicorn. Once in front, he snapped to attention.

“Sir, Private Sparkle reports, as ordered.”

Fuller smiled. “Private, you don’t need to do that right now, but I do want to ask you something.”

Shining Armor followed Fuller away from the partying crowd, to a secluded area in the barrack. When the old unicorn closed and locked the door, Shining Armor looked at him nervously out of the corner of his eye while retaining his attention stance.

“Out of all the recruits that came here, you were the only one who never changed their answer.”

“Answer to what, sir?” asked Shining Armor, gulping nervously.

"Why you joined the Royal Guard. Care to be honest with me or are you going to keep using that same excuse to make yourself feel good?"

===

Shining Armor is sitting on his living room room couch, eyes bloodshot and mane matted down on his face from sweat. His uniform is also messy and darker in spots from sweat. His eyes may be locked on the Equestrian flag, but he’s staring off into space with tormented scowl, drinking from an almost empty bottle of hard, Sweet Apple Acre Cider. He’s levitating the bottle with his magic while holding his medal in his hoof.

"This is all I am," he whispers while looking down at his Captain medal, gently rubbing it with his hoof.

===

"Sir, I joined because I love Equestria and want to protect her, the Royal Family, and all the subjects of Princess Celestia from harm."

           Fuller shook his head, pacing around Shining Armor, unconvinced of his answer. "No, that can't be it. That is what the others said, but as time went on, as I asked each of them, their answers always changed. The intellectuals felt worthless and wanted to prove to everypony else that they weren't. The jocks wanted to travel. The desperate wanted an escape from their personal Tartarus." He stopped in front of Shining Armor. "But not you? You don't want to prove to your bookworm family that brawn is as good as brain? You don't want to travel?" He leaned closer to Shining Armor, and the younger stallion held his stance, although sweating profusely from nervousness. "You have no Tartarus you're trying to escape from?"

===

Shining Armor’s glazed eyes lift up to the flag, now angry with himself as all of his failures seem to be spilling out of their closet and poisoning his mind with negativity.

"And I can't do it right."

===

Shining Armor stared straight ahead, still holding his stance.

"With all due respect, sir, we all have our own slice of Tartarus following us," said Shining Armor respectfully, yet his voice was quavering slightly.

"Ah, so you are trying to escape Tartarus," said Fuller. "Just like my boy. He tries to hide it by preaching about loyalty to Equestria and Harmony, but I know his heart is not right. Most of these bucks' hearts around here aren't right. They might become right down the road, that is if they stay on this path, but you? As much as I don't want to believe it, you are one of the few who truly believes in guarding Equestria, aren’t you?"

===

Shining Armor takes a gulp from his bottle, still staring at the flag, his anger now sorrow and regret.

"Why can't I protect Equestria?"

===

"Why don't you want to believe, sir?" asked Shining Armor.

"Sometimes its harder to believe in good things," replied Fuller, "but if you're honest with me, Private Sparkle, then you will have a good future for yourself. With what I've seen in you during basic, your determination, honesty, integrity, selflessness, and loyalty are some of the best in the Royal Guard. And that is with you just getting started! With those kinds of traits, I won't be surprised if you lead the Royal Guard someday."

===

Shining Armor slumps in his seat, laughing and crying sadly and angrily as he runs his hoof through his mane, dropping his empty bottle and medal on the ground.

“'Lead the stallions to protect Equestria', he said. 'I believe in you', he said. 'Trust in Celestia', he said. Celestia abandoned us!" Shining Armor stands up and throws the bottle against wall, specifically at the picture of Celestia appointing him as Captain of the Royal Guard; the glass shatters and the picture falls to the ground, breaking the frame. "Our own bucking goddess abandoned Equestria! What kind of goddess abandons her own people, huh!?"

===

Fuller put his hoof on Shining Armor's shoulder. "If you truly joined out of love and loyalty for Equestria, the Royal Family, and the Solar Doctrine, then you will be one of the finest Royal Guard Captains we've ever had. Just promise me you'll never give up. No matter what."

===

Shining Armor paces around the room, furiously screaming at the ceiling. "Do you want me to quit? Is that it, huh? Do you want me to resign and let you and Brisk Wind fix everything with your divine powers?"

===

Shining Armor saluted Fuller with a burst of determination in his eyes. "I promise I will never quit, sir. I took an oath to defend Equestria, the Royal Family, and the Solar Doctrine with my life, and that is what I plan to do."

Fuller grinned and returned the salute. "Glad to hear that, son. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to meet up with Glimmer. He gets worried when I'm late. You, in the meantime, enjoy the party with your friends."

"Of course, sir," said Shining Armor with a big smile.

Fuller unlocked the barrack door with his magic, still smiling. "Dismissed."

===

“Shining? You’re home early.”

Shining Armor’s ears perk up and he sees Cadence standing in doorway, looking worried sick about the state he’s in. He chuckles angrily and walks past Cadence while chucking the picture away and giving her a cold stare.

“Sorry to disappoint, Cadenza,” sneers Shining Armor.

Cadence’s ears droop and her nose wrinkles when she smells the strong scent of alcohol. “Are you drunk?”

“Sure am! Celestia and Luna have quit on us and Roar Shock must be allied with the Stars because both are hellbent on wiping out Equestria, so I’m going to drink!” Shining Armor goes into the kitchen and grabs the first bottle of liquor he sees and pops it open, not caring about Cadence’s horrified expression. “And I’m going to keep on drinking!”

“Okay, I think you’ve had enough,” says Cadence worryingly as she tries to yank the bottle from him.

Shining Armor shakes his head and defiantly takes a large gulp of alcohol, despite Cadence’s magical tugging. When she does get the bottle away from him, he laughs irritably and stomps on the ground.

“There’s no point, Cadence! Luna herself said that the Stars have planned Equestria’s destruction for centuries! The Stars! The same cosmo-mysterio-crazy-thingies in space that created Nightmare Moon and destroyed Roam! And what does Celestia do? She locks herself away and cries!”

Cadence cautiously takes a step to Shining Armor, but he mutters unintelligibly, grabs his bottle and storms out of the kitchen, cursing Celestia and Luna. Cadence follows him to the living room and sees him staring at the Equestrian flag, drinking from his bottle of hard cider with gusto.

Cadence approaches Shining Armor carefully with her concern growing. “Shining, what’s wrong?”

He starts towards the stairs.

“It’s over. It’s all done! Finished!” says Shining Armor, waving his bottle around and splashing the area with alcohol.

Cadence walks after him. “What do you mean ‘it’s done’? What’s done? Is this about the Stars dooming Equestria rant?”

Shining Armor stops and glowers at a photo hanging on the hallway wall. Its of him with his group when they graduated from basic. Despite the crisp uniforms they are wearing, they are all still grinning and having a good time with Fuller next to them, looking proud that he turned a bunch of scrawny colts into buff warriors. Behind the group is the clear blue sky with the Canterlot Palace behind them.

“Glad you were listening,” scoffs Shining Armor as his eyes focus in on himself. “Celestia and Luna are lost. Now it’s just me to fight the Stars and Brisk Wind and Roar Shock.” He looks at Cadence angrily, but he’s not angry at her. He’s angry at himself. “I took an oath to protect Equestria, the Royal Family, and the Solar Doctrine, but I can’t!”

“Shining, you are the most capable soldier-”

“STOP!” Cadence jumps back with tears swelling in her eyes and Shining Armor stares at her for a moment before he walks away from the stairs with his head down. “Don’t you see that I’m not capable? I couldn’t stop Nightmare Moon from doing whatever it is she did to Celestia all those years ago. I couldn’t convince Celestia to move Discord from the gardens. I couldn’t protect you from Chrysalis or stop the changeling attack-”

“Okay, Shining, stop right there!” cries Cadence as she stomps after him.

Shining Armor stomps around the living room, each heavy stomp giving him a twinge of pain in his injured hoof.

“I couldn’t stop Eclipse or Gilda or all those other criminals from taking Equestria’s streets.” He marches into the living room, knocks over the flag of Equestria and glares at the broken picture. “I couldn’t save Blueblood-”

“Shining Armor Sparkle, stop this NOW!” orders Cadence. She yanks the bottle away from him as he tries to chug it down and slams it on the coffee table, then she grabs his head and makes him look her in the eyes. “I know you want to be Superstallion to everypony, but you can’t! You can’t be carrying the weight of Equus on your shoulders!”

“You don’t understand, I have to do it!” says Shining Armor as he pulls away and points at himself. “Its my job!... But Quill Pen was right... I am incompetent.”

Cadence shakes her head, closing her eyes and hugging Shining Armor as tears roll down her cheeks. “No, no you’re not incompetent. Not even close. Most would have resigned already, but not you.” Cadence puts her hoof over his heart and looks into his eyes; she remembers when his blue eyes were easy going and now they are filled with pain and regret. “You stopped Chrysalis. You pushed the changelings out. You convinced Celestia to modernize the Royal Guard.”

Shining Armor shakes his head. “Cadence, you don’t get it.”

“Who found Blueblood’s killer? You did! Who’s leading the charge against crime and corruption? You are! Who defeated the League of Justice? You did! That was all you!”

Shining Armor pulls away from Cadence again and slides on the floor, by the fireplace, staring at the ceiling.

“I didn’t defeat the League of Justice. They survived. Their leader is still alive and now he’s going to kill Equestria,” mutters Shining Armor. “He told us justice was coming for us and he was right. He’s coming, and he’ll wipe out Equestria. I don’t know how. I just know he’s going to do it...”

Cadence sits in front of Shining Armor, trying to look him in the eyes, but he keeps shifting his head away.

“Shining, look at me,” says Cadence softly while guiding his face with her hoof so he can see her. When he closes his eyes she says: “Honey, look at me.” Shining Armor reluctantly opens his eyes. “You stopped him once, you can do it again.”

“Do you know how I stopped him last time?” Cadence shakes her head. “Torture. Torture is what saved Equestria last time. I allowed it... I stood by... I watched as they tortured her for information... I did nothing. I want to blame my injuries for not stopping it,” he sighs, “but I don’t think that’s the truth. I think I allowed it because I knew she wouldn’t talk unless we put her through pain, but now we have nopony to torture for information. Now he’s coming with the help of the Stars and the only ones who can stop them have quit, leaving me to fight a war that’s been in the making for a thousand years.”

Cadence stares at Shining Armor, eyes wide and jaw dropping from shock. Then she looks away and both sit in silence, looking at the floor, unmoving and unable to find the strength to look at each other. The seconds ticking by seem to be minutes, and finally, after an indefinite amount of time, Cadence gets up and leaves without saying another word with her head down and tail and wings dragging behind her. Shining Armor watches her walk up the stairs and when the door to their bedroom closes and locks, he closes his eyes, bangs his head against the wall and sips his hard cider.

“Just me...”

=**********=

Brisk Wind, wearing her barding, steps into a large hangar bustling with activity. Ponies are running around, doing last minute check ups on EIB vehicles, loading up gear, checking equipment and attendance, and other things whereas nobody but the ones doing it know what they are doing. She walks up to a line of EIB unicorns standing at attention in front of three black, armored, covered mini-trains with the EIB logo on them. wearing barding with the EIB logo on it, each armed with a battle saddle and headsets connected to radio packs on their backs. Brisk Wind smiles proudly and approaches a black unicorn mare with a mane made up of different shades of gray; her cutie mark is hidden underneath her barding and she is armed with a standard battle saddle.

“Andromeda, I trust your ponies are ready to go,” says Brisk Wind smugly.

The black unicorn turns around and her golden eyes widen from surprise. “Oh, Director Wind, I wasn’t expecting you to come along on this mission.”

“You didn’t think I came up in my barding to give you detailed information about Gilda’s stronghold for show, did you?” says Brisk Wind with a slight teasing tone.

“Actually, I kinda did,” admits Andromeda with a nervous chuckle.

Brisk Wind frowns and when Andromeda apologizes, she turns to the line of unicorns.

“You all already know what to do, and I’ll apologize again for having this such short notice, but after last night’s fiasco, we cannot take any more chances. Gilda needs to go down. And she needs to go down today.” Brisk Wind starts to pace in front of the group and they remain at attention. “Now just to recap. Griffins are dangerous, very dangerous, and if you let them they will kill you, so immobilize them before they can touch you. If you have to, kill them. Gilda is located on the highest point and we’ll strike in two places. Andromeda will lead the ground team to storm Gilda’s manor and I will lead the pegasi to take them from the sky. Clear?”

The group acknowledges her simple recap of the briefing. When that’s said and done, Brisk Wind dismisses them and heads towards the EIB pegasi.

“Excuse me, Director.”

Brisk Wind stops and turns around with a roll of her eyes.

“What is it Andromeda?” asks Brisk Wind impatiently.

Andromeda paws the ground. “I was just wondering why we’re rushing to do this. I mean, I heard the reasons in the briefing, but this is the kind of operation that cannot be rushed.”

Brisk Wind steps dangerously close to the black unicorn, making her shrink back. “Are you telling me how to do my job?”

“N-no, ma’am, I’m just worried that this thing will go wrong since we’re rushing into this.”

“Nothing will go wrong. The griffins won’t know what hit them. They’ll be done with by the end of the day and Equestria will be one criminal empire safer. Now get to your group.”

Andromeda salutes and trots back to her group while Brisk Wind flies to a catwalk to overlook the main attraction of the hangar.She stares at a massive steampunk zeppelin sitting before her in the hangar with a small smile as it is loaded up by the crew. The zeppelin’s cylinder is covered in metal sheets and the back has four fins, each facing a different direction like a basic compass. In between the fins are turbine engines and underneath the cylinder is the area where the passengers reside, which is a couple of stories tall. To top it off, the big ship is decorated in a base of white with gold decorations all along its hull with an eloquent sun and the EIB symbol painted on either side of the cylinder.

A pegasus mare wearing an air captain’s uniform flies over the working crowd of ponies, towards the catwalk Brisk Wind is on.

“Ma’am, we’re ready to launch,” says the mare as she approaches Brisk Wind.

Brisk Wind gets an evil smile at the prospect of doing a complete beatdown. “Excellent, Captain, we’re leaving immediately.”

The Captain nods and flies down, alerting the crew and passengers that they are leaving. Brisk Wind flies down with the pegasus and goes towards the zeppelin’s bridge, located on the front of the ship for an excellent view of the journey that entails. Inside, unicorns and pegasi work the controls by turning wheels, pulling levers and giving orders through intercoms. The bridge’s polished floors, clear glass, and sleek instruments would make one find it hard to believe that such a beautiful location controls a deadly vehicle.

While Brisk Wind is marveling at the feat of engineering she’s standing in, warning alarms ring out in the halls and after a muffled whine and boom, the ship lurches forward at a steadily increasing angle out of the hangar and into the sky.

“Ladies and gentlecolts, we are off!” says the captain proudly over the intercom.

The ship’s halls echo with cheers and praise and Brisk Wind pats the captain’s back.

“Gilda is screwed,” snickers Brisk Wind.

=**********=

Pinkie Pie trudges through an endless field covered in a blanket of thick snow with Laughter’s necklace clamped securely around her neck. In a normal situation of trudging through snow, she would be exhausted to the point of collapse because of the bitter conditions, but the necklace is melting away all the snow around her, revealing healthy, green grass and flowers. However, when they fall out of the necklaces range, they wither and die from the cold. Pinkie Pie is not cold in the slightest sense since the necklace is making her feel warm and cozy, like a personal sun next to her to keep her warm at all times. She only wishes that her mane and tail would puff out again, she hates them when they are straight. It reminds her too much of Pinkamena, and she knows she turns into a monster when that side comes out. She also wishes she didn’t hear the outside world. Its faint when she doesn’t pay attention to it, but its the background noise that never ends and is forever annoying. Occasionally she would feel the ghostly hooves and pressure of the nurses, doctors and machinery working on her body, doing whatever it is they are doing to keep her alive.

Pinkie Pie stops walking on the crest of a hill and sees a familiar site. An old farmhouse in desperate need of fresh paint, possibly new wood, a next to nonexistent fence, and rusting quarry equipment all surrounded by stones varying shapes and sizes. Not to Pinkie Pie’s surprise, the endless snow stops at the border of the rock farm, leaving the stone’s gray colors to add an impossible level of bleh and dread to the area. However, she is surprised to see smoke rising from the crooked chimney and that the lights are shining through the house’s grungy windows.

The closer she gets to the structure, the more her footsteps become reluctant. She’s loathing her approach to the farmhouse, the source of her miserable childhood wracked with poverty, miserable rock farming, and cold, hungry nights. She doesn’t want to go there, being that each step is a heavy reminder of what the place is and why she left, but her feet are moving on their accord. Her breath freezes in the air as, now, not even Laughter’s necklace can keep her warm, and her hooves feel like there’s frost growing on them as she walks through the miserable, rocky field. When she steps on the rickety patio, she’s shaking and her teeth are chattering with frost all over her coat, and when she reaches out to open the door a torpedo of clothing blast through the door and tackles Pinkie Pie dead on. They fly off of the patio, hit the ground rolling over each other, and come to a stop with the bundle on top and Pinkie Pie on her back.

When Pinkie Pie’s eyes stop rolling and she stops seeing doubles, she sees the large bundle of clothing staring down at her with muscular arms on either side and a pointy tail wagging. The thing looking down at her also has the sweetest lizard eyes anyone could ever see.

Pinkie Pie gasps and her mane and tail inflate with an audible pmph and she joyfully cries out “Spike!” while hugging him tightly around his neck.

“Hey there, Pinkie,” says Spike happily, returning the hug and his voice being muffled by the layers of clothes around him. He stands up, easily picking up Pinkie Pie in the process, and carries her to the old farmhouse. “Want some hot chocolate?”

When they are inside the farmhouse, everything is exactly as Pinkie Pie remembers; the old, worn down furniture, the sparse photos, the abundance of farming equipment waiting to be cleaned, and a stack of food stamps resting in a basket poorly nailed into the wall. She walks around she hears the third floorboard to the left of the door creak, exactly as she remembers. Then she sits on her father’s easy chair and feels the lumps and springs, just as she remembered. She also notices that the fireplace is burning nicely and that the fuel is, of course, the fire logs and the daily newspapers that no one ever read.

“This is a copy of my old house, isn’t it?” asks Pinkie Pie as she messes with the lamp that never turned on, no matter how many time the light bulbs were changed.

Spike walks out of the kitchen, no longer bundled and carrying two mugs of hot chocolate with marshmallows in them.

“Yep,” he says while carefully handing a cup to Pinkie Pie. When she balances it on her nose they both sit by the fireplace. “And I have to say, this place really sucks.”

Pinkie Pie takes the cup off of her nose and sips it, smacking her lips and moaning from how good it is moments after.

“You always make great hot cocoa, Spike,” says Pinkie Pie with a warm smile.

Spike shrugs like its no big deal. “Meh, part of the trade. Being Twilight’s assistant I had to learn to cook.” Then he looks down at his marshmallows, smiling sadly. “I’ll never forget that day she burnt the waffles to ash.” Then he looks at Pinkie Pie. “How’s Twilight?”

Pinkie Pie sighs. “I don’t know. We kinda had a falling out after you... died.”

“Oh.” Spike sips his hot chocolate. “I’m guessing Rarity was-”

“Really mad and sad? Yeah, you could say that, but that would be a ridiculously flimsy understatement. They didn’t want to listen to me when I tried to explain what happened. I guess I can’t blame them, though, since I dragged you into my fight and got you killed.”

Spike stares at Pinkie Pie as she looks at the floor, her mane and tail once again deflated. They finish their hot chocolate in silence, and when the mugs are empty, Spike takes them back to the kitchen with Pinkie Pie following.

“I don’t know why you keep blaming yourself,” says Spike as he sets more water to boil. “I mean, you told me you didn’t want me involved, but I helped you anyway. You told me to stay away from whoever that psycho was, but I went ahead and chased her anyway. You see a pattern here?”

Pinkie Pie looks down, not wanting to answer Spike. She knows the answer, but she also knows that she got him into it by not being effective in her attempts to talk him out or to stop him from going after Terra. While she’s moping, she feels a claw go under her chin and her head is gently lifted up so she can look in Spike’s eyes. He’s smiling sadly and Pinkie Pie’s eyes tear up as he strokes her cheek with his claw. Despite his predatory nature, his stroking proves that he was anything but a predator. Pinkie Pie closes her eyes as bliss overtakes her and continues to let Spike rub her cheek.

“It was all me, Pinkie,” says Spike softly. “I made my own choice because a certain pink pony was willing to sacrifice herself to protect the ones she loved and others she didn’t know from someone who wanted to hurt them.”

Spike kneels down to Pinkie Pie’s eye level and she opens her eyes to look into his.

“Spike, I-”

Spike gets a warm smile as he puts his claw over Pinkie Pie’s mouth, giving her a big sign to stay quiet.

“You inspired me to do go above and beyond to protect Twilight and Rarity and all my friends. I know you can continue on, just please stop beating yourself up for what I did. It really sucks seeing a role model do that.” Pinkie Pie nods as she averts her eyes from the dragon. “Besides, you and I know the truth, that should be enough.”

Pinkie Pie pulls away while shaking her head and she sits at the table with her hooves folded over each other. Spike gives her a fresh mug of steamy, delicious hot chocolate a second later.

“What good is there of knowing the truth if nopony else knows it?” mutters Pinkie Pie before gingerly sipping her warm drink.

Spike scratches his head. “Where the heck did you hear that?”

“My head.”

“Oh... Well, you kinda ruined a great, cliched thing there.”

“But everypony -I mean everyone-” Pinkie Pie looks at Spike apologetically, and he merely dismisses her slip-up with a wave of his hand, “everyone talks about only a select few knowing the truth to be good enough when there really is no point in knowing the truth if no one else knows it.”

Spike smacks his lips together, stands up, cracks his fingers, and then he pounces on Pinkie Pie and starts searching through her mane, ignoring her thrashing and colorful protests. When he manages to get Pinkie Pie under control by pushing her to the ground and sitting on top of her, he thoroughly shifts his fingers through her mane while mumbling incoherently.

“Spike, what are you doing!” cries Pinkie Pie as she squirms under him.

“I’m checking to make sure you’re not Twilight,” says Spike playfully as he checks the roots of her mane. “Nope, pink and pink all the way through.”

Pinkie Pie stops squirming and lets her face fall flat on the floor.

“Did I sound like a snobby bookworm?” asks Pinkie Pie, her voice being muffled by the floor.

“Kinda. I knew you were a goofy party animal who had a hidden intellect, but I never thought you’d spew something like that.” Spike crawls off of Pinkie Pie and lies down in front of her so that they are eye to eye again. “Speaking of ‘party animal’, where is she? I see Pinkamena Diane Pie, but not Pinkie Pie.”

Pinkie Pie looks up, glaring at Spike. “Pinkie Pie’s dead, Spike, I made sure of it.”

Spike and Pinkie Pie sit up with Spike sitting with his legs crossed and his head propped against his hand. He stares at Pinkie Pie as if in deep thought while shaking his head.

“You may have painted yourself green and changed your name and cutie mark, but I know that the party meister is in there somewhere.”

“I got you killed, Spike. It’s better if Pinkie Pie stays dead.”

Spike arches an eye ridge. “Really? Is that what you truly believe or is this another way for you to hide from your past?”

Pinkie Pie frowns. “You better not be going philosophical on me.”

Spike shrugs. “I’m just saying that you hate your real name and nobody knows much about your past. The only consistencies in your stories are that you grew up on the bottom of the barrel rock farm and that you got your cutie mark after Rainbow Dash’s sonic rainboom. I can play the mysterious origins card to near perfection because I truly don’t know where I came from. But you? You don’t-”

“STOP!” yells Pinkie Pie suddenly, breathing heavily and eyes narrowed with gritted teeth. Spike holds up his hands defensively and she jumps to her feet. “As much as I am glad to see you -like wordlessly glad- I do not need people telling me what they think my problem is when I know what I am! Everypony thinks that just because I want to see others happy that I’m trying to make up for some horrible mistake! Well I’m not! I’m not making up for anything! I’m not some nutjob! I’m not-”

Pinkie Pie doesn’t finish her sentence as she storms out of the kitchen with an aggravated scream. She heads straight to her old room, slams the door shut, and then she hops on her bed and curls up into a ball. The bed snaps at the legs and collapses to the ground.

“Figures,” mutters Pinkie Pie angrily as she scrunches up tighter in her ball.

Moment’s later, there is a light knocking on the door and Spike pokes his head. Pinkie Pie looks at him briefly before slumping in her spot and poking her old childhood pillow, its shaped as a pink balloon.

“Are you going to try to make do something random to get the old me back?” asks Pinkie Pie moodily. “Because if you are, my random generator is shot to dust.”

“Nope, not here for that,” Spike says coolly as he walks in her room, looking at all of her doodles, most of which are pictures of her mother. He picks up a little old, yet elegant, figurine of a dancing pony with a sun and rainbow behind it with an inscription on the worn, gold plated base, saying: “Sunshine and Rainbows”. There is “To: Pinkie, Love: Mom” underneath the base, too. He puts the figurine down and looks at the moping pony. “I just wanted to apologize for ticking you off.”

“Apology accepted. Can I mope now?”

“You can mope, but can I hear you sing first?”

Pinkie Pie looks at Spike as she arches an eyebrow and sits up. Spike grins as he sits against the wall, tossing one of the random balls in her room between his hands.

“You want me to sing when I’m incredibly depressed right now?” asks Pinkie Pie skeptically.

“Well, you didn’t have a problem singing to Trixie when she had her meltdown,” points out Spike.

“That was different. That was a pony who needed to be comforted.”

“And what about you?” Spike points at Pinkie Pie with the hand holding the ball. “Why don’t you want to be comforted? You have no problem comforting others and being their friends, but when it comes to you, you are very reluctant in making yourself happy. Even going as far as pretending to forget about your birthdays.”

“Since when are you a psychologist?” says Pinkie Pie sourly.

“I lived with a walking library for thirty years, I was bound to pick up something.”

Pinkie Pie sighs, figuring Spike had a point, and she turns away from the dragon as she lies down and pulls a ratty blanket over her. Spike frowns and tosses the ball to her. It bounces off of her head, but she doesn’t react and Spike mumbles “Oh boy” while approaching the depresses mare. Spike sits on the bed, next to Pinkie Pie and drums his fingers while trying to think of something to do to cure the former happiest mare’s depression.

“You know, I never thought I would be the one to help you out of a depression,” says Spike, genuinely surprised about the task at hand. “Twilight? Sure, I’ve done it plenty of times. Rarity also had her fair share of down moments.”

Pinkie Pie starts shaking as she tries to contain her tears. She had always been the one tasked with trying to make others happy, not because she was elected to, but because she just did it out of a default reaction. In her mind, no one deserves to be miserable. No one but her.

“They were right,” says Pinkie Pie in a low whisper as she tugs the blanket tighter around her. “Its all my fault. You. Mom. Octavia... All me. It’s better for everypony if I stay dead.”

Spike hugs Pinkie Pie and gently rocks her as she quivers while crying softly in his arms, apologizing for getting him killed and wishing for things to return to normal. They sit on her old bed for what seems like hours, Spike constantly stroking Pinkie Pie in his hug while she sobs quietly.

“Please forgive me,” whimpers Pinkie Pie.

Spike closes his eyes and rests his head on top of Pinkie Pie’s. “We already have.”

Arc 2- 06- Investigating the Investigators -EDITED-

Arc 2- 12 (Mare-Do-Well Returns [B])

Gilda looks out the window of her office and watches the EIB zeppelin glide towards the griffin enclave like a deadly, colorful blade. While the other griffins and Monte look uneasy about seeing such a thing -especially Blair-, Gilda merely snickers and walks back to her desk and grabs a box of shotgun shells from her desk. She opens them up and pours them all over her desk, then she grabs her shotgun and pops the chamber open, which has a belt for spare shells.

“Oh boy, I haven’t had this much fun in a long time,” snickers Gilda as she loads her weapon.

Gilda slams the chamber shut with a satisfying click and looks outside to see the EIB convoy converging on her home. She scoffs and looks back at her griffins while adjusting a band around her shotgun and slipping her wrist through it.

“These damn ponies have bossed us around long enough,” sneers Gilda, and when she sees Monte shrinking back slightly as the griffins stare at him, she quickly adds: “Except for Monte.”

“Yeah, I’m a zony, anyway, so I don’t count,” says Monte smugly, being sure to throw in an arrogant grin and puff out his chest.

“Monte.”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up. As for you guys, Brisk Wind betrayed us. She has killed our friends without so much as a blink of an eye despite all we’ve done for her. So what we’re going to do is kill every single one of those fuckers that pokes their nasty faces in here!”

The griffins cheers Gilda tightens the shotgun’s safety band around her wrist, then she looks at the ensemble in front of her with murder in her eyes.

“Assemble your teams. Brisk Wind is mine, everyone else is fair game,” says Gilda viciously.

The griffins cheer again and fly out of the room to charge the zeppelin with their weapons at the ready, except for Blair. She runs in the opposite direction, clear out of the office, but Gilda doesn’t really care. When gunfire rings out, Gilda smiles and turns to Monte.

“Do you know what to do, Monte?” asks Gilda sternly.

Monte puts on a cocky smile. “Of course I do.”

“Good.”

Then she flies out of her loft and charges the zeppelin. Monte waves and looks at Gilda’s safe and frowns when he realizes that its locked good and tight, and he doesn’t know the combination.

“Well crap.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Trixie races down the hallway as sporadic popping of gunfire echoes throughout the whole structure. She doesn’t know what the heck happened or why it happened, all she really knows is that she was able to sneak inside with little to no difficulty, and right as she stopped to catch a breather because her sides were killing her, a war sparked in the parking lot. What had been someone demanding the immediate surrender of Gilda turned into a bloodbath. Now she’s snaking through the hallways, trying to keep her head down, as the EIB agents and griffins slaughter each other.

Trixie skids to a stop when a door is kicked off of its hinges, and when an EIB agent pokes her head out, Trixie turns tail and gallops down the hallway in the opposite direction. Some bullets whiz past her, but the agent doesn’t give chase, and when Trixie rounds another corner she runs into a room with four griffins arming their weapons. Both sides stare at each other at a loss for words for a moment before Trixie chuckles nervously, apologizes and closes the door.

“Get her!”

Trixie eeps and bolts down the hallway as the group of griffins break down the door and chase after her. As she zips around the corners, occasionally slipping on the polished tile, she silently thanks Celestia that the hallways are too skinny for the griffin’s to fly through. However, her thanking comes to an abrupt end when a pair of griffin talons snag her off of the ground as if she were some poor fish in a river being snatched for a snack, and she’s flung into a wall head first. After hitting the wall, and leaving a nice, head sized indent, a picture of a flower lands on her head making her grunt. On top of the throbbing pain in her head and the ringing in her ears, she can’t really see clearly because of the layer of drywall dust all over her face.

Trixie shakes her head and hears a pair of wings flapping. When she looks up she sees a small griffin land in front of her, snarling, with the other three griffins running up and aiming their weapons. Then, Trixie sees a team of EIB agents round the corner and she points at them.

“EIB!” shouts Trixie frantically.

The griffin in the very back turns around, swears and brings his weapon to them. The others follow suit and Trixie runs when both sides pump an impossible amount of lead into each other. While running, she comes across a pair of open double doors that lead to an empty hallway with a room at the very end that has a window showing the inside. Trixie notices that through the window she can see a door that is labeled with an elevator symbol, and its being guarded by three griffins who do not seem to notice Trixie. Trixie also notices that the room is labeled: “505”.

‘Okay, really? What is up with that number?’ wonders Trixie.

Then Trixie realizes that the shooting from down the hall has stopped.

Trixie looks over her shoulder, then at the room, then she groans and closes and locks the double doors. When that’s said and done, she takes a deep breath and paws the ground while aiming her horn towards the window.

“This is a really bad idea.”

Trixie gallops towards the window as she charges her horn, sweating and biting back tears of pain as the little ball of electricity on the tip of her horn gives her a splitting headache. When she’s within jumping range, she shoots the little ball and jumps through the window as it shatters. She sails clean through the opening and tackles one of the griffins into the wall. While the griffin is disoriented, Trixie turns and socks a griffin in the jaw before she can fire, then she bucks the remaining griffin in the chest. Right as Trixie is about to make another round, three unicorns in EIB barding rush in from another door and spray the area with lead without so much as hesitating. Trixie swears and jumps over a table and knocks it over to use as a shield. Then, as the bullets shred everything in their path, she squats down as low as she can go and tries not to think about the griffins being shot to bloody ribbons as their squawking quickly vanishes.

Trixie peeks out from her cover and sees that the she needs to get to is right behind the three EIB agents that are approaching her right now. All three have their weapons aimed towards her and are slow and meticulous in their steps as they walk past the three corpses and step over the carpet of glass and splinters. Trixie goes back in her cover and closes her eyes to think. What would Minty... What would Pinkie do?

As she’s thinking, the night of the attack on their apartment replays in great detail. The blood. The smoke. The pian. Sunshine. The revelations of Pinkie Pie and their betrayal. Then she hears two small creaks and clicks.

Trixie’s eyes snap open and she leaps forward, out of the line of fire of the two EIB agents that had flanked her. Their bullets shred the ground to where all that remains is a hole, and when they turn to face Trixie, she screams in rage as she jumps towards one of the EIB and uses her hoof as a hook around the agent’s neck. The agent lets out a sickly, gagging noise as she’s tugged off of her feet and forced on her back. Both unicorns land on their backs with a grunt and Trixie quickly rolls to her hooves and kicks a chair towards the other agent. The chair hits the agent in the chest and as she stumbles, Trixie jumps and brings her forehoof down on her helmet. The agent hits the ground without a peep and Trixie turns around when she hears a click and a weapon whirring to life. She pales at the sight of the remaining EIB agent aiming a scaled gatling gun at her. Trixie runs as the agent shoots at her, tearing apart the wall, floor and basically anything she looked at with the scream of the weapon to accompany the carnage. Trixie dives into the elevator room and instinctively covers her head as a stream of hot lead breaks apart the hallway walls with merciless intent. When she takes the risk of looking at the elevators, she sees yellow tape over all of them, saying: “Closed For Repairs”.

“Oh come on!” yells Trixie irritably.

There’s another burst of fire and Trixie shrinks down farther into the ground.

“Stop shooting, you maniac!”

The shooting stops immediately. Trixie hesitates before poking her head out and sees the unicorn popping out the spent box of ammo and levitating another on in.

“This is a dumb idea.” Trixie says to herself. Then she shouts: “En guard, you fiend!”

The agent looks up, perplexed, as Trixie charges her, screaming like a mad pony. When the agent’s mind clicks and she realizes that Trixie is going for a kamikaze run, she panics and becomes frantic and sloppy as she tries to load a fresh drum. Right when the fresh drum is in, Trixie is already upon her and with one good swing, the weapon on the battle saddle is knocked loose with a shower of sparks bouncing off of the dueling ponies. Trixie blocks the agent’s attempt to stomp her and counters with a swipe to the head. While the agent is still disoriented, Trixie clambers on top of the pony and kicks the weapon off of her saddle. The agent bucks Trixie off and she lands on her back, and rolls out of the way just in time to avoid getting stomped. Trixie shoots a small bolt of lightning at the EIB agent’s chest, while still on her back, causing the intense pain in her horn to return. Trixie winces and tries to clutch her horn under her hat, but to no avail. As Trixie fruitlessly comforts her injured horn, she realizes that her spark also had no real effect on her opponent. All it really did was leave a burnt spot on her opponent’s barding and tick her off.

‘Well shit,’ thinks Trixie dreadfully as her opponent charges her horn for a counter strike.

Her opponent hits Trixie in the chest with a telekinetic blast that pushes her through another window, leading to a nasty drop, and as she falls she wraps her hooves around a cord that is conveniently near her. Trixie breathes a sigh of relief as she hangs on the cord after looking down to see that she’s a good dozen or so stories up. Then she spots a catwalk not too far from where she is currently hanging. Its a story down and if she can swing herself hard enough she just might land on it. Or she can get kicked in the chest by the EIB agent who is using her mouth to stabilize her grip on another cord, lose her grip and barely land on her back on the catwalk. The latter happens.

Trixie groans and coughs as she wobbly pushes herself to her feet, but her ambition to stand up is shot to dust when a set of hooves land on her back, pushing her into the grated floor of the catwalk. Then Trixie’s turned on her back and gets stomped on her gut. Trixie grunts and curls up while rolling on her side.

“I loved that saddle!” sneers the agent, using her magic to tug Trixie’s head up so she can punch her in the cheek and let her fall hard. “And you broke it!”

Trixie uses the railing for support as she pulls herself to her feet. “Oh boohoo!”

The agent roars and charges her horn, and Trixie bolts forward and jabs the base with her hoof. The agent shrieks in pain and falls to the ground, clutching her horn, and Trixie tackles her to the ground and starts pummeling her. The EIB agent beneath her hooves blocks one of Trixie’s punches and in one swift, fluid motion, Trixie finds herself pinned under the agent and is dealt a series of painful blows to her face. Trixie’s world becomes filled with ringing and flashes of white light as the hooves colliding with her face knock everything into blinding chaos. Each punch makes Trixie feel like her head’s going to get crushes and when a lense on her goggles crack and she feels blood trickle down her face, she uses a burst of adrenaline to push her attacker off using her hind legs. The EIB agent lands on her back, away from Trixie, and Equestria’s costumed vigilante scrambles to her hooves and makes an attempt to flee. However, the EIB agent gets up and tackles Trixie. They both roll over each other, skid to a stop, and then scramble to their feet. Both ponies snort hot air and paw the catwalk as their eyes narrow on each other.

“I’ve had enough of you,” says Trixie through gritted, bloody teeth.

Then Trixie and the EIB agent scream and they charge each other as fast as as they can run.

=**********=

Gilda screams as she rams a pegasus EIB agent into the armored hull of the zeppelin. The impact leaves a small dent and Gilda lets the unconscious pony fall to her death, then she twirls her shotgun and shoots another pegasus in the chest. She, too, falls to her death. A couple of pegasi tackle her and they bounce off of the zeppelin’s hull and tumble down, but Gilda regains her flight and slashes the throat of one of the pegasi that tackled her. After throwing the corpse aside, Gilda grabs the other one before she can fly away and speeds towards the first turbine engine. The pegasus screams in terror and desperately tries to free herself, but the griffin is too strong.

“Say ‘Hello’ to your friends for me!” yells Gilda over the screaming engine.

She throws the pegasus in the engine and she and her screams disappear in a cloud of red that is quickly overtaken by a fireball carrying chunks of propeller and other turbine engine parts. The engine bellows fiery, sickly black smoke and the zeppelin shudders and its other engines groan over the added stress.

oooOOOooo

Inside, the zeppelin shook when the first engine was destroyed, and now red warning lights are swirling in the halls and ponies are scrambling to keep the ship flying. On the bridge Brisk Wind glares at the Captain while she tries to keep the terrified crew calm as they struggle to keep the ship up and to figure out what happened.

“What just happened!” exclaims Brisk Wind, wrapping her hoof around the railing for support when the ship shakes.

“One of the engines was destroyed!” says the Captain frantically as she runs next to one of the ponies trying to get a status report on the engine room.

Brisk Wind runs to the window and cranes her neck to get a better look, and sure enough, there is a trail of smoke protruding from a gutted engine. She growls and turns to the Captain to say something, but when she sees Gilda fly past their window, flipping them off, she grits her teeth and swears she feels steam pouring out of her ears.

oooOOOooo

Gilda lands on top of another turbine engine and shoots at the part that connects it to the rest of the ship. After firing half a dozen rounds, the shotgun finally tears into the protective casing, revealing wires and tubes. She quickly reloads and shoots at the wires and tubes. The buckshot shreds them easily, sending sparks and other material flying up to her face. The ship shudders and groans as the engine sputters and shakes violently. Gilda nearly loses her balance because the platform she’s on is shaking as well, but when she regains her footing, she grins upon seeing that she damaged a piston. The piston is spraying out colored, sparkling fumes and making a horrible screeching noise as the damaged metal grinds against one another.

“I’ll see you in Hell!” cackles Gilda while aiming her weapon directly above the piston.

Gilda suddenly screams in pain and falls backwards with a deep gash on her shoulder where she was shot, barely grabbing the ledge to keep herself from falling to her death. Gilda swears and glares at Brisk Wind as she lands where Gilda previously stood with a pistol in her mouth, being sure to land on the griffin’s talons. Gilda wiggles her fingers out from under and lets herself drop right as Brisk Wind fires. The bullet barely misses Gilda and she swerves under and between the engines as Brisk Wind flies after her while shooting sporadically.

“Is that all you got!” taunts Gilda.

Gilda turns and loads the last two shells into her shotgun and shoots a single shot at Brisk Wind. The barding protects her, but the force of the blast sends her spinning back, knocks the air out of her lungs and makes her drop her weapon. The pistol is quickly sucked up by the turbine engine and diced into an oblivion. Small streams of fire pour out from the engine as the whole thing’s rattling becomes more intense. Gilda lands on top of the piston fires her last shot into it before Brisk Wind can reach her. The piston pops open and the sparkling fumes shoot out, making Gilda cough and wave the smoke from her face. However, despite waving the smoke away, the fumes make her skin feel tingly and everything becomes brightly colored and sparkly. Even a charging, furious Brisk Wind looks like she was bathed in neon glitter paint.

The pain of being tackled is real, though.

Brisk Wind and Gilda roll over each other on the engine platform and come to a stop near the edge. The whole thing is shaking violently to the point where both can barely keep their balance on it, and the engine sounds like a blender trying to dice metal while sputtering out black smoke. Gilda tries to blink the colorful mess away, but it does nothing, and Brisk Wind’s hoof to her face doesn’t help matters much.

Gilda stumbles back and when Brisk Wind tries to stomp her again, she grabs her hoof and digs her talons in. Brisk Wind cries out in pain as the claws dig into her flesh, drawing blood and keeping herself locked to Gilda. Gilda pulls Brisk Wind close so that their beak and muzzle are touching.

“Oh I’m sorry, am I hurting you?” sneers Gilda.

Brisk Wind swings her free hoof against Gilda’s eye, and the griffin squawks and releases Brisk Wind while clutching her injury. Then Brisk Wind tackles Gilda to the ground, both almost falling off in the process, and she stomps on Gilda’s wing. As Gilda thrashes in pain, Brisk Wind stomps on the griffin’s back, sending out another painful cry. Brisk Wind brings her hoof up for another stomp, but Gilda scrambles out from under and the pegasus’s hooves hit hard metal. While Brisk Wind swears from the unpleasant feeling of stomping metal, Gilda swings her shotgun against Brisk Wind’s face. The shotgun cracks against her face and sends her flying back and some of her teeth tumbling over the edge. As Brisk Wind tries to get up Gilda rams the shotgun butt on her back and Brisk Wind collapses with half her body dangling over the edge, unmoving.

“You are the meanest dweeb I’ve ever met,” growls Gilda. Then she spits blood on Brisk Wind’s mane and pushes her off of the ledge. Brisk Wind falls barely out of range of the turbine suction, but Gilda doesn’t pay any heed to it. If the engine won’t kill her then the ground will. Gilda looks at the shaky engine, then at her shotgun. “Sorry, buddy.”

Gilda unclips her safety band, tosses the shotgun in the shaky engine’s suction path and takes flight, grunting when a spike of pain shoots throughout her wing. She was expecting the engine to spew out a fireball and cough out black smoke, but what she wasn’t expecting was the engine to explode. The turbine pops open like someone detonating a stick of dynamite inside a metallic watermelon, and the force pushes Gilda towards her office with chunks of burning metal flying around her.

The explosion destroys the engine below it by knocking it loose and sending its burning partner falling to the ground. The red hot shrapnel also penetrates the zeppelin and ignites the balloon in the blink of an eye. Fire rolls out of the windows, carrying glass, loose materials, and unfortunate ponies out with it, and the vehicle begins its plunge to its death... directly towards the main structure of the griffin enclave.

=**********=

Trixie and the EIB agent stare at each other, battered, panting and wanting nothing more than to end the fight with a swift kick to send their opponent over the edge. Right when Trixie is about to go for another attack against her nemesis, her ears droop and her whole body shrinks down as she watches a burning zeppelin dip towards her, leaving a trail of hellish, fiery smoke in its wake. The EIB unicorn she was fighting mirrors Trixie’s reaction when she sees the burning missile, too. What’s left of the armored balloon acts like a thick blade as it breaks through the wall and gigantic decorated windows with an earsplitting mix of stone and glass shattering and the groaning made from metal bending and snapping. A giant fireball rolls out, barely missing both unicorns, as the remains of the zeppelin’s balloon bursts open, and both swear and bolt down the catwalk.

As they gallop from the burning, monster sized vehicle, chunks of burning brick, bent metal, and shards of glass rain down around them. Trixie continues to swear as she gallops faster, and when the burning zeppelin crashes through the catwalk she is on, the EIB unicorn is crushed and the whole thing shifts with a sudden jolt as the majority is knocked off in a twisted mess. The supporting wires snap and Trixie screams in terror as she scrapes her hooves against the collapsing catwalk. When all but one wire remain, the catwalk goes into freefall and swings wildly while Trixie tumbles down. She manages to wrap her hoof around the railing, but when she sees that the catwalk is swinging towards a large wall with lots of little windows on it she closes her eyes and braces herself for the worst.

The catwalk slams against something, Trixie doesn’t know what, but what she does know is that she is sailing through the air, heading towards a window and is in for a painful landing. Trixie rolls herself up into a ball as tight as she can go and flies through the window like a fleshy cannon ball. She rolls across the floor and comes to a stop when she hits the wall with a loud, painful thump. When everything stops ringing and spinning, Trixie realizes her world is upside down. She also realizes that she’s lying on her head with her hind legs in the air and her back pressed against the wall. Then she falls over with a small grunt and tries to stand up, but crumbles to the ground when she feels the cheap stitches break and her blood ooze out.

“Son of a... Can I please get a break!” yells Trixie irritably.

The universe answers with the last cord snapping and the catwalk falling to the ground with a fireball rolling up to the window upon impacting the destroyed vehicle. Trixie winces as she stands up and limps towards the door. She bucks open the door and the door flies off of its hinges and hits a griffin with a bandaged face reloading a double barreled shotgun. The griffin squawks and falls to the ground as her weapon skids away. When the griffin pushes the door off of her back, Trixie rams her into the wall, leaving a crack in it. The griffin shoves Trixie away and swipes at her with her claws. Trixie holds up the modified hoofball gauntlet and the talons leave gashes in it, but don’t slice her skin. The griffin growls and punches Trixie in the jaw. Granted the apparatus on her lower face takes the brunt of the damage, the blow still knocks her off of her feet, cracks the apparatus and leaves a bruise on her face.

While Trixie regains her footing the bandaged griffin leaps towards her shotgun, turns around, sits on her haunches and aims her weapon at Trixie. Trixie is about to make a break for it, but there are three silenced shots and two bloody holes pop open the griffins chest and another on her eye, sending miniature bloody blobs all over Trixie and three bullets barely missing her. Trixie watches the griffin drop and the unicorn she saw at Bon Bon’s candy store approaches her with a silenced revolver floating next to her. She looks uneasy at what she just did, as her weapon is trembling, even with the magic holding it, and she gulps while looking at Trixie.

“Nice costume,” she says uneasily.

“Um... thanks? Who are-”

Trixie’s eyes focus on the armor, more specifically, the symbol on it. The symbol of Roar Shock. The symbol of the League.

The League of Justice is alive! Trixie would dance and clap her hooves together from how insanely happy she is right now, but her injuries prevent her from doing that.

“I’m Lyra,” says the unicorn with a nervous chuckle as she approaches Trixie, “I’m on your side. I’ve heard about you, Vigilante, and the League appreciates what you’re doing in Canterlot.”

Trixie smiles behind her mask. “Really?”

“Yeah! I know they’ll be glad to have you help us take down the griffins! I mean, it’s been hectic when the EIB attacked. It was supposed to be a simple, get in-poison-get out mission, but nope. These guys show up and bring a war on our heads.”

“You talk a lot.”

“Sorry, you’re just my hero. You fight for justice just like the League.”

Trixie finds herself smiling once again and Lyra notices the blood, fresh and dried, on Trixie’s costume. Her eyes widen, mortified that Trixie is in such a state, and surprised that she’s still standing. Lyra gently ushers Trixie inside the room she just came from while keeping an eye out for trouble, and once they are inside she forces her to sit down.

“What are you doing?” asks Trixie uneasily as she watches Lyra levitate a satchel from her back.

“It’s okay, this is some medicine that was given to us by our boss in case of an injury. I think you need it more than I do.”

Lyra pulls out a syringe and Trixie notices that it looks similar to what Gray Muffin gave her after the stupid tea kettle exercise. Lyra uses her magic to pull up a piece of Trixie’s mask and injects the syringe into her neck. Trixie winces as the needle goes in and as the uncomfortable feeling  of her cuts and bruises mending themselves to give herself the shine she loves so much. She even feels the chipped off piece of her horn grow back! But that part is incredibly painful and brings tears to her eyes. After Trixie stifles the urge to cry and blinks tears out of her eyes, she sighs with relief as all the soreness fades away, but her relieved smile twists into a curious frown when she feels weird bulges all over her. Then she realizes what just happened.

Trixie looks at Lyra, mortified. “I forgot to take out my stitches.”

Lyra cringes. “Ouch... well that sucks for you, then.”

Thankfully Lyra can’t see Trixie’s eye twitch behind her visor. Trixie can’t believe Lyra gave such an answer. She didn’t make any attempts to comfort her, tell her that it’s alright, or that they’ll think of something. All Trixie gets is a “sucks for you” response on top of her skin growing over the colorful blotches of thread all over her body. To her, that is beyond a “sucks for you”! That calls for a hug and some comforting, knowing that she’ll have to cut those darn things out. Just the idea of having to cut into her own skin to pull out thread makes Trixie shudder.

“You aren’t mad at me are you?” asks Lyra while cowering back slightly.

‘No, Lyra, I’m not mad. I’m happy that I have colorful stitches under my skin.’ “No, Lyra, I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself for forgetting about my stitches.”

“How did you-”

Trixie holds up her hoof in a blink of an eye. “Silence! We will not mention this to anypony for any reason.” Lyra nods and Trixie lowers her hoof. “Now, where’s the rest of your team. We’ll have to team up if we want to take down Gilda.”

Lyra puts her satchel away. “We’ll most likely be heading towards our fallback point since we’re trying to keep a low profile and weren’t expecting an EIB assault. Especially one like this.”

Trixie shakes her head. “Sorry, if you’re going to be running away I can’t follow. Gilda has information that I need to take down the pony who murdered my friend and I’m not leaving until I get it.”

Lyra looks down. “Yeah, I know what it’s like to lose a friend. I understand what you’re going through... and... well, let’s just say the League helped me avenge her.”

“Oh that’s nice.”

Lyra shakes her head and looks at Trixie. “Truthfully, I want it to feel nice, but it won’t. No matter how hard I try,” Lyra checks her weapon and puts in extra bullets when she realized she forgot to reload, “it doesn’t work. I keep seeing Bon Bon crying. Not because she was murdered, but because I killed her murderer.”

“Don’t feel bad, I see dead ponies all the time,” says Trixie while patting Lyra’s shoulder.

Lyra scowls. “I’m being serious!”

“Me too.”

Trixie can feel Lyra’s confused eyes on her as she walks down the hallway, determined to find the proof that Lock was in Gilda’s pocket and bring him and her down, and with them, Brisk Wind. Her gut is still telling her that Brisk Wind knew about what had happened and had a hoof in it, and if she did, there will bound to be something in Gilda’s files that will link the three to each other.

“Wait!”

Trixie stops and turns around to see Lyra walking towards her, now wearing a headset connected to a radio pack that she just now noticed.

“Lyra, you have to go back to your team, they don’t like it when somepony breaks off,” says Trixie sternly.

“I told Adanz that you were here and trying to avenge your murdered friend. He’s going to meet us at Gilda’s loft with his team,” says Lyra with an excited smile.

Trixie gasps as the great news hits her with a cannonball that spreads joy. “Adanz is alive?”

“...Yeah... you know him?”

Trixie giggles childishly as she bounces up and down in her spot. “I haven’t seen him in-in, gosh! I don’t know how long! I completely lost track of time, but we were cool!”

Lyra raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, you look weird doing that in that costume.”

Trixie stops bouncing and looks down, scuffing the floor, thankful that her embarrassed blush is hidden. “Right, sorry.”

“Follow me. I have a blueprint that will take us to her loft.”

Trixie nods and follows Lyra out. The two run down the shot up hallway, hopping over destroyed furniture and corpses. Trixie tries to ignore the flickering lights and the blood all over the floors and walls, but seeing so much makes it hard to ignore. Trixie hears another set of hooves and looks next to her and sees Sunshine running next to her, coming to brutally murder her good mood like the psychopath he is. Trixie makes a low, irritated, growl and keeps her eyes on Lyra.

“Goin’ t’ follow the pretty whose organization ya betrayed, are ya, Trixie?” mocks Sunshine as he gallops next to her, grinning eagerly.

“I didn’t betray anypony.” growls Trixie.

“Right, ya just murdered hundreds of them-”

“No I didn’t!”

“And burned down their home.”

“No!”

“And now ya think ya’ll just drop by and say ‘Hi’ and they’ll accept ya with open hooves?”

“YES!” Trixie skids to a stop and slams Sunshine against the wall with angry tears swelling in her eyes. “THEY WILL ACCEPT ME!”

Her tormentor merely chuckles and slides into the wall only to walk out of it, next to Trixie, and put his hoof on her back. “Trixie, take it from a professional, all murderers and traitors lie until their lie becomes a reality, but it changes nothin’. Ya can lie t’ yerself all ya want, but it won’t change ya and it won’t change the minds of those wanting t’ kill ya.”

Trixie growls and punches Sunshine, but her hoof goes through him and leaves a large indent in the wall. Sunshine disappears in a puff of fog after that. Trixie pulls her hoof out and shakes the dust off of her gauntlet before she turns around to follow Lyra. She’s half expecting Lyra to be standing there to question her sanity, but the aquamarine unicorn is nowhere to be seen.

“Ya’ll always be a murderer, and the path yer takin’ will add more bodies to yer list,” echoes Sunshine’s voice. “But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Yer gorgeous when you’re feisty.”

Trixie glares at ceiling and walls, hoping to see the demonic presence so she can give him one last punch. But alas, he’s nowhere to be seen, so she does the only thing she can do. Carefully trot down the ruined hallway.

“Call it what it is, ‘killing’. And I don’t cope, I forget about it.”

“I’m no murderer,” mumbles Trixie angrily. Then doubt seeps in and she stops walking while looking down. “I can’t be.”

oooOOOooo

Gilda winces as she pushes herself to her feet. A sharp pain shoots throughout her wing, making her swear loudly and bangs the ground. When she hears a set of hooves land behind her she turns around and sees Brisk Wind behind her, her mane and tail frizzled and bleeding from the injuries on their high altitude brawl. Brisk Wind approaches Gilda with a dangerous glare as the griffin chuckles painfully.

“Wow, you just don’t want to die, do you?” says Gilda, wincing shortly after.

“I was hoping we could continue our alliance for our march to Perfect Harmony, but I was mistaken,” says Brisk Wind coldly as she limps forward. “Now if you want-”

Gilda laughs, spits blood by Brisk Wind’s hoof and wipes her beak clean. “You think I care about your stupid pipe dream? Ha! I only agreed to this so called alliance to keep my tail out of Singsong! But I should’ve known it was better to take my chances in there rather than be your puppet!”

Brisk Wind glances at the Gilda’s safe. “Tell me the combination and I’ll make your death quick.”

“How about I say ‘Fuck you’ and rip out your throat?”

“Tell me, now!”

Gilda roars and launches towards Brisk Wind like a feathered missile. Brisk Wind reels back to block, but Gilda breaks through the pegasus’s defense and tackles her in the chest. Both of them slide across the floor and bonk their heads on the balcony wall. They both curse about the pain, but Brisk Wind quickly presses her hind legs against Gilda’s stomach and kicks her over the edge. Gilda lets out a surprised scream that disappears in an instant, like someone flipped a switched.

Brisk Wind clambers to her feet and peeks over the edge while panting heavily and trying to ignore the throbbing pain all over her body, specifically in her head. When she’s looking over the edge, though, a talon grabs her by her armor’s collar and drag her over the edge. Brisk Wind screams as she tumbles down with Gilda, both of them clutching each other and rapidly spiralling down to the pavement. Gilda snarls and claws at Brisk Wind as she awkwardly bashes her hooves against Gilda’s face and sides while simultaneously trying to keep the griffin’s beak from stabbing her face. Because of Brisk Wind’s armor, Gilda’s talons don’t slice her body open, but they do leave large gashes in them, and her unprotected limbs do get deep cuts. Gilda, on the other hand, has gashes all over her face from where the hoof hit and her sides feel like they’re being stabbed from the inside.

When they are almost at the bottom, Brisk Wind dares to look away to check the distance, and upon seeing how close they are she turns and pushes Gilda to the ground. Gilda acts as a fleshy cushion as she impacts the ground with a sickening crunch and skids across the ground, leaving a trail of blood, feather, and fur while Brisk Wind rolls like a ball. When Gilda slides to a stop, she becomes still, but Brisk Wind stands up, albeit very wobbly and falls over a couple more times before regaining her footing. When the pegasus regains her footing she limps towards Gilda, wincing painfully with each step.

When Brisk Wind is above the griffin she kicks her over so that she can see her face. What she gets instead of seeing Gilda’s eyes is a swipe to her face, leaving three large scratches from her forehead down to the bottom of her cheek, barely missing her eye. Brisk Wind shrieks and falls to the ground, clutching her face and kicking her legs wildly as Gilda towers above her, bleeding profusely from her shredded skin.

“You used me as a puppet!” screams Gilda furiously.

She stomps on Brisk Wind’s gut, making her retract into a ball instantly and pulling her hooves away from her face to clutch the new injury.

“You killed my griffins!”

She picks up Brisk Wind by her throat and punches her in the jaw as hard as her injured arm could. Brisk Wind falls to the ground with a cracked jaw and busted lips to add to her three pouring gashes. She tries to stand up by crawling on the ground and flapping her wing weakly, bleeding and gasping for air while doing so.

“You bring war to my home!”

Gilda stomps on her back again, and she stops crawling, but trembles as the griffin stands above her, breathing heavily with every intention of gutting her.

“I told you I was coming for you.”

Gilda picks up Brisk Wind by her throat again and lifts her off of the ground, glaring hellish daggers into the terrified pegasus’s eyes. As Brisk Wind struggles to breathe and fruitlessly fights to free herself, Gilda tightens her talons around the wounded pegasus’s neck, drawing more blood. Gilda laughs at Brisk Wind’s desperate gasping and sporadic thrashing.

“And now-”

A sudden gunshot rings out and Gilda drops Brisk Wind and falls to the ground with a smoking, bleeding hole in her side. She coughs out blood and tries to stand, but more gunshots ring out and Gilda’s body spasms as each new bullet tears into her. Brisk Wind can’t see what’s going on because of the blood all over face, but she does hear Gilda drop, Andromeda shouting and multiple sets of hooves running towards her. Brisk Wind wipes blood from her eyes just in time to see a medic wrap her face with gauze. Brisk Wind winces as the fabric touches her tender wounds, and when they are taped around her injury, she flies towards Gilda’s office, ignoring the calls for her to come back.

=**********=

Trixie is able to reunite with Lyra after a small time searching, and when they do reunite, they run straight to Gilda’s office. As expected, the office is trashed; however, what they weren’t expecting was Monte fumbling with a safe, mumbling unintelligibly between his terrified whimpers and heavy breathing. When the safe pops open Monte cheers, opens it and puts a sheet of paper in the safe and his mane itches when he gets the feeling he’s being watched.He turns around and his cheerful, victorious grin is replaced with a horrified look in a half blink of an eye.

“Oh no.”

Trixie growls and uses her magic to throw Monte off of his feet and straight into the wall, specifically at one of the framed posters. The frame shatters and Monte falls to the ground with glass cascading around him and his stage garb acting as a shield to guard his hide from the falling glass and splintered wood. As Monte coughs and tries to regain his stance, Trixie runs up to him and rams him against the wall while quietly cursing about the pain in her horn. Apparently the syringe of healing potions didn’t fix her horn all the way, much to her annoyance.

“Check the safe!” barks Trixie.

Lyra runs to the safe and peeks inside, it is completely empty except for a single piece of paper with a small note on it. Lyra turns to tell Trixie what’s on the note, but loses her train of thought when she sees her on top of Monte, punching him.

“What are you doing here, you snake!” demands Trixie.

“I know this looks bad-” A punch to the jaw makes Monte swear. “Stop hitting me!”

Trixie punches him again. “What the buck are you doing here, Monte!”

“If you want him to talk you should probably stop punching him,” recommends Lyra.

Monte looks at Lyra, nose and mouth bloody. “Thank you!” Then he glares at Trixie. “And you need to relax!”

Trixie punches him again.

“Relax!? Relax!? You want me to relax!?” yells Trixie over Monte’s painful swearing.

“Uh... Vigilante,” says Lyra uneasily.

“Listen here, you little snot! My friend was murdered, I’ve been beaten, shot at, my horn is chipped, I was nearly squashed by burning zeppelin, had skin grow over my stitches, and I owe somepony a lot bleach and a shit load of lime, so don’t you tell me to relax!”

Monte stares at Trixie, eyes wide and no longer caring that his face is bleeding. He’s shocked beyond words about Trixie’s outburst and Lyra is too, so she does the only thing she can do. She clears her throat.

Trixie snaps to Lyra. “What!”

“That was entertaining,” says Adanz with a teasing grin and standing in the doorway to Gilda’s office with three earth ponies flanking him, all wearing the same, black barding with Roar Shock’s symbol painted on and armed with silenced battle saddles. Adanz is the only one who isn’t armed, but his barding is considerably thicker than the others.

Trixie drops Monte. “Adanz?”

Adanz arches an eyebrow. “Do I know you?”

“Adanz, it’s me!” Adanz continues to stare at Trixie like she’s a crazed fangirl, and then Trixie remembers she still has her armored mask on. “Oh right, the mask.”

“Don’t do it,” says Sunshine, his voice singsong-y and echoing in her head over Monte, and judging by the zony’s tone, it’s something quirky.

“Shut up,” hisses Trixie.

“First, you tell me to talk. Then you punch me. Then you tell me to shut up. What’s it going to be, Boss Man.”

Trixie is in the middle of removing her apparatus when she glares at Monte. “I’m not a colt!”

“Oh... this is awkward,” says Lyra shamefully while looking down to hide an embarrassed blush.

Trixie glares at Lyra now, wondering how the unicorn could possible mistake her for a colt. Then she gets concerned that the costume is making her look... boyish.

“A colt with throat cancer,” adds Adanz.

Trixie makes a whiny “What!?” as her attention snaps to Adanz.

“And Poor Attitude Syndrome,” remarks Monte. That remark makes all the League of Justice ponies aim their weapons at him and he holds up hooves defensively, chuckling and sweating nervously. “Okay, the Magnificent Monte Fountain will shut up now.”

“You ripped that off from the ‘Great and Powerful Trixie’ didn’t you?” asks Trixie accusingly.

A smile is all she needed to know that he did, in fact, rip her off, and now she wants to buck his teeth in more than ever. Then Adanz steps forward, smiling at Trixie while the others stand back.

“So, Vigilante, it appears while we are in a talking mood, we should have a little discussion.” Adanz turns around and orders his escorts and Lyra to guard the exit. When the others are gone he looks at Trixie with a deadly serious look and stomps the ground, sprouting gleaming talons from his forehoof pads. “A big discussion, Trixie.”

Monte’s jaw drops when Trixie gulps and takes a step back. Monte also gets to his feet and levitates his bladed cards defensively in front of him while Adanz continues to walk forward, his new talons eerily clicking against the floor.

“You know who I am?” asks Trixie, suddenly feeling terrified by the sight of Adanz and his talons.

“You just gave yourself away,” replies Adanz coldly.

“Okay, it looks like you and Trixie have some history, so I think we need to-” Adanz glares at Monte. “Settle this over some cider and hay bacon. Whaddya say?”

“This is between you and me, Trixie,” says Adanz, his eyes narrowing and muscles tensing for a strike. “You betrayed us, and your betrayal ruined Roar Shock and killed Wazza. And I will take great pleasure in ending your life.”

“Adanz, I-I didn’t want it to happen! But the EIB-”

“It doesn’t matter what you wanted! What matters is what you did!”

Monte steps next to Trixie, his bladed cards spinning quickly in front of him and keeping an eye on Adanz’s movements. “Lookie here Atesanz-”

“Adanz!”

“Me and Trixie gotta go on a uh a nice date at the place, like right now.”

“Monte. Shut up,” orders Trixie, majorly irritated by his stupid choice of words.

Then Adanz jumps towards Monte and Trixie, shouting something in zebra. Trixie jumps to the side while using her telekinesis to push Monte away from the dangerous zebra, and winces when her horn burns with pain. Adanz lands where they were a second ago, leaving nasty gashes in the floor, and Monte hits the same spot Trixie launched him in when she first entered. The others run back in, but Adanz orders them to stay back, which Trixie uses the opportunity to attack. As she charges the zebra, her eyes widen behind her goggles as Adanz spins towards her with deadly grace with his claws slicing the air. She’s only saved by a string of sharp cards that push the claws away in a series of sparks from metal scraping against metal. Trixie lands through the cards and on top of Adanz. The dueling equines roll over each other in brutal hoof-to-hoof combat. Adanz snarls viciously while Trixie fights to keep herself from being turned to bloody ribbons and Monte keeps his cards up as a sharp shield. They stop rolling with Trixie on top and she presses her hooves down on the zebra’s chest.

“Adanz, stop this! I don’t want to hurt you!” begs Trixie.

Adanz pushes Trixie off, screaming: “NO!” He then rolls to his hooves and mule kicks Monte away, sending the zony flying into the same spot he hit the previous two times. Then Adanz slashes at Trixie. She jumps back and Adanz’s talons slice through Gilda’ desk and momentarily get stuck on the floor. Adanz quickly yanks them out though, taking some of the floor with him. “You betrayed us!”

“Dammit, that’s the third time!” swears Monte. He then raises his bladed cards and aims all fifty two of them at Adanz. “Okay, Stripes, you’re going down.”

Adanz looks at Monte, then at Trixie, then he smiles evilly at her as he turns to Monte. Trixie’s heart races as she see’s Adanz’s eye dilate, then she screams for Monte to look away when Adanz’s pupils and sclera shift into a bright gold. Trixie screams and charges Adanz in an attempt to break the spell, but the zebra retracts his claws and coolly sticks out his hoof right as Trixie is about to land on him, striking her in the chest and making her gasp in pain as she land on her back, hard.

Monte’s cards drop as his eyes dilate, then he stares at Trixie and starts walking towards her in a trance. Trixie groans and slowly rolls off of her back, only for Adanz to kick her in the side and send her skidding into the balcony. Trixie coughs blood into her mask and stares at Adanz feeling both angry and saddened. Angry because he won’t listen. Saddened because he thinks she betrayed them.

“I told ya they wouldn’t take too kindly to ya,” echoes Sunshine.

“Adanz, I-I didn’t -Adanz please!” cries Trixie as Adanz guides Monte towards her with his freakish mind spell.

“Betrayal is the ultimate sin,” says Monte distantly.

Monte’s horn glows and Trixie is lifted off of her feet and is carried over the edge. She shrieks and flails her legs as she desperately tries to use her magic for anything to save her. But all her horn does is shoot out weak bolts of lightning that serve only to send an annoying shock to Monte and Adanz. When she tries to levitate something, her horn feels like its going to crack and she screams and swears over her terrified sobs. Adanz only stares, though. The cheerful zebra that always played pranks on her is gone. Just like Wazza.

Trixie tries to look into Monte’s distant eyes. “Monte, listen to me! You’re the Magnificent Monte Fountain! The greatest showpony ever! You’re not a killer! You’re an egotistical snot, but not a killer!”

Monte hops on the railing, saying in a monotonous voice: “Just like you, Trixie. You and Monte are the same. Terra was right, Roar Shock should not have let you join us.”

“Adanz, don’t do this!”

“Justice is absolute.”

Then Monte jumps over the edge and his magic disappears, sending Trixie tumbling after him. Trixie screams as she spirals down, and then she hears Monte shrieking. Trixie looks to Monte and sees that his eyes are no longer dilated, but wide as dinner plates and he’s flailing his hooves madly. Another thing Trixie notices is that she’s slowing down rapidly and her cape is stiffening into... a glider? She looks to her left and to her right and sees that her cape had turn rigid and is now acting like a little glider. That, and the ground is getting dangerously close.

Trixie’s horn glows and she bites back her tears as she pulls Monte towards her in a protective hug. Then she closes her eyes and tilts her body weight so that they go up. They fly over the griffin wall and end up flying straight into an empty hotel room, through the window in a dramatic fashion. Trixie drops Monte as soon as they enter and she hits her head on the ceiling, then she bounces across the floor crashes into the wall, blacking out on impact.

=**********=

Adanz looks at the piece of paper in the safe, chuckles quietly, then puts it back and leaves it open just a crack. The others look confused by what he did, especially Lyra, but she’s more confused as to why he killed her hero. Adanz, noticing Lyra’s uneasiness, approaches her and pats her on the shoulder.

“I did what I had to do. The Vigilante’s real identity betrayed us and was a fool to assume we would embrace her,” says Adanz in an even tone.

Adanz walks down the hall with the others walking after him.

“But she didn’t mean to!” cries Lyra as she stomps the ground. “Didn’t that mean anything to you!”

“Intentions mean nothing, Lyra. What matters is the outcome. She betrayed us and for that, she had to be punished.”

Lyra hesitates. “Are you going to tell Roar Shock?”

Adanz stops and turns to Lyra, smiling. “Of course I will, and he will be pleased to hear that Trixie Lulamoon has joined with her father in Tartarus.”

oooOOOooo

Brisk Wind pokes her head out from around a corner and watches the last of the League ponies disappear from view. Then she silently limps towards Gilda’s office, leaving a trail of blood in her wake, and sees the safe open for her taking. She laughs with relief as she hobbles towards it and when she yanks it open all the way, her relieved laughter turns into one of sheer annoyance as she sees only a sheet of paper with a childish message on it. Then she screams and bangs her hooves on the floor.

“Monteeeee!”

The paper is actually a smudged out receipt for a safety deposit box in the Bank of Bernese with a simple note that has a crude, cartoony picture of Monte laughing with his speech bubble saying: “Hahaha! Too slow there, missy!”

=**********=

“...Now that Major Fuller has offered to lead the Civilian Defense Agency, do you think that Princess Celestia will take him up on his offer?”

“Well, Major Fuller was the runner up for Captain of the Guard and he has proven to be capable of running the Research and Development hub at Haven-”

Click.

“...The Baystone Protest was broken up by the Royal Guards this evening. Reports from our Baystone branch say that the protesters were carrying the emblem of the Lunar Society and chanting-”

Click.

“And that is why we all love snowflakes!”

Click.

“Hey, buddy, why don’tcha leave the radio off since you have such a problem keeping a channel” sneers Rainbow Dash in her cell.

A Royal Guard reading a copy of the New Yoke Times with the front page having a picture of Twilight and a caption saying: “New Director of R&D?” looks at the guard messing with the radio. “You know, she does have a point.”

The other guard glares at him. “Well excuse me for wanting to listen to some good music.”

“You have to switch it FM, genius,” Rainbow Dash says with an annoyed scowl.

“You shut your mouth!”

“Hey! Show some respect, I’m the Element of Loyalty!”

“And this is me giving a shit,” says the guard as he turns away from Rainbow Dash to mess with the radio.

“If you want to give shit I got the paperwork for transfer to fertilizer maintenance waiting for you, Private,” snarls Soarin as he marches into the room with his uniform crisp and his buttons gleaming in the light.

Both guards snap to their feet, knocking their chairs down in the process, and salute Captain Soarin as he marches in. He glares at both of them, particularly the one giving Rainbow Dash crap and orders them to leave. They leave without question and when the door shuts behind them, he shuts off the radio and drags the chair towards the cell, directly in front of Rainbow Dash and sits down with a very aggressive scowl. A look that Soarin pulls of very well, despite how laid back he is most of the time. In fact, with the intense frown and lightning, he actually looks terrifying to Rainbow Dash. She shrinks back slightly while looking away to keep that terrifying look out of her line of sight.

“What... What the hay is wrong with you, Rainbow?” asks Soarin, his voice quivering with anger. Rainbow Dash’s ears droop as she looks away from Soarin, and he snorts and keeps his glare set on her. “What you did was stupid. You jeopardized everything!”

“What did you want me to do!” snaps Rainbow Dash, now no longer intimidated by Soarin.

“I wanted you to be smart and-and not so rash for once in your life!”

Rainbow Dash stomps her hoof. “Oh, like you’ve known me all your life! I was a nopony to you until I asked you out!”

“This is not about me! This is about you and how you busted Major Fuller’s lip!”

Rainbow Dash snorts and sits down, puffing out her chest proudly. “If he can’t take that then he doesn’t deserve to be an officer.”

“You don’t get it!” Soarin bangs his hoof against the bars, making the colorful pegasus jump in her spot. “It’s not about how tough he is or whether or not he was right! He was an officer! He’s leading Project: Chrysaor! I stuck my neck out for you to get you in there! Hell, just by courting you I am putting my career and reputation on the line, and-!”

“So it is about you!”

“Now you're punching officials- okay, fine! Maybe it is! Maybe it is about me! But it’s definitely about you! First, you fly into a hospital screaming like a madmare with a bloody pony in your arms-!”

“She’s my friend!”

“Then they find a warehouse full of dead ponies and griffins-!”

“I wasn’t going to leave her there to be murdered!”

“And then you got in a fight in a bucking hospital!”

“He called Pinkie a vege-”

“STOP TALKING OVER ME!” screams Soarin as he slams his hoof against the bars with a deafening result. Rainbow Dash yelps and jumps back, trembling violently in her safe corner as she watches Soarin breathe heavily with his teeth gritted and eyes narrowed. He sighs a moment later and runs his hoof through his mane to push the sweat back. “I like you, Rainbow, I really do. You are very talented, loyal, and ambitious, but you’re also a loose cannon, and that threatens everything.”

“What are you saying?” asks Rainbow Dash as she hesitantly approaches the bars with tears sliding down her cheeks. “Are we breaking up?”

Soarin looks at Rainbow Dash apologetically. “I... No. I don’t want to. I... Let’s just call this a break until this whole-”

“That means ‘break up’!”

“Thing is taken care of.”

“You’re breaking up with me because I was saving Pinkie!?”

“No, we’re taking a break! What you did was reckless and I have a career to look after.”

"Bullshit!”

Soarin looks away from the angry mare. “Rainbow, if you aren’t court marshalled I’ll see to it that you are put in a good unit, but we can’t... we can’t do this. I can’t do this. What you did jeopardized everything I built my life around. I’m sorry, Rainbow, maybe if that night had turned out differently we wouldn’t have this conversation.”

“You mean if I had just let Pinkie die we wouldn’t be having this conversation?” Rainbow Dash scowls and folds her hooves across her chest as she looks away. “Sorry, Soarin, but my friendship with Pinkie is worth more than a hundred of you.”

Soarin silently nods his head and after putting the chair back, he heads towards the exit. Rainbow Dash looks over her shoulder as Soarin pushes open the door.

“What would you do if one of your friends was dying, Soarin?” asks Rainbow Dash coldly.

Soarin stops walking and looks at Rainbow Dash out of the corner of his eye. He opens his mouth to say something, but ends up releasing a heavy sigh and leaving the room without another word. Rainbow Dash calls Soarin, but when the door closes she whimpers and slides to the ground. She closes her eyes and bangs her head against the wall, not caring about the headache she’s getting. All she cares about is how miserable and empty she feels. All she cares about is that she’s been betrayed by the stallion she loves... No. The stallion she loved.

Arc 2- 07- Meetings -EDITED-

Arc 3- 1 (Complications)

“Losing a friend's trust is the fastest way to lose a friend. Losing a friend's trust is the fastest way to lose a friend. Losing a friend's trust is the fastest way to lose a friend. Losing a friend's trust is the fastest way to lose a friend.”

Spike sighs heavily and drums his fingers on his knee as he watches Pinkie Pie repeat her message to herself over and over again like a broken record. He’s feeling conflicting emotions right now. He doesn’t know if he should be annoyed because he’s been hearing the same thing for only Celestia knows how long. Nervous because Pinkie Pie’s mane and tail have deflated and she’s rocking herself back and forth, eyes enormous and devoid of all focus. Or pity because she’s obviously going through a major depression that is fueled by years of guilt build up.

“Losing a friend's trust is the fastest way to lose a friend.”

Spike finally gets up and shakes Pinkie Pie out of her trance. Pinkie Pie’s head shakes back and forth, and when it stabilizes it takes another couple of seconds for her eyes to regain focus. She looks at Spike, eyes watering and body still rocking slightly.

“I betrayed her trust. I lost a friend.” Pinkie Pie says achingly, gulping back tears.

“Are you talking about Twilight’s trust?”

“Trixie.”

“Trixie? You mean that annoying showmare that made those two idiots bring the Ursa Minor in?”

Pinkie Pie nods. “Yeah, the proof-in-the-pudding mare. But I only wanted to protect my family, and I saw Trixie as a tool and I used her to do what I couldn’t -what I wouldn’t do. But the more I spent time with her, the more I realized that she was lost in this nasty game of life. She was more lost than me and I was the only one who could’ve saved her. But I didn’t save her. I got her killed. Just like I got Octavia killed.”

Pinkie Pie rubs her heart, choking painfully as more tears run down her cheeks. She finds it hard to breathe, like all of her guilt has grabbed her lungs and heart and is squeezing them until they pop in its evil claws.

“I pretended to be somepony else, and she trusted me... She trusted me and because of that she is dead.”

Spike picks up one of Pinkie Pie’s rubber chickens to play with it.

“How do you know that they are dead?” asks Spike.

“I heard Octavia crying when Dashie was beating her. Then she became quiet and I woke up in this place.” Pinkie Pie closes her eyes and grits her teeth while pressing her hooves against her head, now feeling like her brain is expanding. “I heard her and didn’t do anything. Pinkamena wouldn’t let me. She kept telling me she broke a Pinkie Promise, she tried to kill me, she wouldn’t listen and deserved to die.” Pinkie Pie’s eyes open. “Just like Lock. Only Pinkamena wanted more. She wanted to hurt my friends, especially Twilight and Rarity. She... she’s evil and I’m losing control of her.”

Pinkie Pie gets up and approaches her high school diploma, framed and hanging proudly on a wall. She can see her reflection in the glass. And not just her’s, but Pinkamena’s as well. The flat haired, maniacal grinning menace inside of Pinkie Pie is taunting her with her faint reflection. As she stares at the diploma, she hears a rumble in the distance and notices a small flash of lightning in the distance, but still she stares at herself and diploma.

“It cost my family a fortune to pay a unicorn for a procedure that would keep Pinkamena in check.  We thought it would work, but then mom hung herself and she almost broke out.”

Pinkie Pie squeezes her eyes shut and looks down as the image of her mother swinging from the ceiling with her father trying to get her down invades her mind. She can hear everything, from the creaking of the body swaying in its spot, to her father’s wailing. When she opens her eyes her hooves carry her to a worn table that has stacks of papers crammed in every which way they could be crammed. Yet in the middle of it all is a simple suicide note with a life insurance quote underneath it. Pinkie Pie sits at the table and stares at it, lips trembling and tears flowing freely. She drags a birthday card addressed to her from her mother and flips it open. The inside of the card saying: Stay strong. It’ll be sunshine and rainbows in the end. Love, Mom.

“Then, when I thought you guys abandoned me when I honestly forgot about my birthday she came back and was able to get control of most of me, but I held her back before she could do more than just creep out Dashie.”

Pinkie Pie closes the card and slides it away, folding her hooves on her desk and placing her head on top of them soon after, ignoring the growing noise of the storm.

“Then... when you died... I knew she would be back. I tried to keep her in check, but I almost lost control when Trixie botched her rescue mission. She came out when I attacked the griffin’s for answers about Bon Bon.”

There is a deafening roll of thunder and a bright flash of green light that shakes the cabin, and while Spike may have jumped, Pinkie Pie just lazily lifts her head. The horrible feelings she has in her head, heart and lungs are getting worse and now she feels a little dizzy.

“I lost control when the EIB and griffins attacked, and I couldn’t stop Lock, and because of that, Trixie died. So I killed him in the warehouse.” Pinkie Pie looks at Spike, ears drooped and whole body sulking and trembling. “I have to stay dead, Spike, for everypony’s sake.”

Spike takes a moment to think. “So, let me get this straight, not only are you blaming yourself for my death, but you’re also afraid of yourself, so you think that in order to keep everyone safe from yourself you’re better of dead.”

Pinkie Pie silently nods and Spike takes a deep breath while rubbing the back of his neck.

“Okay,” sighs Spike, “you need a cookie. A big cookie.”

“Chocolate, light on the sprinkles, please,” mutters Pinkie Pie. “There should be a box of those on the top shelf in the pantry.”

Spike leaves the room and Pinkie Pie stares out the dirty window in her room, watching the endless field of stone and the looming storm in the distance. It doesn’t take a meteorologist to know that the storm will be bad since the clouds are nearly black and the ground shaking, rumbling thunder signaled by the flashes of green lightning. She finds the odd colored lightning weird, but she also feels sick by looking at the storm, and not only that, but the uneasy feeling she’s getting in her body is slowly turning to pain. Pinkie Pie flops on her bed and buries her face in her pillow while pressing her hooves against her ears.

“Jeeze, that is one weird storm,” comments Spike as he walks in with a plate of cookies and a cup of milk. Then he notices Pinkie Pie’s sickly condition. “You okay there, Pinkie?”

“I don’t feel so good,” moans Pinkie Pie.

“What’s wrong? Something not sitting well?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know what.”

“It was probably the hot chocolate,” suggests Spike as he sets the treats on the desk, politely moving the note and insurance quote first. “The expiration date was kinda smudged out on the can, but I still used it anyway.”

Pinkie Pie stares at Spike, jaw agape, and for a brief moment she doesn’t feel sick, only disgusted, and the dragon shrugs while smiling sheepishly.

“Spike!”

“What?”

“Eww-uh!”

“Oh come on, don’t be like that. You know you loved it.”

“It doesn’t- Why did you- Ewww!”

Spike snickers and closes the curtains, commenting on how they shouldn’t look at the creepy storm. Pinkie Pie manages a small chuckle, but that chuckle doesn’t last long being that uncomfortable feeling returns with reinforcements. It feels as though her bones are shaking loose and her muscles are ripping on top of her aches. She tries to ignore the worsening pain all over her body, however it is a lost cause. The pain is gradually worsening, and the horrible, indiscernible sounds that her ears are picking up are making the situation all the more unpleasant.

“Pinkie?”

She wipes sweat off of her face with a shaky hoof, now feeling intensely nauseous on top of her pain. Spike sits next to her and turns her to him, asking her if she’s okay, but she can’t hear him. In fact, the only reason she knows what Spike said is because she read his lips. Pinkie Pie starts swaying back and forth, muttering unintelligibly and certain she’s going to puke, and she knows its not the hot chocolate giving her this feeling. She knows its her Pinkie Senses going off the rocker since bad hot chocolate has never killed anyone, and she feels like she’s dying a horrible death. Her Pinkie Senses have always been pretty clear, such as itches for being spied on or creaky limbs for approaching a hidden threat. The rest came from visual and audio observation. However, her whole body aching and the need to puke is something she has never felt before, and its scaring her.

Pinkie Pie’s eyes start to drift shut, and a shake from Spike makes them open again, however, this time she can’t even concentrate. She hears the awful noises and her heartbeat, but everything is so out of focus she can no longer tell what’s going on. She goes from seeing doubles, to triples, and then to seeing a whole other world mix with her old room. Her eyes then roll to the back of her head and she collapses.

Pinkie Pie’s eyes snap open, fully awake, when her head hits a slab of broken pavement. She slowly lifts her head when a group of terrified and injured ponies run past her, screaming and crying from fear and pain. Over the cries and screams, she can hear the machines she’s hooked up to beep furiously and the doctors and Spike shouting frantically. However, those are soon replaced with roaring fire and rolling thunder. Pinkie Pie pushes herself to her hooves and immediately has to sit down when she sees Canterlot. Burning.

The sky is covered by a thick blanket of fiery smoke that is rising from fire bursting through the towering structures. The streets are littered with mangled bodies, which are being trampled over by a crowd of terrified ponies making an attempt to flee to safety from the risen Hell. Pinkie Pie looks around, unable to move, and watches in horror as the Royal Palace, whose once pearl white walls are now covered in ash and shrapnel damage, collapses to the ground, covering more refugees in fire and burning debris. The terrified screams are silenced by the rumbling and the crushing weight of the wave of brick, metal, and plaster of the palace. More fire, smoke and dust is pushed out as each of the ruined towers collapse on themselves, victimizing everyone in their path.

Through the fire and smoke, a seared and tattered Equestrian flag floats down in front of Pinkie Pie. She takes a step forward to get a closer look and her hoof accidently kicks aside a golden plate of armor. She doesn’t know why, but she’s drawn to it, and when she kneels down to get a closer look she sees that its Celestia’s, covered in soot with a hole burnt through the center of the sun and dried blood on the ridges. Pinkie Pie gingerly picks up the armor plating and strokes it with her hoof, too shocked for words.

“Somepony get Dr. Heartbeat!” shouts a voice in the clouds.

“We’re losing her!” exclaims another.

Pinkie Pie shakes her head in disbelief as tears roll down her cheeks. Then she looks to her side and sees the Mare-Do-Well cape hanging on a bent bar, tattered and drenched in blood with the jewelry encasing the Elements of Harmony around it. Destroyed. She drops the armor and tries to run to it, but trips over herself and lands flat on her face. The she hears what sounds like a set of turbine engines followed by something metallic skidding to a stop not too far from her. She lifts her head and sees a stallion in a full metal suit with gems around his limbs, tesla coils around his ankles, and two turbine engines with a cannon on a swivel mount perched on his back. His eyes glow green and each step he takes leaves a crack in the ground and a trail of green mist. Pinkie Pie stands up and braces herself for the worst as the menace continues his approach.

The stallion fires right as someone shouts “Clear!” and-

=*********=

Trixie jumps upright on a fluffy bed with snowy white sheets and soft pillows with her whole body drenched in sweat and throbbing, especially her horn and around the areas where her stitches are. Trixie groans and raises her hoof to touch her aching horn, but stops when she sees a fresh set of stitches on top of where Vinyl Scratch did her colorful job. And these stitches are bland little lines done professionally. However, despite how pleased Trixie is that she has professional stitching, and no longer feels anything under her skin, the pain cannot be ignored. She gingerly crawls out of the bed and sways when her hooves touch a soft carpet. She looks around and realizes that she’s in an unfamiliar location. The room is well furnished and the window is polished with the curtains pulled back, allowing warms rays of sunshine into the room. She also notices that the room has no photos and that there is music playing softly.

Trixie limps towards the door, twitching ever so slightly from pain, and when she steps out into the white hallway the music becomes clearer.

“Goodbye my Equestrian life.

All that is good is now gone and of strife.

We’re drownin’ all our troubles in cider n’ rye.

Tryin’ not to cry, even though we know that it all died.

Goodbye my Equestrian life.”

She hobbles down the stairs, taking full advantage of the railing, and almost slides down it when her legs give way. Luckily for her, she is able to wrap her hoof around the marble railing. She cringes when her soreness spikes and when her hooves make a squeaking noise from rubbing against the railing.

“Celestia’s summer sun never fails to make us swelter,

But the singing birds now fly off without song or shelter.

And you sit outside protesting in songs about the unfairness of it all,

With your newfound friends, you say ponies like me are what made it all wrong.”

Trixie stumbles into a large living room, furnished with imported furniture from the Crystal Kingdom and illuminated by an extravagant crystal chandelier. The living room has a set of double doors that lead to a large, white balcony with fence posts that are studded with diamond tips, and having a furniture set that matches the one in the living room, complete with an umbrella to cover the table resting near the edge. The balcony also has an uncompromised view of the rolling plains, which has the faint outlines of cities and towns in the distance. However, while the beauty of the view is unmatched, Trixie is not surprised by that. Rather she is surprised by who she sees in the living room. Sitting on the couch, listening to the radio with a cup of water is Monte, humming along to the song playing over the radio.

“With your crafty colorful stalls,

That you put in the park I practice in,

By the hate I see in your eyes I can see you want me gone,

And not just me, but what I know is to be right and wrong.

You want every part of me dead, but I’ll always march to my tune

Why don’t you and your boys come up to dance?”

Trixie’s eyes narrow and she crouches down and approaches Monte like a feline predator. He is completely oblivious to the danger he is in.

“I learned some fancy moves, I’d be glad to show if you gave me the chance-”

Trixie grabs Monte by the back of his neck and pulls him off of the couch while simultaneously using her magic to turn off the radio. Monte lands with a yelp and Trixie clambers on top of him and then presses one hoof against his neck while using her other hoof to keep herself balance. Then she uses her oh so common levitation spell to smash the cup Monte was drinking from against a nightstand and holds the jagged edge to his face.

“Please don’t hurt me,” whimpers Monte while holding up his hooves defensively as Trixie glares down at him like a savage beast. She really wants to add a nice, long gash to his collection of bruises on his face.

“Where am I!” demands Trixie, pressing harder against Monte’s throat and ignoring his wheezing and desperate attempts to gulp in air.

“He can’t talk unless he can breathe,” comments a familiar stallion.

Trixie looks up and her jaw drops, along with the broken cup, when she sees the one and only Fancypants standing in the doorway with his supermodel wife behind him. Trixie climbs off of Monte and steps back, not sure if she should be embarrassed or confused. Once Trixie is off of Monte, he rolls to his feet and rubs his neck while coughing in such a way one could mistake him for trying to hack a hairball. In normal circumstances, Trixie would be repulsed by Monte’s odd behavior, but she hasn’t had a normal situation in over ten years.

“What’s going on here?” asks Trixie as she backs up.

“Trixie, relax, you’re safe, but we need to talk,” says Fancypants calmly. Then to his wife: “Fleur, pouvez-vous s'il vous plaît nous préparer du thé?”

“Oui, ma chère, il sera d'une minute.”

Fleur heads towards the kitchen and Fancypants sighs heavily as he looks at the broken glass. He then quietly uses his magic to pick up the shards and put them in the garbage can. Trixie repeats her question and both stallions look at each other for a moment before looking at Trixie. Fancypants has a disappointed, yet oddly relieved, look while Monte looks worried, but also at ease. The expressions, needless to say, confuse the former showmare.

“Monte banged on my door yesterday night with you on his back,” Fancypants says when the staring contest becomes more awkward than it already was.

“And you were heavy,” adds Monte. Trixie gives him a dirty glare and he chuckles uneasily while pawing at the carpet. “But still looking good for a butch.”

“WHAT!” screams Trixie furiously. “I don’t look butch!” She looks at Fancypants, demanding a second opinion that she agrees with. “Do I look butch?”

“Well, you’re certainly toned, but-”

Trixie groans irritably and sits on her haunches while covering her face and throwing her head back. First, she finds out her “friend” was actually someone she was supposed to kill, then she’s nearly killed by the ponies that were supposed to protect her, then she was almost squashed by a burning vehicle, and finally betrayed by Adanz. And now she finds out she looks butch. These days just keeps getting better and better.

“This is no time to worry about how you look,” says Fancypants sternly. “I need to know why Monte -of all ponies-”

“Hey!”

“Carried you here all the way from the griffin enclave with you in a tattered, bloody costume with stitches under your skin.”

“That is none of your business!” snaps Trixie. “Now where is my costume?”

Fancypants and Monte look at each other again, and the magician cocks his head slightly towards the wood furnace.

“You tell her.”

Fancypants approaches the wood furnace, takes a deep breath, and then opens it to show Trixie what’s inside. Her costume, gnarled and burnt to ashy flakes with her pads cracked apart and the pieces melted together. Trixie frantically cries “No!” repeatedly with a river of tears running down her cheeks as she digs out the pieces, spilling ash all over the carpet. When the pieces -or what’s left of them- are all over the ground, she lies down and buries her face in her hooves and sobs.

“Why did you do that!” sobs Trixie.

“It was for your own good,” says Fancypants as he leaves to grab a broom and dustpan. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a mess to clean up.”

Trixie feels Monte rub his hoof over her shoulder, the rubbing does feel good and she can picture the solemn look on his face, but she’s too upset to look at him, or anyone else for that matter.Trixie cuddles the charred remains of her goggles, the lense but jagged pieces of glass on the ridges and the band is almost nonexistent.

“Where’s the bathroom,” sniffles Trixie.

Monte gives her instructions and she silently leaves the living room, pushing past Fancypants when he enters with cleaning supplies. After reaching the bathroom, she locks herself inside and sits on the toilet, trying to think of what to do next now that her identity is basically destroyed. She closes her eyes and leans forward, running her hoof through her mane. She can hear the gunfire, the screams, and the terrifying sounds made from the burning zeppelin crashing through the wall. Trixie whimpers and rocks back and forth while pressing her head with her hooves. She feels like she’s reliving the battle with Adanz; his fury, his talons... his eyes, all vividly playing in her mind with crystal clear quality. Trixie grits her teeth and sobs quietly, curling up on the floor as Adanz’s golden eyes and what he did to Monte floods her thoughts.

“You betrayed us!”

“I didn’t betray you... I never wanted to betray you... We were family.”

Trixie hears the clinging metal, the wood breaking, and Adanz shouting in his native tongue. She can feel his claws digging into her and the blunt force trauma from her being tossed around. She can almost taste her own blood again.

“Betrayal is the ultimate sin.”

Trixie opens her eyes, trembling, drenched in sweat and tears, and eyes red from crying. Her body is now in massive pain and she can’t bear it. The emotional and physical pain is too much to handle and she’s wishing she had some of those happy pills. She knows Sunshine is around. She can feel him and hear him. Hear his breathing, hear his chuckle, hear his hoofsteps.

Trixie sits up and looks around the simple bathroom for any sign of her tormentor, but he’s nowhere to be seen. She releases a breathe she had no idea she was holding and turns to the bathroom sink. She awkwardly uses her hooves to work the knobs on the sink and when gets the water temperature just right she stick her hoof under the running water and splashes her face. The warm water gives her a nice, relaxing feeling that she needed after what had happened in the past couple of days. However, the splash was clumsy so it only got half of her face. So she splashes the other side of her face, and she does this repeatedly until her whole face is dripping wet. After that, she stares at her reflection and realizes that her eyes are bloodshot with sickly bags under them, and bruises and scars decorating her face are only making her look worse.

Trixie sighs and looks at her stitched hooves, still kicking herself for allowing Lyra to inject her with the medication before warning her about the stitches. Trixie pokes her stitches, not sure what to expect, and when she strangely feels nothing out of the ordinary she leans against the sink. Then she covers her face with her hooves and tries once again to relax. But she can’t relax. The battle at Gilda’s manor keeps playing in her mind, specifically the fight between her and Adanz. Then a single sentence echoes in her mind.

“It was supposed to be a simple, get in-poison-get out mission.”

Her hooves slowly slide off her face and her glistening eyes open just as gradually, and her eye is twitching as her body trembles with anger. Now that she thinks about it, she wonders if they knew she was “Vigilante” all along and were using Lyra to get to her just so they can trap her on the balcony. Trixie knows that if they were going to poison anybody, they would’ve done so with food or water, and she doesn’t recall seeing anything resembling a kitchen anywhere near her. She knows she passed a kitchen on the lower level and she also knows that if they were going to go “covert”, they would not have come in with full battle gear. As she puts the pieces together -the seemingly presentless League, them arriving at the griffin enclave in full battle gear, so willing to follow an “anonymous” hero, and Adanz pointing her out almost immediately- she comes to the conclusion that she was the hit. She and Gilda.

Trixie screams and slams her hooves against the sink counter, sending a ripple of pain over her hooves. She glares at the her reflection, blood boiling and teeth gritted with her whole body trembling.

“They knew,” seethes Trixie.

“I told you, but ya didn’t listen,” says Sunshine coolly, sitting next to Trixie like he’s a welcomed guest. Trixie screams jumps in her spot, towards the source. But there is nothing there, except for polished tiles. She looks back at the mirror and sees Sunshine is sitting in the exact spot, still smiling. “Somethin’ wrong, darlin’?”

“Why can’t you leave me alone?”

“I think we already had this conversation. I said I loved ya, but you said I was obsessed, then I said obsession was love.”

“One of these days, I’m going to kill you and make sure you stay dead,” growls Trixie as she narrows her eyes at Sunshine.

Sunshine snickers. “Me and who else? Adanz? Brisk Wind? Lyra? Monte? Keep growing that list of yers, it’ll be fun when you cross the names off. Trust me.”

There is a knock on the bathroom door and someone calls her, but Trixie keeps her hostile gaze locked on the mirror, playing all kinds of ways she would like to kill those on her hit list. The knocking persists and the pain all over Trixie’s body return with reinforcements. Trixie yells at the people knocking to go away as she yanks opens the medicine cabinet and hastily rummages through it, ignoring the knocking and Sunshine’s quiet smirk, until she finds what she’s looking for. A container of pain pills.

“Good choice,” chuckles Sunshine.

Trixie clumsily uses her magic and hoof to pop the container open, and right as she shoves a couple of pills in her mouth, the door is forced open and Fancypants stumbles in with the aura around his horn fading.

Trixie’s eyes narrow as she slams the container of pills on the counter, yelling: “Can’t a mare get any privacy!”

“We heard you screaming and talking to- Trixie what are- Did you just take my pain pills!” cries Fancypants furiously as he grabs the container with his magic.

When he counts the pills and realizes that he’s short, he glares at Trixie, but she doesn’t care. She wants blood and no one will be standinging in her way. She bullies her way past Fancypants, Fleur, and Monte, all three talking over each other and all three being toned out. That is until three sets of magic grab her and drag her towards them, despite her colorful swearing and thrashing. When they carry Trixie to the living room and toss her on the couch, her whole body tenses up and she grits her teeth as she shrinks and charges her horn defensively.

“Come on! I dare you!” snarls Trixie, body curling for a pounce.

“Dare us to do what?” asks Monte.

Monte yelps when Trixie shoots him in the chest with a bolt of lightning. The blast isn’t fatal, but it does send the poor pony stumbling into the wall. Fleur screams and jumps back and Fancypants lunges at Trixie as Monte struggles to get up. Trixie scrambles out of the way, but is surprised at how fast and agile Fancypants is when he tackles her to the ground in a moment’s notice. While Trixie squirms under him, he presses her head against the carpet and sits on top of her. Trixie screams and swears over Monte -who is also whining and swearing- as her attempts to break free are in vain.

“TRIXIE, SHUT UP!” exclaims Fancypants, then points at Monte. “And you, stop your bitching!”

Everyone shuts up and stares at Fancypants with their jaws locked and eyes wide. Even Fleur, despite how pale her coat is, became impossibly white from the vulgarity of her husband’s language. Fancypants takes a deep breath, pushes his mane back and glares at Trixie.

“You have a lot of explaining to do,” says Fancypants, his voice low and demanding.

Trixie opens her mouth to say something, but when she sees the fire in his eyes, she does a subtle nod instead. Fancypants immediately crawls off of Trixie and helps her up, she brushes herself off and looks at the floor, still holding her grim expressions.

“Chérie, qu'est-ce que c'était?” says Fleur uneasily as she carefully steps forward.

Trixie and Monte look at Fleur, clueless as to what she said.

“Juste un peu de mon ancien moi. Rien à craindre.” replies Fancypants, his smile reflecting his uneasiness about what had happened.

Trixie and Monte’s gaze shifts to Fancypants, still confused, and when Fleur nods and leaves the room, they look at each other, their confusion worse than before. Fancypants takes a deep breath and motions for Trixie and Monte to follow Fleur out. As the two walk out, Trixie leans closer to Monte, whispering: “You have a lot of explaining to do.”

Monte glares at Trixie. “I saved your life and brought you to your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend!”

“Please, everypony at my casino and at your work knows you have wet dreams about him.”

Trixie raises her hoof to punch him, face burning with embarrassment, but Fancypants turns around and clears his throat while giving her a stern, fatherly glare. She lowers her hoof and her head and follows him in silence. The group group walks onto the balcony and Fancypants helps Trixie sit down, and sits across from her. When Monte sits next to Trixie, she scoots away, making the zony frown and turn away with his nose in the air.

“Fine way to repay somepony for saving you,” says Monte irritably.

“I saved your life earlier, so consider us even,” says Trixie, her tone matching Monte’s.

“And that is what I wanted to talk to you about,” says Fancypants. “The costume explains your bruises and scars, but I’m just curious as to what possessed you to act so rash.”

“The beauty of curiosity is that you don’t have to yield to it,” remarks Trixie.

Monte whistles and mentions something about “fancy speak”, and when Fancypants glares at him, he simply waves his hoof dismissively while keeping his eyes away from Trixie. Fancypants turns back to Trixie, and she folds her hooves across her chest and looks away from the older stallion.

“Allow me to rephrase, then,” says Fancypants irritably. “I want to know what you were doing in painted hoofball pads, fighting griffins and EIB agents and taking gliding lessons with your cape. And I want to know it now.”

Trixie glares at Monte, and, without looking, he shrugs again, like he knew Trixie was giving him the death glare. Fleur walks out with a tray of tea in her magical grip, and Fancypants thanks her and carefully takes the tray before telling her something in their fancy language. Fleur looks him questionably, then at Trixie and Monte, then specifically at Trixie, and then she leaves with her nose in the air and slams the balcony door shut.

“I wasn’t gliding, I was falling with style.”

“This is no time for jokes, Trixie!”

“She wasn’t joking. It’s true, we were falling with style,” chuckles Monte.

Fancypants once again glares at Monte, and Trixie tries to leave, but Fancypants uses his magic to keep her pinned to her seat. She demands to be released as she squirms, but Fancypants holds fast, and when Trixie’s horn glows for a strike, a sharp pain rips through where her horn chipped and she collapses to the table, crying and rubbing her injury.

“This sucks!” cries Trixie.

“Trixie, being a costumed hero is not meant for real life. Its only for comic books.” Fancypants says, then he releases her as he leans back in his seat. “Your activities almost got you killed. I don’t want you killed, Trixie. I want you to live a long life where you don’t have to worry about retribution or keeping your identity a secret. If you continue this, you’ll have no choice but to change everything to keep those you love safe from whatever enemies you gained.” He looks at Trixie. “And in some cases, from yourself.”

“But-”

“Trixie, it’s over. You won your war. Gilda has been taken in, her empire is destroyed, and your friend has been avenged. Please stop this nonsense before it consumes you. Or worse.”

Trixie shakes her head, boldly saying: “I can’t. I have to make Brisk Wind and Lock pay for what they’ve done. Then it’ll be Adanz and Roar Shock.”

“Yeah... you probably want to rethink your list,” says Monte slowly.

Trixie looks at Monte quizzically, then her stare is fixated to a newspaper that Fancypants summons. He tosses it in front of Trixie opened to the article about a warehouse massacre, written by Quill Pen.

“Agent Lock is dead. And he died a horrible death,” says Fancypants grimly. “That will be you if you continue like this.”

Then he leaves without another word and when the balcony door closes, Trixie drags the article closer to her and reads it. She barely gets started when she sees many things wrong with it, such as labeling Lock a “talented investigator with a warm heart”, a “hero to his community”, and “a caring mate”. None of those qualities matches Trixie’s idea of him, especially the “warm heart” part. She continues to read the article and when she gets to his death, she can’t help but smile. She’s glad he was beaten to a pulp before being executed, and she finds herself not caring that Octavia was found dead with him or that Rainbow Dash is being investigated by the EIB for her role in the massacre. However, one part does catch her eye and she has to reread it just to make sure its not what some kind of trick her eyes are playing. According to Quill Pen, an anonymous source is claiming that Minty Sprinkles is alive and to commemorate the brave more Quill Pen will be doing a special article surrounding her fight for survival. Trixie chuckles happily as she stands up, feeling a million times better.

“I can’t believe it!” cheers Trixie. “Pinkie’s alive!” Then in an angry tone. “Now I can beat the crap out of her for lying to me and-”

“Did you even hear me?” asks Monte, his eyebrow arched.

“You didn’t say anything,” replies Trixie sharply.

“I did to! I was saying that now that Gilda is in custody and Lock is dead, you can retire. You didn’t even have to knock out Gilda or Lock because their blood feuds is what ended them.” Then in a sly whisper after looking over his shoulder to make sure Fancypants isn’t close by, “Or you could wait until Brisk Wind is taken care of...”

Trixie stares at Monte as the zony smirks.

“You want to know why I was Gilda’s loft?” whispers Monte as he inches closer.

“You worked for her.”

“Work for her. I still work for her, and Gilda, despite being the polar opposite of sunshine, didn’t outshine Eclipse, Sunshine, or Toolbox by being a moron.” Monte chuckles. “Nope, she never really trusts any of her partners so she keeps every bit of dirt she has on them in a safety deposit box in a Bernese bank. That includes Brisk Wind.”

Trixie leans forward, suddenly intrigued by what Monte is saying.

“Everything?” she asks.

“Everything. Conversations, numbers, addresses, contracts, bank transactions, pictures, you name it. The most recent ones are not in the bank, but the older files are. You see, I’m the only one left who can get those files, and... well I was supposed to leave immediately with the recent files but I wanted to screw with Brisk Wind so I left her a nice message that may or may not have the Bank of Bernese logo on it.”

“YOU IDIOT!” screams Trixie. Monte jumps in his seat and falls off when Trixie pounces on him and pins him to the ground. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“Angered two mares with a piece of paper?”

“No! You just gave Brisk Wind a target! She will find those files and destroy them before they see the light of day!”

Monte chuckles and gently pushes Trixie off; she doesn’t go all the way off but its enough for Monte to sit up comfortably. She growls as his smile widens.

“Trixie, you seem to have forgotten that nothing can beat a Bernese bank. I’m on Gilda’s list of approved to access her deposits. I can get those files that will bury Brisk Wind alive, but I’m going to need a companion to court.” He stands up, adjusting his cape. “I’m going... to need... a companion... to court.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We have a common enemy, Trixie. We work together to take her down and then we’ll go our own separate ways. Simple as that.”

“I know that! But what was with the...” Trixie’s eyes widen and she holds up her hoof in disgust while leaning back. “Oh no. I am not doing that!”

“It’s a lot easier to travel as tourists, and its easier to pose as tourists of we look like a couple. Just saying.”

Trixie’s jaw drops. “I am not posing as your marefriend.”

“Actually, I was thinking you can pose as my wife.”

oooOOOooo

Fancypants finishes putting away some freshly cleaned dishes when he sees Monte walk into the kitchen in a trance like state and open up the freezer. He then grabs a pack of frozen beans and walks out while pressing the bag against his jaw. The whole time he is strangely silent. When Monte is out of sight, Fancypants shakes his head and resumes putting his dishes away.

oooOOOooo

Trixie sits on the couch, with her hooves folded across her chest and the ruined goggles pressed to her chest. She’s breathing heavily, trying to hold back her tears and keep herself from having a meltdown. However, that is very hard for her since her costume is ruined beyond repair, her pills are gone, and Monte is being more annoying than usual. She also knows sooner or later she’ll have to deal with Adanz and Roar Shock. She already has some idea of what Adanz is capable of, given that he trained her and that their last encounter showed that he’s got a dangerous gift. But Roar Shock, on the other hand, all she knows about him is that he killed her father in such a way that his death was labeled the most gruesome murder in Canterlot history. That and he’s a genius nutjob bent on enacting his own twisted code of justice.

“You know, I don’t think this marriage will work out if you continue to beat me,” says Monte, either foolish or brave enough to put a noticeable tease in his tone.

“Monte, why are you so persistent about me going to Bernese with you?” asks Trixie dangerously.

“I gave my reasons.”

“Well you better drop it, because its not going to happen.”

“Really.” Monte sits across from Trixie, now holding a stern glare. “Well then inform me, oh Great and Powerful Trixie, how you’re going to bring down Brisk Wind. You don’t have a costume anymore-”

“Because you burnt it.”

“So you can’t go around beating up ponies and getting away with it. You could take the assassination route-”

“I’m not a killer!”

“But by that outburst that is not going to happen anytime soon. So tell me, what are you going to do?”

“She won’t do anything,” says Fancypants sternly. Both Trixie and Monte look at him as he steps into the room. “Trixie, you’re done with this vigilante business.”

Monte steps in between Fancypants and Trixie and pokes him in the chest.

“Hey, last I checked, you’re not her daddy,” says Monte.

“I will not let her get involved in any more of this! She almost died for Celestia’s sake! And now you want her to go with you to Bernese!”

“It’s to take out Brisk Wind!”

“Really! Are you being a good citizen helping out, or is this the wish of Gilda?” Monte opens his mouth, but quickly closes it and walks away, mumbling incoherently. “Thought so.” Then to Trixie: “You are staying right here where its safe.”

“What!” cries Trixie as she jumps to her feet. “But I can’t stay here! I have to-”

“Do nothing. You’re going to be doing nothing and going to be sitting here in this house until we can fix this in a way that doesn’t involve you putting your life in danger.”

“But-”

“Not another word, young lady!”

“You can’t keep me here!” yells Trixie defiantly as she stomps her hoof. “I can do what I want and I’m leaving!”

“Really?” asks Monte hopefully as he zooms back in the room with a giant grin plastered on his face.

“Not with you!” snaps Trixie. Monte groans and looks down, pouting, and Trixie marches towards the exit, but Fancypants steps in front of her. “Out of my way! I’m going to take down Brisk Wind and nothing you say or do will stop me!”

Fancypants steps forward and glares down at Trixie, and she gulps and shrinks back slightly.

“Is that so,” he says in a low, challenging voice.

~~~~~~~~~~

Trixie huffs as she folds her hooves across her chest, sitting on the bed she woke up in not too long ago and glaring at the door as Fancypants closes it with his magic.

=**********=

Shining Armor steps into his workplace, tired and suffering from a hangover and a night of the “couch treatment”. The lights burn his eyes, the noise hurts his ears, and worst of all, he feels as though his head might pop. He tries to ignore the pain and look confident in his stride, but after last night’s confession he can’t hide his shame even if his life depended on it.

As he walks towards his office, he notices that there are very few ponies actually working. Most are crowded around a radio, listening to DJ-Pon3, a character he’s never cared for even to this day. However, with the Vigilante business and the whole Equestria-eating-itself-alive ordeal, her ratings have soared and now he’s certain she’s more popular than the largest news agency.

“I don’t know what the hay happened over at Gilda’s place, but man that was some intense shit,” says DJ Pon3. “Gilda put up one heck of a fight. She hospitalized Director Brisk Wind, took out a freaking zeppelin, and now, from what I hear of my sources, she’s in the hospital after being shot a dozen times. How she’s still alive is beyond me.”

Shining Armor walks up to the crowd as they murmur amongst themselves.

“I’ll get more information about this whole thing as soon as I can. However, before I play some ‘Ghostie Hunter’, I want to give a word of warning to everypony in Baystone. Your protests have stirred the hornets nest and thanks to a few honest journalists and mail, I’m getting all kinds of stuff about ponies disappearing left and right. Specifically those of you in the Lunar Society. So keep your eyes peeled and your ears open and stay safe.” Some hard rock starts playing. “Now, here’s ‘Ghostie Hunter’s ‘Imaginary Kingdom’.”

“There better be a good reason why none of you are working!” exclaims Shining Armor. The ponies around the radio nearly jump out of their skin and scatter as Shining Armor shouts: “Back to work! You can listen to all the radio you want when you’re off your shift!”

He uses his magic to unplug the radio with a hard, swift tug and marches into his office with the radio in tow. Not even five seconds later, the symphony of quills scratching on paper takes over the silence. He goes into his office and carelessly tosses the radio aside, not caring when he hears its casing crack or sees a little shower of sparks in his peripheral vision. He sits at his desk and grumbles to himself when he looks at the stack of paperwork in his basket. Thus begins his mind numbing process of filling out forms to deny or accept requests, sign something then send it to Celestia, or the dozens of other tedious activities. An hour goes by and he feels dead. Very dead. The motions are so repetitive, the wording so long and boring, that he’s certain he will die from boredom.

After signing another sheet to approve of more security measures for the Badlands, he comes across a book sized gift wrapped in brown, crinkly wrapping paper. He picks it up and sees that whoever sent it to him has sloppy handwriting, given that he could barely read: To: Shining Armor, From: Adagio D. Minor.

He looks around as if worried someone might be watching him, and after writing down the sender’s name on a sheet of paper he tears open the wrapping. After tossing the wrapping paper aside he arches an eyebrow. Whoever this “Adagio” person is, sent him a yearbook with a velvety cover that has a coat of arms of a prestigious school on it. The coat of arms consists of a scroll, an atom, drama masks, and math utensils in each of its quadrants with a star in the middle, and underneath, written in calligraphy inside a wavy scroll is: University of Stalliongrad.

“Okay then,” mutters Shining Armor quietly.

Shining Armor flips through the pages, trying to determine why the yearbook was sent to him. He comes across a page with the corner bent and he sees that its a photo of a party of some kind with a group of friends having a good time with goofy poses. He takes a closer look and realizes that he recognizes all of the ponies in the photo. Brisk Wind has her front hooves wrapped around Lock as he gives her a piggyback ride, and laughing with Quill Pen is a younger Glimmer Fuller in his ROTC uniform. All of them look like they are having a good time. Nay, a fantastic time.

Shining Armor flips the pages until he comes across another bent page. Same thing. Quill Pen, Brisk Wind, Lock, and Fuller altogether in some silly pose at some frat party. He skims through it in a more frantic manner, stopping and becoming more shocked as each bent page reveals that the quadrant of terror have known each other since college. And from the looks of it, have been an entourage that just about everyone looked up to. When he reaches the part where all the students have their own thumbnail photo, he sees that each of them have been circled and their class highlighted. They were all in the same graduating class.

Shining Armor slams the book shut and bangs on his intercom button.

“Case Study, get in here!” barks Shining Armor.

Not even a minute later, a unicorn mare with an orange coat, a flat, dark green mane and tail, and a notebook with a hat as a cutie mark bolts in and skids to a stop in front of Shining Armor.

She quickly salutes, saying: “Sir, Staff Sergeant Study reports, as ordered.”

Shining Armor returns the salute, then hands her the slip of paper he wrote the mysterious sender’s name on.

“I need you to find out who that pony is immediately. Do not tell anypony anything and you report everything directly to me.”

“Sir?”

“No mail. No calls. Not even smoke signals. Word of mouth is how you will report. No exceptions.”

Shining Armor puts the yearbook in his safe, and just for good measure he puts a shield spell around it that shimmers a rosy color for a moment before becoming completely invisible. Then he shoves her out like a pushy mother, even going as far as saying “Outoutoutoutout!” and slamming the door shut. After watching her leave the workplace in a hurry, causing some heads to turn no less, he pushes a button on his wall and the bulky communications device similar to the one in Brisk Wind’s office slides out. He grabs a phone book perched next to the device and flips through it until he comes across the number he wanted. He dials the number as quickly as he can and taps his hoof impatiently as he listens to the phone attempt connection.

“Hello?” asks a stallion on the other end. A stallion that Shining Armor doesn’t want to talk to.

“Who’s this?” demands Shining Armor.

“What do you mean ‘Who’s this’? You called me!”

“No I didn’t! I called- Colt is that you?”

“... Yeah.”

“What are you doing at L. Roy’s house?”

“Having cider. What are you calling him for?”

“Put him on.”

“He’s in the bathroom.”

“Bullshit. Put him on.”

“You can-”

“PUT HIM ON!”

There is a moment of silence, some muffled noise, another moment of silence. then a gruff voice on the other end.

“Who the hay is this?”

“L. Roy, its Shining.”

“Oh, Sparkle Sparkle Boom Colt. Long time, no talk. What can I do for you?”

Shining Armor facehoofs at that remark and growls when he hears Colt laughing in the background.

“L. Roy, listen, I need you to pick up somepony off the books. Can you do that?”

“No. Its off my shift, against regulations, and-”

“I need you to pick up Quill Pen.”

“...When do you want her?”

~~~~~~~~~~

Nearly two hours later, Shining Armor walks into a concrete room with a single cell and window where a couple of guards are slacking off. One is reading the New Yoke Times and the other one is messing with the radio. They were oblivious to the nasty screeching noise the metal door made when it swung open, and remained oblivious when he slammed the door shut. But he got their attention when he turned the radio off. Both guards stop what they were doing and looked up at him. Then their jaws dropped and they jumped to their feet, saluting.

“Captain Armor, we weren’t expecting you,” says the guard messing with the radio.

“So I’ve noticed. Get out, both of you.”

The two guards nod and run out, the one that was messing with the radio saying: “Wow, two high rankers in two days!”

When the door shuts, Shining Armor puts a shield around the room and approaches the cell. He sees a colorful tail poking out from under a dirty, gray blanket with an obviously fake snore. He bangs on the cell and the snoring becomes more exaggerated.

“Airmare Dash, approach the cell,” orders Shining Armor.

“Sorry, too busy sleeping,” yawns Rainbow Dash.

To emphasize her point, she yawns even louder, stretches out, and then curls up under her blanket. Shining Armor frowns and uses his magic to pull her out of her bed. She yelps and tries to grab the sheets, but her hooves do nothing except make them messy, and when she’s against the bars, he forces her to stand up.

“As a soldier, you should know better,” comments Shining Armor as he looks down at her.

Rainbow Dash blows some of her vibrant mane out of her eyes. Even by her standards they are messy, they are clumpy from oil buildup and some dirt has caked itself around her. Her normally bright coat also looks drabby and she has a bags under her eyes. It pains Shining Armor to see her treated this way, and not just because she’s an Element.

“You don’t look so good.”

“Getting court martialed for saving a friend usually makes a mess of ponies,” retorts Rainbow Dash. “Now what do you want? Are you here to tell me that I disappointed you? Or disappointed the Royal Guards? Or are you here to say how much I suck?”

“I’m here to give you a way out.” Rainbow Dash stares at him suspiciously. “As Captain of the Royal Guard I can pull strings to get you out of this mess and return you to your unit.”

Rainbow Dash scoffs and starts towards her cot. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m perfectly fine in my cozy little cell, out of Soarin’s sight.”

Shining Armor raises an eyebrow. “Really? Are you turning into Fluttershy now and hiding whenever somepony hurts your feelings?”

Rainbow Dash glares at Shining Armor, feathers ruffled and eyes narrowed, as he steps closer to the cell.

“I’m giving you a way out, Rainbow Dash, and if you’re going to be an idiot and turn me down for whatever reason, then you deserve to have your dishonorable discharge.”

Rainbow Dash looks down, swallowing tears and blinking to keep the tears at bay. She had not been expecting Shining Armor to be so nasty. Sure she barely knew him, but both times she had a decent conversation with him -once at his wedding and another during her recruitment for the Chrysaor Program- he seemed like a real standup pony with a long fuse. When the Captain of the Royal Guard calls Rainbow Dash and taps his hoof against the bar, she looks at him out of the corner of her eye.

“What’s the catch?” asks Rainbow Dash quietly, her voice cracking and trembling.

“I need you to be my eyes and ears in Research and Development. Being as Chrysaor is Major Fuller’s greatest work he’s going to be keeping a noticeable presence.”

Rainbow Dash wipes her eyes and turns to Shining Armor, her head cocked quizzically.

“You want me to spy on the guy I punched?” asks Rainbow Dash uneasily.

“You won’t have much time, he’ll be moving to lead the Civilian Defense Agency soon and be replaced by Twilight.”

“Twilight? You mean our Twilight?”

Shining Armor nods. “I’m going to pardon you under grounds of the Good Holon Law, and being that you have an exceptional status with me backing you, you’ll be fine. That is if you agree to be my eyes and ears.”

Rainbow Dash stares at him and he extends his hoof, not taking his eyes off of her. Rainbow Dash hesitates, then she touches hooves with her superior.

“Deal.”

=**********=

Trixie stands impatiently in a line of dirty ponies outside of a small and extremely crowded soup kitchen that is in desperate need of repair. Like most of the ponies in line, Trixie is starving, dirty, and is wearing a ratty cloak that is shielding most of her body from the painfully cold weather. When the line shuffles forward, she keeps her head down and tries to ignore the stench of the burning fuel as a clunky early model of the motorized wagon drives past her, splashing her and the others in line with muddy slush. Trixie glares at the passing vehicle as she wipes the slush off of her cloak and cloat, then she looks up at the thick, gray clouds and the snowflakes gently falling from the sky. She snorts and looks back ahead of the line, then rolls her eyes when she sees three mares -a unicorn, pegasus, and earth pony- walk next to the line, wearing warm, white coats and hats with suns stitched on them. The earth pony is carrying a cardboard box filled with books, the unicorn is passing out the books, and the pegasus is doing a preaching thing.

Trixie rolls her eyes and tries to ignore them, but her sour look magnetizes the trio to her.

“Ma’am, we are with the Church of Solaria, and we are here to shepard lost souls to the grace of Celestia” says the pegasus with a warm smile. “Have you accepted Celestia as your Queen and Savior?”

Trixie remains silent, keeping her gaze locked to the pony ahead of her.

“Okay, well here’s a copy of the Book of the Sun for you. If you read it, you will find that all of life’s answers lie within in it and in the grace of Celestia. Inside is a card with our church address on it. Hope to see you there.”

The unicorn puts a copy of one of her books, a pure white cover with the sun stamped on it, in Trixie’s cloak pocket and they move on to the next pony, who was more than happy to accept Celestia’s grace. When the trio of evangelicals are six ponies down, Trixie takes out the book and throws it in the middle of the road right as another clunky vehicle drives by. The book disappears under the wheels and in the slushy mud.

When Trixie is inside the soup kitchen, she immediately feels warmer because the heater is on at full blast and the place is crowded to the fullest. She shuffles towards the line of servers, the floorboards creaking with each step. When she reaches the server, she is handed a wooden bowl and spoon and then served a steamy, brown liquid with bits of vegetables and grain floating in it. She looks at it with disgust, but takes it anyway to a table nearest to the exit. She takes a spoonful of it, and it is surprisingly good, but it was mostly broth so all she really got was a warm drink.

“Ladies and gentlecolts,” says a mare on a podium in the very back, “I know you are hungry, but let us take a moment to bless this food.”

Trixie stops in mid-sip and glares up at the pony, only for her glare to turn to a look of shock and confusion. Standing on the podium, wearing the white robe of the church with warm clothing underneath, is the priestess that she told off at her father’s funeral. Trixie throws down her spoon and slouches in her seat.

‘Well that’s just great,’ thinks Trixie bitterly.

The priestess says a quick prayer, and when she finishes everyone in the room says “Amen” in close proximity to one another. All except for Trixie. She snorts and goes back to her food. A short time later, she hears a chair get dragged across the battered, muddy floor and when she looks up she sees the priestess sitting in front of her.

“Mother Glory, it’s been too short,” says Trixie harshly before blowing on her soup.

“No, it’s been too long,” counters Glory sadly. “I can’t believe we’re seeing each other again under these circumstances.”

“Haven’t you heard? Tragedy is a Lulamoon trait.”

Trixie chuckles darkly and decides to forget about the spoon and just lap up the soup from the bowl. Glory looks down, biting her lip.

“Trixie, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” she says finally after what seems like an eternity of heavy silence.

“Congratulations.”

“Celestia spoke through you at your father’s funeral.” Trixie’s skeptical glare doesn’t faze the  priestess. “I realized on that day that I was playing my commitment with the Sun at only half of what is should’ve been. I preached goodwill and servitude towards others, but I never practiced it. I always took the easy route with telling those in distress to pray for deliverance, yet I never raised a hoof to help them. Celestia was upset with my lack of action, so she used you to tell me that I was wrong.”

Trixie finishes her soup and pushes the bowl aside, only for it to be taken by one of the evangelicals making his rounds a couple of seconds later. Trixie then wipes her maw and glares at Glory.

“So let me guess, you opened this soup kitchen to prove to Celestia that you are ‘worthy’ to be her servant.”

Glory smiles. “Yes, that is right. I’m hoping that this soup kitchen will show those in need that the church sees their needs and that Celestia cares about them.”

“Well she sure has a funny way of showing her care.”

“I know its hard to understand why hard things happen, but it all becomes so much clearer if you free yourself from all your pain and hate and anger. If you will let me, I can help you. I can save you from your pain.”

Trixie scowls, gets out of her seat and hurries towards the exit with Glory trailing and calling for her. When they are outside, Trixie turns around and gives a hard jab to Glory’s chest with her hoof.

“Listen here, Mother, I am not interested in being saved. Not by you or the damn church!”

“Trixie, please, let me help you. I’ve made mistakes, but I’ve changed. I-I am a true servant of Celestia now! I understand what it means to help others!” She drops on the ground, staining her white attire with mud, and holds up her hooves in a pleading, prayer position, eyes watering. “Please, let me save you from yourself!”

“If anypony is going to save anypony it will be me! I do not need you or a goddess to save me! I am my own salvation!”

Glory drops to her stomach on the ground, and helplessly watches Trixie walk away.

Trixie stomps down the sidewalk, too angry to be freezing, and every pony she walks past moves out of her way and casts her a worried glance. She stops by a theater and stares at a poster with Twilight Sparkle on it, advertising her visit as a guest speaker for the Starswirl Society. Trixie growls and shoots a bolt of lightning that burns off Twilight’s face and most of her body from the poster.

“That was unnecessary,” says Custos from behind.

Trixie jumps and turns to face Custos while placing her hoof over her heart to calm it down.

“What are you doing here!” snarls Trixie.

“Following you, like I have always done,” answers Custos as he steps next to her. His horn glows and the poster Trixie burnt repairs itself, then he starts down the street. “Walk with me. We need to talk.”

Trixie blows some of her mane out of her face and follows the mysterious pony down the sidewalk, seemingly without direction.

“Where are we going?” asks Trixie.

“To warm you up.”

Custos stops and holds out his hoof, stopping Trixie from walking into the road. Not even a second later, a vehicle drives and splashes both ponies. Custos doesn’t mind, but Trixie swears and frantically wipes the mud off.

Custos leads Trixie across the road, to a coffee shop. When they walk into the warm coffee shop, Trixie wipes off her hooves and walks towards the very back, right underneath a vent blowing out hot air. Custos walks in, but strangely no one seems to care that a unicorn with no features whatsoever had walked in. He actually get a warm greeting from the mare at the counter. Trixie feels a surge of envy when she sees the reception he’s getting, and after Custos takes a seat across from her, she folds her hooves across her chest and looks away.

“So now that we’re here, what is the message this time?” asks Trixie.

“You need friends.”

“Uh, yeah, last time I had friends they betrayed me, so that is out of the question.”

“Trixie, you cannot possibly hope to pass the trails or defeat the coming villains if you are alone.”

“By ‘villains’ you mean Brisk Wind, Adanz, and Roar Shock, right?”

Custos nods. “If you try to fight them alone, you will die, as you’ve almost with Lock and Adanz. And if you do not have friends to help you, you will end up like Roar Shock. Twisted so much from his pain that he no longer realizes that he has become worse than the very monsters he was fighting.”

Trixie chuckles. “Wow, so I need to find friends or else I’ll be locked in a casket or turn into another Roar Shock.” Custos nods and Trixie frowns. “Too bad I don’t have friends.”

Custos shakes his head and his horn glows and little orbs float out with moving pictures of Fancypants, Pinkie Pie, Vinyl Scratch and even Monte and Shining Armor. Trixie stares at each of the pictures and slowly shakes her head.

Trixie points at Shining Armor. “He watched me get tortured.” She points at Monte. “He’s a pig who only wants to use me for his own little thing.” Her hoof moves to Fancypants. “He wants to keep me locked away forever.” Then she glares at Pinkie Pie. “And her... I was supposed to kill her, but she survived and pretended to be somepony else. She lied to me. Played me like a fool. And you expect me to forgive her?”

The one of Vinyl Scratch grows bigger, surpassing the other orbs.

“She has been nothing but helpful towards you, even going as far as treating you without anything in return.”

“Actually, I owe her bleach and lime,” points out Trixie.

“I’m fairly certain she was joking.” Then he shrinks Vinyl Scratch’s orb and enlarges Fancypants’s orb. “You know as well as I do that he cares about you and doesn’t want to see you hurt.” Now it’s Monte’s turn to take up the stage. “As for him, if he was so self-motivated, he would not have offered you a job, tried protecting you from Adanz nor would he have carried you to Fancypants. He would have abandoned you.”

“He probably helped me just so he can get brownie points and get some leverage so I can act as his bodyguard,” grumbles Trixie.

A waitress slides a tray of steaming hot tea and a plate of bagels in front of Trixie. She stares at the tray, then looks at the waitress suspiciously as she leaves without another word.

“You certainly are tougher than Monte,” says Custos, “but it is as you said, you two were even. That food is for you.”

Trixie immediately digs into the bagels, taking massive bites and barely chewing before swallowing. While she digs into her meal, Custos shrinks Monte’s orb down to size and enlarges Shining Armor’s.

“You do not know the burden he is carrying for allowing what had happened to you to happen. But you know he wants to right his wrong and is doing everything in his power to do so. So why do you refuse to forgive him?”

“Easy,” says Trixie, mouth full of chewed bagel, when she swallows: “Political gain. He has a vendetta with Brisk Wind and I’m his winning piece. But it doesn’t matter, I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m dead, and if I poke my head out for even a second then I’ll have Brisk Wind and Roar Shock going after me. If I lay low and find proof that Brisk Wind is the evil bitch she is, then I’ll give it to Vinyl and she can give it to Captain Armor. Captain Armor will take care of her and I’ll handle Roar Shock and Adanz. Simple as pie.”

Trixie sips her tea and her blood warms up in an instant, bringing a smile of relief to her.

“Proof that Monte is handing to you on a silver platter,” remarks Cutos.

Trixie frowns.

“Monte has another motive, and until I figure out what it is, I’m not doing anything with him,” sneers Trixie while pointing at Custos. Then she resumes eating her bagel. “This is a really good bagel.”

“That is your choice, but it is not a good one. You want to expose Brisk Wind, yet you are refusing help from the only ponies who can help. Regardless of what you think of them, you need them and they need you. How do you expect to defeat the common enemy you share if you are too stubborn to forgive them for their sins against you?”

Trixie shoves another delicious bagel in her mouth and chews obnoxiously loud, causing some heads to turn, but she ignores the condescending stares and keeps her focus on Custos.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s all fantastically deep,” mocks Trixie, accidently spitting out some of her bagel while doing so. She licks up the food that escaped her mouth, and when she realizes what she had just done, she coughs nervously and looks away. “Are we done? I’d like to wake up and have a real bagel.”

“Almost.” Pinkie Pie’s orb floats in front of Trixie and she scowls. “Are you going to forgive her, or condemn her for her remaining life as you have for Glory?”

“I planned on it. She played me.”

“And you tried to kill her. Yet she forgave you and renounced everything to ensure that you are taken care of. She saved you from Singsong, courted you, treated you of your injuries, made you an armored suit, and comforted you when you needed it.”

Trixie slams her hooves against the table, yelling: “She did that for her own amusement! It was all a joke to her!”

Clak.

“She went to extraordinary lengths for a simple joke, then.” states Custos.

Clak.

Trixie looks down.

Clak.

Trixie’s ear twitches and she looks up quizzically.

“What is that noise?” wonders Trixie out loud.

Clak.

“It is almost time for you to wake up,” says Custos calmly. “Are you going to forgive Pinkie Pie when she apologizes for what she’s done?” Clak. “Or will you treat her as you’ve treated Glory?”

Clak.

Trixie looks down again.

“What if I can’t forgive her?” whispers Trixie.

“Then you’ll lose a friend.”

Clak.

[[[[O]]]]

Trixie opens her eyes and turns towards the window while rubbing her eyes. It is dark out, and the moon and stars are hidden behind a thin layer of clouds. She jumps slightly when a little glowing pebble smacks against the window. She climbs out of her bed and cautiously approaches the window when another pebble hits it. She opens up the window and swears quietly when a pebble hits her in the face, then she hears someone apologize in a loud whisper. Trixie looks out the window and narrows her eyes at the zony standing in the garden down below with two backpacks.

“Monte, what are you doing!” demands Trixie in a loud whisper.

“C’mon, let’s go. The ferry leaves in a couple of hours,” whispers Monte back.

“What are you doing throwing pebbles at the window.”

“Trying to wake you up. Now let’s go.”

“I can’t.”

“Why? Are you grounded?” asks Monte with a teasing smile

“Yes.”

Monte’s teasing smile disappears. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. Now go away before I get in trouble.”

“Trixie, you’re a grown mare who can make her own decisions. Now get down here and come to Bernese with me!”

“Give me one good reason to go with you.”

Monte facehoofs. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Then he glares at Trixie. “We just had this conversation yesterday!”

Trixie opens her mouth to protest Monte’s “request”, but then remembers what Custos said about the common enemy and how the ponies that can help need her help as well. Trixie groans and sits on her haunches while rubbing her forehead. A moment of thinking later, she peeks outside and sees Monte is still there, waiting impatiently for her.

“Okay, fine, but I’m doing this for me. Not for you.”

Monte waves his hoof dismissively. “Yeah, yeah, whatever, just get down here.”

Trixie nods and sneaks out of her room, down the stairs and turns to the backdoor. She extends her hoof to open the door, tasting the sweet first steps of freedom and justice!

And then her eyes are blinded by the light of the kitchen, making her freeze in her spot and want to die when she sees Fancypants standing with his hoof against the lightswitch. Glaring at her.

“And just where do you think you’re going?” asks Fancypants like how a father would ask an unruly child trying to sneak their out of their punishment. He’s also wearing a bathrobe and levitating a plate of cheese and crackers with a glass of milk.

Trixie looks down and shuffles her hoof on the ground.

“Uh, midnight stroll?” offers Trixie.

“Bernese is a long way to take a midnight stroll, especially during curfew.”

“How did you hear all that!”

He points to the window. “Window was open.” Then he points to the stairs. “Now off to bed with you. We’ll talk about your unruly behavior when I’m actually awake.”

“Fancypants I can’t stay here! I have to go to Bernese and get those files!”

“Do you honestly trust Monte? He worked for Gilda and she almost killed you!”

“Me and Monte have a common enemy! We need each other if we’re going to take out Brisk Wind.”

Fancypants shakes his head, saying: “You aren’t going anywhere. Going against Brisk Wind is too dangerous, and going with Monte makes it even more so. Besides, Captain Armor will find a way to prosecute her with or without your help.”

Trixie stomps her hoof. “But he needs those files! Monte can get those files and I can protect him!”

Fancypants sighs and puts down his midnight snack, and Trixie continues to stare at him with defiance.

“Trixie, I’m begging you, don’t do this,” pleads Fancypants. “You have no idea what Brisk Wind is capable of.”

“I think I know what she’s capable of.”

Fancypants shakes his head. “You’ve only seen a taste of what she can do. What happened with the griffins is what she can do within the law, and she doesn’t obey the law. The world is her playground and the shadows are her friends. If Brisk Wind has even the slightest hint that there is something on her, she will do whatever it takes to make sure it doesn’t see the light of day. She will blackmail whoever she needs to, pull any strings she has to, and hurt anypony that stands in her way.” Fancypants walks forward and puts his hoof on Trixie’s shoulder. “Trixie, I know what she did was cruel, but please don’t do this.”

Suddenly a bottle smashes against Fancypants’s head and Trixie screams and jumps back as he falls to the ground, unconscious with Monte standing behind him, levitating a broken bottle. He puts the broken bottle on the counter, then he takes a deep breath and smiles at Trixie. His smile turning nervous when he sees her eyes wide and jaw dropped.

“Well, now that that is done and over with we can go to Bernese,” says Monte nervously.

Arc 2- 08- Fancy Pants & Octavia -EDITED-

Arc 3- 2 (The Way They Change)

The Deceivers are the biggest threat to any nation, and it is up to the citizens to stay true and fast to their convictions, their values, and all that has made their nation-state possible. While the threat of having a Deceiver will always be a threat that cannot be truly beat, there must be many safeguards to prevent their work from being easy.

One is to remain true to knowledge. Deceivers will do everything in their power to rewrite history and the laws of economics to make their claims easier to swallow. Deceivers thrive on the pride of those who believe to have education on their side, so they will corrupt the educational institutes to make their impossible plan seem as though it can be accomplished. Those without education have always been looked down, and look up to those who have an institute to back them. If the Deceiver can fool those who claim to be intellectual, then they will unknowingly act as the sentries for her. They will claim that through the knowledge they have obtained they will be able to build a utopia where nopony ever has to live in fear or hunger. And just as the intellectuals are sheep to the educational institutes, the uneducated are sheep to the intellectuals.

The second is to keep the messengers from taking sides. Should a messenger take any sides of any conflict, their motivations will not be for the benefit of the populace, but for the benefit of their bags. A leader needs her messengers, and if the messengers are on her side, they will never question her, never doubt her, and forever worship her as the one who could do no wrong. Should they never question her, there will be no reason to doubt and every reason to blindly worship. If there is blind worship there is no integrity for the messenger, and they will surely become as reliable as a crippled foal. Especially if the Deceiver is holding the highest echelons of power. Control of the messengers is control of the nation, and it is best in the hooves of the commoner.

Third is to impose terms on royalty. Everypony has a chance of becoming a Deceiver, and the longer somepony remains in power, the more likely the Deceiver is able to damage the nation-state. Keeping the royalty from establishing a stronghold in the seats of government will make it difficult for the Deceiver to corrupt and the messengers from blindly worshipping, and it will keep the commoners in control, as it should be. Should the royalty have unlimited years in their seats, they can manipulate the commoners into thinking that what is worst for them is best with the help of the messengers, such is the Deceiver’s special talent.

-The Lunar Republic, Chapter XXII: The Deceiver and the Messengers

++++++++++

Laughter Lives!

Pinkamena Diane Pie Survives Harrowing Experience!

__________________

By: Quill Pen

__________________

CANTERLOT--- They say that during the darkest of times, one can always turn to Laughter to find the light. Laughter, like every Element of Harmony, cannot die, but their wielders can. Thankfully Laughter’s wielder never died.

After the escalation of violence in Equestria we finally see a flicker of hope as Pinkamena Diane “Pinkie” Pie was brought to the Canterlot Royal Hospital after Airmare Rainbow Dash brought her to the hospital following the terrible incident at the abandoned Flim Flam warehouse.

An anonymous source has said that Pinkie Pie was in a coma when he last saw her. I was also told by the said source that Captain Shining Armor had ordered her survival to be kept a secret.

Why you may ask? Some have speculated he had orchestrated the infamous Warehouse Massacre as part of his war against the Equestrian Investigation Bureau, and was hoping that Pinkamena Diane Pie and Rainbow Dash would perish in the suicide mission. Naturally such a thought is beyond ridiculous, given Captain Shining Armor’s fantastic record in keeping Equestria safe.

Continued on Next Page.

++++++++++

Shining Armor throws the newspaper across his office, the noise of scribbling pens coming to a halt when the roll hits his door window and leaves an enormous crack in it. He stares at his door, fuming, and wanting nothing more than to blow up something. Or somepony. He simmers in his anger for a couple of more minutes before there is a nervous, quiet rapping on his door.

“Its open,” growls Shining Armor.

The door creaks open and Case Study walks in and closes the door as gently as she can before approaching her superior.

“What do you have,” demands Shining Armor, his tone low and menacing.

“Um... I have this, sir,” replies Case Study quietly as she hands Shining Armor a sealed folder.

Shining Armor takes the folder and rips it open without a second’s thought and instead of finding one profile page he finds three. He furrows his brow and keeps his eyes on the pages while addressing Case Study.

“What am I looking at.”

“Adagio D. Minor was the name of a college band made up of three ponies. One was the vocalist, the other was a guitarist, and the third played the keyboard. The guitarist passed away in the Ponyville General Hospital after being diagnosed with cancer about ten years ago, the vocalist works communications, and the keyboardist is... well, her.”

Case Study points at the picture of the keyboard player and it takes Shining Armor a moment to realize who it was. After it dawned on him, he slams the buzzer on his desk, making Case Study jump back.

“Security office,” says the mare on the other end almost instantly.

“Bring Private Aural Wave to whatever interrogation room is open immediately!” orders Shining Armor. Then to Case Study: “As for you, bring in Vinyl Scratch now!”

Case Study nods her head quicker than a jackhammer and bolts out of the room. Shining Armor gathers up the contents of the folder, the yearbook and his copy of the New Yoke times as well as other files from his safe. Before leaving his office he casts a shield around it, and for good measure he puts up another one. He then marches out of the work area, ignoring the questionable gazes, and heads straight towards the interrogation room holding Quill Pen. Upon reaching the room observing where the journalist in question is being held, he sees L. Roy in his casual uniform, having a staring at Quill Pen, his presence being hidden by the one way window. He also notices that Major Fuller is there, overseeing some ponies in lab jumpsuits installing a weird, blocky object into the wall.

“Fuller, what are you doing here?” demands Shining Armor.

“Installing the new intercoms, sir,” he replies coolly as he adjusts some wires.

“Okay, but what are you doing here?”

“Overseeing.”

“Well you can oversee later. Take you and your ponies out of here, this section is off limits. Besides, don’t you have a ceremony to go to?”

“That won’t be for another three weeks, Captain.”

Major Fuller orders his technicians to stop their work and they file out with their tools. When all the technicians are out, Shining Armor puts a shield around the area they were working on and slams the door shut after Major Fuller leaves, then he turns to L. Roy.

“How long was he been here?” he asks.

“A few hours,” replies L. Roy.

“How long have you been here?” asks Shining Armor while taking a spot next to L. Roy to stare at the imprisoned journalist.

“All night,” answers L. Roy, his gaze noticeably hardening.

“Where’s your partner?”

“Targe Shield is sleeping since our shift doesn’t start for another eight hours,.”

“‘Targe Shield’? What happened to Colt?”

“He got discharged because his cutie mark said he was better at botany than guarding. Now I’m stuck with a tool who is about as interesting as a wet carrot.”

“Has she done anything?” asks Shining Armor in regards to Quill Pen since he really doesn’t know what to say about L. Roy or Colt’s situation.

L. Roy shakes his head, glaring at Quill Pen.

“Okay, I got it from here, you go home and get some rest before you have to report back,” says Shining Armor.

L. Roy nods and leaves without another word, but he does keep his glare on Quill Pen until he could no longer do so comfortably. After a couple of minutes pass, Shining Armor goes into the interrogation room and puts up a shield around it. Quill Pen stares at the shield nervously as its rosey color disappears from the naked eye. Shining Armor takes a seat across from her, pulls out his folders from his saddlebag and sets them in front of Quill Pen.

“This is illegal, you know,” says Quill Pen, trying to act snobbish. “The Solar Doctrine says-”

“‘Ponies and their property, including self, estates, documents, and related effects, are only to be obtained by the State by decree of Warrants. Any and all Warrants are to be issued only upon probable cause, backed by strong evidence, which must be supported by affirmation of a Judge, and any and all Warrants must have specific descriptions of what is to be seized’.”

Quill Pen stares at Shining Armor, amazed at the fact that he said it so fluidly with a stone cold glare.

“Do you know what Article that was?” asks Shining Armor, his voice cold and unforgiving. When Quill Pen shakes her head he says: “Article Four. But with the martial law in place the Solar Doctrine has no power, which is what you wanted, correct?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” says Quill Pen, sticking her nose in the air. “Wait until I get my lawyer. She’ll have a field day with this.”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me. The Solar Doctrine has been suspended. I could keep you here for as long as I want to with no legal representation. I could have you taken away to any prison I want with a simple clop, but I won’t do that. Not yet, anyway.”

“Why? Because you’re so nice?”

“No, because I want answers, and I will get them one way or the other.”

Quill Pen forces herself to smile. “Is that so, Captain?”

Shining Armor narrows his eyes as he levitates copies of Quill Pen’s articles out of their folders for her to see.

“Just about every article you have done recently have shown support for the martial law and have tried to humiliate me and the Royal Guard while praising the EIB.”

“So? A mare is entitled to her own opinion.”

“So you wouldn’t mind if I keep you here for a year or two for writing misleading articles, then?”

“What! You-you can’t do that!”

Shining Armor shows her the most recent article she did, and she makes an audible gulp as she shrinks in her seat.

“I can, and I will, unless you start talking.”

“What do you want to know?” asks Quill Pen, trembling and sweating.

“Who told you about Pinkie Pie and where you got the idea of me sending her and Dash on a suicide mission to kill EIB agents.”

“Bu-but I said that the idea of you ordering that was a stupid thought.”

Shining Armor uses his magic to grab Quill Pen’s head and slam it on the table so that she is looking at her most recent work. Then he rounds the table, still keeping her pinned, and kneels next to her so that he’s right by her ear. He can hear her whimpers and feel her trembling under his wrath.

“Don’t play with me, Pen,” sneers Shining Armor in a threatening whisper, “I am not in the mood. Now who. Told. You. About Pinkie Pie.”

“I can’t say, it was anony-”

Shining Armor lifts Quill Pen’s head up for just a moment to slam her back down on the table with a defined BANG that left Quill Pen sobbing in pain as her ear bends at an unnatural angle. She squirms under Shining Armor and he keeps her still when he presses his hoof against her head, not caring for the small trickle of blood escaping from under her head where her ear is.

“It was Fuller wasn’t it!” accuses Shining Armor. “Fuller told you about Pinkie Pie and Brisk Wind told you to write that article!”

“I-I-Please don’t hurt me!” sobs Quill Pen.

Shining Armor throws Quill Pen to the ground, and she backs up to a corner, shaking violently as he towers above her, shoving one of the photos of her college years to her face.

“You, Lock, Brisk Wind and Fuller have been friends since college! And Brisk Wind has been trying really hard to destroy Equestria while you have been her little puppet trying to ruin me and the Guard! What’s Fuller’s angel on this!”

“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this! It-it-We have nothing against you! I have nothing against you!”

“LIAR!” screams Shining Armor, his eyes shifting to a pure, rosey color with the same color glow around him. “YOU WANT TO DESTROY EQUESTRIA!”

“No!”

“AND I AM THE ONLY ONE IN YOUR WAY!”

“We-we want to save it from itself!”

“YOU MAY HAVE FOOLED CELESTIA, BUT YOU HAVE NOT FOOLED ME!” Shining Armor wraps his magic around Quill Pen’s throat and hoists her up the wall, ignoring her desperate gasps and kicks. “TELL ME EVERYTHING OR SO HELP ME CELESTIA I WILL SNAP YOUR NECK!”

A burst of energy signaled by a blinding light suddenly hits Shining Armor in the side, sending him crashing into the wall and landing with all the air knocked out of his lungs. After regaining his air through a series of painful coughs and gasps, and blinking the globs of colors out of his eyes, his ears folded back and he shrunk down.

“Your Majesty,” says Shining Armor in a quiet voice, his magic dissipating.

“Captain Armor, I would have expected better,” growls Celestia as she finishes forming herself into a solid figure between Shining Armor and Quill Pen. Then to Quill Pen in a much softer tone: “You can go home, and you will be compensated.”

Quill Pen doesn’t need to be told twice; the terrified mare bolts out of the room and when the door shuts Celestia puts another shield, this one golden colored and thick so no one can see inside or out. She then takes a deep breath and looks at Shining Armor, disappointed by what she just saw.

“Are you going to need another break?” asks Celestia sternly.

“No, Your Majesty,” answers Shining Armor, fighting a losing battle to keep his eyes on the Princess. He is now back to his normal self, too.

“You were losing control and threatened to snap her neck! Do you realize what would have happened if your anger got the best of you?”

“But, Your Majesty, I have reason to believe that Brisk Wind’s network goes farther than the EIB. I was trying to get answers from one of her associates.”

“I told you to drop the case, and besides on what grounds have you detained Quill Pen?”

Shining Armor shows her the photos, and although Celestia holds her poker face, he’s certain he has peaked her interest in the matter.

“Is this yearbook why you had Vinyl Scratch and Private Aural Wave detained?” asks Celestia as she flips through the pages.

“Yes, Your Majesty. Brisk Wind, Lock N. Key, Major Glimmer Fuller, and Quill Pen all knew each other and went to the same college and graduated in the same class, all having some degree in Political Science. Those two know something about this, too, and I need to know what they know.”

“And you think that a highlighted yearbook and college friends having similar degrees is cause for your paranoia?”

Shining Armor feels his hope and patience for Celestia taking a nosedive off a cliff, and his agitation becomes evident by his twitching eye.

“It is not paranoia! Quill Pen herself admitted to wanting to ‘save Equestria from itself’ and she has done nothing but discredit me and the Royal Guard while Brisk Wind has convinced you to destroy the foundation of this nation for the sake of security!”

Shining Armor takes a moment to catch his breath while Celestia stares at him, closing and returning the yearbook to him.

“Equestria is falling apart, Captain, in case you haven’t realized,” says Celestia, now towering above him. “I know you don’t like what is happening, and neither do I, but Brisk Wind was right. Because I did not notice the signs, I lost Blueblood and Ponyville suffered. If Equestria is to survive, if we wish to find and remove those that wish to destroy us, then we have to remove such shortcomings as the Solar Doctrine for the time being.”

Shining Armor’s jaw drops. “Your Majesty, listen yourself! You wrote the Solar Doctrine as a means of-”

“Yes, I realized that I wrote it, but I cannot protect my people if I am restricted in my powers to guide and defend them.”

Shining Armor takes a deep breath, then exhales slowly, doing his best to contain his anger. However, despite his best efforts, his gaze still hardens and he forces himself to look away just so he wouldn’t look at Celestia with those eyes. Celestia, seeing how upset Shining Armor is, also looks away.

“I know it is hard for you to hear, but when this is all over then-”

“You’ll do what? Restore the Solar Doctrine? Dismantle the EIB and CDA and release everypony that conveniently disappeared after expressing their disdain?” Shining Armor shakes his head disbelievingly. “If you are so obsessed with protecting us from threats you should’ve just let me continued my interrogation instead of interfering.”

“Captain, I interfered because no matter what you may think, I still don’t want to see anypony hurt, but in this day and age I am constantly failing. You must understand that I am doing these things to protect Equestria and those I care about from harm.” When Shining Armor doesn’t reply, Celestia sighs heavily and looks at the ground. “You should thank Major Fuller for alerting me of this interrogation, if I hadn’t shown up you would have done something that would have ruined you and Cadence.”

“I will thank him. Personally,” grumbles Shining Armor. “I’m assuming Wave and Scratch have been released.”

“By my orders, yes.”

Shining Armor nods, silently gathers his things, then slams the door on his way out. He could just picture his goddess cringing when he did so, however, he also knows her well enough to know that she’s probably just staring at it. He marches down the hallway with the fires of Hell in his eyes and his stomps echoing over the other hoofsteps. Everyone in his way is smart enough to move aside and not talk to him. All but a certain high ranking military official that is.

“Captain Armor, sir,” says Major Fuller casually while approaching him from seemingly out of the blue, “I hope you aren’t too upset about me bringing Princess Celestia in. I was just worried about our prisoner’s safety. You haven’t been yourself in the past few months, and I fear you are getting worse.”

“Thank you for that, Major,” responds Shining Armor, his tone the polar opposite of grateful. “By the way, while we are here, is there anything you want to tell me?”

“About my friendship with Quill Pen, Brisk Wind and Lock, you mean?” Shining Armor stares at him suspiciously, but the Major is showing no discernible expressions. “We had our fun in college, and we shared political science classes, but my dreams differed from theirs, as do all dreams.”

The two walk by an elevator and Major Fuller pushes the “Up” button. The device makes a small ding and they wait patiently for the elevator to come to their floor.

“What if I wanted to ask you something else?” says Shining Armor coldly.

“Forgive me, Captain Armor, but I had assumed that you had wanted. I realized you figured out my connection with Director Wind when you brought in Quill Pen. You want answers, and an investigation requires all avenues to be explored, including past relationships.” The elevator door opens and Shining Armor steps inside, but Major Fuller remains outside. “It is sad, though, that it had come to this for our nation. It is as though such things as trust and Loyalty are but things of the past.”

Shining Armor glares at Major Fuller as he takes a step back, holding his stoic expression.

“If you have any questions about my affiliation with Brisk Wind and Quill Pen, or anything of the like, I will be more than happy to answer them. We are in this war together, after all.”

Shining Armor’s glare is fixated on Major Fuller until the door blocks him from view with a loud clang. When that is said and done, a whirring noise overtakes everything and the elevator begins its ascension. Shining Armor then snorts out hot air and turns his focus to the dial as it gradually moves up the numbers. As the numbers go up, his patience dissolves at a more rapid pace and he finds himself muttering and pawing at the ground. He can also feel his energy surging and he slumps to the ground, clutching his head. When the elevator door opens Shining Armor looks up to see six Royal Guards standing in front of him, and he quickly gets himself under control. There was a flicker of surprise from them, being that they were not expecting to see their superior in an elevator looking as though he wants to kill someone, but they are quick to regain their stoic composure.

“Sir, Pinkamena Pie has escaped from the hospital.”

“And the Royal Bank has been robbed.”

=**********=

In the late afternoon sun, a small army of Royal Guards gallop towards the Royal Bank, which is blaring an annoying, ear breaking ringing noise. The guards bring in armored vehicles to secure the area and crime scene investigators to do what they do best. During the setup, a young Royal Guard approaches an older one who is barking out orders.

“Sir, Captain Armor has been alerted and the CSIs are already getting sample and statements,” reports the young guard.

“Good, now we just have to find a garbage collector,” says the older guard.

“A garbage collector?”

“Yeah, the manager,” the older guard nods to a unicorn mare, who is trembling and mumbling, “said that a garbage collector broke into the vault and whoever was driving it knocked out all the guards and stole an indefinite amount of bits before leaving. I’m thinking we’re going to need to-”

“LOOK OUT!” shouts one of the guards.

Both guards turn and barely dive out of the way in time as a massive, damaged mini-train with a dumpster on its back barrels its way through the blockade of vehicles. The vehicle’s are bent and twisted beyond repair as they roll, twirl, or bounce aside, launching pieces of them in the air. The guards order the vehicle to stop and when it continues plowing through everything, they shoot at the tires with their battle saddles and magic. However, even after popping the tires the vehicle still continues and actually speeds up, although wavering and tearing up the asphalt with its massive ruined rims. Then it hits a bump that signals the beginning of the sidewalk. The vehicle rips apart the edge of the sidewalk, but it is also tilted up and after smashing a motorized wagon into oblivion it falls to its side and slides across the ground, coming to a stop when it breaks through the entrance of a Donut Joe’s Donut Shop with a trail of spilled bags of money in its wake.

The pegasi guards fly ahead and surround the tipped vehicle while the others gallop after them. The pegasi order the driver to vacate the vehicle, but they get no response except for the engine sputtering and releasing hot water and steam. They cautiously approach the cabin and poke their heads in to find... nothing. Absolutely nothing except for a rigged ignition key and a speed lever broken to stay at maximum speed.

The guards stare inside, flabbergasted, then they glance at each other, still holding their expressions. One of the guards then pulls his head out and turns on his radio pack.

“Uh... sir, the vehicle is empty.”

oooOOOooo

Driving down the road, calm as can be, is a motorized wagon painted yellow with black bars and “TAXI” written in bold white letters. There is also are also signs saying “On Break” with a smiley face next to it on the passenger windows. Driving the taxi is an earth pony mare, sickly pale with a flat mane that has its ends frizzles, and her eyes are also droopy. The driver is also wearing a thick hat and a drabby coat that covers most of her body, including her three balloon cutie mark.

Pinkie Pie stops at a redlight and cringes when she sees the trash collector tip to its side and crash into Donut Joe’s shop.

“Sorry, Joe,” apologizes Pinkie Pie quietly. Then the door opens and Filthy Rich climbs in with yet another pegasus mare, both of them tipsy. Pinkie Pie arches an eyebrow and cranes her neck to look over her shoulder, which is still sore from her injuries. “Hey, buddy, cab’s closed.”

“I’ll pay you double the fare to get me to this address,” says Filthy Rich, playfully struggling to keep the mare he’s with from butterfly kissing his whole neck. He also hands Pinkie Pie a slip of paper with an address on it a second later.

While taking the slip with her mouth, Pinkie Pie’s ears fold back and her eyes go half lidded as she gets a sickly feeling from watching the drunk lovebirds. Then she spits the slip onto the front passenger seat without taking her eyes off of the unwanted passengers.

“I got a better idea. How about you actually find a cab that is on shift.”

“It’s only a few blocks down.”

“Then you can walk.” Pinkie Pie pokes her head out the window and sees Royal Guards moving through the crowded street, searching all the large vehicles. However, despite their limited search, she still gets an uneasy feeling. “You can speed walk very fast.”

“But-”

The guards get near her stolen taxi and she pulls her head back inside, now nervously drumming her hooves against the dashboard. She also starts to get more panicky when she sees one of the Royal Guards turn to her, his suspicion plain as day, through the mirror.

“Actually, on second thought, I’ll take you,” blurts Pinkie Pie.

“Really? Nice, I’ll be sure to write a good recommendation Ms. um...”

“The name is ‘Jam’. ‘Hoof Jam’.” Filthy Rich’s eyes bulge and the mare he’s with face contorts to that of disgust. Pinkie Pie takes a quick look at the slip and realizes that the address is for the apartment her and Trixie stayed at. “Hold on tight, I’m-”

The guard Pinkie Pie spotted earlier taps on her window with his hoof. She freezes, and stares at the guard out of the corner of her eye. A second set of knocks prompts her to roll down the window and try to put on an innocent smile, but with her condition it is like watching a zombie trying to smile. He orders her to the side of the road and after some difficulty of weaving through the molasses like traffic conditions, she makes to the shoulder of the road and the guard approaches her window again.

“License and registration,” orders the guard.

“What for?” asks Pinkie Pie innocently.

“Because I said so. License and registration. Now.”

Pinkie Pie’s mind races as she tries to figure out a way out of this mess, and the guard calling for backup is not making things any easier for her. Then the guard orders her passengers out and starts asking them a series of questions as more guards surround the vehicle. Pinkie Pie smiles nervously at the guards as she tries to scan the area. Then she sees it; an empty alley. She clears her throat to get the guards’ attention and when they look at her she gives them an innocent smile.

“We don’t have to do this right here, its crowded and not safe for anypony. Amiright?” says Pinkie Pie uneasily. The guards murmur some agreement and she points at the alley. “I think we should go into the alley over there. Its secluded, away from the traffic, and lets face it, nopony wants to make a scene. Especially if there is any frisking involved.”

With the “frisking” statement she raises her eyebrows suggestively and the guards cast nervous glances at each other.

“Uh, miss, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but we don’t do frisking like that,” says one of the guards.

Pinkie Pie gasps. “What! You pervert! How dare you suggest that I would suggest something as suggestive as frisky frisking!?”

“What! I didn’t- Nevermind! Just get into the alley!”

“Wait until I file that complaint,” grumbles Pinkie Pie as she pulls her stolen taxi into the alley, getting a small, devilish smile when she hears the guards saying something about her victim “getting it now”.

She pulls into the alley, shuts off the vehicle and hops out, carefully studying each of the five guards. One of the guards demands to see her license and registration, and she sighs heavily while leaning against the taxi, suddenly feeling sick. Pinkie Pie feels like she’s going to puke, her legs are wobbly, and she feels her brain throbbing with every beat of her heart.

“I don’t have it,” says Pinkie Pie sickly.

“You don’t have it?” repeats one of the guards skeptically with a raised eyebrow.

Pinkie Pie nods, having to lean against the taxi for support.

“Then what are you doing driving a taxi without them?” demands another guard.

“And why are you taking fares when your clearly off shift?” says another as he points to the sign posted on the passenger window.

Pinkie Pie shrugs. “I needed the bits.”

“Open the trunk,” orders the guard that pulled her over.

Pinkie Pie reluctantly grabs her keys, eyeing each guard carefully and trying to think of anything other than the sick feeling that has conveniently arrived when she couldn’t afford it. She approaches the side of the vehicle and carefully opens the trunk, being sure to avoid the scolding boiler engine, and she steps away as the guard looks inside. As the guard inspects the contents stuffed inside, Pinkie Pie’s eyes narrow like a predator feeling threatened and she starts tapping her hooves impatiently.

“What the hay?”

Pinkie Pie suddenly slams the guard’s face against the rim of the vehicle and he crumbles to the ground, unconscious and bloody. Then she whirls around and jabs the second guard in the throat before knocking out his footing and slamming his head to the ground. The remaining three swear and bring their weapons to bear as Pinkie Pie turns to them, eyes evil with a twisted smile.

“Do you boys wanna play a game?” chuckles Pinkamena.

The remaining guards scream and fire as Pinkamena lunges at them, and-

~~~~~~~~~~

Pinkie Pie jolts upright in a bathroom stall, trembling violently with sweat dripping off of her nose and mane. Pinkie Pie whimpers and clutches her head as she rocks back and forth on the toilet, her hooves bloody and face wet from crying.

“That didn’t happen. That didn’t happen. That didn’t happen.”

“Oh, but it did, and it was fun,” giggles a voice sounding similar to Pinkie Pie’s while the stall door creaks opens. Pinkie Pie looks up and stares, horrified, at the pony in front of her. She’s staring at herself, only her colors are darker, her mane is flat and she has a sick, twisted smile. “What’s the matter, Pinkie, aren’t you glad to see me?”

Pinkie Pie shakes her head, too terrified to speak, and Pinkamena sighs in mock disappointment.

“Well, that sucks,” says Pinkamena, “considering I’m the only one you have left.”

“You’re lying,” says Pinkie Pie quietly, choking on her tears.

“Am I? Pinkie, you’re a smart pony, you know you are alone because you have a talent for making others miserable.”

Pinkie Pie presses her hooves against her ears, shaking her head. “I’m not listening!”

"You know it’s the truth.” Pinkamena grabs Pinkie Pie’s head and twists it to look at her. “You know its the truth, that is why you try to hide it. Yet no matter how hard you try, you. Always. Fail.”

“Please stop,” whimpers Pinkie Pie.

“Killing Spike ruined your friends, and just imagine what daddy will do when he finds out you killed his prodigy.”

Pinkie Pie screams and rams Pinkamena off of her feet. They both crash to the ground, with Pinkamena in between Pinkie Pie’s hooves and the Element of Laughter growling madly through gritted teeth. Pinkamena isn’t fazed, though, she meets Pinkie Pie’s eyes with a cool look as her pupils shift to an emerald color.

“He’ll no doubt disown you since you already made mommy hang herself,” snickers Pinkamena.

Pinkie Pie screams with bloodthirsty rage and slams her hoof down on Pinkamena’s face; it flattens and makes a HONK!

Pinkamena’s face inflates and Pinkie Pie tries again. But every time her hooves smash Pinkamena’s face to a pancake, they make the same honking noise and inflate a couple of seconds later. She continues punching the face, and even grabs it by the sides and slams it on the tile. But all it does is make Pinkamena laugh, taunt her, and make honking noises. Plus Pinkamena’s face always inflates back to its normal size.

“Stop hitting yourself!” cackles Pinkamena. "Why are you hitting yourself? Quit hitting yourself!"

Pinkie Pie screams and slams both of her hooves down on her evil twin’s face and the impact leaves cracks in the dirty tile, but the results are the same.

[[[[O]]]]

Pinkie Pie’s eyes shoot open, her eyes red and puffy and face soaked, when a deafening, continuous honk blares for everyone to hear. She groans and pulls her head off of the taxi’s cracked dashboard and looks to where the horn is. Her hoof is over it and the horn button is shattered, but that is not what is concerning her. What is concerning her is that her hooves, which are bleeding from the scratches she got from the splintered wood, is that her blood is mixing with foreign blood. Pinkie Pie’s eyes bulge and her jaw drops as she clumsily exits the vehicle, falling on her back and cracking her head against the pavement. She winces as she pulls herself up, rubbing her head and trying to ignore the fresh pain in her back. Her ribs also feel fragile and her muscles sore. Her basic disguise is gone, too.

When Pinkie Pie stops rubbing her head, her whole body drops to the ground and she covers her mouth. The whole taxi damaged; its window is shattered with blood on the edge of the broken glass, the frame is riddled with cracks, and there is even a hole through the passenger door. Pinkie Pie gulps as she cautiously approaches the trunk, which has a bloodstain at the base. She opens up the trunk and finds sacks of bits marked with the Royal Bank seal. Pinkie Pie slams the trunk shut and drums her hooves against it, trying to remember what had happened. She remembers robbing the bank to get the money to pay Iron Will, feeling sick when she got pulled over, and asking to leave the vehicle so they can inspect. Then nothing.

Pinkie Pie covers her eyes with her hooves and drops to her haunches, shaking her head in disbelief.

“No, no, no, no, this can’t be happening,” whimpers Pinkie Pie.

“Pinkie, is that you?” says a familiar mare in disbelief.

Pinkie Pie stops whimpering and drags her hooves away from her eyes as she slowly turns to the mare, trembling and eyes watering.

“Help me,” begs Pinkie Pie in a terrified whimper.

=**********=

Trudging down the coast of Equestria is a large, blocky boat with two smokestacks spewing out exhaust and a large wheel on its side, turning the water and pushing it forward. The boat is elegant and decorated with bright colors and plenty of outdoor seating with lifeboats hanging underneath the railing to allow a great view of the ocean. And resting on one of the benches, outside and trying to enjoy the view is the Magnificent Monte Fountain. He’s sitting on the bench, watching the former Great and Powerful Trixie pace in circles in front of him. He has his head rested on his hoof and his eyes are half lidded while Trixie’s ears are perked up to the fullest and her eyes constantly locking onto passengers or crew who have the misfortune of walking too close. Essentially, she is creeping out everyone that passes the two.

“Are you going to relax anytime soon?” asks Monte.

“I can’t relax, for all I know Brisk Wind could have sent somepony on this ship to kill us,” says Trixie, focusing her eyes on a young unicorn couple walking towards them, licking ice cream cones levitating in front of them. She shoots her hoof towards them, growling: “Back off.”

The couple freezes and slowly back away with their tongues still on the cones. When Trixie takes a step towards them, growling, they turn tail and run. Monte shouts an apology and tries to explain that Trixie is just off her meds. With that statement she glares at Monte.

“Don’t tell them that!” snaps Trixie.

“Well you’re acting a little nutty so I have to give them explanation. Besides, you are a pill popper who is off her meds so what we have to do is-” Monte hops off the bench and grabs Trixie’s shoulders and looks her in the eyes, “find a way to calm you down.”

Trixie bats Monte’s hooves off of her shoulders.

“Don’t touch me. And don’t tell me to calm down.”

“Excuse me,” says an ibex wearing a sailor uniform in broken Equestrian, “we have received complaints about the missus.”

Trixie sticks her nose in the air and looks away while Monte chuckles uneasily, wraps his hoof around Trixie’s neck and tugs her in for a one-hoof hug. Trixie nearly loses her balance because of that, but she is able to regain it quickly and give Monte a death glare.

“Oh, yeah, my wife is off of her meds so she’s a little antsy right now,” says Monte.

Trixie rolls her eyes and looks down at the waterproofed, polished floorboards of the ship. She can see her reflection, and Monte was right, she does look a bit butch. But she likes Fancypants’s “toned” description better.

The ibex arches an eyebrow. “Why is she walking without medicine?”

“Simple.” Monte raises his hoof and his mouth is open to give an answer. But after five seconds of silence, he lowers his hoof. “She’s a naughty girl.”

Trixie’s eyes widen and she feels her blood heating up in her cheeks and ears, then her gaze drifts to Monte, shifting to a murderous glare along the way. Then she is caught off guard when Monte speaks to the ibex in his native tongue fluently. At first Monte and the ibex sailor appear to be having a serious conversation, but it gradually turns into a lighthearted one. Soon the zony and ibex are laughing and Trixie feels completely lost, but has a feeling it has something to do with her; especially when Monte hugs her tighter. Trixie tries to leave, but Monte keeps his hoof hooked around her neck, forcing her to stay with him. She has to endure the conversation for a good ten minutes before the two finally say their farewell.

“Ah, das alles macht sinn. Nun halten sie unter kontrolle und genießen sie ihren tag, Herr Fountain,” says the ibex with a smile.

“Auch sie, dank für sein verständnis,” says Monte, waving farewell to the ibex. When the ibex is out of sight, Monte sighs and looks at Trixie, ears drooping when he realizes she’s glaring at him. “Is something wrong, honey?”

“Don’t you ‘honey’ me!” yells Trixie, shrugging him off and jabbing his chest with her hoof. “First you call me a ‘naughty girl’ and then you speak that weird language, leaving me in the dark! What the hay were you talking about, anyway!? It was me wasn’t it? You were talking about me!”

Monte smiles. “First off, it is not a weird language, it is Bernesenese. Secondly, yes we were talking about you. I was just explaining to Herr Strudel that you have some conditions and that we accidently left your extra pills at home. I just have to keep you under control and nopony will get into any sort of trouble.”

Trixie huffs. “You were talking for almost ten minutes.”

“There was a lot to talk about. Now why don’t you have a seat on the bench and relax?”

Trixie grumbles and reluctantly lays down on the bench, when Monte tries to take a spot next to her, she snaps her hoof out and orders him to the other side. Monte’s ears droop and he goes to the other side, pouting. Trixie watches the sun setting in the distance, which she admits is pretty, especially loving how the light off of the water. She also loves the comforting feeling of the boat’s barely noticeable, gentle rocking, and the sound of the water being churned from the giant wheel. The temperature is not too bad, too. However, in spite of all these things, she can’t sit still and continues to glare at those passing by. A minute or two passes before Trixie puts her hoof on the floor.

“Trixie, no hoofy on the floory,” says Monte like a father talking to a toddler.

“I was stretching!” snaps Trixie, turning her glare to Monte as she tucks her leg back.

Monte simply smiles and looks back at the scenery with Trixie, but while Monte is relaxed, Trixie is fidgeting. Monte has to constantly tell Trixie to relax, make her sit down, and on one occasion, hold hold her back with his magic because of her attempts to find an assassin almost led to her ripping apart a cleaner’s cart. Needless to say, Monte spewed a seemingly endless line of apologies to the poor female ibex while keeping Trixie levitated off of the ground. The ibex ran.

When the ibex is out of sight, Monte drops Trixie on the bench and scowls at her as she adjusts her position.

“Well, I hope you’re happy, you just traumatized a maid,” says Monte angrily.

“I had my reasons,” grumbles Trixie.

“Oh, like Brisk Wind fitting an assassin in a stuffed cart? Who is she going to stick in there? A killer midget? A psychotic filly?”

“A bomb?”

“...You are a disturbed individual.”

"Yeah, and this disturbed individual is going-”

Trixie stands up, but is tugged back onto the bench by Monte’s magic.

“Nowhere,” finishes Monte. “Now you’re going to sit there, you’re going to watch the scenery with me, and you’re going to love it.”

Trixie sighs in defeat and lays on the bench, shifting her position so that she is as far from Monte as possible. The two watch the scenery, and Trixie tries to relax by humming the zebra lullaby that Wazza taught her, but it only brings tears to her eyes and reminds her of how Adanz tried to kill her. Trixie whimpers quietly and folds her hooves over each other so she can rest her head on them, and she closes her eyes, hoping to think of something other than what had happened. She fails; all she can hear is Adanz accusing her of betrayal, feel his claws dig into her and the air rushing past her when he tosses her over the edge using Monte. Then she feels a hoof against her shoulder. Trixie’s eyes snap open and her body goes on autopilot as she tackles her enemy to the ground with her hoof on their chest and the other raised and engulfed in an electric ball. She is panting and her watery eyes are narrowed on the pony under her, too terrified to care about the pain in her horn.

“Trixie, relax, it’s me,” says Monte, his voice shaky and his hooves raised defensively. “It’s Monte. The zony you hate.”

Trixie continues to stare at Monte, still breathing heavily and her hoof charged for an attack. Her tears are now that of pain and fear, being that her horn injury is making it feel as though her horn is about to crack into pieces.

“It’s okay, Trixie, you’re safe,” says Monte softly as he cautiously pushes her charged hoof away from his face.

The energy around Trixie’s hoof and horn disappears and a look of horror and shock crosses her mind when she realizes what she was about to do. Monte offers a comforting smile and gently removes Trixie’s hoof from his chest and pulls her in for a hug. He gently shushes her and rubs her back as she trembles in his hug, closing his eyes when he feels her tears on his shoulder.

“I promise nopony will get you,” whispers Monte, closing his eyes and tightening his hug around her as he lowers his head. “I promise.”

=**********=

Brisk Wind walks into a dimly lit, all concrete hallway with Andromeda and another mare that is leading them. They approach a cell at the end of the hallway where a single figure lies huddled in the corner, eyes wide and constantly darting around the room, whimpering and trembling.

“Is this her?” asks Brisk Wind.

“Yes ma’am,” says the escort. “She was picked up shortly after the Vigilante apprehended her gang. The Night Guards caught her flying around after curfew near the scene of the crime, so they took her in. It took us a while, but we found out she was the daughter of Nimbus Cloud and ran his Barnville narcotics business under the guidance of her brother, Sunshine Cloud. That is why we contacted you.”

“Why are we here, exactly, Director?” asks Andromeda as she takes note of the terrified mare having no cutie mark.

Brisk Wind smirks and steps towards the cage, lightly tapping it with her hoof.

“Scarlet Cloud, I am Director Brisk Wind and this is my associate, Lieutenant Andromeda Cluster. We are here to check up on you.”

Andromeda casts Brisk Wind a skeptical glance, but quickly resumes staring at Scarlet.

“I don’t believe you,” whispers Scarlet.

“Why not?” asks Brisk Wind, ruffling her feathers slightly.

“These are your ponies. They follow your orders.”

“Oh, interrogations. That is nothing personal, it’s just one of the ways we protect this fine nation. But while our methods may seem cruel, we are also generous to those who assist us.”

Scarlet looks at Brisk Wind, skepticism mixing with her fear.

“What more could I give you? I already told all I knew about Barnville and the gang I ran with.”

“Scarlet, have you heard of the Rehabilitation Program?” Scarlet nods hesitantly. “Well, I can put you in that program since we have released more questionable ponies than you under it. I can put you in that program under the guidance of Andromeda, and if you do me a favor I can not only give you freedom, but absolute freedom.”

Scarlet stands up, intrigued by Brisk Wind’s offer, but Andromeda scowls and taps the EIB director on the shoulder and asks to have a word with her. The two walk a good distance away from the cell before Andromeda speaks.

“Director, what the hay are you doing?” asks Andromeda in an angry whisper.

“My job,” replies Brisk Wind with a cool smile.

“Okay, but why are you saying I will be a convicts babysitter when I’m supposed to lead the tactical squads of the EIB?”

“Because, Andromeda, there are hardly any ponies who have your skill in getting what I need to get done, done. I would do this task myself, but I have to stay here and root out the rest of Gilda’s empire and monitor Equestria for more threats.”

“What task are you talking about?”

Brisk Wind’s smile broadens and she heads back to Scarlet’s cell, Andromeda following close behind and repeating her question. When they are at the cell again, Scarlet’s skepticism has returned, which only seems to grow when Brisk Wind orders the cage to be opened and she steps inside. Scarlet has to take a couple of steps back to allow Brisk Wind in, and her gaze falls to the floor when she sees Andromeda quietly staring at her in a less than friendly way.

“Scarlet, how would you like to go to Bernes?”

=**********=

Quill Pen steps into her abode, glad to be home after being locked up, interrogated by Shining Armor, and then paying the doctor a visit to get her bandaged. While she is dead tired and wants to do nothing but sleep, she can’t because of the next article she has to write. Normally she wouldn’t worry about getting it done, but a whole day wasted with a case of the jitters to mix with her barely started article does not bode well for quality.

Quill Pen sighs heavily and goes to her kitchen, deciding that if she’s going to catch up she will need to do it with a full stomach. She rummages through the fridge and pulls out a bag of chopped flowers, then she goes to her pantry and grabs some diced hay. After making a small salad she carries her food to her work station. Unlike the rest of her loft, which is kept nice and tidy in just about every aspect, her workspace is a disaster zone. Scrap paper carpets the floor with empty delivery containers, stacks of folders bulging with drafts make towers in the most random of places, and her four garbage bins are overflowing with empty ink cartridges and whatever pieces of garbage she had decided to toss in. In fact, the only area that is clean is her desk, which is mostly taken up by the behemoth machine known as the typewriter. That, and what little space is left is taken up by a basket and stacks of fresh paper and notebooks.

Upon entering her room, Quill Pen turns on the ceiling fan and her radio, which is resting on the floor, brushes loose garbage from her chair and brings a folding table to her. When that is all done, she relaxes in her seat and prepares to work.

“Sorry about being late, kiddos,” says DJ-Pon3, sounding tired, “I just lost track of time after talking with some buddies and having some fun at ‘Klumsy K’s’.”

Quill Pen takes out her notebooks and flips through the pages, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling crawling up her spine.

“We have a lot to talk about and music to listen to. First off, everypony’s favorite griffin crime lord supposedly died today in the hospital when R and D failed at a procedure that would have saved her life. My thoughts? Good riddance. That what you get for screwing with the Vigilante and all us good folks!”

Quill Pen glances at the radio for a second before tossing aside her worthless notebooks in search of the one she needs, mumbling about needing better organization skills.

“I’ll talk more about it later when I actually have more info. But the next subject I find to be very interesting. The Education Equality Act, a bill being pushed through the council, will make it so the Royal Government takes control of the educational system completely! You thought Luna was mad about nationalizing the media? Well, my little ponies, just wait until she accuses you of corrupting knowledge. Which reminds me, Luna has renounced her title as Princess. Did I already tell you-?”

Quill Pen shuts off, grumbling about DJ-Pon3 annoying her, then resumes her work. She spends a couple of minutes studying her notes and making a rough outline of what she’s going to write before something catches her eye. The wire that controls the blinds on her window is missing, and the blinds are shut, which she always keeps open.

Quill Pen cocks her head quizzically and gets up to inspect the odd scene. After getting up, her radio is enveloped in a magical mist and clicks on to a station playing loud, classical music. Quill Pen turns to her radio just in time to see the missing wire wrap around her neck via magic and she tug her off of her feet. Upon hitting the ground, her world flashes white and a throbbing pain radiates throughout her head. Then the cord tightens. Quill Pen gags and trashes on the ground, trying desperately to free herself from the wire by any means she could, but the more she struggled, the harder the squeeze becomes. She starts panicking when she feels her lungs getting ready to pop and her vision fading. She kicks and tries screaming for help, but her scream comes out as a weak gasp and her kicks are awkward, only doing as much as moving garbage. Then, to her horror, she sees the wire going towards her ceiling fan, making her struggle harder and scream louder, but it is all in vain. In one swift motion, the wire gets tangled and before she could release one last stifled scream, her whole body is jerked up, snapping her neck in an instant and breaking the fan.

oooOOOooo

A unicorn’s horn dims as he steps out from the closet in Quill Pen’s workroom, wearing a painter’s full body jumpsuit with a mask that covers all but his eyes. He stares at Quill Pen’s dangling body, and when the fan brings her body to face him so that he can see her lifeless eyes, he shows no sign of remorse. He’s completely satisfied with his work and he quietly leaves the room, being sure to turn off the radio and light before closing the door on his way out.

Arc 2- 10- The Magnificent Monte Fountain -EDITED-

Arc 3- 4 (Vigilance Is Eternal)

Monte gingerly pushes an ice pack against his black eye while glaring resentfully at the bathroom door. The rushing water and frantic scrubbing is all he needs to hear to know what Trixie is doing. She's already taken an hour long shower and an all day bath, which he's sure she used up all the shampoo and soap to do so, and now she's scrubbing her mouth with one of the two dozen toothbrushes she bought, or possibly stolen in her case.

Monte has seen mares freak out when they wake up next to him after a little drunken party, and Celestia knows how vicious a freaked out mare can get, but Trixie has topped his list of "Biggest Freakout" by four longshots.

"You know, you didn't have to yell so loud," says Monte sorely, wincing slightly when he increases the pressure on his bruised eye.

oooOOOooo

In the bathroom, Trixie frantically scrubs her teeth and tongue with a destroyed toothbrush. When she spits out a glob toothpaste, she tosses the toothbrush in a garbage bin filled with more flayed toothbrushes and empty bottles of toothpaste. Then she yanks out another toothbrush from a grocery bag, brutally rips it out of its package and resumes her crusade to cleanse her mouth of Monte.

"Did you hear me?" asks Monte, his voice slightly muffled from the door.

Trixie spits another glob of foamy, white toothpaste in the sink and shudders in disgust for the unwanted pornographic image it gives her. She proceeds to scrub her tongue like how a desperate busboy would try to scrub off caked on grease. Monte repeats himself, and Trixie slams down her toothbrush and glares at the door, wanting to do nothing more than to fling it open and punch Monte is the jaw just so he would shut up.

"Yes, I heard you!” exclaims Trixie furiously. “I heard you the first time, and I heard you the hundredth time! I’m not deaf! Goddess!"

Monte mutters something that Trixie can’t understand, but she’s guessing that it was something quirky in nature. So to keep herself from putting Monte in a full body caste, she goes back to scrubbing her mouth clean of his taste. Admittedly she doesn’t taste him anymore, she tastes more mint than anything else, but she knows Monte. He’s a player, there’s no telling where he’s stuck himself, and she swears to Celestia and Luna, and even Discord, that if he gave her a disease, Canterlot will be short one magician.

Trixie scrubs her mouth so hard that she whimpers quietly from the pain the toothbrush’s bristles are giving her. And it doesn’t help that whenever she uses a toothbrush, images of her giving Monte a-

Trixie slams her toothbrush down with a frustrated scream while pressing the sides of her head with her hooves. Monte says something she can’t quite understand again because while she’s trying to not remember last night, her mind is too busy racing in trying to piece together what happened between her and the criminal postmaster to focus on anything else. That, and her whole body is sore, especially her lower parts, and she hates it. She feels funny when she walks and she’s certain that they were heard last night because her neighbors kept giving her odd looks when they were waiting for the elevator. Add in the fact that she can’t speak Bernesenese to save her life, and it made for a trying morning when she tried to get her large supply of much needed body and oral care products.

Trixie’s thoughts are interrupted when she hears Monte knock on the bathroom door. Casually, nonetheless.

“What!”

“I’m going to get something to eat,” replies Monte. “Do you want to come or stay here and think about the fantastic time we had last night?”

The sultry emphasis Monte puts on “fantastic” makes Trixie’s eye twitch, and she briefly wonders how hard Monte would cry if she castrated him with a bolt of lightning. To prevent herself from doing something as horrible as that, Trixie takes a very deep breath and exhales slowly while keeping her jaw locked good and tight. She does this a couple more times while reminding herself to breathe before she carefully pulls out a container of minty, oral cleaning leaves from her grocery bag.

“Why would I go out with you?” asks Trixie, anger rapidly returning in her voice as she clumsily opens the package. “You are a perverted, mare-inizing, egotistical snot that just wanted to drag me along just so you can fuck me!”

With the ending words, Trixie throws the container at the door, shattering it upon impact and leaving a horrible, splintered gash on the polished wood. She hears Monte jump back and swear like a teenager afraid to cuss, and then there is silence.

Trixie stares at the door, seething and trembling with her teeth grinding against each other, for a couple of seconds before she uses her magic to pick up some of the minty leaves. She chews on them with obnoxious smacks as she glares at her reflection. She can’t feel anything but disgusted rage at the moment.

“You’re an idiot, Trixie,” murmurs Trixie angrily. “A big, fat, fu-”

"Hey, Trixie, we’re going need to have a talk about your language,” says Monte suddenly, prompting her to stop talking to herself and stare at the door, wondering why Monte is still in the room. “Secondly, the whole thing was consensual, so stop being a drama queen and get over it."

Trixie practically rips the bathroom door off of its hinges, swallowing the leaves in the process, and glares daggers at Monte. He, in turn, returns the same stare as he backs up so she doesn’t punch him, or stab him with her horn.

"I was drunk and you took advantage of me!" claims Trixie accusingly.

Monte’s jaw drops. "Are you seriously going with that?” He shakes his head. “Wow, Trixie, just wow! I know you’re a little loopy and have problems admitting stuff, but... wow! Do you honestly think I will do that to-"

“I know you, Monte! I’ve seen guys like you, I’ve been with guys like you! All you care about is how many tails you can gunk up!”

Monte scoffs. “Okay, fine, you caught me. I am a pimp who scores the finest tail money can buy. How much do I owe you?”

Trixie gapes at Monte, and to add salt to the wound, Monte pulls out a few bits, mentioning something about giving her twenty for an “average night”. Trixie growls and swats the bag to the ground, spilling their money supply all over the carpet.

“I want an apology!” screams Trixie.

“Apology? Apology?” Monte points at his black eye, vein throbbing and face red. “You punched me, Trixie! Right in my good eye! And you want me to apologize to you, even though you pounced on me? Tell me, oh Ms. Great and Powerful Trixie, how on Celestia’s good, green Equus does that make sense?”

Trixie stomps the ground.

“I was drunk, that’s why it makes sense!”

“Oh really? Well, news flash for you, missy, I was drunk, too! And if I remember correctly, I tried to get you to stop-”

“Liar!”

“But you were so into me that you were like a magnet to metal!  Now if you’ll excuse me, Ms. Great and Powerful Trixie, I’m going to have a salad.”

Monte heads towards the door, but Trixie holds him fast with her magic, prompting him to grumble irritably and cast an even more annoyed glance at her. Trixie snorts hot air and stands mere inches away from him, glaring deep into his eyes. While most would be unnerved by her murderous glaring, Monte just gets more annoyed by it, which only makes Trixie all the more upset.

“We aren’t done yet,” says Trixie in a low growl through gritted teeth.

Monte’s horn glows and the azure mist holding him in place disappears with a small pop, making Trixie scoff in an angry, whiney disbelief of what had just happened. It’s like he didn’t even try to break free! She takes a step back, still holding her glare, and Monte doesn’t even look at her as he fixes his jacket with his magic.

“We are more than done, Trixie,” says Monte in a low tone. “You just need to get it through your thick skull that the whole thing was consensual and your idea since you pounced on me, and I said ‘Yes’. Consent, through and through.”

Monte tries to leave again, but Trixie runs in front of him and stops him by pressing her hoof against his chest and shoving him back. He stumbles a bit and glares at her out of the corner of his eye as he uses hard strokes of his hoof to brush the newly formed wrinkles away.

"Let's get something straight, Monte," sneers Trixie, "being drunk does not mean consent."

Monte stomps his hoof on the ground, and growls loudly as he cranes his neck to the ceiling, swearing to Celestia that he’s going to break something. Then he mumbles incoherently to himself for a moment before before taking a deep breath and putting his focus on Trixie. The whole time Trixie had watched him carefully, just waiting for another reason to smack him in the face.

"Alright, I’m going to put this as simply as I can,” begins Monte slowly with exaggerated hoof movements to emphasize his point. “If you -as in you, Trixie Lulamoon- held absolutely no attraction to me -which would be me, the Magnificent Monte Fountain-  then it wouldn't matter how many bottles -as in Wild Pegasus- you had, you still would not have pounced -as in, you would not have started it!” Trixie tries to protest, but Monte shushes her. “But guess what? You obviously were attracted to me in some way because when we drank, we -as in both of us- said ‘Yes!’. And two yeses means consent! END OF STORY!"

Trixie points at Monte, head ready to explode from all the anger boiling inside her. "Bullshit! I call bullshit!"

Monte covers his eyes with his hooves, cranes, his head back, and screams painfully to the heavens, his head turning red hot. Trixie takes a step back, ears folding down to her skull and cringing slightly from how loud he is screaming. Then Monte slams his hooves down and Trixie can only stare as he struggles to form a coherent sentence with sputters and agitated whines. Then he extends his trembling hooves to Trixie, eye twitching, chest visibly heaving and teeth barred. Trixie takes a defensive step back, also growling like a rabid dog while her horn sparks.

"You are-You stubborn-You-What is-!” Monte suddenly stops, like a switch went off, and he lowers his hooves, takes a deep breath, and briefly removes his hat to wipe his mane. “You know what, I quit. Go right ahead and blame me all you want, but that still won’t change what happened."

Trixie’s brain fries right at that precise moment, and she cocks her head slightly, wondering if Monte had blown a fuse of some sort. She remains stone still in her defensive position with confusion mixing with rage, and her eyes follow Monte as he coolly trots past her. When it gets to the point where she can’t see him, she turns around and watches in bewilderment as the zony hums to himself. With the way he is acting now, it is hard to believe he was ready to blow a gasket. The very idea of Monte going from a rage monster to a collected individual in a blink of an eye sends a small shiver up Trixie’s spin, and she silently hopes to Celestia that Monte isn’t another psycho. She’s already lived with one, and frankly she doesn’t want to be near another one ever again.

When Monte coolly pulls the door open he looks at Trixie over the shoulder.

“Do you want me to bring you leftovers?” he asks in a strangely calm voice.

“Only if there’s an apology with it,” replies Trixie in a heated, yet careful, tone.

“I don’t think they serve apologies, but I’ll ask.”

And with those words, Monte leaves without saying anything else, and right as his tail is outside, Trixie uses her magic to shut the door. She waits until Monte’s hoofsteps fade away before taking a deep breath and pacing around the room, mumbling to herself about how stupid, perverted, and all around rude Monte is. A minute later, she steps onto the balcony and closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, letting the smell of sea salt and the gentle breeze cool off her temper at a fraction’s level.

Trixie opens her eyes and looks at the metropolis spreading all over the white shores of the Bernese coast. The buildings seem like dwarfs compared to the Canterlot skyline, and the density is not nearly as intense, too. Although, Bernese has a heavy Germanic architecture to it that is mostly not spoiled by the modern world. In fact, they actually do a great job of incorporating their traditional styles into the modern, metal monoliths, unlike Canterlot which has a weird fetish of making their building look like metallic and stone hot-pockets. But alas, a small area of Buchtseite had unfortunately fallen for the hot-pocket look. Luckily they are concentrated in the distance and look as though the architects attempted to make them look presentable. Those ugly things, along with the hectic noise of city life, corrupt the view, though.

Trixie huffs and folds her hooves over the railing and continues watching the peaceful scenery, trying desperately to take her mind off of what happened between her and Monte. The more Trixie tries to clear her mind, the more stubborn the memory becomes until it becomes the only thing on her mind.

Trixie groans and goes back inside, closing the balcony door on her way in, and continues her anxious pacing around the room. During her mindless pacing, she finds a bottle of Wild Pegasus with some of its contents still left leaning against the couch, and she picks it up and swirls it in her grip, watching the brownish liquid with some disgust. But then she thinks about how much she needs a drink to suppress the madness in her mind, and Wild Pegasus did make things better before Monte was an idiot.

“And me, too,” mumbles Trixie glumly in response to her thinking about how much of an idiot the zony was. Then her ears perk as she scowls and shakes her head. “No, it was his fault.... But he’s right. No he’s not. Yes he is. No he’s not. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes he is! At the very least, both of you are in the wrong!” Trixie groans and slumps to the floor. “Goddess, I need a drink.”

She brings the bottle to her lips and is about to enjoy the warm contents of the bottle, but-

“Ya know, I wonder why ya continue to be so easy when yer supposedly so desperate not to be a victim,” says Sunshine shrewdly from thin air.

Trixie drops the bottle and her heart stops for a moment, and she feels her hair stand as a cold dread wash over her from Sunshine’s voice echoing in the room. Trixie slowly rises to her hooves, swallowing her spit and ignoring the alcohol staining the carpet. Sunshine’s cackle echoes in the room, and with that, various suggestive phrases and taunts that make Trixie feel dirty just by hearing them. Every word that leaves Sunshine’s lips slowly warms Trixie’s blood with anger and heart beat all the faster, and soon her steps turn to heavy stomps and her eyes and ears become focused with deadly precision. Her ears and eyes snapping to every noise that dares to make a presence, and when she hears Sunshine’s one wing flap and his hooves scrape against the carpet nearby, but no shadow to mark him, she growls and stomps the ground as her horn releases a painful burst of energy.

“Show yourself!” demands Trixie.

“Sure thing, darlin’,” purrs Sunshine right into Trixie’s ear.

Trixie snarls and swings her hoof where Sunshine is with bone breaking power, but he jumps back with a cackle while flapping his one wing tauntingly. She screams and charges him head on, tackling him in the chest, and they roll end over end of each other like a ball and stop with Trixie on top, growling. Sunshine laughs and raises his eyebrows provocatively.

“I always took ya for a top-girl,” he says loudly, licking his lips suggestively.

Trixie screams with bloodthirsty rage and brings her hoof down on the specter’s face. Her hoof goes through him like he’s nothing, and she feels the floor crack under the carpet followed by a surge of pain in her hoof. But she doesn’t stop. She continues screaming and pounding, determined to beat Sunshine to death. Each slam she screams at him, calling him a pervert, completely ignoring the pain in her hoof from the cracks she leaves underneath her powerful strikes.

After Trixie’s fourth or fifth slam, Sunshine’s shape melts away and he slides out from under her and goes along the floor until he is by a mirror. His shadowy form materializes to his full form and grins lustfully at her, his reflection right above hers. Trixie jumps to her feet, panting and sweating, and her once curly mane is now a frazzled mess with many strands hanging limp in front of her eyes.

“You hit hard, and from what I saw last night, ya like it rough, like an animal! Ya would’ve had a lot of fun with me,” says Sunshine. “But rather than staying and bein’ happy with me and mah sister, ya decided to fight what was meant to be and, well, look at ya now.”

Trixie’s horn shoots out a bolt of lightning that destroys the mirror in an instant and sends shards of glass flying towards her. She ignores the small cuts from the glass shards, and while her horn may be hurting, she still charges Sunshine, who has yet to move, and tries bucking him in the chest. He coolly slides out of the way and lets her hoof breach the wall, and when she yanks it out and goes for a swing, he repeats the motion. Trixie continues swinging and trying to buck, shash and zap him, and he continues with his smug evasion, only  stopping when he is just barely out of her reach. And every time he dodges Trixie, he throws in a vulgar taunt of some kind. This goes on for nearly five minutes, and eventually, Trixie slumps to the floor, panting and covered in sweat and tears. The room is now destroyed with scorches along the wall, floor, as well as the furniture being smashed with holes in the walls and doors. The smell of thin smoke lingers in the air and the tip of her horn dims as the burning feeling mixed with the emotional trauma becomes too much for her. She was perfectly fine when she took the pills, and when Pinkie Pie flushed them, Sunshine had become a part of her life again. A part that she hates and fears at the same time.

She wants those pills back.

She needs those pills back.

“Why are you doing this?” whimpers Trixie; she takes a deep breath and wipes her nose before she lifts her jaded, teary eyes up. “Why are-why can’t you just leave me alone!”

Sunshine sighs in mock annoyance. “This again.”

He sits down in front of Trixie and cups her head in his hooves and forces her to look in his eyes. Her body shivers from his icy touch, and she sees nothing but an endless void of darkness in his eyes, and when he grins broadly, she wants to hide somewhere and curl up into a ball. She starts shaking and whimpering when his hoof caress her cheeks, and she swears she can feel her coat, tears and snot freezing with his touch. He leans closer to her until their noses nearly touch, and despite her best efforts to pull away, he holds her fast and keeps her still in an iron grip.

“Trixie, you are a dog without master. You need somepony who cares about you,” he says in an eerie, soft voice. He closes his eyes and takes a sniff of Trixie’s mane, making her shrink back and release a horrified whine. “You need somepony who loves his dog, and-” he opens his eyes and grins at her “-makes sure that they are taken care of. You are not taken care of, my precious. You live in a fantasy where ya think ya can become a hero because ya thought of yerself as a villain.”

Sunshine releases Trixie and she slumps to the floor, staring off into space and wanting the day to end. She wants to go to sleep under a warm blanket with a soft pillow to rest her head and forget about everyone and everything. Sunshine and Barnville; Monte and the griffin enclave; Brisk Wind and the safety deposit box; the League of Justice and Ponyville.

Pinkie Pie and Mare-Do-Well.

Trixie barely has the courage to look up at Sunshine when she hears him speaking again, but when she does, she sees him staring down at her, looking solemn.

"Ya need end this desire to redeem yerself. Ya can’t be redeemed, no matter how hard ya try. Besides, you ain't a hero, murderer's ain't heroes, so stop trying to be who you can’t be."

“I’m no murderer,” whispers Trixie, her voice cracking as fresh tears run down her cheeks.

Sunshine scoffs. “Yeah, and I was a pharmacist. Keep lyin’ to yerself, and see how far ya go.”

Then he leans down and gives Trixie a quick kiss on her lips. She jolts from the motion and stares at him, horrified by what had just happened and with the way her heart is racing, she’s sure it will explode at any second. It also feels like there is a frost flower growing where she was kissed and when she brings her hoof up to feel it, Sunshine chuckles and expands his wing.

“That was for good luck, darlin’. I’ll be in touch.”

He then disappears in a cloud of black mist, leaving Trixie alone in the hotel room. She stares at where Sunshine was standing for a second or two before she frantically wipes her lips. She sputters and gags, and soon finds herself mumbling incoherently and becoming completely oblivious to what is going on around her. She hears something, but her brain doesn’t register what it is, and when a sandy colored ibex wearing light barding steps in front of her and asks her something, she stops and stares at him with a brain dead look. The ibex repeats himself, and this time Trixie regains some of her senses and realizes that he’s hotel security. She looks to her side and that the door had been opened and now three other guards were searching the room with small weapons on their battle saddles.

“Miss, are you okay?” asks the ibex in a thick Bernese accent.

Trixie silently stares at the sandy ibex until one of the security officers asks him a question. He looks at the guard, then at Trixie, then back at the guard and gives his reply. The guard nods and leaves the room and the sandy ibex kneels in front of her. She doesn’t pay much attention to him, though, since she is back to looking at where Sunshine was standing moments before, trembling and trying to suppress whatever tears haven’t escaped.

“Miss, can you come with me, please? I just need to ask you some questions about what happened here,” says the ibex gently.

Trixie nods, and the ibex helps her up and leads her out of the room. As she walks down the hall with the sandy colored ibex, she ignores the inquiring eyes and silently thanks him when he orders the guests back in their rooms. The elevator opens up and a few more guards come out and head towards her room, and when they go inside, she closes her eyes and slumps to the ground. She listens to the whirring of the gears, the cables guiding the elevator, and the gentle hums and obnoxious dings. When the elevator opens, she is led through the lobby, using the backmost wall as a guide. Trixie lazily watches everything and everyone, but then her gaze falls outside and she spots four unicorn mares wearing light saddles stepping out from two dark colored motorized wagons and walk directly towards the front desk, looking a little too serious to be on vacation. She continues watching them out of the corner of her eye until she could no longer see them.

A few minutes later, Trixie finds herself sitting on a comfortable cushion in a windowless room painted in warm colors. She scans the room and sees family photos of the sandy ibex, books, one of which is The Lunar Republic, and various nicknacks and puzzle books. She leans closer to his desk when she sees that one of the nicknacks is a cube with two ibex soldiers touching hooves elegantly engraved on it, and below them is an engraving that she can’t read.

       “‘Epagrýpni̱si̱ Eína Aió̱nia’. ‘Vigilance Is Eternal’,” recites the ibex, noting her curiosity. “It has been the motto for our guards ever since five-oh-five, pre-banishment.” Trixie remains silent as he flips through a folder that he had pulled out of his saddle. “I am Officer Ufer, I run the hotel security, and you, Mrs. Fountain, are here for vacation, yes?”

Trixie swallows some spit and barely makes a nod, which prompts Ufer to look up from the folder and stare at her quizzically. He asks if she is alright, but she doesn’t answer, and when he asks her if she wants something to drink, she shakes her head. He stares at her for a moment, but looks down at his papers when Trixie stares back at him without blinking or shifting. He mumbles something in his native tongue, and Trixie contemplates whether or not she should tell him about the four mares she saw. The more she thinks about them, the more uneasy she becomes; she doesn’t know if it’s due to paranoia or if her gut instinct is getting better, but something tells her that the four mares from the lobby are not at the hotel for vacation.

“Mrs. Fountain-”

“You need to find Monte,” interrupts Trixie.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Four mares, unicorns, came in your hotel and I think they are after Monte. You need to find him before they do.” Ufer stares at Trixie and she furrows her brow. “Trust me, I-”

The door opens up and a security officer pokes his head in and says something that Trixie doesn’t understand for obvious reasons. Ufer nods and replies with an order, and once the guard leaves, he apologizes and slides out a sheet of paper and rolls a pen towards himself.  He tells Trixie to describe the “suspicious figures” before sticking the pen in his mouth. Trixie takes a moment to collect her thoughts, and when she does, she describes the four mares down to the finest details. From coat color to cutie mark, and mane style to what their saddlebags looked like, nothing was missed, and frankly it appeared that Ufer had some difficulty keeping up with the massive wave of information.

After he finished down writing the last of the details, Ufer spits out his pen and calls in another guard. Once the guard shows up, he gives him the sheet of paper that has the description of the four mares and after the guard leaves he turns his focus back to Trixie. The whole time Trixie was watching the guard carefully, but now that she has the guard looking for those mares she needs to find Monte before something happens to him; there is no telling when the guards will capture the four mares, after all.

“I have to find Monte,” says Trixie urgently.

She stands up to leave, but Ufer holds up his hoof and orders her to sit down. Trixie freezes in her spot and stares at the sandy ibex, completely braindead about why he is ordering her to sit. It takes Ufer repeating his order to get Trixie to reluctantly sit down, and when she does, she visibly tenses up and demands to be released so she can find Monte.

“Your husband is fine,” assures Ufer calmly. “He was brought in and is being questioned about what happened to you.”

A radiopack on the floor crackles to life and when someone on the other line speaks, Ufer frantically turns it off, nearly breaking it in the process and spiking Trixie’s suspicions. She watches him intently as he looks back at her; he tries to play it cool, but Trixie can tell that he’s hiding something by the way he’s sweating and how his breathing suddenly became irregular.

“Tenants reported a lot of disturbance from your room, earlier. I need to know what happened,” says Ufer while he clumsily wipes some sweat from his face.

Trixie’s eyes focus on him and she doesn’t see a weapon on him, but she’s been around long enough to know never to take anything at face value. As Trixie studies him, she notices something underneath a small stack of papers on Ufer’s desk out of the corner of her eye. At the bottom of the stack is a sheet of paper with some numbers and a formal introduction, and on the paper is a paper clip with something underneath. It is normal to have a formal document in a room of someone of a high rank, but what isn’t normal is having a formal document from a foreign government agency. An agency like the Equestrian Investigation Bureau.

Trixie’s heart starts racing as soon as she sees the EIB seal on the corner of the paper, and she looks at Ufer with a mix of rage and fear. She now knows she needs to escape and find Monte immediately. She knew Brisk Wind would go after him and use every resource she could, but she hadn’t realized that the EIB had this much influence in Bernese! She figured that they would have spies here and there, but not an entire hotel, if, in fact, the whole hotel is in on it. Now that she is in a room, without any protection against an unknown amount of armed hotel security guards, she knows she can’t bull rush her way out. But she knows that she can’t low-crawl her way out either.

Ufer cocks his head slightly and repeats his request.

“Picture a bald, one winged pegasus with rotten teeth and colored like puke. Now, tell me where Monte is. Now.”

Ufer tries to repeat her description, although with his tone he sounds very skeptical of the attacker while simultaneously sounding nervous, but Trixie interrupts him by repeating her demand, this time much more threatening. She can see Ufer tense up, and his eyes also narrow slightly; but the difference between the two is that Trixie is obviously ticked off and ready for a fight while Ufer is pretending, through and through.

“He is safe,” assures Ufer, putting a lot of effort into keeping his tone in check. “My guards have apprehended him and is about to be questioned.”

Trixie’s eyes narrow and her lips curl to a frown while her muscles tense to their limit. She’s ready to charge her horn, too.

“‘Apprehended’?” she repeats dangerously.

“Yes. We have to cover all ends of this incident.”

“I just told you who attacked me, and you’re still going after Monte?”

“It is procedure.”

Trixie is using every bit of willpower she has to stop herself jumping over the table and doing a crude interrogation. She knows that Ufer found Monte and gave him up to the four mares, and she’s stuck in a hotel with no apparent easy way out. Her mind races as she tries to think of a way out of her predicament, and the whole time she and Ufer are staring at each other with noticeably different levels of intensity.

===

Trixie gasps for air as a black bag and gag is forcefully removed from her head. She sputtered and her eyes darted around the room she was taken to. It was dark, dingy, and had only a single flickering light bulb hanging down. providing only the most minimal of lighting. She looked around some more and found that she was not only bound, but she also had a horn cuff on with four masked figures standing above her.

Trixie started to whimper and shake violently in her bondage as thoughts of what they would do to her race through her mind. She knew two of her captors were stallions, judging by their large build, and she can only think about the time she was helpless against Sunshine. When one of the masked stallions stepped forward, Trixie ordered him to stay back; she tried to sound brave, but her voice was quivering and her eyes were glistening with tears. The stallion continued his approach, and she swore she could hear one of the mares chuckling. It sounded like Terra.

“I mean it! Stay back!” cried Trixie.

“Stay calm,” said Gray Muffin suddenly, his presence hidden by the shadows, and his normally gruff, humorless voice was strangely calm and reassuring. “Look at your targets. What do you see?”

===

Trixie hears the door open and two extra sets of hooves walk in, but she doesn’t dare take her eyes off of Ufer.

“Three,” murmurs Trixie.

Ufer arches an eyebrow and Trixie glances at one of the photos, not for seeing how cute a baby ibex looks, but for the reflection that the glass is giving her.

“What are they armed with?”

Trixie focuses on the reflection and sees that there are two unicorn mares from the lobby behind her, levitating pistols that have enormous mufflers on their barrels next to them. She moves her focus back to Ufer, and he shifts uneasily in his seat, and she can hear the floorboards creak slightly as the mares step closer.

“Two silenced.”

Trixie can feel the mares’ eyes on her, but she doesn’t care. Her mind is focused on escaping and getting Monte back, and she’s ready to cheat death again to do so.

“What are your disadvantages?”

Trixie chuckles to herself as she knows that she’s in one heck of a pickle, but her chuckling is enough to make Ufer swallow nervously and make the other two aim their weapons at her. Granted, she doesn’t like having guns being pointed at her, but she still likes the idea of striking fear in her opponents. Nothing quite like scaring your enemy when you are supposed to be a prisoner.

“How can you turn them into an advantage?”

Trixie, without moving her head, looks around the room and sees that she is at a huge disadvantage. The majority of her targets are armed and the only thing in the room, besides an abundance of books and nicknacks, is the desk and filing cabinet. Trixie lets out another chuckle and buries her face in her hoof.

“Wow, this sucks,” she says, letting out another heavy chuckle, this time filled with anger, and it makes everyone inch back. “Nothing is ever easy! I’m always getting tricked!”

Ufer tries to play it cool by relaxing in his seat, but when he realizes that a certain piece of paper is carelessly poking out, he pales.

“You know, don’t you?” he says with obvious feigned calmness.

Trixie slowly lowers her hoof, and glares at Ufer with the fires of Tartarus in her eyes, and his eyes widen and he leans back in his seat slightly while the mares take another step back.

“How much?”

“More than I make in a year.” He gulps. “Too bad your husband dragged you into this mess.” Then to the two mares behind Trixie. “You can take her now.”

The mares cautiously move forward, and Trixie takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, and she thinks about her time as a traveling showmare, specifically how she would dazzle her audience with a spectacle of lights and flashy tricks.

“Oh boy, here it comes,” says Sunshine eagerly.

Trixie’s eyes snap open and her horn releases a burst of blinding light as well as a small shockwave. All the papers, nicknacks, photos and other loose items are blasted into the air and everyone, save for Trixie, screams and falls to the ground with their hooves over their eyes. When the light disappears, Trixie’s horn feels like its on fire and she’s sweating and panting slightly from pain as summoned thorns clatter to the ground from thin air. She walks towards Ufer, who is cowering in the corner and blinking madly while holding up his hoof defensively, and she ignores the surge of pain as her horn charges up again.

“Where’s Monte!” screams Trixie.

“Luna verzeih mir,” whimpers Ufer.

Trixie lifts up the desk with her telekinesis and she repeats her demand, but Ufer is too shocked to speak. Then she hears a gun click and she whirls around and smashes the desk against one of the mares without a moment’s pause. The desk hits the mare square in the chest and shatters as she’s crushed into the wall. She slumps to the floor, bloody and motionless, and covered with drywall, plaster and splinters. The other mare scrambles to her feet and aims her pistol at Trixie, but before she can pull the trigger, she’s covered in an azure mist and launched into the ceiling. She almost goes through, but, just like her partner, she doesn’t go all the way through and falls to the floor, her head bent at an unnatural angle.

Ufer swears in his native tongue, and Trixie walks over to the mare she rammed into the ceiling and takes her pistol. As she checks the pistol, she can hear Ufer sobbing and begging, and when she aims it him, the ibex’s forehooves shoot up and he begs her not to shoot. His begging gets more frantic when she presses the pistol against his head.

“Where. Is. Monte!” screams Trixie.

“I-I don’t know!” sobs Ulfer.

“You got three seconds to know!”

“But I-!”

“One!”

“Please, I have a son!”

Trixie flips off the safety and presses it harder against his skull, and he shrinks down further until he’s practically a ball.

“Two!”

“I don’t know! All I know is that a mare named Dusty Swirl wanted him! I-I don’t know where she took him! Please, you have to believe me!”

Trixie studies him for a couple of seconds, and when she determines that he’s telling her the truth, she growls and throws Ufer out of the room. Luckily for him, he goes through the doorway and only bonks his head against the wall after skidding across the floor. Before Trixie leaves his office, she takes a map of the hotel and the paper sent by the EIB, and when she turns it over, she finds a picture of Monte and a copy of his travel information clipped behind the sheet.

Trixie checks the pistol and finds that she has a full clip. Satisfied, she continues to the break lounge, and isn’t too surprised to find that it is empty. She marches her way towards the exit, and when the two other mares she saw from earlier come in there is a moment of hesitation on both sides. However, once both of their horns glow and silenced pistols come out from their saddle bags, Trixie raises her weapon and shoots at them sporadically. She shoots at them until they drop, and then just to be safe, she empties the rest of her ammo into them.

Trixie carefully avoids the blood as she inspects the bodies and saddles. At first she doesn’t find anything of value, but then she finds a couple of EIB badges and some Bernese currency.

“Ooh, nice shots,” says Sunshine proudly.

Trixie sees Sunshine out of the corner of her eye, grinning and clapping his hooves, but she ignores him. She continues her search and finds a map of the city, and upon finding it she sees the bank and the hotel she and Monte are in circled in red. Trixie mentally kicks herself for forgetting about the bank. Of course they were going to use Monte to get into Gilda’s safety deposit box! He was her postmaster after all!

Trixie grabs the unused weapon and speed walks out of the lounge, after strapping one of the saddles to herself and putting in the badges and the documents she collected. She keeps the bloody side of the saddle to the wall, which makes for an uncomfortable feel since she had to put the saddle on backwards, and tries to look calm as she treks through the lobby. Although, in spite of her best efforts, Trixie knows that she is being watched, she can feel wandering eyes locking on to her, and when a security guard walks past her, she gives her a strange look but continues her walk. Trixie looks over her shoulder as she passes and sees the guard walk into the security lounge.

Trixie’s heart races and she swallows spit as she picks up the pace. Then the alarm sounds. Trixie swears under her breath and hurries towards the stairwell. The intercom sounds in both Bernsenes and Equestrian, but being able to understand what is being said over the chaotic clamoring and noises made from the sudden stampede would be a miracle for most. After entering the stairwell, Trixie throws out the idea of speed walking and goes on to a full gallop towards the parking garage. She runs as fast as she can, and even skips a few steps, which inadvertently leads to her slipping and falling a couple of times, but she still manages to reach her destination without any interference from hotel security.

As soon as Trixie bursts into the valet parking garage, she quickly scans the area for anyone or anything that can possibly pose as a threat. She doesn’t see anyone around, but that doesn’t stop her from looking over her shoulder and sweeping her stolen weapon around as she runs through the seemingly endless rows of parked vehicles.

The parking garage is well lit, but it still makes finding someone or something difficult since everything looks the same, save for giant numbers painted on the concrete walls. And after a few minutes of crazy exploring, and evasion of panicking staff and alerted guards, she comes across a rack full of keys. Before making a move on the keys, Trixie looks around to make sure no one is approaching, during which she spots a line of neatly parked bees not too far from her. It doesn’t take her long to find the one she likes; a blue bee with metallic racing stripes and a large, tinted windshield on the front. She stares at the chosen bee and the number it is under, and she turns back to the key rack and immediately spots the appropriate key. She looks at the key, then at the bee again, then she gets a devilish smirk and pulls the respective key off of its hook and gallops towards her chosen vehicle.

~~~~~~~~~~

Trixie veers around the corner of the back parking lot of the Bank of Bernese, her stolen bee now covered in dents and thick gashes of scratched paint. She has a few fresh bruises and scratches herself, too.

It took her a little while to reach the Bank of Bernese, though. She had to not only give herself quick, and very painful, driving lessons, but she also had to avoid the swarm of guards that were converging on the hotel. Luckily for her, she got out easily since the path out was a clear shot, and the alley she escaped to was basically empty. But once she reached the bank, she was both relieved and terrified. There were no guards in sight, though their sirens can still be heard, but she pulled up right as Monte was being led out by a dark colored unicorn with golden eyes carrying a metal box. His hat is missing, too.

Once Trixie parks the vehicle, she hops off and gallops towards the two, ignoring the burning pain in her bruised legs. When she gets close, it takes her a couple of seconds to recognizes the unicorn to be Andromeda, an EIB hotshot who has quite the dedication to her career; knowledge courtesy of an article she read from a newspaper about the raid on the griffins when she was crashing at Fancypants’ place.

Trixie draws her stolen weapon and aims it Andromeda, with every intention of blowing her brains out all over the wall.

When Monte sees Trixie, Andromeda sees her a half second after, and when they both see her weapon drawn, they both have very different reactions. Monte gapes at her and the blood from his face drains, all while a pistol shimmers into view next to his head.

“Trixie, what the heck are you doing!” cries Monte.

“Not another step closer!” barks Andromeda.

Trixie stops and Andromeda keeps her weapon aimed at Monte’s skull. Trixie growls and mentally swears about how unfair it is that Andromeda summoned a pistol so easily. Sure she can summon things, but she had only been able to summon little plants and make cheap light show gimmicks. But she digresses, she pushes aside the unfairness of the situation and carefully approaches the two.

“So, you must be ‘Dust Swirl’,” comments Trixie snidely. “That fake name would work better if you didn’t have your face in the newspapers.”

“And you’re looking pretty good for somepony who should’ve bled to death in the sewers,” remarks Andromeda.

Trixie is about to dish out a snappy comeback, but that notion is replaced with a sudden crawling sensation in her mane when a dozen ponies come out from hiding, all armed with a ballistic weapon of some kind. As Trixie eyes each of them, one word comes to mind: Shit.

Some have mini-gatling guns in their mouths, which Trixie is not sure why anyone would want to do that, given what she had seen with Pinkie Pie, and others are levitating shotguns and pistols or wearing battle saddles. The more Trixie watches them steadily approach her, using the parked vehicles for cover, the more she curses herself for her stupidity. Gray Muffin would fail her on the spot for something like this!

Trixie shakes Gray Muffin of her head, his organization backstabbed her, and he’s dead anyway, so as far as she’s concerned, thinking about him wastes precious time. She looks back at Monte and can see the fear and worry all over his face. He nudges his head to the side, like he is telling her to go, but he is quickly stopped when Andromeda hisses for him to stop. Trixie carefully approaches the group, minding the weapons and hostile eyes trained on her. Especially Andromeda’s freakishly bright, gold eyes.

“Unless you want to die again, I’d suggest you move out of the way,” says Andromeda.

Trixie takes a couple of steps forward, and Andromeda tugs Monte closer to her and her small army tightens up and aim their weapons at Trixie. Trixie stops and aims her weapon at Andromeda, even though she doubts she’ll be able to hit her. In fact, she’s worried she might accidently hit Monte, but she does a great job of hiding her nervousness.

“Let him go,” orders Trixie, now wondering why there are no guards showing up. Surely a standoff like this would draw attention from the authorities.

The small army before her snickers, minus Andromeda. The dark colored unicorn aims her pistol at Trixie, and Trixie swears she sees reluctance. In fact, Andromeda seems to be struggling with containing her surprised about what she’s seeing, now that Trixie thinks about it.

“Trixie, move out of the way. This is not your fight,” says Andromeda.

“This has been my fight ever since the EIB backstabbed me,” growls Trixie.

“Yeah, you guys kinda screwed yourselves on both ends when you did that,” chuckles Monte anxiously.

“Shut up!” yell Trixie and Andromeda in unison.

Monte’s ears droop and he tries to shrink down, but he’s held fast by Andromeda’s magic.

“I’m still mad at you,” adds Trixie, and when Monte rolls her eyes and mutters something, she snarls and briefly aims her pistol at him. “Don’t roll your eyes at me!”

“Hey, who’s the one being held hostage by government agents? Oh yeah, it’s me!” exclaims Monte.

Andromeda presses the barrel of her pistol against Monte’s head, making him wince, and she glares at Trixie. Trixie brings her glare to Andromeda while simultaneously trying to keep an eye  on her goons. They are all on a hair trigger and Trixie knows that one wrong move and she’ll be dead before she can blink, and she knows that they know this. They are just waiting for her to screw up.

“This is your last chance, Trixie. Move,” orders Andromeda, forcing herself to be sinister.

Trixie blinks sweat out of her eyes. “If I move, you’ll just kill me and Monte anyway.”

Andromeda shakes her head as she adjusts her pistol’s position. “I have no intention of killing you or Monte.” Andromeda’s goons look at her curiously, and when she realizes what is going on, she quickly adds: “But I will, if you force my hoof!”

Monte chuckles uneasily and looks at Andromeda out of the corner of his eye. “But we haven’t forced your hoof, so-”

“Last chance. Give me Monte and the box, or else you’ll be sorry,” warns Trixie.

Monte glares at Trixie. “Did you just seriously say that!”

Trixie returns the glare. “Hey, I’m working here!”

“‘You’ll be sorry’? Who says that!?”

“I do!”

“Enough!” snaps Andromeda. “Holy sun, I swear, you two bicker like a married couple!”

Monte forces himself to laugh. “Ha! Joke’s on you, missy! We aren’t married. We just like to argue.”

He immediately gets a pistol whip to the side of the head that leaves him on the ground with a gash. He swears not very colorful words as he presses his hoof against his injury, and while Trixie thinks he deserves it for pushing his luck, she still takes another threatening step forward and clicks the safety off while growling loudly. She doesn’t know why she forgot to turn off her safety, and curses herself for being so stupid since it seems like everyone heard the click. Her heart starts racing when she hears a bunch of clicks and a few taunts, begging her to shoot. She knows beyond a doubt that if this were a test, she would be recycled for stupidity, and then chewed out by Gray Muffin. And she once again pushes that name out of her mind to focus on the situation.

“Do you want to die?” shouts Andromeda viciously. She uses her magic to hoist Monte off the ground, ignoring his whimpers and presses her pistol against his gash, glaring at Trixie. “Do you want him to die? Because I will kill him, right here, right now, in front of your face if you do not move!”

Trixie is about counter Andromeda, but her train of thought is interrupted when she hears tires squealing against the asphalt, and out of her peripheral vision, she sees a mini-train speeding through the parking lot straight for her. Trixie’s eyes widen and even Andromeda gets a look of confusion and anger as the vehicle carelessly plows through the parking lot, nearly running over some of Andromeda’s agents in the process.

“What the hay are they doing!” yells Andromeda to nobody in particular after she pulls Monte into cover with her

The mini-train swerves towards Trixie, and she is barely able jump out of the way in time as the vehicle carelessly smashes through more parked vehicles. She rolls for cover behind a motorized wagon, but gets knocked to the ground as the vehicle is pushed aside by the massive vehicle, showering her with shards of broken glass, and leaving a bruise on her side with no air in her lungs. Pushing aside the pain and better judgement, Trixie pokes her head from her cover and sees the mini-train had stopped, and now the target of a familiar pegasus mare wielding a mini-gatling gun in her mouth. Trixie ducks down and covers her head with her hooves when the said pony starts shooting at her with the high powered weapon. Trixie swears and scrunches up tighter as more shards of glass and splinters rain down around her. Then everybody else starts shooting at her with a complete lack of care for ammo conservation.

Trixie can hear Andromeda shouting something, but with all the bullets whizzing by and destroying everything in their path, she can barely understand a word said. She can’t tell if she’s saying “Cease fire!” or “Keep fire!”, but judging by the way the field is being leveled with bullets, it has to be choice two.

Trixie raises her pistol with her magic and blindly fires at the mini-train, which prompts Monte’s captives to fire at a seemingly quicker rate, and for them to adjust their positions. Andromeda shouts again, too, but again, Trixie barely hears the words and has a hard time figuring out what she’s saying. During the whole ordeal, Trixie barely sees one of Andromeda’s partners round the vehicle she is hiding behind with her weapon raised. Trixie brings her pistol to bear and shoots her soon-to-be attacker in the chest a couple of times, making her stumble into a vehicle and slide to the ground with a trail of blood on the door. Another hired gun, a unicorn carrying a shotgun, comes by and Trixie tries to shoot her, too, but her weapon clicks and the clip falls out.

The pony fires off a shot, which blows a gaping hole in the door next to Trixie’s head, and in response, Trixie shrieks and throws the weapon at the shotgun pony’s face as she scrambles for cover. The weapon hits her target in the nose, and the unicorn yelps and stumbles while accidentally dropping her weapon. Once the shotgun hits the ground, it fires off a round, barely missing Trixie.

Trixie high tails it out of the kill zone, swearing and trying not to whimper as the hired guns mercilessly fill the air around her with lead. Miraculously, Trixie can still hear Andromeda shouting over the innumerable pop and cracks of gunfire, and this time she is guessing that it is an order to leave since the kidnappers jumping in vehicles and driving off. The shooter in the mini-train, on the other hand, is still shooting at Trixie, only this time she is actually aiming.

Trixie curls up in a small ball and covers her head with her hooves, thus poorly shielding herself from the rain of glass shards and splinters. When the firing comes to a sudden stop, Trixie does not dare poke her head out directly, so she crawls on the ground and peeks at the situation from under a motorized wagon, wincing as the glass shards and splinters cut into her skin. She barely sees Monte getting shoved into a motorized wagon with Andromeda, and another pony shouting for the mini-train to hurry it up.

The vehicles start leaving, and Trixie shrinks as far as she can go while keeping her mental crosshairs locked on to Andromeda’s vehicle. When the convoy of seven vehicles speed out of the parking lot, Trixie dares to poke her head out and freezes at the sight of the carnage. As expected, the asphalt is covered with a layer of bullet casings and water from the punctured engines, and the vehicles in the parking lot are riddled with bullet holes as well as the wall to the bank. And the bank wall also has blood splatter and four dead bank guards lying near the door. The only good she can see from the situation is that her stolen bee remains relatively unscathed, minus the scratches and dents from her quick, self-taught bee lessons.

Trixie’s blood boils and her vision turns red as she marches towards her bee. She mutters threatening nonsense to herself along the way, too, and she fantasizes about how she will just blow through the convoy, save Monte, and then set some things straight between them. When she woke up and saw. and felt, the extremely unpleasant surprise, she knew that they had leapt clean over the line, and probably a fence or two. And now she has to set the record straight and convince Monte that what happened should not have happened and they are not a couple, no matter what kind of “fun” they had last night. And she still wants him to apologize for how rude he was to her during their argument.

There’s also the box, too.

Trixie hops on the bee and speeds away from the carnage, barely catching sight of the convoy. She mutters a series of prayers to Celestia, begging her to keep her steady, when the bee tips dangerously close to falling over as she swerves around the corner, into passing traffic. She whimpers and and braces herself for the worst when she feels her coat brushing against the asphalt, but lo and behold, Celestia answered a prayer for once. Trixie is able to righten the bee and she cheers with relief, and feels as though she can catch up, break some skulls, and save Monte... and his box. However, her flash of giddiness coming from her near death experience comes to an end when she spots a guard vehicle speeding towards her, siren blaring and light flashing, through her mirror.

Trixie scoffs and increases her speed, thinking nothing of the guards. They are just clunky vehicles she’ll have to outdrive, which will be easy since she is using a nimble bee. She weaves through the traffic in a less than graceful manner, occasionally coming close to hitting someone or their vehicle, and sometimes driving on the sidewalk or road barriers that have plants in them. Each of her small screw ups makes her yelp and fear for her life, and when she dares to peek in her mirror to see where the guard is, she finds four. And another vehicle slides into view from behind each of the four.

Trixie curses under her breath and swears loudly when she drives through a line of garbage cans blocking off an alley. She spits and shakes her head to get the garbage out of her face and mane, and shrieks and pulls her vehicle to a stop when she almost hits a grungy brick wall head on. The vehicle lurches to a stop and Trixie is almost flung off, but the steering sleeves keep her in at the price of leaving horrible bruises. When the bee thumps back to the ground, Trixie gulps and is about to take a breather to sooth her panicking heart, but alas she doesn’t get the chance to. The same guard vehicle from earlier rounds the corner like a skilled driver would and speeds towards Trixie.

Trixie groans and quickly puts the bee in gear and drives down the alley. She hears the guard shouting at her with his megaphone in his native tongue, but she has no intention of surrendering. Not when Monte and her only chance of exposing the EIB is in the possession of a bunch of Brisk Wind’s troops.

She looks in the mirror again and sees that the lone guard wagon has reinforcements. The only good she sees from the situation is that they are having trouble maneuvering through the alleys. All except for the lead one. The leading guard is matching each of her moves with far more grace than she has, and guards inside also have the advantage of not having garbage flying in their faces.

When they get enough space, the guard vehicle drives next to Trixie and the passenger rolls down his window and motions her to pull over. What she does instead of listening, is she charges her horn and sets off a bright shower of fireworks, causing a few of her chasers to slam on the brakes to avoid crashing into each other. Trixie laughs as she turns into a main road, ignoring the urge to cringe when she hears quite a bit of the guard vehicles crash. However, she does look over her shoulder for a moment and sees a couple of the guard vehicles have piled up onto each other.

She turns her head back to the road and finds a moment of peace as she weaves through the traffic, and is filled with relief when she sees a sign pointing towards the airport. She takes a deep breath and follows the sign, which leads into a tunnel. She thinks nothing of it since the signs are pretty straight forward and she’s following traffic, but the moment of peace is not meant to last. As she drives, she hears faint sirens that are steadily getting louder, and when she peeks at her mirror, her eyes widen and she gets an unusual mix of anger, confusion, and fear. The same guard vehicle that has been chasing her since the bank is heading straight towards her. Granted the vehicle is covered in scratches, dents, and is now missing the windshield, but it is still going strong. And picking up speed.

“This guy just doesn’t know when to quit!” growls Trixie.

Trixie picks up her speed and concentrates on not getting killed from her increasingly dangerous driving. She weaves in and out through the traffic, occasionally looking through the mirror to see where the guard is, and tries to pull fast ones to lose him. None of her tricks work, though, and they really were not tricks since all she really did was do more sporadic driving and tried a round about. The round about was the worst idea she had at the moment since as soon as she turned, the guard fired on her mini gatling gun.

Trixie screams and lays as low as she can on her vehicle, whimpering and trying not to lose control as the bullets ricochet off of the plating. When Trixie passes the guard, the armored vehicle does a tight donut and continues their pursuit, guns blazing and leaving a trail of grounded rubber and thin, white smoke on the road. Trixie’s heart thumps violently in her chest and the adrenaline rushing through her veins is insane as she tries to avoid getting killed by the persistent guard. When Trixie tries to turn around again, she uses the passing vehicles as a cover, knowing that the guard wouldn’t shoot at her if civilians were in the way. Her suspicions proved correct, but the driver also once again proved how skilled he was. The driver narrowly avoids crashing as he drives between two passing vehicles to get to her. Trixie looks in the mirror and realizes that the guard is practically touching the back wheel!

Once the passenger pokes his head and weapon out again, Trixie does a sharp turn and cuts across the lanes, swearing up a storm as she narrowly avoids a constant stream of rapidly advancing commuters. The guard vehicle also turns, but with all the friction it comes to an unwanted stop and Trixie barely notices the passenger jump out before the vehicle is t-boned by a civilian trying to stop. Trixie watches from the corner of her eye in the mirror as the guard vehicle from Hell spirals into the tunnel wall, leaving parts of itself in its wake. She momentarily feels sorry for the driver of the vehicle, but thoughts of sympathy are replaced fear and frantic begs of Celestia keeping her alive in an instant when she accidentally goes off of a ramp made up of an unfinished sidewalk that leads to another open intersection.

Trixie shrieks when her stolen bee gets some air, and as soon as she lands, she skips quite a few heartbeats due to bouncing around, almost falling over and nearly getting hit by oncoming traffic. She rapidly flicks her hooves to whichever side will spare her of death, and the bee jerks painfully with every turn. She swears and swerves to the side again, almost falling over in the process, when one of her turns leads her into a lane being dominated by a mini-train dragging a cargo trailer. She barely has enough room and time to turn, and in doing so, she almost hits the guardrail. The driver of the mini-train honks their horn, ruining Trixie’s hearing for just a moment, and it also makes her lose control of her steering, too. After a couple of seconds of terrifying attempts to straighten herself out and not get killed in the process, Trixie manages to get a clear path down the side of the road generally left open for giving unruly drivers speeding tickets or replacing popped tires.

Trixie whoops at her narrow escapes, and laughs like a filly from the rush she’s getting from the wind pushing against her face and rippling through her mane. She thought it was fun riding on a bee with Vinyl Scratch, but now that she is actually driving one and speeding down the highway, without a helmet nonetheless, the exhilaration is incomparable to anything she has ever done before!

Then a bug flies in her mouth.

Trixie coughs and sputters, and tries desperately to get the bug out, but it was swallowed whole and is now facing the wrath of pony stomach acid. The incident makes Trixie lose control for a few seconds, and she once again almost swerves into traffic. She manages to do a sharp turn, which, luckily for her, leads to an off ramp and, unluckily, brings her towards regular two lane roads. But she is going too fast to stop, so she weaves in and out of traffic, too terrified of crashing and burning to care about the angry honks, and eventually pulls to a stop in an alley by a dumpster. After coming to a stop, she puts her hoof over her racing heart and her head slams on her dashboard on its own accord, trying to get her to rest. But she can’t rest, she has too much adrenaline in her body to rest. Her whole body is shaking, and she feels like she’s going to puke.

Trixie pulls her hooves out of the bee’s steering sleeves and rests one on the dashboard while the other one brushes her mane back, which would be sweaty if it wasn’t air dried by her little adventure.

As Trixie sits by the dumpster, a thought crosses her mind. She had lost Andromeda and Monte. She had been too busy trying not to get captured by the guards or get squashed that she completely lost the pony she was supposed to protect!

“No,” groans Trixie as she squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. “No, no, no, no, no!”

She says “No!” one last time before she slams her hooves on the dashboard, creating a small electric shockwave that and leaves a burnt ring on the bee. She closes her eyes and cries angrily into the dashboard. She can’t believe she that she failed again!

“Goddess-damn it!” sobs Trixie.

“Oh, don’t cry, darlin’,” coos Sunshine, now standing next to her and putting his once wing over her, making her shiver and lift up her head so she can look at him. “Once he’s dead, you won’t have to worry about him anymore. You can move on to Brisk Wind and Roar Shock, and even that Shining Armor fellow.”

Trixie sniffles and wipes her nose, and is about to say something to Sunshine, but she catches something very important out of the corner of her eye. She barely sees it passing, but she sees the mini-train from the bank drive by, and following it is the rest of the convoy. Trixie’s eyes narrow like a predator spotting its prey, and she slips one of her hooves in the sleeve while keeping the other one out to start the ignition. Sunshine frowns when Trixie starts the vehicle and slides her hoof in the open sleeve.

“What are you doing?” asks Sunshine.

“Getting Monte back,” replies Trixie determinedly, then a couple of seconds later she adds: “And his box, too.”

“Sure you are. This is just another one of your-”

Trixie zooms off before Sunshine could finish his statement, and she does a large turn into the road that nearly makes her drive onto the sidewalk, thus making passing civilians shriek and dive for cover. As soon as her bee is straightened out, Trixie speeds towards the convoy with predatory focus. The closer she gets, the more her horn sparks and the harder she grits her teeth. She feels a surge of energy go through her, starting from her horn and slithering through her veins and spreading all over her body. She feels her fur and mane and tail stand from the power surging through her, and she doesn’t even feel the wind rushing past her or hear the ambient noises of city life. It is just her and the convoy. And she wants nothing more than to send the convoy to Tartarus in a mouth basket.

“Hang on, Monte, I’m coming.”

She increases the throttle and gracefully weaves her way through the traffic as a storm cloud appears above her head. The lightning pillars come soon after and form a protective barrier around her, and when she sees the backmost vehicle rounding a corner, she does another sharp turn without caring that she almost fell over or hit a wall for that matter. The civilians on the sidewalk dive for cover and she continues her pursuit with unquenchable determination.When she is a nearly a hundred feet or so away from the rear vehicle, an earth pony pokes her head out with a pistol in her mouth and shoots at Trixie.

Big mistake.

Once the bullet whizzes past her, a ball of electricity forms at the tip of Trixie’s horn, and she launches a devastating beam directly at the vehicle. The electric beam rips apart the asphalt and scorches the sides of vehicles unfortunate enough to be next to it, and when the beam hits the boiler engine of the target there is instant death. The beam rips through the engine and a fireball rolls out of all the windows of the vehicle, sending burning bodies and pieces of the interior flying in every direction they could go. The burning skeleton of the motorized wagon swerves to the side, flips, and rolls down the road, leaving a trail of burning debris and sparks in its wake, coming to a stop when it is bounces into a playground.

Trixie speeds past the wreckage and keeps her focus on the convoy. They are picking up speed, and she can just picture the panic her targets are suffering from seeing one of their vehicles suddenly explode.

An evil smile crosses Trixie’s lips and she puts more pressure on the throttle, easily catching up to Monte’s kidnappers. When she is close to the next vehicle, she is forced to slam on the breaks to put some distance between her and vehicle since the unicorn Trixie bruised with an empty pistol had poked her head out with a shotgun levitating next to her head. The unicorn tries to shoots at Trixie, but the former magician is not going to allow herself to get shot. She has been shot plenty of times and the last thing she needs is a buckshot to the face!

To prevent the unicorn from shooting, Trixie wrestles for control of the shotgun through a telekinetic duel. The shotgun fires a couple of times, one shot tearing apart the road and the other firing off into the sky. Trixie gets closer, and finally yanks the shotgun out of the unicorn’s magical grip and turns the weapon to the occupants. Everyone inside the motorized wagon eyes widen, and one of the passengers, an earth pony, reaches for her pistol, but it is too late. Trixie unloads the shotgun; first to the unicorn that tried to shoot her, then the earth pony, then another panicking passenger trying to unjam her mini-gatling gun, and finally, the driver. The inside of the vehicle is now splattered with gore, and Trixie pulls away, carelessly tossing the now empty shotgun away in the process, and she zooms off towards her next target.

“That’ll teach you to mess with the Great and Powerful Trixie!” yells Trixie in bloodthirsty rage as the bloody motorized wagon crashes into a bridge pillar head on, turning it into a nasty pancake of bodies, wood and metal.

Trixie drives after the convoy with unrelenting fury, and the civilians caught in the exchange between Trixie’s bolts and the convoy’s weapons swerve out of the way. Many of the swerves cause horrible crashes, and Trixie can barely hear the sirens over the sounds of screams and colliding vehicles. But she doesn’t care. She’s putting all of her focus on getting Monte back and making Andromeda pay for what she’s done, and she doesn’t care what it takes! She speeds through the thick, burning smoke caused from her blasting obstacles into burning shrapnel with complete disregard to everyone’s safety, even her own. She refuses to slow down for anyone or anything for this mission!

Trixie can practically taste the fear from everyone around her, especially the ponies in the convoy she’s pursuing, and it makes her smile. She’s glad they are fearing the Great and Powerful Trixie. Everyone should fear her because she knows that she is the greatest unicorn that has ever lived, not that studious brat, Twilight Sparkle.

When Trixie gets close to the third vehicle, she can barely feel the fatigue trickling through her body as her damaged horn nears its limit. Trixie growls because of this and speeds next to the vehicle. The passengers inside pale, and the last thing they see before Trixie shoots at them is her furious, pale eyes and the storm protecting her. Trixie launches an azure shockwave from her horn that sends the motorized wagon flying off of its wheels and flipping in the air, crashing to a stop when it impacts the fourth floor of the office building. The vehicle doesn’t go all the way through, though, and falls to the concrete below, splattering and smashing a picnic table on impact while glass cascades around it. Luckily no civilians were hurt.

The fourth vehicle has its passengers poke their heads out and shoot at Trixie with a mixed armament. The bullets whizz by her, and some bounce off of the bee or leave burning, bloody scratches on her, which only fuels her anger. And when a slug tears into her shoulder, Trixie howls in rage and pain and grits her teeth as blood seeps down from the wound. Within seconds, the wound becomes cauterized from the intense heat that the lightning is surrounding her with, but it doesn’t change the fact that someone got a good shot. Something which Trixie will not let happen again.

“YOU DARE SHOOT THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE!” screams Trixie.

Her horn glows and a ball of crackling, chaotic energy appears at the tip. The storm cloud around her releases a rumble, and it and the lightning swirl around at the ball, like matter getting sucked into a blackhole. Trixie focuses on the vehicle in front of and lets it loose. The widening, electric beam emits a shriek that shatters all the glass near it, and it rips apart the asphalt and anything else unfortunate enough to be caught in its destructive path. As the burning remains of kicked up asphalt and vehicles rain down, the EIB vehicles try to evade it, but they are too slow. The beam impacts the boiler engine of the targeted vehicle, and it is vaporized in a flash of electric fire and burning debris that was lifted from the ground by the force of the impact. The earth shaking explosion creates a small mushroom cloud and another shock wave that pushes just about everything that isn’t nailed down away from it into buildings or more vehicles and lamp posts.

Trixie expertly turns to the side while all this is happening, to avoid the jagged gash and small crater left by her attack. But now she is panting and coated in sweat that makes the dust and ash cling on to her all the easier. She ignores the terrified and agonizing cries of the victims and the choking stench of burning death from her assault, and jerks her motions to dodge the burning chunks of rubble falling around or bouncing past her. Even the EIB vehicle that was in front of her target lands next to her in a mess of twisted metal and shattered wood, and she had to make a large curve lest she wanted its burning tire to hit her.

Trixie drives through the suffocating, burning smoke and is greeted by a different scenery. There is no destruction, just a peaceful city full of fleeing civilians. The fire and smoke of her destructive path is behind her, and now she can clearly see the mini-train and Andromeda’s getaway vehicle speeding off in the setting sun in desperation to escape.

“Oh no you don’t!” growls Trixie.

She lays down as low as she can go on the bee and increases the pressure on the throttle. She is forced to squint her eyes as the rushing wind dries them out and blows against her at incredible speeds. However, in spite of the discomfort, she is too focused on getting Monte back to care about such frivolous things.

Trixie’s eyes focus on the mini-train as her mind races on trying to figure out how to destroy it. The passenger seemed to have an endless supply of weapons, given the fact that she kept poking her head out with a different weapon in her mouth every time. First, it is a pistol, then she switches to a shotgun, she switches to a mini gatling gun after that, and finally, another pistol. And she shoots at Trixie until the weapon ran out of ammo before switching out, too. Luckily for Trixie, the shooter is a bad shot, but then again, when someone is firing from the mouth in a moving vehicle, poor accuracy is much expected.

Due to the much expected poor shots, Trixie is able to sort of gracefully dodge the shots; some managed to hit her bee or graze her body, but they are not enough to do any real damage, only leave small scratches. However, Trixie had spent quite a bit of her energy when she annihilated the other escorts, and she can feel heavy fatigue ruthlessly washing over her, and the pain from the tiny scratches all over her body start building up. The storm cloud around her also starts thinning out and the lightning around her becomes noticeably weaker in strength and numbers.

The closer Trixie gets to the mini-train, the more she figures that the walking armory ran out of ammunition. But her hopes of the pony having no ammunition is tossed into a river to drown when she sees the same pony poke her head out with something in her hooves. It is a black ball with a series of grooves all over it and a pony skull painted on. Then the said pony kisses it and then tosses it towards Trixie, not even caring about the half a dozen civilian vehicles between her and her target.

Trixie’s eyes widen and time seems to slow to a crawl when the black ball bounces towards her and cracks open to let sparkling red sticks roll all over the road. One of which rolls right in front of her. She pulls back on the throttle and veers to the side in an attempt to slow down, but it is not enough to save her. The sparkling stick detonates when she is mid turn, and the last thing she sees before squeezing her eyes shut is a fireball kicking up asphalt and ripping apart the front of her stolen vehicle. She can barely hear herself screaming over the explosion, breaking road and wood, and twisting metal, and when she opens her eyes for just the briefest of seconds she sees the pieces of her vehicle burning and twirling in the air. Next, she feels her bones crack and skin shred against the road, as well as pieces of debris landing or bouncing off of her. She blacks out.

Trixie manages to opens her eyes again, and this time she is surrounded by twisted metal, burning debris, and parts of the bee, and she can barely make out the remaining vehicles in the convoy driving off. She extends her hoof and screams for Monte, but she can’t hear or feel anything. Not her scream, not the crackling fire, not even her heartbeats or the multitude of injuries all over her body. All she can really hear is a ringing noise in her bloodied ears.

Trixie’s hoof falls to the ground and her eyes close for what seems like a second, but when she gasps awake and cries agonizingly when the full force of pain surges through her body. She can feel every breach in her skin, every crack in her bone, and the wet layer of her blood coating her. She coughs blood and crawls across the asphalt, trying without success to get to her feet. Her ears are ringing, her world is warped and faded, and she can hear her heartbeats thumping like thunder in her chest. When she extends her hoof to grab on to what’s left of her bee, she sees the shredded skin and thick streams of blood trickle down and splatter on the road. Trixie keels over, puking blood and sobbing as a sharp pain pierces her side, and is barely able to look up to watch the mini-train do a u-turn to face her.

Trixie grits her teeth and pushes herself away from her destroyed vehicle, swearing and choking back tears when she falls to the ground. Once the mini-train’s engine starts revving, Trixie uses all of her strength to stand up and take a couple of defiant steps towards the vehicle. Each step nearly makes her collapse from how wobbly her legs are, but after a pace, she spits another glob of blood on the ground and screams “Come on!” at the top of her lungs while charging her horn to its limit. Trixie holds back her body’s attempt to shut down her horn since the charge is causing a massive, head splitting pain to erupt from it and go all over her skull and brain.

The vehicle’s tires grind against the road, creating a nasty cloud of white and adding burnt rubber to the stench of destruction around her. Then the vehicle launches towards her like a missile and Trixie’s horn sputters pathetic sparks as she aims it at the oncoming menace. But her legs give out and all concentration is lost; she collapses on the ground and her vision quickly fades as she helplessly watches the mammoth sized vehicle charge her. As much as she wants to close her eyes so she can think of something peaceful before being crushed under the mini-train, her tear soaked and bloodshot eyes remain open.

“I’m sorry,” whispers Trixie weakly.

The vehicle comes closer and closer, and Trixie can picture the driver smiling viciously as the vehicle’s speed increases. Then everything gets an unexpected rosy tint, and the mini-train jerks upwards at a crooked angel and flies out of her line of sight. Moment’s later, the muffled sounds of wood shattering and metal scraping against the pavement fill the air. Trixie shifts in her spot, grunting painfully in the process, and sees a trail of parts leading up to the mini-train, mangled beyond repair. The metal is twisted, the wood is shattered, and one of it’s boiler engines had fallen loose and is now covering the road with scorching water and hot coal. The other engine is also loose, but it hasn’t fallen off, rather it is hanging from a few bolts and is spilling the boiling water and hot coal all over the passengers.

Trixie jolts in her spot when she feels a hoof on her shoulder, but when she hears a familiar voice telling her to hold still, she relaxes just enough not to zap him.

“Captain... what are... what are you doing here?” asks Trixie, her voice now barely audible.

“Saving Equestria and you,” replies Shining Armor sternly as he levitates Trixie on his back; he is keeping his shield up as well as levitating a rifle.

“We have to... we have to save Monte.”

Trixie’s eyes close for a second, but they snap open when a gunshot goes off practically next to her ear. She’s hoping that no one was shot; or at least not her or Shining Armor. But when she sees Shining Armor’s rifle smoking and him ejecting a spent shell she breathes a weak sigh of relief. The rocking, wave like motions of Shining Armor’s body and the mixing of his clops as he walks is a soothing experience to her, despite bleeding to death and in the middle of a warzone on a highway in a foreign country. However, in spite of everything working against her, she still manages to keep her eyes open, albeit heavy and half lidded.

Trixie watches as Shining Armor approaches a unicorn mare, coughing and bleeding from a smoking hole in her chest. When her horn glows and the revolver next to her shimmers, Shining Armor fires another round that makes her head jerk back and splatter the wreckage with her blood and brain matter. After popping in a fresh clip, Shining Armor cautiously approaches the driver’s side of the vehicle with his weapon trained towards the driver’s seat. Trixie watches carefully, fighting more than ever to keep her eyes focused on her faded world, and her eyes widen when she sees a pegasus mare without a cutie mark crawl out of the wreckage. Her wings flap weakly and she cries softly while attempting to stop blood from gushing out of a mortal injury. When she crawled a good ten feet or so from the wreckage, leaving a thick trail of blood in her wake, she leans against the highway railing and looks at the two, her face covered in blood and tears. The pegasus moves her head down and she whimpers, and that is when Trixie realizes that there is a jagged piece of wood impaled in her abdomen.

“Scarlet?” whispers Trixie in disbelief, although with her state, all she can do is mouth her words.

Scarlet looks at Trixie and opens her mouth to say something, but all that comes out is a pained whimper and more tears roll down her cheek, cleaning a small trail of bloody grime from her. Then she she bows her head and her wings droop down as her blood seeps out from under her in a gory pool. Her eyes close and her chest stops moving seconds later. Soon after, Trixie’s vision fades to darkness with the last thing she sees being the sun setting over Scarlet’s corpse.

oooOOOooo

“Holy crap, is she dead!” cries Colt as Shining Armor gently, yet hastily, puts Trixie’s limp body in the back seat.

“We need to move. The guards are coming,” informs L. Roy casually while keeping his eyes locked on the oncoming guard vehicles speeding towards them.

Colt wastes no time in putting the vehicle in full throttle and speeds towards an onramp, away from Andromeda’s vehicle. Shining Armor is in the middle of trying to stop Trixie’s bleeding using fabric from his disguise and the interior of the vehicle when he realizes what Colt is doing.

“What are you doing? Go after Andromeda!” orders Shining Armor angrily.

Colt looks over his shoulder for a split second. “Are you crazy! We need to get her to a hospital or she’ll die!”

“If we lose Andromeda then she will die for nothing! Now do it!”

“Look, I-”

Shining Armor awkwardly presses the barrel of his rifle against Colt’s head, and the earth pony swears and momentarily loses control of the vehicle while L. Roy aims his shotgun at Shining Armor.

“Trail her!”

“Put down your weapon!” barks L. Roy.

A police vehicle suddenly comes out from the side and practically t-bone’s their vehicle. However, Colt’s reaction time proved to be barely adequate to dodge it. During their drift, everyone in the motorized wagon, save for Trixie, screams, and Shining Armor and L. Roy slide towards the doors, grunting upon impact. After hitting the door, L. Roy’s shotgun goes off and blows a gaping hole on the windshield in front of Colt’s face. Colt shrieks and momentarily loses control and swerves into the railguard. The other two get tossed around a bit more before Shining Armor manages to get some control of himself. After regaining his composure, Shining Armor dives on top of Trixie and tries to hold her in place, he hears her moan and mutter something weakly, and when he looks down he sees her eyes struggling to stay open.

“Trixie, can you- Son of a bitch!”

Shining Armor presses himself on top of her protectively when bullets rip through the wooden frame and bounce off the boiler engine. More bullets go through and L. Roy swears in such a way that Shining Armor has never heard before. He looks up and sees L. Roy’s part of the windshield is splattered with blood and he is pressing his hoof against his shoulder. L. Roy clenches his teeth and squeezes tears out of his eyes, and ignores Colt’s frantic babbling and Shining Armor’s attempt to see if he’s okay.

“Put up a shield, Sparkle!” screams L. Roy painfully.

Shining Armor’s horn glows and the whole vehicle is surrounded by a rosy bubble that muffles the outside noise. They can hear the bullets firing and ricocheting off of the shield, with small flashes of light to show where the bullets hit, and they can also hear the guards shouting at them. But since everything sounds like it is under water, and the fact that it is in a foreign language, they can’t understand a single word being said.

With each bullet that bounces off, Shining Armor can see Colt jump slightly, and even L. Roy, as stoic and seemingly emotionless as he is, has a bit of fear showing. Especially when one of the armored police vehicles pulls up next to them and a guard shoots at them with a shotgun. The incident actually makes L. Roy jump, which would be hilarious if they weren’t in a life threatening situation.

Shining Armor watches his shield for a couple of seconds, and swears he can see the scowl through the masks of the guards attacking them. Once his short observation period ends, he turns his attention to Trixie. He sees that she has stopped moving, and when he puts his hoof on her neck, he can barely feel a pulse. Shining Armor swears and his mind races as he tries to figure out a way to keep her from expiring on the car seat.

“Hey, Sparkle, we have a problem,” says Colt uneasily.

Shining Armor ignores Colt, figuring that his statement is stupid. Of course they have a problem. Since when is being chased by foreign police with a key witness bleeding to death in the backseat of a rental not a problem?

He hears L. Roy ordering Colt to turn, and when the vehicle jerks to the right, Shining Armor barely keeps Trixie still, and is in too much of a panic to care that her blood is all over him. He presses his hoof on one of her gashes and urges himself to think harder, which proves to be more difficult than he thought with the combination of him trying to keep his shield up, the bouncing vehicle, and trying to ignore the fact that Colt drove through a diner, judging by the shattered tables and dishes bouncing off of his shield.

Shining Armor is now mentally beating himself up for not thinking of a way to stop Trixie’s bleeding. He can feel his aggravation getting the best of him as he tightens the cheap strips of cloth around her injuries. He uses more magic to harden her blood to make a large, nasty scab in hopes that the improvisation will stop the bleeding. Now his horn is hurting. It feels as though his cracks are splitting and burning, and he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to ignore the pain by thinking about something else. Something like seeing the look on Brisk Wind’s face when he drags her away to Singsong after he shows the evidence of her crimes to Celestia.

“Sparkle,” says Colt in a long, drawn out, panicky tone, “I don’t know if you heard me last time, but we have a problem!”

Trixie’s body now looks like a gory, crimson candy with parts of pony poking out, and Shining Armor makes sure the scabs are really hard before glaring at Colt.

“Yes, I know we have a problem!” he says, snarling. “We have a big problem, so shut up and drive!”

“I don’t think you know how big the problem is,” states L. Roy as he cranes his neck towards the sky.

“Maybe if you showed some emotion from time to time I might believe you about how big the problem is!”

L. Roy scowls and he points towards what is ahead of them, and Shining Armor’s jaw drops for just a fraction of a moment before he screams furiously and bangs his hoof against the door, leaving a nasty hoofprint in it.

“Oh you have got to be kidding me!” exclaims Shining Armor, his throbbing vein close to popping.

Blocking their path to the exit is a flying vehicle with a cylindrical design and two rotators on the top. The back is spewing steam from four different exhaust pipes and it has a gatling gun on each side being manned by a Bernese guard. It has a thick layer of armor and is painted white with a green band, with the seal of the Bernese Local Guard painted on what appears to be its door. And to make matters worse, Andromeda’s vehicle is nowhere to be seen.

The gatling guns whir to life, and within a couple of seconds, two streams of bullets impact the shield and create a series of explosive flashes of light that forces everyone to shield their eyes And since no one can see anything, Colt is literally driving blind, and from the sounds of unknown objects bouncing off and the shield’s crackling, it appears that he is hitting everything under the sun. The vehicle jerks and bounces and scrapes against everything, then they hear something that no one wanted to hear. The sound of one of the tires popping.

“Oh no, not good! Not good!” cries Colt.

“Keep it steady!” barks L. Roy.

Shining Armor’s eyes snap to the front window and pales when he sees a blockade of guard vehicles with a whole line of guards aiming their battle saddles at them. And right behind the blockade is the wide open road, free from the guards, and a strong chance for them to escape and catch up to Andromeda.

“Hang on to something!” orders Shining Armor.

Colt looks at Shining Armor worryingly while L. Roy wraps his hoof around his seat belt, grunting painfully from his wound in the process. Shining Armor hears Colt ask him what he plans on doing, but he ignores him and orders L. Roy to keep Trixie as still as possible and for Colt to keep driving straight.

“But there’s-”

“Do you want me to point a gun at you again?”

Colt’s mouth clamps shut and drives straight towards the blockade while increasing the speed. Shining Armor takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and thinks about everything that has happened to him over the past few months. It all plays like a movie stuck on fast forward, from him watching his soldiers getting slaughtered at Ponyville to allowing Trixie to get tortured for information. And how Brisk Wind gave him bad files, made him look bad in the press, tricked Celestia into creating a police state and turning her against him, and framing him for murder. Now he can just picture Brisk Wind laughing in her office at her victory with her endless supply of fancy liquor, a giant picture of her looking smug, and her face replacing the sun on the Equestrian flag.

Shining Armor’s jaw and shut eyes tightens as he feels the cracks in his horn reopen with burning results. Then his eyes snap open, and they glow bright, rosy hue that looks menacing with the fiery cloud of the same color wrapped around his horn, with his cracks being the brightest part. Small sparks slither around the cloud and move towards the shield, which is now retracting rather quickly. When their vehicle is almost at the blockade,  the shield is at the edge of the vehicle and is sparking violently. The crackles of electricity are painful to the ears, and the sparks are searing everything they touch. Shining Armor takes another deep breath as time seems to slow down around him, and right as they are about to hit a guard vehicle, he stomps his hoof and the shield explodes outwards with a sonic boom that shatters all the glass within a few hundred feet.

The shockwave blows away all the vehicles and guards next to them like they are nothing but burning dolls. The vehicles land around them in a tangle of burning wood and twisted metal, and they crumble and explode upon impact. The guards land at awkward angles, and those who were not carried away dive for cover, using whatever they could to do so. And Shining Armor doesn’t see what happens next because he collapses on top of Trixie, eyes squeezed shut from pain, and dripping with sweating and panting heavily from the amount of energy he spent. Aside from his horn feeling like it is breaking apart at the cracks, it also feels empty, and his muscles are so weak he can barely lift his head. He manages to smile, though, when he hears Colt cheer and L. Roy say something proudly. His eyes drift shut and he welcomes the coming darkness of nap time.

But his peace does not last.

What seems like only a few seconds of precious rest ends when he is jolted awake. The vehicle had been rammed and now Colt is struggling to keep it in control as a damaged guard wagon speeds past them. Shining Armor blacks out again.

When he wakes up again for the briefest of seconds, he sees L. Roy reloading his weapon and a guard vehicle with blood splatter on the windshield careening off of the side of the road and crashing into concrete ravine. The same air vehicle he saw from earlier also makes an appearance and Shining Armor tries to put up a shield, but his horn feels empty, and he immediately passes out when a small shield form around his head.

When he wakes up again, his world is dark and blurry, and there is a loud ringing in his ears. He groggily crawls his way out of the vehicle, which is now upside down and easy to leave since the door is gone. As soon as Shining Armor steps outside, though, the light from the flying vehicle shines down on him. He holds up his hoof to shield his eyes from it, but his legs give out a couple of seconds later and he collapses to the ground, grunting.

After a great, agonizing struggle, Shining Armor is able to push himself to his feet, panting with blood and sweat dripping off of him. Everything is a haze; his vision is shifting from blurry to clear, and the ringing noise in his ears mixes with his breathing and heartbeats and the muffled shouts of the guards rushing him. He sluggishly turns his head when he hears gunshots, and sees L. Roy dropping to the ground with his weapon and Trixie by his side, and blood creeping out from under both of them. Shining Armor hears Colt shouting something, and when he turns to him, he helplessly watches the earth pony get brutally tackled to the ground, despite him showing that he has surrendered. Shining Armor’s gaze moves to Trixie, whether or not she is dead is hard to decide, but he’s determined not to leave her. He limps towards her, ignoring the shouts of the guards and the excruciating pain all over his body, and when his horn glows, there is a single crack, and immediately afterwards he feels a powerful punch that makes him stop walking. He looks down and sees a rapidly growing blotch of blood on his shoulder. His horn charges again as he attempts to put up a shield, but a second shot sends him crumbling to the ground.

Each cough Shining Armor makes feels like a burning knife wound, he and strains his muscles in his struggle to stand up as the small army of guards converge on him, but he doesn’t get far. An ibex reaches him when he is halfway up and headbutts him against his destroyed vehicle. He immediately blacks out.

=**********=

Monte jolts awake when the motorized wagon comes to a sudden stop. He blinks and scans his surroundings as his eyes gradually adjust to the darkness. He wipes caked on blood from his face, wincing when his hoof brushes against the black eye Trixie gave him in the morning, and peers out the window when Andromeda hop out. Monte tries to sneak out, too, but stops and goes on to a casual whistling when he realizes that his hind legs are cuffed to the seat, and he is being watched by an armored EIB earth pony that is wearing a dual shotgun battle saddle.

Monte’s ears swivel when he hears a loud hum, and he holds up his hoof to protect his eyes when a show of bright lights suddenly turn on. Once his vision is cleared from the colorful blotches, he sees a zeppelin with Fancy Entertainment’s logo on it, surrounded by more armed ponies. He also notices Andromeda talking to someone, and that talking soon turns into indistinct yelling. The pony she was talking to, or yelling at, in this case, backs down and shouts an order that springs the armed guards into action. Monte is impressed at how well coordinated they are as they bolt to and fro, from one spot to another, each doing their duty to prepare for liftoff.

Then he sees Andromeda stomping towards him.

Monte whimpers quietly and pushes himself up against the door, trying to get as far away from her as possible, and when she yanks open the door, he yelps and jumps in his seat. Andromeda’s horn glows and the cuffs on Monte’s back hooves fall off like dead leaves, then she yanks him out of the vehicle and throws him to the ground. Monte coughs and gasps for air when the force of impact pushes the air out of his lungs, and fills his mouth with gravel. He sputters and brushes his tongue against his hoof, hoping that it will get the tiny specks of rock off. He tries to stand up, but freezes and nearly wets himself when he hears the safety click off and Andromeda breathe heavily.

“I’m supposed to kill you,” growls Andromeda.

“That... that is a bit cold don’tcha think?” says Monte, his voice trembling and body shivering with fright. “I mean, I did help you get Gilda’s box.”

“After stalling us.”

“Hey, I genuinely forgot the -Okay, okay...” Monte leans forward, soon to collapse on his stomach as Andromeda presses her pistol against the back of his head. “Why not just pull the trigger then?” He sniffles and blinks tears out of his eyes, and takes a deep breath to break the bubble in his throat. “There really is no point in making this dramatic.”

Monte looks at the night sky, marveling at how pretty it is and thinking that the soothing scenery is strangely appropriate. He only wishes that he could see the moon to complete it, though, since there is a huge, blank spot due to the new moon. He sniffles again and wipes tears and snot away from his face.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” says Monte, his voice cracking as he blinks tears out of his eyes. “Aren’t you going to pull the trigger?”

He jumps in his spot when the metal box containing all of Brisk Wind’s dirty little secrets lands in front of him. He stares at the box, mind blank as to why Andromeda tossed it in front of him, or why she is now standing in front of him.

“I want answers. About that box,” says Andromeda, using her pistol to point at the box and further enforce her point.

Monte stares at the box, then back at Andromeda, now thoroughly confused about what is going on. Monte’s eyes drift back towards the box and his mind struggles to form a coherent thought when Andromeda demands to know what the box contains. Nearly ten seconds pass before Monte looks at Andromeda’s murderous eyes pleadingly.

“Wha-what are you talking about?” stammers Monte.

“Don’t play dumb with me!”

Monte yelps, and Andromeda lifts up the box and aims her weapon at him. Monte backpedals awkwardly as Andromeda stomps closer to him, and when he trips over himself and lands on his back, Andromeda stomps on his chest and keeps him still, ignoring his cries and begs.

“What is so important that I lost nearly all of my guys and had only Celestia knows how many innocent people hurt! Tell me why Brisk Wind sent me through all this trouble for me to destroy this and kill you!” screams Andromeda as she waves the metal box in front of Monte.

Monte gulps back tears, and when Andromeda screams “Tell me!”, he yelps and holds up his hoof in a feeble attempt to protect himself while scrunching up as tight as he can.

“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you... I’ll tell you,” whimpers Monte quietly, still holding up his shaky hoof. “But can you please lower your weapon?”

Andromeda lowers her weapon. “Talk. Right now.”

Monte wipes tears out of his eyes and takes a deep breath. “You’ve been played... In that box is something that.... something that will end Brisk Wind. Gilda kept everyone’s dirty little secret as leverage, and that box -what is in that box will put Brisk Wind in Singsong for life, and expose every skeleton in the EIB’s closet.”

Andromeda steps off of Monte and he rolls into the sitting position, gasping and gingerly rubbing his chest with his hoof. Monte takes another gulp of air and notices the key to the box hanging around Andromeda’s neck. He looks at her and she stares back at him, and when his horn glows she cocks her pistol and presses it against his head, making him freeze and stop his magic.

“What are you doing?” demands Andromeda threateningly.

Monte gulps and gradually lifts his hoof up to try to calm her down.

“I’m going to grab the key, and show you what your ponies died for,” he says in a quiet, careful tone.

“I’ll do it myself.”

Andromeda lifts the necklace off of her neck and sticks it in the box. Monte watches her, and realizes that she is hesitant to look inside.

“Do you-”

“I’ll do it!” snaps Andromeda, bringing her pistol back to Monte’s head, making him reel back slightly and shake in his spot.

There is a moment of tense silence between the two, and Monte’s eyes break contact with Andromeda’s for just a moment when the zeppelin’s engines roar to life. He swallows and looks back at Andromeda, she has her eyes locked on the box, and the key is in the lock. He can see her swallowing nervously and he doesn’t know if she’s shaking from nerves or if his eyes are just playing tricks with him. He watches her for a few more seconds before his horn glows and he gently turns the key in the lock. The lock clicks and he keeps his magic trained on the box as he lifts it up so Andromeda can see the contents better.

“This is what they died for,” says Monte solemnly as Andromeda grabs the list of witnesses against the EIB.

Andromeda’s brow furrows and she looks at Monte in angry disbelief, like she doesn’t want to believe what she is looking at. But the more documents she flips through, the more payroll receipts and audio transcripts she sees, the more intense her scowl, and the heavier her breathing, becomes. Soon her jaw is so tight and her breathing is so burdened with fiery hate Monte is worried she might explode and kill everyone around her. He jumps back and almost scrambles away into the night when Andromeda screams in rage loud enough to be heard over the engines, and she throws the box down, and with it, all of the documents.

Andromeda slumps to the ground, seething with angry tears streaking down her cheeks, and swears as she stomps the ground with an audible thump over the whining engines. Monte swallows nervously before extending a hoof to pat her on the shoulder. He gets rejected with a hard swat that makes him wince and take a step back. A moment later, Andromeda  glares at Monte and slowly stands up. His heart thumps in his chest and he lets out a terrified whimper as he inches away from her, but he soon finds himself frozen in fear and helplessly staring into the eyes of the scorned mare.

“Get on the zeppelin,” orders Andromeda.

=**********=

With only the stars to guide them on a clear night sky, two large, armored mini-trains with the Bernese Local Guard seal speed towards a large house with a covered balcony circling the whole structure. Their headlights briefly shine on the carnage they will soon be exploring, and it does nothing but work up their nerves. There are also gazebos and placed in the center of its lush lawn is a fountain with a statue of Iron Will striking a cool pose on the top. One of the vehicles drives towards the back while the other skids to a stop next to a couple of abandoned motorized wagons. Once the vehicle stops, the back opens and heavily armed and armored ibex guards jump out and move towards the house. They do this quickly and professionally, and they check the vehicles, too, and when they find that they are empty, they continue on. They take up positions outside of the front entrance, which has the front door completely destroyed, and keep low so that they aren’t seen from the windows, which are riddled with bullet holes, just like the rest of the wall.

The Lead Guard pokes his head in and sees that the house is dark and has a thick atmosphere of dust, but he can make out bodies all over the floor and more bullet holes, as well as a giant slab of stone sticking out of the ground at an angle. He gives the order to move in, and he and his team rush inside and spread out while being sure to keep each other covered. As they move through the destroyed house, most keep their eyes out for any hostiles, but there are a few that stare at the horrifying mess made up of mutilated corpses, broken furniture, and blood splatter. One particular thing that the Lead Guard finds disturbing is a grotesque cyborg unicorn lying in a thick pool of blood from a neck injury, her eye wide open and stricken with horror.

He doesn’t stay long, though. He orders his team to move upstairs while the ones that went out back secured the rest of the floor. So, they move upstairs, and one of the guards does a quick inspection of the bathroom that had its door mutilated. While that is being done, the Lead Guard moves on down the hallway, coming to a stop when he hears quiet sobbing coming from a guest room. He does hoof motions aimed at his partners to signal where the noise is coming from and they carefully approach the room. The Lead Guard swallows some spit and cautiously pushes open, and when he enters the room, his jaw drops. Huddled in the corner, pale, bloodied and bruised and wearing an lavender armored suit no one has ever seen before, is Pinkie Pie. Her hoof is tightly wrapped in a sheet that is dripping with blood, and she’s rocking herself back and forth, eyes squeezed shut and sobbing.

“I can’t beat her,” she whimpers quietly. “I can’t beat her... I can’t beat her... I can’t beat her...”

Arc 2- 11- The Job -ADDITION-

Arc 3- 5 (Stories)

“[I can assure you that no one will threaten our security! Not the Altains. Not the Equestrians. Not the Roamans. Not even the filth that pretend to be our citizens will bring us down! Bernese will outlive every nation, and those who wish us destroyed will be dealt with with the utmost prejudice. That is my promise. Luna bless Bernese!]”

++++++++++

Shining Armor shakes hooves with yet another guest that wanted to thank him for saving Canterlot from the changeling invasion. His hoof feels numb, and it hurts to keep his smile up, and not only that, he feels like he can only say: “You’re welcome” or “No problem”. After his fiftieth thanks, he finally gets enough time to breath and move from his spot. He practically runs straight towards Cadence, who seems to be enjoying listening to Twilight sing. Shining Armor finds himself enjoying the song, too, and when her song ends, there is a thunderous ovation, and he throws in an approving whistle. He’s glad to see Twilight having a good time after all the things that had happened, and he’s also glad that she hasn’t danced the entire night.

Twilight does a little bow, and then goes to Princess Celestia’s side. Shining Armor looks around and watches Soarin and Rainbow Dash dancing, Pinkie Pie doing an amazing job stacking donuts, leaving Donut Joe speechless, and Rarity striking up a light conversation with Fancypants and Fleur. He also spots Applejack selling apple products to the stuck ups. Where she got the supplies or how she found the time to make them eludes him. And finally, his eyes fall on Fluttershy, who is hiding behind her large mane as an incredibly drunk Filthy Rich is uncomfortably close to her, no doubt trying to pick her up. Thankfully Rarity saves Fluttershy, leaving Filthy Rich to go after another pegasus mare to fill up his quota.

Shining Armor stretches, eyes widening when he gets an unexpected pop in his back. “Oh wow, I was not expecting that.”

“Expecting what?” asks Cadence.

“My back popped.”

“Hmm, it sounds like you need a massage.”

Shining Armor raises an eyebrow. “I am not going to one of those spas. I have an image to keep.”

Cadence giggles, hooks her hoof around his neck and brings him in until their bodies are squished together. “No, silly, I can give you one.” Then in a low, erotic whisper right in his ear. “A really good one.”

The combination of her tone and the warm breath tickling his ear makes Shining Armor’s face flare and his whole body stiffens. He turns to his wife, his tongue is numb and his mind is at a loss for words, so all he can do is smile with adorable awkwardness and nod his head. He finds himself more like putty in her hooves when her sensual smile spreads. Then he wraps his hoof around her body and brings her in for a hug while pecking her nose lovingly.

“Well, Mi Amor-”

“Save it for the bedroom!” blurts Vinyl Scratch, suddenly behind the two. The two gasp and reel back, and the DJ snickers as she snatches some snacks off of their table. This gesture is not met well with either of them, especially Shining Armor.

“Vinyl, what are you doing?” asks Shining Armor sourly.

Vinyl Scratch pops an apple slice in her mouth. “Two things, Big Guy. One, I’m waiting for a thank you for doing this thing at half off for you. And two, I’m waiting for Pinkie to stop” -to Pinkie Pie- “making donut towers!”

Shining Armor looks back at Pinkie Pie and is surprised to find the party animal standing on her hind legs on Joe’s back with minimal difficulty as she stacks more donuts on top of each other. She is biting her tongue in deep concentration, and he is using his magic to hand her donuts, longjohns, and other pastries.

“That is pretty impressive,” says Cadence when Pinkie Pie manages to place little cake toys of the newlyweds on the top.

“I’ll say,” says Shining Armor, his shocked tone mimicking Cadence’s. Then he looks at Vinyl Scratch, trying to look stern again, but with what he just saw regarding Pinkie Pie and the tower of donuts, he’s finding it very hard to do so. “Vinyl, thank you for the party, now can you please give us some privacy?”

“Privacy in a party? What world are you living in?” laughs Vinyl Scratch.

“A different one from yours, apparently.”

Vinyl Scratch’s smile fades. “Okay, I guess I already got my thank you, so I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone.” She looks at Cadence, trying to mask her mixed feelings, and does a quick bow. “Congrats, Princess, you got yourself a real keeper, here.”

Vinyl Scratch then turns to Shining Armor, flashes a quick smile magnifying her mixed feelings before trotting off, calling after Pinkie Pie. Cadence frowns sadly while watching the DJ, all while Shining Armor has to deal with yet another thank you from a happy citizen.

“I think we just hurt her feelings,” says Cadence regretfully.

Shining Armor forces himself to smile as he waves farewell to the leaving patron before looking at Cadence, face now really hurting from all the fake smiles he had to do.

“Vinyl will be fine,” assures Shining Armor. “She-”

BANG! BANG! BANG!

[[[[O]]]]

Shining Armor jerks awake in his cell, then he growls painfully and squeezes his eyes shut while pressing his hoof against the bandage covering his shoulder. He hears the guard say something, but he doesn’t understand a single word he said, so all he can do is glare at the ibex. Next to the guard are four other guards, and another ibex that isn’t wearing armor, but looks at home with them. The unarmored one is wearing a large, tan overcoat with a gray suit underneath. The ibex is also pretty old, his dark gray coat is fading around his eyes, which give his crows feet more definition, and his silvery hair is long and combed back.

“Are you my lawyer?” jokes Shining Armor sourly.

“No, I am Inspector Shekel Gruber, and you and I are going to have some words, Captain Shining Armor Sparkle,” says the old ibex in perfect Equestrian, albeit with a heavy accent.

Shining Armor stares at Shekel, perplexed. He doesn’t know if he is more shocked that the ibex spoke Equestrian fluently, or the fact that he knew his name. Shining Armor swiftly picks Choice A to be his “shocked about” since he figures that an inspector would be able to determine who he is with a quick peek at the newspaper.

The guard opens the door and one of the four guards clamps a chained leash around Shining Armor’s neck with a thick steel collar while the others aim their weapons at him. For extra protection on their part, they clamped a horn cuff to him when he arrived so he wouldn’t be able to use his magic. So now he is just a big stallion with a potential shanking tool on his head.

As the guards escort him down the hall, Shining Armor notices that Shekel has a slight limp in his walk and makes a barely noticeable wince with each step on his left forehoof. Shining Armor decides not to probe on the issue, and they continue walking in silence. He tries to keep his eyes forward, but every now and then they would move on their own accord to get a quick peek at the dirty, crowded cells, the heavily armed guards patrolling the grounds, or escorting prisoners dragging carts of books.

~~~~~~~~~~

After about fifteen minutes of snaking through the concrete labyrinth, Shining Armor is brought into a dimly lit room with a one way window, weak light bulbs on every corner, and an old heater. Almost as if it was planned, upon entering the room, the heater roared to life and started making odd clanking noises and shake a bit. Shining Armor glances at it and Shekel grumbles to himself and shuts it off while a couple of guards set bagged evidence on the table in front of Shining Armor.

Once the heater shuts off, the room drops to a noticeably chillier level, making Shining Armor shiver slightly and Shekel adjust his coat. Shekel walks to the other side of the table and points at the cushion by Shining Armor, telling him to have a seat. He silently complies and continues staring at the ibex.

“I have to say, it is strange seeing someone of your prestige in such a position,” states Shekel calmly as his hoof skims over the bags, as if wondering which ones he wants to use first.

Shining Armor shrugs. “Well, you know its just one of those things where you want to take a vacation with a couple of friends and end up in a car chase and shot.”

“Cute.” Shekel sits down and lightly taps his hooves on the table. “But in case you have not realized, Captain, now is not the time for jokes. Why are you in Bernese?”

“Classified information, Inspector.”

Shekel slides his hooves off of the table. “You must think of me as an idiot, Captain.”

Shining Armor arches an eyebrow, not entirely sure what Shekel is getting at. Technically he was on a mission, and no one else knew about the mission due to the crazy circumstances around it, therefore it was another form of classified. However, when Shining Armor sees some EIB documents bagged up, his expressions shifts to that of resentment for all the hell that Brisk Wind put him through. Shekel’s hoof goes over the paper and he slides it towards Shining Armor, his expression hard and demanding.

“We found this in the hotel where Pixie Fountain and her husband, Monte Fountain, were staying. There was a shootout there, then at the Bernese Bank, and then there was the chase. Retrieved evidence from the bodies showed them to be EIB or working with the EIB.”

Shining Armor drags the paper towards him and reads it over, scowling at how much Brisk Wind was willing pay to ensure Monte be captured, and probably executed somewhere. Shekel’s body relaxes on his cushion, but he still holds his stern expression.

“It is no secret that the you and the EIB have a feud, and you are on the run for a murder of a huge supporter of the EIB.”

Shining Armor glares at Shekel, swallowing the urge to scream about his innocence.

“The EIB is here. You’re here. And both of you made a mess of things,” continues Shekel. “Now I want answers.”

“About what?”

“Everything. How you got here. How you found Pixie Fountain -even though I doubt that to be her real name. And why you think you can bring your war to my home and get away with it.”

Shining Armor leans forward, eyes narrowing on the old ibex, and in a near growl, he says: “First off, I already stated that the mission was classified, and secondly, I did not bring anything to anypony-”

“‘Anyone’.”

“The EIB brought it and I am trying to end it.”

Shekel snorts. “That is not what your friends, Kicker and Jerkins, said.” Shining Armors ears perk, and Shekel stands up and approaches his side and looks at him. Despite Shining Armor sitting, he is still a head taller than Shekel, thus forcing the older ibex to look up. “They said that no one knew about the mission because it was -how did Kicker say it?- ‘On the fly’? Yes, that sounds right.”

Shining Armor stares straight ahead, swearing to Celestia that he’s going to punch Colt in the face for what he said. Shekel, meanwhile, moves to the other side.

“And Jerkins said you were unrecognizable during your chase. Even going as far as aiming your weapon at Kicker’s head and ordering him to pursue an ‘Andromeda’, even when you had a dying passenger.”

Shining Armor’s head snaps to Shekel. “Trixie wanted me to save Monte!”

“So her name is not Pixie? That confirms my suspicion.” Shining Armor glares straight ahead at his reflection, mentally kicking himself for the slipup. “You are lucky that we were able to stabilize her when we caught you, but you picked the wrong country to have your war in.”

Shining Armor watches Shekel intently as he rounds the table, and when he sits down, he rubs his aching hoof while Shining Armor keeps his glare on him. Shekel looks up, still trying to comfort his aching hoof, and returns the glare.

“You can start talking anytime now,” says Shekel sternly.

“Do I get my lawyer?”

Shekel arches an eyebrow. “Why would we waste precious resources on a foreigner? Especially a foreigner that destroyed much of Buchtseite?”

“That sounds like a ‘No’ to me.”

Shekel shakes his head and walks towards his seat. Once sitting down, he folds his hooves on the table and leans towards Shining Armor, his stare becoming more intense by the dim lighting.

“Captain, I am going to be honest with you. Your accomplices have already spoken, and we have already picked up numerous others you came in contact with. I am piecing this puzzle together, but the beauty of puzzles is that you do not need all the pieces to see the picture. I can figure out what happened just by putting the reports together, so what does that leave you? Nothing. You are nothing, and I do not deal with nothings.”

Shining Armor’s hardened expression doesn’t falter, but inside, the words stung him down to the core. He still stares at Shekel, though, not sure what to do. If he talks, then there is a good chance that everyone will get prison time, but if he doesn’t talk then they will get prison time as terrorists. The more he thinks, the more he realizes that he has lost. Shekel was right, his carelessness nearly cost Trixie her life, and had she died, her last request would’ve gone unanswered because Monte was still taken by Andromeda and more than likely executed. Add in that Andromeda had the goldmine that would put Brisk Wind away for life -or even better, turned to stone- and that was most likely destroyed, given her undying loyalty to the EIB. And now he is here, in a foreign nation, being interrogated and awaiting his sentence. Everything had gone wrong, and everyone is suffering because of it.

Shining Armor’s ears droop and his body deflates as he releases a long, depressing sigh.

“Well... are you going to be a nothing or something useful?”

“Where do you want me to begin?” asks Shining Armor quietly.

“How you got here.”

Shining Armor huffs and takes a couple of seconds to collect his thoughts.

<<<>>>

We landed at the Buchtseite zeppelin port at around midday. We took the express flight that a friend had set up to catch up with other friends.

“By ‘other friends’, do you mean the Fountain’s?”

Yes, they left earlier than we did and the circumstances dictated that me, Colt, and L. Roy take an express to catch up with their ferry. We knew where they were going to go to the Bank of Bernese.

“Based on what?”

Nothing, really, just word on the street.

“In my experience, the word of the street’s validity is very fluid. How did you know this rumor was accurate?”

I didn’t, but what choice did I have? Brisk Wind ruined everything I stood for, and turned me into a public enemy. Any chance there was of taking her down I would take, and this was my best chance.

“I see. Well, carry on.”

As soon as we got off the zeppelin we were greeted by an ibex who claimed that his brother was killed by the EIB.

“Silver Well. Like I said, Captain, I already interrogated your associates, and we have already gathered those you came in contact with. So there is no need to play mysterious.”

Silver Well ran a wagon rental shop, and he loaned us one under the counter. He also told us that his uncle, Gold Bit, recently spoke with Monte and that he forgot his password. Honestly, I was glad that he did because that meant that the evidence was still safe. We checked out a rundown hotel room close to the Bank of Bernese, and I had L. Roy keep watch in case Monte came back.

“Yes, Jerkins mentioned that you bought some binoculars at a gift shop to help him.”

Yeah, they were overpriced but did their job.

“And you and Kicker went to ‘Lucky Star’s Verteidigung Speichern’ for some weapons, yes?”

Yeah, we got our weapons from there, and you probably got him in your custody right now.

“What do you think?”

I’m just going to say “Yes”. Anyway, Lucky Star was at first reluctant to help us since he apparently had fought tooth and hoof for his citizenship here, but when we told him that we were told by Silver Well and Vinyl that he could help us take down Brisk Wind, his whole attitude changed. He never said what Brisk Wind did to him, but gave us what we wanted for half off and said if we needed anything else, we were free to ask him.

When we left his shop, we had to hide our weapons in flower boxes since we weren’t supposed to have them for at least a week. And when we were heading back to our hotel, I saw Andromeda scoping out the Bank, too. She was pretending to be a tourist, and me and Colt hid and watched her. I don’t know how long we were there, probably twenty minutes, before someone met her. He was an ibex, and she gave him some papers and an envelope and he left. I knew that this guy was important, and I tried to trail him, but I lost him in the crowd. Besides, Andromeda was heading towards us. She was like a living radar, she did not blink at all when she searched for us. And when she found me and Colt, she started walking towards us without taking her eyes off. She barely moved her head when she was going through the crowd. She was absolutely determined to get us.

Me and Colt had to go into alley and hide. I even had to put my hoof over Colt’s mouth to keep him quiet when she walked into the alley. She almost found me and Colt, but one of her associates distracted her, and we took that moment to slip in through a kitchen. The chefs were mad, but we ignored them and sped walked out of there and into a fancy restaurant. We got some stares and Colt thought it was a good idea to smile and wave.

We got out of the restaurant, and I swear to Celestia Andromeda followed us. We barely got on a trolley when she got out of the restaurant, hopped on the back and went after us. This little game of cat and mouse went on for nearly an hour before we finally managed to lose her in a bazaar. She got swarmed by some Saddle Arabians who wanted to sell her dresses or something, and me and Colt had to fight our way out of there, too, because those vendors were desperate for customers.

When we finally got back to our hotel, L. Roy had told us that the same vehicles passed the Bank multiple times. He had great descriptions of them, and when the Bank closed we each took turns keeping watch in two hour shifts, just to make sure nothing happened, and so we can know when the Bank opened.

The night was long, and boring, but necessary. And the next morning, I kept watch while Colt and L. Roy went to pick up breakfast. We went back to the same routine of keeping watch, and Colt said that L. Roy ran into Andromeda when he went to grab coffee. I was worried at first, but when he told me that he and her hit it off, I was confused and pissed. I was confused because I found it hard to believe that L. Roy could actually charm a mare, and I was pissed because off all the mares out there, it just had to be one of Brisk Wind’s lieutenants.

Colt said that he carried the conversation, and actually smiled and laughed with her. Again, something I found hard to believe. I told L. Roy about Andromeda and how she stalked me and Colt yesterday. In fact, Colt said that the only reason that he wasn’t caught was because he had to use the bathroom, then pretended to be a depressed patron. Andromeda didn’t see him because his back was to her and L. Roy was keeping her distracted.

At first L. Roy was skeptical, but that changed when we saw Andromeda go inside the bank with Monte and a small group of others later on in the day. I could tell he was mad, but I didn’t give him the chance to mope or fuss because I rushed him and Colt out. We ran to our rental, and tried to get to the bank quickly, but traffic was horrible and there was a guard vehicle next to us so we couldn’t do anything to make our trip easier. When we finally got there, we saw Trixie pull up on a motorcycle, and we tried to find a way to get to the Bank parking lot, but it was being guarded by a mini-train. We couldn’t find a safe way in since the only way in was being guarded by EIB agents and hired guns. It wasn’t blatant, but I could still see them. But the weird thing was, after Trixie went in, the ponies in the mini-train started arguing and whatever happened, the driver sped inside and the pony yelling at her just started shooting up the place!

Colt drove to cover and me and L. Roy loaded our weapons as quickly as we could.

“Why were they not loaded earlier?”

We would’ve loaded them on the trip over, but with the congested traffic and the guard vehicle next to us, somepony-

“‘Someone’.”

Was bound to see us, and we didn’t want unnecessary attention. The shooting was over in seconds, and when the convoy left, I ordered Colt to follow them, and he gave me lip. He called me crazy for wanting to take on a convoy in a rental, and I was ready to smack Colt on the back of his head, but when Trixie zoomed out of the parking lot, I was surprised, happy, and mad at all the same time. Surprised because nopony should’ve survived all those bullets; happy because she was alive; and mad because she was being an idiot and going after Andromeda’s convoy in a motorcycle. I screamed at Colt to follow her, and I think I hurt his ears because he winced and didn’t try to talk his way out of it. We went after her, but were forced to keep our distance when a group of guard vehicles went after her. It was hard keeping track of her, but Colt managed to keep up, despite nearly losing her in the alleys. And we almost lost her for good when there was a crash in the tunnel.

We pulled over after getting out of the tunnel, argued about the next course of action. I wanted to continue searching for Trixie since she was a key witness to the EIB’s corruption, and L. Roy suggested that we try to find Andromeda. Colt wanted to call it a day and go home. Especially when we saw the explosion.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I saw Trixie going after the convoy again. She was in her “super form”, as they say, and had a small electric storm from Tartarus around her with a shield of lightning. It was crazy, and Colt almost got out and left right then and there, but me and L. Roy convinced him to stay with a combination of harsh words and threats of being left behind in Bernese.

So we chased after Trixie by following the trail of destruction she left behind, and I admit I was getting nervous by what I was seeing. I mean, I know that a unicorn's power is influenced by emotion as well as training, and what I saw was not only a complete lack of magical control, but some anger issues as well. But we still kept going after her, and when her bike exploded, I saw her fly dozens of feet in the air and after she landed I thought she died.

Then she got back up.

Colt stopped the vehicle and we just stared at her, too stunned for words. Even L. Roy was surprised. But when I saw the mini-train speeding towards her, and saw her collapse, I knew she was dead unless I did something. So I got out and ran towards her while charging my horn. I knew I had to get it just right, and right when the mini-train was about to hit her, I put up a shield around her from underneath the train, and it flew off at an angle. When it landed I had to put up a shield around myself to keep myself from being injured by the debris that flew all over when it landed.

I picked up Trixie, and she was scared at first, but when she found out it was me, she didn’t try to attack me. She told me I had to save Monte, and that Is when I saw Andromeda’s vehicle driving away. Or, at least I was positive it was Andromeda’s vehicle.

“You didn’t know whether or not the vehicle belonged to Andromeda, and yet you still pursued it?”

I really had no evidence, just faith that it was Andromeda that was driving away with the key to Brisk Wind’s prosecution. And honestly, I would’ve taken Trixie to the hospital and have her rehabilitated, but I didn’t know if she would live or not, so it was kind of like a dying wish. Something the Royal Guard take seriously.

“I see.”

The occupants of the mini-train survived, sort of. One seemed well enough to shoot at me, but I still had my shield up so the bullet was worthless. I shot her and went to check the other occupant. There was no saving her. She was impaled with a piece of wood and quickly bled out on the side of the road. After she died, I went back to my wagon with Trixie on my back and went after Andromeda with you guys chasing us.

“And you threatened Colt, yes?”

Yes. But like I said, I wanted to take her to a hospital, but I didn’t know if she would live and her dying wish was for me to save Monte. Monte was with Andromeda, and Andromeda had the box. If Trixie had died and I didn’t have the box or Monte, it would’ve been over for me and her last wish would go unanswered. Not that it matters anyway since we’re stuck here and Andromeda has the evidence and Monte. He’s probably dead in a ditch while all the evidence is burned.

<<<>>>

Shining Armor sighs heavily, trying to ignore the fog puffing from his mouth, and Shekel taps his hoof lightly against the table. A moment of silence later, and the old ibex walks towards the one way mirror and taps against it three time while keeping his eyes on Shining Armor.

“You’re right, Captain, you will be here for a while. While you may be of importance in Equestria, you hold no prestige here.”

The door opens up and the guards return and shackle Shining Armor without him protesting. Shining Armor stands up and is quietly escorted out of the room. He keeps his head held high and eyes straight ahead, and ignores the scrutinizing eyes of the ibexes in the area.

When he is returned to his cell, he lays down on his cot and watches the guards leave. The steel door slams shut and he pulls his undersized, ratty blanket over him and whimpers quietly into his pillow.

=**********=

“...[In other news, Herr Shniztel’s newest invention will soon be on display at the National Science Museum. According to Herr Shniztel and his research team, the device has the capabilities of grinding just about anything to powder.]”

Shekel is now sitting in his office, massaging his aching hoof while listening to the radio with halfhearted interest. He is also skimming over the reports of the Buchtseite Incident and the testimonies gathered from Shining Armor’s group and from the ones they contacted. As he reads the reports, he barely reaches out for a mug of hot chocolate using his sore hoof, but he doesn’t grab it. Rather his hoof glows slightly and the mug floats towards his lips. He takes a small sip from it before setting it down, grumbling when he gets a twinge of pain in the hoof he used. He then sighs quietly and looks at a framed newspaper clipping titled: “[Bomb At Market Kills 10, Injures Dozens More!]”, with a picture of guards trying to quarantine the area as medics carry away bloodied civilians.

Shekel scowls and looks away from the photo of the gruesome scene. He extends his injured hoof again and guides his drink to him, but then there is a sudden knock on the door and Shekel jumps in his seat, spilling his drink all over his lap, making him yelp and jump out of his seat.

“[Inspector, we have something that you need to see],” says the guard outside urgently. “[It's from Inspector Doodle, sir.]”

“[Goddess-damn it],” grumbles Shekel furiously. He uses his miniscule magic to grab a box of tissue, wincing in the process, and uses them liberally to clean up his mess. “[I’m busy! Slide whatever it is under the door!]”

“[The file is too big, sir.]”

Shekel swears and throws the wads of tissue away before manually yanking open the door. The young guard shrinks back from the horrifying glare that his superior is giving him, and when Shekel holds out his good hoof, the guard gives it to him without hesitation.

Shekel lifts up the file so he can grab it with his mouth, then he walks inside his office. He is expecting another set of hooves to follow him, but when he hears the hoofsteps retreating, he turns around and sees the guard leaving. He is about to order the guard to get back to his office, but quickly realizes that he really has nothing to say to the rookie since he already knows what the "gift" is about. If anything, he really wants to chew out Doodle for being lazy, and then politely inform the Chief that he does not appreciate being a dumping ground for cases. Especially when he has a huge case to do.

Shekel closes the door and tosses the file on his desk, then he carefully flips through it. Each passing page fuels his curiosity and scowl. The case is interesting, but it is also a mess, and he knows he cannot do an effective job on it.

Shekel grumbles to himself and pulls out a phone and quickly dials the number to the Chief’s office. It take a few seconds of ringing before someone answers on the other end.

“[Chief Leuchten’s offic],” says a female with a silky voice on the other end.

“[It’s Inspector Gruber.]”

“...[Just a moment.]”

When Chief Leuchten finally picked up the line, the moment had turned into two minutes, but Shekel was determined not to hang up.

“[Are you still on?]” asks an energetic voice on the other end. “[Luna’s plot, I kept you on hold for two minutes. Don’t you have anything better to do other than bug me about something stupid?]”

“[It is not something stupid, sir],” snaps Shekel. “[I just want to know why you gave me two cases.]”

“[Your case is also being handled by a dozen other investigators and the Republican Guard, so that really gives you a light load. So, in the spirit of teamwork and workplace love, I am ordering you to give Doodle a hoof in his case.]”

“[How did you know-]”

“[I know everything. Now get off my line. I’m busy.]”

Shekel doesn’t hang up at first, but when he hears Leuchten’s headphones drop on the other end and some feminine giggling and flirtatious whispering, he sighs irritably and hangs up. Shekel runs his hoof through his hair and stares off into space, listening to the ticking clock, contemplating on what he should do next. The more he thinks, the more he goes back to the copy of Doodle’s case, and when he reads where the main subject is located, he pulls out his copy of the Buchtseite Incident. Specifically where Trixie is being kept.

“[I better be getting a bonus],” grumbles Shekel while dialing another number.

The phone on the other end rings, and rings, and continues ringing, and Shekel is forced to try again three more times before getting an answer.

“[Inspector Doodle of the Buchtseite Guard. How may I help you today?]” says a male with a disgustingly cheerful voice.

Shekel rubs his brow, trying to keep his irritated growl in check. “[Doodle, it’s Gruber. Pack up your saddle, we’re going on a trip.]”

“[We are?]”

Shekel hangs up.

=**********=

Pinkie Pie bursts into her childhood home, eyes wide and panting and covered with a layer of frost that slowly melts away from the warmth of Laughter’s necklace. The howling snowstorm outside blows piercing cold wind and flakes into the house, covering the worn floor in a thin layer of frost and snow. Pinkie Pie slams the door shut with both of her forehooves and stays there, head bowed and hyperventilating. Some of the snow manages to slide underneath the door and cake her hooves in frost, but Pinkie Pie doesn’t move. She stares at the door, legs and lips trembling, and soon she slides to the floor and sobs. Her cries overtake the creaking from the aged house and the terrifying wind, and not even Laughter’s warmth is saving her. Pinkie Pie presses her back against the door, not caring that her puffy tail is being weighed down by the flakes building up on it, or the shiver she’s getting from the cold.

Pinkie Pie sniffles, yanks off her necklace and holds it in front of her eyes. “Why did you pick me? You know what I am and still you picked me!”

When all she gets is silence, she grits her teeth and throws it into across the room. It bounces a couple of times and lands in the fireplace, kicking up a cloud of soot upon impact, and Pinkie Pie clambers to her feet. She knows the Elements are alive! She’s seen and felt Laughter’s comfort, and yet it still refuses to speak!

“I know you’re alive!” screams Pinkie Pie tearfully as she points at the necklace. “So why me! Why did you pick me! Why not Cloud Kicker! She’s always happy and isn’t bucking possessed!”

No answer.

Pinkie Pie slumps to the floor, releasing a tormented groan. “Is it because I was with Twilight on our first adventure? I was only doing what I had to do to welcome her! I could tell she was lonely.”

Pinkie Pie stares at the necklace, still hoping that she will get an answer from it. An answer in the form of a deep, manly voice, or a kind, motherly one. Something, anything, will do! When there is no response, yet again, she sighs and lays down on the floor, poking at one of the firewood logs stacked near the mantel.

“Just like Flutters and Dashie... and Spike and AJ... and-” she tries to scowl, but ends up squeezing tears out of her eyes and has to take a breath to break a wet bubble in her throat “-Rarity.”

“Yeah, yeah, the meanies were lonely, blah blah blah,” says Pinkamena rudely from behind, and accompanying her is the potent scent of kerosene oil.

Pinkie Pie’s ears perk and her whole body tenses as she slowly stands up, and when she hears a liquid slosh around and splash on the upholstery, she turns around and stares, horrified by what she’s seeing. Pinkamena is liberally splashing the floor, walls, and furniture with the semi-clear fluid. Pinkie Pie scrunches up her nose as she puts her hoof over it while Pinkamena’s twisted grin grows larger, and it practically takes up her whole face when she splashes the family photo on the wall with a generous amount of the flammable fluid.

“What are you doing!” cries Pinkie Pie as she fumbles to put Laughter around her neck.

“I am watching out for you, as I have always done, silly,” says Pinkamena, snickering and commenting on how she’s always hated that “stupid chair” when she splashes some oil on her father’s ratty recliner. When the container of oil is empty, she carelessly tosses it aside and grins at Pinkie Pie. “And now, looky here, I am about to burn down a big block of our misery!”

“Are you insane!” yells Pinkie Pie, even more horrified now.

“No, but you are. Do you want to sing?”

“No, I don’t want to sing!”

“Why not? Laughter always wants to sing and dance with everypony.” Pinkamena huffs and lowers her head for second. “Oh well, I guess you weren't meant to be Laughter after all.” Then her head snaps up, grinning and eyes getting a shade of green. “But I want to sing! I just feel so happy right now!”

Pinkamena bounces past Pinkie Pie, singing cheerfully:

“Ohhh, who wants to set your world on fiiiiire?

I do! I do!

Who wants to burn the rot that eats your heart?

I do! I do!

Oh yes, yes, yes, yes I do!

I have but one desire, and that is you.

I want to set you free so you can beam with glee!

Free from this, free from that, free, free, free!

Freeeeeeeee!

I want to set the bad of your world on fiiiiire to warm your heeeeeart.”

While Pinkamena sings, Pinkie Pie watches, backing up slowly against the wall until her rump is against it, and even then she continues backing up until she is squished against it. Her ears droop and she whimpers while placing her hoof protectively over Laughter’s necklace. She hears Pinkamena sing in the kitchen as she rummages through the cupboards and drawers carelessly.

“It’s too bad your friends were fakes,

I tried to warn you of the lies and greed of those freaks,

But you still believed.

Now you see the pain they made.

Now you see they must go away.

Let me set the bad of your world on fire,

To free you and me from the misery of their deeds!”

Pinkie Pie shakes her head and holds up her hoof, begging Pinkamena not to burn the house when her twisted clone skillfully dances out of the kitchen on her hind legs with a lit kerosene lamp in her forehoof. She giggles madly, even though the smoke rising off of her hoof shows that the lamp is burning her, and her shadows dance along the wall as if the demons of Hell are dancing in cadence to her number.

“Lets set these things on fiiiiire,

Just you and me,

To set us free from this prison of misery!”

Pinkamena curls her arm and aims the lamp at the family photo.

“Adios, Tavi and Poppy!”

Pinkie Pie scrambles to her hooves and charges Pinkamena, screaming for her to stop, but everything seems to go in slow motion. Her hooves feel heavy and she finds it hard to breathe as Pinkamena cackles and throws the lamp. It spins slowly in the air, barely out of Pinkie Pie’s reach, and when it hits Octavia’s face, the glass shatters and oily fire spreads wildly all over, engulfing the picture in seconds.

Pinkie Pie lands on the floor and lifts her head up and watches in horror as the fire spreads along the wall in thick hellish fingers. The pictures and wallpaper curl and peel away in ashy flakes, shrouding the room in lung burning darkness. Pinkie Pie coughs and covers her mouth with her hoof, and her tears clean off trails of soot that is clinging to her coat. But Pinkamena, on the other hand, continues with her demented theatrics, now bucking and smashing things to add to her musical number.

Pinkamena knocks over a bookcase, and Pinkie Pie shields herself from the heat wave it pushed towards her, covering her in more soot. The books are nearly engulfed in an instant.

“Sayonara, AJ and Shy!”

Pinkamena then grabs a poker and bats a gravy boat off of a table; it sails through the air, barely missing Pinkie Pie’s head, and flies straight through the window and disappears in the freezing storm.

“Godspeed, Dashie!”

Pinkie Pie scrambles towards the front door, narrowly avoiding a burning beam that crumbles to flaming splinters when it crashes into the floor. Pinkie Pie rams her shoulder against the door, and she breaks through with unexpected ease. She sails through the air with large splinters of the door around her, and a fireball rolls out from the new opening and breaks through the windows, sending hellish smoke into the dark sky. After landing, Pinkie Pie’s lungs have the air pushed out, and she coughs and frantically feels the necklace to make sure it is still on her. She breathes a sigh of relief when she finds it still on, but she forces herself to turn around, when Pinkamena’s song flows smoothly out from the fire.

“And good riddance, Twili and Rarity!

None of you will be missed!”

Pinkie Pie steps back as Pinkamena marches out of the fire, looking proud at what she’s done, and her pink coat and flat mane seemingly unaffected by the heat and ashy cloud around her. The shadows from the fire stretch towards Pinkie Pie, and no matter how far she backs up, the shadows still reach her, with Pinkamena’s shadow covering her. Pinkie Pie whimpers and looks at the shadows, becoming more terrified when she sees red eyes and taunting smiles. The closer Pinkamena gets to Pinkie Pie, the more menacing her appearance becomes. The fire behind her bathes her in an ominous glow and it almost appears that she has the full support of all the evil in the world behind her.

“And no need to beg for mercy,

‘Cause you can’t have any.

You’ll go down to Tirrac’s Tartarus where you belong,

To roast for what you’ve done!”

Pinkamena does a quick, sporadic jig while mimicking a trumpet.

“C’mon, Pinkie!

I’m going to set your world on fiiiiire!

I will! I will!

Oh yes, I will! I will!

Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes I will!

‘Cause you are all I am and I want you free.

I want you beam with glee!

I want you freeeeeeeee!

Yeah!”

Pinkamena stands up on her hind legs and bows theatrically as Pinkie Pie’s childhood home collapses on itself in a raging inferno. When the roof collapses, a ball of fire shoots into the sky, sending random bits of debris shooting off in different directions like fireworks. The world is bathed in the fire’s hue and the surrounding area is affected by the uncomfortable heat radiating from the cabin, and Pinkie Pie can’t help but think that she saw a skull in the rising flames.

Pinkamena drops to her four legs and grins maniacally at Pinkie Pie, but her smile is soon replaced with a pout. Pinkie Pie falls on her haunches and gapes at the fire eating away at her home. It wasn’t a pleasant place, but it was still her home. She covers her mouth her hoof and her shoulders buckle as she sobs into her hoof.

“What? No applause?” asks Pinkamena in phony disappointment.

Pinkie Pie’s sobbing turns into wails and she collapses to the ground, curling up in a ball and bringing her tail to her chest in a feeble attempt to give her comfort. A comfort that she is being denied. Over the crackling fire, she can hear the gravel crunch under Pinkamena’s hooves, and she can feel her eyes on her, too. Pinkie Pie wishes for Spike to show up and save her from the menace, to take her away to another place that isn’t a frozen wasteland. A place like the Sugarcube Corner, where she can enjoy all the pastries and milkshakes and umbrella hats she wants.

“You know, it is very difficult carrying a tune when you have a sudden musical number,” comments Pinkamena casually.

“You burned it down,” sobs Pinkie Pie.

“Well, duh. What’d you want me to do? Repaint it? Puh-leeze, you and me both hated that place.”

Pinkie Pie looks at Pinkamena, shivering and eyes hurting from how hard she is crying, and she shrinks further into her ball, unable to look at her clone, when her eyes shift to green. Pinkamena lowers herself and grabs Pinkie Pie’s cheeks and jerks her head towards her so that she is forced to look in her eyes. Pinkie Pie whimpers and her eyes drift up towards the ash choked clouds that are blocking her view of Celestia’s sun.

“Why have you left me?” whimpers Pinkie Pie in a near impossible to hear tone.

Pinkamena flashes a sharp, toothy grin and hoists Pinkie Pie up. She puts up no resistance whatsoever, she is like a ragdoll in Pinkamena’s grip.

“Oh you silly filly, Celestia was never with you,” coos Pinkamena sinisterly, her eyes now emerald. “You’ve been alone ever since you were a cute little baby. But, hey, at least you got a friend like me!”

[[[[O]]]]

“I don’t want you!” screams Pinkie Pie.

“Don’t want who?”

Pinkie Pie opens her tear soaked eyes and sees an old ibex and a chubby donkey in front of her. The ibex introduces himself as Inspector Shekel Gruber and the donkey to be Inspector Snicker Doodle, but Pinkie Pie doesn’t pay much attention to them. She is more concerned about being tied up in a straight jacket and sitting in a corner of a white room with cushions as walls and a bright light shining down on her.

Pinkie Pie sniffles and wipes her cheek on her shoulder, trying to dry her coat from the tears that wet it.

“Where am I?” she asks wearily.

“You are in the Sommer Tal Geistig Institution, Ms. Pie,” says Shekel.

“How long have I been here?”

“Not even a day.”

“Oh, so not that long, then.” Pinkie Pie then sighs and looks at the padded floor. “So, are you guys here to ask about what happened at Iron Will’s place?”

Shekel nods. “That is correct.”

“Thought so.”

Then there is silence. Pinkie Pie stares at Shekel, and he stares back, both of them don’t say a word or move their lips, or show any signs of having anything on their mind. If the situation wasn’t so bleak, then Pinkie Pie would’ve thought that she had just became part of a spontaneous staring contest.

“You blinked,” says Pinkie Pie.

“And you’re point?” remarks Shekel.

“No point, I just felt like saying it.”

“Ms. Pie, I really don’t feel like playing any games, so you can do one of two things: Talk or go to sleep. The choice is yours.”

“I slept enough, I think. I’m not really sure if I’ve been asleep or awake. I mean, I must’ve done something pretty bad to be locked up in here.”

“You slaughtered a bunch of ponies at Iron Will’s, and when you were brought in the station for questioning you had a burst of violence that left many of our guards injured. And you were singing, too.”

Pinkie Pie looks down at the floor, shaken up by what she was told. “Yeah, that was not me. That was Pinkamena. My evil side. She has a way of ruining things.”

Pinkie Pie’s whole body sulks at the familiarity of her words regarding Twilight, which then makes her think that the League got to her and roughed the information out. Just thinking about what the League did to Twilight sends shivers down to her bone and brings tears to her eyes, knowing that she was the link.

Pinkie Pie awkwardly wipes her eyes on her shoulders.

“I shouldn’t have dragged her into this,” mutters Pinkie Pie quietly.

“Dragged who?” asks Shekel.

“Twilight, a... an acquaintance that is kinda like a friend again, but not really. I think we got a mutual understanding of our, um, problem...”

“I see. Well, Ms. Pie, we will not be talking about your friends or acquaintances, we will be talking about what happened at Iron Will’s residence. We found very few, and two of them don’t know the end and the other is still in shock of what happened.”

“And you’re asking a pony in a straight jacket? Seriously? Doesn’t that seem, I don’t know, kinda dumb?”

Shekel nods. “Yes, I do not like it, but only you know the whole story of that night. And the quicker you tell your story, the quicker you can enjoy your cell in peace.”

Pinkie Pie forces herself to smile. “Buddy, I would love to enjoy anything, but I can’t since I got a certain somepony-”

“Someone.”

“In my head making a mess of things. But I’ll still talk, it’s supposed to be good for the nerves or psychological issues or something like that.”

As soon as Pinkie Pie finishes her sentence, her stomach growls. She smiles apologetically at Shekel when she notices his arched brow.

“Would it be alright if you guys brought me a snack?” Her stomach growls again, this time louder, and her ears droop when Doodle glances at Shekel questionably. “Please.”

Shekel turns to Doodle and orders him to get her a snack, and once he leaves, Pinkie Pie smiles gratefully at him.

“Thanks, it’s been a while since I ate, and I got a high metabolism so I have to eat a lot,” says Pinkie Pie. “By the way, you speak Equestrian really, really good. Did you use to live in Equestria?”

“That is none of your concern,” replies Shekel coldly.

Pinkie Pie cringes slightly from his tone, then she looks at his injured hoof. “So, what happened to your hoof?” He scowls and she once again smiles, only this time nervously. “I mean, I noticed that it is not really... um... covered right with the fur. In fact, it kinda reminds me of Golden Harvest’s hoof. She has ‘earth pony magic’ and it causes some balding in her hoof since it is not natural for an earth pony to have magic.”

Shekel’s scowl deepens. “We are not here to talk about me, we are here to talk about you.”

“Sorry, I just had a rough dream and I’m trying to keep my mind busy so I don’t think about it. But it just seems like the more I try not to think about it, the more I think about it. Does that make sense?”

Shekel’s only response is a cold stare, and Pinkie Pie’s ears droop and she looks down, knowing that Shekel is not in a talking mood. The minutes of boredom tick by, and the only noise in the room is from Pinkie Pie’s grumbling stomach. But when Doodle walk back in, she beams and straightens up in her seat while Shekel mutters something that almost sounds like a thanks. However, Pinkie Pie’s smile fades when she sees that the donkey brought her something that can only be described as a disgusting. Granted, Pinkie Pie isn’t one to turn down food in most occasions, but whatever the snack is, it is truly too nasty to describe, and she wouldn’t even touch it if she weren’t starving. She reluctantly opens her mouth and lets Doodle stuff it in, and when she actually eats it, she has to suppress her gag reflex and urge to cry from how horrible it tasted. Thankfully he also brought her water to wash the vile taste away.

After Pinkie Pie has her fill, she smacks her lips and wipes her tongue against her teeth, and despite the abomination’s taste, it filled her up nicely. Her stomach is at peace and she is ready to talk. She adjusts herself so that she is sitting in the corner, and presses herself against the soft walls for the best comfort she can give her back.

“I’m guessing you guys want this from the top,” says Pinkie Pie.

Shekel says something to Doodle before nodding to Pinkie Pie and motioning her to speak. Pinkie Pie takes a moment to collect her thoughts.

<<<>>>

When I landed at the zeppelin port I was disguised as a gypsy. But it really wasn’t that good, and I think the only reason why nopony figured out who I was, was because I was sitting in the very back by the window, and I also don’t look as good as I used to. During the trip I wanted to sleep and eat, but all I got was one of those stupid little bowls of peanuts and a small glass of water. And I couldn’t sleep because I was too scared too.

“What do you mean?”

Well, put it this way, I have a sixth sense, I call it my Pinkie Sense, and it alerts me whenever danger is around the corner. I usually get specific twitches, but I have just been feeling sick a lot lately. Like I can’t eat or drink as much because I’m too busy worrying.

“Maybe you are just sick.”

No, I know my body, and I know when I’m sick. I’m not sick -physically speaking- it is my Pinkie Senses going on overdrive. And the closer I got to Bernese, the more sick I got. When I landed, I had to run to the bathroom because I thought I was going to puke. I didn’t puke though, but it did make me feel weird. You know that weird feeling you get when you try to puke but you can’t? Yeah, that’s what I got.

So when I left the bathroom, I tried to get something to eat at a cafe at the zeppelin port. I ordered the biggest meal they got, but couldn’t finish it, which was odd and annoying since I could eat an entire triple decker chocolate cake all by myself. With frosting and little strawberries on it, too. I couldn’t even take a to-go box because that place didn’t have any, and I was hoping to at least have a snack afterward, but nope, they were too cheap to have to-go boxes! I mean, seriously, what zeppelin port eating place doesn’t have to-go boxes when basically everypony-

“Everyone.”

Everyone there is on the move?

“I do not know, but why don’t you tell me what you did next.”

After I left, I had to change my disguise from the gypsy to my greatest disguise ever. My Fluttershy suit.

“Your what?”

My Fluttershy suit. It is a perfect replica of Fluttershy. From her cutie mark, all the way down to the individual strands making up her adorable mane and tail. It was expensive, but when I showed up at the Nightmare Night’s costume party, the reactions were priceless! I mean, Rarity actually thought I was Fluttershy and-

“We are not here to talk about costume parties, Ms. Pie. We are here to talk about what happened at Iron Will’s.”

Do you want me to fast forward to Iron Will’s place?

“Is there anything relevant in between?”

You are asking a mare who is locked up in an insane asylum if she has anything relevant to say? Everything relevant to me would be irrelevant to you because I love talking and I haven’t talked as much as I used to talk because I didn’t feel like talking, and now I get a chance to talk about anything I want to talk about everything regarding the anything, but most of what I think would be relevant to talk about would be irrelevant to you since you aren’t a talker and most likely a loner in desperate need of a hug.

“Feel better?”

...

Yeah, a little bit. That was a mouthful. Twilight would chew me out for improper use of grammar or the fact that I refused to breathe for that moment. Speaking of Twilight, I should’ve made a Twilight suit. That would’ve been even better than the-

“Tell me about what happened at Iron Will’s home.”

Oh, alright.

It took me a little while, but I managed to make it to Iron Will’s place after taking a train and a nice long walk. When I arrived at his town, Fluttershy was very popular since I kept getting stopped and asked to autograph pictures from her short lived modeling career. I even autographed someone’s juice box, which was pretty dang hard.

“So you forged your friend’s signature?”

I... I guess I can call Fluttershy a friend. She wasn’t a jerk to me when things got bad. And I didn’t forge her signature, I used my regular mouth writing, only I put “Fluttershy” instead of “Pinkie Pie”. I know I ruined some dreams, but I was in a rush, and last time I tried forging, I got grounded for a week, and missed out on a fieldtrip to Canterlot. Which would’ve-

“Why don’t we continue with your story about your visit to Iron Will’s?”

Okay, back to the swing of things.

There I was, shocked about how big and nice his place was. I could tell he took care of his property. I couldn’t see any sign of dead grass, the statues were clean of poop and polished, and his paint looked like it had a fresh coat. And the funny thing is, when I got up to the gate, I was let in automatically and greeted like an esteemed guest. Granted I had no idea what the gatekeepers were saying, but they seemed to be okay with a smile and nod. I was confused at first, but I soon found out why I was treated with such manners.

So, I approached the house, carefully, because I am weirded out by all of the politeness going on towards me, and I had to take a moment to catch my breath because my Pinkie Senses were really getting the best of me at that point.

When I reached the door I raised my hoof, ready to knock holes in the door. But then I remembered I was disguised as Fluttershy, and nopony can hear her knock. Not even Celestia heard her knock when she was visiting Twilight, and she’s got a great set of ears. So I did the only reasonable thing: I knocked very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very-

“Okay, I get it.”

Very quietly. Naturally, nobody came, so I did the next best thing: I rang the doorbell. Next thing I know, I hear thundering hoofsteps, someone shouting in your angry language cheerfully about something, and the door is yanked open, and there he is: Iron Will. I admit, I was a bit nervous and surprised to see him, since last time I saw him he turned Fluttershy into a jerk. But I was surprised because he had painted himself with the colors and symbol of some sports team. He was even wearing a tie that had the same symbols on it. I think that day was game day.

When he saw me, his smile changed to a confused look, cocked head and raised eyebrow and all.

Then he scratched his head and said: “That was fast.”

I was confused, so I said: “What was fast?” in my best Fluttershy impression, which was apparently super amazing because he answered immediately.

“Getting the soda,” he said. “Where is the soda? And why did you ring? Did you lose the keys again?”

Then it dawned on me. The reason why I was being treated with such respect and being asked about soda and keys is because I -I mean Fluttershy- lived with Iron Will! Talk about awkward.

“As if disguising yourself as one of your friends isn’t awkward enough.”

Like you’ve never wanted to disguise yourself as a friend for a joke.

“I haven’t.”

Oh... well, okay then. I guess I can-

“Continue with your story.”

...Yeah.

So, there I was, shaking in my skin and heart racing and sweating like a pig in a desert, and struggling to think of a way out of the mess I just put myself in. But before I could even do anything, Iron Will scooped me up and hugged me. Tight. Very tight. Like tight enough to squeeze the air out of my lungs and make me sound like a squeaky toy. Then he started nuzzling me! And on top of that, my back started to hurt and I felt like I was being crushed to death! I tried to get him to let go, but I couldn’t because I was having trouble breathing, and he was talking over me.

While he was hugging the life outta me, he said: “I knew it! I’ve been working you too hard, and you’re suffering because of it!”

As I am sitting there, trying to get away, he tightens his grip, making it harder for me to breathe and speak, and he goes on to saying: “You said you could handle it, but I should’ve known you were only trying to make me happy!”

Yeah, I’m not kidding, I think he and Fluttershy had a thing going on, and he was the overprotective-coltfriend-who-worries-about-his-mare-when-she-is-not-in-his-line-of-sight kind of person. I kinda felt bad for Big Mac, since I tried hooking them up and -wait! Don’t say anything, I’m getting back on track.

Okay... But praise Celestia, I was saved by the very pony I was impersonating. Fluttershy arrived not a second too late!

She was all like: “Um... Iron Will, what are you doing?”

Iron Will stopped hugging and nuzzling me, giving me a chance to be able to breathe, and the first thing I did is look over my shoulder. I saw Fluttershy standing there, looking confused and carrying bottles of soda and juice boxes and boxes of frozen pizza in her saddlebags. It took Iron Will a few seconds to realize what he was seeing, but even then, he was still confused. So he held me away at arm’s length with the greatest confused look ever. I wish I had a picture, because it was truly priceless. But when my fake wing fell off, his jaw dropped and I thought he was going to have a heart attack. All I really could do at that point is wave and say “Hi” in my normal voice. And that’s exactly what I did.

Long story short: Iron Will freaked out, Fluttershy gave me the Stare, I became paralyzed, and they brought me inside. You see, Fluttershy hated that Fluttershy suit, and I kinda told her I destroyed it. Her living with Iron Will definitely changed her, because she was all yelling and screaming at me in third pony about how I lied to her, scared her, and a bunch of other stuff.

“Fluttershy... yelling and screaming... Are we thinking of the same pegasus?”

Okay, she wasn’t yelling-yelling, but she was scolding me, and it still wasn’t pretty. It takes a lot, but when you get Fluttershy mad, she will tear you a new one and then shove something sharp and spiky up it.

“Interesting visual.”

I thought so, too. Anyway, when everyone calmed down, I showed Iron Will the money and he brought me to the basement where the suit was. I was starting to feel super sick now, and had to use Fluttershy for support so she could take me to the bathroom so I could go through another round of thinking-but-not-having-to-puke. Iron Will offered to give me some medicine, but I knew it would be worthless. We argued a little bit, but I convinced them to let me see the suit.

“The suit you were wearing when we found you, yes?”

Correctomundo, buddy.

“I am not your buddy.”

Yeah, you definitely need a hug.

“You need to tell what happened next.”

Alright. I don’t think Fluttershy knew of Iron Will’s side business because when we were heading towards the suit, her expressions spoke for her as we went past destroyed targets and pinned up blueprints of suits and weapons. She was confused, surprised, scared, angry, and worried, and all that went up in a snap when we got to the room where the suit was being held. It looked beautiful sitting on the pedestal with the light shining down on it like Celestia had blessed it herself. I was honestly too happy at the moment to care about my Pinkie Senses. Finally, after all the weeks of trouble and near death experiences, I finally got the suit. But then I got a sudden sadness.

The suit was made for Trixie so she could stand a fighting chance against Roar Shock, but Trixie had died when we were betrayed by the EIB. My sister died the same night... she tried to kill me, but Rainbow Dash killed her first. And the thing is, she thought I was somepony else, and wanted to avenge my death. It reminded me of what Celestia had told me. She told me that I would get Trixie killed for my actions, just like I got Spike killed. Those little memories, and my Pinkie Senses on constant alarm, I could only wonder what bad thing would happen next... like who was going to die that night...?

I tried to play it cool, but Fluttershy knew something was wrong. She kept giving me those looks she always gave me and my... friends when she felt something was wrong. She kept asking: “Pinkie, are you okay?”, “Are you sure you’re okay?”, “You don’t look well, do you want me to get you a room prepared so you can rest?”

Honestly, it got annoying, but I knew she was only trying to help, and my Pinkie Senses constantly giving me the shivers is what was really grinding my gears. Eventually I had to be just a tad bit firm with her to get her to stop pestering me, and she stopped after apologizing and hiding behind her mane.

When we finally got around to me actually putting on the suit, I was twitching all over and I had to try super hard not to let my twitches show. Fluttershy was getting more worried at that point because I think she saw me twitching, or at least trying not to twitch, and Iron Will was too busy fitting me with the suit. The suit was actually looser than I thought, though. I mean, I knew Trixie was big and butch, but I didn’t realize how big and butch she had become until I actually put the suit on. I mean, with that suit on, and the voice disguiser, anypony could easily mistake her for a guy.

“So the suit was for Trixie?”’

Yeah.

“And how much was she going to pay?”

Oh... well, um, kind of a funny story, actually. You see, Trixie would be paying with money from her inheritance that turned out to be confiscated by an obscure law I have never heard of, but she wouldn’t have known because I would’ve taken the three hundred grand and given it to Iron Will.

“Wait, Trixie didn’t know?”

...No... No, she didn’t. But I would’ve paid her back!

“How did you convince her to let you measure her for the suit if she did not know?”

She didn’t know anything! It would’ve been a big surprise for her! She didn’t even know that I measured her because I measured her in her sleep!

“You measured her in her sleep?”

Yeah.

“And that did not seem the slightest bit strange to you? Or even-?”

Pervy? C’mon, you’re asking a mare tied up in a straight jacket if she thought that it was strange or pervy to measure somepony in their sleep. But, yes, it felt weird, and at first I was really ridiculously careful. So careful that I sweat buckets whenever I touched her because she got very nasty when she thought somepony was feeling her up. But then I found out that she was not only a very heavy sleeper, but she also snored louder than any normal pony, and she drooled a lot. I didn’t tell her, though, because she was very sensitive, kinda like a toddler. On the outside, she was mean, had some serious ego problems, and got very dangerous when she felt threatened. But on the inside, she was caring and a child at heart who just wanted friends, like me. Only, I wasn’t scared to ask for them and could sing pretty well, whereas Trixie had some serious trust issues and couldn’t sing even if the survival of time and space depended on it. But I know I only made her trusting problems worse, and I wish I could’ve fixed it before she died...

“Ms. Pie, we aren’t here to talk about Trixie, we are here to talk about you and what happened at Iron Will’s residence.”

Right, because nobody wants to hear about how much she changed-

“Ignore her, and tell me what happened-”

Because that would be- Ignore her!? Are you serious!? You want me to stop talking about one of my only true friends after all the crap I’ve been through? Are you- are you serious!? Please tell me you’re joking because that joke is not funny! And I know funny because I am the Element of Laughter!

<<>>

“You were the Element of Laughter,” snaps Shekel. “The Elements of Harmony are no more because you decided to play dead.”

Pinkie Pie glares at Shekel, and Doodle eyes both of them nervously while his reluctant partner towers above the cuffed mare.

“I’m still Laughter,” says Pinkie Pie softly as tears stream down her cheeks. “I was chosen to be Laughter. Me. I-I-I am Laughter... I want to be Laughter.” Pinkie Pie looks down, her trapped shoulders buckling while sobbing. “I wanted to make others happy, but it cost me everything! I don’t have a family anymore. My friends are gone, and not even Celestia likes me anymore!”

Pinkie Pie starts shaking her head and mumbling incoherently, but to Shekel, it kind of sounds like she’s arguing with herself. While Shekel watches, Doodle carefully approaches him and nudges him on the shoulder, saying something that makes Shekel scowl at him.

Pinkie Pie looks up at Shekel, glaring and sniffling. “Just go,” she says in a low, threatening tone. “Auntie Pinkie wants to be alone right now.”

It is just then that the door opens and a nurse wearing the traditional white scrub with the blocky hat storms in, furiously shouting at the two inspectors. She steps in front of them and continues yelling at them until they leave. Pinkie Pie watches the two leave, her glare unwavering, and when Shekel turns to give her one last look, her eyes narrow and the nurse shouts at him while waving her hoof theatrically. Shekel leaves and the nurse kneels next to Pinkie Pie and hugs her close while rocking her and shushing her gently. Pinkie Pie closes her eyes and cries softly into the nurses chest.

oooOOOooo

In the hallway, Shekel and Doodle silently pass other nurses and doctors, but Doodle keeps glancing at Shekel out of the corner of his eye while the ibex keeps his focus straight ahead.

“[So],” begins Doodle nervously, “[you mind telling me what happened in there?]”

“[Your suspect is a nut],” says Shekel sharply.

“[Well, she seemed okay until you said something to her. What did you say?]”

Shekel stops and glares at Doodle, and the donkey shrinks back slightly.

“[I told her the truth, and she didn’t like it],” growls the ibex.

Doodle cocks head head slightly. “[What was the truth?]”

Shekel sighs and starts walking again, this time with his head down and voice quiet. “[She shouldn’t cling to those she thinks dead.]” Then in a louder tone. “[Tell the Chief that I won’t be doing any more double cases. I have too much work to do.]”

=**********=

Trixie’s eyes slowly open, and she after a minute of laying on a surprisingly comfortable cot, she looks around to assess her situation. She is in a bare, white room, covered in strap, IVs connected to bloodbags and medication, and a dozen other wires that seemingly serve no purpose. She stares off into space, listening to the machinery and the quiet conversations of the passing doctors. The longer Trixie sits there, the more her mind wanders towards the dreaded interrogation regarding her explosive chase in the middle of the city. As she waits, she wonders how she will be interrogated. Will they strap her down and inject her with poison, like what Brisk Wind did? Or will they lock her in a dungeon and play screeching music while keeping bright lights shining on her face? The possibilities of torture are limitless!

The longer Trixie waits, the more she plots her escape. She tries tugging on the straps, but her hooves barely move, and when she tries again, this time straining her muscles to the limit, she is forced to go limp because the IVs in her started shifting around, and that alone is a painfully uncomfortable. Trixie then attempts to use her magic, but once her horn sparks, she gets the electric punch to the forehead signaling a magic backlash. For a normal unicorn, a magic backlash would be something that would bring them to tears from the pain and emotional shock of their horn betraying them. However, Trixie has felt worse things, both physically and emotionally, than magical backlash, so all she really does is mentally fold her hooves across her chest and glare at the ceiling resentfully with some tears in her eyes. That goes without saying that her little attempt at magic made the machines she is strapped to spike.

“Great,” mutters Trixie.

She hears a set of hooves approach her room, and she thinks nothing of it until the door opens. Trixie squeezes her eyes shut and pretends to be sleeping, even going as far as throwing in a soft snore. She can hear the visitor approach her bed, and figures its a doctor when they stop by her bed. But when she hears the visitor pull up a chair, her suspicions spike.

“Your snore is too soft for you to be sleeping,” says a familiar voice.

Trixie’s eyes gradually open and she looks to her side, scowling. But when she sees who’s next to her, she jolts up in her bed, or tries to at least. The straps keep her locked down good and tight, and the IVs in her make the sudden movement excruciating. She yelps and crashes down in her bed, trying to hold back her tears by squeezing her eyes shut. She can just picture the visitor shaking his head.

“You always had your moments,” he says with a barely noticeable smirk. Trixie looks to her side again, this time her scowl replaced with painful confusion as Gray Muffin puts his hat on Trixie’s bed. “But with your moments of stupidity, you always had a moment of admirance to counter it.”

“You’re dead... They said that you were dead,” says Trixie, too weak and tired from the medications and blood loss to express her shock effectively at the moment.

Gray Muffin arches an eyebrow. “You believe the words of liars and murderers?”

Trixie frowns. “Aren’t we all murderers?”

“No. We may kill, but we kill those who harm the innocent. That does not make us murderers, it makes us the Agents of Justice.”

Trixie slouches in her bed and stares at a discoloration on the ceiling that strangely looks like an “M”.

“Wow, you sure know how twist words,” she says with a hint of annoyance.

Trixie waits for Gray Muffin to make a comeback or rebuke her words, but he is silent. All he really does is stare at her. His eyes scan the hospital equipment strapped to her, and the straps holding her down. Trixie watches him more intently, and gets more and more uneasy as he continues his silent exploration.

“Can you say something? You’re creeping me out,” says Trixie sharply.

“I was admiring you for how far you have gone with every little training,” says Gray Muffin, then his lips curl to a frown. “And yet, I am also pitying you. If I had not rushed you, then you would not be broken and confused.”

“Confused? Confused about what?” says Trixie angrily. “Confused about why the League trying to kill me after I tried to uphold your values? Or confused about why I’m always getting the short end of the stick? Because if you have answers for that, I would love to hear them!”

Gray Muffin stares at Trixie regretfully, and she glares back at him in such a way she wouldn’t dare to do in what seems like a lifetime ago. But she doesn’t care if she’s glaring daggers at her mentor, even though she is strapped to a hospital bed. The two ponies stare at each other for a little while, with the only noise being a hypnotic ticking of the clock and the whirs and clicks from the medical equipment. Finally, after nearly a minute of pregnant silence, Gray Muffin releases a deep sigh and shakes his head sadly.

“I do not know why you get the worst of things, that is something beyond our perception. That is a question for the Divine Powers.”

Trixie scoffs and turns her focus to the “M” on the ceiling again. “Yeah, pray about it, since they are so eager to make everypony’s life easier. Maybe I can ask them why that stupid number keeps showing up while I’m at it.”

“As for your first question,” continues Gray Muffin with a burst of sternness, “you have not been upholding our values.”

Trixie’s head snaps to Gray Muffin, and she makes a whiney screaming mix as she screams: “What!”

“You went on to fight as an Agent of Justice, which I commemorate you for, but you have not saved Canterlot by showing mercy towards the wicked. You only made it worse for yourself and for those around you.”

Trixie’s jaw drops. “I did not!”

“Everything has a reaction, and you leaving survivors puts you, and those you care about, and everypony else around you, at risk for retaliation by these monsters. Many innocents were hurt and killed at your apartment and the griffin enclave because of your unwillingness to take a life. And your lack of control nearly leveled Buchtseite, killing more innocent. Just like with Ponyville.”

Trixie lowers her eyes, and finds it hard to breath with the wet lump in her throat.

Gray Muffin also looks down shamefully. “But the blame is on my shoulders as well. You do not know how to control your magic, and I never trained you properly. And for that, the terrible things that have happened are my fault more than yours.”

Gray Muffin looks at the clock hanging on the wall, mutters about not having enough time and needing to finish the conversation. This confuses Trixie, but she guesses that he’s on some kind of secret mission, which makes her wonder why he is not killing her on the spot right now since she’s on the League’s hit list.

Gray Muffin looks back at Trixie solemnly. “I am truly sorry you have been marked, Trixie, but the things that happen are necessary for the survival of Justice. And until the day comes where Equestria is free from corruption and where no pony lives in fear of scum, the League will remain in the shadows as the guardians of the innocent.”

Trixie strains her neck as she looks at Gray Muffin while he puts on his hat.

“Gray Muffin, before you go, can you please answer a question?” asks Trixie, worried about what she might hear.

Gray Muffin ignores her as he walks towards the exit, but when Trixie calls for him again, he stops, and he turns his head slightly so he can see her out of the corner of his eye.

Trixie lowers her eyes, trying control her nerves. “I know Roar Shock killed my father, so...” Trixie looks at Gray Muffin, begging for an answer, “why did he let me in?”

Gray Muffin looks down. “I do not know. There are somethings not even Roar Shock will tell me. I’m sorry.”

With that, he leaves the room without uttering another word, and the door quietly clicks as it closes. Once the door shuts, Trixie closes her eyes, slumps in her bed and lets out a loud, disappointing whimper.

“Don't fret, darlin', ya should be proud of yerself,” says Sunshine.

Trixie's eyes snap open and she shrieks and tries to break free from her straps as Sunshine looms over her, licking his lips like a dog eagerly awaiting its treat. But despite her best efforts, the only thing that happens is her straps tighten and the machines beep and ding wildly.

Sunshine chuckles and hops on top of Trixie, tail flicking and wing expanded, and he presses himself down on her, thus trapping her between him and the bed. When Trixie tries to scream for Gray Muffin, he places his nasty hoof over her mouth while shushing her. She trembles and sobs, and though Sunshine has his hoof over her mouth, filling her nose and mouth with the scent and taste of poorly kept soil, she still screams for help.

“Relax, darlin',” says Sunshine in a whisper as he gently removes her IVs, “it's just you and me here. Together. Alone, for celebration of your new direction. Be proud of your sins-” he leans in closer and gradually removes his hoof from her lips, she is still trembling, but is now sobbing quietly “-for your sins have saved you.”

Sunshine presses his muzzle against Trixie's, and her scream is muffled as his thick, slimy tongue bullies its way past her lips and into her mouth. And when Trixie feels Sunshine press his lower body against hers and start grinding she-

[[[[O]]]]

Screams awake, causing the nurse next to her jump and swear in her native language. Trixie pants and looks around the room she is in as the nurse speed walks out of the room, calling for somebody. It is a standard, white hospital room with minimal decorations, and she is also strapped up to machines and IVs while being help down by very sturdy straps. Just like in her dream. She really wants to wipe the sweat off of her face since it is making her itch, but the straps prevent her from doing so and she knows for a fact that her horn is cuffed, leaving her only one option. Shake her head and hope for the best. And that is exactly what she does, and she swears when she gets nauseous from her actions.

Her ears flick and scowls when two old ibexes loom over her, one in a white lab coat and the other looking like he belongs in a noir flick. The doctor has a clipboard and a stethoscope draped around his neck, and the noir looking ibex has a fancy badge hanging off of his neck too.

“Mrs. Fountain, I am Dr. Stain, and this is Inspector Gruber,” says the ibex in the lab coat, pointing at the respected subjects with a graceful motion of his hoof. “How are you feeling?”

Trixie glares at the two, and when it becomes apparent that she is not in the talking mood, the doctor's face falls and he lifts up the clipboard so he can see the data. Trixie tunes him out when he begins listing her near fatal collection of injuries. Something about a dozen broken bones, fractures left and right, internal bleeding, and road rash taking up an insane percentage of her body. Luckily for her, the doctors were nice enough to put her in emergency care and she is now on the path to rehabilitation.

“You should be fully recovered in six to eighteen months, depending on your... activities,” finishes Dr. Stain with a thin smile tugging at his lips.

Trixie's glare deepens, and Shekel also looks at Dr. Stain with a deadpanned look. Then the inspector says something to the doctor in his native language, which sparks a conversation between the two that leaves Trixie absolutely clueless as to what is going on. All she really knows is that she is in deep trouble and can't speak the ibex tongue, leaving her in deeper trouble.

The conversation finishes when the two ibexes look at Trixie, exchange a few more words, and then the doctor leaves while Shekel pulls up the chair that Gray Muffin had used in the dream. And he sits exactly where her mentor had sat, too. This weirds out Trixie a little bit, and she tries not to let it show, but she knows that she is not exactly the most subtle when it comes to hiding feelings. He then starts flipping through a folder he pulled out of his saddle, and Trixie tries to see what he’s reading by craning her neck. She has no luck in reading it, only pain from the IVs tugging against her. She winces and slumps back in her seat, hoping that she isn’t ruining her veins with her constant shifting.

“Mrs. Fountain, with the extent of your injuries, you better be thanking Luna you are alive,” says Shekel with a slight hint of malice in his tone. “You are Mrs. Trixie Fountain, correct?”

Trixie says nothing, and Shekel leans closer to her, making her scrunch her nose from the potent smell of cheap cigar in his breath. He searches her face, and she continues to glare at him, wishing he would go away so she could sleep in peace.

“Mrs. Fountain, when you were brought in, you had left dozens injured and dealt millions in property damage. That does not even include the ones you killed in cold blood.”

“It was defense,” growls Trixie. “I killed those EIB assholes to protect Monte.”

Shekel pulls out a pad from his saddle. “And what about the safety deposit box?”

Trixie shifts uneasily in her seat, her defiant glare now switched with a nervous stare. “Well, yeah, that, too. But mostly Monte since he was a big player in the whole EIB-Griffin team up and was going to testify.”

Shekel nods and scribbles something on his pad. While he does that, Trixie slouches in her bed and closes her eyes. Even with all the medication she is on, her body still feels sore and broken. She feels bloodied and beaten, and as much as she wants to think about the positive, she can't. All she can think about is Andromeda putting a bullet in Monte's skull and Brisk Wind celebrating her victory with a glass of expensive champagne.

“What do you know about Pinkie Pie?” asks Shekel suddenly.

Trixie’s brain stops working for a moment at the mentioning of an old friend, and when her mind decides to start working again, it races to figure out what Shekel would want to know about Pinkie Pie.

“Um... well, she's nice, I guess,” says Trixie uneasily. She shudders when she she remembers Pinkie Pie's demented smile and what she did to the agents and griffins at their apartment.

“You don’t sound so sure about your answer, Mrs. Fountain. If that is even your real last name.”

“Well, um, I know she is a great baker and a bit... crazy. What does this have to do with me?”

“Everything. You and your group of friends have turned Bernese into a battleground. You destroy my home, terrorize the Grand Hotel, and made one of our most beloved citizens a target for a calculated attack.”

Trixie tries to hold her hoof up to silence Shekel, but the damn straps keeps it down. “Wait, Pinkie is here?”

“Yes, and she kept referring you in past tense.”

Trixie's eyebrow raises quizzically. “Why?”

“Because she thinks you are dead. Now why would she think that?”

Trixie tries to shrug. “I don’t know. It is kind of a long story, but we kinda got separated. Can I see her?”

“No.”

“Why not!”

“It is for your own good.”

“Oh, bullshit! Let me see her! We need to talk!”

“She is in no condition to talk, and since Ms. Pie thinks you are dead, she bought herself an advanced suit that was meant for you. Care to explain?”

Trixie stares at Shekel, seething at his refusal, but she does remember how Pinkie Pie made the first Mare-Do-Well suit for her in secret, and with the mention of another one, Trixie could only guess at the design's superiority. But suit aside, even if she wanted to -which she doesn’t- she would find it hard to explain to him the events leading up to her decision to become a vigilante, never the less the kind that would require a strong, comic book type suit. There is also the aspect behind her brief, intense training with a terrorist organization with a twisted sense of justice that would no doubt come up should she divulge on the matter.

Trixie eventually comes to the conclusion that it is best not to get into such things, and so she turns her head from Shekel so she can look at the beautiful paint job of pure white. But when she sees the wall, she thinks of the time Pinkie Pie was Minty Sprinkles, and how she complimented how well painted the white wall was at Fancy Entertainment. This brings a small smile to her face.

“Who are you trying to be, Mrs. Fountain?” says Shekel sternly, completely ruining her moment of peace.

Trixie still doesn’t look at Shekel, she wants to continue staring at the wall and forget for just a moment that she is a prisoner in a foreign country.

Her ears twitch when Shekel clears his throat, and her eyes widen when a photo of the Hotel crime scene floats in front of her face. She looks to her side, expecting to see a unicorn next to Shekel, but when she sees his hoof extended slightly and glowing faintly, she scrunches in her bed. The photo drops on her lap, and more photos float out of his saddle and fall on her bed, each passing photo making Trixie flinch and the old ibex wince slightly and caste a worried glance at the door. When all the photos are on the bed, Trixie looks at Shekel’s glowing hoof, but before she can get a good look at it, he lowers it from view and locks eyes with her.

“Who are you trying to be?” repeats Shekel.

“I’m not trying to be anypony anymore,” says Trixie sadly as she lowers her eyes. “I’m too dangerous to be a hero.”

“Yes, you are quite dangerous, and I am glad you think so,” says Shekel. “Which is why we are putting you away, so you do not harm anybody else. But answer me this, why did you call yourself a hero?”

Trixie swallows her spit as her eyes lower to the paper thin blanket draped over her body. And she continues to stare at it, lost in the memories of the events leading up to her drastic change in direction. From her outperforming and ruining her competitions, to her downfall fueled by her desire to prove her superiority over Twilight, and all the way up to Barnville, Sunshine, and Gray Muffin and the League of Justice. As she thinks, her ears flick slightly in tune with the ticking clock and the tears trailing her cheeks leave an itching feeling that she really wants to scratch, but obviously can't due to the circumstances.

“Mrs. Fountain.” Trixie looks at Shekel, sniffling, and he adjusts his seat so he is closer to her. “Why did you call yourself a hero?”

Trixie takes a deep breath to break a bubble in her throat, then she looks down at the blanket again for a few moments before gathering the courage to explain herself to Shekel.

“You ever feel like you are on top of the world, like nothing could go wrong?” begins Trixie quietly; she sees Shekel barely nod out of her peripheral vision and lifts her head so she can see him. “Then you watch it all just go away in a single night? And you walk aimlessly through areas you used to go to, but now no pony wants to do anything with you, and you spend your nights crying yourself to sleep, blaming somepony else even though deep down you know it is your fault? You wanted to feel valuable, wanted to feel loved and for once in your own miserable existence have things go your way. Then when you thought you found a way, that way wasn’t good enough because one little lie destroyed it. One lie, and you realized how unloved you truly were, how worthless you were made, and how Celestia’s tests are just games to see how naive you are to believe in good things. One. Little. Lie. And you know the truth of how the world really is. Conditional.”

Shekel looks at Trixie, and with the sudden appearance of unmistakable sadness in his eyes, Trixie is sure that she hit a sore spot with him somewhere. Trixie looks down again, swallowing her tears and wishing the ibex could just go away.

“And what does this have to do with you wanting to be a hero?” asks Shekel after a moment’s pause.

Trixie hesitates, not really comfortable with the idea of talking about what happened, but Shekel’s gaze isn’t breaking, and she really wants him to leave so she can sleep.

“Mrs. Fountain, the longer you are quiet, the longer I stay here,” says Shekel, almost as if he had read Trixie’s mind.

Trixie swallows again, but that doesn't stop the tears from swelling up in her eyes.

“One night I was-” Trixie swallows again and blinks a wave of tears from her eyes as the memory of Sunshine floods back. She has to gasp for air and fight to formulate a sentence, and she tries to get Shekel to drop the subject, but he persists under the guise of investigation purposes. “One night I went to this place on the outskirts of Equestria. I was starving, dirty, nowhere to go and no bits to buy food with. I was low, and the idea of killing myself became... stronger. And then I met Sunshine. He was ugly and deformed, but he took me in, fed me, washed me... then he tried to rape me.”

Shekel’s gaze breaks just so he can scribble down what Trixie is saying.

“He poisoned me, locked me in a room, and no matter how hard I fought, he was still stronger, and every night I always think about how if it wasn’t for Gray Muffin, I would be his toy.”

Shekel looks up, pen in mouth. “And who is Gray Muffin.”

Trixie sniffles and gets a faint smile. “He is the one who saved me from Sunshine, and he is the one who trained me.”

Shekel snorts, obviously unimpressed by Gray Muffin’s work, but Trixie doesn’t care at the moment.

“When he trained me, he was tough, but always helped me. He always gave me advice and reasons for his methods.” Trixie frowns. “But he was also bitter. I could see the anger and sadness in him, and he was passionate about justice. When he saved me, I wanted him to train me so that I wouldn’t be abused like that ever again, but I think I really wanted to become an Agent of Justice when I realized how passionate he was for protecting the innocent. But I can't be him, I hurt everypony whereas he only hurt those who deserve it.”

Shekel stops writing for just a moment, and Trixie gets concerned when he underlines something on his pad. She tries to take a peek, but he spots her not so sly movement and pushes the pad to his chest. Then the door opens and Dr. Stain walks in with a clipboard around his neck and he addresses Shekel in a professional manner. The two speak for a little bit, and when they are done, Shekel turns to Trixie and more nurses come in with fresh bags of medication.

“We will have to continue our discussion at another time, Mrs. Fountain,” says Shekel as he puts his stuff in the saddlebags. “Hopefully when we meet again you will be well enough to walk.”

Trixie nods and slumps in her seat, eyes closed and welcoming the comfort of her cot and the fresh dosage of medication.

oooOOOooo

In the hallway, Shekel sits down at a bench and pulls out his pad and flips to his notes on Trixie. He stares at “Agent of Justice”, which is underlined in thick pen strokes. He thinks for a moment before he walks up an unoccupied phone room. He pays the small fee and dials the number he wants, and when he hears a familiar donkey on the other end, he adjusts himself so he can get a better look at his pad.

“[Doodle, it’s Gruber, I have a quick question.]”

“[Okay, what is it?]”

“[You remember how you talked about the Equestrian that was picked up from Iron Will’s when we were going to Pinkie Pie? The one who was in shock?]”

“[Yeah, what about her?]”

“[What did she call herself?]”

“[Lyra... Heartstrings? Yeah, Lyra Heartstrings. She’s some quality eye candy, too, if you know what I mean.]”

Shekel rubs his brow, sighing irritably. He can just picture the stupid smile that Doodle is getting from his fantasy.

“[Doodle, that is not what I’m talking about. What was her title?]”

“[Oh. Psh, I don’t know. I think she called herself an ‘Agent of Justice’, or something cheesy like that. Why?]”

Shekel hangs up and hurries out of the room.

Arc 2- 12- Gilda Grizelda -ADDITION-

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Arc 2- 13- Ink Well & Afternoon Meetings -EDITED-

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Arc 2- 14 - Letters -ADDITION-

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Arc 2- 15- Brutal Brawls Before Bedtime -EDITED-

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Arc 2- 16- Origins -ADDITION-

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Arc 2- 17- The Pre Gala -EDITED-

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Arc 2- 18- Deterioration -EDITED-

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Arc 2- 19- Ultimatum -ADDITION-

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Arc 2- 20- Betrayals -EDITED-

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Arc 2- 21- Midnight Massacre -EDITED-

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Arc 2- 22- End of Watch -ADDITION-

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Arc 2- 23- Looming War -EDITED-

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Arc 2- 24- Honesty and Loyalty -ADDITION-

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Arc 2- 25- Mare-Do-Well Returns -EDITED-

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Arc 2- 26- Reunion -ADDITION-

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Arc 2- 27- Falling Hammers -EDITED-

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Arc 2- 28- Breakable -ADDITION-

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Arc 2- 29- Dying Lights -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 01- The Demon -EDITED-

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Arc 3- 02- Recovery -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 03- Counter Moves -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 04- The Messages -EDITED-

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Arc 3- 05- Over the Edge -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 06- Moving Forward -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 07- Taking Care of Business -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 08- A Boat Ride -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 09- On the Run -EDITED-

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Arc 3- 10- The All Knowing Underdog -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 11- The Next Step -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 12- Interrogation -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 13- Snooping Rainbow -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 14- Welcome to Buchtseite -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 15- The Bank of Bernese -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 16- An Eventful Night -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 17- Vacation Gone Sour -EDITED-

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Arc 3- 18- The Beast -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 19- Departing -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 20- Truth -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 21- Lost Soul -ADDITION-

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Arc 3- 22 (Stories)

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Arc 3- 23 (Consequences)

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Arc 3- 24 (Confessions)

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Arc 3- 25 (Showdown)

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Arc 3- 26 (New Dawns)

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Arc 3- 27 (The Pieces of the Game)

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Arc 3- 28 (Last Choices)

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Arc 3- 29 (A Good Day to Fight Hard [A])

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Arc 3- 30 (A Good Day To Fight Hard [B])

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Arc 3- 31 (Canterlot's Reckoning)

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Arc 3- 32 (This Is Not the End)

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Arc 0- 01- Condemned -EDITED-

0 (Condemned)

“...And after Blueblood’s funeral, Princess Celestia locked herself in her chambers without so much as a peep. Princess Luna-”

Click.

“...The changelings must’ve had something to-”

Click.

“...And I say to you, forgiveness is for everypony! No matter your sins, the Goddess of the Sun will always have room in her heart to forgive you! But you must first forgive yourself! Forgive yourself and others can forgive you!”

Click.

An azure unicorn stallion with a messy, silvery mane slides his hoof off of the dial radio, and stares at it in silence. He wipes his glazed, bloodshot eyes with his hoof, then sniffles and pushes loose strands of his sweaty mane from his eyes.

“Is this how it ends?” he asks, gulping back his tears.

“I’m afraid so,” says a stallion with a deep, fatherly tone. The tormented unicorn glances behind him at the visitor, but his features are hidden in the darkness of the loft. The visitor steps forward, his hoofsteps echoing in the loft even though there is a screaming rainstorm outside. “You made your own choices, Eclipse, and for that, a price must be paid.”

Eclipse turns around, levitating a bottle of hard cider to his lips and takes a large swig, but when he pulls the bottle away he finds himself mumbling incomprehensibly over his crying.

“I prayed and done all the other rites for what I’ve done, but all I’ve endured was more pain!” sobs Eclipse while swinging the bottle around in exaggerated movements, splashing the floor and expensive furniture with liquor. He takes another gulp of his drink and sits down with an audible thump on his snowy white, fluffy couch. “What point is there for begging for such things if all my mistakes still take me to this place?”

The mysterious pony’s horn glows and gently takes the bottle away from Eclipse and sets it down on a placemat on a glass table. Eclipse reaches out with his hoof, but the other stallion gently pushes him back on the couch.

“Eclipse, you must understand that creatures such as yourself, who possess free will,  do not need to obey the laws set in place. With free will one does not need to forget. One does not need to forgive.” Eclipse whimpers and slumps to the floor, covering his face, crying and begging in his hooves as the visitor towers over him. “I’m sorry, Eclipse, but cannot save you.”

Suddenly the door is kicked off of its hinges right as a bolt of lightning lights up the room and a deafening explosion of thunder rattles the loft. Eclipse looks up, trembling, but doesn’t see the visitor anywhere. But standing in the doorway is an imposing stallion, his facial features hidden by his drenched poncho. Eclipse trembles violently and whimpers at the sight of the intruder, who is breathing heavily, snorting out hot air and scuffing his hoof on the wooden floor.

The intruder charges and-

[[[[O]]]]

Eclipse wakes up, screaming and jolting upright in his bed, body soaked in sweat and face wet with tears. He wipes his eyes and muzzle and blinks to get the tears out of his eyes. As his eyes adjust to the darkness he can see his lavish, imported dresser, the expensive oil painting of himself looking proud of his life’s achievements, and his many exotic sculptures. All mean nothing to him, though.

Eclipse slides out of his bed and walks to his grand living room without bothering to turn on the lights, the lightning is providing all the light he needs. He takes a moment to stare out his glass patio doors to look at the raging storm. He can’t see anything and he can hear his grandfather clock ticking louder than it should be over the storm, like a sick reminder that his time is running out. When the grandfather clock chimes at midnight, he walks towards it, opens up the glass case protecting the pendulum and forces it to stop. He doesn’t want to hear the clock. He already knows he’ll be dead soon.

Eclipse takes a deep breath and walks towards his kitchen to grab a drink. As big as his loft is, his kitchen is pretty small. It barely has enough space for a pony to work in it comfortably. Not that comfort matters to Eclipse anymore. The azure unicorn goes to his wine cooler and pulls out an almost empty bottle of wine. He takes a swig of it and his face contorts to that of disgust and he scowls and throws it against the wall, upset that one of his final drinks tastes disgusting. But when he realizes what he did, his glazed, bloodshot eyes widen and he slowly turns to where he threw the bottle and stares at the red colored splotch on his wall. He watches the red liquid trickle down to the floor and bleed onto the floor, around the shards of broken glass.

Eclipse slumps to the floor and stares at the mess.

“This is my life!”

He closes his eyes and sulks as his body shakes from him trying not to cry anymore.

“I’m sorry,” whispers Eclipse, his voice trembling and cracking.

He opens his eyes a moment later and looks through the fridge for anything he can drink. He finds nothing, so he pours himself a glass of water instead and after drinking it in one sitting he goes back to his living room in a trance-like walk. He goes towards his sleek dial radio, which is resting proudly on top of a fancy stand, and stares at it, contemplating if he should listen to some music.

There is a deafening thunderclap after a flash of lightning lights up his whole loft, and he decides now will be a great time to listen to some music. He presses his hoof on the power button and it crackles to life. At first there is static, but after making some odd hissing and popping sounds it finally gets to playing.

“...And after Blueblood’s funeral, Princess Celestia locked herself in her chambers without so much as a peep. Princess Luna-”

Eclipse pales and slams his hoof against the radio. It clicks to the next station.

“...The changelings must’ve had something to-”

“No. No no no no, please Celestia, no,” whimpers Eclipse while pressing his hoof against the radio again. Another click, and the channel changes. “Please, Celestia...”

“...And I say to you, forgiveness is for everypony! No matter your sins, the Goddess of the Sun will always have room in her heart to forgive you! But you must first forgive yourself! Forgive yourself and others can forgive you!”

“No!”

Eclipse rams his hoof against the radio and it breaks upon impact. It makes a sickening crunching sound and sparks shoot out and the noise drones to a stop. Eclipse repeats “No” in sorrowful whimpers as he slides to the ground, sobbing and shaking.

“No, please Celestia, don’t-please don’t let it end like this.”

He looks up at the ceiling as if waiting for a divine voice to tell him that everything will be okay, that he will be safe from any harm. But all he hears is the rain battering against his windows and the howling wind to accompany them. He moans and lies on the floor, covering his head with his hooves. He knows he’s been forsaken. As he squeezes his eyes shut in a useless attempt to escape his fate, he thinks about his past... and how he deserves what is coming. But in spite of what his humble side is saying, he really wants to run and live out his days in hiding, but someone like him can’t stay hidden for long. Especially from him. Just like he found his associates, the guards in his pocket, his informant. He found them all, and now he’s coming for him.

Eclipse looks up at the ceiling again. “Please... save me...”

Nothing.

Eclipse sniffles and nods his head in reluctant understanding. He warily stands up and walks towards a small bookcase filled with records and as he searches through them, he notices a picture of him with his wife and child. He smiles sadly and wipes tears from his eyes as he grabs it with his magic, then he finds the record he wanted. He gently pulls it out with his magic and carries it to the phonogram. After setting it up, he puts the disc on and let’s the music play. There is a small crackling at first, but it soon turns into the sweetest melody he has ever heard.

He carries the picture to his couch and sits down on it, gently stroking the framed photo with his hoof as the soft string instruments and wordless hymns fill his loft with one last sense of serenity before the inevitable. He takes a deep breath and hugs the picture to his chest and closes his eyes as the violins from the track became louder and more peaceful.

While enjoying his final moment of peace, his ears twitch when he hears a floorboard creak from outside his loft door over the chaos of the storm. He slowly opens his eyes and sees a shadow taking up the light shining under his door from the hallway.

“Forgive me,” begs Eclipse quietly.

The door is kicked off of its hinges right as a bolt of lightning lights up the room and a deafening explosion of thunder rattles the loft. Just like the dream. Eclipse trembles, but doesn’t make any attempt to run. He knows its pointless. An imposing stallion stomps in snorting hot air and scuffing his hoof on the floorboard. His facial features may be hidden by his drenched poncho, but Eclipse knows who it is.

Eclipse closes his eyes, bows his head, and tears roll down his cheeks as he rubs the framed photograph for the last time, whispering: “Forgive me.”

~~~~~~~~~~

A middle aged grayish-purple unicorn Night Guard with a small, rough beard and wearing a drying poncho over his lavender armor stares over the battered railing of Eclipse’s loft; the railing’s wood is splintered where the body hit it. He looks up for the briefest of seconds as the pegasi clear the storm clouds away from the apartment before looking over the edge again. Now that the clouds are cleared away he has the moon and stars to give him some light so he can see the other unicorns down below using their horns to shine light on a splattered corpse. The body is unrecognizable since its a gory pancake in a pool of blood, but everyone is certain that it’s Eclipse.

The unicorn huffs and walks inside, not even having to open the balcony doors since they were busted open by Eclipse flying through them. He carefully steps past the broken glass and broken wood, and then inspects the trail of blood leading up to the balcony while other Night Guards collect evidence by taking pictures and placing little markers at the points of interests. These points were areas where the furniture was shattered, where the walls were indented and sometimes having holes in them, where the door was kicked open, and, of course, the bloody trail.

A Night Guard approaches the old unicorn, who is now inspecting the smashed glass table. “Detective Jerkins, we talked to the neighbors and no one saw anything. They only heard the fighting.”

“Figures,” mutters Detective Jerkins while wiping snot from his nose, cold courtesy of the horrible weather, “there never are any good witnesses.”

“We talked to the doorpony, she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, either.”

Detective Jerkins groans irritably, then he sneezes and sniffles. When he’s done sniffling he levitates a handkerchief from his poncho pocket and wipes the snot from his nose. He grimaces at the mucus on his handkerchief and carefully folds up the piece of cloth and sticks it back in his pocket. He almost wants to whine about how much the cold sucks, but that won’t get him anywhere. Besides, he wants to keep the stoic attitude he’s known for. It makes it easier for him to ignore stupid things, like frivolous conversations and horrible jokes.

While the sick unicorn inspects an indent in the wall that has a little bit of blood on the edges, an earth pony stallion noticeably younger than Detective Jerkins trots in with a proud smile. The newcomer has a grayish coat and a slicked back green mane and tail, and his wet helmet is hanging next to him, no doubt ignoring any uncomfortable feelings he's getting.

“Hey L. Roy, I found something,” says the stallion, his voice young and energetic.

“Put your helmet back on, Colt,” orders Detective Jerkins. “And how many times do I have to tell you not to call me L. Roy when on duty?”

“More than I can count.” Detective Jerkins rolls his eyes. “Anyway, I found that the emergency exit has been forced open from the outside.”

All eyes turn on Colt and he smiles proudly while adjusting his helmet. When Detective Jerkins looks at the other guards, though, they resume their business and he goes back to looking at his partner.

“Are you sure it was from the outside?” asks Detective Jerkins skeptically.

Colt nods his head quickly. “Yep, I did all the stuff. I looked at the scene, studied the scene, looked at the door, asked about the door, looked at the door again, labeled the door and then told the nice lady up front how she reminds me of a lunar rose.”

Detective Jerkins groans and facehoofs. “Colt, I swear to Celestia and Luna and all the Stars, you are hopeless.”

“Thanks. I try my best.”

“Definitely hopeless.”

Colt goes outside to peek over the balcony, completely oblivious to the detective’s statement, and makes a low, drawn out whistle as he looks at the mess dozens of stories down.

“Wow, somepony really had it out for this guy,” says Colt carelessly.

Detective Jerkins walks next to him. “What did you expect? He was a crime lord. Crime lords have rivals. And this rival wiped out his entire criminal empire before giving him the window treatment.”

Colt’s ears droop slightly as he looks at the older unicorn. “You think a rival did this?”

“Possibly. I know Grizelda’s moving into town and she’s making room to make her little self nice and cozy in our town. We all know griffins are violent. Especially the bad eggs like her.”

“Where’s the ‘but’? There’s always a ‘but’.”

“But we’ll have to see what the evidence says before pointing hooves.”

Detective Jerkins walks back inside, followed by Colt a few seconds later.

“Hey, L. Roy,” calls Colt. Detective Jerkins stops and sighs heavily; that buck will never learn. “Do you think this whole thing,” Colt waves his hoof around at the mess, “was supposed to be symbolic or something? I mean a crime lord was tossed out his window and splattered in front of a crowd.”

Detective Jerkins looks at Colt. “Message or not, this whole thing should blow over quickly. Nopony is eager to figure out who murdered one of Equestria’s crime lords.” Then he walks towards the exit. “Besides, we should thank whoever did this. This was the last of the Eclipse Mob.”

“One less crime ring to deal with, then.”

“Precisely.” Detective Jerkins sneezes explosively, causing some heads to turn, but once he looks at them they look away and go back to work again. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a cold to take care of.”

Colt waves farewell and when Detective Jerkins is out of sight and his hoofsteps are gone, Colt lowers his hoof and looks out the destroyed patio door at the ever growing, skeletal Canterlot skyline, shrouded by night and rain. Then he glances at s broken oil painting of Eclipse that has fallen to the ground. After unenthusiastically studying the picture for a few seconds he walks over to a display case that was surprisingly untouched during the whole deadly brawl. He takes note of all the little figurines locked safely inside, all of which are some kind of dragon with a moon varying in poses and sizes.

“Nightmare Moon. Discord. Changelings. Crime rings. Assassinations. Murders... Yeah, Equestria’s going to crap.” Colt looks around and scuffs his hoof on the floor to put his boredom at ease. It doesn’t work. He groans quietly and scans the area before he nudges the guard closest to him. “Hey, I’m going to grab some coffee, you want some?”

The guard looks confused by the sudden offer. “Um... no thank you, sir, but if you could grab me a donut that’d be nice.”

Colt smiles. “Sure thing, buddy.”

When Colt turns to leave the guard steps forward. “Excuse me, Detective Kicker, but do you think that this whole thing is symbolic... or something?” he asks meekly.

Colt stops, his whole body visibly droops as he scans the crime scene before looking at the guard. “I do. And call me paranoid, but I think whoever did this is far from being done. Let’s hope I’m wrong.”

Arc 1- 07- Warnings Unheard -EDITED-

Arc 1- 8 (Challenged)

Incompetence From Royal Guard Kills Dozens

__________________

By: Quill Pen

__________________

PONYVILLE--- Ponyville has been struck with great tragedy. The terrorist organization known as the League of Justice enacted their twisted ideology against the peaceful, tourist attraction. The Royal Guard have reported that they got word of the attack at the last minute, but also claimed to be unprepared for the devastation of said attack.

Luckily, though, the Equestrian Investigation Bureau is working where the supposed defenders of Equestria have failed. Under the guidance of Director Brisk Wind, the EIB is working tirelessly around the clock to find any leads to the League of Justice and their whereabouts. Captain Shining Armor has stated that he is willing to work with the EIB to ensure that the LOJ is rooted out from Equestria.

But we must ask ourselves, how much longer can we rely on the Royal Guard’s to protect us? Especially if they are being led by a stallion who allowed the changelings to attack Canterlot, criminal lords to take over our cities, couldn’t prevent Prince Blueblood’s assassination and now failed to stop the attacks all over our fine nation?

With the incompetence running rampant under Captain Shining Armor, we can only hope that Director Brisk Wind and the Equestrian Investigation Bureau can restore order and stability to our nation.

Continued on Next Page

+++++++++

Fluttershy is trying to enjoy the warm weather by feeding her chickens with Big Mac keeping her company, or as much company as the reserved stallion can give. He may be at her cabin, but he’s so quiet that he’s almost invisible. He does help her out whenever she asks, but he’s not one for conversations and he does what is asked so quickly and efficiently that the most Fluttershy can say is “Thank you” and “Good job”. Since everything is already done, save for feeding the chickens, Big Mac really has no reason to stay but Fluttershy begged him to stay. So now he’s relaxing in the shade, waiting for her to ask him of something while keeping an eye out for any trouble.

oooOOOooo

A couple of minutes of peaceful silence pass before Roar Shock and two pegasi escorts wearing suits land gracefully in front of Fluttershy’s cabin. Roar Shock recognizes Big MacIntosh immediately as the massive stallion scrutinizes him and his two guards. When he approaches the chicken coop, his two escorts stay behind to watch Big Mac closely while Roar Shock approaches Fluttershy.

“Hello there, Ms. Fluttershy. I’m Agent Bolt of the Equestrian Investigation Bureau,” says Roar Shock with a warm smile.

Fluttershy stops feeding her chickens and looks at Roar Shock nervously while Big Mac continues his staring contest, this time standing up and making the two guards shrink back slightly. Roar Shock knows that Fluttershy’s friend is not ready to buck teeth out, but he’s definitely going to be keeping an eye on him.

Roar Shock nods politely at Big Mac, who also returns the nod out of common courtesy, and approaches the fence around the coop, still keeping his warm smile. When he’s standing beside the fence he flips up a badge for the Equestrian Investigation Bureau. He puts it away just as quickly as he took it out.

“Would you mind if I had a word with you?” asks Roar Shock politely.

Fluttershy hesitantly approaches Roar Shock, when she’s at the fence she sits down and hides her face behind her enormous pink mane. Roar Shock casts a quick glance at Big Mac as stands defensively behind the timid pegasus.

“What did you want to ask me, sir?” asks Fluttershy quietly.

“You are friends with Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie, correct?” says Roar Shock. Fluttershy nods and Roar Shock chuckles. “Yeah, that was a dumb question. But the next question is more serious. Those two have had a falling out and Twilight Sparkle is accusing Pinkie Pie of causing Spike’s death.”

“Ye-yes” stammers Fluttershy, sniffling after that.

“Why would Twilight Sparkle make an accusation like that?”

“I-I... I don’t... I don’t want to talk about it... if that’s okay with you I mean.”

“No, it’s not okay with me. We need to talk about it right now.”

“Oh... um okay.”

“Fluttershy!” blurts Big Mac, suddenly.

Roar Shock and Fluttershy look at Big Mac as he scowls at her, then he turns his glare to Roar Shock.

“One of Ms. Shy’s friends died and everything is fallin’ apart around her, and yer makin’ her uneasy with these questions of yers,” lectures Big Mac.

“Well my apologies, sir, but this pertains to the safety of a certain mare,” claims Roar Shock.

“Which one.”

“Whoever Mare-Do-Well is. We have reason to believe that whoever targeted the Mayor is also targeting Mare-Do-Well. We don’t know how much they know, and that is why we need to figure out who she is before they can get to her.” Then Roar Shock looks at Fluttershy, and she shrinks behind her mane again to shield herself from his gaze as Big Mac puts his hoof around her shoulder and glares at him. “Ms. Fluttershy, we know you and your friends did the whole Mare-Do-Well thing a long time ago, so please, help us help whoever was Mare-Do-Well that day.”

Fluttershy whimpers and looks at Roar Shock, her eyes shining with tears.

“Wha-what if they come for Rarity? Or-Or Twilight? Pinkie?... Or me?” whimpers Fluttershy.

“They won’t, unless you or any of the said others are the Mare-Do-Well they’re looking for,” assures Roar Shock.

“I think it’s best ya leave. Right now,” says Big Mac hostilely.

“Sir, I’m under the direct order of Director Brisk Wind of the Equestrian Investigation Bureau to find Mare-Do-Well and bring her into protective custody. So I’m not going anywhere until I get answers.”

The two pegasi standing behind Roar Shock shift uneasily as Big Mac walks towards Roar Shock. Roar Shock isn’t fazed by Big Mac’s enormous build on the outside, but on the inside he’s sweating and praying that if they get into a scuffle he’d be the first to strike and not the beast of a stallion. Big Mac scrutinizes Roar Shock for a grand total of five seconds before accusing Roar Shock of lying.

“You are accusing an EIB Agent of lying?” says Roar Shock innocently.

The two pegasi behind Roar Shock cautiously walk towards him and Big Mac.

“Eeyup,” says Big Mac, then he points towards the Everfree Forest. “Now go away before I bury you.”

The sudden threatening choice of words is enough to make Roar Shock pale and take a step back, which in turn makes his guards take three steps back. Roar Shock then nods and hovers in the air so he’s out of Big Mac’s reach for safety reasons.

“Agents, let’s give this cute couple some time to collect themselves,” says Roar Shock to his escorts, then he turns his attention to Big Mac. “As for you, sir, you best suppress that paranoia of yours when your talking to the EIB. We are your friends after all.”

“Go away!” orders Big Mac.

When they are in the clouds, Roar Shock turns around, towards the cabin and hides in the cloud with his escorts. He then pulls out a pair of small binoculars from his suit pocket and zooms in on the cabin.

“So, what are we going to do?” asks one of his escorts.

“Simple, we wait until they are on the move and then we strike,” says Roar Shock coolly.

“Do you honestly think that the mare knows who Mare-Do-Well is?”

“Oh she knows, and she’ll talk. We just need some leverage.” Roar Shock zooms in on Big Mac and gets a demented smile. “And I know just what we need to do.”

“Does it involve pony leverage?” asks the second escort

“Yes it does, we’ll strike him hard and fast. Make sure he doesn’t get a hit on you. The Apples are known to be hard kickers.”

“Oh horse apples, you aren’t seriously-”

“I am serious. She almost broke under pressure just from me talking to her. She’ll snap when there’s a life on the line.”

“But doesn’t Fluttershy have that stare thing?” asks the first escort.

“You don’t honestly believe that, do you?” scoffs the second escort.

Roar Shock smiles at the first escort. “Leave her to me, I’ll make sure she doesn’t look at you. Just make sure her coltfriend is incapacitated for the time being.”

He looks through his binoculars again and sees them leaving the cabin. Fluttershy is sulking next to Big Mac, keeping her head down, while Big Mac is walking with a furious determination not to let harm fall on her.

“Showtime,” says Roar Shock while spreading out his wings.

=**********=

“But, Pinkie Pie, where will you go?” Mrs. Cake asks while helping Pinkie Pie pack up some of her belongings in a cardboard box.

“I don’t know, but I can’t stay here,” says Pinkie Pie dolorously.

Mrs. Cake shakes her head subtly and picks up one of the blenders to pack away, but Pinkie Pie forces a giggle and gently rejects it and tells her that the blender will be her parting gift. Mrs. Cake chooses not to argue with the pink mare and sets the blender on the now desolate dresser, which is also staying behind. A couple of minutes of grim silence passes by before Mrs. Cake suddenly stops packing and embraces Pinkie Pie in a loving, yet grieving, hug, and stifles her tears. Pinkie Pie returns the hug, also crying softly.

“If this is about what happened to Spike...” begins Mrs. Cake shakily.

“It’s more than that,” says Pinkie Pie softly.

“What do you mean?”

Pinkie Pie doesn’t know how to answer that question. How can she tell one of her oldest friends, her mentor, that she was responsible for Spike’s death and that a group of assassins is coming to hunt her down for interfering with their business. Pinkie Pie doesn’t know how to tell Mrs. Cake that she has to leave because she just put everyone she knows in danger. Everyone in Ponyville just experienced what this dangerous group is capable of and how far they are willing to go to get their job done. Now she’s the job, and she can’t stay for the sake of everyone.

When Pinkie Pie is about to give a vague answer to Mrs. Cake’s question, her phone rings. Both mares look at the candy machine shaped headset shaking on the phone as it rings. None of them were expecting a call, and Pinkie Pie tries to ignore it, but the phone still rings. And rings. And rings. And rings. Finally after a minute of ringing, Mrs. Cake answers the phone.

“Hello, who is this?” asks Mrs. Cake ruder than she intended.

There is some chatter on the other end and Mrs. Cake and the stranger exchange some words for a few seconds before she hands the phone to Pinkie Pie.

“It’s for you,” says Mrs. Cake says with some worry.

“Who is it?” asks Pinkie Pie while carefully taking the phone.

“He wouldn’t say.”

Pinkie Pie hesitantly puts the headset on. “Hello?”

“Am I talking to Pinkamena Diane Pie this time?” asks a stallion on the other end with a bit of a teasing tone.

“Who is this?”

“You’ve been watching the group I’m part of for quite some time.”

Pinkie Pie’s face pales; she knew they would find her eventually, but she wasn’t expecting them to find them this soon! She looks at Mrs. Cake and politely asks her to leave. Mrs. Cake nods and leaves the room without saying a word and closes the door behind her. When her footsteps fade away Pinkie Pie moves to the back corner of her room.

“Who am I talking to,” demands Pinkie Pie.

“That’s not really important, now is it? But what is important is that I have a couple of your friends at my mercy,” says the stallion.

“Who.”

There is some movement on the other end, followed by the stallion ordering someone on the other end to speak. Pinkie Pie’s mind races to figure out who the stallion is holding, but when she hears whimpering her heart races. She knows that whimpering, and when the stallion yells at her to speak, the pony on the other end lets out a terrified squeak. Pinkie Pie slumps to the floor with her hoof pressed against her mouth and closes her eyes. Tears roll down her cheeks and she mentally murders herself for making Fluttershy a target for these ponies.

“P-Pinkie?” stammers Fluttershy on the other end.

“Fluttershy, I’m so sorry,” cries Pinkie Pie quietly.

“That’s enough! Take her to the back!” barks the stallion.

There is screaming and begging and sobbing on the other end, followed closely by the sound of a body being dragged across the floor.

“Let her go! She has nothing to do with this!” yells Pinkie Pie.

“On the contrary, she does,” says the stallion. “You have forty five minutes. If you are not at Fluttershy’s cabin in forty five minutes we will kill her and Macintosh. If you bring the guards, we will kill them. If you bring anypony else, we will kill them.”

“I can’t make the run in forty five minutes!”

“Fifty minutes then. That is all your getting. I suggest you start now, you don’t want to be responsible for the death of two more of your friends, do you?”

Pinkie Pie slams the mouthpiece down on the phone and runs out of the Sugar Cube Corner, ignoring Mrs. Cake’s barrage of questions and the ponies that stop and stare at her as she bolts out of the town. The sun is already setting; the trip to Fluttershy’s cabin is undeniably long and she knows it’ll be night when she reaches it. It’s the perfect place and time to kill her. The cabin is isolated, it’ll be night so there is plenty of places where ponies can hide with the aid of the darkness. It could all end tonight.

When Pinkie Pie reaches Fluttershy’s cabin, the first thing she notices is that most of the animals are missing, and there are a few dead ones outside, like they died defending her and the rest fled. The other thing she notices is that the cabin is completely dark and still. The tree its built in even looks dead. Her body tingles as she walks closer to the cabin, it doesn’t take a genius to know that something is off.

When Pinkie Pie enters the cabin, her eyes dart around in search for any movement until she hears a sniffling. She tries to turn on  light, but the light switch doesn’t work so she cautiously walks further inside towards the source of the noise. The place is ransacked, and she can smell death that matches perfectly with the eerie silence. As she gets farther inside, the sniffling and whimpering gets louder, and she spots two figures huddled in the back corner. Pinkie Pie squints her eyes and is barely able to make out that the figures are Big Mac and Fluttershy. Big Mac is lying on the floor, battered and unconscious, with Fluttershy hugging him and crying. She also looks like she’s been attacked, but not as severely as Big Mac. The closer Pinkie Pie gets to her, the more she sees that Fluttershy’s mane is a mess and that she’s covered in mud with some blood mixing in from a scratch on her head.

“Pinkie, I-I’m sorry,” sniffles Fluttershy.

“No. No, I’m the one that’s sorry, Fluttershy. I-You-this should’ve never happened to you,” says Pinkie Pie.

“They-They were going to kill him. They-They already-they already killed Angel and-and-I just couldn’t...”

“Hello, Pinkie Pie. Or shall I say, Mare-Do-Well,” says Roar Shock sinisterly.

Pinkie Pie jumps to face Roar Shock as he materializes out of the shadows with his escorts by his side. None of them are showing any signs of pouncing, much to Pinkie Pie’s amazement.

“So, you figured me out. I guess I didn’t try hard enough to hide my identity,” says Pinkie Pie with a threatening edge to her tone.

“The process of elimination is a miracle worker,” quips Roar Shock.

“So, is this the part where you guys kill me for meddling with your business?”

“Nope, I just came here to negotiate a place for us to have a nice little showdown. I’m thinking that construction site at the edge of your town next week will suffice.”

“Does your boss know that you’re doing negotiations with his enemy?”

“Oh he knows, he’s actually loving the idea because he really wants to test his newest student.”

One of Roar Shock’s escorts moves by the door, blocking Pinkie Pie’s exit, while the other moves closer to Fluttershy and Big Mac. Fluttershy whimpers and shrinks down while staring at the pegasus.

“Who’s this new student?” asks Pinkie Pie.

“I’m sure you’re familiar with her. A certain showpony that was um -how should I say this?- egotistical. More so than your other friend, Rainbow Dash,” replies Roar Shock.

“Trixie? Trixie’s with you?”

“I’m surprised you remembered so quickly. But yes, she is, and I myself and excited to see how she performs.”

“So she’s been trained to become a monster like you.”

“Oh we are not ‘monsters’. Nope, not in the slightest. Even then ‘monster’ is such a harsh and childish word.”

Roar Shock paces around Pinkie Pie, and her eyes follow his every move, she’s just waiting for an excuse to lash out at him. The only reason why she isn’t breaking his jaw is because they are “negotiating” and it would be tacky to punch him, plus Fluttershy and Big Mac are close by and she doesn’t want to risk any further injury to them.

“I wouldn’t even go as far as saying you’re a monster,” continues Roar Shock, “even though you and your friends took up the vigilante thing solely to teach your other friend a lesson. Protecting Ponyville was never your real intent. But enough with the lollygagging. Construction site. Ten hours after noon. Friday next week. Agreed?”

Pinkie Pie takes a deep breath and nods. “Agreed.”

“Good, that was easy,” says Roar Shock with a smug smile. “To prevent any interference you must Pinkie Promise not to tell anypony about what is to happen. That goes for you too, Ms. Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy squeaks and shrinks further behind Big Mac’s body.

“Do you Pinkie Promise to keep this to yourself?” asks Roar Shock threateningly.

“I promise,” says Pinkie Pie.

“Let me hear you say it.”

Pinkie Pie is silent and Roar Shock nods towards the escort nearest to Fluttershy. The escort knocks her on her to the ground and then presses their hoof against her head so that she can’t look at them. Pinkie Pie takes a step forward but the pegasus increases the pressure on Fluttershy’s head, making her cry in pain.

“Let me hear you say it,” repeats Roar Shock in a more sinister tone.

“Pinkie, please don’t do it!” begs Fluttershy.

“Shut up!” snaps the pegasus holding her hostage.

The pegasus presses harder against Fluttershy’s head. She whimpers and tries to break free, but that only leads to him stomping on her head and then resuming his pressing. Pinkie Pie holds up her hoof and begs them to stop.

“It will end with the Pinkie Promise,” says Roar Shock darkly.

Pinkie Pie sighs and reluctantly says: “Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.” while half-heartedly doing the motions.

“Good, now your turn Ms. Fluttershy.”

The pegasus allows her to get up and she also does the Pinkie Promise with the motions. When she’s done, Roar Shock smiles and walks outside with his escorts.

“Thank you ladies, it was a pleasure talking to you,” says Roar Shock.

Then the trio fly away, leaving Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Big Mac alone in the cabin. When the three pegasi are gone, Fluttershy’s lips quiver and her grip tightens around Big Mac. Then she sobs loudly, and Pinkie Pie closes her eyes and hugs her friend tightly. Fluttershy returns the hug and Pinkie Pie rocks her like how a mother would when comforting her daughter, and she runs her hoof through her mane, also crying.

“I’ll fix this,” sniffles Pinkie Pie as she wipes the tears from her eyes. “I promise I’ll fix. You’ll see.”

“N-No! You-You can’t meet them! They’ll kill you!” cries Fluttershy.

“Fluttershy, don’t worry, I have a plan. I’ll stop these ponies, one way or the other.”

Pinkie Pie returns to the Sugar Cube Corner to finish packing after taking Big Mac and Fluttershy to the local hospital. Once back home, she quickly packs up her Mare-Do-Well costum in a decent sized box, and with it, her notebook and one of her blenders. All of the extras have been carefully wrapped, and to ensure their safety she stuffs the box with as many plastic peanuts and crumbled pieces of paper as possible. She also makes sure to wrap the box with duct tape and to finish it off, she attaches an envelope with a letter addressed to Octavia inside.

After making sure the contents in her box are secured she goes to Derpy’s place and asks her to deliver it to Octavia’s address in Canterlot. Derpy accepts the task after some obnoxious knocking, a couple dozen muffins, both mares begging Time Turner to let her go, and a case of energy drinks. After Derpy leaves with the box, Pinkie Pie quietly goes back to her room and calls her sister. Naturally, she gets the answering machine, so she leaves a message giving Octavia explicit instructions not to open the package and to follow the instructions on the note.

After doing that, Pinkie Pie heads over to Twilight’s house with an umbrella hat on. She feels like she’s going to be sick when she reaches the library/house since she knows that she’ll have to face a former friend that now hates her guts. She takes a deep breath, and then knocks on the door. There is no answer, so she knocks again. When no one answers the door Pinkie Pie nods and mouths “Okay”. She had been expecting that to happen, so she came prepared. She takes off the umbrella hat and leaves it at the front door with a note underneath it.

Dear Twilight,

I know you hate me for what has happened, and I know no amount of apologies will bring Spike back. But before I go, I want you to have this umbrella hat as a reminder of our friendship before everything became rotten. I’m sorry for what has happened, and I can only ask that you try to forgive me and remember that Spike died a hero. I’m guessing that our friendship is over, but I will make everything right. I Pinkie Promise.

Love always,

Pinkie Pie

=**********=

Trixie is sitting in the middle of what was once a lavish loft. The walls had expensive paintings, furniture was made with the highest quality material, and dishes so clean and pretty that they looked as though they were carved from crystal. But all the beauty of the apartment has been scarred with a brutal scuffle. The furniture and paintings are smashed, the walls have cracks and dents, and the dishes have shattered to millions of pieces, giving the floor a sparkling shine. But Trixie doesn’t care about the destruction of the loft, she’s actually smiling. Her smile is stretched across her face like it’s her greatest victory and she’s staring out the hole that was once a glass door that lead to a patio.

She’s happy to see the sight, and too happy to feel the blood trickle from her head and down her cheek, staining her silvery mane and coat in red. When the droplets splatter on the floor she chuckles quietly, and madly, while looking down on the little red circles. Then she looks at the balcony again.

“You deserved it, father,” chuckles Trixie. “Every broken bone, every drop of blood spilt, every ounce of fear. You deserved it all.”

“Do you want to claim your inheritance?” asks a mysterious voice, a stallion, with a deep, fatherly voice.

“Trixie doesn’t want his money.”

“But you’ve been through so much already. It is his gift to you.”

Tears swell up in Trixie’s eyes and yet she still keeps her smile.

“His gift to me? The Great and Powerful Trixie?” says Trixie, her voice is cracking

“Yes, his gift to you,” says the voice.

“He never wanted anything to do with me, and I with him. Now leave me be.”

“Trixie...”

“LEAVE ME ALONE!”

A small shockwave shoots out from under Trixie, blowing a circle of shattered glass and other pieces of garbage away from her. She hyperventilates and sniffles, then tries to choke back her tears. She tries to keep her smile, but its faltering, despite her best efforts.

“If only I could see his eyes,” whispers Trixie, her smile twists into a frown before continuing. “If only could see the fear in his eyes... He knew he’d be going to Tartarus... and I... I will soon join him.”

Trixie stands up and walks towards the shattered glass doors, leaving a trail of tears and blood behind to stain the floor. The sounds of the city become more faint the closer she gets to the door.

“Trixie, wait!” says the voice, panicking.

“It was always meant to be,” says Trixie in a trance, the city is now silent. “Celestia played with me from birth to see how miserable I can be. She did it... She won. She made the Great and Powerful Trixie despise everything about herself. She made me hate me”

Soon she’s standing on the balcony, and she closes her eyes and feels the cool wind whip through her mane and cool off the warm blood.

“Trixie, please don’t do this,” begs the voice.

She smiles sadly as she balances herself on the railing, she trembles for a few seconds before she is able to stand on it firmly. She sniffles and looks at the source of the voice, it’s only a shadowy figure of a stallion.

“Trixie’s final act!” says Trixie to her one audience member while trying to use her infamous boasting tone, but her voice is quivering and now tears are streaming down her cheeks uncontrollably. “She will make the life of a menace! A fake! A boastful, greedy tramp!... Disappear!”

“NO!”

Trixie throws herself off the edge and watches in wonder as the lights from the buildings zip past her in a blur, and the howling wind rushing past her brings her comfort, knowing that her miserable existence is soon to end. She doesn’t care that she’ll be going to Tartarus for this, for who she had become. It was all part of Celestia’s game after all and Celestia always win. Plus, the world would be better off without her, all the sneers and stories of her evil prove that she’s nothing but an enemy. Her death will make everything better. One less villain to deal with.

She closes her eyes right before she feels her body connect with the pavement, and-

[[[[O]]]]

She wakes up in the infirmary with a bandage with a red splotch on it wrapped around her head. She raises her hoof and touches it, and quicklt retracts her hoof, wincing, when finding out the hard way that her injury is still tender.

“You are a crazy little pony, you know that, right?” teases Wazza.

Trixie shifts in her spot and sees Wazza sitting next to her bed with a warm smile. His twin is nowhere to be seen, though. This seems odd to Trixie since the two are inseparable, but she’s not too worried about that at the moment. Right now she wants to know how she ended up in the infirmary with a head injury.

“What happened?” asks Trixie groggily.

“You do not remember?” says Wazza quizzically.

“Not at the moment.”

Wazza shifts in his seat and takes a deep breath before explaining to Trixie what happened with possibly the longest verbal detour she’s ever heard. She briefly wonders why zebras like to take forever to explain anything, but guesses that it’s cultural thing so she doesn’t pester Wazza to hurry up. Not that she can force him to do so, anyway.

“Every pony and zebra has a potential for great damage,” begins Wazza, “our mood affects the magic in all of us. For pegasi, their mood determines the weather for the cloud they are on. Sadness brings rain. Rage brings storms. Earth ponies and zebras are not special when it come to sadness, but when enraged an earth pony can become a nearly unstoppable force. While a zebra is a species that has minor psychic abilities that can be extremely dangerous if left unchecked.”

“You mean like lifting things up and all that stuff?” asks Trixie.

“No, that’s telekinesis. A zebra’s psychic ability is what led to all the stories about our witchcraft, which holds some truth, but we have done our best to keep the mind control down to self defense only. Some zebras have completely renounced this, most are weak in it, but we all have it.”

“And what about unicorns?”

Wazza leans forward and puts his hoof over Trixie’s and gives her a stern, yet worried, gaze. “When a unicorn is facing extreme emotional trauma they exert a lot of magic. Because of the diversity of unicorns your species is the most unpredictable and dangerous when it comes to this.”

“Oh no. What did I do?”

“Some can change their physical appearance, others can manipulate matter around them, others are living bombs.”

“Wazza. What. Did I. Do.”

Wazza sighs and pats Trixie’s hoof sympathetically. “You are a living bomb, Trixie. We were trying to get you test your magical level by hypnotizing you to release your emotions. Adanz touched your memory’s sore spot and you went on a small rampage.”

“Oh my goddess,” gasps Trixie while pressing her hoof against her head. “Is Adanz fine? What about the others?”

“Everypony is fine. Your mentor was able to stop you with a brick to your head before you caused too much damage.”

Wazza and Trixie exchange a chuckle while she looks up at the bandage; head injury and the events leading up to it: successfully explained in vague detail, thus is the zebra way. Trixie is relieved that no one was hurt, but now she’s worried that Gray Muffin is mad at her for her emotional meltdown. Wazza gives Trixie a reassuring smile like he knows what she’s thinking (which he probably does, since he confessed zebras hold some psychic abilities).

“I can assure you that your mentor is not upset with you, Trixie,” assures Wazza, “in fact, he was actually pleased by your power and wishes to speak to you as soon as possible.”

“Well what are we waiting for? Let’s go!” says Trixie eagerly, she feels a hundred times better now that she knows that Gray Muffin is actually proud of her rather than the opposite.

Trixie tries to get up, but Wazza holds her down and points at the bandage on her head.

“You aren’t going anywhere with that bump on your head,” says Wazza sternly.

“Oh come on! Please let me go!” pouts Trixie.

“No, a warrior needs to know when to fight, when to relax, and when to heal. You need to heal. I will grab him for you, yes?”

Trixie sighs heavily and nods, and Wazza smiles and leaves the room without another word. She is so eager in her wait for Wazza to return with Gray Muffin that she fidgets in her bed. She drums her hooves on the mattress, her eyes dart around the room, and she even moves pillows around the infirmary with her magic to keep her mind busy.

Thirty seconds turns into a minute. One minute turns into two. Two to five. Five to ten. Ten to twenty. Twenty to forty five. Forty five to an hour. Trixie groans in frustration and slumps on her bed, and then proceeds to using her magic to throw her pillow in the air and catch it in her hooves, then she repeats the process. Finally, after nearly two hours of waiting, Wazza returns with Gray Muffin and Adanz in tow. When Trixie sees Adanz the first thing she notices is that his fur is almost completely black. Her jaw drops and she points at the poor zebra.

“Did-Did I-” stammers Trixie.

“You did, and you are forgiven,” interrupts Adanz.

“Trixie, you and I need to talk,” says Gray Muffin, he does an amazing job of hiding this “pride” Wazza mentioned earlier.

“Of course, sir,” says Trixie while bowing her head slightly.

Gray Muffin glances at Wazza and Adanz. “You two, talk with the farmers about getting more of those mushrooms.”

“Yes sir,” says Wazza and Adanz in unison.

The two zebras bow and speed walk out of the room, and Gray Muffin waits patiently for the door to close, then he waits a good minute before he decides to speak.

“What you did earlier today was both amazing and terrifying,” says Gray Muffin, pride is creeping into his voice now, this makes Trixie smile. “I have never seen anything like it before. Terra was the best unicorn I had, but she preferred up close brutality over using her raw power. But you, on the other hoof, exerted immense power that destroyed the Arena and left dozens of my ponies injured. It was only by sheer luck no pony needed to be sent to the infirmary, save for you.”

“Wazza said I was a um a ‘living bomb’, what did he mean by that? I do not remember the teachers explaining this in school,” says Trixie.

“I think it’s best I show you what Wazza meant.”

“But he said-”

“I know what he said, but do you want to see something you can be truly proud of?”

Trixie instantly hops out of bed and beams at Gray Muffin while doing a small, eager dance in her spot like a filly waiting to go on the world’s greatest roller coaster.

“Yes, yes, yesyesyesyesyes... yes... sir. Yes sir,” says Trixie happily, and then she coughs uneasily because of the weight of the embarrassment she’s feeling.

Gray Muffin smirks and leads Trixie out of the infirmary, towards the Arena. As they walk down the hallway Gray Muffin explains to her that most Equestrians, particularly unicorns, don’t know about the powers they possess. He claims that the Royal Government reserves this special knowledge for their elite soldiers so that they actually know how to control it should the situation arise. He also explains how the few that figure it out, figure it out either by chance or are well informed. When Trixie asks Gray Muffin what he meant about her display of “raw power” being terrifying, his answer is something Trixie is glad to hear, but now fears losing control of her emotions more than ever.

“Since unicorns have direct connection to magic, they face more severe side effects when they lose control of their emotions. Temporary psychosis is the common of these side effects, such as multiple personalities or hallucinations,” says Gray Muffin.

Trixie gulps at the mention of “hallucinations” and she unconsciously looks around for any signs of projections of Sunshine. She doesn’t see him directly, but she swears she see his shadow melt into Gray Muffin’s. Gray Muffin notices Trixie sweating and he stops and puts his hoof on her shoulder in probably the most intimate way Trixie’s ever seen him.

“Are you alright?” asks Gray Muffin.

“I-I’m fine, sir,” says Trixie.

She smiles uneasily at him and his hoof slides off her shoulder and they continue their walk.

“In cases where unicorns unleash an extreme amount of energy due to emotional distress, such as what happened to you, there is a chance for them to black out and lose themselves in their alternate state. This is most common with unicorns like you Trixie, unicorns that are living bombs.”

Right as Gray Muffin finishes his lecture they enter the Arena and Trixie sees first hand what she had done. There is a crater in the middle of the arena with charred floor around it, and pieces of the ceiling have collapsed, revealing sparking wires and damaged pipes. Trixie’s jaw goes slack as she explores the damaged room. The floorboards creak and groan in protest, threatening to snap apart, under her hooves, and she leaves a faint trail of hoofprints in her wake. She stops by the edge of the crater and looks down. It’s not big, but the idea that she did that amazes her. A part of her wishes she could remember doing it, but another part of her is afraid that she’ll get nightmares from it.

“We are all capable of good and evil, Trixie, and I am glad you chose the good side,” says Gray Muffin with a small, proud smile.

“I did this?” whispers Trixie.

“Yes, and I believe with your gift you can kill Pinkie Pie.”

Trixie is lost in the crater, but when Gray Muffin’s message sinks in, she snaps her focus onto him, completely shocked that he has tasked her with killing the Element of Laughter.

“Wha-What do you mean ‘kill Pinkie Pie’, sir?” stammers Trixie.

“I mean exactly what I said,” says Gray Muffin sternly.

“But I just can’t kill her even if she is Mare-Do-Well! She’s the Element of Laughter!”

“There is nothing left to laugh about, not while the vile rule Equestria with their deception.”

Gray Muffin kicks some loose floorboards away and a sick smile flickers across his face as he watches the piece of wood tumble deeper into the crater. This is not the Gray Muffin Trixie knows, and frankly, his whole odd actions have been making Trixie wonder if he’s right in the head. She always thought he was a bit cynical, but now she’s fearing that he may be losing his mind.

“These criminals and their bureaucrat puppets have ruined so many lives, killed so many families, ruined dreams...” says Gray Muffin distantly. “Pinkie Pie contributed to guarding the evil that has taken hold of Equestria. Laughter or not, she is an enemy of Justice and True Harmony.”

He kicks off another piece of floorboard and watches it slide down, the same smile returns for a brief second and Trixie takes a step back.

“You know better than most what evil lurks in the shadows of Equestria.” Gray Muffin looks at Trixie out of the corner of his eye and smirks. “Few hold more pain than you, but what Roar Shock endured served as a revelation as to what must be done. He has something planned that will save Equestria, and he is honored to have you with us in our cause.” Small bits of eagerness have creeped into his voice in the latter part of his statement , like he’s dying to tell Trixie what this plan is, but won’t say anything for fear of getting in trouble.

“What are you planning, sir?” asks Trixie uneasily.

“I cannot tell you just yet, when you kill Pinkie Pie you will know.”

Gray Muffin’s odd expression returns to the cold, calculated killing machine look that Trixie knows him for and he walks towards the exit in a hurry.

“We have work to do. You are to focus on your magic for we strike next week,” orders Gray Muffin.

“What are you going to do?” says Trixie while chasing after him.

Gray Muffin then runs down the hallway, completely ignoring Trixie’s question. Trixie runs after Gray Muffin for a few seconds before she decides it’s best not to pester him. She sighs, sits by the wall and knocks a random rock away from her. Then she realizes that she has no one to help her train in her magic, or no one she knows anyway. She’s been limited to just Gray Muffin, Wazza and Adanz, and the occasional Roar Shock; everyone else either walks around, eat, or becomes her bucking bags when they try the Blitz Training Sessions, which she admits have been very helpful, despite the sore spots they leave.

Trixie sighs and gently rubs her injury before standing up and wandering the place in hopes that she’ll get jumped or something to help her train her magic.

Arc 2- 09- Bonbon Land Brawl -EDITED-

Arc 3- 3 (Come One, Come Some)

The sun shines off of the windows of the Canterlot skyline, illuminating the city with thousands of little stars, and garbage twists and twirls as they are carried by the strong gusts of wind. Walking in a garbage filled alley, past a crude spray painted picture of Celestia with devil horns, is a large stallion wearing a full body cloak. The only parts that aren’t covered are his muzzle, the tip of his tail, and the bottom of his legs. He pauses to look at the picture for just a moment before continuing walk. Once he reaches the end of the alley he is forced to squint his eyes due to the bright afternoon sun, and gets a little bit of shade when one of the propaganda zeppelins glides by. Then a front page of a newspaper with Shining Armor’s face on it flies into the stallion’s face. The paper is pulled away from his face when his horn glows under the cloak.

“CAPTAIN ARMOR WANTED FOR QUESTIONING!”

Shining Armor glowers at the headline and stuffs it in a garbage can as far down as it can go, then he storms down the sidewalk, keeping his head down and body close to the walls. He passes the expected high class snobs talking in their pompous tone, some homeless ponies begging for money or food, vendors selling stuff, and a crowd of ponies at some kind of convention. Shining Armor also spots a Royal Guard patrol wagon driving dangerously close to him, but rather than making a break for it like his legs are telling him to, he keeps his walk steady and direct.

He walks into the convention and sees that it is crowded with mostly the miserable crowd, and yet they also seemed to be relieved. They are dirty and worn down, but they have smiles and are laughing and generally having a good time with one another. Shining Armor peeks over his shoulder and notices the patrol vehicle turning into plot of grass where other vehicles are parked. A couple of Royal Guard’s hop out with radio packs on and the barrels of their battle saddles pointed down. Shining Armor swears under his breath and goes further into the crowd.

“Ladies and gentlecolts!” booms a mare into a microphone, her voice echoing over the crowd chatter from a series  large speakers strategically placed around the convention. Shining Armor had the misfortune of being next to one when the mare spoke, so his ears are ringing and his heart is racing from the unexpected sound. “The pony you have all been waiting for! Mother Glory!”

The crowd cheers and stomps the ground in applause, and Shining Armor snakes his way through the crowd as the two Royal Guardponies trail him.

“Thank you, Sister,” says Mother Glory cheerfully after the crowd dies down. “You know, I have been a priestess for a long time. I’m also a priestess daughter, so I grew up with a devoted family that held the principles of Love and Tolerance to the highest standard.”

Shining Armor ducks into a food court and scrunches down in the farthest table and watches as a Royal Guard walks by, speaking into his radio.

“But the thing is, it didn’t matter. I knew the words, or more accurately, I memorized them. But I didn’t know their meaning, I didn’t comprehend the message. There is so much more to faith than just praying and donating bits to your local charities.”

Shining Armor moves from his table and goes out the back of the food court when the Royal Guard walks towards him. He briskly walks into the food storage area and lies in wait by a stack of boxes containing hay bacon. He crouches down lower when he hears two sets of hooves cautiously enter the maze of boxes.

“There is forgiveness and perseverance and deeds. Forgiveness is the root of all that is good, for without it, the cycle of hate and vengeance will never end.”

   As soon as the first soldier’s head goes into view, Shining Armor socks him in the jaw and he crumbles to the ground, unconscious with a bloody mouth.

“But forgiveness cannot last without our perseverance. We must be strong, we must have the strength to withstand all the evils in the world. We must have the strength to believe that, in the end, evil will fail and good will reign supreme.”

Shining Armor puts a shield around the remaining guard as he brings his barrels up. The guard is going to fast to not pull the trigger, and the bullets ricochet off of the rosy walls of the shield and strike the guard in the legs. The Royal Guard falls to the ground, legs bloody, and crying in pain as he feebly tries to stop the bleeding. Shining Armor approaches the guard and expands his shield so he can walk inside comfortably without anyone hearing the guard’s cries.

“And in order for us to have the strength to continue on, we must fuel our faith with good deeds. We must do right by others, we must fight evil wherever it may be, for there will be days when prayers will not be enough. A prayer, while good for a moment of bliss, is nothing compared to helping your fellow pony.”

The guard looks up at Shining Armor, eyes wide with terror and body trembling. Before the guard can muster a plea for his life, Shining Armor brings his hoof down on the injured soldier’s head, and he falls silent. Shining Armor’s shield disappears and he takes a deep, long and disappointed sigh before using his magic to carry both of the guards to a janitor’s closet. There, he ties and gags them, takes their radios and weapons and locks the door. As he puts on the radio pack, his eyes and ears scan the area for anything suspicious. Not even a few seconds in, he barely hears the clip-clops from hooves landing on concrete over the cheers responding to Mother Glory’s charismatic sermon.

Shining Armor hastily puts on a battle saddle and aims it towards the source. Right when the stranger is about to round the corner, the noise stops. Shining Armor adjusts his battle saddle as he cautiously rounds the corner, being sure to have his hoofsteps as light as equinely possible. Right as the crowd cheers in response to another well said line from Mother Glory, Shining Armor puts a shield around himself and jumps around the corner with his weapon at the ready.

A stallion with an charcoal coat, a muzzle and afro matching an ashy color with neon green sunglasses shrieks at a pitch too high for any normal stallion. The shriek was so loud that Shining Armor could see the ripples of the sound waves go against his shield. The pony’s eyes roll to the back of his head and he collapses to the ground like a bag of bricks, and all Shining Armor can do is blink. When a green coated, purple maned stallion jumps around the corner and uses his magic to cock a shotgun, Shining Armor barely reacts, he’s too stunned by the unconscious pony’s scream to do any real reacting. However, that goes without saying that the Captain still aims his weapon at the newcomer. But oddly enough, the newcomer lowers his weapon and kicks the afro-pony in the side, making him yelp and jump up.

“I almost lost my hearing again because of your stupid scream,” says the stallion coldly, his voice sounding oddly familiar to Shining Armor.

“I’m sorry, but these things just happen,” whines the other, also sounding familiar.

Shining Armor looks at both ponies, and lowers his weapon and shield while cocking his head quizzically.

“L. Roy? Colt?”

The green coated pony looks at Shining Armor and almost gets a smile.

“You got a lot of explaining to do, Sparkle Sparkle Boom Colt,” says L. Roy as he slips his weapon into a scabbard attached to his saddle.

“Don’t call me that!”

The afro-pony, Colt, snickers and when Shining Armor glares at him, his grin and laughter go away in a half blink of an eye. Then Shining Armor’s eyes go half lidded and he frowns as he does a quick inspection of Colt.

“I’m going to guess that these disguises were your idea,” says Shining Armor dryly.

Colt’s grin returns. “Yep.”

L. Roy steps in front of Colt and points at Shining Armor angrily.

“Why were the EIB all over my house? Why was Brisk Wind at my house!?” demands L. Roy.

“She was at my house, too,” adds Colt with a childish raise of his hoof.

“Was this about you murdering Quill Pen?”

“I did not kill Quill Pen!” yells Shining Armor. “And I will be more than happy to answer your questions when we get out of here.”

L. Roy and Colt stare at Shining Armor for a couple seconds, then they look at each other, and then back at Shining Armor. Each second that passes makes Shining Armor all the more anxious, up to the point where he is shifting in his spot and snapping his head to whichever direction looks more threatening at the moment.

“I got a wagon.” Colt finally says with a smile.

~~~~~~~~~~

Nearly half an hour passes before Colt’s motorized wagon grinds to a stop by the river running through Canterlot. Shining Armor remembers when the riverbed was soft and sandy, like a little beach, with a lush wall of trees along the edge. The water was, and still is, the cleanest and clearest in all of Equestria, but the little concrete barriers, chain link fences and gravel roads ruin its beauty. And even if there were none of those things, the distant, towering factories behind warehouses and rundown buildings bellowing icky smoke into the air would be enough to ruin the view.

“Alright, we’re secluded, now start talking,” orders L. Roy, his disguise now partially removed.

Shining Armor sighs. “Okay, the reason why I called you guys and the reason why we are being hunted by the EIB-”

“You’re the one being hunted,” interrupts Colt, still in full disguise, prompting the other two to look at him irritably. “I’m just saying...”

“Brisk Wind thinks I killed Quill Pen and was ordered by Celestia to bring me in,” continues Shining Armor after a moment’s pause. “She’s going after you guys because you,” he looks at L. Roy, “brought her in upon my request and you,” he looks at Colt, “are L. Roy’s closest friend.”

“Unfortunately,” mumbles L. Roy, then he adds in a clearer tone: “Also, Quill Pen ruined my career when my ‘incompetence’ brought the Eclipse Murder Case to a cold case. So that would give me motive to kill her, therefore putting me high on the list of suspects.”

“So, what are you going to do about this?” asks Colt to Shining Armor.

Shining Armor sighs and looks down while running his hoof through his mane.

“I don’t know,” he says disappointingly, “but if Brisk Wind is personally going to your homes it’s a safe bet to say that you are on her hit list.”

“You mean ‘shit list’, right?” asks Colt with a nervous chuckle. Shining Armor looks at him solemnly and L. Roy looks down, sighing heavily, and Colt’s nervous smile fades away to terror. “Oh shit! We’ve been marked!”

Colt pushes the ignition and the wagon rumbles to life. Almost as if their minds are synced, L. Roy turns the vehicle off and Shining Armor yanks out the ignition key, both using their magic to do so. Colt turns in his seat to glare at the two; he’s now hyperventilating and tearing up while Shining Armor remains calm on the outside. As for L. Roy, Shining Armor can’t tell if he’s bored or scared; he can never read the stoic unicorn that well.

“Colt, relax,” orders L. Roy.

“Relax!? Sparky here just said we’re on the EIB hit list!”

“At least we have some idea what the EIB is capable of,” states Shining Armor while placing his battle saddle in between his hooves.

“Yeah, they nearly razed an entire griffin community and got away with it!”

“They won’t get away with it because we will prove that Brisk Wind had an ulterior motive to her raid. Something of that magnitude will lead to a full on investigation that will expose everything she has done.”

“And how exactly are we going to do that?” asks L. Roy with a raised eyebrow.

Shining Armor frowns and thinks for a moment. And he continues thinking... and thinking... and thinking. Soon Shining Armor is rubbing his chin and as the seconds tick by he comes to the dreaded realization that he has absolutely no idea how he’s going to expose Brisk Wind.

He sighs heavily. “I have no idea.”

Colt groans and bangs his head on the dashboard while L. Roy merely stares at him emotionlessly. After a minute or so of Colt’s whining and swearing, L. Roy makes a suggestion.

“We could kill her. Avoid all the restraints of the legal process and her puppets and put an end her and her treachery.”

That shuts Colt up and Shining Armor finds the idea tempting. Very, very tempting. But alas, the Captain turns down L. Roy’s suggestion with a slow shake of his head.

“No, if we kill her then we’d be no better than her,” states Shining Armor.

“In your eyes, maybe,” remarks L. Roy simply, “but think of all the lives she’s ruined and how getting anything on her is near impossible. How can we trust the system when it is in her favor?”

“I don’t like the tone you’re using.”

Colt suddenly lets out a loud gasp and his head lifts up from the dashboard; then he turns to L. Roy and Shining Armor with big googly eyes and a massive grin. He holds that stupid smile for a second before Shining Armor becomes massively uncomfortable with it.

“Um, you okay, Colt?” asks Shining Armor uneasily.

“Yes! I’m more than okay!” cheers Colt. “I just had a brilliant idea that will save all three of us!” He pauses for effect. “We get the Vigilante to help us!”

Shining Armor facehoofs and L. Roy calls Colt an imbecile under his breath. Upon seeing the other two’s reaction the earth pony’s smile fades away and he looks at both of the two with worry. Before he has a chance to say anything or ask about the long faces, Shining Armor speaks up.

“The Vigilante hasn’t been seen ever since the griffins and EIB had the shootout at that apartment complex.”

“Don’t you listen to the news?” adds L. Roy snidely.

Colt waves his hoof dismissively. “Psh, no. The mainstream media is a corrupted, propaganda machine backed by corporate giants and foreign influence whose only goal is to manipulate the sheeponies so that their candidate of choice gets whatever office they’re running for. I can go on all day about this stuff.”

Shining Armor is dumbfounded by Colt’s outburst in regards to the media while L. Roy looks, as usual, unimpressed.

“Then where do you get your information?” probes L. Roy.

“...Vinyl Scratch.”

“Oh goddess, of all of the ponies out there, you just had to pick her.”

The two have a short argument about the famous DJ, and as they argued and light bulb turns on in Now it is Shining Armor’s brain. He remembers how the famous DJ spent her nights idolizing the Vigilante and taunting those that stood in the masked hero’s way. He also remembers how she sent him the yearbook, despite the danger it would put her and her friend in. When Shining Armor gets the fantastic idea, he claps his hooves together, effectively getting the other two’s attention.

“I know what we have to do.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Colt’s motorized wagon reluctantly pulls up to Vinyl Scratch’s house through the alley. The whole time they were driving Colt became less excited and more wrecked, even going as far as offering to find another DJ to go to to beg for help. However, the other two insisted on Colt taking them to Vinyl Scratch; well, more accurately Shining Armor did the insisting and L. Roy provided the silent support he’s known for. Once they approach the house, they stare at it for a few seconds before Colt smacks his lips together and points at it.

“Well, there she is. Have fun guys,” says Colt, chuckling nervously and wiping a thick layer of sweat from his brow.

Shining Armor can’t take it anymore. Colt’s actions are getting too weird for him and he demands answers! And demand answers he does; however, Colt seals his lips and L. Roy is the one that explains why Colt is acting weirder than he usually is.

“Vinyl Scratch and Colt used to date,” explains L. Roy as he wipes off the last of the dye from his face using ultra-strength wet wipes. “I’m guessing she was in her stallion-in-uniform phase.”

“So I take it their relationship ended badly?” inquires Shining Armor.

Colt lets out an exaggerated, nervous filled laugh and shakes his head like it’s a no big deal.

“Oh no, it ended on a peachy note. A really, really, really, rotten, disgusting, deformed, unholy abomination of a peach,” says Colt, sinking further down into his seat with each passing word.

Shining Armor looks at Colt one last time, now barely able to see his mane since he took the afro off, before he and L. Roy approach Vinyl Scratch’s home. As they walk towards the house, Shining Armor remains quiet about the Colt-Vinyl situation, deciding it was none of his business and best not to probe about such a matter. However, L. Roy doesn’t let it go that easily.

“Just so you know, Vinyl Scratch can practically sense Colt so-”

The door suddenly flies open and Vinyl Scratch stomps out, sporting her trademark sunglasses and levitating a shotgun next to her. Shining Armor swears and puts up a shield around himself and the motorized wagon. He can just picture Colt dying of a heart attack in the vehicle, with the last thing he’ll be seeing is a wooden ceiling in desperate need of some paint and finish.

“L. Roy, what the HELL are you and Colt doing here!” screams Vinyl Scratch, aiming her shotgun at the motorized wagon.

Shining Armor leans towards L. Roy as the stoic unicorn levitates his weapon out of his scabbard.

“I’m guessing you knew her, too,” says Shining Armor.

“Fortunately not that well,” replies L. Roy bluntly. “Vinyl, put down your weapon! We need your help with something!”

Vinyl Scratch aims her shotgun at L. Roy, and Shining Armor is sure she would’ve shot him if the shield wasn’t up.

“Buzz off! And take your hobo friend with you!” orders Vinyl Scratch.

Shining Armor doesn’t take that insult very well; he growls and pulls down his hood and points at Vinyl Scratch threateningly.

“I am not a hobo! And I swear to Celestia that if you do not lower your weapon I will personally snap it in half!” proclaims Shining Armor. “Same goes for you, L. Roy! Everypony lower your weapons!”

There is a moment of tense silence, but after that moment passes, L. Roy and Vinyl Scratch point their weapons to the ground in unison. Then Vinyl Scratch chuckles when she recognizes Shining Armor and L. Roy rolls his eyes as he returns his weapon to its proper place.

“Well I’ll be damned,” laughs Vinyl Scratch. “It’s been a while, Big Guy. How are the wife and kids?”

“Wife’s a wreck, don’t have any kids, now let us in,” orders Shining Armor flatly.

“Are you the one that needs help?”

“All three of us need help,” replies Shining Armor.

“But you’re the one being hunted by the EIB for murder.”

Shining Armor scowls. “Yeah.”

Vinyl Scratch steps aside. “Okay, you can come in.” Then she points at L. Roy and her tone suddenly becomes venomous. “You keep watch and keep that wagon running in case we run into some problems.“

L. Roy looks at Shining Armor questionably, but Shining Armor nods his head in agreement with Vinyl Scratch’s order.

“Do as she says,” orders Shining Armor, then he looks at Vinyl Scratch sternly. “We need to have a private talk, anyway.”

Vinyl Scratch motions Shining Armor inside, and once he is inside, she locks the door and he sits on the ground by a table with stacks of books. One stack is of books with a playboy type of stallion in a tuxedo standing next to a mare in a sparkly red dress with “Agent Watch Band and the...” something or other with a dozen variations. Then there is a stack of books next to that one with a gruff stallion in beat up Royal Guard armor striking a cool pose. Those books are titled “The Adventures of Jolt Mac Lane” with a few different subtitles.

“It’s been awhile, Captain. How’s life?”

Shining Armor turns to Vinyl Scratch, his hard scowl showing how unamused he is by her careless tone. His eyes are kept trained on her as she exits the room to grab something from her tiny kitchen.

“How do you think?” grumbles Shining Armor, now removing and folding his cloak.

“Could be better,” says Vinyl Scratch over the sounds of glass bottles clinking against each other.

When Vinyl Scratch exits the kitchen Shining Armor is putting his folded cloak on the table neatly. He realizes that she’s looking at him in a less than casual way, and when she removes her sunglasses, he sees those bedroom eyes. His cheeks and ears burn and the only thing he can really think of is: ‘You have got to be kidding me.’

Vinyl Scratch whistles and gets a sly smile. “Wow, you are a lot bigger than I remember. How often do you work out?”

Shining Armor shifts uncomfortably in his spot, and due to his size he accidentally bumps into the table holding the books and the stacks fall to the ground. He swears under his breath and uses his magic to restack them, but they fall over again, bringing a teasing grin to Vinyl Scratch’s face and an embarrassed blush to Shining Armor’s.

“Why does this happen to me?” grumbles Shining Armor while attempting to keep the stack of books steady. When the stack falls over he throws his hooves in the air and turns to the DJ, scowling. “Forget it. Before we do anything else, Vinyl, I know you and Aural sent that yearbook to me, and I want to know why.”

Vinyl Scratch sits on her chair by her radio equipment, grinning and sipping her drink. When she’s done sipping she sets the bottle on her table and turns her chair to face Shining Armor.

“Okay, I’ll be honest, I did get the yearbook and had Aural mail it to your office.”

“Why.”

“Because I didn’t know where your office was.”

“No, not that! Why did you send the yearbook!”

“You needed some help.”

“Not good enough.”

Vinyl Scratch leans her head against her hoof with a fan girl smile stretching across her face. “Well, Brisk Wind is somepony who needs a network to be efficient, and that yearbook showed us her closest buds. Luckily for you, two of her top guys are already dead, leaving just Glimmer and a small army of their goons. You take out Glimmer and that nutty featherbrain will have no more friends and her little army will scatter like a bunch of headless chickens on speed.”

Shining Armor ignores her interesting metaphor as he paces around the room, studying all of the radio equipment and posters, he also takes a special interest in the flag hanging up.

“I already have somepony keeping an eye on Major Fuller,” says Shining Armor, his eyes tracing the edges of the flag’s symbol.

“And you are wanted for murdering Quill Pen, so-”

“I did not kill her!” exclaims Shining Armor furiously, whirling around to glare at the DJ. Vinyl Scratch holds up her hooves defensively, inching back in her seat as far as she can go while apologizing . “I would not have even known she was dead or that the EIB was coming after me if I hadn’t been warned.”

Vinyl Scratch cocks her head quizzically. “You were warned?”

Shining Armor sighs. “Your friend called me in my office and told me that Brisk Wind is going after me for first degree murder.” He looks down and his voice quivers with anger. “She was ordered by Celestia to bring me in, but I know I was set up. Somepony killed Quill Pen and is trying to make it look like I did it, and I bet you that somepony was Brisk Wind.”

Vinyl Scratch gets up and grabs another bottle of alcohol and hands it to Shining Armor. He rejects it with a shake of his head and a quick wave of his hoof. Vinyl Scratch shrugs and takes a sip from it. She smacks her lips together as her eyes roll towards the ceiling, carefully analyzing the taste, and comes to the conclusion that she likes her other drink better. She puts the bottle down and takes a big swig from her original drink.

“Well, to be fair to the villain, you did run away, and you must’ve done something that made this all the easier to pin this on you.” She takes another sip, frowning when she realizes that she’s almost out of her precious drink. “Also, this pony you got spying on Major Fuller, how are they supposed to tell you what they know about him now that you’re on the run? Brisk Wind must’ve known you were about to hit a jackpot or something and was waiting for the perfect moment to fuck you up the ass with an iron dildo.”

Shining Armor stares at Vinyl Scratched, repulsed by what she said, and the albino pony merely shrugs and takes one last sip before burping and throwing her bottle away. He then shakes his head, trying to get the horribly disturbing image out of his head, and grumbles as he paces around the room, urging himself to think. While Shining Armor tries to think about how he can get into contact with Rainbow Dash, Vinyl Scratch takes on the second bottle of alcohol.

“So, what do you need help with?” asks Vinyl Scratch carefully.

“I need a way to take down Brisk Wind; you did quite a bit of coverage on the Vigilante and you and I both know that there is no way that the Vigilante could escape two vans of EIB agents and an entire griffin hit team.”

“Maybe she’s just that good,” suggests Vinyl Scratch. “Where’s this going?”

She casts a subtle worried glance at her container of pain and Shining Armor sits down, careful to avoid the table of books, and continues staring at Vinyl Scratch, and she stares back at him. She does a decent job of hiding her uneasiness of his constant staring, and uses the classical trick of doing something else to avoid eye contact. In her case, it is floating her pain pills over to herself and popping a couple in her mouth and drowning them with a swig of hard cider. Normally Shining Armor would scold someone for such a stupid act, but he figures he’s not sitting in a radio station-house to give lessons on proper pill popping. He has more important matters to tend to than that.

“The Vigilante was about to figure out something about Brisk Wind and the EIB wasn’t she?”

When Vinyl Scratch remains silent he asks her again and she replies with: “Mare-Do-Well was clueless about the EIB corruption, she was just cleaning up the streets, but since I’m not being haunted I’m guessing that she’s still alive. But she’s definitely going to need some help since the last time I saw her it was a miracle she was standing. Helping her will help you too since she’s going after Brisk Wind.”

Shining Armor practically jumps towards her eagerly awaiting what she has to say. So eager, in fact, that if he were a dog, his tail would be wagging at bone breaking speeds. He doesn’t care how ridiculous he looks with the hopeful smile or giddy stance; if Vinyl Scratch knows of a way to take down Brisk Wind then he’ll be more than happy to do whatever it takes.

“Okay, what is it? What does she need help with?” asks Shining Armor excitedly.

Vinyl Scratch leans forward and motions Shining Armor closer. When he scooches closer, she looks around,clearly paranoid that she is being watched, then she gives her explanation in a low voice.

“Word on the street, particularly with our griffin friends, is that Gilda has dirt on Brisk Wind. Supposedly the said dirt locked away good and tight in a safety deposit box in a bank in Bernese, and Aural -being the little spy that she is- has found that Brisk Wind has sent a small army to get it. See where I’m getting at here?”

Shining Armor slumps to the floor, his excited smile fading to a disturbed frown. “How can Brisk Wind just send an army of EIB agents to Bernese to get what ever is in that box? Even Celestia would find that suspicious.”

Vinyl Scratch shakes her head solemnly. “Nope, not EIB, she’s using ponies from the Rehabilitation Program and using some kind of backdoor funding to ferry them there. That, and they are being led by Lieutenant Andromeda so you know Brisk Wind is trying to hide something.”

“Well that’s just great!” Shining Armor swears and starts pacing around the room again, panicking at the thought of having to take on an unknown number of criminals and the EIB with severely limited resources. “How am I supposed to do get a safety deposit box in Bernese, get past Brisk Wind’s army and show it to Princess Celestia?”

“You could always ask for help,” offers Vinyl Scratch. Shining Armor stops his tangent and looks at Vinyl Scratch questionably, her look now terrifyingly stern. “I got quite a list of guys that would love to stick that bitch’s head on a pike.”

=**********=

“...But what does that say about Equestria’s security?” asks a mare in a Canterlot accent over a dial radio sitting on a nightstand. “The griffins are on a hair trigger because of their arms race with Bernese, and now they are outraged by the EIB’s raid on the griffin community in Canterlot!”

“I am certain that the griffins won’t do anything,” replies another mare sharing the same accent in a much calmer tone. “Griffins may be brutish, but they are civilized brutes. They know they cannot afford hostilities on our border with the ibex problem on their doorstep. Besides, what happened in Canterlot was an isolated incident and Princess Celestia has already apolo-”

Click.

Pinkie Pie’s hoof slides off of the radio and she moves to stare at her reflection in a mirror resting on a simple dresser. She hasn’t had much time to look at herself after Trixie broke the mirror in their apartment, but after getting out of the hospital, she’s dreading what she looks like. Her eyes are tired, and the large bags under them are darker than her mane, almost like a raccoon. Her pale coat also makes her wounds easier to see and her poofy mane is no more than a frazzled mess. Pinkie Pie, without taking her eyes off of the mirror, tenderly rubs where Octavia shot her. Her coat is thinnest in that spot and the scarring from her stitches painfully obvious.

Pinkie Pie looks down at the floor, wanting to go back to sleep so she can talk to Spike again. But as tired as her body is, her mind is too active to allow her to rest. For one, she knows her dream had told her that Roar Shock has become more dangerous and will burn Equestria to the ground should he get the chance. Also, if what Octavia said about Trixie dying in an alley somewhere is true, then Pinkie Pie knows that she has no choice but to put on the Mare-Do-Well suit and stop Roar Shock herself. Then she starts wondering about Laughter’s necklace. Celestia had said that the Elements are beyond mortal understanding, and Pinkie Pie had speculated that they are alive somehow, given that they are picky about Bearers. However, even after she had gone against everything the Elements stand for, Laughter still came to her and warmed her up in that frost field and comforted her when she first arrived in the dreamscape.

As Pinkie Pie ponders the reasons why Laughter had stuck around, she rubs the area when the pendant touched her chest. Her ear swivels towards the door when she hears it click open and sees Twilight carefully step inside the room with a tray of food and juice floating in front of her. When the unicorn sees Pinkie Pie sitting on the floor she stops and carefully sets the tray on the nightstand.

“Have you slept at all?” asks Twilight worryingly. Pinkie Pie looks down at the floor again, shaking her head in silence. Twilight sighs sadly and approaches her friend with some caution. “Pinkie, you need to get some sleep, take it from somepony who knows what little sleep can do to you.”

Pinkie Pie  swallows some tears and forces herself to look at Twilight in the mirror.

“I betcha you’re wishing you could find a stronger time travel spell to go back in time and save Spike,” she says quietly; then she looks down. “I know I wish I could do something like that. I could save Spike, Octavia, Trixie... everypony I hurt I could save if I could do something like that.”

Twilight looks at the floor, and Pinkie Pie locked on the carpet, eyes watering and gulping back a flood of tears. Twilight takes a deep breath and approaches Pinkie Pie, wrapping her hoof around her neck and bringing her in for a hug. Pinkie Pie doesn’t lift a hoof, though, she remains stiff, only leaning into Twilight’s body and closing her eyes.

There is a moment of depressing silence that Twilight tries to break, but the most she can do is open her mouth while her friend remains uncharacteristically quiet. They sit in silence for another minute or two until Twilight hesitantly pulls away from Pinkie Pie and sheepishly points at the tray.

“Well, I, um, I brought you some pancakes and orange juice.” Twilight looks at the tray, frowning in disappointment. “Or they were supposed to be pancakes and orange juice.”

Pinkie Pie gets up and shuffles towards the tray, and her droopy eyes widening when she sees the so called pancakes. Whatever Twilight had done to them makes Pinkie Pie question how Twilight survived without Spike. The pancakes are thin ashy plates that crumble to bits after Pinkie Pie poked them, and when the pink pony looks at the orange juice, the word “repulsed” comes to mind.

“How did you burn orange juice?” asks Pinkie Pie, flabbergasted by the strange sight.

Twilight looks down, blushing and stammering idiotically, and is only silenced when Pinkie Pie tells her to relax. With that being said, Twilight slumps to the ground, shaking her head.

“I’m sorry, Pinkie, I... I’m just not good at cooking, and I wanted to do something for you after all you’ve been through. I tried to see you at the hospital after the newspapers said you were alive, but when I got there you were gone and,” Twilight sniffles and wipes tears from her eyes, “and then Shining was accused of murder and-and I just don’t know how much more of this I can take!”

Twilight slumps against the bed, covering her eyes with her hoof and crying quietly. Pinkie Pie sits next to Twilight and rubs her shoulder, this only makes Twilight cry harder and Pinkie Pie pulls her in for a hug. Twilight wraps her hooves around and cries into Pinkie Pie’s shoulder, and she rubs the unicorn’s back, closing her eyes and bowing her head.

“I’m sorry... for everything,” whispers Pinkie Pie.

“No, I’m sorry. I drove you to this, I broke our friendship, I broke everypony.”

Pinkie Pie pulls away and looks at Twilight’s bloodshot, soaked eyes. “What do you mean? You still have the others.”

Twilight shakes her head, sniffling and wiping a thick stream of tears from her face. “Rainbow Dash hasn’t said a word to me since the Pre-Gala. She took your death the hardest and blamed me and Rarity for what happened, and Rarity hardly talks to me now. Then when Applejack and Big Mac disappeared Fluttershy became paranoid. She told me that she saw them taken away in government vehicles and I told her she was crazy. I haven’t heard anything from her since then. And even before Shining went into hiding, we’ve been arguing a lot about what Celestia is doing... It’s all over. The Elements of Harmony are broken and nopony trusts Celestia anymore... Nopony but me.”

Twilight looks at Pinkie Pie hopefully, and her state brings a lump to the pink pony’s throat and twists her heart in a knot. She remembers when she would comfort Twilight to the best of her abilities, usually in the form a party or a treat from the Sugar Cube Corner, and in spite of what she had done to her, Rainbow Dash’s statement pertaining to the Element of Magic replays in her mind. Pinkie Pie wants to stay mad at Twilight; she wants to tell her off for how bad of a friend she was when she was needed the most; she wants punch her in the eye and-

Pinkie Pie looks away from Twilight, shivering slightly and mentally telling herself that she doesn’t want to hurt Twilight.

“And why don’t you? She was mean to us,” inquires Pinkamena grimly.

“Do you still trust Celestia?” asks Twilight, her tone matching the saddened, yet hopeful look she has.

Pinkie Pie looks at Twilight for a couple of seconds before she hugs Twilight in a tight embrace. Pinkie Pie strokes Twilight’s back when she feels her quiver; the scene reminds Pinkie Pie of when she spent those nights comforting Trixie, particularly when she nearly overdosed on her pills.

“She’s my goddess, I have to trust her,” says Pinkie Pie softly.

She feels Twilight nod her head and her tears drip on her shoulders. Pinkie Pie wishes she could stay with Twilight and tell her that she forgives her, and-

“Wow, you are so quick to forgive that meanie,” sneers Pinkamena, her voice echoing in Pinkie Pie’s mind. Pinkie Pie’s eyes snap to the doorway and expects to see her evil self to be standing in the doorway with a knife; but all she sees is the hallway wall. “This is perfect. Just one quick twist and her neck will break like a celery stick.”

“Pinkie... are you okay?” asks Twilight uneasily.

“No. What’s wrong?”

“You’re kinda strangling me with your hug.”

Pinkie Pie releases Twilight instantly and backs away from Twilight, trembling and barely suppressing a whimper. She sits on her haunches and looks at her hooves with eyes wide and stricken with terror. Her ears twitch and her eyes water while her breathing becomes heavy when she hears Pinkamena giggle.

“One quick twist,” echoes Pinkamena.

Pinkie Pie gulps. “No... No, I can’t.”

Twilight places her hoof on Pinkie Pie’s shoulder, making her jump and scream, which in turn makes Twilight jump and scream. Both ponies stare at each other, hearts racing and gulping for air with their hooves over their hearts.

“You scared me,” says Pinkie Pie after a few seconds of panting.

“Sorry,” apologizes Twilight, “but you were, I guess, talking to yourself.”

“Psychos tend to do that.” Then she gets a twitch in her leg that signals that she is being watched. “I need to go to, like right now.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“I spent too long her and need to get to Bernese.”

Pinkie Pie dashes out of the room and Twilight runs after her. When they are in the hallway,  Pinkie Pie comes to a sudden stop as her tail is enveloped in a magical aura, and when she turns around she sees Twilight’s horn glowing.

“Wha-Why do you have to go to Bernese? More importantly, how can you even think of going? Look at you! You can’t -you can’t go anywhere!” cries Twilight hysterically she motions towards Pinkie Pie’s injuries.

Pinkie Pie jabs the base of Twilight’s horn, making her yelp painfully and tenderly rub it, and Pinkie Pie continues her path. Each of her steps are filled with determination and worry, and when she passes a window blocked by a lavender curtain, her leg cramps up. Pinkie Pie winces and continues her walk, and when she passes the window the cramp disappears. She stops, and backs up to the window. Her leg cramp returns.

“Oh great,” groans Pinkie Pie.

“Pinkie, did you understand me?” asks Twilight sourly as she walks in, tenderly rubbing her horn when she comes to a stop.

“Yeah, yeah, I understood you loud and clear,” says Pinkie Pie as she moves one of Twilight’s lavender curtains out of the way for a better view of Canterlot. “But I’m still leaving since I’m putting you in danger.”

She closes the curtain and goes to Twilight’s kitchen with her “friend” in pursuit. The kitchen is small to begin with, but just large enough for Pinkie Pie to move around with bare minimum comfort. Since the kitchen is tucked away in the back of the apartment with no windows around Pinkie Pie is spared of another leg cramp.

“Okay, I think you need to tell me what’s going on,” says Twilight authoritatively.

Pinkie Pie sighs loudly and looks at Twilight, knowing that the unicorn won’t stop badgering her until she gets some answers. She tries to think of how she would explain what is going on to Twilight in the least time consuming way possible, and thinking of what to say is not made any easier by the way Twilight is staring at her.

“I guess there’s no point in hiding it,” says Pinkie Pie as she anxiously paws at the ground. “I Pinkie Promise I’ll explain everything when this done, but right now you’ll have to settle for the simple version.”

To emphasize her point, Pinkie Pie does the motions and chants the Pinkie Promise, and gets a small smile of relief when Twilight nods she motions her to explain her situation. Pinkie Pie takes a deep breath and exhales slowly while staring at the ground. Then she looks up at Twilight to give her basic story.

“The guys that attacked Ponyville and killed Spike and the Mayor are after me and I’m losing control of my sanity, so I have to leave to Bernese to get an advanced Mare-Do-Well suit from Iron Will and stay away from you and the others until I get Pinkamena under control and stop Roar Shock from killing millions of ponies.”

Pinkie Pie takes a breath and Twilight’s reaction to the really long run-on sentence is a blank blink. A few seconds of silence later, Pinkie Pie starts rummaging through Twilight’s kitchen, searching for anything she can use on her trip out.

“That... that was a very simple version,” says Twilight distantly.

“Yep, sure was.”

“So you are buying a Mare-Do-Well suit from... Iron Will? Isn’t he the minotaur that, you know, turned Fluttershy into Flutter-” the last part is too low for any normal pony to make out.

“Same guy.” Pinkie Pie opens the fridge and spots two cartons of expired milk and a wall of take-out containers. She sniffs the milk and puts them by the sink, telling Twilight to throw those out the first chance she gets. “Anyway, when I was in my coma I had a dream inside a dream and it was about Roar Shock. He was all weird and green and had destroyed Canterlot, and probably killed Celestia and Luna, and so now I have to stop him so that the dream doesn’t come true. That is where Bernese and Iron Will come in. I’ll need the suit to face him.”

Twilight stomps the floor. “But you can’t face him! You are in no condition to be doing anything! We have to alert Celestia of this! She’ll know what to do!”

Pinkie Pie ignores Twilight as she opens up the cabinet in search of something she can pack just so she won’t have to buy anything on the road. She pulls out a container of chocolate cookies with rainbow colored sprinkles on them, and while she’s pulling them out, it dawns on her as to why Twilight hasn’t starved to death. Her whole cabinet is stuffed to the brim with canned goods, insta-cook and just-add-water type of meals, and pudding. Lots and lots of pudding, all of which is organized by flavor and then sorted alphabetically, just like all of the canned items. Another thing that Pinkie Pie spots is a series of six binders resting on a lone shelf.

Pinkie Pie reaches for the nearest one, which just happens to be pink.

“Wait, Pinkie that’s-”

Too late. Pinkie Pie had already opened it and her hair stands up as she jumps back, screaming at the horrendous sight. The book falls open on the floor and Pinkie Pie shakes her head as she backs away from the monstrosity.

“Private. Thanks, Pinkie, you are the queen of overreacting,” says Twilight with half lidded eyes and drooped ears as she levitates the binder back to its proper spot.

“You have an entire cabinet filled with canned food and pudding, and a shelf full of binders with fast food and special order coupons!” says Pinkie Pie as she points an accusing hoof at the offending object.

Twilight furrows her brow. “I already told you I can’t cook to save my life.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Pinkie Pie ignores Twilight’s whiney scoff. “When this is all over, I’m going to teach you how to cook. No ifs, ands, buts or butts about it.”

“Pinkie, this is getting ridiculous.”

“You’re right. I have to hurry this up.”

Pinkie Pie opens up a container of chocolate cookies and puts four in her mouth; she chews the cookies slowly, ignoring Twilight’s flabbergasted stare, and while doing so, her eyes shift in circles, trying to figure out what is wrong with the cookies. They taste a little hard for her, like eating minty flavored sandrocks, and when she swallows them, it dawns on her what was wrong with the cookies.

“These cookies are expired,” says Pinkie Pie in a disappointed and grossed out tone while staring at the expiration date on the package.

“I knew that... I was keeping them on purpose... For science,” Twilight says uneasily as her eyes shift away from Pinkie Pie.

Pinkie Pie shakes her head and after she throws out the expired cookies she starts pulling out random assortment of canned food. Twilight arches an eyebrow and is about to ask a question regarding the cans, but Pinkie Pie is quicker in opening her mouth.

“Where is the money you found me with?” asks Pinkie Pie.

Twilight leaves the room and comes back a couple of minutes later with a tiny bag of bits floating in front of her. Pinkie Pie finishes putting a can of spinach and spaghetti on the counter when she sees that, then her eyes narrow and she points at the bag.

“That better not be all of the money,” she says dangerously.

Twilight takes a step back, stammering and looking away. “No, it’s-it’s all there, I just enchanted it so that they are, well, tiny, since walking around with all that money will be difficult. Especially for somepony in your condition.”

Pinkie Pie sighs and looks away, uttering: “I guess you’re right about that. So is it like sand? Are the bits like little grains of sand?”

Twilight nods and Pinkie Pie snatches the bag with her mouth and tests the bits by tipping the bag to its side. The grainy bits fall out and grow to their normal size, and they sound like a metallic rainstorm when they roll off the counter.

“That is pretty cool,” giggles Pinkie Pie as she stuffs the bits back into the back with the help of Twilight’s magic. The two giggle and Twilight throws in her own bragging rights, but then Pinkie Pie’s face turns deadly serious and she grabs Twilight by her cheeks and pulls her close so that their snouts are almost touching. Twilight’s eyes dart side to side nervously as Pinkie Pie zeros in on her pupils. “I’m going to need your help with something.”

“What do you need help with?” asks Twilight, her voice slightly distorted from the way her cheeks are pressed together.

Pinkie Pie’s grip tightens on Twilight’s cheeks and she moves to where their noses are nearly touching, making Twilight take a half step back and her ears fold down.

“I need you to stay away from me, and to stay with Celestia. Those guys from Ponyville know I’m alive and they will hurt you badly to get to me.”

“But-”

Pinkie Pie jabs her hoof in Twilight’s mouth. “No buts! There’s those League of Justice nuts and then there’s me. I am as much of a threat to you as them, since my alter ego kinda wants to kill you.”

Twilight pales and Pinkie Pie’s eyes zero in on Twilight’s.

“Pinkie Promise me you’ll not follow me and you’ll go to Celestia as soon as possible.”

~~~~~~~~~~

It has been a few minutes after Pinkie Pie left the apartment, and Twilight is now racing around the apartment, trying to gather as much as she can. She is levitating a saddlebag filled with to the brim, almost bursting, actually. The bag is stuffed with important documents, and notes relating to her soon-to-be position as head of Research and Development, and other office equipment.

The seriousness of Pinkie Pie’s tone made Twilight not want to question her former friend, and despite her best efforts to get out quickly, she knows she has too many important documents to be left lying around. She isn’t sure why the terrorists are after Pinkie Pie, but from what she has seen from their attack on Ponyville, she does not want them getting ahold of anything pertaining to the Royal Government. Especially if they are documents relating to Research and Development.

When Twilight runs out of her room with a framed picture of her and Spike at Shining Armor’s wedding, she tries to stuff it in her saddlebag. After a minute of struggling, she manages to squeeze it in and breathes a sigh of relief.

“Finally, now time to get out of here,” says Twilight to herself.

She closes her eyes and charges her horn, and-

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

Twilight’s eyes open and she stares at her door, her heart racing and panic overtaking her. When the heavy knocking returns and a mare calls out her name, Twilight gulps and takes a step back while increasing the charge on her horn.

“Who is it?” asks Twilight cautiously as she tightens the saddlebag around her.

“Equestrian Investigation Bureau. We need to ask you some questions about your brother,” says the mare outside.

Twilight’s horn stops charging and after a moment of silence, the mare calls out to her again and introduces herself as “Agent Harp” of the EIB. Twilight hesitantly opens the door, but still keeps the chained lock on, and peeks outside. Sure enough, there are three mares and a zebra stallion outside, all of them wearing dark suits and wearing the EIB necklace around their necks. Twilight studies the necklaces and deducts that they are, indeed, real EIB badges; although she is a bit surprised to see a zebra in the ranks of the EIB. Pushing the thought aside, figuring that it is a quota thing, Twilight unlocks her door and opens it up and steps aside for them to enter. However, one thing that she finds odd is that all of them are wearing earplugs; that, and one of the mares looks very familiar. And she knows that the aquamarine unicorn recognizes her, too.

“Lyra? You’re EIB?” asks Twilight with surprise.

Twilight looks over her shoulder when she hears her door locks click, and she sees the zebra’s hoof falling from the door with him blocking her way and staring at her with cold eyes. Twilight stares at the zebra suspiciously and then her eyes meet Lyra’s.

“Lyra, what is going on?” demands Twilight.

Lyra closes her eyes and her horn glows a soft blue light, and after she takes a deep breath a strange, soothing music emits from it. It is an orchestra of flutes, lyres, and a dozen other instruments that make Twilight’s eyes heavy. Within seconds she is yawning and having great difficulty trying to concentrate. She fights to keep her eyes open, and tries to charge her horn, but when she does get a small charge, she feels a pair of hooves go on her. One wraps around her neck and the other presses down on her back, realizing they belong to the zebra when she looks out of the corner of her eye. Twilight gets a shiver and lets out a small whimper as she feels his warm breath in her ear when he sings her a hymn in his native tongue. The zebra gently pushes down on her back, thus causing her legs to buckle with minimal resistance. With each passing blink, Twilight’s world becomes hazier and her eyes become heavier. Twilight groans and wraps her hoof around the zebra’s neck in a feeble attempt to stand up while still charging her horn, but he gently removes her hoof and lays her on the ground, still keeping his cold glare and uttering the lullaby. The last thing she sees before blacking out is one of the mares walking up to her with four horn cuffs.

~~~~~~~~~~

Twilight’s eyes flutter open after what seemed like a day of darkness; with each blink her vision becomes clearer and the environment more sinister. Twilight looks around and sees that she is in a dark, gloomy room with the only light source being a single light bulb that has trouble staying on. She also hears a gentle hum and fan blades slicing the air. Twilight grunts and tries to move, but quickly finds that her legs are bound by rope, and when she tries to use her magic, she gets a pinch of pain in her horn. Twilight winces, then she lifts her forelegs up and tries to gnaw the rope off. Her gnawing makes very little progress, and when she sees the rusted metal door in front of her open with a sickening grind, she drops her hooves and glares at the two equines that walked in.

“Lyra, what’s going on!” demands Twilight ferociously.

The zebra steps forward. “The situation is simple, Ms. Sparkle, you are our prisoner and we will release you when you tell us where Pinkie Pie went.”

“Prisoner, huh?”

Twilight squeezes her eyes shut and tries to use her magic, but all she gets is a headache. She tries once again, grunting loudly and squeezing her eyes harder to where it’s bringing out tears. After a minute of struggling, she collapses, panting and sweating heavily.

“With your power nearly rivaling Celestia we did not want to take any chances with just the cuffs,” states the zebra. “So for the safety of everypony here we have nullified your magic with healing mushrooms.”

“What!?”

“You’ll get it back in a half a day’s time.”

Twilight growls and continues her struggle against the bonds, but just like all of her other attempts, she only becomes more tired and loses more hope. Her attempts to escape have left her with a brutal headache that feels like someone has cracked her horn with a hammer, and the ropes have torn into her skin and left small burn marks.

“What do you want with Pinkie?” says Twilight boldly between her pants.

The zebra frowns. “What do you care? You disowned her a lifetime ago.”

“She’s my friend, and nopony is going to hurt her, you hear me!”

Twilight’s captors stare at her, and she stares back defiantly. After a few seconds of hostile staring, the zebra turns to Lyra.

“Heartstrings, bring her in.” When she gives him a horrified look he narrows his eyes. “Now.”

Lyra gallops to the door and pokes her head out. “Adanz says to bring her in!”

Twilight ignores the stare from Adanz as she resumes struggling with her bonds, using physical thrashing and attempts to charge her horn, but her only success is making her headache and the rope burns worse.

“Who’s this secret pony you’re bringing in?” says Twilight in a brave tone, grunting when she tries yet again to slide her hooves out from the rope. “Is she-” another grunt, “some kinda psycho?”

“She’s a survivor.”

The door suddenly glows and swings open, and a unicorn mare marches in wearing a thick overcoat with the collar being extra fluffy and the shoulders having metal plates sewn on, as well as having dual mini-Gatling guns strapped to her back. Underneath is the black barding of the League of Justice with some humble modifications. Half of the unicorn’s face is covered by a metal mask that hides most of the burnt flesh and what’s left of her her mane is combed to the side to cover her exposed skull. She is also drinking a large, strawberry smoothy.

The unicorn’s breathing is raspy and each step makes a series of whirs and clicks, even her neck makes the same noise when she turns her head to look at Lyra. It is at that point that Twilight realizes that the newcomer is a crude cyborg, and her neck, and half of her body and limbs are covered with tiny wires, gears, pistons, and joint systems. When the cyborg reaches Lyra she gives her the smoothy without hesitation and looks at Twilight while hungrily licking her lips. Twilight gets a shiver up her spine and starts shaking as the deformed unicorn looks down at her with a sick, twisted smile.

Adanz steps back. “She’s all yours, Terra.”

Twilight’s eyes widen with terror and tries to shake free from her bondage and charge her horn as Terra levitates a pair of rocks from her jacket. The rocks break apart like liquid and remold into a sleek blade, and Twilight can hear Lyra demanding to know what Terra is trying to do when the crazed unicorn steps in front of her.

“Hello there, do you remember me?” asks Terra in a mocking coo, her voice being scratchy and purely psychotic.

“I-I won’t talk! No matter what you do to me I won’t talk!” cries Twilight; her eyes filling with terrified tears and body trembling as Terra stands above her, grinning and twisting the knife in front of her.

“So you don’t fear me?” asks Terra as she kneels in front of Twilight, licking her burnt lips. “Even though I killed your pet dragon. What was his name? Dike? Pike?”

“HIS NAME WAS SPIKE!” screams Twilight; swearing painfully when the collars around her horn send out a surge of magic that makes it feel like her horn had been shattered.

Twilight’s head drops to the concrete floor, sending a ripple of pain throughout her skull. She sobs quietly and squeezes her eyes shut, trying to think of someplace other than the Hell she is in. A place like her library, where she and her friends would have slumber parties and talk about girly stuff, and then tease Spike when they caught him peeking. Or the nights at the Gala where something crazy would always happen, such as Spike and Pinkie Pie breaking into the kitchen to mix chili powder with the fruit punches.

“Why did you kill him?” sniffles Twilight.

“Kill who?”

“SPIKE!”

“Oh him? I was bored.”

Twilight glares at Terra, saying: “You’ll pay for what you’ve done.” through gritted teeth.

Terra presses her blade against Twilight’s face, right under her eye and digs the blade in. Twilight screams and sobs as she tries to free herself by thrashing and using her magic. But her horn sputters uselessly and she’s too tied up to move; the only thing that happens is the knife scrapes against her skin, leaving more scratches and coating her face with trickles of blood.

“You sure about that?” sneers Terra. “Why don’t you talk first, and then I’ll remove those horn cuffs and then you can get on to the... oh wait.” She snickers and shakes her head. “I just now realized that even if I did take these horn cuffs off you would still be powerless because of the mushrooms! How stupid of you to threaten somepony who has magic!”

Terra punches Twilight in the face, and her world goes into a blur and a loud ringing noise takes over when her head creaks against the pavement. She hears Lyra shouting something and Adanz shouting back at her, but she can’t understand a word they are saying over the ringing in her ears. Twilight winces when Terra uses her magic to lift her up by her mane and look into her sick eye.

“Why don’t you just talk? It’ll be a lot less painful for you.”

Twilight gulps and fails in her fights to hold back her shakes and tears.

“I won’t let you hurt any more of my friends,” she says with her last amount of defiance.

Twilight whimpers and starts crying when Terra’s blade hovers over her eye; over her thumping heart and choked breaths, she can hear Lyra and Adanz still screaming at each other, followed by the metallic doors slamming shut. When the doors slam shut, Twilight sobs harder and twists in her spot, desperate to escape.

“Do what you have to do,” orders Adanz.

The doors open and shut and through her cloudy, teary vision, Twilight sees Terra’s twisted smile widen and the knife get closer to her eye. It is just her and the devil now, locked in the clammy, dark room with a single lightbulb.

oooOOOooo

Lyra’s hoof goes over her mouth, and she leans against the rusted wall and slides to the ground, eyes closed and sobbing, when she hears Twilight’s agonizing shriek. She jumps when Twilight lets out another bloodcurdling, even more agonizing cry over Terra’s shouts. She reluctantly opens her eyes and sees a good number of the pones with her are staring at the door, most too horrified to speak, while others try to act like nothing is wrong. She then looks at Adanz, his back is to her and he appears to be preoccupied with talking to one of his soldiers.

There is another scream that makes Lyra jump and let out a small cry. Adanz turns to her and watches her for a couple of seconds, but all she can do is tremble and sniffle as Twilight’s cries and Terra’s shouts echo from the room and bounce off the concrete walls. When Adanz realizes how much of a mess Lyra is, he approaches her and points towards the exit with a solemn expression.

“Get some air, you’ll need it for what’s coming.”

Lyra glares at him with bloodshot eyes and trembling lips, but her glare is defeated by his stare. She reluctantly gets up and walks down the hall with her head down and tail dragging behind her, squeezing a waterfall of tears from her eyes and gritting her teeth when another one of Twilight’s tortured screams echo down the hallway.

=**********=

Rainbow Dash rubs some sandman crust from her eyes when the elevator doors lazily slide open with a ding. She smacks her lips and runs her tongue around her mouth to lick up the last of her breakfast crumbs, and she checks to make sure her uniform is crisp as she walks into the hallway. If the hallway wasn’t polished then Rainbow Dash would feel like she was walking in a tomb, but its clean and brightly lit with the walls being bare, save for a single, gold stripe running down its length and a sign that prohibits flying. As she walks down the hallway, she smiles nervously at other ponies that give her nervous glances and tries to tune them out when they whisper behind her back.

After going through the tedious checkpoints that check, double check, and triple check her identity and papers, Rainbow Dash finally makes it to the lobby of Research and Development. Like most lobbies, it has a wide open area filled with polished tables and posters along the wall. The posters have a wide variety of subject matter, ranging from proper etiquette in the premise to safety instructions in cases of emergencies; they even posted step by step instructions on how to properly do exercises.

Rainbow Dash looks around the lobby for a moment just for the sake of seeing if there is anyone familiar around; she sees ponies in uniforms conversing amongst themselves about their daily activities, but it seems that once one noticed her presence, everyone noticed her. The crowd stops talking and stares at her, and she takes a deep breath and walks in, flashing a cool smile. She uses her cool charm to greet a couple of mares drinking soda and they move to another table clear across the room.

“Oh boy,” mumbles Rainbow Dash as a couple more ponies scoot away from her when she nears them.

When she reaches the door on the other side, it opens up towards her and a familiar charcoal stallion pegasus walks out with a basic uniform on. He’s talking to someone behind him, so his head is turned away and he ends up bumping into Rainbow Dash. They stumble away from each other and shake the stars out of their eyes before looking at one another. It takes the stallion a couple of seconds longer than Rainbow Dash to regain himself, but when he does, his ears droop and his eyes widen at the sight of her agitated state.

“Watch where you’re going!” snaps Rainbow Dash.

“Sorry!” blurts Thunderlane shakily as he backpedals.

Rainbow Dash scoffs and bullies her way past Thunderlane, and once she is in the hallway and the door slams shut behind her, she stops dead in her tracks and glares at the last pony she wanted to see, hear or imagine. From the looks of it, Soarin is also dreading fate’s cruel joke of having them run into each other, but he also looks as though he has something to say but is having trouble saying it. However, Rainbow Dash doesn’t give him the chance to say anything, she snorts out hot air and storms past him, making sure he sees the murderous scowl on her face. As she stomps down the hall she can feel Soarin’s eyes on her, but she doesn’t look back and is glad that he hasn’t said anything to her since she has nothing to say to him.

“Rainbow, can we talk?” asks Soarin suddenly.

Rainbow Dash swears and fights every urge to turn her head to give him her version of the Stare. The only way she can do it, though, is to pick up her pace and keep her mouth shut, which she does, but it doesn’t stop Soarin from galloping after her. He repeats his question and Rainbow Dash now thinks the best way to escape is to fly. However, it seems that as soon as she spreads her wings, a military police officer appears out of nowhere and clears her throat obnoxiously while pointing at the sign prohibiting flying.

Rainbow Dash lets out an annoyed, explosive sigh as she puts her wings to her side and slows to a trot when Soarin appears next to her. She knows there is no escaping Soarin since she’s not allowed to fly, and the last thing she needs is to get dinged after barely getting out of jail. Especially when she’s on an unofficial top secret mission from the Captain of the Royal Guard.

“Rainbow, can-”

“Yes, we can talk! But make it quick I have work to do,” snarls Rainbow Dash.

“Well, you’ve been avoiding me ever since you got back and I just wanted to talk.”

Rainbow Dash rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I got that after the umpeenth time you said it.”

Rainbow Dash comes to a stop when she bumps into Soarin’s hoof. She rolls her eyes and turns to him, and he leads her to a  secluded part of the hallway after some effort to convince her to do so. Once there, he closes the door and makes sure no one else is around before he turns to Rainbow Dash, pawing the ground nervously. Rainbow Dash scowls and taps her hoof impatiently, and when Soarin’s awkward silence passes the ten second mark she heads towards the door, but he holds out his hoof pleading her to wait.

“You better hurry up, my patience with you is shot to shit,” says Rainbow Dash with a sneer.

Soarin opens and closes his mouth a couple of time before he is finally able to form a sentence. “I want to apologize.”

“You mean you want to apologize about how you left me in a prison cell when I needed you the most?” Soarin looks down to hide the shame in his eyes and Rainbow Dash shakes her head while looking away from his ugly mug to hide the tears building up in her eyes. “And to think I actually believed you when you said you enjoyed being around me.”

Soarin barely has the courage to look at Rainbow Dash, and when she looks at him he flinches and makes a small gulp. His eyes are also shining from the small bit of tears that formed, and Rainbow Dash almost accepts his apology right then and there, but his betrayal is too great to be let off with simple misty eyes.

“I did have fun with you. I did enjoy being around you,” Soarin says quietly, “but I... this is all I know. The Wonderbolts, Air Guard, this uniform... and when you did what you did I panicked.”

“Oh bullshit.”

“You don’t know, Rainbow. You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know how much... you just don’t understand.”

Rainbow Dash ruffles her feathers and angrily points at herself.

“I don’t understand?” she says furiously, tears now rolling down her cheeks and voice cracking. “No, I do understand! You cared more about your career than me! You abandoned me when I needed you the most! My friend nearly died and I was arrested because I saved her! And what do you do? You leave! You left me when I was in a prison cell!”

Soarin makes no attempt to counter Rainbow Dash, and he can’t even look her in the eye. Rainbow Dash watches Soarin, though, hoping he will say something that will give her a reason to scream at him or punch him in the nose. But he remains silent. Rainbow Dash grits her teeth and stomps on the floor after the silence becomes unbearable for her; her stomp makes the Wonderbolt Captain flinch and look away.

“Aren’t you going to say anything!”

Soarin reluctantly looks at Rainbow Dash, gulping back whatever tears haven’t trailed down his cheeks. “I know I hurt you, and I haven’t forgiven myself for it, and I know my apologies won’t work.” He wipes his nose. “But know that I am, and will always be, sorry for what I have done to you, and I hope you’ll forgive me someday.”

Rainbow Dash scoffs and shoves Soarin away while stomping past him, being sure to whip his face with her tail along the way. She slams the door on her way out and marches down the hallway without looking back.

~~~~~~~~~~

It had been nearly a full shift after Rainbow Dash had her unpleasant encounter with Soarin; the whole time she was drilling, her body moved as commanded by Spitfire and she answered whatever question she could in a short, blunt fashion. Overall, she was a moody zombie and nobody talked to her, save for Spitfire who barked at her rather than talked like a normal pony. Not that Rainbow Dash had any major objections to it since she has already adjusted to the lifestyle of the Royal Guard to. But when the shift ended Rainbow Dash was more than eager to leave to get some more important work done. She didn’t say her farewells or stay for a small chat or after-practice massage, she just up and left the training grounds in a colorful flash and once inside began her brisk walking.

As Rainbow Dash walks through the complex, she doesn’t even bother to force a smile, she wants everyone to know that she is pissed and that no one should talk to her. Her idea works out very well, too, given that just about everyone she passes moves out of her way. Because of this, she is able to snake her way through the twisting hallways without anyone bugging her, but that goes without saying that she still had guards to evade. It isn’t even a challenge for her given that her speed and agility is one of the best in Equestria, matched only by a select few.

While sneaking she overhears the guards and passerbys talk about Shining Armor being wanted for the murder of Quill Pen. The news has been circulating like a wildfire ever since Shining Armor disappeared from his office, leaving just an apology letter for Cadence. Rainbow Dash personally thinks the situation stinks of set-up and also wonders how she will be able to tell Shining Armor of her findings, or, more importantly, if Brisk Wind and Major Fuller knew he had someone on the inside. Someone like her. As the thoughts become more dominate, the thoughts of how much of an ass Soarin was moves to the back burner and she becomes more nervous to the point where she gets the jitters and a phony sixth sense. Her movements become more sneaky and predatory, and for the first time in her life she is cursing her parents for making her so colorful.

After spending only Celestia knows how long snooping around and evading the guards, she comes across the place she wanted to be. Major Fuller’s office. She looks around to make sure that no one is around, and when she sees that the coast is clear she pushes aside the part of her brain urging for her to leave and approaches the door. Her nervous side of the brain is now banging pans and screaming at her to leave, and when Rainbow Dash checks the door she finds it to be unlocked. She stares at the door suspiciously for a couple of seconds, waiting for any signs of someone on the other side, before doing one last look around and pushing it open. She cringes when the door hinges squeak and slides inside while carefully closing the door. After it clicks shut she gets to work.

Rainbow Dash wasn’t sure what to expect when she snuck into Major Fuller’s office. She was sure it would be clean, which it is, and she was sure it would have medals along the wall, which it does, but she was not expecting to see so many low ranking medals. One in particular is a blue ribbon with the number five imprinted on it next to a glass case holding a polished bolt action rifle. Inside the case with the rifle  is a series of spent bullet casings, each one with a dated tag, and next to the case is a square formation of pictures.

Rainbow Dash looks over her shoulder to make sure no one is coming in before she gets a closer look at them. One is a picture of Major Fuller with a group of ponies celebrating their college graduation; he is wrapping his hoof around Quill Pen’s neck, wearing a party hat, and overall looking goofy. That is something Rainbow Dash has a hard time picturing, even with the photo evidence to prove it. Another one is a wedding picture labeled “Fuller-Aural Wedding”; Major Fuller is wearing his military uniform with Lock and Brisk Wind in the positions of best stallion and mare. The third picture is of him and Shining Armor at the Gala with Prince Blueblood; Shining Armor looks bored while Major Fuller and Prince Blueblood seem to be having a good time talking to each other. The fourth and final picture has Major Fuller shaking hooves with Braeburn at some kind of outdoor event, judging from the rows of tables stacked with food and banners in the background. Rainbow Dash  is surprised by what she’s seeing, but doesn’t give it too much time since she has more snooping to do.

She walks towards a bookcase and scans the copies of books and small glass decorations. The decorations are nothing spectacular, just birds and other forest animals in various poses. Rainbow Dash also finds books on ornithology and mythology. However, one book catches her attention; it has a red spine and gold lettering that spells: Shining Path. She carefully pulls it out and flips the book open to see what she could find. One thing she finds is that it has the University of Stalliongrad seal on it, but she thinks nothing of it and flips to a random page and starts reading. She loses track of time almost immediately as she reads the confusing, yet admittedly interesting, book about social and economic philosophy, and right as she was about to finish the chapter-

“I presume you’re enjoying the book,”  Major Fuller says suddenly, making Rainbow Dash nearly jump out of her skin and slam the book shut. She steps back when he enters his office and levitates the book back. “I enjoy reading it from time to time. It helps me think about the state of our world and how it can change for the better.”

“I’m sure it does,” says Rainbow Dash carefully as she moves towards the door without taking her eyes off of the unicorn.

Major Fuller walks in front of Rainbow Dash, forcing her to back up until her backside bumps into the bookshelf, and he keeps his eye on her as he points towards the rifle in the casing.

“And that is a Shire and Waler rifle. Developed by the Shire and Waler Defense Company, this model pioneered the rifles and provided the foundation for modern ballistic weapon developments.”

Major Fuller’s horn glows and the rifle floats out of its case, towards him, and the entire time he does not take his eyes off of Rainbow Dash. She watches him carefully, tensing her body and ruffling her feathers as she waits for him to show any signs of wanting to physically harm her.

“This particular rifle got me fifth place in the Annual Appleoosa Shooting Bananza.”

“Wow, you sure wear that medal proudly... sir,” says Rainbow Dash, sliding along the wall, away from the Major when he turns the gun towards her.

She breathes a mental sigh of relief when he points the barrel to the floor and opens up the chamber, peering inside like he thinks something he lost might be hiding in there. He snaps the chamber shut and glances up at Rainbow Dash, still keeping the barrel pointed at the ground.

“It helps me put into perspective on how skilled I have become with such a weapon. You know Crackshot, correct?” asks Major Fuller.

The tone in his voice, though even as usual, had a bad vibe to it. The way those words slid out of his mouth sent a shiver up Rainbow Dash’s spine, and she tries to hide her uneasiness by holding a stern expression. However, she has a feeling that Major Fuller can see through her attempt. So, knowing that she’s in hot water, Rainbow Dash tries to leave, but the door is shut and locked through telekinetic manipulation. Rainbow Dash turns around, now growling and ruffling her feathers as her eyes narrow on her superior. She’s always had a deep seated resentment for Major Fuller ever since that day at the hospital, but now she’s adding a bit of fear to that mix. The way his calculative eyes are looking at her reminds her of one of those eerie villains she read in her Daring Do collection.

“You better open that door if you know what’s good for you,” threatens Rainbow Dash, trying to make herself look bigger with her feathers; however, Major Fuller doesn’t show any signs of intimidation.

“Braeburn Apple, informally known as ‘Crackshot’, told me that the reason why he is so accurate with his weapons is because he follows a simple rule: ‘Aim small. Miss small’.” Major Fuller steps forward, eyes narrowing on Rainbow Dash and his rifle going back to its stand. “He also said that second chances are gifts that need to be held to the highest of standards. You are back, Airmare Dash, and while I do not approve of it, it is not my decision to make. Just know that you are on thin ice as it is, and that if I catch you where you do not belong again, I will end you. Dismissed.”

Major Fuller’s horn glows and the door swings open; he narrows his eyes as he backs up and Rainbow Dash wastes no time in leaving. She walks out of the room with a brisk pace without saying a word, and when Major Fuller closes his door, she releases a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Then she leans against the wall and sits on her haunches while rubbing her eyes with her hooves, which are now shaking.

When she recollects herself a few seconds later, she trots down the hall, mumbling: “Man, what a creep.”

=**********=

Trixie screams herself awake when the foghorns of the boat blare and shake her room. She fumbles under her covers and falls out of her bed in a tangled mess, groaning in annoyance, and when she is finally able to untangle herself she realizes something. She is wet. Her whole body is soaked! As in her face is dripping and her mane is matted down to her face, and the blanket is heavy from whatever soaked it.

She sniffs herself and thankfully finds nothing out of the ordinary, but she is still perplexed about her current condition. However, all thoughts are replaced with colorful swear words when the foghorn sounds again.

Trixie swears loudly and presses her hooves against her ears. She hears someone talking, but she can’t understand him -or her- over the obnoxious horn. When the horn’s deafening signal dies down, Trixie lifts her head up from over the bed and sees Monte standing by his bed, eyes baggy and half lidded with an unimpressed look while a bucket of water floats next to his head. Trixie uses her magic to untangle herself as her cheeks flush with embarrassment; she throws in a few swear words and grunts, too, when the blanket proves to be difficult.

After wrestling herself free from the blanket, she throws it against the wall and shakes the water off of her body like she is some kind of canine.

“Magician. Masked crime fighter. Heavy sleeper. You never fail to surprise me,” says Monte dryly; then he cracks a smile. “Although, I have to say, you look good with a wet mane.”

Trixie’s eyes narrow and growls while her horn sparks a little, and while she does wince slightly she still holds her glare. Monte’s smile disappears and he coughs nervously.

“I take it you don’t like the wet mane look.”

“I hate it,” growls Trixie, ears flicking when she hears Sunshine chuckle.

“Okay, note to self then. ‘Trixie likes dry mane look’. Anything else I should know before we leave the boat?”

“I’ll think of something later.”

Trixie walks to the bathroom, ignoring his commentary about how touchy she is. Once inside their tiny bathroom she grabs a towel and rubs her mane dry, that is until she sees Monte staring at her from the room. She frowns and slams the door shut before resuming her drying.

“Oh c’mon!” whines Monte. “There’s nothing wrong with watching a mare dry off!”

Trixie throws down her towel and grabs another on, this time to dry her tail off. “There is when you throw a bucket of water on the mare!”

“Two buckets, actually. Waking you up is a chore in itself and the only reason why I didn’t think you were dead is because you snore.”

Trixie’s stops and her eyes widen and her towel falls to the floor in a damp mess as she stares the door, horrified by what she had heard. Sure, she knew that she was a heavy sleeper because Pinkie Pie mentioned it a couple of times, but snoring? She never even realized she snored. Pinkie Pie had never mentioned it, nor anyone else for that matter.

“I thought my mom snored loudly, but you? Oh man, we’re going to have to put a muffler on you or something when we get to the hotel room,” continues Monte.

Trixie grabs one of the hoof towels and wipes her face and horn, being sure to be gentle with her horn. The rubbing does feel good against her coat and horn, and she really wants to take a warm shower just so she can get the knots out of her muscles. But she knows that it would be pointless since she already got a cheap shower from Monte’s stunt and she already dampened the towels, and she has no time for a relaxing shower.

Trixie groans in frustration and stomps outside when the horn sounds again, and the very first thing she sees is Monte’s amused smile. At first she is tempted to wipe that stupid smile off with a good punch to the mouth, then she wonders if her punch will injure him beyond use when she remembers how her attacks have a tendency to leave her targets with broken bones.

“You okay, Trixie?” asks Monte, snapping her out of her thoughts.

Trixie shakes her head. “I’m fine. Just thinking about how-” The horn sounds off again and Trixie swears and stomps the ground while glaring at the ceiling. “Seriously! What the hay is up with that stupid horn!”

Monte chuckles and levitates Trixie’s bag to her. “That is the wake up alarm. They want to make sure the tourists are awake since nopony is allowed on the ship once it docks.”

Trixie rubs her ear. “Why? Are they hiding something?”

Monte raises an eyebrow. “Um, no. It’s this thing called ‘rules’; something we should follow, especially in Bernese.”

Trixie snickers and walks past Monte as she puts on her pack. “This is coming from a crime lord’s lieutenant?”

Monte holds up his hoof in protest, but ends up sighing and trotting after Trixie without so much as muttering a protest to her words.

Trixie follows a sea of crowded passengers that are being herded through the hallways with the aid of ibex shipmates giving instructions in a mix of broken and fluent Equestrian. Trixie loses Monte through the crowd, although she knows she isn’t too far from him since she can still hear him calling her over the chatter. Trixie stops by a small pocket of peace where a couple of ibex shipmates are talking. They look at her and she guesses they are trying to order her to leave by the way they are waving her towards the crowd and urgently speaking to her. She tries to explain that she’s waiting for Monte, but the language barrier becomes too annoying and difficult for her; luckily Monte shows up, breathing a big sigh of relief and speaking in the ibex native tongue to excuse the two. The ibex wave them off and Monte stays close to Trixie as they shuffle towards the stairs.

“You are a horrible bodyguard,” says Monte, raising his voice to talk over the excited crowd.

“I was scouting ahead to make sure none of Brisk Wind’s agents were around,” lies Trixie.

“Well, if Brisk Wind’s agents were on this ship they would’ve killed you in your sleep.”

Trixie glares at Monte and is about to counter his claim with the most insulting thing she could think of at the moment, but her train of thought is interrupted by a cheerful ding that is loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Damen und sanftfohlen, willkommen bei Berner!” says the intercom with great enthusiasm clearly over the chatter.

Trixie and Monte are now near the door to the docks and she keeps her eyes on the same couple that had the ice cream the previous day. The two see her and they bak up behind a bigger stallion with a tropical shirt and straw hat; needless to say, he was very confused as to why the couple did that.

“Ladies and gentlecolts, welcome to Bernese!” translates another voice over the intercom, also enthusiastic and heavy on the accent.

Trixie pushes open the door and is immediately blinded by a flash of overwhelming sunshine and cheers, but when she opens her eyes, her jaw drops at the beauty of the site. The port is enormous to say the least, and the towering monuments and buildings along the edge make it all the more surreal. When Trixie looks over the railing she sees little tugboats pulling the ferry closer to the docks with other similar boats and ibexes wearing the appropriate attire tying up the ship and pushing a ramp towards them.

“Willkommen bei Buchtseite, Madam Trixie,” says Monte with a dramatic wave of his hoof.

Once the ramp is secured against the boat, the tourists walk off with eager smiles and converse excitedly amongst themselves about the wonders they will see. Trixie and Monte go down the ramp and she orders him to stay put by a souvenir stand while she walks ahead. As she walks ahead, she scans the area for any threats. She doesn’t spot any, but her mind is racing at all the possibilities of an ambush that could lay waste to them, such as a Gatling gun hiding inside an ice cream cart, a bomb in a garbage can, or maybe an assassin posing as a souvenir merchant ready to kill their target with a poison dart!

Trixie observes Monte by the souvenir shack she left him at. So far he looks okay, seeing as how he is chatting with a female ibex clerk with the flirty look in his eyes, but Trixie will not be taking any chances! She marches towards Monte and focuses her eyes on the clerk as she butts her way next to him. The poor clerk’s cheerful smile is replaced with a nervous one and Monte gives Trixie an annoyed look.

“Having fun, Monte?” asks Trixie harshly while scanning the shack for anything that can be used as a weapon.

“I was until you crashed the party,” replies Monte.

Trixie inspects the items on display and sees lots of little nit picky things. Things such as little Bernese flags -which consist of a white winged full moon with a navy blue background, dolls of famous figureheads and Luna, sunglasses, straw hats, and an assortment of cheap toys. But there is nothing that can be considered a weapon to a normal passerby.

But Trixie is no normal passerby, she sees potentially cleverly disguised weapons everywhere.

Trixie uses her magic to grab a small tube from the display rack and inspect it. It looks like a simple toy to an untrained eye, but Trixie knows that it is obviously one of those cleverly disguised weapons she was searching for, and she calls the clerk out on it.

“How clever of you to disguise this weapon as a toy,” she says sinisterly, ignoring Monte’s facehoof. “Let me guess, a dart gun? No. This must be a radio trigger for a bomb hidden somewhere close by. Like that garbage can!”

The ibex clerk shifts uneasily in her spot as Trixie puts her hooves on the countertop and leans closer to her. She uses her magic to grab the ibex and bring her close so that they are practically touching noses and so that they can hear each other over the commotion of excited tourists.

“How much are you being paid?” asks Trixie threateningly.

“Fa-five bronze an hour?” says the ibex terrifyingly and unsurely; she is now shaking and sweating profusely.

Trixie’s eyes narrow. “And why don’t I believe you?”

The ibex gulps.

“Okay, Trixie, that’s enough,” says Monte as he gently pushes Trixie away and puts the toy back where she found it, ignoring her protests.

He then turns to apologize to the ibex, but she already slammed her window shut and locked it and now has a closed sign hanging down. Monte frowns and looks at Trixie with great annoyance as she scans the area intently. Her eyes dart between every suspicious passerby, which is basically everyone, and her ears swivel towards ever suspicious noise, which is basically everything.

“I can’t believe you!” scolds Monte, snapping Trixie out of her recon state. “You probably scarred that poor lady for the rest of her life!”

“I was doing my job, Monte, which is protecting you from any harm,” counters Trixie.

“I appreciate the notion, I really do, but-” Monte puts his hooves on Trixie’s shoulders and looks into her eyes, and she also looks back into his, although hers are hardened while his are still surprisingly soft, “you are way too paranoid for your own good and need to relax. Brisk Wind can’t touch us in Bernese.”

Trixie shrugs Monte off. “You don’t know her. I’ve seen what she is capable of.”

“I was there at the raid, too, you know.”

Trixie shakes her head and walks through the crowd, being sure to stay near the buildings and constantly looking over her shoulder to make sure Monte is okay.

“But you were never her victim,” says Trixie grimly, eyes narrowing to slits and jaw tightening as her horn sparks a little. “You were never tortured. You were never betrayed and forced to hide by the ones you trusted.”

She sees Sunshine sitting on a bench, not too far from her, smiling eagerly, but when Monte steps in front of her line of sight and she looks past his shoulder, she sees that he had disappeared. Monte looks over his shoulder to where Trixie looked, and when he sees nothing but an empty bench he looks back at Trixie with worry.

“You’re talking about more than Brisk Wind, aren’t you?” he asks.

“Let’s just get those files,” grumbles Trixie. “You said you had a hotel room rented out. Where is it?”

Monte smiles and takes the lead with a burst of enthusiasm. “Follow me, madam, for I shall lead you to one of the most beautiful buildings in all of Equus!”

Trixie huffs and follows Monte down the road, and lets out a little groan when he goes on an intellectual tangent of how it is one of the largest buildings in the world, finely crafted, and a dozen plus other praises for it.

~~~~~~~~~~

After nearly two hours of walking and trying to keep Monte out of the souvenir shops and Trixie from doing street side interrogations for anyone that looked at them, the two finally make it to their destination. When they arrived, Trixie was thankful that they got there since Monte’s need to explain everything about the building and Bernese culture in general was driving her up the wall. But upon arrival, she finds herself stopping in her tracks to drink in the beautiful architecture of the hotel, and Monte steps aside and waves his hoof towards the building with a huge grin.

“Trixie, I present to you the Großartiges Hotel der Buchtseite,” says Monte proudly.

Monte wasn’t lying when he said that the hotel was a marvel of architecture. Its blocky base stands five stories high, and each of the towers on its four corners stand another fifteen stories. Its medieval style is enhanced by the cobblestone road and decorative shrubbery surrounding it, and the marble statue of an ibex wearing a General’s fancy armor and looking gallant as he poses on a rock with four other ibex in simple armor behind him. There are ibexes that occasionally stop with their kids or mate to read the bronze plaque at the base, which is surrounded by a carved in picture of an epic battle.

Trixie walks up to it and tries to decipher what it says, but all she gets is a headache.  Trixie scoffs and paces around the statue, deciding to ignore the plaque to marvel at the elaborate carvings around the base.

“This beauty was carved by the late Herr Chisel,” says Monte with a proud smile, then he points at the General. “That is General Scroll; originally he was a scribe, but after his town was conquered by the griffins he led a resistance network that rallied the ibex tribes and pushed out the griffins. The mural thing you see at the base is the depiction of the Battle of Buchtseite, and it was here that General Grizelda surrendered to General Scroll.”

To emphasize his point, Monte taps the base of the statue with a smile, and Trixie cocks her head and looks closer at the statue. While Trixie looks at the statue, Monte coolly leans against it as he inspects his hoof.

“It’s some cool stuff. You should really read up on Bernesenese history,” he says, retaining his proud tone.

“History is boring,” remarks Trixie carelessly, now walking away from the statue.

“Boring? Boring!?” Monte gasps and shakes his head in disbelief as he gallops after Trixie. “How can you possibly say that history is boring? History, my dear wife, is-”

Trixie holds out her hoof and when Monte bonks into it he stops moving and talking and she slowly turns her head to glare at him.

“Enough with the ‘wife’, Monte, we are not married.”

“I know that, but it is part of our cover, remember? You seriously need to relax; the amount of stress you’re in is not good for your health or your complexion.”

Trixie forces herself to laugh. “You want me to relax? Okay, fine I’ll relax!”

Trixie sticks her nose in the air and trots away from Monte with a huff and a flick of her tail that unfortunately missed Monte’s face. She increases her speed to a brisk walk when she hears Monte calling and going after her. He says something about them needing to stick together and a bunch of other stuff that she could care less about at the moment. She is relaxing, after all. Or at least trying to relax. But all the noise and possibilities of sniper position and other means of attacking them from a vantage point spin around like a carousel in her mind. And just to be sure that Monte isn’t lying dead or being kidnapped by EIB agents, she looks over her shoulder. Monte is fine, and is actually not too far from her, so if something does happen she will know about it. That little bit of closure actually does make her relax a little bit.

“Trixie, hold on a second, you’re-”

“I’m relaxing, Monte, remember?” interrupts Trixie snobbishly.

When she approaches the entrance of the hotel, she goes through a revolving door and ignores the ibex in a bellhop uniform greeting her. She approaches a glass door with a fancy trim and window decorations and tries to push it open. No luck.

Trixie frowns and pushes harder against it, grunting and working up a sweat as her hooves screech against the decorative tile. Her cheeks flush red with embarrassment and anger as a small crowd of tourists gather to watch the show. After nearly twenty seconds of grunting and pushing, she stops and slumps to the ground, panting and glaring the daggers of Tartarus at it.

“What the hay is wrong with this door!” pouts Trixie.

Then the door opens up towards her and Monte steps out with a teasing grin stretched across his face. Trixie’s eyes narrow and she points at him threateningly.

“Don’t you dare,” growls Trixie through gritted teeth.

“Having trouble with the exit, my dear?”

Trixie’s eyes narrow to slits and she grits her teeth as her body trembles; if she were a cartoon character there would be steam pouring out of her ears at this point. Her situation is only made worse when she  looks to her side and sees a couple flaunting how easy it is to go through the proper door with snickering children trotting next to them. Then she looks at Monte and finds herself having a difficult time trying to hold back the urge to smack that increasingly ridiculous smile off his face. She sighs explosively, climbs to her feet and swallows her anger to the best of her abilities.

“I want a divorce,” grumbles Trixie as she walks past Monte with her head down and tail sulking.

“You know you love me.”

Monte walks next to Trixie tells Trixie her that it was stupid of her to leave him behind since he’s the translator and knows how to open doors. Trixie instantly tells him to shut up after that door remark.

“Is somepony upset?” teases Monte.

Trixie rolls her eyes and follows Monte towards the receptionist desk. While Monte talks to the female ibex working the desk, Trixie decides to look around, but her plans are shot to dust when Monte’s magic keeps her locked in place. She glares at Monte, and he looks at her out of the corner of his eye and shakes his head like how a parent would quietly tell their kid “No”. Then he proceeds to talking to the receptionist with a healthy dose of charm and most likely a bit of flirting, given how the female ibex giggles as her cheeks flush red. Seeing this, Trixie mule kicks Mont on his hind leg. He was in the middle of a sentence when she did that, and he lets out an embarrassingly feminine yelp and glares at Trixie with tears in his eyes.

“What was that for?” whines Monte.

“I thought we were married, honey,” says Trixie in a mocking singsongy voice.

“I thought you wanted a divorce, sweetie,” retorts Monte, mimicking Trixie’s tone.

Trixie frowns and rolls her eyes to the ceiling when she hears Monte say something that made the receptionist giggle like a filly. Not wanting to hear any more of Monte’s nonsense, she tunes him out and scans the area.

The hotel is lobby is huge and well furnished, with full sets of furniture resting in their own areas marked by lavish rugs. There is also a huge fireplace that has a massive oil painting above it, as well as crystal chandeliers hanging down from the ceiling. And to finish it off, there are flags of the different regions of Bernese and many smaller pictures of famous ibexes. While the lobby is inviting and great to look at, Trixie is more focused on the picture above the fireplace.

The oil painting depicts a crowd of ibexes wearing high class clothing of their time, all in various poses that point to them being pleasantly surprised. The crowd is inside a large, rustic type room with an early Bernese flag hanging behind them with olive branches and weapons on either side of it. And in front of the crowd is General Scroll graciously accepting a book from Princess Luna.

Trixie does a double take and looks closer at the picture and realizes that the alicorn is, in fact, the Princess Luna, and the book she is giving away has the upside down, winged crescent moon on it that’s been popping up all over Equestria. When Trixie looks at the title, Geburt der Republik, she tries a mental translation, but ends up being thinking about how cool the painting is instead.

Then a pair of keys dangle in front of her face and she hears Monte singing: “Oh sweetie bell, lookie what I got.”

Trixie looks at Monte. “Did you just seriously call me ‘Sweetie Belle’?”

“No, I called you ‘sweetie bell’, not the overrated singer. Anyway, lookie what I got. The keys to our room.” He grins and raises his eyebrows playfully. “Deluxe suite.”

Trixie takes her key and groans angrily when she sees her least favorite number on it.

“What’s wrong?” asks Monte.

“That!” snaps Trixie as she points to the “505” imprinted on her key. “That number is what’s wrong!”

Monte arches an eyebrow. “You don’t like our room number?”

“No! I mean, yes! I hate this number! I see it everywhere and I don’t know why!”

“Maybe it likes you.” Trixie scowls and Monte trots towards the master staircase. “C’mon, we have a room to claim.”

~~~~~~~~~~

When they reach their room, Trixie stares at the gold plated numbers etched into their stylish door. She can feel her vein throbbing and her teeth ready to break from how hard she’s grinding them together. After Monte opens up the door he lets out a little girly squeal and runs inside, saying how beautiful the room is while Trixie remains outside, staring down the mysterious number.

When she walks inside, she closes the door with her magic and as soon as she sees the room she can see why Monte acted like a giddy filly. The room is spacious, like a loft, and has an uncompromised view of the city and ocean; the walls are decorated with warm colors and flowery wallpaper and pictures, the floor has a simple natural color to it, and there is a fancy furniture set that looks to be hoof-carved with great care. And to top it off, there is a dial radio resting on a nightstand beside the lamp, and next to the lamp is a copy of the Lunar Republic. Overall, the room looks like a place anyone can stay in, but there is just one little problem that does not sit well with Trixie.

“Monte,” sighs Trixie irritably.

“Yes?”

Trixie points to the queen sized bed in the hotel room, the only bed in the room, eyes half lidded and lips curled to a frown.

“Why is there only one bed?”

“I made arrangements to check up on the files before Brisk Wind went psycho on Gilda,” says Monte coolly. Trixie stares at him skeptically and he sighs heavily. “I’ll take the couch, you can have the comfy bed.”

Trixie yanks her bag from Monte. “Oh no, I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to guilt trip me into sleeping on the couch.”

Monte turns around and stares at Trixie with an unimpressed look.

“Can you explain how that makes sense?” he asks bemusedly.

Trixie sticks her nose in the air and puts her hoof to her chest while closing her eyes.

“Simple,” she says snobbishly, “a pony of your ego and stature would never sleep on a couch, therefore he would guilt trip his rival into sleeping on the couch while he gets the comfortable bed.” She opens her eyes to glare at Monte. “Not that I care anyway, since I’m your guardian and guardians don’t sleep on comfortable beds. We get couches; it helps us stay awake and alert.”

“So now you’re an expert on what it means to be a guardian?”

Trixie nods. “That is correct.”

Monte sighs and rubs his brow. “Just one problem with that, Trixie.”

“And what is that?”

“It is not proper for a mare to sleep on the couch.”

Trixie scoffs and marches after Monte as he puts his bag at the foot of the couch and pulls out a lavender jacket and with a matching vest. When Monte puts on his outfit, Trixie jabs him in the chest, making him grunt and stumble back.

“How dare you talk about etiquette when you are one of the slimiest ponies I have ever met!” yells Trixie angrily, having more fuel thrown on her annoyance when Monte rolls his eyes mockingly. “And don’t do that! That’s rude!”

“Oh please,” scoffs Monte. “You’re the last pony to be complaining about my manners.”

Trixie gasps at Monte’s insult, and struggles to find a proper response to it as he checks the softness of the couch by pressing his hooves down on it. When he’s done testing it, he lies on the couch and stretches himself out. Trixie watches him in his blissful state and when he closes his eyes and lets out a dreamy sigh while stroking his hooves against the fabric, she stomps her hoof. Monte jumps a little and gives her a quick, annoyed glance before resuming his snuggling with the cushions.

“What is wrong with my mannerism?” demands Trixie.

Monte looks at the clock hanging on their wall. “Well that only took you thirty seconds.”

“Monte.”

Monte reluctantly rolls off of the couch and sits in front of Trixie, and she remains standing and giving him the annoyed death glare.

“Okay,” begins Monte with a sigh, “for starters, you swear a lot, secondly, overreacting is like breathing to you, and thirdly, you never excuse yourself after you burp.”

“And that is sooo much worse than somepony who would mount any mare that bats her lashes at him?”

Monte points at Trixie defensively. “Hey, I always make sure they agree before I do any mounting.”

Trixie scowls. “Doesn’t make you any less of a pig.”

“Actually, it does make me less of a pig since I’ve never forced myself on any pony for any reason. I ask if they are okay with it, and if they say ‘Yes’ then we have fun, if not then I move on and play a board game or something with them. Although, I have to say with my looks and charm I get them ninety percent of the time.”

Trixie feels her blood boiling with agitation while Monte inspects his hoof while a cheesy, victorious grin stretches across his face.

“You don’t get it, Monte! What you do is disgusting, no matter if they say yes or no, and you probably have a disease from all your little sexcapades!”

Monte holds up his hoof, his grin replaced with a frown. “Okay, that’s enough! We need to move on to more important things. Like a certain safety deposit box.”

Realizing that Monte is right, Trixie carelessly tosses her bag on the queen sized bed with a huff and opens up the door to the hallway. Once the door is open she pokes her head out cautiously and scans the halls for any trouble. She doesn’t see anything in the hallway except for the nice furnishing and a couple of ibexes in maid outfits taking a service elevator.

Trixie looks back at Monte and waves him forward.

“C’mon, Monte, the coast is clear.”

“Roger that, Agent Moon Pie.”

Trixie shoots Monte a dirty look and he smiles innocently as does some last minute adjustments to his jacket and hat. When that is said and done he follows Trixie out the door.

~~~~~~~~~~

A taxi slows to a stop outside of the Bank of Bernese. It is a towering building with marble pillars and a domed roof with a statue of Princess Luna at the top of the stairs with her wings outstretched and looking down on the Bernese symbol painted on the staircase. The dome has the same winged full moon on the top and the rim has mountains with a moon behind them carved into it.

After the taxi stops, Monte climbs out and opens the door for Trixie, and after she climbs out she gives him a suspicious look.

“Are you doing this because I called you a pig earlier?” asks Trixie.

“How about a ‘Thank you’?” retorts Monte.

“Fine. Thank you, Monte.”

Monte smiles and closes the door. “It was my pleasure.”

Trixie stares at Monte out of the corner of her eye as she walks forward and he gives her a quick wink. Trixie rolls her eyes and scans the area. Naturally she sees a lot of ibexes walking leaving and entering the building, and when she looks over her shoulder she doesn’t see any suspicious vehicles.

Monte leads Trixie forward and as they climb the decorated stairs she spots a couple of ibexes wearing dark barding and armed with small battle saddles. She stares at them and they stare back, both parties ready to duke it out in an instant. One of the guards takes a step forward and Trixie snorts out some hot air, but Monte steps in front of her, blocking her view of the pair, before something horrible could happen.

“Not to worry, Trixie, they are just guards,” assures Monte.

“Cheerful bunch,” mutters Trixie.

Monte puts his hoof on Trixie’s back and guides her towards a pair of finely carved double doors. “If there is one thing an ibex values, it is their property, and that includes-” Monte pushes the door open and lets Trixie in first, “stuff they hold in their safety deposit boxes.”

Trixie looks around the area for just a moment before Monte guides her towards their destination. The inside of the bank is decorated with warm, natural colors and pleasant pictures and healthy flora. The walls are made of stained oak boards and hanging from the ceiling are numerous crystal chandeliers. Some of the pictures are even on the ceiling, and they consist of landscaping, city views, sailing ships, and, in the case of the ceiling, the night sky and Luna. The furniture they have consists of fancy desks and red velvety cushions and couches. And to finish it off, a massive Bernesenese flag is hanging from the backmost wall, looking over everything, and next to it is a sign saying: Tage bis Luna Tag: 1.

Monte and Trixie approach an old male ibex with a fading white coat and a gray goatee sitting behind an oak table with stacks of papers in baskets and office supplies; he is wearing a gray suit with a matching vest and little spectacles that fit perfectly with someone his age. His desk has a name placard that says “G. Bit” printed on it in gold letters.

When G. Bit sees them approach, he smiles and limps out from behind his desk, and Trixie tries very hard not to stare at the brace around his leg; she fails miserably. His motions are very stiff and each step makes a small clicking noise and when he reaches the two, he and Monte touch hooves, then Monte proceed to do a light hug. Trixie rolls her eyes and silently wishes that Monte would hurry up and get their box.

"Hallo, Herr Bit," says Monte cheerfully as he pulls away from G. Bit.

"Guten abend, Herr Fountain,” G. Bit says, returning the smile and walking back to his seat, his voice quivering slightly, “bist du hier auf dem safe zu überprüfen?"

"Ja."

G. Bit nods and gently eases himself in his seat. “Sehr gut.”

Then he looks at Trixie and smiles and says something to her; naturally she doesn’t understand a word he said, so she stares at him with a blank expression that would make a fresh whiteboard proud. Luckily for her, Monte wraps his hoof around her neck and pulls her in for a half-hug while interjecting in Bernesenese. But whatever Monte said makes G. Bit chuckle and move around his table just to kiss Trixie’s hoof. Trixie’s cheeks flush and she smiles politely, albeit with her uneasiness showing clear as day, and when G. Bit moves back to his seat she glares at Monte.

“What did you say to him?” asks Trixie in an angry whisper.

“What? You don’t like your hoof being kissed by an old guy?” remarks Monte with a teasing smile.

Trixie punches him in the shoulder and he chuckles like it was nothing, but Trixie smiles when Monte brings his hoof to his mouth to stifle his whine. Trixie jumps slightly when she hears a loud BANG! When she sees that G. Bit had pulled out a large, locked book with a thick cover, she breathes a sigh of relief, glad that it wasn’t a gunshot. The ibex taps the side of his brace and a key pops, and then he goes on to unlock the said book. Once the lock clicks open, he smiles and looks at Monte.

"Sehr gut, ich muss nur das passwort ein," says G. Bit while opening up the large book he pulled out.

Monte smiles proudly, adjusts his seat, and then puffs out his chest slightly. "Dweeb."

Trixie looks at G. Bit with a smug smile, glad that something is finally going in her favor.

G. Bit clicks his tongue and shakes his head sadly as his eyes scan the page he’s on. "Es tut mir leid, Herr Fountain, aber dies ist das falsche passwort."

Monte deflates and Trixie, still holding her smug smile, albeit with a lot of force, slowly turns her head to him. She has an idea of what’s going on and if Monte was paying any attention to her he would realize that her eye is twitching slightly.

"Aber du weißt, ich bin Monte und für die ich arbeite Gilda. Öffnen sie nun den safe!"

G. Bit slams the book shut and locks it good and tight before putting it away. "Nicht ohne das richtige passwort, Herr Fountain!"

Trixie facehoofs and chuckles irritably with a mix of whining when Monte gets up and shouts something to G. Bit in their tongue. G. Bit also stands up and shouts something back at Monte, and soon both of them are yelling at each other in a language that now sounds incredibly harsh to Trixie. When the two’s argument passes the minute mark, Trixie slams her hooves on the table, eyes narrowed, teeth grinding against each other, and horn glowing.

“Listen here, you little shit!” screams Trixie, prompting everyone in the bank to stop and stare at the table while Monte’s eyes widen as he scoots away from her. “I did not come all the way from Equestria after almost dying just to be told ‘No’! So give us the box!”

“No.”

That simple two letter word makes something snap in Trixie;. her ears fold back and her eyes narrow on the ibex, and he, in turn, glares back at her. Trixie’s horn glows brighter and sparks as she aims it at G. Bit; the ibex gulps, but remains in his seat and in eye contact with her.

“Monte, hold him down,” orders Trixie.

“Uh, Trixie...”

“JUST DO IT, MONTE!”

Trixie shifts her position and next thing she knows, Monte’s hoof jabs her horn, making her swear painfully and collapse to the ground while rubbing her horn, which is no longer glowing. Trixie growls demonically as she glares at Monte while using the desk for support, but Monte isn’t looking at her, he’s staring at someone behind her.

Trixie turns around and stomps her hoof, shouting: “Oh great!”

Standing in front of Trixie and Monte, clad in suits with dark barding and armed with small battle saddles are four buff ibexes. All four of them are staring at the two ponies with stone cold glares and tight jaws. Monte steps forward while putting on a sweet smile.

“Hallo-”

Monte’s sentence is cut short when the lead guard socks him in the jaw. Monte cries out in pain, pressing his hoof against his jaw as he twirls to the ground, and the remaining three lunge forward.

Next thing Trixie knows, she and Monte are sailing through the air, outside of the bank, and they land on a pile of garbage in the alley behind the building. Trixie swears up a storm while ferally kicking garbage bags away from her, and Monte whimpers as he tenderly rubs his jaw.

When both of them are up, Monte wobbles in his spot and wipes some blood off of his maw. Meanwhile, Trixie screams and bucks a garbage bag down the alley and then stomps on an old box until it is nothing but a flattened mess dented with hoof shaped indents. After destroying the defenseless box, Trixie slumps to the ground panting and eyes watering.

“I can’t believe this,” whines Trixie angrily. “Our one chance to take down Brisk Wind is ruined because you,” she glares at Monte, “forgot the damn password!”

Monte sputters incoherently for a couple of seconds while sitting on the ground and wanting to yank out his mane with his hooves.

“Wha-Wha-What! I- How was I supposed to know that Gilda changed her password?”

“How did you not know that Gilda changed her password? Weren’t you one of her top guys?”

“I was her postmaster! The bottom of the bottom of leadership status!”

Trixie, slumps on her haunches, throws her head back while groaning angrily and covering her eyes. At the moment she wishes she could rip her ears off and throw them at Monte. She can’t believe her miserable luck! Of all the ponies in Equestria that could get the files to destroy Brisk Wind, she gets stuck with the bottom feeder of higher-ups! And its a bottom feeder that can’t even do its job!

“A bucking postmaster!” cries Trixie.

She throws down her hooves, seething and face red from rage, and focuses her mental crosshairs right on Monte’s nose. Monte seems to know this, though, because he takes a step back.

Both of them snort hot air and keep their eyes glued to each other, and Trixie has a hard time thinking clearly due to the accusing thoughts screaming in her mind. She doesn’t understand how a postmaster would forget the password or why Gilda wouldn’t tell Monte something as important as a password change. She knows something’s not right. She smells a betrayal.

Trixie’s eyes narrow to slits and in a flash, Monte is thrown off of his feet, into the brick wall behind him. While he struggles to get up, Trixie jumps on top of him, ignoring his painful grunt and the unpleasant feeling in her horn. She then presses her hoof down on his neck, breaks an empty bottle, and aims the jagged edge at his jugular.

“What’s your play, Monte! Are you you working for Brisk Wind!” demands Trixie over his whimpering.

Monte’s jaw drops. “How can you say that! I have done nothing but tried to help you!”

“Oh really?”

“Yes! Really!”

“Name one time you tried to help me!”

Monte uses his magic to throw Trixie off of him, towards a pile of garbagee bags, and he scrambles to his feet, heart racing and face wet from sweat and tears.

“Are you kidding me!?” cries Monte.

“Answer the question!” yells Trixie after throwing the bottle at Monte’s head; he barely dodges it and takes a split second to watch it shatter to an oblivion.

“FINE!” screams Monte as he lunges closer to Trixie, making her take a couple of steps back in a defensive stance. “Let’s count shall we? First, I have offered you a job by my side! Secondly, I have shown you my tricks in hopes that somepony like you would say ‘Gee, Monte, that was a cool trick. Let’s work together.’! But no! You act like you’d rather be some poor sap stuck at an entry level job because you are too afraid to succeed!”

Trixie grits her teeth and growls at Monte, and he, in turn, does almost the identical thing. So now both of them are practically touching horns, their veins are throbbing, and their eyes are magnitized by the furious state they are in.

“You wanted to use me to make your shows better!” accuses Trixie, jabbing Monte in the chest.

Monte retaliates by poking Trixie in the chest. “Your sponsors used you but you didn’t seem to mind that little detail, now did you!?”

Trixie screams furiously, claiming it was just business as she stomps the ground while Monte remains planted in his spot, keeping his glare fixated on her.

“And you know what else? I’m here in Bernese risking my life for you.”

“Oh you’re so full of shit!” screams Trixie in disbelief.

Trixie remains standing her spot and watches Monte approach her, panting with a huge scowl on his face and eyes becoming bloodshot.

“No I’m not! You are my priority! Not me! Not Gilda! You!” Monte practically jabs Trixie in her chest again, but she takes a couple of steps back so he doesn’t touch her. “I am doing this for you! Even though your father practically enslaved me because of how much I owed him! Even though your arrogance made a couple of idiots bring in an Ursa Minor to Ponyville! Even though you ruined Hank’s career! I’m still doing this! For! You!”

With each passing sentence Trixie stepped back a little and Monte stepped forward, but his strides were larger than her’s and she soon found herself slightly cowering before him. Trixie stares at Monte with wide eyes and her disbelief replaced with shock; he is now panting and his mane is a mess.

Monte steps back and brushes his loose mane away while trying to keep his eyes off of Trixie. Trixie goes to grab his hat, but he uses his magic to snatch it away and place it neatly on his head, still keeping his eyes off of her.

“But you’re right. I don’t... I don’t deserve your trust,” he says in a softer tone after slumping to the ground. “I’m not a good pony. I’m a pig. I’ve done terrible things to others, and yet, here I am... with you, Equestria’s very own, real life comic book hero, ready to take on an entire corrupt agency.”

Trixie quietly watches Monte slump to the ground and brush more of his mane back; he lets out a deep, depressing sigh and stares up at the sky before looking somewhere other than at Trixie. Trixie stares at him for a couple more seconds before looking down at the box she mutilated during her fit. As she stares at the box, she tries to think of something, anything, but her mind is completely blank. All she can really do is register the sounds of passing vehicles, the warmth of the sun, and the alley dirt under her hooves. Nothing about what had just happened within the past day, or more importantly, the past fifteen minutes. She opens her mouth to say something to Monte, but closes it when she can’t find the words to say. She tries again, this time looking up at him, but the same thing happens and his impatient look isn’t helping her any. When Monte looks away from her, she lets out a small sigh and cautiously approaches him, biting her lip when he turns away from her.

“Why are you...?”

"Doing this?"

Trixie fights to keep her eyes on Monte as she nods her head, and he swallows some spit and wipes his maw.

“Because you’re better than me. Always have been, always will be,” replies Monte quietly before wiping his eyes. “And you need this more than I need a check from Gilda.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small book  and a bag of money with his magic and gives it to Trixie. “Here’s some money and a basic Bernesenese language book; it’ll have all the greetings, leavings, and basic questions and a small map of the city in there. Relax. Have fun. I’m going back to the hotel. I need to figure out Gilda’s new password, anyway.”

“But-”

Monte holds up his hoof sternly. “As my bodyguard, I am ordering you to enjoy the sights. Now go and let me work.”

It takes Trixie a couple of seconds to reluctantly grab the offered items with her magic, and after doing so, she silently watches Monte walk away in a sluggish pace with his head down. Trixie sighs heavily and stares at the book, when she looks up she barely catches Monte rounding the corner. Trixie then looks around nervously before she grumbles and kicks away more garbage and walks away in the opposite direction of Monte.

~~~~~~~~~~

A few hours later, with the moon looking down on the brightly lit city, Trixie wobbles down the street, levitating abag, a bottle of alcohol and a small plastic container of cheap pills with an ibex on it that has an exaggerated grin. As she trots down the sidewalk, she tries to focus on her surroundings, but she’s seeing doubles and it seems like the light from the lamp posts are being stretched out while the noise is garbled. In spite of these things, though, Trixie still loves the feeling of bliss she’s getting from the drink; she feels lighter, like all of her troubles were lifted off and drowned in a river, and when she bought those pain pills from the convenience store, after some trouble from the language barrier, she couldn’t feel any of her sores from the cumulative injuries. To her, it was like having a soda and candy snack that gave her more pleasure than the sugary treats. They eliminated her pain and worries. Something those treats cannot do.

Trixie continues her walk down the colorful street, surprised that there are civilians walking around with shopping bags and chatting like it is in the middle of the afternoon. A smile flickers across her face as she  remembers those days in Equestria, when ponies can walk around Canterlot at night without worry. However, one thing that she finds odd is that there is a lot of military propaganda posters plastered all over the walls of the buildings. One poster that catches her eye is a poster for the what she is guessing is their army. It displays a fierce ibex soldier, wearing combat armor and aiming his battle saddle at a griffin soldier swooping down with their claws extended and battle saddle aimed; the soldier is also standing in front of a cowering family and underneath is a sentence that Trixie does not care to translate. The other posters show things like a line of ibex in uniform standing proudly and looking off in the distance with a heavily armed and armored zeppelin flying above them; or soldiers on the deck of a ship guarding a city in the background. The thing that makes her stomach churn, though, is an instruction poster that is clear enough to where she doesn’t even need to read it to know what it is about. The pictures show basic, easy to read, step-by-step instructions on what to do in case of a bombing raid. The bomb is marked by a silhouette of one inside a warning sign, and every ibex in the picture is designed to be simple silhouettes as well; there are examples on how to properly carry injured, what to bring and what not to bring, how to stay together, and they even have arrows to bomb shelters and medical stations with the crossroads labeled.

Trixie shakes her head and makes her way back to the hotel, drinking her drink and staying close to the walls so that when she does lose balance, she’ll have something to lean on. When she is almost at the hotel she passes a group of young ibexes giggling and standing in front of a poster of a group of ibex soldiers; only the lead soldier has a mirror where his head is supposed to be. Each of the children take turns trying to look at their reflection, throwing in their own commentary and laughs, and Trixie continues to watch them until they are called away by their parents. Once they leave, Trixie resumes her trek back, stopping by a garbage can when she feels like she’s going to hurl. She coughs and gags and tries to force herself to barf, but nothing comes out, thus making her grumble unintelligibly and leave the trash can before any more ibexes give her funny looks.

Once she reaches her hotel room, she tries unlocking the door, but the key refuses to go into the darn lock. Trixie swears loudly and stabs at the door, leaving scratches on the doorknob and paint, and when the door opens up, she accidentally pokes Monte’s hest with the key. Monte jumps back and rubs the spot Trixie stabbed. Trixie giggles when she sees Monte’s reaction and leans against the doorway for a moment when it feels like the floor shifts from under her.

“Sorry, honey,” giggles Trixie.

“I take it you had fun,” says Monte sourly; his eyes are bloodshot and he is reeking with alcohol.

“Trixie had all kinds of fun! Trixie found all kinds of cool stuff and no Brisk Wind or Shocky was around to ruin it! Ibex sound funny. Do you think they sound funny?”

“Considering I grew up here, no.”

Trixie snickers as she wobbles past Monte, brushing her tail against his coat in the process. “Well Trixie thinks they sound funny. You sound funny, too when you speak Burnaniece.”

Monte closes the door. “It’s Bernesenese.”

Trixie chugs the last of her beverage and throws it in their room carelessly. She then tries to skip around the apartment, but she nearly falls flat on her face; luckily for her, Monte quickly catches her and sets her upright. When he notices Trixie’s pills he yanks them away from her, but she’s too tipsy to care at the moment. Besides, she’s too busy taking out her next bottle, and when Monte sees what she’s drinking his jaw drops.

"Uh, Trixie, I wouldn't drink that if I were you," says Monte uneasily while pointing at the bottle of Wild Pegasus that Trixie is holding. "You already had quite a bit to drink, and ‘Wild Pegasus’ is for professional liquor holders."

"You don't think Trixie can’t not not hold her liquor?" accuses Trixie, slightly wobbling in her spot.

Monte blinks. "Um, let’s just say you are having a lot to drink in a short amount of time, which is not good, especially for-”

“No, it’s naughty,” slurs Trixie, putting a lot of sensual emphasis on “naughty” and adding a sultry tail flick to the mix.

Trixie snickers when Monte turns away from her, rubbing his face in a feeble attempt to hide the raging blush conquering his face and ears. She gets a large, devilish smile as she watches the Montes mumble incoherently, then she sashays over to him; or tries to at least. She ends up tripping over her own hoof and face-planting the floor. Trixie feels Monte’s hoof wrap under her and gets a surreal feeling as she’s lifted off of the ground and eased into the sitting position. She giggles and sways in her spot, despite Monte’s best efforts to keep her still, and when she leans against him, he lets out a nervous whimper. Then Monte suddenly darts away from Trixie, and she falls to the ground laughing idiotically. He uses his magic to grab the bottle Trixie tossed in their room; it’s another Wild Pegasus.

“You had two of these!” cries Monte, eyes bulging and jaw almost falling off from how far it dropped.

“Of course Trixie had two of those, Mutie,” chuckles Trixie, giggling louder after letting out a sickly hiccup. “Trixie does like a good bottle of the good stuff from time to time.”

Monte shakes his head, throwing the bottles aside and sitting on his haunches. He grabs his head and mumbles something Trixie cannot understand. But she doesn’t care, she has a fantastic fire in her belly, three Montes to tease and the world is spinning! It doesn’t get any more fun than this, especially after the fiasco at the bank.

“Relax, Monte number-o one,” giggles Trixie as she jumps towards the bed; she underestimated the distance, though, and ends up crashing into the foot of the bed, but before Monte can help her, she clambers onto the bed as if nothing happened. She paws on the bed like a picky feline before looking at Monte number two. “Monte Dos, tell Monte One to relax.”

“It’s you who needs to relax!” exclaims Monte when Trixie leaps off the bed, singing the Smile Song in the worst singing voice he has ever heard. “You just mixed pills and two bottles of Wild Pegasus! Do you have any idea-”

“That’s what she said!”

“That doesn’t even make sense! Get back here!”

“You’ll have to catch Trixie first!”

Trixie makes a run for the door, but before she can reach it, Monte zips in front of her and she ends up tackling him. Both ponies roll over each other and bounce across the floor, coming to a stop by the garbage bin.

“Ooh, do you want to wrestle, Funtan?” teases Trixie, her slur seemingly worse than earlier, and her tail flicking provocatively against Monte’s. “Trixie can garrat-teen that you’ll lose.”

Monte pushes Trixie off.

“Okay, Trixie, you had way too much to drink. You need to relax or else you’ll puke up everything.”

“And Trixie will puke all over you.”

Monte frowns. “That was nasty.”

Trixie points and laughs at Monte, eventually rolling on her back and kicking her hind legs wildly while still managing to keep her forehoof pointed at him. She doesn’t know how or why, but something about Monte’s facial expressions and nervous behavior is cracking her up. Maybe it’s the way the stallion’s face is red, or how he’s stumbling over his words constantly? Or perhaps it’s because she has never seen him so nervous before, even when he was in the middle of a bloody raid at the griffin enclave.

Trixie becomes relentless in her teasing, and starts to get even more obnoxious when Monte tells her to knock it off in a whiney tone.

Then she feels it.

Trixie suddenly feels her stomach contents surging to her throat and her face turns green as she bolts to the bathroom. When she slams the door shut and pukes her guts out in the toilet, she hears Monte taking full advantage of her misery by laughing obnoxiously. Trixie groans and rubs her head, wanting to puke again when she sees the chunky, orange vomit floating around in the toilet water. She then glares at the door when Monte laughing shows no sign of stopping, Trixie grits her teeth and pushes the door open as hard as she could, wobbling in place and having some difficulty focusing on the zony. Monte holds up his hoof defensively when he sees Trixie seething at him; but despite her glare, he is still smiling and struggling to hold back his laughter.

“Don’t you dare say it,” growls Trixie, her slur retaining a small presence.

“I-”

“Don’t!”

“But I-”

“Monte!”

“I told you-”

“MONTE, DON’T SAY IT! DON’T YOU BUCKING SAY ANYTHING!”

Monte puts his hoof over his mouth, and his shoulders buckle as he fights a losing battle to keep his laughter under control. Trixie watches Monte for a couple of seconds before she sits down and gently rubs her temple. She then lets out a deep, aggravated sigh and rubs her eyes to ease the discomfort before brushing loose, sweaty strands of her mane from her face.

“Oh goddess, I feel like shit,” groans Trixie.

“I told you so,” blurts Monte.

That does it. Trixie screams furiously and charges Monte. He holds up his forehooves defensively, laughing and managing a “Don’t hit me!” before being tackled to the ground by the azure torpedo.

~~~~~~~~~~

The next morning, Trixie groans and shifts under her cover, the hotel's fluffy, silky cloth rubbing against her coat is like music to her ears. When she shifts the pillow to make it more comfortable using her hoof, she realize that her body feels numb, like she's recovering from a strenuous, but well worth it, exercise. Also, every bit of light and city noise brings pain to her eyes and ears, making for a very odd combination.

'Perfect,' thinks Trixie wryly as she squeezes her eyes shut and buries herself under the blanket.

Trixie also presses her face harder against her pillow in hopes that its cloudy comfort will outweigh the discomfort from the morning activity. But she can't because the hangover she's experiencing is demanding her price be paid in suffering; plus her pillow is wet. She reluctantly opens her eyes she sees a massive drool stain on her pillow. Her eyes narrow in on the menace and before she can curse herself for drooling, the worst morning breath she's ever experienced attacks her mouth in full force. Aside from the natural, painfully icky morning breath, there's also a weird taste in her mouth that she can't explain. Trixie gags and breathes into her hoof, scrunching her nose when she gets a better scent of her horrid breath.

Trixie groans quietly as she runs her hoof through her messy, bedheaded mane, and her eyes widen when she realizes that the numbness she's feeling is strongest in the lower parts of her body. She stops messing with her mane and looks at the blanket. She winces as she reluctantly lifts it up, and what she sees is so horrifying that she slams it back down with her hooves covering her mouth. Her silvery, curly tail and lower body is caked in something she has seen all too much when she was desperate for money. She looks over at the couch, and to her horror, Monte is not on it, just some garbage, and a lump next to her snores and mumbles something softly in the zony’s voice.

Trixie's worry increases tenfold as she sits up, doing her darndest to ignore the aches, and lifts up the blanket to see Monte sleeping peacefully next to her. His mane ruffled and he looks way too happy, and it concerns Trixie how he’s hugging a drool covered pillow like it was his prized lover. He mumbles something again and Trixie's jaw drops when her mind puts the pieces together. No recollection of last night. Hangover. Mysterious aches. Mysterious bad morning breath. Messy, blissful Monte next to her in a bed.

Trixie clamps her hooves over her mouth, blushing furiously, after letting out a terrified squeak that makes Monte stir.

"Mmmm, Trixie, you taste good," mumbles Monte happily, dragging his tongue along the pillow.

Trixie's eyes bulge and when she realizes how messy the room, she just wants to die from humiliation. Along with empty bottles all over the floor, Monte's clothes are in the weirdest of spots and there are empty food containers from room service scattered with food stains all over the place.

Trixie trembles in her spot.

Then she looks at Monte.

Then around the room.

Then at the wall directly in front of her with horrible outcomes playing through her mind.

Trixie shrieks at the top of her lungs and Monte screams in pain and falls off of the side of the bed, clutching his ears.