War Zone-Equestria

by Strumfreak

Rating: mature
Tags: Alternate Universe, Sad, Dark, Adventure, Tragedy
Length: 53076

When the mane 6 arrive in an alternate dimension of Equestria, they have to bring harmony to the war

When Twilight discovers a new book in her library, describing alternate dimensions and how to travel between them, she becomes highly interested. But when she and her friends are accidently transported to an alternative dimension of Equestria, they find things in the other dimension aren't as peaceful as they would have hoped.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2012-07-28 14:39:28 UTC

The Book

Illuminated in the light of the morning sun, Ponyville's residents were all out enjoying the day very early, spending time with their friends. Some residents however kept to their own business despite having opportunities to enjoy them. One particular buzz was coming from Twilight's library; It was a mess. Her books littered the floor with pages ripped up and scattered everywhere. Twilight wasn’t particularly fazed by the mess though, at least not in her current state of mind. She was a little dazed and confused and had sparks coming from her horn. Her hair stood up, frilly and singed, as if copious amounts of electricity had surged through it, along with her tail. Her coat seemed just fine apart from the odd patches of scruffy hair. Whatever it was she had done had woken up Spike though, and he was quick out of bed and running down from the stairs, rubbing his eyes and looking around confused.

“What’s all the noise Twilight?” Spike asked as he entered the room. “What’s all this mess? And what in Equestria happened to you?” Spike asked, getting no response back from Twilight who seemed to just be staring into the ground. Spike starting to get a little bit worried by her lack of reaction walked right up to Twilight waving his hand in her face and shaking her around, eventually resorting to yelling to get her attention “Twilight? Twilight? TWILIGHT?!”

Twilight jumped in shock and snapped right into action. She seemed oblivious to the mess at first, she was just trying to get her bearings and make sure she was still in one piece.

“What? Who? Where are we, Spike? What happened?” Twilight asked confused, jittering and jumping around. She ran to a mirror quickly almost throwing Spike aside in her panic. She stared at herself in the mirror for several seconds surveying her features, before she started to calm down. “Ok, everything seems to be ok" She said commenting on her appearance. She turned around and took in her surroundings, and although she wasn't entirely surprised by the mess, she didn’t seem all that enthusiastic to clean it.

“Ugh, Spike I’m sorry for the noise. I was trying out some new spells from the books delivered from the royal library in Canterlot. The Princess obviously wasn’t lying when she said the spells were difficult.” Twilight explained to her confused assistant, looking around at the mess.

“Oh, that’s ok Twilight... I guess I wasn’t sleeping too well anyway.” Spike told her as he started to pick up the books and Parchment lying on the floor, as per what he considered his duty as her assistant.

“Why? What’s bothering you Spike?” Twilight asked, concerned about what may have been bothering him. Spike seemed hesitant to tell her but realized she could probably help him out.

“Well it’s not that the sleep is rough, I just haven’t felt the same lately. It’s been a while since I last talked to Rarity. I really miss her.” Spike explained.

Twilight didn’t seem too surprised that Spike’s troubles were because of Rarity. Rarity had seemed to be a bit of a shut in for almost two weeks, and hardly anypony had seen her, but the time one of the girls had seen her, she wouldn’t tell her why she was inside so often; Twilight hadn't seen her in person either for longer than Spike, and though she wanted to know what was up, she could stand not knowing for the time being, but could see why spike was troubled.

“It’s alright Spike, she’ll come around and tell us what's happening soon.” She tried comforting him.

“I sure hope so… Hey Twilight?” Spike picked up a book looking at it confused.

Twilight looked over at him placing a few books on the table in the middle of the room with her magic.

“Yes Spike?” She replied.

Spike studied the book's cover a little bit.

“I thought the books the Princess sent you were just about advanced magic...” he said looking at the cover image.

“They are…” Twilight said confused, shelving a few catagorised books. Spike walked over to her with the book.

“This one looks different from the others.” he said, pointing out that while the others bore a title of the spells and magic inside them with a picture relating to the topic, this one was indeed different in appearance and no apparant title on the cover; and Twilight knew she didn't have it before hand. Twilight whisked the book out of his hands with magic and scanned the pages skimming through them. It didn't take her very long to find a page with magical inscriptions on it.

“Well… there are a few spells in here, but it's definately not your typical tutorial book...” Twilight said intrigued, as she scanned the book all over looking for a title. “Dimensions and Time,” she read on the first page of the book. 'Odd that it doesn't have a title on the cover.' she thought to herself.

“Do you want me to send it back?” Spike asked her. Twilight might have said yes had she not become so interested in what the book might contain.

“No that’s ok Spike, I think I might actually read through this. I haven't seen a book like it before...” she replied. Spike shrugged and continued to pick up books and shelve them.  Twilight looked at the room; it was looking much cleaner than before in the short amount of time they'd actually been cleaning. “There are still a few hours till morning Spike. Why don’t you go have a rest or go out for a bit?”

Spike looked at her confused, but he’d never turn down a break. “Ok then Twilight. Thanks.” He said with a smile as he made his way back upstairs.

Twilight used her magic to sweep up the rest of the books that were still out, but instead of shelving them she simply placed them on the table in the centre of the room, and eagerly rushed to her chair to read the book Spike had found. Within only a short time since beginning reading it, she was again devoting the entirity of her attention to it.

She had minimal practical knowledge of the wide array of scientific material she was reading. She knew all about space and time, but alternate dimensions had never been something she paid particular attention to other than a slightly humerous concept. As usual with any book that took Twilight's interest, it kept her reading for what must have been hours. A fair way through the book, if not almost finished, having learnt about the basic concept of an alternate dimension, she found a line that seemed to stand out as important to her. She read it aloud to herself.

“There are always at least two dimensions, and they are always the opposite of the other in some way. They could be different in the nature of the inhabbiting creatures and which ones exist there, their personalities and traits compared to any counterpart they may have, which almost all the inhabitants each world will have one of. Other differences can include the environment, the locations, and current events taking place. There are so many possibilities, but they must always be different. If two dimensions against all odds, were to mirror each other…” Twilight suddenly stopped as she heard a noise that startled her. She looked outside the window and saw that June Bug was walking by and had accidentally bumped into her library wall with her cart. She ran outside to see if she was okay.

"June Bug are you alright?" She asked, noticing June Bug was dazed and had a bruise on her side.

"I'm... I'm alright Twilight... I'm sorry if I woke you... I'm in a hurry to get to the other side of town, I was meant to be there much earlier, but I slept in..." June Bug said, before yawning.

"I can't believe it's still morning... Good to know I wasn't the only pony who stayed in though. I remember it looking much sunnier..." Twilight mused, looking at the clouds filling the sky.

"Well, yesterday was a beautiful, I was getting up early to pick a group of a special type of flower I saw growing outside of the Everfree forest a week ago. I need to get there before the scheduled storm so they aren't drowned in the rain." June Bug Explained.

"Hmm, I thought the pegasus were scheduling a storm tomorrow..." Twilight said confused.

"Uh, well as far as I know the plans haven't been changed. I better run Twilight, I'll talk to you another time soon." June Bug said offering a smile before walking her cart away.

Twilight waved her off, still looking concerned as she walked back inside towards the table with her open book on it.

"If today is the scheduled downpour... and I thought it was tomorrow... then I... oh darn!" Twilight cursed as she realised she'd stayed up reading all night and not even realised it. "And that means Pinkie is holding her party at sugarcube corner! I have to get there and help her set up!” Twilight realised as she rememberred the commitments she had to keep.

She closed the book with a bookmark to checkpoint her progress. She seemed to forget that she had stopped reading mid-sentence, but she was far to distracted to be bothered to relocate her progress. She knew she could catch up to her spot when she got back. Ready to go she wondered if Spike had been asleep the whole time she was reading, and considered waking him up, but she knew she'd have returned before he woke up if he was in that deep a sleep. Bringing concentration to her mind, Twilight used her magic to transport herself all the way to Sugar Cube Corner to get ready for a party.

The Last Party

Almost a good few hours after Twilight had left, Spike's eyes flickered open as he yawned and threw of his blanket. He had slept much better than the last few nights to his surprise. Again he'd dreamt about Rarity, although it didn’t bother him like it had before. He just kept believing he'd see her again soon.

He walked downstairs to finish up cleaning the leftover books he had left behind last night, but to his surprise, they were already shelved, aside a few from the middle of the room on the table.

'Twilight must've finished most of them off,' Spike thought, before actually realising that Twilight wasn't in the same room.

"Twilight?" He called through the library, before running around a bit to find her. He almost considered looking in the basement in case she wanted more privacy, but diverted his attention to the suddenly openning front door, and watched as she walked in, followed by Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash.

“Twilight there you are.” Spike said running to the group. “And Rarity…” Spike could hardly contain his happiness. He leapt up and hugged her as if he hadn’t seen her for over a year.

Rarity was a little taken back at first but realised that she hadn’t spoken to the baby dragon in a long time and could understand why he’d be so excited to see her.

“Where’ve you been?” Spike asked her dropping back to the ground.

Rarity still hadn’t told anypony why she’d been inside for so long. She especially couldn’t tell Spike that he was the reason she’d been trying to avoid them. “Oh I’ve been rather busy with some ensemble orders dear. It is lovely to see you again though Spike.”

Pinkie piped up really quickly and rather loudly, “That party was incredible, I don’t think any of my birthday parties have been that much fun.”

Spike spun around to the others. “Wait, what party? Today was your birthday Pinkie?”

“Yep!” she squeaked still jumping happily on the spot. Spike started to get a little bit upset, ‘Why wasn’t I invited’ he thought to himself. Pinkie was still jumping though before announcing something else to Spike.

”But! Twilight told me that you were sleeping and hadn’t woken up yet. So she organised for me to have a second, slightly smaller party right here! So you wouldn’t feel left out.”

Spike suddenly lit up and smiled looking at Twilight.

“Really?” he asked her.

“Of course Spike, do you really think I would let you miss out on a party?” Twilight rhetorically asked him back.

“Enough Chit Chat! Let’s party some more everypony!” Pinkie Pie declared, kicking her party cannon, which spit out a record player, a bunch of party equipment, and a

large amount of party food. The pin dropped to the record and music started to fill the library. Everypony started dancing together and laughing, all except Twilight, who silently slinked away from the 6 party animals. She had enjoyed herself at Sugarcube corner and felt she needed a slight rest from all the partying.

Besides she really wanted to continue reading the book, she hadn’t read something this fascinating in a long time, but when she found it, the bookmark she had put in earlier had fallen out, and she couldn’t remember the page number she was up to.

“Ugh, great! I’ll have to scan through the whole thing to find my spot again; I think it had something to do with what would happen if two different dimensions would resemble each-other. She flipped a lot of pages, at least 200, it was a surprisingly big book for such a small subject, although the pages were often filled with facts and pictures, rather than the hard pressing information Twilight was most interested in.

She stopped at the last page, realising she must have gone to fast, went to flip back the other way, when she noticed that the seam connecting the final page to the thick cover of the book had been ripped up. Twilight saw what looked like letters under the rip, but couldn’t tell for sure. She was deciding whether or not to peel it off and look or not, worrying if it was considered vandalism if she did. Normally she wouldn’t care, but this book was from Canterlot’s royal library, and she didn’t know if the book was important or not. But then again, normally there’s no writing in-between the last page and the outer cover. Her curiosity got the better of her, and she used her magic to pull the page off until the writing had stopped at the bottom.

She read the writing quietly, “A warning to any who find this spell: If you are reading this then I am long gone. I’ve been trapped in an alternate version of Equestria for quite some time, it was good to get away from the large war in the real Equestria, or I should say, my home Equestria. The Princesses had begun a fight over the rulership of Equestria, and it seemed nopony was safe from Nightmare Moon at the time. I knew that if war was happening here. Then maybe in another Equestria there would be peace. I started working on a spell, a spell I regret creating now. It opened up the space between two dimensions and allowed me to safely traverse it. The Ponies in the other land looked just like the ones from Equestria, and were very welcoming to newcomers. I had proven that there really were alternate dimensions that represented the opposite of another. But my joy was short lived. Many years late, war struck in the alternate land, it seemed to be about the same thing as the last war in my true home Equestria, but the only way that could make sense to me was that the war in my home had ceased. I write this today in hope that in the future people will know of my success, but also will heed my warning, that as long as there is peace in your dimension, there will be war in the other, and it could be far more technologically advanced than what you might think. Please protect this research and the spell below! Don’t let it fall into the hands of those who will use the power it brings for evil. Signed for the last time, Prof. Malcolm Hoof."

Twilight seemed confused. ‘Why would he write that if he was going to return to peace? Unless he knew he might not make it back to this dimension’. She looked below at the spell written out and how to perform it safely. She seemed intrigued but worried at the same time. The spell was extremely advanced. She wasn’t too worried though, she didn’t want to perform it… Or did she? She continued reading the spell and just as she had finished, and put the book down, Applejack walked upstairs to find out what she was doing.

“There you are Twi! Whad’re ye doin up here? The parties a blast below. Twi?”

Twilight snapped up and shut the book, hiding it behind her back as if it belonged to Applejack. She didn’t have a great reason for being nervous, she just didn’t want anypony to know she had been reading and studying magic instead of having fun with her friends. “Oh I was just uhm… well, uh, grabbing something up here.

”Twilight, you’ve been away fer at least 8 minutes, it don’t take that long te grab something unless you put it somewhere real hard te find. So what is it? I could help ye look.”

“Look don’t tell Pinkie, but I was reading up on something Spike found this morning.”

“Sugarcube ahm pretty sure Pinkie won’t mind… ya did go te her main party anyway.”

Twilight accounted for that but continued, “Well, whatever. You’d never believe what I found.”

Applejack’s ears perked up as she listened in to what Twilight had to say.

“I found a spell that can allow inter-dimensional travel!”

“Inter-demewhatnow?” Applejack asked confused.

”Inter-dimensional! Another Equestria, but opposite to this one.”

“Ah still don’t fully understand. What yer tellin me is that you found a spell that lets ye travel te other versions of Equestria?”

“Yeah! Isn’t that amazing!”

“Darn Tootin! Yall should tell the others, or better yet… why don’t ya show us all.”

“I don’t know Applejack, it seems like a really hard spell, not to mention the other Equestria could be dangerous.”

“What and this one isn’t?” Applejack reminded her.

“I’m not sure…”

“Oh come on now Twi, what could go wrong.”

The Spell

The two girls went downstairs and found the others sitting down and chatting. All except Spike who had run to Sugarcube corner to grab something Pinkie left behind.

Applejack quickly got their attention. “Listen everypony; give the party a rest for a bit. Twilight’s learned a new really big spell, and she’s gunna show us all how it works.”

Rarity looked at Applejack and sighed though, because as usual Applejack seemed to rush straight to the point and didn’t mention anything of the little details like what the spell did.

“What exactly does this new spell do Twilight? If it’s a powerful one are you certain you’d want to show us in here.”

“I’m not really sure I’d like to show you girls at all. It seems like it would be really hard for me to perform, it could be dangerous.” Twilight told her.

“Umm, Twilight? Why would it be dangerous? If you don’t mind me asking that is…” Fluttershy asked in her usual quiet voice.

“Well it’s an inter-dimensional travel spell. I can use it to transport us to another version of Equestria. It’s just I don’t know what to expect if I perform it. Each dimension is always different from the other, so I’m not sure what could be happening there.”

“What? Really?” Pinkie asked her just to confirm she heard what she heard.

“Yes, but like I said, it could be dangerous…” Twilight tried to continue.

“Oh my gosh! That’s awesome! We should go there! There could be another me!” Pinkie jumped around on the spot trying to contain her excitement. The idea seemed amazing to her, but everypony else didn’t think so much of the idea.

“Maybe we should stay here…” Dash said objecting to the fact that Pinkie Pie could be right.

Twilight new that Dash was referring to what Pinkie said, but continued “Well I would like to stay here. The letter that was written above the spell said that the last time the writer was in the alternate Equestria, a war had started. It doesn’t give any evidence to say he made it back to this Equestria.”

“How long ago was the book written?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight looked inside the front cover where a date was usually written at the bottom of the first page, but there was no date there. She assumed what she had read and put her knowledge to an estimate. “There’s no written date, but the note in the back sounded like it was written only 2 years ago, around the time when we changed Luna back to normal with the elements of harmony, and her and Celestia stopped fighting, but the events in the rest of the book and the beginning of the note range up to over 1000 years ago.”

“That’s not possible Twilight. Only Alicorns live more than a thousand years.” Rarity reminded her.

“Rarity… This Pony invented Inter-dimensional travel. He could have been capable of anything.” Twilight told her, which somehow made sense to Rarity “Still it seems unlikely that a unicorn would be able to forge a spell to keep himself young for that long. Wait! If he is still alive maybe we can find him and I can learn the spell! I would never have to worry about growing old or frail! Do it Twilight you have to!”

The others seemed to ignore Rarity’s statement, some of them rolling their eyes, and as usual just turned to the next pony that had something to say which in this case was Rainbow Dash.

“How can you be sure of the time frame?” Rainbow Dash asked her.

“Well it’s just that two dimensions must always be different, and in the alternate one in the note, the writer’s name is Malcolm Hoof. He travelled to the alternate Equestria when the massive fight between the Princesses began in this one, one had just ended there, but the note says that a war also started in there, and it doesn’t say wether he made it back to our dimension or not. So I’m just assuming a war started there just as this one ended. That’s why I don’t want to go. What if there is still a war there?” Twilight responded.

“You never know Twilight; a lot could happen in 2 years.” Fluttershy told her trying to reassure her.

Twilight started to take in what her friends had been saying.

“I’m still sceptical here, but ok. I’ll try the spell, but only because you girls want to see it. I don’t know what could happen though, so I need all of you to back up.”

The other girls nodded and moved away from her as asked, but still watched her with enthusiasm waiting to see everything that would happen.

Twilight closed her eyes, and started to focus as her horn suddenly lit up with energy. She started clenching her teeth and focussing even harder. ‘This is harder than moving an Urca-minor’ she though to herself, struggling to concentrate on the spell. Her horn was now blazing with unstable energy. It was throwing sparks and energy everywhere. Although it had still been just under a full minute, the spell was causing Twilight what felt like hours of unending grief, when suddenly, as Twilight felt like the spell was going no-where, She was thrown backwards, as the magic disconnected with her horn and became suspending in mid-air still blazing about with spectacular purple and magenta explosions. Twilight looked at the magical ball before her as it widened and connected with the ground. The middle of it began to swirl inwards. Twilight suddenly realised that she’d done it. She’d opened up another dimension.

“I did it!” she cried with excitement.

The other girls stared in awe at the amazing feat their friend had just pulled off. The girls stared at the magical portal for a few minutes, not sure what to expect. Fluttershy seemed to be the only one who didn’t want to find out what it would do. Finally Applejack spoke up.

“Well… Are we gunna check this here, uhm, other dimension out?”

Twilight didn’t quite want to. “I’m not sure that’d be a good idea.” she said, recovering from losing all the energy she put behind the spell.

“Oh come on Twilight! No point in wasting the opportunity to check out another version of Equestria, besides, you put heaps of effort into the spell. Why let all the effort be for nothing?” Rainbow asked her.

Twilight still trying to make up her mind wanted to say something to argue her point, but it was too late. Rainbow had already flown towards the magical gate at top speed. She disappeared right before the others as she entered. The Portal boomed with power and grew in size, but shrunk back to size almost just as quickly.

“RAINBOW!” Twilight yelled as she saw her friend vanish. “Oh no. What if I didn’t do it right? What if she just died?” Twilight said as she began to hyperventilate.

“She’ll be fine sugarcube.” Applejack reassured her.

“Are you sure?” Twilight asked.

“Only one way to find out!” she responded. She ran into the portal at top speed and vanished just like Rainbow Dash.

“Applejack!” Twilight yelled. She seemed very nervous. She was sweating and nervously trotting on the spot.

“Come on Twilight, lets go see Applejack and Dashie!” Pinkie said as she jumped gleefully into the portal.

Twilight was clearly feeling bad now, she wanted to take it back just for the knowledge that her friends were ok. She almost felt like she was going to be sick because of all the negativity running through her. She looked at Rarity with clearly worried and almost teary eyes, “I-I d-don’t know a-a-about this Rarity.” She said.

“It’s a bit too late to back out now Twilight, if they’re in the other dimension they’ll need you to get back out. You’re the only one who knows the spell.” She told her.

”I won’t be able to perform it again for ages; it really took a lot out of me.” Twilight said.

“There’s not many other options here Twilight. We’re all going to have to go in now. And that means you too Fluttershy” Rarity said turning around and facing the shaking pony quietly moving toward the door.

“Oh, of course, hehehe.” Fluttershy said as she slowly and very nervously shifted back towards Rarity. “Listen I’d rather not…” Fluttershy didn’t even get a chance to finish her sentence before Rarity spoke again.

“See you in there darling.” Rarity told Twilight before jumping in, pulling Fluttershy with her.

Fluttershy gulped and screamed as Rarity pulled her into the portal.

By this point Twilight was distraught. She didn’t know what would happen and certainly didn’t want to find out. But she new she couldn’t abandon her friends now. It was too late to say no. She had no choice but to leap into the portal and knowing that only made her feel worse. She looked at the portal that was now starting to shrink. Taking a heavy breathe she galloped into the portal and held her breathe, as everything around her became dark.

Spike burst through the door just to see the portal vanish. He’d been walking back to the library, when he saw flashing lights of Purple aura flashing out of the windows. He had no idea what to expect.

“Guys? Where are you? Hello?” He worriedly yelled throughout the library. But the sound just echoed back at him from the walls.

He fell over and started to sweat as the scenarios rushed into his head. ‘Maybe, it was just them teleporting somewhere… no, Twilight’s teleporting spells aren’t that large… Or what if they all exploded! No that couldn’t have happened, there’d need to be a reason for an explosion. What if it was a magic spell gone haywire? What if it was lethal? What if they were…’ Spike fought the word entering his head. He knew in his heart the girls had to be alright. But that didn’t stop the flow of emotions clawing at his brain. He felt extremely worried that they would just disappear like that, and rushed outside to look for them, intent on finding them. He would search the whole town if he had to.

But little did he know that even if he’d searched all of Equestria, he wouldn’t find them.

Thrust into War

Twilight found herself laying on a soft, lush landscape. With hundreds of little feather-like objects tickling her coat. She couldn't hear all that well and was struggling to open her eyes. She tried to remember what had happened, she walked into the portal, and everything seemed to just disappear. The world around her, her home, swept up as if someone had pulled it under her like a cloth. She moved around a little and even though she couldn’t tell what was happening she seemed to calm herself when she realized she still had full control of her body, and didn’t feel hurt.

“Twilight?”

What was that she wondered, still feeling like she was drifting in an endless black world. Suddenly the noise started to grow.

“Twilight?” she heard again. She knew someone was trying to reach her. The voice was getting louder, and starting to become clearer.

“TWILIGHT?!”

Suddenly she could tell that it was Applejacks voice, yelling right into her ears. She started to move her eyes open, but it was a surprising struggle. Suddenly she felt her whole body being shaken around, which seemed to be the jump she needed to open her eyes and gain back her full hearing.

Twilight looked up at her friends; they were in an open grassy area behind a large hill with a forest just off the side of them. The sky above them was glowing with a vibrant, magnificent, fiery orange color. She didn’t know if they had actually been transported to another Equestria or not, but she was happy her friends were ok. She lay down breathing steadily, and her friends all backed down breathing a sigh of relief. They had all been trying to wake her up and had gotten seriously worried that she wasn’t responding.

“Oh thank goodness you’re ok Twilight. You weren’t moving at all. We thought you were dead.” Fluttershy said with a grave tone to her voice. Twilight looked over to her and saw her teary, red eyes.

“But I was moving.” Twilight said, surprised that her voice didn’t seem the least bit hoarse or choked. She slowly stood up and walked over to her friend and gave her a small cuddle patting her on the back. “No reason to worry, I feel fine.” She reassured her.

“You mighta thought ya were movin Twi, but ya definitely weren’t, we were worried sick.” Applejack told her also visibly worried. But then she looked at all of them, noticing they all had the same expression, except Fluttershy seemed to be the only one who had resorted to tears. Even Pinkie had momentarily lost her smile. But she lit back up and leapt over to Twilight, hugging her a bit too tightly for Twilight’s comfort.

“Thank goodness you’re ok Twilight. You scared me so much. Don’t ever scare me like that again, please.” Pinkie said to Twilight, before letting go.

“I don’t know why you’re all so worried,” Twilight said confused, “Just because I hadn’t moved for a few seconds doesn’t mean I would have died.”

“Twilight it wasn’t a few seconds. You were out cold for almost 10 minutes!” Rainbow Dash retorted in a strong tone.

Twilight now understood why all her friends were so stressed, her look of confusion descended into an equally worried one, but then she slowly worked up a smile.

“I’m sorry I worried you all so much.” She apologized hoping her friends would understand she didn’t intend to frighten them. Their faces all started to lighten up with hers.

“S’ ok Twilight. Jus you don’t go doin it again, ya hear?” Applejack said lightly patting her shoulder.

“So you girls didn’t even look around yet?” Twilight said.

“Well of course not. We didn’t leave you for even a second.” Rarity told her.

“So you don’t know if we’re definitely in a different Equestria then?”

“Well, not fer sure. The only difference as far as we can tell s’ the sky. It sure as hay wasn’t this red when we left.” Applejack said looking up at the color swirling around as if it was a picture on tapestry still being filled out.

Twilight seemed a lot more relaxed than in the library. ‘At least my friends are safe.’ She thought to herself. “Come on then. Let’s check this place out a little. We aren’t gunna find out much if we stay here.” She said to the others.

The girls seemed surprised by Twilights new change of attitude, but quickly took on it for themselves and started walking up the hill before them.

Nearing the top Twilight started to wonder what could be so bad about this place. ‘There couldn’t be too big a war if there’s this much untouched nature’. She was right though, the trees did seem to stand out as untouched beauty. “Maybe this place won’t be so…” Twilight stopped as she reached the top of the hill. The words couldn’t find a way to escape her mouth at all. Twilight didn’t even take in another breathe. The look that had sat on her face before had changed almost instantly into a horrified look. The other girls still walking up were slightly confused about the change in tone.

Pinkie sped up a little. “What was that Twi…” Pinkie also lost her sentence as she approached the peak of the hill, and she gasped in fear as the smile that was on her face became one almost identical to Twilights. Concern quickly erupted inside the other 4 as they took their last couple of steps to the top of the hill, before finally seeing what had made everypony so quiet. Like the other faces theirs grew rapidly fearful.

”Is… Is that… C-Canterlot” Applejack sputtered.

Far in the distance was indeed Canterlot Castle… or what was remaining of it. The castle was surrounded by thick smoke and fires could be seen dancing all around the city, many areas of the castle including parts of the spires and many columns had broken away and where lying in piles of rubble that weren’t visible to the girls due to their distance from the horrific scene, but they could see where they had collapsed and broken away. The smoke was billowing into the clouds and the castle seemed to be covered in a coat of dark soot, or ash. The girls looked at the city horrified, as explosions seemed to continue endlessly from different parts of the town.

They stood there silent for almost 5 minutes.

“What could have possibly happened? Who would do this to Canterlot” Rarity asked.

“We have to leave.” Twilight said realizing that there really was a war in the alternate Equestria. “Why didn’t I just listen to myself? Why did I have to open that portal?” Twilight questioned herself. The feeling that had troubled her before coming to the alternate Equestria returned.

Suddenly almost out of nowhere, Applejack let out a sharp cry of pain. She collapsed to the ground a few inches away from where she just was. The girls reacted almost instantly and ran over to her to see what was wrong. They jumped back though horrified to see blood hissing from a spot just under her cutie mark. It wasn’t stopping and Applejack started to howl in pain. To her it felt like someone had just slung a rock at her leg 50 times in a row to get it stuck there, and it was just getting worse. The pain became a burning sensation almost as quickly as it started, and blood just kept pouring from the wound. Twilight panicked rushing to her friend’s aid. But she didn’t know what had happened, she’d never had to deal with bloody injuries before, not to mention she had no idea what had even happened anyway.

Applejack kept crying in pain, but a crack was heard in the distance from Canterlot castle, it was ever so faint, but almost as soon as it had happened Rainbow Dash let out a sharp cry and fell to the ground, also further away from where she was standing.  She clutched at the left side of her body under her arm and let out a sharp cry of pain, but bit her lip trying to hold it back. That didn’t stop tears from rolling down her face though. She slammed her right hoof in the ground in pain and anger trying to suppress the burning feeling in her body. The grass below her had started to take on the blood flowing out of the wound, and started to sag under the liquid. Twilight looked at her friends crying on the ground. She had no idea what had just happened. Pinkie had run straight to Rainbow, but was just as lost as Twilight. She seemed hopeless to help her best friend, while Rarity and Fluttershy seemed the same way about Applejack. Suddenly Twilight turned around. She looked at the Castle realizing that there had been a faint noise before Rainbow’s scream drowned it out. She shifted her attention quickly from her distressed friends to the castle and focused over their painful screaming. She formed an invisible protective barrier between her friends and the castle. Then out of the blue, she heard a crack, and almost as quickly as the noise had happened, she found herself staring at a small round metal object spinning like a drill, only a couple of centimeters from her face. She had no idea what it was, but new instantly that it is what hit her friends. But what shocked her most was that the object had partially penetrated her force field. It obviously had a lot of drive behind it. She picked it up in her magic reinforcing her force field and turned to her friends.

Their blood was pooling beneath them now and their conditions had worsened. They had now grown pale and were starting to slip from consciousness. She didn’t know if it was the pain or the blood loss that was causing the change, but she new she had to help them. “Pinkie, help me get Rainbow down the hill, Rarity and Fluttershy, get Applejack down there. We need to leave NOW!” Twilight said carefully slinging Rainbow’s hind-side over her shoulder. She didn’t need to say it twice. Before Twilight knew it Pinkie was putting Rainbow Dash’s front side of her body over her back, taking care not to disturb the bleeding wound, for fear that it might hurt her more. Rarity and Fluttershy were almost just as fast doing the same with Applejack, which really showed Twilight that Rarity was determined to save her friend, considering that Applejack’s blood was now staining her coat. The girls didn’t need to get told to run… another round object had pierced through the force field right past Fluttershy’s leg, which was the biggest jump start they could have possibly gotten.

They raced down the hill leaving the castle out of sight. The girls all had tears streaming down there face, especially Twilight.

‘This is all my fault; I shouldn’t have brought them here! I shouldn’t have let them go in the portal’ she thought, blaming herself for what had happened.

They reached the bottom of the hill, but didn’t stop for fear somepony might come after them. But they were so distracted by fear that they didn’t pay attention to the disturbed pattern in the dirt in front of them, and without warning, found themselves falling into a newly opened hole in the ground as it gave out under their legs. It wasn’t a deep hole, but the force of hitting the ground took every last bit of energy out of the lot. Twilight seemed to be the only one able to look up. She looked at the sky, confused, but then slowly and painfully shifted her gaze to running sounds coming somewhere from her left. She looked at her friends. They were all now badly injured, and Applejack’s and Rainbow Dash’s injuries had only grown more severe. She looked again to the left to see three silhouetted pony figures standing before her. She heard a slightly muffled voice, saw a hoof raise into the air, and then everything became dark.

Interrogation

Twilight didn’t know how long she’d been out. She didn’t even know if she was regaining consciousness. Her head was pounding, but she didn’t know if it was the hit she’d received or if it was the memory of what had happened before that. All the blood, the unexplainable object that she’d been faced with, it just made her sick. She wanted to believe it was all made up, and that she was just sleeping in the library. A dream. She thought about Spike, and how she’d just left without leaving him a note to tell her they’d be back soon. But then she started to wonder if they really would be back soon. She managed the strength to pry her eyes open ever so slightly. She could see a small pegasus pony arguing with a slightly bigger earth pony. She could just vaguely make out the colors of their fur and mane, but it just looked like a blur. There was gray, yellow, light cream, blue, and pink. But this was useless to Twilight when she couldn’t even organize these colors into shapes. She slowly dipped from consciousness again.

It must have been about a day before she was awoken by a sharp, cold stinging feeling spreading through her body like nothing she’d ever felt. It made her feel so alive. She was covered in scratches and grazes but it didn’t bother her. She felt so full of energy. She started breathing heavily as if she had been underwater for ages. Her eyes shifted all around, but she could only see darkness. She tried moving her head, but it seemed to be restricted. But then she realized she could hardly move anything else. Her arms were restricted by bonds that she couldn’t see; same as her legs. A sharp object moved out of her front, left leg causing a slight sting, but it didn’t bother her too much.

She tried pulling at the bonds, trying to break free, grunting and whining, but she didn’t have the strength in her. Suddenly a voice echoed throughout the cold room, “You've been out for quite a few hours." the voice said.

Twilight Struggled harder without listening properly.

"I wouldn’t bother if I were you, you’re only wasting your energy.”

She couldn’t identify the voices location, but it was so familiar. Who was it? She thought momentarily but then it struck her.

“Derpy?” Twilight asked, her voice echoing on the walls. Suddenly the room lit up. It was such a sudden change that Twilight thought she was staring straight at the sun, but she could only protect her eyes by shutting them.

Out of the darkness a gray pegasus pony with a pale yellow mane walked towards Twilight, her eyes started to adjust as the silhouetted pony started to take form. She was right. Derpy was standing in front of her. She had a strange metal contraption on her hoof and was wearing a forest camouflaged helmet. But what stood out most were here eyes. They looked like any other ponies, no lazy eye or anything. If Derpy was trying to conceive a threatening look, without her lazy eye it was definitely achieved.

“That’s commander Derpy to you!” Derpy yelled, her voice striking light fear into Twilight.

“And just how do you know my name anyway? You’re not even supposed to be here! Last we saw of you, your body was just another littering the grounds of Canterlot.”

Twilight was so confused. Why was her friend yelling at her, and what did she mean she wasn’t supposed to be there?

“What are you talking about Derpy? It’s me Twilight Sparkle. We’re friends.”

“What are you talking about?! This wars been raging for 2 years, in the time you were alive you never once even spoke to me, until the mission to save the slave ponies. You were killed on the battlefield before my own eyes! You and your friends! Maybe there’s a reason you’re still alive, you must be a spy!” Derpy yelled, her voice echoing through the room, getting more and more aggressive.

Twilight was becoming worried. ‘What is she talking about? What does she mean I was killed, why doesn’t she remember me?’, but then she remembered what she said about her friends. “I don’t know what you’re talking about Derpy! Where are my friends?”  Twilight said also starting to feel a little angry.

“That’s Commander Derpy dammit! You watch your tone with me or I’ll take your head off right here and now!” Derpy yelled back. Twilight suddenly grew very fearful as her spirit shrunk again.

“Your friends are under supervision and care as we speak, but if you can’t co-operate with us and explain everything, they will be terminated, along with you.”

“NO!” Twilight screamed. “Don’t hurt them; I’ll do what ever you want! Just don’t hurt my friends!”

“Well you can start by explaining how you’re here to begin with. You should be dead; I saw Cross Fire put a bullet right through your head. Along with all your friends! How are you all here?!”

Twilight tried to think of a way she could explain any of this ‘Who was Cross Fire? What did she mean they were all killed? What in the hay were bullets?’, but then she remembered that they weren’t the same ponies as the ones that were killed. She felt so stupid for having forgotten that they weren’t from the same dimension.

“We aren’t the same ponies as the ones that you saw killed. Were from another dimension you see and…”

Derpy was furious and cut her off “How stupid do you think I am. You don’t really expect me to believe that do you? If this is just you trying to be funny, you better cut it out and tell the truth!”

“But it is the truth! I used my magic to test a spell we found in an old black book. It brought us here. To this Equestria!” Twilight was tearing up now. She knew that the story might sound far fetched, but her emotions were displaying all the truth in her words. How could Derpy not see it? But then she noticed a change in Derpy’s eyes they seemed to lighten up for a moment before reverting back to anger.

“You got any proof?! How do I know that your deaths weren’t just an act of magic to fool us? How do I know your not Luna’s spies?!” Derpy was breathing rather heavily.

“What do you mean spies? Why would I be Luna’s spy, what does that have to do with me and my friends?”

Derpy was starting to get confused. “Maybe they did shoot you. You don’t seem to remember anything about the war… or you’re just hiding it.”

Twilight couldn’t take it anymore. She’d never been yelled at so much in her life. She’d never felt so helpless. The tears started to roll down her cheeks.

Derpy wanted to say something, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t the same Derpy Twilight knew, but even under this one’s tough exterior there was still a soft heart. The anger in her face started to retreat and show a look of realization. She knew that emotions could be a powerful lie, but she had trained herself to learn the difference between real and forged, and she did know that this was genuine sadness. She unbound Twilights limbs and helped her down slowly. Twilight sat there for a moment trying to get a hold of herself.

“I’m skeptical to your story, alright, but I do have an explanation. I’m gunna have to take you to the Princess. If she decides your telling the truth, she might let you go.”

Twilight was taken back by Derpy’s change of character, but smiled as the kind Derpy she knew started to show.

“But do you know who I am?” Twilight asked her again.

“Of course. Everyone does. Same as your friends. You were the Princesses top group of Elite soldiers, but when you were killed by a new weapon that the Lunar army had manufactured, we didn’t know what was going to happen. We had our Spy, Spike go in the enemy base at Canterlot Castle and he’s been sending us enemy plans ever since.” Derpy explained.

Twilight suddenly smiled even more and looked at Derpy. “You mean Spike’s here? And he’s alive?”

“He’s not here now, but yes he’s still alive as far as we know. But if what you’re saying is true, then it’s not the same Spike you know.” Derpy reminded her.

That didn’t matter to Twilight. Her friend since she hatched him as an egg was also here, and alive.

“Follow me; I’ll take you to see Princess Celestia.”

Twilight obliged but first had to ask her something. “Can I see my friends?”

“Not until the Princess gives permission for you to leave my supervision. Rest assured they’re being taken care of in our medical facility as we speak.”

Derpy put her hoof to a panel on the door and pushed it in, unlocking the door, which swung open on its own.

Twilight followed her out and looked around. There was a large room with pipes running through it and roots growing from the ceiling, and several tunnels branching in many directions. “Are we underneath a forest?” Twilight asked Derpy looking at the roots.

“Yes. The base is situated here until we can find another location for it, which may have to be soon since you and you friends opened part of it up.” Twilight felt a little guilty knowing that the roof collapsing was her and her friends fault, but didn’t understand why it mattered a lot.

“We’re on the top floor, hence why you can see the roots.”

Suddenly out of almost no where a light, creamy colored mare with a dark blue and pink mane rushed up to her. “Twilight! Your ok!” she yelled.

“Bon Bon?” Twilight asked.

”Where have you been? It’s been over a year since the princess sent you and your team to assault the Lunar army’s base. Did you see Lyra there? Or any of the other ponies? Please tell me she’s ok.” Bon Bon was happy to see Twilight but was also stressed to find out information that Twilight didn’t know the answers to.

“Look Bon Bon, I told you. Lyra was shot, along with all the other Unicorns. She’s gone. I’m sorry, I know it’s a hard truth, but you have to move on.” Derpy told her.

Twilight’s heart sunk almost instantly. ‘What does she mean all the other unicorns? She couldn’t have literally meant all of them!’ she thought to herself.

“Maybe there’s a chance that Lyra is still alive. You told me Twilight and her team were shot in the head. But here they are right now, in our base, living and breathing.” Bon Bon said trying to construct an argument.

“They aren’t the same ponies I saw die. They’re from another version of Equestria.”

Twilight lit up a bit ‘She believes me’ she thought to herself.

“What? But… But she knows me…” Bon Bon remembered, “She said my name before I’d even talked to her.”

Derpy looked inquisitively at Twilight, but Twilight’s explanation was simple.

“Just like there are, well, were copies of us here, there are copies of you and the Princesses in the Equestria I came from. Although, the Derpy back there was a little bit less rough.” Twilight explained looking at Derpy.

“Look I may come off as rough but I just use my tough side for dealing with the enemy, or interrogation.”

“So you don’t know anything about Lyra?” Bon Bon asked Twilight, tears welling up in her eyes.

“I’m sorry Bon Bon; I hardly know anything about the war here either though.” It hurt Twilight to have to tell her that she had no evidence to support her best friend’s status.

“But if it helps at all, the Lyra in the Equestria I came from is still alive, and you and her are still best friends.” Twilight told her in an effort to cheer her up.

Bon Bon sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Thanks Twilight. It’s… It’s good to have you back. Even if you aren’t… well… the ‘you’ I know.” She gave a weak smile, saluted Derpy and then walked off.

“Poor girl… It’s been really hard for her to accept the Lyra was killed during our assault. It made it worse when she found out Lyra was the last Unicorn in Equestria.” Derpy explained to Twilight.

“You can’t possibly mean it when you say the last unicorn right; I mean there has to be others.” Twilight said refusing to believe that even in an Alternate world they could all be gone.

“I’m sorry Twilight. But there hasn’t been a unicorn sighted in over a year, since Luna launched a campaign to have them all slaughtered. Even the ones that fought for her! She’s just a heartless bitch that ‘Princess’! She killed them like it was nothing and said they were animals that shouldn’t be allowed to live. She’s the only animal that shouldn’t be allowed to live!” Derpy roared breathing heavily and digging violently at the ground.

Twilight couldn’t believe it. All the unicorns, gone.

“That can’t be possible. There has to be some left. She couldn’t have killed a whole race. Maybe they’re in hiding?”

“I’m sorry Twilight. It’s true. They’re gone.” Derpy choked out the words. She hated to say it herself but she knew the truth.

“But why would she do that? The Luna in our Dimension was kind, she’d never do something so… wrong!”

“Then our dimensions are two very different ones Twilight. Things are much grimmer here. She had them killed because according to her; they shouldn’t be allowed to use magic. She wanted to be the only one in the land to have magical ability. But if you ask me, she was afraid of them, afraid they were eventually going to over power her. She acted out of fear and fear alone.” Derpy seemed certain she was right, and due to the tone in her voice Twilight didn’t doubt her.

“I can’t believe they’re gone. It just seems so... well, unbelievable.” Twilight said confused and upset.

“I’m sorry Twilight, but that’s war…”

“It’s not fair…”

“It’s never fair Twilight”

“But it’s genocide! How can she still have followers after committing the biggest crime in existence?!” Twilight finished.

“I know its hard Twilight. Some ponies are just heartless and full of greed, but I promise you… soon, they’ll all pay.” Derpy seemed very serious when she said that. But Twilight couldn’t ignore the fact that no matter how bad something is, revenge only makes it worse. “Now come on, we’ve strayed for far too long already. Time to go see the Princess.” Derpy said as she began leading Twilight through the tunnels.

Behind Enemy Lines

A light brown earth pony with a short blue mane with spiked red tips, a short tail of the same color scheme, and a cutie mark of what looked like the reticle of a rifle had been sitting at a large boarded window for ages, watching out from a high and open point of view through the scope of her rifle. It wasn’t a very technologically advanced rifle but it was built for power and distance. It seemed to be fashioned in way perfect for her to use, with a long shining, slender body, and a lever, that acted as the trigger.

She kept watching and didn’t even blink for a second. She seemed to be extremely intent on finding something. She moved aside to a telescope to get a sight of the further areas of Equestria, but all the way from the remains of Trottingham to the rubble of Manehattan, there was nothing. She sat back down in front of her rifle, shifting the scope towards the undisturbed lands, the green land and large hills, harboring many trees and other fauna; she grabbed the straw of drink and took a sip from it, not shifting her gaze for even a second. But then something seemed to flash behind one of the hills. A very faint purple flash, 6 times in a row it repeated itself. No normal pony would usually notice it because it was so faint, but Cross Fire was no normal pony. She saw everything differently to everypony else. The small things that nopony paid attention to were the things that mattered most in a situation to her. She sat there watching the hill for about 8 minutes before starting to lose interest. She knew that by now something would have happened. ‘You’ve been sitting behind the rifle for so long now… you’re probably just so bored that your seeing things,’ she thought to herself, but quickly disregarded the thought. She never missed a spec of dust in a spotless room; there was no way that it was her brain playing tricks on her.

She kept her vision entirely on the mountain for a few more minutes when suddenly the door at the back of the room opened, and a thin earth pony entered the room carrying a box in his mouth.

She sighed before addressing him, “What is it Luis? Why have you interrupted me yet again?”

The stallion was nervous and sweating, clearly uncomfortable being where he was. He started to stutter out his sentence.

”I’m s-sorry for the disruption, C-C-Cross Fire, I, ugh, just b-brought the bullets you asked m-me to retrieve.”

“Ah, excellent. Place them right here.” Cross Fire said pointing to her left. She had momentarily shifted her gaze from the hill. She looked back into the scope. It had been 13 minutes since she had seen the flash and nothing had happened. She sighed about to shift her gaze to another location before suddenly a small purple figure had walked onto the top of the hill. She almost kicked the drink from the chair and dropped the rifle. She picked it back up, readjusting the lens and tinkering with the focus. When she finally saw the figure her jaw almost hit the ground.

Wasn’t that the unicorn she had executed during an assault against Canterlot castle?! She blinked a few times and checked her lens to see if she was actually just seeing things, but she was really there. “How is that possible? I shot her right between the eyes! I watched the life flee her, her brain matter was all over ground!” She shoved the wall in front of her. “It’s not possible! How can she be here?!” Cross Fire was breathing heavily questioning her knowledge of magic. She knew there was no spell that could bring the dead back. Especially with injuries like the ones she’d inflicted on this particular unicorn. So how was she standing right there? It was almost as if Cross Fire could reach out and touch her.

“Uhm if you don’t mind, Cross fire, I’d like to return to my duties in the lower regions of the castle.” Luis told her.

”Wait!” she commanded. "Come here and look at this first. Tell me what you see.” Without moving the rifle she allowed the stallion to look into it.

”I uh, see a, purple unicorn, and a pink pony with a very curly mane and tail.” He said peeking through the scope.

”Wait! What?” Crossfire shoved the small stallion aside and looked through the scope again. He wasn’t lying. There were now two ponies on the hill. She recognized the second one too. She was one of the 5 ponies that stood side by side with the purple unicorn. But then another one walked up, and one by one, to Cross Fire’s shock, all 6 of the ponies that she had executed with so much enthusiasm, had now appeared on the hill before her.

She had no idea how it was possible; she knew they were dead! They had to be! She remembered the glee it brought her to put her hoof gun right between their eyes one by one and fire without even a second thought. She remembered the brains and blood splattering on the concrete floor beneath them as the bullet penetrated the opposite end of the skull, and the blood spraying at her from the explosive force of it entering at such close range. Nopony can survive a point blank shot to the head, especially after the damage it caused. And even if they had found a way, the strongest magic wouldn’t be able to heal their injuries, or just sneak them out of Canterlot castle unnoticed.

”Luis! Go to the body vault, and find the bodies of the ponies you just saw. NOW!” She commanded him.

Without hesitation the small stallion pelted towards the door and shut it behind him.

She looked closely at the expressions the 6 ponies bore on their faces. They looked so confused and horrified at the same time. She pictured what their faces might look like if she got a headshot in on the orange one, and left a bloody disfigured mess on her neck. She took aim, licking her lips and just envisioning the outcome. She pushed on the trigger, and a loud crack erupted in the room as a small explosion occurred within the barrel of her rifle. The noise was almost deafening, but she had fired the rifle so many times, and been in so many gun fights, that she could easily tolerate the noise. She looked back into the scope as the smoke created by the bullet being fired begun to clear away, but she cursed under her breath. She had missed and hit the mare’s flank. She never missed.

“I thought I told them to make the adjustments on this scope accurate!” She said. “When I find that engineer if he doesn’t fix it properly… Humph” She grumbled clearly ticked that the shot had missed its target. She knew that shock and blood could do the rest of the work on the mare but she was really disappointed. She liked it best when she had guaranteed a good kill. Still there was no point in wasting an opportunity.

She picked up a bullet from the box Luis had bought her and placed it on the chair next to her. She cocked the rifle back and the casing that held the bullet bounced out. She picked up the bullet in her mouth and placed it into the slot where the other had just been. She found she was a lot slower if she tried changing bullets with her hooves, and she was still waiting for the engineer to create a magazine that could hold several bullets. She took aim again cocking the rifle and loading the bullet, ready to fire it. She took aim at the blue pegasus, who like her friends was fussing over her friend’s condition, she adjusted the scope ever slightly towards her head, and without a second glance, pushed the trigger. Again the loud crack filled the room and a small explosion occurred in the barrel of the rifle. She shooed away the smoke and looked through her rifle again. She cursed even louder than last time. She missed he target again! The bullet had entered somewhere under the pony’s front left arm.

She was done messing around now. She was determined to take out the group. One missed shot was bad luck, two was really bad luck, but bad luck was something Cross Fire had never had to worry about. She had no doubt the third shot would take out her target. She noticed the purple unicorn starting to focus on the castle spires, but not hers in particular. She had to take her out before she realized that’s where the bullets were coming from. Almost instantly she had slung another bullet into the rifle, and cocked it. She aimed it slowly above the unicorns head and pushed the trigger. But this time she completely ignored the noise and explosion and focused on the unicorn to make sure it had worked. She saw a vibrant purple light expand outwards from in front of the unicorns face. She had perfectly assumed the bullets trajectory, but hadn’t accounted for the unicorn’s magical ability.

She bit her lip to stop herself from swearing out loud and angrily slung another bullet into her rifle. She aimed instead at the yellow pegasus pony’s head and pulled the trigger. Again ignoring the reaction that usually ensued, she watched the group sling their friends onto their backs. Her bullet pierced straight through the force field, but she’d forgotten to account for the inaccuracy of the scope and bullet went straight past the yellow pony’s leg. She swore out loud, she didn’t care now. 4 missed shots were impossible. She hardly ever missed at all. She threw in another bullet for good measure, but was too late, as the ponies had already run back down the hill.

Cross Fire was outraged. She threw her rifle aside out frustration.

”Useless, inaccurate piece of…” she was cut off by the door opening behind her.

”WHAT DO YOU WANT LUIS?!” she yelled as the small stallion collapsed out of fear.

”I f-f-f-found the b-b-bodies, y-you asked m-me to find.” He told her quietly, fearing she might strike him again. “A-a-also the p-p-princess wants t-t-to see you.” He managed to choke out.

She was extremely annoyed and didn’t want anypony else to bother her. “Good. Now get out of my sight!” she commanded. The pony didn’t need to be told again. He sprinted out of the room at top speed. Cross fire looked at her rifle, and back out the window. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and exited the spire following the staircase to the main castle chambers. She trotted over to the main throne room and entered, descending into a bow as Princess Luna appeared before her.

”Cross Fire. I was hoping to get a word with you.” She spoke. She wasn’t using her ‘royal Canterlot voice’ but she still struck fear into Cross Fire, who trembled almost every time she spoke.

”How can I be of assistance Princess?” she asked, not moving from her position.

”you can stand up Cross Fire. You’re my most trusted soldier. I’ve told you many times you have no reason to show me any special respect or fear me.”

Cross Fire Stumbled to a normal stance. “I’m sorry Luna. I’m not in a good state of mind right now.” She informed her.

The princess eyed her carefully. “I heard 4 shots come from your spire. Who was out there?” the princess asked.

“Well that’s just it Princess. I’m not sure if it was my mind playing tricks on me, but Celestia’s 6 best soldiers were standing atop a hill next to the great forests. And I am certain it was them.” Cross Fire informed her.

”That’s impossible. Their bodies were recovered after my sister’s last soldier retreated. You’d left most of their heads lying on the ground of Canterlot. How can they be back?” Luna asked, surprisingly enough to Cross Fire, her voice seemed to have a hint of concern in it.

”I don’t know. But the worst part is, when I tried to take them out, I missed. Only two shots hit them!”

”But that’s impossible! I’ve never seen you miss a shot in the entire time I’ve known you!”

”You can chalk it up to the engineer for the mistake. He hasn’t accurately adjusted the scope on my rifle.”

”I’ll ensure a swift punishment for the engineer and have him fix your rifle, but if what you say is true, we must prepare for our next move!”

”Pardon me for asking Princess, but what is our next move?” Cross Fire asked her, her enthusiasm starting to light up.

”If the 6 were out there, that means my sister may have situated her base in the same area, and if she’s found them. She’ll probably try and recruit the two unicorns to use their magic against me. So I have one option in mind. Prep the bomb squad, they’re about to begin a new mission.” Luna commanded as an evil grin spread across her face.

”With pleasure!” Cross Fire said with a similar look appearing on hers. She turned and trotted towards the door, closing it behind herself.

Trouble Back Home

Spike was running around town trying to find the girls. He’d checked all over Ponyville twice now, and the day was coming to an end. He had other ponies searching but still to no avail. He couldn’t explain it. Twilight never left with out leaving Spike something to tell him where she’d gone. It worried Spike greatly because his fears had become far more than just worry. He was frantic to find them and as usual, thinking about all the negative scenarios that could have taken place in the short time he’d left them. He had no where to turn, and no pony could help him.

He sat down on the bridge covering the small river that ran through Ponyville. It was a significant location to him, because it was the second place Rarity had kissed him. The memory sat in his head as a dream come true, one of the happiest moments in his young life, but the feeling the memory usually gave him seemed to be undermined by the thoughts that he might not ever see Rarity again. He didn’t stray on this thought though as he didn’t want to believe it. He knew in his heart he’d see her again… and the others. So why did he still doubt his thoughts, it made him upset that his emotions and thoughts were conflicting with each other. “Where are you guys?” he muttered watching the water. The tears started to run down his face, but he was still confused as to why. It might have been due to the fact that he was running out of options. Nopony that he’d asked for help had found any of the girls. He started to think about any last ditch things he could do to save the girls.

Suddenly it occurred to him; he could contact Princess Celestia, and send her a message telling her something was wrong. He jumped up and wiped his eyes. “I’ve got it, if I can’t find you girls, then Princess Celestia should be able to!” He jumped onto the road and rushed for the library, being stopped momentarily by ponies that he’d asked for help from before. Colgate, Lyra, Bon Bon, Big Mac, the CMC, the cakes, and many other of the town’s residents that had searched over all over the town, had no positive news to report. Spike was slightly more worried, but he felt that the Princess would be far more likely to find the girls.

He reached the library, and for good measure, had a quick look around to see if Twilight and the girls had come back, but as he suspected, they hadn’t. He went up to Twilight’s bedroom and pulled a piece of parchment out, along with a small tub of ink. He did take care to stay neat, but he didn’t pay much attention to the usual formal greeting he’d normally use when writing to the princess. He read over it quickly to make sure it made sense, ‘Princess Celestia, I’m writing to you because I need your help, Twilight and the others have gone missing, I’ve had ponies searching all over Ponyville, but no one has found them. Please come soon. They could be in urgent trouble.’

It sounded fine to Spike. He ignored the fact that it wasn’t formal, because he couldn’t think of many ways to express how urgently he needed her. Happy with the letter, he breathed a spout of green flames onto it and sent it on its way to the Princess.

Spike paced for what he thought was going to be a long time, but at least 2 minutes after sending the message, he saw an aura of bright lights spark and fizzle outside the library window. Spike recognized the familiar magical energy and ran outside. He brightened up as the Princess stood before him shining with the usual sunny light that always surrounded her. Spike was a little surprised that she had arrived so early to assist him.

“Princess Celestia! Thank goodness you’re here! And so fast too.” Spike said running over to her.

“Hello Spike. I came as fast as I could when I got your message saying that Twilight and her friends were missing. Why would I waste any time when my start student could need my help?” The princess said to Spike. “So what can you tell me right now?”

Spike thought back to the events from that morning, up to the girls’ disappearance. “Well it was Pinkie’s birthday, and Twilight had let her throw a second party in the library, so that I wouldn’t feel bad about missing her party at Sugarcube corner. But Pinkie had to go back to Sugarcube corner to grab some of the party supplies she left there, but I offered to do it for her. I don’t know what happened after that though. I was only gone for about 10 minutes. When I came back, I saw the library was glowing with heaps of purple lights. So I panicked, dropped everything and ran to the door, but when I opened it. All I saw was a round, magical… well… I’m not sure what it was. It was just a purple, magic sphere, which fell to the ground and disappeared almost as soon as I’d seen it. At first I thought maybe the girls had teleported somewhere, But Twilight’s Teleporting spells aren’t usually that powerful.

So I haven’t been able to think of anything else it could have been. Since then I’ve had all of Ponyville searching for them, in case they were still definitely there, but nopony has seen them all day.” Spike said in one long almost slurred out sentence, with only a few breaths, but surprisingly enough, the Princess had anticipated that Spike would be panicked, and might say his sentence at a hard to understand speed, so she made sure to listen very carefully.

”Calm down Spike.” She said patting the small dragon on the head. “I think I’ll be able to detect the most recently cast spell in the room if I focus for a few minutes”.

Spike’s rapid breathing, started to slow down as he lead the princess inside the library. He went over to a chair and sat down fiddling with his fingers waiting to see what the princess was going to tell him. She was moving slowly around the room trying to detect any magical disturbances. She stopped at one particular spot in the middle of the room and focused on it with concern. “Whatever spell it was, it was powerful.”

The Princess focused on her horn and it lit up, with a brilliant shining, white array of lights. She touched her horn to the location of the disturbance, and a large amount of shockwaves spread outwards from the spot she touched with her horn. The magic seemed to fizzle for a moment before the shockwaves took on the form of Twilight’s portal.

Celestia’s face turned to one of grave concern. “That can’t be right… where would Twilight learn such powerful magic?”

”What do you mean? Spike asked her.

”Twilight seems to have conjured a magical gateway to another dimension. A powerful spell I thought I had hidden long ago, deep in the restricted areas of the Royal library. I understand Twilight received a new lot of books to fill in her bookshelves with. Were there any books that stood out amongst the others?” Celestia asked.

”Well, now that you mention it…” Spike got up and ran upstairs; he had a quick look around but found what he was looking for lying on Twilight’s bed. He snatched up the large dark book and took it downstairs to the Princess.

Celestia only had to have one look at the book to know exactly what it was.

“Oh this should have never come here!” Celestia said with grave concern “This should have been locked away from everypony.”

”I don’t understand Princess, what is it?” Spike asked confused.

”I’ll answer your questions soon Spike. We have to go to Canterlot. Now! You were right to send for my help. You were right. Twilight and her friends in grave danger.”

Spike didn’t have to listen to any more than that. He needed an explanation, but he knew he’d get one soon. The princess helped him onto her back, and galloped towards the door. As soon as she was outside she took to the skies, and teleported Spike and herself to Canterlot.

A Filly's Dark Past

Derpy was leading Twilight through a complex system of tunnels and stairs.

’This place is so big…’ she thought to herself, ‘how could she remember exactly where to go?’ she looked closely at all the different rooms the passed, but noticed the words ‘Medical Facility’ written on the sign above one of the doors. ‘My friends must be in there! If only I could see them now… Oh please Celestia let them be alright…’

They continued along their path, but all of a sudden a little orange filly with small wings, was racing towards them from the other side of the hallway riding a scooter.

’Is that Scootaloo’ Twilight asked herself.

When she got closer, Twilight could clearly see her, ‘It is Scootaloo, but why isn’t she slowing down?’

The little filly was racing towards them, but she didn’t seem to be facing them. Instead she was looking behind herself yelling something out to the open room she’d just come out of, but Twilight couldn’t make out the words.

”Look out!” Twilight yelled pulling Derpy to the side of the hall way.

Scootaloo suddenly turned around and noticed the pair, but with hardly any reaction time, found it hard to slow down to avoid them. She found herself instead skidding in an attempt to slow down, but instead being thrown into a barrel roll and falling in front of the pair.

She came to a halt plopped on the ground right in front of Derpy, who wasn’t all to impressed.

“Dammit private! Do you ever watch where you’re going on that thing?!” She yelled, giving the little filly a fright.

”I’m sorry commander I just have to get this supply of ammunition to the barracks.” Scootaloo replied looking at the many bullets scattered all over the ground.

”Get on your way and don’t let me catch you causing any more trouble. You and the other fillies seem to have an irritating habit for doing so.”

Twilight lit up. ‘Does that mean that Apple Bloom and Sweetie Bell were here too?’ She thought to herself.

”Yes commander. I won’t… w-… wait a minute. Twilight?” Scootaloo asked looking behind Derpy at the purple unicorn. “Is… Is it really you?”

”Oh, sweet Celestia! We don’t have time for this!” Derpy growled under her breath.

”H-how? It doesn’t make any sense! How are you here?” Scootaloo asked, getting more and more puzzled by the second.

“Umm, oh how do I explain this without making it confusing?” Twilight asked herself staring at the confused filly.

”I reckon its gunna be confusing no matter how you say it Twilight.  We saw you die. It was one of the worst moments in our lives.” Scootaloo explained, trying to make sense of the situation.

“Well you see… I’m not that Twilight. I’m from another dimension, a different Equestria altogether.” Twilight tried to explain.

“Wait, so how did you get here?” Scootaloo asked, still trying to make sense of what she was saying.

“I… I cast a spell that brought me and the others here…”

”Wait! The others are here too? Like Rainbow Dash?”

Twilight remembered that the little filly looked up to Rainbow Dash as an idol back home. Obviously she had the same affectionate side for her here.

”Yeah, Rainbow, Pinkie, Rarity, A.J, Fluttershy… they all went into the portal first.”

Scootaloo’s face lit up like Pinkie Pie whenever something exciting had happened. But then she remembered the first thing Twilight said. “If Rainbow Dash is from another dimension, she won’t remember anything from this one, will she?” Scootaloo asked Twilight, her smile slowly leaving her face.

”She won’t retain any memories the Rainbow Dash from this dimension had. Sorry Scootaloo, she’s not the same Rainbow Dash…” Twilight explained.

”Oh, o… ok…” Scootaloo said, as a miserable look started to form right over her smile as her eyes welled up a little.

”But…” Twilight went to continue, making the filly look up, confused over whether she should be prepared for good or bad news.

”Rainbow Dash is still going to know who you are. You practically worship her in my dimension. I’m sure she would treat you just the same way she’d treat the other Scootaloo.”

A warm feeling instantly spread over Scootaloo, and a huge smile erupted yet again from her face. She knew it wasn’t going to be the same Rainbow Dash, but it made her happy that she would get to see her favorite pegasus again, especially after the grim memories of what had happened to her.

”Can I see her after I’ve delivered these bullets?” she asked with the biggest pleading look in her eyes. She really did miss Rainbow Dash.

”Decisions like that will be left up to me.” Derpy said stepping in.

“Oh, of course commander.” Scootaloo said slightly edgy.

”Before you can see her I need a status report on private Apple Bloom. Find out if she’s completed her tasks and report back to me in my office within the hour.” Derpy instructed her.

“Yes commander! Right away!” Scootaloo said, picking up the rest of the bullets and dropping them into the casket on her scooter. But before she could leave, Twilight spoke up again.

”Wait! Apple Bloom and Sweetie Bell are definitely here? How are they?”

Scootaloo’s face seemed to go sadder than ever at the mention of Sweetie Bell’s name. She struggled to answer the question, and tears had already found themselves strolling down her face.

”Apple Bloom is ok. She’s always been a little troubled, seeing her sister die on the battlefield; in such a gruesome way… it changed her a lot.” Scootaloo explained, her voice sounding a far grimmer than before. “But I wasn’t able to protect Sweetie Bell from Luna…” she trailed off from her sentence. Twilight thought she was about to let the tears flow out like a fountain, but instead an angry glare appeared on Scootaloo’s face that even managed to make Derpy feel a little edgy. Scootaloo’s eyes shed a few tears, her voice was still grim, but it had an angry tone to it that made Twilight feel very uncomfortable.

”When she had declared all the unicorns as targets, she saw to it herself that every single one suffered. She sought them out with her magic and started killing them in any painful method she felt necessary. We hadn’t found any protection camps or bunkers to hide in and were completely defenseless. Luna just tossed us aside and ignored us. Sweetie Bell…” She trailed of again, only getting more and more upset and aggravated as she went. “I’d never seen anything so horrifying or violent in my life. Sweetie bell didn’t stand a chance.” She collapsed to the ground and tears rolled down her face pooling below her.

Twilight felt horrible. The fact that the Luna here could be so incredibly different from her counterpart in Twilight’s own dimension… It made her sick to contemplate that she would mercilessly slaughter fillies and colts. “I’m… I’m sorry Scootaloo… I shouldn’t have bought it up…” Twilight pat the filly on the back trying to comfort her. She couldn’t think of anything worse that could have happened to Scootaloo then losing her idol and one of her best friends. Derpy just sat there and watched, not uttering a word, she had no idea that such a small pony could emit so much emotion.

Scootaloo sat up, and sniffed, wiping her eyes. The anger wasn’t being displayed anymore, but the two knew it was still there, just being harbored under the depressing emotions.

”It’s ok Twilight. You didn’t know. It’s mainly hard for me and Apple Bloom because she was our best friend, and we can never be the Cutie Mark Crusaders again either, not without Sweetie Bell. Luna has to suffer for that… Sweetie bell never got a chance to find out what her true talent was. She had her whole life ahead of her and that monster just took it away like it was nothing! I hate Luna more than anything, but the one thing I despised her for was that she didn’t kill me when she killed Sweetie Bell. She made me and Apple Bloom watch, helpless, and we couldn’t stop her. She laughed at us and disappeared just like she hadn’t even been there. I wanted her to kill me, I didn’t want to live with the guilt…” she didn’t cry as she spoke, but she wanted to, so badly it hurt her to hold the tears back. “We dropped the Cutie Mark Crusader name that day, there was no point in using it if we weren’t all together, and we aren’t picking it back up. There’s no point seeing as me and Applebloom have our marks now.” She turned around, and instead of a bare flank, Scootaloo bore a picture of her scooter, surrounded by lines bending through it as if representing velocity and wind passing by it. Another difference from Twilights dimension was that this Scootaloo understood her special talent, but that didn’t mean she was proud of it. “I got this when I used my scooter to save Apple Bloom from the bombing raid in Ponyville. That occurred shortly after. I’d never been so fast on the thing in my life. The only thing that kept me going was the burning hatred for Luna. Celestia found us off the edge of town, and brought us all the way here to the base. I’ve been living in here for well over a year now, I’ve come to memorize the tunnels and passages backwards and forwards. That’s probably why they made me the errand filly…” she was trying to repress her grief by changing the subject, but she needed something more before she could do that. “We all have problems down here, we’ve all lost somepony important in our lives. Apple Bloom only has Big Mac now… Granny Smith passed away, and then she was forced to watch her sister executed… she’s had it worse off than me, but she’s grateful for every second she continues living. As hard as it is she only wants to honor their memories. Apple Bloom took up the position of a chef after Granny Smith… Shortly after that she found her special talent in cooking… she may as well be head chef of this place. She’s stayed in the position making meals for soldiers ever since. She can manage to whip up anything from a pie to a cake, and with the forest above us bearing all its fruit, she never runs out of ingredients to use. She got a lot of her baking skills from Granny Smith and Pinkie Pie, but she never gave up on herself after Granny Smith was gone, but after Pinkie was shot, well… she’s seemed to lose faith in her talent. Everypony that was close to her had died, except me and her brother. If we go, she’ll never make it. That’s another reason I keep fighting this war. So she doesn’t lose all her faith.”

Twilight was amazed. Despite the pain, suffering, and loss that both the girls had been subjected to, they still pushed on, just to honor the memories of their lost loved ones. It made Twilight start to tear up a little as well. “I’m sorry everything’s been so hard on you two. I would never pull through what you girls have; you’re both incredibly brave.” She said rubbing the filly on the head, still letting her own tears fall.

”Thanks Twilight. I have to be on my way, I still have duties to attend to, just tell me one thing…” The filly looked up at her and sniffed again.

”Anything…” Twilight said, she wanted to help Scootaloo in any way she possibly could.

”In your dimension… Is Sweetie Bell alive?” Scootaloo had to know, but she wondered is she should be ready for the worst.

”Yes, she’s very much alive and spends almost every day having fun with you and Apple Bloom.”

Scootaloo, through all her emotions, managed a weak smile. She was very happy that at least somewhere, her friend was still alive and living each day.

”Thanks Twilight.” She finished, wiping her eyes and hoping on her scooter.

”Hold up there private.” Derpy spoke out after being silent for almost the whole time. “Get Apple Bloom and go see the girls, you two can take the rest of the day off.” She told her.

Twilight smiled at Derpy. She wasn’t crying but she could tell that Scootaloo’s story had affected her too.

”Thank you commander.” She said about to ride off again before Derpy spoke up and stopped her.

”And why don’t you leave the bullets with me, I’ll take them to the barracks when I check them later on.”

Scootaloo was a little shocked by the change in character Derpy was displaying. Her commander had usually never given a day off to anypony, let alone offered to do a job for them.

”Thank you.” She said again dropping the casket of bullets at Derpy’s hooves. “I’ll see you later Twilight. It’s great to see you again.”

”It’s great to see you too Scootaloo. I hope Apple Bloom feels better when she sees her sister again.” Twilight replied.

”Oh I guarantee it’ll make her day.” Scootaloo said, before hopping onto her Scooter and departing to find her friend.

“That was very kind of you Derpy.” Twilight said turning around, and facing her.

”I have a heart Twilight; I couldn’t let her keep working after hearing that… I just never realized that everything had been that hard for her.” Derpy told her. Twilight understood that seeing that kind of behavior had obviously been a real change from what Derpy normally saw, but was still proud of the decision she made to help Scootaloo out.

”Well we best not waste any more time. Celestia’s office is just a few halls away, and I still don’t think she knows you’re even here in the base.” Derpy said, picking up the casket of bullets and walking down the hall. Twilight wiped her eyes to clear the tears that had sat there and followed her, while thinking about the fillies’ reactions when they’d get to see the girls that they had seen killed so long ago. How happy they’d be just to be able to talk to them again.

Weapons: The Elements Of Warfare

The pair continued through the hallways of the large base. It was incredibly quiet, the only sound of which Twilight could here were her own hooves and Derpy’s trotting on the cement. Seeing as they weren’t quite at Celestia’s office yet, Twilight decided she wanted a few questions answered.

”Derpy?” She asked

Derpy didn’t look back but acknowledged that she was listening “Yes Twilight?”

”I’m just trying to figure out a few of the things about this dimension, like what are bullets? What started the war? What was the mission we were sent on that got us all killed? And what did you mean you said you had an explanation to support my story?”

”I’m can answer most of those for you… Bullets are small metallic objects that we use with a hoof-gun…”

”You think you could be a little bit more specific?” Twilight asked pulling a confused face.

”I’m not done.” Derpy stopped and lifted up her right hoof that had the metal contraption on it that Twilight had seen when she was being interrogated. “This is a hoof gun. We had our own forms of weaponry when our spy Spike sent the Princess the blueprints from Canterlot Castle, but these babies blew them out of the water. We don’t know how Spike got into the armory, or where he found the blueprints, but the fact that he got them to us earned him quite a reputation. As soon as they could the engineering team got to work manufacturing them, and altering the design for better mobility and response. And this is the newest model available. These haven’t been mass produced yet… being the commander under the Princess, I do get my privileges."

Twilight looked at the contraption on Derpy’s arm. It seemed to fit on like a sleeve that went up to the second joint in her leg. The body of the weapon spanned over the mid way of this distance and ended in a small tube peeking over the middle of her hoof. Although it wasn’t connected to the hoof due to it not being able to bend, there was a lever connected to the body of the weapon that went under her hoof, and another smaller lever the connected to the top of the body above an empty slot. “Let me describe how it works…”

She pulled a bullet from the ones that Scootaloo had given her and put it on the ground. “The bullets are made up of a few parts, but it’s quite simple to understand. The part of the bullet that does the damage is this small round part that makes up the tip. That’s the only part that fires. The body around it acts as a case to hold it. And on the bottom, that little metal dot is the primer, and that's what ignites it. The case is combustible and filled with a low level explosive powder called cordite. When you push this lever after loading the bullet into the barrel, the pin on the body flies forward almost instantly and strikes the primer. That sends a spark into the bullet which ignites the cordite. Because it’s pressurized, the explosion caused is much more powerful, and it forces the bullet out at incredible speeds. Because cordite has a slower burning rate then the powder that the Lunar Army uses, it seems to create less smoke then traditional powder. The bullet case ejects itself once the body moves back into position. If you didn’t have a mag on you, then you’d load a bullet in the same way; just push it into the slot, push the handle forward and pull it back, and you’d be ready to fire it again just like that. A magazine is just a case that holds more bullets, you put it in the hole you’d normally insert bullets in and every time you cock the lever, it removes a bullet from the clip and loads it. It’s not exactly a fast process, but it’s better than the Lunar Army’s hoof guns, they only have single shots.” Derpy tried to make it simple, but Twilight understood the contraption rather quickly.

“So the Lunar army thought of this then?” Twilight asked.

”Yes, but we made it better. We had the upper hoof, because we could shoot faster. But the original version of you that fought with one of these on the field was a natural born shooter. She’d always hit her target. Not to mention she was extremely clever with the guns. Although I didn’t know that version of you I could tell she probably knew more about them then the engineers who built them. She was the first to manufacture a semi automatic version.”

”Semi Automatic?” Twilight asked confused.

“She didn’t have to cock the head of the gun to load in another shot. She figured out some sort of spring mechanism to have the gun load another bullet on its own. All she had to do was pull the trigger, fire a bullet, the case would eject itself, and another bullet would be forced into the barrel and loaded.” Derpy explained. “But she never wrote down the schematics or instructions on how to do this to the other hoof guns. So ever since she died nopony in the engineering team could figure out how to replicate it.”

That was odd to Twilight because she’d always written down notes on anything she’d discovered or created, and she’d have assumed that the version of her in this dimension would do the same. “Maybe I can take a look at it later and see if I can do it.” Twilight offered.

“You’re welcome to try, but you’ve never even held one of these things or shot one. So your chances probably won’t fare any better than the engineers.” Derpy picked up the bullet and put it back in the casket with the rest. “I’m not sure how the war started though. All I know is that I have to fight for the right side. You’d be better off asking the princess that one when we get to her office. And as for the explanation… I’d rather discuss it with the princess first.”

“What else did you want to know?” Derpy asked as she continued leading Twilight through the tunnels.

”Well… I’m not sure what to expect from this question, but how did we die? What was the mission the princess had sent us on? And why were Apple Bloom and Scootaloo fighting in it?”

”They weren’t…” Derpy said which confused Twilight.

”But… Scootaloo said they were there, that they saw what happened.”

”That doesn’t mean they were fighting Twilight. They were being rescued. Like Scootaloo said, Celestia found her and Apple Bloom on the edge of their hometown. She was searching for survivors. But amongst the many others there were spies, sent by Luna to pose as helpless victims, to infiltrate the base and kidnap ponies to work for her as slaves. It happened while we were all asleep and unaware of what was happening. When we woke up, at least ¾ of the people Celestia had brought with her were gone, and many of the soldiers had their throats slashed… I was one of them…” Derpy paused for a minute and held up a tuft of fur on her neck revealing a large scar.

Twilight was horrified.

‘How could she have possibly had survived that?!’ she thought to herself.

”Anyway, I lost a lot of blood, but I was one of the lucky lot that didn’t have any extremely vital parts in my neck badly damaged. Don’t get me wrong; the pain was unbearable and my chances were bleak, but surviving it taught me something: I had a purpose to fulfill. I survived because part of me still longed to achieve a greater purpose. The medics patched me up as best they could, but without magic, there was no way they’d be able to save me or any of the others that hadn’t been killed. But Celestia used her magic you see. Being immortal let her give up plenty of life force to us and saved us all, but it really took a lot out of her to give up as much life force as she did. So she asked the other versions of you and your friends to lead a team to infiltrate Canterlot, and retrieve the captive slaves. The alternate you and your friends had quarters closer to the princesses, so none of them were in danger when the attack took place. I wasn’t in the best condition but I managed to convince the princess to let me go with your team. The team consisted of 10 soldiers including myself. The other you and her 5 friends led the other 4, which was myself, Lyra Heartstrings, a changeling who went by the code name of Back Stab, and a stealth griffin who went by the code name Shadow Hack… It’s a really long story Twilight; couldn’t it wait until later when everything has been sorted out?” Derpy asked.

”I really need to know Derpy. It could come in handy to know what I was like in this dimension. If you’d prefer I could use a memory spell to view the story from your experiences? It would take a lot less time too.” Twilight suggested.

”I… I don’t know Twilight.” Derpy said, uneasy about the suggestion.

”Trust me. If you think directly about the mission, I’ll be able to see it and retain the whole thing in my own memory.”

”Are you sure you wouldn’t rather just hear it? It would be a lot easier than seeing it through my eyes. I can promise you that.” Derpy said, still trying to avoid the Twilights suggestion.

Twilight thought for a short time about this, but she’d made up her mind. “Please Derpy; I want to know what happened.”

”Ok then Twilight, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Derpy said, before closing her eyes and focusing as best she could on the time frame. “Ok, I’ve got it.” She said.

Twilight’s horn lit with energy as she focused and altered her spell in her mind, ‘I have to view a memory, not share or unlock one. View one!’ She continued to process these words through her head as she moved her horn towards Derpy’s forehead. The pegasus seemed to flinch a little as Twilight moved her horn closer. Twilight noticed this and realized that Derpy still wasn’t entirely positive about the idea.

”Trust me.” She said stopping and watching Derpy.

She closed her eyes and nodded, “Ok Twilight.”

Twilight moved her horn forward and touched it to Derpy’s head. Suddenly everything faded around Twilight. And the environment started to shift. She saw things from Derpy’s eyes, as a few random memories popped up.

They were extremely brief as Derpy was trying her best to focus on the memory of her mission, but Twilight saw each one and was horrified by the things that had happened to the poor pegasus. She even felt like she was going through it herself, being inside Derpy’s memory. She saw a flashback of Derpy awakening to a pair of hooves surrounding her neck in her sleep and cutting her throat with a blade. Twilight cringed at the blood that seeped out of the wound and almost wanted to vomit. She saw flashes of her choking and sputtering, trying to get air, but Derpy was trying her best to hide these memories. The next few flashes saw her recovery, and how she had gone to the princess to request a position in the rescue mission. But finally, Derpy had found exactly the moment she was looking for, the environment faded and morphed yet again, this time, to a grassy field outside of Canterlot Castle, late in the afternoon. Twilight saw herself sitting in a field wearing a stealth suit, similar to the one she had worn when she traveled to Canterlot Castle in search of a time stopping spell, and the others in the group wearing their own outfit of choice, silently waiting for an order from her alternate self. Twilight suddenly found herself sucked into Derpy’s body. She could see only what Derpy had seen. She readied herself for the visions that were about to unfold before her, but couldn’t help but feel nervous anyway. She had to overcome it though now. This is what she wanted, and it was time to find out the grim past of her alternate self.

Suicide Mission

“This is crazy!” Lyra said in a quiet voice to Back Stab. “I know we’ve been trained for ages and are more than qualified to complete the task… but how in Equestria are we gunna get all the slave ponies out without being caught?!” She was worried and rather stressed, but kept talking as quietly as possible.

”Getting in will be a piece of cake, but no pony said getting out was gunna be easy…” the changeling told her, in a similarly quiet voice. Suddenly Pinkie ran over to them, but was taking care to also be quiet.

“Did somepony say cake?” she said looking at them both eagerly as if she was expecting one of them to pull out a tasty, glazed treat.”

”Hush you lot, we don’t wanna be attractin any unnecasary attention, especially after the trouble we went through ta get this far.” Applejack told them.

Rainbow Dash was sitting besides Shadow Hack and Fluttershy, also taking care to try and keep quiet.

”Let’s go over the plan again. We get inside, split up, find the slave ponies, and meet back on the castle grounds, and then what? If we manage against all odds to get that far unnoticed, then do we just try and escape? What if somepony doesn’t even make it to the grounds to regroup?” Rainbow Dash asked them both, equally as concerned as Lyra about their mission.

“Calm down R.D. I don’t like to think about the future personally, I prefer to let events just play out on their own, cause if I assume my next move to early, and something goes wrong, I’m basically screwed. That’s why I’ve never been failed a mission before in my life. I just roll with the flow of things.” Shadow Hack told her. She was far calmer and more laid back than any of the ponies, but being a griffin she might have felt her threatening size overwhelmed the need to be afraid.

“I certainly hope none of the slave ponies have been hurt. I hate that I’d feel personally responsible for any injuries they could have received. Still… hurt or not, I’ll fight to save them and take down anypony who gets in our way.” Fluttershy told them.

Twilight was watching all the conversations through Derpy’s eyes, just as she’d seen it when she was there. She felt rather awkward seeing Fluttershy talk the way she was about fighting, even if she wasn’t the Fluttershy she knew.

Suddenly Derpy’s head turned to the left and Twilight lost sight of the others, but could still hear the quiet conversations. Twilight felt so strange. Viewing a memory was far more different then sharing one. Instead of just seeing the scenes play out in her head, she felt like she was apart of them, but only through sight and sound. She couldn’t move or look a different direction; she wasn’t even sure she had any sort of physical body. She could only watch through the eyes of the gray pegasus sitting to the left of the others, fiddling with her hoof gun.

”Private?” a voice whispered in Derpy’s direction. Derpy snapped up and stopped fiddling with her hoof gun, looking over to find Rarity walking over to her. She brought her hoof up to salute.

“Oh come now there’s no need for formalities like that. I prefer to think a team judges another by character, instead of rank.” Rarity told her sitting beside her. Derpy smiled and put her hoof back down.

”Me and Twilight are organizing the groups were going in. We’ll be splitting into 5 pairs. You’ll be going with Twilight. We’ll be searching the castle for a maximum of one hour. If you and Twilight don’t find the slaves, try and regroup with another pair and continue your search. After an hour regardless of any findings, you must return to the castle grounds. If you do find slave ponies, make sure you lead them through the castle. You can’t afford for them to get caught wondering… it’ll only make saving them harder. Just remember, don’t be nervous, you’ve been trained for this sort of thing. Don’t forget though, above everything else; remain out of sight. If you can remain hidden your job won’t have to turn into a deadly firefight.” Rarity thoroughly explained the task trying to make sure that Derpy understood.

Derpy gave a weak smile and nod, “Thanks miss…” she stopped. She’d only just joined the team at the last minute, and hardly knew any of the other soldiers’ names.

”My name’s Rarity. Just use that ok? Like I said; no need to be so formal.”

Derpy’s smile widened a little. She was still nervous but at least she felt a little calmer. “Thanks Rarity.” She said.

“My pleasure, I just can’t stand to see another soldier cracking under pressure. Best get ready now. We’re about to begin the mission.” Rarity said, walking over to the others making sure they were briefed and ready.

Derpy made some last second adjustments to her hoof gun. It differed from everyone else’s because she’d personally added a knife holder to attach to hers. It was a brilliant addition because if she was graced with the opportunity to stab her opponent, she’d be able to impale them, and then fire a bullet off for extra damage. She’d even gone as far as to make the blade retractable, so that she wouldn’t blunt it while walking, as it went over her hoof about 15cm. She made sure it was working properly as it would be her only weapon in the castle, unless a firefight broke out as Rarity had said.

Twilight moved from her position in front of the group and turned around to face them. “Alright everypony; It’s time to move out. Do you all know everything you need to know?”

The group gave a silent nod of approval.

“Great! Oh and before we move out, everypony take one of these…” Twilight turned around and opened a box to the side of her and revealed several jet black hollowed cylinders. She picked them up with her magic and gave one out to each member of the team.

“Ugh, Twi… what are these things?” Applejack asked. Looking at it confused.

”At the moment the engineers are calling them muters. They negate the sound of your hoof guns to almost a whisper, but they should still do just as much damage.” Twilight explained attaching the device to her hoof gun. Luckily they were small enough to attach to the guns barrel without stretching out over anypony’s hooves. Back Stab used a modified hoof gun that would disappear whenever he was in a different form. Shadow Hack had a larger, more modified gun then the others; the silencer was even suited to the size of her rifle. But she denied the muter. “I don’t plan on needing to use a weapon.”

She was confident, but Twilight knew confidence only went so far.

Twilight proceeded to prep the troops one last time, just to make sure they were definitely ready. “So Back Stab and Shadow Hack, you two will get us into the castle grounds; we’ll navigate silently through the city; and once were in the castle, we’ll split into groups. Private Derpy, you’ll be assisting me, Rarity, you’ll go with Applejack, Lyra I want you to go with Shadow Hack, Pinkie you’ll go with Rainbow, and Fluttershy, you’ll go with backstab.”

“Alright” they all agreed.

“Good. Let’s go get our people back!” Twilight said.

The gates to Canterlot weren’t heavily guarded, but they were fortified with many planks and columns. The only way in or out was through one door. A lone stallion guarded the entrance wearing a half moon crest on his chest. Twilight initiated the plan whispering to Back Stab and Shadow Hack.

”You two, work your magic.”

Back Stab made his way over to a hill that obscured him from the guard pony’s view and sat on the road and began counting down from 30, while at the same time. Shadow Hack flew off in the opposite direction almost in the blink of an eye, without making so much as a peep or rustle in the long grass.

Finally Back Stab reached zero and activated his magical changeling abilities. He made himself look exactly like Princess Luna. Right down to the smallest detail. Even the hair was sparkling to the same extent. Twilight watched her soldier calmly make his way towards the gate, while the other Twilight watched from Derpy’s eyes.

’they were going to trick the enemy into letting them in’ Twilight realized.

Back Stab approached the gate and the guard pony snapped up almost immediately. Was Princess Luna really walking right in front of him? He found himself quickly assuming a bow and pushing open the door, but Back Stab just stood there watching him with a smirk on his face. The guard could see this face on Luna’s and nervously shifted backwards a little. “Something wrong Princess Luna?” He asked her, unable to shift his gaze from her evil stare. Back Stab decided to have a quick joke before the plan progressed. He spoke cleanly and fluently with Luna’s voice while in her form. “Just… something’s wrong with your neck...” He said, clearly aware that he was making the stallion very uneasy.

”M-my neck?” the stallion asked confused.

“Yes. I think it would look much better without that little head of yours on top of it… don’t you?” he asked the stallion who was now shaking so much that he was creating an odor of fear and sweat, but the stallion didn’t have any time to react to Luna’s statement before two large eagle arms with massive shining claws grasped onto his head, and twisted it violently in a whole 360º revolution. The claws were poking holes into the spots they grabbed and bone and muscle could be seen being forcibly removed from their original locations, followed by strong hissing pops of blood that made its way out of the ripped skin. Shadow Hack twisted the head in another 360º and completely removed it with almost no effort. She tossed it aside, far out of view of anypony who might enter the gate. The stallion’s body collapsed and bits of what remained on his neck littered the ground, along with blood spurting and popping from several rugged, rough spots where the head had just been ripped off. The soldiers didn’t seem to mind the sight; not even Rarity shifted her gaze; but if Twilight wasn’t seeing this from Derpy’s point of view and had a sentient form, she would have been incredibly sick, but being inside Derpy’s head prevented her from being able perform any of her bodily functions or reactions.

Making haste the group quickly advanced to the gate, just as the griffin had thrown the stallion’s dead body further than the head.

“Back Stab; turn yourself into one of the guards and check to see if anypony is watching the gate.” Twilight instructed.

Back Stab nodded and his body started to lightly shiver. Everypony watched on as a green torrent of fire quickly consumed his body and almost instantly changed his appearance. His blue slit eyes had turned into those of the guard pony’s that he’d faced mere seconds ago, his small black horn descended into his skull, his ripped rugged wings folded into his body and glued themselves to it, and the rest of his body grew chunks of bare flesh into the many gaps and open sections of his legs. A thin coat of brown fur covered the new layer of skin, a short ruffled mane grew from his head to his lower neck, along with a tail on his hind to match the style of his mane, and a cutie mark flashed and rest on his flank. The final change was a uniform, which morphed over the front region of his body, with a flashlight attached to it, and a small cap, that appeared on his head to match the uniform. Within the blink of an eye Back Stab had completely replicated the stallion that had just been void of his life less than a minute ago.

He peered through the door that had been opened for him by his own victim, and peeked around the area. There was no pony watching them from above, or any windows of buildings that still stood, but there was instead another guard pony on the other side of the door, sleeping on a fold up chair. He obviously never had much to worry about as no pony ever came in or out of Canterlot except Luna on rare occasions.

‘This is all too easy’ Back Stab thought to himself. He moved back through the door and faced Twilight.

“There’s a lone guard sleeping on the job on the other side of the door, but apart from him I can’t see any other guards or patrols.” He informed her.

“Perfect. You take out the guard and we’ll begin phase 2 of the plan.” Twilight said.

Back Stab nodded and smirked as he calmly walked over to the sleeping stallion, still looking exactly like the one he had taken the form of.

He tapped the sleeping stallion on the forehead and gave him a rough whack to the face.

The startled pony woke up with a fright and fell to the floor with a yelp.

“That could have been a lot worse for you!” Back Stab scolded, using the exact voice of the pony he was interpreting. “If Princess Luna had come through here and found you napping on the job, she’d have your head! You should consider yourself lucky I woke you first!” he said in the same angry tone, showing authority over the other guard.

“Yes, sorry. I-I guess I’m just a little tired of nothing happening in this job.” The stallion said turning around to pick up his folding chair.

Back Stabs wicked side flared up and he morphed a sharp blade into his front left leg, replacing the lower level and hoof of the stallion disguise, but the other stallion hadn’t heard or noticed.

“So you want something to happen?” Back Stab asked rhetorically. “I’ll make something happen!” he said. All in an instant, he plunged the blade right into the back of the stallion’s neck, twisting it in place completely silencing any noise the guard could have made, leaving him with choking and coughing unable to even suck in air. Back Stab continued to twist the blade in place to cause as much non-lethal pain as he could, and then pushed his new arm down the neck and into the back of his victim, slicing nerves, muscle, tendons, organs, and even dislodging bones and moving them through the lower back of the stallion’s body. The guard tried to scream out in pain and fear, but all that escaped his mouth were sputters of weak gasps and blood, even chunks of muscle that had been removed and pushed into his throat made their way onto the pool of bile fluids on the ground in front of him. Reaching the mid level of the stallions back with his blade, Back Stab decided he would just grant the stallion a kindness, and ripped the blade up sideways through his body, snapping and splitting his spinal cord and ripping out any muscle and organ attached to his reddened, blade leg. He then plunged the blade once more into the guard’s body with fierce accuracy, piercing and completely destroying the stallion’s heart. The choked gargling of the guard trying to gasp for air suddenly ceased, and the life fled from his body along with his natural color and blood. Back Stab completely removed his blade leg from the guard’s body and morphed it back to his natural rigid leg, along with the rest of his body. He smiled looking down at the lifeless victim and chuckled.

“Now you can sleep forever.” He said redundantly to the dead stallion.

Twilight had seen most of the act and walked up to Back Stab. “How did you morph your leg into a blade?” she asked him, “I thought changelings could only morph into a living creature.” She said confused.

“That’s true, but I’ve learned to use my magic to my advantage and morph parts of my body into non sentient objects. But it only works with one part of the body, I can’t morph my whole body into something like a chair, one because I don’t think it’s possible, and two if it were and I did it, I would cease to live and become a chair.” He explained.

Twilight found it fascinating that he had figured out how to manipulate his power so well, but the time for discussing magic wasn’t available and she knew that they had a mission to complete.

”Well done Back Stab, obviously handiwork like this is what got you your code name. Shadow Hack? Grab the body and toss it out into the field with the other guard.” She ordered to the griffin. She nodded and walked forward, and without even thinking to avoid the messy patches of body fluid and entrails that were covering the mangled body, she picked it up with one hand and turned around to walk out the gate. As she went by everypony else, they all got a view of the horrendous work their fellow soldier had produced. Pinkie and Lyra seemed to be the only two to flinch at the sight, but they didn’t show any signs of wanting feel sick or gag at the odor that came along with the mess. But as Twilight watched through Derpy’s eyes she wanted so bad to throw up and stop watching, but she still found that against everything she wanted, she couldn’t. Derpy was doing her a massive favor in even bringing up the horrible memories for her, and she wasn’t going to waste her effort. The griffin took the body outside and pelted it off to the side of the castle out of sight.

Derpy’s thoughts quickly skipped a few sections of the group sneaking up to the castle, and went to the point of the mission where Twilight had led her group unseen to the back of Canterlot castle.

“Ok, Rarity and Applejack, you two can go in from the garden entrance. Lyra, use your magic to get you and Shadow Hack through the 2nd furthest wall from the east courtyard. Rainbow Dash, I want you to fly up to the roof of the castle vaults with Pinkie and infiltrate through the smallest stain glass window you can with as little noise as possible, and Backstab, I want you and Fluttershy to go through the south-most spire. Remember your briefing. Don’t get caught and meet back here before the hours up. Find as many of the slaves as you can and try to find another group if you can’t find any slave ponies. This is it everypony. Good luck.” Twilight said as she turned around and cast a translucent looking spell on the wall in front of her. As she peeked her head through slowly, the other groups dispersed and went to their ordered locations. Twilight moved her head out and looked at Derpy.

“The coast is clear. You ready to go Private?” she asked her.

Derpy was nervous, but she hid it as best she could. Besides, she couldn’t back out considering the fact she had to beg to even get a position in this mission.

She gulped down the feeling of fear growing in her throat and nodded, “Mm hmm.”

“Good, go on in, and I’ll lead the way once we’re inside.” Twilight said stepping aside for Derpy. She trotted into the magical entrance and found herself in the castle on the other side of the wall. Twilight followed her and the magic faded from the wall.

Twilight fired a shot into the ground with her hoof gun, but with the muter on the barrel. Derpy was surprised that it actually did make hardly any noise at all. The bullet cracked into the ground and made a very small ditch of chipped cement. She then used her magic to reduce the bullet to a material as thin as dust and sprinkled it around the small hole.

“Memorize the area private. We’ll use this same spot as our exit once we find the slaves.” Twilight told her referring to the hole she just made as a sign to mark where they needed to exit.

Derpy started to flash forward her thoughts of reaching the dungeons, as she followed Twilight quietly through the large halls of the castle, sticking to the shadows and making sure to not make any loud noises. Before long they found what they were searching for. An open room with a large descending staircase; that was Twilight’s first thought on reaching the dungeons where the slaves were likely being held.

Derpy stopped flicking forward and her memory played out as it had occurred originally.

Twilight was about to walk towards the stone entrance, but Derpy grabbed her and pulled her back. She pointed at the door to notice a guard was patrolling the inside of it and had just walked into Derpy’s line of sight.

Twilight watching through Derpy’s eyes wondered how the other Twilight could have expected to just go straight through without running into any trouble.

Twilight looked at Derpy and nodded with a smile to show a thank you.

Derpy nodded back and then spread her wings. She glided up over the door looking in all directions. And landed on the opposite side from which the guard was walking. She nodded to the other side of the door once the guard had passed and Twilight ran over there. Derpy quick as a flash shifted to the same side of the door, to tell Twilight her plan.

“We can take out the guard and get through here really quickly if we play it slow. Get behind him if you can and when I give a signal. Grab his mouth and I’ll make my move.” She said not revealing any other information.

Twilight wasn’t used to taking orders, but she decided to give Derpy a chance to show her ability for her quick reactions before. She did what Derpy said and silently walked into the room sneaking behind the guard. Derpy went through the door and glided up, landing in a shadow of to the left of the guard’s path silent as ever.

‘The guard didn’t even notice her at all’ Twilight thought as she watched him approach Derpy’s hiding place.

Derpy was almost invisible, but poked a feather of her wing into Twilight’s sight and brought it back down to initiate a signal. In a matter of 1 second Twilight leaped up onto the guard and threw her right arm around his neck, while keeping the left across his mouth, to keep him from making any noises apart from muffled gasps and yells. Almost as quick as she acted Derpy emerged from the shadow and flicked her hoof gun to the left, making her self built knife unsheathe itself and click into a locked position. The glimmer from the blade shined right into the guards eyes and in the very same instant, disappeared sinking into his chest. Derpy knew the blade was capable of going straight through him and piercing Twilight, so she had carefully angled it upwards to instead go through his chest and pierce a spot in his neck. The guard let out a huge cry of pain, but again it was just a futile muffled yelp. Blood was already pouring from the stab wound dripping off the blade as she twisted it inside of him, making his muffled cries turn into gargles, as blood started to froth up around Twilight’s arm which was still tightly securing his mouth shut. Derpy finished him off with a muted shot from her hoof gun firing it in the same direction the knife was going, and the bullet ripped straight through him, finding a resting spot halfway through his brain. Twilight held on still as the guards kicking and fighting had been reduced to minor twitches. Derpy pulled out the blade and flicked her hoof up and left, which unlocked the blade and sent it back into its compartment in the modified hoof gun. Twilight dragged the soldier into the dark corner Derpy had hid in not long before that, and dropped the body there, as it was the only spot she could see that would at least render a dead body invisible. She then used her magic on the bloody trail that had been created from the wounds in the stallion’s torso, and made it bubble like acid, before vanishing as if it was never there.

Twilight was finding it hard to watch. She knew the two had no other option but to deal with the guard, but she had never been subjected to such gory sights before in her life. Still she watched on as the other Twilight walked towards Derpy, congratulated her on a good kill and successful strategy, and then led her down the spiraling stone stair case.

When they reached the bottom they looked out the stone entrance before them and saw what looked like a line of cells. Many of them empty, but some filled with dirty, ragged ponies.

“We did it! We found the slaves” Twilight said ecstatically but quietly to Derpy patting her on the back. She peeked out the door and looked around for a guard but there were none in sight. The room seemed to be a long stony hallway with another staircase at the other side.

Having one last check for a guard, Twilight turned to Derpy.

“I’m going to make sure there are no enchantments on these cells, and try and free the slave ponies. I want you to go up the staircase over there and make sure there are no guards patrolling upstairs. If there are, take them out.” Twilight instructed.

Derpy acknowledged her request and glided across the room to the other staircase. She noticed that there was also a passage leading down, but she couldn’t follow it without filling in her instructions and gaining permission first. She flew up the stairs and as expected; there was indeed a guard patrolling. She stayed hidden down a few stairs and flicked out her blade again and began to think of a way she could take him out quietly. But once she had decided on a method, she heard a couple of crunch noises coming from the room, and then a few quick, faint whistle noises. She ran up stairs to see Applejack, Rarity and Fluttershy all holding the guard down. They each seemed to have fired a shot into his throat and abdomen, before throwing him against the wall, while he groaned in pain. Before he had a chance to move out of the way, Applejack kicked him directly in the head against the stone wall of the room, with so much power that his head actually crunched and partially squashed inwards, as brain matter and chipped bone made its way out of his bloodied and mutilated skull. The body fell to the floor with a light plop and blood started to pool all around it. The three ponies nodded at each other.

“Come on, we don’t have much time left.” Fluttershy told them turning towards the stairs, only to see Derpy walking towards them from the staircase.

Derpy flicked her blade back and walked to the group.

“Nice kill you guys. The dungeons are just down the stairs here. You can help me and Twilight get all the slave ponies out of the cells.” She said point at the staircase.

“Well we best hurry then! We gotta get tha hay outta here!” Applejack told her sweating as if she had been running around in the hot light of day.

“Huh? Why? What’s wrong?” Derpy asked her confused, “We still got 25 minutes to complete the mission…”

“Not anymore! We’ve been discovered! Back Stab, Lyra and Shadow Hack, risked their lives to let Fluttershy escape.” Rarity said. “They’re fighting Luna’s right hand soldier Crossfire as we speak, and we haven’t found any sign’s of Rainbow Dash or Pinkie Pie.”

Derpy was worried now, what if the other 3 were killed. She’d heard of Cross Fire and knew she was a dangerous pony to get into a scruff with. Even three to one the odds still didn’t stack up well for the soldiers, even if one of them was a griffin.

“Come on then, let’s get the job done, find Rainbow and Pinkie, and get out!” Derpy led the group downstairs to Twilight. Twilight had almost opened all the cells before she looked at them, but it didn’t take long for her to be able to tell something was wrong.

“Twilight, we’ve got a situation!” Fluttershy said as she ran forward.

“What happened? And where are your partners?” Twilight asked ready for bad news.

“They’re fighting for their lives in one of the castle chambers against Cross Fire! We have to get out of here as soon as we can!” Fluttershy answered stopping in front of Twilight, and panting for air.

“Oh for the love of Celestia, why were you caught?!” Twilight asked confused.

“She already knew we were here.” Rarity said with a worried look. “As far as we know Luna doesn’t know were here yet, but if Cross Fire beats the other 3 before we can find Pinkie and Rainbow, get the slaves, and leave; we’re as good as dead!”

“Well then hurry and open these cages and get the slaves out on the double!” Twilight said, a look of determination finding its way to her expression.

“Twilight? There are stairs leading further into the dungeons. There could be more slaves down there… Do you want me to go check it out?” Derpy asked Twilight as she used her magic to unlock the cells.

“Yes, have Applejack go with you.” Twilight told her. “Fluttershy, go upstairs and keep an eye out for Pinkie and Rainbow and any of the others.” Twilight instructed turning to the yellow pegasus.

“Right!” She said as she glided towards the stairs and run up them.

Twilight still watching the memory play by, took note of how much more confident the Fluttershy of this dimension was. She kept watching but already knew that the mission wouldn’t end well.

Derpy pulled Applejack and had her run downstairs with her. There were indeed more slaves down here in more cells, but they were fillies and colts. There were no guards. So the pair started to break down the cell doors in any way they could as fast as they could; Applejack bucking them down and Derpy shooting the locks open. Before long they had released most of the fillies and colts, but they had taken to long to initiate a rescue mission, and several had been killed by the conditions of their prisons. The ones that were still alive were in bad condition, but the two soldiers had no intention of letting any more die. Applejack suddenly lit up, because amongst the group, she had found her sister, huddled with Scootaloo. She was ecstatic to see her after being separated for so long. She went straight up and hugged her.

“Apple Bloom! Thank goodness yer alright! Me, Big Mac and Granny Smith, have bin worried sick! C’mon, let’s get you two outta here!” she said hushing the fillies out the cell.

“Thank goodness ye came te get us sis… Ah don’t think we’d have lasted another day.” Apple Bloom said weakly, with a raspy, dried out voice.

“Wait, what about Sweetie Belle? Aint she with you two?” Applejack asked confused.

The two fillies looked down and bit their lips as depressing looks spread across their faces. Applejack understood instantly.

“Rarity’s gunna be devastated… We need to leave, now!” she picked up her sister and her friend, and Derpy followed after her making sure that all the foals were making their way up the stairs. There were about 19 to account for; Derpy remembered this incase they got separated.

They ran upstairs to see Rainbow Dash, Pinkie and Fluttershy had all returned. Scootaloo’s face lit up instantly.

“Rainbow Dash!” She yelled leaping from Applejack’s back to go see her favorite pegasus.

“There you are Scoot. Good to see you’re alright.” Rainbow remarked seeing the excited little filly. Scootaloo ran right up to her and hugged her as if she hadn’t seen her for years. Rainbow Dash giggled a little and rubbed the filly’s head. “Hey you even got your cutie mark.” Rainbow said noticing the speedy looking scooter on her flank. Scootaloo started to tell her how she got it while Twilight was finishing of the cell doors.

Twilight opened the last one with any slaves in it; they walked out and joined their peers, while trying to finds their foals if they had any to look for. Rarity walked over to Applejack and Derpy, but they knew what she was going to ask them, and the looks on their faces told Rarity her answer straight away. Her eyes welled up and tears started to drip from them.

“I dunno what te tell ya Rarity, Sweetie Belle was’n even down there…” Applejack told her regrettably. Apple Bloom could see the sadness on her face and thought she had to know what had happened to her sister.

“Rarity? Do ya wanna know what happened te Sweetie Belle? I can tell ya, but ye won’t like it.” Apple Bloom warned her to make sure she understood that.

“She never came with us to the base cause she… she was killed by Luna before tha bombs hit the town. We couldn’t protect her no matter how hard we tried te fight Luna’s magic. It’s our fault she’s gone.” Apple Bloom explained with tears welling up in her own eyes as she sniffed trying to contain them.

Rarity was crying at the news, but as soon as she heard Apple Bloom say it was Scootaloo’s and her fault, she forgot her emotion and turned to face her directly.

“Apple Bloom, don’t you ever dare believe that it was either of your faults! The only one in the wrong is Luna. You girls couldn’t have possibly done anything to stop her.” Rarity scolded her, wondering why Apple Bloom had said something so ridiculous.

“So… So you don’t hate us then?” Apple Bloom asked with tears forcing their way out of her eyes.

”Of course not darling, you were never in the wrong.” Rarity said giving Apple bloom a light hug, still not managing to smile though after the news about her sister.

Apple Bloom was happy that Rarity had been so kind and understanding, but also had no hope of smiling at for the time being.

“Ok everypony! We have to get out of here. Follow me.” Twilight said as she addressed the whole group and turned towards the staircase.

Twilight was watching her counterpart through Derpy’s eyes and marveling at how good a leader she was.

There were about 27 or more mares and stallions from the cells that were running up the stairs with their fillies and colts, The girls knew it wasn’t all the slaves, but if they stayed any longer they risked running into Luna. As they reached the top of the stairs Twilight ran straight into Lyra who was on a desperate run to find them. They got up quickly, a little dazed, but were glad to see each other. Lyra was in a shocking condition with bruises all over her and several cuts all over her face and body.

“Twilight! Thank goodness. We have to leave! Right now! Shadow Hack and Back Stab made me come warn you; they aren’t going to last much longer against Cross Fire! She’s too strong!”

“I didn’t think I’d ever hear of an earth pony topping a griffin in a fight.” Twilight said, thinking about the sacrifice that the griffin and changeling had made.

Twilight realized they didn’t have time to go to the old exit point and had to make a new one. She powered up her horn and blew a hole right through the thick stone castle wall to her right. It led outside, straight to the middle of Canterlot. Twilight knew it was a huge risk to expose themselves that much, but she didn’t have a choice; soon enough the entire army of guards would be upon them.

“Everyone out now! Head for the main gate to the city! Wait there for us to direct you to the Solar Army base!” Twilight commanded all the slaves. In a flurry of hooves, manes and tails the large group of ponies had rushed outside, except for the soldiers, Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo. It was now later than before as the light that had remained in the sky 40 minutes earlier had fled and been replaced by the deep blue of the moon and night sky.

“We have to get these ponies to safety. If guards attack, stand your ground and fight. Once were out of the city, we’ll be much safer. Lyra, and Rarity; we’re the last 3 unicorns in Equestria now; we have to stick together until we escape.” Twilight told them.

Everyone was nervous and hardly ready, but then another voice echoed through the passage; a deep, evil voice that struck fear into all the ponies there.

“You don’t honestly think your going to escape though do you?”

Twilight turned around and gasped. There at the other end of the tunnel was Luna and her assistant Cross Fire both grinning as they walked towards the group.

“There you are little unicorn. Why’d you run off and leave your friends. We had so much more fun after you left.” Cross Fire teased at Lyra.

“Get bucked you bitch!” She responded angrily. Lyra knew that her friends were dead, and she absolutely despised that Cross Fire was making jokes about it.

“Ooh she has such a foul mouth, doesn’t she Luna?” Cross Fire said almost wanting to laugh at the futile attempt to offend her.

”Indeed. We certainly can’t have any of that in my castle!” Luna said as she glared with an evil look in her eyes. Twilight still watching carefully at what Derpy was seeing had a sudden shock of realization. Just for a second… she could have sworn that Luna’s eyes were different… almost like the eyes of… Nightmare Moon!

But the other soldiers didn’t notice this.

Twilight wasn’t listening. She was thinking about the danger presented to her and her friends, and how she could get them out.

“Don’t listen to anything they say you lot. It’s about time we left!” Twilight said firing a flurry of magical spells at Luna and Cross Fire, momentarily creating a purple cloud of power to shield them from Luna’s sight.

Luna easily ignored the magic, but as soon as she had cleared the mist with her own magic. The group was gone.

Twilight was scared for Derpy and her group. She knew that obviously Derpy was going to be ok because she was here now, but she knew the others weren’t going to make it out.

Twilight stopped and noticed Cross Fire was fast approaching them, Luna just seemed to be taking her sweet time to enjoy the show. “Everypony keep going and get the slaves out of here. I’ll hold them off.”

But this time none of the ponies followed the order. They all stopped in front of Twilight and turned around with her.

“What are you all doing? I told you to keep going!”

“And you expect us to listen to that Twilight?” Pinkie asked her not expecting a straight answer.

“We aint leaving you behind Twi! We’re stickin with you!” Applejack said. “Apple Bloom, go with Scootaloo and join the slaves outside. If nopony comes back to get you… I’m certain you’ll know how to get back to the base.”

”Whaddya ya mean ‘if no pony comes to get us’? I aint leaving here without you sis!” Apple Bloom told her determined to stay with her.

“Apple Bloom if something happens to you I won’t be able to live with the guilt. You have to go with Scootaloo right now.”

“But…”

”Apple Bloom!”

“Listen ta me!” Apple Bloom yelled startling her sister. “What if ya don’t come back?! How em I gunna live with the guilt of knowing I didn’t fight with you!”

“Apple Bloom you got nothing to be feelin guilty about. I’m only askin you to go for your own safety. I love you sis, so do me a favor and live, for me.”

Apple Bloom was breaking down to tears. She didn’t want to leave her sister there; she knew that she probably would never see her again.

“Scootaloo, take Apple Bloom and get out of here, you two don’t have the strength to fight this fight.” Rainbow Dash instructed her little follower.

Scootaloo seemed hesitant, but she knew she’d never win an argument against Rainbow Dash. With a weak nod she ran over to her distraught friend and pulled her along to follow her.

Apple Bloom refused for a few moments, but gave in.

“You come back Applejack! You have to! You have to!” Apple Bloom yelled out to her sister as she ran off with Scootaloo crying and breathing at unsteady pace. Applejack didn’t reply though, she turned around and returned her gaze to Cross Fire who was making her way towards the group.

“For the last time, none of you have to do this!  Why should all of us you have to die when only I need to!” Twilight asked the group, but she already knew the answer.

“Because your our best friend Twilight! And Friendship over rules ranks in every way! If your going to go down, we’re going down with you!” Rainbow Dash told her, with everyone else nodding in agreement.

“But what about the slaves?” Twilight asked thinking about her mission.

“We’ve fulfilled our duty in getting them out.” Rarity told her.

“But part of that duty was getting them safely to the base!” Twilight objected again.

“Twilight we aren’t leaving you! Nothing you can say will change that.” Fluttershy said, receiving a nod of agreement from the others.

“But I’m doing this for you guys, as my team, and my friends! I don’t want to see any of you get hurt any more.” Twilight said in one last attempt to make the girls keep going.

“We didn’t ask you to do it Twilight. We fight by your side and that’s that! Besides, you already said that being the last 3 unicorns we need to stick together.” Rarity reminded her.

Twilight had so many objections. But realized they weren’t going to get her anywhere.

“….Ok! But hear me out. If we don’t make it out of this, I want anypony who does survive to go and help the slaves. No ifs or buts! Understand?”

The whole group nodded. They all looked up at Cross Fire who seemed to be enjoying the little argument.

“Good luck everypony.” Twilight said to the others.

Cross Fire stood up. It was time for the fight to begin.

Luna took to the skies and brought a swirling mass of rain clouds above the whole town of Canterlot. She made everything dark, and then bought down a storm of rain.

Cross Fire paced back and forth in front of the group of 8. The odds seemed low for her, but some of the soldiers were in no condition to fight which stacked the odds in her favor. She made her move. She dived directly at Lyra assuming she was the weakest of the lot and got a perfect kick into her side, before quickly following it up with a blow to her fore head.  Lyra was on the ground in seconds struggling to catch a single slither of air as blood started to find its way to the sites of the injuries. The group took this as a moment to attack Cross Fire, but she was more than ready for them as she countered and dodge every single hit they threw at her, pushing them back, and winding them all. They all pulled up their hoof guns except for Lyra and Derpy, and fired a shot each, except for Twilight who fired multiple, being the only one with a semi automatic weapon, but Luna had expected them to try and use their weapons, and stopped the bullets from even reaching a one meter distance from Cross Fire. She seemed to be protecting her with an impenetrable bubble that the bullets couldn’t go through. They all got up and prepared for a second strike, except Derpy who had a surprise idea that seemed the only option that proved a chance. She flicked out her hoof guns blade and waited for the perfect moment. Cross Fire may have been an earth pony, but that gave her strength over the pegasi and unicorns. The only one able to actually meet her strength was Applejack. But not wanting to risk being overpowered, Cross Fire took a cheap but powerful swing at Applejack’s gut, and sent her skidding meters away clutching her stomach in pain. This was exactly the moment Derpy needed. Without hesitation as soon as Cross Fire shifted her gaze to Applejack, Derpy launched herself at Cross Fire and impaled the long, blood stained blade straight through her, and pulled her into it watching as the sharp metal exited the through the other side of her body. Derpy had done it. She’d managed to lethally injure Cross Fire before she could kill anypony.

Twilight was seeing this through Derpy’s eyes and became confused.

‘This can’t be right… she said no pony made it out but her.’

But then Derpy looked up, and she saw why.

Derpy removed her blade from the earth pony’s stomach and flicked it back into place. She watched as Cross Fire collapsed clutching at the wound and screaming as blood and stomach fluid from the blade going straight through her stomach, was seeping out both open wounds and pooling in a filthy puddle beneath her. But then Luna let out a sharp cry and dived at Derpy putting all the force of her landing right into her hip. Derpy let out a massive, horrible cry as she was thrown meters away from Cross Fire’s limp body. She couldn’t move. The pain in her hip was unlike anything she’d ever felt, even worse than having her throat cut open. Luna pinned the others down with red lightning summoned by her magic, and then looked at her slowly dying soldier. She touched her horn to the wound and it lit with energy. Cross Fire let out a weak cry of pain, but it stopped hurting quickly. The energy was healing her. Luna was giving her own life force to save her soldier.

“That’s not fair!” Derpy weakly spat trying to stand up, but the injury was so painful she could hardly stand at all, and just collapsed again.

Cross Fire lay still for a few seconds before getting up.

“One moment of weakness, I assure you it won’t happen again Princess.” She said to Luna who was grinning.

“I know.” Luna said as she used her magic to drive a massive surge of electric energy through the 7 ponies on the ground. Lyra was hardly moving, and her breathing was reduced to hopeless panting. The others seemed to be in almost similar states. They knew they were done for.

“Finish them off.” Luna instructed her, but walked over to Twilight before departing.

“It was a valiant effort, but without the elements of harmony, you’ll never defeat us!” Luna yelled, walking off towards Canterlot Castle.

'How does she know about the elements of harmony?! I thought they didn't exist in this dimension!' Twilight pondered as she watched the memory continue.

Twilight didn’t know what she was talking about, but she knew that it was all over regardless. Cross Fire walked over to her and took her hoof gun from her.

“I think I’d much prefer a fast shooter to a single shot one," she said slipping it on her own hoof. She pointed the weapon directly at Twilight’s head. “Any last words?” she asked with a wicked smile across her face.

Twilight glanced at her friends for one final look. She spoke slowly, and prepared for the inevitable.

“I’m sorry I failed you all.” Twilight said to her friends, before Cross Fire pushed the lever down and fired a round straight into Twilight’s head. It blew apart instantly as part of her brain splattered with a sickish plop on the ground.

The other girls screamed at the same time, almost synchronized. “TWILIGHT!”

“Pity; she could have been quite an addition to the Lunar army. How bout you next?” she said pointing to Pinkie.

She came over and pressed her head tightly against the ground. Pinkie grimaced and whimpered, but was ready for what was going to happen. She closed her eyes, and relaxed as best she could, before the trigger was pulled on her too. Her brain followed up Twilight’s, lying on the floor in a pile of mess and sticky remains.

“This is fun! I never got to be an executioner before!” Cross Fire said as she moved on to Fluttershy. She rested the gun on her forehead, “Seems like it would be a large crime to take such a kind soul…” She said. Fluttershy ignored her, following in Pinkie’s footsteps, relaxing and preparing.

“Just do it you coward!” Fluttershy yelled defiantly.

Angered by Fluttershy’s choice of words, she pulled the trigger, and watched as the right side of Fluttershy’s head shattered into fragments of bloody skin, bone, and brain.

“Then again, it’s a large crime to take any soul.” she finished laughing. She went to Rainbow Dash next. “All sorts of colors on you, how bout we find out if your blood’s as rainbow as your mane?” she said before yet again pulling the trigger. The bloody remains didn’t seem to look any different from the others.

“Hmm, what a shame.” Cross Fire remarked. “Your turn!” She said trotting over to Rarity.

“You’re a pretty one. What’s a mare such as yourself fighting a bloody war for anyway?” she asked teasing Rarity.

“Looks don’t have anything to do with skill!” Rarity yelled using her remaining strength to kick Cross Fire’s leg and leap at her tackling her across the footpath. But her punches were far too weak, and she was thrown back almost straight away. She had dealt some damage but not enough to faze Cross Fire.

Cross Fire spat out a small half mouth amount of blood. “You’ve got a nasty bite!” She said pointing the gun to Rarity’s mouth and pulling the trigger. The bullet emerged out the other side of her mouth. Cross Fire launched one more shot into her brain, but it didn’t splatter like the others.

“Guess it’s your turn!” she said jumping over to Applejack. “You were the toughest of the lot, I wonder if you’ll be able to fight a bullet.” She said.

“Stop stalling and just do it already! I don’t wanna hear what you have to say!” Applejack yelled. Her best friends were dead and she felt horrible; she just wanted it to end.

Cross Fire smiled. “Oh hush now, I’m trying to build up the suspense a little. It’ll make your sister’s reaction so much more precious.”

“What- What are you- talkin about?!” Applejack asked worried. Cross Fire pointed her hoof in the direction the two fillies had run off in and Applejack looked over. Derpy looked over herself to see what she meant.

Apple Bloom and Scootaloo had been sitting there the whole time, they saw everything, and they were horrified. Apple Bloom was shaking so hard she thought she would collapse at any second.

“You know I might see if she’s as tough as you once I’ve dealt with the other two.” Cross Fire chuckled as she pointed the hoof gun at Applejack’s head. But that was the biggest mistake she’d ever made. Before Cross Fire could even react Applejack spun around and kicked her right where Rarity had before, but completely shattered that portion of her leg just above her hoof, and jumped up shoving her almost 5 meters away.

“You can take my life today, but you will NEVER LAY A HOOF ON MY SISTER!” Applejack yelled loud enough to deafen the crippled earth pony. She leapt at Cross Fire and began to rain down punches upon her face. She smashed her hooves into Cross Fire relentlessly, but her strength had started to quickly deplete. Knowing that soon all her energy would leave her, she used most of it to call out to Apple Bloom and Scootaloo. “You two have to run! Now!” she yelled. This time the girls listened, but Cross Fire quickly kicked Applejack off and went to chase them, but she didn’t pay any attention to her severely broken leg and instantly collapsed on it, causing herself more unnecasary torrents of pain. She cursed under her breath. They’d gotten away.

Cross Fire spat out a mouth full of blood, and tried her best to ignore the pain in the bleeding cuts and bruises Applejack had left all over her face. She used her three good legs and walked back over to Applejack, intent on finishing her off point blank. Derpy had started to feel the pain settle, and managed to stand up. No pony noticed her, so she decided to harness the opportunity to get one last strike in on Cross Fire. She flicked out her red, blood glazed blade one more time, and galloped right at the limping mare. She launched herself at Cross Fire and with one swift movement, cut open Cross Fire’s injured leg. Cross Fire collapsed instantly and yelped in extravagant pain, as blood begun pouring out of her open leg with muscle flaps and broken bone exposed. Derpy got up again and grunted shaking off the pain that was bothering her.

“You’ll pay for all the lives you’ve taken Cross Fire!” she said raising her blade again, but before she could bring it down, Cross Fire weakly lifted her arm and fired her hoof gun in an attempt to save herself. She hit Derpy right below the chest and the force of the bullet sent her flying back a few meters. Derpy was in pain, but she wasn’t as badly injured as she thought she would have been. The bullet hadn’t blown her apart like it did the others, but instead had stopped midway in her body. She was still able to stand up. But she didn’t have much strength left in her, and blood had already started to escape the wound. She walked towards Cross Fire, wobbling around a bit. Cross Fire was clutching her leg, and for fear of her life pulled up the hoof gun and shot again, but nothing happened. It just clicked. She pushed the lever a few more times but it kept making a click whenever she tried. ‘Empty clip!’ she thought to herself, but she didn’t have any access to another one. She was severely injured, but as Derpy approached her, she rolled over and grabbed Applejack’s neck. Derpy stopped in her path.

“Move any closer and she dies!” she threatened holding her neck on a slight angle.

Derpy started to back down, but Applejack choked out a sentence.

“Derpy, don’t worry about me. I’m a goner anyways. She’ll die of blood loss before Luna comes back. Go save the fillies and the slaves.”

“But I can take her out right now…” Derpy objected.

“Derpy you’ve already taken her out, she’s a goner, but so are you and the slaves if you don’t go to them. You may not feel that shot now, but it will kill you if you don’t get help. You heard what Twilight said! Go! Run now!” Applejack said.

Derpy glared at Cross Fire and tears started rolling out of her eyes. She bit her lip and tried to resist the urge to attack Cross Fire. She knew Applejack was right.

“If I’m going down, you’re all going down!” Cross Fire yelled, twisting Applejack’s neck and snapping it. Applejack’s head fell to the ground with a thud and her life left her body.

“NO!” Derpy yelled, unable to properly process that her friend had just been mercilessly killed.

She completely repressed the pain in her body and kicked Cross Fire across the courtyard, and she clashed into a building with a deadly crunch. But before Derpy could charge again, a magical aura appeared before her and stopped her. It was Lyra.

She was battered, bruised, had singed fur on many parts of her coat, very badly scarred, and bleeding, but she had enough energy left in her to bring up a force field.

“Derpy ! Go save the slaves! Don’t let the mission be failed just like this! Applejack and Twilight gave you specific commands. Follow them!” her voice was weak, but she was able to get the whole sentence out.

“Lyra, I can’t leave you here while she still lives. You’re the last living unicorn now! I have to protect you!” Derpy said pushing at the force field, trying to get the last lethal attack on Cross Fire.

“Derpy, look at me! I’ll never make it back to the base before I bleed out. You still have a chance if you leave right now! It’s the only chance you’re gunna get! Go now!”

Derpy was angry, but she couldn’t ignore her friend. All her emotions were building up and conflicting in her brain. It was the only pain she could feel at the moment, the rest was being repressed by her anger.

“Don’t let her leave here alive Lyra.”

Derpy ran towards the entrance to the city, but stopped at the same place the fillies had when they were watching the terrifying scene. She didn’t want to leave Lyra alone. She felt like a coward. She turned around and watched on; she needed to see what was going to happen to Lyra.

Lyra had turned her attention to the pile of rubble surrounding Cross Fire. Cross Fire had almost no energy left in her, but Lyra didn’t have much either. Cross Fire started dragging herself towards the Unicorn after she noticed she was still alive. Her leg wasn’t completely severed, or even hanging off for that matter. But it was deeply cut and the bones inside it where destroyed, without an enormous amount of magical aid, she’d never use the leg again. She crawled over to Lyra who was trying to think of a way she could use her magic to save herself. She levitated Pinkie’s hoof gun off her body, threw her broken one down, and slipped on Pinkie’s, but by the time she’d pointed the loaded weapon at Cross Fire she was close enough to smack it aside and pound Lyra on the chest, and snatch the weapon up for herself. Lyra skidded a meter away and clutched her stomach which had started to bleed out of the open wounds even more. Cross Fire crawled over to her, grabbed her head and shoved her into the ground, graphically breaking hear nose. Lyra had a blood ring around her whole snout and had mucus and blood pouring out of it. The whole thing was a disfigured mess, and the fluids in Lyra’s mouth tasted revolting. Her face was in so much pain she could hardly even breathe anymore.

“So much for the last of the unicorns!” Cross Fire yelled triumphantly, shoving Lyra’s head into the ground again, and cracking her horn all the way through. With her own hooves Cross Fire crushed the breaking horn into many pieces that flew outwards, but something else happened. The horn exploded with light as it shattered which threw Cross Fire flying meters away landing next to Applejack. The explosion was buzzing with magic and seemed to be growing the horn back. But Cross Fire had no intention of letting the last unicorn in Equestria go. She pointed the gun at her head and shot with extreme accuracy. Lyra collapsed to the ground along with fragments of her horn skull and brain, while her disfigured, mutilated mouth oozed out more and more blood and mucus. Lyra was finished. Derpy was horrified. The last unicorn in the world, and a close friend of her own, was now gone. She wanted to go back and strike Cross Fire to a pulp, but she had to honor her friend’s final requests. She watched as Cross Fire struggled to stand up much longer. But she thought she saw Applejack’s arm suddenly rise to the air. She did. ‘How in the name of Celestia could she still be alive?!’ she thought. But to her horror, Cross Fire noticed it too. She cocked the hoof gun and put a bullet in her head. The arm fell limply to the ground. Derpy backed away, she had to leave; she couldn’t bear to see any more. Her team; Her close friends; the last of the unicorns… all dead. She put all her energy into getting to the gates of Canterlot, she collapsed outside of them looking at her stomach. The bullet wound was bleeding more than before and had made a red patch of bloody fur.

The slave ponies were quick to come to her aid. She wasn’t able to walk, so they carried her. Apple Bloom looked behind her but her expression saddened instantly and almost resembled Derpy’s. She followed the large crowd of slaves crying her eyes out, while Scootaloo did the best she could to comfort her, while dealing with seeing Rainbow dash so violently murdered.

Twilight was sick of watching the memory now, she couldn’t believe that Derpy had gone through so much. She hoped for Derpy’s sake that Cross Fire had suffered a slow death, but that wouldn’t have even nearly compensated for all the other’s deaths.

Derpy flickered through the memories again, which were almost at an end. She directed the slave ponies throughout the night, all the way to the base. She received urgent medical and magical care from medics and Celestia, and received a commendation and rank as commander for pulling through and bringing back the slaves after suffering through everything she had.

Twilight disconnected her horn from Derpy, who had tears rolling down her face. Twilight didn’t know whether she wanted to vomit or cry. She’d seen so many things she never expected to see.

“So now you know Twilight. The version of you from this dimension was a fierce and dedicated leader, loyal to her friends to the end; while I’m just a coward who left them all there at the hands of Cross Fire. I don’t deserve Twilight’s old rank. I hardly deserve to even be here right now.” Derpy cried as she collapsed to the ground unable to handle her emotions.

“Derpy you can’t talk like that. You had no other option…” Twilight tried to argue.

“But I’m the reason all the unicorns are dead! That the team is dead! I could have saved Lyra…” Derpy tried to finish, but Twilight cut her off.

“But she stopped you! She knew her time was up. She did it to save you. None of it was your fault. Luna and Cross Fire didn’t fight fair! They’re the only ones at fault.”

“But…”

“Derpy I’m telling you. I can tell just from what I’ve seen. Lyra was trying to save you, and she succeeded, she knew she would die that night, but if you had ignored her, she would have died in vain. You honored her request and survived. It’s ok to be upset about what happened. But you can’t pin the blame on yourself.” Twilight said.

“I’m not arguing with you over this Twilight!”

“Then don’t! Just listen instead and don’t argue. It, wasn’t, your, fault! You are not a coward! I’m amazed you’re still standing here today. You’ve pulled through things I never even considered plausible, and things a full grown stallion could hardly stand.” You are more than worthy of position as a commander and the Twilight you knew, would be proud of you.”

Derpy was shocked. She hardly knew this Twilight and here she felt like she was her best friend. She was so much like the Twilight she used to know: Kind and always sticking up for her friends. Derpy let the tears keep rolling, but accepted that no matter what she said from this point on, if it was negative, Twilight would force her to think positive.

Twilight pulled Derpy into a hug, as Derpy continued to let her emotions pour out.

“You might not believe in yourself Derpy, but I do, and I’m sure that every single pony you saved that night does too.” Twilight finished talking and broke off her embrace.

Derpy sniffed and wiped her eyes, and somehow found herself starting to smile. Twilight’s speech was the perfect thing she needed to lift her spirit.

“Thank you Twilight… I-I really needed that.” She said grateful for everything Twilight had said.

“I meant every word of it. Now let’s go see the princess, any more stops and we might not ever see her at all.” Twilight said chuckling a little at the end.

“Ok,” she sniffed again to try and get the mucus in the front of her nose back, and stop as many tears from flowing. “I’ll lead the way. We should be there very shortly.”

Alternate Reunion

After a walk that should have taken about 10 minutes, Derpy and Twilight arrived outside of Celestia’s office, after 28 minutes. They had made so many stops, and had enough emotional experiences in that time to depress a pony for ages. The last of the passages had been passed and they hadn’t run into anypony else; it was time to see the Princess.

“Now Twilight, I don’t know what the Princess is like in your dimension, but you have nothing to be worried about from this one ok. She’s kind and caring; and she’s saved my life more times than I can ever make up for. Just make sure you explain slowly that you aren’t the same Twilight as her old soldier and student. She’ll probably assume that straight away.” Derpy explained standing outside of Celestia’s office, before opening the door.

Derpy Trotted inside first, telling Twilight to wait for just a moment. Twilight listened in to the gap in the open door to see why.

“Princess Celestia? Are you busy at the moment?” Derpy asked as she walked up the large, white alicorn, sitting at her desk.

“Not at the moment no; I’ll have to report to the something troubling you commander?” Celestia asked back noticing the wet patches of fur on Derpy’s face. She quickly wiped them dry, forgetting that she hadn’t cleaned her face properly since her large emotional display in front of Twilight.

“Ah, no; I’m fine. I actually brought someone to see you…”

“Who?” Celestia asked confused.

Derpy looked out the door and ushered Twilight to come in.

Twilight walked inside the room and smiled. She hadn’t seen Princess Celestia in a while; but Celestia just sat there mouth agape. She was absolutely oblivious to what was happening. Had her top soldier and student, that had died in a rescue mission over a year ago… just walked into her office?!

“Twi…Twi-Twilight?! Is… Is it really… you?” She asked unable to confirm that she was seeing what was in front of her.

Derpy chuckled a bit… she’d never seen the Princess so dumbfounded and hopelessly confused.

“Yes… and no…” Twilight said as an answer. This only made the Princess even more confused. She stuttered trying to make out a sentence, before her eyes closed and she literally fainted, gently falling to the ground. She had a slight stream of drool coming from her mouth, but she was breathing just fine.

Derpy stopped chuckling and quickly sprinted over to her, checking her vital signs. Twilight started to worry, but Derpy started to chuckle again.

“I think that was a little too much for her…” Derpy said as she calmly went to a nearby sink, and poured some cool water into a bowl. She took it back over to the Princess and splashed it on her face to wake her up. The Princess shot up almost instantly, as if she hadn’t even fallen over to begin with. She sputtered a little bit and shook her head, trying to clear off all the water. Then she looked back at Twilight, and slowly walked over to her.

“Twilight. I can’t believe… how are you…. what…” The princess kept trying to form sentences, but they all ended unfinished and stuttered. She really had no idea what to say.

“Derpy, you told me that she was killed along with the other soldiers! How is she here?!” Celestia asked seemingly annoyed turning to the commander.

“They were princess. This is a different Twilight.” Derpy tried to explain.

“I’m Twilight from another dimension.” Twilight told her still smiling.

“How is that possible? I can’t believe it…” Celestia said. Even now she still couldn’t quite grasp at the reality of the moment.

“I’m not the soldier you sent into the mission at the lunar army’s base at Canterlot Castle. I’m still Twilight Sparkle, but a different version.”

The Princess hearing this ran up to Twilight and picked her up giving her a huge hug.

“Same Twilight or not, it’s been far too long! I’ve missed you so much!” The Princess said as she continued to hug Twilight. Twilight started to smile more than before, even Derpy smiled at what was happening. She’d never seen the Princess this happy before, let alone this affectionate to anypony else.

“I’ll be back shortly; I still have to deliver these bullets to the barracks.” Derpy said, slipping out of the room and walking off to perform other duties.

After about 2 whole minutes the princess let her down and backed up a bit.

“I can’t believe you’re here… How are you here? Where did you even come from?” Celestia asked, determined to make sense of the whole situation.

“Well. I’m from an alternate version of Equestria. I found a spell book that had a very powerful spell in it that allowed me to conjure a portal between both our dimensions, and my friends convinced me to try it…” Celestia quickly cut Twilight off.

“Are your friends here too?” Celestia asked. Twilights smile faded momentarily while she answered.

“Yes, but the last I saw of them they were badly injured; especially Applejack and Rainbow Dash. I didn’t know what had happened at first, but after Derpy explained a few things to me, I now know that they were shot.” Twilight explained.

“What? Shot by who?”

“Well… I don’t know. There was nopony in sight. The only place the bullets could have come from was the castle.”

“Oh no; Spike warned me that the engineer team in Canterlot were working on a high caliber rifle for an unknown soldier in the Lunar army, but he never reported that they completed it… this is going to make assaulting the Castle much harder… even for an aerial team. Never mind that for now though. I’ll see to it that your friends are cared for and make a full recovery as soon as possible. Any way, you were saying about the portal?”

“Well that’s about all there is to it. We entered it, and found that while our Equestria was peaceful, this one was a war zone! We ran from the bullets and collapsed through the roof of an area of the base. Derpy didn’t say which one.” Twilight said finishing her story.

“Ugh! Nopony tells me anything anymore, I’ll have to find out which section when Derpy comes back. It’ll need to be patched up as soon as possible. I’m sorry about the horrible welcome you and your friends received when you arrived Twilight. I certainly hope you were treated well when you were brought into the base.”

“Derpy was a little intimidating, but I warmed up to her really quickly.” Twilight said smiling about the sensitive moments Derpy had shown after interrogating her.

“I know she’s a little rough around the edges… but she’s been through so much….” Celestia said, thinking about the condition Derpy had been returned to her in without any of the other soldiers.

“Oh believe me Princess… I know.” Twilight said, envisioning the horrible memories that Derpy had courageously shared with her.

“Any way princess, I was hoping to get a few questions answered if it wouldn’t be too much trouble?” Twilight said thinking about the ones that Derpy hadn’t answered.

“Of course Twilight ask away.” Celestia said happy to help her favorite student in any way she could.

“Well, my biggest question is how did this war start? And how did it become so violent? Why is Luna so violent? She’s so kind in our dimension… I guess it just doesn’t make sense to me...”

Celestia’s face went grim. She didn’t like to talk about her sister, and normally she wouldn’t; but Twilight clearly needed answers.

“The war… started just over two years ago. Everything seemed normal until one night, my sister seemed to… well act strangely. She begun to speak much louder than usual and seemed to not have any recollection of where she was. But then she attacked me. She cast a spell at me and I got into a fight with her, but I was trying my best to not hurt her. I didn’t know what was wrong with her. She just seemed to snap. But something was also wrong with her eyes. The seemed to look like… like a serpent’s. They kept quivering and flashing but only for a short time. I knocked my sister to the ground quickly; her magic doesn’t have anywhere near as much power as mine did. But she didn’t snap out of whatever was happening. She just seemed possessed. She threw me off and teleported to another part of the castle, but every time I tried to find her, I found bodies instead; Lifeless bodies of innocent Canterlot ponies… some even torn apart in a bloody mess. It was horrible. I had to stop it. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t hurt my sister. Instead I ran, I left the castle with as many of my subjects following me as I could gather. I didn’t know what happened to Luna that day… but she wasn’t my sister anymore. She’d become something else. Almost like a creature of nightmares.” Celestia explained to Twilight.

Twilight was thinking hard about the situation. She couldn’t make any sense of it. ‘Just over two years ago… but that’s the same time frame we banished Nightmare moon. She can’t be here! It can’t be Nightmare Moon!’ but Twilight couldn’t think of any other plausible scenarios. ‘Evil serpentine eyes… murderous intent… trying to defeat Celestia…’ Every shred of evidence was pointing to Nightmare Moon.

Suddenly Derpy came back into the room.

“Ah commander, you’re back. Twilight informed me before that part of the base subsided when they fell into in…” Celestia began but Derpy cut her off.

“And I’ve set a team to fix it up already princess. Don’t worry; I wouldn’t leave our base exposed.”

“Good. How are Twilight’s friends?”

“They’re in a stable condition, but their injuries are severe. They’re awake, but they won’t be able to move for a long time. Especially the two that were shot; I’m worried Rainbow Dash might not ever be able to fly again. Apparently the bullet that struck her went straight through one of the nerves connecting to her left wing. And the Earth Pony… She’s lost heaps of strength in her back leg.” Derpy said with a grave tone to her voice.

Twilight’s spirit sunk. Rainbow Dash would kill herself if she was permanently grounded. She was the best flier in Equestria and that had all been taken from her in a matter of seconds.

“No need to worry. As Twilight’s friends they will receive all the help I can give them. I’ll happily donate some of my life force for them if it means fixing their injuries.” Celestia said, striking hope into Twilight’s heart again.

“Princess as noble as that is, are you sure you want to go through that sort of pain again? Especially after the first time you did it to me and the soldiers?” Derpy asked her princess concerned.

“Derpy I’m immortal… Yes, it hurts me, and yes I’ll admit it tires me drastically, but all wounds heal with time. Besides Twilight’s friends shouldn’t lose what they hold dearest because of our dimension’s violent events times.”

“You’d really do that for them?” Twilight asked happy that the princess was being so kind.

“Of course Twilight.” Celestia said with a grin.

“Ok Princess, there’s something I’ve been meaning to discuss with you about Twilight’ story. Like an idea as to how she could have done it. Remember Professor Malcolm? That unicorn that appeared out of nowhere over a thousand years ago, that was killed by Luna for his research on our dimension? Do you think that Malcolm got here the same way he did? Because that might have been what was in that book he always carried around! It might have been what Twilight used to get her friends and herself here! It would be why Luna was so intent on getting the book from him before he tossed it into the spell he cast.” Derpy explained, but Twilight snapped up immediately. Why didn’t Derpy tell her that was her explanation? That must have been how the book got to her after so long.

“Derpy? Why didn’t you tell me that’s what you were thinking? Professor Malcolm Hoof’s book was exactly the one I used. It had the exact spell in it I used to get here. Why did Luna Kill him?” Twilight asked wanting to delve deeper into the unknown past of the unicorn responsible for the spell.

“Well, um… she must have been suspicious about the book he was carrying. He never left it alone, and bright explosive lights could always be seen coming from his home. Luna probably thought it had powerful magic written in it.” Derpy explained.

“It did have powerful magic in it. While he was here when the war broke out, he told me he had to leave. I didn’t know what he meant or where he was going. But he showed me the book and said that if he were to die before leaving Equestria that the book must be kept under safe supervision at all times, and not fall into the hooves of the Lunar army. I didn’t understand but I still acknowledged his request. But when I faced off against my sister a second time, she told me that she took great joy in slaughtering all the unicorns including him. When I demanded to know what she had done with the book he carried, I was relieved to find out that he’d tossed it into a body of magic and it disappeared. I didn’t think it contained something so huge. I thought it kept the secrets to his spells on immortality. He was so talented with magic, he could think of a spell for almost anything; and my sister killed him. I still don’t understand why she turned into such an evil hearted creature. She was just like me before she changed.” Celestia explained with a few unclear changes in emotion.

Twilight realized that the book had made it back to Canterlot in her dimension, and the princess must have hidden it to avoid anypony from finding out about the spells it held. So why did it end up in her library with the new books? But she also had to tell Celestia that her sister might not be acting the way she is of her own account. Twilight had always had a knack for seeing through a disguise, this became especially apparent during her brother’s wedding, when she proved her old foal sitter to be a villainous changeling. But she also remembered that these theories of hers often made other ponies, including her best friends, confused and disappointed in her, until she could prove them to be true. She had to wonder whether it might be better to explain her assumptions or wait until she had gathered more evidence apart from a change in her eyes, and knowledge about the elements of harmony. ‘Wait! The Elements of harmony! That might be all the proof I need!’ she quickly thought to herself.

“Princess? What do you know about the elements of harmony?” Twilight quickly asked the princess. Celestia thought for a moment trying to think if those words stood out at all, but she couldn’t think of anything.

“I’m sorry Twilight. I don’t believe I know what those are.” Celestia replied.

‘Yes! I have to be right! If the princess didn’t know about the elements of harmony, then how could Luna know about them? Unless she isn’t Luna! But then, how could Nightmare moon have possibly gotten into this dimension.’

That was the one thing she couldn’t figure out. She decided she’d share her theory anyway.

“Princess I…” But that’s all she got out. A greenish mist had suddenly appeared seeping through the roof of Celestia’s office, and in a flash of magic, formed itself into a scroll.

“Ah. Spike’s weekly report is very early this time.” Celestia said as she cheerily used her magic to unravel the scroll.

Twilight didn’t forget what she wanted to say, but on mention of Spike’s name she became a little excited to hear how the alternate version of her little friend was doing. While Celestia was focused on the note she turned to Derpy.

“So how well do you know Spike?” she asked.

“Oh, well, I didn’t really notice him much around, but after all the girls were killed in the mission, he’s only ever been interested in revenge on Luna. That’s why he became a double agent and took up a position as Celestia’s Spy in Canterlot. He often sends us information on weapon schematics, assaults, guard duty hours; anything that can make defending troops on the field from the Lunar army assaults easier. He was Twilight’s best friend you know. They had very different interests and hobbies, but Spike would always make time to hang out with Twilight and the others…” Derpy explained before the princess cut any further conversation short.

“Oh no… this is bad… Spike might be in trouble. He thinks his cover’s been blown. Commander Derpy, organize an extraction team and await further orders.”

“What?!” Twilight said shocked. “But if he’s been found out by Luna… She could…” Twilight stopped horrified. She knew that this Luna, or Nightmare Moon, would kill Spike without any hesitation if she knew he was a spy.

“On it Princess. Good luck getting back to your dimension Twilight, I hope things turn out well for you and your friends. And again, thanks for the kind words earlier.” Derpy said before turning and rushing out the door.

“Twilight, I think it’s time we finally went and saw your friends. I’ve got important matters to attend to now, so I’ll help out as fast as I can. Follow me.” Celestia said before also opening the door further.

“Oh, but Princess, maybe I could…” Twilight wanted to offer her assistance in helping rescue Spike. But she never got to say the words, before the princess had dashed out the door. She quickly chased after her. ‘Maybe I can ask after I’ve seen my friends. I’m sure she needs all the help she can get,’ Twilight thought as she closed the office door behind her.

The Team Together

Twilight continued to follow Celestia through numerous tunnels. Every now and again they would take a quick pause so Celestia could make sure she was going the right way. She didn’t often have to visit the medical centre and didn’t know the layout of the whole base as well as ponies like Scootaloo. Although the stops were brief Twilight always tried to seize the opportunity to offer assistance to rescue Spike, but the Princess seemed to have too much on her mind and would either tell Twilight she’d listen to what she had to say when they got to her friends, or didn’t reply at all. Although this was slightly annoying to Twilight, she accepted that the Princess did have her hooves full at the moment and that she could wait a little longer. She didn’t seem to be considering the danger the mission would pose, but it was Spike. Her Spike or not, she wasn’t going to let this one die like the ridiculous amounts of innocent Ponies that were already killed by Luna in this dimension.

Finally, after traversing many tunnels and hallways, they reached the medical centre and Celestia stopped Twilight before they entered.

“Now Twilight; I’m not sure exactly what condition all your friends are in right now, hopefully they’re still at a point that I can use my magic to heal them, so although we have a highly trained squad of medics and surgeons, I need to make sure you’re prepared for the worst.”

“I am Princess; I’ve been worried sick about them ever since Derpy told me they were in bad shape. But I’m hoping I don’t need to be. “

Acknowledging this Celestia opened the door and walked up to one of the nurse mares on the scene.  She reminded Twilight of Sapphire Shores, but with a dark, deep red mane. Celestia spoke to her but Twilight couldn’t hear them from the distance she was at and it only sounded like mumbling. She started to move closer, but the nurse smiled and spoke back turning towards a hallway. Celestia seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and looked at Twilight with a smile on her face. The Princess calmly walked over to her before explaining their conversation.

“Your friends are fine Twilight, bruised and battered and a few scratches and grazes. Applejack and Rainbow Dash are the only ones who will need my magical aid in order to heal their injuries, but other than the damage they received from the bullets, they should be just fine.”

Twilight breathed a huge sigh of relief. Probably the first one since they came to the alternate dimension.

“So I can see them?” Twilight asked hoping they weren’t resting.

“Yes, in fact the two fillies Scootaloo and Apple Bloom are also here seeing them.”

“Well what are we waiting for? Let’s go.” Twilight said excitedly rushing into the hallway the nurse had recently walked into.

Celestia laughed as Twilight ran in. It was gleeful moments like this that she had missed, especially with Twilight.

Without hesitating Twilight ducked under a curtain at the end of the hall way, and sitting there talking to the fillies were 6 of her friends, and Rainbow Dash and Applejack lying in beds. They looked up instantly all at once and joy overtook their already happy expressions, and multiplied them.

“Twilight!” They all said at once, including the fillies.

Pinkie Pie instantly jumped up and quick as a flash zipped over and hugged Twilight tightly.

“Oh my gosh! I told you not to scare me anymore Twilight! And the first thing you do is scare the life outta me again, Where in Equestria have you been? You had us all worried sick! Sick I tell you! Are you ok? Are you hurt? Was everypony nice to you? Was...” Twilight put her hoof over the fast talking pony’s mouth to get her to stop talking so rapidly, but Pinkie still trying to talk was making muffled sputters, similar to the time she’d run into poison joke, increasing the size of her tongue and rendering her speechless.

“Pinkie! Calm, down! I’m Fine! What we should be worrying about here is how you girls are! If anypony has been worried sick all day it’s me.” She sounded serious but she kept a smile to make sure her friends understood she wasn’t panicking.

“Rarity I hope it wasn’t too hard for you to find out from these two about your sister… “ she looked at the fillies hoping they had been feeling a little better to see their friends again, they were still saddened when they thought about Sweetie Belle, but they could hide it this time.

“Oh it’s alright Twilight, as long as my real sister’s ok I’ll be fine” Rarity said, managing a weak smile. “Oh and I’ve been especially worried about you two,” she said pointing to Rainbow Dash and Applejack. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” Twilight said as she ran over and hugged them both, but accidently bumped to close to Rainbow’s wound, but she didn’t wince because she knew her friend was trying to be affectionate and concerned.

“Well ahm quite alright Twi. A little hazy yeah, but the only real disappointments that I won’t be buckin no more apple trees with Bucky McGillicuddy.” She said wiggling her bad leg.

Rainbow Dash tried to speak without sounding disappointed, but it was a hard thing to do, considering that she was the best flyer in Equestria, and had all that taken away from her in a second.

“Well, I feel a lot better too Twilight, it’s just...” She trailed off before she could even mention her wings. Twilight thought she saw a tear about to appear in her eyes, but nothing happened. Rainbow sighed. “I guess it’s just hard to be told I’ll never fly again...” she finished, but this time a tear did form in her eye.

“Oh I wouldn’t be so sure about that...” Princess Celestia’s voice filled the room.

Fluttershy looked around, Twilight flinched a little seeing a large dry graze on her neck.

“Was that...” Fluttershy nearly finished as the curtains were lifted up and the large Alicorn walked into the room, which lit up in her presence.

“Princess Celestia!” all the girls exclaimed almost in perfect synch, except the fillies, who were already used to seeing the princess on a regular basis, and Twilight, who was waiting for the princess to make her appearance.

“But how are you here? Did you use the same spell as Twilight?” Rarity asked confused as to how the princess was standing there before her.

“Oh, no she’s the Princess Celestia from this dimension Rarity.” Twilight said to help her friend understand.

“And as ruler of this dimension, I’ve taken responsibility for all your injuries.”

“Come on Princess, there’s no need for that...” Rainbow said trying to ease the weight she believed the princess shouldn’t be putting on her own shoulders.

“I’m responsible for the safety of my subjects, war or no war. If one serves for me, I am responsible as a leader to keep them safe and alive. Twilight has made it more than clear which side of this war you would fight for. I don’t ask you to fight though... It’s far too dangerous out there for that. But instead I will make it up to you another way.” The princess said as she closed her eyes.

“Mighty appreciated Princess, but it’s really not necessary.” Applejack said, but then she noticed Celestia’s horn light up with a spark of energy, which quickly erupted to much more magnitude of intensity. Her body started to flash with brilliant yellow revealing her entire skeleton, as if she was standing behind an x-ray machine.

“What in the hay is she, gah!” Applejack went to ask what the princess was doing, but an orb of energy erupted from the princess’s horn and swept her up before she could finish her sentence. The same thing quickly happened to all the girls, including Twilight. A magical beam, acting as a link found its way from the Princess’s horn to each of the girls, before joining with the large orbs of energy and connect them directly to Celestia. She flashed a few more times filled with energy, but slowly started to collapse to the ground, as the magic became weaker, along with her. Before long, the princess collapsed and the magical connection broke away, causing the orbs around the girls to be absorbed by their bodies.

Celestia was heavily dazed, and in pain, but she was still able to control her basic motor skills, but still found herself rolling over when she tried to stand up. The girls also seemed dazed for a bit, but they were much faster to recover. They all looked at the princess worriedly, but the princess slowly managed to get to her feet, still wobbling a little though.

“Princess! Are ya alright?” Applejack asked jumping up and running over to her, along with Rainbow Dash, who was flying over to where the princess had collapsed.

“I’m alright, I’ve been far better before. But it looks like you girls are feeling better too.” Celestia said as she looked up at the girls, Applejack on her leg, and Rainbow Dash flying.

“Whoa nelly! My leg... It’s... it feels fine. I feel like I could buck all the trees in Sweet Apple Acres with it now.” Applejack said as she stopped, looked back and wiggled her back left leg to see if it looked as good as it felt.

“Hey, maybe ya can give me a hand collectin fruit from tha forest later on now.” Apple Bloom said looking at the alternate version of her sister, and her now healed leg.

“My... my wings... I...” Rainbow Dash felt a look of joy spread over her face. “I can fly again!” Rainbow Dash may have been confined by the small hospital room, but she was so happy that she flew around as fast as she can without knocking anything over. She seemed to create a small whirl of wind in the middle of the room glowing with a rainbow tinted aura. She felt like a new Pegasus. She came to land near Scootaloo. “Guess I can take you for a flying lesson after all Scoot.” She said rubbing her head.

“Yes!” Scootaloo shouted jumping into the air, flapping her little wings as fast as she could, but still struggling to get very high in the air before falling back down. Rainbow couldn’t help but smile at the little filly’s attempt.

“Um, Princess, what did you just do? Even my grazes are fine.” Fluttershy said rubbing the clean fur on her neck.

“And my legs feel perfect for jumping again!” Pinkie said bouncing around the room with delight.

“I shared my own life force with you all to heal your injuries. It won’t take long to recover...” the princess felt a click in her neck and grimaced a little, “but it’s going to hurt until it does.” She finished.

“Princess, ya really shouldn’t ave done that. It wasn’t your fault at all. We ran into this dimension on our own accord ya see... Twilight even tried to get us to stop.” Applejack explained, feeling guilty that the Princess had given up some of her own life force to fix her injuries.

“What’s done is done Applejack. I don’t mind sacrificing a little if it saves a life. And it doesn’t matter anyway, because what I can give, I can get back with time.

Almost all at once each of the girls ran up to the princess to thank her, which seemed a little overwhelming, but the princess knew they were trying to be appreciative all the same. Before long they had returned to general chit chat, but their expressions were much brighter to Twilight and Celestia’s delight.

“So Princess, like I was trying to say earlier. You mentioned sending a group of ponies to get Spike from Canterlot...” Twilight tried yet again to offer her assistance but the Princess suddenly jumped and remembered that she had to go oversee preparations for a team to send.

“Oh thank you for reminding me Twilight! I must go and make sure Derpy has her team together.” Celestia said about to leave before Twilight spoke up.

“Princess please wait. I want to ask if I can help!” Twilight said a little louder than she intended to.

Celestia didn’t take notice to her tone though as much as the thought of such a silly suggestion.

“Twilight, I know Spike probably means a lot to you, especially the one from your dimension... but you haven’t got any experience with weapons or field work...”

“But I’d be a huge help in the field of magic.” Twilight remarked hoping to stack the odds a bit.

“I... I don’t know Twilight. I don’t want to place you in any danger... and a mission in Canterlot is one of the most dangerous I can issue.” Celestia told her still ready to decline Twilight’s request.

“Princess I read in Professor Malcolm’s book that in another dimension, if the version of you living in that dimension is deceased, you will slowly take on some of the knowledge and experience that pony retained before death. Maybe I'll pick up on some of the other Twilight’s skills if I do this.”

“Well... what if you don’t?”

“It also said the chances of not gaining some features of the original pony are extremely low. The only other thing that could cause it to not happen is if two ponies co-exist in the same dimension, but if that was to happen they must not make contact, a dimension supporting two copies of one life is dangerous enough, but two instances of one pony making contact in one dimension could cause a massive paradox... but that’s not important. It’s the fact that I will pick up some of her skills if I go on this mission. I’m possibly picking up some of her knowledge as we speak.”

Celestia was not for allowing the request at all, she had no intention of letting this Twilight get put into harm’s way, but she didn’t want to just flat out deny her. She thought about ways she could prove to Twilight she wouldn’t want to go on the mission, but then an idea struck her.

“Come with me to the armoury then. If you can fire a hoof gun to an appropriate level, I’ll let you go on the mission.”

Twilight lit up with glee. She might get to help save Spike and talk to him again.

They were halfway out the door before Twilight’s friends noticed she was leaving.

“Twilight, where are you going?” Rarity asked first.

“Umm well, I’m hopefully going on a mission to Canterlot to save Spike!” she said, still excited.

“Twilight you shouldn’t be excited, the mission will be extremely dangerous.” The princess said.

“Wait! Spike’s here too?” Rarity said perking up slightly, but giggling and shying back down when everyone looked at her.

“It’s the Spike from this dimension.” Twilight explained.

“Wait sugarcube. You wanna go ta Canterlot to save Spike? The place where that metal thing that almost took mah leg off came from. Are you mad?” Applejack asked, also worried that her friends enthusiasm might be getting the better of her.

“Well if you’re going to be in danger, I’m coming with you Twilight!” Rainbow said showing the loyalty to her friend she was well known for. “No friend of mine’s getting hurt on my watch.”

She flew next to her and slung her front leg over her friends shoulder.

“It’s dangerous enough for Twilight to go even with a team, I can’t let you go too...” Celestia said but none of the girls heard her because Pinkie also spoke up.

“Me too! I’ll be right there with you Twilight!” She said bouncing next to her two best friends. The others seemed to hesitate, especially Fluttershy, but she was the next to speak up.

“Me too. I know it’ll be dangerous, but the guilt you feel when you don’t help your friends is much worse than fear of danger.” She said as she walked over to Twilight’s side. Twilight was shocked at the courage her friends were showing, that they were actually willing to walk into a warzone with her. Rarity spoke up next.

“Don’t think you lot are going anywhere without me.” She said trotting over to the group.

“Nor me yall.” Applejack said going to the large group herself. The fillies stood up too, but they knew the princess would never even consider letting them go on a field mission at their age.

“I’ll go prepare some ration packs fer yer mission, trust me, you’ll need em. It’s a long walk te Canterlot when ye take the long route. “Apple Bloom said rushing out past them to go to the kitchen.”

“And I’ll go make sure the armoury has enough ammo stocked for the 6 of you.” Scootaloo said as she ran past the group out the door. All of this had happened so fast that Celestia didn’t have a chance to voice her opinion… that is if it was still even valid anymore.

“Look I know you girls all want to do your part, but I simply can’t let you all go in without knowing you’ve got survival skills first.” Celestia explained to the group. “Just this once I’ll let you all demonstrate any experience in fighting you may have, but unless you can operate a hoof gun, I can’t let you go on the mission. It might be the thing that saves your life if you get into a bad situation.” Celestia told them trying to convince them to just leave the mission to the trained soldiers.

“We’re more capable than you think princess. I know you think I’m underestimating the danger involved, but I know we can do this, I want to help Spike.” Twilight told her. The princess was still sceptical, but she could tell by the determination in Twilight’s voice that she had to be a part of the team going to Canterlot.

“Ok Twilight, I’ll take you and your friends to the practice range. You can have a look at a hoof gun, test your aim, and any combat skills you might have. But we don’t have long; I’ll give you until Derpy has a full team ready to be dispatched. Don’t expect me to give you this opportunity again though. If you were to be lethally injured on a mission just because of my decision to allow you to go on it… it was just hard enough to lose you all once, and if it happens again, it would devastate me, and imagine your friends back in your dimension if you never returned. They would never know where you went or what happened to you all.” The Princess explained to them all.

“I don’t plan on anything bad happening to any of these girls Princess… I want to help because the other versions of my friends have died already, and if Spike goes too… alternate or not I’d feel horrible. He’s been my closest friend ever since the princess in my dimension let me keep him as a filly.”

Celestia could fully understand now why Twilight was persisting for a position amongst the other soldiers, but she still wanted her to get a small amount of combat training so she would be in less danger if things got ugly.

“Ok then. Follow me.” The princess instructed as she led the girls out of the hospital wing.

She led them through a less complex track of tunnels, delving deeper into the base through stairs and dipping lanes.

“Princess, this here big underground base of yers is nice an all, but it’s so big. How in Equestria did y’all build this place?” Applejack asked admiring the continuing tunnels and ever deepening rooms.

“Well actually it started off as a secluded bunker for anypony who needed it, even others species like griffins and changelings had showed up to find safety. When Luna attacked me, after I left, I had to go to many places in Equestria to make sure she wasn’t attacking others.  I had warned them all that something was wrong with Luna and that I could provide them safety if they came here. With help of many unicorns and builders, we built a stable and secure base, and since then, have been long hidden from the lunar army. The base is constantly monitored, and oxygen is pumped down to all the lower levels. We also had to fortify the base more and more as it grew deeper. As it is we are already 20 levels below the ground.”

She stopped outside a room, the door was closed but Twilight could hear loud banging noises coming from the other side.

“This is the shooting range; I’ll have my leading weapons expert run you through how a hoof gun works in just a moment.” Celestia said as she looked down the hall and pointed her hoof at the other end of the hallway, which was a dead end with two doors on either side making it symmetrical.

“The room on the left is the barracks, that’s where the soldiers sleep ever since the massive spy attack, where many of our soldiers had their throats cut... I had the soldiers moved down here to keep them safe. The room on the right is the armoury, it’s where the weapons and ammo are kept, and it also holds the lab where the weapons are created.” She said before turning her attention to the shooting range again.

“Follow me girls.” She said pushing the door open to reveal a small glass chamber, with ear muffs and protective glasses hanging on the walls.

“Take a pair of these each please; it gets noisy in this room.” Celestia said ushering the girls to take the safety equipment and then leading them into the room.

Twilight looked around and saw many rooms lined up next to each other, with rows of compartments in each. Some soldiers had pony shaped posters at the end of their compartments some distance away, and looked like they were practicing their aim on them. She paid particular attention to the way they held the weapon, and fired it. They were all very accurate shooters, and managed to get most bullets in the middle rings of the targets on the paper pony’s head and body. As Celestia walked the group through the shooting range, ponies started to notice them.  Mild chatter broke out, mainly about the fact that the ponies didn’t know if they were definitely witnessing their 6 long dead leaders walking past them. Twilight almost chuckled when she looked over to one of the booths to see a stallion spin around to see what the commotion was about, and got smacked over the head for spinning a loaded weapon towards other soldiers. Celestia ignored the other soldiers and kept walking, before walking into another room. Twilight and the girls followed her inside.

“I’m about to introduce you girls to the best shooter in the base. Twilight, the version of you from this universe actually trained him, he was even originally going to be granted a spot in a rescue mission over a year ago, but I ultimately gave that position to Derpy instead.” Celestia stopped talking and stopped outside a black door. There were very faint banging sounds coming from the other side.

“What’s his name?” Twilight asked.

“I don’t know, he only ever told the other Twilight his name, and when she died, his name died with her. So he goes by the nickname she gave him; Bullseye.”

She pushed open the door, to reveal a satin brown stallion, about Twilight’s height, standing on his two back hooves, slouched onto the bench of his private compartment, hardly looking down the range he had his hoof gun pointed down, but to Twilight’s surprise; none of his shots missed. Because the room only contained the one compartment, it was rather small, but still it was well lit and clean, with only few bullet shells lying around here and there, empty clip casings and several torn and destroyed posters lying on the ground; each one of which had bullet holes only in the middle of the targets on them. Wearing the ear muffs, he hadn’t heard them come in and continued to arm and fire bullets with little attention, but lethal accuracy. Twilight was trying to put some distinction on the stallion’s age though; he looked rather young to be one of the best marksmen.

Celestia walked over calmly to Bullseye, who had just detached and discarded an empty clip from his weapon, and was midway loading another.

He cocked the weapon ready to blindly fire another bullet at his paper target before she tapped him on the shoulder. It startled him, as he’d just shot as she’d done it, but still his bullet hit the very middle of his target. He looked behind him and as soon as he saw the Princess, he dropped into a bow; he still hadn’t noticed the others behind her.

“Afternoon Princess. How can I help you?” he said slowly jumping up. Hearing His voice was all Twilight needed to know that this stallion was in his prime of youth.

Celestia smiled as she spoke up, “I have a few soldiers in need of combat training.” She said before moving to the side to reveal the others behind her.

Bullseye didn’t say anything. He looked at Twilight directly and completely blocked the others from his line of sight. ‘Am I dreaming’ he thought to himself. He walked over and studied her for a second, before rubbing his eyes. Twilight watched him carefully wondering what he was going to say, but she expected it was going to be something like...

“Is... Is it really you Twilight?” he asked her.

Twilight giggled, she was expecting those exact words.

“Mostly yes.” She replied, prepared to explain herself to yet again another person, hoping he’d be the last.

“So I’m not dreaming?” he asked still confused. “How is this possible... they told me you died.” Bullseye explained, but Twilight had been expecting him to say all these things as everyone else who’d seen her had said pretty much the same thing.

“I am Twilight, but not the same Twilight that taught you.” Twilight explained.  Bullseye stopped and looked confused at her.

“There’s a spell that can make another version of someone?” he asked looking at Celestia. Twilight just chuckled again.

“I’m from another dimension.” Twilight explained making sense of the situation for him. He was still confused, but being an earth pony he didn’t want to argue with the many possibilities behind the use of magic, so he just nodded his head and looked at the others.

“What about you 5? You’re all from another dimension?” he asked the rest of the group. The girls all nodded simultaneously.

“So you don’t remember me then do you?” he asked turning around to Twilight.

She hated to tell him she didn’t know him because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but she didn’t want to lie to him.

“I’m sorry...” she said hoping he wasn’t upset.

“It’s alright.” Bullseye assured her smiling. “So how can I be of assistance princess?” he said returning his attention to his leader.

“There’s a mission to Canterlot to extract our spy...” Celestia started, before being interrupted by Bullseye.

“Spike? Yeah Derpy already assigned me a spot in the group leading the rescue.”

“Oh... are you sure your ready for that Bullseye?” Celestia asked him a little concerned.

Bullseye looked at her a bit offended, then looked at her with a sarcastic frown, cocked his hoof gun, pointed it back at down the range, and without any attention at all, maintaining his eye contact with Celestia, shot a perfect round straight into the middle of the head of the poster target.

“I’m definitely ready princess.” He said removing his hoof gun and placing it on the bench.”

“Well, the 6 of these girls wish to help out in the mission too. But if they are to secure a spot, they need to pass a section of combat and endurance training. If I leave them with you, I want you to record how well they do... if they reach satisfactory levels I’ll let them go on the mission. I must see how Derpy’s team is coming along.” Celestia said as she moved towards the door. As she opened it, she looked back at the group. “Good luck girls.” And she walked out the door which slowly shut behind her.

Twilight swallowed her nerve and prepared herself. She had to get a spot on the mission and was prepared to do anything to get it. She was determined to help save Spike. It was time to begin the short session of combat training.

Combat Training

Twilight turned around to face Bullseye and the other girls. Bullseye was highly confused by what the princess had told him.

“Ok, did the Princess just say you girls want to go on the mission? Are you insane?! It’s a Canterlot field extraction... probably one of the most dangerous and risky missions you can hand out!” Bullseye started.

“Simmer down kiddo. We’re doin it ta help Spike.” Applejack said, slightly annoyed that they were being told a second time that the mission would be dangerous, and that they weren’t ready.

“And you think a small amount of combat training will give you all the skills you need to go waltzing up to Canterlot to save him?”

“Well we can’t exactly get all the experience we need in the short time provided.” Rarity said, a little offended.

“You know we already have lots of experience in lots of areas, fighting or just natural talent. We’ve taken down a lot more troubling creatures back in our dimension then you’d think.” Rainbow said, trying to make him see it from their side.

“What about her?” he said pointing to Fluttershy, who reacted almost immediately. “No offence, but you don’t exactly look like soldier material.” he said studying her small physique.

Fluttershy didn’t care that he meant no offence, she felt very offended. She knew she was often feeble and helpless, but her friends had been trying to boost her confidence where ever possible by reminding her of her great achievements. And ever since her bad assertiveness advice from the Minotaur, Iron Will, she always seemed to snap at anypony who upset her, or judged her when they didn’t know her properly, and she was fighting the urge to have a go at Bullseye.

“Hey, don’t pick on her! Have you ever stared down a full grown dragon or a cockatrice?! Not to mention scare the scales off of them both? Fluttershy has!” Pinkie Pie said butting in to defend her friend, which made Fluttershy feel much better.

“I’m not picking on her, but I only ever briefly saw the rest of you when you were with Twilight, and if they were fully trained and still got killed on their mission to Canterlot, what makes you think you’ll come back after what might not even be an hour of training?”

The girls thought long and hard about this. But Twilight wasn’t intent on turning back, and she knew her friends would follow after her, but what Bullseye was saying was true, so she was unsure if she wanted them to.

“Look Bullseye, we’re all experienced fighters to some extent. I’m more experienced around magic myself, but we are going to Canterlot to save Spike, and we need the extra experience you can teach us, no matter how little it is. And I’m certain you can teach us a lot, from what I’ve seen you’re an amazing shooter, and you’re probably the best in the base. I’d be proud as a teacher.”

Bullseye didn’t seem to believe that these girls were capable of what they were telling him, but when Twilight spoke to him he felt differently. He’d always acknowledged her requests as her student without hesitation. He loved her as family and would strive to please her, so hearing that complement, even from a different version of Twilight, made him happy and very confident in his ability.

“I’ll give you as much help as I can.” He told them with a smile.

“Let’s get started with hoof guns.” He said walking over to a cabinet on the wall. He opened it up to reveal a weapon wheel holding about 10 hoof guns, some were larger than others and some had different sized barrels and harnesses. Twilight thought they must be customized for larger stronger ponies. Next to the weapons there were large bunches of magazines neatly piled to the side.

“Hopefully you won’t need to fire one on the mission, but chances are you will,,, so we need to get check your aim. Twilight, you go first, the version of you from this dimension was the best shooter before she died, you can see where you rank against her. For you and umm, what’s your name?” he asked Rarity, as he still hadn’t been told, and had never learnt her name in the past.

Rarity was a bit confused as to how he didn’t know her name. “Rarity.” She told him.

“Sorry if I don’t know all your names… it’s just that I never really talked to any of you in the past. But anyway, after weapons training, I’ll see if there’s someone I can talk to about finding out how useful yours and Twilight’s magical abilities could be in the field. But I think only Celestia can help there though. Ok so Twilight, come forward and take a gun please.” Bullseye said ushering her towards the weapon rack.  Twilight stared blankly at the weapons before her. She never took interest in areas of violence, and she’d seen what sort of damage the guns were capable of at close range. She didn’t have any intentions of  inflicting that damage on anypony, despite the war they were fighting, but she knew that as much as she was against the idea of injuring, let alone killing another, she had to prove she was able to carry out the action if need be, to get a position in helping Spike. Besides, it was just a paper figure, it’s not like she would have to shoot one at an enemy herself, and there would be other soldiers for that… at least she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She studied the weapons for a bit; most of them were of similar size, but the barrels were the most notable differences. The different ones had numbers on them followed by the word caliber, the highest value being .50, which also had the widest/longest barrel, although it was still small. The shelves stocking the ammunition were also labelled with values, which Twilight realised were the same as their counterpart gun.

“The older versions of you each had .45 and .50 caliber weapons, but I’d recommend you try a .22 or .30 just until you know you can handle something more powerful” Bullseye told her nudging the two guns he had referred to.

Twilight realised that the size and higher values were obviously referring to the increase in power the weapons produced. She took the .30 and placed her hoof in the sleeve, until it reached her mid-leg and she could rest her hoof on the trigger. It was a nice fit, the barrel didn’t pass over her hoof, and the joints of the weapon bent cleanly with the joints in her leg.

“It’s a great fit.” She said to Bullseye turning to look at him.

“I thought it would be; that’s why I recommended it. The weapon is disengaged until you lock the body. Otherwise the trigger won’t release the body and firing pin into the primer of the bullet.” Bullseye said.

“I know most about how all that works, Derpy explained the weapons to me.” Twilight told him studying the weapon a little more.

“Well no the rest of you know, so whenever you need to fire your hoof gun, you need to straighten your leg out until the weapon clicks in both bend joints, cock the body to load a bullet and then the trigger will fire. If you press the joints inwards lightly at the same time, they will unlock and you can bend your leg again so you can run.” Bullseye explained, before turning to the other girls. “I’m assuming Twilight already knows this, but to load a bullet into the body, you push the small handle on the top of the body forward, which will release the empty case of the last bullet fired, then you pull the body backwards and load another bullet into place which will then be ready to be fired. You have to do this each time, because we haven’t figured out a way to make the guns semi-automatic yet. Anyway Twilight, step up to the compartment and I’ll set up a target.” Bullseye said, walking down the range and pulling his paper target from the holder, and slinging a new one in. Twilight walked up to the bench and put on the pair of earmuffs and protective glasses on the bench on. As Bullseye made his way off the range, she looked at the gun and then at the targets marked out on the paper target pony.  She lifted her leg with the gun on it and stood on her back legs lightly leaning on the bench. She straightened her leg and the joints of the weapon clicked into place, restricting her from bending her leg. She pressed the trigger lightly and it clicked.

“Whenever yer ready Twi, ah don’t mean te rush ye but we aint got all day. The others could be ready te start the mission real soon.” Applejack said trying to push her along. Twilight couldn’t hear her too loudly, but she could make out the sentence. She acknowledged her statement and looked at the clip lying on the bench in front of her. She quickly closed her eyes and let her thoughts flash back to seeing bullseye switch his mags over.

“Do you need some help Twilight?” Bullseye asked.

“No… I’ve got this.” She said opening her eyes. Fast enough to think she’d done it several times before, she pulled the body of the gun backwards until it stopped, picked up the clip in her mouth, pushed it into the open slot on the right side of the weapon, and using her free hoof, pushed the lever on top of the body, forward to lock in the clip, pushed it forward further to unclip a bullet and load it, then put her hoof on the other side of the lever and pulled it back till the body clicked in and locked into place. Bullseye was shocked and impressed at the same time; he knew she would be able to do it, but he didn’t expect her to do it so fast and fluently. He was about to praise her on her speed, but backed off because he realised she was about to shoot. Twilight was just trying to think of what firing it would be like first though. She didn’t know whether she’d be able to handle firing it and if it would it be to powerful for her to handle.

She took in a breath, brought the weapon up to a height where she could look straight down the top of the weapons body, aligning the back sights with the front, which was tipped with a red dot for improved accuracy, and braced herself for what she was expecting. She closed her eyes and pressed down on the trigger and through her ear muffs, heard a muffled *Bang*. She opened her eyes, and saw a small puff of smoke escaping the barrel of the gun. She was surprised though, she definitely thought the weapon would have had more power, but it felt more like she was receiving a hoof bump. She could hear another noise behind her that was also muffled, but when she took her headphones off she realised it was her friends cheering. She looked at them all as they applauded, and at Bullseye who also looked shocked.

“Guys, what are you all going crazy for? That took way longer than it should have.” Twilight said, wondering why all her friends seemed so excited by her firing the weapon.

“It’s not that Twilight; take a look at the target.” Rainbow said grinning.

Twilight turned her head to look at the target she’d been allocated. Her shot had perfectly struck the middle of the target circle on the head of the pony on the sheet, which was the smallest target of the five on the sheet. She had aimed around the head, but didn’t expect to get such a lucky first shot. She lit up and started to get excited. This is exactly the type of skill she needed to exhibit for a spot in the mission.

“Well done Twilight, you should be proud of that shot. Most ponies don’t even hit the sheet let alone a target on their first shot. You might be picking up where the other Twilight left off if you keep getting shots like this.” Bullseye said. Twilight blushed, and realised she already was starting to take after the original Twilight’s skill; she knew she would eventually but she didn’t think the knowledge would impact her so soon.

Bullseye turned looking at the others. “Now if you girls want, we can move this along much faster if I split you all up into different compartments to practice in.”

“The quicker we can get as much training done as possible, the better.” Applejack said trotting over to the cabinet of weapons.

“So these here bigger ones are the stronger ones huh?” she said shifting her gaze from Bullseye to the .50 caliber hoof gun.

“Yes, but while the one Twilight used is easy to fire it still packs a punch, those pack a punch on both ends. They should only be handled by someone with strength and experience.” Bullseye explained worrying that she might want to actually try and use one with no weapon experience.

“Oh don’t go talkin te me about all that. I’m a might bit stronger than ah look. This one will be just fine.” Applejack said picking up the weapon in her mouth and moving towards the door.

“You know, I’d recommend you didn’t...” Bullseye started, but Applejack dropped the weapon and cut him off.

“Don’t you worry, If the other version of me could handle it, ah can handle it.” She reassured him picking up the weapon in her mouth and whispering under her breath, “Aint gunna let no pony tell me otherwise”. None of the girls heard this, but they all had disapproving looks across their face. They knew Applejack had a tendency to be arrogant, and also knew she would probably regret her decision soon.

“We’ll just take the one Twilight used.” Rarity said, receiving an approving nod from the others.

Bullseye walked over to another cabinet opening it to reveal several .30 and .22 caliber hoof guns and stocks of ammo.

“These guns are the ones we give to beginners, but if you show accuracy with them and get a spot on the mission, you’ll receive a much more up to date model and more powerful weapon if you think you can handle it. But I don’t think any of you will be leaving here using .50s.” he said looking at Applejack, but she just rolled her eyes and ignored him. The rest of the girls walked over and picked up weapons from the cabinet, except for Fluttershy, who felt it might be better to leave weapons alone.

“Fluttershy... Are you gunna grab one?” Rainbow asked her.

“Oh, um, no. That’s alright I think I’d rather...” Fluttershy started, but got cut off by Twilight.

“Fluttershy, you know you won’t get a place if you can’t fire a weapon... I know you probably don’t like the idea, but if you want to come with us, you have to try.”

“If you think it’ll help, I can get you a .17, but I can’t get anything less powerful than that. They’re only used for hunting small...” Twilight knew he was going to say creatures, and had used her magic to force his mouth closed and muffle the word. She could tell Fluttershy would never even consider touching a gun that’s used for hunting animals. Bullseye looked at her irritated after he realised that she was the one holding his mouth closed.

“Hunting small what?” Fluttershy asked curious as to why he cut off.

He looked at Twilight, unsure as to what she wanted him to say, but she shook her head in disagreement to his original choice of words. He nodded to tell her he wouldn’t say animals, and she lift the magic.

“Small... uh threats; like... spies and, stuff.” He tossed a small, almost weightless hoof gun over to Fluttershy, and she picked it up, with a little less hesitation.

“Twilight feel free to keep practicing in here.” Bullseye told her. She nodded and turned back to the range sliding the earmuffs back on.

“I’m going to take you all to another range with more free compartments so that you can get some practice done.” Bullseye said to the others walking to the door and opening it for them as they all walked through.

Twilight looked at the target as everyone left and started thinking to herself, ‘Could this end up being a real pony?’ She dismissed the thought, licked her lips, pointed and cocked the gun, and firing another shot through the very centre of another target on the front of the paper body. She smiled, if she could do this with no past weapon experience, she must have been gaining knowledge from her past self, and that meant the others would too.

Bullseye led the other 6 girls out to the multiple ranges. They were grouped with two compartments in each room separating each pair with reinforced glass. Rarity didn’t like the overall lack of décor, but obviously an underground base wasn’t going to be decorated like a palace, she was surprised they could even light the rooms so well at the depth they were underground.  She looked at the compartment they were heading towards, but realised there was only one free compartment in it. She also saw what the other soldier in the room was shooting at. It was a paper outline of a bunny; he was obviously a hunter to keep pests out of the base. She hurriedly pulled it down with her magic hoping Fluttershy hadn’t noticed it. She turned around to check, but Fluttershy was staring at many different areas of the room and hadn’t noticed it. She looked back and noticed the confused soldier about to put it back up, and quickly used her magic to shred the paper. The soldier was a little creeped out, obviously he didn’t realise it was magic that destroyed the paper target, but that was understandable considering he hadn’t seen a unicorn in over a year. He put down his gun and left the compartment visibly confused, leaving the whole room free. Bullseye hadn’t seen Rarity destroy the target, so seeing the soldier leave with a worried expression confused him, but he seized the opportunity to get the chamber for two pairs.

“Ok I’m going to split you guys into girls into groups of two. One of you will have to come with me to the next chamber across. I’ll show you all how to load and fire the weapon, and then leave you to practice. After you all hit all 4 targets on one of the paper figures, come see me, and I’ll take you to another area to check your hoof to hoof combat skills. So first things first, who would you each like to practice with?” Bullseye asked them.  Rainbow was about to say something, but Pinkie spoke up before her.

“Ooh ooh, I’ll go with Dashie.” She said gleefully bouncing around. Rainbow knew that Pinkie was going to want to go with her, so she sighed, and gave a weak smile.

“Ok Pinkie.”

“I’ll go with either of ya.” Applejack said to Rarity and Fluttershy.

“I’ll go with Applejack... unless you want to Rarity, I don’t mind either way.” Fluttershy suggested.

“It’s settled then, ok everypony inside.” Bullseye instructed.

Twilight had hit every target in the exact centre with perfect accuracy and had gone through 3 sheet targets. She was about to take pop another fresh clip in the hoof gun before she suddenly felt a massive amount of pain in her head. She fell over clutching at her horn which was glowing with crackles of magenta energy. The pain kept increasing and she started to scream. What in Equestria could have been causing her this much pain. Between each scream she tried to yell for help, but she couldn’t even make out a word. Even if she could though, no one would hear her; the room was almost completely soundproof and concealed from the others by concrete. The only noise loud enough to be heard through the doors was pops from gunfire. The pain was unbearable. She felt as if her horn was about to explode or tear itself out of her head. The base of her horn started to bleed. Twilight couldn’t figure out through the incredible pain what could have possibly been happening.  She rolled around in agony as the outside of her horn started to splinter, tears were streaming out of her eyes and she started to groan as the pain reached a new height of intensity. But then all of a sudden it stopped. The pain as long as it had been there left the site in her head and her horn seemed to reform itself. It became smooth again while her scalp cleared shut. The blood that had streamed out was drying in her fur, and the sparks emitting from her horn ceased. She shook her head groaning, more confused than she’d ever been in her life, but then all of a sudden voices started echoing in her head. They were so muffled Twilight couldn’t make out the words, but it slowly got clearer; was it two voices? Suddenly her horn blazed and threw a magical image of Princess Celestia and Spike in front of her. She was still dazed and feeling the pain from the spasm in her head, but she could make out the words. They looked like they were trying to talk to her, but she couldn’t tell if they were succeeding or not.

“Twilight! Twilight! Can you hear me? Where are you and the others? Are you still in Equestria?” Celestia asked trying to telepathically connect herself to Twilight. Twilight looked back at her, but couldn’t speak properly, still trying to recover from the incredible pain she had endured. Spike was standing on her back looking down at Twilight.

“Princess she’s not answering... she looks like she’s been bleeding around her horn. Princess she looks hurt! You gotta save her!” Spike said.

“Twilight if you can hear me, I know you’re in the wrong dimension. I wouldn’t have this much trouble connecting to you if you were in our dimension. I’m going to disconnect the spell shortly; I’ll be coming to that dimension to get you soon. You can’t stay there. It’s too much of a....” Princess Celestia became more muffled to the point where Twilight could no longer understand her. She wanted to tell her not to come to this dimension, but she could hardly lift her head.

“I’ve got to disconnect Spike. An inter-dimensional telepathic connection like this could be killing her.” Celestia said, before fading away. The pain from before started to grow in her head again, but was less intense and far shorter, but when it was over this time Twilight felt all movement and warmth leave her body, and she  fainted.

Bullseye had run all the other girls through the basics of using a hoof gun and moved to the next compartment with Rarity. Fluttershy kept insisting that Applejack go first, same as Pinkie Pie with Rainbow Dash. Fluttershy wasn’t keen on shooting it so Applejack did her a favour and went up to the bench. Having the most powerful available gun, she wanted to see how powerful it really was. She cocked the gun and lent on the bench in front of her, pointing the weapon as straight as she could towards the head target.

“Watch n learn everypony.” She said to the other 3 in the room. Rainbow was about to shoot, but wanted to see what would happen when Applejack fired it, to see if she really did have the necessary strength. Applejack braced herself, and pressed down on the trigger. The noise cracking from the weapon was incredible, if it weren’t for their earmuffs the lot of them might have had trouble hearing for a very long time. But hearing was the last of applejacks problems. She had been thrown by the force of the weapon and launched into the glass wall of the back of the room. She had completely underestimated the power of the weapon against her shooting style, and was lying there in agony, groaning and clutching her right shoulder.

“Owwww... Dangit... That was much worse than expected... Fluttershy... you go... Owwww”, Applejack moaned telling Fluttershy to take over.

Rainbow Dash chuckled shifting her gaze over to Fluttershy who was a little shaky about needing to shoot the gun, especially after seeing what Applejack’s did. She slowly cocked the body of the rifle, clenched her eyes shut, pointed the gun forward, and pressed the trigger. Compared to Applejack’s hoof gun blast, hers was barely louder than a pop through the earmuffs. She scored a perfect middle headshot on the pony target Applejack had missed. Fluttershy opened one eye and then surprise swept over her face and she opened the other. To all the others’ surprise, she grinned a little, and chuckled, loading the gun again and firing another perfect middle shot on the next target. She began to laugh harder, and her smile became a little more sinister, as she repeated her actions, getting more and more perfect shots. The others started to look a little edgy; was Fluttershy starting to enjoy herself? And how could she be hitting such accurate shots right off the ball?

Rainbow looked away and tried to focus on her own target; she loaded the gun and pointed it, using the sights as best she could. She pressed on the trigger, and the bullet fired, and hit inside the target. It didn’t hit the middle but it was still an accurate shot, she fired 3 more with short gaps in-between to adjust her aim properly, and had the same results with the other 3 targets.

“Yes! Hit every target on my first try just like Twilight! I am so gunna get a spot on the mission!” Rainbow Dash while pinkie clapped her hooves for her shot. “Go ahead and have a try Pinkie, see if you can hit a target.” Rainbow said jumping down, and moving out of the way.

“Thanks Dashie.” She said hopping over to the bench and leaning on it. “Now what I’ve seen from Fluttershy...” Pinkie began staring over at Fluttershy who seemed to be going crazy with sinister delight and laughter which got more intense with each shot; she’d gone through the whole clip in the time they had been standing there. She seemed to have her free hoof always ready to cock the weapon so to keep shooting it.

“That’s kinda creepy... What I’ve seen from Fluttershy though is I can shoot more bullets faster, if I do what she’s doing. So Pinkie stood on her back legs, leaned on the bench, and loaded the weapon. Before Rainbow Dash could expect it Pinkie was firing multiple shots right off the ball. She stopped quickly on four, and lifted her glasses. Rainbow Dash just saw Pinkie start jumping and yelling out happily. She walked over to the bench and her jaw dropped. Pinkie had gotten the very centre of all 4 targets.

“Did you see that Dashie? I did it! My first try and I did 4 really fast shots and got the middle of every target! Now I’ll get a spot too!” Pinkie said with delight as Rainbow just stared at the target in awe. Pinkie happily bounced towards the door. “I better tell Bullseye that we hit our 4 targets... I don’t think I want to keep shooting like Fluttershy.” She said looking over at Fluttershy, who looked like a mad-mare, firing away at her paper figure. She had only hit targets, but fired enough bullets to have almost shredded the paper inside the targets. 2 clips had been emptied with casings and clips on the floor beside her, and Applejack who was also getting a little creeped out, decided to try and convince her to stop. Pinkie walked outside to go next door and find Bullseye, leaving Rainbow to simmer in light anger. Pinkie just seemed to always outshine her somehow at everything, and it was starting to annoy her. She loved Pinkie as her best friend, but still couldn’t help but feel annoyed whenever Pinkie did something better than her.

Bullseye had taken Rarity to the compartment next to the other girls which was separated by reinforced glass. He decided it might be good to get a few questions answered seeing as they were alone.

“So Rarity, why exactly did you 6 come to this dimension of Equestria? Like is there a worse war in yours and you’re trying to escape or something?” Bullseye asked her.

“Actually, Twilight learned a spell which brought us here. We all chose to see what this dimension was like. We didn’t intend on staying for long, and if you’d told me back then that I would be practicing shooting to go on a mission to Canterlot to save an alternate version of Spike... well, none of us expected any of this.” Rarity explained putting on her glasses, and sliding on her earmuffs. Bullseye nodded and did the same, and watched Rarity about to get up and begin shooting, but she stopped and turned around and took them back off.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked curious for answer herself.

“Uh sure.” he replied lifting his earmuffs off.

“What’s it like to live in a war zone at your age?” She asked curious as to how the war might affect someone younger like him. Bullseye had to pause for a bit, before answering.

“It’s been hard ever since Twilight died. My mother died when I was a colt, and I’ve had to grow up without her. When this war began, Twilight found me in one of the places Celestia was searching for survivors, she took out 22 attacking Lunar soldiers that were clearing the towns out to get prisoners, and they bought me here. I asked Twilight if she could teach me to shoot like her, and practiced for months and months. That was when the war felt like it might be easy to live with. Twilight filled in that space that my mother had left, and taught me everything she knew, but when she died... I lost hope. This war won’t end. So I have to learn to live with how much these ponies rely on me as the top soldier to fight for them. With Derpy as commander a little weight is lifted from my shoulders, but there’s still a lot there. So living in a war zone at my age, with the burdens I carry... it’s hard.” Bullseye explained. Rarity hadn’t asked for a life story, but she got it anyway.

She felt sorry for him, having so far only known the sad past of her sister and the other unicorns. Every story just seemed to get worse and worse. Her grim look showed Bullseye that she understood, and felt bad for him. Rarity didn’t know what else to say to reply to him, but he spoke up again before she could figure out what she could say.

“Others here have been through worse. You haven’t even heard Derpy’s story yet. She doesn’t tell anyone this but she never knew her parents. When I was talking to Celestia, she told me what Derpy had told her, and what Derpy had been told when she asked about her parents. When she was too little to remember them her mother died, and her father went into depression which resulted in suicide. She’s been growing up on her own in a pegasus city called Cloudsdale up until the war. She grew up hardened and rough which is one of the reasons Celestia asked her to train as one of her soldiers. And that mission... that she took the place I wanted on... after that I sometimes wonder how she goes on. Anyway, you can’t tell anyone I told you that. She doesn’t even know I know. Let’s get into shooting some targets now ok.” Bullseye said to get off the topic of the past. Rarity nodded and slipped on her ear muffs again, but while moving over to the bench to shoot, she couldn’t help but think about what Bullseye had told her, and it made her sad to see that war could cause so much bad in everypony’s life.

It had been about 10 minutes since they all started practicing, Pinkie and Rainbow had been taken to another room to practice hoof to hoof combat skills with a trainer, Applejack had borrowed Rainbow’s gun to practice with so she could actually get some work done, while Fluttershy had picked up Pinkie’s, which brought more joy to her in shooting because of the increase in power. Rarity had also found herself scoring very well targeted shots and was also practicing hoof to hoof combat. Bullseye finished up helping Applejack adjust her stance to shoot properly and not injure her shoulder further. He looked over to Fluttershy and to his shock she had picked up the .50 cal, and fired a shot. Applejack through her earmuffs recognised the noise it produced from when she had fired it and also looked over. She and Bullseye were absolutely dumbfounded. Fluttershy hadn’t even flinched or been bothered by the weapons force, and had shrugged any bother off and fired another shot. Applejack couldn’t figure it out at all. She was one of the toughest of the tough, but couldn’t fire the weapon without being thrown backwards, and here Fluttershy was, hardly any raw power in her and she was firing the gun like it was nothing. Even Bullseye couldn’t explain it, but he was more creeped out by the sinister looking faces and joy shooting the weapons seemed to bring her. He looked back to Applejack and spoke to her between Fluttershy’s shooting.

“I’ll be... back shortly... to take you girls to... the hoof to... hoof combat area.” He said. Again Applejack didn’t think it would be necessary and wanted to prove it.

“Ah may not have been able te fire the big gun, but ah definitely don’t need no fighting training. Ahm strong enough te handle mahself in a fight.” She said.

“After what happened with the hoof gun, I don’t think I should listen to you.” Bullseye told her. Applejack expected him to say this and needed to prove she didn’t need fighting training, she looked around and then it hit her.

“This here glass is bulletproof right?” she asked.

“To some extent.” Bullseye said. Applejack grinned, leaned forward lifting her back legs off the ground and balanced on her front ones, pulled in her back legs, and with massive force, gave a mighty buck which shattered and destroyed a large portion of the glass.

Bullseye didn’t think he would see anything like Fluttershy firing a .50 cal hoof gun, but even bullets had trouble breaking that glass. Applejack didn’t need to do anything else. She’d proven her true strength.

“How in Equestria did you do that?!” Bullseye asked.

“I’ve been bucking apple trees a long time now. These legs can break a lot of surfaces.” Applejack replied.

“Ok... I’ll let you skip the hoof to hoof training... I feel sorry for the sucker that’s gunna get that when they get on your bad side. I’ll also have to find someone to replace that now.” Bullseye said. Applejack smiled and nodded turning around to practice shooting.

Bullseye turned to go check on Twilight; he’d forgotten that he’d left her on her own for almost 15 minutes now. He left Fluttershy and Applejack and trotted over to the door to his private compartment, but when he opened it he sprinted inside horrified to find Twilight lying on the ground with dried blood all around her horn and on the ground.

“Twilight!” he yelled grabbing her and shaking her. “Twilight!” he continued yelling her name, but she wasn’t opening her eyes. He put her down as he noticed she was breathing, but he was still worried. What could have done that to her head? he tried shaking her a bit to wake her up, but it wouldn’t work. He lifted her over his shoulder and dragged her outside. Applejack noticed her instantly and ran over to see what was wrong. Fluttershy noticed Applejack leave, and when she saw why, became extremely worried and threw her hoof gun away flying over to Twilight at top speed.

“What’s wrong with Twilight?!” Applejack asked, before noticing the blood dried all around her horn.

“What happened?” Fluttershy also asked before she too noticed the blood.

“I don’t know, I found her like this. Help me take her to Celestia.” Bullseye said. Applejack quick as ever went around and picked up Twilight’s other leg and they ran out the door with Fluttershy close behind.

Passing On

Bullseye had to hurry up and get to Celestia. He couldn’t figure out what had happened to Twilight. He knew the princess would be overseeing mission preparation, and knew where to find her. He led the others through the base and found the room he was looking for. He burst inside with Applejack trying to keep up so she didn’t drop Twilight. Celestia was indeed in the room, studying what looked to be a map of Equestria. Fluttershy thought she must have been figuring out a secure track to get to Canterlot. The princess turned around to see them come in but didn’t get a chance to ask what they were doing because Bullseye was speaking already, and Celesta could tell it was serious from how distraught he sounded, and how worried the two girls looked.

“Princess! Something’s wrong with Twilight! She won’t wake up or move. She’s barely breathing! Do you know what’s wrong with her?” Bullseye said gasping for air from the run to her location.

Celestia quickly became worried herself and she ran over to Twilight as the other placed her down. Celestia looked at her and instantly noticed the dried mess of blood around her horn.

“What happened to her?” Celestia asked studying the cut areas on Twilights head.

“I don’t know Princess. I found her like this. I thought maybe you could find out using your magic.”

The princess nodded and studied Twilight further. She was breathing very lightly, and her breath was still notably decreasing. The princess lit up her horn and a blaze of magic surged from the tip of it to Twilight, surrounding her body with yellow glowing energy, and lifting her into the air. She closed her eyes to focus, and started talking as she focused more and more on the site of the injury.

“She wasn’t struck by anything; this injury was cause by magic. The spell wasn’t cast by her though. This is strange, I can’t find the source. It’s powerful... Very powerful. But what is it!” she asked herself aggressively focusing on Twilight’s horn to find the last spell or magic to affect it, but she couldn’t detect it. A bright yellow rope of energy made its way from Celestia’s horn looping itself around the already flowing energy, and surrounding Twilight’s whole head. Celestia focused on it further and discovered that the energy was indeed foreign. But even then she was focussing enough energy on it to detect if it was from their land or not. Instead of trying to pinpoint the source she tried to discover its location from where it was cast. Images flashed through her mind of Equestria, and then Canterlot Castle.

“It’s was cast from Canterlot castle.” The princess told the others.

“Could it have been Luna? She might have sensed her magic and tried to attack her.” Fluttershy said trying to make sense of the situation.

“Impossible. My magic prevents Luna from being able to use her magic to detect anything in this area. She can’t sense life, or magic because of me, so it couldn’t have been her.” Celestia explained.

“Princess there are no unicorns left here. Who else could it have been?” Bullseye asked.

Celestia thought for a short time before realising that it might have been one of the unicorns from Twilight’s own dimension.

“It may have been a unicorn from her dimension. But they would have had to be extremely powerful and focussed to cast a spell through the void that separates them. They obviously didn’t think first though... trying to link yourself with another from a different dimension would require enough power to completely fry the mind of any unicorn. If that’s what happened Twilight’s lucky she’s still alive. I can help her though. Just stand back.” Celestia said breaking her magical connection with Twilight. On the words the others back away to what they presumed was a safe distance. They watched on as Celestia lit up her horn with vibrant lights of energy, but instead of just the usual yellow glow she’d normally emit from her horn, she started to emit auras of red, and blue, and green, which all wrapped together and twisted like a liquorice swirl, connecting itself with Twilight’s horn. Twilight’s breathing started to rapidly increase and so did her heartbeat. Her pulse rode through the magical energy which travelled as a wave of colour into Celestia’s horn.

“It’s not quite powerful enough.” She said as she took in a deep breath and focused further. As the pulsing started to get faster, a bolt of electrical energy sparked from Celestia’s horn and started to grow. The pulse was becoming dangerously fast, but then before it could go out of control, Celestia surged the bolt into Twilight’s chest. The others jumped back in shock, they had no idea what the princess was doing, but it looked dangerous for Twilight. They didn’t dare interrupt though in case something was to go wrong. The princess suddenly broke the connection and the magical energy was all absorbed into Twilight’s body. The room darkened to its early stature lit only by the candles around Celestia’s desk. Twilight was slowly lowered to the ground by magic, but when she met with the ground and the magic faded. She became completely motionless and her breathing ceased. The others stared on, praying for a sign of response. They had no idea what the princess had done, but they all very quickly fell under the impression that it had failed.

The room was silent for several seconds. Princess Celestia didn’t make any movements at all, but stood watching Twilight’s motionless body.

“I... I was sure that... that it would have worked... I don’t... I don’t understand...” Celestia stuttered watching Twilight’s limp body.

Fluttershy walked over and looked at her friend. She put her ear right close to Twilights mouth and nose and tried to listen for breathing, but nothing was happening. She double checked for any vital signs, but still no results. Tears quickly started to well up in her eyes, and pouring out in almost seconds. She collapsed onto Twilight’s lifeless body and started balling out in uncontainable sadness. Applejack felt tears welling up in her own eyes too. She knew instantly that Fluttershy’s reaction could only mean one thing... Twilight was dead.

She walked over to Fluttershy and put her hoof on her shoulder, with tears dripping down her own face as well. She was trying to contain her grief, but she couldn’t, she looked down at Twilight and felt her heart start to throb in pain; how could she contain any sadness when she’d just lost one of her best friends.

“Twi... Twilight...” she started, but collapsed beside Fluttershy before she could finish. She laid her head on Twilights body and started to cry almost as much as Fluttershy, she tried to stutter the rest of her sentence, but had great difficulties in doing so. “Twi... Twilight... Y...ye ca... can’t be g.g... gone... Twilight...” she choked on her words and couldn’t talk anymore; her sadness had completely void her of speech.

Bullseye was struggling to hold his emotion. Twilight had been her teacher once, and been like a mother to him. To lose her once was hard enough, but to see her again, teach her himself, and then lose her again before even getting to talk to her properly... it was a very hard thing for him to deal with.

Princess Celestia wasn’t coping well either. She had so much going through her mind, like the fact that her spell didn’t work. It was a last ditch spell only to be used in extreme situations, but it was foolproof. It was supposed to exercise the vital organs, stop them, and then shock the subject with a surge of electricity that would reactivate them... it had worked every time. What were the other girls going to think when they saw their friend like this? What would her friends in her home dimension think when she never returned? Who was the one who tried to contact her and caused this? These questions and more were buzzing around in her head like a swarm of bees. She paced the floor left and right wondering what could have gone wrong.

“How do we... how do we tell the others Applejack?” Fluttershy said before bursting into more tears. Applejack couldn’t answer. She was too grief stricken. Suddenly Derpy walked into the room, looking for the princess.

“Princess Celestia. My team is prepped and ready to go. We’re just waiting on Bullseye to make his way down and we’ll depart.” She said when she noticed he was up here. But then she noticed everyone in the room was upset, and that Fluttershy and Applejack were both balling their eye’s out lying down on something in the middle of the room. Something purple.

“Umm what’s going on in here?” she asked curiously moving closer, but as she got closer and saw the horn on the body they were laying on, she suddenly realised that they were lying on Twilight. But she couldn’t tell why they were crying yet. She moved around them to get a closer look.

“Twi...Twilight?” She said before noticing that she wasn’t moving at all, nor breathing. Derpy suddenly became very worried and looked at Celestia.

“Princess? What’s wrong with her? Why isn’t she moving?” Derpy asked very concerned, but she was afraid that she might already know the answer.

“She... She’s gone Derpy. She's.... dead.” The princess said giving up on trying to think of a way to fix the problem. She’d lost all hope in being able to save Twilight; her most failsafe spell didn’t work. She wanted to give away her life force to save her, but that kind of magic was impossible when the subject was in an unstable condition, or beyond the point of being healable.

Derpy’s look descended into pure horror. How could Twilight be dead?!

“Wha... What?! How?! What happened? How can she be dead?!” Derpy stammered desperately confused.

She looked at Twilight and all the dried blood around her horn. She felt tears also start to well in her eyes. She couldn’t figure out how someone who was like Twilight could just die. She didn’t even know her that long yet, but in the short time she had been kind and supportive. And now she couldn’t talk to her ever again. She didn’t know what to say. She just kept trying to stutter out a new sentence but no words could take form. The whole group just stayed where they were; unwilling to move and unable to control their emotion. They forgot about the mission, they blocked out everything and rejected the things that didn’t matter. They just sat and mourned their lost friend.

The Price of Life

Twilight felt as though she was floating. Her eyes were stuck shut, and she couldn’t open them, even when she tried to bring her hooves to them, but she couldn’t move her arms. She didn’t know if she was dreaming or not, but the pain she was experiencing before had completely faded, almost as if she’d completely forgotten about it. She tried to use a spell to light up the place around her in an effort to see if it would help her open her eyes, but she couldn’t control her magic at all, she couldn’t even conjure a spark. She tried to call out to her friends for help, but she found she couldn’t speak either. She felt completely paralysed, through her body. All she could do was think.

She tried thinking about what had happened before hand, but could just barely remember that she was rolling around in pain, bleeding all around her horn, which had started to also break apart. Someone had tried to contact her... Celestia, and someone else... Spike. They had tried to contact her from their dimension. So why had it caused her that much pain? She started hearing voices around her. Was that... Bullseye? Why was he yelling her name?  She suddenly felt herself being shaken around, but she didn’t know why; nothing was touching her. She was just floating completely immobilised and blinded. She felt her body sway with each shake, but she still gained no control of her limbs, and had no way of speaking back to her panicky friend. She felt herself stopped being shaken for a minute, but it started again, continuing for at least a minute or so, before her body felt as though it was swept up and thrown over something. She still had no control over herself and couldn’t tell what was happening. Was she dreaming? Was she even asleep... or unconscious?

Suddenly she heard another voice... Applejack! And Fluttershy! They were both there. But she couldn’t open her eyes to see them; she couldn’t move to feel if they were there; she couldn’t speak to ask them what was happening. She was completely helpless. She had enough trouble trying to make out all their words; not that there were many words exchanged by the two, Bullseye had said the most, but she could only hear muffled voices.  She felt herself get swept up on the other side of her body, leaving her legs in the air while her torso dipped behind her. She couldn’t feel anything touching her, but she accepted that they must have been carrying her.

It was about 5 minutes of the same feeling, while all Twilight could do was wonder what was going on, and why this was all happening the way it was. It felt as though they were carrying her around for hours, but that may have just been boredom due to her lack of activity, but as time progressed the feeling in her body slowly started to return to her though; warmth spreading through the bottom of her hooves, and slowly rising through her legs. She could move her hooves now... and her mid legs... she felt herself gain full control of her legs. The warmth started to spread through all of her body in one sudden flush, returning feeling of movement and normality to the rest of her body. She started to hover from her last position moving around freely but unable to stop from hovering. She could still hear the voices and heavy panting of her distressed friends as she kept rising. Suddenly she could see the darkness in front of her, lighting up into blue through her eyelids.   The warmth started to spread through her neck and slowly it overtook the rest of her face. She could speak again, she gasped out as if she’d been suffocating.

Finally the feeling spread to her eyes and as she wanted to since this whole mess started, she opened her eyes. But instead of the base, Applejack, Fluttershy, and Bullseye, there was a large wall of electric blue fire. It rose infinitely and extended out both left and right, also infinitely. It blazed on with spectacular colour, with no apparent changes. Twilight felt a burning shadow behind her though. She turned around to see another large wall extending to the same infinite dimensions of the other, but burning with an inferno of magnificent red. Around her though in-between the both of these was on her right side, a small fading light  surrounded by utter blackness, but to her left, a large shining wall of magenta and purple lights, with bubbles exploding off it like fireworks of plasma. Twilight was very confused, while all the walls seemed to have the sound hissing noise of strong wind and running water, she could still hear the voices of her friends, but there was another voice now... It was Celestia. But even with all her feeling restored, every word she heard was still muffled. She didn’t understand where they were or why she couldn’t hear them properly.

“Hello Twilight Sparkle” echoed a mysterious voice from out of nowhere. Twilight looked around. That voice wasn’t muffled like the others. It was coming from nearby, but Twilight couldn’t pinpoint the direction.

“Over here” said the voice again. Twilight looked at the blue wall; the voice had come specifically from there. She watched wondering if it was the wall that had spoken, as ridiculous as the thought sounded to herself, but jumped back in shock as a large ripple effect began from the bottom of the wall outwards right in front of her. It opened up from the exact same location and spread to reveal an impossibly bright light. Twilight didn’t feel the need to look away though. It wasn’t causing her eyes any pain or discomfort. Out of the brightness, lines and waves of colour emerged and it closed up again returning to the original level of light. The colours zipped and flew around her creating trails of exuberant glow behind them. They all met each other in front of Twilight and as they connected the form of a stallion took shape. It wasn’t a normal stallion though. It seemed completely made of vibrant, glowing colours, but was almost completely hollow. Twilight could see everything behind the stallion straight through him; he didn’t even have a face. Its voice didn’t seem normal either. It sounded like an adult stallion, but a bit fazed, or slightly robotic, but still was easily understandable

“Who... Who are you? What are you?” Twilight asked, backing away slightly confused by magical body of colours before her.

“Fear not Twilight Sparkle. I wish only to help you and offer you guidance. I’m certain this is all very confusing to you. My name is Aura Portarius. I watch the gateways you see before you.” The figure explained.

Twilight was happy to find that she might get some answers at last, but had no idea what she wanted to say first.

“Ummm, ok uh, Aura? What’s happening right now? Where are my friends? How did I get here? And what do you mean by Gate Ways?” she said, wondering if she should have left a space for answers between each question. She watched the colourful figure but couldn’t tell what it was thinking; It was a bit hard to judge without seeing any expression. Aura had expected a large amount of questions though and was more than happy to answer them.

“What’s happening is you are dying Twilight. The Princess Celestia of your dimension in an effort to find you tried to telepathically connect to you to locate you, but in the amount of power she forced into the spell to break the wall between the two dimensions, all of the negative energy that she had broken and collected while breaking that wall, built up and piled itself into your head, which is a wonder it didn’t kill you instantly; It’s quite a lot for one pony to retain; it almost destroyed your horn. You aren’t dead yet, but you are on the brink and are quite close to your last breaths. Your friends are fine, some of them are with you now, others will learn of your passing soon enough. You can hear them right now can’t you?” Aura asked after explaining the entire situation to her.

“Yes, but I can’t understand them...” Twilight said.

“That is because while your body is dying, your spirit is moving on, but until you are fully deceased, you will hear their last words to you. You are here because when you are ready to move on, I can grant you passage to your future in paradise. You can call it an afterlife if you prefer.” Aura said, acknowledging the blue wall he had emerged from before.

Twilight had more questions, but she couldn’t help but think about her friends and the big picture in this situation. Her death would refrain her from seeing them ever again. Her emotions started to catch up with her, and she found that even in a non sentient form, she could still cry, but her tears just fizzled and sparkled into tiny colourful explosions as they hit the invisible ground.

“I’m sorry if the information I’m giving you is hard to hear. I have no feeling of negative emotions, so I cannot determine the degree to which my statements will affect you.”

Twilight sniffled and choked back her tears momentarily, “It’s alright, but am I never going to see my friends again?” Twilight asked.

“On the contrary, they are waiting for you right now.  Time has no restrictions in the afterlife, you are technically there right now, and when you enter, you will stay there permanently, while your friends on the other hand, will join you properly when their time has also passed. However you wont be entering the gateway behind me. This one is for the beings of this dimension. For you to continue you must pass through that gateway first.” Aura said turning his head to the purple, rippling, bubbling wall. “That is the wall that separates your dimensions, you passed through it with your friends which caused the ripple effect that you can see right now. When Celestia broke through the barrier however she shattered many portions of it due to her not passing through it when she had opened it. The Bubbling you can see is the wall trying to repair itself.”

“So what is that wall over there?” Twilight asked looking behind her at the large wall of fire.

“That is a place known as Tartarus. It is a prison for the creatures who dedicate their life to evil and chaos.” Aura explained.

“But I’ve been to Tartarus, I returned Cerberus there when he escaped.” Twilight said, thinking back to the desolate cave entrance, with only a massive body of water inside it.

You’ve been to the mortal entrance of Tartarus. The creatures that are cast into there by magic are forced into the waters by Cerberus, which brings them here, he is no guard dog; No one escapes Tartarus.” Aura explained.

Twilight heard all the mumbled talking of her friends go quiet. Celestia had said something and all the sound had ceased. She looked over to her right at the spot the light was; it was so small now.

“What is that light Aura?” She asked wondering what purpose it served.

“That is your life force. It’s faded to a point that it cannot be recovered from.  But...” Aura was stopped by a loud booming noise that disturbed and rippled the both of the gateways, as the light grew, and split in the middle. It stopped growing and the light slowly started to blacken. But the darkness was quickly light up by a flurry of bright red, blue and green lines swirling in all direction flooded out of the hole and created a sphere in the air. Twilight jumped back in fright, wondering if that was supposed to happen, but Aura just stood and watched, the only movement of colour blazing off of him.

“Well... This I did not expect at all. Twilight Sparkle, it seems I was mistaken. You can indeed be saved, I had almost forgotten of magic like this.”

“Wait, what do you mean? Does this mean I can go back?” Twilight asked with a smile growing on her face.

“Yes Twilight, you can go back. But if that is your choice, I must warn you of the price it will cost you.” Aura started catching Twilight’s attention. She was watching the colourful anomaly very inquisitively, but she knew she may not like what he was about to say.

“You can be saved at any time now. Your body is still in an ample condition, before I believed it impossible for you to be saved, but your will is far stronger than I thought. This is very dark powerful magic, one that I never believed Celestia would use again.”

“Again? You’ve seen this before?” Twilight asked looking surprised.

“3 times. But the magic behaved differently, it swept them up in a wave and pulled them away from me. You seem to have a choice here. This is good, I will have the time to explain the coincidence to you.”

“But what if I run out of time? The light around it is fading. And the sphere won’t have anywhere to take me if it fades.” Twilight said thinking about how it had to enter through her to get here.

“You don’t understand this magic Twilight. No spell can resurrect the dead. But a spell cast on the living can feign, and prolong death for quite some time.” Aura explained redirecting her attention to the sphere. A surge of electricity found its way through the hole and lit up the room in spectacular electric blue light. As the electricity spread, it started to bend and direct itself into the orb, which absorbed it all, and started to burn brightly. It started to shudder and extend to tiny lengths, dropping puddles of bubbling plasma to the ground. Shortly after it absorbed the electricity, the light that had once surrounded the gateway, faded completely, leaving just the colourful, electrified orb, bubbling in its place. Twilight knew that her life force had fade completely, and could now be technically classified dead.

“Is it currently your wish to return among the living Twilight Sparkle?”

“Yes. I’ll do anything to get back to my friends.” She replied.

“You may want to reconsider...” Aura informed her before imploding into a ball of light, and exploding around the room, creating a gust of particles and wind as the ball expanded past Twilight, distressing her mane and tail. Images of her friends flashed in front of her.

“If you wish to return to the others you may still do so, but the cost will be one of their lives.” Aura’s voice explained ringing all around Twilight.

“No! That’s not fair! They shouldn’t have to die for me to live!” Twilight yelled as images of specifically Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Rarity were displayed to her.

“Twilight Sparkle, only one of them will die if you return, I do not know which, or when, and I do not wish to take them, but for a life to be returned another must take its place. The choice will be a demonstration of your true character. That is not all though. If you are to stay and continue to your afterlife, the girls will live, but must spend the rest of their lives trapped in the alternate dimension, surrounded by war that could threaten to end their lives at any time. So the risk of losing one of them is just as strong wether you stay or leave.” Aura explained, before imploding the light he had become into itself and dropping to the ground, where he rose in his normal colourful form. He wasn’t finished talking, but he allowed time for Twilight to assess the situation and think about the decision she was going to make.

“I... I don’t know. What if I go back and die again anyway? They’ll still be trapped.” Twilight pointed out.

“I believed that would be running through your mind, but there is more I must tell you that may make the choice easier to make.  If you return, you will not die in the alternate dimension, I cannot confirm whether you complete your goals but you will not be killed. If you return will you attempt to go to Canterlot to save Spike?” Aura asked.

“Yes.” Twilight said, already having made up her mind that she still wanted to help save Spike.

“I cannot guarantee you will succeed, but you will not die. You will be able to return yourself and 4 of your friends back to your own dimension, but one will die here. But if you stay, they will never see their loved ones again, nor be able to live their everyday lives.” Aura knew there was more he could say to explain, but Twilight understood.

“So no matter what I do... there will be negative repercussions. If I stay my friends lose their lives. If I go back 1 loses their life, while the rest of ours get theirs back... Oh but... No I can’t let that happen! If I go back I’ll make sure none of them die. I’ll stop it from happening somehow!” Twilight said trying to assure herself that if she returned her friends would be safe.

“I’m sorry Twilight, but that would be impossible. You bring one back and expect to not lose someone in their place.”

Twilight didn’t listen though. She had to go back, it was her only option. She contemplated that it would be greedy of her to move on to paradise while her friends were left to suffer in a war zone, but she was confident that if she made sure she kept her friends safe, she could save whichever one was supposed to die.

“I’ve made up my mind. I’m going back.” Twilight said trotting next to the bubbling ball of light.

“Then I won’t see you again for a long time Twilight Sparkle, but I will be seeing a friend of yours very soon. Good luck on your mission Twilight.” Aura told her fading into particles which spread out in all different directions.

Twilight watched as the walls started to shrink inwards and fade away, and then turned around to face the sphere in front of her. She slowly walked into it and felt it stick to her and pull her further in.

“I will save my friends. All of them!” She said looking back one last time. “You’ll see.”

Last Moments of Peace

Twilight’s eyes momentarily felt like they were glued shut. She felt cold all over, and had wet patches all over her chest, along with a heavy feeling as if something was resting on her. She started hear the faint sound of Fluttershy’s voice, which became more identifiable as mixed crying and choking, while Applejack’s voice started to also fill her ears with quieter, but just as intense crying. She felt limp and unable to move momentarily, and her horn was starting to sting again. She could easily feel the cuts all around her head, but they weren’t quite as deep as she thought they were. She started to feel warm again, and her vital systems were starting to resume their normal pace of activity. She wondered why her friends couldn’t feel the change; they must be so distressed from losing her that they weren’t paying attention. She found it hard to open her eyes more than a couple of millimetres but that was enough to see what was in front of her. Derpy was pacing in and out of her line of sight, even though her vision was blurry, but she could identify her voice and colours.

She felt a bit more relaxed knowing her friends were ok, but she still wished she could see them and tell them they could stop crying, and give them a hug until they started smiling again. But she couldn’t. She knew she was alive but she didn’t understand why she couldn’t move. She hated the feeling of being helpless while others were worrying about her. She wondered if the spell brought her back, but restricted movement, or if it hadn’t worked properly. She wondered if she’d even be able to say anything to anypony again.

Before she could try to lift her head to see if the other 6 were in the room, her horn started to buzz, and emit a light humming noise, but she still couldn’t move. Fluttershy was crying too hard to hear it, but Applejack’s ears perked up, hearing something odd in the mix of heavy interrupted breaths and cries. The buzzing was getting louder and Twilight felt the pain in her head start to retreat into her horn. She felt the cuts literally start to seal themselves. Derpy stopped pacing when she too heard the buzzing noise. She looked down at Twilight’s horn, and for a split second, she saw a green spark, and could see the cuts on her head starting to seal. She wiped her eyes and wondered if her emotions really were getting the better of her. But as she focused closer on Twilight’s horn she noticed a couple more sparks. Blue, red, yellow, green, magenta, a flurry of sparks started to zip and whir in all directions from her horn fading just inches from leaving it. A light started to form on the tip of her horn and expand. Derpy lit up as her emotions made a massive turn, as she realised the spell was working. Twilight was coming back.

“Princess! Look at her horn! The spell’s working!” Derpy yelled, getting Celestia’s attention, along with everypony else including Fluttershy.

The light started to grow in size, and Twilight’s eyes suddenly snapped open. She felt wonderful, the pain was gone, she could freely move her limbs, and she could breathe clearly. She used her magic to pull the light back into her horn which spread through her head, making her eyes glow with a vibrant bright light that filled up the room. She closed her eyes and the room went darker, but instead of just the faint glow of Celestia’s light, the one Twilight had conjured was glowing through her head with a faint purple aura, and the light started to descend down her neck and rested in her chest. It faded to the point where Twilight resumed her normal state. She jumped up onto her hooves, regaining her balance quite quickly, startling the others. Everyone was lost in a confusing mess of emotions. Fluttershy was the most shocked. She’d been absolutely devastated beforehand, but all of a sudden her friend was back, yet she still found it hard to adjust her state to happiness, just flushing down the feeling of joy every time it tried to rise.

Applejack found it almost as difficult but really didn’t like the feeling. She wanted to just leap over to Twilight, but didn’t know if she was able to just yet. Seeing her die really took a toll on her state of mind.

“Twilight! You’re... You’re ok!” Derpy said walking forward towards her. “You are ok right?” she asked stopping in front of her.

Twilight stayed silent for a couple of seconds thinking, trying to sense for any pain or irregularities in her body, but there were none. She was completely healed.

“I’m better than fine” Twilight told her with a smile.

On hearing this Derpy didn’t hesitate for even a second to spring up and hug Twilight. Twilight was a bit taken by surprise, and nearly got tackled over, but managed her balance and laid her front right leg around Derpy to return the embrace. It was a slightly tight hug, and Derpy also had watery eyes. She knew she’d befriended this version of Derpy quickly, but she didn’t realise Derpy felt this close to her already. She suddenly felt another pair pony join in the hug leaning on the two of them and resting her head on Twilight’s shoulder. She could feel from the length of the hair spanning down around her flank, and excessively wet dripping eyes making the fur around her neck moist, that it was Fluttershy. She slipped her left foreleg out from between her and Fluttershy and wrapped her in the hug as well.

“It’s ok Fluttershy. I’m Fine.” Twilight said doing her best to reassure her distraught friend.

Fluttershy barely managed to choke out a response, and stuttered a lot trying to make sense of everything.

“But... H-h-how? You w-were d-dea...” Fluttershy cut off and cried harder, pulling Twilight in tighter while Derpy moved away to give Twilight a little free space. Twilight popped both her forelegs around Fluttershy and held her, stroking her mane to calm her down. She figured out a way to relax Fluttershy in the past, if she was afraid or nervous about something, was to just stay silent and make her feel comfortable. It wasn’t very effective though. Trying to help Fluttershy cope with seeing her die was a far higher magnitude than trying to convince her that she needn’t fear something small or troublesome. She just sat and supported herself on her hind legs.

After about  minutes of not shifting at all Fluttershy bought herself to inch back and pull away from Twilight. Twilight left her hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder as she backed away, and could barely see the tiniest hint of a grin forming on the corner of her mouth.

“Don’t you ever p-put me through s-something like t-t-that again Twilight. You’ve almost died enough t-times today. Next time I’m afraid it m-might not be an almost situation.” Fluttershy said to Twilight maintaining a cleaner voice through the mucus and salty tears clogging her sinuses.  She wiped her face and moved back to give Twilight some space. Applejack didn’t feel the urge to assault Twilight with all of her emotion, but she felt it would have been rude to say nothing. She walked up and rubbed Twilight’s back.

“Thank goodness you’re ok Twi. I don’t know what we would’ve done if you had...” Applejack trailed off and grimaced at the word, not wanting to use it. Twilight had no intention of letting her friend sit in a confusing mess of negative feelings. She wanted Applejack to feel better, but all she could think to do was to pull her into a hug as well, so she did. Applejack was a bit taken by surprise, she thought Twilight would like the space, but apparently to her it didn’t matter.

After a short time and mostly silence, Applejack also broke away and backed up, but now she looked like she was fighting of her frown with a smile; just as Twilight had intended.

“I don’t know what you did Princess, but thank you. I thought I might never see any of you again. If you had any idea what I saw...” Twilight said breaking off. She didn’t quite think telling them about what happened after she had died would be a good idea. They might disagree with all the decisions she made. “Thank you Princess. What did you do anyway? I’ve never felt so, restored.” Twilight thought there might have been a better way to say how good she felt at the moment, but that would do for now. The princess had been silent the entire time. She had been so confused, emotionally, mentally and physically. Her spell hadn’t worked, but then it had to a magnitude far greater than she had anticipated, and the fact that her best soldier, and close friend, even if she wasn’t the same one, had almost been taken from her a second time, it almost emotionally drained her, even though she had great difficulty in displaying it.

“Twilight, I... I thought the spell hadn’t worked. I thought you were gone.” Celestia said working forward.

“The effects were just a little delayed obviously.” Twilight lied trying to assure the princess nothing was wrong with her magic, but she felt maybe she should have told her that there was sometimes a choice in allowing the spell to work.

“The spell worked better than expected too. It’s dark magic that I prefer to not use unless it’s absolutely necessary. It’s only meant to revive one close for death and heal the most brutal of injuries, but for you it seems to have cleared up everything.”

“Princess, a spell like that sounds like it would require a tonne of effort. Aren’t you in pain?” Twilight asked starting to reconsider this dimension’s Celestia’s magical talent.

“No Twilight, you see this magic affects my magical reserves. Instead of agony I am unable to cast any more spells for a period of up to 24 hours.” Celestia explained.

Twilight didn’t know how respond. She knew she couldn’t say she shouldn’t have, or everypony in the room would scold her to think it. She kept thinking, but words didn’t seem to fit the piece right now. Instead she just grinned and expressed her gratitude.

“Thankyou Princess. You have no idea how much it means.” Twilight told her.

Celestia gave her a small hug.

“It’s no trouble Twilight.” Celestia assured her.

Celestia stepped back, and when Twilight thought everypony was done one more pony stepped forwards. She turned around to see Bullseye step forward and readied herself for one more hug. Just as she had expected, he put one foreleg around her and she did the same. Twilight could tell his feelings towards this dimension’s Twilight were more than mother and son, but kept quiet for him, and to avoid letting him realise that she knew.

“Thank goodness you’re ok. I don’t know how I’d cope with losing you twice. I know it’s already been said, but after what the other Twilight did to help me... You’re just like her in so many ways.” Twilight backed up as he let go and backed up himself.

“I’m sorry you all got so worried... again.” She added looking at Fluttershy and Applejack. “Where are the others though?” Twilight asked realising that she still hadn’t seen Pinkie, Rarity, or Rainbow.

Bullseye answered her being the one who had taken the girls to the combat training area.

“They’re in the hoof to hoof combat training area, but I may as well go bring them back. Obviously if you’re not going on the mission they won’t be either.” He said making the assumption that she was not going to go to Canterlot after what had just happened. But Twilight had other plans on her mind.

“Oh I’m still going on the mission.” Twilight told him. Everypony in the room just looked at her stunned and yelled “WHAT!” She had expected a negative reaction but Twilight didn’t think they’d be that against it.

“You can’t be serious if you think I’m going to let you go on the mission after that Twilight. There are too many risks.” Celestia told her.

“Or us! Yer crazy if ye think we’re lettin you go to Canterlot Twilight! If ye don’t come back ah won’t be able te live with myself personally, and ah know the other’s will be devastated.” Applejack told her.

Twilight was about to tell them that even if she went on the mission she would be fine, but how could she back it up. How could she explain to them what had happened to her, and expect them to believe it.

“I have to go on the mission guys. Otherwise we wasted all the time practicing for it.”

“Twilight, it was hardly near 40 minutes, what if... whatever happened to you happens again?” Fluttershy asked trying to reason with Twilight.

“That was the princess trying to mentally contact me from our dimension.” She started, making Applejack, Fluttershy look at her confused.

“What happened was she put so much push behind the spell that she broke the rift between this dimension and ours, and when she connected with me, all of the power that it took piled into my head, along with the broken energy from the rift. It should have killed me instantly. But it won’t happen again; Aura told me I’d be fine.” Twilight said, but not realising she had just mentioned Aura.

All at once the confused trio asked a question concerning what they found most odd about what Twilight had just said.

“Who’s Aura?” Applejack asked.

“Twilight, what are you talking about?” Derpy asked.

“How do you know it won’t happen again?” Fluttershy asked.

“Oh it’s a long story... basically when I died; someone I met told me that if I went back I would be ok.” Twilight finished there instead of telling them the rest of what she’d been told. She had no intention of worrying her friends with something that she was going to prevent.

“Twilight you know how farfetched your story sounds right? What if you were just dreaming before you died.” Bullseye said trying to convince Twilight that she was making a bad decision.

Twilight was desperate now. No one believed her and had no intention of supporting her through this decision; it was a feeling she hated and knew too well.

“I wasn’t dreaming! I know it’s hard to believe, but you have to trust me, I’ll be fine. I promise you!” Twilight exclaimed louder than she needed to, but determined to get her point across one way or another. Everypony kept looking at her confused, only Pinkie had ever seen her break a promise, and that was towards Spike. But because neither of them were there she had to hope that they would trust her.

Fluttershy felt the most confused of the lot, but she knew she could always trust Twilight.

“Do you Pinkie Promise?” She said grinning to Twilight.

“Cross my heart, hope to fly, Stick a cupcake in my eye.” Twilight said. While Bullseye, Derpy, and Celestia were all confused by what Twilight had just said, they took Fluttershy’s and Applejack’s reactions as assurance that Twilight meant it. Suddenly the door opened though, and as if on cue the pink party pony who had created the special promise hopped inside the room.

“Did I hear my name?” Pinkie asked joyfully, completely oblivious to the situation at hand.

The three girls just smiled and giggled.

“Don’t worry about it Pinkie.” Twilight said giggling.

Rainbow Dash and Rarity followed through the door along with an unidentified stallion with a light brown coat, chocolate mane, and an hour glass for a cutie mark.

“Commander Derpy. The team is ready to go. Are the 6 extra recruits coming or not?” He asked.

Derpy looked over at Twilight unsure about the decision at hand, but Twilight’s nodding made up her mind for her.

“Yes private Whooves. Report to the departure centre at the back of the base with the team, I’ll bring the other 6 up shortly.” Derpy responded.

“Yes commander.” The stallion said as he galloped off in the direction he had originally come.

“I should go join them,” Bullseye said trotting towards the door.

“Wait just a minute!” Celestia finally managed to burst out. “Do I not get a say in anything anymore?”

“Princess we fulfilled your requirements. Our accuracy with firearms was spot on. We hardly missed any shots.” Twilight informed her. “Tell her Bullseye.” She said looking at the stallion pleadingly.

“It’s true princess. I’ve never seen such fierce accuracy from beginners before, and Fluttershy’s skill is absolutely maniacal. Getting in front of her is suicide.” He remarked praising Fluttershy’s amazing skill she demonstrated with a .50 cal, but also still expressing how weird it was to see her performance. Fluttershy only blushed and gave a week squeak.

Celestia stood thinking for a few seconds trying to figure out which decision was the right one. But she knew she would never hear the end of it if she denied Twilight a chance after doing exactly what she wanted.

“Ok. You’re cleared for the mission then girls. But you all better come back!” She instructed the lot making herself as clear as possible. Twilight thought about what Aura had told her, and gulped down her worries, dismissing the fear of losing one of her friends. She wasn’t going to let it happen.

“Well then Bullseye, join the troops, while I go retrieve weapons for the girls.” Derpy said looking at the soldier.

“Yes commander!” he said content and determined to complete the task ahead. As he left the room Derpy turned to face the girls.

“You girls, follow me. We have one more trip to make before the mission starts.” She said walking towards the door, with all 6 girls starting to move after her. Fluttershy, momentarily waited giving Twilight a small rub on the back with her right hoof before making her way after the others. Twilight smiled and stood up moving after them. She turned around and looked at the Princess, who had gone back over to her desk to send her map to the team, but the princess had momentarily forgotten that she’d used up her magical reserves. Twilight picked it up with her magic and brought it to herself, packaging it all neatly together.

“I’ll take it to for you princess.” Twilight offered.

“Thankyou Twilight. Please be safe.” The princess told her one last time.

“I will. Thankyou Princess.” She said making her farewell, and exiting the room for the last time, with nothing but a look of pure determination across her face.

She ran up and caught up to the others, and they wondered about through the many tunnels of the base. They arrived at a room close to the top of the base. Twilight could only tell because of the faint dying plant life amongst corners of the room and tiny cracks in the edges of the ceiling. Derpy pressed her hoof to a misshapen brick sitting on the wall of stone in front of them. Suddenly a sound of clinking metal came from behind a large portion of one of the bigger rocks, which pulled backwards revealing another room.

“Girls, welcome to the armoury.” Derpy said leading them inside. They looked around the room in awe. Weapons of different shapes and sizes were everywhere. Some of them look liked regular hoof guns, and were all categorized appropriate to their size, and caliber, which captivated Rarity’s attention.

“Now I want to know which weapons you’re all comfortable with before I find appropriate attachments.” Derpy said moving over to Fluttershy first, intent on talking to each of them individually.

“So I suppose you might go for a .28 maybe?” she said, remarking on Fluttershy’s physique, but Fluttershy wasn’t offended. Instead she seized this as an opportunity shock Derpy.

“Actually I’d like a .50 please, if you don’t mind that is.” Fluttershy said faking her usual shy mood to add to the comedy she was getting from Derpy’s reaction. It wasn’t much apart from a mentally affected face and struggled stutter.

‘This is all just getting weirder!’ she thought going over and retrieving a .50 from the low level bench, which obviously housed the smallest available .50 cal hoof gun. She gave it to Fluttershy who slipped it on, studying the visible differences between it and the last one she wore.

“What are all these little empty sockets and bars for?” Fluttershy asked.

“Those are for the weapon’s attachments.” Derpy said moving onto Applejack, leaving Fluttershy confused thinking about what she meant by attachments.

“So will it be a .50 cal for you too?” she asked, confident that Applejack would be more than sturdy enough to handle the force of one.

“NO! No, hehe, ahl be fine with a 30 please.” Applejack said.

Derpy became even more visually confused. She didn’t understand how someone frail like Fluttershy would ask for a gun with the force of a cannon, while a strong mare like Applejack was asking for a regular shooter. Still she knew questioning it would lead to further confusion and instead decided to just fulfil the request. She retrieved a .30 from a higher section of the wall that she believed would fit Applejack.

She moved on to Rarity.

“So, what size would you like?” Derpy asked her.

“I’ll just get a .30 please. What about the rest of you?” Rarity asked the others trying to speed things along.

The rest of them nodded approvingly. Derpy sighed and turned to the wall of .30’s grabbing 4 one by one, and sliding them over to each of the girls, in the sizes she believed were appropriate. Derpy was a very good judge of size and had managed to suit them up with nicely fitting hoof guns.

“Ok before I tech you all up with weapon attachments, I need to get you all clip belts. She trotted over to the wall opposite the one covered in weapons and grabbed several black small belts with up to 4 round holders, sized for different ammo magazines. Derpy grabbed 4 for each of the 6 mares, making sure that they were suited to their respective weapons. She helped each of the girls one attach the belts to their three spare legs, two on their free foreleg, and one for each hind leg for backup ammo. She trotted back to the weapon wall, and opened some black rectangle chests below the categories the girls had received weapons from.

“Alright, I’m going to go to the tech closet and grab a few attachments for your guns. Can you each fill up your ammo belts with mags from the appropriate chests? I’ll be right back.” Derpy said wondering over to a large closet in the corner of the room. The girls each moved up to their respective ammo banks and started loading full mags into their belts, sliding them into comfortable positions.

“These clips are so big!” Fluttershy said comparing hers to the ones the other girls were putting into their belts. Fluttershy had less ammo spots because of her clip sizes and had to settle for 3 on each clip, but she was ok with it considering each clip had around 6 .50 cal bullets in it.

Derpy returned holding a container in her mouth filled with various little metal devices, and dropped them on the ground opening it.

“Right. You each have up to date weaponry which will be able to house more attachments than the older models. I’ve got red dot sight-bars, which are for added precision. The models you practiced with should have had them.” Derpy said picking the small rectangle bars up one by one and passing it to each of the girls. “Just slide them into the bars on top of the front body until they click and lock in. The next attachments I have are muters, they’re small capsules you screw onto the barrel of the gun which negate most of the noise from a shot, but for a .50 cal, it’ll still be relatively loud.” she said looking at Fluttershy. She pulled out 6 one by one all at the appropriate barrel sizes and rolled them to each of the girls who screwed them onto the barrels of their weapons.

“I have two more attachments for each of you. One is standard, and one was one of my original ideas that the engineers modified into newer models.” Derpy said reaching her mouth into the container and pulling out some big cylindrical capsules and dropping them on the ground.

“Ok so these are the standard,” she said pointing at the bulky metal device. It looked like a long cylinder that folded into three, in the same fashion as the gun on the lower third fold was a blunt round end, with a round metal spring loaded handle that was high enough to put their hoof around. There was a split in each section that was made for the handle to travel up and down the device. The girls after a short look could tell this was obviously for launching something. “Recently our engineers figured out a way to safely contain volatile and explosive liquids in capsules called bombs. They’ve been tweaking them to different sizes but their biggest advancement was making them mobile. Then they went further and made special launchers,” she continued pointing her hoof at the contraptions on the ground, “which we use to launch them much farther than we can throw them. But here’s where the choice comes in. You can either have one of these, or you can have my personal favourite attachment...” Derpy said stopping and pulling out a long object in a cloth. Derpy pulled the cloth up and revealed a few long, slender, shining blades. “These babies will be a great asset in a physical combat situation. They clip into the same place a bomb launcher normally would and extend around your shoulder. Once you click your weapon into place it releases and clicks into the front, extending a good 20 centimetres over your hoof; perfect for impaling anyone on it if they get in your way. So what’ll it be?” Derpy asked.

Every pony was admiring their new upgraded tricked out weapons. Twilight had been the only one to pick a blade for her hoof gun. Applejack, and Rainbow had chosen to have the bomb launchers, which surprisingly weighed very little... even the actual bombs which were strapped around their waist were heavier. Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Rarity had all chosen to just stick to the muters, and sights.

“Right, now that you girls have your guns it’s time to get going. Are you all certain you’re up to this? There is no going back from this point!” Derpy said one last time to make sure they were ready.  The girls all gave approving nods. Derpy grinned and trotted over to the closet she’d been at when she collected the container of attachments. She reached inside a small chest inside of it and when the girls finally saw what she was grabbing she popped her right arm out with a very fine looking .50 cal hoof gun, polished to an almost mirror equivalency. It had a special custom sight attachment, with a blue cross instead of red dot, a muter already on the barrel, and a very violently sharp looking blade extending from its mid body to her shoulder.  Twilight noticed a small chamber on the side of the body as well, which had a long sharp rod emerging from the front and stopping next to the top of her hoof.

“Derpy what’s the little tube on the side?” Twilight asked wondering what the little cylinder held.

“That’s a poison Twilight. It paralyses the body and slowly kills the subject injected with it, but unfortunately it only has two uses before it runs empty.

“It certainly is an elegant weapon.” Rarity proclaimed admiring it’s sleekness and shine.

“Thanks. Now are we all ready to...” Derpy trailed off. She looked over and started watching Pinkie who looked as though she was dancing around on the spot, but it was actually only her tail.

“My tail! Girls my tail! Twitchy twitch ‘a’ twitch! Something’s gunna fall!” Pinkie worriedly told the others. Derpy was bewildered though; whatever Pinkie had just said she was completely oblivious to it.

“What’s she talking about?” Derpy asked Twilight. But Twilight didn’t answer straight away. She knew that if they were in a huge underground base, and something was going to fall. It couldn’t be good.

“Oh no... We have to get out of here now!” Twilight said to Derpy. She was still a little dumbfounded but strictly listened to Twilight and bolted to the rock door.

“Come on, let’s go.” She said popping out of it. The others followed her while Dashie nudged Pinkie to move along.

Once everypony was outside Derpy pushed another loose rock in which caused the large rock that housed the doorway to move back into place.

“This Way!” She said galloping down a passage to her immediate right with the other 6 in close pursuit. But as they were running, the whole base suddenly shuddered, with an unnaturally loud booming noise, almost causing each pony to collapse to their knees.

“What in tha hay was that?” Applejack asked, looking at the roof.

Almost instantaneously to her finishing her sentence another boom and Earth shaking explosion could be felt surging through the base.

“Come on! We don’t have time to mess around now! Let’s go!” Derpy said, speeding off in another direction. The run was hard, but they had to push on before the whole place caved in on them. The girls could already see the support beams and walls cracking under pressure.

The explosions continued, for the very few minutes it took for the 7 mares to get there. One of the walls had actually collapsed and nearly crushed Applejack, but Pinkie had sensed the wall early and managed to dive in and tackle her out of the way. Luckily the roof above them didn’t give way with the wall, but it wouldn’t hold for long at this rate. Some of the explosions were far away but others often found the spot right above Twilight and her friends. Derpy opened another door and they found themselves in a round room with about 6 stallions in it, including Bullseye and Private Hooves.

Apple Bloom’s ration packs lay in saddle bags in the middle of the room, along with saddlebags containing the extra ammo Scootaloo had collected. The base continued to shake, and the explosions were now extremely loud, compared to 3 floors underground. They were now on the top floor and there was one door on the opposite side of the room, leading the outside. A stallion was standing in the door way watching the skies outside, trying to find the threat that could be dropping the bombs.

“Commander, Lunar soldiers are dropping large explosives around the forest floor. We think they’re searching for the base.” Bullseye said upon seeing the commander approach the room.

“Have you spotted the attackers?” Derpy asked.

“Not all of them, there are a few griffins, but mostly pegasi. They’re dropping bombs at random; they must have suspicions about the forest. But even if they don’t find us, the explosions could still weaken the base. It would be dangerous to leave everyone in here. We should evacuate everyone to the safety of the sanctuary hall.” Bullseye said. The girls seemed confused by what the two were talking about but kept listening.

“Right. Safety first. Tell your team that they are to instead help evacuate everypony to the sanctuary hall.” Derpy instructed.

“But commander what about the mission?” Bullseye asked.

“We have 6 capable soldiers right here,” Derpy replied nodding towards Twilight and the group. “You, me and them, will go to Canterlot, and extract Spike.”

“Are you sure Commander?” Bullseye asked just to confirm his orders.

“Yes. The situation is actually working out quite well. With the bombers looking for the base all we have to do is sneak through the forest and get through the towns to Canterlot. It shouldn’t be too hard, especially if they’re focussed on finding us out here. Just make sure your team is fast. Not all the levels of this base are secure. We’ve already seen some walls collapse. No quickly private. We have to use the opportunity while we’ve got it!” Derpy said instructing Bullseye one last time.

“Yes Commander!” he said trotting over to talk to each individual member of his team.

Derpy turned around to the girls, with a large grin on her face. She had the whole thing planned out in her head. She readied herself to explain it to them. She cracked her neck to the left and right and spoke to the girls.

“I hope you’re all ready. This is where it gets intense.”