Last chants for the slow dance

Rainbow Dash does not know why the hell she woke up with a fifth leg today. And not fifth leg like she’d joke about a penis, but an actual malformed miniature leg protruding out her right flank. Just south of her cutiemark.

She sits dumbfounded in her cloud bedroom, gawking at it. She can’t really control it but every few minutes on its own the leg will twist and the underdeveloped muscles contract and spasm. The leg does not look healthy.

She’d been having a good morning the ten minutes she has been up before she noticed it. Yeah, something felt strange but she hadn’t dwelt on it until just now when she glanced at her mirror. That does not make her oblivious, it makes her a busy pegasus.

She harshly twists the thing in anger. She squeals in pain. That was dumb, she won’t do it again. She is not recklessly impulsive, she’s just too busy to calculate every little thing like an egghead.

Dash sniffles. This is real serious. She’s so confused. Is this some kind of curse? Or some kind of divine joke by some higher power using her as fodder for amusement? Retribution for her sins?

Visions of a life as a freak assail her.

Dash doesn’t care about the questions overwhelming her. She just wants it gone. It came abruptly so maybe it can go away abruptly. Let somepony else deal with the mysteries and fix everything.

She flashes out her house toward Twilight’s library.

Blue sparks light up the room. Muffled buzzes and whirs fill the air.

In her basement, Twilight Sparkle operates the controls of a large machine. A large steel drill situated in the middle of the room, mounted on a frame at a downward angle. It vibrates and the conical bit spins, seemingly boring into nothing, were it not for the bright sparks at the tip.

She has been at it again for hours, and the air smells singed. Turning a dial at the base, she checks the display before her showing a shifting multitude of measurements and data.. Again she crosses her basement laboratory and scrutinizes her notes, recording the latest data.

For four long years, since she’d become a princess, Twilight has plotted incessantly. The funds she’s entitled to as princess have been extremely useful, ensuring nothing necessary was out of reach for her designs. All her supplies had been gathered and the machine before her covertly assembled. Since then, her days have been consumed with thaumaturgical drilling and analysis. She’s advanced magical subatomic theory further than anypony has ever dared.

These long years are coming to a head. Soon she will tap the source.

Beeping noises break her thought. Spike robotmarches down the steps with mouth zipped shut. He points rapidly upstairs while hopping on his feet.

“What is it, dragon boy, choking on another scroll?” Twilight taunts with a sharp giggle. None of them ever did learn. Celestia will never learn. Part of why it has been so easy, she reflects, before deigning to see what the fuss is about.

Upstairs she hears the locked entrance rattling with a frantic banging.

It does not sound like a good sign. Ponies know she closes the library on Thursday. Twilight doesn’t really want to answer because there’s always a chance it’s the Revenue Service inquiring about those royal funds.

For a moment she deliberates. She gives the door a nasty glare but the banging does not stop. Out of options, Ponyville’s smartest mare yanks open the door.

“Twilight! Twilight!” A shouting Rainbow Dash hurls into the building. And bashes her head into the corner of Twilight’s new Art Deco coffee table.

Twilight gasps as Dash crunches into it.

Feebly, Rainbow Dash rises to her feet, left side of cranium caved in and gaping with bits of fleshy pink brain visible, blood pouring down her brow. Her head turns to Twilight and half-smiles. Then she collapses and lies with disturbing lack of motion.

Twilight gapes. “You did that on purpose.”

“Spike! Spike!”

He hears a voice from upstairs that he would rather not.

Spike wants to reply, but because his mouth is zipped up, it comes out as a grumble. He’d just gotten down the stairs and stairs were hard when you were a young dragon with stubby legs cursed to robotmarch.

But because Twilight is still yelling and won’t stop, he ascends. He is afraid what she’ll do if he doesn't obey. Things don’t look good.

Spike is chilled at the sight upstairs. Twilight is attempting to yank Rainbow Dash’s impacted brain out her skull. She pulls vigorously but the cavity is too small for the brain to fit through and it is only squishing out various fluids and making a mess.

He thinks ranting and raving shouldn’t lead to anypony’s death. It’s easier to believe things don’t work like that. That all ponies have a good heart and he is obeying Twilight because he wants to.

Beep boop beep.

Twilight hears the sound of his robotmarch over her panicking and turns frantically. “Oh, good you’re here, I have tasks for you, you should always be here. Dash’s brains are busted for good this time and we need to get her a new one before anyone finds out!”

Spike points to the door and makes squeaky noises. Not really to indicate anything, but just because it makes him feel better.

“Damn, the door is wide open! Anyone could be looking in - I can’t be found out. Spike, bring me the organ barrel!”

No one makes a move to close the door. Spike rocks on his feet. He decides to think the new look kind of fits Dash and is wondering if he should tell her so. If his mouth wasn’t zipped and Dash was still moving, he would reassure her about her new look.

Twilight notices Rainbow Dash’s little surprise. “And for the love of books, why does she have a sick little new appendage?” She shouts while wiggling it a bit. “While you are at it, get a saw. And surgical tape!”

She’s frothing at the mouth again. Spike doesn’t like being top on the list for organ donors, so the zipper-mouthed dragon boy moves quickly and once more ventures the stairs. He’ll bring her the stuff but he isn’t touching any brains.

Until her dragon boy returns, Twilight counts the bits of brain on her table—four—and devises possible alibis. The best she comes up with is that she was out helping the elderly when she found Rainbow Dash like this. That’s crap.

No matter. If she moves fast enough, no one will even know this little incident happened. The last thing she can do is let police ponies in the library. She can’t have her grand plans, everything she’s spent all this time on, tumbling down because of a stray freak accident. No, impossible.

The downed pegasus’s face remains a dazed mild-hearted expression as if to say ‘This should not reflect poorly on you’.

Twilight snatches the supplies as soon as Spike returns.

Casting a non-stick spell on the coffee table, Twilight lays the body across it. Her tools float in the air beside her and the first thing she does is cut into and alter the jawline, giving Dash a small underbite - not very noticeable at first glance but enough to snicker at. With any luck, ponies talking to her long enough should be put off and wonder why they didn’t notice she was somewhat pigeon-faced before. Which should also distract from noticing the dent in her head, so Twilight considers it quite a clever plan.

Then prying open the organ barrel, she notes looking in that she is down to her last two brains. The choice is between a pruney raspberry-colored brain and one that is oddly lumpy, so Twilight chooses the pruney one, magically saws off Dash’s crown, scoops out the residual brains and fits the new one in. The skull top is reattached with surgical screws, and then she stretches Dash’s skin over the forehead gap and magically seals the flesh.

The alicorn praises herself on her surgeon’s touch before glancing at the malformity southward. That must be what Dash came here for. What has that pegasus been up to?

With minimal care Twilight magically grips mutant appendage—she isn’t touching that thing herself—and hacks that off. At first sight she thought it was a penis, but once it was determined to be a leg, she knew she had no scientific use for it, so Twilight tosses it.

She’s finishing casting a memory transfer spell to put Dash’s mind into the new brain, when Twilight is struck with mad inspiration. Maybe she can get something out of this misfortune.

Seeing the opportunity before her, the meddling-with-all-that-is-holy scientist can’t resist, so she quickly fetches a rainy day project she’s been working on: a pair of magical receiver bolts. She installs a bolt on each side of the pegasus’s neck, integrating them to Rainbow Dash’s nervous system.

Magically tuned to a microphone she got from her karaoke kit, this should allow her to intercept Dash’s brainwaves and inject her own commands.

Twilight stands back and admires her work. Her mood is turning around from panic. It seems to her this might be providence. She doesn’t know if she’ll end up needing it, but now she’ll have another lackey if anything comes up. And one with no smart mouthing.

“I shall call her FrankenDash,” Twilight declares triumphantly. “But only behind her back.”

She just hopes there is nowhere FrankenDash was supposed to be.

Her expectations dwindled. They had never been much of anything, and now they are worsened from that. Fluttershy sometimes thinks light is not so great and then she notices that weeks have slipped away.

She is supposed to be somewhere else right now. An official veterinarian practice with quality facilities for all her animals and steady income so she could have electricity and not have to depend on government aid to eat. Five years ago the world had been young. The susceptible mare had made friends that promised to help her. Rainbow Dash had promised to meet her today.

Fluttershy has been waiting on this street bench for the past hour. Across the street is Ponyville’s new public museum. They’d made plans to see the falcon exhibit currently in town. It was the only day the other pegasus had available.

Rainbow Dash has been a member of the Wonderbolts for the last three years and is going to perform for the princess next week. Fluttershy is going nowhere.

“Today is a little bit worse than yesterday,” she says to her rabbit. He isn’t there but Fluttershy is okay with that.

Her nose picks up the scent of hayfries from a nearby vendor and her stomach rumbles. She would have brought bits but Rainbow Dash had offered to pay for them. Rainbow Dash isn’t here and Fluttershy isn’t really okay with that. She could have stayed at home to be hungry and unsatiated.

Being late isn’t unusual to her airheaded friend, yet not this excessively. Most of the time. It does not seem likely that she will show but Fluttershy reminds herself she cannot predict the future and decides to wait twenty more minutes. She tries not to think that she didn’t have to see the future to know she would turn out like this.

She sits on the bench and kicks her hooves.

Atop her balcony, Princess Celestia breaths in the cool autumn air.

With expertise, her magic embraces the sun and guides its descent. Another day performed in a routine stretching a millenia. She watches the city below. Shops closing. Streets that empty further, ponies heading along their predefined routes, wrapped around daylight’s rays. The sun may be the source of those rays, but it is she that gives them to Equestria.

And she that can take it away, she thinks as night falls.

A familiar frown grows over her face. How she’s grown to despise their small sinful hearts. If only it were as simple as withholding the sun, letting it all die off and starting anew. But they saw how well that plan worked out for her sister.

Her dear sister. Luna’s return had not been what she hoped - in truth, Luna never had returned, not her Luna, the sister she’d once loved. It wasn’t fair. They’d both waited so long. Centuries Celestia had made it through, holding to the hope that things could be how they used to be.

But time doesn’t heal; time kills.

Celestia had tried hard, from the bottom of her heart, to cheer her sister, but nothing healed the gap between them. Nothing pulled Luna from her grief and shame.

Unable to fix the situation on her own, she’d turned to her wonderful Twilight and had sent Luna to Ponyville for Nightmare Night that first year. It had helped for a while, Luna had come back buoyant and reinvigorated to build anew... only to soon sink back to her distant ways. Their relationship was ages dead.

She won’t be surprised if Luna means to go off and build her own castle. Probably something black and brooding and full of gargoyles...

Abandoning Celestia to those pathetic ponies ponies stumbling around below her. Too many summers had gone by. None of these ponies know it. They all go on like nothing had happened. But she’d endured a thousand cycles of seasons. Only Twilight knows her.

Only her most faithful and amazing student. So bright and pure, unlike all the other small-minded ponies who only care for their squabbles and vices. Thinking of her faithful student turned fellow alicorn always does warm her heart. And certain other areas.

But Celestia worries for her. Why was Twilight growing distant? No longer visiting. Letters getting progressively rarer, until now all responses have stopped completely. They’ve hardly seen each other all year.

She’s played ruler so long and what does she have to show for it? Pretty spires and petty rabble that wilts and is replaced by the next same, decade after decade. Her own sister lost to time. She won’t lose Twilight too.

Alone on her balcony, Celestia smiles. She and Twilight won’t be distant for much longer. Her plan isn’t so crude as to withhold the sun, but it’ll work as well. And soon it will be just her and Twilight. Celestia will make her into the most perfect alicorn and their love will shine as bright as the sun. Two perfect ponies with an entire world to themselves.

Rubbing at the exhaustion in her eyes, Twilight forces herself to keep monitoring the drill. No rest for the wicked, as she is fond of saying. Everything must be done manually until she finds her target. She supposes it is pretty dangerous to be operating such hazardous machine when exhausted.

The moment Rainbow Dash had left, she’d gone back to her work. She had wanted to test her receiver right there, but it would defeat the purpose if Dash were aware of her new improvements. So she’d convinced the pegasus, with the aid of subliminal techniques, that she’d merely knocked herself out in another crash landing and sent her off. She also used subliminal messaging to make her cover the bolts with an ascot. No pony will notice a thing.

Celestia won’t see it coming until Twilight strikes from right under her shadow. The arrogant eternal princess will never know what happened even as she falls from her perch.

She examines a red gauge meant for tuning. With care she recalibrates the bit, a microscopically fine adjustment as it drills into the smallest substances known to ponies. Just her really. It isn’t quite on the right resonance yet, but she can feel herself getting closer, evidenced by the flaring sparks it frequently gives. The vibrations her electromagnetic meter is picking up also reassure her.

Giving an optimistic estimate, she thinks that within the fortnight she’ll have it. The force that makes something out of nothing.

Pure magic extracted from the very fabric of creation. This is the quantum force that all magic is derived from, from which unicorn magic is but a clumsy way of reaching at it to manipulate reality. She will touch it from the root. Twilight has a space pinpointed, she is so close to finding the wave length it reacts on. Once she finds that, the secondary feature of the drill will collect and condense it, the grain produced and sifted into near-liquid.

Then all she has to do is drink it. She can’t exactly figure what that will do yet, but it will be something great and powerful. She will be the most powerful being in existence.

Twilight is to be the culmination of reality. Her heart soars and she can’t tell whether she wants to laugh or vomit.