Harmonized

Chapters

War Wounds
Dear Diary
Grave Mistakes
Epilogue
Back to Normal
Here Come The Cavalry

War Wounds

Rainbow waited for her, but Twilight never returned. Twilight didn’t come back up the stairs, at least. Standing there in Ponyville’s little tree library, Rainbow Dash peered down into the dark confines of that basement with some trepidation. Maybe it was a unicorn thing, where you liked sleeping in dark, underground caves? Rainbow Dash sure knew it was anything but a pegasus thing. Just the thought of the ground being above her was cringe inducing.

It seemed like Twilight was as weirdified as the rest of Ponyville though, and so Rainbow Dash walked out of the library with more questions than she had going into it. With no ideas on how to solve it, or anything, Rainbow Dash just went to bed.

She tried writing about it in her diary, but nothing was coming to her, outside of “Twilight was weird too.”

Answers were slow to come to her that day, but a couple days later Rainbow Dash was shuffling through her morning wakeup routine, when her ears perked up at the sound of a familiar pony shouting, “Hey!”

“Rainbow!”

“Dash!”

“Come!”

“To!”

“My!”

“Pinkie Pie, what are you doing?” Rainbow shouted, flying out of her cloud apartment and looking around. “How are you even up here?” she asked incredulously, just as her friend breached the cloud layer, the pink pony’s curly haired head rising up, and then descending down again. But first, Pinkie Pie had time to utter a single word.

“Pogo!” was the word. Shortly, her head appeared again, and she added,

“Stick!”

Wow, that did not sound safe. So Rainbow Dash flew down to where her friend was bouncing on a pogo stick that was definitely adjusted past regulation springiness. Together with Dash, Pinkie hopped on her own power, thankfully abandoning the pogo stick, down the mountain that Dash’s apartment complex had drifted up against, explaining to Rainbow Dash,

“I’m having a party but it’s not really a party but we’re all meeting together so I thought I’d make it like a party and there will be cakes and games and streamers and maybe not games because we have a lot to talk about since the Cakes started acting weird and everypony in town is waaaaay too easy to make laugh I just have to say something to them, and Rarity sees it too, and Applejack and Rarity went to see Fluttershy and she was really messed up, and Applejack tried to talk to Twilight but she’s all weirdified too so it’s just gonna be the 5 of us, an Elements of Harmony super meeting party... minus one.”

Rainbow Dash stuttered to a halt at that last sentence. Pinkie was hard to keep up with, and understand, but that last part of the sentence was clear.

Pinkie hopped ahead a bit, before looking back at Rainbow Dash. “Sorry Dashie, I didn’t mean—” she said, with a wince.

“I—I’m sorry, Pinkie,” Rainbow Dash said, her ears going down, along with her gaze. “If I hadn’t flown off when we were in the maze, we would have won the first time, instead of... instead of him getting to laugh at you all and hurt you even more.”

“Don’t be silly,” Pinkie said calmly, walking up and patting Rainbow Dash on her rainbow maned head. “If you hadn’t flown off, he wouldn’t have thought that he won, and we’d still be wandering around in that maze, when the elements were way off in the library, instead!”

Rainbow lifted her head at that. “...huh,” she concluded, tapping her chin. “I guess that is kinda true.”

“Now come on, Saddy Sadderson, and let’s go figure out what’s still wrong with everypony!” Pinkie cheered. And for once, Dash felt the flutter of hope in her breast. Together, there was nothing they couldn’t accomplish. Together...

...minus one.

“It’s been absolutely, completely bizarre!” Rarity said, laying back on her couch dramatically. They were meeting at the boutique, which Pinkie Pie had decked out with streamers, despite Rarity’s weak protests. The pink pony was currently in the process of baking up some fresh chocolate chip cookies for them to enjoy, while the rest of them swapped stories. “I returned to my boutique, triumphant! Brimming with inspiration!” Rarity proclaimed. “And the next day, a customer came by, just a Ponyville mare by the name of Lily Flowers. She absolutely adored a piece from my old fall collection from last year, but regretfully she is on a flower seller’s salary, so she couldn’t afford the sticker price. So of course I offered to give her a heavy discount. I was just unloading that stock, anyway! And do you know what happened?”

“The mare fai—” Applejack said in a predictable deadpan, while Rarity shushed her harshly, saying,

“I told you, but not everypony else, so be quiet and listen!”

Rarity cleared her throat and continued. “The mare fainted!!”

“It’s Lily,” Applejack cut in, in the same deadpan. “She’d faint if one of her flower stems was broke.”

“As she sells each flower arrangement for approximately twenty four bits, I can understand if she would be upset over losing one,” Rarity countered with a sniff. “But nevertheless... that was only the beginning!

“Every pony who came to my store tried to cheat me!” Rarity moaned, “I gave them a very reasonable price, and they all tried to bargain me down, as if I were some kind of two-timing haggling merchant who priced her goods at twice the cost, just to snatch more bits from the unwary. I had to price them higher, just to allow ponies to bargain me down. And then!”

Applejack exhaled wearily. She didn’t seem bored, just... really worn out from what she was going to hear.

“And then my own sister!” Rarity cried. “My own dear sweet little sister! She had a school recital this week. A recital that I could have provided a beautiful ensemble for! And do you know what she asked me?”

“How many woodchucks—” Rainbow started, but Rarity was on a roll and went on to say,

“She glared at me, and said she wasn’t going to pay for the costuming! My own sister, and she asked me what I was trying to get from her! I told her there was no charge, of course, because sisters help each other out! And she looked at me, and... and she said...

“She said she didn’t belie-e-heve me!” Rarity sobbed.

“‘Nice try-y, Rarity,’!” Rarity continued to wail, “‘I`m not falling for that one again,’ she said!! She thought I was despi-hi-hi-cable!”

Dash rolled her eyes and looked around to a sympathetic everypony else, while Rarity took out her emotions on the acoustic environment. It was sad what she was saying and all, but she was really going to town there, and it’s not like Rarity hadn’t exaggerated before. Rarity’s sister probably said she was... stupid or something, not quote, des-pic-a-ble unquote. Just sisters who got in a fight, right? Rainbow Dash was pretty sure that was a normal thing for sisters to do. But then something jumped into Dash’s peripheral thoughts. Just something she noticed about what Rarity said.

“Hold on,” Rainbow Dash said, once Rarity had quieted to mere sniffles, “What did Sweetie Belle mean by again?”

“I-hi-hi don’t know!” Rarity wailed, and there she goes again.

Thankfully the four of them discovered that a tub of nice, healthy, triple fudge ripple ice cream helped calm Rarity’s sorrows, and kept her mouth occupied. Rainbow would have suggested a spoonful of peanut butter, but for some reason that didn’t strike her as something that would be very well received by the others, as hilarious as it would be.

Applejack’s story was the same, minus the wailing and gnashing of teeth. What was different was Applejack herself; she still looked like death warmed over. She had big bags under her eyes, and a bandage wrapped around her shoulder for “falling down the stairs” she said. But she said it in a way that sounded a lot more haunted and lost than somepony should have been for just a simple accident.

Applejack found ponies at the market thinking she was going to cheat them too, except they didn’t haggle. They went and shopped around, as if they could find cheaper apples somewhere else.

“Strangest thing ah ever did see,” Applejack said in a wearily puzzled tone, “Ah figured maybe Apple Bloom had gone and tried selling apples again, but she said she didn’t, and that ah shouldn’t accuse her of things she didn’t do. I dunno what got mah sister all riled up about a simple question. But everypony had a chip on their withers. Even Red Gala had to leave mah stand to check the Crabs for what they’re chargin’, an’ she’s family!

“Ponies were checkin’ for bruises,” Applejack listed off, “Worms, nicks, apples in the wrong barrel, nothin’ they didn’t have a right to check for, but they just seemed extra careful-like. Like ah was gonna put every apple on its side, just to hide the bad spots?”

Applejack shook her head, “Hoo nelly, and then,” she said, “That kinda shifty mare, Berry Punch you know? She comes up thinkin’ she’s gonna get some of the secret cider supply for her pub. And ah was like, ‘Whut secret cider supply?’ She just winks at me, and says she’ll get the money up front later!”

So even for old time customers, Applejack had to see them look at her prices in disbelief and just wander off, only to come crawling back, saying they never figured she’d match prices with other stalls without any shenanigans. And her family was treating her kind of... disturbingly, but it wasn’t anything to cry about, or anything. At least, not on the outside.

Pinkie had a therapist. That was... news. Rainbow found herself at a loss to understand what was going on with Pinkie Pie, because Pinkie said in her unusual oddly dramatic way, “So there I was. Sitting in my room, and planning for the greatest party ever told. There’s a knock at the door. I answer... the door!”

A pause for dramatic effect, and then Pinkie went back to babbling.

“And there’s this nice pony coming up to my room, who I don’t really remember seeing before, but he wanted to talk with me about my feelings. So I told him that I love talking about my feelings, because I do! I told him that I was feeling happy because we saved the whoooole world, and we had a good party over it, but now I was gonna make the bestest party ever to celebrate and oh my gosh that was supposed to be a huuuuge secret, but I told him anyway, and—”

Applejack plugged Pinkie’s mouth, saying, “Woah there, Pinkie. We’re still tryin’ to catch up to what you say.” She released the pink pony, and Pinkie said with a little bit more restraint,

“It was sooo weird. He didn’t like me being happy! But I asked him why he didn’t like it, and he said that he did like me being happy. Then I asked him what his favorite color was, and he just kinda looked at me. I said I wanted to make him a special cupcake just for him, for coming here and being so nice to me, so I needed to know what color frosting to make that would really make him smile.”

Pinkie paused then, tapping her chin with a confused look on her face, as if she couldn’t quite find the words. “And then he ran screaming out of my room,” she said, “Something about a breakthrough, I think? I tried to talk to him after, but he said that I was in a very delicate state right now, and I told him I’m not in a delicate state, I’m in Equestria, silly! And get this, he didn’t laugh! I didn’t want to upset him, and the Cakes were really happy with what he said, so I guess it’s okay? Whatever makes them happy makes me happy!”

So Pinkie Pie couldn’t get the details, since she was the patient, and he was worried about breaking the... breakthrough? But it was pretty clear that this stallion thought something was... different about her. Rainbow couldn’t understand why he’d think that though. Pinkie Pie was just her normal, happy, cheerful, overly talkative self, just like she always was. Living in a bakery, making ponies laugh, pretty standard Pinkie Pie fare!

But of all of them who had shared their experiences, Fluttershy’s was probably the worst. Fluttershy didn’t want to talk about it at first. Maybe she shouldn’t have. But no, maybe she really, really should, because she needed help more than any of them. Dash and Applejack were feeling a little sick, and Pinkie was wowing head doctors (big surprise there), and Rarity was having sister problems. But Fluttershy...

Going to visit with Fluttershy, Rarity had found her taking care of her animals, way back at the beginning of the week, right after the end of Discord’s short lived second reign. With how he’d turned the animals against her, it was understandable that Fluttershy’d have to talk some sense into them. But when Rarity found her, Rarity said Fluttershy had this nasty... cut across her cheek, and Fluttershy admitted it had been left there by a squirrel’s paw. She had bites on her forearms, and a piece of her tail was kind of... torn off. Long scratches down her side. And this haunted, lost look in her eyes. Just hearing Rarity talk about it was frightening, and Fluttershy not denying it at all. But Fluttershy told them all that it wasn’t the animals she was scared of. It wasn’t her injuries that filled her with fear.

It was herself.

Fluttershy drifted along, humming happily on her way back to her lovely cottage. The economical grassy roof was green against the bright blue sky, and everything about her lovely little place made her feel at home. After the celebration over Discord’s defeat had concluded, Fluttershy was definitely ready for some rest and recuperation! She was so relieved that they had shut that awful creature back into solid stone. She felt bad for feeling that way, but the fact remains that when the Elemental power struck him, she found herself wishing just a little bit that it would just lock him away, rather than try to wash away the evil inside him.

Because if it didn’t lock him away, then that meant she would have to continue working with him. It didn’t matter how nice such a creature had become. He still had the power to touch her, and make her a monster. Fluttershy never wanted to be that way again. She had never been more afraid in her whole life, than when she couldn’t even see anything wrong with destroying her best friend’s petunias.

So it was with a sense of relief that she returned home, to her lovely little cottage where she could be surrounded by her sweet, caring animal friends. She hoped Discord hadn’t scared them too badly. He seemed to do things to them that the animals agreed with, so maybe he wasn’t that bad, though what he did to Fluttershy, and to her friends who were trying to stop him was just beyond unforgivable.

Nevertheless, Fluttershy didn’t expect much issue in rehabilitating her animals. Bunnies had to be consoled that their legs were perfectly large enough. And the squirrels would have to be taught that you don’t just eat the fruits off of some nice pony’s trees without asking, but considering that the fruits were grown to gigantic size, the squirrels were probably just taking advantage of that, and still respected a pony’s need to produce a quality crop.

Fluttershy couldn’t see any of her animal friends playing outside when she got home. Perhaps they hadn’t gotten back yet? Frowning, Fluttershy opened the door to her cottage, and she would have screamed, if she could breathe. Her cute little bird houses and mouse nests, and squirrel huts were gone. Her soft, comfy pet beds were nowhere to be seen. Her house looked very bare and... dreary in fact. Her couch was there, and a table, but there was no rug on the floor, no leaf paintings on the walls. Just herself, an empty room, and a solid wall of iron cages. They weren’t empty.

“Who did... how did... did I I—I couldn’t!” Fluttershy said in a panic. “Did I do this? As she crept closer to the cages, glittering eyes within their dark confines stared back out at her, stared accusingly. “I-it was Discord,” she told her animal friends, not because they would understand, but because she needed to tell herself. “Discord touched me, and enchanted me, and... and I just don’t remember this part,” she said reassuringly. “Oh... oh how horrible,” she whispered tearing up even just looking at the poor things. There weren’t any spaces between the cages, they were just piled up in neat, closely fitting rows. It would have been worse if they were just piled haphazardly, she supposed, because there would be even less room inside the cages then, but oh, what was she saying to herself!

“I’m so sorry this happened,” she told all of the poor, caged animals. “Just hold tight, and I’ll make sure to get each and every one of you out of these cages.”

She reached for the latch to a cage, and the animal within, it was a cat. It was Pusspuss! Fluttershy knew it was Pusspuss because her hoof barely touched the latch when a horror of fury, filthy white fur and claws came slamming against the bars of the cage, screaming like a banshee.

“Pusspuss, is that ...you?” Fluttershy trembled as the unearthly wail died to a low tense growl. “What happened to you?” she asked, “Why are you so...” The cat screamed again, and that was setting off the other animals in the cage, who groaned, growled, barked, chuffed, yowled miserably, and filled Fluttershy’s head with a horrible feeling of wrongness. She was...

She was glad that Discord had been locked in stone. He did this to her. He made her do this. She did this. Fluttershy... was the only pony who could have done this. She trembled, torn between compassion and self hatred. Fluttershy reached for the latch again.

“I had to let them out only one at a time,” Fluttershy said, surrounded by her best friends minus one, staring forward at nothing as she spoke. “It hurt so much to put them back in those cages, but I just couldn’t reason with them. My special talent is that I am very good communicating with animals, but that doesn’t help when they already know to fear me. I just had to try, one at a time, to take them out, and to feed them, and show them that I care. Some... listened.”

Outside Fluttershy’s hut, there were a pile of discarded cages, twisted and broken, bars bent, like they had been crushed by an angry bear.

“Some ran away,” Fluttershy whimpered, “And some tried to... some hurt me.”

Rarity’s tears were forgotten as she whispered, “How could anyone hurt such a kind, loving pony like you?”

“I wasn’t a kind, loving pony,” Fluttershy said, a trace of emotion in her voice as her eyes filled with tears. “Do you remember what he did to me? Don’t you remember what I was?”

Nopony really wanted to answer, as Fluttershy looked around mournfully. Collecting herself, Fluttershy took a slow breath, closed her eyes and said,

“You were a big mean, meanie-pants!” came Pinkie Pie’s voice from the kitchen, as she trotted in with a plate filled with cookies.

“I was!” Fluttershy openly sobbed, breaking down right there in the boutique, her tears hitting the floor as she quietly screamed out, “I hurt ponies, and I hurt animals, and I couldn’t even see any way that it was wrong! I made them hate me, and I don’t even remember!”

After finishing glaring at Pinkie Pie, Applejack stood from where she was sitting on her belly and trotted over to the sobbing Fluttershy. “You cain’t tear yourself up over things that already happened,” Applejack told her. “If he did this to you... Discord must’ve been worse than any of us even imagined. I reckon that’s why the Elements locked him up in stone, because there weren’t a lick of good in him that could be saved.”

“Fluttershy please,” Rarity put in, putting her forehooves around the slender pony, and pulling the shuddering Fluttershy into a hug. “You can’t blame yourself for what you did under his influence. We all did things we regret, like that! If only I had managed to resist that diamond, I might have... well, I might have held out another few minutes at least.”

“He didn’t even use a diamond on me,” Fluttershy said tearfully, turning her nose against Rarity’s white, fuzzy chest. “He just touched me, and then it was like I had always been that way! It was so easy, it was horrible!”

“It was horrible,” Pinkie Pie said in pleasant agreement. When everypony except Fluttershy glared at her, Pinkie shrugged and said, “What? It was.”

“Th...thank you Pinkie,” Fluttershy whispered. Everypony turned to her again with a collective,

“Huhh?”

“I needed to cry; it was so bad, and the tears just wouldn’t... I couldn’t tell myself how horrible I really was,” Fluttershy explained softly, wiping delicately at her cheeks with her wing. “I just... sometimes you just... need somepony to tell you what you can’t tell yourself.”

“Any time, Fluttershy,” Pinkie said with a calm smile, pushing the plate towards Fluttershy’s embrace with Rarity. “Cookie?”

Fluttershy took one cookie, and sat there with Rarity to her back, silently nibbling at it, and saying no more.

“I can’t take it anymore!” Rainbow Dash wailed in frustration. “What are we supposed to do? I can barely even talk to my team, weather or racing, and Applejack’s family thinks she’s still under Discord’s curse. And Rarity too, or something. But like, not really? Pinkie Pie... isn’t like that, and Twilight is all weirdified. And Fluttershy?? How are you even dealing with that!”

“All we c’n do at this point,” Applejack said unhappily, tilting her hat over her bloodshot eyes, “Is just watch, and wait it out. We gotta try an’ convince ponies that they ain’t second guessing us, and that they really cain get better, from whatever it is Discord did to ‘em.”

“What I can do is help Fluttershy with her animals,” Rainbow Dash said confidently. “I’ll kick the tail of any of them that even think about hurting Fluttershy!”

“I hardly think such brute force is called for,” Rarity drawled out, “What she needs is a more subtle touch to assist with her animals.”

“Rarity, no. Your cat already acts like that to you, so how are you gonna stop other animals?” Dash whined in protest.

Rarity frowned at Rainbow Dash and said, “I’ll have you know that my Opalescence is the sweetest, most adorable, most innocent... okay, you have a point.”

“I wish I could ask Twilight,” Fluttershy said in a subdued tone. Which is to say her normal tone of voice. “She’s not busy with training and a job on the weather team. She could spend more time with them... and me.”

“I dunno if you want to ask her,” Rainbow said with an unfortunate touch to her expression, “Twilight is in one of her moods again. I couldn’t get anything out of her, other than everything is fine, and there’s no reason to be alarmed, and I was just asking for the time of day!”

Applejack looked at Dash blandly, and stated, “So, that means in Twilight-talk that nothin’ is fine, and we have every reason to be alarmed.”

“Yyyyep,” Rainbow Dash said, leaning on a rack of dresses and contemplating just what could get Twilight so worked up like that. You know, aside from everything, and next Tuesday.

“Still,” Rarity said, carefully casually, “Applejack is right. The best thing we can do now is get back to our lives, and keep our ears to the ground, so to speak. This doesn’t seem to be getting worse, and other than Rainbow Dash and I taking shifts to help Fluttershy,” she paused to glare at Rainbow Dash challengingly, “It seems there’s no imminent trouble that we are at the current time capable of addressing.”

“Yeah, and also there’s not much we can do right now,” Pinkie said sympathetically.

“Let’s meet next Mondee,” Applejack suggested. “Just the six...uh... five of us, and hopefully six, if one of us cain talk some sense into Twilight. If anything came up since then, maybe we’ll have a better idear what to do.”

With that plan in place, the five of them made idle chatter and then disbanded. Rainbow did her best to follow along with that plan, which would have been great if she wasn’t so tired all the time. What was she, out of shape, or what? Her stamina was just shot, even though her speed was high as ever, and her reflexes beyond par. But reflexes wouldn’t help, when you kept falling asleep at weird hours of the day when you should be doing things. Applejack’s stupid bug was persistent, but Rainbow Dash was definitely on her way to recovery, and so was Applejack believe it or not. They both got a little better every day it seemed.

Didn’t help Dash’s recovery that Fluttershy’s animals had all turned into vicious pony eating monsters, who would sooner attack you than listen to you. Especially the squirrels! But that, and her other troubles, were all things Rainbow Dash could deal with. There was one thing she could not deal with. One thing Rainbow Dash could not deal with. A week into this whole mess, Rainbow Dash had the lucky or unlucky luck to run into Scootaloo.

Scootaloo sought her out, in fact. Rainbow wasn’t sure of a lot of things now, but she was sure of the little pumpkin orange filly’s devotion for her. Rainbow Dash’s #1 fan was sure to be not affected by this weirdo... weird stuff that Rainbow couldn’t quite put her hoof on. Oh, of course Scootaloo wouldn’t be affected. Yeah, right. Sure. More like affected more than everypony else combined!

The kid was smiling at her! Dash was finishing her daily workout, and Scootaloo comes buzzing up on her scooter, beaming from ear to ear. Dash smiled back in relief, afraid that Scootaloo would hate her too, when Scootaloo pulled her scooter up and around, and said, “Hi, Rainbow Dash! I bet you’ll really love what I have for you this time!”

“Oh, really?” Rainbow said, perking at the thought that the squirt might think it’s her birthday or something. “Whatcha got?”

Scootaloo had a rather large wooden box nailed to the back of her scooter now, and she unlocked the padlock and pulled open the lid saying excitedly, “I did it just like you told me. It was easier than I thought! Nopony even noticed when I went into the houses.”

“You... what?” Dash said, looking in the box with a sinking feeling. It was full of bits.

“They’re all for you,” Scootaloo said lovingly, closing the box and trotting up to nuzzle Rainbow Dash, except she stopped short of doing it. “I bet you’re real proud of me,” the little filly said, puffing out her chest, “You can totally pay your bills now. Did I do good? Do you like it, huh?”

“Where... the hay did you get all those bits?” Rainbow Dash asked, raising her voice despite herself. Scootaloo didn’t just, just... what?

“I went in the houses, like you said!” Scootaloo whined. “Check under the mattresses, and break open anything that looks like it’s locked for a reason,” she practically recited. “Don’t let anypony see you, and don’t leave any hair behind,” no, she literally recited. “And now you have um, money,” Scootaloo said uncertainly, “Like you needed for your bills! Did I do—”

“I can pay my own bills!” Rainbow Dash retorted in a panicked fury. “You broke into ponies’ houses? You stole their bits?”

“Yes?” Scootaloo said in confusion, her smile frozen on her face. “Just like you wanted. Nopony caught me, I promise! You need these bits, because you can’t pay your bills! And I don’t know how it works exactly, but you said I would be cool if I could help you out.”

“By stealing bits?! That’s not what I meant!” Rainbow shouted aghast in horror. “How is stealing in any way cool?!”

“B-but you said—” Scootaloo said flat on her rear, eyes brimming with tears, which seemed to be a common thing in Rainbow Dash’s life now.

“I don’t care what I said!” Rainbow Dash practically roared. “You need to get these bits back to the ponies who own them, right away!”

“O... okay I’ll just...” Scootaloo said, struggling mightily to keep her composure. “J-just go into the houses again and t-try to remember how much there was”

“You can’t do that, that’s like double stealing, and you could get caught!” Dash said, pacing frantically, “Argh, I can’t believe I’m saying this. You need to—you need to take that box to town hall in like the middle of the night. No, no not the box, just like... a grocery bag you could get from anywhere. Just—just leave the bits in there, and don’t let any hair—I mean—don’t let anything point back to you. Just leave them there and run, and never ever do something like this again!”

“I messed up real bad, didn’t I,” Scootaloo whimpered miserably. “I thought you wanted me to—”

“Well I didn’t,” Rainbow Dash said curtly, “And you should know better. It’s not right to take things that aren’t yours.”

Scootaloo was really breaking down at this point. Rainbow Dash didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t good with words! She just said stuff! “O-okay I’ll,” Scootaloo managed to get out of her shaking chest, “G-grocery bag... town hall midnight and it’ll be okay then...”

“Look,” Dash sighed, squatting on her haunches next to the filly, who turned away as Dash got near. “You really messed up,” Rainbow told her, “It’s gonna take a while before anything will be okay, after pulling a stunt like this. I know I sound mean, but I’m trying to look out for you! I don’t want to send my number one fan packing off to juvenile hall!”

Scootaloo’s distress showed no signs of abating as she said, “Okay R-rainbow Dash I love—” and she just froze stiff at that, for one timeless moment. “I–I’m sorry,” Scootaloo cursed quietly, “I didn’t—” but that’s as far as she got, before Rainbow Dash absolutely had to wrap Scootaloo up in the biggest, tightest, most desperate bear hug that she could manage. Scootaloo didn’t even hug back for a while, but she did, and Scootaloo was crying but that was okay, and Rainbow Dash was crying, but that was okay, and neither of them knew how things had gone so wrong, but for now they just... had each other. And that was okay.

It turned out Scootaloo didn’t even have parents! She was just... a runaway from Trottingham. How did Dash never know this, before? Scootaloo was like, a mini her! That explained why Scootaloo was so skinny and her mane was so tangly. Dash’d thought Scootaloo was just trying to emulate her own windswept mane, but... maybe Dash should brush herself more often. So Rainbow Dash wasn’t going to send Scootaloo back to... whatever she ran away from. Dash didn’t know how to deal with that really. But she did have an apartment, and food, and the least she could do was make sure Scootaloo had somepony to take them to school every day ...and food. Wasn’t the most convenient of relationships, but the kid was like... over-overjoyed about it. Like Scootaloo expected anything less of her!

True to the filly’s word, there was a big grocery sack full of bits out in front of the doors to town hall that morning, and nary a purple hair to be found among it. If anypony figured out it was Scootaloo who did it, they didn’t act on it. Divvying the loot up among the ponies who discovered their savings were purloined was no easy task though. After a thief so effectively “tested” Ponyville’s security, more ponies started using locks on their doors. There were more police ponies strutting around the streets. Took a while for things to be okay again, it really did.

Though frankly at a heightened level of alert, Ponyville was a lot safer place for ponies who did not want to be burglars and thieves.

That’s what Rainbow Dash wrote down in her diary. She didn’t use Scootaloo’s name. She didn’t dare. If somepony read her private diary and could actually read her squiggly, round mouthwriting, if they found this diary, well... they wouldn’t know it was Scootaloo. Rainbow Dash was prepared to take responsibility for whatever heat that filly would sustain.

Rainbow Dash finished writing her diary entry, spat the pencil back into the pencil holder, and she sat there looking at the open page for a while. Scootaloo was already asleep in the other bed that Rainbow Dash made, and the whole evening was nice and peaceful. Rainbow Dash’s life the past two weeks drifted around her mind, like somepony threw a jigsaw puzzle in the bathtub and all the pieces were just floating around, but not making any sense. The whole thing stunk of Discord, but beyond pointing an accusing hoof at a cold, stone statue, there really wasn’t anything obvious to deduce. It all floated around in her head, nothing meshing together, sitting there just outside of her awareness.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, Rainbow Dash was a quintessential pegasus. On a hunch, she went and flipped back through her diary, an idle curiosity that could have only occurred to somepony like her. Rainbow Dash turned to the last entry dated before Discord woke up from his stone prison. It wasn’t her mouthwriting.

Author's Note

Dear Diary

Mare, I hate Drizzle. She still hasn’t quit the team. Too stupid to know better. Maybe if I scratch up her locker again she’ll get the picture. Got a raise today; government mandated, how cool is that? More money to play around with next time I’m in Las Pegasus. Maybe I’ll go and kick my dad’s face in. He’d deserve it.

Oh speaking of money, I think the squirt is actually gonna do it. So awesome! She thinks I’m hot stuff, so all I had to do was lay it on thick, and she was real easy to warm up to the idea. I should work with foals more often; they’ll believe anything you say. The best part is if she gets caught, it’s all on her! I never told her to do it, oh no no officer, she’s just trying to weasel out of juvie.

The day before Discord came...

Rainbow Dash turned to the previous page of her diary. Dated just a few days prior, it didn’t say much.

I am so sick of work. They’re all a bunch of losers, with their heads up their butts. And boy are those butts clenched tightly. Why can’t I just get money without working? Maybe I’ll show up tomorrow. Heh... maybe.

Rainbow Dash was sitting up in her cloud house, reading her own diary, but it was some other pony’s mouthwriting in it! Some other pony’s writing entirely! She didn’t buy this diary and use it half completed. She wasn’t reading somepony else’s diary, about somepony else’s life on accident. No, the worst thing is Rainbow Dash vaguely remembered these entries, except that she wrote them totally different, and they didn’t happen this way! Did Discord mess up her diary? Or, did...

Rainbow Dash flipped back until she found another significant entry, some time last year when she would have lost the iron pony competition. But... but like... how would evil her react to that?

Dear diary, I hate everypony. The end. I can’t believe that stupid mudsucker farm pony found out I was cheating! She wants money to keep quiet, and I’m like, it’s just a stupid... it’s not even a competition! But of course, sending everypony running into Froggy Bottom Bog would get me in a lot of trouble, even if there wasn’t anything technically illegal about planting fake signs. Actually, since it’s a seasonal function does that make it illegal to disrupt? Well not like I’m gonna tell that no good, scheming dirt butt that, or AJ’ll probably want double. With that much gone, I couldn’t even afford to go to a dress club much less

Rainbow Dash slammed the diary shut. S-she never went to a... a dress club. She knew what ponies did there, so why would she ever... but how did she know that? Obviously, because her father dragged her out to one, and she was too young to even know what was going on. But later she figured it out, when she... um...

Rainbow Dash honestly couldn’t remember when she’d first learned about what happened at dress clubs.

Her first thought was to bring this to Twilight. She’d know what to do. But... but the last time, Twilight had just been so evasive... ridiculously evasive. Twilight wasn’t even... really meeting with them anymore. The poor librarian had some kind of stress collapse thing, and actually spent time in the hospital the other day. And that was the last time Dash really touched bases with her? What the heck, Twilight’s her friend!

Isn’t she?

So in light of Twilight’s... thing, Rainbow Dash instead took her diary to her impromptu “What the Holy Hay is Going on Club,” which Twilight was totally invited to, but she always found some excuse not to attend. But at least the other 5 were aware of the weirdness that was going on. Rainbow... felt really bad about what was written in here, not just bad, but also scared. She didn’t want this diary to fall into the wrong saddlebags, so flying into Rarity’s boutique that afternoon, this is what she said to her friends,

“Okay... I think I know why ponies are acting so weird around us, but I really don’t know if you want to know. I found out, and I... I really don’t want to know. So uh... yeah,” she slapped her diary down on the table they sat at, rattling the teacups.

Smooth as silk.

The other 5 looked at the diary like it was a rattlesnake. “Is that... your private diary?” Rarity asked bemusedly. “I wasn’t even aware you had one.”

“Well, I do,” Rainbow said defensively, “Or, I did. I mean, I do. It’s... confusing. Look, I could just tell you all what I think, but this is the only actual evidence I have. I–I probably shouldn’t show you it. There’s a lot of stuff in here that could make me go to jail, like, for real jail. I uh... but I really need to show it to you, and I think you’re my friends, so I can trust you with it.”

At least they weren’t staring at the book anymore. “Well, ah for one am honored,” Applejack said cautiously, “You might be in a heap of trouble, but that you’d trust me with it is something I can appreciate. I ain’t followin’ you to jail though. Ah got a family to think about.”

I do too, thought Rainbow, thinking about Scootaloo, who’d be getting out of school soon. But what she said was, “Thanks Applejack. I really... could use the support right now.”

“Oh my,” Fluttershy said, looking at the book again with open fear. “Is it that bad? You didn’t murder somepony, did you?”

“What?! No!” Dash yelped, jumping back from the quiet yellow and pink pegasus. “No, nothing like that! Just like... technically illegal maybe stuff. I...I’d still show you if it was ...that, but I’d also be in too much trouble for you to help me with.”

“I can’t take it anymore!” Pinkie shrieked out of absolutely nowhere and leapt upon Dash’s diary, tearing it open and mechanically reciting, “I can’t believe a filly thought she could impress me by stealing something. She didn’t even know it was wrong. I told her to return the bits by leaving it in front of town hall—”

“No, no not that entry!” Dash said frantically, grabbing the book right out of Pinkie’s hooves. “That’s not the point! The point is the mouthwriting! ”

“Scootaloo is the one who stole all those bits?” Rarity asked, astounded. “Scootaloo? But that means Sweetie had to—”

“Just—please, hear me out, okay!” Dash said pleadingly. They looked at her, clutching her book, and she said, “I was just... pretending to write... okay, yes it’s Scootaloo, but she didn’t do anything wrong! She was tricked into doing it!”

“Well then,” Rarity said acidly, “What foul rogue in our village manipulated Scootaloo into using Sweetie Belle to get access to my register?”

“I did! ” Dash shouted in anguished frustration. There were silent stares, all around.

“Look, it says right here,” Rainbow Dash said, jumping up on the table and opening the book to the relevant entry.

...and Scootaloo said that Sweetie Belle distracted Rarity, so that she could get at Rarity’s cash register. It wasn’t her lockbox, but it was pretty cool anyway. Long as the squirt thinks I’m low on cash, I bet that filly could even go rob an entire block for my sake. What an idiot, right?

...Dash couldn’t read the last part out loud.

“Ah don’t get it!” Applejack said, looking fit to burst from barely contained fury. “Why are you tellin’ us? Why are you tellin’ us now? And why are you such a jerk?! ”

“I’m not!” Rainbow pleaded, “I mean, I am. I mean, I was. Look, look see here? See this mouthwriting?”

The tawny orange farm pony leaned closer, and says, “Ah’m more concerned about what you were writing, not how you were writing it.”

“A-are you sure this isn’t just an elaborate fantasy?” Fluttershy barely suggested. “You didn’t really do any of this, and... and just substituted yourself in for the one who did?”

“I saw the bits,” Rainbow Dash said crabbily. She walked around on the table to look at the book again, turning to the very last entry from yesterday, “This one was because Scootaloo tried to give me the bits, a-and I panicked and told her to just dump it and pretend it never happened. But it still kinda did. But I told her to never ever do something like that again. A-and I’ve been picking her up after school, so she doesn’t just have to go off to live at...uh. And... stuff.”

“But why would you tell her,” Applejack huffed in frustration, “Not to do it again, when you basically taught her how to do it?”

“Because I don’t think I was the same pony, back then,” Rainbow said in a haunted tone.

“Sugarcube, we all can change for the better,” Applejack said with a strained expression on her face, “And we’re a new pony every time we do, but that don’t mean—”

“No, no I mean...argh!” Rainbow stomped in frustration, saying, “Here, see this mouthwriting? It’s all squarey and scratchy?” then she flipped to the next page, saying, “And see this mouthwriting? It’s all round and squiggly. That’s how I write. Round and squiggly!”

“Are you suggesting some ruffian stole your private diary, and tried to frame you by writing in it?” Rarity asked, gaping in astonishment.

“No, I’m suggesting that my mouthwriting changed when Discord got loose!” Rainbow retorted.

Rarity stared in continued astonishment for a moment, then her horn lit up. “Let me see that,” she repeated testily, swooping the diary over in her magic, and flipping through its pages.

“I don’t know why,” Rainbow Dash said as she looked, “But I can’t remember writing any of that stuff beforehand. I would never write any of that stuff beforehand, because I would never do any of that stuff!”

Rarity flipped between the old and the new mouthwriting twice before exclaiming, “It’s like two different ponies are writing in this! How do you know it wasn’t somepony else?”

“Because... some of the things in it, I remember!” Rainbow shouted. “You remember last year’s Running of the Leaves?”

“How could I forget,” Rarity said, rolling her eyes. “I ended up hip deep in bog water, and some pegasus who ignored the signs ended up winning the whole thing, with nary a leaf displaced.”

“Uh, no that ain’t last year’s Running,” Applejack said cautiously. “Last year was the one where me and Rainbow tied... for last, on account of we kept fightin’ over who got to be first.”

Rarity looked at Applejack surprised, and said, “Are you sure?”

Rainbow Dash interrupted, saying, “I’m sure. That’s what I remember, is losing with Applejack. But old me wrote about it here, and what she says is that I won it, alone! And then Applejack made me pay up so she wouldn’t spill my secret.”

“Applejack did what?!” Pinkie exclaimed in astonishment, as if all the things Rainbow Dash did/didn’t do weren’t astonishing enough.

“That’s patently ridiculous,” Rarity laughed, waving a hoof at Rainbow Dash, “Applejack would never do something so brutish. Though I do recall that the... pegasus who won was... I mean, it can’t have been you, that would...”

Silence.

“Would...?” Pinkie asked, looking at Rarity, whose pupils were getting really big. What was she—Rarity just kind of... jerked in place, every muscle in her body going rigid and she fell over like a freaking goat, laying there on her side right by the table they were standing at, with her legs kicking in jerky, uncoordinated movements.

“Rarity!” Pinkie shrieked in terror, leaping to her friend trying to wrestle her to stillness.

“She’s havin’ a seizure!” Applejack shouted in alarm. “You gotta—” but she only managed to get a few words out before Fluttershy was just... there, tearing Pinkie Pie bodily away from Rarity and hurling the heavy pink pony against the wall of the boutique with a loud thud. She wha—

Rainbow Dash’s thoughts came to an abrupt halt. She could only stare at the soft spoken pegasus, who braced there like a vengeful angel between the convulsing Rarity and Pinkie Pie, facing Pinkie Pie with an overwhelming intensity in her deep, teal eyes. Fluttershy merely said in a quietly disapproving voice, “You do not hold creatures still when they are having a seizure. I know you’re worried about her, but if you try to hold her still, she could dislocate her joints and tear her ligaments. The best thing we can do is clear a space for her. It shouldn’t last more than a minute.”

Pinkie just nodded, wide eyed, from the crumpled heap of pink she was beside the wall. Fluttershy and Applejack started pushing chairs away, and Rainbow moved to help, but there really wasn’t much to be done. “Now do you believe me?” Rainbow said, regarding the bizarre circumstance that had befallen her unicorn friend. “Something really weird is going on here, and it’s something weird about us! ”

“But ah thought Discord’s magic was supposed to be all gone!” Applejack said, staring at Rarity in open horror. “The Elements cleaned it all up good! Big Mac weren’t barking no more, and Granny wasn’t tap dancin’!”

“M...maybe it only helped other ponies?” Fluttershy offered uncertainly. “The elements protected us... from their own effects?”

“That can’t be right,” Rainbow protested, hovering nervously over her fallen friend. “You remember what his magic did to us! How is any of this... that?”

“What is even wrong with us?” Applejack protested shaky voiced. “Rainbow and ah have memory problems, and her mouthwriting changed the day he came around, and Rarity’s havin’ fits now? She ain’t had a full on seizure since she was a little filly!”

“What do you mean since she was a filly?” Rainbow demanded. “She did this before?!”

“She used to!” Applejack said in protest. “But now she just faints. Or she did. Ah don’t get it, didn’t she have medicine for this sorta thing?”

“Maybe Discord...” Pinkie said thoughtfully, “Maybe he enchanted us twice. He made us forgetty forgettersons, and then he made us mean and nasty, so the Elements could only get the second one?”

“But why?” Applejack exclaimed, shaking her head. “What could he possibly get outta makin’ us forget all the bad things we done before Twilight snapped us out of it?”

“Well, this is pretty chaotic,” Pinkie said, gesturing around the pleasantly pink boutique, and the spilled tea on Rarity’s tablecloth. And Rarity. Rainbow Dash had another idea though.

“Does anypony else besides me keep a diary?” she asked. Applejack shrugged, and Fluttershy shook her head, and Pinkie said, “I only keep a pony planner.”

“Well—” Dash blushed a little, “I bet Rarity does, and when she wakes up... we gotta read it.”

“You... you think her hornwriting changed too?” Fluttershy offered anxiously.

“Look, just... I think she’s not twitching anymore or anything,” Rainbow said, looking down at the still white horse laying on her side. “Does she just... come back like normal?”

“Ah never was with her, only heard about the ones she had as a filly,” Applejack said. “Probably, I guess?”

“She may be sore, but she landed on her side, so she’s probably uninjured,” Fluttershy mused. “I don’t know if it’s different for felines, but she will probably be very thirsty, and maybe sleepy.”

Rarity came to consciousness slowly, much to Dash’s impatience. “Oh, my... I don’t... usually faint so quickly,” Rarity said groggily, after they told her what happened. Rainbow Dash shook her head at that, and said,

“You didn’t faint this time, Rarity. You had another seizure!”

“A... another seizure?” Rarity asked, giving Rainbow a cagey look.

“Somethin’ about this magic that’s gotten into us is bringing back your seizures, Rarity,” Applejack said honestly. “It looks like your seizure medicine ain’t working no more.”

Rarity looked from Applejack to Rainbow Dash, and said in a very puzzled tone of voice, “I’m afraid I don’t know what you two are talking about. I don’t take any seizure medication, that I know of.”

Rarity stood on her own, and swayed on her hooves, saying “Whoo... woozier than usual... and why am I so ...thirsty?”

Fluttershy already had a glass of water ready, that she hooved to Rarity. Rarity took it in her magic, and drank down every drop. “Thank you so much, dear,” Rarity said to Fluttershy, “But how did you know I was going to even ask that?”

“It’s... a common symptom of e-epileptic seizures,” Fluttershy mumbled, blushing self consciously.

“Darling, I know I have my moments of fainting, but I hardly would call that an epileptic seizure. I don’t have ‘seizures’,” Rarity said wryly to Fluttershy. She gave the others a puzzled look and added, “...what?”

“Okay, where’s your medicine cabinet?” Rainbow Dash said flatly. “We’re gonna find your seizure medicine, and I bet it’s gonna be in there.”

Rarity reluctantly showed them her bathroom sink, which held a small set of pill bottles behind it. Headache, decongestant, cold remedy, vitamins, standard stuff, and an orange medical looking bottle with the Ponyville pharmacy sticker on it. As Rainbow Dash presented it to Rarity triumphantly, Rarity took it in her magic and read out, “Carba...mazepine? I honestly have no idea how this got in my medicine cabinet. Detected release? Take one after every ...incident? What is this?”

“Rarity,” Applejack said to her puzzled unicorn friend quite seriously, “We need to take a look at your diary.”

“My private diary?” Rarity exclaimed, dropping the pill bottle in shock. It clattered on the tile floor as she said, “Why in Equestria would you need to do that!”

“Because somethin’s been messing with our memories,” Applejack responded darkly under the brim of her hat, “And ah’ll bet my buckles that if you go the day before Discord, just like Rainbow Dash your mouth—uh...magicywriting...”

“Hornwriting,” Rarity corrected faintly.

“Yeah, that. Your hornwriting’ll change too,” Applejack concluded.

“I’ll just... go fetch it,” Rarity said quietly and without protest. She trotted unsteadily over to her room, and returned with a purple diary that even had a lock on it. Dash just used a plain notebook for hers... maybe that was a bad idea, considering what Rainbow Dash found written in her own diary.

“Now you’ll all have to promise not to speak of anything you read in here,” Rarity said cautiously, a delicate key turning the lock before floating away to wherever Rarity was hiding it. “In fact, don’t read anything at all. We are merely going to see if Applejack’s hypothesis about my hornwriting is correct.”

“Actually it was Rainbow Dash’s idea,” Applejack pointed out, much to Rainbow’s chagrin.

“Then we are going to see if Rainbow Dash’s hypothesis is correct,” Rarity repeated, summarily opening her diary and flipping through it. She seemed troubled by what she saw. Like, breathing faster troubled. “H...how is this possible?” she squeaked, “I didn’t break into my sister’s belongings and steal her... what?!”

Rainbow Dash fluttered over to the book, still floating there in Rarity’s magic and peered over the edge of it to the text below. “There, see?” Rainbow said, flipping from one page to another, “The writing looks totally different! Before you were writing all angular and elegant, and now you’re writing all round and... squiggly...”

“Please, Rainbow Dash!” Rarity said, snatching her diary from under Rainbow’s numb hooves, looking at her with more terror than outrage, “This is private! I don’t want you to... I don’t want you to read any of this!”

“But I... but I didn’t even read it; it was upside down, Rarity,” Rainbow Dash said, with a struggle to get to what she needed to talk about. “But the shape! You saw how the shape changed!”

“I... did,” Rarity said giving Rainbow Dash a cautious look. “What does it mean? Was I writing that other way, while Discord had cursed me?”

Dash fidgeted in the air, saying, “I dunno, maybe? But... okay, here, do you have a quill and paper?”

Rarity provided, and Rainbow inked out a hasty message on the paper. Before showing it to anypony though, she said, “Okay, Rarity I need you to write down ‘This is a sentence’ on that other paper.”

“Write down...” Rarity said unsurely, hovering the quill in her magic.

“Yeah, just write down the sentence ‘This is a sentence,’” Dash confirmed. “I uh... I’m not creative okay, so sue me. Sorry, it’ll mess it up if I tell you why.” She covered up her own paper defensively in her sky blue forehooves.

Rarity did write what she was asked, and then Rainbow Dash showed her what she herself had written, putting the papers side by side. They all looked at it, and Applejack was the first to comment saying,

“Well ah’ll be...”

Rarity was confused though. “These are identical!” she said waving her hoof at the sentences. “What are you saying, that you can copy somepony’s hornwriting?”

“I wasn’t copying anypony’s hornwriting!” Dash said. “I was just writing, that’s the point!”

Applejack bit down on the quill, and went writing the sentence herself. Pinkie joined in on it too, and Fluttershy was... afraid to, but it was pretty obvious by that point.

“Why do we all have the same hornwriting?” Rarity asked in a hauntingly spooked tone. There was nopony who could answer her. Rarity started to get agitated then, levitating her diary and declaring,

“What else does it say? What does it say I’ve done?” She flipped through it frantically, then exclaimed in outrage, “I did not steal those gems from the diamond dogs! I didn’t! Well, technically I did, but that wasn’t the point! They were just using me to get more gems! I didn’t quote, find where they were hiding their cache, unquote, and quote, no dog was the wiser. Unquote.”

“Of course you didn’t!” Fluttershy said emphatically. “You were ponynapped! We all came to rescue you, but you had worked things out with them on your own!”

Everypony else nodded at that, and Rainbow added, “Yeah, I remember that totally wicked dive we took down into the Diamond Dog’s lair.”

“That’s kinda strange when you think about it,” Applejack said thoughtfully, “You fell like the rest of us. Why didn’t you fly?”

“Um, because I was scared—” Fluttershy started, but Applejack shushed her and said,

“No, ah meant Rainbow Dash.”

“Well duh, I couldn’t see a thing in those tunnels,” Dash said, feeling a little nervous about what really should have been more obvious. “Who could even tell which way was up when we landed?”

“The tunnels were pretty well lit, actually,” Applejack said in an unconvinced tone.

“Yeah, they were lit, but when you crash so bad you can’t get your eyes to go straight, it makes it hard to recover!” Dash said in uneasy protest. “That makes sense, right?”

“It’s odd how we all remember that,” Fluttershy remarked, “But only you two and Pinkie remember the real Running of the Leaves last year. I mean, I didn’t attend since I still have trouble shaking down dandelions, but I remember hearing Rarity complaining about the bog, and boy was she um...”

“Upset...” Fluttershy mumbled in a voice heavy with self doubt.

“Well, what’s the difference?” Rainbow Dash asked, “Maybe our memories stop getting messed up outside of Ponyville?”

They compared stories, and everypony remembered that disastrous visit from Rainbow Dash’s former gryphon friend. They all remembered the procession of disaster that was Applebuck season, but their stories were inconsistent, and Dash didn’t want to judge, but it seemed like they were remembering blaming on her instead, a lot of what she remembered Applejack did. Flutters, Dash and Pinkie had no recollection of Applejack and Rarity ever having a sleepover, much less one with Twilight, but Applejack and Rarity remembered it clearly.

They all remembered their encounter with Poison Joke the same, except for the one time that Applejack got separated from them. But the only difference there is Applejack remembered Rainbow Dash giving her a ride and cursed to fly upside down, and Rainbow Dash remembered giving her a ride and being cursed to fly backwards.

And anything recent, but more than a few years ago was just... blurry and messed up. Locked away by this curse, or whatever happened to them.

“The only thing in common with all this is Twilight,” Applejack said. Standing firm on her own four orange hooves, she looked at the others and told them, “Ah know Twilight’s been not too comfortable around any of us lately, but now ah know why. She’s gotta be goin’ through this too, and she’s probably more confused than the rest of us.”

“I know the sign of a pony who is not dealing with this,” Rarity said looking off in the vague direction of the library, “And that is a pony who is not dealing with this.”

“Well, don’t just stand there everypony,” Rainbow Dash said, trotting to the door. “Twilight needs help, and we’re the only ones who can help her! I don’t care if she doesn’t even say hi anymore. It’s because she’s in trouble, and I’m not giving up on her!”

“Twilight’s scary though,” Pinkie Pie whined. “She called me a pink furred menace, and then went back on it at the last minute, and said it’s not true, and then got scared that I thought she said it, and told me not to think that she said it anymore. Then she tells me something really bad is going to happen if I ever tell anypony what she said, and then she tells me not to remember that she said that, either!”

Dash facehooved. “That means she’s in trouble, and needs your help, Pinkie,” she said.

“Oh...!” the pink pony said in dramatic realization, “Okay, let’s go!”

The only one left to protest was Fluttershy, and she... didn’t protest. At all.

“Oh, I just want this to be over,” Fluttershy said in quiet frustration, trotting after Pinkie out of the boutique. “I want my animal friends to learn I’m their friend again, and I want that mean monster I can only barely remember to just go away.”

It didn’t really sound like she was talking about Discord.

The day was in full swing when they left, a few puffy white clouds overhead in the cerulean blue. The five of them travelled as a posse that day, straight to Twilight’s library. Their meeting was running a little bit over time, but they all wanted to get this over with as soon as possible, and get back to their ordinary lives. And who should they meet coming out of that old oak as they approached, but Applejack’s carrot loving neighbor, an earth pony named Golden Harvest.

“Hey there, Goldie!” Applejack said pleasantly on seeing her. Golden Harvest started to smile at Applejack, then noticed the others, and her face just froze.

“Hay there, Applejack...” she said slowly and cautiously, in her smooth alto, backing her carrot colored rump up to the library door again. “Fancy meeting you all here. Together.”

“Matter of fact we’re gonna talk with Twilight right now,” Applejack said. “Important Element business. Some spooky stuff going on. You ain’t got any weird memories lately, that don’t exactly fit, do ya?”

Instead of answering, Golden Harvest just winced and said, not to any of them but to herself, “I knewd this was a bad idea.” She galloped into the library then, and could be heard shouting for Twilight. Beyond that though, it was impossible to make out the words, as the sounds of their conversation drifted out to the 5 confused, and sort of outraged mares standing on the doorstep to the library. It wasn’t long though, before Goldie reemerged from the library, along with the mare in question herself, Twilight Sparkle.

“Oh... hey girls...” Twilight said, walking a very narrow line as she approached them with a dreadful unease.

“Enough with the small talk,” Rainbow Dash said irritably, flying up to Twilight and poking her chest, saying, “We know what’s going on.”

“You do?” Twilight squeaked, backing up all the way until she hit Goldie’s rump.

She and Golden Harvest shared a... glance, and Goldie said, “I’ll go get the others.”

Golden Harvest went galloping off then, and Dash would have gone after her, but Twilight was right here, and the five of them needed to help her, right now. Applejack started talking then, saying to the distressed Twilight Sparkle,

“Sugarcube, we know what you’re goin’ through. Your records don’t match up before and after Discord, do they? He did something to your head that didn’t get undone, and now everypony walks around you in kit socks.”

“We know you’re having trouble, and that’s okay,” Fluttershy said softly. “You’re a good pony, who just had something bad happen to her.”

“We’re all here for you,” Dash put in, “And we know what you’re going through, so you don’t have to avoid us any more.”

“Twilight please,” Rarity said earnestly, “This is beyond anything any of us have ever faced before, and it is distinctly magical in origin! We simply must have your help in order to figure this all out.”

“I’m not really a... menace, am I?” Pinkie said with an uncharacteristically subdued voice.

“It’ll be okay, Twilight,” Fluttershy said with a soft smile.

Twilight mumbled something in reply, staring at the ground as she was. “I’m sorry, what was that?” Fluttershy prompted, turning her ear to face her purple, book loving friend.

“No it won’t,” Twilight repeated more audibly, turning her head up to look at them intensely... angrily?

“It won’t what now?” Pinkie prompted unsurely, contorting her head around.

“It won’t be okay,” Twilight answered loudly, then shouted, “It will never be okay! He meant this to happen!” She was hopping mad and crying with despair at the same time. Pinkie was right. This mare was terrifying! “It’s all going to fall apart now!” Twilight sobbed at them, “You’re going to ruin everything! It’s all my fault! It’s all going to fall apart, and then he is going to be free again!!”

Then Twilight fled her best friends, magically slamming the library door behind her, charging into the comforting confines within.

They all stared in shock, before Applejack managed to find her voice, saying,

“Did Twilight just say we were gonna let Discord loose again?”

Everypony shook their head. It was true but, they just couldn’t believe it, that their friend would accuse them of something like that, after all that creature did to them.

“Oh for pete’s sake!” came Rarity’s frustrated exhalation. She was standing at the library door shouting, “Why does the front door to a public library even have a lock?!”

“I’ll go check the windows,” Rainbow Dash said, lifting up in the air, but Applejack cautioned her, saying,

“Hold on now... do you hear that?”

What she referred to is the thundering hooves of a small group of ponies heading their way at a dead sprint.

Author's Note

Kit socks are socks personally woven by very young foxes, only used in the most delicate of situations.

“Detected release” means the drug is released when the binding charm detects it’s needed.

Grave Mistakes

It was the biggest mistake Discord would make in a thousand years. There was no way that silly, souped up librarian could... actually turn the ponies he sent her into the friends that she imagined they were. They were the opposite of the ideals that Twilight would try to impose on them. She would try to make the compulsive liar the avatar of Honesty, and that cruel animal hoarder as the spirit of Kindness, and so on. The Elements would have no choice but to fizzle out, and remain flaccidly impotent... forever! Or, for however as long as he could find absolutely terrible representatives to fail to take up their mantle.

Discord was starting to get worried though, because as he gloated atop his dark throne, the Elements were actually responding, even on the necks of these ponies. He had his eyes closed; he’d been so confident they were just going to burn the damn things out from trying, and narrowly missed a bolt of pure Magic trying to clip him in the face. As the anodes gathered behind him, Discord reflected that the other five Elements hadn’t tried to take a chunk out of him in their passing. Maybe he shouldn’t have laughed so hard at the Element of Magic lying there in the trash bin.

It was just like the last time the Elements had gone off, but the situation was still salvagable. This time, they couldn’t activate, with the liar, the back stabber, the thug, the greedy cheat, and the cruella he’d managed to find for them. Though the ponies fought bravely, it was only a matter of time before he could tear those awful pendants right off their brawny little necks. But they were so insistent on making them work, it concerned him, so Discord took one more look into the thoughts of these ponies futilely trying to fight his benevolent rule.

“What’s this?” he murmured, as the ponies he thought he knew were somehow different ponies entirely, and their minds were just crawling with a cheerfully magenta tinged aura of magic. It was almost as if she...

“No...”

“I cursed you all,” Twilight said soberly. “All my friends had abandoned me, so I made new friends. I made you my friends. I didn’t just confuse you or beguile you. I overwrote you, with who I thought you should be. Anything that didn’t fit with my preconceived notion, I thought it was Discord’s beguilement, so I f-fixed it.

The Golden Oaks library was a rather foreboding place at the moment, with the front lobby taken up by a whole bunch of ponies who were unsure of whether to fight, flee, or friend. Anypony who poked their nose in, quickly pulled it out again, not wanting to even think about trying to check a book out with a possible fight brewing in here. Certain very smart, small, purple and green creatures had made themselves scarce. Indeed the nachos had been served, yet the shocked ponies could only idly munch on them as the purple unicorn confessed.

“I was so afraid,” Twilight said. “I tried to keep you from knowing, because I didn’t want him to escape. I didn’t want your enchantments to break; I thought... I didn’t want him to do this to me again. He tricked me into doing this to you, and I just don’t trust myself anymore if he gets free. So I tried to keep you from waking up from my b-beguilements.”

“You... you’re serious, aren’t you,” Rarity said, employing the full spectrum of her community college magic degree. “But... but the sheer amount of power, and finesse... one tiny error and it would all come crashing down, and the pony you so perverted... beguilements don’t last, Twilight! Every foal learns that in elementary school! Our minds are... are...”

“Supernaturally resilient!” Twilight said in agreement. “And you’re right. It shouldn’t have worked! Our friendship should have been utterly ruined, as soon as you overcame my dark magic! You would have become the ponies you were before, or you may possibly have gone irrevocably insane, but there’s no way it would actually work without a hitch! I’ve been sitting here waiting for the next shoe to drop, but I couldn’t let it drop because... because you’re all the new Elements of Harmony!”

“The new Elements of Harmony?” Applejack said skeptically. “Who were the old ones?”

Twilight blinked at her, and gave a look of incredulity to the five ponies gathered together: Derpy, Golden Harvest, that... unicorn, uh... 5 ponies that Rainbow Dash wasn’t entirely familiar with.

“Nevermind,” Applejack mumbled, using her hat to hide the blush. “Forget ah asked.”

“H-how long do we have?” Fluttershy asked Twilight, looking absolutely miserable. “Isn’t there anything you can do? I don’t want to be... her again.”

“I... I don’t precisely know, Fluttershy,” Twilight said to her. “But you need to be her again. I know you’re scared right now, but you can’t just go denying your true self forever.”

Rainbow Dash had to hover up to Fluttershy worriedly, as the butter yellow pegasus slowly broke down, saying to Twilight, “I don’t remember it, but in strange bits and pieces, like a horrible nightmare. I can’t remember any events, but I remember feeling so... empty. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s like I wasn’t feeling anything, and that felt even more than any feeling I’ve ever felt. I must have wanted to hurt them just so that I could... could stop not... being... not being.” She choked back a quiet sob.

Dash hugged Fluttershy from behind, and Fluttershy turned to her, lost to tears. And Rainbow was probably the worst pony at doing this, but Fluttershy didn’t seem to care at this point whose chest fluff she had to cry into.

“You um...” Twilight spoke up, standing over the two of them and looking at Fluttershy with concern. Her words sounded so loud compared to Fluttershy’s quiet weeping. “You were... well, the hospital records suggest you were clinically insane. I mean, you are living on financial aid for disabled ponies, and it certainly isn’t because you’re a weak flyer.”

“Oh... I thought it was because of that...” Fluttershy mumbled into Dash’s shoulder.

“No, I kind of... added that part too, accidentally,” Twilight said, nervously twitching her ears. “But you were about to get in very big trouble pretty soon, because you weren’t supposed to be allowed to own erm... animals. Your special talent apparently involved being... cruel to them. It didn’t stop with just pinning butterflies up on the walls. And you know how hard a life a pony has, if they can’t express their special talent.”

“Oh, I hope that is not my special talent,” Fluttershy said in a tone of total hopelessness, staring at the butterflies on her hip, “I want to be friends with the animals, not... do bad things.”

“You can be whoever you want, Fluttershy,” Twilight said comfortingly, “A cutie mark is what you make of it. It’s your story that really matters.” They were wise, noble words, but Fluttershy looked away; she didn’t seem convinced. Dash had to admit it was totally hard to believe, since evil Fluttershy had a whole wall of cages and cruelty to establish that no, you can’t just give up on your cutie mark. It may have seemed like a nightmare, but those cages proved that the evil Fluttershy had been real all along.

“Whoever you were seems... really gone,” the cream mare with the red and blue locks said to Fluttershy, in a dissatisfied tone. “It’s outright unsettling! I’m afraid losing your special talent may be the least of your worries, dear. Even the Elements chose you, over well, us! I suppose even relics of power can be fooled sometimes, but I mean, you are very much ...changed.”

Fluttershy had separated from Dash as the other ponies took the conversation away from her. At least she wasn’t crying anymore and that’s good, plus Rainbow Dash kind of was more comfortable with being by herself right now. She just wanted to... think about things.

“We don’t hold it against you,” Derpy said in an easygoing tone, “I don’t think we really enjoyed all that dangerous adventuring, anyway. Well, maybe Lyra did.”

She looked at Lyra who just shrugged.

“When the Elements chose you, they were right to do so,” Bonbon assured Rainbow Dash and her friends, in a way that sounded like a sort of toned down Rarity, “You five really do deserve the Elements you were given... even if you were... made to deserve them.”

“But they didn’t choose us!” Applejack protested vexedly at the candymare’s kind words, pointing an accusing hoof at Twilight. “They chose her! We’re not even real ponies! We’re just something that purple unicorn dreamed up! Mah own family don’t even know me!”

Applejack huffed and looked away from Bonbon, who was smiling sadly at her strong words, accepting them without backing down, just like Rarity did so well, as far as Rainbow Dash remembered at least.

Twilight didn’t answer Applejack, but one of the other 5 did. “I don’t know how much the Elements really think, but they sure thought you were the real deal,” the other orange farm pony said, with a much lighter accent than Applejack, but it was still there. “We figured it wouldn’t last long, though. Your true selves reassert themselves, the Elements go all to pieces, and Discord breaks right out of his prison. Twilight here was tryin’ to prepare something for when that occurred. Then, we were gonna have to go and... take them back, and defeat him somehow.”

Golden fell to an uncomfortable silence at that. That other cream mare then sighed and admitted in Goldie’s place, “It was such a tenuous longshot, that you couldn’t even see the target over the horizon. But it was all we had.”

“It doesn’t matter, Bonnie,” Twilight told her in an admonishing tone, “Whatever we have, this is just... wrong. Even if they don’t change back on their own, we don’t have the right to ask that of them, to stay like this. There has got to be another way to save the world, if I could just... find it!”

“Twilight, how much have you slept in the past 2 weeks?” Bonbon asked with a somewhat disapproving squint.

“Enough?” Twilight said with a pleading smile, and a nervous twitch in her left eye. “That’s not important. I have to—to figure this out, so I can safely undo what I did to these ponies!”

She turned to the main 5, saying fearfully, “I had no right to overwrite you as ponies. You all think you were so bad before, but even you were important, each and every one of you! You had a special place here in your community, and I violated that. Even the Elements. You think just anypony could have done what you—what the old you were capable of? The ponies you once were, they saved my life! Not you, them!”

Firming her jaw, Twilight said a little more steadily, “The Elements of Harmony have been wielded by one pony before. Not one mortal pony, but it has happened, in desperate times. Six of us are needed to lend our strengths, our personalities, and—well—our life forces to the Elements, so that they can amplify them beyond measure. So what I did would have failed, and it definitely would have killed me, but...”

With a sigh, Twilight looked away from Rainbow Dash, to her old friends, saying, “He convinced me I had found you again. My old friends. Each and every one of you were so strong in my mind. Things were so clear to me now that I could hear you. I could see you. I had the wrong ponies, but... I think each of you gave me so much of yourselves over the years, that... I could wield the elements on my own. Somewhere inside my memories of you was all you taught me about honesty, kindness, generosity, laughter, and loyalty. And that was... what the Elements needed.”

Twilight turned and looked at her new old friends, saying somewhat disparagingly, “Well, that and the life force of a pony several times over. So my point is that... if any of you had the power to resist, or break this somehow, it probably would have backlashed on me. If you somehow refused the Elements, and brought your true selves forth, whatever’s left of them, it might all have failed. But you didn’t.

“You couldn’t fight for the truth,” Twilight said earnestly, full on entreating them now. “Not in your former state of mind. You had no power to resist, no friendship to keep you strong. You were all a bunch of weak willed failures, and you didn’t even try to fight. On some level I think you were all really... unhappy with your lives, if my research is accurate. So... yes maybe, hypothetically I used the Elements by myself, but I still couldn’t have defeated him, without you being the horrible, flawed ponies that you were!”

Twilight pulled back at that, blinking at her own words. She sighed, and looked at the floor, saying, “And now I’ve made you all twisted amalgamations of my imagination, my memories of my friends, and parts of who you once were.”

Rainbow Dash had to shake her head at this. “This is so messed up,” Rainbow Dash and ... Derpy said at exactly the same time. Rainbow cracked an eye open and gave Derpy a look, and Derpy sort of gave her a look back.

After they both carefully paused, Derpy said slowly, in her more squirrely voice, “It makes sense though,” cautiously keeping an eye on Dash who deliberately remained silent. “Discord was gonna win, and we all just abandoned Twilight, and didn’t even think about her. Why shouldn’t she wield the Elements by herself? She was more loyal than I was...”

Twilight looked from Derpy to her rainbow colored pony double, and said in a somewhat detached manner, “You, Rainbow Dash, I actually knew before the... incident. I only knew that you liked vandalizing my library with your reckless stunts. According to my research, you also had a number of petty crimes on your record, but nothing that would stick enough to have you incarcerated.

“You were... lazy, for lack of a better word,” Twilight said, her face twisted in confusion as she struggled to tell Rainbow Dash who she should be. “Which is to say, you worked very hard for yourself, but whenever some other pony depended on you, you let them down. I don’t know your reasons for that, but that’s why he chose you. Your coworkers and teammates reported that you seemed to take a perverse pleasure in ruining another pony’s day. That doesn’t ring any bells, does it? You don’t... feel that sort of thing appealing at all?”

“No, man, mare, I...” Dash shook her head incredulously. “I can’t believe I was even capable of that! I kinda hoped that it was just... fake or something. Or magic, or I dunno. So, every diary entry where I cheated on my shift, so that other ponies had to do the work to catch up, that all really happened?”

Twilight didn’t break her gaze, so Rainbow Dash had to, looking at the ground and scuffing at it. “I guess that explains why everypony hates me...” she said miserably.

“And let me guess,” Rarity then put in humorlessly, “I was greedy and stingy, and wouldn’t even give anypony the time of day.”

“Discord selected you five based on how poorly you embodied your Element of Harmony,” Twilight said, walking back and forth in front of them. “That is not to say you were all horrible ponies, but he was trying to disrupt their power, to stop anypony from defeating him. So he found the least generous pony he could—” She stopped at Rarity, and said, “You were not a horrible pony.”

Twilight faced the dressmaker impassively, telling her, “You were... you are a shrewd, savvy mare, who pulled herself up from nothing to the sole proprieter of a successful business. There are newspaper articles about you, Rarity! Not front page news, but everypony loves a self made mare. Just because you were a little... abrasive doesn’t make you evil. It happens to ponies who try to go into business, sometimes they lose sight of what they really want, and start only thinking about the bottom line.”

Walking away from the white mare, Twilight closed her eyes and uttered, “So yes, you were greedy, and stingy, and bitter for... how you thought other ponies thought of you. And that still doesn’t make what I did a good thing!”

“An’ you’re tellin’ us all this, just because you’re tryin’ to fix us? ” Applejack asked in a less than friendly manner. “Ah don’t even want to know what kinda pony you thought I was, and that’s the honest tru—that’s the truth!”

“But it’s not a good thing!” Twilight implored of them, “I unknowingly hurt you all on a very deep level! I thought you were enchanted. I made you better! I—I made you my friends! What kind of friend am I, if I have to—to dement you into being friends with me?!”

“Why are you trying so hard to make us act like our old selves again? Wasn’t that the whole point?” Rainbow Dash demanded of Twilight, waving her diary around overhead. “Have you even read this? I can’t be like that again. Even I hate me!”

“I wouldn’t even know how,” Rarity said, gazing pensively at her polished white hoof. “I barely recall any of the time I was Discorded... which I suppose is my true self. But it all seems so...”

“Stupid!” Pinkie Pie cut in.

“Silly!” Rarity agreed. “I’d just feel like a bad actor, playing the villain in some sort of tawdry stage production.”

“But... but you can’t trust what you feel now!” Twilight protested. “I made your feelings up! You’re not even real ponies. You’re just figments of my imagination! Can you really say your old self deserves to die just so you can be... be nice ponies?”

They all fell guiltily silent then, and as she was the one who said them originally, Applejack was the only one of them who could answer her own words spat back at her. After that somber silence, Applejack said, “Y’all know mah sister, Apple Bloom, right?”

There were a few nods all around. “Well,” Applejack said uncertainly, “Ah was tuckin’ my little sister in for bed the other night. She said to me all quiet like, that she liked the new Applejack. Ah told her I didn’t know what she was talkin’ about, and she called me a liar. Not saying it serious-like this time, but with a laugh, like she knew it weren’t true no more. She asked me if ah was going back, and I told her I wasn’t going anywhere. Thought she meant like, Manehattan or somethin’ ah dunno.”

Applejack took off her hat and held it in a hoof, staring down at it pensively as she said, “Mah little sister started cryin’ then. Told me she didn’t ever want me to leave. Ah didn’t know what to say to that, so I just told her ah ain’t goin’ nowhere again.”

Looking up at Twilight, Applejack said, “Ah dunno who you think I am, or who you think I was, but—” She clapped her hat back on her head and said seriously, “Ah ain’t a liar. I told her I wasn’t goin’ nowhere, and I ain’t goin’ nowhere. You ain’t got no right to make me somepony ah’m not, even if you already did it once before. Ah might be a little mixed up in mah head now, but I am a real pony, standin’ right here in front of you. And ah ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Applejack puncuated those words with a determined stomp, glaring challengingly at Twilight, and the other 5.

“What about you, Fluttershy?” Rainbow Dash asked, looking around for the soft yellow, soft spoken pony, “You’re with us, right?”

“...Fluttershy?”

Ten ponies were way too many ponies in a crowded library for everypony to panic at once. “We have to find her!” Twilight said shrilly, “She was the worst of you all! There’s no telling what she could do!”

“Okay, don’t panic!” Rainbow Dash said, searching under the seat cushions, “It’s Fluttershy! She probably just went and hid somewhere. I think?”

“Ah swear, if your crazy stories hurt poor Fluttershy, so help me—!” Applejack said, furiously butting up to Twilight while Golden Harvest got in her way, shouting,

“They ain’t crazy stories! Aren’t crazy stories! Oh golly, now you got me talking like you! ”

“We talk like each other!” Applejack shouted back. “We’re neighbors! Our families been friends forever! Ah always talked like you since we were fillies!”

“You ain’t mah neighbor!” Golden Harvest shot back, tear stricken, “Ah don’t even know you anymore!”

“All those horrid things that we said!” Rarity wailed in horror. “What if she feels like she’s regressing? What if she is regressing?!”

“If she’s anything like Flitter, it would break that poor filly’s heart!” Bonbon replied in alarm.

“What if she tries to stop it!” Rarity demanded of Bonbon frantically, “What if she refuses to be Old Fluttershy? What then?!”

“She could hurt herself!” Bonbon replied, with an equally panicked look on her face. “Or worse!!”

“The horror!” the two ponies cried, holding onto each other, “The horror!”

Lyra appeared in a puff of logic, shouting, “I found her!”

Everypony turned to look her way, and Lyra repeated less confidently, “Okay, I didn’t find her. But I found where she went! Misty Flowers saw her running down Halter street!”

Pinkie Pie burst into the library then, shouting, “I found her!”

Everypony turned to look her way, and Pinkie said awkwardly, “Okay, I didn’t find her. But I found where she—”

“Are you for real?!” Lyra shouted to her, getting right up in Pinkie’s face, but Pinkie persevered shouting back in Lyra’s face,

“It doesn’t matter! Misty Flowers said she ran down Halter street. She must be going back to her cottage!”

Lyra backed up a step, looking at Pinkie Pie tensely. “You know where she lives?” Lyra asked.

“You don’t?” Pinkie said, looking at her just as earnestly.

“She never said!” Lyra whined in protest, her ears going down, “She always just yelled at me, and kicked dirt in my face!”

Pinkie blinked at that, but shook her head, saying, “Never mind! We have to go save her!”

Everypony piled out of the library, half in pursuit of their troubled friend, the other half in pursuit of a very dangerous wildcard. Dash hung back at first, feeling like she was missing something. She wanted to make sure they were all going in the right direction, and not just outright panicking. Thankfully, Dash wasn’t the only one who noticed something was off, because Lyra came galloping right back into the library, to drag out the barely responsive Flitter, who was still staring off into space and murmuring “Fluttershy? Kindness was Fluttershy? ”

Dash dropped out of the sky in front of Lyra and Flitter, shouting, “Come on, snap out of it! We have to go! Fluttershy might be hurt!” It seemed like they both heard her, and Rainbow Dash couldn’t bear to wait any longer. She rocketed away from them, faster than Flitter could murmur, “Fluttershy? She replaced me with Fluttershy? ”

Rainbow Dash was there first, of course. Even before her rainbow contrail could fade away, she hammered on Fluttershy’s door shouting, “Fluttershy? Open up!” but there was no answer. “I know you’re in there, Fluttershy!” Rainbow shouted. “You can’t get better if you just lock yourself away! We’ll figure this out. We’ll figure out something to do. We always do!”

“We... always do...” Dash repeated, leaning her forehead on the door as her gaze dropped downward.

“She’s over here!” Derpy called out from off in the distance, and Rainbow could see now the other ponies and her friends had come galloping up the road already. Derpy was off in Fluttershy’s yard waving her hoof at them, around back behind Fluttershy’s cottage, over on the Everfree side of it. Over to the wall-eyed grey pegasus Rainbow Dash flew, with a flutter of hope in her chest, that Fluttershy would be okay.

They found her sitting in a little grassy plot some distance away from the burbling creek. There wasn’t anything there, besides grass and a... marker. It was too small for a pony’s. It wasn’t even a real... one of those. It looked more like an out of place rock, stuck in the ground on its side next to a small raised bed of earth, and it had been like that for quite a while. Any signs of digging were gone, and a lush carpet of green grass covered it, but the way Fluttershy was sitting mournfully before that out-of-place rock, it was... pretty obvious what it was.

“I found this, a few days ago,” Fluttershy said quietly, before anypony else could think of anything to say. “I don’t know who it is. There’s no name on it.”

The breeze whispered overhead as Fluttershy said, “It’s the only one. There are no others. I don’t know where the r—” She took a breath. “...rest of my missing animal friends are.”

“I won’t go back, Twilight,” Fluttershy said as her chest shook with emotion, “I can’t go back—to... to that. I... I can’t be that mare, I’m sorry. I’m just not strong enough...!”

“Fluttershy...” Rarity said, making to approach the distraught pegasus with utmost care.

“I-if... I must become that, I don’t want to live that way,” Fluttershy said in a hollow voice, plastering her cheek against Rarity’s shoulder. “I want to e-end it now, while I still can!”

Twilight was standing shakily before Fluttershy and Rarity, like she was afraid to approach, or like she didn’t feel she had any right to do so. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, Fluttershy,” she told the frightened pegasus, in a quivery nervous almost whisper. “You... you don’t have to change. You don’t have to be the mare you once were.”

Fluttershy looked up at Twilight, soft teal eyes brimming with forgotten tears, beyond hope, yet hoping beyond hope for somepony to save her.

“I guess I started thinking that was the problem, not the solution,” Twilight told Fluttershy a little bit more steadily. “But I want you to know that I couldn’t change you back, even if I tried. That’s the problem I’ve been working on all this time. I don’t know how I did it, but what I did to you... there are no flaws in the shaping, no cracks that could shatter. You should have reverted the moment you realized what was happening. I know it’s wrong to deny your true self, but... you’re having no problem in doing so! The fact that you can want to remain this way, means you won’t stop being this way! The magic I used is forbidden, because once the magic has faded, even the slightest bit of pressure would shatter the changes to your mind, and quite possibly your mind as well. But you...”

As the butter yellow pegasus fought back the sobs, Twilight at last managed to put a hoof on Fluttershy’s back, saying, “You endured this. You experienced the worst day of your life, and you’re still you. You’re still the mare I created, in my worst judgement call ever. Somehow, everything I love about Flitter is a part of you now. And I don’t see any way that could change.”

“So... so...” Fluttershy sniffled, pulling free from Rarity and looking at her friend—at Twilight Sparkle. “So I don’t have to? It won’t just... happen to me?”

“This has never happened before,” Twilight said soberly. “It was supposed to be impossible. Fluttershy, I can’t know the future, but I do know that I’ll do everything in my power to keep you from falling into your old patterns again, if you truly don’t want to be who you... used to be.”

“I just don’t know, Twilight,” Fluttershy sighed with a hoof to her chest, “I can’t see anything good at all, with how you say I’m supposed to be. I-if she really will do so, maybe we should just let that mare rest in peace. I think...

“I think I may still need counseling,” Fluttershy admitted worriedly.

“You and me both, sister!” Pinkie groaned, flopping face down on the grass.

“I’ll be honest,” Twilight said, backing up to address everypony again. “I didn’t really know any of you were living like this. Were you really such terrible ponies, that you couldn’t even stand being yourself? I didn’t even know there were ponies in this town who were in so much ...suffering.”

“Well, Fluttershy’s got it the worst,” Rainbow Dash said, gulping and admitting, “I wouldn’t... kill myself over it or anything. I just don’t like what I read, and I was hurting ponies, so they wouldn’t like it either. Why should we have to be something nopony wants, just because you think it’s wrong?”

“Ah could get mah family to love me again, like this,” Applejack said softly. “But like they think I was? It just wouldn’t end well. I know you don’t want us to be livin’ lives of denial, but why should we deny what you did to us then? Isn’t forcin’ it back as much of a lie as goin’ forward with what we got?”

“If you’re curious, Twilight, you meet a lot of troubled ponies, volunteering at the welfare shelter,” Flitter put in quietly. “That’s how I um, met Fluttershy, actually.”

“Oh, I used the welfare shelter before?” Fluttershy said curiously, “But I have low income housing, so why would I need to?”

Flitter coughed, and stated, “Actually, you’re... not allowed to visit the welfare shelter anymore, without approval from your social worker. You um... went there for a while, but once you had housing you felt it necessary to um... express your opinions about ponies who didn’t have housing... so, just a head’s up.”

“Oh,” Fluttershy said, hiding behind her hair and backing away from Flitter. “Okay, thank you...”

Twilight needed a lot of time to think about this stuff. Applejack said some pretty heavy stuff, and Rainbow Dash said some... less heavy stuff, but still pretty heavy. And Fluttershy freaking demolished them with her heavy stuff. She came in like a... really big demolishy thing. So, Twilight couldn’t give them the answers right away, but the immediate crisis appeared to be ...salvaged, at least. Flitter cautiously, gently led Fluttershy away from the small grave, and everypony ended up convening together for a final time in Fluttershy’s cottage, in what may have been the strangest tea party in history.

The cottage was still very bare, even more so from the removal of the cages, but many cages were still there, for the animals who still could not handle being free. The ones who could live freely didn’t come greet Fluttershy in loving paws, but ran for every nook and cranny they could hide in, once anypony came through the door. Fluttershy assured everypony that the animals were fine, they just had some trust issues they needed to work through, but damn if it wasn’t unsettling to have those beady little eyes staring at you from the dark places.

The tea quickly became lukewarm, as ponies involved found other things to occupy themselves with. The five of them faced off with the 5 of them, not out of fear or malice, but simple, befuddled curiosity at this point.

Rainbow Dash stood facing Derpy chest to chest, looking across the table at her as she chatted up the wall eyed pegasus. “So, you’re a pretty fast flyer, Derpy?” Rainbow asked her larger, blonde, weirdly alternate pony.

“Oh yes,” Derpy replied with a proud smile. It faltered when she added, “But I can’t really see very well, so I’m not gonna win any races.”

“You made your eyes go straight once,” Rainbow said curiously.

Derpy nodded, and closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were straight. Then she blinked, and they weren’t again. “It just doesn’t come naturally to me,” she said, blushing and wingfluttering at the attention. “Lots of ponies have eyes like mine at one point or another, but seeing right comes naturally to them.”

“I dunno what I’d do if my eyes ended up like that,” Rainbow admitted nervously, “Twilight really coulda screwed me up a lot worse than I ended up. I mean, not that you’re a screw-up, just,”

“Oh, it’s okay,” Derpy said unconvincingly. “I know you don’t really mean it in a bad way. It’s true I can’t be in the racing circuits, but I can do a lot of other really cool things!”

“Yeah, like what?” Dash asked in return. “I mean, what do you get up to that’s really cool?”

“Well, once me and my friends had to scare away a dragon!” Derpy said excitedly. “You remember, when the smoke from his snoring was covering the sky?”

“How could I forget?” Rainbow Dash laughed. “And of all ponies it was Fluttershy who stood up to the big guy!”

Derpy looked at Rainbow Dash uneasily, saying, “Um, no actually it was Bonbon, who sweet talked him into sleeping somewhere else.”

Rainbow Dash’s nervous smile matched Derpy’s then, as Dash said, “Oh, right... the whole, fake memories thing...”

“What is it you remember, I’m curious?” Derpy asked, leaning forward.

“Well, Fluttershy didn’t want to go, so we basically had to drag her up the mountain,” Rainbow said, “And we did that because... huh, now that I think on it that was a pretty nasty move on our part. But it was all worth it, when she got really freaky angry. She stared that dragon down and ripped him a new one. He was actually crying!”

Rainbow Dash blinked again, and rubbed her chin with a hoof, saying, “Wow, that does not sound like Fluttershy. She was just worried about her friends, so she acted differently. Except before, when she didn’t.”

She looked up to meet the eyes of a concerned Derpy.

...sorta.

“It’s that bad, huh,” Rainbow Dash said glumly, fiddling with her teacup.

“It’s kinda cool actually, if it’s not a bother to you,” Derpy said, ruffling her nervous wings straight again. “Twilight did get angry at him, when he knocked out Flitter, and it almost looked like she was gonna try to do that, but then Bonbon showed her that he wasn’t a bad dragon, he just made a bad decision. It wasn’t Fluttershy, but it did sort of go like that. Do you remember the avalanche?”

“Yeah, um, did ...Flitter start it going?” Rainbow asked uncertainly.

“Lyra actually,” Derpy said. “You’d think it was me, but not then. I wasn’t even in the air. Just some pebbles hit her rump and she started freaking out, and next thing we knew we were dodging boulders!”

“So uh, what do you do when you’re not with your friends?” Rainbow asked. “I mean, just so we can talk about something Twilight didn’t dump into my head sort of.”

“Well, I’m a lightning specialist,” Derpy responded, smacking her forehooves together in an impressive spark. “So, that’s something. You wouldn’t believe how many ponies think I zapped myself, on account of, you know,” She stuck her tongue out and pointed at her googly eyes.

“I know what you mean,” Rainbow said to Derpy, rolling her own eyes. “You wouldn’t believe how many ponies think I have the hots for a mare! You know, on account of the whole hair thing. I mean, who says I don’t, right? But I totally don’t.”

Derpy just blinked cluelessly, her eyes unnervingly switching orientations as she did so.

“You know, rainbows?” Rainbow Dash said teasingly, giving a little hip wiggle and flicking her tail in Derpy’s direction to illustrate. Derpy seemed to have a difficult time answering, so a little self consciously, Rainbow Dash said, “...what?”

“Well it’s just, I don’t know how appropriate that conversation is here,” Derpy smiled awkwardly. “I really don’t need to know if you... ‘have the hots’ for me or not.”

“Oh,” Dash said in cold realization, dropping her tail straight down. She didn’t talk about that stuff, did she? Or, did she? “Right,” she said blushing, intensely, “Um... I get a lot of flak since my mom was a rainbow drinker? I mean duh, obviously, but ponies think it makes you stupid, or deformed or um gay or whatever. But I came out fine!” Calmly looking in the other direction and tossing her mane so casually, she said in a nonchalant voice, “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is... I know how you feel, even if it doesn’t hurt my racing career.”

Derpy nodded at that, and sipped her tea. Rainbow Dash settled her haunches back down at the table in Fluttershy’s cottage... an unfamiliar table that looked kind of shoddy and bleached, with a few cracks in the boards, like Fluttershy had just grabbed it from the junkyard or something. Actually she probably did, come to think on it. Where else was she gonna get cheap furniture on short notice? Trying to take her mind off how there were a few newspapers stuffed under one of the table legs to keep it from wobbling, Rainbow Dash tried to think of how to salvage Derpy’s friendship, and maybe a teeny little of her respect.

“So, you bottle lighting,” Dash prompted hopefully, “Sounds pretty cool. I always wondered how to do that.”

“It’s pretty tricky,” Derpy admitted, glad for at least something to talk about, “It took me a while to learn, and I still mess up sometimes. But I could show you some time, just the basics.”

“Yeah, that’d be pretty awesome actually,” Rainbow Dash said. “I could do some incredible tricks if I knew how to use lightning!”

“Well, how far did you get in weather school?” Derpy asked her curiously.

Rainbow Dash blushed, turning away and saying, “I’m uh, well I’m pretty good at cloud busting, but I haven’t exactly been formally ...trained in weather work, so... that’s okay, right?”

Derpy looked shocked at Dash’s awkward confession, but she quickly recovered, smiling brightly and saying, “You bet! Just name a date and I’ll be there!”

Well they worked out a time and place, and Rainbow Dash actually felt pretty good at that. She was usually sort of... ashamed to let other ponies know all the stuff she hadn’t had a chance to learn, but it was just easy to get along with this derpy eyed pony, now that Rainbow had a chance to get to know her.

Applejack and Golden Harvest were talking with each other too, laughing heartily over some sort of farm related pun or something, like they’d always been old friends. Though from Applejack’s perspective, they had. Fluttershy and Flitter were pretty quiet, but Fluttershy seemed a lot more at peace with herself than when they chased her over here. Rarity and Bonbon were trying to have a conversation, but Lyra kept doing something that made Bonbon laugh. And she always laughed. Pinkie was watching that exchange with a curiously adoring expression, but not contributing anything herself. And Twilight Sparkle was sitting... at the other end of the table, keeping to herself. Alone.

“Scuse me a moment,” Rainbow Dash said, standing and trotting around behind Derpy’s impressive posterior to approach her moody looking unicorn friend.

“Twilight, what’s wrong?” Rainbow Dash asked the purple unicorn, sitting her rainbow tailed rump right down beside her.

“What’s not wrong?” Twilight responded cynically.

“Okay fine, a lot of things are messed up, but you aren’t talking to anypony,” Rainbow said worriedly, “You’re just sitting here off by yourself. Aren’t we your friends?”

“Who, you 5, or the other 5?” Twilight asked, glancing at Dash with a probing gaze.

“Both,” Dash answered. “You’re friends with everypony here. Nothing bad happened, we didn’t go crazy or anything. So what’s the problem?”

“Everypony is friends with me, is the problem,” Twilight said, turning to Dash with a conflicted tightness in her vividly violet, yet bloodshot eyes. “Are you my friend, though?”

“Of course!” Rainbow said in confusion at her distressed friend, “Isn’t that the same thing?”

Twilight gave a sigh that shook her shoulders. “I... I don’t remember you, Rainbow Dash,” she explained, “I never knew you very well, any time before you just... were my friend all of a sudden.”

“But... didn’t you—you know—make me up or... or something? How do you forget that?” Rainbow asked, tilting her head. “I mean, all this stuff I remember is really your ideas. I would be more upset, but without you, I’d be a... I dunno... a mean, lonely, friendless jerk. ”

“That’s just it, though,” Twilight said, “Anything I... impressed on you wasn’t a memory I had of you. It was a memory I had of her!” She waved a hoof in Derpy’s direction. Derpy waved back cluelessly.

“From my perspective,” Twilight said mutedly, “You just came out of nowhere, and suddenly you were the best friends I could ever possibly have. You all remember me being friends with you, but I just... feel like this is all a fantasy of mine come to life! I never did anything to earn your friendship. I know you think I did, but I can’t remember any differently.”

Rainbow toed the floor, saying, “Yeah, but... you’re still friends with the other five, right?” Something about that just really hurt to say, aching in the rainbow pegasus’s heart. It was true, but Rainbow Dash just felt really... envious of them. They got to be friends with Twilight the easy way, and Dash had to sit here fighting to even be recognized as a friend.

“I can’t help but feel like I betrayed them too,” Twilight said, ears lowering, so ashamed. “I should have found them. I should have ignored Discord and brought them together again, no matter how much it hurt to do so. But it was so easy to just abandon them. I gave up on them, and went and made my own friends. I just wanted my friends back, but it hurt too much to try, so I just pretended you were all my old friends. And eventually, I couldn’t tell the difference. I wasn’t the Element of Magic. I was a little filly playing with dolls. And—”

Twilight rubbed beside her horn with a hoof, gesturing with said hoof as she said, “And it worked! And that somehow makes it worse! Am I such a bad friend that even the Elements of Harmony can’t tell how deluded I am? How do I even talk to anypony in this room? Half of them, I betrayed and replaced. The other half I... I don’t even know. How do I deserve to be friends with you, if I don’t even know anything about you!”

Twilight blinked, then added frankly, “You know, besides all the research I did on your backgrounds, after we sealed Discord away.”

“I can’t—I’m not good at this stuff, Twilight,” Rainbow said, ruffling her wings and standing up. “I don’t need a reason to be friends with you. I’m just friends with you, and that’s that. I can’t tell you how. It just is. You need to ask Applejack for the straight answer, or... Golden Harvest I guess. Or Rarity, she’s real smart about social stuff.

“You need to talk to us,” Rainbow said, flapping up and putting her forehooves on Twilight’s withers. “All of us, not just me. I can’t... I can’t figure this stuff out alone, Twilight.”

“But what do I say?” Twilight asked. The sad, sleep deprived, dissheveled unicorn looked so pitifully out of her element here. Rainbow Dash wished she knew more about what Twilight’s element was, though.

“Just tell them what you told me,” Rainbow suggested. “Tell them about the problem with you being their friend, or how you can’t do it or whatever. See how quick they shoot down that idea, and tell you the real important stuff. I mean... I don’t really know what you should tell them, but I don’t think it really... matters? Just talk to them. They’ll tell you what to tell them!”

Dash scrunched her muzzle in confusion at that line of thinking, saying, “I mean, but if they already told you what to tell them, then you can’t tell um...”

Stilling Rainbow’s confused stuttering, Twilight climbed to four hooves herself, saying, “I think I know what you’re saying, Rainbow Dash. You’re right. I can’t just... sit here by myself. Even if I don’t deserve it, none of you deserve me locking you out. Thank you, I’ll go have a talk with everypony... Dash.”

Dash had to smile; that last part did not go unnoticed by her. Rainbow Dash didn’t know what Twilight talked about with the others, all the others, one at a time, but it made Twilight feel better, and that’s what’s important. The cute purple unicorn looked brighter, and more relieved with every pony she spoke to. She was even laughing together with them, at some of Pinkie’s hilariously bad jokes towards the evening.

“And that’s how the chickens got in the trees!”

Amid laughter, Rainbow cried out, “Pinkie Pie, you are so hilarious!”

“Aww, I’m not so great,” Pinkie said with a blush.

“Don’t sell yourself short, Pinkie,” Rarity said warmly, “I dare say you’re the funniest pony in the room right now!”

Pinkie’s smile froze at that, and she looked nervously over at Lyra, who waved her hoof saying, “Don’t worry about it. Everypony knows my jokes are terrible. Why do you think I’m friends with Bonbon!”

“Don’t you dare say that!” Bonbon shouted, albeit with a smile. She wrapped Lyra in a headlock, and ruffled her stripey mane, saying, “Your jokes are amazing, even if I am easy to please.”

“I dunno, I think Pinkie Pie has a real gift for this kind of stuff,” Lyra said, her eyes turning up to Bonbon with a smirk on her muzzle. “Get it? Gift?”

Pointing at Bonbon, Pinkie squealed in realization, “Because she said please! ” And that set the lot of them falling over laughing again.

You had to be there.

“The only thing I wanna know, is how am I going to plan a party for this?” Lyra asked, wiping tears out of her eyes.

“A party?” Pinkie said curiously, sitting up to face the mint green pony. “What do you wanna do?”

“Well, of course there should be music, and games,” Lyra said, “And you’re a baker, so why don’t you bring a cake? Oh that would be perfect! ”

“And streamers? ” Pinkie said with a face eating grin.

“And balloons!” Lyra agreed excitedly.

“But sweetie,” said Ra—oh, no it was Bonbon. “But sweetie,” Bonbon asked Lyra, “What has you thinking of a party now? Because we’re all friends again?”

“Most of us, technic-ally for the first time!” Applejack pointed out.

“It sure has been a crazy day...” Derpy said wearily.

“I think Twilight is passed out in the coat closet,” Flitter mumbled informatively.

“No, no, no,” Lyra said, rearing up and waving her forehooves dismissively. “You girls don’t even realize?” She turned slowly, looking around excitedly, exclaiming to half of the ponies in the room, “It’s your very first birthday! ”

To say the room fell into stunned silence would not be accurate, because somewhere in there was an almost impossible to hear high pitched squealing noise coming from a certain pink party pony who didn’t look like she could possibly smile any wider.

Author's Note

Epilogue

Dear Princess Celestia,

The truth is a complex thing. Sometimes a lie becomes the truth, and sometimes pursuing what you think is the truth, is to lie. In the end, I think if you accept your feelings, and don’t deny what is there in front of you, then it doesn’t matter if you’re wrong, because you can always learn better if you are.

I am happy to inform you that the world is saved. The attached report should offer full details regarding the mental stability of subjects alpha through epsilon. Rather than any magical solution, it turned out all they needed was somepony kind enough to answer their questions about identity, without judgement or fear.

My new friends showed me that what I wanted was not always best for them, even if I wanted it to be. Sometimes, most times even, the best thing you can do for a pony is give them room to decide for themselves, and support their decision, instead of deciding how to help them all on your own.

I think I know more about what life is worth, now. Yes, I unknowingly changed five ponies’ lives forever, but it would be no service to them to change them further. With this crisis behind us, I hope that they can discover on their own their special place in the world. We need to respect them for who they are, rather than reject them as if they weren’t ponies anymore.

Five ponies that I barely knew became my friends overnight. A truly terrifying power, I consider us lucky having escaped unscathed. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. Our friendship just is, and it doesn’t need more justification than that. The best we can do now is stand together, and become stronger ponies, and better friends, for having done so.

Dash hovered over Twilight as she scratched out her important letter, the unicorn rapt in concentration as she put her thoughts to words. After Twilight was done, Rainbow Dash asked curiously, “Hey, how come your hornwriting is the same as ours?”

“Oh, you mean... this?” Twilight said, gesturing the floating quill at her drying letter.

“It’s how we figured it out. See?” Dash said, pulling out a receipt she had filled out recently. “My mouthwriting changed to that, so I knew I had to be somepony else, back before it changed. And Rarity, and Pinkie and Applejack and me all have the same mouthwriting now. But why did it happen to you?”

Twilight blushed in embarassment, mumbling, “Erm, actually...”

“Actually what?” Rainbow asked the reluctant unicorn, landing to give her a serious look.

“I may have given you all my writing style,” the embarassed unicorn said abashedly. “I didn’t actually... know how my friends wrote, you see. I was always the one writing the letters. I just... never had a chance to see them write. When your writing styles were different from mine, I assumed it was more corruption from Discord. Making ponies unable to read each other’s writing seemed like the sort of thing he’d do.”

Twilight rolled up the letter with her magic and sighed, saying, “I know I said you’re your own pony, but you’re right, you do have... a lot more in common with me than even my own friends. Even talking to you, sometimes I feel like I might as well be talking to myself. You know, if I was just pretending to be Derpy instead of myself.”

Rainbow Dash frowned, at this again. Anything but this again. “Well, uh, for one thing,” she suggested cooly, “If I was pretending to be me, why would I come to tell you that I’m not? If I were you, I’d have been all freaked out and afraid to let anypony know too. But I wasn’t, so it’s different.”

Twilight smiled at the rainbow pegasus, saying, “You always know the right thing to say to me... Dash.” Rainbow Dash nodded, but Twilight looked troubled then, and Rainbow Dash could guess what a pony like her would say, in a situation like this.

“And that’s what I’m worried about,” Twilight and Rainbow Dash said at the same time, though Twilight said it sincerely, while Dash said it in a simpering, squeaky sounding voice.

Twilight’s face at the same time blushed, and fell in horror then, and Rainbow Dash just smiled and slapped her on the shoulder. “I’m just messing with ya, egghead,” she said, “You are so predictable sometimes.

“...and that doesn’t mean I’m you in a me suit,” Rainbow added uncertainly.

“I feel so comforted,” Twilight groaned in exasperation.

Twilight Sparkle ended up sleeping for like, two days straight after revealing to all of them who they are. But after that, they had the big birthday party for all 5 of them. Rainbow Dash had initially expected Pinkie Pie—or well, Lyra, she supposed—to deliver the invitation. It was still weird thinking of Lyra as a party planner, rather than just Pinkie Pie planning parties for all of Ponyville. The town was way too big for just one of them though, and between the both of them it luckily added up to just about right.

But instead of those two crazy ponies, Rainbow Dash walked outside one dark morning, and there on her doorstep was a purple unicorn illuminated in the porch light, a unicorn who immediately started dancing on her hooves, and singing.

“This is a singing telegram, I—”

Rainbow stuffed a hoof in Twilight’s mouth, saying, “Stop, stop, stop. It did not work. That did not work.”

Twilight wilted as Rainbow Dash took her hoof back, but then Twilight brightened up quickly again, saying, “Pinkie and Lyra let me deliver the invitations, if I promised to sing the song, but I wanted to bring you some good news, too! I think I figured out why you’re all so mentally stable.”

“I thought you weren’t gonna work on that anymore?” Dash said cautiously. “You really pushed yourself the last couple weeks.”

“Oh, it’s fine, I came up with the idea as soon as I woke up, in fact!” Twilight said prancing in place on the cloud floor. “I did a little checking, and it makes perfect sense! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before, really.”

Rainbow yawned, and said, “Okay, what’s that?”

“The Elements of Harmony!” Twilight offered merrily. She was in a really good mood, it looked like. “We used the Elements of Harmony,” she repeated. “You remember us using them on Princess Luna, of course. It enabled her to escape from the Nightmare that was tormenting her! That’s what they do. Their power makes things more harmonious.”

“Oh, so...” Dash lifted a hoof, thinking to herself on just what those Elements did. She didn’t really understand it. For her it was just point, shoot and bye-bye villains.

“Well,” Twilight said eagerly, “Discord selected the most discordant ponies he could find, assuming their true natures would disable the Elements of Harmony. And combined with my ill applied sorcery, it was a real mess in your head, at the time. So the Elements would see that as disharmony, and smooth it all out. They repaired any mistakes, and pushed your minds past the danger zone, past the point of no return. Just like the princess, you all came out of your self-inflicted Nightmare, and became like new ponies!”

“Hold on, wait, no,” Rainbow said backing up a step. “We used the Elements on ourselves? And they made your magic permanent? What about Discord’s curses on everypony else? The Elements just got rid of those. Last I checked, they didn’t change Big Macintosh into a literal dog.”

“Yes, but we used the Elements on Discord,” Twilight countered, “We weren’t trying to do anything to me, only to my friends, and him. Him to stop his evil reign, and you all, to protect you from that naggingly persistent corruption. So they made use of my magic, instead of dispelling it!”

Twilight paused thoughtfully, correcting herself by saying, “They did technically dispel my magic too, but only after we had already changed you into you, so to speak.”

“We?” asked Rainbow Dash warily.

“Oh uhm... me, and my um... yous,” Twilight blushed, looking at a hoof. “Sorry, it’s kind of hard to put to words. I don’t know what your old selves were doing, but you as enchanted constructs would have been actively reinforcing the spell. You remember trying to resist his influence, right?”

“He tried to tear Applejack’s element right off her neck!” Rainbow replied hotly. “You didn’t make up that memory too, did you?”

“No, I didn’t modify any of your memories after I thought you were harmonized,” Twilight said softly. “But every time you thought you were resisting his influence, you’d have actually been... sort of... beguiling your old selves to act differently. So when you used the elements, you were in a sense your own targets, because you thought you were resisting Discord, but instead you were resisting... you.

“A-a-anyway, I can’t change what happened any more than you can,” Twilight said scraping a hoof nervously, “But with the Elements involved, it’s much less likely that there’s some explanation I’ve overlooked that might put our mental stability into question..”

Dash tilted her head and tapped a hoof, saying, “So... this is a good thing, right?” She was kind of really nervous about this, and Twilight was sort of throwing off her schedule now. “I mean, I don’t know if it’s a good thing to fire magic rainbows down on yourself, so...”

“While I wouldn’t recommend it on a regular basis, it does lend support to the idea that what happened may be permanent,” Twilight offered, “Fluttershy should be especially pleased at that. And it looks like you’ll all be able to respect your Elements in the forseeable future, so the world isn’t going to plunge again into chaos and ruin any time soon. So I would say... yes. Yes, it is a good thing.”

“Great,” Dash said with another yawn, “Now can I get ready for work now? I gotta have the sky ready for the sunrise.”

“Oh, right! No, I have to give you the invitation!” Twilight stated, whipping out a card in her magic, and scanning over it. “Ahem You’re invited to a party,” she sang distractedly, “Because we think you’re really—”

Dash stuffed a hoof in her mouth again. “Can I just have the card?” she asked. “Please?”

“Mmmhmm,” Twilight said amiably.

Rainbow Dash took the card in her hoof, looked at it and... and smiled at her friend.

“Thanks for giving us a chance, Twilight,” she said, trying to ignore the hint of blush she could feel tinting her cheeks.

When Rainbow got done stashing the card on her dresser and headed out again, Twilight had already trotted back to her balloon, but Twilight waved gladly at her as Rainbow Dash took to the grey skies. As she flew by her, Dash made sure to give Twilight a salute in return. And that felt just right.

After that party, which was incredible by the way, life actually started settling down for Rainbow Dash. Ponies stopped freaking out when she showed up on time, or ordinary, reasonable things like that. Rainbow Dash got back into shape slowly... faster than Applejack though, that mare was in serious trouble for a while.

If Dash had known... well, suffice to say AJ’s family had a reason to distrust her, more than usual even. Apparently Applejack started having these crazy nightmares and... well, she didn’t know why, but she was getting horrible headaches for a while, and getting really... confused and upset. Her family had her housebound for the first 2 days after their victory over Discord, because Applejack got it in her head that there were weevils all over her apple trees... and uh, herself. And weird stuff like that.

Rainbow Dash figured that it was because Twilight used the spell on AJ first, and did her spell better the next time. But it was kind of chilling to find out about Applejack, after the fact. At their weekly picnic, Applejack had only seemed worn out and exhausted. She hadn’t seemed like she’d been stuck in a freaky fever dream a few days ago. Only weeks later, after losing her juice because her hooves were still really shaky, did AJ finally bring up the subject to Dash, tried to downplay it as nothing big, but it sounded like something really big. Rainbow told her to ask Twilight, and Applejack seemed satisfied by the answer she got, whatever it was, but it was still a touchy subject around her.

And that’s not even getting into when Applejack almost got herself killed getting all those ponies arrested that one time for unlicensed alchohol sales. Really, Rainbow Dash felt like she got off lucky. She didn’t have any friends before, and that was sad, but it meant that nopony had been counting on her. She only had up to go from here. Compare that with Rarity, who seemed like she was a hair away from going out of business every week, with that crummy lending company who got to charge exhorbitant rates since Rarity had gotten the loan without any credit, and Rainbow Dash had gotten off lucky. Compare that with Pinkie Pie who uh...

Well... see the thing is, Lyra has a big family with this amazing family history, of a long line of miners harvesting precious stones up on Canterlot mountain. And now Pinkie sort of had that too, except her family wasn’t really... real. Pinkie knew her memories weren’t true, but she liked to forget that sometimes, and pretend that she really had a... family waiting for her somewhere. Rainbow Dash was curious what did happen to her old family, but Pinkie was an orphan, and sort of afraid to find out what happened to her parents. Instead, she kind of... held onto a happy fantasy of what might be true.

For all Dash knew, maybe Pinkie’s fantasy was all true, but it certainly wasn’t what Pinkie Pie remembered before. So Rainbow Dash got off lucky. Since Derpy didn’t show off her family to Twilight at some point, Twilight didn’t have any reason to mess with Dash’s memory of her own folks. They were unhappy memories for Rainbow Dash, but they were important to remember, about her mother, and her father, and what her father had driven her mother to do. Rainbow never wanted to forget that as long as she lived. Bastard.

They were all having problems, but it seemed like the worst of it was over. Fluttershy had a royal edict that allowed her to apprentice with a real animal caretaker in Ponyville, which was about the best she could have expected, or desired for herself. Flutters’ house still seemed so empty without all those animals, but she could go visit them any time she wanted, and regain their trust and stuff. Once she proved to them, and to herself, that she could care properly for animals, then she could start restoring her collection. Uh, her... assortment; Fluttershy didn’t like it if you called it a collection.

Rainbow Dash’s workmates started relying on her, and her team made it to the nationals for the first time this year. Once Rainbow’s neighbor, a kindly old pegasus mare with four grandchildren, stopped thinking she was the devil incarnate, it turns out Ms. Windy made a really mean batch of chocolate fudge, and she was just dying to share it with somepony!

Rainbow Dash was working on teaching Scootaloo less about breaking into houses, and more about being awesome, and the kid seemed to take pretty well to that. Scootaloo had... flying difficulties, and Scoots had come to expect ponies would give up on her because of that. That meant Rainbow Dash only became greater in her eyes, just because of a little dedication and passion that Scootaloo couldn’t get elsewhere. Scoots was even whipping some of the other foals at the orphanage Dash had set her up with into a Rainbow Dash fan club. It was absolutely adorable.

Had Rainbow Dash remained any longer as her old self, Scootaloo might have been... well, Rainbow Dash might not have gotten off so lucky, if that had happened. But it didn’t, so Rainbow had no trouble at all with the squirt, could start teaching her to respect other ponies, instead of trying to get her to disobey them for Rainbow Dash’s sake.

It was kind of problematic how Drizzle had gotten in the habit of following Rainbow around at practice like a puppy, instead of doing her own stuff like she was supposed to. Dash wasn’t sure what to do about somepony who liked you too much. Wasn’t a huge problem, but it did end up with Drizzle in tears again, by the time they had to work it out.

One thing led to another, as things will do. Things got crazy, and things got calm. Rainbow never did recover her memory, or at least not all of it, but she knew the important stuff: what she was supposed to do, where she was supposed to be, and what a huge jerk her dad was. She learned a little more about lightning from Derpy, but they actually didn’t have much reason to hang out together. Plus it was sort of unsettling being around somepony who kept copying you. Dash wasn’t sure if she felt like it was Derpy doing the copying, or vice versa.

Twilight Sparkle assured Rainbow that Rainbow Dash was her own pony, even if she got a little mixed up with Twilight’s ideal version of Derpy at one point in her life. Twilight said there were big differences between Rainbow Dash and Derpy, and Rainbow Dash really hoped that was the case. She didn’t think she could have lived with just being a clone of somepony, especially somepony so... derpy, so she was glad she was her own pony.

But her not being a Derpy clone kind of made some trouble for Twilight, because now Twilight had to juggle two different circles of friends. Ponies like Pinkie/Lyra could know literally everypony in town and not have a problem with it, but the bookworm was actually kind of new at this whole friendship thing, so she found it pretty overwhelming. Rainbow knew you had to be pretty radical to handle being friends with Rainbow Dash, so she could understand why somepony like that would feel caught between a rock and a hard place.

Rainbow Dash was getting pretty comfortable with who she was, now. Even the awful pony she was before, Rainbow Dash was starting to feel kind of okay with that. It sucked, but it was gone now. Like her friend said, it was like waking up from a bad dream. Rainbow was just glad to get that chapter of her life behind her, and eager to take up her new role, the one she was so familiar with. Rainbow Dash was done just being a pony living from day to day. She was ready to be a hero.

So that’s why when she saved that filly from drowning in the old well, Rainbow Dash knew she was doing exactly what she was meant to do. She was on the right track now, and things were only gonna get better from here.

~o The end o~

Author's Note

Back to Normal

It was a beautiful very early spring morning. The stars were gone, but the sky was black as pitch, and the ground was still cloaked in the muzzy darkness of the end of the night. Into this morning, Rainbow Dash awoke feeling refreshed and ready to go. She jumped out of her bed of clouds, and stretched out her sleek, cerulean wings, making sure everything was in order. She took a few minutes to carefully nibble and tug at each primary, but like the rest of the world, her wings were nice and straight.

Rainbow Dash reached for the Hay-Me-O’s like she usually had, but hesitated before her arm closed on the box and smiled to herself. Might as well indulge today, considering that she and her friends had just saved the whole world. She went and got something a bit tastier instead.

It was hard to believe it was only the day before yesterday that the world was in so much peril. Rainbow Dash had been so messed up, she didn’t stand a chance on her own, but then her friends came for her, and saved her, and they all kicked that weird creature’s butt right back into the stone he came from. That’s what she put in her diary at least. Rainbow Dash: world saver. World... defender. Royal world guard. She had to scratch out a lot of possibilities there, never really settled on one.

That was the nice thing about a diary is since nopony was going to read your loopy, squiggly mouthwriting, you didn’t have to worry about making it presentable. Mostly what Dash wrote about that day was how incredible it was that her friends came back for her, even when she wouldn’t listen, and saved her from that awful fear and hatred that filled her, that made her feel like everypony was her enemy. It was just an amazing feeling waking up from that, and knowing you had what it takes to save the day.

That morning, Rainbow peered idly at the slowly growing daylight on the horizon out her window as she ate her breakfast. She quickly got through that tasty lemon blueberry muffin she’d been saving for a special occasion, finishing it off with a tall glass of rainwater. Some final calisthenics, and she zoomed out of her apartment.

The party was over, the celebrations concluded, and this morning her life could finally go back to normal. And that started with her job in cloud busting. With how fast she was, Rainbow Dash wasn’t even slightly worried about being late. She couldn’t call herself Rainbow Dash after all, if she was so slow that she left her workmates hanging!

Her supervisor was a yellow furred redhead called Strawberry Sunrise. A nice mare, strict but fair, Dash had to respect her planning skills, even if a certain blue pegasus could fly circles around her. Strawberry saw Dash coming, and Dash was a little puzzled as the supervisor dropped her clipboard and stared, her jaw hanging open in shock.

“Ready and reporting for duty!” Rainbow Dash said as she swooped up, smirking as she figured she must have wowed her boss, by how she zoomed right up there, and stopped on a dime.

“Rainbow Dash?!” Ms. Strawberry said, beside herself with confusion. “What are you doing here?”

Dash paused, and looked at her supervisor uncertainly, saying, “I... work here? It isn’t the weekend, is it?”

“But you’re on time!” the mare blurted out.

Rainbow figured this was a joke or something, so she said, “You bet I am. When am I ever not on time? Ponyville’s counting on us to give them the weather they need!”

The supervisor blinked several times, before giving an unruly grin and saying, “Oh I don’t even care. We need twenty cubits of cumulus ready to ship to the west side of town before sunrise. You think you’re up to the task?”

“I was born up to the task,” Dash said smugly, shooting off to get her clouds together, barely noticing in the back of her mind the supervisor saying dryly “Well at least that hasn’t changed,” while Rainbow Dash flew away from her.

It was hard work, but it was rewarding to see ponies down there on the ground, looking up at the rain ready to come down overhead. The sky was a grey indigo as Dash hustled, but by the time it was a bright sparkling blue overhead, and the sun peeked over the horizon, everypony below would only see a soft grey. She, along with her coworkers had the morning rainstorm going.

With Discord’s meddling in the everything of everything, the pegasus ponies had a lot of weather management to catch up on. Thankfully the Elements of Harmony had cleaned out all his nasty pink clouds, but that left ponies like Dash there to ensure that Ponyville had a nice peaceful summer. And she wasn’t gonna let them down.

What was less pleasant that day was dealing with her coworkers. So Rainbow Dash showed up first for work, so what? She wasn’t trying to show up anypony else, or put anypony down, like Blossomforth seemed to think. Everypony else loved how helpful she was. Dash was probably the best weather pony they had, and she made sure to make full use of her abilities. She didn’t do things part way, and it didn’t mean anything was wrong, just because they kept giving her strange looks when they thought she wasn’t looking.

To make matters worse, Rainbow Dash was still tired from the party, so she kept running out of steam. It was embarassing having to take a break to catch her breath after just an hour. She didn’t remember what Pinkie got her to drink last night, but Rainbow was certainly going to have a bone to pick with her friend, if Pinkie tried to prank Dash by slipping her some questionable juice. But Dash’s determination didn’t wane, and she knew she’d be more than recovered by tomorrow, and not embarassing herself here getting worn out halfway through the day.

She wasn’t recovered by tomorrow. Over the next few days, Dash started to think that maybe something was wrong. She wasn’t recovering, and her friends weren’t acting normal either. When her five best friends met for a weekly picnic, Twilight in particular was acting really standoffish. “Oh, don’t mention it,” she’d say distractedly when somepony complimented her on how she dealt with that Discord creep. “It’s really not all that,” she said in regards to their accomplishment. And she didn’t want to look anypony in the eye, just staring off at the farms in the distance the whole time.

Another strange thing Rainbow Dash found were like a ton of bills, and all past due! “Man, I really let myself go,” she grumbled, kissing her sweet bonus goodbye, as she budgeted it to fulfill her outstanding obligations. The weird thing is, Rainbow Dash had the money to pay for this stuff, so why was it even overdue? But the really weird thing is, the bills weren’t in her cloud desk. They were just shoved under her bed!

Rainbow Dash really thought she was maybe coming down with something. Her stamina was just shot. She got worn out like halfway through her shift, and her wings were aching and sore after the second day, of just doing ordinary average weather work! She was honestly puzzled because her tricks were going off without a hitch, but as soon as she tried to do anything steadily, it was like she couldn’t put any effort into something for more than 10 minutes.

But the strangeness didn’t end here up in the skies. Rainbow Dash met with her friend Applejack for lunch a few days later, and Dash might have been a little sore and stiff, but Applejack looked like death warmed over. “Woah,” Rainbow said in some shock, at the exhausted farm pony, “What happened to you?”

“C-comin down with somethin’ maybe,” Applejack said in a weary tone, in between wolfing down her sandwich hungrily. “I just ain’t been as peppy as usual these past few days. Plus mah family just... ah don’t even know what’s goin’ on. Mah family...

“Mah own family don’t trust me!” Applejack said with her voice tinged in a hurt and rage that just came out of nowhere. It was enough to get Rainbow to jerk back from hovering her head over the table, and listening her friend’s troubles.

“Sorry,” Applejack said, taking off her beatup old hat. She was so worked up that her hooves were shaking as she tried to hold it firmly against her chest, “Ah just been awful stressed lately, what with mah family still all actin’... weird. Maybe it’s some sorta lingering effect of Discord?”

“Well, how are they acting weird?” Dash asked curiously.

“Where do ah start!” Applejack crowed vehemently, rolling her eyes. “First, ah said ah was gonna go buck the east orchard, and Granny gets up in mah face all squinty eyed. She makes Apple Bloom go out there to keep an eye on me, like I wasn’t even gonna do it! Apple Bloom! And Apple Bloom didn’t even think that was a strange thing for her to do! That filly should be studyin’, not playing nanny to somepony who don’t need watching over. And ah been tryin’ to take my turn cooking meals, but they won’t let me, on account of ah might make something that didn’t agree with them. Me! You even tasted mah fritters?”

“Doesn’t Granny Smith make those?” Rainbow asked uncertainly, but Applejack shook her head.

“Yep, she sure does, but ah make ‘em too. She taught me herself, like she has been teaching me all mah years, about how to cook up a mean dumpling stew, and fancy rhubarb apple pie, and apple shortbread, and apple cakes, and apple brown betties, and apple—”

“Okay, we get the picture,” Rainbow said hastily. “So they like... think you’ll mess up? They think you’re clumsy or something?”

“That’s the thing...” Applejack sighed, slugging her glass to send water down her parched throat. “They think ah’m gonna do it on purpose. They keep lookin’ at me funny, and they say they’ll listen to me, but they ain’t doin’ it. Ah think Big Macintosh thinks I’m tryin’ to prank him or something. He just won’t take seriously anything ah say.”

“Huh...” Dash said, at a loss to understand.

When Applejack tried to stand, she almost collapsed, if an alarmed Rainbow Dash hadn’t rushed down to catch her! AJ had this monster headache, she said. “Be-better stay a ways away,” she cautioned Rainbow Dash with a shaky forehoof raised to push the pegasus away. “Ah don’t want you catchin’ it. Ah’ll just... make mah way home, and sleep it off.”

“Oh, no,” Rainbow said, stubbornly propping up her friend. “You already gave me this flu. I’m just not as sick yet. We’re both gonna get you home, and then I’m gonna go take a rest myself.”

So, things were still pretty weird in this town. But then again it was Ponyville, and you had to accept a certain amount of weirdness. Rainbow Dash was surprised at how surprised Applejack’s family looked to see Rainbow Dash escorting the orange mare home. They weren’t surprised that Applejack would be all sick and shaky like this, but that somepony would be helping her. Very unsettled, Dash wished Applejack luck with her family, and hoped she’d feel better soon from whatever bug that had gotten them both it seemed.

Things got even weirder though, when Rainbow Dash went in for her bi-weekly young flyer training session. Dash trained every day on her own, and this day she looked forward to, because she could get some expert info on flying, and best of all she got to race with some really awesome fliers.

Who all hated her guts now, for some reason.

It took Dash some time to dig herself out of the cloud barrier before shoving off and blasting to catch up with her “partner.”

“What the hay, Thunderlane?” Rainbow Dash said acidly in his direction. “You knocked me right into the barrier! What is your issue, mare?”

“Feels pretty bad when somepony does it to you, huh?” Thunderlane replied without a whit of remorse or sympathy. “Maybe you should work with us, instead of just trying to be the best, at everypony else’s expense!”

“I am!” Dash retorted furiously, but he just broke formation to fly away from her grumbling,

“I don’t have to listen to this crap.”

Nopony wanted to pair with her after that, and Rainbow Dash ended up getting paired with Drizzle! The slowest, most incompetent member of the team! Drizzle was a sort of dumpy looking mauve pegasus, with a burnt orangey mane in soft curls. Umbrellas as her cutie mark, not exactly speed material. And asking to partner with her was only possible, because Drizzle was a total pushover and couldn’t say no!

“Look, please,” Dash said with a hot blush as she put herself out for Drizzle’s sake. “I can’t find anypony else, and this is a relay team! I know you wanna sit on the sidelines, but I really need your help!”

“I... um... b-but why are you asking me??” Drizzle managed to eke out in her squirrely voice, cringing away from the boldly rainbow pony. Actually cringing away! Dash was afraid to even touch the skinny purple pegasus, because she might break!

“Just... come on,” Rainbow Dash said in a troubled voice, “I promise you it’ll be okay. You might not be our best flier, but you’re important to the team, too!”

Drizzle just kind of fish mouthed, and followed along silently. Dash didn’t know what to do with her, but... at least she didn’t treat Rainbow Dash with outright disdain.

Twilight Sparkle was still acting pretty odd. She met with Dash for lunch, and Twilight was acting bored, even resentful when Dash tried to tell her about her tricks, or the weird stuff going on at her job. Twilight started out friendly enough, but when Dash got into the weirdness of her teammates, Twilight just clammed up and stopped looking her in the eye. The unicorn just hurriedly finished her sandwich, and said she had to be somewhere. Barely left Rainbow Dash with so much as a goodbye.

That bothered Rainbow Dash. She knew things were a little funny with everypony in general, it seemed, but Twilight was her friend. It wasn’t right to leave Twilight all alone with whatever was bothering her. Rainbow Dash wasn’t the smartest pony on the block, but she could see that something serious was bothering her friend, and Twilight wasn’t talking about it. Why else would she be so... distant toward Rainbow Dash, if she wasn’t distracted by something else?

That egghead was probably worrying about some big sciency thing again, and Rainbow Dash was just the pony to get Twilight’s head out of the clouds. Twilight’d be more friendly with Rainbow, once the unicorn wasn’t all stressed out, right? Well Dash tried that, and...

The Ponyville public library, “Golden Oaks” branch wasn’t a very interesting place to be. Rainbow Dash usually wasn’t going there, except to crash in through the window when one of her tricks went bad, but today she made an exception and used the door. Because today she had a reason to be going there: to talk with her amazing friend, Twilight Sparkle.

Rainbow Dash found Twilight at her library, and Twilight was in there talking with a bright green unicorn. That wasn’t alarming in of itself, but the two of them both clammed up as soon as they saw Rainbow Dash come in. The other unicorn galloped out of the library without so much as a hello, and Twilight said a little too slowly, “Oh, hello... Rainbow Dash. Anything I can help you with?”

“Uh... yeah... who was...?” Rainbow said, looking from Twilight to the door and back.

Twilight just looked at her cluelessly.

“Never mind,” Rainbow said. “I just wanted to check and see if you’re okay.”

“Of course I’m okay!” Twilight said quickly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Just wondering what stupid thing I said at lunch the other day, that made you not want to talk to me,” Rainbow said.

Twilight thought about that and said, “Hmm... nope. I can’t think of anything you said that might have bothered me. Listen, Rainbow Dash, I’m simply under a lot of stress with my new... project, and I’m sorry if I acted rudely towards you.”

“What’re ya workin on?” Dash asked curiously, approaching Twilight, who backed up a couple steps and said,

“Oh! Nothing special, just taking the chromeo...manticoremilliliter and arcing the tangent until my statistical summary indicates positive correlations in—”

“Woah, forget I asked,” Rainbow Dash groaned. “I’ll just let you do your whole egghead thing. I just wanted to know if anything was wrong.”

“Nope,” Twilight said with a flat smile. “Nothing at all is wrong. Everything is perfectly fine.”

“...okay then,” Dash said, eyeing Twilight worriedly. Twilight merely stared silently back. “So yeah, cya, I guess.”

“Have a nice day, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said with a smile that didn’t look... right.

Twilight was hiding something, that much was obvious. But what? Rainbow guessed she just had to wait for the unicorn librarian to finish whatever it was. The only reason Twilight would be hiding something, was so she could show it to them all when she was finished, right? That was probably all it was, some special magic trick surprise.

Rainbow Dash got to working with Drizzle pretty closely at those training sessions. Drizzle’s problem wasn’t her wingpower, but her self confidence. Somepony had hurt this mare, just like those bullies had gone after Fluttershy so many years ago. It made Dash’s blood boil to think about it, but Drizzle was absolutely adamant about not saying who it was.

Dash didn’t push her. It wouldn’t be right. But she did slowly draw Drizzle out of her shell. Always being there when Drizzle came up to the finish line, even if it meant losing the relay. Giving her tips. Drizzle had a pinion all misaligned and she didn’t even know it until Dash pulled it straight! And sure enough, Drizzle started to perform better. She just needed a little encouragement. When Drizzle passed 6.75 wingpower on the second meeting, there were tears in her eyes. Rainbow Dash didn’t think Drizzle had ever gone that fast before.

And then Drizzle had a total meltdown.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” she shouted in between sobs, and “Why don’t you hate me?” and something about “giving me a chance” while Dash frantically tried to calm her down. It was really hard to understand a pony who was trying to talk while crying. Their aqua green Coach Sassaflash came up to the two with fire in her eyes, saying,

“I thought this was too good to be true. Look what you did to her, Dash. Do you like it when you do this to ponies?”

“What?!” Dash said with tears in her own eyes now, “No! Why would you even think that? What is wrong with you?”

“Oh, don’t you start on me now,” the older pony retorted hotly. “You just get out of here and spend some time to think on what you’ve done. You can consider yourself suspended until further notice!”

And now Drizzle was melting down at the coach’s hooves, begging her not to bluh blub something, but she couldn’t talk real well, and Rainbow Dash wasn’t really aware of much else besides what the coach had said.

“S... suspended?!” she squeaked. She had never ever ever ever ever ever ever

The coach stared at her oddly. “Just what are you playing at, Rainbow Dash?” she asked in a suspicious voice.

“I’m not playing!” Dash wanted to retort angrily, but she got as far as “I’m not pl—” before she couldn’t make words good anymore either. And it was kind of hard to see as she flew off unsteadily, until she wiped at her eyes. And somepony was crying and Rainbow Dash hated it. What went wrong? What did she do?

“Why was everypony being such a huge jerk to me?” she wrote angrily in her diary, later at her apartment all alone. “I tried my best to be there for them all, and they just wouldn’t let me even get close to them! And the one pony who did, I made her cry! Why was she crying? What’s wrong with everypony? They’re”

Dash stared at that her loopy mouthwriting a while, before scribbling “clearly” next to it. Staring at that mouthwriting for a while longer, she simply had no ideas what was so clearly wrong with these ponies. Rainbow Dash just put her diary in her dresser then, rolled over and pulled the clouds up tightly snug against her sleek, blue body, that everypony hated for some reason. Then she let herself drift into a troubled sleep.

Rainbow Dash was pretty much a zombie at work the next day. At least her coworkers had a good reason to give her strange looks now. She couldn’t wrap her head out of what was going on lately. Hadn’t Discord’s evil magic all been dispelled? Maybe some of it was still sticking around? Why else would ponies be so abrasive towards her all of a sudden? She almost got the thunder clouds mixed up with the lightning clouds, she was so out of sorts that day!

And then who should come flying up, but Coach Sassaflash!

“Rainbow Dash, there you are!” Sassaflash said, flying out of the blue to where Rainbow Dash was working steadily on cloud fluffing. “You did... you really work on the weather team?”

Dash blinked at her coach uncomprehendingly, before frowning and saying, “What, you’re here to make fun of me more? I don’t have to say anything to you. I got suspended, remember?”

“Yes, about that,” Sassaflash said, ears drooping as she looked away, searching for the words. “I got the full story from Drizzle, and apparantly you made her cry from being... too... nice to her?”

“Yeah, I don’t get it,” Dash said, angrily, her tail smacking the fluffy cloud beneath her. “Why does everypony have such a problem if I just want to be nice to them?”

Sassaflash didn’t answer, so Rainbow looked her way, and of course the coach was staring again. Sassaflash collected herself quickly though, and said, “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you are the best flyer I’ve ever seen. That’s why we need you on the team. But if you keep this up, you’re not just gonna be a fast flyer. You’re gonna be something... something else.”

“What are you saying?” Dash said with a pained grimace, “I’m kinda trying to work here, so could you make it quick?”

“What I’m saying is, you’re un-suspended,” Sassaflash said seriously, “And, I’m ...sorry. I need you to come to the next workout and be on your A game. Can you do that for me?”

Rainbow Dash swept her up in a giddy hug, saying, “Oh, thank yousomuch! I promise I won’t make anypony cry ever again and I won’t be a jerk even if other ponies are being jerks about it, and I won’t let you down ma’am!”

Then she noticed her coworkers were looking at her oddly again, and with an awkward smile, Rainbow Dash set Sassaflash on the cloud in progress, saying, “I’ll... just get back to work now.”

“You been working here long?” Sassaflash answered with a curious wariness to her voice. Dash knew exactly what she was talking about, for once.

“Yeah, I know, but it pays the bills,” Rainbow said with a sigh. “I quit school about three years ago, if you’re wondering.”

She didn’t know why ponies thought that was so terrible. It’d been necessary after that whole nasty business with her dad finally came to a head, and it’s not like she was missing anything. That stuff was for eggheads, not airheads. She was old enough to work on her own anyway, well... as of last year, at least! With a... permit. She honestly didn’t want to attract a lot of attention to this, or her boss might get in trouble, and Dash really did not need to try to live on her own, without a job.

“Look, I don’t mean to pry or anything,” Sassaflash said in a flustered tone. “Just... be there for practice, please? I promise you’ll... get all kinds of recognition, and you can go to the nationals. I bet you’ll take first prize in the Equestria Games.”

“Well duh, of course I’m gonna do all that,” Rainbow Dash said, rolling her eyes. “I’m awesome! What I wanna know is if Drizzle is gonna be okay with me just showing up again.”

Sassaflash blinked again. “What?” she said, looking once again completely lost.

“I really upset her last time, and I just don’t wanna do it again,” Dash grumbled with some chagrin. “You know how bad it feels when somepony says they hate you, or... or you hate them, or something? If she’s okay with it, I’ll come back, but I care more about her than some stupid prize.”

“You... you don’t care about the prize?” Sassaflash asked looking faint as she did.

“Of course I do,” Dash retorted, “It’d be the most awesome thing ever if ponies would finally recognize me as the greatest flyer to ever come out of Cloudsdale!”

She swooped above the cloud, spreading her wings midair in that bright sky, and saying with a cocky smile, “But what kinda hero would I be, if all I cared about was what I was getting out of it? We can’t take the nationals if we don’t have a good team, no matter how fast I am. I can find another relay team, it’s no biggie.”

“No!” Sassaflash squealed, then said hurriedly, “No, just, show up for practice. You’re more than welcome if you... if...” and to Rainbow Dash’s immense confusion, there were tears in the eyes of her coach now.

“I have to go,” Sassaflash breathed out, flying swiftly away. “Next Tuesday, hour after dawn!” she called out behind herself.

Dash looked after her, and then back at this cloud she was working on. She looked at her coworkers, looking over at her and whispering with each other.

“Okay,” Dash said, in a note of finality. She kicked that cloud into fluffy perfection, and zipped over to get the next one. That broke everypony out of their trance and they started working too. Dash ignored her straining wings, and worked herself until she was breathing in heavy gulps of air, catching up from her daze this morning, and surpassing it. With the clouds tamed, everypony would see a bit of blue, with just enough sun to warm their backs. It looked like it was gonna be another beautiful day in Ponyville.

As soon as she was done, Dash darted over to her supervisor. “Ms. Sunrise, ma’am,” Rainbow Dash said sharply. “I finished my section of the sky. Is it alright if I leave early today?”

The floofy haired Strawberry raised a single eyebrow, but she marked on the time sheet, and said, “Sure thing, Rainbow Dash. In fact, you can take tomorrow off too.”

“What?!” Dash exclaimed in sudden terror, “What’d I do wrong? I don’t want—”

“No, no you’re not in trouble!” her boss said in response waving her hoof holding the clipboard, “You’re just far enough ahead you can take a break. You did tomorrow’s work, today! You been working yourself real hard lately, especially for such a young mare. I just...” With a worried look in her pale olive eyes, Strawberry said, “Just take care of yourself, okay?”

Rainbow Dash nodded solemnly, and headed off. She was pretty exhausted, come to think on it. It wasn’t anything she wasn’t used to though, right? Some weird things were definitely going on here, but she figured it’d all be cleared up by the end of this afternoon. Rainbow Dash might not have been smart enough to figure it out, but she knew somepony who was.

So once again, Rainbow Dash had to fly down to the tree library where one of her best friends lived. Rainbow Dash stopped in front of the open library door, working out her wings as she rubbed at her sore pecs. She didn’t pause any longer than to groan at her uncharacteristic weariness. Barely half the day was over. Dash practically just woke up, but already she felt like going and finding somewhere to lie down and sleep. Rainbow Dash wasn’t gonna do that when she still had things to do though. So with her light blue hooves soon clopping on the wooden floorboards, Dash craned her neck around uneasily inside the building, seeking out the librarian.

“Twilight, you here?” Dash called out, suppressing a yawn, and in response she heard the distant surprised yelp of her friend, followed by the thunder of falling books. Frowning, Rainbow craned her ears in that direction, saying, “Twilight?” But then Twilight bamfed into existence like right in front of her. Rainbow Dash reared back while her lavender unicorn friend said,

“Rainbow Dash! So nice of you to visit! Hello! My good friend Rainbow Dash, what brings you here to the library? Something normal, like checking out a book, or showing off your new trick, right? Nothing dangerous, strange or alarming?”

Twilight didn’t look so good either. She had heavy bags under her eyes, like when she forgot to sleep for a few days from studying too hard. Or... more than a few days. Her mane looked like it hadn’t been brushed in equally as long, stray locks of hair jutting out at odd angles. And her eyes looked... scared. No, terrified.

“Twilight?” Dash said, leaning towards the unicorn, “Is something the matter?” But as she leaned, that made Twilight spook on the spot, jumping back in place with a frightened squeak.

“N-no, nothing’s wrong!” Twilight said, and it didn’t take Applejack to tell that she was lying. “I’ve just been really hitting the books lately, and boy do I need to go sleep it off. So if you’ll excuse me, I have a nap to get to.”

“Well, you do look pretty beat,” Rainbow said to the unicorn in concern. “Have ponies kept acting weird around you too, ever since we kicked Discord’s butt?”

“Oh, yes, yes ponies have been acting weird,” Twilight said quickly, “It’s just a lingering effect of Discord’s influence,” she told Dash. “Nothing to be concerned about. Just keep being who you are, and other ponies will get over it, and everypony will stop acting weird.”

“Being who...? Look,” Dash facehooved. “I actually made Drizzle cry yesterday. Drizzle.”

“What?! What did you do to her?” Twilight squealed, getting in Rainbow’s face again. “You didn’t feel like it was unusually satisfying, did you? You aren’t going to make a habit of—”

“Jeez, mare, back off!” Dash said in frustration, pushing Twilight away. “You’re acting just like everypony else! My coach said the same thing!”

Dash put a hoof on Twilight’s withers, saying seriously, “You know me, Twilight. Do you really think I would feel anything but horrible for making somepony cry?”

“Yes, yes I... I know... you,” Twilight stated thin-lipped. “And there is no way you would do that. I was just testing you, don’t worry. Your coach will come around. You just have to keep doing what you’re doing, and don’t get into any sort of a negative mindset.”

“I already am in a negative mindset,” Dash said with a strained voice, “Because everypony’s acting so weird!”

“Oh, oh no,” Twilight remarked. “I mean, oh that’s nice. And not alarming at all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I really have to go sleep this off. Studying way too long.”

The purple unicorn turned and trotted away without another word, heading downstairs while a flustered Rainbow Dash shouted after her, “You sleep in the basement?!”

“Yes!” came Twilight’s clear voice from deep within.

Author's Note

Here Come The Cavalry

Rainbow Dash wasn’t sure what she was looking at here. She and her friends... well, all but one of her friends were clustered defensively on the green outside the Golden Oaks library. Applejack’s neighbor Golden Harvest had returned, and she brought with her four other ponies.

There was that clumsy pegasus everypony knew as Derpy, and another pegasus name of Flitter, purple, with a barely wind tossed, light blue mane, and a bright cheer in her soft eyes. Dash didn’t really know much about Flitter aside from her stats: she was lighter, more delicate and less destructive than Derpy. There was that one candymaker down the street from Sugarcube corner, with the cream colored coat and the blue and pink curly hair, and finally a mint green unicorn that Dash actually... had only seen around town before, and didn’t know what she did here.

They stood there like it was a faceoff, the five of them, versus Rainbow Dash and her four friends. Except Rainbow Dash didn’t know what they were facing off about!

“Where’s Twilight?” Golden Harvest said at last, in a very quiet, and a very dangerous tone. The others with her were equally hostile in their stance, and in fact even Derpy, silly, goofy, derp eyed Derpy was matching Rainbow Dash’s hover, like she was going to tackle Rainbow Dash if she even tried to fly away, and get this. Derpy’s eyes were straight.

“She ran in the library,” Applejack replied more in a scared and shaken, less in a hostile manner, but still not very friendly. “Was yelling something about us freein’ Discord.”

“She locked the door, too!” Pinkie Pie whined. “We can’t figure out why she doesn’t want to hang out with us anymore!”

“You really do think we’re going to free him, don’t you?” Rarity said to the other ponies, in a note of shaky disbelief.

“Who are you ponies?” Rainbow demanded, wanting at least some answers to this.

“Well, I’m Flitter,” the smaller pegasus, with the long blue hair said, but she wouldn’t say any more than that. None of the other ponies answered, but watching them warily, Golden Harvest separated from the group. She walked to the front door of the library, lifted the doormat up with a hoof, and snatched a key out from underneath with her tail. Wordlessly, she went and unlocked the library door, and vanished inside.

Rainbow didn’t know Twilight hid a key under there.

“She’s getting Twilight, right?” Applejack asked, looking from the door to the ponies who were sort of maybe kind of herding the main 5 of them all nervously clustered together.

The mint unicorn was the first to break, her expression dropping to shock as she said in a bold alto, “Wait a minute, you ponies are all still friends?”

“Uh... yeah?” Applejack said, fiddling nervously with the brim of her hat. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

“You’re still friends??” came Twilight Sparkle’s very surprised voice from the now opening door to the library.

Ignoring the other five, the main 5 turned at once to their darker purple friend, all shouting, “Twilight!”

A frazzled looking purple unicorn known as Twilight Sparkle emerged swiftly from the library, with a tear streaked face, along with Golden Harvest close to her side. Twilight then rushed up to the main 5, eyes full of worry, looking at Applejack’s face, and holding up Fluttershy’s chin, and babbling, “You’re all still friends? You’re still friends with me? You stayed yourself? Other ponies are still acting strangely around you? You’re still yourself?”

“Why are you asking that, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash said suspiciously. “Because I’m not sure that’s true anymore!”

Rainbow pulled her diary out from her wing pouch and tossed it at Twilight’s hooves, the purple unicorn catching it naturally in her magic before it struck the ground. “Turn to the 23rd of this month,” Rainbow Dash said. “You see my mouthwriting? How it changed?”

Twilight didn’t even look in the book. She just looked up at Dash and... and then at Derpy, and then around at the others. She said, “I... I can’t explain it. This doesn’t make any sense. But... I’m so tired of fighting it. Just, come in the library everypony. I’ll... it can’t hurt things any worse at this point to just tell you.”

About two weeks ago, the great lord Discord, Master of Chaos, powerful poker of pony personalities, was having a smashing time with his newfound freedom. After a thousand years of biding his time, the Elements had at last weakened enough that his favorite breed of Chaos could once again spread over all the land. Up was down, red was blue, and everything was checkerboard colored. It was beautiful!

And it would stay that way, if he could get rid of that goody four-shoes librarian. In his regrettable absence, she along with 5 other mortal ponies had somehow taken control of the Elements of Harmony themselves. Discord giggled unpleasantly to himself as he watched the 6 run around in his giant leafy distraction, losing their very selves in their attempt to navigate the maze he never told them to navigate. How had ponies as incompetent as these managed to take the Elements? Surely they had to have been desperate, to attach themselves to mortal ponies at all. But then again...

The Elements had surprised him once before.

Discord hated using his benevolent gift to ponykind, to do such boring, awful things like ruin somepony, but he couldn’t let himself be a big softy when his continued freedom was on the line. You would think ponies would be grateful for what he gave them, putting life back into a decrepit mare’s old legs, granting a very silly earth pony the power of flight, giving a little filly all the talents in the world. Fun, whimsical things like that were his bread and butter. But for these 6, Discord had to harden his heart, and get serious about messing them up if he wanted to survive.

In doing this, he managed to get one of the ponies to separate from the group, but that librarian... as soon as she had the others in her clutches, his greatest beguilement couldn’t convince her to separate from them, or them from her. They went from loving her to hating her, yet in hating her they still wanted to be a part of her life as much as possible! It would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so dangerous.

He made a show of being nigh invulnerable, when they impotently tried to use the Elements against him, a completely futile act thanks to their missing member. But it was only a matter of time at this point, before they would get her back, and Discord would find his newfound life rudely interrupted, his glorious personage once again imprisoned in stone.

An amazing thing happened, then. The purple one broke! The librarian lost her color, and her psychic defenses but she didn’t know that, and just gave him the world on a silver platter! Discord was overjoyed, because without her meddling, her former friends quickly scattered all across town, doing their own thing and not giving one single thought into usurping his well earned reign. He taunted her gleefully as she slogged along through the muddy soap, not even caring whether it was night or day anymore. She didn’t have any friends anymore, this was great! Just like... just like him.

Well, it might have been a trick, on the librarian’s part, and neither sunbutt nor mooney had made their move yet, so Discord once again got to scheming. Now that he had power over this unicorn, he had to make the most of it, before some other force went and stole her out from under his very handsome schnozz. Hurrying ahead of her, he canvassed the librarian’s library, trying to find if she had any secret weapons set up, or traps that she was heading towards, pretending to give up just so that she could arm them and ruin his fun. And there, Discord found... an opportunity.

“Oh, what’s this?” Discord said, as the little purple lizard tried to scramble behind another bookshelf. Discord’s magic turned it into a podium with twenty-three spotlights on it. “A baby dragon!” he said excitedly, “How did you get in a pony’s library, little guy?”

“Stay back!” the kid responded, almost falling over on his own tail. “Twilight’s gonna stop you!” he declared confidently. Oh. The librarian, again. Of course the dragon would be on her side too. Was this her secret weapon? But how could one young dragon’s crude magic pose any sort of threat to Discord master of Chaos?

Poor little Spike stopped struggling then, and belched out a delightfully odiferous gout of green flame. But what was fascinating about it was a scroll that accompanied the dragon’s fire, a scroll that hadn’t been there before. And Discord hadn’t detected any sort of teleportation going on. Could dragon fire do that? Maybe it was closer to Chaos magic than Discord had ever known! In all his years, he’d never had a baby dragon to play with!

Because dragons are absolutely no fun at all, when you want to experiment on their young offspring.

Discord cracked open the seal on the scroll, ignoring the baby dragon’s protests, and eagerly read its contents. His face fell to a smouldering frown upon reading it though. Of course. This was their secret weapon. Not fire, but Friendship. Sunny bunny hadn’t got any less crafty in her old age, it seemed.

“The princess?” Discord drawled casually, glancing from the scroll to the baby dragon, “I’m impressed, that you let her use you like that.”

“What do you mean?” Spike said, alarmed. “I’m not gonna—” oh this was perfect. The dragon had to stop talking, for he belched out another scroll.

“You can’t even stop it, can you?” Discord said, wrapping his lovely tendrils right around this poor dragon’s heart. “You’re just her delivery boy, no... you’re just her mail box. She can use you whenever she wants, without your permission. You must really love being ignored and left behind, since the ponies think you’re only good for delivering the mail.”

“Well, no, they think I’m really important!” Spike said futilely. “I help out lots!”

“But think how much more you could help out,” Discord said, getting right up into Spike’s eyes, “If you could choose who sent you letters. Ponies don’t know any better, do they? Wouldn’t it be better if you could receive all your letters from someone who respected you? Aren’t you tired of just... letting the ponies do whatever they want with you, without asking?”

“Yeah, I’m...” Spike said in a dazed tone. Got him.

“You don’t need to receive letters from any pony, or any princess,” Discord said to the dimming Spike, “You only need to receive letters from me. Unlike them, I would never take advantage of a brave, strong dragon like you.”

Through some fantastic sorcery if he did say so himself, Discord managed to fork Spike’s breath effect, so Spike did not belch out a single letter now that Discord didn’t get to see first, which was absolutely perfect. If Neopolitan and Blueberry didn’t want to come down themselves and deal with him, and he was sure they wouldn’t, then they’d just ignorantly remain up in their mountain castle, thinking all the while that the letters they sent were going straight to their beloved student, the librarian.

Discord absconded the fork out of there when Twilight arrived, the poor, confused mare trudging in and immediately snapping angrily at the dragon, “Pack your things Spike, we’re leaving.” She actually thought Canterlot was going to be there, when she got back! This librarian was inattentive, bitter, and downright stupid, just the opposite of all the qualities that were normally her greatest strengths. He peered eagerly through the window as she outdid his wildest imagination, by taking the lofty, most stuck-up, self important Element: Magic, and just tossing it in the waste bin!

Oh, he would never let it live that one down.

Nevertheless, as pleased as he was with the situation, Discord was still unsatisfied. Yes the bearer was powerless and dim, but that gem was bright as ever, and he swore it gave him a malevolent glitter as it plummeted into the trash. It knew that even his great powers had their limitations. This pony, like every other pony, would eventually shake off his beguilement, and get back to her normal, boring old harmony wielding self. And how would he predict when that happened? Discord didn’t do predictions. That wasn’t his thing!

It was then that Discord got an idea, an awful, terrible, wonderful idea. He thought of a way that wouldn’t rely on his sorcery, to take care of the ponies and the elements, all in one hilarious comedy of errors. Discord’s favorite form of entertainment, second only to infomercials and reality TV.

He had a letter to write.

The library foyer was the most pleasant interrogation chamber that Rainbow Dash had ever gone into. But then again, it was also the most unpleasant interrogation chamber Rainbow Dash had ever gone into. One way or another, they were gonna get some answers from their friend. Rainbow Dash wasn’t sure she wanted answers anymore, though, or that she’d be happy with what she found.

Things were less... tense now that Twilight had outright given up on... whatever she had been doing. Rainbow Dash really wanted to know what was bothering Twilight so much, and why she thought they’d release him of all creatures. Rainbow hated waiting, but Twilight didn’t mince words after they’d gotten inside. She sent Spike off running to the kitchen to prepare some nachos (score!) and settled down to explain to the 5 of them what had happened. Not the 6 of them, not the 11 of them, but only 5 ponies who were kept totally in the dark: Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rarity and Pinkie Pie.

“Okay, everypony,” Twilight said, “You may have noticed that your life, or your life recently, has felt wrong. I want to assure you that it’s only natural, given what happened to you. What I... yes, I know what happened to you. I’m going to tell you, and I’m not going to hesitate. We can’t gamble the safety of our whole world on a lie, however well intentioned,” she told herself firmly, “So this is what I know...”

The beautiful light of Harmony sang through Twilight’s veins. She couldn’t believe how close that had been! Well, not anymore! Discord was fresh out of luck, because his sinuating, twisting writhing ceased. Soon all that was left was a stone statue, and a glorious rainbow.

It spread over all the land, and swept away his dark sorceries. It swept through Twilight’s heart, and cleared her head of all that terrible foggy beguilement that his evil magic had wrought. Twilight and her friends descended like sylphs, two of the air remaining in the bright blue sky, while the three of the earth landed on beautiful, living, green grass, with not a single checkerboard pattern to be seen for miles around. Twilight smiled in blessed relief, and to her eternal amusement, not only did Discord get turned into stone, he did it in such an awkward position that he just toppled over, his statue slamming to the ground on its side with a terrible sound of finality.

“Well, girls,” Twilight concluded, looking to her left, “It looks like—”

She stopped cold.

There, flying in the air was that rainbow haired stunt pony who was always crashing through her library, and in general making a huge jerk out of herself. The mare was... smiling? Fondly? And that baker, Twilight only knew about her through the Cakes, and from the frustration and yelling she heard, of a mare taking her rage out on the baked goods in the back of Sugarcube Corner. The pink pony made good food, but... the Cakes didn’t let her work the front counter, for a very clear reason. It was amazing that they decided to foster a teenager when they did, but even years later, she had some real issues. Well, Pinkamena’s mane was now completely ridiculous in its puffed up nature, and Twilight couldn’t recall her ever smiling before, but she was smiling now!

There was an orange pony that... Twilight had never seen before in her life, a violet haired, white unicorn... that Twilight had vaguely interacted with, then decided her dresses were too overpriced, and finally... a butter yellow, pink maned, pegasus, that Twilight had never seen before, but she had been warned about before. And they were all wearing the Elements of Harmony! Why were they wearing the Elements of Harmony?!

“Ha, we did it!” the rainbow mare uttered, pumping her hoof as Discord’s statue thudded to the ground.

“He looks so silly, on his side!” the pink one crowed, laying on her own side, giggling bubbly and then rolling to kick her legs in the air, just like... no.

“Ah reckon we finally got him,” the orange one said, crossing her hooves and smiling jauntily just like oh no no no.

Twilight was starting to remember what she had done.

“I’m so glad everything’s back to normal,” the butter yellow pegasus said quietly, descending to the ground, turning into her mane in a very familiar way. “I was really worried, for a minute there.”

“You know what this calls for?!” the pink one said loudly, with an earsplitting grin on her face. Twilight didn’t know that pony, but she knew that grin. “A party!” the pink one concluded to herself. Of course.

“I’ll have to get cake and streamers and all sorts of ribbons and glittery things, and Rarity you love glitter ribbon right? We wanna show everypony that the day is saved!”

“Yes, I am partial to glitter, and ribbon, and sometimes their combination,” the white mare... Rarity? Rarity drawled, in that pseudo-ironic, wry manner that lent so well to the selling of c-c-chocolate bon-bons, “But you are the expert on parties, am I right?”

“You are so right, Rarity!” the pink one said enthusiastically.

Some of the other ponies in town, besides the ones who stood with Twilight, were starting to climb out from behind wherever they were hiding, now approaching the six of them. Twilight and her... and these ponies were found standing there by an awe inspired populace, beside the statue of Discord in the center of town, each of the 5 with an Element around her neck, and for Twilight Sparkle, a tiara. As Twilight observed this, her mind working desperately to make this better somehow, she became vaguely aware of the rainbow haired pony looking at her strangely.

“You okay, Twilight?” the rainbow pegasus said, hovering in front of the quietly panicking unicorn. “Aren’t you stoked? We just beat Discord’s butt!” Okay, that was new.

“I’m fine!” Twilight squeaked to... her. “Just a little frazzled, you know. We sure went through a lot of trouble to get him. I’m just a little stressed. I’ll be better before you know it.”

“Anything I can do to help?” the pegasus asked her. Asked her in that way. Twilight turned away in a panic. She couldn’t take it. She couldn’t believe what she did! These mares, she... she had thought they were her friends! Discord tricked her, the whole time! Why didn’t this get dispelled, like every other one of his evil tricks? Because... because...

Because this was a magic trick, but not his magic trick. There was only one magic involved here that Twilight Sparkle could fathom, and that magic was her own.

“I have to write a letter,” Twilight said frankly, and maybe a bit too quickly, to the five of them.

The rainbow one nodded her head, saying, “Hey yeah, good idea! I bet the princess will want to hear about this.” Twilight grinned uneasily, then just left. She trotted off to her library hoping against hope that none of them would follow her. Not until she was inside, with the door closed and her back pressed against it, did Twilight feel like she could even breathe.

It was only then that Twilight realized she had forgotten to take the Elements back from... those ponies. Did it even matter at this point? Had those ponies used the elements? But her friends were supposed to... Twilight didn’t even know where her friends were right now. Where had they gone, when she gave up on them? All she knew is that somehow Twilight and these five complete strangers used the Elements of Harmony to defeat Discord, and not Twilight and her friends.

She traveled in a daze to her writing desk, and levitated out an empty scroll, an inkwell, and one pseudophoenix quill. Her eye twitched slightly as she tried to firm her resolve for what she was going to have to write. She put pen to paper.

Dear Princess Celestia—

“Woah, woah, hold on,” Rainbow Dash cut in, interrupting Twilight Sparkle’s exhaustively complete narrative. “Are you saying you did this to us?”

“I... I–I... I didn’t mean to,” Twilight whimpered, lowering to her belly on wobbly, weak knees. “I didn’t have any other choice, I was beguiled I...”

“Seems simple enough,” Applejack said gruffly, pushing up under Rainbow Dash to address the unicorn. “Just uncast your spell or whatever, and we cain be our old selves again.”

Rainbow Dash had a sinking feeling about that, as in she sank right to the ground. She looked at Applejack unbelievingly, saying, “Are you serious, mare? Did you even read what it said in my diary before that?”

Applejack blanched at that, saying, “Okay fine, change all of us, except Rainbow Dash.”

“And Rarity,” Rainbow said flatly.

“And Rarity,” Applejack nodded. She blinked then, and blushed, adding, “And... Fluttershy. But... but we gotta be ourselves! It just ain’t right to be living a lie!”

“It doesn’t matter anyway, because I can’t safely undo it,” Twilight said miserably. “What I did to you, was... it’s not just a simple spell on you. You’re not even enchanted right now. What I did was... I thought I was helping you, but what I did was...

“Unforgiveable...”

“Snap out of it!” a troubled Twilight Sparkle shouted, pushing Applejack down on her back. “This isn’t you! You’re not a liar!”

Applejack acted too surprised to protest. Clearly the confused mare was surprised because Twilight didn’t believe her. She thought that her boasting about taking on Discord solo was a story that was believed by anypony, anywhere, ever. In that moment of confusion, Twilight strained her magic to its limits, her horn glowing with a brilliant purple light as she tried to recall all of the wonderful memories she had made with [Applejack]. Ponyville’s first successful Winter Wrapup, making up for good times in the Running of the Leaves, saving Twilight from certain death by telling her what she needed to do. Let go.

Discord’s magic didn’t stand a chance against the power of Twilight’s friendship. Applejack’s eyes widened as her memories rushed back, and Twilight poured them right into her, pulling Applejack away from that dark path of confusion, and bringing her into the beautiful light of friendship. Twilight pushed the memory far back, of the visions of them feuding and fighting, and gave her friend something else to think about, something called hope.

“Twilight!” Applejack said, as soon as she had come back to herself enough to recognize the purple mare. “Ah had a vision of us feuding and fighting! Couldn’t face the truth, so... I started telling lies . Can you ever forgive me?”

With a triumphant grin, Twilight said, “I already have.”

“Ah remember that, Twilight, and it was the greatest thing you ever did for me,” Applejack said reverently. “Ah was so lost in that web of lies, and all because of that stupid vision, with those talking apples. You saved me from that. What’s that gotta do with mah family not trustin’ me?”

“Well, actually... I sort of... made that up,” Twilight said with an uncomfortable smile. “With the apples and the pond of truth? I didn’t really know what he did to deceive Golden Harvest at the time, so I just assumed it had something to do with her not wanting to tell us, about how badly we’re going to be fighting. I mean, really. Talking piles of apples? What was I thinking!”

Twilight shook her head, saying, “I wasn’t thinking. I was playing into Discord’s twisted claw the whole time. And then you helped me, because you were my friend. The one I’d lost, or so I thought. One by one, we held down our other friends, and forced them to see the truth, that our friendship over the years is stronger than anything Discord could throw at us. A-and you got better! You all were fighting together with me. I was back in the game. We were going to kick Discord’s scaly brown butt!”

Twilight perked up brightly and more excited as she talked, and... then she just wilted.

“He wasn’t even concerned,” she said softly. “He was toying with us. A-applejack did lie to him, even though she didn’t know it. She said he made her a liar, but he didn’t make her anything she wasn’t already. He knew we couldn’t possibly use the Elements of Harmony, because... because you weren’t even my friends.”

“We are your friends, though!” Rainbow Dash protested. “...aren’t we?”

“Yes. You are!” Twilight protested right back. “You’re all my friends now, and it’s all my fault! I am so sorry!”

“Twilight,” Rarity said with a nervous titter, “You can’t expect us to believe that. Nopony could do that with her magic. What you’re suggesting is nothing more than a tale used to scare foals.”

“An old mare’s tale, perhaps?” the cream colored earth pony said smoothly in response, eyeing Rarity judgementally.

“You have a point, miss Drops...” Rarity grumbled, “But still. Twilight wasn’t... oh... carving our souls with her magic.” She turned to Twilight saying hopefully, “You were just undoing Discord’s curse! The hex he put on each and every one of us!”

“Yeah, that was just some kind of dispel magic!” Pinkie Pie declared, hopping in front of Rarity to face Twilight. “Dashie would never fight against us, if she wasn’t really tricked by Discord to think we were all evil Mcevilersons! When we dragged Rainbow Dash out of the sky, and held her down with ropes,” Pinkie said enthusiastically as Twilight cringed more and more, “So that Twilight could touch her really bright horn directly to her forehead, it was clearly just snapping her out of it.”

“Excuse me Pinkie, but I was in the middle of saying something important,” Rarity huffed, jockeying the pink pony back away from Twilight. Rarity didn’t seem to have anything more she could say though, just remained quiet and gave the scared purple horse a sympathetic wince.

Rainbow herself lifted up an uneasy hoof to her chest, looking from Pinkie Pie to Twilight.

“You... tied me up?” Rainbow asked them cautiously. “I don’t remember that part.”

“You wouldn’t, because...” Twilight sighed, “It was somepony else who remembered that part. I restored your memories, but... but recent ones, I didn’t need to give you. I didn’t think you needed them. I was getting better at the s-spell as I went on. It was the hardest spell I ever had to cast, and I was doing it...”

She turned over her shoulder, looking at a very sad, guilty looking pegasus, whose golden eyes didn’t go the same way. “For you...” Twilight said to Derpy, solemnly.

Pinkie Pie stuck her hoof over her head.

“Ooh! Ooh! Question! I have a question!” she squealed, waving her hoof in the air. Rarity facehooved, grumbling something about herself and giving up, and staggered off to sag down to a sitting position apart from the pink pony.

“Nopony’s talking,” Twilight said, waving vaguely at Pinkie Pie. “You can just ask, you know.”

“If we were all big dumb blue meanies,” Pinkie asked, with a look of childlike curiosity on her face, “Then why didn’t Discord’s magic make us act like goody four-shoes?”

“Pinkie’s right!” Rarity exclaimed, shooting up to a standing position in shock. “Discord’s beguilement made everypony act like somepony they were not!” she said hurrying up to Twilight, “But I remember being subject to that! Vaguely. What you describe seems to fit my beguilement to a T. I don’t care how stingy you think I am, I refuse to believe I was the sort of mare who would mistake a rock for a diamond!”

“You weren’t Discorded,” Twilight mumbled, cringing back until a confused Rarity retreated her head out of the librarian’s personal space.

“I’m sorry, what?” Rarity gaped incredulously.

“You weren’t Discorded!” Twilight repeated, leaning towards Rarity earnestly. “Tom wasn’t a diamond. He was a giant chocolate truffle!”

The candy seller too shrank to her belly at that, snout scrunching as she grumbled under her breath, “I thought we weren’t going to mention that again.”

“I—I just made you think you were Discorded,” Twilight said waving a hoof to show off the other 5, while she looked anxiously at the main ones. “I didn’t make you think you were friends with me. I made you think you were my friends, literally!

“Each of my friends, I used a variation of the come-to-life spell to animate—er—re-animate your brains to think like them instead.” Twilight said, walking from friend to friend as she did. “It was like a puppeteer and her five marionettes, five versions of herself all acting like her ideal image of her friends. Every one of my friends were Discorded, and I... projected my memory of that onto you. Like Lyra here for instance...”

“I thought nopony ever took me seriously,” the mint green unicorn said with a nervous grin. “And I ended up getting mad at anyone who laughed at me... and then at anyone who laughed at all.”

“You and me both, sister!” Pinkie said in tacit agreement, while the unicorn gave her an odd look.

“Discord told me I was too much of a pushover to stop him,” Flitter said, in jaded submission.

“Oh, that’s terrible!” Fluttershy said sympathetically. But as Fluttershy came forward, Flitter jumped back, fluttering into the air in a fright. The blue haired pegasus deliberately descended to the ground then, looking at Fluttershy evenly, but it was too late.

Fluttershy cast her head down, saying sadly, “At least he had to trick you. With me, he didn’t have to do anything at all...”

“It’s okay, ...Fluttershy,” Flitter said, with a tormented smile at the pegasus. “You were as much a ...victim as the rest of us.”

“That’s very kind of you to say,” Fluttershy murmured, looking evenly at Flitter again. “Were you Kindness, then?”

“Ostensibly... yes,” Flitter said, casting her head down and sighing.

“It explains why we act so similar,” Fluttershy speculated.

Flitter looked up at Fluttershy thoughtfully. They stared into each other’s eyes. Then Flitter said in surprise, “You are Kindness now?”

“Yes, though I don’t deserve it,” Fluttershy said, blushing and looking aside.

“You,” Flitter said, “Fluttershy. You’re Kindness?”

“Yes?” Fluttershy said, looking up at her questioningly. Flitter didn’t turn away this time, and just stared right back.

“And my friends were going to betray everypony!” Derpy cried, with a tormented look in her mixed up eyes. “I thought I had to choose...”

“Sometimes loyalty—” Twilight started to say to her.

“—means that when your friends are messing up, that’s when they need your help the most,” Derpy finished for her, turning her nose down sadly as she landed beside the unicorn.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Dash said, fluttering up to the two of them and saying with open mouthed astonishment, “You mean to tell me that Derpy’s the Element of Loyalty? You made me Derpy? ”

She landed and stared at the odd pegasus, who stared right back... sort of. They tilted their heads at each other for a moment, scoping each other out. “She’s nothing like me!” Dash exclaimed exasperatedly, turning to Twilight and waving a hoof at Derpy. “Derpy gets into all sorts of crashes, and I—wait.”

“I take these wicked cloud naps that, wait no, lots of pegasi do that...”

“I... fly... fast?” Dash squeaked out desperately.

“I would fly fast too,” Derpy replied pouting, “If my eyes weren’t so screwy.” She added in a more pleased tone, “But I’m not jealous. It’s like seeing me, as a potential Wonderbolt!”

“Oh, you like the Wonderbolts, huh?” Dash said in cautious respect.

“Yeah, I’m like their biggest fan,” Derpy said with a giddy giggle. “I hope I can meet them again, and maybe even get an autograph this time!”

“When did you meet with them?” Rainbow asked curiously.

“Well, it was last year at the Gala,” Derpy said, tapping her chin, “And it was going really good, except they were too busy to talk to me, and then I kind of um...”

“She ran into me, trying to get them to notice her,” the green pony spoke up in an amused tone of voice, “And bumped me right off the stage. That sort of started a thing going, which...”

“...knocked down the entire Gala,” Derpy finished regretfully.

“But... but that’s when I met the Wonderbolts...” Rainbow Dash said miserably.

“I’m sorry Rainbow Dash, but I don’t think you have,” Derpy said sympathetically. “You’re always saying they’ll recognize your greatness and recruit you, but I don’t think you ever tried to talk to them... or apply.”

Dash was just... speechless at that.

“Discord didn’t curse you,” Golden Harvest announced to the main 5, drawing their attention to the orange carrot farmer. “He didn’t curse any of you. Well, he might have, but only to turn your color grey. All he was going after was fooling Twilight, since the rest of us Elements had already given up, and were off doing... crazy things.”

“But if he didn’t curse us, then how did we get so... discordant?” Rarity asked. “We just happened to be that way? That seems unlikely.”

“It’s more likely, if you consider that he picked you out!” Twilight said confidently. “He was trying to ruin the Elements, by finding the scummiest of scum, no offense, and tricking me into thinking they’re my friends. You were all the worst he could find, and when I confronted him he could just laugh as the Elements failed again, and again. B-but instead, I mean... you saw his statue. I don’t think he was expecting that. Instead, what I believe happened is that...”

With a ridiculously lavish and floppy hat on, Discord bent over his writing desk, pondering as he scratched out a lovely letter on parchment. Yes, parchment. Don’t worry, it wasn’t anyone you knew. “Real friends...” he muttered, “Don’t care what your cover is. Ha ha yes, good luck figuring that one out. I’ll throw in another about how wondrous and powerful friendship is. There we go.

He then delicately patted his chest, and gave an enormous belch of some stolen green flames. A letter from the sun princess emerged from his devilish diversion, that sent her messages straight to himself before they reached their intended destination. He opened it, and read through it, taking note of the contents, but certainly not the names of ponies within. “And who shall I write about this time?” he pondered, “Hmm...”

Drifting around town, Discord found some ponies enjoying his gifts, some ponies fearing them, and some ponies just not giving a care in the world no matter what he did to amaze them. And of that latter group, he found the rottenest, most no-good lying cheater in the entire town, currently dead drunk and passed out at the poker table. It was splendid. Discord hadn’t even known ponies were advanced enough to waste their lives away playing that silly little card game he invented, and imagining that they could be actually skilled at it.

This pony was a piece of work. A struggling mare, with a filly to worry about, a filly that was family to the mare, but she could only pretend the filly was her own. Ponies treated her with sympathy because of this, and gave her support. Yet even with the help of everypony in town, this mare still managed to ‘lose’ her cider supply every spring, and sell it for double price to ponies who thought they were sneaking it out from under her nose. A brilliant scheme, really.

And then she went and gambled her profits away, with her family none the wiser, and not one bit less hungry for the effort. A pony who would work so hard, cheat and steal from so many other ponies, and then throw it away, just so she could pretend that she needed her family to support her financially was absolutely despicable. It made Discord feel ill, just worming his way through her unrepentant rememberances.

She was perfect.

“My friend...” he later said, with a flourish of his super floppy quill ink pen, “Applejack , is the best friend a pony could ever have...”

Five perfect mares later, and Discord’s freedom was finally secured. That adorable little librarian, she ate up every sappy, syrupy word he rewrote to her. As her color brightened, she threw off the yoke of his depressingly boring beguilement. It didn’t even matter whether his magic had hold of her, at this point! This mare had such beautifully manipulable tunnel vision, that once she became convinced of something, there was simply no reasoning with her anymore!

There on his throne, Discord rolled his eyes and adopted a bored, resentful act when the librarian returned, with her five new friends in tow.

It was such a perfect plan, that nothing could possibly go wrong!

Author's Note

Instead, what happened is to be concluded in the next chapter!