Shimmer opened her eyes to find herself in an unfamiliar bed. As her eyes focused, she realized she was in a wood cabin, a nearby window opening out into a dense forest. A small round carpet lay in the center of the floor, right by a plain wooden desk and an equally plain chair. A single light bulb hung dormant above the room, letting the sun's rays do the work of lighting the room. Before she could absorb her surroundings any further, an old lady entered the room, along with a cat that squeezed past her. Her green eyes lit up when she saw Shimmer, highlighted next to her tan-beige skin.

"Oh, you're finally awake!" the woman noted. "Thank heavens!"

"Where am I?" Shimmer asked. "Who are you? How did I get here?"

"You ask a lot of questions," the lady chuckled. "A kind stranger found you unconscious in the woods, and came to me looking for shelter. Of course, I couldn't just turn a blind eye to a poor girl in need. I've been caring for you for about a month now."

"A month!?" Shimmer repeated, jumping out of bed. Worrying thoughts raced rapidly through her mind: where were her friends? Were they okay? What happened to Charade? What the hell happened in the past month!?

Shimmer opened her mouth to ask these questions, but the woman pre-empted her, holding up a hand to stop her before she started. "Now now, I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but I'm afraid I'm just not the person to answer them," she admitted. "Perhaps your rescuer might be more help. He's been here the whole time, waiting for you to wake up. He's waiting out in the living room. Just come out and meet him when you're ready."

As the woman left the room, Shimmer ruminated on the seed of dread that sprouted in her stomach...the moment the lady had said the word "he." Her savior was male, and thus wasn't one of her friends. She forced herself to get up and move toward the door, trying to find the best case scenario. Maybe her savior was just a concerned stranger. Maybe he was Daniel, who might give her some answers. She walked through the door...and her worst fears were realized as she saw Azrael sitting in an armchair, drinking tea, surrounded by a half-dozen more cats.

"I'm glad to see you've recovered," he mentioned nonchalantly, as if he was simply a good friend of Shimmer's, and hadn't torn a guy open right in front of her.

His eyes radiated his sincere care, but Shimmer wasn't having any of it. Disgusted and slightly terrified, she inched her way toward the front door. "Stay away from me," she warned.

Azrael got up out of his chair, disturbing the two cats that had nestled themselves on his lap. "Look, I know how you feel, but trust me, you're safer here than you are out there right now."

That was the last straw. Before Azrael could explain what he meant, Shimmer bolted out the door and ran into the forest. Azrael silently cursed, then followed her out into the woods. Shimmer ran and ran, until the trees thinned out, opening into...a clifftop. She stopped short of the drop-off, and turned around to see Azrael emerge from the forest behind her. He kept his distance, knowing that she might back away off the cliff if he tried to close the gap.

"Please, just...stay away from me!" Shimmer screamed at him.

"Look, if you want me to leave, I'll leave," he accepted. "I was just waiting to make sure you were okay after that blast launched us out here. Still, you should stay here in the sticks with the old cat lady. I was serious when I said you're not safe out in the open."

"I'm less safe wherever you put me," Shimmer shot back. She was burned once, and she wasn't getting burned again.

"I'm not kidding," Azrael argued. "If you don't head back, it won't be long before things end badly for you. Come on, I'll take you back." He held out a hand to her...

"Not a freaking chance!" Suddenly she ponied up, and fire swirled around her hand. On rage-filled instinct, she threw the fireball at Azrael, who simply pulled out a sword to slice it out of existence before putting the blade back. The pony transformation faded away as the fireball had left Shimmer's fingers. Only after the act did she realize what she had just done.

"Wh-what...? How...?" Shimmer wondered, dumbfounded.

"I thought this might happen," Azrael mentioned. "We may be in the middle of nowhere, but I've still been able to keep tabs on what's been going on in the world. From the sound of it, setting off a bomb next to a leaking magic vein had some serious consequences. Go figure. Now that little trickle that had sealed itself off is a huge spring of magic, and all of that stuff pouring into this world has been giving people powers like yours. Gonna go through hell cleaning that mess up in the future."

Shimmer took all of this in, before focusing on one particular point. "Wait, you know what's been going on in the past month?" she realized. "Do you know where my friends are?"

Azrael looked away. "Yeah, that kinda brings me to the danger you're in. Those government goons have been going around rounding up your friends wherever they ended up. As for Daniel...well, I have no idea. He and Charade are the two guys I haven't been able to get a read on all month. I've been kinda busy taking care of you, but now that you're awake, I'm gonna go after them."

"No. No you're not," Shimmer dismissed him, summoning fire as a threat. "Last time I trusted you, you let my friend get drained of their magic, destroyed my magic journal, and nearly slashed a guy in two. What in Tartarus makes you think I'd trust you with my friends now!?"

"Well, who stand the better chance of actually saving them: the girl who only just got fire powers? Or the guy who's had much more powerful magic for longer? Besides, I think that card to the back was Charade giving me the pink slip."

Shimmer gave him a death stare, acknowledging his point without agreeing with him. "If you're gonna insist on this, then I'm gonna keep an eye on you. You're not gonna hurt my friends again."

"Woah there," Azrael disagreed. "Even with my help, you're not ready for this."

"They're my friends. I'm gonna save them," Shimmer argued, then headed off without letting Azrael respond. All he could do was run after her.

"Hey! Do you even know where you're going?"

Trixie had no idea where she was, where she was going, or even how many days had passed. Shortly after her home was destroyed, she woke up to find two men in suits chasing her. It didn't take long for them to catch her, and they threw her into a van like a stray dog on its way to the pound. Since then, she'd had no choice but to twiddle the thumbs on her shackled hands as her windowless prison kept moving along. Occasionally they'd stop, and she'd hear muffled screams outside, before the truck continued its endless journey. By this point, she'd lost count of how many stops they'd made, how many other prisoners the agents had taken. As the seemingly endless journey had dragged on and on, what will she had left slowly crumbled away. Finally, she broke down and started to sob...

In response to her own sorrow, she grew pony ears and a long ponytail in her hair. As this transformation occurred, cold radiated from her hands, superfreezing her shackles. Her surprise at the situation pulled that power out of her grasp, but the shackles were still utterly frozen. She was quick to see an opportunity, and smashed her shackles against the wall. As she thought, the cold had made the shackles so brittle that they shattered on impact, freeing her. Though she only felt her new power for a second, she reached out for it again, and found that she could summon the power of ice at will. With this, hope rushed into her as a sly smile spread across her face.

She poured her power into the iron doors sealing her off from her freedom, growing a large sheet of ice to pry them apart. While she gained her freedom, this stunt caught the attention of all the agents driving similar prison trucks around her, bringing the entire convoy to a stop. Of course, she welcomed this chance to try out her new powers. To her pleasant surprise, another prisoner took this chance to follow her example. One of the other trucks sparked with electricity, and then Rainbow Dash, her hands unfortunately still shackled, kicked her way out the back. A nearby agent, already on alert from Trixie's escape, immediately moved to take Rainbow down before she could react...so Trixie froze his legs to the ground. Surprised, Rainbow turned to her ally.

"Took you long enough," she teased, before freezing Rainbow's shackles to break her free. "Think you can take these guys on without the Great and Powerful Trixie saving you again?"

"Heh. Watch and learn!" Rainbow boasted. She shot bolts of lightning at two approaching agents, stunning them. Trixie proceeded to freeze other agents, until all the goons around them were incapacitated.

"You honestly thought you could stand against Trixie?" Trixie boasted.

"Haha! Owned!" Rainbow cheered, before turning to Trixie. "So, you gonna help break my friends out, or are you gonna sit here taunting these guys?"

"And where do you think you're going?"

As Rainbow and Trixie heard this voice, they felt a strange power surrounding them. Before they could locate the voice, dark shackles formed around their wrists and ankles, pinning them in place. As they struggled in vain against the shackles, Thatch walked over to them, pony ears sprouting off his head and dark power swirling around his hand.

"So sorry, girls," Thatch taunted them, "but you're not the only ones to get powers. Good job on your prison break, though. You wrecked two perfectly good trucks, and we won't be able to get them repaired anytime soon. As a reward, you've both graduated to my truck. I'm not gonna let these shackles off of you until we reach our destination. And trust me, you're not freezing these off."

Before the two girls could even try to resist, or even just surrender, Thatch dragged them along remotely through the shackles. In a few seconds, they had filled to the brim with hope, but in this instant, it all drained away.

Author's Note

I'm kinda feeling off bout the Azrael/Shimmer subplot. I feel like Azrael's coming off as a creeper when he's not supposed to, which is a bit of a problem, as that subplot's kind of important.