Rainboom Revolution

Even vaguely aware of what was going on around them, the guards at the front castle gate were in no way prepared for what they faced. Before they could even level their pikes at the approach, the red-eyed pretense of an alicorn called Agent Snake glared at them both and a ring of red magic energy like that used by unicorns appeared around the necks of the guards. Snake took a perverse pleasure in hearing the guards, both "contemptuous horned ones", gag and choke on the remote applied grip around their necks. It is not long before both slump down in unconsciousness, leaving the approach uncontested.

"Should we stop to inject them, Your Highness?" one of the escort ponies, an armored pegasus wearing an upside-down orange balloon symbol, asks of the power-mad Snake.

"No, we don't need them dead. Just unable to fight back." Snake replies, following up with an evil chuckle. He focuses on the locked gate ahead and with a flash of red energy it WHOOSHES open, allowing Snake and his several escorts to immediately enter the castle's main hall. There, another armored pony wearing the upside-down orange balloon symbol rushes up to Snake as the latter's entourage approaches the grand staircase in the hall.

"Do you have the artifacts from the vault, Agent Sadness?" Snake as the pony that rushed up as that pony bows before him.

"Yes, Your Highness, they are all in the bag with me right here." Agent Sadness answers, pointing to the bag faintly glowing with the power of the magic artifacts inside it.

"And the Gemini Bats?" Snake continues.

"As far as I am aware, the assassins have done their work successfully for the alarm has not yet been raised." Sadness continues on.

"Good, good." Snake comments with an evil grin, looking into the bag as he speaks. Inside the bag among the other artifacts were been two items later used against Twilight Sparkle and her friends: the Staff of Sameness used by Starlight Glimmer to remove cutie marks and the Alicorn Amulet later bought and used by Trixie. Snake had deliberately planned these and other "dangerous" artifacts long ago secured by Princess Celestia to be released so as to increase the level of chaos - although it didn't work out as Snake intended, it allowed the artifacts to torment others again in the future.

"I won't wait for the twin batponies to secure the treasury, I want the artifacts distributed now. Take them to the rally point, Sadness. The second-in-command here has done his escort work well enough, and I won't need any more help now." Snake orders his subordinate Agent. For half a moment, Snake had considered swapping out his second-rate imitation of the Alicorn Amulet with the real thing, but just as quickly remembered that the real Amulet would be better off in the wild causing chaos, so let it go to be distributed, trusting that the second-rate copy would be good enough for what he needed.

"Yes sir!" Sadness replies, saluting as he speaks, then eagerly whizzing past by the stallion pretending to be an alicorn to carry out the orders given to him. Sadness' second-in-command follows quickly behind, shouldering the bag of magic artifacts as he does so.

"All opposition is neutralized. Now we just wait for the fulfillment of our hopes." Snake proclaims to his remaining escorts, eager to sit upon the throne of Celestia as the rule of the alicorns fell and "the chaotic one" returned to torment Equestria once again...

Due to the distraction of the main rebel attacks of Agents Animosity and Cruelty, the loyalists were not aware of the infiltration of Snake (or Agent Sadness, for that matter) into Canterlot Castle until the party lead by Princess Luna from the Royal Guard officer barracks arrived at the breach of the Luna Vault. (Although the main gate had been opened before this point, this opening would not have been visible from the direction Luna's party was coming from.)

As the party spread out, Luna was both relieved and confused that the artifacts inside seemed to have been untouched, and like Lieutenant Aldebaran before her she was confused what exactly the purpose of the break-in was. She was about to issue a more complete search order when Lieutenant Skyver calls the rest of the party - Luna herself, Captain of the Guard Gibraltar, Lieutenant Captain Shining Armor and Guard Upper Class Flash Sentry - over to the rediscovered dead Quartermaster.

"Looks like he was stripped clean after the lethal injection, sir." Skyver reports grimly to the other ponies arrayed around him.

"The question is who did it, and what the purpose was." Captain Gibraltar grimly comments.

"More to the point, sir, where is Lieutenant Aldebaran? Surely he ought to have responded to this situation by now..." Shining Armor adds, continuing to look around as he speaks.

"The Lieutenant Captain makes an excellent point. It is entirely possible that he is engaged elsewhere in the castle, and we should check for such a possibility in the swiftest possible manner." Princess Luna suggests.

"Yes, Your Highness, but where should we check? If the Quartermaster was stripped specifically to access vital areas, there's three or four reasonable possibilities to consider in choosing the search area." Captain Gibraltar asks of the princess of the night.

"There are five of us and three logical places to check for Lieutenant Aldebaran. We will split up as follows: I myself will check the Artifact Vault, the Captain and the Lieutenant will check the armory, and the Lieutenant Captain will work with the Upper Class to check the treasury. Understood?" Luna crisply commands, followed by a reluctant string of affirmative responses - none of the other ponies really have a better plan to suggest.

"Good. Doubletime haste then. FORWARD!" Luna exclaims, the last word in a blast of the trademark Royal Canterlot Voice that startles the other ponies enough to allow Luna an exit into the castle corridors without being seen which direction she was going. All the Guard members left behind give shrugs of resignation and start off to implement Luna's plan, Flash Sentry stopping briefly to cover the dead Quartermaster's body with a cloth dust cover so as to prevent any more shocking surprises...

The alicorn princess of the night moves at a fast canter through the castle hallways, hoping to avoid her movements drawing too much attention from possibly unwanted quarters. She had other, more sneaky methods of getting around, of course - the mist she could shift into being one, as well as just shifting into something that didn't have hooves. But she didn't want to test magic not much practiced since regaining it in an emergency situation such as this one, and it boosted her confidence to hear hooves on the marbled floor. She was still an alicorn princess after all, a warrior that was never supposed to stop fighting for harmony, but often she needed reassurance of those facts to herself...

Luna slides to a stop when two wriggling burlap sacks appear in the hallway ahead of her. With unicorn magic she begins working them open, spilling one armored pegasus stallion from one sack and a second pegasus stallion, also armored, from the other sack. The alicorn recognizes the first one she freed as the critical pony Lieutenant Aldebaran, the other stallion wearing the rank of a Guard Upper Class.

"What's going on here, Lieutenant? Report!" Luna snaps out, desperate for information.

"There's rebels running amok in the castle, Princess! The guards to Celestia's and Cadance's suites are dead, and the assassins were heading to plunder the royal treasury!" Aldebaran exclaims.

"And despite what some ponies might tell you, bondage in a burlap sack is not artistic in any sense, just plain humiliating!" the Upper Class guard with Aldebaran quickly adds with a huffy snort.

"Keep it together, Spearhead, we can discuss your artistic opinions another time! Helping the Princesses is the highest priority!" Lieutenant Aldebaran snaps back.

"You know anything about the Artifact Vault, Guards?" Luna asks, trying to divert focus from what she was convinced was the certain objective of the rebels - resurrecting the "chaotic one" she and her sister defeated with the Elements of Harmony long before, but she dare not speak of now nor could do anything about if he got loose.

"Already opened and stolen from, at least according to what I heard from one of the assassins." Aldebaran answers, temporarily depressing Luna's mood.

"We may not be able to do anything about the artifacts immediately, but if there are rebels in the treasury they must be stopped there." Luna explains, already turning in the direction the treasury would be located. "I sent Lieutenant Captain Shining Armor there along with one escort, they may already be engaged. We must go help them with all haste! FORWARD, FULL GALLOP!"

The last words, again in the Royal Canterlot Voice, echo in reverberation as Lieutenant Skyver and Guard Upper Class Spearhead scramble to follow behind Princess Luna racing through the hallways of Canterlot Castle...

Luna's fears are quickly proven true as her trio approach the site of the Equestrian Treasury and hear the sounds of conflict. First they pass a downed pair of guards that were unlucky enough to have been assigned to guard the treasury's entrance that night, then see Lieutenant Captain Shining Armor and Guard Upper Class Flash Sentry in pitched melee against the batpony pair of Gemini Twins and several other assassins, all the rebels seeking to escape with a haul of bits after accomplishing their task.

Without hesitation, Luna charges into battle, shouting "TRAITORS ALL OF YOU!" as a blast of lightning quickly fires past Shining Armor and Flash Sentry to shock the trapped rebels. Skyver and Spearhead follow up with a charge of their own, finally leveling the odds against them. Amidst stacks of bits and record ledgers, the rebels desperately try to keep away from Luna's electrical blasts and Shining Armor's steamrolling shield bubbles, bit piles and tables flying every which way in the attacks.

The rebels back up, but are quickly running out of room, even after climbing atop piles of bits that would make a dragon feel right at home. Shining Armor puts a magic barrier in the path of the rebels, forcing them to hit it and slide back down the piles right to where the Luna-led force is waiting. The lower-ranking Guard officers spring out ahead of the princess and senior officers to quickly pin the rebels down, ending the battle right there. The assassins were indeed caught without being unable to escape with a monetary prize (partly a fault of their own greed), but as Luna and her allies would soon learn the serious damage had already been done.

"WHERE ARE THE ARTIFACTS FROM THE VAULT, TRAITORS?!" Luna shouts in her Royal Voice mode at the captured Gemini Twins.

"You're all too late, Princess." one of the twins calmly replies as he is bound. "The Artifacts are loose, the guards are dead and Agent Snake is on his way to the Solar Throne to watch the end of the alicorns and return of the chaotic one. We may die, but we have done our duty, and it will not matter if Snake's hopes are fulfilled as we expect shortly."

"What in Equestria is he talking about?!?" Shining Armor exclaims in total confusion.

"It would take too long to explain everything, Lieutenant Captain." Luna tries to answer without revealing too much in the process. "All you need to know is that we need to summon the Captain and his companion here as quickly as possible, then act to wake Celestia so that the Element Bearers can be put on standby. They will be the only ones to stop things if this 'chaotic one' does indeed get loose."

Shining Armor recoils a bit as the other Guards continued their work - he could not conceive of any other villain besides Nightmare Moon that would compel the use of the Elements of Harmony as the final solution. Sure, he wanted to see his younger sister again, but an emergency summoning in the middle of the night was not the way he wanted it done. And what was the deal with Snake sitting on Celestia's throne anyways?

No, he had to push aside his questions and doubts, there was still a crisis to resolve. The climax was rapidly approaching, and in this climax the hopes of the Agents of Chaos would be gloriously fulfilled or brutally dashed. The first place this would happen was the Everfree Forest outside Ponyville, and to the Element Bearers our attention now returns...