Avengers of Harmony

Ingar and his friends filed slowly into the large gym room, looking around in awe at what Twilight had set up in just the few short minutes since her last class. An obstacle course, more like a jungle gym than anything, stretched across the left wall, all the way into the back of the room. On the near side of the right wall was what looked like a series of puzzles. In the back corner, some large crystals were set up, shimmering with the kind of magic that showed they were enchanted.

“Welcome to your first group lesson!” Twilight pranced in place eagerly. “I see you didn’t have any trouble finding it. Each of your teachers will take a turn deciding what challenges you’ll face for a lesson, but for my turn, I wanted to do a general overview of everything you might encounter. This lesson will test your agility, your critical thinking, and your fighting abilities—but most of all, your teamwork. Are you ready to get started?”

Silverstream jumped into the air, pumping her fist. “YEAH!”

“That’s the spirit!” Pinkie called, from behind Twilight.

“Right, then let’s start with the obstacle course. There are two pathways, and you’ll need to divide into two teams and go down each simultaneously. There are levers that need to be pulled to open the route for the other team, things like that. Ready?”

Slowly, they divided. Silverstream shifted to one side, Gallus to the other. Sandbar and Yona followed Gallus; Ingar slid towards Silverstream, followed by Smolder. Ocellus hesitated for a fraction of a second before joining Silverstream’s side. Twilight gestured to two doorways, right next to each other, and each group clustered around one. Some of them thought of a jungle gym; a few of a fast food restaurant's playground for foals.

Twilight held up a stopwatch, glinting in her magic. “I’ll be timing you, but don’t worry about that, and don't move so fast you make silly mistakes. Ready? Set? Go!”

They almost tripped over each other in their haste to enter the course. The first bit seemed fairly straightforward—a small ladder led up to an elevated rope bridge. The two paths were identical, and each group could easily see the other. Silverstream cleared the ladder with a few flaps of her wings, barely touching the rungs, and Ocellus buzzed up after her. Smolder clambered up with no trouble. Ingar took a quick glance over at the other side, where Gallus, from the top, was helping Yona up. There was the teamwork the headmare was after—they were off to a great start! He followed up the ladder.

Silverstream was already on the short bridge, giggling as it bounced. Ocellus was simply flying across it, Smolder not far behind. Ingar took a hesitant step onto it and was immediately flung to one side as it wobbled. He grabbed onto the rails on either side to steady himself and crossed slowly, though he noted that his speed increased when Silverstream had stopped bouncing.

Shouts of “Hey!” and “What gives?” floated over from the other side, and he glanced over to see that the other team’s way was blocked by a wall. His team, on the other hand, had a clear path onto an elevated platform, surrounded by a railing. On one railing rested a lever.

Silverstream shrugged. “Well, Headmare Twilight said there were levers we had to pull, right?” Without waiting for a response, she reached over and flipped it. Gallus, Sandbar, and Yona cheered as the wall blocking them slid aside.

As they moved forwards, they found their paths changing. Ingar and his group discovered that their road led on a sloping path downward and to the right, towards the other team. The others, meanwhile, were moving upwards and left, until they were directly above the first group.

Fake walls, made of tumbling mats, forced the bottom team into a narrow hallway, and obstacles were set up on either side of it, causing them to move back and forth, side to side. Ocellus seemed the most agile, zipping back and forth like a dragonfly, while Smolder struggled with the sharp turns in the air. Silverstream didn’t have enough room for her wingspan to even try to fly, so she trotted along happily on the ground. Ingar jogged right behind her, easily keeping up a steady pace.

At the end of the hallway, they encountered another door. Ocellus was the first to reach it. “Hey, guys!” she called upwards. “Do you have a lever?”

“Don’t see one,” Sandbar replied through the floor. “There’s this weird tube thing that goes up, though.”

“No room in front with a lever inside?”

“Nope. Up next… looks like a slide? I think we’re going back down to your level.”

“Yona think lever in tube!” There was a loud thump, and Ingar guessed the yak had stomped on the floor for emphasis. “Meant to be reached by flyer. They go up, pull lever, come down!”

There was a pause, and Ingar could practically hear the other two turn toward Gallus, who laughed nervously. “Right. Okay. Just go up into that… tiny, thin tube… and pull a lever. Easy peasy.”

“Exactly!” A softer thump, probably Sandbar patting Gallus on the back. “You’re the only guy here with wings. It’s gotta be you.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Another nervous laugh. “Well, now or never, I guess.” There was a soft ruffle of wings, and the scrape of talons against… Ingar wasn’t sure. Maybe the “plastic” thing these ponies had come up with. A tense silence followed.

“Well?” Smolder demanded. “What’s the holdup?”

“Nothing!” Gallus’s voice was higher pitched than normal. “Everything’s fine! Really good!”

“Then why isn’t this wall opening?”

Ingar winced at the harshness of her words, but couldn’t deny her point. It shouldn’t be taking this long. Weren’t they being timed?

“Just… just give me a minute, all right?” Gallus squeaked. “It’s… back in here a ways. Further than I expected.”

Talons scraped against whatever the tube was again, repeatedly this time, as he pushed his way through. He seemed to be moving quickly, but Ingar was just happy he was moving at all. The wall slid out of their way, and they cheered.

In front of them, an ugly yellow slide, plastic again, curved off to the left, while their path twisted right, bringing the two teams side by side once more. Sandbar and Yona slid down, waving their hooves in the air and giggling. Gallus darted out of the tube like ghosts were after him, drenched in sweat and panting.

“Dude,” Sandbar said, “what happened?”

“Nothing!” He smiled a little bit too broadly. “Everything’s great! Super!”

“O… kay.” Sandbar was clearly skeptical, but Gallus was eager to brush the whole thing off.

“Well, come on, let’s get moving! We’re being timed, remember?” He was already moving forward, and Sandbar and Yona had to hurry to keep up with him.

The next obstacle was hurdles, with a sign requesting flyers to remain grounded for the purposes of the course. Smaller print confirmed that touching the hurdles to vault was allowed. Smolder and Ocellus hit the ground on either side of Ingar, and he hung back to let them take the first hurdles first. Silverstream, ahead of all of them, easily leaped each one, laughing all the way. Ocellus jumped, brushed the top, and used it for an extra push over. Smolder clambered over like it was a ladder. Ingar took a running start, laid one hand on the railing, and swung his legs out to the side, vaulting it in a smooth motion. Alternating hands, he continued this way down the entire section of the course, passing first Smolder, then Ocellus, and gaining quickly on Silverstream.

On the other side, he saw vague glimpses of Gallus’s smooth leaps, Sandbar’s steady pace, and Yona’s short leaps that usually smashed the hurdles behind her two companions. Then the view was abruptly cut off as they left the hurdles. The teams moved into two separate rooms, and theirs, he saw, had both a lever and a closed wall.

“All right! Time to help each other out!” Silverstream bounded up to the lever and pulled. “Does that do it for you?” she shouted through the wall, but there was no reply. Still, their own wall began to move, sliding smoothly open. Silverstream let go of the lever and trotted towards the door, then froze as it began to close again. “Uh…”

Smolder looked over at the lever, which had flipped back to the upright position. She pulled it down, then let go, and it pulled itself back up. The door drifted open, then back closed. “Right, okay. I don’t think this thing is connected to the other team at all. I think it’s just us.”

“So, one of us has to stay behind and hold it open?” Ocellus asked.

The four looked at each other for a few moments. Then Ingar’s desire to actually contribute something got the best of him. “I will stay,” he volunteered.

Silverstream smiled. “Thank you!” She gave him a swift hug, then bounded over to the door. Ingar pulled the lever, and the three girls filed through.

“Oh, hey!” Silverstream’s voice echoed from the other room. “There’s another lever here!” She pulled it, and even after Ingar let go, the door stayed open.

“Heh.” Smolder snorted a puff of smoke. “So much for your big sacrifice move.”

Ingar shrugged. “Someday more may be required.”

“Gosh, I hope not.” Silverstream’s wings fidgeted. “Aren’t we supposed to be, like, the small-time guys? And the headmare and the professors will handle the really dangerous stuff?”

“I mean, life is unpredictable,” Ocellus said. “Maybe there’s a threat that looks small but is actually super dangerous.”

“Right now the threat is that we’ve got a time limit!” Smolder reminded them impatiently, gesturing to the next doorway.

“Oh, yeah!” Silverstream trotted through right behind Smolder, followed by Ocellus and Ingar. They found a wide open area, with Sandbar, Gallus, and Yona laughing and chatting. No barrier separated them, and no paths were laid out. “Ooh! Did we do it?”

Twilight trotted over, pressing a button on a stopwatch. “You did. Pretty good time. I had your professors run it before you did, and while they were faster than you, it wasn’t by much.”

“Are you going to compare us to them on each of these?” Smolder asked nervously.

“Well, they are the gold standard of teamwork and experience…” Twilight mumbled.

Ocellus’s wings buzzed with enthusiasm. “Do we get to solve puzzles now?”

“Yes!” Twilight perked up instantly. “Right over here…” She led the group across the room to a series of small tables. “There are some riddles and some more physical puzzles. I wanted to set up an escape room, but there wasn’t time. Maybe another lesson. For now… feel free to split up! Look for the type of puzzle you’re most suited to. A good team knows where their own strengths lie, and when to rely on others’ skills. Ready? Begin!”

Ocellus gravitated immediately towards the riddles. The others drifted around a bit before settling on their choices. Sandbar invited Yona to join him at a table where the challenge was to sort colored items into order. Gallus found a puzzle involving moving small pieces around to form shapes, and Smolder eventually joined him, though based on the smoke from her nostrils, she didn’t find it enjoyable. Silverstream trotted over to the last table, covered in some kind of complex, fast-moving machinery. And Ingar… just wandered.

He passed Ocellus, who was already on the third riddle of five. “Box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid,” she read aloud.

“Who would make an unopenable box?” Ingar asked, from behind her.

She didn’t seem surprised at his approach. “It’s probably not literally that. That’s why it’s a riddle. It could be completely closed, but not an actual box. Like a changeling’s chr… cocoon.”

“Then what’s the golden treasure?”

“I don’t know.” She tapped a hoof on her chin. “Celestia was cocooned at one point, and she represents the sun, so gold? But that’s so specific. It should be a general thing.”

A container with no opening, and something golden inside? “An egg?” he suggested.

“Ooh, that’s good!” Ocellus moved the pen closer to the paper, then hesitated. “But usually riddles are, like, super vague stuff. Maybe your heart? Because you can’t see it, or get inside it, but there’s… I don’t know, friendship inside? That’s the sort of riddle Twilight would write.”

He shrugged. “Well, you certainly know more about it than I. Is there a particular reason to say friendship is golden, though?”

“Yeah, an old pony rhyme.” Her voice turned singsong. “Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.”

“Oh.” He was a new friend, so he was silver. The others were gold. But she clearly hadn’t meant to insult him, so he put on a smile. “Makes sense, then. I’ll leave you to it.” She was already writing down her answer. He wandered over to Silverstream’s side instead. “What is that?”

“Don’t know!” She beamed. “But it’s super fun! Look!”

A tiny ball bounced around the inside of a sloping box, full of bouncy sides and things that moved back and forth. Every time it approached the bottom, she pulled a lever, and a tiny paddle leapt into motion, flinging the ball back into the center. The goal, it seemed, was to keep the ball from falling down.

“Well, it seems like a game for one player. And you seem to have quite good reflexes. I’ll leave you to it,” he finished, for the second time in only a few minutes.

Gallus and Smolder, meanwhile, were fitting colorful tiles of different shapes into a large square. “I think this one goes here,” Gallus said, placing a small square into an empty space.

Smolder removed it and replaced it with a piece shaped like an L. “No, this one!” she argued.

Ingar took a brief look at it as he passed by, but it was utterly incomprehensible to him, so he moved on. Sandbar and Yona were comparing a bright red rose and a sparkling ruby.

“Both red!” Yona argued, stomping her hooves and making the table shake. “Why red different?”

“Well, the gem is scarlet,” Sandbar said, gesturing, “and the rose is crimson.”

“Forget fancy words! Both red!”

“There’s a wide range of reds,” Sandbar protested. “You can’t just equate them.”

“Heh,” Gallus said, from the next table over. “You sound like Professor Rarity.”

“Well, this is her kind of puzzle, isn’t it? I should think like her to solve it.”

Yona snorted in evident frustration.

None of these games seemed like something Ingar would be good at. Maybe he’d go back to the riddles with Ocellus, at least he wasn’t hopelessly lost there…

But just as he thought that, Ocellus put down the pen. “Done!” she announced eagerly.

“Yeah, I think we’ve got these in order,” Sandbar seconded.

Gallus placed the last piece, neatly interlocking with the others. “Done!” he and Smolder announced in unison.

Silverstream was still playing her game, laser focused on her one and only task. “You can stop now,” Twilight reassured her. “The point of that game is just to last a long time, so there’s no real end goal to accomplish. I just wanted something to test your reflexes, and that was all I could think of.”

She turned around. “So… we won?”

Twilight nodded. “You certainly did. Congratulations! You moved quickly and divided the work well." "

"What about me?" Ingar objected.

"Well," Twilight said, "You weren't part of a group working on something, but you were ready to contribute where you were needed if an issue arose. The fact that one didn't doesn't mean you weren't playing a role."

Ingar nodded. Maybe it had been a useful task. Maybe, even though he was just trying to find a place, he had a role after all.

"Now," Twilight continued, "there’s just one more part, and you’re already ahead of schedule!” With a wave of her hoof, she directed them towards the three large, enchanted crystals in the back. They shimmered with a purple glow--was it only Ingar who found it drawing him like a magnet? “These crystals are designed to simulate the movements of a few different types of monsters. You’ll be able to interact with them physically, but they can’t actually hurt you. Once they take enough damage, they’ll power down. Your task is to get past them, either by force or by stealth, and retrieve that golden orb from the shelf behind them. When you bring it to me, the challenge is complete.”

Applejack and Fluttershy trotted forward. “Yona,” Applejack said, “you can use my shield for now.”

“And here are your arrows, Gallus,” Fluttershy offered, holding them out.

“Everycreature ready?” Twilight asked. Almost as one, the group nodded. “Then… begin!” Her horn flashed pink, the crystals flared in reflection of it, and three projections made of light popped into existence in front of the team. They stood near each of their crystals--one in front and two in the back, like a triangle.

“Pukwudgies,” Gallus recognized immediately, wincing away from the front crystal’s projection in memory.

Sandbar pointed to the right. “I think that one back there is a Windigo!”

Smolder shivered. “The Flame Freezer? That’s a legend I’d rather not meet.”

Silverstream recoiled from the image on the back left, shuddering breaths taking over her body.

“What’s wrong?” Ocellus asked.

“N-nothing,” Silverstream dismissed. Looking closer, she’d misestimated the horned figure. “Just some shadows.”

“…okay? Well, that guy back there is Tirek, I think.” Ocellus shivered. “Right now he’s not too big, only about twice the size of a pony, but he’s probably designed to absorb magic attacks. They’ll only make him stronger.”

“Yeah, like we all have so much magic in the first place,” Smolder snapped.

“Well, I have some!” Ocellus defended. “…A little…”

“I have some,” Ingar whispered. “I have magic now.” Not that he actually knew any offensive spells anyway.

“Tirek” charged a beam of light between his horns that drove towards the team. They yelped and darted out of the way, breaking the cluster. “Enough talking! Let’s figure out a plan!” Silverstream called.

“The pukwudgies aren’t actually that aggressive,” Gallus said. “They just defend their home. Fluttershy was showing me how to talk to animals so they don’t get nervous, maybe I could-”

A flurry of quills flew towards him, but Yona took them with the shield. “Whatever Gallus want to do, do it!” she called. “Talk later!”

The windigo exhaled a frosty breath, and the temperature dropped several degrees. “If we don’t get rid of that one first, it’s gonna freeze our tails off!” Smolder complained.

“Isn’t Tirek most urgent?” Ocellus asked. “He can-”

Another magical blast, barely dodged, interrupted them. “-do that,” Ocellus finished.

“All we really have to do is get the golden thingy!” Silverstream protested. “Ocellus, can’t you sneak past them and get it? Changelings are sneaky, right?”

“No!” Ocellus shouted. “No, we’re not anymore!” Then she sighed and wilted a little. “Yes, I was trained for stealth, but that’s not me anymore! And I don’t ever want it to be again!”

“Okay!” Silverstream held up her hands in a placating gesture. “Okay, that’s fine, you don’t have to!”

Another magic blast was coming their way, but Yona darted in to block it. “You all should have more fighting, less talking!”

“What are we fighting first?” Smolder snapped.

“We- I mean- We don’t all have to fight the same thing, right?” Ingar suggested. Everyone turned to him, and he immediately felt silly and conspicuous, but he kept talking. “After all, the last two challenges we split up, and those went well, right?”

Smolder shrugged. “Meh, better than doing nothing.” She turned and, with a flap of her wings, darted up towards the Windigo.

“Gallus, how pukwudgies doing?” Yona asked.

“Uh, not sure.” He was sweating a little with nerves. “I think I’m calming them down, but I can’t actually understand them. All I can do is speak in a soothing tone.” A few of them seemed to be getting restless, so he turned back to them. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said quietly. “We’re not trying to hurt you or... uh... encroach on your territory.”

A couple of them made funny little grunting noises. “Ahh!” Yona shouted. “Creatures growling!”

“I… I’m pretty sure that’s just how they talk,” Gallus said. “But I’m not certain…”

“Grr!” Yona’s eyebrows lowered in anger. “This taking too long! Yona not like tiny creatures!”

“No, wait!”

“Yak… SMASH!”

Her hooves came down hard on one of the smaller creatures. The sheer force of her flattened it, and it fizzled out. But the others, four or five of them, immediately turned on her and on him in anger.

Gallus smacked his talons against his forehead. “Now they’re growling.”

“Hey, meanie!” Silverstream shouted, circling Tirek’s head, “why don’t you pick on somecreature your own size?”

“There isn’t one,” Ocellus objected. Her wings buzzed as she hovered in the air, seemingly uncertain how to contribute to the fight.

“How about someone his own strength?” Ingar suggested, leaping up to Tirek’s height to punch him solidly in the face. Tirek’s hand whipped up in reaction, blocking Ingar’s fist, and Ingar fell back down. “Yes, that seems about right.”

“Ocellus, you wanna give me a hand over here with that spider-silk of yours?” Smolder shouted, as a breath of icy air knocked her backwards and coated her wings with a layer of frost. “Why don’t we bring this guy down to earth a little?”

“On it!” Her wings buzzed, propelling her forward.

Down below, a buck from Sandbar destroyed one of the small pukwudgies, which rippled and vanished from the illusion. Yona reared and stomped down on another. Gallus pulled an arrow from his quiver, flipped it around in his hand, and simply stabbed another one, and it flickered out; the range was too close to use his bow. The one that was left fired spines at him just as Yona readied herself to take it down with a charge. He covered his face with his large wings, but stabbing pain struck them for just a moment before fading. “Ow!”

“Sorry!” Headmare Twilight called from the sidelines. “I didn’t want to hurt you guys, but I had to put a little pain into the projections, or you wouldn’t know you’d gotten hit.”

“Oh, I knew it all right.” He turned to Yona as the final one faded away. “What was that? I thought you were supposed to be the tank!”

“Yona not tank! Yona yak!”

“You know what I mean!” he snapped. “You’re the biggest one, and you’ve got the shield. You’re supposed to cover us! You're supposed to distract them and take the fire off of the weak ones!”

“Maybe somecreature should have toldYona that!”

“Hey, relax!” Pinkie Pie put in. “This is only your first lesson, remember? Nothing’s going to be perfect, but you need to learn from it, not argue about it!”

Gallus shrugged and turned around. “We still have to get that golden thing, right? Well, the path is pretty open.”

Ingar and Silverstream were keeping Tirek busy. Silverstream was the distraction, flying around his head. She hovered for a moment, then, as his large hand swept towards her with crushing force, darted around it. “Ha! You missed! Can’t catch me!”

Ingar swerved between his legs, hitting several of them alternately. Something cracked in them, and Tirek fell heavily into a kneeling position. “Bird creature!” he roared. “I will destroy you!”

“Yep, that’s right!” Silverstream said cheerfully. “Worry about me! I’m dangerous!” Ingar could hear the laughter bubbling beneath the surface of her voice, yet her tone sounded perfectly genuine.

“I’ll crush you like a fly!”

Ingar darted behind Tirek’s hindquarters and leaped over them. His fist hit Tirek’s back first, then his legs as he pushed off and nearly flew back over the barrel and flanks. Tirek jerked forward from the injury, leaning on his hands.

“You will pay!”

“Ooh, keep saying threatening things like that!” Silverstream giggled. “Maybe one of these times you can do something about it!” Tirek swung his horns towards her, then as she dodged upwards, fired a magic blast at her. She swerved, but it singed her tail. “Hey! Meanie!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get him for you,” Ingar joked, jogging back around Tirek’s crouched body. “How’s this?” He swung his lower body around, bringing up one foot to connect solidly with Tirek’s face. With a low grunt, the centaur fell to the ground, and the projection dissolved.

Ocellus streaked through the air like a white arrow, dripping silver strands of web in her wake. Slowly, they wrapped around the windigo. Parts of them, the parts touching the windigo, were sticky; the ends draping down were not. Ocellus dropped to the floor, handing off a set of strings to Smolder. “Pull!” she shouted.

Together, the two gave a tremendous yank. The windigo pulled against them for a moment, then fell, as if in slow motion, to the ground. Ocellus pushed the sticky ends to the floor. “That should hold it for a while,” she panted. “I used a lot of string. Light it up!”

A burst of flame covered the monster. It recoiled from the heat, hissing, but as the flames covered it, the webs blazed into light. They’d lit on fire, which slowly spread over them, gold flickering over silver. The windigo cried in pain as the fire licked its nonexistent skin.

“Cool,” Smolder said.

“But if all the webs burn up, it’ll get loose!” Ocellus objected.

Smolder’s eyes widened, and she bit her lip, watching the slowly burning webs as they damaged the windigo—but was it fast enough? “What do we do?”

Just as they watched, the projection of the windigo faded with a tinkling sound. The webs, still smoldering, fell to the floor.

Gallus trotted past them, the golden orb held in one wing. “Got it while you guys were busy,” he answered the unspoken question, gesturing towards the two groups: Silverstream, Ingar, and the crystal that had held Tirek on one side; Ocellus and Smolder with the newly fallen windigo on the other. “We finished first. Not that it was a competition or anything, obviously. But, if it was, we would’ve won.”

Smolder rolled her eyes. “Yeah, whatever.”

Still smirking, Gallus handed it to Twilight. “Here you go, Headmare.”

Twilight accepted it. “Thank you.” Then she turned to all of them. “You’ve all done very well today. Now, it’s almost time for your next class, so run along! Your teachers and I will be right there soon.”

At the door, Smolder turned around and glanced at the towering crystals, still visible at the back of the room. “Enchanted gems…” she whispered thoughtfully to herself. Then she turned around and left, her tail waving behind her as she slipped through the door to catch up with the others.

For a moment, eager chatter drifted back through the room towards them.

"Did you see me?" Silverstream giggled.

Ingar laughed. "Yeah, you were everywhere! He couldn't keep up!"

"You weren't bad with those tiles, Gallus," Smolder admitted. "I was wrong a few times."

"Yak smash mean hedgehogs!"

The voices faded down the hall. With a smile, Twilight watched them turned to her friends. “Well, what did you think?”

“Yona don’t always got the best judgement,” Applejack admitted, “but her shield instincts are good. Mostly she’s protectin’ her teammates, like she should, though she missed a chance or two.”

Fluttershy clapped her hooves. “I’m so proud of Gallus! He tried talking to the little pukwudgies instead of fighting them! And that thing where he used his arrows close-up—I didn’t teach him that!”

Scootaloo’s wings buzzed with excitement. “Who knew our spiderwebs were flammable?”

“Sandbar didn’t get the chance to use most of what I taught him,” Rarity admitted, “but he worked well with the others.”

“Smolder totally kicked windigo tail!” Rainbow shouted, pumping a hoof in the air. “She rocked!”

Pinkie bounced up and down. “Silverstream was awesome too! She moved so fast! And she’s great at pinball!”

Twilight nodded. “Ingar did pretty well too. But I’m more worried about how they worked as a team. The groups they formed for different tasks were formed spontaneously, without careful judgment of what might be needed—we’re lucky the top group even had a flyer to pull the lever.”

Fluttershy nodded. “I think they need to know their roles in the team,” she whispered. “Yona can take damage, but one hit could crush Ocellus. Silverstream and Ocellus are really agile, but Sandbar and Yona are slower. We should tell them things like that, help them find their fighting style and roles.”

“Yeah, exactly!” Twilight agreed. “They have to know what they’re best at and where they need support. They’re a team, after all, and so they need to fill in where the others don’t fit.” She sighed and started pacing. “I hoped, if they worked together during the battle, a clear leader might emerge to give the team a bit of cohesion. But they split up instead, which might be my fault for having the other challenges split them up.”

Rarity stepped forward. “I checked the riddles, like you told me to, and two answers were wrong. I suspect Ocellus was overconfident in her ability to answer them alone.”

“Yona also seemed annoyed with the puzzles,” Applejack added. “But Ah think that’s just because she’s more of a brawler than a thinker.”

“Anypony notice how Sandbar is always with Yona?” Pinkie brought up. “Anything going on there?”

“I think Sandbar didn’t do a lot,” Scootaloo admitted. “Except he was pretty good with the colors.”

Rarity tossed her mane. “Well, of course he was! I was his teacher!”

Rainbow Dash shrugged. “He was okay. I thought Silverstream was really good, distracting Tirek so Ingar could take a hit.”

“Well, that was kinda a risky move-”

“What was with Gallus after the tunnel?”

“Ocellus and Smolder had the best teamwork…”

“Smolder and Gallus wouldn’t stop arguing about the tile puzzle…”

“Silverstream kinda took the lead of her group during the obstacle course…”

The conversation swirled around Twilight in whirling eddies, ponies talking over each other too fast for her to follow. She tried to interrupt, and get them back on track, but with seven ponies all talking at once, nopony noticed her. She growled softly, and her horn began to glow, ready to cast the voice-projecting spell, but before it could come to completion, a small chime sounded from her horn instead.

Though it was quiet, it had a piercing quality to it, and every head turned to her. “Doorbell charm,” she said awkwardly. “That one specifically is an alarm. I’d better go.”

One more time, her horn flared. A bright flash of light surrounded her, and when it cleared, she was gone.

She appeared in a hidden hallway below the school and looked around. Many rooms opened off the side of it, each containing a different treasure, some valuable, some dangerous. She glanced into one room, where the necklaces and crown that had once held the Elements of Harmony rested. It was empty of intruders.

She fluttered down the hall and looked into the next room. Her royal spending accounts; heaped with gold and jewels. And empty.

The Misfortune Malachite left over from the Storm King’s attack. Empty. A lovely stained glass window, a diplomatic gift from the Hippogriffs that she still needed to put somewhere. Empty. The gauntlets of Infinity and Harmony. Emp-

Wait.

“Flash?”

“Hey, Twilight.” He trotted out of the room. “Sorry, you were busy and I was just looking around. Am I not supposed to be down here?”

She laughed nervously. “No, no, that’s fine! You should’ve just let me know first. I had an alarm on this hallway.” One hoof scuffed against the floor. “What were you looking at?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He waved a wing at the room. “The other stuff around here looked valuable, but that room was just some weird gloves.”

Twilight giggled at that. “No, those aren’t just some gloves—those are actually tools to use the Infinity Stones, or the Elements of Harmony, all of them at once! Crazy, right?”

“No way.” He took another peek at the room. “Those little things?” His voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “Have you ever used them?”

“Them?” Her grin widened. “Oh, I’ve used both! At once!”

His jaw dropped, but then he smiled and kissed her cheek. “My marefriend is so awesome.”

Twilight giggled. “Oh, you.”

He just smiled at her, then took another peek into the room. “But where are the gems?”

“Oh, we don’t keep them here.” She waved a hoof vaguely. “The Elements are on the Tree of Harmony, and the Infinity Stones are scattered throughout both this galaxy and the next, in hopes of keeping someone from getting their hooves—or hands—on them and using them for evil. It’s already happened once. We can’t let it happen again.”

He drooped a little. “Aww. Would’ve been cool to see one.”

Now it was her turn to give him a peck on the cheek. “Maybe I can arrange a trip to New Asgard some time, and you can look at the Tesseract. Just don’t touch, okay? They’re dangerous if you’re not very powerful.”

“Of course.” He smiled gently. “And maybe you can tell me about the others, and all your adventures with them?”

She nodded. “I’d love to. But right now I have a class to teach. Try not to poke around anywhere too dangerous, okay? I’ll be right back after school!” With a flash of light, she vanished, back to the school.

And Flash, left alone in the room, slowly started to smirk.