Sweet Pink Sunset

"So... how are you all gonna get to Canterlot?" Forest asked the mares, whilst hiding the unrelenting worry in his mind.

"Teleportation," Luna answered the stallion, detecting his growth of doubt, "quick, easy and safe."

"Right, right, of course... teleportation."

Pinkie Pie could read his emotions as he walked around and placed his hoof under his lip while the others were performing last minute check ups with each other, Rarity had thanked Arrow once again for his efforts in saving her and told him Sweetiebelle joined Scootaloo and Applebloom for the day once she had been fully healed. They spoke silently to each other, eyeing each other and exchanging frequent smiles. Big Macintosh and Fluttershy were hugging each other for a stretched amount of time, their concerns for each other still had them a bit shaken from the experience at Froggy Bottom Bog, but relieved nonetheless as they were together once again.

"Hey." Pinkie Pie began as approached Forest.

"H-hey... hi... everything al right?" he responded semi-anxiously.

"I was just about to ask you the same thing, you look worried."

"Yeah well, I'm thinking a lot right now... that colt... his father died at the Keep."

"Y- yeah... I heard..."

"It reminded me of the past so much, the look on his face... on his mother's face... their tears... I swore I'd try my best to never let that happen to anypony... no one deserves to go through that pain... looks like I'm failing alrea-" Forest halted his response as he felt the soft connection of Pinkie Pie's lips on to his cheek.

"You've never failed, Forest... you didn't know it was going to happen, nopony did... And besides!" her tone changed to being cheery, "we're gonna get our elements back! Isn't that great? So next time we can show those meanies they can't hurt nopony any more!"

"That's the other thing I'm worried about, Pinkie... you're going to be fighting on the front line, how do you think I feel about that?" he calmly continued.

"Don't worry, silly! Remember how my friends and I took care of Discord and Nightmare Moon?"

"Yes, I remember what you told me... but they both greatly underestimated you guys. These ponies, The Metamor Legion, have dragons and ursas and apparently an entire army!" he replied while waving his hooves in a circular motion, "they are planning their steps every bit of the way and they won't underestimate anypony."

"Here he is, Captain Thundertred!" a rough voice called out, Forest and the whole group had turned around to meet the wielder of the voice, two royal guards from Forest's squad, a unicorn and a pegasus were dragging a soldier from the Metamor Legion.

"He was the spy that had the guts to come back thinking we wouldn't have noticed," The other guard added as they threw the soldier to the ground, pointing their blades at him to restrain him from movement.

"Well you seriously made a bad decision," Forest began as he walked up the the bound spy, immediately holding anger against him as he knew the spy was part of the chaos which took place at the Great North Keep, but not showing it through emotions.

"We found this as well," the royal guards tossed a backpack to the ground which its contents came rolling out, a few letters and writing material.

"So that's how they got a hold of Rarity... They had information on us all along!" Twilight Sparkle complied, "but how did you find out he was the spy?"

The unicorn guard stepped forth to answer Twilight's question, "as all the squads regrouped we found that there was one more guard than there used to be, and of course recalling to our previous events, we held this enemy down and I used a magic reveal spell to remove his disguise... the unicorn that cast the disguise spell on him had forgotten to focus the spell at one point of his body, and so the reveal spell could easily be used to remove the magical alterations."

'Wait a minute,' Forest's expression went to one of shock as he began to ponder, 'the magic reveal spell needs to be used at the concentration point! Then that must mean that Electro chose to alter the book with one great concentration point and not all over the thing! Looks like I'm on to something.'

"Alert all the bases and keeps and have them search for spies! This one is coming with us." Princess Luna commanded the guards as she pointed at the spy.

Jokey levitated one of the notes that fell out of the bag and brought it to him, he rushed the letter open and quickly read through the note, he noticed Boa trying to read the note and quickly shared the glimpse with her.

"This is..." Jokey eyes widened to what he had just read.

"They are planning to attack the South Keep as well!" Boa exclaimed, causing everypony to break into discussion, ceasing notice to the spy and a vermilion orb which had just rolled out of the backpack, the spy broke out of the guards grasp and jumped on to the orb.

"The Metamor Legion will not fall!" The spy exclaimed with pride, the orb began to glow a heavy vermilion colour, and soon enough, the spy burst into vermilion flames, he tried to dive on to the bag in order to destroy all the other letters, but Forest had reacted at the speed of light, grabbed the bag and used a force wave to aggressively throw back the spy, leaving him to burn to ashes. Very soon after, there was nothing left of the spy but ashes and a black mark on the ground.

"Woah," Jokey uttered, "looks like he always wanted to go out in a bang, ey?"

"Jokey!" Boa hissed to him.

"I'm just saying..."

"Sweet Celestia!" Rarity stated in horror, "he just killed himself and didn't stop to think twice!"

"So it seems that even those of the dark path will have a sense of honour," Arrow added undoubtedly, "but the real question is that is it all worth dying for when walking such a path?"

Fluttershy held her chest with her front hooves, terrified with what she had just witnessed, "O- oh my... that is just... horrible..."

"E- eeyup." Big Mactintosh added with hesitation.

Forest who just stood there almost lifelessly, went into another phase of profound thought as everypony else broke into worried discussion. 'This stallion, the leader of the Metamor Legion... if he's managed to train his soldiers to be this proud then he's most probably a charismatic guy... so now there s no doubt if he has the ability to influence an army... but why, why am I beginning to think I've seen him before... there's something about his mane... the colour resembles dad's but his coat is different... and those eyes have been consumed with evil... worst part is that he knows about the book, I mean is it possible that we're both related?'

Rainbow Dash took notice to Forest's statue like act. She stood in front of him waving her hooves in front of his face, he didn't even take notice to the faces she was pulling at him, faces almost similar to the time when she had tried to get one of Celestia's royal guards to laugh at the time Fluttershy had taken Philomeena for care, what a surprise it came to be when Philomeena turned out to be a Phoenix.

"Hey! Earth to Forest!" Rainbow Dash shook him frantically trying to get his attention, Pinkie Pie fell over in laughter as reaction to Rainbow Dash's efforts, "Oh your good," Rainbow added, she then flew up to a cloud as she came across an idea, she dug her hoof into the surface of the cloud and pulled out a snow ball.

Rainbow Dash then flew down and landed two meters in front of Forest, she took aim at the deep orange stallion, "she shoots... and," Rainbow tossed the snow ball at Forest, upon impact, bringing him back to reality. "She scores!"

Forest spat out snow which got into his mouth and began rubbing his face, "What did you do that for, Rainbow?"

Rainbow Dash plainly pointed to Princess Luna behind him, Forest turned around to her to find her staring at him with a cocked eyebrow, it seemed as though she had called his name multiple times and that the group had closed the discussion, ready for the next step.

"The bag, if you please." Luna directed as she pointed at the backpack.

"Oh, right... here you go." Forest magically levitated the backpack to Luna, who then used her magic to levitate it from him as it got close to her, not even stopping to ask why, although he would have known if he didn't phase out as he did, Luna is going to review the plans with them and discuss what had happened to the North Keep with her sister, Princess Celestia. Now they were all good to go.

"We shall be back with the next few minutes or so, whatever time this meeting needs will be necessary," Luna stated, the defenders affirmed a nod to her, and so, Luna began to focus her magic; magical particles began to surround Luna, Twilight, Fluttershy, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie and Rarity. The magic had formed a large dark blue swirling aura, and finally, they left Ponyville through the process of teleportation.

x

Princess Celestia bit her lower lip as she read through a letter she had recently received in her personal room within the Castle of Canterlot.

'Sighting of dragons flying over Oatland? Then that means they would gone past Coltenhagen... could this be?'

A moderately alerting knock on the door drove Celestia away from her thoughts. She quickly stood up and put the letter away on a study desk.

"You may enter," Celestia stated unhesitatingly.

A royal guard opened the door to a slit wide enough for him to just poke his head inside the room, "pardon me, your highness, but your sister Princess Luna and the Elements of Harmony are here to see you."

"Oh, well by all means," Celestia replied, affirming a grin to the guard.

The guard replied with a nod as he opened the door and stood back, allowing Luna and the others to enter.

Celestia welcomed them with a warm smile, "My beloved sister, my faithful student and her loyal friends, what a pleasant surprise to see all of you here."

Twilight Sparkle and her friends bowed down as Celestia greeted them and caught up with Luna as she continued walking up to Celestia.

Celestia's smile faded as she read their expression, "You are all being awfully silent... is something wrong?"

"Princess Celestia," Twilight began in polite student manner before Luna could utter any word, "usually I'd write to you if there are any problems but this is a major one and we all need to be here,as you may know-"

Rainbow Dash interrupted Twilight, "things got really crazy so we need our elements!"

"B- but only if you want to give them to us... it really is your choice if we receive them or not," Fluttershy added.

"But it's super duper important that we do!" Pinkie Pie added.

Rarity then complied, "Although we may get ourselves into unmannerly business, we are in dire times-"

"So we need 'um as soon as possible," Applejack blurted.

"Not that we're demanding or anything," Fluttershy stated timidly, "it's, um, entirely up to y- you of course..."

The main six all began to speak at once, seemingly arguing instead of explaining, Luna gazed upon them with widened eyes and unsure when to cut in to bring back proper control.

"Girls, girls, please, one at a time," Celestia began, bringing them all to complete halt, "your message is quite vague at the moment."

"Sister, please," Luna took over for the explanation, "allow me to inform you of what has happened."

Princess Luna gave Princess Celestia every bit of detail of what had happened at Froggy Bottom Bog as reported to her by the defenders and what had happened to the Great North Keep, each of the main six calmly adding their own findings to the matter as well, keeping everything brief and manageable.

Celestia began to show proper understanding, "I seem but there is a risk. You are not all one hundred percent familiar with how the elements work and-"

Luna had interrupted Celestia, "Sister, training sessions can be arranged for them... also, we have already lost the north keep... all of our guards there were killed, there hath been but only one survivor."

Celestia, being shocked with this news, was then informed by Luna that there are possibly spies in each keep, the spies being the reason that the enemy were able to penetrate into the north keep to start off with. Being left with little options, Celestia agreed to lending the Elements of Harmony to them.

"Follow me," Celestia stated as she left her room, the others following her, she led them down to her personal archives where she hid the elements for greater safe keeping, as they walked into the archives, Twilight noticed another room far across the hallway which was heavily guarded by a large bolted metal door, a symbol of a yellow gem was placed above the door, something about it which seemed familiar. It was where the statue of Discord was locked up.

"I am going to fully entrust the elements to your care, do your best to perfect all the tricks and skills as quickly and as sufficiently as possible," Celestia levitated the elements out of a wall, an illusionary part of a wall which was simply used to trick anypony who was not supposed to be in the personal archives, for the soul purpose of hiding the elements successfully. Celestia also gave each of the main six a book which holds very detailed information on their elements, such as spells that can be casted with them and how to precisely link to them.

As they wore their elements, the affirmed a "Yes, your highness!" and bowed to both Celestia and Luna.

Pinkie Pie jumped out excitedly, startling Fluttershy in the process, "Okey dokey lokey! You can count on us!" She added as she then began to state their titles, "Magic, Generosity, Loyalty, Kindness, Honesty and Laughter! Together we are, The Harmony Heroins!"

Rainbow Dash cocked an eyebrow at her, "Pinkie Pie... you are so random... but I'm diggin' that name!"

Twilight Sparkle quickly flipped through the pages of her book, "Al-right you guys, no more fooling around, we better head back to Ponyville, thank you so much for taking you time with us, Princess Celestia, and thank you, Princess Luna for aiding us so far."

"That's right, we're all mighty thankful fer what ya'll been doin' fer us lately," Applejack complied, and with the others agreeing completely, Luna then takes them back to Ponyville, as there is still business to attend to.