"Right, but first I need to do one little thing…" Limestone—driving with one hand—reached into her jacket and pulled her phone out. "Call the general."

"Dialing General Raven Inkwell," the phone replied.

"General?" Twilight felt like she wasn't following an important conversation. "What's going on?"

"Sergeant? Something wrong?" Raven's voice sounded terse even to Limestone.

"General, I was escorting the VIP around to take measurements when I encountered our tango. They did a number on the VIP. I'm bringing her to you." Limestone could do terse too, with just a hint of fury and anger.

"Did something happen?" Twilight asked. She reached up to her head and rubbed the side of it, trying to make sense of a five-minute hole in her memories.

"Good move, sergeant. Bring the VIP back here and then—Hanging up now. I see you."

Limestone was past the point of road rules. She checked there was no car coming from in front or behind and just swerved across the road and pulled up with two wheels on the sidewalk. "Please hop out so I can go deal with the threat. The general will explain everything."

"But I—" Twilight took one look at Limestone's serious expression and nodded. "I trust you."

Ignoring the rain, Raven Inkwell opened the car door. "Your Highness, please head inside." She waited for Twilight to trot into the building. "Try to avoid killing them. Call me if you have someone to pick up."

"Sir." Limestone was already shifting the car back into gear as the door closed.

Twilight felt in a panic. She needed to get back to Equestria, but at the same time she now suspected that itself was wrong. When the older woman walked into the building, she quickly asked, "What happened? We were taking measurements when I—"

"Dammit, I hate doing these on the fly." Raven pulled out a notepad and a pencil and quickly scrawled a few symbols on it. It took more magic than she'd have used in a month to make the dispelling runes stick, but nonetheless she tore it free and leaned down to set it on Twilight's forehead.

The moment the paper touched her, Twilight felt strange magic rush from it. But rather than an attack, she felt the human magic tear a yoke from her mind. "Oh. My. Gosh. Who did that?"

"Someone who's about to have a very bad day. Your Highness, my name is Raven Inkwell. Please come this way and I'll make sure nothing else was done to you." Pulling out her phone, Raven tapped an icon and then started dialing through the special app. "Excuse me, I need to make a few calls. Our lounge is just up the stairs and is as well warded as anywhere in the city."

"Wait. My memory? Someone took away some of my memories but—Limestone is in danger!" Turning on her heels, Twilight made a run for the doors.

"Halt!" Raven still had her military-trained voice. "She's not in danger. She's immune to whatever the perpetrator is using. You're a guest here, please let me prote—" Quickly lifting her phone back to her ear, Raven spoke one of her code sequences into it slowly, softly, and very carefully. "I need a team at my location. Expect mental control." She hung up the call.

"How can she be immune?" Twilight asked, struggling not to go to Limestone's aid anyway. "Are you sure?"

"We have an asset who can do this kind of mental magic. She pushed the sergeant as hard as she could to no avail. I have a team on its way to secure the building. Once they are here, you'll be getting a ride home." Catching an angry defiance in Twilight's eyes, Raven realized something she'd been missing—this Twilight Sparkle was a fighter. "You're in our country. This is our mess."

Taking a deep breath, Twilight tried to instill some calm in her mind. In that time she quickly skipped through her memories and still only felt she'd lost a few minutes. She could remember Limestone pulling the car up—then there was a blank—then Limestone was driving away. "Yes. Of course. The memories were only very short-term, but that lasting effect was more of a problem. I couldn't even feel it until you—You used magic!"

"Well, I'm out of the bag." Captain Penny, in all her fluffy greatness, walked down the stairs from Raven's office. "My witch uses too many words sometimes. She's a witch, with magic, and she'll do her best to keep you safe."

"Oh. I'm sorry, we haven't been introduced. Twilight Sparkle." Twilight smiled at Penny.

"Penny, bane of mice. I heard what happened because you're both shouting in the outer lobby of what should be a secure building." Looking up at Raven, Penny tried to deploy her best don't even start, you should know better look.

"Well, I'm pleased to meet you, and glad you did reveal your magic, otherwise that effect would still be in place and I wouldn't have noticed it." Things were moving a bit fast for Twilight, but she'd dealt with such situations before. "I'm more familiar with more physical magic fights. This kind of tactic is not something I'm used to."

Raven was so surprised by the confession that she couldn't help but ask, "Your rulers don't lead from the rear, huh?"

It took Twilight a moment to understand the question, but she laughed at it. "Princess Celestia generally sticks to running things; Princess Luna too. Cadance and myself have been more active in our defense of our kingdom. Though, I owe most of my successes to my friends."

"Knowing the friends you've made here, and how effectively they've dealt with threats so far, I think you make good decisions about your friends." Raven hated foreign diplomacy, but now she knew Twilight was more a general who fought from the front line, it let her ignore those emotions. When she heard a revving engine approaching, she pulled out her phone—to see a new message on it.

We've arrived out front.

"Penny, upstairs and keep an eye on things. Princess, please come with me." Opening the door, Raven spotted the big, black SUV parked outside her building.

Stepping out behind Raven, Twilight realized this was going to be her ride home. Relief flooded her, but at the same time she felt something odd. A moment before she stepped into the rain, she felt all the hairs on top of her body start to tingle.

Combat was something Princess Twilight Sparkle was perfectly used to. She'd been introduced to fighting when she'd watched her big brother (technical term: BBBFF) practicing and training, she'd learned all kinds of combat theory reading books, and then she'd started on her path to learning how to actually fight when she'd faced-off against Nightmare Moon.

All this led Princess Twilight Sparkle to have highly honed reflexes for combat. She knew full well that when you feel the hairs on top of your body stand up, throw up an anti-lightning shield—something she did an infinitesimal fraction of a second before a tracer growing from the ground met up with one coming down from the clouds above.

Limestone drove as fast as she could. Ticket be damned, she thought. The rain was beating down harder than ever as she approached the corner where her target had been. Slowing down, she began to try to find them.

The rain was starting to really get to Wallflower. She grumbled and made all kinds of annoyed sounds as she tried to explain it for the third time. "Mom, I want a big party and I want you to book a band."

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather a clown?" Struggling to follow her daughter's words—like she always did—Rhodolite couldn't quite understand why her little girl wanted a band when a clown was much more suitable for her age. "Maybe I could get someone to bring a pony?"

"No, Mom, I want—" When she heard the squeal of car tires, Wallflower jerked her head to the side in time to see the car from earlier pulling up across the street where her tree was. She clutched her stone tight and said, "Ugh. Just go away and never come back." She watched the car stop and the same strange woman from earlier climb out.

The voice in Limestone's head, for once, made her happy—she knew she was close to her target. Looking around and then up at the tree, she ignored the rain streaming down her face, arms, legs, and back. It wasn't important.

"Don't look at me. Don't look at me. Don't look at me." As she chanted, Wallflower watched the woman's head slowly turn and, through that single pane of glass, they were looking right at each other.

Limestone wouldn't have known where to go if it wasn't for that voice in her head. Her ears twitched and she turned and looked at a young woman whose look of shock matched what Limestone expected. "Gotcha."

Walking toward the house, Limestone heard a litany of curses and demands for her to just go away, to forget the face she'd seen, and to never come back. Every single one slid off her skull like the rain. What surprised her, as she reached the front door, was the garage door opening and two cars starting.

But the voice was still coming from inside the house. Limestone let the cars leave.

Hearing her parents' cars drive off, followed shortly by the front door splintering open, Wallflower felt anger boil up—just as a loud crash of thunder rang outside. "Get out! I don't want you here!"

Drawing her sidearm, Limestone kept it pointed down as she entered the house thought an unlocked door. "It's a little late for that. You've been messing with a lot of people." She glanced into the living room, kitchen, then made her way further down the hall. "You can give up now, and we can work something out."

Wallflower's breath was caught in her throat. She could hear the heavy steps in the hallway getting closer to her bedroom. "What'd you do to Mom and Dad?"

"Are you armed?" Limestone stood by the door of the room she'd heard Wallflower in. "Do you have a weapon apart from your mind-power?"

"Where's my mom?"

The voice made Limestone wince. She'd been hoping against hope that it was an adult behind everything, but hearing the pained voice—so much like her younger sisters'—caused her to holster her gun and hope she wouldn't regret it. "I don't know. There was two cars leaving before I came in. Do you want to come out here and talk about it?"

When there was no reply, Limestone sighed. "Look, you can't keep doing this. Your trick won't work on me, so you can either have me come in there or you can come out here and talk."

Wallflower clutched both hands over the stone and hugged it to her belly. "Why doesn't it work on you?"

"Something a lot nastier than you tried to use a mind whammy on me to make me their slave. A friend used magic to stop them and some of it blew back on me—now I'm like this. Why are you doing it?" It was a far calmer version of question-for-question, like what Limestone had done with Aria.

"I just wanted—want—people to like me. My first day in high school I stood up in class and said hello to everyone, but didn't notice I had a big wet patch on my skirt. I ran away from school for the day and that's when I—" Wallflower's knuckles were white she was clutching the stone so tight. "I found it."

Author's Note

Princess Celestia: Seeing your counterpart is having a growing problem with Equestria magic, have you ever thought of swapping place with her to help with magic problem at CHS?

"That would cause significant problems here. I can imbue an item or a pony with the ability to move the sun, but it's lending them my power. If I travel to another world, I take that power with me and it is absent." Tilting her head to the side, Celestia indicated Luna on the second throne beside her own.

"I have no ambition nor ability to move the sun myself," Luna said firmly.

So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post! They will pick one question per chapter.

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Awesome ponies who are already helping to keep me in keyboards and rum:
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