A changing situation. For Limestone, hearing that it was an item helped immensely—items could be disarmed. "It's what lets you do it, right?" A sinking feeling hit her as the dawning realization of what had happened to the girl's parents came to her.

Limestone waited, but when Wallflower didn't continue, she prompted her. "Then what happened?"

"I found the stone. It was like it called to me." Looking down at the carved and glowing rock in her hands, Wallflower bit her lower lip. "I thought it granted wishes. I wished that I could start that day over with no one knowing me.

"It worked. My wish was g-granted. When I went to school the next day, no one knew who I was—even the teachers. They had to call Mom and find out everything from her.

"It doesn't grant wishes, it steals memories. It—it takes away what I want it to." As soon as she said it, Wallflower knew it was a lie. In her hands, the stone flared a little brighter and shivered. "It doesn't grant wishes, it ste—"

Limestone had heard Wallflower the first time. She'd also heard a soft buzzing and saw a flare of light under the door. When Wallflower had started to repeat herself, Limestone was already moving.

"What are you doing?! Stand back!" Wallflower clutched the stone close. "I'll use it to—to…"

Reaching out, Limestone closed her hand around the stone—but like some kind of electric charge she felt it start to burn her fingers. Letting go, she stepped back. "Put it down."

"But—" Looking down at the stone, Wallflower could feel so much potential in her hands. She could do anything with the stone. "But I—" She wanted to say something, she struggled to get the words out, but every time she started to say them the stone would glow a little and she'd forget what she was about to say. "Help m—"

Having dealt with her fair share of pain before, Limestone reached out again—Wallflower's halted plea still in her ears—and grabbed the stone. "Let go."

"But I need it." Wallflower looked down at the stone and saw it flickering to life in Limestone's hand. "I—" Tilting her head up to look at Limestone, she nodded and let go.

The burning became far more intense. Limestone screamed as her hand started to smoke, but inside she felt that wall in her head becoming stronger and stronger. She was a rock, born of rocks, and she wouldn't break. "Ugh, this fucking thing is pissing me off!"

Squeezing down on the stone with her bare hand, Limestone felt magic stirring inside—her own magic. "Just." Tighter her fist squeezed, her gray knuckles not smoking anymore as the stone made a strange whistling sound. "Fucking." Power flooded Limestone. Her hair grew out and tumbled down her back, a snout pushed its way out from between and below her eyes, and she felt her legs change as hooves formed. When her skin started sprouting fur, the power grew to the point where the Memory Stone cracked. "Die!"

Wallflower stared at Limestone. She'd seen Sunset and her friends pony up before, but none of them had been a six-foot-tall angry ex-soldier with the power to crush rocks in her bare hands. When the stone was just so much gravel and sand falling from Limestone's hand, she gasped. "You broke it!"

Turning to look at Wallflower, Limestone grunted. "How could you bear to hold that? It burned me." She looked down at her hand, the dark marks on her fingers seeming to fade. "Whatever. Come on, we need to go back to work out what we'll be doing with you."

"You don't understand, I remember—" Wallflower paused and struggled to remember what she had remembered. When that proved too hard, she instead focused on what she'd lost. "I think a day or two. It was eating away at my memories." Another loud crack of thunder outside made Wallflower jump a little.

"Yeah, I figured that out when you kept stumbling over words. Are you okay?" Assessing the full extent of what Wallflower had done was not Limestone's job. She was simply tasked with stopping the situation. But, given the girl had been a minor when it first started, and the artifact had been affecting her, Limestone was going to be generous in her report.

Wallflower still struggled to remember what had happened in the last four years, but more and more of it was a blur. She couldn't remember a single thing about a class she'd studied let alone the students she'd studied with. "Y-You're with the police, right?"

"Kinda. I'll get some people here to take care of this mess while we go back to write all this up." Turning toward the door, Limestone held out a hand toward Wallflower. "You figured out what happened to your parents, right?"

"It ate everything about me since—since I was about five."

"No. I mean, you shouted to go away and never come back. That's probably why they got in their cars. But, if it's broken, they'll be able to come back." Limestone was surprised when Wallflower rushed against her. Holding back the urge to ask if Wallflower was alright, Limestone just put her arm around the girl as she started to sob.

Looking up at Limestone through tear-streaked eyes, Wallflower couldn't work out why the big and formerly angry soldier was being so nice. "C-Can you take me away now, before they get back?"

"Yeah, if you want. How much do they remember?" Limestone waited for Wallflower to let go, but when she didn't, reached her right arm over the young woman's shoulders and guided her to the front door. "I'll have to call some people to come and deal with things."

"Sooo…" Wallflower felt bad about leaving without talking to her parents, but the insight of several days of clear memories told he that her parents didn't really notice her much anyway. "You were all set to shoot me."

"Yeah." Limestone was blunt, she knew that, she wasn't likely to ever not be blunt. "I thought you were the one doing all—" She froze as she opened the front door, watching as lightning lanced down from the sky again and again back in the direction of her office. "Did you do this?"

Her eyes glued on the repeated lightning lancing into just one spot, Wallflower shook her head. "J-Just the stone. That's all I ever—what's it even doing?"

"My boss keeps telling me to forget everything I know about the natural world and think outside of it. When I see that much power hitting one spot over and over, I don't think that's a pretty big coincidence," Limestone said, "I think someone has a bigger gun than I do."

"I, uh, guess it does look like someone's attacking or fighting. But how are they doing that?" The rain was hammering down just as heavy as before, and while Wallflower was a little reluctant to step out into it, she still had her coat on. Pulling the hood of her raincoat up, she followed Limestone to the car.

"We're not driving into that. You might be an adult, but you're still in my custody." Despite her words, Limestone started the car and headed toward her department's building. "But if not because of you, why is this happening now? Hardly anyone even knows we exist."

Twilight's horn was a veritable fountain of magic. It boiled off and wrapped the car in a hemisphere that channeled the lightning strike safely away. She held her magic, ready in case there was another strike—worried there might be another strike. "Get them indoors where the building can protect them. That lightning wasn't natural."

There wasn't time to respond. Raven could accept advice on magic when the source was not just a powerful magic user, but also a combat magic user. "Exit the vehicle and get under cover!" It was her best parade-ground voice, and it worked.

Standing her ground, Twilight watched as four big men with serious-looking equipment disembarked the car and ran past her and into the building. "Okay, we—" She threw up her lightning shield again, halting a strike that curved under the eaves of the building and tried to lance directly at her.

"You thought you'd gotten away from me?!"

Ice formed in Twilight's veins (figuratively). She knew that voice. Stepping out of the confines of the building's vestibule, she saw a single figure standing in the middle of the street only a few buildings away. "N-No. You—"

"Come on, princess, how could you forget me? Your pegasi kept me from using all my magic last time, but where are your Wonderbolts here?" Gesturing to the sky, the Storm King smiled. "And a whole world of delightfully wild weather for me to play with. I should almost thank you!"

"What?!" Twilight shook her head. "I can't hear you over all this rain!"

"Oh drat. That was a good speech, too."

"What?!"

Bringing his left hand to his side, the Storm King snapped his fingers. Several seconds later the rain just stopped. "There. Can you hear me now? I mean, really, what's the point in monologuing if there's no one able to hear you?"

"What do you want, Storm King?" Twilight stepped out and onto the street. She kept her magic at the ready, but didn't want to make the first move if it came to a rapid flurry of spell-slinging. She was already forming half a dozen different counters and a dozen more of her own attacks.

"I want to ruin you. I want to destroy everything you've ever built. I want all of Equestria in ashes and this—whatever this place is—to be utterly destroyed. There will be nothing you have build, liked, or loved remaining in either world by the time I'm done." As he started talking, the Storm King started to sway a little with the headiness of a good monologue delivered directly to his antagonist. "And, when I'm done destroying everything before your eyes, then I'll kill you."

It was more than a little chilling. In Equestria, most of Twilight's opponents had had nebulous revenge or imprisonment as their objectives. "I won't let you. Not Equestria and not this world. I beat you once, Storm King, and I'll do it—"

The warning streamers caught Twilight's attention and she put up her lightning shield again just in time for a hammering flurry of bolts to start coming down directly on her. "Just stop already!" It was useless to shout—the pressure waves of thunder made it impossible to hear her anyway.

Done with playing defense, Twilight braced her hooves and lowered her horn. It wouldn't be as powerful as the Elements of Harmony, or even the friendship magic that came out when working with her five best friends, but she was an alicorn whose specialty was literally magic. When Twilight Sparkle lanced out with magic, it generally worked well.

Reaching to his back, the Storm King grabbed a shield from his back and brought it around just as the magic beam sought him out. The dark steel shield absorbed the torrent of magic with ease, grounding it out in the same way Twilight's shield had literally grounded the lightning. "Is that all?" he asked.

It was a surprise to the Storm King when Twilight vanished with a pomf of magic. The resulting blast in his back told him exactly where she'd gone. "Hold still!"

Snorting and shaking her head, Twilight teleported again when the Storm King turned to face her—delivering another blast into his back. "I can keep this up all day, you know."

Getting more and more annoyed (and not a little sore) the Storm King had finally had enough of the game. Raising his hand, he called down lightning onto himself and the ground around him.

Twilight had no choice, she had to get away from his lightning this time—the shield was a ground-locked effect. Her teleport took her two buildings away from the Storm King, and her first action was another lightning shield.

Beaming in delight, the Storm King was enjoying himself immensely. When he turned and spotted Twilight, he laughed aloud. "You really think that will save you forever? Your magic is—Can you hear me?!"

Figuring she could annoy him if nothing else, Twilight shook her head.

"Why did she have to teleport so far away? Don't these ponies know they should just give up before I get really serio—" The pain in his shield arm registered before he heard the rapport of the rifle. Dropping the shield, he held up his arm to reveal a sizable hole and a broken bone poking out.

Author's Note

Rhodolite: Where are you going?

"We were—I don't know. I guess I just needed to get out of the house for a few minutes." Rhodolite shrugged her shoulders and smiled. "I wonder where my little girl is?"

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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