Limestone stopped the car a block away from where the fight was taking place. She squinted into the gloom and saw the strange upright creature attacking Twilight with magic. "Ugh. Okay, I'm gonna trust you not to run off and make me chase you again. I want you to get out and head back to the intersection behind us. Get to a corner and wait for me. Got it?"

In shock at the fight going on in front of her, Wallflower got out of the car like a marionette—all jerky motion. "What are you going to do?"

Popping the trunk of her car, Limestone walked around to it and pulled up the carpet to reveal the wheel-well and a locked black case. "What I can. That's all anyone can do."

Wallflower stayed for several seconds as Limestone opened the case and lifted out her assault rifle. It took her a moment to remember that the guy was throwing around actual lightning—which made her turn tail and run as Limestone had told her.

Watching as Limestone climbed up onto the roof of her car, Wallflower turned her attention on the fight going on down the street. There was a pony with wings and a horn trading blows with some kind of fuzzy guy that had a shield. The pony she recognized as having been in the car with Limestone earlier, but the other guy she didn't.

Then the guy raised a hand and lightning started hammering down through him and around him. She gasped, realizing it didn't seem to hurt him. That's when Limestone's gun let out a loud crack.

Eyes wide, the Storm King looked down at his arm and then lifted his head to where the sound of the gun's rapport came from.

Twilight tilted her head forward with another of her powerful blasts. She sent a hurricane of power spiraling down her horn toward the Storm King. "No you"—two cracks of lightning happened before her blast reached him, one down the road at the car and one on himself—"Ponyfeathers!"

Limestone could feel the streamers of energy trailing up from her body. She tried to line up another shot in the time she knew she had, but even as her finger started to squeeze the trigger she knew she was too late.

It was more than just touching a live wire. Limestone screamed in pain as the lightning ripped down the right side of her body. It slagged the rifle butt against her shoulder, carved black lines over her skin, and finally grounded out through the car underneath her leg.

Wallflower was running before her vision had cleared. She pounded back toward the car and reached the smoldering vehicle just as Limestone started to fall sideways off the roof.

170lbs of muscle and bone would have been hard enough for anyone to carry, but Wallflower watched the mountain that was Limestone Pie falling toward her and realized she would not survive a direct hit. Adjusting her position quickly, she aimed to grab Limestone's head and shoulders—or at least let those parts land on her.

When Limestone cameto—nearly a minute later—she was laying on the ground beside the mess of her car, head on Wallflower's lap, looking up into the girl's face. "What the fuck was that?" She tried to move, but found her right side feeling really wrong.

"You shot a monster in the arm and then he struck you with lightning." Wallflower hadn't been able to move since Limestone landed on her. Even just Limestone's head and shoulders were too much for her to move without the possibility of hurting her. "And then you fell off your car and—"

"And you stopped me from spillin' my head all over the ground. Thanks." When she tried to sit up, Limestone was barely able to work her right side, but her left was fine enough. "I mean it. That was quick thinking. What happened to the bad dude?"

"He disappeared, I think. Hey, is that woman on your side?" Wallflower asked.

Limestone tried to turn her head to look, but that required muscles she didn't trust yet. "Does she have an angry-looking cat with her?"

"Cat looks pissed as hell—the woman looks calm."

"Yeah, that's my boss." Now she had something important to do, Limestone started turning her whole body and caught sight of Raven and Penny approaching. "Any chance of postponing the debrief?"

Raven rushed forward and caught Limestone as she started to fall over. "What—No, you're right. Debrief later." Bracing her shoulder under Limestone's left arm, she hefted her employee into a standing position. "Whoever you are, you better come with us," she said to Wallflower.

Not that Wallflower could do much but follow when Limestone reached a hand up to her for help. She braced as hard as she could and took the hand, still almost falling over when someone twice her body weight hauled on her arm.

"You're not going to run?" Limestone asked, trying not to put too much of her weight on Wallflower's shoulder as they started walking away from the smoldering car.

"I'd run, but I have a mountain leaning on me." The joke was easy to crack because it avoided the heart of the question completely. "What just happened?"

"Still trying to figure that out myself. Here was I playing babysitter to a—to a foreign national, then I find someone who's been getting her mind screwed with for four years, and next thing I know there's some kind of monster trying to blast my boss with lightning." Pausing, Limestone looked back at the roof of her car. Her rifle was mostly slagged with a good portion of the barrel now welded to the car. "At least it's not raining anymore."

As happens, nature decided to take that as its cue. Clouds that had been prepared and stuffed with moisture for weeks opened up and pelted the ground with their rain.

Twilight looked across at the young woman sitting in the room with her. "Four years ago?" she asked.

Wallflower was just done with questions. She sighed, putting all her frustration and contempt into it. Getting it all out helped slightly. "Four years ago. The stone could remove memories and—and with practice I could get it to fudge something in its place."

"Like you made me need to return home? How did you do that?"

"I pushed something into the hole in your memory that would make you want to go home. I'm sorry about that." And she was. From what Wallflower could remember, she'd done some bad things with her power, but nothing like almost getting someone killed. Or, so she hoped. "I can't remember everything."

"It's alright. Really. Limestone explained her side of things and I agree with her assessment. This was a case of a hostile artifact using you for its own ends."

Wallflower didn't want to agree to that. "S-So what now? Are you going to lock me up?"

"Me? No. If they have a shred of pride, Raven won't lock you up either. This wasn't your fault. I'm starting to suspect that things have been messed up here for a while, and with the Storm King getting here, I can't see it getting better." Stiffening the muscles in her forelegs, Twilight clamped her jaw shut tight to fight off the self-doubt. "And now he's revealed himself, I can't go home until he's dealt with."

For a brief, shining moment Wallflower imagined herself asking to be Twilight's assistant. To help her battle storm kings and go back to her pony world. Instead, she just lowered her eyes and squeezed her lips into a thin line.

Twilight opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off by the door opening to the office. She looked up at Limestone.

"Boss wants to get all sides of this. We're done with the annoying stuff." Nodding at Wallflower, Limestone tried to at least not frown at the girl.

Raven felt like shit. Her relaxed foreign relations mission couldn't have gone more sideways. The visiting royalty had wound up in a one-on-one fight with a monster on a city street, their local bad-guy had turned out to be a kid who'd been getting mind-fucked by some artifact, and her subordinate had gotten struck by lightning and seemed to have shrugged it off. "Please, have a seat.

"Firstly, let me thank you, princess, for protecting the people of America, and for putting up with some difficult situations while here. None of this was intended, obviously. Secondly, having reviewed the situations of both of you, I think it would be best if Miss Wallflower Blush returns to her parents and Princess Twilight Sparkle returns to her own world."

"No." The word had come from Wallflower and Twilight at the same time. They looked at each other.

"I'll go first," Twilight said. "Magic seeping into this world might have been inevitable, but the Storm King being here wasn't. He followed me here so he could fight me without all of Equestria getting in the way. You saw what he could do out there. If you have anyone try to face him directly they'll—they'll not come out of it well."

When Twilight nodded in her direction, Wallflower felt like the walls were going to close in. Limestone, Raven, Twilight, and even Grace stared at her—she wasn't sure which pair of eyes was worse. "I can't go back to my parents. I can't look at them in the face with what I've done. They don't remember me at all—they remember the little girl I used to be." She looked up at Raven. "I want a job. I want to live my own life and—and stop this happening to others." The oddest thing for Wallflower was the approving looks from everyone present—even the cat.

"I could try to make both my suggestions into orders." Looking between the pair, Raven had the distinct displeasure to realize her subordinate was right. "But right now, with this Storm King still on the loose, I'd take all the help I can get. Officially, princess, you'll be an observer with diplomatic immunity. I'll leave it to my sergeant to explain what that entails. As for you, Miss"—she turned her stern gaze on Wallflower—"I can appreciate you want to help, hell, I admire it, but it won't be out there. I need a pair of eyes to go over all the unclassified reports that are going to start rolling in—that's now your job."

"Err—" Wallflower snapped her mouth closed at having been given a job to do so quickly. This was what she wanted—she nodded.

"Okay, so starting with you leaving here to take the readings, princess, what happened?" Raven relied both on the recording device in her office and her own typing to take things down. She had a fair idea of things based on Limestone's report, but every angle could be important.

Twilight started off describing the first drive, then doubling back to take the second reading. "It was really odd when—when Wallflower's stone affected me. I know now what happened, but at the time I just felt a need to get home and take care of something."

"Your oven was on," Wallflower said with a blush.

"Yes! That was it! Wait, Spike would be using the oven anyway. That doesn't make sense."

"It doesn't need to. You just need something in the gap to anchor your new desire to." Wallflower paused as she realized everyone's eyes were locked on her. "I'm going to have to describe this again, aren't I?"

"Nope. As an employee, you'll have to write a report on it. Then we'll discuss that." Limestone winked at Wallflower.

"So," Twilight said, returning to her description of events, "Limestone got me back in the car before I could run off on my own, and we drove back here."

When Raven looked at Wallflower, she wanted to run and hide. "It was still pouring with rain—harder than ever, actually. After I was happy that Limestone and Pr—Twilight—were gone, I went back inside because the rain started creeping in my poncho. As usual, Mom and Dad couldn't even remember me leaving."

Author's Note

Vice-principle Luna: What are your plan to integrate a dragon into a class of humans?

"For two reasons it wouldn't work. Thunderbolt's education is all over the grading system. I couldn't even put him in a math class and expect him to know enough in all the aspects of it to serve him for his best. So too with English, Science... You get the idea. The second reason is that he would disrupt the class. You simply can't fit that much dragon into a classroom and not expect to have the students pay more attention to him than to their work." Smiling, Luna let out a hint of a smile. "Which is why I tutor him directly. My sister has lightened my load in order to accomplish this."

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.

Fuel my writing on Ko-Fi!

Join me on Discord. Warning, said chat may contain NSFW material and should be considered adult in nature.

Awesome ponies who are already helping to keep me in keyboards and rum:
A.P.O.N.I.
CadelDdraigDarkkon
Canary in the Coal Mine
Daremo
Dio-Drogynous
Ender Voidwalker
KFS Crimson
shortskirtsandexplosions
Sirion123
Vi Watch

And special thanks to the following, for careful eyes and friendly words:
Lab