Limestone's phone beeped. It wasn't a text message beep, but rather an application wanting her attention. When she unlocked it, she let out a sigh of relief. "Got a rough location." Her fingers reached for the starter and brought the car to life. "Can you keep an eye on my phone while I drive?"

"Uh, I could just hold it up where you could watch it?" It was easy enough for Twilight to do so, her magic carefully holding the device up at the level of the dashboard of the car.

"Good enough." Stabbing her foot on the gas, the car jumped forward at Limestone's command. "When we get there, you distract the Storm King again and I won't be shooting to wound. This guy's shown his intent and his methods."

Twilight huffed out a slightly annoyed breath. "It just feels wrong, but after what he did in Equestria…"

"What exactly would make a princess of friendship go along with this? What did he do?" She turned a corner at speed, following the directions on the phone's map.

"He put most of our people in chains and cages, twisted the heart of a wonderful pony with empty promises, and he petrified the other princesses then tried to steal their power. Well, he succeeded in stealing their power."

"You took it back?"

"With some help from friends. The one who ultimately broke him was the mare he betrayed. He tried to petrify her, but took his own medicine to the face." Twilight remembered the encounter with fiery emotion—she wanted to focus on the friends she'd made that day, not the enemy they'd defeated. "This is your world. If you think he needs to be dealt with in that manner, that's up to you, Limestone."

"Hey, one warrior to another, sometimes you have to fight the war in front of you rather than the one in your head." No sooner had Limestone spoken than her phone beeped with a message. A regular, unencrypted message, the phone flashed it up for a few moments in the message bar. "Can you check who sent that? If that's what I think it is, we just got a tip-off."

Trying her hoof at first, Twilight grumbled something about touchscreens and then used her magic to poke at the controls. "Unknown number. Texting to ask who it is." With her magic she could type faster than even the fastest human digits.

—Who r u?—

—Thunderbolt. Hurry, she didn't sound happy there. You want me to help?—

"It was Thunderbolt. He asked if we want help." Twilight was already replying that help would be appreciated.

"No. No civilians, please," Limestone said.

"A dragon isn't a civilian. Equestrian dragons are just about immune to all forms of damage, have four sets of claws, and more teeth than the average pony can count. And I'm not even mentioning that he can breathe"—Twilight froze in her reply to look at a plume of smoke drifting into the sky from some home's backyard—"fire."

Identifying the house wasn't hard, Limestone drove until her phone suddenly lost signal. She stopped the car, climbed out, and walked around to the boot.

Twilight got out of her own side and began mentally preparing for the fight she knew was coming. "What do you need me to do?"

Utter relief flooded Limestone at hearing those words. Reassured she was dealing with a professional, she opened the case in the trunk and started assembling her rifle. "Wait until I start shooting. I'll try to take him down without any fight being needed. If things turn out to not be simple, you can go in and I'll support you." With her gun configured how she wanted it, Limestone added a small mirror to the end of the barrel with a little putty.

Nodding, Twilight ran through her spells and started to focus on what she might have to do. That she was going into this with someone she considered a friend helped immensely. "Right."

Circling to the side of the house, Limestone shouldered her rifle and kept her finger primed but safely off the trigger. Each step along the side of the house resulted in her pausing to listen—what she heard was arguing at the back of the house.

"Perfect! Just what I wanted."

Sonata's voice wasn't a surprise, the happy and joyous tone was. She got to the corner of the house and poked just the end of her barrel around the corner, and looked around with the mirror. Sonata stood with the Storm King at her side and Abacus Cinch opposite them. "Sonata's blocking my shot. There's someone else with them, she'd be your second magic user, right?"

"Probably. Anything that would single them out as knowing magic?" Twilight's nerves were sensitive for the slightest sign that they'd been revealed.

"She has some kind of burning purple smoke coming from her eyes and her hair looks like her head was a tire-fire." Watching both targets, Limestone wanted to curse at the fact she hadn't gotten clearance to engage the second magic user as well. "I don't know how long I want to wait. Do you think you could separate them so I could take a shot?"

"I'll try. Fighting two magic users at once isn't something I enjoy. Hopefully Sonata can help too." Charging her magic, Twilight spotted a spot at the far end of the garden to teleport to, and with a flicker of her magic she was there. "Give it up. We have the place surrounded!"

Three heads turned toward Twilight, while Limestone leaned around the corner of the house and sighted on the Storm King. Her finger moved to disengage the safety and put the weapon into three-round burst fire.

Sonata saw Twilight and felt a big, ditsy grin plaster onto her face. It was the cavalry she'd hoped for.

"Not you again! I should have dealt with you the—" Storm had to duck and dive to the side as a bolt of purple magic cut his monologue short. Throwing his all into storm-summoning magic, he started to cackle. "Now I have a siren and a dark mage with me, little princess. You haven't got a hope!"

"Teleport, you idiot! We have to get out of here! There's no telling what else is lurking around!" Abacus began preparing a spell to deflect a teleport. Of the two castings, it was the harder to do.

But the problem for Storm was he couldn't do any magic without his namesake—or a magic item, and his non-corporeal trip from Equestria had left him without his usual toys. Pulling at the gathering clouds with all his magical strength, he felt more than saw the second threat.

Limestone squeezed the trigger on her rifle and it spat three rounds in quick succession. All three crackled in the air inches from Storm's body and the bullets were destroyed. "Fuck."

Opening her mouth, Sonata closed her eyes and started to sing.

Hush, little babies, don't you fight
Sonata's gonna ease you of all your fright

Twilight heard the magical verse and panicked. She could see Storm and Abacus looking a little spaced out, but she too felt the effects of siren magic worming into her head. She fumbled for a spell to cover her ears, but by the time Sonata started the second verse, she just wanted to lie down and rest.

"Stop that, I can't"—Abacus' shout was interrupted by a yawn—"I can barely think straight."

And if the lullaby don't work
Limestone's gonna shoot you and then she'll smirk

It felt like a throbbing in the back of Limestone's head, but Sonata's wink to her made up the bad lyrics. To her sensitive ears, though, all Limestone could hear was a soft chant of: sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.

One little storm cloud hovered overhead, but it was all Storm needed. Losing his struggle against mimicking Abacus' yawn, he sat down on the grass as he called down lightning on himself and Abacus. Though the siren-song claimed him, he felt the teleport take hold.

Rounding her attention on Abacus, Sonata shoved all her magic toward the woman, just to have her disappear in a blast of lightning. She turned back to Storm, and saw he was gone too. "Damn it. I should have used that inside. The problem is it takes time to snare people."

Staring at Sonata, Limestone had to mentally pull her thoughts away from her. "Check on Twilight, I want to get someone here to go through their house with a fine-toothed comb."

Blinking in surprise, Sonata flicked her tail and swam through the air over to Twilight. It wasn't until she reached the princess that Sonata realized that she had a long tail and a lot more fins than before. Looking down, she spotted her gemstone firmly planted in her chest. "Oh gosh, this is too much."

While Limestone had her phone out and was talking on it, Sonata had herself a good little panic. Swimming through the air in tight circles, she stopped dead when she saw Twilight waking up. "Ohmygosh, I'm sorry! I was trying to just get them with it, but—"

Yawning as she regained her bearings, Twilight looked around, then up at the big predator just above her. "Sonata, just calm down. I know why and what you were trying. Did it work?"

"Kinda. I think it took effect just as they finished the teleport. I watched the Storm King fall asleep just as he did his trigger, and I think Abacus Cinch got her jink spell—that's what I call a redirected teleport—just before it took her down." Looking back at her body, Sonata felt embarrassed.

Close to fifteen feet from her head to the tip of her tail, Sonata looked almost exactly like a mermaid. Almost, except for the fins that decorated her back and sides and the scales that coated her up and over her belly. Twilight took a deep breath. "Can you shape-shift?"

Freezing mid figure-eight of worry, Sonata looked down at Twilight and giggled. "I can try!"

Hanging up her phone, Limestone looked at the huge creature Sonata had become just in time to see her become a normal human. It left her divided. On one hand Sonata needed to be able to pass for human. On the other hand it wasn't fair that she got to pretend she was still perfectly human.

"Backup is on its way. I assume they'll only be out for a minute or two, like Twilight?" Limestone asked as she walked over. It occurred to her that Sonata was standing there naked. "Fuck." Taking her jacket off, Limestone held it out to Sonata.

Wrapping the jacket around her shoulders, Sonata realized how small she was compared to Limestone. "Thanks. The other two should be out for about twelve hours or so, I think. I don't think I've ever had that much energy before. I tried to shield Twilight, that's why it wore off fast."

"Twelve hours—" Thinking out loud, Limestone looked back at the house. "Any idea at all where they might have gone?"

"Not far," Twilight said, clearing the last of the siren magic from her head so she could focus on the magic in the area. "At least a mile, not more than ten."

"Well, it's a start. They have twelve hours of downtime. Shame it's not mid winter or the sleeping spell and the cold would do our work for us. Sonata, I hate to lay this on you, but we're going to need to debrief."

"Yeah, figure. I've been trying to remember everything they said and did while I was here. I take it you got Thunderbolt's message?" Sonata looked up into the sky, but couldn't see where he was. Quickly pulling her phone out, she started tapping in a message thanking him.

"Did Thunderbolt interact with them at all?" Limestone asked.

"Yeah." Sonata couldn't help but smile. "He got all angry and in their face on my behalf. He backed off when I told him to. Remind me to get him something special as a thank-you."

Author's Note

Twilight Velvet: With so many things happened around your children lately, do you fear that you might get grandchildren out of wedlock?

Twilight closed her eyes and took a deep, slow breath. "So long as they're born to loving parents—and you will only hear this from a lawyer once—I don't care what a piece of paper says."

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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