Taken

Twilight is looking at me fearfully as she hops down off the bed. She doesn’t know what to do, which I guess is odd because I guess I thought she always had the answers to everything. Now that I think about it, though, she isn’t perfect, so there’s no reason to expect her to be.

“What do we do now?” she asks. “There are so many out there…”

I’m trying to think fast. “Spike.” I motion towards the door. “Go and check all around the house. I need to know if they’ve got the whole place surrounded.” Spike nods and runs out the door.

Now my attention goes to Twilight. “Have they moved at all?”

She shakes her head. “They’re all just… standing there.” I don’t really know what to make of this. If this really was Discord’s work, they wouldn’t just be standing still. Or would they? This sounds like more of his tricks.

“What was Discord like in Equestria?” I ask. “Did he ever do anything like this?”

“Oh, no… Not even close. Yes, he was very chaotic, but almost all of his antics weren’t destructive. Nothing like this…”

Spike comes back now. “Yeah, they’re all over the place. They’re keeping their distance, though.”

I sigh. I was really hoping there was going to be some kind of way that we could get out of this. They aren’t making it easy on us, though. I duck down below the window and sit down with my back against the wall. Spike and Twilight do the same.

“Okay, so we’re going to have to prepare for the worst. We have to assume that these things are here to kill us. Which means we’re going to have to defend ourselves.” I look at Spike. “What’s the extent of your magic?”

Spike begins to look very much sheepish. “Um… not very much… I can send letters to Princess Celestia, and occasionally I can make a bit of fire just as a general thing, but other than that…” He sighs. “Twilight is much better at the whole magic thing than I am.”

“That’s only because I’ve had more practice at it than you have,” Twilight said in a conciliatory voice. “Besides, you’re still really young. You shouldn’t be expected to even be close to being on par with me when it comes to magic. And think about it like this: dragon magic is naturally stronger than pony magic to begin with. So when you get to be about my age, you’re going to be way more powerful than I could ever be.”

I don’t know whether to be touched or pissed off. “Um, guys, sorry to bring you back down from cloud nine and a half, but this doesn’t help us out in our current situation… Those things are still out there, ready to do Luna knows what to us, and-“

“Wait. What did you just say?”

“Luna knows what… Why, is that a bad thing?”

Twilight’s eyes light up. “No, not really, just odd… But that does give me an idea. Spike! Get ready to take down a letter to the princess!” Spike nodded and produced a pen and quill from out of nowhere.

I can’t help but gawk. “Where in the living hell do you keep pulling those things out of?”

“An alternate dimension.” I honestly can’t tell if he’s serious or not. So, I just am content with turning around and-

Seeing the Molotov cocktail being thrown at my face, via the window. Fuck. I barely have time to dodge out of the way before it crashes through the window, eliciting screams of surprise and fear from both Twilight and Spike. The bottle crashes through the window, sending shards of glass going everywhere. When it hits the floor, the carpet lights ablaze.

“No!” Twilight cries out. Her horn glows briefly, and the flame is snuffed out before it can spread any further than what it already had.

I look at her gratefully. “Thank you…” She nods and then turns back to Spike. I look out the now-shattered window, as Twilight begins to dictate her letter behind me.

“Dear Princess,” she starts out, “if you get this at all, we need to know what to do. There are beings outside the place where I am at, and they are most likely about to kill us. They appear to be under Discord’s control. Please, Princess… you know Discord better than any of us. Send us some kind of information as to how we need to proceed. Your student, Twilight Sparkle.”

Spike finishes writing the letter, then seals it up with an official-looking ribbon. What he does then rather intrigues me: he belches out a green flame and it consumes the letter, causing it to disappear.

“Um… didn’t you just disintegrate it?”

Spike laughs a bit. “Nope. That’s how I send my letters. It’ll appear right in front of her, completely and totally intact.”

Twilight looks outside. “They’re still just standing out there. I just don’t get it. Why are they even here if they’re just going to-“ Suddenly, she cuts herself off and ducks down. “Discord!” she hisses.”He’s out there!”

I look up a bit. Sure enough, he’s hovering over the mass of people closest to our window. He’s got such a smug grin on his face, too. It really infuriates me, and before I know what I’m doing I stand up.

“What are you doing?” Twilight hisses, this time at me. “Do you want him to see you?”

“He already knows I’m here,” I retort. “And besides, I need to do something… I can’t just sit in here and do nothing.” I start to walk towards the door.

“Matthew…” Twilight’s voice is more pleading now, and I stop again. “Please… don’t do this. I… I need you…”

That last part in particular threw me for a bit of a loop. She… needs me? Haven’t we already been over this? The whole she’s-got-magic-and-I-don’t thing? But then again…

I reach out and grasp the door handle. Before I step out, I turn my head towards Twilight one last time. I smile at her as kindly as I possibly can. “You know it as well as I do… Rainbow Dash is a much better fit for you than I’ll ever be.” And with that, I opened the door, leaving Twilight inside gasping in shock, and Spike standing beside her, an ever-vigilant guardian against all that would harm her.

Which at this point, was just about everything.

I walked outside and shut the door behind me. Discord, I knew, could probably sense the fact that I was scared absolutely shitless at that particular point. I also knew that there was no way in hell that I was going to let him see that. So, I pulled out that damned pack of cigarettes- when was the last time I even smoked one of these? Had to be a few days at least- and pulled one out, lighting it.

“Oh, aren’t you just a regular Marlboro Man?” Discord taunted. “You know, I’m starting to regret ever giving you that ever-refilling pack. Maybe you would have broken a lot sooner if I’d actually taken them away from you a bit sooner.”

“Naw,” I replied, taking a puff. “I’m more resilient than you give me credit for.” I gestured to all of the… zombies, were they? All of the whatever they were, standing outside. “So what, you have to bring an army to face a lonesome human, a pony, and a baby dragon?”

“A baby dragon?” Discord begins to laugh hysterically. “Oh my, this makes things much more interesting! So it would appear that the moon princess’s spell actually worked…”

Fuck. Another new development. “What spell?”

“Oh, it’s just something that she’s been developing at a very rapid place lately. She doesn’t trust either you or Twilight Sparkle to get the job done by yourselves- and by job, of course, I mean surviving long enough for the two of you to get my message across to yourselves and return to your home dimensions- so she was going to send one other member of Twilight’s world to aid you in your journey. But Spike…? It seems like an odd choice, to me.”

“He definitely has his merits,” I counter. “Like that thing he can do where he sends those letters to Princess Celestia. Speaking of, we should be getting a reply back any second now…”

This definitely seems to be news to Discord. “Hmm… So the baby one has a direct line to Celestia herself?” He chuckles to himself. “Foolish goddess. She thought Fluttershy could reform me… How wrong she was.”

“Well, I guess we’re both learning new things today.” I take another drag. “How did Fluttershy try to reform you?”

Discord looks at me oddly. I smirk at him. “Oh, was I not supposed to know that? Well, I suppose that-“

Suddenly I’m looking at Twilight again, and I’m back inside the house.

“-I’ve got some… thing… Um, Twilight? Why did you pull me back in here?” I know I must look a bit aggravated, but that’s just due to the fact that my current emotional state is a bit in flux.

“I’m sorry, Matthew, but I just couldn’t risk any more interaction between you and Discord. He already knows too much the way it is, and if you slip up and tell him something you’re not supposed to tell him-“

“Like what?” I snap at her. “I don’t know bloody fucking anything about your world, your kind, not even where you fucking go to the bathroom-“

“We go outside, silly. It’s excellent plant fertilizer, really.”

“-Because… you haven’t trusted me enough to tell me any of this.”

Twilight gawks at me for a second. “I… haven’t trusted you? What do you think I’ve been doing since the minute I found you? If I hadn’t trusted you to protect me, I would’ve left you to die out there in that cold-“

“Yeah, speaking of which…” I shiver a bit. “It’s been getting colder and colder lately. I hope it doesn’t start getting as cold again, as it did when we first got here.”

“Me either…” Twilight responded in an almost-whisper.

I really don’t feel like talking to Twilight any more for now, so I look for Spike. He’s standing up by the broken window looking forlornly out at the army that has amassed itself outside with Discord as its commander-in-chief.

I stand up and walk over to him. “As cliché as this sounds, Spike, we’re gonna make it through this. We’ve got my Flame, Twilight’s magic, and your… well, whatever it is that you can do-“

“Which apparently is nothing…” Spike turns and faces away from the window, and at the same time away from me. “Princess Celestia hasn’t even sent me back a letter yet, and usually she doesn’t take half this much time to respond… What’s going on, Matthew?”

Something occurs to me at that point, and I’m about to point this out to Spike when all of a sudden, a scroll appears right in front of him. He sighs in relief and opens it up. As he scans its contents, the look on his face grows from one of elation to one of confusion.

“What is it?” Twilight asks, as she starts to read it. “Oh… I didn’t even think of that…”

“What does it say?” I ask.

Spike clears his throat and begins to read: “Dear Spike, I do not appreciate such a joke being played on me. You know just as well as I that Twilight has been gone for a very long time-“

“What?” Twilight asks, as though she’d just heard that part for the first time.

“-and besides that, you just saw me at my castle a few hours ago. There is nothing wrong with you- or Discord, for that matter, as he is still sealed away like he always has been- and I do not appreciate you wasting my time like this. Yours truly, Princess Celestia.”

Spike looks in horror at what he’s just read. “Why…? Why would the princess respond like this? Knowing that it isn’t true…”

I can’t stand to see the little guy this sad. Even if he is pretty much annoying… “Um, Spike. Yeah, about that… It is pretty much possible. See, here… we’re in the year 2073.”

“What?!” Spike looks at me incredulously. “You’re seriously telling me we’re that far in the future here! Wait. So that means…”

None of us want to say it, but Twilight does anyways. She’s almost silent, and we can barely hear her, but her words are impactful nonetheless: "It means I may not survive to go back to Ponyville."

"Twilight..." Spike urges quietly. "Don't say things like that... I don't like it."

"We have to consider the possibility though, Spike," she replies, closing her eyes.

"I might die here."