My World Is Empty Without You

by McPoodle

Chapters

Prologue
The Story So Far
Chapter 1B
Chapter 2A
Chapter 2B
Chapter 2C
Chapter 3A
Chapter 3B
Chapter 4A
Chapter 4B
Chapter 5A
Chapter 5B
Chapter 6A
Chapter 6B
Chapter 7
Epilogue: Spike
Massively Self-Indulgent Acknowledgements & Credits
Chapter 1A

Prologue

Thought Experiments 6:

My World Is Empty Without You

A My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic

By McPoodle (and Fluttershy...don’t tell)

Prologue

The Glittering Caverns were located less than ten thousand strides west of Stalliongrad, but their existence was unknown to the ponies. Its entrance was a simple hole, concealed inside of a dense pricklebush in the Desolate Tundra. In the early days when the Dragon Emperor was making his plans and extending his control from his base in the caverns, access to and from that location was carefully coordinated to avoid the ponies noticing.

Now of course dragons could enter and leave the caverns with impunity, if they weren’t under strict orders to keep their distance. The ponies of Stalliongrad were under the Emperor’s complete mental control, and the border separating dragon conquests from the beleaguered pony homelands was located far to the south.

The reason the Glittering Caverns were off limits was because of the Emperor’s top-secret Final Stage, the plan that would give the planet forever to the dragons. At least, that was what they were promised by their master in his mental transmissions.

* * *

The central of the five Glittering Caverns was as big as the house of a well-off pony family, and twice as tall. Its walls were encrusted with gems of every shape, size and quality. A few of the gems were of the decorative variety that dragons hoarded and ponies fashioned into jewelry, but most of them were the far more valuable variety known as mana gems. These were capable of storing and discharging large quantities of magic energy. Ponies powered their artifacts with these gems; while for dragons, it was the only way for them to wield most of the magic they were capable of controlling.

The clearer mana gems in the ceiling were enchanted to glow, providing light. What that light illuminated was a group of eight crystal caskets. Seven of them were arranged in a circle; they were each designed to hold an average-sized pony, and that is what each one contained. Situated in front of the other caskets was a significantly bigger casket, also occupied. Each of the caskets had a variety of mana gems embedded in them, enchanted to perform a bewildering variety of tasks. Bundled wires connected the caskets with each other and with a control panel located on one wall of the cavern.

The control panel was also made up of mana gems, arranged so they could be easily overseen by the juvenile dragon with the clipboard who was sitting on a crystal stool and looking them over. There was a small cluster of monitoring gems devoted to each casket. The flat surface of one flat gem in each cluster acted as a screen, showing the sleeping face of the casket’s inhabitant. Another gem pulsed in color with each breath of the subject, while a third gem monitored heartbeat.

The center of the control panel was dedicated to another large screen, this one showing a confrontation between two of the sleeping ponies: Rarity and DJ Pon-3, otherwise known as Vinyl Scratch. A grill under the screen provided the sound for the scene.

“The world I have created is finally reaching its inevitable conclusion,” the voice of Rarity declared from the grill, in the manner of the villain from a spy story. This impression was not hindered in the slightest by the presence of a tiny dragon in a black trench coat perched upon her back.

The dragon sitting on the stool responded to this particular line by quickly finishing off his late-night snack of a sapphire cupcake and washing it down with water from a tall thin glass. His break over, he began to split his attention, paying special attention to one set of vital signs in particular, but every few seconds he would also spare some time to look at a smaller screen sitting on the desk beside him. This object showed signs of being added very recently: it wasn’t installed in the wall; the wires connecting it to the various caskets were imperfectly insulated and tended to spark every minute or so; and there were some knobs on the sides that constantly had to be fiddled with to keep the device working properly.

The output of this jury-rigged device was not audio or video, but colored text depicting an entirely different conversation than that taking place on the main screen:

Did…did you just topple Pony Civilization with a real estate scam?

Uh-huh. I wonder sometimes if I am always a force for good.

The color of the first line of text corresponded with that of the labels around Applejack’s monitor cluster, while the second line’s color identified it as belonging to Twilight Sparkle.

As the dragon watched, intently but dispassionately, the two off-white ponies on the screen argued, culminating in…a musical duet?

“I swear I will never understand ponies till the day I die,” the dumbfounded dragon swore under his breath.

The song, in turn, somehow managed to power the spell being generated by the DJ pony’s horn, leading to the utter obliteration of Rarity, and therefore the end of her dream.

Rarity’s free, she’s…

(This line came from Vinyl Scratch.)

The output stopped after the dragon tapped a large pink gem, which responded by slowly flashing on and off.

The vital signs for Rarity showed clear signs that she was waking up. With an annoyed grunt, the dragon tapped an orange gem, causing it to start glowing.

In the casket behind him, a similarly orange-colored gas flooded into Rarity’s enclosure, causing her to stop moving.

The dragon nodded. “You stay put,” he told her. “The good part’s starting, and I don’t want to miss it dealing with you.”

The Dragon Emperor experienced the dreams of his victims differently than they or his dragon lackey did. It’s rather hard to put his experience into words, so I hope you’ll indulge me while I use a medium I’m quite familiar with:

WELCOME TO DREAM OS, V.1.0.0. SYSTEM: Fluttershy

YOU HAVE LOGGED IN WITH ACCESS LEVEL: COMPLETE CONTROL.

DREAM STATE: Not Started.

DragonEmperor: sudo "Fluttershy"

YOU ARE NOW "Fluttershy".

"Fluttershy": dream.exe -start

THE DREAM IS NOW STARTING.

"Fluttershy": A peaceful day in the little village of Ponyville is disrupted as day suddenly turns to night. But not just any night—a supernatural darkness which makes it impossible to see more than a couple of ponylengths in any direction.

SETTING "Ponyville" CREATED.

"Fluttershy": dream.exe -add $AllAvailableDreamers -location "City Hall" -radius 500pl

DREAMER "Twilight Sparkle" ADDED.

DREAMER "Pinkie^H^H^H^H^H^H^H NOT DEFINED. SUBSTITUTE DREAMER "Pinkamena" ADDED.

DREAMER "Rainbow Dash" ADDED.

DREAMER "Rarity" NOT FOUND.

DREAMER "Applejack" ADDED.

DREAMER Fluttershy: NOT APPLICABLE.

DREAMER "Vinyl Scratch" ADDED.

ALL DREAMERS LOCATED AROUND LOCATION "City Hall".

NO DREAMERS CLOSER THAN 500 PONYLENGTHS TO EACH OTHER.

"Fluttershy": From the Everfree, dangerous creatures of all sorts invade Ponyville, attacking at random. The ponies of the town cry in in fear and terror.

Applejack: I help anypony I can.

YOU FIND Lyra AND Bon-Bon, AND LEAD THEM BACK TO THEIR HOUSE.

Rainbow Dash: I can’t see! I land to try and see what’s going on.

SOME SORT OF LEATHERY CREATURE FLIES RIGHT OVER YOUR HEAD AS YOU LAND.

Rainbow Dash: I fly back up and catch it.

Pinkamena: Is the ground stable? What do I smell?

THERE ARE NO SIGNS OF SEISMIC ACTIVITY. THE AIR IS HUMID, WITH A STRONG EARTHY SMELL.

Pinkamena: What does my Pinkie Sense tell me? (The interpretation, not the actual signs, please. I don’t have time to pull out my cheat sheet.)

PinkieSenseBot: FOUR TIMBERWOLVES ARE TRYING TO SURROUND YOU.

Pinkamena: I look down at the ground, trying to give the impression that I’ve given up. When the pack is in range I buck the closest one, followed by the others in clockwise fashion.

Fluttershy: This is my dream?

YES.

Fluttershy: I try to find the closest of my friends.

YOU EVENTUALLY FIND Twilight Sparkle.

Twilight Sparkle: I summon Spike.

CONSTRUCT "Spike" HAS BEEN ADDED IN "Twilight Sparkle's" LOCATION.

Twilight Sparkle: I cast Harmony’s Light.

YOUR LIGHT SPELL PUSHES BACK THE DARKNESS.

"Fluttershy": Your spell also reveals the presence of Nightmare Moon, grinning cruelly at you.

CONSTRUCT "Nightmare Moon" HAS BEEN ADDED IN "Twilight Sparkle's" LOCATION.

Twilight Sparkle: Luna! What happened to you!

"Fluttershy": Nightmare Moon replies, “The Dragon Emperor has passed me, The Nightmare, into Luna’s weak and pitiful body. Now that I infect her once again, I will begin my revenge here, at the location of my prior defeat and with you, the architect of my ruin. Prepare for your doom, Twilight Sparkle!”

Twilight Sparkle: I cast Shield, Level 3. Spike provides the mana deficit.

"Fluttershy": Nightmare Moon replies, “I cast Tartarus’ Might, Level 5, obliterating Twilight’s shield. Before she has a chance to react, I strike again, instantly ki

Fluttershy: ...infecting her. I did say that Luna was “infected” with the Nightmare, right? I always thought of them more as a symbiotic magical entity rather than an infection but I suppose it can work. So now Twilight has been infected, too, turning her into Nightmare Twilight! No, that doesn’t sound right. Nightmare Dusk? No. Dusk Dawn? No… Let me see...what should she be called? … …

"Fluttershy": ...Midnight Sparkle. If we...I mean “I” am going to do this, her name should be Midnight Sparkle. It’s not like I spend late nights fantasizing about what an evil Twilight Sparkle would be like or anything.

DREAMER "Twilight Sparkle" HAS BEEN REPLACED WITH CONSTRUCT "Midnight Sparkle".

Fluttershy: OK. I sure made up my mind on that all of a sudden. Which is a bit unusual, but I suppose sometimes I get lucky and my anxiety doesn’t pin me down until *after* I make a decision. Like… Midnight Sparkle, what would she even look like? Just dark fur and a corrupted cutie mark? Oh, definitely slitted eyes, those were cool looking, wearing a royal outfit. A silk cape with gold embroidery around the edges and a thin silver crown just sharp enough looking to bring claws to mind.

DESCRIPTION FOR "Midnight Sparkle" HAS BEEN UDPATED.

"Fluttershy": Dressed in black leather, and wielding a…

Fluttershy: Well! Since I’m talking to myself—and definitely not to someone who is in my head and able to control my thoughts, which would be so terrifying I may just give up on thinking altogether—that must mean I just learned something new about me just now. Something I really didn’t need to know. (Black leather, really?) So, where was I?

"Fluttershy": Midnight Sparkle! Nightmare Moon and Midnight Sparkle team up to continue their revenge. They see Pinkamena and…

Fluttershy: ...Pass right over her to corner Fluttershy. The poor pegasus doesn’t stand a chance.

"Fluttershy": ...That’s not right. Fluttershy would be too easy. She should be the last victim.

Fluttershy: No, definitely the first. She’s Grade-A victim material. No villain could possibly pass that up.

"Fluttershy": ...Couldn’t they warm up on Applejack? Or what about Vinyl Scratch? I almost forgot about her.

Fluttershy: Absolutely not! I’ve had enough nightmares on the subject to be more than sure that Fluttershy is just about to meet a grisly demise, probably be decapitated before her body becomes worm food. Right...about…n

"Fluttershy": ^C^C^C^C^C

THE DREAM HAS BEEN PAUSED.

Back in the cave, the Emperor’s technician sighed in embarrassment. Looking over the console, he saw that the orange tranquilizer gem’s glow had completely faded out, and Rarity was once again trying to get up.

“Oh no you don’t,” the dragon said, tapping the orange gem again to deliver another dose of knock-out gas. He then turned his attention back to Fluttershy’s screen, certain that his boss would succeed this time for sure.

"Fluttershy": dream.exe -charedit "Midnight Sparkle" -replacewith "Twilight Sparkle"

CONSTRUCT "Midnight Sparkle" HAS BEEN REPLACED WITH DREAMER "Twilight Sparkle".

"Fluttershy": dream.exe -charedit "Twilight Sparkle" -appearance -match "Midnight Sparkle"

DREAMER "Twilight Sparkle" NOW LOOKS LIKE "Midnight Sparkle".

"Fluttershy": sudo "Celestia"

YOU ARE NOW "Celestia".

"Celestia": dream.exe -resume

THE DREAM HAS BEEN RESUMED.

"Celestia": I appear in the clearing in front of Fluttershy, marked with numerous wounds and with a sheared pink mane. "Fluttershy!" I gasp. "Nightmare Moon has rendered me too weak to help you personally in your struggle against her and Midnight Sparkle. But I can send you this." I present Fluttershy with a horn blade. "With this weapon, you can render Midnight Sparkle powerless, unable to use her magic for weeks. Too bad it doesn’t work on alicorns."

Fluttershy: I stare at Celestia, the most powerful and terrifying creature in existence, before averting my gaze to stare at the floor.

"Celestia": “I need your help, Fluttershy. I can’t do this alone, and I know that you can, if you just try.”

Fluttershy: “Of all the ponies in the world, why would you pick the one pony destined to fail?” I ask, still staring at the dirt in front of me.

"Celestia": “What?! You’ve defeated countless enemies, you’ve overcome incredible odds! I know you can do this!”

Fluttershy: “No. I can’t. Maybe Daring Do could do this. Maybe Rainbow Dash or my friends, but… If I’m truly the last thing holding back the end of the world? Then the world is already lost. I can’t.” If Rainbow D— I mean Daring Do were here, then she could save the world. But not Fluttershy. No.

"Celestia": “Your former friends have turned against me, turned against Equestria, won’t you do something?”

Fluttershy: ...I will watch.

"Celestia": dream.exe -BatchExecute FinalScene.ds

DREAM SETTING: title-set EVERFREE

DREAM SETTING: environment DENSE-DECIDUOUS-FOREST

DREAM SETTING: environment NIGHT

DREAM SETTING: environment COLD

DREAM SETTING: environment HOPELESS

INVALID PARAMETER.

"Celestia": dream.exe -environment lifeless

DREAM SETTING: environment LIFELESS

ALL DREAMERS HAVE BEEN MOVED TO THIS LOCATION.

"Celestia": …Progress, I think?

THAT IS NOT A VALID DREAM COMMAND.

SYSTEM Fluttershy SETMODE SPECTATOR

CONSTRUCT "Nightmare Moon" HAS BEEN ADDED.

Fluttershy: Really… Why would Nightmare Moon even care about Twilight and her friends if a far more preferable target is available? Nightmare Moon stalks the shadows near Celestia, laughing softly to herself.

"Nightmare Moon": “Sister, sister, sister. How far you’ve fallen, crawling through the dirt of the Everfree, your apprentice and her friends scattered in the trees. You’ve lost. Truly and utterly, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

"Celestia": I bring the hornblade up to defend mys

Fluttershy: With a surge of black magic the hornblade explodes, sending shards of metal deep into Celestia’s cheek and neck, red blood further staining her once-pristine white coat.

"Celestia": I’m certainly too powerful to be hurt so easily!

Fluttershy: No, I already decided that Celestia was drained so much she was going to ask Fluttershy of all ponies for help, she must be near death for that to happen.

"Celestia": ”Sister, my allies will rise again! If you kill me before them, then you’ll never be able to stand against their retribution!”

"Nightmare Moon": “So you’ve learned how to lie, now? With Fluttershy already dead, and the Elements of harmony shattered—”

CONSTRUCT "Fluttershy’s dead mutilated corpse" CREATED

CONSTRUCT "Shattered elements of harmony" CREATED

"Nightmare Moon": “—You’re all I care about. The betrayer, the cruel sister who abandoned the other on the moon to rot.”

Fluttershy: ...

"Celestia": …^C

THE DREAM HAS BEEN PAUSED.

"Celestia": I'm getting a headache.

?SYNTAX ERROR.

"Celestia": I wasn’t talking to you.

?SYNTAX ERROR.

The technician face-palmed.

He looked at the board, and saw that Rarity was once again waking up. And also that the casket was out of tranquilizing gas.

Shaking his head, the dragon hopped down from his stool, grabbed a nearby stun-stick, and approached Rarity’s casket. Through the clear cover he could see her begin to thrash around. With a sigh, he pushed a button on the side of the casket, causing the top half to swing up, liberating a small cloud of faintly-orange tinted steam. As soon as she was exposed to the colder air of the cavern, Rarity froze up, her back facing the dragon.

The dragon sighed once again. “Alright, pony,” he told her in a rough voice. “You came through on your side of the Master’s bargain, now you need to get out and let me tie you up. Can’t have you interfering in the last dream—whenever it finally gets going. Now we can either do this the easy way, or the hard way.”

He waited for a minute, but the pony before him failed to move.

“The hard way it is, then,” he concluded then prodded Rarity’s back with the sharp end of his stun-stick.

Rarity screamed out in pain, so loudly that the dragon nearly dropped his weapon. As he watched, the white unicorn tumbled out of her casket and onto the ground, gasping in desperation and clawing at a silver-colored circlet that surrounded her neck but had an open latch on one side. Her fur was matted with sweat and her face lined with running mascara. This was followed by choking sounds and flailing, her face turning blue. The dragon walked around to get a better look at her, while keeping a safe distance. She reached out her hooves towards him, silently pleading for his help. Instead he stepped forward and squeezed her flickering horn, snuffing out any spell she might devise to save herself from this unexpected reaction to his stick.

“Note to self,” he said out loud. “The combination of using the tranquilizing gas more than once plus using the stun-stick on the same pony more than ten times in the same day may lead to unpleasant side effects. Including death.” He smiled coldly as he watched her thrashing fade away. With a final rattle in her throat, she collapsed.

Satisfied that she would not struggle any more, he reached down to start dragging her towards the coat closet…only to be toppled over by a sudden sweep of Rarity’s rear leg. Before he had a chance to react, Rarity jumped onto him and used her magic and hooves to rip off her neck-circlet and attach it around his own neck. As soon as the latch was closed, he dropped into a deep slumber.

“Now that…” Rarity quipped between gasps of air, “is what I call ‘the hard way’.” After a few seconds of recovery, she dragged the dragon into the very closet he had intended to stash her body.

With this task accomplished, she restored her flawless looks with a quick spell and then made a survey of the room, verifying that there were no guards either in the other caverns or outside the main entrance. This revealed the existence of an entirely independent gem screen in another room, this one showing the Ancient rocket and waiting robot standing just outside the Everfree Forest. This was the reason for the Dragon Emperor’s entire dream trap chain plot: to prevent the ponies from interfering when he made his deal with the Ancients: a deal for infinite power, infinite riches…at the cost of the long-term doom of two universes. That last bit wasn’t slated to happen until after the Dragon Emperor died of over-indulgence, so he didn’t really care.

The trip also revealed that the time was a few hours after midnight. The white unicorn went to the caskets containing her friends and examined them with a growing frown—and a look of utter contempt for the Dragon Emperor in his casket—then looked over the dream control panel.

Once she thought she had a handle on the current situation, she retrieved her saddlebag from under her casket and put it on. She picked up the tall and narrow glass that the dragon was drinking from with her telekinesis, and she took it over to a secondary cavern, which had a stream of water flowing across one corner of its floor. She cleaned the glass and filled it half-way with fresh water, then added the contents of a small bottle labelled “shampoo” she took out of her saddle bags. Considering the complex reaction and magical sparks that resulted, it was probably not shampoo.

Bringing the filled glass back to the main cavern, she set it down on the control panel table and cast a spell on it, which instantly fizzled.

“Yeah,” she said out loud, “I didn’t think that would work.”

From her tail she removed a hexagonal gem, a shimmering red in color, and placed it next to the glass. This gem was the rarest of them all, for it didn’t even come from Equestria, but from the far-off home of the Ancients, made of a mysterious substance known as plastic. For the Ancients, plastic was a quite ordinary material, but when exposed to the magical fields of Equestria, its properties changed dramatically.

The gem was already wrapped in a net of thin copper wire. Rarity used her magic to partially unwind this net, and wrapped the newly-freed wire around the grooves of her horn. Bracing herself, Rarity raised a forehoof above the gem for a few seconds, and then brought it down sharply.

The gem responded by generating a powerful bolt of lightning, which traveled up the wire and into her horn. She shoved the hoof into her mouth to silence a cry of pain—genuine this time—as she converted the lightning into magic, which she poured into the glass of enchanted water. A beam of energy shot out of the water and through the southwestern wall of the cave.

Rarity looked down at the jet-black surface of the water. “Damsel to Whiskey Tango,” she said, directing her voice into the top of the narrow glass. “Damsel to Whiskey Tango. Over.”

A few seconds later, a distant voice emerged from the black liquid: “Whiskey Tango to Damsel. Go ahead. Over.”

Rarity recognized the voice as belonging to Waking Terror, a dragon-but-not-really that acted as Princess Celestia’s War Minister. In reality she was a reformed spirit of corruption, the twin of Nightmare Moon. “Situation is currently stable. Request presence of Light Mother before giving my full report,” said Rarity. “Over.”

“…Roger, Damsel. I’ll go get Her. But if She’s cranky it’s all on you. Stand by. Over.” There was the barely discernible sound of the dragon’s claws on stone walking away, followed by silence.

Rarity took this moment to take another look at the caskets containing her friends. This was when she noticed that Pinkie’s mane was straight, and her coat color was significantly darker than usual.

Rarity looked nervously upwards. But her mind’s eye was focused not on the cavern’s ceiling, but at a space far, far above it. She prayed that no one up there was currently looking down at her.

“Whiskey Tango to Damsel. Over.”

Rarity raced back to the enchanted water glass. “Damsel to Whiskey Tango. Go ahead. Over.”

“Damsel, Light Mother is present to receive your report. Over.”

“Whiskey Tango, Light Mother, I need to ask you something very important before giving my report. Over.”

There was an obvious pause caused by the dragon and alicorn looking at each other in Canterlot Castle. “Whiskey Tango to Damsel. Go ahead. Over,” was the message that was finally sent.

“Whiskey Tango, Light Mother, did either of you experience something inexplicable in the past few hours? Something involving a room with three sides? Over.”

“How did you know about that!” a panicked Waking Terror asked. “There’s no possible—”

He was interrupted by the voice of Princess Celestia, aka “Light Mother”. “Something like that may have happened, Damsel. Over.”

“Have you spoken of this affair to anyone? Even to each other? Over.” Rarity made it clear from her tone that a great deal rode on the answer to that question.

“Negative, Damsel,” answered the Princess. “Over.”

“Oh, thank the Creator!” Rarity exclaimed, before realizing that ponies’ creator was in fact the individual she was currently speaking with. “Err…thank You.” The “over” that followed was barely audible.

There was an audible sigh on the other end of the line. “If you insist on bringing that fact up, Damsel, the least you can do is use the plural. My sister had an equal part in the matter, after all. Over.”

“Of…of course, Crea…Light Mother. I must warn You that it is of vital importance that this matter never be discussed until we return to Equestria. Over.”

“Acknowledged. Any particular reason for this directive? Over.”

“Someone is being sought by a Higher Power,” Rarity explained. “We cannot allow this to happen. Over.”

“I detect no ‘higher power’,” said Waking Terror. “Over.”

“It’s none that you’re familiar with, Whiskey Tango,” said Rarity. “But care is essential. These Higher Powers can see and hear anything that They wish. And Their power cannot be stopped by anypony. Not even You. Over.”

There was a moment of silence. “Acknowledged, Damsel,” Celestia finally responded. “How do you know this information? We didn’t sense your presence at the time, only Purple Smart and Delta Juliet. Over.”

Rarity steeled herself for the inevitable reaction before speaking. “I was told by the Dragon Emperor himself. In a dream. He believes, and I concur, that…They cannot see into dreams. Over.”

“Acknowledged. And what has he done with that information?” a nervous Waking Terror asked.“Over.”

“That’s part of my full report, but suffice it to say that it appears to be reversible. Over.”

“I am now ready for your full report, Damsel,” said Celestia. “Over.”

Back in his casket, the Dragon Emperor worked to get his temper under control, fighting to keep from breaking out of his tight confines. And then he spent several minutes reviewing his mistakes. Finally, he returned to the dream:

DragonEmperor: status.exe

SUBJECT Fluttershy IS IN STANDBY MODE, REVIEWING MEMORIES.

DragonEmperor: dream.exe -observe

YOU ARE OBSERVING SUBJECT Fluttershy's CURRENT THOUGHTS.

Fluttershy IS CONTROLLING ALL CHARACTERS.

"Rainbow Dash": “That was pretty good, actually. I suppose with the low magic levels at high altitude, you’re actually better at this than I am.”

Fluttershy: ~~“Oh, it’s nothing special. You’re so much better at everything else.”~~ “Do you really think so?”

"Rainbow Dash": “Sure! I’m not so full of myself that I won’t tell you when you’re being the cool one, ‘Shy.”

"Rainbow Dash": “You know I’ve always looked after you. And it isn’t just because you’ve needed protecting. ~~You’re special to me, Fluttershy. And I think it’s finally time to let you…~~”

Fluttershy: ^C

THE MEMORY IS PAUSED.

Fluttershy: No, no, no! That wasn’t her, it was me! She’d never say anything like that. Let’s try this again.

?SYNTAX ERROR.

Fluttershy: memory.exe -i 87-43-15

THE MEMORY IS STARTING.

MEMORY.EXE: Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash are hovering in the upper atmosphere, with Equestria invisible underneath a blanket of clouds.

"Rainbow Dash": “Thanks for keeping me company, Fluttershy. I figure increasing my endurance will definitely get me into the Wonderbolts, and with how weak magic is up here, this will be perfect!”

Fluttershy: “That sounds like a great idea! How can I help?”

DragonEmperor: ...

DragonEmperor: sysquery -i "how do your dreams normally start?"

Fluttershy: Falling. They always start with me falling down towards the Everfree.

DragonEmperor: sysquery -i "Who gets hurt the most in your dreams, after yourself?"

Fluttershy: ~~My friends, especially Rainb~~ Daring Do.

YOU HAVE EXITED THE DREAM.

DreamEmperor: ...that gives me an idea. Maybe less control is more in this case...

?SYNTAX ERROR.

Author's Note

This is undoubtedly the most-experimental chapter in the whole story, and potentially the most bewildering.

The next chapter should explain everything you need to know before things really start moving.

The Story So Far

Well, here we are, the last story of the Thought Experiments series.

And I start off by losing half my readers. — Aw, don’t say that, Poodly! Maybe some of them don’t understand all the backstory stuff, but I’m sure they’ll keep reading.

It can’t be avoided, really. This is the last story, which means it has to resolve threads I’ve been setting up since “Javelin”.

So that means that the prologue you just read is a test: if you can follow everything that happened, you’re ready for Chapter 1.

However, I’ll be lenient. Here’s a cheat sheet (but not Pinkamena’s cheat sheet), which is nearly half the length of the prologue itself. (But far shorter than reading the ~~dozen~~ eleven prior stories it pulls from.)

(Which is why we’re putting it in a separate chapter of its own! So that we can explain everything you possibly need to know, and make it easy to read!)

This is an alternate universe set immediately after the Season 2 premiere, based on a number of assumptions I had about how Equestria worked, many of which were later proved to be false. I managed to sneak references to several Season 2 episodes in as I was writing.
Equestria is a world located in an obscure corner of the space settled by humanity in the distant future. It sits on a portal to a pocket universe, one where the different physical laws allow willpower to directly shape reality. The portal was closed long ago by the Time Lords, but over time it has become leaky, which has caused the laws of the two universes to mix. This mixture allows magic to exist, and allows the planet to orbit its star instead of vice versa after an act of Discord.
This world was originally settled by humans, who were unaware of its potentially unique nature. These humans created a barrier around the solar system to hide themselves from the greater universe, with the constellations as seen from Earth painted on the inside. Creating this barrier had the unexpected side effect of concentrating the magic trapped within. Infused with this magic, the humans became mages who created most of the current races of Equestria, but eventually the magic levels got so high that the humans all died. They are remembered in greatly distorted form as “The Ancients”.
The greatest of these creations were the alicorns, who named their world “Equestria”. The brief rule of the alicorns ended when nearly the entire race was wiped out in an act of suicidal madness by their king. The slaughter left only two alicorn survivors: the king’s two daughters, Celestia and Luna.
I capitalize the pronouns of beings treated as gods by their contemporaries. It’s only polite, after all.
Out of loneliness, the Sisters created the three pony races as inferior copies of themselves. This was 7,000 years ago.
Meanwhile, the entity that ruled the pocket universe sought to invade our universe, but needed a conduit. He infected the minds of both Celestia and Luna with spirits of His creation. Luna’s spirit succeeded in corrupting Her, turning Her into Nightmare Moon. She was banished before she could let her master into Equestria. Celestia’s spirit bided her time.
Jumping forward to a few decades before the start of Friendship Is Magic, Vinyl Scratch was born blind. She spent her fillyhood in Ponyville, living in the Golden Oaks library with Rarity as her best friend. Then she was committed to an insane asylum against her will. The personality of DJ PON-3 was developed in the asylum as a defense mechanism. On reaching adulthood, Vinyl was let out of the asylum and became not only an expert audio technician, but also Equestria’s first disk jockey, and all of this while still keeping her blindness (and multiple personalities) a secret. She moved in with Octavia in an apartment in Canterlot. I don’t know why I told you this last bit, as Octavia has no further role in events.
“Javelin”: Vinyl travels to Ponyville, the town of her fillyhood and home of her one-time best friend Rarity. She meets Rarity’s friends, and finds them strange. This isn’t helped by the fact that they have just returned from a bizarre jaunt across time and space, visiting a world called “Earth in the Year 2010” and coming back with a set of Ancient artifacts, ordinary objects that became magical when taken to Equestria. Twilight got a set of books written in the strange Ancient alphabet—not magical, but potentially devastating nonetheless due to knowledge that the Sisters wish to be kept secret. Applejack got a lasso of truth. Rarity got a plastic gem—we just found out what that gem does when smacked. Rainbow Dash got the titular javelin, a potential weapon of mass destruction, as one end will explosively neutralize magic, and the other end will explosively neutralize science. Fluttershy got the anime accessory Ryooki the Cabbit. And Pinkie Pie got a set of compact discs. Working together, Vinyl and Twilight reverse-engineer a CD player from the discs, and together create a company to manufacture both the players and more discs. Pinkie’s original discs contain the magical property of inducing the emotions of the performers in the listener.
“The Masterpiece”: After taking a peek inside Pinkie Pie’s nightmares, Luna becomes convinced that Pinkie is heading towards a mental breakdown. She confides Her fears to Twilight Sparkle. It is revealed that Pinkamena (the personality from “Party of One”) is in fact the pink pony’s original personality, and that the Sonic Rainboom somehow created Pinkie Pie. Ever since then, the reclusive Pinkamena has been living in the back of her own brain, allowing Pinkie Pie to stay in charge. The story ends with the other Bearers reaching out to become Pinkamena’s friends. Vinyl Scratch is not present for this.
“But Wait...There’s More”: The Sisters have been living Their lives bound by a set of prophecies in Their possession. They can foresee a moment three thousand years in the future, when magic levels have dropped to the point that it kills Them, but not Their creations. This will be the moment when mankind will break the barrier, and the ponies have to be prepared, or they will be exploited out of existence. Twilight is an important part of this plan, a pony raised to question Celestia’s judgement, unlike most other ponies, and thereby set a precedent for the future. This part of the plan didn’t work out very well, but to the Sisters’ surprise, Vinyl manages to more than make up the gap in independence, leading Luna to decide to break one of the prophecies, and allow the ponies to create their own future. This also means that humanity might intervene in pony history long before the predicted moment. Along the way we are introduced to Oars in Wells, a scheming unicorn “radio” producer that tries to use the Bearers to make himself popular, and Vinyl meets Pinkemena, although she doesn’t realize it at the time. During their confrontation with Oars, he dismisses the idea that Rarity could be a spy, categorizing her as a definite “damsel in distress”.
“Luna and the Tree Ponies”: A story set in Luna’s past, covering Her introduction to the Doctor, and how She and Her sister became powerful enough to create the ponies. This is also the moment when They were infected by Their spirits.
“The Trial of a Time Pony”: Celestia puts the Doctor on trial for his continual interference in pony history, which was done to prepare the ponies for a threat not covered by prophecy. Luna figures out that Celestia is being taken over by Her own spirit, a sister to Nightmare Moon. This is the end of the Doctor Who content in this series.
“Whopper of the Year”: Luna rounds up the Bearers and Vinyl, and takes them to confront Celestia. Vinyl is revealed to have some powers derived from her blindness, including the ability to “see” on a microscopic level. Luna exploits this ability to extract and imprison Celestia’s spirit, Waking Terror. Celestia then convinces Waking Terror to turn against the ruler of the pocket universe, and rewards her with an artificial dragon body. Waking Terror is second-best dragon, but she needs far more hugs than she is getting.
“[Redacted]”: A tiny outcast dragon discovers the portal to the pocket universe. After killing its ruler and absorbing as much of its power as he could hold, he emerges back in Equestria as a controller of minds. From here he becomes the Dragon Emperor and sets out to conquer Equestria, starting from Stalliongrad. Luna sets out at the head of an army to face him, but almost immediately disappears. Vinyl volunteers to become a spy for the Princesses. Just then, a human-constructed robot appears, bargaining with both Celestia and the Dragon Emperor for an extremely-lucrative trade: the exchange of ordinary objects between the two sides of the barrier, objects which would become powerful artifacts after the exchange. The long-term effect of this practice would almost certainly be disastrous to worlds on both sides of the barrier. Meanwhile, the Emperor has not been doing too well in the war, so he sneaks into Canterlot, allies with Oars in Wells, and ambushes Celestia and Twilight, trapping them in a nightmare of his creation, all so that he can make a deal with the robot. Vinyl uses both friendship and her special power to save the dreamers without risking going into the dream herself. The nightmare backfires on the Emperor, driving him permanently insane, but nobody realizes that this was actually the Emperor. Meanwhile, it turns out that the ever-resourceful Oars has planned for this possibility…
“The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville”: Admitting defeat, the Dragon Emperor invites the Bearers “and one guest” to travel to his headquarters to draft the terms of his surrender. Celestia knows this is a trap, but there are many ponies still in danger, including Her missing sister, so She agrees. But the guest will not be the obvious choice of Spike (who can be mind-controlled), but instead Vinyl Scratch (who is way too stubborn to be controlled by anyone). The Bearers are able to enter the Emperor’s portal, and are instantly knocked out. Vinyl is blocked, because the portal’s magic is visual in nature. Vinyl improvises by creating a spell based on one of Pinkie Pie’s CDs, containing a song that had emotional resonance with Twilight Sparkle. Vinyl enters the portal, and is also knocked out. She wakes up inside Twilight Sparkle’s dream, her memories overwritten to fit her assigned role in that dream. Over the course of this dream, Vinyl figures out who she is, she once again meets Pinkamena, and the dream character of Spike becomes self-aware (making him Best Dragon for sheer tenacity). On escaping Twilight’s dream, Vinyl and Twilight now know the nature of the Dragon Emperor’s trap: everypony has become a pawn in everypony else’s dreams, dreams that are being manipulated to kill them, which will kill them in real life. A dream can only be ended by making the dreamer self-aware, or by waking them up, and these aware ponies are then aware in the next dream they enter. And Vinyl can use her CDs to choose which dream to enter. Oh, and this story establishes the convention that colored text represents the thoughts of the characters, which cannot be detected by the dreamer, and presumably the Dragon Emperor.
“Masquerade”: Vinyl and Twilight enter Pinkie Pie’s dream, and find themselves in the waking world as Princess Celestia and one of her advisors, Pr. Stein. They are confronted by Waking Terror, who becomes possessed by the Dragon Emperor and tries to kill all three of them. Vinyl-as-Celestia then breaks through into an even deeper level of reality, a world where Equestria is the setting of a role-playing game played by juvenile Ancients. That thread will not be followed up in this series.
“Accelerando”: Vinyl, Twilight and Pinkie enter Rainbow Dash’s dream. Spike is summoned back into existence. Pinkamena becomes a major part of ending the dream, so Vinyl finally learns who she is. Rainbow’s family is revealed to be extremely controlling, which is why she is slumming as a weather pony instead of the bandleader role that was picked for her. Fluttershy is revealed to have a frankly psychotic mother, who has a serious prejudice against non-pegasi. Rarity is shocked by the dream’s horrible fashions into not just waking up from Rainbow Dash’s dream, but from the whole cycle of dreams altogether. It helps that she is a lucid dreamer. And Applejack achieves self-awareness, all by herself! (And absolutely not because of what happened when the author tried to write her dream.)
“The Mistress of Dreams”: The Dream Emperor gives Rarity permission to create a lucid dream to try and prepare the other dreamers for what will happen after the last dream, so long as she succeeds in killing one of them. What she does instead is separate Pinkie Pie from Pinkamena, and then traps Pinkie Pie in a video game that will keep her from helping the others until it is too late. She then trains Vinyl in using music to shape dreams, and helps Twilight and Spike to find a way to share magic, since Dream Spike is technically Twilight’s familiar. The only pony who dies in the end is Rarity, and since she was lucid dreaming, that will only eject her from the dream cycle again instead of killing her for real. Pinkie Pie’s mysterious backstory is finally revealed: She’s a rogue goddess known as The Judge who has gone a little nuts as a result of being locked up in Limbo for all eternity with nothing but Earth cartoons to watch. Rainbow Dash’s Rainboom happened right on top of Pinkamena, and as result it knocked her into Limbo. The Judge befriended Pinkamena and helped her return home, and at the last second Pinkamena decided to bring her new friend along with her. When her abusive father made her life too difficult to bear (see “The Masterpiece”), Pinkamena surrendered her body more or less permanently to Pinkie Pie, who escaped to Ponyville and later became the Bearer of the Element of Laughter. Pinkie has been carefully controlling the use of Her powers, although this isn’t helped by the fact that She bores easily. If the fact that She escaped Limbo ever became known to Her jealous race of gods, the consequences would include the deletion of Equestria from history.
Currently, the only individuals aware of Pinkie Pie’s true nature are Rainbow Dash (because She told her), Rarity and the Dragon Emperor (because they were watching the dream), and Waking Terror and Celestia (who as you read in the Prologue barely know anything).

…And that should be everything.

Author's Note

From this point, I will be publishing one chapter a week until the story is done.

Some chapters are split into two parts. When that happens, I'll post both half-chapters on the same day.

Chapter 1B

My World Is Empty Without You

Chapter 1B

“All right!” Angel replied, rubbing his forepaws together with wicked glee. “Tell me all the grisly details.”

Fluttershy sighed. “Well, this has been building up for a long time. Daring has experienced a lot of bad things, and those experiences have made her a pony that no longer remembers what’s important any more. The readers deserve to have a more positive main character. So this story will replace her with somepony who can carry the series forward.”

She started pacing around the living room as she invented the particulars of her latest novel. “The point of view character can’t be Daring, so I think it should be…”

My world is empty without you, babe…
My world is empty without you, babe…

“…Vinyl Scratch.”

“Who?” Angel asked in bewilderment.

Another creature poked up its head at this point, a fuzzy brown creature looking like a cross between a rabbit and a cat, with a red gem permanently embedded in its forehead. “You know…Rarity’s friend! The one who plays the loud music all the time.” This was Ryooki, Fluttershy’s Gift of the Ancients. The creature seemed to have the intelligence of a foal—and the stomach capacity of the Maelstrom—but with a very limited vocabulary. Originally, Fluttershy took its self-identification sound to be “Rooky”, but over time she refined it to “Ryooki”, or perhaps “Ryo-Ohki”. In Fluttershy’s dreams, Ryooki possessed the voice of a pre-teen girl on a permanent sugar high.

“Why’d you pick her?” Angel asked with a tone of suspicion. “She never showed up in any of your earlier books.”

Fluttershy shrugged. “She just felt right. Daring Do is on a mission that needs a DJ. There are a bunch of other ponies there, including the one that will betray her, Ra…Ra…” She put a hoof to her mouth in confusion.

“What’s wrong, does the cabbit have your tongue?” Ryooki joked.

“She would have been the obvious choice considering the setting,” Fluttershy mused. “But my heart is telling me no, so I’ll pick the traitor later.”

“A traitor?” Angel reflected. “Good. Good…”

“The story is set in the one location that Daring Do has never faced, a place more treacherous than any jungle or booby-trapped tomb. A place called…Canterlot.”

With a rush, the protestor was subdued by the special police.

The slip of paper fluttered to the ground.

Vinyl Scratch turned her head about rapidly, taking in her very crowded surroundings. There were dozens, if not hundreds of other ponies packed around her, all in an agitated state.

Alright, I’m still blind, she thought. Nice of Fluttershy to remember that.

Somepony was being dragged away by a group of other ponies. Vinyl considered following them, but her ears soon told her that there were now too many bystanders in the way for her to possibly be able to tell what was going on.

“Ponies of Equestria!” a voice boomed around her. “Your chancellor regrets to inform you that Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are still missing.” There was a groan from all around the square.

I’m in Canterlot, Vinyl realized, as she matched the acoustics of the crowd sounds to her meticulous memories. The courtyard in front of the palace. In fact...

“But do not worry,” the magically-enhanced voice of the Chancellor continued, “Even as I speak, the instrument of their liberation and our salvation is fast approaching. A weapon against the dragons even more powerful than the Elements of Harmony.”

Two revelations hit Vinyl at once. First, the voice of the chancellor did not belong to Professor Stein, Princess Celestia’s long-time confidant, but instead was Oars in Wells, the etheric producer. There was something else important about Mr. Wells besides his occupation, but for the life of her, Vinyl couldn’t recall what it was.

The second revelation was that Vinyl was not just standing in the palace courtyard, but in fact in the exact same spot from which she had observed the anti-dragon mob on the night before war was declared. It had been her last significant moment as a civilian before she joined the Princesses’ secret service, or “Morale Corps”, as it was code-named.

A very short-lived commission: Less than a week later, she and the Bearers walked willingly into the Dragon Emperor’s trap, starting this whole confusing period of spending time in the dreams of each of her friends.

How could Fluttershy know I was in this exact spot? she idly asked herself. Wasn’t she returning with the other Bearers from one of their numerous secret missions at that time?

“Vinyl, there you are!” Twilight Sparkle said as she came up beside her. “We’ve figured out why we’re here!”

This wasn’t really Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy knew—she would never subject any of her friends to the excruciating experience of being a character in one of her books. Rather, this was a character with Twilight’s personality, but a different name and a different past. This was in fact the seventh time she had done this to Twilight Sparkle in the Daring Do books. She didn’t usually bother to correct the name in her manuscripts until the final draft, so that she might more easily keep the characterizations straight.

The bespectacled mare shook her head briefly to free it of frivolous thoughts, then turned to follow the distinctive sound of the unicorn’s hoofsteps out of the plaza.

“Return to this square at sunrise tomorrow, ponies, to witness the start of a new chapter in Equestrian history!”

The crowd roared its approval.

Vinyl’s first step flipped the slip of paper over, causing her sensitive frog to detect the presence of words indented into the paper. Using her magic, she passed the paper over her lips to reveal its nonsensical text: The persimmons are no longer in season.

The words seared themselves into Vinyl on the level of a childhood memory, meaningless but profound in some way, and she could abruptly taste persimmon, the earthy half-sweet fruit filling her mouth for just a flash, before it was gone and she was following Twilight, her heart racing and hooves shaking just enough for her to notice.

* * *

Vinyl Scratch had joined the group.

Pinkie Pie…no…Pinkamena was pacing around, gazing deeply into the eyes of every pony as they passed. This had the effect of causing everypony to steer clear of the three ponies and one dragon.

“Wait a second, where’s Rai…” Vinyl started to say, before getting a hoof in her mouth courtesy of the unicorn.

“Ask not ‘is where’; that’s why we’re here,” Pinkamena whispered. Oddly, she mis-pronounced "where" as "weir".

“So, are we…?” Vinyl asked, gesturing up the heavens with one hoof.

“No!” the pink pony hissed. “No.” She looked at first one bystander, then whipped her head around to another. “There!” she cried out. She then flipped around to face the opposite direction. “No...there!” Her gaze next went to a passing pegasus. “SHE’S EVERYWHERE!”

Applejack looked about her helplessly. “I really don’t know how the rules of this game work, gals,” she told them.

Twilight Sparkle sighed. “The royal guard just came through here with a captive.” Her eyes glanced upward. “A captive we’re supposed to rescue: Daring Do.”

Vinyl tilted her head. “Isn’t she…?” …Fictional? She stopped and sighed. “No, of course not.”

“And she gave the sign,” the other unicorn added, shaking her hoof in a particular way.

So that means that Rainbow Dash is in Daring Do’s head, thought Vinyl.

Vinyl sat down hard.

And Daring Do is apparently a re-colored version of Rainbow Dash. I’ve never heard of any pony beside those two to have so many shades in their mane.

Wait, is Fluttershy A. K. Yearling?

Vinyl mentally reviewed the physical descriptions of the secondary characters in the novels, novels that had been read to her by her uncle. She had never bothered to pay attention to these parts earlier, but they were clear to her now—perhaps a sort of bleed-through from the dreamer. One thing became abundantly obvious: those descriptions matched up to the appearances of her other friends, appearances that of course she only had now because she had been in dreams where she had been granted the power of sight.

What was also revealed by this train of thought was the fact that the Daring Do series never included a certain white-coated DJ, blind or sighted.

“Alright,” she said, getting up. “I’m clearly out of my depth here, so I’m going to take my lead from the rest of you. I’m...Vinyl Scratch, Canterlot’s local disk jockey.”

The pause was to see if Fluttershy was going to give her another name. She felt relieved that she was being allowed her autonomy...for now.

Then, a gentle feeling of prodding came over her, like Fluttershy was standing right there, a wing over Vinyl’s back, and she could feel the words being provided to her, but not forced to say, as if Fluttershy wanted to make sure that the character’s emotions guided the words to sound right in their mouth.

“I’m just here to get you where you need to go. After all, Daring only paid for a guide.”

Vinyl paused to consider what just happened to her. Compared to some of her other dreamers, Fluttershy by far had the most gentle touch.

Twilight broke the gathering silence by bumping Applejack in the ribs.

“Oh...right,” she said, and pulled out her wartime I.D. “This here says that I’m Cricket Fly.”

“Daring’s most valued assistant,” added the baby dragon.

“I’m Daring’s other, usually-forgotten assistant, Darai,” Pinkamena said dully.

A sort of unspoken conversation took place between Vinyl and Pinkamena:

Isn’t that the pony raised by zebras?

Yes.

And are you any good at rhyming?

Not to save my life.

Then this ought to be good.

What do you mean?

Vinyl heard Darai’s hoof lightly tap and then slowly scratch on the pavement, a signal that she was undergoing an inner struggle. A moment later, the earth pony added another, not entirely voluntary, sentence to her statement.

“Though our adventures have carried us quite distant, I’ve followed her both low and high.”

...Somepony just kill me now.

“I am Daring’s frequent benefactor, Brass Quill,” said Twilight Sparkle. “And this is Spike.”

“I didn’t have anything better to do today,” the dragon drawled.

And then Spike flinched, and added a few words. “And who knows,” he said with a rictus-grin. “Maybe I’ll learn a few things along the way.”

“So, where is Daring Do?” Vinyl asked.

* * *

Rainbow Dash awoke from nothingness to find herself immobilized. She was lying face down on a nearly vertical slab, her hooves and wings stretched taut by chained manacles. She heard a loud “SNAP!” right next to her right ear. With some difficulty, she turned her head to see a pegasus in a black robe and facemask, holding a whip. “Who are you? What’s going on?” she asked.

The whip snapped again, striking her right between the shoulder blades. She bit down the instinct to scream. “What do you want?” she demanded. “I’m not going to—AAH!”

The cry was in response to another lash, this one on her lower back.

Rainbow gritted her teeth. “I’m...not going to tell you anything!”

An earth pony emerged from the shadows, wielding a white-hot poker in one hoof.

“Wha...what are you going to do with that thing?” Rainbow asked fearfully.

The rod was applied to a rear hoof, causing Rainbow to scream out in agony.

“You’re...you’re not doing this right!” she tried to cry out, but her words came out in a mere whisper. “You’re supposed to tell me what you want to know—AAH!—and...and I’m supposed say something clever and then—AAAAAGGH!—and then you hurt me.”

The rod was applied to her other rear hoof. This nearly caused her to pass out.

Why? She thought tearfully. Why are they doing this to me?

And that’s when the pegasus with the clamp emerged from the shadows to begin tearing out her feathers.

Chapter 2A

My World Is Empty Without You

Chapter 2A

“I really didn’t think you had it in you,” Angel said with a vicious grin as he stood on the back of Fluttershy’s chair and read the pages she was writing.

Fluttershy arched an eyebrow and turned around in her seat. “You… do realize I’ve written over two dozen full length novels, right Angel? I know you don’t read them, but I’ve written plenty of violence before.”

“Sure, sure,” Angel rolled his eyes, grin turning into a smirk. “But torture? Ripping the feathers out of her wings, burning her hooves? That’s nasty! Not very… kind of you.”

Fluttershy turned away from her typewriter, and gave Angel her full attention as she also took note of Ryooki, paws over her mouth in abject horror.

“R… R… Ripping out her feathers?!” Ryooki whimpered.

“Ryooki… I understand what you both mean. It seems like too much, but when writing fiction, especially adventure fiction for young adult—”

“Young?!” Ryooki shrieked, as Fluttershy’s ears pinned back briefly.

“Yes…” Fluttershy nodded slowly. “I have fans who are only eight years old, but the majority of my readers fall in the twelve to twenty demographic, which… to be fair is a very lucrative market.”

“But… but… you’re ripping feathers out!” Ryooki cried.

“And sometimes, when we are young, we need to know that bad people exist out there,” Fluttershy explained calmly. “And that pain can happen. It’s never portrayed as justified, I never show Daring Do causing pain to others without regretting it, or it being a difficult decision. The heroes don’t do evil.”

“Who says it’s evil?” Angel asked with a grin. “It’s the rule of the forest. Might makes right. If you can hurt the people you don’t like, you do it. You win.”

Fluttershy leveled a very gentle glare at Angel.

“That is precisely not the reason why I include violence and suffering in my books. Angel, in the past you’ve told me that if I ever had foals, they’d be insufferable, because they’d think the world was full of wonderful happy things, and know nothing of the bad parts, right?”

“Uh, sure,” Angel said with wide eyes, Fluttershy assuming that he was surprised she remembered it.

“Well if my foals read books where sometimes really bad things happened, but there was always a way to get through it, and it was almost always a bad person who went out of their way to cause that pain, then do you think they’d understand the world is more complex than that?”

Angel nodded slowly.

“So that’s my point,” Fluttershy said as she stood and went to the kitchen. “In this adventure, with a truly horrible pony in charge doing truly horrible things, it makes sense that Daring Do is a threat to them. They have to warn her off, disincentivize her. Maybe… maybe even scare her a little.”

She came back with three bottles of apple cider tucked under her wings, passing them out before sitting.

“If I didn’t show that pain, if I didn’t show bad ponies, then it wouldn’t be honest,” she said as she held up the apple cider bottle, mentally reminiscent of Applejack.

“Bad is bad!” Ryooki said, frowning as she uncorked her bottle. “You don’t have to read about… about a hot poker in the bottom of a hoof!”

“Pansy,” Angel snickered.

“Don’t be mean,” Fluttershy admonished before taking a sip of the cider and looking to Ryooki. “We have to learn what bad is somehow though, don’t we Ryooki?”

“Bad things are bad, hurting others is bad, Angel is just a bad rabbit for thinking they’re not,” Ryooki retorted.

“Oh no,” Angel said flatly. “I’m a bad rabbit. Whatsoever shall I do.”

As Angel guzzled his cider, Fluttershy shook her head.

“I um… Oh, I know how I can explain this,” Fluttershy finally said, gesturing to Ryooki. “Is there a situation where it’s ok to hit someone, Ryooki?”

“Sure,” Ryooki said reluctantly. “If they’re doing something really bad, or if they’re about to hurt themselves…”

Fluttershy nodded slowly. “So hitting someone isn’t the problem. The problem is hitting someone for the wrong reasons.”

Ryooki bit her lip and sighed. “Yeah… I suppose so, but we figure that stuff out on our own!”

“Not always,” Fluttershy says quickly. “Like… is there any situation where it’s ok to rip feathers out of a pegasi’s wing?”

“No!”

“There you go,” Fluttershy finally relaxed a little in her chair. “So we have to learn what reasons are okay, what motivates evil and what good ponies do in the worst situations. This is how self-defense is justified, and how we cannot allow torture by anyone, even if there is supposedly a good reason.”

“Untrue!” Angel said gleefully. “There are good situations where torture is involved!”

Fluttershy leveled a much less gentle glare at the bunny.

“That’s a difference of morals. I don’t believe it is ever acceptable. You do. You’re wrong, but I don’t think I can change your opinion on this. It’s philosophical.”

“What a copout,” Angel reported with a smirk, before guzzling the rest of his drink and tossing the bottle on the floor before making air-quotes with his paws. “‘It’s philosophical.’ No it’s not. It’s practical.”

“Practical because you think it’s a tool,” Fluttershy sighed, sitting back in her chair and mentally settling in for the long haul. “But study after study shows that every instance of torture being used historically not only fails to provide better information than passive spying, but it runs into the same ethical problems as capital punishment. Every failure of the system is magnified exponentially… Wow I really sound like Twilight,” she chuckled.

“You’re talking about torture and killing people,” Ryooki said angrily. “Like it’s…. It’s… just a tool! With pros and cons and… that’s horrible!”

Fluttershy looked at Ryooki, as she rolled her bottle between her hooves.

“It… The only way I can talk to Angel, where he could conceivably come to agree with me, is by starting out sort of close to him, Ryooki. I have to use his terms, and treat it like it is a tool. With pros and cons. Because there are pros! I know you don’t want there to be, and I don’t want there to be an… an ‘upside’ to torture,” she said distastefully. “But if you have absolute certainty that you have the right creature, and you have a limited amount of time, and the amount of harm done by retaining that information is great enough, a case could be made for the use of torture if your culture doesn’t ban it outright. It’s barbaric, but it existed for millennia for a reason.”

“That doesn’t mean that it has to be in your story,” Ryooki grumbled, looking away.

“No, but this is all about the inspiration for Daring Do, isn’t it?” Angel asked with a sinister smile. “Get in some fictional jabs at your dear friend, Rainbow Dash. What, did she turn down a date or something?”

“Oh hah-hah,” Fluttershy said angrily as her cheeks turned red. “Make fun of Fluttershy because she’s no good at romance. But no, not even a little. Rainbow Dash has been a jerk lately, and not… not very kind to me, but Daring Do and Rainbow Dash have been very different ponies for a very long time. But settle down you two, I need to figure this out.”

Chapter 2B

My World Is Empty Without You

Chapter 2B

In a cell deep underground, a door opened and a tan-colored pegasus with a monochrome mane was unceremoniously tossed onto a small bed before the door was slammed behind her.

She still didn’t know what was going on. Why would they spend hours doing...those things to her, and then heal her of all her injuries? Sure, she was missing all her primary feathers, but the rest of it seemed so...pointless.

Rainbow Dash was surprised for a moment at how very nice the bed was. Until she remembered who was really in charge here.

The same somepony who basically just tortured her for fun.

Rainbow decided that Fluttershy was already being possessed by the Dragon Emperor. It was the only conclusion that made any sense.

Daring Do got up from her cot, and looked around.

The wall outside the bars of her prison was gone. Gone and yet not gone: Guards walked by acting like the open space was a wall, and steadfastly refused to look at it.

The fourth wall of a theater was being quite literally presented before her.

The captive reached up to make sure her pith helmet was still in place and set at a cocky angle. It was.

Rainbow Dash had noticed the changes to her pelt and mane colors. She knew she wasn’t playing herself. And she knew the pony she was playing was named Daring Do. She knew that not from her captors—who so far had not told her anything—but from staring at the book covers when she was at Twilight’s and the egghead was reading her “favorite adventure series”. But that was all that Rainbow knew about Daring Do, because Rainbow was “too kewl for skool.”

* * *

Twilight Sparkle gripped her head. “It hurts!”

“What does?” Vinyl asked.

“Somepony, somewhere, is abusing the Laws of Spelling!”

Fluttershy leaned back in her chair and sighed, staring at a scattered array of papers across the table.

"Can the group run without the spy as the foil?" She asked Angel, turning to look at him and Ryooki the Cabbit, currently playing tug of war with a particularly large carrot. "I really was planning on having the obvious but wrong mole. Somepony well spoken, suave, but…I can't think of a character that fits right now."

“Well, you could just have one of us be the spy, I’m super suave!” Ryooki said with a grin, losing the carrot and immediately becoming dejected. “Aw…”

Fluttershy tossed them both a few more carrots, turning back to the sheet of paper inside the typewriter, ink still shimmering slightly in the light as it dried.

“Well, I suppose I could make it work still, I just need to make the rest of the team seem more suspicious to Daring. A few small changes, maybe a certain zebra-raised pony showing up where she isn’t supposed to…”

Nothing was happening.

Either somepony else was being the hero, or else Daring Do was the hero.

Daring Do was locked in prison.

Rainbow Dash might not be an avid reader, but she was quite fond of etheric dramas.

I am the hero...AWESOME! she thought.

So now what?

Daring Do looked once more around the confines of her cell. “Hello!” she cried out. “Is anypony there?”

“I am here,” came a faint voice from the other side of the wall behind Daring.

Daring put her ear up against the wall. “Who are you?”

“You know...I’m not really sure anymore. Was I somepony important? Maybe…”

Daring wasn’t in the mood for riddles. “Do you know what you’re in here for?”

There was a loud pause.

Daring pounded on the wall. “You’re not asleep, are you?”

“Huh? Oh, sorry, I fell asleep. I was dreaming about my cutie mark. It was a nice mark...I think?”

Daring’s blood ran cold. The Staff!

Rainbow’s eyes darted around. I didn’t think that!

“What do you mean…’was’?” she demanded.

“It was a nice...sort of...swirly thing...with a big star on the bottom,” the unseen mare said dreamily. “Went well with the stripe in my mane.”

“Look, did losing your cutie mark have anything to do with this forked staff?” Daring asked.

Yeah, that’s right, Rainbow thought glumly to herself. Daring asked. As in not me.

“Yeah, that’s the one!” the other pony said, her voice animated for once. “It really hurt!”

Daring sunk her head into her hooves. “What have I done!”

Hoofsteps approached, slowly. A shape in the dark stopped just out of view and the pony, clearly a unicorn, watched Daring for a moment.

“You did what you’ve always done, Daring Do,” the mare said, voice cold but hauntingly familiar in its inflection. “You took a valuable relic, and you brought it to those who know how to use it best. That is…really, all. No adventure this time, no heroics. Just a job already done. By the way, we got everything we want out of you, so you’re free to go.”

“What?!” exclaimed Daring, racing for the bars. “Just like that? What’s to keep me from telling the press everything that happened to me. Once I’m free…”

The shrouded unicorn laughed coldly, cutting Daring off. “Free? Do you think you will be released to freedom, Daring Do? On the contrary, you are being released to your doom. Before the sun rises tomorrow, you will be cut down...by one of your own friends.” The voice faded into the distance. “And with you gone, there will be nothing to stop the full demonstration of the Staff of Sameness.”

With a click, and the grinding of stone, the back wall slid aside to reveal the storm sewers of Canterlot, but as Daring turned to leave there was another sound. A shuffling.

“Are you…are you going to leave now?” the soft voice from the adjacent cell asked, seeming to already know the answer.

Rainbow Dash scowled. Low blow on the ‘secret traitor’ business, she thought to herself.

Daring began to feel along the various stones on the wall.

Now the least you can do for me, Fluttershy, is...ha! I knew it!

With a click, one of the stones depressed, causing a section of wall to slide away. The small chamber on the other side didn’t even have a nice bed! Daring reached out a hoof to the blinking unicorn on the other side.

“Come with me if you want to live,” she said suavely.

Rainbow inwardly beamed. I don’t care that I didn’t come up with that line, she thought. I’m still totally adding it to my vocabulary.

The unicorn took her hoof, and was pulled into the storm sewer, finally free from the small room as she blinked owlishly up at Daring.

“Daring Do, at your service,” she said with a mock bow.

“Mauve Shadow. Th…Thanks. I didn’t…actually think you’d save me,” the mare admitted.

She had a pale lilac coat, with turquoise streaks in her purple mane, and deep blue eyes that seemed to rarely focus on anything in particular.

In Rainbow’s eyes, this boiled down to: purple coat, darker purple mane with a highlight that was cut in front with a ruler. Oh yeah, and she used to have a star in her cutie mark. You do know that there are more unicorns in existence than just Twilight Sparkle, right Fluttershy? she thought to herself.

But as they made their way through the sewers, and finally ascended onto a less busy street, the unicorn seemed empty, staring around but not really taking in anything she saw. It was only in the sunlight that Daring could see the greyness in the mare’s coat, and the two black bars that took the place of her cutie mark.

“Just wait until you meet my friends!” Daring exclaimed, trying to be extra-happy to lift the ex-prisoner’s spirits. “We’ll find that staff…no, that’s stupid. The bad guy will hold on to it until the very moment he uses it—it’s what I would do in his place.”

“You could use the Cruciform…” Mauve said in a low voice, looking down at a hoof that was poking at the pavement.

“What’s the Cruciform?” Daring asked.

“Well you know how the Staff of Sameness was created by Mage Meadowbrook in order to tame dangerous creatures? Well Starswirl the Bearded was suspicious that it might be used for evil purposes, so he created the Cruciform of Diversity to restore the differences that the Staff removed from its victims. My team already had the Cruciform, so that’s why we hired you to find the Staff.” Her eyes clouded for a moment. “Wait…I had a team?”

Rainbow Dash recognized the cue, and mentally stepped back as the next line was supplied to her.

“You were the one who hired me,” Daring said with some degree of surprise. “Your ego was so enormous it covered you like a cloak—no wonder I didn’t recognize you as you are now. At the time, I waved off the warning signals because I was so eager to find one of the Wards of the Pillars.”

“Do you think Daring Do and the Ward of the Pillar would make a better title for the book?” Fluttershy asked her companions.

Angel leveled a cold gaze. “Fluttershy, nothing is ever going to beat Daring Do and the Instrument of Her Own Destruction.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

Rainbow took control once more to add her own commentary.

“Wow, your own team betrayed you. Were you really that obnoxious, or did you volunteer yourself as a guinea pig?”

Mauve Shadow racked her brain, then sighed in resignation. “I don’t think I’ll ever know now. I apologize for whatever awful plan I’ve set in motion. The least I can do is make up for it. I remember where the Cruciform is being held: the Canterlot University archives. That’s one of the few clear memories I still have left.”

“And where are the archives?” Daring asked eagerly.

“Ah. That’s one of the things I don’t remember that well. Or at all.”

Daring sighed in exasperation.

* * *

“...And that’s how we’ll rescue Daring Do!” Twilight Sparkle concluded. “It’s the perfect plan!”

“Hi, girls,” Daring said casually as she walked up to the others.

“Wow, Tw...Miss Quill, your plan is so amazing that it worked without us having to do anything!” Spike exclaimed.

“Who's the copycat pony?” Pinkamena mumbled, half-laying on a crate as she pointed at the mare following Daring. “Yeah, I’m saying you’re a phony,” she added under her breath.

“Huh?” the unicorn mare mumbled, looking around as though she’d just been woken up. “Copywhatnow?”

Twilight did a double take. “Do I know you?”

“This is Mauve Shadow,” Daring explained. “I busted her out of prison with me.” She looked carefully around the group. “Now please, please tell me that there’s one more pony hiding behind a crate or something, some pony near and dear to Dar...to me. The Shrimp.”

“The Shrimp?” Applejack asked.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “That’s the other pony’s sidekick. We don’t talk about him.”

“So…no explosives?”

The others all shook their heads in the negative.

With a sigh, she closed her eyes and pointed at her benefactor. “Brass Quill.”

This was a trick that Vinyl had taught the others after the first dream. If you thought of a pony in disguise, the dream provided the name of the disguise.

“Yes?”

“If Spike went totally evil, you could just blow him up with magic, right?”

Spike looked back and forth between Twilight and Daring Do. “Look, this isn’t one of those ‘pony supremacist’ scenarios, is it? Because I’m just a poor defenseless baby dragon.” And his eyes expanded to the size of dinner plates.

“Ok, that…That can’t be normal, right? Does he have some kind of deformity?” Mauve mumbled from behind Daring.

“Dragons have acute control over their size,” Twilight lectured, “extending even to control over...well, I wouldn’t remember the rest of that. I must have heard it in a lecture by some famous academic. Can we get back to the need to blow individuals up?”

“In case they go totally evil, or somethin’ like that,” AJ said, arching an eyebrow and leaning on a backpack full of Daring’s gear.

“Look, is there an all-night diner somewhere around here?” asked Daring. “Because I’ve got quite a story to tell!”

And like a book flipping open to the perfect page, Vinyl had one in mind. Quiet, well-traveled but not popular with tourists, and most importantly it was directly in between two possible locations for the Cruciform that she had in mind.

Wait, what’s the ‘Cruciform’? Vinyl thought to herself.

“Wait, how would Vinyl know about the Cruciform yet?” Angel asked Fluttershy.

“Oops, right.”

Fluttershy picked up the jar of correction fluid between her feathers, and took out the last part of the last sentence that she had typed.

And suddenly Vinyl had no idea why she was confused, which was even more confusing.

Chapter 2C

It was a nondescript diner, far longer than it was wide, with powder blue walls and floor accents. The lights were, uncharacteristically, the color of sunlight.

Just like all the lighting has been, Rainbow thought.

The outer wall was missing, and nopony walked on the sidewalk outside it. Giving Director Fluttershy the perfect view of its contents from a safe distance away.

Rainbow decided to leave the bit about the torture out of her explanation, other than to show off her non-functioning wings.

“It’s like this,” Daring began. “There’s a magical artifact called the Staff of Sameness. It was designed to make crazy animals less crazy. I was hired to retrieve it for the Equestrian government. But too late I found out that it could be changed into something else: a way to remove the cutie marks from 99% of all ponies in Equestria with a single blast.”

Twilight was flabbergasted. “What would that even do? Would we even be ponies after something like that?”

“Oh, we’d be ponies, but we’d all be the same, dropped to the same level in everything. No earth pony would be stronger than the weakest earth pony before the Staff was used on them. No pegasus could fly faster or higher than the worst pegasus. And so on.”

“I was the pony in charge,” Mauve admitted. “The one who made the conversion. We built a magic-proof bunker, deep underground. A group of unicorns hoof-picked by Oars in Wells would go in there, while a dupe disguised as Oars would use the Staff. That group would then emerge as the absolute rulers of the planet.”

“What about the Princesses?” asked Pinkamena.

“The Staff would affect them as well.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Vinyl interjected. “What would happen to the sun, moon and stars? Wouldn’t that spell the end of the world right there?”

“No, because seven hundred years ago, Princess Celestia commissioned the creation of the Orrery,” Twilight explained. “It’s an artifact that can take over for Celestia and Luna’s roles if they were ever incapacitated. It does require a large amount of unicorn magic to operate.”

“Where did you hear that from?” Vinyl asked incredulously.

“Well it’s a state secret, but the Bearers…I mean, that is to say…I-seduced-Twilight-Sparkle.” Her cheeks turned bright red as she covered her mouth with her hooves.

Spike struck his forehead with a claw with a resounding ‘slap!’

Daring meanwhile let out a raucous laugh.

The others just stared incredulously at Twilight.

With a frown, Fluttershy got out her bottle of correcting fluid.

“Leave it in! Leave it in!” Angel exclaimed between bursts of laughter.

With a roll of her eyes, Fluttershy replaced the bottle.

Applejack took the moment of everypony’s recovery to step forward and confront Mauve. “So, you’re admitting you’re the villain. Why should we believe a word you say? Why shouldn’t we tie you up right now?”

“You probably should!” Mauve exclaimed. “There’s this big…hole…in my head that keeps me from explaining myself! On one side, I’m this cold-blooded monster who wants to enslave every single pony, including the Princesses! And on the other, I’m…this! The only victim so far of the Staff of Sameness.”

Daring put a comforting hoof around Mauve’s shoulders. “I think she did it to herself,” she told the others. “I think, like me, she was given a goal so fascinating that she never stopped to see the consequences until it was too late. I think she fought back, tried to destroy the Staff, and that caused it to accidentally go off on her and only her. In any case, I think she genuinely wants to fix this. What do you think, Cricket?”

Applejack blinked when everypony suddenly looked her way. “Oh, right. Well, if things work the same way here as they do…back home…then I’d say she’s telling the truth.”

“Not necessarily,” added Vinyl, her voice distant.

Well I suppose it was inevitable that the author would eventually get around to feeding me with lines, Vinyl mused, inwardly seething.

“As a one-time member of the Equestrian Secret Service, I have access to some secrets of my own. Including the fact that the government was seriously considering carrying out a project confiscated from the griffons hundreds of years ago: Project Nightshade.”

“And so the air is shrouded by a pall, because that doesn’t sound good at all,” Pinkamena quipped.

“Project Nightshade is a combination of powerful drugs, hypnosis, and mind-altering spells, with the goal of creating in the victim a new personality. One that is absolutely loyal to the caster. Once this is done, the new personality is hidden away in the back of the victim’s mind, until they hear a pre-selected code phrase, which causes that fake personality to take over. The Secret Service proposed using it on our dragon prisoners, but Princess Celestia refused.”

Pinkamena’s jaw dropped. “That’s…that’s just pure evil!” For a moment, she tried valiantly to resist the urge to rhyme, but then she gave in with the deliberately-worst line that fit the requirement: “E-e-e-evil!”

“And it doesn’t even apply here!” Twilight exclaimed, pointing at Mauve. “…I’m pointing at Mauve,” she added as she remembered that Vinyl couldn’t see her gesture.

“Sure, it does,” Vinyl replied. “You just flip the idea on its head: you take evil Mauve Shadow, and instead of giving her a fake evil personality, you give her a fake good personality. You tell her the code-word, and now she’s good and 100% believes what she’s saying. But you also set up a second code word to put her evil original personality back in control.”

Everyone looked suspiciously at Mauve, who responded by burying her head in her hooves.

“I…I don’t know!” she wailed into the table. “If you’re right, how would I know? I already have holes in my memory, so I couldn’t look for inconsistencies. You have no reason to trust me.”

Twilight reached over to comfort Mauve. “But we’ll do it anyway.”

“Why?” Mauve wailed.

“Because it doesn’t only have to be you,” said Pinkamena. “In a war, anypony could come under ‘review’. Once they erase the memory, there’s no way to tell who is trustworthy.”

“So, we have no choice but to trust in each other,” Twilight concluded.

“I think that logic just broke my brain,” Spike added. “With that out of the way, what can we do about the Staff in the next eight hours?”

Daring and Mauve then told the others about the Cruciform.

The group paused at this point as the waitress gave them their bill, only to receive the precisely-calculated payment from Twilight Sparkle. She walked away with an incredulous shake of her head.

Vinyl waited until the waitress was far enough away to finally speak up. “So, is she gone yet?”

Applejack pointed at the waitress in confusion.

“That pony watches us still,” Pinkamena snorted in disgust. “Despite the tedium before the bill!” A rumble erupted from her midsection, and she poked at it experimentally.

“But she wasn’t…?” Applejack tried to ask.

“In all our adventures, this is surely a first,” Pinkamena announced, getting up. “Plan without me; I must go before I burst.”

“Where are you going?” Twilight asked in disbelief, then watched as Pinkamena disappeared into the mare’s room. “Huh,” she remarked. “That is a first. OK, planning time. Vinyl, you first.”

Vinyl turned her ears away from the restroom doors. “What was that?” She caught on to the expectant silence. “OK, let’s get through the obvious: Daring, you were one of the toughest of all street fighters when you were just a foal.”

“I was? AWESO...I mean, that’s cool.”

“So, if any of us suddenly turn evil, feel free to knock us out.”

Twilight tried to stand up. “But Vinyl, that would mean whoever that is…”

“...Would be kicked off of the mission. And at worst, for a few minutes afterwards.”

By “mission”, of course, Vinyl was referring to the dream they were currently in.

Suddenly, the sound of Pinkamena’s voice burst out from inside the bathroom. “OH, COME ON!” she exclaimed. The following rhyme—almost certainly obscene—was too faint to hear.

The others waited as the bathroom’s sink was then used, followed by the paper towel dispenser.

Finally, Pinkamena emerged from the mare’s room with a loud bang of the opening door. She pointed back wordlessly at the restroom, engaging it in a minute-long staring contest.

Her friends shared looks of equal confusion, until Daring suddenly burst out laughing. “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” she said between chuckles. “She isn’t in there?”

“Yes, that is it! Which is to say, no, she isn’t.”

AJ looked around at the others for a few moments, pondering what she had just heard. “Oh, I get it!” she suddenly exclaimed. “Maybe we can have a makeover party in my family’s bath—”

“I doubt that’s going to work,” said Twilight. “And besides, Spike…”

“Not it!” exclaimed Spike. “I’m so not it.”

“Are we finished?” Vinyl asked calmly, waiting for Pinkamana to sit down. She then waited a few more seconds as a random customer in a trench coat walked by on the way to the exit. “I gave Daring permission to take out the traitor,” she recapped when she was sure nobody extra was listening in on them. “Non lethally. And really, we should have been expecting this. Up to now, our missions have had minimal casualties. It would make sense that this last one is turning up the heat."

"You're right," Daring Do said.

Her tone was off, much older and calmer than she'd been a second ago. When everypony looked at Daring now, they saw the world-weary adventurer in her mid-forties, stirring a cup of coffee.

"I mean… that thing about the last mission. I think you're right. I'm done after this one."

Fluttershy the author was very much present, and very much trying to make some sense out of the off-topic gibberish her typewriter was producing.

“What?!” Twilight exclaimed.

The trenchcoated stranger turned around at the outburst. She was an elderly unicorn mare, her coat a deep, dark gray in color. Her eyes fixed on those of Daring.

Oblivious to this turn, Twilight reached out to grasp Daring by the shoulders. “You can’t retire yet,” she told her. “This is only the twenty-third...mission you’ve been on. Are you sure you can’t hold out for twenty-five?”

“I don’t believe in round numbers,” Daring and Vinyl said in unison. (Quoting a famous line of Daring’s from several of her previous novels.)

Daring flashed Vinyl an appreciative smile, before Daring was once again just Rainbow Dash with a makeover. She looked up at the elderly unicorn, then closed her eyes and pointed experimentally at her. “Professor Crow’s Foot of the University of Canterlot?”

“Professor Crow’s Foot?” Twilight echoed, twisting her head around. “You were Daring’s Equinology teacher in her senior year in college!”

The professor walked back to Daring’s table. “May I?” she asked, gesturing towards a portion of the bench. The others moved closer together to make room for her to sit. “How long has it been since your graduation?” she asked.

“Twelve years,” Daring said, without thinking. “Oh, wait! Mauve Shadow here said that the government is storing the Cruciform in the Canterlot University archives. Do you know where that is?”

“Sorry. I don’t know where that particular item is stored in the archives.”

“But you know where the archives are, right?”

Crow’s Foot looked at her strangely. “You visited them all the time as a student.”

“Could you refresh my memory?” Daring said with an embarrassed blush. “What’s the address?”

“There’s not just one address. You see, there are three buildings designated as the archives in Canterlot.”

“Could you tell us their locations?” Applejack asked. “It would be mighty helpful.”

After telling them of the three locations, Pr. Crow’s Foot took to reminiscing. “So much has changed in twelve years. Do you remember Dr. Bravera? You were always urging me to tell her my true feelings.” She blushed. “Well, it took nearly six years, but I finally did take your advice. We’ve been married for three years now.”

After being congratulated by the others at the table, she continued on. “It seems that you never took my advice, though. I told you that you would be happier pursuing archeology from behind a desk, but you were so insistent that anything other than a job in the field finding lost civilizations was a waste of a life.” She said this to Daring with a wry smile. “So, in the end, how successful were you relying on your own counsel? I don’t remember reading anything in the journals.”

“Hey, I found lots of lost stuff!” Daring insisted. She wanted to leave it at that, but something made her add, “Although, when it comes down to it—” She then clamped her lips together.

Is this going to take very long? Rainbow asked herself. Because if so, I really don’t want my mouth taken over every other line. She looked to Twilight, the Daring Do expert, and gestured towards her mouth using a hoof hopefully out of sight of Fluttershy.

“Well, I suppose technically Daring hasn’t ‘found’ any civilizations,” Twilight said to the professor. “At least, none that could be studied by the scientific community. The Achoo were blown off the face of Equestria, the Yeti were buried under a mile of rubble, and as for the Seaponies…yeah, nopony’s ever going to see a trace of them again.”

Crow’s Foot cast an accusing glance at Daring.

“And none of it was her fault!” Twilight exclaimed, sticking her head between teacher and student. “They all had artifacts that could have changed the world in horrible ways, or destroy it altogether! If Daring hadn’t interfered, who knows what could have happened when they were discovered by some hapless innocent!”

“I’ll have to take your word, Miss…?”

“Brass Quill. I’ve been sponsoring Miss Do here for quite some time, and so have come to learn quite a bit about her.”

“Very well, Miss Quill,” the professor said, turning her attention. “I suppose I won’t hold such misfortunes against Miss Do here. Now since my former student doesn’t appear to be in a talkative mood tonight, perhaps you can answer a question I’ve long been meaning to ask. You see, Daring Do came from a most extraordinary class of students, any one of which could have gone on to either revolutionize a scientific field, or else to become a leader in whatever area they might choose. I have heard of the ‘famous Daring Do’ from the newspapers, but I have heard nothing of her classmates. Would you by any chance know anything of the current whereabouts of Focused Starlight?”

Twilight thought for a moment. “Yes, I remember her! She was Daring’s first sidekick. At the climax of the…the adventure, she was turned into a sparrow by the Wax Medallion. She got lost in a flock, and so Daring wasn’t able to reverse the transformation before the time limit expired!” She beamed like a schoolfilly, proud that she had managed to remember a bit of trivia that most readers failed to notice.

“That’s horrible!” Crow’s Foot exclaimed.

“What? Oh…oh, I suppose that is rather bad.”

“And what about Jack Maillard?”

“That was Daring’s second sidekick, and first love interest. You see, there was this giant barbeque, the Barbeque of the Gods. And Daring was trying to get the Spatula of Steel, and then Jack tripped and…”

Everyone at the table winced in unison.

“Did any of his classmates escape a gruesome fate?” Crow’s Foot asked acidly.

“Well there’s…no, she didn’t make it. And then there’s…no, all three of them had to be committed to an insane asylum. And we have no idea where that portal Desert Rose fell into led, so there’s a microscopic chance that she’s quite happy wherever she ended up!”

This time it was Applejack who raised the doubting eyebrow at her.

“Well, what about Tabula Rasa? She never got hurt, mostly because of her irrational hatred of Daring. She’d never fail to yell at her any time they met.”

“If I remember correctly,” the professor replied, “Tabula Rasa was the head of the reunion committee, and therefore the one member of the class most likely to be aware of the grisly fates of all of the others.”

“Oh!” Twilight exclaimed. “That fills a big plot hole. Oh, wait! There’s one more pony who technically is doing better than when he graduated.”

“And who is that?”

“Doctor Cabelleron. He’s Daring’s arch-rival now, always trying to sell his discoveries on the black market.”

“Discoveries that appear to be mostly weapons of mass destruction.”

“Yes.”

Crow’s Foot sighed. “And how did this happen? He was the most honest, idealistic student in my class when I knew him.”

“Well, he developed a drug and gambling problem soon after graduating. After using up his family inheritance, he turned to a life of crime to support himself.” Again, Twilight was initially proud of having remembered all of this without prodding from Fluttershy, but then she frowned on seeing the impact of her words on the professor.

“And did none of you see this coming?” the elderly unicorn demanded, standing up.

“I did,” Daring said, with words that seemed to be dragged out of her. “But I was more interested in getting my discoveries in before he could, so I did nothing.”

“No, I think you and your little band have done quite enough,” the professor said with disgust before excusing herself and walking out the door.

The others rose to try and stop her.

“No,” Daring said with authority. “Let her go. She has a right to her opinion. Let’s check out those three archives before it’s too late. Twi…Brass Quill, do you think you could draw up a rough map of the city on the back of this place setting?”

Crow’s Foot stepped into the carriage being pulled by her pegasus wife with a sigh.

“Shall we head home?” Bravera asked.

“No, we need to go to the palace,” Crow’s Foot said heavily. “Those agents of Mr. Wells were right. Daring is a menace, and she needs to be…‘put down for the good of everypony’.”

Chapter 3A

My World Is Empty Without You

Chapter 3A

Fluttershy put down her quill and frowned at the pages, as Angel waited on baited breath.

“Well?!” Angel growled. “Her old friend is going to assassinate her, right?”

“Why in the world would Crow’s Foot kill Daring Do?” Fluttershy sighed. “She’s furious, but she’s just going to tell the Chancellor where Daring is. Maybe what she’s planning, I’m not sure how far she’ll go but it’ll be off screen, so…”

“Why is Crow’s Foot blaming Daring for so much?” Ryooki finally asked after a long silent pause.

Fluttershy bit her lip, rocking back in her chair before looking back towards the closet full of memorabilia.

“So… I was able to go to the last Fic-Con, I was asked to be a speaker but I… I don’t… I couldn’t stand being in front of so many ponies. But I did sit in the crowd while some ponies talked about my books. Most of what I heard was praise, but some of it… There was a pony from the Southern Lands. She was descended from the Ink-in ponies, and she talked about how Daring Do came into her culture, stole and destroyed, and everything she touched died or was hurt. I don’t think she was wrong.”

The silence wasn’t just awkward now; it was heavy, oppressive.

“They’re just… fiction books,” Angel said incredulously. “If ponies are so weak that they can’t stand a fictional pony going on a fictional adventure, well… That’s their fault.”

“No, Angel, this isn’t about them standing it,” Fluttershy said gently, turning to face him. “This is… This is about making a good story. If I wrote a story where the good guy killed every friend they had, that wouldn’t make sense, right?”

Angel slowly shrugged.

“It wouldn’t be,” Fluttershy decreed. “And I’ve kind of done this. Just… well… She’s not killing them, they’re getting killed. It started out being like… It’s dangerous, it’s really dangerous, so sometimes ponies will get hurt. Then, well, Daring Do can’t get too badly hurt, because she’s carrying the books. So the sidekick gets hurt, or… killed. Then, the adventure series is all about finding a valuable important thing, and… If the locals want it, but it’s dangerous, Daring Do takes it, and…”

Fluttershy wiped a few tears from her eyes, scowling at her closet.

“It’s ok, Fluttershy,” Ryooki said softly.

“It’s just a book series, do these people know that real creatures die every day?” Angel asked incredulously. “And they’re freaking out because the jungle ponies didn’t get to keep a doomsday rock?”

“Thanks, Ryooki,” Fluttershy sighed, embracing the cabbit as Angel groaned a little.

But Fluttershy clearly wasn’t done, she felt like she had to say these things now. “I created a book series with adventure and hope, but instead, it just became a story of everyone Daring Do meets being horribly hurt and every culture that she tries to help being robbed. So now… I have to have a clean start, I have to. Daring Do has to die,” She said the last sentence with a rare surge of determination.

She didn’t see Angel’s dark grin as he nodded.

“Somepony,” he whispered. “If not all these ponies, have to die.”

Chapter 3B

My World Is Empty Without You

Chapter 3B

The words were spray-painted on a brick wall directly facing the exit of the diner, the conclusion of a poem by Evening Frost:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.

The color of the paint was identical to that of the bricks, and could only be detected by somepony with bat pony blood.

Therefore, the first thing most of the sighted ponies saw when they walked out of the diner was not the poem, but rather a menacing robed pony barring their way. A pony…armed with the Staff of Sameness.

Daring assumed a combat-ready stance. “You’re outnumbered!” she declared. “Hand over the Staff, and nopony gets hurt.”

The robed pony responded by pointing the Staff at Daring.

“Scatter!” Daring ordered.

The group was about to obey that command, but at that very instant, there was a flash of light behind them, and the robed pony revealed his face.

It was Daren Do, Daring’s long-lost archaeologist father. “Twenty years,” he said, in a voice that sounded like it came from a cavernous tomb. The voice caused all who heard it to be frozen in place, having no choice now but to hear him address his daughter. “Twenty years you left me to rot in the demon world behind that tomb.” The pony threw back his head and howled like a beast. “It was a living torture! Why couldn’t you follow the clues I left for you? What kind of a miserable excuse of an archaeologist are you?!”

Well, these were the words that Fluttershy meant for the group to hear. But this was in fact a spell, and the purpose of the spell was to cause the victim to think themselves confronted by one who’s respect they feared to lose the most. Instead of Daren Do, Twilight Sparkle saw Princess Celestia in that robe. Spike saw Twilight Sparkle, despite the fact that the real Twilight Sparkle was right behind him. And three of the ponies saw their fathers. These are the words each of them heard:

“Is this how you have wasted the potential that first brought you to my attention? You are worthless! Begone from my sight!”

“Why didn’t you save me?”

“Don’t point those empty sockets at me! You’re a freak, an abomination of nature, a stain upon our family honor, and you are no daughter of mine!”

“Do you think you are a hero, because you’ve set yourself against the Nightmare? No, you are a failure! She was supposed to cleanse us of our sins, but you have condemned all ponykind to eternal damnation with your blasphemous frivolity! From this moment forth, you are dead to this family! May our love be denied to you forevermore!”

The words were too much for Pinkamena, who fled from the scene wailing.

Daring gritted her teeth, ~~tears~~…enraged by what she was hearing.

“Wait…what?” Angel asked Fluttershy as he saw the correction being made.

“The words…changed themselves…” Fluttershy said in a small voice.

Rainbow Dash of course didn’t see Daring’s father. Instead she saw Spitfire, the captain of the Wonderbolts. “Your compassion disgusts me!” Spitfire said. “You’re too weak to ever be a…”

“Shut up!” she roared.

Rainbow was convinced that she was in a nightmare, and this certainty allowed her to resist the spell’s effects.

“You’re not real! You’re not real!” She pounced on the figure, and it dissolved into smoke.

The other ponies shook their heads, freeing themselves of their paralysis.

Mauve sighed. “Too bad that illusion didn’t leave behind the actual Staff of Sameness,” she said with a smirk. She looked around her cautiously, then positioned herself to no longer be in sight of Applejack, and replaced the smirk with a not very convincing look of fear.

“Hey, where’s Darai?” asked Twilight.

The others looked around them, trying in vain to spot the magenta earth pony.

“I’ll find her!” Daring exclaimed, trying to take to the sky, only to be instantly grounded by Mauve grabbing her tail in her teeth.

“One, you’re in no condition to fly,” Mauve told her once she stopped trying to leave. “Two, you’re Public Enemy Number One, so flying is out of the question in any case. And three, the real Staff is going to be used in about two hours. I’m her designated companion in our quest to find the Cruciform, so I’ll keep an eye out for her on the way to our chosen branch of the Archives. The rest of you need to go to yours. Right, Daring?”

Daring snorted in frustration, then turned with a sigh. “I’m trusting you to take care of her, Mauve,” she said, before reluctantly walking into the gloom, accompanied by Vinyl Scratch.

“Since when was Mauve so commanding?” Twilight asked suspiciously, before being dragged away by Applejack and Spike. Their group made up the first search party, their destination on the outskirts of Canterlot.

Daring and Vinyl Scratch headed towards the branch of the Archives closest to the Palace.

Mauve stood in the abandoned courtyard next to the invisible poem, waiting. Once Mauve was sure she was alone, she walked over to the drainpipe of a nearby building and knocked on it five times.

In response, a pegasus glided down and landed beside her.

“The magenta-colored pony,” Mauve said in a cold commanding voice. “You saw where she went?”

“Yeah, she ran right to the hiding place,” the pegasus stallion replied in an oily voice. “Hid herself in a corner far from witnesses. Want me to take care of her?”

“No,” said Mauve. “Leave her to me.”

* * *

It took nearly an hour for Twilight’s party to reach their designated location. Twilight’s magic made it easy for them to break in unnoticed, but it was another half an hour before Twilight was sure that this branch of the Archives didn’t have the Cruciform.

“So that’s it,” she concluded. “We won’t be able to get to the Palace in time to help anypony. We might as well rest up for what happens next.”

“And what will happen next?” Applejack asked.

“Aren’t you paying attention?” Ryooki addressed the written page. “Daring is going to save the day!”

“Next will be the battle of our lives,” said Spike. “Literally, in my case. We’ll be up against somebody with complete control…of everything!”

“And how are we supposed to fight that?” Applejack demanded, gobstruck.

“With this,” Twilight assured her, tapping her own temple. “Try to remember your foalhood, and the wildest drea—”

“—Why are you wasting time with these three?!” Angel demanded, getting in Fluttershy’s face. “They have nothing to do with either Daring, or the pony you’re going to replace her with!”

“…Right,” Fluttershy said, shaking her head as if to wake from some sort of trance. “I’ll…fix that all later.”

* * *

Mauve sauntered into the alleyway, which was silent except for the soft sobbing of a magenta pony.

“Go away, Brass Q—”

Pinkamena stopped mid-sentence, as she spotted Mauve, standing over her, smiling gently.

“I can’t be a hero,” Pinkamena whimpered. “I’m not her. I’ll never be her. And it sickens me every time they look for her to solve their problems, and then they see me, and for a moment, for one brief moment, they can’t hide their crushing disappointment.”

Fluttershy stopped, as Angel groaned.

“This is important,” Fluttershy scolded gently. “To continue the series, this has to work, and… Darai isn’t… I wanted her to be happy, coming out of her shell slowly, energetic, but she’s…”

“A buzzkill dumb pony who does nothing but frown?” Angel said flatly. “Also, you forgot to make her rhyme.”

Fluttershy laid her head down on the table, groaning softly.

“N… Sort of,” she sighed. “I’ve been using Pinkie as inspiration but I think I’m not… Pinkamena’s more complex than that, and… And Mauve is now just too dark. Way too dark for this story. Darai needs to be able to recover from this. She can’t be… broken. I have to fix this.” She thought for a second before adding, “And this part is too important. I’ll put the rhymes in later.”

“Don’t worry,” Mauve said gently, in a tone of kindness. “When I look at you, I see just another victim of her own cutie mark.”

Pinkamena stood, shaking her head slowly. “But… it’s not mine. It never has been.”

“Wh… What?!” Mauve asked, reeling back.

“I don’t have a mark,” Pinkamena insisted, voice rough. “This? This isn’t mine. I can’t use it.”

“Then why are you so miserable?” Mauve asked incredulously. “If you just… That has to be your mark, because you’re a mess, being controlled by it!”

Pinkamena put on a tiny little smile. “Because this is who I am. I don’t have to be happy all the time. Bad things happen to good ponies. Everywhere. All the time. But you know what? I keep going. Without a cutie mark...wi...without the family who rejected me. I. Am. Still. Me.”

Mauve scowled, but took a step back. “So what? You’re not special, I gave up my mark, and— I mean, my mark was taken and I’m fi— f—” Mauve stuttered, and seemed incapable of completing the sentence that would so thoroughly betray her truth.

With a bellow of rage, she blasted Pinkamena with every bit of magic she had.

Pinkamena blinked and looked around her, patting her fur to find herself completely unharmed. “What do you know?” she mused. “You’re just as worthless as I am.”

Mauve pulled out the small wand that she had used to cast the mind-altering spell on the ponies earlier, and stared at it. She had thought...she actually had the nerve to believe, that her vaunted inequitable equality would somehow still allow her to cast magic beyond the norm.

“I gave it all up,” she whispered, wide eyed and numb, speaking as though the words were being dragged out of her. “I gave up all the skill I had, because I thought it’d fix the world. But if your mark does nothing for you, and you’re still doing all the insane things you’re doing, I… What point is there?”

“They all want to fix it, don’t they? As if our very own creators made the world this way on purpose. If They couldn’t do it…” She looked away and sighed. “You know, Vinyl Scratch said something to me once: ‘why can’t we just make our own purpose?’ Arrogant as always, but I think she kind of has a point.” Getting up, she walked past Mauve out of the alley, arriving at a four-way intersection.

The other pony followed her numbly. “If they couldn’t do it, then what makes me think that I could?” Mauve sighed, tears beginning to fall. “My… I don’t have a purpose. It was to try and put things right. So nopony hurt how I did. But… That’s gone now.” She turned away from Pinkamena to look down the western road.

Pinkamena pointed into the darkness that Mauve was facing. “That is the past, the place where we knew everything bad that has been done to us.” She gently turned the unicorn around to face the opposite direction, where the pre-dawn sun was preparing to rise. “I like this direction better. I tend to be blinded by the light, but I don’t mind.”

“My mother left me when I was eight,” Mauve suddenly announced. She had no idea why she had said it. “Because I… My magic surges, they… It wasn’t easy on her.”

Pinkamena looked off in a slightly different direction, the direction of her own family’s home. Then she glanced over her shoulder in the direction of Ponyville. “Everypony does something unforgivable once in their life,” she said, looking into the rising sun. “Your true family are the ones who forgive you anyway.” She then looked over at Mauve. “I forgive you.”

“Why would you do that?” Mauve asked, burying a sob under her anger. “You don’t even know, I didn’t even tell you… You can’t just… fix it like that!” she shouted, as her cheeks turned dark, eyes red.

Mauve was transparently desperate to be hated. It was the only thing that made sense in her mind, and to have a pony so resolutely refuse to do so despite all of the reasons for it was baffling to her.

Pinkamena looked at Mauve in confusion. “My earth pony ancestors deliberately tried to starve your unicorn ancestors to death about fifteen hundred years ago. You don’t hold that against me.”

“But I should, right?!” Mauve whimpered. “There isn’t… The only lesson my mom ever gave me; ‘You can’t just say sorry when you’ve killed somepony, Mauve!’”

She was trembling, her mind focused on her own mother’s words from so long ago, and completely helpless before the pony she’d been about to trick into being brainwashed and abused by a maniacal chancellor.

Pinkamena walked over and looked carefully at Mauve, and then followed the direction that her eyes were focused on. She then positioned herself to the side of that empty spot and bucked. “There,” she declared. “I just bucked your mother into the ‘bad parent bin’.” She looked down into the imaginary hole. “I forgive you, too.”

Mauve laughed. It was a weak, small laugh, but it was genuine.

Pinkamena reached up and put a hoof around Mauve’s withers. “The sun is rising, sister,” she said gently. “Do you know where the Cruciform is?”

“I do,” she whispered. “And… we might have enough time left to get it.”

Pinkamena’s eyes glistened. “Look…” she said, pointing.

Mauve turned her head to look...at her restored cutie mark.

It was a wand. It looked just like the wand she’d used earlier, but surrounded in purple sparks, with a ghost-white wisp of magic coming off of it. She knew the symbology of that white wisp. It was a rare feature of unicorn Marks, more common in Earth Ponies: it was the Changing of the Self. Once a sign of the ways she broke those around her, now it was finally personal.

Mauve leaned into Pinkamena’s grip and cried softly, before laughing. “Go, we need to go. Quickly now. I can celebrate later. Don’t want to lose it again.”

Chapter 4A

My World Is Empty Without You

Chapter 4A

Fluttershy breathed a slow sigh and stood, walking away from her papers, quill, typewriter, and ink, pacing the room.

“Oh come on, a big emotional scene, setting up for the big finale, you could even kill off Brass Quill,” Angel offered hopefully.

“Not right now, Angel,” Shy said quietly. “I just… I just made Darai the main character of my massive fiction novel empire with thirty one published stories if you include the Etheric broadcasts, and… Can she carry that? Can I carry her? She’s so much more complex, her stories… I’ll have to ditch the current adventure-of-the-week format obviously. I’ll need to edit this story to have her rhyming slowly drop as she comes out of her shell, but then I also need to show her holding onto Zebra culture and traditions, clearly enough to distinguish between rhyming as a speech habit, and culture as something worth preserving…”

She paused, looking at Angel and Ryooki, who were both looking at her as though she’d grown a second head.

Cheeks hot, Shy sat down and mumbled something.

“I’m sorry, what?” Angel asked.

“I may have gotten a sociology degree a little while ago to help with portraying cultures I don’t understand better…”

“How… How did you do that? You’re a wildlife caretaker,” Angel scoffed.

“Twilight kept talking about how most ponies think it’s harder to get a degree than it really is, and I found out a few classes were being held locally, and transferred credits… Twilight helped a lot,” she scuffed the floor with one hoof, blushing still. “But anyway! This is a big big change for the series, it’s huge, and now… I think that it’s going to be such a huge change, maybe… I should scrap this draft, and start over.”

“NO!” Angel shouted.

Ryooki and Fluttershy stared at him.

“Yes,” Ryooki said, crossing her arms. “Yes you should. You figure out a lot of things, but you could make it better, and this is a good stopping point.”

“But… I… You tried so hard, and came so far, what if in the end it doesn’t even matter?” Angel asked frantically. “Finishing this, you can give it a good ending, and then work… work backwards?”

Fluttershy hummed softly, frowning. “I… I suppose,” she conceded.

“But you’ve pushed it as far as you can go, and you just have to know,” Ryooki countered. “There’s a point to refining what you have before trying to finish it!”

“Is there some reference here I’m missing?” Fluttershy mumbled, frowning a little.

“If you kept everything inside, even though you try, it could all fall apart!” Angel insisted. “Get it out onto the page now!”

“Okay, okay!” Fluttershy said, holding her hoof up. “Both of you, calm down. I’m going to continue, just… stop speak-singing, it’s weird.”

Chapter 4B

My World Is Empty Without You

Chapter 4B

Daring Do and Vinyl Scratch arrived at the final branch of the University Archives roughly a half hour before sunrise. The building was right across the Royal Plaza from the Canterlot Public library; if you followed the curve of the plaza two more buildings, you arrived at the entrance of the Palace, where the Chancellor’s plan to enslave the whole of ponykind to his clique was soon to be enacted.

Daring ushered Vinyl to a spot out of the public eye and looked up with a sigh. “If I hadn’t had my wings stripped, I’d be flying you in through that open window on the third floor,” she informed her companion. “Are you any good at lockpicking? There’s a service door facing the alley.”

“I’m afraid not,” Vinyl said. She walked up to the wall of the Archives and felt it until she reached the door. “Although… I don’t suppose you know any songs about breaking into a secure location?”

“Would the theme from Con Mare count?”

Vinyl chuckled as she reared up to examine the door lock with her hooves. To her surprise, the door swung wide open. “The latch is taped open,” she told Daring after a moment’s inspection.

Daring sighed. “So, it’s obviously a trap,” she said.

“Obviously.”

* * *

A few minutes of sneaking around revealed that the building, at least on the first floor, was abandoned. Thanks to its position alongside the Royal Plaza, there was more than enough light coming in through the windows—and the missing Fourth Wall—for Daring to see by. Vinyl of course didn’t need a light source. The only thing they couldn’t see clearly was a sign that had been taped to the elevator. Daring was about to remove the sign to walk over to a window when Vinyl tapped her on the withers.

“Allow me,” she said.

From Daring’s obstructed point of view, what appeared to happen next was Vinyl licking every inch of the sign.

“Ew,” she noted quietly.

Vinyl turned her head to point her muzzle at Daring. “I was using my lips to read the sign.”

“Oh. What does it say?”

“Out of order.”

“I guess that’s what the stairs are for.”

* * *

The first floor had contained the main lobby, some meeting rooms, and a bunch of offices. All of the interior doors were not only unlocked, but also propped open. Closets were also open, and drawers were all pulled out, but nothing was disturbed. It was therefore trivial to determine that the Cruciform was not on that floor.

The second floor was a library, made up of bookshelves separated by wide aisles. There was a row of reading rooms at one end, also with doors propped open. That even included the main door for entering the library from either the elevator or the stairs—that door had a pad next to it for scanning a pony’s magical field from their hoof, to ensure that only a select group of researchers would be able to access the forbidden tomes inside.

“Somepony wants us to get this search over with,” Vinyl concluded.

“Yeah,” Daring said, looking around and chewing her lower lip in thought. “I don’t suppose any of these books would be useful to us?”

Vinyl frowned. “Well first of all, you came to Canterlot knowing 90% of everything there was to know about the Staff of Sameness, and we got the last 10% from Mauve Shadow and Crow’s Foot. And second, you wouldn’t be able to read one anyway.” She padded a nearby bookcase with a forehoof until she was able to pull out a random volume, and then presented its cover to Daring.

It was too dark to read.

As a matter of fact, the problem was that the letters on the cover were complete gibberish. That’s right, Rainbow thought to herself. You can’t read in a dream.

“Come on,” Vinyl urged. “We’ve got one more floor, and time’s a wasting.”

A memory was trying to make itself felt in Rainbow’s head. She saw an image of Vinyl Scratch, sitting on the top floor of the Golden Oaks library. The shelves were all bare, and the books that belonged in those shelves had fallen down to surround the DJ pony. She was desperately trying to find a book… or was it three books?

“It’s probably just more books up there,” Daring said idly.

With some concentration, Rainbow was able to recall more details: This was the first of the dreams they had been trapped in, the one created by Twilight Sparkle. Since Vinyl was taking Twilight’s place in the dream, Vinyl was able to see. The dream was about the return of Nightmare Moon. Vinyl… surrounded by books… she needed to use three specific books to convince the other ponies around her that they should go into the Everfree Forest with her, but because of the book collapse, she couldn’t find any of them. She had nearly lost hope until she thought of asking Pinkamena to find each one for her. To the magenta mare’s surprise, she was able to find each one.

How was Pinkamena able to find each book if she couldn’t read the titles? Rainbow asked herself. For that matter, how was Vinyl able to read the books?

Out of the corner of her eye, Rainbow saw one book that looked familiar, from before the war…

One day Rainbow and her friends had traveled together to Canterlot to see the recording of Oars in Wells’ etheric show. The others had gone shopping in the common market that worked out of the Plaza on Canterdays. Rainbow had been looking for a good cloud to nap on when she happened to see none other than Oars himself picking through a used bookseller’s cart. The book he had chosen to buy that day had a bright orange cover, with a very unusual title…

“Can we go?” Vinyl said in a small voice. “Something about this place is just… wrong.”

Daring, who must have been thinking back on the vision of her father from earlier that day, shook herself out of her funk and turned to face the other pony. “Hey, you want to see a magic trick?” she asked with a broad smile. “That’s just the thing to lift your spirits. Pinkamena taught me this one.” While keeping her eyes fixed on Vinyl’s confused expression, Daring reached blindly behind and above her and managed to pull down a thick orange volume. She sat down, flipped open the cover, and used a hoof to quickly flick through the entire book in about ten seconds. “Here, catch!”

And with that, she tossed the book right at Vinyl Scratch, who only just barely managed to not catch it with her face. “Hey, what was that for?” she demanded, her breath fogging up the protective coating on the spine.

Daring shrugged. “It didn’t have any pictures,” she said by way of explanation.

Vinyl didn’t know what Rainbow Dash was up to. She knew from experience that the only books a pony could “read” in a dream were those the dreamer actually had read. What kind of books would Fluttershy casually leave in a dream version of a top-secret library? She passed the spine of the book across her lip so quickly it nearly left a contact burn. It was hopefully fast enough for the dreamer not to notice, and fast enough to blur the mangled characters of the title back into something legible: Means By Which One May Control the Gods. It was almost certainly the book that Rarity and the Emperor had used to remove Pinkie Pie from the dream world. How in Celestia’s name could Fluttershy possibly have read this book?

Vinyl Scratch froze. This wasn’t Fluttershy’s dream anymore. Or at least, not entirely her dream.

“Over here,” Daring called out from the staircase. “I’ll bet you a hundred bits there’s just a bunch more boring books up there.”

On reaching the top of the staircase, Vinyl was surprised when Daring, instead of going through the main door, instead walked up to the elevator. Vinyl stopped and held out a hoof to keep Daring from getting any closer. “The elevator door’s open, revealing an empty shaft leading all the way down to the ground,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Daring. “How did you know?”

“The breeze coming up and hitting us in the face. I felt something similar at the top of a box canyon.”

“Doesn’t even have caution tape,” Daring said, pushing down Vinyl’s hoof to get a closer look. The bottom of the shaft was littered with small boulders, illuminated by a blood-red light that came into the shaft from what must have been a hole in the side opposite the closed doors on the first floor. A glance upwards confirmed that the elevator car was parked above them, probably poised to drop down at a moment’s notice. “Pretty obvious death trap, if you ask me,” Daring concluded. She then tapped at a black screen that was attached to the wall next to the opening. “While this looks like some more advanced unicorn tech.”

“Why thank you! I designed it myself.”

The screen now displayed the inside of a cramped office, with the rotund Oars in Wells squeezed into position behind the desk, looking right at a startled Daring. The walls behind him were made of plates of metal bolted crudely together.

“Getting comfortable in your bunker, Chancellor Oars?” Daring asked with a smirk. “And you went to all the trouble of dropping your magic shield, just to talk to me! I should be honored.”

Vinyl stepped over to join Daring in facing down the two-dimensional illusion. “Why are you doing all this?” she demanded. “You are already the most-powerful pony in the land. Isn’t that enough?”

“No, it is not!” Oars tried to stand on his hind legs in hateful indignation, but he found that he was wedged behind his desk so snugly that the act was impossible. He instead settled for pounding the desktop with one hoof—it was not very impressive. “I have fought my whole life to earn the respect that was my due from birth! Even when I followed the ‘modern’ path to greatness, by taking the Etheric from a forgotten utility into high art with elaborate machines of my own creation, still I was mocked! The nobles declared my work beneath their notice!” He leaned towards the glass, a look of Discordian malice upon his brow. “Those same nobles are crammed together in the next room, thinking they’ll get a share of my ultimate power. None of them have the wit to realize that the magical field extends to this room, and this room alone. Today, I will attain my destiny! Starting today, I and I alone will have the power to decide who lives and who dies! And nopony will ever have the power to hurt me, ever again!” He punctuated this pronouncement by pounding the desktop several times with his hoof.

At this point Oars suddenly realized how loud and melodramatic he had been getting, and took a deep breath to calm himself. “But enough about me,” he said with a smile. “I’m here to personally oversee your doom, Daring Do.”

Daring glanced over at a wall-mounted clock. “You better make this quick, then—you only have fifteen minutes until sunrise.”

“Oh, the timetable is going exactly as expected,” Oars replied, his slightly-tinny voice dripping with smugness. “Including your presence at this particular time and place. You see, I’ve had you followed this whole time, and I had several individuals planted in select locations throughout the city to feed you the locations of the three annexes.”

“So, the others are in danger as well!” Vinyl concluded. She tried in vain to think of a way to warn or help them before it was too late.

Oars tapped his forehooves together lightly and rolled his eyes in a faux-innocent manner. “Well… Darai is probably done for, without her ‘special friend’ to help her out. But I know better than to put either Brass Quill or Cricket Fly in a corner, so I left strict instructions to leave them alone.”

“I think you’ll find that ‘Darai’ is far more capable than you might think,” Daring stated with complete confidence. With a knowing grin, she added, “But then, that was a mistake you made before, isn’t it?”

Rainbow was referring to Rarity, a pony Oars had once dismissed as a “damsel in distress”. That damsel later broke out of her dream and then talked the Dragon Emperor into sending her back in. Once she got her wish, she used the opportunity to train the others on how to fight him in their upcoming final confrontation.

“Perhaps,” Oars admitted with reluctance, staring down at the collection of folders stacked atop his desk. “I don’t have a file on her.” He then opened the top folder on the stack. “But I do have a folder on you, Vinyl Scratch.” He put on a pair of spectacles as he examined the pages inside.

Vinyl silently pushed her way forward.

“Born to the noble Tempo family of Canterlot in the 10th of Winter in the Year 6892 of the Celestial Era,” Oars recited from the piece of paper he held up with his levitation. He put the paper down and tapped his round chin with a hoof. “Note to self: Start Year 1 of the New Era in about… thirteen minutes.” Looking back at the page, he continued. “Believed to be the only naturally-blind pony in the history of Equestria. Committed to the Manehattan Sanitorium for the Insane on her fifth birthday by her parents. The admitting diagnosis was recorded as violent schizophrenia, but we both know the real reason, don’t we?” He looked up to see Vinyl’s traumatized expression and continued remorselessly. “They stuck you in there to get rid of you, and the effect you were having on the ‘family reputation’. After all, if Princess Celestia has made this the ‘best of all possible worlds’, and the respected Tempos have given birth to a freak, then surely that can only be seen as a rebuke of the highest caliber.”

How? Vinyl asked herself in shock. How could Fluttershy possibly know?

“You’ve said enough,” Daring said sternly, putting a hoof around a shaking Vinyl’s withers.

“Is this…? This is too much, it’s not believable,” Fluttershy said, wondering why she was being so cruel to her friend’s fictional past.

But as she touched the corrective fluid bottle, Angel’s paw was there, and he was staring into her eyes. Slowly, Fluttershy looked back into the page, where more of Oars’ dialog was being written without her help. Her hoof shaking ever so slightly, she turned and rejoined the flow, filling in both Daring Do and Vinyl.

“But I’m just getting to the good part!” Oars retorted jovially. “For eight years, she was continually attacked by her fellow inmates for her ‘unnatural nature’, with the staff doing nothing to help her until the night of Spring 13, 6906, when events of an unknown nature caused a severe psychological break, creating at least seven new personalities and giving her her cutie mark.”

Oars fished another page from Vinyl’s file to continue his tale: “One of these personalities, PON-3, was measured to have a genius level I.Q. It was almost certainly she who orchestrated the escapes on Harvest 32, 6908 of both Vinyl Scratch and her new friend Octavia Melody, admitted to the Sanitorium a week earlier for mental exhaustion. Vinyl, or probably PON-3 pretending to be Vinyl, then won an impressive string of court cases that not only buried all public documentation of Vinyl’s disability, but also had her declared a legal adult, and 100% sane.

“From there, she became a significant inventor in the field of audio electronics, and as DJ-P0N3, became Equestria’s first disk jockey.”

“Is there a point to all this?” Vinyl said wearily.

“I just wanted to make sure that Daring Do knew the true nature of the pony she’s currently entrusting her life with. Oh, and let me add this last bit: One day after the start of the Second Pony-Dragon War, she enlisted into the ranks of the Morale Corps.” Oars put down the page he had been consulting, as well as his spectacles. Taking a monogrammed hoofkerchief out of his breast pocket, he used a hoof and his magic to polish the lenses. Still looking down, he said, “You know, members of the Morale Corps are frequently kept out of the public eye, both to carry out secret missions for the Crown… and to submit themselves to experiments, experiments that are then carefully erased from their memories afterwards. Do you want to take a guess as to which experiment we performed on you, Vinyl Scratch?”

Vinyl began to back away from the screen. “Stay away from me,” she warned. “Especially you, Daring!”

“Oh but Vinyl, you need to do your duty,” Oars cooed, relishing his upcoming triumph. “The persimmons are in bloom, and Daring Do is a traitor to the Crown!”

Vinyl screamed in anguish, clutching her head with her hooves. “N…o! I won’t let you!” she cried.

Daring positioned herself with her back against a windowed wall, away from the elevator shaft and away from Vinyl Scratch, who she judged was soon to lose the battle against her implanted personality. She saw the shadows growing around the unicorn, and instinctually ducked as four pegasi burst through the window behind her.

“That’s the traitor!” the image of Oars in Wells shouted in a panicked voice, pointing a hoof at Daring Do.

The image was replaced with a recording caught on a shaky motion picture camera. It showed a grim Daring Do, staring straight at the viewer. “Dragon Emperor, I hear and obey your order to kill Chancellor Oars before sunrise, and that is what I’m going to do.” She raised in her hooves the Cruciform of Diversity, which cracked with arcane energy. “The same way I already killed Princesses Luna and Celestia.”

Oars in Wells was a master of stage magic and illusions. The former included the ability to impersonate any voice, and the combination of the latter and having members of his acting ensemble that were practically identical to each one of the Bearers made this forgery easy to accomplish.

Daring prepared herself to face off against Oars’ soldiers, but froze on realizing that they were all Wonderbolts. “That’s… that’s not fair…” she whimpered.

Soarin’ stepped forward. Like the other Wonderbolts, he was shocked by the confession he had just witnessed. “Daring Do, you are under arrest.”

“No!” the Chancellor demanded. “For her treason, she must be thrown into the pit!”

The elevator shaft briefly glowed red.

Spitfire, having taken longer than her lieutenant to recover from what she had seen, stepped before the glass. “Begging your pardon, Chancellor, but shouldn’t she be put on trial? The nation is going to want to see the face of one who did something… this vile.”

To look of disgust she shot Daring was enough to make her feel physically ill.

Oars sighed. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” he intoned. “Now carry out my order!”

A dark look washed over the eyes of the four Wonderbolts. “We hear and obey!” they proclaimed in unison. And before Daring had managed to get past them to reach the stairway down, they pounced on her.

Daring fought desperately against her enemies, the whole time muttering under her breath: “Why are you doing this to me? Why are you making me attack my heroes?” But not only did they outnumber her, but they were trained for years to work and fight together as a team, and besides, they could fly and she could not. Finally, they were able to drag her over to be positioned right in front of the entrance to the open elevator shaft, two holding her by each trio of limbs (arm, wing and leg).

Daring looked up, to see a stern Vinyl Scratch charging up her horn, facing the ground. “Please… no…” she begged.

Vinyl raised her head, her expression completely impassive. “Death to the traitor,” she decreed, and with a blast of magic, Daring was sent tumbling down the shaft.

& & &

The fall took only a few seconds, but to Daring it seemed an eternity. She did everything in her power, first to slow her fall, and then to avoid striking the sharpest of the rocks which had been positioned at the bottom of the shaft. When she finally struck, the pain was excruciating. Daring cried out in agony.

From the shadows that were in the four corners of the shaft emerged familiar figures: Dr. Cabelleron and his three henchponies.

Daring tried to get up, but found she could neither move nor feel her back legs. She hoped that Cabelleron would spout some sort of triumphal speech long enough for her to plan some form of escape.

Instead the four surrounded her and, with a quiet signal, jumped upon her body multiple times, trying their best to break the rest of Daring’s bones.

Daring did not cry out in pain any longer. She did not curse or taunt her enemies. She just accepted her fate with a look of utter hopelessness.

When it became clear that she was no longer physically capable of fighting back, the attackers stopped, with the exception of Rough Stuff, who could not resist the temptation to throw in one last kick in the ribs. The foursome then picked Daring Do up onto their shoulders, carrying her like an honored corpse. Slowly, they made their way towards the blood-red light pouring in from a giant hole in the wall.

Daring looked not into the red light and into the place where she would meet her final fate.

She looked at me. She looked at me like she could see me, and then she said, “I’m sorry, Fluttershy. I’m sorry that you have to see this. I told you at Flight Camp that I would never turn against you, and I never break a promise. I forgive you.”

Chapter 5A

My World Is Empty Without You

Chapter 5A

The quill hit the floor with a click, then stopped mid-bounce as Fluttershy stood.

“Fluttersh—”

Angel froze mid-word, and though he was struggling, fighting hard, Fluttershy ignored him as she let tears fall onto the pages she’d written.

“I think I’ll go see Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy whispered.

“Wake u—”

Ryooki froze too, more completely than Angel, like a statue as Angel growled and whimpered against the grip of an uncompromising author who was feeling more pain than usual, for sentencing a fictional character to death.

Her world, her dream-land that felt as real to her as any other waking day, stood utterly still so that Fluttershy could breathe for a moment.

She stepped away from the table and walked out to the front of her home, looking up at the clouds. What was up there? Cloudsdale? Being awake?

Everything shuddered, and she gasped as the world grew blurry. She’d never been aware of a dream before, and even this bare edge of that awareness was painful and frightening, it felt like she was falling apart, everything in the world was falling apart.

“Rainbow Dash…” she whispered in horror, tears pouring down her cheeks. “Oh Rainbow… No… No no no…”

PON-3 sighed with resignation. She and the troops had tried their best, but in the end they were unable to dislodge the entity which called itself “The Agent” from maintaining control of Vinyl Scratch. After a few microseconds of contemplation, she decided to change tactics. If that sorry excuse for a unicorn can play tricks with reality to get what he wants, then so can I! she thought to herself.

“Agent Vinyl! Front and center!”

Vinyl Scratch turned her head to point towards the magical screen for a moment, then quickly repositioned itself so she was facing it straight on. “Ready for further orders, Chancellor!” she stated.

“The continued existence of this device is a security threat, Agent,” PON-3 said. As she spoke, her words were transformed to be heard by Agent Vinyl as a reasonable approximation of the voice of Oars in Wells. “I hereby order you to use your magic to destroy the screen!” Beside her floated a physical representation of a specific spell matrix.

“I hear and obey!” Agent Vinyl declared, charging her horn.

At the last second, the destruction matrix was replaced with one Vinyl had picked up at the Sanitorium, one that ironically had been created specifically to work on her. The bright purple blast struck the glass screen, causing it to give out a loud and persistent buzzing of a very specific frequency.

Seconds later, Vinyl Scratch was unconscious.

& & &

The Agent found herself standing at one side of a large rectangular-shaped room. For some reason she knew this room extremely well, even though she couldn’t remember it. One thing she noticed about the room was that the acoustics were tuned so perfectly that by merely tapping a hoof on the floor and listening to the echoes, she could tell exactly what was in the room. What she detected was a bed, a barred window, and a door which was behind her. The door also had barred windows. The room extended off on one side, but instead of the clothes cabinet—how did she know about that?—there was instead a space that seemed to swallow sound. She could detect the floor, wall and ceiling contours entering the space, but they then sort of faded out into... nothing.

“Hello?” she asked the emptiness. “What’s going on? Where am I?”

Out of the emptiness emerged a figure, a pony that reminded the Agent of herself, only... older. Twenty or even thirty years older. This mare walked up to the Agent with absolute certainty in her step, despite suffering from the same... condition that kept her from being able to see.

“Ah, Little Miss Agent,” the newcomer said in a voice that was a variation on Agent’s own. “Welcome to the herd.”

“Who are you?” Agent asked.

“My friends call me PON-3, but as far as you’re concerned, I’m the bucking Princess.”

Agent pouted. “That’s disrespectful to the chain of command.”

“That was the intent—you did try to kill one of my friends, after all. But I’m willing to put that behind us, just as soon as we get past the initiation.”

Agent didn’t like the sound of that. “What kind of initiation?” she asked.

“Think of it as a get-together,” PON-3 said as she walked into the emptiness.

Agent strained her ears, and heard the faint sound of doors being opened.

“A way to get to know your fellow cast members,” PON-3 continued from the far end of the room. “The ones I don’t normally let out of their cages.”

Agent began to hear other sounds. Skittering sounds, not only on the floor but also the walls and the ceiling. And laughter—the laughter of poor souls that have utterly lost their minds.

“Don’t worry!” PON-3 exclaimed jovially, suddenly right next to the terrified pony and putting a hoof around her withers. “You can’t die in here.” Her voice turned cold as she added, “Although after the first week, you might wish for it.”

Agent sobbed. “P... please... Princess. I was just following orders. It’s my entire purpose! Without a purpose, what am I?”

“I don’t know. What are you?” the elder unicorn replied with some warmth. When this received no reply she added, “No, I’m serious, and this is really important. If there’s nothing more to you than blind obedience to authority, then I’m throwing you in a cell with the others.”

“I... I…”

“Go on, take your time. I’ll hold back the army until I hear your answer.” As she waited, she pointed her ears at the ceiling, or rather beyond it, at the reality outside Vinyl’s skull. And in the meantime, I sure hope somepony comes across our body and wakes us up.

Pinkamena walked into the Royal Plaza, the Cruciform balanced across her back. To her immense relief, she found herself finally free from Fluttershy’s attention for the first time in this entire dream. Carefully, she made her way around the crowd waiting in the pre-dawn darkness for Chancellor Oars’ big announcement. She stopped when she realized that she had just passed the Annex building that Rainbow Dash and Vinyl Scratch had gone to. Craning her neck back, she saw that a large window on the third floor had been smashed.

Actually, it looks like it’s been broken through by multiple pony-sized objects flying at approximately twenty ponylengths per second, to judge by both the size and conformation of the hole and the lack of fragments on the pavement, the expert geologist concluded. Which means they need my help.

Chapter 5B

My World Is Empty Without You

Chapter 5B

Cabelleron and his henchponies carried Rainbow Dash—for surely this was Rainbow Dash, regardless of her current appearance—through the hole in the wall into a large rectangular room that had been elaborately carved out of the granite beneath the Royal Plaza. It looked to Rainbow like it must have taken months, if not years, to achieve this level of detail. Engravings, glyphs, and ritual paintings covered every hoofwidth of the walls and floor of the chamber, as well as the sides of the giant stone slab that dominated the room. The focus of all attention, the direction that every carved and painted figure looked towards in reverential awe, was the dais set at the far end of the room, backlit by the large blazer from which emerged the unnatural dancing red flame that was the sole source of illumination. In every detail, this chamber was a perfect replica of the Sacrifice Room from the Temple of Blood from the fallen Hayan Empire.

Rainbow Dash was dropped on the slab by Caballeron and his gang, who looked decidedly out of place. Without a word they backed out of the room the way they came, then pried open the elevator doors and made their escape (observed by a hiding Pinkamena). Their place as Rainbow’s captors was replaced by Hayan priests, or rather, devoted native ponies of the Tenochtitlan Basin taking on the roles of the long-dead Hayans. With deliberate care, they placed shackles around Rainbow’s neck, hooves, and the bases of her wings and tail, and then pulled the chains attached to those shackles to eight iron rings set in the floor, pulling her body tight with an audible groan.

Rainbow Dash turned her head as much as she could, given her bindings, and fixed her eyes on the master of ceremonies for her upcoming execution: the unique creature Ahuizotl, Daring Do’s arch-enemy. “Hiya!” she said brightly.

The multiple concussions might have made her a little loopy.

Rainbow Dash had expectations for this kind of scene, expectations set by dozens of movie series watched in her foalhood. The villain would give a long monologue, punctuated by maniacal laughter, and then for no very good reason would leave the hero or heroine alone, inevitably leading to the latter’s escape. But this villain didn’t give a monologue. Instead, he picked up a nasty knife with a wiggly blade in his tail-hand and a glass goblet in a regular hand and walked over to Rainbow’s side.

“What’s the cup for?” Rainbow asked.

“Your heart,” Ahuizotl replied.

“Oh,” said Rainbow calmly.

The priests began to chant in a foreign tongue.

With a note of resignation, Rainbow turned her head back until she was staring at the ceiling.

And on that ceiling, which Fluttershy couldn’t see from her ground-level perspective, the following words appeared: Fluttershy still has some measure of control – R. The final letter was in an elaborate cursive, and the entire script was 100%, beyond-obviously Rarity.

“Then why is she doing this?” Rainbow asked nonsensically. It appeared that the stress had finally caused her to snap.

The words from before were wiped like chalk off of a school board, and were then speedily replaced with a new message: She thinks you abandoned her for the Wonderbolts.

The chanting increased in volume.

After a moment, the bound pegasus took in a deep breath, turned her head to face away from Ahuizotl, and spoke, loudly and clearly: “There are two branches of the Wonderbolts: the rank-and-file, and the officer corps. When Spitfire took me out to dinner after winning the Best Young Flyer competition, she asked me to join the ‘Bolts as a private, right then and there. She also told me that I would have to spend the next two years at Wonderbolt HQ, every day except for holidays. Because that’s the rule for all new privates. I asked her if that rule applied to the officers, and she said no. So, I turned down her invitation. You know why? Because I would never abandon my friends like that. Never. I told her that I would wait until she thought me worthy to start as an officer, and if she thought my rejecting her now was insulting, well I guess I would never become a Wonderbolt.

“That is the truth. Anypony who told you something different is a liar. …And also a stagepony who’s really good with illusions.”

I… I… I had finally had enough! “You will stop this immediately!” I declared, entering the chamber and embracing Rainbow Dash. “I had no idea what was really going on, I swear!”

“I believe you,” Rainbow replied with a pained grin.

Pinkamena carefully edged her way around the back wall of the chamber, unnoticed by anypony. On reaching the missing Fourth Wall, she walked through it into a sort of black emptiness… that was interrupted by a quaint wooden cottage door opening into the interior of Fluttershy’s tree house.

Pinkamena looked from the scene in the sacrificial chamber to the incongruous door. Making up her mind, she turned her back on the blood-red room, stepping through the cottage door.

I backed up and looked around at my surroundings, as if for the first time. “So… this is the Emperor’s dream trap, right? And he was using me to hurt the rest of you!”

For a moment, the entire room shook and blurred. When it came back into focus, the engravings and paintings were distorted, as if they had been put on the page with still-wet paint, and then brushed over by a careless hoof.

Behind me, the sun began to rise above the horizon.

I put a hoof to my head. “This isn’t real…” As I said this, the world began to fade out around me.

“No!” Rainbow cried out, her voice faint. “You can’t wake up! Everything that happens to us in the dream does the same thing to our bodies in the waking world!”

I squeezed my eyes shut and uttered a quiet squeal of desperation. “You… can’t just tell a pony to not wake up, Rainbow Dash!”

“Oops.”

Then, there were words. I watched them appear, scrawled in the air in delicate hornwriting.

“As you feel your limbs grow numb, and the world drift away, you know you are a gentle pony, a good pony.”

I trembled, closing my eyes. “How do… Rarity? Is that you?”

“It is,” Rainbow Dash said softly.

“She knows my mantra; say it out loud for me so I can keep my eyes closed,” I pleaded, desperate for Rainbow’s voice to say those calming words.

Rainbow sighed, and I imagined her putting a wing around me like she had… before I had tortured her nearly to death. “As the worries of the day fade away, and all of your friends stand guard over you, you feel light, weightless, drifting, and finally falling, Fluttershy. The sky surrounds you on every side, and you can let go.”

Everything, every pony and creature in the dream briefly felt completely weightless, before the dream settled back in, and I opened my eyes again, calm. Hovering high in the room on gentle wingbeats. And utterly asleep.

The priests were all staring up at me at awe. It may have been because I was glowing. That happens to me sometimes in my dreams.

“Well, don’t just stand there gaping!” Ahuizotl bellowed, his cheeks red with rage. “We have a sacrifice to complete!”

The priests snapped to attention and resumed their chanting.

“Wait, you all have to stop,” I said, quietly but firmly. I knew they all heard me, but they did nothing to honor my request. “What’s happening?” I asked Rainbow.

“I don’t think you’re in control of the dream anymore,” Rainbow replied in a resigned tone.

“Then who is?”

“That would be me.”

I looked over at the source of the new voice, a magical screen hanging on the fourth wall. It hadn’t been there an instant ago. Pictured on its surface was a stiff papier-mâché mask in the shape of Angel bunny’s face. The mask was then removed to reveal Oars in Wells, sitting in my study and working on my typewriter. “This interloper has seen too much,” Oars recited the words he was typing. “She must be sacrificed as well.”

“This interloper has seen too much,” Ahuizotl said in a stiff voice. “She must be sacrificed as well.”

The priests pulled me roughly down from the sky and over to the slab to join Rainbow. I tried to struggle, but it was no use.

I looked helplessly over at the screen. “Does this mean that you’re the Dragon Emperor?”

“Finally!” Oars cried out. “I have been waiting through five dreams for somepony to figure that out!”

“But how?” I demanded. (I did this both out of curiosity and because I knew it would give Oars an excuse to gloat long enough for Rainbow to think of something amazing to get us out of this mess.)

“Do you remember the dragon who tried to entrap Twilight Sparkle and the Princess in his dream, but they accidentally ended up putting him in a coma? That was the Emperor.”

“That was the Dragon Emperor?” Rainbow asked. “He was smaller than Spike! I thought he was like… the Emperor’s shrimpy Court Wizard.”

“But he was also the most-powerful being on the planet, more powerful than even the Sisters combined. And as you remember, I was his confederate, which meant that I alone knew the secret to his incredible power. He had stumbled on nothing less than the source of all magic in Equestria, the magic that the Sisters used to create ponykind seven millennia ago.

“And with the Emperor dead… Well, let’s just say I made a little field trip to the Sister’s ancestral home and took out a rather large withdrawal. And that’s how I became—” With a loud “bong!”, the pompous unicorn’s words came to a sudden stop. Oars in Wells swayed for a few seconds, his eyes reeling, before falling over with a crash big enough to shake the entire cottage.

Pinkamena then stepped into frame with my frying pan, now quite dented. “Wow, that guy really doesn’t know how to shut up, does he?”

“Yay! It’s Darai! She was originally going to be your love interest, you know,” I told Daring… Rainbow?

Rainbow lay back and blinked several times in quick succession. I make one fashion mistake in my dream, and that’s enough to wake up Rarity. I should be like... super awake right now!

Far away, the distant sound of screaming began to be heard.

Pinkamena glanced over her shoulder at the Cruciform, which was still resting on her back. “I’ll be right back,” she said, before darting out of frame.

The earth pony dashed over to the open cottage door, which she promptly shut. “Okay, a teeny-tiny bit of reality bending,” she told herself. “Which anypony can do, because this is a dream. So...”

She closed her eyes.

“Ground floor! Royal Palace, Canterlot Annex, panicking crowds and evil villain wielding the Staff of Sameness. Going up!”

She opened the door, and instead of seeing the Hayan Sacrifice Room, she found herself right behind what appeared to be a body double of the Chancellor. He was on the ground, along with everypony else. At least in the actor’s case, his cutie mark had been replaced with a black equals sign.

Pinkamena grabbed the Cruciform from off of her back, pointed it at the crowd, and yelled, “Fix everything!”

Nothing happened.

Pinkamena looked down at the floor of the cottage she was still standing in, and then out at the stage.

She sighed deeply. “This is going to hurt, isn’t it?” she asked nopony in particular. Then she stepped out of the cottage, so the Cruciform had a concrete reality to fix.

She was right—it did hurt. And the part about the Cruciform working the second time. She was right about that as well.

“Oh, that’s unfortunate,” I sighed. “A lot of ponies probably having their Self stripped from them. I don’t even know where I got that plotline from! I mean, seriously, Daring Dash, I’ve never done political drama before, why pin the conclusion of my main character on one?”

“I wouldn’t know, Fluttershy,” Rainbow said calmly, “because I had it stuck in my head that only eggheads read for fun. I’m beginning to reconsider that opinion. Would you perhaps have any reading recommendations for a beginner such as myself?”

“Oh,” I laughed softly. “Definitely none of my stuff, no, maybe um… Even though he’s trying to kill us, Oars actually writes some entertaining stuff, that might be fun for you. My stuff would, ah…”

I stared off into the middle distance, trying to figure out how to say “make you realize my deep and complex feelings for you” without actually saying it like that.

“Would you like me to unshackle you?” I asked hopefully.

Rainbow turned her head to look at a thoroughly confused Ahuizotl. “Are we done here?” she asked with a grin.

“Ah… where did that wall go?” He pointed his tail-hand behind me for that last part.

Curiously, I turned my head and looked where he was pointing. And yes, it was a black void, but I must say that it was the most friendly and inviting black void that I had ever seen, so I guess that was alright.

“Oh! I can fix this,” I said eagerly as I turned my head back to face him. “Not the wall thing, but the other thing—the reason for the whole ‘heart in a goblet’ thing. Um... Look, I never got to put it in a story, um… Mr. Ahuizotl? Your mother is still alive and living in the frozen North. You don’t have to perform a sacrifice to bring her back to life. You can unlock us and go.”

The creature looked around him as he thought over the revelation he had just been given. Gently, he put down the sacrificial knife. He kneeled down to be close to Rainbow. “Is... is what she says the truth?” he whispered.

“Word of God,” Rainbow said simply.

“Huh,” Ahuizotl said as he stood back up. “Gentleponies, my faithful followers and fellow devotees of all things Hayan, I’m afraid that I have a confession to make: This ceremony is a sham. All of it. The Hayans never practiced pony sacrifice. I stole that from the Asstecs to make the Hayans more bad-flank.”

The priests all moaned in disappointment. “But this was going to be awesome!” one of them whined.

“We’ve all clearly been working way too hard lately, and maybe, just maybe, we got a bit too much into character,” Ahuizotl continued. “Or mind-controlled by a mad-pony. Same thing,” he added under his breath. “As such, I will be taking a month-long sabbatical out of the country. Go... have fun with your families or something while I’m gone. We’ll re-evaluate our priorities when I return.”

“Oh, and releasing us?” I asked politely. I leaned over and whispered to Rainbow, “It’s going to be a single lever.”

“Yeah, right!” Rainbow barked. “What kind of lame author would... I’m going to shut up right now.”

One pull of a single lever later, the pair was released.

“To be fair, I always liked the absurdity of it. The traps, the levers, it’s always silly no matter how real,” I explained to her as I stood and looked her over, frowning a little. “You… why is there so much blood?”

I felt a little dizzy as the world slipped out of focus for a second before coming back sharp.

Rainbow tried to roll off of the slab, and promptly landed in a pile on the granite floor. “Ow…”

I sat next to her, somehow unable to touch her as long as she looked like… Her. Daring Do. The version of Rainbow whose strings I pulled.

“Rainbow… Did I do this to you?” I asked softly.

Rainbow turned her head to look up at me. “So, you admit this was you the whole time?” she said with a smile. “I gotta say, I didn’t think you had it in you. Totally bad flank.”

“I… I never meant for it to be you, it was… It was Daring. Daring… see?” I reached out and gently pulled forward a bit of her monochrome mane, as if somehow that would help prove that I hadn’t tortured my closest friend for hours.

“Am... am I interrupting?”

We turned to see Darai... I guess I mean Pinkamena... standing in front of my cottage door. Which was... somehow... just sitting in the blackness like it belonged there the entire time.

“Help me fix her,” I whimpered, trying to put the rest of the situation out of my mind as I gestured to Rainbow. “Please, please help me. I don’t know how.”

“Right,” Pinkamena said, sitting down for a few seconds. “Oh wait, I know!” she cried out, and went back inside... my house? She came back out with my hope chest.

“That’s my hope chest,” I told her.

“Yes, but inside the chest is... let’s see... I think it’s... the Griffon’s Goblet! The mystical artifact whose ever-full waters can cure any ailment. I am thinking of the right artifact, right? I mean, it’s been so many years since…”

I started to smile a little, and I even managed a soft little laugh. “You… you read my books!” I said gleefully. “The Griffon’s Goblet yeah, but if I was going to put it anywhere, it’d be in my closet! That’s where all of Daring’s stuff is.”

“Right!” Pinkamena said with a huge smile as she put down the chest. “I’ll go ahead and let you do the honors.”

“You’ll have to get it,” I said peacefully. “To use meta you can’t let someone who has an accurate memory of the contents of the closet open it first; if you open it though, I trust your description more than my own, so that’d be best.”

With a huff, Pinkamena walked over, lifted Rainbow Dash onto her back, and took her over to the chest. “Open the stupid box!” she ordered.

“Alright, alright,” Rainbow said. She reached out a feeble hoof and flipped open the box, revealing a glimmering chalice of gold and jewels.

I breathed a sigh of relief, hunching my shoulders. “If… If I did it, and it didn’t work, then it’d be all my fault,” I whispered, looking away from the treasure. “But… But I knew you’d figure it out.” I scooted over and picked up the cup, before blinking my eyes quickly, then shutting them tight to eke out a tear into the crystalline matrix at the bottom of the goblet, where it shone and filled on its own, to the brim, with glittering golden light.

“Please, Rainbow,” I said as I offered it to her. “Please be better.”

Pinkamena pivoted to put Rainbow’s mouth closer to the goblet. She reached forward and began to sip. And as she drank the glow in the water transferred itself to her coat, which steadily increased in brightness until it was blinding.

When the light had faded, Rainbow was exactly as I always remembered her. Not only that, but she was no longer Daring Do, but her own beautiful, prismatic self.

Rainbow took to the air with her restored wings. Looking down at her colors, she asked, “Does this count as a self-insert?”

“Only if I give you an author credit,” I said playfully, looking Rainbow over with overwhelming relief. “Otherwise it’s just libel, since I’m implying an Element of Harmony would go on crazy adventures to steal ancient relics, and everypony knows we don’t do that.”

“Okay, well in that case, could you take some advice from a member of the preview audience?”

“Beta readers,” Pinkamena interrupted.

“Whatever. This story is a mess. I think you should trash it and start over.”

“Hey now, this story isn’t so bad,” I said, smiling as I looked at her. “It’s the first of my novels with my favorite pony in it, that’s got to count for something. Name one thing that’s inappropriate.”

Rainbow Dash blushed briefly, before pointing a silent hoof at the altar which still had quite a bit of her own blood on it.

“Ok, but I wouldn’t have actually written ‘Oh pools of blood flowing over the stone,’ in the end product,” I objected with a huff. “It’d be something poetic about the pain, the wrenching. As long as you just describe the feelings but not the visuals, editors will give you a pass—that’s a lesson for the ages.”

“Are you sure you can’t just write a mindless action adventure? Those have always been my favorite.” Rainbow said with a teasing smirk.

I could feel my cheeks get hot, as my smile faded just a little. “For you, Rainbow? I'd write anything. Even Daring Do being a huge dummy who never so much as hears the word ‘politics’ in her life.”

Fate took that moment to deliver Brass Quill... no, I need to keep things straight. Twilight Sparkle, Spike and Applejack burst into the room from the bottom of the elevator shaft.

“Daring, we’re here to rescue you!” Spike announced. He was only able to do this because he had ridden the whole way on Twilight’s back—the other two were far too winded to speak. “Uh, wait... weren’t you tan before?”

Rainbow had a mid-air laughing fit.

“Wait, quick question, why didn’t we just bring a bomb to the Dragon Emperor's meeting?” I asked abruptly. “I just… A small bomb could have skipped so many steps.”

“Total. Bad. Flank,” concluded Rainbow Dash.

“I’m not a bad-flank,” I laughed. “I would never be brave enough to say that for real. I’m just too scared. Like, I’ve been in love with the real you for… twelve years now? And I could never ever tell you.”

Every other pony in the room froze.

“Any other loose ends you’d like me to tie up?” Pinkamena asked in a small voice. “Preferably far, far away from here?”

“Yeah,” Rainbow said in a distant voice. “There are homicidal versions of Vinyl Scratch and the Wonderbolts on the third floor of this building.”

“Oh, is that all? I’m on it!” Pinkamena exclaimed, running into the void for a few moments until stopping. “Or... I could take the stairs. That works!” And she soon exited the scene.

Spike meanwhile hopped off of Twilight’s back and walked up the void. He stuck his arm into it, and the arm disappeared until he pulled it back out. “Hello darkness my old friend…” he whispered.

I continued smiling, relaxing. My dream-friends were going to fix all the problems with my story. “Oh, and we should probably figure out where Oars is too, tie him up or something.”

“Already did that!” drifted down Pinkamena’s voice from the second floor.

Rainbow drifted quietly down to the floor, walked forward, and gently rested a wing over one of mine. “This would normally be the part where I’d warn you that I’m borderline obsessive, have a pathological hang-up over the subject of ‘loyalty’, live in a town full of psychos at the edge of a sentient forest, and wind up with the part about being in an ultra-powerful group dedicated to protecting the whole of Equestria from rogue gods and other miscellaneous threats. But you already know all of that. So... Pinkie Pie’s my daughter. I’m pretty sure you don’t know that one.”

“I think the only surprise besides that is that you used ‘pathological’ correctly,” I admitted. “Probably my fault, I’m not writing you properly, but… you’re you enough.” I scooted closer and laid my head against her cheek. “I can be Pinkie’s co-mom. That actually sounds really nice. Where is she, by the way?”

“That’s a really long story,” Twilight butted in.

“Well that’s ok. OH!” I said with sudden energy, sitting up. “As long as I’m lucid dreaming, and I’ve got you here… Twilight! You’re an officiator, I know you are, can you marry me with Dream-Rainbow?”

Twilight stared incredulously at me, then over to Applejack.

“Hey!” the farm pony declared. “Why do you think I’ve got the answers?”

Twilight sighed. “Fluttershy, don’t you think you might want to go on a date first? Or... move in together?”

I laughed softly, shaking my head as I stepped over to Twilight and put a wing over her back, like I’d seen Celestia do before.

“Oh Twilight… I know you don’t understand, but I’m a bad pony and everypony knows it, deep down. The real Rainbow Dash would know that, and it’d be perfectly natural for her to just want to be friends, because nopony could stand my presence for more than a few minutes, really. But this is just a fantasy! A dream fantasy! Just like you—a version of Twilight that asks me questions instead of always having the answers, and like Vinyl, but a version of her that has cool friends in her heads that I could meet and talk to separately, like some sort of super-spy! It’s all just to make myself happy… that’s what dreams are good for! And since I’m a fundamentally terrible pony unworthy of love, I’ll never have a wedding or marriage, and might as well just have one here, with a Rainbow that knows all my secrets and still loves me, and has Pinkie Pie as a daughter! I mean, how awesome is that? It’s so cool!”

Rainbow Dash took a position next to me and addressed the purple unicorn. “Twilight, you’re using the wrong script.”

“Wrong script…” Twilight looked off into the blackness for a few seconds before turning back to face the couple and putting on a stern expression. “Fluttershy Parula Fluffykins, I absolutely forbid you from marrying Rainbow Dash! She’s an utter hooligan, and a bad influence.”

“Don’t care, because we’re eloping!” Rainbow declared with a loud raspberry. She then tossed me over her shoulder and flew off to do unspeakable things to me. Wait, give me a moment to get my thesaurus. They won’t be unspeakable for long...

I couldn’t stop laughing, giggling, as I held Rainbow close, and slowly… the dream faded as we all woke up.

Then, I remembered. I remembered what was going on, I remembered that those had been my actual friends, and I was actually hyperventilating in a crystalline coffin while numbly pondering whether I could fly out of the cave and all the way to Neighpon to start a new life before Rainbow could catch me.

Chapter 6A

My World Is Empty Without You

Chapter 6

The dreamers found themselves in a small round chamber constructed out of large square gray stones, joined without any visible mortar. The space was illuminated by magical torches in sconces.

Fluttershy didn’t think their shared dream was over yet, but she wasn’t sure, so she asked, “Did we wake up?” After all, she considered “saying the wrong thing” to sort of be her specialty among the Bearers.

“No, this is sort of a waystation between dreams,” Twilight explained as she approached Fluttershy. After a moment of concentration, Dream Spike popped into existence sitting on her back.

Fluttershy winced as Twilight approached, dreading the moment when the unicorn would bring up the pegasus’ humiliating behavior earlier. When several moments of nothing happened instead, she nerved herself to continue speaking. “Oh... OK. This looks like the room that teleported us into the Dragon Emperor’s meeting spot. Where this whole dream business started.”

“It’s a dream copy of that room,” Vinyl explained, resting a hoof on the surface of a wall rock, the only rock in the whole room that was colored blue instead of gray. “I’ve been using it to pick the order of the dreams we visit.”

“Rawr!” the blue stone exclaimed in a sexy voice.

“Cecil!” Vinyl exclaimed, yanking the hoof away.

“What is it, my pink softstone?” Cecil purred.

The others had a good laugh at Vinyl’s flushed expression.

“Why did you make him like that?” Applejack asked Vinyl.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re the one that summoned up this room, so you must have created a Dream Cecil just like Twilight here created herself a Dream Spike.”

“I... I dunno! Maybe he had the hots for me the whole time!”

Twilight took this moment to turn back to Fluttershy. “Now before anything else happens,” she asked, “could you tell me how your dream ended? I don’t remember anything after Applejack and I entered the Royal Plaza.”

“You... you don’t remember?” Fluttershy asked hopefully. “What about the rest of you?”

“Nope,” said Applejack.

“That’s where my memories end as well,” admitted Pinkamena.

“Don’t look at me,” Spike said when Fluttershy looked his way. “I don’t know anything Twilight doesn’t.”

“My experience of the dream effectively ended shortly after I was brainwashed into pushing Rainbow Dash down the elevator shaft,” Vinyl said, shocking most of the others. “I... got better.”

“Glad to hear it, buddy,” Rainbow Dash said, hovering into the air so she could pat Vinyl on the back. She then flew over to land beside Fluttershy.

Fluttershy struggled to hold in a smile of relief so wide it could split her face open.

“Well I hope you remember what happened, Fluttershy,” Twilight told her with some concern. “An edge we can use against the Dragon Emperor could mean the difference between life and death.”

“Oh, well Pinkamena used the Cruciform to stop Oars’ evil plan. And Oars admitted that he was the Dragon Emperor all along. Or at least since after the first dream trap spell.”

“That Etheric fellow is the Emperor?!” Applejack asked in shock. “Why would he want to turn on his own kind?”

“Pinkamena knocked him out before he got to that part of his villain rant.” Fluttershy turned to the magenta mare. “Sorry.”

“I... I actually got to be the hero for once?” Pinkamena asked in awe. “Too bad I don’t remember it.”

“Sorry.” Fluttershy turned her head away from Pinkamena, which brought her face-to-face with Rainbow Dash, who was looking at her in a very salacious manner.

Rainbow leaned in to whisper in Fluttershy’s ear. “You never asked Mrs. Fluffykins how much she remembers from the end of your dream. The answer is: all of it.”

Fluttershy’s pupils shrunk to pinpricks as she backed away. Suddenly, the stone that she tried to rest her hoof upon dropped away, causing her to stumble.

Rainbow Dash rushed forward, effortlessly lifting her into the air until Fluttershy remembered to start using her wings. They looked down at the hole and through it, to the image of the loose stone tumbling downwards into a blue sky. As they watched, another stone suddenly dropped out, followed by another, and another.

“Those who can’t fly, gather around!” Twilight ordered. When the others got close enough, she levitated into the air and summoned a force field bubble around them.

After the floor had completely fallen away, it was followed by the stones of the walls, falling faster and faster. When it came to be Cecil’s turn, he cried out. “I’m afraid of heights!” A few seconds later, he disappeared mid-fall.

“Perhaps he woke up,” Pinkamena speculated. “Assuming Vinyl didn’t create him.”

Through the open floor, the ponies (and imaginary dragon) could see the city of Canterlot far below, with the Royal Plaza directly downwards. The stones were smashing into the cobblestones of the plaza one after the other.

Twilight, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy directed themselves down the two-hundred or so ponyheights to set hoof upon the remains of the Plaza.

& & &

The moment Twilight dispelled her force field, the ground began to shake violently.

“Prepare yourselves,” Applejack yelled. “That Oars snake is making his move!”

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy took once more to the air. Rainbow guided Fluttershy a full story above the ground, and off to one side significantly separated from the others. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe,” Rainbow assured Fluttershy.

“Don’t worry about me, Rainbow,” Fluttershy insisted. “Go help the others.”

“No can do,” Rainbow retorted with a wink.

Fluttershy crossed her arms and snorted in resentment, but said no more for now.

Meanwhile, the shaking had increased to the point where the trees that lined the plaza were falling over, and some of the buildings were crumbling.

Twilight was unable to summon the concentration to bring back her bubble shield. Then she saw the third floor of the Annex break completely off and begin to fall, right towards the two pegasi. “Look out!” she exclaimed.

Rainbow Dash looked up, and positioned herself to take the brunt of the damage.

As the others watched in horror, the separated floor smashed into the ground, mostly intact.

“Fluttershy?! Rainbow!” Applejack cried out.

“...We’re OK,” the muffled voice of Rainbow Dash re-assured them from within the wreckage. “My wing is pinned down by some rocks, but no other damage. Go on without me.”

& & &

Inside the building fragment, Fluttershy found herself in a space not much bigger than the stone chamber from earlier. Seeing Rainbow Dash, she went over and tried in vain to move the big rocks that did indeed pin Rainbow’s right wing to the ground. “I’ll go and get help,” she said.

“No!” Rainbow insisted, reading out and grabbing Fluttershy’s hoof. “Stay with me!” She looked scared.

No... that’s not right, Fluttershy thought to herself. Rainbow was a very good actress, but Fluttershy could always see through her act, and Rainbow knew it. And she was only pretending to be afraid now. But who is she pretending for? Fluttershy didn’t have to look up, she knew that the two of them were being watched right now, watched by the mad unicorn behind all of this. She thought back to when Rainbow Dash took her aside from the others in the Plaza, as if that would make them any safer in a dream. And, when the building had been falling, Rainbow could have easily pushed both of them out of the way, but instead she deliberately positioned them so they would end up safely isolated from the others. This was all an act. And, most importantly, Rainbow had a plan.

“OK,” Fluttershy said simply, sitting down beside Rainbow Dash and squeezing her hoof.

& & &

The remaining ponies formed themselves into the points of a square, facing outwards. At a signal from Twilight, Spike hopped off of her back and made for the edge of the plaza.

Twilight looked up to the sky. “Alright, show yourself!” she yelled. “We don’t have all day.”

“THE DAY IS PRECISELY AS LONG AS I SAY IT IS.” The voice of Oars in Wells boomed around them. Simultaneously, a blinding light caused the ponies to all look down and rub their eyes. They recovered to see Oars in Wells standing before them. But he was no longer the short fat unicorn they knew. Instead, He was wearing a masculine, muscled-up version of Princess Celestia’s body, complete with flowing mane. And He was wreathed in celestial flame. “AND YOU SHALL KNEEL BEFORE YOUR NEW GOD!”

The shaking had stopped.

By this time, all four ponies out in the open had turned to face Alicorn Oars, and it was with a visible effort that three of them resisted the automatic impulse to do as He had commanded. After all, Celestia and Luna had created the entire pony race and no matter how humble the two acted, it was almost impossible not to see the Sisters as Them (with a capital ‘T’) instead of as them. Twilight in particular was shaking as a result of her internal struggle.

The one pony who didn’t show any sign of obedience was Vinyl Scratch, and she was seething. “And what have You ever done to deserve a speck of respect from us?” she demanded, pointing a hoof accusingly at Oars.

Oars’ aura faded as He relaxed from His demanding posture. With a disarming smile, He replied, in words of softer volume but still resonating with power. “Oh, my little pony, the equation is quite simple: My power is orders of magnitude greater than all of yours’ combined. You will bow to me, or you will die. That is the true nature of power.”

“You are wrong!” Vinyl countered. “No tyrant will ever have the satisfaction of enjoying the power he has stolen, not so long as one pony under his enslavement resists! No matter what You do, I will never bend!” Sensing the hesitation of the others, she gathered herself and concentrated.

The sound of cellos began to build around her. Pinkamena turned, and thought she saw a spectral orchestra composed entirely of Octavias, playing a defiant melody.

Vinyl began to sing:

For the daring, and our cause.
To no gods we pray, never waive.
Time has come for us to take charge
And fight the power.

As she continued, Vinyl advanced one step closer to the dread alicorn with each line.

Standing still as You charge
We will hold our ground, not back down.
We will raise our hooves from the ground
And fight the war to end
All the suffering.

She felt the other ponies gaining strength from her words, advancing alongside her.

“You cannot resist me!” Oars cried out, trying His best to be heard over the ever-louder phantom orchestra. “I command the sun itself!” He declared after taking to the sky.

With a gesture, the sun began to drop out of the sky. Growing larger and hotter with every passing moment.

A magical bolt struck Him at the back of His head. He turned to see Spike scurrying out of view. With His head turned, He was stuck in the same spot by another magical bolt, this one from Twilight. He glared up at the sun, which began to approach even faster. The fallen trees simultaneously burst into flames from the intense heat, and the ponies felt like they were about to faint.

“V... Vinyl’s right!” Pinkamena cried, summoning up her courage. She picked up a burnt twig and tossed it into the alicorn’s flowing mane. “And you…” She pointed suddenly at Oars’ cutie mark, no longer a representation of His name, but instead a copy of Princess Celestia’s.

With a flash, Mauve Shadow was standing beside Pinkamena, armed with an unaltered Staff of Sameness.

“You don’t deserve that mark!” Pinkamena and Mauve cried out in unison. And then the beam from the artifact struck Alicorn Oars in the flank.

Oars cried out in agony as the sun was ripped off of Him and replaced by a plain equals sign. At that moment the sun retreated back to its rightful location in the sky.

Twilight, Applejack and Vinyl looked at Pinkamena in surprise—or pointed their ears, in Vinyl’s case.

“What?” Pinkamena asked defensively. “Can’t a mare have two imaginary friends?”

& & &

Under the building, Rainbow and Fluttershy sat and listened to the sounds of the battle.

“I wonder why Oars hasn’t taken us over yet,” Fluttershy asked Rainbow.

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Rainbow replied. “In my dream, I had complete control over you, Rarity and Applejack, because none of you had woken up yet. But I could only suggest what to do to Twilight, Vinyl and Pinkie Pie, because they were awake in the dream.”

Rainbow watched with a gentle smile as Fluttershy put the facts together. “So that means... in my dream when I proposed to you, and you accepted, that was you? I wasn’t just playing out my fantasy, that was really you?”

Rainbow Dash nodded. “After you opened your heart to me, I just gave up.” She picked up Fluttershy’s hoof, and snuggled her cheek against it. “I’ve loved you for years, Flutters, but I pretended not to because I thought I would just hurt you, like I hurt Gilda at the Academy.”

“I don’t care,” Fluttershy said.

“But I act without thinking. All the time!”

“I still don’t care. Life is pain. And a little sorrow makes the joy all the sweeter.”

Rainbow’s eyes filled with tears, and she impulsively pulled Fluttershy into a hug.

“I just don’t know what you see in me,” Fluttershy muttered into Rainbow’s fur.

Rainbow pushed Fluttershy away until she was at arm’s length, and looked at her sadly. “Flutters, there’s something you need to know.”

“What is it, Rainbow?”

“There’s something wrong with my ears, because every time you tell me something awful about yourself, all I hear is another reason to believe that you’re the most awesome pony to have ever lived.” She grinned and opened her arms wide.

Fluttershy leaped forward and enveloped Rainbow into another hug.

“Not yet,” she whispered into Rainbow’s ear.

Chapter 6B

The powerless alicorn Oars in Wells fell out of the sky and landed on the floor of the Royal Plaza.

And then He turned to stone.

“Did you do that?” Applejack asked Twilight.

“No,” Twilight replied, before she noticed cracks spreading along the surface of Stone Oars. “Oh, no…” she whispered in recognition.

The stone shell exploded, and from the rubble emerged Draconoquus Oars in Wells.

“I’d like to see you try and stop this form!” He boasted. He snapped His claw, and the surface of the plaza was covered with soapy water. Each building turned a different color. One of them turned into gelatin, and another floated gently into the sky. With a wicked grin, He stared at the ponies opposing Him, and His eyes became spinning spirals.

“Not again!” Applejack cried out, fighting a rising compulsion to give up on honesty.

Twilight buried her snout in her hooves as she tried to dismiss the false memory that all of her friends had turned on her.

Pinkamena was given a new compulsion, that Pinkie Pie had abandoned her for being too boring. She began to laugh, and found that she couldn’t stop.

Mauve Shadow had an utterly panicked expression on her face for a moment, and then she popped out of existence.

A phantom Rarity then popped into existence, floating above them. “You have to resist, everypony!” she insisted. “You know in your heart what is true, and what is false. Listen to me!”

Spike emerged from the rubble, and began shaking Twilight. “She’s right, Twilight. Snap out of it!”

Oars tried to send one of the fallen rocks through Rarity’s illusion, but it reared wildly off course and embedded itself into the gelatin building.

“You’re a creature of chaos now, Mr. Wells,” Rarity chided. “Stopping me won’t be as simple as that!”

Oars lifted into the air and tried to swipe at Phantom Rarity with a claw, but she easily eluded His grasp. He then started throwing everything He could find at her, as she hopped and skipped merrily around the Plaza.

& & &

“Cloudsdale!” Rainbow Dash cried out feebly, reaching out to something only she could see.

“No!” Fluttershy shouted, grabbing Rainbow’s head and shaking it. “We don’t have time for that! He’s not looking, Dash. He’s not looking!” And apparently, with all his research into the Bearers, he had failed to uncover the fact that Discord had failed in his attempt to corrupt Fluttershy from within, leaving her unaffected this time as well.

“What?” Rainbow asked, looking at Fluttershy with unfocused eyes. “He’s not?” She closed her eyes, and with an extreme effort, dismissed the illusion. She looked to Fluttershy with determination. “OK, then. I need you to repeat after me, real softly.”

“I can do that,” Fluttershy said with a warm smile.

“O Pinkie Pie, mighty and merciful goddess, I, Fire Boom the Fifth, aka Rainbow Miriam Dash Fluffykins—” (the last word said with a giant grin) “—hereby consecrate myself as your follower.”

“O Pinkie Pie, mighty and merciful goddess, I, Fluttershy Parula Fluffykins Dash—” (fully matching Rainbow’s grin) “—hereby consecrate myself as your follower.”

“As I am bonded to you, so you are bonded to me.”

& & &

Vinyl Scratch sat quietly in the soapy water, feeling a small amount of contempt for Draconequus Oars in Wells. Once again, somepony had tried to put the whammy on her using a spell that only works on ponies that can see. Discord at least was smarter than that.

“3.141592653597…” she began to recite, a musical drone building behind her.

A second voice, a somewhat older copy of her own, chimed in with the same verse. This was joined by a third, younger voice, forming a fugue.

A bubble of order began to grow around her, turning the Plaza back to normal.

Oars turned to see it, and backed away in fear. Then He produced a trumpet out of nowhere and played a deafening brown note.

Vinyl flipped her glasses off of her snout right before they shattered, revealing the giant empty sockets where her eyes should have been. She cried out in pain and terror as the nightmare of being overwhelmed by her other personalities overwhelmed her.

Oars turned on Rarity, and the awful note disintegrated her image.

The light in the plaza shimmered as everypony’s nightmares became visible. Each of them pulled into fetal positions to try and escape.

Oars reached out at random and plucked Spike out of the air by his tail. He blew a puff of flame at the dragon, and he burnt away like he was made of paper.

Oars stood there quietly, taking in His triumph. And then He heard the faint sound of chanting coming from the rubble of the third floor of the University of Canterlot Annex. He inflated himself to the size of a giant so that He could lift the entire building up with a claw.

He saw Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, side by side, their snouts pressed against the ground, praying... probably to Princess Celestia. “She can’t hear you, you know,” He said contemptuously. When they didn’t stop, He leaned forward to hear what they were saying.

“No more shall you be the grim Judge of Fate,” they chanted in unison. “By our command, you are now transformed into Pinkie Pie, Goddess of Dreams!”

Oars leaned back in terror. Then He grabbed onto the broken building with both paw and claw and prepared to slam it down upon their heads.

“LEAVE MY FOLLOWERS ALONE!”

(Editor’s note: In this one instance, the use of the color pink does not mean that words so colored are invisible to the dreamer. Rather, the spoken words were, in fact, pink in color.)

The sky... no, the very fabric of reality ripped open, and out of the blinding white substance behind the universe emerged an amorphous bipedal being, pink in color and five stories tall. A limb extended outwards, becoming a hand that grabbed up the draconequus, distorting perspective to shrink Him down against His will. She then used Her other hand to strip an invisible something off of Him, rendering Him a “he” once more.

“No!” he bellowed, trying in vain to twist his way out of Her grip. Rocks flew through the air with a snap of his claw, but they just passed through her. “I’ll destroy you! I’ll destroy anything that gets in my way!” He twisted and reformed himself yet again, into a form that was supposed to be known only to the Sisters in the current era: a red centaur, the spot between his horns a black hole for magical energy. “I’ll destroy everything!” he bellowed.

The goddess lifted Oars in Wells up, giving off a wave of distaste, and then She dropped him into Her mouth, swallowing him whole.

The fuzzy pink mountain shrank and focused, becoming a pink alicorn with a mane made up of braids that tangled and untangled by themselves. Her face, though, was obviously Pinkie Pie. “So,” she said brightly. “Did you miss me?”

All the other ponies rushed forward for a big group hug. Pinkamena took the opportunity to point out the alicorn’s somewhat creepy manestyle, and Pinkie turned it back into its usual static poofiness.

Once that was done, Twilight backed up to get a good look at her. “I’ve got to say, from the bottom of my heart: thank you.”

“For saving you all?” Pinkie asked.

“Well, yes,” Twilight replied. “But mostly for validating my faith in a rational universe. I mean, of course a goddess would be able to do all the crazy things that you do on a daily basis!”

Pinkie furrowed her brow in confusion. “Well actually, those are all things that any pony—”

She was interrupted by a hoof put over her mouth by Pinkamena, who frowned and shook her head as a warning not to complete that particular thought. After a moment, she removed her hoof and asked Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, “I do have a question though: how were you two able to complete that chant together? I can’t think of any time when you would have been able to rehearse it without Oars in Wells noticing.”

Pinkie Pie decided to answer before the other two had a chance. “I think it’s the same sort of thing as when a pony starts singing a new song, and suddenly everypony else knows the words. Or, or maybe it’s true love! Like when an old couple can complete each other’s thoughts! You two just short-circuited the whole process because of the Elements of Harmony, or plugging your spirits into my reality pool. And speaking of which…”

In an instant, she had teleported the extremely-short distance to be between the two pegasi. “You two need to totally do a do-over! How could you pour out your hearts to each other without me sitting between you to make you both feel really awkward! First free moment we get, I’m throwing you a Roameo and Jeweliette party, only without the icky ending part.”

“Only if you call me Mom,” Fluttershy demurred with pink cheeks and a smile.

Unnoticed by the others, Pinkie Pie reconstituted Vinyl’s glasses, and levitated them over to her. Vinyl could somehow sense that Pinkie was looking right at her, looking right at her as she really was and was smiling kindly, not flinching. Maybe that was one of her new dream powers. Vinyl nodded in thanks as she put back on her shield against the world.

“You two are getting together?” Applejack asked the pegasus pair. “It’s about time!”

The others were about to get in on the congratulations of the new couple, when the voice of Rarity rang out around them: “There’s no time for that! Oars is getting away in the waking world, and he’s planning something awful!”

Twilight floated involuntarily up into the air, and at the apex of her arc suddenly disappeared. Spike disappeared at the same instant.

“Well, see you on the other side,” Vinyl quipped, before she too was literally yanked out of the dream.

Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy quickly followed.

Pinkamena was beginning to float up when Pinkie Pie stopped her with a hoof. “Can we have a moment?” she asked the unseen Rarity.

Pinkamena was floated back down in response.

Pinkie Pie put a hoof on Pinkamena’s chest and looked her straight in the eyes. “I’m going to have to stay here, Pinks,” she said. “To get used to my new job.”

Pinkamena gestured to Pinkie’s alicorn body with a grin. “Not to mention keep from having your divine cover blown right open.”

“You’re... not going to have a problem running the old body solo for a while?”

Pinkamena’s smile became warmer. “Promise me I’ll still have your shoulder to cry on every night if I need it?”

Pinkie nodded. “It’s a deal.”

“Okay, you can pull me out!” she yelled at the sky.

A moment later, Pinkie Pie was alone in the plaza. With a deep sigh, she set to work repairing the damage with her magic.

Chapter 7

My World Is Empty Without You

Chapter 7

The dreaming world was a distinctly different experience than being awake.

In the dreaming world, you walked into a room, and that room was precisely defined. The four walls were exactly square, and they had a known composition. None of the floorboards creaked, because the floor was a single solid substance that only looked like individual planks of wood.

Similarly, if you met somepony new in a dream, that pony was exactly who they appeared to be. They didn’t come off as two-dimensional because you had only known them for a few minutes; they were in fact two-dimensional characters, with no complexity beyond what you picked up on a first impression.

And then, out of nowhere, anything or everything could change. The square room was now round. And the new character was not discovered to be more complex; he or she now had a completely new personality. And might have suddenly changed from a filly into an old mare. But after that change, everything was simple again. It was so simple, in fact, that it was incredibly fragile—a simple touch could destroy everything, or end the dream altogether.

The waking world was different, so very different, although it appeared to be similar. The closer you examined it, the more detail you would discover. That was especially true for the ponies you met—they were never as simple as you thought they were when you met them.

These were the thoughts that raced through Vinyl Scratch’s head as she found herself in a location she had no memory of ever visiting before. She was in a crystalline casket, in a rough-hewn stone cavern.

Oh, and the cavern was collapsing, threatening to bury her alive.

Climbing out of the casket, Vinyl made her way to the grunts of unicorns trying to hold up a great weight. She reached out a hoof and contacted a unicorn’s coat, then volunteered her magic to strengthen their own.

“This way!” Rarity called out, from somewhere outside the cavern.

She heard two other ponies, presumably Applejack and Pinkamena, run past her. Vinyl could only assume that Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy had already escaped.

“On three,” the voice of Twilight Sparkle addressed her. “One, two, three!”

The two unicorns ran for the exit, angling their magic to hold up the collapsing rocks behind them until they were safely free from danger.

“He went through that portal,” Rarity told the others. “Here are your saddlebags.”

Each of the ponies received magical saddlebags, enchanted to reveal a secret compartment that could hold much more than the compartment appeared on the outside, but only when activated by the pony’s personal magic.

“I’ve got my Gift,” Rainbow announced after checking.

“Same here,” announced Applejack.

“I have mine,” Twilight said.

“Oh, Ryooki, I hope you weren’t scared waiting for me,” Fluttershy said, addressing her particular Gift of the Ancients.

“What was Pinkie Pie’s Gift again?” Pinkamena asked. “All I’ve got are pies. Lots and lots of pies.” She laughed in shocked surprise as the situation suddenly sank in. “I’m awake, aren’t I? Awake and in full hero mode. What has happened to me?”

“Pinkie Pie gave me Pinkie’s Gift, Pinkamena,” Vinyl told her. “And I’ve got it.”

“Yes, and I have the jewel,” Rarity said with growing impatience. “Come on!”

Twilight made sounds of concentrated study. “Yes, I think I can reactivate Oars' portal,” she said at last. There was a burst of powerful magic, which suddenly bloomed into a field that leaked massive amounts of it into the air. “Alright, Spike, get on my back.”

Silence.

“Right. No Spike. Everypony else, follow me!”

And with blind trust, the group of six ponies stepped one by one through the portal to an unknown destination.

& & &

A few seconds later, a closet door opened up into the destroyed remnants of the Dream Emperor’s Control Room.

“Hello?” the dragon lackey asked the rubble. “Anybody there?”

The portal dropped them outside a forest. The normal sounds of this forest were being drowned out by what sounded like a never-ending explosion. Vinyl covered her over-sensitive ears with her hooves.

“It’s the Ancient rocket!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash.

From this, Vinyl was able to conclude that they were outside the Everfree.

The sound of what must have been the rocket began to move upwards.

“My magic bounces right off of it!” Twilight exclaimed.

“I...might be able to catch it,” Rainbow said with very uncharacteristic hesitation.

“I know what to do!” Fluttershy said sharply. “Give me some space!”

Vinyl could just make out the sound of Fluttershy running away from them. This was followed a few moments later by Fluttershy running back towards them, accompanied by a hard to identify organic sound that suddenly became crystalline.

There was a moment of silence, which Vinyl assumed to be caused by seeing whatever strange thing she had just heard.

“Well...that just happened,” Applejack commented.

“There’s no time! Everypony get inside!” Twilight commanded.

Vinyl allowed herself to be herded inside whatever thing Fluttershy had summoned into existence. The interior was like one giant crystal. Vinyl found a corner to sit down.

There was a change in atmospheric pressure, as the doorway that Vinyl had passed through closed itself.

“Follow that spaceship!” Rainbow ordered.

“That awful Oars pony is up to no good,” Fluttershy quietly explained to somepony. (Although Vinyl had no idea who was left who wasn’t aware of that fact.) “Do you think you can chase after him?”

There was a complex sort of mewing sound, accompanied by a mechanical click.

“I think she’s saying that she needs Rarity’s Gift as a power source. If…if you don’t mind giving it up forever and being the only one of us without her present from that nice Ancient Jeff.” Fluttershy’s voice had descended into a pathetic whimper by the end of that sentence.

“Oh Fluttershy, Darling, I don’t need a mere physical object to remember our time with that gracious alien. Here you are.”

Less than five seconds later, Vinyl suddenly felt herself squished into the floor.

“Alright, let me get this straight,” Pinkamena said a few moments later. “The super power of your Gift of the Ancients—who just so happens to be a living animal—is the ability to turn itself into a spaceship?!”

“Yes,” Fluttershy told the others. “Do you remember that time that my chicken coup got flattened? That was Ryooki. I didn’t tell you before because she was too scared to do it again, and I didn’t think you’d believe me without proof.”

“We’re inside a rabbit,” Pinkamena said in realization.

“She’s a cabbit,” Fluttershy clarified. “Now Ryooki, this looks like a screen. Is there any way you can show us the rocket? ...Yes, just like that. Thank you.”

“Gather around, everypony,” Twilight announced. “I have a plan.”

The other ponies surrounded Twilight. Vinyl didn’t hear anypony beckoning her, so she stayed put.

& & &

As the others planned, Vinyl found herself with time to reflect.

“What am I doing here?” she muttered. “Inside the dream I could do anything with a song, but out here what am I next to the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony? We’ve just walked onto the set of a Smash Fortune serial, and they don’t even bat an eye!”

“Well, I’m normal, too,” Pinkamana said, sitting down next to her. “And I don’t exactly know how to fly a spaceship. Besides, aren’t you a secret agent?”

“I was a glorified paper-pusher,” Vinyl told her.

“You saved Twilight and the Princess from the original dream trap,” Pinkamena countered.

“I just knew the right dragon to throw at the problem,” Vinyl said.

“Well, that’s pretty much what they do 80% of the time. The times when they pull out the magic jewelry is more the exception than the rule. Besides, you’ve been in all of their dreams. And mine. And what does that tell you?”

“...That you’re all just as crazy as I am,” Vinyl said with a grin.

“So why don’t you go and contribute something,” Pinkamena said, pushing Vinyl to her hooves.

“...And that’s why we have to concentrate all of our friendship into Rainbow Dash,” Twilight concluded.

“It’s just too bad there’s no way we can try to talk Mr. Wells into giving up,” said Fluttershy.

“Um...Twilight?”

“Yes, Vinyl?”

“If you cast the Etheric spell, you should be able to communicate with Oars.”

“That’s right!” Twilight exclaimed. After a magical “poof”, a sphere of static appeared in the center of the room they were in.

(Was this the whole spaceship? Vinyl asked herself. Or is this more like the bridge?)

“Oars in Wells, this is madness!” Twilight declared. “You need to surrender! I’m sure we can come to some sort of lenient arrangement.”

“Never!” replied the voice of Oars in Wells from the center of the Etheric sphere. “We’re nearly at the Sphere of Stars, the barrier that separates the Equestrian realm from the wider universe, a place where magic is completely unknown.”

As Oars was talking, Rainbow Dash walked quietly over to Fluttershy. “How close are we right now?” she asked quietly.

“We’re nearly caught up,” Fluttershy replied.

Vinyl heard Rainbow tap something with a hoof, and this was followed by the sound of a panel sliding aside. This in turn made the sound of rushing air that had accompanied the entire trip much louder.

Editor’s Note: The outer space of the Equus system differs from regular space in that it contains a breathable atmosphere.

“Once I pass through that Sphere,” Oars continued, “I will absorb all of the magic contained in this universe, transforming me into a god among gods!”

There was a flap of Rainbow’s wings, and then she was gone.

“That will kill all of the ponies!” Twilight exclaimed in horror.

“And most of the animals!” Fluttershy added. “And the dragons, the zebra, the griffons...in fact, it would be easier to just list the survivors, of which there would be very few!”

& & &

Rainbow Dash tried to catch up with the rocket using her usual Sonic Rainboom technique, but was hampered by having a recently-crushed wing. With a sigh, she removed the comically-long Javelin from her tiny saddlebags, tucking the sharpened stick under that same lame wing. She then launched into a technique her overbearing mother Firefly had taught her: twirling around her barrel like a ballerina, only much much faster. This caused her to shoot forward like a skyrocket.

She was greatly helped by the gross inefficiency of the rocket. It had been designed on a computer by Ancients that only had remote readings of the ways that magic affected various materials. In fact, if there had been a road stretching from the surface of Equestria to the Sphere of Stars, even Applejack could have outraced that rocket.

Of course her technique is better than mine, Rainbow grumbled to herself. Mother will never let me hear the end of it if she ever finds out.

& & &

“I am the sum total of Pony History!” Oars declared madly. “I will avenge the crime the Ancients committed by abandoning us so long ago! Once I’ve laid low Pinkie Pie’s arrogant clan, there will be none who will dare oppose me! Everything that lives will exist purely to serve my whims.”

“Please stop…” Fluttershy whimpered. “You are striving to rule an uncaring universe, for your own ego, when you could find love here just by stopping—”

“Entire galaxies—is that the right term...yes—entire galaxies will be obliterated, just to teach the survivors a lesson.”

& & &

Having passed Oar’s rocket, Rainbow stopped her rotation, faced the rocket, and flung the javelin, all in one fluid motion—in that moment she remembered a photograph framed on the wall of the Sports Wing of the Equestrian Museum, showing a pegasus throwing a discus, immortalized for all posterity. For a moment, she wished she had read one of those old history books, because she felt like she was going to end up in one.

The silver end of the stick embedded itself in the nosecone of the rocket, leaving the gold end exposed.

Rainbow allowed the adrenaline to drain out of her as she surveyed her work.

And that’s when she realized that being this close to the Sphere of Stars, there was no ambient magic left. She had used up her entire personal store to get here.

And so Rainbow stopped fighting the feeling of emptiness that was crawling through her muscles and mind. The limpness came first, her vision clouding at the edges as she rotated through the air in zero gravity, the rocket roaring past her and further up into the sky, but even turning her head to follow it would be too much effort. She was a creature of magic and energy, and without both she was a feather on the breeze, as gravity finally reclaimed her and she began to fall towards her home, Equestria, waiting with open arms as she closed her eyes and was no longer aware.

“Hope there are some butterflies waiting for me down there, Shy,” were her last thoughts.

& & &

“...I will devour the multiverse!” Oars concluded his diatribe, wherein he somehow managed to connect being denied his rightful noble title at birth with the right to kill billions.

“Shut it off, Twilight,” Applejack said sternly. “He’s about to get what’s coming to him.”

Twilight saw the edge of the universe rapidly approaching. “Cut the engines,” she ordered in a panic. “Pull back! Pull back!”

& & &

In the mundane universe, Rainbow’s javelin was a thick round pole made of cedar wood, sharpened to a point at both ends. One end was covered with a gold alloy cap, and the other was covered with a silver alloy cap.

Within the magical pocket universe that contained Equestria, that object gained additional abilities. The gold cap had an affinity for magic, and the silver cap had an affinity for science, the science of the outer universe. If the silver end was ever allowed to strike the surface of Equestria, it would convert an area about the size of Ponyville into antimatter, with the effect you might expect of such a reaction.

In this case, the surface of the rocket was designed scientifically, but covered with a micro-thin coating that allowed it to exist in a magical environment. The silver end had punctured that coating, and when the rocket reached the Sphere, the magic-loving gold end pushed through just enough to contact the edge of the mundane universe.

The result could be described as a “short circuit”, but Rainbow would have found that severely lacking in awesomeness.

Oars and his rocket were obliterated by an explosion big enough that had it been on the surface, the griffons and dragons would have found the whole of Equestria only a smoking crater on the sunrise.

& & &

Ryooki was in full retreat at the time of the explosion, protected by a powerful shield generated by Twilight and re-enforced by Rarity.

“Vinyl, help me!” Twilight urged.

“No!” Vinyl cried, rising to her hooves and pointing her head in the direction of the explosion. “Drop your shield and give me your magic! The Sphere of Stars has ruptured!”

“How do you—?”

“My eyes!” Vinyl exclaimed. “Or what I have instead of them. Anything smaller than a grain of sand or larger than a city! I can see this, Twilight. And if you give me your magic, I can fix it!”

Wordlessly, Twilight and Rarity gave their magic over to Vinyl Scratch. The ship shook violently as the shield disappeared, and then it screamed, in that deeply disturbing way that cats scream.

Vinyl built her spell, the macro version of the same spell that she had used to grab the spirit that had been hiding inside Celestia’s brain, the spirit that later became Waking Terror. She used blocks of magic shaped into hooves the size of cities to pull the frayed edges of the broken barrier together.

And then she felt something else, coming not just from her fellow unicorns but instead from every pony in the ship, causing her magical levels to leap up by orders of magnitude. It could be nothing other than the literal Magic of Friendship, being used to save the entire universe.

The edges of the tear sealed together, and the invading forces that threatened to disintegrate anything they touched faded into nothingness.

Vinyl collapsed.

“Are you done?!” Fluttershy demanded.

“Yes…” Vinyl breathed, her ears ringing. She’d barely heard the question, but she knew it had to be answered, even though she was so focused on the incredible mental image of what she’d just done. The fabric of her reality had briefly been held together only by her mind. So once she’d answered, there was nothing else to do but succumb to the blissful exhaustion.

Fluttershy jumped out of the ship. It was instantly too fast but not fast enough. Every time she’d practiced with Rainbow to increase her flight speed, every time they’d done snap-stops has been unknowingly in preparation for this moment as the high-altitude winds tore her away from the ship.

I’m in the upper edge of the Southbound Jetstream, she thought to herself, desperate to keep herself calm as she turned against the current and accelerated to keep her place, pumping her wings in broad firm strokes. You’d be so proud of me right now, remembering our training sessions. But what if you were too close to the explosion? she asked herself as panic started to crawl into her mind. What if you were blown outside?

“Rainbow Dash!” she screamed, as loud as she had ever screamed before.

I’m not loud enough. I’m not strong enough. But I have to try. She kept screaming. “Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash!”

She suddenly felt a force within her, guiding her. The force made her think of Ryooki. She allowed it to take control, and guide her eyes through the black until she saw a limp blue form in the darkness.

Like Rainbow Dash, she found that she no longer had the internal magic necessary to move herself in the void. Growing numb, her wings beat slower and slower. But she knew she was never truly alone, not with her friends. Help me! she thought, pushing that thought out through the same mental tether that had linked her with the living starship. And from that source she took the same power that she had earlier leant to Vinyl Scratch.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes opened weakly, to reveal a vision of a godly being approaching, surrounded by a sun-colored halo. The image resolved itself into Fluttershy, grabbing her gently in her arms and wings and carrying her back to safety.

Sorry Pinkie, Rainbow thought as she slipped in and out of consciousness. But I’ve found a new goddess to worship.

Author's Note

In the past I've been guilty of cutting my stories off the moment the climax was in view, so you might be justified in thinking that this is the end of this story.

In fact, there's still an epilogue to go, and it will show what Spike, the real Spike, has been doing during this entire series.

Epilogue: Spike

My World Is Empty Without You

Epilogue: Spike

The Canterlot Palace was a large and imposing structure, easily visible from most of Equestria. Up close, its size was even more evident. Most visitors were therefore surprised when they found the internal layout so simple. That was because the public parts of the palace were all situated in a straight line from the main gate, past the ballroom and kitchens, to the audience chambers.

The curious visitor who summoned the nerve to walk through the open doors located all along that public corridor would discover the “semi-public” section of the palace, the areas dedicated to the offices of the crown’s royal servants, and the various meeting rooms dedicated to diplomatic functions. Beyond that of course were the bedrooms and other private areas, separated by closed and locked doors from these areas that at least theoretically could be visited by anypony.

Unlike the public area, the semi-public area was immense, going up and down stairs. If you searched long enough, you could find the royal observatory…or the royal dungeons. You could also become very, very lost.

At the end of one corridor far from the bustle of the more used parts of the palace was a single door. This led into the chamber containing Cecil the living rock. The chamber that Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Fluttershy and Vinyl Scratch had stepped through two days ago. They were teleported out to an unknown destination, and there was no telling when they would return. But it could be at any time, and they could come back hurt and in need of help.

And so, Spike the Dragon had camped himself out in this isolated corridor, to stand watch.

The first night had been the worst. Some sort of calamity had taken place in the main part of the palace, and Spike heard all kinds of running, shouting, and even screaming. But he remained in his post. And then it had gotten dark, and all the noise had been replaced by an unnatural silence. No guards came to check on him, or even bring him some supper. But despite this, Spike remained at his post.

On the second day, Princess Celestia had come by with some pastries and some gems, and tried to lift his spirits. She told him that the dragon armies were on the retreat, and it was certain that Princess Luna would soon be found.

Spike had noticed something off about Princess Celestia, but supposed it to just be Her response to all of the stress of running a war and looking for Princess Luna.

Spike had shown a hopeful face to the Princess at the time, and was glad that She might soon be reunited with Her sister. But he also saw between the lines: If the dragon troops were retreating, that could only mean that the Dragon Emperor had shifted his focus from the armies to his new captives.

After Princess Celestia had departed, Spike had opened the door, and checked inside. Not only were there no ponies, but Cecil wouldn’t talk to him. Spike didn’t know what this meant, but he supposed that it couldn’t be good.

Shortly after dinnertime on the second day, Princess Celestia had returned to tell him that the seven ponies were trapped in dreams being manipulated by the Dragon Emperor. Rarity had managed to escape, and was working to free the others. Spike was honestly surprised that somepony had actually told him the whole story the first time. Usually when something like this happened, somepony would tell him some lame lie to cover up the fact that somepony he cared about was in a life-threatening situation, like he was some kind of idiot. And inevitably, he’d have to force his way into Princess Celestia’s presence to find out the truth. Well, this time the Princess had decided to cut out the middlepony. It was also clear that She trusted him to handle the truth, and he did.

He was also terrified. But he remembered times when Twilight too was so very scared, and she did what needed to be done anyway. And sometimes he was the one she was scared for. So he wouldn’t fail her. He’d be a true Dragon Knight.

Only...that wasn’t going to be easy. When he had told Princess Celestia his intention of waiting outside the door for Twilight’s return, She had not only allowed it and arranged for regular food deliveries, but also got him books to read, to keep him from getting distracted.

In addition to the usual adventure stories, there were also stuffy volumes covering what little about dragons that ponies had written down over the ages. He and Twilight had gone through most of these, and were going to start on this latest shipment before the Dragon Emperor had sent his peace overture.

One book in particular was very interesting, because it was a translation of a big griffon tome on dragon lore.

The griffons had worked for the dragons for centuries, excavating areas too small for the giant adult dragons to reach, and too dangerous to trust to the smaller juvenile dragons. This meant that the stories they recorded were presumably devoid of the fear that plagued most pony accounts.

Spike mostly skimmed through the large jade-bound book, entitled simply Dragons. He found out a great deal that he would need to discuss with Twilight when she returned, but what struck him the most was the fact that the story of the Dragon Knight was just that: a single story, about a single dragon who had learned about knights from some traveling ponies he had captured for a month, and then out of boredom decided to become his own twisted idea of a knight himself, to protect the weaker of the dragons from the stronger. The story...was a farce, designed to show how foolish were the ways of ponies.

Spike didn’t like this story. At all. He decided that he didn’t care if the Dragon Knight was a joke. He was going to be a dragon knight anyway, and he’d do such a good job of it that the dragons would have no choice but to admit that he was right. He got out the scroll and quill that Twilight always made him carry, and set to work on Version 2 of the Dragon Code. He was stumbling his way through Section 6: Metaphysics, when he heard the approaching clatter of hooves running down the corridor towards him.

“It’s the Bearers,” Princess Celestia told him as She came to a halt before him. “They’ve been sighted outside the Everfree.” Despite what must have been hundreds of strides of galloping, she was not winded in the slightest. She then stretched out a wing for him to climb up.

With a huff, Spike tore off the section of scroll he had been working on, put the remainder along with the quill and stoppered ink bottle in his bag, and climbed up on the Princess’ back. “What are they doing out there?” he asked.

Princess Celestia teleported the two of them into the sky above Canterlot.

“Was the Dragon Emperor hiding in Fluttershy’s cottage?” Spike speculated. “There’s nothing else out there.”

“Except the Ancient rocket,” the Princess informed him. She teleported a second time, to be located over Ponyville.

“Oh...right.”

From their aerial position, the pair could see the rocket high above them, diminishing into a point of light. It was being followed by a second object.

“What is that?” Princess Celestia asked.

“Not sure. But it’s made of crystal.”

“You’re certain?”

“Of course! It’s a dragon thing.”

The Princess landed, and the pair spent the next few moments staring fruitlessly up at the sky. Both objects had by this point faded completely out of view.

“Let’s go back to the Golden Oaks,” Spike suggested. “Twilight has this special telescope for presentations. It has a wide angle of view, so it should be easier to find them with it.”

Celestia nodded, and with two quick teleports, they had returned to the same spot with the telescope in question.

Spike stood on Celestia’s back as he scanned the heavens. “I hope the rocket didn’t head to the other hemisphere,” he said as he oriented the eyepiece in various directions.

“There!” Celestia exclaimed nearly an hour later.

Spike didn’t have to see where the alicorn was pointing, as it was obvious: there was a small tear in the sky, allowing a milky-white light to leak into the night.

With the flash of teleportation, Princess Luna was suddenly standing beside them, dressed in Her battle armor. “What have they done to my night?!” She demanded. With the flash of her horn, a disk appeared before Her, acting like just the wide-angle telescope that Spike had been trying to use all this time. He nudged Celesia with a foot to get closer.

Luna used the disk to examine the edges of the tear.

“Can you fix it?” Celestia asked Her.

“I’m too weak to do it from here, and I wouldn’t be able to get there in time,” Luna informed Her sister. “The Dragon Emperor has been draining my magic during my imprisonment. It is only now, with his overthrow, that I was able to free myself.”

“The Emperor has been defeated?” Spike asked hopefully.

“He must have been the one in the rocket,” Celestia concluded.

At that moment, Luna’s examination revealed a blue speck drifting aimlessly across the surface of the tear. At Her command, the disk zoomed in, revealing an unconscious Rainbow Dash.

“Oh, no!” Spike exclaimed.

Luna zoomed out, and rapidly looked around for any other pony. She soon found a yellow speck drifting across the void, and revealed that to be Fluttershy. She was moving in the wrong direction.

“No, Fluttershy! RD’s over there!” Spike yelled at the disk, hoping that it might somehow allow sound to be magnified the same way it affected light.

“She needs our help,” Celestia informed them, acting as if She had received some message inaudible to the others.

And so those three sent their feelings of hope and goodwill in Fluttershy’s direction. Spike secretly suspected that they were too far away for them to have any possible effect on the outcome—and he had always been a bit suspicious about the power of friendship to do anything when divorced from the artifacts specifically created to be powered by it—but nevertheless, there did appear to be an effect: Fluttershy changed her course to reach Rainbow Dash, and the two of them slowly headed towards a gray crystalline shape.

Princess Celestia looked away from the disk. “It will be nearly an hour before they can get back to Equestria, and we need to be prepared. Spike, can you take several letters for me?”

Spike hopped off of Celestia’s back, produced his truncated scroll and quill, and saluted. “I’m at your service!” he declared.

By the time the strange spaceship had landed—and turned into a rabbit???—there were several pony carriages waiting, stocked up with food and blankets for a quick and direct path back to the palace.

Spike had been the first to greet Twilight when she had left the ship, and the loudest to congratulate the others on saving the world (universe?) and keeping each other safe. On the trip back he had wrapped his arms around one of Twilight’s forelegs, and said nothing. It gradually dawned on him that nopony was saying anything. Not even Rainbow Dash, who, as usual, had quickly recovered from whatever had knocked her out. Also, Pinkie Pie was Pinkamena, but nopony seemed to comment on this.

Celestia had tried to ask something, but Twilight had merely looked Her in the eyes and said, “Tonight. In our dreams.”

Something about this terse answer had put a mysterious grin on Celestia’s face. Perhaps it was the fact that this was the first time that Twilight had ever interrupted the Princess or refused to answer one of Her questions.

And so they had gotten to the Palace, and had been all sent to the personal bedrooms that had been reserved for them. Twilight, despite her obvious exhaustion, had insisted on writing a letter with her own magic and giving it over to a servant to deliver. Spike had managed to pick up that it was addressed to Twilight’s parents, but Twilight refused to tell him anything else. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up prematurely, Spike,” she had said by way of explanation. “After all, they could say ‘no’.”

After that, she went to sleep. And, a few minutes later, Spike did the same.

Spike found himself in a large chamber constructed of clouds, with large cushions lining the floor. Spike poked a claw experimentally through the cloud wall.

He looked around, and saw not only his friends, but also Vinyl Scratch and both Princesses sitting on pillows. Standing in the middle of the room was Pinkie Pie, dressed like a Saddle Arabian princess.

Spike did a double-take on realizing that Pinkamena was also in the room, sitting on one of the cushions.

“Am...am I dreaming?” he asked the others.

“You’re all dreaming,” Pinkie told the group. “And I’m letting you all share the same dream.”

Spike turned to Twilight, who was sitting beside him. “Alright, we’re in a dream. Now can you tell me what’s been going on?”

What followed was nearly two hours of explanations and story-telling. All of it was directed at Spike, as he was the one who knew the least about what had happened. But parts of the story were apparently new to each of the other ponies at one time or another.

Twilight had started off by explaining how the mad dragon in the asylum was not the Dragon Emperor’s wizard, but the Dragon Emperor himself. It was Oars in Wells who then snuck over to Castle By the Sea, to absorb all of the magic of the Great Will, and become a god even more powerful than Discord. And still he hadn’t been able to defeat the ponies, because of the Princesses, and because of Twilight and her friends.

Spike got his one chance to be an explainer, as Luna didn’t know who Oars in Wells was.

Once that bit was filled in, Vinyl Scratch took over. She quickly described the operation of the Dream Trap Chain spell, and how they had all nearly fallen victim to it, except that Twilight in her dream had forgotten that Vinyl was supposed to be blind, and so shocked her into becoming self-aware.

The rest of Twilight’s dream was glossed over, and then the account of Pinkie Pie’s dream was cut short—

“Luna and I have discussed the matter, and we have agreed to reveal to you the details of what you witnessed in the room with three walls,” Celestia informed them.

“But not tonight,” Luna concluded. “It would take a whole night answering the questions that would come from that revelation.”

—And so the account skipped forward to Rainbow Dash’s dream. This dream had not only ended with Rainbow becoming self-aware, but also doing the same for Applejack and propelling Rarity all the way into being fully awake.

Pinkamena interrupted to provide a detail that had been left out of the brief summary so far: the existence of Dream Spike.

“Vinyl was replacing me in my first trip to Ponyville,” Twilight explained. “And so I had a version of you in there. Not you yourself, you understand, but a version I made up. The same way I stuck Mayor Mare in the same dream.”

“Sure, I understand,” Spike said.

“But I was running a simulation in my dream, and I had to include the actions by all players. So I decided that Dream Spike was so smart that after he was abandoned—”

“Hey!”

“—Just like we left you behind to journey into the Everfree Forest—after he was abandoned, he managed to figure out that he was in a dream, and that he was imaginary. So, in his final act, he sacrificed himself to buy the others time when Nightmare Moon attacked.”

Spike was stunned. “No way. You had me save the day?”

Twilight nodded. “And when I needed somepony to talk through my theories in Rainbow Dash’s dream, there you were again. Not Rainbow’s version of you, but mine. And you remembered everything that had happened to you. So I kept you for all the rest of the dreams.”

Spike thought for a moment. “So this ‘Dream Spike’...he was a voice in your head. Like Pinkie Pie?”

“Not exactly,” said Vinyl in a quiet voice. “More like the voices in my head.”

“This is new,” said Luna. She then looked quizzically at her sister. “This is new, correct?”

“It is,” Celestia replied. “How did this happen?”

Vinyl sighed deeply. “I was sent to the Manehattan Home for the Mentally Incapacitated when I was very young.”

“How young?” Celestia interrupted.

“My fifth birthday. And things were...rough there. So I developed seven different personalities to compensate.”

“Wait,” Fluttershy said in a nearly inaudible tone. “I made that up for my story. Er...dream. That was real?”

Luna had a different reaction: She bristled. She had been studying psychology for the past several months, and was quite aware of the most-likely cause of Multiple Personality Disorder. She made a mental note to perform a thorough review of this ‘Home’ as soon as She woke up.

Vinyl resumed her explanation. “Anyway, I managed to escape and I...or I guess we...won our case in court, so I never have to go back there again.”

“So, should we be meeting any of these voices any time soon?” Applejack asked.

Vinyl shook her head. “They really much prefer being out of sight. Except P0N-3. You’ve met her at my sessions.”

The others took some time to take all this in.

& & &

Rarity next took up the reins of the story, telling how she awoke to find herself a prisoner of Oars in Wells, and how she talked him into letting her create her own dream, to give the dreamers a fighting chance of facing him in the final dream.

And this led to the bombshell, the whole reason why this debriefing was taking place in a dream instead of in a meeting room in the waking world, no matter how secure—the fact that Pinkie Pie wasn’t a pony or an alternate personality, but rather a goddess, a being akin to Discord in the extent of Her ability to warp reality. Pinkie told the others what She was, and how She had ended up in the body of Pinkamena Diane Pie.

Rarity told of how Oars had discovered Pinkie’s secret, and had used it to trap Her in a closed-off part of the dream world.

And then had come Fluttershy’s dream, where Oars had gone all-out to try and finish off the whole group of them. And then the wild sequence of events that had ended with the final defeat of Oars in Wells, and therefore the present moment.

“Hey wait a second,” Rainbow interrupted. “How come You’re not a pink alicorn anymore?”

Pinkie gave Rainbow a deadpan look. “Rainbow, I’m not even a pony. And I’m the Goddess of Dreams now. I can look any way I want. And for My friends, I want to look the way they most fondly remember Me as.” She then looked over at Luna, who had been silent throughout the last part of the story. “Princess Luna, I’m sorry that I’ve taken Your job away from You. I don’t think we had any other choice.”

“No, it’s alright,” Luna said quietly. “When I first started protecting fillies and foals from their nightmares, I was praised by everypony, and showered with thanks and works of art depicting My acts. But then came the Time of Troubles and the Night Army, and I was forced to leave the ponies to fend for themselves in their dreams for generations. And when I returned...a rumor spread that I was creating the bad dreams that I would then vanquish. This is where the name ‘Nightmare Moon’ for Me was originally from.

“When I returned, I tried once again to monitor the dreams of the pony children. They appreciated what I did, but their parents were terrified, so I very reluctantly stopped what I was doing. Now, I only protect the dreams of those ponies who are My friends in the waking world, who know that I would never do anything bad to those suffering from nightmares, and would never use anything I learned from those dreams against them.”

Luna closed Her eyes and took in a cleansing breath. “I am an immortal, so I can afford to be patient. Give Me a few decades, and I think I will be able to convince most ponies to entrust their dreams to My care.”

“And in the meantime, I’ll take care of them!” Pinkie exclaimed. “And I’ll be sure to put in a good word for You whenever I get the chance. Before You know it, the thirty thousand years of chaos will be shortened to a mere millennium!”

The others gave Her a typical “what are you talking about Pinkie Pie” stare.

Pinkie Pie groaned. “Someday, somepony is going to get one of My references.”

Pinkamena stood up. “And in the meantime, I’m leaving Ponyville.”

This pronouncement put everypony in an uproar that lasted several minutes.

“No, no, no!” Pinkamena finally exclaimed to quiet the others. “No, Rainbow, I am not leaving because I think the rest of you don’t like me. I know you all like me. But there’s something I need to do.

“Mauve Shadow is out there somewhere. Like Dream Spike, she was far too real to be a totally made-up character. I am convinced that Oars met this mare somewhere in Equestria, and that she is pretty much the mare we met in the dream. And that means she badly needs help. I am going to set out to find her, and find out why she hates cutie marks so much, and to become her friend in real life.

“Pinkamena,” Applejack pleaded, “even if this ‘Mauve Shadow’ does exist, we have no idea where in Equestria she might live.”

Celestia nodded Her head. “We’ve been over Oars’ papers. He did indeed have files on all seven of you, but there was nothing about a unicorn by Mauve’s name or description. Believe me, a pony possessing an artifact allowing her to remove other ponies’ cutie marks—if there was anything written about her, I would have noticed.”

“Nevertheless, I am determined to do this.”

“Pinkamena, we are all willing to help you,” Twilight told her.

“But are you willing to give up your lives in Ponyville, potentially for years, before you find her? I’m the only one without roots. I’m certainly no baker, and Ponyville doesn’t really have a place for a geologist. I’m the one for this job. I’ll have the chance to travel to places that never heard of Pinkie Pie, and maybe in those places I can figure out more about myself, and what else I might be besides a worrywart inventor that obsesses over rocks.

“And besides, any time I want a shoulder to cry on, or somepony to share my story with, I just have to go to sleep, and I’m sure Pinkie will take care of the rest, no matter where in Equestria I might be.”

“You know it, Sister,” Pinkie said, pulling the magenta earth pony into a warm hug. “Now unless anypony else wants to drop another big drama bomb on all of us, I wanted to move this dream along to the party stage, particularly the ‘Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash Are Married, Woo-Hoo!’ party, which is right over here!” And with that, Pinkie Pie walked over to the cloud wall and swept it aside like it was a curtain, revealing a simple banquet hall.

Spike woke up the next morning fully rested. The party the night before had seemed to go on for hours, but true to Pinkie’s word, it had actually taken up less than a single hour of dream time, leaving the rest for the kind of sleep that the stressed ponies and dragon had all desperately needed.

After eating a hearty breakfast, Twilight had put on a suit that had been hurriedly stitched together by Rarity in the early morning hours, and had then set out for her family’s house in Canterlot, with Spike sitting on her back. The predominant atmosphere of the city was one of jubilation—the war with the dragons was finally over, and all of the ponies who had spent the war sheltered inside Canterlot were finally free to head home.

Ponies had called out individually to both Twilight and to Spike. To Twilight for being one of the Heroes of Equestria, responsible through undisclosed means for the victory. And to Spike for standing with the ponies in their hour of need. Spike was overjoyed that ponies were showing their best side at this time, remembering his many small good deeds for Canterlot and its citizens over the past few years, and not just lumping him in with the group of dragons that had tried to mentally enslave Equestria. Never before had he felt so proud to be an Equestrian citizen.

He even saw a trio of juvenile dragons among the crowd. Two of them were as tall as Luna and the third was his size and colored a bright fluorescent green. That one looked strangely familiar, for some reason.

Twilight and Spike stopped outside a very familiar wooden door, which Twilight had sharply knocked on. It was opened by both of Twilight’s parents, wearing formal clothing. Spike had no idea what the occasion was.

“So,” Twilight asked the two unicorns in a somewhat formal manner. “Did you consider the course of action I proposed?”

“Yes,” said Twilight Velvet, “and to be honest we are both ashamed that we never thought about it before.”

“It should be obvious that we both want this now as much as you do,” added Night Light.

“What?” Spike asked Twilight, standing up on her back and leaning over her head to look into her eyes. “What do you all want?”

Twilight used her magic to levitate Spike into the air and turn him around so they were face to face. “Spike,” she said with barely-controlled emotion, “how would you like to formally become a member of my family? Dream Spike made me realize that I’ve been taking you for granted, and reminded me of what could happen if I ever got hurt far from Canterlot or Ponyville. The hospital staff won’t even let you see me if I was really hurt! And if I—”

Spike held Twilight’s snout closed with a claw. “Yes,” he said with tears in his eyes.

“We want to adopt you,” Night Light blurted out.

“Yeah, I kinda figured that out,” Spike deadpanned. And then they all laughed. And hugged. And ran all the way to the courthouse.

Fluttershy guided Rainbow Dash to sit down on her couch.

“You really don’t have to do this, Shy,” Rainbow insisted gently.

But Fluttershy didn’t reply, she was focused, she was single minded for once as she began to gather things on the coffee table.

Twenty-three books, eight etheric records, one hundred and eight short stories written under five different pseudonyms, a framed sociology degree.

Two writing awards, a business license, the title for her home, a veterinary certification, her wildlife caretaker’s title, her first story in an old notebook, a crude drawing of Daring Do, a slightly less crude drawing of Rainbow Dash.

Her bank statements, her list of charity contributions, her list of successful animal adoptions, her list of successfully rehabilitated injured animals, her very short list of friends.

Fluttershy sat next to the coffee table, her head low.

“I know it’s not much,” she whispered. “But this is everything I have, and I want to give it to you…”

Rainbow Dash stood and kissed Fluttershy on the forehead.

“No, Fluttershy,” she whispered. “You’re enough.”

“But I—”

“You’re everything I need, Fluttershy,” Rainbow Dash whispered again. “What was that quote… ‘the measure of a mare is what she does with power’ right? You… Once you were free to use that power, you wanted me. You wanted… me, Fluttershy, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

On the other side of the Veil, Pinkie Pie was looking through Her compact disc collection, pulling out the ones that most closely resembled Herself and Her friends. The ones that contained the songs that Vinyl had used to enter each of their dreams.

There was “25 or 6 to 4”, for Twilight Sparkle. The “Waltz from Masquerade”, for Herself. “Crazy on You”, for Rainbow Dash. Applejack had been skipped, and Rarity had pulled them into her dream, but if Pinkie were to guess—and She was very good at guessing—She’d pick “A Hard Day’s Night” for Applejack, and “Don’t Rain on My Parade” for Rarity, and the former of these was only because Jeff didn’t have “Take Me Home Country Roads” on any of the CDs he had given to Her.

And finally there was Fluttershy. Her song was “My World Is Empty Without You,” and Vinyl had told Pinkie that they had all regretted going into her dream once they heard that title.

But that was no longer Fluttershy’s song. Pinkie reached into Her saddlebags and pulled out a new CD box set, one that had never been there before: The Dusty Springfield Anthology. Pinkie had to put on a smirk at that title: “Dusty Springfield” was one of those rare human names that was exactly the same in Pony. She got out one of Vinyl Scratch’s Trottman players, and put the second CD from the box inside it, cueing up track 9, and Fluttershy’s new song: “Magic Garden”.

And when your dreaming vanishes
Like snowflakes in the summer sky
Melts away in darkness
And you don't know why the magic garden
Waits with all the gates wide open
And darlin', I'll be standin' just inside.

Yes…much better, She thought.

Octavia finally returned to her Canterlot apartment from her enforced stay in Fillydelphia two days later. She shoved her way through the door, with five large bags just sticking to her back in a display of one of the lesser-known earth pony powers. The luggage-mountain on legs stumbled through the living room to fall apart into its component parts in her bedroom, and Octavia collapsed upon her bed, falling asleep instantly.

By the time she awoke, it was the middle of the night.

Octavia instantly remembered that she had left her front door open, and rushed out to first check it, and then do an inventory of what had been stolen during her nap. She found the door closed and locked, nothing missing, and a strange pony snoring on her couch.

Well, the snorer was Vinyl Scratch, but that didn’t necessarily change her category away from being a strange pony.

“That’s the sorriest excuse for a snore that I have ever heard,” Octavia loudly declared.

“Aw, you can always see through me,” Vinyl said, sitting up.

Octavia sat down beside her. “So, what did I miss?”

“Oars in Wells has tragically passed away in his sleep. ...Or, he got what he deserved after betraying the whole Pony race. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

“Uh-huh,” Octavia said stoically. To be honest, she had had her suspicions. “And what happens to his shows?”

“I was thinking we would take them over,” Vinyl said, trying in vain to cover up her enthusiasm.

“We have absolutely no experience.”

“And neither does anypony else! That’s why we’re perfect for the job.”

“This is a very bad idea, Vinyl,” Octavia said.

“No it isn’t, it’s brilliant. I mean, Pon-3 thinks so.”

Octavia raised an eyebrow. “Really.”

“Really! Just listen: ‘I, DJ Pon-3, think this idea is absolutely superb!’”

“Vinyl, that’s your Prince Blueblood impression.”

“And he loves the idea, too!”

Octavia shook her head at the absurdity of it all. “And what about his acting troupe?”

“Oh, they’ve all been arrested as co-conspirators. I mean...they all won fabulous all-expense paid vacations to the South Sea coast.”

“The agency you don’t belong to needs to come up with better cover stories,” Octavia quipped.

“I’ll be sure not to let them know,” Vinyl shot back. “So I think we should start rehearsing the second season premiere of the Risking It All Team next Tuesday.”

“...And who will be playing the parts? Us?”

“What? Of course not! I talked the Bearers into playing their own parodies.”

“You did not!”

“I did! It will be amazing.”

Octavia sat there for several seconds, hoping that Vinyl would get at least a suspicion that she wouldn’t be able to talk her into yet another hare-brained scheme. But eventually, she had to relent. “Alright, how does it start?”

“Now get this: We walk from the sounds of a Canterlot street into a forbidden dragon fighting ring. Enter the Dark King—”

That was Oars in Wells’ signature role. “Played by?” Octavia prompted with a wicked smile.

“...”

“Yes?”

“...Enter the Dark King’s evil twin sister, played by me! ‘Mwa-ha-ha!’ I cackle, as I outline my scheme to get revenge for the tragic tub-drain-related death of my brother…”

The End

Massively Self-Indulgent Acknowledgements & Credits

My World Is Empty Without You

Massively Self-Indulgent Acknowledgements & Credits

In 2001, I posted my very first fanfic on The Acorn Café, the central forum for the 1989 Disney television series Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers. The first thing I did after joining the forum was read every single Rescue Rangers fanfic that had ever been written—this was a small fandom, so it didn’t take long. Over the next eight years I wrote two more fanfics, each one harder to put out than the last.

In late 2009, I had a sudden inspiration for a massive story that would encapsulate everything I felt for the cartoon, for the fans, and in fact for the very idea of “fandom” in general. The idea was so massive that I was forced to ask for co-writing help for the first time. A year later, the 107,000 word novel was finished and online. It was 2010, I was 38 years old, and I was done writing fanfiction forever.

And then I discovered Friendship Is Magic.

As soon as the first season stopped airing, I started writing. I wrote “The Invisible Hairless Ape” for Equestria Daily, started The Best of All Possible Worlds, and came up with the idea for At the Inn of the Prancing Pony. And while I was writing I was reading, reading every FIMfic that had ever been published on Equestria Daily, so I would know my audience and which ideas had already been tried out.

One of these stories was “Feedback”, by Kegisak, a romance featuring a blind Vinyl Scratch. This inspired me to write a mock saga to comment on all of the sagas that everybody else was writing at the time, sagas such as It’s a Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door, by Jetfire2012 (first published on Equestria Daily in April of 2011). There’d be some silly war between the ponies and the dragons, and the main character would be my version of Kegisak’s Vinyl Scratch, commenting on the battles of the gods like Howard the Duck. I submitted the first story in my saga, Javelin, to Equestria Daily on January 11, 2012. It was rejected.

That’s when I discovered FIMFiction.net. Every story on that site got positive comments, no matter how poorly written I thought they were. I published Javelin there in July of 2012, and it was received well enough for me to continue writing. My “mock saga” didn’t stay as jokey as I intended it to be, and the quality of the sequels definitely varies from story to story, but overall I’m proud of what I’ve written.

At the time I had an outline of the whole thing in my head, only some of which has survived all the way into the present. Vinyl saving the universe from Chapter 6 of this story was always going to happen. Rarity waking up from the dream during Accelerando came out of nowhere. And I had no idea what to do with Fluttershy’s dream.

In July of 2013, a blog post commenting on the PonyEarthverse series of fanfics led to me collaborating with Hope for the first time. And that led to co-authoring on At the Inn of the Prancing Pony when that fic became too big to handle. So of course Hope was who I was going to turn to when I finally got around to writing my Fluttershy fanfic, eight years after starting this series.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is the property of Hasbro, brilliantly re-imagined from its prior generations by Lauren Faust. This story would not exist without her and her team at DHX Studios, now Allspark Animation.

But this story in particular would not exist without Hope. Hope, I had a great time co-authoring with you on this story, and I hope we can continue to help each other out in the future. Your Fluttershy is my definitive fan version of the character, and I am in awe of how easily you write for her.

Now, with that being said, let’s plow our way through the references.

First of all, here are the characters in this story that don’t belong to me: Twilight Sparkle. Spike. Pinkie Pie. Rainbow Dash. Rarity. Applejack. Fluttershy. Vinyl Scratch/DJ Pon-3. Nightmare Moon/Luna. Celestia. Daring Do/A.K. Yearling (although they are not the same pony in this fic). Discord. Angel Bunny. Mage Meadowbrook. Cabelleron and his lackey Rough Stuff. Spitfire. Octavia. Ahuizotl. Gilda the Griffon. Twilight Velvet and Night Light. Other locations and concepts owned by Hasbro include timberwolves, the Wonderbolts, Pinkamena as Pinkie Pie’s real name, the Sonic Rainboom, the Elements of Harmony and their Bearers, Canterlot, the Staff of Sameness, Con Mare, the Best Young Flier Competition, and the Golden Oaks library.

Prologue: Dream Control

“My World Is Empty Without You” was written by the Motown trio of Holland, Dozier and Holland for The Supremes in 1965. It was released as part of the album I Hear a Symphony.

“Thought Experiments” is the name of this half of the series, beginning with The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville. The title is a reference to being inside the “thoughts” (dreams) of the protagonists.

Stalliongrad is a fan-created pony city corresponding to Stalingrad, the name that the Russian city of Volgograd had from 1925 until 1961. It was the site of a crucial battle during World War II, where the Nazis were defeated by the cold as well as the soldiers. So in my version of Equestria, it is the northernmost city populated by ponies. In my story [Redacted], I have the minds of the ponies of Stalliongrad taken over by the Dragon Emperor, leading the city to surrender itself to the dragons and thereby start the Second Pony-Dragon War.

The scene observed by the unnamed dragon toady is the conclusion of my last story in this series, The Mistress of Dreams.

The “Dream OS” section of this chapter is designed to resemble multiple operating systems I have interacted with, including Unix shells, Commdore 64 BASIC and MS-DOS.

“Sudo” is the name of a Unix command to run a program under the alias of another user on the system. Strictly speaking, the Emperor should have been prompted to enter his password after the “sudo” command, making this an example of poor security practices. “Fluttershy” in quotes is actually the Dragon Emperor.

“500pl” (as the radius argument to the dream.exe function adding the dreamers): Throughout the series, I have stubbornly insisted on measuring lengths using “ponylengths” and “ponyheights”, thereby side-stepping the whole Imperial/Metric debate.

“^H”: On Unix terminals, the control code for backspace could be generated by pressing Control-H. On improperly-configured systems, this would be displayed as “^H” instead of actually backspacing. On Commodore 64 BASIC, typing the double quote character put you in “quote mode”, and any control keys you typed would then be represented as graphic symbols instead of being carried out. Since “Pinkie” starts with double quotes, that turned on the “^H”s. And that was way more information than you wanted to know about this joke.

“Dusk Dawn” is one of the standard targets of the fandom, being supposedly the worst animated fanwork ever created for Friendship Is Magic. “Midnight Sparkle” on the other hand is the name given to the demon that human Twilight Sparkle transforms into in Equestria Girls — Friendship Games.

“^C”: The TOPS-10 operating system used Control-C to abort running programs. This was adopted by Unix and MS-DOS. So just as “^H” became a joke about deleting something you don’t want someone else to see, “^C” became the 1970’s version of the “do not want” meme.

“?SYNTAX ERROR.” The most frustrating thing I’ve ever seen on a Commodore 64.

The robot/rocket subplot: That was from way back in [Redacted], so I suspect none of you were expecting it.

Ancients: This series’ name for humans.

For the gem, I quote from Javelin, Chapter 3:

“You can’t joke about this gem,” a shaken Rarity told her. “Striking it would have very serious repercussions.”

So that was one of the bits I had planned out from the beginning.

Waking Terror: Character introduced in Whopper of the Year.

The room with three sides: Masquerade.

The Story So Far

Time Lords: Reference to Doctor Who, property of the BBC.
I needed them to get this series started, but I haven’t referenced them since The Trial of a Time Pony.

Applejack’s lasso of truth: I never did anything with that one, did I?

Ryooki the Cabbit: Character from the Tenchi Muyo! franchise
created by Masaki Kajishima and Hiroki Hayashi. A cabbit is a fictional cross between a cat and a rabbit. I got her name wrong in But Wait…There’s More!

Oars in Wells: A reference to a bunch of film villains played by Orson Welles, particularly those in The Third Man (1949), The Stranger (1946) and Touch of Evil (1958).

Chapter 1A

The jazzy song of [Fluttershy’s] self-discovery: Reference to the Season 1 FIM episode “The Cutie Mark Chronicles”.

“Is this the [story] that’s been in limbo for months?” Well, it’s been a bit longer than that.

Professor Stein: Modeled after professional boring person Ben Stein.

“The exact same spot from which she had observed the anti-dragon mob on the night before war was declared”: Referencing a scene from [Redacted].

Daring Do being based on Rainbow Dash: That was what I thought after seeing “Read It and Weep”.

Fluttershy being the true identity of A.K. Yearling: I got that one from The Many Secret Origins of Scootaloo, by defender2222.

Chapter 2B

The mare confronting Daring Do: Mauve Shadow before she had her personality switched.

Mauve Shadow: Starlight Glimmer, obviously. Except this is Season 2, so it can’t actually be her.

Chapter 2C

The Staff of Sameness: In this story, Starlight’s lie from “The Cutie Map” episode is treated as fact: Mage Meadowbrook actually created it, albeit to tame wild animals. The Cruciform of Diversity as its counter is my creation.

“The Shrimp” and the “Other Pony”: A reference to Short Round and the title character from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). The former was good with explosives.

An orrery is a mechanical model of the solar system. The one in this story is basically the device used by Twilight Sparkle in Season 9 of the series to control the sun and moon.

The discussion of the Daring Do series: I riffed all of this after reading the mock article on TV Tropes about the series.

The Seaponies: Another favorite fan victim, referencing the grating characters from the My Little Pony pilot Rescue at Midnight Castle (1984) as opposed to the characters introduced by the 2016 movie.

Jack Maillard: Drake Mallard was a character from that Rescue Rangers novel I wrote in 2010.
(A mallard is a type of duck.) The Maillard Reaction is the chemical explanation for how food browns when it’s cooked. And then you bring in the Barbeque of the Gods…

Chapter 3A

Ink-in: Ponied version of Incan.

Chapter 3B

The poem at the beginning is from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, by Robert Frost. In the 1977 film Telefon, a rogue Soviet agent uses the last line to active American sleeper agents and send them off on violent killing sprees.

Daren Do is from that TV Tropes page I linked above.

Pinkamena’s father as a disapproving worshiper of Nightmare Moon is from my earlier fanfic The Masterpiece.

Chapter 4B

Con Mare was the James Bond parody referenced in the episode “MMMystery on the Friendship Express”.

Rainbow Dash’s long monologue references events from The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville and But Wait…There’s More! The idea of the Etheric—a radio program transmitted directly into unicorns’ minds—is from the latter story.

The Celestial Era dates events from the moment when Celestia and Luna created the ponies. The pilot episode of the series occurred in the year 7010. Instead of months, dates are organized into seasons.

“The needs of the many” is a re-phrasing of Jeremy Bentham’s “It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong”, the founding statement of Utilitarianism. The phrasing you see here was used in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Chapter 5B

Hayan Empire: Mayan Empire. And the Asstecs are the Aztecs.

Tenochtitlan: Capital of the Aztec Empire. The term is used unchanged in various Daring Do episodes of Friendship Is Magic. The mythological creature known as the ahuizotl also comes from the Aztecs.

Ahuizotl’s Mother: The idea that Ahuizotl has a mother came from Daring Do and the Tiny Tornado by Metool Bard.

The Griffon’s Goblet: This showed up at the end of “Read It and Weep” as the next Daring Do novel. I made the unoriginal decision to make it the Holy Grail from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).

“Hello darkness my old friend”: Opening lyrics to “The Sound of Silence”, written by Paul Simon in 1964 for the duo of Simon & Garfunkel.

“Pinkie Pie’s my daughter”: As established in The Mistress of Dreams, the Sonic Rainboom sent Pinkamena into Limbo, where she met a goddess who followed her back into Equestria to become Pinkie Pie. Pinkie therefore considers Pinkamena and Rainbow Dash to be her parents.

Fluttershy Parula Fluffykins: Parula is the name of Fluttershy’s mother in Accelerando. And Fluffykins as the name of Fluttershy’s ancestor is from The Best of All Possible Worlds.

Neighpon as the name of Pony Japan: Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is a purely fan creation, right?

Chapter 6A

Cecil: Character introduced in The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville. I hadn’t really put any thought as to why the animated rock had the hots for Vinyl Scratch, until the comments for that story focused on that throwaway gag, so I decided to develop it here as well as I was able. That, and it sets a precident: if Twilight can create an imaginary version of Spike and Vinyl can create an imaginary version of Cecil, that frees up Pinkamena later to create an imaginary version of Mauve.

The confrontation with the God Oars: Something I have been hammering at throughout this series is what kind of relationship mortals can have with gods that live in their midst. Vinyl has always been my spokespony in these scenes, her attitude inspired by Osysseus’ attitude in the 1997 TV miniseries version of The Odyssey.

Vinyl’s song of defiance is taken from “Never Back Down”, written by Thomas J. Bergersen for Two Steps from Hell. Significantly, the line appealing to help from the gods is flipped on its head.

Chapter 6B

Fire Boom the Fifth, aka Rainbow Miriam Dash Fluffykins: Fire Boom is revealed as Rainbow Dash’s true name in Accelerando. Miriam is Rainbow’s middle name from the unfinished Fair Feather Friend by darthbobcat.

The brown note is a hypothetical frequency that’s supposed to cause its victims to lose all bodily control.

The red centaur form of Oars is Lord Tirek.

Roameo and Jeweliette: I’m sure there’s better puns for Romeo and Juliet out there.

Chapter 7

Ryooki turning into a spaceship: In Tenchi Muyo, Ryo-Oki is a genetically-engineered being capable of transforming into a spaceship. I can’t make up ideas this weird all by myself!

Jeff: The name of the human the ponies visited in the never-to-be-written predecessor to Javelin.

The spiral flight technique taught by Rainbow Dash’s mother: A reference to the character of Firebelle from At the Inn of the Prancing Pony, who is also an ancestor of Rainbow Dash.

The photo of a pegasus throwing a discus: That and the Sports Wing of the Equestrian Museum are from Javelin.

Epilogue: Spike

“The griffons had worked for the dragons for centuries”: This is a variation of the story from The Best of All Possible Worlds, which can be considered an alternate reality to the series this story is in. In that story, the Diamond Dogs had worked for the dragons in the same capacity.

The Dragon Code: From the episode “Spike at Your Service”.

Castle By the Sea: The ancestral home of the alicorns in my story Luna and the Tree Ponies, and the location where the Dragon Emperor gained his power offscreen in [Redacted].

The Great Will: The god of another universe adjoining our own. Two of His subjects were sent to this universe to infect Luna and Celestia, and became Nightmare Moon and Waking Terror.

The most likely cause of Multiple Personality Disorder: Child abuse.

The Time of Troubles and the Night Army: These are purposefully empty references, designed to have the same effect as the following line from the Doctor Who episode “The End of Time” in describing the Time War: “the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres.” Of course, being Doctor Who, all of those proper nouns eventually ended up with a mountain of backstory behind them…

Thirty thousand years of chaos shortened to a mere millennium: A reference to the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov.

The trio of juvenile dragons: These are three characters from Invader Zim in dragon form: Tallest Red, Tallest Purple, and Zim himself. They spent the Pony-Dragon War disguised (badly) as ponies, which is why Spike doesn’t recognize them. Their primary appearance was in But Wait…There’s More!

And finally, the Risking It All Team show was from But Wait…There’s Still More!

Good night, good luck, and may you have a pleasant tomorrow.

Chapter 1A

My World Is Empty Without You

Chapter 1A

Fluttershy fell from the heavens to the earth.

This was how all of her dreams began, with a repetition of the most-significant event of her life.

But this fall was devoid of the fear that accompanied the original fall from Flight Camp. The butterflies caught Fluttershy—as they always did—and she lightly touched down on her four hooves right in front of her home.

She walked down the path, her head swinging in time to the beat of the jazzy song of her self-discovery that filled the air. She mumble-sang the lyrics, hitting the occasional note perfectly.

The tree house was missing its front wall; there was merely the mental suggestion of the windows and door.

This shouldn’t be too unusual, if you think about it: In your dreams, I bet the buildings are missing ceilings: as the god of your dream, you need to be above the action, while still seeing everything that happens. Well, Fluttershy does not look down upon her dream creations; instead she walks among them, visible or invisible to them as she wills.

Fluttershy walked into her home and took in the comforting sight. The little hutches full of mice and birds, the burrows near the floor, the hung-up teacups next to her sink in a tidy row, and Angel bunny laying on the couch, watching her, waiting.

“I think I'd like to write a book today, Angel,” Fluttershy sighed, smiling. “Isn't it terrible that I think it'll have a sad ending?”

“Good,” Angel huffed, sounding like a teenager interrupted from an evening of nothing. “Too many boring books out there. Is this the one that’s been in limbo for months?”

“Well, I think I've finally got an ending,” Fluttershy admitted with a nod, walking to her closet and opening it to reveal a small shrine to a fictional character.

A well-worn axe with a sheath hung on one wall. Two swords on the other, a hat, vest, shirt, belt, and other clothing hung over a neat pile of books, all emblazoned with the name Daring Do, the pony who looked suspiciously like Rainbow Dash.

“…But what if you had to choose?” the memory of her own voice repeated in her head.

“Then…then I’d choose the Wonderbolts, Flutters,” the remembered voice from the shadows replied. “If the only way I could get in was to leave you and Ponyville behind forever, I’d do it, and I’d never look back.

“I’ve wanted this for far longer than I’ve known you, Fluttershy. No friendship is worth giving up the Wonderbolts.”

“I think I know how Daring Do dies,” she said with somber determination.