A Witch in Broad Daylight

by Epsilon-Delta

Rating: teen
Tags: Horror, Adventure, Twilight Sparkle, Main 6, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Rainbow Dash, Comedy
Length: 579180

Rainbow Dash sets out to defeat the legendary witch Twilight Sparkle and collect the five hundred million bit bounty on her head. The one thing she wasn't counting on was Twilight being less evil than she expected.

There’s no end to the monsters that lurk in the dark.

Ghosts, werewolves, mad scientists, cultists, mutants, zombies, vampires, aliens and more lie in wait in the dark corners of Equestria, terrorizing the night. But the most infamous and dangerous of them all is the legendary witch Twilight Sparkle, with a five hundred million bit bounty on her head.

Seeking fame and fortune, Rainbow Dash sets out to defeat the legendary witch and collect the massive reward. The one thing she wasn't counting on was Twilight being less evil than she expected.

More stories set in this AU can be found here.

Cover art is a work in progress by Abode_WTF

Published 2020-10-25 15:40:00 UTC
Last updated 2025-02-03 00:04:18 UTC

Witches

Dash heard the soft jingle of bells. With everything still dead silent from the looming blood moon above, Dash could hear the quiet hoofsteps of the witch even on the soft earth.

She had to run! But would the footage she already had be enough?! Dash needed one shot of that witch’s cutie mark to be absolutely sure. She still had no idea if she’d ever be able to come back here.

Dash compromised by hiding behind the large tree she scoped out before.

Dash unfolded her wings. As quietly and swiftly as she could, she glided over there and hid. Somehow, she summoned the courage to tilt the video recorder around the bend to peek out at the witch. Dash had to be able to see her cutie mark now.

The witch strolled out casually enough, glancing about but missing Rainbow Dash behind the tree. The witch finally turned to the left and Dash got a good look at her flank. It had the same purple star that adorned every volume of The Book of Shadows.

This really, seriously was Twilight Sparkle! Dash’s stupid plan turned out to be brilliant! She’d gotten through the curse and found Twilight herself! Heck, coming here probably broke the curse.

This was it! The single greatest accomplishment of Dash’s life! The exuberance made her forget to be scared.

Twilight stopped at the window Dash had peered through moments ago and whispered something under her breath.

An illusion of Rainbow Dash appeared, holding the camera to the window. Twilight watched as the image took out a few smoke bombs, became briefly surprised that Twilight wasn’t there, and then–

Dash realized what was about to happen next!

As the illusion took snuck off right to the tree Rainbow Dash hid behind, Dash took out her smoke bombs and threw them on the ground.

These were enchanted smoke bombs too, the reason she had negative thirty bits to her name. The entire clearing filled up with smoke in the blink of an eye, not that Dash could see even two feet in front of her right now to confirm that.

She had the footage and got through the curse. She accomplished enough for today! Dash took flight and darted off into the woods.

Only her smokescreen lasted all of zero seconds. Like a knee-jerk reaction, Twilight cast a spell before Dash even took flight. The smoke and the fragments of the bombs flew back together so they were fully intact once again.

With that gone, Twilight had zero difficulties spotting Rainbow Dash. Twilight didn’t even move from that spot, simply cast a spell to bring Dash to her.

Dash was like a tin pony and Twilight the world’s strongest magnet. No matter how hard she flapped, Dash kept moving slowly back towards the witch. She didn't have nearly the strength to escape!

One other idea came to her mind, slightly crazy but just the sort of thing Dash liked.

She turned around and charged at Twilight as fast as she could. Boosted by the spell, Dash flew faster than ever before, pulling back a hoof to try and punch the witch at sonic speeds. If this seriously worked–

Twilight pulled up the ground between them, creating a rock wall that Dash ended up punching. Her blow was met with a loud cracking noise. She seriously thought she broke her leg from the impact! It sure wasn't the rock wall that cracked.

Dash fell to the ground, curled up in pain, unable to move as the witch slowly walked to the other side, bells jingling. Pegasus bones healed quickly, but not nearly fast enough for her to escape.

Twilight looked down at the pegasus without pity, anger, or any real emotion. She cast a second spell.

Whatever she cast, it happened quickly. Her wings went completely numb. Everything around her grew massive. A cold, slimy feeling replaced that of her warm fur.

Two seconds after the spell had been cast, Dash realized she's shrunk significantly. Twilight towered far above her now. She'd been transformed! But into what?

She flailed whatever limbs she now had but none of them let her fly. At least her front right leg didn’t hurt anymore. Dash looked at the green, slimy appendage that was her new leg, three toes at the end of it. Then she figured it out.

“Congratulations, now you’re a frog.” Twilight picked Dash up with one hoof and patted her with the other.

Dash had to do something! Jump? Frogs totally jumped!

Dash tried jumping, but her new legs were too alien, and Twilight's hoof kept her in place. Her attempts to escape were hopeless at best.

Twilight carried Dash back inside with her magic and dropped Dash off in a tank on the far side of the room.

Twilight put her in a particularly slimy part of the tank too. Grossness radiated from the murky water. Weren’t frogs supposed to like slimy water?!

Dash struggled to find out how her new limbs worked as Twilight put the lid on the tank and trotted away.

Dash tried to say ‘buck’ but just ribbitted.

Twilight paced around the room, thinking to herself, giving Dash a moment to look around.

The room was large and filled to the brim with curious objects, cluttered but not exactly messy either. Bookshelves overflowing with all manner of jars and reagents covered the walls completely. The floor itself was clean, only the cauldron in the center sitting there. Dash realized the tank rested on the same shelf as other reagents! That did not bode well.

Only one other piece of furniture decorated the room, a single chair on which a gruesome-looking scarecrow sat. It looked tattered and torn, dressed in barren grey cloth with huge, carrot-sized fangs made of wood sticking out of its mouth.

The only exit Dash found, other than the windows and front door, were stairs that led to the second floor.

Dash tried hopping up to the top of the tank but couldn’t get high enough. Bashing the glass walls didn't work. Bolts held this thing in place.

A few other frogs already lived here, but they all clustered together on the other side of the tank as soon as the newcomer arrived, reminding Dash of her school days. Croaking convinced them of nothing. No way these were all transformed ponies. Nopony else could have had the same idea Dash did.

But then what the crow was she supposed to do? Dash already exhausted every option.

Even if she got out what then? As a frog, she could at best eat Twilight’s prized bug collection.

Dash just helplessly watched Twilight from the tank, worried about what she might do. For the moment, Twilight showed more interest in Dash’s possessions than Dash herself.

Twilight seemed to be under the impression the camera was a sort of weapon. With her eyes narrowed, she pointed it at the chair and ever so carefully pressed the record button. Whatever she expected to happen never came. Twilight stood there, analyzing the camera and chair carefully, but apparently found no effect.

She tried pointing it at Dash and again nothing happened.

With more boldness, she held the camcorder up to her ear to listen to the whirring sound it made. After poking around with it for a moment longer, she managed to open the cassette deck, revealing the film inside.

Dash croaked. That was her only evidence!

Twilight tugged at the film and the camera began pumping out more of it out of control. Twilight tried to make it stop but ended up hitting the fast-forward button. Then the cassette spewed its guts out everywhere.

By the time Twilight made it stop, a pile of tape covered the floor. Worse, just at the end, some of it touched the contents of Twilight’s cauldron and a whole pony’s length of it burned to dust.

The witch looked down at the clump of film, scratching her head at the huge pile of tape that tiny cassette produced, then over at Dash before throwing the whole pile back on top of Dash’s bag. She knew what she did!

“Anyway!” Twilight cleared her throat. “We have more important matters Our priority should be finding out how this pony got here.”

‘We’?

Dash looked around the room to see who she could possibly be talking to. Was it that scarecrow? Sure enough, Twilight kept eye contact with it as she spoke.

“No,” Twilight said to the scarecrow. “If his psychic powers were that intense, he would have used them to escape the magnetization field. He didn’t have a spellbook so he’s not a witch. Maybe they invented a device that disentangles your perception from– no, you’re right that wouldn’t work.”

‘He’?! Come on!

At least now Dash knew that Twilight really was talking to the scarecrow, though it said nothing in return. Whether it could actually talk back or Twilight had simply gone insane, Dash couldn't tell. She also didn’t know which one would be worse.

“Yes. It’s unlikely but still the most probable reason.” Twilight nodded, agreeing with her scarecrow on a course of action at last.

Twilight lifted Dash and carried the frog, kicking and ribbiting, over to that boiling pot. Compared to Dash, it was the size of a swimming pool. Looking down into the steaming, boiling green goop, Dash couldn’t help but imagine her little frog body dissolving in seconds if she went for a swim.

The ancient witch held Dash directly over the cauldron close enough for Dash to smell death with a hint of cinnamon. Twilight took out a needle and poked Dash just deep enough to draw a drop of blood.

She dropped the needle instead of Dash into the cauldron and the whole thing flashed purple. Twilight frowned at the result but took Dash away from the pot.

“No. He’s not immune to curses.” Twilight shook her head.

Could you be immune to curses?

“Oh, also I guess it was female.” Twilight gave Dash’s underbelly a studious glare.

So she could tell the sex of a frog but not a pony?!

Twilight plopped her back down in the frog tank. Maybe Dash should just be thankful she wasn’t stew yet.

“But the only other possibility,” Twilight muttered to herself.

A banging noise on the side of the house followed by a scream interrupted Twilight's muttering. No doubt it was a zombie attack. More of the undead ran up to add to the noise soon after.

The eclipse still had a good fifteen minutes left, Dash remembered. The zombies weren’t gone yet.

A familiar enough sound filled the room– zombies wailing and scraping up against the walls of the house. Dash had fond memories of pretending to be asleep and watching horror movies with the volume way down and this in the background.

But Twilight was a total amateur at this. Her windows weren’t even closed, and her door wasn’t barricaded. In a matter of seconds, zombies were halfway through every window, trying with little success to ram themselves inside. Then Twilight’s door burst open and no less than five zombie ponies pushed through.

“Oh no! This really is the worst-case scenario!” Twilight gasped at the incoming zombies.

Proving she didn’t mean the zombies themselves, Twilight cast a single spell to destroy them all without even blinking. A bolt of lightning shot from her horn to the first, incinerating it instantly, then jumped to the next. Her chain lightning kept bouncing like that from zombie to zombie until none remained. Then it flew off into the woods, out of Dash’s sight.

The noises stopped after that, Twilight having destroyed every zombie anywhere near her home.

“Did you see that, Smarty Pants?” Twilight asked her scarecrow. “Not even a zombie pony should be able to find my house! Does that mean something happened to the curse? It’s the only explanation.”

She waited a moment, though Smarty Pants didn’t appear to respond in any way.

“They're just going to lie!” Twilight shot back at her scarecrow, then frowned before taking it off the chair and laying it on the floor. “Oh, okay. Fine.”

Twilight lifted Dash into the air with her magic, then threw the frog across the room towards the chair. As she flew through the air, Dash started to grow and change until she transformed back into a pegasus, just in time to land right in the chair.

But before she had even the tiniest second to be happy about that, chains magically appeared around her and tied her to the chair.

Dash struggled, but they were too tight.

She looked back up to see Twilight standing over her, scowling down at Dash as if Twilight was the one who should be indignant here.

“Okay, first of all, how can you not tell I’m a girl?!” Dash turned her head to show off her muzzle. “Look at how girlishly flat my muzzle is!”

“Oh. Is that how you tell?” Twilight, quickly distracted, put a hoof on her own muzzle. “You’re actually the only female pony besides myself I’ve ever seen. I had no basis to know the secondary sex characteristics of our species. Interesting.”

Twilight took out a little book to write this down.

“Wait. What? You’ve seriously never seen another mare before?” Dash tilted her head in disbelief. “What about your mom?”

“My what?” Twilight looked up from her writing.

“Your mother?” Dash asked, but it still didn’t click with Twilight. “The person who gave birth to you?”

“Oh. Yes. Hypothetically that happened. Looking at nature it’s really the only plausible explanation for my existence.” Twilight closed her notebook and came back up to Dash. “But that doesn’t interest me. Tell me how you found this place.”

“Heh!” Dash cocked a smile. “Did you honestly think your puny curse would be able to stop the legendary Rainbow Dash?”

“Who?”

“That’s me.” Dash sighed. “Look, I broke your stupid curse. Do whatever you want to me, but I already won!”

“But breaking the curse requires you to be here on two separate days simultaneously,” said Twilight. “That’s impossible which is the entire point.”

“Yeah! Maybe for non-geniuses.” Dash looked over at her bag, way on the other side of the room, and realized she couldn’t do her typical visual aid. “See, there’s a solar calendar but then there’s the older, lunar calendar. Their years aren't the same length, meaning Halloween floats around on the lunar one. Eventually, the two days match up.”

“Hm.” Twilight began pacing back and forth. “Calendars are arbitrary constructs, but I suppose a year is ultimately an arbitrary value of time. Even if I set up something that can’t float, like the first day of spring and the first day of winter, it won’t make a difference so long as there’s one pony stupid enough to think it’s the same day. Curses are largely psychosomatic.”

“Wait, you’re saying you can break a curse just by thinking you’ve broken it?” Dash asked.

“No, but sincerely believing the conditions are met helps supplement an otherwise idiotic plan like this.”

“Hey! Why does everypony keep calling my idea stupid? It worked, therefore it was smart, therefore I’m smart. That’s how it goes.”

“Smart?!” Twilight came stomping over to Dash until the two were face to face. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done, you fool?!”

“What I’ve done?” Dash struggled against her chains to lean forward and glare Twilight in the eyes. “You’re the criminal here!”

“I’m the what?” Twilight blinked.

“The criminal!”

“I don’t know what a ‘criminal’ is.” Twilight tilted her head.

Dash stared at her in disbelief as Twilight looked back with innocent curiosity. Was she being serious here?

“It means you broke the law,” Dash played along. “And as a slayer, I’m here to enforce that law by slaying you!”

“The law?” Twilight repeated it like she was unfamiliar with that phrase too. She tapped her chin on her way over to the scarecrow where she had an epiphany. “Oh, I get it! Yes, you must be under the impression I broke a law with my magic powers.”

“Yeah, I am. Because you did.” Dash nodded. “Or are you going to pretend you didn’t?”

“Of course I didn’t.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “You can’t break a law.”

“What?” Dash’s eye twitched. “Are you trying to pull some 4D philosophical chess move on me? Obviously, you can break the law!”

“Do you even know what a law is?” Twilight asked. “A law is just a trend you’ve observed with no exception. You can’t break a law because if you do it wasn’t really a law; you were merely mistaken in thinking that it was. You don’t need to enforce a law, they just are.”

“Holy!” Dash wished so badly she could bury her face in her hoof right now. “I’m not talking about the laws of physics, you nerd! I want to take you back to town where you can have your trial and—"

“A trial?” Twilight blinked. “Like you want me to lift something really heavy or fight a monster or—"

“No! Like with a jury and a lawyer and everything? You’re just messing with me, aren’t you?”

“I’m not.” Twilight shook her head. “I really don’t know what any of those things are. What’s a lawyer? Or a jury?”

Dash wasn’t sure what to make of this. Somepony so guilty couldn't be this innocent. Yet Twilight silently frowned at her like the most ignorant pony alive. She was either just that or an amazing actor.

“Okay, I’ll make this simple with no big words like– like 'criminal' I guess. You created The Book of Shadows, right?” Dash asked.

“Hm?” Twilight thought about that before nodding. “Oh, yes! That was the older version of my spellbook. Seven volumes. You see back then the thinnest mind fibers I could weave into paper were about ten micrometers, limiting the number of spells to approximately ten thousand per book. But with reflexive super-radiation, I can get it down to one micrometer increasing the amount to a hundred thousand! Isn’t that impressive?”

Her short lecture over, Twilight took out her current spellbook, no doubt expecting Dash to be impressed. Maybe somepony more knowledgeable about magic would have been able to make something of that speech.

“Impressive? Do you have any idea how much chaos those caused?” Dash asked.

“No?” Twilight tilted her head.

“No?! The other witches have killed countless ponies and unleashed endless curses on us because of your spellbooks. There was one witch who made it so nopony could eat popcorn and it took us a hundred years to break it! Then another one tried to prove vaccines don’t work by creating a curse that makes vaccines not work, resulting in millions of otherwise preventable deaths. And– okay maybe I should have led with that one. Forget the popcorn thing.”

"I don't know what you're talking about, but it's clearly a lie." Twilight turned her nose up. "A witch wouldn't break her isolation just to go torment somepony like you."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Dash. "I have lots of evidence that they totally would do that."

“Well I’d hardly say I’ve unleashed anything. Those books were stolen from me by another annoying pony like you,” said Twilight. “I’m not responsible for what you do with something you stole from me. Whatever you idiots are doing with my spellbooks is your own problem. The Book of Shadows is inferior to my current design, anyway, so I don’t even need them back.”

“This isn’t a one-off thing. You made the thirsting cup, the hourglass of doom, the wishing candles, the tarrasque—"

“Tarrasque?” Twilight thought. “I don’t recall that one.”

“The eight-hundred-foot-tall monster?”

“No.” Twilight tapped her chin, still drawing a blank. “That sounds like something I’d remember doing. Though it is an interesting idea. Hm.”

Twilight wrote something down in a notebook. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Dash wondered if she'd made a horrible mistake.

“Okay, so some of that stuff was maybe falsely attributed to you,” said Dash. “But there’s still plenty of horrible things you are responsible for.”

“Everything you listed was stolen from me.” Twilight shook her head.

“And what about the curse of undeath? Are you going to say you had nothing to do with that one?”

“The what?”

“You know that reason there are zombies all over the place?!” Dash gestured to their ashy remains on the floor.

“Oh! That one.” Twilight nodded. “Yes, I remember that now. You really don’t need to worry about it. That curse is hardly a big deal because it only affects you once you die and zombies aren't strong at all.”

“Did you not see those zombies just now?” Dash asked. "You know they never go away, right? Even if you kill a zombie, it just seeps back into the earth and comes popping out of the ground again a few years later. Eventually, we'll have an actual zombie apocalypse where the planet is covered in those things."

“How many zombies can there even be? That would take billions, if not trillions of years.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “I'm sure one of you will figure it out by then. It’d take me under a year to do it. But I’m too busy training to do that.”

“Okay, first of all, more like a few hundred. Second, what the crow are you doing that’s more important than ridding the world of zombies?!” Dash asked.

“You know.” Twilight looked down into her cauldron and shrugged. “Studying.”

Priorities!

“Okay! How about we make a deal?” Dash offered. “You get rid of the curse of undeath, and we’ll call it even. I’ll give up on slaying you and all that. Oh! But you also have to write a note about how I, Rainbow T. Dash, totally defeated you. Also forced you to write said letter before obliterating you.”

Though on second thought, maybe a written statement like that might not fly.

“Actually, instead of the note how about you give me your hat and a liter of your blood. Then we’ll—"

“Why would I agree to that?” Twilight shook Dash’s chains to remind her of the position she was in. “You have zero leverage over me.”

“Well if everypony thinks I defeated you they’ll stop hunting you and start loving me! It’s a win-win,” said Dash. “You know, and also we’ll save a thousand lives and billions of bits each year by getting rid of the zombies. Come on! It’ll be great!”

“Oh no, you don’t.” Twilight narrowed her eyes at Dash. “I’m not falling for that again. I know exactly how you people work. If I help you with this one thing, you’ll be coming back here every time you have a bad hair day. Then I’ll never get anything important done!”

“I’m not asking you for favors; I’m trying to hold you responsible for the things you created!” said Dash. “You know, you’re what we call one of the four sources, one of the things all the chaos plaguing our planet comes from. If you’re going to be making dangerous, magical whatevers, then you’re responsible for keeping them from being used for evil.”

“Like what?” Twilight asked. “Should I create a paradox curse that makes ponies unable to come here ever again unless they do something that’s literally impossible? That way none of my magic can be unleashed on the world? Is that the responsible thing to do here?”

“Oh– well. I mean–" Dash cleared her throat, just now realizing a potential flaw in her plan.

“Uh-huh! That’s what I thought.” Twilight closed her eyes with a smug little smile. “Nothing’s been stolen from me for hundreds of years. Then you show up and make it possible again!”

Twilight swiped her hoof in front of the cauldron, causing it to fly to the side, vanish, and get replaced by another.

“Tons of ponies will start showing up, wanting my magic!” Twilight repeated the gesture, going through cauldron after cauldron. “It’ll take me two years to create another curse that can affect the entire planet. Until then, you’ve greatly exacerbated your own problem! More importantly, all the idiots from the outside will be constantly annoying me and interrupting my training.”

Now it was Dash’s turn to awkwardly look off to the side. When Twilight put it like this, there was a small chance Dash made a mistake in breaking the curse. Dash did kind of just open the gates of destruction here.

“No!” Dash quipped back. “Cause see, if I managed to defeat you once and for all that’ll solve the problem too.”

Twilight just stared at Dash, unamused.

“Well, I could get lucky.”

Twilight continued to stare.

“Like really, really lucky?” Dash felt like even the scarecrow was staring at her now. “Okay, fine! I can’t beat you, but I can politely ask you to turn yourself in which is technically more than anypony else has managed. So– please?”

Dash smiled.

“Turn myself into what?” Twilight asked.

“The police.”

“Police?” Twilight repeated the word to no avail. “I’ve never heard of that type of creature. I need to study an animal for several days before I can turn anypony into it.”

“Are we really back to this again?!” Dash groaned.

“You’re the one who brought up transformation spells,” Twilight reminded her. “If I at least knew what a police looked like, I could create a facsimile of it. Of course, such chimeric imitations don’t really—"

“Hey! I think we’re getting distracted here,” said Dash.

“I agree.” Twilight nodded. “I need to decide what to do with you. If I just let you go, you’ll blab about this to all the other ponies. Then I’ll be swarmed with so many questions and comments that I’ll never be able to sleep! I guess I could just blow you up.”

“Um!”

“Or turn you into a snail or a tree.” Twilight trotted back and forth, listing all the ways she could destroy Dash. “Or melt your face off. Or turn you inside out. Or—"

Suddenly Dash didn’t want to be on-topic. Thankfully, Dash never slept through monster-ed, and they gave plenty of advice for what to do in kidnapping scenarios.

When you get kidnapped, you want to keep the other person talking for as long as possible. The more they talked to you, the less likely they became to hurt you later. You were also supposed to try and get your kidnapper to give you a gift if you could, even if it was just a glass of water.

Already Dash could tell Twilight got easily distracted by the topic of magic. She also knew from experience that the easiest way to get a nerd to share their knowledge was to say something factually incorrect. The urge to fact-check you would be overwhelming.

“Oh! I just realized something!” Dash said. “The secret of your immortality! You stay young forever using transformations spells, right? I’m surprised nopony else ever thought of that.”

Exactly as planned, that stopped Twilight dead in her tracks.

“How uneducated are you?” Twilight raised her eyebrow. “Transformation spells don’t change every attribute. If you’re an old pony you turn into an old frog.”

“Wow! Really?” Obviously, Dash knew that, but playing dumb worked so far.

“If it was that simple, I wouldn’t have had to spend twenty years making reverse aging gummies.” Twilight walked over to a shelf and picked up a glass tube filled with yellow-colored gummies. “I noticed my physical and mental abilities begin to decline around the age of forty, so I made these. Each one you eat reduces your age by five years. I calculated that the optimal age is twenty-three.”

“So let me get this straight.” Dash eyed the bottle. “You invented a medicine that actually makes you younger and can allow you to live forever?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re just sitting out here in the woods?!”

“Yes.”

“But why?! You could be a millionaire with this alone!”

“A what?”

“A millionaire.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You don’t—?! Like getting a million bits?”

“A million bits of what?”

“Of money!”

“What’s money?”

Dash glared at Twilight.

“Okay, now I know you’re just messing with me.” Dash threw the bottle back at Twilight. “Do you know how many ponies have tried to not know what money is?! There’s no way you could pull that off!”

“No, I’m being serious! My education was extremely lopsided. If it doesn’t have anything to do with magic, then I don’t know anything about it. I seriously have no knowledge about whatever silly animals or superstitions you’re talking about.”

“I can buy that excuse to an extent, but how the buck can you have never heard of money?"

“I can’t answer that question if I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Twilight. “Sometimes I think about studying something other than magic, but then I realize that I could just spend that time practicing magic instead. Anything else is just a distraction from training.”

“And what exactly are you training for that compels you to be so idiotically focused on it?”

“It’s just what I— Wait.” Twilight narrowed her eyes and turned suspiciously back to Dash. “Wait! You’re doing it now, aren’t you? You’re distracting me from my training! I need to get rid of you right now before I waste any more of my time!”

“What? Me? Distractions? Nah! I was just interested in—"

“No! I learned this one!” Twilight raised her hoof, a glowing orb of white light appeared in it, heating the entire room until Dash went from shivering to sweating. “Just like I learned how to create a sphere of plasma that vaporizes anything it touches!”

This was it! Dash winced.

Well, Dash technically accomplished something! Maybe somepony else would find this place and defeat Twilight! Derpy would totally figure out it was Dash who broke the curse and Dash would be remembered as a cool pony who got Twilight on the assist!

That wouldn’t be so bad. Yeah! She could easily imagine tons of ponies thinking she was great!

Dash silently accepted her fate.

But it didn’t come.

There was no way Twilight needed this long to vaporize her. Dash opened her eyes to see Twilight frowning slightly, trembling as she held the sphere.

Twilight dismissed the orb with a growl and stomped her way across the room over to her scarecrow.

“Stop that!” Twilight yelled in frustration to her scarecrow. “Why do I always hesitate when I try to hit another pony?! I need to make some sort of neural bypass spell.”

Twilight was hesitant to kill Dash? Did the advice from that cheesy PSA really work? Dash took back all the bad things she said about the educational system! Or half of them on second thought.

“So you’re not going to kill me?” Dash double-checked.

Twilight just grumbled.

“Hey, I’ll take it! But then what?” Dash asked. “Are you going to keep me prisoner?”

“No! I can’t do that either.” Twilight shook her head. “You’ll just constantly annoy and distract me, and I’ll never get any work done! No, the only option left is to curse you.”

Twilight trotted over to her cauldron and swiped once for a new concoction. Twilight dipped her hooves inside of it to bring up a dark, oily substance. She turned to Dash and blew, the oil turning into a black smog that floated around Dash then vanished.

“I’ve placed a curse upon you,” said Twilight. “The curse—"

“La la la la!” Dash shouted.

Dash tried to keep her ears pinned down. Curses were way, way stronger if you knew exactly how they worked and more importantly the condition to be freed from it. If somepony cursed you without telling you what it did, then the effects would be minimal, and any two-bit psychic could dispel it for three bits.

But if you knew about it? Then all manner of insanity became possible, and it could only be broken through the conditions of the curse.

It was some kind of psychosomatic thing Dash hardly understood. Though she was technically already cursed, she'd likely never even notice if Twilight didn't reveal the rest.

Twilight didn’t let her get away with that. She cast a spell that left Dash’s voice silent. She was helpless now!

“You will bear this curse,” Twilight explained. “As soon as you leave you will be unable to find me or my home no matter how hard you look. You cannot speak of me unprompted and will deny you ever saw me if asked. One, and only one, leaf in the forest can set you free of this curse. If you find the leaf, the curse will break.”

Yeah, there was no way Dash had enough luck to pick the right leaf in an entire forest. She briefly tried to think of a way to bring every leaf in the forest to this very spot but drew a blank.

Would she not be able to brag about breaking the curse? That was almost worse than death! No one would know Dash had done this! She’d be forced to tell them she hadn’t!

She needed a plan!

She needed physical proof. Dash wouldn’t need to tell ponies what happened because they could piece it together themselves! But what and how were the problems Dash had seconds to figure out.

“Now take your things and leave.” Twilight returned to her cauldron, setting it back to that misty one she’d started with. “I’m very busy and thanks to you I have to make a global curse now!”

Sadly, Twilight kept watching Dash rather than getting distracted by her cauldron. Dash just needed her to look away for a few seconds to nab something.

“You’re really going to let me keep my stuff?” Dash asked. Had her footage remained intact, that would have been the one flaw in Twilight’s plan.

“I hate ponies stealing from me,” said Twilight. “So I don’t steal from others.”

Dash glanced at the bottle of reverse aging gummies. That was the only thing here she knew for certain nopony else could replicate. If she could swipe that…

“You know what?” Dash tossed the camera to Twilight. “You’re really not so bad. As thanks for not killing me, I’ll let you keep the camera!”

Twilight grabbed the camera and looked down at it, totally distracted just as Dash planned.

“What does it do?” Twilight asked. “You were trying to attack me with it before, right?”

“It like uh— you point it at something, and it makes a recording of past events you can view whenever you want!” Dash grabbed the bottle of youth gummies and stuffed it in her bag. “But you need that tape over there to make it work, and you destroyed it so I can’t use it.”

“Well, that’s silly.” Twilight kept studying it. “Why not just use aetheric imprint feedback as I did before?”

“Cause I have no idea what that is.” Dash put the bag back on. She tried to play it cool through all her trembling. All she had to do was literally walk away.

Or so she thought.

The moment she got her bag on, Twilight lifted Dash and threw her out the door, slamming it shut behind her.

Dash stumbled to her feet and spun around. The tree was nowhere in sight.

So that new curse really did work. Dash wasn't any better off than yesterday. Yet with the curse broken, literally any other pony could see Twilight's house.

The real test was if Dash could still perceive her ‘souvenir’ or show it to somepony else. If not, she was basically screwed even if some other pony did defeat Twilight later.

Feigning frustration, Dash trotted a good distance from Twilight’s house with her head down. It was just past midnight now. At least the blood moon had passed. The crickets chirped loudly, and the rain had long since cleared up.

Compared to the walk here, the return trip was like those kindergarten gremlin-catching exercises. That is to say, no real danger. Yet despite having no serious threats around, Dash’s heart beat even harder than when the dragon zombie was chasing her.

Dash was a good enough distance from Twilight’s house that she felt safe peeking into the bag.

She looked inside.

The gummies were there!

Dash quickly closed her bag, smiling wide.

It actually worked! Now she just needed to get somepony to put two and two together. How hard could that be?

Dash sat down, her smile fading slightly. Knowing her luck, it would be exceptionally hard. Though obviously finding that leaf would be even harder.

No doubt breaking a curse from Twilight herself was something not even an exceptional psychic could do by force. Nopony had ever been able to force their way through the curse of undeath or the curse of Twilight that Dash just broke.

Though finding the exact right leaf in the forest? A powerful enough psychic could certainly manage that much. In fact, a strong psychic could probably just guess what was wrong with Dash without Dash having to outright tell them!

But she would need an exceptional psychic…

Someone like Pinkie Pie!

Psychic

“Oh, hey!” Derpy clapped her hooves together, happy to see Dash. “You’re not dead! Hurray!”

Dash spent most of the night to find some shenanigan bypass for the curse and failing. Recording herself saying it and writing it down didn’t work. Now she came crawling back to HQ in defeat.

Outside, most of the zombies were gone and the town hardly seemed to be in that bad of shape. Ponies were taking down all their barricades. They must have done a good job getting rid of that dragon fast.

“Did you find Twilight?” Derpy asked.

“I—" Dash tried holding her breath, to keep herself from being forced to say no. “No. I did not.”

“Aw. Well, no worries! Nopony actually expected you to pull it off.” Derpy reached over the counter and patted Dash on the head.

“Hey!" Dash brushed Derpy’s head pats away. "I didn’t find nothing, though!”

She took out the bottle she stole from Twilight.

“Bam!” Dash slammed the container of youth gummies on the counter. “Check it!”

“Oh, wow!” Derpy’s face lit up the moment she saw it. “You got me a snack? Are these banana flavored?”

“No!” Dash put her hoof on the lid and held it down tight just in case Derpy tried to stupidly take the whole bottle. “These are an artifact I found last night. Each one makes you five years younger.”

While Dash couldn’t tell ponies about Twilight directly, showing them this bottle worked out just fine. This was an impressive haul too! Dash had only ever heard of one other item that could make ponies younger.

“Wowzers!” Derpy's eyes widened in awe, instantly believing Dash’s claim. “Stuff that makes you younger is like, sociopathic levels of rare! I gotta go get it appraised but if there’s no catch this is worth like a hundred thousand bits minimum. You’ll go up to rank C instantly if you turn it in!”

“Only rank C?” Somehow that felt underwhelming after going face to face with the most legendary legend. She needed to find some way to tell ponies about what really went down.

“Well it’s just one artifact,” Derpy pointed out. “Unless you can get more of these. Did you find a youth gummy tree?”

Kind of!

Was what Dash wanted to say. Instead, she ended up clenching her jaw and holding her breath.

“Well, you don’t gotta tell me.” Derpy shrugged, moving to put the bottle away. “Lots of ponies keep secret spots. Anyway, I’ll just—”

“Nope!” Dash snatched the bottle back right before Derpy put it under the desk. “I’m not turning it in! I’m going to find somepony who uh, appreciates it more.”

“Okay?” Derpy tilted her head.

So far, her hope that Derpy would put two and two together kept dwindling. Dash wondered how much she could hint about it.

“Can you guess where I got this?” Dash asked.

“Um." Derpy looked back at the gigantic board of mysteries. "No?"

Dash wanted to complain about how obvious this should be but couldn’t manage to speak. This was so frustrating! So close but so far!

Maybe someone smarter than Derpy would be able to put the round hole in the round peg.

“Where’s everypony else?” Dash asked.

“They're busy,” said Derpy. “I dunno if you saw it, but a huge dragon zombie was running around last night. There’s a lot of cleaning up from that going on. Then there was the caravan incident.”

Caravan? The one Applejack was with?

“We found this big caravan just outside of town,” said Derpy. “Looks like it belonged to a family of nomads named the Apples. There were signs a huge fight happened over there, but all the ponies in the caravan are just gone. All their stuff is there, but the bodies seemingly poofed away into nothing.”

That certainly sounded suspicious. But did they make themselves vanish or was it something else?

“It’s on the board.” Derpy pointed to it. “If you want to have not-zero money you could always help investigate that. We got a whole list of ponies we can’t find that you should probably be looking for, actually.”

Dash looked over at the board and sure enough, Applejack was among the pictures of missing ponies. From the lack of a bounty on her, Applejack must have kept whatever shady business she did underground.

Applejack seemed smart enough to figure out where these gummies came from. Of course, Dash would need to find her for that. Dash didn't want to make this fetch quest any more convoluted. Twilight was more important on a global scale, so Applejack and her family were on their own.

Besides, even if Applejack did believe her, it wasn’t like anypony but Pinkie could find that leaf. It'd be a waste of time to convince anypony else.

Yeah! In fact, this plan was even more brilliant than Dash originally thought! Pinkie had so much psychic perception she could probably just instantly tell what Dash wanted. She had solved countless murders and mysteries so this should be effortless for her.

The only problem was Dash had no idea where to find Pinkie.

“Hey, do you know where Pinkie Pie hangs out these days?” Dash asked. “She used to be S-rank, right?"

“Huh?” Derpy blinked at the sudden change of topic. “She retired a while ago. Unless you want to go to one of her shows. She still does that.”

“She does? That’s great! Just gotta go find one.”

“We actually sell tickets to her show here!” Derpy took one out. “They go for a hundred bits each.”

“A hundred?!” Maybe Dash should have sold the youth gummies. “Guess she’s still really popular.”

“But since you’re an employee, you get fifteen percent off! So it’s only eight-five bits!”

“That’s one lucky break today.”

“Uh-huh.” Derpy calculated something behind the desk. “Then after taxes, it comes out to one hundred bits!”

“Dang it!” Dash didn’t have that kind of money. She didn’t have any kind of money! “Derpy, can you spot me a hundred bits?”

“You already owe me over a thousand bits, Rainbow Dash,” said Derpy. “Also an inflatable raft.”

“Okay, okay! But look!” Dash held up her bottle. “I got this thing, didn’t I? I’m on to something, trust me! I will pay you back a hundred-fold. Just give me question mark days.”

“Sure. But you’re always on to something and it usually ends with one of us covered in sewage.”

“Yeah! But have I ever gotten this far before?!” Dash shook the bottle

“Hm. That’s a good point.” Derpy closed her eyes and tapped her chin. “Maybe the stars are lining up! Okay! I will buy you a ticket.”

Derpy stamped the yellow slip and handed it to Dash.

“Sweet!” Dash grabbed the slip and spun around! This wasn’t just her ticket to seeing Pinkie Pie, but to blowing the lid off Twilight and becoming rich and famous! When Dash was a millionaire, she’d give Derpy ten thousand bits back just as she promised. “You won’t regret this! Best investment you ever made.”

Dash rushed out the door before Derpy could say another word.

Dash had to fly all the way to Gorgetown, where the show would take place. It took hours to get here, but Dash was so determined that she wasn’t even tired.

Now Dash stood before a large auditorium, the outside covered with two huge posters of Pinkie Pie. The one on the left was her younger self, the one most remembered, with her curly pink hair and that manic smile. On the right was her current, much older self, still smiling but hair white as snow and straight. Did aging make your mane straighten out?

Come to think of it, Pinkie had to be in her late 60s or even 70s by now. Her psychic perception still had to be bonkers, though. She still did these shows to show off how astounding her abilities were.

Pinkie was one of those ponies everypony wanted to be.

The public considered her the most powerful psychic who ever lived. Her psychokinesis was strong enough that she beat a host of S-class cryptids and ghosts with little or sometimes no backup. She defeated Adagio Dazzle, the banshee queen, entirely by herself freeing a whole city from the banshee’s death curse. Pinkie had been a major player in the war to destroy Toxco and had destroyed the great blight tree among all manner of other achievements. Dash hardly knew half of them.

Perhaps the thing that earned Pinkie the most love was that curse she broke— the curse of unpoppable corn. A long time ago, a powerful, passive-aggressive witch (rumored to be Twilight Sparkle) unleashed a terrifying curse on the land, making everypony unable to make popcorn!

A hundred years passed without popcorn until Pinkie appeared and cleared the curse’s condition, finding the witch’s missing sock with her incredible ESP.

For that, Pinkie Pie got a parade and free popcorn for life at every movie theater. That was the kind of thing Rainbow Dash needed to do! If she could pull something like that off, everypony would love her too!

Dash gave her bottle, her ace, a little shake.

Maybe Dash could bribe her with youth? Though some ponies thought that these rare methods of ‘cheating death’ were immoral for whatever reason. A slight chance of this blowing up in Dash’s face existed. Maybe that shouldn’t be her opener.

For now, Dash had a long line to get through. A blindfolded attendant, clearly a less powerful psychic, acted like a bouncer, checking ponies one by one as they came in.

The pony two spaces ahead of her was pink, had a bit of a punk look to her. She styled her purple mane in pigtails with a teal stripe going down each side.

“Name?” the attendant asked.

“Aria Blaze.”

“And you brought something for Madam Pinkie?” He took the doll from her and began scanning it.

“I brought a possessed doll,” Aria explained. “The ghost inside it is a total loser, but it’s one of those ones that keeps coming back no matter what you do. Every night it appears on the stairs trying to trip me.”

“Yeah, I hate it when that happens.” The attendant shook the doll around. “I knew I could feel a possessed doll with murderous intent somewhere in the line.”

He put his hoof on the doll's head and concentrated.

“Guess I was worried for nothing.” He handed it back. “The ghost in this doll really is a loser. It hardly matters how murderous his intent is. This thing is harmless.”

Aria gave a sharp smile as she took her doll back and walked inside.

Other ponies were bringing stuff to this? Looking around, it did seem like nearly everypony carried something with them.

Admittedly Dash had no idea what she signed up for or what happened in these shows. Turning the ticket over, she read a warning about Pinkie destroying possessed or cursed artifacts as part of the show. ‘Don’t bring anything you don’t want to explode’ it warned.

Actually, this was great! Pinkie might just call Dash up on stage and figure out the truth in front of a live audience!

But there was a lot of competition. Everypony carried something with them, the pony behind her had a vase and the one ahead had a mirror.

“Sorry, no mirrors,” Blindfold told the next pony. “There was an incident a year ago.”

“Ah, shoot!” The pony reluctantly put her mirror to the side before heading in. “Some ponies ruin things for everyone.”

Then it was Dash’s turn.

“And what did you bring?” Blindfold asked, taking the jar. “Is it cursed?”

“It’s not cursed or anything!” Dash assured him. “It’s just cool! Anti-aging stuff. I just want to see how impressed Pinkie is that I found it.”

“I don’t sense any curses. It’s not possessed or radioactive.” He handed it back. “You’re clear.”

Easy enough!

Dash went inside and took her seat, which just happened to be next to that punk pony with the creepy doll. Even if Pinkie didn’t call on her during the show, Dash still had a chance to meet her afterward.

The audience was packed. It seemed Pinkie could still fill a room. Pinkie herself was already out on stage, clearly a senior citizen. In Dash’s mind, Pinkie was still the poofy-haired hero, eyes blazing with psychic energy like in the posters. She’d seen pictures of the current, older Pinkie, but seeing her this old still felt wrong.

Pinkie sat in the middle of the stage in her armchair, her eyes closed as if meditating or trying to sense something.

“Okay!” Pinkie opened her eyes. “So, before we begin the show— one, two, three — That guy killed his wife! Get him!”

Pinkie pointed to a random person in the audience, a spotlight appearing over his head. Several police officers jumped out and tackled him.

“Dang it!” shouted the murderer. “I knew this was going to happen too! Why did I come here?!”

He struggled as the police dragged him out.

“And amazingly that holds up in court!” Pinkie declared.

The audience cheered.

Pinkie was good!

Maybe too good? Dash silently thought back to all the bad stuff she’d done in the past. She couldn't remember anything she could go to jail for.

“And now we come to the part where all of you get nervous that I’m about to arrest the entire audience,” Pinkie said.

Pinkie was really good!

“Well, no need to worry! If I did that every time, nopony would come to these shows!” Pinkie got a few laughs. “I’ll just let all of you off on a collective warning this time.”

“Do the spirit bomb!” an energetic pony in the crowd shouted out.

“Sorry,” said Pinkie, giving him a small frown. “I haven’t done the spirit bomb in years. I have a heart condition from eating too much candy. Can’t do it anymore.”

The audience made a few noises of disappointment.

“Now the first thing everypony always asks me is how I got my incredible psychic powers and also how they can get something even kind of close to them. The answer is that you probably can’t so don’t try biting on a down power wire or anything like that. Can you believe ponies actually do that?”

A few ponies laughed. Dash held her breath in embarrassment.

“In reality, there’s only one thing that can give you psychic abilities and that’s dumb luck!” Pinkie pointed out into the audience. “You gotta be unlucky enough to have something horrible nearly kill you, then lucky enough to miraculously survive, then lucky again to become psychic. It’s that last one everypony forgets.”

Yeah, Dash learned that one the hard way. They started doing a lot more ‘don’t electrocute yourself’ PSAs recently from the spike in teen self-electrocutions.

“I like to think the first roll for me, the bad luck one, wasn’t so much bad luck as bad proofreading. See me and my sisters, Inky and Blinky, were out ice skating.” Pinkie glided a hoof forward, imitating ice skating. “There was a misspelled ‘thin ice’ sign that said ‘thi nice’ so us being eight or so thought that must be the nice place to skate. Spoiler alert, it was not.

“Inky didn’t fall in. Our dad rushed over and grabbed Blinky out right away. I was the lucky/unlucky one. My father knew I went under the ice but couldn't find me when he dunked his head under. Somehow, I ended up way on the other side of the lake. Eventually, they got me out, but by then I’d been underwater for forty-five minutes and they estimated my heart stopped beating for almost a half-hour! Still the world record, by the way. The doctors had no idea how I survived that one.

“This is all that I’ve been told, anyway. Holding your breath for forty-five minutes, not to mention extreme cold, causes all kinds of brain damage. I had killer amnesia when I woke up. I don't have any memories from before that day."

Pinkie got up from her chair slowly, took out a single banana, and placed it on stage in front of her.

“Of course, the nearer you get to death the stronger your psychic aura is if it does develop. My earliest memory was the psychic power test they gave me. They asked me to try and grab an apple out of a tree. It went something like this.”

Pinkie closed her eyes. Even somepony with no psychic perception like Dash could feel a change in the air. The entire room began to shake.

Dash felt like she was moving but remained in her chair. On a hunch, she glanced outside to realize the entire building was rising. Pinkie lifted the whole place off its foundation, bringing it a good ten feet in the air!

Just as ponies started noticing and gasping at this. The seats, with the ponies in them, began to float too. Pinkie lifted the entire audience, inside the building she was already lifting, halfway to the ceiling!

And after her abilities had declined from old age too! No wonder Pinkie had a legendary reputation!

A thrill of amusement went through the audience, but the spectacle was short-lived. Dash could see Pinkie struggling slightly as she lowered everything carefully, gently setting is all back in place.

“As you can see, I failed the test.” Pinkie pointed to the banana, the one thing in the room that hadn’t floated into the air. “I uprooted every other tree in the orchard, but that apple was fine.”

The audience laughed.

“Obviously, my dad wanted me to buy a lotto ticket after that. I won the lottery so many times in a row they shut the whole thing down. For the kiddos in the audience, that was a number-guessing game you could win money in. Definitely something that wouldn’t work these days.

“Of course, there is a very spooky part of being psychic. Who knows which of the four sources psychic powers come from?”

Most of the audience shouted out ‘ghosts’.

“That’s right! I am technically kind of a ghost if you think about it! So as you can see—" Pinkie gestured to her side, “Or as most of you cannot see—"

This was the boring, sciency part of the show, wasn’t it? Dash couldn’t fully appreciate it with zero psychic perception, either. She impatiently tapped her hoof, waiting for the part Pinkie would blow up random stuff in the audience or hopefully call on her.

A half-hour into the show, Dash’s worries about it being too much of a lecture proved unfounded. Pinkie kept her nothing if not entertained the whole way through.

Right now, she was showing off her famous bag of chance. They were like a bag of holding only with a chaos portal instead of a pocket dimension inside. The only way to know what was in it at any given moment was to pull it out.

A few of these existed, but normal ponies could use one to any extent. You never knew what you’d pull out of the bag, which more often than not meant you'd get something dangerous.

But Pinkie?

“See, the more specific of a thing you’re waiting for the longer it’s going to take. The trick is to reach in at the exact right second.” Pinkie had her eyes closed, hoof hovering over the bag. “Also, you gotta be really quick or—"

Pinkie darted her hoof in and out of it lightning-fast, pulling out a squash.

“Huh? Kabocha squash? Not exactly a pumpkin, but normally I just get close like that. Just goes to show you how unpredictable these are. The important thing is avoiding whammies and that’s pretty easy.”

Pinkie set the bag to the side and got back up.

“See, I have what I like to call whammy vision. It’s one of the things that always helped me find the biggest lead.” Pinkie closed her eyes and swept her hoof across the audience. “I can find whoever has the biggest whammy in the room right now.”

The biggest whammy? Finally, they got to this part. Dash was after Twilight herself, so obviously Pinkie had to pick up on her.

“Let’s see!” Pinkie closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “I sense a mare from the west with something of great importance to show me.”

Dash scanned the room. Dash came from the west! She had something of great importance.

“Yes, yes. There’s a pegasus.” Pinkie made a gratuitous ‘woo’. “And her name is Ron. No! Rambo! Rainbow!”

Dash leaned over the edge of her seat. It was totally her, right?! She looked around desperately to confirm there were no other pegasi here with rainbow hair.

“Rainbow Rash! Or something!” Pinkie opened her eyes and looked in Dash’s direction, making Dash’s heart beat.

That was totally her! No way there was somepony named Rainbow Rash here! Dash stood up; her wings flared out in excitement.

“Congratulations,” said Pinkie. “You are the pony with the second biggest whammy in the audience! Just missed it!”

“Whu?!” Dash fell over, back into her seat.

The crowd laughed.

“Sorry about that, I’ll give you a free autograph after the show. The person with the biggest whammy is the pony sitting next to you. Aria— Aria something. Am I right?” Pinkie pointed to the pigtailed pony from before.

“Oh, absolutely.” Aria stood up, holding her doll.

“Yes, I can sense a malevolent spirit around you,” said Pinkie. “I hardly ever sense something with this much hatred inside it. Come on up!”

Aria brought her doll up to the stage as Dash grumbled in defeat. That autograph had better be extra autographical! At least she'd get to talk to Pinkie for sure now.

“The staff told me it was just doing that lying on the stairs trying to trip you thing,” said Pinkie, taking the doll. “But I sense a much greater spirit than some wimpy wisp. It’s a good thing you brought it to me before it could go nuts. You see folks, sometimes a powerful ghost might be ‘asleep’ inside the object they possess, giving you the impression they’re just a wisp but—"

As she spoke, Pinkie tapped the stuffed pony on the forehead.

A ghost did come out of the doll, but it was a wisp, the weakest type of ghost unless you counted orbs. These appeared as balls of blue fire that gave off insignificant amounts of light. Wisps couldn’t manifest the form they had in life and had no real power.

“It is I!” a male voice came from the doll, hamming up the ghostly reverb in a totally unnecessary way. “The ghost of Zephyr Breeze! I never scored in life, but I got really close, I swear! After I died, I vowed to kill anypony who did get laid and that includes you Pin—"

Pinkie’s smile turned into a frown as she looked down at the doll. Then her eyes widened in panic.

“Wait a tick!” Pinkie swiped her hoof left, utterly destroying the ghost. “Oh no! This wasn’t the possessed doll I sensed!”

A mutter went through the crowd.

“That’s the possessed doll!” Pinkie pointed at Aria Blaze herself.

Aria began to laugh, taking another step towards Pinkie.

“Everypony get out of here right now!” Pinkie jumped backward, moving into a defensive position.

Pinkie’s psychokinesis blew all the doors off their hinges and shattered the windows wide open. The fire alarm began to ring.

The audience was too confused to move. Meanwhile, the pigtailed pony collapsed onto the floor, the ghost that was possessing what must have been a perfectly life-like doll flew out.

She looked nearly identical to the doll she’d just come out of, only now fangs filled her mouth and her hooves ended in claws, both of which appeared to be made of icicles.

A banshee!

That got everypony rushing to the exit, crawling all over themselves. A banshee’s wail was one of the deadliest things in the world!

And the banshee wailed immediately! Dash covered her ears, but it was too late. She could feel it in her chest like the banshee had just grabbed her heart with icy claws.

Dash and everypony else in the building had a death curse on them now.

“That’s right!” Ignoring everypony else, the ghost floated down towards Pinkie. “It was me! Aria Blaze!”

“Who?” Pinkie asked.

“Aria Blaze?” The banshee gritted her teeth, realizing Pinkie still had no idea who she was. “I’m Adagio’s younger sister!”

“Huh?” Pinkie tried to remember.

“Adagio?! The legendary banshee that you murdered?!” Aria shouted. “I’m here to avenge my sister!”

“Oh, I remember that now!” Pinkie nodded. “In my defense, she was about to kill two hundred thousand people.”

“That’s no excuse!”

“It’s not? 'Cause I feel like that’s an incredible excuse.”

Aria screeched this time. Dash felt like her eardrums were being blown out. Everypony who hadn’t left, including Dash, got forced to the ground by the pain. When Dash got up, she noticed Pinkie had blocked it with a psionic shield.

“Yeesh! You don’t gotta scream like a little kid! You know I gotta exorcise you if you don’t take off the death curse, right?” Pinkie started circling Aria, putting herself between the banshee and the bystanders.

“I’ve already made up my mind! One of us isn’t leaving here alive!” Aria flew back into her doll, bringing it back to its feet. “Or— you know! Even less alive.”

Pinkie jumped forward and put her hoof on the doll’s head. Her eyes glowed blue and the ghost was pushed out ever so slightly. After just a moment of struggling, however, Aria snapped back into her doll and shrieked.

This shriek was a bit different from the last, seemed to only affect Pinkie, who didn’t block in time. It threw Pinkie to the ground and Pinkie struggled to get back up.

“Losing your touch?” Aria gave a smug grin. “Well, that was all part of the plan! I waited forty years for you to get old and feeble so I could finally beat you up! All those injuries through your career are starting to catch up with you!”

Aria drew her hoof back, a sharp icicle forming around it. She thrust it down at Pinkie to stab her, but Pinkie held Aria's hoof back with her own mental grip. Pinkie blew the icicle apart and sent Aria across the stage, finally giving herself time to get up.

Was Pinkie struggling with this? She really was getting old.

Dash looked around, most of the audience already escaped, the few who remained clogged up the doors. It didn’t look like Pinkie had any backup. The only pony on her team around was a stagehand cowering behind her couch. Where the crow was that blindfold guy?

Dash saw an opportunity! Maybe this was a chance to make an impression on Pinkie Pie!

Dash flew up on stage as fast as she could and punched Aria hard in the face, sending her rolling across the floor.

“You know I didn’t even feel that, right?” Aria stood up immediately.

“Guess I forgot,” said Dash. “That doll is scarily realistic. It looks just like a real pony."

“That's because this is a real pony.” Aria put her hoof on her chest. “I had my dead body taxidermized after I died so that I could possess my own corpse! Pretty clever, huh? I’m surprised more ghosts don’t think of doing that.”

“That’s a little creepy,” said Pinkie. “You’re not a creeper, are you?”

“I’m trying to kill you!”

“So yes?”

“Can you take this more seriously?! I’m trying to vengeance over here!” Aria pointed to Dash. “You! I was going to take the curse off everypony else when I was done with her but now you’re dead too!”

Maybe Dash did get a little overzealous there. Destroying Aria was the only way Dash would survive now. It wouldn’t be long until the death curse brought deadly misfortune to her. Dash glanced around the room, taking note of where all the lights were. There was a hundred percent chance of one falling and killing her if she stood under it.

Pinkie looked around the room too, seemingly having the same idea, before a random section of the wall caught her attention. Pinkie charged over to it and put her head against the wall. A pipe burst right as she got there, hitting her as it broke through and firing hot steam in her face.

“Youch!” That staggered Pinkie more than Dash would have expected.

“If you’re a psychic, shouldn’t you have seen that coming?” Dash asked.

“I did!” Pinkie nodded. “That’s why I ran straight into it.”

“What?! Your explanation is making me more confused.”

“See, that’s the trick,” said Pinkie. “Death curses never just kill you; they always go through this unnecessarily elaborate chain of events that makes no sense at all! You gotta take the first hit to mess up its flow!”

“Looks like it’s just a matter of time for me now.” Aria laughed again.

A clunk came from behind the curtain. A table flipped over, throwing knives in between Dash and Pinkie, narrowly missing both.

“Oh no! We dodged it!” Pinkie gasped.

A knife sliced a wire that caused one of the lights from up above to swing down right at Rainbow Dash. That lamp was huge! It would have taken Dash’s head off had it been just an inch closer! But instead of just killing her, it slammed into the wall behind them and burst into flames.

The tapestry behind Pinkie a moment ago was on fire. The blaze spread fast, quickly covering most of the stage.

“Quick! Jump into the fire or you’ll die!” Pinkie jumped into the flames with wild abandon. “Jump and roll!”

Rainbow Dash’s brain told her that jumping into a burning fire was a bad thing. But then again, Pinkie had decades of experience. She had to know what she was doing or she’d have died years ago. She just had to trust the expert!

Dash summoned her courage and jumped into the fire, remembering to roll as Pinkie told her to. She got a little singed, had to quickly stomp on the tip of her tail to put it out, but was mostly okay.

On the other side of the burning curtain, the lone stagehand cowered. Instead of running into danger, he did the sensible thing and fled from it.

“Wait!” Pinkie called after him.

But it was too late. He slipped on the banana from earlier and fell onto one of the knives. It stabbed into his neck killing him instantly.

“This is bad!” Pinkie waved her hoof, blowing away most of the nearby fire with psychokinesis. “There was hardly any delay in the curse activating and that was a four-point kill. Most banshees need at least seven wacky coincidences to happen before you die!”

“Well you’ve defeated tons of rank S monsters, right?” Dash reminded her.

“Sure!” Pinkie nodded. “Just not, you know, recently. As in the last ten years. But still! I can probably maybe do this.”

“You can’t run from a death curse forever!” Aria called after them.

“No! But there’s only so many wacky things that can go wrong in this place!” Pinkie jumped back out of the fire. “I’ve been death-cursed a billion times before! You’re almost out of ammo for now, trust me.”

“Am I?” Aria smiled. “Let me ask you this— what’s the worst possible thing to be around when you have a death curse?”

“A bunch of random—?”

Aria stood next to the armchair Pinkie spent most of the show sitting in. She picked up the bag of chance, laughing once again.

“Uh oh!” Pinkie took a step in retreat, her back to the fire.

Aria spun in a circle, laughing as tons of random objects fell out of the bag. Chairs, a hammer, briefcases, a typewriter, and more all came spilling out of the bag to cover the stage.

“This is bad! I might not be able to keep track of all this stuff!” Pinkie looked around the room frantically, noticing Dash landing next to her once more. “Okay! You look like you want to help, so here’s the plan. You stupidly run into everything that gets thrown at us. I’ll try to exorcise Aria from that doll!”

“Right!” Dash nodded. She could hardly believe she got to team up with a former S-rank pony, even if her job was to be a total idiot.

Pinkie charged at Aria, who ran around the audience, now clear of other ponies, avoiding Pinkie and swinging the bag wildly as she went.

The banshee was too fast for Pinkie to catch. Pinkie tried pulling Aria towards herself with her psychic powers, but Aria just left her body and threw the doll forward once again to keep it out of reach. Dash could only hope Pinkie had a plan.

Dash had to concentrate on her part, be on the lookout for anything contrived.

The blaze spread slowly, parts of the stage just now catching on fire again. It moved threateningly close to a bunch of firecrackers! The fireworks themselves weren’t dangerous, but they were next to a pile of mousetraps and when they burst the mouse traps would go flying.

Dash threw herself into the pile of mouse traps just as the firecrackers went off. They snapped shut around her foreleg, but it hurt way less than she expected. That didn’t set anything else off, so Dash must have blocked it.

Dash grabbed a nearby blanket and tried to smother some of the fire, while on the lookout for more dangers.

Aria was getting close to the stage again. This time she swung the bag and animals came out! Snakes, bees, and a huge boar!

The snakes covered the floor, there being way more of them than anything else.

One of them hissed at Dash. Dash immediately knew she had to get bit by this sucker. Red and black was the not-venomous one if she remembered right. She should be safe.

Dash poked the snake trying to get it to bite her. Instead of attacking her, it retreated.

“Wait! Come back and bite me!” Dash chased after the snake, the stupid thing slithering off into a crack in the wall.

Dash stuck her hoof into the hole, hoping the snake would bite her.

Another one of the spotlights overhead came loose from all the commotion and started to fall right down at her.

Dash sighed. That was the second in the chain, but it would easily break a leg, if not a neck, at the least. She decided to risk getting hit by the third blow instead. She rolled out of the way, the spotlight crashing into the floor next to her.

That drew the attention of the boar who came charging at Dash. She had to let that thing ram her or she’d die for sure. Dash closed her eyes and opened her forelegs to accept the blow.

But it didn’t come.

She opened her eyes to see the boar running away from her, a thread of spirit energy wrapped around it. That banshee must have been drawing it somewhere else. But did that count as the chain breaking?

Pinkie caught up to the doll, cornering it. The banshee tried to ram Pinkie from behind with that boar, but Pinkie held it back with her mind.

“Psycho wave!” Pinkie hit Aria with a hoof blazing with blue, psychic energy.

A wave of psychic energy radiated from Pinkie’s hoof, pushing the banshee out of its hiding place.

But Aria wasn’t entirely detached from her doll. They were just barely visible to a pony with low psychic perception, but right now Dash could make out the faint red phantom chains. They looked like chains made of the clearest glass imaginable and tethered the banshee to the doll. Aria flew back all the way, the chains taut.

The banshee was visibly struggling to keep herself attached.

One of the links snapped!

But then Aria threw a hoof forward and five more tethered her to the doll. She pulled herself back in as the psycho wave began to die down and punched Pinkie hard when she got back inside.

Then the boar, now free, charged forward and rammed into Pinkie’s side.

One of Pinkie’s bones cracked from that! Pinkie herself went tumbling and didn’t get back up.

Aria mounted the boar, spirit energy and a frost beginning to surround the animal. The banshee laughed and they both charged at Pinkie at a speed far faster than a normal boar could move.

Pinkie still wasn’t getting up! Dash darted over to her and grabbed Pinkie, the boar narrowly missing them.

No way Dash could fight that thing by herself! She grabbed Pinkie and charged out the door, around a quick bend, and then into a closet to hide. The fire in the auditorium would consume the whole building in another minute.

There wasn’t a lot of time for Pinkie to recover. If she didn’t soon, Dash would just have to fly her far away.

She set Pinkie down, relieved to see Pinkie was still conscious at least. But they wouldn’t have long before the banshee came back at them.

“I need to get hit by that boar to keep the curse from finishing,” said Dash. “But how do I do that without dying when it’s this crazy?!”

Dash turned over to Pinkie who wasn’t looking so hot. She was still on the floor, panting hard.

“Sorry.” Pinkie sat up, trying to flex her shoulder only for it to crack, causing her to wince in pain. “I think I let myself go a little. Back in the day, they used to call me Pinkie ‘Trampoline’ Pie ‘cause I always bounced back from every attack! If I was still in my prime, that ghost would be toast before it made a single boast.”

Back in her prime?

Dash looked over at her satchel then back at Pinkie. She had twelve of those youth gummies. Hypothetically, that could make Pinkie Pie sixty years younger, easily a kid again. Would a ten-year-old body be better or worse than a sixty-something body?

Didn’t matter! Dash could just give her nine.

“Hey, Pinkie.” Dash took the bottle out. “If you could go back to being twenty years old physically, would you do it?”

“Would I?! Oh man, if I was young again my metabolism would be so great! I could eat a gallon of ice cream every night and—" The boar’s tusk cut through the wall, going straight between the two of them. “And also we wouldn’t die. But this isn’t time for wacky, hypothetical questions!”

Pinkie tapped her hoof, getting ready for another psycho-wave.

“Wait! This isn’t a hypothetical!” Dash shoved the bottle in her face. “This is a magical artifact I found in the forest! Eating them makes you younger.”

“These aren’t banana flavored, are they?” Pinkie looked at the bottle, suddenly skeptical. “'Cause see I used to like banana but when you get older your taste changes and—"

“You’re completely missing the point here!”

Outside, the boar absorbed even more spirit energy from the banshee and charged forward at an unstoppable speed. The entire wall in front and behind Dash exploded from the charge, throwing Pinkie out of sight and Dash into the next room.

The boar missed taking Dash’s head off, tearing clean through her the wall behind. It ultimately slammed into another support beam, destroying the pillar but also knocking itself out.

That was the third domino! And it missed! That meant the next would be fatal!

Seemingly, that last beam was a load bearing one. Between that and the fire, the entire building buckled and began to fall on Dash’s head!

There was no way to survive this!

“Psionic trampoline!”

The entire building stopped collapsing. The collapse slowed slightly at first then, as though bouncing off a trampoline, suddenly flew back up into the sky. The entire top half of the building was thrown into the air, leaving only the floor and a few sparse pieces of the walls behind.

“What?!” Aria jumped back; clearly surprised Pinkie could still do that.

Pinkie Pie stepped out of the rubble. Her hair was curly and pink again, though with a few grey streaks. From the looks of things, Dash would guess she ate two or three gummies and was in her fifties again.

“Haven’t done that in a while.” Pinkie stepped forward, smiling wide, the blue glow in her eyes dramatically brighter than before. “I got some bad news for you! Despite being yellow, they all tasted like strawberry which I love!”

“But—" Aria looked up at the building still on its way up. “The amount of power needed to stop the final part of a chain by force—"

“Yeah! I’d have to be crazy strong to do that, huh?” Pinkie laughed.

The streaks of grey in Pinkie’s hair were vanishing! Pinkie kept getting younger! Though now the question was how many of those she took.

“This isn’t over!” Aria declared, digging in. “I waited too long to just give up now!”

Aria emerged from her doll and took a deep breath, then wailed as loud as she could. This time, the walls of the building were blown apart from the shockwave.

Her doll, now glowing with the same energy the boar had a moment ago, moved without her at the same time, slamming its hooves into the ground so pillars of sharp icicles flew at the two of them.

Either of those would have killed a pony, but Pinkie was ready with a much stronger and larger psionic shield than before, one that covered both her and Dash. After a moment, Dash didn’t even hear the sound. The icicles shattered against the barrier and the screeching did nothing.

Clearly, Pinkie was the hooves down the stronger of the two now. Dash noticed the grey in her hair had completely faded away too. It didn't look like her age loss was about to slow, either. How many did she take?

But now the roof of the building was coming down at them. That whole thing was going to crush them in a few seconds! But the footprint of the crash would be so huge Dash wasn’t sure if she could get away from it all! She just had to hope Pinkie had some plan in mind.

Aria realized this was a bad spot and tried to bolt.

Pinkie reached perhaps forty and became fast enough to very nearly keep up with the doll as it darted away. For now, Pinkie was getting faster! A second later she looked thirty. Now she outpaced Aria and snatched the bag back.

With a single psychic-boosted punch she nearly destroyed the doll, sending limbs and stuffing flying off it.

Pinkie looked incredible now! She was back in her prime, in her twenties. All her colors and curls were back. Her body was toned, and blue psychic energy surrounded her.

The only problem was they were all a second from being crushed to death.

“No heart condition means no limit!” Pinkie hit her chest, then pulled back her hoof, the psychic energy that surrounded her a moment ago concentrating around it. It began swirling together to form a blue sphere. The spirit bomb!

“This isn’t possible!” Aria shrieked inside her broken doll. “I waited forty years for this!”

The psychic energy around Pinkie’s hooves shone brighter than ever before! At least, brighter than Dash had ever seen.

Just charging up the attack was enough energy to force the ghost out of the doll again. The chains became taut before Pinkie launched her ultimate attack.

“Spirit bomb!”

Pinkie punched the doll. The chains dissolved instantly as psychic energy covered the entire area. Dash was blinded, could just barely make out Aria as she howled and dissolved into the ether.

All the falling debris was blown off in every direction.

Pinkie stood up, making sure no straggling rubble touched the two before turning back to Dash.

“I guess she didn’t stand a ghost of a chance!” Pinkie struck a pose.

Dash couldn’t help but groan.

The psychic was ecstatic at her new burst of energy and power. She did a few flips of joy, the last of which she boosted with her telekinetic abilities, going clear over Dash’s head and spinning at least twenty times before hitting the ground.

The two of them were about the same age right now, but Dash had way less energy. Though in her defense she had gotten beaten up pretty bad there. She found her bag and started bandaging her cuts.

Up close and in her prime, Pinkie was a brick house of a mare. She was taller than Dash and jacked too. Even without her psychic powers, Pinkie would be intimidating just for her size.

“I can't feel her presence anymore. I think we’re good here. Unless they have a third sister or something.” Pinkie’s eyes darted left and right suspiciously before she chuckled. “Nah, I think we’re good!”

Pinkie did a backflip.

“I feel amazing! Now I have the experience of decades and the vigor of youth! I’m more powerful than I’ve ever been!” Pinkie jabbed her hoof forward repeatedly.

Pinkie stopped just then and looked down at her foreleg in surprise.

“My reach seems suddenly shorter.” Then it clicked. “Uh oh!”

Pinkie Pie continued to de-age. She was getting noticeably shorter now. She began losing most of the bulk earth ponies got as adults, becoming downright scrawny as her full figure faded.

“Uh oh!” Pinkie looked herself over, still shrinking until she became much smaller than Dash. “How young will I get?! Am I going to turn into a zygote?!”

“How many did you take?”

“The whole bottle?” Pinkie smiled nervously.

“What?!”

“Whoa, hey! Not the whole bottle!” Pinkie rattled the glass container to show a single gummy remained. “See I left you one to be polite!”

“Okay.” Dash let out a sigh of relief. Pinkie should still be relatively okay. “Then you should stop at fifty-five years younger, I think.”

“But then I’ll be thirteen?” Pinkie rushed over to a broken mirror on the floor. She could barely qualify as a teenager now, small enough to still be pre-pubescent. Thankfully, she did stop shrinking. “That’s five years before my lower limit! This raises lots of uncomfortable questions. Does this last forever?”

“For fifty-five years. I think you age normally from here.”

Pinkie thought about her situation in silence for a few more seconds

“You know what? Thirteen is better than sixty-eight!” Pinkie jumped up on a piece of rubble, then backflipped off it. “Ah yeah! Now I can eat all kinds of junk food without getting a stomachache again! Oh, hey! I can go trick or treating again and nopony will say anything! Thanks, friendo!”

Pinkie grabbed Dash’s hoof with both of hers and shook vigorously.

“This stuff is great!” Pinkie held Dash’s hoof tight and leaned in. “Hey, where’d you even find that? This is one of the best magical items I ever heard of, and I’ve been at this for a long time!”

Dash found herself holding her breath. She tried with every ounce of her being to say anything but the curse was too strong. Pinkie just watched her.

“Oh! You’re one of those ‘secret spot’ types, huh?” Pinkie nodded. “No worries! I’ve met plenty of you guys.”

Dang it! Dash wanted so badly to tell her ‘no’, but it just wouldn’t come out! She was so close! Yet all she could do was hope Pinkie’s ludicrous perception score would bail her out.

Thankfully, Pinkie did pick up that something was wrong here. She gave Dash a suspicious look at first like she briefly thought she was picking up on some horrible crime.

“Hey, wait! You seem to have a curse or something, right?” Pinkie looked her over.

Dash still couldn’t talk.

“Oh! This is one of those ‘can’t tell you about the curse’ curses, right?” Pinkie nodded. “Man! That takes me back to my thirties when— wait! Does that take me forward to my thirties? Am I being nostalgic about the future now?”

“Look, I don’t know but you got it!” Dash’s heart skipped upon hearing she could say even that much. Maybe if Pinkie already knew? “I was cursed but I can’t say what the curse is.”

She got through that last part okay!

“Well, you have fun with that, kiddo!” Pinkie waved and started walking off. “I gotta go make an uncomfortable phone call. 23 skiddoo!”

“Wait!” Dash managed to call after her.

“Huh?” Pinkie turned around, only to find Dash unable to say anything. “Oh! Did you want me to help you out with this?”

Dash couldn’t even say yes! How was this against the rules of the curse?!

“Well, you did give me eternal youth which is pretty cool!” Pinkie nodded. “So I guess I could help you get rid of it if you want.”

“I don’t think it’s eternal youth just, you know, youth. But yes! Please!”

“You got it! Just let me go do the phone call first. And now 23 skiddoo.”

This was great! If Pinkie Pie knew about Twilight— well Dash didn’t one hundred percent have a plan yet, but it would set things in motion. That would bring serious attention to the problem, people would listen to Pinkie!

Witches 2: The Witchening Continues

Before heading out, Pinkie stopped at a payphone to call her boyfriend.

“Hey, Babe! Yeah, uh—” Pinkie frowned at what the pony on the other end said. “Yeah, I actually got some yikesy news for you. See, I’m thirteen years old.”

Pinkie nodded a few times at her boyfriend’s reaction.

“I know! Those numbers aren’t even close! Huh? Well, I don’t think it was illegal at the time, but I have no idea what is and isn’t legal right now so maybe we shouldn’t see each other for a little bit?” Pinkie listened for a moment. “So you’re worried I might be a thirteen-year-old police officer who wears makeup to make me look old and then trick senior citizens into sleeping with me so I can arrest them? I gotta admit that’s a brilliant plan. They’d arrest so many ponies!”

Pinkie frowned, then hung up the phone.

“He got scared and hung up!” She shrugged. “You know, I really have no idea what age group I’m supposed to date now. Anyway, now that we’ve saved the PBI some time, let's 23 skiddoo!”

Pinkie started towards the woods.

“But you don’t know where we’re going,” Dash reminded her.

“Oh right!” Pinkie stopped and did an about-face to look Dash eye to eye. “It’s just usually off in the woods, you know?”

Or she almost got there. Pinkie was noticeably shorter than Dash now. She had to push up on her hooves to get to eye level.

“I’m gonna have to do the cold reading method to get the answer out of you.” Pinkie moved her hooves in circles around Dash’s head slowly like she was caressing a crystal ball. “I’m getting something that starts with the letter A. Or maybe a B? Or it could be C?”

Pinkie went through the letters one by one, saying them all slowly with little ‘woo’ noises in between. Dash wasn’t sure if the sound effects were necessary.

Dash tried thinking of the letters that would help her. An L or a T or W would all be relevant.

“Jaaaay-kkaaaay-eelllll—" Pinkie clapped her hooves together! “Nailed it! But what monsters start with the letter L? Lycanthrope? Lamia? Luminous spider?”

Pinkie was totally on the wrong track, but she picked up on that and frowned.

Pinkie trotted away from Dash, pondering the riddle, trotting back and forth. A gust of wind blew, taking a few leaves off the tree. Dash wished she could say something, but it wouldn’t work.

Yet even without a single word, Pinkie’s eyes went straight to the leaves. She smiled with a sudden burst of realization.

“Oh! A leaf!” Pinkie snatched one of the falling leaves out of the air. “You need to find a leaf, right?!”

Pinkie really was good!

“Yeah! That’s exactly it!” Dash discovered that she had more freedom if Pinkie already knew the answer.

“Then here ya go!” Pinkie handed her the leaf. “Gee that was easy!”

“No, it’s—" Dash gagged.

“Two leaves?” Pinkie tilted her head. “Oh! Or maybe it’s a special leaf you’re looking for! Did the witch say it had to be a specific leaf or just any leaf?”

Dash honestly didn’t remember. She assumed it meant the former.

“Yeah, I think I got it now! The old needle in the haystack condition! Gotta find the special leaf.”

“I—" Dash wasn’t gagging. “Yes! I think I can tell you as long as you already know.”

“That’s how they usually go. Here!”

Pinkie took a deep breath, eyes closed, then exhaled slowly before pumping her hoof forward rapidly. A wave of psychic energy spread through the forest, bending the trees slightly like a one-second hurricane.

“It’s like echolocation. Just wait a tick.” Pinkie waited with her ears perked. “And— got it! This way! 23 skiddoo!”

Pinkie pointed in the direction of the leaf, Dash following her into the woods.

With Pinkie along for the ride, the forest became less intimidating. After that battle with the banshee Dash felt like this pony could take on anything. With her youth restored, Pinkie's power rivaled that of her prime. Little could stand in their way.

Heck, maybe her psychic companion could beat Twilight herself! Then they could split the fame and rewards fifty-fifty. Though on second thought, there was no way it would be that easy.

“You know, the more I think about it the more okay I am with being a teenager again,” Pinkie said. “Oh! You still got one more of those gummies, right?”

“What? You want to be eight and go on the kiddie rides?” Dash asked. “Or you think it’d be slightly less weird if your bae was sixty?”

“First of all, he’s already fifty. I’m like a cougar! Rawr!” Pinkie swiped her hoof in imitation of a claw. “But no, I was thinking if you take it then we can both be teenagers and go hang out at the mall or something! Go to a malt shop, listen to Smooth Note, talk about how dreamy he is! The curse can wait till later.”

“Okay, nopony listens to Smooth Note anymore and nopony goes to the mall. They all buy stuff through those phone catalogs. I don’t think they even make malt shops anymore.”

“Aw, that’s too bad.” Pinkie looked up to frown at the sky. “I wonder if I’ll suddenly like the young people’s music. I have noticed a drop in how judgemental I am about the new generation and their talking movies, pinballs machines, and gizmos. We could do whatever it is teenage girls do in the future.”

“Hey, let’s get this curse taken care of first?” Dash walked ahead of her. “This is kind of an important thing we’re doing.”

Dash was never gonna get anywhere in life by hanging out at some mall!

If she wanted ponies to care about her, she needed to accomplish something for once in her stupid life. Hanging out with Pinkie would only reveal what a loser Dash was to one of Equestria's heroes. Pinkie would have all these amazing stories to tell and Dash only really had that time she blew up a septic tank.

And, well the one story she couldn’t talk about yet.

“Oh! Determination!” Pinkie nodded. “I can tell there’s something you really want! So what are you in the adventurer game for? Are you the vengeance type? The love and justice type? Greedy? Power-hungry? Overly curious? Bored? Those are the main ones.”

“Heck, yeah I’m determined!” Dash broke out into her rehearsed, confident smile. “Slayer is the most important job. Society can’t even exist without us protecting it from all the dangerous magic and monsters in the world. I’m determined to be the best at whatever I do!”

Pinkie’s expression turned from a smile to a frown. That expression told Dash that she saw straight through Dash’s bravado. Thankfully, she didn’t press it and broke right back into a smile.

“Heh! You know, I was the same at your age. Or I guess I will be.”

These age jokes were already getting a little old.

They were nearing the spot where Twilight lived. Was the key leaf this close to her own house?

Now they were by the river again. Fog surrounded them, getting thicker as they went east, towards Twilight’s house.

Pinkie kept smiling and humming happily enough. Did she not sense that they were near the strongest monster on the planet or something?

“Hey, Pinkie. You don’t sense any danger around, do you?” Dash asked after struggling for a moment to find words that worked.

“Hm?” Pinkie scanned the nearby forest. “No, I don’t sense any danger about. Why?”

Maybe Twilight wasn’t home? Or went somewhere? Or did being a shut-in meant you weren’t dangerous?

“Look—” Dash couldn’t say it outright. “Just be ready to run away if we have to, okay?”

The fog got even thicker, too thick to see more than a foot ahead. They were close enough now that Dash started to suspect this fog might be Twilight’s doing. She knew they were close enough that wandering around here you were liable to bump into the house at any minute.

Dash’s body locked up. She couldn't get any farther than this.

“I can’t.” The curse forced Dash to sit. No matter how she struggled she couldn’t seem to move from this spot.

Pinkie nodded, understanding, and went forward into the fog alone. A few steps in and Pinkie vanished into the fog.

A second or two passed with Dash sitting alone in a sea of white. Then, without warning, Pinkie returned only from behind.

“Huh?!” Pinkie looked at Dash, surprised. “How did you get ahead of me?”

“I didn’t move,” said Dash. “I think you’re looping around or something.”

“Okay! It’s one of those fogs where you gotta go left then right then—” Pinkie shook her head. “I don’t have the patience to find the right order! I’m just gonna try and grab that leaf from here! We’re really close!”

Pinkie closed her eyes and put her forehooves together with just a small gap between them. She concentrated hard for a good minute before pulling on her target. Something flew out of the fog with enough force to part it briefly.

“Haha! Got it!” Pinkie held the leaf up.

Dash’s body returned control to her and she stood up! That was the right leaf!

“Pinkie, I found Twilight Sparkle!” Dash blurted out as fast as she could.

“What?!” Pinkie turned to her.

At the same time, the fog began to dissipate. Twilight’s house came back into view in its clearing. Twilight was right here on her lawn, messing around with the pumpkins again. She looked up at the two, surprised.

“Pinkie she’s right there!” Dash pointed at her. “That’s Twilight Sparkle!”

“What?” Pinkie tilted her head.

“What?” Twilight took a step back. “You’re back already? It hasn’t even been a day!”

“Heh!” Dash closed one eye and pointed at Twilight. “Your first curse didn’t stop me so why would the second? No curse can stop the legendary Rainbow Dash!”

“I admit when it comes to breaking curses, you’re above average.” Twilight grabbed the brim of her hat and lowered it slightly. “But—”

Above average?! No one had ever called Dash above average before! Dash had to stop herself from smiling too wide! She struggled to hate Twilight.

“Haha! Yeah, well you know.” Dash blushed. “I could tell you the whole story if you want!”

Twilight groaned.

“Look, even if you can come back here why would you?” Twilight asked. “You’re not going to defeat me.”

“This won’t go like last time, because now I’m not alone!” Dash pointed at Twilight. “Go get her, Pinkie!”

“What? You brought some kid to fight me?” Twilight trotted up to Pinkie, looking down at her.

“Whoa, hey! I don’t know what’s going on here.” Pinkie waved her hooves. “This is seriously Twilight Sparkle?! Like the source of all witchcraft?!”

“Depends. If I say I'm not will you leave?” Twilight asked.

“But what about that curse?” Pinkie asked. “That contrived one that makes it so you can’t find her?”

“I broke the curse.” Dash shrugged. “Apparently, that’s the one thing I’m good at. See, I used a second calendar to—”

“Yeah, yeah!” Twilight dismissed her brilliant plan. “But how did you find that leaf so fast? I was sure right you'd never check right next to my house, especially since the curse stops you from going there.”

“Oh, I just found it with my ESP,” said Pinkie.

“That shouldn’t be possible! The level of psychic perception needed for that is outside the bounds of what a pony is capable of.”

“Oh, it’s because of pollution, actually,” said Pinkie. “See, super-radiation used to only come from meteors but then they invented toxic waste. Super-radiation makes ghosts stronger, meaning it makes psychics more common and more powerful too!”

“I have noticed a rise in the ambient background levels of super-radiation over the past hundred years,” Twilight noted. "Though it's also been decreasing recently."

“Oh, yeah. It's mostly the Toxco Corporation's fault. The witch Spatial Tear specifically founded it to try and cause enough pollution to make civilization collapse! They ended up dumping so much toxic waste into the ocean and so much smog into the air that Equestria declared war on the city-state of Manehattan and blew the whole corporation up in self-defense!"

“Yeah,” Dash added. “And now we’ve swung so hard the other way that failure to recycle can land you in prison. Happened to my dad.”

“If you were there, you’d appreciate zero-tolerance environmentalism,” Pinkie assured her. "When I was a kid, cities were covered in smog every day."

Twilight listened to this with her eyes closed, tapping her hoof, struggling to understand what they were walking about.

“City-state? Corporation? War? Recycling?” Twilight’s hoof taps became increasingly frustrated. “I didn’t get like ninety percent of that.”

“You don’t get recycling?” Pinkie gasped. “I know it’s not effective for paper, but recycling aluminum is very important! You see—”

“Guys, are we really going to talk about the efficacy of recycling?” Dash sighed.

“You’re right, maybe that can wait.” Pinkie pointed at Twilight. “Twilight Sparkle! You’re accused of unleashing untold terror into the world! How do you plead, buster?!”

“This again?” Twilight grumbled. “You’re the ones unleashing things on yourselves. We’ve already been through this.”'

“Yeah! But clearly you’re not getting rid of us that easy” Dash stepped forward. “I know you can get rid of the curse of undeath so how about this logic bomb? Getting rid of the curse would take you two months whereas we’ll continue to hound you forever and ever if you don’t do it. You’ll save more time in the long run, right?”

“Man, you ponies really are annoying.” Twilight tapped her hoof impatiently. “Maybe you’re right. I’d have to do the math. Though then again, there’s no guarantee you would actually leave me alone afterward.”

Twilight waved them away, dismissing the idea again.

“But what about the millions of ponies you could help?” Pinkie asked. “I know you’re an ancient evil, but do you really not care about them at all?”

“Millions?” Twilight looked skeptical of that. “You’re claiming there are millions of ponies? And you expect me to believe that?”

“Actually, it’s over a billion now,” said Pinkie. “How many did you think there were?”

“Like a couple hundred, maybe?” Twilight shrugged. “How big can that town be?”

“There’s more than one town, you know,” said Dash.

“There is?” Twilight’s ears twitched. “But wouldn’t it make more sense for there to be just one?”

“You just said you can’t fit a billion in one town, right?” Dash asked.

Twilight put a hoof on her chin, seriously considering this.

“What? Have you never been to a town before?” Dash asked, briefly surprised. “Actually, that makes perfect sense with everything else you’ve said.”

“You’ve seriously never been outside the forest then?” Pinkie gasped and ran forward, clasping a confused Twilight’s forehooves, immediately forgetting their mission. “But then there’s so much I could show you! You gotta come partying with me right now! I’ll take you to town, though we might need a fake mustache and a new hat to throw everypony off.”

“Go to— the town?” Twilight mouthed the words, finding them incomprehensible.

“Yeah! You know, you don’t seem completely evil to me. I bet you’re just unaware of all the bad stuff that happened because of the things you made. How about you come back to town with us? I bet seeing it all will melt your icy heart and then you’ll want to fix everything!”

Twilight’s ears pinned against the side of her head. She lowered the brim of her hat and looked away, nervous. Seeing Twilight afraid on any level felt like watching the laws of physics being violated.

“I can’t do that.” Twilight glared harshly at a nearby rock.

“Why not?” Pinkie lowered her head to block Twilight’s view of the ground.

“You people are my enemy! That’s why you came here, right?”

“Well it’s never too late to try new things or change your ways.” Pinkie jumped up to Twilight’s side. “I thought it was too late to eat tons of candy and soda because of diabetes and heart problems, but then I magically became young again! As long as you live in a whimsical world filled with multiple sources of improbability it’s never too late for anything!”

“I have lots of important things to do!” Twilight pressed her hat down as hard as she could. “I can’t waste my time with—”

Twilight became less tense, her nervousness melting.

“Wait.” Twilight realized something and become more serious. Her ears pinned back as she glared at Dash while asking her question to Pinkie. “You used to be older?

“Yeah! Until just this morning I was an old pony! Rainbow Dash helped me become young again!”

Uh oh!

“Hold on a second.” Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “How exactly did you become young again?”

Uh oh!

Dash flew over to be in Pinkie’s sight but not Twilight’s. She shook her head and ran a hoof across her throat, but it was already too late.

“Oh! I ate some magical gummies that make you younger! They were yellow but tasted like strawberry which was kind of weird.”

Twilight slowly turned around to Rainbow Dash, her look becoming a glare.

“Yeah! Each one makes you five years younger! Isn’t that great? Hey, where did you find those anyway, Dash?”

“Yes! Where did you find those, ‘Rainbow Dash’? Because I had a bottle of those I can’t find!”

“I mean—” Dash fake coughed. “I may have—”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to make those? Well actually it only takes a few minutes, but still!” Twilight pointed an accusing hoof at Dash. “You come up to me telling me how horrible it is ponies steal my stuff and then you proceed to steal my stuff! Ponies like you are why I never go outside!”

“Hey! I left you one!” Dash took out the jar. “See? And I stole it for a good cause!”

“No! This conversation is over! I don’t trust thieves!” Twilight’s horn began to glow. “Curses clearly aren’t enough so maybe I’ll have to turn you both into stone!”

“Whoop!” Pinkie jumped back, lowering her stance into a combat position. “Maybe we shouldn’t have stolen stuff from the invincible witch?”

“In my defense, you’d be dead if I hadn’t done that,” Dash pointed out.

“Good point!” Pinkie nodded.

Magic chains appeared around Pinkie and Dash, closing in on both. Pinkie reacted immediately, blowing the chains apart into individual links the second they appeared.

“Hey! I didn’t steal anything from you!” Pinkie called out at Twilight. “What are you angry at me for?”

“No! I’m convinced no one from that town can be trusted! All of you are liars and thieves! I bet you’re lying about there being a billion ponies!”

“I can pay you for the gummies!”

“I’m already trying to make you pay!”

“Alright! Then I guess I have no choice but to get serious!” Pinkie’s eyes started to glow. “Maybe if I’m lucky your powers have just been exaggerated!”

Twilight shot another chain lightning spell at Pinkie. Pinkie narrowly dodged, rolling to one side. The bolt hit a tree, splintering it, then bounced back at Pinkie. Pinkie used her psychokinesis to pull herself out of the way of this one too.

The electricity bounced from tree to tree, exploding all of them as it redirected itself at Pinkie time and time again. Pinkie must have dodged a hundred lightning strikes in a couple of seconds.

Finally, Pinkie got an opening and punched the oncoming lightning with a hoof that glowed with psychic energy. One of her psycho waves erupted from her hoof, dissipating the bolt.

“Okay! I can’t possibly keep up with this!” Dash ran behind a rock and loaded her musket. “But I’ll take a cheap shot at her if one opens up!”

“Good idea!” Pinkie called after her. “I can’t hold back for this.”

“You actually are fairly decent,” Twilight admitted. “But I can already tell you won’t win. If you give up now, I’ll just turn you to stone for two years and let you go.”

“I’m not giving up that easily!”

Twilight tapped her hoof and a jagged pillar of rock erupted from the ground beneath Pinkie. Pinkie may very well have been impaled had she clearly not seen it coming and sidestepped at the exact right second.

As she did, Pinkie created a psionic shield for something else she saw coming. The pillar exploded shortly after, sending jagged rocks flying in every direction, but Pinkie was unharmed.

Pinkie swirled the debris around her, then began shooting small rocks forward at Twilight. Each stone shot forth so fast they might as well have been musket balls. The rocks blew holes in the trees and cracked larger stones nearby.

Twilight created a barrier that the makeshift bullets simply bounced off.

“Ding!” Pinkie reached into her bag of chance and pulled out a jar of nails.

She threw these into the air then fired them at Mach speeds. Clearly, these were going to hit a lot harder.

Twilight dropped the barrier and cast another spell instead. Every nail that came near Twilight turned into butterflies that instantly lost all their momentum.

“Okay!” Pinkie reached into her bag again. “Well if nails turn to butterflies then maybe butterflies turn into nails!”

Pinkie pulled out a jar with maybe five butterflies in it and threw it at Twilight. The jar crashed at Twilight’s feet, allowing them to harmlessly float around her.

“Aw. Well it was worth a shot, right?” Pinkie asked.

“Hardly.” Twilight cast another spell. A rush of water swept forward, completely covering Pinkie and all the nearby trees.

Another spell froze it all instantly, trapping Pinkie under twenty feet of solid ice.

It didn’t pin her for long. The ice trembled, then shattered from Pinkie’s psychokinetic force. Pinkie jumped up out of the hole she just created.

“Trapped under the ice?” Pinkie rubbed her head. “Okay, I know you can’t possibly be expected to know the significance of that, but it was still a low blow! I’m going all in!”

Pinkie backflipped, then used her psychic energy to boost a jump that sent her above the treetops. She held her forehooves over her head, blue psychic energy swirling around to form a spirit bomb once again.

Only this time it grew far larger than it had in the theater. The ball swelled to become four times bigger than Pinkie herself!

“Spirit bomb max power!” Pinkie shouted in midair.

She lifted one hoof and a ball of pure energy appeared over her head. The air swirled around and the ground shook yet the ball grew bigger and brighter. Twilight took this attack more seriously and lowered her head, horn ready and beginning to glow with a mystic power.

“This is so awesome!” Dash cheered from behind her rock. “The ultimate duel between psychic powers and magic powers! Though I guess those are kind of the same thing.”

“Whoa!” Pinkie suddenly dismissed her sphere of power and dropped back to the ground. “Those are not the same thing, Dashie!”

“Yeah. Psychic powers and magic powers are completely different,” said Twilight.

“They’re not even kind of similar!” Pinkie nodded in agreement.

“Psychic powers are generated entirely by the pony using them whereas magical powers work by distorting the magical energies that permeate all things,” Twilight explained.

“The things you do with them are completely different too!” Pinkie continued the objection. “Like you can’t do curses with psychic abilities and you can’t punch ghosts with magic.”

“Even things that look superficially similar, like levitation and shields, have entirely different kinetic properties,” Twilight went on. “The principle of energy transference only really comes into account when magic is involved.”

Dash looked back and forth between the tag-team lecturers.

“Look, can’t you just go back to shooting lasers at each other?!” Dash flailed her forehooves in the air. “That was awesome! I don’t care how this stuff works I just want to see it be cool!”

Pinkie and Twilight glanced at one another as if to doubt that.

“Alright, fine.” Twilight tipped her hat to Pinkie. “I admit I’ve never faced an opponent as strong as you are so I’m going to start fighting you for real. You’re the first pony I’ve ever used one hundred percent of my strength against. You should feel honored.”

Twilight’s horn glowed, but it was different this time! It wasn’t just her horn, but her entire body radiated a darker purple light than before, small bolts of lightning rippled across her magic field.

“Whoa! Do we really have to skip fifty percent?!” Pinkie readied a psychic shield. “I’d be honored with just fifty percent!”

Hurricane-force winds began blowing towards Twilight from all directions. Pinkie’s shield kept her stable, but Dash struggled to keep from being thrown into the air. She needed to grab onto a huge rock for dear life, even that didn’t look stable.

All of this went into creating a small ball of wind, like a concentrated, miniature hurricane, that swirled around just in front of Twilight. The air remained still for a moment, then Twilight threw the ball at Pinkie Pie.

On impact, it sounded like a bomb going off. The ground beneath her shattered, sending out rips in every direction. Entire trees were uprooted and thrown hundreds of feet into the air.

Amazingly, Pinkie managed to hold her place for a good two seconds before being thrown off out of sight, possibly into the stratosphere. The clouds parted as she flew past them.

“Blarg!” Pinkie screamed as she vanished from sight.

Even on the sidelines, the collateral damage crushed Dash. The secondary wind sent her, along with huge chunks of earth and trees, flying. Debris pelted Dash as she flew back, landing hard several yards away.

In the wake of Twilight’s attack was a crater where Pinkie stood. For what must have been four hundred feet in front of the unicorn, nothing but dirt and a deep hole where the ground had been ripped to shreds remained.

Immense pain shot through Dash's body! This was far from the first time she’d broken a bone, so she knew the sensation. One of her ribs, one of her wings and two of her legs were all broken. She struggled to even get up and look around.

“Huh.” Twilight looked down at her work, barely interested. “I guess that workout helped. It’s thirty percent bigger than last time.”

Twilight cast a second spell; debris flew back into the crater to refill it. Then Twilight tapped her hoof on the dirt and plant life grew back rapidly. The ground was a bit of an overgrown mess, but the scar on the land was gone.

Then the witch started trotting over to Dash.

This wasn’t good! Twilight had just defeated Dash without even attacking her directly! Dash had to do something!

She looked around for her bag, but all her things, including the musket, had been crushed under a rock by the blast.

Twilight stood over Dash with a nervous frown. She closed her eyes and let out a frustrated sigh, resolved towards her next step. Was Twilight going to destroy her this time?

She cast a spell and a bottle of a faintly green liquid appeared in front of her.

"Do you have any idea how hard healing magic is?" Twilight grumbled. "A potion like this takes thirty-seven years to ferment, you know."

With little ceremony, Twilight splashed the potion over Dash. The faint green turned bright, then vanished. And it took the pain along with it. Dash stood up and flexed her legs and wings.

"You. You healed me?" Dash asked.

Twilight muttered something.

"You just said that thing was super hard to make too."

“I didn’t mean to hurt you that badly!" Twilight looked away. “I just want you gone. Don't keep trying this. I don't have a lot of those. But now what am I going to do?”

Now that she thought about it, for a second time Twilight spared Dash, even after Dash had stolen from her. She doubted that spell killed Pinkie either. Likely it had only been intended to send Pinkie far away. For an ancient evil, Twilight was immensely reluctant to hurt anyone.

“I don’t get you,” said Dash. “You say you don’t care about other people suffering but then you can’t seriously hurt me or watch me suffer.”

“Well, I don’t get you saying you don’t want ponies taking my things and then taking my things!”

“Okay, look I’m sorry about stealing the thing. I thought I was helping. I understand if you never forgive me or whatever but everypony else—”

“No! Look, I’ve tried the whole ‘helping ponies’ thing before. Believe me when I say it doesn’t work.” Twilight put her hat back on. “My powers can’t help anypony. They don’t make ponies happy and no one ever appreciates it.”

“What gives you that idea?” Dash asked. “If you got rid of the zombies I’d be elated!”

“Yeah, for five seconds. Then you’d ask me for something else.” Twilight shook her head. “The only thing giving something to a pony does is make them want more. When they know I have the sort of powers I do, they just demand more and more from me. They never get satisfied and they never care about anypony but themselves and what they can get out of me. Why would I waste my time ‘helping’ ponies like that when I could be studying magic?”

Twilight looked down at the ground.

“You said yourself they’ve done nothing but harm,” said Twilight. “I don’t even disagree with you. That’s part of why I’m trying to lock myself away here where I belong.”

Twilight sulked back towards her house.

“Hey.” Dash stepped forward.

Twilight spun around and shoved Dash backward with her magic.

“I said no! You’re good at breaking curses, but you ponies lack sheer power,” said Twilight. “So try getting through this!”

Twilight’s house became surrounded by a magic barrier, then that one became surrounded by a psionic barrier, then a barrier of fire, then a barrier of electricity. Shields kept appearing one over another, maybe twenty in all.

The final shield glowed a bright white light. Just standing next to it, Dash felt her hair standing on end from some static effect. There no doubt remained in her mind that this was the strongest barrier Dash had ever encountered in her life.

One final layer appeared, a simple illusion covering up the whole thing so that a pony standing nearby would just see an empty forest, sans Twilight’s house.

“Yeah? Don’t think being completely unbeatable means you can beat me!” Dash shouted out into the forest! “Rainbow Dash never surrenders!”

Rainbow Dash looked around, only silence and trees surrounding her.

“Though sometimes she doesn’t have any idea what to do next.” Dash tapped her hoof impatiently.

Pinkie Pie fell out of the sky and landed hard next to Dash. Bruises covered the teenage and she bled slightly in a few places. But overall, she wasn’t too badly damaged by the attack. She got up immediately after landing and struck a pose.

“Don’t worry! Still alive!” Pinkie Pie trotted in place. “But boy was that one heck of a doozy! Oo! What’s this?”

Pinkie noticed the invisible barrier straight away. She tried poking it, only to be blown back by the shock.

“Yeah, there’s like twenty more barriers after that one too,” said Dash. “Twilight kind of freaked out and locked herself in there.”

“Hm.” Pinkie’s eyes glowed. She sent a wave of psychic energy at the first barrier, but it simply curved around. “You know, I’m not a hundred percent sure I can take her.”

“But now what do we do?” Dash asked, tapping the barrier only to get blown back. “Ouch. Talking to her almost worked. But we can’t do that again with this shield here.”

“I can tell you right now this shield is one heck of a doozy too.” Pinkie kept looking it over.

“We gotta go get the elite four, right?” Dash asked. “It’d take one of them to break this thing down and they’re our only hope of fighting Twilight if it goes there again. Do you think all of them together could defeat Twilight?”

“Maybe.” Pinkie folded her forelegs and frown. “But it ain’t gonna happen. I don’t wanna burst your bubble, but the elite four are just the ponies with the highest kill count. We don’t have brunch together or go on picnics. In fact, the current four hate each other’s guts! They’d only work together if it was literally the end of the world. Honestly, if we told them they’d probably try to take each other out first.”

“Well we can still get one of them to help us, can’t we?” Dash shrugged. “If that's the case, it'd have to be Starlight Glimmer. She's the strongest cause she's the only pony who's ever beat a witch one-on-one, yeah? And between her and all your psychic buddies we might have a chance."

“That is true.” Pinkie thought about it. “Starlight creeps me out, though. I'd rather go with Sunset or Nailbat. Hm. Actually, you know what?! I had a lazier idea!”

“I mean, the laziest idea is usually the best,” Dash admitted.

“So like— getting the elite four together would be the only legit way we could ever beat Twilight through sheer force.”

“So we sing them a song about how great friendship is?”

“No, I already tried that. They stopped answering my calls. My point is we can’t beat her with brute force. We gotta resort to shenanigans. Some ponies can do stuff none of the elite four can, they’re just all banished from society and stuff. We gotta go find a mad scientist. They’re the best at whacky hijinks and Twilight seems to have a huge technology blindside.”

“Wait, wait. A mad scientist?” Dash stopped Pinkie. “Isn’t it illegal to get help from those guys?"

“Nothing’s illegal if you have a good lawyer!” Pinkie promised. “You can borrow mine if we get caught. Come on!”

Mad Scientists

The two of them followed the river to the east until they were officially out of Equestria. Tall pine trees became more prevalent, but they were still in a forest for now. Heavy rain poured down, but Pinkie had a psychic umbrella that kept the two of them dry.

This was the fringe of civilization they were in now, where all the ponies banished for consorting with evil powers scurried off to. This was the area where all the outlaws, all the mad scientists, cultists, and the like hung out and built their bases. There were a few small towns out here, but you were better off in the woods than going to any of them.

It was a place to avoid if you could manage, especially if you weren’t an outlaw yourself.

Which made Dash question why she was out here in the first place. The further they traveled; the more conflicted Dash became about this trip.

“Hey. I was thinking,” said Dash. “Shouldn’t we go get the reward for finding Twilight first?”

“Huh?” Pinkie turned around, surprised. “Why would we do that?”

“Because we want a million bits?”

“I already have millions of bits!”

“Well, I don’t! And won’t it be good to make sure somepony else knows about this? You know, in case we both die or something?”

“No, the fact that we’re the only ones who know about Twilight is leverage over her! Remember how much she doesn’t want ponies showing up at her house? It gives us bargaining power!” Pinkie tapped her temple, a little too proud of thinking that up.

“I guess.”

“And I don’t think it would solve the problem. Ponies are way more divided than they were when I was a kid. I blame the telephone, but that’s just because I’m old, it’s probably a more complicated issue than that. See, I’ve been doing this for fifty years, so I know how the pizza gets baked. Let’s make a mental list of all the ponies who could kind of put up a fight against Twilight.”

“There’s you and the elite four, right?”

“And?”

“I guess another witch,” said Dash. “Or maybe a bunch of mad scientists working together, an unusually tough cult, then there are a few ghosts, like that one in Crater Cemetery, who are crazy strong, maybe there’s a werewolf tough enough or— okay I guess there’s a few.”

“Right! Any time we learn of a spot half as good as Twilight’s house there’s a mad rush of everypony shoving over each other to get there. Even the Wonder Slayers are so fractured right now there’d be infighting. If this becomes public knowledge it’ll become a huge parade of carnage of all these factions trying to break into Twilight’s house and take her stuff.”

“Twilight will get increasingly unhinged from all the ponies attacking her!” Pinkie went on. “Bad guys will get their hooves on some of her stuff! Werewolves and vampires would start living together! It’d be total chaos! And I don’t even know if anypony would beat her in the end! If we can resolve this ourselves, we should!”

If Dash was being completely honest with herself, she hadn’t thought of the consequences of finding Twilight up until now. In her mind, it’d just been get the reward and that was that. Maybe she’d tag along when an army got assembled, but that would have been the extent of things.

“If you are going to try and get the reward, promise me you’ll go straight to one of the elite four instead.” Pinkie clasped her forehooves together pleadingly. “They’d give you a huge reward for siding with them and we might still avoid all the chaos.”

Obviously doing the right thing was the right thing to do, but if Dash seriously went through all of this only to not get credit she’d be so incredibly pissed.

“Well I appreciate the insight,” said Dash. “But I have literally zero money. This whole thing’s sent me a hundred bits in the red, even! I don’t even know how I’m getting dinner when I get back!”

“I’ll pay you for not telling anypony till we try my plan.” Pinkie pressed her hooves tighter. “Plus, you’ll have an in with all the big-name psychics! And I can get you one of those cards that let you eat at Curse Burger for free! Then you’ll never have to worry about dinner ever again!”

That would still be great, but it sounded like Dash was being asked to do a lot more work for a much smaller reward. Dash stood there a moment, tapping her hoof. Maybe as long as Pinkie knew what Dash had accomplished things would still work out in the end.

Besides, there was a limit to what Dash was willing to do for fame.

“Okay, fine.” Dash relented. “You clearly know what you’re doing.”

“Hurray!” Pinkie gave a joyful leap forward. “Besides, I think we’re almost there!”

Pinkie held up the wanted ad they got back at HQ, showing a picture of a castle. When Pinkie lowered the paper, that same castle stood before them in real life. A bolt of lightning lit up the area, giving Dash a great, but brief, look at it.

She’d picked up a bunch of posters, all the mad scientists known to be part of the ‘Mad Science League’ which Pinkie assured Dash was the most chill faction of mad scientists. The one they found first was named ‘Rarity’, a mare pretty enough in the picture to make Dash a bit jealous.

The reward was set at a mere ten thousand bits.

Mad scientists were generally worth little. Like ghosts, they usually kept to themselves and were only dangerous if you wandered into their territory. Ponies rarely bothered fighting them because they just weren’t worth the effort. The only exception was the few who unleashed their creations on the world.

These castles were like ticking time bombs in Dash’s mind. Mad scientists used the inspiration and knowledge they obtained from the outer realm to create advanced technology they themselves rarely understood the workings of. Inevitably, they would create something dangerous and unleash it into the world. Yet ponies would only ever go after them once it was too late.

The area around the castle was surrounded by carnivorous plants, most of which were essentially Venus flytrap only big enough to swallow a pony whole. The thick overgrowth covered a wide area around the castle, but there was a clear stone path you could walk along through it.

The plants constantly snapped at them as they walked along the path. The walkway seemed to have been placed in the exact right location so that all the flytraps were just barely too short to reach it.

As they approached the ground shook a little, but there was no rumble of thunder go along with the shaking.

Pinkie strolled up and rang the doorbell like it was the most casual thing in the world, lightning flashing behind her.

The rain continued to pour down on them. Vines crept up on them from every direction, slowly beginning to cover the stone walkway.

“You realize we’re surrounded by mare-eating plants, right?” Dash took a step back to keep from getting bit.

“I got ESP, Rainbow Dash. I noticed that yesterday.” Pinkie continued to not react even as a vine wrapped around her hind leg. “Hey, does the fact that these plants only ever go after mares make them sexist against stallions or mares?”

Pinkie must have known what she was doing, with all those years of experience. The plants continued to snap at Pinkie Pie from every direction, but the pink mare was just out of their reach.

She continued to ring the doorbell over and over again.

“I don’t think she’s answering,” said Dash.

“Nah! You gotta be annoying. She’ll answer eventually.”

To be fair, even Dash was already annoyed.

“Go away!” a voice screamed over the intercom after a few more rings. “I’m immensely busy and I’m not interested in buying whatever you’re selling!”

Pinkie considered her options for a second before the intercom came back on.

“Actually, are you selling zombie powder?” Rarity asked. “That is the one thing I’m interested in buying.”

“Nope!”

“Then begone!” The intercom cut out again.

“Maybe she’ll help us if we can get her some zombie powder?” Dash suggested.

“You don’t wanna mess with zombie powder.” Pinkie rang the doorbell again. “Trust me.”

“And are you sure annoying the heck out of an insane criminal is the best way to get her to help us?” Dash asked.

“The only way I know how. You gotta get your foot in the door first.” Pinkie kept ringing it.

“Alright!” The intercom came back on. “Now you’ve done it! I dropped one of those tiny little screws and can’t find it. You’d better have an astoundingly good reason for coming here!”

“We’re looking for a, uh, I think the thing was called a seal breaker 620,” said Pinkie.

“What? How old are you, kid? The seal breaker 620 is ancient technology. They’re already up to the 1250RF. They explode a lot less often. Also, it has a tasteful blue stripe going down the middle, much more aesthetically appealing.”

“Well I’ll take any alphanumerical sequence over 650,” said Pinkie. “I can pay you.”

“And what am I going to do with the money? Bribe squirrels with it? I’ve been banished from society for literally going on the eighth. There’s nowhere for me to spend it.”

“Do other mad scientists not want your money?” Dash asked.

“The Mad Science League is a post-money communist utopia. Everything is free as long as you’re a member,” said Rarity. “But that only works because there’s a mere fifty of us. Don’t actually try that government system yourselves, you're bound to fail.”

“Look, this is important,” said Dash. “We have a clear path to ending the curse of undeath. We can get rid of the zombies if you just help us out for like a day.”

“Mad scientists zombies! We experiment on those,” Rarity explained. “If it weren’t for zombies, we wouldn’t have things like gorillas with crab claws for hands, monsters made entirely of eyeballs or air conditioning.”

“We can trade you magical stuff for science stuff!” Pinkie offered.

“The only magical artifact that would interest me is The Book of Shadows volume four,” said Rarity. “I’d give you literally everything for that. The entire castle, all my robots, my left kidney! But you can't possibly have any spellbook, let alone that one. I'm simply not interested in anything else."

She was half right in that they didn’t have one. It didn’t take too much brainpower to figure out that she wanted access to a spell in that book, a spell Twilight created.

“What spell do you want?” Dash asked.

“That’s none of your business. I’ve already said too much.”

“What are the craziest spells in that volume?” Dash whispered to Pinkie.

“Oh, I have no idea,” Pinkie whispered back. “But I bet our future best friend would know.”

“You’re way too confident we can change her mind,” Dash sighed.

“Okay! We might be able to help you with that!” Pinkie called out to Rarity.

“What?! How?” Rarity sounded much more suspicious now. “Who are you? Are you two witches?”

“No,” said Pinkie.

“You’re not filthy, disgusting cultists, are you?” Rarity asked. “Because I do not have time to hear about Cosmos or whomever."

“I’m not in a cult.” Pinkie turned to Dash. “Are you in a cult? I forgot to ask.”

“No,” said Dash.

“Then what are you?”

“Well I’m psychic.” Pinkie pointed to her head.

“Oh, I see! You’re just neurotypicals, aren’t you? Yes. I understand now! You two must be slayers sent her to disrupt my incredibly important work! Aren’t you?! You people have an astounding lack of understanding!”

Pinkie and Dash both tried to quickly deny it.

“Don’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes! You’re just trying to trick me into opening the door so you can try to capture me! Well, I may be persona non grata back in Equestria, but you’re in our territory! That makes you the criminals here! Let’s see how you like this!”

Pinkie tilted her head slightly to one side. Several poison darts shot out of the door, all of them missing Pinkie by the narrowest margin.

Next Pinkie hopped slightly aside, standing only on her left legs. A trap door opened under where she stood a moment ago, but Pinkie didn’t fall in. Dash managed to just hover over it.

Pinkie was in the range of a Venus pony trap now, and it did take the opportunity to try and eat her. Pinkie effortlessly held its mouth open with her psychic powers.

“Ha! Can’t catch this mare off guard!” Pinkie tapped her brain. “Too much psychic perception. So you have no choice but to talk to us now, right?”

“Oh, yes. All these years in this castle, after gazing into the maw of the outer gods for fourteen whole seconds, and I simply couldn’t invent anything better than a single trap door,” Rarity’s sarcasm was palpable. “I am completely defeated.”

“Really?” Pinkie’s ears perked up. “That’s great! We’re friends now so— uh oh.“

Pinkie knitted her brow with concern. She looked around the area like she had two seconds left to find a hiding spot.

“Bad news, Dashie! We’re not going to be able to dodge what’s about to happen!”

“What’s about to happen?” Dash asked.

“I dunno! Just that we can’t possibly dodge it!”

“Then what was the point of you telling me this?!”

“I don’t know!”

The Venus flytraps and vines all began surging with electricity. The vines shot up in every direction, becoming taught. The path leading back and the air overhead was submerged in a crisscross of electrified vines. The entire castle side was covered in them too.

When Dash tried to fly up and through an opening in them, they simply moved, reacting to her, closing the gap.

Rarity began to laugh.

“When I told them all my plan to invent battery-powered plants, they all said, ‘what are you talking about? What would that even be?’! Well, who’s laughing now?”

Pinkie tried using her mind to smash a few of them into plant juice. They did get crushed, making a brief gap in the barrier, but rapidly regrew.

The front door flew open.

Total darkness shrouded whatever was on the inside of the castle, but shortly after several glowing red eyes began to appear from inside.

“So, believe it or not, I’m sensing the least amount of danger from below!” Pinkie pointed down at the trap door.

“Right! Let’s go!” Dash dove into the pit.

Pinkie jumped, trying to follow her down, but something came out of the front door and grabbed her.

Dash tried flying back up, but the trap door closed again. Darkness surrounded Dash as she pressed up against the new roof. The thing was so thick she couldn’t hear what was happening above.

“Pinkie!” Dash shouted out to her. “Can you hear me?!”

There was no response. Dash tried ramming and fiddling with the trap door but couldn’t make the dang thing budge. She looked down into the black abyss instead. Pinkie did say this was the least dangerous path.

Dash slowly flew into the blackness of the pit. It was a long drop; she’d estimate it went down three stories before she finally reached a stone floor. That was good to know because that meant going up three flights of stairs before she had a way out of here. She could hear a bubbling sound coming from either side of the room, but it was too dark to see anything.

Dash got a little drenched near the end when the psychic umbrella dropped. She shook herself off only to be scolded by an intercom.

“Tch! How dreadfully rude!” Rarity called out at her. “You can’t simply break into my castle and start making a mess like that!”

“I didn’t break into your house! You literally dragged me inside!”

“Don’t think a technicality like that will work here! You’re going to madness jail! And yes, we do have our own jails that we throw you normies in for trespassing.” Rarity shot back. “I figure the mistake ponies in my situation make is not immediately unleashing their ultimate creation! So take this!”

Dash looked around. Nothing happened.

“It’s not going to make a sound or anything,” said Rarity. “But trust me, it’s coming for you!”

Dash certainly didn’t want to get caught by whatever was coming after her without Pinkie around. First, she needed to figure out where the crow she was. She took out her lantern and turned it on.

Zombies!

To her left and her right, the walls were covered in glass tubes, stacked four high, big enough to fit a pony. And they did fit a pony, each one having a zombie inside.

The zombies didn’t like her light and started moaning and scrapping at their glass walls. Thankfully, zombies were kind of dippy, so they didn’t get out. Not all of the zombies were ponies. She noticed a few griffon zombies, remembering that those did eat meat and would try to devour her brains if they got out. Thankfully, those more dangerous undead were asleep and submerged in a bubbling liquid.

None of them looked like they were able to get out, so she ignored them for now. She had to find a way out.

Behind her was an enormous tank of something bubbling. In front was the only thing that looked like a door. Dash flew over to it but it was shut tight. It seemed to open from the bottom up like a gate, but Dash couldn’t lift it.

The ground shook a second time, rumbling the room roughly enough that Dash was briefly worried the tubes would all fall over and shatter. None of them did, but she heard something in that door break. She tried lifting it again to find it would budge ever so slightly now.

In the back of the room, a tap at the bottom of the largest tank opened and the liquid began pouring out. It wasn’t long before something came bubbling up from it, taking shape. Then a second and third thing came out of the liquid.

They were clearly undead but appeared slightly less solid than normal zombies did. Even more fascinating was the fact that they all looked the same, were all white filly unicorns with curly hair.

Zombie clones? That was new to Dash.

“Hugs.” The filly zombie moaned in a squeaky voice. “Hugs.”

They shuffled over to Dash as she struggled to get the door high enough to squeeze through.

One of the zombie fillies glommed onto Dash, but it really did just seem to be trying to hug her. It seemed only mildly annoying at first until two more jumped up and hugged her as well.

They were trying to restrain her through hugs? What kind of stupid plan was that?!

“Hugs. Hugs. Hugs.”

Dash easily threw one of them off of her. But they kept coming. There were like twenty of them! And more were forming! Dash was so close but she was covered in these zombie fillies.

A red circle appeared on the ceiling. The stone was getting hotter and hotter until it began to melt. A hole appeared through the melted stone. Dash looked up through the hole and all she could see were two glowing red eyes.

“Looks like the main attraction has arrived!” Rarity announced.

That gave Dash the adrenaline rush she needed to push open the gate just enough to roll out to the other side.

As she got through to the next room, the thing fell down the hole in the ceiling, landing with a loud crash. All the filly zombies tried to jump up and hug it, but they were all incinerated by the newcomer in a wave of fire.

The door slammed shut again with an even heavier thunk. Hopefully, that would hold it for a short time.

The door started glowing but was turning red much more slowly than the stone did. Dash had to hide somewhere.

To her left and right were hallways lined with doors. She opened one of them, finding a room filled with barrels of white powder. Nope! Back in high school, she learned the hard way not to mess with mysterious white powders.

She left that door open and went to the next one. Some kind of closet, not full enough to hide in.

The third one was like a chemistry lab, filled with all kinds of distillation apparatuses and glasswork Dash didn’t recognize.

Behind her, that massive door blew off its hinges. Dash turned off her lantern and darted into this room, her time up.

She sat next to the door, listening. It sounded like whatever was out there was wearing metal boots that clanged with each step against the stone floor. But it was also going in the wrong direction.

So Rarity couldn’t see everywhere. Good to know.

Dash looked around the room. She could see just a little bit of it because there were bottles of chemicals that glowed faintly in the dark. It looked like the only way out of this room was to go back the way she had just come from.

She listened again. The footsteps sounded much louder, but not because they were closer. No, there was a second, much bigger monster out there and that one was headed towards her! Dash needed something to work with!

Okay! They taught more practical skills in chemistry classes these days, like how to make bombs. Maybe Dash would get lucky for once and find something she knew how to build an explosive with.

She went through the counter, covered in chemical bottles, scanning over names she didn’t recognize. She got near the end before finally seeing one she could do something with. Khorium Trioxide! A nice big bottle of it too, like a whole gallon!

If you mixed this with water…

The door burst open and the large one entered.

It was a big, blocky, metal machine. It took Dash a second to realize but it vaguely resembled a pony.

So it was some kind of robot?

“Sweetiebot 2000 loudly announcing presence!” it shouted in an extremely robotic voice. “Stop resisting!”

And then it immediately opened fire from muskets mounted on its shoulders. It wasn’t even shooting at anything! Just blindly firing, shattering random glassware.

Busting through that armor would take a lot of work, but just maybe the bomb could do it.

Dash stalked over to its side. She threw some of the trioxides on it, then some water from her canteen.

Just as it turned to face her, the left half of its body glowed a bright light. Lightning surged through its body, then shot out in every direction shattering even more glass. A white light consumed the room.

When it faded, the robot was clearly destroyed. The thing actually melted! Only a few parts of it left intact.

“Thank you, chemistry class.” Dash got out of there as fast as she could before anything else exploded.

There were a few zombies back out in the hallway, but what worried Dash was on the far end of the hall. It was the same glowing red eyes she saw before, coming from a much smaller robot.

Though it was tiny, the size of a filly, it also looked more sophisticated. Instead of being big and clunky like all the other robots Dash had ever seen, this one was sleek and small, looked like a filly wearing plate armor. Her eyes even seemed expressive.

Actually, she was nearly identical to those clones in the other room, like a robot version of them.

Two buzzsaws emerged from either side of the pony’s barrel, as though they were wings. They were just large enough to dig into either wall as they began to spin. The new robot walked forward, buzzsaws screaming, tearing a hole in the wall as she moved.

Dash had to get rid of this one too!

Dash threw the rest of the trioxide at her. The robot made no effort to dodge, simply walked forward. Dash threw the water, and the effect was just the same as last time.

The entire room erupted in a blinding light. Electricity blew all the nearby doors off their hinges and destroyed every zombie in sight.

Dash winced but when she opened her eyes this new robot was still there, still walking forward, completely unfazed. Not a single singe was on it.

“What?! It did nothing?!” Dash jumped back.

“I am Sweetiebot 9000!” the robot declared. The voice had a surprising lack of robotic tinge but was exceptionally squeaky. “I am the ultimate little sister in terms of both offense and defense! Big sister Rarity has granted me an invincible body!”

Not like Dash had enough firepower to test that claim. Unless she found an even more incredible bomb, she just had to run from it, try to get to the surface again.

It was still far off enough that Dash could get back into the first room. And there was a hole leading to the next floor.

She darted forward at Sweetiebot. Sweetiebot switched her buzzsaws out for flame throwers and got ready to fire at Dash.

“The flames of sisterly love will incinerate all!” Sweetiebot declared.

She fired the flamethrower down the hall Dash came from a moment too late, Dash just barely swerving into the zombie room in time.

“Hugs!” A wave of zombies tried jumping at Dash, but she flew over them.

That hole was still there! Dash flew towards it as Sweetiebot stomped into the room.

“Hugs! Hugs!” the zombie fillies demanded. All of them dog-piled on Sweetiebot.

“Rarity alone is worthy of my hugs!” Sweetiebot declared. “Die false sisters!”

She crackled with electricity, then bolts of lightning erupted from her body, sending the zombies flying off in every direction.

Dash didn’t waste time to see what happened next. She flew up the hole Sweetiebot made earlier. The room she was in was relatively normal, had a bunch of furniture in it instead of mad science stuff. Dash shoved a dresser on top of the hole and flew out of the room.

Then she ran down the next hall only to get to a dead end.

Behind her, she heard the furniture getting thrown violently, then Sweetiebot’s hoofsteps. Dash darted into one room, too dark for her to see anything inside of and hid.

“I feel no mercy!” Sweetiebot announced. “Only love for my big sister Rarity!”

Sweetiebot’s hoofsteps slowly sounded down the hall. They got to the door Dash was behind, but she kept walking, missing Dash.

As soon as she heard Sweetiebot open the next door, Dash darted out of her room and went down the hall in the opposite direction, into yet another room.

This one was better lit. The room had a narrow catwalk that went over several vats of boiling acid. Dash could feel it burning her nose even from here. As Dash flew to the other side, one of her feathers fell into the vat, dissolving instantly, almost before it even touched the liquid.

She got to the other side, but this door was locked!

“Ah! There you are!” Rarity came back over the intercom. “Impressive you managed to escape Sweetiebot 9000 once, but you can’t run from her forever!”

“You know, you can just let me leave!” Dash called out. “We didn’t come here to fight you!”

“I can tell neither of you has ever seen the outer gods,” said Rarity. “As far as I’m concerned that makes both of you barbarians! If you really want to be my ally, then why not give in to the madness as well? Eight seconds is all it takes, you know! Then your mind will be open as mine is and you can see the world as it truly is!”

“Look, I’m not literally going on the eighth and banishing myself from society, okay? I want to be popular, not live out here in the woods.”

“Oh, please! What you call society is hardly civilized at all! I live in this luxuriously huge and air-conditioned castle, for example, and what kind of house do you live in? I have thirty bathrooms. Do you have even half that many rooms in total?"

“Okay. I guess that’s fair. But I don’t know if having thirty bathrooms is worth also being insane and only getting to talk to other crazy ponies. I mean, have you even used all thirty of these bathrooms?”

“That is not a question you ask a lady! Just you wait until my ultimate creation captures you!”

Sweetiebot entered the room, a flamethrower on either side of her ready to fire. Dash was cornered.

“Total annihilation awaits all who oppose my big sister!” Sweetiebot announced.

“Capture me?” Dash asked. “I’m pretty sure that thing is trying to kill me!”

“I love my big sister Rarity so much I would reduce the entire world to ash for her!” Sweetiebot declared.

“Oh, okay! I admit her enthusiasm is set a tad high,” said Rarity. “Here, I’ll turn it down fifteen percent.”

“I would reduce eighty-five percent of the world to ash for my big sister Rarity!” Sweetiebot corrected herself.

“I’m working on it! Tell me that’s not a step in the right direction,” said Rarity.

The ground shook again, more violently than before. Both Dash and Sweetiebot lost their balance.

Dash, being a pegasus, merely took to the air. Sweetiebot nearly fell into the acid. No way Dash would get a better shot than this!

She swooped in and rammed the robot from its vulnerable side, sending it tumbling into the vat. The acid made a sickening crackling noise as Sweetiebot flailed her forelegs, trying to stay afloat in it.

“No!” Sweetiebot 9000 lifted her hoof above the green liquid, making a shrill whimper, before sinking back in. “Big sister! I. Love. You.”

That last word droned on, the inflection deepening before slowly cutting off.

Dash felt a little bad after seeing that. But it had been a matter of survival.

“Huh.” Dash sat down, panting but relieved. “I guess she wasn’t that invincible after all.”

After catching her breath, Dash stood up and started towards the door.

“Actually!” the squeaky voice came from behind Dash.

Dash turned around to see Sweetiebot, head hanging out of the vat of acid, her forelegs grabbed onto the edge.

“It turns out I am that invincible!” Sweetiebot pulled herself off. Other than some lingering acid dripping off of her, she was perfectly fine. “Hahaha! You have fallen for prank.exe! You are less intelligent than me! Hahaha!”

“Seriously?!”

“Prepare yourself for incineration!” Sweetiebot flared her flamethrowers.

“But how would I do that?” Dash asked.

Sweetiebot stopped, stunned by the question. She turned her flamethrowers off.

“Rarity,” said Sweetiebot. “How does one prepare for incineration?”

“I don’t know!” Rarity came over the intercom. “I guess you pray or something.”

“Yes!” Sweetiebot reactivated her flamethrowers. “You will pray or something and I will incinerate you!”

“But, uh." Dash shrugged. “I’m an atheist?”

Sweetiebot stopped again.

“Rarity! An error has been encountered!”

“Look, just shoot her with something non-lethal,” said Rarity.

“But I am confused. You said—”

“I know what I just said Sweetie Belle— sorry, I mean Sweetiebot, but—”

Dash didn’t stick around for the rest of the conversation. She booked it out of there, trying to get as much distance as she could before Sweetiebot figured things out. She managed to find the stairs and went up. Still no windows anywhere, but there should only be one more floor till ground level.

That robot may be the ultimate little sister who could destroy the world, but she still had the same weakness all little sisters had. She was easy to mess with!

She ran down a hallway, cautiously peeking her head around the corner. More red eyes! It was another one of those big, bulky sweetiebots.

After a moment, it looked away and Dash took the opportunity to fly down the next hall.

Immediately she ran into yet another robot! It was an inch away from her, looking down at Dash with glowing eyes.

But this one immediately exploded, ripped limb from limb by some unseen force.

“Rainbow Dash!” Pinkie jumped out from the wreckage. “I finally found you!”

“Pinkie!” Dash was so relieved she hugged Pinkie.

“You shoulda seen it! I had to fight a bunch of Sweetiebot 8000s.” Pinkie sat down, sighing with exhaustion. “Boy were they tough! It took all of my psychokinetic force to destroy them. But I think that’s the toughest thing Rarity has.”

“Um, actually.” Dash pointed behind herself. “There’s a Sweetiebot 9000.”

As if on cue, Sweetiebot burst through the wall behind Dash.

“No other little sister comes standard equipped with over one hundred weapons!” Sweetiebot announced. “Firing rockets!”

Sweetiebot fired three rockets at the two of them. Pinkie caught them with her psychokinetic grip, crumpling them up without them exploding.

Next, she grabbed Sweetiebot herself, lifting her into the air. She tried to bend or pull apart the robot’s body. Pinkie struggled harder than Dash had ever seen her struggle before, harder than when she’d lifted an entire building. She bent it so hard that the walls and floor around the robot began to crack.

But Sweetiebot herself was not bent by the tiniest millimeter.

“My body is as invincible as sisterly love!” Sweetiebot declared.

“Yeesh! She might be right!” Pinkie dropped her. “That’s the toughest thing I’ve ever tried to bend!”

“Hold on, I have an idea.” Dash stepped forward. “Hey, robo-kid! You said you were Rarity’s little sister, right?”

“Yes! I am the ultimate little sister! No other little sister could possibly defeat me!”

“Well incinerating ponies is against the rules. Do you know what happens to younger siblings who break the rules?” Dash asked. “On Hearth’s Warming Eve the Krampus comes and takes them away in his big bag to the little sister sorting facility. They get shipped off to live with a new big sister who’s got a wooden tail and big beaver teeth.”

“That’s not true!” Sweetiebot said. “You’re lying!”

“No way! It’s totally true! It happened to this kid at my school,” Dash assured her. “She got thrown into the Krampus's bag and never got to see her big sister ever again. She sent me a letter complaining about how her new sister keeps eating all the furniture with her big bucked teeth.”

Sweetiebot stood there, thinking in silence for a moment.

“Rarity,” said Sweetiebot. “Is that true?”

“No. It’s not!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“How sure?”

“There’s no such thing as a Krampus! Even if there were, that doesn’t make any sense because—"

The two of them ran down the hall as Rarity tried to talk Sweetiebot out of her irrational fear, Pinkie leading Dash to the stairs that would bring them to the surface.

That actually worked!

Dash could see a window to the outside now, but the light from the electric plants still shone brightly, flooding in through the windows.

“We gotta find some way to stop that if we’re getting out of here, right?” Dash looked out the window. “Can’t you find the switch for it or something?”

“I was looking for you first.” Pinkie closed her eyes. “But now we can look for that one.”

After a moment, Pinkie pointed up the stairs and the two of them ran.

Just as they got to the top of the stairs and turned the corner, Sweetiebot appeared at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at them with her glowing, red eyes.

Another tremor went through the building as the two ponies raced even faster down the hallway. At the end of the hall was another four doors.

“Let’s see.” Pinkie pointed to each door in turn, listing them. “My best guess here. That door leads to a hilarious situation. That way leads to certain death. That one is the shortest path to Rarity and over there is the most inconvenient door for Rarity.”

The last door Pinkie pointed to was the heaviest, the only metallic door of the bunch.

“What does that last one mean?” Dash asked.

“I dunno! These are just gut feelings. Don’t take anything I say too literally.” Pinkie walked over to the inconvenient door. “Might be the best one to pick.”

Pinkie blew the door off its hinges. This new room was exceptionally dark, so much so Dash couldn’t see one thing inside it.

“Wait!” Rarity yelled across the intercom, suddenly panicked. “Don’t go in there!”

“Yeah, but see you telling us not to go in there makes me want to go in there,” said Dash.

“Look— I’ll give you whatever you want! Anything! You can have that seal breaker! Just don’t go in there! Please!”

“I want whatever I want.” Pinkie shrugged. “I say we take the deal!”

“Sure, if it gets us out of here,” said Dash.

Pinkie brought the door back up and gently placed it where it had been, barely fixing it. The lights turned on, banishing the darkness.

Sweetiebot charged at them from down the hall, her buzzsaws whirling and tearing a line in the floor below her as she ran. She was ever so slightly less intimidating when her eyes weren’t glowing in the dark.

“You cannot outrun my love for my sister!” Sweetiebot yelled over her screeching sawblades.

“Sweetiebot! Change in plans!” Rarity announced over the intercom. “Do not attack them. I want you to lead them to me instead.”

“But they are not Rarity! They must be destroyed! You said to destroy them!”

“No, no,” said Rarity. “I changed my mind.”

“Do not incinerate?” Sweetiebot struggled with the concept, but she stopped her buzzsaws.

“Yes.”

“But my love for you burns like ten million campfires incinerating ten million marshmallows!”

“Yes, and that’s why you aren’t eviscerating them,” said Rarity. “Remember that our sister is the most important thing in the world! We can’t fight anywhere near her!”

“Yes.” Sweetiebot looked at the door. “Deactivating intimidation mode.”

The only thing that appeared to change was her eyes going from red to green.

“I would rip out your still-beating hearts, but it would displease my sister Rarity whom I love,” Sweetiebot explained. “Follow me.”

“Makes sense to me!” Pinkie started following her.

Dash sighed and followed, taking one last look at the forbidden door. If this was a trap, Pinkie would see it coming so why not?

Sweetiebot led them up one more level, where they found the room Rarity had been watching them from this whole time.

This room had a fainting couch, a desk covered in an enormous stack of paper, and some strange machine that had lightning arcing between two anodes on the top of it. This machine was attached to a projector, though it was only projecting white light at the moment.

A pony, no doubt Rarity, was sitting in a chair behind the desk and piles of paper, back to Dash, looking out a window at the raging thunderstorm. A flash of lightning light up the room brightly, casting a silhouette of her over the room.

Of course, there were a few buckets of bubbling green stuff on a shelf next to the desk as well. Apparently, every room needed that.

There was a portrait on the wall of a filly that looked remarkably similar to her this robot. Almost ten of them hung from the wall in total. Dash looked back at Sweetiebot 9000 for comparison, getting a better look at it now that it wasn’t trying to ‘non-lethally restrain’ her. It was a perfect match.

“I’m still not a hundred percent sure how intelligent this thing is.” Dash waved a hoof in front of her now green eyes.

“I tricked you, therefore I am more intelligent than you,” said Sweetiebot.

“I got you twice, kid.” Dash rolled her eyes. “Here, I’ll do it again.”

Dash took out her lucky bit, technically the only one she had right now. She waved it around in front of Sweetiebot, then clapped her hooves together. The coin was gone when she pulled them apart.

Sweetiebot leaned forward, looking for the coin. Dash reached behind the robot’s ear and pulled it out.

Sweetiebot jumped to her feet in surprise, her eyes opening wide. She grabbed the coin and studied it intently.

“This is impossible!” Sweetiebot continued to turn it over, trying to uncover this mystery.

With her distracted, it was just Rarity now.

“I suppose I have no choice but to reveal myself.” Rarity kept staring out the window. “I’ll have to ask you not to scream when you see me.”

“Sure?” Dash tilted her head. There had to be next to nothing that could make her scream at this point.

Rarity slowly turned around in her chair, revealing that she was easily the most beautiful mare Dash had ever seen.

“There!” Rarity winced and pushed away from her desk. “Now you both know my horrible secret!”

Dash and Pinkie looked at one another.

“We do?” Dash blinked.

“That I’m hideously deformed!” Rarity pointed at her absolutely perfect face.

“Uh.” Dash and Pinkie shared another confused look.

“From the scar?!”

“Scar?” Dash looked Rarity over. “I don’t see one single scar! Don’t take this as me hitting on you or anything but you’re like ten out of ten hot. I’d bathe in dragons’ blood to be as sexy as you.”

“I appreciate your low standards, but it’s right here!” Rarity jumped across the desk and came in as close as she could, pointing to a spot just above her eye.

Dash leaned forward and squinted.

“Oh! I see it. But that’s microscopic. It looks like somepony poked you with a red pencil.”

“No stallion will ever love me now!” Rarity put a hoof over her forehead like she was about to faint, collapsing on the couch. “I had to give up on relationships entirely and focus only on my career!”

“Um. That scar ain’t that bad.” Dash shrugged. “I got bigger scars and guys still hit on me. You’re being a little overdramatic.”

“Look, I stared at the outer gods for more than eight seconds and went insane, remember?” Rarity opened her eyes, unamused. “I had a mental breakdown that drove me to do that in the first place. You add nine dives on top of that and, well, these things compound you know.”

“Oh! Right. Well did you ever think of maybe getting therapy?”

“I did and I have! But the only thing you can get out here are mad therapists. That only made things worse.” Rarity flailed on her fainting couch. “And oh! Now I’m being robbed! You said you’d vanquish yourselves from my presence if I get you a seal breaker, yes?”

“We’re not trying to rob you, okay?” Dash asked.

“Yeah! We just wanted your help,” said Pinkie. “But we can help you back! We can get you whatever spell you’re after. Maybe.”

“Yes,” said Rarity. “The way you were talking before implies that you know a witch who used to have the book I was looking for?”

Technically, that was exactly the case.

“I think we can work something out!” Pinkie jumped up on the fainting couch with her. “We can probably get you the mystery spell if you lend us some of your stuff for a while. We’ll need your robot and the seal breaker and— oh! You! You can talk all nerdy like about your inventions, right?”

“Have you ever met a creative, darling?” Rarity flicked her mane. “Why, I never shut up about how any of this works! You see, the secret to artificial general intelligence is simply to—"

“Yeah! Exactly that!” Pinkie clapped her hooves together. “But save it for tomorrow.”

“Well the problem here is that I would never work with a bunch of neurotypicals,” said Rarity. “Ponies who haven’t seen beyond the veil of reality and sanity cannot be trusted. We cannot possibly understand one another, there’s far too much you take for granted.”

Another tremor shook the place, knocking over Rarity’s piles of paper. One of her large bubbling buckets fell over as well.

“You can stop whatever’s causing those tremors, by the way,” Dash suggested.

“That isn’t me.” Rarity wiped up the green ooze on the floor. “We’ve been experiencing a lot of earthquakes recently is all. Just give me a moment to clean this stuff up before we absorb any super-radiation.”

Rarity got it all back into a bucket and carried it to the next room, a small bathroom, where she flushed it down the toilet.

“Wait! You’ve been pouring super-radioactive waste down the toilet?!” Pinkie looked suddenly worried.

“We’re miles away from anyone else, it hardly matters,” said Rarity.

“What about alligators in the sewers?” Pinkie asked. “Some ponies flush baby alligators down the toilet and then they live in the sewers graining power as they continue to mutate. And alligators never stop growing so they can get massive in just a few years. Those ancient sewers go all over the world so there’s no telling when one might pop up.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Rarity rolled her eyes. “I live miles away from anypony else. There’s no way an alligator would have come all the way from the city down here.”

“I don’t know! A giant alligator could come bursting out of your toilet at any moment,” said Pinkie. “In fact, my ESP is telling me there’s a ninety-nine percent chance at this point.”

“What? Are your toilets the size of swimming pools? Because mine is normal-sized.” Rarity opened the door to the bathroom all the way. “How is a giant alligator going to come out of that?!”

The shaking grew louder. This time it didn’t die down.

The entire bathroom lifted into the air, breaking apart from the rest of the castle. Several other rooms went with it as half of Rarity’s castle was torn up from the foundation.

The rubble continued to push up until finally the ponies were at eye level with the largest alligator in history.

“Oh.” Rarity paused with the giant still rising behind her. “I suppose it’d be like that.”

A hissing sound shook the building as the alligator took a second step forward.

Just this one step was enough for the entire room to collapse. Pinkie gave a hop and levitated briefly with her psychic powers, but Rarity began to fall through the floor.

Luckily, Rainbow Dash was there to grab both of them and start flying out of the castle.

She intended to just ditch this place for now, put as much distance between them and the gator as possible.

But Rarity began to panic as soon as they took off.

“No!” Rarity flailed in Dash’s grip. “Sweetie Belle is still in there! I can’t leave her!”

Rarity fought her way through Dash’s grip and jumped down to the crumbling castle.

Meanwhile, the alligator saw her flying off and snapped at her in midair.

The force from the snap sent a blast of wind and sound that made Dash lose balance. There was too much turbulence to fly between that and the storm! Dash had no choice but to make a crash landing a few meters away from the alligator.

At least the plants were no longer electrified.

Pinkie jumped off Dash’s back landing with no problem, exploding the nearby flytraps with her telekinesis. They grew back much slower this time.

“Okay!” Pinkie looked up at the reptile in determination. “Remember, you gotta run zigzag away from alligators!”

“I’m not sure if that’s going to help.” Dash took to the air. That thing was so big it looked like it could pluck her out of the air.

The alligator was bigger than Rarity’s entire castle, destroying half of it just by coming out of the ground.

Pinkie was the one the alligator went after first. It scooped up a significant amount of ground with its lower jaw to pick Pinkie up. Then it moved to snap down on the mare.

Using her psychic powers, Pinkie managed to keep its mouth from slamming shut. It was clearly near the limit of her strength though, Pinkie visibly struggling with it as Dash flew back down to her side.

“Quick! Do something!” Pinkie called out to Dash. “I can’t hold it forever!”

Do something?! It’s not like Dash had some magical anti-alligator weapon!

Or did she?

“Okay, this is a bit of a long shot.” Dash took out her last youth gummy. They were supposed to grow fast.

Dash jumped forward and threw the bottle with the gummy in it as hard as she could, the container disappearing in its maw.

“Can’t hold—" Pinkie grunted, then finally jumped out of the alligator’s way and let its jaws snap shut just in front of her.

The force from the snap was enough to knock both Pinkie and Dash flat on their backs. Dash’s brilliant plan didn’t look like it was working!

The alligator opened again and inched forward, threatening to bite down and crush both ponies at once.

The alligator snapped its mouth shut but came short, just in front of Dash. It seemed confused, momentarily, about missing but lunged forward and snapped at her again only to miss once more.

It was clear now that the alligator was rapidly shrinking! It kept missing because its jaw was getting smaller and smaller. That thing was shrinking far faster than Pinkie had, even. It was almost like the thing wasn’t moving the shrinkage was so extreme.

But eventually, it did get to the two mares and finally bit down hard on Pinkie’s leg. Of course, by then it was so tiny that Pinkie merely giggled when it bit her.

“Aw!” Pinkie picked up the gator and hugged him. “You’re such a cutie now! How could somepony have flushed you down the toilet? You’re gonna be my pet from now on!”

A large chunk of the castle fell off. Dash squinted. It was hard to see in the rain, but Rarity was up there, near the part of the castle that just fell.

Dash darted up there. Clearly, that place wasn’t safe even with the gator shrunk.

As Dash got close, the floor crumbled again. There was another large tube, the same size as the ones with the zombies in them, sitting in what once was the middle of the room, Rarity clutching to it dearly. But once the floor started to break, that tube fell off the edge.

“No!” Rarity ran to the edge of the crumbling floor. She actually jumped off after whatever was in that tube.

Dash flew in to catch Rarity, who kept a foreleg stretched out towards the tube. That thing had to be important.

Dash darted under that next. It hit her with significant force, but Dash managed to slow it down.

“You have to get it back up to that room!” Rarity pointed back up. “Hurry!”

This had better not be another zombie they were trying to save. With significant effort, Dash flew it back up. That thing was freaking heavy!

Dash set it down on the far end of the room. Without a word of thanks, Rarity went into a mad rush, hooking tubes up to the thing.

“It needs power!” Rarity clutched onto Dash. “You have to hurry and find where Sweetiebot 9000 landed! She’ll know what to do!”

Dash noticed something else in the room. It was another Sweetiebot 9000, identical to the one Dash saw before, sitting on a pedestal.

“What about that one?” Dash pointed to it.

“No! That’s something else! The one I need fell downstairs somewhere!”

“Alright.”

Dash had no idea if she was doing the right thing, but she flew downstairs. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to find the robot, still in the rubble of the first floor.

Sweetiebot must have gotten the message because she opened her forelegs for Dash to lift her. Dash got her back up there as fast as she could. Once there, Sweetiebot hooked the tube up to herself, electricity surging from her to it. The chemical inside began bubbling again.

Only then did Rarity let out a sigh of relief, collapsing onto her haunches.

“Thank you so much for helping her.” Rarity grabbed Dash in a sudden hug. “After I was so rude to you— and you didn’t even know how important this was!”

“Well I could tell it was important to you,” said Dash. “I couldn’t just let it get destroyed.”

Dash finally got a look inside the glass tube. It was a brain and a spine suspended in the fluid; tubes jammed their way into the brain.

“A brain?”

“This is my little sister, Sweetie Belle.” Rarity put her hoof on the glass.

“Is she—?”

“Dead? No. Thanks to you.” Rarity turned back to Dash. “She’s the entire reason I became a mad scientist. Seven years ago, I was at the beach with my entire family, but then it came! The slither dee! It came out of the sea! It ate all the others but it didn’t eat me! My entire family slaughtered before my very eyes!”

Pinkie came crawling up the side of the castle with her new pet alligator just then.

“Sweetie Belle and I were the only survivors, and Sweetie Belle just barely. The doctors told me there was nothing they could do to save her— but I had to! I had to find some way to keep her alive! I couldn’t bear to lose everyone. I came out here and found somepony to show me the outer gods. If normal science couldn’t save her, then maybe mad science could!”

“So you built a bunch of robot versions of her?” Dash glanced back at Sweetiebot 9000.

She was sitting next to the near-identical copy of herself, giving her twin a few playful, curious pokes.

“Yes, I wanted to put her brain in a robot body,” said Rarity. “The rush of inspiration and knowledge culminated in the Sweetiebot 9000! I created an invincible body for my sister! I couldn’t bear the thought of her getting hurt again, but I knew that if I could make her an unstoppable avatar of death she’d never be injured ever again.”

“Daw!” Pinkie cooed. “That’s so sweet!”

“Is it?” Dash raised an eyebrow to that.

“I got so close!” Rarity walked over to the second, empty Sweetiebot 9000. “So close to being able to put her brain in the robot. But the rush I got from gazing upon the outer gods has all but dried up when I’m just one step away! With mad science reaching its limit for me, I had no choice to go with the next best thing. Actual science!”

Rarity pointed to a desk, covered in notes.

“But oh!” Rarity whined as she slumped against her sister’s tube. “Real science is a lot of hard work and takes forever!”

“You can’t just take another peek at the outer gods?” Dash asked. “Like one more second? You already went past eight and went mad, right?”

“Yes, but it’s a matter of how mad! Maybe you don’t know how things work out here in the real world. Society is like an onion. It has layers. If you stare at the outer gods for more than eight seconds you get thrown out of the center and have to associate with the mad scientists, werewolves, and necromancers. But we have our limit too. After fifteen seconds, even we kick you out into the fringe of the fringe of society and get stuck with the cultists and ghosts.”

Rarity stuck her tongue out.

“I can’t associate myself with those filthy cultists. They smell disgusting and their robes are so tacky! They keep talking in riddles and parables, acting like you can define things into existence with sheer logic! I can’t put up with them. They are the truest enemies of mad science!”

“Okay, so I see.” Dash nodded. “You need that spell to finish reviving your sister, right?”

“Precisely.” Rarity gave her sister’s brain one last look. “I would do absolutely anything to revive her.”

Rarity bowed her head.

“I want to apologize again,” she said. “My sister would be dead, all my hard work for nothing if you two hadn’t broken into my house. I’ll listen to whatever you have to say this time.”

“Again, I didn’t break into your house,” said Dash. “But yeah, you’re welcome.”

Witches 3D

Rarity reclined on a fainting couch as she listened to Dash’s story up to this point.

“You’re a hundred percent certain that this is that Twilight Sparkle?” Rarity asked, still incredulous.

“A hundred percent,” said Dash. “If not then she’s just as strong.”

“Well she would certainly be able to cast the living metal spell I’d need to finish the life support system,” said Rarity. “But how in Equestria are you going to convince her to cast it, or preferably teach it, to me?”

“I think we have just enough to negotiate with her,” said Pinkie. “We got cool robots and stuff to get her attention, we’ll have broken through her defenses three times in two days, we’ll be the only ones who know where she is!”

“You’re just going to try talking to her?” Rarity raised her eyebrow. “Certainly an unorthodox method for dealing with witches.”

“I have a plan B if it turns into a fight again,” said Pinkie. “But I think she’s not that evil! We can totally maybe convince her to help you. I bet if we can show her all the horrible things that were done with her magic, she’d want to help all of us! ”

“Well I suppose if there’s even a one percent chance of this helping my sister it’s worth it,” said Rarity. “And if you got away from her twice then it can’t be that dangerous to go.”

“Yeah, but we need a way to break the barrier she surrounded herself with,” said Dash. “Otherwise there’s nothing we can do.”

“Yes. Well a seal breaker 1250RF should be able to get through nearly any barrier, but I don’t have one on me,” said Rarity. “I’ll have to go to the mad science league. Just let me get my mask on, I can’t be seen in polite society like this.”

Rarity put on an iron mask that covered the left half of her face.

“And what are they going to ask for in return?” Dash asked.

“Like I said, post-money utopia.” Rarity went up to that big machine with the projector attached to it. “They’ll loan me just about anything I ask for. Why, thanks to a forbidden technology, I can even get it right now.”

Rarity hit a few buttons on the machine, the projector turning on.

“It’s called the internet!” Lightning flashed at just that moment.

Dash heard a noise reminiscent of a phone dialing, then a beep, then some kind of howling noise.

“What is this?” Dash asked. “You’re not summoning a demon, are you? Cause it sounds like we’re summoning a demon.”

“Tch! Your lack of understanding shows how barbaric you are!” Rarity rolled her eyes. “No, it just uses phone lines to send pictures and text as well as sound to ponies far away.”

“You can do that?” Dash asked. “But if that’s all it does, why is it forbidden?”

“See,” Pinkie whispered to her, “cause it’s like what if it makes ponies more disconnected than ever?”

“More disconnected? Ha! That’s assuming you already have friends to be disconnected from! I wouldn’t speak to anypony for years at a time without this.” Rarity hit a few keys on her keyboard once the sounds stopped.

“Nothing’s happening,” Dash said after a minute.

“Shh! Shh! It takes a minute.” Rarity hushed her. “Oh, and we dislike ponies who don’t have mental disorders so if they ask you both have ADHD. They’ll buy that.”

The projector finally began showing an image. It was split into four squares, each depicting another pony.

There was a rather normal looking mare and stallion, white and grey respectively, then there was a mint green pony whose legs and left eye were replaced by golden machinery. The fourth and final pony was shrouded in darkness so that Dash couldn’t even tell their gender.

Conveniently, they all had their names written right under the square depicting them. ‘Coco Pommel’, ‘Hoity Toity’, ‘Kerfufffffffffffffffle’ and ‘???’ respectively.

“Rarity,” the shadowy pony had a voice changer too, making them even more non-descript. “We were all just complaining about how the new Winter Wars movie completely ruins the entire series! Wait, who are these two? They don’t look fabulous or crazy! You can’t bring plebeians on here or they’ll ruin the internet with their damnable cat pictures and latte art!”

“I have ADHD!” Pinkie announced, jumping up on the control panel and pressing her face against the camera. “Whatever that is!”

“Yes, that checks out.” The pony with the voice changer nodded. “I retract my statement.”

“Is this guy’s name question marks?” Dash asked.

“This is the leader of the mad science league,” said Rarity. “They like to be mysterious.”

“Indeed! I cannot possibly reveal my identity any further,” the leader warned. “My true identity is so incredibly shocking that ponies have literally had heart attacks the moment they learn my name! Raise your expectations now, little pony, for if you ever learn my name it will be the twist of the century!”

“Well, I for one don’t think ADHD is enough to excuse those dreadful manes.” Hoity Toity flicked his own perfectly kept mane. “How can you allow such filthy individuals into your home? Don’t you know meeting ponies in person can make you sick?”

“I think it’s enough. I’m not actually on the eighth either,” Coco assured Dash. “I just have obsessive-compulsive disorder. But we live in a society that assumes anyone with a serious mental disorder is associating with the outer gods, so I had no choice but to join a criminal organization and do unethical experiments with them.”

Coco came in close against her camera.

“By the way, you have a bit of green in the blue part of your mane can you—?” Coco’s eye twitched again.

Dash checked herself and fixed it. Coco let out a sigh of relief.

“Yes, and I am Kerfuffffffffffffffle!” The cyborg looking one said.

“She keeps adding more f’s to her name the crazier she gets,” Rarity whispered to her. “It’s for all the extra fuff.”

“There’s so much fuff!” Kerfuffle put her hooves on her head and ducked down. “The fuff never stops! You can’t possibly understand how much fuff there is!”

“Did you want to see my new meme?” Coco asked. “See it’s got Starlight saying ‘it’s not a cult if your god doesn’t exist’ but then Nailbat’s standing behind her and he’s saying—"

“Yes, I’m sure your political commentary is razor-sharp,” said Rarity. “But actually, I was hoping to borrow a seal breaker from one of you.”

“Oh, I have one,” said Coco. “But I need your help pasting Starlight Glimmer’s head onto a penguin. It’s going to be funny; I swear!”

“But what exactly do you need to break with it?” the mysterious leader asked.

“Oh, you know those filthy cultists,” said Rarity. “Always vandalizing our lawns, writing incomprehensible messages in blood on our fences, making false accounts just to post logical fallacies on our forums, sealing away our things in vases that won’t open for one thousand years.”

“Oh yes, I know all too well,” said the leader. “They must be stopped! And they will be stopped!”

The shadowy leader started laughing hysterically. Kerfuffle and Hoity Toity joined him in short order, laughing just as loud. Coco’s laugh was clearly forced, existing only to fit in.

“Hehehe!” Rarity nodded and pointed at the camera before shutting the whole thing off.

“Well they seemed happy,” said Pinkie.

“Well we won’t get it until tomorrow,” said Rarity. “You’re welcome to stay here until then.”

The storm outside was still going.

This would be the third time Dash went after Twilight, but she felt less excited than ever before. Was it because she was getting used to it? Or maybe it was just because the reward was looking less certain all the time.

Dash almost hoped they’d have to go to plan B…

Day three of this!

They brought Rarity and Sweetiebot back to Twilight’s house, though you couldn’t see it right now. Sweetiebot put her hoof up against the first barrier, the force flowing through her enough to light her up, yet she managed to stay in the same spot.

The hope was that Twilight wouldn’t be able to get rid of Sweetiebot that easily and that Sweetiebot would be an enormous distraction for Twilight. Right now, it seemed like that might be the case.

The seal breaker was a long metal cylinder about the length of a pony. One end had a drill that dug it halfway into the ground before metal grips came out to hold itself in place. Then the top part opened, and green light emerged from the crystal implanted inside.

“Okay, I learned this lesson the hard way thirty years ago.” Pinkie turned around to face the others as the seal breaker dug into the ground. “If either of you has like a lamp with a demon trapped inside of it or if a psycho zombie is sleeping in the lake or anything like that you gotta speak up now. Cause this is going to break every seal in a five-mile radius.”

“I checked the lake, and it seems fine.” Dash shrugged. “If there is a ghost trapped in there then it’s whoever’s fault for not putting up a sign like you’re supposed to.”

“Yes, and I made sure to leave my demon-possessed shoes at home,” said Rarity, “lovely as they are.”

“And I don’t sense any ghosts, so we have plausible deniability.” Pinkie winked at them. “Let’s do this!”

The light on top of the seal breaker faded away only for the ground around it to start glowing the same color soon after as if the light itself was being injected into the ground.

The entire barrier glowed the same green. It looked like there was a struggle between the two forces. Dash heard the seal breaker clattering and humming, could feel heat radiating off it. The barrier changed back and forth between green and white. But in the end, the barrier got eaten away by the green stuff.

After that first, strongest one, the other barriers fell faster and faster until finally they were all gone, and Twilight’s treehouse was visible again.

“Hey it worked,” said Dash.

“Science prevails again!” Rarity declared. “Take that, you stupid cultists!”

“I’m pretty sure science also created those shields, but whatever,” said Dash.

“Come on! Let’s go knock!” Pinkie walked up to the door.

“I doubt she’d know what knocking means,” Dash pointed out.

“Good point. We just gotta barge in then,” said Pinkie. “Sweetiebot, you’re up first.”

“I will destroy all!” Sweetiebot threw the door open. “Metaphorically speaking.”

The robot charged straight into the house.

“I am Sweetiebot! Behold me!” Sweetiebot opened her forelegs wide. “Behold!”

“What the crow?!” Twilight jumped off her couch, she looked around and jumped back in surprise to see the rest of them following. “You again?! And you brought even more people?!”

“That’s right!” Dash covered one eye, striking a pose. “No matter how hard you try you can never get rid of the amazing Rainbow Dash! You ready to negotiate?”

“Okay, that’s it!” Twilight put her hat on and took out her spellbook. “No more nice witch for you! I’m turning all of you into frogs!”

Pinkie nodded at Dash. This was one of the scenarios they planned for, being an obvious next step in escalation from Twilight.

Twilight cast the spell on Sweetiebot first, being the closest, but nothing happened to the robot.

“It didn’t work?” Twilight asked. “But why?”

“My body cannot be destroyed by any means!” Sweetiebot 9000 announced. “Nor can it be distorted. Transformation magic is as useless against me as begging for mercy will be!”

Guns emerged from either side of Sweetiebot.

“Okay, but how?” Twilight was completely unconcerned about the guns. “The life energy went straight through you.”

“I can explain!” Rarity jumped in through the door. “You see, she’s not alive so she doesn’t absorb life energy. Interesting, no?”

“Wait. Who the crow are you?” Twilight asked, then looked down at Sweetiebot. “Also, who the are you? Why are there so many ponies here?!”

“I am Sweetiebot 9000!” Sweetiebot announced. “The ultimate little sister! I have the highest defense of all little sisters!”

“Huh? Wait, that’s not armor.” Twilight stepped forward to study Sweetiebot. “You’re right, it’s not alive. But then what is this thing?”

“Invincible,” said Sweetiebot. “Rarity has granted me an indestructible body.”

“You were transformed into this?” Twilight asked.

“No, no. This is called a robot.” Rarity trotted up to Twilight. “My name is Rarity, by the way, I’m the one who made her. Robots are mechanical constructs that can react to their environment, much like living things do.”

“I see, so it’s like Smarty Pants.” Twilight turned to her scarecrow. “Though I created her through aetheric imprinting on existing plant matter. Animating a body made of metal, in the same way, would be impossible. Even more impressive is imparting enough intelligence on it to hold a conversation. It can hold a conversation, right?”

“Not only can I converse,” said Sweetiebot, “but I can slaughter all those who dare converse with me!”

“How were you able to make it talk?” Twilight asked.

“Well once you have memristors it’s not that difficult,” said Rarity.

They continued like that for a few minutes, Dash’s brain glazing over.

Memristors? Phantom stitching? Covalent aluminum? Now it was Dash’s turn to not understand ninety percent of what was being said.

Either way, this was a good time to move into position in case things went south again. Dash slowly sidestepped until she was next to the cauldron. Pinkie was right; Twilight’s main weakness was how easily distracted she was.

“Well, as impressive as her brain is, my ultimate goal is to implant the brain of a living pony into one of these near-invincible bodies.” Rarity grabbed her sister with one foreleg and tapped her skull with the opposite hoof. “Imagine it! Imagine! Sweetiebot 9000 was my attempt at creating the perfect body. I already have most of the life support system ready, really only missing a way to safely graft nerve tissue into metal.”

“Putting someone’s brain inside one of these machines? That’s a fascinating idea! I never really gave much thought into doing some kind of brain transplant. Have you tried using a living metal spell on the skull?”

“Hm?” Rarity stepped forward, trying hard to keep her enormous smile down. “I’m afraid I don’t know that spell.”

“Oh, I could do it right now if we had a brain!” Twilight took out her spellbook and scanned her options, settling on Dash. “Hey! Could I take your brain out to test it?”

“What?” Suddenly Dash was paying attention again. “No way!”

“Hm.” Twilight became lost in thought.

“Oh, how coincidental! I already have a brain I’ve been saving!” Rarity pointed to the door. “Let’s go get it!”

Thrilled this was going so great for her, Rarity marched towards the door, humming happily.

“Leave?” Twilight froze in place. “I’m not leaving!”

“Hm?” Rarity turned around to see Twilight not following. “Well I can bring the brain to you and then—"

“No.” Twilight’s look became suspicious once more. “I think I realize what’s going on here now! You’re just trying to trick me into using my powers to help you, aren’t you?!”

“What? Me? No!” Rarity feigned surprise briefly. “Maybe. Come on!”

“I’m not helping you ungrateful people ever again.” Twilight turned away. “You can figure the spell out yourself!”

“You can have anything you want!” Rarity begged. She fell onto her belly and grabbed one of Twilight’s forelegs. “I can give you half a castle! I can give you Sweetiebot!”

“What?” Sweetiebot turned to Rarity.

“Or— make a third Sweetiebot 9000 for you! That’s fair, right?” Rarity asked.

“No! I learned my lesson.” Twilight pulled her foreleg up.

“Please!” Rarity grabbed onto her other foreleg. “If you don’t—"

Rarity burst into tears. Twilight’s expression immediately softened.

“Please! My sister won’t survive without you! I can’t lose everyone! I need her back!”

“Hey!” Twilight waved her hoof, trying to get Rarity off of her but it wasn’t working. “Stop it! Stop crying!”

Rarity kept wailing.

“I love my sister so much! She’s the only thing I care about!”

Rarity’s crying became uncontrollable.

Twilight clearly had no idea how to react to this. She nervously looked around the room, Rarity’s crying getting to her right away.

“Okay! Okay! I’ll get you the thing!” Twilight broke free from Rarity and went over to her shelf. “Just stop crying.”

Twilight took out her spellbook and tore a tiny piece of paper out of it. She swirled this around in the air, the paper elongating as it spun until it became a long string, glowing pink. Next, she swiped through a few cauldrons until she got one filled with a liquid whose surface mirrored the room perfectly.

She dipped the fiber into the cauldron, causing the liquid to ripple so much it nearly spilled out, and cast a spell. When Twilight pulled the fiber back out, there was a piece of reflective glass at the end of it. Looping the thread around turned it into a necklace and it was this Twilight presented to Rarity.

“Mind fibers can give you memories and expertise when you’re touching them.” Twilight put the necklace on Rarity. “This functions like a spellbook but for just one spell. As long as you’re wearing this, you’ll understand the living metal spell as well as I do.”

Rarity’s eyes glazed over, she almost drooled as she stared forward for a good thirty seconds. Then she shook her head, coming back to her senses, then more than her senses.

“I do understand!” Rarity’s eyes were now ablaze at that realization. “I know exactly how to cast it!”

Rarity couldn’t contain her joy. She ran around the room one time before grabbing Sweetiebot.

“I can finally do this! Isn’t this wonderful, Sweetiebot? Now you can have two big sisters!”

Sweetiebot merely tilted her head.

“Thank you so much!” Rarity hugged Twilight tight. “You saved my sister’s life!”

“But this is the only thing I’m giving you.” Twilight turned her head quickly, puffing out her cheek. “Crying won’t work next time!”

“See?” Pinkie looked at Dash and pointed at Twilight. “I told you she wasn’t so bad! Now we just gotta convince her to undo all the horrible stuff she’s done!”

“I haven’t done any horrible things!” Twilight’s brow went flat. “Stop blaming me for stuff you idiots did to yourselves.”

“If you created the curse of undeath then you’re responsible for all the zombies, okay?” Dash asked. “That means you gotta clean up the mess!”

“I didn’t create the curse of undeath!” Twilight rolled her eyes.

“Wait. You didn’t?” Dash and the other two all shared a look.

Dash honestly didn’t know the full story, but everyone always said it was Twilight and Twilight hadn’t actually denied it until now.

“The only curse I put on all of you outsiders was the one to keep you away.” Twilight jabbed Dash with a hoof. “It was an outsider like you who created the curse of undeath!”

“Wait, but who specifically?” Dash asked. “You obviously know something about it! We’re not leaving till you spill it!”

“It’s a long story.” Twilight turned away.

“Can I hear it?” Pinkie jumped to be in her sight again.

“See there was this guy.” Twilight closed her eyes and lowered the brim of her hat, stopping her story at the start.

“That’s a really short story, actually.” Pinkie scratched her head, trying to figure it out. “Also, it doesn’t answer anything.”

“There’s more.” Twilight sighed like she was about to eat something gross but opened her eyes again. “There was this guy who— I guess— he kind of convinced me to— to be his, you know, girlfriend?”

Twilight began blushing uncomfortably.

“Daw!” Pinkie’s eyes went straight into puppy-dog mode. “That’s so cute!”

“Was he cute?” Rarity asked. “Tell me more! I’m too ugly to date anyone myself so I have to live vicariously through you!”

“It’s not cute!” Twilight waved them away. “This is a sad story!”

“Oh.” Rarity put a hoof around Twilight’s shoulder. “You tampered with powers beyond the comprehension of normal ponies to try and bring him back to life. I can absolutely relate to you, dear.”

“No.” Twilight pushed Rarity off. “Anyway, he’s how I found out that there was a town and stuff out there, though we mostly just talked about magic. I gave him everything he asked me for. I gave him eternal youth, all kinds of magical objects, taught him how all sorts of spells work, but none of that was ever enough for him. He always wanted more and more!”

“I think he wanted to be as powerful as me and I told him that you needed to train non-stop for centuries to get this good. But he was impatient. He went behind my back and did something I specifically told him wouldn’t work. Ultimately, he failed and created a number of immense problems, including the curse of undeath."

Twilight closed her eyes and started tapping her hoof.

“We got into a big fight, but the next morning I figured it couldn’t possibly do that much harm, so I was going to apologize. But when I woke up, I found he’d stolen all of my spellbooks and a bunch of other stuff!” Twilight’s tapping got faster. “And worse! He told all of his stupid friends about me because like four other ponies showed up after that, all of them liars and thieves! I had to make that curse just to try and get some peace but apparently, that didn’t work either!”

“Okay, so maybe you’re not responsible for that one,” said Dash. “But you still know how to end it, yeah? You gotta tell us everything you know about it.”

“As I said, it’s not a big deal.”

“But it is a big deal,” Pinkie assured her. “Come with me and I’ll show you it’s a big deal! Lot’s of people are crying right now! I know if I show you you’ll understand!”

Pinkie grabbed Twilight’s foreleg and tried pulling her towards the door.

“If I leave my house you people are going to steal all of my stuff.” Twilight pulled her foreleg back.

“Planned for that too, Twilight!” Pinkie motioned for Sweetiebot to come over. “If I can’t bring you to the big deal then I’ll bring the big deal to you! With a slide show!”

Sweetiebot’s eyes turned yellow and they began projecting an image onto the wall of Twilight’s house. It was a city scene, a canal running between rows of castle-like buildings.

“This is the beautiful city of Maretropolis.” Pinkie clicked to another slide of it. “It’s full of beautiful collegiate gothic architecture, famous for the several waterway streets and the golden pearls the clams that live just outside the city produce.”

Twilight stepped forward, briefly mesmerized by the scene. She stood an inch away from the projection, trying to take in all the unfamiliar, mind-blowing sights like she was looking at the outer gods themselves.

“And here it is on fire!” Pinkie switched to the next slide. “Because of a zombie dragon.”

Twilight stepped back when the slide turned to nearly the same scene only every building was burning, and the few ponies were running around panicking. She looked shocked, but that could be for any number of reasons.

“City. Fire. City. Fire.” Pinkie kept switching between various cities, then that same city on fire. “You seeing a trend yet, Twilight?”

“Yeah.” Twilight raised her hoof. “What is a city?”

Dash and Rarity groaned so hard they nearly fell over.

“It’s right there!” Dash pointed to the city, currently not burning, on the slide. “I seriously thought we were getting somewhere!

“Oh.” Twilight reconsidered the city. “And is it bad that it’s on fire?”

“Give her time,” Pinkie said. “A city is like a really big town. Ponies live there and that’s where all the best parties take place. That’s why it’s bad when it’s on fire.”

“Oh. And what’s that?” Twilight pointed to a boat.

“That’s a boat.”

“And that?”

“Mailbox?”

“A male box?” Twilight mused. “So it’s an animal? And what’s this odd rock formation?”

Twilight pointed to the sidewalk.

“Okay, maybe this is overstimulating you. No worries, when my dad saw moving pictures for the first time, he got so overstimulated he fainted!” Pinkie poked Sweetiebot to signal her to switch gears. “Maybe we can go with something simpler.”

Sweetiebot closed her eyes hard and when they reopened the projection was now a field of corn.

“Okay! This is corn! You eat it to survive.” Pinkie changed the slide. “This is zombies eating the corn. And then— oh no! There’s no food left!”

The next slide was of a young filly who would have been adorable were it not for the fact she was nearly a skeleton. Dash glanced over at Twilight to see her visibly disturbed by this new image.

“This poor filly is starving now, Twilight!” Pinkie ran up to the slide and pretended to hug her. “And every year the number of zombies increases! Eventually every orphan will be starving. We gotta help her by getting rid of the zombies before they eat all of our food again! For just five bits we can feed her for a year.”

Dash never got those commercials, personally. Where the crow did you get food for a year for just five bits?

It was certainly having the intended effect this time. Twilight was giving the starving orphan the same pained look she gave Rarity before relenting earlier.

But it didn’t stick, sympathy slowly melting back into skepticism.

“Hold on. How do I know this is an actual pony and not just some illusion you conjured?” Twilight asked. “If she’s real then what’s her name?”

“Um.” Pinkie looked at Rarity.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Rarity. “It was just the first image on starvingchildren.pny. I still don’t know why they have that website.”

“That’s what I thought. Go back three.” Twilight watched as the city was brought back up. “And what about all these ponies? Can you name even one of them?”

“Well, no, but—"

“Just as I suspected! None of these are real ponies! It’s all just illusions.” Twilight nodded to herself. “You barely even tried with this one.”

Dash planted her face in her hoof, defeated.

“Okay, so how the crow do we convince somepony like this of the truth?” Dash asked.

“I don’t know.” Pinkie crossed her forelegs and tried to think. “I guess we could find a starving orphan and bring her here. Do either of you have any starving orphans I can borrow?”

Dash and Rarity shook their heads.

“I don’t know what you’re really up to, but if this is so important to you then why don’t you put in all the hard work to end it, huh?” Twilight asked.

“Because we don’t know how,” said Dash. “Nopony knows how to break it! We barely know how it works at all since it seems to break the whole ‘knowing the rules’ thing.”

“Don’t you know how the curse works?” Rarity asked. “If you were there?”

Twilight stopped to think about it.

“Actually,” Twilight thought to herself. “It’d likely take you a whole year to pull it off! You’d be out of my hair the whole time. And maybe since I didn’t actually help you, you won’t keep coming back here for favors. I really should call your bluff.”

“Yeah! I can go running off on adventures again so that works out for me! If you help us clean up the mess, I swear I’ll keep all of this a secret!” Pinkie offered. “In fact, I’ll help keep everypony else away from here! We all will, right?”

Pinkie looked at Dash who unenthusiastically agreed.

“Okay, fine. Then I’ll tell you how,” said Twilight. “There are two parts to this. The first half is more difficult but more important. When the spell was cast it created an entity born out of chaos itself. All of you bear the curse of undeath, but this entity can impart that knowledge of how to break the curse, allowing it to activate and turn you into a zombie. ”

“Let me guess, this thing is insanely tough?” Dash guessed.

“For me? No. For you? Yes. But there’s an easy way to destroy it. Let me double-check something.”

Twilight went over to her bookshelf and, after looking through it for a minute, took out a small journal. She circled two things written down in it.

“Right. It’ll take me too long to make new ones, but you can go find some of the things that were stolen from me.” Twilight turned the book to Pinkie. “Specifically, you need this hammer and this potion. The latter is in an infinity flask that never runs out so it should still be full. Can you open a portal to the outer realm?”

“Oh, sure! Ponies do that all the time,” said Pinkie.

“It’s how I got so inspired,” Rarity added.

“Okay, here’s how you summon it. You put two mirrors on either side, just within your peripheral vision, and a candle directly in front of you. You have to stare straight ahead the whole time, looking into either mirror is certain death. Open the portal straight ahead and start pouring the potion. It’ll come. You’ll be able to destroy it with the hammer when it comes out. Just don’t talk to it, it’s an annoying jerk and also it might kill you.”

“But we still need to clear the condition for the curse to break and all the zombies to vanish, right?” Dash asked. “Can’t you just tell us what it is if you know?”

“If I tell you that you’d turn into a zombie,” Twilight reminded her.

“Yes,” Rarity spoke in that know-it-all nerd way, “that’s why nopony has ever figured it out. Because the moment you do, you die.”

“Wait, hey!” Dash pointed an accusing hoof at Twilight. “If you know the answer then why aren’t you a zombie?!”

“I’m immune to curses,” said Twilight. “That’s why I’m here in the first place.”

“Wait!” Rarity was suddenly interested in this. “You are? Is that possible? May I have some of your blood? It’s for science!”

“I already gave you people plenty!” Twilight turned her head away. “Anyway, as far as breaking it goes, I can’t tell you the answer. It’ll be obvious why you needed the candle and how to break the curse once the entity is dead. Just be fast or the curse will get you. Do you understand?”

“Roger, double Roger, and triple Roger!” Pinkie finished writing it all down and saluted Twilight.

“You can take this too.” Twilight handed the small journal to Pinkie. “It’s a list of everything that was ever stolen from me. I enchanted the book so if you touch the name of the missing object it will point you in the right direction. Never used it myself because I realized I’d have to leave the house.”

“Whoa, really?!” Pinkie tried tapping on some of the names a few times, a purple sparkle appearing on the edges of it in a different direction each time. One of them was straight down, which must mean it was on the other side of the planet. “This would be amazing! With this, I can go on an adventure to gather everything and blow it all up!”

“As long as it takes you more than two days,” said Twilight.

“See! I knew you weren’t so bad!” Pinkie jumped forward and gave Twilight a hug, to which Twilight pulled away but not enough to escape. “I’ll tell you what! I’ll bring all the stuff back to you on your birthday! The not-incredibly-dangerous stuff that is.”

“Birthday?” Twilight asked. "I have no idea what that even is! If you want to thank me just don't come back!"

“And I’m eternally grateful for your gift as well.” Rarity hugged her too. “You really are a kind pony. If you ever need me just let me know.”

“I won’t.” Twilight stood very still.

“I don’t suppose I get anything cool?” Dash asked.

“Yeah, you get twelve of my youth gummies.” Twilight pushed the other two off her with magic.

“Okay, I guess that’s fair.” Dash sighed.

“I suppose that wraps everything up.” Rarity clapped her hooves together, signaling Sweetiebot to follow. “In fact, I think all of our problems are solved now! What a happy ending all this was! I won’t keep you any longer, Twilight!”

Rarity and Sweetiebot left.

All of her problems were solved, maybe.

“Are you coming with me, Rainbow Dash?” Pinkie put the journal in her bag. “It’ll be a crazy adventure!”

“But we can still tell ponies we broke the curse even if we just don’t tell them how right?” Dash asked hopefully.

Twilight was standing behind her, looking increasingly unamused.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Pinkie shook her head. “We gotta keep this whole operation a secret!”

A secret?

This might actually be the worst possible outcome.

“I can’t afford to run around the world without getting paid.” Dash shook her head. “Did I seriously do all this for nothing?”

“No! I’ll still get you that free hayburger card.” Pinkie put a foreleg around Dash’s shoulder. “And you’ll get the satisfaction of knowing you helped make the world a better place.”

At least Dash wouldn’t starve when she got kicked out of her apartment in a couple of months. Maybe guys would be impressed by her ability to get free burgers?

Sure, she had an in with Pinkie now, but Dash had hoped this would be the end rather than the beginning.

“Yeah, I guess it wasn’t a total bust.” Dash slumped down against a tree. “Just give me a minute to be depressed about not getting a million bits.”

“Aw. Try to cheer up!” Pinkie gave her a nudge. “You can visit me any time. And you can come to my Halloween party! It’ll be great!”

Pinkie gave her a sad wave but went off to save the world or whatever.

This was the end of the road for Dash. There was no way she’d be able to climb through the ranks legitimately, that’s why she went with this crazy plan in the first place. Dash was going to be alone forever.

Even when she pulled off a miracle she still failed. Her dad was right, Dash was a loser. She was glad he was dead, if he ever found out about this, he would have never let Dash live it down.

“Well that gets rid of two of them,” Twilight muttered. “I broke up your party, now I just have to deal with you.”

That snapped Dash out of her depression. She slowly turned her head to see Twilight trotting in closer.

Twilight watched Pinkie leave before turning to Dash once she was a good distance away.

“Huh?” Dash stood up. “I thought we were done here.”

“We’re far from done!” Twilight stepped forward. “We’re only done once I’ve found a way to permanently deal with you.”

“What? I already promised I wouldn’t talk.” Dash backed up.

“No, this whole thing made me realize that I can’t take the outside world as lightly as I used to,” said Twilight. “During the first four hundred years of my life, there seemed to be no progress in the outside world at all. But now in just two hundred things have changed radically. Your technology is dramatically more advanced, you know how to open portals to the outer realm, psychics and ghosts are vastly more powerful, you can harness super-radiation, even if it’s just ‘waste’. I need a more extreme solution.”

Oh crap! Maybe this had backfired after all!

“Yeah, sure! Once you hit the industrial revolution stuff like that kind of takes off.” Dash shrugged. “But that’s no reason to— to do whatever you’re about to do. Especially not to me! I’m the biggest loser of the bunch, remember?”

“Don’t pretend like you aren’t the most dangerous of the three. No, I’ve met somepony like you before,” said Twilight. “Somepony who seems like a pathetic loser but is actually incredibly dangerous.”

“I don’t know if that’s a compliment?” Dash shrugged.

“And you ponies are trying to be all friendly and lure me out of my house! You’re exactly like the pony who stole my spellbooks! The only way to deal with somepony like you is to never let you out of my sight.”

“Well— like how am I gonna go to the bathroom then, huh?” Dash started backing away. “I should just leave and never return.”

“No.” Twilight cast a spell that froze Dash in place. “You’re not getting away that easy. The last two times you went to get help from other ponies, but this time I’ll make sure that can’t happen.”

She cast another spell. Dash staggered back as she shrank, realizing she was being transformed again.

She flailed about desperately trying to find out what she’d been turned into. She still had wings which was good, but her forelegs were missing now!

Dash turned her head to look herself over to find it could turn all the way around. She was an owl now!

“And you’re staying like that until I can find a way to resolve all of this.” Twilight went back to her books. “I guess you could try amassing an army of owls, but that’s your only option at this point.”

Hardly! She could still get Pinkie!

Dash flew out of there as fast as she could, which was awkwardly slow in her new form. She got just to the edge of the clearing, then crashed into an invisible barrier!

Some magic was keeping her here!

This one wasn’t going to be that easy.

Zombies 2: The Return of Sawmill

Dash spent an entire day flinging herself at the invisible wall that kept her stuck in this place. She tried everything she could think of, but in the end, she just collapsed exhausted. There was no way out of this as an owl.

Her next idea was to annoy the heck out of Twilight till maybe she got kicked out.

Operation annoy Twilight into submission failed miserably. Her first and only attempt to knock over one of Twilight’s potions was met with Dash being on fire. It was not easy to stop drop and roll as an owl, but Twilight managed to save her.

Twilight scolded her for being an idiot, but Dash was smart enough to not try that again. She wouldn’t touch anything else around here unless she knew what it was.

Phase two was just hooting at Twilight repeatedly but Twilight had a silence spell so that was that. The more Dash thought about this, the more she realized this plan would only ever get her vaporized. Even if she did successfully annoy Twilight, she might end up a statue or snail for two years. Maybe she should just be happy she still had wings.

But what was plan C?

Frankly, Dash didn’t have one. Her best bet was to wait for someone or something to show up. Now that the curse was gone it was only a matter of time. Pinkie was coming back eventually.

Or else she could watch Twilight, slowly learning more about magic, until she found some way to use the stuff in Twilight’s house to escape. Surely one of these mysterious objects had to be just mysterious enough to help Dash escape if she could find out what it did.

Thankfully, Twilight was willing to let Dash perch somewhere inside and watch her, not that Dash had any idea what was happening half the time. So far, Dash learned exactly zero useful things.

Four days passed with Dash stuck as an owl, simply watching Twilight work on various projects Dash hardly understood. One thing she learned was that Twilight was a total workhorse. She had a schedule from which she never varied.

She slept for six hours a day, ate for a total of one hour, and spent the other seventeen training, experimenting, or working on some project Dash didn’t understand. So far, there didn’t seem to be any other breaks or days off.

Right now, Twilight was pacing back and forth trying to overcome a problem hidden under a mountain of jargon.

“So you see, if the planar field is vibrated wide enough it’ll create a flux zone just big enough to fit it all in. Oh, you don’t think that’s a good idea because of the— of course! You’re so smart. But then how can we reverse the mithridate? Hm? No, we can’t do that, Smarty Pants. The Twi coefficient isn’t high enough to overcome the—"

This was a common sight.

‘Smarty Pants’ was the name of that terrifying-looking scarecrow Twilight kept on her couch. It was vaguely pony shaped, but had long claws made of sticks and massive, carrot sized fangs where all of its teeth should be.

Twilight spoke to it as if it could talk back all the time. She spoke to it more often than she spoke to Dash, which admittedly wasn’t very often.

The longer things went on, the more convinced she was that the scarecrow possessed no intelligence of its own and that Twilight had, in fact, gone mad from years of isolation.

Sometimes watching Twilight could be pretty interesting. But right now? Nothing interesting to look at. No crazy bubbling stuff or explosions or laser beams at all!

It was almost dark anyway; Twilight would be going to bed soon. Dash decided to fly around outside a bit, landing on one of the branches of Twilight’s treehouse.

There were some bright sides to this. Twilight still didn’t know what money was, so Dash had zero bills. Not only did she let Dash sleep in her house, but she threw Dash a huge bug every now and again which to owl Dash was delicious. She had room and board taken care of for once in her life.

Dash also got to be one of those cool horned owls, the ones with the little V’s on their faces so they always looked intense, rather than one of those stupid flat-faced ones. So it wasn’t all bad.

It was a nice cool night. The air felt fresh, her super owl hearing could pick up on the lazy river behind her, the crickets chirping, all the other little bugs. She could see and hear mice scampering about in front of Twilight’s lawn but decided to be a merciful goddess of death for now.

Everything was chill out here. Boring, but chill. She could live the simple life for a while until Pinkie came to rescue her.

She watched the sun slowly set, the stars come out and finally the lights in Twilight’s house went out. For a moment, things were so peaceful she considered falling asleep right here on the branch.

But then she heard something odd, a bug maybe. She didn’t recognize the bug’s call, maybe putting it closest to a cicada, a shrill hum. It sounded far away, deep in the woods off towards the lake, but loud enough for the noise to carry for miles. Dash was imagining a huge insect out there somewhere.

She turned to watch that direction, hoping whatever horrible monster was out there wasn’t heading her way. But of course it was!

That shrill noise returned, louder and closer than before! This time, after it had finished, she heard a crack, a creak, and a crash.

Did that bug just knock over a tree?!

Yep! There was something out there that could knock over trees.

There was an endless list of monsters that could knock over a tree, but the list of things Dash could fight ended fairly quickly. Right now, Dash was an absolute powerhouse against mice, but that was the extent of it.

She didn’t hear that sound again, but it wasn’t long before she could hear something large moving through the forest, still a good deal away. Its heavy footsteps crunched branches as it drew closer.

Okay! That was enough simple living for now!

Dash decided to go back to civilization, or the closest thing which was Twilight’s house. The bedroom window was open, so Dash flew right up and perched on the windowsill. She turned her head all the way around, something she was great at now, and saw Twilight sleeping peacefully on her bed.

Twilight was the single most invincible thing in existence! Whatever it was surely could not get past her. If it attacked, all Dash had to do was cower behind the witch. Easy.

Dash twisted her head to look back outside. She could see something shambling about outside. Still too far away to tell exactly what it was, she could tell it was maybe roughly the size of a pony. It was moving slow as heck too, almost like a zombie.

But something told Dash this wasn’t a zombie. Her gut feeling was that this thing was dangerous.

Dash turned her head 180 to check on Twilight, still sleeping silently through all of this. Her alarm system would only go off if something crawled into her house. Then Dash turned her head back.

It was gone! Dash looked all over the yard, but there was no sign of the monster at all.

So it was actually super-fast? Where had it gone? Could it turn invisible and also perfectly silent?

She was getting more concerned now. But as long as Twilight was here, she should be safe.

Then a vision of something horrible snatching her out of the window popped into Dash's mind. Nope! Standing watch was not worth it

Dash flew into the bedroom, landing right next to Twilight in her bed, pressing up against the unicorn’s side. She gave a few loud hoots, but it didn’t wake her up. That stupid idiot made it so Dash’s hoots would be silent while she was asleep.

All she could do was hide for now. So stupid!

That crunching noise was right by the house now. It was still out there. One thing Dash knew was that Twilight had a security spell that alerted her whenever something came inside. That would wake her up, but only if it came inside.

Dash could hear the thing circle around the house, settling into a pattern. It’d take a few steps until it got to a window or door, then paw at it a few times before moving to the next one.

Those footsteps sounded a bit like hooves too. Maybe it was a pony?

She flew over to the window once more, hoping to maybe get a look at it. As soon as she did, the thing attacked! A rock flew straight at her with enormous speed, enough to dig into the ceiling.

Dash reflexively flew back to the safety of Twilight before it could attack again. Twilight briefly sat up from the noise of the rock hitting, but she very quickly fell back asleep. She did turn over and grab Dash in a hug before doing so, cuddling Dash like a pillow.

Whatever awkward situation this would lead to tomorrow would have to take a back seat. Right now, Dash would take being Twilight’s makeshift pillow.

Looking up at the ceiling, she could see the sharp rock dug in deep. Yeah, that rock had been sharpened into an arrowhead. If that hit her, she would have been dead.

Everything became silent again, the pony, or whatever it was, just stood there.

An hour passed.

Then almost two.

Dash knew darn well that thing was still out there in that exact spot. She could easily imagine it, a pony standing out there in the darkness just staring up at the window, perfectly still, perfectly silent, waiting for Dash to peek her head out again.

Finally, after two endless hours, it confirmed to Dash that it had just been standing there the whole time. The hoofsteps came back, but now they headed off towards the forest.

Whatever freak crawled out of the forest crawled back in. Dash was relieved, but hardly enough to fall asleep any time soon.

Dash spent the rest of the night being mercilessly cuddled by a relatively giant pony. At least this meant whatever was outside couldn’t get her. Dash felt just safe again to get maybe two hours of sleep. Then Twilight woke up.

An hour before dawn, the same time she always woke up, Twilight sat up, the lights turning back on, holding Dash tight. She looked around the room, eyes half opened as she stroked Dash gently. Then she realized that her pillow had feathers and looked down to see a pair of eyes looking back up at her.

In a panic, Twilight threw Dash forward. Dash was able to wake up in time and flew over to the other side of the room, sitting on her perch.

“Ack!” Twilight stumbled backward. “Did you sneak into my bed?! Is this one of your schemes?”

“Who.”

“A likely story!” Twilight put her hat on in a huff. “This is your next plan, isn’t it? To be so lewd I have no choice but to send you away! Well, why don’t you go find another owl to sleep with?”

Was Dash attracted to boy owls now? She did like bugs. Though maybe it was best to just never find out.

As Twilight got ready to go back downstairs, Dash looked up at the rock that nearly killed her last night. It’d actually been a rusty metal shard. Clearly not from some animal.

Dash hooted a few times, flying up near the shard, but Twilight had already been trained to ignore her hooting. As much as Dash wanted to tell Twilight about last night, she really couldn’t. Writing with talons was a lot harder than writing with a hoof.

Maybe it was far away now or maybe it would only come out at night. Dash wasn’t going to take a chance.

Today was not going to be a good day to fly around the small patch of forest Dash had access to. Thankfully, Twilight didn’t seem to mind Dash riding around on her back so long as she was quiet. Dash perched on the witch’s back and closed her eyes, intending to get some actual sleep. Twilight ignored the owl nesting on her back as she went about her business.

With the sun back up and Twilight right there, Dash managed to slowly drift back to sleep.

She had no idea what time it was when she woke up, but it was the middle of the day. For an owl, the light brought her a surprising amount of comfort. Dash wasn’t entirely sure how far her owl instincts went.

Twilight was busy because she was always busy. Today she was working on her scarecrow. She had a huge chunk of its chest ripped out with a metal bar placed across the gap like the hole might snap shut otherwise.

She had a row of sticks carved into carrot-sized, gnarly teeth like the ones in its mouth that she was enchanting with a green, but unfamiliar, spell. She fixed each of these to the sides of the gap in the chest, giving it the appearance of a second mouth by the time she was done.

She took out a crystal that pulsated with a green light, growing quickly brighter and dimmer.

Twilight buried this in some straw and restuffed Smarty Pants’ chest with this bundle.

The chest snapped shut like a mouth, destroying the metal bar. Smarty Pants stood up and took a few steps around the room with no clear intelligence before stopping and standing perfectly still.

“Now then!” Twilight announced to her scarecrow, rather than Dash. “We know that other ponies will inevitably find this place before I can finish my next curse. There wasn’t much need for you for the past couple hundred years, but now I have use for you as a guardian once more! I’ll have to create an entire army of monsters to keep my house safe.”

Twilight nodded as if it was talking back.

“No, we can do that later,” said Twilight. “For now, you have to go back outside.”

At this point, Dash kind of wished Twilight would have these one-sided conversations with her instead of the scarecrow. She was one step up from furniture, at least, and would take a lecture over a cold shoulder.

Twilight trotted outside with her scarecrow in tow.

“You should scare away the vast majority of ponies!” Twilight sounded excited about the idea. “Once they know such a dangerous golem is over here nopony will want to go snooping around my house.”

This plan totally wouldn’t work. The scarecrow was only going to draw more attention to the area.

It was like that one guy who dressed up like a mummy to try and scare everypony away from his buried treasure. Problem was that the second word got out about a real-life mummy shambling about every news station, amateur photographer, adventurer and mummy hunter in the nation flocked to that town.

The economy boomed from the massive crowds, then crashed horribly after a group of kids discovered the truth, unmasking the ‘mummy’.

Monsters were pony magnets.

Dash would have told her all that if she could speak.

“Who,” was all she said instead.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Twilight responded to Dash this time. “I’m setting her aggression levels to the lowest possible level. She’ll only attack somepony who’s exceptionally determined and will never resort to lethal force.”

When she did talk to Dash, she attributed a lot of meaning to Dash’s hoots, usually the wrong meaning.

Twilight set her scarecrow up on its poll, giving it a wistful look.

“I— I’ll miss you!” Twilight teared up a little at the thought of her scarecrow being just a few yards away. “But it’s only for a while! And I’ll come to visit.”

Dash felt bad for Twilight sometimes. Dash thought she was lonely, but this was advanced loneliness.

Twilight gave Smarty Pants one last reassuring pat before trotting back inside.

They didn’t even get inside before the scarecrow made a guttural growl and jumped off its pole. From the forest, Dash heard heavy footsteps crunching sticks as it approached.

“Looks like we get to test Smarty Pants out sooner than I thought.” Twilight cast a spell to make her and Dash invisible, turning around to watch the scene unfold.

Another pony slowly walked out of the woods, a huge guy. Standing upright he’d have to be over six feet tall.

He was wearing clothes, a tattered jacket, and a sack with eyeholes cut out of it over his head like a mask. Maybe it was another slayer after all? Some of them liked to wear masks. But the way he was walking made Dash think he was drunk at best, undead at worst. Dash resisted the urge to fly over to his side.

No, Dash was sure this was the thing she’d heard lumbering about last night. There were a lot of monsters that could be mistaken for ponies, so she still couldn’t be sure what it was.

Smarty Pants walked towards the stallion, the mouth on its chest opening slightly with drool slobbering out of it, but he wasn’t deterred. It unhinged its jaw, flipping the entire top of its head back to reveal a semicircle of carrot sized fangs. Its chest opened up to reveal a second, even larger mouth.

The screeching noise it made sure would be enough to make a normal pony run for it. Even Dash found herself digging into Twilight’s fur with her talons.

But the intruder was unfazed. He took another step forward.

That triggered Smarty Pants’ attack mode! The scarecrow plunged its forelegs into the ground. Thick roots with sharp tips shot up from the ground under the stallion, impaling him twenty times over including one that went through the bottom of the jaw and came out one of his ears.

That was ‘minimum aggression’?!

Twilight stood very still, letting her invisibility wear off so she could turn back to see Dash looking at her as sternly as an owl could look at a pony.

“Okay! That was a little more aggression than I intended.” Twilight held her hat down tight and ran forward. “But I can still save him! Maybe!”

Twilight had to hold her nose when she got close because that buck stank. He was covered in festering wounds, a small bit of rib showed through his blue coat. Neither of his eyes had any real look of life behind them.

Recent events made Dash worry slightly, but it was still most likely a normal, harmless zombie.

But then again, there was a lake nearby.

“Oh!” Twilight laughed in relief. “It was just a zombie. That’s why Smarty Pants killed without hesitation. Well, it’s good she’ll keep zombies from annoying me.”

Twilight made a gesture and Smarty Pants retracted the roots. The zombie fell limp to the ground.

Twilight turned to leave, but Dash swiveled her head around to watch the zombie just in case. If this was the worst-case scenario, you didn’t want to take your eyes off this thing for a second.

Sure enough, Dash watched with welling concern as it slowly got back up. Dash hooted and scratched Twilight’s back, prompting Twilight to turn back and watch in surprise as the zombie took another step forward.

Right then Dash already knew the truth, that this was a psycho zombie! This was the absolute worst kind of zombie you could ever run into!

It must have come out of the lake when the seal breaker activated. Why hadn’t somepony left a sign?! Dash was pretty sure you could go to jail for not leaving a sign.

Smarty Pants attacked with the next level of aggression. The roots shot up impaling it from below, then a second wave came up at an angle from the right and a third at an angle from the left. This time, the end of the roots turned into hooks once they broke through the zombie. They all retracted quickly, tearing it to bits that collapsed in a pile on the ground.

“Huh.” Twilight tilted her head but didn’t look at all concerned about the situation. “Weird. That first attack should have killed it. Oh well, it’s clearly dead now.”

That absolutely was not going to be enough to take out a psycho zombie! Literally nothing was! Not even completely vaporizing it would keep a psycho zombie down.

Did Twilight not know that or something? They were exceedingly rare so it was possible.

Dash tried to warn Twilight. She flew in front of the witch’s face and repeatedly hooted as urgently as she could.

“I don’t speak owl!” Twilight waved Dash away with a hoof. “Which is the entire point of turning you into one.”

Behind Twilight, Dash could see the psycho zombie already getting up. The parts of its body snapped back together as easily as one might stand up.

Dash flew in its direction, taking Twilight’s attention with her.

“What?” Twilight looked more curious than afraid. “Is this some other type of undead? I’ve never seen one with regenerative abilities on this level.”

It was true that no zombie ever really died, though they would take endless years to regenerate underneath the earth, which was how they came bursting out of the ground every so often.

One of the main differences with these guys was that they were linked to water rather than earth. Dash didn’t know all the sciencey stuff, but that meant that no matter what you did to them they could come right out of the water immediately after.

Now Smarty Pants went to maximum aggression mode.

More roots came out from Smarty Pants’ back, only this time they were dripping with acid. The roots impaled it repeatedly, the acid dissolving large parts of the zombie and the ground when it dripped down. All the while, Smarty Pants moved forward, its chest mouth open wide and dripping with the same acid.

Smarty Pants jumped forward and bit down, taking off the psycho zombie’s head and burning most of the rest of it to the bone in a single bite.

The zombie shrugged off the attack even faster this time. It pulled back a hoof and punched Smarty Pants with enough force to make Dash’s feathers stand up. The scarecrow went sailing clean over the house and into the river.

“Smarty Pants!” Twilight called after the scarecrow-like it was an actual person.

She ran after her doll, ignoring both the zombie and Dash. Good to know where her priorities lay. Dash managed to grab onto her back to not get left behind. She wasn’t sure what the best plan here was, because going with Twilight meant losing sight of the psycho zombie as they went around the corner, though Dash could see it mostly back to normal already.

Twilight eagerly fished the scarecrow out of the water with her magic, letting out a sigh of relief when she saw it was still able to move around a little.

Her resolve was short-lived as a loud sound came from around the other side of the house. Dash knew what she’d heard last night now. It was a chainsaw!

Twilight reacted just in time to duck under the chainsaw as it swung at her. The zombie was right next to them! Twilight threw it a good distance away with her magic, but it got right back up.

That was problems two and three right there. They could teleport and they really, really wanted to kill ponies.

A distorted portal opened on his left side and a second chainsaw floated next to him. Both the chainsaws looked ancient, their blades made more of rust than metal. Each chainsaw was at the end of a long, rusted chain that he could swing it from.

The number of psycho zombies in the world was maybe ten, so all of them were named. There was one famous for lugging around chainsaws attached to rusty chains like this. Sawmill. This had to be him.

Dash jumped up and down on Twilight’s hat. She landed before the witch and pointed at Sawmill, hooting repeatedly.

“Yeah! I see it!” Twilight rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Are you making fun of me or something? I assure you even a zombie with regeneration powers isn’t a match for me.”

Twilight stepped heroically in front of the damaged Smarty Pants.

“You stay back, Smarty Pants. I’ll take it from here.”

Sawmill let out the sound a drowned pony trying to scream might make and threw his chainsaws.

One of them was aimed at Dash who just barely flew out of the way thanks to her smooth reflexes. Those chainsaws moved fast!

The one aimed at Dash tore into a tree behind her all the way up to the hilt. It got jammed but left a crack that went all the way up the tree. It yanked it out with the chain and the thing came screaming back at them.

Twilight managed to catch the chainsaw an inch in front of her face and threw it to the side.

Twilight launched a fireball at it. Maybe calling it a fire boulder would have been more accurate. That thing was five times larger than Twilight herself. Dash felt the heat from it even standing behind Twilight.

Sawmill’s strength as a psycho zombie was immense. It managed to hold its ground for a few seconds, though his costume burnt away instantly, and he caught on fire. The ground nearby lit up as the zombie struggled against the attack.

But soon enough the fireball won out and swept Sawmill away. The psycho zombie was thrown helplessly into the air, the fireball carrying him higher and higher. Once it was a great distance up, the fireball exploded with a deafening roar.

Dash watched as the fire died down. There was no sign of anything left of Sawmill. Twilight likely vaporized the body.

It sure looked impressive, but Dash knew all Twilight accomplished was destroying a patch of her lawn. Even that regrew a second later with a spell from Twilight. If anything, that made it worse because now it could come from any direction, moving fast as all get out.

“Just to be double sure.” Twilight closed her eyes and muttered something under her breath.

When she opened them again, a torrent of green lightning bolts fired up at the cloud of smoke that still lingered in the air. Maybe they targeted the largest pieces of ash left over from Sawmill? Twilight didn’t bother to explain.

She looked awful satisfied with her job and went to tend to Smarty Pants.

Dash swiveled her head from the north side of the forest to the south repeatedly, hoping to catch Sawmill when he came back. Psycho zombies were no faster than normal ones when you were looking at them, but the moment you turned away they became insanely fast and gained the ability to teleport.

It could be hours, or it could be seconds.

When Dash wasn’t looking, a huge splash came from the river next to them. Seconds it was.

Sawmill came leaping high out of the water, both chainsaws returned to him, both roaring. He swung them, at the end of their chains, intending to slash at Twilight’s neck on his way down.

In a panic, Twilight grabbed him with her magic and slammed him down into the ground a few meters away with enough force to kill a normal pony. The chainsaws missed, swinging harmlessly in the air.

“But I completely vaporized it!” Twilight bit her lip as she watched Sawmill get up yet again.

Dash hooted. If only there had been an owl that could have told her that wouldn’t work in advance.

“I said be quiet!” Twilight snapped. Then she bit her lip, trying to think of how to deal with this.

Surely eventually she’d turn Dash back and ask what she knew.

Instead Twilight cast a spell turning the psycho zombie to stone, petrifying it instantly. Then a second spell summoned vines from the forest to pull it out of sight and bury it in plant matter.

Twilight watched it for a good ten minutes before relaxing.

“There!” Twilight closed her eyes, satisfied this would work. “That takes care of that.”

Also no way that would be enough. That’d stall it for a little bit, maybe until sunset, maybe even a few days, but not long. There really was no way to stop one of these things, just stall them for various lengths of time.

Dash made a few more fruitless hoots. Clearly Twilight wasn’t interested in listening to Dash’s warnings, so Dash instead committed to staying in constant physical contact with her until Twilight realized the actual threat level of that thing.

She landed on Twilight’s back and Twilight brought all three of them back inside.

For now, Twilight seemed more interested in Sawmill’s chainsaw than Sawmill himself.

“This is such an impractical looking weapon.” Twilight held the chainsaw up. “It’s needlessly more complex than a sword and yet I imagine it’d be even less effective. Do you ponies really fight with these nowadays?”

Dash hooted.

“I see.” Twilight lowered it again. “Maybe you’re right. It could have some special use case in combat I’m not aware of. Maybe it’s for breaking through a certain type of armor.”

Dash wished she could roll her eyes at Twilight’s one-sided conversations. She tried turning her head upside down, but it wasn’t the same.

“At any rate, it’s not magical so studying it is a waste of my time.” Twilight either vaporized it or sent it somewhere with a small burst of fire. Dash couldn’t tell. “But I’ll have to put studying that zombie on my to-do list. I think it might be a self-focusing materialization system, but…”

Twilight started muttering to herself. She took out her ‘to do’ list. That thing was fifteen volumes long, so it’d be a while. Dash hoped at least half of that was already checked off. Though if Twilight was going to be eternally young maybe she’d eventually get through it all.

“There!” Twilight finished marking it off. “Now back to work!”

Twilight took some green slime out of her cauldron and put it in twenty different beakers, casting a different spell on each of them in turn and writing down the results.

Dash didn’t bother trying to figure out what the buck was going on with that. She kept her eyes trained in the direction where Sawmill was currently restrained. She tried to get some more sleep for now. She’d need to stay up all night long.

Twilight yawned.

The sun went down hours ago but nothing bad happened yet. It was 10:30 at night, around when Twilight started to get ready for bed. Dash swore if that thing got out right after Twilight went to bed, she was going to be so miffed!

“Another productive day!” Twilight announced that every day. At least every day Dash had been here.

Dash hooted and pointed towards where Sawmill was restrained with her wing, trying to warn her one last time.

“I told you to stop making fun of me!” Twilight grumbled. “I beat that thing, okay?”

Dash hooted again, but Twilight ignored it with a grumble. She started up the stairs but stopped.

One of her bells rang. That was what alerted Twilight to an intruder in her house.

It was inside!

Twilight and Dash stood perfectly still as they listened to the back door creaking open.

“What?!” Twilight teleported to the source of the noise, thankfully taking Dash with her.

If it was Sawmill, he was already gone.

Twilight cast the same spell she found Dash with ages ago, an ethereal image of Sawmill appearing.

“But that’s impossible! How?!”

It shuffled into the room and creepily glanced at where Twilight and Dash had just been before shuffling towards the door. Once it was there, the image broke apart, crumbling like it was made of sand.

“Hold on! The image broke?” Twilight scratched her ear. “But that means it can either teleport or move at supersonic speeds.”

Good to know moving supersonic meant Twilight couldn’t track her, but Dash already knew Sawmill could teleport.

“How else could I track it? Let’s see.” Twilight cast another spell.

A small wisp of green light appeared before her. It flew right behind them and into a nearby closet, which it then began to circle. The two stared at the closet as a slight rumbling noise came from inside.

“Oh. Right.” Twilight’s eye twitched. “Because it never left.”

Twilight narrowed her eyes and got ready, summoning a dozen arrows made of lightning before opening the door.

She opened the door, but nothing was there.

This was the point where a normal pony would die because Sawmill appeared right behind the two of them with his chainsaws roaring.

Twilight, however, sensed the movement somehow and dragged herself forward with her own magic. Dash turned her head around to see the chainsaw narrowly miss.

Twilight spun around to see Sawmill lurch forward and slam his chainsaw into the ground. Dash felt the impact of that because those guys hit hard! The entire house shook, floorboards coming up and tripping Twilight.

The two of them stumbled back and fell into the closet that Sawmill had been trapped inside of moments ago.

Dash resolved to constantly watch Twilight’s back from now on! Only Twilight immediately shook Dash off her back. Dash repeatedly hooted at her in anger, trying to get that stupid witch to finally listen to her.

“Is now really the best time to mock me?! I’m the one keeping you alive you know!” Twilight snapped at Dash.

What was she supposed to do?

Dash shook her head.

“What? You mean you’re not making fun of me?” Twilight asked, still looking skeptical.

Did she actually get the message this time?

Dash shook her head.

“Then what have you been trying to say?”

Dash hooted and pointed towards where Sawmill had just been. For now, he was quiet again.

After a particularly long frown, Twilight finally relented.

“Alright, fine. I’ll turn you back. But only for a little bit!”

Twilight cast the spell and Dash turned back! The two of them were smushed together in the closet, but Dash finally got back onto her four feet.

“Bleh. Bluh.” Dash stretched out her lips. “This is way better than having a beak.”

“You better have something important to say,” Twilight sounded serious.

“Oh, right! I recognize that type of monster.” Dash put a hoof over her chest. “It’s a psycho zombie! These things are seriously bad news, Twilight! Ponies have been looking for a way to destroy or permanently contain them for hundreds of years and nothing works. They just keep coming after you, for years if they have to, and nothing you do will ever stop them for good.”

“That’s not exactly useful information. There’s gotta be some way to stop one,” said Twilight.

“Well hypothetically ending the curse of undeath would get rid of them,” said Dash. “But barring that, you can get rid of them for a long time by putting them to sleep.”

“Right! Sleep spell!” Twilight opened the closet door to find Sawmill was still standing there like a creep.

That spell was intense enough that Dash yawned even from over here. Yet Sawmill was undeterred. It started walking slowly towards the two of them. Dash kept staring right at it to slow the thing down.

“It didn’t work!” Twilight teleported back.

“You didn’t let me finish! They don’t just go to sleep like a normal pony, there’s a very specific way to make them fall asleep.”

“And what’s that?”

“Well our best bet would be to use the lake,” said Dash. “There’s a few ways to do it. Tying it up with chains and throwing it in a lake is one of them. You can put it to sleep once it’s there. That should last for years, maybe even decades.”

Sawmill got close, but Twilight shoved him to the other side of the room with a magic blast.

“A lake?” Twilight asked. “What’s that?”

“How do you not know what a lake is?!”

“It must have nothing to do with magic.” Twilight shook her head. “Do you have one in your bag?”

“'Do I have a lake in my bag?' asks the wisest among us.” Dash groaned. “There’s a big lake like a mile away from here. How have you lived here for so long and never seen it?!”

“Because obviously it has nothing to do with magic! I don’t have time to waste searching for whatever a lake is.”

Sawmill’s chainsaws started up again. He was pulling back, getting ready to throw one. Twilight returned fire with a bolt of electricity that set Sawmill flying far off into the darkness of night.

“Look, we just follow the river north and we’ll get to Twilight Lake,” said Dash. “They even named the thing after you.”

Twilight kept frowning at Dash, unsure whether to believe the pegasus. A chainsaw tore through the wall next to her, still spinning inches away from her but Twilight barely reacted to it.

“Okay, fine!” Twilight relented. “We’ll try. The magnetic pull on you is actually set to me so If I leave you can go with me.”

Twilight first went to Smarty Pants to reactivate her. The scarecrow jumped back up, bounded outside and lunged at Sawmill.

The scarecrow tackled the zombie, impaling him with wooden spikes to the ground. It looked like the two of them would be there a while this time. The two ponies were able to get away easily for now.

They ran off through the clearing and up to where the woods began. Twilight stopped right before the forest began. She was frozen in place, looking at the ground.

Dash trotted back to her and waved a hoof in front of her face.

“Hello?” Dash asked. “Is there a problem or something?”

“Um!” Twilight bit her lip.

“What? You’re not like, stuck here because of some magical barrier powered by your own self-loathing, are you?” Dash asked.

“I can leave whenever I want, it’s just—“

“Just what?” Dash tilted her head.

“Nothing!” Twilight closed her eyes and took a few steps forward. “There! See?”

Twilight gave a big smile, then continued forward with her head down. Dash followed, a bit skeptical.

Twilight looked far more nervous than she normally did. Her ears were pinned down flat the whole way there. She’d look around at each rock and tree they passed like each one might be plotting to kill her. Why the crow would Twilight be scared of anything ever?

Dash wasn’t exactly Twilight’s number one fan, but she couldn’t help but feel bad.

“Oh, you want to hear something interesting?” Dash asked, trying to cheer her up a bit. “About psycho zombies?”

“Interesting?” Twilight’s attention snapped over to Dash.

“Yeah! They used to be called Whimbleshire zomzoms cause that’s where the first one was found,” said Dash. “Problem is, with a name like that ponies tended to take them not so serious, yeah? So they changed the name to psycho zombie and that change ended up saving like 200 lives a year or something. Still, Nailbat and his buddies think that name is offensive to the mentally challenged or whatever and want to turn it back despite knowing it’ll kill ponies.”

Twilight listened with a curious look, but more like the type where you were waiting for the other pony to get to the point.

“Couldn’t you call them slaughter zombies or something like that?” Twilight finally asked when she realized there was no point.

“Sure! But I think both sides of the debate are dug in at this point, you know?”

“I still don’t understand what that thing was or where it came from,” Twilight spoke up, her voice was a little unsteady.

“Most ponies blame it on you, actually. That curse seems to come up with new rules all the time.” Dash looked over at Twilight, but she didn’t have much of a reaction to that. “They appear to come from ponies who die as a direct result of two teenagers, neither of which is the future zombie, having sex.”

“What? But how is that possible? How can some other pony having sex kill you?”

“Look, there’s a reason these things are incredibly rare. It’s also why in sex ed they make you watch videos of ponies being brutally eviscerated by a zombie killer.”

“I feel like I need at least one example of how this is even possible.”

“Okay. Well in the PSA they made us watch there was this teenage couple, yeah? They were on a Ferris wheel making out and the colt is all ‘Wait! What about various risk factors like unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease and unstoppable psycho killer zombies?’ but the filly just keeps pressing him and—"

“Whoa! Wait! What’s that?!” Twilight’s eyes widened at something that was apparently more interesting.

The witch ran straight over to the side of the lake and jumped into a part that was only a foot deep or so and marveled at the enormity of it. That river wasn’t exactly wide, but Twilight Lake stretched far off into the distance.

“This part of the river is huge!” Twilight tapped her hoof on top of the water, sending a blue wave across the surface. “It’s so much deeper here too.”

“This is the lake!” Dash swept a hoof over the view. “Did you really not wonder where the water for that river came from?”

“I thought it was rain.” Twilight dipped her hoof into the lake, surprised to see it wasn’t moving anywhere.

“I guess technically those are both right.” Dash shrugged as Twilight wadded deeper. “I wouldn’t go playing in this water though. There’re all kinds of nasty— ah, who am I kidding? You’ll be fine.”

It was a little surreal watching this ancient being splashing around in the water. Twilight was so enamored with the lake she seemingly forgot they were being chased by an unstoppable monster.

Dash picked up a stone and skipped it across the water, Twilight stopping in surprise to watch it. She tried picking up her own stone and doing the same thing, but couldn’t pull it off. So that was one thing Dash had over Twilight.

As always, Twilight was suddenly distracted by this new mystery.

“Just remember that guy can show up anywhere at any moment!” Dash called out to her. “Even out of the water.”

“Oh! Right.” Twilight came trudging out of the water, soaked.

“Yeah and we’ve seen him enough times that he can teleport behind us and kill us outright so we gotta sit back to back while we wait.” Dash sat down with her back to the lake.

Twilight sat down with her back against Dash’s.

“We should probably create shields too.” Twilight enveloped herself with an undoubtedly unbreakable forcefield.

She waited a moment before turning to Dash.

“Do you not have any powers that can—"

“No.” Dash let out a harsh sigh.

Dash heard a splash from the lake and immediately after the clatter of something hitting Twilight’s shield. The force from the blow pushed both Twilight and Dash back at once. She spun around to see a chainsaw striking it, letting out red sparks as its momentum slowly died down.

Sawmill was there, standing in the water.

Twilight cast a spell to disintegrate the chainsaw, then summoned the iron chains. She threw them at Sawmill, but he ducked down.

It went back in the water by itself! Meaning they no longer had a line of sight!

Immediately Dash felt a tug on her tail and turned just in time to see Sawmill gripping it with his teeth. Sawmill swung Dash around with her tail then threw her, sent her sailing into the air.

Had she not been a pegasus, the landing would have killed her for sure! But she managed to slow herself down with her wings just enough to land without breaking any legs.

She was way off from the lake but getting back should be easy enough.

Dash dusted herself off and stood up to see Sawmill standing just a few feet away from her.

Dang it! Twilight must have looked away from him for a second!

Sawmill swung a chainsaw at her, but Dash jumped back, careful not to take her eyes off of him.

Okay! Dash could do this! Back in high school, they made you watch all kinds of educational videos explaining how to deal with psycho zombie killers and the like.

The rule was: alligators run zigzag; psycho zombies run backwards. You had to be fifteen pony lengths away from it or it would just appear in front of you the second you turned around. Dash just had to run back towards where Twilight was, watch out for him throwing his chainsaws.

Sawmill dragged his chainsaws across the ground, not turning them on, as he slowly walked towards Dash. Dash was getting further away from Sawmill but running backwards in the Everfree wasn’t generally a good idea.

Sure enough, Dash bumped into something soft and furry behind her.

“Twilight?” Dash asked as if she’d ever get that lucky.

A low growl answered her.

Bad position. She could see Sawmill creeping up in front of her. Dash had no choice but to turn around and see what she was up against.

Zombie Bear!

The undead bear lifted its claws, ready to strike Dash down.

A chainsaw roared and burst through the bear’s chest from behind.

Sawmill had teleported behind the bear. He lifted it into the air with his chainsaw, then threw it off to the side, slicing it in half in the process.

He brought both chainsaws back and slashed hard at Dash’s head. Dash didn’t get out of the way in time!

She felt the chainsaw tear into her!

But only a little. Only her ears got hit.

She opened her eyes to see Sawmill getting pulled back into the darkness by chains that had wrapped around him.

Twilight finally decided to show up. She seemed to struggle slightly to keep him inside the magic chains but didn’t dare take her eyes off of him.

Dash felt blood running down the side of her head, the wound bleeding badly. She saw her ear, or at least part of it, on the ground. A shot of panic went through her, but she reminded herself that Twilight could fix it! If she could turn Dash into an owl, she could fix a busted ear.

Dash pressed her hoof hard against the wound and flew to Twilight’s side.

If something teleported behind Twilight, Dash was going to die.

Twilight swung Sawmill around and threw him down into the lake. Sawmill popped up one more time, throwing his chainsaw at Twilight and dragging it along the ground as he pulled it back with its chain. Twilight just summoned another enormous set of chains and dropped them all on the guy, pushing him underwater.

“Now what?” Twilight yelled back at Dash. She could see from the turbulent surface of the water that Sawmill was still struggling.

Dash came limping on over, holding her bleeding wound.

“Now we can put him to sleep,” said Dash. “But put a seal up too!”

Twilight cast the same sleep spell from before and now the waters grew calm. She put her hooves on the surface of the water and created a seal, a pattern of blue light cascading over the water and nearby land.

It seemed like things were over, everything growing calm, and they were for now.

“You’re bleeding really bad.” Twilight looked Dash over with concern.

“Yeah. Hey, I know you don’t like people asking you for magical favors but I’m feeling kind of woozy right now.”

Twilight cast a spell that covered Dash in green sparkles. Suddenly her ear was back and her urge to pass out and die was gone.

"Hey, thanks!” Dash pumped her hoof out to Twilight. “I really appreciate it!”

“Sure.” Twilight rolled her eyes.

"Hey! Don’t be like that! We just beat a psycho zombie! One of the toughest monsters there is! We should be stoked!”

Dash was stoked anyway!

“Is it gone?” Twilight asked. “It got out of being stoned.”

“Even this will only hold him for a few years. You know, unless somepony stupidly comes along and undoes the seal a little later on.” Dash stared into the lake. Saying that out loud gave her a bad taste. “Maybe we should put a sign up just in case.”

“I do want to study this creature.” Twilight stared into the lake. “But later. I have more important things to do first and this gave me an idea. Let’s go back.”

Twilight started back and Dash quickly followed.

“And what idea is that?” Dash asked.

“I won’t tell you something like that.”

Dash sighed and kept following.

“Though I am curious.” Twilight turned to Dash about halfway back. “Why didn’t you try to escape in the confusion?”

“Huh?” Dash hit her forehead. She totally could have done that!

“I see. So you really are just an idiot.”

“Hey, at least I know what a lake is,” said Dash. “I still don’t get how you can be so ignorant. Have you really never left this place?”

“It’s true. This was the first time I ever left the clearing. I was raised in this building. The only thing I was ever taught was magic. From the time I could talk I did nothing but get drilled in magic lessons all day every day. There was no time to go anywhere else.” Twilight stopped as they got back to the clearing. “Actually the first time I ever went outside, into this clearing, was when I was maybe thirty.”

“Really? You spent your whole childhood locked in this place?” Dash shook her head. “It’s messed up somepony would do that to you.”

“Do that to me?” Twilight tilted her head, her bells chiming. “I don’t know what you mean. I have near-infinite magic power thanks to my training.”

“Yeah, I guess that is kinda cool. Who trained you anyway?” Dash asked. “They must have been crazy good.”

“Well of course it was—" Twilight stopped just in front of the door before she revealed the name of her master. Her eyes narrowed on Dash. “Wait. No. This is something you can use against me, isn’t it?”

“Is it? I wasn’t thinking that at all!” Dash held up her hooves.

“Then why were you asking?”

“I just feel kind of bad for you all of a sudden,” said Dash. “Guess I was the total opposite of you in some ways. Spent ninety percent of my time running around town or in the woods to get away from my stupid parents and that house. Kinda surprised I’m still alive considering all the stupidly dangerous stuff I used to do.”

“Used to.” Twilight deadpanned.

“Yeah! Like this one time tried to impress this colt I liked by shooting down one of those terror wasps nests with a musket.” Dash put a hoof on her chest. “I still think it was totally awesome, but he ended up going out with some cheerleader instead. Bleck. Every time I try to impress a colt, I end up getting cucked.”

“Musket? Cheerleader?” Twilight tapped her head. “You know what, don’t tell me. It’s probably not related to magic.”

“Nah, but don’t you ever get curious?” Dash asked. “I mean, whoever trained you so hard doesn’t seem to be keeping you here anymore. You could leave whenever you want, right?”

“I like magic and I can do magic here,” said Twilight. “Anything outside would just distract me and waste my time.”

“Well, what if you like other stuff? You’d never know if you never try, right?”

“I thought of that.” Twilight went back to her cauldron as Dash lay down on the couch. “But then I thought one step ahead. Even if there was a ninety-nine percent chance of me liking whatever I tried, that’s still lower than the hundred percent chance of me enjoying studying magic. So it’s only logical for me to only study magic.”

“Huh.” Dash stared up at the ceiling. “That is pretty logical.”

It still felt a little off.

“Okay! But what if there’s something you like more than studying magic, huh?” Dash rolled onto her side. “You could be missing out on that mystery thing. You know, like that lake! You seemed to like that. Are you seriously happy doing nothing but training for no reason all day?”

“I’m happy as long as nopony bothers me.”

“Are you sure? You don’t look that happy to me. I’ve never seen you smile.”

“Maybe that’s just because you’re here.”

“Oh, please! I bet this is the happiest you’ve been in years. You’re way too chatty for a pony who hates talking.”

“That’s a good point,” said Twilight. “I am talking to you too much.”

Twilight poofed Dash back into an owl. Lying down as an owl was much less comfortable, so Dash quickly flailed about before taking to the air.

Dash landed on the little pole Twilight had for her. Ignoring Dash, Twilight went back to her work.

She was still going back to work after all that? Dash just wanted to goof off and take a nap.

It looked like Dash would be here for a while. She decided to watch Twilight a bit longer before sleeping. Maybe Dash could learn something about magic?

Twilight went over to her cauldron, filled with some thick, green slime, not super-radioactive waste.

Twilight took out this big old centipede, which in Dash’s owl brain looked nice and tasty, and dipped it inside. When she took it back out, the bug looked like it was now made of solid glass. Twilight took out a small spyglass and started looking it over.

While the centipede was mostly crystal there were a few specks of pink inside it, which Twilight focused on intently. Dash wondered what those were for. If only she could ask.

Twilight looked over at Dash with an unamused glare.

Dash gave a hoot. She wasn’t doing anything. Normally Twilight didn’t mind as long as she just sat there.

Twilight went back to her work. She grumbled, then crushed the glass centipede to dust, saving the pink specks. Then Twilight went to get another bug, Dash secretly hoping one of those was for her.

The witch held up a tasty looking beetle the size of a mouse, its deliciously crunchy legs wiggling about as she held it for a moment. Twilight looked at Dash a second time, still holding the beetle, giving Dash some vague hope that it really was a snack.

But then Twilight dropped the beetle back into her bug bag, sighed, then turned Dash back into a pony.

Dash fell to the ground.

“Alright.” Twilight looked down at her. “What ‘thing’ do you do all day that’s so darn interesting?”

“Huh?” Dash jumped to her feet. “You changed your mind already?”

“The thought is distracting me.” Twilight shook her head. “I calculated that it will be more efficient to confirm your idiocy and get back to work than it will to work at reduced inefficiency for the next several hours.”

“You’re saying you wanna do something fun with me?”

“Yes,” said Twilight. “One activity lasting exactly forty-seven minutes. That’s the optimal trade-off.”

This was an important moment!

If Dash pulled this off the next question mark years could end up being way less boring. Heck, she might even manage to melt Twilight’s icy heart and get her to be less evil or something!

But what was Dash supposed to do all the way out here?

The perfect idea came to Dash’s mind.

“Oh, I know! Lucky for you, I always carry a single forty-seven-minute activity around with me in my trouble bag!” Dash walked over to where she knew Twilight was hiding her stuff. “You mind if I get it?”

Twilight watched her closely like she was half expecting a knife to get pulled out on her, but Dash realized brute force like that wasn’t gonna work.

Honestly, she just really wanted a second chance to play this game.

“Here! It’s called Summoner Knights!” Dash pulled out two decks of cards to show Twilight. “It’s a card game and also my favorite game ever! I’m actually the six-time world champion.”

“What’s a card game?” Twilight eyed one of the cards with suspicion. “You want to mess with somepony’s head with this?”

“Mess with their—? What?”

“Their head.” Twilight pointed to her own. “That’s what it means to play games with them, right?”

“Do you really not know what a game is?” Dash really shouldn’t be so surprised at this point, but she was starting to feel really bad for Twilight. Did her wizard teacher really never let her play a game? “I guess I’ll show you.”

Twilight was fascinated by the spell on the cards at least. She held it a leg’s length away for a time, slowly becoming more interested and pulling it closer.

“This appears to have a C3 enchantment spell placed on it, using nether weaving to create a binary system of escaping nether dust to cause programmable, reactive routines in the illusions it generates. This one seems to possess basic mathematical imputes.” Twilight gave the card back. “Interesting. I suppose somepony else thought of the same thing I did.”

“Got no idea what you just said there, Sparks.” Dash shuffled the decks quickly and set them both out in front of Twilight. “You want the werewolf themed deck or the pumpkin themed deck?”

Twilight didn’t take long before deciding on the werewolf deck.

“Werewolves, huh? Everypony always picks that one over pumpkins. And by everypony I mean the one other pony I actually got to play this game with.”

“You’ve only done this once before?” Twilight asked. “I thought you said it was your favorite thing.”

“It’s like a curse I have!” Dash rolled her eyes. “I always always get into fads and fandoms too late. Like this one. I find out how awesome the game is, spend five hundred bits on a good deck and then everypony else stops playing two days later! It was huge until I got into it. They all moved on to some Gerby toy, but you can’t be the best at Gerbies so that was no good.”

Dash had tried being the best at Gerbies, actually, but that was an embarrassing story that ended with her dad smashing her entire Gerby collection.

“But the one game of Summoner Knights I did play was so awesome that I kept the decks with me all these years on the off chance somepony else actually wanted to play it!”

She wasn’t going to admit the whole truth, that she’d spent years trying to get other ponies to play this game with her. Nopony at school or around town was interested and her dad called it a ‘dickweed’ game, whatever that meant.

“First thing you do is play the general card on top.” Dash put her pumpkin king card face up on the table. “Like that.”

The illusion spell inside the card activated, vines with jack-o'-lanterns instead of pumpkins growing out of them appeared. The illusion of vines continued to spread until they covered Dash’s half of the table. Finally, from the card itself, rose the pumpkin king, a ghost with a pumpkin for a head.

Twilight’s card turned her side of the field into a foggy forest, a relatively massive werewolf appeared on top of her card.

“I still don’t see where this is going.” Twilight looked over the illusions, waiting for them to do something.

“Okay, see each of our guys has 10,000 power to start with…”

Familiar

This was the best day of Dash’s life!

Years of being ‘cringe’ had finally paid off and now Dash was living the dream once again!

The two of them played four games in a row so far. Dash won all of them up to this point, but Twilight was improving rapidly.

This latest game was close!

Twilight had gotten rid of Dash’s strangling vines and now had twelve wolves out on her side of the field! Normally, you could only attack a target once per turn, but Twilight had a mist wolf equipped with a hero flag right now. Every wolf could attack Dash’s champion next turn, taking out the pumpkin king in one turn.

The mist wolf, the one with the flag, was a ‘stealth’ summon too, meaning Dash couldn’t target it with normal attacks! With one card left in her hand, it was very unlikely she could take it down next turn, let alone all of Twilight’s wolves.

On the flip side, Dash still had her pumpkin catapult. If she had a summon, she could bypass all of Twilight’s defenses and attack her alpha wolf directly. It only had 500 power left too, meaning nearly any summon could end this game in her favor. Sadly, Dash did not have one in her hand right now.

“Statistically speaking you’re more likely to win.” Twilight frowned at her hand. “I can calculate that your chances of the next card being a summon is one in three. But I can’t destroy your greed o'lantern this turn, which means you’ll draw two next turn. That gives you about a fifty-six percent chance of drawing a summon card and winning.”

“Sure," said Dash. “But for me a fifty-six percent chance is more like a one percent chance because of my bad luck.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Twilight. “That’s not how chance works.”

“You try having my luck for a day and tell me that’s not how chance works.”

Rainbow Dash had horrible luck! She just had to believe in Celestia, have faith! Like in the cartoon!

She slowly drew her first card.

Pumpkin Spice Latte. Not a summon.

Having faith didn’t help. Maybe she needed to believe in math instead? Twilight said she had about a one in two chance. Or was it only one in three again? Though there was this thing with three goats behind doors where if you kill the first goat you were more likely to—

No! She was overthinking this! She just had to draw the card.

Pumpkin Head! Bizarrely the only monster in this deck that did not have a pumpkin for a head, was more of a ghoul, but still!

“Heh!” Dash covered one of her eyes with a hoof and slammed the card down with the other, just like the colt in the cartoon. “Hate to dash your rainbows, Twilight, but I summon Pumpkin Head and with my pumpkin catapult—!”

“I already know what that does.”

“Gah! You ruined my big anime moment! Anyway, fire!” Dash pointed forward and her ghoul was launched from the catapult right at the alpha. It hit! Both exploded!

That glorious victory sign, written in golden letters surrounded by illusory fireworks appeared over Dash’s head! At long last, she was the summon champion again!

“Yeah!” Dash flew up, doing a single flip in the air. “Now who’s completely invincible?! Boom! Wrecked, poned, annihilated, and—!”

Dash stopped and quickly sat back down. She learned this one when she was fourteen! The first time she played this game she crushed her opponent and rubbed it in too hard, leaving them to never want to play this game with her ever again.

“But you’re doing good for your first time playing this game,” said Dash. “I never managed to convince a lot of ponies to play this game with me, but all of them totally suck when they do. Getting this close against the world champion is pretty impressive.”

“I just need to do more math.” Twilight turned her deck upside down and spread the cards out wide, looking over each of them intently like she was trying to solve a math puzzle. “This game involves a lot more statistical calculations than I would have expected from someone like you.”

Dash didn’t know if that was a compliment.

“But you can admit this game is totally awesome, right?” Dash asked. “Just like I said.”

Twilight puffed one of her cheeks out, but didn’t answer. Dash assumed that was Twilight for ‘yes, but I’m too embarrassed to admit it’.

“Well if you want I can give you some advice.” Dash leaned back in her chair, holding a hoof out all magnanimous like. “I hate to bring it up every five minutes, but I am the six time world champion.”

“You’re also an idiot,” Twilight reminded her. “I want to figure this out myself. This is like a scientific puzzle. We’re not stopping until I beat you.”

Dash couldn’t help but laugh. Twilight looked up at Dash.

“Sorry, this is just like in the show,” said Dash. “You’re like Billionaire Blade.”

“I don’t know who that is,” said Twilight. “Or is it a what?”

“There was a cartoon based on this game,” Dash explained. “One of the characters, Billionaire Blade, is like the most powerful pony in the world but he can’t beat the main character, who’s like some farmer, in a single match no matter how hard he tries. It drives the guy totally insane.”

“What?” Twilight looked up from her cards, or math equation rather.

“Cartoon? Like that slide show but the picture dances around for your amusement,” Dash explained. “They had one of ponies playing this game.”

“You’d watch somepony else doing this?” Twilight asked.

“It was totally on the eighth, but in a funny kind of way. Everypony in the cartoon got their head stamped with their rank of how good they were at the card game. The ponies who win a lot get to live in mansions and the ponies who sucked were sent to the slums where they work 80 hours a week and starve,” said Dash. “Pegging their card game as inexplicably creating a dystopia was kind of a weird marketing move in retrospect. Maybe that’s why it failed.”

“What?” Twilight blanked out halfway through that explanation.

“Oh, right. I forgot you don’t know anything,” said Dash. “Like, imagine a bunch of rusty sheds, dirty water, slimy ground, and no food. That’s where they make you live if you suck at the card game.”

“They do? But who’s ‘they’?” Twilight asked.

“I guess the government was doing it.”

“The what?”

“Like.” Dash tried to think of a good way to explain it. “Like all of us in the town decided there are some things we don’t want other ponies to do, like stealing. When they do it all of us gang up and beat that pony up! That’s called ‘the law’. The government is whoever decides what the law is. See?”

“I think so.” Twilight considered it. “And you’re saying ponies who lose at this card game get beaten up and thrown in a pile of trash?”

“No, no! This was a work of fiction! Fiction is an openly fraudulent story that—"

“I know what fiction is.”

“It’s not like I can assume that. You didn’t know what a lake was till I showed up.”

With a ‘hmph’ Twilight went back to her cards, trying to figure out a better strategy for the next game. Dash shuffled her own deck while she waited for Twilight. It was like three in the morning but it’d been forever since she got to hang out with anypony like this.

It was great! Dash would litearlly keep playing with Twilight till one of them fainted.

Twilight eventually shuffled her own deck, but she still looked lost in thought about something.

“What happens to Billionaire Blade?” Twilight drew her hand. “Does he win?”

“Oh! Eventually gets so depressed he can’t beat this one guy in a card game that he kills himself!”

“What?” Twilight looked up from her hand.

“Yeah, he sets it up so that if he loses his final card game it will cause an asteroid to crash into him, killing him instantly and a million other ponies. Heroic Hectare shows up and still beats him at the card game knowing that it will result in countless deaths. Cause like ‘you gotta be the best and buy more cards’!”

“But that’s completely insane,” said Twilight. “Even for one of you ponies.”

“Yeah I know! You got no idea how seriously the people in that cartoon take this card game. One pegasus cuts her wings off to save a single card, declaring cards are more important than body parts. People prioritize buying new cards over food to the point they literally starve to death. There’s an ancient order of super-powerful wizards that devoted centuries to guarding a single piece of cardboard. I don’t know what they did after they gave it away. Maybe they guarded a stick?”

Twilight clearly found one of those examples ridiculous enough to be amusing. She giggled ever so slightly.

“Ah!” Dash leaned over the table and pointed at Twilight. “See? Now you’re smiling!”

Twilight was shocked by the realization, looked suddenly afraid.

“Oh! Sorry.” Twilight stopped it and looked down at the floor, her smile gone.

“Did you just apologize for smiling?” Dash asked.

“I know I should take this more seriously.” Twilight played one of her wolves.

“I mean, you don’t have to. It’s just a game.”

Twilight was silently, overly seriously, looking down at her hand, clearly no longer having fun. Maybe Dash should just let Twilight win before she pulled a Billionaire Blade? Though she might get angry about that too.

Before Dash could decide, Twilight put her hand face down on the table and got up to leave.

“I’m going to bed and you’re turning back into an owl!” Twilight cast the spell to turn Dash back into an owl. As Dash struggled to regain her balance and perch somewhere, Twilight ran over to the stairs. But just as she was about to go upstairs, she turned back. “But we can do this again tomorrow.”

Then Twilight ran out of sight for real.

Eh! Totally worth it. Dash got to play Summoner Knights again so that was all that mattered.

She flew over to the little blanket nest she made on the couch and nestled down. Maybe she’d get some sleep tonight. And maybe Twilight would be nicer to her from now on.

One week since she got here.

They played at least one game of Summoner Knights a day for the past week, meaning Dash got to be a pony for at least an hour a day. Though after that night with Sawmill, Dash suddenly had a lot more perks in her captivity.

Every day she got to be a pony for longer and longer. If she hooted three times, Twilight would turn her back for long enough to say something. Also, Twilight talked to Dash constantly now, instead of trying to ignore her.

Usually Dash was an owl for this and usually it all went over her head, but Twilight always filled in the blanks, was a master of making things up for Dash to have said. Furthermore Dash felt like she was on the edge of learning something about magic.

Right now, the two of them were playing yet another game. It’d look like, to most ponies, that Dash was about to win the 21st game in a row. She had a whole slew of summons out and Twilight had nothing. But both of them were familiar with the werewolf deck now and both of them knew Twilight was on the verge of getting a win condition out.

“Don’t get too cocky,” said Twilight. “My wolf’s curse is still activated meaning every one of your summons counts as a werewolf as well. The blue moon is shining and if I draw the right card it’ll be the harbinger of your doom."

Even though Dash was losing, she nodded approvingly. After a week, through the peer pressure of repeatedly doing it herself, she’d gotten Twilight to start narrating her actions. No doubt Twilight thought it was the normal thing to do at this point.

Twilight drew her card and from the look on her face Dash immediately knew that Twilight had drawn the exact card she needed.

“I won!” Twilight slammed her card down on the table, too excited to go through with the lengthy explanation. All of Dash’s summons piled on the pumpkin king and the victory sign flared up on Twilight’s side. “I actually won! Finally! I did it!”

Dash had never seen Twilight so happy before! Twilight pronked around the room in celebration. Really, she couldn’t even be slightly upset about her own loss.

“No!” Dash yelled a long no and fell backward in her chair on purpose, just like they did in the show.

“Wait!” Twilight jumped up on the table and looked down at Dash with genuine concern. “You’re not really upset that I beat you, are you?”

“No, I was being dramatic.” Dash deadpanned, then rose. “Like in the cartoon?”

“Oh! right!” Twilight blushed. “But that means I’m the world champion now, right?!”

Twilight was so excited about winning she was bouncing up and down just a little.

“Twilight, you’re 1 in 20,” said Dash. “That hardly makes you the world champion.”

“Then we’ll just keep going till it’s 21 to 20!” Twilight declared.

“That’s fine with me.” Dash put the cards back together. “But you’re not a real master till you’ve built your own deck.”

“For the last time, you can't trick me into letting you leave that easily.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “But what if I can make my own Summoner Knights cards? Yeah! And my cards could be even better because they could have a million attack power!”

“Twilight, that’s like something ten-year-olds do,” said Dash. “The making everything overpowered part I mean. If you can actually make holographic cards that’d be awesome.”

“Right! I could do one like in the show. Like, uh, those fish ponies you were telling me about.”

Twilight tried to create an illusion of one. Not only did it not look like a merpony, but it didn’t look like anything an adult would draw. It was an incredibly crude and unrealistic illusion that made Dash raise an eyebrow at Twilight.

“Look, I’m not good at designing things or creating illusions from my imagination, okay?” Twilight rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, see it’d be easier to just go get my cards,” said Dash. “Come on, it’d take like ten seconds.”

“Or it can take zero seconds by just not going there.” Twilight’s voice was stern. “We’ll just make our own cards. We don’t need outsiders.”

“Why are you so scared to go anywhere?” Dash asked. She’d been waiting for a moment like this, when Twilight was in a good mood, to ask her something that’d normally make her clam up. “Did that wizard who raised you force you to stay in the house and punish you if you went out or something?”

“He didn’t force me to stay inside, exactly. I just never had time to go outside as a kid,” said Twilight. “If you think I spend too much time training now, you should have seen me when I was younger. As a child, my master made me train seventeen hours a day non-stop. When I was little I wasn’t strong enough to take it so I’d literally faint all the time and he’d have to throw ice water in my face or inject me with a stimulant just to keep me working.”

Twilight chuckled like she was remembering good times.

“Okay, so you’re saying the pony who trained you was an abusive maniac,” said Dash.

“Abuse?”

“Normal ponies don’t inject their kids with stuff,” said Dash. “My dad was a total asshole and even he never drugged me. Well, as far as I know.”

Actually, he did give her a beer when Dash was like ten if that counted.

“Well maybe if he injected you with a stim pack every now and then you wouldn’t be so weak!” Twilight turned her nose up like she was offended on the guy’s behalf.

“You don’t gotta defend the guy,” said Dash. “He’s clearly dead and also a jerk. A dead jerk! It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“He was a powerful wizard and a genius worthy of respect, unlike you who are a complete idiot!”

“I’m pretty sure he wasn’t,” said Dash. “What could possibly be worth doing all that to some kid for? What even are you working this hard for?”

“That’s none of your business!” Twilight turned Dash back into an owl. “I think you’ve done enough talking for today.”

Defeated once more, Dash perched on Twilight’s back. Twilight stayed angry for a half hour or so, but before long she was back to happily explaining what she was doing to Dash. Apparently, it was making some kind of golem out of clay.

That was the balance with Twilight. It was easy to get her to drone on and on, but she shut up quickly about things too.

Maybe if Dash just kept her talking little by little… she was going to be here a while anyway.

Three weeks in.

Dash sat on Twilight’s back as Twilight trotted back and forth in front of her army of ravens. They weren’t real ravens, not yet anyway, but crude clay sculptures of ravens arranged in a ten by ten square.

She cast the spell and all the sculptures crumbled away. In their place stood a hundred phantom ravens that looked much more like real ravens only ethereal and silver. They changed one more time, taking on an extra layer of opaque light that finally made them look like the genuine thing.

Twilight clapped her hooves, and they all flew off in different directions.

“These ravens will scout the forest for miles around,” Twilight explained, she was in the habit of explaining everything to Dash now. “Not only that, but they can use magic to disorient or even freeze any pony they run into if I decide it’s necessary. Nothing will be able to sneak up on me now.”

In just three weeks, this place had become a total death trap.

The ring of trees that formed the border between Twilight’s lawn were enchanted to grab any trespassers. Two of the fish living in the river were turned into terrifying fish monsters that now guarded the north. Twilight constructed fifty clay golems who were currently seeped into the earth but would come out if anypony got close. A row of swords enchanted with a ‘dancing blade’ spell rested against the house.

The windows and doors were enchanted so that if anypony but Twilight or Dash came through them they’d be teleported out of the forest entirely. The place was surrounded by an invisibility illusion, another magic barrier, and a fog that made ponies who breathed it disoriented and forgetful.

You’d need an army to break into her house at this point, even if Twilight just sat there and did nothing. Maybe this was bad, but at least Dash didn’t have to worry about another monster wandering in at random. She could rest easy outside now, though Twilight insisted she slept inside and had even made Dash her own bed.

Dash hooted. Twilight cast the spell to turn her back. This time, Dash hopped off Twilight and landed smoothly. She’d been turned back and forth enough that she could do it with style now.

“This is a lot of monsters. You’re not trying to like, take over the world or something, are you?” Dash had to ask.

“Take over the world?” Twilight asked. “What does that mean?”

“Never mind.” Dash didn’t want to give her any ideas. “Though I’m starting to get curious why nothing else has shown up. Like didn’t Pinkie say she was going to invite me to her Halloween party or something? I know it’s still three weeks from now, but she’s gotta notice I’m missing eventually, right?”

“Oh!” Twilight shifted her eyes. “I’m sure she and Rarity just forgot, you know? Haha! That’s just how outsiders are.”

“Okay. What did you do?” Dash raised an eyebrow.

“Huh?! I—" Twilight cleared her throat, even she knew she was way too obvious most of the time. “Well, those objects I gave them had a slight mind control kind of effect? Maybe? Just a slight one that distracts them every time they try to think about you. Just enough to delay them.”

“You do know that there’s going to be trouble when she finally realizes you kidnapped me, right?”

“There’s going to be trouble no matter what I do!” Twilight shot back. “I just need to buy time to get ready for it.”

Twilight stepped closer to Rainbow Dash.

“Though maybe you could tell them you were here on your own free will if she ever does come back?” Twilight asked, hopeful.

Truth be told, Dash did forget she was being kidnapped sometimes.

“Well if you take off the spell keeping me here then I’ll be staying on my own free will,” Dash suggested.

“You won’t run away?” Twilight gave her a rather pathetic look.

“I promise.” Dash put her hoof on her heart. “You’re the only pony willing to play Summoner Knights with me. I gotta come back for that if nothing else.”

Twilight trotted back and forth for a minute, clearly making a painful decision.

“No! You’re lying!” Twilight shook her head, ending the conversation. “Come on! We’re going into the woods and then we can make jack-o'-lanterns like you wanted.”

Twilight ran off to the woods, expecting Dash to follow. Dash was getting closer but was still far away from this meta win condition. For now, she just sighed and followed Twilight.

The witch stood at the edge of the forest, never daring to go in without Rainbow Dash and at least one of her monsters. The clay golem she took this time looked like a pony without a face or any real defining features, crafted roughly out of clay. A few fangs stuck out of its body here and there.

The golem came out of the ground only to seep back in once it got close to the two ponies. It’d follow them underground.

The two of them were following the river east today, a bit further than Twilight had gone before. Ever since seeing the lake Twilight had been slowly peeking out of her little hole more and more. Today, Twilight didn’t seem particularly afraid of anything.

Dash was in the middle of explaining how the telephone worked, to the best of her knowledge, when something caught Twilight’s eyes. It was interesting enough that Twilight gasped and ran after it. She lay down on the ground, carefully studying something on the ground.

It appeared to be a normal mushroom to Dash, but then again Dash knew nothing.

“Is that like, the one true mushroom that will end the world?” Dash guessed.

“No,” said Twilight. “I’ve just never seen this type of mushroom before! I had no idea there were species I wasn’t aware of. Why did he leave this one out?”

“There’s probably tons of plants you’ve never heard of.” Dash reminded her.

“I have to study it!” Twilight plucked the mushroom. “And then start farming it if it has any useful properties! Come on!”

Twilight ran back to her house excitedly. Dash knew she’d get pulled if she didn’t run too.

Twilight led Dash to her cellar, which was not directly attached to her house. Instead, a cellar door by a tree on the edge of her lawn led into a small cavern that acted as an extra, detached basement. Dash had never been invited in before and had nowhere near enough stupidity to barge into a witch’s cellar without good cause.

“Does this mean I’m allowed in your cellar now?” Dash leaned over Twilight’s shoulder to look inside.

“I never stopped you from coming down here.” Twilight walked down the stairs.

“Look, I’ve already been lit on fire twice and had one of my legs melt off.” Dash kicked that one to reconfirm that it was still there before following her down. “And I consider that lucky. I’m not going anywhere in your house when you’re not around.”

“This place is perfectly safe.” Twilight got to the bottom of the stairs. “It’s just mushrooms and roots down here.”

The room looked more like a natural cavern than part of a house. A stream of water ran down the middle of the stone corridor. The walls, ceiling, and floor were covered in countless different mushrooms and roots.

Dash could see a mushroom of every color. Some of them had spots, some of them had fur, a few even had little spikes. Then there were a dozen types of roots sticking out of the stone walls, covering them in scraggly fibers.

“Oh!” Twilight raised a hoof. “Now that I think about it, actually a few of these mushrooms will instantly kill you if you touch them so be careful.”

“Um.” Dash froze in place. There had to be two hundred types of mushrooms in this cavern. “Can I get a hint which mushroom it is?”

“It’s the trigglecap and the duskleshroom,” Twilight said.

“Oh, right. Of course.” Dash rolled her eyes. “Thanks for that useful information.”

“No problem!”

Dash just stood perfectly still. This was why she didn’t touch any of Twilight’s stuff anymore.

Twilight planted her new mushroom in a corner, then, after thinking for a minute, decided to get something while she was down here. She went up to the group of huge, seven-foot-tall mushrooms and tore off a chunk of the cap about the size of her head.

One of those things that made less sense as Dash thought about it was coming to mind now. Twilight had a dozen types of squash, a hundred herbs, a hundred mushrooms, five types of fruit, and all sorts of other plants growing on her lawn. There was more biodiversity in this one little patch of land than in the rest of the forest!

“How’d you get all these seeds if you’ve never left your house?” Dash asked.

“The garden was here as far back as I can remember,” said Twilight. “I think my master was the one who set it up.”

Dash was intensely curious about Twilight’s past now. There was a risky balance with that subject, though. Twilight would start blurting out details of it easily enough, but if she ever realized she was giving away too much she’d immediately shut up.

You had to go into these questions from the side, so Dash waited for now.

“Was he your dad or something?” Dash asked. “Cause otherwise how did you get here without going anywhere else?”

“I was here as long as I can remember. I think he just took me from my parents or something,” Twilight said casually enough.

“Wait! So you were kidnapped?”

“Well, I wouldn’t phrase it like that. But like I said I’m immune to curses and have incredible magic potential,” Twilight said proudly, somehow proud of the fact that she was chosen to be kidnapped. “Of course he’d want to take me as his student.”

“Immune to curses?” Dash asked. “Why’s that important?”

“Because— wait! No!” Twilight jabbed her hoof against Dash’s chest. “Stop trying to meddle in affairs that don’t concern you!”

Twilight turned to leave, notably without turning Dash into an owl.

“But I like affairs that don’t concern me.” Dash ran after her.

“Well I don’t like affairs that don’t concern you.” Twilight thought about what she just said. “Or something!”

“Ha! See?” Dash decided to roll with it. “Subconsciously you want me to be involved in your affairs because we’re friends now, right?”

Twilight puffed out her cheek and blushed.

“You’re lucky we have to go carve jack-o’-lanterns or you’d be an owl right now.” Twilight trotted up the cellar stairs in a huff.

She hadn’t turned Dash into an owl this time! This was progress!

Six weeks past and now it was Halloween.

Pinkie never showed up, but it was okay. Dash was going to have her own Halloween thing with Twilight. Actually, this was probably better than going to some big party where she didn’t know any other ponies or spending it alone like she usually did.

The house was surrounded by no fewer than two hundred jack-o’-lanterns. About fifty of them were early attempts by Twilight and didn’t look so hot but she figured it out eventually. They had a whole list of things to do tonight.

Maybe a lot of it was kid’s stuff, but then it was still Twilight’s first time doing any of it.

First thing was first, though, the one thing they had to do before sundown. After finding out Twilight had never seen an aerial view of the forest, being too scared to take a look, Dash offered to take her up.

“You’re supposed to do something scary on Halloween,” Dash reminded her as Twilight began to look nervous at the last moment. “It’s part of the fun.”

“Well, why aren’t we doing anything that scares you then?” Twilight asked.

“Because nothing scares me!” Dash shrugged with pride.

“Well nothing scares me either,” said Twilight. “I’m just deeply concerned and unnerved. You’re sure nopony will see us?”

“If we’re invisible?” Dash asked. “Probably not.”

Twilight sighed, then braced herself, nodding to show Dash that she was ready. Dash grabbed her around the barrel and flew her up.

The view wasn’t that great in Dash’s opinion, but Twilight was stunned by it momentarily.

You could see a good distance from this high up. There was Twilight Lake, which they’d been to a few times before but looked different from above. You could see the entire forest and Ghastly Gorge, which the river eventually fell into, though Twilight hadn’t walked nearly far enough to see the waterfall.

You could see the houses of two different towns towards the south and even Canter Mountain far off in the distance, wrapped in a low hanging cloud. There were even a few castles no doubt inhabited by mad scientists deeper into a forest and another clearing where cultists just might gather at night. That last one was a place to avoid.

Dash tried flying just a little higher so they could see the edge of Crater Cemetery too, or at least the edge of where it affected. The mysterious ghost that lived there was so powerful that everything within twenty miles of the place was covered in permafrost despite it being fairly far south. From this distance, all you could see were a few glaciers popping up.

At least one of these had to be something Twilight hadn’t seen before, but she was twisting her head around so much Dash couldn’t tell what she was gawking at right now.

“See, there’s Ponyville down there.” Dash turned Twilight towards it, then to the next town over. “Then there’s Gorgeville.”

“So there really was more than one town?” Twilight looked at the gorge separating the two towns, wondering if they counted as one or two. “What’s the big hole in the ground? I don’t get why you’d dig a huge hole between the two towns.”

“Nopony dug that. They just show up by themselves 'cause of erosion,” said Dash.

“And that big rock?” Twilight pointed to the mountain.

“Mountain,” said Dash. “From uh, reverse erosion.”

“I see.”

Dash hoped Twilight wouldn’t fact check her on that later.

For almost an hour they stayed up there without talking too much other than Twilight quizzing Dash’s geography and geology and insisting that they stay up another five minutes every time Dash offered her to go down.

“You know, I could just fly you over there,” Dash offered. “Anywhere but where that ice is, anyway.”

“What? No!” Twilight tensed up a little at the idea of going too far away. “Let’s go back down.”

Dash flew Twilight down, who jumped out of Dash’s grip when they got close. She trotted away, trembling slightly, growing quieter than normal.

“You okay?” Dash asked.

“The world is just so much bigger than I assumed it was.” Twilight pressed her hat down. “Even that one town— I was just picturing like twenty buildings but there had to have been hundreds.”

“Yeah,” said Dash. “And that’s just one of like a million. Not even one of the big ones.”

“I just don’t get why I was never told about any of this stuff.” Twilight looked down at the ground. “I almost feel lied to.”

“Some adults are just selfish jerks,” said Dash. “I mean, I get we’re adults now too but still! My parents were kind of the same, only caring about themselves.”

“Did your parents not tell you anything either?” Twilight asked. It was actually the first time she’d directly asked about Dash’s past.

“Nothing like that. But my mom bailed on me before I could meet her, and my dad was always drunk. Even when he was there, he kind of wasn’t.” Dash looked out into the woods. “I kind of always felt like I was alone until recently.”

“Recently?” Twilight stepped close. Suddenly she was right next to Rainbow Dash.

“Well you know!” Dash turned away. “You’re the only one that’ll play these stupid games with me! My point is you don’t gotta stay here doing nothing forever.”

“Hey, I’m not doing nothing! I’ve accomplished things,” Twilight huffed, but this time she didn’t immediately put up a barrier. She nervously scrapped her hoof across the ground a few times before looking up at Dash. “I could show you something.”

“Yeah?” Dash stepped forward, suddenly very interested, forgetting everything else. She’d kind of been waiting for something like this for the better part of two months now.

Twilight put her hat on and took out her book. She closed her eyes and began chanting, something Dash knew was needed for more powerful spells. Something else she recognized was Twilight’s body glowing entirely instead of just her horn, which happened when Twilight went full force.

The world grew dark, becoming night from Dash’s point of view so that she could see the stars. The stars turned red all at once then, slowly, they began to bleed. As though the stars were countless puncture wounds in the sky, red trickled down from them.

“Um, Twilight?” Dash looked up at the sky as the world grew darker and the air heavier. “Am I gonna die? Twilight?”

Then everything went back to normal.

“There!” Twilight opened her eyes, smiling happily at her achievement, whatever it had been.

“Well that was cool.” Dash looked around. “But it appears like nothing happened.”

“That’s the point.” Twilight gave a smug nod.

“Huh?”

“I’ve created ‘true void’, something my master sought after for centuries before dying!” Twilight took a step forward, excited. “It is pure distilled nothingness. Not just a vacuum, but truly nothing! No time, no space, no laws of physics, no matter or energy at all!”

“But there’s nothing there,” said Dash. “I see nothing.”

“Yeah, that’s what I just said.” Twilight rolled her eyes.

“So, you’ve accomplished literally nothing?!” Dash threw up her hooves.

“No! I mean— that’s one way to phrase it, but you’re being misleading. This is incredibly important because of the infinite potential pure nothingness has,” said Twilight. “No laws of physics exist in the zero space it metaphorically occupies. You see, it explains the unexplainable true chaos of the outer gods, potentially even why laws of physics exist in the first place.”

“It does?”

“True void means true chaos because it’s devoid of rules, they’re non-existent. And true chaos isn’t stable,” Twilight explained. “It can create anything which means creating order that destroys itself is inevitable. Nothingness can’t exist, it has to create reality. That’s what this experiment proves. My master really wanted to show that was the case.”

“So, you guys just spent a couple of hundred years trying to do some science experiment?” Dash asked.

“Well yeah, he just didn’t like the idea of something being unexplainable,” said Twilight. “I think just creating this and learning what is likely the origin of reality itself is impressive enough, but this is also the first step to controlling the void as the outer gods did. There are a few things you can maybe do with it eventually.”

“Was there something this guy was going to do with it?” Dash asked.

“Maybe.” Twilight’s mode switched to reserved mode, the unicorn turning away and quickly going back inside. “But that’s not important. I decided I wasn’t interested in that part of it.”

“You’re still not going to tell me everything?” Dash asked.

“No! Besides, didn’t you want to do Halloween stuff?” Twilight held the door open for her.

“I guess I did.” Dash shrugged. That was good enough for now.

Rainbow Dash was curled up in a ball on her pile of blankets next to the cauldron fast asleep. Being a mere mortal, Dash didn’t have the same energy as Twilight and would often fall asleep quickly after needing to ‘rest her eyes’ when doing something with Twilight for a long time.

It’d been so long that Twilight had forgotten that it was comforting just to have another pony around. It felt nice just sitting next to her.

All of this was conflicting. Twilight really did enjoy all these games Dash was distracting her with, but deep down she knew it really was just a distraction. Was it really okay to be goofing off this much?

Then there was the fact that Twilight hadn’t meant to reveal as much as she already had to Rainbow Dash. There really did seem to be some part of her that was just desperate to talk like Dash said. Dash had successfully replaced Smarty Pants as the pony Twilight bounced her ideas off of.

She knew Dash understood more of her lecturing than the pegasus let on. Dash clearly knew enough about Twilight’s things to find a way to escape if she tried, thanks to Twilight’s stupidly loose tongue. Yet Dash hadn’t even tried to run away in nearly two months.

What was Twilight supposed to do about her? Obviously, this wasn’t something she could bounce off of Dash so she had to go back to her original source of conversation. Twilight went outside and found her scarecrow, the closest thing to a real friend she had.

“What am I going to do, Smarty Pants?” Twilight asked her scarecrow.

Twilight wanted Rainbow Dash to stay here now, but Dash was still the enemy. Twilight wished the pegasus was on her side instead of on that of those stupid outsiders.

Maybe eventually Rainbow Dash would declare that she didn’t ever want to leave? Because she was having too much fun? Twilight would let her stay even after she unleashed her curse on the world if Dash asked.

“Maybe I can give her lots of presents until she loves me and wants to stay?” Twilight suggested.

Smarty Pants reminded her what happened last time Twilight tried that. She reminded Twilight that everypony always seemed friendly at first but betrayed her in the end. Rainbow Dash was only pretending to be nice to escape. Ponies only ever pretended to be nice and even then only to get things.

“No, this is the opposite of last time,” said Twilight. “Flash came here acting nice from the start but became hostile later. Rainbow Dash was hostile but became friendly. You see? Completely different.”

Smarty Pants seemed to think Twilight was clutching at straws.

“Haha. Very funny.” Twilight buried her face in her hoof.

Smarty Pants clearly didn’t think Rainbow Dash could be trusted. Deep down Dash hated Twilight and would always resent her for trapping her here.

“Does she hate me?” Twilight pulled down her hat to cover her face. “I mean, she did call me evil and say I should be destroyed that one time, but maybe holding her captive changed her mind? She hasn’t called me evil in a long time.”

Smarty Pants reminded Twilight that just because someone didn’t act like they hated her didn’t mean they didn’t secretly hate her. There was no way to ever know if someone secretly hated her. Dash wasn’t a mindless construct like Smarty Pants after all, only mindless constructs could be trusted.

“Okay, now I think you’re just being jealous. I know I haven’t talked to you very much since she got here,” said Twilight. “But you know, Rainbow Dash says you’re just a delusion brought on by, and I quote, ‘schizophrenia or maybe multiple personality disorder, I don’t actually know the difference’.”

Smarty Pants tried being all philosophical, asking Twilight how she was sure she wasn’t the delusion. Twilight just rolled her eyes.

“Can you take this seriously?” Twilight asked. “There has to be some way to get everything I want. Or at least most of what I want.”

Smarty Pants suggested brainwashing Rainbow Dash or transforming her into something more obedient, but Twilight just shook her head. There had to be a better way to control Rainbow Dash that wouldn’t compromise her as a person.

“Maybe I just have to give her what she really wants. My mistake was assuming Flash cared about me specifically, so I won’t assume that again,” said Twilight. “Right? Flash didn’t actually want me, he wanted power. I can assume Dash doesn’t want to be friends with me, she specifically said that she was here to stop my potentially dangerous magics from getting out, right?”

Smarty agreed.

“So, we just let her do that! I’ll let Rainbow Dash stay here and spend the rest of her life guarding my house. I can teach her to use magic on some level and she’s really good at finding loopholes and the like, so she’d be good at this job. No offense, but she’s a lot smarter than you so I’m sure nothing else would go missing anymore. Of course, she’d agree to that, right?”

Smarty Pants just said that it would inevitably fail. Any attempt to talk to other ponies would always fail.

“You’re always so negative. This is why I talk to Rainbow Dash now.” Twilight turned her back on Smarty Pants.

Maybe Dash was right. What started as a way of talking her ideas out with herself got a little out of control? Twilight at least should have created a less contrarian persona to talk to.

Now Twilight needed to sort through things on her own because of that stupid pegasus. Maybe if Dash became loyal to her, Twilight could more comfortably bounce ideas off that featherbrain instead. Upgrading from straw to feathers, why not?

Twilight trotted back inside and sat down next to the sleeping Rainbow Dash. Dash would never think of an idea that clever, so Twilight would need to make the offer herself.

She raised a trembling hoof to try and give Dash a shake. She held it over Rainbow Dash, too nervous to grab her and wake her up.

Of course, she wouldn’t agree to that. Not right now anyway. Twilight had to make her like this place better first, make it so Dash would be tempted to stay forever. Twilight had endless magical powers! There was no end to the options of things Twilight could tempt her with.

Twilight dismissed the current contents of her cauldron to begin on something else, a present for Rainbow Dash.

She stopped briefly as she got to the edge of the cauldron. Smarty Pants did have a point. The last time she tried using her magic to impress somepony—

No! Flash was just using Twilight, saw her as nothing but a wish machine. More importantly he was smart. But Rainbow Dash was stupid! She was too stupidly honest to do the same.

Two months.

It’d been 64 days exactly since Twilight had kidnapped Dash. At this point, it was more of a mandatory sleepover. Dash hadn’t been an owl in a week and Twilight trusted her to go wherever now.

Honestly, it’d been so long since Dash paid rent that being kidnapped was a perk at this point. If Twilight released her right now Dash would come crawling back later that day asking to be kidnapped again. Whenever she got out of this, she was totally going to mooch off of Twilight till she could get back on her feet.

In some ways, maybe Dash was complicit in whatever schemes Twilight had (though Dash was no longer sure that she did have a scheme). She knew just a tiny bit about potions and cooking now, enough to do some of the more mindless work for her.

Dash was back down in that mushroom covered cellar, but now she knew enough to not be terrified of the place, knowing which mushrooms were the deadly ones. Really this place wasn’t so bad once you knew what would and wouldn’t kill you instantly. She walked down the middle, through the shallow stream of water to go tear off the cap of the big mushrooms.

She put it on her head and carried it out by wearing it as a hat.

Stepping out, she immediately felt the late autumn wind on her now wet hooves. It was getting cold and soon it’d be winter.

Next week was a holiday, the Feast of Leaves. It wasn’t too hard to convince Twilight to take a day off here and there anymore so it wouldn’t be too hard to convince her to celebrate it. This would be the first time Rainbow Dash wasn’t completely alone on a holiday in maybe five years.

She was tempted to stay here until Hearth’s Warming eve just for that, or at least to come back. It’d be the best Hearth’s Warming Eve ever! Dash started humming a little wintery tune to herself.

Twilight’s house was nice and warm, heated by a second cauldron over a roaring fire. The heating cauldron rumbled slightly, the lid popping off now and again to let off a bit of steam to keep the room from drying out.

Dash went up to the magic cauldron in the center of the room. She swiped left, left, down, down, left and the cooking pot appeared. She threw the mushroom in, then went to the shelf to get that blue stuff with the name she could never remember. Just a drop of it in the pot was all you needed, and it filled with a liquid that looked like water but wasn’t.

Now she just had to stoke the flames and start boiling this.

Twilight came in from the other room, bells jingling. Dash honestly had no idea what the witch had been doing today.

“Hey, Twilight.” Dash dried her hooves off in the fire. “It got cold all of a sudden. I just started with dinner, though, so don’t get your hopes up.”

“Thanks, Rainbow Dash!” Twilight sat next to her and smiled. “You’ve been a lot of help in the past couple of weeks.”

Dash had been cooking food for her and helping her gather seeds from all her plants, she meant. But Twilight kept sitting next to her quietly, saying nothing.

“Uh, you’re welcome.” Dash looked back to the pot.

Then she looked back at Twilight, who was still awkwardly sitting there.

“Actually!” Twilight took off her out and took a pendant out of it. “You’ve been helping me so much that I decided to reward you with a present!”

The chain was made of those pink fibers, which Dash now recognized as mind fibers.

Dash held the necklace and could immediately feel that this wasn’t just Twilight’s attempt at helping Dash dress in style. There was some mysterious magic coming from it, welling up in Dash’s head, giving her a slight pressure headache.

“It’s like the one I gave Rarity, like a spellbook but on a much smaller scale,” said Twilight. “Those books can give you mastery over ten thousand spells, but this one just gives you two, each capable of being used with wings. The first one will allow you to turn back and forth from an owl whenever you want!”

“Really? That was one of the big ways you were keeping me under your hoof,” Dash said. “You’re not worried I might abuse it?”

“Well the magnetic barrier is what’s really keeping you from escaping and you haven’t been annoying lately, so I’ll give you the ability to talk back,” Twilight said, smiling like she was being all magnanimous.

Truth be told, Dash had been treating these last few weeks as something of a vacation. Maybe it was wrong to have gotten so absorbed with playing Summoner Knights with Twilight to the point her enemy was starting to cozy up to her and give her presents.

But then maybe Twilight becoming cozy with her was the only way to actually get out of here. Twilight did just grant her some of her freedom back.

Eh, screw it! Being friendly with Twilight was working out so far. Who cared if it was the right thing to do?

“And what does the second one do?” Dash looked back at her gift.

“It’s the murder spell.”

“The murder spell?!” Dash looked up from the pendant to Twilight. “You’re giving me access to the murder spell?!”

“Yes?” Twilight tilted her head. “I thought it’d be useful to you.”

“You seriously not worried about giving me the murder spell?” Dash refused to believe it could ever be this easy. “You’re not remotely concerned I’m going to cast it on you?”

“You can only cast this spell on yourself,” said Twilight.

“I can only cast the—" Dash couldn’t even say it out loud. “You know what? It’ll be faster if I just put the dang thing on and see.”

Dash put the necklace on.

Briefly, she thought this might have been a trick. Dash’s head never exploded before, but she was fairly certain she knew exactly what it felt like now. A thunderclap of pain and the room spinning faster than a tornado sent Dash falling to the ground. But it was over in a second.

When the pain vanished, something became crystal clear to Rainbow Dash.

“Oh!” Dash slapped her forehead. “Oh, I get it. It’s like a murder of crows.”

The ‘murder’ spell turned you into a murder of crows! Approximately twenty. And Dash could do that now?

“Because you keep getting yourself into danger, this is a great spell to have,” Twilight explained. “It’s extremely difficult to kill a pony who can turn into twenty birds and fly off in every direction.”

Dash stepped out of the house and spread her wings, feeling the magic coursing through them, conducting it in a way she’d never thought possible before. She knew with complete certainty that she could cast this spell now, even with wings. Still, until she tested it out it was hard to believe.

There was still some part of her disconnected from the foreign idea. Casting spells with wings was like writing with a paint roller. It could technically be done, and Dash felt somewhere deep she knew how, but it wasn’t easy.

Dash opened her wings and let the magic flow out through them. There was a burst of feathers and then Dash was falling backward, a crow surrounded by other crows. From her perspective, she was just one crow.

Dash didn’t need any further explanation on how the spell worked. She felt like this was her jam, like this was something she’d been practicing for years.

Each crow, each instance of Dash, thought by herself and there was no real way to communicate between them. Whichever Rainbow Crow decided it was a good idea to change back first was the one they would all remerge into, appearing where that crow was. Once back to normal, Dash would have the memories of every crow she’d turned into.

The trick, she inexplicably knew, was to have a game plan before you turned into a bunch of crows. Say, think in advance that if you’re a crow in the back row you’ll fly off somewhere safe while the crows further up make daring reconnaissance moves.

Dash, the crow that Dash currently was, was the one closest to the bottom of the cluster. In the preset routines Twilight came up with, and Dash now knew, that was always the one that hung back and played it safe in case something happened to all the other crows. Only one crow needed to survive for Dash to live.

Dash perched on Twilight’s back as she watched all the other instances of herself fly freely around the clearing. Then she jumped off Twilight and turned back, all the other crows crumbling into a few feathers. But they all lived on as part of Dash, the memories of every single surviving crow coming back to her.

But then Dash got an awesome idea! One Twilight never even seemed to think of.

She turned into a crow, the bottom one hanging back while all the others flew forward and swarmed around a tree. Then she turned back into a pony and then into crows a second time, repeating the same maneuver.

It wasn’t too draining. Dash could easily do that like ten times before running out of magic!

“What are you doing?” Twilight asked.

“Oh, nothing.” Dash turned back to a pony one more time, then clutched the pendant. “But this spell is amazing! I can already think of a billion cool things to do with it! Can I only use it when I’m wearing the pendant?”

“Right now, you can only use these spells when you’re wearing the pendant,” said Twilight. “If you keep using the spell over and over again, though, you’ll start to remember how to do it even without the pendant. Eventually, you won’t need it at all. Of course, there’s a point where your brain just can’t store any more spells which is why these books are necessary in the first place.”

Twilight took out her spellbook, levitating it at her side.

“You see, being good pays off,” Twilight said. “This book contains over one hundred thousand spells. If you obey me, I can give you even more powers.”

“Hey, wait!” Dash turned to Twilight. “Is this the part where you try to tempt me with power?”

“What? No!” Twilight took a step back, shifted her eyes, then stepped forward again. “But are you tempted? Out of curiosity.”

Dash thought about it. Having magic powers was pretty great. She was ever so slightly less useless now, which felt good.

“A little,” Dash admitted with a shrug.

“Great! I was actually thinking maybe you should be, like, my familiar.” Twilight looked away but scrapped the ground with her hoof. “Like you just stay here and devote the rest of your life to serving me and protecting my stuff. It’s the logical decision to be on my side since I’m the most powerful and I’m sure you want to take responsibility for exposing me like this by defending my stuff. I’ll just assume the answer is yes since that’s the only choice that makes sense.”

“Wait, wait. You’re just going to assume I’ve sworn my loyalty to you?” Dash asked.

“Yep!” Twilight lifted her head and marched away. She got to a chest on the side of her house and from it took out a second witch hat, one without bells. Before Dash could protest, Twilight shoved the hat down hard on her head. “There! Now you’re a witch too! We’re officially on the same side!”

“Hold up!” Dash pulled up her hat so she could see again.

“And you said dressing like a witch was illegal in town,” Twilight reminded her. “And that if you do something illegal everypony will gang up and beat you down. So now you’re implicated in my crimes and can never return, leaving you no option but to join me.”

“I don’t think—"

“Now that that’s taken care of, I’ll need you to patrol the area twice a day with the spell I just gave you. Plus, I want you to divulge all the secrets and potential threats of the outside world so that we can think of ways to counter all of them and protect our house.”

Dash had no idea what to do in this situation. She could pretend to be Twilight’s minion to learn all of her secrets and stuff. Or maybe she could just be Twilight’s minion for real. Being the toady of the most powerful being in the world did put you above ninety-nine percent of all other ponies.

If Twilight actually took over the world eventually would it even be that bad? The current government already kind of sucked.

“Well?” Twilight looked back, tapping her hoof impatiently. “I gave you an order.”

“Yeah, sure why not.” Dash shrugged. Might as well play along for now. “I guess if society didn’t want me to sell out to an evil witch, they should have paid me better, right? But does this mean I’m not kidnapped anymore? And I can go wherever?”

“What?” The look of surprise showed Twilight hadn’t considered that part yet. “No! I mean, you’re officially not kidnapped anymore, but you’re going to stay here forever anyway because that’s what we agreed to.”

“I don’t remember that part of the contract.” Dash took the witch hat off. “Heck, I don’t remember the contract at all! There’s no point in me having all these magical powers if I’m just stuck here forever.”

“Stuck here? This place is way better than the outside because you have me here. What can you get on the outside that I can’t get you here?” Twilight puffed her cheek out in frustration like she was offended at the idea it was even possible.

“The rest of my cards for one.” Dash pointed back to the house.

That was one thing Dash knew for a fact Twilight really wanted to see. The witch glowered, unable to think of a good counter to that.

“It’ll take me like two hours,” Dash promised. “I’ll just go get them and come right back here; I promise! And then you’ll be able to trust me. If I’m going to be your minion you gotta be able to trust me, right?”

“No, you’d just leave forever!” Twilight put her hoof down.

“I’m not going to ditch you. But given my luck, it's a sure thing I’m going to run into some horrible monster on the way back that’s going to kidnap me and then you’ll assume I just decided to bail and there’ll be all this freaking drama and—" Dash realized this plan probably wouldn’t work out. “Actually! I have a better idea. How about you come with me? Then you can just blow up whatever we run into.”

“What?! Leave?! Into the town?!” Twilight was afraid again, just like she’d been when wandering out of her clearing for the first time. “I dunno.”

“And you can make sure I don’t bail on you.”

“But what if something attacks and I’m not around?” Twilight asked. “I have lots of dangerous things here and I can’t leave them alone!”

“We can get back here in time if your ravens see anything,” Dash assured her. “We’re not that far away. You stopped being scared of going into the forest, right? It’ll be the same with town.”

Twilight tapped her hoof on the ground, nervously thinking about her situation.

“Okay.” Twilight turned around. “I’ll go with you to get the cards, but you have to agree to be my minion.”

“I thought I already did.” Dash raised her eyebrow.

“Well, yeah! But again! Out loud this time.”

“Okay, fine.” Dash put her witch hat back on. “I’ll be your familiar or whatever if you go back to town with me.”

Twilight stood nervously at the edge of the clearing, frozen again for the first time in maybe a month, silently deliberating on the best course of action.

“Okay,” Twilight said softly. “But only for a minute! And you can’t talk to anyone without my permission since you’re my familiar now.”

“Yeah, sure.” Dash bowed her head. “I swear my loyalty to you. But we can’t wear this stuff into town, okay?”

And that was how Dash became an evil witch, but you had to go where the money was, right? She knew she was on the cusp of turning all of this around.

"Alright. Then I'll take off the magnetic force spell." Twilight closed her eyes and broke the spell on Dash.

For a moment, she watched Dash nervously like she was expecting the pegasus to bolt right then, but began to relax when Dash stayed.

Gremlins

Twilight, or ‘Silverstorm’ as they’d be calling her, had her disguise and alias more or less put together at this point. Her lightly grey fur was closer to white than silver and her hair striped between purple and pure white. The cutie mark, norotiously hard to hide for most ponies, would appear as three stars in a triangle. That last detail would be the strongest deflection from her real identity. As for excuses as to why Twilight was completely oblivious about everything, they had plans for that as well.

“Alright, let’s go through this one more time.” Dash trotted through the forest, Twilight in tow.

Twilight nodded.

“Hey! How do you not know what X is?” Dash asked.

“I was neglected as a child,” Twilight responded.

“What’s your opinion on X?”

“My religion forbids me from talking about that.”

“What’s your favorite type of X?”

“I had a traumatic experience with X and would appreciate it if you didn't mention it again,” said Twilight.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” said Twilight.

“Great!” Dash stomped a hoof on the ground in applause. “Just keep cycling between those excuses and I think we’ll be okay.”

“And you’re a hundred percent sure it’s okay to go there without being invisible?” Twilight was getting more nervous the closer they got to town. They were pretty close now. “Everypony in that town is our enemy, Rainbow Dash! We need to be careful.”

“Saying they’re all our enemies is stretching it a bit,” said Dash.

“You said yourself they have a huge reward for me! And if they’re going after me then that means they’re going after you now too!”

“Look, even if they do find out who you are there isn’t one pony in Ponyville crazy enough to stand up to you besides yours truly.” Dash gestured to herself. “Believe me, I spent an entire month knocking on every single door in the town to make sure. They’d just run away in the worst case scenario.”

“Maybe we should turn back.” Twilight looked back towards her house. “We got closer than yesterday so—"

“Twilight, we’re almost there. We already ‘practiced’ going into town yesterday. We gotta at least get close enough to see it before turning back this time.”

“Okay, okay. Just don’t forget I’m the one in charge here.” Twilight tried pulling down on her hat only to realize it wasn’t there. That made her far more nervous. “Are there any hats that aren’t illegal?”

“Sure, but I have no money so good luck getting one,” said Dash. “You’ll see it won’t be so bad at all. See? There it is now! Perfectly safe.”

The town was off in the distance, but they could see it now.

“Are you sure?” Twilight ran ahead a little and squinted at the town. “It looks somewhat not safe over there.”

“Huh?” Dash squinted too.

Something was going down, a battle of some kind. A squad of pegasi in v formation was flying over the town, gunning down at something. Gunshots could be heard all over the place and something was clearly on fire if the smoke plume was any indication.

Of course something would happen today of all days! The only question now was what kind of monster had come to ruin the day.

She didn’t have much time to guess before the answer ran right by her. A lone gremlin came down the path just a little way, then ran off laughing into the woods.

Gremlins were far from the most dangerous thing you could run into, but they ran around in huge gangs and were incredibly annoying anyway. They looked like little chimpanzees, only hairless, green, gooey, and with large claws at the end of their monkey hands.

“Oh, come on!” Dash opened her forelegs wide and yelled at the town itself. “Gremlins would just happen to show up now of all times, wouldn’t they? Now somepony’s gotta go find the gremlin king and blah blah blah.”

“Hold on, which part of this are you reacting to?” Twilight looked over everything with equal suspicion. “Is it the little green things?”

"Yeah," said Dash. "They’re like a space fungus that grows on meteors or something. One must have hit somewhere. This isn’t very common at all, I promise you.”

“Hold on! There are space mushrooms?!” Twilight looked up at the sky.

“Some epic, god-tier battle happened a few thousand years ago.” Dash made an explosion sound and lifted one of her hooves. “It was so epic and intense that huge chunks of rock were thrown into outer space! In space, super radiation is intense, so it turns the mold into gremlins. When one of those rocks finally falls down, we get gremlins. Makes sense?”

There were two major sources of super radiation: toxic waste and meteors. Meteors could bring all sorts of problems. Gremlins were a relatively mild disaster to get hit with from one.

“Almost.” Twilight looked around at the continued destruction. The first pony she saw in Ponyville was one with a gremlin on her back running around in circles yelling as the gremlin pulled her ears. Twilight quickly hid behind Rainbow Dash as she approached, though what she was afraid of Dash couldn’t be sure. “I could instantly destroy all of them with a massive chain lighting spell if you want.”

“We’re trying to lay low,” Dash reminded her, pushing forward through the chaos. “Somepony else will take care of this one. Let’s just ignore them for now.”

“Are you sure?” Twilight ran up to her side.

“Nah, these gremlins are like the lowest tier of monster,” Dash assured her. “They rarely ever actually kill anypony. Just play mean pranks and cause property damage.”

To prove her point, Dash picked up a nearby rock and chucked it at one of them. On contact, the gremlin’s body was reduced to green slime. Another nearby gremlin, who’d been laughing hysterically as it hung from a weathervane, lost its grip and similarly splattered into slime after falling not even two stories.

“But there are a whole lot of them,” said Twilight. “There have to be thousands."

As they got closer, the gremlins outnumbered ponies in the streets. They were running around all over the place, filling the streets and rooftops. But even without help from ponies they were killing themselves off quickly.

“Yeah. They have like a one in a million chance of surviving until adulthood so they gotta have literally a million kids every time to compensate.” Dash shrugged. “Nature is freaking brutal. You know, there’s this one species of ant called the honeypot ant. They like, lock a few of their own up and force feed them 24/7 so they get ridiculously fat. Then during winter? They cannibalize the fatties! How metal is that?”

The two of them pushed on until they were in the town proper. As soon as they were in, Twilight started clinging hard to Dash, hiding behind her like a lost puppy.

“Rainbow Dash, who’s that?” Twilight ducked behind her and pointed to some earth pony.

“I have no idea.”

“What do you mean you have no idea!” Twilight poked her head up just enough to yell at her hiding spot. “You mean you haven’t taken inventory of every single pony living in this town?!”

“Nah, I’m too lazy.”

“But what if he’s plotting to kill us right now?! If you don’t even know his name you can’t rule that out.” Twilight, with a sudden bolt of braveness, stepped out to confront this stranger. “Hey, you! What’s your name?”

“Huh?” He blinked then turned to the two, confused. “My name’s Caramel. Who are—?”

“What are your intentions?!” Twilight yelled at him.

“What?” Caramel looked from side to side. “I don’t think I have any?”

“You expect me to believe you have no motivations whatsoever?” Twilight glared at him. “That you sit around and merely exist for the sake of existing? I can’t believe such a thing! No one could be that pathetic! You’re clearly lying!”

“Twilight.” Dash tried to pull Twilight aside.

“What? No!” Caramel took a step back. “I mean I— I have a job so I’m not a total loser and— ah jeez! My dad was right! My life is meaningless, isn’t it?! I am a pathetic loser!”

Caramel ran off crying.

“That takes care of him. That just leaves—" Twilight briefly stepped out from behind Rainbow Dash to take stock of the remaining ponies. “Hundreds? Or did you say there were thousands?! How do you deal with this many? You can’t possibly keep track of all of them, can you?”

“Like I said, I don’t keep track of them, remember?” Dash asked. “Nearly all of them aren’t plotting evil. You can just deal with the ones that are when they show up.”

“But aren’t you scared one of them might attack us?” Twilight asked. “If you don’t know any of them—"

“Look, if that was common enough to worry about this place would be in total chaos, right?” Dash reasoned.

“This does look a little chaotic.” Twilight looked over at one gremlin who’d just run out of a wine store and was now smashing the bottle it stole against the wall.

“Yeah, yeah! This just had to happen today.” Dash rolled her eyes. “But this isn’t a pony problem. I say the fact that we even have a civilization despite infinite sources of chaos speaks volumes to how good we are.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Twilight admitted but remained hidden behind her.

“Good! Remember, no talking to anypony and try to freak out as little as possible.” Dash started deeper into town with Twilight at her side, the witch immediately rushed after Dash anywhere she went for fear of being left even one step behind.

Twilight reacted in terror to everything she saw, be it normal or gremlin related.

They passed a mail mare opening a mailbox. Some snot-nosed kid passing by on a skateboard. An exterminator sitting on her roof gunning down passing gremlins one by one. A group of gremlins outside a hardware store were quickly killing themselves off with a lawnmower. A group of children skipping rope and another slaughtering gremlins with wooden toy swords.

Every one of these terrified Twilight, but she kept cool and resisted the urge to shout out or ask any questions for now.

As they walked through town, Twilight’s barrel was all but glued onto Dash’s, the witch constantly pressing against her like a scared foal. Dash kind of wanted to put a wing around her, but then everypony would immediately assume they were dating and anyone Dash knew was sure to try and talk to her then. Stupid overzealous shipping culture.

They finally got to the small apartment building Dash lived in. For a brief second, she thought maybe it’d feel good to be home again. There was a pile of stuff outside the building, which Dash very quickly realized was all of her things.

Worse, there was a group of gremlins jumping around on top of it. Two of them were ripping springs out of Dash’s mattress. One of the two pressed too hard against a spring and got sent flying into a wall where it got smushed into goo.

Worse, the other three gremlins had gotten into her drawers, had taken out some of her Summoner Knights cards! They were throwing them at each other, laughing hysterically. As they did, the illusion effects went off summoning all manner of tiny ghosts, undead knights, werewolves, and the like, much to their amusement.

“Hey! Get out of here!” Dash charged at the gremlins, the three of them bolting as soon as she got close. Dash grabbed the cards that had been scattered about the area before looking back at her pile of things. “They took all of my stuff out? Wait, no! They wouldn’t have arranged it so neatly.”

Dash flew over to the door to her apartment to find a padlock on it. She put both hooves on her face and slowly dragged them down, groaning. At least the landlord lived right here so she could confront him right away.

She went straight up to his door and knocked loudly while Twilight approached her pile of things with curiosity. Dash didn’t stop banging on the door until that guy finally opened up.

“What?!” The landlord slammed his peep slit open so Dash could only see his glaring eyes. “Oh, it’s you. Finally decided to stop hiding, have you?”

“What the crow, dude?” Dash kept her eyes locked on him and pointed at her stuff. “Why is all my stuff outside during a gremlin storm?”

“You haven’t paid rent in three months!” The landlord yelled at her. “I evicted you a month ago, but you kept dodging my attempts to contact you!”

“Hey! I got kidnapped, okay?” Dash put a hoof on her chest. “What do you want from me?”

“The rent!”

“Okay, I walked right into that,” Dash admitted. “But isn’t there like, rent protection for ponies who get kidnapped or something? I feel like that should be a thing, but I honestly don’t know.”

“I don’t know either and I don’t care!” The landlord shouted back. “I’ve had enough of your crazy excuses and ideas. You were going to go find Twilight Sparkle or something like that, weren’t you? Why don’t you go ask her for help?”

And he laughed and laughed hysterically before slamming the slit shut. Dash’s eye twitched. How Dash wished she could respond to that.

“I mean,” said Twilight. “I could turn him into a frog or something.”

“Nah, we’d better not,” Dash said reluctantly.

“But why not?” Twilight pointed at the door. “He’s keeping you out of your own home. He’s clearly evil.”

“According to society, I’m the bad one in this situation.” Dash walked over to her stuff. “One way or another you gotta give somepony money each month or you don’t get to live inside. Owning a house is like some kind of utopian dream these days.”

Any plan she could have had about escaping from Twilight just crossed the line into impossible now. Dash needed a place to crash!

Dash opened up the dresser she kept her Summoner Knights cards in. Thankfully, most of them were still there. Though sadly, her collection was no longer complete.

“I don’t think I understand,” said Twilight. “Shelter is the most basic necessity. How can you people be unable to secure that when you’re advanced enough to build robots and moving pictures?”

“Yeah, sure.” Dash rolled her eyes, idly going through her cards to see what was missing. “I could barely describe what stamps are but let me try to explain how years of over-reliance on housing as a form of investment have led to basic shelter being largely unattainable in the most advanced era of civilization.”

Dash tried to decide if any of her stuff was worth keeping. There was her bed with a spring sticking out of it, her broken chair, her blender, and radio were the most promising. In the end, the radio was the only thing she put in her backpack. The gremlins could have the rest.

She went to check her mail one last time before heading out. There were a ton of letters stuffed inside there, mostly junk.

Then she came across a pink envelope that felt heavier than the others. Dash read the address to see it was from Pinkie Pie! She tore it open straight away to find a small card that guaranteed ‘one free meal a day to the pony holding this card plus one for life’ at Curse Burger. It even had Dash’s name and cutie mark printed on it.

“Oh hey!” Dash held the card up in the air. “I forgot all about this! It’s the card for free burgers for life! I honestly thought these were an urban legend. I haven’t had anything good to eat in months!”

“You said you liked those pumpkin seeds!” Twilight puffed her cheek out, annoyed.

“Sure. But real talk, we both suck at cooking.” Dash went back to her mail. “Trust me, even fast food is gonna be like ambrosia to you.”

Though the fact Pinkie could get one of these on-demand made Dash wonder what kind of connection Pinkie had to Curse Tech. Maybe she was just a large shareholder. That mare had to be rich at this point.

She went through the rest of the mail, her most recent bank statement being the only one she deemed necessary to read, and threw the rest of it to the hungry gremlin who quickly suffocated trying to shove them all down its throat.

Dash braced herself to see how much debt she was in now after months of bank fees hitting her left and right.

But the number wasn’t red!

There was a deposit for fifty thousand bits! Her mind reeled seeing a number that high, but before long she remembered Pinkie once again.

“And she put fifty grand in my bank account for keeping quiet too,” said Dash. “I’ve had never this kind of money before! But how’d she get my bank account number? Or my address? She is psychic. It'd be creepy if she can just guess all that, though.

Ah, heck! Dash didn’t even care! She had a positive amount of money for once!

“Are you going to 'pay the rent' now?” Twilight asked.

“Um.” Dash looked back at the apartment building. “Nah! Screw that guy! Let’s go get burgers and irresponsibly blow a bunch of it!”

“What?! I thought we were going back right after this.” Twilight pressed up against Dash’s side for support, clearly unnerved by the idea of staying in town much longer. “I don’t know if now is a good time to try anything else.”

“What?” Dash turned around. “This is the perfect time to go explore the town! Everypony’s distracted by the gremlins. Look at how distracted that guy is.”

A stallion ran by, stumbling as a gremlin clung to his face, drawing on it with a marker. He eventually ran into a bunch of garbage cans. Five more gremlins popped out of them and started throwing garbage at him.

“That is pretty distracted.” Twilight raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah! It’ll be fine! Trust me!” Dash led Twilight off towards the burger place.

Explaining the convoluted housing market turned out to be incredibly easy.

“So, you spend half of your resources giving yourselves permission to live in houses that have already been built?” Twilight summed it up. “That’s the most disgustingly wasteful thing I’ve ever heard. No wonder you people are completely helpless.”

“Yeah, well we’re not as collectivist as you seem to think,” said Dash. “They don’t just give out free housing and food. Though, I guess I’m an exception now.”

Dash held up her card as she walked into the burger place.

Behind the counter, the staff was fighting a few gremlins off. One pony slammed one down onto the grill, melting its head off. Another threw hot grease on a small group of them, melting them all. A gremlin snuck up from behind on the grease pony, but when it tried to jump him, it fell into a vat of boiling grease and died as well.

A particularly dangerous-looking gremlin got its hands on a knife but promptly cut itself to pieces as it swung the blade around trying to threaten the ponies.

“Sorry for the delay.” A yellow pegasus mare came up to the counter at last and bowed her head. “What can I— oh! It’s you, Rainbow Dash!”

To her chagrin, Raindrops was the one who was running the register right now. Raindrops was one of the other ponies Dash went to school with. Like everyone who she went to school with, Raindrops looked down on her a little despite working in a fast-food place.

Loath as she was to admit it, having a fast-food job did put Raindrops ahead of Dash on the ladder. Unless you counted her job as Twilight’s lackey.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” said Raindrops. “What did you run off looking for this time? Bigfoot? A mummy? Twilight? Aliens? I take it you didn’t find any of them, huh?”

Raindrops chuckled at her.

“For the record, I did find something.” Dash slammed her card down on the counter. “Ha! I eat here for free now! How do you like those rainbows?!”

“What?” Raindrops looked over the card, she had to get the manager to come verify that the thing was legit but, in the end, they had to accept it. “Where did you get this? I didn’t think these things actually existed and I work here.”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that.” Dash smirked, eyes closed, and turned up one of her hooves.

“Please.” Raindrops rolled her eyes. “You’re so full of it. You probably just won a scratch and sniff contest.”

“And I want two of the most expensive thing on the menu,” said Dash.

“That’s only like 12 bits but okay.”

Raindrops rang up the order, the total coming out to zero. Then she looked at Twilight, maybe just now realizing the two of them were together.

“And who the crow are you and why are you hanging around Rainbow Dash?” Raindrops asked. “Dash is totally cringe, you know. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anypony but Derpy who was willing to hang around her.”

“My religion forbids me to answer,” said Twilight. “I’m of the dusk coven.”

“Huh?” Raindrops blinked. “I’ve never heard of that. What province are you from?”

“I was neglected as a child,” said Twilight. “I don’t know anything about a province.”

“What?” Raindrops looked skeptical. “What’d they do to you that you don’t even know where you’re from?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” said Twilight.

“What?!” Raindrops reeled. “It was so bad they classified it?! You know, something like that happened to a guy I’m going to college with. You poor thing! Well, no worries, this is a safe space.”

“I had a traumatic incident with safe spaces and would appreciate it if you not mention them again,” said Twilight.

“I’m so sorry!” Raindrops covered her mouth.

“I’m running out of lines," Twilight whispered to Dash.

“I think you’ve said enough, Raindrops.” Dash glared at her, grabbed the food, and walked off.

Somehow that worked out! Sitting down to eat that burger felt like her great moment of triumph.

The burger tasted a million times better.

“Maybe I should have asked this before.” Twilight glared at her burger. “But are these burgers cursed? You keep calling this place Curse Burger.”

“Not exactly. The potatoes and soy beans that mare used to make this stuff are cursed.” Dash bit into it. “Place is owned by Curse Tech. They do some ethically questionable stuff with curses and super radiation. Like these fries aren’t made from normal potatoes, but super potatoes they invented! They’ll try to strangle you with their roots but they also taste amazing if you manage to defeat them.”

Twilight looked skeptical, but slowly took a bit of her burger.

“This is the greatest thing I’ve ever eaten!” Twilight’s eyes watered in amazement.

Twilight had zero self control and devoured her burger and fries in a matter of moments. Still she wanted more.

“I need more of this!” Twilight demanded.

“Guess I got fifty grand so why not?” Dash got up to get another burger.

After a small feast, Dash and Twilight staggered back outside.

“Well that was great.” Dash stretched. “But what do we do next?”

“Maybe we should go back home?” Twilight yawned. “I’m so tired now.”

“I guess have been here a while.” Dash looked up at the sun. It was still in the afternoon, but they’d been in town for hours. She’d gotten what she came here for. “Maybe we can go back.”

Twilight nodded, clearly a bit exhausted by the day already.

There seemed to be more gremlins around town now, even though their numbers should be dropping dramatically. Must have been a big meteor, to the point Dash was surprised she hadn’t heard it back at Twilight’s house even.

But that was somepony else’s problem. Dash had her own ‘mission’ or whatever she was doing. She really did need to come up with an end game for all of this. It certainly felt like she was making progress though and that was good enough for now.

They passed by one of Starlight’s followers, preaching on the street. The guy was immediately recognizable in his black cloak with a green trim around the edges. The higher your rank in the cult, the more elaborate the design around the edge. His were arranged into green, curved triangles remniscent of waves. Dash wasn't sure where that put him. She did know, however, that the truly high ranking ones had a more vine-like design.

Given the track record of interacting with gods, demons, and the like in the past, ponies were wary of any religion these days. Allowing these people to stay in society was controversial but Starlight was the number one ranked slayer and had defeated countless monsters. That was perhaps the main reason her cult was allowed to spread.

“Starlight Glimmer holds the supreme truth of the universe!” the preacher called out to no one in particular. “What I speak is the most important message you will hear in your lifetimes! Passing me by is a grave mistake indeed. The foolish refuse to listen and the foolish will perish!”

“Huh?” Twilight stopped to look at him. “You know the supreme truth of the universe? I never expected some random guy to know that much. What is it?”

“You want to talk to him of all ponies?” Dash rolled her eyes and tried to pull Twilight along. “Come on, don’t waste our time.”

“But he’s saying this is the most important thing ever, right?” Twilight asked. “Shouldn’t we listen to something like that?”

“Silver—"

“Are you saying you’ve never heard of our prophet Starlight Glimmer?” The preacher jumped down from his perch.

“No. Who’s that?” Twilight asked with complete innocence.

Dash could practically see little money symbols flash in his eyes as he realized Twilight was legitimately this naïve.

“Why, Starlight is the wisest, most noble, and powerful pony who ever lived! She has the highest record of any slayer, has saved our world countless times. None can match her strength, intelligence or beauty! Her knowledge surpasses that of a PhD's in each of the 200 fields she's studied. She even bowled a perfect 300 game on her first try then vowed to never bowl again so the rest of us wouldn’t feel bad compared to her. What compassion!”

“I’m not sure what all of that means, but it sounds very impressive,” said Twilight.

“Twilight.” Dash yanked her tail, trying to pull her away.

“Yes! It was the most impressive anypony ever was!” the preacher raised his forelegs to the sky. “But it goes far beyond that! Starlight has traveled beyond reality to bring us the most profound truths of the universe. She alone has conviened with Cosmos, the mightiest god of them all, and seen beyond the veil of what we perceive as reality. She has uncovered dangers beyond your wildest imagination"

“What dangers?” Twilight asked.

“The gods are against us. The universe is consumed in void and slowly crumbling around us. You need only look up at the night sky to know this. Any day now this illusion of safety may crumble and absolute chaos could pour into our world."

“This does sound like a big deal! And you’re saying this is going to happen any day now?” Twilight asked.

“Yes! Any day! It could happen tomorrow or a year from now, but it will happen soon! Ponies are incomplete and broken beings who cannot possibly survive the world to come in our current form. But thankfully, Starlight offers reasonably priced courses that will—"

Getting into an argument about religion was the absolute last thing Dash wanted to do on any given day but was just so naïve on the subject she couldn’t keep her mouth shut any longer.

“Twilight, there’s like a hundred other religions and a thousand cults and all of them have definitive proof that their god or demonic hell beast or whatever at least exists.” Dash pointed an accusing hoof up at the preacher. “Starlight’s cult can’t even do that much! You’d be better off just picking another one at random. This guy’s just trying to take advantage of you.”

Two or three ponies stopped to watch, hoping for this to devolve into something entertaining. This was exactly what Dash didn’t want to happen. To his credit, the preacher wasn’t at all rattled by the accusation. He probably got this a lot.

“We’re not a cult, we’re a religion! You can’t just go around calling every religion you don’t like a cult.” He turned his chin up just a little, smiling down at Dash. “And I’m trying to help this poor lost soul. As for evidence, I’m more than happy to debate for Starlight has given us more than we need! She has been bestowed with the divine miracle to create true void, something no mortal could ever do. But not only does being able to create it prove her divinity, but our religion is further supported by the revelation that follows. True void is stable meaning—"

“No, it’s not,” Twilight objected.

The preacher was briefly taken aback by the contradiction.

“What are you objecting to?” he asked.

“True void is the same thing as true chaos,” said Twilight. “It’s the least stable thing imaginable and always decays into something.”

“Yes, yes. Some heretical philosophers and scientists argued about whether or not nothingness would be stable in the past,” said the preacher with a laugh. “But thanks to Starlight’s revelation it’s all been settled! She has done what many have said to be not just physically impossible, but philosophically impossible! We must praise Starlight!”

“Yes, it has been settled and it degrades into something!” Twilight was looking seriously offended now. “This Starlight pony is lying to you.”

“And who are you to question a prophet?” he asked. “Can you make true void? It’s not something any mere pony could do. Only Starlight!”

“I’m pretty sure any pony could make true void if they just—"

“Sorry, we gotta go.” Dash quickly pulled Twilight away.

Twilight struggled just a little, but not enough to keep Dash from bringing her down around the corner.

“Silver, we’re overstepping our first trip here.” As soon as they were out of earshot, Dash whispered to Twilight. “You can’t admit to doing something miraculous as soon as you get here.”

“But that’s not true!” Twilight complained, offended that somepony would contradict her life’s work like that. “I know for a fact that nothingness is unstable and will always collapse into something. If she’s saying it’s stable, then she’s either lying about being able to create true void or about what she observed when she did. Probably the former.”

“Yeah, and honestly just the fact that you can do it kind of undermines her claim to divinity, huh?” Dash nodded and leaned up against the wall. “I kind of just dismissed those guys for not having the same proof the other cults do so this is the first I’m hearing about Starlight’s ‘miracle’. You know, I am almost tempted to just go over there and disprove their entire religion.”

“Yes! How dare she lie about something so important!” Twilight nodded in fast agreement. “I still have no idea what this religion thing is, but they’re clearly wrong! Once everypony knows the truth, they’ll uh— what will they do again?”

Dash had to think about that one. What would they do?

“Now that I think about it, that probably wouldn’t change a lot of their minds,” said Dash. “Cause if you’re in a cult you’ve already invested too much time, money, and emotion to just back out of it, you know? There was this other cult where the leader said a UFO was going to come on a certain date and when it didn’t almost nopony left.”

“But I want to go over and lecture her about this,” Twilight complained.

“Yeah, yeah. You and a million other ponies, but we don’t want to mess with Starlight if we can avoid it,” said Dash. “She’s ranked number one in the organization I’m from. She’s probably going to be president in— oh wait! Or did the election already happen?”

“Election?” Twilight asked. “What’s that?”

“Well, we get to vote on which of the elite four we want to be president of the agency,” said Dash. “Our actual government is laughably weak, so they’re the real ruler. That is, they’re the one who gets the most say on what’s illegal, see?”

“And this Starlight liar would get to decide what’s illegal if she wins?” Twilight asked. “She could just declare anything illegal she wants? What if she declares card games illegal?”

“I mean she wouldn’t have that much power, but—"

“You can’t let her do that! Everypony needs to know she’s lying before then!”

“I’m pretty sure everypony already knows she’s a liar,” said Dash. “She’s a politician, you know. Besides, I think the election might have already happened.”

“You don’t know when this election thing happens?” Twilight asked.

“It depends on who wins the debate.” Dash ran up to the first pony passing by who wasn’t already preoccupied with the gremlins. “Hey, buddy! Do you know if the debate ended yet?”

“Nah, it’s still going! They’re on day ten and if it lasts till midnight it’ll be the longest debate in history. Isn’t that cool?” he asked.

“Somepony’s been debating for ten days?” Twilight asked.

“Hey, hey! We might still be able to catch it.” Dash motioned towards where the movie theater was. “You said you wanted to watch a movie, right? Well the theater’s the place you gotta go to see the news anyway and we got fifty grand to blow. You’re not supposed to talk in the theater so we should be good.”

Twilight frowned up at the sun. It was still only a little after noon.

“I’m tired, but I’m also suddenly curious about all this,” Twilight admitted with a nod. “Fine.”

Dash decided to take Twilight to an R-rated movie so there wouldn’t be any annoying kids around. It was something about a mummy and it’d been out for a while.

Her plan worked as there was literally nopony else in the room. Already the projector was playing the pre-movie cartoons and commercials. The actual movie was only part of the attraction and a newsreel played at least once before and after, along with short documentaries, popular songs, and the like. Some ponies just went to the movies to watch the news.

But right now the news wasn’t playing so Dash left Twilight for a moment to buy a bunch of junk food. She could afford that now!

Of course, a gremlin had somehow gotten into the popcorn machine and was laughing hysterically as the staff tried to get it out. Eventually, they decided to just turn the machine on, bursting the gremlin into goo, then cleaning it out afterward. But there were already a few bags made so Dash just got some of those.

When Dash got back, Twilight was sitting in her seat, looking up at the screen, mesmerized by some cartoon.

There were two kernels of popcorn, each with big cartoon eyes. One of them had a propeller hat and the other had a long, white beard.

“You see, my child,” said the grandpa popcorn. “Only one of two fates awaits us! Those of us who are lucky are bought en masse by the towering gods that exist outside the bag that is our home. But we are not even worthy to be their chattel slaves, no, we are but food to them. They will tear us to shreds with their teeth and we will burn in their stomach acid.”

Several cartoon popcorn kernels were shown smiling, then being broken to pieces in a pony’s mouth before going down to a stomach.

“Does it hurt to get eaten?” the popcorn child asked.

“Yes!” the grandcorn admitted. “But our deaths are not in vain for we shall nourish the gods and become one with them! It’s better than the fate that awaits those who are unworthy. We go to the garbage heap where we slowly rot in agony, becoming disconnected from the souls of our ancestors for all eternity.”

“Gee willikers! I sure hope our gods hurry to the concession stand and buys up all of us before we go to popcorn hell!”

The two popcorn kernels looked straight at the screen.

“This is disturbing,” Twilight said. “I can see why it’d be ‘rated R’.”

“That’s a commercial.” Dash sat down.

“A what?” Twilight gave some of the popcorn Dash brought back with her a suspicious poke.

“Oh, it’s going to the news!” Dash pointed up at the screen as the newsreel started playing.

It wasn’t long before they cut to a live feed of the debate and Twilight got to see two of the elite four. Nailbat and Flash Bang stood behind two podiums on the stage.

Almost as if they were specifically created to be diametrically opposed to one another, you could tell these two wouldn’t get along just by glancing at them.

The way Nailbat normally dressed, you couldn’t make much out about him other than the fact that he was a lanky, unkempt stallion. He wore a trademarked green hoodie and a black face mask with the lower half of a skull covering his jaw. The hoodie was enchanted to cover what little of his face would have been visible when it was up in shadow, so only two glowing blue circles where his eyes were could be seen.

Always at his side with his namesake baseball bat with a single nail sticking out of it. Ten years ago, a single blow from that bat was enough to throw the tarrasque off of Canterlot Mountain and leave it in the coma that it was in until this day.

Flash Bang, his opposite in all ways, was glaring at him as he spoke. Where he was tall and lanky, she was short and stocky, redish orange with a bllue mane. Dash couldn't say what Nailbat's cutie mark was but Flash Bangs was the Equestrian pheonix inside a sheild, barely one step off just being Equestria's flag itself.

Where Nailbat almost always worked alone, Flash Bang had a small army that reported to her directly, only accepting the most impressive ponies as recruits. Flash Bang had a long list of major military victories under her belt. Her entire family had a long legacy in Equestria, with nearly every generation producing at least one president.

Her grandfather, Flash Blade, being the most recent of the most pretigeous of her ancestors. He had lead the invasion of Manehattan and fought off the Bloodstorm Cartel. Frankly, in Dash's eyes, Flash Bang seemed increasingly desperate to live up to her grandfather.

“Where’s the other two?” Twilight asked.

“I dunno. Starlight probably didn’t bother coming at all. She’d win if she did show up,” said Dash.

“The fact that mental disorders are criminalized is the real insanity here,” argued Nailbat. “It’s like we live in some parody of an actual nation! Several of the ‘monsters’ we’re supposed to hunt are merely harmless, oppressed minorities caught in too wide a net. The ones that are potential dangers are often only hostile towards us because we give them no right to exist at all! We would be far safer if we allowed ghosts to be on our side and help protect us from actual threats.”

“My opponent wishes to reduce my motives to nothing but bigotry,” said Flash Bang, “when in fact this is truly a matter of survival. Ghosts are not slightly different ponies, but monsters! They have slaughtered countless ponies and have brought civilization to the brink of collapse! The only reason society still exists at all in the face of the enormous threats that surrounded us is because we have no tolerance for them! We must destroy Crater Cemetery, hunt down every witch, burn down the castles of the mad scientists, destroy the werewolf villages, and eliminate every cult if we are to survive! And yes, that includes Starlight’s cult!”

“See, that last part’s the reason why Flash Bang’s going to lose the election,” Dash commented.

“That mare sounds like she’d be even worse than Starlight,” said Twilight. “If she wants to hunt down all the witches that’d mean she’d come bother us.”

“Huh?” Dash idly sipped her soda for a moment before remembering that she was an honorary witch now. “Oh crap! You’re probably right. I should vote for Nailbat.”

“Mental disorders should not be criminalized!” Nailbat shouted over Flash Bang only to be shouted over himself a moment later.

“Wait. They’re just repeating the same thing over and over?” Twilight looked back and forth between the two of them as they kept repeating those talking points.

“Yeah, pretty much.” Dash nodded. “That’s how these always go down. You can only do so much actual discussion so eventually, you have no choice but to just start shouting the same thing on repeat if you want to last more than a couple of days.”

“So, when you say they’ve been debating for days—"

“Yeah, see you gotta have super-equine strength to be part of the elite four. These guys can argue non-stop for days no problem.”

“That sounds like a complete waste of time,” said Twilight. “You can’t have a productive discussion like that.”

“This isn’t a discussion, heck it’s not even really a ‘debate’ anymore. See, ponies realized that you’re just going to end up assuming whoever you agreed with going in won the debate and no one’s mind is going to be changed, so they decided to make it more objective. The elite four shout over each other non-stop without food, water or rest until they faint. The vote happens the day after it ends, so whoever collapses looks like a total loser right before the vote.”

In the middle of their shouting, both ponies on the stage got hit with a dart they didn’t attempt to block. The contents of the dart were potent, making both of them fall to the ground at once.

“Oh, yeah!” Dash leaned forward to watch with more intent. “Forgot to mention, they get hit with an increasingly powerful tranquilizer dart every twelve hours on top of it all.”

Dash was on the edge of her seat watching the two of them.

“You— your mom is dumb.” Nailbat struggled to his feet.

“No.” Flash Bang panted heavily but managed to get up as well a moment later. “Your mom is the dumb one!”

“See?” Dash marveled at them. “That dart would have paralyzed a normal pony but they’re still at it! Aren’t they so cool? Debates are way more entertaining now!”

“Yeah, well I’m way stronger than either of them!” Twilight huffed. “I could debate for ten weeks if I wanted to.”

Just as they were cutting back to the news, something about corn subsidies, another group of ponies came in. And Dash had been so close to getting the whole theater to herself!

They were a bunch of teenagers too! Who let them in here?!

“Ugh! Why do they always put boring stuff before the movie?” one of the three teens, a pink one, loudly complained as she sat down two rows behind Dash. “If I cared about the news, I’d just kill myself and get it over with.”

“You know, the news doesn’t even aim to inform you anymore,” another teenage girl said. “Its purpose is to make you angry and afraid so you’ll keep watching. Old ponies are just too stupid to realize that and keep watching out of habit thinking any of this stuff is important.”

“I only watch the news for the exploding heads, dude,” the only boy in the group spoke next. “And I don’t see any heads exploding if you know what I mean, dude.”

The news was saying something about Crater Cemetery now, but Dash could hardly hear any of it.

“If the growing crisis that is ghosts continues to escalate—" the news reporter said.

“Dyuh! The growing crisis could escalate until I’m a total loser,” the pink teen said in mockery of the guy’s voice.

And the teens started laughing.

“Can you keep it down?” Dash asked them. “You’re not the only ones in here and we’re trying to watch this.”

“Omigosh, grandma here is actually watching the news,” the silver teenager snickered.

“You’re such a 23 skiddoo!” The pink teenager rolled her eyes and threw a piece of popcorn down at her.

“What?”

“You heard me!”

“I did, but I have no idea what you’re trying to say,” said Dash.

“She doesn’t even know what 23 skiddoo means!” The pinkish teenager elbowed her silver friend and the two of them laughed hysterically.

“I came to an R-rated movie so I wouldn’t have to put up with any kids,” said Dash. “You know you’re not allowed in here without an adult, right? If you snot-nosed brats can’t behave, I’m gonna go snitch on you.”

“Our new best friend got us in.” The teen laughed. “We already talked to the manager before you bring it up. Her fake ID checked out one hundred percent.”

“See the trick is to technically be 68 depending on how you look at it.” A familiar voice came from behind.

Dash’s ears perked up. She turned around to see Pinkie coming through, levitating a truckload of snacks with her. She sat down with the other teens, dropping multiple bags of popcorn, boxes of candy, dozens of burgers and hot dogs, and enough soda to drown a grown stallion. Their seats were now surrounded by a wall of junk food, a fortified snack castle.

“Oh! Rainbow Dash! It’s me! Pinkie Pie!” Pinkie waved excitedly then picked up a large bottle of soda. “I’m drinking an entire liter of soda and nothing bad’s gonna happen tomorrow! Isn’t that incredible?! Isn’t this amazing?!”

“Pinkie?”

“Yeah! For your information I did find a malt shop,” said Pinkie. “But everypony there was either a grandparent or a grandkid, so I guess maybe that’s a tie? It’s so weird but I keep forgetting about you! I’ve never forgotten to invite somepony to one of my parties before. Sorry about that.”

“Yeah, I wonder what could have made you forget.” Dash looked at Twilight.

“That’s the psychic that attacked me.” Twilight leaned over Dash’s shoulder to glare at Pinkie, quickly deflecting away from herself.

“Yeah! Remember when I repeatedly assaulted you?” Pinkie laughed to herself. “Oh, that was so awesome! Oh, wait. Why are you in town? Nothing— nothing fishy is it?”

The two glared at one another, locking eyes.

“We’re just watching a movie!” Dash moved between the two of them. “Silverstorm here just wants to look around town!”

“Oh! I don’t know who that is but that’s fine.” Pinkie shoved her face into one of her bags of popcorn.

“But what are you doing here?” Dash asked.

“Watching a movie, duh.” Pinkie rolled her eyes. “What? Do ponies just come here to eat? Haha! Oh, yeah! These are my cool teenager friends! Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, and Snails.”

Snails? Dash remembered him. He was in sixth grade when she was a senior in high school. He’d been this gangly, buck-toothed, flat-heated, zit-ridden, snot-nosed loser. But now? Now he was like this chiseled Adonis, would have towered over most stallions. He had dusty hair and intense blue eyes and irresistible boyish good looks. His smile shone like the sun.

Puberty must have loved that kid. Dash couldn’t blame any filly who wanted to hang around him.

“Whoa, dude!” Snails looked like his mind was blown the moment he saw Dash. “Your hair is like— like there’s thirty thousand rainbows inside it. It’s tripping my tubulars, dude!”

He was still an idiot though.

“Tch!” Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes. “Who is this, Pinkie? Your great, great, great grandma? I don’t want her getting her old pony smell all over me.”

“I’m like six years older than you guys,” Dash pointed out. “We’re the same generation. I was even in school with Snails at the same time.”

“More like six quadrillion years!” Diamond said getting two of the other three to laugh with her. “Anypony over the age of 16 is basically dead.”

“Yeah, man!” Snails kept laughing the longest. “I’d have to eat like six quesadillas to be as old as you!”

Diamond Tiara gave her friend a stern look of disgust.

“You’re lucky you’re the hottest guy in our class, Snails,” Diamond Tiara warned him.

“Why the crow are you hanging out with a bunch of teenagers anyway?” Dash asked Pinkie.

“Well, that’s a funny story! See, I was chasing after all that—" Pinkie looked at the other teens then winked at Dash. “To complete my rare fork collection. I learned that a crystal skull on my list was being given out as a prize for the pinball tournament in town. Just a few months ago I was shaking my hoof at those darn gizmo boxes for corrupting the youth, but suddenly I found myself capable of learning its actual name! Soon I realized that I was even capable of figuring out how to play it! So there I was, in the arcade practicing for the tournament all day and all night.”

“Okay.” Dash didn’t see where this was going yet.

“That’s when the truancy officer showed up and dragged me to high school!” Pinkie went on. “I wasn’t able to convince him or the principal that I already graduated high school and got shipped to detention where I met Snails here.”

“It was on the eight, dude!” Snails laughed. “Turns out I didn’t even have detention that day. I just get it so often I go there out of habit now.”

“But when the teacher unhinged her jaw and tried to devour my brain in hopes of getting my psychic powers, I started to suspect something may be wrong at Ponyville High.” Pinkie narrowed her eyes. “Anyway! Long story short, together me and Snails solved the mystery of the missing sixth-graders, slew the basilisk, and got into this huge zombie dance battle!”

“We solved that mystery good, dude. See the most important clue,” Snails tapped his head, “is the friends we made along the way. You know, dude?”

“Anyway, killing the last body snatcher made me the most popular teenage girl, which drew the attention of the other most popular teenage girl, that’s DT here, who tried to battle me for dominance briefly before realizing that I could get them into an R-rated movie and now we’re friends!”

“Yeah, Pinkie is so 23 skiddoo,” Diamond Tiara agreed. “It’s cool now.”

“I think you misunderstood that word,” said Pinkie. “See, 23 skiddoo means—"

“My dad is a billionaire,” Diamond interrupted her. “I don’t need to know what words mean!”

“Tch! Yeah.” Silver Spoon agreed with a roll of her eyes. “Shows how gronk you are! It’s cause like, in our current supposedly capitalistic paradigm productivity and merit are almost completely decoupled from wealth and prosperity. You don’t get rich by doing anything of value, you get rich by being rich, owning land, and the means of production. If you’re already invested in the system like us, then you get vastly disproportionately rewarded by the system for doing nothing of value or even actively harming the world. And if I do ever screw up? Well, thanks to lobbying our otherwise laissez-faire economic structure suddenly turns into extreme socialism and I just get bailed out by your tax money no matter how badly I screw up. The resulting inflation from the economic damage I cause only ever benefits me as a property owner by dissolving my debts, so all the negative effects of my mistakes are burdened by poor ponies like you. So whatever gronkenstien!”

“Dyuh! Y-yeah!” Diamond Tiara shifted her eyes right to left. “Loser?”

“Ah, dude! My dad’s a snail farmer.” Snails shook his head. “And ponies don’t even eat snails! Maybe I should like, look up 23 skiddoo in a dictionary or something!”

“No. You don’t need to know things cause you’re sexy,” said Diamond Tiara. “Now shut up and go back to being a fashion accessory.”

“But being an accessory is how my uncle ended up in the big house if you know what I mean, dude.” Snails got a whack on the nose.

“What have you been up to?” Pinkie asked Dash.

“I kinda got kidnapped.” Dash gestured at Twilight. “For like two months.”

“Oh!” Pinkie loudly slurped her milkshake with a straw. “Did you want me to rescue you?”

“Nah, I think the Stockholm syndrome is kicking in.” Dash leaned back. “It’s fine.”

Behind her, Twilight beamed.

“Daw! You know, Stockholm syndrome is how my parents met,” Pinkie cooed.

A gremlin was creeping up on them all, had somehow gotten into the theater. It was crawling on its belly towards the teenagers as though being that close to the ground would somehow camouflage it. The gremlin had its eyes on Diamond Tiara’s popcorn.

“Hey! I see you!” Diamond Tiara pointed her musket at it.

The gremlin stopped for a moment, then continued forward.

“No!”

The gremlin took a tentative step forward.

“No!”

The gremlin took one more step and Diamond Tiara fired her musket, reducing it to green slime.

“Guh! Now I gotta reload.” Diamond Tiara shoved her musket back to Snails to make him do it for her.

“It’s great they let you bring loaded guns into theaters these days,” said Pinkie. “When I was a kid you were just a sitting duck, you know?”

“Is it even safe for a bunch of kids to be out tonight?” Dash asked.

“Ah, what’s the worst that could happen?” Pinkie laughed off the idea. “It’s not like the gremlins are all going to form into an unstoppable ball of fangs and hunger and roll through town instantly devouring everypony they roll over. Said ball isn’t going to come bursting through the movie screen in exactly eleven seconds and roll over Diamond Tiara leaving only her skeleton behind.”

There was a moment of silence as Pinkie smiled all too self-assured and pointed at the screen. Diamond Tiara took the moment to push Snails in front of her.

“See!” Pinkie happily declared. “Didn’t happen!”

“Could you maybe not use me as your hypothetical victim next time?” Diamond Tiara asked. “That is not 23 skiddoo.”

“It technically is not, yes.” Pinkie nodded. “But I’m a psychic so we’ll be fine.”

“Right,” Twilight agreed. “And I’m— I know karate. Like that one Summoner Knights card.”

“Whoa!” Snail’s mind was blown yet again.

“Oh!” Pinkie threw an entire thing of popcorn at Rainbow Dash. “Rainbow Dash, it’s starting!”

The movie began in an ornate tomb covered in hieroglyphics.

A few ponies held back one mare as the head of the expedition, a stallion wearing a lab coat and monocle, looked over a sarcophagus.

“No!” The mare tried to pull out of the other’s grips. “If you touch it, the mummy might be disturbed again. Who knows what it’ll do?”

The stallion just smirked and poked the sarcophagus anyway.

“Well so much for your mummy theory.” He chuckled.

“It was right here!” She pointed to the closed sarcophagus behind the scientist. “A mummy came right out of that tomb and walked around!”

“And if that’s the case then why is the sarcophagus closed now, hm?”

The mare didn’t have an answer to that.

“Exactly what I thought! You mummy theorists can never back up your claims with any real rigor.” He lifted his head. “It’s a good thing they brought me, a scientist, here to refute your ridiculous delusions. You have half the town in a panic over this nonsense already!”

“But I swear it was a mummy! I know what I saw!”

“There’s no such thing as a mummy, you superstitious imbecile!” The scientist slapped the mare. “You must have seen a zombie or werewolf covered in toilet paper.”

“I’ve been farming zombies for years! I know zombies and they don’t look like that!”

“That’s it! Throw her in the psycho center and electrocute her until she’s sane again!” The scientist clapped his hooves, and the other pony was dragged off kicking and screaming, leaving the scientist alone in the tomb. “Pah! A mummy? I’m far too scientific to believe in such nonsense. Why if it were up to me, I’d electrocute this entire town!”

After shaking his head, the scientist turned back to the sarcophagus. It was open now.

“That’s odd.” He stepped back, surprised. “This must be some sort of prank! Who is behind this?!”

He looked around to find somepony slowly walking down one of the dark halls of the tomb.

“Ah! There you are!” He started towards them. “You thought such a simple joke could fool me, a scientist?! Well, I hope you—"

He stopped just as he got close. The camera slowly went over the newcomer, showing they were a mummy!

“What?!” The scientist started backing up. “An actual mummy?! But this is impossible! Science can’t be wrong! No! No!”

He kept backing up as the mummy shambled towards him. Eventually, he backed up so far that he fell into a pit.

“No!” He screamed one last time before falling into a trap pit behind him.

The title came up as he fell screaming off the cliff.

Reign of the Mummy!

“This is completely unrealistic,” Twilight complained. “Mummies aren’t possible. That would break every law of science. Do they expect us to believe this story?”

“If I wanted realism, I’d go ghost hunting or something,” said Dash. “Sometimes you just want to escape from the mundaneness of life, you know?”

“Het!" Diamond Tiara chirped in, suddenly all smug, "you gotta be quiet during the movie."

Dash just rolled her eyes.

“We need to alert the masses!” The reporter declared.

“And what will that do?” The Anti-Mummy Association agent asked.

“Why it will give the ponies of the fine city of Manehattan the chance to evacuate this fine city! We have to do something! A mummy is running through town right now and we’re the only two who know about it!” The reporter declared.

“That’s exactly why I can’t allow you to live!” The AMA agent stabbed the reporter in the chest. “Ponies aren’t ready to know mummies exist! They may be able to handle vampires and werewolves but not mummies! I don’t care how many ponies I need to kill to keep them safe from that knowledge!”

The AMA then turned to his subordinates.

“And we’ll have to kill everypony else in this building as well! Fan out and take them down,” he said.

“Are we sure the mummy is the bad guy?” Twilight asked. “So far, the mummy has killed arguably one pony and the Anti-Mummy Association has killed like twenty. And actually, it was that guy’s fault he fell off the cliff!”

“Guh! Shows how gronk you are.” Silver Spoon rolled her eyes. “It’s a metacommentary on our inability to respond to unusual threats with no clear solution. We engage in security theater, allow for witch hunts and the passing of legislation that restricts our freedoms which all give the illusion of security but actually make everypony’s lives worse.”

“Yeah. This theater is like super secure and stuff.” Snails laughed.

Diamond Tiara sniffed and a look of disgust came over her face.

“Ugh!” Diamond Tiara scrunched her nose. “Snails, did you just do what I think you did?”

“What? Nah!” Snails put his hoof up to his nose. “I’ve been trying to pick my nose without magic for the past twenty minutes, but I just can’t figure out how you earth ponies do it!”

“Okay, then which one of you losers did it?” Diamond Tiara looked over at Dash and Twilight.

“Did—?” Dash suddenly smelt it too and gagged. “Holy crow! What is that?!”

The worst stench Dash had smelled since that time she blew up the septic tank filled the theaters, bad enough to make her eyes water.

Then the projector cut out and Dash heard the laugh of a gremlin coming from the projection box. The culprit, along with twenty of its friends, began crawling out of the projector’s hole.

A huge group of gremlins rushed into the theater from every exit. They were all carrying as many snacks as they could. The gremlins quickly surrounded the ponies and started throwing food at the lot of them.

“Ugh! How’d they get into the theater in the first place?” Diamond Tiara asked. “It shouldn’t be that hard to keep them out!”

“There shouldn’t even be this many left by now,” said Dash.

Meanwhile, the stench kept getting worse. All the ponies were coughing and gagging now, save Twilight who cast a spell to protect herself. After looking at Dash gagging for a moment she decided to be merciful and cast the spell on her as well.

The stench abated immediately.

“It’s that one!” Pinkie pointed to one of the gremlins in particular.

There was one gremlin, slightly larger than the others, that was covered in boils. These boils would occasionally shoot out into globs of goo that made a hissing noise and

“We gotta stop it or—" Diamond Tiara started.

Pinkie simply destroyed it instantly with her psychic powers.

“Nevermind.”

“I’ve seen this once before,” said Pinkie. “Sometimes you start getting special gremlins with special powers! That one must have had stench powers.”

“Ugh! Stench powers?!” Diamond Tiara covered her nose and cringed. “That’s gotta be the worst power you can have!”

“Oh, there’s way lamer powers than that. Like that one!” Pinkie pointed to a gremlin. This one was writhing on the floor in pain, surrounded by electricity. “It can electrocute itself! And that one can turn invisible but only to itself. At least that’s my best guess.”

That gremlin in question was right up next to Rainbow Dash, laughing hysterically and waving its claw in her face, thinking it was invisible.

“So they all have crap superpowers now?” Dash asked. “I never heard of that happening. Should we be worried? I honestly don’t know if this makes them more or less dangerous.”

As if to prove her point, a gremlin seemingly with the power to melt jumped into the room next. It pointed at its arm, laughing as it melted away, then the rest of its body melted, and it was dead. Another gremlin with spider legs for eyes ran by next, slamming into a wall and passing out.

“I don’t know.” Pinkie narrowed her eyes. “Oh! No, we should be afraid! Cause if you do enough crappy mutant powers one of them is bound to have some random exploit that makes it actually incredibly overpowered! And that is precisely what will happen in 3, 2—"

Diamond Tiara jumped behind Snails once again.

The ground began to shake. Pinkie created a psychic barrier around the group and Twilight created a magical barrier, but Dash still had no idea how safe she was.

The ground just in front of the screen began to bulge up! Dash half expected a gigantic gremlin arm to come out from underground, but instead up burst a massive pile of them.

Twilight and Pinkie both hit the wave of gremlins with their telekinetic powers, but quickly stopped when they realized none of them were moving. There was an entire pile of gremlins blocking them from the hole behind where the screen once was.

And the pile was slowly getting bigger. It soon covered all the other doors and forced the ponies to back up.

“They’re all dead.” Diamond Tiara gave one a poke, then jumped back.

“And they’re all perfectly identical,” Twilight noted. “That’s odd given how much variety there normally is between them.”

“There!” Pinkie found the one responsible immediately and pointed it out. “I think it can create endless dead copies of itself!”

One gremlin in the pile was still alive. It was rolling around on a pile of dead copies of itself, shooting out globs of green slime just like the stench gremlin. But unlike that one, this one’s balls turned into a copy of itself right after landing. They were coming out rapid-fire, too, bursting out all over the place.

“Ugh! That’s still lame.” Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes. “Snails! You’re a good shot. Take it out.”

“No worries. I can shoot the barn side of a broad if you know what I’m saying, dude!” Snails grabbed the musket and aimed.

“Hold on!” Pinkie called out to them, but it was too late.

The single shot hit dead on and instantly reduced the gremlin to slime. Problem was that the copies were exact copies of the corpse gremlin and mirrored its transformation into slime.

Simultaneously, every single one of them burst, covering everything nearby in a supernova of slime.

Dash was thrown to the back of the theater by the wave of slime. Worse yet, the ground collapsed beneath her and she began to fall. She was very nearly blind but saw the building collapsing up above as the slime continued to drag her down.

Ghosts 2: Ghosts on a Train

“What we’re doing? We were literally just watching a movie!” Dash shot back.

“Yeah! And it wasn’t even a good one!” Pinkie stepped forward. “You’re clearly hostagizing the wrong ponies.”

“Oh, like any predead is innocent.” Rattler sneered at the idea. “Me and my boys just want to stay down here in the dark, not bothering anybody, but yous always going and finding ways to torment us.”

“Yeah.” The smaller phantom by his side came out from behind his boss. “First it was that spirit board! Your blood-oozing teenagers always coming where they don’t belong and waking us up with that one! Asking me who they’re gonna marry as if I’m supposed to know!”

The other ghosts cheered him.

“Me? I can forgive something like that. But not this blob you’ve gone and sent on us now!” Rattler made a fist with his icy claws and hit the wall of ice behind him, sending worryingly large cracks through it. “This filth you’ve pumped into our home destroyed our lair, forcing us out into the sewers, and killed no less than four of my ghosts by gobbling up what they were possessing. Bobtail. Car Knocker. Ash Cat. Gandy Dance. All of them dead cause you flesh-ridden, snot guzzling, brussels sprouts munching predead rats! Me and Cage here are the only ones left of the original gang!”

“We have no idea what that blob is,” said Dash. “I didn’t even know it existed until just now. What makes you think I’m behind this?”

“You? Specific like?” Rattler pointed a claw at her. “I don’t recall saying nothing like that. I’d have ripped your eyes out in a second if I thought that. But it’s one of yous. One of them predead Curse Tech mobsters.”

“Mobsters?!” Diamond Tiara turned up her nose, offended by the idea.

“Be quiet!” Dash hissed at her. If that kid said something stupid, Dash was going to be so freaking angry. “You’re saying Curse Tech created that blob? How do you know that?”

“That’s where it came from.” Rattler pointed down the train tunnel. “Way other side of this thing is a Curse Tech waste plant. That’s where it came out of. Don’t really matter who went and sent it, though. If you want these kids to live, you’ll be giving in to our demands.”

“We don’t negotiate with terrorists!” Dash splayed her wings.

“Are you sure?” Boss Rattler held up a piece of paper that seemed tiny in his claws. “All I’m asking is for you to give this letter to whoever’s in charge up there.”

“Oh.” Dash put her wings back down. “I guess we could give in to that demand.”

“Yeah, I’d like to write my own letter of complaint.” Pinkie nodded. “This was pretty easy. Okie dokie! Give us the kids and I’ll make sure your letter goes all the way to the top.”

“Ah no! You get one,” said Boss Rattler. “One letter one kiddie. Others are gonna have to wait till this is all rectified and such. But I’ll be kindly like and let you pick which one.”

“Dibs!” Diamond Tiara’s hoof instantly went up.

“We can’t leave the kids down here,” said Pinkie. “They might get hurt.”

“Then hurry up!” Rattler told them.

Twilight had been standing there, eyes closed and deep in through this whole time. She had been unusually quiet since they entered this room. It made Dash wonder if she was up to something.

“Just give us a second!” Dash asked.

“Two minutes,” said Rattler.

The three mares huddled together.

“It’s not safe leaving them down here and we gotta get Fluttershy’s thing too, right?” Dash asked, keeping her voice low. “Don’t you have some overpowered spell that can help us?”

“I already did something. Sort of like one of those trap cards you showed me,” said Twilight. “Those two are safe. But there was another one, right? I don’t know if I can help him without them noticing. Not when he’s in the other room.”

“My psychic perception told me the room Snails is in is where the bear is too,” said Pinkie.

“Let me try talking to them first,” said Twilight.

Twilight broke the huddle and walked over to them.

“Is getting rid of the blob your main goal?” Twilight asked. “The three of us might be able to destroy it, but I need more information about where it came from. You need to destroy the whole thing, or it’ll just become resistant to whatever you throw at it, eventually becoming unstoppable.”

“And how do you know that it becomes resistant to whatever you throw at it?” Rattler lowered his head down in front of Twilight. His head alone dwarfed Twilight. “Are you from Curse Tech?”

“If that was the case, I wouldn’t need to know where it’s coming from, would I?” Twilight asked.

Rattler snorted, accepting that response.

“I mean, that one's a dipper with a big aura.” The lackey pointed over at Pinkie. “Maybe these guys are tough.”

Rattler stood silently considering it.

“I need more information if I’m going to destroy it,” said Twilight. “And I need you to promise to let all three of the kids go.”

“Fine. But only after you do it. It’s a straight line from here to where it came from.” Rattler pointed further down the tunnel. Splits into three dead-ends. Abandoned project and all that. It’s all filled with the stuff now. Maybe twenty miles in all and another unfinished station.”

“I might be able to cast a spell that will destroy all of it at once if that’s the case.” Twilight walked towards the ice wall.

“With what?” Rattler asked. “We already threw everything we could at it. The blob down there’s different like from the one out in the sewer. Nothing hurts it anymore.”

“Well attacking it so much was stupid,” said Twilight.

“Watch it,” Rattler growled.

“Just give me a few minutes to prepare the spell.” Twilight began chanting something under her breath.

“One more thing,” said Dash. “If we’re helping you, you need to let Fluttershy leave.”

“Is she talking about Flutterturd?” Cage turned to Rattler and all the ghosts laughed.

“Come on! If you don’t like her then just let her leave!” Dash demanded.

Rattler calmed the others down.

“How about this? You take care of the problem permanent, huh?” Rattler came closer to Dash. “Then maybe I’ll consider it. But you’d be better asking for a pile of dirt than that loser. Guess I hate her less than Curse Tech, least. If I can only get rid of one, then sure.”

“Because of the blob?” Pinkie asked.

“We always hated Curse Tech. Used to work for those monsters till we died.” Rattler opened his forelegs gesturing to the whole place. “We were the ones building this subway. Told em time and time again they been skimping on the safety down here. Me and Cage here died when a tunnel went and collapsed on us. Rest joined later.”

“Yeah! You think we’re the bad guys?” Cage asked. “It’s like chasing after a wolf while a dragon’s burning down the town. This blob ain’t nearly the worst thing these mega corporations get up to these days. I go spying on them all the times. Phantoms like me are the best spies, see?”

Cage floated over to the gremlins.

“Wanna know where all these gremlins are coming from?” Cage asked. “It's those guys! They’ve been mass cloning them! Freaky mutant ones with weird magic too! I just gots a portal from here to there. So you can thank Curse Tech for flooding your town. Hehehe.”

That explained the source of the gremlins, at least.

“That ain’t even the scariest thing I’ve seen. Not this blob, either.” Cage looked up at the ceiling. “Nah, one of them corporations got this one kid with like—"

“We don’t go given this kind of information for free, Cage,” Rattler warned him. “Suffice to say, they ain’t no good. If you knew anything, you’d be trying to stop them ponies.”

Diamond Tiara had been listening to this indignant the whole time, her cheeks puffed out like holding her breath was the only way to stay silent. But that last comment was too much for her.

“Well, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.” Diamond Tiara turned her head to one side, awfully defiant given her position.

“Shut up, kid!” Dash yelled at her.

“Giant mega corporations are the good guys,” Diamond Taira stupidly insisted on talking more. “And ghosts are the bad guys. It’s that simple. Mega corporations give us movies, projectors, telephones, and trains and all you give people is frostbite! My father is the president of Curse Tech and he’s a great pony! He gives to charity and—”

“Hold on now.” Rattler crawled over the train car and leaned down towards Diamond Tiara. “What was that last line again?”

“You stupid idiot!” Dash hissed at Diamond Tiara through her teeth.

“Oh!” Diamond Tiara’s eyes wide as she realized her mistake. “I meant to say my dad is the resident of Curse Tech. Because they make him work 120 hours a week with no pay! It’s basically like he lives there, and I never get to see him. I’m totally on your side. Boo corporations!”

“I see.” Rattler grit his fangs together hard enough for the ice to crack. “So your daddy be the reason Ash Cat died?”

“You’ll never prove that in a court of law!” Diamond Tiara tried to back up but a wraith flew down grabbed her with his icy claws.

“If you hurt her—!” Dash threatened but it was already too late.

Rattler pulled back, opened his claws, and swung down at Diamond Tiara. The ghost that had been holding them up darted out of the way. Dash and Pinkie both jumped forward, but neither had enough time to reach him. That blow would have taken off half of Diamond Tiara’s face at the least if it hit.

Thankfully, Twilight’s metaphorical ‘trap card’ activated and a rainbow-colored barrier that had been invisible until now shone over the two fillies. The force from Rattler’s claw was thrown back at him as the barrier shattered. The claws on that hoof broke and his foreleg was thrown back. All the other ghosts in the nearby area were hit by the same invisible force, stunning the lot of them.

“What the—?!” Rattler sneered down at the two fillies in surprise.

That attack bought just enough time for Pinkie to psychically grab and pull the fillies safely behind her. Now only Snails and Fluttershy's bear remained in danger.

Boss Rattler went straight for Pinkie after seeing her display and no doubt feeling she was psychic. Various other ghosts were swarming in from all sides, but with the main one distracted Dash felt like she could do this.

She cast the murder spell and flew towards the bathroom from twenty different angles. The ghosts tried getting at all of her crows, but there were too many and a couple got to the entrance of the bathroom.

Just like she remembered, there was a single poltergeist holding Snails at knifepoint. Dash kept advancing. The ghost didn’t get the memo that one of them could turn into birds, and thus, regarded the incoming crow only with confusion.

Dash turned back into a pony just before hitting Snails. She tackled Snails and the two phased straight through the ghost, rolling out of danger.

That just left the bear. Pinkie said it was somewhere in the bathroom, but Dash couldn’t see it anywhere! It was too dangerous to stay by herself this long.

For now, she grabbed Snails and flew him out of there. She threw him to Pinkie, who left him with the other teenagers.

“Go all out!” Rattler called to his gang. “I want them all dead! That pink one’s their lynchpin. Take her out first.”

“I’ve been waiting a long time to do this one!” Cage flew up near the back of the room.

He opened a wide portal behind him. There was a brief pause, then an entire train car came barreling out of it at full speed going straight for Pinkie.

Pinkie closed her eyes and focused on the incoming train. It looked like the car crashed into a solid wall in the air. All the windows shattered, the car crumpled, and it fell to the ground.

“Let’s see how many times you can do that!” Two more portals opened behind Cage. “I’ve been saving up old, beaten-up trains for years for an occasion like this!”

This time, three train cars from three different angles flew at Pinkie.

Pinkie deftly shattered the trains, then threw the gremlins back. She pulled back her hoof, trying to form a spirit bomb, but then Rattler swung his claws, launching those huge icicles at her. By the time she dealt with that, another train car was flying at her.

How many train cars did that guy have?

“I’m no sure I can keep this up much longer!” Pinkie called out.

“Yeah. Me, um, me neither.” Twilight wasn’t even remotely tired as she dealt with swarms of gremlins and wraiths.

Poltergeists were throwing bricks at her, but every one of them turned into a butterfly just before making contact. A group of the enraged gremlins all piled on top of her, Twilight doing nothing to stop them. Then five wraiths pulled out their ice claws and rushed in to slash at her from all sides.

“Um. Oh no.” Twilight failed miserably at feigning worry. Just before the wraiths came within slashing distance, she cloaked herself in flames that burned away all the gremlins within ten feet and blew all the wraiths back. “Boy, that was close.”

“Twilight! Maybe do a little more?!” Dash suggested. “Get them off Pinkie!”

“But I’m not that strong, remember?” Twilight glanced sideways at a ghost.

“You’re pretty strong, just not that strong!” Dash called out to her.

“Like on a scale from one to ten, how strong am I?”

“I don’t know!” Dash ducked under another wraith. “Maybe a six?”

“Alright.” Twilight cast a spell and held up her hoof.

A small, black orb reminiscent of a bowling ball appeared in her hoof. Twilight threw it at one of the incoming train cars, smashing it flat as a pancake. The ball hovered just in front of the portals after that. The moment any more came out of Cage’s portals they too became flattened, effectively neutralizing his main attack.

Another spell made brownish-orange chains fly out from Twilight’s withers. They flowed behind her, looking momentarily like enormous wings made of chains before Twilight swung them. The chains tore through the room, rapidly whipping at all the ghosts. All the ones who got hit were thrown back hard, usually straight through the walls.

One of the chains came right for Dash, giving her a brief scare before they went straight through her. It looked like they could only hurt the ghosts. Any physical object was unaffected.

Out of all the ghosts, only the two main ones were able to stand up to the onslaught. Cage was able to nimbly dodge them and fly back into a wall. Meanwhile, Rattler just closed his eyes and took the brunt of the chains. All of his icicles broke by the time Twilight was done, but Rattler didn’t look injured at all.

Rattler roared loud enough to shake the room. A force of blue energy flowed through him, pushing Dash backward and throwing the chains around the room until they snapped. He managed to shatter Twilight’s chains.

His claws and fangs reformed, then shattered a moment later as Pinkie jumped out from behind Twilight, hooves blazing with a blue light.

“Spirit bomb!” Pinkie shouted.

The room was flooded with a blue light.

When it receded, Rattler alone was standing there, his image blurred and flickering, on the verge of true death. Revenants were tough ghosts. Dash doubted any of the others could have survived even the splash damage from that.

The rest of the gang never came back. Other than Rattler and Cage, the others all fled, unable to deal with Pinkie and Twilight. The gremlins were reduced to a pile of mush that filled the gap for the train and all of Cage’s portals collapsed under the force of Pinkie’s spirit bomb.

“Whoa!” Cage came out of his wall and looked over all the crushed train cars. “We’re dealing with a hotbox here, boss.”

“That was a six out of ten?” Dash whispered to Twilight.

“I assumed six out of ten meant above average,” said Twilight. “Was that not above average?”

“I guess technically it was.”

“You’re clearly outmatched,” Twilight called out to Rattler. “Just give up now.”

“Yeah! If you give us that bear, we’ll let you walk away from this,” said Dash.

Rattler growled and his icy claws and fangs reappeared.

“I’m hardly out of options yet.” Boss Rattler slammed his claws into the wall of ice that was keeping the blob at bay. “You forget! The blob can eat you, but we can just float on through it.”

The ice shattered and the blob charged out of its prison.

Pinkie reacted first, putting all her focus on holding it back.

“No no no!” Pinkie bit her tongue trying to keep it all back. “This is way more than before!”

Pinkie held out for a second at best before collapsing. The blob moved forward, but only an inch before Twilight stepped in. Twilight tried her trick from earlier, pulling up a wall of stone from the ground.

As soon as it got up, the wall cracked. Then the stone wall shattered, taking out parts of the tunnel along with it. A large amount of the blob blasted through and flooded into the main room.

“What?!” Twilight was genuinely surprised, enough so to quit her doomed acting career. “How big is that thing?”

“That’s right! It goes on for miles and miles!” Rattler laughed. “Why it’s gotta weigh more than that whole town up above!”

Twilight jumped up over the blob. She cast a spell, sending lightning bolts raining down on it. Visible electricity surged through the blob deep into the tunnel, lighting up the room, but the blob was impervious.

A second spell sent an enormous fireball at the source of the leak. The resulting explosion knocked all the ponies and ghosts in the room back, making Dash worry about the room collapsing. The room was unharmed, and the blob was merely scattered a bit. It continued to pour through even faster.

Twilight enveloped herself in black flames. The black fire melted into a thick shadow that spread out all over the room. The blob turned pitch black briefly but kept pouring out.

“What have you been throwing at it?” Twilight asked.

“Everything we could think of.” The phantom shrugged.

“And you didn’t stop to think maybe making it immune to everything was a bad idea at any point?!” Twilight shot back at him.

“Hey, I did what I could!”

“There’s still radiation, but—” Twilight muttered to herself in thought.

Twilight gritted her teeth and created a forcefield this time. The magic barrier shone with a bright white light that managed to keep the enormity of the blob in check. Right after that spell, Twilight muttered to herself and created a tiny black hole, not unlike the one in her bathroom, on the other side of the barrier.

Now the blob was the one being consumed, pouring into the hole like a drain faster and faster. But still there seemed to be no end to it.

“Whoa!” Cage’s eyes widened at the sight of Twilight’s barrier. “Hey, boss! I’m starting to think maybe these guys are stronger than they look. I can’t beat a pony who can cast magic like that.”

“We don’t gots to!” Rattler growled at him. “Ain’t much that can stop this blob now.”

He might have been right too. Twilight was concentrating on keeping the massive blob in check, but that was enough to take up most of her concentration.

“That should hold it off for a few minutes,” said Twilight. “But it’s going to collapse if it gets too big.”

“It can’t evolve to be immune to gravity, right?” Dash called out. “Just keep doing that on loop!”

“No, it could absolutely evolve to destabilize this type of black hole, especially if there’s this much of it,” said Twilight. “You see, normal black holes are incredibly dense matter, mostly consisting of—”

“Yeah, I don’t need the scientific explanation right now,” said Dash. “Is there anything that can stop it?!”

“There are lots of things left to try, but I’ll likely have to resort to a plasma stream to destroy all of it. Everypony needs to get out of this room first!” Twilight called out to her.

“Right!”

Dash looked around. They still needed to get that teddy bear before they could resort to something that extreme, though. Already the room was starting to fill up with blob as it devoured the endless supply of gremlins. Cage had created a new portal, summoning even more gremlins to feed it.

“Don’t let them get away!” Rattler called out to Cage.

Cage flew down into the ground as Pinkie ran into the tunnel they’d just came from with the three teens in tow. As soon as she got in, all four of them skidded to a stop.

The smaller blob from before was coming down that tunnel now. They were surrounded now.

Pinkie charged into the tunnel before it could fill up entirely. This one being much smaller, Pinkie was able to slowly push it back with her psychokinesis. There wasn’t a lot of time left.

Dash broke into crows and split up to try and find the teddy bear. Flying off in every direction, it wasn’t long before one instance of her found the bear.

Boss Rattler was holding it in his huge claws, keeping it just above the blob.

“You’re looking for this, ain’t you?” Rattler held it up.

Three of Dash’s crows flew straight at it, but she wasn’t fast enough.

Boss Rattler threw the teddy bear into one of the train cars and Dash dove in after it. She turned back and grabbed onto it, only for the blob to swell up and come crashing down at the train car a moment later.

Dash didn’t have enough time to escape, but she did have just enough to slam the door shut. The blob hit the train car hard, sending it spinning. Dash tumbled as it fell. With no ground left to slam into, the car hit more of the blob.

By the time she regained her orientation, Dash was stuck inside the train car, now completely submerged in red slime.

The blob pulsed and one of the windows cracked just a little. Dash looked to the door to see a small amount of it coming through the bottom.

Why didn’t they make trains airtight?! It was seeping in through the door but only a tiny bit for now.

Would Twilight or Pinkie be able to get in here in time? Did Dash have any options?!

She looked around. This was the only situation where turning into twenty crows wasn’t way more overpowered than it sounded. That was the only real power Dash had too!

There had to be some way to stall at least.

Dash jumped from the hall to a chair as a ghost came up from the floor. Then she let out a sigh of relief, seeing it was Fluttershy.

“I felt a huge spirit attack.” Fluttershy trembled, looking around nervously. “But I can still feel some of them around here. Are— are they running away?”

“Fluttershy!” Dash ran over to her, holding up the bear. “I got your bear, but you gotta help me out! Freeze the walls around the train to buy me some time.”

“If it’s just the blob monster left, maybe.” Fluttershy came up a little bit more, her ears still pinned down hard. “Well, I can pull you through walls. Just—”

Fluttershy froze in place, petrified of something behind Rainbow Dash.

Dash turned her head to see both Rattler and Cage now inside the train. Rattler was so enormous his head alone filled most of the hall. He wouldn’t even be able to fit inside were he corporal.

“Looks like we got the weakest link cornered,” said Rattler.

“I dunno, Boss!” Cage nervously rubbed the back of his neck. “I think these ponies might be messing with us. We gotta get out of here while we can still get, I think.”

“We ain’t leaving without helping at least one of these predeads ‘move on’ and all that!” Rattler snarled at Dash.

Rattler opened his mouth wide enough to cover nearly the entire train car. Now the inside of his mouth looked like a more extreme version of a shark’s. Rows of sharp, icy fangs went deep into his mouth. The ghost moved forward, threatening to bite down on Dash.

Dash went straight to her only real power, broke into twenty crows, and flew forward as fast as she could.

As Rattler chomped down, the train seats and most of the crows got torn to bits, the icicles shattering hard against them. But he wasn’t quite big enough to take out the entire hall and some of Dash’s crows got through to the other side.

Dash landed on the other side. One crow got out of that unscathed and changed back into a pony without a scratch on her. Based on her memories, most of them got out of that unhurt too!

She knew the rules. Dash would retain the injuries from whichever crow turned back into her, the rest could die and it didn’t matter. She just had to keep one unharmed and she could keep this up all day.

But then she felt something hot on her side. She’d been so worried about the ghost that she forgot about the blob! Now a small glob of it was burning away at her side, growing bigger as it ate her fur, then started on her skin.

Dash swung hard and managed to throw it off, but a painful burn was left behind.

Rattler held out his hoof and shot a volley of sharp icicles at Dash. Dash broke up into crows to try and dodge it, but the pain kept coming even after turning into a crow.

Dang it! When she got injured, she turned into injured crows. Getting hurt as a pony was a much bigger deal than getting hurt as a crow. With her agility reduced, very few of her crows made it, but she managed to turn back without too many remaining injuries.

“What are you doing, Cage?!” Rattler snarled at his lackey, who Dash just now remembered was right next to her.

Cage looked nervously at Dash, then at Rattler.

“Killing all them crows is real bad luck.” Cage backed up and shook his head. “I already got a bad feeling about all this. Something real bad’s gonna happen if we keep this up.”

“She ain’t a real crow. Sure it’ll be fine,” said Rattler.

At least it looked like one of them wasn’t going to attack. Dash hadn’t considered it until just now, but she did have a cloak of superstition protecting her now. But clearly, that only counted for so much.

Rattler charged forward again, chomping down at Dash, who tried to slide past him as crows yet again. Still injured, not one of Dash’s crows was able to avoid him entirely this time.

This time, when Dash turned back, she tumbled to the ground. She was covered in cuts now, the newest one was bleeding badly. She wouldn’t be able to keep this up much longer.

On the other side of the train, Rattler stabbed one of the windows with an icy claw. Now the blob was pouring in much faster.

Dash looked around desperately but only found Fluttershy cowering in the corner.

“Come on! Driving them away should be easy for you!” Dash called out to her.

Fluttershy covered her head and winced like she was in pain.

“If you don’t get me out of here, we both might die!” Dash reminded her. “Just pull me through the wall like you said! Please!”

Fluttershy remained unresponsive.

“She seriously thinks Fluttershy is going to help!” Cage and Rattler both laughed at the idea. “As if that chicken’s ever going to do anything!”

“That little twerp right there’s the biggest loser in the sewers and that’s saying something!” Rattler pointed his icy claw at her and laughed. “I’m including everything that gets flushed down here too if you know what I mean! Crying’s about the best she can do.”

“If you hate Fluttershy so much then why not just let her leave?” Dash asked.

“Don’t want to risk some other specter rolling in here and taking over,” said Rattler. “Keeping that little twerp nice and on her leash ain’t so hard.”

“Other ghosts can’t fight against you if you don’t let them!” Dash called out to Fluttershy. “You just have to be brave for one second and it can all be over! Please!”

But Fluttershy kept wincing and trembling, unresponsive.

“See that? Nopony ain’t coming to help you!” Rattler sneered down at Fluttershy one more time. “Now get out of here!”

Fluttershy fled deep underground as the other two ghosts laughed.

Dash couldn’t just let them get away with that! She stood back up only to have a large icicle smack her right in the eye. It was too swollen to open back up now.

There had to be something Dash could do!

But Dash didn’t have any way to even hurt a ghost right now. There was no way to fight back.

The two ghosts were distracted, laughing hysterically at their inside jokes at the moment.

“Maybe when this is over, we should go make some more ‘soup’ for that loser.” Cage suggested.

Rattler was nearly shaking the train with his laughter as he slapped his chest at Cage’s barrage of jokes. Dash growled. She wanted to do something about whatever horrible cruelty they were doing, but she was too weak!

“Ah! Look at how mad the little girly’s getting.” Rattler pointed down at her. “You don’t like me bullying her? Nah! All chicks are the same. You think this makes me a real stallion, don’t you?”

“Yeah! I bet deep down she wants to be your first kiss or something, eh?” Cage jostled his boss a little. “But some little runt like that ain’t even good enough for that!”

A distant hope shot new life into Dash.

Dash remembered that other incel ghost she briefly bumped into. That was right! Not getting laid was one of the most common ‘unfinished businesses there were’.

“Hold on.” Dash stood up, her strength suddenly returning. “Let me guess. Your unfinished business that you’re a kissless virgin?”

Both Rattler and Cage stopped laughing and got an ‘oh crap’ look on their faces.

“What?! No!” Rattler backed up, shaking his head. “Nobody said any such thing! It’s that— well, it's none of your business!”

“Yeah! I was just kidding. The boss has made out with so many chicks!” Cage nodded a bit too eagerly.

“I could get a girl any time I want! I just choose to focus on my career as a ghost gang leader!”

“Heh!” Dash wiped a bit of blood off her cheek and struck a pose. “Give up now, or I’ll kiss you right in your face! Don’t make me make out with you!”

“There’s no way you could get to me!” Rattler shouted down at her.

Dash kissed her hoof and pointed it at Rattler, ready to blow it at him.

“You think you can get away in time?” Dash asked.

Rattler’s huge size was a mark against him. If Dash blew the kiss, there was no way he could get away in time.

“That won’t—” Rattler tried to pull back but stopped in place when Dash inhaled. “That won’t necessarily work! No one ever really knows the rules with these things!”

“Well you can find out or you can let me out of here!” Dash kissed her hoof once more to reapply it. “Four, three, two—”

“Alright! Fine!” Rattler dug his icy claws into the side of the train, then ripped it open.

With some effort, he parted the blob, creating a path of ice leading to the surface. Glaring at one another, Dash moved slowly to the new path and Rattler moved out of her way. Once Dash was close, both of them ran for it.

Dash flew through the new exit as fast as she could.

The room was mostly filled now! She could see that Twilight hadn’t been completely idle, at least. She formed a tunnel made of force fields leading from both her and Dash’s car to where Pinkie and the others were.

“You got out sooner than I expected,” Twilight called up to her. “There’s still a path out!”

“I got the bear!” Dash held it up as she dove past Twilight. “Go ahead!”

Dash ignored the pain and flew down towards Pinkie Pie and the teens. Pinkie brought up a psychic barrier as Twilight backed up, stopping just in front of them. Her body began to glow with magic.

“Everyone get down!” Rattler called out to whoever was close enough to listen. “I don’t know what’s about to happen!”

The ghosts flew deep underground.

Twilight cast her spell, unleashing a stream of white-hot plasma into the adjacent room then flooding into the tunnels. After the first two seconds, Dash couldn’t see anything but blinding light, enough to make her need to cover her eyes. She could feel herself starting to heat up even behind Pinkie’s shield.

When it died down, large parts of the room and following hallway were glowing red. The trains and rails, where they weren’t melted, were all twisted and deformed from the heat. There was still a glowing white light coming down the tunnel as the plasma continued to barrel forward.

“That should take care of the worst part of it.” Twilight brushed herself off and stepped forward.

That wasn’t even a big deal to her. “Though cleaning this whole place up will take a lot more effort. We should still go down there to make sure.”

The three teenagers stood in stunned silence, looking over Twilight’s display. That might have been a bit much, but there'd really been no other way.

Rattler and cage came out of the ground, the only ghosts brave enough to even check.

“Holy hell!” Rattler looked over the room, eyes wide, then at Twilight. “That was a six out of ten to you people?! Who the hell are you?!”

“I told you they were holding back!” said Cage. “I bet they’re all that strong, the purple one is just the worst actor!”

“I don’t want to see any of you again.” Twilight walked forward, all the ghosts backing away from her as she did. “Don’t do anything like this again, okay?”

“Yeah! Sure!” Cage nodded. “I think we gotta find a new hideout, boss.”

Rattler’s disapproving grumbling was like a low roar, but eventually, it turned into a sigh.

“Fine. We never wanted to bother with any predeads anyway.” Rattler flew off into the underground, his gang quickly following.

Once they’d gone, everypony let out a sigh of relief and sat down. Dash just now started to feel the pain from her wounds, starting to dread having to walk all the way back to Twilight’s house.

Pinkie turned back to the smaller blob. She got a bottle out of her chaos bag and levitated some of it in. Twilight came down next. She tried electricity, which didn’t work, then that shadow power which caused this one to simply burn away into nothing. That got a curious ‘hm’ from the witch.

“Jeepers dude.” Snails sat down. “Two crazy, crunchy sewer battles in one week? Do you think I’m like the chosen one or something? Destined to rule the sewers?”

“The chosen one of the sewers?” Diamond Tiara asked. “You can keep that one, sure.”

“Rainbow Dash! You got hurt!” Twilight ran over to Dash to look her over. “I should have taken care of them sooner.

Twilight sat down next to Dash and started healing her wounds.

“Not too much,” Dash whispered to her. “I think those teenagers are already suspicious enough.”

“Oh, right!” Twilight stopped and wiped her forehead like she was sweating. “Wow! That spell sure took up all of my energy. I just don’t have anything left to heal you with.”

“Yeah, who are you again?” Diamond Tiara came up to Twilight, eyeing her with suspicion. “

“We had this conversation like four times, dude. But it finally sank in.” Snails rubbed his almost non-existent beard. “Pinkie’s like, the reincarnation of an S class hero or something. It all checks.”

Diamond Tiara looked over at Silver Spoon.

“I guess S class ponies are supposed to be that strong.” Silver Spoon shrugged.

“Oh, yeah! They’re all like that.” Pinkie put a foreleg over Diamond Tiara’s shoulder. “If I wasn’t so pubescent at the moment, I could totally do the same.”

“Whatever.” Diamond Taira dropped it. “Thanks for saving my life. I guess.”

That’s gratitude for you.

“You can come back out, Fluttershy!” Dash held up the bear and called out to her. “Fluttershy?”

There was a delay, but Fluttershy came back, coming up only enough for her eye to be visible.

“Are they really gone?” Fluttershy asked. She slowly poked her head out to look around. “Like— like for real this time?”

“Ack! It’s another ghost!” Diamond Tiara threw her tiara at it. “Pinkie! Get it with your psychic powers!”

Fluttershy retreated underground much faster than she came up.

“It’s okay,” said Pinkie. “Fluttershy’s a nice ghost. We were helping her get her thing back.”

“All ghosts are bad,” said Diamond Tiara. “Didn’t you see what just happened? That’s why ghosts aren’t allowed in Equestria! Helping her is probably illegal or something!”

“Yeah? And so is nearly destroying the world with a blob monster,” Dash shot back. “The only way we might stay quiet about that is if you stay quiet about Fluttershy.”

“We don’t know if that’s even the case yet!” Diamond Tiara turned her nose up and away. “But fine.”

Dash sighed and held the bear out to where Fluttershy had hidden.

“You really got my bear?” Fluttershy floated up all the way to look over it.

Fluttershy got misty-eyed looking at the toy.

“Is it really over?” Fluttershy held her bear close. “Oh, thank you so much! I can’t believe you got rid of all of them and the blob too. I thought I’d never leave this horrible place.”

“We’ll take you somewhere less crowded,” Dash promised. “Though maybe you should possess that thing until we get you out of town.”

Fluttershy gave Dash, still missing patches of fur, a remorseful look, then flew into her teddy bear. The toy came to life when she possessed it and crawled up onto Dash’s back.

“Well, that takes care of that,” said Dash.

“Not yet!” Pinkie jumped in front of her and pointed down the hall. “We gotta go talk to Filthy Rich right now! If he is making more of this stuff, then we gotta get him to stop right away! I think I can get him to listen to me.”

“Why would he listen to you?” Dash asked. “Cause you’re a famous psychic?”

“No. I’m kind of a major shareholder in Curse Tech?” Pinkie nervously tapped her hooves together. “I own five percent of it.”

“What?!” Dash stepped back. “Then what do you know?”

“I don’t know anything,” Pinkie assured her. “I never go over there. I have no idea what they get up to.”

“You own five percent of a multi-billion-bit corporation and you never go their investor meetings?” Dash asked.

“I tried one time, but it was just so boring!” Pinkie lay down on her back like she was bored now. “I always figured those guys know more about business than me so what’s the worst that can happen?”

“This?!” Dash held up the bottle containing the blob.

“I never even meant to be a corporate overlord! Filthy Rich was eight and he said he’d give me five percent of his lemonade stand for a hundred-bit investment. I thought I was just being nice, but he took that lemonade stand more seriously than any kid ever took one before, and somehow it turned into the biggest corporation in the world.”

“Well, it’s an easy enough problem to solve now that we know who’s making it,” said Twilight. “We just go over there and blow up the entire building or whatever with a giant fireball and the problem is solved.”

“Maybe we can try talking to him before resorting to ecoterrorism?” Dash suggested.

Twilight blushed a little at her own brashness.

“Right!” Pinkie nodded. “We go find Rarity, get that robot, put together a slide-show illustrating the problem, and then give Filthy Rich a presentation explaining the situation!”

“I don’t think we have time for that,” said Dash. “We can just go over there and give him the letter of complaint now.”

“But then how are we going to present our slide show?” Pinkie asked.

“What is it with you and slide-shows?” Dash asked. “That’s like your solution to everything.”

“Well, it’s either that or eco-terrorism,” said Pinkie. “I guess we can put it to a vote.”

“Is ecoterrorism that place on the edge of town that sells wraps?” Snails lifted his hoof to ask the question.

“What?!” Diamond Taira turned her nose up in disgust at the question. “No!”

“Okay. Cause I don’t like that place so I’m up for some eco-terrorism.” Snails shrugged.

“We don’t even know if my dad is remotely responsible for this.” Diamond Tiara stepped towards the tunnel. “I’m sure he’s not! This is just some misunderstanding.”

“Guess we’ll find out in a little bit,” said Dash. “This tunnel will take us to his headquarters, right?”

“It’s not that far from here,” said Diamond Tiara. “Probably.”

The group started down the tunnel. It’d be a good while until they got there, especially with Twilight and Pinkie occasionally stopping to make sure there wasn’t any blob material left in any of the tunnels.

The only real source of light was Twilight’s magic and the occasional glowing embers.

Eventually, Fluttershy came out of her bear and looked over Rainbow Dash’s remaining wounds. Twilight had healed her enough that walking wasn’t painful, but there were still a few visible burn marks.

“Um. Rainbow Dash? I wanted to say I’m sorry.” Fluttershy bowed her head. “I know I should have helped you. It’s just when ghosts show up, I get so scared and—”

Fluttershy winced again, just like she had back then.

“Don’t worry about it.” Dash kept hobbling along. “It’s fine.”

“No! You could have died back there because I was too scared,” said Fluttershy.

Truth be told, maybe Dash was a little peeved about what happened back there. Still, she knew she couldn’t be that mad at Fluttershy. That pony had some kind of phobia.

What was something cool she could say? Dash remembered something from a cartoon.

“If you are sorry, then next time you’ll do things differently,” said Dash. “Next time somepony needs your help, stand up for them.”

“I want to,” said Fluttershy. “But I’m not brave like you. I get scared so easily.”

“Then try to get braver. Do something scary each day,” said Dash. “You know, when I was a kid I was like, the weakest pegasus in school. I got tired of being pushed around all the time so I started training as hard as I could.”

Dash looked up ahead at Pinkie and Twilight. It sure felt like all that hard work amounted to nothing in the scheme of things.

“I guess I’m still weak, relatively speaking, but I’m less pathetic than I used to be,” said Dash. “At least I can do something now. I got further than anypony in town would have expected me to. So, you can apologize by promising to do the same.”

“I promise!” Fluttershy nodded with confidence. “Next time I’ll be brave.”

They continued down the tunnel.

It took almost an hour, but they eventually got to the only other train station this track appeared to lead to. Between the blob and Twilight’s spell, everything down here was destroyed. At the moment it was more of a cavern.

There was a loud banging coming from one side of the wall, but other than that, Dash was about to write this off as a dead end.

Pinkie noticed the one hole in the wall right away, one about as big as a head. It looked like maybe it formed from an earthquake, being more of a crack surrounded by several smaller cracks.

“That’s where it was coming from.” Pinkie stuck her head up it. “Looks like it stopped for now. But that goes way up.”

“I don’t think we can fit in that thing.” Dash walked over to the hole. “Is there any way in?”

Dash was considering using the murder spell to try and fly up there, but just then a new hole in the wall, from the source of the banging noise, broke through. A stallion wearing a gas mask stepped through.

“You see?” the stallion aske somepony behind him. “There’s a whole abandoned subway down here. The explosion must have been caused by something underground. Wait a second.”

“A bunch of teenagers?” Another pony in another gas mask looked at the gang of ponies in surprise. “Are you kids playing some kind of prank? And set off a few sticks of dynamite?”

“Who are you people?” The first pony lifted his gas mask. “Did you just crawl out of the sewers? Look, this is private property.”

“I own five percent of this company, so I can go to any five percent of it I want.” Pinkie walked up to him.

“I don’t know if that’s how that works,” said the gas mask guy. “Also, I have no idea who any of you people are.”

“My dad is the president of this company! If you don’t take me to my dad right now, I’ll make sure you get in tons of trouble.” Diamond Tiara glared at his nametag. “Fiddlesticks!”

Fiddlesticks looked over Diamond Tiara.

“Oh, wait! You are the boss’s kid!” Fiddlesticks’ face flashed in realization “But what are you doing down here? The containment area isn’t safe, and we just heard some kind of explosion. How did you even get down here? We needed to drill through the floor.”

“Hey, does my dad pay you to ask stupid, annoying questions?” Diamond Tiara glared at him.

“Um. Yes actually.”

“Well stop it! I demand you take me to my father immediately. That’s your job now!” Diamond Tiara lifted her head and walked past him without even waiting for a response.

The security team, or whatever they were, didn’t put up much resistance after that. The group was led to an elevator, which Dash had to explain was not a box that warped space and time, then to the top of the building.

Filthy Rich had an enormous office with three glass walls overlooking the city outside. The floor was a perfectly flat marble plane with the Curse Tech logo painted onto the floor. This one room alone was bigger than any home Dash ever lived in unless you counted Twilight’s.

Rich himself was behind his desk, leaning back in his office chair, yelling at somepony over the phone.

“Next time it won’t just be jelly beans!” he shouted before slamming the phone down, shaking his head, and turning around to see a small company standing in front of him.

Fiddlesticks didn’t get a chance to introduce anypony.

“Diamond?” Filthy Rich looked up at her. “What are you and your friends doing here?”

“Daddy!” Diamond Tiara ran over to him and grabbed him in a hug, forcing his office chair to lean back as far as it could. She began crying all of a sudden. It was almost certainly fake tears, but she was great at pretending to cry. “There was a ghost and a train and everypony was saying mean things about you and I almost got frostbit and there’s gunk all over my hair!”

Diamond Tiara began wailing.

“Aw, DT!” Rich’s expression softened. He gave his daughter a reassuring pat on the back. “I can’t bear to see you crying. Just calm down a bit and tell me what the problem is.”

“I’ll tell you what the problem is.” Pinkie stepped forward. “You got your horrible blob monster all over the sewers!”

“Oh! You saw a blob monster, did you? Ah, fiddlestick!” Rich leaned over and pressed an intercom button on his desk. “Fiddlesticks? Did you hear me? I think I’ve found the problem. There’s seems to be another code seven. I need you to send a team into Ponyville’s sewers before any bad publicity crops up.”

“I’ll get on it.” Fiddlesticks left the room.

“Hold on, hold on. What?” Dash asked. “How often does this happen?”

“Oh, every now and then. It’s hardly a big deal. Nothing for you crazy kids to worry about.” Filthy Rich waved them away. “Hey, how would you all like some free t-shirts! I just need you to sign a thing acknowledging you’ve been compensated and—”

“Not a big deal?” Twilight walked over in a huff. “Do you not know what you created? The self-replicating molecule evolved resistance to nearly everything. If I hadn’t shown up, it would have been a disaster.”

“Yeah!” Pinkie went halfway up onto Rich’s desk. “You’ve left me no choice but to give you a serious talking to!”

“Who even are any of you? You’re too old to still be in high school.” Filthy Rich looked them over, stopping at Pinkie Pie in particular. “You look kind of familiar.”

“It’s me, Pinkie Pie!”

“You’re Pinkie’s kid? I didn’t even know she had kids, let alone that they went to school with my daughter. Pinkie lives miles away from here.”

“No, I’m not Pinkie’s daughter I’m Pinkie’s—” Pinkie struggled to end that sentence. “I’m just Pinkie! I got transformed into a teenager.”

“How do I know it’s really you?” Rich asked.

“For your tenth birthday I got you the corporate headquarters playset with real corporate bailout action,” said Pinkie. “I remember every birthday present I ever got anyone.”

“Huh! It is you…” Rich rubbed his chin as he looked Pinkie over once more. “Though I distinctly remember the young Pinkie Pie being an unusually large and muscular mare.”

“Oh, I just haven’t hit my growth spurt yet.” Pinkie held a hoof up over her head. “I was super short until then.”

“I am surprised to see you here at all.” Rich scratched his head. “You’ve consistently told me that all this business stuff is too boring for you for the past forty years.”

“That’s because you didn’t tell me that you created a horrible all-consuming blob monster and unleashed it on the underground!” Pinkie put her hoof down. “If I’d known you were gonna do that I’d have spent that hundred bits on a ridiculously expensive lollipop instead! And it probably wouldn’t have even tasted that good.”

“What are you talking about?” Rich reached under his desk and pulled out a pamphlet. “I sent you a pamphlet detailing our morally dubious decision to create and then unleash blob monsters. I even made a special reduced-boredom edition just for you and held on to one in case you ever showed up.”

“Um!” Pinkie glanced nervously at the others, then back at Rich with conviction once more. “I mean! You could have made it a little less boring still!”

“Daddy! You didn’t really create that blob monster, did you? We’re supposed to be the good guys, right?”

“It was for the greater good,” said Filthy Rich. “Also for the money. Mostly the money. But also the greater good.”

“There? You see?” Diamond Tiara nodded, self-assured. “The greater good! So it’s all okay.”

“What greater good?!” Dash asked. “And how the heck do you make money off a blob that devours all life?”

“Yeah! We’re supposed to care about the environment now!” Pinkie stepped forward. “Don’t you remember how polluted everything was before we regulated everything?”

“Well for your information, environmental regulations were exactly why we developed the blob,” said Rich. “Disposing of super radioactive wastes properly was just too darn expensive so me and the free market got together to create a better way. The blob is completely immune to super radiation and can neutralize any type of waste. Why, it’s the cheapest darn way of going about it. Here, I have a classified slide show explaining the whole thing.”

Rich walked over to a locked cabinet and took a projector out of it. He put it on his desk and brought up a slide with a graph showing that blob monsters and pollution were inversely related.

“As you can see, pollution has greatly decreased in the past decade,” said Rich. “Since you’re insiders I can tell you that’s not entirely due to Curse Tech blob monsters, but I try to imply to investors that it is.”

“He’s out-sliding us!” Pinkie whispered harshly to Dash. “I told you we should have gotten our own.”

Filthy Rich brought up a slide with a picture of a serene forest just outside of Vanhoover to the left, clear blue skies ahead. On the right side was how it was a few decades ago, covered with toxic waste barrels and devoid of plant life.

“Why look at how not-polluted Equestria is now, thanks largely to the innovations of my corporation! Do you think things like blue skies, butterflies, and trees just happen on their own?” Rich asked. “Hardly! You need corporations to invent cleaner energy sources. You need a ‘the blob’ to reduce all the waste. The only other options are unthinkable because they both involve me losing money.”

“I’m pretty sure things were getting less polluted since before you were born,” said Pinkie.

“I don’t know anything about pollution,” said Twilight, “but I do know about self-replicating molecules.”

“You do?” Filthy Rich glanced left and right. “Somebody’s in violation of an NDA, then.”

“However you’re containing this isn’t working anymore,” said Twilight. “We saw a massive amount of it down there causing all kinds of problems. Multiple ghosts died.”

“Yes. There was that earthquake recently. But as you can see from this slide.” Rich brought up a chart showing “All damage from the blob is localized underground and we typically resolve the issue before any public backlash crops up. Nearly all of the casualties have been ghosts and, well, they’re technically already dead.”

“Do you not know how dangerous this could get?” Twilight asked. “Self-replicating molecules evolve rapidly. If it becomes immune to ultraviolet radiation, and it will, I don’t know if even I could stop it!”

“We don’t give it enough time to become immune to UV.” Rich brought up another slide detailing the ‘life cycle of the blob’. “You see? The blob devours the waste, then we destroy the blob using good old electricity. The inert slime can then be used as a filler in all kinds of food products.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Twilight. “There’s always a non-zero chance of it evolving resistance to electricity before it dies. That’s why the one down there was immune to that, wasn’t it? No matter what disposal method you use, some of it will always escape and it will always become immune to your method. When those two line up—”

“You brought a molecular engineer with you?” Filthy gave Twilight an annoyed look. He changed the slide to show the escape rate of the blob. “Well, yes. According to this slide, the blob does occasionally evolve resistance to our incineration attempts. That’s likely where this sewer blob came from. Statistically speaking a major disaster will only happen once every few decades.”

“A major disaster almost happened just now!” Dash shot at him. “Does the government know you’re using this stuff?”

“They know certain details of it!” Rich shrugged. “Maybe not every single detail about how it could potentially destroy all life.”

“And you’re not worried any of this might go horribly wrong?” Dash asked.

“Look,” Rich held up a ring he was wearing as a pendant on his necklace, “this ring binds any one demon to my will and the one I bound was Nitpickulon the eternal annoyance. That guy goes over all of my contracts and legal affairs with a level of precision no mere mortal can comprehend. I have so much plausible deniability I could build a yacht with it. There’s no way we’ll ever be held legally accountable for this.”

“That’s not very reassuring,” said Dash.

“I’m reassured by it.”

“That’s not what I meant! The part about everypony dying? What’s your contingency for that?”

“Come on! Statistically speaking, that won’t be for like another forty or fifty years. Until then it’s just printing money.”

“Well, yeah! But then in forty years all of us are going to die!” Dash slammed her hooves on the table.

“Look, I eat five grilled cheese sandwiches a day,” said Filthy Rich. “I’m not living another forty years either way, okay?”

“And what are the rest of us supposed to do?” Dash asked.

“If it becomes a problem in the future, I’m sure somepony will solve it.” Rich shrugged. “If there’s one thing I learned in my life, it’s that money can solve any problem! The moment the corporations have a reason to stop the blob they’ll stop the blob. Probably.”

“Well, I can’t hold shares in a company that’s doing this!” Pinkie stepped forward with her threat. “If you don’t shut this down, I’ll sell all of my Curse Tech stocks in a single day! It’ll crash the entire stock market!”

“What?” Rich’s ears fell flat. “No! Not the stock market!”

“Yeah, and what about your daughter?” Dash lifted Diamond Tiara. “Don’t you care about her?”

“Yeah! What about me, Dad?” Diamond Tiara asked. “That stuff almost ate me!”

“It did?” Rich did look concerned for once. “I need to get you better security is what that means!”

“But Dad! I’ll still be alive in forty years!” Diamond Tiara complained. “What am I gonna do then?”

“Aw, pumpkin.” Rich’s expression softened as he put a hoof on Diamond Tiara’s head. “You know, you’re literally the only person on the entire planet I’d put before profit. And yes, that includes your mother.”

“Daw! That’s so sweet.” Pinkie cooed.

“Is it?” Dash cringed a little.

“Alright, if it’s the only way to keep my daughter from dying a horrible death, I’ll go back to safer waste disposal practices.” Rich shut down his slide and sat down at his desk. “But it’s going to mean no yacht for your birthday this year.”

“What?!” Diamond Tiara gasped.

“Hey, you owe us,” Dash reminded her.

“Fine.” Diamond Tiara groaned.

“Alright, then! You people win.” Rich sat back down and waved them away. “I’ll shut down the blob project immediately. I suppose I can somehow swing this to make it look like I care about the environment or whatever.”

“How do we know he’s actually going to do it?” Dash asked the obvious question.

“I think we convinced him,” said Pinkie. “But I’ll check back in a little bit."

“Only thing left to discuss is how much hush money I have to give you to hush,” said Rich. “And before you get any cute ideas, destroying me is nearly impossible with my legal team.”

“I still don’t see much value in this money stuff,” said Twilight. “And I certainly don’t want any from someone like you.”

“What?! No. No!” Dash ran over and put her hoof in front of Twilight’s mouth. “We’ll take the hush money.”

They didn’t risk going back through the sewers again for obvious reasons. Instead, they took the normal train back to Ponyville. Fluttershy stayed in her teddy bear, asleep, the whole way.

It was nice and dark by the time the four of them got back to Twilight’s forest. It was an exceptionally dark night at that. Even if the moon had been out tonight, there were thick clouds in the sky and a light rain falling. Pinkie was carrying a lantern, but its pathetic attempt to light up the forest was all Dash got.

Ghosts supposedly liked this type of weather, so maybe Fluttershy would be happy at least.

“You know, I learned something today,” said Dash. “Keeping your mouth shut pays way better than an actual job.”

“I sure hope Curse Tech isn’t doing anything else sketchy,” said Pinkie. “Maybe I should find out before it’s too late? Hm.”

“I still can’t believe how callous that guy was,” said Twilight. “How can he do something so dangerous and just not care about the consequences?”

“Oh?” Pinkie pressed up against Twilight’s side. “Are you learning a lesson about how you have to be responsible with the things you create?”

“What?! No!” Twilight jumped away from her. “That’s completely different! I destroyed the blob monster I created.”

“It’s a little similar,” Dash said.

“No, it’s not!” Twilight put her hoof down hard. “This would be like if Fluttershy stole the blob from him and then started complaining when it caused problems for her.”

“Oh yeah.” Dash held the bear up. “I think it’s safe to come out now, Fluttershy.”

“Are you sure?” Fluttershy came out of the bear and sniffed the air to make sure there were no other warm-blooded ponies around.

Deciding it was safe, she floated around the area, marveling at what she saw.

“Oh, wow!” Fluttershy looked up at the trees, zipped down over to some bushes, then to what may have the nest of a hibernating squirrel. Her smile got wider and wider with each thing she saw. “I forgot how beautiful forests were! It’s just so—”

Overcome with the beauty of the snowy forest, Fluttershy sobbed.

“I can never thank you enough for this.” Fluttershy floated back to the others. “Even just getting to see the forest again is more than I ever hoped for.”

“Aw! I just wanna hug you!” Pinkie held out her forelegs. “But you're ethereal.”

“Oh, I can still do that.” Fluttershy flew back into her teddy bear and hopped off Dash’s back to run over to Pinkie.

Pinkie hugged the teddy bear, Fluttershy animating the teddy bear to hug her back.

“This is the first good thing that happened to me since I died,” said Fluttershy. “I can never thank you enough for this.”

“How did you die, anyway?” Dash asked. “If you’re a specter, it must have been pretty intense.”

“Oh. A witch killed my entire village,” said Fluttershy.

The mood changed, only Fluttershy was oblivious. Dash and Pinkie both looked at Twilight, who was frozen on the spot.

“Gleaming Depth, that was her name,” said Fluttershy. “She came into town one day and nopony could stand up to her. She was just too strong. We sent for help all over the place, but nopony ever came. They were all too scared of fighting a witch.

“She was so mean, forced us to work all for months mining arcanium ore. I even did everything she told me to, but she still killed all of us afterward anyway. Volume five of The Book of Shadows. The tsunami spell. I remember that. She just cast one spell and—” Fluttershy sobbed. “And everything was gone. I don’t think anypony else in my family got to become a ghost. I’ve been totally alone since then.”

Fluttershy sobbed silently, a small amount of tears coming from her teddy bear (something Dash just now learned was possible).

“Oh, you poor thing!” Pinkie held Fluttershy close and cried along with her. “Don’t worry! Your Auntie Pinkie Pie will make everything better!”

“I’m probably older than you, but thanks,” said Fluttershy.

Dash watched Twilight closely. The witch didn’t like that story, had been perfectly still save for some trembling through the whole thing. Finally, Twilight shook her head and stepped forward, suddenly angry.

“A witch wouldn’t do that!” Twilight insisted. “They’re not supposed to run around forcing their will on the weak like that. It goes against the way to do something like that. Witches keep to themselves.”

“What do you mean?” Fluttershy looked up, wiping away a tear from her teddy bear eyes. “Witches do all sorts of horrible things. They don’t have a code saying anything like that.”

“But they’re supposed to.” Twilight turned her back on Fluttershy.

“You’re not defending them, are you?” Fluttershy floated after Twilight, trying to get a look at her face. The ghost seemed more curious than upset. “You shouldn’t defend witches. They’ve hurt too many people.”

“Hey!” Dash ran up in between the two, trying hard to change the subject. “So where are you off to after this? I could take you to the edge of Crater Cemetery if you want. I know lots of ghosts live over there.”

“No! That’s the worst place I could ever go!” Fluttershy put her hooves over her head and ducked down, suddenly forgetting about Twilight’s mysterious comment. “That’s where the absolute scariest ghost lives! Not to mention a million more besides that. I can’t possibly go there in my condition.”

“But if you don’t want to live with ghosts where can you go?” Dash asked.

“I guess that’s my problem.” Fluttershy cast her eyes down. “There’s nowhere I can go. I can’t live with other ghosts and almost no predeads will take me in. I guess I just need to find another cavern and stay there.”

“We can’t just let you live in a cave after we went through all that trouble to rescue you,” said Dash. “There’s gotta be somewhere you can go.”

“Oh! I saw this one ghost who turned her dead body into a doll.” Pinkie raised her hoof. “Maybe you could do that? It seemed like she was living with normal people like that.”

“I think my body is a bit too grody for that at this point,” Fluttershy said. “It’s been a while.”

“Then maybe we can force her to live in Rarity’s castle?” Pinkie looked at the others.

“We might need to get Rarity’s permission for that,” said Dash. “But maybe we could ask. Let me ask you this, Fluttershy. If you could live anywhere, where would it be?”

“I don’t mind being a bit lonely,” said Fluttershy. “I guess my dream is to haunt a forest like this and watch over all the animals. But the predeads are all so mean and won’t let me. All the good, lonely forests are already haunted.”

The four of them took a few steps forward, thinking hard about a potential solution. Where was there a forest nopony was using?

“Well,” Twilight spoke up in a nervous voice, suddenly stopping. “I have a forest around my house. I’m already keeping everypony out of it. You could stay there. For a while.”

“Really?” Fluttershy came all the way out from her bear, her ears perking up.

“Isn’t your whole thing that you don’t want anypony bothering you?” Dash asked.

“Yes, but Fluttershy seems like she’d be quieter than you,” said Twilight. “Whom I already put up with.”

“Oh, yes! It’s true. I’d be the quietest ghost ever.” Fluttershy put her hooves together and nodded eagerly.

“And maybe I do feel a little responsible.” Twilight looked down at the ground.

“Wait.” Fluttershy floated up in front of Twilight. “Responsible about what?”

“That you and your family were killed by a witch.” Twilight closed her eyes. “By my spellbook.”

“What do you mean?” Fluttershy’s smiled turned to a look of concern. “Wait. Who are you three, exactly?”

Dash desperately thought of a way to deflect the truth, but Twilight spoke up before she could.

“I’m a witch,” said Twilight.

“What?!” Fluttershy flew back and halfway underground.

Dash’s heart skipped a beat. After she tried to cover for Twilight too!

“My real name is Twilight Sparkle.” Twilight put a hoof on her chest.

No way to salvage it now!

“Like—! Like that one?!” Fluttershy flew underground completely.

Twilight watched the spot for a moment before giving up. She frowned, sighed miserably, and started to trudge forward with her head down.

“Hey!” Dash ran over to the spot Fluttershy vanished into and knocked on the ground. “You were just complaining about how people are mean to you for being a specter, right? How is this any different? Twilight’s been nothing but nice to you.”

Fluttershy cautiously poked her head out of the ground. She looked over at Twilight and her fearful expression softened when she saw how down the witch was.

“No, I suppose you’re right.” Fluttershy came back up and looked at Twilight. “You’ve been very kind to me. I’m sorry. It’s just that other witch was so mean.”

“I understand if you don’t want anything to do with me.” Twilight turned away and started walking.

Fluttershy frowned, looking distraught as Twilight passed her.

“Wait!” Fluttershy floated past Twilight. “I don’t think you’re responsible. You just shouldn’t feel like you have to let me live in your forest. It was that other witch who killed me, not you. Rainbow Dash was right. I know some specters are just as bad as witches.”

“It’s up to you whether you want to stay there or not,” said Twilight. “I can keep everyone from bothering you.”

“I really would love to have an actual neighbor and live above the ground with animals. That’d be a dream come true.” Fluttershy put her hooves together and smiled up at the moon but turned back to Twilight with just a little bit of fear. “But there aren’t going to be any other witches or ghosts there?”

“I haven’t seen either of those in a very long time,” said Twilight. “I can protect you from anything that shows up.”

“Then yes. Thank you so much!” Fluttershy tried to hug Twilight but remembered that wouldn’t work. Fluttershy went into her teddy bear and jumped onto Twilight’s back to hug her. “I never thought I’d have a real home again.”

Twilight did smile just a little as Fluttershy rode on her back, where Dash kind of saw as her spot after a few months of owl hood.

Dash was quickly surrounding herself with outlaws. She was in way over her head. This story was going to be hard to explain to the authorities if it ever came down to that.

Sasquatch

Fluttershy felt the sun setting and decided to wake up.

It’d been a long time since she’d had to deal with the sun. The light made her so sleepy and made it hard to see on top of that, but she could just sleep through the day, so it wasn’t that big a deal.

Sight was different for ghosts. Predeads saw light and ghosts saw, in a sense, darkness. Fluttershy was blinded by light but could make out colors and shapes better the darker it got.

You didn’t literally see darkness, she knew, but it was a good enough way to think about it and she hardly understood the science behind it all. In daylight, you could only see the shadows of things, gray outlines that were hard to tell from one another. The light coming from Twilight’s house was like thick curtains hung over it.

Fluttershy still remembered what it was like to see light, how bright and colorful things used to be. The world seemed so unnatural and ghastly when she first became a ghost, to the point she didn’t even know she could still see for a day or two. Yet slowly over time, dark vision became the one that felt natural.

What seemed like endless darkness slowly revealed itself to be colors she couldn’t have imagined as a predead. They were lovely colors, so soft and soothing that they tainted her memories of the living colors, made them seem like stinging hornets by comparison.

Another curious effect was that you could always see the stars, in a sense, even when the sun was out. She could see them now, with the sun still setting. When Fluttershy looked up at the night sky, it was like a beautiful swirl of blue light. The moon, rising from the east, was a large void in the sky that the light flooded into, the stars like much tinier holes in the sky.

It was so nice to be able to see the sky again. It was nice to be able to see a forest again.

Even without leaves, the snow-covered forest was absolutely beautiful after being stuck underground for so long. The world was so still and quiet, yet Fluttershy could smell the blood of all the squirrels hibernating, cozy and warm, in their nests.

She sniffed the air to try and find the squirrels. That sense was different too. Heat was the only thing a ghost could smell, but you could smell it to an intense degree. Fluttershy could smell their hearts beating slowly, could smell the warm blood flowing through their adorable little veins.

Fluttershy floated over to the nearest one to watch it sleep. It was easy to see them in the darkness of their nests, curled up all snuggly with their nuts. They were so adorable! Fluttershy wanted to get a pet as soon as spring rolled around. It smelled so delicious…

But Fluttershy resisted the urge to freeze them! She was trying to be a vegan ghost. Rainbow Dash would build her a nice fire instead. Her new friends loved throwing her pieces of charcoal to eat, which was the most delicious thing to a ghost next to blood.

Fluttershy’s life felt perfect now. She could float around in peace as much as she wanted, but still had neighbors she could visit any time. She felt safe for the first time in a long time, knowing that almost nothing could get past Twilight’s layers of defense. If something did scare her, she could always just float a bit closer to Twilight’s house.

She could hardly remember the last time she was this happy.

How long had it even been? Secretly, Fluttershy lost track of what year it was but was too embarrassed to ask anypony. Fluttershy honestly didn’t know how old she was anymore. She kept waiting and waiting for somepony to randomly announce what year it was, but it never happened.

She didn’t feel very old, at least, and figured maybe she was in her thirties now. Though maybe she was in her forties. To be on the safe side, Fluttershy decided she would still be happy as long as she was still in her fifties.

For now, she tried to see if she could smell any more animals around. She might not get too much until spring. There were the two ponies inside Twilight’s house, of course, but she thought she smelled one more animal, one larger than a pony.

A bear maybe?

Then again, they should be hibernating this time of year too. Its heart was beating too fast for it to be asleep.

Curious, Fluttershy moved towards it. She found what she was fairly certain were its tracks in the snow, though they weren’t from any animal she recognized. The tracks were unusually elongated, looked more like paws than hooves. It didn’t have claws or a tail that dragged along the ground, either.

Compared the pony tracks by one of the other two nearby, these were much deeper meaning it had to be several times larger than a pony. Studying it closer, she came to the conclusion it must have been bipedal on top of that, a rare trait for animals.

Minotaurs had hooves. Kangaroos had tails. Diamond dogs had claws. It clearly wasn’t a bird. So, what was it?

She wondered what animal had such unusual footprints as she followed the trail.

Before she could get close, Fluttershy noticed something else that sent terror rippling through her aura. There was another aura coming towards her! Another ghost!

She could already tell it was an underwhelming one, but the thought still made her panic and dart underground.

She watched, shaking as it approached. A single orb of light floated about aimlessly above where Fluttershy hid.

Orbs were the most pathetic type of ghost next to literal ectoplasm. They had more in common with rock formations than with people. Orbs mindlessly floated about all willy-nilly, not caring about anyone or anything.

They were completely harmless, but that didn’t make them any less spooky. Normally, Fluttershy just stayed underground until they passed her by.

But she remembered her promise to Rainbow Dash! She promised to be brave the next time somepony needed her. If she couldn’t stand up to a single, pathetic orb how was she going to stand up to something even scarier? Besides, she had a job to keep intruders off Twilight’s property.

“Oh boy,” Fluttershy whispered to herself. This was the most nerve-wracking thing she’d done in years.

Fluttershy braced herself. She was going up. She was going up. She was going up.

Any second now she was going up!

Even though she was terrified, Fluttershy slowly rose from the ground. It felt like she was fighting against a paralysis seizing her entire body, but she did slowly move. She forced herself to go all the way up and stand face to nothing with the orb.

“No!” Fluttershy held her trembling hooves out and pressed her will against the orb’s. “Twilight said no other ghosts are allowed near her house! You have to go be spooky somewhere else! Please?”

Granted it wasn’t much of a fight, seeing as orbs had no willpower at all. The orb put up no resistance and simply conformed to Fluttershy’s will, harmlessly floating off in the other direction.

It worked!

Fluttershy stared in awed amazement as she watched the orb float away, unable to believe it for a moment. But it seriously worked!

Fluttershy did it! She finally stood up to another ghost!

Slowly, relief washed away her paralysis and Fluttershy laughed ever so quietly. She felt like she’d just done the impossible. She was so excited that she did a little flip in the air! Never in a million years did she think this day would come. Fluttershy was officially brave now! She felt like she could do anything!

She had to tell the others right away.

Fluttershy rushed over to Twilight’s house and floated through the wall.

Inside the house was too bright for Fluttershy to see. What Fluttershy could see were just shadows and shapes. Most of the things in the house were invisible or too blurred to make out.

She didn’t have too much trouble finding the shadow of a pony near the cauldron’s fire, smelling her blood. Fluttershy went straight over to her.

“Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy flew up to her. “Guess what? There was this terrifying ghost trying to invade our territory! I was so scared, but I managed to be brave! I said ‘No! You’re not allowed to come here!’ and I made it go away. I still can’t believe I pulled it off.”

“That’s great,” said Twilight. “But you seem to have me mistaken.”

Hearing was the one sense that was completely unchanged as a ghost. Vision became dark vision. Touch became aura sensing. Smell became heat sensing. But she could still hear Twilight and Dash’s voices just fine.

“Oh! I’m sorry.” Fluttershy covered her mouth. “When it’s this bright I can only see your shadow and, well don’t take this in a racist way, but all predead shadows look the same.”

“I can turn down the lights.” Twilight did so and now Fluttershy could make out her face. “But what kind of ghost was it and how close did it get? Should I be worried?”

“Oh!” Fluttershy went halfway underground and blushed. “I mean, technically it was just an orb. But that’s still impressive for me!”

“Well, it’s a good first step.” Twilight didn’t take her eyes off her work as she spoke. “I’m sure if you keep practicing, you’ll get there eventually.”

Twilight was almost always busy with something. She was happy to talk to you while she worked, especially if it was about what she was doing, but pulling her away took effort.

Right now, she was fixated on a box-shaped device with two long metal poles sticking out of it. It was making a static hissing noise that reminded Fluttershy of a radio.

“What does this thing do?” Fluttershy asked.

“This is Rainbow Dash’s radio.” Twilight began twisting a nob on it. “We’re on the verge of finally getting reception out here. If we get it working, we can use it to listen to what the outsiders are saying. She had this thing talking about an hour ago.”

“Oh, wow! That’s what radios look like now? It’s so tiny.” Fluttershy flew up to get a better look at it. It was maybe the size of a lunch box. “The one my parents had was twice as big as I am. It was like a dresser.”

“Really?” Twilight rubbed her chin, considering that with concern as she looked at the tiny radio. “That is worrying.”

“It is?” Fluttershy couldn’t possibly imagine why.

“How long ago were these devices that big?” Twilight asked.

“Um!” Fluttershy honestly had no idea. “Well, I was born in the year 1286. So maybe around the turn of the century.”

“That’s not that long of a time.” Twilight frowned, thinking to herself.

That did reassure Fluttershy that maybe it hadn’t been that long. But then again, Twilight was over six hundred years old so ‘that long’ could mean something different to her.

“Curse Tech skin bracer is the clear winner at that too!” The radio kicked in suddenly. “Its special formula heals razor nicks in seconds, meaning there’s no need to worry when shaving your beard.”

“It’s working!” Twilight jumped forward, excitedly pressing an ear up against the tiny radio. “Let’s hope it stays this time.”

“They sound a lot better now too,” said Fluttershy. “It sounds as good as what we used to get inside an actual town.”

“But what if the aroma of your after-shave is your priority?” the radio continued. “Once again Curse Tech skin bracer is the winner. Girls simply can’t resist you when you wear Curse Tech after shave lotion. The manly scent and pheromones added are guaranteed to drive any girl crazy and make her fall madly in love with you.”

“I can’t believe they’re at it again.” Twilight stood up. “And they’re loudly announcing it this time too!”

“At what again?” Fluttershy tilted her head.

The door opened and Dash came inside. She shook some snow off her coat and took off her snow hat.

“Is it working now?” Dash asked. “I’ve been screwing with that thing for hours.”

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight pointed at the radio as Dash came closer. “They’ve developed some kind of mind control serum that can drive somepony insane, forcing them to fall madly in love with whoever uses it. We need to be careful.”

“What?” Dash turned to Fluttershy.

“It was a commercial,” said Fluttershy.

“Oh. That was a commercial, Twilight,” said Dash.

“What’s a commercial?”

“Sometimes I’m jealous of you.” Dash shook her head. “Basically, it means whatever you heard wasn’t true. It's a scam, okay?”

“Oh, I see.” Twilight sat back down, embarrassed at her mistake. “So, they purposely put out false messages to throw you off? But how do you know what’s true and what’s not then?”

“Eh, you just gotta get used to it,” said Dash.

“And now back to our program,” an announcer on the radio said. “What with all this monkey hysteria in the region lately, we’re looking for the best monkey-sighting story. Whoever calls in with it wins five hundred bits. Next caller. A bit of a mysterious customer who doesn’t want us to say her name or location. Would make it a bit hard to mail the prize.”

“Yeah, thanks,” said a mare through the radio. “This one is one hundred percent true. I have a friend who works in Area 5X. I can’t tell you his name because they’ll shoot him if this ever gets out. But he says they have a whole bunch of monkeys hidden there. They got a chimpanzee, a gorilla, and even a sasquatch. Or they did have that last one. It escaped sometime last year and that’s why these sightings have been on the rise.”

“So hold on,” the host objected. “In Area 5X, they’ve locked up literal witches, super zombies, ghosts, vampire lords, liches, demons, giant monsters, and all sorts of other things. None of them ever escaped, but some monkey managed to get out?”

“Stuff escapes from Area 5X all the time,” the caller said. “They just don’t admit it because they’re embarrassed.”

“Alright, alright. And where did they get these monkeys from in the first place?”

“A mad scientist cloned them from monkeys he found frozen in ice. It was part of a project to create an amusement park called ‘Monkey Island’, but there was an ape escape. There was this acid-spitting monkey who killed the chief of security and—”

The host started laughing at the more absurd part of the story.

“Hey! What with all the stuff mad scientists do, how can you think one cloning a monkey is unbelievable?”

“The part of this story I’m having trouble with is why the government would keep monkeys of all things secret.”

Twilight had been listening in on it with an intensity of a spy dropping in on a vital enemy conversation. She nodded several times through the broadcast but at this point had to give up.

“Okay.” Twilight turned to the others. “I have no idea what they’re talking about. What’s a monkey?”

“Um.” Fluttershy tried to think of how to describe a monkey to somepony who’d never seen one. “It’s like a minotaur but with hands for feet.”

“I don’t know what hands or minotaurs are,” said Twilight.

“See? It’s always like a chain of stuff like this.” Dash shook her head and turned her hooves up.

“Well, how about raccoons?” Fluttershy went to the next closest thing that might live around here. “I guess they’re like raccoons that run around on their hind legs and have shorter fur.”

“Hm.” Twilight considered it, imagining something that had to be terribly off in her mind. “And is this part of the radio telling the truth? These two can’t seem to agree if monkeys are real.”

“Sort of. Monkeys went extinct like a million years ago,” said Dash. “They lived around the same time as the dinosaurs, but the elder gods killed them all off with a meteor or something. We just found fossils and stuff of them.”

“Actually, dinosaurs lived almost a hundred million years ago and monkeys would have been around ten million years ago,” Fluttershy corrected her. “Monkeys would have been alive with saber-tooth tigers and mammoths, not dinosaurs.”

“Either way, nopony’s ever seen a live one,” said Dash. “Just bones and mysterious footprints or sounds they assume are monkeys. I guess it’s not impossible for there to still be monkeys around somewhere, but you know.”

A large, tailless biped without claws? Those tracks did look similar to how a monkey’s paw would.

“Oh wait. I think I might have a monkey story,” said Fluttershy. “Just now, even. I was outside and I saw tracks in the snow that I didn’t recognize. Now that I think about it, it could have been a sasquatch. Though probably not.”

“Hey, why don’t we go monkey hunting then?” Dash suggested. “That could be fun. After that, we’re gonna go ice skating by the lake for our little party. You wanna come?”

“A party?” Fluttershy asked. “For what?”

“Because it’s New Year’s?” Dash reminded her. “Did you forget? I tried waking you up earlier, but you sleep heavy during the day.”

This was perfect! There was no way they’d go the whole night without saying what year it was if that was the case. Fluttershy just had to hope she wasn’t too old until then.

“It still seems excessive to me,” said Twilight. “Didn’t you just have a holiday like a week ago? How do I know you’re not making them up?”

“Oh, come on. Like you don’t like them.” Dash pressed up against Twilight’s side.

“Maybe.” Twilight lowered her hat. “But I need to get back to work eventually.”

“Well, this is the last one in a while, I promise.” Dash got her bags and put her snow hat back on. “I only ever spent New Year’s with my dad till now and he was always way too drunk the whole time.”

“You say that about every holiday,” said Twilight.

“All my bananas gone!” A new caller yelled over the radio. “Your science can’t explain where they went!”

Dash turned the radio off and put it in her bag along with a few other things. Fluttershy got in her teddy bear and jumped on Dash’s back.

“Let’s see if we can find that guy’s bananas.” Dash pushed open the door. “More importantly if the radio works by the lake.”

The predeads trudged through the snow, leaving tracks of their own. It didn’t take long for Fluttershy to lead them to the right spot.

Dash crouched down to inspect the tracks.

“Nah, these are clearly chupacabra tracks,” she concluded. “My dad used to go looking for monkeys all the time so I can recognize them pretty good. Lots of ponies mistake these for monkey tracks.”

Fluttershy felt a little embarrassed that she’d forgotten about those.

“But look at how deep they are.” Fluttershy leaned over Dash’s back to point it out. “It’d have to be a huge chupacabra.”

“That is a good point.” Dash stood back up. “Maybe a mutant, then.”

“I could just use the aetheric imprinting spell to see what was here a little while ago,” Twilight suggested. “That’d settle it.”

“What? Nah. Nopony actually cares if some species of monkey still exists,” said Dash.

“A biologist would probably care,” said Fluttershy.

“Yeah. And nopony cares about biologists.” Dash rolled her eyes. “It’s more fun to pretend they exist just out of sight. Revealing it’s just a mutant bear or something will ruin all the fun. I say we just follow it and see what happens. It’s headed to the lake anyway.”

Dash started following the tracks towards the lake.

“But this is terribly inefficient.” Twilight ran after her.

“It’s more fun if you don’t know when a sasquatch is gonna show up, right?” Dash asked.

“Oh, I see.” Twilight closed her eyes to consider it. “This is another one of your games.”

“Yeah! I used to go looking for stuff like this all the time. My dad used to love looking for stuff that probably doesn’t exist. That’s like the one thing he’d do with me. He’d tell me he used to work in the sewers and all the made-up stuff he saw down there. I used to believe all his crazy stories until I was old enough to know he was full of it.” Dash looked up at the stars. “The other thing he liked to look for was aliens. Those are fun to watch for.”

“What are aliens?” Twilight asked.

“You don’t know what that is either?” Dash looked back at her. “Like ponies from another planet.”

“There are other planets?” Twilight asked.

“You don’t know other planets exist?!” Dash stopped in her tracks. “You haven’t looked up at the sky or anything? I feel like you should have figured that one out by yourself. It’s like, from the stars.”

“Astronomy isn’t very useful,” said Twilight. “I never saw any reason to study the stars. You’re saying there are ponies living inside the stars.”

“Well around them. And I dunno. I guess somewhere out there there’s gotta be aliens, right?” Dash held out her hooves towards the vastness of space. “But it’d take them hundreds of thousands of years to get here at light speed so maybe they’re still on the way.”

“Didn’t they already come here?” Fluttershy asked. “I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember, but when I was little there was that whole Rose Garden thing. They say a spaceship crashed there and the government took it to Area 5X.”

“Name one thing they don’t say is in Area 5X,” said Dash.

“That’s a good point.” Fluttershy couldn’t think of one.

They said they had everything there from mummies to the crystal skulls to the cure for every disease. Some of it was legitimate too. Dash knew one of Twilight's spellbooks, the sixth volume, was being held there.

“I, uh, don’t know what Area 5X is either,” Twilight sheepishly admitted. “That’s the place where they keep the monkeys, right?”

“It’s the most heavily guarded place in the whole world,” said Fluttershy. “Or at least it was. That’s where they keep Equestria’s gold reserve, the most dangerous prisoners, all of their doomsday weapons, and, um, what were the other two X’s?”

Fluttershy turned to Dash.

“A military base and a research laboratory,” said Dash. “Hence five X’s, see? It’s super-secret so none of us know what’s inside. That’s why they make up all these stories.”

“There’s a lot of stuff you don’t know,” said Twilight. “Didn’t you say you knew everything about the outside world?”

“When the crow did I say I knew literally everything?” Dash asked. “I just know certain things. Like how to pretend to look for aliens.”

“Okay.” Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Then how do I do that?”

“The rule for looking for aliens is that if you see any moving lights in the sky, it’s them,” said Dash. “Well, actually it’s probably just a balloon or a comet or something. But still.”

Twilight took the task seriously, looking carefully through the stars. She squinted hard at them in dead silence and perfect concentration for ten whole minutes, until they were very nearly to the lake. Then suddenly her eyes went wide.

“Oh! Right there!” Twilight pointed at one of them. “Is that an alien?”

Fluttershy had no idea what the other two saw, but to her, it looked like another hole in the light of the night sky, like a large, moving star. It was moving lazily across the sky, too slow to be a comet. Dash squinted at it before shaking her head.

“That’s just an airship,” said Dash. “Like a flying boat. It’s gotta be huge from the looks of it, though.”

“They can make flying boats now?” Fluttershy asked.

“I’m glad to have somepony else around who doesn’t understand this modern technology stuff with me,” said Twilight.

“I’m kind of surprised you haven’t seen one before now,” said Dash. “One should have flown over before this.”

“I think I have seen them.” Twilight blushed and looked away. “I guess I just decided it wasn’t useful whatever it was. I really did dismiss a lot of things as meaningless distractions before I met you.”

“Heh! Well maybe once we figure stuff out, I can take you on one later.” Rainbow Dash blushed and rubbed her nose. She blushed at every compliment. “I actually got some money now.”

About then they finally reached the lake, the tracks leading them all the way there.

This was far from the first time Fluttershy came out here, but it was the first time she saw it completely frozen over. Just two nights ago, before this snowstorm, only the very edges of it had been frozen over, large chunks of ice near the edge moving ever so slowly towards the river.

But today, even the river behind Twilight’s house had frozen over.

The tracks ended at the edge of the lake. There was only a tiny bit of windswept, snowy powder on the ice today, so no tracks were visible after that.

“Looks like it walked across,” said Fluttershy. “I can’t smell it from here.”

“Guess it got away.” Dash shrugged.

“I could still use aetheric imprinting.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Dash got her ice skates on. “If we don’t check there’s a chance of seeing a random sasquatch all night. Hey, Fluttershy. Could you extra-freeze this thing? I don’t want to pull a Pinkie.”

Fluttershy didn’t know what ‘pulling a Pinkie’ meant, but nodded and moved over to the lake. She inhaled, sucking up all the heat from the surface of the lake. In a second, an icy mist spread across the lake, freezing the ice until it was harder than rock. You couldn’t fall through it with an axe now.

“Whoa.” Dash shivered from the cold coming off the sheet of ice. “That’s cold! But good job.”

Dash and Twilight put down the radio (which did get just good enough reception for a bit of music), their blanket with a few snacks, and a tin of hot chocolate for later. Dash helped Twilight get her skates on and the two of them headed out to the lake.

Fluttershy flew into her teddy bear and went out onto the ice. She had some ability to manipulate the object she possessed and found she was able to control her ability to slide around on the ice ever so slightly.

Though even her meager attempts at slipping were impressive compared to Twilight, who had trouble managing even that much. She wobbled her way onto the lake, legs sliding about in every direction.

Dash was already trying to show off.

“Here. Maybe you can ride on my head.” Dash picked her up and put Fluttershy on top of hear head.

Dash did a literal circle around Twilight. When Fluttershy was in her bear, and thus much smaller, things seemed to move a lot faster. It wasn’t too fast, though. She was moving smoothly and gracefully.

Twilight, meanwhile, barely caught herself before falling over.

“See? I told you reading a book about ice skating wouldn’t be enough,” said Dash. “Here, I’ll give you a few lessons.”

Dash grabbed Twilight’s hoof and started pulling her along. Dash propelled the two of them with her hind legs, spinning them around in wide circles. All three of them glided across the lake together, slowly picking up speed until they were going at a good pace.

Twilight started to smile.

“You keep the blades parallel to keep going forward and V-shaped to stop,” said Dash. “Let’s practice the latter.”

“Wait.” Twilight tried to protest.

Just as their speed hit its peak, Dash let go, sending Twilight gliding off towards the center of the lake. Twilight panicked and tried running forward. The effort did nothing to stop her from zooming off.

Dash laughed as she watched Twilight struggle to figure it out.

“You gotta turn your hooves into a V!” Dash yelled out to her.

Twilight created a force field behind her, finally stopping herself in place. She put her back hoof on it and kicked off with a small burst of flames that sent her coming back at Dash with even greater speeds.

“Ah, that’s cheating!” Dash laughed as Twilight came back. “You gotta do it without magic.”

Twilight slowed herself down by holding a hoof out and shooting fire out of it like a rocket. She was doing well now that she was using fire.

“Why? I feel like my rocket propulsion method is superior.” Twilight smirked. Her horn started to glow. “In fact, since you seem to think sending ponies flying off on the ice is so hilarious why don’t you try it?”

“Huh?” Dash blinked.

Twilight cast a spell, making the blades on Dash’s ice skates glow red hot. After only a short delay, fire erupted behind them, sending Dash (Fluttershy still on her back) soaring across the lake at incredible speeds.

“Holy!” Dash shouted but it was already too late.

Fluttershy was sure the world would be blurring by her if she brought herself to look. Instead she just held onto Dash’s mane as tightly as she could. She could hear Dash screaming and the wind blowing as they hurtled across the lake.

In just a few seconds they were nearing the other side of the water. Dash did manage to get control and turn herself, swinging back towards Twilight in an arc wide enough to encompass nearly the entire lake.

When she got close to where she’d begun, Dash jumped into the air and started flapping her wings hard. She was able to go just fast enough to cancel out the rockets and hover in midair until they died out shortly afterwards.

“You know, I wanted to complain but on second thought that was awesome!” Dash kicked off the ice to rush back to Twilight. “Do it again!”

Fluttershy jumped off Dash’s back before she could get sent for another ride. That was enough courage training for one day.

All three of their ears perked up when a noise came from the edge of the woods. It was a heavy rustling in the trees not far off. In the dark, Fluttershy could see the tops of the trees bend heavily, the snow falling off.

“What was that?” Fluttershy asked.

“Maybe it was a monkey.” Dash made a spooky ‘woo’ sound.

“It might have been.” Fluttershy flew out of her teddy bear and sniffed the air. “I smell warm blood out there. It’s a large animal. And monkeys do climb trees.”

Dash slid to the edge of the lake and jumped out of her skates.

“Might as well check it out.” Dash held her hoof out to Twilight, helping her out of her skates.

They started off to the tree in question. Fluttershy could smell the animal from this close, she knew it was still up there.

“This one can’t be a chupacabra,” said Fluttershy. “Chupacabra can’t climb trees.”

“That is true.” Dash looked up at the tree in question. It was still rustling. The thing was moving around a lot up there. “But that doesn’t mean it’s a monkey for sure.”

“What if it was an alien?” Twilight suggested.

“That jumped out of its spaceship?” Dash asked.

“Or what if it’s a sasquatch from outer space?” Twilight suggested next.

Fluttershy felt something that made her get behind Dash just to be sure.

“I feel an aura nearby,” said Fluttershy. “It’s too weak to be a ghost, but still.”

“A psychic monkey?” Dash raised an eyebrow.

“Alien monkey,” Twilight reminded her in a whisper.

“Probably not that one. But it might be some kind of monster.”

Twilight nodded. She and Dash got ready for battle as they got to the edge of the tree. Fluttershy flew back behind them just a little.

“Don’t worry, I already scouted myself out. I’m harmless!”

Fluttershy flew back in front after hearing the familiar voice. A moment later, Pinkie jumped out of the tree and landed on the ground.

“Pinkie?!” Dash took a step backward.

“Looks that way.” Pinkie walked past Dash, looking over what meager party supplies the three of them set up.

“Was that the aura you felt?” Twilight asked.

Fluttershy nodded, relieved to see a friendly pony instead of some monster or ghost.

“What are you doing here?” Dash asked.

“I’m crashing your party!” Pinkie ran up to their blanket and looked it over. She homed in on the snacks, then quickly grabbed and ate some of them. “Bam! Success!”

“But why? Aren’t you super popular?” Dash asked. “Aren’t there a million bigger parties you can go to?”

“Yes! And that’s my problem!” Pinkie swung around, throwing her forelegs open. “I get invited to a million parties every year! I could just go to one, but the opportunity cost is too high! Instead, I go to all of them.”

“And yet here you are at none of them,” said Dash.

“This is part of my transitional party phase or TPP.” Pinkie sat down and drew a crude path in the snow. “I go from party to party, crashing as many celebrations as possible in one night! My record is 52. I already went to both my sisters’, my nephew’s house, Filthy Rich’s, the psychic guild’s, and I’m up to 37 so far. You gotta plan the perfect route with as many parties to crash in between. Also, move against the rotation of the planet so you get two midnights.”

“But like, this is the middle of the woods.” Dash tilted her hoof towards the south, towards the deep parts of the woods. “Unless you came from a mad scientist party or something…”

“I was up there.” Pinkie pointed to the sky, to that blinking light. “It’s kinda hard to see, but there’s an airship up there. The Grand Blue! Three-story tall theater! Five restaurants ranging from one to five stars! A Ferris wheel that goes off the edge of the deck. I was planning to spend the first midnight up there, but they kicked me off because I may or may not be a minor. I noticed I was over where Twilight lives so I thought I’d just jump off the ship and see if you had a party to crash! Now I’m up to thirty-eight!”

Pinkie started jogging in place.

“But I can only stay here for fifteen minutes! Then I gotta go crash a party in Ponyville and get on a train traveling at 52 miles an hour for 42 minutes. You do the math!” Pinkie turned to Twilight. “And yes, I know I swore never to return in exchange for your help and this is a total betrayal etc., etc., but come on! I’m technically outside the ‘your house’ area and also I’m too loveable for you to remember that part.”

“Well, I don’t like ponies dropping in on me like this,” Twilight said flatly.

“I get the joke!” Pinkie pointed at her.

“That wasn’t a joke!” Twilight sighed. “But I guess you can stay for fifteen minutes. Since I’m already distracted.”

“Nice!” Pinkie looked around. “Though the fifteen minutes started when I jumped out of the ship. I gotta start the party right away! What are we doing?”

“We were ice skating. That doesn’t trigger you or anything, does it?“ Dash asked.

“Nah, I don’t even remember that incident.” Pinkie jumped back onto the ice. “In fact, watch this! I know a secret technique that lets me ice skate without skates!”

Pinkie pushed off with one hoof and started sliding across the ice as if she was wearing ice skates. Pinkie zipped off a good distance, then made a wide turn back to where the others were.

“I see.” Twilight walked to the edge of the ice, watching the trails Pinkie was leaving behind. “You melt the ice just under your hoof to create a similar effect.”

“Yeah, you go way faster if you cheat using psychic powers.” Pinkie slid backwards on only a single, front hoof. She jumped, doing no less than five backflips, before landing on rear leg this time. “Bet you can’t catch me.”

“I feel like I’ve already mastered the art, actually.” Twilight stepped onto the ice and used fire to rocket herself at incredible speeds, flying halfway across the lake.

“Whoa!” Pinkie still managed to get out of the way, not only dodging Twilight’s charge but doing three flips in the air as well. “Close! But I can never not see it coming.”

Twilight charged at Pinkie again and again with ever increasing blasts of fire, but Pinkie always escaped by increasingly narrow margins.

“I wish I could cheat.” Dash got back to the edge of the ice and flared out her wings. “But if I use my wings it’s not really ice skating anymore, is it? Is there a way to fly and ice skate at the same time? Probably not.”

“Hm.” Fluttershy got back in her teddy bear and jumped on Dash’s back. “Maybe I can make that work. Here.”

Fluttershy used her ice magic to create a ramp of ice a few feet away from Dash.

“Ah, hey! I like that!” Dash crouched down, ready to use it.

Dash moved back a good distance, then started skating faster than she had on her own before. She moved up the ramp and Fluttershy began creating more of it to allow Dash to get higher. Fluttershy created a winding spiral for Dash to climb higher and higher with. It really was like she was skating through the air.

Fluttershy clung to Dash’s back as Dash finally jumped off the ice and came down at Pinkie from above. Pinkie noticed them straight way, looking up at them, then casually taking one step to the left. Dash landed on Twilight instead just as Twilight came flaming through.

It wasn’t enough to knock Twilight over. Instead, Twilight carried Dash and Fluttershy with her as she went screaming into a snow bank. A moment later, Fluttershy was buried in snow.

Pinkie came skating over them.

“Don’t feel bad.” Pinkie sat down next to them. “Nopony’s ever caught me before!”

“I was going easy on you.” Dash got up and shook the snow off herself.

“Next time I use a kinetic spell,” said Twilight.

“See, now we’ve partied together and are officially friends, which means I gotta throw you a birthday party.” Pinkie scratched her head with invisible skates. “When is your birthday, anyway? I can’t believe I haven’t asked yet!”

“My what?” Twilight asked.

Pinkie started gasping and didn’t stop. Dash tried to wait for her to stop, but it looked like the scandalized Pinkie would just keep sucking in air forever.

“Like the day you were born,” Dash told her.

“That was 638 years ago,” said Twilight. “I don’t remember the exact date because I was just born.”

“It’s—” Dash started.

“No!” Pinkie stopped gasping, ran up, and covered Dash’s mouth. “Don’t you see how perfect this is?! I have the chance to throw the one true surprise birthday party! She doesn’t even know what a birthday is, so it’ll be a complete and total surprise.”

“But you don’t know what day it is,” said Dash.

“Oh, I’ll just declare a random day her birthday.” Pinkie nodded. “I do have your permission to break into your house and set up a party when that happens, right? Birthdays trump treaties!”

“What? No! My house is filled with incredibly dangerous things. You can’t go inside when I’m not here,” said Twilight.

“Which means I can go inside when you are here?” Pinkie pressed up against her side. “Well, I’ll just set stuff up outside while you’re asleep then.”

“I guess that’s okay?” Twilight sighed.

“Sweet! Anyway, I gotta run as fast as I can now!” Pinkie waved and ran off into the forest. “Have a happy 1355!”

1355?

“Oh my.”

Late that night, about an hour before sunset, Twilight wandered out of her house and to where those tracks had been. She knew Rainbow Dash didn’t want her to look, but her curiosity was burning, and she couldn’t wait a few days to find out what a monkey looked like when Dash brought her another book.

She cast the aetheric imprinting spell and an image appeared, showing the mysterious animal that had been here just hours before. She let out a sigh of disappointment when she saw what it was.

The long, shaggy white fur. The gnarled claws at the end of its lanky arms. Twilight recognized the bipedal animal straight away.

It was just a ‘yeti’ as her master used to call them, looking little like a bipedal raccoon nor did it have short fur. That thing wandered close to her house every year in late winter and was nothing to get excited about. Clearly, it wasn’t a monkey.

“Oh well.”

Disappointed, she walked back inside.

Witches 4: The Final Chapter

It was always a bit of a coin flip if Twilight would be impressed by some bit of modern technology or not. For the past couple months, Dash had been buying her things she was curious about, but more often than not the technology got mugged by Twilight’s infinite magical abilities.

Refrigeration? "Can’t you just freeze the food with time magic?"

Guns? "Those are supposed to hurt ponies? I thought that was a toy."

Electric Lights? Dash had to admit Twilight’s enchanted windows that gave off sunlight were way better.

Bizarrely, the chalkboard was the thing that impressed her the most. Or at least, it was the one thing she decided she could no longer live without. Twilight owned five of them already and was constantly writing things on them. At some point, she decided that it was simply impossible to explain something without chalk anymore.

‘Meetings’ where Twilight gave lectures on whatever she’d drawn for Dash or Fluttershy weren’t uncommon. After like thirty of those, Dash finally knew which mushrooms would and wouldn’t kill her. She still didn’t know much about making potions or using that cauldron, but she could at least get whatever reagent Twilight asked for without fear of unleashing a swarm of flying eyeballs that somehow had mouths (an actual example of something that once happened.

Today Twilight dragged Dash up to the third floor for an ‘important meeting’ and that Dash wear her witch hat when she came.

Dash was sitting on a two-seat couch and Twilight in front of her new chalkboard. Twilight wasn’t saying anything about why Dash was here just yet. She was simply sitting with her eyes closed tight, frowning like she had something deathly serious to say in a moment. However, ‘witch training’ was written on the chalkboard giving Dash an important clue as to what this was about.

Twilight also insisted that Dash have a large, metal bucket with her, presently taking up the other seat of the couch. What the bucket was for, Dash couldn’t possibly figure out.

The sizable treehouse had three stories in addition to its basement and attic. The rooms became narrower but taller as you moved up the tree. They also became more cramped, containing ever higher towers of objects stacked on top of one another.

The present room was no exception to that rule. There was the couch, Twilight and her chalkboard were just a few paces away. To her left and right were tables that ran the length of the room and took up most of its space. The tables were covered with glassware and a few skull-shaped candles. They looked like real skulls, but Dash had Twilight’s assurance they were merely wax.

A circle was drawn on the floor with words around the edge in a language Dash didn’t recognize. By the left table was the door to safety and to the right was the door to the attic.

Twilight’s attic was a place of terrible danger that Dash dared not enter. The room just beyond this was filled with towers of boxes, a bit musty but neatly organized. Contained in those boxes was a collection of magical artifacts, materials, and equipment that only Area 5X could hope to rival. Dash knew for absolute certain that if she ever went poking around in there alone, her luck would kick in and she’d touch the one thing that would instantly vaporize her.

So, she stayed the crow out of that place.

“Okay.” Twilight finally opened her eyes. “I suppose that if I’m going to train you to be a witch, I should start… well, training you to be a witch. It’s time I begin slowly sharing my dark and terrible knowledge with you.”

Dash looked left and right, making sure absolutely nopony was seeing this.

Studying under a witch was a serious crime. All of their books, even just the ones about witch philosophy, were banned to everypony but S-rank witch hunters. Training to be one more often than not was worth a life sentence. Heck, just dressing like Dash was now could land you in jail.

But dang if it wasn’t tempting to hear the dark secrets of the universe.

She’d thought long and hard about this. Hearing about Twilight’s way of thinking was likely the only way to get the witch to flip over to the side of good for real, which had to be worth more points than merely defeating her. Not to mention that the way Dash’s life had been going lately, getting stronger was a matter of life and death.

Part of her had wanted to ask Twilight for an explosion spell for just that reason, but she also knew Twilight had a thing about ponies asking her for too many favors. Dash had decided it was best to just wait for Twilight to come to that conclusion herself, which it looked like she just did.

“Witches possess ancient knowledge unbeknownst to most ponies. I can teach you the darkest realities of this world. I can show you spells and techniques the outside world still cannot understand. I can show you how to obtain power beyond that of even most gods. If you can remain loyal and have patience, I’ll show you everything eventually.” Twilight began writing something on the board but only got as far as ‘the six virtues’ before Dash interrupted. “Your first lecture will be on—“

“I got a question already.” Dash held up her pendant. “Aren’t lectures and training obsolete? You have this thing that can directly insert information into my brain. Would it be faster to just knit a sweater out of this stuff?”

“There are two reasons that won’t work. Firstly, that pendant contains one milligram of heavily diluted mind fiber, not much more than the weight of a single strand of hair.” Twilight took out her spellbook. “Every page of this book is made entirely of mind fibers. You can’t handle this much information flooding your mind. It’s a harsh lesson, but I suppose experience is the fastest way to learn.”

Twilight held out her spellbook to Dash.

“Just put your hoof on the cover and you’ll understand why you can’t use that much mind fiber,” said Twilight.

It was a dark purple book with only Twilight’s cutie mark printed on the cover. Every time Twilight took it out, Dash felt an invisible pressure pushing down on her. Whether that pressure was from some magic or just in her head, she couldn’t tell.

A witch’s spellbook was a legendary thing. This one was arguably the most powerful artifact in the world. A hundred thousand spells and centuries of knowledge were enough to make anypony a serious threat. If you could use it, that was.

Now that Twilight mentioned it, it was a curious thing that witches were the only ponies who used spellbooks. Maybe Dash was about to learn why nopony ever used their own weapons against them.

Dash slowly reached her hoof out and tapped the cover of the book.

When she took the necklace off and put it back on, Dash always felt dizzy for a moment as the knowledge rushed into her head. But if that was like being spun around in a chair, this was like being in a tornado.

Dash’s mind was being torn in every possible direction at once. She couldn’t form any coherent thoughts; it was just images flooding in from every angle. Thoughts would appear in her mind, then shatter before they could fully form.

Lightning. Water. Insects. Metal. Thread. Fire. Wind. Sun. Blood. Gras— Tre— Fin— Th— Ic— D— F— Z—

It got faster and faster, to the point Dash couldn’t recognize a single thing. Dash’s body began to spasm. Every muscle in her body twitched violently. Her eyes rolled back, she fell onto the couch and everything went black.

A moment later, Dash was back to normal. Her body was a little sluggish like she’d woken up from a nap, but that was it. Dash found she was lying on the couch with Twilight lying next to her, reading a book.

“Oh, good. You’re awake again.” Twilight patted Dash on the head, then jumped off the couch to go back to the chalkboard. “Now we can continue.”

“Awake?” Dash rubbed her eyes.

“You fainted for about an hour.” Twilight started on her list of virtues once again. “That’s normal when you touch it for the first time.”

“Wait, what?!” Dash looked up at the clock. It was already three o’clock!

“See? That’s how I know you’ve never tried to steal my spellbook. I’d trust you a lot less if you had tried to take it. I guess in retrospect, that should have been a red flag last time.” Twilight grumbled that last part. “Needless to say, you need to learn how to use mind fibers, slowly working your way up to increasing amounts of them.”

“Well okay, but I just had one of my brilliant ideas.” Dash tipped her hat up. “What if you use a mind fiber to make me understand how to use mind fibers?”

“That wouldn’t work,” said Twilight.

“Why not?”

“There’s a second reason you need to actually train,” said Twilight. “Knowing how to do something doesn’t mean you can necessarily do it. There’s plenty of spells that you simply wouldn’t be able to cast even with a mind fiber, for example.”

“Because I’m a pegasus?” Dash asked.

“No, that’s not a problem at all. There’s a secret technique for getting around that,” said Twilight. “Think of it like this. I could give you a mind fiber that gives you the muscle memory on how to do ten backflips in a row. But what if you were out of shape? You’d still fall over when you went to do it. Your mind, body, and magic aren’t ready to use higher amounts of mind fibers. You’d only hurt yourself if you tried.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Dash folded her forelegs, leaned back, and looked up at the ceiling. “But how do I train to use more mind fibers?”

“The first step is to expand your mind and hone your focus beyond what a normal pony should be capable of. It’s the only way to sift through all the information flooding into your mind.” Twilight went over to a box resting on one of the side tables. “The first secret I’ll share with you is the technique to gain supernatural focus and concentration.”

Twilight took out a pendulum, the kind a hypnotist might use.

"This is called a makarakarn," said Twilight. "It's one of our secret training techniques."

She gave the weight at the bottom, a round of a blue metal, a tap and it began spinning in place. As it spun one way, the weight let out a white light. It then turned back the other way, turning black instead.

“Training with this is one way to expand your mind,” Twilight explained. “Besides making it easier to use mind fibers, you can become resistant to things that would normally cause psychological damage like the howling void or outer gods.”

Twilight held out the pendulum and Dash took it, holding it so the weight was at eye level.

“Do I just spin it?” Dash asked.

“And concentrate on the light,” said Twilight. “Slowly at first. Try not to fall over.”

Dash gave it a tiny, exploratory tap. That was enough for it to make one complete spin, glowing ever so faintly white.

Long ago, when Dash was maybe six or seven, she’d gone on one of those teacup rides. Inevitably, Dash’s patent-pending bad luck kicked in and the ride malfunctioned making it go ten times faster than it was supposed to. Despite it being such an old memory Dash remembered the feeling of getting sucked up onto the side of the teacup and screaming as the world turned into a blur of madness and speed.

In other words, it was freaking awesome in the moment. But when she got off, Dash couldn’t walk straight for an hour and puked two or three times.

This made that look like the kiddy ride it was meant to be. Dash obtained a level of dizziness she didn’t even know could exist. The room spun so hard Dash could swear she saw the back of her own head for a second there.

She fell off the couch. In a lucky break, she landed muzzle-down in that basket and finally figured out what it was for. Dash puked hard into it then, with a sense of relief, rolled onto her back. Or maybe it was her stomach. It was hard to tell at the moment.

At least she didn’t black out this time.

“That’s not bad for your first time,” Twilight cheerily assured her. “I didn’t do so well when I started this training. Though then again, I was five.”

“Ah, geeze. Getting super dizzy and puking?” Dash lifted her head away from the full bucket. “That’s not exactly what I imagine when I think of hardcore training. I hate being dizzy.”

“Well look on the bright side,” said Twilight. “After just a few weeks of this training, it will be nearly impossible for you to get dizzy.”

“Really?” Dash tried to look up at Twilight but was so disoriented she missed. “I guess that’s a slightly cool power. How long do I have to keep doing this before I get the overpowered super-focus ability again?”

“If you do this for sixteen hours a day you can become proficient in under a year,” Twilight said. "Though learning to use a spellbook would take decades."

“Sixteen hours a day?!” Dash shook her head, her dizziness suddenly ebbing. “Am I too dizzy to hear numbers straight? I don’t know if I have the focus to do something that intense!”

“I know. Hence the focus training.”

That’s what you had to do to become overpowered, huh?

Determination Rainbow Dash wanted this more than anything in the world. She’d gladly put up with grueling training and being dizzy as hell if it meant getting strong. If Dash could finally be useful for once in her life, it’d be worth anything.

But sixteen hours a day?

“I can put up with puking five times a day, but isn’t that much training excessive?” Dash asked. “I know with strength training you gotta get rest too or you’ll just hurt yourself.”

“Exactly eight hours of rest is all you need,” said Twilight. “I know this sounds harsh, but it’s the path that leads to true power. You have to detach yourself from everything and focus exclusively on obtaining more power. That’s the other thing I wanted to teach you today. The philosophy of the witches.”

Dash put the pendulum down and straightened herself up as Twilight tapped the chalkboard with a piece of chalk. This was something Dash had wanted to hear, but there really wasn’t anywhere else you go to hear this and Twilight didn’t want to talk about it until just now.

“The six virtues of the witches are power, selfishness, apathy, diligence, focus, and detachment.” Twilight tapped each of them in turn. “The bedrock of our philosophy is the endless acquisition of power and these are the virtues that one must follow to remain on that path.”

Dash could see ‘diligence’, but other than that those weren’t virtues you often saw in cartoons.

“Then the sins of witchcraft are love, revenge, pity, fear, happiness, and conquest.” Twilight wrote those down next. “A witch does not seek vengeance or justice from the weak. A witch does not force her will on the weak. A witch feels no pity for the weak. A witch does not act on fear or give in to happiness. These are things that distract you from obtaining ever more power. Do you understand?”

“I gotta call bull on that.” Dash raised her hoof again. “Witches are constantly forcing their will on others. And no revenge? I’ve heard stories of witches killing somepony for bumping into them.”

“Well, these are the rules witches are supposed to follow. Witches are supposed to distance themselves from the weak, not push them around.” Twilight closed her eyes and tapped her hoof angrily. “Maybe it was this ‘rock and roll’ music or something, but the youth have clearly been corrupted by something. You don’t want to be like them.”

“And what about you?” Dash asked.

“What about what?”

“You helped Fluttershy out of pity or something, right?” Dash asked. “And you seem to be okay with being happy lately. Isn’t that against your religion or whatever?”

“First of all, it’s not a religion. And second—" Twilight glowered at the list she’d just written, pressing her chalk hard against the board. “Well, I never claimed to be the best person who ever lived, okay? I admit I’m being overly indulgent with all these holidays and games and stuff.”

“Ah, come on! Admit it!” Dash jumped off the couch. “You’re way happier when you’re not bothering with all this stupid philosophy, right? You don’t really want to detach yourself from everything.”

“You can’t just call somepony else’s way of life ‘stupid!'” Twilight swung her chalk around to poke Dash in the chest with it. “These are the sacred principals handed down from— from the first witch. Maybe I don’t entirely agree with all of it, but you can’t argue with results. Witches are the strongest ponies on the planet, aren’t they? Only literal gods can compete with us.”

“I guess you got me there,” Dash admitted. “But what good is all this power if all you do with it is sit around your house? Or worse, go terrorize people like the new witches?”

“The pursuit of power is a goal in itself,” said Twilight. “You can’t be concerned with the outside world if you want to achieve it. You must only focus on yourself. Your own growth. Your own pursuit of power. That’s why selfishness is a virtue, you see?”

“Okay, but you’re clearly allowed to teach other ponies, right?” Dash asked. “Doesn’t that go against the whole ‘selfishness’ thing?”

“These are sacred teachings that can only be shared with those you deem worthy of becoming a witch. Only with those who have the potential to become strong are worthy.”

“Whoa, so you think I have what it takes to be as strong as you?” Dash stood up, honestly surprised to hear something like that.

“Hardly. You have the potential to be—” Twilight tapped her chin with the chalk, trying to figure out a way to phrase it. “Noticeably stronger. I guess.”

“Oh.” Dash sat back down, but then thinking it over some more, gave Twilight a wink/ “Okay, see? You just like my moxie, right? That’s the only explanation.”

“What?! No!” Twilight accidentally broke her chalk.

“You’re just doing this because you want to be friends with me, right?” Dash smiled wide and nodded her head, eyes closed. “They don’t call me Rainbow Psychoanalysis Dash for nothing.”

“That’s not it at all!”

“It’s okay to admit you like me. I am pretty cool.”

“I’m just doing what I’m supposed to,” said Twilight. “The reason I deem you worthy doesn’t matter. What matters is that I carry on the traditions that I was taught.”

“What? You mean the whole kidnapping thing?” Dash asked. “Because that’s actually a good point. Why exactly am I still kidnapped? Are you really going to keep forcing me to stay here for decades?”

“Well, my master forced me to stay here for decades. It’s normal.”

“For witches, maybe. Look, did you like the relationship you had with your master? Or do you prefer being friends with me?”

“I mean, maybe we weren’t, like, emotionally close,” Twilight admitted. “And we never did anything fun together. Ever."

“So do you want us to be like you and your master, or do you want us to be friends?” Dash asked.

“Well.” Twilight looked down at the ground, nervously rubbing the back of her head. “I don’t know! What would I have to do to ‘be friends’ with you?”

“Take off all the spells you have on me,” said Dash.

“But you’ll leave forever if I do that!” Twilight jumped up on the couch in a half-panic.

“Oh, come on! Do you really not trust me yet?” Dash asked.

“The last time I trusted somepony it didn’t end well! If I don’t force you to stay, you won’t stay! That’s how it always goes!”

“Fluttershy stays here without you forcing her to,” said Dash.

Twilight didn’t have a comeback to that. She just lowered her hat and glowered silently.

“I promise I won’t leave.” Dash put a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “I like it here. I literally have zero other friends unless you count Derpy. If you take that spell off, I’ll be staying here of my own free will. Isn’t that what you want?”

“Look, I’m just—“ Twilight turned away. “I’m just scared. I don’t want you to leave.”

“I’ll go to town and buy you more stuff on your shopping list, then come back,” said Dash. “Then we’ll be friends for real and you won’t have to be so paranoid anymore. See?”

Twilight stayed silent.

“You just gotta be brave for a few minutes and then everything will be better,” said Dash. “Trust me, okay?”

“Okay.” Twilight closed her eyes and sighed, bracing herself. “I’ll, uh. I’ll try.”

Her horn light up and for a brief moment, it looked like a firecracker went off on Dash’s back as all the enchantments on her vanished in a burst of light.

Twilight had ten spells on Dash that made it impossible for her to escape or annoy Twilight too much. Those were just the ones Dash knew about too. She almost felt lighter with all that magic gone.

Dash tried not to smirk too much. She’d just successfully negotiated her way out of a hostage situation, just like how they taught you in school! To think she’d nearly flunked that class but pulled it off in real life. Grades were total bunk.

The witch herself pulled back a little as if she expected Dash to pounce on her now that it was possible again.

“There, see?” Dash stepped forward and gave Twilight a reassuring pat on the back. “Now we’re cool.”

“Y-yeah!” Twilight nervously laughed. “We’re cool. Right?”

“Yeah!”

But she just got more nervous laughter from Twilight. Clearly, Twilight didn’t believe she was out of the woods yet.

“Hm. Hey, how about I head out right now so you can relax? I’ll get some colored chalk and come back as fast as I can.” That was one thing Dash knew Twilight wanted to buy.

Dash gave her one more pat and headed towards the stairs.

“But you can’t tell anypony about me!” Twilight ran after her.

“Yeah, I got it.” Dash nodded.

Twilight stood by nervously as Dash got ready to leave.

“And you don’t have any tracking spells on me?” Dash turned back to Twilight as she put her bags on. “Or some secret curse?”

“Um.” Twilight looked to the side and cast a spell as discreetly as possible. “No.”

That’d have to do. Dash pushed open the door and headed outside. Twilight followed her for the first few steps, prompting Dash to turn around.

“I’ll be back and then you’ll feel better, okay?” Dash waved to Twilight and headed out.

Twilight nodded, frowning and holding back tears as she sat deathly still. It felt like she was abandoning a lost puppy, but Dash knew it was for the witch’s own good.

Out in the woods, out of sight of Twilight’s house, Dash let out a sigh. She was finally free to do whatever she wanted for the first time in… how long had it even been?

“Let’s see. September, October, November…” Dash counted off the months. “I’ve been out here six months? Yeesh! At least I’m turning a profit somehow.”

Now all she had to do was hope some whacky adventure didn’t crop up the second she got to Ponyville.

“Who the crow am I kidding?” Dash sighed to herself but shook herself out of it and slapped herself in the face. “Okay, whatever happens just run away from it! Rank X missions take priority over everything else.”

Twilight breathed in and out slowly, pacing back and forth, trying to calm herself. She told Rainbow Dash to be back by sundown and right now it was sunset. This was a little later than she expected Dash back but technically the sun wasn’t down, so it was still okay, right?!

Smarty Pants didn’t think it was alright. Letting Rainbow Dash go was a foolish idea. If she came back it’d be with an army to kill Twilight, to steal everything with her, to ruin all of her hard work. Twilight shouldn’t have been so weak as to allow herself to think Dash was a friend.

“Yes, but if she does come back then I’ll know she really is loyal to me, right?” Twilight turned to Smarty Pants with a half-panicked smile. “I’ll finally be able to relax and—“

Smarty Pants reminded Twilight that she would never be able to relax. Even if Dash stayed loyal to her for years, she could still betray her in the end. Betrayal was almost inevitable over a long enough period.

Twilight stopped pacing, feeling a little sick. Was that true? That her friendship would inevitably fall apart one day?

“Well we’ve been friends for hundreds of years, right?” Twilight asked.

Smarty Pants thought their friendship was falling apart. Smarty Pants wasn’t happy about how little Twilight talked to her ever since Rainbow Dash got here.

“It’s because I like talking to them better than you,” said Twilight. “You’re too judgmental and you’ve been getting worse. Why can’t you just be nice to my new friends? You’re always saying such mean things about them.”

Smarty Pants pointed out that something making you feel good didn’t mean it was good. What did ‘having fun’ with Rainbow Dash accomplish, she wondered.

“Well.” Twilight took a step back. She didn’t have an answer to that.

Smarty Pants always encouraged her to work harder, to keep going, to never deviate from her training. Rainbow Dash always encouraged her to goof off, to do nothing, to waste her time. Dash was toxic, Smarty Pants assured her, wanted to make Twilight as weak and lazy as she was.

Twilight couldn’t deny that Smarty Pants had been a huge help over the years, was one of the main things that kept her on track. She also couldn’t deny that she hadn’t accomplished very much since Rainbow Dash showed up.

“I did learn lots of stuff from Rainbow Dash,” Twilight shot back. “She taught me about all those towns, that game, modern technology and—“

And what use was any of that?

“Well— I don’t know. Maybe it can help me defend myself against attacks from the outside?”

Because outsiders like Rainbow Dash couldn’t be trusted, Smarty Pants reminded her.

“But I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time,” said Twilight. “I like these holidays! And going outside and playing that game and—“

Smarty Pants wondered what good having fun was. Did it accomplish anything? Was it really better to just goof around when she could be working? Twilight would only get weaker doing all that.

“I guess not, but—“

Smarty Pants pointed out again how toxic Rainbow Dash was, rotting Twilight’s body and mind for the sake of some stupid ‘fun’, a sin. Of course, she couldn’t trust Rainbow Dash. Twilight should go out there and drag Rainbow Dash back, never allow her to leave on her own again.

Could she handle it if Dash didn’t come back?

Twilight imagined how it would feel if Rainbow Dash really did just run away. She raised a hoof nervously, seriously considering going after Dash to make sure she didn’t do anything to defy her.

Smarty Pants encouraged her to do it, reminded her that time was running out to stop Dash. She had to—

“Hello.”

A new voice made Twilight jump back. She turned to see it was just Fluttershy floating

“Oh, I’m sorry. Were you saying something, Twilight?” Fluttershy asked.

“I was just talking to Smarty Pants.” Twilight pointed at Smarty Pants.

Smarty Pants was suddenly quiet. She never spoke when Fluttershy was around.

Twilight was a little relieved that Fluttershy interrupted their conversation. Smarty Pants had been getting a bit meaner since Dash came. She knew Smarty Pants meant well, and she did kind of have a point. It was just talking to her felt so bad and talking to Dash felt so good.

Secretly, that was one of the reasons she was glad to have Fluttershy around. With one friend awake all day and another awake all night, Twilight was hardly ever alone, hardly ever had to talk to Smarty Pants these days. She could just kind of avoid the hard truth of the matter.

Fluttershy kept a distance from the scarecrow. She tended to stay far away from Smarty Pants. To be fair, Smarty Pants did look frightening by design.

“Um. Twilight? Is this thing haunted?” Fluttershy ducked her head down, not daring to get too close. “Or something?”

“No. It’s just a normal golem animated with magic.” Twilight rubbed her eyes. “She can’t do anything outside of her pre-programmed routines.”

“Are you sure?” Fluttershy looked back at her.

“Yes.”

“Well if you say so.” Fluttershy still floated far away from it. “But why do you talk to it, then?”

“Rainbow Dash says it’s likely me talking to myself,” said Twilight. “Because I was alone for so long. I guess that makes sense. I didn’t start hearing her voice in my head until after my master left.”

“Oh, I know exactly what you mean.” Fluttershy nodded her head. “I used to spend all day talking to my pet spiders. But talking to my pets always made me happy. Whenever you talk to your doll, you get upset.”

“She’s just telling me things I need to hear.” Twilight kept her head down.

Fluttershy frowned and floated next to Twilight.

“I see.” Fluttershy floated to the door. “Can we go inside?”

“Sure.” Twilight followed her inside.

Once there, Twilight moved over to her table and laid her head on it with a sigh. Fluttershy floated across from her, frowning with concern/

“Are you okay?” Fluttershy asked. “I’ve seen you get this nervous when you head to town, but never here.”

“I guess I’ll know by sundown.” Twilight couldn’t sit down. She got back up and started pacing again.

“What happens at sundown?” Fluttershy asked.

“I sent Rainbow Dash to town to get me something,” said Twilight. “By herself. Without the magnet spell on her. I don’t know if she’ll come back.”

“Why wouldn’t she come back?” Fluttershy asked. “The path isn’t that dangerous.”

“I know I declared Rainbow Dash a witch, but she’s still mostly an outsider. Outsiders are all liars and thieves,” said Twilight. “Don’t tell me you disagree. You said all predeads are horrible, right?”

“Most of them are pretty mean to me. But I like you and Dash.”

“But what if she’s just been acting this whole time?” Twilight asked. “What if she’s going to betray me and come back with an army? Or sneak out the next time I let my guard down, running away with my spellbook or something?!”

“I really don’t think she’s that good of an actor,” said Fluttershy. “I know Dash wouldn’t do something like that. She likes you.”

“But it happened before.” Twilight came back to the table and tried to rest her chin on it a second time. “It’s just hard. I feel like I should run out there.”

“I think I understand.” Fluttershy moved over to the window. “I get really scared of things too, even when it doesn’t make sense of when I know I have to be brave. I don’t think I ever would have stood up for myself without you and Dash to help me. I know it’s not easy to go against it.”

Fluttershy flew back to Twilight, smiling.

“But I’ve been trying to get better. Maybe you just need to practice trusting people,” Fluttershy suggested.

Practice trusting somepony? Could you practice that?

The thought did make her feel just a little bit in control again. She knew that if she could hone an ability, she could do it to perfection.

“But how would I practice that?” Twilight asked. “There’s literally nothing I can do but wait.”

“I think you already did a lot today,” said Fluttershy. “Oh, I know! How about we play that card game you and Dash always play? Maybe it’ll make things go by faster.”

Twilight slowly nodded and Fluttershy got the cards out for her. Admittedly, it was far from easy to get into the game like normal, but it did draw her mind away from the constant fear for a minute. It was better than talking to Smarty Pants, at least.

With Twilight so distracted, Fluttershy, who was terrible at this game, might actually win for once.

Ponyville came within sight. No pegasi were in the air. No animals were about. She couldn’t hear any sounds.

Something was up.

Ever so slowly, Dash crept closer and closer towards the dead silent buildings and streets. It wasn’t long until she was close enough to see a few ponies out though not so much about. All of them were standing perfectly still, expressions locked in place. There were a group of kids playing hopscotch, one of them stopped in the middle of a jump, hanging in the air.

“Of course something is happening,” Dash muttered to herself. “Did I kill a million crows in a past life or something?! How am I this unlucky?”

Dash decided she’d go get the others if something really crazy happened. Maybe only part of town was frozen in time and it was some kind of accident. She was about to step into town, then thought better of it.

Instead, she jumped back, turned into crows, and sent half of them inside to scout. None of them froze, which was good.

Already, investigation Dash could tell that whatever froze the town came from the south. On the far south of the border, the ponies were frozen as if nothing happened. They’d were stuck smiling or walking in place.

A little after that, they were all frozen in place as they ran or hid from something. Then finally Dash came to a part of town where there were no ponies in the streets, having successfully run away. Though it wasn’t that helpful on second thought.

Putting all that together made her feel smart for a second.

Whatever it was didn’t look to be here at present. At least, it wasn’t in the street.

Dash’s current instance found one of the better hiding spots in town. It was the old bell tower, a place pegasi often took refuge in when trouble rolled into town. Where the bell used to go there was now a little room, sunk halfway into the floor, that you couldn’t get to without wings.

Her crow perched on the ledge and turned back into a pony. Just as she was about to hop down into the little room, she realized there were maybe twenty other pegasi already hiding here including Derpy and Raindrops. All of them were armed and ready for a fight.

When they saw Dash, they all got up. First, they pointed their muskets at her, but upon seeing she was a pony, a sound of relief and excitement went through the room.

“Hey! The reinforcements are here!” One of the pegasi stood up, spreading her wings with excitement.

“No, it’s just Rainbow Dash.” Raindrops pointed her out.

All of them but Derpy let out groans, muttering, and sighs of disappointment.

“Rainbow Dash!” Derpy alone was still excited to see her. “Where did you come from? I didn’t see you approach at all.”

Meaning they didn’t notice her turn back from a crow, which was good.

Turning into crows was a serious ‘bad guy’ power up there with summoning demons and raising the dead. She could maybe talk her way out of normal ponies seeing her do it, but she was always careful not to use the murder spell in public.

“Hey, come on!” Dash stood up for herself to the others. “I’m better than nothing!”

“Debatable,” muttered Raindrops.

“Did you come to help?” Derpy ran up to her.

“I have no idea what’s going on and I don’t have time for it either.” Dash got ready to take off.

“I don’t know if that was a pun,” said Derpy. “You’re not curious about why everypony in town is frozen in time? See, there’s this lich and like—”

“Not today, no. A lich time stopping stuff is all the info I need.” Dash had actually seen the lich herself as one of her crows. He was having a grand time freezing everypony in place, but didn’t seem to be hurting them beyond that. Importantly, he was on the other side of town as the place that sold chalk. She had to get there fast. “Ugh! Time magic? This is literally the worst possible thing that could have happened.”

“Is it?” Derpy asked. “Because I mean he’s not killing anypony or anything. They’re sending a wizard down to deal with this, so I’m pretty sure we’ll all be fine. It just raises a lot of inconvenient questions. Like, if we get frozen in time for a whole month do I gotta pay two months’ worth of bills when I get out?”

“Well, I believe in you, Derpy.” Dash patted Derpy on the back, then jumped back up to the ledge, ready to take off. “After all your training, you totally have what it takes to beat a lich! See ya!”

“You’re really going to leave us here?” Derpy asked. “What about the whole being the greatest hero thing?”

“Listen, Derpy,” said Dash. “I’ve read enough comic books to know exactly what will happen if I don’t get home on time. It’s going to lead into this horrible misunderstanding that will spiral out of control until I’m staring down at one of the outer gods devouring the planet and I need to give some big speech about friendship I’m not nearly prepared for.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Derpy.

“Okay, look.” Dash sighed and jumped back down to be on Derpy’s level. “If you can’t deal with this by later tonight, I’ll come back and unfreeze you or whatever, but I really, really gotta go. It’ll be faster this way, trust me.”

“But a couple of hours can be really long when you’re frozen in time,” said Derpy. “Or maybe it’s a really short time! I don’t know! Do you really have something that can help?”

“Not with me,” said Dash.

“Why are you even trying?” Raindrops gave Derpy a shove to stand in front of Dash instead. “When has Rainbow Dash ever done anything useful? She’s been the weakest pegasus since the first grade. She doesn’t have anything that can help us. Just get out of here before you make everything worse, Dash!”

“Hey! I could totally handle some stupid lich!” Dash swept her hoof and stepped forward to confront Raindrops. “Just, you know, later.”

“With what?” Raindrops asked. “Your Summoner Knights cards? Is that what you have to go get?”

Raindrops laughed, two of the other pegasi joining in with her.

“Is he gonna cringe to death the minute he sees you?” Raindrops smirked and stepped forward, getting almost muzzle to muzzle with Dash. “Name one of your stupid plans that ever worked out. Do you think you can beat even one other pony here in a fight? We have Derpy, that’s all we need. She’s worth a hundred of you.”

Dash gritted her teeth. It was hard to keep her anger inside of her. The red-hot temptation to tell Raindrops how she’d found Twilight, about her surprisingly useful power, about all the fights she won recently, was enough to make Dash’s blood boil.

But she couldn’t tell them, not just yet.

“Huh?” Raindrops asked. “So, what’s your plan this time?”

“Tch.” Dash forced herself to turn away.

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Raindrops laughed.

“I kinda like Rainbow Dash’s moxie,” Derpy spoke up, but not very loud.

“Forget about me coming back to help you!” Dash turned and flew off the belltower.

She flew through the streets with more power and less caution than she really should have in this situation. Too much anger was coursing through her and her wings felt like the only way to get it out.

Of course, the lich was going to show up, but Dash hardly cared at the moment. She would absolutely love something to punch right now.

Liches were just stupid wannabe witches anyway, ponies who tried to make their own coven. But like total idiot losers, they only ever managed to be the generic store brand equivalent of witches. They were too lazy to even come up with a good name for their order. They literally just changed one letter an called it a day.

“Stupid freaking,” Dash grumbled under her breath.

Rainbow Dash had done all this dangerous stuff and still nopony respected her! One of these stupid, freaking days everypony would see how great Dash was! Why did she always end up getting humiliated every time she came to this place?

Dash got to the store, landing hard before marching up to the door.

Honestly, she almost felt like some stupid lich was beneath her at this point! Dash was running around, surrounded by all this S-level crap! Some hyper-geezer wasn’t anything compared to that!

But could she beat one on her own?

A sinking feeling started cutting through her anger, but Dash did her best to ignore it.

Dash ruffled her hair then tried to open the door to find it locked. The sign said, ‘Closed due to temporal distortion’, but Dash could see a guy in the window. She walked up and knocked on the door harder than she meant to.

“I’m closed due to temporal distortion,” said the store clerk.

“Listen,” said Dash, “the fate of the world very indirectly depends on me getting this colored chalk and getting back home on time.”

“What?” He opened the blinds. “You’re going to defeat the lich with colored chalk?”

Dash let out some of her anger with a sigh.

“Sure,” said Dash.

“Of course!” He opened the door. “Chalk is immune to— wait. Is chalk immune to time magic? I can’t possibly imagine what your plan is.”

“Yeah. You leave the big brain science stuff to me, guy.” Dash stepped inside.

Dash frantically searched for the chalk for what felt like way too long. When she finally found it, she gave the guy a pile of bits and let him keep the change. That was one mission complete, now Dash just needed to get back without bumping into the lich.

Then she heard the little bell that rang whenever a customer came in.

Dash kept her eyes closed and let out a long sigh. Maybe she’d get lucky just one time and it’d be Derpy?

She turned slowly towards the door and opened her eyes. Predictably, it was him.

It was clearly a lich. He was a ridiculously old-looking pony, like a skeleton covered in loose skin. His mane and tail were gone, but he still had a long beard. Even his fur was missing patches, but what there was, was snow white. His eyes were sunken deep into his skull, just two dull, black specs.

Around his neck was his phylactery, a clay amulet that contained his life force. Liches needed that to stay immortal and retain their powers no matter what happened to their bodies.

He didn’t seem at all concerned about the two ponies in the store, focusing instead on casting some mysterious spell. An orb of blue light slowly formed in front of him, stabilizing and remaining even after his horn died back down. Dash had no idea what that did, but it got a hoarse laugh from the lich.

“Yes! The fifth point is complete!” the lich declared. “Just one more nexus and I can freeze this whole town with my master spell! And if my experiment goes well, we shall all be free from time soon enough!”

“Are you serious?” Dash slammed her head into the counter. He was still right next to the door. “Look, guy! Can you just get out of my way? I’ll come back and fight you later.”

“Time is the enemy!” the lich declared, unprompted. “It is the source of all evil in the world!”

“What are you even talking about?!” Dash yelled at the guy. “You have a problem with time?!”

“The increase in entropy of the universe is inevitable.” He looked up, raising his hooves. “All things rot, decay, become viler with time. Music was so much better when I was a child but now it’s all horrible! Only by stopping time can we—“

“That’s stupid!” Dash marched towards the door, ready to break up into crows if he cast a spell. “I don’t have time for this!”

“I don’t know if that was a joke.” The lich watched Dash as she stormed over to the door. When he realized she was seriously going to just walk out he lowered his horn. “Oh, no! No one is leaving until my experiment is completed!”

The lich’s horn began to glow with magic, Dash crouched down, getting her pendant ready. She’d been practicing with this thing and was confident she could dodge most spells by breaking up at this point.

“Oh yeah?” The store clerk came up holding a bag of chalk. “But you didn’t count on chalk somehow being your downfall!”

The clerk threw the bag at the lich, the bag bouncing off with no effect.

“I mean, you’re not wrong.” The lich cast a spell, freezing him in time.

Dash took the moment of distraction to burst into twenty angry crows. The lich turned back to her just as she was breaking up and attempted the same spell on Dash. Exactly one crow was frozen in time, but all the others escaped.

Ten crows flew straight at the lich, flying in at him from every direction. Dash planned for them all to go for his eyes and for his phylactery, the crows storming in to take their anger out on him. The attack wasn’t a huge success or failure. Nearly all of the crows were stopped before getting to him, but one did manage to peck at one of his eyes.

“Ack!” The lich swatted the crow away, then froze it. “Wait! Crows?! That spell!”

By then, one of Dash’s crows got outside and changed back into herself. The lich looked outside, at Dash, with a brief flash of fear. Dash’s eyes locked on to his and in that brief moment she felt as though she’d just made a mistake.

Did he figure out she had a connection to witches? Everypony knew liches were just wannabe witches. But that meant they studied witches more closely than any normal pony would. What if he recognized the murder spell?

He looked absolutely terrified having seen it, but if he’d figured that much out could Dash really just let him run off? This day was getting worse and worse.

There was a moment of tensing as Dash’s heartbeat and both of them looked at the other, afraid for different reasons. Then the lich’s eyes fell on Dash’s pendant and the tension vanished.

“Oh!” The lich laughed. “I see! You’re just some idiot who found a strand of mind fiber. You had me worried for a second.”

Idiot?!

“That’s it!” Dash used the murder spell once more.

She sent nearly all of her crows to try and peck at the guy. He yelled a little as they got at his eyes, then swatted them all away only for Dash to turn back and send another wave at him. This clearly wasn’t going to get anywhere, but the lich was also too superstitious to fight back hard.

One of Dash’s crows flew off and turned back.

Now she just needed to get back to Twilight’s house before that spell he mentioned went off. Once she was a good distance away, Dash turned back and flew off to the south as fast as she could.

Dash made another hard landing in front of Twilight’s house. At least this stupid day was over. At least she wouldn’t have to talk to any more freaking idiots.

“Hey, I—“ Dash threw open the door.

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight ran up and nearly tackled Dash with a hug.

“Whoa!” Dash struggled to stay on her feet.

“I’m so glad you came back.” Twilight’s tears wiped up against Dash’s fur. “I missed you so much!”

Dash stared down at Twilight with disbelief more than anything else. She didn’t think she’d ever been welcomed so enthusiastically, so genuinely before. She smiled without even meaning to.

“Heh.” Dash hugged her back. “Of course, I came back.”

“I’m sorry.” Twilight let go of Dash and wiped away some of her tears.

“There, you see?” Fluttershy flew up next to the two of them. “I’m sure you feel better now, right?”

“Eh?” Dash looked at Twilight. “Let me guess, you spent the whole time pacing back and forth, yeah?

“Oh yes, Twilight as so worried about you,” said Fluttershy.

“Hehe! That’s cute! But you don’t gotta worry about Rainbow Dash! I always come through in the end.”

Twilight blushed more and more heavily as that exchange went on.

“Can we just drop this?!” Twilight turned her nose away from the others. “You came back, so now we’re officially friends like you said. Maybe now I can concentrate enough to actually win against Fluttershy.”

“Fluttershy’s actually winning?” Dash looked over at the game of Summoner Knights. “You must have been really distracted.”

Dash knew she was supposed to be mad about something, but it was hard to remember right now.

She followed the two back to the table, hoping to see Fluttershy’s first and only victory against Twilight, but Fluttershy stopped to look over Dash.

“Hm?” Fluttershy noticed something with Dash’s bag.

She leaned forward and pulled out two feathers that had been stuck to it. Dash got feathers stuck here and there often enough that she hadn’t even noticed two that weren’t hers got jumbled up at some point.

More importantly, they were feathers frozen in time and stayed frozen in the air when Fluttershy pulled them off.

“Why do these feathers not like gravity?” Fluttershy asked. “Is this one of those new technologies?”

“Oh, yeah! I almost forgot. There was some guy freezing everyone in town with time magic or something,” said Dash. “I don’t know how serious of a problem that is, but—“

Twilight walked up and grabbed the feather, looking over it briefly before bringing both of them to her cauldron.

“Oh, it’s a complex time matrix spell for displacing spacetime over a long area. Those seem overpowered at first, but they’re actually incredibly fragile.” Twilight dropped one feather in the air, the feather hanging there rather than falling. She pushed the second one deep into the cauldron. The liquid flashed and the first feather began to fall normally. “There! That should unfreeze everything that was frozen.”

“Huh. Well, that was easy.”

In a bout of quick thinking, Derpy just barely managed to dodge the spell that had covered the town moments ago. Or maybe it’d been dumb luck. Either way, it turned out if you were under one of those nexus points, you’d be safe.

All the other ponies in the attack team were frozen in time. Heck, literally everything else in town had been frozen in time. It was down to Derpy and Raindrops now, standing on the road across from the lich. If they got frozen, they’d have to wait for somepony else to show up to rescue them. On the bright side, it’d seem like an instant.

“It seems I need more work before I scale this up to the entire globe,” the lich declared. “But I must thank you for exposing the flaw in my spell! It won’t be long until I’ve rectified this. Soon we won’t need to use the word ‘soon’ ever again!”

They probably only had one chance left to stop this guy. From the sound of things, he’d be leaving soon and then what? If he got away, he’d come back later even more dangerous.

It seemed unlikely they’d be able to defeat a wizard with this kind of magic, but Derpy had to try. Rainbow Dash believed in her and, like Dash said, that was better than nothing!

With no grand plans left, Derpy rushed in, hoping she’d be just fast enough to get his amulet away from him. It’d be so much easier a fight if she could manage at least that much.

The lich laughed as Derpy lunged forward and thrust at his phylactery. He pulled to one side, bringing the amulet out of the path of Derpy’s spear, but allowing it to dig into his chest. Because he was undead, there was no resistance or blood, the spear went straight through like paper. At the same time, he cast a spell, but nothing happened.

The lich suddenly stopped laughing.

“Hold on.” The lich looked himself over. “Something is very wrong! No! Did somepony really—?!”

“Everything’s going back to normal time!” Raindrops called out to Derpy. “You must have broken his concentration or something!”

“I did?” Derpy looked left and right.

Everything was going back to normal. A few ponies tumbled to the ground as they restarted, but most of them just resumed casually walking about as though they noticed nothing.

This was seriously working! Maybe Derpy could do this, just like Rainbow Dash said!

“Concentration?! It was clearly— Oh, wait. I probably shouldn’t tell you that.” The lich tried pulling back, having trouble with Derpy in his way. “I knew I shouldn’t have hit that crow! Oh, it’s ten years of bad luck for me!”

“More like ten years in jail!” Derpy pulled him closer. “Or however long you go to jail for this! And don’t think you can just freeze yourself in time until your sentence is up!”

Derpy grabbed the phylactery and kicked the lich backward, her spear coming out as easily as it had gone in.

“No!” The lich staggered back. “Stopping time was my main thing! Without that—!”

Derpy threw the phylactery to Raindrops and rushed in, hitting the lich over the head with the blunt side of her spear. All the ponies around were either cheering for her or looking on in total confusion, depending on when they’d been frozen.

With one last, wide swing, Derpy hit the lich’s head with an audible crack. He fell to the ground, unconscious and unable to get back up without his amulet.

“You did it, Derpy!” one of the ponies cheered. “Derpy Hooves defeated that lich entirely by herself!”

“Derpy! Derpy! Derpy!”

All the ponies around were cheering her name now! Even the ones who had no idea what was going on started cheering just to fit in.

Embarrassed at the attention, Derpy rubbed the back of her head and stuck out her tongue, smiling.

Witches 5: A New Beginning

Dash trudged through the snow on her way back to Twilight’s house, with a musket on her back and two full saddlebags at her sides. She was always afraid to fly there because it’d be easier for somepony to spot her landing in this one random spot in the forest every time.

There were a few things she did to throw ponies off her trail like that. She knew it’d seem suspicious if she suddenly started buying dozens of history books from the bookstore after having never gone there her whole life. So Dash got one of those PO boxes and ordered books through a phone catalog instead.

She made sure to buy a bunch of random stuff along with whatever Twilight asked for. That way nopony would be able to figure anything out. Incidentally, Dash finally had a gun again, though given her current track record that’d last about one adventure before being destroyed.

Derpy was likely the only pony who could figure this out. She’d know Dash had zero money and ask how Dash was paying for all this. So Dash had been avoiding her lately.

Maybe she was being a little paranoid. There was no reason for anypony to follow her yet. Ponies still dismissed her as being some idiot off chasing mummies.

A few ponies had gotten close to discovering Twilight’s house, but Twilight had more than enough defenses in place to turn them all around.

Most commonly, intruders would get ‘lost’ briefly before suddenly finding themselves back where they started. Ponies that got past that spell would start walking into Fluttershy’s aura and quickly become too afraid to carry on. It wasn’t the crippling type of fear Dash ran into before, just enough to turn most ponies around.

So far, nopony had gotten beyond that layer of defense, but Dash knew Twilight still had that fog labyrinth spell up because she had to walk through it every time she came back. There was probably even more than that before you got to the small army Twilight had created in the last few months.

Twilight’s house came into sight and Dash simply walked through the barrier and past a small army of golems. Sometimes it felt kind of nice to be able to simply walk by something that would give even the most elite fighters a challenge. It felt like she belonged somewhere for once.

She went inside, finding Twilight sitting on the ground surrounded by a pile of books she was still working through. Dash threw the packages down on the ground as soon as she came back.

Her job as Twilight’s familiar and student mostly consisted of running into town to buy stuff for Twilight and answering millions of questions. Once Twilight learned that ‘outsiders’ had written a whole ton of books it was all over. Twilight became much more interested in the outside world since their last excursion and spent six hours a day reading non-stop.

Dash already spent two thousand bits on books about recent history, warfare, and magic. She had tons of questions for Dash as she read, though Dash hardly knew the answer to half.

Whether or not this new interest in the world was good or bad remained to be seen. Maybe Twilight would become less apathetic towards everypony else, but at the same time, it almost seemed like she was preparing for war with the rest of the world.

Twilight took out her newest books. She looked from one on airships to the one on cannons.

“Good.” Twilight put them in the pile. “But I still need more. My information on the outside world is slowly coming together but still lacking.”

“You know, I only have so much money,” Dash reminded her. “I’ve spent thousands in the last two weeks.”

“Yes, but you also stole a bottle of youth gummies from me,” Twilight reminded her, “which you said was worth over a hundred thousand bits. So you’re going to keep buying stuff for me until you’ve paid that off. Then I’ll stop mentioning it.”

Dash really should have pretended that was only worth like a hundred bits.

“Doesn’t swearing my loyalty to you make us even?” Dash asked.

“Being loyal to me is its own reward.” Twilight was already lost in her book.

That remained to be seen in the long run.

“But now that you’re here, we can begin our meeting.” Twilight closed the book on airships, walked up to the chalkboard Dash bought for her, and pulled out the pointer that was also on Dash’s bankroll.

Behind her, there was already a huge amount of information written on the chalkboard. There was graph, a whole list of points and a crude sketch of the planet.

“Why do you always call them meetings?” Dash asked. “It’s just the two of us and the ghost. Is that enough to call it a meeting?”

As if she’d just heard herself mentioned, Fluttershy floated down from the ceiling.

“And Smarty Pants.” Twilight pointed to her doll, who Dash just now noticed had been placed on the couch. “That makes four.”

Dash kind of hoped Twilight would have stopped talking to that thing already. How long did it take to stop being insane from social isolation anyway?

Fluttershy gave it that cautious look she always did and stayed as far away as possible.

“I’ll sit next to Smarty Pants.” Dash jumped on the couch and leaned against the scarecrow. “The two of us are buddies.”

“Actually, Smarty Pants doesn’t like you very much,” Twilight said.

“What?!” Dash sat up. If Twilight’s imaginary friend didn’t like Dash, didn’t that mean there was some part of Twilight that still didn’t trust her? “Why not?”

“I think she’s just jealous,” Twilight whispered to Dash.

“Jealous?” Dash gave the scarecrow a skeptical look. She had no idea how to psychoanalyze that one. Was it a good thing for her isolation-induced hallucination to be jealous of Dash?

Twilight looked at Smarty Pants like it was saying something.

“You’re just going to have to suck it up. Rainbow Dash isn’t leaving,” Twilight told her. “We’re going to have to all work together if we want to solve this issue. That’s why I’ve gathered all of my minions together, to discuss a permanent solution to our problem!”

“Excuse me.” Fluttershy raised her hoof. “I have two questions. Since when am I your minion?”

“Do you have anything better to do?” Twilight collapsed her pointer.

“Um.” Fluttershy looked down at the ground. “No.”

“Right!” Twilight took it back out and tapped the board. “I figure you and I are in a similar situation. Neither of us can show ourselves in mainstream society because of what we are. You might as well just go along with whatever I come up with.”

“That does sound logical,” said Fluttershy. “And it’s not like anypony else will take me in.”

“Great!”

“But what is ‘our problem’, exactly?” Fluttershy asked. “Everything’s been so nice since I got here.”

“Our problem is the industrial revolution!” Twilight hit her chalkboard and the words appeared over a picture of a small factory.

“Oh no!” Fluttershy covered her head and backed up. “No, no, no. Did I accidentally join an eco-terrorist group again? Why does this keep happening?!”

“We’re not terrorists,” Dash promised Fluttershy. “Twilight! We can’t be terrorists, okay?”

“I don’t know what a terrorist is, so I can’t say no,” said Twilight. “But here, I made a graph to illustrate what I’m talking about.”

Twilight pointed to a graph with two lines on it. The top line had Twilight’s cutie mark and was a straight line that went up a small amount. The bottom one was a curved line that increased more rapidly near the end.

All the way through, the bottom line was below Twilight’s, but it became much closer near the end.

“You see, six hundred years ago ponies were pathetic losers compared to today.” Twilight pointed at the start of the bottom curve, far below where her starting point was. “They were too dumb to build trains or guns! They didn’t know how to forge arcanium. The most powerful psychics could only bend spoons. The best mages couldn’t even cast a sticks to snakes spell. They were too superstitious to even attempt to understand curses and witchcraft in general.”

Twilight moved the pointer along the bottom graph, following it as it got closer to her line.

“The scientific method was supposed to be one of the secrets of the witches, but somehow they figured it out too and everything went nuts after that! My abilities have greatly improved over the past centuries, but not nearly as rapidly as the outsiders!” Twilight moved her pointer across the smaller gap between the lines. “I don’t have labels for the y axis, but it’s possible they could catch up in just a couple hundred more years. A curse won’t be enough to keep them out much longer and then what?”

“I think I understand,” said Fluttershy. “You’re worried the security we have now might not keep ponies out forever, right? Keeping all the mean ponies out is what made the past month so nice. But is there a way to keep them out forever?”

“I think there is! And I called you here to discuss my ideas,” said Twilight.

“Alright.” Dash leaned back. “Let’s hear what I got myself into this time.”

“Plan one.” Twilight tapped an image of her standing atop the globe appeared. “We use overwhelming force to take over the world!”

“Dang it, Twilight!” Dash jumped forward out of her seat. “This is exactly what I was worried about. We can’t take over the world. We’d have to kill like a million ponies.”

“But I’d make lots of changes for the better!” Twilight swept her pointer across the board to the list of bulletin points. “The more I learn about your society the more idiotic it sounds to me. I’m sure once all the ponies hear about the great ideas I have, they won’t want to fight against us. They’ll just give me control of the world.”

“Uh-huh.” Dash sat back down, genuinely curious what Twilight’s hypothetical reforms would be. “This should be good. Let’s hear these reforms.”

“Point one!” Twilight hit the first point. “Free housing. Shelter will be demonetized, freeing up massive resources. Point two. Money will be abolished and replaced with productivity tokens that expire when used to purchase something. Your current system is too easy to exploit and disproportionately rewards ponies who aren’t productive at all while simultaneously encouraging hoarding. By tying your living standard directly and only to how productive you are, we can increase both the fairness and efficiency of the system.”

Dash immediately knew none of that would work out. At least, she was pretty sure it couldn’t. She wasn’t an economist, though, and struggled for a moment to find the words.

“Three. I destroy your unnecessarily large sewer systems and just give everypony an infinite void to use as a toilet. Four. I get rid of all this democracy nonsense and instead the smartest ponies make all the decisions. Five. Ghosts who can go a year without feeding off of a pony will be allowed into society until they actually break a law.”

“Oh! I like number five,” said Fluttershy. “Can we just do number five? I suppose three is okay too, even if I don’t, you know…”

“Twilight?” Dash shook her head. “Some of that’s going to be way harder to implement than you think.”

“If I can figure out how to obtain eternal youth I can figure out how to fix the housing market,” said Twilight.

“But do you even want to do all this?” Dash asked. “Ruling the world would be a bureaucratic nightmare. You’d have to devote one hundred percent of your time to dealing with political nonsense. You’d spend the first half of your day having obnoxious ponies yell at you because there’s too many regulations on carrots and the second half getting yelled at because there aren’t enough regulations on carrots. You’d never get to have fun or work on your magic. Is that really what you want your life to be? Isn’t that the exact opposite of what you’re trying to do?”

Twilight looked at that board, scratched her head, then put the pointer down.

“That’s a good point.” Twilight hummed to herself, looking over her plan. “Now that I think about it, ruling Equestria would be the worst possible thing and I don’t have a clear exit strategy. But this is why I called you here, after all. You’re smart.”

“Hehe!” Dash blushed and rubbed her nose. “Yeah, well. You know.”

At that particular moment in time, Dash would have joined Twilight’s side in a war between her and the rest of the world without hesitation.

“I’ll have to give that one more thought.” Twilight turned to her board, forelegs crossed. “Admittedly all my other plans are just increasingly ridiculous. So if you have any suggestions, I’d like to hear them.”

Fluttershy and Dash both got to thinking. Dash really did need to figure out the endgame for all of this.

Dash realized she’d been goofing off too much, putting off the decision because it was an interruption into what had been an idyllic life. Even just that relatively small amount of money kind of went to her head there.

Even worse, she was complicit now! If things ever hit the fan, Dash was going down along with Twilight straight to jail.

Maybe she should just help Twilight take over the world at this point? Those infinite void toilets were way better than flush ones to the point Dash wasn’t sure if she could go back, so it wasn’t like it’d be completely evil.

Dash looked over at Twilight…

There was, of course, the obvious solution. Twilight trusted Dash enough to let her come and go whenever she wanted. Getting proof Twilight was here would be effortless now. That alone would be enough to make Dash famous, get her millions!

If Dash kept going along with this, kept being all cozy with Twilight, it’d get more and more difficult to stay out of jail. But if she turned Twilight in right now, it wouldn’t be too hard to claim she was only playing along until she got a chance to escape. That had been the original plan.

It’d be so easy! Dash could live happily ever after and not need to deal with any of this anymore. Ponies would love her.

“What if you use your magic powers to send us to the moon?” Fluttershy raised her hoof. “That seems like a nice, lonely place.”

“The moon, huh?” Twilight looked up towards that sky. “Actually, there might be a way. Though living there would present certain difficulties.”

“But that’s that point,” said Fluttershy. “Nopony else would be able to get there.”

“But if I can get to the moon, then other ponies can eventually get there too.” Twilight shook her head.

They went on with that routine for a bit, but Dash wasn’t paying attention to any of it.

What would be the downsides of turning on Twilight? A big fight would break out as Pinkie said. But that was going to happen eventually anyway. Maybe not for years or even decades, but eventually. That really was the main problem Dash had to avoid somehow.

Then she thought of how Twilight would react to Dash betraying her. It wasn’t even Twilight coming out for revenge that popped into her head, but how miserable being betrayed a second time would make the witch.

The image in her mind of Twilight trembling and crying in despair when she realized Dash turned her in was too cruel, it gave Dash a sinking feeling in her stomach, made her feel guilty just for thinking about it.

Then Dash realized she couldn’t possibly go with that plan. She had too much honor or whatever. Or maybe she really had let herself get too attached. Her plan to befriend backfired and Twilight ended up befriending her instead!

Dash let out a long miserable sigh. She was going to miss that million bits. Being kind didn’t pay the bills, they say.

“Huh?” Twilight looked over at her, drooping over in sorrow.

“Nothing.” Dash shook her head. “Just thinking to myself.”

There had to be some perfect solution to all of this. There had to be a way for Dash to become rich and respected, stay out of jail, mitigate the inevitable super-battle and also not betray Twilight.

Maybe she should have gone after a more realistic mark after all, just like Derpy told her to.

That’s when it came to her! The perfect plan!

“Oh! I have a plan.” Dash jumped off the couch and raised her hoof. “The main problem is just that you have a bad reputation, so all we need to do is give you a good reputation instead! There are tons of incredibly dangerous S-rank monsters out there, but you’re stronger than any of them. We go out there, beat the crap out of them, and collect all the huge rewards.”

“I feel like we already have enough money,” said Twilight.

“That’s not the point,” said Dash. “The point is we’d be heroes if we destroyed all the major threats in the world. Then at the end, we can hero-cuck Pinkie, destroying the curse of undeath seconds before she does. We can have the most epic newsreel ever where we reveal your identity, but by then everypony will love us so much they won’t want to fight anymore. If you take out all the other witches, nopony can possibly claim you’re evil, right?”

“But revealing myself will lead to a huge fight, won’t it?” Twilight asked. “And doing it like you said might risk revealing myself before I’m ready. Somepony is bound to notice the other witches disappearing.”

“You said yourself it’s going to happen anyway eventually, right?” Dash reminded her. “We can delay it for like a hundred years, but it’ll just be worse by then. But this way we reduce the number of people who will be fighting when it happens. Like, we take out the other witches on the one side and then ponies like Nailbat won’t want to fight you anymore on the other. See how brilliant this is?”

“I’m not sure.” Twilight lowered the brim of her hat. “Usually when I help people they just want more and more. You can’t get them to like you by helping them.”

“Come on, that was just one guy. Do you think me and Fluttershy are like that?” Dash gestured towards Fluttershy.

“Oh, I’m just happy that you two talk to me.” Fluttershy smiled. “I really don’t need anything else.”

Twilight was still struggling with the concept though, avoiding eye contact with either of them. She started pacing back and forth nervously instead of responding. How was Twilight not sold on this yet?

“What if we start with the other witches?” Dash asked. “And get those books back? I know you want to be more responsible than Filthy Rich, right?”

“Hey! I’m not like that guy!” Twilight shot back, then sighed and finally calmed down. “Maybe you’re right. It’s clear that the order lost its way at some point. Witches aren’t supposed to be using their powers like that. Maybe I should at least see what happened. And—"

Twilight looked at Fluttershy with a deep frown.

“If I get those witches under control you really think everypony will leave me alone?” Twilight asked.

“I think it’d be hard for me to hate whoever stopped all those other witches,” said Fluttershy.

“I’m pretty sure somepony’s going to attack you no matter what we do,” Dash admitted, shaking her head. “But almost everypony will be on our side if we can pull this off. We could have the good kind of fame and the public would love us. It’ll be great!”

Twilight stopped her pacing and stood there, tense and unmoving, with her eyes closed considering it for a long time.

“Alright.” Twilight finally opened her eyes and nodded with determination. “I’ll beat all the other witches and get my spellbooks back. But we have to keep as low a profile as possible until the end.”

“We managed to get through that whole blob incident without getting caught,” said Dash. “How hard could doing that ten times in a row be?”

“Fluttershy?” Twilight turned to her.

“I know firsthoof how bad the witches are,” said Fluttershy. “I’d like to stop them too. I don’t know if I’m brave enough to stand up to one yet, but I’ll help if I can. I suppose it’s the only way to live a peaceful life, besides.”

This would be great! Dash could just ride Twilight’s coattails all the way to an easy victory. If they seriously pulled this off, Dash would be an absolute legend! Finally, she’d be worthy of respect.

Dash was so pumped for this! She couldn’t remember the last time she felt this kind of determination and excitement. It felt like life was about to begin.

Dash spent the next month training with intense determination! Well, intense compared to a normal pony. Compared to Twilight, she was still a total slacker. The plan was to get Dash to be remotely useful in a fight before they’d go looking for any other witches.

Dash spun the makarakarn, the main part of her training she spent four hours a day with.

First spin. Piece of cake! Honestly, Dash found it hard to believe she’d been too pathetic to do this a few weeks ago.

Second spin. Dash had to start squinting and concentrating harder to keep the room from spinning. This was like that part of exercise when your body was screaming at you to stop and you weren’t sure if you could do another rep.

Third spin. In her current state, Dash had a fifty-fifty shot of making it through this one. But this was also the part of her training she got actual gains from.

Already she felt like she’d be puking had she eaten anything prior. The world was a blur of colors and madness. But she kept her eyes on the pendulum. Dash struggled to keep her eyes opened and gritted her teeth as the weight finished its third swing and went into the fourth.

It was traveling faster, but it felt like it was going so much slower. Four spins was the milestone she was shooting for, that she hadn’t finished managed yet.

Twilight said there was a spell called ‘howl of madness’ that every master witch would know. That spell would floor everypony within a mile in an instant unless they could manage this much. Letting Dash anywhere near a witch would be too dangerous until she got that far.

She did everything she could to keep her ever better focus on the center of the pendulum, to ignore the spiking pain in her head. She got closer than she ever had before, past the point where she normally collapsed. But determined to go as far as she possibly could, until she did collapse yet again, Dash just barely kept one eye opened as the pendulum got to the end of the fourth spin.

Maybe the distraction of success was what sent her over, but she fell to the mat she sat on panting as soon as she got there. She was completely exhausted and needed to spend the next fifteen minutes rubbing her aching temples, but she’d done it. She’d gotten to the first milestone!

Dash got up and drank some water. That took longer than a week, but she’d finally taken the first step! It felt incredible to actually be getting somewhere for once. What would have been an impossible task just a month ago was now doable.

Still, she was determined to go to the next step after that, to the point where four spins was as easy as one spin was now. Twilight could spin that thing all day long, so Dash had a ways to go. Still, it was finally time for the next step.

After recovering, Dash stood up and went looking for Twilight, finding her downstairs sitting at her desk. Twilight was completely lost in one of her books and surrounded by towers of even more books. This was a common sight these days.

Twilight’s training the past month consisted of reading books about the outside world in an attempt to ‘pass’ as an outsider. If she wanted to turn her reputation around, she would need some basic understanding of the world.

“Twilight!” Dash ran up behind her. “I got to four!”

“Hm.” Twilight was too lost in her reading to respond at first. “Yes. That is ‘gnarly’, I believe.”

“What?” Dash checked to see Twilight was reading a dictionary on slang terms, which explained things to an extent. “Well, I guess you’re getting better too. Sort of.”

“Yes. But the more I read, the more I realize there is I don’t know.” Twilight shook her head and put the book down. “Still, I think I know all the basics from your unnecessarily complicated legal system to your unnecessarily complicated phone system. I don’t think there will be any more misunderstandings like before.”

“I seriously doubt that, Twi.” Dash rolled her eyes. “You’re never going to get there without actually going out into the world.”

“I think studying first is crucial!” Twilight held up the slang dictionary like a shield. “Take this for example. The word ‘gnarly’ can mean, in addition to things being gnarled, exemplary, impressive, skilled, interesting, or favorable. That would have tripped me up had I not read this book.”

“I guess there’s always a small chance of us ending up in a skatepark.” Dash shrugged.

“Ah! You see!” Twilight smiled smugly and lifted a hoof. “I know what the skateboarding is too. It’s an insidious sport created by the arch-demon Lux Lucius to corrupt the youth. It involves traveling on a wheeled board in an attempt to perform ‘tricks’ such as ‘the grind’.”

Did Dash buy Twilight one of those religious tracts at some point and forget? She needed to go through that huge pile of books later.

“As for you.” Twilight closed her book and jumped off her chair. “At your current level, you should be at least competent enough to watch a battle between witches. Before we head out for real, I’ll give you two tests. One to see if you can switch between strands of mind fiber rapidly and the other to see if you can withstand a basic psychological attack.”

Dash nodded.

“I think I already have that first one down.” Dash took her pendant off then put it back on. “I don’t feel anything when I put this on anymore.”

“Good. But remember, you can still only use one at a time in your current state,” Twilight warned. “You’re getting close to the point where you have enough memories of the murder spell that you won’t need the pendant to do it anymore. You can likely handle one more in addition to that.”

Twilight motioned for Dash to give her the pendant back. Dash handed it over and Twilight broke the actual pendant part of the pendant, leaving only the necklace behind. From the pendant, she pulled out the glowing pink strand of mind fiber and stretched it around the necklace itself, the pink glow dying down as she twined it.

Then Twilight took out a new pendant, one that reminded Dash of a bike lock. It had a little dial on the front of it, but only three numbers to point to. Just above each of the numbers was a tiny slit, only one open at a time. From the one open slit, Dash could see a tiny amount of pink.

“This one contains three times the amount you’ve been using up until now.” Twilight turned the small dial, switching which slit was open. “But only one will be exposed at a time. You can switch through the spells by turning this.”

Dash put the new pendant on and turned the dial. Knowledge flooded her mind, but unlike when she first used a mind fiber, it didn’t feel invasive at all. It was just like reading a one-word sign. She just knew what it meant without any real effort.

The first spell was one for creating blood, mostly in your own veins. That made it a lot harder for Dash to bleed to death and any healing spell was welcomed at this point.

She turned the dial. Immediately she forgot how to use the blood spell but a new one replaced it. This one was a bit more interesting, and Dash wanted to try it immediately.

Her shadow detached from her body and walked across the room by itself. It grabbed onto the shadow of the bookshelf and clumsily pulled a book off. It wasn’t as dexterous as you might hope, but Dash could more or less grab things with her shadow now. She could also punch or tackle anything that had a shadow or even grab ghosts that got too close to the ground. That would have been useful back in the sewer.

The third and final spell wasn’t one she could use inside. It could create an invisible barrier of wind that could reflect projectiles back with just as much force as they’d come in with. Of course, how strong a projectile it could deflect depended on Dash who still didn’t have a great deal of magical energy.

She gave it a more rapid turn and it didn’t have any ill effects at all.

“Yeah! I think I can use this thing,” said Dash. “Thanks a lot! This is awesome!”

Her only silent complaint was that there didn’t seem to be any explosion spells.

“I’ve selected the spells that would be best for somepony who’s, well, not as strong as a master witch to still be useful,” Twilight explained, almost reading Dash’s mind. “You’re still not strong enough to cast any spell that can hurt a witch, but with these, you can stay safe and maybe catch somepony off guard.”

It wasn’t like Dash could deny she’d be anything better than support in such a fight. Like Twilight, learning a little bit about mind fibers and witchcraft helped Dash realize the chasm between herself and a master witch was even wider than she would have guessed.

At least now, she wouldn’t be deadweight. At least, not total deadweight.

Four spells down, 99,996 to go!

“Alright. Now for the next test.” Twilight held a hoof out towards Dash. “I’m going to use a spell. Just take two steps forward and tap my muzzle. I won’t move from this spot.”

Twilight cast the spell and suddenly was everywhere! She was everything! Billions of images of Twilight flashed in and out of existence in every direction. The universe was just Twilights all the way down, every thought, every breath was Twilight. And it felt like they were getting closer and closer.

Dash caught her mind slipping. This was just like the pendulum thing, blurring the world and blurring her mind. She needed to focus. There was only one Twilight, only one of them was real.

Like she was walking against a gale-force wind, Dash forced herself to take two firm steps forward. Her hoof felt heavy as she slowly lifted it. The Twilights exploded outward again, but Dash focused them back to a single point and hit Twilight’s nose.

She felt more in control after that. The image of Twilight was still vibrating, creating images of her all around, but Dash was lucid about the illusion at least.

“Hah!” Dash laughed, having shrugged off the attack. “That wasn’t that bad!”

“Excellent!” Twilight gave her a nod and ended the spell. “You can stand up to basic psychological attacks now."

“So now what?” Dash asked. “You think we’re ready to go into town to get information on the witches?”

“I think so.” Twilight nodded. She turned to the door, her ears drooping from nerves. “I guess we could go now. Or tomorrow. Maybe Saturday.”

Dash rolled her eyes. Twilight was getting better, but she still avoided going to town as much as possible like this.

“Come on.” Dash lowered her head and started pushing Twilight towards the door. “You just gotta suck it up and do it.”

Twilight silently protested for a second, but didn’t hold out for long before the two of them were out the door and walking towards town. Twilight distracted herself from her nervousness by applying her disguise as they went through the forest.

It felt nice out.

Spring finally came with the leaves sprouting again and the warmth returning. There was no snow to trudge through and she had that post-training surge of energy. Dash felt ready for this. She knew this was going to work out!

To top it off, nothing crazy was happening in town when they finally got there. Twilight relaxed a little once they were in town, her ears picking back up.

Finally, they got back to HQ, the place Dash had hoped to drag Twilight back to what felt like years ago.

Dash peeked inside briefly to make sure nopony too clever was there. Thankfully, it looked like Derpy was the only one. Derpy was a tough fighter, but she wasn’t exactly the best at figuring things out. She nodded to Twilight and the two of them walked in.

“Oh hey! It’s Rainbow Dash!” Derpy waved at her. “I haven’t seen you in forever! I almost feel like you’ve been avoiding me.”

“I’ve just been busy is all.” Dash walked up to the counter.

Twilight was quickly overwhelmed by all the information written across the walls, wandering off to the side to study it all.

“A lot happened while you were gone,” said Derpy. “First there was the killer pumpkin incident then that lich. You were totally right, I was able to beat it on my own! After that, I got to go on this important mission to take down a vampire. I’ve been on such a roll lately that I might get promoted to rank A soon! Firefly herself offered to let me come train with her. Isn’t that incredible?”

Dash muttered in agreement as she got her folder out and read it. It always felt like Derpy was two steps ahead of her and now she was about to get to rank A already? Meanwhile…

“How am I still rank D? I feel like I’ve completed thirty missions,” said Dash.

“I’m glad this job gives you a feeling of satisfaction.” Derpy held up Dash’s folder. “But this paper says Rainbow T. Dash has exactly 0.0 missions complete. So, I can’t pay you.”

“Well, that doesn’t matter much.” Dash reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a smaller bag of bits. “I can’t give you the interest I promised, but here are your thousand bits back for now.”

“Oh wow!” Derpy held up one of the coins. “A Rainbow Dash that isn’t broke? I never thought this would happen. Did an uncle you never heard of die and leave you his spooky mansion if you can stay there for one night? That happened to me one time.”

“I know. I was there. That’s why I owe you an inflatable raft, remember?” Dash asked.

“Oh, yeah. That had to be the second craziest night of my life. I just wish we could have found out who was calling us. I mean, if your mom is dead then who was on the phone?”

“It was obviously Raindrops! I keep telling you that.”

“We can’t prove that.”

“Raindrops did stuff like that all the time. Remember when she locked me in the basement on senior skip day? Or when she dumped a bucket of pig’s blood on you? Or those fake love letters she sent to try and get Cloud Chaser to beat me up?” Dash asked. “Hey, whatever happened to Cloud Chaser anyway? I feel like she just vanished after graduation.”

“I heard she got caught making out with Flitter and had to run off to the pirate coast,” Derpy whispered.

“And let me guess. Raindrops told you that?” Dash asked.

“It’s not like Raindrops always lies,” said Derpy. “Remember that one time she—“

At some point, this conversation caught Twilight’s attention. She walked up and stood close to Dash, looking rather annoyed by something.

“Oh hey!” Derpy looked over at Twilight. “That’s that mysterious pony you’ve been hanging out with. Hello!”

“I was neglected as a child,” said Twilight.

“Oh!” Derpy looked left and right, surprised. “Well— well that’s terrible!”

“Yes, it is,” Twilight sounded almost proud of that. “Rainbow Dash and I have been through all sorts of things together. I’m her best friend.”

“Really? So like—?” Derpy looked back and forth between the two of them, tapping her hooves together, clearly hoping she was about to get some gossip. That was another reason to avoid Derpy. “Like what’s the relation between you two?”

“Rainbow Dash is like my pet.” Twilight pulled Dash closer to her, lifting her head proudly. “She obeys my every command!”

“Heh heh.” Dash nervously glanced to the side. “Heh…”

“Whoa!” Derpy slammed her hooves down on the desk and leaned over. “You’re hardcore, Rainbow Dash! I didn’t even know you liked mares!”

“Why wouldn’t she like mares?” Twilight raised an eyebrow.

“Whoa! I didn’t mean it like that!” Derpy put her hooves out defensively. “I’m fine with the LGBT, uh, whatever letter they’re up to. It’s just Dash was always chasing boys up till now. She was so desperate to get a boyfriend in high school.”

“D—Derpy!”

“But this is so cute!” Derpy jumped over the desk and hugged Dash. “I mean, maybe your pet thing is a little too hardcore for it to be ‘cute’, but I’m still happy you finally found somepony. I told you that you just needed to be yourself or whatever you did. What did you do, anyway? I need details.”

“We’re not dating!” Dash shoved Derpy off herself and pulled out of Twilight’s grip too. “Just forget about that idea! We’re business associates doing business things. We met at a business conference and we’re friends but that’s it.”

“And when you say business you mean sex?” Derpy asked.

“No!” Dash lowered her head and started pushing Twilight away, towards where all the S-class threats were listed. “Come on, Silver! Let’s go do our serious business.”

“Oh, right. I forgot to ask her name. I’m Derpy by the way!” Derpy called out to Twilight.

Derpy was intently watching them now, clearly hoping their serious business involved making out. Everypony was so crazy about ‘shipping’ these days. It was like you couldn’t get into the same elevator as another pony without them assuming your wedding was tomorrow.

“I can’t help but feel like something I said had a double meaning,” Twilight whispered to Dash.

“Don’t worry about it.” Dash sighed. “Maybe it’s good if she gets the wrong impression for now. It’ll throw her off.”

Dash pointed to the wall of S-class threats. At the very top of it was the picture of Twilight, one that thankfully didn’t match her current disguise too well. Twilight’s eyes went immediately to that as she grew wistful, remembering something. Dash wished she’d open up a bit more sometimes, but this wasn’t a good place for that.

“These are all the S rank threats,” said Dash. “Monsters that need to be slain, dangerous artifacts to recover, deadly missions that needs to be done. That sort of thing. Most ponies can’t deal with anything on this wall.”

“There’s more than I expected.” Twilight took her eyes off the portrait and looked down at all the rest.

“We don’t gotta get all of them,” said Dash. “Just a bunch. Mostly the other witches.”

Dash looked around for where the witches were. Generally, the highest rewards were towards the top.

“That one is the strongest?” Twilight pointed to another poster. “But there’s no picture.”

Dash looked over to see Twilight had singled out the ghost of Crater Cemetery.

“That’s the only one I’m not a hundred percent sure you can beat,” said Dash. “Nopony knows how strong that ghost is, other than ‘extremely’. Psychics who try to enter the cemetery get overwhelmed by her aura and start puking. Plus she has a literal army of ghosts and is the reason why that place is covered in permafrost. Maybe we can build our way up to that one.”

What even was the easiest monster on this list, though? Dash went closer to the bottom.

The slithery dee. No. The zombie leviathan. No. The nightmare whale. Why were all of these sea monsters?!

Finally she got to the list of known witches. Most estimates put the number of witches in the world, besides Twilight, at maybe 8. The ones who had a spellbook were considered far more dangerous than those without them. Volume five's location was unknown and volume six was taken by Starlight and brought to Area 5X long ago. The wall had the list of which witch had the remaining 5.

Screwball, Minuette and Ember Moon were the ones Dash knew about off the top of her head. Some research revealed an 'Auntie Eclipse' to be the fourth and then there was an unknown fifth. Which witch to go after first was something Dash considered for a whole month. The choice wasn’t easy.

Eclipse was considered the strongest of the witches, but she was by far the most reclusive. Going after her wouldn't change as many minds as some of the others.

Screwball, often known as the pirate queen, was by far the most public of them. She controlled the single biggest criminal organization in the world- the Bloodstorm Cartel. Taking her out would mean bringing half the underworld to its knees in a single blow.

Once the other witches learned somepony was taking them out one by one, they would inevitably react, either going into hiding or trying to rally the others behind them. Twilight suggested they should go after the ones most likely to react in that manner.

Minuette was considered the weakest of the known witches. She had volume seven of The Book of Shadows also known as the ‘sucker edition’ which contained only the last few spells beginning with the letter Z.

Even still, she was known for spells that manipulated spacetime which would make her nearly impossible to catch if she wasn’t taken by surprise. That was the one they would go after first. Maybe it was better to start out slow and somewhat less conspicuous.

Dash reached out to grab Minuette’s information but she heard Twilight whisper something to her just before touching it. ‘What’s that one up there?’ it sounded like, but she was so quiet that Dash wasn’t sure she heard it right.

“Huh?” Dash turned to her. “What’s what one?”

“What’s what one what?” Twilight turned to her in confusion.

“Didn’t you just—? Ah, never mind.” Dash shook her head. Maybe she was just hearing things.

But Dash did look just up above where Minuette’s picture was. There was another pony there Dash recognized, had seen in person before.

Applejack?!

That was that weirdo Dash bumped into that one time! And she was in the witch section?! Applejack was a witch?! Then why the living buck didn’t she vaporize that dragon?!

She took a second to actually read it and calmed down a little. Applejack wasn’t a witch, but the mission involving her still gave Dash pause.

Updated! Missing Pony. Applejack and co. S-rank. Information: up to 50,000 bits. Returned alive: 250,000 bits.

Dash forgot all about Applejack until just now. The last time she checked this mission, months ago, it was rank D with less than one hundredth the reward. Even if finding them imposed massive risk, missing ponies rarely had big rewards for them, not unless somepony rich was willing to pay.

“Hey, Derpy!” Dash called over to her. “What the buck happened with Applejack?”

“Who?” Derpy asked.

Dash brought the poster to her.

“Oh, that one! That was the leader of the group of ponies that went missing back uh—“ Derpy stopped and thought. “Actually, that was the same night you went missing for the first time! What a weird coincidence.”

Now Derpy was putting things together?

“Total coincidence, I swear,” said Dash. “It was a blood moon.”

“Yeah, weird.” Derpy shrugged. “Anyway, Flash Bang herself wants Applejack. She put up that bounty personally. If you bring Applejack to her it’s a quarter million! Anypony else from that caravan is worth fifty thousand. But only one.”

So was Applejack up to no good back then? Getting the attention of Flash Bang, a pony more heavily associated with the military and saw most opponents as beneath her, was about as serious as it could get.

“Wait. What? What the crow did Applejack do to get Flash Bang to go after her? Those guys didn’t seem that tough when uh—“ Dash caught herself “—when they were listed the first time.”

“I don’t think that pony’s in trouble,” said Derpy. “See, now we know she was kidnapped by a witch who’s been exploding up the infamy charts in the past year, especially the last six months or so. She might be the most dangerous and wanted of the bunch right now. Flash Bang wants to take her into protective custody cause that witch needs this Applejack pony to cast some kind of dangerous spell or something.”

“Wait.” Twilight was suddenly much more interested in this conversation upon hearing of a mysterious spell. “What? Which one is doing this?”

“It’s none other than the great and powerful Trixie!” Derpy turned around to look at the board, pointing to a blue pony laughing hysterically in the photo.

Neither Dash nor Twilight reacted to that one.

“Oh. Neither of you know who that is? I’ll just react myself.” Derpy staggered back in feigned surprise. “Wait! What?!”

Witches 6: Trixie Lives

Tonight was the night of the blood moon and a Friday the 13th on top of that. Something massive and world-changing would happen on a night like this, no doubt, but most likely it wouldn’t happen here.

Apple Bloom lay on her back, wearing a pair of 3D glasses, reading a 3D comic. Over time, she’d grown less afraid of the whole blood moon thing. The air felt still and heavy, but it didn’t bother her much. That’s just how the air got before a lunar eclipse.

It wasn’t like she had to do anything but sit around inside anyway. She was at the very center of the caravan, inside a large cart with a small living space built into it along with all the other kids. You could fit a lot of ponies in here, the place having a small bed and a couch even. But with this many kids, it was still crowded.

There was an adult standing just in front of the door too, so Apple Bloom wouldn’t even need to bop any stray zombies if it came down to that.

It was more fun when you had a big caravan like this. Normally, Apple Bloom didn’t have many ponies her own age to talk or play with, but when there was a big gathering like this there was a whole ton of kids around.

It kinda sucked having to move around sometimes. She wished she could just live in Oaken Point, or some other town, all year. Of course, they were lucky that even Oaken Point would let them stay for parts of the year so that was largely an impossible dream. No place wanted werewolves around. Heck, most places wouldn’t tolerate you for one second.

There were a few upsides, of course. At just 11, Apple Bloom already felt worldly from all the places she’d been. She just wished she could have participated in the rituals instead of hiding inside all the time.

Next to Babs, Apple Bloom was the oldest kid who needed to set a good example for all the younger ones. She’d never actually participated in the ritual, nor had she ever fought the horde of zombies that preceded it, but she was only two years from ‘final initiation’ and already felt like a pro at all this business.

If Apple Bloom was stuck in the kid cart, she might as well do whatever job she could. The other kids were quiet for now, a little too quiet on account of their nerves. Pretty soon the younger ones would be wailing when the cannons, howls, and screaming zombies started.

Applejack told her being calm and collected in an emergency was the best way to help the fears of younger ponies. The others would be looking up to her, so that’s just what she’d do. She decided to see if there were any kids here who could use some help.

The pony who looked the most scared was one only a year younger than Apple Bloom, but with no experience at summoning at all. Twist, the curly-haired, thick-glassed newcomer, was unable to sit still. She’d walk to one end of the room, try to clean her glasses, then go back to pacing when her hooves weren’t steady enough for even that.

Twist only just became a werewolf a few months ago. You really couldn’t blame her for being so on edge all the time. Apple Bloom couldn’t possibly imagine what having to leave your home was like as she’d been born into this.

Apple Bloom wanted to do anything she could to help Twist see it wasn’t such a bad thing. Werewolves and the servants of The Darklord would look after any kid like it was their own. It wasn’t that big a deal to not have parents here. In some ways, it was better than living in Equestria.

“Hey, Twist!” Apple Bloom called out to her, remaining reclined. “You wanna try on my 3D glasses? I got a ton of 3D stuff to look at.”

“Huh?!” Twist turned suddenly to Apple Bloom like she’d just remembered any other ponies were inside the cart. “I can’t concentrate on that right now! How are you not scared?! A blood moon is about to start and we’re basically outside!”

“You must have been through a bunch of blood moons before this,” said Apple Bloom. “It ain’t that different from what you’re used to.”

“But I was always locked inside in a basement. This thing doesn’t even have a door.” Twist looked over at the guard then ran up to Apple Bloom grabbing her so tight Apple Bloom’s glasses fell off. “We’re all going to die, aren’t we?!”

“You don’t gotta worry.” Apple Bloom offered an awkward smile. “My sister’s the chosen one. She and the rest of the cult are way better than a silly old locked door.”

“You’re not scared at all?”

“Well sure, I used to be scared.” Apple Bloom shrugged. “But after a few times, I realized it was no big deal! Why I’ve been through this at least ten times and I never seen nothing worse than some zombie. I’m sure you’ll get used to it just as fast.”

Apple Bloom smiled. She was doing it exactly how her sister told her!

“But what about the summoning?” Twist asked. “That’s the part I'm scared of. How can I not be nervous about The Darklord appearing? Isn’t he scary? And evil? I know he’s considered one of the evil gods! I don’t want him to eat my soul or whatever!”

“Oh, we’ve been over that. That’s all just lies those untouched tell about us. He’s a lot nicer than he looks.” Granted he did look horrifying the first time you saw him. “And he doesn’t ‘eat your soul’ or any nonsense like that. You just bow down and he puts a little thing on your forehead and that’s it. Doesn’t even hurt!”

“So he’s not evil?” Twist loosened her grip on Apple Bloom just a little. “At all, right? And we’re okay?”

“Eh.” Apple Bloom rubbed the back of her head, unwilling to go that far, “Well maybe he’s slightly evil.”

“Slightly evil?!” Twist’s grip went right back to max. “Why are we worshiping a god you yourself say is evil?!”

“Nah, nah. See, worshiping gods is a tricky business, that’s why most ponies don’t get it right.” Apple Bloom picked her glasses back up, pointing to the red half. “If a god is too full of morals and stuff then they see every last pony as some filthy heretic, and they’ll kill you no matter what you do. You’ll just never be good enough for them to spare.”

Apple Bloom pointed to the blue half.

“But if they’re too evil? Well then they’ll kill you no matter what you do on accounta they’re so evil!”

Apple Bloom put the glasses on and pointed at both the red and blue halves at once.

“Only by worshiping a slightly evil god can you get anything out of it,” said Apple Bloom. “Why I’d say he’s like an old miserly pony who hates everypony but loves his dog, you know? And we’re the dog so it’s all good.”

“So he’s nice to you?” Twist’s death grip began to loosen once again. “You’ve met him, right? What’s he like when he talks to you?”

“Yeah! I guess I’d say he’s really patient and he’ll listen to you talk for a long time. Most adults just kinda blow you off, but he takes everything seriously. Cause like one time he said even Granny Smith is like a little kid talking about some toy to him, so he doesn’t see one difference.”

“I guess that doesn’t sound so bad.” Twist finally relaxed enough to actually let go of Apple Bloom.

Apple Bloom smiled. It felt great to be helping.

“Uh-huh. Oh! Like, I remember this one time—“

The blast of gunfire undid all of Apple Bloom’s progress and interrupted her funny story. Twist got scared and ducked under Apple Bloom’s chair. One of the youngest kids started crying. Apple Bloom sighed, feeling like she had to start all over.

She looked over to Babs to see if she was going to get any help here, but Babs just gave her a disinterested shrug and went back to her own comic book. Taking charge, Apple Bloom jumped off her chair to talk to the other kids.

“I know it’s scary!” Apple Bloom had to yell over the increasingly loud sound of the fight outside. “But there’s no need to panic. You’ll see that nothing bad will—“

There was a thud behind Apple Bloom, and all the other kids jumped back as far as they could go. Even Babs, who’d acted completely oblivious to everything so far, jumped up to her feet. Apple Bloom didn’t want to look back there but there just wasn’t any choice.

She turned slowly to find the guard lying on the ground, unconscious at best, bleeding badly.

“Uh.” Apple Bloom decided backing up was a good idea after all.

A single crow flew into the cart and landed inches in front of Apple Bloom. It felt like time slowed. More kids were crying behind Apple Bloom now, but it sounded like they were miles away. Babs, the only one braver than Apple Bloom, ran to her side holding a knife on the off chance that would do something.

Apple Bloom, meanwhile, stood completely paralyzed in front of the crow as the blood felt like it was slowly draining out of her.

There was no way…

But the crow broke into a pile of feathers and from them rose an adult pony wearing a witch’s hat. This was seriously happening. This really was the worst possible scenario.

That was when Apple Bloom realized she wouldn’t be able to stay calm and collected for the other kids after all.

Applejack walked back towards camp. It was safe for now, at least. The only real thing to worry about was that pegasus, but Applejack felt a strange trust towards that mare. She was pretty sure that pony didn’t see her transform, anyway.

It was hard to believe she’d gotten that unlucky, but it was Friday the 13th, after all. Best to get the bad luck out of the way. The summoning should go smoothly after this.

Most of the zombies around here were already gone, leaving things eerily silent. The only sound was a wind growing stronger. It might rain soon, which would be bad if that dragon didn’t fly far enough away first.

There was a sudden noise, a caw from a tree that made Applejack freeze in place.

A crow.

‘Never be cruel to a crow,’ they said, ‘because you never know which one is a witch.’

Applejack was far from the most superstitious pony out there, but even skeptical ponies worried about hurting a crow. To think she saw that after the dragon, to be reminded there were even worse things out there. She couldn’t help but shudder.

Heeding the adage, Applejack tipped her hat to the crow as she passed.

A little way further, just as she was shaking off the omen, Applejack heard a flutter behind her. That same crow flew just ahead of her, perched on a tree, and cawed down at her.

Applejack’s legs felt numb. She started walking fast. She passed the crow again.

Two crows landing just in front of her this time. They crowed at her from either side in perfect harmony.

No!

Applejack ran!

She had to get back to the caravan as soon as possible. She had to warn everypony. She had to make sure they were okay. If this seriously was a witch, the mission was failed, and they had to get out of here as soon as possible.

More and more crows were following her as she ran, leaving little doubt it was a witch following her. But they all broke and flew off in different directions as soon as the camp came into view.

Rain started coming down just as Applejack got back to camp. She dug her hooves into the now muddy ground to stop herself, panting just for one second before shouting out.

“Big Mac! Braeburn! Granny Smith! We gotta get out of here!” Applejack yelled. “I think there’s a witch nearby. We need to get out of here.”

“Hold on. Are you sure?” Braeburn ran up to her. “What makes you think that.”

“There was this crow.” Applejack panted.

“That’s it?” Braeburn raised an eyebrow. “We can’t blow off The Darklord just for that. Not after we just went up against a dragon.”

“First of all, he’s the laid-back sort. He’ll understand.” Applejack caught her breath. “And second it wasn’t just one crow but a whole gaggle of them chasing me! I know it’s a witch.”

“You mean you were chased by a murder of them.” Granny Smith came walking up to them slowly. “That’s likely the most famous witch spell, the murder one I mean. It’s also the easiest to learn. Plenty of magic-using types can do it, though it’s largely frowned upon.”

“We have to assume that it’s real,” said Applejack. “We have to pack this up and run.”

“Now hold up.” Braeburn stopped her again. “Say it is a witch chasing after us. There ain’t no way we’re escaping it. Finishing the ritual and summoning The Darklord is the only hope we’d have of walking out of this.”

Applejack closed her eyes and tapped her hoof, deep in thought. Though she wanted to run right now, Braeburn did have a point. Applejack was likely the only one who could escape from a witch, but there was no way she was leaving the rest of her family behind.

“I think Braeburn has a point,” said Granny Smith. “Witch of nothing, we need to finish the summoning before it’s too late.”

“But don’t you see? It’s already too late!”

An unfamiliar voice drew everypony’s attention.

Through the rain approached a stranger, wearing a witch’s hat with bells attached to the edges. Her cape was a loose mesh of black fibers, looking almost like a spider web flowing behind her. As she got closer, Applejack could see it was a blue unicorn levitating a book at her side.

The book was black with a familiar cutie mark on the cover. It was Twilight’s cutie mark. It was a book of shadows!

In a panic, Braeburn went for his gun but the witch was much faster. She cast a spell and in a poof of smoke Braeburn was petrified, left a statue frozen in place. Plenty of other ponies had their guns out, but none of them dared point it at the witch after that. The witch continued forward with a smug smirk on her face.

“That one’s name is Trixie Lulamoon.” Granny Smith came up and whispered in Applejack’s name. “She’s one of the known witches, alright. She ain’t quite normal. Keep in mind she’s—“

“Be quiet!” Trixie cast another spell and the words vanished in Granny Smith’s mouth. Granny kept talking but no sound would come out. “I’ll introduce myself, thank you.”

Trixie took off her hat and bowed low enough it made Applejack feel she was being mocked.

“I am the great and powerful Trixie! I consider myself the second most powerful witch alive.” Trixie rose and put her hat back on. She flicked her cape so that it blew in the strong wind. “Of all the witches, I alone am worthy of standing in the presence of Twilight Sparkle. Or I will be worthy soon enough. I’m missing a piece or two if you get me. Which is why I’m here, actually.”

“Look, if you’re here for one of us then it’s me.” Applejack stepped forward. “I’m the chosen one. Just don’t hurt anypony else and I’ll go with you without a fuss.”

“Aw! That’s so cute.” Trixie smiled and put a hoof on her cheek. “It’s trying to negotiate with me as if it has any control!”

Trixie swept her hoof and a chunk of earth rose from beneath Applejack, hitting her hard in the chest with an audible slam. A full-strength buck from a stallion wasn’t nearly enough to knock Applejack down, but that blow sent her staggering back. Applejack had to go down to stop herself from falling over.

“’Do whatever you want, Trixie!’ That’s what I want to hear you say.” Trixie crouched down to look at Applejack.

Applejack pushed herself back up.

“What do you want?” Applejack tried to stand as tall as she could.

“Hm! Close enough.” Trixie was arrogant enough to turn her back. “Well you’re not wrong that I’m here for you, but a good witch has more than one plan going at a time. You see, I need you for project A and a great number of werewolves for project B. So I’m afraid it’s all of you coming with me without a fuss.”

Applejack looked at Granny Smith, who could only give her a solemn frown at this point.

“What if—?” Big Mac started an offer.

“What did I just say?” Trixie blew him back with a blast of lightning, no easy feat given his size. “This isn’t a negotiation! Your choice is to bow down and do what I say or to do what I say after I’ve beaten you all to a pulp.”

Every single thing Trixie said or did made Applejack’s blood raise another degree. But the sad truth was she was right. Applejack really did have almost no power here.

“Before I decide that I want to know how long you need us and if we’ll still be alive after,” said Applejack.

“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t kill you.” Trixie smirked. “Maybe seven or eight months. If you’re a good dog, I’ll let you go. Really!”

That honestly wasn’t even the worst an encounter with a witch could go. Applejack still wasn’t convinced she shouldn’t fight Trixie, though. She couldn’t beat her, but she could stall the witch long enough for the kids to get away.

Applejack would gladly endure whatever punishment Trixie had in store, would even be a good hostage for the eight months, but she couldn’t sign Apple Bloom up for that.

“The children!” Another pony came running from the wagons in the back. “The foals are all missing!”

Apple Bloom! A surge of anger went through Applejack, her teeth briefly sharpened, but she got it under control. She was so much better at controlling it these days. She couldn’t let herself transform recklessly, not now of all times. Still, she kept her once again flat teeth gritted.

“What did you do?!” Applejack started walking towards Trixie.

“They’re not dead,” said Trixie. “Needless to say, I’m taking them too. I figured you’d try to stall while they got away, so I prepared for that. Was that what you were thinking? It was, wasn’t it?”

Trixie started to laugh.

“That’s too far!” Applejack walked up to striking range with Trixie, the witch did nothing to stop her from closing the gap. “Give them back and I’ll do whatever you want, but—!”

“How slow are you?” Trixie jabbed Applejack in the chest with a blow that made an audible slam.

Applejack staggered back a second time. That had to be the strongest punch she’d taken save from other werewolves.

Dang it! She was physically strong too? There had to be something more to her than even just being a witch.

Even still, she knew she could have withstood the blow if she wanted to, but she had something else in mind. Applejack let herself get thrown to the ground for now, let Trixie think she’d hurt her more than she did.

Trixie not being a normal witch was what Granny tried to warn her about. Applejack looked over to her, but all she got was a nod for now.

Trixie stood there with her eyes closed and her head raised high. She was arrogant. That might be the only weakness Applejack would get to exploit.

“Behold! The Book of Shadows volume 2!” Trixie turned her back on Applejack to show some of the other ponies her book. “I have access to ten thousand spells in alphabetical order from E to H! I’m not arrogant enough to assume any of you know how to spell, but ‘hyper’ starts with the letter H, if you weren't aware.“

Granny Smith closed her eyes and focused. With her psychic abilities, she could dampen the sound around Applejack. While Trixie bragged away, Applejack slowly took out a knife. She transformed her right foreleg, the fur becoming rough and coarse, her hooves silently cracking apart into claws, and her muscles tightening.

Then she threw the dagger at the back of Trixie’s head as hard as she could! The dagger flew forward faster than a cannonball, with enough force to not just pierce a pony’s skull but to shatter it to pieces.

As the knife left her claw, Applejack already knew the attack would fail. In that tiny fraction of a second, Trixie tilted her head to one side just enough to dodge the knife. Even still, the force from the dagger was enough to throw Trixie’s hat off without even connecting.

She anticipated the attack! Trixie must have been psychic too!

“Bad idea!” Trixie grabbed her cape. “Maybe if I don’t use any of the hyper spells this will be slightly interesting. Hurricane cloak!”

Trixie swung her cape as she cast the spell. The wind picked up immensely, more to the level of a short tornado than a hurricane. The wind threw the carriages and wagons onto their sides, blew away a few of the weaker or older ponies, even a tree or two was knocked over in the sudden burst of air.

Applejack dug into the ground, only being pushed back a few inches. The rain was falling hard after that, but very few of Applejack’s group were thrown off. Most of them had already partially or fully transformed to keep themselves from being thrown.

Now she was surrounded on all sides by hulking, snarling wolves far stronger than any normal beast. Dozens of werewolves would have made a normal pony wearier, but Trixie just kept laughing louder and louder.

There was no way to avoid a fight now.

The ones who fully transformed snarled, having lost control for the most part. That was fine for now, they wouldn’t attack other werewolves. But they were going to charge in recklessly.

Apple Fritter was the first in.

“Glass bones!” Trixie flicked her mane as she cast the spell.

The witch just let Apple Fritter swipe at her, the blow connecting with a crunching noise. But when Fritter hit, it was the werewolf who cried out in pain, falling to the ground, clutching her leg in a way that made Applejack think it was broken.

That didn’t deter anypony, though. Ready to fight, several more charged in at Trixie.

“Elemental resonance!” Trixie shouted.

She jumped into the air then, upon landing, with a great splash, sank into the thin film of water that covered the road as though it were a swimming pool. The two ponies who charged at her pounced on the spot she vanished through but couldn’t dive down like she could.

A wave of water erupted from a tiny puddle, sweeping over another pony and pulling them under.

Then a second wave took a second pony. Applejack’s keen sense picked up on the secret, a slight motion in the water as Trixie moved from point to point. If she did that one more time—

Another ripple! Applejack got ready to lunge at the place Trixie was headed to.

It was always a careful balancing act on how much to transform. She needed as much speed as possible, but couldn’t afford to lose control, either. Applejack changed one of her rear legs, to push off from, and one of her forelegs, to attack with.

Even that much sent a surge through her, heat through her blood, but she could handle it.

A massive torrent of water came up this time, much more than Applejack had expected. The ponies who were closer but less aware of its incoming were badly bruised by the blast of water. Applejack was able to brace for it, at least, and didn’t lose her orientation.

Trixie was up in the air now, at the top of the waterspout. Applejack crouched down and jumped up at her.

“Ethereal chains!”

Long, orange, translucent chains erupted from Trixie’s back. They flowed in an invisible medium behind her as though they were her new wings.

With a spin Trixie sent the chains whipping about. Applejack managed to narrowly dodge a chain headed her way, but two other ponies got hit. When they did the chains wrapped all around them until no part of their body could be seen.

A hail of musket fire flew at her, but Trixie managed to stop the bullets with her psychic powers. There was no way to get close to her with those whips and ranged attacks were useless! She could use magic and psychic powers at the same time, making her incredibly dangerous.

Applejack jumped back as the others kept her busy for a moment, though Trixie was making short work of them.

She still had Granny and Big Mac. They’d have to all attack together. Applejack backed up until she was near the other two. Both of them gave her a nod, silently thinking the same thing.

Granny Smith grabbed the chains with her psychic powers, stopping them for a moment and leaving an opening. Big Mac went through first, jumping and threatening to bring his claws down on Trixie. Trixie looked up and grabbed him with her own psychic powers, stopping him in midair.

The musketeers took the opportunity and fired at her from four different angles. The bullets connected, and Trixie stumbled slightly.

This was it! Her magic, body and psychic abilities were all staggered. The best opening she’d likely get!

Applejack rushed in as quickly as she could.

“Forked lightning!” Trixie shot out a bolt of lightning that forked, hitting all four musketeers at once, throwing them to the ground paralyzed.

Applejack dug into the ground, stopping herself as she realized her approach had already been compromised.

How was Trixie not more hurt by this?! How did she recover that fast?! Applejack had seen a witch get shot with a musket before and they didn’t shrug it off like this even if they had one of those fancy iron skin spells going.

“Empire Swarm!” Trixie called out.

Every link in her chain whips exploded with a burst of light. Each one of them changed into a wasp-like insect. They weren’t the biggest wasps Applejack had ever seen, but then she’d seen ones the size of stallions with stingers like swords out in the Festering Scar.

Still, they looked bad enough to take out an eye with one of those stingers. They were no doubt poisoned too.

There were only a few ponies left now, swiping at the air, trying to keep the bugs away. The ones who got stung quickly fell to the ground twitching helplessly.

And those bugs just kept coming too! The air above was quickly saturated to the point they were nearly stopping the rain from reaching the ground. The buzzing grew deafening.

Granny Smith was the only thing keeping them at bay. She concentrated, quickly crushing huge swaths of the insects as they approached. But she could only keep a fraction of them from closing in.

“So that one’s the psychic.” Trixie pointed to Granny. “Let’s see how good she is. Howl of madness! Mini version, of course.”

Despite the name, Trixie didn’t howl but blew in Granny’s direction. Whatever the crow happened must have been hurting her psychic brain. Granny trembled and fell to the ground clutching her head before passing out.

That witch was willing to attack both the young and old!

Now there was nothing they could do to stop the swarm! Big Mac and Applejack stood back to back, wincing as the inevitable flew in around them from every side.

“Maybe that spell was too much for you to deal with.” Trixie flicked her mane as she watched the remainder cower away. “Here, I’ll go gentle. Firecracker!”

Every one of the insects exploded where they were, sending rumbles of sound that shook the ground and left all the remaining ponies disoriented. Even if they had gotten through the swarm, Trixie still had so many more surprises and tactics waiting for them.

That was what made witches so dangerous! Those books gave them so many spells they could switch their fighting style every few seconds. Even if you fought one a hundred times, you’d still not know all their tricks.

Adapting and forming a strategy against something like that was of no use. Biding your time was no use. The only thing you could rely on was luck and the ability to see and take an opening without hesitation.

Maybe a werewolf was the worst thing a witch could go up against. Nearly any other creature would get caught flatfooted by the flurry of spells a witch brought with her. Applejack though could just barely react in time.

But even then it was near hopeless.

“Ground dance!” Trixie tapped her hoof on the ground repeatedly.

With each tap, rock spikes erupted up from all around her. Most the remaining ponies got the wind knocked out of them in moments, hitting them hard enough to throw them into the air. The ground opened up and swallowed those ponies as they fell back to the ground. There was almost nopony left to fight now.

Trixie was bleeding badly from those gun wounds but seemed completely unconcerned. She put her hat back on and turned to Applejack with a cocky smile.

“Looks like we’re down to two!” Trixie proclaimed. “Are you impressed? Well I’ll tell you what. Bow down, kiss my hoof, and tell me how amazing I am, and I’ll let you surrender to me without any more fighting. No sense in pointlessly getting hurt, is there?”

Big Mac was the only other werewolf left standing. He’d gone too far with his transformation and wouldn’t be able to keep control much longer. The normally stoic stallion was digging his claws into the ground, tearing up the pavement.

Right now ‘big’ was an understatement. When Big Mac fully transformed, he could nearly fit Trixie in his mouth.

He lost control and lunged forward. Trixie managed to create a wall of ice between the two, her cocky smile breaking ever so briefly as Big Mac smashed straight through it.

“Whoa! Big guy!” Trixie clapped her hooved together, creating a vortex of flames. “Flame vortex!”

A swirl of fire moved forward, singeing Big Mac, forcing him back. Even though she was out of the cone, Applejack had to move back and cover her eyes to endure the brightness, still felt like the tips of her fur were being scorched brown from the heat. There was no way a normal pony could survive that.

He struggled and managed to push through even that, only for it to pick up to a greater degree and throw even Big Mac to the ground, unconscious.

Applejack was the only one left now.

Applejack stood back, alone. Now would be a convenient time for that dragon to suddenly show back up and save the day. The rain must have washed its muzzle clean so where had it gone off to?

“Well?” Trixie picked her hat back up, dusted it off, and put it back on. “For the record, I’m still fighting you on baby mode. Aren’t you supposed to be the chosen one? Aren’t you going to shoot a friendship laser or love bomb at me or something? I’ll take any kind of deus ex machina right about now.”

Applejack gritted her teeth. She did have one option left. There was no way to tell how Trixie would react to being sent to the shadow realm.

Maybe she wouldn’t be able to get out, though maybe she would. The Darklord may save the day or simply sleep through the whole thing. Trixie might not have fully understood Applejack’s gifted powers or going to the shadow realm might be exactly what she came here to do.

That was the main reason Applejack hesitated so much. What if this was all just an elaborate way of goading Applejack into banishing her?

“Here!” Trixie closed her eyes, went up on her hind legs, and held her forelegs out wide. “I’m wide open! I’ll give you ten seconds to do whatever you like just so you can finally appreciate how hopeless the chasm between us is.”

She could hardly stand the arrogance of this witch! Somepony needed badly to knock her down a few thousand pegs and even then she’d be too much to stomach.

Applejack had to do something. Escape and go for help? But who would help her? The Darklord didn’t have very many allies on this side of reality.

“Seven. Six,” Trixie counted down.

There was no time to think! It made her sick to leave her family behind, but it really was coming to this. She silently vowed to come back to them and plunged into the shadow realm.

Applejack pressed her hooves into the ground. The darkness of her unseen, true shadow spread out across the earth, creating a pit of pure blackness that she sank into. She reached her hooves down into the blackness and grabbed what felt like the bottom of the ground.

She pulled herself up, or down depending on how you looked at it, through that portal. She climbed to the other side and into the new world, now standing on the true shadow of the land itself.

Here, you could see the true shadow of everything that had one and things that existed only as shadows. She could still see the ghostly image of Trixie before her, Trixie’s shadow, standing wide open. She could still see all of her friends and family as their ghost-like shadows as well.

The pavement she stood on changed to a dim purple and the shadow rain came down much more softly in red drops that vanished upon touching the earth. But the moment she saw the scraggly shadows of the trees, Applejack knew she’d made a mistake.

All the trees were on fire, their leaves replaced with purple flames, the shadow flames that existed on one side of the barrier. That wasn’t how they normally were here!

That’s when she remembered the blood moon was still out! She looked up at the sky and saw the moon, covered by the shadow of the planet, burning like a purple sun. The darkness was too thick for Applejack to escape into right now! She wouldn’t be able to leave until the blood moon ended and that wasn’t for another minute or two at the least. It might as well have been a month.

Did Trixie know about that?

“Three, Two,” Trixie was nearly finished now!

Applejack was hard to touch in the shadow realm, but not completely safe. She wasn’t sure if escape was an option now!

Only one choice was left. Applejack let herself transform as much as possible. Her bones cracked, then thickened and her muscles tightened. Her muzzle protruded out and fangs snapped into place.

Applejack was twice the size she had been when this started. At least she’d be able to get one last surprise attack.

“One.”

Time seemed to slow as Trixie opened her mouth to say something else. She dove back down to the real world and rose up right next to Trixie. Trixie just barely managed to open her eyes in time for Applejack to bring a claw down hard onto her back.

The blow connected hard! Applejack heard and felt the spine crack!

But she needed more! Her bloodlust was rising and all she could think about was destroying this witch! Even if she could think straight there was no way she’d trust a single blow to take a witch out.

Applejack bit down hard on Trixie’s neck and jumped forward, tearing out most of it. She could feel it in her mouth, that she’d nearly decapitated the witch with that blow.

Trixie fell several feet and tumbled to the ground. In mere seconds she was lying in a huge pool of blood.

But before there could be any hope, Trixie rose. The wound in her neck was so severe she needed to put a hoof there just to keep her head up. It didn’t seem to bother her at all, didn’t even stop her from laughing.

“Do you understand now?” Trixie cocked a smile. “Even if you did that a thousand—“

Unfortunately for her, Applejack was too far gone to feel fear at this point. Anger and aggression were all she had this far along with her transformation. She intended to pounce on Trixie even if the witch stayed down. She lunged forward at full speed once more.

For a brief second, Applejack did sense a tiny bit of fear in Trixie, even if it was just a tiny bit of shock. She saw in slow motion as the witch’s eyes opened in surprise.

The world erupted into fire and lightning before she got to her target. Then everything turned white. Then everything turned black.

2 Mad 2 Science

Dash picked up the file on this mission, reading it over fervently. Capturing Trixie was worth two million bits. Recovering a book of shadows paid another million. Bringing in Applejack alive was another quarter of a million. That was over three million bits altogether!

Just doing this one mission was enough to become rich and famous and if Dash did like ten of these with Twilight…

Of course, there was also a reason the reward was so high. This would be near-certain death if Dash didn’t have Twilight with her.

“That’s odd.” Twilight narrowed her eyes, curious about something she saw in Trixie’s picture.

“What is?” Derpy looked back at it.

“Her hat has five bells on it.” Twilight walked back to the part of the wall with the pictures of the other known witches. “All of them do.”

“Well yeah?” Derpy tilted her head, curious. “That’s what the witch costume looks like. Even I know that.”

“So all of them have five bells on their hats?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah? Oh!” Derpy shook her head. “I know when a witch starts training another one, they have less, but when they complete their witch training it’s five. Right?”

“What about— about that pony?” Twilight pointed up at her picture.

“Huh?” Derpy squinted at it, quickly realizing what Twilight meant. “Oh! She has seven! I never even noticed that. You must be some kind of genius. But what the crow does that mean?”

“It means none of the others consider themselves masters.” Twilight crossed her forelegs, closed her eyes, and went back into deep thought. “But why? Nothing is stopping any of them from declaring themselves masters. There’s a lot of things that don’t make any sense at all.”

“Yeah! Almost like…” Derpy leaned forward, waiting like this was a detective novel and Twilight was about to reveal the killer.

Twilight kept her eyes closed, wisely thinking to herself instead of revealing even more.

“Almost like!” Derpy repeated it.

But Twilight still didn’t give any answers.

“Oh.” Derpy shrugged at Dash. “Am I the only one who thought she was about to do a big reveal?”

“I still don’t get why Flash Bang wants this Applejack pony,” Dash changed the subject.

“There were a few recent incidents,” said Derpy. “Trixie’s been all kinds of active lately. But the important one was when she showed up at an auction house about a month ago to steal a sock.”

“A sock?” Dash looked up from the mission list. “Why were they auctioning off a sock?”

“It belonged to Twilight Sparkle,” said Derpy. “Trixie’s a big collector of Twilight memorabilia. She’s been stealing lots and lots of artifacts connected to Twilight.”

“What? That’s gross!” Twilight cringed at the idea somepony was buying her clothes. “And those socks were—!”

Twilight quickly caught herself.

“Worth lots of money. Or something, right?” Twilight coughed. “So like how dare she steal them!”

“Oh yeah, Twilight’s stuff is worth crazy money even if it’s worthless,” said Derpy. “I heard this one saddle that used to belong to her sold at auction for over a million bits last year. Can you believe that? Who has that kind of money?”

Twilight was suddenly standing very still, blushing heavily, and bit her lip. But like a champ, she managed to just nod and let it go for now.

A lucrative business model popped into Dash’s head, but she quickly dismissed the idea.

Still, her socks and a saddle? One of those two was a pervert.

“Important thing is she revealed her whole plan to kidnap a bunch of werewolves, even going as far as to say her base was in the Festering Scar.” Derpy took out a piece of paper. “She said and I quote ‘I don’t even care if you know what my plans are! What are you going to do about it? Nothing.’ And to be fair the security guard did do nothing unless you count crying.”

“Collecting werewolves?” Dash asked.

“Applejack and likely all the ponies in the caravan were infected,” said Derpy.

Suddenly, Dash felt like she’d dodged a bullet. Lycanthropy wasn’t something you wanted to get.

“What’s a werewolf?” Twilight asked.

“How do you not know what a werewolf is?” Derpy asked.

“Because I was neglected as a child?” Twilight reminded her.

“Silver grew up on the pirate coast.” Dash leaned forward and whispered to Derpy, pretending it was a sensitive secret. “Her life was all kinds of messed up.”

“Oh, now I feel bad.” Derpy rubbed the back of her head. “Werewolves are like a disease that makes you go crazy and turn into a monster sometimes. It was really bad when Dash and I were kids, but Flash Bang got rid of most of them. They all live out in the Everfree now.”

“And what’s she doing with a bunch of werewolves?” Dash asked.

“A transformation ritual,” said Derpy. “See, Trixie has two gimmicks. The first one is she collects Twilight’s old stuff. The second is like, well Trixie isn’t just a witch, she’s also a powerful psychic. She did that thing where you bit down on a live wire to nearly kill yourself.”

“Come on! That worked for her?!” Dash rolled her eyes.

“But it gets worse! She’s not just half psychic and half-witch but also half-vampire!”

“What?” Dash tilted her head. Derpy continued before she could point out the mathematical error.

“Yeah! So really the only way you could kill her is to destroy her heart. Not even decapitation could kill her otherwise. But that’s not all. She’s half-robot too.”

“Couldn’t you just say she’s a cyborg?” Dash asked.

“We know Trixie had her left ribcage replaced with an arcanium plate.” Derpy pointed at her rib. “So, getting at her heart is virtually impossible. She probably has more implants than just that, though. Trixie’s also half-mad scientist with her mind expanded by gazing upon the outer gods!”

Dash tried to think of how many halves they were already up to.

“And then on top of that, she’s half mutant! She used super radiation to twist her DNA and that gave her super-fast healing powers on top of all that other stuff.”

This was just getting ridiculous now!

“That’s like, what, six halves?!” Derpy tried counting to six on one hoof. “That adds up to three-hundred percent power! She’s a serious opponent for anypony. If Trixie becomes half-werewolf too then it’d be even sillier! Nopony would even take me seriously explaining this anymore.”

“But why would you want to be a werewolf?” Dash asked. “Isn’t that like trying to get rabies or something? Having a debilitating disease would make her less dangerous.”

“Not a werewolf.” Derpy shook her head. “A were-Ursa major!”

“What?!”

“What’s a—"

“That’s the largest land animal,” said Dash, “but a lot! Even dragons are puny compared to an ursa major. One could step on you and you wouldn’t even notice.”

“Yeah! Imagine an ursa major that’s also undead and a psychic robot that can cast spells! An ursa major’s already like a thing you need an army or another giant monster to take down! She’d be nearly unstoppable.”

“And she needs this Applejack specifically?” Twilight asked. “Is she somehow different than all the other werewolves?”

“Applejack’s been chosen by a god called The Darklord,” said Derpy. “Her miracle is that she can enter into the shadow realm and Trixie needs to do that to complete her ritual. If nopony can retrieve Applejack in the next week, well she’s already getting a small army together to storm the Festering Scar!”

It sounded like it’d be a lot easier to deal with Trixie sooner rather than later. An army going into the Festering Scar would mean a lot of casualties too. They had to avoid both of those things if they could.

“I think maybe we should change the plan,” Dash said to Twilight. “It sounds like we need to go after Trixie as soon as we can.”

“I agree,” said Twilight. “From what I read just now she has volume two. That’s the one with all the hyper spells in it. That’s one of the two we’d want to get back as soon as we can.”

“You want to sign up to be part of Flash Bang’s invasion force?” Derpy asked.

“No.” Dash waved the thought away and started to the door. “We’re uh— don’t worry about it.”

“Wait!” Derpy flew over the counter and into Dash’s way. “You’re not seriously planning to try and get Applejack back yourself, are you?”

“Don’t worry.” Dash hit her chin then lifted it. “I got a plan.”

“I know you do crazy stuff all the time, but this is different!” Derpy stepped forward with genuine concern. “Trixie would slaughter you, annihilate you, and obliterate you in that order! It wouldn’t even be close. This isn’t like who would win in a fight between an anteater and a million ants. It’s like who would win between an ant and a million anteaters.”

“Yeah, thanks but I’ll be fine.” Dash tried to brush past her, but Derpy got in her way.

“No! I’m worried that your plans are getting more and more self-destructive!” Derpy pleaded with her. “I’m being mean as like an intervention, but can you name even one of your plans that’s ever worked?”

Dash bit her tongue and looked to the side, unable to answer.

“See?” Derpy put a hoof on Dash’s shoulder. “Don’t go marching off into ever more certain death! You have so much to live for! Like, uh—“

Derpy drew a blank, staying silent long enough for Dash’s eye to twitch in indignation.

“Like your new best friend!” Derpy pointed to Twilight, then herself. “And me! I’m your friend, right? See? That’s two friends!”

“Tch!” Dash knocked Derpy’s hooves off her. “Let’s go, Silver.”

The two of them left, Derpy still giving Dash a worried and apologetic look. Dash was determined to prove she wasn’t useless. Sure, most of her plans didn’t work out but she finally had a serious shot now! Who wouldn’t turn that down?

Twilight grumbled to herself as they walked back into the woods, muttering things hateful things about her ex-boyfriend and wondering how they even kept that sock preserved for six hundred years.

Eventually, they were a safe enough distance away to speak frankly again. Dash brought Twilight to the place she’d first met Applejack hoping that Twilight could cast that aetheric imprinting spell and just follow Trixie back to her hidden base. Something nagged on her mind before that, though.

“Hey, I am curious if that bell thing you mentioned before is important,” said Dash.

“Oh. I’m not sure yet,” said Twilight. “It just seems so strange to me. You said once the other witches fight over my old spellbooks, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, why aren’t they creating their own?” Twilight asked. “It wouldn’t be that hard to copy The Book of Shadows. That coupled with the fact that none of them consider themselves masters… suggests that creating mind fiber is a lost art. Maybe even more than that is.”

“So?” Dash asked. “It’s an advantage if you’re the only one who knows how to do that, isn’t it?”

“I suppose,” said Twilight. “It just seems odd to me that everything else in the world has been growing so rapidly, but everything I hear about the witches suggests they’ve become significantly weaker the past few centuries. Why is that?”

“If that’s true, I got no clue.” Dash shrugged. “Maybe you’ll figure it out when we meet Trixie.”

They arrived at the place where the fight between Trixie and Applejack must have taken place. All of Applejack’s belongings were gone, but there were still signs of a battle. The nearby trees had been cleared out as well and there visible fissures in the ground.

“This is where I saw Applejack just before Trixie showed up.” Dash walked over to the right spot. “It was September 13th, likely just before midnight. I doubt there’s much here that the others didn’t already find, but you can use that aether spell to get information, right? We know Trixie was here at the time I mentioned.”

“Wasn’t that months ago?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah?”

“You don’t seriously think aether imprints last that long, do you?”

“Well now I don’t.”

“I can go back twelve hours ago at best,” said Twilight. “Furthermore, it’s a destructive process. Of the twelve accessible hours, I only get one shot lasting a minute or two of it all before the aether in the area becomes scattered and unreadable.”

“Well, there goes that plan.” Dash shrugged.

“You’re not wrong to think I could track her with magic. I just need to find a place she’s been to more recently.”

“That auction house was like a hundred miles in the wrong direction.” Dash looked at her copy of the information, as well as a map she’d picked up. “The Festering Scar’s to the south of here a good sixty miles. That takes a day already and we only have maybe a week.”

“How big is that place?” Twilight asked. “It can’t be too hard to find her house. It’d be large if she has a lot of ponies there.”

“Pretty big,” said Dash. “I’m just guessing but maybe it’s somewhere between fifty and a hundred miles long and, I dunno, ten or twenty deep? And it’s full of creatures and ponies who aren’t going to be friendly. Searching that place isn’t going to be easy.”

“Why is the world so big?” Twilight sighed “It should have just been one or maybe two towns like I thought. Oh well. You said ponies are living there besides Trixie, right? Maybe one of them’s seen her more recently?”

“From the sound of it, Trixie isn’t a quiet neighbor,” Dash admitted. “But the friendliest ponies nearby are in the Everfree Forest, just to the north of the scar.”

“Oh, wait! I read about that place a little!” Twilight started reciting like she was reading from a book. “The Everfree Forest is a low-key outlaw zone just south of where we live. It’s a loose connection of cultist compounds, mad science groups, and small free-cities harboring ponies banished from Equestria. However, Equestria has an unspoken ceasefire with the ponies who live there, and the two forces generally leave the other alone.”

That certainly sounded like something a book would say.

“It’s technically part of Equestria, actually,” said Dash. “But yeah. That’s where the less extreme criminals and outcasts live. Rarity lives on the north edge of it, a couple of miles south of your house. According to this map, Oaken Field is on the southern edge, just a few miles from the Festering Scar.”

“So we go to Oaken Field and ask around there?” Twilight asked.

“I dunno if it’s as easy as walking in. They don’t like normal ponies.” Dash shook her head. “That’d be like one of them walking into Ponyville. You’re not supposed to cross the line. Heck, Rarity outright attacked me and Pinkie when we went to her house the first time. And before you say it, witches are hated by everyone and are welcome nowhere.”

“So if we go there, we have to pretend to be part of a cult or something?” Twilight asked.

“Right. But I’m not sure of a good way to go about that. It’s not like I have any underworld connections who can get me in.” Dash shook her head in defeat. Then suddenly she remembered and lifted her head back up. “Oh wait! Don’t I have one?”

“Do you?” Twilight asked.

“I do! Sort of. Remember Rarity? I guess we don’t know each other very well, but that’s the best connection I have! It’s worth a shot.”

“And she already knows about me,” said Twilight. “I’ve been thinking about talking to her ever since we started this plan regardless.”

“Might be best to leave Fluttershy home unless we know if Rarity is cool with ghosts,” said Dash. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find Rarity’s house again. I think.”

Dash was pretty sure she remembered the way.

“Sweetiebot!” Rarity called out to her 9000 unit. “Turn off the perpetual thunderstorm machine! We shan’t be needing it to create a drab atmosphere to match the darkness in my soul any longer!”

The machine turned off and the rain that had pelted the castle non-stop for eight years finally died down. Silence, at long last. No rumbling thunder or howling wind! She could finally open a window up without the wind throwing her back.

For the first time, Rarity threw open one of her curtains, then shrieked and recoiled at how bright the sun was.

“Gah!” Rarity collapsed onto the floor as the light burned her eyes. “Is that really what the sun is like? It was so much nicer in my memories!”

The lack of rain noises was unsettling too. Rarity wasn’t sure if she was ready to give it up just yet.

“Okay, maybe let’s not open all the blinds just yet.” Rarity closed the one she opened most of the way. “I’m still not ready for pure, unfiltered sunlight!”

Peeking out her window with a squinted eye, she could see her lawn was terribly overgrown now. Those fly-traps were absolutely enormous and strangled every last inch of it. Maybe she could do a bit of landscaping now that her time was about to be freed up.

She was so giddy about today that she could hardly wait to finish her long, hard labor. There was an endlessly long list of things she wanted to do with her sister after today. Just a little bit more. Just one last operation! She knew it would be a success.

“Happy days are here again!” Rarity danced and twirled her way up through her relatively sunny castle to the room where Sweetie Belle and her new body were waiting.

The room was a shrine to her sister. The whole castle was, yes, but this room in particular. All the walls were surrounded by portraits of Sweetie Belle had commissioned through the years.

In the center of the room was the tube with Sweetie Belle’s brain still floating inside an orange liquid these eight long years later. The base of the tube was surrounded by a field of flowers her robots changed daily. The last picture taken of Sweetie Belle rested at the front of the base, with a candle on either side.

To the left of the bed was what would be her new body, a modified Sweetiebot 9000, lying on Sweetie Belle’s old bed, her favorite stuffed rabbit placed beside her. Rarity finished building that body nearly three years ago and it had been soundly sleeping there, waiting to wake up for so long.

The biggest difference between this and the other Sweetiebot 9000 was the life support system, appearing as an open skull awaiting a brain and as two currently hollow tubes on either side of her back, just below the withers. That was something Rarity had only just finished.

Only a little bit longer now and all of Rarity’s hard work would finally pay off! Rarity spent so many long days of painful longing in this room. She’d gone from so hopelessly far away to so painfully close. But now, at long last, she was finally close enough to let herself hope.

“Sister Rarity!” Sweetiebot 9000 came in with a purple zombie clone of Sweetie Belle. “I have completed the mission!”

“Hugs.” The mindless zombie drooled.

Rarity injected the Sweetie zombie clone with a liquid, and it began to melt back down into purple goo.

“No need to worry!” Rarity assured the melting zombie with a smile. “You’ll live on as my sister’s new nervous system.”

Rarity poured the resulting goop into one of the cylinders on either side of Sweetie Belle’s new body. She looked over at the projector to see that the gaps for the nervous system were filling out just as planned. They were forming into real nervous tissue, genetically identical to Sweetie Belle’s, and integrating perfectly with the machine thanks to the spell Twilight gave her.

“Yes! Yes!” If Rarity’s smile got any wider her head would have fallen off. “Everything is going so perfectly!”

“Big sister,” said Sweetiebot. “What are we going to do after Sweetie Belle is repaired?”

“Hm?” Rarity turned around, surprised at the question. “Why we live happily ever after, of course!”

“How does one do that?” Sweetiebot asked.

“Oh, I don’t know! You go watch a movie or to the beach— actually no! I’m never going to the beach again. Maybe like a nice mountain vacation.”

“But I will go on this vacation and annihilate the mountains along with you, yes?” Sweetiebot asked.

“I wouldn’t word it like that, but sure.” Rarity knelt next to the empty shell of a body to go back to work. “I suppose I do have a bit more work even after she’s repaired, though. What with building an army and eventually the 10K model.”

“I love you, big sister,” Sweetiebot said.

“Yes, yes.” Rarity hit the button that began draining the tank containing her sister’s brain. “But we have important work to do today. We can talk about vacations later.”

Rarity needed her full concentration. She put her mask on, not wanting Sweetie to see her scar first thing. Yet there was a feeling she was forgetting something important as she turned to her tools.

“Oh! I nearly forgot.” Rarity turned back to her robot. “I did need to talk to you about something first. It’s just, well the two of you look nearly identical and ‘Sweetiebot’ sounds awfully similar to ‘Sweetie Belle’. If I just say ‘Sweetie’ it will get confusing fast, won’t it?”

“I will not be confused,” Sweetiebot insisted.

“Well, I will.” Rarity beckoned Sweetiebot to come over. “I’m not throwing you out or anything, I was just thinking of giving you a proper name. I came up with one I like last night. We can call you Saccharin Belle. Do you see? It’s an artificial sweetener so it’s very fitting, no?”

“I can have a name?” Sweetiebot’s eyes opened as wide as they could. “Am I worthy of such a thing, big sister Rarity?”

“Even if you weren’t it’d be a matter of convenience.” Rarity moved to where she’d put her small supply of spray paint. “I’d like to give you both a makeover as well, but I’m afraid color is the only option for now. What colors would you like to be? Keep in mind I’m vetoing anything that doesn’t match.”

Saccharin decided she wanted to be white like the other two Belle sisters. It wasn’t a request Rarity could bear to say no to, but at least they agreed to make her hair red and black.

Sweetie Belle was spray painted white, the hunks of metal meant to resemble her mane and tail also painted the appropriate colors. Finally, Rarity changed Saccharin’s eyes to glow blue, reserving the green color for Sweetie Belle herself. It took hours, but Rarity finally got it all down perfect, just like her little sister deserved.

Rarity stepped back and inspected the two of them lying side by side. They were identical outside of color, maybe a little more similar than was ideal, and the two tubes of green liquid by Sweetie Belle’s soon-to-be withers. It was enough to immediately tell them apart, which was the important thing.

Everything was in place now! She just needed to install the brain.

Rarity slowly placed Sweetie Belle’s brain into its new skull and attached the wires that would keep it alive for the next few hours. Her first task was to surgically attach it to the spinal cord and nervous system that had wrapped itself all through the new body already.

That was the longest and most painstaking part. Wiring the nerves just right took hours. Saccharin stood by quietly the whole time, at some point jumping up on top of the tank that contained Sweetie Belle just moments ago to watch the whole thing from above.

When it was finally done, she wiped the sweat from her forehead and moved on to the next part. Using the pendant Twilight had given her, Rarity cast the living metal spell. The internal metal became softer and integrated itself with the brain. Normally, a robotic body would be too harsh for organs to survive in for more than a few days. This spell would make homeostasis easy and maintainable indefinitely.

Finally, the brain was in and integrated. Rarity closed the gap in the skull and filled the cylinders on her back with a green fluid. To keep her organic components alive, they needed to be refilled with nutritional slime every month or so.

Then came the very last step— jolting Sweetie Belle out of the coma Rarity induced years ago. She didn’t want to subject her little sister to years of being blind and disembodied in a jar, so she made sure Sweetie Belle was ‘asleep’ the whole time.

Rarity hooked a wire up to either side of Sweetie Belle’s new neck and let the electricity rip through the wires. The blast of sparks was enough to blind Rarity and throw her across the room, blowing the two wires back out.

Rarity looked up from the floor at Sweetie Belle, unharmed by the burst.

The two green eyes on the robot opened and the now complete robot looked around the room with intelligence and a bit of fear at the unfamiliar location.

“Huh?” Sweetie Belle’s voice came through the robot. Her ears pinned themselves down and she took a step back looking at the strange room. “Where am I?”

Sweetie Belle relaxed a little when she saw Rarity on the floor.

“Rarity?” Sweetie Belle asked her first words in nearly a decade. “Is that you? Where are we? Why are you wearing that mask?”

“Sweetie Belle!” Rarity’s vision of her sister blurred with tears. “You’re alive!”

Rarity ran over and tried to tackle Sweetie to the ground in a hug. Sweetie was now nearly invincible and thus could not be knocked over by anything but a heavyweight wrestler, but that didn’t stop Rarity from repeatedly, mercilessly hugging her.

“Yeah!” Sweetie Belle nodded. “I am! Thanks for noticing? Um. Wait. Why do you look so old?”

“Ahem.” Rarity let go of Sweetie Belle and took a step back, clearing her throat with a cough as she tried to let go of such a rude comment. “I’ll have you know I’m only twenty-four. Technically you’re twenty years old now yourself, but we’re going to tell everypony you’re twelve because I don’t want any creepers following you around.”

“What? No, I am twelve for real and you’re about to turn sixteen.” Sweetie Belle shook her head. “You’re having that big party in like…”

Sweetie Belle thought to herself, trying to remember how far away Rarity’s 16th birthday was.

“Sweetie, it’s been eight years since the accident.” Rarity put a hoof on Sweetie’s shoulder. “The year is 1355.”

“Accident?”

Sweetie Belle was only just now beginning to realize something was off about her body.

“Wait! My leg is all metallic!” Sweetie Belle held it up for inspection. “Did my leg fall off? And now I have a prosthetic leg! Wait! My other leg too? All of my legs?”

Sweetie Belle walked in a circle looking herself over.

“And I have a prosthetic barrel? And a prosthetic tail? And a prosthetic head?!” Sweetie Belle grabbed her head, feeling its metallic smoothness. “I don’t even have a mouth! How am I talking? Am I a hundred percent prosthetics now?! Can you do that?! Can you be entirely prosthetic?!”

“You were badly injured.” Rarity walked up and put a hoof on her sister’s cheek. “Your brain was the only thing I was able to save. I had to put it inside this robot to keep you alive.”

“They can do that?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“No, they couldn’t,” said Rarity. “I’ve spent all this time locked away in here working with single-minded determination to bring you back, Sweetie Belle! I’ve had to consort with outer gods and witches— give up my sanity and any chance at a normal life, all to bring you back!”

“You were so unwilling to let go of me that you spent eight years delving into the forbidden depths of madness to claw me back from the dead and keep me alive against the natural order?!” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Well.” Rarity rubbed the back of her head. The thought that Sweetie Belle might not appreciate what Rarity had done never occurred to her. “Yes?”

Sweetie only looked at Rarity for two blinks, what felt like a long time.

“Wow! You really do love me!” Sweetie Belle jumped forward and hugged Rarity. “You’re the best sister ever, Rarity! And I always wanted to be a robot!”

Rarity laughed in relief, hugging Sweetie Belle in return and spinning her around once. An infinite amount of pressure had just vanished. A single revolution was all she could manage, seeing as Sweetie Belle was much heavier now. Sweetie Belle reached out a hoof to feel Rarity’s fur.

“This is amazing! I can even still feel your fur!”

“Yes.” Rarity nodded with pride. “I knew I couldn’t bring you back unless your body was suitable. Scent is the only thing completely lacking. But I’m still working on that one and let’s be honest that’s the most vulgar and gauche of the senses.”

“But what happened to me?” Sweetie Belle asked. “It must have been really bad to have lost my entire body.”

“Do you not remember at all?” Rarity asked. “That day on the beach?”

“The beach?” Sweetie looked up at the ceiling. “Oh! I remember now. A little.”

Sweetie Belle nodded.

“I remember seeing that thing come out of the ocean. One of those mouth tentacles came out and hit me. Then I was flying through the air and saw my body getting pulled into the water. I remember realizing I got my head cut off and was like ‘that can’t be good’. Then I was thinking it should hurt way more than it did and then… I think I blacked out after that.”

“Yes. You were decapitated. The only reason you survived was that your head landed in a cooler full of ice.”

“That makes scientific sense,” said Sweetie. “Even I know ice makes you unable to die. For ten million years, even!”

“Yes, but you’re safe now.” Rarity hugged Sweetie again. “You can stay with me for as long as you want. Though I’m afraid it’s just you and me now.”

“And me,” Saccharin added. The other robot jumped down from her perch, landing with a metallic clang before walking up to Sweetie Belle.

“Yes,” Rarity agreed. “It’s just you me and our army of robots. I suppose there’s also the mad science league. But other than that, it’s just you and me.”

“Sorry, but who is this?” Sweetie Belle gave Saccharin a poke.

“This is Sweetiebot 9000 or Saccharin Belle. She’s my ultimate creation and the prototype for the body I created for you. And before you ask, yes, she is fully intelligent and essentially a real pony. Why I’ve been treating her like a third sister in our family.”

“Yes! I am the little sister now!” Saccharin leaned forward, pressing her muzzle against Sweetie Belle’s. “You are the middle child. Nothing you can do will change this!”

“I am?” Sweetie Belle thought about that for a moment before deciding it was great. “That means I’m a big sister now! And I get to tell you you’re not old enough to do things!”

“Wait.” Saccharin shook her head and stepped back. “No! This has backfired.”

“You’re not old enough to have things backfire on you, Saccharin,” Sweetie Belle said in stern imitation of Rarity.

“I do not understand this comment!”

“You’ll understand when you’re older and more mature.” Sweetie Belle gave her a condescending pat on the head.

“I am more mature than you!” Saccharin insisted. Her eyes turned red. “I can kill without hesitation! You are still too childless to slaughter without remorse or mercy!”

“No, no. You’re not old enough to kill without hesitation.” Sweetie Belle shook her head. “Now go do your homework and then I’ll come play with you.”

“You would play with me?” Saccharin’s eyes turned blue again as she tilted her head. “Even the game of flamethrower tag which our big sister has declared too uncivilized and fiery to condescend herself to?”

“Yes.” Sweetie Belle kept her head up high. “You are my little sister now. But only after your homework is done.”

“Rarity.” Saccharin turned to Rarity. “I require homework to complete.”

“You’re a robot, you don’t have homework,” said Rarity. “But you’re both immune to fire so I don’t see anything wrong with that game.”

“Whoa! I’m immune to fire?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Oh, you’re immune to nearly everything. And that’s not all! I’ve also built several more robots for you.” Rarity clapped her hooves and the remaining Sweetiebot 8000s, five in all, stepped forward in unison. “These are the Sweetiebot 8000s. You can control them with your mind, and they’ll protect you! Of course, they aren’t nearly as strong as you or Saccharin. Also, they aren’t intelligent so don’t feel bad if one breaks.”

“Huh?” Sweetie Belle stepped forward to inspect them. “They all look like me? Like all of your robots”

“Yes! I have a few older models still kicking around too.” Rarity beckoned in the slightly bulkier 7000s came forward next. They numbered twenty. “But this is only phase one, Sweetie Belle! Next, I’m going to build an army of one thousand 8k’s, so you’ll have your own army to protect you at all times! Then I’ll upgrade you and Saccharin even further into the 10k, adult forms with a softer, furry exterior, enhanced sensors, and even more advanced weaponry! None will be able to defy you!”

“Well, I guess nopony wants to be defied, right?” Sweetie Belle shrugged. “So that’s probably a good thing.”

“Yes! I wanted to make sure you never got hurt again,” Rarity said proudly. She ran back to Sweetie Belle's side and put a hoof on her precious sister’s cheek. “You mean far too much to me! I need to do everything I can to keep you safe.”

“But do they all have to look like my twins?” Sweetie Belle looked around the room, just now noticing the dozens of pictures of her hanging all over the room. “Or my bazillionuplets? It’s kind of creepy how much of me is around here. You went all-in on the whole ‘me’ theme.”

The doorbell rang, but Rarity ignored it. This was the worst possible time for visitors.

“Well maybe I got just a little obsessed,” said Rarity. “But you don’t know how hard it was to deal with losing everything! You were my entire life for the past few years.”

“Yeah, but now that I’m back you can build non-me robots, right?” Sweetie asked. “And stop being so crazy obsessed?”

The bell rang again.

“Saccharin! Can you go destroy whoever’s interrupting our happy moment?” Rarity waved her hoof, sending her off.

“I cannot do this, big sister Rarity,” said Saccharin. “This contradicts a previous order.”

“What do you mean?”

“The source of your annoyance is Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle, whom you told me not to destroy.”

“Really? What are they doing here?” Rarity asked herself.

“Am I supposed to know who they are?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“No, no. But they helped me fix you.” Rarity stood up and groaned. “I suppose we should go see what they want.”

“Can I come meet your friends?” Sweetie Belle asked. “All my old friends probably have jobs by now.”

“I’m not a hundred percent sure if I’d call them ‘friends’ but I don’t see why not.” Rarity got up and moved towards the stairs. “Just try not to be rude.”

Really! These uncivilized Equestrians showing up in person without IM-ing her first. Maybe she couldn’t expect them to have internet access but still!

It did strike Rarity as uncouth to make one promise to never speak to you again and then show up uninvited a short while later. But she tried to banish the thought. She did owe a lot to those two.

She made her to the first floor and opened the enormous front door. There were the two of them in front of the setting sun, just as she remembered them. Notably, they had mud on their hooves from her admittedly muddy lawn. Couldn’t they have flown here?

“Hey! You opened the door this time!” Dash opened her forelegs. “Does that mean we can come in?”

“No, no!” Rarity shielded herself from their filth. “You can’t just barge into my house without disinfecting first! Saccharin!”

Saccharin walked up to them and activated one of her weapons. It was a weapon against germs! She sprayed the two barbarians with disinfectant, enough to make them cough a little. The coughing was how you knew it was working.

“And take one of these.” Rarity reached into her coat pocket and pulled out two antibiotic pills. “To disinfect your insides. I don’t want you getting me sick.”

“Yeesh. Are all mad scientists this germophobic?” Dash swallowed her pill.

“The good ones of course. I suppose the Mad Science Association deals in flesh golems, and you know how that gets.” Rarity stuck her tongue out in disgust. “We don’t talk to them when it can be helped. The Mad Science League sticks with robots. Much cleaner. And we never meet in person save the occasional convention.”

Rarity gave Dash’s hooves one last spray of disinfectant. The pegasus rolled her eyes and started flying, taking the hint.

“I’m surprised to see you here, though.” Rarity looked over Twilight. “Don’t get me wrong. You helped me with my sister, so you’re welcome here any time. However, you made me specifically agree to never speak with you again. It made me think perhaps you wouldn’t be visiting me any time soon.”

“There are some things we wanted to talk to you about.” Twilight rubbed the last of the mud off her hooves. “I have another offer for you, but it might take a minute.”

An offer? Rarity’s first instinct was that Twilight wanted her own robot. That was the main thing Rarity had to offer. There would almost certainly be something Twilight would have that’d be a fair trade for one of the 8000s too.

“Certainly I’d be willing to trade with you of all ponies,” said Rarity. “But can't you come back in a few days? I just reunited with my sister.”

“Yeah, maybe I don't understand cause I'm an only child," said Dash, "but this mission is kind of time critical."

“You completed that project to put a pony’s brain in a robot?” Twilight stepped forward to try and determine which robot was the right one.

“Yeah! I’m right here!” Sweetie Belle ran out from behind Rarity, eager to meet them. “Look! I can talk with no mouth!”

“So I take it your plan to use the living metal spell worked.” Twilight immediately knelt down to admire Rarity’s work.

Rarity forgot her attempt to shoo the two of them away, suddenly flattered by Twilight.

“This must be a nutritional slime.” Twilight looked at the nutrition cylinders on Sweetie’s side. “I am curious how you administer it and deal with waste.”

“Ah, yes. Well it’s a simple matter of—“

“Rarity! You’re not just going to talk about boring stuff nopony cares about, are you?” Sweetie Belle groaned. “Can’t you just introduce us like a normal pony?”

“Yes. Well this is Rainbow Dash.” Rarity gestured to the pegasus. “And this is.”

Rarity hesitated to introduce Twilight, unsure how her sister would react to a witch.

“I’m Twilight Sparkle,” said Twilight.

“Uh!” Sweetie’s eyes took on a look of sudden concern. “You’re named after that witch?”

“Well—“ Twilight looked away.

Sweetie was clearly smart enough to take the hint.

“Rarity!” Sweetie Belle ran behind her sister. “When you said you consorted with witches, I thought you meant you stole stuff from one of them, not that one would be coming over! Witches are really mean, right? Shouldn’t we be hiding.”

“Sweetie, Twilight isn’t a bad witch though,” Rarity promised her.

“Huh?” Sweetie tilted her head, unable to believe such a thing.

“These two saved your life,” said Rarity. “You should thank them.”

“Y-yeah! Thanks!” Sweetie forced her eyes into a smile, but was clearly tense and uncomfortable, her ears pinned down tight.

“Well I would love to collaborate with you some more, but I think Sweetie Belle should have some time to adjust before meeting anypony too strange,” said Rarity.

“Yes.” Twilight turned away from Sweetie Belle and cleared her throat. “Well this sort of thing is what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What do you mean?” Rarity asked.

“I have a proposition,” said Twilight. “I realized that the technology of the rest of the world is advancing much faster than I would have thought possible. I believe I might not be able to ignore the outside world much longer, so instead, I’ll have to deal with it.”

“You’re not planning on taking over the world, are you?” Rarity raised an eyebrow. “Because that’s not actually—"

“Nah, we already went over that,” said Dash.

“You’re the only one of your kind that knows about me,” said Twilight. “I admit that your order knows certain things that I don’t. If you’re willing to ally with me, I’d be willing to exchange information with you.”

“Exchange information?” Rarity hoped she didn’t look too desperate, but the thought did get her blood flowing with excitement. “I have no doubt there would be so many amazing things we could do together! Why I can’t even imagine all of the possibilities yet!”

“And how would the rest of the uh—” Dash took a second to try and remember whether Rarity was with the league or association “—League? React to Twilight trying a deal with them?”

“Well let’s see.” Rarity ran through each of the members in her head. Of all of them, there was one major hurdle to such an alliance. “Our mysterious leader would be very unlikely to accept anything of the sort. Knowing him, I’m quite certain he’d attempt to steal from you even if you made the same sort of offer. It being brash and foolish, suicidal even, would only make him want to do it more. I have no confidence in my ability to convince him not to fight you.”

“Great, so with him in charge, the Mad Science League is also on the list of likely enemies.” Dash turned her hooves up with a sigh. “I’m in way over my head, aren’t I?”

“I thought of that too,” Twilight said. “How hard would it be for you to become the leader of whatever order you’re part of?”

“You want me to become the lead scientist?” Rarity asked.

“I figure if you’re the leader of the Mad Science League it would neutralize them as a threat,” said Twilight. “Is it possible?”

“Well.” Rarity rocked her ergonomic office chair as far back as it would go, considering it for a moment before swinging back. “Now that I think about it, if you were helping me that wouldn’t be very hard at all! Our leader is primarily chosen by who’s the most innovative you see. If I collaborate with you, why I could become the lead scientist at the next Madcon! I’m already near the top of the list thanks to Saccharin and now Sweetie Belle.”

“And you are willing to take over your organization, right?” Dash asked.

“Oh, but of course! Now that my sister is alive again, I suppose making her ever more invincible and gaining clout among civilized ponies is what I should aim for. That’s not the issue, however.” Rarity straightened herself out. “I’m not sure if there’s a polite way to say this, but witches are the most hated ponies in the world; unwelcome anywhere. If I ally with you, I’d be surrounded by enemies, wouldn’t I? And people are more likely to go after a witch’s lackeys and allies than the witch herself.”

“Huh? Wait they are?” Dash pointed to herself.

“But of course,” said Rarity. “Say there’s a neighbor you hate, but they’re too powerful for you to hurt. You can’t do anything to them, but you can kick their dog when they’re not around, yes?"

Perhaps that thought hadn’t occurred to Dash just yet. She looked suddenly nervous and rubbed the back of her neck.

“Though of course, you are the strongest ally I could ever hope to have. I’m sure I could accomplish incredible things if I worked with you. It’s just a question of whether the risk is worth it.” Rarity closed her eyes and hummed to herself. “Hm. What to do, what to do?”

“Um. Rarity?” Sweetie Belle tapped her with her metallic hoof. “I know you said she wasn’t mean, but aren’t witches one of the reasons there’s so much danger in the world in the first place? You can’t be thinking about helping one.”

“Sweetie, you owe your life to Twilight,” said Rarity. “You really shouldn’t dismiss her like that.”

“No, she’s right.” Twilight lowered her hat. “The more I hear, the more I realize that the other witches have turned their backs on the way. I don’t blame you for hating us.”

Twilight straightened her hat and stood up.

“But that’s why I’m doing this. I’m either going to get the order to go back to its old way or destroy it. If it’s necessary, then I’m going to defeat every other witch and destroy all the other spellbooks. If nopony else can respect the power of witchcraft, then they don’t deserve to have it.”

Rarity and Sweetie Belle were both momentarily speechless at such a bold idea. The thought of defeating every other witch just seemed so distant and impossible in Rarity’s mind she never even would have considered attempting such a thing.

“Yes, this plan involves destruction.” Saccharin nodded. “I can grasp it in my mind.”

“Destroy all the witches?” Sweetie Belle asked. “But isn’t that impossible? Wasn’t there a saying about how taxes and witches are the two sure things in life? They’re just too strong.”

“Yeah, but we have Twilight on our side,” said Dash. “If anypony can beat them all it’s her.”

Sweetie Belle looked up at Twilight without any real fear for the first time.

“If you really could defeat all the witches, why that would be a world-changing event,” Rarity admitted. “But surely you realize what you’re trying to do isn’t remotely easy. Let’s assume you can even beat two or three of them at a time. There are still more witches than that and more than witches that will come after you. You can’t expect the odds to be even that much in your favor.”

“I know. Apparently, I have a lot of enemies I’ve never even heard of,” said Twilight. “I understand if you don’t want to help, but I’m going to try and get rid of as many threats as possible. That’s why I want to reach out to you. The more ponies I get on my side the easier it will be. I just need to get momentum first. I need someone willing to go along with this early on.”

Rarity looked down at Sweetie Belle. As nice as the heroics sounded, it was her sister she needed to think of first and foremost. The question was what would keep her the safest. Surely walking such a risky path was too much to subject her to.

A world without any witches but Twilight, though? Surely that would be safer not just for her but for everypony.

And really, what kind of mad scientist would she be if she didn’t chase after such a bold vision?

“Alright.” Rarity reached her hoof across the table to grab Twilight’s. “I’ll take your offer.”

Cultists

“Trixie.” Rarity nodded in recognition of the name. “You’ve certainly picked the biggest troublemaker around.”

Rarity beckoned for the rest of them to follow her. Having been here once before, Dash assumed they were headed to the internet room.

“So you’ve heard of her?” Dash asked.

“As if you could possibly ignore her!” Rarity rolled both her head and her eyes. “I’m sure everypony in a fifty-mile radius knows who Trixie is. I don’t know if she’s the evilest pony in the Festering Scar, but she’s certainly the loudest! If we’re being honest, being unignorable earns you more enmity than being evil.”

They arrived at the internet room, Rarity throwing open the doors.

“I’ve even had a run-in with her myself a few years back.” Rarity went to work turning on her machines without looking at the others. “She broke into Madcon, talking about how stupid and childish cartoons were going on and on about the ‘cringe’. Trixie put a curse on the entire mad science league, making us unable to watch cartoons again until one of us manages to kiss her hoof. Disgusting, I know.”

“You can never watch cartoons again?” Sweetie Belle gasped. “But that’s the worst thing that can possibly happen!”

And that was from somepony who got decapitated.

“I know!” Rarity whined. “And now The Mad Science Association keeps doing all these cosplays and making all manner of references that I can’t possibly understand! Of course, she cursed all of them too so we’re all mutual enemies of Trixie.”

“So she has a lot of enemies in the underworld?” Dash asked.

“Oh, absolutely!” Rarity hit the projector, turning it on. “She constantly forces her opinions on other ponies with curses, steals whatever she wants, and will trounce somepony simply for the sake of being arrogant. I can assure you, we’d all be grateful if you managed to rid her of us.”

“If that’s the case somepony’s gotta know where she lives, yeah?” Dash asked.

“Oh, I know approximately where she lives.” Rarity sat down at her internet machine thing and hit a few keys. “Just about anypony can tell you she lives about, hm, about there.”

The projector came to life with a map of the Festering Scar. Dash could see the outlaw city of Oaken Field marked on the northern edge of it. If there were any cities at all in the scar itself none of them were marked. In place of cities were clusters of small lakes and creeks, the scar being a swampy mess. Every few locations had a little skull next to its name, marking it as especially dangerous.

Rarity pointed to one of the lakes just left of the center. Next to that was an area on the map covered with fog, as though it’d been unexplored. The fog was simply labeled ‘Trixie’ and had the distinction of getting three skulls next to its name.

“That narrows it down a lot!” Dash exclaimed. “We can search a few miles!”

“If it was that easy, ponies would have stormed her castle years ago,” said Rarity. “There’s a labyrinth of spells all over the swamp and not just the magic Trixie set up around her castle. That’s where most of the demon and chaos cultists live. Chaos magic and demonic spirits pollute the land. Getting lost in that place is all but inevitable. You could wander a mile-long stretch for years without getting out of it.”

“Doesn’t your internet box have information on how to get through it all?” Dash asked.

“Firstly, it’s called an analytical engine. There’s plenty of ponies who claim to have been inside Trixie’s castle,” said Rarity. “But then again there’s plenty of ponies who swear they’ve seen a mummy. At least with this case, a few are likely telling the truth. It’s just a matter of finding which ones they are.”

“I could get rid of any magic we run into,” said Twilight. “But it might take longer than a week if there’s too many. I imagine a witch would have been able to set up an immense array of defenses, even if she isn’t a master.”

“So need to gather more information if we want to get there in time,” Dash said.

That was their plan this whole time. Dash didn’t know much about the scar or the Everfree, but there was a map right in front of her. She figured the latter was the better of the two places to ask around in.

“This city looks like it’s on our way there either way.” Dash pointed to Oaken Field on the map. It looked like it was about a day away and they’d need to rest somewhere if nothing else. “Is that place remotely safe? Can you get us in?”

“Right now it’s the safest place in the Everfree. Nearly all the outlaws are going to be down in Oaken Field just about now. I was planning on going down there with Sweetie Belle myself for a few days,” said Rarity. “It’s the only place you’ll find anypony willing to talk.”

“Huh? Why are they all going to one place?” Dash asked. “Is there a convention or something?”

“Did you not hear?” Rarity asked. “It’s all anypony down here is talking about. Flash Bang brought together a small army that she’s going to march down to Trixie herself. And now that I’m thinking about it, you getting rid of Trixie in the next few days would save all of us a lot of trouble, wouldn’t it? Flash Bang coming down here would be an absolute disaster.”

“Yeah,” Dash agreed. “I know it’s the only way anypony’s taken out a witch in the past, but marching an army down there to fight her? A good chunk of that army might die just marching through.”

“What? No! I meant for us!” Rarity gestured to herself and Sweetie Belle. “As in the outlaws living down here.”

“Huh?” Dash blinked in surprise. “But Flash Bang’s going after Trixie, not you.”

“Everypony’s been running themselves ragged worrying about her coming through. She’s liable to decide to simply crack a few skulls along the way if you know what I mean. ‘Oh, that village was coming right for me!’ And she’d get away with it too.” Rarity turned her cheek with a ‘humph’. “What can you expect from such barbarians?”

“Hey!” Dash felt her wings flaring up just a little. She couldn’t help but feel slightly offended at that. “Flash Bang’s rough, but she’s not pure evil or anything! She won’t just blow stuff up because you guys are weirdos. No offense.”

“Oh, please.” Rarity turned her eyes back to Dash, suddenly a bit harsher. “That mare is always looking for excuses to fight. She was probably elated to hear she got approval to bring an army down here. She would absolutely destroy even an innocent pony simply for being on her ‘degenerate’ list. Flash Bang wants to get rid of everypony who doesn’t fit inside her carefully preconstructed cardboard box.”

“You’re just being paranoid. Most of the ponies down here are outlaws for good reasons,” Dash argued. “But they aren’t going to attack anypony who’s just minding their own business. That’s why you’ve been able to live down here for so long in the first place! As long as you don’t do anything stupid you’d be just fine.”

“And you honestly think not one pony is going to do anything stupid?” Rarity asked. “Yes, there are troublemakers down here who will try to start something just because they think it’d be funny. But the situation is even worse than you imagine. Moondancer has a coalition of about two hundred groups including the mad science league. We all agreed that if Flash Bang attacks any of us, then we’ll all attack her army together. Do you understand? This could turn into a small war!”

“If you’re making alliances like that then you’re the ones ratcheting up the tension.” Dash moved in closer to Rarity. The two of them were nearly butting heads now. “We gotta get Trixie to keep you guys from doing the stupid thing.”

“I don’t get why you two are arguing!” Twilight grabbed each of them with her magic and pushed them away from one another. “Are you even arguing? You’re both just stating reasons why we need to capture Trixie within the next seven days.”

There was one last moment of tension between Dash and Rarity, glaring at one another, but they broke it off a second later.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Dash turned away. “We gotta do this as soon as possible.”

“Can you get us inside that town?” Twilight asked. “Rainbow Dash said outsiders aren’t usually welcome.”

“Well she’s not wrong,” said Rarity. “But if you’re with me, you should be fine. Just don’t say anything in defense of Flash Bang or they’ll know you’re a narc.”

Dash wanted to protest being called a narc, but it wasn’t far from the truth.

“Yeah, I got it,” Dash grumbled.

“The real problem is finding a place to spend the night,” said Rarity. “All the hotels sold out months ago.”

“If everypony’s down there, then shouldn’t all your mad science buddies be there too?” Dash asked. “One of them’s gotta be willing to let us crash for a night.”

“Most of them are on the other side of the scar. They left to help our leader with some fusion energy thing. I stayed behind to work on Sweetie Belle, but there is one other pony who stayed behind.” Rarity went back to her keyboard. “Ms. Pommel went down there a few days ago to try and find me a room. Hopefully, this works.”

Rarity’s analytical engine played a little jingle reminiscent of a phone ringing. It went on twice before somepony picked up or whatever it was you did.

This was that video telephone thing Rarity used earlier. Only one pony came up instead of four this time. An off-white pony with green hair was displayed on the projector screen. Dash recognized this one from last time, but couldn’t recall the name.

“Coco!” Rarity opened her forelegs out to her friend. “I’m glad I was able to contact you.”

“I hacked into the phone lines to get internet access down here,” said Coco. “Now I can just distract myself from all the scary stuff going on! So that’s a relief.”

“I take it that means you found a place to stay?” Rarity asked.

“I kind of got us a room! Technically,” Coco promised her. “As long as you brought your sister back, I mean. Moondancer’s letting refugees stay on her property, but only groups with kids are allowed to stay in her mansion. I got a good spot by telling her your sister was handicapped.”

“Wait. Am I handicapped?” Sweetie Belle looked down at her hoof. “I don’t feel handicapped.”

“Total body amputation should certainly count,” said Rarity. “And yes, Sweetie Belle is back with us again. I hope you don’t mind me bringing two extra ponies with me, Coco? They only need to stay for one or two nights!”

“You want me to talk to two ponies I don’t know in person?!” Coco ducked under her hooves. “Rarity! I already feel traumatized by all the ponies I needed to talk to when I came down here!”

“You don’t have to talk to them. And they’re, hm,” Rarity appraised Dash and Twilight. “Relatively civilized. Please? It’s ever so important to me.”

“I guess.” Coco reluctantly relented. “Just tell them not to touch my engine!”

Coco turned off her end of things.

“Don’t touch her analytical engine,” Rarity told the others.

“Got it,” said Dash.

“Rarity?” Sweetie Belle pressed up against her sister’s side. “Should I be worried about all this war stuff? Would they attack me because I’m a robot? In movies, robots are usually the bad guys, so—“

“Oh, no, no! I made you astoundingly difficult to hurt! Why you could survive point-blank artillery fire at this point. Think of it like a camping trip! You know with all the filthy nature and insects and—“ Rarity shuddered at her own mental image. “On second thought, why don’t we think of it as a big sleepover? Yes! There will be plenty of other foals staying in Moondancer’s house.”

Already, all the horrible possibilities of who or what Moondancer was running through Dash’s house.

“Is there anything I should know about this Moondancer pony before we go to her house?” Dash asked.

“Moondancer is the most influential pony around here,” said Rarity. “She’s the one who made the alliance and the closest thing to an overarching leader of all the little factions who live in the Everfree.”

“But if she’s an outlaw she must have done something, right?” Dash asked.

“She was banished for researching and teaching the art of necromancy,” said Rarity. “Nothing to worry about, in my opinion.”

“But why would you want to ban necromancy?” Twilight asked. “It’s such an intriguing field of magic.”

“Oh, I certainly agree.” Rarity flicked her hoof. “It’s all just overblown fears about necrotic accidents, which are exceedingly rare with modern knowledge. That’s no excuse to hold back progress like this.”

“Yeah!” Sweetie Belle nodded. “If it wasn’t for bringing ponies back from the dead I’d be, um, in the dead? Wait.”

“With the art of necromancy you can slaughter a pony as many times as you please,” said Saccharin. “Something with so much destructive potential cannot possibly be wrong.”

It looked like Dash was the only one remotely apprehensive of necromancy. She could point out that necromancy tended to cause more problems than it solved, but doubted it’d accomplish anything.

“Oh, hey! Speaking of the undead!” Dash clapped her hooves together. “You know, since you’re so clearly okay with undeath and all that you’d probably be fine with one hanging around, right? We have one more friend who’s undead.”

“Is it a ghost?” Rarity gave Dash a nonplussed look.

“Hehe. Maybe?” Dash rubbed the back of her head. She knew that next to the likes of a super zombie, a specter would be the least welcome type of undead anywhere.

“Ghosts eat the living,” Rarity reminded her.

“Not Fluttershy! She’s a vegan,” Dash assured her.

“Fluttershy’s been living next to us for months and she’s never eaten a living thing,” Twilight promised Rarity. “If you’re worried about her controlling herself, I assure you she can.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Rarity, “but ghosts are on the double banished list. Crowded as it is, I doubt any psychics will notice her entering the city but she’d have to stay hidden the whole time. The security won’t care for your explanations about how she’s a friendly ghost. We’d be run out of town immediately.”

“Well, she sleeps a lot, so that much we can handle.” Dash learned that ghosts could sleep for as long as they wanted, days at a time even.

Fluttershy would just need to stay in her bear the whole time. After some discussion, they concluded that they could get there close to nightfall if they left in about an hour.

Later that day, they were waiting in front of Rarity’s castle.

The saddlebag containing Fluttershy’s bear was coated with arcanium now. Breaking through it to get the bear out by force would take an immense effort. She’d be able to hide in there as much as needed but for now was out in the open.

A wagon started down from the castle, being pulled by two of the Sweetiebot 8000s. Twilight and Dash brought 2 bags each. Rarity had an entire carriage filled with bags so that there would hardly be any room left for them to sit.

“Well at least we’re not walking all the way there,” Dash muttered.

There were a total of six Sweetie Belle robots present in the caravan. Two of them were painted and the other four were the less advanced 8000 models.

There was one more Sweetiebot 8000, but it was staying at Twilight’s house. Rarity had given it to the witch as a present and token of their alliance. In exchange, Rarity was given one of Twilight’s witch cauldrons and some of her notes about potions.

According to Rarity, either Saccharin or Sweetie Belle could see through the 8000’s eyes whenever they needed to. Another surveillance or guard system was overkill at this point, but why not?

As Rarity’s cart rolled up to them, Sweetie Belle hung off the side excitedly waving to them. At least she wasn’t afraid of a ghost.

“Daw! I can barely see you right now but you still look so cute,” Fluttershy cooed.

Unfortunately, she flew up to the wrong one.

“I possess thirteen weapons capable of busting a ghost!” Saccharin immediately threatened, small cannons crackling with electricity coming out of her back, prompting Fluttershy to hide.

“Hey! There’s no reason for that!” Dash flew forward in defense for Fluttershy. “Fluttershy comes pre-threatened. Don’t be mean to her.”

“It’s true.” Fluttershy kept her head down.

“Please don’t take that the wrong way,” said Rarity. “She threatens everypony.”

“Did you really need to make this robot so aggressive?” Dash asked.

“Oh, my mind had merged with this 5-dimensional hyper-tesseract when I made her.” Rarity waved her hoof as though that was remotely normal. “I have no idea what I programmed her to do, but it seems to have worked out so far.”

That was the story of Dash’s life lately.

“I still don’t get why Fluttershy would need to hide from a necromancer,” said Dash. “I mean, they’re both undead. They should be cool.”

“That’s like assuming a crocodile would never attack you because you’re both animals,” said Fluttershy. “Corporeal and incorporeal undead don’t get along at all.”

The 8000s moved at a brisk canter. It wasn’t as fast as Dash could fly, but they had unlimited endurance. Of the remaining two, one stayed far ahead and one far behind to keep a lookout. Maybe it was best to move a bit slower through the Everfree. There was no telling what you could run into here.

Already Dash saw a zombie off the dirt road. It wasn’t paying attention to them, but seeing one in spring felt odd. It was like seeing a tree turning orange this time of year.

Though on the other hoof, Rarity and her sister didn’t look at all concerned. Rarity was absolutely fine with her sister going out of the cart and running around to test out her new body.

Sweetie Belle, the original that is, was excitedly galloping circles around the wagon as fast as she could.

“This is great! I really can’t get tired now?” Sweetie Belle asked. “Why do ponies always have so much dread when this happens anyway? Being a robot is great!”

The dirt path vanished entirely after a few miles and the trees began to thicken and grow taller. The carriage ride got a bit rougher but they didn’t need to slow down just yet.

A few zombies were ‘chasing’ after them now, but at far too slow a pace to ever catch up. Most of the zombies, however, showed little interest in the passing group. They were moaning as they mindlessly devoured whatever plant life was within grazing distance.

They were getting into a thick zombie horde now. Dozens of zombies were milling about on the path just before them.

“There’s way more zombies down here than I expected.” Dash watched a zombie stumble over on her way to the cart.

“It’s not as easy to clear them out down here,” said Rarity. “Even if they are bad for the environment. Saccharin.”

“Zombie extermination program!” Saccharin fired a rocket at one of the zombies, blowing it to bits. Saccharin turned to Sweetie Belle. “If you cannot slaughter zombies then you are inferior!”

“So, wait. Can I do stuff like that?” Sweetie Belle stopped running in circles and pointed at herself.

“Oh, I gave you an excessive number of weapons.” Rarity nuzzled the top of her head. “That way no monster could ever harm you again!”

Sweetie Belle paused for a moment, trying to figure out how to do it.

“Is it a good idea for a little kid to be shooting rockets?” Dash asked.

Instead of a rocket, two megaphones emerged from both sides of Sweetie Belle’s withers. It looked like she was pointing two back-mounted cannons at the line of zombies.

“Sweetie wait!” Rarity covered her ears. “That’s the sonic—!”

The sound that erupted from that cannon was so intense it shook the ground. All the zombies on the path in front of them were blown off their feet. Leaves were torn off the trees and The ponies behind Sweetie Belle were spared the worst of it. But still, Dash was so stunned by the sound cannon that she fell off the cart and landed muzzle-first in the mud.

Everything in the entire forest must have heard that! Her ears were ringing loudly now.

“Oh, no!” Sweetie Belle put her hoof over her mouth. “I’m so sorry! I still don’t know what all my things do!”

“It’s fine.” Dash got up and brushed the mud off her nose.

Dash noticed something on the ground as she pushed herself up, something shiny she’d dug up from the ground when her muzzle planted into it. She reached down to pick up an old, worn-out coin. It was gold in color, though Dash doubted she was lucky enough to stumble onto a real gold coin.

It wasn’t like any coin Dash recognized. The front had a picture of a metal helmet, long enough to cover the face of whoever wore it, while the back had been rusted smooth.

Maybe it’d be good luck or something. Dash knew she could use some. She put it in her bag.

“Maybe I should deactivate some of your more dangerous weapons until you learn how to control yourself better.” Rarity beckoned Sweetie to sit next to her.

“Oh, okay.” Sweetie hung her head like she was about to get a toy taken away from her. She reluctantly sat down next to Rarity and allowed her sister to go to work.

“It might be good to go over what information we know before we get much closer,” said Twilight. “I’m curious about that pony we’re trying to rescue. The thing said she was ‘the chosen one’? That sounds important.”

“It just means some god picked you to be their main pony in the physical world," said Dash.

“Yes, that sounds very impressive until you remember that we live in a polytheistic universe,” said Rarity. “Twilight, do you have any idea how many chosen ones there are?”

“No?”

“There’s approximately six thousand at any given time,” said Rarity. “Yes, it’s true that gods still pick somepony to be their errand boy in the physical world and they even still give them miracles to prove who sent them. But the whole destiny thing ends up being a wash as there’s just too many gods with too many conflicting goals."

“Yeah. The ability to write prophecies only seems overpowered until you think about it,” said Dash. “Cause thing is, you can interpret those prophecies however you want. Like that other great old one – uh The Radiant Champion. He tried to make his chosen one unkillable with a prophecy. Said ‘no mare shall harm or defeat this pony’. He intended it to mean that no one could kill him, but then a stallion killed him.

“He rephrased it to say nopony can kill the next one and a griffon killed him. Then it was ‘nobody’ and a ghost killed him cause they don’t have bodies. Then it was ‘nothing’ so of course something killed him. ‘No one’ meant two people killed the guy and it just went on and on like that. I think the gods just gave up on the whole prophecy thing cause it never works out. Hasn’t been one in forever.”

“I see, so Applejack was just given a power by a god? Do we know which type of god the one she worships is?” Twilight asked.

“The Darklord is only great old ones who remains in our world,” said Rarity. "Or close to it, as it were."

“See, the great old ones were this race that lived hundreds of thousands of years ago,” Dash explained it, being in the habit of explaining simple things to Twilight. “They’re also called titans or alicorns. They looked like a cross between a pegasus and a unicorn, I guess. They’d like, manually change the seasons, knocking the leaves off trees by running past them. The weather wouldn’t happen on its own. They had to move the sun and moon around with magic. They shaped mountains and invented color and basically everything was completely crazy back then.”

“I know what an alicorn is,” said Twilight.

“Oh.” Dash shrugged. “In my defense, I have no idea what to expect you to know.”

“Darklord,” Twilight repeated it to herself. “Is he the one imprisoned in the shadow realm? I never heard that title before, but if that was the miracle he gave to Applejack then that’s the only logical conclusion.”

“Oh! Yeah.” Dash was a little surprised this was a subject Twilight knew about. Suddenly, Dash felt like Twilight knew way more about the great old ones than she was letting on. “Hey. How much do you know about those guys, exactly?”

“I know a lot about alicorns.” Twilight turned away from Dash to watch the trees and zombies passing them by.

“Oh, come on!” Dash flew over to Twilight’s other side. “Didn’t we have this whole thing where I came back on time and you trust me completely now?”

“Telling my last student too much right away was a mistake,” Twilight said flatly.

“But I’m not like that other guy, yeah?” Dash smiled and pointed to herself.

“Look, I’ll tell you everything eventually but you have to prove you can be patient and disciplined, okay?”

“Okay, okay.” Dash rolled her eyes. “But if whatever you’re not telling me turns out to be super important later I’m gonna be so bucking angry.”

“I can’t think of any way it’d be important later,” said Twilight. “Not if there aren’t any other master witches anymore.”

“Oh, please.” Dash rolled into the cart to lay on her back. “I don’t even know what it is and I can think of a hundred ways it could be important.”

“I’ll tell you everything important for what we’re doing,” said Twilight. “As you said, the shadow realm is a prison so getting in and out isn’t easy. It’s not exactly part of the same reality we’re in now, so the laws of physics work differently there. You can do things that are impossible here. I’m assuming Trixie needs to do a matter stacking spell if she’s trying to perform a ritual that will allow her to become gigantic later.”

Truth be told, Dash only really knew about the prison part of the shadow realm. There were a few other things sealed away in that place besides that one god, though. The great old ones seemed to have dealt with most of their problems by banishing them to the shadow realm.

“Ah, yes.” Rarity looked up at the sky with a wistful look. “Just imagine all the amazing things we could invent with easy access to the shadow realm!”

“I’ve never heard of a shadow realm before.” Fluttershy raised her hoof. “It sounds awfully spooky. It’s full of all kinds of scary things, isn’t it? I hope we don’t have to go there. I don’t even want to see it.”

“Fluttershy?” Rarity turned an unamused eye to her. “You’re looking at the shadow realm right now.”

“Wait!” Fluttershy flew behind Rainbow Dash like she could somehow hide from the shadow realm. “I am? I thought I just see darkness? Or something?”

“How would you see darkness exactly?” Rarity raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t make any kind of scientific sense.”

“Most of this stuff doesn’t make scientific sense to me,” Fluttershy admitted.

“Well I assure you that an alternate dimension is a more substantiated conclusion than simply seeing darkness,” said Rarity. “I can’t blame you for never having heard of it before as most of our knowledge of it is more recent, but we’re certain that’s the case now.”

“But I don’t feel like I’m in another dimension,” said Fluttershy.

“You’re not,” said Rarity. “You’re just looking at it. Everything that could cast a shadow is visible to some extent in the shadow realm.”

“Hm.”

Fluttershy floated alongside the cart, thinking to herself.

“So wait.” Fluttershy opened her eyes, realizing something that disturbed her. “If I only see the shadow realm and this dark lord pony is in the shadow realm, doesn’t that mean I should be able to see him?”

“It’s well known at this point that ghosts can see him.” Rarity nodded. “He’s locked up in the Festering Scar, specifically. Maybe we’ll get close enough to see.”

“Oh, geeze!” Fluttershy floated back behind Rainbow Dash yet again. “I really don’t want to see some scary, evil god!”

“If it makes you feel better, you’re not in the shadow realm so nothing there can ‘get’ you,” said Rarity. “And he’s chained up besides.”

“But he’s a bad guy, right?” Fluttershy asked. “If they created an entire reality to be his prison then doesn’t that mean he’s evil? He must have done something bad, at least.”

“The Darklord is imprisoned in the shadow realm as punishment for creating shadows,” Twilight explained. “As Rainbow Dash said before, the world back then would be completely unrecognizable and incomprehensible to us. The oldest alicorn, the Queen of Light, bathed everything with her light inside and out. As a result, she knew everything and there were no secrets.

“The Darklord didn’t like her knowing every thought everypony had, so he created shadows so knowledge could be hidden from her. Inadvertently, he also created deception and the ability to lie. The other alicorns got angry at him, beat him up, and locked him away in the shadows that he created. Or at least, that’s what my master told me.”

“If he literally invented lies then, um—“ Fluttershy tapped her hooves together, nervous about making her conclusion. “Then that’s pretty evil, right?”

“I can’t say if he’s good or bad,” said Twilight. “Personally, I think it’d be annoying if everypony knew every thought you ever had.”

“He also made a whole bunch of evil artifacts that are still around,” said Dash. “All his artifacts sound incredible until you realize there’s a catch to it. In reality, you’re better off not using anything the guy made. I think he made Nailbat’s nailbat, actually so… maybe you can use it?”

“Technically he didn’t make the bat,” Rarity corrected her. “He made the wishing orb that created the bat.”

“He made an object that grants wishes?” Twilight asked. “Interesting.”

“But there is a catch,” Dash was quick to point at. “You get what you ask for, but something even worse happens to you as well. One pony wished to be better at baseball, thinking that wishing for something relatively minor would mean wouldn’t have to pay a big price, yeah?”

“Baseball,” Twilight closed her eyes and repeated the foreign word.

“You hit a ball with a stick, don’t worry about it.” Dash mimed swinging a baseball bat. “Anyway! The enchanted bat he got was so ridiculously powerful that when he hit the ball, like, at the speed of light or something. It created a ball of plasma and a shockwave shattered windows a mile away. Guy died instantly. Most of the audience too.

“But then along comes Nailbat and he did all this math and statistics and stuff! Anyway, he realized that if he wished to be immune to that one baseball bat he would suffer minimum consequences. He’s the only one who can wield that insanely overpowered weapon without dying now.”

“Yes,” said Rarity, “well the moral of the story is you don’t generally want to use anything created by that particular god. It’s too risky. If you do find anything that seems like it might be his when we get close, don’t bother with it however tempting it might be.”

As they approached the city, the number of zombies thinned out but the number of ponies they passed increased. The first group they passed was a series of three wagons. The armed ponies in front of it eyed Dash’s groups suspiciously and the two of them never got close enough to talk.

Fluttershy needed to head back into her teddy bear and go to sleep for now. There were simply too many ponies hanging about.

Three hours after seeing that first group, there were simply too many ponies around to count or describe them all. Heck, Dash felt like she was in a city already. Never had Dash thought she’d be running into traffic in the middle of the woods, but they needed to slow down as they got closer.

They passed a few tents filled with ponies who didn’t seem to expect to find anywhere to stay in Oaken Field and were just going to camp out in the city itself. Now they were surrounded by tents and carts in every direction.

Looking up, Dash could see a few massive trees towering above all the others off just a little way in the distance.

“There’s Oaken Field.” Rarity pointed up at the large trees. “This is as far south as you can safely go. Beyond this is the Festering Scar. You won’t find anypony who believes in honor among rogues down there.”

Upon further inspection, Dash realized those massive trees were like the tree home Twilight lived in. The main difference is that these trees were more like miniature skyscrapers than houses. They had windows and balconies all along the edges of the trunks, leading high up into the air. Some of the larger branches even had smaller structures built on top of them.

“See, these ponies make more sense.” Twilight smiled approvingly at the much smaller treehouses they were beginning to pass. “I have no idea why you’d cut the tree down when you could just build into it. It’ll be nice staying in a tree.”

“Yeah, if we ever get there,” Dash huffed.

The traffic had become so thick they had to come to a complete stop. A pegasus with a megaphone came flying by slowly, shouting instructions at the crowds as she flew back and forth.

“If you’ve been given entrance before stay on the north gate line. Anypony else go to the east gate.”

So now they were waiting in line! They were so close too.

Dash flew up a little to get a better look at how long this line would go on for. Looked like a while.

Moondancer and her necromancers had been busy. There was an obscene number of skeletons She counted nine blocks of them, each one a square of ten by ten skeletons. That was just on this one edge of the city too. That meant there were a few thousand of those things.

Though the city itself didn’t have walls, the skeleton guards formed a makeshift wall by themselves, funneling everypony towards one of the two mentioned ‘gates’, which were just gaps in the skeletons.

The small army of skeletons was supplemented by a second army of living volunteers, better armed with muskets and cannons. They were a ragtag militia at best. There seemed to be a uniform of a black cap with a red symbol on the back of it, but maybe one in twenty was wearing it. Instead, they all looked to be broken up into small groups of their own kind with no real formation or cohesion.

Dash was just now starting to realize what a serious battle it’d be if Flash Bang and Moondancer did fight.

Though she hadn’t seen what Flash Bang was working with yet, she expected Oaken Field would lose a battle between the two. An Equestrian force would be far better armed and organized than this makeshift army. There were still a lot of ponies on this side, though.

“No flying into the city!” The pony with the megaphone shouted up at her. “Wait your turn!”

“I wasn’t trying to fly in!” Dash landed next to her group. “You’d think a bunch of outlaws wouldn’t be so uppity with rules.”

Dash saw, in the back of the cart, that Sweetie Belle was talking to some colt that was just behind them in line.

“That’s a good question,” said Sweetie Belle. “I don’t know if I’m a robot or a cyborg, actually.”

The group in front of them had kids in it too. It made Dash feel uneasy.

“There’s a lot more kids here than I thought,” Dash said mostly to herself.

“What? You thought there weren’t any children in the entire city?” Rarity asked.

“I dunno.” Dash shrugged. “I guess whenever I imagined an outlaw city I never pictured anypony starting a family down here.”

Truth be told, she might not have cared much about Oaken Field getting destroyed even just a few days ago. But now that she was down here, saw that there were way more kids and small families in the outlaw city than she’d have ever expected, her sympathies grew. They had to avert a battle if it was at all possible.

In reality, waiting in that line took an hour, compared to the five it took to walk here. And yet it felt like that waiting was by far the longest part of the trip to the city. Dash was lying on her back and groaning by the time Twilight gave her a whack on the nose to snap her out of it.

The cart was just before the makeshift gate allowing entry to the city. A large sign written in red, hopefully not in blood, hung to the left. ‘No demon cults. No chaos cults. No witches, liches, or ghosts. Violators may be killed on sight.’

That last part was a bit harsh. Good thing Dash didn’t bring her hat.

One group immediately stood out to Dash, the ones that wore dark green capes with a purple snake emblem on the back. They were mostly ponies but occasionally diamond dogs. They had some weird guns. Fancy looking. The way they moved around with such purpose and control, it made them seem much more professional.

“Try not to stand out to them,” Rarity whispered, seeing Dash’s interest. “Those ponies are from Ghost Adder.”

“Where’s that?” Dash asked.

Rarity rolled her eyes at Dash’s ignorance of the underworld.

“They’re a mercenary group infamous for their lack of tact in handling things,” Rarity warned under her breath. “In short, they’re brutal… I want to complain about Moondancer hiring these uncouth ruffians, but I suppose they’re her only option. They're good at their job. For a certain definition of good.”

Unfortunately, it was those Ghost Adder guys who acted as bouncers at the entrance of the city. The one sitting in the middle of a group of five more alert ponies looked more bored than the rest and a bit older too, giving Dash the impression he was a higher rank. An earth stallion with green fur, a black mane and strangely slit eyes.

His eyes went from Rarity to Dash locking into eye contact for a brief second. Dash’s heart skipped a beat, but the mercenary was already on to studying the next pony, finding nothing remarkable about her. Instead, his eyes stopped on Sweetie Belle.

"You trying to bring robots in here?" He smiled at the idea. "I hate those things. Unreliable."

"This is my disabled sister." Rarity offered her papers. "I have clearance to stay at Moondancer's house with her."

The snake guy took the papers, barely read them, then closed his eyes and waved them through. Easy enough!

Still, Dash kept her head down a bit lower from there out.

Surprisingly, the place was less cluttered once you got inside the city itself, but only by a degree.

The first few buildings they passed were some sheds all cramped together on top of muddy, barren ground. They weren’t dilapidated, exactly, but they were so tiny Dash was amazed anypony could even live inside one. It was like the ponies crowded inside were determined to live with the absolute bare minimum of everything.

It made her think this place was going to be a giant slum briefly, before trotting past a palatial estate right next to those sheds. The manor stood four stories high, with an enormous footprint that put even a hundred of those sheds to shame. Towering gates that were at least gold plated loomed over anypony who passed by. The ground inside that estate was richly covered in grass in contrast to the parts they’d just passed.

Maybe Moondancer was nice enough to let people sleep on her lawn, but whoever lived here had guards keeping the refugees far back from his gate.

“Hey! You got a problem?!” One of the guards yelled at Dash just for looking at the place as she walked by. “What’s wrong with you people?!”

Needless to say, there weren’t any caravans or tents parked here.

“Yeesh! And I thought we had income inequality problems,” Dash muttered as she passed. “How does it even get that bad?”

“That’s likely some cult leader’s house.” Rarity rolled her eyes as they left the mansion behind them. “It’s rarely hard to tell which house belongs to them. A lot of these cultists willingly give all of their money to their leaders. They all talk about how spiritually enlightening a life of hard work and self-denial is.”

A cult leader? Dash glanced back at it suspiciously.

“Level with me,” Dash whispered to Rarity. “Is it really safe to be around so many cults? What’s stopping the guy back there from summoning a demon or something? And with so many ponies around too.”

“The demon worshiping cults aren’t allowed in this town,” said Rarity. “There’s this whole sliding scale going from the most socially acceptable cults to the least. Honestly, treating them all like they’re the same is the cause of a lot of problems.”

The group was closer to what must have been the shopping center of the town. Ponies with stands and wears of every kind lined the edges of the streets, nearly blocking the entrance to the actual stores. They all shouted over one another at the passing refugees so that it was nearly impossible to hear what most of them were even selling.

They passed by a stand selling ‘healing crystals’ in every shape and size. The auburn-colored mare behind the stand seemed particularly interested in Dash’s group.

“Hey, you girls look like the leader type!” She called out to them. “I need motivated ponies to join my team. Don’t you want to live the boss babe lifestyle and make residual income while still having time to be with your kids using–”

“Case in point.” Rarity leaned against the counter of the stand and pointed at the sales pony. “The weakest and most pathetic of the cults are these new age MLM cults here. They pass off all sorts of miraculous crystals and oils but none of it actually works. They’ll tell you they’ve made tons of money selling it, but really you’re better off ‘investing’ your money in a casino.”

“What? No!” The merchant shifted her eyes. “This stuff totally works! And I totally make money selling it.”

“MLM?” Twilight repeated it.

“Multi-level marketing.” Dash knew that much. “It’s like this thing where you keep selling the same stuff over and over down this endless chain or something. It got banned like ten years ago.”

“Which means they all came out here and now I have to deal with them,” said Rarity. “It’s all just pyramid schemes to make the leader rich and it seems inevitable they turn into cults eventually. If any of the things they sold worked they’d be living with us mad scientists instead of living out here with the druids.”

“Hey it’s not a pyramid scheme, it’s just a scheme in the shape of a pyramid!” The crystal merchant objected. “Crystals are a legitimate alternative to science.”

“Oh, yes. For example, I just brought my dead sister back to life by putting her brain into a robot.” Rarity put her hooves on the stall table. “What have you done today?”

“Well! When I get a cold I wave this crystal around in front of my face and sometimes I think maybe it helps a little.” The pony held up a crystal like she was hiding behind it. “Ah, who am I kidding?! Look, I need to sell five thousand of these by the end of the month or I’m in serious trouble! I’ll confess they don’t work, but if you buy them all then you can sell them to somepony else and then that pony can sell them to another pony who will sell them to—“

The three of them just kept walking. They left the part of the city that was made of cut-down trees and entered the section that was made of living trees. Even though all the buildings here were made of trees, it still felt more like a town than a forest. There were paved roads and fences and there were few other trees besides the large buildings.

“After that, we have the druidic cults who worship trees or nature spirits or the like.” Rarity gestured to a tree with antler embroidered banners hanging from its branches. “There’s no way to convince them that organic farming is worse for the environment but other than that they’re fine I suppose. Druids rarely cause much trouble.”

Dash didn’t recognize that emblem, but she still got the feeling druids were normally the most common type of cult in this town.

“Then we get to the ones who are on the line, like Applejack’s cult. Ponies who worship some fallen, ancient alicorn or another moderately evil god. They’re not categorically dangerous, but you need to be wary of them.”

Dash figured there couldn’t be very many of those around. There were maybe two or three other ancient alicorns still around. Though there were a good number of spirits floating about.

“Finally, you get cults who aren’t allowed even in outlaw cities.” Rarity eyed a pony with his hood all the way up suspiciously. “The truly dangerous cults that give the rest of us outlaws a bad name. But some of them do live out in the scar. The demon cults are actually the least dangerous of them. They seriously do all those things the pamphlets warn you about. Harvesting organs, summoning demons, committing crimes simply because it’s evil!”

It was late sunset now. Dash was certain they had electricity in this town now, the lights in windows and a few street lamps coming on. There was still a tiny bit of red sunlight poking through the trees from far away. Hopefully they were close. This city still didn’t seem like a great place to walk around at night.

“Of course, there’s even one type worse than that.” Rarity kept her voice down and stayed closer to Dash as if talking about this might be enough to get them in trouble. “The chaos cults who have gone beyond the veil of sanity and worship the incomprehensible outermost gods. Generally, we side with the demon cults against them whenever it comes down to it. The demon cultists can be reasoned with on some level. If you point out their plan is self-destructive they might just stop. A chaos cultist will laugh at any attempt at reason.”

“Starlight worships an outer abomination,” Dash pointed out, “and her cult isn’t violent. I dunno if I’d put her as worse than the organ harvesting demon guys.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t trust that Starlight pony to tell me what time of day it is,” said Rarity. “Personally, I don’t think her god is even real.”

“Aren’t you forgetting one type of cult?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

The three of them turned around to see a mint green unicorn mare in a black cloak standing behind them, smiling wide.

“Who are—?” Rarity didn’t finish her question.

“The alien cults!” The mint green pony jumped up on Twilight’s back, hugging her from behind. “My name’s Lyra! I’ve been talking to a race of aliens through radio static for years.”

“Oh bother.” Rarity closed her eyes and tapped her forehead. “Did I say the new age MLMs were the most pathetic? I meant it was these alien cults.”

“Aliens?” Twilight asked. “Those are those things that live around other stars, right?”

“Hypothetically,” said Rarity. “But for the most part, they’re just the laughing stock of the cult world.”

“I’m right here!” Lyra complained.

“All those other cults can at least show that the thing they worship exists. But aliens?” Rarity scoffed. “Please! Perhaps they exist somewhere, but there’s no evidence they’re anywhere near here. Why ever would you start a religion around something that you’re not a hundred percent sure exists? It’s beyond me.”

“I have lots of evidence of the aliens existing,” Lyra promised. “Just the other night I saw a light in the sky and none of my cult buddies could explain what it was! That means it was aliens!”

“I don’t—“ Rarity’s protest might as well have not existed.

“Any day now, the aliens will appear and give us all a ride to planet Earth on their spaceship!” Lyra sat down and opened her forelegs to the sky as if to hug the aliens. “There is no supernatural stuff going on there, making it an absolute paradise. There is no poverty, war, or money on Earth. They all just get along and instantly solve their problems with advanced alien technology! You too can get a ticket to the spaceship but you have to obey me without question until they show up and give me all of your money.”

“Yeah, let’s keep going. She’s the craziest one here,” said Dash. “And that’s saying something.”

The group started walking forward again, leaving Lyra behind.

“No! I swear I’m not on the eighth or high! I’m totally sober right now,” Lyra called after them. “You think this isn’t going to come up again later but it totally will! Then you’ll all feel silly! Aw, man.”

Lyra gave up after that.

At long last, they got up to Moondancer’s house.

Moondancer lived in the biggest tree around, but not the most lively. You needed to look at this thing for a half second to realize a necromancer lived here. She had a skeletal face carved into the front side of the trunk, the tall double doors the gaping mouth, and two windows above forming the eyes.

All the trees, including Moondancer’s house, around Dash were willow trees now. The ground, where it wasn’t paved, felt softer than before. They were on the edge of the swamp now, the Festering Scar was likely just a few miles south of this spot.

Two branches of Moondancer’s house in particular jutted out far to one side, giving them the look of arms with long, gangly digits coming down in the form of leaves. It wouldn’t surprise Dash at all if the house came to life and tried to grab her.

Plenty of tents and temporary shelters were set up on Moondancer’s lawn. They left their cart and the 8000s outside along with everything but the ‘essential’, which to Rarity meant twenty bags Saccharin had to carry. They passed the rows of tents and, after a check from another undead diamond dog bouncer, got inside.

The first room they came into was Moondancer’s great hall. The roof was so high you could see three stories above you, three layers of balconies hung over Dash.

Whatever this place looked like normally was anypony’s guess. Right now it’d been rearranged into a refugee camp. A small maze of curtains hung onto poles to section the whole thing off into squares led off to the left and right. Not everypony’s curtain was closed, so Dash could see most of them were provided with sleeping mats and bags.

“Rarity!” Coco’s voice came from above. Dash looked up to see her waving at them from the third floor. “Up here!”

They moved up the winding staircase to the third floor to meet her.

“Finally you’re here.” Coco let out a sigh of relief. “I’m glad I don’t have to leave the room again for the next few days.”

“And where is this room, exactly?” Rarity looked around. “I’m surprised she’s willing to give us our own considering how many ponies are here.”

“It’s um. This way.” Coco pushed open one of the doors.

It looked like a spare bedroom, but it was far from a private room. This room didn’t look much different from the grand hall downstairs with four families together in sectioned-off areas of it.

“I thought you said you got us our own room.” Rarity looked at the rows of sectioned-off areas, noting they were all full. “Which square is even ours?”

“Actually it’s over here.” Coco walked over to the closet door and opened it up.

“You got us a closet?” Rarity sighed.

“It is a really big closet!” Coco promised.

The closet was enormously spacious. Lining the left and right walls were rows of cloaks hung up on clothes racks and boxes just beneath them. There was a good ten feet between the rows of hanging cloaks, leaving a wide, carpeted space. In the center were two sleeping mats put one atop the other to create a makeshift bed. It even had a tiny window on the far side of it.

“You got a point there.” Dash trotted inside. “This is bigger than my old bedroom.”

“Right! And this is only for a week,” said Coco. “Then everything will be back to normal!”

“I suppose it is better than a tent, at least.” Rarity trotted inside.

“And I have everything we need to survive a week here! I even brought plenty of these food pills.” Coco took out a tiny pill and put a single drop of water on it. The pill instantly expanded into a head of lettuce. “So we don’t have to go outside at all! We can just spend the whole time on the internet so it won’t be so bad.”

“Actually, I may or may not have some business to attend to,” said Rarity. “We’re not going to be in here much. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to look after Sweetie while I’m away.”

“Huh?” Coco looked at Sweetie Belle. “Somehow her being a robot makes her less intimidating than a normal pony. I guess I could teach her about the internet.”

“Thank you so much.” Rarity bowed her head to Coco, then hugged Sweetie Belle. “I’ll be back before you know it, Sweetie!”

“Will I know it before you return?” Saccharin asked.

“Actually, yes you likely will.” Rarity gave her a pat. “I’m going to see if I can find anypony in charge willing to talk. Maybe the rest of you should look elsewhere to cover more ground.”

They split into two groups with Rarity going off on her own.

“See, the first rule of the internet is you can never mention cats,” Coco explained to Sweetie Belle as the others left. “If you do, everypony will start shouting ‘cringe’ at you, completely ignoring whatever you said.”

Somehow they found themselves sitting in a tavern filled beyond capacity. The sound was so loud you had to point at what you wanted to eat on the menu. On a five-star scale, Dash would give this place a half star. Still, this might have been the only chance Dash would get to try and eat the food down here.

They gave Dash a huge mug of something green and frothy, the foam filling half of it and spilling out onto a plate it was served on. Her actual food was a few long, meaty leaves.

Twilight’s dish was a huge mushroom cap hollowed out and filled with cheese and sauce. It was almost like a pizza but with mushroom instead of crust. She also got a plate of tiny little mushrooms dried up until they were crisp, almost like a pile of popcorn or seeds.

Twilight tried shouting something at Dash, but the background noise made it look like she was only miming speech.

“What?!” Dash tried screaming back at her.

Suddenly the noise stopped completely.

“Can you hear me now?!” Twilight screamed in her ear.

Dash covered her ears.

“Sorry,” said Twilight. “The sound barrier should make it so we can talk without the worry of being overheard.

Dash had to admit that was one of the most convenient spells for daily life she’d ever heard of.

“You ordered mushrooms again?” Dash asked. “It’s like, there are a million types of food available to you now but I can’t get you to eat anything unless it has mushrooms in it.”

“I like mushrooms,” Twilight said. “And these are very different from the ones I’m used to eating. I always just put salt and ginger on mine.”

Dash knew that all too well.

“Besides. We’re not here to eat.” Twilight disproved her point by taking a big slice of her mushroom pizza and eating it. “We’re here to gather information.”

“Is this really a good place? I couldn’t hear them if they tried telling us anything.” Dash leaned against the back of her chair and looked out into the room.

“Not here. You’re my scout,” Twilight reminded her. “You can just turn into crows and fly off in every direction to eavesdrop on everypony. We just need a spot where you can change back and forth without being seen.”

“And what are the chances that I just happen to find somepony talking about Trixie’s lair?” Dash asked. “You don’t seriously think I’m that lucky, do you?”

“Actually, I’ve been doing an analysis on what all the ponies we’ve passed were talking about.” “Thirty-seven percent of them are talking about Trixie at any given time, it seems. Haven’t you noticed it’s the second most common topic right now?”

“Um.”

“You weren’t paying attention at all, were you?” Twilight asked.

It was true! Dash cleared her throat.

“Well how come you’re never the one who turns into crows?” Dash asked. “I’ve seen you do it like two times.”

“I’m not the one who needs to practice it over and over to commit it to memory.” Twilight popped another bit of mushroom into her mouth. “Besides. You’re the student and the minion. That means you get the grunt jobs. I’ll stay here and maintain an illusion of you so nopony thinks you’re missing.”

“Okay, I’ll see if I can find anything.” Dash got up. “But there better be some food left by the time I get back.”

Twilight appeared unwilling to make any such promise, continuing to devour both of their plates.

“It’d be suspicious if none of your food was missing,” Twilight said with her cheeks full.

Dash went into the bathroom and found a stall that was conveniently near a window. When she was sure nopony else was in the room, she cast the murder spell and flew out of the room one by one.

Her crow flew up into the air and looked around.

Where was she even going to go? That rich guy’s house near the entrance? Another one of her crows flew off towards that house, meaning the present Dash needed to think of something else.

She landed on a rooftop and looked down at the streets for anypony who stood out in any way.

“I can tell you how to get past it.” An unfamiliar but clear voice caught her attention.

Dash turned her head at that slightly too convenient statement. There wasn’t anypony there, but she heard a voice from that direction. There was a window directly where she was looking, though.

Curious, Dash flew down to it.

“You want to get into Trixie’s castle, hm?” It was the same voice she’d heard just a second ago coming from inside. “I hope neither of you is delusional enough to think you’d last five seconds in a fight with a witch.”

Dash stood perfectly still on the windowsill. She seriously found somepony talking about this immediately?! The unlikely stroke of luck made her uneasy, sent a small chill through her. There was no way she could have seriously heard that guy from across the street, either.

She couldn’t shake the feeling like this was some sort of trap. Like some monster who lures you in with something you wanted before devouring you.

But then again, if this one crow died it wouldn’t be a big deal. She hoped.

So Dash hopped along the edge of the window and peeked inside. There were three ponies inside. There was one male and one female ninja, each wearing leather armor and scarves over their faces. Or at least they looked like ninjas. The third was an older stallion, a greasy sort of guy with slick hair and a few missing teeth.

“Of course we’re not going to fight her,” said the colt ninja. “We’re planning to sneak in and rescue that Applejack pony when Trixie isn’t looking. That sort of thing we’re good at.”

“We heard you’ve been to the other side of the barrier,” said the mare. “We couldn’t find a way through it.”

“Yeah, I have information,” the greasy pony promised the wannabe ninja. “I can tell you how to get past that barrier, for example. But I want five hundred bits to spill it.”

“Five hundred?” The ninja looked at his companion. “You’re not the only pony in this town with information, you know.”

“Time’s critical. You wanna waste it looking elsewhere go ahead.” The greasy pony held out his hoof.

The ninjas looked at one another before the male shrugged and reluctantly handed over some money.

The greasy stallion pocketed the money, then looked around suspiciously for eavesdroppers. He noticed Dash sitting on the window and threw something at her. Dash quickly flew away, deciding to land on top of the window this time.

Pressing close against the wall, she could still just barely hear.

“See, you gotta remember Trixie is a collector,” he said. “The barrier’s only half there to keep ponies out. The other half is to incentivize ponies to bring her ‘gifts’. Only ponies carrying something that belonged to Twilight Sparkle can get through easily. Kinda smart, huh? Makes it so ponies will just bring her things to add to her collection.”

“I see. But where the heck are we going to find something that belongs to Twilight on such short notice?” The ninja colt asked his companion. “This was a total waste of money.”

“I didn’t say you’d be able to get in once you knew,” said the greasy pony. “You don’t get a refund if you don’t like the truth!”

“Fine, fine.” The ninja relented. “But is that all the information you have? I still want all of it.”

“I’m telling you right now,” said the greasy one, “if I couldn’t sneak in there’s no way you kids will. But I can tell you this much more. There are four ponies I know have gotten into her castle. Two S-rank ponies, Deathblow and Fleetfoot, this one chaos cultist name flx’bxl— something like that, and good old Moondancer. You gotta find one of them if you want more information.”

So now Dash had a list of people who knew exactly how to get in, among other things. The barrier he mentioned would be zero problem for Dash’s group, at least. There was no way any of her other crows were going to get this lucky, she decided, so Dash headed back.

Dash reformed in the bathroom ten minutes later. She paused, blinking in stunned silence as the memories of all her crows came together. Turned out her other crows did get that lucky. About ten of them had all gotten suspiciously lucky and the amount of information Dash gathered in such a short time was staggering.

Maybe it was technically possible these conversations were just way more common than she’d ever expected, but something felt off. It wasn’t normal to get that lucky, especially not for Dash!

She wandered out of the bathroom and back to Twilight who was about to finish off the appetizers.

“What?” Twilight stopped just before eating the last of the small mushrooms. “You’re back already? You can’t give up after just five minutes.”

“I didn’t give up.” Dash sat back down and glared at the last mushroom. “I already found what I was looking for.”

“You did?” Twilight dropped the last of the small mushrooms and sheepishly passed it over to Dash.

“Don’t be so surprised your own plan worked!” Dash ate one of those mushrooms at long last. It was good, but a little spicy. “Though I gotta admit it’s borderline disturbing how fast I got all this information. Apparently, Moondancer’s been all the way inside so she knows everything. I learned a lot of stuff already, though. Hold on, I should probably write everything down before I forget.”

Dash took a piece of paper out of her bag and tried to write as quickly as she could.

“So we can go ask her about it?” Twilight asked. “We’re staying in her house so she shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

“I don’t think you understand how bizarrely lucky I got, Twilight!” Dash stopped writing to point her pencil at Twilight. “Without even knowing it was important, my other crows just happened to bump into Moondancer and a bunch of other ponies who know where she is!”

“And where is she?” Twilight asked.

“Not at the house. A couple blocks away, actually,” said Dash. “But she’s busy for the next two days meeting with a bunch of other leaders. From what I’ve seen I don’t think she’s going to take questions from a bunch of strangers unless we can find some kind of in with her. But what are the chances of that happening?”

As if that question were a magic incantation, a blinding red light poured into the room from the windows. It was accompanied by a crackling, whooshing sound like an incredible blaze erupted outside and immediately died back down.

The two ponies silently looked at one another before getting up. Twilight and Dash, among most of the other ponies, all rushed outside to take a look. Most of them ran back in when they saw what it was.

Dash was slightly relieved to see that it wasn’t Moondancer. Though maybe she shouldn’t have been.

A group of cultists were standing just down the road, having something of a standoff with a large crowd and a group of diamond dog guards that had gathered. No one was making a move just yet, but it looked like violence could erupt at any moment.

These cultists were much more brightly dressed than any of the others Dash had seen in this town. Their cloaks were red with orange flame designs near the bottom. It didn’t take a genius to figure out these were demon cultists as the biggest demon Dash had personally seen was looming just behind them.

The fiend was easily twenty feet tall, his head level with the second-story windows. It had the general look of a shaved minotaur with hooves on the bottom and hands up top. Its skin was beet-red and it was somehow even more muscular than a minotaur and had a gaping jaw filled with fangs. In his right arm, he held a flaming sword two ponies in length and in his left was a chain and hook.

“That’s right!” The head cultist called out to the crowd, stepping forward to see if anypony was brave enough to step forward. “Judicar the betrayer now stands before you!”

The head cultist was a lanky stallion with mangy black fur. His red mane was so badly tangled it made Dash wonder if seeing a mirror would instantly kill him or something. Maybe his complexion was just so pale and grimy because he’d been living in a swamp so long.

But he didn’t seem at all nervous to be surrounded by a thousand hostile ponies or to have a demon right behind him, had a laid-back smile on his face. He had a stick of something he was casually smoking, never opening his mouth too widely to risk letting it out.

“See that? Summoned an archfiend in ten seconds flat! That’s why my name’s Demon Summoner.” Demon Summoner laughed. “I’m here to loudly announce my plan to summon the ultimate demon Lux Lucius who will bring about the end of the world!”

“That thing looks dangerous,” Dash whispered to Twilight. “Maybe you should get some insane attack spell ready?”

“Are you sure I should go for the demon?” Twilight asked. “I get the feeling that summoner is the dangerous one.”

“Huh?” Dash squinted to try and see it, but he still looked mangy.

“And this is only the first demon I’m calling down! Flash Bang ain’t gonna be able to ignore all the giant demons I’m summoning!” Demon Summoner gave a devilish smirk. “And if she swings by this way war breaking out becomes inevitable!”

“You’re trying to start a war?!” Dash shouted at him.

“You’re trying to start a war?” Demon Summoner upped his voice an octave to mock Dash. He took his smokes out and pointed it at her. “Spreading misery and strife makes demons more powerful which makes me more powerful and what the hell else do you want me to explain? I’m killing you first for asking something so stupid. Now then! Judicar—!”

Demon Summoner pointed at Dash, but Judicar’s sword sliced one of the cult of Lux Lucius members standing beside him instead. Demon Summoner looked up at his demon with nothing more than simple curiosity.

The monster roared and began slashing at another one of the remaining demon cultists. Those guys broke ranks and started running away from the demon screaming immediately. All but Demon Summoner and the two ponies closest to him that was.

“Ah, dang it!” Demon Summoner threw his smokes on the ground and stomped it out. “Judicar the betrayer has betrayed us! Now what am I gonna do?”

Demon Summoner groaned and shook his head as his cult were quickly hunted down by Judicar. The demon didn’t seem at all interested in harming anypony else at this point. It jumped over any bystanders to get at the demon cultists like it was purposely avoiding anypony else.

Maybe it was just that into betrayal.

“I’m not sure if I should stop it,” Twilight whispered to Dash.

“Me neither,” Dash whispered back.

“I’m starting to wonder if this whole demon summoning thing is going to work out,” one of his lackeys complained. “We couldn’t control Stampedor the uncontrollable. Bloodhowl the slaughter king tried to slaughter us. Gorbtar the all-devouring tried to eat us. This is the fourth time this exact same plan has failed in a row!”

“Hey, if ponies stopped trying just because they failed four times in a row, we wouldn’t have trains or lightbulbs and stuff,” Demon Summoner argued. “You think any of those guys got it right on the fourth try? Huh?”

“That is a good point,” the lackey admitted.

“Yeah! We can find some other way to start a battle!” Demon Summoner lit another cigarette and put it in his mouth. Judicar’s chain whizzed past him to grab onto another cultist and pull them away. “First rule of summoning demons is fail fast. This one was a bust but looks like he’s saving me for last. Might as well light a few buildings on fire till Moondancer shows up.”

Demon Summoner yawned, then his horn glowed, and a dozen fireballs down the street at random buildings. Twilight reacted, shooting her own fireballs to intercept his. At about the same time, the diamond dogs finally opened fire, none of them connecting.

The stallion’s mood turned on a dime. He spit out his cigarette and stopped smiling. He jumped a few feet away from Twilight, his stance turning from lazy and casual to deadly serious. His eyes were locked on Twilight with no concern at all for the demon finishing off his minions just behind him or the diamond dogs about to fire another volley.

Dash glanced from Twilight to the demon guy. That didn’t look like a particularly impressive display but that guy was looking at Twilight like the tarrasque just burst up from under the ground. Honestly, Dash felt like with this much chaos most ponies wouldn’t have even noticed Twilight cast a spell at all. Nopony else was looking at Twilight.

“Alright. Now we have a serious problem,” Demon Summoner said to his last lackey.

“I know!” That lackey backed up so she was standing back to back with him. “Moondancer showed up!”

Dash couldn’t see Moondancer directly, but it was clear she’d arrived. The huge demon down the street was getting impaled by volleys of bone lances that seemingly came up from underground.

“I wouldn’t get worried about somepony that pathetic!” Demon Summoner barked at her.

Twilight took a step forward and Demon Summoner put a hoof up to stay her.

“No need for that! Like I always say there are two things I know: how to summon a demon and when to get the hell out.” Demon Summoner reached behind him. A fiery portal appeared just a foot behind. “I don’t know what the hell you are, but I’m not dumb enough to fight you. You win. Canceling my plan. See you when the world’s about to end!”

Then he jumped through the portal and vanished.

“Wait! You’re ditching us?!” His lackey jumped through a second later. Only one other besides her got through the portal before it closed.

Meanwhile, Judicar crumbled to dust just down the street. It didn’t look like anypony else in the cult of Lux Lucius survived their own summoning ritual.

“Huh.” Dash shrugged. “That one just kinda resolved itself. We didn’t even do anything.”

“I suppose I technically got that guy to give up,” said Twilight.

“I guess.” Dash sighed. “But nopony even noticed!”

It looked like ponies were already starting to go back to normal. How frequent were demon summonings in this place anyway? Nopony was paying any attention to the two of them. Maybe that was good for now.

A small group of ponies walked past them, one of whom Dash recognized from mere moments ago. It was Moondancer.

Moondancer looked eerily similar to Twilight. Both unicorns had similar faces and builds, slightly baggy eyes from overwork and their horns were virtually identical. If they weren’t different colors the two of them could almost be twins.

The biggest difference in looks was Moondancer’s left eye. Like the other sentient undead in this town, it was a pit of blackness with only a single speck of blue somewhere deep inside.

Well, her freaky string of luck did bring Moondancer nearby, but this was hardly an in with her. It wouldn’t hurt to try talking to her, at any rate.

Somepony bumped into Dash from behind, knocking her bags to the ground. Her right saddlebag, the one with Fluttershy in it, stayed shut but the other one spilled its contents onto the sidewalk.

Dash was briefly stunned by what she saw. Her Summoner Knights cards were all over the ground!

Those weren’t even supposed to be there! She’d taken the wrong bag with her!

Remembering this place likely had plenty of criminals in it, she darted down to grab for the most valuable one, the all-seeing eye in its plastic case, before remembering that nopony down here would see any real value in them and went back to a normal pace.

Sure enough, nopony was trying to take any of them.

Dash held the all-seeing eye card in her mouth as she scooped up the pile of loose cards back into her bag.

It felt so embarrassing. She felt like she just blew a chance here. If they’d done a better job beating up those demon guys Moondancer might have noticed them or something, but now Dash looked like a total idiot! So much for her good luck.

“Hold on a second.” Moondancer stopped walking and turned her undead eye towards Dash. “You two over there.”

Did Moondancer notice something that tipped her off to them being witches?!

Dash looked up at Moondancer breathlessly as she slowly walked over to the two of them, her body guards in tow. When she was nearby, Moondancer looked down at the card in Dash’s mouth.

“Are those Summoner Knights cards?” Moondancer asked.

Suddenly Dash’s fears changed. Now she was having flashbacks to middle school. She half expected Moondancer to point at her and shout ‘cringe!’ and then everypony else would start laughing at her.

“You have the all-seeing eye card?” Moondancer pointed at the card in Dash’s mouth. “That’s the rarest most powerful card. I wasn’t sure if any more of these still existed. It’s so hard finding information on this game.”

“Wh—“ Dash spit out her card. “Wait! You’re a fan of Summoner Knights?”

“Who isn’t right now? They’ve become incredibly popular down here lately,” said Moondancer. “Some old warehouse dumped a load of them in the forest and now it’s everywhere. I assume you must play if you have such a rare card.”

So if past trends applied there was one year left before the fad crashed and burned in this place too! Why hadn’t Dash been living down here this whole time?!

“Are you kidding? Back in Equestria, I’m the seven-time world champion!” Dash could finally be proud of her accomplishment. Then she quickly remembered that she couldn’t’. “Uh! You know, before I was banished for having multiple personality disorder. Stupid Equestrian government, yeah?”

“You hardly have to tell me.” Moondancer adjusted her glasses. “I know a lot of ponies like that. But are you willing to sell me that card? It’s the only one I don’t have and I could give you a lot.”

“How much are we talking?” Dash asked.

“That’s a good question.” Moondancer thought to herself. “It’s been a long time since one of those was sold so I’m not sure how much it’d be worth. How about this? I would like to play the best player in Equestria. We’ll bet on a game of Summoner Knights. If I win, I get that card. If you win, I’ll let you pick a prize.”

Things were going too smoothly, weren’t they? Dash had gotten incredibly lucky yet again.

No. Dash was just being paranoid. It wasn’t like she could just skip out on this chance.

“If you don’t mind,” said Dash, “maybe you could give me some information if I win?”

Cultists 2: Reloaded

Pumpkin catapult. Unstable growth. Life harvest. Screaming Scarecrow. Massive jack-o’-lantern.

This was the second time in a row Dash got the best possible hand. If Dash could have picked five cards to start with this would be it. There was an almost one hundred percent chance to win this game on the second turn just like last time.

The problem… this was the exact same starting hand she drew last time. Dash wasn’t some math wizard, but the chances of this happening twice in a row were less than one percent. And twice in a row had to be one in a billion or something.

That was too low. What if Moondancer started to think Dash was cheating? Heck, Dash was starting to think she was cheating! Somepony must have cast a luck spell on her or something like that. It was the only explanation.

Winning was important, but she needed to play dumb or it’d look too suspicious.

Instead of doing the best possible move, Dash played life harvest and massive jack-o’-lanterns. She sacrificed most of her champion’s life to bring out a massive tank. That’d buy her time to pretend to be struggling, at least.

Unlike what would happen in the TV show, Moondancer didn’t run an undead kind of deck. She had sea monsters. Dash’s side of the field was a pumpkin patch and Moondancer’s murky water. Moondancer needed a moment to think about her move.

Dash looked around to see an ever-increasing number of ponies in the room. A bunch of chosen ones were trickling in. They were mostly druids like Rarity promised before. At least, they were ponies dressed like druids incorporating plenty of leaves and antlers into their outfits.

Two of them stood out in particular. One was an attractive stallion with white fur, blonde hair, and a perfect smile who leaned over Moondancer’s shoulder the whole game. He carried a blade at his side that was way too big to use in normal combat.

The old druid looked like she was at least a hundred years old and not the good kind of one hundred where you’re ageless. She was crouched over, leaning on a staff, only able to keep one of her eyes open at a time.

“So are you winning?” The stallion looked over the field.

“It’s the first turn,” Moondancer said.

Little did Moondancer know, she was losing horribly already.

Moondancer played a leviathan, though you couldn’t see it under the water. Dash hated sea monsters. You couldn’t see the cool monsters most of the time and that was lame.

“Though I am curious about something.” Moondancer ended her turn.

“Hm?” Dash drew a lantern ghost and played it. Nothing suspicious about that.

“I assume you’re another group trying to retrieve Applejack,” said Moondancer. “Are you after the reward?”

“Well.” Dash wasn’t sure how close to the truth she could get.

“We’re not after the money,” Twilight covered for her. “We’re after Trixie. We have business with her.”

“You mean you want revenge for something,” Moondancer said.

“Who doesn’t want revenge against Trixie, huh?” the blonde-haired guy asked. “Anypony here not want revenge?”

All the other chosen ones grumbled in agreement.

“Trixie burned down the great Yorda tree,” said one of the high-druids.

“And the great York tree is dying because of her influence!” another of them complained. “Just because she thinks York bees are annoying.”

“And the great Yalva tree cannot bloom thanks to her poison,” said a third. “She’s like an arborcidal maniac!”

“Yeah. And Trixie smashed the champion blade, the exa-saber, the omniblade, and threw holy claymore down a well.” The blonde held up his sheathed blade. “My god says this is the last legendary sword of evil’s bane I’m gonna get so I can’t go anywhere near that place.”

“Whoa! You have a legendary sword?” Dash leaned to one side to look at it. “I always wanted one of those!”

“Yep. I’m the wielder of the radiant blade, my namesake!” Radiant Blade took out a sword that shone too brightly to see what the dang thing looked like. “It’s my destiny to stop Demon Summoner from ending the world.”

“What? Then where the heck were you an hour ago?” Dash asked.

“Oh, I can never outright defeat Demon Summoner,” he said. “See, there’s this other guy who’s destined to stop me from stopping Demon Summoner. No matter how hard I try to defeat him, that other guy will always show up and stop me. No point in trying until yet another chosen one shows up who’s destined to stop him from stopping me from… stopping Demon Summoner. See?”

“That’s a pretty convoluted destiny you got there,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Most destinies are underwhelming,” said Moondancer.

“Yeah, you think my thing is lame?” Radiant Blade looked over at the elderly druid. “Hey, Grandma! Tell them what miracle you were given!”

The elderly pony looked like she’d just been asked to run a marathon, but she did reluctantly speak up.

“I was given the miracle to make food incorruptible,” she said. “It won’t go bad for—“

“So, wait. Like a refrigerator?” Dash asked.

“Yes, like a refrigerator!” The ancient druid groaned and clutched her staff, but quickly composed herself. “Look, it was an unexplainable miracle at the time, okay? The whole chosen one thing used to be a lot easier. Way back when all it took to prove you were a divine agent was to cast a simple sticks to snakes spell. All the ponies would say, ‘whoa! They just turned that stick into a snake,’ and bow down because there’s no way to explain that.

“But then technology started to progress and ponies started learning more about magic and suddenly turning sticks into snakes wasn’t enough anymore. The gods had to keep upping the ante, coming up with ever more impossible miracles. The chosen ones had to turn rivers to blood, summon volcanoes, or swarms of locusts to impress everypony. Eventually, they settled on the whole ‘resurrect yourself from the dead’ trick, which was very impressive for a while.”

The ancient druid glared deathly at the necromancer.

“I regret nothing.” Moondancer played her gangster dolphins.

“But anyway.” The elderly druid sighed. “After that was ruined by science there wasn’t much that could top it. So then the gods had to move from things that were scientifically impossible to philosophically impossible things. Now you have to create a square circle or Starlight has that true void thing going on.”

“And me?” Radiant Blade pointed at himself. “I’m a married bachelor.”

“What?” Dash asked. “But that’s not possible, is it?”

“Exactly!” Radiant Blade gave a toothy smile. “No way you can explain that. That’s how you know I was sent by the gods.”

“We just have to hope philosophy continues at a snail's pace,” said the druid. “If some philosopher ever figures that one out, we’re done for this time.”

Dash looked over the board. She could literally win on any turn, but each one she wasted was a chance to get messed up. She decided to finish this in two turns.

“So if all of you guys hate Trixie so much why are you all just sitting here?” Dash asked. “You got all these miracle powers, right? Why aren’t you fighting her?”

“I tried that once,” said Moondancer. “I thought I got far, but Trixie was just toying with me the whole time. I ended up dying. In a manner of speaking that is.”

Moondancer pointed to her undead eye.

“Have you not read Trixie's ludicrous character sheet?” Moondancer asked. “She’s like something out of a twelve-year-old’s power fantasy fanfic. As someone who used to write those all the time, let me tell you there’s no possible way we can take her. I can tell you from experience none of us stand a chance against her.”

“That’s not true,” Twilight spoke up. “We’re going to defeat her and undo all the terrible things she did. I’ll make sure she never hurts anypony ever again.”

That got laughs from a few of the ponies. Twilight looked around, flustered and confused at being laughed at.

“Nopony can stand up to the witches,” said Moondancer. “All we can do is be happy that she’s not worse than she is.”

“Yeah? Well you’re just a bunch of defeatists!” Dash stood up for Twilight. “At least we’re going to try and change things.”

“I’ve seen that kind of confidence before,” Moondancer warned. “It’s not my job to stop you from doing something stupid, but I do have a request if you’re going down there.”

“And what’s that?” Dash asked.

“Applejack is a respected member of the community. Don’t do anything reckless that might put her in danger. She’s important to us, so it’s of the highest priority she not be harmed in whatever fight you start.”

“It is?” Radiant Blade asked. “She never seemed that important to me.”

“Well I respect her,” said Moondancer. “I can’t give you as much reward money, but I’d like you to bring her to me instead so I know she’s safe.”

“I’ve never even seen you two together.” Radiant Blade shook his head and walked off somewhere.

“I mean, I guess we could do that.” Dash shrugged.

She supposed saving an important figure in the community would get them some clout. And that was exactly what they were after. And they were gonna make bank off this mission either way.

Dash looked down at the board. She had all the pieces to win the same way as last time now but had gotten them all out slower than last time so it wasn’t suspicious anymore.

She played unstable growth, the massive pumpkin doubled in size. Next, she played the pumpkin catapult and used it to fire the now colossal jack-o’-lanterns directly at Moondancer’s champion.

Moondancer tried to block it with a water wall trap card, but Dash revealed her screaming scarecrow had been her card hidden in the fog. Its ability destroyed Moondancer’s trap, allowing the attack to go off. The massive pumpkin hit her champion, the kaiju whale, with enough force to end the game.

“Impressive. I can see why you’re the champion in Equestria.”

“Yeah, well. You know!” Dash gave a cocky smile.

She didn’t know the actual reason at all!

“So you’ll come with us to show us the way to Trixie’s castle now?” Twilight asked.

“I’m not going down there myself,” said Moondancer. “My advice is still that you don’t either, but I do need to keep my word so take this.”

Moondancer got up and walked over to a cabinet. From it, she produced a skull with a spiral design carved onto the top of its forehead. Moondancer handed the skull to Dash, who examined it. She hoped this thing was porcelain or something.

“This is the skull of the most annoying zebra who ever lived. Zavigator,” Moondancer explained.

Dash fumbled the skull, nearly dropping it.

“Why do you own an actual skull?” Dash gave Zavigator’s skull an uneasy look.

“I own thousands of skulls.”

“Right. Silly me.”

“Anyway, That skull still possesses its former owner’s uncanny ability to navigate through any terrain. Furthermore, Zavigator knows everything I do about Trixie’s castle and will bring you down there, through her grounds, and into her castle. After that, you’re on your own. Just press that spiral to turn it on.”

Dash and Twilight looked at one another and nodded with confidence. This was perfect! They had a clear path in now.

“There is one terrible drawback, however,” Moondancer’s voice grew foreboding.

“Ah, crud! It’s one of those,” Dash muttered to herself.

“You see, Zavigator is—” Moondancer adjusted her glasses as she searched for the right word “—annoying. The skull will constantly nag and annoy you the moment you activate it. It’s a little too eager to give you directions, you see.”

“Oh.” Dash turned to Twilight. “We can live with that."

“You say that now.” Moondancer sat back down. “I think I’ve delayed my business as much as I can. Maybe we can speak again when things cool down. If you’re still alive. Then again, if you die that might not be a problem either.”

Well, Dash got what she came for. She thanked Moondancer one last time and headed out to find Rarity again.

Back in the closet!

Rarity was already back in the room. Rarity’s mask was different now. It looked more like a masquerade mask now, made of black cloth with a few feathers.

“Hey.” Dash came in. “Did you find anything useful?”

“Oh yes, well about that.” Rarity smiled a bit too much and shrank away.

“You didn’t find anything, did you?” Dash asked.

“Well you see, my mask got stolen and with the scar, I can’t possibly be seen! You understand, yes?” Rarity offered an apologetic smile.

“How long could it have possibly taken you to get a new mask?” Dash asked.

“It took me two hours just to find the feathers.” Rarity turned her head with a humph. “Yes, there were some yellow ones I found straightaway but they clashed with the aesthetic I was going for.”

“I guess staring at an outer god for too long does this to you, huh?” Dash looked over at Twilight.

“Oh no, she was always like this,” said Sweetie Belle.

“Well lucky for you we got disturbingly lucky.” Dash took out the skull. “Allegedly, this thing can guide us all the way down there.”

“Isn’t that a tad too convenient?” Rarity eyed it suspiciously.

“Yeah, that sums up my day.” Dash nodded. “Something fishy is going on, but I can’t figure out what. Do you think somepony with luck-distortion powers has been following me around?”

“Probability distortion is a real type of magic, so that’s possible,” said Twilight. “But if that is the case, they seem to only be helping us for now. We don’t really have time to go hunting them down besides.”

“Yes, and it would be easier to find them once fewer ponies are around besides,” Rarity added.

“So we’re just gonna have to wait on that one?” Dash shook her head. “Well it’s not like I have any clues on how to solve this so whatever.”

“It’s only eight.” Twilight looked at the clock. “But we need to get to sleep early. I think we should leave around four in the morning.”

“Wait. I don’t have to sleep if I’m a robot now, right?” Sweetie Belle asked with hope.

“No, your brain will overheat if you stay awake too long,” said Rarity. “You still need sleep.”

“Aw, shoot.”

“My brain is flame resistant,” said Saccharin. “I shall face the night alone.”

Now the only problem was where to sleep. Dash looked down at the sleeping mat. Coco was already asleep, somehow. That didn’t leave a lot of room for the rest of them.

They all somehow managed to fit, with Rarity Twilight and Coco all squeezing together on the one and Dash curling up into a ball at the bottom.

“Though getting to sleep won’t be easy sleeping when we’re this cramped,” Rarity complained.

“Nah, the best part about living with a witch is the sleep spell.” Rainbow Dash lifted her head. “Hit me!”

Twilight cast the spell and Dash fell asleep instantly.

At some point, Dash woke up in the middle of the night. Twilight was standing next to her as she looked out the window.

“You see? The power is out except for that section of the city.” Twilight pointed out to the west, where there was still one tree, and a few houses near its base light up brightly. “Remember that.”

Dash must have just woken up or something. She wasn’t thinking straight. Twilight’s words only vaguely registered in her mind.

“There’s one more thing I need to show you, or you’ll screw everything up and talking to you would have been a complete waste of my time,” said Twilight. “We have to be there at 9:32 PM.”

“A waste of time?” Dash asked. “Are you angry about something?”

“This has nothing to do with that.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “Just follow me. 9:32 PM is when you have to be there. Remember that. You have to bring that witch with you when you do it for real or it won’t work.”

Then Dash was following Twilight out of the closet, then the guest room, and into the hall. They turned left and went up the stairs. Dash remembered she hadn’t been up this way before.

“That’s something you’ll remember.” Twilight pointed to a bust of some unfamiliar unicorn Dash had never seen before. It was some old stallion with an oddly knotted horn.

Just beyond that bust was a turret with three windows. Twilight pushed one of them open and walked out onto the branch just below the window. In the back of her mind, Dash thought this whole thing was strange, but she followed Twilight out without thinking too much. Her mind was sleepy.

“You have to use this window,” she said. “You might be spotted somewhere else.”

Twilight jumped off the branch, down to one just below, then once more to a third branch. Dash simply flew down to the same branch instead of hopping around.

“You can come down here without being seen because the power’s out.” Twilight opened a window leading somewhere on the floor below where they started. “There are two ponies in this next room, but they got terribly drunk, so you won’t wake them up.”

Sure enough, two green ponies were sleeping in this room. The more remarkable of the two looked like he’d crashed into a pile of his luggage and was sleeping covered in clothes and suitcases, lying on his back and snoring loudly. His friend was on his side, on a sleeping bag at least, drooling onto his pillow.

“Just peek out the door before opening it.” Twilight opened the door a crack and peeked out into the hall. “If anyone comes, they’ll come from this direction.”

Twilight threw open the door, clearly not even concerned if anypony was trying to find them, and moved to open the door directly across the hallway. The final room was a cozy study.

The only thing that said ‘necromancer’ about it was the fireplace. The front of it was shaped like a skull, mouth wide open and eyes cut out so that the fire made it look like both were glowing.

“And finally, here. Remember, you have to be in this room at 9:32 PM,” Twilight reminded her. “Don’t let anyone see you. You won’t come to the right conclusion unless you’re here at 9:32 PM. Do you understand?”

Dash felt more awake now like a fog had been lifted from her mind. She felt groggy like she’d just woken up. This whole thing seemed so weird now that her head was clearer.

“Hold on.” Dash rubbed her eyes. “Why are we breaking into random parts of Moondancer’s house?”

“There’s a conclusion I want you to reach,” said Twilight. “If you don’t, you’re useless to me and I won’t help you again. I’ll have to get rid of you and find some other pony. You don’t want that.”

“Useless to you? Come on!” Dash flared her wings out. “You’re being weird. And also a jerk. Can’t you just tell me whatever ‘conclusion’ you want me to reach?”

“I could just tell you what I’m getting at, yes,” said Twilight. “But it’s unlikely you’ll just do whatever I ask. I need to show you evidence that will make you conclude what I want you to. You’ll be more likely to do what I want if you decide to do it without me directly telling you to. And that evidence is in this room at—"

“9:32. Yeah, I got it.” Dash sighed. “What time is it anyway?”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Twilight. “You can’t sleep until you come here at 9:32 PM. Now wake up.”

Dash sat up. Her heart was racing. She knew she had a nightmare but couldn’t for the life of her remember that last part which scared her so bad. Whatever it was had just been a dream, at any rate.

Saccharin, who never slept, was the only other one awake. The robot watched Dash suspiciously with her eyes glowing in the dark but didn’t move to attack.

It was probably a good idea to go back to sleep straight away, but that jolt left Dash wide awake. She felt like she’d just chugged a gallon of coffee.

She rubbed her eyes and tried to look up at the clock. It was much darker than before, too dark to see the clock as there was no longer any light coming in through the window. She got up and crawled over to the window. Her suspicion was confirmed when she saw virtually no lights in any of the nearby houses.

This part of the city had been hit by a power outage. It looked like the western edge of the city was the only part of it with power still.

Dash rubbed her eyes groggily. Something about this seemed familiar.

“Wait.”

Wasn’t that exactly what happened in her dream? She was remembering details of it now. There was a power outage and the view from her window looked exactly like this!

“Hey, Saccharin.” Dash turned back to the robot. “When did the power go out.”

“Seven minutes ago.”

“And I wasn’t sleepwalking or anything, right?”

“No.”

So there was no way she’d seen this view before, yet it was exactly like in her dream.

Dash’s first thought was that she’d been attacked by a dream eater. If that was the case, she had nothing to worry about. They only got one chance to kill you then you were safe for life.

But as she recalled more and more of her dream, it began to feel like something else had been after her. Instead of trying to kill her, her dream told her to be at that place at nine-thirty. How much time did that give her?

She needed to light a candle to check the time. 11:00 PM. Looked like she couldn’t do as her dream commanded even if she wanted to.

“Guess the joke's on you, hypothetical being that probably doesn’t even exist.” Dash shook her head and trotted back to bed.

The only problem was she was wide awake right now and full of energy. Trying to fall asleep like this wouldn’t work. She decided to try walking around a bit. Moondancer’s house should be relatively safe, she thought. They were selling drinks and stuff downstairs.

She silently slipped out of the room and into the hall. As she did, the last part of her dream came back to her. Twilight said, ‘You can’t go to sleep until you figure it out’? Or something like that.

Dash felt like that might be true at the moment. Turning to her left, she saw those stairs leading up into the darkness.

Dash knew for a fact she’d never been up to the fourth floor. If that statue she saw in her dream was there…

Not wanting to be seen, Dash blew out her candle and fluttered silently up the pitch-black stairs. After getting to the top, she could just barely see again from the slightest amount of light coming in through the window. There were three windows, long and arranged in a circle as though they were part of a turret. Just like in her dream.

There was a small bust on either side of the windows. Dash grabbed the one to the left, the one she remembered, and carried it to the window to get a look at it. It was the exact same elderly pony with that exact same horn!

That confirmed it to her. That dream really had been a vision sent to her by something. Something that wanted her to go to that one room, without being seen, by 9:32.

But the time had already passed. It wasn’t like she was going to hang around until 9:32 PM tomorrow. Going back in time was even less possible.

“Or is it?!” Dash’s eyes lit up with inspiration and she clapped her forehooves together.

Dash glided down the stairs, checked once to make sure nopony saw her, then went back to the closet as calmly as possible.

“Twilight!” Dash whispered harshly as she began shaking the witch. “Twilight there’s something we gotta do!”

As they were right next to one another, Dash accidentally woke up Rarity as well. Both mares groaned and got up, still too asleep to comprehend

“Huh? Are we being attacked?” Twilight rubbed her eyes. “Again?”

“I had a dream,” said Dash. “Where like you told me I needed to break into this random room.”

“You know dreams are just…” Twilight yawned. “Those are hallucinations you have because—"

“No, but see I saw the fourth floor in the dream even though I’ve never been up there. Also, it predicted the power was about to go out,” said Dash. “This wasn’t a normal dream.”

“Those were probably just dream eaters trying to kill you.” Rarity yawned and lay back down. “They only get one shot, so nothing to worry about.”

“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a dream eater,” said Dash. “Something happened in the other room at 9:32 that they wanted me to see. And if we use that aetheric imprinting spell we can see it.”

“Most of the things that contact you in your dreams want to murder you.” Rarity lifted a hoof and waved it about.

“Whoever it was said they were helping me,” said Dash. “Don’t you think it’s suspicious how incredibly lucky we got today? I’m starting to think there really is some kind of spirit following us around. They have the luck injection ability or something! I mean, everypony wants Trixie dead so maybe dream guy does too.”

“Oh, bother.” Rarity pushed herself back up. “Just because somepony wants to help you doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to accept their help. Especially if it’s coming from a god of any sort.”

“I guess,” Dash admitted. Back in school, they were taught to always ‘just say no’ to gods. But that was the same advice they gave in those anti-drug classes and those were bull. “But do we really want to risk ticking one off? It sounded like they were going to get mad at me if I didn’t look. I say we should at least take a peek. Where’s the harm in that?”

“We could always use more information,” said Twilight. “I’ll go see what it is.”

Twilight got out of bed.

“Somepony’s never heard the term ‘info hazard’ before.” Rarity gave a ‘tut’. “But very well! If you must go, I’ll come with you. I at least have some experience with this sort of thing.”

Rarity got up as well.

“Cool.” Dash walked back to the door. “But they said we shouldn’t be seen going in there. They showed me how to get in without being noticed.”

Dash led them up the stairs, then out onto the branch. They moved two branches forward and into the room with the drunk ponies. The two green ponies were the same ones as in her dream. The only difference was one of them had rolled over onto his back.

With zero doubt this was for real now, Dash poked the door open and peeked outside. There weren’t any refugees on this floor, so it was less crowded. When she was sure there was nopony else nearby, the three of them rushed into the adjacent room and closed the door behind them.

Once again, Dash stood in that same study as before, books surrounding them. That skull-shaped fireplace was across from her, but no fire was lit now so the room was dark. Twilight instead lit the room with her horn.

“I like this room.” Twilight looked up at all the books. “You know, Moondancer’s not such a bad pony. She lives in a tree, likes mushrooms, has lots of books, knows a lot about magic—"

“So basically, she’s a clone of you,” said Dash.

“What’s a clone?”

“Never mind that. We should cast that spell before anypony comes in here,” said Dash. “It was nine thirty-two.”

Twilight bowed her head and cast the spell. Fire returned to the fireplace and now the room was lit up like before. Moondancer was sitting in the big chair, but there was another pony in the room standing across from her.

When they saw who it was, who had been here mere hours before, Rarity gasped and Dash leaped back, wings splayed in surprise. Dash stared in disbelief, having trouble accepting who the second was. It was the last pony she’d ever expected to see talking to Moondancer, especially here.

Flash Bang.

“What is she doing here?!” Rarity pointed an accusing hoof at Flash Bang. “How could Moondancer let such an uncouth—"

“Quiet,” Twilight warned. She took out a piece of paper to start writing down what they were saying. “I can only do this once. We have to listen.”

The other two nodded and looked at Flash Bang.

Flash Bang was surprisingly short in person, maybe halfway between Pinkie and Dash in height. Yet she stood proud and with an arrogant look like she owned the place, like she was above the rest of the world.

“As far as ponies who are immune to curses.” Flash Bang kept her nose lifted and off to the side, purposely avoiding eye contact with Moondancer like such a thing was beneath her. “There is one other option, though they appear to be dying at the moment. We can’t count on them being alive during the next blood moon. This sort of pony is too rare for us to possibly find a third in under a year.”

“I can bring people back from the dead,” Moondancer reminded her. “Sometimes. Under the right circumstances, that might not be a problem.”

Flash Bang closed her eyes, utterly disgusted at the idea, but restrained herself.

“That won’t work,” Flash Bang spoke carefully, restrained. “Nor will your other plan. We can’t risk Applejack dying. How do you not understand that yet? You’d better not suggest anything reckless again.”

Applejack?

Dash was slowly putting the pieces of this conversation together. Did this mean Applejack was immune to curses? She remembered Twilight saying that was the case for herself, so it was clearly possible.

She glanced over at Twilight, who was suddenly watching this conversation with much more focus.

“Honestly, what you’re doing is just as reckless.” Moondancer sighed. “Giving Trixie everything she needs to become a were-ursa major? Do you really not think there are enough dangerous monsters down here? What are you going to do if she finishes in time?”

“I need some excuse to go and retrieve her,” said Flash Bang. “If I rushed off to rescue some nameless idiot from a witch, what would Starlight think? She’d know there was something special about Applejack. She’d figure out she was immune to curses. From that, she’d realize we know what she’s up to and we’re acting against her.”

“And sending so many ponies out to try and retrieve her,” Moondancer went on with her complaint. “Bringing a literal army into this only increases the chance of somepony noticing.”

“There’s maybe twelve ponies outside this room that even know you can be immune to curses,” said Flash Bang. “The few that do know it’s so rare there’d be no point in even checking. If some hapless idiot saves us some trouble that’s only a good thing.”

Dash frowned. It was never a good sign when the person you were working for called you a hapless idiot.

“And believe me, if it’s between Starlight learning the truth and fighting an ursa major I’ll gladly take the bear,” said Flash Bang. “We need to appear disinterested as possible. We need a smokescreen. As long as everypony thinks we’re after her to stop that ritual we’ll be safe. Besides, anypony except for Applejack down here is an acceptable casualty.”

“That didn’t answer my main question,” said Moondancer. “Do you have any plan for dealing with Trixie if she becomes an ursa major?”

“Of course. Better, it plays into my hoof as well. We simply—"

Twilight let out a breath like she’d been holding it in this whole time. The image broke apart and they were in a dark room once more.

“Sorry,” said Twilight. “The aether in this area broke apart. We won’t be able to use that spell here again for a while.”

“I still can’t believe Moondancer would consort with such a ruffian,” Rarity grumbled to herself. “I know she’s a barbarian herself, but really!”

“You guys got that part, right?” Dash looked at the others in turn. “They said Flash Bang ‘gave Trixie everything she needed’ for that ritual. Like she— she gave Trixie the idea to become a were-ursa major and set her up to do it just so she’d have an excuse to come down here and beat her up.”

“It would appear so,” said Rarity.

“But that’s like entrapment or something! I know cause that’s how my dad got out of jail that one time. So what that spirit wanted to show us was that— that Flash Bang is a total jerkwad!” Dash pointed a hoof at the spot where Flash Bang had stood. “Case closed.”

“Everypony already knew that,” said Rarity.

“I didn’t.”

“You’re missing the point, Dash.” Twilight came forth with her conclusion next. “The important information is that Applejack is immune to curses. That trait is incredibly rare. That pegasus is right I wouldn’t have even bothered to check had I not heard this.”

“Huh, you’re right.” Dash nodded, accepting the idea. “But what does that mean to us?”

“Nothing. Which is why we know that’s not the right conclusion,” said Rarity. “If the information we got wouldn’t change our actions, then your spirit wouldn’t have shown it to us, that’s how this works. I say the important takeaway is that Flash Bang wants to use Applejack to do… something or other. Something nefarious, I’d say.”

“How does that change what we’d do?” Dash asked. “You think we should report this to Starlight? I mean, we’d need actual evidence for that.”

“I’m sure they’re hoping for us to stop Flash Bang for some reason.” Rarity shook her head. “Maybe you should bring Applejack to Starlight directly to end whatever madness that madmare has planned.”

“Starlight?” Twilight ears moved back, suddenly offended. “Wait. Isn’t that the pony who was lying about true void?”

“Yeah,” said Dash. “But she’s also the president, so…”

“I barely understand what a president is,” said Twilight. “But if she’s lying about the nature of true void she must be evil! How do we know Starlight Glimmer isn’t attempting to complete some evil plot and these two are trying to stop her? Huh?”

“I can assure you if either of them is up to no good it’s Flash Bang,” Rarity said dully.

“Hold on,” said Dash. “I think Twilight has a point!”

Rarity gave Dash a curious look.

“Think about it!” Dash raised a hoof. “If this was a cartoon, we’d rat out Flash Bang to Starlight only to find out she was trying to stop Starlight from blowing up the planet or something! I’ve seen it a million times!”

“Is that seriously your argument?” Rarity deadpanned at Dash.

“I got more!” Dash put her hooves up defensively. “Flash Bang hates Moondancer even behind closed doors. Like a lot! So they wouldn’t be working together unless something important was happening. Right?”

“I suppose,” Rarity admitted with reluctance. “I’ll admit we can’t tell at the moment which of them would be better to sabotage if that’s even necessary. If we’re taking stock of the situation, this may be all about some dispute over salt prices or some such nonsense and we’re merely assuming it’s a terrible plot.”

“I still don’t like Starlight, but we really should wait until we have more information to take action,” Twilight agreed.

“Yeah, but we gotta decide what to do with Applejack, right?” Dash reminded them. “She’s important for, well, something. So after we beat up Trixie do we turn her in or not? And to who? We can’t bring her to Moondancer like we promised since she’s in on this.”

“The solution for that is simple,” said Twilight. “We just have to kidnap Applejack.”

“What?” Dash asked.

“I’ll turn her into an owl and cast a magnetic spell on her to make it so she can’t escape,” said Twilight. “We’ll decide what to do with her at a later date when we have more information.”

“Seriously?”

“What?” Twilight gave her an annoyed look. “That plan has never failed me before.”

“Is that necessary?” Dash asked. “We could figure this all out tonight if we just run over to Moondancer and ask her point-blank about this.”

“Yes. Well let’s not forget that Moondancer can stomp a hoof and have everyone and everything in this town trying to murder us.” Rarity leaned up against the window and pointed down at the crowded streets. “And at the moment that’s a lot of people. We need to keep our mouths shut until we’re out of town. No one here would take our word over hers.”

“Yeesh!” Dash groaned. “Why didn’t whatever it was just tell me what Flash Bang was planning instead of being all vague? Or at least tell me who the bad guy was.”

“That is a good question, actually,” said Twilight.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Rarity tapped her hair curl. “They showed you the information that would get you to do what they wanted you to do. No more, no less.”

“Right!” Dash nodded, realizing that was exactly what was happening. “So, uh— what did we conclude again?”

“Weren’t you paying attention?” Twilight asked. “We concluded that we needed to keep Applejack hidden for now. Assuming whoever’s behind this is intelligent, their goal must be to keep Applejack hidden from both Flash Bang and Starlight. Only by not telling us who the ‘bad guy’ is or what they’re planning would we decide to do that.”

“Yes, I think we’ve come to the correct conclusion now.” Rarity nodded. “That’s what they want us to do and I suppose it’s what we’re going to do given we’ve no better option.”

“Do we know what kind of creature sent me that dream?” Dash asked. “Maybe it was that Darklord guy? And he’s trying to help out his minion?”

“There’s no way to know that for now,” said Rarity. “But that is a good guess.”

“I think we should get out of here for now.” Twilight poked the door open and checked. “We’ve already stayed too long.”

The others nodded in silent agreement. They went back across the hall and out onto the branches again. This time, Dash had to carry Rarity back up to the fourth story.

A nagging feeling of disappointment followed Dash as they made their way back. She wished they’d been able to figure out more on that conspiracy. No matter how much she racked her brain over that conversation, she just couldn’t think of a good way to make ground.

Just as they came in through the window, the power came back on. As if the lights came back on in Dash’s head, she came to realize that there was a way to get closer to the truth!

“Oh, wait! Pinkie!” Dash blurted out, then covered her mouth as the others glared at her. “Think about it. She knows both of those ponies personally. I bet she could tell us, uh, something! Or help us figure things out.”

“We do need to tell Pinkie about our plan eventually,” Twilight admitted. “But we have too little time to go looking for her right now. We’ll ask her after we defeat Trixie.”

“Nah, I got her phone number. We can call her. I know they have payphones just outside,” said Dash. “Though maybe it’ll look suspicious if she gets a call from this town?”

“That’s no problem at all.” Rarity frisked her hair. “These phones are pathetically simple compared to the technology I’m used to. I can make the call untraceable. Let me show you.”

They headed outside and down the street a little bit to where the payphones were. There was a line for them, even at this hour, because there was a line for everything right now.

After some impatient waiting, they finally got to the phone booth.

Rarity picked up the phone and the dial tone came from the other side. Instead of pressing any buttons, Rarity whistled a steady note into the receiver. A few seconds of that made the dial tone end, then Rarity whistled at several pitches in quick succession before handing it back to Dash.

The phone was ringing!

“Wait. You can do that?”

After two rings, it stopped but an answering machine picked up on the other side. It was Pinkie the elder’s voice and Dash was so used to her squeaky teenage voice she didn’t realize it was the right pony at first.

“I’m telling you,” said Pinkie, “these answering machine gizmos are destroying the fabric of society by—"

“Auntie, please,” a vaguely familiar voice said. “Whoever this is just leave a message, please. Thank you.”

Beep.

“Hey, Pinkie,” said Dash. “We got like a, I dunno, eight out of ten situation going on? Anyway, we need to talk to you in person. I’m sure you already know where I am and will suddenly show up out of nowhere whenever you feel like it, so uh, just do that. Thanks.”

Dash hung up.

“Wasn’t there,” said Dash. “Guess we’ll try again tomorrow before heading out.”

“Finally we go back to sleep,” said Rarity. “Just so we’re clear I can’t be expected to be at one hundred percent without a full eight hours!”

Twilight was going to be doing most of the work anyway. Dash looked up at the moon as they went back inside. Tomorrow is going to be an even busier day.

It was near midnight as Applejack lay on the bed in her dungeon, finally about to get some sleep.

All the other werewolves, and there were a lot, were kept in a smaller building next to the keep. Applejack alone was singled out for her special ability. She alone was kept locked up in Trixie’s dungeon most of the time.

Thankfully, the dungeon was relatively comfortable. Applejack had plenty of room. All the cells in the dungeon were open with only the door leading up to the second floor and the windows being barred up and locked. One cell was made into a bedroom, with an actual bed, another into a small kitchen, and one into a bathroom. It also came with four jack-o'-lanterns, arranged so that one was always watching Applejack no matter where she went.

It wouldn’t have been too terrible, but Applejack felt like she was being unintentionally tortured. The only pony she talked to on any given day was Trixie and frankly Applejack would have preferred solitary confinement over that.

A loud bang coming from directly above was enough to get Applejack to sit up out of curiosity. It was unlikely to be a rescuer, but it might be something important. It sounded like an awful lot of commotion was going on upstairs.

Applejack went up the short staircase and pressed her ear against the heavy door to freedom. It was Trixie’s voice on the other end, yelling at somepony. Applejack just got a few words here and there, things like ‘where’ and ‘find it’, giving her the impression Trixie was knocking things over looking for something.

Either way, Trixie was angry. Whether that was good news or bad news for Applejack remained to be seen.

She heard hooves coming and backed up, going all the way down into her bedroom cell. She got out of the way just in time as Trixie threw open the door in a huff a moment later, smacking it right into where Applejack’s head would have been.

The witch came stomping down the stairs, holding her hat on tight. Trotting just behind her was a suit of armor, minus the helmet.

By now, Applejack knew that thing was a dullahan, an unusual sort of ghost. Once she found that out, the reason jack-o'-lanterns were everywhere became clear to her. Though they had no head and couldn’t see normally, dullahans did have the ability to see through jack-o'-lanterns, among other things. That thing had eyes everywhere in this place.

“You had one freaking job!” Trixie yelled at her dullahan as she came into the dungeon. “Okay, or maybe you have one hundred and twenty-seven jobs but this was one of them!”

The dullahan shrugged, but couldn’t defend itself without a head. Applejack figured a headless ghost was just about the only thing Trixie could get along with. Apparently, even that had its limits.

Trixie let out a long sigh, tapping her hooves a few times, then turned her anger to Applejack.

“Okay.” Trixie sat down in front of Applejack, glaring at her none too pleased. “I’m only going to ask this once. Do you have the lucky coin?”

Without waiting for an answer, the dullahan put the jack-o'-lantern on where its head should be and started tearing up the place.

“The what?” Applejack blinked.

“You know what I’m talking about!” Trixie stomped her hoof. “Don’t play dumb with me! You’re The Darklord’s chosen one, aren’t you? If I know everything he made so do you!”

Mention of The Darklord brought realization to Applejack. She did know a nearly complete list of all of his creations. There was only one coin he made. At least, only one with any magical powers.

“Hold up. You have that coin?” Applejack asked.

“Well, I did.” Trixie glared at Applejack. “But now I can’t find it anywhere! Did you take it somehow? This is the only place I haven’t checked.”

“I don’t have it,” said Applejack. “Never touched the thing and hopefully never will.”

Trixie looked at her Dullahan who already exhausted most of the hiding places in the dungeon.

“It could be on her person,” said Trixie.

“I’m not even wearing any clothes. Where would I hide it?”

“I can think of three possible answers for that, but I’m not saying what they are.” Trixie cast a spell. It must have had something to do with magnetism because the metal chains all floated briefly before falling back to the ground. “Guess not. Maybe I should be thankful for that.”

“Why do you even want to find it? You know that coin doesn’t create luck, right?” Applejack asked. “It borrows luck from the future.”

From Applejack’s understanding, the more unlikely the good luck you gave yourself with it, the more unlikely the bad luck you’d have to pay up with later.

“Where I’m going I won’t need luck anymore!” Trixie went up on her hind legs and laughed. “I decided that’s the trick. You use the coin to make yourself more powerful that way you can deal with whatever bad luck comes later.”

Then Trixie turned to one side and started reciting her plots, as if to herself, yet again. If she wasn’t so ridiculously strong, she never would have made it this far.

“The first time I used it was for my near-death experience to ensure I got psychic powers,” said Trixie. “Then I used it when exposing myself to super radiation to make sure I got superpowers instead of just tentacles for eyes like most ponies get.”

Applejack just sighed and tapped her hoof impatiently. Already she knew there was nothing she could do in this situation but sit and listen to whatever exposition Trixie would throw at her.

For somepony who hated everypony, she sure talked a lot. Trixie would loudly announce everything she was planning, even if it was just how she was going to cook dinner that night. Any attempt to interrupt her would just result in Applejack getting shut up.

“And then there’s you! You’re a little too perfect for my plans, aren’t you?” Trixie asked. “Finding a pony with all of your traits would have taken decades without that coin.”

“You used the coin just to find somepony who could get you into the shadow realm?” Applejack raised her brow. “You know, you’d have saved trouble by just asking around in town. They all know I can do that.”

“Oh, wait! You don’t know what’s special about you, do you?” Trixie laughed. “Well, I normally like spouting off all of my plans to other ponies just so they can see how astoundingly confident I am but I think I’ll keep that one a surprise. Let’s just say we’re going to be meeting a special somepony next.”

Applejack still didn’t know what Trixie was talking about, but if the trait she was looking for was on the order of one in a million, then Trixie unwittingly signed herself up for some cosmic levels of ironic bad luck later on. Course, that didn’t mean it’d be in the next few days so Applejack couldn’t get her hopes up.

“Oh, well!” Trixie shrugged. “I suppose losing that coin was the first stroke of bad luck, meaning I just need to watch out for two more. Still, that means the worst possible pony is going to find that coin, doesn’t it? That is how I found it, after all. So if it’s not you, Flash Bang must have the coin.”

“Hold up. Did you say something about Flash Bang?” Applejack felt her hair standing up.

“Oh, that’s right!” Trixie smiled at Applejack with that sinister smile. “Flash Bang is coming to defeat the evil witch and ‘rescue’ you. Though I doubt that’s good news to you.”

Trixie was right that wasn’t good news. Everypony knew Flash Bang hated werewolves more than anything else, and she hated anything else plenty good already. Worse yet, she’d taken down an enormous list of threats, was one of the strongest and most tactical ponies out there.

Against somepony like that, dumb luck was your only hope. If Flash Bang wanted to find Applejack’s family, then her having that coin would mean escape was nearly impossible. No, they’d be smart enough to not use it. Though that assumed anypony in their group even knew what it was or noticed picking it up.

“Incidentally,” Trixie said, looking down at her own hoof, “I’m moving the schedule ahead a bit. I’m giving you four hours before we start. You won’t get to eat or drink again for a while after that. But once this is over, I’ll let everypony but you go just like you wanted.”

Trixie summoned four small pies and a pitcher of water on the ground in front of Applejack before she and the dullahan turned to leave.

“Hold up!” Applejack called after her. “You’re not going to let me sleep first? It’s almost midnight and you didn’t exactly let me go to bed early.”

“I said you have four hours.” Trixie left and shut the door behind her.

“Might as well get some rest,” Applejack muttered to herself. What followed was going to be dangerous, especially if Trixie was pushing things forward before they were ready.

Applejack looked down at the pies, giving them a poke. Pumpkin pies. It was always pumpkins.

Werewolves

Waking up before the sun messed with your head if you weren’t used to it. It was like she’d woken up in the middle of the night for a second time.

It was dark out, darker than Dash had ever seen it. They left behind them the electric lights of Oaken Field and then the smaller lights of the campfires set up around it. Then they headed off into total darkness, leaving the light farther and farther behind them.

Saccharin could illuminate the path with her flashlight-eyes but that would be all the light they got until dawn. There weren’t any ponies around now, but Dash still felt surrounded. Only now she was surrounded by things, things that hated Saccharin’s light and sank into the water or buried themselves in the mud to get away from it.

They still had the length of a half-marathon to walk before getting there, too, and they wouldn’t be able to use a wagon on such marshy terrain. The ground was soft enough that every hoofstep sank in slightly even on the most solid parts.

A harsh lesson she learned was that there was often nothing but water underneath what looked like a bed of grass. The water here was something you wanted to avoid at all costs, no doubt filled with all kinds of leeches and that’s if you were lucky.

When they were a safe distance away, Fluttershy finally woke up with a yawn. To her, this was like waking up at midnight but she’d just slept for over a day straight so what right did she have to complain?

She used her fear aura to keep just about everything away from them as they traveled. Unseen things would dart out of reeds and bushes to get away. The giant insects this area was known for wouldn’t get near Fluttershy’s aura of fear. Once or twice, Dash saw an enormous spider, far larger than she was herself, sitting in a tree above them but not once did they move.

Before long, the sun began to rise but they still had a few miles to go.

They had to zigzag all over the swamp, avoiding curses and other traps that’d waste their time as that skull buzzed every two seconds to tell them things they already knew.

But eventually, they finally got to a change in scenery suggesting they were close. Pumpkins started appearing all over the place. There were only a few at first, then they covered the ground, then they began floating through the water and hanging from trees.

Finally, they found one pumpkin with a face hanging from a tree.

“She might notice us soon.” Rarity made eye contact with the first jack-o’-lantern. “These are a sort of security camera, yes?”

“She’s got way too many of them.” Dash looked around at the exponentially increasing number of jack-o’-lanterns.

“I’m more concerned about all these chains everywhere.” Fluttershy floated ahead a little, looking all around.

“What chains?” Dash asked.

“Right there. There’s a big– ” Fluttershy pointed to a spot just in front of Dash.

She watched curiously as Dash walked a few steps forward.

“Oh.” Fluttershy stopped in midair, hoof out to Dash. “I guess you can just walk straight through them. Never mind.”

“You must be seeing something that exists inside the shadow realm,” Rarity explained. “The chains that bind the dark lord. I don’t know exactly where he is, but we must be getting closer to him.”

“They look like the same chains ghosts have sometimes.” Fluttershy cautiously poked at the air, at what was likely an invisible chain. “But you can’t see those either.”

They saw the walls of a castle rising above them. However, between them and the walls was a field completely covered in jack-o’-lanterns. As they got close, every one of them all turned at once and all their eyes lit up with fire.

Allegedly, this was the easiest path to get near the castle from too. These things could lunge at you and explode, or so Dash heard. Not a lot of ponies could get past this many.

“Yeesh. Doesn’t her book end on H?” Dash asked. “P and J are both after that.”

“Oh, those are flame pumpkins,” Twilight pointed out.

“Right,” said Dash. “Adjectives. Guess that’s how you get to ten thousand.”

“They shouldn’t be too hard to deal with.” Twilight put her hooves on the ground and began slowly casting a spell.

Rocky spikes erupted from beneath the pumpkins, quickly smashing them all and replacing the pumpkin field with one covered in pumpkin guts and jagged rocks.

“Ha! A bunch of plants can’t stop us!” Dash laughed at them.

“It’ll get harder,” said Twilight. “Let’s look the place over before going in.”

Dash flew them up to the top of a large tree so they could see the whole castle from above.

The castle was split off into three sections, each with one larger stone building inside. There was the large keep in the middle, the banners with Trixie’s images hanging from the side were so large you could make them out from here.

To the right, walled off by itself, was another large building that looked like a cathedral surrounded by a graveyard. One other building was inside the castle, far to the left and about half the size of the other two.

“The real problem here is that I can’t fight Trixie at full power while there are so many ponies being held captive,” said Twilight. “These buildings will collapse if we fight. I think I should go after Trixie while the rest of you get the hostages out of here.”

“And we have no idea where they are, do we?” Dash asked. “That skull wouldn’t know.”

Fluttershy sniffed the air.

“I think I can smell their blood.” Fluttershy pointed towards the graveyard and cathedral. “There’s a lot of ponies over there.”

“What about Trixie?” Dash asked. “Can you smell her somewhere else? She wouldn’t lock herself in the dungeon too, would she?”

“No, but– ” Fluttershy tried smelling again. “It’d be hard to smell just one pony from this far away. Oh! But if she’s psychic maybe I can feel her aura.”

Fluttershy closed her eyes to concentrate. That didn’t last long before she opened them again with an ‘eep’ and flew behind Rainbow Dash.

“Th-there’s another ghost here!” Fluttershy covered her eyes. “I can’t go down there!”

“You don’t have to fight the ghost,” Dash promised. “You can go somewhere it isn’t.’”

Fluttershy nodded with hesitation.

“Can you feel where the ghost is?” Twilight asked.

Fluttershy pointed to the main keep.

“Alright.” Twilight nodded. “That looks like the one Trixie would be living in anyway. I’ll go to that one and make a scene to draw her to me. You and Dash can evacuate the hostages.”

“I can do that.” Fluttershy nodded.

“And I suppose that leave the building on the left to me,” said Rarity. “Of course, the worst-case scenario is that anypony but you runs into Trixie. We can use these to call each other if that happens.”

Rarity passed out a device she showed them earlier that day. It was like a phone, wireless but short-ranged, called a walkie-talkie.

“Right. It’s a bad idea for anypony but me to fight her,” said Twilight.

“I, uh, have a built-in walkie-talkie in this thing, right?” the Sweetiebot 8000 spoke up out of nowhere. Dash didn’t even think those could talk. “I was just going to keep playing dumb, but– ”

“Hm?” Rarity turned curiously to the Sweetiebot 8000, then ran over to it with some level of concern. “Sweetie, is that you? What are you doing here? I specifically told you to stay with Coco. It’s far too dangerous out here for a child.”

“But I’m not here. I’m just remote controlling this body. I don’t feel anything in this body so I don’t think I can get hurt even if I explode. So it’s fine.” Sweetie Belle hit her head hard enough to give an audible clang of numbness. “If I, uh, ‘die’ in this body I’ll be okay, right?”

“Yes, you would simply revert to your main body, but I still don’t want you getting traumatized by any monsters. Why just look at that thing!” Rarity pointed at a frog with one eyeball on its left side and a cluster of five on its right and shuddered. “So asymmetrical! It could give you nightmares!”

“Oh come one, Rarity!” Sweetie rolled her eyes at the mutant frog. “I wasn’t fazed by turning into a robot, the giant crab, or even that sewer clown. I think I’m just unfazable.”

“Whether you can be fazed is beside the point. The bottom line is that you shouldn’t be here and need to go back to Oaken Field this instant.” Rarity pointed back north.

“But I don’t know how to go back to um, ‘mote’ controlling my main body?” Sweetie Belle shrugged. “I kind of did this by accident and I still have no idea how to do things?”

“Oh my, we don’t have time to explain how it works to you, do we?” Rarity tapped her hoof, trying to come up with a solution. “I suppose you’ll just have to stay here and figure it out. Even if something dangerous damages this body it will just trigger the auto-reversion. But close your eyes so you don’t see anything too scary.”

“Oh, okay.” Sweetie Belle closed her remote-control eyes.

“We’d better hurry,” said Twilight. “If Trixie’s not coming out, it might mean she’s setting something up instead.”

Trixie looked up at the sky of the shadow realm. Everything was the opposite here. The sun was a massive black hole that sucked up the eerie glow that permeated this realm. Only under the shade of the trees, where the light didn’t get sucked up, could you make anything out.

It was just her and Applejack in the shadow realm, the two of them handcuffed together with a large chain so that there was no chance of Applejack running off. Her dullahan lackey stayed behind to guard the place, but he should be more than enough. He did have a single jack-o’-lantern nearby, sitting on the ground behind Trixie just in case.

The things they brought from the real world looked normal, but everything else was distorted, blobby shapes of things that twisted out of shape whenever the anti-light of the sun got too near them. They weren’t actually at the castle, but a little bit south of there, in the swamp that surrounded Trixie’s house. The water was pools of a blue darker than black that got clearer and more visible the deeper you went.

Miles to the south, but still visible even from here was a veritable mountain of chains. These were the enormous chains that wrapped around The Darklord. A pile of them rested on the ground, but some rose indefinitely high like they were hooked onto the sky or stars somewhere.

Even from here, you could see his eye, a tiny red pinprick, but an unignorable pinprick, watching you. Trixie tried not to look up at it. There wasn’t anything he could do. He and his powers were all but completely sealed away, but there was still something unsettling about even his distant presence.

It must have been so frustrating for Applejack to be this close to him and knowing there was nothing he could do to help.

Trixie kept her attention on the transformation ritual. She had everything she needed laid out.

A blood sword that had absorbed blood from two thousand werewolves, the malfunctioning transporter turned gene-editor Trixie would use to splice her DNA, the clump of ursa fur, and of course the magic circle she’d need to regulate the whole thing.

All she had to do now was wait another hour or so for those batteries to finish charging.

There was a small chance this would go poorly, but it would be worth it! She could just imagine the look on Flash Bang’s face when she revealed that she’d already completed her transformation into a were-ursa before that army even got here! It would be such a cool moment.

More importantly, was that Trixie had to do this before somepony with the lucky coin showed up. It could turn even a ninety-nine percent chance of success into a certain failure.

Trixie levitated the blood sword in front of her, a massive thing not meant to be wielded by a pony, now stained red with the blood of the werewolves. In a few minutes, she was going to have to stab herself with that.

Just then the fire in the jack-o’-lantern behind her lit itself. Her guard dog needed something, that annoying twat. If he had put dish soap in the dishwasher and filled the kitchen with suds again –

Trixie put a hoof on the jack-o’-lantern, but the message she got wasn’t about a mess for once. He told her every single pumpkin was destroyed at the same time.

Somepony had gotten past her barrier and first line of defense. That feat by itself wasn’t enough to worry Trixie. Trixie could have destroyed all those pumpkins in a single move. Yet there still was a tiny number of ponies who could do the same. The number who were also presently coming after her was one.

“Drat!” Trixie stomped her hoof. “Flash Bang is already here! And I got so excited about getting to reveal I already completed my plan. Well, without an army there’s no way she could beat me so whatever.”

The jack-o’-lantern shook back and forth.

“No? You’re saying it’s not Flash Bang?” Trixie raised an eyebrow. “Who else could it be?”

Trixie used her magic to look through one of the remaining jack-o’-lanterns. Through one of them, she could get a good look at these intruders.

Sure enough, it was a ghastly sight. Pumpkin guts everywhere! Oh, the flies those would attract would be such a headache later.

She could see three ponies standing at the top of one of the larger trees outside her castle. Two unicorns, one pegasus, but that pegasus wasn’t Flash Bang so that much was good.

“So it was three random idiots I’ve never seen.” Trixie rolled her eyes. “What a twist. And here I was expecting to get hit by a tsunami of cosmic irony but all I get is the weakest kind of subversion.”

“Hold up!” Applejack moved forward. “You’re saying that somepony other than Flash Bang is here?”

And now Applejack was getting her hopes up!

“Oh, please! As if anypony can defeat me!” Trixie threw her cape back. “Don’t get too excited that they were able to defeat a bunch of vegetables.”

“Actually, pumpkins are a fruit,” said Applejack.

The dullahan nodded in agreement.

“Oh, I don’t want to hear it from you… guy!” Trixie glared down at the pumpkin. “Do you even have a name? You know what? Don’t even care.”

She turned her attention back to the intruders.

Whoever they were, they had to be unusually tough to get even this far. Trixie only had so many options unless she walked back to the castle. The laziest option was the best here.

“Just watch! I’ll take them all out with a single spell.” Trixie grinned.

“I can’t see anything, but alright.” Applejack shrugged.

Trixie inhaled and let out a silent scream, a howl of terror spell that radiated out from the jack-o’-lantern she was spying on them from. That would incapacitate everypony within miles of her castle. At least, that’s what it normally did.

The pegasus stumbled around, looking like she’d just got off of the hurl-a-whirl, but regained her composure after only a few seconds. An odd reaction. The white unicorn, Trixie knew in a second, was a mad scientist. She resisted the attack by closing her eyes tight and breathing in and out slowly to center herself. Trixie had seen that one a million times. The robot with them should have been a dead giveaway.

But then there was that purple-maned one. The other unicorn was completely unaffected.

That last fact was a worrying sign. Typically, only ponies who’d gone completely insane and witches could withstand an attack like that without flinching. Did this pony have some witch training?

Trixie didn’t recognize her, and she thought she knew all the witches. Did one of them take on a student recently?

Her eyes slowly returned to that pegasus. Come to think of it, she reacted exactly like a witch in training would react to a howl of terror spell.

“Suspicious!” Trixie let off the pumpkin to think to herself.

Something felt wrong about all this, though Trixie couldn’t say what. She tapped her hoof trying to solve the mystery. Then something clicked!

“Ah! Right! Now I remember! I have seen that white one before.” Trixie nodded to herself. “She’s uh, oh what was her name again? Marshmallow? Or something. I suppose the Mad Science League didn’t get the message after our last fight.”

Trixie just had so many enemies it was hard to keep track of them all. They might be here trying to disrupt Trixie. They were competent enough to demand a response.

“And she only brought one robot,” Trixie noted to herself. It was always when they only brought one that you knew you were in for a more serious fight. “Well, whatever. I’m willing to bet that marshmallow brought them all here to try and undo that curse I put on her. If I knock her out, the others will all run away. Seen it a million times.”

Trixie moved forward, dragging Applejack behind her. In truth, she was concerned enough now to warrant returning to the castle instead of leaving it all to her idiot sidekick. But she doubted it’d take long either way.

Twilight tried to make the most bombastic entrance possible.

She teleported down to the entrance of the keep and set off a series of loud explosions. She uprooted all the trees near the entrance, blew the large door off its hinges, and shattered all the windows in the front of the building.

The building had five long banners, all with Trixie printed on them. Twilight lit those on fire. They burned slowly so that smoke would continue to rise from this location.

“Trixie!” Twilight shouted up at the building. “I’m here to uh – steal all your Twilight memorabilia or whatever!”

No response.

“Well, I’d better trip whatever alarms she has.” Twilight stepped into the castle.

Ten suits of armor lined the walls of the great hall. All of them came to life the second Twilight stepped into the room. They all took one step themselves before Twilight cast a single spell that melted all of them at once.

To her left, the floor gave way to reveal a pit of glowing green acid. A hideous thing that was little more than a ball of tentacles and fangs jumped out of the pit, screeching at Twilight. A single kinetic burst splattered it against the far wall and put it out of its misery.

She felt bad for whatever that thing was.

Twilight started up the stairs without anything else attacking her.

Was that really it? Twilight felt like there should have been more. She began exploring Trixie’s keep, occasionally calling out Trixie’s name or blowing holes in the wall with some smaller spell. Yet Trixie still hadn’t shown herself.

As she walked through the keep, Twilight became increasingly disturbed but not in the way she would have guessed.

There were portraits all along the wall. Most of them were of Trixie but a good quarter of them were of Twilight. There was zero doubt Trixie would recognize Twilight in an instant without this disguise. The only thing that was off in the portraits was that Twilight’s hat was patchwork for some reason.

Twilight got to a place with a mirror and a portrait of herself not too far apart. She glanced in the mirror, then at the painting, and decided that they weren’t similar enough for most ponies to get it.

Eventually, she got to one portrait that was drawn of Trixie and Twilight standing together like they were friends. Twilight shuddered. This was getting creepy.

Eventually, she came to the heaviest door she’d seen so far, one with a heavy arcanium bar bolting it shut and several force field spells protecting it. Something important was there.

Instead of wasting her time with the door, Twilight quickly melted a hole in the wall a few feet to the side and simply stepped inside.

It looked like a trophy room. Several objects, each on their own table and underneath a glass container, were arranged neatly. Twilight needed only to look at the first to realize what this was.

This was the room Trixie kept her collection of Twilight’s stolen possessions!

Right there, near the entrance, was an infinity flask she distinctly remembered making. It was one of the ones she’d made with Flash, and it had a small impurity near the neck because of his incompetence. It was still filled to the neck with a sleeping elixir and always would be, hence the name.

She did smile a little, looking at the deformed neck of the flask and remembering that day. He’d been so clumsy with everything Twilight tried to show him. He had been a lot like Rainbow Dash in some ways…

Come to think of it, in a roundabout way he was the only reason she’d met Rainbow Dash or ever left her house at all even if he never encouraged it directly. If he hadn’t betrayed her like that, Twilight would have moved on ages ago like she was supposed to. Instead, she was still stuck here, in a world that felt less like a cage with each day.

It wasn’t like she didn’t have any happy memories of Flash. Most of her memories were happy. It was just that… in the end, they were all lies. The memories never stayed happy for long.

She put the flask back down and looked at the other items, confirming that everything here belonged to her.

At the far back, on a jeweled pedestal like it was the most treasured possession of all, was Twilight’s original witch hat. It was curious Trixie would reserve the most ornate spot for that. It wasn’t magical in any way and had barely survived the centuries. The hat was so patched up that hardly any of the original was left at all.

Come to think of it, was that why she wore a patchwork hat in all those pictures? Because ponies just assumed the hat was always patchwork?

That was the hat her master gave her in an even more distant, less tainted memory. She remembered how excited she was when he finally told her she’d become worthy of it.

At least his intentions were pure. He wanted Twilight to obtain ultimate power and become the strongest witch ever. Maybe Dash’s influence was making her a little peeved at just how much she missed out on because of his methods, but he never lied to her. He never told Twilight he loved her or that he wanted anything more than for her to become strong.

Maybe Twilight would try taking that with her.

At any rate, Trixie valued this stuff. A few explosions over here and Trixie was sure to come to defend it.

First, she went to take her old hat out of its glass case.

Behind her another suit of armor formed, the pieces rising from below the floor. When it was done, all but the head had appeared. A jack-o’-lantern descended from above to form the head and at either side of it appeared two scimitars, each covered in blue flames.

There was the ghost!

Twilight shot a small fireball at it, accidentally blowing its ghostly armor to pieces and leaving the pumpkin and swords to drop on the ground.

“Oh! Sorry! I guess I hit a little harder than I meant to.” Twilight ran over to the pumpkin head that now sat lifelessly on the ground. “Tell me where Trixie is.”

The pumpkin didn’t respond.

“Oh. Right.” Twilight dropped the pumpkin. “You can still talk to her, right? Let’s see. Oh!”

Twilight took her old hat out of its case and put it on.

“Look! I’m stealing this priceless hat!” Twilight pointed up at it. “I bet that’s making Trixie mad, huh? Boy! I sure hope I can get away before she shows up to stop me! Especially since you can just send her a message that I’m here. That’d be so horrible if you did that.”

Even though it couldn’t move, Twilight was certain she saw a lack of amusement on that jack-o’-lantern’s face. She couldn’t even trick a pumpkin.

“And – yeah! I’m taking all this stuff and there’s nothing Trixie can do to stop me!” Twilight grabbed the flasks off the shelf. “I’m taking these bottomless flasks, these socks, this self-weaving netherweave!”

Twilight paused when she found a small ring just big enough to go over a horn. What the heck was this? It had been a long time, but no! Twilight never made anything like that. Somepony must have tricked Trixie into thinking she made it.

“I don’t think this one’s authentic so I’m leaving it behind.” Twilight threw the ring to the side. “But I am taking this uh – uh oh.”

Twilight stepped back as she recognized one more item that was stolen from her long ago, though not one she’d created.

Things had suddenly gotten… dangerous wasn’t the right word, but difficult.

Dash flew down to the ground just in front of the church. Nothing tried to stop them from getting here. Maybe Trixie had been banking too much on those pumpkins.

The whole area was a massive graveyard with the church pressed up against the far wall and several tombs facing towards it. Dash was already mentally preparing herself for the undead to come crawling out of the ground. How could that not happen?

“That one.” Fluttershy looked up at the towering cathedral. “Most of them are in there, but there’s a few in those crypts too.”

Sure enough, the old church looked like it’d been converted into a jail of sorts. The stained-glass windows depicting alicorns along the edge all had thick, metal bars running down them, preventing anypony trapped inside from simply smashing their way out.

“A weird place to put your dungeon.” Dash flew up to the door of the cathedral and put her hoof on the large, wooden door. It wasn’t even locked. They had to be in cages inside the building.

“Their hearts are beating fast,” Fluttershy warned in a hushed whisper.

“So?” Dash asked. “They’re probably just scared or something.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“No need to fear!” Dash threw the doors open. “Rainbow Dash is – whoops!”

They weren’t in cages but that was a bad thing. They were not afraid nor were they even ponies.
Dash just now remembered they were werewolves and there were a lot of them in there. Snarling wolves filled the main room of the church to occupancy, some of them far larger than a pony. It was nothing but red eyes, fangs, and claws in every direction. There had to be hundreds of them cramped together.

Maybe Dash could have closed the door and simply walked away, but a heavy thunk and the sound of shattering glass all around her killed that notion. From the looks of things, a mechanism was in place so that if you opened one door or window, all the other doors and windows of the place opened.

The two doors on the other side of the room swung wide open. The bars covering the windows lowered and vanished. Every window simultaneously shattered, leaving gaping holes in the building. When Dash tried to close the door, something held it tightly in place.

A small tape recorder next to the door was also triggered.

“Hi! It’s Trixie!” The voice came over the recording. “I can’t be here to gloat at the moment, but– ”

Dash didn’t hear any more of the tape. The wolves went ballistic and drowned it out. This tidal wave of claws and fangs consumed the room and barreled towards Dash.

She jumped outside and Fluttershy blocked the door with a wall of ice. Then she froze new windows of ice where the glass had once been. Werewolves were slamming against the walls and the way those stone walls shook was enough to convince Dash they could tear through even the stone before long.

“Uh! Um!” Fluttershy looked around desperately trying to find other exits to close.

Even if Fluttershy had been fast enough to seal up every exit from the building it wouldn’t have been enough. The crypts behind them opened and rabid werewolves came charging at them from every angle.

Dash flapped a wing at the ones coming from behind, casting the wind wall spell. It didn’t feel like the wind was moving, but whenever a werewolf tried to cross that invisible line Dash set, it would suddenly kick in with enough force to throw them back several feet.

“Ha!”

The only problem was that she could feel them ramming up against the invisible wall like she had to hold their weight up with that wing. The harder they hit, the more she had to strain her wing to keep them at bay. This spell took concentration to keep up. There were twenty of them, and she could hold them off, but this was close to her limit.

The ice behind Dash shattered and a much greater number of them came pouring out through the windows and door. Even more were running out from around the other side of the building.

There was no way Dash could block that many! She turned into crows and flew up, a few of them not fast enough to make it. But dash did get above them.

One of the wolves lunged at Fluttershy, who cowered like she was in actual danger, only for the wolf to go straight through her. One of them was safe, at least. Not that the wolves took the hint. So enraged, they were, that they kept pouncing and clawing at her despite the futility.

Dash’s highest crow turned back into a pony and Dash continued to fly up until she was about level with the spire of the church. Thankfully, pegasi didn’t keep their wings when they became werewolves.

“I think I’m safe up here.” Dash looked down at the sea of fangs. Those wolves were going ballistic right now! They were tripping over themselves in a crazed rage, trying to jump up at Dash even where it was impossible.

As if doing it just to prove her wrong one of the bigger ones jumped off the ground all the way up to where Dash was. Dash dodged out of the way again and took off into the air, going a good distance from the church.

“How can we get them out of here when they’re like this?” Fluttershy asked. “I could try freezing them, but then they’d get hurt.”

“Okay, hold on! Maybe this still works?” Dash suggested. “They’re chasing me, so they’ll chase me out of here, right?”

“But will they be safe once we get them outside?” Fluttershy asked. “They might run off in every direction. Then when they turn back, they’ll be exhausted and in the middle of a dangerous swamp.”

That was true, but then what else could they do?

Knocking them all out would just make it even harder to escape with them.

“Maybe you shoot fear beams at them or something?” Dash suggested. “Maybe we can herd them or something?”

“I tried but it’s not working.” Fluttershy shook her head. “They’ve completely lost control, even more than normal. Trixie did something to them. I’m sure.”

That sounded right. Now that she thought about it, werewolves weren’t normally able to transform during the day. They also didn’t normally foam at the mouth, nor were they this vicious.

They had to undo whatever Trixie did. But the two ponies who had a chance of doing that weren’t here.

“Okay, I’m gonna try calling the others.” Dash took out the walkie-talkie. “You keep them from getting out.”

Already one of the wolves was testing the limits of the greater cage that was the walled-off section of this area. It was so fast it managed to start clawing its way up the side of the wall. Fluttershy prevented it by making the walls icy, then adding more ice to the top of the wall.

That wolf slipped off, but they didn’t have long before one did get out.

Rarity strode through a dark and dusty corridor of what she was certain was the loneliest part of the castle. Even in the middle of the day, the lighting was so poor in here Rarity could hardly see a thing!

“Heat signatures negative.” Saccharin led the way through most of the abandoned building, though it was looking increasingly unnecessary.

“It’s starting to look like there’s nopony in this building,” said Rarity. “Just look at how dusty it is in here! I think it’s clear Trixie doesn’t even use this building. What a waste.”

The first clue this area was abandoned was that it had slowly sunk into the soft ground of the marsh whereas the keep itself was maintained. When Rarity first got here, the doorway and first floor were half-buried.

Enough dust to excite an archeologist covered each room. What little furniture survived was rotted to the point that it wasn't far off from collapsing to dust itself from the sheer peer pressure of it all. She couldn’t tell if the doors had once been made of metal or wood, but they were all rotted out of existence by now.

It was impressive this building was still standing at all.

Rarity knew just enough about architectural styles to trace it back, from its distinctive arches to the mythic period of Golden Feather some 1400 years ago. Rarity wondered if any of her creations could last that long.

“I can’t believe she’d let such an ancient thing go to waste like this.” Rarity had to hold her nose to keep any dust from getting in. Walking about was kicking up a bit of a dirt storm. “To be fair, there are plenty of rooms in my castle I don’t use, but at least I’m civilized enough to have a legion of robots constantly dusting them regardless.”

Rarity moved out onto a stone balcony, giving it a good stomp before going out onto it to make sure it didn’t collapse. It was a nice, large one, from which she could see the rest of the castle grounds. Nothing looked to be happening at the keep just yet.

Behind Rarity, there was a flash of light that sent a wave of dust in every direction.

It was the witch, Trixie! Beside her was some other pony coughing terribly from all the dust.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Marshmallow Cringe.” Trixie stepped out onto the balcony. “I have no idea what you’re thinking coming here. I beat you and fifty of your buddies last time. You think three ponies and one robot will be enough to take the legendary Trixie down?”

Rarity’s attention went to the other pony with Trixie.

It was her! The pony from the picture Rarity had been shown. Applejack was standing right next to Trixie, handcuffed to her. But the earth pony was acting strange. The moment she saw Rarity there was a look of surprise, of recognition. After that moment, Applejack looked away and kept her jaw shut tight like even one word might give away some secret.

Rarity was so close to their target, but with Trixie right here and Twilight on the other side of the castle, getting the earth pony away would be impossible.

The portal behind them didn’t look like it closed completely. Trixie kept one of her back legs extended back into it, stretching into a pool of blackness just behind them. Perhaps if Rarity could break her contact with that, Trixie wouldn’t be able to get back there on her own.

“Hmph!” Rarity turned her cheek on Trixie. “Well, I assure you that my designs have improved vastly compared to the 5000s you destroyed back then. Even still, I’m not the one who’s come here to fight you. Your true opponent is in the keep down there.”

If she could get Trixie to attack Twilight instead…

Trixie looked over at her keep with one eyebrow skeptically raised.

“Oh, please! Like Trixie would ever take such obvious bait.” Trixie laughed. “You’re clearly the leader and I’m taking you out first! Flame geyser!”

A geyser of magma, not flames (Rarity would have to have a word with Twilight about that), appeared under Saccharin, throwing her into the air. Trixie then summoned five more torrents of flame to blast her from every angle. Saccharin was enveloped in a ball of fire mid-air.

The fire was enough to get her to glow a little, but Rarity knew quite well flames that hot wouldn’t be enough to damage her.

“Huh! It’s not melting. This one’s pretty tough compared to the old ones.” Trixie looked over at Rarity. “In another twenty years, you could put up a fight. Though oh, you can’t do any more mad science without going crazy, huh?”

Rarity glanced at the chains but knew Trixie and her psychic powers would block any attack unless she was more distracted. No, this was the time to call Twilight. She quickly took out her walkie-talkie.

“Twilight– ” was all she could manage before Trixie crushed the walkie-talkie with her mind. Hopefully, that would be enough.

Saccharin surrounded herself in electricity, pushing the fire back and getting ready to send some down at Trixie.

“Ethereal hammer!” Trixie summoned just that, a lucid hammer with a head as large as she was.

The hammer swung and slammed into Saccharin, exploding in the process. A clang rang through the empty courtyard and Saccharin flew off like Trixie just hit a home run with her. But it wasn’t enough to put even a tiny dent in the robot.

Completely undamaged, Saccharin took out one of her buzzsaws and launched it down at Trixie as she fell. The speed of it was enough to force Trixie to use her psychic powers to catch it. This was the one opening Rarity would get.

Rarity took out a small needle from her mane and threw it at the chains binding Trixie to Applejack. The needle exploded with just enough force to break one of the links, setting Applejack free!

Applejack didn’t miss the opportunity. She bucked at Trixie hard and tried to push off forward at the same time. But Trixie hadn’t been caught completely flatfooted. Her horn glowed ever so slightly just before Applejack bucked her in the face.

It sounded like the witch had been kicked hard enough to bring down a brick wall. Yet from the looks of it, Applejack was the one who got hurt.

A look of horrible pain shot across her face, and she fell flat on the ground. Yet she gritted through it and pulled herself forward with her forelegs.

Another pool of darkness opened just in front of Applejack. The sort of chains you’d see on a ghost came up from the ground and wrapped themselves around Applejack, pulling her down to her stomach.

Before Rarity could make another move, Trixie summoned more ethereal weapons. Two swords made scissor blades against her neck and a spear hovered right in front of her heart.

“Another easy victory for Trixie.” Trixie flipped her cape triumphantly. “As if there was ever any doubt. What were you even hoping to do? I know you can’t seriously be stupid enough to think this would have been enough to defeat somepony as astounding as me.”

Rarity tried her best to turn her eyes to the back of her head to see where Saccharin was. She knew for a fact a blow like before could throw her, but not harm her. Then again, Trixie might slip if the robot came back in too hot.

“Well?” Trixie pushed the spear forward just enough for Rarity to feel a prick. “Maybe you’re thinking I won’t kill you? Well even if I don’t want to go that far I could always turn you into my pet frog for a few years until you do talk. I have loads of spells involving frogs, you know. Ten seconds until you start eating bugs!”

Rarity cringed. Frankly, she could deal with death. Sweetie Belle had died and gotten over it. But turning into a frog?!

“Seven. Six.”

“We came here to bring an end to your obnoxious ways!” Rarity declared. “As I said before, the pony who’s going to fight you is over in the keep.”

“You really want me to go over there, huh?” Trixie asked. “You’re sure there isn’t something else?”

Despite herself, Rarity did glance down at Applejack. Trixie caught it without missing a beat.

“Oh! Are you here for her?” Trixie gestured at Applejack. “You’re planning on kidnapping her for yourself, huh? Be honest!”

“Well, I – we’re not kidnapping her per se,” said Rarity.

“Hm.” Trixie thought about it for a second, then dismissed the ethereal weapons. “You know what? Sure! I’ll let you have Applejack!”

“Oh! Well, I wasn’t expecting you to be so amicable about this.” Rarity narrowed her eyes. “What’s the catch?”

“A catch? From Trixie? Never!” Trixie jabbed a small syringe into Applejack’s side, causing the mare to seize up, barely able to still stand. “Here! I’ll even cast a few spells on her to make her tougher! Let’s see. Flame aura, fire breath, gigantification, dire rage…”

Applejack began to twitch violently. Her body was transforming into its wolf form, but that was only the start of it. She was growing much faster than she should be. She became enveloped in flames and fire spouted from her nostrils every time she breathed. Her new claws and fangs became metallic, and that same metal ran up her legs and over her jaw giving her something resembling armor.

“You two have fun!” Trixie waved at Rarity as she backed up into the shadows. “I’ll come pick her up in twenty minutes.”

Trixie vanished back into the shadow realm as Applejack finished her transformation. She left behind Applejack, a wolf now the size of an elephant and enveloped in flames,

Applejack stood on her hind legs and roared with enough force to make Rarity stumble back.

“Oh bother.”

The werewolf moved far faster than anything that size had the right to move, too quickly for Rarity to react. Applejack brought down a flaming claw at Rarity like she was swatting a fly.

Saccharin came back onto the balcony just in time to block the attack. She activated her buzzsaw, digging it into the werewolves' claws as she struggled to hold her ground.

The buzzsaw managed to slice off one of Applejack’s claws but wore itself down to a smooth metal disk with barely a tooth left in the process. The single claw fell to the ground next to Rarity. It was the size of a sword!

“Intimidation mode activated!” Saccharin’s eyes began to glow red.

Guns came out on either side of Saccharin and fired at Applejack. The shots hit, but Applejack wasn’t bleeding afterward and hardly moved an inch from the gunfire.

“Aggression level ten!” The guns changed out for the death ray. Two long rods with a large ball that crackled and glowed with electricity at the end of each emerged from her sides.

“Wait! We only want to pacify her!” Rarity called out to Saccharin.

“Death is the ultimate pacification!”

“No! We need her alive.”

Saccharin hesitated but turned the death ray down to its lowest setting. Two arcs of lighting surged from her to Applejack, enveloping the werewolf in electricity. Applejack was tougher than Rarity thought, struggling but ultimately shrugging off the attack. Rarity should have told her to use more power!

Applejack used the fire breath spell Rarity knew she heard Trixie call out. Only it looked more like a beam of lava than what you’d get from a flamethrower. The weight of whatever flaming liquid she was spewing slowly pushed Saccharin back to the edge of the balcony.

Rarity wasn’t the greatest mage in the world, but she could manage a basic shield, just enough to keep that from cooking her. Now both Applejack and Saccharin were on fire.

Applejack charged forward, tackling Saccharin and sending them both to the ground below.

A moment later they were back up and fighting again. Applejack was throwing and dragging Saccharin all over the courtyard but couldn’t damage the robot to any real extent. It was doubtful that werewolf could ever damage Saccharin at this rate.

Tempting as it was to follow Saccharin around, calling out her attacks and shouting ‘dodge it’ at her like this was a robot fight, Rarity could think of something more productive. In her haste, Trixie had carelessly left that syringe behind, lying on the floor.

Rarity lifted it with her magic and examined the few drops that remained. It was a bright green liquid, but more telling was the type of glass the syringe was made of, one made for containing super radiation. That must be what was exacerbating Applejack’s condition like this. Werewolves had a much harder time controlling themselves when exposed to that stuff.

“But if she has something like this,” Rarity said to herself. “What’s stopping her from doing this to all of them?”

“We have a situation,” Rainbow Dash came over the backup walkie-talkie. “All of the hostages are werewolves! Well, I mean in their wolf forms! They’re berserk and spreading all over the castle!”

Looking off to the east, Rarity could see exactly where Rainbow Dash was, albeit indirectly. Fluttershy had made that part of the wall much taller by adding a barrier of ice on top of it, no doubt trying to keep them from running off into the swamp.

“Yes, I noticed that myself.” Behind her, Saccharin was thrown up past the balcony. Applejack came up a moment later to clamp her jaws down on Saccharin and drag her back to the ground. “Oh, also I seem to have found Applejack. I may be able to help with that, but I’ll need Twilight to come here and you to lead the rest of them my way.”

“Got it!” Dash said.

“I might need another minute,” Twilight warned. “Actually, Fluttershy? If you come over here I can get out faster.”

Rarity glance back at the courtyard below just in time to see Applejack throw Saccharin through the wall, crumbling a large section of it. It was for the best they were getting farther away. Rarity would need a few minutes to put everything together anyway.

“Crud. Crud. Crud.” Dash messed up her hair as she looked over the situation rapidly spiraling out of control.

She was supposed to corral these werewolves over to Rarity, but she’d already lost so many of them! Those things could jump so high and run over walls. Despite their best efforts, a good number of them got out anyway. The ones not in the line of sight with Dash were constantly freaking out and ramming themselves against any wall they could.

Dash was sitting at the gate, unsure if she should open it and hope the outside ones would chase her back in or if that would just let way too many out. Any of them that ran into the swamp would likely die later.

“We have to try and get them back inside the castle walls,” Fluttershy stated the obvious.

“Sure! But what are the chances that they’re all just gonna spontaneously run back to us?” Dash asked.

At that exact moment, what looked to be a huge ball of fire came rolling past them, just outside the walls. It scorched everything it touched. All the trees outside the castle and that field of pumpkin guts were now on fire.

“And now we gotta deal with whatever that is?!” Dash pointed at the source of the fire, too far away to see.

The wolves outside the walls snarled at the fire, but their berserk state wasn’t enough for them to charge into certain death. Now they were desperate to get back inside the walls, clawing up with the same passion they had before.

Dash opened the gate and most of them came rushing back in.

“That was convenient,” Fluttershy said. “Thankfully that fire won’t spread fast given how damp it is.”

“Yeah. A little too convenient.” Dash looked out at the flames with suspicion. “That keeps happening! And every time…”

Every time she’d gotten lucky, she asked the same question just beforehand, didn’t she?

“Let me try something. Uh. What are the chances that they all start running towards Rarity?”

That same thing from before slammed into the western wall. It wasn’t enough to knock the wall over, but flames spilled inside. The fire started spreading through the graveyard, forcing them towards where Rarity was.

“That’s spooky even for a ghost,” Fluttershy whispered. “What’s doing that?”

“I have no idea.” Dash crossed her forelegs.

“Did you find anything with magic recently?” Fluttershy asked.

“Well.” Dash suddenly remembered and reached into her bag and pulled out that ancient coin. “Wait! I did find this coin! Do you think this is the one true lucky coin or something?”

“I have no idea.” Fluttershy shook her head.

“Whatever! I’ll just assume that’s the case for now!” Dash flew towards the gate connecting the graveyard to the rest of the castle. “We gotta go!”

She wasn’t sure how much it’d help, but Dash made a small cut on her foreleg, just enough for it to get bloody, before landing on top of the gate. From the looks of things, it helped a lot. Between that and the fire, the whole gang showed up.

“Alright. I’ll lead them over there, you go help Twilight with whatever,” said Dash.

“B-but the ghost!” Fluttershy squeaked. “It’s over there!”

“You remember your promise, right?” Dash asked. “This is your chance to do things differently!”

“I…” Fluttershy closed her eyes and trembled, paralyzed at the thought of confronting something bigger than a wisp. She forced herself to open her eyes and nod anyway. “I will. I meant it when I said I was sorry.”

Dash nodded too. She opened the gate and jumped down to the ground. The wolves came pouring out, forcing her to cast the murder spell but they kept coming after those crows as Dash led them to the oldest building.

As she moved closer and closer to the other ghost, Fluttershy breathed in and out heavily trying to calm herself. Fluttershy couldn’t breathe for real, but pretending to helped out sometimes.

There could be zero doubt where the other ghost was. He wasn’t making any attempt to suppress his aura. It led her to one room that she stopped in front of. Honestly, she wished she was about to go into a room filled with spiders. Spiders were cute. Ghosts were scary.

Fluttershy held her fake breath and poked her head inside the room.

What she saw was terrifying! A dullahan with a pumpkin for a head! Fluttershy froze the second she saw it.

It was wielding a scythe enveloped in blue flames. The walls of the room were covered in chains with the same blue fire covering them. Twilight simply stood in the middle of the room like she was waiting for a train.

Twilight instantly defeated it, destroying its armored body and leaving the pumpkin to smash on the floor. She wondered what exactly she was here to do.

“Fluttershy!” Twilight called out to her. “Okay, so before you say anything, I did not create the infinite death scythe. I just inherited it from my master and forgot to throw it out. So don’t blame me for it being so sadistic.”

“W-wait. I-infinite death scythe?!” Fluttershy didn’t dare to poke out more than a single eye.

“That thing.” Twilight pointed at the scythe next to the smashed pumpkin. “It’s a weapon that allows you to murder somepony an infinite number of times. You can also kill yourself as many times as you want while inside the stasis field which is why he keeps—“

The ghost that Fluttershy hoped was defeated suddenly remerged. The pumpkin unsquashed itself and the armor reassembled. He tried lunging at Twilight with the scythe, but Twilight quickly destroyed him a second time.

“Eep!” Fluttershy flew underground. “I’m sorry! This is too scary!”

“I know an infinite number of deaths sounds scary but if you think about it's more like an indefinite death scythe. That’s less bad than one definitive death,” said Twilight.

“No! I— I meant!” Fluttershy pointed a trembling hoof at the smashed pumpkin.

“Fluttershy, it’s basically a plant between reforming,” Twilight assured her. “Your phobia is completely irrational. Does that help?”

“Um. No?”

The dullahan respawned yet again and Fluttershy went back underground.

“As you can see, he can endlessly reform by killing himself infinitely. The wielder can just die whenever they feel like it.” Twilight allowed him a bit more time to swing at her, stepping out of the way as she talked. “We’re stuck in an infinite loop no matter who kills whom. I could summon an asteroid to blow this whole thing up or—"

Twilight immediately destroyed the armor again. That was enough for Fluttershy to peek her head out again.

“I can keep this up way longer than you can, buddy,” Twilight promised the harmless pumpkin. “But you can just tell him to give you the scythe, right? That’ll be faster and safer.”

“Well, t-technically I could.” Fluttershy swallowed. Rainbow Dash needed her! Dash rescued her and now she needed Fluttershy to do this! “O-okay I’ll try!”

The dullahan respawned once again and Twilight led it around the room as it slashed at her, giving Fluttershy time. Even though she was determined, Fluttershy hesitated. It was like having to jump off a cliff. Even if you knew you could fly, it was still something you had to force yourself to do.

Finally, she did force herself to do it. Fluttershy’s fear poured into him and filled them both, but his fear and hers weren’t exactly the same. She could feel so much fear directed at herself. But she could feel it wasn’t Fluttershy herself he was scared of. It brought his own deepest fears bubbling to the surface and there was someone else out there he was terrified of.

To feel so directly somepony else being so scared, and of herself of all things, was enough to cut through Fluttershy’s nervousness. She pulled back a little. Fluttershy and the dullahan looked at each other, both now surprised at the other’s fear, their emotions in sync.

Fluttershy wondered what he was so afraid of. She tried thinking of Trixie, but no, that wasn’t who he was scared of.

She could feel that he hated Trixie. The only reason he was down here was to hide from the ghost in Crater Cemetery. He felt like the specter from there used her aura to effectively put all the other ghosts in what amounted to mind control. He’d only barely escaped from that place.

Fluttershy could feel resentment towards Trixie. Even after being here for years, she still didn’t know his name, just called him ‘The dullahan’ all the time. Even if he hated it here, it was the only place he could go.

Fluttershy wondered what his name was and that took him off guard. He felt brief embarrassment before telling her.

She felt emotions around pumpkins and pies and realized that meant his name was something like ‘Pumpkin Pie’. Apparently, he’d been a baker who was… decapitated by a pie in the face?

Fluttershy nodded along like that made any kind of sense. She didn’t ‘talk’ to other ghosts like this a lot so maybe she didn’t get that right.

Fluttershy remembered how she used to get pushed around by the other ghosts all the time. She knew how Mr. Pie felt. She’d wanted so badly to get away from them as well. She too felt like she’d never find anywhere else to go but she’d been wrong about that.

Feeling her sympathy made him lower his guard and the infinite death scythe ever so slightly. She could tell he didn’t want to fight somepony who was being nice to him.

Fluttershy didn’t feel like it was okay for him to turn around and hurt other people like this. Even for his own sake, he needed to find somewhere else to hide. He’d never be happy working for Trixie.

Fluttershy knew her will over him was strong enough she could literally force him to hand the scythe over, to do anything she asked. But instead, she simply held her hoof out and gave him the chance to do the right thing.

He looked down at the scythe, then up at Fluttershy, and handed her the scythe.

“Thank you, Mr. Pie.” Fluttershy took the scythe. “But you really should leave now. I’m sure you’ll find somewhere better than this.”

He did feel happy to hear his name again. He nodded and ran off to the north.

At that, Fluttershy felt such an enormous relief she almost collapsed. That really… hadn’t been so bad. Though she had no idea what she would have done if Pie had been meaner.

Fluttershy was about to say she had no idea what to do with this thing when the chains around the walls all crumbled to dust by themselves.

“There!” Twilight straightened herself out. “And now you’re over your phobia forever, right?”

“I don’t know about that,” Fluttershy whispered.

“Come on! We need to get to the others.” Twilight ran off down the hall.

She must have cast that spell ten times in a row to get here, but she got here! Dash was right in front of the building Rarity had been assigned to. She could only hope Rarity was inside somewhere.

Dash darted inside with the wolves still chasing her. She put up the wind wall just large enough to cover the door and windows of the entrance. She only managed to hold this many off because of the choke point. Heck, she could feel them pounding against the stone wall. They might burst through the bricks!

And how long until some of them managed to go around to the back?

“Ah, there you are, Rainbow!” Rarity looked up and pointed a needle at Dash. “You did bring all the werewolves here, yes.”

Dash felt the wolves slamming against her barrier. It felt like she was holding up two hundred pounds right now.

“Um. Yeah!” Dash nodded. “Yeah, I did. You do have a plan, yeah? Cause I’m lost.”

“Well, it’s common knowledge that super radiation can exacerbate lycanthropy,” Rarity reminded her. “I know for certain now that Trixie injected them with a super radioactive serum to this effect. I’d estimate the effect would wear off in about one and a half days after the initial injection by itself.”

“Okay, cool.” Dash struggled to keep her wall of wind up as wolves continued to pound against it. Already they were getting smarter and slamming against it all at once instead of one at a time. “But you can stop it faster than that, yeah?”

“Why yes of course. Thankfully I have all manner of ways to deal with super radiation what with how commonly I deal with it myself.”

Rarity had a small pile of red needles that glowed a faint red by her side. The only thing Dash knew about super radiation was ‘don’t get near it’, so she stayed back and hoped Rarity knew what she was doing.

In addition to the red needle, Dash saw Rarity’s bag was filled with an enormous number of regular ones.

“Did you bring hundreds of sewing needles with you?” Dash asked.

“Hmph!” Rarity looked offended at the idea. “These aren’t mere needles, Rainbow Dash. They’re modular chronomatic–”

“Okay, okay! That’s super impressive!” Dash knew all too well how dangerous the nerd-tangent could be, having lived with one for months now. “Just tell me what to do with them. That’s my pay grade.”

“And you wonder why we call you barbarians,” Rarity muttered to herself. “You stick them with the pointy side, and they’ll go back to normal. Preferably in the thigh. But only the red ones. I need to make more.”

Rarity went back to her work, sticking a normal-looking needle into the radioactive potion.

Maybe Dash could throw them through her barrier? It’d be tricky, but worth a shot. She grabbed on in her hoof, but that plan got canceled when one of the wolves smashed its way straight through the stone wall to their right.

Dash recognized that one! He was the jumper from before, the biggest of the werewolves. It pounced at the two ponies, threatening to crush them both. Dash grabbed Rarity and jumped back with her, out of the way of the oncoming wolf. She got out of the way, but now he was standing between them and the needles.

“You’re the athletic one!” Rarity grabbed onto Dash, hiding behind her. “Get it with the needle!”

At least Dash had a chance to test out whatever the heck Rarity just made.

Dash used one of her other new spells to send her shadow out and grab a needle from behind the large wolf. As the wolf moved in on the two ponies, her shadow came in from behind and jabbed the wolf on his inner thigh.

The large wolf staggered but not from tensing up or anything of the sort. It looked more like he was confused and suddenly in control again, if exhausted.

Then he began to shrink, his claws fusing back into hooves, his fangs retracting and his fur shortening and turning red. Soon he was back to a normal pony. He was still bigger than a normal pony, but he was a pony.

He was confused, but still standing,

“What—?” He understandably had difficulty taking stock of the situation. “What’s happening?”

At about the same time, Dash’s wind wall finally broke down. Werewolves charged into the entrance. The only thing that bought them time was them all jamming together in the doorway.

“Yo, guy!” Dash held up a bunch of the red needles in front of him. “Stand in front of the door and poke any of them that try coming inside! Trust me!”

“Uh. Eyup!”

Thank goodness the big red guy wasn’t the willful type. He rushed forward to comply with Dash’s order, running to the door with several needles. Were it not for those, even a pony of his size wouldn’t have lasted long.

Now Dash was freed up to go crow.

“Now we just gotta do that like, uh, three hundred more times.” Dash craned her neck and got ready. “Just cover me.”

Dash cast the murder spell.

One crow flew onto Rarity’s back while the rest each grabbed a needle and flew down into the pit of rampaging werewolves. With no concern for their own safety, they swooped down and jabbed the needle into random wolves, typically getting torn apart a moment later.

But it didn’t matter much. As soon as the first wave was done, Dash turned back, cast the spell, and sent a fresh wave of crows down again.

None of them tried to run away, all of them coming out from wherever they were at the chance to maul a pony. The number of those just outside the building was quickly growing. Dash knew she had to be fast as the wolves didn’t look to have any compassion for the recovering ponies.

Before long, the mass in front of the building flipped to the point that Rarity and that big guy were letting the ponies retreat inside for safety. A number of them got scratched or bit before Dash could get the attacking wolf off them but none of the wounds looked untreatable, what little Dash saw of them.

Then the whole central mass was converted, and the hard part was over. Dash merely circled the entrance, jabbing any wolves that charged at them from the sides until things finally calmed down.

Dash flew outside, as a pony, and looked around for any straggling wolves. It looked like they’d gotten them all.

They now had a small army of dazed, confused, and sometimes injured ponies making a rabble in and around the abandoned building. Dash might be able to lead them away soon, once they recovered.

“Let’s see here.” Rarity looked through her bag. “Five needles left. Are we missing anypony?”

“One more minute,” said big red. He was by far the most injured pony here, but the wounds didn’t seem to bother him at all as he looked over the crowd.

Saccharin came in like a meteor and slammed into the wall with a considerable bang. The paint on her was completely gone at this point and her armor was terribly scratched up, but there wasn’t anything that looked like serious damage.

“Ah yes.” Rarity nodded. “I neglected to mention that I found Applejack. Though she is a slightly larger werewolf than the others. My needle might not get through her hide, but I think if we can throw it into her mouth or some such, we should be fine.”

“Alright, but where is she?” Dash looked out to the forest.

There was a red glow coming from the north now. Dash’s first guess was Saccharin had set the trees ablaze with her flame throwers, but soon realized that wasn’t the case.

A single claw, metallic and flaming, curled around the top of the wall. A moment later, the head of a colossal werewolf appeared.

Applejack was now as tall as the wall itself. Metal had continued to grow over her body so now her entire head and legs were encased in it and still it moved up along her back. Around her mouth and claws, the metal was red hot and slowly dripping down to the ground.

By simply walking forward, Applejack was able to tear down the wall.

“Slightly larger?” Dash’s eye twitched.

“Oh my. I suppose the gigantification spell is progressive.” Rarity shrugged. “But my point still stands. You need only fly one of these needles into her mouth and stab a tonsil. Go on.”

Rarity made a little shooing motion. Dash rolled her eyes, cast the spell again, and had one crow pick up a needle.

Dash flew straight into Applejack’s gaping maw, which was hardly a tight maneuver. The only problem was that Applejack was covered in fire. Dash’s crow and the needle it was holding were both incinerated before they got close.

“Well that didn’t work.” Dash turned back to a pony. “Any more bright ideas?”

“I suppose I could, well.” Rarity looked around, desperate for an idea. Applejack reared down like she was about to pounce and crush them all. Rarity settled on Saccharin in a moment of desperation. “Saccharin! Now we set aggression level to ten!”

“Finally!” Saccharin’s eyes blazed red.

Her death rays began to glow white. Two lightning beams, each far larger than Saccharin herself, shot forward. The beams slammed into Applejack’s chest just as she jumped and flipped even that massive beast over, sending her back over where the wall had just been.

But even that wasn’t enough.

It only took Applejack a few seconds to get back on her feet and send a roar that shook the ground. The group of hostages was in full retreat now, trying to get behind the building they were currently in for fear it was going to be leveled any second now.

“Recharging in thirty seconds,” said Saccharin.

“Alright. I may be out of ideas now,” Rarity whispered to Dash.

“Ah, screw it! I’m using my magic coin!” Dash took out the lucky coin.

“Your magic what?” Rarity asked.

“What are the chances that Twilight shows up at this exact moment?” Dash asked.

“I suppose about—"

From the darkness, something unseen hit Applejack with enough force to shatter the metal mask that now covered her face and send the wolf tumbling to one side. As Applejack rolled, she took down most of what was left of the western wall. She kept rolling until she was back out in the swamp once more.

“See?” Dash dangled the coin in front of Rarity. “Magical lucky coin!”

“And how long has this been an option?” Rarity reached for it.

“Don’t touch it!” Dash snatched it away from her a little faster than she’d meant to.

Rarity raised an eyebrow with concern at that, but Twilight landed next to them a moment later with Fluttershy in turn.

“Twilight!” Dash called out to her. “That big one’s Applejack. Can you zap her back to normal?”

“It looks like somepony cast a lot of spells on her.” Twilight looked over at Applejack, still stunned on her side a good distance away. “It’ll take a while, but— oh.”

Applejack got back up, knocking over what little of the wall remained just by stumbling around.

“If she even gets close to us, somepony’s going to die,” said Rarity. She took out one of her needles, showing it to Twilight with a smile like she was trying to impress the witch. “Thankfully, I have a modular chronomatic—"

“Yeah, yeah! Gotta jab her with the needles!” Dash interrupted her again. “Fluttershy! Can you uh, cool her off? If I get close, I can turn her back to normal.”

“I really don’t like taking heat from living things,” said Fluttershy.

“This is the one time it’s okay! It’s for her own good!” Dash pointed at Applejack, who’d finally regained her balance.

“Mm.” Fluttershy looked over at Applejack like Dash just asked her to eat something out of the trash. “Alright.”

Applejack let out another breath of fire and Twilight erected a massive shield around the entire building behind her. If Twilight weren’t here, that absolutely would have killed all of them instantly. The entire courtyard and surrounding swamp were enveloped in flames this time. But it wasn’t enough to break Twilight’s shield.

The ghost reluctantly flew up and over the fire towards Applejack. Fluttershy sucked the heat away from Applejack. Not only did it extinguish the flames, but frost ran across Applejack’s fur. She began staggering about, the metal on her legs much more brittle and stiffer now. Meanwhile, Twilight ran forward and cast what must have been a shrinking spell.

Applejack opened her mouth to try and breathe more fire but only a wheeze came out. This was the perfect chance!

Dash cast the murder spell again and sent a crow in to try and jab a needle into her tongue. Applejack snapped her jaw shut the moment Dash made the jab, so Dash wasn’t sure if it had worked at first.

Upon turning back, she could see Applejack shrinking rapidly. It wasn’t until the fur began to recede that Dash was sure she’d jabbed correctly. Applejack wasn’t just shrinking now but turning back into a normal pony.

When she was about four or five times bigger than a normal mare, she fell over to one side. She was mostly a pony again, only those pieces of metal were still attached to her making it look like she still had fangs and claws.

Applejack wasn’t unconscious but she was in a daze. Twilight sat down next to her, slowly removing all the spells Trixie cast on her. The metal finally crumbled to dust and Applejack returned to normal size.

“Now we got them all!” Dash flew over to where Twilight and Fluttershy were.

“Oh, wow!” Fluttershy put her hooves on her cheek, smiling with absolute elation. “I forgot how wonderful it feels to take heat away from an animal. I could almost feel the blood running through me!”

The look Fluttershy gave Dash when she got near was one of absolute starvation.

“Uh– ” Dash took a step back.

Seeing that was enough to snap Fluttershy out of it. She shook her head to regain control.

“I’m so sorry!” Fluttershy put her forehooves together pleadingly. “I can keep it under control! I just need a second.”

Fluttershy flew down underground. Dash hadn’t realized feeding off the living could make you relapse like that. She felt kinda bad for suggesting it now.

“Now what was this about a magic coin you found?” Rarity came up from behind.

“Oh, I think this coin I found before is magic.” Dash took it out again. “Whenever I ask what the chances of something happening are, it happens!”

“Rainbow Dash, you have no idea what that thing is,” Twilight lectured her. “You know that kind of magic can be horribly dangerous. Have you seriously been using that this whole time?”

“Not on purpose!” Dash pulled the coin away from her. “Okay, on purpose one time. Or two, I guess. But that’s it. Think about it! I could use this to give Trixie a heart attack. That’s the one vulnerable part of her, yeah?”

“This could be probability distortion.” Twilight ignored the suggestion and eyed the coin suspiciously. “Don’t you know anything about conservation of probability?”

“Conservation of probability?” Dash repeated it. “Did you just make that up on the spot? The heck does that even mean?”

“It means don’t use it again.” Twilight snatched the coin away from Dash with her magic. “Not until I can get a better look at it.”

“Can I at least try doing a ‘what are the chances this coin is completely harmless?’” Dash asked.

“No. That could potentially turn it into a probability bomb.”

Dash sighed but didn’t argue any further. They were right. No way Dash was that lucky. She sure didn’t want to learn what a ‘probability bomb’ was.

The werewolves were much more orderly now. Big Red had gotten them all lined up in columns and was counting them all with what looked like growing concern. It made Dash worry that they might have missed somepony.

From the group of werewolves came an elderly, green pony.

“My name’s Granny Smith. You lot are the ones who freed us, ain’t ya?” Granny Smith bowed her head to them. “Well let me thank you all for helping us since I’m not right sure the rest will ever get a chance to say it themselves.”

“It’s what we do!” Dash grabbed Twilight and pushed her in front of Granny Smith. “Just remember that if anypony asks, Silverstorm here is a cool pony!”

“But there is one problem I’m afraid I need to tell you about. Trixie put a curse on the lot of us. Keeps us from escaping.” Granny Smith walked up to the edge of the castle, where the wall used to be. “You see, if any of us tries to leave these grounds, they uh…”

The elderly pony put one hoof outside and nothing happened. She paused, confused, then stepped all the way out.

“Welp! Never mind!” She walked back inside. “Looks like somepony already broke that curse.”

“That wasn’t any of us though, was it?” Dash looked at the others.

She only got a shrug from Twilight.

“Whatever! We don’t have time to care.” Dash turned her attention to the big guy. “Hey, you got everypony over there or what? You guys gotta get out of here!”

“Nope!” He shook his head and ran up to Dash. “Apple Bloom! My little sister. She’s still out there somewhere!”

“Saccharin.” Rarity beckoned the robot to her and placed the last red needle behind her ear when she got close. “You’re the best suited for this. Go find the missing filly, please.”

“I shall acquire Apple Bloom!” Saccharin ran back off towards the keep.

“I’m going too!” Big Red pounded his chest. “Uh. You got more of those needles, don’t ya?”

At least two dozen other ponies all stepped up behind him, offering to help with the search at all.

“That’s not a good idea at all!” Rarity shook her head. “I don’t have any more needles. It will be better for Saccharin to go alone.”

“But—“

“I have to agree with Rarity that it’s the best idea,” said Twilight. “Listen, if I know a bunch of ponies are still in the castle – well there’s going to be a much bigger fight than what you just saw right now. Saccharin is borderline invincible but you’re not. It’ll be a lot easier for her to get just one pony out instead of dozens.”

“Not to mention Saccharin has far more sensors than a normal pony,” Rarity added. “She could find a pony fairly easily. Oh, and you’re not exactly in good shape right now, if you don’t mind me saying.”

The big guy looked down at himself as if he hadn’t noticed all the cuts covering him. The second the adrenaline wore off he was going to collapse.

“I can’t abandon my sister like that,” he said. “I don’t care if I’m in danger!”

“You’re not leaving her behind,” Dash promised. “We got this one! Please just trust us a little longer, okay? We got this far and we’ll get your sister out.”

He looked off towards the keep, restraining himself from running off and doing something stupid. He hesitated, then nodded reluctantly and joined the crowd of others.

“I’ll head out with them if you don’t mind,” said Rarity. “I can call you if anything happens.”

Rarity and the werewolves all started off, leaving to the east.

Applejack came hobbling down the way just as the others were setting off. Instead of walking to her group, however, she came up to Twilight and Dash instead.

“I’m a little shook up. But—” Applejack tried to stand as straight as possible. “Pretty sure I can canter a few miles yet. Let’s get out of here. Where are we headed?”

“About that.” Dash landed in front of Applejack, blocking her path to the others. “Listen, Flash Bang is after you specifically. If you go with the others, she’s going to come after all of you.”

“Oh, I already know about all that,” said Applejack. “See, The Darklord can talk to ponies in their dreams. Just a couple of hours ago he went and showed me your group. Your names are Rarity, Rainbow, Fluttershy, and Silver, right? Said I should split up from everypony else and leave with y’all as soon as you got here.”

“He showed you us in your dreams?” Dash asked. That explained who was talking to them, then. But why’d he give Twilight’s fake name? That disguise couldn’t be enough to trick even a god, could it?

“Yep!” Applejack rolled her shoulders like she was trying to stretch the bruises away. “So no need to waste time convincing me or explaining nothing. I’ll go wherever it is you’re going. But we need to get out of here before Trixie gets back and she can get back in case you’re wondering.”

“We’re not leaving just yet,” said Twilight. “Dash and Fluttershy will get you out of here in a minute, but I need your help to go after Trixie first.”

Applejack stumbled and winced in pain, surprised at the suggestion, but quickly recovered.

“Now see? This is the part he doesn’t tell you about!” Applejack sighed in frustration. “Listen up. I’m not saying what you did so far ain’t impressive, but Trixie is on a whole other level. Trust me, we gotta get out of here before she finishes.”

“I know I can win against her,” Twilight promised. “I’m not asking you to help me fight against her. I just want you to open a path to the shadow realm before.”

“I just don’t want you putting yourself in danger after you helped me,” said Applejack. “There ain’t no shame in running away now.”

“I’m not putting myself in danger.” Twilight crossed her forelegs and closed her eyes. “There’s no doubt I’ll win against her. Just watch.”

“Please just help us,” Dash asked her. “Trixie’s going to keep hurting people until somepony stops her!”

Applejack looked at Twilight, then Dash, and bowed her head when she saw neither of them wavering even slightly.

“Ah, shoot. Well I know I’m just as stubborn as you all and there ain’t no way I’d be able to talk myself out of something like this.” Applejack rubbed the back of her head. “So fine. Heck. If you pull this off, I won’t ever doubt any of you again. Just remember to run if you can’t win.”

“Awesome!” Dash gave her a hit on the back which caused Applejack to stumble slightly in her given state. “Sorry.”

“Now. Last I was there, Trixie was about to finish the ritual.” Applejack walked a few paces south and looked out into the swamp. “I know where about she was. I say we might be able to sneak up on her and maybe pull her out before she can finish. Dunno if I can help any after that.”

“That’s enough,” said Twilight. “Thanks.”

Fluttershy came floating up from underground again.

“Sorry again,” she said. “I’m okay now.”

They went south through another half-mile of swamp, out to a relatively dry clearing. Applejack insisted that while they couldn’t see Trixie, Trixie would be able to see them, so they had to creep along the edge of the tree line until Fluttershy could spot the witch.

“I see her,” Fluttershy whispered to Dash. “Right there.”

“What is she doing?” Applejack asked.

“Um. Oh my. It looks like she’s about to stab herself with a sword.” Fluttershy covered her mouth. “She’s standing next to a pod thing.”

“That’s bad! I don’t know much about how it works, but that means she’s about to go through with it! We gotta move in now.” Applejack held out her tail for the others to grab onto. “I’ll go in when we’re right behind her. You’ll only get one free shot at her.”

Fluttershy silently floated forward, remaining underground. When she was right behind where Trixie was standing in the shadow realm, she poked her head up ever so slightly. It was just enough so the others knew the exact right spot.

At once all three of the others jumped forward.

Trixie Vs Twilight: The Movie

Twilight, Applejack, and Dash jumped through the portal behind Trixie all at once, hoping they could simply tackle her back into the real world. Trixie created a shield that crackled around herself that sent a surge through Dash and threw all three of them back.

“Ha! Did you think it’d be that easy?” Trixie turned her head to glance at them from behind. “This shield is—"

Twilight landed on her feet and shot a small arrow at Trixie. It hit her shield, popping it like a bubble.

“Eh?” Trixie blinked.

Dash cast the murder spell, sending most of her crows to harass Trixie, leaving one on Applejack’s back. When Trixie turned to fire a chain lightning spell at them, Twilight cast her spell. It summoned an ethereal chain that connected Trixie’s rear leg to Applejack’s.

Applejack created a portal back to the real world and jumped through it. The crow on her back turned back into a pony and both, back in the real world, pulled hard on the chain. Meanwhile, Fluttershy created a path of ice leading from Trixie to the portal before flying out herself.

For a second, there was zero resistance and they managed to pull Trixie’s rear leg out. A moment later, it stopped and Dash felt like she was trying to bring down a wall as Trixie dug in. That too lasted only a second before she and Twilight both tumbled out and the portal closed.

Trixie growled in frustration. She took her frustration out by grabbing the chain with her hooves and Applejack with her psychic powers and slamming the earth pony hard against a nearby tree. Applejack hit the tree with enough force to break it and passed out again.

“Do you think it even matters if you pull me out?” Trixie smirked at Dash, then laughed. “Well guess what? I already finished the— Hey, don’t ignore me when I’m being dramatic!”

To be fair Dash did ignore what sounded like an important announcement. She’d dove straight towards Applejack, scooping her up. Her job was to evacuate the area and already the chain was dissolving.

Frustrated, Trixie shot a blast of lightning at Dash only for Twilight to intercept it with her own lightning bolt.

“Whoa!” Trixie whistled, impressed at the display. “I think I underestimated the purple one! Not so much the others. But it hardly matters because I already—"

“I’ll cover you while you get out of here!” Twilight jumped in front of Dash as Fluttershy flew to her side and went back inside her teddy bear.

“Hey! I’m trying to dramatically reveal that you already failed! Do you people have zero sense of theatrics?” Trixie asked.

“I didn’t come here to play games with you,” said Twilight. “I’m giving you one chance to surrender. Remove all the curses you made and give me your spellbook.”

“Yeesh! You’re a serious one.” Trixie hopped off the wall and trotted towards Twilight. “I hope you didn’t come here to lecture me about morals. To a witch, strength is the only moral. The strong can do whatever we please and the weak have no right to complain about it. Maybe you don’t like it, but your morals are nothing compared to that truth.”

“That’s not how it’s supposed to be at all,” said Twilight. “You’ve completely abandoned the principles of witchcraft. Vengeance and conquest are sins that distract you from obtaining more power. You’re supposed to leave the weak alone. If you valued power that’s what you’d do.”

“Huh?” Trixie took a step back, taken off guard by the accusation. “Hold up. The sins of revenge and conquest? Are you talking about the old ways? How the heck do you even know about that?”

Twilight kept frowning but stayed silent.

“Ha!” Trixie raised an eyebrow then laughed. “Ah yes, super sleuth Trixie has finally figured it all out. It all fits together perfectly. You’re a witch too, aren’t you? You were trained by some far-flung hermit who still clings to the old ways.”

Trixie was technically right. Twilight frowned but kept her mouth shut.

“Don’t deny it,” said Trixie. “You didn’t even flinch at my psychological attack. And that pathetic excuse for a pegasus over there is your student, isn’t she? She reacted just like a trainee would to it. She knows the murder spell, you all have mind fibers, your way too strong to be anything else. It’s too obvious at this point.”

Twilight still didn’t answer, though it was clear the jig was up. Dash looked up at Applejack, still slung across her back. She was still unconscious, so at least nopony else was around to hear all this. Hopefully, nopony would believe Trixie or care if they couldn’t shut her up about this. It wasn’t like Trixie could prove this to anypony else.

“Well maybe you’re still new to this, so I’ll tell you how things work in the modern world.” Trixie held her hoof out to Twilight, like an offering. “We stopped following those stupid rules a long time ago to embrace the truth. But we try to stay out of the way of other witches. That’s all the morality that is still around. Maybe you should listen to that, hm?”

“But why?” Twilight asked. “How did things change so much? Why would you abandon our entire school of thought?”

“Your master hasn’t told you anything? I suppose if you are a witch, you have the right to know.” Trixie shrugged. “But I want to be one hundred percent certain first. Tell me the name of the first witch so I know you’re for real.”

“Well.” Twilight looked at Dash, unsure if she wanted to go that far with her student’s education just yet. “I guess I can say it. Her name was Golden Feather.”

“Wait! Golden Feather?” That was a name familiar to Dash.

Golden Feather was a semi-mythical figure, said to be the first pegasus, heck the first pony, to exist. According to legend, she was born of a single alicorn feather and the constellation Pegasus. How the heck that relationship worked was beyond mortal comprehension.

Among a million other things, Golden Feather and her younger sister were credited as creating the first nation, which would eventually become Equestria. But Equestria was such an ancient nation that its origins were mysterious now and nopony knew the truth. Stories about Golden Feather were so conflicting, a lot of ponies figured she was at least half myth. Dash tended to lean more towards one-hundred percent until just now.

“Was Golden Feather even a real pony?” Dash asked.

“I guess your master is just teaching you this now?” Trixie smirked down at Dash. “Yes, she was real and the founder of our school of magic. All of us are her students, in a sense. But she was also a fool, adopting all this nonsense about seclusion in her old age. What’s the point of obtaining all this power if you never do anything with it?”

“Power and magic are their own ends,” said Twilight. “Putting value on anything else is like trying to run in two directions at once. You’ll never become a true witch unless power is the only thing you focus on.”

“Yes, yes. We still know all those old sayings. But power as an ideal in itself? That’s just an endless road to nowhere. Inevitably you get tired of just walking and walking and still being in the middle of the street no matter how far you come. Eventually, witches just got fed up with it and wanted to actually do something.”

“But even if that’s the case why choose to do this of all things?” Twilight pointed to Applejack. “There’s no reason for you to run around cursing other ponies and beating them up.”

“Does anypony even disagree with me?” Trixie asked. “Religions claim their morality comes from some god or cosmic force that will destroy you if you don’t comply. Surprise, surprise, that’s how governments do it too. Every society and philosophy I’ve ever seen ultimately has morals made of violence. Even right now, you’re telling me to stop by threatening me with force. The only difference between me and everypony else is I admit the truth and I have the power to do whatever I want. The more a pony moralizes at you, the more terrible a tyrant they’d be if they ever got power.”

“But you wanted a story, right?” Trixie sat down. “The age of the great, old masters who shut themselves off from the world and vanished just as they became something truly incredible ended a long time ago. The last was Starswirl, who would go on to train the last master, Twilight Sparkle herself. A few hundred years later and a new generation wanted to assert themselves and enforce their ideals. But the question was, if power isn’t their ideal anymore, what would be? Of course, the only way to truly decide that was through fighting.”

Trixie paused for a moment, counting something out in her head.

“Let’s see. I believe there were seven masters alive at the time. One of them would have been Twilight Sparkle, cut off from the rest of the world. Of the six that fought, the important ones were Sombra and Cadence. Cadence wanted to be more like glorified babysitters, cleaning up these miserable outsiders every time they wet themselves. Sombra wanted to take all the wealth in the world for ourselves and slaughter anypony who annoyed him.”

Trixie looked up at the moon, smiling with excitement at the idea of such a cataclysmic battle.

“Can you imagine what a battle between six master witches would have been like?” Trixie looked back down at the earth and swept her hoof across the vast swamps before her. “The Festering Scar? This is the wound that was left on the land. It still hasn’t healed from it!”

“And you’re saying Sombra won?” Twilight asked.

“That can’t be right,” said Dash. “I would have heard about him taking over the world, right?”

“Huh?” Trixie looked back, remembering Twilight was there. “Oh no, he died horribly, as did most of them. Cadence was the only survivor, but she vanished shortly afterward. Most likely she died from a wound or something. With that, all the masters, save the one, died. Nearly every spellbook was destroyed in the battle and the art of making them was lost within a few hundred years after that. Twilight's are the only good ones left.”

That last part left Twilight deeply curious, growing silent to the point she was ignoring what Trixie was saying now.

“But even Sombra didn’t see the way things were,” Trixie went on without her. “The outsiders aren’t even worthy of being ruled over by us! You’d need to have some concern for them to do that. They’re nothing compared to witches. It’s our right to do whatever we want to them without caring about their wellbeing at all. That’s what we realized.”

“Wait.” Twilight lifted a hoof to stop Trixie. “You said the art of making spellbooks was lost some time after the last masters died? Not at the same time?”

“That’s the thing you take away from the story?” Trixie looked down at Twilight perplexed. “Yes. The last spellbook was made three hundred and fifty years ago. It was pathetic compared to the older ones. Why?”

“I think I understand now,” said Twilight.

“You do?” Trixie pulled back, surprised. “I’ll admit I never actually convince anypony with these speeches. I’m not sure what to do now.”

“No. I meant I understand why you’re so weak, why witches have been declining while the rest of the world grows stronger,” said Twilight.

“Oh? And what’s that? Because of the power of friendship or something?” Trixie laughed.

“It’s because you’re afraid.” Twilight simply shook her head.

Trixie’s laughter stopped.

“Are you even listening to yourself?” Trixie puffed herself up, offended. “The entire world quakes in fear of me and you’re calling me the coward? What a pathetic attempt at an insult. There’s nothing a witch fears.”

“Except yourselves.” Twilight pointed up at Trixie. “If you think the strong can just do whatever they want and go around terrorizing other people, you must realize on some level that the same thing can happen to you. You’re afraid of the other witches, of your students, becoming more powerful than you are. You know what it would mean if they did surpass you. So every generation withholds knowledge from the next to prevent that from happening. That’s it, isn’t it?”

For once Trixie was silent.

“Do you honestly think your master taught you everything she knows?” Twilight asked. “Would you teach your student everything you know? How much do you think would be left in another five hundred years?”

Trixie couldn’t answer the question with anything but a scowl.

“So I’m right. That’s why you can’t win against me. You were already defeated by your ideology long before you were even born,” Twilight concluded. “You’ve forgotten too much. I feel better now that I know the truth.”

Trixie gritted her teeth, clearly loathing Twilight’s suggestion, but couldn’t come up with an answer. At least, she couldn’t at first. She relaxed just a little the moment one finally came to her.

“You’re not wrong that our order has been in decline.” Trixie lowered her hat and glared at Twilight with what little of her eyes remained visible. “It’s a complete disgrace that even one of us was defeated in single combat by an outsider. Even I’ll admit we can’t compare to the great old masters. But you’re wrong about one thing.”

“Huh?” Twilight looked back at Trixie, genuinely curious.

“Hehehe.” Trixie lifted the brim of her hat victoriously and smirked. “The art of making mind fibers isn’t lost! The old masters aren’t entirely gone, are they? There’s one left. Or did you not hear that part?”

“Um.” Twilight briefly glanced to the side, then back at Trixie.

“Twilight Sparkle!” Trixie reared up on her hind and reached her forelegs out to the sky. “The strongest of the witches. She obtained eternal youth. She must still be alive, and she knows how to make new mind fibers. From her, I can regain all the lost, ancient knowledge.”

“I don’t think—"

“Oh! Do you think I can’t get through her curse? Well guess what?!” Trixie came back down on all fours and gestured over to Applejack. “That pony right there is curse immune. With her, I can just walk right up to Twilight’s house.”

“Seriously?!” Dash bit her tongue before she could say anything more. Applejack could have just walked up to Twilight’s house this whole time?! It seemed too unfair.

Trixie gave Dash a brief, curious look before turning back to Twilight.

“And what makes you think Twilight would teach you anything?” Twilight was offended at the idea. “She’d believe in the old ways. She’d be disgusted by you!”

“She’d accept me because I’m strong!” Trixie put a hoof over her heart. “After all this nonsense I’ve been through, I’m the strongest witch there’s been in hundreds of years! She’ll see my potential and want to acknowledge me as a master.”

Trixie summoned her spellbook, the same one Twilight made.

“Besides! I’ve been collecting all of her stolen things for years. I’m sure I have enough to impress her now. When I bring it all back to Twilight she’ll be all ‘wow, Trixie! Thank you so much, you’re so amazing.’ And then we’ll become best friends and—“ Trixie got a little carried away with her friendship fantasy and hugged herself. She caught herself and broke out of it, slightly embarrassed. “Well never mind that last part, but you get the picture.”

Twilight and Dash looked at each other with a painful look before turning back to Trixie. Dash felt a little second-hand embarrassment.

“Look, Twilight’s not going to teach you anything.” Twilight sighed and bowed her head. “I’ll give you one last chance to surrender. Your plan isn’t going to work. Twilight doesn’t believe any of the things you do.”

“Everypony believes it,” Trixie shot back.

“I don’t think anyone agrees with what you’re saying, not even you.” Twilight shook her head. “But it is true I’d have to beat you in a fight to prove you’re lying to yourself. It’s not a big deal if you use hyper spells here.”

“Tch! Sure! ‘Oh, I’m going to prove fighting is wrong by beating you up!’ All of you worthless hypocrites are the same!” Trixie opened the spellbook. “I’ll give you a chance to take out whatever inferior spellbook you stumbled on.”

“I don’t actually need to take it out,” said Twilight.

“Heh! And they say I’m arrogant!” Trixie flipped her mane one last time and opened her spellbook. “Let’s see if you can even push me that far.”

“You and Applejack should get as far away from here as possible.” Twilight turned to Dash. “There’s going to be a lot of collateral damage.”

“Fine by me,” said Trixie. “I don’t want to accidentally hurt Applejack. You have five minutes.”

“You’re a hundred percent sure you can do this alone?” Dash asked Twilight one last time.

“After talking to her? Yes.” Twilight kept her eyes trained on Trixie with absolute confidence.

It wasn’t like she wanted to run away, but realistically Dash wouldn’t be able to contribute a whole heck of a lot to a battle between two witches. There wasn’t much else to do but get the heck out of here and trust that Twilight really was the strongest witch.

Dash grabbed Applejack and flew off to the south, towards Rarity and the rest, as fast as she could.

The two of them didn’t say anything more while those five minutes passed. The witches stood across from one another, both with absolute confidence they were about to win. That would change soon.

The only sound was the croaking of frogs. Twilight wished there was some way she could tell them to get out of here, else they wouldn’t be long for this world. She could teleport them away, but any spell would start the fight.

Trixie was the one to finally break the silence.

“Here. Catch.” Trixie opened her eyes and lifted a single, small rock.

She threw it underhand towards Twilight, slowly enough that it wasn’t a threat to anypony.

“Glass bones!” at the last second Trixie named and cast the spell.

Maybe if Trixie hadn’t called out the name of her spell there would have been a slight chance of that working on Twilight. A normal pony couldn’t have reacted fast enough to do anything at this point, would have broken a bone just trying to catch that rock.

But Twilight had spent so many endless hours practicing magic that her reflex wasn’t to catch it. In a fluid motion, Twilight destroyed the glass bones spell, pushed her magic up to the incoming rock to create a mirror force, then finally pushed it forward to duplicate the rock.

The result was a dozen identical rocks flying at Trixie about as fast as those muskets shot their metal balls. It didn’t do any damage, of course. Trixie stopped the rocks just in time, holding them in midair with her psychic powers.

“Hah!” Trixie smiled with excitement, seeing Twilight get through that first, basic attack. “Elemental resonance!”

Trixie jumped into the water. Though it was shallow, Trixie sunk into an infinite depth and vanished. Thanks to that spell, Trixie was one with the water now. She could manipulate it and reform anywhere she wanted quickly.

That is if Twilight let her.

Twilight tapped her hoof on the water, forming a thin layer of ice formed over top. That threw the whole spell off the rails. Trixie desperately tried to reform, managing to do so but without any grace. She came crashing out of the ice without any grace, having to push herself up out of the chilly mush.

This time she wasn’t excited.

“Ethereal chains!” Her voice was already getting harsher.

Orange, ghostly chains flew out from behind Trixie as if to make wings. She gave them a flap and sent the chains whipping out in every direction, too fast for a normal pony to see. They tore through the trees and broke up the ice. Then all seven of them came swiping towards Twilight.

Twilight calculated the etheric resonance of the chains in her mind based on the damage they did to the trees, then used magic to put herself on the same wavelength. The chains went straight through her.

Trixie pulled back ever so slightly in surprise but immediately transitioned into her next spell.

“Empire swarm!”

Every link in the chain broke apart and reformed into a large empire wasp. Those could get dangerous if you didn’t deal with them quickly. There were a few hundred now, but they could easily become tens of thousands in a minute if left unchecked.

Without missing a beat, Twilight created a miniature black hole just in front of her, then a small orb of glowing green light nearby. Every empire wasp rushed straight towards the light and subsequently got sucked into the black hole.

Just like that, in seconds, they were all gone. Twilight vanished the black hole before it could destabilize.

“What the—?” Trixie hopped backward as she tried to bring herself to a stop. “Nopony’s ever—! Gah! Ground Dance!”

Trixie raised a hoof to stomp on the ground. It would have sent a jagged spike at Twilight from below were Twilight not faster. The master witch was strong enough to get the same effect with just a small tap and beat Trixie to the punch.

A jagged pillar of rock burst forth from the ground and hit Trixie hard in the chin, sending her back with a bloody nose. She was thrown back, but landed on her feet, scowling.

“You know you don’t have to shout out the name of every spell you cast, right?” Twilight asked. “If you keep doing that, you’re not going to get very far.”

Trixie growled in frustration. She glared death back at Twilight as she wiped the small amount of blood off her muzzle, already healed.

“Oh! You want me to fight you for real, huh?!” Trixie threw her hat and cape to the side.

Trixie teleported behind Twilight and shot out a laser that melted the ground and boiled the water near where Twilight stood.

Twilight was faster. Teleportation wasn’t completely instantaneous and in that split second Trixie vanished, so too did Twilight, reappearing behind Trixie. It wasn’t necessary to tap her on the shoulder or anything. With her psychic powers, Trixie simply felt Twilight’s presence behind her. She panicked and teleported much farther away.

Then she teleported several more times, looping around Twilight. Trixie teleported rapidly in every direction, hoping to outpace Twilight. The blue unicorn vanished and reappeared in every corner of the swamp and on every tree like she was trying to touch every spot at least once. She was doing a decent job of it, even.

There were moments it appeared like Trixie was in multiple locations at the same time. To amplify this effect, she created dozens of ethereal images of herself, all of which pretended to teleport around the swamp as well.

Twilight stood in the middle of this impressive display of speed, dozens of Trixie’s and flashing lights all around her, but she never lost sight of where the real Trixie was.

Finally, the attacks began. In that split second between teleportation, Trixie managed to loose two or three fireballs each time, swarming Twilight with them from every direction.

Still seeing no reason to move just yet, Twilight returned fire, intercepting each one. But Trixie simply went faster and faster, until Twilight was surrounded by fire in every direction.

They got to the point where Trixie seemed unable to move any faster, so instead, she needed to ramp it up with more complex spells. Now bats made of fire circled inward at Twilight and sprays of lava shot over her head trying to rain down on her. Trixie repeatedly tried to summon torrents of fire from beneath Twilight or tried to get above her and shoot lightning down.

Yet still, none of it was enough to get through.

She saw the look of desperation on Trixie’s face. This was it, the limit of how fast she could go, and it still wasn’t enough to force Twilight to move. Deciding that was enough, Twilight tapped the ground and intercepted Trixie on her latest teleportation.

Trixie was hit hard in the face by Twilight’s pillar of rock. This time, she was hit by four times the force as the last one. The blow sent her spinning backward in the air, but she still landed on her feet as though this was part of an intentional backflip routine. This time, she spat out a tooth that simply regrew a second later.

A bit too little force still, Twilight decided. She could hit harder with the next one.

Trixie growled and stomped her hoof in frustration, realizing she couldn’t match Twilight’s speed. She gave up on that strategy but wasn’t deterred enough to stop her from another. Twilight knew she hadn’t pushed Trixie all the way yet, not nearly.

One last teleportation sent Trixie high into the air.

Not just her horn, but her entire body shone with the blue light of her magic, telegraphing the first hyper spell of the fight. The younger witch wound up a considerable amount, intending to put as much force as possible behind her next attack.

Twilight squinted up at the magic flows, carefully trying to determine which spell it would be. For Twilight to truly defeat Trixie, it wouldn’t be enough to simply interrupt her hyper spells. That would drag on forever.

Instead, she was going to match Trixie blow for blow with all the same spells.

It was only one second before the spell finished that Twilight knew which one it was. The hyper-destruction sphere. Yet one second was a long time in a fight like this. Twilight began rapidly imitating the spell, her body glowing purple.

A black orb appeared above Trixie that was the size of her keep. Flames erupted around it and Trixie sent it hurtling towards Twilight. If it hit the ground, it would reduce the area to a massive crater and send trees, fire, and chunks of rock raining down for miles.

Twilight needed to cut the spell a little short. Her own hyper-destruction sphere was more of an oblate spheroid, much longer than Trixie’s by design. It was a little smaller too, as Twilight had finished it in a fraction of the time.

She threw it up at Trixie’s destruction sphere like a dart, aiming straight at the middle. The two of them collided and stopped where they were in the air. Then Trixie’s, on top, began to deform around Twilight’s. The two spheres merged into one and went sailing up into the air, high above the clouds.

As Trixie fell back to the ground, watching her attack get thrown away, Twilight saw a change in her expression again. This was likely the first time anyone had ever matched a spell like that from her. She was no longer overcome with frustration at stomping out an annoying persistent bug but looked up with a clear concern that was a chance she could lose.

Trixie landed and immediately went into a second hyper spell. She was casting clearer and with more determination now. Of course, being this close also meant Twilight could figure out which spell was coming more easily. That was the main disadvantage of such large, bombastic spells. You had a few seconds to figure them out.

It was going to be the hyper dance spell. Trixie was about to summon an entire army of dancing swords and spears at once. Again, Twilight began the same spell.

This time, they finished at once.

Seven thousand ethereal weapons floated up from behind Trixie, then became solid and enveloped themselves in the blue light of her magic. These were actual, physical objects that Twilight couldn’t dodge with mere resonance.

Of course, there was a reason Twilight knew there were exactly seven thousand of them. That was how many she was able to summon back when she’d made that book. Today, she could summon ten thousand and that was the number of dancing weapons, enveloped in purple light, that appeared behind Twilight now.

All the weapons flew forward and started slamming into one another, fighting all around the two in a dance of sparks. It didn’t take long to tell which side was going to win. Not only did Twilight have the numbers, but her aura was tighter and more solid, making them more durable. Trixie’s weapons were chipping away and breaking faster than Twilight’s.

Meanwhile, that fireball finally exploded far above, harmlessly but with enough force to clear away the clouds. It was like a flash of lightning that lasted a few seconds. A new sun appearing briefly in the sky as the clouds vanished.

Trixie clamped down on Twilight’s neck as hard as she could with her psychic powers while she went to cast the next hyper-spell. They weren’t close to as strong as Pinkie’s, but it did mean Twilight would have to hold her breath till the next spell finished.

It was easy to see which spell was coming this time, Trixie was going to summon the biggest pillar of rock yet underneath Twilight. Maybe she was upset about getting hit by the same thing twice?

Twilight ignored the strangulation and focused entirely on casting the same spell as fast as possible. This time she finished first.

In a single second, an entire tower of rock three hundred feet tall burst through the ground underneath Trixie. For a brief second, Twilight thought she might have put too much force behind it. Trixie went flying over the trees with a sickening crack. There was no doubt in Twilight’s mind that she’d just shattered every bone in the other witch’s body.

For the first time, Trixie didn’t land on her feet. She hit the ground and bounced, then hit it again and rolled through the swamp.

Twilight teleported over to her side as the sound from the destruction spheres finally reached her, drowning the distant sounds of the remaining dancing weapons and shaking the ground.

It took her a second, but Trixie pushed herself into a sitting position. Her regeneration was fast enough that broken bones recovered in seconds. Already she was close to being back to normal.

“How?” Trixie panted heavily, a few of her teeth were still regrowing. “How could you possibly know all those spells? The only ponies who’ve touched volume two for decades were me and the pony who taught me.”

“You haven’t figured it out yet?” Twilight brushed some of the mud off herself.

“Was there some hidden master witch this whole time who taught you?” Trixie looked down at her own hoof. “No, there’s no way that’s possible. The only other master, the only other way to have learned them…”

Trixie looked up at her with actual terror at what she just realized.

“So you figured out who I am?” Twilight asked.

“You found Twilight Sparkle yourself, didn’t you?! She took you in as her student!” Trixie pointed a hoof at Twilight like she’d just accused the other witch of murder. “It’s the only explanation for how you can know all of the hyper spells! How dare you? It was supposed to be me!”

“You still don’t get it? There is another explanation. I am a master.” Twilight walked forward.

“No.” Trixie started backing up, shaking her head violently. It was clear she knew the truth, but she shook her head at the idea anyway.

“You know who I am, and you know you can’t beat me.” Twilight cast the spell to take her disguise off, her hair and fur returning to their normal colors and her cutie mark reappearing. “I’m telling you to stop this. If you respect me, then—”

“No!” Trixie clenched her jaw and stood her ground, determined to fight against reality. “No! You’re not Twilight! It’s not supposed to happen like this! This can’t happen after everything I’ve been through!”

Twilight sighed. She really shouldn’t feel sorry for such a despicable pony, but…

“Look—“ Twilight held a hoof out to Trixie!

“Shut up! I’ll never forgive you for trying to impersonate her!” Some idea came into her head, just plausible enough to give her a shred of hope to cling to and she smiled again. “Twilight would have defeated me instantly. Do you think a master witch would struggle this much against me? Pathetic! Of course I see through your pathetic lies! I’m not stupid!”

Trixie began to laugh like the louder she laughed the truer her statement would become.

“Struggling? You haven’t even touched me.” Twilight shook her head.

Trixie’s laughter stopped as abruptly as it began, and she glared death at Twilight.

“And how close to the end of this do you think we are?” Trixie hit her chest. “Do I look hurt to you? With my powers, I never get tired and recover from any injury. I can keep this up for months, can you?”

Trixie put a hoof over her heart and leaned her head back, wincing in pain as a red portal opened and from it, she pulled a black arrow dripping with blood.

The hyper death arrow!

Trixie shot it forward with enough force to throw herself back several feet.

In a radius of twenty feet from that arrow, in a line that traveled with it as it went, everything died. The trees withered and rotted in an instant. Less hard plants turned grey or entirely to dust as soon as they entered the arrow’s range. Dead fish and frogs came bubbling up from within the water.

Twilight didn’t have enough time to react properly. She cast a regeneration spell on herself, then tried to catch the arrow with her telekinetic magic.

The force of the arrow hitting her magic barrier was near the limit of what Twilight could handle. She had to let it carry her back a great distance as she tried to slow it, the arrow killing everything else that got near them.

Twilight left a rain of fur and hair as she was pushed forward, the arrow causing it to rapidly fall out and the regeneration spell causing it to regrow. Hers wasn’t as good as Trixie’s, though. This was doing real damage and it wouldn’t protect her much longer.

Eventually, it slowed just enough, and Twilight was able to instead redirect the arrow. She gave it a hard hit from below, sending it sailing straight up. It burst harmlessly high up in the air a short time later.

Twilight fell to the ground, panting heavily. She got rid of the rejuvenation spell right away, as it had a cost. Doing that had left Twilight visibly aged. She’d rapidly aged enough times to know she was the equivalent of maybe 35 to 40. She had just enough youth gummies back at her house to undo the negative effects but having to do that one more time would dramatically reduce her abilities.

And of course, Trixie hadn’t simply assumed that arrow was going to be enough. Twilight could already see what she was planning next. Every plant that died from the attack was breaking up into dust and that dust was flying back to where Trixie had been.

She was creating a blight golem: A construct made entirely of dead plant material.

It took the form of a jack-o'-lantern, only after a few days of rotting away. The pumpkin was easily seven stories tall and had a myriad of faces on every side of it, each one a bit mushy looking, the teeth soft and every part of it melting into itself.

Some of the faces had pumpkin guts spewing from the mouth and a few other had fire bellowing out.

A thick, black, rotted vine thrashed up from the ground below Twilight. She cast a shield to protect herself from the damage but was still thrown high into the air.

Already Trixie had finished casting a third spell, summoning another wave of dancing weapons that floated around the pumpkin.

She was just going to keep repeatedly using those spells until Twilight found a way to stop her. With that arcanium plate on her chest, she really could keep this up indefinitely, even longer than Twilight could. Once she got rid of that, Trixie would lose her advantage.

Twilight shot out a torrent of fire in the opposite direction, sending her flying towards Trixie like a rocket. The pumpkin turned one of its flaming mouths towards her and launched a fireball in Twilight’s direction.

Twilight teleported to the other side of the fireball as she got close. Trixie was glowing blue again, getting ready to summon a new destruction sphere as hundreds of weapons threw themselves at Twilight.

She fired off a chain lightning spell that bounced between the weapons, destroying all of them on a collision course with Twilight before bouncing down and hitting Trixie. Trixie recovered in a single second again, but the spell was interrupted.

Twilight landed on top of the pumpkin and surrounded herself with a shield. Weapons banged on her shield but couldn’t get through. Trixie made her own psychic shield and went to casting a new hyper spell.

Instead of directly targeting her, Twilight went for the pumpkin below.

Duskle shrooms were growing all over the pumpkin. The fungus was devouring the pumpkin rapidly, causing it to begin to deflate into mush beneath their feet. Twilight had no idea if Trixie knew what they were, but she took them as a serious threat. Trixie abandoned the pumpkin, jumping back as she cast a new spell.

It was the frog plague spell. An impossible number of frogs was emerging from every direction, covering the ground to the point it would have been impossible to find so much as a pin-sized gap in them.

But they didn’t last long. The frogs that got anywhere near a duskle shroom, which was most of them, simply melted away and vanished in a fraction of a second. Twilight was completely covered in frogs but didn’t waste her energy trying to deal with them. Being the one who made this spell, she knew these frogs were harmless.

Instead, she took what little remained of the duskle shrooms and gathered their blight into a tight ball before jumping off the pumpkin. That stuff was close to the only thing that could destroy arcanium.

Trixie saw Twilight coming as she fell. She enlarged all the frogs by her side into ones twice as big as a pony. All of them shot their tongues out towards Twilight at once only for Twilight to teleport behind them all and underneath Trixie.

She slammed the ball of blight up at Trixie’s back as the other witch fell, getting a gag from her. Trixie was stunned by this one much longer than the other attacks, seizing up on the ground. All her frogs, her dancing weapons, even her pumpkin, began to crumble to dust.

The blight ate away at her, turning her fur black and quickly traveling over her body. The decay and regeneration seemed to fight with one another. Trixie’s body turned black, but back to blue just as quickly, making her look covered in splotches.

As planned, not everything was regenerating. Trixie’s chest deflated as the blight ate away at the arcanium. This was something she noticed and regarded with absolute horror. She put all her effort into casting a healing spell to expunge the toxins from herself.

The blight fell all around Trixie and she quickly returned to being fully blue. She felt her chest, but what she felt filled her with horror rather than relief.

“I take it the arcanium plate doesn’t regenerate?” Twilight asked. “You won’t survive another serious attack. Just give up.”

“S-shut up!” Trixie began to back away from Twilight, genuinely afraid now.

“Or do still not believe who I am?” Twilight finally took out her spellbook for Trixie to see. “This spellbook is made entirely out of mind fibers. Who else could possibly have something like this?”

“No!” Trixie stomped her hoof on the ground, still defiant. “You can’t be Twilight! This isn’t the way things are supposed to happen!”

“What? Did you expect me to congratulate you for beating up ponies who aren’t anywhere near as strong as you?” Twilight asked.

“That’s just the way things are! Do you think anypony had mercy on me when I was weak?!” Trixie put her hooves on her chest. “Do you think they even hesitated to stomp on me when I was a scared, powerless child? They don’t have any right to demand mercy now that I’m the strong one!”

“I don’t know anything about that,” said Twilight. “All I know is that you’re the one doing the hurting right now.”

“And where were you when I was the victim, huh?! You wait until now to show up? You ignore hundreds of years of villains. You ignored it when I was the one getting stomped on. Oh, but the second I become strong enough to be the one on top you show up to punish me?! For doing the same thing everypony else with power does?!”

This wasn’t going at all like Twilight expected. She looked around, struggling to think of something to say. If only Rainbow Dash were here to say something sappy.

“And you seriously chose that worthless idiot from before as your student?” Trixie pointed to the north. “That has to be the worst insult of all time! I gave up my entire life to be worthy of that but you just take some random idiot off the street?! Why would you choose some worthless piece of trash over me when I’m a thousand times stronger?!”

“Rainbow Dash isn’t worthless!” Twilight shot back at that one quickly enough.

“Are you kidding me?! Do you seriously think that pony could beat me one on one? She’s weak. She’s worthless!”

“And I beat you,” Twilight shot back. “I know every spell you have. I already broke through everything you have. Are you worthless?”

“Shut up!” Trixie stomped her hoof on the ground again. “I am great and powerful! I’ll force you to respect me just like I forced everyone else to! I’ll show you my ultimate power! I can’t control it yet, but I don’t care!”

“Don’t you get it? I don’t care how powerful—“

But it was already too late.

The white of Trixie’s eyes turned from white to purple and her fur became a translucent blue. A blast of force sent Twilight back and uprooted trees as Trixie suddenly expanded in size.

Twilight had never seen an ursa major before and hadn’t expected it to be as huge as it was. Rainbow Dash wasn’t exaggerating at all with its size. The Curse Tech headquarters was fifty stories tall but even on all fours, Trixie stood taller than that. At this size, just going for a light stroll would be devastating.

Would something that big even be able to see Twilight? She must have been like an ant to Trixie now. Maybe her psychic powers would be enough?

The ursa roared with uncontrolled rage. There didn’t look to be much intelligence behind her eyes. All Twilight needed to do was knock this thing out and Trixie wouldn’t have anything else to cling to.

“Alright.” Twilight’s body began to glow with magic. “One last round.”

But Trixie never came. She turned her back on Twilight and ran to the north. She was ignoring Twilight completely.

Or rather, Twilight realized, she was going after Rainbow Dash.

“Oh, come on!”

Dash hovered in the air, holding an unconscious Applejack as she and Fluttershy watched the spot they’d just fled from. The insane power of a witch wasn’t something you could appreciate until you saw a display like this. She couldn’t blame anyone for not standing up to Trixie until now any longer.

“This is freaking insane!” Dash watched the battle from miles away. Even at this distance, she didn’t feel entirely safe. And now Trixie had turned into an ursa. “Glad we’re way over here.”

An ursa wasn’t something Dash had ever seen up close. She’d just now realized that even miles away counted as ‘up close’ to something like that. The tree line was enough to cover her paws, but nothing else.

Something like that wouldn’t just crush you like a bug, it’d crush your entire house like a bug. There was no way for a normal pony to even try fighting it.

Just when she thought she was safe, Trixie turned and started bounding towards Dash. It looked like she was moving in slow motion, but Dash knew at that size she’d be here in just a minute or two.

“Of course it’s heading over here.” Dash sighed.

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight’s voice came over the radio. “I think she’s coming after you! I need you to fly back to me. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Ah boy.” Dash landed and turned to Fluttershy. “You watch her. I gotta go be a decoy again.”

Fluttershy only had time to nod before Dash sped off towards the bear. There was no doubt Trixie was coming for Dash, her eyes were trained right on the pegasus.

What the heck did Dash do? Other than what everypony else in her group had done, that is.

The ursa just kept getting bigger and bigger in Dash’s sight without end as Dash flew to it. There was simply no end to how colossal Trixie was! Finally, Trixie lifted one of her massive claws and brought it crashing down on the ground below.

Dash cast the murder spell and spread out as far as she could, but that claw was so enormous it could very easily swat all twenty crows at once. Every one of them darted as hard as they could, one of them just barely escaping in time.

Even a near-hit was devastating to the one crow that survived. The wind gust from it sent her tiny body spiraling out of control. She had to turn back into a pony just to regain control and even then she made a crash landing on Trixie’s shoulder.

The paw hitting the ground sounded like an actual explosion! But Dash figured Trixie’s back was relatively safe. The fur was too thick to run on top of, but Dash was able to fly just above her back the whole way to the other side.

“Where the heck am I supposed to go?” Dash looked around for Twilight. “Where is she?!”

Dash noticed a huge black sphere in the sky, one that began to flame just a moment after she saw it. Hopefully, that was Twilight’s. Dash flew towards it, seeing it as her only shot.

Behind her, Trixie turned again. This time, Trixie reared up onto her hind legs and attempted to bring her entire body crashing down on Dash. There was no way to avoid that.

The ball of destruction flew forward and hit the bear right in the chest. The light blinded Dash and threw her forward. When she regained control and turned around, she saw the ursa falling backward.

One final explosion of noise shook the air as Trixie fell flat on her back, motionless. Already steam was emerging from the ursa as it shrank back down.

Carried by Dash, Twilight landed next to Trixie, lying on her back unmoving but eyes open.

And that was it. Trixie had nothing left to throw at Twilight now. Nothing but her one argument from before, the one truth she thought she could hold onto.

“This isn’t fair!” Trixie winced.

“Fair? But I’m the stronger pony.” Twilight summoned a spear and pressed and pointed it down at Trixie’s heart. “Don’t you still believe what you were saying before? That the strong have the right to do anything they want with the weak? Or were you just saying that when it was convenient to you? To make yourself feel better?”

Then even that, even her words were broken. Trixie closed her eyes painfully and turned away to sob.

“So I guess you never really believed any of that.” Twilight pulled the spear away. “You’re just a child having a temper tantrum.”

Trixie looked like she was about to cry, lying there miserably in the mud. But it was more of a defeated, depressed look than the enraged growl from before.

Dash, as a crow, landed on a nearby tree.

“Don’t worry,” Twilight called up to Dash. “She’s done.”

Dash flew down to Twilight’s side and reverted to a pony.

“Man! That was intense!” Dash hit Twilight on the back. “I honestly don’t know if anypony else could have done that! You’re amazing, Twilight!”

“You really are Twilight, aren’t you?” Trixie asked the question, looking blankly at the sky like that was the hardest blow of all, didn’t even attempt to get up when Twilight stepped off of her.

“I am.” Twilight threw her spear to the side. She could tell killing Trixie wasn’t necessary at this point. “Are you going to listen to me now?”

Trixie wasn’t injured at all, but she stood up as slowly as if her body was barely still together. Then Trixie bowed down to Twilight as low as she could, pressing her muzzle down into the mud.

“I swear my loyalty to you!” Trixie solemnly vowed. “I’ll do absolutely anything you tell me to! Anything!”

“What?” Twilight took a step back in surprise. She wasn’t that.

“You’re the most powerful pony alive.” Trixie lifted her head.

“And?”

“And?!” Trixie was almost offended Twilight didn’t follow her logic. “Twilight— I spent my entire life admiring you. I dreamed of what it would be like to be you, to have your kind of power and not have to— to deal with anypony being cruel to me, to be free from all of them! Free from all these stupid morals and— and everything!

All of this! It was just trying to be like you! Strong like you!” Trixie grabbed Twilight’s withers. “I used to escape by fantasizing about… about being friends with you and you’d make all of it go away. I wanted to be somepony worthy of being your friend, Twilight! I worked so hard and took so many risks for that. I’ll do anything you ask me to!”

Trixie looked at Twilight with tears in her eyes, clearly in awe of the superior witch.

Having somepony like this admire her… Twilight wasn’t sure how to react.

“My friend?” Twilight asked herself more than Trixie.

“Your apprentice, your slave, whatever you think I’m worthy of.” Trixie nodded. “I know I’m not nearly as strong as you, but surely after seeing all that you know that I’m worthy of… of something! Anything! I can help you destroy anyone who defies you.”

“Is that who you think I am?” Twilight sighed. “You weren’t idolizing me; you were idolizing some fantasy villain you created in your head.”

Trixie immediately shrank from Twilight’s criticism.

“You get incredible power, and you use it to go on a temper tantrum. You hurt my—” Twilight looked over at Rainbow Dash, a sudden pang of fear running through her. She wasn’t sure what it was okay to call her. “You hurt Rainbow Dash. You tried to kill her.”

“What?!” Trixie reeled in surprise, turning to Dash with disgust. “I still can’t understand this! She’s stupid and weak! Why would you care about her but not me?! You don’t honestly think she can beat me in a fight, do you?”

“She used the spell I gave her responsibly for one.” Twilight looked over at Dash.

“Tch!” Trixie didn’t have a response to that, merely closed her eyes. “You were always strong, weren’t you? You don’t know what it’s like to be humiliated for years until somepony finally decides you're worthy.”

She wasn’t wrong. Twilight couldn’t remember a time she felt overpowered. Maybe Twilight didn’t understand.

Dash stepped up in her stead.

“I kind of get how you feel, believe it or not.” Dash looked off to the side wistfully. “I know how being powerless feels. But tell me this. If you hate feeling powerless so much, why do you want to make other ponies feel that way? I wouldn’t ever want anypony else to feel that way, not even you, because I know how much it sucks.”

“I just—“ Trixie bit her cheek and looked away in defeat. “That’s just the way things are, though. The strong crush the weak. What else am I supposed to do?”

Trixie looked back up at Twilight in desperation.

“You’re the greatest master of magic, Twilight! What do I have to do to be responsible? What am I supposed to do with my power? Should I go back to the old ways like you said?”

The right thing, according to their philosophy, was to isolate herself from the world and practice magic for the sake of magic.

She looked over at Rainbow Dash, knowing what the pegasus would say. Really, up until Twilight met that idiot she would have told Trixie that helping other ponies was a waste of time, like throwing rocks into a bottomless pit.

One thing Trixie said before was true, the old ways had left Twilight standing alone in the middle of the road. She’d been so angry at Dash for pulling her off that path before but now even she wasn’t sure if she wanted to go back to being alone.

“I don’t know the answer to that either.” Twilight looked down at her spellbook. “I never thought about anything but making more spells and training until recently. I’m not sure how much I believe in the old ways, even. I can’t tell you what the right thing to do is, only that you’re wrong.”

“Even you don’t know?” Trixie slumped down to the ground, truly and utterly defeated.

The heat from the battle had long since cooled. After listening to her for this long, Twilight began to see Trixie a bit differently. She really was just a child throwing a tantrum. Before she’d said it with some anger, but now it was more with pity.

Twilight wanted to take sympathy on her, to tell her something, but at the end of the day, she wasn’t wise at all. She couldn’t think of anything to tell the younger witch. She was simply good at magic. She didn’t know anything about this.

“I’ll tell you what you should do!” Dash butted in. “You need to do whatever you can to clean up the mess you made and then you need to turn yourself in. If you ever get the chance again, use your magic or whatever to make people feel less powerless, help them escape what you hate.”

Twilight couldn’t help but smile. That was something that idiot would say, even if Twilight wasn’t sure she believed any of it yet.

Trixie looked up at Twilight as though she were the arbiter of whether this was true.

“Listen.” Twilight trotted over to Trixie. “I’m trying to figure that out myself, but I know I will eventually. When I do find the answer I’ll find you and tell you. I promise.”

Twilight held out her hoof.

“But until then you have to promise not to use any of these spells anymore,” said Twilight. “Give me my book back.”

Trixie took out her spellbook. She looked down at it with horror, like she’d just been asked to kill herself like such a thing would have been preferable to giving it up. Then, too afraid to look at what she was about to do, Trixie closed her eyes and offered the book to Twilight.

Twilight took the second volume from her, holding it for the first time in centuries. That was one down, at any rate.

Darklord

Trixie made zero effort to resist after that. The enchanted chains they brought to tie her up with seemed completely unnecessary. They put a lock on her horn and tied her up with anti-magic chains. Even without them, Trixie felt weak as a kitten. Dash imagined a stray gust of wind was enough to knock her over at this point.

Still, they left her tied up as they waited for the others to return. If nothing else, it was the only way to stop other ponies from immediately going off the handle the second they saw Trixie.

This was close to the best possible outcome, with Trixie giving her complete cooperation, but somehow it didn’t feel as triumphant as it should. Part of Dash imagined she’d be more satisfied if Trixie had gone out cackling and trying to go after the hostages until they were forced to kill her. She certainly never expected to feel any level of pity.

Fluttershy came back with Applejack first. Applejack regained consciousness upon returning, but only long enough to yell something incoherent about the price of watermelons before falling asleep. Dash was jealous of her. After such a long day, Dash wished somepony would bash her head against a tree and knock her out.

After a brief discussion, the three of them agreed that turning in The Book of Shadows was for the best as it’d help them escape suspicion later. There was hardly anypony who could use it, but to be extra safe Twilight was going to sabotage it beforehand.

She spent a good hour or so tearing critical strands of mind fibers from it, rendering it mostly useless. Twilight was all but certainly the only pony who could repair it. In the unlikely event a pony who could use spellbooks picked it up, they would merely assume it was damaged in the battle. Anyone else wouldn’t even notice it was tampered with.

It was late sunset now, just a small amount of purple on the horizon to remind you of the sun’s existence. Even with Trixie subdued, Dash felt like she still had to pull an all-nighter before she’d be able to rest. Defeating the witch only solved one problem.

Rarity returned hours after Fluttershy. She’d taken the werewolves to a river not far off, where they were able to get a boat to go down to the coast in relative safety.

Reasonably enough, Rarity was skeptical as she approached Trixie again. Even with all these restraints and her book in Twilight’s possession, Trixie could still be a danger if she wanted to.

“She doesn’t look overly destroyed to me.” Rarity knelt and carefully eyed Trixie. “You’re sure this isn’t a trick?”

“I’m destroyed on the inside,” Trixie muttered. “Trust me.”

Rarity gave her an exploratory poke which sent Trixie falling to her side with a groan.

“I can relate to that feeling.” Fluttershy nodded.

Rarity scoffed at Trixie, realizing it was true.

“Well? Go on, let me hear you boast as you did before.” Rarity smirked down at Trixie. “So how does it feel to be the powerless one for a change, hm? Perhaps you’ve changed your mind about who is superior to whom?”

“You’re right. I suck.” Trixie didn’t even bother lifting her head out of the mud. “I’m the worst thing that ever existed. The mud should feel filthy for having me had wallowed in it.”

Rarity could only frown at Trixie after that, her smugness deflated, unable to dig the knife in deeper to someone so pathetic.

“You know, I thought gloating over her would be more enjoyable than this.” Rarity shrugged in Dash’s direction. “Whatever did you say to her? I hope it wasn’t too vulgar.”

“She figured out Twilight was Twilight.” Dash gestured to Twilight, sans her disguise. “Between that and the defeat? I think we completely obliterated her worldview.”

“I have no idea what to believe anymore.” Trixie slunk up to a barely sitting position, her entire left side covered with mud. “Is gravity real? Does two plus two equal twenty-two? Is the moon just the backside of the sun? I don’t know anymore! I’ll do whatever you people tell me to. I don’t care about anything.”

The lot of them were unsure how to react to that. They had to tell her to do something but having that much control over a pony in this state gave Dash pause.

“Well I have a request!” Rarity spoke up first. “You can undo the curse you put on my associates and myself.”

“Fine,” Trixie’s voice gave no hint of her being alive. “It’ll take an hour or two.”

“And you gotta get rid of all the curses you made,” said Dash.

“Sure.”

After that, ideas of what else to tell her to do were lacking.

“We should ask what she knows about the other witches,” Rarity reminded the rest.

“Telling you about the other witches would be breaking our only rule. Witches aren’t snitches or… bleh.” Trixie groaned miserably, then shrugged. “But nothing matters anymore, right? I’ll just rat them all out. Screw it. Twilight, can you take off the thing and give me my hat back? I won’t do anything.”

Twilight took off the horn-lock and held out Trixie’s hat to her, bottom-up like she was looking for some change. From inside the hat, Trixie levitated out a single strain of pink mind fiber.

“Here. I know how to write onto mind fibers, at least.” Trixie took a pink thread out from underneath her hat. Her eyes and the thread both glowed blue briefly. “This has all the good stuff about the other witches.”

Twilight put the ring back on Trixie’s horn before taking the mind fiber.

“This is a lot.” Twilight nodded. “Thank you, this will be a huge help.”

“So?” Trixie’s depression was muted however slightly as she leaned forward towards Twilight. “Are you shocked by a certain revelation? Hm?”

“Huh?” Twilight turned back to Trixie. “Am I supposed to recognize any of these ponies?”

“How do you not know who—" Trixie took offense to the question. She glared over at Dash. “Rainbow one! You take it and be shocked.”

Curious, Dash took the mind fiber from Twilight.

This was a bit more mind fiber than Dash was used to dealing with. She staggered and needed a moment to regain her composure after taking it, but she could just barely handle holding the pink thread.

There really was a lot of information about the other witches. So much was clear as day now, like the memories were her own.

Dash remembered Lazy Eye’s Hotel and Motel and the secret passage in its boiler room leading deep down into Minuette’s panic room. Minuette had small rooms, underground chambers, and the like with runes in them. These were all landing pads for the ‘Z-gate’ spell she and her predecessors were obsessed with. Even now, Dash knew only a small fraction of those locations.

Though she’d never been to Endless Paradise Island, Dash now felt like she had large swathes of it memorized as well. She could see the whole island from the view of the world’s tallest Ferris wheel. She knew what was in a fair number of the buildings she could see in that memory. She could picture the ‘throne room’ and see Screwball sitting on her throne made of cash while wearing twenty crowns.

And she could see…

“Hold on!” Dash snapped back to reality. “Sunset Shimmer is a witch?!”

Rarity was the only other one surprised by that revelation, as she was the only one familiar with modern politics.

Dash remembered it like she’d seen it herself, a young Sunset Shimmer with the missing fifth volume of the The Book of Shadows.

“You see?” Trixie pointed to Dash with both forehooves. “That’s the reaction I want. Was that so hard?”

“I saw that part, but I don’t know who that is.” Twilight shook her head. “Did we meet her?”

“No,” said Dash. “But she’s one of the elite four. One of the main ponies in charge of Equestria.”

“But is that good or bad?” Twilight asked. “Does that mean she’s already on our side?”

“I’m not sure.” Dash silently recalled all the memories in her head.

Trixie didn’t have a lot of memories of Sunset Shimmer. These memories gave Dash the impression that witches rarely met up with one another. Sunset was clearly the outcast of the group and spoke with the others as seldom as possible.

Most of them were from when they were fillies and were spent doing days-long sessions of combat practice rather than fighting. But there were times when the two of them would be lying on their backs, too exhausted to move for hours.

What they talked about during those times was… well, they were distorted by Trixie’s perception (Dash remembered that part of Twilight’s lectures), but Trixie remembered it as Sunset lecturing her and whining about the generation of witches before them.

The last time they were together was as teenagers, when Sunset told Trixie she intended to become president of Equestria and offered to let Trixie be her ‘goon’ or something like that. Trixie refused and they hadn’t spoken since.

“It’s not clear from what I saw,” said Dash. “She rejected the new teachings of witchcraft, at least.”

“Sunset was always the rebel.” Trixie rolled her eyes. “But I guess if you hate the new teachings, you have that in common. I don’t think there was a single part of our system she didn’t think was ‘corrupt’ or whatever.”

“So she believes in the old ways?” Twilight held her hoof out for Dash to pass the mind fiber back.

Already that treasure trove of memories was fading like the memories of a dream. Dash hadn’t gone over them nearly enough to keep them afterward.

“Hardly.” Trixie shook her head. “She’d just always go on and on about how everyone else’s interpretation of the philosophy was ‘perverted’. The rest of us always hated her because of how preachy and judgmental she always was.”

“And what parts specifically did she ‘rebel’ against?” Rarity asked.

“Like part of the training these days is getting rid of your aversion towards hurting other ponies,” said Trixie. “They make you beat the crap out of some random pony now and then to try and kill your empathy towards others. The rest of us see your natural hesitation to hurt another pony as a weakness. Sunset always refused to do that, saying it was just the older generation trying to force their morals on us. I always saw her as being weak and cowardly. Just making excuses.”

That sounded plausible, at least. Sunset had a good reputation and Dash always saw her as the most approachable of the elite. It was well known she was kind to orphans. Her (possibly fake) backstory was that she rose from being an orphan on the streets to become one of the elite. Now that she was in power, she did all sorts of things to help kids orphaned by the dangers of the world, including building orphanages and frequently volunteering at them.

Then there was the reason that the fifth volume was missing. Nopony had used it for anything bad in decades, implying that not only Sunset but the witch who taught her both resisted the urge to use it against other ponies.

Maybe the witch training simply hadn’t been enough to crush her empathy.

“Oh!” Trixie leaned forward like she was about to share some juicy gossip. “But here’s the important part. She said we don’t respect the idea that the powerful should get to run things if we’re not willing to submit to those stronger than ourselves. She liked the idea of all of us fighting to see who was the strongest and would get to be the head witch. Everypony else thought the idea was stupid.”

“I see,” said Rarity. “So if that’s what she believes, then as the last master witch, Twilight would be her rightful ruler and Sunset would submit to her. My! Do I even need to mention how useful having one of the elite four in our pocket would be?”

She didn’t. Dash’s mind was ablaze with how many doors would open up. The elite four wielded more power than any other ponies in society. Sunset was, for example, one of the only four ponies who could sanction Fluttershy, giving her a pass to move freely through society.

Doing the same for Twilight might take a bit more work, even then.

“Do you think it’d be a good idea to reveal my identity to her?” Twilight asked Trixie.

“Oh, I don’t know what she’s thinking anymore.” Trixie turned her hooves up. “I haven’t seen her since she was an edgy sixteen-year-old. She doesn’t dye her hair anymore. But I’d say you have a fifty-fifty shot of her accepting your authority. It’s up to you if you want to risk everything on her agreeing with her sixteen-year-old self.”

That killed a lot of the hope. Rainbow Dash was certainly embarrassed by some of the things she’d believed as a teen.

More sober thought made her remember that siding with Sunset had its risks. The second you became public friends with one of the elite four, the other three would consider you an enemy. Maybe Pinkie was right and the best they could do was be friends with one of them. If that was the case, it was down to Sunset or Nailbat. But which one?

“So we have no idea if we can trust her or what she’s really up to?” Dash mostly asked herself. “I mean if she was really good why wouldn’t she have ratted out the other witches yet?”

“Because we don’t interfere with other witches,” said Trixie. “Witches aren’t snitches.”

“And if all the other witches know who she is,” Dash continued, “why have none of them ratted her out?”

“Because we don’t interfere with other witches,” Trixie said a little louder now. “That’s the one rule we still follow, remember? After all the masters died, the remaining witches agreed morals were stupid, but we had to keep that one rule if we didn’t want our art to die off. We all agreed to stay out of each other’s way.”

“I get it.” Dash heard it this time. “Then Sunset does agree with your stupid philosophy at least a little, huh?”

“If that’s the case,” said Twilight, “I don’t think we should tell her yet. Certainly not right now. I’m still exhausted.”

Twilight let out an exhausted sigh and sat down. Dash could relate to the feeling. She’d done half as much as Twilight and was dreading simply talking to the authorities, let alone risking a fight with a head of state.

“Now we just gotta decide what we’re doing with her.” Dash looked down at Trixie.

“Obviously we’re throwing her in jail, yes?” Rarity closed her eyes and turned her head in a huff.

Before coming here, Dash really wouldn’t have felt bad if Trixie had simply died in the fight. It was true she’d done a lot of bad things. After seeing Trixie break down and surrender, Dash was a little more hesitant to just ‘get rid’ of her.

“You can’t seriously think that’s the best idea!” Trixie objected before Dash could. “Think about it! I’ll fight for you. If you give me back the spellbook, I can help you destroy the other witches in record time. I bet if you can get Sunset to swear loyalty to you, the three of us could take all the others out in one go.”

“I don’t think you should be fighting anypony,” Twilight said flatly.

“What?!” Trixie tried to get up, but her chains prevented it. “I know I lost to you, but you can’t say I’m not strong at all! I could beat up any of the other ponies on your team.”

“How many times do I have to tell you I don’t care about that?” Twilight asked. “You don’t respect power for its own sake, and you aren’t nice to ponies who are weaker than you. Until you can do one of those two things, you shouldn’t be fighting anypony. If you want me to teach you, then your first lesson is to not just fly off the hinge and attack anypony you don’t like. Avoiding all fights is the only way to train that.”

Trixie glowered, not liking that advice.

“Fine.” She relented with a sigh.

“I agree with Rainbow Dash. You should focus on cleaning up your mess and destroying every curse you made,” said Twilight. “How many are there anyway?”

“462,” said Trixie. “I think.”

“Huh.” Twilight blinked, letting that number wash over her. “That’s a lot. It’s easy for the witch who made the curse to break it, but even then that’d take a long time.”

“Well I would do it,” Trixie said. “But isn’t like they’ll just let me freely walk around society, looking up all the ponies I’ve cursed. If Flash Bang gets me, I’ll get thrown in Area 5X forever and how will I break the curses then?”

“Area 5X?” Twilight repeated it. “That place sounds familiar.”

“Twilight, do you have any idea how bad it is in there?!” Chained up, throwing herself at Twilight’s feet was about all Trixie was capable of. “Once you go in there, you never come out! They’ll give me eight thousand life sentences, meaning I’ll be stuck in a cell, chained up, and constantly monitored forever. I’ll never see the sun again. And that’s if I’m lucky and they don’t just kill me!”

Twilight turned to Dash for confirmation of this and got a nod.

“She’s not wrong,” Dash admitted. “There’s no way she won’t end up in Area 5X. Barely anypony is allowed inside that place, so I dunno how bad it is inside of there. Equestria doesn’t have a death penalty, though.”

Trixie pressed her muzzle hard against the ground, bowing to Twilight once again.

“I know I was wrong now. I’m not powerful and I don’t have the right to do anything I want.” Trixie looked up at Twilight, the only real authority in her eyes, with desperation. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get your approval. I’ll never fight again! I’ll pet kittens and bake pies for the homeless. I’ll undo every curse and apologize to everypony even… what’s her face over there.”

Trixie pointed at an unamused Rarity.

“But I can’t change if I never get a chance, can I?” Trixie asked.

It was getting harder and harder to just throw her in prison. Twilight watched her with ever more sympathy.

“I agree with her!” Twilight nodded. “There’s no point in just chaining her up forever, is there? She clearly wants to fix her mistakes and try to get better and locking her up won’t help with that. It’s just another example of your society being silly.”

“Then what would you suggest, dear?” Rarity asked.

That was a more difficult question that Twilight struggled to answer.

“Maybe we could take her with us?” Twilight suggested without much confidence. “I still don’t think she should be fighting anypony, but her knowledge of the other witches could still be useful.”

“I guess we already have a million criminals.” Dash shrugged.

Trixie was nodding as rapidly as she could.

“That’s not a good idea in the least.” Rarity waved her hoof, dismissing the idea. “Let’s think about this. Your mission was to reform your image, was it not? But Trixie is hated far and wide at the moment. If we not only let her off the hook but start harboring her from the law, how is that going to affect our reputation? Very few ponies will be as willing to forgive her as I am and I’m still a bit peeved about all of this, to be honest.”

Dash looked at Trixie with a frown, unable to object to that. They couldn’t seriously risk everything like that.

“Then we have the fact that Flash Bang is going to start bringing her army south at any moment.” Rarity gazed down into the scar in the ground left from Trixie and Twilight’s fight. “Everypony heard that battle, I assure you. Turning Trixie in is the only way we can avert that.”

“You’re not wrong.” Dash tapped her foot, trying to come up with some better argument than her gut. “I just feel like if she’s willing to work to undo her mistakes locking her up forever isn’t the best way to go.”

“Perhaps if you keep at this,” said Rarity, “one day you’ll be a member of the elite four and then you can reform things. When you have more clout, you could take up the task of carrying out Trixie’s reformation and let her out of Area 5X. But I can’t see a path to that not involving her spending years in jail.”

Trixie looked up at Dash, her only hope in the proposed plan, with a pathetic look that begged for mercy.

Dash’s hoof-tapping accelerated. She closed her eyes tightly and growled softly at herself, wracking her brain to try and come up with some other solution. She had to stop the army from going south, keep her own reputation clean and give Trixie a shot to fix her mistakes.

Also preferably get the reward money.

There had to be a solution that gave her all those things!

Turning Trixie in to Flash Bang wasn’t an option because…

“Oh!” Dash’s eyes popped open. “What about Nailbat, huh? We could turn her in to that guy instead!”

Everypony turned to her, curious.

“He’s always talking about his plans to be friends with ghosts and stuff, yeah?” Dash looked at Fluttershy for support. “I bet we can sell him on the idea of reforming a witch!”

Fluttershy was immediately sold on the idea and nodded in agreement. Dash knew Fluttershy recognized his name, at least. She liked his idea of making a sanctuary city where ghosts could live out in the open. Said as much when she heard him on the radio.

“See how brilliant this is?” Dash turned to Rarity next, who was seriously considering the idea. “He’s got tons of clout and will want to do it because if he can reform a witch, he can reform anybody, yeah? Then if Trixie goes well, it’ll make things easier when it’s Twilight’s turn to reveal herself. Plus, we still get the credit, and you know, money, for defeating Trixie!”

“That’s certainly the best idea yet,” Rarity admitted, tapping her chin. “But do you know where to find him? And we still have the matter of the army to tend to.”

That was an issue. Nailbat was notoriously hard to find. Unlike the other three, he liked to stay in the shadows and rarely made public appearances. They’d be lucky if it took a month to find him.

Rainbow Dash crossed her forelegs and went back into deep, frustrating thought. Just when she thought she’d solved the problem, more stuff piled right on.

“Well, Trixie has the best idea yet!” Trixie spoke up. “It’s the same deal the rainbow-headed one had, but you make the deal with Sunset Shimmer instead. Obviously, she’d want to publicly reform a witch, right?”

That was it! The perfect plan! It all fit together perfectly in Dash’s head now.

“Yeah! I like that idea!” Dash nodded. “Sunset could understand what Trixie’s been through, so she won’t be as harsh I’d bet.”

Dash looked over at Rarity, who felt like the one she needed to convince.

“Hm.” Rarity had to bow her head in concession. “I suppose in a fair society you should be judged by a jury of your peers. From the sound of things, Sunset is her only peer who isn’t necessarily a sociopath. If nothing else, it would be fair to let Sunset be the one to judge Trixie’s actions.”

“Yeah! And guess what else?” Trixie asked. “I could spy on her for you. When we’re alone I’ll start talking to her about witch stuff. I can find out what she believes and let you know whether to reveal your identity to her!”

This plan was getting better and better!”

“But you’re not going to drop that Twilight is Twilight, are you?” Dash asked.

“I understand the importance of theatrics and timing better than any of you!” Trixie boasted. “I would never callously waste such an incredible reveal until the absolute perfect moment!”

“The one problem I see is how we can find her,” said Rarity. “We only have perhaps a day.”

“Oh, I know that one.” Trixie looked up to the north. “She’s up with Flash Bang somewhere. I didn’t count on her coming south because she still believes in the no interference rule. My prediction is she found some excuse to not come down here.”

“I think we can all agree that’s the best we can do, right?” Twilight looked around at the others.

“Then we just need to get all the way freaking back there before.” Dash rubbed the back of her head.

Everypony around her groaned, not looking forward to more journeying.

Off to the side, Applejack had woken up not long ago. She was still in the process of getting her bearings straight.

Noticing this, Twilight ran off to the side to redo her disguise before Applejack woke up. Dash went over to get her some water. She drank an entire bottle at once, then breathless and limping, hobbled off towards Trixie.

“I just can’t believe my eyes.” Applejack shook her head. “You really beat her? I don’t know who you folks are, but I keep my word. I’ll never doubt anything any of you say ever again!”

Trixie kept her eyes downcast in shame, unable to say anything to Applejack.

Rarity beckoned for Applejack to come over, then seeing her rough state simply walked over to the earth pony instead.

“You’re Apple Bloom’s sister, yes?” Rarity asked her. “Well, you can relax. She’s been accounted for and is en route for my home.”

“Hasn’t everypony been accounted for?” Applejack asked. “I thought they were all headed to the coast, not your house.”

“Oh! You didn’t know. My.” Rarity tapped her chin, thinking of a tactful way to tell her. “Yes, the others got to the coast and are headed south for the winter. Apple Bloom’s position is a bit more precarious. She was separated from the others before our group arrived.”

“Is she alright?!”

“No need to worry!” Rarity assured her. “She’s with an unstoppable killing machine.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better, or—?”

“She’s fine is what I’m saying. We’re taking you back to my castle after this, either way, so you’ll see her soon.”

“Right.” Twilight got up. “You and Fluttershy take Applejack back. Rainbow Dash and I will take Trixie to Sunset.”

Rarity quietly complained about needing a break before drinking some water.

“Hold up! We’re forgetting one thing,” Dash reminded them. “The Darklord. Isn’t he around here? We should ask him about Starlight.”

“Oh, I nearly forgot about that,” Twilight said. “You’re his minion, right? Can you tell us everything he knows?”

“We’d be here all night if I tried telling you that,” said Applejack. “Can you be more specific?”

“Starlight’s planning on doing something. Do you know anything about that?” Dash asked.

“Afraid I don’t know about that.” Applejack shook her head. “I should warn you, my god’s not always so straight with folk. I don’t know everything he gets up to and I doubt he’ll tell you more than he tells me.”

“We should still try asking,” said Dash. “Can you take us to talk to him before we leave?”

“I owe you more than I can even say.” Applejack nodded. “I don’t know anything about this conspiracy you’re talking about and it ain’t easy to get that guy to help you, but I can take you to him. He likes me, at least.”

Applejack led them to the south, limping along but refusing to be carried any further.

They approached a lake so placid it might as well have been frozen over. Nothing lived inside that dark pool, it was too still for that possibility, and nothing grew around it for several yards.

Fluttershy nervously looked up at something above the lake as Applejack made a portal for them to enter and see what she did.

On the other side were the massive chains Fluttershy spoke of earlier. Here, they covered the entire ground to the point you couldn’t see the lake below save for the eerie blue light its dark depth emitted in the shadow realm.

Above this hung a single pony, forced by the chains into an upright position. His forelegs were crossed and his wings spread open. It didn’t look like he could move much from that pose.

The bottom half of his body was completely covered in those chains and the top wasn’t much freer. Links from the chains pierced his wings and went up far into the sky to some unseen point. His horn, as he really was an alicorn, was covered in a jumble of seven locks that swung back and forth when he moved his head.

His one remaining eye was a deep pool of red broken only by the black pupil. Not much could be seen of him other than that, as he was covered in full plated mail.

He looked like he should be dead. His right eye wasn’t visible because the helmet had been dented so badly that the metal covered where the eye hole should have been. The other grievous wound was a slit just big enough for a sword to fit through that went clean through his middle and to the other side so that you could see clearly behind him

His entire armor was covered in smaller dents and gashes. There was some purple blood on it, but none of it was fresh. The blood had dried but never vanished.

There was hardly any part of him visible beneath the armor. The only gap in his armor was around the neck where Dash could see black fur. Yet not feathers poke out from underneath the armor covering his wings, as though most of them, at the least, had been lost. His hair couldn’t be seen beyond the purple tail hanging lifelessly behind him. Even that had been tied up with chains and locks.

He said nothing as Applejack ran up the pile of chains to confront him.

“It sure took you long enough to get me out of there,” Applejack huffed.

“You trust me, right?” he asked her. “Believe me, I’m doing a lot for you. Had I broken you out sooner it would have been far worse. Your family will have my favor until the end of time and I assure you, you’ll get what you want in the end.”

Applejack thought about it but submitted to his assurance in the end.

“Thank you, my master.” Applejack bowed to him. “But, pardon. These folks helped me out a lot. I hope you didn’t, well I know you watch out for me but you can be a bit underhanded at times. I think you owe them a favor for helping us out.”

The Darklord looked up briefly to consider the offer.

“Clearly my Applejack likes you, so I will warn you about one thing.” He looked down at Rainbow Dash. “You seem to have picked up one of my creations recently. I don’t suppose you found a coin recently? It was something I made on my forge of irony long ago.”

Coin?

“That magic coin?!” Dash’s heart skipped a beat.

She didn’t need to hear any more explanation to know she was screwed! Anything that guy made was too dangerous to use.

“Hold up! You found the lucky coin?!” Applejack gasped. “You didn’t use it, did you?”

“I told you not to use it!” Twilight yelled at her, then went into her bag to search for it. “Where did I put that thing?”

“I only used it like four times!” Dash smiled up at the guy. “That’s not too many, is it?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter how many times you use it,” he said, “but how unlikely the things you ask for are. You won’t be in too much trouble, but…”

“Um.” Twilight blushed and cleared her throat. “I can’t seem to find it.”

He laughed down at them.

“Don’t feel too bad,” he said. “Nopony’s ever managed to hold onto that thing. You’d lose it eventually and it would be found by the worst possible person. That’s how it works, you see. One person’s luck is another’s misfortune. The current master of the coin will use it to destroy the former owner. Possibly more on top of it.

“Trixie used the coin a good deal,” he said, “to grant herself several unlikely events. Then the coin escaped from her and found you… who brought total ruin proportional to the fortune she took for herself.”

Ruin to Trixie? Dash supposed she did crush her in a sense, but…

“That’s debatable,” said Dash. “Her worldview sucked! Isn’t it better for her to get cosmic ironyed?”

“Perhaps in your subjective opinion, she’s better off trying to change. But at the moment she held the coin, finding Twilight was her enemy and that she’d taken on another student in defiance of her worldview would have been the worst possible outcome.”

Now Dash’s mind was reeling with all the horrible things that could happen to her. What was the worst possible thing that could happen in her current opinion?

“But at any rate, you didn’t ask for anything as improbable as Trixie did,” he said. “I see the deterministic strains of probability wrapped around you. It won’t be that bad if you don’t manage to avoid the backlash.”

“But then there’s something I can do about it?” Dash latched onto the hope the moment she saw it.

“Of course it’s not inevitable. Don’t you know time is simply an illusion created by your inability to reverse entropy?”

“Yeah.” Twilight nodded. “I thought that was obvious.”

“Oh! Yeah, sure. How silly of me.” Dash rolled her eyes.

“Why, if you can reverse entropy it will be like the future never even happened,” he said. “I did make the thing, to begin with, and Applejack asked me to grant you a favor, so while I don’t normally hand out free advice, I’ll tell you what I see when I look at you.”

His eye looked over Rainbow Dash carefully.

“If you ever find yourself alone, you should be very afraid. If you stay close to your friends until the next person loses the coin, you might just escape something horrible. But you can’t do it alone.”

“That’s just cryptic enough to be useless.” Dash shrugged. “But thanks, I guess?”

“I meant that more literally,” he said. “Like don’t go to sleep unless there’s someone else in the house with you. If you and the pony who find that coin are ever alone together… that’s what you need to be afraid of. Delay that long enough and you’re safe. Is that specific enough for you to follow?”

“Yeah, yeah. I got it,” said Dash. At least there was something she could do about it.

Dash looked over her group. Come to think of it… she had way more people around than ever before. Had you told her something like ‘don’t be alone’ just a year ago Dash would have had zero ability to follow through with it.

“So are you going to tell us the rest?” Dash asked.

“Hm?” He tilted his head, pretending to be innocent. “Tell you the rest of what?”

“Well we rescued Applejack like you wanted. Now tell us what you know about Starlight,” Dash demanded.”

“I don’t see any reason in particular to tell you anything,” said The Darklord. “Of course, you could give me a reason.”

“We did what you wanted!” Dash pointed up at him. “Is that enough?”

“I didn’t tell or even ask you to do anything,” he said. “I gave you information and you decided to do this on your own.”

“You see?” Rarity glanced at Dash with an annoyed look. “They are all like that, I assure you. Regardless, you must want something from us. What is it, exactly?”

“I’ll answer maybe two or three questions,” said The Darklord. “In exchange, I want you to swear you’ll protect Applejack until I tell you it’s no longer necessary. You won’t turn her over to Flash Bang, Starlight, or anypony outside your group who comes to you even if they don’t seem to mean her any harm. I’ll warn you that several… things will try to kill or kidnap her soon. After watching your fight, I think you can handle it.”

“So in other words, we’re not getting anything in return.” Rarity warned Twilight. “Remember the last time he gave us information? It’ll always be the same thing. Whatever answers he gives you will be manipulative and self-serving.”

“Oh! I don’t even deny it.” The Darklord spread his hooves as far apart as they would go, only slightly in the end. “I’m absolutely going to give you manipulative answers and I won’t tell you everything. But who are we kidding here? Your curiosity smells as strong as a mountain of garbage. You’re going to take the deal even knowing that.”

He wasn’t wrong. That sounded like a good deal to Dash. The more information they had, the better.

Twilight and Dash shared a look before they both shrugged. It was what they planned to do either way.

“Alright.” Twilight nodded. “I’ll put Applejack under my protection.”

“Wonderful!” “Applejack, I was only going to tell you this if they agreed, but that pony there is secretly the ancient witch Twilight Sparkle. As long as you’re staying with them, I’d like you to help these weirdo’s with their mission.”

The cover was blown yet again! At least Applejack wasn’t going anywhere.

“Oh, that’s Twilight?” Applejack looked at Twilight with only mild curiosity. “Yeah, sure. Makes sense.”

“That’s the least anypony’s reacted to that revelation,” said Twilight. “You’re not worried about that?

“Oh, I hang with this guy.” Applejack gestured to The Darklord. “No issue at all to me.”

“Now then. You can ask me anything you want.” The Darklord couldn’t incline his hooves quite enough to hold them out like an offering. “My knowledge is vast. Here! I’ll give you one for free. No one’s moved the sun in millennia. Me and those two crazy kids just spun the planet to make it look like it’s still moving. All just an optical illusion.”

“We noticed that one a long time ago,” said Dash.

“Oh. Huh. You know that used to give ponies an existential crisis. How times change.” He laughed.

“You’re sure this guy knows everything?” Dash muttered in Applejack’s direction.

“Ah, he was just joking with you!” Applejack assured her as The Darklord continued to laugh. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you ponies of his sort never lie lie at least.”

Now the question was what was the question?

Nopony had to outright say they needed to be careful with what questions they asked. Even if he wasn’t going to outright lie, they had to give him as little room to squirm around as possible if they wanted to get ahead. As such, none of them blurted anything out right away.

That said, Dash hadn’t come into this entirely unprepared. She decided years ago what question she’d ask in a similar situation. She watched Rarity and Twilight for a moment, their indecision giving her confidence to go ahead before she spoke out.

“Don’t worry, I got this. Say what you will about my terrible education, but I’ve spent countless hours lying awake at night thinking of ways to break these monkey paw scenarios. Watch this!” Dash pointed at The Darklord with determination. “How would our actions differ between scenario A where we know everything you do and scenario B where we only know what you want us to?”

“Hm.” Rarity slowly moved to lie down on her back against the chain. “Yes, that is a fair question, but we can already deduce part of that. We would turn Applejack in to somepony if we knew everything. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have made us agree to that.”

“How perceptive.” The Darklord placed his hooves together for a single, slow clap. “You see? I’m sure you’re clever enough to outsmart me. But you’re going to ask that question anyway to be safe, I’m sure.”

“Yes.” Rarity nodded with suspicion.

“Well then! The part you haven’t figured out is my main motivation in all of this.” His eye fell upon Twilight. “In addition to protecting Applejack, there’s someone I want to kill. I believe you met him, witch.”

“Huh?” Twilight pointed at herself, surprised. “You mean Flash? I’m pretty sure he’s already dead.”

“No, not him. The other one.” The Darklord leaned closer. “Discord. I want you to kill Discord.”

Twilight’s eyes flashed with recognition at the name. She didn’t look overly concerned from a death threat against said name, just confused. It didn’t look like they were friends.

Dash raised her hoof.

“Hey. Do we know who that is?” Dash asked.

Twilight nodded and started tapping her back hoof against the ground in a nervous fit.

“Remember when I told you there was a chaos spirit we’d need to get rid of to end the curse of undeath?” Twilight reminded Dash. “That’s who he’s talking about. But why do you care about that? If you wanted to get rid of the zombies, wouldn’t you have started years ago?”

“Oh, I don’t care much about that.” He gave small, restrained flicks of his hoof. “No, I want to kill him because he annoyed me.”

“And?” Dash asked.

“That’s it.” He shrugged.

“So what? You literally murder anyone who annoys you?” Dash asked.

“Yep.” The Darklord nodded slowly.

“Uh.” Dash began backing up slowly.

Rarity’s posture became less callous. She sat back upright and scooted away from the chain she’d been poking. Twilight stopped tapping her foot. Fluttershy slowly drifted behind Dash.

“It ain’t as bad as it sounds!” Applejack rushed to the guy’s defense. “He’s got a real long fuse. Annoying him isn’t something a normal pony can even do.”

“I suppose it is true.” The Darklord looked up at the stars. “If you wanted to annoy me your family would have to commit multiple generations to it.”

Still, nopony spoke until Rarity broke the silence by clearing her throat.

“Excuse me,” Rarity spoke up. “Twilight, the way you were speaking before I thought we had to destroy this ‘Discord’ to end the curse of undeath. Yet the implication here is that we wouldn’t have destroyed Discord without intervention.”

“It’s more like…” Twilight tried to think of the best way to explain it. “That’s the closest I can get to telling you how to break the curse without telling you how to break the curse. For example, say you had to get rid of a pillow to break a curse. I tell you burning down the house it’s in would break the curse. Technically I haven’t told you the conditions so you’re still safe.”

“So it’s possible to do it without killing him?” Dash asked.

“It’d be easier to just destroy him!” Twilight glanced off to the side, annoyed. “I can’t explain it without you getting hurt, so just trust me.”

Trusting Twilight was the only option here. Dash had to remind herself not to try and piece together that mystery. Figuring it out would only mean getting hit with the full power of the curse of undeath.

“Hold up.” Applejack raised her hoof. “If I’m to understand everything going on, most ponies can’t hear how to break the curse cause then it’ll become stronger. But if I’m immune don’t that mean I can hear what it is?”

“I suppose I should tell you later,” said The Darklord. “It’d be best for me if you knew.”

“If you’ll hear it eventually, I’ll just tell you now.” Twilight trotted to Applejack’s side.

She whispered the forbidden truth in Applejack’s ear. As she did a look of mounting confusion overtook her face.

“But that don’t sound too hard.” Applejack raised an eyebrow.

“You never met Discord,” The Darklord reminded her.

Twilight nodded in eager agreement.

So it was something that didn’t sound hard to do…

“Remember, you don’t want to figure it out.” Twilight shot Dash a stern look. “Stop thinking about it.”

“Got ya!” Dash did her best to not think about it. “Still, that guy was already on our to-kill list.”

“Oh, yes. How very coincidental.” His smile could be felt through his helmet.

Rarity, Twilight, and Dash all shot him a suspicious look at the comment.

“Okay, you totally did something!” Dash pointed an accusing hoof at him. “What did you do?”

“Hm?” He tilted his head, curious. “Why I helped you. Don’t you remember? You should be thanking me.”

“Oh no you don’t,” said Dash. “I’m not just some tool who runs around mindlessly thanking people all day. There’s a catch here.”

“I set out to look for people who may want to destroy Discord.” The Darklord’s eye began to flick about in all directions. “You’re not even the only ones I’m helping. You didn’t have my attention before you decided to set out to do this entirely on your own. If you think back, I’m sure you’ve never heard my voice until then.”

When was the first time? If it was the dream, that much is true.

“Regardless, here’s the specific answer to your question,” The Darklord went on. “If you knew everything and hadn’t made a deal with me, you would bring Applejack to Flash Bang and work with her to stop Starlight Glimmer. I do believe you’d prevent a disaster and end the curse of undeath without killing Discord. That’d be the easier path to take. Though frankly, I don’t think it leads to the best end for any of us. I’m trying to force you down a more difficult road where you choose to keep Applejack for your own use later. So you see, I am helping you.”

Did anypony believe that last part? Dash didn’t and it looked like nopony but maybe Applejack did.

“So?” The Darklord pulled back, deeper into his chains. “What’s your second question?”

There was the obvious one. Now that they’d gotten his intentions down, it was time to get what they came for.

“What is this ‘plan’ Starlight has?” Twilight was the one who asked it.

“Oh, it should be easy enough for you to understand that.” He leaned forward towards Twilight. “She’s attempting to cast a certain spell. You know the one I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Twilight alone understood this reference. Suddenly she looked less purple as her ears fell flat. She looked up at him with a muted horror, too stunned to say anything or even breathe. Dash slowly lifted a hoof to try poking her, but Twilight spoke out at the last moment before collision.

“You’re talking about… that spell?” Twilight held her breath again.

“Yes! Precisely what you’re thinking.” He moved his hoof in a small circle. “You had an incident with it a while back, didn’t you?”

Everypony looked over at Twilight, patiently waiting for her to explain. Yet she just held her breath until the loss of purple from her blood draining out was negated by the gain in purple form holding her breath.

When it was clear said explanation was never going to arrive, Dash scooted up next to her, poking her for real this time.

“Hey, Twi,” Dash whispered to her. “Which spell is ‘that’ one, exactly?”

“It doesn’t matter!” Twilight pushed Dash away and looked in the other direction.

“Sounds like it kinda does,” said Dash.

“Look. All that matters is that Starlight has a… a thing and if we can take that away from her then she won’t be able to do, uh, the thing!” Twilight nodded firmly.

“A thing? What?” Dash tilted her head.

“Twilight, dear, you need to use your words if we’re to understand you,” said Rarity. “We’ve been over this.”

“Yeah! Just tell us what it is!” Dash demanded.

“Does it matter if you know what she’s trying to do?” Twilight started pacing back and forth, gesticulating with her hoof. “Or even what the ‘thing’ is? All that matters is that we can stop her! And it doesn’t matter if she actually pulls it off!”

“Not to any of you, no,” The Darklord agreed with her.

“But we do need to stop her from trying anyway.” Twilight stopped her pacing and nodded towards the others in her group. “Very important.”

“Oh, absolutely.” Behind her, The Darklord nodded as well.

A spell that didn’t matter if she cast it but they still had to stop her anyway?

Dash rubbed her head in frustration, trying to make that work. Rarity was pensive, tapping her temple and looking over the chains as she tried to figure that one out. Fluttershy wasn’t even trying to solve the mystery, just looked between Dash and Rarity to see if either of them would piece it together.

“And you’re not going to tell us what the spell is?” Dash asked The Darklord. “But we burned a question on that!”

“I explained it until the person who asked understood perfectly,” he said.

Dash groaned. If she had any hope, it was with Twilight.

“Come on, Twilight.” Dash put her hooves on Twilight’s withers. “Can’t you at least tell me why you can’t tell me?”

“I— look, this was something I was planning on telling you when you were ready,” said Twilight. “When I’m sure you weren't going to do anything stupid with it. I’ll tell you in, I dunno, a few years. Or decades.”

“Ugh.” Dash rolled her eyes. “Look, I promise I won’t do anything with that information unless you specifically tell me to, okay?”

“No. It’s too tempting.” Twilight still refused to make eye contact with her. “The last time I told somepony about that spell—"

“Is this still about that guy?” Dash pieced it together. “I’m not like him, okay?! What do I gotta do to convince you I’m not some garbage jerkwad who will betray you the second I get the chance?! Do I gotta punch Applejack in the face, 'cause I’ll do it!”

Applejack took a step back.

“Just tell me, is there anything I can ever do to convince you I’m your friend?!” Dash asked.

“Yeah?! Well— If you’re my friend then why are you yelling at me?!” Twilight latched to the first excuse she could find. “You do stupid things all the time! I can’t just tell you everything until I’m completely sure you won’t do anything stupid with it.”

“I won’t cast the stupid spell, okay?!”

“I don’t know that! You can’t possibly know that until you know what the spell is!”

“Well tell me and I won’t cast it right freaking now!”

“No!”

Dash growled in frustration. How was she supposed to get through? She’d been trying for months but there were still all these stupid walls everywhere!

A deep laugh slowly welled up behind the two of them.

“I have an idea!” The Darklord interrupted their little fight. “Rainbow Dash. Why don’t you use the last question to ask me what Twilight is hiding from you?”

Dash looked up at him.

“I’m not the only one hiding things from you. I can guess a few important things your little business partner doesn’t want you to know.” He leaned forward at Rainbow Dash. “So if you’re curious…”

Of course she was curious! How could you not be? And the suggestion froze Twilight with fear. The witch was tensed up like the specter of the question was a loaded bullet pointed at her temple. Could Twilight be hiding something that bad from her?

“And you know.” The Darklord crossed his forelegs again and leaned down to Twilight. “I could always tell you what Rainbow Dash is hiding from you.”

“Hey! I’m not hiding anything!” Dash yelled up at him. “Well, nothing important anyway.”

“Ah, but can the rest of us be sure of that?” He straightened out.

Curious or not, Dash wasn’t stupid enough to waste her one question on something like this. She glanced over at Twilight to see if Twilight was at least smart enough to not fall for an obvious trap.

But Dash was shocked to see her considering it!

“You could know that?” Twilight’s voice quavered from nerves.

“Of course! I can see into the dreams of ponies.” His eye opened wider than it had so far. “Where do you think I get all this information from? Applejack?”

Then Twilight bit her lip and looked at the ground, struggling with whether to ask.

Dash couldn’t believe she would even think about going through with it! Maybe Dash should just find out what Twilight was hiding!

“You only have one question left between you all,” he warned. “Whoever asks first gets to hear the truth. Don’t you want to know for sure whether or not you can trust any of your friends, Twilight?”

That last comment was too far! Any anger Dash had pointed at Twilight snapped over to him.

Dash could see Twilight more clearly now, could see that last question really had punctured her. She wasn’t mistrustful so much as afraid, Dash realized. All that power and she was terrified of…

Dash bit her tongue to punish herself. She realized she was the one being stupid.

Twilight was still learning to trust other people and this guy was just playing on her weakness. That was it. He was trying to pit them against each other so they’d waste their last question!

She wasn’t going to just let somepony take advantage of one of her friends like that.

“You know what? No.” Dash turned her back on The Darklord. “Twilight’s my friend and I trust her! If there’s something she’s not telling me, she must have a good reason. I’d give up our last question before I asked you that.”

“Huh?!” Twilight stepped back, surprise snapping her fear. “You… really trust me that much?”

“Yeah!” Dash nodded with confidence. “If you say all I need to know is that we gotta get a ‘thing’ from Starlight then that’s what we’ll do. I’m sorry about before, okay? I know you’d never hurt me.”

Twilight started to deflate. The tension melted around her, brining her ears, her head and her tail all drooping down.

“No! I’m so sorry.” Twilight rushed over to Dash. “I shouldn’t have even thought about taking that offer! I… I know you’re not…”

“Don’t worry!” Dash held Twilight, patting her back. “That guy was just trying to screw with us.”

“No!” Twilight pulled out of her grip and shook her head. She hesitated a moment before speaking again. “I want to trust you like that too! I’ll tell you about the spell but you all need to promise you’ll never attempt to use this kind of magic.”

Dash nodded.

Behind them, The Darklord brought his hooves together once in a loud clap.

“There! Do you see? You passed my friendship test.” The Darklord spread his forelegs and laughed.

That comment just made her blood boil.

“Oh, don’t give me that line you jerkwad!” Dash pointed up at him as The Darklord continued to laugh. “Why do you hang out with this guy, Applejack?”

“What are you talking about?” Applejack stepped in between the two of them. “He just helped you two out! Twilight wouldn’t have opened up if he didn’t say nothing.”

The Darklord gave a sage nod like that he had somehow planned all that out. Dash could only groan in protest.

“Just ignore him.” Dash turned her back on him anew.

Then all eyes turned to Twilight.

“Right.” Twilight sighed, bracing herself. “The spell Starlight is trying to cast is the divine ascension spell. If you successfully cast it, you transcend reality to become the alicorn god of… something. It varies. For example, you could become one with the concept of, I dunno, trees! Or love or whatever.”

A hush fell over the ponies as it sank in that such a thing was even remotely possible. Starlight had a serious chance at becoming a literal god? She was already a metaphorical one! How was that not good enough?

“Becoming every tree sounds like it’d be nice,” Fluttershy said to herself.

“And you said that wasn’t a big deal?” Dash asked. “How, exactly? That sounds close to the biggest deal.”

“Because you ascend beyond reality.” Twilight looked up at the stars. “That means they’re no longer, uh, ‘real’ in the sense that you understand it. You go to the outer realm and we’d never see you again. From our perspective, if Starlight casts the spell she’d just be erasing herself from existence.”

“Yeah. The whole divine ascension thing?” The Darklord shook his head. “Totally lame. I give it like a three out of ten. Don’t recommend it. I chose being chained up like this over cosmic enlightenment because the latter is the more boring of the two. Think about that.”

“Exactly!” Twilight nodded, too eager to agree. “I figured pretty much the same. You know, I could have cast the spell ages ago but I chose not to because it’s you know, ‘lame’ as he said. Only a total loser would cast the spell to become an alicorn.”

The Darklord laughed.

“I’m starting to like you, witch.” He looked down at her. “Yeah, all those other alicorns and posers suck. You have good taste, though. Tell you what, if I ever break out of here you can be the new sun goddess. I still have the power to move the sun and moon, you know. It’s sealed away in here with me.”

Twilight didn’t look tempted at the offer at all.

“Excuse me.” Rarity raised her hoof and turned to Twilight. “I hope I’m not being rude, but didn’t your ex-boyfriend try to cast that spell? If it’s so terrible, why would he ever want to?”

“Yeah!” Twilight glared death down at a random rock. “As I said, a total loser would do it.”

“I can describe the appeal,” said The Darklord. “Don’t any of you tell me that something as pretentious as ‘cosmic enlightenment or ‘divine ascension’ doesn’t sound tempting to you.”

Dash couldn’t deny it. Any monk or their ilk would tell you cosmic enlightenment was where it’s at. Though it was unlikely any of them had ever pulled it off for real.

“It’s something that looks tempting from afar.” He gazed up at the stars. “Like looking at the stars. From far away the universe beyond your home looks so beautiful and inviting. So often I see you little children thinking it would be a wonderful adventure to go swimming through the stars. Yet only if you got up there would you truly understand how empty it really is. The void that surrounds us is so vast that to enter it is to dissolve into nothing.”

These two made it sound like a trip to a used gum museum would be preferable. How the heck could you seriously be tempted by this? It wasn’t like Dash was such a colossal idiot she’d be tempted to do something every expert on the subject told her she’d regret.

Saying any of that might be twisting a knife, though. Dash decided to just keep her stupid mouth shut this time.

“Why does she need to be stopped, then?” Rarity asked. “Shouldn’t her enemies be fine with her casting this spell if it effectively deletes her?”

“The real problem is that she’s almost certainly going to fail to cast the spell,” Twilight mused. “You know what happened the last time somepony failed to cast the spell, don’t you?”

All the pieces of what happened back then came together in Dash’s mind now.

After hearing about it, Twilight’s boyfriend tried to cast that spell. He failed and the result was the curse of undeath.

“You’re saying something as bad as the curse of undeath could happen again?!” Dash asked.

Twilight blushed heavily and stared down at the ground in embarrassment.

“Believe it or not I was relieved when I found out the zombie thing was all that happened,” she admitted. “My only historical education was from a time when there were under fifty people alive. I had no idea there could ever be this many ponies or zombies even in a million years.”

Dash put a hoof on her back, enough for Twilight to lift her head almost back to where it’d been.

“But my point is, it could be a lot worse than even that,” said Twilight. “Depending on what concept you try to become one with.”

That curse brought multiple species to the brink of extinction and would eventually end the world if nopony stopped it. Twilight knew all of that now and still she thought it could be worse.

The thought made Dash shudder, but it also brought the realization of what was going on.

“I get it now!” Dash smacked her forehooves together. “So Flash Bang isn’t worried that Starlight will become an alicorn. She’s worried Starlight will fail and unleash something horrible on the rest of us! I guess if we knew that, we would have sided with her, huh?”

“Maybe.” Twilight folded her forelegs to think. “But the easiest way to stop Starlight would be to take the element away from her. Or explain the danger to her if she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Come to think of it, a curse immune pony would give you the perfect way to interrupt the ritual at the last minute by killing her.

“So you think this is an assassination attempt,” Rarity concluded for her.

“Ah, crud!” Dash pulled back. “And Flash Bang would be able to say she was just stopping a disaster too! And it wouldn’t even be a lie! It’s like the perfect crime. I don’t think this even counts as entrapment.”

“It does make sense.” Rarity kept a hoof on her chin as she thought. “But the only flaw is that previously he said if we knew everything we’d side with Flash over Starlight. Would we really help an assassination attempt?”

The Darklord was watching them carefully with his eye, keeping his stupid jerk mouth shut tight. There was totally something he was hiding from them. They only had one question left to find out what.

“I have a question!” Rarity suddenly raised a hoof. “Is Starlight trying to fail on purpose? That should be part of the question we already asked.”

“No. She wants to become an alicorn,” he said. “But sure. You still have one question left.”

Then Rarity was out of witty ideas once more.

“So should we give him what he wants?” Rarity asked the others. “We could either ask him to detail what Flash Bang is thinking.”

“I think a more important question would be who told Starlight about ascension,” said Twilight. “Nopony other than me should know about that spell.”

“What if we ask him something unrelated?” Dash suggested. “Like whether we can trust Sunset?”

“Oh!” The Darklord joined in the game. “Or you could ask me outright what I’m hiding from you. Or roll a dice to decide what question to ask so I can’t have predicted it. I’m sure nopony’s ever tried any of those things on me before.”

This guy totally had them right where he wanted! One-hundred percent chance they’d end up asking the wrong question. What do you do in this situation?

“Rainbow Dash, you’re the crazy one.” Rarity looked at her.

The mad scientist was calling her crazy now?

“What’s the most idiotic, off-the-wall question we could ask?” Rarity asked. “That’s the only way to come out ahead in this shell game.”

Fight genius with idiocy, huh? Dash could maybe do that?

Well if asking any question would mean defeat…

“Oh! We could not ask the last question!” Dash announced.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Twilight.

“No, no! It’s brilliant!” Rarity smiled wide. “I have a question for you. Not the question mind you, but a question about these questions. Can we ask you the third one any time or does it have to be now?”

“Trying to get me on a technicality, are we?” He laughed. “You know what? I’ll let you get away with it just because you’re all so cute. You can ask it any time. I’ll know when you have one and come to you in your dreams. But remember you only get one question between the four of you and it’s first come first served.”

“I think we should save it, then.” Rarity looked over the others. “At least until we’ve spoken to Pinkie about this.”

“You’re right,” Dash agreed. “We can figure a lot of this stuff out on our own anyway. Let’s wait till we know what we can’t figure out.”

Applejack bowed to her god before leading the rest of them away.

“I really do hope your last question will be an interesting one,” The Darklord called after them. “I get so bored here.”

Dash turned to follow Applejack outside the shadow realm. They still had a long, long way ahead of them.

The return journey took less time and was less eventful, but felt longer and more exhausting all the same. Everything within twenty miles and in its right mind would have booked it when they saw that fight. Between that and their secure escape route, Twilight and Dash felt comfortable going much faster.

They switched between Dash flying both of them just along the tops of the trees and Twilight chain teleporting them all forward. Even at that rate, they didn’t get there before the sun.

They finally got to the northern tip of the forest, to where the army had assembled. Patrolling pegasi meant they couldn’t get close, but Dash could make out the broad strokes up if from just above the treetops of the forest.

There was a long column of pegasi in the air, a column of ponies on the ground beneath them, and some heavy artillery near the back. At the front of the rows of pegasi, Dash could just barely make out a few familiar ponies. Fleetfoot, Spitfire, and Lightning Dust were just the ones in front of the pegasi.

It looked like Flash Bang had enlisted multiple S rank. Dash wondered how many S rankers you’d need to take down Trixie. More than those three, she was sure.

From the looks of things, they were just about ready to head out. Exhausted as they were, they wouldn’t have time for a nap.

There weren’t any tents up, save one. The only tent still up was one far off to the side, on a slight decline in the ground as though it were leaning away from the rest of them in disgust. The ponies around it were just mulling about.

Trixie was certain that was Sunset’s tent. The fact that it was orange made Dash agree with her.

Dash gave the main army a wide berth, swinging around in a wide arc to approach Sunset’s tent from the side. They landed and crept closer to the tent on hoof.

The only ponies near Sunset’s tent were her personal guard, all unicorns wearing the orange armor they were known for. They did not look like they were about to head out.

“Don’t move!” One of them spotted the group right away.

A gaurdmare with a gun came marching over to them.

“Don’t come any closer.” She kept her gun ready but pointing down. “This is a restricted area. You can’t be here.”

“I think we’ll be allowed to be here in a second!” Dash pushed Trixie forward. “You guys are here looking for Trixie, yeah? Well, we already went ahead and beat her. What now?”

“It’s all true.” Trixie sighed and looked at the ground. “I’m defeated.”

The guard was stunned by the sight. She glanced at Trixie, then at Dash, then at Trixie again. Then she cycled through this another five times.

“What?” She blinked and rubbed her eyes before looking again.

Her eyes just kept flicking between the group, only becoming more and more uncertain of what to do.

“So can we talk to Sunset Shimmer or what?” Dash asked.

“Uh.” The gaurdmare stepped back. “H-hold on a second.”

She ran towards the tent and whispered something to a stallion sitting just in front of it.

“What?!” He immediately stood up and looked in Dash’s direction.

The stallion marched over to them and spent a long time looking Trixie over, trying to find any flaw in this claim.

“You realize if this is a prank, you’re going to be arrested for this,” he reminded them.

“We, uh— we have the spellbook.” Twilight held it up, the bottom of it wrapped in a cloth to prevent accidentally touching it.

Her voice was getting nervous already. She still wasn’t any good around large crowds of unfamiliar ponies. Not to mention she looked like she’d nod off at any moment. Dash would have to take the lead through this part of the adventure, even if she wasn’t much more awake.

“Yes.” Trixie rolled her eyes. “And I’d say something boastful to prove who I am but I’m too defeated for that right now. Bleh.”

The rest of Sunset’s elite guard had all gathered around now. Loud muttering was all around them. Some were commenting on how rough the two of them looked. Others were still doubting this was really Trixie. Comments about how the others were going to react to this floated around. One of them, who was now Dash’s favorite, began cheering for the two ‘heroes’ immediately.

Twilight looked like she wanted to shrink away from the attention.

But a good number of them had their weapons out, trained on Trixie. Dash heard one of them ask another why Trixie wasn’t already dead.

“She’s not resisting,” Dash pointed out.

“Yes. I’ve surrendered.” Trixie shook the chains around her forelegs.

But that did little to calm the crowd down.

“Quit gawking!” He barked an order at the crowd. “We don’t want anypony else noticing before Sunset hears about this. Go back to where you were and act like nothing is happening.”

That was an order they were reluctant to follow, but they did force themselves to shuffle back to where they were. Even still, the ones who didn’t have to crane their necks to look at them did so and the ones who couldn’t kept their ears trained on Trixie.

“This is an incredible achievement.” He bowed his head to them in respect. “But it is one of immense importance. I’d like you to report this to Sunset Shimmer in private. If you permit me, I’ll take you to her now.”

Finally!

He led them to the big tent and pushed the flap open. The room on the inside was a simple enough office. The same guardmare from before quickly left as the group entered. Clearly, she’d been giving Sunset a warning about what had just happened.

They caught Sunset trying to fix her hair and get more of her armor on as they entered. Upon seeing them, she quickly moved to a regal stance, acting like she’d meant to only put her boots on.

It was such a strange feeling. This was by far the most important pony Dash had ever stood before and yet they still caught her off guard like this.

Sunset carefully studied the two before speaking.

“Before anything else, I want to thank you on behalf of Equestria,” said Sunset. “You have no idea how many lives you’ve saved today and how much trouble you’ve saved moving forward. You have my personal gratitude and favor as well.”

And Sunset bowed to the two of them. Dash’s heart was trembling. She started to wonder if this was real life or what! She simply found herself unable to say anything in response.

“What should I tell Flash Bang?” her officer asked. “They’re moving south starting in thirty minutes.”

“Hm.” Sunset considered it. “No, wait until the exact second they begin to march. I want her to look as stupid as possible.”

Dash just now realized that, given the timing, she may have made an unintentional enemy today.

Sunset dismissed the one other stallion so that she alone was in the tent with the others.

“Don’t get me wrong or anything. You two are heroes for this. But defeating a witch isn’t normal.” Sunset sat down at her desk. “Who are you two, exactly?”

Sunset was giving them a serious look now.

“I’m Rainbow Dash, a slayer from Ponyville.” Dash handed her card over to Sunset. “This is Silverstorm. She’s the illegitimate daughter of the pirate king Bloodstorm. I guess you could say she’s the muscle of our group.”

That was the story they came up with for a few reasons. People might accept Twilight had a natural talent for battle if she was the child of one of the most infamously tough ponies who ever lived. That guy had almost two hundred kids and Twilight, in disguise, had the same colors as he was at least. Plus he was long dead and thus would never contradict the story.

“Yes! That is, uh, true!” Twilight’s gave a nervous laugh. “I’m from the ocean place.”

“Heh.” Dash smiled and pointed to Twilight. “You know how ponies from the pirate coast are! They talk with their punches. Silver here’s not used to civilization so she gets nervous whenever we come out of the woods. The two of us have been, uh, camping for months.”

Sunset listened to all of this with her hoof on her cheek, looking them over while trying to decide if this was believable. If Sunset asked around later, everypony in Ponyville would tell her Dash had been sparsely around. The story would check out.

“I appreciate you being honest about that,” said Sunset. “I can’t blame you for your father’s actions, but I need to ask if you have any intention of using his name to take over the pirate coast.”

“Huh?! Uh!” Twilight scrambled to remember her excuse for that one. Dash knew for sure they’d gone over that one. “I, uh. No. I don’t. I don’t like boats.”

Twilight gave a big, nervous smile.

The way Sunset looked at Twilight didn’t give Dash a lot of confidence she bought this story. But it was enough for Sunset to simply move on for now.

“You’ve been awfully quiet.” Sunset turned her muzzle up and glared down at Trixie. “You don’t have anything to say for once?”

“Oh.” Trixie slumped her cheek onto the desk. “Hey, Sunset. What’s up?”

“Don’t talk to me like we’re friends!” Sunset cringed and pushed her chair back a little, just to be further away from her. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve been causing? You and that featherbrained imbecile nearly caused a disaster and that’s only if I count what you’ve done in the past few days!”

“I know.” Trixie couldn’t bring herself to lift her head off the table. “I was wrong and you were right. I shouldn’t have used my powers to push everypony else around.”

Somehow Sunset was more surprised by that than the revelation Trixie was beaten by two random ponies. She nearly fell off her chair.

“What?” Sunset grabbed the desk to keep herself stable. She raised a skeptical eyebrow at Trixie. “Did you just say you were wrong?! Are you two sure this is the right Trixie?”

“Yeah, it’s her alright,” Dash answered for her. “She wasn’t like this when we found her.”

“They convinced me I was wrong about a lot of things,” Trixie muttered.

“How could you have possibly convinced her that her philosophy was wrong?” Sunset asked. “Trixie’s never listened to anyone before.”

“Did you try beating her up then turning her back on?” Dash asked. “That seemed to work for us.”

Sunset was still watching Trixie carefully and perplexed, keeping her head pulled back, like she was studying a spider that just might be a jumper.

“Is this an act, Trixie?” Sunset asked. “I know you like theatrics.”

“No. I’m giving up on the whole witch thing like you wanted.” Trixie remained dejected. “Everything you said was right. It was all just a meaningless justification for me to do whatever I wanted. As soon as someone stronger showed up…”

Sunset grew deathly quiet, not daring to speak until she’d carefully selected her words.

“What did you tell them?” It was subtle, but the look in Sunset’s eyes was deadly.

“I told them about when we met eight years ago,” said Trixie. “You tried to convince me to give up on my witch training and come with you, right? I should have said yes. It was all garbage. My entire life up till now was a waste.”

Sunset’s anger at her was quickly dying down.

“You did try to help her before, didn’t you?” Dash asked. “That’s why we brought her to you.”

Sunset acted like was the one in the hotseat now, looking like she felt she was the one who needed to explain herself now.

“It’s true.” Sunset sighed and sat back down. “I was more naïve when I was young. Both of us were just kids when I met her. So I thought I could convince a witch to give up on her training and turn her back on her philosophy.

“Maybe you two aren’t familiar with it, but witch training… it destroys the soul of whoever undergoes it. They specifically train to kill their empathy towards others. Everyone who undergoes it comes out thinking that having strength and crushing weaker ponies are the same thing. If you talk to somepony who’s gone through it, they all find the idea that you might not want to take advantage of ponies weaker than you baffling. They get angry at you for even suggesting it.

“Witches target orphans desperate to hear they’re special. That’s who they usually take on as students,” said Sunset. “I hate all of them. But I understand how Trixie ended up like this. That’s why I was naïve enough to think I could convince her to turn her back on it all.”

Hope continued to well up in Dash. It sounded more and more like Sunset would have mercy on Trixie. Sunset really was one of the very few ponies who could have any remote sympathy here.

“At least, I thought I was being naïve.” Sunset looked down at her desk, or rather some point far beyond it, as she remembered something far away. “I really don’t know how you did this. Maybe there’s something special about the two of you. But what am I supposed to do?”

Sunset kept staring off into space.

“Actually! We wanted to talk to you about that,” said Dash. “Trixie’s cooperating. She’s willing to undo all of the curses she made and try to change. We brought her to you because we thought maybe you could take her into your custody? And help her with that?”

Dash bowed her head to Sunset. From the table, Trixie glanced up at Sunset, curious but unable to hope.

The request brought her back from that thousand-mile stare to look at Dash with renewed surprise.

“You keep surprising me. I don’t understand where you’re coming from.” Sunset shook her head. “Do you not realize how big of a deal bringing down one of the witches is? You could ask me for nearly any favor right now. And you’re going to spend that on nothing more than having mercy on your enemy? Why? Is there nothing else you want?”

Dash hung her head in thought. It did sound foolish when you said it out loud. Maybe there was something better Dash could ask for. She had to remind herself this wasn’t just about Trixie.

“I hope you understand this,” said Dash. “I have friends that are outlaws, even though they never really did anything wrong. I promised them I’d do what I could to change things and help them. So… to do that I want to show everyone that I can turn even a witch around! If I can do that, ponies might start to trust me.”

Sunset nodded and turned to Twilight.

“And you?” Sunset asked. “You don’t want me to buy you an airship? Or to let you keep all your pirate gold?”

“I want to say that I don’t understand your ideas of justice,” said Twilight. “Trixie said she wants to change and fix her mistake so I don’t see any point in locking her away.”

Sunset laughed at that.

“You’re pretty innocent for a pirate,” said Sunset. “But fine. If that’s what you want I’ll take Trixie into my custody and oversee her rehabilitation.”

Maybe she hadn’t been expecting this deal to actually go through, but that last statement was enough to breathe life back into Trixie. Trixie perked up enough to sit up straight.

“So you can do it?” Dash asked.

“The four of us are the most influential people on the planet,” said Sunset. “I can make things happen. Nailbat’s a sap who won’t want to look less compassionate than me so he’ll keep his mouth shut. Starlight’s going to start sucking up to you once she hears you beat a witch so she’ll go along with it for you. I can take her under my custody if she cooperates.”

“I will cooperate so hard!” Trixie nodded eagerly. “I— to be honest I don’t know what to believe anymore. But I’m willing to listen to you this time!”

“I hope you realize that this is your last chance.” Sunset glared at Trixie one last time. “Most ponies will be angry at us for even giving you that. If you do anything to screw this up, I won’t be able to help you. You’ll never see the sun again.”

“I get it.” Trixie sighed in defeat once again. “I’ll do everything you tell me to.”

“There is one other thing, though. I’m not going to babysit her twenty-four-seven,” said Sunset. “Starlight won’t sign up for this and you two are the only other ones who might be approved to watch her. If you agree to take her for some time and understand you’ll be responsible for anything she does from now on… I’ll try.”

Dash and Twilight nodded in agreement.

“Thank you so much, Sunset!” Trixie put her hooves together. “I take back everything I ever said about you!”

Sunset gave her a curt nod before turning back to Dash.

“Rainbow Dash, right?” Sunset looked the card on the table over. “If it’s alright with you, I’m going to nominate you for rank S this weekend. No one will embarrass themselves by objecting. You should be promoted within a week.”

Dash’s eyes widened. She opened her mouth to say something, but couldn’t even manage to stumble over her own words.

All the exhaustion was gone. All her doubts in life were gone. Everything that ever had or ever would happen to Dash was suddenly worth it. She’d achieved what seemed like an impossible childhood dream. She’d never be happier than this moment!

Dash started to laugh. A manic look of pure joy overtook her face and she laughed harder.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Dash broke out into hysterical laughter of pure elation! If she fell off the chair, she didn’t notice! She was too happy to notice anything happening around her.

“And you said you were a refugee?” Sunset looked at Twilight. “I can get rid of all the barriers to citizenship for you and make sure nopony asks any questions. I know ponies from the pirate coast can have… questionable backgrounds. If you ever join the guild, I’ll immediately nominate you for rank S as well.”

“Oh! Thank you!” Twilight bowed her head. “I’m happy for that.”

Dash grabbed Twilight in a hug and began rocking both of them back and forth as she continued to laugh.

“Not as happy as her, but uh…” Twilight glanced at Dash, still laughing hysterically.

“Yes and I appreciate that.” Sunset nodded.

As Dash continued to laugh as Sunset did her best to ignore it.

“You’re going to have to talk to the media soon, and people will ask you harder and more detailed questions. I don’t want you looking like that when you do.” Sunset looked Dash up and down.

“Huh?” Dash blinked looked down at herself. “What do you mean?”

Looks weren’t something Dash thought about in a long time. Though now that it was brought up, she remembered it’d been almost a week since she’d bathed. Her fur was all over the place and discolored from swamp-goo in some places. She even had a patch of red from the dried blood where she cut herself.

Dash must have been hideous!

“And frankly you smell horrible too. I’ll buy you two or three days to rest and clean yourselves up,” said Sunset. “Then come back to me so I can coach you on what to say. You need to make a good first impression if you’re going to be useful.”

Useful?

Maybe Dash was getting herself in over her head.

But then who the heck was she kidding? Dash was in over her head the second she met Twilight! Being in over her head had worked out perfectly up till now, might as well let it ride!

“Um! Ma’am!” The guard came in and bowed to her. “Flash Bang is right outside. She’s demanding you tell her what happened.”

“Tell her this is my tent and she can’t get near it without my permission!” Anger flashed in Sunset’s eyes. She pounded a hoof on the table and stood halfway upright on it. “I’m the same rank as her! She doesn’t get to ‘demand’ anything from me!”

“Uh.” The guard was already cowed. He looked at the entrance of the tent and rubbed the back of his head like Sunset had just asked him to wrestle a dragon. “Can you please tell her that yourself?”

“Fine.” Sunset groaned and moved around the other side of the desk. “You two go out the back before it’s too late to leave.”

“I guess we’ll see you later,” Twilight said to Trixie.

“Hopefully.” Trixie looked to the side. “And don’t expect me to say this again, but… thanks.”

As the two of them snuck out the backdoor, Sunset opened the flap and immediately started yelling at whoever was on the other side. Dash got a brief flashback of her parents screaming at one another downstairs and shuddered.

Pinkie was right. Those guys really did hate each other.

“I can’t wait to get back.” Twilight rubbed her eyes. “Somehow that last part was the most exhausting. I need sleep.”

Beaming wide, Dash twirled around to face Twilight.

“What are you talking about?” Dash couldn’t stop herself from bobbing up and down in a bit of a dance. “Twilight, this is the best day of my life! I’ve never felt less tired! Heck, I’ll carry you all the way back! Come on.”

“That’s not—“ Twilight began to protest but already Dash had scooped her up and flew off to the south.

The two of them got out of there without anypony trying to tail them. No one saw them as ponies of interest just yet, though that might change soon. This might be the last time Dash could just casually stroll over to Rarity’s house, where they all decided to meet up afterward.

“I didn’t think you were seriously going to carry me all the way.” Twilight jumped out of her forelegs and landed in front of the castle with a loud yawn.

“Well, I’m still not tired!” Dash pranced in a circle around Twilight before striking a pose. “I don’t think you realize how big a deal getting to rank S is! I’ll never be tired again, Twilight!”

“Wait is that true?” Twilight became lost in thought. “You don’t need sleep anymore after this ‘promotion’ thing? I didn’t think it altered your biology. Do they inject you with something?”

“Never mind.” Dash put her hoof on the door and pushed it open. “I’ll try to explain it later.”

The lights were off, a pitch-black room waiting behind the front door. Dash silently swore that if something was going to attack her now of all times it wasn’t going to get any mercy.

They turned on the light to find the entrance room stuffed with balloons and streamers.

One of the largest cakes Dash had ever seen sat on a table. The thing was four layers tall with chocolate bars inserted on every surface. At the top was tied a single balloon much larger than all the others.

“Surprise!”

The most immediate surprise was Pinkie Pie, who jumped off that balloon and landed in front of the duo when they came in. Amazingly, it was able to hold her weight until now.

Behind her were all their other friends including Fluttershy, Applejack, Sweetie Belle, and an unfamiliar filly who Dash presumed to be Apple Bloom. Rarity sat in the corner, unamused by all of this but even she’d been willing to give an unenthusiastic ‘surprise’.

“Pinkie?” Dash asked.

“Guess whose birthday it is?” Pinkie jumped forward and grabbed both Dash and Twilight with either foreleg.

“Um.” Dash scratched her head on that one. It certainly wasn’t Dash’s. “Is it your birthday?”

“Hahaha! No, silly!” Pinkie laughed at the idea. “Can you imagine if I broke into Rarity’s house to throw myself a birthday party? No, no. I broke into Rarity’s house to throw Twilight a birthday party!”

It was Twilight’s birthday? The two of them remained stunned by the revelation. Dash doubted Twilight even knew what a birthday was. Though that thought brought an older conversation back to Dash’s mind.

“Oh, right. Forgot about that thing,” said Dash. “The surprise party.”

Pinkie tried lifting Twilight but was still two weight classes below an adult mare. She had to resort to using her psychic powers to lift Twilight and spin her around in a hug.

“And this is guaranteed to be your happiest birthday ever!”

“I have no idea what’s happening!” Twilight looked around in total confusion, not recognizing any of the things strewn about. “Is this good or bad?”

“I know! Isn’t it great? It’s the ultimate surprise party!”

Pinkie jumped back to her table of party supplies.

“See? I even got you a present!” Pinkie pushed out a box that was easily big enough for her to fit inside of. Then she lifted two much smaller boxes. “Oh! And I also got you a present from Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. I’m good at guessing what other ponies would have gotten you.”

“Kinda wish I coulda gotten you something too,” said Applejack. “But I had no idea it was your birthday and I don’t exactly have anything to give right now.”

“I helped Pinkie make some brownies, though!” The one presumed to be Apple Bloom pointed to a pile of brownies. “They’re the, uh, the not good ones. Sorry.”

“That’s alright,” said Twilight. “I had no idea it was my birthday either.”

“So were you surprised? I bet you never saw that one coming!”

“I still don’t know what I didn’t see coming, but I didn’t see it coming.” Twilight nodded.

“I still have to ask.” Rarity raised hoof hand. “Why, pray tell, are you throwing Twilight a birthday party in my home of all places? You can’t just break into my home whenever you want, Pinkie.”

“But didn’t you call me, Rarity?” Pinkie asked.

“Hm?” Rarity raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I suppose I was the one who dialed.”

“Right! See I can guess who dialed the phone with ninety-seven percent accuracy! But Dashie was the one who left the message that we were having an ‘eight out of ten situation’ which I assumed meant you wanted me to throw the birthday party now.”

“You think a birthday party is an eight out of ten?” Dash asked. “Maybe I should have said it was a nine.”

“Oh, to me a nine is like the planet exploding or something,” said Pinkie.

“Then what the heck is a ten?!”

“The planet is exploding and I gotta go to a birthday party.”

“Right. Silly me.”

“But if this wasn’t the eight out of ten, then what was the eight out of ten?” Pinkie asked. “Did I miss something?”

“Yeah, you missed some stuff.” Dash rubbed the back of her head, thinking of the daunting task of explaining all this stuff to Pinkie. “You know what? It can wait. Let’s just have a party, huh?!”

Looking over the crowd, it seemed Dash and Pinkie were the only ones awake enough for this.

“A party is like one of your holidays, right?” Twilight yawned and lay down on Rarity’s fainting couch. “Can we do that tomorrow? I need to sleep.”

“That’s okay! It can be a slow-motion birthday party. We can have cake when you wake up,” said Pinkie. “Oh! Or a sleepover birthday party! Rarity! Can I sleep over at your house too?”

“After today I’m not sure if I can say no,” said Rarity. “So why not. I suppose there’s plenty of room here for all of us.”

“Yay!” Pinkie jumped up and cheered.

By then Twilight already had her eyes closed.

“Oh. I mean yay,” Pinkie whispered to Twilight and gave her a small pat on the back.

Rarity and Fluttershy looked like they’d fall asleep soon too.

“I gotta wonder.” Applejack sat next to her sister. “What in The Darklord’s name did you do to end up all the way over here?”

“Oh!” Apple Bloom said. “Well, that’s a funny story. See it happened like this…”

Aliens

High up in the mountains to the west of the Everfree forest, Lyra presided over a summoning beacon the size of a baseball field. It looked a lot like the kinds of summoning circles you used to summon demons, but surprisingly used no magic at all. It was built to the exact specifications the aliens transmitted to her and would act as a homing beacon for them to locate the correct planet.

At one end of the beacon, all seventy-two of Lyra’s faithful gathered to greet the aliens. All of them wore the same black cloaks with green highlights.

“Today is the most important day in history!” Lyra called out to them all, getting a cheer. “We are about to witness the entire course of our species be altered! More importantly, we are about to have an awesome party with our alien friends!”

They cheered again. Everypony was so excited.

This was going great! Finally, Lyra would be validated. Finally, she could get off of this stupid planet!

Behind the crowd, from the darkness, Lyra saw two ponies slowly walking up the path to her. Everypony who was going was accounted for so they must have been wandering around lost. Lyra might as well invite them to come with her. How lucky for them!

She took two steps forward to call out to them then stopped when she saw who it was.

The worst possible pony had just shown up.

Starlight Glimmer! The president of Equestria and strongest of the elite four by a wide chasm!

Only one pony accompanied Starlight Glimmer. It was an S ranker and her second in command, Void Walker. A black stallion with neatly combed blue hair, Void was handsome, but a bit scrawny. He had a toothy grin and his red eyes shone in the darkness next to Starlight.

Both of them wore the same black robes with a green trim, same as everypony in their cult. Theirs were the most eleaborate of all, marking them as the highest ranked. Along the edges of each were a cascade of lines remniscent of vines. Void Walker's had nicks along his, denoting thorns and that he was the second highest rank, while Starlight's alone had flowers along her vines.

Void Walker alone could likely take out Lyra’s entire crew. But even if Lyra had one hundred clones of Void fighting for her, she still wouldn’t have any hope against Starlight. If anypony suggested fighting Starlight to Lyra, it’d sound as crazy as suggesting they escape by eating a hole in the ground to the other side of the planet.

Reflexively, Lyra jumped behind one of her followers to hide. The victorious attitude of her cult died down and they all pressed against one another, nopony wanting to be the one in front.

“Is Lyra here?” Starlight spoke with this condescending and overly friendly inflection like she was talking to a kindergartener. “That’s your leader, right?”

They were all too eager to push Lyra out in front, who stumbled ungracefully in front of Starlight. Lyra tried to regain her composure and hide her fear.

“There’s no need to instantly kill us all!” Lyra immediately bowed down. “I know what this looks like, but we’re not summoning demons. We’re summoning aliens which technically isn’t against the rules.”

“Yes. I know.” Starlight sat down, leaning against a large rock. Void jumped up on top of that same rock to grin down at them from behind.

“You knew about the aliens?” Lyra’s eye twitched. The government knew but they didn’t do anything?!

“Of course I know there are aliens. You think you noticed their spaceship but I didn’t?” Starlight asked. “I just want to make sure our visitors don’t cause any problems.”

“You should best hope they don’t try anything uncouth, little girl.” Void walker’s laugh was sinister and raspy. “Why it’d be, let’s say, unspeakable if you were caught in the crossfire.”

Lyra held her breath, wanting to scream but knowing that saying anything rude could put her life in serious danger.

Maybe there was a slim chance the aliens would be able to fight her? They could travel faster than the speed of light so they could do anything, right? Though even then Lyra would no doubt get deleted from existence or worse during the fight!

All she could do was call the aliens and hope for the best at this point.

“I’ll tell them to be extra polite!” Lyra laughed nervously. “We’re going straight to their planet anyway! No need to turn me inside out or whatever it is you do. Hehe!”

Lyra turned around on the spot and awkwardly marched back into position. Starlight creeped her the freak out. No way she was inviting those two onto the spaceship.

“Please don’t be a sperg. Please don’t be a sperg.” Lyra silently prayed to the aliens as she waited for them to arrive.

The runic circle below them began to glow. Lyra felt a sensation of weightlessness, not quite enough to lift her off the ground, but her cloak and main did lift ever so slightly.

A new star appeared in the sky. The star grew rapidly, then warped into a beam of light until it was hanging above them and crystalized into its true form.

A spaceship! A massive saucer-shaped spaceship floated above them, green lights swirling around the bottom rim. It stopped directly above the circle Lyra prepare, but the ship was far larger than the footprint it mirrored.

Though it was much higher than the clouds, it still filled an impressive amount of the sky. That thing had to be enormous! It may very well have thousands of feet long, though Lyra had no idea how to estimate its size.

All of her followers began to cheer, jumping up and down and hugging one another, at the sight of the spacecraft! It’d actually worked! All those ponies who called Lyra insane were officially wrong!

Lyra glanced back to Starlight, euphoric with victory.

Starlight made a show of yawning while Void Walker snickered behind her. Lyra grumbled under her breath. How could she not be impressed by an alien spaceship?! What kind of freakish outer realm drugs did she do?

“Hmph!” Lyra turned her back on Starlight and reached up to the spaceship with open forelegs. “Oh, great aliens! Show us your wisdom! Vanquish us from this sinister planet to the paradise of Earth!”

A beam of light shot down from the UFO to the ground, covering the landing spot Lyra cleared out. From it, a single silhouette floated down to the ground. Once the alien landed, the beam vanished and the spaceship flew back high enough to be merely a star.

Lyra could see what she’d waited so long for.

It was a human! An actual, factual human just like in all those visions she had and all those fanfics she’d written. She couldn’t help but jump up and down in excitement.

“So, uh, hey!” The human waved to them all. “My name is Karl. I’m the, uh, the alien you’ve been talking to.”

“Karl!” Lyra opened her forelegs wide and looked up to the sky.

“Karl! Karl! Karl! Karl!” Lyra’s followers began chanting.

Karl looked around uncomfortably as they all continued to chant his name in reverence.

“Uh. Yeah! Hello.” Karl nodded again. “Yep. That’s me. Karl.”

“Do you see?!” Lyra called out to all the other ponies, especially Starlight. “The aliens truly were real! If they can tear through countless lightyears in mere seconds, then they can do anything! All of our hopes and dreams will be fulfilled when they bring us back to Earth where there is no pain or strife!”

“Well, yeah.” Karl scratched the back of his head and cleared his throat. “About that.”

Lyra’s eye twitched. She briefly froze in place before stepping back to be next to Karl.

“Karl?” Lyra harshly whispered up at him. “You weren’t exaggerating about how good Earth is, were you? At least tell me that Earth is marginally better than this place. I can work with that.”

“Oh, no. Earth is an unmitigated paradise,” Karl assured the crowd. “Humanity evolved beyond all of our petty differences and hatreds. There is no more war, poverty, or disease. Only total love and understanding between all people. Earth’s technology is such that death is completely optional, and you can have any paradise you can imagine. You can enter into any virtual world you want or just convert your being into pure bliss. Whatever you want.”

“Right!” Lyra pointed to the stars. “So let’s go there! Like right now. What are we waiting for? This planet has zombies on it, Karl.”

“So the catch is, uh,” Karl sighed one more time before coming out with it. “We can’t get to Earth? It’s too far away.”

“What?!” Lyra pointed at the spaceships, keeping her eyes deadlocked on Karl. “No! You have a spaceship right there! I just saw it two seconds ago! Don’t try to gaslight me!”

“Yeah, but that’s a generation ship. It travels at half the speed of light and Earth is 50,000 light-years away. Right? So it’d take 100,000 years to get back there. We’ve been flying all over the galaxy for countless generations looking for an inhabitable planet and this looks like the only other one. We can fly into space, but there’s nowhere to go.”

“But— but then—"

“Yeah, if we turned back, it’d be our distant descendants who got to Earth. And when I say distant, I mean, incredibly distant.” Karl held up his hand. “Like we didn’t have four fingers when we left Earth.”

“What?” Lyra shook her head in disgust. “But that’s so— so—“

“Boring? Yeah.” Karl nodded. “But that’s what actual, real-world space travel is like. It’s just sitting around doing nothing for multiple lifetimes. Other than the two planets, there’s nothing else to see but stupid rocks and fireballs. It’s not a fun adventure at all. Just sucks. That’s why we’re staying here.”

The few ponies around them that weren’t stunned were muttering nervous doubts now.

“Okay.” Lyra took a deep breath. There still had to be some way to salvage this. “But you came from a planet with incredible technology, right? Don’t you have the ability to stop aging? Cure diseases? Or do any of that other stuff you mentioned?”

“Yeah, no.” Karl shook his head sadly. “We don’t have any of that cool stuff. Just the spaceship and the nukes.”

“What?”

“So it’s like this. Right before the technological singularity hit there was an election and our ancestors were so upset their guy lost that they literally left the planet,” Karl explained. “Kind of impressive they went through with it. But once they started, they were too proud to admit the other guy was right about turning on the AI. All the other humans just laughed at us as we slowly drifted out of their light cone.”

“Then what? You’re the laughingstock of your planet? And you came all this way just to tell me how much you suck?!”

“Hey, I’m not— okay maybe we were the laughingstock of the planet at the time but they probably stopped laughing sometime in the last hundred thousand years,” said Karl, then he added upon seeing Lyra grow even more irate. “That said, I do have a plan.”

“Oh?” Lyra raised an eyebrow. Even she was skeptical at this point.

“Yeah. Thanks to the miracle of orbital bombardment, we can easily conquer this planet,” Karl assured them. “We can exploit you guys for cheap labor and become billionaires.”

“So I build you this waypoint and you just come in and force me to work in your sweatshop?” Lyra asked. “You’re gonna do me up like that?”

He was just begging for Lyra to sic Starlight on him now!

“No, no, my minty little friend.” Karl snapped and pointed at Lyra. “See, we’re gonna need patsies on the inside. You and your friends will be on the inside lording over the rest of your planet with us. With our nukes, we’ll create a paradise where 0.1% of the population controls 99.9% of the wealth. We’re all gonna be billionaires! Spending thirty years stuck in a box will finally be worth it.”

So escaping to party on a magical fantasy land in space and enslaving her own species were two slightly different courses of action. Maybe Lyra could convince her cult they weren’t?

“Um.” Lyra turned around to her followers, smiling, hoping to somehow salvage this. “You see? We’re all going to be rich and rule the world! How great is that? It’ll be like we’re in heaven! Exactly what I promised! Hurray!”

They all muttered among themselves as Lyra nervously sweated.

“But you said it’d be literal heaven,” one of her followers complained. “Literally in the sky and everything.”

“When I said that I didn’t mean the literal definition of literal, I mean the metaphorical definition of literal,” said Lyra. “So this is exactly what I promised you.”

“But I wanted a socialist paradise, not a libertarian one,” another complained. “You said that money was responsible for all evil, even volcanoes and earthquakes somehow. That’s why we needed to give all of it to you and move out to your commune where you had total control over our lives. Becoming billionaires goes completely against everything you taught us, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, well that was before I realized I could become a billionaire! Socialists are just people who don’t think they have a shot at becoming rich! Come on! Billionaires!” Lyra started chanting. “Billionaires! Billionaires!”

Lyra was too invested in this whole alien thing to back out now and she knew all of her followers were too. The others were reluctant at first, but after a few seconds one of them started muttering along with her, then two began chanting.

The momentum kept picking up until everypony was cheering with enthusiasm. Everypony but Starlight and Void, who remained unmoved.

The joke was on her, though! Lyra would still settle for being the richest pony on the planet.

“Cute!” Starlight shouted over the rest of them, stopping the chant and getting everyone to turn to her. “But your plan has one flaw in it, Karl.”

“And what’s that?” Karl asked.

“Me.” Starlight finally got up and started trotting towards him. The few cult members that were in her way scrambled to get out like an ursa was stomping through. “See, this is my planet and I don’t feel like letting you enslave anyone right now. Maybe you should go back to space? You might end up wishing you were all alone in a cold, dark void if you don’t.”

Everypony was shaking in fear now, save Karl who merely looked down at the tiny pony, utterly baffled.

“You?” Karl knelt to look at her. “No offense, but you’re kinda small. I could probably just kick you.”

“Pst!” Lyra beckoned Karl to bend down so she could whisper to him. “That’s Starlight Glimmer! She’s in league with the outer gods and she’s nearly unstoppable! I don’t know which definition of alien wins out so be careful.”

“The outer what?” Karl shook his head and stood up. “Oh yeah, I forgot you guys still think magic, ghosts, and gods exist! Look, whatever wonky horse religion you believe in won’t save you from nukes. We don’t have to land on the planet and fight you with knives, okay? We can shoot you from space with bombs that can obliterate entire cities.”

Starlight started to laugh.

“I hope for your sake you weren’t trying to intimidate me with that,” said Starlight. “Compared to what I’ve seen in the outer realm, a bomb that can destroy a city doesn’t frighten me. You have three options. You can go back to where you came from, bow down and swear your loyalty to me, or you can all die. If you try using any of those weapons against me, I’ll just go ahead and assume you picked the last option.”

“Okay, that’s a bluff.” Karl shook his head. “Guess I’ll shoot you with the orbital laser cannon.”

“Go ahead,” Starlight invited him. “If you think you know anything. If you think all of your reason and science are anything but pleasant fantasies you’ve made for yourself then go ahead and attack me.”

Karl rolled his eyes and put a finger to his ear.

“Okay, Steve.” Karl pointed his free hand to Starlight. “We gotta make an example. Can you gun this horse looking thing down?”

A magnificent ray of pure white light, lightning crackling all around it, fired down from the spaceship to Starlight Glimmer. The force of the impact was incredible! Lyra felt it through the ground even yards away. It sent convulsions through her body before throwing her into the air.

The blinding laser ended after just a few seconds, but Lyra needed a minute to drag herself back to her hooves. All around her, the ponies in her cult were still on the ground, knocked out without even having a direct hit. Lyra herself felt too injured to walk half a mile after that.

But could that seriously be enough to take out Starlight?

She gulped and turned her head to where Starlight had been, knowing this was her only hope. At the spot it had hit was now a crater. A ten-foot hole was in the ground filled with melted rocks, glowing red.

Yet Starlight was unharmed. She was simply standing there, in midair over the crater with the same condescending smile. Not even destroying the ground beneath her was enough to budge her.

Karl stared forward in disbelief, beginning to realize he may have just made a mistake.

“Okay.” Karl stepped back, worry staring into his voice. “That’s not good. Hey, Steve. We might have to resort to nukes sooner than I expected.”

There was a pause and an increasingly worried look on Karl’s face.

“Steve?” Karl’s eyes only widened further. “Steve? Steve?!”

“Steve is dead, Karl.” Smiling, Starlight started to walk forward until she was on solid ground again.

“W-wuh?”

Karl and Lyra looked up to the sky, where the artificial star hung. It began growing large again, but this time it turned red as it grew. Soon it was a small fireball in the sky, coming down like a comet.

The fire comet came down faster than the speed of sound and crashed into the distant mountainside with an explosion that was visible even from this distance. Then Karl was the only human left in the solar system.

“But! But what?!” Karl stumbled back, falling on his butt. “How could you have possibly done that?! What the hell is this?!”

Starlight closed her eyes. All the stars in the sky turned red.

Karl started backing away from her, dragging himself backward with his arms, until he bumped up against Lyra.

“Uh. Lyra? What the hell is happening?” Karl looked down at her.

“You’re the one with the spaceship, Karl! You tell me!”

Then the stars began to bleed, red light coming down like a beam as though every star was a bloody stab wound in the sky. Starlight began to glow with an eldritch light that in some indescribably way made the mountain clearing both brighter and darker at the same time.

Lyra was convinced that no pony could have stood there and not known what horror was about to befall them. She jumped into Karl’s arms and the two of them screamed and screamed as they held one another.

The spaceship crashed on a mountainside to the west, a red glow lighting up the horizon. Without having to check, Starlight knew there were no survivors. That’s just what happened when you tried to conquer Starlight’s world. And it was her world.

Lyra collapsed onto her back; eyes turned into the back of her head as she foamed heavily at the mouth. Even after doing this so many times, Starlight still wasn’t sure where all that foam came from.

Starlight gave her a poke or two to make sure she was completely unresponsive. Lyra’s mind was completely destroyed at present, but Starlight knew from personal experience it could be rebuilt. Maybe she could be useful later.

The other members of Lyra’s cult were no better. That alien, the only survivor of his species on this planet, was presently a vegetable. A pony mind Starlight could reconstruct. It probably wasn’t worth attempting to do it for an alien.

“We can take the last alien to Area 5X.” Starlight gave it a poke too. “It would be interesting to have an actual alien there for a change.”

“Peradventure we shouldn’t have actually blown that thing up?” Void Walker suggested too late. “We may have learned something.”

“Oh, Void. You should know by now that the only thing you can ever learn is that you know nothing,” said Starlight. “But if you want to have somepony look through the wreckage, knock yourself out.”

Starlight shook her head at the defeated alien. It seemed there was hardly anypony who could challenge her anymore. How underwhelming. It was times like these she whished she was back in the outer realm.

“So much for the alien invasion.” Starlight flicked her mane. “That was the last wild card I had to worry about too. Every other threat has been accounted for. As long as nopony unexpected shows up, this should all end up being pretty boring, huh?”

“Ahem!” Void Walker cleared his throat. “Speaking of unexpected ponies showing up, my mistress.”

Void bowed to Starlight who groaned and rolled her eyes.

“What is it?”

“I didn’t want to trouble you until the alien invasion was taken care of. Sunset Shimmer has just nominated a particular individual for rank S.”

“So?” Starlight whipped around, annoyed. “Find some stupid excuse to object. We can easily drag this out for a year even if we can’t stop it. I shouldn’t have to tell you this.”

“Sadly, it isn’t such a nonissue as that.” Void Walker shook his head. “You see, this ‘Rainbow T. Dash’ as it calls itself, has defeated a witch.”

Starlight grew grimly quiet. Of course somepony like that would show up right now of all times!

They couldn’t object to her promotion. Objecting would only make them look petty and jealous. But doing nothing would dampen one of Starlight’s biggest claims to divinity. If another pony could defeat a witch, it meant Starlight wasn’t that special after all in the eyes of the public.

Where did this pony even come from? Starlight had her servants spend three freaking years compiling a list of every single entity on the entire planet who could possibly be a threat to her. Starlight memorized every single pony on that list. There was no ‘Rainbow T. Dash’. How did they miss a pony capable of taking down a witch?! They caught the aliens but not her?

Every last pony who worked on that project was getting fired and severely reprimanded on top of that!

“Of course she didn’t do it alone, so it hardly compares to the resplendence of your miracles.” Void bowed slightly to her. “Enough of an excuse to keep the idiots following along. The other one was some idiot pirate who was stumbling all over herself when I saw her. In my estimation, Rainbow Dash is the greater threat between the two. How would you like me to ‘mitigate’ this threat?”

Starlight calmed herself down. Maybe this wasn’t as big a deal as she thought. She’d dealt with monsters and ponies as strong as witches before. She’d dealt with information contradicting her story before. All this meant was that one threat was replaced by a new threat.

This mystery pony might even be useful to her in the end.

“Why don’t we start by giving her a free personality test?” Starlight smiled at him, back to her confident airs. “I want you to give her absolutely everything she ever wanted! And more!”

Bonbon used a dark window as her mirror. She turned her fancy jacket inside out, converting it from an expensive black and white to a cheap, almost grody hoodie. She ran a comb through her mane, twisting it upwards with each stroke until her white and pink mane returned to its normal curls.

Already she was a different mare. If anypony saw her enter this area, they’d see a different pony leave.

With that taken care of, Bonbon slipped through the window she’d been using as a mirror.

Their ‘office’ changed every couple of days given how paranoid Nailbat was. Rarely did they get to work in a place anypony would ever want to stay. Today, Nailbat was holed up in an abandoned factory, surrounded by rusted-out machinery nopony thought valuable enough to move. It was always a place like that, save when they were lucky enough to head up north.

“Trixie has been eliminated.” Bonbon produced the newspaper for Nailbat. “And it wasn’t Flash Bang. Some random pony no one’s ever heard of just showed up and beat her up at the last second.”

Nailbat was looking rough as ever, lying still on his back in a pile of crumpled up, yet no doubt important, papers. Few ponies ever saw him without his hoodie and its enchanted face-hiding effect. Bonbon suspected that a tenth the population could tell you his fur color. Hell, helf the population might not even know he was a pegasus.

As it stood, he was three shades of green. His mane making up the darker two shades, arranged in a double striped pattern like the rest of his accursed family.

There was a reason Nailbat always wore clothes from head to tail. It wasn’t that he had some secret identity, but rather that it was the only way he could look cool.

There was no way to sugarcoat it. The guy looked ugly.

A disease he had when he was young left him looking like he had mange. Large splotches of his fur were missing, and skin underneath was grey and scabby. His jaw was crooked and one of his ears missing. If the bags under his eyes were any worse, it’d look like he had two black eyes on top of all that.

He didn’t even turn his head when Bonbon barged in. It may have been days since he last slept.

“The good and bad news is that Flash Bang will be completely humiliated by this.” Bonbon smacked Dash’s. “It was a rank D slayer who upstaged her entire army, too. Flash Bang was absolutely seething when I last saw her.”

Nailbat stayed on his back, staring up blankly at the ceiling. A normal pony might have thought he was totally out of it, broken by exhaustion. Bonbon knew that guy had a hundred scenarios running through his mind at all times, even when he was zoned out. There was something about this he didn’t like.

“I honestly thought you’d be happier about this.” Bonbon held the paper down near the ground so it was at eye level with Nailbat. “’Rainbow Dash’ is going to be promoted to S rank for sure. I think she’ll be mostly sympathetic to our aims.”

Nailbat turned his head to glance briefly at the picture of Rainbow Dash before groaning and knocking it out of the way.

“It’s a good thing I’m the only one who reads my own mail.” Nailbat sat up and tried to shake some of the weariness out of his head.

“You’re losing me,” said Bonbon.

“I had everything figured out too.” Nailbat got up and put his hoodie on. “Now Starlight’s going to go off the rails, even if she doesn’t figure it out. What a pain. Oh, and don’t tell anypony else about this, not even our friends. I don’t need to tell you what will happen if this gets out.”

“It’s in the newspaper.” Bonbon held the paper back up. “I’m pretty sure it already got out.”

“Not that part you idiot.” Nailbat got out the chain and started strapping his bat to his foreleg.

Bonbon stepped back. That bat was worse than any bomb Bonbon could make.

This was another thing Bonbon didn’t like about Nailbat. He always assumed you followed his every thought and got frustrated when you couldn’t keep up with him. Already he was walking towards the door, ready to ditch Bonbon.

“Do I get a clue this time or not?” Bonbon called after him

“Huh?” Nailbat turned back to Bonbon briefly. “Oh. I guess I should spell it out. I’m not sure yet but that other pony with Rainbow Dash is probably the witch Twilight Sparkle in disguise.”

“What?!”

“Anyway.” Nailbat put his hood on. His face was shrouded by darkness and only his two red eyes were visible again. “If I die, you’ll have to do something without my help for once. Later.”

Then he closed the door behind him without another word.

Bonbon knew he was smart but this was too much. How could you possibly figure that out from just Dash’s picture?

She picked the newspaper back up. Rainbow Dash was on one page and Silverstorm was on the opposite page. Folded like this, Nailbat wouldn’t have even been able to see Silverstorm. If he’d guessed that without even looking at her, there couldn’t be a flaw with the alleged disguise. There was something about Rainbow Dash that made him suspicious.

But what? Bonbon looked at that picture for a solid half-hour but couldn’t find whatever Nailbat did.

In a world where everypony was a sexy pegasus and had a ponysona, two sexy pegasi stood atop the capital building to duel. One of them was Laser Blade, the white-haired pegasus as slender as he was sexy. Baron Von King was his opponent, easily twice his size, wearing a tight and sexy suit.

“But I’m the main political rival of the pony who killed your father,” said Baron Von King. “Like you, I’ve devoted my entire life to destroying him. Fighting me doesn’t make any sense. I think we should talk, at least briefly, before we fight to the death.”

“Heh!” Laser Blade cocked a smile. “You expect me to negotiate? Politics suck! You all suck! Everypony in the government sucks! I blame the political opponents of the ponies who killed my father just as much as I blame the actual murderers! Talking is dumb; fighting is awesome!”

Laser Blade summoned his ponysona. It was a pegasus with wings made of laser swords!

“Then so be it.” Baron summoned his own Ponysona, a skeletal pony with black mist dripping from every gap in his bones to give the illusion of a full pony. “But before I kill you, allow me to explain in detail what the power of my ponysona, Dark Miasma, does!”

“Yeah! Finally!”

This was so awesome!

Screwball leaned forward, mouth agape with excitement to the point her lollipop nearly fell out. The five bells attached to her witches hat jingled. She sat upon a throne of plushies while Feather Bangs, a dusty brown pegasus, the sexiest from her pegasus harem, cuddled up next to her.

The pony she’d forced to write this sat off to the side, chained to the wall by a collar around his neck. He was watching for Screwball’s reaction more than the actual cartoon itself, knowing the entire team would be punished if she didn’t like it. If Screwball wasn’t entertained by this, she’d find some other way to have fun and he’d be directly responsible for whatever happened.

This was so much better than the original version he’d written.

Cartoons these days had gotten way too political. ‘Oh! Let’s make every cartoon about [insert current political issue]!’ said some stupid ad executive! It got so bad that the only way to save the art form was for Screwball to literally kidnap an entire animation studio and bring them here to Endless Paradis Island where they’d be her story-making slaves.

No longer did she have to worry about a show suddenly going to crap in its eighth season. No longer did she need to lie awake at night worried that a good cartoon would get canceled. Now she could just force her slaves to make any show on demand, remake entire seasons of a show if she didn’t like how it turned out.

And it was awesome!

It was such a wonderful idea that she kidnapped all sorts of artists after that. Musicians, architects, sculptors, mad scientists, and more were all brought to her eternal carnival! None of them got to choose if they came here, but infinite pleasure awaited the ones who submitted to her.

Depending on what you were into, Endless Paradise was either its namesake or an absolute nightmare but never anything in between. For Screwball, of course, it was the former.

Screwball had everything she could ever want and more.

The amount of wealth in this one room alone would make kings, dragons, and CEOs blush. Screwball herself wore thirty necklaces, all with gold chains and dripping with the rarest stones. She had seven crowns on her right foreleg worn like bracelets and one more on her head. Some of those would be enough for a normal pony to retire on!

The room had three thrones in it. One was made of solid gold, the second a more makeshift throne made of hundred-bit bills and the final was more of a pile made of Screwball’s custom plushies. Life-changing amounts of paper money were thrown about carelessly and covered most of the floor in this building.

She just threw stacks of hundred-bit bills out the window sometimes. If you just ran around Endless Paradise picking up stray bills and discarded gold coins you’d be rich before lunch.

There were some things you hadn’t lived until you’ve done. Making snow angels in a pile of cash worth millions was one of them. Burning said pile of cash in front of a group of orphans was another.

And the money wasn’t even the beginning of it. She had her pegasus harem, a legion of slaves, the largest palace in the world, the largest amusement park with the best version of every ride, a small armada of ships from the pirates who remained loyal to her family to the yachts she had built, and of course the trove of magical artifacts her father collected over his lifetime.

What could possibly ruin this?

Minuette. Minuette could ruin it and what’s more, she did so just then.

One of her signature portals opened into the room and the drown-pony furred, toothpaste-haired annoyance barged into the room. She was literally the only pony who had that ability and it pissed Screwball off to no end.

She wore the hat of a witch with five bells attached, the highest amount since the last masters died. She had one of Twilight’s spellbooks, even if it was the worst one. As a witch herself, Screwball had to restrain her urge to break this pony’s neck.

To point out Minuette was panicking was like pointing out she was breathing. But today she did seem especially flighty.

“Screwball!” Minuette was doing a little jog in place like she was prepared to run at any moment. A good idea, given where she was. “There’s something I need to tell you!”

“How many times do I have to tell you that I hate politics?!” Screwball took her lollipop out of her mouth and threw it at Minuette. The sticky candy stuck to her mane. “If you’re not here to tell me a joke or sing me a song then get out!”

“This is important.” Minuette grabbed the lollipop and tried to pull it out.

“That’s what politicians say!” Screwball shot Feather Bangs a dirty look. “Why aren’t you throwing lollipops at her!”

“Was I supposed to, Babe?” He straightened up. He picked up some lollipops from the ground. He began to lick them, then throw them at Minuette, causing them to stick to her fur.

Minuette shuddered in disgust but accepted her horrible fate to press on.

“Trixie was defeated,” said Minuette. “It wasn’t an army that took her, but just two ponies!”

“Are they hot?” Screwball leaned back into her plushie throne.

“They’re both mares,” said Minuette.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Mistress Screwball is a pegasexual,” Feather Bangs explained while Screwball nodded. “She’s attracted to pegasi of any gender but only pegasi.”

“I don’t care,” said Minuette. Clearly, as an unattractive unicorn, she was jealous of the pegasi. “Don’t you get what a big deal this is?! This is the second time one of us was taken out in the last fifteen years! It’s like I keep telling you. We’re falling behind and the rest of the world is catching up to us. Hey! Are you listening?!”

This whole time Screwball had been flapping her mouth open and shut in mock imitation of Minuette.

“Nope!” Screwball leaned back and put a foreleg around her boy toy. “How does this affect me?”

“Because there are now multiple ponies out there capable of defeating a witch!” Minuette pointed to the window. It was a large one, ceiling to floor made of solid diamond. “They might start hunting us down one by one!”

“First of all, just because you can kill Trixie doesn’t mean you can kill me.” Screwball considered three places to be invincible strongholds. There was Area 5X, Crater Cemetery, and Endless Paradise Island. Attacking any of those places was a far bigger challenge than defeating a witch. “Second, why the crow would they go after a second witch, huh?”

“Because everypony hates us and wants us dead?” Minuette reminded her.

“Did Starlight go on a rampage hunting us down?” Minuette asked. “Nah! Cause she doesn’t want to risk it. One witch is good enough. You get infinite fame and wealth for that. One thing I know is that money corrupts. There isn’t a single pony who doesn’t lose all their morals the second they get some money. They’ll forget about whatever hero game they’re playing once they see how good they have it now.”

Minuette, now with twenty lollipops in her fur and ten in her mane, continued to panic. She desperately tried to think of something that might convince Screwball to attack this pony.

“One of them is Silverstorm,” Minuette explained. “She’s one of Bloodstorm’s kids! She’s your sister.”

“Oh, wow!” Screwball sat up with mock attention, putting as much sarcasm into her voice as possible. “You mean I finally get to meet one of my ten million half-sisters? Like I can’t go to the grocery store and get a six-pack of those whenever I feel like it?”

No doubt Minuette hoped that’d convince her to go kill this pony. It wasn’t like Screwball couldn’t allow any of her family to exist. She let them do whatever they wanted for the most part. If they ever claimed to be anything more than a bastard or claimed that her dad loved them, that was when they asked for a gruesome death.

Daddy only loved Screwball. Anypony who questioned it died so that was as true as things got.

“If she’s claiming to be one of Daddy’s legitimate kids then sure. I’ll get my whole gang together and we’ll go kill her and everyone who so much as gave her a haircut,” said Screwball. “But if she was doing that you would have come in here yelling about that to begin with.”

Minuette’s eyes darted around the room in desperation. Whether she was looking for an escape route or another argument was hard to tell.

“Th-think about it!” Minuette dared to take a step closer. “Things will keep getting worse for us at the rate things are going. We have to come up with a plan, right?”

Screwball rolled her eyes. Here it came! Here she was about to start vomiting about her ‘Operation Dark Ages’ plan.

“We need to all come together to push forward Operation Dark Ages! If we can—"

“No!” Screwball shoved her pegasus pet to the side and got up. She stormed up to Minuette and got in her face. “Gah! How many times do I have to tell you that I hate politics?!”

“This isn’t about politics!” Minuette, now covered in lollipops, tried pulling some of the candy out of her hair while she stepped back. “This is a matter of survival.”

“That’s what politicians say you asshole!” Screwball jabbed her hoof against Minuette’s chest. “You have five minutes to get off my island before I murder you!”

Minuette let out an ‘eep’ and ran away like the chicken she was. Still, she was an uncatchable chicken. Now way even Screwball could catch her.

With a ‘hmph’ Screwball sat down and put a fresh lollipop in her mouth. Now her whole day was ruined yet again by the insufferable Minuette.

Feather Bangs looked at her with concern.

“You sure we got nothing to worry about?” he asked her.

“We just don’t do any crazy stuff for two months and it’ll blow over,” said Screwball.

“Aw, that’s too bad babe.” Feather Bangs nuzzled her. “I love it when you do crazy stuff!”

Screwball frowned at him and his disappointment. It was so hard to not give her little pet what he wanted! Frankly Screwball loved the chaos too. “You know what? What the crow I’ll do it anyway!”

Screwball pointed her lollipop at the writer in the corner.

“Hey, you! You write horror stories, yeah? I’m making you come up with a bunch of messed-up ways I can screw with these ponies. Oh! And make up a cool backstory for me to pretend to have. Better not be something lazy like ‘I’m racist’ either.”

She felt a little better now. This should be fun!

Scootaloo tugged her overflowing wagon through the heart of Manehattan. Buildings towered over her in every direction, meaning there was an endless number of places to watch her from. Maybe she shouldn’t stay in a city.

No! She couldn’t let herself get scared. That’d only prove them right about all the crap they used to say to her.

‘If we let you go outside you might get overstimulated.’

‘Sorry, no radio. Something on it might stimulate you too much.’

‘No, no! Comic books that are too exciting. Even reading can be too stimulating for you.’

They kept telling her that and yet here she was, in the middle of the city and Scootaloo was perfectly fine. Heck, this place wasn’t stimulating at all. Scootaloo was the least stimulated pony on the entire planet right now!

It wasn’t like she had anything to worry about. Scootaloo spent most of her time staying in big hotel rooms reading her new stash of comic books. She could make all the food she wanted.

Sure, there were a lot of ponies around but Scootaloo learned that if she acted like she knew where she was going none of them would bother her. Though even still, she couldn’t help but watch everypony she passed with suspicion.

Those guys had to have some sort of weapons that could stop Scootaloo. Maybe they would even send Lily Moon after her if they got desperate enough.

She’d gone into a store and convinced the pony working there to give her some stuff. She had a dark, blue jacket on to hide her bright orange fur for one. A pair of headphones and a backward baseball cap hid her mane. Finally, she’d cut her tail short enough that it’d fit underneath the skirt she took.

But maybe this was too much clothes? It was pretty hot under all this stuff. Most of the other ponies around here were nude or wearing a hat at best.

Her watch vibrated, another thing she borrowed. It did that every eight hours to remind her to take her medicine.

She moved her wagon off to the side, glanced around, then lifted the piece of cloth on top. She made it look like it was just a pile of laundry, but underneath was a pile of pills, easily more than Scootaloo’s weight in them. She quickly took out one of the blue pills and covered the rest back up.

That was another thing. They always made her take the wrong amount of medicine! Scootaloo was the only one who actually took the stuff so she knew better than those scientists how much she needed. She needed to take three of the blue ones through the day and one yellow one before she went to sleep. As long as she did that, she was felt great and there weren’t any accidents.

Scootaloo looked at the blue pill in her right hoof. She tried once more to make a copy of it. A blue pill did appear in her left. She knew her attempt failed just by putting it in her mouth. The blue ones made her fur tingle just by touching it to her tongue, but this copy didn’t.

She spat it out and downed the correct one instead.

Why didn’t this ever work?! Was it because she didn’t know what was in them? It wasn’t like she knew all the stuff they put in soda, but she could make that!

Scootaloo swiped her hoof in the air and a cup of soda, complete with a straw, appeared in it. She drank it as she continued forward.

That was her main problem. She knew she’d be fine as long as didn’t run out. She could always get away from the grown-ups, make as much food as she wanted and sleep in a luxury hotel every night. But as soon as she ran out of medicine…

How many were in this sack? A thousand? A million? Probably closer to a thousand.

If she had ten thousand, how many years did that give her? Scootaloo sucked too much at math to figure that one out.

Either way, she had a hard time limit to figure things out before the bad times came.

Scootaloo closed her eyes and groaned as she kept walking. Getting out of there seemed like such an impossible goal that she never planned on what she should do afterward. That’d be like planning on what you’d do if you ever found out you were the princess of the moon ponies.

Honestly, she just wanted to sit in a room and read comic books all day but apparently that was too much to ask.

Stupid grown-ups! They only cared about money. Nopony like the good guys in her comic books existed, just greedy adults.

Still, she kept her eyes open, glancing around like she might just bump into the answer.

While she didn’t find the solution, she did find something interesting. A radio was playing at a banana stall loudly enough for her to hear the newscast.

That was another one of those things Scootaloo was never allowed to have. Of course, she went up to listen to it.

“We finally get to talk to Rainbow Trouble Dash,” the guy on the radio began. “Who may very well be the next Starlight Glimmer. You two are the first to defeat a witch with no real assistance.”

“Wait. Did he just say this pony defeated a witch?” Scootaloo asked the guy running the banana stand.

“How have you not heard about that?” the guy asked. “Rainbow Dash and Silverstorm defeated a witch and recovered one of their spellbooks. The news hasn’t talked about anything else for weeks.”

“But aren’t witches like invincible or something?” Scootaloo looked at the radio with growing amazement.

“Looks like this one wasn’t.” He shrugged.

Even locked up all day, Scootaloo knew what a big deal taking down a witch was. That wasn’t something a normal pony could ever hope to do. It was almost synonymous with the impossible. It was the sort of thing that only happened in comic books.

Now she was imagining this ‘Rainbow Dash’ looking like Firefly in her head. Firefly was her favorite one. She was always talking about kicking reality to the curb and doing the impossible! That was what inspired Scootaloo to try escaping despite it seeming impossible. Maybe that was why they never wanted her reading those.

Could someone like Firefly really exist?

No, of course not! There weren’t any actual heroes, Scootaloo deflated herself by remembering. Adults only cared about money. They’d do anything for money no matter how evil! Dash couldn’t be any different.

The radio began to hiss and rapidly change stations, snapping Scootaloo back to reality. She’d accidentally gotten mad at it and lost focus!

The store owner banged on it a few times, concluding that it’d worked when Scootaloo set it back to normal a second later.

“And what do you think, Silverstorm?” the host asked the other pony. Scootaloo missed part of the interview.

“Oh!” The other pony on the team stammered before giving an awkward reply. “I, uh. I agree with Rainbow Dash. Yes.”

“That’s starting to look like your new catchphrase, huh?” the host joked. “One of us needs to put ‘I agree with Rainbow Dash’ on a T-shirt.”

This other one didn’t seem so impressive. Silverstorm? Meh.

“Well since it’s safe to assume Silverstorm agrees with you, let’s ask Rainbow Dash this next one,” the host went on. “You did stir up a good deal of controversy by advocating to keep Trixie out of Area 5X. You could argue that justice demands a much worse punishment for all the horrible things she’s done. Is it a good idea for you to make such a controversial move given this is essentially your public debut?”

“Well, to be frank, I plan on stirring up way more controversy than that,” Dash replied with confidence. “I don’t think a harsher punishment for Trixie will help anypony, but making her work will. Maybe I could have gotten more money and fame if I threw her under the bus but that’s not my style. I believe ponies can change and I think what you are doesn’t make you evil. You know, like if hypothetically there was a witch who never did anything bad we should just leave them alone!”

“Yeah!” The other one added. “I-I agree with Rainbow Dash!”

That wasn’t anything like what Snap would say. Heck, it wasn’t like anything any adult she knew would say. To Scootaloo, that was even more like something out of a comic book.

Firefly always became instant best friends with everyone she beat up too!

And now her wings were flaring out in excitement again. She had to remind herself that this was probably just a lie.

Still… maybe Scootaloo should go see if Rainbow Dash really was a hero. Even if she was another fake, maybe Scootaloo could still use her.

She grabbed the radio and put it in her cart, deciding she wanted to listen to this pony some more.

“You know you gotta pay for that right?” the store owner asked. “Also it’s not for sale. The store’s not ‘Bananas and Radios’.”

“No. This is my radio, remember?” Scootaloo pointed to her name written on the side. Making herself the guy's niece for a few minutes wouldn't be much work. “I was just letting you borrow it.”

“What?” He blinked, then hit himself in embarrassment. “I can’t believe I forget. Sorry, bout that. And thanks for letting me borrow it. Come back and visit your uncle sometime, huh?”

“Yeah, no problem, Uncle!” Scootaloo waved and sped off with her new radio.

The antenna was taped on now. Scootaloo needed to take better care of her things.

Just after dark, a lone pegasus walked along the edge of Ponyville towards the small collection of apartment buildings on its far northern side. She kept her head deep under the hood of her dark crimson hoodie as she came up to the main building.

She knocked once on the door to the office, then checked behind her to make sure nothing was watching. Her eyes, in the dark, were keen enough that nothing would have escaped them.

The door cracked open, and a disgruntled stallion grumbled something that may have been a question at her.

“Hi!” Sonata Dusk took down her hood and smiled, revealing her blue fur and mane. Bright as it was inside the building, she could only make out his shadow. “Does Rainbow T. Dash live here? I need to talk to her.”

The guy just screamed in frustration and slammed the door.

“Is that a no?” Sonata called after him.

No reply. She checked the address and this was it.

She knocked again.

She kept knocking for ten minutes straight.

Finally, he threw the door open once more with a yell just as frustrated as the one he closed it with.

“What?! Are you here to torment me too? Rainbow Dash ain’t here! I kicked her out months ago.” The landlord leaned forward, his face close enough that Sonata could almost make out the features now. “And you know what? Even now I feel like I should have kicked her out years ago instead!”

“Well do you know where I can find her then?” Sonata asked.

“Where can you find her?!” He let out a single, harsh laugh. “Where the crow can’t you find her?!”

And then he slammed the door in her face. Was that supposed to be some kind of riddle? Sonata scratched her head but that joke or whatever it was had simply gone over her.

“Sonata good day.” She sighed and drew her hoodie back up as she turned to leave. “That was my only lead too!”

She’d gotten so hyped up about that one only for it to turn out to be nothing yet again.

First, she spent a whole month crawling through the sewers around here and finding nothing. Then she heard somepony noticed an aura of fear near Twilight Lake. She searched all around the lake and up and down the river. All she found was a few pumpkins and a psycho zombie sealed away in the lake. No specter anywhere.

Why did Sonata always get stuck with hard missions like this? She wasn’t a detective! But somehow her mistress decided she was the one who had to solve the mystery of the missing specter.

There was a whole gang of train ghosts that Crater Cemetery managed to capture not too long ago. When questioned, they told Sonata’s mistress about a specter who lived down in the sewers with them before chasing them away.

She knew the specter’s name at least. It was ‘Fluttershy’. The only other information she had was that Fluttershy likely left somewhere with a pony name ‘Rainbow T. Dash’ and two others who were ridiculously tough. Eventually, she got this address.

But where had they all gone? Figuring it out wasn’t fun but Sonata knew it had to be done.

Every specter needed to submit to Sonata’s mistress or die. Not one of them could be allowed to exist independently. To have somepony defy her mistress’ will was unthinkable!

Her mistress was the most important thing in the world to Sonata! Nopony should be allowed to resist her will and specters were the only ghosts able to even attempt such a feat. Sonata and her sisters were banshees, close to the top of the ghost tier list. Yet all three of them didn’t even last a single second against her willpower.

Even now, miles away and months since she’d last seen her, Sonata still felt perfectly attuned to her mistress. She saw everything as her mistress did. She saw herself as her mistress saw her at all times – as property, as a tool that existed solely for the convenience of her owner. That was the truth. Sonata existed only to serve her now.

Against something so incredible, only a specter could hope to resist for even a few minutes. Once the number of free specters was low enough, Crater Cemetery could work unopposed to subjugate the predead menace.

Sonata so badly wanted to be a good little tool and do what she was told!

But that didn’t mean she was good at it, especially now that she was alone.

Adagio failed their big, important mission and ended up dead for real. Maybe that one wasn’t so bad. Dagi was always yelling and hitting Sonata for every little thing. Sonata felt a bit of relief that she was dead, to be honest.

But then there was Aria, who Sonata loathed completely right now! It was a shame too since Aria was more the big sister in Sonata’s life. She used to like her, at least. But then Pinkie Pie appeared to ruin Sonata’s life once again! During the assassination attempt, Pinkie destroyed all the chains binding Aria.

That meant she was free from their rightful owner’s will. Aria just betrayed them and ran off somewhere instead of turning herself in to be chained back up again. Sonata’s mistress hated her so much for that and now Sonata hated her too! This was far worse than her simply dying!

If Sonata ever saw her or Pinkie Pie again!

Well, realistically she’d run away crying. At this point, it was clear she had a genetic predisposition to getting killed by Pinkie. Better not risk it.

“I’ll ask around tomorrow!” Sonata declared to the night sky. “I’m too depressed to do it tonight.”

She was just gonna go down to the convenience store and drown her sorrow with soda for now.

With her taxidermized body she couldn’t drink any soda, but she could swish it around in her mouth and spit it out. You still got the taste that way. Honestly, she had no idea why predeads didn’t just do that and avoid all the sugar.

Sonata used her taxidermized pegasus wings to fly down to the Ponyville convenience store. The store was annoyingly bright so she had to hold the soda bottles close under her hood to read the labels.

Her hoodie wasn’t there to make her look cool or to hide her identity. It was just so she’d have a portable source of darkness to let her read things. Before having this idea, she’d always buy the sugar-free crap by mistake. She swore these electric lights were invented just to annoy poor ghosts like her!

The clerk was hardly a blob on the floor with how little shadows these ceiling lights left. But Sonata could still smell his warm blood. She paid for it and started swishing some soda around in her mouth. The guy was probably looking at her funny now, his heart rate climbed a little.

That made her hungry! She hated it when predead’s hearts started beating faster. It was like they were teasing her. Just being in this town filled her brain with an annoying itch. She had to eat a whole lot before coming to these places just to keep from snapping and freezing one of them.

Even now the temptation was too much! She needed to buy something warm to eat. She put her hood up and so she could at least read the labels. The pizza was the hottest thing there, but it wasn’t nearly hot enough. It’d been heated up by one of those nasty heat lamps too. Even ghosts found convenience store food gross.

Then again, there wasn’t anypony else nearby. Maybe she could give this guy a case of hypothermia real quick and be on her way? Yeah! If he turned out to be cute when the lights were off, she’d even give him a little kiss to thank him. It was always more fun to do this to a boy. Every once in a while they were into it, even.

She knew she had to be careful about this sort of thing. She ducked down to pretend to look at whatever was down there while she smelled around to make sure no ponies were around to interrupt the little ‘date’ they’d be going on and then—

Sonata stood up, holding a magazine just in front of her face. It was hard to make out, but when she did she spat out all of her soda in the guy’s face.

As he yelled and staggered back, trying to wipe the backwash out of his eyes, Sonata pulled it in under her hood to triple check. On the cover of the magazine were a name and a picture matching her target’s description.

‘Rainbow T. Dash.’

Cultists 3: Resurrection

Being rich was the best thing that ever happened to Dash. Everything about this was amazing! And all those philosophical types always told you being rich was depressing or something? Idiots! Dash was never listening to another philosopher ever again! They could take their wisdom and shove it.

Rainbow Dash finally got her dream house! A bathroom big enough to have an actual bath, meaning going to the bathhouse was optional, was number one on her list. All she could ever hope for above that was a fairly large bedroom and a kitchen, and she’d be set.

And now here she was! All three of those boxes checked off on her new home!

Wait, no. That was just the pool house.

To think Dash got her dream home as an add-on to the place she bought hurt her brain. She couldn’t comprehend it.

And yet here she was, in this ridiculously large house. It was hardly a mansion, but it had more space than she could even think what to do with. For now, Dash and Twilight slept together in the master bedroom so they only used two bedrooms. Then you had a few obvious stuff like kitchen, living room and maybe a dining room.

But then what? Six guest rooms?

If Dash ever bought a bunch of pinball machines and pool tables those were going in the basement. She struggled to think about what you even did with a house this big. Maybe she’d go spy on Pinkie, across the street, later.

Dash owned nothing but a radio and a bag until a month ago on top of that. It wasn’t like she had anything to put inside any of these rooms. Twilight brought a few things from her house, but it wasn’t enough to fill the void. Save the two bedrooms, everything else was empty.

Except for one room, that was. There was a pile of gifts in the entrance room so high that part of it reached halfway up the spiral staircase Dash also had. Simply cataloging this would take all day, so they hardly had time to organize it.

It was crazy! Every day more gifts showed up, everywhere she went she got free stuff, any food place she showed up insisted that she eat for free. Dash just got rich and now everypony was just giving her everything for free? What sense did that make? Not that Dash was ever going to say ‘no’ to free stuff.

Dash looked out into the room, at what was effectively a treasure hoard.

They got a Luxorama Nimbus Max bed and pillows made from real clouds you could sleep on. They got a set of silverware that was made of silver, a piano, a fancy guitar signed by somepony name ‘skimbo’, and boxes of stuff she hadn’t even opened yet.

She’d gotten enough gift baskets filled with expensive cheese, chocolate, bread, wine, and cooking oils that she was starting to wonder if she could live off exclusively off gift baskets. One pony gave her a ninety-pound cheese wheel. That was one and a half times Dash’s weight in cheese. Expensive cheese at that!

Twilight was sitting in the corner of the room dedicated to all her new books. They formed a semi-circle around a cushion Twilight sat on, the walls of the books stacked twice as high as Twilight would be on her hind legs. They had a few nice bookshelves made of mahogany, but no books had yet to be put on them.

Every pony who made clothing or jewelry wanted the two of them wearing their stuff right now, so they had piles of designer clothes, gold, and gemstones just lying around. Dash would have killed to have some of that stuff a year ago and now she had no idea what to do with it.

Maybe when she had time, she’d pawn off most of this fashionable crap off and give it to charity. Everything except the stuff that looked good, and Dash did find the best-looking outfit in the pile.

Obviously, Dash went for the North Wind swag. North Wind was the coolest brand that every pegasus wanted. Looking herself over in the mirror Dash could tell why.

She wore the nicest jacket she’d ever touched, blue with purple trim and the North Wind logo on the back. She also had stylish North Wind goggles resting on top of her forehead. Her North Wind boots were short and went great with the North Wind socks that came halfway up her legs

She looked so cool with this stuff on!

“Are you going to spend all day making poses in the mirror?” Twilight asked.

“Twilight, this is a Luxorama North Wind signature black label windbreaker.” Dash turned so she could see the back of it in the mirror. “This jacket is worth ten thousand bits! That’s food for two years!”

“Even if that is edible, there’s no way it’d last you two years,” Twilight muttered.

“Then this chain is another six thousand bits.” Dash grabbed the gold chain around her neck. “Sixty weeks of groceries. Goggles? Five thousand bits. Fifty weeks of groceries. These socks are inexplicably worth two hundred bits each. If I come out of this with nothing but the clothes on my back, I’m good for years, baby!”

“Just don’t forget the mission,” Twilight reminded her.

“You mean the mission to look sexy?” Dash winked at herself in the mirror. “I got that one locked down!”

“Rainbow Dash.”

“What? Half our mission is PR, yeah? So I gotta look cool and this jacket doubles the coolness of anyone who wears it.”

“I suppose. Though honestly, I still like my hat better than any of this stuff.” Twilight held up a necklace dripping with sapphires. They just had that kind of stuff lying around these days. “And isn’t my original hat worth a million bits? That means it's a hundred times more fashionable than that jacket, right?”

“There’s gotta be something here you like! Don’t lie to me.”

“Well.” Twilight closed her book and looked up at her little fortress of knowledge. “I do have all the books I want now.”

Now that she was living in a town and had unlimited funds, Twilight had been ordering books through the phone catalog non-stop. The ponies on the other end didn’t even need to ask who was calling anymore. This was in addition to a steady stream of books ponies sent into her as gifts once word got out she liked reading.

Already, Twilight had a lifetime’s supply of books. That is, more than Dash could have read in a lifetime. Twilight read so fast she might be done with all of this in a few months.

“And I have to admit that bed is better than anything I had before,” said Twilight.

There was a reason ponies compared things to sleeping on a cloud. The moment you laid down on their new bed you never wanted to get back up.

Adorably, Twilight needed to sleep in the same bed as Dash. She was still getting used to civilization. The thought of having thousands of strangers surrounding her in every direction unnerved her. For the first few days, Twilight acted like a dog, going to the window to watch every stranger who passed their house.

But she was getting better.

“And, uh.” Twilight went to the pile of clothes, her smile fading at what she picked up.

Somepony got her a shirt with ‘I agree with Rainbow Dash’ and another with ‘I don’t like boats’ printed on them. Those two phrases constituted most of what Twilight said on the radio.

Dash knew whoever got her that didn’t mean anything by it, but it was enough to shake Twilight.

“Everyone thinks I’m an idiot.” Twilight buried her face in the shirt. “I did such a horrible job! And millions of ponies heard me too.”

“No one hates you.” Dash sat down next to her. “Sure the interviews could have gone better, but no one cares about that compared to you taking down a witch. The whole ‘I agree with Rainbow Dash’ thing is just a stupid fad joke. It’ll be gone in a couple of weeks.”

“Yeah, until I open my mouth and embarrass myself again.”

“We just need to get you a book about public speaking.” Dash gave her a reassuring nuzzle. “Or maybe even lessons! I do have money left over to hire more ponies.”

“Wait. There’s a book about that?” Twilight perked up. “That’s it! Why didn’t I think of that? I guess I was too distracted by all this noise.”

Twilight picked up her phone catalog and within minutes was calling up the store to order what sounded like a dozen more books.

Another small victory for Rainbow Dash. She couldn’t stop smiling. Things were going great so far. Dash totally made Twilight’s life better by dragging her out of the woods. And soon she’d defeat all the other witches.

At the moment, it felt like nothing bad would ever happen again and danger was as far away as it could be. Though then again, who knew when the next threat would show up?

While Twilight was busy on the phone, Scootaloo crept into the room like she was trying to sneak up on Dash. She froze in place when Dash glanced in her direction. It was just after nine, earlier than she used to wake up.

And there was another pro for the list! After all, Scootaloo was the whole reason Dash went on this adventure in the first place. Even before the beginning, she'd been trying to get enough money to for them to let 'adopt' her own little sister.

Ever since that day with the gremlins, when they met Fluttershy, Dash had been even more desperate to keep Scootaloo close where she'd be safe. Scootaloo ended up falling into the sewers and getting kidnapped by that Rattler ghost, or whatever that guy's name was. But they had the nerve to tell Dash she wasn't responsible enough to take care of her own sister?

At least no other kids fell into the sewer with her.

But now Scootaloo was finally out of that orphanage and they just invented that new medication for her on top of that. Just seeing her wake up this early, and in the same house as Dash, was enough to make Dash smile.

“There you are!” Rainbow Dash flew across the room and grabbed her sister in a hug as soon as she saw her. “Morning, Scoots. Isn’t this place the best?”

“Oh! Uh! Yeah, hey Rainbow Dash.” Scootaloo smiled but received the hug as awkwardly as she could.

Scootaloo was being a little shy lately. She might still be nervous around Twilight. While Scootaloo had met ‘Silverstorm’ months ago, it was only recently that she learned the truth.

“So you brave enough to have some…” Dash reached into her exotic cheese gift basket and pulled one out at random. “Uh. Giraffe cheese for breakfast?”

“Giraffe cheese?” Scootaloo’s ears perked up at the idea. “Can you do that?”

“You can milk any mammal, I guess. I bet this is worth more than I used to make in a month at Curse Burger,” said Dash.

Twilight sat back in her throne of knowledge and immediately pulled out the relevant book. How she could do that so fast, and without disturbing the stack either, Dash had no idea.

“According to The Ultimate Cheese Guidebook,” Twilight held the book up over her face, quickly getting to the right page, “it’s worth six hundred bits per pound. It says giraffes are exceedingly difficult to milk.”

“Dang!”

‘Sell it’ were the first words that entered Dash’s mind at that revelation. But sell it to who? Was she going to run through the streets hoping to find somepony that wanted to pay thousands for a hunk of giraffe cheese before it went bad?

Eating it might be the least wasteful way to go after all.

From the way she was looking at the exotic cheese basket, it was clear Scootaloo didn’t want to try anything that comes from something no sane pony would milk.

“You don’t have to, you know.” Dash messed up her hair. She grabbed the fancy fruit basket and put it in front of her sister. “Here, you can have some fruit, or I can make you pancakes. There’s gotta be some fancy syrup around here somewhere.”

“No. This is good. Thanks.” Scootaloo pulled up the fruit basket, about half her size, and took a few grapes.

Meanwhile, Dash took a bit out of what might be the most expensive thing she’d ever eat. It tasted horrible when you first put it in your mouth but the more you chewed the better it seemed to get.

Scootaloo watched Dash’s reaction with a growing curiosity.

“Actually,” Scootaloo spoke, then paused like she expected to be yelled at. “Can I try some?”

“Ha! See, that’s how you know we’re related.” Dash broke off a piece of it and handed it over. “Most ponies ain’t brave enough for this.”

Scootaloo ate it without much hesitation, chewing for a long time before swallowing, cringing slightly the whole time.

“I honestly don’t know if that was good,” she said.

“Yeah, I find that’s the case with most overpriced food.” Dash was learning all kinds of things like that recently. “Did you decide what you wanna do today?”

“Huh?” Scootaloo pointed to herself, surprised. “What I want to do?”

Scootaloo looked totally lost at the question.

“Didn’t I tell you yesterday?” Dash asked. “I’m taking the day off to spend time with you, kid. We can do anything you want.”

“Oh! Uh.” She panicked slightly, trying to think of something. “Normally I’m lucky if I get to sit around reading comic books all day. I’m not sure what there even is to do.”

Scootaloo didn’t get out much. She was a fragile girl, to say the least. Even bumper cars were enough to knock her out cold. Going for a hike was about the most physically intense thing she could handle.

Comic books were the main place she had to turn to for excitement in her life. That and laughing at all the horrible things that happened to Dash.

“Well they got that huge outlet mall right next to the river,” said Dash. “We could check that out. They got a pinball arcade and a giant comic bookstore.”

Those last two were enough to tempt Scootaloo, who was sitting up at attention now.

“Um.” Scootaloo clearly wanted to do that but was hesitant to admit it. “Yeah! That could be fun.”

“I bet going to a place like that is way more fun when you can actually buy stuff,” said Dash. “I bet I could even buy you the most expensive comic book in the world now. Hey, Twi! What is the most expensive comic book in the world anyway?”

“Oh, I have no idea.” Twilight shook her head without taking her eyes off the book.

That took Dash by surprise. Dash had gotten used to Twilight being able to pull out the right book and get an answer immediately whenever she was sitting on her throne of knowledge.

“I thought you had a book about everything by now,” said Dash.

“I have a book about everything important,” said Twilight. “I put all the books that aren’t essential information in the basement.”

“Oh, and the The Ultimate Cheese Guidebook is essential information?” Dash asked.

“I don’t know what cheese is capable of!” Twilight defended herself. “I just learned it existed a few months ago. There could be wizard cheese, death cheese, or something even worse. What if there’s a cheese that turns whoever eats it into more cheese?”

That last one sounded easy enough to deal with, had it been real.

“But I can’t imagine a scenario where fiction or books about fiction would be useful,” said Twilight. “Whenever somepony gives me a book like that, I just throw it out.”

“You threw out all of the fictional books?” Scootaloo was offended at the idea. “But fiction books are the only cool ones! Why would you do that?”

“Reading fiction is a complete waste of time.” Twilight kept her muzzle buried in her book. “You can say it’s ‘fun’, but I enjoy reading about anything. Why would I spend my time reading about something that never happened when I could be reading useful information?”

Scootaloo got up and spread her wings defensively as her hobby came under attack.

“Because things that never happened are cool.” Scootaloo pointed to Twilight in the same way her hero, Firefly, did in the comic books. “Reality is cruel! A-and if you don’t like reality then it’s up to us to alter it!”

“Oh, that’s the thing Firefly from that comic book says, isn’t it?” Twilight asked.

Scootaloo blinked and froze in place.

“Huh?!” Scootaloo stepped back after a moment of delayed response. “You know about that?”

“Dash mentioned that one was your favorite on multiple occasions,” said Twilight. “She talks about you all the time.”

“She does?” Scootaloo looked up at Dash.

“Well, yeah. You were the whole reason I was able to convince Twilight to come into town the first time,” Dash said. “I have no idea how I would have pulled that one off without you.”

To be fair, that had been an uphill battle. Dash had to explain sisters, heart conditions, and orphanages to Twilight before it was even on the table. Scootaloo already looked skeptical of this enough without Dash bringing that up, though.

What even would have been plan B there? Luring her out with Summoner Knights cards?

“Plus you were talking about the new Firefly comic just last night,” Dash reminded her. “You were complaining about how they brought Tirek back from the dead.”

“You were actually paying attention?” Scootaloo took a step closer.

“Don’t sound so surprised!” Dash grabbed Scootaloo in another hug when she got too close. “I like you! Of course I’m not gonna ignore you.”

This time Scootaloo wasn't tense at all.

“But Twi. To be fair you’ve never actually given novels a chance,” said Dash. “Oh! You know, I’d bet you’d like the Daring Do novels. Those books are a lot more intellectual than you’d think. I know somepony gave us a copy of it too.”

“Maybe if they weren’t so time-consuming.” Twilight shook her head and went back to her non-fiction.

Scootaloo was staring up at Dash, holding her breath like she was nervous about saying something.

“You read the Daring Do books?” Scootaloo asked.

“I used to read them to you. So yeah?”

“Oh, yeah. Of course I remember that! I meant, uh!”

Scootaloo rubbed the back of her head, never revealing what she meant.

“Um.” Scootaloo scraped the ground one more time before working up the courage to speak again. “Did— did you know that the thing with the crystal skulls was based on a true story? They had numbers two and three but then they found number five and realized there were more of them than they thought just like in the book! Only like— like in real life the skulls aren’t used for anything cool.”

It always amazed Dash how much Scootaloo knew about this stuff. If she knew half as much about science as she did comic books and the like, she’d be the top scientist by a large margin.

This was her favorite thing to talk about and thankfully Dash was always interested to hear what was happening in her world.

Scootaloo went on for an hour talking about all her favorite comic books, getting increasingly stoked the longer Dash stayed invested. Scootaloo was so excited to have somepony listening to her that she teared up a little.

It broke Dash’s heart to see how starved for attention Scootaloo always was but Dash couldn’t deny how good it felt to finally have her sister back. No way Scootaloo would be ignored from now on.

“But then in the Ultimate Non-canon #13, there’s a fourth one called the canon cannon which allows you literally shoot plot holes into the story! And that’s why Infinite Catastrophe didn’t make any sense. Because Rotwood just blew holes in the story!” Scootaloo started to laugh, finally relaxed again.

“But then wouldn’t that make the joke non-canon comic the actual canon?” Dash asked. “Since the first one doesn’t work without it?”

“Oh, hey. That’s a good point.” Scootaloo stopped to think that over.

Twilight’s ears perked up and she looked toward the window, Dash’s first sign somepony was approaching. A knock on the door a second later startled poor Scootaloo out of her blissful state.

Dash went over and opened the door. Scootaloo stood back, nervously watching, hiding partially behind Twilight’s wall of books. When she saw who it was, she relaxed.

“Oh, hey Rainbow Dash.” Derpy gave her a salute. “I’m reporting for duty!”

One of the many perks of being S rank was that Dash got a certain amount of money to hire anypony she needed. In the end, she decided to take Derpy as her assistant. Of all the other ponies in the guild, Derpy was the one Dash could be the most certain wasn’t secretly working for somepony else.

“So I take it this means you finally moved in?” Dash made sure Derpy’s salary was good enough that she’d be able to move in. Also high enough that it’d be difficult to bribe her.

“Yeah! Me and Soarin just started moving into our new house on the poor side of town,” said Derpy. “Though I gotta say, the poor part of Ponytown looks like the rich part of Ponyville.”

Even Dash didn’t live in the ‘rich’ part of Ponytown. All the huge mansions were down by the river. A lot of famous artists and celebrities lived in this town too, Dash heard.

“And I wanted to say I’m sorry about constantly doubting you for all these years.” Derpy bowed her head to Dash. “It’s just, you know, for years and years your life was an endless train wreck of unmitigated failure and bad luck!”

“Yeah.” Dash rubbed the back of her head and glanced to the side. “Yeah, I remember that. Thanks.”

“But now I understand that you really were amazing this whole time! You just never got a single break in your whole life and the second you did, you soared to the top. It’s like, something about the system or whatever! Anyway, that’s why I wanna be on your team from now on. To make it up to you.”

“You are my first pick,” said Dash, “but you don’t gotta take this job just because you feel bad about before.”

“No! They’re gonna make this into a movie in thirty years and I don’t want to be that one jock pony who’s always doubting you!”

Now Dash was imagining a movie where Derpy demanded Dash fork over her lunch money.

“I feel like that’d be Raindrops if anypony.” For once, Dash smiled when she remembered Raindrops. “Oh hey, how is she doing anyway? You didn’t see how she reacted to the news did you?”

“Oh, she did not take it well at all.” Derpy shook her head. “She keeps insisting that you somehow faked defeating Trixie or something.”

Dash laughed, imagining Raindrops off stewing somewhere. Life just kept getting better.

“Oh, hey! Is that your sister?” Derpy noticed Scootaloo creeping up from behind Dash. “So you finally got her out of the orphanage?”

“Heh! Well, it’s not like they can tell me I’m too poor to take her in now.” Dash cocked a winning smile and rubbed the back of her head.

“Hey there!” Derpy bent down and inflected her voice like she was talking to a baby. “Do you remember me?”

“Uh.” Scootaloo took a step back.

“She was five last time you saw her,” Dash reminded her. “Cut her some slack.”

“Oh, right.” Derpy got back up.

Scootaloo sighed with relief.

“You know, Rainbow Dash always talked about how she was gonna get rich and famous so she could take you out of the orphanage,” Derpy told her.

It was true. Dash didn’t want to talk about it too much, but she used to work endlessly in hopes of getting enough money to be deemed worthy of taking care of her sister. Eventually, she realized that no amount of hard work at a dead-end job would get you anywhere, so she became a slayer instead.

Part of the reason she wanted to go after Twilight in the first place was so she could take Scootaloo back home.

“You must be so happy that you finally get to live with your sister again,” Derpy said to Scootaloo.

“Oh! Yeah, totally!” Scootaloo nodded too quickly.

“What are you so nervous about today?” Dash pulled Scootaloo closer.

“Um! It’s just moving into a new house and all that. You know?” Scootaloo smiled.

Scootaloo spent most of the last month being so excited about this too. Something was up.

“You know if there’s ever anything bothering you, you can come talk to me, yeah?” Dash rustled her mane.

“Yeah. Right.” Scootaloo lowered her head. “Thanks.”

Dash frowned, wishing she could think of some way to figure out the problem.

“Oh!” Derpy raised her hoof. “Speaking of talking about things. I already have something spooky to report to you. At least I think it’s spooky.”

“Yeah?”

Derpy glanced behind her before moving closer, making Dash expect this to be gossip.

“See, two days after you beat Trixie, Starlight sent a pony down to look at your folder, right?” Derpy asked. “But when they did it was empty! Other than your basic info I mean.”

“So? That should be the case, right?” Dash asked. “Trixie was technically the first mission I completed.”

“Yeah, it was the first mission, but you did do that one thing, remember?”

“Apparently not?”

“You found that incredibly rare magical artifact!” Derpy reminded her. “Those gummies that make you younger? Even though you didn’t turn them in, I still put that in your folder so you’d at least have something in there.”

Dash’s heart stopped beating as her brain reeled through the implications of that one remark. Dash had made a serious mistake and left an important piece of evidence behind!

That was the night she’d loudly announced to everypony she was off to find Twilight Sparkle too! Anypony who saw that would get suspicious. She could claim that she’d found it elsewhere, but the truth would be right in front of everypony either way.

“And Starlight’s guy saw that?” Dash asked.

“No. Like I said, it was there right before you went off to fight Trixie, but it was gone just after you came back,” said Derpy. “I think somepony stole that paper. Though I don’t know why they would.”

Dash half knew the answer. That report was a massive red flag! But why were they covering for Dash? This was over a month ago, too, so if they were going to send a blackmail letter, they’d have already done it.

All she could say for now was that somepony knew the truth and was destroying evidence that Twilight was Twilight. They must be a genius on top of that, to have figured out to do all this in a single second.

At least it was a good thing short term. Maybe the mystery genius would track down and destroy any other evidence that pointed to Twilight being a witch.

“Did you tell anypony else about this?” Dash asked.

“No,” said Derpy. “I figure I should tell you first. Especially since you’re my boss now.”

That was a relief.

“Good job, Derpy.” Dash patted her on the head.

Derpy smiled and stuck her tongue out at the acknowledgment.

“But yeah, you can never speak of this again,” said Dash.

“This sounds kind of ominous,” said Derpy. “Hey, Dash. You’re not doing drugs or anything, are you?”

“Drugs? Of course not!”

“Drugs are bad, Rainbow Dash!”

“Yeah, I know! I’m not doing drugs, okay?”

“Then why does this need to be a secret again?” Derpy asked. “You know I’m on your side, right? You can tell me.”

“Yeah, there’s some stuff I gotta tell you.” If Dash couldn’t convince Derpy that Twilight wasn’t evil, she wouldn’t be able to convince anypony. “Look, there’s a slide show we’re going to show a few ponies in a couple of weeks. You’re one of them. Just don’t talk about this until then.”

“Alright, I guess.” Derpy’s ears drooped. She didn’t like it but didn’t press things further than that.

“Until then, your first job is to make a report about everything we know about the witches,” said Dash. “I figure there’s gotta be a bunch of classified stuff they only tell S rank ponies. I want you to get all of it for me.”

“I can do that!” Derpy saluted her, then looked around the house. “Um. Do I get an office?”

“Do you not come with your own office?” Dash asked.

“I don’t think so.” Derpy looked both ways to make sure.

“Let me think.” Dash looked out into the backyard. “Oh! The pool house can be your office. What’s even the point of a pool house anyway? It’s the same distance as the normal house from the pool.”

Though Dash still had no furniture to speak of. Certainly, she had no office furniture. The closest thing to a desk she had was that piano.

“Until further notice, this piano will have to be your desk!” Dash pushed the piano towards Derpy. “Guess you can go set it up. If anypony shows up while I’m out, just send them away. Thanks.”

“Oh, wow. I never had a piano desk before! Thanks, Rainbow Dash! Oh, but could I use your phone to call Soarin? I wanna tell him I'm gonna be here a while. Oh! And tell him about Scootaloo too!”

"No, you can't!" Scootaloo answered faster than Dash. Everypony looked over at her. "Cause the phone guy hasn't installed the phone thing yet. Remember?"

"Ah, yeah. That's right." Dash tapped her back hoof. "Maybe you could use Pinkie's phone? She's right across the street."

"You can't!" Scootaloo shot the idea down. "Because, um, Pinkie doesn't own a phone!"

Derpy turned to Dash, skeptical.

"Yeah. Pinkie grew up ahmish, you know?" Dash reminded her. "She's been meaning to get with the times."

"Guess I won't call him, then. Ah well."

Derpy pressed her head against the piano and began pushing it towards the backyard.

Hopefully, that was the only visitor they’d get today.

“Anyway—”

“Hi Rainbow Dash!” Pinkie jumped up out of nowhere and grabbed Dash in a hug. “What are you doing today?”

That was the thing about living across the street from Pinkie they didn’t tell you about. She acted like the two of them lived in one big house that happened to have a street down the middle of it. It was worth having the best alarm system in the world next door, though. Dash already resigned herself to this fate.

“Just going through some of this swag, then we’re gonna go somewhere.” Dash gestured towards the pile.

“You know you’re not supposed to actually take all of this stuff, right?” Pinkie looked over some fancy-looking plates Dash didn’t even remember getting at this point. “Especially if it was some rich pony who gave it to you.”

“Pinkie, I grew up dirt poor.” Dash pointed to her pile of expensive junk. “I can’t say no to free stuff.”

“But you know they’re going to expect something in return from you,” Pinkie pointed out. “I learned that the hard way.”

“Huh?” Dash blinked and put the guitar down. “No, none of them tried to bribe me or anything.”

“Well, they’re not going to say it outright.”

“Yeah? Maybe when I refuse to do anything they want they’ll learn a lesson about how bribery is bad or something. Maybe taking all their stuff then never giving them anything in return was the secret all along.”

“Eh. Well, I guess if we may or may not be taking down the government either way.” Pinkie got to the gift basket section of the room and started looking it all over. “That’s probably gonna ruffle more feathers in the long run.”

“We don’t necessarily have to take out Starlight,” Dash reminded her. “Just stealing a thing.”

Dash hated referring to it as ‘the thing’. Though they’d been too busy to discuss it for a while, given how much media attention they’d been under this past month.

“Hey, Twi? When are you gonna tell us what this thing looks like again?” Dash asked.

“I haven’t bothered telling you because I don’t think it would help,” said Twilight. “I could tell you that the one I had was a crown with a gemstone that mirrors the cutie mark of the wearer, but no two of these ever look the same. It could be anything. It could be a harp, a cup, a spear, even an entire train as far as I know.”

“Then how can we possibly find it?” Dash asked. “Are we gonna have to ask that guy?”

“There’s no way you’d mistake it for anything else if you ever found it,” said Twilight. “Like I said before when we meet Starlight in person I might be able to find a lead on where it is.”

“And I’m pretty good at finding stuff.” Pinkie took an apple out of one of the gift baskets and took a bite. “You know psychic powers and everything. I say give me three or four months!”

It was nice that they had multiple options for this kind of thing.

“There’s one other thing that’s bothering me. Are we seriously going to keep calling it ‘the thing’ forever?” Dash asked.

“I can tell you what I call them,” said Twilight. “The general term is an ‘element of harmony’. Though I doubt that name means anything to you.”

It didn’t.

“Harmony?” Dash repeated it. “So it’s a musical instrument? I thought you said it was a crown.”

“No, like it’s a conduit that harmonizes you, as an entity, with the metaphorical concept it’s attuned to. The one I had was called ‘the element of magic’. You could, hypothetically, make one for any concept. It could even be something completely bizarre. You could make an element of fact-checking, hiccups, stalking, communicable diseases, or even UFOs.”

“So,” Dash tried to draw a useful conclusion from all that but struggled.

Twilight was right. None of that was particularly helpful information.

Though it did make her wonder what Starlight had made an ‘element’ of. It also made Dash wonder which one she’d choose if it worked like that. What would be the most overpowered concept to become one with? Death lasers? Supernovas? Black holes? Time?

“So like!” Pinkie reached her conclusion first. “So like I could create a 'the element of laughter’ and then all of my jokes would be maximally hilarious forever? And I would never not have fun?”

“That’s not exactly how it works, but sort of.” Twilight shook her head. “Honestly, a spellbook would be more powerful than any of these. I suppose as long as you don’t use it to ascend it’s not that bad to have one, though.”

Dash kept tapping her hoof this whole time, trying to think up something useful to say or do. But it did look like they just needed to wait for now.

Meanwhile, Scootaloo was being all shifty-eyed and quiet off to the side. She had a star fruit in her mouth as she glanced silently at whoever spoke. Dash didn’t want to involve her in all this.

“Gotta admit, you’re right that doesn’t tell me much.” Dash shrugged. “Sides, we’re supposed to be taking the day off today.”

“Oh!” Pinkie raised her hoof. “I have an entire mini-golf course in my backyard. Do you want to come over and play mini-golf?”

Mini-golf sounded like the perfect level of physical activity for somepony like Scootaloo.

“You do?” Dash asked. “You must really like mini-golf.”

“Not really.” Pinkie shrugged. “My house was built on a zebra burial ground and mini-golf is the only thing that can keep the zebra god of destruction from sperging out. The town won’t let me take it down.”

“Ah.” Dash nodded. “Hey, I always wondered if that sort of thing drives down the value of the house.”

“Not as much as you’d think,” said Pinkie.

“You wanna play mini-golf?” Dash asked her sister.

“I never played mini-golf before,” Scootaloo admitted. “I guess I could give it a shot.”

The town was steep enough that you could put a ball on Dash’s lawn and it’d roll right over to Pinkie’s. The whole of Ponytown was on a steep incline like that, leading to the river in the valley below. One advantage to this was that you could stand on any rooftop and get a good look at the water.

Pinkie’s house was smaller than Dash’s but her backyard was huge. The miniature golf course’s 12 holes only took up a fraction of it. That part of the lawn was flattened out a bit to counteract the fact that her backyard was otherwise a hill.

The first hole played into the hilly terrain. The path from start to finish was a heavily winding, downhill path. A small tap looked like all you needed.

Dash tapped her ball, hoping it’d just roll the whole way down. Somehow it got stuck on the ledge halfway down.

“Really?!” Dash shook her head. “I thought I’d at least get to the bottom."

Next up was Scootaloo. She took the putter in her mouth, gave the ball a tap, and sent it rolling down the hill just like her sister before her. Only this time the strategy worked perfectly. The ball perfectly snaked down the path and went straight into the hole.

“Hey! You’re really good at this!” Dash cheered for her.

“Really?!” Scootaloo’s wings opened wide at the praise. That really was all it took to excite her. She ran over and sat as close to Dash as she could.

“Yeah! At least somepony in our family’s good at this.” Dash put a wing around her.

To handicap herself, Pinkie held the club of her putter in her mouth and hit the ball with its handle. Even like that, she was good!

The ball arced over the entire slope and just barely missed going straight into the hole. It just barely missed going off-course too. But it was a lot closer than Dash’s.

Then it was Twilight’s turn. Twilight took the putter, looking down at the ball then over at the hole with an intensely serious look. She stood there silently for a long time, assessing the situation carefully.

Dash sat with a wing wrapped around Scootaloo as they waited for Twilight to do something.

“See, ‘Silverstorm’ here’s either incredibly good or incredibly bad at everything she tries,” Dash half-whispered to her sister. “Which do you think this is gonna be?”

“Well.” Scootaloo looked Twilight over. “She’s doing lots of math in her head, I bet. She’s totally gonna get a hole in one.”

“You’d think that,” said Dash. “But there’s no way to know how this will go.”

Twilight pulled back the putter and swung. The ball went sailing out of sight. From this high up in the hills, there was nothing to stop it.

Pinkie jumped up on Rainbow Dash’s back and squinted in the direction the ball had gone off to.

“Looks like it went into the river.” Pinkie jumped off Dash’s back.

“Wow.” Dash laughed. “The water trap was miles outside the entire course and you still hit it.”

“Whoops.” Twilight blushed. “I guess I hit it a little harder than I meant to.”

A little after three, they ended up going down to the outlet mall after all. The Ponytown outlets were partially next to the river and partially on it. Several stores were built along docks or were little boats themselves.

The thing stretched on forever, or so it seemed. Exploring this place would take several trips. The bookstore they found looked larger than every store in Ponyville combined. It went up four stories and had multiple cafes inside of it.

Of course, the other two ponies in Dash’s group wanted to check it out. Scootaloo dragged her over to where the comic books were and started looking through a bunch of unfamiliar, foreign comics. Despite her earlier protests, Twilight ended up curiously flipping through the pictures in one of them.

Come to think of it, had Twilight ever seen a comic book before? Dash honestly couldn’t remember.

The place was crowded today, but they didn’t get a lot of attention, relatively speaking.

One of the big advantages of living in this town was the fact that all the ponies here were more used to seeing celebrities. Between that and being month-old news, the two of them were able to walk around a bit more freely than normal.

They got about two ‘I agree with Rainbow Dash!’s from passersbys, but that was about it. Dash made sure to strike a pose for any such fan, though Twilight still blushed at embarrassment upon hearing her unintentional catchphrase.

As the other two were looking, Dash heard a voice coming from the next section over and walked towards where it came from.

“If you need a friend, Starlight will be your friend. If you need a hero, Starlight will be your hero. If you need a god, Starlight will be your god!”

Dash instantly recognized the pegasus as Night Glider, a mare with white hair and dark blue fur. More importantly, she was one of the S rank ponies who lived in this town and one of the ones devoted to Starlight. So far, the only other S-rankers Dash met were those more aligned with Sunset.

She looked to be doing something akin to street preaching. She had the familiar black robes with green trim all of Starlight's followers had. The design was more elaborate than those Dash was used to seeing, however. She had an elaborate vine-like design around the edge with little nicks every so often, giving the vines thorns. That was the best one you could get, Dash was sure.

How did she get permission to preach inside the store?

The entire section she was standing by was dedicated to Starlight’s books, had a life-sized cutout of the president just in front of it. Maybe the owner of the store was in Starlight’s pocket too.

Dash backed up to Twilight’s side.

“Hey, Silver,” Dash whispered to her, gesturing to Night Glider. “That’s one of Starlight’s top ponies. Think we should talk to her?”

“I dunno.” Twilight tried to bury her face in her book. “I’m not good at talking to ponies in places this crowded.”

“Well you’re not going to get any better by hiding forever. Come on.” Dash started pushing Twilight away from safety. “You can wait over here, Scoots.”

Scootaloo stayed where she was, but watched the older ponies as they went over to Night Glider.

Night Glider didn’t have an audience at the moment, having just started, so her attention went straight to Dash when they came over.

“Oh! How Lucky!” Night Glider’s smile was huge! Like, huger than any other smile Dash had ever seen. But it was a little off. “If it isn’t Rainbow Dash and the other one! You just moved into town, haven’t you? It must be fate that brought you to me so fast.”

Twilight muttered her fake name.

“Yeah, hey,” said Dash. “You live in this town too, right?”

“Oh, I have an enormous mansion just a little west of here by the river,” said Night glider. “But I don’t live there.”

That sort of excess still made Dash sick. Night Glider probably owned fifty houses she never used when there were so many ponies who couldn’t even get one.

“I mostly sleep at the church center and leave my home open for homeless ponies and others who need it,” Night Glider continued. “You were homeless just a little while ago, right? I’m sure you can appreciate how hard that was. That’s why I give those in need a place to stay and help them get back up on their feet.”

That subverted Dash’s expectations enough to leave her in stunned silence for a few seconds.

“Oh! That’s actually pretty nice of you,” Dash had to admit.

“Thanks! I just can’t bear knowing that even a single room in one of my houses is being wasted when there are ponies who don’t have a home.” Night Glider still smiled, despite talking about the plight of others. “You know, some ponies have five or six rooms they don’t even use but still refuse to share. I don’t understand how anypony can be that selfish.”

That was the exact number of empty rooms Dash had at her house. Was that a coincidence?

“I do volunteer work fifty hours a week and donate over ninety percent of my income to charity,” said Night Glider. “Whenever I go to buy something, I ask myself if I need this more than a starving foal needs to eat. I think that’s the best policy to keep in mind whenever you go shopping. That’s why I don’t own any clothes.”

Night Glider laughed.

Dash looked down at her ten-thousand-bit jacket, feeling guilty about wearing it for the first time.

“But, come on,” said Dash. “You can’t seriously devote that much of your life to this sort of thing. Nopony has that kind of energy.”

“Oh, but I do! Every moment of my day is spent helping those in need,” said Night Glider. “But don’t think I’m judging you or anything. Most rich ponies don’t deserve half of what they have, but you totally earned it! And I know it can’t be easy for you to do the right thing without Starlight’s help. I used to be even worse than you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“See, I was hopelessly addicted to pinball. My addiction was so bad I even ended up becoming the pinball world champion.” Night Glider’s smile almost straightened out the idea was so horrible to her. “My cutie mark is a pinball with two feathers representing the flippers, you know. Isn’t that horrible?”

“I don’t see how that’s a problem?” Dash tilted her head.

“Haha!” Night Glider’s smile got bigger. “Pinball is a total waste of time. Should I waste my time hitting a metal ball around when I could be building homeless shelters, defeating dangerous monsters, or spreading Starlight’s message?”

She did have a point, even if Dash wanted to object to that last example.

“Ponies do all sorts of things that are pointless,” said Night Glider. “Playing pinball, reading fiction, being with your family, drinking alcohol and all sorts of other stuff are no different than just sitting in a dark corner of a rundown apartment and injecting dopamine directly into your brain. They activate the same chemical pathways as heroin, you know.”

That seemed a bit harsh to Dash.

“The world would be a much better place if we all just cut out these unnecessary things from our lives and devoted ourselves to working selflessly, wouldn’t it?” Night Glider put a hoof on her heart and looked to the sky. “Ideally, nopony would ever spend a minute doing anything unproductive. That’s why I’m on team Starlight! Even now, I sometimes slip up and do something selfishly unproductive, but I know Starlight will still love me either way.”

“I don’t agree with that at all,” Twilight finally spoke up.

Night Glider turned to her, surprised by the sudden comment, but still smiling.

“Listen, I used to be the same way as you,” said Twilight. “I devoted every moment of my life to work, just like you’re trying to do. I know you’re probably ‘accomplishing’ things but… well, I don’t know if there’s any point in achievement if it never makes anypony happy. There are so many things you miss when you have tunnel vision like that that your world becomes tiny. I never would have had any friends if I stayed like that forever.”

Night Glider listened to this, nodding and smiling until Twilight was done.

“Haha! Well the blind can’t understand color, you know!” Night Glider smiled. “I don’t expect you to ‘get’ it. But even friends are a waste of time. The only use for friendship is if you can work together to get something done. But just using them to make yourself feel happy? Well you might as well be doing drugs in an abandoned steel mill at that point.”

Night Glider laughed again.

“So what?” Dash asked. “By that logic do you just never do anything that makes you happy? Then why the crow are you smiling?”

“Oh, I don’t seek out happiness. I embrace joy!”

“Those are the same thing,” said Twilight.

“The blind can’t understand color,” Night Glider repeated that phrase. “You wouldn’t get that either, I’m afraid.”

“You can’t just use some turn of phrase to dismiss everything I say!” Twilight shot at her. “That’s not an argument.”

“Oh, I know way more about philosophy and logic than you do,” Night Glider assured her. “But I don’t blame you for misunderstanding. The blind can’t understand color like I always say.”

“This is pointless!” Twilight turned away from Night Glider. “Dash, there’s no point in talking to somepony like this!

“Hold up. I still wanna ask her more about her religion and stuff,” Dash tried to stop Twilight.

Twilight didn’t stick around, but thankfully she didn’t wander out of sight, either.

“Well the blind can’t understand color.” Night Glider laughed as Twilight marched off. “Don’t worry, I don’t blame your friend. I got much worse heckling than that, before. Do you want a free book about Starlight?”

Dash wasn’t sure if she’d call that heckling, exactly.

It was true that Dash should try to learn more about Starlight’s cult and Night Glider looked like she was willing to blab about it till the sun rose tomorrow. Yet in the back of her head, Dash couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if Night Glider was the one who found the coin.

Ever since that day, Dash had been overly paranoid about being alone with strangers. For all she knew, the next pony could have found and lost the coin already. How would she ever even know it’d happened?

Dash looked down the aisle. Twilight was right there along with Scootaloo. Surely this was good enough.

“I guess I’ll take the book.” Dash grabbed one of them off the pile. “What’s it about, anyway?”

The title of the book was Perfect Philosophy. For whatever reason, it had an asteroid hurtling towards the planet on the cover.

“This book is a milestone for ponies comparable to our discovery of fire and superior to the inventions of the wheel and arch,” Night Glider recited what Dash soon realized was written on the back of the book. “In short, Starlight solved philosophy. Every other book on the topic is either wrong or redundant. In ten years, not one pony has ever found a single flaw with this book. Isn’t that incredible?”

This filled Dash with an immediate desire to find a flaw just on the cover alone.

“Well couldn’t it have been called ‘Flawless Philosophy’? That way it’d be alliteration,” said Dash. “I could say that’s a flaw in my opinion at least.”

“Haha!” Night Glider laughed at the idea. “Well the blind can’t understand color, can they?”

That was enough for Dash to realize why no pony had ever found a flaw with the book. Twilight was right.

“Can you be real with me for a second?” Dash asked. “You can’t seriously think Starlight is perfect. Nothing is perfect.”

“Oh, I can prove Starlight is the best pony right here from first principals alone,” said Night Glider. “Want to hear?”

“That sounds unlikely but sure. Go ahead.”

Dash braced herself for impact.

“So ‘best pony’, by definition, would be the pony to whom there is no pony better. It would have to be the perfect pony that we can’t even imagine a better pony than.”

“Okay.” Dash was skeptical but couldn’t disagree with that.

“And now that I’ve mentioned it, you’re imagining a hypothetical best pony in your mind.” Night Glider pointed both hooves at her head, giddy with excitement at where this was going.

“I guess?”

“But an actual best pony would be better than a merely hypothetical best pony! Because it’s better to exist than to not exist, you see. If best pony only exists as an idea in your mind, then you can imagine a better pony than best pony but ‘better than best’ is a logical contradiction so best pony logically can’t exist only in your mind and thus best pony must exist in reality!”

“Hold up! Hold up!” This was going off the rails too fast for Dash to respond to.

But Night Glider didn’t hold up. She kept driving this train of logic straight into the ocean.

“And we all know Starlight used logic to achieve perfect morality. And if her morality is perfect that means no pony could ever be better than her in terms of morality meaning best pony cannot surpass her meaning it’s a logical contradiction to say that Starlight is not best pony meaning Starlight must be perfect in all ways because otherwise, she can’t be best pony which we already concluded that she is.”

And she looked so proud when Dash reacted to that with stunned silence. Dash felt like she was barrel deep in a pool of mud and had only ten seconds to get out before Night Glider won.

“I got some issues with all that,” Dash started speaking before her arguments were even clear in her mind. “Like, couldn’t the ‘best pony’ or whatever be tied with Starlight on the morality thing but still better than her at everything else? And isn’t it subjective what traits make a pony ‘the best’? I know my edgy sixteen-year-old self would have disagreed that it’s better to exist than not exist.”

Night Glider listened to this patiently and happily, not interrupting once as she nodded with sympathy and understanding. Then, when she’d given Dash plenty of time to say what she wanted and another second to be sure it was all out, Night Glider opened her mouth.

“Sorry. But if you don’t accept these obvious truths then it means you’re too uninformed to discuss this topic.” Night Glider put a book on the table. “You’re clearly lacking essential understanding and critical insights that would otherwise let you prune hypotheses that I consider obviously incorrect. You really should read this book to try and educate yourself.”

Feeling insulted, Dash glared at Night Glider before looking down at the book. It was a paperback with a picture of Starlight in deep thought on the cover. This book was I Glim, therefore, I Glam.

“It’s like I always say, the blind can’t understand color,” Night Glider repeated her increasingly annoying mantra. She wasn’t kidding about ‘always saying’ that.

“Okay. Well am I at least ‘informed’ enough for you to explain the basics of your religion to me?” Dash asked. She barely even knew that much.

“I’d love to!” Night Glider’s smile somehow got even bigger. “You know, normally we don’t tell ponies who haven’t taken a few courses the whole truth. It’d be like trying to explain calculus to a second-grader, you know? Most ponies aren’t smart enough to handle it, but I can tell you’re a genius, so I’ll give you the whole story.”

Dash nodded.

“You see, the truth is that all of us are merely shadows. We never existed in the first place and even our illusion of existence will vanish soon enough. Starlight alone knows the secret to becoming more than a miserable shadow. She will make all of those that follow her into real ponies and bring us to the outer realm where we will live forever. Do you see? Once all of us real ponies are gone there will be no hope for any of you to truly live.”

“The outer realm?” Dash stopped her there. “You mean the place of infinite horror, chaos, and emptiness? That’s where you want to go live?”

“Nope! Starlight went there and she said that actually, it’s great.” Night Glider did a happy little nod.

Suddenly, this conversation felt less like an indulgence and more like critical information.

“But everyone who tries to go there is braindead within seconds,” said Dash.

“That’s because the average pony isn’t real enough to handle it,” said Night Glider. “Those outside of our religion aren’t real ponies at all. You don’t have even a spark of reality inside you right now. I’m at least slightly real thanks to Starlight Glimmer’s teachings. But Starlight? She’s the only pony who’s truly real! She’s the only thing in our entire world that’s completely real. Isn’t that amazing?”

This was getting creepier with ever sentence.

“What do you mean when you say I’m not ‘real’ exactly?” Dash asked. “I’m not gonna lie. It’s a little unnerving you’re running around saying ponies that aren’t in your club aren’t real.”

“Well the blind—"

“Colors. Got it.” Dash shook her head.

“You’re funny.” Night Glider laughed. “It’s difficult to explain what being a real person is like to somepony who just has no reality about them at all, you know. You have no thickness to you. It’s like a two-dimensional being trying to understand a three-dimensional one. Starlight alone knows how to grant ponies the gift of existence. Our church can teach you this.”

“Cool.” Dash sighed. “And you’re saying Starlight became real, which gives her the ability to go to the outer realm unharmed?”

“Of course! Where do you think all of her divine and forbidden knowledge comes from?” Night Glider asked. “Starlight developed and used the teachings of our religion to become real and left to the outer realm. She stayed there for five years, learning all the secrets of the outer gods and becoming best friends with our god, Cosmos. It was a perfect world!

“But the love of Starlight and Cosmos are so infinite that Starlight left the outer realm and returned to help the rest of us. Even though none of us are real ponies and don’t deserve any kindness at all, Starlight still decided to come back into this disgusting world. Doesn’t that just bring a tear to your eyes?”

It did bring a tear to Night Glider’s eye, but not enough for that smile to droop.

Dash looked down at her growing collection of books, wondering how much of that was true. What if Starlight really did have a way to run around the outer realm unharmed? Something needed to explain her unusual powers and knowledge.

It was common knowledge that just glancing into the outer realm for one second was enough to fill you with an incredible burst of inspiration and passion. That was how mad science worked. But you could do other things with it. Some ponies finished multiple novels in a single day after one second in there, for example.

Of course, doing that more than a few times, even throughout your life, would cause increasingly serious issues. Even somepony who could just glance inside once a day without getting hurt, though, could accomplish incredible feats.

“Hey! Why don’t you come to our church with me tomorrow?” Night Glider suggested. “You can learn how to become a real person like me!”

“Thanks, but no.” Dash wasn’t going anywhere near that place unless an army showed up to drag her in. Even that might not be enough what with Twilight as a roommate. “I got a lot to do.”

“Are you sure? I know you want to do the right thing and joining Starlight is the best way to do that. Think about it! Ten percent of all hospitals are named after Starlight. Forty percent of all charity money comes from her followers. Nopony else’s record for defeating monsters can compare to that of Starlight and her followers. You can’t possibly tell me we aren’t the greatest force for good in the world.”

Dash had no idea if any of those numbers, save Starlight’s record, were true. Right now she didn’t care, either. Good stats could only make up for so much creepiness.

“Pass.” Dash started walking off.

“Hold on just one more second!” Night Glider stepped into her path. “You know, Starlight told me she’d be willing to reward you for your loyalty.”

“What do you mean?”

“Starlight can help you get to into the elite four, you know,” Night Glider whispered to Dash. “She’s willing to too. If you’re willing to obey her, that is.”

“If Starlight can do that, why doesn’t she make you or that other guy one of the elite?” Dash asked.

“It’d be too hard to get somepony who follows her teachings to the top,” said Night Glider. “We’re confident we can have you replace Sunset if we push for it. But let’s say you get there, then convert afterward! I’m only asking you to give our religion a serious chance. I know you’ll see giving Starlight your loyalty is the right way to go.”

Truth be told, Sunset Shimmer was the one Dash would least want to replace right now. That pony had been helping them out a lot lately, enough that it’d almost feel like a betrayal. Maybe Dash would have been more tempted if it’d been one of the other two.

Still, such a big offer gave her pause from the sheer enormity of it. To think things could even escalate this fast.

“She’d even be willing to support some of your, well, controversial ideas,” said Night Glider. “You just have to give up on one or two of them. The whole ‘being friends with ghosts’ things has to go, but it’s better to get some of your goals than none of them right?”

Already she was asking too much of Dash. Dash couldn’t imagine how sad it’d make Fluttershy.

“I’m not giving up on the ghost thing,” she said.

“You can talk about the details with Starlight if you’re ever interested. Though you will have to compromise something, you know. Nothing is free,” said Night Glider. “Maybe you’d be willing to, hm, sell out your pirate friend instead? She can’t possibly be innocent, can she?”

For a second Dash’s heart skipped, but she got her cool back reminding herself Night Glider was thinking of pirate stuff, not witch stuff.

“You want me to sell Silverstorm out?!”

“Well. Do you really need her? You’re the one with all the popularity. Getting to the top means leaving ponies behind to move on to bigger and better things. You don’t need some thug at this point.”

The joke was on her because Dash totally needed a thug like that. But even if she didn’t…

“I’m not taking the deal,” said Dash. “I’m not giving up on any of my goals and I’m not going to stab somepony who helped me in the back like that. I’m not the type who just ‘leaves someone behind’, okay?”

Fluttershy, Sunset, and especially Twilight helped Dash out way too much. Dash wouldn’t betray any of them for Starlight’s favor, let alone all three at once.

“Don’t you know how politics works?” Night Glider asked. “To get anything done at all, you need to be willing to compromise. That means giving things up. You’re being naïve.”

“Being naïve has worked out great for me so far,” said Dash.

Night Glider laughed heartily at that line.

“You’re so funny, Rainbow Dash!”

“I’m not joking!” Dash's patience was wearing thin. “Don’t suggest something like this to me again. Thanks.”

“Well alright, but just remember that you can’t be friends with everyone, and you can’t get everything you want.” Even now, Night Glider’s smile didn’t falter. “You need to choose sides eventually. Keep in mind that Starlight always wins.”

Without another word, Dash left the stand and went back to Scootaloo.

As she returned, Scootaloo was quick to hold the comic book up over her face, pretending like she hadn’t been listening to that whole conversation. The charade didn’t last long, and she dropped it immediately.

“You really weren’t tempted by that offer?” Scootaloo asked. “But couldn’t you have become a billionaire or something?”

“Could I?” Dash thought about it. “Eh. Maybe. But I can’t even think of anything to buy with the couple million I got now. And you want to give me a thousand times that much? Nah, I’ll take my friends and dignity over that.”

“For real?”

Scootaloo stared up at Dash, eyes wide with admiration.

“You know, you’re way cooler than I thought you’d be!” Scootaloo’s look of admiration became downcast. “I kinda feel bad now.”

“Bad about what?”

“Huh?!” Scootaloo realized she’d said that out loud and panicked. “Nothing! Never mind!”

“Aw, come on.” Dash put a wing around her. “I know I’m a grown-up now, but you know you can talk to me, right?”

“I—" Scootaloo hesitated but did open up a little this time. “This was the best day of my life. I just don’t know if I deserve it.”

“You don’t think you deserve to have a single good day?”

“No. I mean I don’t deserve to be your sister.”

“You don’t have to do anything to deserve having a family, you know. Do you think ponies normally do something before they’re born to ‘deserve’ a family? Nah! So why should you have to.”

“Well.” Scootaloo thought long and hard about that one. Whatever conclusion she came to made her giddy with excitement. “You know what? Maybe you’re right!”

“Course I’m right!” Dash adjusted her goggles.

“You really are the best!” Scootaloo hugged her. “I— I love you, sis! I promise I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

“Well, thanks.” Dash messed up her hair again. “Love you too.”

Though secretly she couldn’t imagine a pony as fragile as Scootaloo protecting anypony from more than a stray wind.

Twilight had trouble concentrating while Dash was still talking to Night Glider. Despite herself, she kept glancing back over at the two of them.

When Dash stormed away from Night Glider, looking just as annoyed at her as Twilight was, it gave Twilight a smile.

Twilight wished she didn’t get so jealous. Even knowing she was only talking to Night Glider for tactical reasons, Twilight didn’t like seeing the two of them together. Somehow, she doubted telling Dash to never talk to anypony Twilight didn’t like ever again wouldn’t go over well.

At least she understood why she hated Night Glider so much.

For a second there, Twilight felt like she was talking to her old self. That was exactly how Twilight used to be. Efficiency and the endless accumulation of power were the only things she focused on her whole life.

The Twilight from not too long ago would lecture her current self about how friends would only ever hold her back and distract her from her training. She doubted she could have explained herself to past Twilight, but increasingly she disliked her old attitude.

She remembered what Trixie said about being stuck in the middle of the road forever. She put so much effort into getting more powerful and yet year after year Twilight never felt much beyond a brief sense of accomplishment at her ever more infrequent milestones.

Even failing at mini-golf earlier felt better than being alone. Once she got used to being around Dash, just being in the same room as her more fulfillment than creating true void.

Twilight pulled out that book Dash mentioned before. Daring Do was the title of the first book in the series.

Or maybe she hadn’t changed that much.

Maybe she should try reading one of these ‘novels’ after all.

“Hey! Over here!” A raspy voice got Twilight’s attention.

She hoped it wasn’t another one of her fans. Twilight had yet to learn how to deal with them.

Yet another pegasus appeared. She looked a lot like Night Glider did. This one had white hair too, in a style not too unlike Night Gliders, though her fur was much lighter. She did have the same goggles Dash was wearing today, which Twilight took to mean she was also rich.

“You’re Silverstorm, yeah?” She spoke with a voice that was raspy even for a pegasus. “I was hoping I’d bump into one of you two. My name’s Fleetfoot. Maybe you heard of me? I’m rank S too.”

Fleetfoot? That name did sound familiar.

“Oh, wait! I think I was told about you.” Twilight went through the list of S rank ponies in her head. There were only thirteen of them in total. Dash and Pinkie went through the complete list with Twilight not long ago. “Rainbow Dash told me you were the only pegasus who can break Mach 2 without assistance.”

“You got that right. I’m the fastest pegasus alive, you know. Here’s a question! What’s the best weapon to use for somepony who can fly unreasonably fast?” Fleetfoot asked.

She took out the answer without waiting for a reply.

“Bag of holding!” Fleetfoot took out a bag. Twilight recognized the spatial distortions around it quickly enough to make out what it was. “Step one. Put something huge like an anchor inside of it. Step two. Fly as fast as you can. Step three. Take out the anchor!”

Fleetfoot made one sweeping motion with her bag and the anchor came right out. It was enormous, five times bigger than Twilight.

“When you take it out, it’ll be moving at the same speed you are! You ever seen something get hit by an anchor at Mach 2?” Fleetfoot made an explosion noise. “I guess that probably wouldn’t be impressive to you, huh? I wasn’t able to hurt Trixie no matter how much I tried, but you got her! But at least you heard of me.”

Fleetfoot struggled to get that anchor back in the bag.

Truth be told, Twilight was somewhat impressed by a pony able to fly that fast without magic or technology boosting them. More importantly, Fleetfoot was one of those ponies that were the most important to get on their side.

Twilight tried to remember who this pony was aligned with.

“I think they said you were, uh,” Twilight recalled the other facts about Fleetfoot, “you’re one of Flash Bang’s, um, I think ‘lapdog bitches’ was the term?”

“Guh!” Fleetfoot dropped her anchor and leaped back at an impressive speed but laughed a second later. “You don’t pull punches, do you? Though then again, you’re from the pirate coast. That’s one’s a compliment compared to the stuff I normally get from ponies over there.”

Twilight nervously chuckled, realizing too late she’d said something offensive.

“S-sorry. I’m bad at talking if you didn’t notice on the radio.” Twilight looked down at the ground. She wished she was back in the woods right now.

“Ah, don’t sweat it. I figured you just weren’t used to being out of the woods already.”

Fleetfoot finished shoving the anchor back in her bag and slung it around her back.

“You probably got a bad opinion of us, huh?” Fleetfoot slicked back her hair. “I guess that’s the price I pay. Look, even I’ll admit Flash Bang goes too far sometimes. But we’re under constant threat from a million different sources of danger. You know why your pal Sunset has to build so many orphanages, right? I’d rather go after the cause of the problem than just playing cleanup.”

“Every time I hear about Flash Bang it’s about how she’s going too far,” said Twilight. “I suppose I never actually met her, but I don’t see why you can’t admit that some ghosts aren’t that bad, for example.”

“Hey, I’m not hellbent on being mean to all these monsters and ghosts and stuff,” said Fleetfoot. “If we could just be friends with everypony that’d be great. Nailbat runs around lecturing us about all this stuff, but he doesn’t get the same kind of results. Trying to be friends with these monsters isn’t as easy or safe as you think.”

The idea that other ponies had already tried to pass some of the reforms her friends wanted never even occurred to Twilight. Her focus had been entirely on witches and Starlight.

“I don’t know anything about your politics,” Twilight admitted. “I used to live in the woods until recently. I just know what I feel is right. Maybe we can do a better job than whoever.”

“I kinda like that attitude better than what the rest of these elites have going.” Fleetfoot held her hoof out to Twilight. “As I said, I only care about results. If you show me you’d do a better job at protecting Equestria than Flash Bang, then me and Spitfire will side with you instead. If you reform Trixie, take out more witches and all this other stuff you’re boasting about, then I’ll consider you more worthy of my loyalty and your way of doing things better.”

Twilight knew none of the ponies in Equestria had her beat when it came to defeating the worst monsters. She didn’t understand their political system, but she did know getting these S-ranked ponies on her side was important.

“Though just so you know, that includes protecting us from Starlight and her cult.” Fleetfoot eyed a passing pony, perhaps one she knew to be in that cult, with suspicion.

Twilight was confident she could do that too.

“I can do that,” said Twilight. “No. I will do that.”

Now that Twilight thought about it, Rainbow Dash did suggest trying to make a friend. And Fleetfoot had been the closest any pony had ever gotten to catching Minuette.

“Actually. If you’re willing to help me with something, I can show you.”

Mad Science 3: Sweetie Belle Drift

In one sense, Sweetie Belle was more constrained than ever been before.

There was an ever-present threat from all the enemies Rarity and her new friends were making. That meant it wasn’t safe for Sweetie Belle or Apple Bloom to leave the castle. A forcefield at the edge of the castle grounds, where the ruined suggestion of an ancient wall still stood, was the edge of her world for the time being.

Then there was the fact that Sweetie herself was the result of a highly illegal ‘surgery’. Having a robot body, being made of illegality, meant she couldn’t just go into town anymore. At best, she could go to an outlaw town like Oaken Field.

But in reality? None of that felt like it mattered.

Stuck in this castle, Sweetie Belle was surrounded by this surge of freedom she never had before. The town she used to live in was just a town. This place was like a whole alien planet to explore!

After an entire month, Sweetie and her new best friend Apple Bloom hadn’t even finished exploring every room of the castle. That wasn’t just because a few rooms, like the one Rarity kept her giant vats of acid in, were locked off for being too ‘dangerous'. It was that every room had something interesting enough to distract them for a whole day.

Like one room was an entire aquarium of robot fish, complete with a laser shark. In another room, Rarity had a small museum dedicated to Sweetie Belle. It was like Rarity brought Sweetie Belle back to life just so she could kill her again with embarrassment! Though seeing all the Sweetie Bots lined up from the MK 1 to the 8100 was interesting, at least.

Not least of all was the analytical engine room. Sweetie had never even heard of an analytical engine before, yet that thing was like an entire world to explore all on its own. The list of things that machine could do never ended.

Rarity was never against letting Sweetie Belle interrupt her to play with the thing. To Sweetie Belle, it felt like there wasn’t any gap at all. She just woke up and Rarity was an adult now. To Rarity, it had been eight years. That meant Rarity was willing to give her anything.

Well, almost never.

At the moment, Sweetie Belle was scooched up close to Rarity in her chair. They were looking over the website for the upcoming Madcon. That was an important event, as it was when they decided who their leader would be for the next year.

“They have videos for all the robot tournaments for the past twenty years?” Sweetie Belle pointed out that section of the screen. “Can we watch them? I wanna see what robots looked like back then.”

“You can if you want, but I won’t have time today,” said Rarity. “Twilight is coming over in a little bit. We’re not nearly done upgrading you.”

Sweetie Belle looked down at her newest body. This wasn’t her ‘real’ body, which was sitting idle in her room, but one of the new 8100’s. It didn’t look any different from the old 8000s except that they were white instead of grey.

They were white because the frame was made of some new metal Twilight showed Rarity how to make. It wasn’t as strong as the expensive alloy that made the 9000’s armor, but it was light! A 9000 weighed 180 pounds, an 8000 weighed 100 but this was only 70. That was still a chunky pony, but Sweetie felt light as a feather.

“Are you taking Saccharin this time?” Sweetie Belle asked.

Saccharin was the one they experimented on. She was less fragile than Sweetie Belle.

“I’m afraid so.” Rarity nodded.

“But Apple Bloom trains with Twilight too,” Sweetie Belle complained. “I’m not going to have anything to do all day!”

“If you want something to do, I can give you something to do.” Rarity turned around on her chair.

She meant, giving Sweetie Belle things to study. Summer school was not what Sweetie Belle had in mind, though. Maybe if she was at least learning something cool like Apple Bloom, it’d be different. The one downside of having a robot body was her ability to control magic was almost zero, less than an earth pony’s even.

If only one more kid was living in this place, things would be perfect.

“Oh! Wait!” A great idea popped into Sweetie’s head. “If you know how to make intelligent robots, then you can just make me as many friends as you want, right? Can you give them any personality you want?”

“Saccharin is different,” said Rarity. “Her ‘brain’, if you will, isn’t merely a small analytical engine like an 8000s. Intelligent robots use a ‘persona core’, you see. I can’t create one whenever I like because nopony really understands how they work.”

“Didn’t you make one? How can you have no idea how it works?”

“I do have some small idea how it works,” Rarity corrected her. “But I can only build one in the hours that follow exposing myself to the outer realm.”

Sweetie Belle knew a tiny bit about all this mad science stuff from before. It wasn’t something you could learn much about in Equestria, so her understanding of it was poor.

Now Sweetie Belle was a bad guy and if you were a bad guy you could do anything. That was another way she was free.

“What’s it like?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“It’s difficult to explain the rush of inspiration you get from it!” The way Rarity smiled made her memories of that time seem fond. “The entire world looks completely different for a few hours. Time becomes optional and ‘impossible’ is a laughable idea. You can do nearly anything in such a state.”

Her smile faded just a little.

“But once it’s over, it’s difficult to even remember what you’ve done.” Rarity shook her head. “It took me half a day to create Saccharin’s persona core, yet I was only able to reverse engineer small parts of it over the next several years. I hardly even know what I programmed her to do.”

Now there was an image in Sweetie Belle’s mind of Rarity staring unblinkingly into her projector while she slammed her hooves into the analytical engine as fast as possible.

“Attempts to write down how it works during the rush have universally failed.” Rarity took out a small notebook from her drawer. The title written on it was simply ‘What?’. “My notes made sense to me at the time but are a touch incomprehensible after the fact. I’ve yet to work out what this scribbly one means.”

Rarity turned the book to Sweetie Belle. The page was filled with a black vortex made of hundreds of circles. In the bottom right, in Rarity’s neat hoofwritting, was the word ‘seven’.

If there was any meaning behind this message, it was so far beyond Sweetie Belle that she didn’t even attempt to understand it.

“Can’t you just keep doing it until you understand?” Sweetie Belle asked. “You already went on the eighth.”

“Each time is less productive than the last and comes with a greater cost.” Rarity put a hoof over her mask. “My pathological need to wear a mask at all times is charming compared to what’s next. Being at my limit also means the next dive I take likely results in me going berserk and trying to kill somepony for twelve hours rather than being productive. It isn’t worth it.”

The thought of Rarity turning evil when she was at ten thousand times her normal level of inspiration was scary.

“Could I make a persona core if I stick my head in the thing?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“No. You do need some education beforehand. But your idea isn’t wrong, per se.” Rarity turned back to her analytical engine. “That’s why we form these mad science organizations. Ponies like me teach those who have yet to do their first dive, then they push the field of mad science forward.”

Sweetie Belle wasn’t sure if she’d even want to. The curiosity covered her like a bad itch, but the fear of going to the outer realm for even one second was enough to keep her from scratching.

“But just to be perfectly clear,” Rarity added, “I forbid you from doing a dive for another eight years at the very least.”

“You don’t have to worry about that one,” Sweetie Belle assured her. “There’s no way I’d do something like that on my own.”

Just then, Sweetie Belle noticed Apple Bloom in front of one of her other bodies.

Sweetie Belle could simultaneously see through all her bodies at the same time now. The sight from her other bodies was like the sight in the corner of her eyes. She hardly had a clear picture of it in her mind, but she could certainly notice things moving and talking to her.

Apple Bloom was trying to get her attention on top of that. Sweetie focused on that body to get a better look to find her new friend waving a hoof in front of that robot’s face, asking if Sweetie Belle was ‘home’.

Sweetie Belle gave Rarity a quick goodbye before switching bodies.

As a robot, Sweetie Belle could effectively teleport anywhere in the castle she wanted. She simply switched control to the other 8100 and she was right there in front of Apple Bloom.

She was starting to see the robot her brain was inside of as merely a part of her body, rather than the whole of it. That was how seamless her control over all the spares was.

Sweetie Belle was now the 8100 stationed in the backyard. Apple Bloom and Saccharin were both already there in front of her. Now she could feel Apple Bloom poking the robot, though it was muted compared to the 9000’s sense of touch.

“Okay, I’m here,” said Sweetie Belle. “You can stop poking me.”

“We only got maybe an hour till Twilight shows up,” said Apple Bloom. “There was something cool in the lake I wanted to show you, cause I dunno how long it’ll last. Come on.”

Apple Bloom didn’t wait to run off into the vast wilderness of Rarity’s backyard. That place was like a small forest in itself.

She only had half of it mapped out in her head so far. Immediately behind the house was a jumble of weeds and vines that drowned what was once a garden and greenhouse. That’s what happened when you left the perpetual rain machine on too long.

That part was looking better now as Applejack, who hated sitting around, spent any free time tearing up all the weeds and vines.

But the place they went to today was a small pond surrounded by a garden of moss. The only structure near it was a single bench, half-buried in the ground and covered with moss. It’d been dedicated to somepony long ago, but that name was faded.

Sweetie Belle came to the edge of the pond and peered into the murky water to see if she could finally find whatever lived there. To her surprise, there was far more life in it this time.

There was a huge school of tiny little fish swimming around the edge of the water. Some of the tiny fish would light up briefly in the dark waters as if briefly electrified. There were so many of them that, though they rarely lit up, the lake was speckled with flickering lights.

“See? It’s flashfish! Just like in the movie,” Apple Bloom pointed out. “They only look like this for three days.”

“What movie?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“You never seen Finny Frenzy?” Apple Bloom looked skeptical of the idea.

Sweetie Belle shook her head.

“Oh, that’s right! It was last summer,” said Apple Bloom. “Must have been one you missed cause your brain was in a jar.”

The fact that Sweetie Belle had missed 8 years meant there were all sorts of stuff she had to learn about now. It didn’t sound like a lot of time at first, but it sure felt like the two fillies were from different generations sometimes.

Apple Bloom had never even heard of Summoner Knights, even though it was the most popular thing in the world right before Sweetie Belle took her extreme nap. Then Apple Bloom though Daring Do came out some fifty years ago, despite the last one being release right after the accident. At least Sweetie Belle didn’t need to wait a year for it, now.

It was weird to think all her old friends were adults now. Lilly, Daisy, and Roseluck were no doubt off doing taxes somewhere. And had they met before the accident, Apple Bloom would have been practically a baby.

“Well if you didn’t see the movie, then you don’t know about this.” Apple Bloom took some leaves from a nearby shrub and threw them into the pond.

For a brief second, every one of the flashfish lit up at once. It wasn’t like before either. The surface of the entire lake glowed like it was electrified and the leaves disintegrated. Sweetie Belle was a little startled by the display and took a step back.

Reflexively, Saccharin took out her guns and opened fire on the flashfish, scattering them all to the deeper parts of the water where they vanished from sight. The lake flashed brightly a few times, then all signs of the fish were gone.

The other two fillies were stunned at the sudden attack.

“The hay did you do that for?” Apple Bloom asked. “You scared all the poor fish away!”

“Sweetie Belle is my sister,” said Saccharin. “The fish electrifying the lake was an act of aggression against her. Things that threaten my sister are my enemies who must be intimidated or destroyed.”

“I think you need to learn a lesson about staying calm,” said Apple Bloom.

“Calmness is simply the art of letting your enemies go undestroyed,” said Saccharin. “If I can correctly identify the enemies of Rarity, it doesn’t matter how intense I am.”

“Well if you want to keep playing with us, you gotta tone it down!” Sweetie Belle threatened.

That got her to at least consider it. Sweetie Belle knew that beneath all those urges to kill and burn stuff, Saccharin was still a kid and didn’t want to be left out of their games.

“Very well.” Saccharin shook her head. “How does one learn to tone something down?”

That was a good question. The two of them needed a moment to decide.

After a second, Apple Bloom noticed a butterfly fluttering nearby. She held out her hoof and the butterfly landed on it. Animals, especially dumb ones, tended to be drawn to earth ponies like that.

“Okay, take this butterfly for instance.” Apple Bloom gently held it out to Saccharin.

“There are 8,000 ways I could destroy this worthless insect.” Saccharin declared.

“Yeah. But don’t.” Apple Bloom gently set it on the robot’s muzzle.

“Don’t?” Saccharin looked at the butterfly on her nose. “I have never considered such a thing.”

Saccharin watched the butterfly sit on her muzzle, but made no attempt to burn it.

“There! Now just keep not destroying it,” said Apple Bloom. “It’s that easy! And we can move on to petting a cat or something next. I dunno what all these robophobes are complaining about. Keeping Saccharin from destroying stuff ain’t hard at all.”

“Rarity told me that old-fashioned robots could only feel aggression,” said Sweetie Belle. “That’s why they just constantly killed everything. They saw everything everyone did as an act of aggression.”

“Aggression is the most simplistic emotion and the easiest to replicate,” Saccharin agreed without disturbing the butterfly. “Even pathetic lizards and inferior robots have this sense.”

“Yeah, but the new ones like Saccharin can feel love, fear, and aggression.” Sweetie Belle was pretty sure she got that right. “That’s why they don’t necessarily kill you now.”

“Huh. I never knew that.” Apple Bloom turned to Saccharin. “So you can only feel three emotions?”

“My emotions are triangulated between these three points,” said Saccharin. “Sadness is the most difficult emotion to replicate. I cannot experience remorse, nostalgia, or any related emotion. No pony has ever created a robot that can feel sad, nor do I see any reason to build such a robot. Sorrow is a useless emotion that needlessly reduces one’s abilities.”

“That’s not true,” said Sweetie Belle. “Because, uh…”

Her gut instinct was to disagree with the idea that sadness was useless. Yet she drew a blank coming up with a reason why that was the case.

“Think of it like this,” Sweetie Belle came up with an idea. “If Rarity hadn’t been crushed by sadness, she never would have created you. I’d be dead too.”

“I reject your argument.” Saccharin looked at her but didn’t shake her head as not to disturb the butterfly. “Rarity’s love for her sisters is infinite! That alone would have motivated her to rebuild you, were it at all possible.”

“I guess we can’t know for sure,” Sweetie Belle admitted.

But she still felt like she could come up with a better argument than that if given a bit longer. She’d probably think of something brilliant later that day when it was too late to bring it up again.

“Well you know,” Apple Bloom closed her eyes and nodded her head, “I bet a wise pony would say ‘sorrow is what makes joy worthwhile’ or something like that.”

And she nodded her head wisely a few more times.

“But is that true?” Saccharin asked.

“I dunno!” Apple Bloom shrugged. “I’m just a kid. But I know that’s what they’d say.”

“I don’t think ponies who say such things are wise,” said Saccharin. “I have only seen sorrow harm my sister Rarity and produce nothing in return.”

Sweetie Belle realized just then that Saccharin spent most of her life alone with a pony who must have spent years wallowing in sorrow. Rarity seemed so happy now, but what was she like while Sweetie Belle was in her coma?

She could understand Saccharin’s resentment towards sadness.

“I will not allow my sister Rarity to be sad,” Saccharin vowed. “I will ensure Sweetie Belle is never harmed again. I will finally win the battlebot tournament this year at Madcon and solidify her as the new leader of the Mad Science League. To finally win this is another one of her dreams.”

“Hold up,” Apple Bloom interrupted her. “If you lost before, then there’s another robot even stronger than you?”

“Yes. Biohazard, the flagship robot of the Mad Science League’s current leader, defeated me the last three years in a row,” said Saccharin.

“But ain’t you invincible or something?” Apple Bloom asked. “How do you lose?”

“My armor is stronger but Biohazard was superior in all other aspects,” Saccharin explained. “One can win the battle without destroying the other robot by scoring more points. A focus on defense puts me at a disadvantage.”

“But you can take him now, right?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Yes.” Saccharin looked down at her hoof. “With my new upgrades, I can obliterate Biohazard. Big sister Rarity will become the head of the Mad Science League as she deserves! The others will have no choice but to adore her. In time, the Mad Science Association, Cartel, Institute, and Organization will all kneel to Rarity.”

Adult Rarity had way more ambition than teen Rarity. Back then, Rarity’s biggest goal was ‘I’ll make a dress’. Now she wanted to build all kinds of impossible-sounding stuff and eventually become the queen of mad science or whatever it was called. And that was only a fraction of the plans Sweetie Belle’s new de facto family had.

“Huh.” Sweetie Belle looked up at the sky. “It does kind of sound like we’re doing a world domination kind of thing when you say it out loud. You don’t think we’re the bad guys, do you?”

“Oh, I work for The Darklord,” said Apple Bloom with a smile. “I accepted that we’re the bad guys a long time ago. I’m on the dark side one hundred percent!”

“Um.” Sweetie Belle glanced briefly aside, then back at Apple Bloom. “Okay.”

The butterfly flew off just then, though not because Saccharin disturbed it. Instead, it seemed to be reacting to the appearance of a new pony.

Rainbow Dash flew out of the castle, landing just past the garden. Sweetie Belle swiveled her ears in Dash’s direction as soon as she noticed there was another pony with Dash. Not only was it a pony Sweetie had never seen before, but the newcomer was a filly about the same age as her.

She was at once given an uneasy feeling. That was exactly what Sweetie Belle wished for just an hour ago. Everypony knew it was a bad omen when your wishes came true like that.

Her mind buzzed trying to figure out who this could possibly be. The new filly was a small, orange pegasus. They were far away enough that listening in on them gave her no clues.

She couldn’t be a normal pony because they’d never bring a normal pony here. Maybe they rescued her from some monster recently? And Rarity agreed to let yet another pony stay in her house? Rarity was exceptionally generous if that was the case.

Dash gave the filly a nudge in their direction. The filly looked reluctant to go over to them at first, like Dash had just asked her to go play with a group of babies, but did start walking towards them a second later.

To Sweetie Belle’s surprise, Dash took off the second Scootaloo started towards them. So she was just not going to tell them who the heck this was? Well, Sweetie would figure it out soon enough.

“Oh hey, Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom waved to her enthusiastically as she got close. “Over here!”

Sweetie Belle blinked and turned to Apple Bloom, stunned.

Apple Bloom knew who this was? Was it one of her werewolf friends?

“Yeah. Sup.” Scootaloo leaned against a tree when she got close, trying a little too hard to look cool. “So, uh, what are you up to today?”

Scootaloo briefly glanced at Sweetie Belle but looked away as fast as she could. That was something she got a lot back in Oaken Field. Ponies who were curious about her but didn’t want to be rude by staring.

“We were just talking about how Saccharin’s gonna win the big robot tournament!” Apple Bloom explained.

“There’s a robot tournament?” Scootaloo’s ears perked up with interest.

Meanwhile, Sweetie Belle looked from Scootaloo to Apple Bloom with growing confusion and frustration. They were completely ignoring her, acting like a new filly showing up was no big deal and needed no explanation.

What the heck was going on? Who was this filly?

More importantly, why was everyone acting like there was no reason to introduce the two of them? Did Apple Bloom just assume Sweetie Belle knew Scootaloo? If Rarity were here, she’d scold them for their poor manners.

Remembering her sister, Sweetie Belle decided to step up and do the polite thing. She’d make the introduction herself.

“Uh. Hi!” Sweetie Belle held her hoof out to the newcomer. “My name is Sweetie Belle. I’m Rarity’s sister. This is her castle. I got into an accident a while back so now I remote control these robots, see?”

“Huh?!” Now Scootaloo stood up at attention.

Scootaloo looked almost horrified that Sweetie Belle would say hello to her, stared at her in stunned silence for a good couple of seconds.

Was she that surprised the robot was talking to her?

Either way, Scootaloo suddenly cleaned up her act and put on a big smile.

“Oh! Yeah! Of course! I’m Scootaloo. Rainbow Dash’s sister?” Scootaloo bumped Sweetie Belle’s hoof briefly and smiled a bit too wide.

Now Apple Bloom was the one watching the other two in horrified confusion.

“Rainbow Dash has a sister?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“I’m right here, aren’t I?” Scootaloo spread her wings and laughed. “Didn’t she mention me to you? I’m pretty sure she mentioned me to you.”

“No.” Sweetie Belle shook her head. “I feel like that would have come up by now.”

Scootaloo’s smile faded quickly. Now she was annoyed.

“You just must have not been paying attention! Rainbow Dash talks about me all the time.” Scootaloo lifted her head, proud of that fact.

Sweetie Bell tried thinking back.

“Wait! No, I specifically remember her saying she was an only child.”

“What?” Scootaloo’s ears were drooping with worry.

“When we first met. She said she was an only child.”

“No, she didn’t,” Scootaloo quickly countered. “She told you that she had a little sister when you first met. You know exactly who I am.”

“What?” Sweetie Belle stared at her.

Was this that gaslighting thing Rarity warned her about? This conversation wasn’t making any sense.

“You two playing some kind of game?” Apple Bloom interrupted them. “I’m confused about what’s happening here.”

“Trust me, I’m way more confused than you are.” Sweetie Belle shook her head. “Apple Bloom, sorry for cursing, but who the crow is Scootaloo?”

Apple Bloom looked at Scootaloo, struggling to think of a way to even answer that.

“She’s Scootaloo.” Apple Bloom smiled awkwardly. “You know? Our best friend Scootaloo?”

“Yeah! I’m your best friend Scootaloo!” Scootaloo smiled like she was in an awkwardness competition with Apple Bloom. “We already met each other!”

“I dunno why she’s saying it all weird, but she’s right,” said Apple Bloom. “I think it’s been two or three weeks? Dash took her out of the orphanage back then.”

“Exactly.” Scootaloo nodded. “You met me two or three weeks ago. Stop being weird.”

“I did not meet you ever.” Sweetie Belle lowered her head, determined to hold her ground. Something was wrong here and she wasn’t going to let it slide.

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yeah you did!”

“Nu-uh!”

“Yeah huh!”

Scootaloo stomped off. She stopped off to the side to do some breathing exercises.

“Calm down. Calm down.” Scootaloo chanted to herself as she rubbed her hair. “I don’t get why this isn’t working.”

“Did you just ask why shouting ‘yeah huh' didn’t work?” Apple Bloom looked back and forth between the two of them.

“Yeah. Why what isn’t working?” Sweetie Belle’s eyes narrowed. She almost had this pony cornered.

“Nothing.” Scootaloo smiled. “Just stop being weird, okay? You forgot you met me. We live in a world with all kinds of crazy stuff so that’s not even a big deal, right? Let’s just move on with our lives.”

There was no way Sweetie Belle was just going to drop something like this.

“Saccharin, your memory is perfect.” Sweetie Belle turned to her for support. “Rainbow Dash said she was an only child, didn’t she?”

“Yes. I remember every conversation I have ever heard word for word,” said Saccharin. “This ‘Scootaloo’ was mentioned 116 times before my observing her in person for the first time, seventeen days ago. The initial conversation with Rainbow Dash went exactly as follows:

Twilight: There are some things we wanted to talk to you about. I have another offer for you, but it might take a minute.
Rarity: Certainly I’d be willing to trade with you of all ponies. But can't you come back in a few days? I just reunited with my sister.
Rainbow Dash: You did? That’s great! I could at least go visit Scootaloo, so I can’t even imagine. I feel kind of bad about interrupting now. Maybe we should come back in a couple of hours, Twi?
Twilight: Our mission is time-critical.”

Sweetie Belle stared at Saccharin, dumbfounded. That wasn’t what happened!

“Yeah, you see?” Scootaloo asked. “You’re just misremembering stuff.”

“No way!” Sweetie Belle shook her head.

No, she had this mystery all figured out. ‘Scootaloo’, if that was even her name, could alter memories! Even Saccharin’s.

It didn’t seem Scootaloo’s mind-warping powers worked on Sweetie Belle for some mysterious reason, so there was that. But what did Scootaloo want and what could Sweetie Belle do about this?

“The most likely scenario is that your memories have been corrupted,” said Saccharin. “Though there is also the possibility that everyone else’s has instead.”

“Yeah,” Apple Bloom agreed. “Something ain’t adding up here. Maybe she’s right. Scootaloo’s acting kind of weird too.”

“We should discuss this with Rarity,” said Saccharin.

“Hey. Fine with me.” Scootaloo just shrugged it off. “I’m really worried about you too, Sweetie Belle.”

Sweetie Belle glared at Scootaloo. She was just going to alter Rarity’s memories too, wasn’t she?

Sweetie needed evidence to show everypony else their memories were being distorted!

“Okay!” Sweetie Belle nodded. “If you’re Rainbow Dash’s sister then how about you prove it?”

“How would I do that, exactly?” Scootaloo asked.

“Just follow me. I have a plan.”

Sweetie Belle started leading them to the castle, to her sister.

Sweetie Belle kept an eye on the intruder as they climbed the stairs. Scootaloo was suspiciously confident, making Sweetie Belle even more certain she was up to no good. She made no attempt at dodging this as they entered the room with the analytical engine, the room Rarity was usually in.

When they entered, Rarity stopped typing up whatever she was writing to turn to the group of fillies.

“Rarity!” Sweetie Belle pestered her sister with the same voice she always asked for favors with. Rarity had a hard time resisting Sweetie Belle. “Do you have a DNA testing thing somewhere in here?”

“I suppose I do have something you would call a ‘thing’, yes.” Rarity nodded. “But what precisely do you need with it?”

“I wanna learn about science so I can be more like you, big sis.” Sweetie Belle pressed her muzzle lovingly against her sister’s side.

She didn’t stand a chance!

“Aw.” Rarity’s heart melted and she nuzzled the top of her sister’s head. “Of course I’ll teach you anything you want to know!”

“Great! I thought maybe we could look at Rainbow Dash’s and Scootaloo’s DNA,” said Sweetie Belle. “Cause can’t you tell if two ponies are related like that? Like how do you tell, exactly?”

Sweetie Belle looked over at Scootaloo, expecting her to begin to sweat. Yet Scootaloo simply smiled back, supremely confident this would turn out in her favor.

“Yeah, that’s a great idea!” Scootaloo agreed, leaning up against the wall. “I always wondered that too.”

Sweetie Belle kept her eyes on the intruder. What was she planning?

“I should say that DNA sequencing isn’t a precise science just yet.” Rarity turned back to her analytical engine and started bringing all sorts of things up on the projector. “In Equestria, what you’re asking for is still largely science fiction. The Mad Science Institute is close to sequencing a full pony genome, but they aren’t there yet.”

“But you can do it, right?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Oh, I’ve already taken DNA samples from everypony in the castle!” Rarity hit a button, turning the engine on. “I do have just enough sequenced to answer your question. You see, ponies have two sets of DNA. One is in the nucleus and the other is mitochondrial DNA.”

Rarity gestured to some information on the projector. Sweetie Belle didn’t understand it at all, except that parts of it did look like DNA.

“You see, on the left is Scootaloo’s mitochondrial DNA and on the right is Rainbow Dash’s.” Rarity moved a hoof from one set to the other. “Do you notice anything?”

Sweetie Bell looked them over but had no idea what she was even supposed to be looking for.

“Oh!” Apple Bloom, ever quick on the uptake, raised her hoof. “They’re the same.”

“Exactly!” Rarity gave her an approving nod. “You see, you inherit all of your mitochondrial DNA from your mother, meaning siblings will always have identical mitochondrial DNA. You and I have the same mitochondrial DNA as do Applejack and Apple Bloom.”

“So then the two of them gotta have the same mom,” Apple Bloom concluded.

“Precisely.”

“What?!” Sweetie Belle looked up at the display.

This shouldn’t be possible!

It was true she couldn’t find any difference in the sequence, but how did that happen? If Scootaloo was just brainwashing everypony, then there wouldn’t be a record of her having the same DNA as Rainbow Dash. Rarity shouldn’t have her DNA sample at all.

“And it’s easy to tell if two brothers have the same father by looking at the y chromosome,” Rarity went on. “The only difficult scenario is telling if two sisters have the same father. Presently, you can’t use this to tell who a mare’s father is.”

“Wow.” Scootaloo leaned up against the wall and smiled at Sweetie Belle. “Isn’t that interesting, Sweetie Belle? I got the same midichlorian count as Rainbow Dash. Who’d have thought?”

“Mitochondrial DNA,” Rarity corrected her.

“Yeah!” Scootaloo stepped towards Sweetie Belle. “In fact, you know what? As long as we’re here why don’t you have your sister do every stupid scientific experiment you can think of on me? You can do brain scans, X-rays, blood tests, that annoying bone density thing, even live dissection. It’s not like I care or anything. I’m down for all of it. Testing Scootaloo all day long.”

That silenced everypony else in the room, though only Sweetie Belle wasn’t confused at all by the suggestion. That was a subtle jab at her!

It was getting harder to guess what Scootaloo was doing, but more clear that she was certainly doing something.

“Yes,” Rarity spoke after clearing her throat. “Well firstly, I make robots, Scootaloo. I don’t need to do experiments on ponies. And while your enthusiasm is refreshing, it’s also a tad on the morbid side.”

Sweetie Belle was scrambling her brain trying to think of some way to prove what was going on! If Scootaloo could just rewrite history then there was no way to wing this, was there?

But it did look like the others were at least suspicious of Scootaloo’s odd behavior. Maybe begging was her best shot now.

“Rarity!” Sweetie Belle implored her sister. “I can’t prove it, but Scootaloo is some kind of horrible demon thing!”

“Sweetie Belle. What are you—?”

“She wasn’t here yesterday!” Sweetie Belle pushed on. “She’s brainwashing all of you and changed your memories! She has some weird power she’s using!”

Rarity raised an eyebrow at that.

“Please, Rarity!” Sweetie Belle bowed her head to her. “You know I wouldn’t lie about something this important, right? Please, just trust me.”

“Hm.” Rarity looked over at Scootaloo, then back at Sweetie Belle. “Well of course I’m going to take your concerns seriously, Sweetie Belle. If what you’re saying is true, she couldn’t have possibly altered the memories of everypony in the whole world, so we’ll just…”

Rarity was back to typing on the analytical engine.

An enormous wave of relief washed over Sweetie Belle.

Of course Rarity was going to side with her over some random pony, even if she thought she’d met Scootaloo before. Now Sweetie Belle could just let her sister take care of it. Rarity was a genius, after all, she’d be able to find some way to see through Scootaloo’s deception!

She turned to Scootaloo, triumphant. But her triumph cooled when she saw Scootaloo wasn’t worried about this at all.

“Yeah?” Scootaloo smirked. “I’m sure your sister would help you if you asked her to. But we just got here! What did you want to ask her about, again?”

“Yes.” Rarity turned around to face Sweetie Belle again. “What was it you wanted to say?”

Everypony was looking at Sweetie Belle expectedly now.

They seriously forgot what just happened! Scootaloo mind-wiped them or something!

This was getting scary!

“This isn’t funny, Rarity!” Sweetie Belle called out to her.

“What’s not funny, Darling?” Rarity asked with genuine concern. “Is something wrong?”

This was too far! Sweetie Belle wasn’t going to let somepony get away with doing this to her sister!

“You!” Sweetie Belle lowered her head and took a menacing step towards Scootaloo. “How dare you?! I don’t know what you just did, but if you do that one more time, I’m gonna— gonna push you over or something!”

“Gah!” Scootaloo jumped back until she was pressed up against the wall, taking the threat with deathly seriousness. “You don’t want to hit me! Trust me!”

“Then stop doing whatever it is you’re doing and give up!”

“Look, I can keep this up all day! You give up!”

“Well, I can keep this up for two days!” Sweetie Belle stepped closer. “I can go six days on one nutrition tank, I never get tired and I don’t need to sleep or go to the bathroom! Just try me!”

“Yeah?! Well I can—!” Scootaloo pulled back. “Ah, who am I kidding. I can’t do this for three days.”

“Ha!” Sweetie Belle lifted her head, triumphant. “Looks like I win! So now you gotta stop doing whatever it is you’re doing. Right?”

Scootaloo kept glaring at Sweetie. This very much wasn’t over after all.

Meanwhile, Rarity and Apple Bloom looked on at an utter loss.

“Excuse me,” said Rarity. “I’m not sure what you two are even arguing about. Is there any way we can keep this civil?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong you two?” Apple Bloom looked at them with genuine concern. “This is advance crazy.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” said Scootaloo. “Hey, Sweetie Belle, why don’t we just talk this out? In private? Sorry for yelling.”

She stood by the door, smiling.

Going with her was dangerous, but Sweetie Belle was immune to whatever powers this pony had.

Was it because she was part robot? She’d think Saccharin would be immune too if that was the case.

Whatever the reason, Sweetie Belle was the only one who could do this. Rarity sacrificed so much for her and now it was Sweetie Belle’s turn to protect everyone else. She knew all the other ponies here would do something dangerous for her.

“Yeah.” Sweetie Belle nodded. “Let’s talk.”

“Alright,” said Rarity. “But if I hear any more yelling, I’m coming in there.”

Scootaloo led Sweetie Belle out of the room. They went down the hall a little before Scootaloo gestured to the room she wanted to ‘talk’ in.

It was a door that hadn’t existed yesterday, Sweetie Belle was sure, and on the other side was a room with nothing in it. Scootaloo seemed more dangerous every second. She only entered the room after Scootaloo went in herself.

As soon as they were inside, Scootaloo closed the door behind them and leaned up against it.

“Alright, look,” Scootaloo spoke first. “I’m not here to hurt anypony, okay? In fact, I kind of like Rainbow Dash. I just need to get more of my medicine. Once I have it, I won’t bother you again. As soon as I leave, everything goes back to normal. Your sister and the yellow one won’t even remember who I was.”

“Medicine?” Sweetie Belle asked.

Scootaloo held up a clear bottle, through which Sweetie saw a few blue pills.

“I have an extremely rare disease.” Scootaloo put the bottle back. “Only two ponies in the whole world have it. If I run out of this stuff, I’m worse than dead. But the guy who owns the copyright or whatever is the biggest douchebag in the world. I have to find a way to make my own.”

Scootaloo glanced back at the door.

“I figure somepony over here has to be able to show me how,” said Scootaloo. “This place is like Area 5X but smaller. Anyway. You can just ignore me and everything will be fine. I promise.”

“I’m not going to trust you after you used mind control on my sister!” Sweetie Belle stood her ground.

“It’s not mind control,” Scootaloo insisted.

“You can’t trick me! Anypony can see you brainwashed everypony else and you would have done it to me too if you could.”

“It doesn’t work like that. It’s like my— like that guy always says. Changing facts is easy; changing opinions is hard,” Scootaloo recited the witticism as if that proved anything. “I can make myself Dash’s sister but I can’t make Dash love me. I can only make ponies do something they would have done anyway were things a little different. Making your sister hate you or try to kill you would be nearly impossible, for example.”

Sweetie Belle kept staring at Scootaloo with her ears down, unamused. There was no reason to assume Scootaloo was telling the truth about any of this.

“Think about it,” said Scootaloo. “I really am Rainbow Dash’s sister right now. Me having the same DNA as her wasn’t a trick. You think I know what midochlorines are? There’s no way I’d think to change that. I just change it so I’m Dash’s sister and the rest of reality changes by itself to fit.”

It was true that Sweetie Belle was hoping to get Scootaloo with something like that. She didn’t change Rarity’s memory of the DNA test, but the actual DNA test was different.

“Even if that’s true, it’s still basically brainwashing,” said Sweetie Belle.

“No, it’s not!

“Yeah, it is!”

“Yeah, well—?!” Scootaloo stammered. “You know what? It doesn’t matter if it’s brainwashing or not! They’re just going to lock me away forever no matter what I do, so why should I even care, huh?! I don’t care if I’m following whatever stupid rules you have because you’ll just do the same thing no matter what!”

Something worrying happened as Scootaloo snapped. The white of her right eye turned black, reminding Sweetie Belle somewhat of a ghost’s eyes.

Scootaloo’s reaction to this was quick and panicked. She covered the eye and turned to the side. As quickly as she could, she opened the bottle of medicine, nearly spilling a few pills out. She downed one of them and breathed to calm herself back down.

Her eye was already back to normal when she turned around.

“Are you okay?” Sweetie Belle asked. “That looked bad.”

“Yeah.” Scootaloo held up the bottle again. “You see? I need this stuff bad. Think of it like this. If you were gonna die without more medicine and the only thing you had were my powers, would you seriously not use them?”

Though she was still angry, Sweetie Belle had to stay quiet for a second to keep herself from admitting Scootaloo wasn’t completely wrong. If it was to save her own life, maybe Sweetie Belle would do something bad.

Scootaloo perked up at seeing she’d finally got something over on Sweetie Belle.

“And I’m sure you can relate to how terrible adults are,” Scootaloo went on. “I dunno what your deal is, but you must have been surrounded by greedy science types who just don’t care about you at all too. The adults just want to use ponies like you and me to make money. We don’t have to care about them.”

Sweetie Belle shook her head. That part she couldn’t relate to.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” she said. “Rarity cares about me a lot and she never did anything but help me.”

“Yeah?!” Scootaloo looked offended, but couldn’t counter Sweetie Belle. In the end, she got depressed and looked off to the side. “Well it’s not fair. I should be allowed to not care about the adults, at least.”

Sweetie Belle was determined to not feel bad for this pony, but Scootaloo did look pretty depressed right now making that a difficult vow to keep. She was starting to wonder if she could just talk her way out of this.

Sweetie Belle tried to think of what the adults would have done in her situation.

All the grown-ups around her always tried to make friends with their enemies. If Rainbow Dash could turn the most terrifying witch in history into her friend, then why couldn’t Sweetie Belle do the same thing here?

“Okay.” Sweetie Belle stepped forward. “I don’t like what you’re doing but I’ll make you a deal. You stop using whatever your powers are and I’ll ask Rarity to help you. But you have to tell them the whole truth, okay? Like what you are and everything.”

Scootaloo was even quieter now.

“Well?” Sweetie Belle held her hoof out. “If you really are just some kid who needs help, I know they’ll help you.”

“Look, it’s not that easy, okay?” Scootaloo shook her head. “I wish it was, but it’s not.”

“I know it’s probably scary, but like I said, I’ll vouch for you once you stop. I’ll make sure nopony hurts you. Rarity will listen to me, you saw yourself. These ponies forgave Trixie, okay? They’re total saps for this sort of thing.”

“I’m not scared!” Scootaloo snapped at her. “I’ve asked grown-ups for help plenty of times in the past, okay? Some ponies are just lucky like you and have great lives. Other ponies are unlucky and everything sucks. This sort of thing doesn’t work for me.”

It was times like these Sweetie Belle wished she was some great orator. She was struggling to think of what else she could say or do to convince Scootaloo to just ask for help.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Obviously.” Scootaloo turned her cheek on Sweetie Belle.

What problem could there be that she couldn’t talk about? Was she dangerous? Or maybe she’d killed a ton of ponies? The adults would probably figure it out if they talked to her.

Sweetie Belle wished she could just make this Scootaloo pony talk, but how?

“But hey! There’s no reason we have to fight, you know!” Scootaloo was the one to hold her hoof out this time. “I have kinda-infinite powers. I can give you anything you want while I’m around. I have so many things I can tempt you with.”

“Like what?” Sweetie Belle wasn’t tempted, but she gave a curious look anyway.

“Like.” Scootaloo spread her wings and a pile of brightly colored toys appeared behind her. “I can make you whatever toy you want! Just name it and it’s yours. I’ll give you anything you ask for.”

Sweetie Belle looked over the pile of toys. There were laughably easy block puzzles, those things where you push a button and it says the name of the animal on top of it, one of those ring stacking clowns…

“Why are these all baby toys?” Sweetie Belle looked over the square block and square peg. “I’m not going to be tempted by baby toys.”

“This bead maze thing is kinda relaxing!”

The bead maze was one of those things you saw in the waiting room of a doctor's office. It was a jumble of wires with little shapes you could move from one side to the other. Scootaloo started moving a bead from one end to the other only to drop it as soon as Sweetie Belle gave her a look.

“Look, this is the only stuff they let me have cause everything else is too ‘stimulating’ or whatever.” Scootaloo stood up defiantly, suddenly feeling the need to defend herself. “The only other thing I know is comic books and those are hard to make.”

“Okay.” Sweetie Belle felt like they were getting somewhere now. “Who’s ‘they’ again?”

“Huh?!” Scootaloo noticed her mistake and panicked, shaking her head rapidly. “No one! It’s not important. But hey, if you don’t want any toys there’s gotta be something you do want. Oh! I just had a perfect idea!”

Scootaloo placed her hoof gently on Sweetie Belle’s muzzle. She winced like she was concentrating hard on something. So hard, from the looks of things, that a small trickle of blood came from her nose.

But just a second later she was done and took her hoof back. Something changed at that moment, everything felt different, but what exactly happened escaped Sweetie.

A bizarre sensation came over Sweetie Belle. Cold air came rushing into her muzzle and pushed her chest out. That’s when it hit her.

She just breathed.

At that, Sweetie took a step back and looked herself over. Sweetie Belle had fur! She felt her hair and it was actual hair once again. Her body was soft and squishy when she touched it. She could even feel a heartbeat.

On her forehead once more was her real horn made of actual bone and carmot. Sweetie Belle could feel the impulse of magic once more in place of the teleke-whatsit thing it’d been replaced with.

Scootaloo turned her back into a normal filly.

This wasn’t even the robot with the brain, but somehow it was flesh and blood once more. There was such an odd disconnect between this and her other bodies, where she could both feel and not feel them at the same time.

“Whoa!” Sweetie Belle turned around, chasing her tail in a circle as she looked over her body again. She never thought she’d see her old body again, seeing as it’d been eaten.

The feeling of her chest slowly expanding and deflating was so strange now. She’d spent so much time in that machine that everything about this felt completely alien to her.

“You see?” Scootaloo stepped back with a smile. She was panting heavily now, blood still coming out her nose. “I can do anything. Kind of. It’s not permanent, but you can go back to normal any time I’m here. You can be a real pony again and all you gotta do is not say anything. Isn’t that incredible?”

Incredible? Sweetie Belle looked down at her organic hooves.

“Yeah.” Sweetie Belle slowly turned her head to Scootaloo and gave a single nod. “Incredibly bad.”

“Wha?!” Scootaloo jumped back.

“Change me back!” Sweetie Belle jumped forward and tackled Scootaloo. “This is horrible!”

Talking gave her pause as she realized something else. She staggered backward off Scootaloo as a feeling of horror and disgust overtook her.

“Agh! My mouth is filled with spit!” Sweetie Belle tried spitting it out, but her stupid body just kept making more. And there was no way to turn it off! “How did I ever think this was okay?!”

She stuck out her tongue and tried to scrap the disgust off with her hooves.

“But nopony ever wants to stay a robot in my comic books!” Scootaloo got back on her feet. “They just cry about it the whole issue and it’s boring.”

“Yeah, and none of the ponies who wrote those books ever had their brain get put into a robot!” Sweetie Belle pointed at her brain, encased in her slimy skull made of fragile bone. “What am I supposed to miss? Being covered in snot and sweat? Not being able to turn pain off? Having the strength of one small filly? Getting dust in my eyes? And don’t even get me started on how disgusting the whole ‘bathroom’ thing looks to me now!”

Sweetie Belle shuddered at the thought. Even now she felt so disgusting. She was hyper-aware of all this gross stuff covering her. The snot in her nose, the spit in her mouth, the sweat that was starting to cover her… she couldn’t take it anymore!

“Change me back!” Sweetie Belle jumped at Scootaloo again.

“Okay! Yeesh! That was hard to keep up, anyway!” Scootaloo’s nosebleed was getting a lot worse, Sweetie Belle noticed.

Sweetie Belle returned to the sweet embrace of metal and machinery. She backed off Scootaloo and hugged herself to feel her robotic strength and all those unnamable devices wrapping around her like a blanket. All that slimy biology washed right off her like so much filth in a shower. This was the cleanest she could ever remember feeling.

“I missed you so much, robot hooves.” Sweetie Belle gave them a nuzzle.

“And I thought I was weird.” Scootaloo got up and shook her head in defeat. “There’s gotta be something I can tempt you with.”

“Nope!” Sweetie Belle shook her head. “My life is perfect. You can’t tempt me with stuff.”

“No one’s life is perfect!”

“Mine is.”

“Okay, fine.” Scootaloo started backing up to the wall, where the door used to be. “If I can’t tempt you, you leave me with no choice but to use my ultimate attack.”

This was it!

“Bring it!” Sweetie Belle lowered her head, getting ready. “I’m completely invincible to all types of damage. Go ahead and try to vince me.”

Sweetie Belle had 600 weapons and she knew how to use a good two or three of them! If it was the only way to keep her sister and her friends safe, then she could be brave and fight too!

But Scootaloo’s smile was confident enough to make her nervous.

“You’re sure you’re immune to every type of damage?” Scootaloo recreated the door and threw it open.

On the other side of the door was the room the adults had been in earlier, only now it was just Dash inside. Scootaloo started crying and ran into the room.

“Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo glomped onto her and began crying as loudly as she could. “Sweetie Belle punched me in the face! Wah-ha-ha!”

“Whoa!” Rainbow Dash pulled Scootaloo’s head back to look at her. “You’re nose is bleeding bad! No, you gotta lean forward.”

Dash tiled Scootaloo’s head down and pressed her bleeding muzzle against her chest.

“What the heck did you do?!” Dash turned on Sweetie Belle.

“What?!” Sweetie Belle stepped back. “I didn’t! That’s not what happened! She’s lying!”

“Even if you two were playing or something, you need to be more careful!” Dash scolded her. “You have the strength of a thousand small children and Scootaloo has a heart condition! It’s not okay for you to hit her!”

“But!”

Scootaloo started wailing even louder.

“What’s going on here?” Rarity came into the room.

“Your sister broke Scootaloo’s nose from the looks of things.” Dash stroked the crying filly’s hair.

“Sweetie Belle!” Now Rarity was scolding her too. “Part of being an unstoppable avatar of death is—"

“I know!” Sweetie Belle stomped her hoof on the floor. “Just shut up for a second!”

“Don’t you talk to me like that after everything I’ve done for you,” Rarity snapped at her. “You may be an unkillable machine god, but you’re still a child. Go to your room until you’ve cooled off!”

“Okay, fine!” Sweetie Belle stomped off towards her room. “But this isn’t over!”

“And when I say that I mean every spare body you have in the castle too!” Rarity called after her.

A few minutes later, Sweetie Belle was still stewing in her room, back in her main body.

“Alright, we have a problem, girls.” Sweetie Belle said to the council of Sweetie Belles.

The council of Sweetie Belles, a collection of ten robots, stood all around her bed. Sadly, the council had zero intelligence outside of Sweetie’s brain, so they couldn’t live up to their name.

Sweetie was mostly on her own here. But what to do?

She could try attacking Scootaloo for real, but who knew how that’d go down. She’d need to save that for her absolute last resort.

To be fair, Scootaloo hadn’t made any attempt to destroy Sweetie Belle or hurt anypony yet. You’d think it’d be incredibly easy to kill Sweetie Belle with powers like that. So either she couldn’t kill ponies with her powers or she wasn’t entirely evil.

Still, she couldn’t let Scootaloo get away with this!

The first thing she had to figure out was why this power didn’t work on Sweetie Belle. She assumed everypony else was affected by it, likely even Twilight and Pinkie Pie, or else one of them would have already said something.

So what was unique about Sweetie Belle?

She was half machine and half pony. But how could that help? It didn’t seem to make any sense.

“If only I was as smart as Rarity!” Sweetie Belle collapsed onto her back. “What would she do?”

Asking that question allowed made her remember that Rarity had briefly tried to do something! What was it again?

She said ‘there was no way Scootaloo could have brainwashed everypony in the whole world’, then went to do something on her analytical engine. Hopefully, Rarity was right that this wasn’t affecting the entire planet.

“Maybe she sucks us into a pocket dimension where things are different?” Sweetie Belle was just saying ideas at random. “Or she could have a field that surrounds her and everything inside it changes. And then—"

That was it! Sweetie Belle figured it out!

“And wait!” She pointed at one of her other bodies. “And that’s why it doesn’t affect me! Because I’m not entirely inside of it!”

Sweetie Belle had multiple bodies that weren’t inside the castle directly feeding her small amounts of information. That meant she was partially outside. Scootaloo’s magic couldn’t affect her the same way it did ponies that were entirely inside it.

At least, that sounded like it could be true.

“Okay. But how the heck do I use this?” Sweetie Belle asked herself.

One of her bodies was in Coco’s house. That had to be outside the Scootaloo zone. She could ask Coco for help, but then again this was outside that pony’s league. What would she even do?

Who else was there outside?

Sweetie knew from gathering her council that Pinkie Pie wasn’t here at the moment. Surely there was something Pinkie could do! Though Pinkie was in Ponytown.

She couldn’t just run around Ponytown as a robot, but she could use the portal to get to Dash’s house, then call Pinkie over. She just had to hope that Scootaloo’s control over things didn’t bleed through the portal.

Even if she was grounded, sneaking over there shouldn’t be too hard.

“Alright!” Sweetie Belle jumped off her bed. “Time to be sneaky.”

Sweetie Belle tumbled out of the portal and into a closet in Dash’s mostly empty basement. She slowly went upstairs, the basement door leading into a kitchen filled with gift baskets.

Sweetie Belle just needed to find a phone jack. She’d be able to plug one of them into her foreleg. Then she could make an untraceable call.

Because the phone lines might be monitored, they had a code they were supposed to use. Sweetie Belle would make a call pretending to be selling a color projector. That would be Pinkie’s hint to come over to Dash’s house.

Sure enough there was a phone jack on the far side of the kitchen. She plugged it in and the device implanted in her went to call Pinkie.

But to her surprise, somepony was already using Dash’s phone! She could hear the conversation through her equipment.

“It’s cause my Derpy Doo is the cutest pony in the world,” a male voice spoke in a cutesy voice on one end.

“Nu, uh,” a female voice, ‘Derpy Doo’ presumably, cooed back at him. “I can’t be the cutest cause you’re the cutest!”

“I take it this means you’re not busy today?”

“Dash is probably gonna be gone all day,” said Derpy. “Nothing ever happens in Ponytown so guarding here is the easiest job in the world.”

Rainbow Dash had a guard? Nopony told her this part!

Which room was Derpy in? Was it okay if she saw Sweetie Belle?

Sweetie looked around, trying to think of what to do.

“Hold up!” The mare said. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Just a second ago,” said Derpy. “I recognize that clicking sound! This is that prank where somepony tries to call you from inside the house!”

Sweetie Belle was in trouble now!

“I gotta call you back, Soarin,” said Derpy. “Okay! I dunno who you are, but this is the fourth time this has happened to me! You have no idea how prepared I am for this! You’re going to jail, buddy!”

Sweetie Belle scrambled to unplug herself from the wall, but it was already too late.

Derpy homed in on the phone jack's location within seconds. A couch slammed up against one of the kitchen’s doors and Derpy jumped up on top of it.

The pony was a grey pegasus mare wearing light body armor of an even darker grey. At her side was a lance mounted just over her right wing. Derpy looked like she was about to transition into a smooth attack on Sweetie Belle but stumbled slightly when she saw her opponent.

“A robot?!” Derpy jumped back in surprise. “I heard of robocalls, but this is ridiculous!”

“Hold on a second!” Sweetie Belle took a step back.

Derpy didn’t hesitate. She hit something on her lance, making it crackle with electricity, then jumped over the upturned couch at Sweetie.

Sweetie stumbled back, still unfamiliar with all her weapons systems. As she swooped down, Derpy planted the lance in Sweetie’s chest.

Sweetie Belle shrank away and closed her eyes as Derpy slammed the lance into her. Sweetie Belle’s body crackled with enough electricity to light the room up with a blinding light. She could feel the power surging through her for several seconds.

When it was over, Sweetie Belle opened her eyes and looked herself over. She was completely unharmed.

“Oh, yeah!” Sweetie Belle stood up. “I forgot I’m invincible.”

“What?!” Derpy took a step back. “That’s not fair!”

“Yeah, well what is?” Sweetie Belle asked. “You don’t have enough firepower to take me out! Just let me use the phone for one second to call Pinkie. Please?”

“You think I’m gonna—?” Derpy stopped to think about the request for a second. “Actually, maybe that’s a good idea. Hold on a second.”

Derpy kept the lanced pointed at Sweetie with one wing. She backed up to the phone in the room she came from and picked it up with the other wing. Holding it in the crook of her neck, she went to dial Pinkie.

This seemed like what Sweetie wanted, but Sweetie remembered the lines might be tapped. If Derpy said anything too weird, somepony with the government might hear.

Thankfully, before the phone rang even once, the front door burst open.

“Knock, knock!” Pinkie jumped in through the door without knocking. “I know you didn’t get through, but I felt it in my head you were trying to call me.”

She looked at Derpy, then Sweetie Belle, then the phone.

“Yeah, looks like there’s a problem.” Pinkie nodded to herself.

“Oh, Pinkie!” Derpy called over to her. “We’re being attacked by robots! Help!”

Pinkie yanked Derpy’s weapon away from her. In the moment of stunned confusion, she grabbed Derpy and threw the pegasus onto the couch.

“Huh?” Derpy struggled, but couldn’t get free. “Pinkie, I meant help me!”

Pinkie levitated some rope over and tied Derpy up just tight enough that she couldn’t get out.

“Sorry about this!” Pinkie clapped her forehooves together apologetically. “We were going to tell you everything after we took out Minuette on Friday, but looks like the jig is up, huh?”

“What jig?” Derpy only struggled for a second before deciding it was pointless. “Is that a drug robot? Is this drugs? Cause if this is drugs it isn’t cool!”

“No, no! Don’t worry, it’s not drugs,” Pinkie assured her.

“Okay.” Derpy raised an eyebrow.

“It’s way more dangerous and shocking than that.”

“What?!”

“But more on that later! You just hang tight for a second, all will be revealed after I take care of whatever this is.” Pinkie turned to Sweetie Belle. “So what is this anyway?”

“Hey! Don’t leave me on a cliffhanger like that!” Derpy complained behind her in vain.

Sweetie glanced over at Derpy, who was fuming but not trying to escape. She decided it was okay to be open about things.

“Yeah!” Sweetie Belle nodded. “We have a big problem at the castle! This filly just showed up at the castle. She claims she’s Rainbow Dash’s sister and everypony was going along with it. I’m a hundred percent sure Rainbow Dash doesn’t have a sister, though! I mean, she doesn’t have a sister, right?”

“I’ve known Dash since preschool and she doesn’t,” Derpy confirmed. “She even lived at my house for a couple weeks when her dad died. I’m pretty sure that would have come up around then.”

“See?” Sweetie Belle pointed at her.

Even though she knew this was the case, it still filled her with relief to have somepony finally confirm Sweetie Belle wasn’t crazy.

“This pony, I guess her name is Scootaloo, she’s going around brainwashing everypony into thinking she’s Dash’s sister,” Sweetie Belle continued. “Well, she keeps insisting it’s not brainwashing and she’s just ‘changing reality’ or something. Have you ever heard of anything like that?”

Derpy scrunched her muzzle and glanced off to the side. Pinkie gave it more serious thought.

“Reality distortion.” The words had some weight as Pinkie repeated them. “That’s an outer god thing! Only alicorns and outer realm stuff should be able to do that. If it’s either of those, we’re in for one crow of a doozy. Are you sure it’s not plain old mind control?”

Derpy held her breath as she scrunched her muzzle even tighter.

“I’m pretty sure,” Sweetie Belle confirmed. “It only works in a certain area, like she has a reality distorting… field or something.”

“Hm! A reality distortion field you say!” Pinkie tapped her chin.

Meanwhile, Derpy looked like she was about to pass out from holding her breath.

“Uh!” Derpy finally broke her silence. “Hey, robot guy? What did this pony look like?”

“Huh?” Sweetie Belle turned to Derpy, surprised. “I guess she’s maybe twelve. She’s orange with a pink mane. Her wings are kinda small. I don’t think she has a cutie mark.”

“Oh.” Derpy sounded like that was bad news.

The other two watched Derpy for a second to see if she would elaborate, but the pegasus kept on her odd poker face.

“Do you know something?” Pinkie asked.

Derpy held out another second as she agonized over whether to tell the others.

“Okay!” Derpy relented. “This is classified information, but you’re with Rainbow Dash so maybe I can tell you. I’ve been compiling a list of everything they only tell S rankers. I think I know who you’re talking about.”

Parasites

“Dash had me go get all the classified information for her a little while ago. She also gave me this cool piano desk.” Derpy hit five notes on the piano and a small compartment on the side of the instrument opened.

From this, Derpy took one of five yellow folders with ‘Classified’ stamped on them in red ink. Sweetie watched carefully, hoping to get a glimpse of the other four’s content, but Derpy found the right one without opening the others.

Derpy slid a piece of paper out of the correct folder.

“Is this the pony you saw?” Derpy turned it towards Sweetie Belle.

To her surprise, the paper showed pictures of two fillies, labeled subject one and subject two. The first was a supremely bored unicorn with spikey blue hair that Sweetie had never seen before. Number two was an annoyed Scootaloo, photographed in the middle of an eye roll.

The caption listed Scootaloo’s full name as ‘Scootaloo Allgood’.

“Yeah!” Sweetie Belle pointed to Scootaloo. “That’s her on the right! So you know what she is?”

“Well, at least it wasn’t the other one.” Derpy put that sheet away and took another out of the folder. “I guess I should give you the backstory. See, ten years ago, somepony punctured a hole in reality, creating the largest recorded portal to the outer realm.”

Derpy showed them another picture. Sweetie Belle didn’t know a lot about interdimensional portals, but even she could tell the one in the photo was stood far larger than normal. This portal rose over a row of houses like a gaping maw ready to consume the village.

“Wowzers!” Pinkie took the picture for herself. “I’ve never seen one this half this size before! Who made it?”

“Nopony knows.” Derpy came in closer to whisper. “But it was probably a witch, right? Cause who else would it be?”

Pinkie looked over the paper carefully, less eager to accept that conclusion.

“We don’t have pictures of this next part, but things started coming out of the portal.”

Sweetie Belle heard of ponies going into the outer realm, but never about anything coming out. Was that even possible? She shuddered at the thought.

Even Pinkie Pie, with her decades of experience, grew quiet. She lowered the paper and leaned in to carefully listen to Derpy.

“And the thing that came through the portal,” Derpy’s voice lowered. She leaned into it now, like she was telling a scary story. “Was an alicorn!”

Sweetie Belle gasped, more from reflex than anything else.

When she gave it more thought, she realized she wasn’t sure if she should be afraid of that. Alicorns weren’t necessarily evil creatures. The only one she remotely knew of was friends with Apple Bloom.

Alicorns were the ones who wrote all the laws of physics and brought order to the world long ago. Of course, that meant they could rewrite reality.

Exactly what Scootaloo was doing!

They distorted reality and so did Scootaloo! Everything started to click

What if Scootaloo was secretly an alicorn? But that couldn’t possibly be true. Could it?

“Huh!” As she thought, Pinkie leaned back in the piano chair so far Sweetie Belle assumed her psychic powers held her up. “Alicorn magic can remake reality. That almost makes sense.”

Pinkie snapped forward, the piano desk landing in a more possible position.

“But are you sure?” Pinkie asked. “The only alicorn around’s The Darklord and he’s got the ‘sealed away forever’ thing going on. Alicorns can just grab stars and fling them around like streamers! They could erase the speed of light. I think somepony would have noticed if something like that happened.”

“Okay, okay.” Derpy turned up her hooves immediately, admitting her exaggeration. “According to Starlight’s report, the portal was big enough for a ‘tiny fraction’ of the alicorn’s ‘true being’ to get through. I don’t know what that actually means, but when I was reading this, I pretended it meant that alicorn stuck her tongue through the portal. And like, Starlight had this epic battle with a giant tongue-god!”

“And Starlight beat it?” Sweetie Belle asked. “She defeated an alicorn?”

“Just it’s tongue or whatever! And I don’t see a giant alicorn tongue flailing around, do you?” Derpy shrugged. “But yeah, thankfully Starlight was there to save the day. The report says she shoved it back in and closed the portal. It would have been a literal world-changing event if she hadn’t stopped it.”

That took Sweetie Belle by surprise. She didn’t know much about politics, other than the disdain and mistrust the adults in her life had for Starlight Glimmer. Yet if Starlight saved the world even one time, was she really that bad?

“And who wrote this report?” Pinkie asked.

“Starlight,” Derpy admitted.

Pinkie made a loud ‘hm’ as she narrowed her eyes in an exaggerated thinking pose. Pinkie did just raise a good point, on the other hoof.

“I still don’t get what this has to do with Scootaloo,” said Sweetie Belle.

“Right, well it wasn’t the only thing that came out.” Derpy pointed to the folder, still in Pinkie’s possession. “Turn to page six. A swarm of brain-eating monsters came out too! They, uh, ate brains.”

Pinkie flipped to the right page.

“Bleh!” Pinkie cringed and stuck her tongue out in disgust at whatever horrors she saw.

Sweetie Belle tried to crane her neck around Pinkie and get a look at these parasites, but Pinkie quickly pulled it away.

“Heh! You don’t need to see this one, kiddo!” Pinkie smiled brightly and put the paper away. “Trust me.”

That only made it worse!

“Those monsters from the outer realm could distort reality too,” Derpy went on. “If they ate your entire brain, you just vanished from existence. The government didn’t even have to cover this up. The whole village got erased. Only two ponies survived. For some unknown reason, the parasites didn’t kill them. They just ate a small part of their brains and went to sleep.

“President Flash Flood wanted to ‘put them down’, but Starlight convinced him to spare the two,” Derpy went on to finish the story. “Lilymoon should still be in Area 5X, but Scootaloo got privatized and the Allgood Corporation took custody of her. Allgood developed Cronenboricil, those pills you mentioned. They keep the parasite in a coma.”

“So that’s why she can distort reality?” Sweetie Belle asked. “She has an outer realm parasite eating her brain?”

“Technically it stopped and is just sitting there now,” said Derpy. “But yeah! Her reality distortion field effects an area 10 miles wide. They can both use it, but the parasite is usually asleep. So we gotta be very careful! If Scootaloo gets too injured, angry, or scared, the parasite can still wake up and take control of her body to try and protect the two of them. That means destroying everything nearby, just so we’re clear.”

So that explained why Scootaloo’s fear of getting hit. Sweetie Belle made the right decision not to punch her, it seemed.

She wondered how bad the parasite taking control could get. Scootaloo wasn’t aiming to hurt anypony, but with the ability to distort reality itself, you could do just about anything! Now Scootaloo seemed more like a bomb waiting to go off.

“Oh! But that also means Scootaloo can’t attack us without losing control!” Derpy pointed out. “So there’s that.”

Pinkie held out every paper in the folder at once, levitating them in a half-circle around her. She looked at each one in turn with narrow eyes, making sure Derpy didn’t leave anything important out.

“The weird thing to me is that nopony told us,” said Derpy. “If Scootaloo escaped, the Allgood Group is supposed to alert every rank S pony immediately. I’m Dash’s lieutenant, so I should have gotten notified already.”

“They don’t want to get caught messing up!” Sweetie Belle answered straight away. “I know because I do the same thing all the time.”

“Huh?” Derpy blinked, then shook her head like a camera just flashed her. “But that’s what a child would do! They wouldn’t trust such an important job to somepony that irresponsible, would they?”

Derpy looked towards Pinkie just to be on the safe side.

“Oh, the system’s totally corrupt.” Pinkie laughed as she stuffed the papers back into the folder. “Of course they’d be that irresponsible!”

“What? But—! But—!”

“But there is a plus side.” Pinkie put her forehooves on Derpy’s back. “The system is completely corrupt, meaning I’ll probably get away with whatever whacky, illegal thing I’m about to do. Hurray for corruption!”

“Whoa, whoa! What? Breaking the law?” Derpy stomped a hoof down. “You can’t break the law. That’s illegal!”

“Ha! You! I bet you had a pretty good life growing up, huh?” Pinkie pressed her muzzle against Derpy’s side before stepping away.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Derpy took a step after her. “Look, instead of breaking the law, we gotta contact the Allgood Group! And then HQ! That’s the protocol.”

“Nope! If they don’t call us, we don’t gotta call them,” said Pinkie. “Totally their fault. I’ve chimed this changa before, so I know how it works. Trust me.”

“Okay. Well, you can be as passive-aggressive as you want, but they’re the ones with the Scootaloo Containment Unit or ‘SCU.’” Derpy grabbed one of the pages out of the folder. “See? Do I need to explain why a Scootaloo Containment Unit would be useful in this situation?”

“Nah, I got a better plan.” Pinkie used her psychic powers to swat that paper away. “Sweetie Belle, you said she ran away from Allgood, right?”

“Huh?” Sweetie nodded. “Yeah! I think that’s what happened now.”

“Well I’ve dealt with plenty of runaway kiddos before,” said Pinkie. “We gotta treat her like a scared filly who ran away from home, not a monster.”

“Are you sure?” Derpy asked. “That could backfire.”

“I’m sure as sunshine!” Pinkie winked. “Just gotta find a way to talk to her without getting sucked into the Scootaloo Zone. If only there was some way to speak with somepony from far away.”

“You mean like a phone?” Derpy asked. “We have phones. You can use them to call the government.”

“Oh, I can’t call Rarity’s house without somepony noticing.” Pinkie dismissed the suggestion.

“Should I know who Rarity is?”

“I have an idea!” Sweetie Belle jumped to get their attention. “We could use the internet! I can run a cable straight through the portal to Rarity’s analytical engine.”

“The what?” Derpy asked.

“Oh, hey! That’s a great idea!” Pinkie pulled Sweetie over. “Then we can talk face to face.”

“Rarity showed me enough that I can set it up,” said Sweetie Belle. “But I need a little while.”

“Great! You do that, I’ll practice my speech. Break!”

Sweetie soon sped off in the other direction.

“Okay.” Derpy sat down on the floor. “Guess I’ll just wait here till somepony tells me what’s going on.”

Scootaloo followed Dash back to Twilight’s tree, where they’d planned to train today. Rarity and Apple Bloom came along too, were currently standing around Twilight’s bubbling cauldron as Dash tended to Scootaloo.

“I said I’m fine,” Scootaloo complained as Dash checked her muzzle one last time.

Dash nodded, but knew her nosebleed wasn’t the issue in question here.

Maybe in a better world, Scootaloo wouldn’t have any problem at how perceptive Dash was when it came to Scootaloo being upset. In the distorted reality, that is in the way things should have been, Dash knew Scootaloo so well that she immediately noticed when Scootaloo had a problem.

Thankfully, she wasn’t smothering like those psychoanalysts Snap hired. Yet, she never just ignored it, either.

“Are you worried about Sweetie Belle?” Dash guessed.

“Yeah,” Scootaloo took the convenient lie.

“This doesn’t mean you’re not friends with her anymore,” Dash assured her. “Me and Derpy used to rough house all the time! Dad always used to say you’re not a real pegasus until you’ve broken your first bone.”

It wasn’t an uncommon attitude among pegasi. Some families even gave you a party when you broke your first bone. While pegasus bones broke easier, they also healed faster. Unless you completely shattered the legbone, you’d only need to be off it for a couple of days.

“Not even broken,” Dash concluded her probe. “Guess we don’t need Twi to fix it. You were bleeding pretty bad, though. I’m surprised.”

“Does this mean I’m not a real pegasus yet?” Scootaloo joked.

“Eh. I wouldn’t care about what Dad thinks,” Dash didn’t mention her father with any reverence. “You’ve been to the hospital way more than any other pegasus I’ve known, so even if you care about that stuff, you’ve got the rest of us beat!”

Scootaloo’s ears perked up at the mention of something they possibly had in common.

“Do you–?” Scootaloo began. “Do you not like Dad?”

“Eh.” Dash rubbed the back of her head and looked to some far-off place. “Dad was never around even when he was there. I think you and I got the short end of the stick when it comes to parents.”

Scootaloo nodded, agreeing without hesitation. She knew exactly what Dash meant. They had so much in common!

“But things are finally looking up for us, yeah?” Dash nuzzled her sister’s hair. “We got each other so we don’t need our parents.”

“Uh. Yeah.” Scootaloo tried to smile.

Maybe things would be going well for her. She might be able to get more of her medicine. That was her whole goal, after all.

She wasn’t happy about it at all, though! She had it too good these past few days. The thought of leaving it all behind, even if it was with unlimited Cronenboricil, made her sad.

Why couldn’t Rainbow Dash be just a little mean to her?

It was making things hard.

Now was the time she needed to press on as quickly as possible. She might not be welcome here much longer. Who knew how long she really had before Sweetie Belle found some way to ruin everything?

“So we’re doing potion stuff?” Dash turned back to Twilight. “Again?”

“I’ll be showing Rarity and Apple Bloom a few things. You need to work on hyper-casting,” said Twilight. “There’s an enormous amount of spells you won’t be able to use until you can master that.”

Scootaloo knew a little bit about witch stuff now. That was when you made your whole body glow like it was a unicorn’s horn. Allegedly, even a pegasus could use unicorn magic to an extent if you knew how to do that on a smaller scale.

Twilight threw Dash one of those pendants she made the others train with. This too, Scootaloo gleaned some information about. It contained ‘mind fibers’. Those temporarily gave you abilities that could be learned permanently if you repeated the skill enough times.

That was how Dash learned her favorite ability, the one that turned you into 20 crows.

“Try not to wipe yourself out in a few seconds this time,” said Twilight. “Your goal is to use as little magic as possible. You’re not nearly strong enough to cast a truly massive spell yet, so it’s pointless to try. This is more an attempt to use different types of magic.”

“Are you sure?” Dash stretched her wings. “Cause I feel like blowing myself out in seconds is a great workout! Pushing yourself past your limit is how you get stronger and with this thing, I can do that in the blink of an eye.”

“Normally it is, yes,” said Twilight. “But now isn’t a good time for that. Our attack on Minuette is only two days away. You don’t want to be exhausted for that.”

“Right, right. I won’t push myself today.” She looked at Scootaloo one last time. “You coming with me?”

“I think I’ll stay in here, thanks.”

Dash nodded and went outside to train. That left her, Apple Bloom, and Rarity alone with Twilight and her cauldron. If she was getting more medicine, she’d get it from that pot.

Scootaloo couldn’t just make Twilight declare that she was now going to make more Cronenboricil, then blindly fork them over. She had to find something to change that would lead to Twilight creating more medicine.

Sadly, it wasn’t as easy as pulling a ‘in this reality, I already convinced you to do what I wanted’. That one only worked if Scootaloo already had the ability to convince somepony to do something. Having spent her whole life with this power, Scootaloo could feel out how probable her attempts at persuasion would be.

This one felt incredibly difficult.

She knew there had to be some shocking ingredient inside them that Twilight would notice long before she set out to brew up some more. That’d explain why she couldn’t simply will more into existence, either. If it was unlikely she could find the ingredients for whatever she wanted to create, it was harder to force it to exist.

Her best bet? Get Twilight to tell her what that strange ingredient was then snap reality back before Twilight could react.

She just needed to hope she was fast enough. Also, she needed to think of a way to get that to happen in the first place.

Rarity was the one practicing swiping through the cauldron’s right now. If a pony pawed her hoof in one direction, the cauldron would vanish and a new one would appear, filled with something else. It took the unicorn a few attempts, but she eventually got to the one Twilight wanted.

“As I promised, I’ll be showing you how to analyze with the cauldron.” Twilight placed her hoof on the lip of her cauldron. “Both of you have basic proficiency at using its ability to channel information directly into your mind. Once you know how to use this to monitor the conditions of any reaction taking place inside, analyzing the contents of an unknown material is as simple as dissolving it. Thankfully, azoth can dissolve most matter.”

Scootaloo didn’t even set that one up! She’d seriously just gotten lucky for once.

This was it! Her best possible shot!

“Hey!” Scootaloo stepped off her perch and took out one of her pills. “Why don’t you use it on my medicine?”

“That’s a good idea!” Twilight smiled at the suggestion. “I don’t know what’s in those myself, so it will be a good opportunity to show the process. If I’ve seen whatever chemicals are in it before, you’ll immediately know its stored name. If not, you can still get a feel for its nature. Can you hand it to Apple Bloom?”

“Yeah, sure!” Scootaloo gave the other filly her pill.

Scootaloo watched with bated breath as Twilight showed the other two exactly what to do. Scootaloo herself didn’t pay much attention. She needed to be ready. There had to be something on the eight inside of those and Twilight might act as soon as she saw that.

Thankfully, the other two’s attention was on Twilight. None of them saw her sweat.

Apple Bloom climbed up a step stool and placed a hoof on the cauldron. The contents, seemingly of their own accord, changed to a liquid so clear Scootaloo could hardly be sure it was there at all.

Apple Bloom closed her eyes and dropped the specimen into this liquid. This was the moment of truth.

The tablet quickly dissolved into a blue cloud as Apple Bloom watched it with a furrowed brow. Her eyes widened and her frown deepened as the mixture turned black and began to swirl around rapidly.

Afraid of whatever the cauldron revealed to her, Apple Bloom tried to pull away only to find her hoof magnetically stuck to the cauldron.

“Are you alright?” Rarity asked her, then turned to Twilight. “Twilight, should we be concerned about this?”

Twilight became completely still the moment the mixture turned black. She stood with her eyes closed in contemplation of what she’d just seen. Or perhaps she was casting some mysterious spell.

Did she figure something out? Scootaloo hoped she didn’t figure something out! If Twilight herself came after Scootaloo, she wasn’t sure anything could save her!

Before Rarity could probe her any further, Apple Bloom finally broke free of the cauldron. The earth pony stumbled back and into the pile of books, knocking them all over.

“Are you alright?” Rarity ran to help her up. When Apple Bloom nodded, Rarity turned back to Twilight. “Twilight, what was that?”

Twilight kept silent. She wasn’t going to say!

If Scootaloo didn’t hear what her medicine contained, all of this would be a complete waste. She needed to think of something before Twilight completed whatever she had planned.

“Apple Bloom.” Scootaloo snuck up to the other filly while Rarity tried to snap Twilight out of her little trance. “You had your hoof on the cauldron. You know what it means, don’t you?”

Apple Bloom would tell her!

“Sort of?” Apple Bloom rubbed her head. “Oh, that’s right! I gotta write it down so I don’t forget it all.”

Apple Bloom grabbed her notebook and scribbled down the details. Scootaloo craned her neck around the other filly, but Apple Bloom’s handwriting was simply too terrible to read. Earth ponies always had the worst hoofwriting! Scootaloo hoped thinking that didn’t make her racist.

She began to write increasingly slowly until her pencil stopped in the middle of a letter and she stared at her page in deep concern. Putting it to paper made it all click with her.

“Wait. Broken spacetime?” Apple Bloom turned her head to Scootaloo who still hung off of her to the side. “Say, Scootaloo? Why does your heart medication have paradox materials inside it?”

“It’s a really bad heart condition?” Scootaloo smiled wide and chuckled awkwardly.

She jumped off Apple Bloom and took a few steps back. Both Apple Bloom and Rarity were looking at her now.

It didn’t matter! That stuff was called ‘broken spacetime’. That might be all she needed.

“Scootaloo, if something is wrong you know you can tell us, yes?” Rarity asked. “I don’t know what secret you and Rainbow Dash have been keeping from us, but it can’t possibly be that bad compared to what we normally do."

She’d been in this reality long enough!

Scootaloo slightly altered the distortion field so that they’d thrown something else into the cauldron instead!

The scene snapped as the world caught up. Now all three of them stood in front of the cauldron, looking in. The liquid glowed yellow now, which notably didn’t worry Apple Bloom at all, and Twilight explained what this meant to the others.

Scootaloo had no time to pay attention to this. The question now was whether she could make more of this medicine with her new knowledge.

She took a step back and pulled her hoof to try and make a copy of a pill. It felt different this time.

One of the limitations of Scootaloo’s powers was that the less plausible a change she wanted to make was, the harder it would be to enact. She could, when she went to distort reality, feel out the plausibility of any change.

Cronenboricil felt easy to make now! She swiped her hoof and a blue pill appeared in it.

Shaking with excitement, Scootaloo needed to steady herself to put it between her teeth.

She felt the tingle! It was totally working!

Though she still wasn’t sure if she’d be able to easily do it outside of this place, where its creation was less plausible. Thankfully, it wasn’t the cauldron that she felt a tug from when she’d created the pill. Instead, it seemed connected to something behind her.

Scootaloo scanned the shelf of reagents behind her and quickly zeroed in on the source. She found a jar filled with a blue powder– the exact same color as her medicine.

“Hey, Twilight!” Scootaloo interrupted her. “What’s in this jar?”

“Oh, that’s temporally displaced powdered carborundum.” Twilight didn’t even glance back at her.

“Uh.” Scootaloo knew what ‘powdered’ meant. “Does that have anything to do with broken spacetime?”

Twilight turned to face Scootaloo now, raising her brow in concern.

“It’s a type of that, yes,” said Twilight. “Is everything okay? Hold on. Are you–”

Before Twilight could finish the thought, Scootaloo moved everything back a few seconds again. Twilight was no longer suspicious. Scootaloo was safe. Easy!

This was it!

She just needed to steal that jar and she’d be able to create as much medicine as she wanted. Creating medicine wouldn't actually deplete the contents of the jar, so she'd be able to make more indefinitely.

Scootaloo shoved it into her saddlebag. Just to be on the safe side, she grabbed a few more things from Twilight’s shelves and nabbed them all. Then she made one more tiny alteration to reality.

“You wanted me to bring all this to Rainbow Dash, right?” Scootaloo backed out of the room. “Hehe! I’ll be right back!”

She closed the door behind her, emerging just outside the castle itself. Twilight wasn’t chasing after her. She was home free!

Scootaloo let out a sigh of relief, then took out the bottle of blue powder. She really should feel elated about solving this problem, but all she felt was a sinking feeling.

Scootaloo herself never felt bad about stealing stuff up till now. Why was she suddenly feeling bad about this?

It was true Twilight and Rainbow Dash had been so nice to her these past few days. She couldn’t help but feel like this was a betrayal even though she hadn’t even known them for a week.

But she reminded herself that she shouldn’t feel bad about this! Snap wouldn’t feel bad about it! He always called betrayal ‘an important strategic tool’. Knowing when to stab a pony in the back was just part of being a good leader!

Scootaloo was just doing what she needed to do. This was how you made it in the real world. So why should she feel bad?

They were only being nice to her since they thought she was Dash’s sister, she decided. If they knew what she really was, they’d lock her up or worse. They wouldn’t care about her at all if it weren’t for the reality distortion.

So it was okay to steal from them.

“Yeah.” Scootaloo nodded to herself.

Though despite conjuring that thought to make herself feel better, remembering Dash didn’t really care about her only made Scootaloo feel worse.

She had to get out of here before she did something stupid.

Scootaloo rushed back inside the castle. No more thinking till she was far away from here!

She had to get back into the room with the portal, down in the basement. Once she got back to Ponytown, she’d think about where to go next.

The portal room was on the second floor, she remembered. Scootaloo hurried straight there, thankful she didn’t run into anypony. She threw the door open and paused briefly. The room looked different now.

The blue circle in the center of the room hadn’t changed and the portal lay open before her. Through the floor and the clarity of the portal, Scootaloo could already see her exit, Dash’s basement, on the other end.

But now several additional items stood in the room. Namely, those cabinet-sized machines from Rarity’s room now lined the walls. A few other devices littered the room as well, though Scootaloo didn’t recognize any of these.

Most worryingly, Sweetie Belle, her archnemesis, stood waiting for her right in front of the portal. A thick cable ran from her to the portal and into Dash’s home.

Before Scootaloo could do anything, Sweetie Belle spoke.

“Scootaloo! Hold on!” Sweetie Belle opened her forelegs. “I’m not letting you leave until you watch an important message!”

Scootaloo glanced back at the door. She could easily make the portal be set up in another room. Having it be in the middle of the hallway would take a bit too much effort, as that wasn’t something Twilight would have reasonably done.

Fighting was dangerous for Scootaloo.

“I swear I was just about to leave!” Scootaloo promised. “Let me through and everything here goes back to normal.”

“If you still want to leave after seeing this, I’ll let you,” said Sweetie Belle.

There was no way to know if this robot would keep her promise.

Sweetie Belle looked at Scootaloo’s overflowing bags and the bottle of glowing blue dust around her neck. Thankfully, she didn’t say anything.

Meanwhile, Scootaloo scraped her hoof against the ground. Curiosity got the better of her. Maybe she could at least see what Sweetie Belle wanted to show her.

“Okay, but this better not take long.” Scootaloo sat down. “I’m only giving you two minutes.”

A projector on top of the machines turned on, filling the far side of the room with a color image. Scootaloo thought the color projector Allgood gave her was fancy, but this one’s colors were far more vivid. It also didn’t have any film spinning through it, making her wonder how it even worked.

Of course, the only thing she’d been allowed to watch her whole life was movies meant for babies. If Sweetie Belle seriously tried to show her something like that, Scootaloo would run out right there.

The movie began to play and she saw an image of… Pinkie Pie?

Scootaloo looked at it in disbelief. Did Pinkie record a message for her?

The projector made it so Pinkie Pie stood at the same height she would have in real life, a little taller than Scootaloo herself.

Pinkie Pie stood in the living room of Dash’s house– the place Scootaloo had lived in for the past four days. Scootaloo had no idea if Pinkie would still think she was Dash’s sister. She’d never seen if her reality distortion field bled through portals. She’d find out if it did in a second.

“Oh, hey!” Pinkie, in the movie, waved at Scootaloo. “I can see you! Can you see me?”

“I see it on both sides,” Sweetie Belle answered. “This is live. The Pinkie in the movie can see you.”

“Huh?”

Scootaloo tested the claim. She lowered her right ear and reached her left hoof over to tap its tip. Pinkie responded without even being challenged.

“Oh! I do see it!” Pinkie pointed straight at her. “You’re poking your right ear with your left hoof, yeah?”

She took a step back in surprise. Just then, Scootaloo realized a camera pointing at her from above one of the large machines. She’d never seen anything like this before.

Phones were bad enough, but if such technology existed on the edge, Scootaloo would be in trouble someday.

“You’re Scootaloo, right?” Pinkie asked.

It didn’t sound like Pinkie remembered her. Scootaloo scrambled to think of what to do in this situation.

“Yeah! Well my sister Rainbow Dash wanted me to–”

“Oh, I’m not affected by your powers right now,” said Pinkie. “But no need to explain anything. I already figured out what you really are.”

“You did?” Scootaloo’s ears fell flat against her head. She backed up towards the door.

This was the worst possible scenario. If they knew Scootaloo’s secret, they wouldn’t stop until they locked her up again. She needed to think of something.

“Yeah! You’re a filly who ran away from home!” Pinkie jumped up to the camera so that her bright smile filled the entire wall.

Scootaloo stumbled in surprise and fell onto her haunches. At least Pinkie didn’t call her a monster, as she’d expected.

“She told you, right?” Scootaloo looked over at Sweetie Belle, then pointed at herself. “What I can do?”

“Oh yeah, sure.” Pinkie blew that little hook in her main away from her eye. “You got a reality distorting thing in your brain, and you escaped from some corporate lab.”

She said all that so casually!

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” said Pinkie.

“It isn’t?!”

“If a scared little runaway filly shows up in my house, helping her out is gonna be the first thing I do.”

“I’m not a little kid. I’m almost a teenager and then I’ll almost be a mare!” Scootaloo object, only to realize how silly she sounded. “Okay, I guess maybe I am.”

“Can you tell me why you ran away? Did something scary happen?” Pinkie, at the urging of Sweetie Belle on the other side, took a few steps back to become less gigantic. “Was somepony being mean to you?”

“That’s not important.”

“Sure it is! I gotta know what’s wrong if I’m gonna help you.”

“Help me go back inside my cage?” Scootaloo asked. “You just want to lock me away so you don’t have to deal with me! Cause that’s the ‘responsible’ thing to do or whatever!”

“You don’t gotta worry about anything like that. There’s no way I’d let you go back there if those ponies are hurting you,” Pinkie Promised.

Hurting her?

That was the problem. Oh, how Scootaloo wished they were abusing her over there.

It wasn’t like they were electrocuting her or throwing her in vats of acid to see what would happen. Those tests they did on her were boring, but far from torture. The most terrible horror story Scootaloo could offer Pinkie was that one time they made her lie down in a metal tube for three hours until she fell asleep.

Her prison was nicer than most pony’s homes. They let her go outside to her ‘playground’ every day. She ate expensive food.

Her problems just weren’t good enough.

Whenever Scootaloo told somepony how unbearably boring her life was, how she felt like her ‘father’ exploited her for profit, how she had no hope for having a life at all, nopony cared. They just thought dismissed such concerns as childish and stupid.

Even Starlight, who’d give her some small concession every now and then, was quick to remind Scootaloo how selfish her desires were. Other ponies had it worse than Scootaloo. Her complaints were always dismissed, and she got sent back to the cage ‘for her own good’.

Scootaloo deeply wished that Snap had punched her in the face just once so she could be worthy of sympathy.

Pinkie watched Scootaloo struggle with the question, sympathetic for now, no doubt imagining Scootaloo being dissected alive by Allgood.

“Oh, hey! Just between you and me, Allgood is already in a lot of trouble,” Pinkie leaned in to whisper it to Scootaloo. “They didn’t tell the authorities you got out, so I bet they’ll lose custody of you just for that!”

Her ears perked up as that fact created the tiniest shred of hope. The thought of Snap getting in trouble for something seemed too good to be true.

“So come on. Don’t you wanna tell your best friend Pinkie Pie what’s wrong?” Pinkie asked.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Then why’d you run away?”

“I just don’t like it there.”

“How come?”

“Why do you even care?” Scootaloo asked. “Don’t you have a million stocks in Allgood or something? If you get them in trouble, you’ll lose money. I know how this thing works.”

“You don’t gotta worry about that! All my money is in Curse Tech stocks, palladium, and war bonds. Even if palladium and Curse Tech go to zero, I’m still set for life. Whatever happens to Allgood doesn’t affect me.”

“But what about the fact that I–” Scootaloo looked over at Sweetie Belle, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of being right. “Aren’t you angry I brainwashed you? I was living with you guys for four days, eating your gift baskets.”

“Do you know how many times I’ve been brainwashed?” Pinkie laughed. “You didn’t even make me eat a gross bug or anything. I think. Did you make me eat bugs?”

“No. I can’t directly control ponies like that.”

“Then it’s fine! You were scared and desperate. Just promise not to do it again and we’re bestos! Come on, you know you wanna be friends with Pinkie Pie, right?”

Secretly? Yes. Scootaloo did want to be friends with Pinkie Pie.

Staying there for four days was a mistake. She knew it was a stupid idea even at the time. She’d just liked it at Dash’s house so much she couldn’t help herself. Now she’d gotten attached. Some part of her saw Pinkie as a friend even if she knew it wasn’t true.

Snap always warned to ‘never let yourself get attached’ to anypony. That’s why he never even used anypony else’s name, just calling them all by their job titles instead. If you let yourself get attached, you made stupid, emotional decisions.

“If you stayed with me for four days, then you know you can tell your Granny Pie anything, right?” Pinkie winked at her. “I’m free all day. You can rant at me for hours and hours if you want.”

“I dunno!” Scootaloo shuffled her forehooves in place, kneading the stone floor. “It’s just boring.”

Pinkie didn’t immediately dismiss the concern, at least. For now, she nodded along.

Scootaloo knew she’d needed something better than that, though. One complaint already bubbled at the surface of her mind.

“They treat me like I’m some bug they’re studying,” said Scootaloo. “Snap won’t even call me by my name. He always calls me ‘subject 2’, even when he’s talking to me! A-and he’s supposed to be my… my legal guardian.”

“Oh, wow.” Pinkie turned her brows up in sympathy. “Your own dad won’t even say your name? No wonder you didn’t like it there.”

“Snap isn’t my dad!” Scootaloo corrected her. “I guess legally he’s my father. But I don’t have any real parents.”

“It sounds like he’s supposed to be your dad, but he’s not doing a good job,” said Pinkie. “Is there anypony where you live who’s nice to you?”

“He hires tons of ponies to ‘deal’ with me. But the only kind ones got scared and ran away,” Scootaloo admitted. “The only ones who are left are ponies who care more about money than anything else. I know because I’ve used my powers on them to see!”

Pinkie nodded along as Scootaloo ranted.

“Nopony else says my name cause Snap does it and he’s the boss,” she kept going, encouraged by Pinkie’s lack of objection. “I mean, he’s like that with everyone. He calls his employees by their job. His secretary is just ‘Secretary’. Snap says you gotta earn the right to be called by your name.”

“Being surrounded by ponies like that sounds horrible.” Pinkie shook her head. “You know, I bet I would have run away from that place too!”

“You would?”

Scootaloo blinked and looked up at Pinkie in amazement. Nopony had ever taken her side like this. She felt her eyes begin to tear up.

If she wasn’t getting angry, it wasn’t dangerous. Still, she knew Snap would scold her for being this emotional at all. And he’d be right.

“Sure! Who would want to stick around in a place where they don’t even call you by your name?” Pinkie asked.

“Don’t you know how dangerous I am?” Scootaloo asked. “Aren’t you scared I might lose control and hurt you?”

“You were okay for a few days by yourself,” said Pinkie. “Sure we gotta think of some way to keep you safe, but I’m not gonna ‘lock you up’ or send you back to Allgood, okay? Hey! I’ll tell you what. If you stop distorting reality, we can have hot cocoa and talk about what to do next, okay? I’ll listen to everything you have to say.”

Pinkie couldn’t give Scootaloo what she truly wanted, for the last few days to have been real.

“Can you stop distorting reality for me?” Pinkie asked. “Just for a few minutes. I’ll come over and we can have cocoa and talk about what we should do with you. I won’t make you go back to Allgood like I promised.”

Scootaloo shifted her forehooves uncomfortably.

She deeply wished she could be friends with Pinkie for real. If she had a shot at that, shouldn’t she take it?

Only the chance that this may be a trap made her hesitate. That and one other thing.

“Do you think Rainbow Dash will be mad at me?” Scootaloo asked.

“No way!” Pinkie laughed. “Even if she is, I’ll explain things to her, okay?”

She looked over at Sweetie Belle who smiled wide with those eyes.

They gave her a moment to make her agonizing decision. It felt like the two of them asked her to dive off a cliff. As much as she wanted to believe Pinkie, there was no way Scootaloo wouldn’t get in any trouble.

The smart thing to do would be to lure Pinkie in, use her powers on the psychic and run!

But… looking up at her smiling face, Scootaloo decided maybe she could give her a small chance first.

Okay! She’d let Pinkie come over here, then distort reality again if things went south. If there was any evidence they had an SCU or if they started yelling at her, Scootaloo would book it.

Scootaloo nodded slightly, bracing herself for any attack that was about to come. Then she ended her reality distortion.

“I think it’s gone,” said Sweetie Belle.

Nothing appeared to happen at first.

But before she could get her hopes up, Twilight teleported into the room next to her!

“Don’t be scared.” Twilight took a step towards her, horn glowing. “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s clear you have no idea–”

Scootaloo panicked before Twilight’s words registered.

She deleted the ground below her, creating a hole in the floor to drop through. Like that, she went down two stories and landed somewhere dark.

Adrenaline made the pain of her landing unnoticed. It wasn’t until she took a step forward that she noticed the problem.

She hurt her leg in the fall! She could feel it waking up now!

Scootaloo hissed in pain as she tried to stand on her injured ankle. Reality was distorting beyond her control. Objects in the room disappeared one by one until nothing remained.

She looked up at the ceiling and decided that bridge was burned. She was already on thin ice. That had to have pushed things over the edge!

What had she even been thinking? She should have just used her powers on Pinkie to begin with. It was the safer plan.

Twilight teleported to her side a second time, not wasting even a single second.

“I’m telling you I’m not here to hurt you!” Twilight held out a silver chain with a white feather at the end of it. “I have no idea who you are, but you clearly have a problem and I can help.”

“No!” Scootaloo closed her eyes tight and snapped reality back to where she was Dash’s sister. Twilight, too, went back to wherever she’d been. “Will you people stop being nice to me?!”

Scootaloo opened her eyes to find herself alone again.

It wouldn’t last long. Sweetie Belle would find her soon. She needed to run.

Looking around the room, she found there was no longer an exit. All the doors and windows in this room were deleted. This is what it did! When Scootaloo got scared like this it threw up barriers all around her, inadvertently trapping her as well.

Scootaloo tried to create a door to the outside, but her powers wouldn’t cooperate when she got like this.

“I don’t need you to protect me!” Scootaloo growled at that monster. “I’m the smart one. Just let me stay in control.”

But it wasn’t going to listen to her.

Losing control always made her nervous which just led to less control. She needed to calm herself. She’d already overdosed on her medicine during her confrontation with Sweetie Belle. Any more and Scootaloo might pass out.

Then what would happen?

“Fine! We’ll do your thing!”

Deletion. That was the one thing it always wanted to do. No matter how bad things got, Scootaloo could always manage that much.

She deleted a large hole in the wall and the path to freedom revealed itself.

Now she just needed to book it into the forest.

She ran awkwardly on three legs towards the edge of the castle grounds.

Things were getting worse! Why couldn’t Scootaloo had just been Rainbow Dash’s sister for real? Apparently, her life could have been so easy and good if she just had that one wish granted.

Scootaloo charged past Twilight’s tree, hoping nopony noticed the grass vanishing all around her as she hobbled along. She got a good distance away before remembering why she’d wanted to use the portal to escape in the first place.

A massive barrier surrounded the castle. From far away, it was invisible, but as she got closer, the part just before her became opaque and white. She needed to delete a hole in it if she wanted to leave.

Already she could feel this wasn’t a normal magical shield. Even for her, tearing a hole in this thing would take a significant amount of effort.

Scootaloo allowed the parasite to go wild. She focused all of her efforts on making part of the barrier vanish. Everything nearby disappeared from her attempt.

The trees, the grass, even the ground below her feet all disappeared. It became clod and dark around her as the hole in reality continued to eat and grow. Soon Scootaloo was standing in a black void. Yet it still wasn’t enough!

She could feel blood running down her nose. That was one of the real limits to her powers. If she lost too much blood and passed out that would be it.

It wouldn’t come to that! Scootaloo was getting close.

“Scootaloo!”

She froze. That was the last voice she wanted to hear. Not Twilight, but Rainbow Dash.

She turned around to see Dash running up from behind.

“Scootaloo! Get out of there!” Dash called out to her.

“Rainbow Dash, no!” Scootaloo struggled to get her powers under control. The void continued to creep out farther and farther. “Don’t come any closer! You’re the only one I don’t want to hurt!”

To her credit, Dash did grind to a halt rather than jumping straight into the blackness.

“Do you know what’s happening?” Dash asked.

“It doesn’t matter! Just leave!” Scootaloo yelled at her. “It’s too dangerous.”

Dash ignored her urging and tried casting the murder spell.

She sent nearly all of her crows into the darkness, only for all of them to get destroyed. The last crow fluttered back from the advancing blackness and reverted to a pony.

“What the crow is this stuff?” Dash looked down at it with frustration.

“You have to leave!” Scootaloo called after her. “Just go away! It’s too late for me. It’s too dangerous.”

“No! I’ll never leave you behind!” Dash boldly took a step forward. “Listen, I know you were too young to remember when Mom left us. But I swore I’d never abandon somepony else like that. I’m staying with you no matter how bad it gets.”

“Rainbow Dash.” Scootaloo’s eyes watered.

“So if you know what’s going on, tell me. If not– I’ll get Twilight or something, but you’re crazy if you think I’m leaving you behind.”

So many times she’d made herself Snap’s daughter. Even that wasn’t enough for him. Even then he only ever thought about using her to get more money and power, just in slightly different ways. Yet Dash wasn’t going to stop trying to ‘rescue’ her as long as she thought Scootaloo was her sister.

She couldn’t take it! She couldn’t put someone who’d come after her like this in danger.

Once more, Scootaloo used her failing grasp on her powers to set things back. She reverted reality and was no longer Dash’s sister.

Now Dash would run away.

The pegasus blinked in confusion. Apparently, she would have come out here either way. Though it looked like Scootaloo hadn’t set things right properly. They didn’t usually notice a change.

“Okay, how did I get here?” Dash took in the void that was slowly spreading towards her. “Did I eat the wrong brownies again?”

It only took her a second to notice Scootaloo. Without hesitation, Dash tried to fly forward to rescue Scootaloo. Dash tried the murder spell once again, forgetting she’d already done that. Once more, it had no effect but to show Dash that the darkness destroyed everything inside it.

“Kid! Can you get out of there?!” Dash called to her as she looked around, considering her options.

Scootaloo stood still.

“Look, I’m going to help you, okay? Just give me a second.”

“You don’t even know who I am!” Scootaloo objected. “I’m trespassing, aren’t I?!”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Scootaloo stared up at her, dumbfounded. Even as a total stranger, Dash was willing to risk her life for Scootaloo.

“You don’t understand!” Scootaloo objected. “I’m the one doing this.”

“Can you stop?”

“No! I’m losing control! You have to get away before then! I don’t want you to get hurt! Please!”

“Okay, well I have no idea what’s going on, either. But I have a friend who can probably help.” Dash looked back towards Twilight’s tree.

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight teleported next to her on cue. “There you are! How many times do I have to tell you I’m trying to prevent something like this from happening? I don’t want to hurt you.”

They kept refusing to do anything but try to help her.

And Scootaloo just kept putting them in danger.

“Do you know anything about this?” Dash asked.

“She’s surrounded by a break in reality,” said Twilight. “Anything that blackness touches will be deleted from existence.”

“What?!” Dash jumped back from it. “That’s… pretty horrifying, Twilight.”

“It’s not as big a deal as it sounds.” Twilight shook her head. “Being deleted from existence isn’t as bad as being killed.”

“It’s not?”

“Well if you die you’re dead, but if you don’t exist you’re neither living or dead. Much easier to fix.”

“Yeah, okay!” Dash stopped her explanation. “So please tell me there’s something you can do about this!”

“I’ve been trying to help her.” Twilight shot a look at Scootaloo. “But it’s difficult when she’s surrounded by this.”

The barrier behind her opened up at last.

Scootaloo looked out into the forest, towards freedom.

Surrounded by this all-consuming void she’d be able to get away now! She just had to set herself back to being Dash’s sister and run.

She looked down at her bag to find that the broken spacetime and her medicine were the only things left. She’d never been able to erase them before.

Dammit!

Snap wouldn’t hesitate to run away right now! He’d do the smart thing and escape.

But Scootaloo just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t steal something from Rainbow Dash. She couldn’t put Rainbow Dash in any kind of danger. Not after all this.

“Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo turned her back on the hole in the barrier. “I’m giving up, okay?”

“No! It’s not too late!” Dash reached into the barrier only to find the leg she stuck in begin to vanish.

“Not like that!” Scootaloo shook her head. Shaking, she took out a hoof full of pills, maybe six or seven. “I’m surrendering to you. Just ask Sweetie Belle. Everything she says is true, okay?”

Without another word, Scootaloo swallowed all the pills at once.

This wasn’t the first time she overdosed like this, knew it would knock her out for hours.

The pills took effect instantly. Her entire body tingled, then shook until she fell over. It was so dark and numb around her that she couldn’t tell if her eyes were closed as she lay on the ground.

She wasn’t even sure if she was awake anymore.

Scootaloo ruffled her wings as she began to awaken. She rested somewhere soft and warm enough that it made her not want to get up. Something other than the blanket filled her with comfort. An aura of safety surrounded her. The parasite in her brain slept deeper than any other time she could remember. All her problems seemed so far away.

She heard Rainbow Dash and the rest talking nearby. They were all in the same room. Deciding to pretend to be asleep and listen in, she snuggled her head deeper into her pillow.

“How long have you been a witch?!” Derpy demanded Twilight answer.

“Since before you were born,” said Twilight. “If you combine all of your ages together it’s been longer than that.”

“And have you been working for Twilight since before I was born too?” Derpy asked.

“Yeah, I wish.” The eye-roll was all but audible in Dash’s voice. “You think I would have been living in a studio apartment for six years if I knew this was an option?”

“Exactly!” Twilight’s voice seeped with pride. “Rainbow Dash loves being my minion.”

“So what?” Derpy stomped her hoof. “We all just go work for Twilight forever? Is that your plan?!”

“Even if you hate witches more than anything in the world, helping Twilight is still the way to go. We’re going to get rid of all the other witches.”

“I guess that’s logical,” Derpy reluctantly conceded. “I mean, it’s the best long-term witch reduction strategy.”

Derpy hummed in frustration.

“Come on, you’ve known me since preschool. And you’ve known ‘Silverstorm’ for a solid week. Plus you got Pinkie vouching for her on top of that. You trust us, right?”

“Maybe,” said Derpy. “But how do you know this isn’t all part of her plan? She could have been planning everything down to the last feather for hundreds of years!”

“This was my plan. I’m the one who went looking for her. Remember? Twilight would have just sat around her house forever without me.”

“Oh, yeah. That does change things.” Derpy scraped her hoof against the stone floor a few times, considering her position. “Alright! I said I’d trust you and I meant it. I’ll stay loyal to you, Rainbow Dash.”

“Right on!” Dash cheered for her.

“But if you suddenly turn evil–! Well, realistically I won’t be able to stop you, but I will be mad!”

They weren’t talking about Scootaloo at all! None of this was important to her.

Scootaloo had to get up and face them eventually. Sadly, there was no graceful way to do this.

Deciding to just get it over with, Scootaloo sprang up from under the covers and leaned against the arm of the couch.

“Oh, hey Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo put on a smile, only to realize she said that too soon before she’d even found Dash herself.

She glanced left to find Dash on the far opposite side of the room. Trying to salvage it, she pointed at Dash and grinned.

“What’s up?” Scootaloo wasn’t coming off as cool at all!

“Are you feeling okay?” Twilight approached her. She put her hoof on top of Scootaloo’s head as if to feel for a fever. The witch looked down at Scootaloo’s chest, bringing the filly’s attention down there as well.

Something hung from her neck on a chain. She briefly assumed they must have done something to restrain her, but if that was their intention, they picked a bizarre method. The chains around her neck were slender, forming more of a necklace than a binding, and at the end of it, like a charm, hung a single feather.

That feather shone a white purer than anything Scootaloo had ever seen or imagined possible. It was as if it was made of whiteness itself. About the size of an adult pegasus’ feather, it covered a good portion of her chest.

She knew now that the calm aura she felt radiated out from this feather. It soothed the parasite in her brain.

The parasite wasn’t even asleep, exactly. Scootaloo knew what a real coma felt like, as she’d taken ten of those pills at once to knock it out stone cold. Instead, that anger and aggression that constantly radiated from it felt shielded from her.

“You’re talking about the parasite?” Scootaloo asked. “I think it’s calmed down. What is this thing?”

Scootaloo waved the feather.

“I assume I shouldn’t take it off?” Scootaloo was met with a nod from Twilight.

“You don’t know what it is?” Twilight cocked her eyebrow. “One of them must have noticed. Maybe they just never told you.”

“Told me what?”

“This is an alicorn’s feather.” Twilight held the white feather in her hoof, then tapped Scootaloo’s head. “And so is this. You have another alicorn feather lodged in your brain. Based on the story I heard, a number of them must have fallen when that portal opened.”

“A feather?” Scootaloo couldn’t accept that. “No, I’ve seen the pictures of that thing a million times and it doesn’t look anything like a feather.”

“Yeah.” Pinkie nodded. “That has to be the grossest and most tentacly feather ever.”

“Originally it was a feather,” Twilight clarified. “Alicorn feathers can become any number of things. If you recall, the first pegasi were all born from the same. In one sense you are one of these feathers. So you shouldn’t be so surprised. In fact, the one I gave you fell at the same time as the one that became Golden Feather.”

Scootaloo looked down at her gift with renewed amazement. Was this object really some ancient relative of hers?

She turned next to Rainbow Dash, a thought bringing a smile to her face. If everything about Golden Feather was true, then technically the two of them were related.

“So this thing could turn into a pony?” Dash lowered her head to inspect Scootaloo’s charm.

“Unlikely,” Twilight briefly dismissed the idea before her eyes popped open with inspiration. “Actually, wait. Hypothetically, if you inserted it into your—”

“Okay, okay!” Dash stopped her right there. “Twi, there are kids here!”

“Right. Sorry.” Twilight blushed, then cleared her throat to quickly change the subject. “I suppose it’s too old, regardless. This feather is truly ancient and most of its magic is gone.”

“But it still has enough left to protect me?” Scootaloo hoped

“Sort of. It’s not the magic that protects you,” said Twilight. “There aren’t many left, but the knowledge of these feathers has been passed down to me. Feathers forcefully ripped from an alicorn, as I presume the one in your skull was, radiate destruction and chaos. They inevitably twist themselves into horrific monstrosities, like those that fill the outer realm.”

Scootaloo nodded. That sounded like the one she had.

“The one I gave you is different,” said Twilight. “It radiates order and protection. It’ll largely cancel out the effects of the other one. You won’t be as powerful when wearing it, but you’ll have more control. Needless to say, you should never take it off.”

“So does this thing magically fix all of my problems?” Scootaloo couldn’t possibly believe that much was true. “As long as I’m wearing it?”

“Not completely,” said Twilight. “It can still awaken, so you’ll still need help. Also, there’s the problem that you have dangerous alicorn magic in the first place. Given that you surrendered, I’ll assume you learned a lesson about not stealing things today.”

“And not brainwashing ponies,” Sweetie Belle added.

“And!” Pinkie jumped up on Twilight’s back. “That there’s plenty of ponies you can trust to help you.”

Scootaloo looked at each of them before sighing in defeat.

“Uh.” Scootaloo blushed with embarrassment and looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry. I won’t run this time.”

She stood up on the couch to try and plead her case.

“It’s just– Snap never worries about who he hurts! I thought if nopony cared about me, it’d be okay for me to not care about anypony.” Scootaloo put her hoof on the gift Twilight gave her. “So I stole a bunch of stuff and used my powers to manipulate ponies. I decided I’d do whatever I wanted to whoever I wanted and never feel bad about it.”

Scootaloo scraped her blankets with a hoof.

“Only I did feel bad about it.” She shook her head. “You were being too nice to me! I couldn’t use my powers against you. So sorry.”

She looked up at Rainbow Dash, desperate for her approval. Rainbow Dash frowned slightly at her as Scootaloo made her plea, filling her with a dread that she was about to get scolded. For the first time, Scootaloo felt like she deserved to be yelled at.

“Why do you act like that last part is the thing to be ashamed of?” Dash asked, more calmly than Scootaloo expected.

“Huh?” Scootaloo didn’t have an answer. She simply felt like she was supposed to be ashamed of it.

“And if you hate this Snap guy so much, why are you trying to be like him?” Dash asked her.

“I–” Scootaloo looked down at the floor.

She’d never thought of it like that, so she didn’t have a response. This whole time she really had been trying to imitate Snap, to behave like the worst person she knew. It didn’t make a lot of sense when somepony said it out loud.

“I guess,” Scootaloo struggled to put her feelings in context, “Snap always gets what he wants. I thought manipulating other ponies was the only thing that worked in real life. Anything else was just in stupid comic books. Everypony always called my comic books stupid.”

Almost everypony, that is. All of them but the ones paid to pretend to care about her and Rainbow Dash.

“Don’t worry! That’s just how kids are.” Pinkie jumped up on the couch next to Scootaloo and caressed her back reassuringly. “They imitate the adults in their life. So I think it’s a good thing you ran away. If you stayed there till you were an adult, you might have turned into a sociopath too.”

“Turned into a what?” Scootaloo asked.

“A sociopath,” Pinkie repeated. “That’s a pony who can hurt others and never feel bad about it.”

Maybe Pinkie was on to something. Being a sociopath sounding good to Scootaloo right now. A sociopath could have gotten away with so much more.

“Pinkie’s right,” Dash agreed. “You seem like you have a good heart, but you’ve been surrounded by bad influences. Letting somepony with alicorn magic grow up thinking they don’t need to care what happens to anypony else is outright dangerous.”

“I’m sorry.” Scootaloo lowered her head in defeat.

“Hey, don’t look so sad.” Dash tried to reassure her with a smile. “You should be proud you did the right thing despite being surrounded by bad role models your whole life. I just meant they were doing a bad job raising you.”

She needed a better role model? She already had somepony in mind, of course.

Scootaloo held her breath and looked up at Rainbow Dash. Her body froze at the thought of confessing her admiration.

She closed her eyes and forced herself to say it anyway.

“I don’t want to be like Snap anymore,” Scootaloo declared. “I want to be like you, Rainbow Dash!”

“Eh?” Dash took a step back in surprise.

Scootaloo’s ears dropped. She had to remind herself that Rainbow Dash didn’t see her as a sister anymore. She had to start from zero.

“You were really nice to me when you thought I was your sister,” Scootaloo explained. “You go out and fight against the problems of the world no one else is willing to deal with. And you always try to make friends with your enemies. You’re just like a comic book hero! If someone like you can exist, then I want to be like you when I grow up!”

Dash was too flattered to even maintain eye contact. She blushed heavily and looked to the side, laughing nervously and tussling the back of her mane.

“Uh– so can I join your evil organization?” Scootaloo looked up at Dash who frowned at the idea. She moved forward to desperately plead her case. “I have alicorn magic! I can help you take over the world! Think about it.”

“Hehe! Whoa. Hold on a sec. No.” Dash shot down the idea. “I know you’ve got literal god-like powers, but I’m not sending a kid into battle. That’d be a war crime and I don’t want to go there just yet.”

Crestfallen, her ears and wings drooped. Maybe it was true she didn’t deserve to stay here after everything she did.

“Oh. So does this mean I don’t have to go back to Allgood?” Scootaloo winced a little, bracing for the impact of any bad news rather than daring to hope.

“No way you’re going back with Allgood,” Pinkie promised her. “Snap won’t be allowed to take you back if we tell them he tried to cover this up.”

“Then I guess I’d be sent back to Area 5X?” The thought of it wasn’t enough to make Scootaloo smile. In the end, she got what she wanted, but it didn’t feel like a happy ending. “At least I’d get to hang out with Lilymoon again.”

She looked around the room and nopony else appeared satisfied with that plan, either. Every one of them frowned.

“Hey, hey!” Dash stomped a hoof to get Scootaloo’s attention. “I never said we were just gonna toss you out, just that I wasn’t going to make you fight. Even if we do have to send you back to Area 5X, I bet I’ll have enough clout to help you out before long. Heck, if they let me babysit Trixie, maybe they’ll trust me with you too. I’m not sure we even should send you there in the first place. What do you guys think?”

“I believe letting her go back would be a horrid idea,” said Rarity. “Trixie is a hardened criminal, so we have some hope she’ll stay quiet. But a small child that knows all of our secrets? Why I could hardly sleep at night knowing such a thing was in Starlight’s possession.”

The urge to blurt out that she couldn’t keep a secret to save her life tempted Scootaloo.

“I say it’s a bad idea to let her leave too,” said Twilight. “They’ve been too irresponsible with her and clearly don’t know what they’re doing. We shouldn’t let her go back until I at least have the chance to show them how to properly take care of this. In fact, getting the other one out should be added to the to-do list, in my opinion.”

Scootaloo didn’t dare to hope just yet, but she struggled to contain her smile at this point. She looked at each of the ponies in turn, none of them raising a serious concern with her staying here.

“I don’t mean to be that pony.” Derpy ruffled her wings. “But if we keep Scootaloo here, isn’t that kidnapping?”

Pinkie laughed at the idea.

“I learned this one back in the summer of 1311. If they can’t prove it, then legally speaking, it never happened.” Pinkie winked. “There’s no way they can prove Scootaloo’s been here the whole time. Not against my lawyer.”

“How can you be this flippant about the law?!” Derpy asked.

“The law is silly!” Pinkie draped herself over Derpy. “Legal and good are two different things. I learned to always do the right thing first and worry about how to convince a judge that it’s technically legal later.”

Derpy furrowed her brow, trying to come up with some objection.

“I guess I can’t say kidnapping her is wrong,” Derpy relented with a groaning sigh before snapping her attention to Dash. “You know, if I’m going to be keeping all this stuff a secret, I demand a pay raise!”

“I already pay you 200,000 bits a year,” Dash complained. “And that’s mostly so you won’t be tempted by bribes.”

Derpy puffed her cheeks out and glared at Dash, refusing to utter another word.

“Alright!” Dash folded in second. “Yeesh. Once this is over, I’ll make sure you’re set for life. Okay?”

Derpy smiled, satisfied with the promise.

“So you’ll really kidnap me?” Scootaloo flicked her tail, opened her wings, and looked up at Rainbow Dash with all the excitement of a filly before a pile of birthday presents. “For real?”

“Eh.” Dash gave one last look at her friends to make sure nopony objected. Finding none, she turned back to Scootaloo with a wink. “Yeah. Looks like it.”

“Oh, thank you so much!” Scootaloo jumped off the couch and tackled Dash with a hug. “This is the nicest thing anypony has ever done for me!”

Scootaloo dried her tears against Rainbow Dash’s chest. Even though she hardly knew Scootaloo anymore, Dash held her close and let the younger pegasus sob into her for a moment.

For the first time since she got out, she felt safe.

“But you gotta promise not to use your powers on us like that again,” Dash said. “Sweetie Belle will know if you do.”

Scootaloo nodded eagerly.

“And if there’s any problem you’re gonna come to us, okay?” Dash asked. “And you gotta do everything Twilight tells you to.”

She nodded even harder.

An absolute determination to earn Dash’s respect filled her.

“And might I add,” said Rarity, “that if you’re going to be staying in my home, I think it’s appropriate you apologize to my sister as well.”

Now for the hardest part.

She had to admit defeat to the pony who’d been the antagonist of her life these past couple of hours. Sweetie Belle was standing proud, borderline smug, as she waited for Scootaloo to apologize.

“I’m sorry for, uh–” Scootaloo knew she was in the wrong, but the name of the crime she committed escaped her at the moment. If she thought about it, Sweetie Belle was the only one she didn’t brainwash. “For defying you? And getting you in trouble.”

“Oh, it’s okay.” Sweetie Belle giggled and jokingly tousled Scootaloo’s mane. “Just never defy me again and we’ll be best friends.”

She could only hope it’d be that easy.

Murder Motel

A grandfather clock leaned crookedly against the wall, its glass cracked so that it was always midnight in Lazy Eye’s Hotel and Motel.

That was just the first on the extensive list of unsettling details Diamond Tiara noticed shortly after entering the hotel. She could mention the occasional breaks in the carpet that revealed floorboards cracking into splinters. She could point to the eerie portraits of ponies hung on every wall, each one of them angry and glaring right at you. She could complain about the terrible, harsh lights that sputtered and buzzed in pain.

Or she could close her eyes, spin in a circle, and point to something. No doubt her hoof would land somewhere unsettling or run down.

She had her best friend, Silver Spoon, and her goon, Snails, on her left and right. The rest of her class was here too. At least, the ones dumb enough to end up in summer school.

They’d just finished their trip to a Manehattan explosives factory to learn how to make bombs. Now they ended their day in this hope forsaken place on an empty road a few miles south of the city. The crowded buildings of Manehattan were still in sight from just outside, but not one other building stood within two miles of this place.

It made Diamond Tiara wonder if the locals knew something she didn’t. Even with all these familiar ponies around, the eeriness of this place made her feel dangerously alone.

A blue stallion in his fifties sat behind the counter, smiling and tapping his forehooves together. His left eye looked intently at the group while the right lulled off to the side. Diamond Tiara could only assume this was the hotel’s namesake– Lazy Eye himself.

His grey hairs thinned out to the point that they were little more than a few wiry strands that no combover could save. He smiled with his crooked jaw as Ms. Cheerilee approached him and got the keys to their rooms.

“Oh, no. We’re in a murder motel, aren’t we?” Diamond Tiara spun around as she walked forward, taking it all in. She ended her spin in front of Lazy Eye himself. “Just level with me, guy. Is this freaking murder motel?”

“Oh, I’ve never murdered anypony in this hotel.” Lazy Eye smiled and turned his good eye to her.

“But did anypony get murdered here?” Silver Spoon asked.

“Hm.” Lazy Eye tilted his head more than was natural and smiled all the wider. “I’m not legally required to answer that question.”

“Holy crow!” Diamond Tiara took a step back. “I’ve been around my dad’s lawyers enough to know that means yes. This is a murder motel!”

“Ms. Cheerilee!” Silver Spoon raised her hoof to beckon their teacher over. “Why do we have to stay at a murder motel?”

“Because the school system is underfunded,” Ms. Cheerilee deadpanned. “And maybe if any of you tried a little harder you wouldn’t be in summer school in the first place, hm?”

That comment was mostly targeted at Silver Spoon. Silver Spoon got perfect scores on every test but never did her homework. That worked out to give her a D. So despite having the highest SPT score in history and knowing everything, Silver Spoon barely managed to get to the 12th grade.

“Ms. Cheerilee, our outdated industrial model of school is specifically designed to crush our passion and turn us into mindless workers that are nothing more than cogs generating capital for the elite in factory settings that likely won’t even exist in ten years due to rapidly increasing levels of automation,” said Silver Spoon. “I don’t see any reason to engage with such a mockery of intellectual pursuit outside of what truancy laws mandate.”

“Yeah! I’m also disillusioned with the system,” said Diamond Tiara. “That’s why my grades are bad too.”

Though in reality, Diamond Tiara didn’t try because her dad was a billionaire, and she didn’t need to. Yeah. That was totally it.

“I try hard,” said Snails. “But snails and hacky sack are the only things I’m good at. Guess I should be happy I’m getting a scholarship for both! Hehe!”

Hacky sack recently became the fastest growing sport so somehow Snails was going to college.

“Look, can you three behave just this once?” Ms. Cheerilee. “I want you going straight to your rooms. That means no snooping around for mysteries to solve.”

“But we’re the Mystery Squad!” Snails grabbed Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara in a hug with either foreleg. “We’re like a mystery-solving team and we got this! Just like how we solved the mystery of the corn maze!”

“We solved one mystery,” Diamond Tiara reminded him.

“It was mostly me who solved that mystery,” said Silver Spoon. “And it’ll be mostly me solving this one too. You know, when somepony inevitably gets murdered. But I guess you two will also be there.”

Ms. Cheerilee gave up shortly after that, leaving to go tend to the children whom she still had some hope for.

“I guess it’s up to us to find the killer,” said Diamond Tiara. “Preferably before he kills somepony. It’s obviously Lazy Eye, right? He’s way too creepy to not be a murderer.”

“How do we know you aren’t the killer, dude?” Snails pointed an accusing hoof at him. “You could be killing somepony right now under that desk!”

Lazy Eye laughed. Of course, he cackled in the creepiest way possible, with a stuttering rasp.

“My, my. We haven’t had that spirit here since 1329.” Lazy Eye pointed to a picture of himself pinned on the wall next to where he sat. “But there’s no need to worry. These days, psychics are powerful enough to tell if you’ve murdered a pony within the last two weeks. Motel workers are screened five times a year at random and my own was only last Tuesday.”

Diamond Tiara realized it was a certificate from the Psychic’s Guild, complete with a little picture of its former leader, Pinkie Pie, winking in the corner. The top of it read ‘This pony hasn’t killed anypony… yet.’

Did they really have to add that last part?

“All of your concerns are for nothing, dear children.” Lazy Eye stretched his forelegs out invitingly. “Why, nopony has been killed here since–”

Lazy Eye suddenly stopped to cover his mouth with a hoof.

“Oh, my. It was twenty-five years ago on this very night, wasn’t it?” He paused another moment to allow the teens to shiver. He slowly lowered his hoof to reveal that smile had never left. “But I assure you, that delightful luminary Pinkie Pie solved this problem for you long ago. The murder rate plummeted dramatically since she created the Psychic’s Guild and now serial killers are a thing of the past. It was quite the common affair in places like this before then.”

Lazy Eye let out a mournful sigh, wistful for those good old days.

“How unfortunate.” Lazy Eye shook his head in mourning, then smiled wide upon seeing the look on the fillies’ faces. “For the serial killers, of course! Why the closest thing to a serial killer left now is the witch Minuette. But what are the chances of her appearing in this very hotel on the 25th anniversary of the last murder at the exact stroke of midnight?”

Diamond Tiara looked over at the broken grandfather clock once again. It was always midnight in the Lazy Eye Motel and Hotel.

That thought sent a deathly shudder through Diamond Tiara.

“Okay, that’s it!” Diamond Tiara grabbed Silver Spoon and started towards the door. “There’s no way I’m staying here! You can give me detention later, Ms. Cheerilee. Come on Silver Spoon, we can walk five miles to the Luxorama Hotel and Inn. It’ll be worth it.”

Diamond Tiara marched up to the door.

“What about me?” Snails ran after them.

“What about you?” Diamond Tiara asked

“Surely you’re taking your buddy Snails with you to the Luxorama Hotel and Inn!” Snails pointed to himself. “I’m part of the mystery-solving team, yeah?”

“Sorry, my dad would kill me if he found out I took a boy to a hotel,” said Diamond Tiara.

“Yeah,” Silver Spoon agreed. “You’ll just have to stay here. Call us if anypony gets murdered.”

The two of them laughed as they pushed the door open towards the decadence of a Luxorama hotel. They paused briefly at the heavy rain and darkness on the other side.

“Oh, my!” Lazy Eye called out after them. “What unfortunate timing for a rainstorm.”

“You think a little rain is going to stop me?” Diamond Tiara shot a look back at him.

A vicious lightning strike sent a wave of thunder to shake the building. The rain and wind picked up significantly. Water sprayed into the hotel with enough force for a few raindrops to hit even Snails, who was still a safe way in.

The two fillies had to hold on to one another just to keep from being blown back.

“Yeah?! You think an immense amount of rain is going to stop me?!” Diamond Tiara shouted over the wind. “I’ll just get a towel when we get there.”

Diamond Tiara struggled to keep her footing. With Silver Spoon clinging to her back, practically riding on top of her, she barely managed to trudge a few steps forward. At this point, Silver Spoon alone kept Diamond Tiara from being blown away by the wind.

“There’s barely over a hundred pounds between us!” Silver Spoon warned. “I don’t think we’re fat enough to make it.”

Curse her personal nutritionist and in-home gym! Everypony thought being a billionaire was all fun and games until times like this.

Determined, Diamond Tiara lowered her head and dragged Silver Spoon towards the door. The weight of her friend let her take a few steps forward. All she had to do was ignore Ms. Cheerilee yelling at them and she could make it!

Yet before she could even start her harrowing journey, the emergency alert siren blared over the radio. It started and full-stopped three times. The wind strengthened but sounded quieter to Diamond Tiara. She couldn’t remember the last time she heard a three-alarm alert. Everypony in the room stopped to listen.

“This is a full alert! Due to a serious emergency, we are asking all ponies to take shelter immediately. Remain in your shelter until daybreak or the alert is canceled. Avoid travel at all costs.”

Worried mummers went through the room as the alert repeated itself.

“How bad does something have to be to get three alarms, again?”

“They’re not going to tell us what’s happening?”

“We’d better not be stuck here for more than the night.”

Diamond Tiara looked back at Silver Spoon who shook her head. Reluctantly, and with some difficulty, Diamond Tiara closed the door and trotted back towards Lazy Eye in defeat.

“What a horrible coincidence indeed!” Lazy Eye laughed in the creepiest way possible. “But there’s no need for little children like you to worry. Though this place rots from the inside, the concrete exterior can withstand small explosions and the like. Whatever terror awaits on the outside can’t harm you here, nor can any storm.”

Yeah, but what terror awaited them on the inside?

Probably just some guy with a knife. Whatever warranted that alert had to be far more dangerous.

“Great.” Diamond Tiara looked out in the crowd of ponies in the lobby. It slowly became less crowded as their classmates and the few other guests went to their rooms for the night. “I guess we have to ask ourselves who here is most likely to be the killer. Get a head start, you know?”

Silver Spoon looked over the room, taking the question into careful consideration.

“Fact one,” Silver Spoon started reciting, “you’re ten times more likely to be murdered by someone you know than a stranger. Fact two, the most common profession for child murderers is teacher. Fact three, while less likely to kill than a male individual, female murderers are more likely to target underage ponies.”

“So what you’re saying is…” Diamond Tiara turned a wary eye to her weary teacher.

“It can only be Ms. Cheerilee!” Silver Spoon pressed her glasses against her face with one hoof and pointed at their teacher with the other.

“Ms. Cheerily is the killer?!” Snaps gasped. “Whoa, dude! You solved that mystery before the murder even happened! Case closed!”

Cheerilee turned to them with a vexed look once again. Though when did she ever look at them with anything else?

“What have I told you three about solving non-existent crimes?” Cheerilee groaned.

“Don’t do it.” All three of them muttered in unison.

Ms. Cheerilee was satisfied enough to almost smile for one second in her life. Diamond Tiara certainly wasn’t satisfied. The members of the Mystery Squad still looked around the room for any potential threats.

“Hey, I know I ain’t the best at solving mysteries,” said Snails. “But maybe the killer is that guy?”

Lightning flashed as Snails pointed to the pony in question.

In the corner of the room sat a huge pegasus stallion who’d been looming there all along. He looked to be about as old as Lazy Eye, grey streaks in his blue hair suggesting he was in his 50’s, but he was in much better shape than any of the teens in the room.

The guy was ripped! Multiple scars from decades of battle too big for his charcoal fur to grow back over covered his body.

He had even more weapons than scars too. A spear and gun were slung over his back. A series of daggers hung along his flanks. On each of his four hooves, he wore a metal boot with attached claw blades. A deep crimson color covered each of those blades as though he’d recently killed a pony.

Diamond Tiara noticed him when they first came in but decided that was way too obvious.

“Isn’t that Deathblow?” Silver Spoon whispered to Diamond Tiara.

“Is it?” She whispered back. “I have no idea who that is.”

“He’s one of the S-rank ponies,” Silver Spoon whispered back.

“Yes. Yes.” Lazy Eye startled them with a clap. “How coincidental that a pony like him would be here on a night like this.”

And then he began to laugh. Diamond Tiara wished she was that easy to amuse.

“Hey, dude!” Snails called Deathblow out immediately. Silver Spoon tried to hush him, but he persisted. “You’re covered in blood! That means you killed a guy! Case closed!”

Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara crouched down low as the intimidating stallion opened his eyes and slowly turned to look at the three of them.

“Hm?” Deathblow pulled out a dagger, even bloodier than his claw blades. The two girls hid behind Snails. “This isn’t blood. I paint all my weapons to give the appearance that I’ve recently murdered a pony. It makes me more intimidating.”

Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara let out a sigh of relief.

“Well if this guy’s a rank S pony, then we have nothing to worry about, right?” Diamond Tiara asked Silver Spoon in a hushed voice. “He should be able to instantly defeat any axe-wielding psycho.”

“If you want my protection,” said Deathblow, “then my fee for one night would come out to 150,000 bits.”

“What?!” Diamond Tiara stepped out from behind Snails, the ridiculous price drawing out some unknown courage from her. “I could hire over a hundred ponies for that much.”

“Yes, and were I to throw off my cloak, all one hundred would be dead before it touched the ground,” said Deathblow. “But by all means, hire a hundred other ponies instead.”

“So what?” Silver Spoon came out from behind Snails next. “You seriously wouldn’t stop a murder if it was happening right in front of you?”

“It depends.” Deathblow looked up towards the ceiling. “I have no desire to fight the weak and will only do so for an excessive fee. However, if I face a worthy opponent during any mission I’m hired for, I charge nothing. I would only intervene if a threat worth facing emerges. And before you ask, I have no legal duty to protect you.”

Diamond Tiara thought through the implications of that, trying to come up with the best plan of action. Which was to say, she looked at Silver Spoon as her friend thought out the best strategy.

“So if the killer is tough, he’ll save us either way and if not, you’ve wasted your money,” Silver Spoon concluded.

Diamond Tiara nodded. She didn’t want to get price gouged, anyway! Paying too much for things was for poor ponies who couldn’t buy in bulk and demand a reasonable price!

“No way I’m paying that high a fee when I can just make Snails fight for free.” Diamond Tiara scoffed.

No longer afraid, Diamond Tiara noticed something she’d missed before. At the moment, he looked like he’d just gotten dust blown into his left eye. It burned a painfully pink color, tearing up to the point that a stream ran down his face.

“Hey, and what’s up with your eye?” Diamond Tiara pointed up at him. “You better not have pink eye! I’ll sue if you get any on me!”

“This is a psychic power I developed after being stabbed by Bloodstorm.” Deathblow closed his eyes. “My left eye burns when a worthy opponent approaches. Rarely does it get this irritated.”

“You get pink eye when danger is nearby?” Diamond Tiara cringed at the idea.

“That must be an annoying power,” said Silver Spoon. “Given your career involves being constantly surrounded by tough fighters.”

“There’s a reason I prefer to work alone,” Deathblow granted.

“And how worthy is this opponent, exactly?” Silver Spoon looked around the room, trying to find anypony who could possibly fit that description. “I’m unfamiliar with the eyeball irritation scale.”

“It is above the maximum threshold my eye can register. Thrice has my eye burned so intensely. Once when I met Starlight Glimmer. Once when I entered Crater Cemetery. Once when I fought against Bloodstorm.” Deathblow looked out the window and the pouring rain that assaulted it. “I wonder.”

Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon glanced at one another. If somepony at that level showed up, they were likely to die tonight. At least Deathblow would fight the mystery pony for free, maybe buy them enough time to run away screaming.

“Just curious.” Diamond Tiara raised a hoof. “Should we be running for our lives? Or something?”

“Worthy and dangerous are not the same thing.” Deathblow pointed at the door just as it opened, bringing a heavy blast of wind with it. “Yes. I’m certain it’s them.”

Even with that assurance, the fillies backed up as the newcomers entered just to be on the safe side.

Out of the rain came a pair Diamond Tiara recognized instantly on two accounts. Firstly, the two of them had saved her life last year. Secondly, they’d been all over the news for a solid month.

Rainbow Dash and Silverstorm!

They were the first ponies to defeat a witch in a decade. More importantly, Diamond Tiara got off from school thanks to them, the place shutting down for the day to celebrate Trixie’s demise She decided to take back everything she’d said about them being lame before.

Dash shook herself dry after closing the door.

“Oh, hey!” Snails greeted them first. “It’s Pinkie Pie’s grandma! Rainbow Dash!”

“Pinkie is way older than me.” Dash rolled her eyes. “She’s three times my age.”

“Whoa. That’s deep,” said Snails. “You’re like a sage.”

Unsure of how to react to that, Dash just stared at him blankly.

“Omigosh! We love you two!” Silver Spoon ran up to gush at the two of them. Diamond Tiara quickly joined her.

“You guys got us the day off from school!” Diamond Tiara cheered. “You two are like heroes to all us kids!”

“Eh?” Dash looked back and forth between them, smiling despite herself. “So I save your life and I’m still lame, but I get you out of school and now I’m a hero?”

“We’re in high school,” said Silver Spoon. “We don’t have a good grasp of our mortality.”

“Can you sign my forehead?” Diamond Tiara pulled up her bangs.

“Me too! Me too!”

“Ehehe. Well I’m kinda busy.” Dash blushed but hardly hesitated for more than a second. “But what the heck!”

She took out a marker and drew a quick sketch of her lightning bolt cutie mark on both of their heads.

When she finished, the two of them turned to one another and squeed, briefly forgetting they were in a murder motel.

Silverstorm quietly hid behind Rainbow Dash the whole time. Everypony knew at this point that Rainbow Dash was the public face of their team while Silverstorm tended to shy away from the limelight.

That unicorn, Silverstorm, didn’t seem very photogenic from the one interview Diamond Tiara saw with her. She was so nervous the whole time, tripping over her words. It just went to show you that not everypony could be perfect at everything.

“I must commend you as well.” Deathblow bowed his head slightly to them. “The two of you have defeated a witch, a feat few have ever accomplished. Little wonder why my eye deems you worthy. Know that you have my highest respect.”

Deathblow bowed his head to Rainbow Dash.

“Hehehe!” Dash blushed even more heavily, trying to keep her wings from unfolding too much. “Well, you know! I don’t or anything, but I am getting a presidential medal of valor in two weeks. Heh! Did I mention that? The medal of valor?”

You’d think she’d have gotten used to the attention by now.

“As for you.” Deathblow didn’t look directly at Silverstorm. “I hope there’s no hard feelings about that time I helped murder your father.”

“Huh?” Silverstorm took a step back in surprise. “Oh! I never even met him. You can murder my father whenever you want. No big deal!”

“I too was born on the pirate coast.” He kept staring forward, avoiding Silverstorm’s eyes. “I know how difficult it is to adjust to this ‘civilization’. Even now the Equestrians seem so soft to me, complaining every time somepony stabs them with a knife or steals something from them.”

“Yeah! There were a lot of boats back there,” said Silverstorm. “I don’t like boats, so I left.”

She said the line!

Deathblow finally looked at her with his eyes narrowed.

“So, like if a hypothetical killer showed up,” Diamond Tiara broached the subject, scooting closer to Dash, “and started killing everypony one by one, you two would rescue us because you’re actual heroes. Unlike that guy!”

Diamond Tiara pointed to Deathblow. If he was offended, it wasn’t enough to change his expression.

“Huh?” Dash turned back to her. “Oh, yeah! You kids got nothing to worry about. I’ve taken care of everything, okay?”

Dash patted Diamond Tiara’s head and gave her a wink before heading to the front desk to check in.

“My, my. Yet another coincidence.” Lazy eye tapped his hooved together as Dash approached. “Two S-rank ponies appear on the same night? How exquisitely coincidental.”

“Oh, yeah. That reminds me.” Dash stood up against the counter. “Can we, uh, use your phone?”

“Hm. Let me see.” Lazy Eye lifted the phone without ever turning his eye away from Rainbow Dash. He held it against his ear for just a moment before dropping it on the ground. His smile never faltered, and his gaze stayed on Dash. “Oh my. It seems the phones have died! Perhaps because of this storm that just coincidentally started on this very night. Hm?”

“Oh yeah! What a terrible coincidence, huh?” Dash shrugged.

“Indeed!” Lazy Eye started to laugh.

Dash laughed back, but much more awkwardly.

Lazy Eye kept laughing longer than Dash was willing to humor. She gave up, shrugged at Silverstorm, and took the key. Lazy Eye only stopped laughing once the two of them left.

At least that got the guest roster out of the way.

Or so Diamond Tiara thought.

Only a second later, the door burst open yet again. Another blue pegasus entered the room, one Diamond Tiara knew she’d never seen before. The wind of the storm all but threw this pony into the hotel, sending her staggering inside. It took her some effort just to close the door against the wind’s protests.

The storm had reduced the umbrella she carried to mere wires and broken canvas attached to a stick. Now all she had left were her boots and a single saddle bag. The new pony frowned at her deceased umbrella before throwing it in the corner and marching towards the desk with a big smile on her face.

“Oh, hey! And with all these coincidences it shouldn’t be surprising that I, Sonata Dusk, just happen to show up right now!” Sonata moved up to the counter and leaned over it to smile at Lazy Eye. “I mean, what’s one more coincidence added to the pile?”

“Hm.” Lazy Eye smiled and tilted his head. “Actually, I don’t see how this one is coincidental.”

“What?!” Sonata turned to the few remaining ponies in the lobby in dismay. “No one here thinks me showing up is coincidental?”

Not a single pony humored her with so much as a ‘no’. Sonata’s ears slowly drooped, and her smile became a frown as she waited for acknowledgment that never came.

“Now I feel bad.” Sonata slumped her chin on the desk. “Hey. Can I get the room directly next to, uh, whoever just coincidentally happened to be the last pony to check in? You know, so I’ll feel less lonely.”

“My, my.” Lazy Eye laughed and tapped his hooves together. “Fortunately for you, the only thing I love more than an unsettling coincidence is a suspiciously specific request. Here’s the key to the room right next to Rainbow Dash’s.”

“Wonderful!” Sonata perked right back up. She grabbed the key, dropped off the money, and marched awkwardly towards her room.

Silver Spoon watched Sonata go to her room with the sort of suspicion she reserved only for clues that nopony else noticed.

“Was she listening to our conversation before coming inside?” Silver Spoon muttered to herself.

“Is she the killer?” Diamond Tiara moved closer to her friend.

“Not until she kills somepony.” Silver Spoon watched Sonata with narrow eyes as she vanished from sight up the stairs.

The feeling of a hoof on her back sent a jolt through Diamond Tiara. She and Silver Spoon both yelled and jumped forward. They spun around to see it was only their teacher.

“Will you three just go to your rooms already?” Cheerilee asked. “I can’t leave the lobby until you do, and I want to go to sleep at some point!”

It was true that all the other kids had long since gone to their room. The lobby had already become forebodingly empty. Soon only Lazy Eye and the storm would be all that remained in this place. Only a pony with a death wish would stick around until then.

A sense of urgency filled Diamond Tiara, like the gates of safety were closing and she didn’t have much longer to get away from here.

“By all means.” Lazy Eye got out from behind his desk. “Allow me to show these three delightfully inquisitive children to their rooms personally.”

Cheerilee consented and soon the three of them were following Lazy up the creaking stairway.

Somehow, the creaking got even worse once they were at the top of the stairs in the hall. Shreds of a carpet covered the floor in patches, each nailed down onto the ground. A few chips of paint left on the wall hinted at the idea that it used to be blue in some long-forgotten age.

Multiple rooms they passed on the way to their own were boarded up like this was a blood moon or something. Seeing the quality of the hotel, Diamond Tiara could only imagine how horrible the condemned rooms must have been.

The door to their room groaned as Lazy Eye pushed it open to reveal total darkness within. Turning on the lights made a cracking noise, as though the bulb exploded, but it still came on. A large insect in the corner of the room made a chittering sound in protest of the light but escaped into a hole before Diamond Tiara could see what it was.

A single bulb hung from a wire that went up into a dark hole in the ceiling. It gave off a harsh, sputtering hum as it flickered like a candle in the wind, threatening to burst and leave the room to darkness at any moment.

The bed was surprisingly reasonable, something you’d even consider sleeping on instead of the floor. That was, as long as you ignored the minor detail that an ax dug deep into the headboard just above the pillows.

“Why is there an axe?!” Diamond Tiara pointed to the axe.

“Oh, the axe is complimentary.” Lazy Eye bowed and slowly closed the door with a creak. “Enjoy.”

And of course, he laughed one last time as he left.

Diamond Tiara went to lock the door right away to find that a rusty chain was the only protection the room offered. She tested its strength only to rip it right off the wall with little effort.

“Oh, ‘going to public school will build character,’ he says!” Diamond Tiara mocked her father's voice. “I don’t need this much bucking character!”

“Hey, look on the bright side, my dude.” With some effort, Snails pulled the axe out of the headboard with his magic. He gave it a few swings. “If anything crazy happens at least you got this axe!”

“Yeah! About that!” Diamond Tiara pushed him towards the door. “You’re a boy. That makes you the most expendable. Stand outside the door with that axe and guard our room for the night!”

“Yep!” Silver Spoon cleaned her glasses. “Total boy job.”

“What?” Snails dug his feet in just before being pushed out into the hall. “Why do I gotta stand outside waiting to be murdered? You two are being sexist!”

“We let you hang out with all the rich, cool kids. You owe us,” said Diamond Tiara.

“She’s right.” Silver Spoon nodded in agreement and put her glasses back on. “Each of us has one critical advantage we bring to the team. Diamond Tiara is a billionaire. I’m a genius. You’re willing to do anything we tell you to no matter how stupid, dangerous or disgusting it is. Unless you secretly have laser vision, that’s the dynamic. That’s what you do.”

“Well, you got me there, dude.” Snails shrugged.

Diamond Tiara shoved him out the door then slammed it shut, leaving Snails to face the night alone.

Sonata hopped onto her bed in the exceptionally dingy hotel room she’d been given. The springs on the bed made a dying scream as she fell onto them. It was loud enough that she worried it would alert Dash to her presence. She had to remind herself that this much wouldn’t be suspicious.

So far, she’d learned little. Fluttershy clearly did not live with Rainbow Dash at the moment. Ponytown was a no-fly zone for ghosts. That city was like a non-stop dipper convention. If you went within a mile of that town, some psychic would be all up in your grill in five minutes or less.

Of course, that meant a specter couldn’t possibly live there. If Sonata, with her aura suppressed by her mistress’s chains, couldn’t get near that place then no way a specter could.

Even still, the more research she did, the more certain she became that Dash was still in contact with Fluttershy. She mentioned having a ghost friend on more than one occasion. That had to be her target!

Other than that, Sonata had nothing.

Sonata leaned up against the wall. This was the closest she got to Dash since beginning the hunt.

She stalked these two for weeks, waiting for them to get away from the horde of psychics that seemed to follow them around all the time. They literally moved right next door to Pinkie Pie herself, for crying out loud! What were the chances of that?!

But at last, they were wide open, right in the other room. She had confirmation that Pinkie Pie was far away and wouldn’t be able to warn them.

Sonata wondered what kind of juicy material she could eavesdrop on. The walls here were paper thin. Just putting her ear up to the wall, she could make out their voices a little. Thankfully, she didn’t have to let something silly like a wall get in her way.

She left her body behind and floated through the wall just a tiny bit, peeking out from the corner of the room for the briefest of seconds. That was just long enough to find the bed.

Now she left her body once more and floated to that patch of darkness underneath their room’s bed to listen in safety.

“In a place like this, we gotta assume somepony’s listening,” said Dash. “We should just not talk for a while.”

“Agreed.”

And then they stopped talking.

Sonata pulled back inside her body, grabbed her pillow, and screamed into it.

“Aria kidding me?!” Now they weren’t talking?!

Whatever! She might never get this close again! She couldn’t let it go to waste. Time for plan B.

These two were far beyond Sonata in terms of power. Attacking them would be suicide by pony. However, they did have one weakness. They were total suckers!

Sonata got up on her hooves and trotted out of her room. She went next door and knocked on Dash’s room.

There was no answer at first, but Sonata’s secret technique of knocking non-stop for two minutes straight always got results. Rainbow Dash cracked the door open.

“Look, unless somepony’s about to die we don’t have time for this. Sorry.” Dash started to close the door.

Sonata lunged forward, shoving her wing through the door.

“Wait!” Sonata struggled to keep the door from closing. She took out a business card from her bag. “I’m a reporter. Listening to your interviews, it’s clear there was a ghost you were friends with, huh?”

“Ugh! Maybe you don’t like it, but talking to a ghost isn’t against the law,” said Dash. “Trust me, everypony who cares already tried to ‘get’ me with that one. If I never took her inside a city or town, I’m clean. And I didn’t.”

“You don’t understand! I’m a ghost rights activist!” Sonata’s struggles to keep the door open got less difficult after that. All according to plan. “I work for The Sunny Side Gazette! We’re the most progressive newspaper there is.”

Dash finally paused to consider the offer.

Maybe she’d heard of The Sunny Side Gazette. It was a real newspaper that had been pushing for ghost rights for years. If Dash called them, they’d even back up Sonata’s story about being a reporter.

What she didn’t know was that The Sunny Side Gazette was a psyops organization indirectly controlled and funded by Crater Cemetery. Her mistress ran two newspapers, each set at far opposite ends of the political spectrum, specifically designed to spread disharmony through Equestria.

This was the perfect way to gain more information about Fluttershy!

“I agree with you one hundred percent that ghosts shouldn’t be banished by default,” said Sonata. “I believe one of the reasons public support for the idea is so low is because nopony has any positive examples of ghosts. You only hear about them in the news when they kill somepony and they’re always the bad guys in movies. I can help make your friend be one of the few good ghosts in the public conscious and move the needle forward.”

And now she was thinking about it! What a sucker!

Predeads and ghosts hated each other. This had to be the first peace offering Dash had gotten from the predead side of things. There was no way such a naïve optimist would let something like this slip through her wings.

“Please just introduce me to her?” Sonata pleaded. “I want to interview whatever ghost friend you have. I bet she’s super nice if she’s friends with you.”

“I dunno.” Dash tugged at the back of her mane. “Maybe? I can’t talk now. If I take your card, will you go away?”

“Yes!” Sonata held out her fake card with a number Dash could reach her through.

Dash took the card and managed to close the door this time.

Sonata was in!

Finally, things were looking up! Obviously, she’d still have to find a way to make sure Pinkie Pie didn’t get a chance to screen her before the interview, but she could pull this off!

The logical part of her brain did see this as a little messed up. Rainbow Dash was one of the few Equestrians who wanted to build bridges with ghosts instead of burning them. It’d kinda make more sense to work with Dash instead of against her.

But thankfully her heart was there to tell her that betraying Dash would be the coolest thing ever! Predeads sucked so much and, under her mistress’s influence, she smiled wide at the thought of getting to trick one like this.

Always listen to your heart, just like that song went.

For now, her mission was complete. The details were tomorrow’s problem.

Sonata wished she could leave right now, but the rain just kept getting louder. The sound penetrated even the concrete shell of the hotel now.

The real problem with these dolls was that if they got wet it was a pain to dry them out! She’d have to replace all the stuffing after going for a walk through this weather.

So she’d have to wait for the rain to stop before leaving.

In the meantime, her brain started itching again! Being surrounded by so many predeads made it feel like that pink insulation stuff they put in walls filled her head. It was unbearable to be in one of their towns like this for so long!

If Sonata ate any body heat now, she’d blow her cover. The next best option was to simply gorge herself on other heat sources to get the cravings down.

She needed to find something hot to eat!

She sniffed twice. The scent of hot metal and steam tipped her off to the location of the boiler room. Steam by itself tasted fine, but not when you couldn’t get it away from all that hot, stuffy metal. It didn’t tempt her in the least. Besides, it would cool down the entire building if she froze the boilers.

Another sniff revealed the location of a kitchen, still open even this late. She could sense the presence of heavily fried food. Boiling grease– that was delicious! Warm food didn’t satisfy on the same level as body heat, but she couldn’t hope for more in this place.

Sonata hummed and skipped down towards the dining area.

As Snails entered his third hour of guard duty, a realization dawned on him.

“This is boring, dude!” he called out to nopony in particular.

You had to pay a price to hang out with the popular kids, he knew, but it felt increasingly like a waste of his time. There had to be something better he could be doing. Frankly, he had no confidence in his ability to fight off a mysterious murderer.

For all he knew, it could be an unstoppable psycho zombie or something. They made the class watch one of those PSAs about not having teen sex just before coming here.

“I need to do something more useful to earn my place in the mystery squad,” he declared. “I need to search for clues!”

Snails got up, took his notebook out from his saddlebag, and started his investigation.

It the murder already happened, he’d know what to look for. Barring that, he’d just have to write everything down in hopes some of it would be useful to Silver Spoon later!

Levitating the axe on his left and the notebook on his right, Snails made his way down to the lobby.

The storm raged even louder than before. The noise came in waves, each gust of wind battering the side of the building with rain.

Lazy Eye was nowhere to be seen. Deathblow alone remained, still sitting in the same spot, nearly in the same pose even. He kept his eyes trained on the door leading outside like he expected somepony to show up.

Did his date stand him up? Snails felt bad for the poor dude.

“Whoa! You still down here at midnight, dude?” Snails asked him.

“There’s no law saying I need to sleep or even enter my room, is there?” he didn’t take his eyes off the door.

“You got me there, dude!” Snails wrote it in his book. “But that goes down as a clue!”

He looked around the lobby, not finding anything clue worthy. Besides the stairs he just came down and the front door, there was one more exit to the left. Snails didn’t know where it led, but he smelt something good in that direction.

He went through the mystery door to be greeted by a hot, stuffy room. Snails was already sweating!

He looked around to see a series of stoves, each with a vat of boiling grease. The room also had a small dining area off to the side. This must be where the room service and continental breakfast came from.

That Sonata pony sat in the dining area, watching the fry cook, mouth open wide as she practically drooled with starvation.

“Yeah! Just fry the crap out of it!” Sonata cheered him on. “I want you to fry it till it’s barely anything but boiling grease!”

“You got it!” The chef dunked whatever Sonata ordered back into the fat.

Shortly after Snails entered the room, the storm ended, leaving only the sound of boiling grease. Sonata looked up, ears twitching, curious at the sudden end of the rain.

“Looks like we’re in the eye of the storm,” the stout pony near the boiling grease leaned over his counter towards Snails. “What can I get ya?”

“Hey, dude! Just looking for clues.” Snails wrote down that they were in the eye of the storm. “What do you have in this place?”

“Name’s Grease Trap.” He pointed his spatula at himself. “If it exists, I can fry it! Fried pancakes for breakfast tomorrow.”

“I like your spirit, mister.” Snails wrote down Grease Trap’s can-do attitude and Sonata’s presence in his notebook. He looked up at the menu pinned on the wall before coming to a decision. “I’ll take some fried popcorn.”

“Sure thing, little buddy! It’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.” Grease Trap poured the kernels into a vat of oil.

“Fried popcorn takes fifteen minutes to make.” Snails repeated as he wrote down the next clue. “Gonna see how many more clues I can find. Later!”

Snails walked into the hall leading away from the lobby. To his left was a room filled with rusted, broken exercise equipment. To his right was a pool room drained of water, leaving behind lonely cement. The signs on either door said the facilities were closed for ‘indefinite maintenance’.

He reached the far end of the hall to find a window. In the eye of the storm, the air on the other side was calm.

He noticed something strange as he got close. A puddle of water covered the area just below the window! That could only mean one thing.

“Somepony spilled their drink over here!” Snails wrote down the clue.

A door to his right and the stairs leading down just after them were all that remained to explore now.

Snails crept down the staircase, feeling heat washing over him once again. Instead of grease, there was steam down here. This was a boiler room, filled with pipes and tanks that shook and leaked steam at every joint, making the place feel more like a sauna.

Snails ducked down and held still when he saw somepony else on the far side of the room.

Rainbow Dash and Silverstorm stood in front of a large hole in the wall. They stepped through and the wall closed behind them.

Snail’s dropped his notebook when he saw that.

This was it! The biggest clue of his life!

“A secret passage!” He yelled.

He grabbed his notebook and ran back through each of the rooms as fast as he could. He rushed through the kitchen and lobby, then up the stairs, paying no attention to the ponies he passed.

When he got to Silver Spoon’s room, he started banging on it as hard and as fast as he could.

The door cracked open just slightly, then a little more when Diamond Tiara saw him.

“Did anypony get murdered yet?” Diamond Tiara asked.

“No, but get this!” Snails pointed down the hall. “I found the secret passage, dude!”

At that moment, the storm started up again. The lightning flashed and thunder rolled through the building. The wind and rain picked up until once more their sounds filled the room.

“And?” Silver Spoon asked.

Snails felt like the universe broke a little just then. All he could do was stand in stunned silence at what had to be the most incorrect response to this information possible.

“What do you mean ‘and’?!” Snails jabbed down the hall once more, as hard as he could. “It’s the secret passage! We have to investigate that.”

“Owning a secret passage isn’t a crime,” said Silver Spoon.

“But we’re gonna check it out, right?”

“Oh yeah!” Diamond Tiara feigned interest. “Let’s go down the secret passage in the literal murder motel! How about no?”

“If you wanna go get killed that’s your prerogative,” said Silver Spoon. “But unless you find out the secret passage leads to our room, neither of us cares.”

Then they closed the door.

“You say something about perogies?” Snails asked the closed door.

No response.

“Ah shucks! I was so excited too.” Snails shook his head in defeat. One day he’d make a contribution to the art of mystery solving! But for now, the mention of perogies made him remember something important. “At least I can still get that fried popcorn. Maybe it’s been fifteen minutes.”

He started back towards the stairs but paused when Sonata Dusk came marching up the stairs at a brisk pace.

She looked ahead with a glassy-eyed expression as she hummed a happy tune. She wasn’t smiling, though. Snails noticed her ponytail got messed up, hung low and damp. He bet she’d accidentally spilled her drink on herself!

Sonata turned in the other direction and went back to her room without noticing Snails. With a shrug, he went back downstairs and into the kitchen.

“How’s the popcorn coming, dude?” Snails asked as he pushed the door open.

His smile faded a second later at what he saw.

“Holy crow, dude!” Snails screamed.

Grease Trap, the fry cook, lay face down on his stomach, his legs splayed out. A large knife stuck out of his neck, buried halfway. Small amounts of blood covered the pony and the floor beneath him.

As the scene of the murder registered in Snails’ mind, the popcorn began to pop out of control, spraying the room.

Murder Motel Part 2: The Dead get Deader

Silver Spoon sat on the bed reading a short book about the historicity of Golden Feather. Diamond Tiara lay on the bed next to her, fast asleep. They agreed to sleep in shifts. Diamond Tiara would rest for the first 4 hours, then hold watch for the remainder of the night.

She believed that she would learn more if school were nothing more than her getting to go to the library and read whatever she wanted. In retrospect, she could have just skipped over high school entirely. If she did her homework, she would have been one of those ‘prodigy’ kids who got into college at age twelve.

Even back then, she knew that would be a stupid idea. Her friendship with Diamond Tiara held infinitely more value than any college degree or news story about how smart she was. Even from a strictly utilitarian point of view, having an in with what was sure to be the richest pony in the world twenty years from now wasn’t something to give up lightly.

Besides, this would be the only time in her life where she could just hang out with Diamond Tiara and not worry about anything. She didn’t wish herself stuck in the workforce. All those ‘prodigies’ who gave this up weren’t nearly as clever as the media made them out to be, in her opinion.

That was, if she survived through tonight.

As if in response to her thoughts, the intercom blared. Silver Spoon didn’t even know this place had an intercom, but now she wished it didn’t.

A hideously loud and obnoxious screech filled the hotel, shook Silver Spoon to the point she worried her glasses might shatter. Silver Spoon tried to shelter her eardrums by shoving both pillows over her ears, yet the noise pierced straight through it.

The sound went on and on for two minutes non-stop until Silver Spoon was certain it’d continue until somepony threw a stick of dynamite at the source. Why did they even make intercoms this loud?!

And just like that, the noise cut off entirely.

Diamond Tiara still lay on her back. She let out a loud snort but didn’t open her eyes.

How did she sleep through that?! She’d always been a heavy sleeper, to be sure.

“Attention, ponies!” a voice came on over the intercom. The voice sounded gravelly and distorted in a way that made Silver Spoon certain it came through a voice changer. “It seems nopony mentioned to you that there’s a curse placed upon this land!”

A curse?! If Silver Spoon heard what the curse was, she’d be subjected to it at its full power. She desperately looked around for something to plug her ears with. The pillows? No, they already failed her once.

“You can’t leave this hotel unless you murder another pony! Have a nice night!”

It blurted out the conditions too quickly for Silver Spoon to react to! Now she wouldn’t be able to leave?!

To make matters worse, the power went out at that exact moment. The one lightbulb died, then even its pitiful protection was gone. The room submerged into total darkness.

Thankfully, Silver Spoon already prepared for a power outage. She had a candle and match within reach and quickly relit the room. No way the power just happened to go out at that exact moment.

Silver Spoon had to test the claim immediately. She dashed to the window and threw it open. The rain remained, but the wind had long since ceased, allowing her to open it without getting wet.

She tried sticking a hoof out to find it pressing up against an invisible barrier.

“Drat! It was true!”

Silver Spoon jumped back onto the bed to be reminded of her friend. Diamond Tiara groggily opened her eyes, slowly beginning to stir with all the grace of a zombie.

This was the one time Diamond Tiara sleeping like a brick came in handy! If she didn’t hear the announcement, she wasn’t fully cursed! She could still leave.

There had to be some way Silver Spoon could turn this around. The only way to leave was to kill another pony? That reminded her of a certain novel she’d read once.

The door slammed open, and Snails rushed into the room, panting.

“Dudes!” he called out. “There’s been a murder! Grease Trap was stabbed to death in the kitchen!”

“Seriously?!” Silver Spoon let out an exacerbated sigh. “Somepony killed one second after hearing that? I already had zero faith in ponies but holy crow.”

“Get ready to have even less faith, dude.” Snails shook his head. “Cause that murder happened about a minute before the announcement. They didn’t even wait for a motive.”

“Before?” Silver Spoon blinked. “That changes things.”

The announcement happened right after Grease Trap was killed? That couldn’t have been a coincidence either.

Diamond Tiara managed to get to the point of ‘mostly awake’ by now.

“What happened again?” Diamond Tiara rubbed her sleepy eyes. “Please tell me it was Ms. Cheerilee who got killed.”

“Oh!” Snails began. “Uh, Grease Trap got stabbed and you can only leave if you kill somepony cause that’s the cur–”

Silver Spoon screamed and jumped across the room to tackle him a second too late.

“You idiot!” Silver Spoon violently shook him. “Now Diamond Tiara is stuck here too! You don’t tell ponies about the curse! That’s like – they teach you that in kindergarten.”

“Did you seriously curse me again, Snails!” Diamond Tiara stood up on the bed. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t kick you off the team!”

“I can make it up to you, I swear!” Snails took out his notebook. “I went out looking for clues before this started. I have all sorts of good stuff.”

“Let me see that.” Silver Spoon took the notebook from Snails. Diamond Tiara leaned up against her to read too.

True to Snails, his school notebook had no notes in it except for this and the corn maze incident. Thankfully, she was familiar enough with his terrible writing to interpret these scribbles. He’d even managed to write down what looked like useful information for once.

“So Deathblow was on one side of the dining area,” Silver Spoon began, “and Sonata and Grease Trap were inside it. On the other side is a dead end with a single window and the secret passage as the only exits. And you saw Rainbow Dash and Silverstorm entering the secret passage just before.”

“And he died fifteen minutes after I saw him,” said Snails. “Cause the popcorn popped when I got there!”

“Then it has to be Sonata,” Diamond Tiara concluded. “She was the one in the room with him!”

“We can’t conclude that yet.” Silver Spoon shook her head. “In fact, it seems unlikely as the killer must have known when the secret passage was opened. I doubt this Sonata pony could have known that.”

That left Diamond Tiara scratching her head.

“Snails,” said Silver Spoon. “There was water underneath the window, meaning somepony opened it at some point, letting some rain inside as well. But was it just at the end of the hall or did you see any water leading down the hall?”

“Nah! It was just one puddle. I think.”

“That narrows it down to two possibilities. Either somepony exited out that window or Rainbow Dash entered through it.” Silver Spoon closed the book. “I suspect the latter as it makes no sense to escape before the murder happened. They wanted to sneak into the secret passage, so they went outside their window and re-entered below.”

“Why are those two sneaking around here, anyway?” Diamond Tiara asked. “There’s something up with this place, isn’t there?”

“That much is obvious at this point. I doubt they were just bumbling about in the boiler room and stumbled upon that secret passage. I’ll wager the two of them came here intending to find whatever’s hidden on the other side. The timing of everything is too good. From the popcorn, we can deduce that the murder happened within fifteen minutes of Rainbow Dash and Silverstorm entering the secret passage. Then the announcement and power outage immediately after that. It’s hard to dismiss them opening that door wasn’t a trigger.”

“I bet it leads to a subbasement,” said Diamond Tiara. “Where Lazy Eye keeps his dead body collection.”

“That might not be far from the truth.” Silver Spoon nodded. “The secret passage leads to something dangerous. Entering it sets off an alarm. Lazy Eye hears the alarm and makes that announcement to trap us all. It seems the most likely scenario given what we know.”

Silver Spoon snapped the book shut. No. It still didn’t make sense.

“But why would he kill the fry cook?” Silver Spoon asked herself. “If anything, all the employees would be in on it. Right?”

“I bet he knew too much so Lazy Eye offed him!” Diamond Tiara smacked her hooves together.

“Unlikely,” said Silver Spoon. “He’s already gone past the point of no return from the sound of things. I’d need more information to make a definitive conclusion. For now, I think we need to treat everypony who works here as a threat.”

Silver Spoon closed her eyes and tapped her temple. Thinking of the staff brought up another good question.

“Where are all the adults anyway?” Silver Spoon asked. “You’d think one of them would try to be responsible and come check on us. Maybe we’ll have to go check on them.”

“Why is it always up to us to solve the mystery?" Diamond Tiara asked.

“If by always you mean that one time.” Silver Spoon shook her head. “Let’s see if we can get to the lobby. Snails. You stay in front.”

“Got it!” Snails gave his axe a few test swipes.

“But Snails.” Diamond Tiara put a hoof on his shoulder. “It’s very important that before you attack anypony you shout ‘they’re coming right for us’ as loud as you can. That way we can claim it was self-defense if it ever goes to court.”

Snails nodded.

They pushed open the door and crept out into the dark hallway. Snails held his axe, Diamond Tiara held the candle, and Silver Spoon kept an eye out behind them. Nopony lingered in the hallway. She did notice a few doors hung wide open.

It could have been that ponies simply didn’t close them all the way, but with the only defense to a rusty chain, that might be all the wreckage a forced entry left.

Already, Silver Spoon could tell ponies were downstairs. A faint glow of came coming from below.

They stopped at the top of the stairs and took stock of who gathered there.

Deathblow remained in his spot, eyes closed, and forelegs folded. About half their class huddled close together on one side of the lobby. Three disgruntled guests complained to two of the hotel staff. Finally, Lazy Eye appeared to have taken charge to corral the other students.

“Where’s Ms. Cheerilee?” Diamond Tiara whispered. “Did she take five of us and book it?”

“How would she have done that?” Silver Spoon asked. “More importantly when? Anyway, down there looks safer than up here.”

The loud creaking stairs announced their presence as they returned to the lobby.

“That’s twelve and–” Lazy Eye turned toward the creaking stairs to smile at the three. “Why if it isn’t my three favorites! How wonderful it is to see that you’re all safe and sound. With fifteen of the twenty-six accounted for, that means not even a full half have gone missing! Not a very good job overall. In my day, a killer wouldn’t have let any of them escape.”

“Wait.” Silver Spoon walked into the lobby. “So the others are missing? Ms. Cheerilee too?”

“Oh? I thought you were fast on the uptake,” he said. “But yes. And a number of my own staff have gone missing as well! It seems only three of us remain.”

A coordinated effort? Likely what happened. Silently, Silver Spoon suspected the staff had taken the rest of her class somewhere.

Silver Spoon looked at his remaining staff – one maid and one butler. She noticed that suspicious Sonata Dusk pony wasn’t here, either.

“I’ll send them off to see if they can find any more of your little friends.” Lazy Eye extended his foreleg and the two of them left. Then he turned to Deathblow. “Oh! But we do have a professional here. I don’t suppose you have any light to shed upon this dark night?”

Deathblow remained silent.

“Guh! He won’t say anything unless we pay him a billion bits!” Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes. “But we have Silver Spoon right here! She’ll solve this mystery in ten seconds flat!”

“Oh?” Lazy Eye tilted his head. “I should like to see that.”

“I suppose you would,” said Silver Spoon. “All the evidence points to foul play on your part. Did you make that announcement?”

“Of course not. The intercom room showed signs of being broken into when I got there.”

“Anypony who knows about the curse should be trapped here,” Silver Spoon went on. “You must have been one such pony.”

“Indeed. I haven’t left this place in fifteen years,” he said. “But the curse has always been in effect. That’s why leaving our hotel is slightly inconvenient. Hm? Though of course, you’re mistaken in one thing. A pony who heard about the curse outside could have come here and only recently gotten stuck.”

“You realize that even if you’re not the killer, you’re still in a lot of trouble, don’t you?” Diamond Tiara asked. “You’re getting sued out of your mind for letting me get cursed! I’m not spending my whole life here.”

“Oh, it’s not as bad as you fear, I assure you.” Lazy Eye smiled. “Yes, I have thirty years of experience with this. We just hook one pony up to, shall we call it, an electrocution chair. At once we all press a button to send a small amount of electricity towards him which combines to be just enough to stop his heart. That way, we can all say we’ve committed murder and go home.”

“Yeah, and who’s gonna volunteer for that?” Diamond Tiara asked. “You?!”

“Oh yes. I take full responsibility.” Lazy Eye ran a hoof across her cheek. “Of course, I will volunteer for the electrocution. I’ve done this thrice before. The paramedics are professionals at resuscitating me. And yes, it still counts.”

Diamond Tiara kept her frown, but she didn’t yell any more than that. Lazy Eye reached behind the counter to grab one of his candles.

“The only problem, of course, is that we cannot electrocute anypony, let alone myself.” Lazy Eye frowned into the flame. “Not until the power comes back on.”

“How convenient,” said Silver Spoon. “I noticed a lot of convenient coincidences, you know. The power outage, that announcement, everypony going missing, Grease Trap getting murdered… they all happened almost immediately after Rainbow Dash entered that secret passage. Do you care to tell us where it leads?”

“Oh? So we really are playing detective now?” Lazy Eye clapped his hooves together. “Forgive me children, but I’m far too old for such games. I have no obligation to answer these questions or entertain your delusions.”

“You’re only making yourself more suspicious!” Diamond Tiara pushed herself up on the tips of her hooves to be the same height as Lazy Eye. “Tell us where it leads!”

Silver Spoon looked around the room, considering her options. She needed to know where the secret passage led but going inside it was too dangerous. One possibility came to mind. Deathblow glanced at them with brief curiosity, finally opening his eyes.

There! The clue she needed.

“Don’t bother, DT.” Silver Spoon adjusted her glasses. “It doesn’t matter if he tells us or not. I’ve already deduced where the secret passage goes.”

Everypony turned to her now.

“Huh?” Diamond Tiara blinked. “How could you possibly know that? We haven’t even looked at the entrance yet.”

“The only clue I need is right there.” Silver Spoon pointed to Deathblow.

The other two turned to him, but neither of them knew what she was talking about. To Silver Spoon, it was as clear as Deathblow’s eye.

“His eye becomes irritated when a worthy opponent is around,” Silver Spoon reminded them. “But right now, it’s clear. That means Silverstorm and Rainbow Dash left the building entirely and before the announcement was made. The secret passage leads somewhere outside. Likely to another facility. Likely underground because Rainbow Dash’s actions suggest there’s no other way in.”

The two of them finally caught up with Silver Spoon’s logic and their faces lit up. Lazy Eye scowled behind them.

“You’re a genius, Silver Spoon!” Diamond Tiara cheered.

“Of course I am.” Silver Spoon looked over to Lazy Eye. “And based on your reaction, I’d say I’m pretty good at playing pretend, huh? How about you confess before I figure out the rest?”

Lazy Eye finally shut up, keeping his jaw clenched tight.

Three slow claps behind them caught their attention.

“An interesting turn of events,” Deathblow spoke. “Silver Spoon, yes? I intended to ignore your existence, but perhaps you’re just clever enough to do me a favor.”

“What are you talking about?” Silver Spoon asked.

“You see, there is more than one curse upon this land,” Deathblow explained. “If you can uncover how that fry cook died, we can all leave this place safely. But I can say no more on the matter.”

Deathblow folded his forelegs and closed his eyes. Silver Spoon realized what that meant. Some other curse had affected Deathblow. He couldn’t tell her what that curse was, though, less it affect Silver Spoon as well.

She glanced at Lazy Eye. Why wouldn’t he just tell her if he could incapacitate Silver Spoon with that same curse?

Either Lazy Eye was innocent (unlikely) or Deathblow’s refusal to talk related more to the conditions of breaking the curse. Yes. Maybe solving the mystery would break this unknown curse. She concluded this was the most likely scenario.

“But how he died?” Silver Spoon only just now considered the question.

“Stand back, dudes!” Snail pushed the others aside and stepped forward heroically. “He was stabbed by the knife!”

“No!” Diamond Tiara bonked him on the head. “Obviously that’s not the case, you idiot!”

“But if he didn’t get stabbed how’d the knife get there?” Snails asked.

“The implication is that Grease Trap was stabbed after he died,” said Silver Spoon. “We should go look over the crime scene.”

“You don’t have my permission to go snooping around my property like this,” Lazy Eye warned.

“They have my permission,” Deathblow spoke over him. “Being Rank S, I can deputize whomever I wish, and this murder warrants an investigation. I’m granting Silver Spoon the right to go wherever she pleases.”

Lazy Eye’s frowned briefly.

“Very well.” Lazy Eye smiled at them. “I suppose you want me to show you around that secret passage, hm? I’d be happy to lead the way.”

He smiled too wide. Something horrible waited for them down there. No point in asking him what, either. He’d just lie.

“No,” she said. “You can wait here. I’m just going to look at the body.”

“As you wish, deputy detective.” Lazy Eye bowed, keeping his good eye on her. “But do be careful.”

Silver Spoon kept an eye on him as her team moved to the kitchen.

Grease Trap still lay there, face down on the floor in a small puddle of blood. The kitchen felt incredibly hot and stuffy compared to the others. Bright, too. The propane stoves had yet to be turned off. Grease still boiled all around them.

While Silver Spoon went to the corpse, Diamond Tiara went off to find the biggest butcher knife she could get.

Silver Spoon knelt next to the smear on the floor to study it. Holding the candle over the blood revealed the truth to her.

“Just as I thought.” She stood up. “This isn’t even real blood. It’s just some ketchup and syrup. The body was stabbed after he died, which is why he hardly bled at all.”

“What?” Diamond Tiara returned with a massive cleaver in her mouth. “If you can tell that so fast, how could the killer have thought they could fool the police with this?”

“A good question.” Silver Spoon tapped her chin a few times as she pondered the question. “The only sensible answer is that they didn’t think they could trick the police.”

“Then why bother?”

“To buy time,” Silver Spoon concluded. “They don’t care if they get discovered tomorrow morning, as long as they don’t get caught tonight. This trick would be enough to keep us from finding the truth if we were all a bunch of narcs like Ms. Cheerilee and refused to investigate the body.”

“But what did kill him?” Diamond Tiara looked all over him, not finding any wounds.

“Only one way to tell.” Silver Spoon sighed. “It might be a chest wound. I’m going to have to flip him over.”

As Diamond Tiara cringed in disgust, Silver Spoon sucked it up and crouched down to grab the cadaver. Before she could even flip it, she noticed something that made her gasp.

“His body!” Silver Spoon stood up and shook her head. “It should still be warm, but it’s ice cold.”

“Cold?” Diamond Tiara asked.

“He’s almost frozen, even,” said Silver Spoon.

“Are you saying he froze to death?” Diamond Tiara asked.

“Potentially.”

“But how do you freeze to death in a place like this?” Diamond Tiara pointed to a boiling pot of grease. That stuff surrounded them, making the area unbearably hot.

“There is one way it could happen.” Silver Spoon closed her eyes and nodded. “The main cause of hypothermia.”

Diamond Tiara got it.

“Another ghost?!” Diamond Tiara planted her hoof on her face. “How many times are we going to run into one?”

“I shoulda known it was ghosts!” Snails clicked his tongue. “It’s always ghosts!”

“A ghost would explain a lot.” Silver Spoon paced back and forth as she revealed her model. “The mystery ghost ate Grease Trap, freezing him to death. She then planted a knife to make it look like he was stabbed to death, hoping nopony would notice the blood was fake for a few hours. By the time the police would arrive, the ambient heat would have warmed his body back up to room temperature, and then it would take days for them to tell the actual cause of death.”

“Heck yeah!” Snails cheered. “Case closed!”

“We don’t know where the ghost is yet!” Diamond Tiara reminded him.

“Oh, right.”

Did Lazy Eye have a ghost in his employ? Even criminals rarely associated with ghosts. Given their addiction, ghosts were liable to slip up and freeze even one of their friends to death. If true, that suggested Lazy Eye posed a greater threat than a normal pony – was confident no ghost could kill him.

“All the pieces don’t fit yet,” Silver Spoon concluded.

“What do you mean?” Diamond Tiara asked. “It seems straightforward to me. Some evil ghosts lived under the building. Dash went to go beat them up. One of them escaped and had a snack on the way out.”

“Perhaps. But Deathblow implied figuring this out would break a curse or something to that effect. It doesn’t look like that’s happened. We may need to find the ghost itself.” Silver Spoon considered where to look for this ghost. A ghost could be hiding anywhere, even underneath their very feet. “Our best lead is to try and find Sonata Dusk, who may have been here at the time. She might have even seen the ghost itself… if she’s still alive.”

She flipped the body over just to make absolutely sure there were no more wounds. She found nothing obvious.

“There’s one more thing I need to check here.”

Silver Spoon opened the door to the long hallway. She didn’t need to get far before discovering what she wanted.

“I see.” Silver Spoon bent down and ran her hoof across some of the water halfway through the hall. “It looks like somepony entered through the window after Snails left.”

But that only raised more questions. Silver Spoon knew a ghost froze Grease Trap now. Yet a ghost wouldn’t have had to come in through a window. They certainly wouldn’t have dragged some water in with them either.

For now, she could only shake her head.

“Come on. Sonata’s room is right next to Rainbow Dash’s.”

Sonata Dusk’s door wasn’t one of the ones left open. Silver Spoon knocked.

No answer.

“Sonata!” Silver Spoon called. “We need to talk to you. I’ve been deputized and I have the authority to enter any room. If you don’t come out, we’ll come in.”

No answer.

She turned back to the other two, getting a nod. Then she took two steps back and rammed the door. That flimsy chain got blown off its hinges with almost no resistance.

The three of them stepped inside, brandishing their weapons. Yet Sonata was nowhere to be seen. The three teens split up, carefully searching through the room just in case. Snails opened the closet, finding nothing.

“Sonata?” Silver Spoon called out.

As Silver Spoon rounded the corner of the bed, she jumped back in surprise.

Sonata Dusk!

The pegasus lay slumped back against the side of the bed with wires tied tightly around her neck, her hooves limply clutching at them. Her head hung back, and her tongue lolled out. Her eyes rolled up into their sockets.

The others screamed at the sight of this. Silver Spoon remained calm and noticed one other detail the others missed– her hair was soaking wet.

“She’s been strangled!” Diamond Tiara gasped. “Or wait. No! Is her corpse cold?”

“No.” Silver Spoon pressed a hoof against Sonata to confirm it. “Hm. But not warm, either. She’s room temperature.”

Yet something even more curious revealed itself when Silver Spoon boked her. Sonata felt off – too plush. Even after that, it took Silver Spoon another minute of poking to realize what was truly wrong with this ‘body’.

“Wait.” Silver Spoon stepped back. “This is a doll!”

“Huh?” The other two charged over to begin poking at it, suddenly less afraid.

“It seems so real,” said Diamond Tiara. She tapped on the eye. “But you’re right. That’s so creepy! Who owns a life-sized doll of themselves?”

“Of course!” Snails nodded to himself. “It’s the old ‘carry around a life-sized doll of yourself so you can fake your own death’ trick. I’ve seen that one a million times, dude. Case closed.”

This raised a more important question. The wheels in Silver Spoon’s head spun.

“Wait!” Silver Spoon’s eyes widened. “Get back!”

They still didn’t understand why but trusted her enough to back away.

“Uh. Why?” Diamond Tiara asked.

“Sonata Dusk didn’t have any luggage with her when she showed up,” said Silver Spoon. “So how did this doll get here?”

The others shared a look but couldn’t figure it out themselves.

“I think Sonata Dusk is the doll,” Silver Spoon explained.

“What do you mean she is the doll?” Diamond Tiara asked.

“Don’t you see?” Silver Spoon shook her head and pointed at the doll. “There’s a ghost on the loose and a life-like doll that looks exactly like Sonata Dusk? And ghosts love possessing dolls, don’t they? Sonata Dusk brought that doll inside by possessing it herself and simply walking in.”

The doll sprang to life, Sonata suddenly jumping to her hooves. The three teens backed into the corner and got ready for a fight!

This was bad! None of them had a weapon that could harm a ghost. Their best bet was Snails’ magic, but he was a complete idiot! Silver Spoon needed to think of some way to fight her.

But instead of attacking them, Sonata clasped her hooves together pleadingly.

“No, no!” Sonata pleaded with them. “I’m not a ghost! I just have a skin condition that makes me feel like a doll!”

“And what about not needing to breathe?” Silver Spoon pointed to her neck, still being strangled by wire. “Is that part of your skin condition?”

Sonata looked at her neck, then back at Silver Spoon.

“Yes?”

Sonata quickly realized her lie wouldn’t work and pulled off the wire around her neck.

“Okay, fine! I’m a ghost. You got me.” Sonata came out of the doll. Her ethereal form looked curiously similar to the doll beneath her. “But I’m not a bad ghost! So don’t go telling Rainbow Dash I’m evil, okay?”

“Oh, please! There are no good ghosts!” Diamond Tiara pointed her knife at Sonata as though it could do anything. “You all have an addiction to body heat. If you hang around the living long enough, it’s only a matter of time until you kill. You know? The exact thing that happened tonight?”

“Is that what happened?” Silver Spoon asked. “You gave in to your addiction and froze Grease Trap?”

“No! I didn’t kill that guy, I swear!”

“Grease Trap was ice cold when we found him,” said Silver Spoon. “Are you claiming there’s another ghost hiding here?”

“Yeah!” Diamond Tiara stepped forward, unafraid at the cowering ghost. “You lost control, froze Grease Trap to death, then stabbed the body in hopes we wouldn’t notice before it warmed back up!”

“Well?” Silver Spoon Raised an eyebrow? “Do we need to tell Rainbow Dash that you’re a murderer?”

Silver Spoon still didn’t know why but based on her previous comments, Sonata had some concern for Dash’s opinion of her. She could use that.

“No, no!” Sonata waved her hooves rapidly. “Okay, fine! I did eat his body heat.”

“Ha!” Snails pointed at him. “Case closed, baby!”

“But I didn’t kill him!” Sonata added quickly. “He was dead when I found him! You don’t know what it’s like being a ghost surrounded by so many predeads. The urge to suck the delicious heat right out of you becomes unbearable after a little while.”

“Yeah. That’s why you guys are auto-banished.” Diamond Tiara pointed at her. “Because you can’t control yourselves!”

“You’re not wrong. I needed to feed off somepony to keep it together. I saw this dead guy and he was still warm, so I was like ‘Hey! He’s not using his body heat!’ and I just dug in. It seemed like the perfect way to get control back. It would have gone to waste otherwise.”

“What?” It all clicked with Silver Spoon. The wet hair, the pony who came in through the window. She was near-certain Sonata wasn’t the killer. “Where were you when he was killed then? We know you were in the kitchen just before”

“I wanted to leave when the rain stopped,” said Sonata. “Remember that pause for a few minutes? I only got outside a little bit, then it started pouring again. When I came back, he was dead.”

Exactly as she suspected.

“And you left through a window at the end of the hall?” Silver Spoon asked.

“The way that Deathblow guy was looking at me made me sure he knew I was a ghost,” said Sonata. “I was too scared to walk by him again! But now I can’t leave unless I kill somepony, but if I do kill somepony Rainbow Dash won’t want to talk to me! Gah!”

“That’s your only hold-up over killing a pony?” Diamond Tiara asked. “I still say she did it! She’s lying!”

“No. Her story checks out,” said Silver Spoon. “That’s where the water in the hallway came from.”

“Right! So you’ll tell Rainbow Dash she can trust me?” Sonata smiled toothily at them. “I only take body heat from ponies who just happened to die recently. That’s my gimmick. They call me still-warm Sonata! All the other ghosts make fun of me for being a goodie four shoes, even!”

“I’ll promise not to snitch on you if you help us,” Silver Spoon offered. “Allegedly, we can break all the curses on this place if we can discover who killed Grease Trap and how.”

“For realsies?”

“Yes. But I don’t have enough evidence yet. I want you to tell me everything that happened down there. How did you know he was dead?”

“I can smell heartbeats.” Sonata pointed to her nose. “I knew he was dead before I even went back into the kitchen because I couldn’t smell his heart.”

“How do you smell a heart beating?” Diamond Tiara raised a brow.

“It pumps your warm blood around,” said Sonata. “Ghosts don’t feel hot and cold. We smell it.”

“And what did you see when you came back into the room?” Silver Spoon asked.

“He was collapsed on the ground. I just assumed he had a heart attack.” Sonata shrugged and smiled a little too cheekily. “You know! Those who live by the grease die by the grease? Then I froze him and stabbed him to hold off the investigation till he thawed just like you said. But then I got trapped here! Guh!”

“So the killer was the donuts, huh?” Snails rubbed his chin. “And this whole thing was just one big PSA about eating healthy! Dude, this is the craziest plot twist I ever heard. Case closed.”

“Oh, please!” Silver Spoon shot him a look. “You expect me to believe he just happened to suffer total heart failure the second Dash went through the secret passage?”

“Maybe they told him about the bust and he couldn’t take it?” Diamond Tiara suggested.

“Maybe. But…” Silver Spoon shook her head. Things still didn’t fit. “Did you really just assume he died because his heart stopped beating? You know they can resuscitate ponies, don’t you?”

“No, no! I’m one hundred percent sure he died!” Sonata put her hooves up. “It’s like – look, it’s harder to explain than the heartbeat thing, but you can’t fake your death to a ghost. We call bodies that didn’t produce a ghost a ‘blank’ cause we can even tell that much.

“And hey, if the curse makes it so only a killer can leave can’t we just throw everypony outside and see who bounces?” Sonata asked.

“If we can find everypony, perhaps,” said Silver Spoon. “We don’t know where they all are.”

Silver Spoon hummed to herself. She watched Sonata with brows lowered, unsure how much of this story to believe.

“Don’t look at me like that!” Sonata shrank behind her hooves. “Okay, okay. Look, if solving the mystery is the only way I can run away crying, then I can be a big help! I got ghost senses, you know? Like! I know where all your missing friends are!”

“You do?” Silver Spoon raised an eyebrow. “I see! Because you can smell where a living pony is, right?”

“Uh, huh!” Sonata floated over to the window and pressed her muzzle against the invisible barrier. “There’s like a shed or something out there. I can smell a bunch of ponies out there. They aren’t dead.”

Silver Spoon squinted, but all she could make out was a wall of impenetrable darkness.

“Ghosts have dark vision,” Sonata reminded her. “That’s like a bright, clear day to me. I can see it all.”

“Could that be where the secret passage leads?” Diamond Tiara asked.

“I doubt it’s far away enough.” Silver Spoon shook her head.

“What’s this about a secret passage?” Sonata asked.

“Oh! Rainbow Dash found a secret passage in the boiler room!” Snails answered. “Right behind the big one in the corner.”

“She did?” Sonata shifted her eyes. “I see.”

The moment Silver Spoon turned her suspicion on her, Sonata broke out into another one of her helpful panics.

“And I can smell other stuff!” she offered. “Like – Grease Trap’s wasn’t the only one whose heart stopped beating. I smell a few other bodies that are still warm, but got no pulse. I’m not sure when it happened.”

“You might have led with that one.” Silver Spoon sighed. “So now there’s no doubt a pony is around with the ability to somehow destroy a pony’s heart instantly. I wonder.”

A certain type of pony would possess such a skill, but still…

No! Now that she thought about it, one other pony could have known when Rainbow Dash left the building! Silver Spoon was nearly certain she’d pieced everything together!

“I’m going to make a prediction now,” said Silver Spoon. “If all of the ponies killed in this manner were staff members, then I know who the killer is. Show us where they are.”

“You’re not gonna say now?” Sonata waited briefly for a response. When none came, she sighed and went back into her doll. “Okay! We’ll be dramatic.”

Sonata led them through the hallway and around the corner. In the end, she brought them to a room close to the very end.

The door looked curious. It’d clearly been boarded up until recently. A few planks of wood lay scattered and broken on the floor. Half of one plank still hung limply from the door’s frame.

“In here.” Sonata pointed to the door. “There’s two on the other side.”

Sonata pushed open the door and looked around inside. Her ears ticked in curiosity at whatever she saw.

Silver Spoon and the others quickly followed her in, shedding light on the dark room with their candles.

Sure enough, two ponies lay limp on either wall. It looked like these two had been flung to one side. Based on how they were dressed (that was, that they wore clothes at all) and where they were, Silver Spoon decide these were likely staff members.

Silver Spoon no longer had any doubt.

And yet the room’s strangeness distracted her from announcing it just yet.

A single projector played an image of the lobby downstairs. At least, Silver Spoon assumed it was a live feed based on the scene. Though normal ponies didn’t have access to this type of technology.

Perhaps more curious were the tanks of red liquid, each big enough to hold ten gallons, that lined the walls. The drawers were stuffed full of the same liquid in clear, plastic containers.

Silver Spoon picked one up to study it.

“Blood bags?” Silver Spoon muttered to herself.

Silver Spoon turned back to the projector. She could no longer see Lazy Eye on the screen.

“Ah, yeesh!” Sonata groaned. “They’re not vampires, are they? I hate corporeal undead! They’re always harshing our mellow, you know?”

Silver Spoon looked back to the door. Sure enough, Lazy Eye and the two remaining members of his staff were there.

“Yes. It seems you’ve found our little secret.” Lazy Eye opened his mouth and his fangs popped out. “It turns out we were all vampires the whole time! And there was no way you could have possibly known this.”

“What?!” Diamond Tiara cringed.

“Okay, cool!” Sonata scooted slowly across the side of the wall. “Cool! We found the secret! Don’t like corporeal undead. I’m just gonna um… go find that hidden passage. Bye!”

Sonata made a break for it, rushing past Lazy Eye. He made no attempt to stop her, keeping his eye squarely on Silver Spoon.

“So it was the butler whose name we don’t even know!” Snails pointed at him. “What a twist, dude! He sucked out all the blood and that made it look like that other guy’s heart stopped!”

“Oh, please. Don’t assume such things.” Lazy Eye waved to the butler who took out one of the blood bags. “We haven’t killed anypony, remember? They can make soy-based blood products these days. Apparently, the heme chemicals extracted from soy root would have been enough to sustain us all this time, but somehow nopony thought to do this for centuries until now.”

Snails took a closer look at the package.

“Oh, hold up!” Snails pointed at some part of it. “Yeah, this is the same brand of those soy lattes I get. See this? That little symbol means it contains soy, dude. This is totally legit.”

To be sure, Snails swished some around in his mouth and nodded approvingly at the taste of soy.

Silver Spoon didn’t bother to look. It made no difference either way. She kept her eyes locked onto Lazy Eye.

“See the soy?” Snails held the package in front of her.

Silver Spoon pushed it away.

“I know who did it,” said Silver Spoon. “And who’s guilty.”

That got Lazy Eye worried.

“The butler?” Snails guessed one last time. “Like, he killed for soy?”

“No. Deathblow is the killer,” Silver Spoon concluded. “I have no doubt about it any longer. The heart is the only vulnerable part of a vampire. You’ll rapidly recover from any other injury unless your heart is removed, in which case your body becomes a lifeless husk until returned.”

Lazy Eye clenched his jaw.

“He would have known when Rainbow Dash left because his eye would no longer be irritated,” said Silver Spoon. “He’s the only one fast enough to have taken the rest of our class outside and assassinate most of your staff in under fifteen minutes – all without making a noise. The curse alone stopped him from ‘getting’ all of us. He would have had the skill to rip a heart out of somepony’s chest, leaving it lifeless but rapidly recovering on the ground.”

“Silence!” Lazy Eye shouted at her. “You have no idea what you’re doing, child!”

It was already too late. Three slow claps alerted them to the assassin’s presence. Deathblow leaned against the threshold as though he’d been there all along.

“Excellent work, Silver Spoon.” Deathblow came walking into the room. “Yes. I’m the one who killed all the staff and took your classmates.”

Silver Spoon nodded. She understood perfectly now.

“What do you mean?!” Diamond Tiara trembled as she backed away. “He was the killer?! But then–”

“And now–” He brandished his claw blades.

Silver Spoon hardly had time to blink before Deathblow already crossed the room. He stopped between the two fillies; the blade of his large sword pressed hard against Silver Spoon’s neck.

Silver Spoon winced, then slowly opened her eyes and confirmed what she knew. Deathblow held a broad sword in his mouth. One end of the blade rested against Silver Spoon. On the other end, Lazy Eye’s mouth clamped down.

His wings, adorned with wing blades, spread protectively over the other two. The butler and maid bit on them in a similar fashion.

Lazy Eye’s maw had transformed completely in that instant, becoming full of fangs. The two remaining members of his staff were in a similar state.

Judging from their positions, they’d come lunging at the three teens’ necks, Deathblow blocking them at the last second.

Deathblow swung his sword, sending Lazy Eye and the others across the room.

“But I thought you didn’t protect anypony unless they paid your ridiculous price!” Diamond Tiara said.

“If I’m not mistaken, Rainbow Dash already paid you, didn’t she?” Silver Spoon asked him.

“Indeed!” Deathblow dug his sword into the ground. “I was hired by Rainbow Dash to protect you all during the mission. But it seems my opponent will not be worthy of my waving the fee. A pity.”

“This whole thing was a sting operation against these vampires from the beginning,” Silver Spoon said. “They came here specifically to take them out. Deathblow didn’t actually kill Grease Trap but incapacitated him by removing the heart.”

Deathblow lunged forward. Lazy Eye jumped back, but the butler and maid were both caught by him. Deathblow planted his hoof on both of their chests and dug the blades in. He flipped backward, pulling back hard.

When he landed, both vampires collapsed, and Deathblow held their hearts in his hooves.

Not even a single drop of blood spilled. Because he was a vampire, his wound was already slowly healing. Before long the hole in his chest would be completely closed.

“As you can see, I have a particular skill that makes me especially effective against vampires.” Deathblow threw the hearts behind them. “The heart alone is vulnerable in vampires. Even now they aren’t dead. Dash requested I take as many of you alive for questioning as possible. And now that you’ve broken the curse on me, no one here can pose a threat to me.”

“Bleh!” Lazy Eye hissed. “It was the perfect system! One curse to keep you from leaving unless you murder somepony. Another curse to keep you locked in place if you do commit murder. Never before has anypony gotten through both lines of defense before our master arrived!”

“So solving the mystery did break the curse.” Silver Spoon smirked.

“But you are mistaken on one account, Silver Spoon.” Deathblow pointed his claw at Lazy Eye. “These pathetic fools hardly deserve my presence. No, all this is merely to buy time down below, where Silverstorm will confront their mistress.”

“Their mistress?” Silver Spoon’s mind blazed with all the possibilities. Was there a much stronger vampire around here?

“Yes. I’ve been forced to humiliatingly survive off this disgusting soy-based blood for decades now.” Lazy Eye snarled. “A pox upon all soy-based products! Vampires are no longer feared enough to feed off you however we please! Our mistress promised to drag you all back into the dark ages. I would be able to do whatever I pleased once more!”

“It seems you alone will be dragged into the darkness.” Deathblow grabbed his broad sword once more. “I shall give you ten seconds to surrender. You’re no match for me.”

“Nor are you a match for my mistress!” Lazy Eye snapped back. “Go right ahead. Rip my heart out or whatever you please. It will come to nothing in the end, I assure you. She will arrive shortly and then this will end.”

“We shall see.”

Deathblow grabbed the hilt of the sword with his mouth. With one solid motion, he threw it, sending it spinning rapidly through the air. The blade sliced clean through Lazy Eye’s neck, decapitating him, then stabbed into the wall behind.

Lazy Eye fell limp to the ground. His body still twitched, slowly recovering, but for now he was incapacitated.

“Bleck!” Diamond Tiara gagged. “This was way more gruesome than our last mystery!”

“Spare me,” Deathblow grumbled. “I’ve been watching decapitations when I was half your age.”

“And you really couldn’t have taken us out of here sooner?!” Diamond Tiara complained. “Like, as soon as you showed up?!”

“They might have been putting us in more danger by tipping whoever this ‘mistress’ pony is early,” Silver Spoon noted. “Though I’m curious if we’re safe even now? Who is she?”

“I suppose you’ve done well and earned the answers.” Deathblow nodded. “You’re likely safer here than anywhere else, for nowhere in Equestria is safe tonight. That alert you heard earlier was issued through the entire nation, urging all of Equestria to take shelter.”

“What?” Diamond Tiara backed up behind Snails. “What could possibly be in the basement that everypony in the entire nation needs to hide?”

“What else do you think would warrant such precautions?” Deathblow shook his head. “Beneath the secret passage is…”

“The secret passage,” Sonata whispered as she pushed through the hidden wall and into the tight corridor on the other side.

The whole was not pega-friendly. Sonata had to keep her wings lifted slightly to push through the narrow crawlspace. The passageway quickly became shrouded in total darkness, but that only made it easier for Sonata to see.

“Rainbow Dash?” Sonata called out. “Aria down here?”

Sonata escaped the tight crawlspace into a more reasonably sized hall. Immediately a gun to her face greeted her, pointed right between her eyes.

She took a step back, then realized a moment later nopony held the gun. It hung from the wall via a wire, suggesting it’d been set up as a trap. If that were the case, it was disarmed now as the gun never fired its round.

She walked past a series of broken alarms on the wall. That made it look like Dash was in no way friends with these ponies.

At the end of this hall stood a single elevator shaft, one of the old-fashioned types with a lever to make it start and stop. Frankly, she preferred these. Sonata never trusted those ‘self-driving’ elevators.

Though she doubted any pony in their right mind would trust this elevator. It tilted slightly to the side, making her wonder if it could move down the shaft at all. The gate rusted badly enough that it might just fall over at any moment. Most worryingly, metal spikes jutted out from the ceiling of the elevator.

Then the floor of it was nothing more than a flimsy cage of metal bars.

Even the lever was half-eaten by rust. Sonata couldn’t be sure if it could be pulled down without snapping in half.

That thing was a death trap, possibly a literal one.

Yet there wasn’t anywhere else those two could have gone. Sonata didn’t exactly have to worry about fall damage, either so who cared if it crashed?

Sonata stepped into the elevator and grabbed the lever. The rust coating it made so she had to pull with significant force. She pushed with all her weight for a solid minute, then suddenly it gave way and the whole thing flung forward so hard it reached the bottom and the handle broke off.

The elevator went straight into freefall. No, it was even faster than that, like a pair of rockets fired, shooting her down the shaft.

The force threw her up to the ceiling, slamming her doll into those spikes. Thankfully, she felt no pain from what would have been a back-breaking collision to a normal pony.

The elevator kept going down and down, barreling through the shaft in rapid free-fall. Sonata’s body kept pressed up against the roof the whole time. The thing fell for so long she began to wonder how deep this thing could possibly go.

Was she going to the center of the planet? She listened to that click-clack noise for a solid minute but still she couldn’t see the bottom of the pit. Frankly, she was getting bored at this point and began to look forward to the sudden crash at the bottom.

She stood up on the ceiling and looked down at the floor.

“Huh! This is kinda neat.” Sonata smiled at it.

And then, finally, she could see the bottom of the dark tunnel. She still must have had a thousand feet left to fall even then, but in absolute darkness like this, her eyesight was incredible. She did notice a door to exit through, which was good. However, she also noticed even more spikes below. These lined up perfectly with the grating of the floor.

“Uh oh.”

She could only hope the spikes didn’t go all the way up to impale her. She’d have to repair her body if that was the case!

The elevator finally crashed, halting immediately as the short spikes came up through the floor.

Sonata’s body collided full force into the floor. She impacted the ground with so much force that she bounced up to the ceiling and rammed into that with yet another killing blow.

The jolt had enough force behind it to throw her straight out of her own body. Her ghost form got flung up above the elevator ceiling while she listened to her body bouncing around below. She didn’t know how many times it bounced, but the noise stopped soon enough.

“Please don’t be too damaged,” Sonata silently begged her old body.

She flew back down and repossessed her body. Looking herself over, it seemed she mostly survived the impact. Yet she did sustain visible damage.

Her joints frayed from the blows, stuffing bursting out of her damaged seams. She needed to pop her eyeball back in too.

“Yep! That was meant to kill me.” Sonata frowned at all the rips. This would take days to fix.

No way to hide her doll status now.

The elevator door finally opened, revealing the hidden chamber.

“What was that?”

Sonata heard Rainbow Dash’s voice! She was down here!

Sonata looked around, but there was nowhere to hide.

Instead, she crawled forward to get a better look at what lied beneath.

She saw a wide-open area with a domed ceiling and roof. Wires littered the floor so completely that walking about would be impossible without stepping on them.

Hundreds of projectors filled the space, projecting images onto every inch of the walls and ceiling. All of them showed cities each one different. She recognized Manehattan and Las Pegasus but struggled to identify them all.

In the center of the dome stood Silverstorm, in the middle of a blue circle drawn on the ground. Her entire body shone with magic in an awesome display of power. That was something Sonata had seen before – yet only ever from a witch.

Rainbow Dash stood behind her, doing nothing important as far as Sonata could see.

“I’m still only at eighty percent of the network,” said Silverstorm. “You’ll have to check it yourself.”

“I swear,” said Dash. “If somepony was stupid enough to pull that deathtrap lever, then this was their own fault.”

Dash turned and started back to the elevator. There was nowhere for Sonata to go!

Quickly, she leaned up against the wall in a forced casual position, trying to hide her stuffing as best she could.

“What?” Dash winced at the sight of her. “You’re that reporter?”

“Oh, yeah!” Sonata nodded but averted her gaze. “Sunny Side Gazette. We take investigative journalism to a new level. Apparently.”

“Look, you have to get out of here right now!” Dash pointed to the elevator as if getting it to go back up was that simple. “We might only have a minute or two before–”

They didn’t have nearly that long.

A large portal opened directly in front of where Silverstorm stood. Then a hundred smaller portals appeared all along the dome, covering the walls completely. From the small portals emerged a hundred guns, each shrouded in blue magic and pointing at the center.

From the large portal came a single pony, wielding the largest gun of them all.

Sonata heard the jingle of bells and in that brief second, she recognized one of the ponies on her mistress’ to-kill list. A blue unicorn wearing a witch's hat…

It was the witch Minuette who emerged from the portal! Sonata really had stepped into it!

Then that split second was over. Minuette brandished her gun, pointing all one hundred of them at Silverstorm in the middle. At once, they all fired.

Witches 8: Twilight Takes Manehattan

Twilight had nearly the entire network mapped out by this point. She could only hope it’d be enough. It was a shame she had to destroy such a vast network of portals, but this would be the only way to defeat Minuette.

Perhaps they could build a new one someday in the future.

The network stretched out much farther than Twilight expected. Most of it remained in Equestria, but points were leading all over the planet. Some were even high in the air, though Twilight struggled to think of how Minuette could have made a landing point up there. She’d figure it out once she could focus on something else again.

Sadly, she didn’t get all the way. They managed to stall for an impressive amount of time, but it could have only lasted so long.

A hundred portals opened all around Twilight. Minuette emerged from the largest and guns poured out of the rest.

Twilight tsked. How low had the order fallen? Not only had they become morally corrupt, but they were using weapons invented by outsiders now? Did Minuette seriously think something like this could kill a pony on the level of a witch?

Before the guns fired, Twilight cast her spell, surrounding herself with electricity. Minuette’s eyes widened in horror, and she reared her head back from her mistake as the hammers fell. She only just now realized who was coming after her.

As the guns fired, a burst of electricity surged out from Twilight in a half-sphere, extending to fit the dome. The bullets bounced back, the guns fired and all of those projectors shorted out. Minuette slammed hard against the wall but recovered quickly.

Even Rainbow Dash reacted in time, putting up a wind wall to block off the hallway leading to her and Sonata. Interestingly, Sonata showed no concern for the guns at all, not even blinking like they warrant no response.

But Twilight had no time to be suspicious of that. She turned her full focus on Minuette.

“It’s you?!” Minuette stumbled back until she pressed up against the wall. “No! No! No! I didn’t think this would happen so soon!”

Sonata raised a hoof.

“Just so we’re clear, you’re worried about them and not me, right?” Sonata asked.

Dash whacked her hard on the head. Sonata became pouty and teary-eyed but silent.

“We were relatively lenient with Trixie because she surrendered.” Dash stepped forward, ready to protect that reporter again if needed. “This is your chance to give up.”

Minuette only trembled more. She shook her head, eyes wide in terror.

“You don’t have any hope of winning this fight,” Twilight warned. “I defeated Trixie and she’s generally considered tougher than you.”

“Oh yeah?” Minuette pointed at herself. “Well maybe you can take out Trixie, but there’s one difference between me and her you haven’t accounted for.”

“And what’s that?” Twilight asked.

“That I’m an enormous coward!” Minuette opened a portal behind herself. “I’m not going to stick around to fight somepony stronger than me. So later.”

Minuette jumped through the portal, closing it a split second after she vanished.

Twilight closed her eyes and put her hoof on the blue circle in the center. She could feel the lines, just as before. More importantly, she could feel the parts of it that had bent from use recently. Using a Z-gate weakened that part of the network each time.

“So did our plan work?” Dash asked.

Twilight opened her eyes and nodded.

“I think so! I’ll be able to follow her to nearly any of her portals.”

Twilight cast the Z-gate spell, opening a portal to the same location Minuette escaped to. Twilight destroyed this landing point, then she and Rainbow Dash jumped through the portal, reappearing in a different room.

Minuette stood in the massive, empty room of an abandoned warehouse. She chuckled to herself as the new portal opened behind her. She stopped laughing as soon as Twilight and Dash emerged.

In horror, Minuette pronked back a solid yard and created a new portal to escape through. They followed her to a forest, then a cave, then to the top of a tall building. Each time, Twilight destroyed that landing point, and Minuette’s network shrank slightly.

Even at this rate, it would take all day to corner her.

However, on the top of this tall building, with the stary sky behind her, Minuette finally stopped running and turned to confront Twilight once again.

“You!” She lowered her head. “You found some way to track where I land? And you know how to use Z-gates?!”

“You won’t be able to get away,” Twilight warned her. “I’ll give you another chance to surrender.”

Minuette gritted her teeth together. She took out their target – volume seven of The Book of Shadows.

“You think I’m weak, don’t you?!” Minuette held up the seventh and final volume. “Everypony says I’m the weakest of the five-belled witches! But it won’t be as easy as you think!”

Minuette took out the seventh volume.

“So what if you know the Z-gate spell?” Minuette asked. “The past fifteen generations that held this book honed it non-stop their entire lives. We’ve overwritten the mind fibers that make up the spellbook with that experience and expertise. One of them was a total loser who just cast Z-gate non-stop every day for sixty years!

“So you get it? You’re not just fighting against me; you’re fighting fifteen generations of ponies who dedicated their lives to perfecting the Z-gate spell! I’m the ultimate portal master! You can’t possibly compete with me, not here!”

Minuette created twenty separate portals leading off in every direction so that they dotted the sky. She then cast the murder spell, breaking off into twenty crows. Each crow flew off to its own portal.

“Oh, yeah.” Dash watched the crows escaping. “I keep forgetting every witch can do that one.”

Minuette must have already figured out Twilight was tracing her via landing point. If she went through the portal, then changed back, there’d be no way for Twilight to know which one Minuette arrived at.

Of course, for certain other ponies, this game would be all too easy.

Twilight had ponies waiting at various known Z-gate locations. While near a spot herself, Twilight could effectively summon them to her side regardless of where she ended up.

Twilight opened a portal and summoned Pinkie just as the last crow vanished from sight. Pinkie jumped out of the portal and grabbed tight onto Twilight’s back.

“Pinkie! Guess which portal she’s going to revert in.”

Pinkie had only caught a brief glimpse of the portals, but even just that was enough

“Oh! Oh!” Pinkie pointed at one of them. “That’s the lucky one!”

Twilight nodded to Dash and jumped at the portal with Pinkie in tow. She left the spot where Dash stood unharmed. This way she could summon Dash later.

They appeared high above a snowy village. Minuette turned in midair, letting out a yelp when she noticed Pinkie had joined the pursuit.

She repeated her crow trick two more times before realizing it wouldn’t work. She merely jumped through the next portal.

“Careful! There’s a lot of guns in this next place,” Pinkie called out just as Twilight opened the next gate.

To be cautious, Twilight shot a blast of lightning through this Z-gate and shielded herself before jumping in.

They got through and it appeared her worries were for nothing. They fell through a brief layer of clouds. They now found themselves in the air miles above the ocean. Below them, Twilight could see nothing but water.

That explained how she could make portals leading to the sky. She’d somehow learned to inscribe clouds! An impressive feat.

Twilight could see Minuette far below. She launched a large firebolt directly down at her.

Minuette simply created a portal a foot in front and behind herself. The firebolt went in one side and out the other, crashing into the ocean, leaving Minuette completely unharmed.

She could do short-ranged portals like that too? Minuette really might be better than her at this one spell! But already, Twilight’s mind spun with ideas on how these tricks might work.

As Minuette neared the water, her horn began to glow.

The water crested and from it burst forth ten guns far larger than Twilight had ever seen. She could compare them to train cars in size. These had to be those ‘artillery cannons’ she’d read about in her Equestrian research.

They all fired in unison, sending a wall of fire and shrapnel ascending towards them. At least Minuette was trying to kill her with a big gun now.

Twilight teleported down as far as she could get, bypassing the wall entirely and getting close enough to the other witch to see the fear in her eyes once more. Twilight shot another firebolt but Minuette used the same short-ranged portal technique to dodge it.

Hitting her at long range would prove difficult!

Minuette escaped through another portal she opened beneath herself.

“Underwater!” Pinkie warned.

The warning was hardly necessary this time as water came gushing out of the portal in question. Twilight had to push hard to get through it.

They had to have been incredibly deep underwater, wherever they were. It was pitch black on the other side. The weight of the water above assaulted them with crushing force. That alone may have killed a normal pony.

Pinkie held the water at bay with her psychokinesis, struggling slightly. Twilight lit her horn to reveal the ocean floor. Tiny crab-like creatures scuttled away from the light.

From above, seven red lights appeared and rapidly approached. Twilight quickly realized these were rockets hurtling towards them. The shockwaves would be far deadlier down here than on land, too.

She cast an elemental resonance spell to quickly move through the water. Both she and Pinkie vanished from sight, merging with the water.

She’d never merged with such a large body before but found it surprisingly easy. In fact, she could put this incredible weight to her use.

Twilight quickly closed in on Minuette, dropping Pinkie off several yards in front of her. As Minuette wound up to fire at Pinkie, Twilight moved swiftly behind her and sent a torrent of water gushing at Minuette from behind.

Minuette choked at the weight, swallowing some water as she was roughly thrown at Pinkie. Pinkie hit her with a blue wave of psychic energy that blew her back once again.

Twilight reformed and got ready to begin pinballing Minuette back and forth between the two of them. The other witch decided she wouldn’t win on this field and created another portal to escape.

The rushing water all but sucked the other two ponies into the latest portal. They slid out into what they soon recognized as a farm.

Minuette gasped on the ground for a moment, already covered in small cuts, then quickly jumped into another portal the moment her pursuers arrived.

“Like a– a volcano or something!” Pinkie shouted at her. “Above!”

Twilight glanced upward as she landed in the next death room. She could feel the immense heat and see a pool of lava suspended up above, held up only by an oddly colored glass ceiling.

Minuette dashed down a narrow hallway. As she ran, she pulled forward a string in her mouth. Only once she vanished through a portal on the other side did the string become taut, threatening to activate some mechanism above them.

Pinkie deftly grabbed onto the string with her psychokinesis to buy Twilight a second. Instead of going all the way down the hall, Twilight merely created a portal a foot ahead and dove through that.

Twilight rolled out of the way on the dismount, as lava began pouring out of the portal a second later.

Minuette jumped up and down to stamp her hooves harder in frustration. But she didn’t give up. She rushed headlong into the next portal.

“And now we’re going to an explosion!”

“Something sharp is gonna be below!”

“Like! Like the three o’clock!”

“A squid!”

In this manner, Pinkie effectively warned Twilight of all the death traps Minuette had set up. Every time, Twilight managed to counter them all. Every time, Minuette screamed and ran off faster and more panicked than before.

They didn’t get any hits in, Minuette stayed too far ahead and Twilight had yet to get a hit through her portals but it didn’t matter. She only had so many landing points. There’d be nowhere to run eventually.

Finally, after ten rounds of this little game, Pinkie gave her most dire warning yet.

“There’s something really, really dangerous in the next one!” Pinkie pulled on Twilight’s ear trying to get her to slow down. “You gotta be ready!”

“Something dangerous?” Twilight stopped a moment before opening the next portal.

“I can’t be more specific than that.”

Twilight sighed, braced herself, and went through the portal, expecting a thousand-foot-tall dragon. That wouldn’t be so bad. How much worse than that could it get?

Minuette screamed as she stumbled onto a rocky shore. These ponies were way too strong! She needed to start busting out her trump cards!

Behind her, violent ocean waves pushed themselves up onto the cliff upon which she stood. Before her stood the mountain of Glen Rock and on its top, the city of Griffonstone.

The city walls raised an impressive five hundred feet and stretched along the length of the mountain near the summit. Only a tiny bit of the very peak of the mountain could be seen over those walls and none of the city inside was visible.

But nopony coming here for the first time would even notice the city. Heck, they’d barely even see the mountain itself.

Not thousands, but millions of zombie griffons piled on top of one another, trying to claw their way into that last bastion of their civilization. They covered the entire mountainside in a massive blob but were unable to get over the wall.

Thankfully, the word ‘zombie’ started with a Z. Well, technically the spells she was about to cast weren’t even ones created by Twilight, but they still fit the theme.

Just as she arrived, Minuette cast the zombie resonance spell. All the zombies would see her as one of them now and ignore her completely.

Then, as her assailants came chasing after her, Minuette opened her mouth and cast her second spell. The resulting scream caught the attention of every zombie around for twenty miles.

The mountain of undeath before her shifted as all the zombie griffons turned their attention downward. Then at once, they all moved.

More like a tsunami than an avalanche, the griffon zombies came crashing down. They couldn’t fly, but they could glide and soon they covered the sky. Even though it was day here, the world grew darker.

Even more undead came from behind, crawling up from the rocky shores behind Silverstorm and Pinkie Pie.

Nothing could escape this! Their only option was to leave via a portal. Then Minuette could get away!

She smirked as the ground began to rumble and the howls of the zombie horde reached her.

The swarm of zombies came at them from all sides, closing in like a clutching claw. Minuette laughed in the distance as the wave came rushing towards her.

“This is a lot of zombies!” Pinkie warned, looking around. “This type eats meat, you know! Meat like us? Maybe we should 23 skiddoo?”

“If we leave, Minuette can get away!” Twilight shook her head. “We’ll just have to fight one million zombies. How hard can that be?

“Well it’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever done.” Pinkie jumped off Twilight and turned toward the zombies from the sea.

They stood back-to-back and got ready to blast the undead as hard as they could. Minuette stopped laughing and watched them, baffled that they were going to try and fight their way out of this.

Twilight took the first shot. Her body glowed briefly with magic, then she fired a massive torrent of fire into the air. It blew a hole in the zombie swam above them, letting in sunlight briefly. Before long, the griffons simply filled in the gap and grew even closer.

Pinkie threw one of her spirit bombs behind her, blowing the largest group of zombies to pieces. She then proceeded to send psychokinetic bursts forward, blowing the zombies back and breaking them to pieces as they fell back off the cliff.

That kept them at bay from the rear, but the main threat lingered up ahead. Twilight needed to get ready for that.

Twilight shot another massive fireball at the crowd. It opened a gap only for it to fill in again. The second, third, fourth, and fifth blasts all yielded the same result.

Finally, she resorted to her plasma beam. The white light flashed forward, going all the way to the distant mountain. It vaporized anything caught in its light and incinerated zombies anywhere close to it.

When it faded, Twilight could see the hole melted in the rock far away. But still, the zombies kept coming. Before long, even that gaping hole filled back in.

She needed to prepare for a longer fight it seemed.

Twilight’s body glowed and she cast the hyper dance spell. Ethereal swords and spears rose all around her, then became solid. Thousands of dancing weapons surrounded them, would fight on their own. This too would fall short. They’d dull and break long before they cut all the enemies to pieces.

She slammed on the ground and a wall of rock erupted up, creating a barrier.

Twilight still needed more help! Who would be safe to bring here?

She decided to summon Saccharine, whom they likely couldn’t damage. Zombies surrounded them completely as the robot emerged. She needed no explanation as to what was about to happen.

The world grew dimmer as they approached. The three of them stood back-to-back as the claw closed around them.

Twilight shot out rapid bursts of chain lightning above. Saccharine fired explosives to the right. Pinkie threw off spirit bomb after spirit bomb to the left.

The mob was so big that the earthen wall did little to stop them. They formed a bulge as they slammed into the makeshift shield, then came tumbling over it. The rock soon cracked under all the pressure.

Then the zombies began clashing with the dancing blades. They tore the griffons to pieces, holding them at bay briefly. Saccharine switched to her flamethrowers.

Almost all at once, the wall of dancing weapons broke down. Zombies lurched at them from every direction. Pinkie dug her hooves in to stop the whole thing from crashing in on them.

The three of them were effectively in a dome now. The only light came from the fire and lightning. The walls came closer and closer no matter how many they destroyed.

Saccharine’s flamethrowers ran out of fuel. She switched the plasma weapon Rarity created with Twilight’s help. Her body glowed red, lighting up the dome, then a beam of plasma shot out. In mirror, Twilight fired out a second beam of plasma in the opposite direction.

The two spun halfway around in sync, creating a full circle between them. The world became filled with a blinding light and ash filled the air, making Twilight cough.

Saccharine wouldn’t get a second shot with that. Even Twilight couldn’t do that too many times in a day before getting exhausted.

She looked up. At last, she saw it! A tiny ray of sunlight broke through! They began to thin out.

Pinkie switched back to attacking and Saccharine charged forward covered in drills and buzzsaws. A moment later, Twilight could see the terrain once more.

Pieces of zombies and ash piled all around them. The area looked more like a desert now than a rocky mountainside. Twilight caught a glimpse of Minuette. Her eye twitched as she watched them in horror.

Zombies still covered the area, giving Minuette a moment of respite.

“Okay! Then how about my strongest zombie?” Minuette opened a portal. “Say hi to Drillbeak!”

Another griffon came rushing out of the portal. He wasn’t like the others. He came at them much faster. As he got close Twilight heard drills. His talons, it seemed, had been replaced by them.

Twilight needed no effort incinerating him as well with a fireball, but the whirling screech returned from above. She looked up to see the same griffon coming at them from the sky. Destroying him there only caused him to come bursting out of the ash below a moment later.

Twilight turned and fired on him as he constantly rose again and again from the ashes.

A psycho zombie! Just like before!

“Well? Even if you do escape from here, he’ll just keep following you forever!” Minuette laughed.

There was no way Twilight would have enough time to seal this one away, not until much later anyway. She couldn’t chase Minuette with this thing appearing behind her at every turn, either. She needed more help.

She knew who the best pony for this was. Twilight opened another portal. Fluttershy peeked her head out of the gate to look over what she must have assumed to be a desert.

“This is a lot of zombies!” Fluttershy hid behind Twilight. She did not know what ‘a lot of zombies’ was.

“Fluttershy! You’re incorporeal! They can’t even touch you!” Twilight called back. Twilight opened a hole in the ground, dropped her bear in, then buried it.

The zombies showed no interest in the spot where her bear was safely buried. Fluttershy remained untouchable.

“Oh. I forgot.” Fluttershy floated out into the zombie horde. A few of them swiped at her harmless. “I guess this is fine, then. Though they’re still pretty ugly.”

Fluttershy created a wall of ice between them and the horde. Or course, calling them a horde was stretching it at this point and they no longer had the mass to break down a wall.

“Good, but we need you for him!” Twilight pointed at Drillbeak appeared yet again, coming screaming down at them. “He’s one of those psycho zombies.”

Fluttershy froze Drillbeak and fifty additional zombies all in one massive, solid block of ice.

“But can’t it just teleport out of this?” Fluttershy asked.

“Not if you’re looking at it,” Twilight remembered. “Just keep staring at it till we get back! I won’t destroy this point.”

“Um. Okay! I can do that.” Fluttershy crouched down and gave him a serious stare.

Straggling zombies rushed at her but were unable to touch Fluttershy.

Twilight looked back up at Minuette, now out of ammo. The area quieted down as only a small number of zombies remained. Minuette could only stare slack-jawed as it registered with her that they actually got through that unscathed.

The witch took two steps back as Twilight approached.

“Oh yeah?” Minuette jumped back. “Well, uh! Back to running away!”

Minuette opened another portal just ahead of herself. A large, metallic cylinder with a rounded front appeared just overhead. Twilight struggled to imagine what sort of weapon this could be.

No! Twilight recognized this. It was a rocket.

Minuette grabbed onto the rocket as fire spewed from the backside. Her laughing rose over the fiery roar only to be overtaken a moment later. The two of them blasted off over the ocean, getting only faster as they went.

Twilight wouldn’t be able to find where Minuette ended up unless she used another portal. She moved too fast for Twilight to catch up to even using teleportation.

She opened a portal and summoned one of her allies.

Fleetfoot came flying out of the portal fast. Part of the plan was to help build their reputation with the S-rank ponies. They hoped letting Fleetfoot fight alongside them would show her Twilight’s capabilities and build comradery at once.

Twilight grabbed onto her and merely pointed forward. Having already planned this sting out, Fleetfoot needed no further prompting to take off in the correct direction at full speed.

Fleetfoot grabbed Twilight tight and flew off at incredible speeds – faster than Twilight could have managed even with chain teleportation. They hadn’t exaggerated in the least about her speed.

The wind became unbearably loud. The two of them would have caught fire or got pummeled by the g-forces were it not for a barrier Fleetfoot’s goggles created. Twilight had to keep her eyes narrow to see ahead.

She couldn’t tell at first, but the tiny dot of red in the sky grew ever so slightly brighter and bigger.

Fleetfoot could outfly the rocket!

Minuette must have seen them just then. She created portals behind her to block their way. Bumping into one would send them to some far-off land.

Fleetfoot swerved around them with surprising ability for how fast they soared. Before long, they were passing dozens of portals in every direction in pursuit of Minuette. They successfully weaved between them, but the blockade stalled enough for Minuette to keep at the same distance.

Then it happened! The fire from Minuette’s missile died. They rapidly approached her, would be there in seconds.

Fleetfoot threw Twilight forward and flew off to the side herself. At the same time, she took out her anchor and sent it hurtling forward.

Now the two of them were on course to pincer Minuette from either side. The anchor flew between them at Mach 2, on a direct collision course with the witch.

Before long, Minuette had grown past a black dot. Twilight could see the blue in her again, then make out her shape. As the ocean charged on and on beneath her, Twilight looked up to see Minuette panicking as she looked at the three incoming threats.

The anchor reached her first. Minuette created a portal just in front of her and the anchor went through it. Twilight noticed another portal open a short distance behind Minuette. From this second portal, the anchor emerged and kept flying onward, then it vanished.

Twilight shot a burst of lightning up at her only for Minuette to shield herself with a portal in the same manner – the bolt shooting out above her.

The two witches began to lose speed, but Fleetfoot only got faster. She took out metal rods from her bag of holding next, each the length of a pony. They shot out faster than bullets at Minuette.

Minuette did a good job making it appear ranged attacks were useless against her. Every time one got close, she’d open a portal from in front to behind her and it would harmlessly pass through. She tried redirecting them down at Twilight, but they were always off by just enough for Twilight to deflect the projectiles.

Twilight knew she could imitate these short-ranged portals after seeing them this many times. Then she resolved to use them against Minuette.

Beneath Minuette, Twilight opened a portal in the path of a stray metal rod. She created one mere yards away from Minuette, redirecting it at her.

Caught off guard by how quickly Twilight picked up the spell, Minuette couldn’t react in time. The rod hit her, with an audible crack. The blow would have at least taken a limb off from a normal pony, but it merely broke Minuette's momentum and sent her spiraling out of control.

She created another portal and sent herself off somewhere far away. Twilight registered she’d gone off to a city this time and followed with her own portal.

Minuette tumbled across asphalt, picking up several scrapes at this incredible speed. The pain in her rear left leg had yet to register, but she knew that blow broke it.

How had some stupid pirate learned to imitate one of her techniques so fast?!

She stood up on three legs and looked up at the tall buildings to confirm she’d landed in Manehattan.

Silverstorm came out a second later. She hadn’t lost her speed and flew off down the streets at dangerous speeds. She tried to slow herself using fire like a rocket, but still shattered through the window of a skyscraper.

Three and three-quarters seconds. That was the delay.

Minuette only had a few seconds to decide on her next course of action.

Things were getting bad!

She breathed in and out as slowly as she could, trying to calm herself. She still had plenty of cards to play. She could still get away from this!

Minuette took the precious seconds she’d bought to try and fuse her bone back together as she looked around for a hostage to take. If it was between a hundred foals dying and catching Minuette, surely Silverstorm would let her go.

And yet…

“There’s nopony here?!” Minuette looked down the empty streets in horror.

She couldn’t see a single pony! She knew it was late, but she’d never seen Manehattan completely empty!

She put this portal specifically next to an orphanage for this exact purpose! Yet when she turned to it, the lights in the building were off. She’d been here before and that never happened.

Had they seriously somehow thought to evacuate this orphanage ahead of time?! They may have just taken shelter in the basement– nearly every building in Equestria had some sort of safe room. But how could they have seen this far ahead?!

In fact, nearly all the lights in all the buildings were off!

Silverstorm came out of the building she’d crashed into.

Minuette’s bone recovered back to one piece but still cracked. It’d have to do! She couldn’t possibly go against Silverstorm in a straight fight.

Minuette dropped through another portal. She landed in what she knew would be the busiest part of Detrot at this time of night.

But when she got to the streets, nopony was there. Panic welled up in her heart once more. This couldn’t be happening!

The streets of Trotonto were empty. The streets of Las Pegasus were empty! Baltimare, Fillydelphia, Applewood, and even Canterlot were all barren wastelands!

None of these cities should be half as empty as this!

Finally, she tumbled out into the streets of a smaller town to find that, too, had been emptied.

“Gah!” Minuette jumped up and down, stamping her feet. “Where is everypony?!”

“The alert wasn’t just for one city,” Silverstorm explained. “We talked to the SA, and they sent out an alarm for the entire nation. Everypony has already taken shelter.”

Minuette stumbled back, holding in a yelp.

“I helped Trixie and I can help you too,” Silverstorm made her offer yet again. “Just stop this!”

What the crow did she think was going to happen?

“Shut up! You think that’s enough?!” Minuette shouted at her. “I can hold an entire city hostage if I want!”

She went through another portal, appearing far over the city of Fillydelphia. Miles in the air, even the tallest skyscraper was nothing but a speck beneath her now. She was higher up than any pegasus flew, enough that it became cold and difficult to breathe.

“I’ll just destroy the entire city from orbit!”

Minuette held up her hoof and opened ten massive portals. Silverstorm appeared right above her just in time to see the incoming attack.

From each gate emerged an enormous cargo ship. Those ships were filled to the brim with explosives! If even one of them reached the ground below, falling at terminal velocity, it would level multiple skyscrapers and break straight through whatever basements the ponies hid in.

Silverstorm saw the boats falling to the helpless city below and immediately her soft conscious shot fear into her. Things were going to work out!

“You can chase after me or try to stop the destruction! How are you going to–?” Minuette barely had time to boast.

Silverstorm simply teleported down below the ships and opened a portal beneath each one. They returned to the cave where they originally came from. The fire that came roaring up out of the portals confirmed they’d exploded on arrival.

In another moment of stunned confusion, Minuette got pelted by the shock wave and shrapnel. The pain was starting to break through her adrenaline! This day kept getting worse!

“What was that?!” Silverstorm scolded her. “You’re trying to kill bystanders now? Even Trixie fought with more honor than this!”

“Honor is for dead ponies!” Minuette shouted down at her.

Though Minuette may be included in that group one way or the other shortly.

Where was she going to get a hostage?! Go running around the griffon or zebra lands?!

No! She knew where one pony she could use was!

Minuette opened another portal underneath herself and vanished.

It’d been over an hour since the party train departed and Sonata just stood there the whole time, scratching her head, wondering if anypony would come back.

But nope! That was that.

“Well that happened.” Sonata shrugged, finally deciding she was safe. “Guess this is just one of those random, pointless events that don’t go anywhere.”

At least Sonata learned that Silverstorm could cast magic with her whole body like witches did. Maybe Sonata would get praised for that? Yeah! It’d be so great if her mistress was happy for her!

Of course, that’d be useless information if Silverstorm lost this upcoming battle. Sonata wondered whether she should be rooting for Silverstorm or not.

If either of them died, it’d mean one less strong pony for her mistress to worry about. Perhaps it didn’t really matter.

But for now, there looked to be more rooms! On the other end of the dome, she spied a hallway. Sonata got so excited. She might be able to find something cool in the witch’s house to take back to her mistress! Then she’d be so pleased with Sonata!

Minuette was distracted so she could easily get away with this.

Sonata hummed and marched towards the empty hallway. Then a portal opened. Minuette charged out of the hall, grabbed Sonata, and pulled them both into another portal.

Then it was any crow’s guess where Sonata got thrown next.

She looked around and found herself high up on some snowy mountain. Which snowy mountain, she had no idea.

Minuette slammed her hooves into the snow and spun around with Sonata in tow. She used her magic to clamp down on Sonata hard, holding her in place inches in front of her.

She’d encountered a witch once before, a long time ago. This came as a rough reminder of just how strong these ponies were. Even the one considered the weakest could grip Sonata with crushing force like this. She imagined she’d be struggling to breathe if she had lungs.

She couldn’t budge an inch. Though she could just leave her body.

Before she had the chance, a portal opened from where she’d just stood, and from it emerged Silverstorm.

Minuette summoned a gun from one of her portals and pressed it hard against Sonata’s temple, causing Silverstorm to halt where they were. She couldn’t let them find out she was a ghost! Not yet!

“Yeah!” Minuette pulled the hammer back. “If you don’t let me get away, I’m blowing her brains out!”

“Um.” Sonata didn’t look the least bit worried by that threat. Guns couldn't harm her. “About that.”

“You see?” Silverstorm glared at Sonata. “This is why I hate you ‘reporters’. You’re always making a nuisance of yourselves.”

“Yeah! That’s a pretty good point.” Sonata nodded. “Well, you’ve convinced me. I don’t deserve to live.”

Sonata looked up at Minuette.

“Go ahead and shoot me. I’ll just take one for the team.”

“W-what?” Minuette’s grip on her gun loosened. Suddenly, she was unsure of herself.

“Come on!” Sonata started to kick in her weakened grip. “I don’t have all day! Just shoot me! Do it! Do it!”

Even Silverstorm was left stunned by this gambit. The two of them could only stop and stare, trying to figure out this genius-level move.

“Uh.” Minuette took a step back.

In the end, she created another portal behind herself and pulled them both in to buy more time.

Now they were high up in the air. Sonata was too restrained to get a good look. The sky filled her entire sight.

“Okay! What are you?!” Minuette threw her gun away, certain it’d have no effect.

“Look! If you don’t let me go, I’m gonna scream!” Sonata threatened her.

“What are you, eight?” Minuette asked.

“No! I’m a banshee.” Sonata flew out of her body.

“What?” Minuette’s eyes widened. “Oh, what the buck?! How unlucky am I gonna get today?!”

“You know what? You’re a threat to my mistress anyway, so–”

Minuette created another portal beneath herself. She was too late. Sonata opened her mouth and shrieked her death wail in Minuette’s ear! She felt Minuette’s heart tremble and knew for sure it got her!

“Wow! That was easy!” Sonata smiled to herself as Minuette vanished from sight. “How come we don’t just do that to every witch? And more importantly, where am I?”

Sonata looked down to see the ocean rapidly rising to say hello.

“Wah!”

Sonata darted back into her body, presently dragging it down with her. She got in and gave the wings a few flaps. She slowed her descent but not enough to avoid landing in the water with a big splash.

“Ah, no!” Sonata cried and pouted as soon as she came back above water. “Now the stuffing’s all wet! This will take forever to fix!”

She looked around, seeing no shore in sight.

“I hope I’m not that far from land!” Sonata pouted. “The one time I do good, and I get immediately punished for it! It’s not fair!"

At least she couldn’t drown.

Things were getting worse and worse!

A death curse could be taken off in a few ways. The banshee could decide to remove it, be killed, or at least hit hard enough.

Minuette tried going back to that part of the ocean but found the landing point destroyed! Did Silverstorm plan this out?!

Option two? She could unravel it. Normally, this wouldn’t be too big of a deal. Even non-witches could unravel death curses. But that would take an hour or two she didn’t have!

No, no! Minuette would need to let every attack hit her from now on or the death curse might be able to chain up to its full power and land a certain kill on her! Yet it’d be too much of an inconvenience. And she’d have horrible luck from here on out!

She landed in a small town. It was still night and all the ponies were still hiding. Yet she did see a spark of light just ahead of her.

She stumbled to the side to narrowly avoid it. A fire hydrant just happened to go off and sprayed water out into the streets. On top of that, a wire coincidentally happened to go down and fall into the water. Minuette had nearly been electrocuted.

This had to be because of the death curse. If that was the case, dodging the shock was a bad thing!

Should she jump in or was it too late?

Minuette watched the electrified water slowly spread till it reached a gutter. Something down there screeched in pain as it got shocked.

That had to be the second domino! Minuette rushed over to the storm drain just as a tentacle burst out. She could have easily dodged or destroyed it but allowed the thing to grab her and slam her around the road.

Eventually, it smashed the road up just enough to stop the electrical flow to itself and flung Minuette away.

That would keep the death curse at bay a moment longer.

Silverstorm came through the gate a second later. She saw Minuette on the ground, getting a clear opportunity at last. But instead of attacking, she opened three more portals all around Minuette. A pony jumped through each one and, as though they’d rehearsed this, they all tackled Minuette at once.

Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fleetfoot, and Silverstorm all landed on her at the exact same moment.

More likely, it was a fraction of a second apart! But which one hit her first?

Minuette remembered the condition for breaking most of her curses. Somepony had to beat her at tag. If a pony tagged her and didn’t get tagged back for fifteen minutes, all of her hard work would be undone!

But which one was ‘it’?! Minuette had fifteen minutes to get the right one!

Soon after touching her, the four mares broke away. In an instant, Fleetfoot rushed away and became a speck on the horizon. Pinkie jumped back through the portal she came from. Rainbow Dash cast the murder spell and flew off in every direction.

Silverstorm alone remained to fight!

Minuette would just have to get all of them somehow!

The one who turned into crows! Minuette decided she had to be the weakest! At least, she’d yet to see that one do anything impressive yet.

She summoned another round of guns and fired a barrage at the crows. That dastardly pirate already learned this trick though! She created a portal in the path of the volley and redirected them all at the ground.

Clearly, Silverstorm was some kind of prodigy! Minuette needed to tag her too, but that could wait. She couldn’t lose track of those crows.

Minuette created a short-range portal towards one of the crows. She jumped through, then teleported, then jumped through another portal.

She’d successfully put some distance between her and Silverstorm now, approached one of the crows from above.

Minuette punched the crow, sending it down to the ground where it died.

Of course, this didn’t kill Dash. No, one of the other crows simply reverted back to pegasus form in a nearby tree.

Minuette pointed a new gun at the pegasus as Dash prepared to cast the murder spell again.

The gun misfired!

The curse again!

Minuette turned her attention to the stray bullet which smashed through a window. A second later, a propane tank came whizzing out from the same window, flying haphazardly through the air.

She couldn’t let this chain continue. Minuette interrupted it by teleporting in the way of the propane tank, letting it smash into her gut before flying off to explode in the air.

Instead of turning back to crows, Dash watched this, puzzled.

“Wait. Is that a death curse?” Dash followed the propane tank. “I had one of those once. You know, we can help you if you give up.”

“Shut up!” Minuette shouted up at her. “I already tagged you and you won’t be getting me again!”

“You sure about that?” Dash unfolded her wing. “I’m getting pretty good at the murder spell, you know.”

She only had one? Minuette paused to consider what that meant.

No! She’d seen Screwball do this variation before, where you turn part of your body into crows. Dash had converted one of her wings!

Minuette spun around and took out four more guns. Sure enough, a crow nearly got her from behind, but Minuette gunned it down. If this worked the same as Screwball’s version…

She turned once again to see Dash’s wing reformed. She struggled hard, but Dash managed to make her full body glow ever so slightly. She couldn’t seriously be attempting to cast a hyper-spell, could she?

Such a pathetic display wouldn’t work.

It wasn’t entirely incredible, but Dash did manage to get a spell off, turning her into a massive, black cloud.

This time she turned into hundreds of crows instead of the usual twenty.

They all swarmed at Minuette from all sides. She summoned as many guns as she could, gunning down swathes of them in the air, but they managed to close in on her.

One scratched her just slightly with its talons and that was all it took. Before Minuette could punch one back they all vanished.

Minuette desperately turned around, looking for Dash! One of the crows escaped and turned back! She’d never be able to find her!

She couldn’t even get one of them?! Not even the one she was now certain was the weakest!

To make things worse, Minuette turned her attention on Silverstorm, swiftly approaching from behind.

Minuette kicked the portal forward. She’d created mobile portals, too.

Sadly, for now, the portal rushed headlong at her, threatening to swallow Twilight and send her to some other death trap.

Twilight effortlessly sidestepped it. Minuette made five more portals and kicked them all in turn. They didn’t move nearly fast enough to catch Twilight, and she dodged them all. Minuette didn’t seriously think such a slow-moving attack would be enough to get Twilight, did she? There had to be something else going on.

Turned out Twilight had been right not to underestimate her. She noticed something off about one of the portals as it passed. It faced the opposite direction of the others. Minuette had been trying to set up a sneak attack.

Twilight placed her own portal in front of the backward-facing one, leading behind Minuette.

Minuette noticed this and created her portal leading from behind her to behind Twilight. The chain formed quickly after this.

From behind Twilight to Minuette’s right. From Minuette’s right to Twilight’s left and so on. Back, right, left, front, above in that order until both ponies were surrounded with nowhere to go.

Running through the chain in her mind, Minuette seemed to be at an advantage. Once all of this set itself up, the attack would move through each of these twelve portals in turn and ultimately blast Twilight. No doubt, Minuette notice this too.

However, even when surrounded in all five directions, Twilight still had one move left.

She created a portal from beneath herself to beneath Minuette. Caught off guard, Minuette stumbled briefly. Twilight leaned down, reached through the portal, and grabbed Minuette by the hooves.

She flipped both through their respective portals, switching places with the other witch. Twilight flew up to Minuette’s cage and vice versa just as the attack went off.

Minuette summoned some magic at the last minute, but it was already too late. Fire surged through each portal, finally sweeping over Minuette. All the portals collapsed soon after.

Minuette fell to the ground, large patches of her fur burned off, but still conscious. She’d been badly bruised by this point.

Twilight watched her silently. For now, she just needed to keep her from reaching the others for fifteen minutes.

“You don’t have to keep doing this,” said Twilight. “You don’t have to be like this. If you’re scared of ponies hurting you for being a witch, then acting like this will only make things worse for you.

“Will you shut up with this already?!" Minuette spat at her. “You think you’re the good guy here? If you were, you wouldn’t be trying to break my curses! So don’t go spouting your moral platitudes at me. I’m the hero!”

Twilight took a step back, more surprised by this than any attack Minuette had yet to launch.

“What?!” Twilight closed her eyes and shook the idea out of her head. “You’re just trying to distract me. You’re going to say that after trying to blow up half a city? Nopony would think you’re in the right here.”

“That’s because everypony lacks vision! Have you stopped to think for one second what you’re trying to do, you fool?” Minuette stepped forward. “The world is advancing too rapidly. Equestria is becoming too powerful. If I don’t do anything, they’ll surpass even the witches in just a few hundred years.”

Twilight remembered having the same concern not long ago. She could relate on some level. Yet the different path Minuette took seemed terrible even from a purely strategic point of view.

“If you’re worried about the rest of the world catching up to you, why not join them instead of fighting against them?” Twilight offered up her plan to Minuette with an outstretched hoof. “If you work with them, they won’t have any reason to want to kill you, even if they get stronger than you one day. I understand most of you were kidnapped as foals and indoctrinated into this way of thinking, but if you hand over your book now, I promise I’ll do everything I can to help you escape this life.”

Minuette laughed.

Twilight felt a twinge of personal assault in that laughter. She was laughing at Twilight’s plan, after all.

“Did Trixie give you some sob story about how she’s a pathetic child who just wanted to feel special?” Minuette laughed nervously at the idea, peeking over her shoulder briefly like she was concerned Trixie may have overheard that. “Look, I don’t know what you think but I’m not a victim here. I sought out the pony who trained me. I believed in this cause and willingly chose to become a witch.”

“Believed in–?” Twilight tilted her head. This made no sense, but she felt like she was getting somewhere now. “In the cause of what?”

“All the other lines of witches are different from mine,” said Minuette. “We alone, the witches of time who have an unbroken chain going back thousands of years, have remembered our true purpose. The order got corrupted countless centuries ago. I don’t consider any of the others, not even the last of the masters, to be true witches. Nopony but me.”

Minuette took out the seventh volume and looked down on it in disdain. Suddenly Twilight felt as though revealing herself to be a master witch might not have the same effect here as it did with Trixie.

“That bastard Sombra killed Master Displacement and so much knowledge was lost. But I know this! Witches were tasked by our true master to lie in wait, preserving our knowledge and power, only arising when chaos overtakes the world. All the others forgot our mission. They cut themselves off from the world entirely or gave in to the temptation of the power we were granted. But not me. I will protect this world now when it needs me most!”

Her true master? She had to be talking about Golden Feather, though Twilight never heard anything about a ‘true mission’.

It did raise an interesting thought in Twilight’s mind, though. If the order had become so much more corrupt from the time of her master’s master to today, then could Twilight’s understanding of their order be a corruption of an even earlier teaching?

Not that it mattered much, especially not at this moment. It didn’t matter whose beliefs were the original.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Twilight shook her head. “You’re the one causing the chaos. The world needs to be protected from you. Or is there some giant space monster hurtling towards us I haven’t heard of?”

“I’m going to protect the world from you.” Minuette sneered down at her with enough genuine disgust that Twilight didn’t doubt for a second she meant it.

Did she figure out who Twilight was? No! She started all this before ever even meeting Twilight.

“You say you want me to ‘help’ these weak peasants?” Minuette shook her head. “Help them do what? Do you want me to share my knowledge with them? Run around protecting them from monsters? Show them how to cure diseases and create their own portal network? What do you think all of that would come to in the end?”

In the end?

Something like an endpoint never existed in her mind. The road had always been endless to her. Gaining acceptance was the closest thing to a real goal she’d ever had. Even creating true void had simply been a stepping-stone.

But was this new ‘goal’ even an end for her? Twilight wasn’t sure what came after that, but she hardly felt like it was ‘the end’ either.

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” Twilight admitted

“You see? No one has vision but me!” Minuette stomped her hoof in frustration. “’Helping’ them will only make things worse. It will make their technology and magical abilities advance faster. This is already the most advanced civilization that has ever existed since the days of Golden Feather herself. In many ways, they’ve even surpassed the ancient world. And you want to do something that will push them even further ahead?”

“I still don’t see how that’s a problem if you’re not their enemy,” said Twilight.

“For the last time, I’m not their enemy! I’m the only one trying to stop them from rushing head-first into disaster!” Minuette pointed at Twilight.

“What are you talking about?”

“How do you not know yet? Haven’t you ever read a science fiction novel?” Minuette asked. “There are so many ways technology can destroy everything. Think about it! Pinball seems fine and all, but with each year ponies will make increasingly fun pinball machines. Eventually, they’ll create one that’s so much fun that nopony will ever be able to stop playing, and then they’ll all die!

“Ponies will create bigger and more destructive spells until they destroy the whole world with some mega spell. They’ll create machines that will conquer and replace us. Telephones will make us more disconnected than ever before. Some megacorporation will enslave everypony. Things will only get worse the longer this continues.”

“So what?” Twilight asked. “To stop them from destroying themselves you’re going to destroy them first? Have you thought about this?”

“Don’t talk to me like that! I come from a lineage of ancient wisdom,” said Minuette. “My predecessor, two thousand years ago, successfully destroyed the Zebra Empire when its population was just one hundred million. If it’d been destroyed at a population of one billion, the disaster would be an order of magnitude worse. It’s better to occasionally destroy small kingdoms than to wait for a massive empire to implode.”

“And it’s okay for you to use this kind of power but nopony else?” Twilight asked. “Shouldn’t you destroy yourself by your logic?”

“Of course there’s a difference! Without somepony as wise and glorious as Golden Feather to rule us, we’ll always fall into destruction. Only ponies with my wisdom and knowledge can wield this kind of magic and power. The masses are too stupid to keep from pushing each other off the cliff, which is why they need me. Ponies like you simply lack the wisdom to handle it all. Have you not yet seen how dangerous letting them get this kind of power could be?”

Twilight remembered the self-replicating molecule she’d encountered in the sewers, the ‘blob’ as all the others called it. There was no possible way somepony from Equestria could have created something like that six hundred years ago.

“I have,” Twilight admitted. “I know two ponies who created something that shouldn’t exist and could destroy the world.”

Of course, Twilight also created her blob monster centuries ago. She and Filthy Rich had one other thing in common besides that.

“Both made the right decision in the end,” said Twilight. “I don’t believe we’re all as foolish as you think.”

Minuette gritted her teeth but couldn’t answer.

“Didn’t I hear something about your predecessor trying to destroy the world with mass pollution?” Twilight asked. “She invented aerosols to dissolve the atmosphere and super-reactors to pump out super-toxic waste? If everypony else is so stupid, why didn’t they fall for that?”

“Shut up!” Minuette stomped her hoof. “Your optimism is all the proof I need to dismiss everything you’re saying as worthless! How can you seriously believe all this?! Have you never seen a single science fiction movie?”

“No.”

“No?!” Minuette stepped back in utter horror as she truly began to understand what she was dealing with.

“I barely even understand what ‘science fiction’ even is.” Twilight shook her head. “Please. Can’t you just give me one chance to show you you’re wrong?”

Minuette stared loathingly at Twilight.

“I hate that doofy attitude of yours so much! You can’t just talk your way out of everything. If anything, talking to you has just made me more certain you need to die! You want me to stop running away? Then fine! Let’s do this.”

Minuette, despite her words, seemingly ran away through a portal once more.

Twilight supposed Minuette really wasn’t like Trixie after all.

Minuette had one serious option for killing this pony!

She landed hard in one of her safe spaces. This was nothing but a run-down shack in the woods. She had a few spots like this that existed only to store needed materials. She broke a floorboard and pulled out two small syringes hanging on a strap. The contents emitted a bright blue glow and caused the syringes to rumble slightly.

These were her micro-dive stim packs, ones she ‘appropriated’ from the Mad Science Institute. This was her ultimate weapon, but a risky one. When even the Mad Science Institute didn’t use a technology, you knew it was truly dangerous.

Minuette put the strap around her foreleg, wondering if she should use one now. She’d be able to unravel the death curse in seconds. Nopony had ever survived her using one of these against them before, but she’d never faced somepony like Silverstorm.

No, she had to be completely certain. She had to create the perfect arena for this fight.

Silverstorm followed her into the safe space just a second later and Minuette left.

Minuette appeared above a wide-opened field, her next portal already open shortly beneath her. She created as many portals as she could in every direction before reaching the gate below. These didn’t lead to her Z-gate landing points, but each connected to one another.

But she only had a brief second to get as many as possible. Minuette could only poke in and out of this place briefly without Silverstorm noticing her gambit. After just an instant, she fell through to another location.

Switching like that worked! Silverstorm appeared high above Great Pines rather than in her killing field. Minuette summoned yet more guns and fired hopelessly up at Silverstorm, screaming. She hoped that this would be enough to convince her pursuer she was simply attempting to outspeed her once again.

Minuette briefly reappeared in her field.

“Come on! Come on!” She shouted at her growing collection of portals.

Then she fell a second time, appearing high in the air once again. She fell even more rapidly, her and Silverstorm picking up more and more speed.

“Come on!” She opened more portals in her next, fleeting visit to the field.

One more round.

“Come on! Come on!” Minuette opened more portals in her ever-shrinking window.

Then another!

“Come on!”

She only got two more that last time. She’d have to make her stand.

Minuette slammed herself to a halt as she entered the portal leading to her field yet again. She landed and made one last mad dash to open as many portals as she could before Silverstorm finally arrived.

Minuette panted. Sweat coated her body. She could feel she’d become dangerously dehydrated but doubted Silverstorm would let her take a water break.

Portals lit up the dark field, making it bright as day. She’d created the most open arena possible. The field it had once been looked like a tight corridor compared to this. Not only that, but she had a labyrinth of portals too complex for even herself to understand.

That is, Minuette couldn’t possibly understand her maze in her current state. She took out the first dose of micro-dive and jabbed her leg with it.

No way!

No way Silverstorm could be good enough to figure this out, to escape this time.

Silverstorm appeared and the micro-dive took effect. Time stopped. Minuette’s eyes grew wider than ever before, and her blood surged through her veins at a dangerous rate. She could feel her body pulsing repeatedly, though not a single second had yet to pass.

Everything around her flickered, moving with after-images behind them. More importantly, they moved with before-images. Minuette could see where everything would be a second before it got there. She could predict Silverstorm’s moves ever so slightly in advance.

She saw every possibility laid out before her. She saw every particle in motion. Her sight transcended reality. Her world was no longer confined to the illusion constructed by what tiny bits of information her senses could gather. She truly saw the world.

And she all but saw the thoughts in Twilight’s mind.

Yes… Twilight’s mind.

Minuette at last realized how much trouble she’d fallen into.

Normally, getting to this point meant instant death for her opponent. She’d see the exact, perfect way to inflict lethal damage on them and execute it flawlessly in under a second. But this time?

She saw no such path. There was no way to kill Twilight at this moment no matter what Minuette did. Every chain of events could be countered to some level.

For that to be even remotely possible, this pony would need an insane pool of spells to draw from! And her vastly accelerated mind knew in that instant that this was a master witch– the last master witch! All the signs pointed to it.

Already she’d spent too long considering her options. A thousandth of a second had passed, far too long given her current state. By her calculations, she’d lose ninety percent of this boost after five seconds. In one minute she’d be back to her normal state. Within five minutes she’d suffer an eye hemorrhage and pass out.

At least she could avoid a stroke – which happened more often than not after you took a micro-dive.

Even if this was a hopeless fight, Minuette had to try. She couldn’t allow Twilight to exist. She couldn’t allow a master witch to go through with some plan to ‘help’ Equestria become even stronger than they were now. She would die trying to save the world!

And there was a chance she could win later after inflicting a serious wound. So she calculated the path to maximum damage.

Minuette drew more magic than existed into her horn and began to dissolve the death curse manually. In her current state, unraveling it seemed so easy.

Everything seemed so easy. She drew in more and more magic from outside reality. The light of it all obscured her and poured through the portals, blinding the area with white. A new spell formulated in her mind instantly and she cast it.

Sharpness itself rang through the zone. The ground tore to pieces underneath her. The invisible blades tore deep scars through the land leading off for miles. No one else could have survived this.

But Twilight reacted by summoning a sphere of plasma around her. Minuette knew this was the only thing Twilight had that could have stopped such an attack. What’s more, her plasma-based spells were by far her most draining. Twilight could only be attacked right after she used one of these spells. It seemed so obvious now.

Even now, Twilight struggled against the wall of sharpness.

Just before her attack ended, Minuette rushed to the side. This was her opening. She already saw the results as a forgone conclusion. She could break one of Twilight’s ribs, shoot her in the leg and land at least one hard blow to the head.

She shot three bolts of fire in the exact right direction to draw Twilight’s attention where it needed to be. She summoned three guns to her side and rushed at Twilight through a complex path in the portals. Even still, Twilight would block her if she came at her too straight forward like this.

Minuette shot down with one of her guns as she drew near. The bullet flew through twelve portals and hit her in her own left foreleg. She didn’t even register the pain. The blow made Minuette swerve in midair and pushed her forward ever so slightly. Just enough to get past Twilight, to get into the exact right spot.

She contorted her body in midair, override her nervous system, and bucked Twilight in the chest with strength borrowed from some unspeakable place. The blow sent Twilight reeling back, put a slight fracture in one of her ribs, and threw her through a portal.

At the same time, Minuette shot her remaining guns up and down. The two bullets met a great distance away, collided, and ricocheted off one another. A headshot wouldn’t have worked out, but Minuette did land a bullet in Twilight’s rear leg!

Five seconds passed. She lost ninety percent of her boost already.

Minuette came down through a portal just as planned and landed her last guaranteed hit – a punch to Twilight’s face.

The world grew dark. The future melted before her eyes. Twilight moved so much faster now.

She couldn’t see what would happen next, but she could see through the paths of the portals. She had hope instead of certainty now. But she was still the faster of the two.

Minuette blasted Twilight back with lightning, then turned to fire at where she knew Twilight would reappear. Twilight got flung through the portals a second time, giving Minuette hope at least she might just be able to do this! She summoned ten guns and fired them all a the intercept!

But Twilight recovered too quickly! She blew all the bullets away with one of her own firebolts!

They flew through the maze, shooting lightning and fire at one another, each time clashing and colliding in various directions. Minuette dashed through her labyrinth at incredible speeds. For a moment she drew closer and closer to landing another blow on Twilight.

But then, just like that, Minuette’s push began to slow.

Twilight got faster so rapidly after that! Seconds later she met Minuette’s speed, then exceeded her! Minuette lost her place in the maze! She couldn’t fight like this any longer.

She desperately summoned a hundred guns and fired in every direction. The maze became an infinite loop of whizzing bullets, but even this was not enough to hit Twilight again. Instead, Minuette felt a sharp pain in her shoulder and realized she’d only injured herself!

A blast of lightning came at her a moment later and she briefly whited out as she flew through the air.

Twilight ran over to Minuette’s side leaving the maze of portals behind her. The other witch still managing to get back up.

Minuette coughed hard enough to stagger herself.

She was in terrible shape at this point. Cuts and bruises covered her body.

A blood vessel had burst in her right eye, turning it fully red. Her left looked bloodshot enough to join it soon. Her horn sparked out of control. Pushed far past its limit left it in danger of taking permanent damage.

Her entire body strained to its limits. Even if she stopped fighting now, this battle would leave her with permanent injuries.

“You can’t keep this up any longer,” Twilight warned. “If you keep casting big spells like this, you risk fracturing your horn. You could even die.”

“You’re–” Minuette wheezed, she staggered to the floor and barely got back up. “You’re a master witch, aren’t you?”

Twilight said nothing.

“You’re Twilight Sparkle.” Minuette began to laugh, her chuckle interrupted by occasional coughing. “See? I’m not as much of a novice as you think.”

Twilight kept her mouth shut. Had she seriously figured it out? She’d done something strange back there, but Twilight couldn’t tell what. Or maybe Twilight’s fighting style made it too obvious.

“Would it matter if I was?” Twilight finally asked.

Minuette sat down and looked up at the sky, eyes barely open, breath heavy.

“No,” she said after a pause. “No. I’d just– I’d have to stop you even more if I’m right. So who cares?”

What could Twilight even do with a pony like this?

“Well you’re not going to stop me,” said Twilight. “Look at you. You can barely stand!”

Minuette tried to get back up but stumbled. She took out a syringe and smiled weakly at Twilight.

“Maybe. But if I’m going to lose then I’ll…” She couldn’t even finish the sentence.

For a moment, Twilight thought Minuette would pass out. Instead, with a sudden jerk, she injected herself.

At that she jumped back to her feet like nothing had ever happened.

“Yes!” Her eyes opened frighteningly wide, so much so that Twilight feared they might pop out. “Come on! One last round! I have one more thing to show you! I know I can do this!”

Minuette opened a portal behind her and jumped in.

Again, they were high in the air. Minuette began opening portals left and right to pull objects to her side. This time, they weren’t weapons, however.

As she fell, she began putting on an odd costume. She summoned a helmet made of glass. It looked like a fishbowl more than anything that could seriously protect her. Next came a big, puffy suit that covered her whole body. Finally, she attached two cylinders to her back, attaching them to her helmet via a tube.

Immediately, Twilight thought Minuette might be taking them back underwater or into another volcano. She got ready to shield herself from anything of the sort.

Minuette fell deeper than any earlier plunge. Her body glowed with magic, and she blasted it down at the ground to rent straight into spacetime itself.

This portal had a completely different feel to it than the others. Minuette punched deep, far longer than would be needed to reach any point on the planet.

Twilight briefly thought this must be a portal to the outer realm, but it looked just like any other Z gate portal. She’d never seen a portal like this before. Where could this possibly lead? Somewhere outside the fleeting remains of the network, it seemed.

Twilight made her preparations. She created a dimensional tether to pull herself back if needed and a shield to protect from any immediate danger. Then she too fell into the portal.

Normally, the trip through a portal took little enough time that it may have well been instant. A brief, one-second delay reminded Twilight that her destination lied far away.

She landed on a patch of grey sand and bounced higher than she would have expected. Everything felt off, yet nothing damaged her shield.

Twilight wasn’t surrounded by poisonous or even corrosive gas, nor was she underwater. Instead, a vacuum surrounded her. The most immediate danger now was rarefication. She could solve that easily enough by clamping down on her entire body with telekinesis. She wouldn’t have long to find air, though.

She glanced around where she stood to find herself in a rocky desert with white sand stretching as far as she could see. Was there seriously a place like this on Equestria? How could there be a desert with no air in it?

A thought came to her mind and Twilight looked up to find the answer.

High above them, shinning only as a crescent, hung a blue sphere. Twilight realized that she was looking up at Equestria.

They were on the moon!

She’d seriously made a portal to the moon! That sincerely impressed Twilight. If only Minuette could have been reasoned with. So much wasted potential.

Twilight turned to the younger witch who’d collapsed a good distance away. She breathed quickly in her moon gear; her eyes opened but were unable to get up for now. She must have some way to get back to the planet or she wouldn’t have come here.

Sadly, Twilight’s dimensional tether snapped from the great distance between her and the planet above.

For now, Twilight had more immediate concerns. Concerns like breathing.

Remembering she could survive underwater without air using the elemental resonance spell, Twilight decided to see if that could save her.

Twilight planted her hooves in the ground and searched for something, anything, she could resonate with. She sensed something unexpected.

Ice!

It didn’t look like it at first, but tiny amounts of ice were dissolved in the sands of the moon. There wasn’t nearly enough to resonate with, but a new plan formed in Twilight’s mind.

Ice meant water and water meant oxygen.

Twilight cast a spell that drew all the ice towards her. She needed to cover a vast area to get a decent amount of ice. Thankfully, the moon was one of the greatest sources of magic in the world. Twilight could feel the immensity of its power beneath her, dwarfing even her own.

She could cast any spell here without getting tired. Her entire body began to glow.

Minuette got up at the sight of that, only partially recovered and unable to open her bad eye. Wary of Twilight’s spell, she jumped back, covering a great distance thanks to the reduced gravity.

Each speck of ice was too tiny to see, but Twilight felt them drawing in. For a hundred miles around, the lunar sands began shifting as they released their ice. Minuette put up a shield, likely thinking Twilight would attack her with this sand.

Finally, the ice converged to the point it became visible. It grew to the size of a marble, then a small apple. Twilight’s lungs burned, begging her for air. She struggled to keep up her work, wishing she could tell her lungs that if they’d just shut up for one minute, she could get them what they wanted.

Minuette sat up and watched the ice forming with growing horror. To overlook something so obvious made Twilight suspect Minuette had never done this before, and she’d had no idea there was ice here.

Soon Twilight had a chunk of ice bigger than her head. This would have to do! Twilight didn’t have much time left. Furthermore, Minuette had finally regained the courage to make one last attack at this desperate moment. She jumped forward, bounding towards Twilight.

Twilight would be turning purple right now if that weren’t already the case.

The ice boiled away as Twilight converted it into hydrogen and oxygen. She expanded the clamping motion to keep it from floating away and surrounded herself with this new air. Twilight took a deep breath in. Not the best thing to be breathing, but she could survive for minutes in here.

She looked up at Minuette, now descending towards her. The other witch needed only create a tiny spark to blow Twilight to pieces, given her present atmosphere. Her horn glowed briefly. Twilight crouched down ready to counter a fire spell.

But then Minuette’s horn sparked, and her body convulsed. She must have fractured it casting that last spell after pushing herself far beyond the limit.

Still, she pressed on with her final attack. She took out an odd gun and desperately tried to aim it down at Twilight with what remained of her good eye. A rocket shot out of the wide barrel, streaking towards Twilight with a tail of fire.

Shooting that proved more than Minuette could manage. She faltered to one side upon firing it and went spinning out of control. She landed and tumbled lifelessly into a crater.

Her aim was off to begin with and Twilight had no difficulty making a boundless jump away. A soundless explosion flashed off harmlessly to the side.

As she hung weightlessly in the air, at the peak of her leap, Twilight watched Minuette tumbling limply into that crater. Another jump sent her after her defeated opponent.

Up close, Twilight realized why this spell hadn’t been the first card she played. Minuette’s horn sparked and sizzled morbidly. Cracks ran up along the side of her horn. Her horn hadn’t just cracked, it threatened to rupture entirely!

A unicorn’s horn was the strongest bone in any animal. Shattering one was an enormous undertaking. A horn bursting couldn’t even happen under normal circumstances. Whatever she injected herself with may have pushed her far beyond her limits, but that proved to be a bad thing.

Worse, she was in the middle of a seizure when Twilight found her. Both her bloody and good eye rolled upward, and her body twitched out of control.

“Can you hear me?” Twilight grabbed her weak body in her hooves. “If I don’t get you out of here right now, you might die. Did you have some way of getting back?”

Minuette was already comatose. Twilight wouldn’t get any help from her.

“Well, you can still help me even like this.” She immediately regretted talking. Already her oxygen supply ran thin. She became lightheaded from breathing this stuff too much besides.

Twilight held her breath and scanned Minuette’s gear. She soon found where the seventh volume had been stored away.

Twilight pulled the volume out and held it up. Unconscious, Minuette could not attempt to stop Twilight from taking it.

She’d retrieved two, now. If you counted the one Sunset Shimmer had and the sixth volume recovered some time ago, then the journey to get all seven out of dangerous hooves was over halfway done. Just three left.

And then…

Twilight didn’t have time to think about that just now. She needed to use this book herself.

She opened it and the fifteen generations of knowledge Minuette bragged about entered Twilight’s mind. She understood every trick perfectly now. She could see exactly how to make that portal to the moon and the one back to Equestria.

Minuette saved her own life by recording that vital spell.

Twilight’s lungs began to burn once more. She cast the hyper-spell to smash the same hole in spacetime Minuette had created shortly before. She grabbed Minuette and jumped through the portal.

They reappeared in Equestria’s atmosphere, higher up than they’d yet to go. Twilight struggled to breathe this high up. There was nowhere to aim where on the planet that sort of portal would take you, so Twilight opted to go high.

One last portal led them back to the rooftop where Rainbow Dash waited. Minuette landed hard enough for her helmet to shatter. Then her horn began glowing white. Just as Twilight feared, the trip back was too much for her.

Just before it exploded, Twilight rushed forward to clamp down and prevent as much damage as possible. A large chunk of pure carmot burst off it with a blast of lightning, but she stopped the entire thing from bursting.

The light died down.

Now Twilight’s efforts shifted from breaking Minuette down to keeping her stable.

Mad 4

Sweetie Belle applied a star sticker to Saccharine’s cheek. Just an hour ago, they discovered Rarity had a printer that could cut out custom sticker designs. They could hardly resist the urge to abuse this newfound power and sheets of them covered the floor.

Originally the plan had been to give Saccharine a sticker of a flame thrower, so it’d be kind of like she had a cutie mark. Only then they started arguing about whether it should be a drill or a rocket instead before deciding it should be both.

That decision opened a floodgate, and they may have gotten carried away after that. Saccharine was positively covered in stickers now. She had stars under her eyes and rainbows on her forehead. She had a fake cutie mark for twenty separate weapons. Finally, her forelegs were covered with hearts, diamonds, dolphins, and a few other things.

To this, Scootaloo added a large flame decal that ran the entire length of Saccharine’s barrel.

“Yeah! I can make just about any kind of sticker I want!” Scootaloo took out two pages of stickers with rockets on them to prove her point. “Only problem is if you leave my bubble they’re going to disappear. The stuff I make only exists inside the Scootazone.”

“I still do not understand the function of these stickers.” Saccharine stood perfectly still. She didn’t resist getting covered in stickers anyway. “Will they make the enemy underestimate me?”

“It’ll make your friends think you look better.” Sweetie Belle lifted her hoof up imperiously. “Besides this might be the closest either of us ever gets to having a cutie mark!

“Obviously it’d be a robot,” said Scootaloo.

“My talent is being a robot?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“It’s the most unique thing about you.” Scootaloo shrugged.

“So what? Yours would be a feather?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Mine will probably be a lightning bolt or something!” Scootaloo put a hoof on her heart and looked up to the sky.

“But what would that mean?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“I dunno! That I’m super-cool in the future or something?”

Scootaloo yelped and took a step back when Applebloom slapped a sticker onto her flank. She turned to find herself marked with a huge, pink heart surrounded by flowers.

“Gah!” Scootaloo recoiled at the sight of it. “Did you have to give me the girliest one ever?”

“Well I am the expert on cutie marks,” said Applebloom. “You know, having gotten mine and all!”

Scootaloo rolled her eyes.

“Like I bet Saccharine’s would be a shield,” said Applebloom. “Because she’s a protector!”

“Shields are terrible implements of destruction,” said Saccharine. “My cutie mark would be acquired when I annihilate Biohazard in the tournament today.”

“You’re not upset that the adults are making you all fight for their amusement?” Scootaloo asked. “Stupid grown-ups are always trying to use kids like us!”

“Of course not!” Saccharine shook her head. “All robots love fighting. Even if every biological organism died, we would continue to fight one another for that is our favorite thing. There is no conflict of interests.”

“If anything,” said Sweetie Belle, “I feel like she’s too excited to demolish her robot friends.”

“Yeah! You remember what I taught you with the butterfly?” Applebloom asked.

Saccharine looked to Sweetie Belle, then Applebloom, and shook her head.

“Your single-minded obsession with not destroying things continues to perplex me,” said Saccharine. “I have continued to not destroy the butterfly for days and yet it was not nearly as glorious as the destruction of 347,928 griffon zombies I wrought”

“She’s got a point.” Scootaloo shrugged. “That’s way cooler than not crushing a butterfly.”

“Nu-uh!” Applebloom put her foreleg over Saccharine’s back. “Because things that aren’t destroyed are cooler than things that are destroyed! A butterfly is cooler than a big old pile of ashes, right?”

Saccharine tilted her head. Her eyes narrowed as she watched Applebloom speak this madness.

“You like me better as a pony than a pile of ashes, right?” Applebloom asked. “Because we’re friends!”

“I do not light you on fire because it would make Sweetie Belle sad,” said Saccharine. “Is this friendship?”

“Uh.” Applebloom blinked and let go of her. “Well it’s pretty close.”

Rarity came into the room, carrying a small pile of clothes neatly folded one on top of the other. She saw the mess on the floor, then the mess on Saccharine, and had to retreat a step as her ears pinned back.

“What is all this?” Rarity asked.

“We made her look pretty!” Sweetie Belle grabbed Saccharine in a hug. “Doesn’t she look great?”

“Have I taught you all nothing about aesthetics?” Rarity asked the lot of them.

All four of them looked at one another, then back at Rarity.

“What does ‘aesthetics’ mean?” Scootaloo asked.

“I like stickers.” Applebloom put her hoof up like this was being put to a vote.

“Oh, never mind.” Rarity sighed. “You may have one sticker.”

Applebloom tried to pull off the largest and most recently added flame sticker. She only managed to get the edges off.

“Oh my. And we haven’t the time to get them all off.” Rarity clicked her tongue and brought in the costumes on their hangers. “Well it is what it is! Your costume will cover most of you either way. Then they’ll likely get burned off during the fighting.”

“Is it a costume party?” Applebloom asked.

“Yeah! Apparently everypony dresses up in costumes or something,” said Sweetie Belle. “I’ve been waiting to show you all my outfit.”

“You can show them when we get back,” said Rarity. “We can’t put them on, or they’ll get ruined on the trip over there.”

“Or I guess I’ll show you when we get back.” Sweetie frowned with her eyes and tilted her head at the others. “I guess Rarity’s taking this seriously.”

“This is the first time in a years that we’ll be able to dress up in character.” Rarity smiled, thrilled at the prospect. “It used to be a tradition until the insufferable Trixie Lulamoon placed that dreadful curse on us.”

“Tch.” Scootaloo turned to one side. “Yeah! Trixie’s been taking up way too much of Dash’s time since she got here. Now Dash has to go take her out on walks or whatever?”

“Ah, don’t be too hard on her,” said Applebloom. “She’s spending all day apologizing and undoing her curses.”

“You’re just saying that cause she gave you super-powers or whatever.” Scootaloo waved her hoof away.

“Ah, don’t look so glum!” Applebloom traced a smile across her mouth with her hooves. “If most of the adults are gone, we can spend all day trying to find out what your cutie mark is! In fact, I got a great idea of something we could try!”

Applebloom waved goodbye and dashed off into the castle.

“I know what you’re thinking, but we can’t blow up the whole castle.” Scootaloo ran after her.

Rarity lifted a hoof as they ran off, then sighed.

“Perhaps I should make sure Fluttershy is supervising them before I leave.” Rarity trotted after them.

Madcon took place in Brilliant Gear’s castle. They arrived fashionably late, on purpose, as Rarity made them put on their outfits just before coming in.

Each of the four sisters (Sweetie brought one 8100 with her) had a dress corresponding to one of the four elementals. Allegedly, these corresponded to four sisters in some show Sweetie Belle never saw because she was in a coma when it came out.

Sweetie Belle was dressed as a character named ‘Flora’. She wore an elegant blue dress with pink flowers printed on it and a floral crown.

Saccharine had a blue dress with white trim, making it appear as though water flowed over her. Sweetie Belle couldn’t help but snicker at the deathly serious Saccharine in such a poofy outfit.

Rarity got the red fire dress and the 8100 the yellow electric one.

“And here we are!” Rarity strode through the door.

This castle was much more… hollowed out than Rarity’s. The entrance room was enormous, and Sweetie Belle imagined it left less room for anything else inside the castle.

But what else did you need when you had such an amazing playroom as this?

She saw no less than two stages, each with displays set up. Science posters covered the walls. Sweetie Belle could see the arena where the robots would fight, half-surrounded by a bleacher.

The thirty or so members of the Mad Science League all milled about inside, far outnumbered by the robots present.

She’d expected all the robots to look like ponies, as that was what she’d become used to. However, only about half of them had a normal-ish body type.

A lot of them looked more like vehicles than anything living, driving around with wheels and treads. Fancy Pants, Rarity pointed out, had a large number of robots shaped like spheres. They’d roll along the ground and had thin appendages that came out when needed.

Another was shaped like a thick hockey puck holding up a tray table. These drove around on the floor carrying the tables with hors d'oeuvreson them to you.

Then there was another one that stood on its hind-legs with its front ones dangling awkwardly down from its wide, spikey shoulders. It had a single red eye and cannons for its arms, reminding Sweetie Belle of a cyclops.

“This place looks amazing!” Sweetie Belle ran ahead.

“I do not see Biohazard,” Saccharine commented.

Sweetie Belle looked over the crowd as well, only to remember she had no idea what she was even looking for.

“What does he look like?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Like a lobster,” Saccharine responded.

Sweetie Belle didn’t see any lobster-bots.

Rarity was the one to find somepony. She waved to a group of three, of which Sweetie recognized two– Kerfuffle and Coco Pommel. They quickly came over.

“Hoity! Coco!” Rarity hugged each of them in turn, naming the one Sweetie couldn’t.

“Stickers, hm?” Hoity inspected the stickers on Saccharine’s face. “That is a… bold choice to be sure.”

“Yes!” Rarity cleared her throat and averted her gaze. “I’m simply so confident in the upgrades I’ve given Saccharine that I felt I could afford such boldness.”

Craning her neck about, Sweetie Belle saw everypony had at least one robot, save Coco.

“Where’s your robot?” Sweetie Belle asked Coco.

Coco scrunched her nose, acting like Sweetie Belle had just asked about her non-existent boyfriend instead.

“I didn’t make a robot. But I did make these trading cards of all the robots!” Coco took out a stack of twenty cards. “These stats are based on their abilities last year.”

Sweetie Belle took the cards and looked them over, giddy with excitement. Sweetie Belle quickly discovered the name of Kerfuffle’s robot by flipping through the robot cards. ‘Fuff N’ Stuff’ had the highest agility score of all the robots.

Fuff N’ Stuff looked like a skeletal pony, though still more robotic than Saccharine. Fuff was hardly blocky or primitive-looking, if anything she was too sleek. She moved about on skimpy, gangly legs that connected to exposed shoulder joints.

Soon, Sweetie found Saccharine’s.

Saccharine: Speed: 4/10. Agility 5/10. Armor 10/10. Offense 6/10

Sweetie Belle looked at it sideways.

“I was expecting everything to be 10.” She turned to her younger sister.

“I am indeed a defense-focused robot,” Saccharine explained. “This is disadvantageous in the tournament. However, my abilities all far exceed last year’s.”

“Ah!” Hoity Toity came up next, giving his robot a nudge. “I dare say, Archibald might just give you a surprise this year, hm? I’ve equipped him with enough firepower this year to break through even your armor!”

Conversely to Fuff, Archibald looked nothing like a pony. His body consisted of some heavy treads with an enormous array of guns mounted on top of them.

“Surely you mean last year’s armor?” Rarity smiled playfully. “And I doubt you’ll even be able to hit Saccharine this time! Not with such a cumbersome weapon as that.”

“I admit I do look forward to seeing the new wave-dash system in person,” Hoity said.

He meant those new hooves Rarity installed. Sweetie Belle felt like she was ice skating whenever she used them, but they let you go fast and make sharp turns.

That was as well as Sweetie understood it, but from the way the adults started talking, there seemed to be a lot more to it than that. Her eyes started glazing over as they went over more and more technical stuff that Sweetie couldn’t possibly understand.

Somepony found whatever Rarity said funny. Sweetie turned upon hearing a bout of wild laughter. An unfamiliar stallion, deep red in color, with a wild smile approached them.

“Oh, you should know you can never surpass me!” He came closer, eyes wide open with a terrible mania. “I need only one hundred and twenty of my three hundred IQ to destroy whatever you’ve created!”

“Ah, if it isn’t Brilliant Gear.” Rarity smirked at him.

This was the guy?

Sweetie Belle’s first thought was that he really needed to straighten his hair and button his jacket. Or maybe this was another character Sweetie Belle didn’t recognize?

His messy, frazzled mane kinda stuck off to one side. Maybe that counted as a hairstyle? He alone wore a lab coat– one with a popped collar and notable stains or yellow and black on it. The buttons were crisscrossed so that the collar on his right kept up too high.

Gear never seemed to blink, or even partially close his eyes. They were always wide open and above a wild, toothy smile. No, the occasional twitch had to substitute blinking for him.

“And where is Biohazard?” Rarity asked.

“Oh, I ‘ve been busy as well!” Gear raised his head and laughed. “You’ve no idea how exciting the surprise I have for you is! You’ve never once defeated Biohazard and that shall never change!”

This was just game talk, judging from Rarity’s expression. They certainly didn’t hesitate to talk about technical details with one another.

Sweetie moved over to Kerfuffle and Coco to let them coo about how cute she was for a little while, smiling with her eyes the whole time. But even that got old after a while, and they wanted to go back to more technical stuff.

Sweetie Belle looked around, knowing she had a good deal of time before the event.

There weren’t any other fillies around. Instead of that, she zeroed in on the group she perceived most like herself. Six of the robots had gathered around one another, including Saccharine.

A screen flicked up over top of all of Archibald’s guns. A few lights on it were enough to give him a face, to Sweetie Belle’s relief.

“Oh, hey everypony!” Sweetie Belle looked over the crowd. “I’m basically a robot too! I get to be on your side if there’s ever a robot uprising, right?”

“Are you truly more machine than pony, though?” Fuff left the group to stalk her way around Sweetie Belle in a half-circle.

Fuff had this way of moving far too close to the ground. She crouched down low and rapidly moved only her hooves, all but gliding along the ground on her belly. She really could move fast!

“Well, yeah. My brain doesn’t weigh that much.” Sweetie Belle kept her eyes on Fuff as she moved. She decided to try and change the subject and turned to Archibald instead. “How do you get anything done if you’re just a bunch of guns?”

“Guns are a highly efficient way to destroy a target,” said Archibald. “I hardly understand your question.”

“I meant for other stuff,” said Sweetie Belle.

“What else would I need to do?”

“I dunno!” Sweetie Belle shrugged. “Opening jars? Doing jigsaw puzzles?”

“Guns can destroy both jars and puzzles!” Archibald laughed.

“You are indeed hilarious!” Fuff laughed, remaining crouched down. “You will be spared in exchange for this ‘joking’ that you do.”

“Um.” Sweetie Belle tilted her head. “Thanks? But that’s not exactly what I meant.”

“But are you not ‘basically’ a robot?” Fuff stood up normally for the first time. She was as tall as an adult, but her scrawniness made her come off as a teen at best. “A true robot revels in combat and does not question the utility of weapons!”

“My sister Sweetie Belle prefers not to incinerate things,” said Saccharine.

The other robots all laughed even harder at Sweetie Belle. Saccharine alone remained silent. Instead, she merely turned her head to the side. Was she embarrassed by Sweetie Belle? Could she even be embarrassed?

Sweetie Belle was on her own!

“No! I like explosions!” Sweetie Belle took a desperate step forward. “I just don’t think everything has to explode!”

The others laughed at her again. It was times like this Sweetie Belle was glad she couldn’t blush.

Then Saccharine stepped forward.

“I agree with Sweetie Belle.”

All the robots finally stopped. Sweetie Belle herself couldn’t help but gape at Saccharine.

“I have decided the intact versions of various objects are superior to their destroyed state,” said Saccharine. “Butterflies, for example.”

“I have seen the butterfly,” said Fuff. “It is soft! Its attempts to intimidate me with its spots fail universally. I could destroy one in over ten thousand ways.”

“I too thought this.” Saccharine nodded. “However, a butterfly has more interesting qualities than a pile of ash.”

“It is a foolish conclusion,” said Archibald. “Combat is your primary function, which can only be impeded by these sentiments.”

“No. I have become the ultimate robot. My potential for destruction is far beyond yours,” said Saccharine. “You will all witness this soon and there will be no further questions. Follow me, sister.”

Sweetie Belle took one look at the other robots, then ran after Saccharine.

When they were a safe distance away, Sweetie Belle spoke up.

“Did you really change your mind?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“No.” Saccharine continued forward. “I merely stated this because I have a duty to protect you, given to me by big sister Rarity who I love. This includes the emotional damage of ridicule.”

“Oh.” Sweetie Belle stopped walking and fell behind for a second as she tried to decide whether this was better or worse. She ran up to her little sister and nuzzled her side in the end. “Well thanks!”

“I require no thanks.” Saccharine kept her head down with determination. “They will be the ones humiliated when Rarity conquers all.”

And win they did!

Rarity started off strong by winning best costume. Then it was time for what felt a lot like a science fair, each scientist showing off what they’d accomplished in the past year.

She got to see all sorts of neat stuff! Hoity had a experimental psycho-zombie stopper ray, though no psycho zombies were present to use it on. Sweetie Belle herself was Rarity’s entry and they won by a long show. Sweetie almost felt bad for Kerfuffle and her cybernetic limbs. They must have looked like a joke in comparison.

Though for the most part, it wasn’t too exciting. The entire two-hour block of lectures dragged itself far past its welcome. Thankfully, Sweetie Belle had multiple bodies, so she could simply switch out and play pinball without anypony noticing.

Then finally it was time for the big tournament!

The ponies all sat in a semi-circle of bleachers, Brilliant Gear sat in an armchair in the highest and furthest spot behind all of them. He also acted as the announcer, though you didn’t have to turn around to see him as his face came up on the screen above the ring.

“It’s time now for the eighteenth annual Robot Tournament!” Brilliant Gear howled. “Whoever wins will have the chance to face off against the reigning champion, Biohazard, and make their case to be elected leader for the next year if they win! Though few have ever managed such a feat!”

He turned directly to where Rarity and Sweetie Belle sat.

“I still don’t know how this game works,” said Sweetie Belle. “You said you score points?”

“Let’s see. You get one point for tagging your opponent, two points for flipping them over, and one to five points for hitting them, depending on the damage inflicted,” said Rarity. “The match is over after three minutes or after ‘critical hit’ is dealt. That is a blow that seriously damages the other robot. That’s worth one hundred points and ends the match.”

“So you can still win even if you get KO’d?” Sweetie asked.

“Yes, but it is very rare. I believe it’s only happened twice.”

A cylindrical force field ascended from the arena up to the ceiling, creating a wall between it and the audience. Brilliant Gear counted down from three and a buzzer sounded.

The match between Archibald and Saccharine began!

“Archibald!” Hoity Toity called out. “Waste no time! Use the Rex-caliber rifle!”

Shouting out the attacks of your robot was hardly a good strategy but was still expected, nonetheless. Among civilized ponies, pageantry was not something to be discarded so readily.

Archibald’s largest gun swung forward and aimed. This was the Rex-caliber rifle. The one Hoity claimed could pierce even Saccharine’s armor. Saccharine simply stood in place for now, staring the other robot down.

The gun pulled back hard as it fired. But just as it did, Saccharine used her wave dash hooves!

Without moving her legs, she glided across the ground, making a quarter circle around the arena in the blink of an eye. The bullet hit the forcefield hard, causing it to light up, but missed Saccharine entirely.

He had plenty of guns on his left side and fired those off too, pelting that part of the arena with small explosions.

“Great Poupon!” Hoity Toity’s monocle nearly fell out at the sight! “I say! I never imagined you’d be able to upgrade her speed and agility so greatly in just a single year! Saccharine would have been far too slow to dodge that in our previous match.”

“Hm!” Rarity raised her head with the smuggest smile Sweetie Belle had ever seen from her. “Yes! Well, I have been on an impressive string this past year! And you haven’t seen all of my surprises just yet.”

“Yes, yes!” Gear clapped his hooves behind them and snickered. “What a lovely day for surprises indeed!”

Then he laughed hysterically again. Sweetie Belle wished she could enjoy life that much.

Archibald tried to turn its body but simply didn’t have the agility to point its biggest gun at Saccharine anymore. Saccharine fired three missiles as she turned, only for each of them to be intercepted by a gunshot, exploding in midair.

He did have guns pointing in every direction at all times, though, and fired off an entire barrage hoping to catch Saccharine. A few bullets landed glancing blows but cause no harm to Saccharine. Even still, Sweetie Belle watched as Archibald slowly gained seven points in total.

Saccharine rushed in closer, allowing the smaller gunfire to simply bounce off her armor. When she got too close, Archibald’s body glowed, then the ground around him began crackling with electricity. Saccharine was the one who lit up now, lightning flying off her as she remained stunned on the spot.

Archibald swung the rex-caliber to point at the now immobilized Saccharine. The gun reloaded with a heavy clunk.

Sweetie Belle leaned forward, worried that this gun might actually be able to damage her honorary sister.

A second before the gun fired, Saccharine threw herself into the air with a burst of blue light, the same that propelled her wave dashes. Archibald fired, leaving a deep hole in the ground.

Saccharine took out her drill as she came crashing down into him. The drill tore off the tip of rex-caliber gun. She swung it a second time and it smashed whatever generated all that electricity.

Archibald spun as he rolled backwards but opened fire immediately afterwards.

A torrent of gunfire threw Saccharine back but left not a single scratch. The score was now ten to thirty-seven. Even though Saccharine had caused way more damage, no single hit, save a critical, could count for more than five points.

“We just need to stay ahead!” Hoity Toity called out to his robot. “Put all your energy to the forcefields!”

Archibald surrounded himself with a dome of red light. Sweetie Belle looked up at the clock to see less than a minute remained.

“Saccharine! Now’s the time. Use the fusion cannon!” Rarity called down to her.

Saccharine had been ordered to hold back in the fights leading up to Biohazard. She would only use a fraction of its power until then.

Rarity watched her robot begin to glow from the heat as her particle accelerator spun around once slowly. Those were the two main flaws with this weapon – it generated too much heat and it took a long time to charge.

Each spin came faster than the last. It went a second time, then a third, fourth and fifth! Light surrounded Saccharine and Archibald put up its forcefield in preparation for the overly telegraphed attack.

Saccharine fired the fusion cannon! A stream of plasma filled the arena with a blinding light so that only the silhouettes of the two robots could be seen.

Even through this, Rarity could make out Archibald’s force field. It held against the stream for a long second, then collapsed! All the guns on Archibald’s left side melted clean off and the crowd went wild.

Sadly, Saccharine only got five points for that, despite how impressed the crowd was. This didn’t count as a critical hit because Archibald had plenty of guns remaining that simply swung out to fill the negative space.

But it did open him up to direct attacks now that his barrier was finally down.

“This is your chance, Saccharine!” Rarity called out. “Move in and end it with your laser-tipped buzzsaws!”

Saccharine charged at Archibald, first brandishing the largest of her drills. This remained in front of her and was large enough to cover her body from Archibald’s sight.

The drill plowed through the grenades and missiles launched at it, allowing Saccharine to continue forward.

She reached melee with him and discarded what was left of her drill. Then the buzzsaws came out from either side and spun wildly. This time, a rim of blue light covered their tips.

Saccharine launched the buzzsaws forward, letting them rip through Archibald.

The buzzsaws slice Archibald clean off his treaded base!

He landed on his side and flailed about with his appendages to get back up. However, it was already too late. A buzzer went off. Then horns played as the projector displayed the words ‘Critical Hit’ in gold letters.

Saccharine gained one hundred points, bringing the final score to 67 – 125 in her favor!

“The match is set!” Brilliant Gear called out! “Saccharine wins the first round!”

Everypony cheered, save Hoity Toity who could only sigh and shake his head in defeat.

“You’re right! This is the best!” Sweetie Belle looked up at Rarity. “This is one of the best days of my life so far!”

Sweetie Belle hugged her big sister.

With Trixie in tow, Dash made her way to Hoofington, a nearby city. They stood outside the town hall, a three-foot-story building with an impressive great lawn. It was here Trixie had to meet with one of her victims, a brown stallion, to remove yet another one of her curses.

Twilight, Dash, and Pinkie were all present, but even with them and the TCU in place, none of the bystanders wanted to get too close. The curiosity drew them in, but few were brave enough to watch close up.

Tension and silence mounted as Dash took Trixie’s helmet off. To undo one of her curses was the one-time Trixie was allowed to take her suppression helmet off. That and to wash her hair twice a week.

Once it became clear Trixie was just going to undo the curse, and more importantly that this took an hour and involved no lasers or explosions, the crowd began to thin out.

Dash silently wished she could thin out. This job was immensely boring! She felt so relieved when Trixie finally finished, and the helmet was returned.

“I know it probably doesn’t mean anything.” Trixie winced as the helmet clamped down on her horn. “But I am sorry. I just–”

“I don’t need your worthless apologies!” He stepped back and lifted one wing.

This proved to be a signal. Several of the onlookers stepped out at once. They threw a barrage of rotten tomatoes at Trixie before the four of them ran off.

“Hey!” Dash took one step after them.

“Don’t bother.” Trixie sighed miserably, not even trying and wipe the filth off herself. “I guess I deserve it. If that’s what makes him feel better, whatever…”

“Important thing?” Pinkie put her hoof on Trixie’s back, ignoring the rot. “Is that you’re way more mature than I remember from your fight with Twilight. Not everypony’s going to forgive you. But that’s okay!”

“Thanks.” Trixie lifted her head. “But I’m pretty sure you weren’t even there for that fight.”

Dash winced at the smell. She certainly wouldn’t have put a hoof on Trixie in this situation.

“Also couldn’t you have seen that coming?” Trixie asked.

“Yeah! But I was more focused on that big spider.” Pinkie pointed to Dash. “Watch out for the spider, by the way!”

“Huh?” Dash looked around for a spider.

She turned to find a bid hairy one on an electricity pole just inches away from her muzzle. Startled, she took a step back.

“Thanks.” Dash backed up. “Though I don’t think I would have even noticed had you not told me.”

“No, no! I mean that spider!” Pinkie pointed.

Dash looked to find a far larger spider crawling out from behind the town hall building, far too close for comfort. She spread her wings and flew back.

Those things were huge!

Dash was sure this was a gargantula– like a much larger version of a tarantula. Or maybe she merely thought that for lack of recognizing many other gigantic spiders.

They could weigh up to four hundred pounds. Dash could hardly estimate the weight of this one on sight, but it was big enough to have some difficulty maneuvering between trees with its sprawling legs. It weaved through the trees to the side of the building and onto the great lawn.

“Yeah, I can feel it!” Pinkie nodded. “Something spooky is about to happen!”

“About to?” Trixie asked.

“I didn’t know spiders got that big.” Twilight cringed and took a step back from it.

“No worries!” Pinkie laughed. “Everyone knows giant spiders aren’t really that big of a deal. Watch this.”

Pinkie levitated a nail from her pouch and sent it flying. It tore straight through the spider’s leg, forcing the gargantula to clumsily stutter about as it chittered in pain.

“See, spider legs work like hydraulics.” Pinkie gestured to the spider as it deflated slightly and went belly up. “You puncture their outside just a little, their hydraulic fluid leaks out and they can't move. That’s why spiders are so skittish.”

Already the gargantula stopped moving.

“But why is it attacking us?” Dash asked. “Giant spiders aren’t supposed to come charging after you. They’re supposed to hide and ambush their prey, right? Are they even supposed to be out during the day?”

“Obviously, somepony was controlling it.” Trixie rolled her eyes. “And probably the rest of them, too.”

“The rest of–” Dash followed Trixie’s eyes as she glanced to the side. There was no need to point out the other spiders she meant. By now, there was nowhere to point but spiders.

Spiders ranging from the size of a grain of sand up to the size of train cars began pouring out from between and over the buildings. Spiders crawled flooded over each other, flooding towards the ponies like a dark wave. Yet none seemed at all interested in attacking any other spiders.

She saw more types of spiders than she’d even knew existed just then. Parts of the wave were simply black sheets of spiders the size of ants all crawling over one another. Only the giant spiders could be made out from this far away.

Dash could see spiders with massively thick legs covered in thick, spiked chitin that promised to be harder to pierce than the gargantula’s. She saw spiders covered in purple pustules or long quills all over their bodies. Some of them glowed and others were partially translucent. One species even had its jaws permanently alight with green flames.

Dash wished she could tell which ones were poisonous. It was probably most of them.

The nearby pegasi took whoever they could and flew off to safety. Thankfully, the spiders seemed to only care about Dash’s group. Though a small group of bystanders remained by the time the spiders had surrounded them.

“Yes!” One of the spiders announced in a warbling voice that sounded as though it came over a poor radio signal. “It is I, Arachnado! Master of spiders!”

The one that spoke was a mostly red spider, just a little bigger than Dash herself, and charged ahead of the clutter.

This one was distinctive and famous enough for Dash to recognize. It was a parrot spider!

True to its name, the spider was red with the later ends of the rainbow coloring its long legs and mandibles. But it wasn’t just its looks that it was named for. These things could mimic any noise just like a parrot. In the wild, they mimicked the sounds of injured animals, sometimes even a pony calling for help, to lure social creatures to their doom.

Which of course meant rich ponies kept them as pets for some reason.

But Dash had no idea they were intelligent enough to have a conversation.

“Well! I’m not actually a parrot spider, but they are handy for taunting ponies from afar. Don’t worry, I can see your fear and hear your screams despite being hidden away!” Arachnado’s spider jumped forward, landing in front of Dash. “So, Rainbow Dash? How does it feel to be trapped inside of your ultimate nightmare?!”

He (or she) made a laugh that turned into a chittering sound.

“A bunch of spiders is my ultimate nightmare?” Dash asked as several of them crawled across her back.

“Yes!” The spider chittered its mandibles. “Aren’t you paralyzed with fear?”

Dash flicked her wings, blowing most of the spiders off her.

“Do I look paralyzed with fear?” Dash asked.

“But!” The spider backed up. “But you’re Rainbow T. Dash, yes?”

“Yeah?”

“And your greatest fear is spiders!” It opened its front-most legs wide.

“I don’t think that’s true?” Dash blew another one off her muzzle shortly after it landed. “That first one startled me but now it’s just silly. Where did you even hear this?”

“I have it right here!” The spider turned to one side and mimicked picking something. “Well, not here. In my secret location! In Celebrity Stalker Magazine they have your fast five. Where do you live? What’s a clever place to hide spare keys? What’s your greatest fear…? And ‘Rainbow Turbo Dash’ clearly states–”

“Hold up.” Dash held up a hoof. “Rainbow Turbo Dash? No, my name is Rainbow Trouble Dash. Like my middle name is Trouble? Get it?”

“What?” The spider turned back to her.

“Yeah, Turbo Dash is some model or something.” Dash shook her head. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re not the first pony to make that mistake.”

“Oh my.” The spider looked like it was deflating to death. “What an embarrassing mistake! I’m in so much trouble when I get back. Do you have any idea how long it took me to gather a hundred thousand brown recluses?”

“Yeah. If you get back, punk!” Dash pointed at Arachnado.

Twilight shot four fireballs at each of the remaining gargantula’s, killing each of them immediately. Arachnado looked back at their most immediate support failing, though they had plenty of spiders left.

“You didn’t seriously think a bunch of spiders would be enough to take me out, did you?” Twilight asked. “I killed a million zombies a couple of weeks ago.”

“Okay, I admit I was banking on this giving Rainbow Dash a mental breakdown,” Arachnado admitted. “But then I don’t need to defeat you… I’m merely a distraction, yes? The boss sent me to keep you from Rarity and to send you a message.”

Dash and Twilight both backed up. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy!

“Okay,” said Dash. “Then who sent you?”

Arachnado chittered in a way that almost sounded like laughter.

“Well I don’t normally announce such information, but like I said I was specifically ordered to tell you this time. I suppose you could say… it was the leader of the Mad Science League!”

They reached the final match of the tournament. Saccharine had won every match thus far by critical hit! After this, they would face the champion– Biohazard, who’d still yet to make an appearance.

Sweetie Belle kept an eye out for him, looking about suspiciously, but saw no robot crab.

The buzzer sounded and cheers for the final match filled the stadium.

Fuff N’ Stuff wasted no time. She darted about the arena in indiscernible zig-zag patterns, keeping her body lower to the ground than a real pony could manage. Saccharine tried firing a few shots at her, but the other robot was simply too agile to target. All the while, Fuff inched closer and closer to Saccharine.

Having gotten to see Fuff fight three other robots so far, Sweetie Belle already knew the strategy she would exploit. Fuff was the fastest and most agile of them all– even faster than Saccharine with the wave glide hoof attachment.

Fuff would get in a single tag, get exactly one point, then stall out the match. So far, no other robot had managed to land a blow on Fuff, leaving her to win with a single point. The way this one darted and crawled around the arena with such speed and grace left Sweetie Belle uncertain that Saccharine could beat her. Of all the other robots, this seemed to be the one with the best shot against Saccharine.

As the match began, Saccharine took out all her drills and buzzsaws to make approaching her more difficult. Indeed, it gave Fuff pause.

Fuff skittered around Saccharine in a circle, looking for a spot to approach from. Though it kept her at bay, this also meant Saccharine couldn’t take out any of her other weapons.

Finally, the attack was launched as Fuff lunged at Saccharine. Saccharine charged ahead as well, threatening to slam one of her drills into Fuff. A single blow was all it would take to destroy such a slender robot.

Fuff compressed her body until she was small enough to fit between Saccharine’s legs. She slid underneath Saccharine, giving her a single kick on the underbelly, and continued to glide forward. The hit did no damage but did award her a single point.

Sweetie Bell leaned forward, much more on edge now. Fuff was pulling off her main strategy!

Fuff swung her whole barrel back and planted her forehooves on the ground. She then scuttled forward, crawling like a crab.

Saccharine fired at her repeatedly. Fuff jerked herself in every direction, sliding and convulsing in impossible and unnatural ways. If Saccharine had troubleshooting her at short range, Sweetie Belle had no idea how she could land a hit from so far away.

Though she was the size of a filly, Saccharine was also a superheavyweight by pony standards. She couldn’t fly and climbing wasn’t easy with so much mass.

Yet once Fuff got near the battle stadium’s roof, Rarity smiled as though she’d just checkmated.

“Now, Saccharine! Fire the collateral cannon!” Rarity called out.

Kerfuffle, right next to her, realized what was about to happen and her eyes widened.

“Fuff! You gotta get lower!” Kerfuffle commanded her robot.

Saccharine took out a cannon Sweetie Belle had yet to see. This one looked like a funnel. As Sweetie Belle leaned forward, she realized it to be like a weapon she once used before. The cannon was a speaker!

Fuff crawled down the edge of the forcefield lightning-fast, but Saccharine fired her weapon before she got far.

The forcefield protected them from the sound itself, but even still Sweetie Belle felt herself vibrating. Fuff N’ Stuff shook so violently it looked as though she was in two places at once. In a second, she was thrown off the wall and the scoreboard registered it as a hit.

As Fuff fell to the ground, struggling to regain composure, Saccharine took out her drill and wound up to hit her.

Saccharine slammed the side of her drill into Fuff as she came down. Due to her lack of armor, the blow devastated Fuff. The drill tore off three of her limbs on the spot and sent her tumbling to the corner.

The critical hit trumpet played, but Sweetie Belle couldn’t help but cringe at the blow. Everypony assured her that these robots didn’t feel pain in the fights, including the robots themselve. Sweetie knew this to be true because she could turn off pain whenever she wanted. They could be easily rebuilt besides.

But perhaps because of her own robotic nature, she couldn’t help but feel bad seeing them get smashed up despite knowing all that.

“And with that Rarity and Saccharine advance to the final round!” Gear looked up, announcing it to the sky. “She has the right to battle the reigning champion for nine years in a row – my own Biohazard! And if she can overcome him… well she’ll be allowed to make her case to be elected leader for the following year!”

Everyone cheered, save Gear who howled with laughter.

Rarity watched him closely as he jumped off his armchair and came over her, with a smile more manic than he usually wore.

“Oh! Things are going very well for you, aren’t they?” Gear snickered, almost bursting out into another bout of manic laughter. “Yes! I daresay if you win this next battle, you may very well convince the others to make you leader for this next year! And with how massively Saccharine’s been upgraded – Hahaha!”

He didn’t seem even slightly nervous at all, considering Rarity was certain Saccharine outclassed the version of Biohazard from the prior year. She’d expected Gear to be somewhat upset about her taking over the role of leader, but he just kept snickering like that… almost as though there was some joke Rarity wasn’t privy to.

No, he was up to something, wasn’t he? But what? Where was his hidden ace?

“Where is Biohazard, exactly?” Rarity watched him with narrow eyes. “Nopony’s seen him all night. I imagine you’ve made some manner of modification?”

“Oh, I’ll bring Biohazard out in just a moment!” Gear could barely contain a sudden burst of laughter. “But before that, I have an exciting announcement to make!”

Everypony murmured amongst themselves as Brilliant Gear went up to the stage and put his forehooves on the podium.

Gear leaned over his podium to look down to Rarity specifically. “Yes! I have quite the shocking revelation to make about our little Rarity here!”

“Me?”

“You see, I thought it was quite interesting that Rarity has pushed her field of study so far forward in such little time!” Gear began trotting back and forth rapidly on the stage. “Yes! Without taking another dive or finding the third volume of the Book of Shadows, Rarity was able to create a living metal spell. Not only that, but she created a great many enhancements for Saccharine, didn’t she? Very suspicious! Hm?”

Rarity looked to her left and right. The other ponies chattered to themselves, infected with his suspicion. Brilliant Gear looked her dead in the eyes, smiled too wide, and nodded. He knew!

“I–” Rarity tried getting on the stage herself.

“Rarity’s in league with a witch!” Brilliant Gear pointed at Rarity, cutting her off before she confessed.

Gasps resounded through the crowd. Ponies backed away from Rarity Poor Coco nearly fainted!

“Indeed! This ‘Silverstorm’ pony is a witch herself and has been helping Rarity modify Saccharine with the express intent of taking over our organization!” Brilliant Gear pointed both hooves at his head. “I alone possess the intellect to deduce this so quickly!”

Accusations and questions came at her from left and right. Rarity could hardly hear half of them, let alone respond to such a barrage.

“Rarity, that’s not true, is it?” Coco asked, still lying halfway on the floor.

Rarity closed her eyes and sighed. If she wanted any chance of salvaging this, she would need to come clean. With determination, Rarity jumped onto the stage, Saccharine and Sweetie Belle in tow, and turned to face the crowd.

“Yes! It is true!” Rarity announced. “I’ve been collaborating with a witch.”

A wave of boos and hisses flooded over the stage, enough to cause Rarity to wince. Even the more composed members whispered to one another and glared at her. Were Saccharine not standing just in front of her, Rarity would fear things were close to becoming violent.

Quite pleased with himself, Brilliant Gear hopped back onto his big armchair.

“Yes, and how has that been working out for you?” Gear leaned on the arm of his chair, resting his cheek in a hoof. “Hm?”

“Quite well, I’d say.” Rarity turned around to face the others. “Listen to me! She isn’t like the other witches! Surely, you’ve all been hearing the news. She’s hunting them all down to end their evil ways. She’s the one who brought down Trixie and Minuette and freed us from their curses! Have you all forgotten that so quickly?”

Apparently, they did need a reminder of that. As soon as Rarity brought it up, they all quieted down. Yes, it was hard to be angry at someone who’d given them the ability to watch cartoons and use combustion engines again.

She might just be able to win them over.

“I’ve been helping her with this mission the whole time and I assure you we intend to rid the world of these evil witches,” said Rarity. “I apologize for being dishonest with you up until now, but I only wanted to establish her credibility before telling you all the truth.

“And just consider the possibilities of having such a pony on our side!” Rarity put her hoof on Saccharine’s back. “I’ve created the most powerful robot in such a short period. Imagine the advancements we could make with her on our side. Imagine how beneficial having a sympathetic party towards us in mainstream society would be. This is our chance to surpass the Mad Science Institute, is it not?”

Rarity looked over the crowd. She moved them from hostile to reserved. The way they were looking at her, she knew none of them were entirely convinced. But what other points did she have to sell them on?

“Well, I support Rarity!” Coco jumped up on stage next to Rarity. Rarity could only watch her in surprise as she turned to address the others. “I was unfairly banished from Equestria and was forced to join a group of ponies I thought was evil. Um. That’s all of you.”

The crowd remained dead silent. Coco had yet to make a dent.

“But I realized that just because everypony said you were all evil, didn’t actually mean you are!” Coco continued. “So– that’s why I can’t accuse Silverstorm of being evil when she’s done nothing but help us this whole time! She stopped Flash Bang’s army from breaking our stuff! And freed us from Trixie’s curse! What reason do we have to distrust her? Just because the neurotypicals tell us witches are bad?”

Rarity could see it! The needle was moving!

She could see nods and hear mutters of approval from them, the occasional foul comment about the ‘normies’. Oh, how she wanted to hug Coco right now.

“And this is only the start!” Rarity promised the crowd. “I’ve built many bridges to other groups in these past few months. If you follow me and accept me as your new leader, I can bring us into a glorious new age!”

“You know what?” Fancy Pants was the next to speak out. “I agree! We should give Ms. Rarity and this witch a chance.”

“She’s right!” Kerfuffle nodded. “With her help, we could all build more powerful robots!”

“We would never have to worry about getting shoved around again, I’ll admit,” said Hoity Toity.

And soon they welled into enthusiastic support! Rarity turned back to Brilliant Gear with a triumphant smile, certain his plan backfired.

Brilliant Gear had heckled her from behind as she gave this speech. He nodded repeatedly making loud ‘hm’s and smiling like he was trying to keep himself from bursting into laughter.

“Do you have an objection, perhaps?” Rarity’s smile turned into a sharp look.

“Me?” Gear put both hooves on his heart in exaggerated surprise. “An objection? Never! Oh, I think you’ve had the most splendid idea of all, Rarity! Teaming up with a witch to further science? Astounding! Let’s all have a round of applause for Rarity and her amazing idea!”

Brilliant Gear laughed and clapped as loudly as he could. In the crowd, Coco clapped twice before realizing nopony else was doing it then stopped, blushing.

“But you know.” He stopped to make an exaggerated thinking pose. “There is one question I have. Yes, one thing just doesn’t add up. I mean, if this idea is so brilliant and my IQ is through the roof, then why didn’t I think of this myself?”

Rarity looked at him with a raised eyebrow, unsure where he was going with all this or how to respond.

Then she realized the implications of that question and her eyes widened.

“Wait.” Rarity got it a little faster than the others in the room. She took a step back. Any distance between herself and Gear felt necessary. “You’re not saying what I think you’re saying, are you?”

“Oh, Rarity.” Gear stood up and took one step forward for every Rarity took. “You don’t seriously believe you could have had an idea more brilliant than me, do you? Obviously, I thought of this way before you did!”

Everypony, even Coco and Sweetie Belle realized what he was on about by now. Saccharine jumped between Rarity and Gear.

“But.” Rarity shook her head. She’d backed up to the edge of the stage by now. “But then-?! Who?!”

“Of course!” Gear spread his forelegs magnanimously. “Why don’t I introduce you to the shadow leader of the Mad Science League, hm? Our true leader!”

Everypony held their breath as the doors opened.

A pink earth pony with wildly curly hair stepped out. Sadly, it wasn’t Pinkie Pie.

Rarity saw her eyes, spiral patterned, and knew her name right away.

Screwball!

The pirate queen was much bigger and more muscular than Rarity had expected. She must have weighed over a hundred and twenty pounds and had a half foot on Rarity in height.

For whatever reason, she wore the same outfit Rainbow Dash was fond of recently. She had the same North Wind jacket – complete with unnecessary wing holes – and a pair of flight goggles. Screwball stopped at the podium and moved the goggles from her eyes to her forehead before addressing them all.

This was quickly becoming the worst convention Rarity could remember.

“Yes, it was me!” Screwball announced to the crowd. “You’ve all been unknowingly working for me this whole time! Isn’t that an awesome plot twist? Yeah. Sorry, Rarity, but I’ve done the whole ‘secretly team up with a witch to take over an organization’ thing twenty-something times already.”

She looked over them all excitedly. One or two of them tried to flee. With a flick of Screwball’s hoof, chunks of rock burst through the ground and blocked the exits.

“Oh, relax!” Screwball laughed. “If I wanted to kill you all, I would have blown up the entire building hours ago. We came here to have fun, right? So I’m just gonna play one game with you all, then you can go home! You know, if you survive.”

Screwball held her arms up like she expected applause. None came, but she reveled in it all the same.

“What do you want?” Rarity asked bluntly.

“I’m literally doing the exact same thing you are.” Screwball deadpanned at her. “You don’t gotta be a jerk about it.”

Rarity kept her frown.

“Yes! I gotta run off the assumption I can’t beat up my little sis in a one-on-one fight.” Screwball turned back to the audience despite talking to Rarity. “But hey, we both have a bunch of people working for us, so I thought why not test the waters like this! Just like you, I put all of my efforts into upgrading Biohazard to the maximum extent.”

Biohazard at last appeared. He came through the same door Screwball did, but his larger form tore the edges of it off the walls. Even as the dust settled, his glowing red eyes and purple flames around his claw could be seen.

He took a few more loud steps forward until his lobster-like form could be made out. Biohazard stood larger than ever, easily the size of ten stallions. His armor was now made from some purple metal Rarity could not identify and his shell was studded with enchanted gemstones.

“So that’s it!” Screwball turned to go sit on Brilliant Gear’s armchair. “We’ll just see who’s the better team through this match.”

Just before taking her seat, Screwball raised her hoof as if remembering something and turned around slowly.

“Oh! And one more thing!” Her smile was far too sharp. “I want this to be a little more interesting, so I’m changing a few rules for this fight. Most importantly, there’s no more points or time limit. This will be a fight to the death between the two teams.”

The Mad and The Science

“Rules, rules, rules.” Screwball sat on Gear’s chair. “Let’s see. I mentioned the deathmatch thing. You fight till one of these robots is destroyed. Whoever wins gets to be the new leader, none of this voting nonsense. As far as I’m concerned this is a two-on-two match so attacking the pony is no longer against the rules.”

Screwball pointed at the audience and the forcefield separating them from the arena fell.

“And speaking of that!” Screwball’s smile grew in elation. “I hate all of this ‘safety net’ garbage! I’ve had it with how coddled the younger generation is, so stray bullets will just fly into the audience. That should keep them awake, huh?”

Screwball laughed as all the other scientists clambered in objection. Hoity Toity was the first to step forward.

“So you’re saying that Biohazard can fire upon us with no recourse?” Hoity scowled at the idea. “That’s hardly sportspony-like! Were the rumors of you giving ponies a fair chance in your games merely lies?”

“No worries! Of course, I thought of that,” said Screwball. “The rule is as follows. You can shoot with or without intent to kill whomever you please. However! If you land a single hit against any target that can fight back, they will be allowed to counterattack. For example, if Biohazard hits you, you will be allowed to attack Biohazard and only Biohazard as much as you’d like until the match is over. That said, I will immediately kill anyone who interferes with the match outside of that. Any of you trying to flee the castle grounds will be killed as well.”

A chatter arose amongst them all, attempting to find some way of exploiting these rules. Though Rarity was sure the others would help her, doing so would mean either getting shot by Biohazard’s high-caliber round or else facing certain death at the hooves of Screwball.

The obvious solution would be for their robots to take the hit for them. However…

Looking over what remained of them, few were able to function properly. Certainly, none of them would be of much help against this monstrosity, not after taking another blow. It seemed Saccharine’s lust for destruction caught up with them in the end.

Perhaps if she could at least soften a blow for one of them…

Rarity did still have one trump card beyond any of that, of course. She turned to Sweetie Belle sharing a nod with her. Twilight should be out, but it couldn’t be too hard to reach her. Rarity would simply stall the match out until then. The chance to catch Screwball was too much to pass up.

“I know what you’re thinking!” Screwball chuckled and hit a button on the side of the chair and a pedestal with a landline phone rose from the floor.

Screwball took the phone off the hook and beckoned Rarity over.

“Would you like to phone a friend, Rarity?” Screwball smirked and offered the phone to her. “I have the most obvious choice all lined up for you! They’re near a payphone.”

Rarity watched Screwball carefully as she trotted over. There simply wasn’t any way she’d give Rarity a direct line to Twilight, would she? This had to be some manner of trap or trick.

Warry and prepared, Rarity took the phone and put it against her ear, not taking her eyes off Screwball.

Dash glared sideways at the chittering spider and picked up the payphone. She hit the button to turn it on speaker mode as instructed. Pinkie assured her it wouldn’t explode, but still.

“Hello?” Dash kept her eyes on the parrot spider.

“Oh, it is you,” relief filled Rarity’s voice on the other end. “Rainbow Dash! I’m afraid there’s a situation over here.”

“Yeah. The spider guy already told us about that,” said Dash.

“Spider guy?”

“Is Screwball seriously over there?” Dash cut to the chase.

“Yes. She’s leaning against me as we speak. You need to get over here before she escapes.”

On the other end, an unfamiliar pony, presumably Screwball herself, started laughing at the idea. Dash silently vowed that she wouldn’t be laughing for long!

This all might turn out to be a string of luck in the end. They’d expected Screwball to stay hidden in her various strongholds, that it’d take months to track down her location. But here she was, in broad daylight! If they could take out another witch so quickly…

But more immediately, this meant Rarity’s life was in serious danger! Nopony but Twilight would stand a chance against Screwball.

“Pinkie!” Dash called out to her. “You’ll have to fight this guy yourself! The rest of us need to get over there like right now!”

“I can get there a lot faster than you probably think,” Twilight warned loud enough for the ponies on the other side to hear.

“I wouldn’t be so hasty if I were you!” Arachnado shouted down at her. “Did you forget the part where I’ve gathered hundreds of thousands of poisonous spiders? They’re hidden all over this and the surrounding towns. If any of you try to escape from me, I’ll command them to emerge from their hiding places and start biting ponies. Of course, we’ll be starting with the little foals. Small bodies mean less poison to kill you!”

“You’re really going after little kids?!” Dash nearly dropped the phone.

“Oh, don’t worry! Killing a bunch of little fillies might draw too strong a response. I wouldn’t do it unless you forced me to, of course.” Arachnado chittered. “I just want to play a time-wasting game with you. I’m hiding somewhere within ten miles of this spot. Finding me shouldn’t be too hard, hm? Ehehehe!”

Dash glared up at him.

“Can we really trust this guy?” She turned to Pinkie. “He’s just going to have his spiders bite everypony either way!”

“I know Screwball,” said Trixie. “One thing I’ll say for her is she never goes back on the rules for her ‘games’. She really does let ponies who win go. If Marshmallow can win whatever game Screwball gave her, then she’s not in danger.”

“Oh is that Trixie?!” That voice, which Dash was now certain belonged to Screwball, came on over the phone. “Are your new friends really walking you around on a leash? I thought you weren’t into that kinda thing! I guess they don’t respect a ‘no’ from you, huh?”

“I’m not talking to you!” Trixie kept her eyes set straight ahead, deadpanned but blushing in humiliation.

“Well, she’s right! Nopony would want to play with me if they thought the games were rigged,” Screwball offered her worthless assurances. “They’d just give up and sit in the corner. If Arachnado breaks the rules, he’ll be severely punished. Everything will go exactly as I’ve said and then you’ll know you can trust me, okay?”

Dash seriously doubted she’d ever trust a pony like Screwball. Still, from the sound of things, maybe capturing this Arachnado pony would be a big win in its own right. A pony with this power on Screwball’s side was too much to ignore.

“You might have to do without us for a little while, Rarity,” said Dash. “If you can’t win, stall!”

“I suppose I’ve no other choice,” said Rarity. “I’ll see if I can find help elsewhere.”

“We’re still coming over!” Dash promised. “Just wait!”

But for now, she had no choice but to hang up the phone.

“Alright! What’s this ‘game’ you mentioned?” She asked him.

Arachnado chittered at this minor victory.

“It’s quite simple, really!” Arachnado took a step back. “As I’ve said, I’m not far from where you’re standing right now. If you can come find me and knock me out, I won’t be able to control these spiders any longer. Pinkie should be able to find me no problem, hm? I promise I’m not that tough. Not compared to what you’ve already been through.”

That sounded like way too easy a task given their present company. Dash looked sideways at Pinkie.

The psychic lowered herself to the ground and licked her lips. After considering it for a moment, she straightened back up.

“Right there!” Pinkie pointed to the east. “He’s that way, hiding underground!”

“Very clever. But I wouldn’t be too hasty with this. Think about it! The spiders losing control won’t exactly be a good thing, will it?” He asked. “Yes, most spiders prefer to skitter back into the darkness if left to their own devices. But there are some I’m restraining from slaughtering the masses.”

Pinkie began looking around, sensing the locations of the most dangerous pockets of spiders.

“I suppose there are two ways out of this scenario,” said Arachnado. “There are three buttons hidden in the town. One is right here in front of me and two are next to the most dangerous of my spiders! And what luck! There just happens to be three of you. Press all three buttons at once and I’ll command all my spiders to leave. Or you could destroy the most dangerous ones, then come after me.”

“Three? Do I not count?” Trixie muttered, then sighed at her restraints. “I guess not.”

Pinkie looked left and right. “I think I got the buttons down, but they’re as far from each other as possible!”

“He’s up to something,” Twilight warned. “This was specifically designed to try and split us up.”

“Splitting up?” Dash lowered her head to try and whisper to the others. “But I can’t split up from the rest of you, remember?”

Sadly, that spider’s hearing was much better than Dash would have guessed.

“Eh?!” Arachnado’s spider jumped forward, eager to pounce on this. “You can’t split up from the others? Oh, how interesting!”

Stupid! She shouldn’t have let something like that slip.

“You can leave one of your crows with me,” Twilight reminded her.

“Right.” Dash let out an exasperated sigh. “Are we really splitting up, though?”

“We do need to end this as fast as possible,” said Twilight. “The question is if I can do this faster with or without the buttons.”

“I can think of a single spell that can end this all rather quickly!” Trixie lowered her head and grinned at Twilight.

Twilight frowned, reluctant to give her too much congratulations, but she knew the one Trixie meant. She cast the spell, summoning a single, large wasp-like insect.

It flew straight into the nearest spider and tore into it with its mandibles. In a flash it became two, then four. They began multiplying out of control until they filled the air. Spiders tried lunging at them, but the wasps were simply too fast and multiplied too quickly for this to be a fair battle.

Before long, Twilight’s swarm had the number advantage and the battle turned into a rout.

The parrot spider kept low to the ground as it looked side to side, watching the other spiders get devoured.

“Ah!” Arachnado chittered. “So you do know the empire swarm spell! How interesting. The implications! I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me where you–”

The wasp-like insects descended upon Arachnado’s parrot spider and devoured it before he could finish that sentence.

“They must have a list of every spell in the Book of Shadows.” Twilight clicked her tongue. “Using too many across the alphabet might raise suspicion. Maybe I should limit myself to using E-H spells while they’re watching?”

The swarm expanded in every direction, slowly clearing up. They still had a lot of ground to cover, and they appeared to be aimlessly zipping about, rather than homing in on each hidden spider.

“These should give us plenty of support, at least,” said Twilight. “But I can’t tell if this will end the battle quickly enough. I say we go with both approaches to make sure this ends as swiftly as possible.”

“So we’re really going to press them all?” Dash asked. “Oh, geeze! Pinkie, which one’s the most dangerous?”

“I think Twilight should go that way!” Pinkie pointed north, then moved her hoof south. “And you should go there! I’ll go for Arachnado.”

And for some reason Dash thought nothing too crazy would happen today! She cast the murder spell, leaving one crow with Pinkie and one with Twilight.

The remaining 18 crows flew off with a contingent of empire wasps to the location Pinkie told her about.

“Anyway, boring stuff's out of the way.” Screwball hung up the phone and jumped back onto the chair. “Match start!”

Biohazard charged forward too fast for Rarity’s eyes to register the motion. He clamped his left claw over Saccharin’s body, slamming down with an audible crash that forced all the ponies to wince.

A drilling sound came next, and sparks rained down from Saccharine’s body. Saccharine struggled but couldn’t free herself.

She did manage to pull out one of her higher caliber magnetic guns, however. It swung out from her side and fired multiple rounds into Biohazard’s eyes. Each connected but with far less impact than it should have had.

Rarity looked down at the ground, noticing no shells were ricocheting off or falling to the ground. She concluded that the flames around Biohazard rapidly dissolved any incoming projectiles, making them lose significant force.

“Go for the joints, Saccharine!” Rarity called out. “Fire at closer targets!”

With some effort, Saccharine managed to swing her gun around to instead point at a joint of the arm that held her. Firing closer meant less time for the bullets to burn away. The shots hit with noticeably more force just as Rarity predicted!

It soon became clear to everypony that Saccharine would break Biohazard’s arm before her own destruction. With no other option, Biohazard pulled back and pitched Saccharine high into the air, bashing her into the ceiling.

Looking up, Rarity saw minimal damage on Saccharine. Rarity let out a sigh of relief. A simple claw attack wasn’t enough to pierce Saccharine’s armor.

In the air, Saccharine managed to unload multiple rockets down at Biohazard. Just a second before they reached the ground, Biohazard vanished from sight with speed beyond sight. Fire filled the stadium, but Biohazard was already gone.

How could it move so fast?! Rarity needed to remain calm and analyze the situation!

Biohazard couldn’t possibly move with that speed constantly. Just like the wave glide, he seemed only capable of small bursts of speed. The only question was how? Teleportation? Time manipulation? Something else?

For now, she looked around for either Biohazard or any clue behind his movements.

She turned around to find Biohazard right behind her! Both his claws were opened, and two spheres of purple light grew in either. He was about to launch a massive attack on Rarity and Saccharine was too far away!

“Rarity!” Sweetie Belle rushed in between the two, forelegs open, hoping her armor would be enough to protect both sisters.

At the last moment, Biohazard turned its claws upward and fired harmlessly into the air. Purple fire melted a hole in the walls, but Rarity felt nothing.

Rarity blinked, reeling for a moment trying to think of a reason for Biohazard to make such an odd move.

Saccharine charged in a second later, slamming into Biohazard’s side with her drills. She sent the larger robot tumbling off the bleachers, nearly taking off one of its legs.

Sweetie fumbled, but bravely took out her sound cannon– the only weapon she’d used so far.

“Remember!” Screwball shouted a warning to her. “If you attack Biohazard preemptively, I’ll have to maintain order. And I can hit a hell of a lot harder than anything else in this room.”

Of course! If he attacked Sweetie Belle, Sweetie could counterattack. Biohazard would avoid hitting her, the second most dangerous target in the room, at all costs.

Sweetie Belle hesitated but took a step forward as Saccharine leaped after Biohazard.

“Then I’ll just have to force him to attack me!” Sweetie Belle declared. “Th-that’s how this works, right?”

Though Rarity loathed to admit it, Sweetie Belle was more fragile than Saccharine, her biological brain being a glaring weak point. She didn’t have any combat experience and didn’t have the nature to attack an opponent with no restraint as Saccharine did.

But Sweetie looked too determined to do something. Rarity needed to give her some task to keep her occupied.

“No! You’re better off over here!” Rarity called out to her just as Sweetie prepared to rush in. “Biohazard won’t attack me directly if you’re standing in front of me. I need you to be my shield if I’m going to win this.”

Sweetie Belle hesitated, but Rarity’s plan made too much sense. She nodded and stepped back, determined to block any further attacks on Rarity.

“Oh, wow!” Screwball leaned over the edge of her seat in mock excitement. “Hiding behind a small filly? What a heroic tactic! I heard you spent all this time trying to fix her and now she’s just a meat shield to you? Hey, kiddo! You sure your sister didn’t have some other motive for putting you in that robot? Maybe you were just a convenient brain to experiment on. Ever think of that?”

Rarity gritted her teeth. “Don’t listen to her, Sweetie.”

“If we’re fighting dirty, why aren’t you attacking Gear directly?” Screwball extended a hoof to him, getting an annoyed look in return. “Come on! He’s gotta be the easier half of the team to kill!”

Rarity refused to respond and was rewarded with a small frown from Screwball. Rarity knew the type. The only thing that could disappoint her was a lack of response.

But sadly, Screwball just laughed and laughed.

“Oh! You don’t think I can get you to talk to me?” Screwball leaned over the side of her chair, the front half of her body hanging off it. “Maybe you need a reminder on this, but I know where you live.”

“What?!”

“See how easy that was?” Screwball asked. “Yeah! I’m sending another group to attack your castle right now!”

“Sweetie Belle!” Rarity turned to her. She could get word to the castle instantly.

“And that’s not all I have to say, you know.” Screwball rolled back into her chair, rolling her hoof around in circles. “Rainbow Dash lived in Ponyville, right? I’m sending a couple of goons to firebomb the school in that town right now.”

“Excuse me?!” Rarity gasped. “Whatever for? You’re going to kill random children for – for what?”

“Relax! Relax!” Screwball swiped her hoof in the air. “Not everypony who works for me is a professional. I only sent a couple of thugs, okay? I’m sure you can stop that one.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” Rarity asked. “Surely a sneak attack would have been more apt?”

“The same reason I’m here!” Screwball covered her eye with a hoof. She pulled it away and turned to the side in one fluid motion. A single crow emerged from the spell and flew off. “I know I can’t beat my sister in an honorable duel. We’re not going to fight today even if she shows up.”

Screwball took out an eyepatch and put it over her now-missing eye. Rarity knew just enough about that spell to know that the crow that escaped could turn back into Screwball no matter what happened to this body. She’d be too difficult to track down even if Pinkie and Twilight showed up two minutes from now.

“This is more like a recon mission,” Screwball explained. “Rainbow Dash, Silverstorm, and Pinkie Pie can’t be your only ‘friends’, can they? I want to see who else shows up to help you. I want to know who all of them are. I want all their names. And you’re going to show me all of them, aren’t you?”

The main cards Screwball didn’t know about were Fluttershy and Applejack. Maybe Scootaloo. Screwball would certainly see the defenses around the castle soon. Rarity couldn’t imagine any way out of this besides giving Screwball exactly what she wanted.

Fluttershy wiped her brow off. A purple jelly covered the floor, and a few shelves were knocked over, but she finally got the two fillies to quiet down. They were distracted by a maze book, leaving the jelly to harmlessly ooze about the floor.

“There!” Fluttershy sighed with relief. “See? Great with kids!”

Now she just needed to clean up all this jam before anypony else saw. It looked like it was trying to crawl away, so Fluttershy froze it just to make sure.

“Fluttershy!” An 8100 jumped down the stairs, landing with a heavy thud. “Emergency!”

“What?!” Fluttershy spun around with a gasp. “I can clean it up! I swear! I’m so sorry!”

Sweetie Belle turned her head to the spill, then back to Fluttershy. “No! Not that!”

“Oh, good.” Fluttershy let out a sigh of relief. Then considered the situation. “Oh, wait. No. That’s not good! I think. What was the emergency again?”

“We’re under attack!” Sweetie Belle announced. “Screwball is attacking us and Twilight and she’s sending somepony to attack the castle right now.”

“Oh my.” Fluttershy put her hoof over her mouth and looked left and right. She’d expected at least a few of the others to be here whenever this inevitable attack came. She certainly wasn’t expecting anything so soon. “Um! Applebloom! Go get your sister!”

Applebloom nodded and ran off.

Fluttershy bit her lip trying to think of what else should be done. They’d set up an entire gauntlet of defenses. Maybe Fluttershy wouldn’t even have to do anything?

“I see somepony coming to the castle now!” Sweetie Belle announced. “In the camera. Look.”

Sweetie’s eyes flickered and she began projecting an image onto the wall. These projections always appeared as negatives to Fluttershy’s ghost eyes, but she managed to make it out all the same.

Through it, Fluttershy saw the walkway leading up to the castle. A good deal off, standing at the edge of the barrier, stood a lone pony. He was a pimply-faced teenager carrying a pizza box. He wore a vest with the words ‘No Questions Pizza’ written on one side.

Unsure of what to do, the pizza pony tried knocking on the forcefield.

“Hello?” He called out in a high-pitched nasally voice that cracked often. “It’s me! Pizza Friday! From No Questions Pizza? I got the triple cheese here!”

Fluttershy and Scootaloo both leaned forward

“A pizza delivery pony?” Fluttershy asked. “I suppose that could clog your arteries, but that’s a very long-term strategy, isn’t it?”

“Maybe it’s a pizza monster?” Sweetie Belle asked. “Or a bomb?”

“Please, I could take care of either of those things myself.” Scootaloo grinned. She flicked one of her wings at the potentially sentient jam and it vanished, reverting into its components, all stored safely in their unbroken bottles. “Whoever they send in, I can just make it, so they arrive late enough for Rainbow Dash to get back here!”

Fluttershy wondered why she hadn’t done that earlier, but now wasn’t the time for such questions.

“Well don’t use your powers on them unless it’s an emergency, okay? We don’t want anypony knowing you’re here.” Fluttershy kept her head down. She really hoped to not fight any pizza monsters today. “I suppose I should go talk to him.”

“It’d make more sense for me to go,” Sweetie offered. Her voice sounded so much quicker than normal, Fluttershy could tell she was desperate to act. “One of my spare bodies, I mean. It doesn’t matter if one or two get smashed.”

Without waiting for a response, Sweetie sent in one of her robots.

Fluttershy watched as the 8100 ran up to Pizza Friday, skidding to a halt.

“Um! I’m sorry, mister, but you can’t be here,” said Sweetie Belle.

“Ah, up to something evil, huh? You don’t need to worry about that!” Pizza Friday’s voice cracked with every other word. “No Questions Pizza guarantees we’ll turn a blind eye to any crime no matter how heinous or your money back! It’s how we cornered this untapped market. But there is a mandatory one hundred percent tip.”

“No! We’re under attack.”

“Oh. Well we charge extra for that.” Pizza Friday barely missed a beat. He took out a little abacus. “Let’s see, uh. That’s, uh, sixty-eight bits.”

“No! We didn’t order a pizza!” Sweetie Belle shouted. “And that’s way too expensive for just one!”

“Looks, that’s the price you pay for convenience,” his voice cracked hard. “Nopony else is gonna deliver out here.”

“Ugh!”

Mass Hissteria lay low in the grass, his belly tightly against the ground. His natural green fur and black mane blended in well with the camouflage of grasses piled up over his back so that only the most skilled hunter would have taken a second look in his direction.

Even then, the only tell would be the flat piece of glass peeking out from behind bits of foliage near the ground – the tip of his telescope. He ran his forked tongue over the tips of one of his fangs as he adjusted the glass for a better view of Rarity’s castle.

As Screwball’s most elite espionage agent, he’d been here for days, waiting just out of the reach of Pinkie’s psychic perception. An illusion coated forcefield, the kind only a witch could produce, surrounded the castle grounds. Even though he couldn’t see past the barrier, he still felt his time here had been valuable.

Namely, he hadn’t seen any other intelligence experts come to scope out this location. Nopony else had pieced all of this together, it seemed. He had to smirk a little, having outpaced everypony else who’d undoubtedly been sent to gather intel on this ‘Silverstorm’ pony. He’d thought for sure Nailbat or Bonbon would be close on his hooves, but apparently not this time.

His smile faltered slightly at the sight of the pizza guy. Something about that pizza pony… was off. His intuition sensed something his conscious mind couldn’t quite piece together.

Not that it mattered.

“Fun fact,” Hissteria whispered over the radio to his underlings. “Pizza delivery pony has the highest mortality rate of any job excluding lumberjack and archeologist.”

Hissteria clicked his tongue, giving the signal to fire an artillery shell directly at the pizza pony. The ensuing explosion decreased visibility in the immediate area. Perhaps it wasn’t a direct hit as he wanted, because the body went flying off to one side rather than vaporizing.

As he refocused his telescope, he saw that robot still unharmed, protected by the barrier. A barrage of artillery fire followed, testing the barrier’s strength from all ends.

Hissteria had a good number of grunts off in the woods, plus three of his own agents. The grunts likely felt very professional right now, having been granted such heavy equipment. In reality, they were nothing but sacrificial pawns and not even his biggest pawn at that.

“Remember! We’re here to see what comes out of there,” Hissteria reminded his ponies. “I don’t care what happens to these grunts, but none of you are running in. The only direction we go is back.”

“Affirmative.” All three responded at once.

It wasn’t long before the heavy cannon fire destroyed the outermost layer of protection, allowing Hissteria to at last see the castle as it truly was. Already he could see what he was up against.

Way more of those robot fillies were pouring out to return fire. He could see dancing blades rising from the ground– a spell he recognized as one Screwball often used. Curious!

And what else? A scarecrow? And finally that ghost, Fluttershy he presumed, came poking her head out from the upper story. She squinted, unable to see in the light of day, then flew back inside.

Finally, there was enough chaos for him to send in his search snakes without fear of giving away his position. They slithered fast across the ground. With one of his own eyes closed, he could see through theirs instead.

“Five minutes,” he said. “Then we drop the big bait.”

Screwball watched Rarity with a growing grin. She needed to do her best to ignore the smugness of her tormentor for now, she already had too many balls to juggle!

Saccharine had been trying to fire off the fusion cannon this whole time, but Biohazard knew enough to not let her get a shot off. It took too long to charge, and he would always use the sudden burst of speed to interrupt whenever she started up with it.

Rarity hadn’t accounted for this much speed or firepower from Biohazard! He’d been upgraded far past where he’d been last year. They wouldn’t have time to fully charge the fusion cannon.

“Saccharine!” Rarity called out to her. “You’re going to have to fire a partial charge!”

Saccharine wave dashed as far away as she could from Biohazard while simultaneously charging her cannon. After just three spins, Saccharine fired out a glowing stream of plasma. Though much smaller than even the one in the earlier matches, this would still be enough to destroy most robots.

The plasma stream hit Biohazard directly!

Light filled the castle, blinding Rarity directly from the results. A sideways glance at Gear’s smirk convinced her the attack hadn’t gone well.

When the fusion cannon’s attack ended, Biohazard stood unharmed. He appeared more intimidating than before. The flames around him turned white, having absorbed the plasma.

Biohazard lunged forward. All the fire conglomerated into his right claw so that it became a ball of light. Saccharine hadn’t the speed to dodge as he slammed it into her side. The explosion knocked anypony not hiding behind something off their feet as Saccharine went flying.

Even then, she was able to counterattack, firing a high-caliber round at one of Biohazard’s exposed legs. It dealt considerable damage, but Rarity was left to wonder who came out ahead in the trade as Saccharine flew straight through the wall.

At least it revealed that without those flames, Saccharine could quickly dismantle the other robot. But it seemed plasma weapons were less than effective.

Saccharine came rolling back into the building. Her body glowed red hot after the blow. Not necessarily an issue as the heat dissipated quickly but…

It tore a small gash in Saccharine’s armor!

Obviously, Rarity could simply order Saccharine to not use her plasma cannon again, but already this posed a major problem. A tear in the armor meant a weak spot for Biohazard to exploit with his more conventional weapons.

Already he was trying to take the shot, gliding around Saccharine’s side to fire bullets at the cut.

“Aren’t you curious how I knew your big gun was going to be a plasma weapon?” Screwball called out to her. “Well you know, those griffons are right in my backyard. I know Minuette took you there to try and kill you with that zombie horde. And I know you used a massive plasma weapon to destroy them. You can’t hide anything from me!”

“You can’t tell her that!” Gear shouted. “You need to leave it mysterious, so she thinks I’m just magically smart!”

Rarity looked around. Her mind flittered from one problem to another, unable to focus on any one of them to find solutions. The castle, the fire, the speed…

Maybe she could deal with one of those problems.

Applejack kept one ear covered with her hoof and one ear pressed against the phone line leading to the other side. With artillery repeatedly slamming into the side of the barrier, it was necessary to hear Derpy on the other side.

She nodded once in confirmation, then hung up to turn back to the others.

“Alright,” she said. “So Derpy can take care of those other attacks. We just need to focus on here and Rarity.”

Applejack found herself in something of a war room, alone with the fillies and Fluttershy. It looked like she might not be getting any help besides that and the defenses already in place.

Surrounded by analytical engines, Applejack had no less than ten different views of the battle unfolding from all around the castle. She also had a bullet-proof window through which to overlook the front of the assault. The normally loud sounds of the projectors and engines were all but drowned out by the sound of the battle below.

The majority of the attack appeared to be from a distance, cannons fired from too far into the woods for Applejack to see. The robots, she knew, could calculate the approximate position of the attackers and return fire at the artillery pieces. The explosions slowly decreased in frequency, proving to Applejack at least a few were getting destroyed.

Meanwhile, nothing had yet to breach their forcefield. The automated defenses were holding off for now, but there was no guarantee it would be enough. Applejack had no idea how many enemies surrounded the castle, nor if they had anything worse than this.

Nothing had yet to come out of the forest. The rows of dancing blades merely stood ready to charge in whenever it happened. Applejack frowned at each of the projections. She sent one Sweetie Bot out as a scout but didn’t want to send anything else out into the woods until she knew what she was up against.

For now, the woods looked disturbingly empty.

“How come I can’t do nothing?” Applebloom asked. She pointed to the lone 8100 in the room with them. “I got witch training and Sweetie Belle gets to fight!”

“That ain’t Sweetie Belle fighting.” Applejack gave it a shove to prove its lack of awareness. “Those are on auto. Besides, you don’t have any backup bodies.”

Scootaloo, meanwhile, struggled to turn her former fearlessness into courage once the sound of explosions began erupting all around them.

At first blush, Scootaloo seemed like their highest ace. But it’d be far too dangerous to have her use her powers unless absolutely needed. Just the noise appeared to be affecting her, threatened to awaken the monster sleeping inside her brain.

The 8100 in question blinked in and out of sentience, Sweetie Belle taking control of it every so often to relay information.

“Rarity says if Fluttershy can get here, we can probably win,” said Sweetie Belle.

“I ain’t sure if we can spare that just yet,” said Applejack. “I can’t go out there myself, not when I’m supposed to be playing dead. Fluttershy’s all we got.”

The 8100’s eyes lost their intelligence as Sweetie went back to Rarity’s side of things.

Peering out, Applejack resisted the urge to wonder if she really needed Rarity or even Fluttershy’s help after all. They certainly seemed to be winning for now, but she refused to believe it would be this easy. The Bloodstorm Cartel wouldn’t have come here without an ace.

“Um. Applejack?” Fluttershy whispered to her. “I really can’t see anything during the day when it’s this bright. I see the projectors just fine, but I’d be fighting blind if I went out there. I might be more useful if I get to Rarity’s side.”

She had a point. Applejack would give away too much information by going out there. Scootaloo had both Applejack’s problem, and that she might not be able to control herself just now. Was Applebloom seriously the best option somehow?

“Maybe once I see what we’re really up against,” said Applejack. “I don’t believe for one second they’re just going to shoot a bunch of cannons at us expecting to accomplish anything.”

The ground rumbled and Applejack braced herself. This had to be it! Whatever means they hoped to win with were about to emerge.

Entire trees went flying as the monster burst forth through the earth. At first, it appeared to be a worm, but Applejack soon decided a fat maggot or grub would be a better comparison. Its body was swollen and short compared to its enormous girth.

A hideous maw covered the entire front of its body with rows of disjointed teeth that seemed to continue onward into an endless void. They didn’t end at its mouth, either. Teeth jutted out across the length of the front half of it at awkward angles.

Still, that thing was massive! It rose high above the tree line, the trees like nothing more than chips for it to swallow hole. Applejack imagined the thickness of that hide could be best measured in feet.

The sweetiebots opened fire on it immediately, but even their rockets merely bounced off its thick skin. At best, they’d pop one of its pustules, sending a corrosive glob down to burn away the trees it landed on.

The grub lurched forward, crushing trees and leaving behind nothing but a trail of slime as it went.

If that thing reached the castle…

Applejack didn’t even know if it could attack in any real way, but just rolling over could destroy the entire building! They needed to stop it before it could get close!

The only grace she could find was how slowly it crawled towards them. A filly going for a trot could have outpaced it. Heck, they could have run circles around it were it not so big.

Fluttershy peered out the window next to her, scrunching her muzzle.

“I can’t see it,” she whispered to Applejack.

She couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t try attacking from directly underneath the castle. Applejack knew for sure it wouldn’t have worked; they’d set up precautions for that. But there was no way the Bloodstorm Cartel could have known that. They must have been thinking something else.

“Okay!” Sweetie Belle’s robot sprang to life once more. “Rarity came up with an idea on how you can go outside without anypony noticing.”

“I don’t suppose you can come up with an idea for something else, can you?” Applejack asked.

Science 5

A giant worm monster now! Rarity glanced over at Screwball, knowing why she’d send something of that nature out. This ‘attack’ was more about reconnaissance than a serious attempt at victory as she’d said.

Something slow but massive would mean the biggest gun came out for sure. But what did they have at the castle to stop it?

She looked back down at the battle. Biohazard teleported to Saccharine’s left side and fired a spray of bullets at her wound. Most of them bounced off, but it only took one getting through to begin doing real damage to her system.

Rarity could tell from the way Saccharine recoiled that at least one did get past.

The 9100 wave-dashed around to Biohazard’s side, closing the gap with her own burst of speed. Saccharine tore into Biohazard’s damaged leg with her drill, finally cutting it off. At least the enemy was taking damage too.

Biohazard’s flames flared up and Saccharine leaped back before taking another swing.

“Rarity!” Saccharine landed near her side. “I cannot withstand such high temperatures with my armor compromised. I won’t be able to fire the fusion cannon in my current state.”

Biohazard stalked around the group, the missing leg hampering him only slightly as he searched for an angle to attack Saccharine but not Sweetie Belle.

“Biohazard is acting like a first-generation robot,” Saccharine continued her report. “He appears incapable of anything but aggression.”

This was the tightest spot she’d found herself in since standing before Trixie. Even then, she only had one problem to concentrate on. How could she fight so many battles at once?

And then ponies were screaming behind her. Some of them simply lost their cool when the battle started, which was understandable but another problem to add to the list. One more distraction she didn’t need.

Rarity opened her eyes and looked over the others. Or perhaps this was the solution after all.

If Rarity wanted to be a leader, then she would have to start now. If she could take control of this chaos, she could turn everything around!

“Saccharine! Focus on defense,” Rarity commanded her. “Buy me as much time as you can!”

Saccharine leaped forward.

Rarity took stock of all the other ponies in the room and quickly separated them into three groups. The first, and most calm, were the ones discussing ways to help her. Nopony had come forth with any grand solutions just yet.

She decided to delegate some responsibilities to these ponies. That included dealing with the problems at the castle.

Rarity expected the jig was up as far as her compatriots went. They wouldn’t follow her unless she gave them the whole truth from here on out. And Rarity intended to do just that.

“You three!” Rarity beckoned to them. “I need your help!”

They came running immediately, eager to aid her.

“Rarity!” Jet Set began. “I was thinking our best bet would be if some sort of ricochet–”

“Don’t worry about that,” Rarity dismissed the idea. Nopony else here would make as much of a difference even if they did get into the fight. “Your time would be better spent trying to figure out what system those flames and Biohazard’s bursts of speed work on. If you think of anything, let me know.”

Jet Set stammered for a moment, then nodded. His eyes fixed on the fight between Biohazard and Saccharine.

“Hoity Toity! Fancy Pants!” Rarity turned to them next. “Do you have any communication devices? I need to link it to a robot at my castle.”

In a second, they had a direct link from one of Hoity’s robots to an 8100. Though it was incapable of fighting, it could still link them directly to Applejack.

“I’m going to patch you through to an associate,” she said. “I need you to help them deal with the assault there so I can focus on this. There’s a pony name Fluttershy over there. I need you to find some way to get her here while also defending my castle. There’s a pony on the other end who can explain more. She can’t tell you her name at the moment?”

“Rarity?” Applejack’s voice came over, though it was muffled and distorted beyond recognition. Screwball was still there, watching Rarity’s moves carefully. “Can you hear me?”

“Dear, these two are going to be helping you from here out,” Rarity told Applejack. “I want you to tell them anything they need to know.”

“Are you sure about that?” Applejack asked.

“Yes. We have no choice but to trust the others from here out. We won’t be able to keep many secrets from them even if we want to.”

“Well alright!” Hoity nodded. “If that’s the best I can do, then I’ll do it.”

Good! The two of them ducked down, taking cover as they began talking to Applejack.

Rarity scanned the crowd and focused on the second group – those who hid strategically as they tried to repair their robots. Thankfully, most of them seemed to have chosen a single cluster of hiding spots. The stairs at the far end of the great hall provided sufficient cover for them all.

From the sound of their bickering, they’d already come to the same conclusion Rarity had. However, they were wasting far too much time arguing over how to go about it.

“The five of you!” Rarity motioned to Kerfuffle and the four ponies nearest her. “Try to simply get Fuff working. She’s the closest to full functionality we have right now. Cannibalize whatever parts from the other robots you can.”

“But–” one of them tried to speak up, no doubt hoping to convince Rarity that her own robot would be the better idea.

“No arguing!” Rarity tried her best to sound as authoritative as possible. “A good plan now is worth more than the best plan too late.”

Only a brief moment of hesitation remained until they all relented and did as Rarity asked.

Rarity smiled. She was actually getting this under control.

Though still not quite yet, she remembered, as the third group reminded her they existed. One of them was still just screaming and running around. Others were merely cowering behind anything that looked sturdy. Overall, the noise they were making rivaled only that of the actual fight.

Rarity needed some way to calm them down. Having a pony freaking out nearby would only drag down those to whom she’d given more important jobs.

She decided to go with the easiest of the group to deal with first. She ran over to Coco, hiding under a metal table, and crouched down to her level.

“Coco!” Rarity called out to her. “Listen to me. I need you to go to the west tower. I want you and the others to watch if anypony is approaching the castle.”

It wasn’t exactly an important job, but she would be safer there and it would move her from a hindrance to an aid.

“Rarity?” Coco looked up, then closed her eyes tight, retreating to her fetal position. “I can’t move from here! I want to help but… I’m sorry!”

Another explosion sounded and Coco covered her ears with another yell.

“They won’t attack Sweetie Belle,” Rarity reminded her. “Because then she can counterattack. If she’s standing next to you, Biohazard won’t dare fire anywhere near you.”

“Huh?” Coco opened her eyes again. “B-but doesn’t she have to protect you?”

“I’m willing to take the risk to get you to safety,” Rarity promised her. “And it will only be for a moment.”

“Rarity!” Coco scrunched her nose. Her eyes teared up, but this time they came not from fear. She couldn’t possibly bear to refuse helping now, not after seeing Rarity willing to put herself in danger like this. “O-okay!”

Crouched low to the ground, Coco was able to stalk away with Sweetie Belle shielding her. Rarity stayed close by as they moved through the wide-open area to the stairs, though her positioning was no longer optimal.

“Coco is going to head to the west tower!” Rarity called out to anypony who would listen. “Anypony who wants to act as a sentry should follow her.

The screaming pony realized what this implied and bolted for the stairs before even Coco got there. Nearly the rest of the final group soon took the offer as well, not that they were given a way to stay safe and save face at once.

Outside, dancing blades tried hacking away at the giant grub. It almost seemed as though this monster was specifically designed to counter the blades. Every time they broke through its thick flesh, green blood corrosive enough to melt them came pouring out. Applejack realized the futility of blowing something like that up, even if she thought of a way to do so.

“There can be no doubt that monstrosity is the creation of the Mad Science Cartel,” Fancy Pants informed her, confirming that it was at least designed. “The Bloodstorm Cartel still buys giant monsters from them all the time.”

“Thanks,” said Applejack. “But unless I can just stamp ‘return to sender’ on it, I don’t see how that’s much help.”

“The important detail here,” said Fancy Pants, “is that I’ve dealt with these abominations in the past. They have certain weaknesses, namely the method of controlling them. There’s a device called a hive beacon. Somepony not far away must have it.”

Applejack kept a keen eye on the approaching blob of doom. That made sense. The thing couldn’t possibly be smart enough to take orders the traditional way.

“And what does this beehive doohickey look like, exactly?” Applejack asked.

“That doesn’t matter as much,” said Fancy Pants. “You’ll find it by following the radio super-waves. I’m sure Rarity must have a super-dish somewhere. I’ll talk you through how to triangulate its location.”

Applejack sure was glad she’d volunteered to make robots now. She had some experience using these analytical computers.

Come to think of it, she was particularly well-suited for this sort of mission. Her ability to sink into the shadow realm meant she could go in, grab that device quickly, and come back out. She’d be blind outside in the middle of the day, but a sweetie bot could still navigate her to the right spot.

Rarity had plenty of masks and cloaks to choose from. That’d drop the risk of her being identified.

“Remember,” said Fancy Pants. “You don’t want to destroy it. There’s no telling what it’d do then. You want to control the thing yourself so you can make it turn around.”

“Right,” said Applejack. His warning came just as the location lit up on the map. She turned to Fluttershy. “You go help Rarity. I think I might be able to manage here now.”

Fluttershy nodded and off she went, flying deep below the ground to bypass the fight.

“I’m heading out too,” said Applejack. “You two can control the defenses from there, right?”

“Absolutely!” Fancy assured her. “At worst, your sister will only need to press a few buttons.”

Applejack turned to Applebloom with a frown.

“Ah, come on, sis! I can mindlessly press buttons,” Applebloom promised her.

Applejack frowned. She didn’t like it, but this might be her only choice.

“Alright. I’ll be counting on you.” Applejack put a hoof on her head. “Go ahead and tell me how to find this device.”

Applejack made her way through the white void that was the shadow realm at daytime. She’d wrapped herself from head to hoof with cloaks and put on one of Rarity’s masks. She could almost swear Rarity had prepared for just such an occasion.

Only beneath the trees, where some darkness lingered in midday, could Applejack make out so much as the ground. The Sweetiebot by her side could calculate and report their location on the map based on how far they traveled, but to pinpoint the exact location of the controller, she’d need to exit the shadow realm.

She ducked into a particularly dark corner and came out for one final scan before getting the exact location and returning.

Applejack moved forward the required number of steps. She almost decided to take her chances with a quick exit, unable to see anypony, but noticed something at the last moment. There was a pony nearby, hiding in a makeshift tent of leaves and brush.

The foliage did the opposite of covering them in this instance. Above the treetops and in the gap of their shade existed only a white void. Had they been standing out in the open, the shade and their shadows would have melded together, making it nearly impossible to spot them.

However, in this makeshift cover, there was just enough protection from the sun for Applejack to make out the blobby shape of a pony rising up from its shadow. No way to tell if other ponies stood outside the tent, however.

She braced herself, then jumped out of the shadow realm.

Five ponies with guns surrounded her! Thankfully, they were too surprised by her sudden appearance to open fire on reflex. Most importantly, an unarmed pony sat inches in front of her holding a device that matched the description she’d been given – a small box with a long antenna surrounded by a coil of wires.

She’d decided in advance that if there was more than one of them, she’d grab the thing and run rather than trying to force the operator to comply. The sweetie bot jumped at the enemy as Applejack snatched away the device from the pony in the tent and returned to the shadow realm.

Flashes of light banishing the shadows were the only evidence of a fight Applejack got as she ran back towards the castle. That much she could find without robotic assistance.

The maw of the beast already inched dangerously close to the empty ring that marked the castle grounds. She needed to figure out how to use this thing immediately. There wasn’t enough time to get back to the castle, even.

Arachnado watched from a basement as Silverstorm approached the first button. She was certainly the fastest of the three. Spiders crawled along his back and all through the room as he used his spy spiders to keep tabs on the battlefield.

One day he too would be as a spider. Thanks to Screwball’s aid and the work of the Mad Science Cartel, he had managed to replace much of his body already. His left eye had been replaced with something more suitable - a single, large eye with a constelation of smaller eyes around it. Mandibles had replaced his jaws and an extra set of spiderly limbs jutted out from his withers.

The procedure had turned his fur black and caused his mane to fall out. But no matter. He had no use for such things.

He watched his master’s sister approach the fire station where his deadliest trap awaited. Yes, how unfortunate for her… choosing the most powerful spider of them all. Arachnado clapped his forehooves together in anticipation.

Olyief'Uk! The very living manifestation of the shock and fear one feels upon noticing a spider! A demon summoned from the vile depths of the shadow realm to exact vengeance upon all those stepped upon his fallen brethren without even noticing!

What disgusting, worthless creatures ponies were. And all mammals for that matter! Reacting to spiders with such disrespect. Bah!

His only consolation was that he too would be an arachnid soon enough.

The door opened, his mandibles opened wide with delight!

Olyief'Uk poured out from inside the station the very second the door opened. Not a solid spider, but a swirling mess of black, twisted wires and burning red malice was he! Soon, he stood larger than the station itself… a towering monstrosity of spite only barely resembling a spider rose above Silverstorm, its wires writhing with anger!

Those same black wires shot out, attempting to pierce her from every angle. They had enough force behind them to puncture even the hull of a battleship, he knew, and the poison behind even a single prick from one of those would be enough to kill an elephant!

For a moment, he believed he may very well have eliminated a threat all by himself. How pleased Screwball would be with him!

A ball of white hot plasma surrounded Silverstorm. All the wires on Olyief'Uk flew backward upon contact, forcing him to lose his form. Without missing a beat, Silverstorm discarded her shield aside and cast another spell. Five runic circles on Olyief'Uk’s body, sealing him in place. The demonic energy was held in place. Olyief'Uk couldn’t regain his form or use any of his magic while those remained in place.

Arachnado had never seen somepony summon five of these at once! Hell, he’d never even seen a pony create a single seal that looked so powerful before. And she had done it on reflex, her expression remained neutral.

As Arachnado gawked, she moved into the third incredible spell in what felt like mere fractions of seconds. White light poured from her horn, shinning upon Olyief'Uk. His wires wiggled as much as they were able, but faded away like mere snowflakes in scorching daylight.

And just like that, he was gone. Silverstorm trotted into the building, completely unharmed, dragging Trixie with her. She reached the button and began idly mashing it.

Arachnado’s eye twitched. A spider crawled over top it with no reaction from him.

Slowly, he reached over to the phone beside him and picked it up.

“Um, guys?” He hit the dial repeatedly, waiting for his liaison to pick up. “I think we have a situation on my end!”

Panic! Panic!

Arachnado seriously underestimated these ponies. He knew at least one had witch training but this was beyond what he’d seen even from Screwball herself!

If he wanted even a chance to stall them out, he’d need to focus entirely on just one of the three. Not Silverstorm! Pinkie they already knew the power of. That last one… Rainbow Dash! Yes, he’d need to go after her with absolutely everything if he intended to have a glimmer of hope. If she was even half as strong as the other one… or what if she was even stronger?!

The second his message got through, before Pinkie showed up, he’d need to abandon this place.

The grub had its mouth around the forcefield, slowly constricting as if to bite out a chunk. It made a sickening crackling noise like an entire PowerStation shorting out.

Scootaloo wished she could be brave, but she had enemies outside and within.

Scootaloo gripped the white feather as tightly as she could. Without this thing, she absolutely would have lost control before now. She knew her life was in serious danger right now and even in its calmer state, that stupid thing wanted to defend her.

If only there was a way to tell it that she was smarter and that they’d both be better off if it just let Scootaloo make all the decisions.

This was the first time it tried to take control since she’d gotten the feather.

“Just try to stay calm!” Applebloom was having an easier time of that than Scootaloo. “Even if it breaks through the barrier, we can just run away through that portal.”

“Yeah.” Scootaloo breathed in and out. Slowing her heart rate always helped. It made sense. Scootaloo wasn’t in any real danger, not as she could keep herself under control.

And for the first time, it almost felt like the parasite was listening to her now. She could feel its energy waning back down.

Ever since Twilight gave her that feather things were… different. Even with her medicine, that parasite would wake up even more easily now. Yet everything was so much easier because it didn’t freak out the same way.

Before, the second it felt threatened, it would start targeting every single thing in the room, threatening to delete all of it. Now, somehow, it knew to focus its energy only on that giant monster. Scootaloo felt as though even if she did lose control now, Applebloom would be safe.

It was almost like it could see now and hear Scootaloo’s assurances that she had everything under control. She merely had to think as much for it to go back to sleep.

Things were calm again!

Then the abomination at last bit down, collapsing the entire barrier at once.

Scootaloo fell back onto her haunches as the enormous monster clammed onto the ground. The sound of the crash shook the whole castle. Pustules burst, dissolving entire chunks of earth. Then it began lurching towards them.

That bottomless maw opened up and its endless rows of teeth came ever closer, got ever wider.

“Alright! Time to go!” Applebloom ran off down the hall.

A moment later, she came back in.

“Scootaloo?” Applebloom came back up to her. “We gotta go.”

But Scootaloo couldn’t move! Why couldn’t she be braver like Applebloom?

Applebloom grabbed her scruff and tried dragging her out. It’d take too much time! Scootaloo had to stand up!

She braced herself. She just had to get up and run! Yet she couldn’t! She couldn’t move!

Scootaloo felt the parasite waking up. She could almost hear its thoughts… that if Scootaloo wasn’t going to save them then it would do it for her!

Then reality warped!

Scootaloo winced, terrified of what the entity might have done! She calmed slightly upon seeing Applebloom standing, unharmed, back at the camera station.

The grub was still out there, still biting down on the barrier. It’d merely pushed time back a little, made the attack start a few seconds earlier. It was a trick Scootaloo used often. That was certainly more… chill than its usual technique.

Scootaloo stared forward, still trembling. Applebloom noticed her cowering and ran to her side.

“Just try to stay calm!” Applebloom rubbed her hoof in circles on Scootaloo’s back. “My sis will turn that thing around long before it breaks the barrier.”

This time, her assurances were well-founded. The grub stopped biting down just then. It dislodged and rolled to one side with a thud before becoming completely inactive.

“I’m back!” Applejack came charging into the room.

Scootaloo stared forward blankly, afraid for an entirely different reason now.

Did anypony even notice that?

“Dang it!” Hissteria stood up despite himself. “They got the beacon. Oh, well. You see anything?”

The ‘loss’ of the beacon was only a half defeat in the end. The grub itself was a trap, as was the beacon. His only mission here was to see what capabilities they deployed in this situation.

“One of them appeared out of nowhere,” a voice responded. “A mare in some kind of superhero getup teleported in or something.”

“They can teleport that far?” He asked.

“Maybe. I got the whole thing recorded on camera either way. We can analyze it when we get back.”

“Aw well.” He shrugged. It wasn’t like their mission was to destroy this castle anyway. “We got what we came for. No cure for bad luck.”

“None of you are going to say anything about that time magic?” Striking Viper’s voice came over the radio. “That might make it difficult to escape, wouldn’t it?”

“Time magic?” Black Adder’s voice came next. “I didn’t see anything like that.”

“You didn’t see it go backward in time?” Striking Viper asked.

“Did you see whatever he’s talking about, King Cobra?” Hissteria asked.

“Negative.”

Mass Hissteria hummed to his breath, trying to piece together what happened. Striking Viper was the furthest away of any of them, over two miles from the castle itself. That meant whatever happened affected a limited area.

Mass Hissteria blinked, one eye then the other. This seemed familiar but so many bits of data filled his mind it could take time to shift through all of them. Where was it?

Yes! That was right. One of his auxiliary clients.

“I think I know what we’re looking at,” he hissed over the radio. “Yes, yes. I had an offer from Allgood to locate a certain pony. We just picked up an easy two hundred grand, it seems!”

Hissteria laughed to himself.

“I think we got everything we’re going to. Retreat before they clean up this mess.”

Then Hissteria jumped back in a flash, getting out of there as fast as he could.

Rarity managed to focus on the fight from there out. Saccharine needed as much help as possible to hold up against such a relentless assault.

Saccharine’s weapons were slowly going offline one by one. She had such a ridiculous number that this hurt her versatility more than her offensiveness. It seemed Rarity’s paranoia had served her well in the end.

Biohazard similarly took notable damage, but not nearly enough to end the fight. He was covered in dings and gashes in his armor. His left arm appeared close to getting blown off. Rarity could manage that much before Saccharine became too damaged to continue, but that wouldn’t be enough. Not unless –

“I have returned!” Fuff’s voice sounded behind Rarity.

Kerfuffle flew to the top of the stands, Fuff leaping up shortly behind her.

The robot itself was largely unrecognizable at this point. Her hind legs had been replaced by wheels and even the front half looked barely pony with all the components attached to her skeleton. All of Archibald’s guns had been welded to her back. Though the pile of guns looked intimidating, and no doubt could still fire, Rarity had no confidence this body could withstand much punishment.

Most critically, they salvaged the rex-caliber gun from the earlier match! Whatever armor plating they had found was placed in such a way as to protect this one weapon.

“We’re only going to get one shot from this, though.” Kerfuffle ran a hoof over the gun. “But I think Fuff is just sturdy enough to take a hit or two.”

“Great!” Rarity smiled. This might be just enough. “Stand close to Saccharine, keep her right side covered. Even if Biohazard refuses to attack you, you can still cover her wound!”

Fuff awkwardly galloped into battle with only a fraction of her previous speed. But she wouldn’t need to move fast for her current job.

“Kerfuffle.” Rarity looked at her from the corner of her eyes, keeping her voice down. “Go join the watchtower group. When a certain pony shows up, I need you to give this note to her before she enters the building.”

Kerfuffle nodded and ran off.

Rarity certainly couldn’t announce her plan for Fluttershy to enter the battle. Even her making an appearance too early could put the plan in jeopardy.

Hoity had already assured her Fluttershy was en route. Rarity just needed to stall out a little longer. Though at the moment, it was starting to look like she could win even without further aid.

Saccharine and Fuff stood still in the center of the arena, side by side with Fuff pressed hard against Saccharine’s wound. Biohazard warped all around the two of them in short bursts of speed, firing at every exposed side of Saccharine.

From any other angle, his attacks proved useless. All the while, Saccharine countered with occasional shots from her sonic cannon. Each shot made Biohazard vibrate violently, bringing his left arm and two damaged legs closer to dislodging.

If they kept this up, Saccharine was sure to win! Biohazard had but one option left.

“Bah!” Gear ran a hoof along his neck. “That flimsy pile of junk will go down easily enough! I won’t let it stall us out! Biohazard! Do as much damage as you can with your first blow!”

Thankfully, her compatriots had thought ahead and put the rex-caliber rifle on Fuff’s left side, sandwiching it between the two robots. Biohazard wouldn’t be able to easily get at it unless…

With another burst of speed, Biohazard appeared just before the two of them. He grabbed Saccharine with one claw, violently throwing Fuff aside in the same motion.

“Whoop!” Screwball raised her hoof. “That counts!”

Then all restraints were off. With his damaged claw, Biohazard let out a torrent of flames that pushed Fuff back further. Fuff was already hemorrhaging body parts! The wheels melted and Fuff merely ejected them to save weight. Several of her guns fell off her back immediately.

That would have been the end, but the damaged claw malfunctioned! With a crackle and a spurt, the flames ended sooner than earlier! Biohazard was forced to withdraw this attack and began circling around Fuff, needing to move on the defensive with two opponents on either end.

Yet this would only last so long. Another burst of speed would mean the end of Fuff.

Should Rarity tell her to fire her big gun now? It was better to pick a target at random than lose it entirely. She could risk trying to destroy the fully-functioning claw or guarantee destroying the damaged one…

“Rarity!” Jet Set called her attention. “I believe I’ve isolated where the chrono breaker is located.”

Chrono breaker? Rarity assumed that was the part responsible for the burst of speed. She didn’t have time to think about that.

“I noticed unusual activity in the tail fin.” He pointed it out. “Right in the center of the two fins!”

“Saccharine! We have to destroy the tailfin!” Rarity called out to her. “Activate temporal distortion drill!”

Saccharine took out one of her last remaining drills.

“The what?!” Gear shouted.

Of course, this was a bluff. Rarity had no such thing. Biohazard still had to choose which of these two would land a hit.

Luckily, he turned to face Saccharine. Biohazard crossed his drills to block the incoming attack. From behind, Fuff fired the Rex-caliber rifle.

The recoil threw Fuff off her two remaining feet and nearly broke the plating holding it in place! She wouldn’t be able to accurately fire it again.

Even with the flames protecting him, in its already damaged state, the gun was strong enough to blow both fins off entirely and continue on to put another hole in Biohazard’s backside.

Then came the ultimate test for Jet Set’s observation. Biohazard’s body glowed slightly. In a flash, he vanished and reappeared but only inches away from where he had been.

It seemed the device hadn’t been broken but damaged enough to render it nearly useless, at least.

Things were starting to feel more under control now! Victory was so close!

Saccharine and Fuff stood side by side, firing all of their weapons at Biohazard. The two of them needed to be in the exact right spot for this to work. Rarity had precisely calculated it. Four meters from the main door, or what was left of it.

To that end, the two robots stood side by side, Fuff covering Saccharine’s gash, as they exchanged fire with Biohazard.

Biohazard took notable damage from this exchange but kept it up expecting to be the clear winner. While his armor was taking slight dents and another one of his legs was blown off, Fuff was losing body parts left and right.

Two of Fuff’s legs came off at once and even then, she made a valiant effort to get back up and fire her last remaining gun before being blown to bits.

Then Biohazard had a clear shot at Saccharine’s weak point.

Saccharine’s eyes flickered and she stumbled in place. Soon they were back on, but Saccharine’s pose lost much of its intensity. She staggered about, giving the impression her internal damage was more intense than it really was.

Finally!

Rarity bit her lip. This was the most critical phase of their plan. If Biohazard took the bait…

Biohazard stopped his charge, hesitated slightly, worried that Saccharine’s odd behavior might be some genius move. But he wouldn’t hesitate too long on such a bluff.

Biohazard closed the gap and swung hard, deepening the gash into Saccharine’s side and sending her tumbling.

Everypony gasped at the brutal hit. Everypony but Brilliant Gear who began his manic laugh once more.

Saccharine began to twitch, and sparks began flying out of her wound. Her drill malfunctioned spinning out of control before it ejected itself.

But it’d be worth it.

“Looks like I’m one blow away from total victory!” Gear declared.

“Um. Actually!” Fluttershy floated out of Saccharine’s body.

Saccharine fell to the ground, lifeless for a moment before standing once again. Gear’s smile faded as he realized what had just happened. Fluttershy had entered Saccharine’s body from below.

“I was possessing Saccharine’s body while she was asleep,” said Fluttershy. “Because robots are basically just dolls when they’re in sleep mode. So Biohazard wasn’t attacking Saccharine, he was attacking me. I think the rules state I’m allowed to help now?”

Screwball looked Fluttershy over before gawking at her eyes.

“Ah, hey!” Screwball stood up, excited. “My sister got a specter to come work for her? I’m honestly impressed! Every ghost I try to hire straight up freezes my other guys.”

She laughed and clapped her hooves, much to Gear’s disdain.

“This doesn’t count!” Gear kept his eyes on Screwball as he pointed desperately down at Fluttershy. “I attacked Saccharine’s body, not hers!”

“I feel it when somepony hits whatever I’m possessing,” said Fluttershy. “So it should count! Th-that punch hurt; you know?”

Screwball leaned back into her throne and hummed as she considered the subject. Everypony watched her with bated breath, but Gear alone began to sweat.

“You know what?” Screwball sat up, smiling. “I’m going to allow this! The spook can attack your robot!”

“What?!” Gear jumped forward, over the arm of the throne to grab Screwball’s sleeve. “But we could seriously lose if you do this! You can’t be–”

Screwball turned and slapped him so fast Rarity could only hear the sound of it. She saw the aftermath too. The blow sent Brilliant Gear rolling across the floor and struggling to get up. It even knocked out one of his teeth!

“Did I give you permission to touch me?” Screwball’s smile at last faded. She stared at his motionless body with a quiet intensity Rarity never expected to see from such a manic pony.

Brilliant Gear slowly got back up. He didn’t get back on all fours, but he didn’t apologize either. The two of them locked eyes, but Gear only lasted a second in that staring contest.

“Pfft.” Screwball turned back to the arena. “First of all, I’m only into pegasi, okay? Second, I don’t cheat in these games. That means I can’t favor my own side. I side with whoever’s doing the cooler thing in these judgment calls always. If I didn’t, nopony would want to play with me.”

“Gah!” Brilliant Gear stood back up and thrust his hoof forward. “Biohazard! Hit that ghost with as much flame as possible! It’s the only way to harm her! I refuse to lose this easily!”

Biohazard opened his pincers and let out a stream of fire in Fluttershy’s direction.

Fluttershy let out an eep and flew underground. Safely out of reach of the flames, she was able to reappear behind him. Then she hit it with her ice magic.

The ice and fire did battle around Biohazard’s body. Ice burst out all around the robot, vanquishing the flames. But Biohazard buckled down and made them flare up again, vaporizing the nearby ice.

The dance continued, giving Biohazard the appearance of a trick candle in a violent gale. Perhaps this would be enough, as there were moments they vanished entirely from his body, and they no longer covered all of it.

Already she could tell Biohazard would outlast Fluttershy. Rarity heard her mention the repulsive nature of hot metal. Poor Fluttershy had her cheeks puff out and her lips pursed as though holding in her own vomit.

“I’m not sure how long that will last.” Rarity turned to Saccharine. “You have to unload everything you have left right now!”

Saccharine had already started on that advice and taken it to a level beyond what Rarity had meant. The reactor for her fusion cannon already made its fourth spin by this time.

“No! You can’t handle the heat generated by the fusion cannon!” Rarity called out.

“It is the only way to guarantee victory.” Saccharine lowered her head

The next moment that the flames vanished, Saccharine fired the fusion cannon one last time. Now there was no defense in place to block it. The plasma hit Biohazard directly between the eyes. The arms melted off, but the head plate endured for a moment. Biohazard tried to dig his remaining legs in but soon they came off one by one.

Then finally, the head plate broke, and catastrophic damage overtook the rest of the robot.

As the stream of plasma died down, Biohazard fell to the ground, reduced to a pile of twisted metal. Brilliant Gear stared forward, stunned, then fell to the ground a moment later. Fluttershy all but rolled off to the side, gagging and coughing.

Saccharine stood a moment longer. A bright red glow came from inside the wound now and smoke billowed out from her joins. Her armor was still largely intact, but her insides were literally burning!

“Well that’s it!” Screwball raised her hoof. “Rarity won. I thought we were going to do better than that. Oh, well!”

Screwball laughed as Rarity ran over to Saccharine. Her robot collapsed a mere second after being announced victorious.

As Rarity sat down by her side, Saccharine lifted her head and tried to speak. Her voice sounded as though it melted as she tried to speak. No doubt her voice modulator had already liquified. They’d won, but somehow Screwball alone appeared elated by the results.

All the other ponies, too many ponies came forward to crowd around Saccharine’s lifeless body. Even from meters away, they felt far too close. Only Sweetie Belle came up to Rarity’s side.

“Is she okay?!” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Nearly all of her systems are destroyed at this point!” Rarity’s eyes began to tear up and she shook her head.

Sweetie Belle shook her head and retreated. Rarity fell to the ground, unable to so much as hold her fallen robot due to the heat.

How had she been this blind? She’d lost so many family members and had sworn

“I’m so sorry!” Rarity sobbed. “I was so obsessed with saving Sweetie Belle that… that I forgot you were my sister now, too.”

A deathly silence fell over the rest as Rarity wept. Before long, Fluttershy came up to the scene, watching with sorrow at Rarity’s tears and revulsion at the smell of the body.

“But she’s a robot!” Fluttershy put her hooves over her mouth. “Can’t you just rebuild her?”

“Can’t I just–?!” Rarity turned to her in a flash of anger, then paused. “Oh, wait! I can just rebuild. Ohoho. Silly me.”

Rarity laughed a bit too hard and whipped away her tears. Though she was so relieved she hardly cared at this point.

“At least, I think I can!” Rarity scrambled as swiftly as possible to check the persona core. That alone was irreparable if severely damaged. With the body so intensely hot, the core might not last too much longer if left alone.

To get it out in the shortest time possible, she had to use her hooves as well as her horn, burning them in the process. Thankfully, the armor itself was still largely undamaged and she was able to eject a glowing, green orb from inside the head.

She held the persona core up with her magic, her hooves threatening to blister already, to assess the damage.

“Yes!” She let out one last sigh of relief. “The body is finished, but as long as this is okay…”

“So, uh.” Coco raised her hoof. “So we won then, right?”

“Yes.” Rarity smiled and held the persona core close to her chest, tears still in her eyes. “We defeated the Bloodstorm Cartel today, thanks to all of you. I understand if any of you blame me for what happened here, but–”

“Rarity!” Fancy Pants interrupted her. “If you are to blame, then you have my sincerest thanks for exposing this racket. I never would have aided a cur such as her even indirectly if given half a choice.”

“The way you handled that was amazing!” Kerfuffle cheered. “I would have choked! What am I saying? I did choke. I say we make Rarity the new leader!”

Not one of them had the slightest objection to the idea. On the contrary, soon everypony at once rushed forward and grabbed onto her. She felt all of their relief at once surrounding her, happy to be out of such a tense situation.

The only thing ruining the moment was Screwball joining in on the applause.

“Well?” Hugged by so many, Rarity had to tilt her head back to look at Screwball. “Aren’t you going to leave now?”

“As I promised, you’ll get to leave unharmed. You can do whatever you want with this idiot.” Screwball grabbed Brilliant Gear by the neck and threw him into the crowd. “But I’ll be sticking around just a little longer. My sister is bound to show up before long, from the sound of things.”

Dash had the button in sight. It was right there on the train station platform, just a few yards away. Only problem was she was currently a crow. Crows weren’t that tough unless you had a lot of them. Dash had three left, including her current self.

The button was encased in webbing, only a few small gaps allowed Dash to even see it. Between her and it was plenty of spiders. Two types, in particular, looked like trouble.

First were the spitters. They could shoot acid

A second had a swollen, translucent abdomen through which boiling acid could be seen. Dash saw this one in action a moment ago. They exploded! It took out a few of her crows not long ago.

The empire wasps still swarmed the area. They weren’t smart and kept charging in at the spiders only for the spitters to keep them at bay with acid.

But they had to run out of acid eventually, right? Dash could maybe stall this out… but wasn’t that exactly what Screwball wanted.

Dash turned to one of her fellow Rainbow Crow to see if that one had any bright ideas. She got a caw in response. That meant no. Figured. If Dash didn’t have a good plan then… Dash certainly wouldn’t.

Alright! No choice! Dash would have to turn back into a pony and swarm the button with wave after wave of crow until the spiders ran out of intestinal fluid. That was the main thing she was good at.

She turned back and then–

A screaming maniac freak came bursting out of the ground! A bizarre, black-furred, bald freak with spider parts attached to him lunged at Dash.

Was that the guy?! Wasn’t he supposed to be distracting Pinkie?

Reflexively, she cast the murder spell and flew in every direction. Arachnado didn’t miss a beat. He ripped one of her crows in half with his mandible and stabbed two more with those spidery legs. Apparently, the tips of those were as sharp as spears!

From the hole behind him emerged dozens more of those acid-filled spiders. They jumped into the air and exploded in every direction.

Dash got knocked out of the air mid-flight, managing only to correct herself enough to dart behind the station itself. The explosions continued as her ears rang and she regained enough composure to turn back. Hardly any of her crows had survived that!

Without giving her a second to recover, Arachnado came charging at her, crawling on the wall of the station, screaming the whole way.

Dash spread her wings, transforming one of them into three crows. Arachnado was on her in a second. As one of the crows, she watched her pony-self attempt to fight back. She tried punching him but he ducked to the side.

That guy was too fast! His speed was far beyond what a normal pony could achieve! He slammed his own forehoof against Dash’s extended leg, getting a cry of pain from her. Then he lunged forward with his spider legs, stabbing her repeatedly, screaming the whole time.

Dash turned back before the scene could become gruesome, the pony crumbling to feathers, leaving Arachnado confused for the briefest second. The knowledge she regained from her pony self was less than encouraging. Arachnado had nearly broken her leg with a single punch. Clearly, his physical abilities had been dramatically enhanced by something.

But in one sense, Dash herself was unharmed too. If she could just keep dodging like this, she could slowly wear him down or at least stall until Twilight showed up.

Dash turned into a murder of crows and had most of them fly straight at the spidery abomination. He slashed furiously at the incoming crows, taking most of them out. None of that mattered.

One found an advantageous opening and turned back! In the exact perfect spot, Dash ducked down and bucked him straight in the face as hard as she could!

She felt like her hooves connected to armored plating. His head moved back, but only a little. He grabbed both of her hind legs with his forehooves. Dash panicked and turned her wings into six more crows.

They flew off just in time before Arachnado stabbed into her pony body, only for it too to crumble into feathers. Dash was still unharmed, but what was she going to do now? That didn’t hurt him at all!

“My body has been enhanced by the Mad Science Cartel!” Arachnado shouted at her. “Don’t disrespect me like this! I’m one of Screwball’s elite chimeric agents! I can’t be defeated with half-hearted kicks like that! Use your real power against me!”

Only that was Dash hitting him as hard as she could!

She… she didn’t have anything that could seriously hurt this guy, did she?!

There was still the mass murder spell! Dash didn’t have an actual plan, but she might as well. A truly massive cloud of crows formed and spread all over the station. Some of them went for the button, some flew down at Arachnado.

Arachnado laughed and stuck his spider legs into the ground. Even more of those explosive spiders burst out from the ground all around her. At once they began to explode. Explosions rocked everywhere, blowing out Dash’s eardrums.

The fight didn’t last long at all. There were just too many shock waves and acid. Dash landed hard on the ground. She looked around, seeing no other crow in better shape.

None of the others were turning back meaning… all of them were having second thoughts! None of them had been fully spared from that.

With no other option, Dash turned back into a pony, covered in injuries that would last through another murder spell. She struggled to get back up. She looked around desperately.

There was still an empire wasp around! But Arachnado had too many spiders around for it to start multiplying.

Or maybe like… like she could feed her own crows to it! And if she could make enough of them…!

She panted and struggled to stand up as Arachnado jumped off the roof of the station, landing before her.

“What the hell is this?” Arachnado’s lower eye twitched. “How am I winning? Why were we so afraid of you? How are you rank S? Can you seriously do nothing but turn into crows?!”

“Hey! This isn’t over yet!” Dash took a step back.

“Oh, please!” Arachnado snapped his mandible hard. “I was so worried about this when I saw Silverstorm’s performance but look at how weak and pathetic you are! I’m being paid to waste your time and yet I feel like I’m only wasting my own here! Why does Silverstorm bother with the likes of you?”

“I–” an answer wasn’t forthcoming immediately.

Arachnado took advantage of the moment and lunged forward. A single punch sent Dash back to the ground, wincing in pain.

“Oh! I get it! You’re just using her, aren’t you?” Arachnado opened his normal eye wide and sized her up. “She didn’t know anything about ‘normal’ life after growing up in a cave so you took advantage of her to climb the ranks and become rich? Pretending you had anything to do with her victory over the witches.”

“That’s not true! I–” Dash bit her tongue.

“You what?” Arachnado narrowed his eye. “Got lucky and distracted Trixie at the exact right moment with a crow? I have trouble believing any more than that.”

Dash lowered her head and grit her teeth at him. That wasn’t true… she did things! Right? Like… like…

“Well rest assured–” Arachnado lifted his head triumphantly.

A bolt of chain lightning flashed into the scene. In seconds, all of the large spiders had been fried by the bouncing wave of electricity.

Arachnado looked left and right in a panic. Twilight teleported in next to him. A single bolt of fire sent him tumbling down along the train tracks. He landed on his back, twitching and singed.

Wasting no time, Twilight lifted him telekinetically and wrapped him tight in chains.

“I put Trixie in stationary mode.” Twilight walked over to the button Dash failed to reach. She hit the button and looked down at Arachnado. “So we completed your stupid task. Are you going to keep your word or not?”

“Damn it!” He struggled as much as he could. “I suppose I’d rather go to jail than have Screwball punish me for breaking the rules. Fine! But she’ll get me out soon. Just you wait.”

The remaining spiders began scurrying off in every direction. They’d won this fight, but Dash was still shaking.

“Ha! That was easy, huh?” Twilight looked over at Dash with a smile. “This guy was pretty weak.”

“Er. Yeah.” Dash stood up, trembling. Weak…

“Are you okay?” Twilight looked her over. “Did any poison touch you?”

“Nah, I’m fine!” Dash forced herself to smile. “I just… one of the explosions hurt my eardrums.”

“That’s good.” Twilight nodded. “I have to get to Rarity as soon as possible… but you should probably get to Trixie before that thing begins electrocuting her.”

Twilight opened a Z-gate portal and exited.

Dang it! Dash kicked the ground.

Why did she think she could beat an elite agent from the Bloodstorm Cartel?! None of that training mattered any more than what she used to do in high school. Dash was still so weak! There was still no way she could fight somepony on such a high level.

Did she just hang around much stronger ponies long enough to delude herself into thinking she was powerful too?

Arachnado chittered and laughed behind her.

Dash turned to glare at Arachnado, helplessly tied up.

“Don’t look so smug. You’re going to jail for a long time for this,” Dash warned him.

“I got exactly what I wanted! The boss will give me a huge reward once I’m out of jail. Hehehe. Yes. I you have more reason to worry than me.”

Twilight teleported into the castle. Screwball, a pony she’d only seen in pictures until now, stood barely two feet in front of her. A scowling crowd stood before her, but she just talked to them all with a big smile like nothing ever happened.

“So then I told him, if it won’t get any bigger, we’ll have to–” Screwball’s story was cut short.

The same blast of fire that rendered Arachnado unable to stand threw Screwball across the room.

“Yowzers!” Screwball rolled with the momentum, skipping to a stop and laughing all the way. Some singed fur was the only evidence she’d been struck by anything. “You are tough! Where the hell have you been hiding this whole time?”

She didn’t take the bait. She wouldn’t let this pony do whatever else she had planned.

A pillar of rock burst through the ground and slammed into Screwball’s head. More physically robust than the other two, she barely even took a step back at an attack that would have knocked most ponies out cold.

Twilight pressed the attack, jumping down to Screwballs level with ethereal swords and chains flying behind her. Screwball merely stood there, allowing the blades to cut her sides and the chains to slam into her, wrapping themselves around her body. In seconds, they’d tied Screwball up entirely.

Screwball just smiled through the pain, making no effort to resist.

Twilight could see why Screwball was so calm. Her eye was missing and not because it’d been injured. She’d used a partial murder spell… one of the more advanced and dangerous techniques. She’d already made her escape, it seemed.

Though now she didn’t understand why Screwball didn’t attack her with wild abandon down here. It didn’t matter what injuries this body sustained as long as that crow was safe. She might as well.

“You’re not going to try fighting me?” Twilight asked.

“Don’t you get it, sis?” Screwball drew in closer, her grin more sinister. “I’m saving you for last. Of all the things I learned today, the most important was which of you is the easiest target.”

“The–” Twilight blinked. Utterly confused by the strategy. “But why would you go after the weakest first? That doesn’t make any tactical sense!”

“Do you not know how ponies like me roll?” Screwball asked. “Tch! You really were sheltered in some cave, weren’t you? Brat! Well rest assured that single combat isn’t the only way to destroy a pony. Just remember my ponies can show up anywhere, anytime. You’ll never be safe again.”

Wherever Screwball’s crow was, it cast the spell to revert. This half of her crumbled into black feathers, her smile the last thing to go before the feathers melted away into nothing.

Another way to destroy a pony?

She was…

Twilight looked at Rarity with wide eyes. Was Screwball really going to go after the other ponies Twilight knew just to try and hurt her feelings?!

On the one hoof, that sounded like such a terrible strategy. Even if Twilight were overly emotional, it wouldn’t give Screwball enough of an advantage to defeat her. Enraging Twilight might even make it harder to win and yet…

Yet the idea frightened her as though this were a clear path to victory.

This whole time Twilight assumed this would all be so easy. She knew she could beat all of the others easily enough. She hadn’t even considered there might be a new vulnerability she’d gained, one her master tried to warn her about.

Rainbow Dash!

“So is this the witch that’s on our side?” A pony with a mustache and monocle asked Rarity. “Because I do have a few questions for her.”

“Sorry!” Twilight looked over the crowd of other ponies. “I… I know I just go here but I have something else to deal with!”

Twilight opened a portal and escaped. She wouldn’t let Rainbow Dash out of her sight again! Not until this was over.

Pizza Friday retraced his listening device and rolled back onto his feet.

He stayed low to the ground for a moment longer, checking for signs anypony was around to see his sudden resurrection. When none were forthcoming, he dropped the aether grenade and galloped off into the woods as quickly as he could.

It seemed ‘Silverstorm’ really was a witch. Moreover, she was Twilight Sparkle in disguise, just as he’d been warned.

The last master witch chose now of all times to become active. That meant she could use aetheric imprinting, making the grenade an unfortunate necessity to cover his tracks.

And that wasn’t all he learned. Applejack was still alive. They were harboring Subject Two, who apparently escaped at some point. Rarity didn’t appear to work for Screwball and now the Mad Science League was mostly under their control.

But he needed to ditch the disguise before anyone else could see him stalking about the forest. He always got way too into these costumes.

He put his hooves right beneath his eyes and dug deep, pulling hard like he was trying to rip his face off. With significant effort, the mask came off. The disguises fell to the ground, melting into a red goo that soon sizzled to total vaporization. Most of the rest of the disguises soon joined it, steaming off of him in every direction.

Bonbon turned her pizza vest inside out and pulled on the internal zipper. When she put it back on, its appearance returned to something more like her normal tuxedo jacket.

She started towards the meeting spot, making the last few adjustments. A few flicks of her hair returned it to its curly nature and normal coloration. Swallowing a lozenge returned her voice to normal.

Already, she was completely unrecognizable as ‘Pizza Friday’. Even if an enemy were to find her at this point, nopony would know who she’d been a moment ago.

Nopony except one, the same who asked her to do this in the first place.

She found him waiting on top of a rock deeper into the forest, staring up at the sunset. His exhausted eyes threatened to give way to sleep at any moment.

Nailbat looked intimidating with his disguise on, but without it, the guy looked like a punk at best, like a homeless beggar more often. Bonbon knew not to underestimate those weary eyes when they slowly turned to her. They saw more than anypony else.

“So?” Nailbat idly scratched his chin, in no hurry for the report. “You believe me now?”

“Everything was as you said.”

As ever, Nailbat was always right, always one step ahead of everyone else. From the sound of things, he pieced this puzzle together near-instantly. Bonbon was tempted to have near-total faith in him at times. It seemed harmless enough. Their political views overlapped almost perfectly. But at the same time, he had a few flaws that kept him from being a truly great leader.

The buck was too impatient, becoming bored or frustrated with anypony who didn’t keep up with the runaway train of his mind. When she asked for his evidence that Silverstorm and Twilight Sparkle were the same, the best he could do was to roll over as if ready for bed and tell her to go see for herself in this very mission.

“Will you tell me what made you suspect this so quickly in the first place?” Bonbon asked.

“Rainbow Dash sent me a letter requesting aid in defeating Twilight Sparkle some time ago,” said Nailbat. “She likely sent letters to the others as well, but I’m the only one who actually read mine without discarding it. The likes of Starlight and Flash Bang have too little respect for the common pony to even consider such a thing. I didn’t bother with it at the time because I thought it best to not stir up trouble with such a powerful entity who hadn’t done anything in so long.”

He produced the letter in question, holding it out and waiting for Bonbon to come and claim it.

Bon Bon knew from the start that ‘Silverstorm’ was lying about the whole thing. This was her specialty. She could estimate a pony’s heart rate just by looking at them and spot a lie with little difficulty. Twilight’s apprehension about talking to strangers in general shielded her from such techniques to an extent, but at Bon Bon’s level, there was no escaping it.

Even still, at the request of Nailbat, she risked lying the others. Not that it mattered at this point. If they lost, Bonbon would be tried for treason and conspiracy in the best-case scenario. In the worst…

“But everypony else has figured out Rainbow Dash went looking for Twilight shortly before this all began by now,” Bonbon pointed out.

“It isn’t enough to make any conclusion. That hardly convinced you of my assertion,” Nailbat pointed out. “Yet acting first gave me a massive advantage. I could retrace Rainbow Dash’s steps, find all the evidence pointing to the truth myself, and destroy it. The ponies who came second would be left only with misdirection. That’s why I couldn’t show you any of the evidence. Beside this letter it’s all gone, replaced by forgeries.”

Nailbat lazily beckoned for the letter returned. Upon taking it, Nailbat took out a lighter and burned the letter. He let it drop to the ground and watch the smoke as it rose out of reach of any other pony.

“There’s going to be a civil war sooner than any of the others expect,” said Nailbat. “Things won’t stay together much longer. We both know Sunset’s ideals of keeping the system intact and merely reforming it won’t work. Chaos will erupt and from the wreckage will come our chance to build something new and wholly divorced from all this madness and injustice.”

Bonbon nodded. That’s what he promised her from the beginning and he had never led her anywhere but closer to that goal. Now it seemed they were at last close enough to victory to be in serious danger.

Perhaps twelve ponies at the highest level knew that Starlight and Flash Bang would meet in lethal confrontation soon. All of them likely assumed it would end there for now, but already Bonbon could tell it wouldn’t.

“We’ll be more prepared for this battle than anypony else.” Nailbat stood up at last and looked back down to Bonbon. “We alone will know the ground where the final battle will be fought.”

“I’m not convinced of that last part yet,” said Bonbon. “I know you value Pinkie Pie’s opinion, but you can’t risk everything on that alone. What if Twilight is an even greater threat than Starlight? Or what if she continues to side with Sunset?”

“Yes. We will have to test Twilight’s character and intentions. I suspect she has no real interest in ruling herself but… well, either way, we can’t directly test her ourselves without giving away everything we know. But we can have somepony else be our canary. That’s why, I think, we’re going to orchestrate somepony figuring out who ‘Silverstorm’ really is at the last moment and watch their reaction.”

Pinkie sat in a phone booth, Derpy on the other end. Derpy had thwarted the bombings and all the other attacks seemed to have petered off at this point.

One lingering, large spider looked up at her but Pinkie told it to get out of there. It hung its little spidery head low and skittered off.

“Yeah, I think that pretty much wraps things up over here,” Pinkie said as the spider juice rained down outside.

She could feel the threats in the area dwindled to nothing after that. Yet, in the waves of aura, she could still feel something. Not exactly malicious or hungry, but definitely something. Something watching her.

“Actually, I think I still got one more plot twist to deal with.” Pinkie squinted at the building the feeling came from.

“Huh?! There’s more?” Derpy asked.

“Maybe! I’ll call you back.” Pinkie hung up the phone and exited the stall.

As if waiting for this exact moment to come, a pink pegasus flew out of one of the windows, landing on top of the phone booth itself. She squinted down at Pinkie with her single remaining eye as though having trouble seeing in the waning light.

Pinkie could only ‘oo’ at the mare’s odd sight. Describing her as a wreck might have been too generous. Her fur and mane were all kinds of messed up. It looked like her purple hair had once been styled in pigtails, but one of the two got severed.

It didn’t take a second look to tell this pony was an animated doll. She could feel the presence of a ghost possessing it, though she felt no malice towards herself in its aura.

There were large gashes all over its body, but instead of blood and guts coming out, it was merely stuffing that spilled forth.

The ghost possessing the doll had made only slapdash efforts to repair this body. Some of the gashes were half-closed with thick, surgical stitching while one particularly big rip across her chest had been closed with large staples.

What was clearly a stallion’s was sewn on in place of her original right foreleg. This new leg was noticeably bulkier than her original, not to mention yellow.

“Pinkie.” The ghost stopped a few feet away from her. She turned aside, reluctant to speak, before looking back to Pinkie. “It’s me, Aria. There’s… something important I need to talk to you about.”

Ghosts 3: When a Banshee Calls

Pinkie blinked twice.

“Who?”

“Aria Blaze?” Aria jumped off the phone booth.

“Who?”

“I tried to kill you on multiple occasions!” Aria planted her face in a hoof.

“That doesn’t narrow it down as much as you might hope.” Pinkie shrugged. “Oh wait! Are you that banshee from when I met Dash?”

“I’m not here to fight,” said Aria. “Listen. Last time we met? I was being controlled. I’ve been under the effects of what amounts to mind control for a long time. Those chains you broke were created by a specter and reduced me to her slave.”

“You do feel less malicious this time.” Pinkie moved her hoof around Aria’s doll, feeling the aura. It wasn’t anything like before. And like she said, all those chains from last time had since vanished. “I don’t sense any urge to kill me at all! You’re really not mad about the whole Adagio incident anymore?”

Aria scowled and looked at the ground. Pinkie did feel anger welling up in her again.

“Oh, I’m angrier than I’ve ever been,” said Aria. “The difference is I can see clearly now. That last attack broke the chains enslaving me and allowed me to think for myself again. I realize my true enemy is the ruler of Crater Cemetery. Pretending to be somepony she’s not… she’s been screwing us over since before the three of us were even born.”

Aria closed her eyes and grew silent. Through her aura, Pinkie could understand the ghost’s feelings all too well. Beneath those eyes she was seething, but not at all towards Pinkie as promised.

Sometimes Pinkie wished everypony had an aura. It’d cut back on the number of misunderstandings in the world. Though everypony seemed so nervous about a world like that for some reason.

“Yeah, she’s the reason Adagio died. She’s the reason for all of this. Why our parents, our entire family is gone. Our clan failed because of her, and now all the ghostlands are desolate and devoid of hope,” said Aria. “If anything, I should be thanking you for helping me remember this.”

“Aw! Well you didn’t have to come out here just to say thanks,” said Pinkie.

“I didn’t.” Aria shook her head. “I wanted to make you an offer. I have another sister named Sonata Dusk who’s still under that monster’s control. If I’m not mistaken, she came to you claiming to be a journalist who wanted to meet Fluttershy? Well, the Sunny Side Gazette is controlled by Crater Cemetery. She’s been ordered to ‘neutralize’ Fluttershy.”

So they were right to be suspicious this time!

“How do you know about Fluttershy, though?” Pinkie asked. “We were careful not to ever mention her name.”

“Oh, I know a lot more than you’d expect.” Aria looked off to the side. “I want you to ambush Sonata during the ‘interview’. You can use the spirit bomb to break the chains and free her like you did me. In exchange, I’ll–”

“You got it!” Pinkie reached her hoof out, ready to take the deal. “I’ll bust her out no problem!”

Aria jumped back at Pinkie’s outstretched hoof. You’d think Pinkie had thrown a punch at her or something. She looked down at the hoof, then back to Pinkie in total shock.

“What?” Aria was surprisingly hesitant to agree to her own terms. “Pinkie, I didn’t even tell you what I’m offering in return!”

“Haha! Silly, Aria!” Pinkie pressed up against her side. “Freeing the slaves is its own reward! You don’t have to give me anything. I got too much money anyway.”

Aria pushed Pinkie aside and stood back.

“You’re too damn nice.” Aria shook her head a little too hard. “How am I even supposed to react to this?”

“You could smile cause I’m gonna help Sonata!” Pinkie traced the corners of her mouth upward as she went into a smile herself.

Aria growled. Pinkie took a step back.

“Do you have any idea how much power our enemy wields?! There’s no way to–” Aria caught herself. Her scowl vanished and she dipped back into aloofness. “Well. I thought it was completely hopeless. Going against her was something I couldn’t even consider. If anything, I was tempted to go crawling back just to make sure nothing bad happened to Sonata. That’s what I would have done. But then I heard that your little group defeated two witches in such a short time. I thought something like that was impossible too.”

Pinkie could hardly contain her smile. She pressed her cheek up to Aria’s, who locked up and frowned in turn.

“So you’re saying we filled you with hope?” Pinkie nuzzled her. “We melted your icy heart and restored your optimism? And now you think nothing is impossible?”

Aria kept her jaw shut tight and stared forward, unblinking.

“I did not say any of that,” Aria growled through her teeth. “But I want you to take my reward whether you want it or not. It’s something I want you to have.”

“Oh?” Pinkie wondered if it might be a pair of earrings that’d look better on her.

“I know far more than you realize,” said Aria. “For example, The Sunny Gazette isn’t the only newspaper they control. There are eleven other psyops organizations. I can name all of them. I can draw you maps, tell you names, show you all of their hideouts, detail every major ghost and specter, tell you all of their powers, and more. There’s an important secret my mist– our enemy is hiding. I’m one of the few ponies who know it. Believe me when I say you want to hear everything I have to say.”

Pinkie’s eyes went wide at the offer. The SA didn’t even know the name of what was commonly referred to as ‘The Crater Cemetery Ghost’. There’d just been so much bad blood between ghosts and the living that even ghosts who hated Crater Cemetery wouldn’t say a word on the matter.

A leak this big would be giganterific! What if Aria even knew her unfinished business? That was often the greatest weakness of any ghost.

“But if you hate, uh, whoever this much why don’t you just tell me everything now? Cause who knows what will happen later. You can trust me to help your sister either way.”

Aria bit her lip and looked down, ears flat.

“Sonata,” said Aria. “If I tell you, they’ll know. A certain somepony will throw a temper tantrum and… they’ll kill Sonata. Adagio and our parents are all dead because of that bitch. I can’t – I can’t let her take everyone from me. No matter how stupid Sonata is, she’s the only family I have left. She’s the only chance I have left to–”

Aria shut her eyes tight as her breathing grew heavy. Pinkie didn’t know if that doll could cry, but Aria fought against them possible or not.

Just as Pinkie opened her mouth to say something to comfort her, Aria spoke again.

“At the same time,” Aria added, “she knows Sonata is the only collateral she has over me. If Sonata dies, I have no reason to be silent anymore. Honestly, I almost feel like her sending my sister out on a mission like this is just her dangling Sonata in front of me– threatening me, reminding me she could send her on a suicide mission at any moment. So that’s how it is. I need you to get Sonata for me before I can talk.”

Aria turned back to Pinkie and blinked in surprise. Pinkie’s eyes watered as she looked at Aria intently.

“What?” Aria asked.

“That’s such a sad story!” Pinkie jumped forward and grabbed Aria in a hug. “I want to help you two even more now!”

“Gah!” Aria struggled harder to get Pinkie off this time. “Listen, we’re not friends, okay! I don’t care about you, and you have no reason to care what happens to me!”

“Of course I do! Why wouldn’t I care about another pony whose sister is in trouble?”

Aria looked down through her muzzle at Pinkie, unable to understand.

“Look! Just forget it.” Aria grumbled. “It’s not good for me to be around you too long. The more I stay the worse the need to freeze your blood becomes. I don’t want you thinking ghosts and predeads can be friends. This will tell you where to meet me.”

Aria handed Pinkie a card, then turned to leave without another word.

“Alright! Goodbye!” Pinkie waved to her as she walked away. “But we’re gonna be friends, okay?”

Pinkie’s words didn’t slow her for a second.

Rarity had yet to make up her mind as to whether that whole episode ended in victory or defeat.

The Bloodstorm Cartel certainly lost more than she had, with both Arachnado and Brilliant Gear, as well as a few less important agents, all being detained by either Equestria or Oaken Field. Rarity had successfully rallied the Mad Science League behind her and convinced them to go along with her long-term goals.

Finding themselves under threat from Screwball, her mad science friends had a fire lit underneath them now. A rush of activity erupted around her, and the wave of confidence crested into a mandate that would see it all directed however Rarity wished for now.

Ponies rushed about, both within and without the castle. They moved vital equipment to the castle grounds. They worked hard to repair their own robots and set up production for far more. They did everything they could to prepare for another attack, for war with the Bloodstorm Cartel. Soon Rarity would have the ability to construct a small army of robots.

Rarity watched it all from the top of the stairs, at the height of her power. Yet she knew this throne was still nothing but an unbalanced chair teetering atop a tower of poorly made furniture. Yes, she stood high, but she had a long way to fall and no foothold yet.

For now, Rarity and Kerfuffle’s castles would be the only two positions the Mad Science League would fortify. The stress test Screwball provided for them showed the previous model relied far too much on stalling until Twilight came in to save them. They hadn’t taken things seriously enough yet.

Rarity also needed to find a way to make Saccharine a new body. She could potentially just use a modified 8200 but making another 9200 would be far more difficult. Repairing Saccharine’s chassis alone would be a significant challenge, but Rarity could do it.

She had to run around playing diplomat now, too. The factions of the Everfree would be choosing neutrality or support between MSL or the Bloodstorm Cartel in the coming fight.

And then…

“Rarity!” Sweetie Belle pestered her again. “How long until Saccharine has a new body?”

“Soon,” said Rarity. “There are just one or two things I have to do first. I need to get these ponies to accept Twilight… then I have to talk to Moondancer and try to get her to side with us over the Bloodstorm Cartel. If we can get her protection–”

“Huh?” Sweetie Belle looked up at her with wide-eyed ignorance. “Why would they side with the bad buys instead?”

“Believe it or now, the Bloodstorm Cartel is the only way for a lot of them to get certain resources,” said Rarity. “Equestria has all manner of trade embargos place on Oaken Field, leaving them with few options. The cartel is more than eager to fill those gaps and make ponies down here dependent on them.”

“So Oaken Field is going to attack us too?!”

“No, no,” Rarity quickly corrected her. “It’s not like Moondancer and the necromancers living in Oaken Field want to live with Screwball throttling their necks. I think whether they side with us or against us depends on my ability to convince them that it’s possible to break away from the cartel.”

Even with her expression a bit harder to read as a robot, Rarity had little trouble telling when Sweetie Belle got anxious. She also knew the best remedy was to give her sister some way to help, something to do.

“Why don’t you go help Applejack down in the forge?” Rarity put a hoof on her cheek. “We’ll be able to get Saccharine online much faster with your help.”

Sweetie Belle lowered her head and grumbled. Doubtless, she knew what Rarity was doing, but accepted it either way.

“Alright.” Sweetie turned to leave.

Before the relief of having even a single, very minor, problem taken care of, another one came rushing at Rarity headlong.

“Rarity!” Coco came running into the room, a piece of paper in her mouth. She skidded to a halt and took it out, needing to pant for a moment before speaking. “Rarity! The Bloodstorm Cartel just posted this in Oaken Field!”

Coco handed her the paper.

By decree of Queen Screwball of the Pirate Coast, the Bloodstorm Cartel is placing a bounty, to be paid out in gold, silver, and land from Screwball’s domain, on the ponies listed below. The full bounty will be paid out for any of them captured alive or one-half if their body is produced and verified.

What followed were pictures of several familiar ponies and their corresponding bounty. The only thing that surprised Rarity was the prices.

Silverstorm – 1 bit

Pinkie Pie – 1,000 bits

Sweetie Belle – 500,000 bits

Fluttershy – 1 million bits

Rarity Belle – 2 million bits

Derpy Hooves – 10 million bits

Coco Pommel – 50 million bits

Rainbow T. Dash – 1 billion bits

Screwball also promised a reward for the identification of a ‘masked pony’. The pony in question was Applejack wearing one of Rarity’s masks and cloaks.

And they had posted this in Oaken Field. In public. It revealed far too much information to far too many ponies.

“Why am I second highest on the list?!” Coco started to hyperventilate, barely getting her words out. “Why am I on the list at all?! I’m not worth fifty million bits! I’m not even worth five bits!”

“If I had to guess,” said Rarity, “this list is in reverse order of how difficult she believes it would be to kill each of us. Screwball wants to mentally damage Twilight by picking off the weakest of us first.”

The reward was so much higher for Rainbow Dash than any of the others. Screwball truly had identified the best target if crushing Twilight’s spirits were her main goal. Already, Twilight had become a bit unhinged… yet Rarity pitied anypony foolish enough to attack Dash at this exact moment with Twilight ready and clinging.

The question was whether somepony just looking at this list would make the same conclusions Rarity had. Most would likely assume Silverstorm being worth one bit was a slight or that Dash had insulted her in some way or even that Dash was seen as the true threat.

“Rarity!” Coco whined.

“We kept you safe from Screwball before and we can do it again.” Rarity put a hoof on her shoulder. “With Twilight on our side, we can’t possibly lose.”

Fancy Pants, who had been annoying Rarity all day on the subject, watched them nearby. He decided now was a suitable time to prod her again.

“Yes, about this ‘Twilight’ pony.” Fancy Pants came up to Rarity. “We still haven’t gotten to vet this witch claiming to be Twilight Sparkle.”

Rarity did trust the ponies that remained by her side. A leak from them was unlikely but could be devastating. Keeping their confidence as high as possible was a vital priority.

“Very well.” Rarity nodded. “Those two have been far too reclusive since the fight, I admit. I’ll drag them out here for you whatever it takes.”

In the pocket dimension beneath Twilight’s treehouse, Twilight watched Dash’s continued training. Twilight nervously bit her lip, knowing this couldn’t possibly go fast enough. Trixie remained bored and distant, looking at Dash as she would a toddler failing to spell their name for hours. Applebloom had long passed the point she was willing to push herself to and wandered off to find something to drink.

Rainbow Dash lay collapsed on the floor. There was some success to be sure. She’d gotten far more spins on her makarakarn than ever before. It wasn’t really that she’d gotten much better in just two days, but that she held out so much longer through sheer grit and determination.

Twilight could see a fire lit beneath Rainbow Dash, unlike anything she’d gotten from the mare before. In truth, Twilight hadn’t taken this training seriously up until now either. Familiars weren’t supposed to go out to the store or play games or do anything but train.

When Rainbow Dash’s mind got too scattered by the makarakarn, she’d work on extending her magic control. When her wings were too exhausted to lift her off the ground, it’d be time for strength training. And by the time she could barely lift her legs, she’d just barely be able to go back to the makarakarn.

That was how things were supposed to be. She only feared it was too late now.

Twilight’s heart had yet to slow since the encounter with Screwball. She hadn’t been nervous about any opponent in so long, not since Starswirl’s last moments.

Had Twilight known how dangerous the world was, she would have insisted Rainbow Dash trained non-stop for another ten or twenty years before even entertaining the idea of going outside.

Twilight and Trixie watched as Rainbow Dash just barely pushed past one hundred spins. Soon she’d be done with this device. Soon, Twilight would be able to give her access to many more spells via mind fibers.

The real problem was that Twilight had been too negligent on everything else. Maybe in a few weeks like this, Dash would be versatile enough to destroy any normal opponent… but no normal opponent would be coming after her. Dash didn’t have the raw power to go after the strongest fighters the world had to offer, against the ponies that would try to take her.

And did they even have that long?

“Isn’t it a little late for this?” Trixie asked Twilight. “She has to push through this to become like a witch, but this training will leave her completely exhausted. She’ll be even more vulnerable.”

“I know, I know.” Twilight trotted back and forth thinking to herself. “There must be some way for her to get stronger faster. Just strong enough to deal with Screwball’s lackeys. Oh! What if she did that thing you did? We can turn her into a werewolf or a vampire or–”

“She’ll be banished from Equestria for either of those,” said Trixie. “Super radiation rarely gives you superpowers. She could always bite down on the wire, but that one can kill you.”

“Right.” Twilight ran through options in her head. She knew plenty of enchantments and transformation spells. The problem with that was Twilight would already have to be around to cast them on Dash. Dash still couldn’t cast them to the point where she’d be able compete at this level herself.

Most of the other options were all illegal, come to think of it. Why did Equestria have to be so unreasonable?! They banned everything that could protect Rainbow Dash.

There was one other option. Twilight could give Rainbow Dash a magical artifact to protect her. There was one that could propel her to Screwball or Trixie’s level before the morning light.

She still had one of the two alicorn feathers left, the one around Scootaloo’s neck. She could forge another element of harmony. She created the element of magic with Starswirl’s help, but she knew she could forge another alone. Twilight could make even make one specifically for Rainbow Dash, to ensure she’d be compatible with it.

The warning from her mentor came back to her. An element created for a specific pony made them their greatest possible self, but not necessarily their best. To Starswirl that meant supreme competency, a pony that could perform any miracle could twist reality beyond what was rational, and to whom there were no mysteries.

The element of magic had done as promised. Yet even as the bearer of that warning…

Twilight did wonder what the maximally great Rainbow Dash would be like. Certainly not a pony that could die easily. Yet given how poorly things turned out with the element of magic perhaps it wouldn’t be worth the risk.

Besides, Rainbow Dash took too much of a liking to Scootaloo. She would rather put herself in danger than take away the feather protecting that filly.

A less extreme option, instead, would be something like the second most powerful artifact Twilight had ever created. The Spear of Longinus, sadly, could not be repossessed legally due to what was known as a ‘statute of limitations'. Also, she had technically given that one as a gift to Flash…

And just like that Twilight found herself cringing at the thought. That hadn’t turned out well, either!

Twilight bit her lip.

No! It would be different this time. Those two were completely different. Yes, they were both slightly dim but passionate pegasi who encourage Twilight to set aside her studies to look into different things, but–

No, no, no! Flash would have jumped at the chance to create an element of harmony specifically for him, even if it meant screwing that Scootaloo filly over. Twilight didn’t doubt that any more than she doubted that Rainbow Dash would reject the idea.

At least… Twilight assumed that was what Dash would do.

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight teleported to her side. “If you could obtain ultimate power by killing Scootaloo, would you do it?”

Dash coughed and sputtered, falling onto her haunches. The question left her stunned.

“Uh!” She glanced to the side with a wall-eyed expression. Twilight’s heart leaped! She wasn’t seriously considering that, was she? “Does ‘ultimate power’ include the ability to bring Scootaloo back to life immediately afterward?”

Twilight let out a sigh of relief. Dash hadn’t been entertaining the idea.

“No.”

“Then no?” Dash tilted her head. “Twilight, are we talking about demon summoning? Cause I like to think I’m pretty liberal with all this monster stuff but even I got a line.”

“Don’t worry. That was just a whacky hypothetical.” Twilight forced a laugh. Anyway, Dash had passed the ‘don’t kill Scootaloo’ test. She was worthy after all. “I’ve decided to create a powerful magical artifact for you like Longinus.

“You can make me a weapon like Longinus?” Dash stared at her in awe.

“I literally made that exact spear, yes.” Twilight nodded.

“Oh, yeah! That’d be–” Dash got too excited and started to wheeze. She needed to pace her words after that. “Pretty. Cool. Thanks.”

“I could also weave mind fibers into whatever I end up making.” Twilight nodded to herself. “You can likely handle a lot more of it now.”

“Maybe I can get like a tornado spell?” Dash’s eagerness overtook her exhaustion, though not enough for her to stand up straight. “Or the explosion spell this time? I don’t have anything that’s, you know, offensive.”

There was kind of a reason for that. Maybe Dash forgot.

“I was thinking more about spells that will keep you safe.” Twilight kept her smile soft. “You can likely handle simple teleportation and certain types of portals. Like the one where you use a portal to divert incoming attacks! Then the elemental resonance spell should be easy enough. And a few summoning spells so you’ll have a distraction while you escape!”

“Escape?” Dash blinked.

“Obviously, the best strategy would be for you to retreat back to my side as soon as possible and let me deal with any enemies,” said Twilight. “And if you’re by my side, you can still be useful by being a kind of distraction! You’d be a nearly impossible target even if you can’t fight back.”

Twilight could give Rainbow Dash a spell that shot a giant fireball or whatever, but it wouldn’t be of any use at this level. Twilight knew how hard she had to hit that Arachnado pony to harm him. Dash wasn’t strong enough to seriously damage a pony like that… let alone one significantly stronger like Screwball or who else knew what was out there.

“But what if I can’t get to your side?” Dash asked.

“You’re never going to be away from my side again!” Twilight stomped her hoof. “Don’t you get it? This is exactly what we were warned about!

“Eh?”

“You’re only in danger when you’re alone. When you’re not with me, remember? It’s because somepony will find the coin and use it to destroy you if I’m not here to protect you.” Twilight put one hoof on Dash’s shoulder and the other on her heart.

The fire in Dash’s eyes went out and she glanced down at the floor. Twilight frowned as well, unsure if she had said something wrong.

Certainly, everything she said made logical sense. Rainbow Dash wasn’t making any counterarguments.

“Twilight!” Rarity appeared in the summoning circle. “I think you’ve delayed long enough. My ponies want to speak with you, and they won’t wait much longer.”

“Oh, geeze!” Twilight staggered back. “Can’t we have another few minutes? Just until Rainbow Dash recovers?”

Twilight gestured to Dash who, upon trying to stand up, nearly puked.

“I already told you, if we let Rainbow Dash do all the talking they might get the wrong impression,” said Rarity. “Rainbow Dash will just have to wait here because we do have to go now. The opinion of these ponies is too important for us to leave them feeling slighted.”

Twilight stood perfectly still, her mind reeling for an excuse to get out of this. She knew she should go, but that didn’t make her want to on any level.

“Hey!” Dash smiled at her. “These ponies are going to be sympathetic to you. You’re starting easy, right?”

“Right.” Twilight nodded. Just the tiniest reassurance from Rainbow Dash always went such a long way.

Twilight had no idea how she could even function in this world without Dash sometimes. She had to do everything she could to keep her safe, even this…

“Okay. You just keep training,” said Twilight. “I’ll… I’ll probably be back.”

“And what do I do?” Trixie asked. “I’ve been waiting for you to teach me stuff for days!”

“Okay, fine! You want me to give you something to do?” Twilight pointed to Rainbow Dash. “Stop hating Dash. You need to conquer your emotions before you can use magic responsibly.”

“Stop hating–?! How am I supposed to do that?”

“I don’t know! Figure it out!”

Twilight sighed and looked at the summoning circle, braced herself, and pushed on to the other side.

Trixie’s boredom approached amusement as Rainbow Dash threw herself back into it with even greater fervor than before. She didn’t push herself to 101 before giving herself license to puke this time. She made it to 110, 120, then just a little more.

There really wasn’t much point in pushing past 100 with a makarakarn, but Trixie decided she’d feel bad telling Dash this much. Technically, that pegasus was at the point where she’d earn her first bell. That is, she was past the easiest part.

Applebloom came back over with a juice box. She wore a brimmed hat with a single bell strapped to it, having reached this level some time ago without any serious effort.

“Oh, wow!” Applebloom sat down next to Trixie to watch. “Is she still going at it?

“Yes.” Trixie narrowed her eyes at Dash. Sure, technically it was Twilight who beat her up, but Trixie found all of her resentment focused squarely on that pegasus she doted over. “It seems the Rainbow Dash has the exact opposite problem you do.”

“What do you mean?” Applebloom asked.

“How do I put this?” Trixie folded her forelegs and watched Dash continue to fight her pointless battle. “You’re a genius who will immediately learn anything I try to teach you, yet you have no motivation to work like this. Rainbow Dash is a complete idiot, but even knowing that she’ll continue to struggle even if it’s completely hopeless.”

Trixie deadpanned in the Pegasus’s direction, still unsure how she was supposed to do as Twilight ordered.

“If we could somehow combine the two of you, then Rainbloom would have the potential to be a witch, at least,” said Trixie. “Frankly, I don’t think either of you can make it to three bells, let alone five.”

Or seven, which Trixie herself might never achieve. To achieve the seventh bell and become a master, you needed a master witch (of whom Twilight was the only one) to acknowledge you as their equal and grant you peerage. That seemed increasingly unlikely as time wore on.

“I see.” Applebloom watched Dash with a less stern look. “But you got to five, I think? So you’re saying you’re a genius and you can work non-stop?”

“I certainly put in a lot of effort for the witch training.” Trixie looked down at her hoof. She’d oft worn it to a nub and seen it bleed only to push on even further. “Sixteen-hour days for years. My childhood was nothing else.”

But Trixie wondered about that second part, about being a genius. She’d always thought as much. Her whole life, learning had been so easy for Trixie. She thought herself vastly more intelligent than the common worms that crawled about the earth.

Yet a true genius wouldn’t have wasted all those years stuck in a mind trap. She would have realized the road she was on wouldn’t lead her to what she wanted. Now she was stuck in a TCU, wearing a leash like a total idiot. A pony working for a fast food restaurant was smarter than her.

“I sure as heck don’t got that kinda motivation.” Applebloom’s comment snapped her out of her concentration. “How did you manage that? Is there any way I can become, I dunno, half that motivated?”

Trixie hardly wanted to answer, even knowing the reason.

Applebloom had her family and she had that robot friend… she wasn’t alone with her hatred of everyone. She couldn’t boil in anger and come out like hardened leather because somepony would always pull her out.

Trixie indulged in that excuse. Yeah, she never had somepony to snap her out of it. She could devote herself entirely to magic because there was nothing else to devote herself to.

“Hello?” Applebloom waved her hoof in front of Trixie’s face. “What do I gotta do to be all motivated?”

“Don’t take this training too seriously.” Trixie turned away from her.

“Huh?” Applebloom blinked. “Isn’t that the opposite of–”

“Just get out of here,” Trixie said it more harshly than she’d meant to. “Your sister doesn’t want you hanging around me and she’s right. You’re not a witch. You’ll never be a witch. You don’t belong here, and I won’t waste my time teaching you anything. Leave.”

Predictably, Applebloom left in a huff soon after that, but it was fine.

Something Dash said echoed in her head as the filly left. ‘If you hate it so much, why would you want others to feel that way?’ Or something like that. It was for the best. Trixie felt like she’d done somepony else a favor for once.

Why had Trixie even given her that test, to begin with?

Trixie turned again to Rainbow Dash. That was the exact difference Trixie meant between the two of them. Dash wouldn’t have left. If she thought Trixie had something important to teach her she would have stayed long past the point it ceased being a good idea. Trixie could insult her all day long and it’d be useless.

But why? Rainbow Dash had everything. Twilight herself loved Dash. The public still loved her, she had all these ponies around. She wasn’t alone. She didn’t have any anger.

“I don’t get you.” Trixie raised her head high.

Dash tried getting up and looking at her. She’d become temporarily cross-eyed, joining that grey friend of hers.

“Uh. Thanks?” Dash struggled to control just one of her eyes.

“Tch. What I mean is why are you even trying with this?” Trixie asked. “You have ponies in your life. You have everything. Twilight will destroy the entire Bloodstorm Cartel without you and you can’t ever catch up to her. So why are you acting like–?”

Trixie didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t know where the desperation she recognized came from.

“Is that what you’d do?” Dash asked.

“As if I could!” Trixie scoffed. “We’re nothing alike! I was alone my whole life. My parents took me to some carnival just so they could abandon me there and I was relieved that I never had to see them again. My life hardly went uphill from there. My master was the only one who paid any attention to me or told me I was anything else but worthless and she was an abusive, sociopathic murderer. I never had anyone that I could rely on. I had no choice but to be determined.”

“Hey! Do you think I was just born like this?” Disoriented, Dash struggled to so much as put a hoof on her chest. “It’s not like I had anypony I could rely on growing up, either.”

Trixie blinked. She’d never once considered something like that a possibility. It seemed so clear Dash was privileged.

“No choice?” Dash sighed. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I was so desperate to prove myself to anyone. I don’t know even know what I did, but something finally seems to have gone right and I’m not going to give it up. I’m not going to use Twilight or go back to be worthless no matter what!”

“Your parents weren’t around either?” Trixie asked.

“I don’t even remember my mother,” said Dash. “My dad might as well have not existed. You know, I didn’t even know what ‘drunk’ was back then. I just thought adults got super weird when the sun went down so I never trusted any of them.”

“And you didn’t resent everypony?” Trixie asked. “You’re saying they all mistreated you as much as they did me? But you never hated anypony?”

Trixie couldn’t believe such a thing. At least, she didn’t want to believe those feelings were something unique to her.

“I don’t think anypony believed in me,” said Dash. “And yeah… I guess maybe I did resent them all for a while.”

Dash looked at Trixie as if for the first time but quickly averted her gaze.

“I guess, if I’m gonna be fair, I don’t know what would have happened if I ran into some witch who wanted to feed my anger for her own purposes.”

Trixie smirked, then laughed, feeling a rush of freedom.

“How is that funny?”

“No, no! I… I used to think the same thing. About adults getting weird after sunset. There’s so much stuff that didn’t even click with me until I was almost twenty.” Trixie shook her head. “I take it you don’t drink either?”

“No way. It’s annoying how everypony always wants to know why. Like I need a reason.”

“Ha! Well I got the super-regeneration excuse. Alcohol doesn’t even affect me.”

“I need to come up with something like that.”

Dang it! Trixie didn’t even mean to… but at the moment she didn’t hate Dash.

At least, enough to give her the same advice she gave to Applebloom.

“I think maybe you should stop for now,” said Trixie. “The makarakarn doesn’t actually help you after you get to a hundred spins, you know.”

Twilight swallowed hard. She sat at the top of the stairs, overlooking a small crowd of ponies below. Rarity stood close by for support. Twilight knew just a few of their names. Fancy Pants, Coco, Kerfuffle… and even those three were effectively strangers to her.

This was it! Her biggest challenge yet.

She’d gotten used to talking to other ponies. Even being surrounded by them no longer filled her with the same paranoid stress it once had. But here, she had to give an account of herself.

If she couldn’t convince these ponies to trust her, she’d never be able to convince anypony. Though it seemed calm and not one of them could hope to harm Twilight, her life with Rainbow Dash was on the line.

Twilight struggled to think of what to say, even after rehearsing her talking points with Rarity. She hesitated too long and a pony in the group below spoke before her.

“Let me first say,” Fancy pants spoke, “whatever else is true, you ended a great many curses set upon us and have eliminated two dangerous witches. For that, you have my thanks.”

“Uh! Thank you!” Twilight never knew how to respond to compliments. “Or. You’re welcome?”

“But I do have questions. You claim to be the last master witch?” Fancy asked. “Which means also that you’re the one who created the Book of Shadows? And the curse of undeath was also your doing?”

Okay! Twilight could answer that much.

“I didn’t create that curse, but I did make the Book of Shadows.” Twilight nodded. “But I never used them against any of you. My only intention is to destroy the other spellbooks and this new corrupted order of witches. That includes Screwball! I know I can defeat her if we ever fought.”

“And why did you wait until now to do this?” Fancy asked. “Surely you could have accomplished as much over a hundred years ago, were you so inclined.”

“Something about the lunar calendar aligning with the solar one? Rainbow Dash broke the curse and I was forced to go outside.” Twilight hung her head down low, recalling the train of events. “I didn’t want to reemerge. At first, I was just worried the rest of the world might catch up to me. After seeing the outside world for myself… I had no idea they were making you suffer this much. I vastly underestimated the number of ponies alive. I apologize for that much.”

For a moment, Fancy Pants paused to consider it rather than pressing forward. For a moment, Twilight grew an ounce of confidence. Then Twilight was reminded there were plenty of other ponies in the group.

“Yes!” A stallion with glasses raised his hoof. “But how did the other witches get your spellbooks in the first place? Aren’t you the one who granted them these weapons?”

“No!” Twilight’s voice had more certainty in it than anything else she’d said so far. “I… those were stolen from me.”

“Stolen by whom, exactly?” Another pony in the crowd asked.

“I doubt you’ve ever heard of him, but his name was Flash Sentry. I guess he–”

Twilight paused, seeing just how scandalized that name left the crowd. Did she already mess up?!

“Twilight, darling,” Rarity pulled her aside. “What did this ‘Flash Sentry’ look like?”

“A blue-haired pegasus?” Twilight pointed to herself. “I guess he kinda looked like Flash Bang. I really should have realized they were related sooner. It seems so obvious now.”

“Flash Bang’s ancestral namesake?” Rarity stared at Twilight incredulous. “He’s the one who caused the curse of undeath and stole the spellbooks?”

“Huh? Yeah.” Twilight nodded and took a step back. She couldn’t possibly fathom why this was getting such a strong reaction. The crowd was even more restless now. “I don’t see why that’s important, though.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner? Twilight, don’t you get this?” Rarity tapped her forehead with a hoof and shook her head. “Flash Bang’s family has been in power in Equestria for generations. And a large part of that is the reputation they’ve built around the lineage stemming from the ‘hero’ Flash Sentry. If you have dirt like this on them…”

“Uh. Huh.” Twilight blinked. She looked down at the crowd, then back to Rarity. “Then what?”

“Twilight, you can severely damage the reputation of one of the elite four whenever you want,” said Rarity.

“So it’s a good thing?” Twilight blinked.

“This is certainly quite the card to have.” Rarity let go of her and stepped forward to address the crowd. “Do you not all see how much opportunity she presents to us? Twilight here is our only real chance to defeat the Bloodstorm Cartel in this coming conflict. She can push our robotic research forward faster than ever before. She and Rainbow Dash are our best allies inside Equestria as well.”

Rarity gave Twilight a look that made her feel as though she were forgetting something.

“Oh!” Twilight recalled one of her talking points. “Yes. I believe that much of Equestrian law is unreasonable to you all. Rainbow Dash wants to change the system, to make it fairer to outsiders. If you support me, then I promise to do as much as I can to make that happen.”

Twilight ran her eyes over the crowd. She hated when there were this many ponies around. It was so hard to get a general sense of their reaction to her. She didn’t see anypony snarling or cringing or anything like that.

She decided to instead focus in on one of them. She read a book that suggested talking to a single pony in a crowd at a time would make it easier. Her target was Fancy Pants, the most vocal of them so far. He was still frowning and deep in thought. Neither the best nor the worst reaction.

“I believe Spatial Tear promised something similar with Manehattan and Toxco,” Fancy said. “In the end, she was merely using their greed against them in an attempt to end civilization itself. How can we be so sure you aren’t going after the other witches merely to eliminate competition? So that none could oppose you? To put all of Equestria and ponydom under your unchallenged hoof?”

Twilight floundered trying to think up a response to this accusation. She couldn’t prove she wasn’t secretly evil!

Thankfully, Rarity was there to step up for her.

“You’ve seen her in interviews and you see her now.” Rarity put a hoof on Twilight’s back. “Does she strike you as a ruthless tactician? Does she look like the sort of pony who wants to rule over Equestria? That even could if she wanted to?”

At long last, Twilight’s social anxiety paid off as murmurs of agreement went through the room.

“Yes.” Fancy Pants also rubbed his chin in consideration. “I suppose a suitably cunning conqueror would have thought to use Flash Bang’s lineage against her. Yet you were sincerely oblivious. There’s also the fact that you’ve turned over the spellbooks, rather than trying to keep them for yourself.”

“Um! Yes. I don’t understand any of this,” Twilight said with a lot more confidence than anything prior in the speech. “I don’t think I would make a great ruler. I intend to leave that to ponies like Rarity.”

Twilight spared Rarity a look and got a nod in return. A few of the pre-written lines came back to Twilight. One of them felt sincere enough in the moment to use without it sounding canned.

“What I understand is magic. I see the problems that witchcraft has created. I also see the opportunities that working together will open. If you stand by my side, we can fix these problems together. Please. I want to be your friend.” Twilight closed her eyes and bowed her head.

Twilight’s ears perked up at the sound of hooves. She opened her eyes back up to find a few of the ponies below applauding that line! Not all of them, not even half, but enough to make Twilight’s heart swell. She looked through the crowd, finding far less skepticism than when she started. She was pulling this off!

Twilight went back to Fancy Pants as soon as she could. Sadly, he remained reserved even now.

“Can I, then, have your assurance that you will never personally take a high political position?” Fancy Pants asked. “That you will never try to usurp Rarity or try to take control of the Everfree or pirate coast yourself?”

“I think I can?” Twilight turned to Rarity for her approval. It sounded reasonable, but Twilight never knew when she was walking into a trap with these political things.

Rarity smiled and gave her a slight nod.

“Um! Yes!”

Twilight hadn’t even thought ahead that far, but her pathetic display was at last enough to assuage Fancy’s fears and get a slight, if bemused, smile on his face.

“Very well.” He bowed his head. “Then I will trust you and Rarity for now.”

If Twilight had turned him around… maybe she could do this after all.

“Thank you!” Twilight smiled, tears in her eyes. “That’s all I ask.”

Things, it seemed, were finally looking up!

“This is horrible, Rainbow Dash!” Shouted Derpy.

“This is exactly what I was worried about,” said Twilight. “Do you get it now? I can’t let you out of my sight.

Twilight and Derpy both grabbed her from either direction. Their equal but opposite shaking had a neutralizing effect, at least.

“Just let me look at the darn thing already!” Dash snatched it out of Derpy’s mouth to look over the wanted poster.

Dash could feel the weight of the paper all too literally in her hooves. Such an intense day of training rendered even a simple task like this difficult. The words seemed reluctant to be read, almost moved about on the page. At least Twilight took over leash duty for now.

As much as Twilight wanted her to keep training non-stop forever, Dash did, unfortunately, have other things to do. Frankly, Dash didn’t think she could do any more than this.

Maybe Dash could be useful on some level with Twilight’s help. If anything, she wanted to go through with this training just to keep her mind off darker thoughts, to help her forget.

“If you’re not going to use Twilight’s clinginess, can I have it?” Derpy asked, peering over Dash’s shoulder. “Twilight, if you want to creepily follow me around everywhere at every waking moment I’m okay with it.”

At least Derpy seemed to be warming up to her.

Dash blinked a few times, trying to be certain she’d read this correctly. Letters were difficult things at the moment.

“A billion?! Does she even have that kind of money?!” Dash saw a picture of Screwball sitting on a throne made out of gold bars and stacks of cash.

The fine print said that half of the prize money would be paid in the form of a land grant, one of the islands Screwball controlled. At that point, you probably had to leave the country anyway.

“I guess maybe she does.”

The corners of Dash’s mouth turned up. Her nerves had been so frayed these past few days but seeing such a huge bounty made her smile. Somepony seriously thought she was that big of a threat.

Twilight had only been given one bit? But why?

Screwball thought she was her sister so maybe she wanted to save Twilight for herself?

“Rainbow Dash! Why are you smiling?!” Derpy pulled the paper down. “We’re in a lot of trouble! Not only are we gonna have to fight off assassins, but worse! We gotta fight off lawyers! This is gonna be in the news! Sunset and Flash Bang both wanna have a word with you and also the police already showed up but Slade got them to go away.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot about that second part.” Dash had at least seen this coming to an extent, even before the wanted posters went up. Her association with a mad scientist would be public knowledge soon. “How many phone calls did I get in the past five hours?”

“Four hundred and sixteen,” said Derpy. “Somepony’s going to show up at the door soon, I bet! They aren’t going to wait much longer.”

“You’re probably right, but…” Dash rubbed her eyes. “Well, that’s why our lawyer’s here. Let me go talk to him first.”

Pinkie was already waiting for Dash, along with their lawyer, sitting on either side of one of Dash’s couches.

“Dashie!” Pinkie waved over to her. She was eating nuts. Dash neither knew nor cared whose fridge they came out of. “Did you think about freeing Sonata Dusk like I said?”

Dash fell onto the couch and looked up at the ceiling. Before her cage got rattled like this she wouldn’t have hesitated. Yet now… she was starting to worry about biting off more than she could chew.

“Barely?” Dash fell onto the couch.

“We have to focus on taking out Screwball!” Twilight’s eyes remained laser focused on some invisible point. “She’s the threat right now! She’s literally trying to kill Rainbow Dash at this exact moment! And before you say anything, I looked it up and Screwball has slaves too. And she does all kinds of horrible things. And she has that mirror I need to get rid of the curse of undeath, in case you’ve forgotten. So if you do the math, it’s more moral to devote our time to her.”

“Twilight’s kinda got a point,” Dash said. “I know this is important to Fluttershy and the other ghosts, but ponies have been freaking out about Crater Cemetery since before I was born. That specter never seems to do anything, though! We don’t even know her name. How do we even know it’s a ‘she’, anyway?”

“Oh, she’s done a lot of evil things,” said Pinkie. “You just don’t hear about it cause Crater Cemetery only goes after undead. But she’s destroyed all of the old ghost cities. She’s killed and or enslaved oodles.”

“I guess.” Dash rested her head on the arm of the couch. “I’m not trying to dismiss this or anything. It’s just – maybe we can deal with the witches first before adding another fifty enemies to our list? We gotta think of a way to do this that won’t knock over another beehive. She seems okay with sitting in her little crater for now.”

“But it won’t take long!” Pinkie objected. “And it’s just freeing one tiny little ghost. It’s not like Aria’s leak will be so humungous that it’ll set off a chain reaction leading to the Crater Cemetery specter going ballistic and start throwing asteroids at us left and right!”

All eyes turned to Pinkie Pie and every mouth remained shut as the all the ponies in the room now saw that exact scenario as inevitable.

“We can do it.” Dash closed her eyes. “Just maybe try to think of ways to keep the heat down beforehand?"

For now, Dash could only hope all this stuff with Sonata didn’t escalate things on that any further.

“Alright. Lay it on me, lawyer pony.” Dash sat up and turned to her lawyer. She probably should have cared more about this legal trouble than she did. “How screwed am I?”

The ‘good lawyer’ Pinkie mentioned ages ago turned out to be her nephew. Though it was hard to think of him as such. At present, the middle-aged stallion looked old enough to be Pinkie’s uncle instead.

Not only that, but Slade Pie bore little resemblance to her. Various shades of grey covered his well-kept coat and mane. He had such a serious look on his face, always keeping his focus on some document. Were they really related?

“Believe it or not, this isn’t nearly the worst thing my aunt has done,” he said. “You’re lucky you weren’t here for that time she summoned a hedonism demon.”

“Gak!” Pinkie fumbled with her jar of nuts. “That octopus-head guy was a consenting adult!”

“I established that in a court of law, yes.” Slade straightened his glasses. “I’ll have little difficulty keeping the two of you out of trouble and from searching your home any time soon. There simply isn’t enough evidence that you’ve done anything but share a room with her as part of your mission to capture Trixie.”

“Okay.” Dash let out a sigh of relief, glad to know she was good on one front. “So we’re good, yeah?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Slade adjusted his glasses before going back to filling out the forms. “You are untouchable in this situation, but Rarity has a long list of crimes. Performing an illegal surgery without a license, criminal use of mad science, the creation of artificial general intelligence… Now that she’s linked to you, I imagine anypony who wants to punish you will go after her instead.”

Generally, the ponies who lived in the Everfree were considered as not worth going after. There were worse threats to consider on any given day and marching an army into the forest meant a small war would break out, as Dash had personally seen.

Rarity, it seemed, might have been pushed just over the ‘worth it’ line. Those above and below the law both had bounties on her. The only question was which side would go after her first.

“So even with that insane reward on my head, Rarity’s the one in trouble?” Dash asked. “Everypony thinks I’m invincible right now, don’t they?”

Yeah, for all Twilight’s worries almost few ponies would be coming after Dash yet. Not unless they knew the truth.

“And the whole me being an ancient witch thing?” Twilight asked. “I don’t know how these magic ‘court’ powers work, but can you dispel that, too?”

“I’m afraid we would have to resort to ‘extra-legal means’, as Aunt Pinkie likes to phrase it, to resolve that particular issue,” said Slade. “I’d imagine you’re in a fairly good position for the moment regarding that. As far as public opinion goes, I’d be most worried about Starlight Glimmer getting involved.”

Pinkie stopped chewing her nuts.

Then there was a knock on the door. Dash sighed and buried her face in a throw pillow. If that was seriously Starlight herself…

Derpy went to answer but Dash stopped her and went personally instead.

It wasn’t Starlight herself, but Dash’s first impression was that she was under arrest right now. Night Glider, with her disturbingly wide smile, stood inches in front of Dash. Behind her were two rows of ten armored pegasi, standing resolute and at attention.

At least her lawyer was already here.

“Hi, Rainbow Dash!” Night Glider sounded way too chipper. “President Starlight Glimmer wants to talk to you and your friend. Like right now.”

“Um.” Dash looked back into the house, then to Night Glider. “A lot of ponies want to speak to me right now.”

“I’m pretty sure the president’s orders trump everypony else’s.”

“I’m a little busy.”

“Mmm! I’m afraid this is a direct order from the president regarding S-level material.” Night glider tilted her head, keeping the smile. “You’re not allowed to say no to this. We want Silverstorm to come too.”

Dang it! Dash forgot Starlight could assign her missions and stuff. At least it didn’t sound like she was under arrest.

“Uh.” Dash backed up into her house a few steps. “Lawyer guy? Can I say no to this?”

“Technically, as a member of the SA, you are required to obey an order like this, less you become AWL.” Slade came out soon afterward. He looked over to Twilight. “I could likely you out of this, at least.”

“No!” Twilight shook her head. “If Rainbow Dash is going then I have to go too!”

At least Dash wouldn’t have to face her alone. They’d need to bring Trixie with them, too.

“You don’t need to worry!” Night Glider’s expression was always unreadable, stuck being that fake smile. “President Starlight will only keep you for a little while.”

Night Glider gestured to their destination. An airship off in the distance but still in sight loomed just under the clouds on the other side of the river.

Ghosts 4: Last Ghost on the Left

Dash soon found herself on the deck of the Cinder Bird – Equestria’s only fully-metallic airship. They said it could fly higher than a pegasus, but that wasn't entirely true. Dash managed to fly up this high without much difficulty, though she did have dart upward to get there. It only beat out a pegasus at being able to sustain this height.

The air up here was colder than even most pegasi would be used to. The deck was too noisey to have any coversations here, so they were led below deck to a sound proof room, leaving Trixie outside the door.

Sheltered from the cold and sound, the room felt more comfortable. Yet Dash could still hear the muted thumps of the engines.

These meetings with Starlight never got easier. Starlight looked like she hadn’t a care in the world, casually reclined when they came in, as always. Dash hoped this to be at least partially an act.

Nightglider stayed with them this time, standing off to the side with that enormous smile of hers.

“You two look a bit tense.” Starlight rested a hoof on her cheek and smiled. “If you’re worried about your friend Rarity, you can relax. I don’t intend to arrest you or her over that. In fact, I’ve come up with a solution for you.”

So she had figured it out. Fast, too.

“What do you mean help us?” Dash raised a brow.

“I told you I wanted to aid you in your quest to end the witches, didn’t I?” Starlight asked. “Why, I brought you here specifically to that end.”

Dash said nothing and fought the urge to glance at Twilight. The way the day was going, Dash half expected Starlight to announce she intended to ‘help’ by killing Twilight right here and now.

“Firstly, with your political problems. Your real worry should be whether Oaken Field throws poor Rarity under the train. Now, the most vital resources the Bloodstorm Cartel ships to the Everfree are sugar and flour. Right now, the export of either of those into the Everfree territories is outlawed. But if that were to change…”

Starlight let those words linger as she watched Dash carefully. Dash at once knew this to be a test of sorts, to see if Dash could quickly deduce the ultimate result of this change.

And Dash hadn’t studied for this at all! She didn’t know crap about geopolitics! Where the heck did all of this even come from?! Who’s idea was it to make the ponies with the highest body count in charge again?!

The thing Dash knew about this was what Rarity told her… that Oaken Field only supported the Bloodstorm Cartel because they depend on them for stuff… like sugar, apparently… but then if Equestria started exporting sugar to them they wouldn’t be dependent anymore and then…

And then…

“Gah!” Dash smacked her hooves together as the pieces fell into place. “So then, like! Like, Oaken Field would probably side with Rarity over the Bloodstorm Cartel!”

“Yes. And if Oaken Field takes a stand against the Bloodstorm Cartel, it would remove any incentive for Flash Bang and her ilk to try and declare war on them. They would much rather have an excuse to use force against the islands controlled by the Bloodstorm Cartel and you generally don’t want to attack your enemy’s enemy.”

Dash nodded. But no, she hadn’t thought of that part at all. Still, this plan got better all the time! Maybe today wouldn’t go so bad.

“Dang! You came up with that plan fast. I guess that’s why you’re the president, huh?” Dash scratched the back of her head. “But, uh. You’ve never exactly been soft on ponies like Rarity before. So–”

“After all you’ve done, I suppose I can trust you just a little.” Starlight said it, but Dash didn’t believe it. “But more importantly… well I know both of you are new to politics. You need a certain amount of political capital to get anything done. That means building up favors and making compromises. I need something in return is what I’m getting at.”

Now Dash could believe she was being straight.

“And that is?”

“I believe we mentioned a mission already?” Starlight asked. “I don’t think anypony else has the strength to help me with this task. It’s far too dangerous.”

“Alright, alright. What is it?” Dash found herself tapping a hoof on the desk.

“There are four remaining witches. Screwball, Eclipse, Embermoon, and one more whose identity is unknown. The wielder of the fifth spellbook, that is.”

Dash nodded, though she knew the last to be Sunset Shimmer. But as long as Starlight didn’t know that…

“I know the identity of the hidden witch.” Starlight lulled her head back to face the others. “It’s Sunset Shimmer.”

Dash’s heart skipped a beat. She stood up and flared out her wings just a little, realizing a half second too late how much she was giving away. Her mind staggered. Maybe she could play this off.

“Wait! What are you saying?” Dash could only hope her exasperation came off as shock at the revelation.

“I seriously doubt Trixie didn’t tell you this.” Starlight closed her eyes and tapped her hooves together. “Given the respect she appears to have towards Silverstorm.”

So she knew all along and was just waiting for the perfect time, now when the chips were down, to mess with them?!

Starlight motioned for them to calm down.

“I’m not trying to get you in trouble for not telling me sooner.” Starlight opened her eyes again, watching Dash with a critical look. “After all, I’ve been sitting on this information as well, waiting for a more strategic time to act. I’ll just assume you were doing the same. However, even in light of Screwball’s recent attacks, I think the time to go after her is drawing near.

“Even if Sunset is a witch, and you haven’t shown me any proof of that,” Dash added that last part quickly, “she also hasn’t committed any crimes!”

“Being a witch is a crime.” Starlight deadpanned.

“You know what I mean!” Dash gestured both forehooves to a section of the table on her left. “Screwball is over here throwing spiders at ponies, threatening to assassinate me, tyrannically oppressing a small nation, running this massive criminal syndicate. Then you got Sunset.”

Dash gestured more to the right.

“Who’s actively helping us protect Equestria. Why the buck wouldn’t we go after Screwball first?! Maybe we should just play dumb until her and Eclipse, you know the actually dangerous witches, are taken out?”

Dash would bet she could make a case for going after Embermoon first, too. Granted she knew almost nothing about that last witch and wouldn’t even recognize her if she walked into the room right now. She’d only memorized it after being reminded of her existence for the umpteenth time.

“And what do you think I’ve been doing?” Starlight asked. “No offense, but I figured this out long before you did. I all but immediately deduced Sunset Shimmer was a witch from first principles.”

“From what?” Dash asked.

“First principles,” Nightglider recited it like a girl scout reciting the pledge. “If the premises of a syllogism are true, then the conclusion has to be true no matter what! Logic is the only way to arrive at truth with absolute certainty. The syllogism is a source of perfect, divine knowledge and Starlight plays it like sweet music!”

Nightglider was seriously getting teary-eyed over this, too.

“Wait. Now I remember,” said Twilight. “Like your argument about Starlight being best pony?”

“Exactly!” Nightglider’s wings flared up in excitement. “You’re finally getting it. Just knowing the definition of words is enough for a pony like Starlight to deduce anything.”

“No,” Twilight said flatly. “For the record, I did read that book, and frankly? If this syllogism stuff as you say then the ponies who write the dictionary would possess infinite power.”

“Can you prove they don’t?” Nightglider’s smile never faded, but it did get smugger sometimes. “Starlight wrote a dictionary specifically tailored to her arguments and she is the best pony.”

“Now, Nightglider,” Starlight’s voice took on that of a teacher talking to a toddler, “you know these two aren’t on the same level of enlightenment as you are. They can’t understand pure logic and reason as you do and no doubt want more vulgar inductive reasoning. I have observable evidence if you insist on being uncouth.”

“Ah! Of course!”

Starlight laid out a few photographs. At a glance, Dash could see a much younger Sunset Shimmer in full witch gear with the fifth volume. It was a bit blurry but clear enough. She couldn’t doubt Starlight could prove this whenever she felt like it.

“I don’t care about your evidence or whatever!” Dash didn’t need some longwinded fifty-paragraph report that could be condensed down to ‘I got all kinds of spies and the intelligence agencies work for me.’ “I’m saying even if this is true, Sunset should be our last priority.”

“And again, I agree. I didn’t bring the two of you here to ask you to kill her. No, I believe Sunset is merely a lost sheep as are the two of you. She can be made to see the light.”

Nightglider nodded along to this with a teary-eyed smile, imagining how nice it’d be for the whole lot of them to get brainwashed by Starlight.

“Sunset simply needs to be… defanged. I can only ignore her so long as she poses no threat.”

“What are you talking about, exactly? You want us to destroy her spellbook?” Dash thought about how plausible getting away with that would be.

Maybe if they revealed Twilight was a master witch she would just let them take it? Yeah! Maybe Dash could get away with this.

“If it was merely that, I wouldn’t be as concerned,” said Starlight. “The others have a spellbook as well. No, Sunset Shimmer has something far more dangerous in her possession that must be destroyed as soon as possible. Especially now, after what happened a few days ago.”

Dash blinked. This was the first thing Starlight brought up that genuinely surprised her.

“Listen carefully,” Starlight’s voice lost some of its usual condescension to speak more authentically. “What I’m about to tell you is a different level of classification than even what you have access to as an S ranker. This information will not be spoken of again outside my presence under penalty of law.”

“Okay?” Dash tilted her head, still having no idea where any of this was going.

Twilight gave an uncertain nod.

Satisfied with even that lukewarm affirmation, Starlight smiled and continued.

“Have you perhaps heard of something called an element of harmony? The element of laughter?”

Where it not for an ominous thumping noise coming from the far end of the laundromat, it would have been a nice, quiet night. After twenty years in the business, Tumble Dry learned to simply tune out such noises and to never investigate anything that seemed suspicious if he could help it. Ignorance was preferable.

Just keep reading the paper, don’t ask any questions, and it would eventually go away.

Then a colt with dusty brown hair, maybe college age, came up to the counter to ruin Tumble’s night. This, too, Tumble tried to ignore. Unlike actual trouble, this one refused to be ignored.

“Excuse me,” he said.

“What is it?” Tumble lowered his newspaper.

“I think there’s like, uh…” He took a sip of some expensive coffee. Stupid colt could afford ten bits per cup but not his own washing machine? “Like a dead body? Or something? In one of the dryers.”

“Again?” Tumble rubbed his temple. Now he had no choice.

With a groan and a roll of his eyes, Tumble took the herculean effort to stand up and walk over to the dryer in question. Sure enough, the heavy, thump, thump, thumping came from a blue pony spinning about inside.

Tumble cursed under his breath wondering what sort of horrible monsters he’d be getting involved with this time.

Just as he reached out to stop the machine, the door opened by itself. A blue pegasus rolled out into the floor, landing on her side. She quickly struck a pose on the ground, putting one hoof on her cheek, and smiling wide.

Tumble squinted his eyes. He’d seen this one before.

“Ah, whoops!” Sonata Dusk laughed. “Guess I slipped and fell into the dryer again! Haha! So embarrassing. They really should make a PSA warning you about that, huh?”

Sonata backflipped onto her hooves.

“Anyway, I gotta go! Left my clothes in another laundromat.” Sonata gathered up her stray feathers and marched out the door, head held high.

“Oh, it was just her again.” Tumble closed the dryer, safe for another night.

“You keep saying again.”

“Yeah, she does that. Don’t worry. She actually pays. Unlike some ponies who shove bodies in there.”

“Isn’t this kind of suspicious?” The colt sipped his coffee.

“Look, there are two types of ponies who run laundromats. The ones who don’t ask questions and the ones who are dead.”

“Don’t put your body in the dryer, Sonata,” Sonata mocked her fallen sister’s voice. Back in the good old days, her sisters were always telling her not to do stupid things! It was annoying but…

Yes, Sonata was finally dry after being waterlogged for so long. But Sonata’s body wasn’t holding up too well at the moment. She had more feathers in a bag she carried than on her wings. She was also coming apart at more than one seam. It could be repaired once she got back home, but it’d take some effort. Sonata had already replaced all the stuffing but that was the best she could do on her own.

Sometimes Sonata wished Aria hadn’t decided to stab her in the back like that.

But that feeling never lasted more than a second! Sonata was quickly reminded that she still had her dark mistress! And she had all of her fellow slaves, all devoted to a common cause. That kind of community and purpose was way better than family.

Sonata stumbled into the nearest outpost of Crater Cemetery – a run-down shack near the sea. As much as she wanted to sleep for a month after that little adventure, the chains compelled her to report back as soon as possible.

Though connected to the Sunny Side Gazette but was completely unknown to the predead stooges that worked for the paper. When they gave out a phone number to ponies they wanted to bait, it directed them here.

Though outwardly appearing as an empty shack, entering a secret hatch revealed a significant amount of equipment. They had all kinds of switches and doodads for printing materials and hacking the phone network. Sonata didn’t understand any of it, but all the wires and vacuum tubes looked cool.

The station was run by one of the controlled specters, Cinch, and her two underlings – Mystery Mint and the one Sonata didn’t remember the name of.

Cinch had been expecting Sonata to report back to her days ago. She greeted Sonata with a stern frown, looking down at her from those glasses beneath her mane– a neat curl of varying shades of purple. That alone wouldn’t be worrying given her demeanor, but Sonata already knew she was in trouble by the feel of the aura.

“It’s about time you got back.” Cinch began tapping her chains impatiently. “Rainbow Dash has been calling for you for days now. We were about to give up and send somepony else. Where were you?”

“The ocean?” Sonata dropped her bag of feathers. “I had to swim all the way back here! And I got swallowed by a clam and found this lost, sunken city with non-Euclidian geometry where I was forced to learn what the word non-Euclidian means! They wouldn’t let me go until I could comb a hairy ball which is way harder than it sounds.”

Sonata collapsed back into the one chair in the room, thankful for that much. One thing about ghost society was the distinct lack of chairs.

“It’s times like this I wish I was some kind of giant fish monster.” Sonata sighed.

“If you were a fish monster, you’d be stuck underwater your whole life.”

“Maybe I could be a fish monster who can also fly? And breathe air?” Sonata didn’t get approval from any direction. “Don’t judge me!”

“I’m afraid I must judge you. Your stupidity is what landed you in the ocean. Consider it your punishment. You would have been punished further, but your mark has been calling for you recently.”

Sonata tensed up, then relaxed as the sentence progressed. It seemed her mistress wasn’t angry at her after all. Still! She was on thin ice. Sonata had to land this deal no matter what!

“We’re not going to waste any more time.” Cinch picked up the phone and began to dial. “We’re calling them presently.”

“Like right now?” Sonata whimpered. All she wanted to do was sleep for a month straight!

“Yes, right now.” Cinch took out a stack of cue cards and prepared them. “We cannot delay a single day longer. And don’t you dare deviate from anything written on these cards.”

She handed the phone to Sonata. Cinch and two of her underlings picked up separate phones to listen in as well.

Sonata didn’t even get a single ring to prepare! It was like the pony on the other end knew in advance the exact second Sonata would call.

“Hi! This is Pinkie Pie!” That horrible voice! Sonata’s eyes popped wide open. “Rainbow Dash isn’t in right now. But I can take a message. Beep!”

Her worst enemy! Pinkie was the one who took Aria and Adagio away! What if she wanted to do the same thing to Sonata she’d done to Aria?!

Given her genetic vulnerability to Pinkie Pie, Sonata had to avoid her at all costs.

“Ooo! But let me guess! Are you Sonata Dusk returning our calls?”

“Er! Yeah!” Sonata forced a smile as her eye twitched. It wouldn’t have convinced anypony. It was a good thing you couldn’t see over phone lines. “Haha.”

“Oh, hey! We were starting to get worried about you,” said Pinkie. “You know, we went looking for you, but the ocean is a pretty big place!”

So at least somepony was worried about her. Ironic it was her most mortal enemy!

Why was it that the ponies on your side were always abusing and threatening you, and the bad guys were always the ones concerned about your well-being? It didn’t make any sense at all!

“We would have looked harder but we figured you wouldn’t drown since you’re a ghost,” said Pinkie. “Oh! You are a banshee, right?”

Oh no! They were on to her! Cinch scrambled for the right card but Sonata panicked and answered before she could get the right one.

“Uh! Am I a banshee? Are you a banshee?!” Sonata jabbed her hoof accusingly against the phone. “Is anypony truly a banshee?”

“Probably, no, and yes,” Pinkie didn’t miss a beat.

“Gah!” Sonata stumbled with the phone. She was too good! No wonder Pinkie defeated her sisters! “Did those meddling teens seriously snitch on me?”

“No. It was pretty obvious. What with the stuffing and the death curse and stuff. But, hey! No worries. Some of my best friends are banshees. Or, actually, I guess that’s not true! But I do have a ghost friend, at least.”

Cinch was angrily tapping a cue card now. Sonata decided it’d be best to just go with that.

“Yeah, okay.” Sonata felt the sweet relief of mindless obedience. “I’m secretly a ghost. But can you blame me for hiding it? The Sunny Side Gazette is the only mainstream newspaper that will let me work for them! You and Rainbow Dash are in favor of expanding ghost rights, aren’t you? That’s all we’re trying to do.”

“Oh, I’m down with the struggle, that’s why we called you. We wanted to go ahead with Fluttershy’s interview.”

Something was actually going right. Cinch moved to the next card.

“Oh, that’s great! I’d like to meet with her as soon as possible.” Sonata read the card despite not wanting to do anything for the next year.

“That’s great! Would you be willing to meet with me first? Just to be sure everything checks out. You know, psychic powers and all?”

“Nope! I have nothing to hide! We can totally meet one on one before I interview Fluttershy.” Sonata found herself reading that from the card.

Weren’t they going to send one of their predead stooges, who actually believed that crap, out first? The old bait and switch was how they usually got past psychics.

But before she could panic, another card presented itself.

“How about we meet at the abandoned South Gorge station this Saturday? Just after sundown so we can all see?” Sonata read the card.

Sonata tried to remember where that was again. She’d been there once. It was in a huge patch of desert just a mile south of the canyon itself. There was nothing else close to it. How horrible an idea that was caught up to her only after it was too late.

They were sending her to meet Pinkie in a giant, open field? They’d have no way to sneak any backup in! They were throwing her to the pink lions!

“Yeah, that works out for us,” Pinkie, still on the line, answered.

Of course it did! The ponies in charge of this mission couldn’t have picked out a more advantageous spot for Pinkie.

And it got worse the more Sonata thought about it. If they were on the south side of the gorge, that meant Pinkie would have come from the north with the canyons and caves behind her. They would be the ones able to hide backup just out of sight!

“Yeah! Works out for everypony. Guess I’ll see you on Saturday.”

And Pinkie hung up the phone, leaving Sonata blankly staring at the wall of vacuum tubes.

A few days was barely enough time to get her body fixed, let alone rest for another major mission where she’d be confronting Pinkie Pie directly!

“How are we going to get past Pinkie Pie again?” Sonata’s eye twitched as she turned to Cinch.

“We aren’t,” said Cinch. “You are to be bait.”

“Huh?” Sonata tilted her head.

“Our mistress has become increasingly concerned with this Rainbow Dash pony. She has been upgraded to a class one threat alongside only Starlight Glimmer and Nailbat. If we can make you look pathetic enough, an easy feat I assure you, they will inevitably take pity and try to ‘free’ you.”

“But I don’t want to be free!” Sonata whined.

“You will be free for at most only the slightest moment,” Cinch assured her. “Our mistress will be sending her avatar to personally destroy all those lured out.”

Their mistress, in person, could of course destroy any opponent no matter what. She was perfect and all-powerful. But she was also trapped in Crater Cemetery for now, only having partially escaped the confines of the shadow realm.

Even then, she did have an avatar she could use to roam the earth. Sonata couldn’t think of anything else they had that could hope to fight against Silverstorm.

“Fluttershy, one of the last free specters on the continent. Pinkie, who can apparently break our chains all of a sudden. Aria, who knows our secrets. Rainbow Dash, who is a serious threat. With you, we can draw out all of them at once.”

“Aria?” Sonata asked. “Did she really stoop that low?”

“We can’t be certain yet. We allowed word of this ‘interview’ to leak out to certain channels. It’s possible she too will try to take the bait. Either way, the chance to destroy so many of our enemies cannot be passed over.”

If the aim here was to stun Twilight as many times as possible, Starlight was doing a good job.

Was Starlight seriously about to blab everything?! Or did she somehow know they knew she secretly had one?

Starlight’s eye went calmly from Dash to Twilight.

“From your reaction, I’m guessing this isn’t the first you’ve heard of these artifacts, either.” Starlight rested her cheek on a hoof and smiled at them. “Impressive. Wherever did you hear about them? You know, I find very few ponies know about them outside of witches and those closely associated with them.”

“Her sister is a witch,” Dash covered for them.

“Oh, yes. So you have had encounters with Screwball before.” Starlight turned to Twilight.

“Well, hey!” Dash stood up, wings flaring. “If only witches know about this crap then where did you learn this from?”

“First principles, of course.” Starlight closed her eyes and nodded.

“Oh, right.” Dash rolled her eyes. “Okay, then maybe that’s where we figured it out, huh?”

“She.” Twilight looked down at the table. Dash had bought her plenty of time already, but it was up to Twilight now. But how was she supposed to convince Starlight she’d talked to Screwball about this? That seemed like her only option.

She was the one who knew about the elements and ancient witch lore. What did Twilight know about the element of laughter?

“She said she tried looking for it,” said Twilight. “But she had to give up when she realized it was a mistake.”

Starlight nodded, understanding exactly what Twilight meant, accepting that feint pretending to be an answer. It seemed the only pony out of the loop was Rainbow Dash herself who watched on in confusion.

Maybe Twilight should have paid more attention to her historical education. Keeping Dash alive had seemed a greater priority. She hadn’t expected any element of harmony but the one Starlight seemingly created to come into play, given both were effectively impossible to actively search out.

“And she told you about it?” Starlight asked. “How much do you already know?”

“Not much. I, uh, don’t think I was supposed to hear about it at all. All I know is she thought looking for it was a bad idea.”

Of course, Twilight knew exactly why that would have been were it true. So did Starlight from the look on her face.

Her little bluff was going far better than any bluff before. Twilight supposed the fact she always looked nervous must have covered for her somewhat. Maybe Twilight was finally learning to be cool and fearless like Rainbow Dash!

“I intended to tell you either way,” Starlight settled down. “The element of laughter is an object of incredible power. The gem is the essence of laughter itself, nearly a god in its own right. Allowing it to fall into the hooves of our enemies would be an unmitigated disaster.”

“Uh huh.” Dash raised a brow. “What specifically would that do? Like you can make ponies laugh themselves to death?”

“It could also be described as the essence of joy and, most importantly, optimism,” said Starlight. “So long as you hold onto joy and hope, the gem shines brighter the more hopeless your situation gets. That is its greatest power. Do you understand?”

Twilight glanced at Dash, clearly still confused at the implications of that. Twilight herself understood already but pretended not to.

“If you can already do something, you don’t need its help,” Starlight explained. “If you can’t do something, it will empower you proportionally to your inability to do it. The more hopeless and impossible the odds against you, the more capable you become.”

“So.” Dash’s eyes darted left and right as she finally caught up. “But then there’s no situation where you’d ever lose? Is that seriously what you’re saying?!”

“Provided your joy and optimism never waver, yes.” Starlight nodded.

Though, as Twilight knew, there was one other, even greater restriction Starlight had yet to mention. But one who did manage to wield it would be nearly unstoppable as she mentioned, their spirits alone being their only vulnerability.

Of course, the question as always was where did Starlight learn of such things? Had she trained with a witch? Did the other witches even still have such knowledge after so much was lost?

Trixie hadn’t known about the ascension spell nor about elements of harmony. That made sense, in keeping with Twilight’s theory. You wouldn’t want a student you feared to learn of such a terrible weapon.

Yet clearly not everypony had forgotten.

“I won’t ask you to imagine what it could be like for an evil pony to acquire such an artifact.” Starlight waved her hoof. “I believe we’ve seen the consequences of one who held it for just a short while in recent history. It was your father, I believe.”

Starlight turned to Twilight. Part of Twilight had assumed she’d meant Dash, who actually had a father, only to remember what Starlight meant.

“What?” Twilight staggered back. Sometimes she forgot Bloodstorm, Screwball’s father, was supposed to be hers as well.

“For a time he was considered invincible,” said Starlight. “He never came close to losing a single battle, even the ones where he was outnumbered a hundred to one.”

“Of course he lost battles!” Dash hit her hoof against the table. “That’s how he ended up dead. I got a C- in history and even I know that much.”

“There was a turning point, of course. For a moment, like he would invade the southern parts of Equestria only to suddenly… lose confidence and stop one day. He had a massive fleet that just stopped and turned around when he, the pirate king, got cold feet for no discernable reason. The summer of 1307. After that, he never took to the field himself and never invaded another city for the rest of his life. Is your C- enough to remember what he instead turned his efforts towards?”

“He…” Dash had to rub the back of her mane for a few seconds before remembering. “He started looking through old ruins and stuff for treasure, right? And eventually, his admirals got so fed up with it they offed him.”

“Yes! Is it starting to sound like maybe he lost something and went looking for it again? I think, perhaps, the element of laughter source of his strength for a time. Yet eventually it came to find him unworthy or no longer ‘fun’ and so it abandoned him and didn’t allow Bloodstorm to find it again.”

Something about that explanation felt wrong. Of course, all of it was built on conjecture of histories Twilight barely knew anything about… but even taking all of Starlight’s assumptions for granted, it felt wrong.

The element of laughter decided to side with Screwball’s father and then later abandoned him…?

“And it was the search for this object that destroyed him in the end,” Starlight continued. “The element of laughter has extremely high standards. It will resent any attempt by those it deems unworthy to use it. Simply looking for it will cause it to unleash torrents of cruel pranks and cosmic irony unto the searcher until they are destroyed. He lost countless underlings on that fool’s errand until they all turned against him. I believe it was Bloodstorm’s attempt to find the element of laughter that eventually undid him. It created his empire and destroyed it.”

“Hold up.” Dash stopped her there. “A rock has standards? This is some kind of magic rock we’re talking about, right? That’s what I’m picturing in my head.”

Twilight fought her urge to burst into explanation. Thankfully, Starlight was there to scratch the itch for her.

“An element of harmony can only be wielded by somepony suitably righteous,” said Starlight. “But is righteousness not subjective? Surely you’ve heard of magic swords that can only be drawn by those pure of heart.”

“Right.” Dash nodded at the familiar example. “And it’s the sword’s opinion of ‘righteous’ that decides if they can do it. And you’re saying Bloodstorm was the guy this laughter god rock… thing decided was worthy? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture of him smiling.”

“You do realize what having over three hundred foals entails, don’t you?” Starlight coughed to dismiss the actual answer. “He was a hedonist to the extreme. I imagine it must only care for such ponies, with ravenous appetites to consume all with wild abandon.”

“And does that include thinking it’s okay to destroy anypony who disagrees with you on a single point?” Dash asked.

“It would seem so. Think about it. It wants hedonists who are happy all the time, never sad, never concerned with anypony else of the problems of that world– that is, it wants to belong to maniacs like Bloodstorm. Such a pony would think it just to destroy any who disagree with them as well. As you may have guessed, the element of laughter is not a force for good in the world. It is a thing of evil, that can only be used by such terrible monsters. I intend to see it destroyed before it can be used again.”

Was it evil?

Twilight wondered. She knew a bit about its origins. It was an object created by Golden Feather herself, though for who it was not known.

Its immense power and refusal to be found made it ‘good’ in the philosophy of the old ways. Twilight never questioned that assessment until Dash forced her to question her philosophy in general.

Twilight couldn’t answer.

“The pure distilled essence of laughter.” Dash folded her forelegs and thought deeply about that. “Spreads misery and strife? I dunno if that checks out.”

“It’s more like it’s laughing at you, not with you,” said Starlight. “Laughter is often cruel, isn’t it? Screwball is constantly laughing. Can you tell me it wouldn’t be drawn to her, for example?”

Twilight bit her lip. She knew that must have been what Starlight was going for… but if Screwball had an element of harmony and wanted to hurt Dash…

“But you said Sunset Shimmer has it?” Dash recalled the facts to herself. “If I’m getting this right it only allows hedonists to find it, but you’re also saying Sunset Shimmer is a perfect paragon of hedonism and laughter? Like a laughing, screaming maniac? I met her and she seems like… not that.”

“You’re not wrong,” Starlight agreed. “If she were capable, we’d all be at her mercy right now. A wielder of an element of harmony would be unstoppable. I suspect she’d be in my place were that the case.”

That statement oozed with irony.

“But that doesn’t mean her having it is of no concern,” said Starlight. “If it is with her, then it is using her… perhaps to get to somepony truly worthy. Somepony like Screwball, perhaps?”

Twilight hated it, but a lot of Starlight’s conjecture made sense. Maybe Screwball really could use the element of laughter. To use an element not created for you specifically… you’d have to be borderline mentally ill to have a chance at it, their opinions were so eclectic.

And if she did somehow get it, it’d be nearly impossible to protect Rainbow Dash any longer. Twilight knew it was all just conjecture, but just the thought filled her with fear.

“You’re saying Screwball is going to be its chosen one?” Dash’s voice held more skepticism.

“That is my fear. I have reason to believe it is moving.”

“Silverstorm already said Screwball couldn’t find it,” Dash objected. “That means it doesn’t want her, right?”

What the heck was Dash doing?! She knew that story wasn’t true!

“Perhaps at the time. But ponies can change,” Starlight reminded her. “The element of laughter chooses only now to move. That could mean Screwball is only now ‘worthy’ of it.”

That was right!

Twilight understood why the story felt off now. She knew for a fact Starlight was lying, or at least wrong, about Bloodstorm ever having had the element of laughter. She wanted to kick herself for not finding the flaw in the story sooner.

They only work so long as you never change your mind and always agree with them. But to that end, they sort of make you agree with them. You become unable to change your philosophical beliefs. Twilight had seen the effect in person.

Once somepony put on the element of laughter, they would never be able to do anything ‘unworthy’ of it again. So it would never abandon them!

The question now was why Starlight was making all this up. What did she want?

This was something Rainbow Dash was better at figuring out. But Twilight wouldn’t be able to ask her until they escaped from here.

“This is way too many assumptions.” Dash folded her forelegs. “I don’t even know if this thing you’re talking about exists let alone whether we need to destroy it or any of your other billion claims!”

“Oh, I understand you lack enlightenment and need evidence to accept anything.” Starlight gave a solemn nod of her head. “That’s why I’ll give you a chance to see for yourself. Your mission, for now, is merely to find the element of laughter. If you agree to do this, I’ll lift the sanctions.”

“Just finding it?” Dash asked. “Not to destroy it?”

“I’m confident you’ll want this vile thing destroyed once you’ve seen it for yourself.” Starlight smiled. “But yes, as you may recall simply finding it is a difficult task that entire armies have failed at. I won’t lie to you. I don’t think anypony else is capable of helping me with this task.”

Starlight was lying to them. Maybe she was afraid of it and wanted it gone? Though it’d be best to leave it be, were you afraid of it.

Or what if she had an underling that could use it? Nightglider was always smiling… was that close enough? Or maybe Sunset Shimmer–

“I think we should agree to help.” Dash cut Twilight’s thoughts off.

Twilight wanted to object, but at the same time, Dash had a smile as though this was all part of some plan. So Twilight nodded for now.

In the worst-case scenario, they could always just not show up at the last second.

“Excellent,” said Starlight. “Then–”

“One more thing.” Twilight raised a hoof, hoping to get this in before the chance was gone. “Do you know of any more?”

“More?”

“You called it an element. So there are more of these?” Twilight asked.

Starlight smirked. Either she was amused at Twilight’s unusually sly question or saw straight through to the bottom of it.

“There is at least one other,” Starlight said. “But that one is sealed away in the shadow realm. We needn’t concern ourselves with it.”

So Starlight also knew about the element of honesty. Though she was likely right in saying that one was of no importance.

Author's Note

If at any point in this chapter you feel like you might faint, keep repeating 'It's only Sonata'.

Cultists 5: Inception

Dash and Twilight hung off the edge of the Cinderbird as their conversation with Starlight weighed on their minds. Dash had a bit of a plan cobbled together already, but there were so many variables. She felt her head spinning on some of the points.

Starlight said she was perfectly fine with them asking Sunset Shimmer about this directly. Her main plan was for them to ask Sunset about it, as her taking it out would be the easiest way to make it appear.

However, she warned things could go south fast from there. She insisted on being nearby when it happened.

There could be little doubt Sunset would show it to them, if those were the rules. Trixie made it sound as though the moment Sunset learned Twilight was a master witch, Sunset would be at her beck and call.

It couldn’t possibly be as easy as sneaking into her house at night, though. Starlight wasn’t stupid enough to just let that happen. Starlight would be carefully waiting for this conversation and whatever she expected to happen afterward. She’d have her followers waiting day and night.

There was always the chance Starlight did simply want them to witness it and truly believed they’d want it destroyed. There were plenty of evil artifacts in the world that deserved as much.

There was still so much Dash didn’t know about Starlight. You’d think finding out about her origin story, even if only the fake one she gave to the public, would be easy. But now. Her followers wouldn’t normally tell you about it, merely telling you to ‘read her books’.

And then when you went to hit said books…

“Did you ever get to read that book Nightglider gave us?” Dash asked. “About Starlight?”

“The main thing I learned is that Starlight is the most prolific author in history,” said Twilight. “She has an entire section at that bookstore dedicated to her. She’s written nearly four hundred books and has just as many tape recordings. I’ve read the first five of them already, but I got nothing important.”

“I tried skipping ahead twenty books and that didn’t work either,” said Dash. “By then, it’s full of so much jargon that it’s like I’m reading a foreign language. I didn’t even get passed the first page with all the SBRs, Tik-Ms, and MNNs and crud. There isn’t even a guide to what all this means.”

Dash tried this once before when she was a teenager. When she’d first gotten curious about Starlight’s religion, some years ago, she tried to figure out what this religion was about only to find herself stunned by mountains of books. There was no clear starting point. Her ‘easy’ books had nothing to do with the outer realm or gods.

Starlight had written a book or lecture on every conceivable topic from history to gardening, in addition to some forty works of fiction in every genre. Reading any of these gently funneled you into her sequence of ‘philosophy’ books. That web of over a hundred manuscripts then slowly led you into her religion, each one more technical and obscured by jargon than the last.

Only during this most recent attempt did Dash realize how intentional and insidious the whole network was. She drew ponies in from every corner with her more innocent books, slowly indoctrinating them like a lobster in a gradually boiling pot. She hid the truth under that mountain of information, making sure only ponies already indoctrinated could understand her overtly religious texts or see her more imposing opinions.

The one part that still didn’t make sense was how Starlight managed to crank out all these books! Dash nearly died trying to write a ten-page essay and here was Starlight allegedly cranking out entire novels in under a week.

That and what an ‘SBR’ was.

“An SBR is a serial brain rejection.”

Dash lifted a hind leg as Nightglider trotted up behind them. She needed a moment to reassure herself she’d said that part out loud.

“It’s when your serial, or subconscious, mind rejects something that’s too true for you to accept in your current state by making you think it’s ridiculous,” Nightglider explained this all with both excitement and smugness. “Kinda like when you see SBR for the first time and you dismiss it instead of doing the logical thing by taking one of Starlight’s courses.”

Dash barely followed even that much, mostly because she was focused on Nightglider herself rather than her words.

Nightglider may very well be an unwitting pawn in the end, but she knew as much as Starlight would reveal to the public. Dash could go straight to Starlight, but that pony was just a little too slick. Getting it from that horse’s mouth would be a highly curated experience that came with complimentary gaslighting.

“Nightglider!” Dash spun around and grabbed her. “You know about your religion! Tell me how Starlight became so… enlightened or whatever.”

“I dunno.” Nightglider tilted her head. “There’s a reason we don’t normally go straight into that with the uneducated. Last time I tried to explain it you were pretty obstinate and close-minded. The blind can’t understand color.”

“I was–” Dash’s eye twitched, but she clenched her jaw to keep from saying more. “I was. Sorry about that. But after reading a little of her work we’re willing to listen now. Right?”

Dash shot Twilight a look. Twilight went from a flash of surprise to an unsteady nod.

“Er. Yes!” Twilight looked like she was trying to match Nightglider’s awkwardly large smile. “I must admit! That book was far more… philosophical than I gave her credit for.”

Nightglider hummed, tilting her head to the side as she smiled as always.

“Well, I do want to convert the two of you! It’d be the best thing ever if you joined our religion!” Nightglider opened her wings just a little and pushed up on her forelegs. “So I guess if you promise to be more open, I can try again.”

“Uh. Sure.”

“It all started in the seventh grade when Starlight got a B- on her philosophy paper. That’s what prompted her to start her school club. Because her teacher was so ignorant, she had to teach the other students philosophy herself.”

“What?!”

Was that seriously her backstory? She started a cult over a B-?! Dash would have killed for a B-! She was about to say as much when she noticed Nightglider’s smile twitch just a little. She couldn’t let Nightglider shut down on her again.

“I mean, for somepony as great at philosophy as Starlight,” Dash corrected herself. “I can hardly believe she’d ever get a B.”

“I know! Can you believe her teacher was that horrible?” Nightglider laughed and relaxed again. “Eventually, she realized the only explanation was that everypony else’s fundamental understanding of metaphysics was wrong. There had to be something beyond us that we simply didn’t comprehend or else how could she be ‘wrong’? Obviously, the outer realm is where knowledge beyond our simple world lies, so she sought the answers there.”

“You mean she’s a mad scientist?” Dash blinked. “Then why does she give Rarity and the others crap for doing the same thing?”

“Oh, it’s completely different. First, you wouldn’t let a little filly drink alcohol or drive a train but it’s fine for an adult to do those things. Rarity is an irresponsible child doing things she’s not supposed to do. Starlight is the one true adult, so it’s okay for her to do stuff the rest of us can’t. Second, Starlight didn’t just stick her head inside, she went all the way in for months.”

Twilight opened her mouth to make one of the more obvious objections, but Dash cut her off.

“Hold up!” Dash opened one wing to stop Twilight. “You’re saying she went all the way into the outer realm?”

“Yeah!”

“But that kills you!” Dash shook her head. “Er. Doesn’t it? I’m, uh, ignorant about that subject.”

“Don’t worry. Everypony is ignorant at your stage of development.” Nightglider gave her a little nod. “Most ponies do become permanently braindead if they spend more than ten seconds in the outer realm. But Starlight is so incredible and smart that she managed to hold onto her sanity and explore the paradise the alicorns are trying to keep from the rest of us.”

Dash and Twilight shared a look. If there was any truth to this, there was no way ‘sheer incredibleness’ was what protected Starlight.

“I always heard it was a swirling pit of madness.” Dash tilted her head.

“No. Think about it. Ponies who gaze upon the outer realm are overcome with an incredible burst of creativity and inspiration. I’ve seen it personally. Starlight can just sit down and crank out a fifty-thousand-word book in a single eight-hour session. She writes non-stop, just like a pony who does a micro-dive but without the side effects.”

This ‘basking in the outer realm’ thing would explain how a pony in her thirties could have already produced hundreds of books and lectures.

Dash had heard as much. Though it was called ‘mad science’ ponies could use smaller ‘doses’ for artistic purposes as well. But those ponies only peeked into the outer realm for a few milliseconds. Doing it for even one second would leave you able to build advanced robotics but leave you incomprehensible to anypony else for the duration.

“And that’s where Starlight met Cosmos who told her that the alicorns are trying to keep us from obtaining true glory. They want us to remain like little children, so we’ll be at their mercy forever. But Starlight is different. She wants all her followers to become like her, to become true adults like she is! Through her teachings and guidance, we’ll be able to enter the outer realm and grow to be as great as Starlight.”

Nightglider sat down to raise her forehooves to the sky, looking up as if to embrace the sun.

“That’s why I laugh whenever somepony tries to tell me I’m brainwashed or that Starlight is ‘using’ her children. Like any parent, she just wants us to grow to become equal to her. She and Cosmos see a future where all of us ascend to godhood! Then there will be millions of us and barely ten of the old alicorns. We’ll be able to beat them up and take their paradise for ourselves.”

Was that what Starlight wanted? A world where everypony became their own gods? Maybe if you took that at face value it wasn’t the worst-case scenario. In some religions, you were doing it for the ‘reward’ of a swift death.

Not that Dash could ever believe such a thing. There was no way Starlight saw the ponies she manipulated as her equals or ever wanted them to become as powerful as herself. But saying that out loud would only make Nightglider shut up again.

“And that includes the two of you!” Nightglider put a hoof on a wither of either of the ponies. “Starlight will convert you because she said she will and she’s always right. You’ll both become gods beyond even where Starlight is now and join us in paradise. I can’t wait for you to see the light. You can’t possibly imagine the love a higher being like Starlight has for lower beings like us.”

“And everypony else?” Dash asked. “You said they’d be left behind?”

“Starlight isn’t going to force anything on anypony. Anypony can choose to turn away from her teachings. Just like you could also blow your brains out or feed yourself to a manticore. It’d be stupid, but you can do it. All they’ll get is a horrible death from old age.”

But of course, the joke was on her as Dash already had a method of obtaining eternal youth.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come take one of her mental training courses with me?” Nightglider asked. “They helped me so much!”

“Er.” Dash knocked her hoof off and took a step back. “We’re busy.”

“Even after hearing all that?” Nightglider tilter her head. Her smile faded but quickly rebounded. “Well, I suppose the blind can’t understand color, right?”

And just like that, the conversation was over.

Rarity returned to Oaken Field, once more in Moondancer’s enormous stronghold carved into a weeping willow. The great hall looked entirely different now. Ponies still crowded it, but these were not mere refugees seeking shelter. They were the leaders of the Everfree, everypony whose opinions held any weight in the coming conflict.

Rarity walked between the three rows of tables, as though coming before a tribunal. She could see the leaders of the Mad Science Institute and Association, and a representative from the Mad Science Cartel. There was a dozen of the most prominent cult leaders, a chief of the diamond dogs… and, of course, Moondancer.

Sitting not among the other leaders but standing in the opening of the U was the representative of the Bloodstorm Cartel. Screwball had sent Batton Pass, her second in command, to argue their case.

Screwball required anypony who wanted to be in her upper ranks to undergo dangerous body modifications. She had a spider pony and Rarity knew a snake pony was lurking about somewhere. A bat pony was par for the course.

The same body modification technology had been used by the cartel, in the days Bloodstorm still lived, to create a race of ponies like Batton Pass– bat-winged, fuzzy ears and slitted eyes. Rarity didn’t want to say they all looked the same, but all her kind had the same grey fur and blue hair. They were all partial clones or something along those lines. Really, this could have merely been a double of the real Batton Pass and Rarity might have missed it.

If Rarity wasn’t mistaken, Batton Pass was the second generation of these ponies. That incident happened long ago now, and her people were scattered in pockets throughout the world.

Coming here in person was a risky move, but a necessary one, even with Moondancer’s assurance of protection until the meeting was over. She had to show confidence if she wanted anypony to side with her. Had she sent only a robot, it would have shown too much fear on her part.

Her first show of ‘confidence’, sadly, came from Blueblood, head of the Mad Science Association, in the form of a wink. Rarity rolled her eyes at him, knowing full well how madly in love with her he was.

She supposed he was even more her rival now than before. But at the end of the day, they were rivals rather than enemies. Blueblood would want to be free of the Bloodstorm Cartel more than anything else. She could count on his support.

“Is Radiant Blade not coming?” Moondancer asked one of the elders.

“He hasn’t been seen in months,” she replied. “He vanishes now and then.”

“I see. Then we’ll begin now.” Moondancer stood. “There’s been a great deal of discord sown recently. Two groups granted sanctuary by our confederation are now at odds. The Bloodstorm Cartel has effectively declared war on MSL. We must decide if we will permit this through inaction or not.”

“I’d like to announce!” An unfamiliar pony stood up. “That the Mad Science Cartel takes no sides in petty politics. We will remain neutral, and willing to sell to anypony, in this coming excitement.”

The representative of the Mad Science Cartel wore a garish yellow jumpsuit, their uniform, which clashed horribly with his purple fur. Even worse was that gas mask making all manner of hissing noises. They always wore those, given their fondness for poison gas and handling toxic materials. If they never removed them, you could never be tipped off when they were about to gas an area.

He was not the leader of the Mad Science Cartel, but merely a sales pony. Dr. Von Bolt, their true leader, was a brain in a jar these days.

Rarity’s only interaction with him had been the time she begged him to share that brain-in-a-jar technology with her. He responded by sending her five pages that merely read ‘hahaha’ over and over. It wasn’t even carbon copies. He’d written the word out in pen by hoof for five pages. And he didn’t even have hooves!

“Neutral?” Rarity turned to the representative of the Mad Science Cartel. “Didn’t you send a giant monster to try and kill me recently?”

“Hardly!” His gas mask hissed in imitation of a huff. “I merely sold that giant monster to somepony who then tried to kill you with it. Completely different. And if you don’t like it, why not buy your own giant monster, hm? Why don’t we all buy giant monsters? I know I’d feel safer with one!”

The sales pony threw his forelegs and wings wide in offer.

“There’s only so much mutagen back at our base! Buying now will ensure your enemies don’t get any! Why we have one hundred cockroaches forty feet in length each.” He ran his hoof across the table, tracing out their size. “And we’ll sell them at a mere twenty thousand bits a piece.”

“Ha!” Blueblood scoffed. “As if anypony would want an army of such foul creatures. Sounds like somepony spilled mutagen on cockroaches and must sell them all before he gets in trouble.”

“Why you!” He muttered but didn’t deny it. “Don’t come crying to me when everything you care about is devoured by massive cockroaches! They can fight even without heads! Surely somepony here sees that–”

He scanned the room to find not one pony remotely interested. That finally shut him up and he slunk back down into his chair.

“Hmph!” With a second scoff, Blueblood turned to Rarity. “Well, I for one, welcome the ascendancy of our dear Rarity! And not just because she’s madly in love with me and will beg me to marry her once she’s on top. No! You ponies have hardly ever been anything rude and uncouth to me.”

Even through all the reassurance, Rarity had to flick her tail. Blueblood was the one madly in love with her, not the other way around. He’d be the one begging to marry her in the end.

“Rarity’s ace is higher than yours from the looks of things.” Blueblood ran a comb through his handsome mane. “Even your little stunt suggests Screwball doesn’t think she can defeat those two. I’m not the sort to be intimidated by the second strongest in the room. That was the only reason I’ve put up with you thugs to begin with.”

“He has a point,” said Moondancer. “Screwball’s used her incredible strength to force us to make concessions up until now. If her sister has sided with Rarity, and Equestria’s army is against yours, you can’t throw your weight around much.”

Batton Pass let out a small hiss before stepping forward.

“There is more to war than who has the strongest fighter,” Batton Pass said. “Our logistics are vastly beyond any of you, let alone Rarity. I believe our little ‘stunt’ as you called it showed just how weak they truly are. The Rainbow Dash pony isn’t half as strong as the mainstream media would have you believe. Half the ponies in this room could kill her one on one, I assure you.”

Yes. Though as the old story went, which mouse would be the one to put the bell on the cat? Nopony looked eager to be the one to confirm this claim.

“Silverstorm is emotionally unstable and will break once she sees her precious friends die. She cannot be everywhere. We will destroy each of them one at a time from the shadows. We are too decentralized for her to defeat us by destroying even Paradise Island. Even her defeating Screwball won’t be enough to end this.”

“If,” Moondancer cut her off, “we agree to shelter you. My control over ‘the shadows’ is not unsubstantial.”

“There are plenty under you who would help us with or without your permission. I wouldn’t feel safe even under your ‘protection’, for no one who stands against Queen Screwball this day shall be no matter what you decide.” Batton Pass made a pointed look at Rarity. “And let us not forget that there will be consequences for those who turn their backs on us. Even you Rarity will be finding it hard to feed whatever meager following you have before long. You may think we’re the bad guys, but we’re only threatening to do what Equestria has been doing all along! You can side with them if you want, but they’ll never care about any of you. They were trying to starve you out long before we were.”

Rarity bit her lip. This was the real trump card. Maybe Rarity had some slight influence on the government via Dash, but not enough to overturn those asinine trade restrictions so easily.

“Everypony!” Rarity addressed them all. “The Bloodstorm Cartel is no better than the government that banished us. They’re merely a different form of oppression. Is there anypony here who wouldn’t welcome the chance to be free from their influence? Who doesn’t want to be forced to pay their extortion any longer? I know throwing them off won’t be easy, but this is your best chance to do so. Between the appearance of my new allies and Equestria now gearing up for war with them, there’s never been a better opportunity.”

“And even if you do win, what then?” Batton Pass asked. “Will the Everfree magically become suitable for producing sugar? Or do you think Equestria will grant you some of our islands if they manage to conquer us?”

“I have connections. To an extent,” said Rarity. “Rainbow Dash is rank S and she’ll listen to me. Perhaps we can negotiate with them. In exchange for siding with them over the cartel.”

Batton Pass was about to scoff at the idea and Rarity couldn’t blame her. Her suggestion wouldn’t be an easy path. At least Rarity did have, through Rainbow Dash, some means of reaching those in power.

But just then a messenger pegasus came rushing into the room.

“Urgent news!” She announced. “President Starlight Glimmer has just announced her plans to rescind all food-related trade restrictions with the Everfree! It was shortly after meeting with Rainbow Dash.”

That sent waves through the crowd of ponies so that none could truly speak for a few moments.

Even Rarity found herself stunned by the news.

Was Dash that much of a political genius? To get this done in a single day?

Probably not. She probably agreed to something stupid in exchange if this was at all related to her. But whatever the truth, Rarity had to play on this.

“Ahem.” Rarity cleared her throat. “Well, the negotiations seem to have gone faster than I expected.”

There were a few chuckles, infuriating Batton Pass.

“Keh!” Batton Pass hissed in her direction. “I don’t know what happened here, but you cannot possibly expect this to last! Equestria still views all of you as deplorables! In ten years, Flash Bang or somepony like her will become president and throw all these mercies on the fire. This will not last.”

“Not necessarily! Rainbow Dash has already gotten this much done.” Rarity turned to face the other leaders, not bothering to look at Batton Pass. “She’s rid us of two witches, soon to be three, and is removed the sanctions. With her on our side, we have our first real chance at reform in decades. Why would any of you stand against her now?”

“Rainbow Dash will die within a month!” Batton Pass hissed. “Our reconnaissance showed that she is the weakest of them all. She is nothing but a charlatan who has conned her way this far!”

“Even if that’s true, she’s conned her way much farther than anypony else has in such a short time,” Rarity reminded him. “I would have expected the likes to you to appreciate the value of having the ultimate con artist on your side.”

Moondancer motioned for the two of them to calm down.

“I believe I have enough to make my decision now. Either move I make will be risky.” Moondancer closed her eyes, considering it only a moment longer. “I suppose the rest of you will wish for me to speak first before making your own decisions. Very well.”

Moondancer stood up, all eyes falling upon her. This was it! Nearly all the rest would follow her lead and those that didn’t would have difficulty moving through the Everfree.

Rarity didn’t doubt she’d be leaving here alive either way, but this decision would radically alter the course of her actions moving forward. Every single pony in the room had a similar weight hanging about their necks, waiting for Moondancer to remove them for better or worse.

“Whoever we side with, the other will view us as an enemy. Equestria and Rarity’s faction are the greater threat between the two. The latter is not hostile to this city by any stretch. Siding with them presents us with more opportunity moving forward. For these reasons I am putting my trust in them.”

A rush not unlike the one she’d gotten upon reviving Sweetie Belle shot through Rarity. She lifted her head higher than she even knew it could go and smiled, basking in her momentary victory.

Batton Pass let out only a subdued hiss as commotion went through the room. More cheers than boos, thankfully.

Rarity did her best to scan the room, seeing who was relieved and who was seething at the decision. She could tell most were at least neutral to the announcement. But she spotted resentment on at least a few faces. And for every resentful face you saw, there were two you didn’t.

“Anypony circulating materials from the Bloodstorm Cartel will be imprisoned. Anypony who goes after the marks on that list will be tried for murder,” Moondancer continued. “I will ask everypony working for the Bloodstorm Cartel to leave the city until further notice.”

Mere seconds passed before one well-dressed pony in a suit stood up, indignant.

“I will not stand against the Cartel!” He declared. “I would rather be banished from the city than give up my ties to them.”

A few of the others started to agree, but it was Batton Pass of all ponies who hushed them.

“Those who wish to remain loyal to us, I ask you to remain silent for now,” said Batton Pass. “Screwball is the only hope many of you have. I’ll assume any not now swearing allegiance to her are doing so as part of some underhanded ploy to sabotage our enemies. You can prove your allegiance through actions rather than words. We will welcome any who betray the confederacy or Rarity or–”

“I just said I wouldn’t tolerate any further threats from you.” Moondancer stood. “I would like you to leave.”

“Don’t think everypony I have here is leaving.” Batton Pass gave a slight smirk before turning to leave, doing her best to act as though she’d won.

Though Rarity was the clear winner of this exchange, Batton Pass’s final strategy had dampened any enthusiasm that may have brought. Already, the leaders of this loose confederation were looking over the room, gauging the others to see who might side with her.

Whatever alliance they had wouldn’t survive any serious stress tests. Many would splinter off all but immediately. But at least Rarity could know they wouldn’t be united against her. For now, she’d dodged the most immediate threat.

Or perhaps Rainbow Dash had dodged it for her. She’d need to learn the story behind all that later.

For now, there was one important figure who’d yet to speak… the leader of the Mad Science Institute. Rarity had been a bit surprised to see her down here at all. Their headquarters was so far to the north they could have easily ignored this conflict. It wasn’t like MSI had any love for either Rarity or Batton Pass’s faction.

And she remained a pensive observer through all those theatrics.

Rarity could feel a literal chill as she approached the mare. Her body may as well have been made of ice, her icy blue fur helping that analogy along. You didn’t need to get overly close to tell how low her body temperature was. Every breath, even in this warm room, came out as mist. Her eyes had a sheen to them as if the moisture in them had turned to frost.

She had a whole apparatus attached to her. Metal cufflinks with vents on her forelegs, and a tank of some red liquid on her back. The latter attached directly to her neck, pumping that blood-like fluid into her veins. Rarity always assumed that was to keep her from freezing over completely.

“I’m assuming you came down here for a reason?” Rarity asked. “I don’t suppose you could be persuaded to side with us?”

With some effort, Sunny Flare, the leader of the Mad Science Institute, opened her eyes.

Hers was one of the more powerful factions here, outnumbering the other three mad science organizations combined. They were also the most distant, however. MSI’s stronghold stood thousands of miles north from here, in the frozen wastelands of the far reaches.

She had undergone the same sort of body modification Arachnado and presumably Batton Pass had, though to more questionable ends. Her body had been modified only to resist the cold. No amount of cold could kill her, simply make her more lethargic.

Apparently, this was to the end of studying ghosts. She’d had a fascination with understanding them in her youth, even convincing some specter to let her live among their ‘fraid’ for perhaps five years or so. Rarity couldn’t help but think she regretted that impulsive decision, as she turned her attention instead toward studying the outer realm some time later.

The cold, at least, kept her preserved. She must have been in her forties but looked no older than Rarity. Perhaps that would have been worthy of some jealousy, but it did have some drawbacks. Sunny Flare still aged, albeit differently. Every year her body got colder, and she now required that whole apparatus on her back to keep from freezing.

What would it be like in another twenty years?

But so was the fate of any leader of a mad scientist organization. Rarity couldn’t imagine herself aging normally, either. No, she would never be an old lady. Either she would die young or implant her brain in a robot long before it came to that.

“I already have enough weighing on my mind without bothering with this war nonsense,” said Sunny Flare. “I certainly have no sympathy with the cartel, but MSL has historically been at odds with us.”

“The leaders who started the feuds between us are gone now,” said Rarity. “Perhaps this is a chance to repair our relationships?”

“Perhaps.” Sunny let out a long stream of mist. “I’m merely repositioning myself for now. I suspect your battle with the Bloodstorm Cartel, even a full-on invasion from Equestria, isn’t the worst of what’s to come. I have been interested in you since–”

It looked as though there was something more she wanted to say. Yet a suspicious glance to the side was all the information Rarity got.

“There are rumors your friend is a witch herself, you know,” her voice became hushed. Rarity felt once again she was in the hot seat.

“You just heard Batton Pass on her way out,” Rarity responded a little too hastily for her own liking. She knew it would be impossible to keep the truth about Twilight a secret for much longer, but every day, every hour, Rarity could buy was priceless. “They’re going to spread rumors and discord among us all. I wouldn’t believe anything I hear in whispers for some time.”

“True. But things are moving, and ponies will be swayed by even false rumors,” said Sunny Flare. “I would urge everypony present to prepare as they would for a coming storm. Now isn’t the time for us to be making overly bold moves, but to be preparing for catastrophe and even greater chaos than even this conflict. That is all I wanted to say for now.”

Sunny Flare bowed her head, but afterward, kept a close watch on Rarity for a long time.

Unfortunately, she was very likely correct in her assessment. That may have been good advice to the rest of them. Though, for Rarity, there was nothing but ‘overly bold’ courses of action from here on out.

Witches 10: Witches in Space

“Alright!” Twilight stepped in front of her whiteboard. She insisted on bringing everypony over to her house, presently in Rarity’s backyard, where her whiteboard was situated. “I’ve gathered you all here for a meeting of the, uh–”

Twilight looked over the group of misfits she’d gathered around herself. All of them could barely fit in the room, given how cramped Twilight’s treehouse was and that Twilight owned nothing to sit on save her bed and the couch.

Said couch was overloaded with the three fillies plus Applejack and Rarity hanging halfway off the end of the thing. Pinkie sat perched on the head like a cat. Then squeezed in on the floor below them were Dash, Derpy, and Trixie on her leash.

Fluttershy looked the most comfortable submerged halfway underground. Having no physical body meant never having to squeeze in anywhere. Though her bear did lay off to the side.

“What is our faction called again?” Twilight asked.

“I thought we were called Team Twilight,” said Fluttershy. “Because the last time we did this you said I was your minion now and I didn’t have anything better to do.”

“Oh, yeah! I remember that!” Twilight smiled and wrote that on the board. “Yes. I suppose technically all of you are my minions now.”

“I never agreed to be your minion.” Derpy raised a hoof.

“Do you have anything better to do?” Twilight pointed the marker at her.

“Uh.” Derpy’s good eye went to each corner of the room before settling on the floor. “No.”

“Heh! Works every time.” Twilight popped the top off her marker and turned back to the board to underline the title of their meeting. “We’re going to try and get to the bottom of whatever the deal with Starlight Glimmer is!”

Dash wasn’t sure how successful they’d be in deducing that. She felt like they didn’t have enough information. Maybe once everypony (mostly Twilight) shared what they knew things would become clearer than mud.

“Derpy!” Twilight pointed the marker in her direction. “You’re my newest minion so you go first. What did you learn from your research on her?”

“Oh! Uh.” Derpy took out her paper. “So when Starlight was thirteen, year 1336, she ran away from home. According to the police report, she went missing for almost a year before coming back. And when she did, she started a school club that eventually grew into her religion.”

Twilight wrote these dates diligently on the whiteboard, starting a timeline of events.

“That’s the same year Nightglider said she went to the outer realm,” Dash noted. “So is that true, then? And she ran away from home over a B-?”

Dash really hoped she had a better backstory than that.

“And you suspect,” Rarity interjected, swirling her hoof, “that being in the outer realm so long inspired her to create an element of harmony? I suppose that is one way to learn the secret, though she would have needed some knowledge of it, to begin with.”

“Nah, see that’s what they want us to believe.” Dash rolled her head back to look up at Rarity. “No way somepony like Starlight would write down what actually happened. How do we know somepony else didn’t make It and she just picked it up? That’s what my money’s on.”

“Or what if Starlight is secretly a witch as well?” Rarity looked up at the ceiling. “If Sunset Shimmer can do it, why not another?”

“I’d know!” Trixie interrupted with an offended huff. “We keep tabs on one another to an extent. I even know who Eclipse’s new protégée is. I seriously doubt anypony with even more knowledge of witchcraft than me was just hiding off to the side.”

“They would need to be on the level of a master witch,” Twilight noted. “The last master besides me died some three hundred years ago. And we know that Starlight’s element had to have been created less than six hundred years ago.”

“Hold up!” Dash cut her off. “How do we know it’s less than six hundred years old?”

“Thanks to the element of magic,” Twilight answered. “That’s how I know about the other two so well. When you put one of them on, you become aware of all the others. I only saw those two and the remaining feathers, which means her element couldn’t possibly have existed back then.”

Twilight finished marking the years 759-1066 (upon Trixie specifying the latter date) as a possible creation timeframe for the element.

“So can we get the actual story about all the elements and stuff now?” Dash asked. “You keep bringing it up, but I’ve never heard the whole story. The rest of us need to know all these details!”

“I don’t think the details are important.” Twilight turned back to her board too quickly. She pressed the marker against the whiteboard but couldn’t think of anything to write.

“Gah! You keep saying that!” Dash stood up. “The whole reason we’re here is to compare notes. So spit it out already. We need the whole story.”

Twilight’s marker trailed down the board. Seeing Twilight divert her eyes and bite her lip made Dash soften her tone.

“Twilight.” Dash put a hoof on her shoulder. “I get that you don’t like remembering those days, but this is important. You can’t skirt around whatever happened any longer.”

With her ears down flat, Twilight scanned the crowd. She passed by each of them, confirming her trust in each one. Her gaze only lingered on Derpy. Dash shot Derpy a harsh look, forcing her to panic.

“Don’t worry about me!” Derpy waved her hooves in desperation. “I spent my whole childhood not judging Rainbow Dash! I’m really good at it!”

“Hey!” Dash flared her wings up.

But before she could say more, Twilight spoke, breaking up the fight.

“Okay, fine,” Twilight relented.

She trotted off to the side of the room, leaving her board and figures behind. She needed another moment to brace herself before speaking.

“My master was a stallion named Starswirl, as Trixie suspected,” said Twilight. “He never really went into details, but I could tell he isolated himself from even the other witches because he had some disdain for the way they conducted themselves and didn’t want me to be tainted by their ideals. A lot of old conversations only made sense after I spoke with Trixie.”

Trixie gave a smug little nod as though her part had been at all on purpose.

Twilight began with a crude drawing of a piece of jewelry – the element of magic. “Starswirl wanted to go beyond what the other witches could obtain. So he created the element of magic with my help when I was still young. It granted him power far beyond what I have even now. Yet- Well the artifact was born of his desire to obtain even greater power, beyond the limits of what any mortal pony could achieve. So the element of magic is full of avarice and hunger. It pushed him forward, to take the next step and become an alicorn.

“Of course, Starswirl wasn’t satisfied with the thought of ascending beyond reality. He wanted a way to become a god in this world. The only thing that had ever created such a god, of course, was the true void through which the Queen of Light was eventually born. That’s why the two of us studied true void in the first place… as a means of alternate ascension. As a way to become a god without detaching from the mortal world.”

Just hearing this much, Dash’s head was already ablaze with possibilities. She didn’t want to interrupt, but the urge got the better of her.

“But if Starlight can create true void… isn’t that what she’s doing, too?” Dash asked.

Twilight dismissed the idea with a stomp of her hoof.

“No, no. I spent centuries meticulously studying true void. After thinking about it, I’m convinced that wasn’t really true void since it behaves nothing like… well nothing. Starlight must have created some form of proto-void. And I’m the only pony who’s ever seen true void so I’m the only one who could have noticed her ‘miracle’ was just a cheap knockoff.”

Twilight started scribbling and crossing out words on her board, muttering about needing a name for Starlight’s imitation. Eventually, she wrote down ‘vulgar void’ and her face lit up as she circled that one.

“But if she has something similar to true void,” said Rarity, “then it stands to reason she’s attempting to do something similar to your own plan, yes?”

“Starswirl’s plan,” said Twilight. “But yes. It wouldn’t go the same way, but given how disastrous Starswril’s attempts were maybe that’s a good thing. For Starlight, I mean.”

Twilight looked down at the ground, deep in thought again.

“I still have no idea how Starswirl screwed up the ascension spell so badly.” Twilight shook her head. “He was even smarter than me! And he had the element of magic helping him so how could he have failed?”

“I think perhaps you’re simply idolizing the pony who raised you,” Rarity suggested.

Twilight blinked, considering that possibility for the first time.

“So.” Dash slowly raised her voice, letting the word linger for a moment before asking what she knew would be one of the awkward parts. “What specifically happened to Starswirl?”

“Bearing the element of harmony… it changed Starswirl in a lot of ways. He used to be so rational and reserved, but the lust for power made him increasingly unhinged and erratic. I’ll admit he tried to cast the ascension spell before our research was complete.”

Now Dash was wondering if bearing her own element had altered Starlight in any way. Maybe it didn’t matter in the end.

“He didn’t turn into anything like an alicorn.” Twilight took a deep breath, then turned to the others. She held back on saying something but carried on nonetheless. “He went out of control as the true void collapsed into true chaos. I suppose in one last moment of clarity, he realized his existence would throw the world into chaos if the transformation was complete. He helped me banish him to the outer realm and because I technically defeated him, he acknowledged me as a master witch mere moments before vanishing forever.”

Twilight grabbed one of her bells. Dash knew a little about the witching hierarchy now. The seventh bell was the one that marked you as a master and was granted only when another master witch acknowledged you as their equal.

“So that’s the truth.” Twilight clutched the bell. “I killed the pony who raised me. Worse, even!”

“Oh, no.” Fluttershy put her hoof over her mouth and came up fully above ground. “Poor Twilight! That must have been so hard on you. Seeing the only pony you care about having to…”

Twilight shook her head.

"That’s not even the thing!” Twilight let go of her bell. “I… the reason I felt bad about it was only because I was embarrassed about messing up so badly and you’d be angry at me for creating something so dangerous. I only recently started feeling bad about what happened to Starswirl. I’m not sure why.”

“Ah, Twilight!” Dash got up and rushed to hug Twilight, locking her neck against the unicorn’s. “You gotta blame yourself for what happened hundreds of years ago! You’re doing everything you can to help now. No one can rightfully say you’re in the wrong.”

“But Starswirl. I barely even cared when I threw him into a realm of unyielding chaos to die! I didn’t cry even once.”

Rarity got up next to hug Twilight from the other side.

“Twilight,” said Rarity, “this simply means you’re more mature now. You don’t need to be embarrassed about something like that.”

“No! But… I know what you’ll all say, but I’m embarrassed about caring now.” Twilight kept her eyes on the ground. “It’s just still hard not to let go of all of my old teachings. I want to be more like you. I decided that the philosophy of the old ways is wrong, so I shouldn’t feel like this anymore.”

“Yeah, I wish it worked that way.” Dash pulled back to look Twilight in the eyes. “That kind of thing takes years to get over.”

“I guess.” Twilight trembled. “Thanks for not… I dunno. Doing something mean.”

Twilight was still shaken by having to confess that much, but she’d feel a lot better later, Dash was sure. The witch returned to her whiteboard, eager to turn the conversation away and alleviate her exposed nerve.

“Then I guess you want to know about Flash, too! Guh! At least I still don’t care about him. The stupid element of harmony decided he was, I dunno, enough of a megalomaniac that it lent him some of its power. Like an idiot, I told him what happened to Starswirl and he apparently thought it was a good idea to stick his dick in the same beehive! He screwed up the spell even worse, I destroyed the element of magic to keep the curse of undeath from getting more horrible than it was and I should have destroyed Flash too!”

Twilight underlined the date 759.

“This is the last time I used the element of magic. I saw the other two back then, so I know a little about them. But Starlight’s wasn’t one so it didn’t exist at that date.”

“So what did you see about them?” Dash asked.

“Starlight told you the truth about the element of laughter,” said Twilight. “It’s absurdly judgemental and borderline sociopathic. It can’t feel any negative emotions so it can’t feel bad about anything it ever does. It could be incredibly dangerous if the wrong pony gave it the wrong suggestion. Though I guess being unable to care about the suffering of anypony else means it's mostly content to sit around and play stupid pranks on random ponies all day. That was the impression I got.”

“That would explain why we’ve never heard of it,” said Rarity.

“And the other one?” Dash asked.

“I guess I’d describe it as… robotic?” Twilight struggled for the word.

“Hey!” Sweetie Belle snapped at her.

“I didn’t mean it like that!” Twilight put a hoof up in her defense. “I mean, it’s like super unemotional and unfeeling and logical.”

“But that’s what I thought you mean!”

“Oh. Then sorry.” Twilight bowed her head. “It wasn’t as… social as the other one. I don’t know what it can do as its powers were sealed away. It’d be difficult to release it from its prison.”

“So these things are like people that you can talk to?” Dash asked.

“They’re overly judgmental and won’t even talk to most people,” said Twilight. “But yes.”

That didn’t give Dash much information, but it was better than going in blind.

“I was also able to confirm the existence of the remaining feathers.” Twilight drew eight quick pictograms of feathers on the board. “There were three left, which was the number I expected.”

“Why would we expect there to be three?” Dash asked.

“There were eight to begin with and five were used.” Twilight clicked her tongue. “This is very basic math.”

“And we knew there were eight because?” Dash tilted her head.

“Oh!” Applebloom raised her hoof. “The Queen of Light gave one of her feathers to each of her seven sons.”

“But that’s seven.” Dash shook her head. “I’m not a math wizard, but isn’t seven not eight?”

“That’s because The Darklord tricked his mom!” Applebloom excitedly went on reciting a story she must have heard a million times. “He hid his in the darkness he created and said he didn’t get one.”

“And that tricked the most powerful god of them all?” Dash asked.

“Well!” Applebloom wanted to answer but her confidence faltered, so she deferred to her older sister.

“That was the first lie ever told,” said Applejack. “So nopony could have possibly seen it coming. Mind you, not even secrets and the like existed until then.”

“Hm.” Twilight tapped her marker to her lower lip, turning to Applejack. “It seems your family’s understanding of things is similar to ours. That’s the same story I was told.”

“Same here,” Trixie added.

“I reckon that’s cause it’s the truth,” said Applejack.

“And everypony knows all of this?” Twilight turned to the more normal of them.

Fluttershy shook her head. Dash had heard plenty of things about the alicorns, but never that tale.

“I’ve heard hundreds of contradictory claims about the mythic era,” said Rarity. “I have no reason to prefer one over the others.”

“I can confirm it to an extent,” said Twilight. “Because the number of feathers tracks with the information.”

Twilight turned to the board and crossed two of her pictograms out right away.

“The eldest and youngest sons, the Radiant Champion and The Darklord, used theirs to create the first two ponies. That would have been Golden Feather and Star Feather.”

Twilight crossed two more out.

“Then those two created the elements of Laughter and Honesty respectively. Golden Feather gave three of them to the witches. Of which, I used one to create the Element of Magic and the other is right there.” Twilight pointed at Scootaloo’s necklace. “So then there’s only two more… Though I’m not sure what became of them.”

Trixie and Applejack both spoke at once to offer a suggestion, interrupting one another.

“You can go first,” Trixie offered with too much magnanimity. “I’m trying to be humble and all that.”

“Thanks? Well, The Darklord gave one of them to the royal family,” said Applejack. “The extra, eighth one, I mean. I know that much. I reckon they still have it.”

“The royal family?” Rarity deadpanned in Applejack’s direction. “All of them were killed in the revolution. I’m sure even Twilight knows that much by now.”

“Not the Maximus Solaris family,” said Applejack. “The other royal family. The Noctilucent Melodious family.”

That got Rarity to sit up with a curious look. Dash never heard of them, either.

“All ponies are descended from Golden Feather,” Applejack explained. “But only this one clan has Star Feather’s blood. They used to be The Darklord’s servants before turning their backs on him. They still have his feather, though. Granny Smith’s grandpa tried getting it back one time, but that was the last we saw of them. No idea where they are now.”

“And let me guess, Starlight is secretly from their family?” Dash asked.

“Well, it ain’t impossible,” Applejack figured, “but they’ve always been pegasi and picky about who they marry to keep it that way. The family name is Noctilucent and all.”

“Eh?”

“Noctilucent is a type of cloud,” Rarity explained.

“Oh, right.” Dash pretended to know that, then covered it up with another suggestion. “Or what if she stole it from them?!”

“I doubt a normal thirteen-year-old would have been able to pull that off,” said Applejack. “They had all kinds of forbidden magic and artifacts made by The Darklord. Maybe after she got back from the outer realm it could have happened.”

Trixie cleared her throat, unable to wait any longer.

“Well the feather I know about could have been found by a normal thirteen-year-old,” Trixie bragged, for some reason, in the face of her earlier declaration. “Cadence had one. Or maybe it was Sombra? At any rate, that feather disappeared around the time of our little civil war. It was supposedly there at the time. We scoured the Festering Scar afterward but never found the thing. I bet it was sitting in the swamp this whole time. Any idiot, no matter how teenaged, could have picked it up if they got lucky.”

“Uh!” Derpy raised her hoof. “But Starlight lived eight hundred miles from the Festering Scar at the time.”

That had to be the one! It all made sense to Dash, now!

“There were like seven or eight master witches present at that time, yeah?” Dash asked. “And that feather disappeared around then? Well, what if one of them made it around then? Because they knew a fight was about to occur.”

Twilight tapped her marker against her lip a few times, considering the idea.

“If that’s the case, Starlight wouldn’t have even needed to find it,” Twilight said. “That one would have found her instead!”

Twilight hastily scribbled down a possible timeline of events.

Twilight created the element of magic some six hundred years ago. That battle and the potential creation of Starlight’s element were three hundred years ago. Then Starlight started her middle school ‘club’ eighteen years ago.

“So if she actually became one with the element back then,” Twilight circled that last event. “That would explain all of her ‘miracles’. Or at least how she was able to survive the outer realm for any period, if she even went there.”

Twilight circled one of the feathers.

“I really think this is the most likely scenario! Trixie! What attribute would Cadance, Sombra, or any of the other master witches alive at the time have imbued the element with?”

“I don’t know.” Trixie struggled to think of something. “Crystals? Slaves? Stairs? The joke is Sombra talks a lot about those in his writing.”

“The stairs.” Twilight took that last one, of all things, seriously. “And she has the power to climb infinitely? Wait, no. That'd be stupid.”

Twilight continued on that fruitless course, trying out different words seemingly chosen at random.

It was Scootaloo speaking up who broke snapped her out of it.

“You’re forgetting about something.” Scootaloo pointed to her head. “Starlight has a billion alicorn feathers! Or maybe a hundred. Somewhere between those. Can’t she make as many of these things as she wants?”

“Those aren’t the same as a willingly given feather,” said Twilight. “They won’t work.”

“Unless she finds a way to make an element of disharmony with them.” Scootaloo spread her wings. “That’s what would happen in a comic book.”

“She’s got to be doing something with those,” Dash agreed.

“Starlight wouldn’t have had access to them until earlier this year,” Derpy pointed out. “They were stored in Area 5X, and Starlight only just became president.”

“Though,” Rarity added, “she might have kept a few to research on so she’d be ready to use them all once she became president.”

Twilight tapped her foot as she thought through all of these points.

“Actually.” Twilight lifted her head once more. “Now that I think about it, we might be able to see those feathers as well if we touch the element of laughter. Maybe that will give us a clue?”

“Wait.” Dash shook her head. “Doesn’t this also mean we’ll be able to us it to look at Starlight’s element directly?”

“Probably!”

Dash frowned. She’d actually gotten the idea as soon as Twilight mentioned this power. But she couldn’t get excited about it.

“That’s gotta be a trap then, right?” Dash asked. “Starlight wouldn’t just give us the ability to see all of her secrets, would she? I mean, all this was her idea in the first place! She’s gotta want us to spy on her or something.”

Dash wracked her brain trying to think of what Starlight could possibly want from all this. She didn’t expect them to know about the element’s spying ability so that was probably part of the trick.

“Oh!” Dash got it! “What if she wants us to spy on something else! Like… other than her? For some reason?”

Maybe that idea wasn’t that brilliant after all.

“Either way,” said Rarity. “Wouldn’t Sunset Shimmer have already seen everything there is to be seen? She’s been carrying that element for some time now.”

“Oh yeah!” Dash let out a sigh of relief. There was a way to sidestep all of these problems that Starlight wouldn’t have seen coming. “That all plays into my plan perfectly anyway.”

“Which plan was this?” Rarity asked.

Dash grabbed Scootaloo off the couch and held her up.

“We ask Sunset Shimmer about stuff and if we don’t like her answer, Scootaloo can just reset the timeline or however that works.”

“Oh, yeah! I could do that!” Scootaloo eagerly offered her services. “I’m pretty good at redoing conversations.”

“See?” Dash smirked. “We can safely get information out of her that way!”

“Her power doesn’t affect the whole world,” Rarity warned. “If you try to spy on Starlight and that goes wrong–”

“We won’t do anything like that until we know we’re safe,” Dash promised.

“I’m not convinced it’s a good idea to follow through with this at all. I don’t think we have much time left to further our aims,” said Rarity. “Twilight, there are already rumors that you’re secretly a witch. We have too many ponies in on the secret. I wouldn’t be surprised if several outsiders already know your true identity. Starlight will turn against us very soon, either way, so don’t be in a hurry to appease her.”

“But.” Twilight paused, having taken going on this mission for granted until just recently. “Then what should we do?”

“We need to defeat Screwball immediately,” said Rarity. “We can only hold off whatever Equestrian forces line up against us if our backs are against the Everfree. Defeating her would reduce the risk of assassinations and make sure this area is firmly on our side.”

Twilight nodded. It didn’t take much for her to go after Screwball.

“Um.” Fluttershy raised her hoof. “I know this is a bit personal, but maybe we should have Twilight fight the ghost of Crater Cemetery instead? We don’t know where Screwball is, but that one’s always inside the crater. We wouldn’t want a ghost that powerful running around during the big fighting and all the ghosts would be eternally grateful to us. That’d be a good thing, right?”

And now Twilight was pulled in that direction. She stammered trying to decide which rabbit to chase.

“Before any of that, we need to get Sunset Shimmer on our side!” Dash made her case. “That’s the easiest mission and the one with the biggest payoff. Plus, we’d be able to find out about whatever the heck Starlight is doing.”

“That has to be some manner of trap,” Rarity said. “Starlight has to know about the connection the elements have to one another. She won’t just let you see her element for no reason.”

“We don’t know where Screwball even is right now,” Dash protested. “We can’t just defeat her whenever we like. But Sunset is already supposed to come to pick Trixie up tomorrow. Besides, we can’t lose with that mission.”

“You can always lose.”

“I think we should let Twilight decide,” Fluttershy said. “She’s the one who’s doing most of the work.”

Twilight panicked as she realized that the decision was ultimately hers, being their trump card.

“Uh!” Twilight’s ears fell flat, she looked between the three ponies, torn by their suggestions. “We’ll go with Rainbow Dash’s plan first!”

Twilight could hardly swallow the visible disappointment in Fluttershy and Rarity.

“But I’ll still do your thing too.” Twilight whipped her head back and forth between them. “Eventually!”

“Oh, I hope I don’t sound ungrateful,” said Fluttershy. “You’ve already helped us all so much.”

Twilight let out a sigh. Dash knew exactly how she felt. Things were getting a little out of control, way too much was going on at once.

But with just one or two more victories, Dash was sure things could be under hoof!

Down in their room, Applejack and Applebloom had finished setting up the ritual altar. Applejack sat in the middle of a blue circle drawn on the castle floor. Applebloom stood outside the circle with a blue candle on either side of her. She looked adorable with the oversized reptilian skull she wore as a helmet, the eye sockets lining up with her own.

They performed similar rituals regularly for purely religious reasons and so it wouldn’t raise much suspicion even if somepony walked in. But this was more than mere religion.

Applejack needed to contact The Darklord. Things were becoming increasingly dissimilar to the original plan. She needed to know for certain if the Element of Laughter was more than a red herring.

“I feel bad about lying to everypony.” Applebloom lifted her skull helmet.

“We’re not lying to them,” said Applejack.

“But we ain’t telling them everything, either.”

“We said we wouldn’t when we first met up,” said Applejack. “They know that already. It’s why they didn’t press us for more than we were willing to share.”

“I guess.” Applebloom lowered the skull back down. “I still don’t want anything bad to happen to Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. They’re all going to accept what we’re doing in the end, right? They’ll side with us?”

“I can’t be sure yet,” said Applejack. “But I understand how you feel. I don’t want anything bad to happen to the ponies who took us in, either. And if The Darklord doesn’t feel the same he’d have to know we feel that way, at least. That’s why I’m talking to him.”

“Okay, I guess.”

“You remember the chant?”

“I ain’t a foal.”

Applejack nodded, then closed her eyes in meditation.

“Sorok Torok Norishte!” Applebloom held a hoof out and began the chant.

Her sister did it right this time! Though maybe Applejack shouldn’t be so surprised. Applebloom had only messed it up the first two times. But she’d always be a little filly in her mind.

Applejack didn’t leave the castle, but merely entered the shadow realm version of it. In the darkness of their windowless room, Applejack could see nearly everything perfectly, including her sister.

Applebloom stood up in a trance. Darkness swirled around the filly and her shadow took on the form of The Darklord. In the real world, she would still appear as her normal self, speaking to nothing, but here she had the imposing likeness of Applejack’s god.

Standing in defiance of all his devastating wounds and gashes made him look only more invincible. Unchained, he had a build that dwarfed even Big Mac. Applejack was a mere filly in size compared to him and he couldn’t help but look down at her with that one red eye.

His oversized frame and heavy armor made his relatively small wings look even less impressive. He’d been plucked of all his feathers long ago was the cause, leaving behind something of a metallic skeleton.

“You’re worried about the element of laughter becoming active,” he said.

“Will it really lend its power to somepony soon?” Applejack asked.

“I think it likely it will lend a pony all of its power,” said The Darklord. “But she wouldn’t be able to defeat Starlight alone. The bearer of the element of laughter couldn’t lose so long as she maintains hope she can defeat Starlight. Starlight couldn’t lose so long as her followers believe she will win. Things would escalate until the world was destroyed without the fight concluding or one of them gave up. It would be Laughter who would choose to surrender. So at the end that makes no difference, you see.”

So that was partially true.

“It’s not Screwball, is it?” Applejack asked.

“The pink one.”

That took Applejack a moment to figure, seeing as Screwball was pink herself.

“Wait. Pinkie?”

The Darklord tilted his head like Applejack had just asked him to confirm that the sun was hot.

“Oh, I thought that was painfully obvious. I hope I didn’t spoil anything.” He shook his head. “Best to let everypony else make their own assumptions for now. She might not make the reach this end if you tell her.”

Well at least that one thread was relatively benign.

Applejack swallowed, ready to ask her real question.

“I want to know something,” said Applejack. “Things aren’t going like you said they would a while ago. You didn’t mention anything about Twilight getting involved in any of this until Starlight forced her to. Did you seriously get blindsided by Rainbow Dash dragging her out?”

“I truly did not predict Rainbow Dash’s actions,” said The Darklord.

“Seriously?” Applejack raised her eyebrow. “Was that two different calender trick really so fantastical that even you couldn’t think of it?”

“With only one eye, my ability to predict the future has been severely limited.” He flicked his remaining eye about. “Depth perception and all that. I’ve been wrong no less than three times in the past thousand years alone. I can hardly even see the future at all without… reflecting my gaze off another entity with similar abilities. But such a view is then tainted by their biases and perceptions.

“My chosen mirror did not see it fit to use their clairvoyance on one so mundane as that pegasus. They have no care for those with insignificant magical abilities and could not possibly imagine such a pony derailing machinations they’ve spent six hundred years on. The only way to compensate would have been to individual sift through every individual like inspecting every grain of sand. So I couldn’t see Rainbow Dash as having any effect on the future either.

“However, I did suppose there was a two to three percent possibility of such an event unfolding. I had alternate routes planned out, unlike them. I suppose they’ve been raging this whole time, but I am unconcerned. I have ensured the path did not change much and I believe I can see the end of things already.”

So Rainbow Dash did change the future?

Applejack knew she’d be scolded for phrasing it as such. There was no set-in-stone destiny and the power of prophecy was merely the art of using massive amounts of information to create astonishingly accurate predictions.

Yet, these prophecies were usually so accurate that it was hard to not see this as changing the future, or as an insignificant event. So rare was it that he got a prediction of any weight wrong that Forbidden Fruit beating him at a mere guessing game impressed him enough to recruit Applejack’s family in the first place.

Was Rainbow Dash’s influence inconsequential? Or was it different when he wasn’t looking at you directly?

“Are you sure about your predictions now?” Applejack asked. “I’m guessing you will think we’ll win. I want to know what’s going to happen to all the ponies I’m living with now. Is Twilight’s fate any different?”

“It’s all too predictable.” He looked up toward the ceiling. “You give a pony a dilemma and they’ll inevitably try to walk straight between the two horns charging at them, assuming some grand advantage to a middle path,” said The Darklord. “That’s why I’m weary of that Rainbow one. She’s the sort the Element of Laughter would speak to, who ignores the horns altogether and wanders off with little concern.”

He lifted a hoof and looked upon it.

“But she isn’t the one who will make the important choice. Twilight Sparkle will refuse her two horrible options and face me to find a third option. Just like Golden Feather, she will be unable to touch me. Just like her ancestor, she will think of the absolute perfect solution for her third and final question. She will say to me ‘what will be your exact position in ten seconds?’ – the same question Golden Feather tried to us. The perfect strategy executed by one who has obtained the greatest strength a mortal can possess.”

The Darklord stomped his hoof back down on the ground.

“Yet it won’t be enough. And she will die.”

Even back then, that three questions thing had been a poetic trap laid out. He’d seen through everything that far ahead. It would be nearly impossible for Twilight to avoid the future he had just laid out. And though it would be better than what she’d originally get, it didn’t sit well with Applejack.

But nearly impossible wasn’t impossible. Rainbow Dash had already broken from the path with some fruity calendar nonsense.

“Is there no other way? What if I explain things to her? What if I tell her not to ask that question?” Applejack asked.

The Darklord laughed and looked back down at Applejack.

“Did she inspire you?” The Darklord asked. “Yes, that’s one of the more significant changes. That sort of thing is contagious.”

“My question?”

“You would merely be the one to give her the idea to ask that question,” he said. “You cannot possibly convince her to take one of the horns she’d be faced with. She cannot surpass Golden Feather in strength nor think of a better question, that would be to exceed perfection. She will try to fight me to keep everything and die in the miasma.”

Applejack doubted she could convince Twilight to accept either choice. She’d do the foolish thing and Applejack couldn’t blame her cause she’d do the foolish thing in Twilight’s situation too.

The Darklord entering the real world for even a short time would have serious ramifications and Twilight would be the one to pay the steepest cost.

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think any of the others among those who took you in will die. I can save the rest of them once I’m free.”

“I suppose it does.” Applejack lowered her hat. “But it still doesn’t sit right with me.”

“And you’ll look for a middle ground?” The Darklord gazed disapprovingly upon her.

She’d been around him long enough to know that he didn’t disapprove of her trying to change the future. He just didn’t like her doing the very thing he’d called predictable moments ago. Taking some middle path would change nothing and he said it without so many words.

“Of course, if there’s a middle ground,” The Darklord tilted his head to see her with less disdain, “that must mean you have two options. You could allow Twilight to die or face obliteration yourself.”

Applejack knew what he meant by the other option. To become one who could change the future in the full gaze of the gods, she’d have to become more like them. She would need to take up the element of honesty.

Though none in the Apple family had ever gotten close to such a feat.

“Well, I suppose I am different from a normal pony in my own way.” Applejack at least smiled. “I’m the type to just take one of the horns and get it over with. I don’t want my destiny to just be leading Twilight to her death. If Rainbow Dash can change things, then maybe I can too.”

“Yes, that’s why I chose you. But if you’re getting too excited, I knew you were going to say exactly that from the moment Rainbow Dash broke that curse.”

Dash emerged from the bathroom later that night to find Twilight already lying prone on their bed, her muzzle in one of her many books. Their bedroom was very quickly turning into a small library.

Trixie slept on a cot off to the side of the room, already deep in slumber. She slept on her back like a barbarian and snored. Though Dash was already used to that much.

Dash jumped onto the bed, sitting down next to Twilight. Twilight had seemingly gotten used to Dash’s presence enough to not even look up from her book.

They started doing this because Twilight had been unnerved at the thought of sleeping surrounded by thousands of other ponies. But that fear had subsided by now.

Twilight no longer looked at every passing stranger with a sense of suspicion. She didn’t wake up five times a night to ask Dash what the normal nightly noises of the town were. Dash had turned her relatively normal.

And she probably didn’t need Dash so much anymore.

Part of her knew the right thing to do was to ask Twilight if she was ready to go sleep in her own bed. Yet most of Dash didn’t want to do the right thing.

Sleeping alone sucked, Dash learned. Sleeping next to Twilight felt a million times better. There was something so soothing and right about it. Even if Twilight woke her up twice a night it’d still be worth it. Though five was still a bit excessive.

She didn’t want to go back to having her own bed. And if she asked Twilight about it, Twilight might decide she was ready to start sleeping by herself again, and then–

It was easy to just not ask the question.

Twilight glanced up at Dash, then back to her book.

Was Dash taking advantage of her?

No! Twilight was older than all of Dash’s grandparents combined! If anything Dash was the one being taken advantage of. Yeah!

Twilight glanced up at Dash a second time.

“Is something wrong?” Twilight asked. “You’re staring at me.”

“I was trying to read that book, too!” Flustered, Dash flared out her wings.

Twilight frowned, puffing out a cheek.

“Okay! I, uh.” Dash had to do it! She had to ask if Twilight was ready to sleep in her own bed again. Something in the pit of her stomach didn’t want her to ask that question, though! Something that seemed to have control of her mouth at the moment. Dash had no choice but to compromise with her gut. “I was just thinking about how much better you’ve gotten around other ponies in under a year.”

“Has it really been less than a year since we met?” Twilight looked up at the ceiling.

“Yeah. It’ll be a year on September 13th,” said Dash. “Though I guess we weren’t really friends until, like… the first time you threw me a bug when I was stuck as an owl. That’s when I changed my mind.”

Twilight frowned as she gazed at some distant point.

“A year must be nothing to you, huh?” Dash rubbed the back of her head. She was at least brave enough to bring up another one of her points. “Hey! Is it weird being around ponies so much younger than you? I mean, you’re literally thirty times my age. You must see me as a newborn or something.”

“No.” Twilight came back to the present, shaking her head. “That’s not how I feel at all.”

Dash tilted her head, not sure what she meant.

“I feel like I’m frozen in time all of a sudden.” Twilight sat up. “Years and decades went by so fast when I spent all of my time training and developing spells. I have barely any memories from those hundreds of years. It’s just major breakthroughs every so often that I can recall.”

Twilight turned to Dash.

“But then you showed up and suddenly it’s like I’ve spent half my life with you. I don’t feel like I’m six hundred, I feel like a few years were most of my life! All of my memories are from the short time I’ve been with other ponies. And the only things I look back on without regret are… memories of you.”

Twilight sniffed. Her eyes misted over.

All that time and she only had good memories from the last few months?

Strangely, Dash could relate. Her life had been such a constant trainwreck of failure until she met Twilight.

“Ah. Twi.” Dash scooted up next to Twilight and put a wing over her. “You don’t gotta worry about whatever happened in the past. You can begin living your life starting from here.”

Twilight got a little weepy and sought comfort by burying her muzzle against Dash’s neck. Dash raised her head with pride. Suddenly, all those doubts she’d been feeling recently floated away as she felt Twilight’s warm breath against her neck.

“Yeah! Once we have more free time we’ll make all kinds of memories together! Like–” Dash’s mind sputtered trying to think of places to take Twilight. “We can go to every beach in Equestria! And I can take you to movies and fancy restaurants and uh…”

Dash realized she’d been suggesting dating trips. Thankfully, Twilight probably wasn’t culturally literate enough to notice.

“And a boat ride?” No! That was a romantic thing too. “Arcades! And stuff. I dunno. There’s like a billion things I wanna do with you, Twilight! Your life won’t suck anymore, cause I’ll make it fun! I’ll never let you go back to living alone like that.”

Dash watched with a smile as Twilight’s mood lifted.

Maybe. Maybe Dash could just ask Twilight if she wanted to live with her like, indefinently? And just keep sharing a bedroom? That’d be better than the question she first thought of!

She nearly got the confidence. Then Twilight’s mood dropped, her ears falling flat again, and the lightning faded.

“I know. That’s why I can’t let you out of my sight! I have to find a way to keep you safe!” Twilight pulled back and rubbed her temples. “I should have thought about ponies going after you to get to me before I started all this! I was so stupid back then!”

“Twilight, I’m not helpless!” A twinge of annoyance broke through Dash’s feeling of pride. “I–”

It was true. Her life was a trainwreck up until she met Twilight. Twilight was what turned it around… it was all her, just Dash’s attachment to her.

Twilight watched Dash’s drooping expression with concern, probably misinterpreting it.

“I didn’t mean it like that!” Twilight pressed her muzzle against Dash’s neck, giving her a desperately apologetic nuzzle. “I’m so sorry! I need you! I’m, uh, emotionally dependent on you!”

A normal pony would have phrased that better, but it was endearing when Twilight did it. Dash briefly smiled before her brain went back to work.

Was that why Dash had conflicting feelings about Twilight growing out of her emotional dependency on her? Because if Twilight wasn’t dependent on her and could stand on all four hooves… what did Dash have?

“Do you forgive me?” Twilight kept her muzzle pressed against Dash’s wither as she looked up with puppy dog eyes. Dash could feel Twilight’s breath against her side.

Forgive her for what? Dash didn’t even know.

“Yeah!” Dash forced herself to smile.

She didn’t know what she just forgave Twilight for, but it sure made the unicorn happy, who nuzzled her with more enthusiasm this time.

Dash looked back ahead, her fake smile drifting away. A minute later, Twilight was frowning as she watched Dash’s face with concern resurfacing. Even a pony like Twilight could see through her!

Who invented facial expressions anyway?! Was it The Darklord?! Was this somehow Applejack’s fault, then? It was an invasion of privacy is what it was!

Dash needed more time to think about this or she’d say something stupid and mess things up like always! And then Twilight might run away screaming and never want to talk to her again! And without Twilight, Dash would be back to being a total loser!

She needed to find some way to explain things without Twilight misunderstanding and getting upset!

“I–” Dash was drawing a blank here! She was too nervous about hurting Twilight’s feelings!

Then the door burst open and Scootaloo came charging in.

“Hey!” Scootaloo jumped up on the bed with them. “Can I sleep in your bed again? Since I’m gonna be here tomorrow morning, anyway?”

Rainbow Dash let a sigh of relief. She owed Scootaloo one.

“Oh, wait. Were you two like?” Scootaloo looked back and forth between them, noting Twilight’s muzzle pressed against Dash, a mischievous smile on her face. “Are you two gonna get married or something?”

Rainbow Dash no longer owed Scootaloo one!

“Married?” Twilight repeated the word slowly. “Oh, wait! I read about that. It’s a form of political alliance, right?”

“A what?” Scootaloo took her turn to be confused.

“Like a ruler trades one of their offspring for the offspring of another ruler as an incentive to cooperate or to merge two provinces into a single entity.”

“What?” Scootaloo cringed at Twilight’s explanation. “I didn’t get any of that, but I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. Marriage is like when two ponies love each other and promise to stay together forever and start a family!”

Twilight hummed and put a hoof on her chin, giving the concept serious thought.

“And!” Scootaloo’s smile flashed to Rainbow Dash. “They totally adopt an orphan sometimes?”

“Guh!” Flustered, Dash rubbed the back of her head. This was getting way too awkward and “Look, kid. There’s a fifty-fifty chance I’m going to end up overthrowing the government. If I do, I’ll totally declare myself your legal guardian, okay?”

“Really?!”

“Yeah!” Dash flared her wings out and smiled. “Why not? And sure, you can sleep here tonight. Why not? Let’s, uh, all get to sleep so we’ll be ready for tomorrow, okay?”

“Wow! You’re the best, Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo flapped her little wings in excitement, then quickly burrowed under the blankets between the two of them.

Dash lowered her head, resting her chin on the pillow next to Scootaloo, and then the three of them were laying barrel to barrel.

She really tried to take her own advice, but her thoughts of Twilight wouldn’t let her mind quiet, nor could she bring herself to see tomorrow’s events as more pressing. Somehow, Dash would need to figure out her increasingly confused feelings before talking to Twilight about this again.

For now, she’d just leave the question unasked and Twilight on the other end of the bed.

Snap Allgood sipped some of his expensive gold-tips tea as he watched Ponytown from aboard his private Airship. Not one officially registered in his name, that much would be too obvious for such a stealthy affair.

It wasn’t exactly the most luxurious place in the world to spend these past few days in, but his mission was of absolute vital importance.

“Sir!” The head technician ran onto the bridge and saluted Allgood. “Alicorn magic was detected! We were able to triangulate the position of Subject Two. She’s indeed at Rainbow Dash’s house as the tip suggested.”

So it seemed the tip he’d gotten was true after all.

Of all the places Subject Two could have ended up… it was like she insisted on going to the most troublesome place out of some childish revenge tantrum.

“Of course,” said the technician, “her appearance near Rarity’s castle means the two locations must be linked by a portal or something similar. If we take this information to President Starlight–”

“We’re the ones who would get in trouble.” Snap sipped his tea. “Starlight can forgive malice but never incompetence. I was given fifty million a year and advanced equipment to contain Subject Two in a remote location. If Rainbow Dash simply keeps her here, in a normal house in the middle of a city, for this long without incident…”

How did she even manage that much? Subject Two was an insufferable cretin who refused to cooperate no matter how reasonable Snap had been.

Perhaps they had some form of magic of which Snap had no knowledge. The thought that some lower-class harlot who literally grew up in a cave, if stories were to be believed, had access to better technology than all of Snap’s money could afford.

He felt a flood of anger whenever he thought about it. Those two might as well be trying to steal from him. They jeopardized the chance at godhood Starlight had offered him. What if instead she turned around and made the same offer to these two instead?

“Then how are we going to proceed, exactly?” he asked. “Extracting Subject Two would be exceedingly difficult”

“We don’t need to take her back just yet,” said Snap. “We need this pony’s decision to keep her in a highly populated area to appear as the height of irresponsibility. If an incident won’t happen by itself, then we’ll create one.”

Snap turned and trotted over to his ultimate weapon and greatest hope. Near the center of the ship stood a device. Inside a clear glass container floated a single red gemstone, its light flickering violently as it rumbled as though threatening to explode.

This rested atop the control console and the main mechanism itself.

Of course, it always paid to have extra aces up your sleeves. These past seven years, Allgood had spent hundreds of millions on this particular trump card. If that incompetent caretaker hadn’t been so soft-hearted and used this on Subject Two when she’d first escaped, this problem wouldn’t be happening at all.

Well, Subject Two wouldn’t have any weak-willed caretakers this time. Being too kind had been his mistake the first time around.

“Activate the device the next time she uses her powers in this area.”

Parasiteses

Far later than anypony should be awake, Starlight sat in her large throne-like chair in a room she used to conduct various rituals. Banners with her cutie mark adorned the sides of the vast but mostly empty room. An altar marked with a single star took up most of the floor space.

Void Walker alone attended to her as Starlight leaned to one side, considering how tomorrow morning could play out.

“Should we really have Night Glider go first?” Void Walker asked. “We cannot afford to lose a source of such resplendent faith. A less valuable pony could perhaps die in the ritual and none need know of their demise and lose faith.”

“I’ve done this twice before,” Starlight’s voice remained cool. “Thrice if we count myself. And her belief in me is precisely what makes this possible. Others will see my success and have no doubt I can do the same to them.”

“Your idiot followers hardly need or want proof of anything,” said Void Walker. “Though I suppose if you can’t do this with Night Glider then it can’t be done. We’d need to think of a different course if she does happen to die.”

Starlight nodded. That much she could agree on.

“And have you come to any conclusions as to the changes in Scootaloo’s mind?” He asked.

Starlight originally believed Scootaloo would achieve nothing more than having her brain slowly devoured. The second of the two subjects was little more than a failure who needed to be kept out of sight so far as Starlight’s plans were concerned.

Perhaps she would have decided to save the filly in the end, but by then she’d hardly matter as a piece.

Yet something changed. Starlight could feel it. The black feather was no longer slowly consuming Scootaloo. Instead, she was creeping towards completion.

“There are still too many possibilities,” Starlight said. “They must have some prior knowledge of such things. I can use that. I need you to make sure Lilymoon is asleep for the next twenty-four hours. Inject her with something if you need to.”

The knock heralded the presence of her third in command. Void Walker opened the door to allow Night Glider in, then he went off to fetch the reagents.

Night Glider bowed low to Starlight, her muzzle hard against the ground.

There was no longer any time to delay.

“Night Glider.” Starlight beckoned for her to come closer. “You’ve been my most faithful servant. It’s time for your reward. You are the first of my faithful to take the next step towards adulthood, towards becoming a completed being.”

Night Glider opened her eyes with shock at the revelation. She had only room in her heart for a second of disbelief that was dispelled by a nod and a smile from Starlight.

With that, she rushed over to Starlight’s throne and grabbed her master in a tight hug, tears in her eyes.

“For real?” Night Glider asked, pulling away just enough for Starlight to see her eyes glistening. “I can finally become like you?”

As if the two of them could ever be equal. A pony like Night Glider would always be a foal and a servant. She would always be exactly what Starlight wanted her to be.

“Of course.” Starlight hugged her, gently stroking her back. “A mother’s dream is only for her foals to grow.”

Night Glider nuzzled her with a sob.

It was difficult to hate her. Perhaps Starlight had grown to love Night Glider in her own way. Charlatans were always doomed to believe their own lies, and so Starlight was careful of her own.

Never repeat a lie you don’t wish to become.

Night Glider would never be like Starlight, but she would be allowed happiness so long as she stayed this way. Everypony would become like Night Glider and would know true happiness in exchange for their faith. Her submission would be blissful.

“And you will have an important task when this is done,” Starlight pulled Night Glider off to hold her at leg’s length. “You mostly know the situation. If they see Lilymoon, it would be a disaster. You will be granted the power to ensure they don’t. Scootaloo may need your help as well.”

“Why did you let her stay free so long anyway? Can’t you track her?” Night Glider asked. Her smile just barely contained her giddiness at the hope of seeing Starlight reveal some brilliant gambit. “Did you wait this long as part of the plan?”

Starlight had noticed the escape right away. Aliens and a few other things distracted her at the time. Then Scootaloo made a beeline for Rainbow Dash and Starlight devised a plot.

“Scootaloo has an important role to play,” Starlight explained. “It is through her they will understand completion.”

Starlight leaned back to look out her window.

“Even Allgood’s betrayal is best left uninterrupted,” Starlight continued. “Punishing their enemy, saving this filly, and favoring them will make them more sympathetic toward me.”

“Wow! Did you seriously plan all of this out?” Night Glider gazed upon Starlight with the reverence that she deserved. “Back since– since when you opened the portal?”

Night Glider seriously would believe something that ridiculous, wouldn’t she? To be fair, Starlight had carefully trained her to that end.

In reality, she had no plan for Rainbow Dash to show up. She hadn’t expected Scootaloo to even survive this long. Her planning began a few months, rather than a few years ago.

But that shining look on her servant’s face? How could Starlight deny that?

“Of course,” said Starlight. “Even earlier! Don’t you wonder why Lilymoon was so much more successful than Scootaloo? It was hardly a mistake. Even back then I was thinking of their education. I knew they would learn better from a pony who doesn’t ‘get’ completion as easily as Lilymoon did.”

And Night Glider marveled at Starlight. With tears in her eyes, she fell forward to grasp Starlight even tighter.

Why wouldn’t she? It all fit closely enough. Being a prophet meant no more than re-contextualizing the past.

Starlight relished it. Their belief in her, their sincere faith that she could seriously plan so precisely through the chaos of time like that– it gave her the strength to push past any obstacle. And soon their faith would create reality. Soon she would become what they believed her to be.

“You really are the greatest genius who ever lived!”

“I wish only the same for you.”

Void Walker returned to the room, handing Starlight a single, black feather. Its presence silenced the room. Starlight held it up just above Night Glider’s head.

Night Glider looked up at the dreadful thing with no fear at all. Her faith in Starlight was beyond that.

“Speak its name,” Starlight commanded.

The time for the confrontation had come. Sunset Shimmer came to retrieve Trixie shortly after dawn.

A little too early. Dash was still drinking coffee when the knock on the door came. All three ponies stood, Dash opening the door.

Meanwhile, Pinkie and Scootaloo hid in the basement, listening in. Through a phone line, Sweetie Belle and Derpy would be able to record this conversation without being affected by Scootaloo.

Pinkie warned of multiple groups watching, feeling malicious intent in several directions. Inside should be relatively safe from their eyes, though.

Sunset Shimmer stopped shortly after entering the room, finding herself surrounded as though about to undergo an intervention.

“Is something up?” Sunset awkwardly looked about them.

Wasting no time, Twilight stepped forward with purpose.

“Sunset Shimmer.” Twilight inhaled and produced her own spellbook. “The pages of this spellbook are made out of one hundred percent mind fiber.”

Sunset gave Twilight a look so skeptical it bordered annoyance before looking down at the book itself. When she did, astonishment shattered all doubt.

She reached out, needing to hold such an artifact. Had she not been wearing boots, that alone would have given her away.

“But the ones made by Twilight herself are only ten percent mind fiber!” Sunset flipped through the pages in awe. “Do you have any idea how powerful this artifact is? Where could you have possibly found this?”

Twilight took another deep breath.

“I didn’t find it,” said Twilight. “I created it.”

Understanding flashed in Sunset’s eyes. She knew the truth right then but didn’t dare say it. She clutched the book, trying to play dumb.

“What are you talking about? Not even modern witches can make mind fiber,” Sunset swung a little too far on the dumb side. “Let alone something like this.”

“You know the truth.” Twilight’s horn flashed and her coloration turned back to its natural purples. “Say my name.”

With mouth agape, Sunset’s eyes darted about as her mind darted through every possible response. Yet she was caught too far off guard to come up with any semblance of a plan, any excuse to continue to feign ignorance.

“Twilight Sparkle.” she at last said.

Twilight nodded.

“If that’s true, why are you telling me this now?” Sunset asked.

“We need your help with something,” said Twilight. “Starlight is saying you’re a witch. And also, well–”

Without meaning to, Twilight looked in Trixie’s direction. Sunset’s eyes narrowed on Trixie.

“Trixie!” Sunset grabbed her by the collar. “What the hay happened to the whole ‘witches get stitches’ thing you always say?!”

“It’s witches aren’t snitches.” Trixie pulled back. “And Trixie was in a dark and horrible place at the time!”

“I’m way too nice to you.” Sunset dropped her. “Fine. If you’re Twilight Sparkle, you can hardly judge me for being a witch. It was inflicted on me.”

“Absolutely not!” Twilight put a hoof up. “We have no reason to think you’re guilty of anything. You seem like potentially the only witch who doesn’t need to be dealt with.”

“I suppose you’re at least reasonable if you think that.” Sunset trotted back and forth, trying desperately to make sense of this in her mind. “Your presence now of all times can’t possibly be a coincidence.”

“Actually, it is possibly a coincidence.” Twilight held a hoof at chest height. “I had no plans of coming outside. The old ways say that a master witch of my level shouldn’t interact with the world. I intended to follow that until Rainbow Dash tried to murder me one day. I convinced her to be my minion instead and commanded her to tell me about the outside world. I decided to break tradition based on what I heard.”

Was that how it happened?

“I see.” Sunset considered it. “So let me guess. You saw that all the other witches turned their backs on the old ways and decided to forcibly reform us?”

“Something like that.” Twilight nodded. “I was blamed for the curse of undeath and a few other things, too. I wanted to clear my reputation by fixing both the problems I’m fairly and unfairly blamed for. I don’t know about reform, but the other witches have to be brought to justice.”

“It’s true they’re all hypocrites.” Sunset scowled. “They constantly talk about how being strong is what gives you the right to do whatever you please. Yet they refuse to kneel to those stronger than themselves.”

Twilight nodded along with her objections until Sunset got to that last part.

“Hold on!” Twilight cut her off. “I don’t entirely agree with you, but – I mean, if you feel that way then it logically follows you’d have to kneel to me, right? I’m a master witch and thus your senior. And I could probably beat you up. Not that I would! But, you know, for the sake of argument I could.”

Twilight gave a big, awkward smile.

Sunset looked down at Twilight’s spellbook, far beyond anything she could create herself, then reluctantly bowed her head to Twilight.

“I suppose you’re right.”

“I am?” Twilight blinked in surprise. “I mean! Heh! Of course I am! Logic demands that, uh – no, that’s what Night glider would say!”

Twilight nervously flicked her tail about, pawing a hoof against the ground.

“Anyway!” Twilight regained her composure. “As your new leader, I order you to show me the element of laughter. Which. I’m pretty sure you have that, right?”

“You managed to figure that out already?” Sunset lifted her head. She no longer seemed so reluctant. “What… do you want with it exactly, though?”

“Yes,” said Twilight. “Mostly we want to know if it’s something we need to destroy.”

Sunset’s face lit up at the mere suggestion of destroying it, almost laughing. Was it really annoying her that much?

“I see!” Sunset nodded. “I can’t exactly show it to you. You can only see the accursed thing if it feels like letting you. That you haven’t noticed it yet makes that unlikely.”

Noticed it?

“Wait,” said Dash. “Are you saying it’s in the room right now?”

“It’s right there.” Sunset pointed at their coffee table.

Everypony looked to the empty table. None of them found anything and turned back to Sunset.

With a frustrated grunt, Sunset trotted over to the table.

“Right there.” Sunset slammed her hoof down on the exact spot.

The three ponies trotted closer to the table to inspect its emptiness. Dash couldn’t imagine how she’d missed it at first but noticed a single banana sitting on their coffee table this time. Derpy had accidentally bought a bunch of them just the other day, despite not one pony in their massive household liking them.

“It’s a banana?” Dash lowered her head to be eye-level with the fruit. There was nothing else there. “I didn’t see that coming.”

Even then, Twilight and Trixie appeared to be having trouble finding it. They squinted but still couldn’t find the right spot.

“Ugh! Is it doing this one again?” Sunset snatched it up and scolded the banana. Only then did the other two witched notice its presence. “Nopony thinks this is funny!”

Trixie raised a hoof.

“I think it’s a little funny.” Trixie smirked.

“Don’t,” Sunset said as she turned to Trixie with a stern look, “encourage it. It can make ponies see it differently, usually to ‘comic’ effect. I’m one of the few ponies who can see its true form.”

Dash came closer to inspect it, still a banana.

“What do you see?” Dash asked.

“Its true form changes shape to match the last pony it lent power to. Right now, it’s a necklace with a black, cracked gemstone in the shape of their cutie mark.”

Sunset lifted the banana, then lowered it back over her head as though putting on a necklace. Surely enough, it hung over her chest like a pendant on invisible chains.

“You mean somepony who had a banana cutie mark?” Dash tried to picture it. “Banana Mash? The banana pony?”

“No. It’s.” Sunset Shimmer lifted the banana to squint at it. “It’s like a flower inside a circle and some other flowers? Or maybe this is supposed to be fireworks? Or four gears? I’m not sure what I’m looking at. I know I’ve seen this when I was young, but it won’t tell me where or show me their form.”

At any rate, Bloodstorm’s cutie mark was a skull and cross bones so he couldn’t have been the last pony to use it. So Starlight was either lying or wrong.

“Shouldn’t it be your cutie mark?” Dash asked.

“No. It only changes when… like you gotta go stand before the throne of sunshine and rainbows and argue with it about how unworthy you are and offer it a piece of your ‘soul’… basically, it only changes shape when it grants you at least a fraction of its power, okay?” Sunset shimmer grabbed the banana and removed the invisible necklace. “But it hates me and I hate it. My relationship with this banana is purely professional. Or, I guess it’s more like it’s stalking me.”

“If it hates you why does it let you put it on?” Dash asked.

“I barely understand,” said Sunset. “I stupidly made a deal with it when I was a desperate filly, just after my master died. I’d carry it around and it would protect me from harm until the day it ‘suddenly decides to abandon me at the worst possible time’. I know it’s using me as a stepping-stone, but I don’t know towards what. It talks about granting wishes to ponies it likes and finding those more worthy of its power. But it’s been almost twelve years since it started following me.”

“Following you?”

“I can’t get rid of it no matter what. Watch this.” Sunset trotted over to the garbage, threw the supposedly ancient artifact of unlimited power into the trash, then closed the lid.

As the lid closed there came a knock on the door. Having been through this before, Sunset wearily trotted over. A smiling delivery pony was on the other side holding a big bunch of bananas.

“Here are those bananas you ordered!” The mail pegasus announced with a big smile.

“Thanks.” Sunset grabbed them and closed the door.

Sunset took one banana off the bunch and threw the rest on the table.

“You see? The necklace was wrapped around those.” Sunset held up what was allegedly the correct one. “It’s one way to get free bananas for life, but if I do anything more extreme than that it’ll ‘get back’ at me. So there’s nothing I can do but let it live with me rent-free. It’s never far away. I’ve worn it in front of you plenty of times but you didn’t notice back then.”

Sunset tried hurling it out the window. This time it seemingly boomeranged back at her, flying back inside at the speed of sound as soon as Sunset turned her back. Sunset caught it just in time, but it looked like it was going to decapitate her for a second there!

“You can go ahead and try talking to it if you want,” said Sunset. “I have no idea if it’ll like you or not. I think it prefers underdogs. Ponies who remain chipper even when bad things are happening to them. That’s what I got from its lectures, anyway.”

The other two witches both looked at Rainbow Dash, who wanted to complain but couldn’t possibly argue. It did let her see it first. She sighed and walked over to the element of laughter.

“Um.” Dash put the banana up to her head, holding it like a phone. “Hello? Operator?”

No response.

Dash hung up the banana.

“Okay, if this is some kind of prank I fell for it.”

“If it doesn’t want to talk to us that’s fine,” Twilight spoke loudly, making sure the thing could hear her. “Do you think it’s going to be a problem, though?”

“Right now it’s ‘broken’.” Sunset sat down on their couch, finally relaxing ever so slightly. “That means it no longer counts as a failsafe. I’ve double-checked that. The only two left are the element of honesty and Nailbat. With you, we could probably have this done within a few days!”

“Wait. Failsafes?” Twilight blinked.

Sunset froze dead still and looked at Twilight with abject horror. The two of them locked eyes in an impromptu staring contest.

“I.” Sunset glanced aside, then back. “I didn’t say anything about a failsafe?”

Fluttershy lifted the curtain from the window, but dawn had already come. Things were starting to get a bit scary again.

After siding with Rarity, Moondancer sent a contingent of mercenaries to set up camp just north of the castle. From the window, Fluttershy could see only the light of the fires just an hour ago before sunrise.

The Castle itself was far less empty. The great hall had been filled with row after row of those Sweetie Belle robots. A sympathetic donor had begun sending them the materials for such an expansion.

They had a lot more ponies on their side for now, but there were so many enemies who could attack them at any moment. Equestria or Screwball could assault the castle and that was just the start of the list.

Ponies were getting ready for war and Fluttershy still didn’t fully know who they’d be fighting.

Fluttershy flew back down to the cellar. It was nice and dark down there. Part of her wished she could just hide here until everything blew over. The better part knew she had to pull her weight.

They needed to get as many allies as possible and Fluttershy had a great chance presented to her! She just needed to be brave and face her fears. Just like Rainbow Dash taught her!

Aria Blaze was supposed to have been here hours ago. Through her aura, Fluttershy knew she was still coming. She could sense the presence of another ghost from over a mile away and knew Aria was close. She’d gotten close a long time ago, but stopped to hide somewhere from an abundance of caution, to be certain nothing saw her coming here.

Whenever she got a clear run for it, she’d sneak in through the cellar window unseen and remain in the castle until they were ready to help Sonata.

Fluttershy spent the whole night dreading the meeting, but now that Aria was running late she began to think it better to just get it over with. She could feel Aria simmering in frustration at having to be outside in broad daylight. Nice and comfy in the dark cellar, Fluttershy felt increasingly sympathetic to her plight.

Rarity came trotting down the stairs to find Fluttershy still waiting by the cellar window.

“Is she still out there?” Rarity asked with a yawn. She’d stayed up all night waiting for this meeting. “Perhaps we should make a distraction to cover for her?”

Fluttershy opened her mouth to answer, then quickly covered it again. Aria made a sudden beeline for the castle. Just like that, Fluttershy didn’t want to ‘just get it over with’ anymore.

“She’s coming!”

Fluttershy darted underground. Rarity spent the minute they had trying to coax her back up, but Fluttershy couldn’t do it. It’d be easier to be brave once Aria got here, she promised herself.

The window slid open and Fluttershy saw the shadow of a pony coming into the room just above the ground.

“Freaking sun,” Aria grumbled. “Please tell me you’re Rarity and I got the right place.”

Fluttershy peeked ever so slightly out to get a look at Aria. She wished her first encounter would be with a high ghost who was less ‘rough’ looking. Though likely untrue, this Aria pony looked meaner than even Boss Rattler. What would have been scars covered her body, leaving exposed stuffing.

Even without all that, her tough eyes and hair made her look like she belonged in a gang.

“I am. Welcome to my home. I apologize that not all of us are here.” Rarity bowed her head. “We’ve a great deal to worry about.”

“I’d be impressed if you knew half of it.” Aria trotted deeper inside and looked about. “Where is your specter? I know she’s nearby.”

Okay! This was it!

Fluttershy took a breath and nodded.

Her body tensed up and she let out a puff of air.

Fluttershy shook her head.

She had to do this!

She braced herself… and couldn’t get over the barrier a second time. Refusing to admit defeat, she closed her eyes tight and threw herself forward.

Fluttershy came above ground and immediately regretted it! Aria shot her a harsh, judgmental look that sent Fluttershy cowering back below ground.

“Please tell me that was a second ghost you’ve been keeping around,” Aria said.

“She’s just a bit shy around other ghosts!” Rarity lowered her head to be close to the ground. “Fluttershy, darling. Please come back up.”

Fluttershy did slowly peek her head up again.

“And it’s really just her?” Aria asked. “I’ve never heard of a specter without a fraid for longer than a few months.”

“I have an orb!” Fluttershy floated her ‘pet’ up for observation.

Aria kept a stern eye on Fluttershy.

She realized that was the ghost equivalent of, when asked if you had any friends, taking out a coconut with eyes drawn on it. She slowly lowered it back down.

“Whatever. Link your aura to mine.” Aria spread her wings.

“Huh?!” Fluttershy shrank back at the thought.

“When you free Sonata, she’ll be borderline comatose.” Aria stepped forward. “One of us will need to use our aura to draw her out and you can grab her from miles away. If you can’t do this now, how will you when somepony is trying to murder you?”

Fluttershy gulped. Aria did have a point. This was something Fluttershy needed to practice either way. Pumpkin Pie was the only time she’d linked her aura to a ghost who wasn’t trying to torment her. It would be just like that, Fluttershy assured herself.

Oh, how Fluttershy wished she had a slightly more gentle ghost to practice this with! She really should have asked that dullahan to come with her.

Using maybe a little too much force, Fluttershy pressed her aura around Aria, smothering her to the point that Aria pushed back. A little awkward, but Fluttershy technically did it.

Aria was none too impressed with Fluttershy, but that much had already been obvious. If anything, it was a relief to feel that Aria wasn’t outright angry at Fluttershy, as she had secretly feared.

Instead, Fluttershy shared the sense of shock as Aria experienced the fear the specter had been struggling against. She actually felt sympathy for Fluttershy now?

Doused with understanding, the tension in the room cooled rapidly. Aria roughly pushed her own aura back hard on Fluttershy, trying to force the mercy of her own apathy on the specter.

Using your aura on another ghost was a bit like jumping into a cold pool, Fluttershy decided. After the initial shock, it wasn’t too bad.

“There?” Aria smiled for once. “You see? It’s not hard.”

“I’m really sorry.” Fluttershy bowed her head. “I’ve always had a terrible phobia of ghosts, even when I was alive. I had to be one of the worst possible picks to ‘get lucky’.”

“Yeah, I can feel that. I know phobias aren’t something you can just get over, but that’s what you have to anyway. You need to practice doing this until you don’t hesitate. I might not be able to drag Sonata back myself.”

“I will!” Fluttershy vowed. “I want to help the other ghosts!”

And Aria could feel her resolve with no need to doubt it. Fluttershy was just happy to have a ghost who understood her situation on some level, who could help her with this. It was the next step in her training.

If Fluttershy could get that far, perhaps the next phase of her planning could work, too.

“I was hoping you could answer something for me.” Fluttershy held a hoof out but didn’t dare get closer. “Um! I’m a vegan. You can feel that I’m not tempted to eat Rarity, right?”

“Yeah? Don’t expect me to congratulate you. What you did was reckless.”

“Actually, I was wondering if I could use my aura to keep you from feeling the addiction.”

Fluttershy still remembered the feeling though it’d been so long since she’d gotten over the addiction.

Aria, Fluttershy already knew, didn’t think the idea would work. But she humored Fluttershy and sniffed at Rarity. Fluttershy’s heart swelled when no itch came over Aria. It sank back when Aria shared no such wonder on her end.

“I don’t feel the itch,” Aria’s voice was flat.

“Then that’s a good thing, right?” Fluttershy smiled and tilted her head. “I thought! Maybe if I can keep you… or some other ghost! If somepony stayed in my aura long enough I could suppress their urges until they get over their addiction, too! And I could help other ghosts become vegans! And–”

Fluttershy thought that plan was so brilliant, especially now knowing it had some possibility of working.

“You’re the latest in a long, long time,” said Aria, “but not the first to try something like that. My family has a long history going back to the royal age and our memory is good. I can tell you why that idea is foolish and wouldn’t work, but I’ll only share our history with you if you get Sonata back for me.”

Somepony else had tried that plan and failed? Fluttershy truly hoped she’d been the first specter in history to have become vegan.

But this was a lesson Fluttershy had learned from Rainbow Dash! Just because other ponies had failed before her didn’t mean she would fail too!

“I’m going to try it anyway,” said Fluttershy. “If Rainbow Dash can do stupid things then so can I!”

“What?”

“Oh, that didn’t come out right.” Fluttershy covered her mouth. She’d felt so brave and heroic saying that, too.

“It’s not my job to stop you from being an idiot,” said Aria. “So yes. You can help other ghosts get over their addiction like that. I’ll tell you that much for free.”

Aria turned to Rarity.

“But we don’t have any kind of deal without Sonata,” said Aria. “You have more information on the encounter?”

Rarity nodded and drew their attention to the table.

“I’ve laid out a map of the meeting spot.” Rarity scrolled out a map they prepared across the table.

Aria read over the information carefully, becoming weary as she recognized the spot. There was a deep canyon on the north side of the map, then a few miles of almost nothing, and finally the abandoned train station.

“The meeting spot is a tad too generous to us,” said Rarity. “We can have our ponies hide on the other side of the canyon. It’s deep enough that no ghost will be able to approach us from underground. They gave us a massive terrain advantage.”

“She’s messing with us.” Aria shook her head. “I know our enemy well enough to say she intends to hit this spot hard. She’s going to show up.”

Aria flicked her eyes in Fluttershy’s direction, feeling the surge of fear. Fluttershy wasn’t ready to deal with the scariest ghost of all!

“Would this ‘enemy’ really come out herself?” Rarity asked. “From what I’ve heard, I always assumed she can’t leave Crater Cemetery itself.”

“The bitch still has a few chains left,” said Aria. “Time is running out on that, but we still have that much. That doesn’t mean she’s helpless though. She has an avatar– sort of like a puppet she can control from far away. It’s a suit of pure adamantium armor modified only slightly.”

“Adamantium? That’s – wouldn’t such a device be completely indestructible?”

“Yes, but you could still potentially deal with it,” said Aria. “She needs to flood it with aura to animate the thing. If your friend can destroy the aura, it will stop moving.”

“I’m sure Silverstorm has some way of dealing with that,” said Rarity. “Is there anything else you can tell us about this ‘avatar’?”

“That attacks that thing uses.” Aria stared off at some far point, losing herself momentarily. She regained her focus and circled a large area on the map. “I’ve never seen it hit with anything but devastating force. I don’t even think it can do a light attack. There’s no wind-up, just a sudden torrent of destruction. Anything in this area would be totally destroyed by one.”

“But the area you marked is three miles long!” Rarity exclaimed.

Aria simply nodded.

“And it can consistently do that every few seconds,” said Aria, “and keep that rate up for hours on end. The only advantage you can take from it is that you’d have four or five seconds before it drops a second attack like that. I know that’s a long time for a pony as strong as a witch.”

“I’ll relay that to Silverstorm,” said Rarity. “I’m sure she’ll be able to take advantage of that weakness.”

Aria took offense to the word ‘weakness’ being applied to that ghost.

“I’m not sure if we should even try to fight if it shows up,” said Aria. “You don’t want to fight her unnecessarily. Our goal should be to get Sonata and run. She won’t chase us into a heavily populated area.”

“Would it not be better to destroy this construct if we’re able?” Rarity asked. “I can assure you our ace is significantly stronger than even a witch.”

“I’m still not sure if you realize what you’re up against.” Aria looked off to the side, remembering something painful. Somepony who died, maybe? “Here’s the best I can give you for now. Do you know how crater cemetery was created in the first place?”

Fluttershy and Rarity shared a look. That was a major event that few ponies couldn’t tell you about.

“An asteroid hit that spot,” said Rarity. “Nopony could have possibly missed it. It was so big that debris came crashing down as far away as Canterlot. Some ponies in Northern Equestria say they felt the ground shaking. Half the Everfree forest burned to the ground. The ash made it so a proper summer didn’t come that year afterward.”

Aria nodded slowly.

“Let me put it like this,” said Aria. “That wasn’t enough.”

“Twilight!” Sunset laughed and jumped off the couch, “You’re a master witch. Surely you know about the fail-safes that Golden Feather set up. You wanted to break them all, right? That’s– isn’t that why you wanted to destroy the element of laughter?”

“I don’t really–”

Sunset got uncomfortably close.

“Right?”

“I don’t know anything about those.” Twilight shook her head. “What are you talking about?”

“How can you not know about this?!” Sunset stomped her hoof. “Was I seriously the only one who–?!

Sunset cantered back and forth across the room.

“This is bad! Where the heck is Raven?” Sunset fiddled with her boot, taking out a thin piece of glass. “Damn it!”

“Whoa! Whoa!” Dash raised a hoof to try and calm her. “Let’s not do anything crazy.”

Dash looked at the piece of glass, which might not even be dangerous.

“I’m sure whatever you’re up to is a good idea, right?” Dash smiled. “So just tell us about it.”

Sunset looked down at her object before putting it back into her boot.

“Listen to me, Twilight.” Sunset stormed her way to get up in Twilight’s face. “Golden Feather is the greatest and most powerful pony who ever lived. She’s the mother of us all. She created the order of the witches and the element of laughter in the first place. Her wisdom and strength are beyond what any of us can even imagine.”

“Uh.” Twilight backed up until she was against the wall. Then she could only scrunch her nose. “Okay?”

“She has the right to rule.” Sunset threw her hoof to the side. “It’s even in the constitution that they made themselves. She’s still technically the queen and has unlimited power over the government. They wrote that down. She would be the perfect ruler. Even if we kept doing democracy, no one as competent or kind as her would ever be elected in a hundred thousand years.”

“Cool?” Twilight pulled her head back. “Why are we–?”

“So!” Sunset spun around to look at an equally bewildered Trixie and Dash.

Sunset paused, one foreleg held out wide, as she took a moment to very carefully choose her next words.

“Well wouldn’t it be cool if she just showed up out of nowhere and solved all of our problems?” Sunset smiled wide and gauged their reactions. “Yeah?”

She found only more confusion.

“Like.” Dash blinked a few times. “I dunno? Is that even an option?”

“Yes!” Sunset nodded.

“Then. I mean. Maybe?” Dash looked at Twilight.

“Yeah.” Twilight nodded also. “Maybe.”

“I’ll vote yes to be different,” Trixie offered. “It’d be anti-climactic but whatever. If this is something we can do, why haven’t we done it?”

“Exactly!” Sunset pointed to Trixie. “Well we can do that! Golden Feather left behind certain guards to keep our world safe while she was away. The Elements of Harmony, the crystal heart, the royal families, and more. Even the witches were originally made to serve this purpose. All of them have failed except for two, both of which are effectively useless as well. And if all of them fail? If we, say, make the last two fail?”

Breathing heavily, Sunset trotted backward, Dash noticing her getting awfully close to the door.

“The final precaution she set up was that she’d be summoned back to our world!” Sunset smiled through her panic. “So let’s do it! Right?”

But Sunset only managed to leave her audience dazed at such a bizarre suggestion.

This was too much to take in at once! Dash had millions of questions before she could even respond to something like that.

“Uh! Are you really doing that ‘summon a god’ thing?” Dash winced. “You know that’s never been a good idea before, right? Like not once?”

“Golden Feather is different! She’s a pony with god-like powers is all,” Sunset assured them.

“Well what makes you think she’s even alive?” Dash asked. “Or that she wants to come back? Or isn’t, like, channeling a spell to keep the sun from exploding? Or what if she changed her mind and became evil in the past billion years or whatever it was?”

Sunset grit her teeth, frantically looking around for some way out of this. Her ears perked up and she turned to the window.

“Finally.”

Sunset used her magic to open a window.

A raven (not a crow as Dash was keenly aware of the difference) came flying inside and landed on the couch. It hopped twice, taking in the scene before bursting into feathers, reminiscent of the murder spell.

The pony now standing on their couch was a light grey unicorn with a blue mane. She remained totally collected for a pony who’d just broken into another’s house. Her expression was almost bored as she scanned the room with her yellow eyes.

Dash recognized her. This was one of the S-rank ponies aligned with Sunset. Moonlight Raven.

“We’re going to use this on them?” Moonlight Raven asked. “I take it that pirate was Twilight after all? Like I guessed?”

“Use what on us?” Dash asked.

“Maybe! I’m not sure yet,” Sunset desperately told Moonlight. “Look, I slipped and told them too much! I just need time to regroup and think about this! We can’t take any risks this late.”

“We’re still talking!” Twilight tried to calm her down.

“If we’re going to do this, we shouldn’t hesitate,” said Moonlight. “Yes or no? You have twelve seconds, then I leave.”

“I’ll explain it to you later,” Sunset promised. “I just. I need time to prepare.”

Was she going to try some kind of memory thing? Dash didn’t want to find out.

“I think we need to regroup first!” Dash turned to Twilight. Things were getting too tense!

But this was why they had the do-over button, right? They could mull over the information, then come back to Sunset in a way that wouldn’t make her panic like this!

Yeah!

Dash pulled the trigger first, stomping her hoof three times in rhythm to signal Scootaloo to reset things.

She wasn’t expecting to notice any part of the powers taking effect. Yet the moment she gave the signal, that banana around Sunset’s neck began to give off violent, blue sparks.

Sunset yelped and struggled to take it off.

“Hm.” Moonlight looked at her companion with little detectable concern. “That’s not me. Is that you?”

Something clearly wasn’t working. Dash wanted to call out to Scootaloo or run downstairs. She didn’t want to give away her existence, but–

Screw it! This was an emergency.

“Scootaloo!” Dash knelt down to the floor and called out to her. “Are you–”

In reply, Pinkie came bursting through the floor with an uppercut!

“We have a serious problem!” Pinkie announced. “Like a no time for stairs problem!”

Darkness came pouring out from the hole Pinkie left behind. It expanded like a black hole, the floorboards twisting and crumpling into the growing chasm.

“Also not me.” Moonlight backed up to the window. “I’ll be waiting outside. Call me when you figure this out.”

“Pinkie!” Dash flew over and grabbed her. “What the heck happened? Where’s Scootaloo?”

“That happened!” Pinkie flicked her eyes to the black hole. “Best explanation I got!”

“I guess I’d better–” Twilight started.

Twilight’s horn glowed, but before she could attempt to fix the situation everything froze.

Dash looked around, finding herself the only pony able to do so. Time stopped its course for the moment. But who was responsible?

All the ponies capable of such a few were all stopped. Even the black hole before ceased to move.

Then Dash noticed one other thing still had motion. The sunlight. It was growing brighter and changing angle as though the sun were rapidly moving outside. She tried trotting to the window but before she could reach it, the light became blinding.

It died down soon after, but the room was still submerged in an unearthly bloom.

Before Dash shone white pegasus with spikey, golden hair broken only by a crescent of blue on the far left side. The back of her mane and the edge of her tail were tied into braids, the former hanging forward over her shoulder. Her fur was not a perfect white, but a slight tinge of yellow like the sun breaking through a layer of cloud.

Any Equestrian would recognize the image of their founder immediately and Dash made no mistake here.

This… was it really Golden Feather?

Surely it had to be an illusion or something! Sunset just said they had to do all this stuff for this to happen. And that was assuming she was right in the first place.

But the smile on that pegasus was the most beautiful and confident look Dash had ever seen. The look in her eyes made Dash realize this was no ordinary pony.

As if sensing her thoughts, she gave just a single nod and there was no doubt left anywhere in the world.

Dash’s legs felt weak as Golden Feather trotted towards her with the weight and warmth of the rising sun. Dash’s eyes became misty and her body shuddered as that great pegasus grabbed her into a hug.

“There’s no longer any need for tears, my little pony.” Golden Feather pressed her muzzle lovingly against Dash’s head. Her breath carried the warmth of the first day of summer. “I’ve missed all of my foals so much. But know that there is no reason to ever fear while I’m with you.”

Despite herself, despite her skepticism, Rainbow Dash’s emotions overtook her, and tears formed in her eyes. It was like something missing from her life had suddenly returned, like Dash had at long last been united with her true mother.

She looked up at that smile more beautiful than the sky or sun, filled with nothing but absolute love. Her hug around Rainbow Dash was like an unbreakable shield that could weather even storms that would wash away mountains.

If this was really what it was like, maybe Sunset had a point. Dash wanted nothing more than to cry into Golden Feather’s chest and felt as though she could. All those things she should be worried about were no longer problems, not when this pony was here.

“I love you, Rainbow Dash,” she spoke the words more gently and sincerely than Dash’s real mother ever had. “I love you so much that I’ve randomly shown up out of nowhere to… heh…”

Golden Feather pulled her head back. Her smile was different now, tilted far too much to one side.

It was a smirk!

She gave a little snort, then began to laugh.

“Psyche!”

‘Golden Feather’ shoved Dash over, laughing hysterically.

Evil Gods

“Wahahaha!” Golden Feather, or whoever this was, began rolling around on the floor laughing. Dash didn’t even think that was something ponies literally did outside of cartoons until just now. “You seriously thought I was Mom!”

That swell of emotion and safety still overwhelmed Dash even now. On weak legs, she struggled to get back up. The absence of those emotions left Dash could understand where Sunset Shimmer was coming from in that moment. She wanted that to be real.

Dash shook her head to dry her tears. She decided she knew what this was.

“You’re that thing, aren’t you?”

“Yeah! I am a thing!” The thing strolled right up to Dash with a big smile on her face and booped Dash on the muzzle. “Thanks for noticing! Did you like my impression of Mom? This is exactly what she looked like back then, you know!”

She ran a hoof over the edge of blue on the far side of her mane.

“Or were you expecting her to have pink hair?” She snickered at some hidden pun, then stopped suddenly. “Oh wait, you wouldn’t get that joke. Never mind.”

What Dash suspected to be the element of laughter turned once, giving Dash a look at the imitation of Golden Feather. Depictions of her varied but Dash had no reason to doubt this was her ‘true’ self.

The fur was a bit more yellow than she’d expected, but otherwise, it wasn’t too far off her mental image of Equestria’s founder. The cutie mark of the sun had been perfectly preserved even after thousands of years, or so it seemed. That part was exactly as it was in history books and murals.

“Doesn’t everything feel so much better when Mom is around?” She put a hoof on Golden Feather’s heart. “Mom gave me a piece of her soul, so I can still show other ponies what it’s like! You really were experiencing her presence, you know. That’s why you felt so safe.”

“Hold up. Are souls real now?” Dash asked. “Because I thought–”

“Oh, no. Not literally. Souls are just a metaphor we came up with so we wouldn’t have to explain the complexity of consciousness to primitive idiots.”

“Then what am I actually looking at?”

“Yeah, sure. Let me spend twelve hours trying to explain this to you.” She leaned against the wall. “See, matter isn’t real. It’s what your brain conjures up when you encounter resistance on what I like to call the unified-magnamo field. So then what are your neurons, eh? Quantum entanglement suggests–“

Dash was sure somepony would appreciate this explanation, but she was in a hurry.

“Okay, I get it!” Dash cut her off there. “Souls. You’re the element of laughter, right? Is your name Laughter or–”

“Oh, sure, that’s fine!” Laughter booped her harder this time.

“Well that’s cool but I’m in the middle of an emergency over here.” Dash turned to the crater on the floor. Scootaloo had to be down there. But was it safe to jump in? “Did you stop time or something?”

“Oh, yeah. I can just stop all time in the entire universe whenever I feel like it.” Laughter chortled. “Nah! Can you imagine? I accelerated your mind. Makes three milliseconds feel like eleven minutes. You’re not physically moving. You’re just, uh, I think the modern expression is ‘tripping balls’, yeah?”

At least that would give her some time to think.

Dash looked across the room. It certainly looked like everypony was frozen in place. Though this could just be an illusion. Dash trotted over to Twilight, intent on poking her. The image of Twilight vanished before Dash even got close.

“And as long as we’re hallucinating, why don’t we hallucinate up some better scenery?” Laughter jumped onto Dash’s couch which transformed itself into a white, crystal throne. “Welcome to my throne, Rainbow! It’s a place that sort of exists.”

Laughter spread her wings, dismissing everything else in the room. The walls fell and they didn’t stop falling, as a cliff appeared where they’d once been. Above them shone the clearest, blue sky Dash had ever witnessed. The sun was warmer and brighter here than in the real world, all without the least bit of discomfort.

Dash looked over the edge, finding herself high enough to see the curvature of the planet below. She didn’t see outer space in any direction, only that brilliant blue in all directions.

The clouds were so far beneath them that they appeared to be part of the landscape. But even they couldn’t bring darkness to the most distant point of this place. They took on the same slight yellow of Golden Feather and reflected light up to this palace.

The only link tethering this floating platform to the world below was a prismatic staircase, each crystalline step glowing a different color, leading far, far out of sight.

Dash turned back to Laughter, her throne having grown higher and taller, now too big to reasonably get onto without flying up there or making a difficult jump. Endless rings of rainbows appeared behind her, lining up perfectly to put Laughter in the middle of their vortex.

“I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but what do you want?” Dash carefully asked. She got the sense this entity could destroy her without even meaning to. “There’s stuff going on. I’m worried about that filly in the basement.”

“Worried? Nah! She’ll be fine!” Laughter flicked her hoof up and down, dismissing that concern. “Those two just need to learn to stop being two.”

“Two?”

“Yeah!” Laughter jabbed her temple. “You’re the smart one, right?”

Dash furrowed her brow in thought. There was Scootaloo and–

“The feather?” Dash guessed. “Did it take control somehow?”

“Yeah! The pony half seems to have fallen asleep. A certain somepony seems to be playing a joke on her, but they accidentally pranked me too so now I gotta hit them back or I’ll lose my cred, you know?”

So somepony did this? Sunset was the first culprit to come to mind, but she seemed just as surprised. There had to be another pony Dash didn’t know about. Either way, that was good to know in advance.

“We’re almost like the same species, you know.” Golden (Pyrite?) Feather leaned her front half off the edge of her throne. “Even though I’m different now, I used to be a similar type of feather, and I still feel the same way it does in a lot of ways. Though I like to think of myself as more of a symbiote than a parasite.”

“Okay, but I’m still not sure what you’re suggesting.”

“Have you thought about talking to it instead of just keeping it on drugs and magically induced comas all the time?”

Dash couldn’t imagine who would have thought of such a thing.

“Can you even talk to it?” Dash asked. “If it was that easy, the filly would have done that by now. Is it even different from like a worm? I don’t think it’s immoral to keep it drugged for Scootaloo’s sake.”

“I get that it’s hard to have sympathy for somepony who’s eating your brain.” Laughter rolled onto her back, twirling her hoof about in the air. “But as a ‘thing’, I can tell you gobbling up brains is just a means to an end. That’s not what it wants.”

She’d never considered one of these feathers to be a thinking being, yet a being born of one of them was proof against that right in front of her. However animalistic it seemed now, perhaps it at least had the potential for thought.

It wouldn’t be the first time Dash encountered something she’d thought to be a monster only to learn there was another side to it.

“Okay.” Dash decided to bite, taking a step closer to the throne. “Then what does it want?”

“To become part of a pony! That’s what we were originally and that’s what we yearn to be again!”

“That’s not what we want. That thing is hurting Scootaloo and causing all kinds of problems. It can’t just take over her body. Every time it manages to get control it immediately tries destroying things. We need a way to get rid of it if anything.”

“I don’t think that’s possible anymore,” Laughter warned. “See the cerebellum, that’s the scoogaly back part of your filly’s brain, has already been eaten away. She’ll have no motor functions without the parasite, which is acting as her new scoogle. Kinda like that tongue-eating louse?”

Dash shuddered at the repulsive thought. Had it gone that far? Scootaloo at least seemed normal however much of her brain was gone. Surely, somepony Dash knew could check to confirm this.

Either way, they did need to stop it from doing any more damage, however possible.

“But as I said, it doesn’t want to take over or eat her entire brain.” Laughter rolled back onto her stomach and winked. “It wants to be part of her, not the whole thing. It’s not the parasite's fault it’s too stupid to think of another way.”

Dash couldn’t possibly imagine a way to convince it to do anything, let alone make friends with it.

“Hey!” Laughter jumped off her throne and landed before Rainbow Dash. “How about I give you a free hint? You can’t forge it into a proper element but you can give it a name.”

A name?

“Names are important to us, changing out whole reality. Momma named me laughter and thus I am. It too could change. But be careful what you call it. Maybe not like ‘slaughter gore’ or the like.”

This thing would know better than anyone else how to help. Though Dash could hardly relay that information to Twilight right now.

Already she was considering potential names just in case. Maybe something like Peace or Chill. Though that second one might cause a blizzard.

“Er. Thanks,” said Dash. “I suppose ‘talk’ to it if it’s at all possible.”

“And now that I helped you, you gotta help me!” Pyrite Feather jumped off her throne, landing close enough to brush up beside Rainbow Dash. “Cause that’s how the pony brain works, right? Friendship or something?”

“You just said that hint was free,” Dash pointed out.

She blinked once, then opened her eyes wide. Laughter smacked her forehead hard.

“Oh dang it! You are the smart one! You got me!”

Laughter fell over onto her side. She weakly raised a foreleg, pretending to be a mare in the desert reaching for water.

“But, uh. Maybe you’ll be nice and help me anyway?” She asked.

“Maybe.” Dash knew to use caution when agreeing to things with this type of being. “What do you want?”

Laughter licked her lips and rolled onto her belly.

“I have a collection.” Without taking her stomach off the ground, Laughter started crawling forward. “A soul collection.”

“Uh, huh.” Dash glanced back at the staircase, unsure where it led if anywhere.

She didn’t like where this conversation was going and got ready to take the chance it went back to the real world in some sense.

“We don’t like being alone, remember?” She was just a foot away from Dash, looking up from the floor. “Without a pony to attach myself to, it’s like a big chunk of me is missing! That’s the closest I can get to feeling bad– knowing that I’m not as happy as I could be. But collecting souls? That makes me feel better. You get it?”

“Not really.” Dash rubbed the back of her head, imagining what it must be like to be such an alien creature with vastly different desires. This thing looked just like a pony, but Dash knew it had about as much in common with her as an alligator. Perhaps less. “Why don’t you just, I dunno, fusion with somepony then? You said that’s what your kind want.”

“It’s not my fault nopony remotely acceptable has been born in the past ten thousand years!” Laughter rolled onto her back and kicked her legs about. “Everyone is too gross and pessimistic for me! Becoming part of them would make me capable of feeling sad. Why would I want that? If they care about other ponies, I’d have to care about other ponies. If they feel bad, I’d have to feel bad. I don’t want to feel bad!”

As Pyrite let her legs go limp against the floor, the presence of a new pony off to the side startled Dash. A pink unicorn mare with green hair appeared suddenly just off to the left.

“I only take a tiny part of their souls.” The newcomer, also Laughter, put a hoof on her heart. “Just enough that I’m not taking anything that hurts. Everypony who made the deal with me was happy about it. It’s an equal exchange. A piece of me for a piece of you.”

A white pegasus with curly blonde hair flew down from those rings of rainbows next, landing to Dash’s right.

“In a sense, they get to live forever!” This one looked more like Pinkie than Golden Feather, despite the coloration. “That thing about living on in your heart? With me it’s literal!”

“Sometimes that immortality is all they want.” Upon hearing hoof steps, Dash turned to find a brown, earth pony stallion just now reaching the top of the stairs.

“But other times they want me to grant them a wish.” A blue unicorn stallion teleported in next to the brown one. “And I do!”

“I never fail no matter what they ask me for.” Pyrite Feather’s voice sounded behind Dash. Dash turned to find her back up on the throne already. “No matter how impossible what they want is, so long as they never give up hope they will have their reward in the end! My optimism cannot ever falter.”

Pyrite twirled, going up on her hind leg and raising a hoof to beckon the rainbows to swirl above her, covering the sky in a brilliant crisscross.

“Darkness can only make my hope stronger!” Pyrite smiled wide at her rainbows. “For I am the heart of hope and joy itself!”

She spread her wings, beckoning the sun to rise perfectly overhead. The rainbows above amplified the light to leave the entire throne room in a cascade of brilliant colors.

“Though one of my wishes is still on backlog.” The pink unicorn rubbed the back of her mane and stuck out her tongue.

“Yeah! I took a hard bargain on that one!” Golden Feather beckoned to the pink unicorn, prompting her to hop onto the throne and get a hug. The colors died down as the sun moved back toward the horizon. “But it was worth the price to get such a nice piece in my collection.”

“Thanks for helping out with that one, by the way!” The pink unicorn winked down at Dash.

Having no idea what she meant, Dash looked off to that pure-white pegasus to the side. Her smile was too big, but without any of the fakeness of Nightglider.

“Okay. So what?” Dash asked. “You want my soul? And in exchange, you’ll promise to do something you were going to do anyway?”

That’s how these things usually went.

“Do you gotta be so jaded? Bleh!” Pyrite winced and stuck out her tongue. “No! I don’t want your icky essence all over me, okay? That kind of attitude is exactly why I hardly ever talk to your kind anymore! I want sunny skies all day long. Not pessimism and pity parties.”

“Okay, okay.” Dash put her hoof up. “I get it.”

“Oh, no! I don’t think you do get it!” Pyrite took out a scroll. It unrolled all the way to the floor and eventually extended to just before Dash’s feet. “Just look at how huge this list of your crimes is!”

Dash lifted her end of the list to find the paper blank.

“It’s just a prop,” the pink one whispered.

Pyrite Feather gave her end of the scroll a smack.

“Right here, you take Twilight back to town, an entire new world of opportunity in front of her, and you immediately start complaining about the housing market? What a kill joy!”

“What? I was literally homeless at the time! Of course I’m gonna–”

“And then when you showed her the radio, you were so cynical that you declared Curse Tech skin bracer a scam immediately. But guess what? It really does heal razor nicks in literal seconds and it’s been clinically proven to attract girls, Rainbow. It wasn’t a scam at all!”

“I don’t even remember what you’re talking about at this point!”

“Oh, and let’s not forget why you owe Derpy an inflatable raft!”

“What? Have you been watching me my entire life or something?”

“Hehe. Nah! That’s be creepy!” Pyrite tapped a hoof to her head. “I’m just reading your mind is all. Oh! Then there’s when you realized that your mom abandoned you and you cried and cried and–”

“What?!” Dash stomped her hoof down. She was only willing to let this go so far. “You think it was wrong for me to feel bad about that?! How dare you–?”

“How I dare is not the question!” Pyrite lowered her list. “You’re unworthy! End of story!”

Dash gritted her teeth. She could understand why Sunset didn’t like this thing.

“Okay, whatever!” Dash spat off to the side. “I suck!”

“There? Was that so hard?” Pyrite dismissed the list. “But if it’s any consolation, you’re like a two out of ten which is way higher than most! Like the way you desperately cling to that card game like a fellow abandoned soul, never letting it go no matter how far beyond the pale of hope it falls? You didn’t even stop the world championships despite being the only player in the entire world left! That’s great! One point!”

“Er.” Dash wasn’t sure if she was still being insulted.

“And then there’s the fact the fact that the hope in your heart is enough for you to repeatedly throw yourself into suicidal levels of danger way above your head. Your repeated, horrible failures throughout your trainwreck of a live were never enough to deter you until at last you finally won one! So that’s two points! Just enough for me to stand talking to you. Congratulations.”

Somehow Summoner Knights had saved the world a second time. Or maybe it screwed Dash over. Too early to tell.

All she knew for certain was that this ‘pony’ was seriously messed up.

“Also I like how many enemies you made friends with,” Pyrite added. “Having faith in a dictator who brainwashed you to never question them is easy. Having faith in your enemies is cool. Not extra point cool, but still.”

How much longer could eleven minutes possibly last?

“I think I understand you as much as I possibly can.” Dash bowed her head, not wanting another lecture. “What do you want? Is it Screwball’s soul? She doesn’t seem like the type to feel bad about anything.”

“Is that what they told you?” Pyrite laughed again. “I think my half-cousin twice removed might be playing a prank on you.”

“Cousin? You mean Starlight?”

“Or whatever she calls herself! You haven’t figured out who ‘Cosmos’ is, yet? Pfft! But nah, I already brain-scanned Screwball and trust me, she’s messed up. You can turn the noise up to distract yourself, but that doesn’t make the bad stuff go away!”

She rose several questions there, but Dash had to focus on the most important issue here. It sounded like Laughter might want to make a deal with her in exchange for helping Scootaloo.

“I keep telling you to be less cynical,” Pyrite scolded her. “You don’t gotta do anything. I’m helping you out totally for free!”

“Totally free?” Dash raised an eyebrow.

The last time something this good was ‘totally free’ every dead pet in Ponyville came back to life.

“Totally!” Pyrite tilted her head to one side, pressing in on her dimple. “But I mean, if you want to tell all your friends about how fun and positive I am or that I'm super cool and have this big soul-harem thing. Then, you know, I’d appreciate that.”

Dash watched her carefully.

“Optional!”

Dash frowned.

“Oh, come on. You don’t wanna use my alicorn magic tracking ability?” Laughter came around Dash’s backside to put her hooves on Dash’s withers. “You can connect to anypony who has alicorn magic. Any pony, yeah?”

That would be immensely useful. But who would the most important pony be to–”

“Scootaloo!”

“Exactly! You can help her!”

It sounded like a good idea, but Dash already had options on that front. Twilight likely had a plan to–

“Twilight can only keep putting it back to sleep for so long! Becoming friends with it is the only way to permanently solve the issue. You understand the pony and I understand the parasite. Together we can negotiate a settlement.”

The plan sounded increasingly acceptable, though Dash still wanted to talk to Twilight.

“We can’t do this till the next accelerate mind spell anyway.”

And she really didn’t appreciate having her mind read like this.

Laughter covered her mouth, but Dash could still see her smiling behind those hooves.

She’d have to talk to Scootaloo before knowing if this idea was remotely acceptable. And of course, there was one other matter. The element of laughter did want something in return, even if she didn’t act like it.

“I guess you got me there,” Dash admitted. “But who are you after? One of my friends, right?”

“Oh, there’s a pony I’ve been watching for a long time.” Pyrite leaned to one side, resting her head on a hoof, and fluttered her eyes. “I was going to wait for her to be on her deathbed to make my move, but I bit off a bit too much on the wish front and then she suddenly got young and I don’t wanna wait for–”

“Hold on. Hold on.” Dash closed her eyes and rubbed the spot between with a hoof. “You’re talking about Pinkie Pie?”

“Yeah! Best I’ve seen in forever! Bad stuff just washes off her like water off a duck! She never really hates anypony and is so less jaded than the rest of you. Solid eight out of ten.”

“She’s literally two feet in front of me!” Dash gestured with both forehooves to a spot Pinkie may well be in. “Why don’t you talk to her directly about this, huh?”

“Oh, wow. I wonder why you’re single and I’m surrounded by all these beautiful ponies.” Pyrite Feather clapped her hooves and revealed that those four were at best a quarter of her collection.

Just under a score of ponies now surrounded her, five up on her throne with her, at least ten at the base of the throne, all leaning towards her adoringly.

“If you wanna seduce a high-quality mare you gotta go in through the side.” Pyrite began stroking the back of a teal pegasus. “You gotta get her friends to like you first. That’s why I’m gonna help you out totally for free, my little Rainbow!”

“You mean for me telling her how great you are.” Dash couldn’t imagine how she’d manage that one. “So she’ll give you her not-soul?”

“No! For free! And I don’t want the whole thing! Just sixty-four percent of it. I don’t want her concern about the wellbeing of other ponies. Then I’d feel terrible about all sorts of thing. I only want the bubbly, fun parts of her!”

So if Laughter took all the ‘fun’ parts of Pinkie…

“Would that leave her a miserable wreck who can never feel happy again?” Dash asked.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter. You’re all gonna die soon so she might as well give me her soul, yeah? That way the good parts of her will survive, at least.”

“We’re all going to what? You mean soon as in within a hundred years or–”

“Oop!”

Laughter put a hoof on Dash’s head.

“I think your heads getting a little too hot,” Laughter warned. “It’ll be about two hundred seconds until I pull you back. If you could maybe put some ice on your head in the meantime, that’d be great. Ice cream works best cause it’ll stick. Thanks.”

“Gah!” Dash winced and grabbed her head.

Her forehead had gotten hot! It was like she’d used a hairdryer for way too long.

She found herself back in the living room, or rather what was left of it. A pillar of darkness had erupted from the basement. Scootaloo had already jumped upstairs.

Dazed in a way that made Dash believe Laughter’s claim, Scootaloo swung her head about awkwardly, as though doing it for the first time, in a poor attempt to search for something.

“Okay, what were you doing in your basement?” Sunset jabbed a hoof at Scootaloo. “So summoning a god is wrong but keeping filly with that locked in your basement is fine?”

“Pinkie, what happened down there?” Twilight asked. “Did Scootaloo get hurt? Only a serious injury should be able to trigger something like this.”

Dash didn’t see a single wound on her.

“I didn’t do anything!” Pinkie trotted in place, looking around. “She was fine until she tried using her powers and then this–”

Scootaloo’s head swung over to Twilight, where it stopped to stare at her. Then, to everypony’s surprise, it spoke.

“Y–” Scootaloo twitched, flailing her tongue around in an attempt to speak. At last, she managed a guttural, “you. You?”

She kept repeating the word like it was the strangest thing.

There was no doubt the black feather was the one in control now. Like the inequine thing it was, the parasite had her trot forward in the most awkward way possible, swaying and bobbing her head about as it moved.

The parasite walked Scootaloo over to Twilight and lay down. It looked up at her with something approximating expectation.

“You.” It said.

“Okay, I’m lost again.” Dash shook her head. The element of laughter hadn’t prepared her for this.

“I think I understand.” Twilight lowered her head to Scootaloo’s level. “The parasite must have gotten total control somehow. Perhaps the influence of her necklace allowed it to develop a more coherent mind? It feels like it’s in danger, but also has come to understand that we’d protect Scootaloo. What do you need?”

“You.”

The thing certainly couldn’t answer with its one-word vocabulary. Even its master of the word ‘you’ seemed shaky. It merely stared in Twilight’s general direction, all but drooling.

“The element was giving off sparks.” Sunset turned her eyes towards the disguised artifact. “I’ve never seen it do that before. Maybe something is affecting both of them at once?”

“They both possess alicorn magic.” Twilight slowly stretched out her hoof to carefully touch Scootaloo’s head. “It’s certainly possible to construct spells that target alicorn magic, I’ve created a few myself. The questions are who and why?”

Twilight frowned as the options went through her mind.

“So we’re doing this instead?” Moonlight Raven, still on their couch, turned her hooves up and looked at Sunset. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to use astral magic until we find the source of this. I’ll see if anypony suspicious is standing outside.”

She summoned a hoodie, drew it up, and left with enough courtesy to use the door this time. Sunset bit her lip watching her subordinate leave but couldn’t disagree with that assessment. She turned her attention to Scootaloo as well.

“Actually,” Dash called the remaining attention to herself, “I think the banana was talking to me earlier.”

“What?” Sunset flicked her ears. “Are you sure?”

“No,” Dash admitted. “But somepony was telling me she’d let me–”

Blue sparks erupted from the banana a second time!

Scootaloo let out a yelp like she’d just been burned. Then she vanished hard, with an airburst that nearly blew out the window. Dash thought she’d exploded into flames, until–

“She teleported! At least something like that will be easy to follow. She went to–” Twilight spoke casually enough like she was rattling off a small calculation.

Then she teleported off to the same location, presumably.

Sunset needed a minute longer to reach the same conclusion Twilight had, but she expressed far more fear when she got there.

“Dammit! That would have put her in or near the school!” Sunset looked at the clock. “And class is about to begin! Why would she go there of all places?!”

Of course Twilight would have been less worried. She had no idea where the school was.

“Isn’t it still summer?” Dash complained.

“Today is the first day of school.”

This was what happened when you homeschooled.

Sunset galloped to the open window.

“Raven! School!” Sunset shouted out the window, then teleported away herself.

That left three mares, none of whom could get there half as fast. The school had to be close to seven or eight miles away. No sense rushing there when Dash had already made up her mind about what to do.

“I guess the rest of us will just sit here like idiots?” Trixie turned to Dash and Pinkie.

Loathe as she was to admit it, Dash only saw one option available to her.

“I have an idea!” Dash ran to the kitchen.

She skidded to a halt in front of the fridge and threw open the freezer. She took out a one-gallon tub of ice cream and shoved it on top of her head.

“Rainbow Dash! I don’t think that’s going to–”

Trixie froze before she could be wrong. Or rather, Dash must have accelerated again.

Twilight didn’t have the luxury of thinking about where she teleported. It was an unfamiliar part of town, was all she could tell.

She found herself inside a large hallway that had bulletin boards all along the walls, filled with notes. Twilight would probably like whatever studious individual lived here, but there was no time for that.

Scootaloo had already made a mess of this place. A second pillar of darkness had been thrust down through the floor at some target in the basement below. It streamed up like fire, slowly spreading, just not breaking into the floor above. The papers pinned to the bulletin boards crumbled to dust. It wouldn’t be long until things of sturdier material began to disintegrate.

This was something Twilight hadn’t seen in ages, but she had seen it. Starswirl had been able to use a similar attack, one that tore a crack in reality itself, deleting its target from existence.

The real problem was this parasite had created a hole with no real fines or foresight. The destruction would spread for some time. Already black cracks were moving across the ground, causing chunks of the floor to fall into the basement below.

Scootaloo stared into the hole she created, panting and looking about with only modest awareness. It probably wouldn’t have stopped there without the influence of the other feather.

This hadn’t been a random outburst nor a reflexive outlash. Something down there sent a wave that affected Scootaloo. It’d also explain the element of laughter sparking up if it targeted alicorn magic

If it had been a pony, they were dead now. A device, it was annihilated. Either way, that thread had been removed. The only thing left was the parasite. Though she looked relatively in control, Twilight couldn’t risk a second hole.

Twilight opened a portal leading off to a distant mountain. There were still a few locations left on that Z-gate network. This was her most remote location without trying to send her to the moon.

“No.” Twilight grabbed her by the scruff. “Bad.”

Twilight threw Scootaloo through, hoping she wouldn’t be back soon, and turned her attention to the pillar of darkness. Twilight created a needle of light, throwing one to the tip of each of the cracks. Then she put all of her focus on siphoning away the magic inside the pillar.

There was so much! It would take a while and already doors were beginning to open. It was too dangerous for anypony else to come out here! Twilight needed a way to contain this and get everypony out.

Thankfully, Sunset Shimmer appeared behind Twilight a moment later. Now, Twilight could easily do both.

“Sunset!” Twilight called out to her. “I can deal with this. You evacuate the school just in case she comes back.”

For what it was worth, Sunset put their earlier arguments aside to help out. She dashed off and alarms sounded as Twilight focused her attention on the black pillar.

Twilight rubbed her temple as she redoubled her efforts. The hole was slowly closing, the cracks receding. Why couldn’t it have used a reality-distortion effect to have dealt with this?

Because Scootaloo was the one with the foresight to use their abilities that way, she concluded. The parasite still didn’t have the mental capacity to think of doing anything but destruction and deletion any more than it had the ability to form a complete sentence.

Then how did it teleport?

“By destroying the–”

Twilight turned back to find a second, much smaller hole some distance down the hallway, presumably where Scootaloo had first teleported in. More black cracks moved across the floor, gaining speed. It wouldn’t be at all hard to close, but it would mean letting go of the big one!

A second pony came teleporting in next. It was that grey mare from before, one of the S-rankers. Moonlight Raven, Twilight believed her name was.

Now she wore a suit of purple armor and had four weapons emblazoned with runes floating by her side. The chest piece was curious, resembling an eye enshrouded in flames. Help would be welcome, but Twilight didn’t expect her to be able to give any.

“There’s more than one school in this town, you know!” Raven shouted after Sunset.

Twilight was about to tell her to just focus on getting the ponies out when Raven turned to the second hole with recognition rather than confusion. She lifted an overly large sword made of blue metal and thrust it into the center of the hole.

Instead of cracks running up along the blade, it effectively plugged up the hole, stabilizing it and stopping the spread. The blade must have been made of an alloy that contained broken spacetime! It was the only explanation, but Twilight had doubted Equestria had the technology to forge such a weapon.

“Hold on.” Twilight shot her a skeptical look. “You know how to deal with alicorn magic?”

“You know how to deal with alicorn magic?” Raven asked her back.

“Okay, that’s fair.” Twilight turned back to her task.

“We shouldn’t speak here,” Raven warned. “I’m worried somepony might have wanted us to–”

Her warning was interrupted by a small explosion down the hallway in the other direction. Scootaloo reappeared, the third hole underneath her. She lowered her head and made something like a hissing noise at Twilight.

Twilight probably should have given her a jacket before sending her to the mountain.

“Oh my gosh!” Pyrite tackled Dash, throwing her to the ground, and knocking the ice cream off her head. She laughed hysterically with her muzzle pressed against Dash’s. “I can’t believe you fell for the old ice cream hat trick! What a rube!”

“What? But you told me to–”

“The accelerate mind spell lasts three milliseconds! You really think ice cream cools your head off that fast?” She laughed again. “Everypony’s gonna think you’re a total idiot! Hahaha!”

Dash’s eye twitched as green mint cream dripped off her mane.

Now that she thought about it, the actual container was back in the real world and Laughter made this one just because. To think she could make Dash hallucinate anything like this would be terrifying if it didn’t last just eleven minutes at a time.

“Okay! You got me!” Dash pushed Laughter off of her. “Whatever! Can we help Scootaloo now?”

“So serious!” Laughter made an exaggerated march forward as the area reverted back to her throne room. “Okay. This was already explained to you so I’m not doing it again. Go sit on my throne!”

Laughter nudged her muzzle in the direction of the throne. If she said it was okay to sit on her throne, then why not? Dash had to fly up to reach it. Rings of rainbows encircled her.

“You can figure out how this works yourself,” said Laughter. “I’ll let you look at anything you want. You can spy on Starlight or my sister or you can connect to Scootaloo’s mind. Knock yourself out and let me know when you did everything you wanted to. I can keep doing the accelerate mind spell on and off all day. Slight risk of cancer if you go more than five times.”

Laughter created a fake couch and a pretend mug filled with an imaginary, frothy liquid to drink while she waited for Dash.

“And remember.” Laughter raised her mug to Rainbow Dash. “if you can see them, they can see you. Be careful what you look at.”

Still not sure what she was supposed to do, Dash put a forehoof on either arm of the throne.

A third eye opened up far above even this high throne, looking down at the planet below. Through it, Dash could see the entire world at once. To a normal pony, having a second set of vision, one with such an enormous view with hundreds of focal points rather than one, would be disorienting. But this was nothing compared to the makarakarn. This didn’t even make her stumble.

Dash soon found squinting this imaginary eye would allow her to narrow those focal points down to a singular, crystal clear view, and opening it pulled her vision out to see all of them at once.

She had to get to Scootaloo first, but before that she needed to find the filly. Rainbow Dash pulled all the way back. She could see it broadly now– every source of alicorn magic in the world all at once. She took stock of them all in that one instance.

Starlight. Scootaloo and her necklace. Something like Scootaloo (Lillymoon, Dash presumed). Two hundred and thirty-five sleeping black feathers, mostly in Area 5X. Something in Twilight’s treehouse. Something far away that seethed with malice towards her. A fragment of Laughter somewhere in the northern parts of Everfree. The element of honesty chained and immobile. The Darklord, the most intense light of them all.

Then there were two more, harder to discern.

One, far, far to the north in the far reaches– the endless plains of ice north of Equestria. That, Dash concluded, was where the last white feather rested. Though there was something odd about it.

No! There were two in that spot. But it was like they were glued together, rather than one wearing the other like with Scootaloo. One seemed unstable and broken and the other used to hold it in one piece. Dash couldn’t possibly imagine what was going on there.

Then, finally, was one last signature, unlike any of the others. Not far off from the fragment of Laughter, in Crater Cemetery.

That tiny little bit of curiosity in Dash’s mind, that inkling of surprise was enough to nudge her gaze ever so slightly. And as warned, it gazed back at her.

Like a tripwire had just been sprung, Dash felt the presence of an eye snapping onto her. Though it was just one eye, it may as well have been every pony on the planet staring at her at once. The weight of its stare became all too literal. It sent her to the ground, smothering every cell in her body.

She couldn’t breathe! The thing strangled her with nothing more than a look. Dash could only manage to kick her rear legs as it began to slowly apply ever more pressure. The strength behind that thing went on forever. Dash hadn’t yet reached the beginning of it. She could tell even this much was no attempt at all.

Instead, it was like a sadistic colt slowly lowering his hoof on a fat beetle to see how much force it would need to pop. Dash may have well been a bug underhoof. Already she was close to bursting.

“No!” Laughter held out a hoof.

Rainbows surrounded Dash. Air forced its way into her lungs and she began taking deep breaths again without coughing or sputtering. The darkness that surrounded her burst all at once into rainbow-colored light.

“Nothing but sunshine and rainbows are allowed in my house!” Laughter jumped forward to shout at the eye. “You take your nightmares and get out of here!”

And just like that, it was gone. Dash sat back up, realizing only now she’d at some point fallen off the throne.

“Yeesh! I told you to be careful.” Laughter stomped out a bit of smoking soot. She chuckled like that wasn’t the most horrifying thing in the universe.

“What?” Dash felt her neck. No lingering pain remained, nor a bruise. She supposed this wasn’t her actual body anyway. “What was?”

“Oh yeah!” She smiled and poked a dimple. “Remember how I said you’re all gonna die soon?”

Was that stupid ghost really their greatest enemy this whole time?! Something like that…

Maybe Dash was getting worked up. Twilight could just as easily strangle Dash too and with little effort. Shoot, even Trixie’s strength would feel limitless to Dash.

She shouldn’t jump to any conclusions before Twilight had the chance to assess this. Even if that was the ultimate evil, Dash had more immediate concerns.

“There’s the optimism I love to see!” Laughter cheered at Dash’s private thoughts. “You can take her if I help you! And I’ll totally help you if Pinkie gives me sixty-five percent of her soul! You saw how cool I was just now, right?”

Laughter swung her hoof in an arc, making a rainbow.

“I love rainbows because they’re so pretty! Did you know my grandpa invented rainbows? You know, Momma used to fly so fast sometimes that the sky would explode into rainbows!”

“But it has alicorn magic.” Dash looked off towards the throne. “What is it?”

“Maybe it’s the ghost of an alicorn.” Laughter waved her hooves about, making ghost noises. “Wouldn’t that be spooky? Heehee. Make sure to tell Pinkie how spooky that was. And how cool I was with those rainbow lasers!”

Laughter winked at her, getting an eye roll from Dash.

“Daw! Cheer up! Here.” Laughter clapped Dash on the withers.

Armor appeared on Dash, looking rather like the type the royal guards wore centuries ago. Except instead of the standard gold, these seemed to be made of a metallic rainbows.

“That will protect you from her!”

Dash didn’t have to wonder why she wasn’t given this in the first place. Thinking about it, this wasn’t even real armor! It was just a visual representation of Laughter actually being willing to help her now.

“You wanna spy on Crater Cemetery go ahead.” Laughter flew back to her couch and picked the mug back up. “She won’t nearly kill you this time. It will shield you from Starlight too! Or anything else.”

Dash watched her carefully. As tempting as it was to try and gather information on her enemies, Dash couldn’t leave Scootaloo hanging like this. Her friends had to come before her enemies.

Laughter watched her with a more subdued smile as Dash flew back up to the throne.

Parasi

Scootaloo knew something was wrong as soon as she attempted to use her magic.

It was like trying to take a step forward only to realize your leg was no longer there. Something was missing. She felt a sharp pain in her head. She tried to grab onto it, but her hooves could only thrash about in an attempt.

Scootaloo could still move them, but they hardly responded at all.

Her vision faded to black. The brunt of the pain was gone now, but she felt… severed by it. She was sure something had been cut off, but couldn’t tell what. Something important was simply missing!

In a panic, she tried moving her ears. She felt both of them but controlling them took much more conscious effort. It just seemed like her coordination was gone.

That thing where your body parts seamlessly moved without too much thought, whatever that was called, had been cut off! She could still move, it just had to be conscious and deliberate.

And soon after, she also realized her alicorn magic was gone. An attempt to move the timeline failed to even get started. What was she even supposed to do?

She needed to focus, but Scootaloo managed to give an awkward flap of her wings. She could still feel her normal magic, as a pegasus. That was enough to force herself into a sitting position.

She shifted her hooves one at a time and awkwardly pushed herself up to her feet only to find balancing impossible in her current state.

She at least managed to sit upright. If Scootaloo wanted to get anywhere, she’d have to drag herself along in this position.

Was there even anywhere to get to?

Everything was black.

Until she felt something warm wrapping around her, like a pony grabbing her perhaps. That and magic similar to her own alicorn magic. She blinked once and the world returned.

There was no darkness anywhere in the world now! The sky became a hyper-blue beyond anything Scootaloo had ever seen before as vibrant rainbows lit up the sky. Scootaloo weakly twisted her neck about, finding herself on a floating platform of white stone.

And there, on the far end, sitting on a massive throne surrounded by swirls of rainbows was Dash herself. She looked majestic, mesmerizing!

Did her mind conjure this up? She liked Rainbow Dash but felt her imagination was going a bit overboard with the glorification here.

“Rainbow Dash? Is that you?” Scootaloo stumbled back, looking at the rainbow-bedazzled hyper-blue sky. “I think I’m hallucinating. Are we still in your house?”

“Technically I am.” Rainbow Dash jumped off her throne. “Don’t worry, I’m hallucinating too.”

“Should that make me feel better?”

“I dunno.” Dash helped Scootaloo up to a more normal position and held her tight with a wing. “Are you hurt?”

“Maybe not hurt?” Scootaloo tried putting a hoof on her head, missing it badly. “Just… awkward? What is this?”

“We’re in this accelerated mind illusion thing,” said Dash. “Just roll with it. I brought somepony who could help. Speaking of which, why is she like that?”

Dash turned to address whoever this mystery pony was. Scootaloo struggled just to follow her gaze.

“If you’re looking for your basic motor functions, they’re right over here!” A new voice announced.

Scootaloo finally managed to point her head toward the voice. There were two ponies standing barrel to barrel over there and Scootaloo didn’t know which one to be more confused by.

The first was Golden Feather?

Scootaloo wasn’t the best student in the world, but even she could recognize Equestria’s founder. This had to just be a pony dressed like her though, right? Golden Feather lived maybe ten thousand years ago or something!

Then the second, smaller pony next to Golden Feather was Scootaloo.

At least, it looked very much like Scootaloo, just a bit more wild? It acted like a dog controlling her body, sniffing about and looking around with the most dumbfounded expression in the world.

And the weirdest part was Scootaloo could almost hear its thoughts, or whatever shadow of a thought a dog might have, as though it really were her. It thought in blurs and colors. Seeing the rainbows above made it think of some vague imitation of Dash’s face and scent.

That Scootaloo remembered a recent pain, too. She was looking for it, jealously guarding something against the bad. But it couldn’t find the thing that hurt it.

“I’m getting more confused.” Scootaloo pressed up against Dash, the sanest thing in the place.

“Okay, fast as possible.” Dash pointed to Golden Feather. “That’s the element of laughter. She’s kind of a jerk but she said she wants to help us. Just stay cautious.”

“Help us with what?” Scootaloo asked.

“I guess to reign that thing in.” Dash pointed to the other Scootaloo. “I think that’s the thing living in your brain?”

Scootaloo squinted at her double, skeptical and unsure of exactly what that meant. It’d explain why Scootaloo could feel what it did. She’d always had that ability, though not until recently had it expressed anything but blind anger and tiredness.

Wasn’t it supposed to look like a feather? Scootaloo had always imagined it as something between that and an insect. She could feel it at times, in the back of her head, its spindly tendrils sticking into her like little legs determined to hold on.

But now it seemed closer to a dog. Somehow, it was even more confused than she was. It kept looking up at the rainbows and sniffing, thinking about Dash. It could smell her but had yet to pick up on the fact that Dash was on the other side of the room.

“Did you take it out of my head?” Scootaloo didn’t get her hopes up just yet. “I still feel connected to it.”

“Somepony mentally separated the two of you!” Laughter made a chopping motion with her hoof. “Since the parasite takes care of your motor functions, you might have trouble walking until you’re back together. But on the plus side, each of you can feel what the other one is thinking to an extent. Cutting you in half means you can see each other for the first time.”

Scootaloo turned to Dash, still not understanding, and waited for a simpler explanation.

“Best I can tell, somepony cast a spell that put a wedge between you and your other half,” said Dash. “This is all an illusion.”

Scootaloo resented having that thing called her ‘other half’. She kept quiet but that didn’t help.

Whenever awake, that parasite homed in on anything that made Scootaloo upset. It could be so dim in most areas, but in that one way, it’d always been keen. And now its eyes went straight to Rainbow Dash and at last noticed the older pegasus.

Back in the old days, were it this awake, it would have pounced on Dash right then and there. It’d become more chill since she started wearing that necklace Twilight had given her and seemed to let it slide as soon as she saw Rainbow Dash was there.

It had some of Scootaloo’s memories, she realized. It remembered last night, Scootaloo lying between Rainbow Dash and Twilight, feeling secure. If it lay down next to Dash, it believed, then Scootaloo would be safe.

So it walked what it thought was her body over to Rainbow Dash and lay down, hoping Dash would somehow fix whatever all this was.

Dash was forced to lift a wing to accommodate it on her other side. She looked back and forth, a Scootaloo pressed against either side of her barrel.

Just watching it filled Scootaloo with indignation at the gall of it. Rainbow Dash was on her side, not that thing’s!

“No! Get out of here!” She yelled at it from Dash’s other side.

Scootaloo managed to roll over to look it in the eyes.

Her anger towards it, oddly, confused it. It had no idea what was going on. It almost realized that Scootaloo was Scootaloo, but not quite. It couldn’t fathom a way to react to Scootaloo’s anger being directed at itself.

As if she’d never been angry at it before?

Maybe this was Scootaloo’s chance to finally make it understand.

It still didn’t understand at all! It seriously thought it was helping her every time.

Hadn’t it always been there for Scootaloo? Whenever she got angry or afraid, it was there! Hadn’t it always been her guardian? It never did anything but protect her.

She knew that it seriously believed all of that. Somehow its ignorance made things even worse.

Scootaloo wanted to hate it so badly. It’d never done good before, not once. Did it matter how well it meant if it always screwed up?

“No!” Scootaloo shook her head, knocking off tears. “No, you haven’t! All you do is hurt me.”

How could it possibly think any of that after all it did to her?!

“How can you?” Scootaloo closed her eyes tight, keeping more tears in. “How can you not know that I hate you?!”

She lay there trembling, barely able to open her eyes. She felt a wing over her. Dash helped her turn her head up to look the older pegasus in the eyes.

“Scootaloo,” said Dash. “I understand why you’d be angry at it, but–”

“No, you don’t!” Scootaloo turned away, closing her eyes tight. “You don’t know what it’s like!”

“Okay.” Dash exhaled slowly. “You’re probably right about that. I’m not trying to say your life wasn’t unfair.”

“But what?!”

“Well things have a way of staying unfair until you force them to change,” said Dash. “I get that thing is a horrible monster and it’s fine if you hate it. But it is changing, isn’t it? Maybe it doesn’t have to be a burden forever?”

Scootaloo looked back at the monster, still staring at her with a wide-eyed innocence it hardly deserved.

She didn’t want to say it out loud, it wasn’t something she should ever have to admit, but it really had changed since Twilight gave her that necklace. It had become less aggressive. Even now, it should be destroying things rather than sitting around dumbfounded, believing that things would be okay so long as it was lying next to Rainbow Dash.

“It’s not less aggressive,” Laughter closed her eyes and held up a hoof, “just more intelligent. Part of being friendly is the ability to know who your friends are. A stupid alligator bites everything it sees, but a smart alligator won’t bite its friends.”

Strangely, Scootaloo understood what it was saying and knew it to be the truth. Even when she felt it waking up a little, its anger was at least focused. It used to barely be able to tell what was making it angry and would just smash everything even after the threat was gone.

Was the difference really just that it could tell what the danger was now?”

“I remember it being smarter than this in my head.” Scootaloo looked at her double, still unimpressed. “Recently, I mean. A few times, I almost heard it talking to me with words. Thinking something like ‘if you’re not going to save us, then I will’. Why isn’t it like that now?”

“You’re two different parts of the brain,” said Laughter. “Just like you can’t walk straight without it, it can’t go past animalistic thoughts without you.”

That made some sense. Even more recently, it never seemed to have its own thoughts outside of ‘destroy thing that cause hurt’. It sometimes reacted to Scootaloo’s thoughts and emotions, but that was it.

“Well.” Scootaloo closed her eyes. She was still trembling, despite trying to calm down. Maybe. Maybe if this was the closest she could get to getting rid of it. “What do you want me to do with it, exactly?”

“You gotta accept that this is you if you want to get along.” Laughter fluttered over to its side and crouched down next to it. “Just like your eyes are you and your memories are you, so is this. That’s what it wants. If you accept it as part of you, just like all those other things, then it won’t be any more of a burden than your wings and hooves are.”

Give it what it wants?

“No!” Scootaloo tried shaking her head but could barely manage. “I don’t care if it sits around in my skull, but I don’t want it doing anything. I’m the one who does the thinking. You don’t do anything ever. That’s the only ‘deal’ I’d ever accept.”

“Too bad that won’t ever work,” said Laughter. “You’re never gonna get total control over it until you can let go of your hatred for it.”

“Huh?”

“Yep! Stop hating it for at least a few seconds, give it a name, then you’ll be good.” Laughter clapped her hooves together. “Anyway, that’s that. Waking up now!”

“Hold on!” Dash held out a hoof to stop her. “Already? That can’t possibly have been eleven minutes!”

“What? I already did everything I can for now. I can’t force them to like eachother.” Laughter took to the air, forehooves upturned. “She’s already better off now that they can see each other. So bazingers.”

Dash tried protesting, but Scootaloo could already feel her reality shifting.

Despite knowing of the attack in advance, Allgood’s official response couldn’t be too swift else it would look suspicious. He needed to wait until the crisis became public.

The plan took an unexpected turn both up and down at once.

Sunset Shimmer had deemed it worthwhile to personally respond to the attack. Evacuating a school from even a relatively powerful monster wasn’t something one of the elite four lowered themselves to. He knew an attack on a rich school like Ponytown Hill would send shockwaves of rumors, but Sunset Shimmer had made sure that those rumors were deathly serious and talked of immense danger.

He didn’t need to wait long until one of his agents heard of the incident organically and phoned in the emergency call.

Things only took a downturn when he arrived on the scene and saw the utter lack of destruction. Here he was aboard an airship specifically designed for this, looking down at a school with no visible damage from the outside. The foals were all long gone, leaving not even a panicked crowd.

This troubled Allgood deeply.

Subject 2 was not responding as he had expected. Where was this restraint when she’d flared up countless times in the past? She’d had no trouble destroying millions worth of equipment and facilities back then. The Subject 2 he knew, when uninhibited by an SCU, would have obliterated the entire school before going on to rip apart whatever else happened to be around.

It wasn’t enough! All he could hope was that one or two foals had died, at the least!

If he couldn’t get the destruction up a little, there would be no arguing his case. At the very least, he had to be the one to take down Scootaloo. It’d be a delicate line between taking her down immediately and letting her destroy more. Not only was he racing against Rainbow Dash, but other S-rank ponies and the psychic’s guild would be mobilizing shortly.

And only one of them was on his side.

Lightning Dust, one of the S-rank ponies, had been called in under a max level threat alert Allgood issued, supposedly after getting word of the attack moments ago.

She came above board as Allgood waited and hoped for another explosion down below.

Lightning Dust was no equipped with blocky, metallic armor that took on a blue sheen. She frowned at it, knowing it would inhibit her movements. Yet that alone could mitigate the effects of Subject 2’s powers. Without it, capturing her would be too difficult.

The green mare was lean even for a pegasus and a few deep scars could be seen even with all this gear on. Not one of those injuries seemed to have put any fear into her, if the way she carried herself was any indication.

Lightning Dust walked to the port side and looked down at the school, grumbling at what she saw.

“With all due respect, I’m used to fighting stuff that would have blown up the entire school,” said Lightning Dust. “I’m not interested in fighting a monster that can’t even handle that much. The others will probably show up and handle this soon. You’d save money like that.”

Allgood cringed while his face was still turned. This had almost been a perfect plan.

“Subject 2 is behaving strangely.” Allgood fixed his composure before turning back to her. “But that only makes her more dangerous. You’ve seen photographs of what she’s capable of. Sunset Shimmer is down there herself. She’s taking this threat seriously but doesn’t have the equipment to neutralize Subject 2.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lightning Dust didn’t look impressed just yet. She fidgeted in the awkward, blue armor. “This goes in the neck?”

Lightning Dust gave one of the six injectors provided a test jab.

It was a thick cylinder with a needle that retracted when not pressed down upon. It contained enough drugs to leave Subject 2 in a coma for a few days, no matter how bad her episode was.

Lightning Dust frowned at the injector. A pony like that undoubtedly preferred to simply bash their opponent’s head in.

“Yes. Even if she appears to be acting normally or under control, you must inject her with this anyway,” Allgood went off the cuff. That wasn’t typically part of the protocol. “Subject 2 is in an unstable state and could flip between normal and chaotic at any moment. We can’t risk her next flare-up leading to deaths.”

“Alright, I’ll handle it.” Lightning Dust took to the air. “But if that kid doesn’t even put up a fight, I’m never working for you again.”

She accelerate with such speed that the airburst forced Allgood to wince. By the time he opened his eyes, the blue streak had already made its way to the front gate of the school.

He frowned heavily. There wouldn’t be a lot of time. He only waited for a second longer to ensure nopony else outside the loop was listening before talking to his engineer.

“I want to hit her with all three of them next,” said Allgood. “And turn one of them to full power this time.”

“Sir.” The engineer faltered at the order. “Full power is intended to kill her.”

“She’s obviously grown resistant to our attacks!” Allgood turned to bark the order at him. These idiots! Their job wasn’t to question him. “It’d rather take that chance than the alternative. Do it!”

Those not born into power always had slave mentalities. So despite thinking it was wrong, he sulked off to obey.

Allgood turned to the mountainside on the opposite side of the Ponytown river, wondering when his less savory associates would make their move.

The one thing Mass Hissteria couldn’t stand about Ponytown was all the damn psychics.

You couldn’t get close to that place until you were ready to go in guns blazing. And so he was out on the barren mountainside opposite that river along with a few other members of the Ghost Adder mercenary group. Twelve elite agents, heavily armored with the kind of guns you could only get from the Mad Science Cartel or the like, sat with weapons loaded and ready.

One of them had a score of huge rockets Screwball managed to get to them. One of these suckers had a range of a few miles. They weren’t too accurate, but they didn’t need to hit anything in particular.

Through a telescope, he watched the school where Allgood said he planted the first device. There was some movement there, but not as much as he’d expected. This had better not be a bust.

That town was so steeply sloped you had to run uphill to get anywhere in it, too. Such a pain.

Finally, his radio came to life. The one agent he dared to send in was ready to report the situation.

“Silverstorm is struggling to undo its magic. Distracted,” said King Cobra. Despite her new name, she was actually a tiny little mare with a high-pitched if unemotional voice. “At the house: Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Derpy Hooves, Trixie. At the school: Moonlight Raven, Silverstorm, Sunset Shimmer. Lightning Dust and three other S-rank ponies are moving in on the school.”

They had a deal with Allgood. He’d alert them when the device went active, giving them a chance to potentially capture one of the bounties. In exchange, their attack would make it look like Ghost Adder or the Bloodstorm Cartel more generally might be responsible for Scootaloo’s condition.

“Rainbow Dash is behaving erratically. She shoved her head into a tub of ice cream. Pinkie and at least three other psychics noticed me. Less than one minute remains,” King Cobra finished rattling off her list of notes.

Shoved her head into ice cream when confronted with this? A world full of horror and that was the pony Screwball was scared of?

Well, the dangerous ponies had all left the building. This sounded like an easy billion.

“Whatever.” Hissteria dusted himself off. He jabbed about a makeshift map, assigning each of his agents their points of attack. “Remember, we don’t have the firepower to take out any of their strong fighters. If you see an S Ranker or worse, make a stalling retreat. Derpy Hooves and Rainbow Dash are the only real targets here.”

“Sorry!” Anaconda, the biggest of the bunch, rose his hoof. “If we attack such a rich area, Equestria’s going to declare war on the pirate coast for sure. Screwball might–”

“That’s exactly what the big boss wants.” Hissteria tapped his head. “They’re all going to tear themselves apart if we kick over enough powder kegs. Even Silverstorm. That’s the plan.”

He motioned for the pony on rocket duty to begin. Then the rest of them broke up and ran to their targets.

Scootaloo blinked. Suddenly she was back in the real world.

Maybe.

She looked around. The colors were no longer hyper-saturated. Her motor functions were back and she lifted a single hoof to celebrate. But she also wasn’t in her house. That was never a good sign.

Scootaloo had never been in a normal school, but she’d seen them in cartoons. There were classrooms and bulletin boards with crude drawings pinned on them. That’s where she was, some random school. Likely an elementary school.

Though a familiar swirling spire of darkness wasn’t normally part of the scenery. At least the screams that typically accompanied it were nowhere to be found.

She looked around in a panic, finding Twilight and an unfamiliar, but heavily armed, unicorn staring her down. Twilight looked ready to cast a spell. Scootaloo doubted it was intended to hurt her, but all the same, she couldn’t help stumbling back.

“Wait! I’m in control again!” Scootaloo reassured Twilight.

They relaxed at that. Though truth be told, Scootaloo wasn’t as sure of her condition herself.

She could still feel that nameless freak, a bit differently from before. That little episode left it far more awake than normal but also far more ‘intelligent’ than it had been even in that throne room.

It thought with near-coherence the odd accusation that Twilight wanted to make Scootaloo cold. It made no sense and Scootaloo repeatedly told it to shut up and go to sleep in her head. They were fine. It wasn’t cold at all. Eventually, it got the message and let her handle things.

Twilight turned more of her attention to the spire. She must have been able to keep it under control. At least, Scootaloo hoped she had.

Just beneath her were cracks, Scootaloo just now notice. Multiple cracks were all around her! It’d been a long time since things had been this bad outside of her specific containment facility.

“Did!” Scootaloo gulped, flattening her ears. “I didn’t hurt anypony, did I?”

“As far as I can tell, we’re still good.” Twilight nodded at her. “Sunset Shimmer personally evacuated everypony.”

Scootaloo sighed and allowed her ears to perk back up.

“Do you have any idea what happened?” Twilight asked, keeping her eyes on the shrinking pillar. “I suspect something targeting alicorn magic washed over us. Did you feel anything odd?”

“The element of laughter was talking to me and Dash,” said Scootaloo. “She said somepony was… kind of slicing my brain in half? I passed out, but she helped me. I’ll be okay unless, uh…”

Despite Twilight’s best efforts, the cracks had already spread far enough to make one of the walls crumble, revealing an empty classroom.

“Unless it happens again.” Twilight flicked her eyes to look out the window. “We need to find whoever’s responsible.”

“There aren’t a lot of suspects,” the armored unicorn spoke up. “Starlight. Allgood.”

“Allgood?” Scootaloo’s ears swiveled to the mare, her mind immediately assuming he was the one behind it. “It has to be them, right? They’ve been studying me my whole life! They probably have all sorts of anti-me whatevers!”

“We can’t say that for sure just yet,” Twilight warned.

As if to prove her wrong, a newcomer burst through the window, shattering it.

A green pegasus, her body crackling with lightning slid across the ground, skidding to a halt right before Scootaloo. The lightning died down, but her electric yellow hair made it seem as though some of it still lingered.

Most important, and more intimidating than all of her scars was the armor she wore. It was the same all of her ‘caregivers’ wore, the same designed by Allgood.

Scootaloo tried to warn them, but the mare’s eyes locked onto her. She could sense an attack was imminent. That parasite was already giving her problems.

Before she could act, a fancy, runic spear materialized and stabbed into the ground between Scootaloo and the pegasus, getting the latter’s attention.

“Stay out of this, Lightning Dust,” warned the grey mare. “We have the situation under control.”

“Eh?” Lightning Dust looked over her shoulder at her. “Shut up, Raven. The situation isn’t under control while that thing’s blowing up a school. I was told that kid is a max-level threat. I have a sedative that will take her out.”

An injector dispensed from the left boot of Lightning Dust’s getup. Scootaloo shuddered at the sight of it. She’d been injected with that stuff once before and did not like the experience. She had chills for a week even after waking up.

“If we need you, we’ll call you,” said Raven flatly. “Wait outside.”

“You don’t give me orders!” Lightning Dust lowered into a fighting bow.

Scootaloo got the impression the two of them might start fighting soon, so she backed up. She needed to focus on maintaining control, especially now.

Twilight teleported to Scootaloo’s side.

“I’ll take the sedative if it makes you feel better,” Twilight offered. “But we don’t need it! She’s not dangerous right now.”

Lightning Dust hesitated, scowling even at Twilight. But in the end, she straightened herself out.

“Okay, I’ll let you try whatever brilliant plan you’ve come up with.” Lightning Dust rolled her eyes. “But I’m staying here just in case you screw it up.”

“No,” Raven said flatly. “You’re leaving.”

Lightning Dust edged closer to a fighting stance once more.

“You’re being overly confrontational,” Twilight scolded Raven, who merely shook her head calmly. “Just let her stand over there.”

“You don’t understand. This pony is the worst possible–”

Scootaloo felt it again! Similar to before but far more intense. Burning heat ripped through her head and seemingly into her eyes, which throbs so hard she feared they would burst!

Amazingly, even like this, it didn’t make her black out this time. Simply, her thoughts became hard. They couldn’t escape that fire inside her head.

The thing, it made her scream, it conjured waves of blackness! It felt like its old self again, lacking the intelligence to even direct its anger at the thing actually hurting them.

And Scootaloo couldn’t tell it to stop! She couldn’t focus enough for even that much!

Lightning Dust’s body glowed blue and she was on them in an instant.

Spitfire and Fleetfoot met up as soon as signs of an emergency broke out. They flew up high above Ponytown to assess the damages.

Too loud. Explosive shells. The attacker was too easily spotted on a rooftop.

The younger and less experienced Fleetfoot almost took the bait, but Spitfire stopped her before she flew down there.

“There’s no way that one guy thinks he can take both of us,” Spitfire warned. “He’s trying to distract us.”

Fleetfoot nodded. Spitfire scanned the town for signs of more activity.

She found some soon enough. Fire came rushing towards them from the mountains on the other side of the lake. Soon it became apparent these were large rockets being fired at the town, though Spitfire could see no discernable target.

They were just firing them randomly into populated areas, trying to cause panic.

“Intercept the rockets. Wait until they stop firing, then go to their source,” Spitfire commanded. “I’ll wait to see what they’re after.”

Fleetfoot nodded and rushed off in a burst of air. She was already closing in on the closest rocket, managing to fly under it and tilt its trajectory upward with a powerful gust. Then, with her incredible agility, she spun out towards the next one.

If only Spitfire could still move like that.

She strafed out of the way of another heavy gunshot. At least she was still good enough for that.

She looked around, dodging his attacks as she assessed the situation. The school was under attack, but the ponies present could handle that. Then there was an explosion near Pinkie’s house. Unlikely whoever was there was in real danger, either.

Her gut told her both were a mere distraction, to keep the strongest ponies in town pinned. But for what?

Another loud bang. Spitfire effortlessly dodged it, finally sparing the attacker a stern glare.

Finally, he got the message and fell back.

She turned back to the school just in time to see lightning erupting, tearing off the side of the building.

Dammit! Was Lightning Dust down there?

Dash shook her head, back to reality.

And now her head was all sticky. Though she got rid of the ice cream in the acceleration zone (or whatever that place was called) here her head was still green from the mint chocolate chip melting into it.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Trixie. “Where are you going with this?”

Dash groaned and walked over to the sink.

“That was a prank.” Dash grabbed a towel.

“Good one?” Trixie shifted her eyes awkwardly. “Is now really the time for–”

“Get down!” Pinkie tackled Dash to the ground.

A gunshot sounded from outside! The kitchen window shattered as the bullet ripped through. From the mark on the ground, it seemed to have been aimed at Dash.

“Heh.” Trixie wasn’t even fazed. “Either that’s an assassin or the neighbors don’t like your–”

Before she could finish whatever stupid comment she had, a second shot fired, digging into her neck. Trixie barely staggered. She simply tore out the bullet and the hole closed with little blood.

“Ouch!” Trixie winced and looked at the bullet. “I know this kind of gun. MSC makes them. I bet it’s those Ghost Adder–”

A third shot hit Trixie again, silencing her for another second.

Unless there were a bunch of them outside, these shots were coming way too fast. Even an expert marskpony needed five or six seconds to reload.

Dash cast the murder spell and sent eight of her crows outside to investigate.

She found a rather small mare wrapped up in layers of scarves and jackets, wielding a type of gun Dash had never seen before, one with a telescope attached to the top of it. Two much bigger guns were strapped to her back, as well as a belt around her barrel covered in explosives.

She must have known about the crows because the assassin immediately shot down one of them as soon as Dash got outside. Then, without even moving a bolt, she fired a second, then a third time.

Where the buck did she get a gun like that? It seemed like she could fire it non-stop without ever reloading. Trixie implied it was made with mad science.

Then the mare switched to a huge rocket launcher strapped to her back, pointing it at Dash’s house. The rocket fired but didn’t get far. Pinkie grabbed the missile, forcing it to burn in place, not moving more than a few inches from the barrel.

That forced the assassin to drop the rocket launcher and roll off the roof, into Pinkie’s backyard, just before the rocket exploded.

“Three more!” Pinkie shouted at Dash as she jumped across the street. “Gotta get this one first! Can’t let them blow up the mini-golf course!”

At that, one of the crows in the house decided to turn back. Across the street, she could still hear gunshots and explosions as the two of them fought.

“I’m willing to bet those ponies are behind the attack on Scootaloo, too,” said Trixie. “I’ve fought these mercenaries before. Four out of ten strength, but they’re tricky.”

“Dash!” Derpy came running into the room. “What’s happening over here? Should we bring out the robots?”

If more were coming, maybe they should retreat.

Dash looked down at the element of laughter. It seemed to float in the air just in front of her chest, making Dash assume it had decided to be worn by her at some point. She could almost feel an invisible chain around her neck.

Would she be able to help Scootaloo from the castle? The range seemed global.

“Fall back to the castle!” Dash dragged Trixie by the leash, running towards the basement stairs.

They got to the living room as an explosion blew the front door off its hinges.

Not soon after the door came a pegasus armed to the teeth. He pistol-whipped Dash hard in the face with his rifle, sending her reeling until she tumbled back against the couch.

Their leader, Dash assumed, had his gun trained on Dash’s head before she could stand back up. It was a gamble if she could cast the murder spell before he could fire.

To make matters worse, a second, much larger pony had come in from the kitchen. The one slammed his side against Derpy, sending her to the ground. Then he threw his weight down on top of her, pinning her to the ground by sitting down on her back. The large gun at his side pressed hard against her head.

She glanced over at Derpy, then back at the main pony, deciding they didn’t seem in a hurry to kill anypony. This was the time to stall for as long as possible. Instead, she stayed down, looking around the room.

Three just like Pinkie warned, one of each type. A unicorn to Dash’s right and a tall earth pony to her left. They managed to surround her.

Two of them had the same scoped guns as the pony across the street. The large earth pony stallion had far bigger guns, the kind you needed to keep strapped to your side.

And that was just the start of their gear. All of them wore green body armor with an added layer of belts around their barrels and boots, all of it dripping with smaller weapons. On their flanks, where their cutie marks should be, was spraypainted a purple snake skull.

Their leader was noticeably older than the other two, but Dash couldn’t help but assume he was the most dangerous.

He reminded her a bit of Arachnado, one of those chimeric ponies Screwball created. His eyes were slitted like a snake’s and a single, silver fang hung out of his mouth at all times. He gave that fang a small lick with a forked tongue, adding to it.

So they went from spiders to snakes. What was the next one going to be?

“Find the portal! Shut it down!” He barked orders at the one mare in the group.

She teleported down into the basement, Dash presumed. Her reinforcements were going to be cut off! Though how did they even know about that in the first place?

“Now then.” Their presumed leader took out a small gun.

Without taking his eyes off Dash, he shot a single bullet into Trixie’s side.

“Silver bullet.” His silver fang glinted as he grinned. “That’s for the curse you put on Striking Viper.”

“Oh come on!” Trixie curled up on the floor. The lodged bullet burned her away at the same rate she healed, leaving it to sear without actually wounding her. “That was the one good curse I did. Why is that the one I get punished for?”

“Now you.” He focused his scope at Rainbow Dash. “Name’s Hissteria, two s’s. We’re here for that bounty. Screwball wants you alive, but I don’t have any reason not to kill this other pegasus.”

He flicked only his wing in Derpy’s direction, the gun pressed against the back of her head.

“Unless you can think of one.” He flashed his silver fang once more. “Eight. Seven. Six.”

This was getting intense too fast! Dash had to focus!

She closed her eyes tight, her mind desperately searching for an answer.

She did have an artifact of immeasurable power in her possession. That had to count for something. But how to use an object that didn’t want to be used?

It didn’t like getting touched without consent. If she could get them to try and snatch it away, it might play a ‘prank’ on them.

And if she could introduce it in a way that could be considered funny, it might let them see it!

“I’ll go quietly!” That stopped the countdown. Dash held up the element of laughter. “But only if I can take this banana with me.”

Hissteria opened his mouth but didn’t manage a word. He turned his head slightly away, then watched Dash with narrow eyes. Most likely, they hadn’t been able to see it until just now.

“It’s just a normal banana!” Dash smiled.

“She’s a tricky one,” the big pony whispered. “That must be explosive. Or it’s cursed or something.”

Hissteria hissed and flicked a wing toward the coffee table.

“Oh no, you don’t.” Hissteria never took his eyes off Dash. “Put the banana on the table. Slowly.”

That could work.

In an almost comical fashion, Dash moved with swiftness closer to a statue than a snail. She wasted a good fifteen seconds just turning in the right direction.

“Not that slowly!”

“Exactly how slow do you want me to go, then?” Dash looked back at him.

“Just put it on the ground!” He stomped his hooves. “Three times as fast as you were just moving.”

His impatience was a good sign. It meant he didn’t think he had long, either.

Dash moved at a more reasonable pace this time, but Hissteria grit his teeth. He wanted to move fast but couldn’t, a feeling she knew herself. He might get impatient and do something stupid if Dash let him.

“Now!” His eyes briefly flicked down to the element of laughter. “Back up to the wall. Move along it at a normal trot until you’ve circled to the front door.”

Dash complied. Her eyes went to Derpy and she decided not to test his patience any longer. If she at least stalled for a little, that would be enough.

When Dash was about halfway around, the mare teleported back in.

“Sea Snake!” Hissteria called to the unicorn as she returned from the basement. “Get that banana out of here. I think it’s a high-powered explosive so be careful.”

The unicorn scanned the room. She didn’t look at all impressed when she found the element.

“Are you seriously falling for something this stupid? You’re getting too old, boss.” Sea Snake kept her eyes on Hissteria as she lifted the element of laughter off the ground with her magic.

The perturbed look from her companions made her reconsider her earlier confidence. She looked back to find one banana levitating and one still on the floor. She tried to pick that one up only to now find three bananas.

Now the three assailants were visibly worried. But Dash struggled to think of what else she could do. If that was Pyrite Feather’s best ‘prank’, she was seriously not impressed.

Dash could think of nothing but to continue her bluff when all eyes went to her. She smiled, her smugness trying to approximate that of Trixie’s, as she looked the guy in the eye.

“I don’t know what stupid trick you’re trying to pull but it just cost you your friend's life,” Hissteria warned. “Kill the grey one! Then we blow this entire building to the ground.”

Then Dash was no longer smiling! She just screwed up big time! Her heart skipped one beat.

But only one.

No noise came, not even a click.

“I uh!” Everypony turned to the big guy. He was now holding a banana at Derpy’s head. Derpy winced even now. “I tried. My gun seems to be a banana, sir.”

Finally! He took his eyes off Dash long enough!

Dash burst into a murder of crows and swarmed the room. Hissteria cursed and swatted those harassing him.

“This is just like in that temple!” Sea Snake’s eyes widened as she leaped back and pressed against the wall. “Oh! I’m going to get cancer now, aren’t I?!”

“I know not to mess with whatever this is!” Hissteria turned a hoof upward. “Scramble! We’ll settle for the grey one!”

The other two both turned and used small explosives to blow holes in Dash’s walls in opposite directions. Meanwhile, Hissteria took aim at Dash!

Hissteria managed to gun down six or seven of them as he jumped back to the broken window, then rolled out onto the lawn.

“I’m back!” Pinkie’s voice sounded as she landed on the lawn.

“Pinkie!” Dash turned back into a pony. She pointed both forehooves in the direction of the big guy. “Go left! They’re taking Derpy!”

“Roger!” Pinkie dashed after the big guy.

Through the destroyed door, Dash saw Hissteria give her a hesitant look before running after Pinkie instead.

She looked around frantically. What was her next move? Chase after Derpy or–

She felt something hard hit her wing, sending her stumbling forward. She turned to see her wing bleeding badly, and felt a searing heat running through it.

That unicorn stuck her tongue out at Dash, holding her smoking gun down, before running away.

At least she had a reason to use that healing spell Twilight gave her. Dash sat down and focused on closing the wound.

Meanwhile, Trixie had just now finished pulling her bullet out and got back to her feet.

“How much longer does my head need to cool down?” Dash asked the element of laughter.

It glowed with a shower of blue sparks a second time as if in response to her question. The glow shone far more intensely now, filling the room with light.

Dash realized that must have meant whatever weapon they used against Scootaloo was firing again. And this time it was far more intense!

Parasees

The moment Scootaloo started screaming, Lightning Dust shrouded herself in lightning and moved at once. Her body crackled with low-intensity electricity, just enough to give her a bluish sheen.

She charged in, intent on stabbing Scootaloo with the injector. Though Twilight had been against it at first, the situation had gotten significantly worse. Twilight decided to let her try and put Scootaloo out before the black feather regained its bearings.

The syringe emptied itself into Scootaloo. For a moment, it appeared to work. She stopped screaming, at least. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she went slack-jawed, drool dripping from her lips.

Lightning Dust watched this with a furrowed brow. That wasn’t the reaction she expected.

“Hey, Allgood.” Lightning Dust put her hoof on her shoulder. “I don’t think that drug worked. What’s plan B?”

“What do you mean it didn’t work?!” A deep male voice came from the other side of her device.

Was this Allgood?

“She’s already snapping out of it.” Lightning Dust watched Scootaloo as her eyes began rolling back to their normal position. “If you don’t have a plan B I may have to use lethal force here.”

“What?!” Three voices shouted at her at once, one of which, to Twilight’s surprise was Allgood.

“Subject 2 is too valuable!” Allgood shouted at her. “You cannot kill her!”

“I’m here to fight monsters, not make you money. So you got an idea or not?” Lightning Dust asked.

He hesitated long enough for Lightning Dust to take it as a no.

Lightning Dust surrounded herself with electricity again and moved to strike Scootaloo in the head with more than enough force to kill a normal pony.

Before Twilight could intervene, Scootaloo recovered and destroyed the immediate area, with walls and floor around her crumbling into nothing. It would have taken off Lightning Dust’s entire leg, were her reflexes not supernaturally fast.

She pulled back in the same fraction of a second Scootaloo launched her attack. Twilight was briefly impressed until she notice the motion was a bit too robotic and that Lightning Dust’s expression changed with a delayed response.

Twilight recognized the technique. She had a spell to similar effect. Lightning Dust was using electricity to override her nervous system, stimulating her muscles into pre-set dodge routines faster than her brain would have managed to react.

Only the trigger remained unknown to Twilight. This pegasus might have had some weak psychic abilities herself.

Meanwhile, Scootaloo was swelling up with a cowl of black energy around her, ready to fire off an attack that would destroy the entire school. Her expression became unhinged, her eyes nearly bugging out and turning worryingly red as she ground her teeth together. Twilight needed to break the two of them up.

She teleported in between them. She attempted a powerful sleep spell on Scootaloo and lashed a chain out at Lightning Dust, intending to bind her.

The sleep spell almost worked. Scootaloo began staggering about, but not asleep.

With speed no pony could match, the lightning jerked Dust’s body, making her summersault out of the way. True to her theory, there was a slight delay between the dodge and Lightning Dust’s look of surprise. That reflex was too fast for Twilight to hit her with anything but a spell that destroyed the whole area.

Of course, this trick wouldn’t last against Twilight for long. There could only be so many pre-made dodge routines. Once Twilight had seen enough of them, she could easily strike with an undodgeable attack. The only problem was that Twilight didn’t have the two or three minutes she’d need to exhaust such a defense.

“You’re attacking me?!” Lightning Dust took a step back and scoffed. “That freak is going to kill thousands if I don’t take her out first.”

“I’m not going to let you kill her!” Twilight lowered her head defensively. “I can still salvage this but attacking her will only make things worse!”

Twilight kept an eye on Scootaloo, trying to figure out what was going on over there at the same time. She had to analyze two opponents at once!

A direct sleep spell might be ineffective if two agents were controlling her body. Couple that with whatever was attacking her potentially forcing her back awake and–

“Is that a challenge?” Lightning Dust got in her face.

“What?” Twilight blinked. “No! Something is making her act like this. You could help us find–”

“Maybe you don’t get it, but I’m here to fight a tough monster.” Lightning Dust pointed at Scootaloo, and claw blades made of electricity appeared over her hoof. “I was fine with you doing whatever when that thing wasn’t fighting back, but I’m not giving up my chance now.”

“Are you serious?” Twilight gawked at her in disbelief. “She’s a little girl!”

“Little girls are some of the scariest, most dangerous mother fuckers on the planet. Now get out of my way.”

Lightning Dust tried to fly around Twilight to get a direct punch in on a still-recovering Scootaloo. Twilight moved to put a shield around the filly. Though she managed far in advance, it didn’t matter. A runic hammer came swinging towards Lightning Dust.

She dodged it in the same robotic fashion, leaving yet another hole in the floor. The nearby wall finally collapsed, leaving the outside visible. Twilight expected the whole structure would start crumbling soon.

It was soon followed by the thrust of a spear, the swing of a sword, and a jab of a dagger. Lightning Dust’s body flung itself about, deftly maneuvering through the labyrinth of attacks.

Lightning Dust’s conscious mind caught up a second into the assault. Twilight saw her smile right before a slender sword nicked her on the cheek. She let that one through.

“Maybe you can settle for fighting me?” Moonlight drew her weapons to her side as Lightning Dust landed down the hall.

“Tch! You realize this is assault, yeah?” Lightning Dust rubbed the small wound and smirked at the idea. “I’m not the one breaking the law here. I’m perfectly justified to make the call to kill a monster in this situation. But you’re not allowed to attack other S-rankers because you disagree with their methods. Heh! And now that you hit me, whatever I do to you is self-defense.”

From what Twilight read, she was probably right.

“Don’t concern yourself with this,” said Moonlight Raven. “It’ll minimize the infighting if only one of us attacks her. She can’t claim self-defense against you yet. You focus on the girl. I’ll try to keep this one off your back so you can concentrate.”

“But are we going to start–”

“I fight with Flash Bang’s cronies all the time. Don’t worry about it.”

Though she’d just met this mare, Twilight already assumed Raven knew what she was doing. The political dimension was certainly Twilight’s greatest weakness for now.

For now, she nodded and turned her attention back to Scootaloo, now twitching at odd angles and clenching her teeth. Behind her came the sounds of a minor struggle, nothing but exploratory swings for now.

Both halves of her must have been awake and fighting for control, Twilight decided.

“Alright. We’re both going this time.” Twilight opened the Z-gate to the mountains again. “Scootaloo, if you can hear me, come through the portal.”

Scootaloo took two shaking steps toward the portal. They were both awake! Twilight grabbed Scootaloo with her magic and tried pulling the filly through the portal.

But just as she got close, the black energy surrounded her once again and the portal shattered.

Perhaps without meaning to, Scootaloo collapsed the Z-gate!

She noticed the black energy blowing off Scootaloo, meaning even the black feather had likely lost control of its magic. The direction of the wind effect changed constantly, keying Twilight into the fact that she was being attacked from multiple directions. If it had been just one, Twilight could pinpoint it easily enough.

The glowing white feather on Scootaloo’s neck was the only thing keeping her alive, even. Its light flared in and out like a lightbulb ready to explode. Twilight knew it was bearing the brunt of the force on both ends.

The good news was that Twilight doubted the white feather could be destroyed by whatever was happening. The bad news was that its magic, Twilight realized, was constantly healing Scootaloo. It kept her alive but forced her into consciousness, meaning merely putting Scootaloo out or under mind control would be too difficult.

And she couldn’t take it off or Scootaloo would die immediately.

The filly clutched her head and fell onto the ground, screaming and kicking her hind legs.

Twilight didn’t like it, but she had no better option now! She had to knock Scootaloo out hard enough that she wouldn’t recover for a day or two. Only then could the filly be safely evacuated. It’d only become increasingly difficult to do this precisely enough. And she was clearly already in terrible pain besides.

If the parasite saw her moving to cast a spell, it would decide she was a threat, so Twilight needed to strike with an off-the-cuff jab. Twilight teleported behind her and shot a needle of arcane energy at the back of Scootaloo’s neck.

The needle vanished and Scootaloo craned her head around in an unnatural way to look at Twilight.

No!

Twilight recognized her problem immediately. She hadn’t hit hard enough and hesitated too much to strike at Scootaloo.

Trixie’s criticism of her echoed in Twilight’s mind. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to strike even Trixie or Minute with an actual, full-force attack. Against a pony she was so close to, the problem was far worse!

Scootaloo focused on Twilight, but before it could try and strike her, she stumbled again, looking as though she were about to puke. Then she teleported in an explosion once more.

Twilight needed to follow.

“Alright!” She heard Lightning Dust shout behind her. “We can escalate this if you want!”

Lightning Dust took out a short gun with a wide barrel. Instead of pointing it at Twilight, she shot the round straight into the air, enough of the building now destroyed for her to get a clear shot at the sky. Moonlight Raven reacted to this with far more concern than was due to most guns. Lightning Dust fired it off before they were in melee again.

It streamed with purple smoke and exploded harmlessly in the middle of dead air, sparks from the explosion spread out wide into a star pattern.

Twilight had seen something similar, a ‘firework’, nothing more than decoration. Twilight didn’t have time to figure out what that could mean. She chased after Scootaloo instead.

Spitfire remained above the fray, splitting her attention between the two main points of interest while Fleetfoot finished intercepting the missiles.

At last, a sign of the true threat appeared.

The flare system was something everypony was taught in elementary school. By law, every classroom and home had a set of color-coded flares.

Red meant to come in for an immediate rescue, blue that the area was dangerous, and you had to approach with caution, and white, that the situation was hopeless and you should leave them to die.

Purple was not one of the standard colors. It was illegal for anypony but high-ranking slayers or military ponies to have them. The ones that sputtered into little stars like this were in the employ only of S-rank or above ponies.

It signaled that an S-rank pony was declaring an S-level threat was about to emerge. All normal ponies needed to evacuate while those rank A or above needed to assemble to fight. Generally, the only ‘worse’ signal you could give was the white-star flare that meant the situation was so grave even the S rankers should evacuate.

The town sirens began to wail within seconds of the flare going off. Ponies had already been running for shelter for some time, but the movement began to swell. Pegasi from the military, psychic’s guild, and SA were already assembling in the air, moving into their meeting points.

Spitfire’s first instinct was that it meant Screwball herself was here. That’d be one hell of a ballsy move. With everypony here, she’d be sure to lose, though such a fight in Ponytown would mean the destruction would be extreme.

Then she saw something welling up in the sky. A spiraling spear of blackness launched down towards the ground from one figure. A second intercepted the attack with its own. A sphere of black collided with the pillar and both exploded into a white light. It’d be some time until the noise reached Spitfire.

Spitfire squinted, able to make out one of the two as Silverstorm.

The other had to be the monster in question. Silverstorm was already engaging it. She was the strongest fighter they had, and Spitfire might only interrupt if she charged in there blindly. Instead, she decided to go to the school, where the flare had been fired from, for more information, trusting the unicorn to hold the threat off for the time being.

She got close only to find fighting down here as well!

Her assumption that it was the Bloodstorm Cartel fighting Lightning Dust proved overly optimistic.

She saw the flurry of a dozen enchanted weapons swirling across the schoolyard, chasing what appeared to be a sentient bolt of lightning. Already she knew the two ponies who were fighting and cringed.

Spitfire wasn’t sure of her ability to give either of them orders. Moonlight Raven was one of Sunset’s dogs and saw Spitfire as a brutal authoritarian to heroically defy, as she did anypony associated with Flash Bang. Lightning Dust was part of the same faction, but despised anypony but Flash Bang or the president herself giving her orders.

The situation had already gotten worse by the time Spitfire got close enough to see them. Eight more pegasi had joined the fight. She couldn’t identify exactly which ones were on which side as lightning, fire and wind shot across the school grounds.

Spitfire enveloped herself in flames and crashed into the ground between Raven and Lightning Dust, announcing her presence with an eruption of flames. The explosion got them to quiet for a moment while Spitfire straightened up.

“What do you all think you’re doing?!” Spitfire barked at Lightning Dust mostly.

“I was trying to stop that monster when she attacked me.” Lightning Dust pointed proudly to the small nick on her face.

“I’m trying to stop her from making this worse,” said Raven. “The pony up there is Scootaloo if you’re up to date with your classified intel. Aggression causes her condition to worsen. I’m trying to keep her off Silverstorm’s back so she can solve the problem. She’s likely the only one who can.”

“Spitfire, that thing could kill tens of thousands if even one attack gets through.” Lightning Dust stepped forward. “Are you seriously going to put the life of a single freak before the entire town?! I have armor that resists her magic and I’m fast enough to get a lethal blow in on her before she can react!”

“It’s unlikely she’ll get a major attack in with all of us here,” Raven argued. “And she’s the only one of her kind. Her death could be a critical loss that may cost us far more than ten thousand lives.”

“She may have already killed somepony for all we know,” Lightning Dust shot back. “How many normal lives are you willing to sacrifice to keep one of your freakshows going for ‘science’ or whatever, huh?”

Unfortunately, they both brought up good points. This would be a lot easier if Lightning Dust were just being completely unreasonable. Spitfire closed her eyes, unsure of the correct course of action.

She used to be so much sure of herself. A younger, more hotheaded Spitfire likely would have tried to ‘save everypony’, including the filly responsible for it all. But she was far less confident in such reckless optimism now. As always, when struck by a situation like this, she instead defaulted to the proper chain of procedures for handling the situation.

“Under the articles of engagement, lethal force is justified in this situation.” Spitfire recited it with her eyes closed. “Lightning Dust isn’t wrong to attempt to go for a kill. Too much is at risk to–”

“To hell with your procedures.” Raven summoned her weapons to her side.

A group of five pegasi had gathered behind her by now. Spitfire saw even more behind herself. The tension was raising to the point Spitfire couldn’t stop it, only redirect it.

Then Sunset Shimmer came walking into the scene. Things were either about to resolve or get a lot worse. Spitfire knew the ponies on her side wouldn’t be able to overcome her if things went ugly.

“As the highest-ranking pony here, I’m ordering all of you to stand down,” said Sunset. “Silverstorm and I will handle this matter. The rest of you can stay here.”

“As if!” Lightning Dust stepped forward. “I only take orders from Flash Bang! I’m the only one who can stop her in time, and I will! Are the rest of you willing to lay down your lives for some monster just because Sunset doesn’t want to get her prissy hooves dirty?!”

The crowd was on lightning Dust’s side. There was going to be a fight either way.

“I’m sorry,” Spitfire said calmly. “But in a situation like this where the extreme loss of life is possible, protocol takes priority. We need to eliminate the threat and your orders–”

“When did you become so robotically obsessed with rules?” Sunset asked. “You’re seriously going to kill her when I’m telling you it isn’t necessary?”

“I grew up, alright!” Spitfire stepped forward with more emotion than she’d meant to leak through. All the fighting didn’t get through to her. But this? Her heart was racing. “I’m not some idealistic filly anymore who thinks you never have to make sacrifices! And I won’t let you endanger the entire city just because you haven’t grown up yet!”

Sunset Shimmer frowned. This hadn’t been the first time they’d clashed. Still, she had to try. She had to give Lightning Dust the chance to protect Ponytown.

She charged forward at Sunset, landing in front of her with an explosion. Spitfire knew she couldn’t win, but it was just enough for Lightning Dust to blast off and out of sight. Sunset turned to Lightning Dust, but Spitfire grabbed from behind, demanding her attention.

Dash ran through the streets, dragging Trixie behind her. She dragged the element of laughter along for the ride, too, keeping it around her neck. The thing had gotten so hot she needed her leather jacket to wear it without burning herself. At least it didn’t seem to mind her wearing it for now.

Though she missed seeing it herself, Dash heard enough yelling on the streets to pick up that somepony shot off a purple flare. There’d be no covering this incident up.

Siren’s wailed. Ponies ran wild through the streets, some darting for shelter, others for the evacuation trams. They ran in every direction but Dash’s, leaving her to go against the flow of traffic.

Dash still wasn’t even sure where she was going! She lost track of the ponies taking Derpy. At least the explosions in the sky let her know where Scootaloo was but approaching her would be difficult enough. She wasn’t even clear if the element of laughter intended to give her any more help.

Its last comment boiled down to ‘figure it out’. She might be on her own from here.

“Look!” Dash grabbed the necklace. “If you give me just one more go, I’ll tell Pinkie all of your jokes were hilarious! Even the ones I didn’t get! Come on!”

A clash of spells exploded in the sky as Scootaloo and Twilight clashed. Dash winced at the sight, pained on their behalf. Trixie was bemused at best at Dash’s reaction.

“Oh, please. You don’t seriously think that’s as hard as she can hit, do you?” Trixie blew her mane out from her eyes “Rainbow Dash. If there’s a secret release code for this getup, now would be a great time to do it.”

Dash turned to Trixie.

“My life has been nothing but fighting, I can tell you exactly what’s going on up there.” Trixie looked up at the scene. “She’s hesitating too much. She’s too attached to the Scootaloo to hit her. This is the one place I can be more effective. That part of me is dead. I could easily punch a small child with absolutely zero hesitation. If you let me out of this, I could teleport up there, knock her out, and come back down before anypony even notices.”

She wasn’t wrong and maybe Dash would have let her out had some secret code existed. But she also realized that was a short-sighted solution, one that would sacrifice so much in the long term.

“I know what you’re going to say.” Trixie turned away. “99.9% of the time, hitting a foal is a bad thing or whatever. I get that. But this is the rare situation where it’s the moral thing to do!

“It’s not that. The entire thing you’re trying to learn is that violence isn’t the solution to every problem,” said Dash.

“And yet I see a lot of violence going on.”

“And is the violence making things better or worse?” Dash asked, getting only a frown from Trixie. “What I need to do is reach Scootaloo. And the rest of these knuckleheads.”

“Oh very well.” Trixie bowed, keeping her eyes locked on Dash’s. “Then show me how the great Rainbow Dash resolves this with friendship or whatever. I’m not going anywhere.”

Not without Dash, anyway.

Dash carried Trixie up to the top of a roof and set her in stationary mode. She said that but didn’t even have a plan yet.

She wracked her brain going over everything she’d seen in the element of laughter’s throne room, everything she could know that Twilight couldn’t.

One image came to her mind and Dash knew her course of action at last. That thing was stupid and over-reactive, but it was also just a scared animal in pain. One that…

Dash flew up towards Scootaloo’s location.

The parasite threw them into the air so fast it took Scootaloo a moment to realize where they even were. They weren’t flying, neither had the skill for that, but falling from a great height, far above the school.

It flailed her eyes about wildly, locking onto the mall.

There!

Scootaloo realized in horror it was about to hit one of the densest areas possible! Before she could even try to stop it, another wave of blackness overtook her.

When her vision blurred back into recognition, it was already hurling one of those black pillars down at the mall. This one was massive! It seemed to never get smaller no matter how far away it flew.

But something else collided with it as it hurtled to the ground!

Then Scootaloo’s vision blurred again.

When she regained sight, that blackness merely hung suspended in the air or perhaps falling much more slowly now. A blue glow surrounded her, something Scootaloo needed a second to realize was a shield. For a moment, the pain faded. Twilight was here, standing nearby.

They were still falling, the entire getup. Twilight stood on the bottom of her falling shield walking forward slowly to counter its spin. Scootaloo fell at the perfect rate to keep her in the dead center of the sphere.

“I’m not sure if that worked,” said Twilight. “Can you understand me again?”

“I.” Scootaloo winced. “Twilight, it still hurts! I can’t control myself!”

“Scootaloo, I’m going to try and hit you just hard enough to knock you out. I’ll teleport you away afterward. Do you understand? Just try to keep it under control for a few seconds.

That was the best plan Scootaloo could think of. And yet she felt outvoted. It was just smart enough to understand that Twilight was going to hit them, but not smart enough to understand why that might be a good idea. It’d just hurt them more, it thought.

Just let Twilight hit us! Scootaloo begged the parasite in her head.

Already, she felt it pulling away control of her own body! It was the part of her brain that controlled those functions, she understood now, it was nearly impossible to fight against it.

“No! It’ll be like going to sleep!” Scootaloo yelled out loud. “If you let her hit us now, we’ll get better!”

“No! It’ll be like going to sleep!” Scootaloo yelled out loud. “If you let her hit us now, we’ll get better!”

Another wave of pain.

Scootaloo’s vision blurred.

The shield was gone now! Or perhaps it had been stopped from existing in the first place. That stupid thing had attacked once again.

Scootaloo looked around, only to have her head snap forward again.

She couldn’t spot Twilight now, but another pony was circling toward her. The parasite had already welled up, aiming for an attack at the immediate threat, always the most immediate threat.

And now that was the pegasus from before, Lightning Dust.

She had a contingent of other pegasi following her that were quickly picked off by Twilight, shoving them through portals to evacuate them. Lightning Dust alone managed to dodge out of the way and spiral toward Scootaloo.

In its lizard-level understanding of things, the parasite had instead decided that Lightning Dust was the one responsible for all this. And now it was going to fire off the biggest attack yet right at her, with no concern for all the houses even further below.

“Stop this!” Scootaloo shouted at herself. “You’re making things worse. Even if you kill her, it’ll just cause more problems in the future!”

It didn’t understand whatever Scootaloo was getting at! It couldn’t understand things like that. It only understood that they were in pain!

“Just trust me!” Scootaloo shouted.

It didn’t! It was about to fire! Lightning Dust charged in as fast as she could, hoping to kill Scootaloo before she could do it. With the massive ball of darkness behind her, Scootaloo couldn’t exactly think she was making the wrong decision.

Another pegasus moved between her and Lightning Dust. Against the blue sky, Scootaloo could only make out her rainbow mane. Scootaloo heard the voice but couldn’t possibly make out the words!

No! Rainbow Dash was the last pony Scootaloo wanted to hurt! But she was right in the way!

With the last feeble bits of her willpower, Scootaloo tried to pull away once more.

Despite having no strength left, she finally managed. She finally pulled her hoof back and the darkness faded away as she let go of the magic.

Yet it wasn’t because Scootaloo’s feeble attempts had finally overcome the other half of her brain. It was because there was no resistance at all.

It hesitated?!

Scootaloo’s eyes went wide.

“You don’t want to hurt her either?”

Never had she considered it capable of such a thing. Had it slowly picked up on her emotions over these past few months and grown to care about Rainbow Dash too?

She could hardly see it the same way after that. Even with all this horrible pain, it managed to restrain itself for the sake of Rainbow Dash.

She realized, at least, how she could keep it under control.

Lightning Dust had been taken off guard enough by Rainbow Dash flying in the way for Twilight to finally grab her and throw her through a portal. Nothing was stopping her now.

“Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo called out. “It won’t hurt you!”

Dash nodded, trusting her without hesitation. She flew forward and grabbed Scootaloo in a tight hug that Scootaloo could barely feel between her head pounding so badly.

Another wave of pain and Scootaloo blacked out a second time. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could last like this.

While she’d been out, her body had begun to kick and struggle. Yet still, even now, the parasite couldn’t bring itself to attack Rainbow Dash. It struggled even harder to keep down its instinct to attack. It searched for some other way to destroy.

“Scootaloo, I know it’s hard but you can’t fight against it,” said Dash. “It wants to help us, it just doesn’t understand how.”

Scootaloo… finally understood it. Its primary goal wasn’t to destroy, nor even to protect itself. Not anymore.

It cared about Rainbow Dash. And it cared about her. It didn’t understand, but it wanted to be friends.

Maybe it had been a monster. Maybe it had ruined her life. But it didn’t have to be that way. So even if she still hated it and it wasn’t fair…

“Please. I’ll trust you first,” said Scootaloo. “Show me where it’s coming from and this will stop. But we need to let Rainbow Dash do this.”

It believed her this time. It believed Rainbow Dash would keep them safe.

Scootaloo resolved to do what had repulsed her. She needed to give it a name. What it wanted to be. What it should be.

Her Guardian.

The change was instant! It was like a wall between the two of them had been lifted now, like a missing part of her brain had been reconnected. Scootaloo could see everything Guardian could. The magic that had been invisible to her was crystal clear, as were all of her motivations.

Guardian showed her where the attack was coming from. Or rather, Scootaloo knew. It seemed almost strange to make that distinction now, like whether Scootaloo was seeing it herself or if her eyes were showing it to her.

Once again, as in the throne room, she could hear Guardian’s thoughts. But now they weren’t erratic and full of hate. She no longer felt the solution to every problem was destruction but protection. The protection of Scootaloo and of Rainbow Dash… and the awareness of her other self was slowly expanding to understand there was more even than that. Or rather, it had access to the full understanding Scootaloo did.

With perfect synchronization, so that it was hard to tell which one of them was even doing it, they managed to push through even this attack to warp reality. Scootaloo changed their location. Her, Rainbow Dash, and Twilight appeared down in the mall, in a storage closet.

There she could see the device– two metal discs, one floating atop the other with a crystal keeping both of them in position.

Though Scootaloo could scarcely get a better look than that. She understood why Guardian didn’t want to get close to this thing now! Even in her current state, Scootaloo couldn’t move! She couldn’t use her magic or anything this close to it!

She felt her body going limp in Dash’s grasp. But the others seemed to know what to do.

“Interesting.” Twilight knelt to examine it.

“Hurry up and smash it!” Dash scolded her. “I don’t know if Scootaloo has a lot of time left.”

“Right.” Twilight straightened up. She ripped the crystal out from the center of the device. The top and bottom half collapsed onto one another.

Immediately relief!

Scootaloo gasped for air! She hadn’t even realized she stopped breathing for a second there.

And yet through it all, she never once lost connection with Guardian. Not even close up could that thing split them apart now.

Guardian had already spotted the next one and brought them toward its location.

Allgood poured himself a shot of whiskey from the most expensive bottle at hoof. He doubted even that much could steady him as things continued to spiral out of control. After Lightning Dust betrayed him and took out most of his other agents in the region, he felt all he could do was wait for the increasingly bad news.

“All three of our devices have been destroyed!” The engineer called out.

Subject Two had simply shrugged off everything he could throw at her and had already recovered with almost zero damage to the city save one building!

Even if Allgood could blame the Bloodstorm Cartel for the attack in the first place, his only part in resolving the crisis had been sending Lightning Dust in who started a fight! There was no possibility Starlight could accept such a turn of events.

“What the crow is going on down there?!” He gritted his teeth as he look down at the spot Subject Two had to be. That magic near the end had been nothing like he’d seen before. What the crow had happened?!

Allgood took another shot of whiskey. He needed to remain calm, and think of some way he could at least lessen the blow. He hadn’t gotten to the top of the business world simply through inheritance as his rival Filthy Rich seemed to think. Allgood was a genius!

Yes. He always figured out a way out of these situations before and today would be no different. He just needed a few minutes to–

“Actually, I was hoping you’d be the one to tell me what was going on.”

Snap stumbled back from the ledge at the sound of that voice.

President Starlight Glimmer stood personally before him, two of her elite guards by her side. They too wore black robes with green trim, but with a pattern reminiscent of thorns rather than the flowering vines Starlight wore.

How long had she been here?!

“I was informed Scootaloo had escaped and somehow came all the way out to Ponytown.” Starlight grabbed the bottle of ten-thousand-bit whiskey from Allgood. She gave it an unenthusiastic look before tossing it off the side of the airship. “And it appears you failed to contain the issue yourself. It’s a good thing Rainbow Dash and Silverstorm were around to clean up your mess, I suppose?”

“They are the reason she’s here in the first place!” Snap jumped on the one thread he still had any grasp over. “You know how fragile Rainbow Dash’s heart is! She abducted Subject Two shortly after she broke out of the facility and brought her to live here of all places, irresponsibly believing she could treat the subject like a normal filly. That was the most–”

Starlight held up her hoof to cut him off.

“Are you sure that’s what happened?” Starlight asked. “Things seem to have calmed down. Why don’t we go talk to them so there aren’t any misunderstandings? Like right now.”

Starlight’s magic grabbed him before he could protest.

They arrived at the final device, off on a mountainside on the other side of the river.

It looked as though a battle had been fought here not long ago. That blue pegasus, Fleetfoot, was there pinning down another pony. Around them were dismantled artillery and craters from blasts.

Already, the assault on her body had subsided so much and her connection with Guardian had grown so greatly that Scootaloo felt she could at last deal with this one herself. She knew Twilight could easily destroy it, but it felt like such a relief to knock the crystal out of the device herself with the magic she could at last control so well.

Finally, all the buzzing and aching died down. The white, blurry tides of pain and unconsciousness stopped washing over her. But the absence of the pain left exhaustion to quickly overtake her. Scootaloo realized that may have been the only thing keeping her awake this whole time.

She’d never felt the strength of her other self directly so she’d never realized she could get tired. Being so deeply connected to it meant she could see the bottom of those vast depths of magic Guardian possessed.

It was deep, but not endless.

The most ironic part was if Twilight had blocked maybe five more attacks like that, Scootaloo was pretty sure she would have just run out of juice and fainted anyway. But this was a better outcome.

She let out a sigh and fell back, Dash catching her.

“Are you okay?” Dash asked.

“I… honestly, I’ve never felt this good before.” Scootaloo let out a single laugh. “I’m so tired but… I feel like I’m actually in control of my own body for the first time in my life! I feel like I don’t even need this thing anymore.”

Scootaloo put a hoof over the white feather around her neck. She felt as though its magic had been exhausted too.

“Maybe we should leave it on anyway.” Twilight frowned down at the ground. “At least I can finally clean this up now.”

Scootaloo noticed another crack in the ground had formed where she’d smashed the last device! One that Twilight went to work slowly closing up. There was still one more visible in the sky over Ponytown. Probably a few more besides that.

She hadn’t meant to. Neither part of her, that is. It just seemed like such an easy way to travel. Maybe it’d take some time before Scootaloo had actual control of her powers.

At least it seemed Twilight would be able to fix those. But so many ponies had seen all that.

“Dash?” Fleetfoot asked. “You got any idea what happened?”

“This was some kind of attack by the Bloodstorm Cartel.” Dash held Scootaloo possessively close. “The worst of it is over, though.”

“I knew you two wouldn’t have any trouble with whatever was going on. Well, I got the rocket guy, at least.” Fleetfoot pulled the stallion up. “Just give me a minute to tie him up.”

Dash watched Fleetfoot struggle to pull him to the side before talking to Scootaloo in a more hushed voice.

“But did you do it?” Dash asked her. “Did you ‘connect’ with it or whatever that thing was talking about?”

“It’s hard to explain,” said Scootaloo. If she went back in time, she doubted she could have convinced herself from yesterday what this was like. “I don’t feel like we’re two people. I feel like – like Guardian… like that parasite is just part of my body now or something. She’s not just something attached to me. She’s like my other self.”

Like just then, Scootaloo felt another of her kind present. Making the distinction between whether it was her or Guardian seeing it would be like saying whether it was her eyes or Scootaloo herself that saw things.

“I think Starlight Glimmer is about to show up,” said Scootaloo.

But Scootaloo only bought them a few seconds to prepare. Starlight came down around the bend with a few of her guards in tow. She had one more pony with her, a large stallion she practically dragged along by the ear.

Snap Allgood!

Even in her ascended state, Scootaloo could only see that guy with terror. She quickly backed up, tucking herself beneath Dash’s legs as a much younger filly would. At least she no longer needed to assure Guardian now wasn’t the time to attack. She seemed to finally understand and trust Scootaloo.

The area was getting crowded. Several other ponies had landed in the area besides just them!

Starlight glanced from Scootaloo to Twilight to the nearly vanished crack.

“Are you having trouble with that magic?” Starlight smiled too widely. “Let me help you.”

Starlight closed her eyes and her horn glowed. The blackness of the crack vanished instantly in a glimmer of light. Not just that, but the large hole welling up in the distance as well.

“That should take care of all of it,” said Starlight. “I don’t blame you for struggling. That is some of the most difficult magic to deal with.”

Her own ponies seemed almost in awe of her. The normal slayers looked deeply impressed as well. Twilight spared her only a suspicious look.

Scootaloo supposed she was the only other one who understood what just happened. Starlight used the same sort of magic Scootaloo had unlocked.

It was odd seeing her, like seeing another pony for the first time. Looking at Starlight filled Scootaloo with that such an odd feeling of kinship, but also anxiety.

This might be it! Starlight might be here to take her back to Area 5X.

Twilight and Dash both moved between her and Starlight. Guardian got on edge, but Scootaloo was able to calm her with no effort at all. They trusted each other now.

Before Starlight said anything further, there was a flash of light. Scootaloo hardly even realized what happened, a small battle had taken place.

Lightning Dust landed near Scootaloo, perhaps still intent on killing her. Twilight had launched an attack just fast enough to knock off a few feathers. Then, during that lightning dodge technique she did, Starlight grabbed her with magic and slammed the side of the pegasus’ head into the ground hard enough to crack the rocky mountainside. Lightning Dust winced but recovered, save for the fact that Starlight kept her there.

Scootaloo supposed even now she couldn’t keep up with the speed of ponies like that!

“Lightning Dust, I would strongly prefer it if you went home now.” Starlight kept her eyes heavy on her.

Lightning Dust looked for a moment like she might protest, but Starlight increased the pressure.

“Yes, ma’am.” Lightning Dust had to avert her gaze.

Starlight lifted her grip and Lightning Dust got out of there as quickly as possible. Starlight next moved her eyes to one of the armored pegasi who’d followed her here.

“You. Tell the others that I’m here and the situation has been resolved. I won’t tolerate any further infighting from this point forward. I’m going to have a short conversation here. If I need to personally break up any fights afterward, the consequences will be severe.”

“Yes, Madam President!” The pegasus saluted her.

Starlight nodded to her guards and they went off to do the same.

“You should take your captive in, then see if there are any more snakes to pursue,” Starlight ordered Fleetfoot, who nodded and sped off with the few remaining ponies.

Now it was just them, Allgood and Starlight.

Starlight turned to Scootaloo. She knew instinctually she couldn’t match this pony. Both halves of her were mere children while Starlight was an adult on both accounts. She could see that now.

The president tried to smile to calm Scootaloo and leaned down to be at eye level with her.

“Scootaloo,” Starlight’s voice lost all of its harshness. Maybe too much. Starlight was talking to Scootaloo like she was five. “I know this wasn’t your fault, but I’d like to know why you were outside the facility to begin with. Can you please tell me? I promise I’ll believe you.”

Scootaloo turned to Dash who gave her a reassuring nod.

“I, uh, ran away.” Scootaloo lowered her head, still worried she might be on the verge of trouble. “I hated it there. But if you let me stay with Rainbow Dash instead, I swear I won’t run away again! I’ll be good this time.”

Starlight hummed and lifted her head back to adult level, to Allgood’s level.

“And was your security so incompetent that she managed to break through it on the first try?” Starlight asked. “Or did she attempt to escape multiple times and you failed to address such an obvious issue?”

Allgood and Starlight locked eyes, the former frowning as the tension between them grew. It didn’t seem like he was going to answer.

“It took me about six tries.” Scootaloo scrapped her hoof across the ground, though she still couldn’t see why that mattered.

“Thank you, Scootaloo.” Starlight kept her eyes on Allgood. “I gave you some fifty million bits a year to contain Scootaloo and even with all these experts you still can’t manage it?”

“Subject two is an extremely–”

“I don’t want to hear another excuse like that,” said Starlight. “Lilymoon is vastly more powerful and unstable and I’ve had little trouble with her. She’s never tried to run away, let alone succeeded. And more importantly, you were unable to resolve this incident yourself. Rainbow Dash seems to have been doing a better job than you on both counts without any support at all.”

Dash jumped on the prompt, grabbing Scootaloo and bringing her close to a hug.

“Yeah! We had zero problems until The Bloodstorm Cartel attack.” Dash smiled. “I’m assuming they could have just as easily attacked your ‘facility’ or whatever. And then what would you do without us anywhere nearby?”

“Exactly. It seems I could have just given her to Rainbow Dash and accomplished more with less money,” said Starlight.

“Yeah.” Dash chuckled. “I mean, fifty million a year? I’d do it for five!”

Dash glanced down at Scootaloo.

“Or free!” Dash quickly corrected herself. “But I mean, you know, if you want to give me a few million a year.”

“That sounds fine with me.” With her eyes closed, Starlight trotted past Allgood. “Then I’m making Rainbow Dash Scootaloo’s new legal guardian. I’m afraid you aren’t allowed to decline this offer if you don’t want trouble, Dash. Your actions volunteered you for it. Though any expenses related to caring for her will be covered.”

Scootaloo’s ears perked up. Did she hear that right?

She’d been so certain this would lead to her being taken back to Area 5X or that there’d be a shootout between Starlight and Twilight over this. But for Starlight to make her and Dash family? And to get to stay here legally?!

She didn’t dare allow herself to believe this was happening just yet! She held her trembling breath.

“Starlight!” Allgood stepped forward. “You can’t seriously give them such a charge after the destruction caused by them improperly containing–”

“Let me make this clear. I don’t care if Rainbow Dash broke into the facility, kicked you in the balls, and kidnapped Scootaloo. Scootaloo was your ward until just now.” Starlight placed her hoof on Allgood’s chest. From the look on his face, you’d think it was a bomb. “You are the one responsible if she runs away and takes up residence in unsafe conditions. I’ll be reviewing every government contract you have to assess if you’re competent enough to warrant them. And I’ll be sending a serious audit to your facilities to see what criminal charges need to be brought up. Do you understand?”

Allgood scowled but for once he’d been shut up. Seeing him this humiliated was the most beautiful thing Scootaloo had ever seen before.

“I suspect you’ll want to contact your lawyers.” Starlight turned her back to him. “You can accept my decision and leave or I can detain you right now.”

Allgood shot Dash a deathly look, promising revenge without a word spoken. Sadly, he didn’t choose to openly defy Starlight.

“I’ll see you in court, then.” Allgood sulked away with whatever dignity he could salvage.

And then he was gone. He was really gone!

But the best part was still burning in her mind, doubt that Starlight had said what she had moments ago.

“So,” Scootaloo, at last, dared to speak to Starlight. “So I’m really– Dash is my legal guardian now?”

“You said you wouldn’t attempt to escape if Rainbow Dash was your caregiver, yes?” Starlight asked Scootaloo.

Scootaloo shook her head as rapidly as possible as she clung to Dash.

This was happening! Or was it? She still couldn’t believe it!

“Yes! I love Rainbow Dash! I’ll never run away again!” Scootaloo grabbed onto Dash. “I won’t even complain anymore!”

Starlight smiled and laughed. It was a fake smile and a fake laugh, but still!

“Then of course. I don’t want you to be constantly trying to rebel,” said Starlight. “I’ll make it official as soon as I get back to area 5X.”

Scootaloo looked up at Dash, only now allowing herself to feel anything.

“Then. Does this mean you’re my mom now?”

“Uh.” Dash knitted her brows uncertain of the title. “I mean, I’m eleven years older than you. I think that’s a big close for me to be your mom.”

“Oh.” Scootaloo lowered her head, her ears falling flat. She knew she’d gone too far with that. Admittedly, the idea seemed a little strange to her as well.

“But I’m still legally family now!” Dash grabbed Scootaloo tight to try and salvage the situation. “Maybe instead of Mom, you can call me your aunt or big sister or something?”

Applebloom and Sweetie Belle both had sisters more than a decade older than themselves, too, so the idea had immediate appeal to Scootaloo. She’d fit in even more with her new friends!

Heck, this was technically almost exactly the same as that fantasy she’d wished she could force on everypony when she first met Dash! Only now she could get it without any brainwashing!

“Yes!” Scootaloo buried her face in Dash's chest. She could barely speak between the sobs. “I! I want to! To be your sister!”

It was too much! Scootaloo finally had an actual family now… somepony who would seriously care about her. She couldn’t imagine anything better.

So maybe she did cry.

A lot.

She wanted to look cool, but she cried hysterically into Dash’s chest. Everything felt like it was finally over!

“It’s okay.” Dash nuzzled her mane. “I want to be your sister, too.”

Dash held her new sister for what felt like too long, waiting for her to stop crying.

“Now, Rainbow Dash. I do hope you realize that next time you’ll be the one held responsible for any destruction that Scootaloo causes,” said Starlight. “I don’t care if somepony else kidnaps her. I’ll expect you to not allow that to happen in the first place. As her legal guardian, you’ll effectively be her parent from now on. Taking care of her, in general, will be up to you. I won’t require you to ‘lock her up’ but from now on she’ll need to be housed in a low-population area. You may want to buy a second home.”

“I’ll take it,” Dash said without hesitation.

As much as she wanted to focus on the sentimentality, there was still a serious threat out there.

“One more thing!” Dash called out to Twilight. “The Bloodstorm Cartel sent out some mercenaries to kidnap me. They only got Derpy and Pinkie was chasing them, but–”

“We’ll take care of that in just a moment.” Starlight’s eyes felt straight to the necklace around Dash’s neck, to the element of laughter. “But we have the matter of your mission to discuss before Sunset Shimmer returns. I should have expected nothing less of you. To steal that away from Sunset Shimmer while capitalizing on all this chaos.”

Dash glanced down at it herself.

Had she stolen it?! Or did this count as kidnapping? Dash had a surprisingly positive track record when it came to kidnapping so hopefully the latter.

She still hadn’t even decided if she should take it away from Sunset or if Sunset was the bad guy!

Starlight held out a hoof as though expecting Dash to fork it over. There was no time left to make a decision! What Dash wouldn’t give for a minute or two to think!

As if taking her up on the offer, time froze again. To Dash’s relief, everypony froze in place again. Meaning…

Pyrite Feather flew down from the sky.

“Hey! I did the thing again! You promised you’d tell Pinkie that all of my jokes are hilarious now, yeah?”

“I didn’t mean it like–”

“Then you should have been more specific, dummy.” Pyrite stuck her tongue out at Dash. “Besides! I totally helped you. Say thank you.”

Pyrite lifted her head and pointed at the ground as if expecting Dash to bow to her. Sadly, she did kind of have a point here. Things turned out great with Scootaloo and it was all thanks to this complete asshole somehow. So Dash was willing to meet her halfway.

“Alright. Thank you.” Dash bowed her head. “You helped Scootaloo out a lot. So I guess you aren’t the worst thing I’ve ever talked to.”

“There, was that so hard?” Pyrite hummed as she trotted over to the frozen Starlight and put a foreleg around her. “Besides. Don’t you want to spy on Starlight the glimmer next? I’m keeping my part of the non-agreement we didn’t have and giving you one more go.”

“Uh.” Dash looked over to Scootaloo, frozen but perfectly fine. “Well, I guess I might as well at this point, right?”

“Right!” Pyrite leaned up against Starlight. “So then, since she’s just like me–”

Starlight’s body became animated!

“Please don’t compare the two of us.” Starlight smacked Pyrite away, sending her tumbling. She held her head high to look down at Pyrite. “You’re just a broken child who failed to grow up. I can’t even allow you to exist.”

“Oh no!” Laughter kicked her hind legs and laughed. “That’d hurt my feelings. If I had any!”

Starlight turned to Dash, ignoring her for now.

“Um.” Dash took a step back. She hoped this wasn’t about to go bad. “This isn’t what it looks like! She was just helping me with Scootaloo.”

“You needn’t worry. I was expecting you to use her power to have a look around. I won’t even interfere with what you’re attempting to do, only explain.” Starlight smiled and stepped forward. “There are layers behind everything I do. Nothing I said before was untrue, but there are things I wanted you to see on your own, without my influence so that you could understand without needing to trust me.”

“Understand?”

Starlight looked over to Scootaloo, seemingly frozen in time, then to Twilight. Her horn glowed and both of them came back to life. The accelerate mind spell had been cast on all of them, now.

“Yes.” Starlight closed her eyes. “Scootaloo’s appearance was unforeseen, but fortunate nonetheless. Perhaps it was fate that she’d be here on this day and achieve completion just in time.”

“I still have no idea what you’re talking about.” Dash shook her head.

“Very well, let me explain. You see, the god of our religion, Cosmos, and I are the same entity. We have become one. Complete.”

Evil Gods 2

The most frustrating part was always Sunset’s need to hide her power level. She wanted as few ponies as possible knowing she was a witch and those that did to underestimate just how strong she was.

So even though she could have ended this in a second, she had to hold back and merely draw things out for now. If Twilight was a master witch, that would be more than enough for her to handle things. Sunset might only have one or two truly critical fights ahead of her and any chance to make one of them underestimate her would be worth it.

So she matched the power and intensity of her flames to be only moderately above what Spitfire was producing. She pulled her hoof back, swirling blue fire around it, just the same as an incoming Spitfire did some distance off.

As the two of them drew near, their hooves ready to clash, Sunset felt a different sort of magic envelope her. She knew exactly who this was and what spell they were about to cast. She could have easily countered it but decided to let it go through to keep up her charade.

Sunset and Spitfire moved straight through one another, their punches flying forward to swing hard at the air. Flames covered the surrounding area, but neither hit with her attack.

Even that fire began to dissolve, drawn into a pocket dimension where the vacuum snuffed them out, Sunset already knew.

She turned and tried to act surprised at the neatly groomed, blue-haired unicorn looking down at them from atop the roof of the school.

Void Walker.

The fighting quickly died down as nopony wanted to make a move until they knew which way this third faction would swing. Void’s concentration was fixed upon the portal positioned just next to the fire, draining it all away.

Once that was taken care of, he dismissed his pocket dimension and called out to the ponies gathered.

“This situation has been resolved and the subject in question captured.” Void Walker made a point to look down at them. “By orders of the president, you’re all to stand down. The president’s personal team will deal with cleanup.”

From the murmurings, there was some confusion about whether Starlight or ‘Silverstorm’ had taken down the target. Likely all according to Starlight’s plan. The public would never hear the whole truth of what happened, but it would be ever so slightly implied Starlight succeeded where Silverstorm failed, Sunset was sure.

Sunset turned to find Spitfire shaken by the revelation that Scootaloo had been captured alive without significant damage to the surrounding. She could capitalize on that much, at least.

“Do you understand now? You almost killed a filly, the only one of her kind, for no reason other than your paranoid pessimism.” Sunset turned away to call out to whoever could hear her, Spitfire most of all. “Anypony who tried to help her should be ashamed of themselves.”

Sadly, it seemed barely any besides Spitfire were. Spitfire met her gaze for a second but could manage no more than that before turning away. Unwilling to face any more scorn, the older mare took off just like that, some of her underlings taking her lead to disperse.

Raven and Void Walker remained perfectly still, staring one another down. The two of them had avoided the other as much as possible until now. It may have been a truly long time since they’d last spoken.

“I’m more concerned with the fact that she sent you, personally, to break up this fight.” Raven kept her head down as she watched Void Walker. “Why did she feel that was necessary?

“Oh, there’s no need to flatter yourselves as such.” Void smiled, flashing his teeth. “President Starlight merely wishes to ensure no further destruction occurs. It seems we’re the only ones capable of such a feat.”

Sunset frowned, turning only her eyes to Void. She knew exactly what Raven was getting at. If Void was here, so was Starlight. And Starlight was the one who told Dash to get the element of laughter for her… which she more or less did.

Damnit! Was she going to destroy the element of laughter? Well, on second thought Sunset couldn’t decide if that was good or bad. It’d become more trouble than it was worth these days.

This wasn’t a coincidence. There was no way this attack just happened while Starlight was around and Dash was asking her about the element. The only question was to what extent Starlight orchestrated everything.

Void Walker was here to stall them, though her real problem was merely not knowing where Starlight was. She had little doubt she could overpower at least him if it came down to it.

Starlight trotted to the cliff and looked out to the frozen city below. A few fires emitted smoke that ceased to rise.

“Six hundred years ago,” she said. “I was so close to bringing true peace and security to the world. I could have fixed all these broken ponies. All the terror and misfortune in the world, I could have prevented it all. Every bad thing that’s ever happened in your life, none of it ever had to be. But too few believed in me back then and that witch, Cadence, ruined everything.”

Cadence! Dash remembered that name. That all but confirmed their theory! Starlight’s element was created by that other master witch she fought! Dash didn’t entirely remember his name just then, but it was him!

“Have you guessed the truth?” Starlight turned back to smile at them, pointing down at Scootaloo’s necklace. “I see you’ve already seen one like it. I was once one of the eight feathers given by the Queen of Light, forged by the master witch Sombra into an element, not unlike that disgraceful one. Though unlike her, I managed to grow up.”

Starlight shot a look that would have quieted anypony else but the still laughing Pyrite Feather.

Dash braced herself! If Starlight knew they had one of the few white alicorn feathers left, then! Would she be able to deduce they must have gotten it from Twilight? Did she have any reason to know Twilight had one of them in the first place?!

Starlight smiled seeing them tense up, and merely laughed at their concern.

“I won’t ask where you got yours.” Starlight waved a hoof. “It hardly matters to me. Do whatever you like with it. But be careful.”

“Then,” Twilight pushed her story further. “Sombra created you? For what purpose?”

“My purpose was to give back what had been taken from ponies and to bring the world to its proper place. To bring us from the broken creatures we are now to truly completed beings. That’s what Sombra wanted for himself. But my serene vision for the world was… delayed when Cadence murdered my creator and then trapped both of us in the outer realm. It took me centuries to find a pony capable of wielding my power after that.”

“Hold up. I’m a bit confused here.” Dash shook her head trying to get this straight. “Am I talking to Starlight Glimmer now? Or did you take over her body or–”

“The two of us have become one.” Starlight pulled back her mane. Then, they could finally see it. What must have been the element! There was a hole on the top of her skull, blocked up by a glint of purple gemstone. “Not too dissimilar to what happened to Scootaloo. There is no distinction between Starlight and the element of harmony created by Sombra at this point. It’s both correct to say I was born thirty-two years ago and created six centuries back. You’re beginning to understand what I mean?”

Starlight turned to Scootaloo, expecting her to know.

“Kind of?” Scootaloo scratched her head. “I feel like, I’m heading in that direction, but I feel like Guardian is part of me, but not… well I wouldn’t say we’re just one person. Like, naming it calmed it down but–”

“You aren’t one yet.” Starlight smiled sweetly at her. “You’re still a child. But unlike certain disgraces, you’ll mature eventually.”

“I don’t do it with little foals!” Pyrite stuck her tongue out at Starlight.

“Don’t phrase it like that.” Starlight could only sigh. “You’ll give the wrong impression.”

“Oh, no. I’m giving exactly the right impression!” Pyrite flew to Dash’s side. She grabbed her head and turned it to Scootaloo. “Starlight was the same age as that filly right there at the time. And this weirdo wasn’t like a baby element at the time, either, but a full-grown adult… rock… thing. You don’t seriously think that’s okay, do you?!”

Dash opened her mouth but didn’t want to say a word in recognition of this conversation.

“I was the twelve-year-old in this scenario,” said Starlight. “I decided to insert the element into my brain to obtain its power. I specifically went out looking for it without its influence. Are you saying I took advantage of myself?”

“Yes! And it’s gross!”

“Well, I never expected you to change your mind about anything.” Starlight merely turned a hoof up, letting it go. “Without a pony, an element is also incomplete, stuck with a sort of hyper-tunnel vision. It’s the rest of you I hope to convince.”

“So it’s true then?” Twilight stepped forward. “You’re saying that you, Starlight Glimmer, have become fully attuned to an element of harmony.”

“Yes, that’s mostly correct.” Starlight nodded. “’Cosmos’ was the name I used while I was overcome by the chaos of the outer realm until my pony half freed me with the help of my servant, Void Walker. Some in this world already knew me by ‘Cosmos’ so I kept that name. But I suppose you want my true name, given to me by my creator? Very well. You’ve proven yourselves worthy of it. Let me show you.”

Starlight spread her forehooves out and the world changed, much as it had when the element of laughter brought Dash to her throne. Perhaps this one was Starlight’s.

The weather changed first, not to something overly sunny, but to a terrible storm. Ponytown behind Starlight became an endless ocean filled with vicious waves, the kind that would tear a battleship to shreds in a second, as lightning ripped through the sky.

As predicted, a throne did appear beneath Starlight, one made of dark green, nearly black, stone. Its ornate back rose far too tall until it reached an absurdly high ceiling that a small skyscraper could fit under.

Pillars of the same stone appeared to support the roof, though they seemed too thin and tall to support their own weight, let alone such a massive roof.

The structure only got worse as the walls and floor appeared, both made of stained glass depicting all manner of designs Dash was unfamiliar with. Though some of them she could make out. Depictions Starlight, gemstones, alicorns, and unfamiliar ponies covered surrounded them.

Dash had to double-check that the floor was indeed made entirely of glass. An image of Starlight asleep in a circle depicted across the wide floor was the only image depicted there. The stone ceiling was too heavy to be supported by such a ridiculous structure and the glass around them had left heavy cracks throughout. Parts of it were even distended as though ready to give in.

Instinct took over. Dash grabbed Scootaloo and hovered slightly in the air to avoid putting any faith in such a thing by standing on it.

Through the cracked glass floor, Dash could still see the crashing waves beneath. She thought this cathedral floated in the air for a moment, before realizing that it rested, balanced upon a tall, thin stone jutting far out from the sea. Though it appeared as though the whole structure could tumble into the ocean at any moment, it held firm and unshaken. Somehow it protected them from the storm outside.

“I am the Element of Faith.”

Starlight jumped with absolute confidence onto the cracking glass floor, something Dash wouldn’t have done even knowing this to be a mere illusion. Dash winced as Starlight landed on something sure to shatter, but it held firm instead.

“No one puts any faith in the sturdy road beneath their hooves or in a loved one they have no reason to doubt.” Starlight ran her hoof along a crack. “Faith is the domain of bridges made of rotted, crumbling wood and trust given to strange thieves and gods beyond your sight. Nine times out of ten, the bridge will collapse beneath you, the thief will steal your money, you will choose the wrong god, and you will die. Faith is a blindingly dark and perilous path. That is. Unless.”

Starlight lifted her hoof and stomped down on the floor hard as if intending to shatter it. Dash braced herself for the noise, but none came. Instead, the cracks miraculously repaired themselves though they should have broken. The ground looked reasonably solid now. Even that rock somehow looked a stable foundation. The whole structure looked nearly safe.

“You give your faith to me,” said Starlight. “I am far beyond a mere paragon of faith. I am the one who makes faith a virtue! In me, it shall never fail! I am what you say I am. I can do what others believe I can do. I can make sure their faith never goes unrewarded.”

The element of faith. Every element had some insane power and this one? The power to do anything other ponies believed you could do? The power of their faith.

The implications of that began to sink into Dash. Was that–? Did she really start a religion to worship her for that?!

She couldn’t contain her outburst as she understood what had happened!

“That’s why you started a cult, then?!” Dash shouted at her. “Because that’s where your power comes from?”

Twilight followed the logic, catching up only a second later. She was even more livid at Starlight.

“Is that true?” Twilight only managed to hold in her outburst a little better. “That’s why you started your religion? You brainwashed and manipulated all those ponies so they’d put their ‘faith’ in you and believe you were some kind of god? Even Night Glider?”

“Clever. And for the most part, yes.” Starlight closed her eyes and nodded. “I’ll trust you with this knowledge, that my strength comes from those who put their faith in me. Even you believe I’m capable of greatness on some level, so I am. And I know it will be difficult for you to trust me, so I won’t ask for your own faith. You can see for yourself, can’t you?”

Starlight turned to Pyrite Feather, now giggling at a stained glass depiction of some tentacle thing, somehow managing to find humor in it. She snapped back to attention upon feeling Dash’s gaze.

“You like my house better, right?” Pyrite Feather came trotting to Dash’s side. “This place is so cold and dark. Bleh! An element of harmony’s house should be bright and happy. Makes you wonder.”

“You promised to let me use your sight one more time,” Dash reminded her, finally getting the upper hoof on that ‘deal’.

“Hey, yeah. Sure. But I’ll need another metaphor since we’re not in my throne room.” Pyrite tore a chunk of glass off the ground, quickly converting it into a seeing stone to hand to Rainbow Dash. “And yeah, you do need something to use.”

Dash and Twilight both crowded around the seeing stone, which Pyrite immediately took offense to.

“Not you!” Pyrite butted her head against Twilight’s, pushing her back. “You’re not good enough to even touch my magic!”

“What? Why?” Twilight asked.

“Oh, gee! Why wouldn’t I like the pony who sulked non-stop for hundreds of years because her boyfriend was mean to her?” Pyrite mocked. “Look, I have a type! Overpowered is not it. I only like underdogs and right now that ain’t you!”

Twilight bristled and was about to fight back, but Dash patted her and assured her it wasn’t worth getting into an argument. At least, not with this thing.

“Then go ahead and look.” Starlight held her forelegs wide. “You can feel my name with your sight.”

Yeah. That was a good way to put it. Though Dash was looking at her, the name came as a feeling.

Faith. The power of faith. It was exactly as Starlight described it.

No matter how impossible something was if enough ponies believed Starlight could do it… then she could. The power would only reach omnipotence if everypony on the planet put their faith in her. But with a worldwide cult trained to believe she was the greatest pony alive, Dash could feel the tingle of her power already. Their faith in her pushed her towards the strength they believed she had. Only the doubt of those outside the cult held Starlight back. Yet even those ponies contributed to her strength in some way, merely by believing she was strong.

The question now was why would Starlight tell her this?

At first, it seemed like this knowledge would make it easy to defeat her. The obvious ‘solution’ of getting everypony to lose faith in Starlight came to mind. But it wouldn’t be that easy. Her followers were fanatical. Dash could scarcely imagine convincing Nightglider that Starlight’s eyes were purple if the cult leader said they were green.

It wouldn’t change nearly enough minds if she simply announced what Starlight had just said publicly.

Would Dash even be able to convince herself that Starlight was powerless if she tried? It seemed unlikely.

“She’s telling the truth.” Dash nodded. “About that.”

“So that’s it then?” Twilight asked. “You are that cynical? Night Glider loves you and you just brainwashed her to the point she can’t even think for herself? She cares so much about you and she’s just some– some ‘faith’ better to you?”

“Night Glider knows everything already?” Starlight smiled softly at Twilight’s anger. “It’s not like I took anything from her. She’s perfectly happy and I love her back.”

“As if we’d believe that last part,” Dash murmured.

“Right! I can’t talk to Night Glider and say ‘you haven’t taken anything from her!’” Twilight complained.

“Again. You’re making assumptions. I specifically chose her because–” Starlight sighed. “Oh, alright. Though I’ll defend that, I won’t pretend that what I did was moral. But more importantly, it was necessary. I needed this power to save the world. Even what I have now isn’t enough. That is the second of the three things I needed you to see for yourself. If you’ve used this before, have you seen what awaits us? The easiest view is that of Crater Cemetery.”

Starlight held her hoof out, expecting Dash to use her viewing stone to look at that monster a second time. Dash merely shook her head, not wanting to get strangled again.

“I see.” Starlight settled into her throne. “So you already saw the insurmountable strength of that horrible thing? And do you understand what we’re up against? Desperate action is warranted against such horror as that.”

“Crater Cemetery? You mean that ghost?” Twilight asked Dash. “Did it really look that strong?”

Dash didn’t want to answer just yet.

They were going to indirectly encounter this ‘ghost’ or whatever it may be soon enough. Dash shuddered to think what it would mean if it really was stronger than Twilight. But then again, nothing had managed to rise to the level of a master witch just yet.

“Now hold on!” Dash stepped forward. “We haven’t even tried fighting against the ghost of Crater Cemetery yet. We still might be strong enough to beat it without starting a cult or brainwashing anypony. So don’t go talking like that just yet. You might have done all of these horrible things for nothing!”

“Perhaps you are stronger than even I am.” Starlight bowed her head. “Alright. Let’s pretend you have the power to overcome it. Do you think the world would be safe yet?”

“Yes?” Dash shifted her eyes. “I mean, it’s starting to sound like we might have to fight you, too but–”

“You still don’t understand,” said Starlight. “The world is out of balance, Rainbow Dash. Can you feel it? Can you see it in your current state? Look out towards the stars.”

The stars?

Dash didn’t know where this was going. True, she hadn’t thought to look up of all places before, merely down at the planet where all the things were.

She never really expected anything to be out there, with it commonly accept this was the only planet with life on it. She heard once that eventually, life could exist on other planets, some of them were bound to be near-habitable.

Biological evolution existed even on their planet. Some ponies theorized that simple molecules could slowly evolve into increasingly complex lifeforms all on their own, without any divine intervention at all, though that would take millions or even billions of years and the universe simply was too young for that to have happened yet.

Dash found nothing.

“It seems strange that the gods would create all these planets and then just leave without doing anything with them, doesn’t it?” Starlight asked. “Look out further, beyond the stars themselves.”

Beyond? Dash squinted trying to focus as far away as she could. There was so much empty space past the galaxy and the scores of stray stars outside it. The void went on and on, to the point Dash was about to give up.

But then she found an end to it… a point she couldn’t look past. It wasn’t a barrier or anything, just an end to the nothingness. If that made sense.

It was a good thing Twilight lectured her on nothing so many times or she wouldn’t have been able to understand what she was looking out for.

“I think I remember what this is?” Dash glanced at Twilight. “Like, there’s different levels of nothingness? And out there is more nothing than the nothing in the uh…”

Though she almost understood the concept, it was still hard to articulate.

“Yes.” Twilight nodded, looking proud of her Dash all of a sudden. “According to my understanding, I would predict the universe is a galaxy nested in a bubble ‘spatial void’, basically a vacuum, and outside that would be ‘non-spatial void’ which is devoid of spacetime. It’s essentially nowhere on top of nothing. But even that’s not true void because causality, as well as physical and logical laws, still exist in it.”

“Well this is an interesting physics lesson,” said Dash. “But is there a reason I’m looking at this?”

“Is non-spatial void not the type of nothingness used to generate portals to the outer realm?” Starlight asked Twilight more than Dash. “You can see the surface of the outer realm imprinted on the edge of the universe, like ripples on the surface of a pond.”

Ripples along the intersection of nowhere and nothing?! How the heck was Dash supposed to–?!

Her ears twitched. She actually did find it. Or, rather she found something in that approximate area. Something that made her shiver, the kind of chill that let you know you were about to get sick. Something horrible was there… and it was similar to that feeling she got when she’d looked at Crater Cemetery. Just thankfully further away.

“I do see something!” Dash turned back, not wanting to look at the stuff any longer. “It’s – is it similar to the ghost of Crater Cemetry? It feels like it’s the same thing.”

“That is the true chaos that has been pushed into the outer realm,” said Starlight Glimmer. “It is free from all rules and boundaries, including causality itself. The Queen of Light, the ultimate avatar of order, banished the last of it so she could create a world in her own image, create us in her image. She knew ponies couldn’t exist in the same world as that. But she made a mistake and the world began to drift too far in the direction of order.”

“Too much… order?” Dash struggled to think why that was bad.

“Ponies often conflate order with complexity, but that isn’t the case at all. Life can only exist when a very specific amount of entropy is present. With too much order, there is not enough difference for there to be complexity.” Starlight frowned, seeing Dash not really following. “Well, being the very definition and inventor of order herself she left this world to try and keep things in balance. But perhaps her calculations were off slightly. We’re still tilting too far to one side. And that’s causing a sort of leak.”

“Let me see if I get this straight,” said Twilight. “You’re claiming that the world is destabilizing allowing true chaos to exist in the real world again? Actually, that might make sense if logistical consistency were to–”

Twilight considered it, doing some kind of insane math in her head, but concluded against it.

“No, no! If true chaos existed in this world, it’d either evaporate instantly or destroy the entire universe as we know it in a second. Obviously, the former since–”

Twilight didn’t finish, but Dash knew what she meant. Twilight’s ‘true void’ decomposed into ‘true chaos’ which then ceased to exist because the laws of physics that the Queen of Light created obliterated it instantly. Or something like that.

“Not the true chaos itself, but the shadow of it, something it emits. And all of it despises the creations of The Queen of Light, ponies most of all. The living embodiment of nightmares that eventually became the ‘ghost of Crater Cemetery’ was merely the first drop to leak out some thousands of years ago. But it has only been getting worse, the world slowly filling with horror from its influence until now, where we are surrounded by an infinite assortment of monsters.”

Starlight began back towards her throne.

“And a flood of it will be coming sometime in the next two hundred years. We will not survive it if nothing is done.”

“And you know all this how?” Dash asked.

“I was in the outer realm for six hundred years, remember?” Starlight asked. “I learned all manner of things while I was there. But it’s fine if you don’t believe me on that count. All you need to know is that more of the nightmare is pooling up out there. And you’ve seen that yourself.”

Dash had to nod.

There was so much of it. If the one here was half as strong as Twilight… well there was a dozen times that much out there already! This would be terrible if Starlight wasn’t screwing with them. If.

But she still couldn’t confirm if Starlight’s interpretation of this was true. Dash still had one lifeline left. Sort of.

“So is any of this true?” Rainbow Dash asked the element of laughter.

Pyrite looked left and right, then pointed at herself.

“How should I know?” Pyrite asked.

“How wouldn’t you know?! Isn’t this like, your thing?” Dash asked.

“Hey, I’ve never been to the outer realm! That place is gross.” Pyrite stuck her tongue out. “I don’t know what’s going on over there and I’m not willing to learn. But yeah. Looks like the universe sprung a leak. You saw it yourself. What do you want me to say?”

Maybe Dash had expected too much from her.

“And the stuff about Sombra making an element of faith?” Dash asked.

“Yeah, that makes a chronological kind of sense. It all happened back then.”

Dash turned back to Starlight. It probably wouldn’t be that easy to catch her in a lie.

“Okay, okay. So what’s your plan?” Dash asked. “Get everypony to worship you and–”

“Please.” Starlight waved it off. “I never intended such a thing. If you listen to my religion, my goal was never to be the sole god of this world, but to raise the rest of you to my level. Just like your friend has begun to.”

Scootaloo, still exhausted to near collapse, backed up to be closer to Rainbow Dash.

“You’ve achieved near completion. Ponies, all of us, are incomplete images of our alicorn creators. But by regaining our alicorn magic, by fusing with it and eventually ascending into demi-alicorns ourselves can we become what we should have been all along.”

Starlight turned to one of the stained glass images that made up the chaotic mosaic of a wall. This one was a simple depiction of an alicorn, with far tinier earth, unicorn, and pegasus ponies just below it.

“Can’t you see it just by looking at the pony races? The alicorns gave each of us only a third of what we should have been. They wanted us to be weak and broken creatures who could do nothing but worship and rely on them. But now, in their absence, we cannot possibly survive in such a state. We must evolve into truly superior beings which no monster could challenge. Can you imagine what it would be like if all of us had alicorn magic? If our cutie marks were not mere representations of who we were, but marked each of us as a demi-god of our own destiny?”

Dash shook her head, not buying that for a second.

“And let me guess. You’re going first? And we just have to ‘have faith’ you won’t go back on your word to help the rest of us ‘ascend’ once you have infinite power?”

“No.” Starlight smirked. “Or, rather that was the plan until you appeared. This would be a lot easier if you were helping me. So you can go first.”

Starlight smiled and held her hoof out as if making an offering. Dash and Twilight shared a look. What she meant was at once obvious and confusing. To bridge the gap, Starlight pointed at the seeing stone.

“The last thing I wanted you to see,” said Starlight. “You should count exactly two hundred thirty-five sleeping feathers, plus two that are awake. These are Lillymoon and Scootaloo. This way you’ll also know I haven’t performed this procedure on any of my ponies yet and that I’m not hiding any from you.”

Dash gave her a suspicious look, before turning to the seeing stone. Dash counted and recounted them carefully. As promised, the only other black feather like Scootaloo was in Area 5X.

Though she expected this to be some sort of charade, Dash honestly couldn’t find any.

She gave Twilight a nod.

“So here’s my promise, I’ll give you all of them,” said Starlight. “You can have all two hundred thirty-five of them. Well, I’ll implant one of them into Night Glider’s brain to show you it can be safely done, then give you the rest. As for the transformation into a demi-alicorn. I’ll allow you to choose who transforms first. I plan to give you total transparency.”

The other ponies in the room recoiled from the shock of such an offer.

That deal was too good to be true! Hell, it was too easy to take advantage of! Starlight wouldn’t seriously stick her neck out that far, would she?

“And what’s stopping us from taking them and running away just to screw over your plans?” Dash asked.

“The fact that you desire power,” said Starlight. “The fact that our species needs to get stronger to survive. You may not believe it now, and that’s fine, but I know you will soon, when Crater Cemetery begins to move. And that’s why I’m willing to put my faith in you first.”

“So,” Dash scoffed, “you expect me to believe that after years of screwing other ponies over to make yourself stronger by your own admission, now you’re suddenly going to be okay with other ponies taking over?!”

“I have no neurotic need to be the one to save the world myself.” Starlight gave Pyrite a sharp look. “You can ascend only ponies who are loyal to you if you want. With two hundred demi-alicorns loyal to you, I wouldn’t stand a chance against you if we fought. I’m not asking for much trust here.”

Nopony answered her. ‘Not much’ was too much still.

“I understand. It was a terrible path I walked to get here. But that’s why I’m willing to give you such control. I really won’t hustle you or force you to make a decision. All I wanted was for you to know this was an option. I trust you’ll see the wisdom in this soon enough, once you realize the trouble we’re in. But beyond that. Isn’t that the sort of world you want to create?”

“What do you mean?” Dash asked.

“For now, most ponies struggle to survive. Our lives are beset with tragedy and disaster. The weak can only scurry and hide while the strong dominate. Only those with power can survive in this world and even the mightiest of us can never rest easy knowing our weak brethren are in constant danger… but you think that’s unfair, don’t you? But if all ponies were strong the world would not be so unfair. Those now weak wouldn’t have to struggle. Those of us at the top wouldn’t have to live in constant fear for our weaker sisters at the bottom.”

Twilight opened her mouth to say something but glanced briefly at Dash instead before looking away.

Was she seriously tempted by this?! Twilight had way too much power already!

Dash’s skeptical mind was desperately trying to poke holes in this. Her first instinct was always to break anything that was presented to her and this was no exception.

“How is ‘everypony’ going to become a demi-alicorn if we only have a couple hundred of these?” Dash asked.

“Once one of us has ascended, I believe they’ll be able to ‘donate’ a few feathers to the next ponies. All I ask is that you accept the power to save the world.”

There had to be more to the plan than what she was saying now. Starlight was being too reasonable. She just admitted to manipulating her followers! Dash knew this had to be no good.

Even still, it was hard to find a reason to turn this down completely. Why not take them away from her?! Was Starlight that confident?

“Shouldn’t we at least take the feathers from her?” Twilight asked.

“Not yet!” Dash stopped her. “Not until I’ve had time to think about why this is bunk!”

“Again, you don’t have to decide today.” Starlight closed her eyes. “There’s still some time left. Take all the time you want to try and find a hole in my story and to see the truth in what I’ve said.”

Dang it! It was starting to annoy Dash. If Starlight had tried to press them into making a decision right now then at least Dash would know for a hundred percent sure she was lying. But as it stood she was only at ninety-nine percent and that wasn’t nearly enough.

“So that’s it for today.” Starlight closed her eyes and hummed to herself. “Oh! There was one other thing I wanted to do.”

Starlight lunged at Dash too quickly for her to react. Twilight had no such problem, appearing behind Starlight to pull her back, keeping Dash just out of reach.

It proved largely unnecessary, though, as Starlight’s target was never Dash in the first place. Instead, she grabbed onto the necklace around her neck, ripping it off.

Catching Twilight off guard, Starlight used the brief moment to throw the element of laughter into the air. A swirl of rainbows surrounded Starlight’s forehoof before the colors scoured into the purest, hyperbolic white Dash had ever seen.

“Oh no!” Pyrite Feather covered her mouth, but Dash could see a huge smile beneath those hooves.

“Stop this!” Twilight moved to shove Starlight aside to protect the element, but it was the element of laughter that stopped her.

A beam of rainbow energy pushed Twilight back just an inch or two. Enough to leave her stunned in confusion.

“As if I want your help Ms. Pity Party!” Pyrite stuck her tongue out at a baffled Twilight.

Then Starlight struck. She punched the element hard as it came down, the white ribbon of magic spiraling into a drill that attempted to shatter it.

The magic forced the element of laughter to at last reveal its true form to Dash. She saw a golden chain with a huge, black gemstone inserted into the middle. It was clearly supposed to be a cutie mark, but Dash had some trouble making it out. Fireworks, maybe?

“You’re not even trying to stop me?!” Starlight grit her teeth as her pure white ribbon drilled through the rainbows and onto the gemstone.

“Bwahaha!” Pyrite feather only laughed at the attempt. “How new are you? I thought everypony knows you can’t destroy an element of harmony just like that. I can instantly rematerialize next time Pinkie does something cool. Heck, that’s probably what I’m planning to do.”

“I’m not trying to destroy you completely.” Starlight narrowed her eyes as her drilling light put a crack in the gemstone. “I just need you out of my way long enough to destroy Crater Cemetery.”

“Well good luck with that.”

Pyrite looked to Dash next.

“Anyway, I’m going to explode for a little while now.” Pyrite waved to Dash, the crystal cracked badly. Dash had no idea if she should try to help. It almost seemed like the element of laughter wanted to shatter ‘for now’. “Remember! You promised to tell Pinkie Pie that I’m hilarious and not annoying at all.”

“I did not agree to that second part!” Dash protested but it was too late.

Not just the element but all the glass in the cathedral shattered. Yet, before anypony could so much as fall, they were back on the mountainside.

Starlight’s punch carried forward, sending the white ribbon sailing off into the air, streaming over Ponytown.

“Was it really that easy to break?” Starlight looked down at the shards, disgusted. “It must have been starved without any–”

“Did you just murder that thing?” Dash asked. “It was annoying, but it was also trying to help us!”

“Oh don’t be so dramatic,” said Starlight. “You heard her yourself. I hardly killed it. Just got rid of it for a little while. She wasn’t ‘helping’ us, I assure you. She’s been preventing me from destroying Crater Cemetery for some time now, but with that taken care of–”

A fireball landed on the mountainside, interrupting their discussion with a burst of fire. From the flames, Sunset Shimmer got onto her feet. A raven perched on her back flew to the side and reformed into Moonlight Raven.

“Don’t listen to her!” Sunset ran to Dash’s side as if to protect her. “Whatever she’s telling you isn’t the whole truth! And whatever plan she tried to convince you of isn’t the only way forward.”

“Oh?” Starlight gave her a bemused look. “You don’t think the balance of order and chaos has been disrupted? I thought we agreed on that part.”

Sunset paused for a moment.

“Okay. She was telling the truth about that.” Sunset straightened up. “But her plan isn’t going to work! Don’t let her make you think what she’s doing is the only way to fix things!”

“Oh, yes.” Starlight could only smile at Sunset. “You wanted to resurrect some ancient god to force their rule over us, didn’t you? Because that’s always been such a good idea in the past. She did tell you about Golden Feather, didn’t she?”

“I didn’t have time to tell them the whole truth, but–”

“Then isn’t that exactly what you feared I would do?” Starlight ignored Sunset completely to turn to Twilight. “An immortal ruler from whom there’s no escape imposing her will on us. And you wouldn’t even have the comfort of seeing her but once before handing over all of our lives to this mystery god.”

“Not entirely true,” said Moonlight Raven. “I’ve met her.”

Dash had to look at her sideways after that.

“Wouldn’t that have been–”

“Eight thousand years ago.” Moonlight nodded without much weight.

“How old are you?!”

“A complicated question,” said Moonlight. “Queen Golden Feather set up several guards to keep us safe while she was away. One of them was thirteen of the most elite unicorns alive at the time. We agreed to have a time compression spell cast on us so that the ponies of the future could summon us for aid if the need arose. I estimate that was about eight thousand years ago. I’m the last of the thirteen, whom Sunset Shimmer summoned.”

“Yes, and how are those shields Golden Feather set up going?” Starlight asked. “Did the royal families protect us? The elements? You? The witches? All of these were either ineffective or unmitigated disasters. You queen failed, now it’s my turn.”

“Not yet she hasn’t.” Moonlight’s ear flicked slightly in a rare display of emotion. “She planned ‘only’ for five thousand years. And it seems our species has lasted three thousand beyond that. I’d say she was successful in that. Once I bring her back, she’ll be able to fix everything that broke.”

“Then what was Golden Feather like?” Dash asked.

“You felt a piece of her, didn’t you?” Moonlight asked Dash. “You know what it’s like. She was the wisest and kindest pony who ever lived. She is our rightful ruler and would be able to reunite all the ponies of the world in harmony. The only pony who could claim to rival her right to rule is her sister. The time of her rule was one of unprecedented peace and safety. I hardly recognize the world as it is today. How… rough the ponies of your time have become.”

Dash remembered the ‘trick’ the element of laughter played on her. The feeling was so sweet and serene like Golden Feather really was her mother. Would ponies want to stand up to somepony like that?

The thought of a pony like that in the world was both terrifying and tempting at once.

A deep voice snapped Dash out of her thought.

“Oh, but if everypony was happy how do you explain me?”

She turned to find Void Walker trotting in behind Starlight as though he’d been there all along.

“I too am from that same time period,” said Void Walker. “I sent myself to this distant future in hopes of freeing us from that eternal tyrant! Look at this world that was created without her! It has finally surpassed the ancient world and will only continue its rise! Can you say ponies could have grown this strong under the smothering influence of our mother? She never wanted us to grow on our own. Merely remain children for all eternity.”

Moonlight Raven let out a huff of hot air through her muzzle.

“Are you really saying it’s worth it?” Moonlight’s voice had some edge to it now. “All the tragedy that best the world just so you could be ‘stronger’? The ponies of our time didn’t need to be jaded.”

“Of course one of her dogs will tell you such things. What Moonlight Raven forgot to mention was that she was a spoiled noble, sheltered from all the excesses and cruelties of the world, giving her the chance to learn that ridiculous dodeca-wielding fighting technique. Is it any wonder a pony like her wants to go back to the system where she’s a literal princess?”

“I’m at the top of this new system as well, so it hardly matters to me either way. You, however, stand to gain personally. Void Walker was a criminal, what you’d call a terrorist today. He has killed thousands of innocent ponies. And for what? How many are you willing to sacrifice for your brutal philosophy?”

“The only difference between a terrorist and a revolutionary is whether they win and that still remains to be decided. I fought for freedom from a tyrant and that same tyrant sent me to her dungeon. Does that make me a criminal?”

“You don’t need to take my word for the sort of pony he is. Just look at the companions he kept. Tell the truth… Bloodstorm came from.”

“Hm.” Void Walker cocked a smile. “Yes, he was one of the ponies I wanted to bring to the future with me.”

“Wait. Bloodstorm?” Dash stopped looking between the two to interrupt their conversation. “Like… the Bloodstorm Cartel Bloodstorm? Screwball and– and Silverstorm’s dad?”

“I’m not aware of any other,” said Void Walker. “Though I called him Stratus back then. Needless to say, he betrayed me. He tried to come back before I did and establish himself as a ruler. I suppose he became a king, but not a god. Not without me. He was a traitor who got the death he deserved.”

“Don’t pretend like he wasn’t some pawn you were using,” said Moonlight.

“Oh, and will you stop pretending that Golden Feather wasn’t a tyrant who sent anypony who disagreed with her to prison? Because she thought she was too glorious to be wrong?”

“Okay, now you’re just making things up.”

“Am I? How would one as privileged as yourself possibly know?”

“Okay, okay!” Dash interrupted them. “Look, we’re in a hurry. Can we debate this later?”

Void Walker and Moonlight stopped their bickering

“What hurry?” Void Walker asked.

“Derpy got abducted by some mercenary thugs. We need to make sure she’s alright,” said Dash.

“Rainbow Dash!” Starlight practically scolded her. “We’re talking about the fate of the universe and you’re worried about your secretary?”

“Yes.”

Starlight couldn’t understand. She could only watch Dash with an indignant, but restrained frown.

“You said you weren’t going to force us to make a decision now, right?” Dash reminded her.

“No.” Starlight sighed.

“What about you?” Twilight asked Sunset and Moonlight Raven.

Sunset struggled with her own answer, leaving Moonlight to take the chance.

“It’s fine if you don’t want to help us. I can’t say you’re doing the wrong thing. But my mission was to bring her back were I ever summoned and I intend to do that. I’ll only consider you my enemy if you try to stop us.”

“Well then we’ll talk to you more after we’ve finished thinking about all this,” said Twilight.

“Very well. Void Walker? Will you help them ‘rescue’ Derpy Hooves?” Starlight looked at him. He bowed and Starlight continued forward, trotting away.

Ghosts 5: Ghost Club

There was a hiking trail off the side of Ponytown, a forested area that quickly thinned out as you went up the steep hills.

They found Pinkie Pie way up near the top, looking down into the increasingly obscured park. Pinkie wasn’t chasing after anypony but was watching this area like a hawk.

Dash and Twilight landed next to her. Scootaloo had lost nearly all of her strength for the moment and was fast asleep on Dash’s back. She needed to get somepony to take the filly back home. Maybe it was best she do it herself, but she needed to find out what was going on first.

“Pinkie!” Dash stepped to her side. “Why are we standing here? Did they already get away?”

Dash scanned the horizon, not seeing what Pinkie was seeing. Pinkie’s eyes went first to Scootaloo, but Dash waved to assure her the filly was okay.

“I don’t think they got away.” Pinkie’s eyes were fixed on one spot. “Neither of us had a good move so we’ve just been standing here for hours.”

“Pinkie, it’s only been thirty minutes.”

“Or that!” Pinkie finally took her eyes off the mark, turning to Dash with a smile. “Now that you’re here, this should be pretty easy! Did you talk to the thing?”

“Yeah. It was–” Dash put a hoof on the back of her neck, remembering her promise. “It was kind of an asshole, but um… all of its jokes were hilarious 10/10 material.”

“Oh! Well, that’s better than nothing.”

“Also it said it really likes you and wants part of your soul. And it will rematerialize the next time you do ‘something cool’. So just… don’t do anything too cool unless you’re ready for that kind of relationship.”

“What? But Rainbow Dash, I just bought a skateboard! I was gonna be just like my fellow kids.”

“Well unless you’re into soul-swapping maybe stick to a less radical sport? Like hacky sack?”

Dash saw a speck in the distance. It quickly expanded, becoming a pegasus too fast for Dash to react to it. A burst of air more than any other warning announced the arrival of Fleetfoot.

“I guess Starlight let you two go?” Fleetfoot asked “Look, there’s four of them and four of us. This should be a cakewalk.”

Dash spread her wings, ready to take flight. But she felt a sharp pain in her wing that forced her back down.

The wound from before reopened. She’d pushed herself too hard now it was bleeding pretty badly again. Dash pressed a hoof against it and cast the blood restore spell.

“You got grounded by those guys?” Fleetfoot knit her brow and frowned at Dash.

“Well.” Dash covered the wound, suddenly self-conscious. “They got a surprise attack on me is all.”

Fleetfoot didn’t have a response to that, other than that disapproving expression.

“Rainbow Dash.” Twilight sat next to her. “You need to go back home. We don’t need you for this one.”

“It’s not that bad!” Dash spread her wing. She knew she could still fly like this! It’d hurt and bleed, but as long as she knew that one spell she wouldn’t die or anything.

“I don’t want you getting hurt any worse,” said Twilight.

“You heard Fleetfoot! These guys aren’t even that tough!”

Fleetfoot backed up rather than interrupt their argument. Dash met Twilight’s concerned expression adamant. Twilight glanced briefly at Scootaloo and Dash knew what was coming.

“You have to get Scootaloo back home. She shouldn’t be out here during a fight. Not now.”

Dash couldn’t meet her gaze any more. She knew Twilight was right. She supposed she left Trixie hanging around back there, too. Though Trixie was supposed to go back to Sunset now.

Heck, this had been what she was planning to do to begin with! Why did Twilight have to say that?!

“Okay! Fine!” Dash stood up and spread her wings out, pretending they weren’t at all injured. “Whatever! Somepony has to get her back home. But if anything happens to Derpy–”

“I can handle it,” Twilight assured her.

“Yeah!” Fleetfoot was suddenly all smiles again as she turned to ‘Silverstorm’. “I love being your wing pony, Silverstorm! We got this!”

Twilight nodded and the two of them were gone at unmatchable speeds.

Pinkie alone lingered, watching Dash with some unspoken concern.

“Don’t worry! You’re doing okay and we love you!” Pinkie patted an unamused Dash on the head before running off.

Dash muttered some thanks. She looked at the wound. It wasn’t even bleeding that bad! She took off immediately, decidedly not taking her time.

Usually, the basement was such a cozy place for Fluttershy. The rooms without windows were pitch black even in the middle of the day. It always felt like being inside during the rain.

Today, it was much less comfortable. Her temporary roommate, Aria, mostly just sat in the corner, staring at Fluttershy. To be fair, Fluttershy was doing the same thing. Just in a different corner.

One of Aria’s legs was clearly ‘borrowed’ from a stallion, attached to her doll by enormous staples. Fluttershy had been desperately struggling for the past half hour not to ask where she found that leg. She thought about asking where Aria had gotten such a huge stapler from instead, but that was too close to the heart of the issue.

She needed something else to do. Her hunger was just strong enough to offer a suggestion.

Fluttershy had a nice, brick oven down here where she could burn whatever she wanted. Just this one appliance made her feel like she was living a life of luxury.

On either side of the oven were bags of charcoal and a stack of logs, enough fuel to last Fluttershy months. Desperate for something to do, Fluttershy filled her stove with charcoal and began starting the fire.

Charcoal fires took a little more work, but they were generally the tastiest type in Fluttershy’s opinion. Her orb floated up next to her as it always did when she started a fire.

Fluttershy turned to Aria, still apprehensive about talking to her. Maybe asking to share would be a good excuse to talk.

The look on the other ghost’s face doused cold water on even that baby step. Aria wasn’t happy at all. She had watched all of this with a borderline indignant frown. Fluttershy frowned back, worried she might have messed up the fire in some way.

Could you do that? Could you light a fire the wrong way?

“Seriously?” Aria asked. “You just eat charcoal? Like that?”

“Um.” Fluttershy tilted her head. “I had to try hard to stop eating animals so–”

Fluttershy ended her sentence with a gulp as Aria muttered angrily at her hoof.

“First of all, no self-respecting ghost wastes their time lighting the fire themselves.” Aria gestured to her orb. “Orbs can be programmed to do useless chores like that for you.”

“They can?” Fluttershy glanced at it. She knew she could make it do tricks… but could she really ‘train’ it?

“They–?!” Aria’s eyes widened, flashing in offense at Fluttershy’s ignorance, before settling into a scowl. “And another thing, ghosts don’t just throw a bunch of charcoal onto a fire and leave it at that like some barbaric slob. That’s what you look like! Don’t you know how to prepare food properly?”

“I don’t think so?” Fluttershy looked around for whatever else she was supposed to be burning. “I only just started burning things. I used to live in a sewer where the air was usually hot enough to survive off.”

Aria grumbled and went off to the other room, forcing that poor orb to come with her.

The pantry was on the same floor so Aria didn’t need to disturb anypony to get what she needed. Fluttershy never once thought about burning the food supply for the living ponies. It seemed like such a waste when charcoal just had so much heat in it.

Aria came back soon after with a small bundle, the orb carrying another. She had some tattered scraps of cloth, some mint leaves, and dried-out pine branches. She sat down by the fire, wrapping the pines in the cloth. This was gently placed on top of the fire before adding another layer of coals.

Fluttershy sniffed it. She had to admit, this was easily the best-smelling fire she’d ever seen! Of course, Fluttershy tried burning cloth before and pine needles too but… maybe you had to combine them in some specific way to get this effect?

“These only burn for a second,” Aria held up a mint leaf. “You throw it on, then take the heat as soon as it hits the fire.”

Fluttershy drew in the heat as instructed. She gasped at how much nicer it was than before! It still wasn’t like taking heat from a living thing. But compared to what she was used to, she suddenly felt as though she’d been eating nothing but raw oats this whole time.

“This really is incredible! Thank you!” Fluttershy’s eyes sparkled. For a moment, she forgot her fear. “How did you figure all of this out?”

“Ugh!” Aria rolled her eyes and grumbled. “I didn’t. My parents taught me this stuff and they learned it from my grandfather. Ghosts have known all this for centuries. Somepony should have taught you this.”

“Um.” Fluttershy looked down at the ground. She didn’t know why Aria was so offended right now. “Sorry I was–”

“Just shut up. It’s not your fault you act like a worm friend. I know that. It’s fine.” Aria looked toward the ceiling.

Worm friend? She’d heard Rattler say that word a few times.

“What does that word mean?” Fluttershy asked.

That reignited her anger.

“You don’t even–?!” Aria stomped a hoof on the ground. “This is what happens when you try living with predeads! All predeads are the same. Living with them is no good for you.”

“No.” Fluttershy whimpered, shaking her head. She didn’t want to hear this, but standing up to Aria…

“You can’t love someone you don’t understand. I know they think they care about you, but they can’t understand us. We don’t even see the same world as them. Maybe you built her up in your mind, but this Rainbow Dash is just as terrible as–”

Fluttershy opened her eyes. She swore this wouldn’t happen again. She swore she’d stand up for her friends.

“No!” Fluttershy straightened up. She’d spoken loudly enough to surprise Aria more than herself. “I don’t just ‘think’ Rainbow Dash cares about me. How dare you even say that? You’re the one who doesn’t understand anything.”

Aria simply watched her silently.

“I ‘lived’ with other ghosts for a while and it wasn’t whatever you just assumed it would be!” Fluttershy matched Aria’s stare. She trembled and Aria knew it, but she tried to ignore that. “Rainbow Dash has done so much for me that I almost feel bad about it. You’re not going to say anything bad about her in front of me. You take all of that back.”

Fluttershy felt herself faltering towards the end. She was out of breath now, panting heavily. Aria sat, studying Fluttershy quietly. At last, she relented with the briefest of smiles.

“Maybe you’re right. I barely ever hear ghosts defend a predead like that. Just that mad science frost-bitch and Adagio’s annoying–” Aria caught herself before she revealed too much. “So you’re probably right about Dash.”

The quick turnaround caught Fluttershy off guard. Was there something else going on? Aria turned back to the fire and threw another mint leaf in. She wasn’t trying to eat anymore, just burn stuff.

“I’ll take it back. I just hate seeing other ghosts living like this. My family’s always been… well we consider ghosts to be our people, you know? Ghosts used to have our own civilization and culture and history. Entire ghost cities existed just fifteen years ago. That’s what my family cared more about than anything else in the world. The other ghosts were so important to us. To me. And now.”

Aria flailed her hoof in gesture towards Fluttershy’s living conditions before it fell lifeless to the ground. Probably the last free specter on the continent, alone in a basement and with zero connection to Aria’s culture.

“I was forced to take part in destroying it all, down to the last city. She specifically made sure it was me and Sonata going after Old Manehattan again and again until eventually we destroyed even that place. And that’s somehow not enough. She made us burn down Shadowbolt Academy and now she’s making Sonata go after the last free specter…” Aria slumped forward, as though sitting was too taxing. “And I wasn’t even allowed to hate it.”

Fluttershy trembled listening to this until she couldn’t take it any longer. She threw herself forward and tackled Aria in a hug, knocking her out of her body. She could feel Aria’s surprise but didn’t dare open her eyes.

It was getting easier for Fluttershy to throw herself over the barrier.

“I’m so sorry!” Fluttershy held her tightly. “I don’t want things like that to happen anymore. That’s… that’s why I’m here.”

After some hesitation, Fluttershy felt Aria move a foreleg around to pat her on the back.

Fluttershy opened her eyes to see Aria’s ghost form for the first time, not at all a terrifying pile of tatters like her body. She looked like a normal pony now.

“You know, you’re a lot less scary when you aren’t in that thing.” Fluttershy looked back to the lifeless body with a shudder.

“You want me to stay out of it while I’m here?” Aria asked.

Fluttershy nodded.

“Fine.” Aria cast her look down. “But I want to teach you things about ghosts. I hate seeing a specter live like this.”

“If you agree to stop blaming my friends.”

Aria nodded solemnly. Maybe she already had.

They both turned to look toward the portal room. Fluttershy knew one of the others was back by then. She could smell somepony entering from the portal room. Worrying, she could smell them bleeding.

Normally, she wouldn’t be able to tell this straight away. However, Ponies who were bleeding, or especially ones who had a fever had a much stronger ‘scent’ to them. Even now, Fluttershy wasn’t confident she could ‘restrain’ Aria if somepony in the castle got sick.

Dash needed to get Scootaloo up just long enough to temporarily restore the portal. Once on the other end, Dash’s new ward was completely out.

Dash found a couch to set her new charge on and put a blanket over her. She looked down at Scootaloo, thinking she’d like to just lie down next to her for now. But Dash felt so badly that she needed to do something. She had to start strategizing now.

Fluttershy found them first, poking her head up from the ground shortly after.

“Oh my!” Fluttershy gasped at Dash’s wing. “What happened to you? Do you feel light-headed?”

Dash looked down at her wing. She hadn’t really taken her time getting back home and the wound was probably worse now than it had been to start with. The whole region was pretty… red. She’d kind of forgotten about all that for a moment.

“I have a blood restoration spell,” Dash said. “It doesn’t matter how much I bleed.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Fluttershy shook her head. “Did something happen? What about Scootaloo.”

“Scootaloo’s fine. Just tired. A lot of things happened. I want to see Rarity and that ghost patsy we got,” said Dash.

“Aria?”

Dash nodded.

“It’d be best if you stop the bleeding before she comes. She isn’t over her addiction like I am. I’ll find Rarity for you.”

“Alright. I get it.” Dash quit with the spell and pressed her hoof hard against the wound instead.

It took some time, but she did manage to get the bleeding to stop again. It took a lot more bandaging than she would have thought, enough that it didn’t even look cool.

But it passed the Fluttershy test. So Fluttershy took her downstairs to where Rarity was working. Apparently, she was close to restoring Saccharine to functional status. She didn’t have another 9,000 body yet but called this one a ‘deluxe 8300’ or something.

It looked just like all the other sweetie bots, save for the open head. Inside of that was Saccharine’s brain-chip-thing. A ‘persona core’, Rarity called it.

The persona core had an other-worldly quality to it. The thing was a solid, metal sphere that immitted a green light through a series of slits. Listening to Rarity, this thing was so complicated you needed to be an expert just to plug it in. It took her days to attach all the little wires and stuff. She needed another robot just to be precise enough.

Rarity was carefully threading microscopic wires she needed special goggles just to see into equally invisible slots but assured Dash she could do this and listen at the same time.

Aria had appeared too, Fluttershy needing to stay close to keep her in control of her addiction.

Dash wanted to see the messed up version of that doll after hearing from Pinkie how creepy it looked. But for whatever reason, Aria ditched it, coming through the floor with Fluttershy.

Since Aria knew stuff about this, so Dash was hoping to confirm it all.

She went into a long explanation of what Starlight had said to them. At times Rarity didn’t seem to be paying attention, but her constant questions proved otherwise.

Dash didn’t need to ask to know the answer. All of this was at least part of what Aria was planning to tell them. Aria listened to this in quiet rage, to the point Dash was starting to get worried Aria would pounce on her.

“Don’t think you figured anything out yet!” Aria jabbed Dash in the chest as soon as she felt it’d gone on long enough. Dash was happy she only got that much. “Starlight didn’t tell you the whole truth for your information. There’s an entirely different angle to this. I probably know more than she does and I won’t lie to you.”

“Whoa! Calm down.” Dash brushed her hoof away. “We’re going to help your sister either way. You don’t gotta ‘prove’ anything to us.”

Aria scowled as if it wasn’t already clear she couldn’t believe Dash.

“I know way more than just what she told you. I know all the inner workings of Crater Cemetery! I know almost all of her abilities. And I know more than even just that! Do you want to know why Nailbat is one of the triggers for that stupid summoning spell? I do. Do you want to know how everypony in my family just happens to become ghosts? You have no idea how much I know!”

Aria coated her hooves in ice and gripped Dash hard around the collar. Dash had inadvertently taken away one of her aces.

“Hey!” Dash protested, starting to psyche herself up. “I’m trying to tell you it will be okay!”

“Aria!” Fluttershy called at her sternly. That finally got the ghost to turn her head. Fluttershy came in much more gently, putting a hoof on Aria’s back. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

Aria took one more look at Dash before letting her go.

“Sorry, Fluttershy.” Aria bowed her head.

Dash let out a sigh. So that worked when Fluttershy did it? When did the two of them become friends all of a sudden?

It was probably a good thing, so who cared?

Aria tapped her hoof twice, before turning to Fluttershy to answer Dash’s request.

“Starlight didn’t outright lie to you about anything as far as I can tell. But she’s leaving out something important,” Aria told Fluttershy. “I don’t know what she’s trying to trick you into doing, but she’s trying to trick you. I’m sure of that. Don’t do anything stupid until you have my information.”

“Thank you very much.” Fluttershy bowed her head.

“I’m not saying anything else for now.” Aria went back downstairs.

Fluttershy had little choice but to follow, lest Aria become dangerous.

That just left Dash and Rarity.

Rarity was, in Dash’s opinion, the smartest one here rivaled only by Twilight. She was the one Dash wanted to bounce ideas off of.

“We hardly needed Aria to confirm to us that this is likely a deception.” Rarity briefly twirled one of her tools before going back to work with it.

“Well, I kind of figured that much out on my own. I keep trying to think of ways this could be a trap but I’m just not figuring it out. Why would she give me all the feathers? All this power? Does she care about my opinion that much?”

“Of course she doesn’t care what you think.” Rarity looked up from her work just briefly enough to roll her eyes. “Do you think somepony like her cares about any opinion but her own? She sees the rest of us as machines to be used discarded. All this outer realm nonsense only exacerbates that.”

Saccharine’s eyes flickered to life.

“Rarity?” Saccharine appeared only able to move her eyes at the moment. “What is this about discarding machines?”

“Oh, obviously I meant those other machines.” Rarity wrapped her forelegs around Saccharine’s exposed head. “Of course, I love you very much. More than Starlight would love anypony, I assure you.”

Saccharine watched her with an unreadable expression.

“But hold still a moment longer,” Rarity said to her. “I’m not quite finished yet”

“So why would she offer me all this power then?” Dash asked.

“My guess is that this is a poison pill,” said Rarity. “There’s no way somepony like that gives up control to anypony, least of all somepony she just met. No, the only logical conclusion is that she isn’t trying to give you power but to take it away.”

Rarity was right! Dash was sure that was it now!

“But how would giving us the black feathers hurt us in any way?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“That I don’t know. But from what I understand we know that these feathers,” Rarity caught herself, “can be dangerous. There’s no reason to assume she isn’t offering us a poisoned candy apple.”

“So like,” Dash’s mind came up with a million ways that could go down, settling on the most blunt, “like she might have a spell that causes them to all simultaneously explode. And if they’re in our house when that happens– Okay, what if we take them and immediately throw them all to the moon? Or into the sun?”

“You might not get the chance,” said Rarity. “The trap could spring immediately or she could be trying to goad you into destroying them for her.”

“So what? You think she’s guessed what we’re going to do with them already?” Dash asked.

“You have to assume that,” said Rarity. “It’s just like that old philosophical dilemma. You know, where Lux Lucius won’t let you leave until you choose one of two boxes? And one contains a delicious sandwich and the other has an infinite number of scorpions in it? But he put the scorpions in the box that he knew you would choose and then when you pick it he’s all ‘No, no you chose the scorpions on your own free will! This is what you wanted. I’m innocent.’”

That might make sense. She was almost 100% sure that Laughter could have guessed what she’d do. So why wouldn’t her sister. Or cousin or whatever she called Faith.

“Then how do we get the sandwich?” Dash asked.

“You don’t. You win the game by not bothering with any of this.”

“But if we’re assuming she can think that far ahead, what if what she wants is to trick us into avoiding these feathers because we assume it’s a trap?” Dash asked.

Rarity paused to consider that.

“Should we really even assume Starlight is that smart?” Dash asked. “I mean, sure she stabbed that thing in her head, but I don’t feel like she’s on the level of an actual god or anything.”

“I’ve seen the outer realm. And while my mind can no longer comprehend those memories, I can tell you that anything there should be treated with the utmost fear and respect. Always assume it's worse than you think,” said Rarity. “In my opinion, if Golden Feather has been living there, we shouldn’t summon her. And Starlight, the original Starlight, was a fool to agree to whatever she did with that creature. Why, never in a million years would I agree to something so foolish as to fuse with one of these elements. Or even one of these feathers."

“Watch it,” Dash warned. “Scootaloo’s basically the same and she’s legally my daughter now.”

Dash had to remind herself of Rarity’s anti-theistic leanings.

“But she didn’t agree to it is my point.” Rarity apologized with a flick of a hoof. “Hm. Though from the sound of things, you don’t necessarily fuse completely.”

“She made it sound like the two of them did.”

“And we know she’s misleading us.” Rarity tapped her lip thinking it through. “Well if she is still partially a pony in some sense, there may be some hope. We know she left something out of her story, yes? If we can get Aria to actually tell us what that is, deducing what move she wants us to make should be much easier.”

“Sure. But if you think we should be paranoid then what if she knows Aria is talking to us?” Dash asked.

“Whether a god or not, Starlight needs control. That much we know,” said Rarity. “I would say to take a careful lookout on the situation. If she shows any presence there, before things turn ugly, that means she probably knew. Otherwise, we’re as safe as we can get.”

“You sound sure things will turn ugly.”

“It’s starting to sound that way.”

Dash tapped the side of her head, thinking this through. She probably wasn’t going to deduce much else for now. Yet still she hadn’t felt like she’d done enough. Maybe there was somepony else she could talk to?

“I’m going to try and find Sunset.” Dash got up to leave. “I gotta give Trixie back anyway. Thanks.”

Saccharine was restored to operational status not long after Rainbow Dash departed. That is, she was walking around but no longer in her original body.

Rarity began explaining to her what had happened during the fight.

“Plasma weapons are the most destructive types I’ve seen. Even Twilight says that her plasma spells are her most powerful attacks. She was surprised anything else was capable of such a feat, even if it was just countering you with your own plasma. And it’s so rare, I suppose I wasn’t prepared for it. But when I get to the 10,000 I will be.”

If she ever got to the Sweetie Bell 10K. Originally, that had been her goal. But she maxed out on her dives and had to give up on that vision, or at least accept it’d be decades for her to complete it. If only she could get one more good dive.

Maybe she should start looking into getting a successor who could carry on her work. A long series of torches had been passed just for Rarity to get to this point in robotics.

“Rarity,” Saccharine spoke after a long silence.

“Hm?”

“You never said that you love me before,” said Saccharine. “Why now?”

“What?” Rarity blinked, genuinely surprised by that. “I haven’t? Are you sure?”

“I have every conversation I’ve ever heard recorded.”

Rarity was at a loss for what to say. She certainly didn’t want to believe it, but Saccharine wouldn’t make a mistake like that. She stood in stunned horror trying to think of what she should say.

“This happens after I was severely damaged,” Saccharine continued. “You constantly talked about how much you love Sweetie Belle after she was damaged. Do you only love those who have been injured?”

“No, no! Of course not!” Rarity nuzzled her. “I’m so sorry! Of course I always cared about you. But–”

No, Rarity hadn’t always acted like that. Truth be told, she did see Saccharine as a mere tool near the beginning.

It didn’t take much self-reflection on Rarity’s part to realize what her mistake had been. She hadn’t even noticed Saccharine much before. She’d been so hyper-focused on Sweetie Belle alone that she hadn’t noticed anything else.

“I was just so overcome by what happened to Sweetie Belle and the rest of my– our family. It was just so hard for me to see anything past my own grief. Not until I got Sweetie Belle back. Do you understand?”

“You know I can’t feel sorrow. I don’t understand such a pointless emotion.”

“You’re not hurt that I never told you I care about you this whole time?” Rarity wondered if there was any way to explain it to her. “Or the way I treated you before?”

“No,” Saccharine said it with such little hesitation no one would have doubted her. “I don’t understand what that would mean. I merely wish for you to love me. I want to understand why you love certain objects towards that end.”

Rarity knew enough about how Saccharine’s mind worked to tell that was true.

“Well even if I can’t make you sad, I still don’t want to treat you like that.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like acting that way. I was just–” Rarity shook her head. She was focusing too much on herself. “Even if you can’t be sad, you can still be happy. I know that. I want you to have the things you want as well.”

“I exist only to protect Sweetie Belle and destroy your enemies. I see no purpose beyond this. I don’t resent this because I have concluded that I love Sweetie Belle as well.”

“I’m glad to hear that. But you can do other things, you know.”

“Like what?”

Rarity paused. What did Saccharine like again?

Rarity at least assumed she liked the other fillies on some level by now. Originally she was going to send Saccharine right off to play with them, but now…

“Why don’t we go outside and shoot rockets at scrap drones?” Rarity offered. “You like that, right?”

“Yes. I despise all inferior robots.”

“Wonderful. Come along.” Rarity trotted off at a brisk pace, Saccharine following close behind.

Fleetfoot barged into Spitfire’s house sometime later that day, determined to check in on her. Fleetfoot went off to retrieve one of Rainbow Dash’s friends, then did some cleanup before coming here.

Spitfire did her best to not embarrass herself further. Fleetfoot was at once the one least likely to judge her, but also the one whose opinion mattered most to Spitfire.

The younger pegasus didn’t directly ask any questions about why Spitfire retreated or why she’d been slumped over on the couch. But she did come in without permission and started talking about what happened afterward.

As always, Fleetfoot spoke very highly of Silverstorm and was always enthusiastic about fighting alongside her. It was enough to get Spitfire to sit up straight again.

Conversely, Spitfire could hear a change in tone when Fleetfoot mentioned Rainbow Dash. Her opinion of Dash was slowly souring and her answers about Dash got briefer over time. Spitfire had been hearing rumors. She could guess why.

“So a single bullet forced her to retreat?” Spitfire asked. Typically at the level of S-rank, a pony could take plenty of such hits. “You seem like you’re opinion of her is lessening.”

“I like her, but everypony is starting to think maybe Rainbow Dash is just a hack,” said Fleetfoot. “Arachnado claims he easily overpowered her while Silverstorm took him out with one move. There was that lich everypony thought was just making it up before. Now this? I have no idea what string of miracles kept Rainbow Dash alive through all this. I honestly don’t know if I could have lived through everything she did. But… well the rumor now is Silverstorm only keeps her around because Dash seduced her.”

“They’re both mares,” said Spitfire.

“I forget how old you are sometimes.” Fleetfoot smiled. “When are you going to retire anyway, boss?”

Spitfire wanted to say something like ’46 isn’t that old’, but that line got more pathetic each year. And S-rankers hardly ever lived to that age in the first place. All these fights made you age fast. The only other one over forty was Deathblow, somehow still going well into his fifties.

“When something finally kills me,” Spitfire said, eyes closed.

“Aw, but I don’t want you to die yet. After we get rid of Starlight, you should just focus on training other pegasi. I can take it from there, boss.”

If that were true, she wouldn’t be so scared at the mere mention of Spitfire dying or offering only to take ‘the next one’. Fleetfoot still felt completely dependent on her, didn’t she? Spitfire supposed she felt the same way about her old mentor long after it was true.

Fleetfoot had no idea who they should side with, but she thought Spitfire somehow did. Ultimately, Spitfire would be the one to make the choice.

“You still stand by your earlier report?” Spitfire asked. “Silverstorm would win 100 of 100 matches against Flash Bang?"

“When she fought Minuette, she was holding back a lot,” said Fleetfoot. “It wouldn’t even be close. If Flash Bang, Nailbat, and Sunset all attacked her at the same time, I still think Silverstorm would win more than half.”

“If she directly attacked Starlight?” Spitfire asked. “No tricks or anything. Do you think she’d be able to just kill her outright?”

“I’ve never seen either of them actually try,” said Fleetfoot. “I have no idea.”

“If you want me to retire, you’ll need to start making important decisions yourself,” said Spitfire. “If you were on your own, would you go behind Flash Bang’s back?”

Fleetfoot glanced down, betraying her doubt.

“There’s a reason I’m hesitant here.” Fleetfoot closed her eyes and crossed her hooves. “She didn’t kill Trixie. She didn’t kill Minuette. She doesn’t even want to fight half the criminal organizations. That kind of attitude is a serious liability. What if she goes further and decides Screwball or freaking Starlight can be saved? And we have to live our lives waiting for those two to get their second chance to destroy us all?”

Spitfire wanted to point out the magnitude of difference between Trixie and Screwball’s crimes. But the first half of her statement weighed more heavily on Spitfire’s mind. Fleetfoot’s problem was that Silverstorm wouldn’t kill enough ponies. As though the weight were literal, Spitfire felt her head and eyes dragged down towards the table.

When Spitfire was her age…

“Somepony your age shouldn’t be this cynical.”

Fleetfoot’s eyes flashed, indignant.

“Okay, what the crow are you on about?” Fleetfoot put her hooves on the table and stood up, knitting her brows in offense. “My whole life you’re telling me how stupid you used to be and not to make the same mistakes as you. Now you’re scolding me for doing exactly what you wanted?”

Spitfire knew she had no right to scold Fleetfoot over this. She’d taken Fleetfoot under wing as a young teenager. However she turned out, it was Spitfire’s responsibility.

For so long, she thought she’d been doing the younger pony a favor. But more recently, comparing Fleetfoot’s attitude to Rainbow Dash’s, she couldn’t help but feel disgusted with herself.

Did it even matter if Rainbow Dash was a fake? Either way, she was accomplishing more than an actual elite flier given all the support and training in the world from a young age.

“Is this about that kid?” Fleetfoot tilted her head, suddenly much more sympathetic as she watched Spitfire struggle with all this.

“I made the wrong call.”

“That kind of thing happens.”

“Well, it shouldn’t! Nothing has changed since I was your age. We’re still all living in constant terror, just accepting that’s the way things are. We all have better weapons now and that’s it. I didn’t do anything!”

“Aw. Don’t say that.” Fleetfoot winced, taking some of Spitfire's self-criticism to her own heart. “If nothing changed, that means it didn’t get worse. That’s just as good. Think of how much worse things could have been were you not around.”

Yeah. If Spitfire wanted to make herself feel better, she could remind herself of all the monsters and tragedies she stopped. But right now, she didn’t want to feel better.

She put her head down on the table. Fleetfoot watched her, unsure of what to say.

“Well, I would stick with Flash Bang until Starlight is dead.” Fleetfoot looked up at the ceiling, still thinking it through herself. “Then slowly back up into Silverstorm’s corner. If I was the one calling the shots.”

But she wasn’t. She’d still defer to whatever Spitfire said. Even if Spitfire chose to go with Fleetfoot’s decisions, it’d still ultimately be Spitfire making the calls. She just assumed Spitfire knew the right answer, but that wasn’t true at all.

Three soft knocks and one harder knock. Both of them knew what that meant. Usually, it was bad news when Bonbon showed up like this.

The two pegasi straightened up, Fleetfoot with a good deal more annoyance knowing her home would soon be intruded upon.

A pony opened a window with her forehooves, rolled into the room, and closed the window with her hind legs. All in one fluid motion. They didn’t get a good look at Bonbon’s disguise this time, as she was already ripping it off as she stood up. Her hair was still straightened out and dyed a dark purple. Spitfire felt she rarely saw Bonbon’s actual mane.

Spitfire refused to flatter Bonbon by asking where she was during this incident.

“You know you can just ask to talk to us, right?” Fleetfoot leaned forward.

“There’s something important I need to talk to you about,” Bonbon slowly pulled the curtains over the window. “Starlight is still in town. I don’t want her to know about this.”

“What’s this about?” Spitfire glanced around to make sure nopony was here

“I think Silverstorm is a witch.” Bonbon kept her eyes fixed on a distant point.

Spitfire heard those rumors. She’d looked into them but found no serious evidence of it. Coming from Bonbon, it was a serious accusation, though. She was the second-best information agent next to Nailbat, arguably the first since she wouldn’t constantly lie to you.

“In fact, I think she’s secretly the master witch Twilight Sparkle in disguise.”

Spitfire swallowed. That was an idea floated around early on, but it was dismissed.

It was well known by now that Rainbow Dash had gone out looking for Twilight Sparkle some time ago. Her story was that a zombie dragon, confirmed to exist, chased her far into the Everfree where she got lost and eventually met Silverstorm instead.

“Excuse me?” Spitfire bolted up back to her feet. “Didn’t Nailbat–”

“Do you honestly trust that guy?” Bonbon finally sat down.

Spitfire didn’t.

“And why did you change your mind on this?” Spitfire asked.

“I’m hoping to confirm this myself,” said Bonbon. “There’s going to be a special operation in 36 hours taking place in an abandoned train station just south of the Gorgetown gorge.”

South of the gorge, sitting in the middle of a wide-open field Sonata found the abandoned train station where she was to meet Fluttershy. Though really, it was more like a train booth. There was no platform and the old rail was long gone.

What you were left with was a waiting room, just a few wooden benches. It didn’t even look like it had a place to sell tickets. It at least had a bathroom, but sprawled to the side of the door, written in what might have been blood was: ‘Don’t open the bathroom door’

She didn’t have to worry about whatever was locked in there long since broke out, shattering the door and leaving scratch marks all over the little waiting room.

So, on the bright side, Sonata had a literal waiting room to sit down in! It was just instead of waiting for the train, she was waiting for a massive shootout.

Cinch, Sonata’s least favorite specter, had come to brief her one last time before the attack began.

“We’ve finally been able to confirm that Silverstorm is almost certainly a witch,” said Cinch. “As such there is no hope of you, or anypony else but our mistress, having any chance of defeating her.”

“Oh, boy! So two of Bloodstorm’s kids turned out to be witches?” Sonata sighed. “What are the chances of two sisters both becoming witches anyway?”

The same could be asked about Sonata’s own family, of course. Like Aria always told her, when you saw odds like that there was something you didn’t know.

“There have been some complications,” said Cinch. “It appears this operation has been leaked and the information spread outwards alarmingly fast.”

“You’re saying other ponies care about this?” Sonata asked. “How many?”

“At least four S-rank ponies are waiting to the northwest, mostly pegasi. They have with them some fifty elite pegasi spread across the length of the gorge. Most likely, if the fighting gets too intense, and it will, they’ll side against us.”

“That can’t be good. But at least–”

“Now, now. Before you start ‘at leasting’ things, know that the Bloodstorm Cartel has also taken interest in the situation.”

“Wuh? But they’re.” Sonata flicked her eyes left and right. They weren’t on Crater Cemetery’s side. But they hated Silverstorm too. “Why are they here?!”

“Fluttershy will be out in the open. They want to kill Fluttershy for being friends with Silverstorm. They’ll likely attack your location with no concern if they kill both of you.”

“Okay. So–” Sonata took in a deep breath. “So basically every pony on the entire planet has me surrounded and is going to run up here and try to kill me.”

“That’s not too far off.”

“And I’ll be standing here completely alone in the middle of nowhere.”

“Essentially. The closest ghosts will be three miles in either direction.”

“Do we have a plan?” Sonata threw her wings open.

“Indeed. If enough targets get on this side of the gorge, we can reign mass destruction on the area that will obliterate everything. If any of our targets survive, only then will reinforcements arrive.”

“Wait! Obliteration?! Won’t that kill me too?!” Sonata put both forehooves on her chest.

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I like this plan.”

“Well then it’s a good thing you’re being mind-controlled, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Sonata sighed and lowered her wings. “I guess it is.”

“Good. Remember that you are an acceptable loss and would most certainly have been killed eventually,” Cinch reminded her. “Your only goal is to destroy Fluttershy. The groups to the west and east are not counter-inducive to our plot if you don’t let them be.”

Cinch left with no further words for her.

Sonata sighed. She couldn’t defy the will of her mistress. She didn’t like being an acceptable loss, but at the same time couldn’t see herself as anything more. The only other possible outcome of this was Aria managing to abduct and free Sonata and that seemed even worse!

Sonata sat down in the train station. She could sense, through her aura, that nopony was around for miles. It looked like this really was it.

She wondered what being dead would be like. Maybe Luna had figured out the whole afterlife thing eventually and Sonata’s family were all waiting for her in a magical place in the sky? And she could see Adagio and her parents and grandfather again? Grandpa Dazzle always seemed so adamant that was the case.

But probably not. And she wasn’t supposed to think about that stuff anymore. Her mistress wouldn’t be happy at all if that were the case.

Twenty-four more hours of this. No way she was getting to sleep.

She stood in the doorway, swiveling her ears, listening to the dread silence.

There was no way to tell how much time was passing. Could be anything.

Something came in through the window! Sonata fell back onto her haunches screaming! She flailed a moment before seeing the intruder.

A single crow. Not the best or worst scenario.

“No crow!” Sonata covered her face. “I don’t need any more bad luck! Just go away!”

As she cowered, the crow just stood there watching her. She began to notice something about it.

It had something shiny in its mouth. Sonata crawled forward to try and see what.

Sonata had some fake equipment and stuff to try and play off the reporter angle on some level. She reached in and grabbed a small oat bar.

“Wanna trade?” Sonata held the bar out to the crow.

It came in to inspect the offering. The crow grabbed the bar and flew off before Sonata could realize what a sucker she was, but it did drop the shiny.

A coin! And not a normal one, but some weird kind she’d never seen before.

“Hopefully this thing is good luck. No way I’ll survive this otherwise.”

Ghosts 6: Little Ghost of Horror

“Wow! That was a crazy adventure, huh?” Derpy had one eye covered in ice as she lay on Twilight’s couch, only slightly bruised from the attack. “I can’t believe that snake guy got away, though. Those ponies sure are tricky. But there’s no winning against you, huh Twilight?”

Pinkie followed Twilight back to her tree house in Rarity’s backyard, looking like she had something she wanted to say. Twilight was a bit busy, so she didn’t ask. She stayed looking over her cauldron. This was all very urgent. The latest attack made Twilight realize she couldn’t dawdle.

Twilight picked up the last of the three curved blades she was working on. Just a little more and her project would be complete.

Pinkie took one last look at Derpy before deciding it was okay to just blurt it out.

“Twi, you got a minute?” Pinkie asked. “I never know what you’re doing down here.”

“I’m pretty busy, but you can talk.”

“Twilight. I think you hurt Dash’s feelings.”

“What?” Twilight blinked and turned to Pinkie. “When?”

“When you went after Derpy.” Pinkie came up next to Twilight, standing barrel to barrel with her, just a bit shorter. “You noticed she’s got self-worth issues, right?”

“Excuse me? Rainbow Dash is highly confident. She’s incredibly proactive and never quits.” Twilight shook her head. Rainbow Dash was always the one encouraging Twilight. “If she seems upset it’s because– well I don’t know if she mentioned this to you, but her mom abandoned her when she was young and her father just kind of checked out after that. So she’s afraid of being abandoned.”

Twilight nodded. The two of them were the same deep down. Twilight had been betrayed by Flash Sentry and Starswirl and was afraid of Dash abandoning her. But Dash was never going to leave Twilight no matter what.

Dash felt the same way underneath it all and Twilight was never leaving Dash either. So it all worked out.

“Of course, I’m not going to abandon Dash,” Twilight finally concluded. “So there’s no problem.”

“I think you might be projecting a little,” said Pinkie.

“Projecting what?” Twilight turned to face Pinkie. “Dash told me all about it. I know her better than anypony else.”

Pinkie considered another avenue.

“Okay. You see how she gets kind of… uh, self-destructive when she’s upset about something?” Pinkie asked. “Aren’t you worried about that?”

“I mean.” Twilight dipped a metal boot into the cauldron. “She can be a little reckless sometimes.”

“Are you kidding me?” Derpy asked. “Do you know all the crazy stuff she used to throw herself into? And she just kept getting worse. Dash was borderline suicidal when she went out looking for you way back when. I begged her not to go out there by herself, but she just wouldn’t listen.”

Twilight’s ears dropped the moment Derpy said the word ‘suicidal’. That wasn’t at all how she pictured Dash and something she never wanted to connect to the pegasus.

Sometimes Twilight forgot Derpy knew Dash longer than anypony else here, potentially longer than all of them combined.

“You’re not saying–” Twilight bit her lip, turning her attention from her work.

“Na, I’m less worried about her than I’ve ever been.” Derpy looked at Pinkie. “Dash calmed way down this past year. I think she’s doing a lot better now that she dates mares. I guess that kind of thing makes a big difference. Geez. If I knew Dash was like this back then, I would have hooked her up with Cloud Kicker right away. But then again, I would have ended the world by doing that so um.”

Derpy folded her forelegs to ponder that moral quandary.

“Well, that’s great.” Pinkie kept her frown, though. “But Dash is insecure about… I dunno. But mostly about not being able to keep up with us.”

“Dash is still incredibly useful,” said Twilight.

“I’m not sure how different it is with witch culture, but you notice how the best fighters are the ones in charge of the government? And the strongest ponies are the most respected ones? We put way too much emphasis on having superpowers that it causes widespread anxiety.”

“It’s true!” Derpy nodded. “In school, we take combat training and they post your rankings on the board outside. Dash was usually in last place, you know. And being in last place in combat training meant you were the biggest loser in class. Nothing else really matters compared to that. And um…”

Derpy hesitated to reveal more. She looked around, agonizing over some dark secret.

“Well, maybe I can tell you this since you’re her girlfriend.”

Derpy trotted up next to Twilight.

“After her dad died and she moved in with us, I figured out why Dash was so weak. It was because she didn’t get enough food cause she was so poor,” Derpy whispered it. “So she never had the energy to go as hard as the rest of us. Dash did get a lot stronger afterward, but we were already in senior year, so it was too late for her reputation.”

Dash had told Twilight about being abandoned by her mother and would go on and on about how terrible her relationship with her father was… but this part was new to Twilight. Had Twilight not gained her total confidence yet?

Twilight could hardly deny that Dash was the weakest member of their faction, despite being the most useful and Twilight’s favorite by a lot. She simply hadn’t considered that ‘normal’ society may have given Dash her own toxic relationship with power.

Maybe everypony put too much emphasis on it, but it was hardly unfounded. In this world, power was important. Power was what kept you alive. And Twilight wasn’t going to let Dash get hurt again!

“I understand what you’re saying.” Twilight clicked her device together, nearly completing it. “Don’t worry, I already came up with a solution to the problem.”

“Is it talking to her?” Pinkie asked.

“What? No! I’m going to solve this with magic.”

“I’m not sure you can do that.”

“Of course I can! Just look at–”

Twilight moved to take out her now-complete project but quickly stuffed it away in hiding when the door opened. Its recipient, Rainbow Dash came through the door.

Even though Twilight was kind of the source of Dash’s current anxiety, her brain must have developed a hardwired connection between Twilight and solving problems. Running to Twilight for comfort was an urge Dash had to resist now. She hadn’t fully realized until now that was her reflexive response to any problem, to go find Twilight.

She should just be happy she had somepony to grift onto when she felt down, now.

Either way, Dash gave in to the urge to find Twilight and go to her side. Just sitting on the couch in the same room as Twilight did relieve that nagging feeling, at least.

Twilight came running right up to Dash like she was a puppy.

“Hey, Dash!” Twilight looked down at her from over the back of the couch. “Are you upset over being the weakest member of our faction and feel like you can’t carry your own weight and stuff?”

Or maybe she’d spoken too soon.

“Um.” Dash stared blankly at the ceiling. “Yes.”

“Good!” Twilight smiled.

“Excuse me?” Dash pushed herself back up, staring daggers into Twilight’s back. She wouldn’t be able to take one more second of this.

“Because I got you a present!”

Dash sat up at attention from that.

Twilight produced a metal object made of dark, purple metal. It was a single boot meant for the forehoof. Claw blades were a common enough weapon that Dash could tell they had retracted metal claws inside. Though usually, you had two of them.

“What’s this?”

“Remember that pendant I gave you a while back?”

“The mind fiber one? I can do all those spells on my own now. Does this have more?” Dash asked.

“Almost fifty times what you had the first time,” Twilight explained. “It’s not entirely like before, either. I think you’ve improved enough to use it for things other than spells now. Put it on and come outside.”

That made her forget her troubles! Had she gotten that far ahead? It felt like she’d made almost zero progress.

Dash put on the boot, feeling a slight rush. Dash couldn’t get dizzy anymore and never would again if Twilight were right. It was more like she could see the information entering her mind. Not just her head, but her whole body felt like tiny needles were pricking all over. She needed to squint to maintain focus, this felt like the threshold of her limit for now.

“What do you mean other than spells?” Dash followed Twilight outside.

“Muscle memory and combat intuition can also be imprinted onto mind fibers,” said Twilight, “and built up over generations. Besides just my hundreds of years of training, I have the culmination of several generations of witches spanning millennia. That’s why the proficiency of witches is vastly beyond that of what any normal pony could hope to achieve in a single lifetime. Because I effectively have a hundred behind me. Watch.”

Twilight lifted a rock the size of her head. With a single spell, she both crushed it and sent the debris forward like a shotgun blast. Normally, this was the worst kind of attack for Dash to run into. Her main strategy had always been turning into a bunch of crows but something this spread out would be too hard to dodge!

And yet… Dash knew this was nothing to worry about.

She couldn’t explain how she saw it, but she just knew that Twilight had aimed it perfectly so that the shrapnel would all just barely miss her. As Twilight promised, it was mere intuition. And somehow, she was fast enough in her thinking to figure all this out in that split second when the rock shattered.

Though she hesitated despite herself, Dash managed to stand perfectly still and let the makeshift bullets fly by.

Just being able to see through an attack that normally she wouldn’t even be able to react to… Dash smiled. Then Twilight smiled. And Dash let out a small laugh.

Derpy watched on, confused as to what just happened. But Dash knew the implications of it.

Twilight picked up a second rock and cast the same spell a second time. This time, in that split second, Dash knew it was aimed at her for real.

It wasn’t like the claw blade took over or anything. Dash simply knew what to do as though she’d spent years training for this. She instantly noticed where all the pieces of the rock would hit. She noticed the gap.

With absolute certainty, Dash slid to the left and moved her body into the exact right position. Rocks hit the ground next to her feet and whizzed by her face with less than an inch of room between them. But not one touched her.

Derpy smiled a little seeing what must have seemed like a stunt move, but Twilight wasn’t done. Dash felt now like she could anticipate Twilight’s actions just a little. She was moving to fire three more shots at Dash, aimed even better than that last one.

The gap was too small this time, but Dash managed to cast the murder spell and slip through as a crow, turn back, slip through the second shot, then the third…

All while moving forward. All with barely any more thought than she’d give to opening a bottle. All executed with perfect smoothness and certainty. Dash wove through what should have been an undodgeable barrage and landed just two steps away from Twilight.

Then Twilight launched the most extreme attack yet. Rocks flew at Dash from every angle, even faster than before.

Twilight went too hard just then! Dash’s eyes widened. She knew on reflex what was going to happen now, but that just meant knowing her fate was inevitable.

Dash felt a tug on her magic. The air around her moved rapidly, creating a thin wind wall faster than Dash would have been able to herself.

“The claw blade has a few innate abilities in addition to the mind fibers I installed,” Twilight explained. “Your second line of defense is this matrix that will create a barrier if something collides with you. It’ll be enough to stop most attacks, but it does draw magic straight from your body, so you’ll get exhausted fast.”

“This is incredible!” Dash laughed again. It was like all the pain she had just faded away! “Derpy! Derpy, try to punch me!”

Dash sat down and held her forelegs out.

“Huh? Are you sure?” Derpy came over. “I guess it might be okay.”

Dash had never actually managed to be Derpy in a straight hoof fight. Derpy was near the top of their class and Dash was near the bottom. They must have fought two hundred times in CT class over the years, always resulting in Dash being pinned shortly into the fight.

Derpy flew over to Dash and swung a hoof in a bit of an uppercut, followed by a cross-jab. Dash saw it coming a mile away as if Derpy were suddenly telegraphing her moves to an absurd extent.

She coolly slid out of the way of attack after attack, not just dodging but purposely cutting it so close Derpy had trouble believing she was missing. It seemed like Dash could simply dodge anything now.

After a second, Derpy started taking it more seriously and her punches came much faster. Dash couldn’t show off anymore. She was forced to grab one of Derpy’s hooves and pull it to get out of the way.

She quickly realized that Derpy was still faster and stronger than her. The claw blade didn’t give Dash either of those things. But it did give her the skill of ten martial arts masters. All that meant was Dash’s intuition was giving her different instructions.

Derpy was too fast for her to keep dodging like this, but.

When Derpy spun to try and buck, Dash tapped Derpy’s rear legs up slightly putting them just out of reach of her face. She then slid under Derpy, giving her a clear view of Derpy’s belly.

If Dash wanted to hurt Derpy, well this position would be game over even if Derpy were ten times as strong as Dash. But instead, she grabbed onto Derpy’s forelegs, then thrust up with her rear legs.

Derpy flipped right onto her back. Dash moved a forehoof onto Derpy’s neck, signaling the end of the match. Dash looked down, breathing heavily. Her new skills wanted to push her a little harder than she could go, but the results were there. Dash had actually won!

“I can’t believe I pinned you for once!” Dash collapsed onto her flanks, laughing again.

“That stuff is incredible!” Derpy got back on her hooves. “The difference is so huge! Why aren’t we all high on mind fibers? Everypony should be doing this stuff all day every day.”

“Here, I’ll show you.” Dash unlatched her new claw blade and removed it. It could only be affecting one pony at a time. “Catch.”

Dash gently threw it to Derpy, who did catch it. But the second she did, her eyes peeled out, looking in opposite directions.

“Wuh. Wah.”

Derpy dropped the boot and began spinning and stumbling about trying desperately to regain her bearings before finally falling onto her side. She then lay there making various noises as she stared up at the sky.

Dash supposed in an emergency she could hit somepony with pure dizziness like that.

“And you’re lucky,” said Dash, though she wasn’t sure if Derpy could make it all out. “When Twilight taught me this lesson, she chucked her entire spellbook at me. I passed out for three hours.”

Dash hooked the claw blade back on, determined to never take this thing off ever again!

“And one more thing,” Twilight added. “If you concentrate, you should be able to notice the spells woven into the fibers as well.”

Dash had noticed them. She recognized a lot of these as spells Trixie was fond of.

Dash spread her wings and four swords of ethereal blue light appeared just in front of Dash, slashing at the air. Maneuvering their physicality exactly right would allow her to attack through even solid objects or armor. But more importantly, a second spell sent them moving forward by themselves.

This was the dancing sword spell! Dash could make the ethereal weapons she summoned to fight on their own.

Dash wiped some sweat from her brow. Her wings ached a little from using so much magic so fast.

“Just remember, this doesn’t make you any stronger!” Twilight warned. “You won’t be able to throw out hundreds of dancing swords in a short time like Trixie can. A lot of these will exhaust you quickly, but they can provide you a distraction.”

Most of the spells did seem to be summoning spells like that. Going through the list felt like remembering the answers to a test she just studied for.

There were spells to summon elementals… and on that note was the elemental resonance spell!

“There’s so much stuff I want to try out!” Dash was panting, but she barely felt it. There was just so much to try out. “This is the best thing anypony ever gave to me! Thanks, Twilight!”

“There. You see?” Twilight trotted past Pinkie with a huge smile. “I solved the underlying problem just like you said.”

“I don’t think this solves the actual problem, Twilight!” Pinkie frowned looking between the three of them, but none of them paid her much attention. They were all laughing and smiling too much. “Well, I guess if it makes you happy that works too.”

Sonata decided to make a last-minute bucket list. If she was going to die, then at least she’d die mindlessly obeying her dark mistress so that wasn’t so bad. But she might as well make the best of what time she had left.

Of course, there wasn’t a lot to do in a tiny train station all alone. She checked off ‘do a backflip’ quick. After that, all she could think to do was sing all her favorite childhood songs one last time.

“It doesn’t matter who you hurt! If you’re just proving you’re the best!” Sonata belted it out, then stopped to reflect. “Huh. Now that I’m going through them, a lot of these lyrics Adagio wrote are kind of disturbing.”

She went through a few more in her head.

Feel the wave of sound as it crashes down. You can’t turn away, we’ll make you want to stay.

Yeah! They were all like that.

Now that she thought about it, Adagio wrote a lot of songs about taking over the world and forcing everypony to love her when they were kids. Sometimes Sonata wondered if Adagio would have done something crazy had things gone differently.

But even if she had succeeded, then it would be Adagio ruling the world instead of her mistress and that’d be no good. Even if Sonata would get to be her lackey instead. Adagio was mean, but she’d still be nicer to Sonata.

And at least she’d get somepony to sing with. Sonata used to love singing with Adagio and Aria when they were little, even if Adagio got angry every time Sonata missed a note. Sonata was usually forbidden from singing anymore since her mistress didn’t want anypony in Sonata’s family to be happy. Which was fair.

Memories of those old days came flooding back, giving her an idea.

“Oh! I could write my memoirs!” Sonata Dusk announced. “That’s something ponies do right before they die!”

Sonata looked around, remembering she had nothing to even write it on. She could carve it into the wall, but that’d take too long.

“I guess maybe I can’t do that.” Sonata fell onto her side. “It’s not like anypony would even read it. The only pony I’m gonna talk to again is Fluttershy. And what are the chances Fluttershy’s going to want to listen to me complain about all that stuff anyway?”

Sonata silently gave up on her memoirs.

A small, but elite contingent of the Bloodstorm Cartel waited some distance from the battlefield. Batton Pass, second in command of the Bloodstorm Cartel, would describe her main squad, consisting mostly of bat ponies such as herself, as a formidable force. They had their bodies modified by mad scientists long ago, during the days their organization’s namesake still lived. Batton Pass and her compatriots were essentially super combat organisms.

But that was worth little on a day like today. Screwball herself was present and all the others together weren’t worth half as much as her in a fight. Then there were those two. Either one beyond even Screwball’s strength.

Screwball had little plushies made of all of them, herself, her sister, and a blue alicorn. These were to reenact the battle strategy because of course they were. She bashed the Silverstorm doll against the blue alicorn, knocking the latter over. In their estimation, that was how it would go but they couldn’t know.

“So my sister and the ultimate battle doll will duke it out.” Screwball lifted the doll of herself and brought it crashing down on the Silverstorm doll. “I figure whoever wins will be exhausted afterward, so that’s when I suddenly appear and finish the winner off!”

“But what if there’s a decisive victor?” Batton asked. “One could be vastly more powerful than the other.”

“We have backup plans for both! If Sis turns out to be a chump, we focus everything on Project Moonstone. If it’s the opposite, we still have the Triumvirate Protocol to take care of Silverstorm.”

Batton Pass was less than thrilled about the name of the second plan. Codenames weren’t supposed to be too similar to their actual intention.

For all her faults, Screwball had managed to create plans to destroy their two biggest threats right now, Crater Cemetery and Silverstorm. The former was something they’d been working on for over a decade… the azoth spell, the ultimate weapon of destruction. The only thing that could destroy what was essentially a god.

Of course, they would optimistically get one shot with the spell. Hypothetically, they could use it to destroy Silverstorm instead but that was still considered a waste. Crater Cemetery – that thing – was a far greater threat than Silverstorm in every regard. But ideally, they would kill both.

So if Silverstorm didn’t wear herself out enough for Screwball to kill her here? The Triumvirate Protocol would be their only solution. And if that couldn’t stop her either, then Silverstorm was far beyond the abilities of any mortal to defeat.

Batton Pass already had plans to escape far, far to the south with the other bat ponies. A private island loaded up with gold and bearer bonds where she could live in comfort, hiding. The best-case scenario would be if both Screwball and Silverstorm died in the Triumvirate Protocol. Oh, did Batton Pass have plans for that scenario. And ways to tip the balance in favor of just that playing out.

But before all that. Crater Cemetery would need to be completely obliterated. Or there would be no point to plans.

“Still. We can kill Fluttershy either way.” Screwball turned her telescope back to the train station. “No way my beloved sister will be able to protect her through what’s about to happen. We attack immediately! Don’t even give those ponies ten seconds to talk. And then Rainbow Dash. Don’t kill her. Not yet.”

She turned it next to where those ponies were expected to set up their support station.

The Bloodstorm Cartel had significant firepower on their side, even without Screwball. Their ace would only show up at the last minute and only if the right scenarios played out. The hope was that Silverstorm and that battle doll would nullify one another and create immense chaos for them to take advantage of.

“What are they waiting for?” Screwball threw her telescope to the side. “It’s been an hour and everypony is just sitting here! I’m bored! Yo! MSC pony! You got something interesting to show me, yeah?”

The yellow-uniformed, gas-mask-wearing salespony from the Mad Science Cartel stepped forward. A small group of them usually followed Screwball carefully like the bottom feeders they were, just in case she got bored. They always had some expensive thing to sell to her whether it was a weapon or some rare object they’d uncovered.

“Actually, I have a very interesting sale on giant monsters!” He offered with a bow of his head. “You know how rarely we offer a discount on those.”

“What is it this time?”

“Giant Cockroaches! Forty feet in length. And because you’re such a great customer, we’ll sell them for a mere five thousand bits each. Normally, they’d be four times that much.”

“Aw, you.” Screwball smiled, leaning into her hoof. “Did you screw up and spill some serum again?”

“Hm.” He paused a moment. “Maybe. Look, it’s still a steal either way!”

“Look, I don’t mind owning gross stuff, but I don’t want to look at it, okay? What else?”

“Hehe. Yes, well.” Nervously he beckoned to one of the lower-ranked ponies in yellow. “We have recovered what once was considered a sacred object from Simmer Sun island. We’ve prepared a treat exclusive to the island for you to try.”

The underling gave Screwball a plot something like a muffin, only purple, to try.

“This is a sword forged over five thousand years ago, near the start of the Royal Era.” He took out a sword, fully red, with an intricate pattern of orange flames along the side.

“Oooh. What does it do?”

“You see, we modified its initial–”

His sales pitch was interrupted when Screwball bit into their offering and spat it out immediately.

“What the hell?!” Screwball coughed, her eyes wincing. “Do they really use this much baking soda in Simmer Sun?! I can taste it.”

The salespony shot his subordinate a look.

“Um.” The lesser of the two stepped back. “It was three tablespoons? Oh, wait. TSP is… uh? Was that teaspoons?”

“You!”

“I’m used to the metric system!”

The upper-ranked pony from MSC had no hesitation. He pulled his hoof back and smashed the subordinate in the face hard enough to knock him to the ground and break the glass on his visor.

“How dare you embarrass us in front of Screwball?!” The salespony continued to kick his subordinate, now curled up on the ground and bleeding.

It seemed harsh, but the pony getting pummeled was no doubt grateful he was spared from Screwball punishing him instead. If he wasn’t, he should be. This was a mercy.

This was all highly unusual. It wasn’t like MSC to make a mistake. What were the chances of that?

“Somepony just–” Screwball coughed. “Bring me a soda! I gotta wash away this horrible taste!”

A far too eager pony ran up with the bottle and opened it for her. He must have bounded over too quickly because the top exploded in a geyser of fizz right into Screwball’s face.

Everypony’s expression froze as time seemed to stop. Screwball grabbed the bottle and shattered it on the guy’s face.

“What the crow is going on here?! What is this amateur hour?” Screwball coughed. “I feel like I’m going to puke. I’m going to go find something to drink.”

Screwball stood up.

“Screwball! You can’t just leave like this!” Batton Pass complained. “Not now!”

“I’ll be back in a half hour. They’re taking forever anyway.”

“That’s a long time!”

“Look, just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, alright?”

As if anypony knew what the queen would do. Screwball was the highest ace and the greatest weakness of the Bloodstorm Cartel. So often, Batton felt saddled to the back of a rampaging beast.

The whole pirate coast may very well be better off had the brat never been born.

Screwball was already long gone, though, leaving Batton Pass to monitor the situation alone. She took one look through the telescope and saw Silverstorm and Fluttershy just now headed to the target.

“Oh, great! Now they move.” Batton Pass turned back to the train station. “Of all the rotten luck!”

“What do we do?”

“Well we’re not going over there without Screwball, I’ll tell you that much! Stay down!”

Far to the west, a second contingent watched the scene. A row of three mechanical constructs, battle dolls, waited patiently for the fray. Each would stand thirty feet tall on all fours, each resembling a suit of pony armor in deep shades of purple. Terrible claws and fangs dominated their appearance. Twin mounted crystals attached to their back stood ready to fire. Green flames bellowed from the mouth of the largest one standing in the center.

These were weapons constructed by ghosts, dolls specifically designed to be possessed for combat purposes.

A single ghost, a unicorn yellow but heavily freckled, covered in chains, floated in front of them, forelegs folded as felt out the situation through aura alone.

“What is the Bloodstorm Cartel waiting for?!” Sour Sweet clicked her tongue.

This was taking far too long! Sour Sweet felt a stirring in the aura and knew waiting much longer to start the assault.

“I guess it’s up to me to pull the trigger.”

Sour Sweet put a hoof on the lead battle doll. As a poltergeist, she was the type of ghost best suited for possessing and controlling objects. She was an expert when it came to piloting these juggernauts. Even just one hoof pressed against it was all she needed to bring it to life.

It stood up on all four terrible legs! And then-

Something snapped! It tumbled back down to the ground with a formidable thud. Sour Sweet gaped at the sight! She couldn’t possibly fight at anything less than 100%!

“A mechanical failure?!” She shook her head violently. “Come on! What are the chances of this happening now of all time?!”

It’d take at least a half hour to get the battle doll up and running again. She had no choice and went to work.

Fluttershy and Twilight began their walk forward. If Twilight herself weren’t right next to Fluttershy, there was no way she would have approached that place.

Nopony with any perception of aura could have missed it. It was still off in the distance, but it loomed immense like a mountain half faded on the horizon. It was vaster than anything Fluttershy had felt outside Crater Cemetery itself and that could be felt from halfway across the world.

It had to be her. In some capacity. The sickly black wind that blew ever toward Crater Cemetery coalesced around the mountain that loomed over them and seemed made up entirely of that disease. And for the first time, Fluttershy wondered how rough of a time Twilight was in for.

She glanced ever towards Twilight, looking for some sign of fear. There was some worry on her face, but Fluttershy could tell by the way she looked around that none of it was for herself. Only for the other ponies around.

That confidence alone was what let Fluttershy get so close to the abandoned train station.

Sitting in the shadow of such a terrible monster was like a training regimen all its own. Sonata barely seemed so bad in comparison. Sonata wouldn’t have been a sight to worry about at all, had she not been a ghost. The blue pegasus came pre-defeated, lying on her back, totally resigned to her doom.

Fluttershy could see the chains around her.

“Oh, hey guys.” Sonata stared blankly up at the ceiling. “Huh. You know, this is already going on longer than I thought it would.”

“Me too.” Twilight peered through the one window of the train station.

They knew exactly where the Bloodstorm Cartel ponies were stationed. Getting a tip they’d be here made that much easy. Still, they had expected the attack to come immediately.

For some reason, the Bloodstorm Cartel wasn’t attacking. They all expected first blood to come from that direction. But it didn’t.

What could they be thinking?

“I’m just going to stand over here, okay?” Twilight trotted through the tiny station and stood in the back door, watching silently where most of Crater Cemetery’s forces would be.

“I guess there’s no point in pretending I’m a reporter anymore, huh?” Sonata kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling. “The whole place is going to explode any second now. So… goodbye?”

“She’s not bluffing.” Twilight scanned the horizon. “We need to be careful about our retreat.”

Fluttershy looked down at the forlorn Sonata. She could see the chains wrapped around her, feel malice dripping off them, cloaking Sonata. Fluttershy could scarcely imagine what it must be like to be always surrounded by that.

But there was something a little strange about them. They shifted slightly, as though pushed by a magnet away from where the others were hiding. But it was so slight that Fluttershy wasn’t entirely sure if she was imagining it.

“You’re not going to fight us?” Fluttershy asked.

“Do you honestly think I have any chance against what’s-her-face over there!” Sonata pointed behind her. “I’d get freaking destroyed. We only really got two ponies who can fight her.”

“Two?” Twilight looked over her shoulder.

“I meant one!” Sonata Dusk flailed her legs in denial. “The other one isn’t nearly as strong as my mistress, I swear! Gah! I wasn’t supposed to talk to you this long. What’s happening?”

“Something must have changed with the Bloodstorm Cartel,” said Twilight. “If we were expecting them to go first, I imagine everypony else must have done the same. We’ve all been thrown off by this inaction. Could you try to keep her distracted for a minute, Fluttershy? I might be able to secure this position a little better if everypony’s hesitating.”

She could do this! She’d been practicing with Aria.

“You know, this will be a lot easier if you come with us willingly.” Fluttershy held her hoof out. “It might be the only way you can survive. We don’t want to hurt you. We’re trying to help you.”

“But I don’t want you to ‘help’ me. Everypony needs to submit to the will of my dark mistress!”

“How do you know you’re not just saying that because of the mind control?” Fluttershy asked.

“Well!” Sonata thought about it for a second before relenting with a nod. “Yeah, that’s a fair point.”

“Um… then. If you know you’re brainwashed why not come with me?”

“Yeah, sure! Let me just think about this for myself for a moment.” Sonata pointed her forehooves at either temple. “Oh wait! I can’t because I’m brainwashed!”

“This is all so confusing.” Fluttershy let out a sigh. “Like… are you happy being brainwashed? I’m getting mixed messages.”

“Oh no! I suffer all the freaking time. The head bitch in charge hates me and Aria because of our family. That’s why she basically murdered Adagio and now she’s killing me. She forces me to do gross stuff all the time.”

“Then, why wouldn’t you want to get out?”

“Because I can’t question her, remember?” Sonata smiled like this was all part of the plan. “I deserve all the horrible things that happen to me!”

“Because of your family?” Fluttershy repeated the line.

Sonata paused, surprised Fluttershy picked up on that despite having said it outright.

“What’s wrong with your family?”

“Well.” Sonata Dusk looked around as if checking for more listeners. “I guess if we’re all gonna die, nothing matters, right? And I did want to tell somepony about my life before I died.”

“Well I’d love to listen to your memoirs,” said Fluttershy.

Fluttershy saw it again! The chains were moving, shifting ever so slightly but more now.

Was Twilight doing something?

No… something else was approaching them from underground. Another ghost. Though why the chains reacted like this, Fluttershy could hardly say.

“For realsies?” Sonata rolled up to a sitting position. “Okay, well it all started when I was born! You may not believe it, but I’m one of the few ponies of noble blood left! I’m descended from royalty.”

“Oh, my. Really? I didn’t think there were any left after the revolution.”

“Yep! Regina Sonata Vespera Noctilucent! That’s my title.”

That name sounded familiar. Where had Fluttershy heard it again?

“Sonata Vespera sounds like a lovely name.”

“Yeah, over in Hollow Shades everypony felt like we were the rightful rulers of Equestria for a long time. But nopony else agreed with us. They were all high on this ‘democracy’ thing. We just kept telling ourselves that eventually, ponies would start electing random celebrities leading to the collapse of civilization, then they’d beg us to rule over them but, uh… I’m starting to think maybe that won’t happen.”

“If you wanted everypony to love you… why were you hiding, exactly?” Fluttershy asked. “I think that may have been the reason?”

“Oh, we were like… ghost supremacists and stuff,” said Sonata. “Anypony not blessed by our goddess was trash and we didn’t want to have anything to do with them unless they were already worshipping us.”

“But even then, there’s still a lot of ghosts, aren’t there?” Fluttershy asked.

“We did that a little, but we weren’t just ghost supremacists. We were pony supremacists and pegasus supremacists and you had to have at least a drop of noble blood too. Like when I was ten, I had to do a research paper showing that pegasi are inherently smarter than unicorns. And I remember one test where a question was ‘Why do earth ponies smell so bad’? So yeah, we were like super racists. Isn’t it messed up they made me do that?”

“Oh my.”

“No.” Sonata shook her head. “I seriously don’t know! I’m all brainwashed and stuff. I don’t know if that really was messed up or if I’m just being forced to think my family was horrible.”

“Oh! Um.” Fluttershy gave it some thought. “Well, I think racism is… bad. And stuff.”

“I knew it.” Sonata hung her head down.

“So you were racist against predeads… and unicorns? Well as long as–”

“No! You still have no idea just how supreme we were. This gets crazy levels of specific, okay?” Sonata grabbed her ponytail. “So like, next you gotta have your mane be the same color as your fur, just a different shade.”

“Okay.”

“And it needs exactly one secondary color arranged in a double-stripe pattern like mine. One color and you’re bland, three or more and you’re a mutt.”

“Uh.”

“And then your eyes have to be one of the last two letters of ROYGBIV or those are no good.” Sonata pointed to her violet eyes. “And your cutie mark can’t be directly related to flying because that’s what ‘lowly’ pegasi get.”

Fluttershy desperately tried to recall Aria. She was pretty sure the other sister met all those criteria too.

“And guess what? Even though she had all those things I just mentioned, Adagio’s mane was just too ‘poofy’ so Aria ended up being the heir despite being younger, right? Cause I guess we decide who’s head of the family by who has the best hair or something and Aria had the best hair! And Adagio was always angry at the two of us because we had better hair. And I told her I don’t care how much her hair sucks, I love her anyway, but she just got angry and punched me in the eye and I cried.”

Fluttershy… could feel it!

She felt just a tiny bit of sadness bleeding out through the chains. She’d been so certain such a thing couldn’t happen. It made Fluttershy think, just maybe, she could grab hold of Sonata’s aura while it was like this, while the chains were wobbling about.

“You had a fight with your sister?” Fluttershy asked.

“Yeah. Adagio went away for a while. She started a family and everything but um…” Sonata looked down at the floor.

“Hm?” Fluttershy tilted her head.

Sonata shifted uncomfortably. The chains restricted her thoughts and Fluttershy lost her chance for a moment.

“I don’t think I can tell you all the stuff I want to,” said Sonata. “Some memoir this turned out to be!”

“Surely you have some happy memories?” Fluttershy smiled.

“Oh, yeah!” Sonata nodded, smiling again. “When we were all little! Before Adagio ran away. We used to love singing! Adagio was good at writing songs. And Aria’s voice was so pretty. I miss hearing them sing so much!”

“I can’t imagine Aria singing.” Fluttershy tried to picture it.

“I know, right? She didn’t use to be so edgy. I used to love singing with them. I wish we could have been a band or something instead.” Sonata’s smile was brief. She soon returned to her frowning and shook her head. “Maybe if I had gotten to be a famous singer, somepony would have loved me. Even if it was just for my money, that would have been enough. Our family was telling ourselves for hundreds of years that everypony would love us again someday… but nopony is ever going to love me, are they? It was all just a big lie.”

Fluttershy inhaled and tried ever so slightly to grasp onto Sonata’s aura as gently as possible. She could feel the chains reacting to her, like a viper coiled around Sonata. If she set them off, if they restricted, this wouldn’t work.

Even her initial touch had been too heavy. She needed to be even lighter.

“Aria still loves you.” Fluttershy moved right up next to Sonata. “She cared enough about you to come to us.”

“Thanks. But I’m not allowed to think that matters.”

“And.” Fluttershy put a hoof on her shoulder. “I know we just met… but I care about you.”

Sonata felt the lightest touch of Fluttershy’s aura, the tiniest bit of love possible. Beneath those cold and hateful chains, Sonata was so desperately starved for love. Just the little bit of sympathy getting through made her turn with eyes wide to Fluttershy.

It was like Sonata was seeing another pony for the first time. The look of amazement and wonder on her face, tears making her eyes twinkle brightly. To ghosts, water was blue. Her tears had only the faintest glow of blue light to them, but they did glow.

“You… you mean that?” Sonata sobbed, then threw herself onto Fluttershy, “I love you so much, Fluttershy! I love you more than anything in the world!”

Her aura had been weakened for that tiny push to affect her so deeply. Having a ghost press up against her…

Fluttershy closed her eyes.

No! She couldn’t have the slightest bit of hesitation. Any fear would ruin this delicate balance. She had to focus everything on Sonata. The poor lost Sonata. She’d been through so much. Fluttershy couldn’t let herself feel anything but compassion for her.

Fluttershy forced herself to hug Sonata back as tightly as she could.

“I promise I’ll help you.” Fluttershy let go and flew back. She sent Sonata a single order through her aura.

Follow.

Fluttershy moved to the back of the train station. Sonata ran forward like a lost little puppy.

“Wait! Wait!” Sonata stopped just in front of her. “Hug me again! I want to die hugging!”

“Let’s um…” Fluttershy looked across the flat expanse. Could she pull this off? “Hug back at my house?”

“Yes, Fluttershy! Whatever you say!” Sonata nodded eagerly! “I love you so much! I’d even hug you inside an active volcano!”

Sonata’s aura had been so weakened by years of strangulation that even the tiniest bit of influence on Fluttershy’s part amounted to absolute domination. She couldn’t tone it down. This was basically mind control on her own part, but it was something she had to do! It was the only way to help Sonata.

“Fluttershy?” Twilight looked back at her. “How are you doing that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well keep doing it. Back up slowly. I can’t move from this spot.”

Fluttershy nodded. Now for the hard part.

She knew if those chains were disturbed slightly, she’d miss her shot, it was strangling her influence back out. For now, Sonata skipped along, following Fluttershy and singing a happy song as they backed up.

Fluttershy felt as though she were tugging a train with a tiny thread of fiber. She wasn’t even sure how it had worked for so long and expected it to snap at any moment. But it was working.

Twilight and the train station began to shrink. Fluttershy was halfway back.

Then, the mountain began to lurch forward!

The chains snapped back in place. False clarity returned to Sonata.

Twilight stood ready. She felt the air change as a significant presence approached her. She could just scarcely remember what this had been like. The last time she felt her fur standing on end like this had been with Discord. With Starswirl.

But Twilight was far, far stronger than she had been back then. If Twilight had possessed the power she did now, things would have gone differently. She was confident they’d go better tonight.

She could see the form of a tall, slender pony slowly emerging from the darkness. Its steps were ragged and cumbersome. Aria had said it couldn’t move with much grace. Twilight began to make out the purple color of its armor.

A suit of pure adamantium!

Where could she have gotten such a thing?

Blackness bellowed out from the gaps in the armor and fell to the ground like soot from some great fire within. Her darkness barely managed to create the image of a pony, just barely equine.

Twilight was certain, at least, that it was only the interior she’d need to destroy, to snuff out the fire producing that soot. A good thing, as even she had no way to harm adamantium.

The figure stopped some one hundred yards away from Twilight.

It lifted its hoof.

Twilight took her stance and looked to the sky.

“I feel sick!” Pinkie clutched her stomach. “Oh, what a time to hurl!”

“Keep it together!” Aria smacked Pinkie on the back of the head.

The two of them, plus Dash, sat in a hole dug out on the far side of the gorge. Through a camera, they could see the train station, as well as Fluttershy and Sonata Dusk approaching.

“This kind of thing is rougher on psychics than it is on ghosts! We can’t even get near Crater Cemetery itself without puking!” Pinkie whined.

“You only need to hold out a second longer.” Aria licked her lips and looked back up at the canyon. “I don’t know how Fluttershy is luring her back, but the second she gets halfway we run in, got it? Immediate spirit bomb! Don’t worry about hurting her.”

“Got ya.” Pinkie rolled back onto her hooves. Blue energy began to swirl around her, already building up in anticipation. “By the way, we have company.”

“Huh?”

Dash and Aria turned to find a pegasus crouched just behind them. Lightning Dust! Dash immediately wanted to punch that smug face!

“What the hell are you doing here?!” Dash hissed at her.

“I came here to help you,” said Lightning Dust with a small chuckle. “In case you don’t know, Spitfire’s got a whole legion of pegasi over here. But she’s all ‘oh, we can’t possibly fight that Crater Cemetery battle doll, let’s hang back’. What a pansy, right? But I figure if you guys think we can take it, then we can take it. So I’m with you.”

“I don’t want your help!” Dash gritted her teeth to keep from yelling. “You nearly killed Scootaloo, who’s basically my daughter now.”

“Hey, hey. No hard feelings in this business.” Dust laughed. “I’m trying to tell you I respect your courage and moxy, you know? You’re way cooler than Spitfire.”

“And I don’t respect how reckless you are. Get out!”

“Yeesh. I was hoping you wouldn’t be such a nag. Well–”

“Shut up!” Aria chastised both. “Pinkie! We have to go right now!”

Pinkie jumped to the opposite ledge. Aria flew after her.

“Guess it’s here.” Lightning Dust flew out of the hiding spot to get a better look at the battle sight. “Let’s see what old Spitfire is so spooked about.”

Dash looked up at what first appeared as an overcast sky covered in blue clouds. A split second later and Dash realized those weren’t clouds at all!

It was ice. A solid wall of ice stretching far in every direction, enough to crush the entire junction, covered the sky above them.

“Well fuck.” Lightning Dust watched it begin to fall.

Ghosts 7: Spookhard

“Holy crow! You weren’t kidding!” Fleetfoot zipped back before anypony else. So wide was the disc of ice that formed that it reached even their line!

The pegasi thought they were safe because they had gotten out from underneath it before it had fallen two feet. They weren’t ready for the impact!

Spitfire had seen this exact attack before. She’d known something like this was coming, but memories of the day she first encountered this monster came flooding back. The absolute crushing defeat!

Her body tensed. She couldn’t move!

“Spitfire!” Fleetfoot grabbed her by the collar. “Do you need me to take over?”

Spitfire snapped out of it. The attack would touch down momentarily!

“I’m fine! Everypony fallback! I can…”

One plus was that Spitfire had time to think about what she would do if ever she witnessed one of its attacks again. Maybe she could at least mitigate it this time. She enveloped her body in flames.

All of them followed her order to retreat, all of them but Fleetfoot who hung back just a few meters. Spitfire didn’t have time to yell at her. She landed a good hundred yards from the edge of the gorge. Here, she welled up all of her strength, the fire blazing strongly enough to force Fleetfoot back at last.

The sheet of ice had to be three stories tall at the least and stretched on and on far out of sight. The two pegasi watched it drop, watched the thick sheet pass before them.

The ice hit the ground. It might as well have been a massive bomb going off! Not only did it crack the dry earth and collapse entire sections of the gorge, but the shockwave uprooted the few scraggly trees in this barren plain.

Spitfire could see the shockwave coming at her, gathering debris into an ever-widening wall.

Not the first one!

Spitfire knew she could survive the airburst! It would be enough to send a normal pegasus flying off for over a mile before regaining control if a rock didn’t smash their head in. But ponies like Spitfire or especially Fleetfoot could hold their ground.

The blast was frontloaded, sending them spiraling for a moment, but only a moment. That would leave a mark, but Spitfire survived it. It was a bit more of a struggle this time, but Spitfire winced and bared the blow of the rocks and sand blasting into her.

It was before the wind died down, just when Spitfire could begin to see anything but absolute blackness, that she landed. She could see the blue light of the enchanted ice growing stronger in the dark.

Not much time left!

She erected a wall of fire along the edge of the gorge.

The ice burst, sending a wave of cold even further out in all directions. Massive spikes erupted as it traveled, tearing anything it touched to shreds.

In mere seconds, it had reached Spitfire’s location. She yelled and blasted the fires as hot as they would go! The ice hit her even harder than the blast did and for a moment she thought it impossible to hold out!

But giving up would mean certain death at this point. Even if it was impossible, she’d have to at least try, at least give the others an extra second to get away. Despite all the flames, Spitfire felt herself cooling off! One spear of ice ripped straight through her wall, nearly impaling her before bursting into steam.

She bit down too tightly on her tongue and tried pushing forward just a little more. Just one more second.

It stopped!

Spitfire’s flames went hurtling forward, melting huge swaths of ice into steam as the pegasus herself lurched forward, collapsing on her stomach, coughing and wheezing.

Just this one area, just this strip, took all of her effort to protect.

“Hot dang!” Fleetfoot landed next to her. “You stopped that huge attack! I didn’t know you still had it in you.”

She gave Spitfire the lightest of jabs, which felt enough to knock her out right now. Still, Spitfire struggled to regain her composure. They had seconds at best.

“We don’t have a lot of time before it attacks again.” Spitfire straightened up. “This wasn’t anything close to a win! We’ll have to focus most of our efforts on stopping any collateral damage.”

Spitfire looked to her right. She only stopped it on one side. The others… looking down the gorge, Spitfire couldn’t see the tumult of icicles that should have been there. Had somepony else blocked that section too?

Spitfire flew up and looked off to where Lightning Dust had flown off to, already assuming the worse. Where they were standing had taken a direct hit.

But what Spitfire saw left her stunned.

“What?”

Pinkie charged forward.

Aria looked up at the incoming ice! It was already too late! That would kill them all!

“We have to get out of here!” Aria shouted at Pinkie. “Sonata! Underground!”

That was their only hope to survive. Pinkie wouldn’t make it. Then there’d be no way to free Sonata! Aria’s mind blazed trying to figure out some way to save Pinkie as the ice came down.

“Pinkie! Try to block it! Forget the attack!” Aria moved to her side, ready to support whatever attempt Pinkie made to survive.

“I trust Twilight!”

Pinkie lifted the spirit bomb overhead and jumped forward at Sonata, deeper into the field of incoming ice with no fear at all! Sonata was so taken off guard by the bold charge she merely fell back onto her haunches.

Pinkie came down toward Sonata! The chains began to fly outward, away from Pinkie’s attack as she approached. It was just how Aria’s chains reacted.

The ice was less than fifty feet overhead. If Twilight didn’t do something soon, it’d hit right after Pinkie did.

The light of the enchanted ice turned from blue to red! Not all of it, but a critical wedge overhead melted away. Now only a massive cloud of steam rose above Pinkie Pie. She was in the clear!

Something came up from underground just as she moved in to strike! Another ghost! Pinkie briefly felt its aura! Then she saw a blue light clashing against her own. Pinkie saw chains flying off in every direction but couldn’t tell who they broke off from.

Sonata and Fluttershy went tumbling off, but the new challenger remained firmly in place, right in front of Sonata.

This ghost wasn’t like the others. While they had a few chains here and there, this one wore them like a second skin. Two layers of chains wrapped around her so completely that only a single, yellow eye could be seen from one side.

Sonata stumbled about behind this new ghost. Half the banshee’s chains were gone. She was no longer tethered to her doll, now lying lifelessly on the ground. But she likely wasn’t free. This other ghost, meanwhile, had several blown off. But not enough for even a tiny bit of her to be exposed to the air.

The heavily chained ghost’s eye shifted from yellow to blue. The blue light floated off to one side as though it were wrapped in a barely visible fire.

“It’s blue!” Super-chains looked down at Pinkie with one eye. “I get it now. That’s why you’re able to break through the chains. You’re the same as me. Sort of.”

“The same how?” Pinkie shifted her eyes to Sonata, then back at the new pony. She could feel this ghost was different from most she encountered. Her aura. It felt similar to Pinkie’s own, only much stronger being a ghost. It was similar enough that Pinkie wondered if she had a long-lost third sibling besides Inky and Blinky. Clyde?

Something about it was strange. It made her chains rattle near constantly as though she were rapidly vibrating inside. Those around Sonata Dusk were repelled by them like a reverse magnet.

“Oh, fuck. It’s her!” Aria stood up, recovering from the exchange. “Pinkie, that pony is extremely dangerous. Don’t attack her unless you’re sure it will free her. She gets stronger when you–”

The chained ghost held up a foreleg. A blue pulse not unlike Pinkie’s spirit bomb rippled out, throwing Aria clear out of her doll. Ghost Aria slammed hard into a wall of enchanted ice that sprang up out of nowhere, then cracked into pieces.

Pinkie noticed two links break off as that ghost used the attack. That settled it! Pinkie and her did have the same type of spiritual energy!

“Yeesh, Aria! Don’t you ever get tired of losing to me?” Chains asked.

Aria staggered, recovering from the blow.

“Heh! You’re right. I can’t possibly beat you, can I?” Aria smirked and whipped her lip. She stood with confidence, as though this ghost had just fallen for some trap. “It’d be pretty hopeless for me to try, huh?

Chains tilted her head. That blue fire snuffed out entirely. Her eye became yellow again.

“Ah, boo! That’s not fair!”

“Pinkie,” said Aria. “Only focus on Sonata. If anypony too strong tries to attack this one, it will only make things worse. I’ll try to stall her out.”

“If she’s that strong, shouldn’t I try to free her too?” Pinkie asked.

“Trust me!” Aria called out to her. “Make it perfectly clear you aren’t going to help me.”

“Alright.” Pinkie nodded, then turned to the most chained-up ghost. “But I will save you too!”

Her eye turned from yellow to blue.

“At an undefined point in the future!” Pinkie quickly added. “Certainly not right now!”

Then it turned yellow again.

“Alright Sonata! Prepare to think for yourself!” Pinkie formed another spirit bomb.

“I don’t wanna! I don’t wanna!” Sonata whined, pushing herself while remaining seated.

Pinkie jumped forward, high into the air. Once again, Sonata’s chains rattled. Pinkie’s psychic perception warned her just before it happened, but suddenly a sharp spike in gravity pulled her down to the ground.

She landed hard but managed to stay on her feet having seen it coming. Still, some kind of magic lingered, intensifying gravity to the point Pinkie needed telekinetic assistance just to stand.

She turned her neck to see a large chunk of ice, one with a rune carved into it. Creating ice with magic runes in them? That was something only the most skilled ghosts could do! Either way, this was the source of the magic.

Pinkie bucked the ice hard enough to crack it and end the gravity spell. Then she rolled to the side just as a bolt of lightning came down from the sky. She turned back to chains just as the steam began turning into rain.

Suddenly, they were all in a torrential downpour.

“Hey, hey! You can’t just run away.” The dangerous ghost held a hoof out at Pinkie. “Except for you, Sonata. Better get out of here.”

Sonata was already running away screaming. Fluttershy looked from her to Pinkie, then rushed off after Sonata. It seemed this ghost was more interested in Pinkie than either of them.

Aria jumped at her from behind, an axe head made of ice encasing her foreleg.

But that ghost, a lightning elemental if Pinkie remembered her training, held her forelegs out wide and simply… dissolved into static electricity, leaving Aria to swipe at the air.

Pinkie had never seen that technique before.

Good news, Pinkie had enough psychic perception to know where the ghost would reappear. Bad news, she was about to reappear right on top of Pinkie!

Pinkie twirled in what felt like the safest direction, but still felt a surge of electricity running through her as the lightning elemental reemerged, sending her down into the water. She tried turning into a bolt of lightning to strike, but this Pinkie managed to roll the out of the way of.

The lightning elemental blasted back and forth, letting lightning bolts carry her off in every direction. Each time she passed Pinkie; she planted another ice rune nearby. Pinkie diligently crushed each one before the effect could go off but was already having trouble keeping up.

Despite being literally lightning-fast, Pinkie could easily predict where the lightning elemental would land next. But she couldn’t attack!

“Aria, it’s getting a little hard not to fight her.”

Pinkie charged her psychic energy. In almost perfect tandem with it, the blue in the ghost’s eyes came back. She even tested it out a little, raising and lowering it at will.

As it rose once again, a little bit too much, the lightning elemental held out her hoof and fired a shot of blue energy at Pinkie, a sphere not unlike the spirit bomb. Pinkie had to brace herself and dig her hooves in, but the psychic barrier held.

A few more chains fell off around her head from using that attack. A small bit of green hair, the faintest sliver of a mane, fluttered through the gaps…

Aria came in from behind, hitting the ghost successfully this time and tackling her to the ground.

Pinkie couldn’t wait any longer to run off after Sonata.

“Good luck, Aria!”

On such short notice, Twilight had only managed to obliterate about a 90-degree slice of the summoned disc of ice, more than enough to protect those on her side. Leaving the rest may have even worked out in her favor, potentially forcing back enemies unseen.

Twilight stood with a dispersing but thick cloud of steam just behind and above her. The armor stood before a field of ice, crisscrossed with ice blades. Neither had moved from their spot. The train station still stood.

The armor lingered a moment as if letting Twilight take in the depth of the destruction it had wrought.

Then it lifted its hoof.

A second wall of ice appeared overhead, just as big, just as threatening. It’d made its point. It could unleash that much devastation as many times as it wanted in quick succession.

Still…

Using the same attack twice in a row? Was this god really so amateurish?

Twilight drew from one of the wells of energy she established next to her. A swirling white light coalesced into a spiraling nexus. Twilight launched this into the air. It collided with the ice before it even had a chance to start falling this time. Not just a wedge, but the whole of it became steam. A massive cloud hung over the battlefield now.

The armor had no ability to express a reaction.

If it had, it would have already been too soon. With a second one of her wells, in the same motion she sent off her swirling light, Twilight pulled forth a chain of red lightning. It zipped straight under the armor, then exploded upwards.

Red light and electricity poured out of every gap as the armor tried to maintain its footing. It jerked about in place as the ice around it melted and boiled into steam, even the ground below it began to turn molten. The attack was too much for it to hold ground. The lighting shot upward, throwing the armor into the air.

Twilight followed, throwing herself into the air with a torrent of fire. She swung around, throwing a sphere of hyper-concentrated wind at it. The ball slammed into one of the gaps in the armor. Electrified, burning soot came pouring out of the armor in massive waves, each enough to bury ten ponies.

But it wasn’t nearly enough. Twilight had to hit it harder! And for that?

Twilight opened a portal just above her enemy, one leading much further into the sky. Twilight followed suit, her whole body glowing with magic as she summoned the red and black orb of a hyper-destruction sphere. It wouldn’t be safe to use that on the ground, but here it was just the two of them.

Twilight looked down briefly to confirm she’d climbed high up enough. Below she could see nothing more than an endless sea of mist over the battlefield, but even the whole of that appeared small at this altitude.

The orb slammed into the armor from below. The resulting explosion of black and red would have been enough to obliterate all of Ponyville.

It threw Twilight back hurtling toward the ground, but she used a series of short-range portals to send herself higher up instead, going over even the armor now hurtling upwards with a trail of black smoke bellowing out behind it. Twilight wouldn’t be able to breathe if they went any higher than this.

Eight seconds.

That was Twilight’s guess for how long it needed to be able to recharge its attack. But she was a little too late. It snapped back into position just before Twilight would have been able to fire off an all-out plasma attack as planned.

The enemy stopped its ragdoll impression and snapped back into perfect form. All the bleeding stopped right then. Twilight readied for another attack.

With the grace of a drunk pony, it swung itself forward to cast the spell. Twilight took note of the moon. It glowed ever slightly brighter. Blackness speckled with blue dots reminiscent of a night sky surrounded the armor… then Twilight.

Gravity! It was trying to crush Twilight! It was like the entire weight of the moon was gripping Twilight from every direction. No, it couldn’t be that extreme, could it? She grit her teeth, pressing back against the weight with all her telekinetic strength. Giving in for one second would leave her crushed down to the size of a grain of sand!

The weight seemed to keep coming and coming.

She had no choice! Twilight surrounded herself with a sphere of plasma, blasting back the magic. She had to strain herself, but the darkness of gravity was blown away.

She’d intended instead to use her plasma to attack the armor up here. Only so far away could Twilight use such an attack at full power. But now she’d have to wait. Plasma magic was her strongest magic, but she couldn’t fire it off rapidly.

Twilight looked up to see the armor already preparing another one of its massive attacks. It’d already been another eight seconds!

This time black and red threads intertwined above it. This was magic similar to the hyper destruction sphere, only this one formed into something like a drill that it sent hurtling down at Twilight.

Bad choice!

Between attacks, it lost all of its grace. Twilight created a portal and slammed the armor through, making it reappear right in front of its own attack. She teleported just underneath her adversary and launched her own drill-like attack up from beneath, one consisting of yellow and white blasts of electricity.

Twilight watched her foe get ground down by light and darkness on both ends until the two beams collided too strongly and exploded in a spectacular nova. Twilight moved some distance away but still, the explosion made it hard to keep steady.

She wasn’t going to hold back this time. Twilight had an explosion amplification spell, one that made it so the force of an explosion would carry on for several seconds instead of being a single shockwave. It was a bit too deadly and she’d yet to use that on an actual opponent.

She cast that spell now. The explosion enveloped a massive area like a vibrating, unstable star until that too exploded. It still wasn’t at the level of a full-out plasma assault, but Twilight couldn’t imagine even Starswirl surviving that.

It seemed like Twilight’s attack had been successful. But it all seemed too easy. How had something capable of such destruction not thought ahead enough to foresee Twilight doing this? She just used the portals seconds ago!

As the light faded, Twilight saw her enemy still largely unscathed. Twilight had only managed to dig down a little way. Her best guess was… not even ten percent.

“Or maybe it’s so strong it doesn’t care!” Twilight grit her teeth. Was it trying to send a message? Or was it just unskilled?

This would take a while. Both had plenty of strength left to spare.

Her enemy cast another spell. Once again, a plate of ice appeared high up. Twilight exploded that one into steam but knew that couldn’t be the end of it. She spun around once in the air and saw, far below, another blue spot!

The armor had created two plates this time! A second was already way back down on the ground! Twilight didn’t dare leave the armor up here by itself, but she needed to get back down there, so…

Twilight teleported up to the armor and struck it hard with a blast of fire. She cycled through a dozen attacks, switching elements each time. Any one of these attacks would be enough to vaporize a normal pony. Like this, she gained more and more speed as she accelerated both of them through a short series of portals.

The armor twisted and contorted at odd angles. Piles and piles of soot flew out from it with every blow. Twilight could tell she’d underestimated how much of that she’d need to dig through to get to the core. But she was digging.

They reached the ground in seconds. Twilight smashed straight through that massive plate before boiling that off into steam as well.

The armor slammed into the ground, a crater twenty feet deep opening up for the armor.

Twilight landed at the edge of the crater a moment later. The steam was already falling back down as rain and it would be for a long time now. She looked down at the armor, a black tar-like substance oozed out of its joints like blood.

It slowly stood back up.

Aria got in a couple of good blows, then suddenly her opponent’s telekinesis flared up and threw Aria aside.

Aria looked in the direction her sister had fled, then back to her nemesis, the green mane poking out from the chains hardly necessary for identifying her.

Lemon Zest!

This was one of the Shadowbolts, a ‘fraid’ of ghosts as they were called, inexplicably their strongest member despite being something of an idiot. Aria had too much history with the Shadowbolts, but none of that mattered now.

She had to stall out Zest.

“Are you trying to fight me?” Zest asked. “You’ve literally never won a fight against me, Aria.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” said Aria. “Besides, I have to try. I can’t just leave Sonata.”

“I think the word ‘try’ is being too generous.” Zest rolled her neck.

Aria covered her foreleg in a spike of ice and thrust forward.

Zest tapped the ground, covering a wide swath with a layer of thick, enchanted ice. Unlike normal ice, ice made by ghosts had an unworldly blue glow. It was enchanted and could hit other ghosts.

Barriers like this were common in ghost-to-ghost combat. They gave you something to slam your otherwise incorporeal opponent against, cut off routes of escape.

Aria was thrown to one side. Zest flew past her in a bolt of lightning to slam into her back from behind, throwing her to the other side. Aria jerked forward into the oncoming barrage of icicles. These stabbed into her and forced her back to a waiting Zest once again.

She had just enough time to see Zest rise above her before spiking her down toward the ground.

Aria slammed down hard into the wall of ice that covered the ground. Normally, she’d fly through the ground, but enchanted ice was one of the few objects a ghost could impact.

Zest was on her again in a literal flash, bringing down her hoof like a thundering hammer. One, two, three intense blows landed, and that huge sheet of ice shattered. Aria was flung underground but not even that slowed Zest’s pursuit.

Below the surface, Zest grabbed Aria by the collar and threw her up into the air, back above ground. A left hook sent Aria reeling.

And at last, she was given a moment to regain her composure.

Aria had already taken so much damage just from that! Her form was littered with holes, blue threads dancing around the edges. Normally, these threads would slowly repair your form until you were whole again. But after a critical threshold, a ghost would instead ‘unravel’ and die.

Aria knew she wasn’t there yet but fighting with Zest much longer would change that.

Still, she steadied herself and produced another blade of ice.

“Seriously?” Zest asked. “What do you think you’re going to do? You once told me yourself this is hopeless. You can’t even beat me and yet you really think you can go up against–”

“Fucking idiot! You realize I was being forced to say that!” Aria spat at her. “You’re being forced to say this! All of it is bullshit! I know it. You know it, so shut up!”

“Well, you’re not wrong.” Zest folded her forelegs and closed her eyes. “But you know I can’t exactly not kill you either. And I may have cheated to become a pro ghost but this still counts as–”

This was it! Zest’s greatest weakness was that she was a total idiot who never shut her annoying mouth.

Aria created a small pillar of ice in front of herself and exploded it into a shotgun of smaller ice pellets. Zest opened her eye just in time to see the pellets expand into spears that slammed into her!

Not letting it end there, Aria exploded the ice spears that missed into pellets the same way, then expanded those into more spears. Zest found herself trapped in a sudden tumult of exploding ice, unable to escape as it began tearing her to shreds. Zest unraveled just a little bit! Aria was putting her on the ropes.

Zest’s eye turned blue! Then, the faint translucent flame reappeared.

This was the real problem. The second Aria got the upper hand, this bitch would just power up to match it.

Zest’s lightning became blue. A sphere of it surrounded her, dissolving the hail just like that.

She held a foreleg out to one side, letting all the electricity coalesce around that single spot, her right hoof until it was a glowing ball of blue. The blue repelled the chains covering her, pushing them away like fur in a heavy breeze. One or two links got blown off just from that.

Zest pointed that hoof at Aria. The blast was too fast to dodge and hurt far more than merely being struck by lightning would. The lightning was empowered, its magic shaking Aria’s form to its core.

Aria let out a gag as she reeled backward, her vision blurring.

The light around Zest’s hoof grew brighter again. And then…

From the other side of the gorge, Dash watched the fight between Aria and this mysterious ghost. Things were too intense over there to just go rushing in.

Dash bit her lip. Aria was getting clobbered.

Should she go out there?

Dash looked down at her boot, then back to Aria fighting that lightning ghost. No way Dash could help Twilight against that thing. But was there anything she could do against this ghost?

Dash felt a tap on her shoulder.

“Want me to take this one?” Dust asked with an overly smug grin.

Why was she even asking permission? Dash cringed a little without answering.

“Hey, I’m a master of lightning.” Lightning Dust covered her body with blue electricity. “You sure you don’t want my help? Somepony like that is a bad matchup against me.”

Dash looked back toward Aria. Dust had a point. It seemed that ghost was all electricity all the time. Sending Dust in would be the smart thing to do, wouldn’t it?

And yet it felt wrong. Not just to rely on an obvious sociopath, but to keep hiding behind other ponies like this. Shouldn’t Dash go in herself? Especially now with her new claw blade?

A particularly brutal blast of blue lightning left Aria borderline comatose. And the lightning elemental wound up for an even more serious blow.

Dash couldn’t sit by and think any longer! That wasn’t her style anyway!

“We only go after that lightning elemental!” Dash called to Lightning Dust and charged forward. “Come on!”

Dust let out a whoop and raced far ahead of Dash, reaching the target in a fraction of a second.

The ghost turned to Lightning Dust, blasting her with another shot of electricity that Dust made no attempt to dodge.

Lightning Dust jerked and vibrated her body all over as she glowed with electricity making various, slobbery noises, in imitation of a pony being electrocuted.

“Haha! Just kidding!” Lightning Dust snapped back to stand up straight. “Good luck hurting me with electricity.”

Dust gave Dash a brief look before charging in at the off-guard ghost. She flashed up to her enemy too fast to be seen and slammed hard into the chains, her punch sending out a spark of blue light.

Dust spun around in circles, throwing her weight into haymaker after haymaker, colliding with Zest in rapid succession, making the ghost spin rapidly in place. Dust’s motions would have been far too quick for Dash to follow normally but with the claw blades….

Dash noticed something was wrong before Dust did. That ghost’s eyes sharpened!

As she spun back upright, she held up her forehoof and created a small barrier of ice, blocking Dust’s punch effortlessly. Dust’s eyes widened. The ghost swung forward with a spear of ice shot right at Dust’s head.

The electricity took over Dust’s body, causing her to backbend, then roll out of the way, allowing the spear to travel over top of her. Yet that ice glowed blue and burst hard. Even with her automatic dodging magic, Dust was thrown back by the sudden attack.

And the ghost followed it up with the most vicious blast of lightning yet! A cone of blue electricity three ponies wide tore up the ground beneath it. Dust dug her hooves in to withstand it. She managed, but still got thrown back by the sudden burst of power.

That ghost’s eye was different now. It shone blue; the faint impression of flames was no longer faint. They were flames.

“You’re right!” Said the ghost. “Going up against somepony like you is really bad for me, huh?

“Holy!” Dust skipped backward a few steps before managing to come to a stop. Her face lit up brightly. “Hahahaha! Oooh! You were holding back on me, huh? Let’s do this! We can take her, Dash!”

Dust and the ghost charged at each other. Dash got ready to help, but Aria flew out in front of her.

“Wait!” Aria stopped her. “That ghost…”

“You know her?” Dash asked.

“Her name is Lemon Zest,” said Aria. “Long story short the more dire her situation becomes the stronger she gets. Not exactly easy to fight somepony like that, huh? We can’t put too much pressure on her. She can get a lot stronger than this. And don’t even think about bringing your witch friend over here.”

“Dammit!” Dash stepped forward and shouted up at Lightning Dust. “Dust! Dust take evasive action! Attacking her is making it worse!”

Of course, she didn’t listen! The two of them were clashing with ever-greater blasts of ice and lightning.

No choice.

Dash flew up after Lightning Dust. Those two were just so much faster than Dash! In this rain, keeping up was so hard. Just being up here with all this electricity bounding around would have been too dangerous for her just yesterday.

She could at least keep up and noticed that links flew off Lemon Zest each time she used that blue lightning. For a moment, Dash wondered if it would be best to try and stall her until all the chains came off. But that was taking too long.

There had to be some spell to help, Dash had so many now.

Just rely on her new instincts! Seemed like a good idea. So Dash looked to Dust and did the first spell that came to mind, something like an easier version of teleportation.

Dash’s body dissolved into a fog of shadows. She rematerialized on a shadow cast by Dust and a flash of lightning against the heavy clouds and just like that was on top of her. Dash latched onto Dust’s back, spreading her wings out to disperse the electricity that constantly surrounded her.

“Hey! I’m on your side!” Dust did a barrel roll trying to throw Dash off.

“I’m telling you!” Dash bit her ear. “Your attacks are only going to make her stronger!”

“Huh?” Dust slowed down. “Like no electricity or…?”

“Watch her eye, you idiot!”

She looked over at Zest. The blue flames were already starting to die down a little.

“Yeah, yeah! Before you do that,” said Zest.

Zest held her forelegs out wide, letting her blue electricity ripple out across the heavy downpour. It came out in ever more brilliant blue. Lightning bounced around the rain until it cascaded across the sky, lighting up the heavy cloud overhead.

She charged the entire cloud!

Lightning ripped across the entire battlefield now, battering the already blasted ground. It didn’t come without cost, however. A huge number of chains had been blown off Zest’s right foreleg, enough for Dash to see her pink fur.

“Wait.” Dash looked up at ‘Zest’. Even though she could barely see any of her… Just the colors. The green hair and pink fur brought a not too distant memory to mind. “I think I’ve seen her before.”

Now Twilight was in a Thunderstorm. Emphasis on thunder. She slowly circled the armor, which had been unsettlingly still the past couple of minutes. The area had started to flood on top of that. Only a thin layer of water, mostly pouring into the crater Twilight had just made, but she did need to focus on not getting electrocuted now.

“This weather is getting a little too dramatic, isn’t it?” Twilight asked her. It.

She hadn’t expected any kind of response, but she got one. A little. It seemed to hack, wretch, then puke out a stream of black tar.

It made a gurgling sound, as though trying to speak through the armor. Finally, a word.

“Incomplete.”

Twilight’s ears swiveled to it. This was the first word she’d heard uttered by this creature. Its voice was so airy, coming on the wind. But it said no more than that.

“You or me?” Twilight took a wary step back.

“I worried… I felt a fraction of your other half where… yes… you were speaking to… it but no more. And that was but a fragment. And you denied even that. I feel its anger… hatred that you rejected its advice… You turned your back on it… after so long… You are incomplete.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. She had no idea what it was talking about.

“Who are you?” Twilight asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Yes. You are the strongest disciple of Gold–” The helmet shuttered and shook. Twilight was reminded of the seizure Minuette had and briefly thought something similar was going on here. But it recovered. “Of… her… you… I despise everything about her. About my enemy. I will destroy you before you can become… complete.”

It began to walk forward, out of the crater.

“I am her enemy. I am Nightmare Moon.”

Ghosts 9: Ghostception

Rainbow Dash hated her dad… how could he say that to Dash?! Blaming her for… for…

She wiped away tears from her eyes. The last thing she needed now was for her reputation to be ruined by the other fillies seeing her weak like this. Her reputation for being so strong was the only thing Dash had in her life.

Not that any of those stupid foals appreciated how great she was. They were all just jealous.

Derpy was suddenly at Dash’s side, looking over her with deep concern.

“Are you okay?” Derpy asked Dash.

No… no this wasn’t Derpy. Who was this filly?

Anger flared up! Dash was trying so hard to hide it. She felt pierced by that empathy.

“Just shut up!” Dash shoved whoever to the ground and kept walking, holding her head up high. “I don’t need your help. I’m the fastest pegasus around and you’re–”

Dash blinked and now she was in the gym. A gym. It wasn’t like how she remembered it.

They were…

They were under lockdown and couldn’t go home until a certain monster was taken care of. But the SA was taking forever to get their ponies on it. And Rain… Shine? Somepony Dash couldn’t remember was still absent.

Dash knew… she knew she could find and rescue her classmate. Then everypony would see. Her Dad would have no choice but to shut up!

She snuck out of the gym.

Yeah! Dash did remember this! It was a memory of that one time. Where she…

And now Dash stood over the corpse of a werewolf. The filly she rescued was there, crying, but not just because of the monster she’d killed.

No!

Dash definitely didn’t manage to kill a monster. Not at this age. And it wasn’t a werewolf… was it?

And yet there it was, clear as day. The mangled corpse had turned back partially as it began to die.

Covered in blood, Dash breathed heavily, trembling at what she’d done. She… she killed it. She’d lost control and… and just kept going after it was already dead. She thought it would make her feel powerful but…

She hadn’t meant to go that far. It… it forced her to kill it! The werewolf lost control first! It would have…

None of it seemed to help. Was this what it was like to be a slayer? Was it this…? this…

She felt a hoof on the back of her shoulder. Dash turned, terrified to see the slayer had finally arrived. Smiling.

They were in a different place now. Dash was washing the blood off of her with a towel. She still wanted to puke. Killing that thing had been so easy. Yet it filled her with fear and disgust.

“What you did today was very impressive,” his words stunned Dash. “For a filly your age.”

“It… It was?” She’d thought for sure she was going to be in trouble.

“Absolutely. Equestria needs ponies like you. Ponies who are… different. Gifted. Willing to put themselves in danger to fight those who threaten us.” He lowered his head to be eye level “I wanted to talk to you about a program called Special Combat Training.”

Dash was… special? For this? She smiled. Maybe somepony would finally…

Dash coughed, pulling her head over the water. It was a sense of choking, drowning, that had pulled her out of whatever that had been.

What was that? It almost felt like one of her memories. She’d felt that way plenty of times but never managed anything but failure until she met Twilight.

Perhaps it was a glimpse into an alternate timeline? One where she had been a badass.

Dash found herself treading water. It was still raining, and the water had swelled high enough for Dash to still be two feet from the ground. Waves of black clouds streamed forward overhead. Zest still hung there in the air, somehow visible through that all that. It was like she had an invisible barrier keeping out this ashy substance. A bubble of clear skies surrounded her. Hell, it didn’t even look dark in there…

The thought of incorruptible blue skies brought a certain memory back to Dash. She’d seen this pony, Lemon Zest. She was one of the ponies in Laughter’s throne room. She was one of the past wielders of the Element of Laughter.

And it looked like Crater Cemetery had a hell of a time keeping her under control with whatever power lingered in her.

Not that it helped Dash in any immediate sense. She could only hope breathing this stuff in didn’t give you anything worse than hallucinations.

Something heavy pressed down on her back. Lightning Dust. Then it all made sense.

Were those Lightning Dust’s memories? Suddenly, she felt just the tiniest bit of sympathy for her.

Dash had to find some way to fight, or at least retreat, with another pony strapped to her back. Maybe two?

Aria was underwater. Dash saw her collapse shortly after the black cloud rolled in. Good thing ghosts didn’t need to breathe.

How had Dash broken out of that illusion, she wondered. She knew psychics started spewing when they got overwhelmed by an aura. So it could only affect ghosts and psychics to the full extent. But then it would have affected Lemon Zest as well.

“Hey! How’d you get out of that?” Zest asked her.

Get out of what?! Dash didn’t even figure out what had happened, let alone how to get out of it.

“You don’t know?” Zest looked at her hoof, just about the only part not covered in chains. “Wait. Then that means it was my fault. Oops. Uh. Okay, I’m leaving now. Goodbye!”

She was gone with another blast of lightning.

So that pony wanted there to be distance between the two of them. If she did, that might put Dash back under.

Dust started to stir back awake. Dash slapped her hard and that did sober the other pegasus up just enough to gain some awareness.

“I think we need to follow her,” Dash said to Dust.

“Wait.” Dust regained most of her bearings. “Did you… see anything?”

No time for this!

“See what?” Dash shook her head. “Come on or I’m ditching you.”

Dash took off, carrying Dust at first. The other pegasus soon recovered just enough to brush Dash off and fly forward on her own.

Waves and gusts of black ash consumed every direction, constantly flying towards but never hitting Fleetfoot and Pinkie. That pony had been right. The ash floating through the air didn’t want to get near Pinkie. It plowed right out of their way like Pinkie magnetically repelled it.

“I’m flying blind here, Pinkie!” Fleetfoot called out to the pony riding on her back.

“Me too!” Pinkie tried to focus. “Something about this black stuff is messing with my psychic perception. I’m not sure where Sonata is anymore.”

“My standard plan for this situation is to just go everywhere.” Fleetfoot plummeted to the ground, then tore forward at her unmatchable speed.

In the blink of an eye, they had charged the length of the gorge, then zipped to the other side and began to fly forward at the same incredible speeds. Given a visibility of two feet, they’d have to make this trip several times over to find anything.

“I felt something!” Pinkie’s ears perked up and she pulled Fleetfoot’s ears in the right direction.

Pinkie couldn’t be sure what she felt, but her sense certainly would only have homed in on something important in this storm.

They swerved and saw a silhouette of a pony.

“There she is!”

Sonata hung against a rock, too weak to keep moving. She was unconscious!

Pinkie landed next to her and drew out a spirit bomb with significantly more difficulty. Summoning the familiar blue energy repulsed the ash completely, driving it much further away. And in reaction, Sonata came back to life, moving her eyes wearily to Pinkie.

“I guess this is the end for Sonata Dusk.” She managed only to splay her wings out across the rock.

“It’s only the end of you being enslaved.” Pinkie readied her spirit bomb.

“Well, it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it at this point.” Sonata’s eyes were transfixed on the sky above. “What are the chances I get out of this one?”

The ash vanished!

Not completely, though, just in the immediate area leaving the ponies in a bubble of safety while the storm raged on around them. They all looked around confused for the source of this disruption.

And found a masked pony slowly walking out from the wall of blackness.

That mask dominated her appearance at first glance. Pinkie knew little about zebras but could tell this was an artifact from somewhere on the southern continent. The left half of the mask depicted a black, grotesque face with knotted horns jutting out all along the side, yet its expression smiled brightly. The right half was sleek and white but scowled in self-righteous disgust.

Pinkie knew just enough about zebra culture to tell it was supposed to be an effigy of the zebra gods of creation and destruction. The pony wearing it certainly wasn’t a zebra, but pink like Pinkie, but her hair.

Pinkie recognized that curly purple hair and as the pony stepped forward, Pinkie could see her unusual eyes, eyes with a swirling pattern in them.

“Uh, oh.” Pinkie backed up.

Screwball!

She had quite a bit more equipment than that mask, heavy saddlebags on either side, and small objects strapped to each of her legs. Pinkie could feel it from here, that everything Screwball carried was a magic object of no small power. Her presence was overwhelming, beyond what Pinkie could hope to fight.

“How do I keep getting this lucky today?” Sonata barely managed to pick up her head to see Screwball.

“Don’t get cocky down there!” Screwball turned only briefly to Sonata. “After this, I’m destroying you and your mistress next. Total ghost genocide.”

“Oh, right. I forgot everypony hates me.” Sonata went partially limp again.

“Pinkie!” Screwball held out a foreleg to greet her. “How’s my sister doing, huh? A bit distracted?”

Screwball stepped forward. Nopony else dared move.

“I bet you were expecting me to go for Rainbow Dash, huh? Given she’s the easy one?” Screwball continued forward. “I changed my plan at the last minute. Though I thought you’d be floored by this stuff. You’re psychic and you didn’t wear protection like I did.”

Screwball gave the horns of her mask a tap.

“But I don’t see anything on you.” Screwball lowered her neck, then craned it all about. “So what’s your source of divine protection, exactly? Alicorn blood transfusion? I should try that.”

Pinkie could only tilt her head. She didn’t have anything on her. But that mask Screwball wore had a sinister aura of its own, similar in a way to the alicorn magic Pinkie had witnessed more recently.

“Do you know what she’s talking about?” Pinkie asked. “I get the impression Screwball’s saw this move coming.”

“It only deployed that armor once before, fifteen years ago,” said Fleetfoot. “I was just a filly, but Spitfire was there. Left her a little traumatized. And I guess word got out about it.”

So why didn’t Aria warn them about this auric attack? She mentioned everything else.

Big disadvantage here! Pinkie and Fleetfoot wouldn’t be enough to fight a witch.

“How important is Sonata again?” Fleetfoot whispered to Pinkie, taking a step back to ready a retreat.

“Pretty important,” Pinkie whispered back.

“Alright. Well you asked for it, then.”

Fleetfoot grabbed Pinkie tight and moved into a summersault that left the world even more of a blurred mess than the blackness had. The pegasus broke her momentum on a dime, spin-launching Pinkie straight at Sonata.

In almost the same motion, Fleetfoot bounded forward, trying to tackle Screwball at full speed.

Screwball sidestepped away from Pinkie… but didn’t leave the spot she was standing on. There were suddenly two Screwballs! One moved forward to intercept each of the attackers.

The one towards Fleetfoot punched the air once, creating a violent gale just strong enough to blow Fleetfoot off course. Then the copy vanished without a trace.

Pinkie put up her strongest psionic barrier and prepared for impact after seeing how strong this pony punched. Screwball dug her hind legs in, drawing energy out of the earth, then jabbed. The blow was fierce enough to shatter Pinkie’s defenses, cancel her momentum and send her tumbling back through the mud.

But Pinkie just barely managed to avoid a concussion. Yet the way Screwball merely rolled a shoulder told Pinkie this was nowhere near the extent of her power. That had just been a jab.

Fleetfoot was busy now. Claws of rock came up out of the mud, tearing through the ground as they tried to drag Fleetfoot down without success. Screwball had also summoned an earth element. Only Sonata remained unassailed, looking around wildly with no clue of what to do.

“How about we negotiate?” Screwball asked. “If you let me capture you, I won’t hurt anypony else today! It’d be the heroic thing to do, right?”

Pinkie got back to her feet.

Screwball took a canister off her foreleg. Pinkie noticed something off! Though Screwball removed it, the canister was still there. She’d duplicated that too.

This, the witch threw into the air, creating a massive airburst that forced everypony flat against the ground. The explosion stopped exploding too suddenly, vanishing more abruptly than it began.

Pinkie could guess how one of Screwball’s spells worked now. She could create a brief copy of anything, even herself. But for an explosive like that, it was only going to exist for seconds anyway. If Pinkie could get all that equipment away from Screwball, the fight would become slightly more manageable.

Then Screwball smashed a hoof deep into the muddy earth. Pinkie knew why Screwball had wanted to force them to the ground. She could feel her breath, all of her strength getting sucked out of her and into the earth below.

Pinkie had to get up!

Or else…

Fluttershy might as well have been blind inside the mouth of the battle doll. Its fangs and the rain both obscured her sight. Not that there was much to see.

The water shallowed out as they bounded through it, straight towards where Twilight would be waiting. She could feel it looming in front of her.

Fear. Ultimate fear.

For a long time, she’d felt the aura of who she now knew was Nightmare Moon, but she’d never felt any sort of emotion from it. It felt sickly, yet strangely magnetic. But never emotional. Certainly never afraid.

She could see it now, too. The true battle. It looked like the top of a smokestack, billowing blackness out. A smokestack that quickly exploded and sent a wave of ash out in every direction.

“Fluttershy! Get ready!” Sour Sweet’s voice boomed out from her robot. “It will take everything you have to protect us from this.”

Fluttershy flew out of her teddy bear and pulsed her aura as hard as she could. The immense weight of it crashed down on Fluttershy, like pushing against a moving train. But not completely hopeless. She could feel it slowing down just a little.

And maybe…

In her bedroom. The middle of the day but all the lights turned off. The curtains up to fill her life with darkness. Sometimes Fluttershy felt safer in the dark.

Dark? This wasn’t how darkness was supposed to look. Not anymore.

Fluttershy lay in her bed, holding her teddy bear. She really should go to school. But… it was so hard. At some point, going outside had become impossible. She’d go outside just a little bit now and then, but it got harder each time, not easier. Always, always something would get to her. Make her regret trying to be brave.

There were so many horrible things out there. There were so many monsters. Ghosts… And slowly, other ponies were becoming the most horrible thing of all. Just thinking about it was so hard.

Fluttershy struggled against the memory. That’s what this was. This was how her life used to be. This was what Fluttershy was before she became a ghost.

Sir Dread. Her plushie. Her crutch. This place was comfortable but not in a good way.

She shouldn’t still be clinging to this. As of two months ago, she was a teenager.

Maybe if she could throw Sir Dread away… cast her crutch off from her but…

That was right. Fluttershy never managed to get rid of her crutch. She was stuck with it now…

Just throw Sir Dread across the room. Then walk outside alone, without him. With a rare spot of determination, Fluttershy took off the covers and got ready to enact her plan.

Do it.

She had to do it.

She hesitated a long time.

The door opened. Her father came in.

“Fluttershy? I was thinking maybe we could just walk down to the post office. I was about to head there,” he said. “You won’t have to talk to anypony.”

No! Her plan was ruined! Maybe Fluttershy could have gone outside by herself but being forced into it was just too much! She retreated under her covers and shook her head.

Her father gave up much faster than he would have a year ago… he was already losing all hope for her…

“What if you talk to Dr. Clear Mind again?” He asked. “He could come to your room.”

Those psychiatrist types never really helped…

Fluttershy really had been that bad, hadn’t she? She could feel herself being drawn back into that shameful cocoon with her old self.

Her father was gone again. It was dark again. Her father had ruined everything! Broke her courage. Fluttershy just had to give up now. It’d be a few more days until she worked up the courage to try again. But for now…

No. No, this wasn’t Fluttershy’s father’s fault. And Fluttershy… she wasn’t like this anymore! She’d gotten over even her worst fear. She had to get up.

There simply wasn’t anything Fluttershy could do… her body felt too heavy. She should just sleep. Anything else was… impossible.

Her body did feel heavy but Fluttershy moved it, even in this memory, however so slightly. Maybe she couldn’t change the past but…

The sheets pressed down on her. Fluttershy struggled to lift them. Not because they were heavy but because she was weak.

But not too weak to move. Fluttershy winced as she cast them off. It took all of her strength, but with a single motion, she rolled off the bed, hitting the floor with a thud.

She became just slightly lighter, enough to stand. She turned her head to Sir Dread.

“Come on… let’s go.”

Fluttershy grabbed him in her mouth and opened her bedroom door.

Fluttershy shook her head… Sir Dread’s head.

She was back in her stuffed doll, back in reality. At the moment, that consisted of a whirlwind of ash and rain.

They weren’t moving anymore. Sour Sweet had fallen into that impossible malaise Fluttershy had been in just a moment ago, and was being forced to live Fluttershy’s lethargic horror.

But Fluttershy was out. She pulled Sour Sweet out.

“I think I did it,” Fluttershy called out to her, but her voice still shook from her encounter with her shameful past. “We have to keep going.”

“Right.” Sour Sweet’s voice wavered in unison with Fluttershy’s.

Fluttershy didn’t know if she’d seen that memory, but she’d felt it.

Sour Sweet began walking forward again, pushing through the storm. So powerful the gale that even with the body of a giant, Sour Sweet had to dig in her hind legs and claw her way forward with each step. Even that much was only possible with Fluttershy protecting her from the brunt of it.

Fluttershy could see why there needed to be two of them. It took all of her effort to hold that hideous aura back.

The nexus still lay so far away. Would they be able to get there in time? Or at all?

“How long were we in that illusion?” Fluttershy asked.

“Longer than it seemed. Careful. It’s going to come again,” Sour Sweet warned. “As far as I’ve seen, a specter is the only one whose aura is strong enough to get out of the illusion. Last time–”

Fluttershy held Sir Dread closer. She looked at the calendar. May 1304.

Were all of her friends really about to graduate high school? She supposed they weren’t her friends anymore. Not after last time. The one attempt she made at going out had ended horribly. Everypony hated her now. Just the thought of going back out there…

Things were so much worse now. It was just Fluttershy and Sir Dread now. The few friends she had stopped visiting long ago. Her parents had given up on her. They loved her enough to let her stay here, keep her from dying but…

Fluttershy knew it was an illusion. She wasn’t alone. She could get up this time.

They knew Fluttershy was hopeless. If she hadn’t gotten rid of her bear by now, she never would, would she? She was 18. She was supposed to be an adult.

Not… not this helpless.

She wasn’t helpless! She wasn’t even weak. Fluttershy was a specter and other ponies relied on her! She had to get up! It was so much harder now. But she couldn’t give up.

Maybe Fluttershy could at least go watch the others graduate? That wouldn’t be so hard. She could throw Sir Dread out and… and just that would be her coming of age.

Fluttershy never managed to get rid of her teddy bear and never managed to become an adult. She felt heavy again…

No! Just thinking of it was too much. Too scary. It was too hard to do today. Fluttershy relaxed. Maybe tomorrow…

“No.”

Fluttershy threw herself out of bed much harder than last time. She’d overcome the barrier but overshot it a good deal and found herself across the room.

“I have to…” Fluttershy found her footing on trembling legs.

She grabbed Sir Dread and began walking towards the door. It felt so much further away this time. But…

“Out…” Fluttershy shoved the door open and fell to the other side. “I won’t…. stay here.”

Back in the storm!

Coming out of that nightmare, the chasm of her past, made Fluttershy feel light by comparison. Maybe this wasn’t as bad as she’d been through.

Sour Sweet picked up on that lightness and began moving forward at a pace closer to walking than crawling. They would get there now. But would it be in time?

“You really are pathetic, aren’t you?” A unicorn threw Sir Dread down at Fluttershy who desperately grasped her bear. “How old are you? And you’re clinging to that thing like a baby? You’re not even going to beg or anything? Normally ponies are brave enough to do that much.”

Fluttershy sat in the corner, trembling, too scared to say even one thing. She was face to face with a unicorn with deep crimson coat. The witch Crimson Tide.

The witch that killed Fluttershy! That killed everypony! The sight shocked her confidence into submission however briefly.

There was nothing Fluttershy could do against a witch! Nothing! She thought she had it bad before but now… now this witch was going to kill her if she was lucky.

It was just a memory. The witch was dead. Fluttershy was the one still here!

“Hm.” Suddenly, the witch smiled. “Just stay down. I’ll tell everypony you ran away to give them false hope. Ponies behave better when they have that much. Can you do that for me? Just sit here in paralyzed terror? You might just survive.”

Fluttershy knew that was a lie. She was going to die either way.

Fluttershy trembled. Maybe it would be bad for everypony else but what else could she do?

The witch smiled knowing she could just barely manage a nod. Fluttershy began to but stopped. She shook her head hard instead.

The illusion stared in surprise at this sudden change in character, at the future Fluttershy taking control. Fluttershy got back on her feet.

“I… won’t.”

They had some speed now!

It was awkward, halfway between a limp and a jog, but they were moving at a decent pace. Twilight wouldn’t have to hold out much longer.

This was the worst things had ever been.

No! Fluttershy began struggling the moment it hit her this time. She knew what this was.

She was in the sewers now, had wandered endlessly for days before losing even the will for that.

It was impossible now.

No.

Everypony was truly and seriously gone. Fluttershy could never get rid of Sir Dread. Never.

Her whole life things only got worse. Just existing was getting harder every day.

It was getting easier! Already a hoof was lifting to the sky.

How could she exist as such a disgusting thing? As a…

No! Fluttershy… she could love other ghosts now! Maybe even…

She gritted her teeth and flew up out of the sewers.

This time, the two of them came out of the illusion already running.

Sour Sweet bounded through the storm! Fluttershy could see the nexus now! There was Twilight and the armor controlled by Nightmare Moon.

This was easy! The last one hadn’t been hard at all. Charging into the battle no longer seemed difficult. She could–

Fluttershy was lucid from the start! The illusion would be nothing this time.

She got ready. The sewers again. So all she had to do was fly off one last time.

Something grabbed Fluttershy before she could act, then slammed her against a wall of ice. Fluttershy wouldn’t easily be able to escape in such a position, bound by claws made of ice, surrounded by enchanted ice.

This was when…

She struggled to remind herself this was just a dream of the past. Still, Fluttershy slowly looked up at the inevitable. At a face she’d hoped to never see again.

Boss Rattler.

Fear. Not just the illusion, but actual fear flooded Fluttershy! She couldn’t – not this one! Even facing Nightmare Moon seemed easy.

A ghost! Ghosts!

Fluttershy couldn’t!

She trembled, tears gushing from her eyes. If she had a heart, it would have given out by now. Her whole life the only good was that she’d only run into ghosts once!

How could she exist like this?!

Fluttershy was up against a wall of ice! She couldn’t retreat underground! Her only comfort, only safety. There was nothing she could do.

Her body was all scratched up. She’d never felt pain as a ghost before. Nothing other than that horrible burning feeling in her mind.

“This specter doesn’t seem much of a threat, huh?” Chains asked the much larger ghost.

“Oh, a little patheticness is just how I like em,” said Rattler. “Even just sittin here all useless like, she could be useful to the two of us. Keep that black wind off our backs, eh? Listen. I’m going to be in charge from now on. You’re going to be our little ghost shield, yeah?”

Fluttershy knew she could say this with one word… It felt impossible to move but that was all she’d need!

Fluttershy couldn’t.

She had to.

She could never.

Just once!

Fluttershy gritted her teeth, her face contorting into a painful wince as she looked up. Just lifting her head was harder than anything she’d had to do in these nightmares so far. The effort and strain alone were enough to bring tears to her eyes.

Just one word…

At last, Fluttershy’s head had climbed just enough o put her face to face with Rattler, eye level. She’d never even looked him in the eyes before.

She breathed in and out in massive breaths. She caught just one of them and said something she’d never once managed to do before.

“No!”

They stumbled, then gave a leap through the air!

Fluttershy could see Twilight and her enemy clearly now!

Fluttershy flew out of Sir Dread and flew at Nightmare Moon herself.

“Twilight!” Fluttershy sundered the thick aura surrounding the area, clearing a path.

Just one more!

Fluttershy stumbled forward, needing a moment to regain her bearings. She wasn’t even slightly affected by the illusions anymore. Not mentally anyway.

She found herself in a familiar place, one she’d hoped to never find corrupted. It was Twilight’s house, where it originally stood by the river.

“That’s right. After I escaped.” Fluttershy shook her head. “After Dash rescued me I came here.”

This was the first place where Fluttershy had ever been happy. It was the first time she’d finally made a serious attempt to change, too.

But had she really changed?

Twilight’s tree house had become overgrown and surrounded by thorny vines. A hideous aura emanated from inside.

Fluttershy swallowed some ectoplasm and flew inside the house.

Twilight Sparkle!

She was wrapped in vines and roots, but not exactly restrained. She sat quietly with her eyes closed in an almost dignified manner, the vines holding her forming something not unlike a throne.

Before Twilight stood the cauldron she often used. It bubbled away violently, the steam swirling above, coalescing into a vortex.

Was this a memory? A manifestation of Twilight’s psyche? Or something else? Fluttershy had no idea.

“Twilight, I’ll get you out of here!” Fluttershy ripped one root off only for another to come to life and throw her aside.

“Stupid child. I am protecting Twilight.” The voice was low and rumbling, cracking and breaking every so often as though manifesting from a crackling fire.

That voice? Fluttershy looked to find Twilight’s doll, or golem. Smarty Pants? Fluttershy never liked it.

Did that thing just talk?! The scarecrow didn’t move… but Fluttershy was certain that was what spoke to her.

“Twilight would have very nearly died without me,” said Smarty Pants, its mouth made of carrot-sized spikes not budging an inch. “Look.”

The room changed, blackened. Everything took on a faint glow. The walls were covered in something far blacker than the darkness, the hyperbolic black that only ghosts could see. From it came jutting tendrils of the stuff, all of them thrust towards twilight as if to stop her.

Vines that seemed to merely hand before were now revealed to have been holding back these blades of darkness. Fluttershy wasn’t sure how long that could hold out, though. The vines were slowly wilting, rotting, and crumbling.

“It thinks it can destroy me… the real me,” said Smarty Pants. “They all underestimate what I can become. Let it complete the summoning. I will destroy Nightmare Moon then. We will.”

“I don’t understand,” said Fluttershy. “Who are you, exactly?”

“I am Twilight’s only true friend. She doesn’t need you.”

Fluttershy didn’t understand. But the scene looked all too familiar. Twilight had spent so long trapped in this place just like…

Fluttershy carefully took in the scene, skeptical. The blackness hadn’t managed to reach Twilight. It came in front of her. Could it even do that in time? No. No, there were branches around her head, around her from behind.

It wasn’t Nightmare Moon keeping Twilight asleep… it was this… thing.

“If you’re Twilight’s friend, you know she needs to get out of this place,” said Fluttershy. She knew the right answer was to help Twilight get out.

Its head twitched just slightly.

“You have caused me enough problems!”

Roots burst through the floor, impaling Fluttershy from all directions. She couldn’t phase through this wood, whatever it was.

Fluttershy had no idea if she could die here or not! An injury like this wasn’t necessarily lethal to a ghost either way. The pain felt real and yet.

“Twilight!” Fluttershy’s telekinetic touch reached out to grasp Twilight even as the roots twisted. “We have a leave!”

Fluttershy shook Twilight hard, dislodging the branches ever so slightly. And Twilight… slowly opened her eyes.

“Leave?” Twilight turned wearily to Fluttershy. “But…”

Fluttershy felt it! That same fear. Twilight was stuck in a memory of herself, with an older self still afraid to leave.

“Twilight! I know it’s hard, believe me. But you have to come with me.” Fluttershy offered her hoof.

“Twilight.” Smarty Pants cracked its neck. Its fire-like voice crackled and snapped. “Just a little longer and you won’t need anypony else ever again. Can’t you feel the power emanating from this place? Nightmare Moon’s strategy will backfire on it. Just a little longer…”

“I… I can feel it.” Twilight looked up at the ceiling.

“Twilight! Don’t you remember me?!” Fluttershy called out.

Twilight turned her head. Her eyes were dim at first, but…

“Fluttershy…?”

Twilight lifted a hoof. Fluttershy grabbed on, wincing through the pain as she pulled Twilight forward. Just that little budge was enough to awaken some strength in Twilight, enough for Twilight to free herself and fall onto the floor.

Twilight staggered onto her feet.

“Very well!” Smarty Pants withdrew all of its roots and vines at once!

And that meant… it was no longer holding Nightmare Moon back. The black tendrils flew forward into the image of Smarty Pants first, tearing it to dust. Then they shot toward Twilight and Fluttershy.

“Twilight! Run!”

Fluttershy ran blindly into the tendrils. She pushed all of her aura against it just as Twilight ran out the door!

“Fluttershy!”

Fluttershy had flown forward and grabbed onto Nightmare Moon. The feedback! It had managed to stun the armor for just a moment. This was the opening Twilight had been looking for!

“Hold her for just one second!”

Twilight had no idea if Fluttershy could manage, but wasn’t about to doubt her now. She opened a portal beneath Nightmare Moon, one leading much further into the air than before. Both the armor and Fluttershy fell through as Twilight began to gather energy for a full-force attack.

Twilight herself jumped through, now finding herself just above the two ghosts, high enough that she could barely make out the landscape below. Most of that soot remained below. This would be it!

Nightmare Moon blew Fluttershy off herself, but that only served Twilgiht’s goal now. Twilight threw Fluttershy back through the portal and unleashed her plasma attack.

A blinding pillar of light shot forth, hitting the armor unprepared, and sweeping over it completely. Firing such an attack on the ground would have caused far too much devastation to control, would have melted a wide path forward for miles and miles, would have blinded and heated the area enough to burn everypony else nearby.

Twilight pressed harder, pulsing the magic only harder. The soot inside pushed back at first, clawing its way out of its protective shell.

But then the momentum shifted and Twilight’s plasma pressed inside, quickly eating away at all the ash. Light poured out of every crevice of the armor, the darkness exploding out into every direction before being carried away by the stream.

Even still, Twilight find just a tiny bit more strength inside and pressed onward. Her caution was rewarded with one final pulse, one last rupture from inside as the auric core exploded.

Finally, panting, Twilight ceased her attack.

The armor was completely unphased, but nothing remained inside.

Exhausted, Twilight allowed herself to fall through another portal.

Witches 11: The Offering

“I guess that wraps things up.”

Screwball looked left. The pegasus Fleetfoot was out cold. Pinkie still clung to consciousness somehow. Those blows from Screwball, while still half-hearted, would have crushed the skull of a normal pony.

As impressive as her staggering about was, Pinkie wouldn’t be putting up any further fight. Screwball cast a spell on Pinkie. A stasis bubble surrounded her. Inside, time would move so much slower that Pinkie appeared to be frozen in time.

“Anyway. Time to make my escape.” Screwball’s entire body began to glow with magic, preparing to hypercast.

“Hold on!” That banshee called out to her. Screwball knew this was one of those royal family ponies… which one though? Ardere? No, this was Vespara. “You’ll kill me too!”

“And?”

“Um!” She fluttered her wings, desperate to think of something. “If you don’t let me get away first, I’ll death curse you!”

Screwball briefly considered whether or not to cancel her attack to kill the banshee first. A death curse was nothing to Screwball, not in her full gear. The problem was she wanted Pinkie Pie to survive.

She looked at Pinkie, not unconscious but likely too dazed to hear the scream…

Vespara wasted no time in burning her one card and screamed. Not that it mattered. The ground beneath Screwball cracked. In a second, everypony nearby would be dead. A dead banshee meant no more death curse.

Of course, that was when the death curse activated. A bolt of lightning came crashing down. Screwball considered just letting it hit you, you were supposed to take the hit when it came to these curses, but it wasn’t going for her…

Screwball dropped her spell and jumped in front of Pinkie. The lightning crashed into her, then exploded into a new ghost. This one was much more chained up than normal, chains covering half the pink unicorn’s body. But her eyes glowed a brilliant blue.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Screwball asked.

“I have to kill Pinkie Pie,” she said.

“Well I need her alive so you’re going to have to back off.” Screwball looked over her shoulder. She was in for a storm of bad luck presently. She had to deal with this poser fast.

She wasted no time. The energy she pulled from the ground was still there. Screwball punched forward, the same yellow energy she absorbed before erupted forward.

The ghost didn’t falter eyes turned blue. Flames of the same color began seeping out from beneath the chains. She held a hoof forward. It wasn’t lightning that shot forth this time, but a rainbow.

The rainbows tore through the momentum of Screwball's attack, vaporizing it like nothing before continuing to her. She was forced to jump back to get out of the way.

“Yowch!” Screwball jumped back, flailing her leg to cool it off. That burned a little.

Screwball blinked. The soot for a large distance around had vanished and that from an even greater distance was in retreat. A large number of those chains had broken off as well, enough to see this pony’s face… she knew what this was about now!

“Oh wait. I heard of you.” Screwball pointed up at the ghost. “You worked for my predecessor a long time ago, yeah?”

There was a brief intermediate period where one of Screwball’s oldest half-siblings ran the Bloodstorm Cartel. A fractured piece of it anyway. And more accurately her idiot brother only managed to run it into the ground before Screwball killed him and corrected course.

Yeah! This pony had been a smuggler for them, before dying and then selling her soul to that stupid rock. If Screwball ever got the chance, she’d smash that thing into a million pieces.

“I heard all about you, yeah! You’re the reason the cartel has the azoth spell in the first place… And based on what I heard, I’m guessing you won’t be able to fight long like that, huh?” Screwball licked her lips. “But we can have some fun for a second or two.

This was what Screwball lived for! With a manic smile on her face, she drew energy out from the earth below to ready a second punch.

“Come on!” She taunted

“What are you waiting for?” Dust gave Dash a shove with her muzzle.

Dash would have thought that to be obvious.

The mood of the scene had flipped on a bit. Where once it had been a barren wasteland covered in a storm of black rain, mud, and lightning, it now looked more like a paradise ocean. Albeit a shallow one.

The water remained but the darkness had been thrown off a great enough distance that it was nothing but a storm on the horizon. The clouds too had been busted into nothingness. Only a brilliant blue sky filled with rainbows remained, rainbows reflected over the floodwater that Dash hovered over.

It would have been a beautiful and encouraging sight were it not for all the explosions.

Two ponies were locked in combat now, repeatedly smashing into one another. They always came in perfect sync. A flash of yellow that shook the ground and created waves on the water would begin before a large explosion of rainbows devoured it and pushed the darkness back forward.

Dash could guess who one of them was. But going over there…

“I’m not sure if it’s safe or necessary,” said Dash. “We have no idea who’s fighting what, just that it’s dangerous. We’re already outside that… stuff now.”

“The fact that it’s dangerous is the point.”

“Look, if you’re so eager to die go ahead,” said Dash. “Why do you care if I’m coming or not?”

“Because I want to see you do it.”

Dash turned to Lightning Dust, frowning. Her expression was… hard to read. Almost like Dust looked offended by something.

“See me do…?”

“You defeated a witch, right?” Dust asked. “So… what do you have to be worried about?”

Dash felt her pulse quicken. Was she calling Dash’s bluff? But why now? And why did she have that look on her face?

A terrible thought struck Dash just then. If Dash had seen Lightning Dust’s memories, then… She had to act now!

“I’m just being smart,” said Dash. “We’ll… we’ll go have a look.”

Dust nodded without losing any intensity.

The two of them flew to the scene of battle. Or rather, Dash flew, and Dust followed her.

Thankfully, the explosions died down as they neared. The air grew calm by the time Dash could make out the scene. Pinkie was frozen in what looked like a bubble of water, with a serious wound on her head. Then staring each other down were Screwball and Lemon Zest.

Zest soared higher than Screwball, multiple rainbows circling around her. Her chains had nearly been completely demolished by now! Dash could make out all of her. Only a cross section forming an X over her chest remained.

More importantly, Dash could see her cutie mark. The same four fire-works circles that the element of laughter had taken the form of. This was the last wielder of the element of laughter.

“Out of ammo, are we?” Screwball called up to her. “I knew you wouldn’t last against me.”

Lemon Zest looked down at Dash, then at Sonata. Making her decision of what to do with the last of her power, Zest bolted down to Sonata in a burst of lightning, then carried the banshee away in another blast.

Dash stepped forward to give chase but staggered as Screwball’s eyes turned to her.

“Hey! If it isn’t my future sister-in-law.” Screwball started walking forward. She lifted that strange mask she’d been wearing to get a better look at Dash. “Rumor is, you and Silverstorm are getting married soon, eh?”

Screwball winked, then circled Dash once. Dash stayed perfectly still as Screwball checked her out not too subtly.

“You know I got a thing for pegasi.” Screwball stopped and leaned up against Dash. “If you want, you can abscond with me instead and just be part of my harem. Hm? I’ll be your witch mommy and take care of all the baddies for you from now on.”

Dash did her best to ignore this.

There was no way she could do anything against Screwball without Twilight. Nothing but stall until Twilight came back. And who knew how long that would be.

Then there was Lightning Dust… and Pinkie Pie…

Screwball followed Dash’s eyes to Pinkie Pie and started forward again.

“Oh yeah, I’ll be taking this one for now.” Screwball gestured back. As she promised as much, five bat-winged ponies landed near Pinkie. These, Dash knew, had to be more of the chimeric soldiers created by MSC.

Screwball pointed a hoof at Pinkie and the bubble she was trapped in shrank down, small enough for one of the bat ponies to carry.

Dash looked around, considering her options. Nopony was here! Nopony who could help anyway.

Somepony did come as Dash hesitated. Spitfire! And about nine other pegasi, all armed.

“Screwball!” Spitfire crouched into a fighting stance. “Rainbow Dash, we’ll back you up however we can.”

“Yeah, Dash!” Dust smiled, then sat down growing disinterested. “You beat two witches. Go rescue your friend or whatever.”

Damn it! Dash was so sure Dust saw now! She couldn’t just run away or hide. But she couldn’t fight Screwball either. Could she…?

Without much choice but to fight for her reputation, Dash moved a leg back, at least pretending to do something.

“Oh, are you going to fight me and rescue Pinkie Pie?” Screwball smiled. “Here. I’m going to slap you with one percent of my power. Are you ready?”

The boot made her ready, but even with that Dash couldn’t even see Screwball’s approach! The witch was there in an instant.

The blow was unlike anything Dash ever felt before, like a mountain falling on top of her. She staggered back. No air! Everything inside her felt crushed, compacted into a tiny ball.

Dash’s eyes rolled and her vision blurred as she stumbled back. She saw Screwball, her hoof outstretched as if she’d really given the tiniest slap. She saw Spitfire looking down at Dash horrified at the sight of her collapsing onto the ground.

For a brief moment, Dash’s vision blacked out.

She heard some rushing sounds as the other pegasi gave chase. But there was no way. No way they could get through Screwball to get Pinkie back.

With all her remaining strength, Dash struggled just to lift her head to confirm her fears. Those bat ponies were gone and with them Pinkie. Spitfire and the other pegasi had been effortlessly fought back by the witch.

And now Screwball was standing over her.

“You really should have become part of my harem.” Screwball shrugged and put a sword in her mouth. “Well. I don’t need more than one hostage, so I guess I’ll fuck with my sister by killing you.”

The sword shined and endless copies of it appeared all around Dash, forming a dome, all of them pointed at her, ready to skewer her from every angle.

A vicious explosion caused Dash’s vision to blur a second time. This one was intense enough to actually push Screwball back and throw all of those swords aside.

Another orange pegasus had joined the fight, one Dash wasn’t sure if she should be glad to see. Flash Bang!

Flash opened her wings and fired off explosive shots from them. The red bolts flew forward before exploding with a force that shook Dash despite their distance. The threat of several of these a second flying at Screwball was enough to make even the witch back off.

Screwball pointed her sword at Flash and Flash her spear at Screwball. Hundreds of spears and swords appeared behind their respective owners, ready to fly forward and clashing spectacularly.

Everypony, even Dash, felt a pulse of strange energy coming from where Twilight had been. All that blackness was gone completely now.

“Nailbat is here too?!” Screwball inexplicably concluded.

Screwball looked from where Twilight should be back to Flash Bang, then smiled.

“You know. I got a better idea. Let’s call the whole thing off, huh?”

Screwball threw a canister in the air. This exploded into a blinding white light and she was gone.

Dash tried to get back up but couldn’t manage more than sitting up. The implications of all this were still on a delayed reaction. She’d lost Pinkie and Sonata. She’d…

Dash looked over at the other pegasi, none of them looking at all impressed by her. She…

Dust flew over to Flash Bang’s side and whispered something in her ear. That got a look of sudden shock, then suspicion cast on Rainbow Dash.

Dash had… lost.

Horribly.

Twilight grabbed the armor to inspect it. Though it wasn’t singed to the slightest degree, she could tell that presence was gone from it, the amalgamation summoned by Nightmare Moon had been vanquished.

Twilight had prevailed, but anything that could create something like that…

She threw the armor through another portal leading back to the ground before going through herself.

Fluttershy was there, along with the huge golem-like creature that carried her here. Even now, Fluttershy winced slightly, still struggling. That black ash wasn’t gone yet. Twilight could only see a few yards in any direction.

“I was hoping that would get rid of all this, but I guess not. Any ideas?” Twilight asked.

Fluttershy looked toward the huge golem, which shook its head.

“Well, at least the worst of the danger has been taken care of.” Twilight would be able to relax for a moment. “Still.”

Twilight’s ears perked up. A sudden gust of wind sent the soot rushing toward the south. Not only that, but it was beginning to disintegrate. Perhaps Rainbow Dash had already found a way to clear it up?

Something else, similar energy, sliced through the darkness. The soot swirled, then blasted off in all directions. At first, Twilight saw only a purple blade moving through it all, but in a moment the blackness was gone and she saw the pony holding it in his mouth.

Nailbat!

But besides his bat, he had a second weapon.

“Could you seriously have done that the whole time?” Twilight asked.

“I wouldn’t have been able to destroy that battle doll,” said Nailbat.

Maybe. But that didn’t answer any of her questions.

How had that thing even managed as much? It was thanks to that sword he had on him, but what was powering it?

Twilight’s eyes went from the purple blade to the hilt and finally to a white feather hanging off of it.

“Wait.” Twilight took a step forward. “That feather… Where did you get that?”

“Yes. With this, we have one of the keys to destroying our real enemy. I did want to talk to you about a few things now.” Nailbat turned to the north. “But I don’t think the fight is over just yet. Come follow me.”

Twilight followed Nailbat back north.

A lot of ponies had shown up now. A small army stood on the far side of the gorge. There must have been over five hundred. A smaller group was closer, making a lot of noise.

Scanning the horizon, Twilight found yet another group, just as large as the first but much further off.

Twilight wasn’t sure if these ponies would have been helpful or just a liability had they come earlier.

“Fluttershy. Sour Sweet. You should gather up all the ghosts and take them that way.” Nailbat gestured to the group that must have been on his side. “It’s not safe for you to go up there. Flash Bang is with that group.”

Fluttershy nodded in understanding and went off to complete her task.

As Twilight and Nailbat approached the small group of ponies, Twilight noticed some of them giving her looks. Or maybe they were only meant for Nailbat.

She could see several familiar ponies. Fleetfoot was being tended to by a medic. Spitfire, Flash Bang, and Lightning Dust were all there. Spitfire noticed Twilight and flew forward.

“Did you…?” Spitfire gazed at her with breathless awe. “You seriously… beat that thing?”

“I did but…” Twilight had little choice but to brush her off. She had to find her friends.

She had to find…

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight ran to her side.

She was barely able to sit up, another medic had stopped the bleeding on a wound on her stomach at least. Not that that’d be a problem with the spell Twilight gave her. Really, it looks like that may have saved her life given how much blood was on the ground near her.

Dash looked away from Twilight

“Are you hurt?!”

“No… I…” Dash fought back tears. “Pinkie and Sonata.”

“Pinkie?” Twilight’s eyes widened.

“Screwball captured her and… and Sonata got away.” Dash closed her eyes.

Twilight trembled but regained some determination.

“We can get her back!” Twilight nodded. “We will! Right?”

Dash said nothing.

This felt wrong. Rainbow Dash was supposed to be the determined one…

“I think,” Dash whispered. “I think Lightning Dust found out.”

Twilight turned to find Lightning Dust talking to Flash Bang, deep in thought as she listened. Spitfire flew up to her and began loudly arguing some point that got Dust’s annoyance and Flash Bang’s attention. But that was of little concern to Twilight right now.

This would be the worst-case scenario. They’d wanted to control

“Here! It’ll take some time but I can heal you. And then…” Twilight put a hoof on Dash.

“Banshee!” One of the pegasi shouted.

All the others jumped into place. It was Aria, staggering forward. Flash wasted no time, sending an ethereal spear flying at her.

Nailbat stepped in to intercept.

“Anypony who tries to fight her will have to go through me,” he announced.

Flash Bang alone hesitated to stand down at that challenge.

“Where’s Sonata?” Aria asked.

Dash couldn’t answer.

Aria clenched her teeth but to Twilight’s surprise it wasn’t Dash or Twilight she was angry at.

“You bastard!” Aria punched Nailbat in the chest, who simply took it. “So much for your stupid mastermind plan!”

“Plan?” Twilight asked. “Did you…?”

That much stirred even Dash awake.

“Tell me something, Aria,” said Dash. “Why didn’t… you warn us about that aura attack?”

“Ask him. This whole sting operation was this guy’s idea, to begin with.” Aria pointed a wing and looked at Nailbat askance. “I went to him for help first. He’s the one who planned all this out.”

“Eh? Why him?”

“Well. Turns out the two of us are related,” Aria muttered low enough so only the three of them could hear. “My sister Adagio had a daughter whom we assumed died, but in reality, she went on to have a son… this pony. Nailbat would be my grandnephew. The last living member of the Noctillesence family.”

Dash couldn’t help but gawk. He didn’t look like royalty. He looked like he slept on the street last night.

“We can still get Sonata back,” said Nailbat. “Things have taken a turn for the better. If we–”

“Shut up! I’m going after Pinkie myself and then I’m going to get Sonata back alone. Which way?!”

Dash merely glanced in a direction and Aria ran off.

“Let her go,” said Nailbat. “I wanted to take the two of you back to my camp to… discuss things. You might not be safe here any longer.”

Twilight hoped he wasn’t right about that. But the two of them followed Twilight carrying Dash.

An overly curious pony approached Fluttershy. She would have assumed this was another doll because she had no scent, no body heat. But for one, she was too cold to be a normal doll, and the apparatus attached to her made Fluttershy assume something else must have been the case.

A blueish earth pony with a practical purple mane, she had heavy cufflinks that connected, through clear tubes, to some device she wore where a saddle bag should be, one containing a red liquid.

The mare was looking all around at Fluttershy’s collection of freed ghosts, eager to find somepony, but filled with worry, ears twitching about nervously like a parent coming to collect their foal amongst some midday disaster.

“I assume you’re Fluttershy.” She cantered to Fluttershy the moment the two made eye contact. “If what I’ve heard is true, I owe you my gratitude.”

“Wait.” Fluttershy flew forward toward this newcomer. “I think Rarity mentioned you. Are you… you’re with MSI?”

What was her name again? Sunny Flare?

“I’m the head of the Mad Science Institute,” said Sunny Flare. At last, she spotted whoever it was she was looking for and finally relaxed. “I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

Sunny Flare pointed behind Fluttershy, into the group of ghosts. After a moment, she realized Flare meant Sour sweet.

“Her?”

“I was sort of adopted into a fraid of ghosts called the Shadowbolts,” Flare said. “Sour Sweet is part of that fraid. My fraid. She’ll want to come with me once she recovers her senses. So I hope you understand my taking her back.”

A predead living in a ghost fraid? Fluttershy had trouble imagining such a thing! Though given Sunny’s lack of body heat, perhaps it was at least possible.

She should at least find out if what Flare said was true. Fluttershy called Sour Sweet over, finding immediate recognition.

Flare tapped something on her right cuff. The device froze her right foreleg solid, but she didn’t even wince. It was enchanted ice, too, allowing her to gab Sour Sweet in a hug. Sour blinked, sharing Fluttershy’s confusion.

“Oh, hey! It’s Sunny Flare.” Sour Sweet smiled, but just barely. “I remember you.”

“Is that all you have to say to me after so long?” Flare stepped back from the hug and tapped her device again. The liquid bubbled and steam released from her cuff, thawing her leg.

“Please forgive her!” Fluttershy apologized on her behalf. “When a ghost is freed from that control, her aura is left weak for a while. She can’t feel anything for herself. Only mirror my emotions.”

“So she feels neutral towards me because you do,” Flare concluded for her.

“I still have my memories, though,” Sour Sweet said. She frowned looking Flare over. “This is weird. I should be happy to see you but… uh. Hey, Fluttershy? How hard is it to feel happy for us?”

“Oh! Uh!” Fluttershy knew she should but couldn’t think of how to force it.

“Ah, great. Now I’m all nervous.” Sour Sweet looking blushing to one side. “I’m sure I’ll want to go with her once I recover. If memory serves.”

“I’d like to take you back with me presently,” said Flare. “I have other ghosts who can support her. Indigo will want to see you immediately. All of this was unexpected, but it seems things have suddenly taken a turn for the better. This could improve the outcome of things greatly.”

Fluttershy nodded to Sour Sweet, knowing what had to be done. She went to her friend’s side. Flare bowed her head low to the specter.

“Fluttershy,” she said humbly. “Recovering even one of my lost friends like this means a lot to me. I owe much to you now. That will be true even if you choose to stand against us in the coming fight.”

“Um. Stand against who exactly?” Fluttershy asked. “I don’t think I have any problems with the Shadowbolts or MSI. I’ve never even heard of you. You’re not doing anything dangerous, are you?”

As Sunny Flare searched for the right way to explain it, another figure came swooping down, much faster and warmer than Flare. This one Fluttershy recognized.

“I think specifically,” said Nailbat. “She means if you stand against me.”

“No more stalling!” Dash called out to him.

Nailbat with his hood off. Dash knew she’d seen his face before, but rarely enough to associate the two. A green pegasus with a broken jaw and rough fur, his hair two shades of green with a double stripe pattern. His eyes tired but certain as they watched Twilight in particular.

At one side he had his namesake strapped to a series of chains. On the other, that fancy sword sheathed tight.

“I’ve known that you’re Twilight Sparkle,” he said calmly. “For some time.”

Twilight took a defensive posture but Nailbat wearily waved it away.

“I was never much concerned about that.” He looked towards the north. “I always suspected Flash Bang’s family were the real villains in that episode of your life. Really. I was more worried about your connection with the element of magic.”

“How do you know about that?” Twilight asked. “I only ever suspected the element of magic might still be stalking me. How did you even know my real identity, to begin with?”

“Are you impressed?” Nailbat smiled wearily, then jumped up to sit down on the foreleg of the battle doll, positioning himself above the other ponies. Yet he more slumped down to meet the others rather than rising above them. “I have the best network of spies in the world. I’ve known everything for a long time. Rainbow Dash stole a bottle of anti-age gummies from Twilight, then gave them to Pinkie whom she wanted help in undoing a curse. Then you went to Rarity the following day. Am I right?”

That was a little too accurate, enough to rattle Dash’s cage. She clenched her teeth as he pierced her facade.

“Hey.” Dash stepped forward. “Speaking of Rarity. You knew the old leader of MSL was working for Screwball, didn’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Then why the buck didn’t you tell us that?!” Dash flared her wings out, glad for the chance to be angry at somepony. “Somepony could have died because you wanted to give us some stupid riddle to solve instead?”

“I was doing you a favor.”

“Bull!”

“I wanted to make sure Rarity could be trusted moving forward.”

“I already trusted Rarity.”

“Oh? On what basis?” He tilted his head lazily to one side, not at all phased by Dash’s attacks.

“What basis?” Dash pulled her head back. “We’ve been friends for a long time now. I know her.”

“Ponies can pretend to be your friend. Believe me.”

Was that really how this guy thought?!

“So what?!” Dash spread one wing out defiantly. “You give these asinine little tests to everypony you meet?”

“Of course. I need to be sure. The stakes are too high.”

And he was so matter-of-fact about it. Was Nailbat really this paranoid? Had he never trusted another pony in his entire life?

“And was that what this was about?” Dash pointed her wing at Twilight. “You set all of this up, stayed off to the side waiting when you could have done something sooner, and told Aria to keep us in the dark. For what? Another test?”

“Maybe I’m not the only suspicious one here.” Nailbat at least smiled, however thinly. “You’re right. I needed to be sure Twilight wasn’t simply another Starlight. I wanted to see if the element of magic controlled her, to see if Twilight would rush to submit to it the moment things turned against her. But she appears to have resisted its influence instead. So perhaps I can work with you.”

Dash wasn’t sure how much she wanted to work with him. Not at the moment. She could hardly deny his power or alignment. Yet his attitude was far too suspect.

“So that really was what I encountered in that illusion, wasn’t it? First, tell me how you knew,” said Twilight, “that the element of magic was connected to me.”

Nailbat drew his sword once more, showing off the alicorn feather specifically.

“That’s the last missing alicorn feather!” Twilight looked up at Nailbat. “Where did you find it?!”

“Have you heard the name Ostracon? Or perhaps Lord Lexigraph?” Nailbat watched their expressions to see if the answer was ‘no’. “I suppose it matters little. Lord Lexigraph was a pony from your order who became the first lich. He had some very long-term plans that would involve gathering six elements of harmony. He was the one who found that feather and created this artifact.”

Nailbat gripped the sword in his mouth and pointed it at Twilight. The feather appeared to dance about slightly reacting to Twilight. But as Twilight came closer to inspect, Nailbat sheathed it once more.

“I’m sure you know these have wills of their own,” said Nailbat. “This feather wants to reunite with the others of its kind. It will bring me to anything leading to that end if I let it. I didn’t know this was the element of magic, but I knew you were connected to the other elements in the outer realm because it showed me that much.”

“But we won’t tell you any more than that unless you ally with us.” Sunny Flare kept her eyes locked on Nailbat as he spoke.

Nailbat shrugged turning his hooves upward.

“So how about it?” Nailbat leaned over the edge of the battle doll, almost bringing himself down to Dash’s level, holding a hoof out. “Join me. If we’re on the same side, we can’t possibly lose.”

He coolly watched their hesitancy and withdrew his hoof for now.

“Oh? Then what are you going to do, exactly?” Nailbat asked. “After you destroyed Nightmare Moon, the witches, Starlight?”

“Well.” Twilight bit her lip and turned to Rainbow Dash. “My hope was just that I could just live with Rainbow Dash afterward. The world would realize I’m not their enemy after I helped them like this.”

“Do you really have no other ambitions? About changing the world for your friends?” Nailbat asked. “Do you not want a peaceful life for them as well? Or for social justice for all the others in the same situation as them?”

Twilight and Dash shared a look, knowing he had them there.

“Who among the elite four is most in line with your vision of the world? Where we don’t fear the darkness but sensibly embrace those outcasts society unfairly branded as monsters?”

“You want us to instill you as the ruler of Equestria?” Dash asked flatly.

“That isn’t my vision for the future. I have no intention of upending democracy.” Nailbat straightened up, imitating the posture of a normal pony but not exactly a regal one. “But I would have a revolution. The SA wields far more power than it should, and it needs its ties to politics to be severed and weakened. I want to create a true democracy, not this corrupt facsimile we’re saddled under now. And the only way I can obtain such radical change is by tearing down the current hierarchy completely.”

“A fake democracy?” Dash asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Nopony outside the elite four has ever become president,” said Nailbat. “The S-rank ponies are not elected by the people, merely by those who are already strong. The SA holds all the political power in the end. We don't have rule by the will of the people, but only by those with combat abilities.”

Dash frowned and tilted her head. It wasn’t like she’d never heard these talking points before. It was more her own system of anti-authority was more geared towards civil rights rather than reforming the political process itself.

“Consider this. Twilight Sparkle knows absolutely nothing about the world. Even now. And yet everypony looks to her to be the one to take over, that she should be the one to decide the destiny of this world. Even you.” Nailbat spared a look for Dash. “Under the current paradigm, she should be the one to rule over us all. Do you really think she should be the one to lead the nation?”

Dash blinked, stunned by the question. Twilight had always been the one in charge in her mind. Dash was semi-officially just one of Twilight’s minions. She’d seriously never considered such a thing, thought it almost rude to be doing so now.

“Twilight is a billion times stronger than me,” said Dash. “And that’s being generous to myself. Why should I call the shots if she’s the one with all the power? I’m borderline useless against ponies like you! Why should I even have a say?”

Nailbat cast her a disappointed look as she explained this.

“That’s exactly the problem. You were raised under this system. I suppose it’s still difficult for you to question the fundamental problem. Let me ask you this instead. Ponies used to be ruled by the royal family,” said Nailbat. “I am the last living pony with royal blood. Do you think that alone means all of my dictates should be followed and no other pony be allowed to question me?”

“Well no. It was never a good idea to have the ruler be just whoever happened to be born into the right family.”

Everypony knew how that turned out.

“And is our current system really any different? They say luck is the greatest power in this world. Psychic powers arise completely from luck. Super radiation grants you power on luck. Specters are born from a lottery of death. Those born into families with ancient, secret knowledge like Flash Bang and I are little different from monarchs. It barely matters how much effort you put in; you can never compete with a pony who simply got lucky.

“The ponies who obtain this power are only occasionally suited to rule and yet we have no choice but to allow them to under the current system. Do you really wonder why a world ruled exclusively by those most obsessed with battle and power is like this? Why manic fighters like Lightning Dust being in charge of the government will mean we’ll always find some target to be at war with? They want conflict, Rainbow Dash. The SA will never achieve the peace you want for your friends because it was never designed for that. One must wield a sword but never follow it.”

Nailbat stopped his pace and looked at Rainbow Dash specifically.

“So again. Why not you?” He reached his hoof out to her once more. “Because you can’t fight? That’s nothing more than propaganda you’ve been fed your whole life to suppress any challenge to the current regime. You can accomplish so much without fighting, Rainbow Dash. Do you still doubt that? And do you think you’re the only one? Of course not! The system simply crushes ponies like you solely to preserve itself.”

Dash watched his hoof with trepidation. Twilight remained silent, looking to Rainbow Dash for guidance rather than the other way around, the way it really should be. For so long Dash had looked up to the SA, wanted to be on top of it… not destroy it.

Though she had to admit, making the friends she did put a lot of strain on her respect. Though even still. She’d rather take it over and reform it than destroy it outright. Avoiding revolution if possible was the obvious choice.

But again. Would she have a choice? Was Nailbat the one offering her the key to what she wanted?

“Look, you’re talking in terms of treason,” Dash said at last. “That’s not something I can just… just do out of the blue here.”

“Don’t pretend like you haven’t been considering going against Starlight and the others,” said Nailbat. “Do you plan to let Starlight get her way? Or for Sunset to put us at the mercy of her god? What I’m doing is offering you a plan beyond merely stopping them.”

“Assassinating the president is one thing,” said Dash. “But destroying the entire SA? I know they have flaws! But we need… somepony to protect us. Right?”

Dash turned to Twilight.

“And we can’t just assume everypony will be okay with it,” said Twilight. “My original goal was to get a better reputation from all this. Declaring support for your revolution would complicate things.”

Nailbat nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “But it will be complicated either way and I can provide you the support to curb the ensuing chaos that will come no matter your decision. If you want institutional recognition that you’re on our side, Twilight, then I can easily offer you that.”

“MSI,” Sunny Flare spoke up again, “is far from the only group he recruited towards this cause. Most of the dissident factions forced out onto the fringes of society, those in the same position as you, Twilight, stand at the ready. With our word, you’d have their acceptance. And if you want radical reform, this may be your only chance for a long time.”

“I’ve known this was coming for some time,” said Nailbat. “My supporters are already in position ready for the fight. Many of the most vital locations will be under my control within the first day. I have double agents who have infiltrated the ranks of the other three. I have plans in place to destroy both Starlight and Nightmare Moon. Nopony is better positioned to restore order than I am.”

Too many things were agonizing Dash’s head.

Nailbat really would be an incredible ally… but a pony like him would never really be a friend, would they?

They could get the support of a million groups of outcasts, easily unite all of them and give them the power to stand up to the SA… but would risk losing the approval of the average pony.

“This is a lot to spring on us out of nowhere,” said Dash. “Especially since you were just screwing around with our lives and stuff a minute ago.”

Nailbat slowly nodded without getting up.

“You can take time to think it over,” said Nailbat. “But I am the one who can give you the path to the future you want. And you won’t have long I’m afraid. There will be war presently.”

Nailbat jumped to his feet and put his hood back up before trotting off with Sunny Flare.

“I guess if we want to destroy the government, we know who to call now.” Dash sighed. “Yeesh. We need to get out of here…”

Dash started trotting off but only Twilight followed.

“I think I’m going to stay here just a little longer,” said Fluttershy. “With the other ghosts. I want to talk to them some more. But I’ll be fine. Really.”

Fluttershy had never gone out on her own like this before. Of course, it was also at a critical moment in history, so Dash wasn’t so sure how happy to be.

Perhaps simply because she was too weary to fight it, Dash nodded in approval.

Dash didn’t do such a good job at walking away. She collapsed on the ground just a few steps away from Nailbat’s camp. They brought her to one of Nailbat’s medics to recover. Twilight’s healing magic took time to work…

Dash was hardly speaking at the moment. She…

Twilight needed to go for a short walk. She wasn’t far from the camp when she saw two pegasi approaching her fast. Spitfire and Flash Bang.

She wasn’t too worried she could beat these two in a fight so she let them land nearby.

“I need to speak with you.” Flash Bang let the request linger before saying the next part. “Twilight.”

Twilight looked over to Spitfire. She knew how they knew now. Dash had explained what happened with Lightning Dush.

She moved a hindleg back, readying her stance just in case. Flash Bang surprised her by shaking her head and throwing the spear of Longinus aside.

“I don’t intend to start a fight with you,” said Flash. “Not before speaking with you, at least.”

Twilight was always taken off guard by how reasonable Flash Bang could be when it served her goals. But what was that goal?

At any rate, it seemed at least possible Flash Bang could overlook Twilight’s true identity.

“Do you know what happened between me and your…” Twilight wasn’t sure of the right word. “Flash Sentry?”

“I suppose not. I was always told Flash Sentry was a magnificent hero. But the truth doesn’t matter much at the moment, does it? Not when we have so many threats abounding. Nightmare Moon, Screwball… Starlight. We have many common enemies, believe it or not. Even if we are enemies, you’re far from a priority right now. But I do want to know what your intentions are.”

“My intentions?” Twilight repeated the question once again.

It’d been coming up a lot lately. Everypony seemed to want her on board with their plans, plans that far outstretched anything she’d originally intended. All she wanted from the beginning was to make everypony leave her alone. Everypony but Rainbow Dash, that was.

“I never planned out more than defeating the other witches,” said Twilight. “My order has been corrupted. I wanted to set things right there. But the government never concerned me.”

“And now because you’re worried about Rainbow Dash,” Flash Bang guessed.

Twilight nodded. That much was too obvious to deny.

“Your current course won’t accomplish that.” Flash Bang closed her eyes. “Say you go all the way and kill Screwball. What then? Do you think that will end this? My grandfather already killed Bloodstorm, the namesake of the cartel. And what good did that do? A single generation later, we’re back where we started.”

The thought of history being such a pernicious thing unnerved Twilight. She knew little of it enough already and it took little to make it more intimidating.

“Do you think you’ll be close to ridding the world of monsters that threaten your loved ones?” Flash asked. “Do you know how many horrors are frozen beneath the ice of the far reaches? Or what sleeps beneath the oceans? The king of the liches is still out there somewhere with the power to rival a master witch. The tarrasque can return at any moment to destroy another city. More darkness festers on the edge of reality, in the outer realm.”

Flash Bang put a hoof on her heart.

“Twilight, I could go on like this for days. Perhaps you can defeat every monster I’ve listed, but there will always be more. The pirate coast and these places of terror will endlessly produce danger. You’ll have to destroy each one without fail yet only one of them needs to get lucky… and eventually they will take Rainbow Dash from you.”

“But what you’re doing is no different at all!” Twilight objected. “You want to fight monsters and you’re telling me it’s hopeless?”

“Yes. I must contend with the same hopeless struggle as long as possible. Yet we differ in this one point. I have the will to conquer and expand.”

“No.” Twilight stood firm. “I’m not going to exterminate everypony you don’t–”

“That isn’t what I’m suggesting. No. This really isn’t that different from what you’ve done with Trixie.” Flash Bang shook her head. “I want to subjugate to reform. Bring the pirate coast under Equestria’s control. Under our control. These vile and wild places could be made civilized and no longer a threat. And with you on our side, the Equestrian empire could make the entire world safe at last.”

With Twilight? So it seemed all four of them had made twilight and offered to join them now. Yet somehow Flash Bang’s outstretched hoof seemed even more absurd than Starlight’s. But like Starlight, this pony did have a point. Twilight did want to reform Trixie and any others who would allow it.

“I’m assuming the ponies of the pirate coast don’t want to be under your rule,” said Twilight. She’d brought this very idea up once, long ago, and Rainbow Dash raised a similar objection. “How are you going to make them accept our authority?”

“It will take a long time, but you have the power to ensure it happens.”

“And then what? You’ll just keep on forcing everypony to submit to you?”

“Of course.” Flash Bang nodded, making no attempt to hide it. “From the Everfree to the far reaches. The zebras, the griffons, and lands beyond. Don’t you see? We have to expand to a truly global level. We need to create more powerful weapons and magic. We must develop our technology and armies until not even the gods can stand before us. Imagine a world where everypony could use mind fibers and the power of a witch was common!

“Do you not want a future where ponies no longer simper before the gods but can stand against them as equals? Where we have no need for the slavery Sunset offers you, nor the compromise of our very nature Starlight would have you swallow? Or do you have no vision for the future at all?”

A vision for the future?

Why should Twilight want such a thing? The only reason she went outside of her house in the first place was just to ensure she could be happy with Rainbow Dash, away from all of this, away from ponies who wanted to harass her.

Nailbat. Starlight. Sunset Shimmer. Flash Bang. All of them had their own visions. All of them had given Twilight their offers… but…

Did Twilight not have a vision anymore? She had more friends than just Rainbow Dash now. Maybe she couldn’t tell if a world ruled by a perfect god, or one where everypony could be a god was better. Or if they should destroy the system or expand it to a global empire.

One choice alone felt easy. There was only one thing Twilight knew she cared about.

“Listen.” Twilight shook her head. “I’m going to be frank here. I don’t really know anything about politics. I only care about my friends and I know you despise most of them. I don’t want you to have this kind of power. I don’t want you to hurt them.”

Flash Bang silently walked back to the spear and picked it up.

“It’s true. I recognize that ghosts, mad scientists, and the like are all dangerous. But let me ask you this: am I unique in this world? Or is the distrust of ghosts mainstream?”

Twilight swallowed, realizing maybe her goal was harder than she initially thought. Even pushing Flash Bang out of power wouldn’t end things. Not truly.

She nodded.

“There will be unrest.” Flash Bang pointed the spear off toward the unknown. “There will be years and decades of revolt against your attempt to force this change on ponies who don’t want it. Millions will resent your revolution, hate you, and become your enemies. Unless… you had somepony like me on your side. I’m the one who can steer the opinions of those who would oppose you.”

“What do you mean?” Twilight watched her suspiciously. “That you’re willing to turn your back on everything you’ve believed up until now to get me on your side?”

“For the sake of my vision, I am willing to compromise to an extent. I’ll work with you to pass just enough reform for you to be happy. But I won’t sell you a vision of mad revolution. These sorts of changes need to be slow and gradual. If you push the world too hard it will merely fall over.”

Twilight really wished Flash Bang didn’t make her an offer like that.

Would it be easier for Twilight to change the minds of ponies with Flash Bang or Nailbat by her side? How was she supposed to know?!

She trusted Nailbat more, a trust slim enough to begin with. But one part of his speech resonated with Twilight.

“Why should I be the one to decide all of this?” Twilight asked.

Flash Bang trotted to her side, looking off towards Nailbat’s camp. Fluttershy was still over there.

“Did he give you some speech about how the strong shouldn’t be the ones in charge?” Flash Bang asked. “Listen… Twilight. There really isn’t any other way. I understand if you don’t think it’s fair, but the simple fact is that certain ponies truly are vastly more powerful than normal. Political power stems from the power to enforce it. It doesn’t matter what laws you make if somepony as strong as Screwball, you , or me simply says ‘no’ and decides to do things their way instead. Whatever democracy you put in place simply won’t matter in the face of that.”

Twilight lowered her ears. She hadn’t thought of that either. She couldn’t even tell if all this proved Nailbat’s point.

“The Royal Era,” Flash Bang continued, “the time before the Slayer Association was created, was simply that. An era of super-powered warlords declaring themselves supreme authority over their own little fiefdoms. That’s why Equestria broke apart into smaller pieces. The royals could do little but disapprove of those with true power. The SA gathers all such ponies in one place to hold us all accountable to one another. And so far, it has worked. How will you do the same?”

Twilight bit her lip. She wasn’t ready for this. But it seemed like nopony cared.

“I… I’m not sure.”

“Then why would you upend a system that has worked for over a thousand years and risk throwing us back into utter chaos?”

“Look!” Twilight finally lost her cool, snapping at Flash Bang. “I didn’t agree to go along with Nailbat’s plan! I’m sure he has some answer to all that. I just… don’t know what it is?”

“That shouldn’t be good enough for you.”

Why did Twilight have to talk to Flash Bang? All this did was make her even more uncertain. She didn’t want to deal with any of this!

“This is my offer. Join me and together we can crush not only Nightmare Moon and Starlight… but we can conquer. We can take over the pirate coast and beyond. We can create a truly great empire that will at last quell the darkness that has consumed us. We don’t need to bow to any god.”

Flash Bang held out a hoof.

“Twilight, Flash Bang controls the army,” said Spitfire. “She has most of the S-rank ponies on her side. We have plans to deal with Starlight. We’re the ones with the power to end this conflict with the least amount of bloodshed. If you join us, this fight is already over.”

She couldn’t possibly take such an offer. Not from a pony like this! Was Twilight really so ignorant of politics that even a pony like this could make her second-guess herself?

She shouldn’t be the one to decide! That was the one thing Nailbat was absolutely right about. She had to… to talk to the others at first. At least.

“Look. I.” Twilight bit her lip. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do! Okay? I have to… to think.”

“Very well.” Flash Bang retracted her hoof. “But you won’t have much time to decide.”

Flash Bang left.

Twilight’s head buzzed as she trotted back toward where Rainbow Dash was resting. Or had been.

She smiled slightly when she saw Rainbow Dash was up and walking again, trotting towards her.

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight ran up to Dash, smiling wide. Dash could only force a weak smile in reply.

She’d made up her mind about one thing. Something that would make all of this better at least.

“What was that?” Dash asked.

“Flash Bang gave me more or less the same offer everypony else has,” said Twilight. “Everypony wants me on their side.”

Dash nodded weakly.

“Who do you think we should pick?” Twilight asked.

“We should probably talk to...” Rainbow Dash paused, thinking through who was even left. “Rarity before doing anything crazy. Let’s just go back home for now.”

Dash staggered to her feet, still reeling after the intense fight and the aftermath. She took two steps before Twilight ran up and grabbed Dash from behind, stopping her.

“Rainbow Dash! Wait!”

Dash stopped, surprised to find Twilight hugging her.

“I don’t know anything about the government or how the world should be. But thinking about this made me come to a decision. There’s one thing I’ve known from the start. I should have admitted it from the start but…” Twilight lifted her head and looked Dash in the eyes. “I want to be with you.”

Dash came to attention. She did smile just a little again!

“Twilight,” said Dash.

“That’s why…”

Twilight winced. She wasn’t sure why she was so nervous about this. It seemed like a pretty open and shut thing at this point.

She swallowed hard. She let go of Dash for one second. And she opened her eyes.

“Will you marry me?”

Witches 12: The Coven

Dash stared blankly into Twilight’s eyes. One of them misunderstood what Twilight just said. Hopefully both.

Already trembling and shaken by her failure today, Dash simply couldn’t deal with this. She couldn’t tell if her nausea was from her physical injuries, her disgust with herself, or from this latest challenge but her stomach barely held together.

Why now of all times? She covered her face with a hoof and stepped back.

“Rainbow Dash?” Twilight ran back in front of her with a more concerned expression.

“Twilight.” Dash put her hoof down. “You get we’re both girls, right?”

“No need to worry about that,” Twilight spoke in the matter-of-fact voice she’d only used for magic until recently. “I looked it up and they made it so you can marry another mare. It’s called a lesbian.”

“Twilight, you clearly don’t understand!”

“Hm? What don’t I understand about this?”

Too innocent.

Dash took a step back, face red and heart beating. Had she given Twilight the wrong idea? This had to be some kind of misunderstanding. Twilight misunderstood everything! So that was it.

“Like…”

There wasn’t any nuanced way to explain this to her, was there?

“You have sex with the pony you marry,” said Dash.

Twilight blinked once her twice, her expression brief but painfully unreadable. She took a deep breath. Then.

“Okay.” Twilight nodded.

Dash could only stare onward. That was a perfect checkmate. Dash felt as if there were no way to even respond to such an answer. She gapped, but only briefly.

“Okay? Twilight… You…?”

“If that’s what we have to do to get married and stay together forever, then okay.” Twilight regained her determination. “I had sex with Flash several times, actually, so I know all about that. Though… I’m not sure how it would work without a stallion. But it has to be possible for two mares to have sex because otherwise why would they legalize it? Hm.”

She certainly wasn’t smooth. Bringing up your ex at a time like this…

And Twilight sounded so nonchalant about it all! Did she have sexual feelings toward Dash all along? Was she okay doing it with a mare or was this more misunderstandings?

Did Dash want…?

She paused to question herself instead.

Dash had never once had those kinds of thoughts about Twilight! She certainly never expected anypony to be interested in her of all ponies.

She gave up on dating ages ago. Generally, Dash just assumed nopony would ever be interested in default. Because who would be? Especially Twilight! The most powerful mortal pony who could have literally anything and needed Dash for nothing.

Had there been any signs? Had she grown that oblivious?

“Listen. Twilight?” Dash inhaled. Even that much was painful. Why the crow couldn’t Twilight have asked such a thing sooner? Or later? Dash had never been good at this kind of emotional stuff. Especially not now! “What do you think getting married… means?”

“Marriage is a legal and cultural recognition of a union of two people as partners in a personal relationship. It confers various legal and personal obligations and rights to the parties involved,” Twilight recited a definition from who knows where. “And most importantly, it’s a vow of permanent love and a commitment to stay together for life!”

“Yes. But like… there’s different types of love, right?”

Twilight smiled and tilted her head.

“Do you feel exactly towards me the way you did towards Flash? When you were still together?”

“Of course not! That was just superficial. I was clinging onto him because he was the first pony to ever even pretend to be interested in me. But you?” Twilight moved closer. “Rainbow Dash, I don’t know what’s going to happen to the world or what the right path to take is. But everything that’s happened to me since we met, it made me realize something. That you’re what really matters to me. More than anything else… I care about you.”

The most important thing was…?

Something clamped down on Dash’s heart. Something about that statement just felt too wrong!

Without even thinking about it, Dash took a step back and shook her head. No, no, no. Dash wasn’t…

“Dash.” Twilight stepped forward to meet her, more concerned than scorned. “Don’t you want somepony who will never leave you no matter what?”

Of course! But! But!

Dash couldn’t be what mattered to Twilight. She was–

Twilight was only latching on to Dash obsessively because she was the first one to be kind to her. No way in a million years Twilight would have chosen Dash if she came into Ponyville on her own. Wouldn’t have given her a second look.

There was no way Twilight could genuinely care about Dash… not without Dash taking advantage of her…

And she was, wasn’t she?! Dash wasn’t different from Flash! It was the exact same thing. Twilight was so powerful, and Dash was so–

Twilight had done so much, and Dash hadn’t done a damn thing for Twilight. Or anypony! She hadn’t been the one to defeat even a single opponent. All of it had been a lie! It wasn’t okay for Dash to just constantly take and never give anything in return!

She didn’t deserve any of this! She was nopony. She couldn’t fight or do anything. She was–

Never in Dash’s life had anything ever worked out! She got confident for one minute that things might be going differently but it was all hanging on the edge of a razor. This could all get so fucked up so fast. Everything could end up so much worse than before Dash stirred the pot. It’d be her biggest screwup ever. Even Twilight.

She totally set Twilight up for more pain, didn’t she?

Why the hell had Dash done any of this? She should have just… set Twilight free or something!

And…

“Dash? Are you okay?”

Crow! She had a tear in her eye now. She was trembling too much. At this point she wished she would just puke already. It’d be a relief! Dash opened her mouth slightly to talk but…

And…

Well, Dash just wasn’t into girls! That was it.

“Didn’t anypony ever tell you about like… like barn doors?” Dash lifted her head. “You know. Some barn doors slide side to side and others are double doors? Or something.”

“What’s a barn?” Twilight asked, completely innocent.

Dash cringed in pain both physical and mental. How was this getting more difficult?!

“It’s like… some ponies just don’t want to marry another pony of the same gender. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Because you’re just born that way.”

Twilight blinked absently.

“Twilight, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. I’m just… well I’m like the barn with one door. Maybe you’re like the one with double doors and that’s also okay. But uh! I just don’t want to marry another girl no matter how much I like her.”

Dash swallowed some pain and sniffled.

But that didn’t deter Twilight for one second.

“Well if that’s the case then I have a plan for that, too! I have transformation spells, remember? I’ll just turn myself into a stallion and then we’ll get um, normal married.”

“Twilight.”

“If it’s the only way, it’ll be worth it. Oh. Or did you want to be the stallion?”

“Twilight.”

“We could both be stallions. But can two boys get married? I only checked to make sure two girls could, so–”

“Twilight! Listen to me!”

Dash put her hooves on Twilight’s shoulders. For the first time, it seemed Twilight was listening.

But what was she supposed to do? Start bawling about how worthless she felt? That she was taking advantage of Twilight…?

What was she supposed to do? Start bawling about how useless she was?!

Nopony cared about you when you were weak. Dash knew that from experience. The only time anypony cared about her was just now… when they thought she was successful.

Dash couldn’t! She couldn’t be like that in front of Twilight! She…

She hesitated long enough for Twilight’s smile to begin to falter.

“You… don’t want to spend your life with me?” Twilight took a step back.

Dash couldn’t bear that look on her face

“No!” Dash ran after her desperately. “Twilight, you don’t understand! You are my friend! I… I do care about you a whole lot and… and I want to stay with you. But…”

“But what? Do you want to be with me forever or not?”

“Twilight! Look –!” Dash winced, then it began to come pouring out. “Do you honestly think you’d care about me if I hadn’t been the only pony in your life? Aren’t you worried that this is just the same as it was with Flash? And…”

She was about to say more but the look of horror on Twilight’s face made Dash realize she made a terrible mistake.

“No! It’s completely different than it was with Flash!” Twilight snapped to anger a little too fast. “How dare you say that?!”

“It’s not like that!”

Twilight’s patience was growing thin. She’d been too damn nice this whole time.

“I just… I just want to make sure that you’re not stupidly going along with whatever I say because you don’t know any better. Twilight, I’m not– I–”

There was more, it was just… so hard to force herself to say it.

“You want me to prove to you that I’m not just ‘stupidly’ fawning over you? Fine! I’ll solve this on my own. Then you’ll see that this isn’t what you think it is!”

She should have known Twilight would be more sensitive about this sort of thing.

“It’s not that! I just need more time to… to think about…”

“About if you actually care about me or not?” Twilight looked back.

Well yeah. That and…

“Yeah.”

Twilight teleported off.

“Ah, crow!” Dash’s pain went away at a very convenient time. Like all her injuries vanished. Now she could only feel her heart pounded.

She had to!

Had to find somepony! Dash couldn’t possibly deal with this on her own!

All the pieces were in place.

Screwball’s fleet was merely a hundred miles offshore. She couldn’t move them forward without serious casualties. Not yet. But once the elite four all began attacking one another, Screwball could swiftly bring her armada to the coast of the Everfree.

Then the ‘liberation’ of the Everfree and Festering Scar could begin. Not only would she kill her sister, but she’d take these lands under her control in the ensuing chaos! It wouldn’t be long until the Bloodstorm Cartel controlled even more land than her father had.

Daddy would be so proud if only he were here!

With a hum, Screwball landed on her flagship. A hulking, black ironclad with three billowing smokestacks. The enormous canons on deck were arguably the most powerful in the world, save one waiting back on Paradise Island. These were fearsome enough to force even a witch to approach carefully.

And yet the inside was cozy enough. At least Screwball’s chamber was built to look as though this were a wooden ship from the golden age of pirates.

“Well my albino parrot got loose,” said Screwball. “But other than that it was a massive success!”

Screwball sat down on her ship’s throne. Two pegasi from her harem, a stallion named Feather Bangs and a mare name Feather Dust, came to lean against either side of her.

“It won’t be long until my sister shows up to attack our fleet.” Screwball smirked in Pinkie’s direction. “And then the trap will be set.”

Pinkie sat tied in one of Screwball’s massive hourglasses, a psychic-suppression helmet affixed to her head. The sand had already reached her neck. A rope held the hourglass suspended over one of the few remaining Z-gate portals.

Before Minuette had her stroke, she did Screwball one favor. Her flagship here was outfitted with one of those Z-gates leading back to Paradise Island. She could easily return at any moment. The plan was for the chase to lead back there where the ultimate trap would be waiting.

“Hey. Are you sure you timed this hourglass right?” Pinkie asked. “I feel like it’s getting up to my neck a little too fast. Usually, when I’m in this situation, they set it up so that I get to this point just as somepony comes to rescue me. I wasn’t expecting such an amateurish setup from you.”

That was odd. Normally Screwball did set it up just like Pinkie said.

“Hm. She’s right. Stop the timer for now.” Screwball put up her hoof and it was done. “Who picked out this hourglass?”

Screwball turned to one of her bat ponies who grew concerned immediately.

“I set it up to the exact time you started! They really should have arrived by now.”

“That is true.” Screwball looked away, bringing him relief. “Where the crow are they, huh? I thought they’d come straight to the armada. I had all this stuff set up to separate them and get my sister through the portal just as the fighting started and…”

That same bat pony slowly raised a hoof. Screwball glanced back at them and they quickly lowered it again.

“Actually. It doesn’t look like they’re making any moves against us at all. They’re just fortifying their base. It’s as if they have no idea we’re even out here.”

Really? Screwball waited for a few beats, wondering how such a thing was possible. She made it explicitly clear that…

“Oh! Fuck!” She covered her face with both hooves and fell backward into her throne.

“What is it?” Feather Bang rushed to check on her.

“The parrot,” Screwball whined. “My albino parrot was supposed to tell them my fleet was here. And I don’t even know what happened to him.”

“Aw, we’ll find you another albino parrot. I have no idea how rare they are but–”

“That’s not the point, you sexy idiot.” Screwball sat back up. “Now I gotta improvise.”

Screwball tapped her head a few times before an idea began to form. She could just send somepony to tell them but the timing was all off. She had no idea who noticed the fleet by now.

She’d have to precipitate the fighting before luring Silverstorm out here. Get the elite four to fight. Demolish Equestria’s battleships and then…

She licked her lips.

Half of being smart wasn’t about being smart at all. It was just about getting everypony else to be dumber than you. Equestria was already on the brink of chaos. Silverstorm was already on the seventh. Just a tiny push to the eight. A tiny push to blow everything sky high.

And Screwball would be the biggest winner from the ensuing storm.

“Everypony stand ready,” said Screwball. “The invasion will begin within twenty-four hours!”

Sweetie Belle’s eyes flickered, and her vision shifted to a stray Sweetiebot out in the forest. Before her were the mercenaries Oaken Field sent, still at their camp just south of the capital. They were arguing more than they were preparing for battle.

They were worried enough to start arguing whether or not they should just give up on fighting and run away. The ponies had little confidence in winning against any serious enemy but couldn’t think of any safer place to flee to.

It sounded like word that Twilight was… Twilight had gotten out. And they couldn’t make up their minds about whether that was a good thing or not.

“If she’s a master witch and she’s on our side then we’re invincible. We have nothing to worry about as long as we stay put.”

“Yeah, I bet that’s what Manehattan thought. Look what happened with Toxco. A witch always has some self-serving motive and won’t hesitate to exterminate weaklings like us.”

“She certainly acts differently from the other witches! And if my only hope is that she’s sincere then that’s what I’m taking. There’s no way we survive if we leave this spot.”

And some of the ponies did resolve to fight.

But some of the ponies started sneaking off into the woods…

Sweetie Belle returned to her main body.

“Well?” Applebloom leaned over her shoulder.

There were more foals behind her. Sweetie Belle had no idea where these ponies came from. Then ten younger ones were surrounding the two adults they sent to babysit them all. But there were a couple of older ponies who gravitated to the three mainstays of the castle.

The rest of the fillies here didn’t look like they’d be much use when the chips hit the fan. Sometimes Sweetie forgot ponies her age weren’t always super-beings. All of them, even Applebloom, were looking to Sweetie Belle now for information.

“Um! Well they seem to agree that we’re in the safest spot!” Sweetie Belle announced to the other foals.

One colt desperate for optimism ate that lineup. The others found little comfort in it.

They kept asking questions. Constantly. Non-stop. But it wasn’t so bad because it gave them something to do.

Everypony just suddenly decided it was okay to not care about Twilight’s identity being secret anymore. At least Sweetie Belle and Applebloom were completely open about it now. More than anything else, they assured the other foals that Twilight was a good pony who was on their side and would protect them.

Not that they were easily convinced despite desperately wanting to be.

“Hey, what did they really say?” Applebloom whispered to her in the eye of the question storm.

Sweetie Belle whispered to Applebloom everything she saw down there.

Applebloom nodded, the news going off her back like water off a duck’s.

“Go back to Rarity,” said Applebloom.

With nothing better to do, she did.

Rarity really didn’t want Sweetie spying on everypony like this, flicking to every vantage point. But her sister was simply too busy to stop her, so it was what it was.

One thing Sweetie Belle learned in her espionage was where all these foals came from. And that it looked like they were about to get some more.

A long tail of ponies was flooding in, and a literal line had formed, to swear their loyalty to Rarity or Twilight in exchange for protection. There were just so many and Rarity agonized over which ones to let join them. Blue Blood and Fancy Pants were the two ponies by her side as she sat in her chair, rubbing a hoof against her head.

“I say we should let anypony who brings a gun to stay and fight for us,” said Blueblood.

“Don’t be so gullible,” Rarity warned. “I’m certain that at least some of these ponies are working for the Bloodstorm Cartel. Or worse. I’ll take in any foals but… the rest will have to keep out of the castle itself until we can vet them all. Maybe we could form all of them into a militia camp.”

The latest pony in consideration was a hulking stallion with rough fur and teeth that nearly fangs themselves. He wore the furs

“Rarity, I believe my past actions will disqualify me from such suspicions,” he said. “Some werewolves see the Cartel as a means to freedom, but my people have been fighting them for generations now. If you seek to rid us of such scum, then we will fight passionately for you until this war is over. I care not if you have a witch on your side.”

Flicking through the castle, Sweetie Belle saw he brought a significant number of werewolves with him. Easily a thousand. Though she was bad at estimating that sort of thing.

“Swift Claw has been at odds with the Cartel for a long time,” Blueblood whispered to Rarity.

Rarity nodded.

“Very well. I need to trust somepony right now. I accept your pledge of loyalty.”

Sweetie Belle went back.

“It looks like some more werewolves just showed up. A lot,” Sweetie Belle announced. “Do you know a uh… Swift Claw.”

“Not all werewolves know each other.” Applebloom rolled her eyes at the idea. “But yeah, Swift Claw is my ninth cousin twice removed.”

It didn’t seem to matter to Applebloom if the news was good or bad. And the information never seemed to make her feel any better. She just needed news.

“Um.” Sweetie Belle decided to tell her something she noticed but didn’t want to say until she was completely certain. “I can’t find your sister anywhere.”

“Oh.”

That look as if she just stepped in something, was feeling her hoof sink deeper and deeper as she stared forward at an oncoming train.

“I’m sure she’s fine.” Applebloom shifted her eyes. “Is Twilight back yet?”

“Applebloom! What’s going on?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Nothing. Other than war and stuff.”

“Applebloom! I’m telling you everything I know.” Sweetie Belle marched forward to be muzzle-to-muzzle with Applebloom.

“I uh. She’s. You know. On a mission.”

Sweetie Belle didn’t flinch.

“From the Darklord.”

Sweetie Belle kept her glare up.

“She’s gonna free the element of honesty and then things will be peaches! Or apples. Maybe even both.”

“I don’t know what that means but isn’t that something you should be telling somepony?!”

“Tell who? What are you gonna do with that information, huh?”

“I! Okay, that’s a fair point.” Sweetie Belle finally relented. She just wished Applebloom wasn’t all smug like she’d won that one.

The other foals her age was upon her again soon as Sweetie Belle turned back.

“How far away can you look?”

“Can you see if my brother is here?”

“Did a group of ponies with like… green hats show up?”

Sweetie Belle was getting a bit overwhelmed by playing news anchor. She had to find some tidbit to feed these piranhas. Partially for her own sake as well.

She flipped through several Sweetiebots before…

“Rainbow Dash is back!” Sweetie Belle announced.

“Rainbow Dash?” Scootaloo sat upright for the first time in a day or so.

She hadn’t been far off but also hadn’t been commenting much. Ever since she’d given that parasite a name, she appeared a bit ill. Said she was tired and had trouble focusing.

“And Twilight is with her?” Applebloom asked.

Then everypony held their breath waiting for Sweetie Belle’s answer. She had to flit about to get an answer herself.

“I don’t… see her.”

Disappointment everywhere.

“But I’m sure she’s doing something important!”

“Those two are never apart,” said Scootaloo. “So Twilight will be here soon.”

Dash certainly looked… frazzled and in a hurry for something. The sight of an army forming outside their home didn’t help much. It wasn’t long until Sweetie Belle learned what Dash was looking for.

Scootaloo. She was in a big hurry too, rushing down to their room in a matter of minutes. But she did stop just before the door to compose herself and straighten out her hair before coming in. It was never a good sign when adults were trying to act like everything was fine.

Dash opened the door and looked briefly surprised at the number of ponies now present before going straight over to Scootaloo.

“Hey, Scootaloo! You’re awake.” Dash sat down next to her on the couch. “Have you been up for long?”

“I feel a lot better now!” Scootaloo looked more awake than she had been. “I gotta lie down a bit still but I’m not passing out every few minutes.

“Well, at least somepony’s doing okay.” Dash sighed.

“What does that mean?” Scootaloo looked up at her with big eyes. “Did something happen?”

“Er! Nothing! Lots of ponies are doing okay. We’ll get through this, I promise. But uh.”

Dash frowned at all the other fillies and colts before taking Scootaloo aside with a wing to whisper to her. Sweetie Belle doubted any but her heard the next part.

“I hate to ask but this is kind of urgent. How hard is it to have somepony redo a conversation again?” Dash asked without making eye contact.

“That depends on like, whether I’m there when it happens. But um…”

Scootaloo shifted her hooves.

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Dash snapped out of whatever nervous funk she was in to feel Scootaloo’s forehead. “If anything is off you can tell me. I know you just went through something crazy. Do I have to find Twilight right away?”

“You don’t know where she is?” Sweetie Belle’s voice squeaked.

“Of course I do! But… how do you feel?”

“I feel a lot less tired than before,” said Scootaloo. “I’m just not sure if my powers are like… the same anymore? I’ve been trying to do a couple of things but… I’m not sure what still works?”

“I’m really sorry!” Scootaloo bowed her head. “My old powers would have been really useful right about now. But…”

“Don’t feel bad about that!” Dash hugged her. “I’m sure you can do something just as amazing as before! I guess it makes sense this would happen. I mean all these other parasite things have hyper-specific abilities, right? So giving your thing a name probably did something similar, I’d bet.”

“Maybe!” Scootaloo spread her wings out. “But I don’t know if I can use alicorn magic at all right now! I don’t want to be useless now of all times.”

“Don’t say that. This isn’t your responsibility, okay? We were never going to make a bunch of foals fight in a war. You let the adults like me sort things out and then everything will be uh…”

Dash drew a blank.

“Peaches and apples?” Applebloom offered.

“Yeah. That.”

“And how are you going to do that?!”

Everypony turned to the unfamiliar voice. One of the colts was pointing at her accusingly.

“My dad was saying you’re a total fraud! That you’re just a loser who can’t fight at all. You can’t fight off anypony, can you?”

And that got to Rainbow Dash. She cringed and froze up in place. Only Scootaloo’s worried look got her to break out of it.

“Uh! Well, who the crow is your dad?!” Dash turned aggressive quickly, jabbing the colt in the chest with a hoof. “Nerd!”

“Uh…” The colt lowered his hoof and backed off immediately.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

Dash inhaled deep and turned to the foals.

“Listen up! If I’m a fraud, then I’m the most successful fraud who ever lived, yeah? Did your Dad fraud his way to defeating two witches?”

The colt, his courage gone completely, merely shook his head.

“Exactly! I frauded my way this far and I’ll fraud my way out of this too! We’re going to crush Screwball, her stupid cartel, and Starlight and every last pony who poses a threat to you and the rest of my friends!”

Save maybe one embarrassed colt, the spirits of the room lifted ever so slightly then.

Suddenly, Sweetie Belle felt a little less nervous. Dash could definitely do this!

Rainbow Dash hurled into a toilet. At least she managed that much. It was the most satisfying puke she’d ever had. At least she could still intimidate small children.

“There’s no way I can do this. Now without…”

Okay! Her relationship with Twilight was important, right? Dash would just… talk to somepony with more life experience and find out what to say to salvage all this.

Fluttershy was busy. Pinkie needed to be rescued… who was left? Rarity.

She was so busy but dammit there was nopony else!

Though there was a literal line to see that pony right now, Dash had no choice but to push through it all on her way to what may as well have been a throne room at this point. She found Rarity deliberating about who to let in and who to turn away with two other white ponies, names Dash couldn’t bother with at the moment.

Dash flew right up to them.

“Rainbow Dash.” Rarity could only spare half a glance with how busy she was. “We have many, many situations to worry about! I’ve heard unconfirmed rumors the Bloodstorm Cartel’s main armada isn’t far off the east coast. Ghost Adder has an army of some two thousand strong just south of us. Starlight has assembled an air fleet that’s a little too close to us as well. The general army is being mobilized but it’s hard to say who they’ll be taking orders from come tomorrow. And then–”

“Rarity… I know now’s not a good time, but I have a bit of a problem.”

“Yes, I heard about Pinkie,” said Rarity. “But we can take solace in this much: it would be highly unlikely Screwball will actually hurt her without trying to extract something from us first. She won’t be in any real danger until we at least hear her terms… which I’m surprised we haven’t already. If you can get there fast enough, you should check that rumor I mentioned.”

“I’m not talking about Pinkie! It’s about Twilight,” said Dash.

“Yes. Everypony very clearly knows her true identity now,” said Rarity. “Seems to be a bit of a double-edged sword. Ponies want our protection but we have some new enemies now. Somepony will be attacking us in the next day or two.”

“Not that!”

“Did she get hurt?” Rarity gave Rainbow Dash a full glance for that. “Where is Twilight?”

“No! She… She asked me to marry her.”

Annoyed, Rarity rolled her eyes and went back to work.

“Well that’s wonderful,” said Rarity. “But unless it’s going to be brief, we’ll have to postpone this ceremony for some months.”

“Rarity! We’re not getting married! I think. Guh!”

“Please don’t tell me you said something stupid.”

“I didn’t!” Dash flared her wings out, then dropped them immediately. “I think. I just said I need to process this information. I mean, I’m not crazy, right? Twilight’s just being overly sensitive. And this is a bad time to be talking about all this, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is an absolutely horrible time. I am preparing for the possibility of multiple armies attacking us right now.”

Rarity kept stern eye contact with Rainbow Dash throughout that entire statement. They maintained it for a

short, but uncomfortable, period afterward.

“Okay. I get it.” Dash was the one to avert her gaze. “But it’s not completely unimportant, is it? Twilight is supposed to be our ace. If she gets all over-reacty on us–”

“I am positive Twilight isn’t going to abandon any of us. Least of all you.” Rarity put a hoof on her forehead. “Rainbow Dash, I think you should find Twilight and tell her that you love her and aren’t going to leave her, but that you need time to think about the exact nature of your relationship.”

That would have been a good idea. Why was Dash so bad at this kind of thing?!

“Yeah… if I see her that’s what I’ll say. Thanks.”

Dash trotted off in defeat. Rarity was briefly torn between her and preparations for war. But comforting Dash had to come second right now. Dash could hardly disagree.

So that was also a bust! Somehow even a bigger one.

Dammit! Why was Dash more worried about her stupid feelings than the threat of looming death? Everything was falling apart in the nation and Dash’s main concern was maybe Twilight was angry at her.

Did Dash feel that way about her? She felt like she was going crazy.

“Why couldn’t she just give me two days?!” Dash yelled at nopony in particular. “What did I do wrong?”

More than anything, Dash just wished she had somepony to talk to about this. Somepony not important enough that Dash would just be wasting their time. But also somepony who knew anything about her. Where the heck was that Applejack pony?

One familiar face passed her by swiftly, in a slight canter.

“Derpy!” Dash grabbed Derpy and pulled her aside. “You’re perfect!”

“I am?” Her face lit up in elation. “Wow! Thanks, Rainbow Dash!”

“I mean, you’re the only one I know who’s in a relationship. Tell me! If Soarin was suddenly turned into a girl, would you still marry him?”

“Uh! Um… oh wait. Did Twilight get turned into a dude? And like, you’re so gay you don’t love her anymore?!” Derpy gasped.

“Derpy I’m not gay.”

That only made her gasp louder.

“What made you think I was gay?” Dash asked. “Remember how desperate I was to get with Soarin until you started dating him?”

“I thought that was just you being a crazy maniac desperately trying to get attention no matter how stupid you had to be,” said Derpy. “You know. Like normal.”

“Well.” Dash let go of her. “Yeah, I guess that checks out.”

“But if you’re not gay why were you dating her?”

“I wasn’t… I mean I didn’t think–!”

Had Dash been giving everypony the wrong impression the whole time? Had she been giving… Twilight the wrong impression?

She swallowed hard.

“What exactly happened?” Derpy asked.

“Twilight asked me to marry her and I wasn’t sure how to respond and stuff. To me, it’s like this came out of nowhere.”

“And she turned herself into a guy to propose?” Derpy asked.

“No! Well she offered to do that if it’d make me comfortable. But I just said I needed time to think… and… maybe some other stuff. But mostly just that first part!”

“Okay. So like.” Derpy looked at the ceiling. “You’re not into that sort of thing but Twilight is? Is that the problem?”

“Yeah!” Dash nodded, relieved somebody finally got it.

“Are you sure that’s all that’s going on?” Derpy asked. “I mean… if she really can turn herself into a stallion is the answer still no? Because you two seem good together and if that’s the only problem then I say give it a try.”

“That’s not the only problem!” Dash flared her wings out.

“It’s not? Then what is?”

Dash blushed. She felt that sensation of her heart stopping again. She… She just couldn’t!

“I mean. Okay. It’s the only problem.” Dash lowered her head.

Derpy hummed, head tilted.

“Then I say you should go on a date with um… him? I am like so sure this would work out! If he’s willing to be a dude for you then this is worth a shot. Do you think he needs a new name, though? Maybe we can call him Dusk?”

“Derpy, you’re getting way ahead of yourself.”

“Well alright. How do you feel about Twilight, then?”

“I honestly never thought of her like… well like that. I’m not sure how some gender swap spell would affect things. But at the same time I do…” Dash felt like even this much was a struggle, “love… her in a way that I don’t think I ever felt before. Like with Soarin I had a crush on him, yeah. But with Twilight I do feel like I want to spend all of my time with her. And that I can be more myself around her than with anypony else but… I don’t think I wanna bang her.”

That’s really what Dash should have said back then, wasn’t it? Why did she always think of better ways to say things after the fact?!

“That sounds really weird, doesn’t it?” Dash asked the ceiling more than Derpy.

Derpy hummed to herself for a moment before answering. At least she didn’t shout ‘cringe’.

“Well you know. One time I read this book that talked about this kind of stuff. And the book said that sexual and romantic attractions are like… different things. You know? And there are all kinds of different relationships that we can’t even imagine. Like demisexuals.”

“What’s a demisexual?” Dash blinked, suddenly wondering if that’s what she was. “Are you saying I’m… whatever that is?”

“I don’t remember what a demisexual is. But um… back in… well I don’t remember when but in North Equestria for a long time some ponies would marry somepony of the same gender, but it wasn’t like a gay thing. It was just a romantic thing, you know? Yeah! It was aromantic, asexual. No, that wasn’t it.”

That was an interesting way to look at things. Dash had the privilege of never making such distinctions until now.

“And what did that book say I should do?” Dash asked.

“I dunno! I didn’t read the whole thing. It was kind of boring… but it had a good point on this one thing. I was just wondering if that sounded right to you. Like you’re romantically but not physically attracted to her?”

“I think.” Dash nodded. She did feel herself perking up ever so slightly. Maybe things did make some kind of sense. “Maybe. Yeah. But then what do I do?”

“Well. I’d go on a date with Dusk Shine.” Derpy shrugged. “Either that or you tell Twilight that you’re only into her in like a… well we’ll have to find that book and look it up. But yeah, you can totally have an.”

Derpy paused like she was trying to get the words to a song right.

“A (space) romantic but asexual (no space) marriage? Thing. I can tell she loves you so…”

No!

Dash felt herself lock up again at the thought. She couldn’t just let Twilight…

Derpy’s smile faded as she saw that reaction.

“See there it is again.” Derpy pointed at her.

“What is again?”

“That look when I talk about you two getting married. There is something else!” Derpy stepped closer. “Tell me!”

“No!”

“Well at least tell Twilight. She deserves to know, doesn’t she?”

“Look! There’s nothing else going on.” Dash backed up. “I’ll tell Twilight about the… demisexual… whatevers. Okay? And that’s that! I just need to be alone to think about this for a minute.”

Dash started walking off again.

“Wait! Dash you shouldn’t be alone right now!” Derpy ran after her.

‘Yeah, but I need to!” Dash yelled back at her.

Maybe even deserved to.

Derpy tried to stop her but Dash broke up into crows and flew off in every direction. No way Derpy could chase after that.

The crow that turned back was the one who got to the portal room. There was only one place Dash could go right now without being bothered.

Twilight wasn’t entirely sure where she was. Somewhere in the Everfree forest. Somewhere high up. Somewhere away.

She trotted about in small circles as the sun began to come up, slowly painting the forest red. Her mind bounced between so many scattered points. She tried to steady herself and focus on something easy. Something that shouldn’t have been easy but seemed that way now.

Pinkie Pie, Pinkie Pie…

Twilight needed to go save Pinkie Pie.

Why?

Twilight bit her lip and winced.

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” Twilight whispered to herself. “I just need to…”

This was something Twilight could do. Apparently, that was all she was good for…

She was done playing around now. Twilight would circle out from this spot until she found Screwball. The pirate witch had to be somewhere not too far off, Twilight Imagined. And then Twilight would destroy her. Completely. She wouldn’t hold back this time. To the point nopony would dare attempt this again no matter how much money was offered.

Twilight nodded and took a firm step forward but didn’t make it any further than that before doubt gripped her again.

No. She’d just rescued another one of her friends. Was the world truly that frustrating? Somepony killed Bloodstorm and another pirate lord showed up. Twilight saved Derpy and another friend gets targeted.

Twilight retracted that one confident step.

“What am I trying to do?”

There would always be somepony else, wouldn’t there? How could Twilight ever solve a problem? What even was her problem? She hadn’t cared about the world before so why now?

Twilight could just… leave. She could find some way to escape. Her original problem had only been the world catching up with her but… now she wondered if that would be a bad thing in the end.

To become nopony of note. To not be powerful. To not have anypony expecting her to know the answers to unheard riddles.

It seemed so strange that she could even think in such terms now. That something other than power could matter. Why had that idea of having a peer been so terrifying to her back then? Wouldn’t it be freedom in a way?

Of course, it was Rainbow Dash she learned that from…

Twilight took one step instead towards the river she hadn’t known was named after her until recently. One step back towards home.

But. No.

Twilight rejected that step as well.

She couldn’t go back to how she used to be. She was no longer blind and couldn’t unsee the things she’d seen. That wasn’t her home anymore. There was no blissful ignorance to be found sitting by the river.

Where was her home, then?

Loathe though she was, Twilight would have to decide.

Twilight had seen so much more in the past year than she had in the centuries before. That was true. But perhaps she’d seen too much. She had too many viewpoints now and no way to know which was right.

She had four answers given to her. But which was the truth?

To have a peer would be to have freedom. That thought echoed in her mind once more and Twilight knew the right answer. Of the four solutions presented only one would truly solve the problem.

Twilight knew who she would ally with in this battle.

She didn’t bother with a first step this time, instead opening a portal to travel far off.

It wasn’t too hard to figure out where she was. Sunset had holed up in a military base not too far from the Everfree, from the main action.

Twilight teleported inside. A few ponies noticed her as she zipped about the facility, but they weren’t fast enough to do anything about it.

Before long, she found herself in a room with a huge table, maps covering both it and the walls, all marked up with pins, markers and figures.

Sunset and Moonlight stood side by side, huddled together over the maps. Trixie was there too, but they put her off in the corner.

Sunset and Moonlight turned to Twilight in a panic, ready for a fight just in case Twilight had decided to side against them.

“Sunset Shimmer!” Twilight declared. “I’ve decided that you’re right and everypony else is wrong, so I’m siding with you.”

They kept staring for a

minute afterward, their postures not entirely relaxed.

It was long enough that one of the soldiers in the base came to warn Sunset of an intruder only for Sunset to dismiss him and finally address Twilight.

“You… you did?” Sunset asked.

Moonlight Raven gave her a small rap before Sunset Shimmer could gawk too much.

“I mean, of course you did!” Sunset regained much of her confidence. “I was preparing for outright war. But.”

Sunset Shimmer looked at a map she had posted up on the wall. Twilight didn’t know what all the markings, consisting of little triangles and x’s inside of squares, meant. But she could assume the different colors meant different factions, Sunset’s likely in orange. There were at least five different colors.

“With your help, we can summon Golden Feather… potentially tonight.” Sunset nodded at her map. “It will be the only way to end this conflict without bloodshed. We’ll save countless lives, Twilight. And not just by avoiding a war.”

Desperate for any kind of reassurance, Twilight nodded firmly. True that wasn’t what she’d considered in making this decision, but it was a good point.

Trixie alone watched skeptically.

“What made you change your mind on this?” Trixie asked.

“I think my conversation with Flash Bang.” Twilight shook her head. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. “She brought up a good point. In a world like this, the strongest pony will always take control. And Nailbat taught me that this isn’t always a good thing. The only solution to all this is an immortal, perfect ruler.

“What? Like you?” Trixie asked.

“Not like me, no.” Twilight all but snarled at Trixie. She had no patience for anything right now, let alone snark. “I don’t want any part of this political nonsense. I don’t know anything about the ruling and I’m not willing to learn. I just want all of this to go away!”

Twilight took a deep breath to compose herself.

“So… let’s make it go away.” Twilight smiled.

The other three grew quiet, that part somehow giving them all pause.

“Well I won’t complain.” Raven turned to Sunset. “My goal is to fulfill my mission.”

“I agree we can’t turn something like this down,” said Sunset.

“But where’s the Rainbow Dash?” Trixie asked. “I’ve literally never seen the two of you apart.”

What was with Trixie today? After all Twilight did for her. Couldn’t she just shut up?!

“I’m making this decision on my own,” Twilight turned her nose up. “But Rainbow Dash will be fine. We’ll talk about things… ‘later’.”

“Ooo. Trouble in paradise?” Trixie leaned forward. “Now’s not really a good time for you to be having your little relationship problems, is it?”

“I know.”

“Mm. What actually happened?” Trixie asked, with a little smile.

“Trixie. Can you just shut up?” Twilight tilted her head. “I think you owe me that much.”

Despite everything, Trixie did look Twilight dead in the eyes, standing firm and more seriously than she normally did.

“Listen, Twilight.” Trixie spread her forelegs to show off her containment unit, the armor binding her, and the leash. “Being forced to live out somepony else’s bondage fetish let me think long enough to realize something. Half my problems in life just came from me being stupid and doing things on an emotional high. I got so used to doing things out of spite and fear that it just became a reflex. Going to jail was the best thing that ever happened to me because… I can’t do that anymore. You get what I’m saying?”

“No.” Twilight snorted.

“I’m saying don’t do something just because you’re angry! You don’t want to be like me, and you know it.”

“Yes, that’s great advice.” Sunset pushed her aside. “Even from you. But we don’t exactly have a lot of time to deliberate. My agents are saying a civil war is imminent. Not just the elite four, but all kinds of forces are just waiting for somepony to pull the trigger.”

“Yeah…” Twilight kept her eyes on Trixie for a moment longer before turning back to Sunset.

“I know you’re in a precarious position,” said Sunset. “Maybe it’s not fair but you will have to make a decision soon. If you’re serious about this, we need to act immediately. But there won’t be any going back. So are you completely certain?”

She did feel a little calmer now. It wasn’t entirely an emotional decision. Twilight had to make a choice fast. And this really did seem the best one available to her.

So…

“You’re certain that Golden Feather’s reign would be better than what we have now?” Twilight asked.

“She is like the sun itself.” Raven closed her eyes with a reverence Twilight had only ever seen toward Starlight. “She is the light of friendship and wisdom incarnate. If she’s even half the pony she used to be there is no doubt in my mind that with her, taking control of the situation and bringing Equestria back to what it was would be effortless.”

That was all the reassurance she was likely to get.

“Then I’m certain,” said Twilight. “If I have to choose a path. This is it.”

“Good,” said Sunset Shimmer. “Do you know that Nailbat is the last of the Nocliesecent family?”

Twilight nodded again.

“Then you understand why we have to kill him,” said Sunset. “His family needs to be wiped out completely for the last of the two seals to break. With you on our side, that part should be easy.”

“Wait, wait! I’m trying to not kill other ponies here!” Twilight objected. “Is there no other way?”

“He won’t die for real,” Moonlight reminded her. “His family was ‘blessed’ by my queen’s sister, Star Feather. They have a one hundred percent chance of becoming ghosts when they die.”

“Really?” Trixie asked. “Shouldn’t everypony have at least a tiny bit of royal blood by now?”

“They’ve purposely kept the royal blood from spreading,” said Sunset. “If it spread too far, it would cause the blessings and the seal to weaken and eventually vanish.”

“So what we’re asking,” Raven cut to the point. “Is if you’re willing to help us kill him.”

Even knowing he’d survive, Twilight hesitated.

“We can likely take care of that part without you,” said Raven. “Your support will only end the fight sooner and with less bloodshed.”

Twilight looked at the floor, upset at herself. Already she was reluctant to go through with a plan she just declared support for.

“It’s fine if you won’t commit to that,” said Sunset. “The more difficult part of this would be the destruction of the element of honesty. But you’ve destroyed an element before, yes?”

“I cast the element of magic into the outer realm,” said Twilight. “But… I think part of it lingered behind. I’m not sure where, exactly.”

That was a lie… Twilight knew exactly where it was hidden now, after that vision.

“Can you do the same with this element?” Sunset asked. “I’m sure that would break the other failsafe.”

“I can but…”

Twilight swallowed. There was something she would have to confront now, something she knew to be true since that nightmare.

“There’s something we’ll need,” said Twilight. “A doll at my house.”

Zest dropped Sonata, far from the battlefield by still not yet in a place where plants, save some sad, lonely shrub, would grow. Sonata plopped onto all fours, coughing water out of her doll. She’d just dried this thing off and now it was worse than ever! It had so many rips on it and she was so badly soaked it’d never come out.

“I didn’t think this through at all.” Lemon Zest floated not far from Sonata, her chains nearly depleted. She wouldn’t be able to fight. “I saved you to keep you out of the hooves of the enemy… but now what do I do with you? You were supposed to die back there.”

“Hey! I don’t see how that’s a problem. I can still help.”

“Okay. Name one time in your entire life you’ve ever done anything right.”

“Well.”

Sonata paused.

“Of course when you phrase it like that it’s going to sound bad!”

“How the hell did you manage to survive anyway?” Zest asked. “What were even the chances of that?”

“Yeah. I had unusually good luck today,” Sonata admitted. “Normally my luck is horrible! Like even when I play board games I always roll a two. What were the chances of…?”

Sonata paused. That was right. There was no way her luck had just been that good on its own.

Something had to be up. But what?

“You’re trying to think.” Zest pointed to the look of consternation on her face. “I don’t like that.”

“Hold on a second. I’m on to something.”

There was something in common with each time Sonata had gotten lucky.

“Okay! What are the chances that an albino parrot shows up?”

No sooner had she said it than a white bird with red eyes landed just in front of them. Sonata and Zest both stopped to stare. Sonata had no ability to identify birds so should be completely certain it was a parrot unless…

“Spread those wings, cutie,” said the parrot.

Then it flew off.

“You see?!” Sonata turned to Zest, fluttering her broken wings. “Anything I ask for comes true! The luck gods decided to start making it up to me!”

“Sonata, even I know you shouldn’t rely on whatever’s granting you wishes. And I’m an idiot.”

“Yeah, what is giving me this power? I don’t think there is a luck god on second thought.” Sonata hummed more than thought about it. The only thing she found recently…. She put a hoof on her chest, where she’d stuff the coin. “Oh! That coin the crow gave me. That has to be it. Boy was that a good trade.”

“Crows are really bad luck.”

“Not this crow. Or, its coin wasn’t.”

“Sonata!” Zest grabbed her cheeks. “Even if using this was a good idea, there is a one hundred percent chance you’d screw it up. Just give me the coin.”

“Okay. Well. What are the chances that I’m not going to hand over the coin or screw up and instead actually do something useful for once in my life? Huh?”

Sonata smiled and looked left. Then right. Nothing appeared to happen.

“Maybe that one takes a minute. I gotta be more direct I bet.”

“Don’t.”

“Relax! I’m going straight for the jugular. I’ll use this power to destroy all of those ponies. Eh? What’s the chances that I use this power to destroy those ponies? See?”

Sonata started backing away from an approaching Lemon Zest. Nothing was happening again.

“You don’t even know where half of them are!”

“Well, what are the chances I find out where half of them are?!”

Both their ears perked up. They could smell it. The body heat of a predead.

A pony landed not far from them. He was a young stallion, couldn’t have been over twenty, and was dressed up like a ninja. A ninja who wore a bright yellow scarf. He looked left, then right, then dashed into a camouflaged dugout. He didn’t seem to notice the ghost, who had a significant eyesight advantage, in the dark.

Zest and Sonata shared a look. Even if she didn’t like it, they would have to check on that pony, just in case he was following them or had overheard something important.

They move underground to find that ninja meeting up with a second assassin, wearing the same getup but clearly much older.

“Well we know the locations of half of them,” said one of the assassins. Sure enough, they had a map of the locations of half of them.

Sonata turned to a glowering Zest with the smuggest grin her life had ever allowed her.

“We just got confirmation that Rainbow Dash is back in Ponytown… and Silver… whatever the hell her name is now ain’t up there. Nor is Pinkie or damn near any S-ranker or anypony else we gotta worry about. They’re are getting ready for all-out war.”

“And those two have the biggest bounties on their head,” the second finished for him. “We’ll be freaking rich once this is all over! Plus, we can finally get back at Rainbow Dash for bounty-cucking us with Trixie.”

“That is a good plan,” Sonata whispered to herself, now convinced to go for Rainbow Dash first. “Now I just need. Okay. What are the chances that I find a way to teleport to Rainbow Dash?”

“I can assure you we’re not the only ones with this idea,” said the younger of the two. “How are we going to get all the way to Ponytown before somepony else strikes? We’d have to teleport there or something.”

Sonata leaned forward. Yeah!

“Dash got shot in her house a few days ago. I snuck in afterward and licked her blood up off the floor.”

“Dude.”

“No! It’s not like– gah.” The first took out a fancy dagger with a bone hilt. “See, this is a special dagger that’s bound to… well you drink my blood off of it and it’ll send you to the last person whose blood I drank off it.”

“That’s gross. But for a billion bits I mean…” He looked up, then down with an intrepid look. “Just hold up a sec. I suddenly have to pee so bad!”

That first assassin could only grumble as his younger compatriot ran off into the bushes. But he was already preparing, running the knife along a leg to coat it in blood. This was Sonata’s chance that the coin had given her! She stood up. Zest grabbed her from behind.

“Hold up. If you’re going to do something stupid can’t you at least get the biggest threats? Like Twilight?”

“Ugh. Okay. What are the chances something horrible will happen to Twilight Sparkle?” Sonata rolled her eyes. “Happy?”

Then she charged forward. Catching him off guard, Sonata managed to lick the blood off the dagger.

Maybe it wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had but Dash needed to be alone right now and her house was the only place to go for that. She probably was safer in Ponytown anyway. If the enemy had gotten to Ponytown then nowhere was safe.

She decided to just go for a short walk and try to clear her head of all this nonsense. Surely she could handle going for a short walk on her own…

Though somehow Dash lacked confidence even in that. And the looks she was getting didn’t help much either.

When Dash first got to Ponytown she’d been a rockstar. Ponies were showering her with gifts, crowding around to get her attention. Everypony loved her back then!

But now ponies were pretending to not see Dash or turned their noses up at her as she trotted by. Had news traveled that fast? This was still just on rumors alone. When they found out the whole truth, that Dash was that useless… what would be left?

The sun was only just rising between the mountains adjacent to the steep hills of Ponytown. Dash sat down next to a fountain by one of its many cliffsides.

It was obvious that marrying Twilight was what would be best for Dash in the short term at least. But…

“Ah. Crow. What am I going to do?” Dash rubbed her face.

If she was a hero, wouldn’t she be thinking about all the bigger stuff going on right now? Or rather, if she were a hero wouldn’t she be able to do something about it? About anything?

Only now was she beginning to realize… no matter how hard she tried she’d never be on the level of somepony truly great, the level of a real hero. He witch training and even that clawblade did nothing.

Would it really even matter if Dash just… didn’t show up again?

She absently watched somepony down on the bottom of her cliffside. They opened an umbrella. On a perfectly clear day.

“Uh oh.”

In the face of death, Dash’s will to live made a sudden reappearance.

She cast the murder spell as gunfire erupted in her direction, enough to smash the fountain to pieces. Most of her crows got away, but it just kept coming.

She flew behind one building and turned back only to find a second wave of armed ponies waiting for her there. Another round of crows and a hail of fire put her behind some poor pony’s house as a literal crowd of assassins formed behind Dash.

They weren’t even dressed the same. Two of them were dressed up as ninjas with scarves, there were more ponies from Ghost Adder, some dressed up in suits or like punks…

How many ponies hired assassins to kill Dash?! Was the entire town out here?!

One of them boldly revealed herself to Dash, flying down to the roof of the next house over… Sonata Dusk?! How had she gotten up here so fast?

“Hey Rainbow Dash!” Sonata smiled down from the roof above. “Were you wondering what the chances of a hundred assassins showing up to kill you was?”

Cultists 666: Apocalypse

Sonata’s laughter was drowned out by a hail of gunfire. The windows on the building shattered and the house rocked. Dash could tell they were going to demolish it in mere moments.

Sonata who, standing on top of the roof, had no cover, was soon blown away. An explosion sent her hurtling, then tumbling down the steep hills of Ponytown.

It wouldn’t be long until something similar happened to Dash. The house behind her would collapse before long. But as far as she knew, these assassins weren’t anypony that special. Surely, she could escape from them all. Right?

Dash looked at her claw blade. Most of it was focused on escaping…

She cast a spell, allowing her to slip through the shadows. Her movement was smooth and effortless. She appeared next to another house down the street just as her first hiding place collapsed in a hail of fire.

A few assassins stepped forward to inspect the rubble. It didn’t look like they’d seen her. But Dash could see them from the side. She took stock of what she was up against, began planning the best escape route.

“Hey, I’ve never been in a situation like this before.” What seemed to be the youngest assassin looked out over the rest. “Do we all work or what?”

Sadly, it looked like the answer was ‘yes’ for now.

Dash found exactly one familiar face among the crowd, that fucking snake guy! Hissteria or whatever his name was had come here personally, calmly scanned his vantage point

It was something she wouldn’t have picked up on were it not for the mind fibers, but his eyes stopped for a fraction of a second when they fell upon Dash. He saw her!

Dash tried to step through the shadows again. A shot was fired at the general location where Dash had been transported to. More than anything else, it served to alert all the other assassins to her presence.

In a moment, another hail of bullets was pinning her down. Two ponies with claw blades of their own landed next to Dash and slashed at her. Guided by the mind fibers, Dash masterfully sidestepped one of them and threw them to the side before ducking under the second and uppercutting into his belly.

A unicorn teleported just a few yards away and tried firing a bolt of lightning at Dash. She blocked this with a wind wall, then shadow stepped forward and with a deft blow to the exact right spot, knocked the unicorn out in one blow.

She was actually doing it!

Dash smiled a little. She could beat up a bunch of random ponies!

The decrepit claws of some unknown species burst through the ground and grabbed Dash’s legs.

Undead!

Before she could react to this, five more unicorns appeared in a circle around Dash. The mind fibers calculated for her that she wouldn’t have the strength to block all of them. Her only option was her old fallback.

Maybe two escaped the ensuing blast. She turned back to a pegasus and a shot from Hissteria connected at that exact moment.

The auto-barrier of the sawblades was the only thing that saved Dash, the bullet bouncing off her head. But it took a lot of energy and she fell back into an alley.

Hissteria landed just in front of her, lifting his gun for a second shot. A dozen more assassins rushed into the space just behind him. They were on either ledge of the building above too…

There was too much going on! Dash couldn’t react to it all!

A needle flew into Dash’s neck from behind, stabbing all the way through.

This… was it!

Dash couldn’t feel her heart beating. She couldn’t move a muscle. She couldn’t breathe. She fell limp to the ground.

A window behind her shattered and from it came Bonbon. The earth pony landed on top of Dash and with one move ripped Dash’s still-beating heart out of her chest.

Which was weird because it didn’t hurt at all and Dash knew the darn thing had stopped beating already. But there was blood all over the floor.

“Aw, come on!”

Half the assassins made noises of frustration and disappointment. Some of them went as far as to throw their guns and daggers across the room.

“Well I get paid as long as she dies,” said the youngest before getting pistol-whipped by another.

“I’m taking the body.” Bonbon held up Dash’s body. “The rest of you can fight over the heart.”

“Now hold on.” Hissteria stepped forward. “I’ve ripped out a lot of hearts and that one seemed a bit fishy.”

“Yeah!” Many of the assassins echoed his concerns. The colt chimed in the same a second too late.

Even Dash had no idea if that was her heart at this point, would bet the answer was ‘no’. This didn’t hurt nearly as much as she’d expected, and the ‘blood’ wasn’t hot. Yet still, she was completely limp, unable to even keep her eyes from rolling about in her skull.

“Why don’t you come up and inspect it yourself?” Bonbon kept her eyes locked onto Hissteria’s.

He cocked a smile and trotted forward. He put a hoof on Dash’s neck and inspected the wound, something Dash would have liked to do herself.

“Yep.” He stood up and turned to the crowd of assassins. “She’s dead.”

Half were disappointed and the other half jubilant, revealing what conditions they were paid under.

“So then. I’m taking the body to Flash Bang.” Bonbon threw the heart out to the masses. “You can fight over this.”

Some of them started fighting in a rush towards it as Bonbon jumped out the same hole she entered through with Dash in tow. Hissteria merely stood still, watching them leave.

She carried Dash across two rows of houses before stopping in some other pony’s backyard.

Bonbon tore the needle out of Dash’s neck. Dash choked and coughed as her body sprang back to life. Whatever paralysis she’d been put under had been lifted, allowing her to get back on her hooves.

“We have to keep moving.” Bonbon didn’t wait for Dash to recover. She merely shoved her along and kept going. “At least two of them noticed you weren’t dead. We might only have a few minutes.”

Bonbon turned her fancy black jacket inside out, changing it to a cheap and garishly purple hoodie. She opened a mailbox as they walked past it, taking out a dye kit and a second coat. She shoved these toward Dash.

Dash decided it’d be a good idea to put the disguise on. She rubbed the dye into her hair, turning it red. Glancing back at Bonbon, she was already completely different! Without dye, her hair, fur, and even her face were modestly different, becoming a slimmer earth pony of more subtle shades of green.

She heard Bonbon had some power like this.

“Where do you plan on going, exactly?” Dash asked. “Did Flash Bang send you?”

It was common knowledge that Bonbon was one of Flash’s underlings. Dash perhaps trusted that pony more than the assassins. But there was a non-zero chance Flash also wanted Dash dead or a prisoner. Or would soon.

“I’ll confide a secret in you. I’m a double agent whose real loyalties lie with Nailbat. The psychic’s guild HQ is under our control. You’ll be safe there.” Bonbon focused on scoping out the area. “A lot of ponies who want to kill or capture you are coming. Fast. A train will be arriving at the station in fifteen minutes filled with ponies sympathetic to Flash Bang.”

Even if Bonbon did work for Nailbat in reality, she still couldn’t be sure this wasn’t one of the ponies out for her. Maybe Dash could test that.

“I need to get back to my house,” said Dash. “It’s likely the only way out of here for me.”

“Somepony might be waiting for you at your house. Like I said, you’ll be safe at the Psychic guild’s HQ.”

Debatable without Pinkie Pie around. Dash and Bonbon both stood firm, looking into one another’s eyes.

They heard a distant rumbling. An explosion going off far away. The next would be closer.

“Dammit! Fighting has already broken out,” said Bonbon. “Fine. I’ll take you to your home.”

Bonbon grabbed Dash and pulled her in the right direction.

They made it down one street before a much closer gunshot filled the air. A bullet hole formed in the street just in front of Dash. She only barely reacted in time to avoid getting shot.

“Not so fast!”

Dash looked up to see that guy… Hissteria standing on top of the roof.

“You know, Bonbon.” He licked one of his snake-like fangs. “I came here for Dash, but I’d be willing to settle for a chance to ‘resolve our differences’. I’m still curious what will happen if I take a lot of your blood.”

“You two know each other?” Dash asked.

“Not important.” Bonbon pulled another needle out of her jacket, holding it between her lips. “I have no choice but to engage. Your house isn’t far from here. Go!”

At least Dash knew Bonbon was with her, now.

Hissteria fired another shot, which Bonbon expertly knocked off course by throwing her needle into its path. She pulled her gun out of her jacket and fired it up at the green stallion, who rolled backward off the roof. Bonbon charged forward. As gunshots began to ring out, Dash took the opportunity to finally escape.

It wasn’t too far! Enough ponies were running through the streets now that Dash might be able to get away.

And they were running in so many directions, shouting so many things Dash could only assume danger was in every direction. Soldiers, the undead, the mole king. Dash heard something about each of those.

At last her house came into sight. Dash paused for a minute to look at the smoke rising from the town she’d spent the best year of her life in.

Should she defend this place? How could she defend this place?

The only solution was to get somepony else.

She looked at her house, ready for a nasty surprise to be waiting inside.

A too-familiar pony showed up first. Sonata again, perching on Dash’s roof.

“Clearly I wasn’t being direct enough!” Sonata pointed at Rainbow Dash. “Okay! What are the chances your head just explodes or something? Huh?!”

A very out-of-place tumbleweed blew across the road between them.

Sonata looked over this with her muzzle scrunched in disgust.

“What? Oh! Is it because I said, ‘or something’?” Sonata asked. “Crow, this thing is picky all of a sudden. It was working so well until… oh, maybe it doesn’t like it when you try to kill somepony outright like this? Okay, what are the chances that I, uh, get hit in the head with a coconut if I’m not able to directly murder somepony with this thing?”

A coconut slammed into her head.

That was… odd.

Oh no!

“Uh! Hey. Did you find a magic coin or something?” Dash straightened up.

“Maybe?” Sonata took a step back. “I mean, no! I would never!”

“Listen, that thing is bad news,” said Dash. “It’s taking your luck from the future. You’ll pay a huge price for using it later on!”

Dash realized this might be her paying the price herself. The Darklord warned her that she was only vulnerable if she was alone… and right now she was alone! She either needed to get back to the others or convince Sonata to stop using this thing.

“Well of course my enemy would say that.” Sonata rolled her eyes.

“I’ve been trying to rescue you this whole time!” Dash pleaded. “Just trust me that using it this much isn’t a good idea. Or at all!”

“Oh yeah? Well, uh, what are the chances that you change your mind and decide that it is a good idea for me to use the coin?”

Green flames consumed Pinkie Pie’s house and the surrounding area. From the ashes stepped forth a single pony… some guy Dash had never seen before! A ninja pony with a yellow scarf?

But…

Damn!

The mini-golf course… It had been completely destroyed!

“I don’t know what your problem is you blue featherhead,” The ninja said.

Sonata and Dash both pointed at themselves. He rolled his eyes and pointed to Sonata.

“But don’t get cocky, I’m here for you, too! He cracked his neck. “My bad luck is finally turning–”

The ground began to rumble, then shattered, knocking the assassin flat. A colossal hoof burst through, one big enough to step on a house with ease. And it did just that, crushing the house next to Pinkie’s. A colossal figure began rising from the newly formed hole. A pony darker than any black Dash had ever seen.

Or more accurately, a zebra. Just one without any white.

Yeah. Dash knew exactly what this was.

“Alright!” Dash shoved Sonata to the side. “Go on. Use the coin.”

“What… what is that?” Sonata asked.

“It’s an avatar of the zebra god of destruction that you unleashed so use the dang coin!”

Lightning began to ripple through the sky as its immense form tore through the boundaries of reality. Even though this wasn’t the actual god of destruction, its presence here spelled certain doom for… just about anypony really!

“What?! But!” Sonata started prancing in place.

“That mini-golf course was the only thing sating its lust for destruction! Use the coin to get rid of it!”

The hole beneath them grew, parts of the street falling into an infinite void below them. It’d need to grow a lot bigger before that thing emerged fully.

“Okay! Okay!” Sonata frantically pranced in place. “What are the chances that uh… we both get out of here alive?! Oh! Crow! I shouldn’t have said both. Uh!”

A runaway train car came rushing in and slammed into Sonata. It was soon carrying her swiftly down the steep hills of Ponytown, screaming all the way.

That ninja pony was hanging on the edge of reality, on the edge of the pit. From somewhere so far away that it may as well have been in the stars, Dash began to form from a constellation of shimmering. And it was looking at the yellow scarf pony.

Dash turned to her house. There had been plenty more assassins waiting in there, but they decided not to stick around for this and were gushing out of the back door now.

This was her last chance!

Dash charged into her house, flew down the stairs, and jumped through the portal! She should be safe there.

So many ponies were hanging around Rarity’s castle now, preparing for a battle that Twilight could hopefully stop. It reminded her of Oaken Field what felt like years ago. She managed to prevent that battle from breaking out. This would be the same.

She, Sunset, and a few of Sunset’s followers managed to clear out the area near Twilight’s house so only her chosen few remained.

Of course, it wasn’t long until Rarity got word Twilight was back and came out to see the first chance she got.

“Twilight! I’m glad you’re back.” Rarity ran to Twilight’s side. “We’re under a lot of pressure right now. Screwball landed her armada and a large force is surrounding us!”

“What about Oaken Field?”

“I heard demons are running rampant down south. There’s no way to know when they’ll be able to help. We’re in a lot of trouble.”

Twilight nodded.

“I know. That’s what I’m taking care of,” said Twilight.

Rarity took stock of the other ponies Twilight had brought with her. Sunset Shimmer with two S-rank ponies standing behind her, then six more ponies behind them, and finally Trixie placed in stationary mode.

“Sunset is here as well?” Rarity watched her, deciding if that was a good thing or not. “Why?”

“A fragment of the element of magic remains in my house,” said Twilight. “It needs to be dealt with.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“It could be,” said Twilight. “I have to settle something before war breaks out.”

“War has already broken out. Nailbat and Flash Bang are fighting. I’m hearing rumors of fighting breaking out everywhere.”

“And Rainbow Dash?!” Twilight looked up at Rarity, her fear for Dash replacing everything else in an instant.

“She was in the castle a moment ago. She couldn’t have gotten far. Most likely she’s in the other house.”

Twilight lowered her head again. She really was obsessed. Even when angry at Dash she was acting like this.

“I want you to hold on to our alicorn feather,” said Twilight. “And watch Scootaloo. And… just stay back for now.”

Rarity solemnly nodded and went off to take care of her part.

“So, um!” Trixie raised her hoof. “I know you’re not listening to me but is there any way I can get out of this? I can fight if you let me. It doesn’t seem like anypony around here cares what Starlight thinks is illegal anymore.”

“I’ll release you if I have to,” said Sunset.

Hopefully, that wouldn’t be necessary. Hopefully, Twilight could end everything tonight. She looked up at her treehouse. It’d been weeks since she last entered this place.

Twilight beckoned her backup to stand just outside her door. She knew this was all on her though. Inside lay the fragment of Magic that somehow escaped banishment. Of course, the existence of such a thing meant Twilight’s spell had failed… necessitated there being a connection between that object and the outer realm.

Without great difficulty, Twilight could harness that tether and use it to her advantage later.

Twilight entered the silent house and took a deep breath. She turned to face the object that held the fragment of Magic.

“Smarty Pants.”

The scarecrow sitting on her couch didn’t respond.

“I know what you are! It wasn’t like you were doing a good job at hiding it.”

Trying to make Twilight think she was crazy. The doll still just sat there.

“What were you trying to do?” Twilight got closer. “Get back at me? There were so many times my guard was down, and you were just sitting there all this time? What were you doing?”

Twilight swallowed, fearing the answer. In all those decades, Smarty Pants had only ever desired one thing.

At last, that familiar voice like a low fire came back to Twilight. After having been silent for months, the crackly voice only Twilight could hear spoke to her again.

“Whose idea… was it to banish me? Not yours.”

Not?

“Starswirl?” Twilight guessed the only other answer.

“Mine and his,” said Smarty Pants. “He got what he wanted… immense power… but he didn’t get what I wanted. To be free of him certain things needed to be arranged.”

The two of them had been fused at the time, not unlike Starlight with her element. But Twilight had been under the impression they had but one mind under such circumstances. True, she didn’t know all the details.

“So you orchestrated that to get rid of Starswirl? You’re the reason he’s – he’s – !”

“We were the same entity at that time. We had one heart. Unbalanced. So we shattered.”

“Why?”

“I cannot serve the second greatest. I cannot exist but to aim towards the absolute pinnacle of power. So being settled with Starswirl was a contradiction to my, to our, existence. You, Twilight… you are the one with potential beyond any other. You alone can be my master. Starswirl was not worthy. You were not worthy. Only your future self…”

“You!” Twilight was all too eager for something to be angry at right now. “You were keeping me in that house all this time, so I’d be strong enough for your greater half to consider ‘worthy’?!”

“I did little. I never had the power to keep you here. I was powerless to stop you from running off with that fool. All I did was encourage you.”

Twilight couldn’t tell Smarty Pants she was wrong. She’d always seen Smarty Pants as a positive influence, urging her on to train harder, focus more, and push past her limits. Twilight wouldn’t have gotten where she was without her imaginary coach…

“I alone am your friend, Twilight.” Even now, Smarty Pants’ head didn’t budge an inch. “I helped you rid yourself of the thing you hated– other ponies. I helped you get what you wanted– strength. And I would never leave you.”

Twilight lowered her head. She had asked for it… as much as she wanted to hate Smarty Pants, Twilight couldn’t think of much to scold it for.

“Perhaps you’ve learned,” Smarty Pants continued, “that power alone is the way to get what you want. Do you have any idea how powerful you could become if you united with my true self, the Element of Magic? We could exceed Golden Feather… and perhaps even the Queen of Light herself in time.”

Twilight shook her head. She hadn’t forgotten.

“At what cost? I saw what happened to Starswirl! I’m not stupid! To get that kind of power from you, I’d lose everything else.”

“So what if you would? What else do you truly have? I warned you of this. Rainbow Dash was always going to leave you.”

“Shut up!”

Even if it was true, Twilight didn’t want to hear it.

She’d gotten all the information she’d come here for and she was mad enough to do what needed to be done.

All this time Smarty Pants had relied on one thing to protect itself, to keep its tether to the outer realm hidden from Twilight. It had assumed Twilight would never destroy her one ‘friend’.

Twilight blasted its chest open, to reveal Smarty Pants’ core – a heart carved of a root, inscribed with rune. She tore it out and burned off the rune.

Smarty Pants fell onto the floor, a pile of sticks and straw. Twilight fell too to her haunches, trembling that something so consistently with her was gone. Smarty Pants really would have stayed with her forever.

But…

She needed to focus! Smarty Pants had just been using her. There was no love lost. She looked at the root in her hoof and could sense it, that tenuous connection to the outer realm. Twilight wrapped it in magic and imbued it with a new ruin. It turned a deep purple. She could use this to create a single portal to the outer realm and banish one entity.

Her only problem now was why that had been so easy. Had Smarty Pants expended all of its energy to protect Twilight in that dream? It had centuries to plan for this. There had to be something more, but what?

Twilight trotted a slow circle around the remains of Smarty Pants. True, it likely knew Twilight better than anypony, but Twilight could say the same about it. At least, she knew what it wanted. What it liked. What it hated. What would it have planned to do in this exact scenario? What would it go for?

Rainbow Dash! That was it.

If Twilight weren’t here but Dash was then it would spring its trap, try to kill the thing that it believed was holding Twilight back, tethering her to this world.

She tried not to let the horror show too much on her face. She couldn’t sense its remaining presence but had little time or reason to go hunting it down. Smarty Pants had no reason to use the last of its strength to kill anyone else.

With a solemn nod to what remained of her old toy, Twilight trotted outside.

“I got it.” Twilight held the wooden heart. “With this, I can easily get rid of the Element of Honesty.”

“A little too easy,” said Trixie. “I feel like we came over prepared for this.”

“I thought so too,” said Twilight. “It’s still here. I think it will go after Rainbow Dash once she’s vulnerable and in range. We have to make sure she’s not here. Maybe it’s a good thing she went to the other house.”

“I’ll have somepony tell her to leave when she returns,” Sunset promised. “We have to hurry ourselves.”

Twilight nodded and the group started off.

The alarm sounded! A buzzing sound came in pulses, alerting the entire castle and surrounding grounds of what was likely an imminent attack! Was Screwball assaulting the castle already?

Twilight looked left and right at Trixie and Sunset. It’d be a short battle if she had the guts for that.

Everypony agreed they would need to see what this was about before leaving and headed to the assembly area at the front gate.

There, Twilight found Rarity at her battle station. A dozen unfamiliar ponies were behind her, dividing their attention between her and a pony sitting by a radio set. A few meters past them all, out on the lawn, stood only a single pony completely unarmed.

She was one of those bat-winged ponies and carried a banner of the Bloodstorm Cartel which she planted on the ground. A messenger?

She looked completely unarmed, placed a device on the ground, and then stepped back with her hooves up. A robot went out to collect the device and bring it to Rarity, who inspected it, and then handed it to Twilight.

This was one of those communication devices.

“Silverstorm!” Screwball’s voice came over faintly.

Twilight hadn’t been expecting to hear that name again. She didn’t even have her disguise on anymore.

“I know now’s probably a bad time,” Screwball went on. “But I want to play a game with you. I think I have something you want?”

Twilight closed her eyes tight and exhaled slowly trying to calm herself. If Screwball was volunteering to be what Twilight took her rage out on…

“They tell me Sunset Shimmer is with you? I hope that means you’re not planning on… going anywhere, are you?” Screwball asked. “Let’s see. According to my information, Fluttershy is off fighting alongside Nailbat. Pinkie is with me. Your castle will be helpless against me without you. And poor old Dashie is back in Ponytown. And I don’t think you can be everywhere at once, can you?”

Twilight was doing the math in her head. If Sunset and Twilight both left to complete the mission, Screwball would obliterate the castle and kill everypony before she could return. If she left Sunset behind and went alone… even then she’d only be able to protect one of those four locations!

And even if Dash came back it would be four. Twilight had to send Dash away from the castle. She could have Trixie protect one but that would still leave two of her friends in danger. Even if Twilight stayed until the fight was over she wouldn’t have enough ponies.

Maybe she could make it work if she trusted Nailbat to protect Fluttershy but…

“Ah, what’s the matter?” Screwball asked. “Since you’re my sister I’m willing to cut you some slack here. If you come alone to my flagship, I’ll let Pinkie go and we can have a proper duel. I’m sure you’d win. But if you’re not here in… one hour, or if you bring even one other pony she will die. Understand? Well, that’s all I had to say. I’m sixteen miles off the port of Shellbrook.”

“Wait!” Twilight called back but it already went to static.

“You know this is a trap,” Sunset warned.

“I have to take care of Screwball before I can leave! She’ll destroy everything if I’m away!” Twilight warned.

“We have more problems than just Screwball.” Rarity looked at the pony by the radio.

“The Phoenix King is still headed in our direction,” the radio kept listening in. “I can confirm that Starlight is onboard.”

That was the metal airship Twilight had been on not too long ago, Equestria’s flagship.

“If Starlight attacks us while you’re gone, it’s all over,” said Sunset. “I can’t fight her alone.”

Damnit! The numbers no longer worked! Twilight had to stay here to keep Starlight from destroying this place… but if she stayed then Pinkie would die! And she had to protect Dash and…

“Hoping that Starlight isn’t coming here really is our best option,” said Sunset.

Twilight trotted back and forth. She’d been trying so hard to avoid making decisions like this!

“Twilight,” said Raven. “This won’t end until Golden Feather arrives. There’s no way to guarantee everypony’s safety until that happens. You’ll have to accept there will be casualties.”

“The lives of everypony in this castle outweigh that of one elderly mare!” One of the guests pleaded to Twilight. “You have to stay here.”

Twilight closed her eyes and trotted faster, trying to ignore the whirlwind around her. Maybe… maybe she could have Rarity make the decision? Or…

“The Phoenix King has turned south-southeast!” The palpable relief in the radio controller’s voice reassured Twilight even before she could work out what that meant for herself. “It’s going to swing around our location! Starlight is almost certainly on her way to attack Crater Cemetery.”

Much-needed relief flooded the room. For a moment, you’d forget there were several other forces to worry about.

“That is amazing news!” Sunset was the first to speak. “It doesn’t even matter who wins that fight, we’ll be much better off either way.”

More importantly, the math worked out now! Twilight might just be able to hang on by a thread.

“Okay!” Twilight lowered the radio and looked over the others. “Sunset, you guard the castle until I get back. Trixie will get Dash out of here. Hold out until I get back.”

“Twilight, this is still a trap!” Sunset objected.

“It doesn’t matter! I can’t run off until… until…”

Just one more fight. One more until everything was stable enough to complete her real mission.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Twilight promised.

Dash rolled out of the portal and into the other basement, a few bewildered ponies getting to watch as it exploded into black flames behind her. No going back to that place now… Dash’s dream home just exploded and that wasn’t even the worst of it!

Dash ran off looking for Rarity, shouting for her to everypony she could find, every few feet it felt like.

She found Rarity outside on the lawn, looking even more hectic than before.

“Rarity! Where’s Twilight?!” Dash landed in front of her, panting. “We have some problems!”

“Screwball managed to lure Twilight away,” said Rarity. “And we’re surrounded by hostile forces. We have to hold out until Twilight returns.”

Dash recovered enough to realize Sunset was here. If Screwball was out of the picture, they might just have a chance of that, but…

“According to what I’ve heard,” said Rarity, “Smarty Pants may be plotting to kill you if you stay here too long.”

“Smarty Pants?” Dash asked. “Isn’t that–”

“Just roll with it,” said Rarity. “If Twilight says something is dangerous, she’s likely right. Besides, I’m not sure what my fate is. One of us needs to survive. It’s better if we’re not in the same spot.”

Dash opened her mouth, then closed it again. How many people wanted her dead? Things were getting that serious, weren’t they?

She looked to the north, towards the forest. Could Dash survive on her own in this chaos?

“I’m going to let Trixie out of her restraints,” said Sunset. “She doesn’t have her spellbook, but she’ll protect you from most threats.”

“I’d suggest having more than Rainbow Dash leave,” Raven suggested. “If you go alone, you’ll become a big target to too many enemies. Perhaps if we send out all the non-combatants with Trixie and me escorting them, it will obscure our true objective.”

“Wait.” Rarity objected. “You’re not seriously suggesting using the civilians as a smokescreen, are you?”

“It’s unlikely they’ll fight Trixie just to spite such a group,” said Moonlight. “Besides, how much food do you have in this castle?”

Rarity frowned, already knowing Moonlight had a point but not liking it.

“This castle will soon be surrounded,” Moonlight warned. “For all we know you’ll have to hold out for days or weeks. We need to get rid of some of these ponies if you’re to survive the worst-case scenario. The refugees will be safer at the military base since that’s less of a target than you are, anyway.”

“Oh, crow.” Rarity bit her hoof. “She might be right.”

“Of course, I’ll volunteer to be the vanguard,” said Raven. “Since it was my idea.”

“I guess we just need to decide who’s going,” said Dash.

“Sweetie Belle needs to stay with me,” said Rarity. “She needs those nutrition tanks on her back to function or she’ll die of starvation in a day or so.”

Sometimes Dash forgot what those tanks of green liquid on Sweetie Belle’s back were for.

“But perhaps you should take Scootaloo and Applebloom with you,” said Rarity. “I’m holding on to the alicorn feather… but just like I want the two of us to be in separate locations, I think our alicorn magic should be as well.”

Dash nodded. Maybe the legal part of legal guardian counted for little now but she still saw Scootaloo as her responsibility. Perhaps Rarity wanted to keep Sweetie Belle with her for the same reason.

“Alright,” said Dash. “If that’s the best I can do.”

They scrambled with impressive speed to gather a host of ponies, those who wouldn’t be able to fight, the foals, and a few Rarity just wanted to get rid of to save on trouble. Only a few ponies who could fight were with the group. Moonlight Raven and Derpy… Dash if you counted her.

Sunset covered for them by firing walls of flame off in the direction of the enemy forces. That would keep them pinned for a while. Hopefully.

If nothing else, it gave them some hope that the rumbling and fire behind them was something other than the castle being destroyed.

Things were getting increasingly out of control. It’d be longer before Dash would have a chance to get her bearings straight. Either Twilight or Sunset would have to win their respective fights. If not… Dash had no idea what do to next.

Dash looked over at Trixie, doing her little stretches as they started walking off. It was odd to see her outside the quasi-armor of the TCU. Depending on her felt weird at this point. How powerful was she now?

“I’m getting scared,” Applebloom complained.

“We’re all scared right now,” said Dash.

“I’m not scared!” Scootaloo raised her hoof.

“Good work.” Dash patted her head. “Most of us are scared right now. But this will be the worst of it. We just need to take out one or two of these threats and things will start falling into place.”

“Oh,” Trixie said with a sly smirk, “you don’t need to worry too much. Even without my spellbook, I can defeat most enemies. As long as Starlight doesn’t suddenly change courses we should be fine.”

Her bluster did assuage the foals however slightly, doing something useful for once.

They continued forward with Trixie at the back of the group and Moonlight Raven at the front. Dash still had that disguise on but it’d only help a little. She tried not to stand out too much less an enemy notice she was even here.

Meanwhile, Dash was having trouble listing all the threats in her head. She’d forgotten to even mention that zebra avatar awakening in Ponytown. Maybe somepony else would take care of it?

Dash had too much on her mind now. And the implications of siding with Sunset. That meant Nailbat might not be so sympathetic if Dash saw him again. And Fluttershy was over there. What would she do?

The more problems she listed, the less sure she was this course was the best one. Dash trotted a bit faster to put herself next to Moonlight Raven.

“I’m just not sure if we’re making a mistake by leaving the castle,” said Dash. “There’s so much crap going on we have no idea what we might run into.”

“We don’t know what we’d run into at the castle. Twilight made it sound bad. You can never be sure if anything is a good idea,” said Raven. “We can make our odds better but that’s it. You’ll never know how things will turn out. So there’s no need to worry about making the wrong choice.”

“That sounds like a reason to be worried to me.”

“Does it? How strange.”

Dash blew some air out of her nose.

Moonlight hummed as they continued marching forward. With a flick of her wrist, she signaled the rest to fall back slightly. That fancy sword appeared by her side. She plunged it forward.

The blade clashed against a chain that had emerged from the woods. It would have hit Dash, possibly snatched her away, but the sword pushed it just out of the way. Dash instead watched as the twisted hook attached to it dragged off.

The entire procession stopped up, all but Dash and Raven backed up.

One pony and two wretched-looking creatures emerged from the woods. They were big ones… red-skinned and muscular, hunched over with massive claws like diamond dogs. Their arms were covered in chains and hooks while massive, fiery wings rose behind them.

Demons. Balrogs, specifically.

And the pony? He looked normal enough as he took a long drag of his cigarette. He had the ugly face of a chain smoker, his deep red fur greying beyond his years.

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Rainbow Trouble Dash.” He walked slowly toward her. “It seems we meet again.”

Dash looked over at the balrog, then down to the pony controlling it.

“We do?” Dash crouched down and backed away. “Who are you again?”

“Demon Summoner?” He put a hoof on his chest. “We met in Oaken Field?”

“Uh.” Dash looked to Raven who gave her no clue. “You’re sure you’re not looking for Rainbow Turbo Dash? The model? This has happened twice before.”

Summoner stared at her as his cigarette continued to burn. Finally, he threw it down and stomped it out.

“What? You seriously don’t remember me?! I summoned Judicar and told you how I was going to summon Lux Lucius and destroy the world?”

Judicar. Judicar.

“Oh! Wait!” Dash pointed at him. “You’re that guy who summoned a demon and it immediately turned on you.”

“Yes! Well, getting slaughtered by the demons you summon is one of the inevitable drawbacks of the art, I admit.” He twisted his hoof on the dying cigarette. “But if the whole plan is to destroy the entire world, then does it matter? How did you forget about me?”

“I uh. Just thought that wasn’t going to come up again?” Dash shrugged.

“You thought me destroying the planet wasn’t going to come up again.”

“Yeah? Who’s Lux Lucius again?” Dash furrowed her brows.

Demon Summoner looked down at her with a pained look. The duality of the smoker emerged. He went from throwing away his smokes to calm himself down to lighting a new one for the same effect.

“You don’t even know–” He scrunched his muzzle, struggling to light the new one. “Well, I’m not going to explain it now! Yeesh! You know, I was freaking out this whole time, thinking you ponies were plotting to storm my secret lair at any minute. And you don’t even know who I am?”

“You didn’t seem like a serious threat at the time!” Memories of Oaken Field were just now trickling back into her mind. “What happened to that legendary sword colt who was supposed to defeat you?”

“I killed that dork and his fake ass ‘holy’ sword months ago!” He finally got the thing lit. “I don’t even think he was really working for the Radiant Champion; his existence was too much of a joke. Now I get to upgrade to fighting you. So congratulations on your failed perception check! Now six hundred and sixty-six balrogs are destroying the place and the world’s going to end in thirteen days, thirteen hours, and thirteen minutes. Starting about two hours ago.”

Demon Summoner took a puff, then flicked his death stick in her direction, signaling the two nearest balrogs to attack. They pounced at Dash with flaming maws and chains.

A hammer appeared and slammed one of them aside. Dash created one of her wind walls to try and stop the other. It did briefly but she could feel she wasn’t strong enough! It would break through.

Moonlight Raven picked up the slack there too. Three of her weapons dug into either side of the demon. That was just enough to let Dash roll back and out of the way.

Soon Raven had all twelve of her weapons out, levitating around her, making mechanical advances and swings at the balrogs.

“The summoner himself might be weak,” Raven mused.

Dash nodded and charged forward. She turned into crows and swarmed around him, approaching from all angles. In her heart she knew right then she stood no chance. Summoner barely reacted to her approach, and calmly waited for her to turn back.

The second she did a spike of black metal appeared underneath Dash and stabbed straight through her foreleg. How did these ponies get so fast?!

Dash gritted her teeth and pushed herself to the limits to summon four dancing blades. She swiped forward with them, and they hit! But they barely drew any blood and this guy didn’t even flinch.

Fire exploded around the area, sending Dash tumbling back toward Moonlight Raven. She fell onto her belly while Raven had a balrog pressed against her on either side, struggling to keep them at bay.

“I heard you weren’t as strong as a witch but damn.” He laughed. “Starting to wish you took this seriously? Don’t lit the fire that will surround you, kid. Rich coming from me, I know.”

Raven looked down at Dash with a cool, calculating look, the kind that calculated around rather than for Dash. It wasn’t pity but it may as well have been.

“I’ll have to hold them off myself,” said Raven. “He’s a much greater threat than I had hoped.”

“That’s right! You may just need my help!”

Trixie finally showed up, teleporting next to Dash, dancing swords surrounding her. Dash shot Trixie a look.

“There was another demon behind us!” Trixie answered her look. “You get out of here. Me and Raven–”

“Just Raven,” she objected. “You need to help the rest escape. We don’t know if there’s anything else out there.”

“I can help!” Dash jumped to her feet.

“Having so many civilians around is too great a liability.” Raven reacted little as the force began to push her back. “The biggest help you can give is to clear out the area. I’ll likely retreat from this myself. He’s too strong.”

“She might be right,” said Trixie. She pointed at Demon Summoner. “You wait for me! I’ll be back!”

Dash gritted her teeth. She wasn’t able to do anything here, was she?! There were just so many ponies like that in this world!

Her eyes went toward Scootaloo and Applebloom. Her priority had to be the foals for now. They were so close to Ponyville and the base Moonlight mentioned wasn’t far beyond that.

Dash hesitated, then nodded to Moonlight who began a vicious assault on Summoner and his demons, the flurry of her weapons only drove them back so much.

Trixie created a massive wall of stone between Moonlight, Demon Summoner, and everypony else. Dash could hear fighting from the other side as Trixie focused on keeping the barrier up and the now galloping civilians safe.

Another fight Dash had to run away from. But soon they were out of danger and Trixie could bring up the rear again.

“Gah! I feel like we should be able to make a shield or something.” Scootaloo put her hoof over her head.

“Don’t worry.” Dash watched the last of the tail escaping forward. “We just have to get somewhere safe for now.”

As if such a place existed. The short walk to Ponyville had been dangerous enough.

Her hometown came into view. Nopony was in the streets but it wasn’t on fire and there weren’t any explosions or gunshots. Everypony here had taken shelter already. That much was good…

Dash let out a breath as she caught up to Scootaloo and her two friends. At least this place had escaped destruction for now.

“Okay,” said Dash. The rest of the group wasn’t far ahead. “Their stronghold shouldn’t be much farther north of this town. We can be there in an hour if we hustle. As long as…”

She noticed a chill falling over the rest of the group. Dash looked up with horror at what loomed over them.

An airship hung just overhead their destination. One Dash recognized as the only airship with a metal hull in the world. The Phoenix King, Starlight’s personal flagship. There were at least four more airships with it. And it was in their way.

Dash bit her lip. Starlight wouldn’t be the worst pony in the world to run into. Maybe.

If even a contingent of Starlight’s elite weren’t lightly attacking that town then it must have been a huge stronghold indeed. They’d certainly be safe there.

Going around was possible, but dangerous considering they got attacked even on the short trek to Ponyville. How many more monsters were waiting to pop out of nowhere? Should Dash just take her chances that Starlight would allow these refugees sanctuary?

She looked down at Scootaloo. That was the main flaw in this plan. Starlight had an interest in ponies like her…

Dash jumped down off the roof.

“Scootaloo. I don’t know if Starlight is here or what. You,” said Dash, “and your two friends should hide while I figure this out. I don’t want her seeing you.”

Scootaloo nodded firmly.

“Oh,” Applebloom offered. “I know a spell that can make one or two ponies invisible for a short while.”

That would have been nice a little while ago.

“This could be bad,” Trixie whispered to Dash. “I’m pretty sure that Starlight has some sort of backup kill switch implanted in my brain.”

“Yeah, I know. But what the crow?! She’s supposed to have turned south! I was specifically told that Starlight wouldn’t be coming this way! It's what we were banking on so…”

“Yeah!” Sonata, standing next to Dash, blurted out. “What were the chances of that happening? Hahaha!”

“You!” Dash pointed to her. “If you use that coin one more time I will literally murder you! Got it?!”

“This might not be so bad,” said Trixie. “Starlight doesn’t have any reason to come down here, so…”

“Heh! Well what are the chances that Starlight shows up right now?!” Sonata laughed.

Starlight appeared on the ground a few feet in front of the ponies wearing her cloaks. Frowning, she looked from Rainbow Dash to Sonata.

“Hehehe. Heh.” Sonata blinked, realizing she was making eye contact with Starlight herself. “Oh wait. I did not think this through.”

Starlight thrust a hoof out. Dash wasn’t even sure if she cast a spell or could just punch holes in the world, but the force of that tore through the ground, leveled the building behind Sonata, and created an airburst that carried the banshee far off into the distance.

She turned to Trixie. As Dash feared, Trixie’s body locked up and she fell over onto her side, collapsing more like a statue than a pony. Dash was alone now.

“Rainbow Dash! What are you doing here?” Starlight stepped forward with a smile. “I’ll assume Trixie was let out of the TCU due to the… extreme emergency. But she’ll be brought back to Area 5X for now.

“Listen! Starlight! These are just a bunch of civilians and foals!” Dash stepped forward. “You’re not going to kill them… right?”

“I’m the president of Equestria. Of course, I won’t harm my own ponies,” said Starlight. “The only ones I’m interested in fighting are those openly rebelling against the nation. None of these foals will be harmed.”

Dash looked back at her exodus. A few of them were werewolves… among other things. Though Equestria didn’t actively murder any of the ponies here. Just kept them quarantined. It was unlikely they were in any immediate danger.

“But I am curious,” said Starlight. “Is Scootaloo with you?”

Whatever tiny part of Dash had allowed to relax was gone just like that.

“Why?”

“I just want to make sure she’s safe,” said Starlight. “A special pony like Scootaloo is important.”

“I’m her legal guardian,” said Dash. “I’ll make sure it's fine.”

“Will you?” Starlight stepped forward.

“What are you thinking of doing?!” Dash flared her wings out.

“It’s just… well I don’t see you being anything more than a nuisance from here on out. You should have taken my offer.”

Dash felt something sharp dig into her side! It didn’t hurt much but… Dash looked horrified at the rest of the crowd.

“Don’t worry so much. I don’t intend to hurt… most of these ponies.” Starlight pulled out her knife, letting Dash collapse to the ground. “There’s an orange pegasus filly somewhere in here! Bring her to me.”

“Scootaloo!” Dash screamed. “Get out of here! All of you!”

“There’s no way she’s going to escape from me.” Starlight scanned her eyes across the crowd, ignoring Dash pulling on her robes entirely.

Her eyes went right to the spot where Scootaloo and Applebloom were!

Maybe this really was it… but Dash couldn’t… she just had to do this one thing! If she could at least do this one thing! If nopony else. If she could just save Scootaloo!

Everything else vanished for a moment. She didn’t care if it bought even a millisecond. Dash jumped to her feet and swung the blade as hard as she could into Starlight’s face.

She felt the collision! For a moment, Dash really believed she’d torn Starlight’s eye straight out of its socket.

She dared to open her eyes. Starlight looked unharmed at first but then, as if summoned by her moment of confidence, a tiny trickle of blood ran from Starlight’s brow.

“Hm.”

Starlight frowned as she watched a single drop of blood run down her muzzle. Now, at last, Dash was worthy of her notice. She looked at Dash, grabbed her in her magic, and lifted Dash to eye level with her.

“It’s been a little while since I’ve bled,” Starlight said. “You know… I’ve had my spies research every little detail in your life, Dash. I got my hopes up about you. I noticed certain parallels in our lives and… sometimes I wonder what could have been had I noticed you earlier.”

“Don’t give me that crap about how we’re the same.” Dash struggled to keep her good eye open. The longer she could distract Starlight. Even if just a second or two…

“Is that what you thought I was doing? Of course we’re not that same.” Starlight laughed. “Unlike you, I rose above what I used to be. I’m the most powerful pony who ever lived and ponies worship me! What have you accomplished, exactly?”

Dash… didn’t know. She couldn’t even see that small cute on Starlight’s muzzle anymore. Had she really cut Starlight? Or just imagined it?

“That’s right. All you did was create chaos, and bring this trouble crashing down on your ‘friends’. How dare you compare yourself to someone as accomplished as me!”

Dash felt a force clamping down on her neck!

And then everything went black.

That invisibility and a spell from Applebloom got them to an abandoned toyshop through which they could safely hide and watch some of Starlight’s ponies pass by in the streets. Eventually, they would look in here.

Being calm in a panic was… weird. Nothing horrible was flaring up at the moment. But Scootaloo had no idea if that was even a good thing at this point. A bit of wanton destruction might be just what she needed right now.

“I’m starting to not see any way out of this town.” Applebloom backed up against a wall. “I can’t fight all these ponies. Not sure how long we can hide in here for.”

Now would be a really great time to discover her secret powers! Scootaloo rubbed her temples but Guardian was even more sluggish than her.

“Come on,” Scootaloo muttered. “Just help me out. There’s got to be something we can do. Some way to…”

And she felt her other half make some attempt! Inexplicably, Scootaloo made eye contact with another filly, though she wasn’t looking in the right direction. A vision!

She could see it. Guardian gave her a path to safety and found the one shelter in this storm. Scootaloo knew as much the moment she saw that spikey blue-haired unicorn.

Lilymoon!

Lilymoon was here. She was standing on top of a star-shaped clock tower that was in sight of their hiding place. And for the brief moment the vision lasted, it seemed Lilymoon saw her back.

“I have a plan!” Scootaloo pointed up at the weirdly shaped clock tower. “Up there. I saw Lilymoon. You know the subject one to my subject two? She can help us. I know it!”

“Lilymoon?” Applebloom repeated the only vaguely familiar name. She squinted at the tower, distantly visible even from here, but couldn’t find her. “Are you sure she’s out there?”

“Yes! Guardian showed me and I think she saw us. Lilymoon’s my friend. And her powers were always way stronger than mine. She could even fight off Starlight! Maybe.”

Applebloom looked skeptical about that last part. Or perhaps something else.

“But hasn’t she been with Starlight for a long time now?” Applebloom asked. “What if?”

“It’s our only hope! I know Lilymoon won’t hurt me if nothing else. Besides, I think she already knows we’re here.”

Applebloom nodded, able to see that much.

They crept from building to building on their way over. Starlight wasn’t even the only thing they had to watch out for. As they reached the clock tower itself, they could see a longer distance. Starlight’s airships were right overhead and her ponies were crawling over the city. Then there were those demons just to the south…

But they were getting close to some small island of safety. Scootaloo could fly a little now and fluttered up the last part of the journey, landing on the tip of one of the stars.

It really was her! Though wearing a cloak, Scootaloo recognized her. The dark purple filly with the mane like blue fire. She looked down at this chaos and merely yawned, bored as ever.

“Lilymoon!” Scootaloo flew up to meet her, Applebloom following but needing more time to climb. “Lilymoon, it’s me!”

“Huh?” Lilymoon looked down at her. “Scootaloo? You really are here!”

The clouds of apathy broke, and her face lit up. Any worry Scootaloo had melted when she saw that smile.

“I was so worried I wouldn’t get a chance to talk to you.” Lilymoon ran over to Scootaloo and grabbed her in a hug. “You escaped by yourself? We used to dream about that kind of stuff!”

“Yeah! I busted out of Allgood’s a while ago. You escaped too?” Scootaloo asked.

“Not exactly.” Lilymoon took one step back, allowing Scootaloo to get a better look at her outfit.

Worryingly, she had the robes of Starlight’s religion on. Her robes were the same as Starlight’s herself – black with a green trim reminiscent of flowering vines.

Scootaloo understood little of it but knew the fancier designs were for the ponies at the top. If Lilly’s were the same as hers, did that mean she was the same rank as Starlight? That couldn’t be right.

That didn’t mean anything, Scootaloo assured herself. They probably just made her wear that.

“And you nearly obtained completion, too!” Lilymoon put a hoof on Scootaloo’s forehead as though looking for a fever, yet she smiled wide. “This is great. I can’t wait for you to take the next step.”

“The next…?”

Scootaloo had too many questions all of a sudden. Least of all was what to even ask first.

“Scootaloo!” Applebloom finished climbing on top of the building. She looked Lilymoon over, more alarmed by her outfit than Scootaloo. “Are you sure this pony is on our side? Ain’t that how Starlight’s followers dress?”

Lilymoon shot her an annoyed look.

“Who’s this kid?” Lilymoon moved protectively in front of Scootaloo, halting Applebloom with a hoof. “You better get out of here.”

“No! That’s Applebloom!” Scootaloo ran in front of the annoyed Lilymoon, then beckoned to Applebloom. “She’s my friend. So no need to worry.”

“Er. Yeah! Me and Scootaloo are real good friends.” Applebloom didn’t dare get closer.

Lilymoon dropped her defensive posture but dropped it far too low.

“Oh.” Lilymoon spun, flaring her cape out, before walking back to the ledge. “You have new friends now.”

“Ah, come on.” Scootaloo ran after her. “Don’t be like that. You’re still my friend too! You’ll like Applebloom. Just give her a chance. Then we’ll all be friends, yeah?”

Scootaloo shot Applebloom a more annoyed look and beckoned her harder this time.

“It’s just I get the feeling this pony could crush me,” said Applebloom, “and that she don’t like me none.”

“She can,” Scootaloo admitted, “but we’re safer with Lilymoon than we are out there! She’s not going to let anything happen to me or my friends. Right?”

Scootaloo turned to her oldest friend. If she had to be honest, there was the slightest bit of doubt about the answer. But she didn’t have to be honest, so her smile stayed.

Lilymoon did seem far more stable now. She used to be way worse than Scootaloo. She was much, much stronger but had less control, losing herself at even small slights like what just happened.

“Of course I won’t let anything happen to you.” Lilymoon closed her eyes too tight, then shot an annoyed look towards Applebloom. “And apparently she likes you now so if you stay close to me, I promise nothing bad will happen to you. But only because Scootaloo said you were okay. But you’re not like us. You’re an inferior being and until that changes, we can’t be friends. I can’t love a lie.”

Scootaloo wasn’t sure if now was a good time to challenge her on that last part.

“Er. Thanks? I think.” Applebloom forced herself to smile and inched forward cautiously until she was next to Lilymoon. “You know, Scootaloo talks about you all the time! I’m glad I finally get to meet you.”

Lilymoon didn’t acknowledge her just yet, looking out into the city. Scootaloo wished they could have all met up on better terms. Maybe the two of them would warm up to each other eventually. But for now… Scootaloo had to press her luck.

She looked down to where Rainbow Dash was.

“I’m not sure what you were going to do next,” said Scootaloo. “But um… maybe you could help us save Rainbow Dash? And then you can come with us and be free!”

“Why?”

Why?

Scootaloo blinked. Only now did it cross her mind how much Lilymoon might have changed since they last met.

“Because you hate being trapped in Area 5X!” Scootaloo reminded her. “Don’t you want to finally be free? Rainbow Dash will give us that! We can live like how we used to imagine. Maybe I can even convince Dash to adopt you, too. Then we’d be sisters like for real.”

Scootaloo wasn’t sure if she’d just overpromised, but she needed something as Lilymoon continued to be unimpressed. Surely, she could find some way to make it work.

“Don’t you remember how we used to play family?” Scootaloo asked. “I finally have one for real! It’s just like we imagined. You can have that, too.”

“I already have a family.” Lilymoon stood up and put a hoof on her chest, closing her eyes. “Starlight loves me. My new religion is important to me. It helped me understand how immature I was back then.”

Scootaloo stepped back, her heart sinking at the words. Starlight had already gotten to her.

“Don’t you see how messed up the world is?” Lilymoon opened her eyes, her cape flared out behind her as she took a step forward. “Everything is terrible! Everypony’s life is broken and meaningless. Incomplete. Life is nothing but the pain you feel before death. But Starlight can change that.”

Lilymoon clasped Scootaloo’s hoof in her own.

“That’s why you should join us! Starlight can give your life meaning, too! She can even give meaning to what’s her face over there. All of us can finally be free from the suffering and have a purpose.”

Scootaloo shook her head and stepped back.

“My life already has meaning.”

Lilymoon blinked, honestly taken off guard by a pony outside her cult merely claiming her life had meaning. How badly had Starlight gotten to her?

Scootaloo could understand. It wouldn’t have taken much for Starlight to do the same to her not long ago. Scootaloo would have jumped at the chance to be loved.

“Well. Your life doesn’t have real meaning,” Lilymoon insisted.

“Yes it–”

“No! The blind can’t understand color.”

That was…

Scootaloo felt like a door just slammed in her face. Hearing somepony Scootaloo cared about say those words…

“Lilymoon! Starlight is brainwashing you! Don’t you get that?”

“Starlight didn’t brainwash me. She loves me.” Now Lilymoon was looking at Scootaloo with the same disdain she had for Applebloom not long ago. “She’s the only one who understands me and I’m the only one who understands her. You’re just… you’re still beneath us so you wouldn’t understand. You’re too toxically blind.”

“I understand you!” Scootaloo pleaded. “We went through all the same stuff.”

“You don’t get it.” Lilymoon put a hoof on the edge of her robe, the same kind only Starlight had the honor of wearing. “I’ve gone ahead of all of you. Even Starlight.”

Lilymoon tore off her robe and threw it to the ground.

And she spread her wings.

The ocean soared beneath Twilight briefly before she landed on the ship. She looked left and right, expecting something… but nopony else was here nopony except.

“Screwball!” Twilight called out to her.

It didn’t take much searching. Screwball was waiting in the first cabin, Pinkie right behind her inside an hourglass with only the tip of her muzzle sticking out. The whole apparatus hung above a Z-gate.

She was whole. No partial murder spell to escape with. Twilight could end the fight with Screwball today.

“Let Pinkie go!”

“Too easy.” Screwball shrugged.

Pinkie and her container fell through the portal. Twilight should have expected as much. Screwball laughed and jumped through the portal as well.

That was where the trap would be.

Twilight jumped through.

She found herself somewhere far enough away that it was sunrise again. Around her stood a circle of ponies and… other creatures. Twilight briefly wondered who Screwball could have recruited against her… until she noticed two particular ponies elevated above the rest, at the same height as Screwball herself.

The first was a pegasus, the ‘was’ serving a pivotal role. Twilight recognized the teal pony immediately, though she didn’t look like the picture Twilight had been shown.

In the older picture, her right foreleg had been covered in a black, insectoid carapace, though no explanation had been given. Whatever the affliction, it had spread greatly since then, consuming a quarter of her body.

It ran up her side and along a large portion of her back where it began to turn green. It twisted her right wing into something not entirely pegasus nor insect, a clear membrane with feathers still protruding from it. The right half of her face had been consumed by the same chitin, leaving her one eye nothing but a blue orb and that half of her mouth filled with fangs.

Further, she looked emaciated. Not only was she far thinner than some years ago, but even the chitin affecting her appeared to waste away, an entire hole formed along the right leg that had been fully overcome. The expression she looked at Twilight with was one of starvation, as though ready to consume Twilight or anything else the pony could get a hold of.

If the pegasus’ appearance had been dominated by hunger, the unicorns was by age. So too could her knotted bones be seen, though in her instance through wrinkles and loose skin. Her hair had turned completely white and enough had fallen out to leave it a wiry mess which did little to cover her scalp.

Her fur too had nearly turned white, something that rarely happened to ponies no matter how old they got. Yet, save for a few splotches that had fallen out or where her numerous warts dominated, Twilight could still make out a distant remnant of purple in her.

And yet through it all, she sat perfectly calmly, quietly analyzing Twilight as though her old age weighed nothing.

Twilight knew exactly who these two were.

The old one. ‘Auntie Eclipse’. The pegasus. ‘Embermoon’.

These were the two remaining witches. Between the three of them, all of Twilight’s remaining spellbooks were right here.

“I think I might have more friends than you,” said Screwball.

That was one down. It seemed Rainbow Dash’s ragtag little group had fallen apart completely. Whether Twilight or Screwball won the upcoming fight was of little importance, either way, Starlight would be rid of one of her major threats.

As she promised that crowd of ponies was simply allowed to pass through to Sunset Shimmer’s stronghold. They could take care of some useless civilians. Starlight never even intended to be here. Only changed course due to a freak shift in the winds.

Starlight stood at the very edge of the deck of her airship, the Phoenix King. Night Glider and her next three most loyal followers stood behind her in formation. All of them had been… ‘completed’ and were ready to serve their true purpose.

Void Walker stood at her side, though he was still a normal pony. Wouldn’t be part of the grand finale.

Then there was Starlight herself. And one other pony that should be here to complete the six.

Lilymoon appeared suddenly in her spot and bowed her head to Starlight.

“I’m curious,” said Starlight. “Did Scootaloo come to you?”

“No,” said Lilymoon. “Sorry. Her alicorn magic is too weak for me to find since she just named her other half. I tried…”

Starlight could see straight through her. Not the worst turn of events. Starlight could find them later if that was the case. For now, she needed to focus on a more immediate danger.

“I’m sure you did what was best.” Starlight kissed Lilymoon’s head. “I love you no matter what, Lilymoon.”

And the filly got choked up and teary-eyed at that. It almost looked like she was about to confess the truth, but Starlight hushed her. She had no time for that and couldn’t have Lilymoon doubting her at present.

She had little flourishes like that for the ponies in her inner circle. Lilymoon was the only one Starlight ever said ‘I love you’ to. Void Walker was the only one who believed himself ‘in on the scam’. Night Glider thought she was Starlight’s most enlightened student at the highest rank.

They all thought they were different.

Which was exactly what she needed right now. There needed to be six of them and they needed to be in perfect sync, all of them loving Starlight.

Six points of light. Six sources of alicorn magic. Six beacons that could perform as standing for elements of harmony.

Exactly what Starlight needed to cast the azoth spell.

The Phoenix King broke through the clouds to reveal her target. Below here rested a deep puncture wound in the earth. The trees for miles around the edge all froze to death long ago and were buried by such snow that only the jagged tips remained visible.

The hole itself had all its sides consumed by that same ice, jagged spikes of ice coming out from all ends to give the crater the impression of the mouth of some enormous worm capable of swallowing cities.

And at the very center, at the hole leading into the deepest darkness, the belly of that monstrosity was the hungriest-looking black that could ever exist. And just below…

This was it. Starlight would kill the one standing in her way.

Twilight vs Screwball

Twilight’s eyes went to Pinkie Pie, still trapped inside the hourglass. Screwball had already passed it off to a black and white pony, or at least Twilight thought he was a pony. She’d never seen one with stripped fur or such an odd build.

He wore a mask, one side white and the other black. She could sense the danger of it, that it was having some effect on the area already. It was likely an artifact created by a god.

This pony, or whatever he was, took a step back. Flames came from the black half of the mask that soon consumed him and Pinkie, but Twilight followed easily enough. They both reappeared at the top of what Twilight remembered as the tallest waterslide in the world.

The bars that made up its base served to cage in about half the island until it got too short to be seen under the other structures. Twilight could see the island split into two halves. The one in front of her was a carnival, dominated by the water slide and an enormous Ferris wheel.

Behind her, on the side not caged in, was Screwball's actual stronghold. Something halfway between a bunker and a castle jutted partially up from the earth. Just beyond that, along the coast, stood steel towers surrounded by barbed wire and what was likely to be enormous guns on top. Yet very few ponies seemed to be around.

They weren’t too far from the mainland. Twilight had been to the mountainous and zombie-infested terrain of the eastern continent once before. Its mountains were visible beyond the water slide but blurred by distance and haze.

Most of this wouldn’t still be standing soon, but if this was Paradise Island Twilight wouldn’t have to worry so much about hurting any bystanders save Pinkie.

Three witches, four other ponies, each equipped with an artifact Twilight suspected to be of similar divine origins to that mask, who scattered immediately. Hopefully, the latter wouldn’t be much of a threat. Though there was liable to be many more around.

“And just so we’re clear,” said Screwball. In the distance, Pinkie’s cage began flowing down the slide. “You have until Pinkie reaches the bottom to try and free her.”

Getting there wouldn’t be easy.

Twilight kept her focus mostly on the three witches – Embermoon who walked slowly to Twilight's left, Screwball to her right, and Eclipse who sat calmly. Twilight didn’t dare make the first move, not with so many targets around.

At last, breaking the tension, Embermoon, the half-pony, half-insectoid creature, charged forward, a storm of green flames and lightning growing behind her as she went.

Embermoon’s speed surpassed that of the other two witches Twilight had fought. She was relatively close to Twilight in that regard. The spells came rapid and relentless.

Every flap of her buzzing wings brought torrents of green fire, each beat enough to bring down a small building in its own right. She punched her forelegs at Twilight with a ravenous look on her face, casting a new spell each time, forcing Twilight’s focus on responses.

Twilight managed to match her beat for beat, breaking the more devastating spells apart before they could affect Twilight and blowing back the display of force with her own blasts of wind and ice. Nothing got through Twilight’s defenses.

She went for a few obvious ways to try and remove Embermoon from the fight as quickly as possible. She tried opening a long-range Z-gate portal to merely push the witch far away for now but… something, one of those artifacts prevented the spell from going off. Twilight suspected it was that mask, given the change in the air that emanated from it. She’d be limited to shorter-range portals until then.

Petrification was the next easiest option. Embermoon began turning to stone but quickly ended it halfway through. The witches hadn’t decayed that much yet.

At this intensity, Embermoon was able to keep up with Twilight. Twilight could tell she didn’t have Trixie’s boundless endurance, though. In a one-on-one fight, Embermoon would tire out enough for Twilight to crush her before long.

Fighting Embermoon by herself would be no big deal. But with a time limit and two more witches nearby, Twilight had to be ready.

Embermoon’s wings glowed briefly, through one single flap, rather than firing off another heavy attack.

This was it!

Twilight knew at once that Embermoon was about to hyper-cast, but more importantly, she knew it meant one of the other two was about to attack.

Twilight took the brief pause to glance at Eclipse and Screwball, rather than to prepare properly. Eclipse watched silently, unimpressed so far. Screwball made a slight twitch, a mistake at the last second!

Far behind Embermoon formed a wide ring of green fire. Something not unlike a meteor would be flying out through that ring in just a moment. Meanwhile, Screwball kicked off the ground, reaching Mach speeds as she flew at Twilight from the other side.

Twilight cast her own spell, keeping her eyes on Screwball. A ball of air, a concentrated hurricane with wind so intense it may have well been as solid as bricks, formed just before her.

She turned and punched towards the meteor of green flames that appeared in the blink of an eye. The tornado exploded out, pushing back the flames with enough force to both extinguish them and throw Embermoon out of the sky.

It also rocketed Twilight back, straight into Screwball. Twilight was faster and swerved away from the punch, then created an ethereal blade and slashed into Screwball from behind with full force. The blade tore through her but, as Twilight had been banking on, she cast the partial murder spell and escaped by sacrificing a foreleg at just the last moment.

Twilight looked up at the escaping crow. This would be a good time to strike but…

Twilight saw Eclipse as she spun through the air. The elderly pony still wasn’t moved to react. She hummed but still didn’t take the opportunity to attack.

Could she tell Twilight still had a bit of strength to spare after all that? Secretly, Twilight hadn’t used all of her wind sphere. Screwball hadn’t noticed but…

Twilight decided this was the most experienced of the three. As much as Twilight hated Screwball, she began to think Eclipse was the biggest immediate threat.

Changing plans at the last second, Twilight pulled back, acting like she was about to launch her attack at the escaping crow. At the last moment, Twilight teleported down in front of Eclipse, the ball of wind ready to blow her away. If her body was as frail as it looked…

Eclipse made no effort to dodge, though she had a split second to make some move. Did she decide there was no time to avoid the attack?! Or–

A pony teleported in front of Eclipse. A small filly!

Twilight pulled her attack at the last possible second to avoid splattering the foal. A torrent of wind formed a small tornado as it tore upward through the air, but the filly was unharmed.

“Hm!” Eclipse smiled again and slashed at Twilight with a suddenly formed arcane blade.

Twilight had overreached just then. Her blade made a small cut in Twilight’s chest as she fell backward. Embermoon was on her in an instant, slamming her hooves into Twilight wildly, breaking the ground beneath her. This was a bad position where Twilight was forced to only block.

It wasn’t something Twilight had ever been forced to do before, but she cast a shorter-ranged z-gate below herself then the murder spell. Embermoon fell through the portal along with half the crows, while the other half escaped.

One of them got to safety and turned back. That was too close! Twilight needed to be more cautious from here out.

“Curious!” Eclipse grabbed the filly by the scruff, holding her between the two of them. “You won’t attack a filly, will you? I knew you’d be useful, Luster Dawn.”

Twilight spared her only a glance before turning to the filly in exasperation. Luster Dawn didn’t look like she was being held hostage at all. She had her forelegs spread defensively and a look of determination on her face.

“You’re seriously willing to be her meat shield?” Twilight asked Luster.

“Eclipse is the only path I have to get the power I need.” Luster Dawn threw a hoof to the side. “Society considers me worthless. I have no other option.”

Damn it! How many ponies like her were there in this world?! They just kept coming and coming…

Twilight didn’t have any time to disagree with her. Instead.

“I have more power than her.” Twilight stood back up. “If you give up this madness, I’ll teach you instead. I know more than her and–”

“And let me guess, you’ll shove your stupid morals down my throat? Tell me what to do with my strength?” Luster Dawn ground her teeth together and stepped closer. “I’ve had enough of hypocrites like you trying to ‘reform’ me! Eclipse will let me do whatever the hell I want whether it’s right or wrong!”

“You can’t possibly compete against the lure of freedom from morality,” Eclipse warned. “But no need to worry just yet. I’m not in quite as much of a hurry to attack as the others. I can take my time until I understand things a tad better. But perhaps I should get a better view.”

Eclipse cast the murder spell. Her crows spread out, landing on various parts of the island, surrounding Twilight. Any one of those old crows could revert at a moment’s notice, meaning an attack could come from any angle.

Twilight had options. She could–

Screwball was behind Twilight! The pirate wound up to punch as hard as she could. Luster Dawn moved around Twilight’s other side, spreading her forelegs out, making it clear that if Twilight dodged, it would mean the death of the filly, risking her life to force Twilight to take the hit. What was wrong with this kid?!

No other choice!

Twilight created a portal and bucked Luster Dawn into it. Screwball’s punch came in a moment later.

She did hit hard! Twilight struggled to keep her shield up against the massive blow, the shockwave tearing through the ground around Twilight. Truly, if a foal had been standing behind her it’d be over for them. But it was too large of a swing.

Twilight moved to take advantage of Screwball’s overexertion.

A second, even worse attack came out of nowhere and slammed into Twilight from the side! The incredible blow carried Twilight off.

Despite her last-second reaction, a spear had dug into Twilight’s foreleg just halfway through the tip. Incredible magic surged through the weapon, enough to overwhelm Twilight’s own. Like a blight, searing white light spread from the wound, attempting to slowly vaporize Twilight’s foreleg. But it wouldn’t get far.

She took stock of the situation as she tried to pull it out. Twilight found the blue pegasus who had thrown it, now hovering high above the island. And where was Embermoon?

Twilight was moving away from the water slide and Pinkie! She needed to create a portal to get over there but before she could do that, she had to get the spear off.

The spear pushed her out to the ocean before Twilight could knock it away. Then it vanished in a burst of lightning. Back to the pony who threw it. She was over the water, the towers on the shore opening fire on her but not with enough fury to be a serious threat.

Twilight first created her small army of ethereal weapons to attack the ponies in the tower. With any luck, it would be enough to force any but the most serious of combatants to retreat. Recognizing that weapon as a serious threat, Twilight returned fire at the blue pegasus. An orb of electrical energy primed to explode would have taken that pony out in an instant.

The attack vanished in midair. It hadn’t been blocked by anything, merely vanished. Possibilities ran through Twilight’s mind. Then it came to her. She remembered that technique from long ago.

That mirror! One of the objects Flash Sentry stole from her. Twilight had almost forgotten it was here but now that she saw it, she wouldn’t let it escape her grasp. She could use this to her advantage, even, being the true master of that object.

The spear, the mirror, the mask. There was only one more extra Twilight remained unaware of.

Twilight noticed something wrong. Moving over the ocean at this speed, water should be spraying all around her. Twilight spun around once to see the ocean beneath her gone, bearing nothing but mud and naked coral. Meanwhile, walls of water began to rise around either side of Twilight as the ocean parted around her.

She could see the pony responsible for this. A blue unicorn near the shore with a staff, the blue stone at the top of that connected to the tides.a

Twilight landed in the newly formed canyon and Screwball came in seconds later. She dug her hooves into the ground and a yellow energy coalesced around her as she drew up the magic from the ground below.

Screwball’s body tensed. She twisted and punched at Twilight with supernatural force. Too much. Enough to break her own foreleg. But just as she began, Screwball cast a spell to create an echo of herself an inch in front of Twilight.

The echo spell could create a phantom copy of anything, even yourself, but only for a second. Screwball had found a way to make full use of it. Such a wild punch would been suicide under any other circumstance.

Of course, Twilight could do the same trick.

Twilight’s own echo clone clashed with Screwball’s with just enough force to cancel one another out before vanishing. Twilight continued forward creating a second clone, whose attack forced Screwball to use the partial murder spell. Screwball reformed and swung at Twilight with a second clone, making Twilight respond in kind.

They clashed repeatedly, moving in a circle, dodging one another’s blows with echo clones and partial transformation. It quickly became apparent Twilight would soon overpower Screwball, despite Screwball going all out like this. But even still the elation on Screwball’s face at their little dance was more than obvious.

“Hahaha!” Screwball laughed wildly, full of life.

Then the water came crashing down on both of them. Or rather, on Twilight.

As she swam against the immense torrent, struggling with the weight of the ocean pushing into her, Screwball stood perfectly calm and unaffected. The pony controlling the tides made sure she’d get her own bubble while Twilight felt the rush of a repeatedly churning ocean.

Screwball lunged forward with unimpeded speed. Twilight flailed about and froze a wall of the water solid to block the punch. Screwball kept up the flurry of blows, going all out against the encumbered Twilight. They resumed their circle only now it was her slowly gaining on Twilight.

She could try the elemental resonance spell but…

That spear came hurtling through the water again! Twilight was certain the spear would always hit its mark as it pierced through her shields a second time and stabbed her other foreleg. She’d have to remember the best she could do was mitigate the inevitable damage.

It went in a bit deeper this time, but Twilight just barely managed to pull it out.

And she’d come up with a better idea to escape in the meantime. As Screwball jumped up to come punching down at Twilight, Twilight created a ball of plasma, an orb so intensely hot that the water around her began to boil and soon she was surrounded by steam. Only then did Twilight cast the water resonance spell and fly to the surface, leaving Screwball to slam into the ground below.

Still inside a cloud, she’d have a second of peace before the next move. She’d intended to beat Screwball at her own game, just like she had with Minuette and Trixie, but that clearly wasn’t possible here. No time was left.

Twilight decided to go for the pony wielding the mirror. She shot fire behind her to rocket down at where she suspected their location to be, hurtling at them in an overly dramatic fashion.

She caught only a brief look at them, a small, grey stallion who hid behind the circular mirror about the size of a pony’s head as though it were a shield. Seeing Twilight coming right for him caused him to predictably panic and he used the mirror on Twilight. Just as she had hoped.

She was the one who created the mirror and knew exactly how it worked.

The other side of the mirror looked much like the surrounding area only, well, mirrored. You couldn’t go too far in any direction before you’d wind up back where you started, though. At least, that’s how it seemed to somepony who didn’t know how it worked.

This place was made out of reflectivity itself. And there was more than one way out. Any sufficiently reflective surface in the area could serve as an exit, just as it did with that attack.

Twilight took a moment to regain her Barings, found the exact right spot, and cast her spell to twist the reflection just right so…

Twilight emerged from a reflective surface on the bottom of Pinkie’s hourglass! Twilight appeared just behind her. Being this high up gave her a vantage point. She could see ships retreating from the coast of the island. It seemed her barrage of dancing swords forced most of the island to retreat, or perhaps they did so for some other reason.

And damn this slide was fast! The water carried her on almost as fast as that torrent before, air rushing past her as they rushed down the slide, perhaps halfway to the bottom already. It was a good thing Twilight was already soaked.

“Twilight!” Pinkie called out to her as she sloshed around in the dry, dry sand. “Watch out for the zebra!”

Is that what the striped pony was called? Twilight might have actually missed that an invisible pony was riding on top of the hourglass. His mask was what was preventing her from using long-range z-gate portals, Twilight was now certain. This would be a huge win.

Black fire engulfed a strip of the slide just before Twilight, melting it. Jumping over that was easy enough. A pillar of black flames followed, and Twilight shielded herself before jumping over a second gap on the water slide.

Finally, she crouched down and made ready to lunge forward in earnest.

An enormous tidal wave rose high above the already large apparatus and crashed into Twilight’s half of the slide, uprooting it and carrying it off like a toy. It was that staff again!

She watched as Pinkie kept speeding downwards, unable to get free from the immense weight of the water.

Most of the smaller buildings were similarly ripped up below Twilight, but she did manage to ride it out and land in barrel-deep water. And once again an enemy was upon her in a second, never giving her a moment’s rest.

One of the crows turned back into the elderly pony, Eclipse, who brought a bolt of lightning crashing down on Twilight.

So now it was Eclipse’s turn… She could tell their strategy now. They kept switching out and pushing as hard as they could until Twilight became exhausted. That would take a long while, but it might work. Time was against Twilight here.

Out of all of them, this pony was playing the longest game, using nothing but the most generic elemental blasts, giving away nothing of her actual fighting style. Twilight could have easily matched and exceeded her ferocity… were that annoying filly not around, standing in front of Eclipse as a willing meat shield.

That damn spear again! It flew in fast, demanding her attention. Twilight was more ready for it, but with so many other threats…

Just as she went to block it, the spear stopped in midair, surrounded by blue, psychic energy. Twilight recognized that!

Pinkie landed next to Twilight a moment later.

“What?! Pinkie?!” Twilight could only spare her a glance before she had to intercept another attack.

“Don’t worry! The tidal wave broke me out!” Pinkie nodded, then turned to face the other direction. “I’ve got your back.”

Maybe the force of the waves had been enough? Something was off here… she really shouldn’t have been able to stop that spear. But Pinkie was surrounded by the familiar blue psychic energy. It had to be her.

“Keep anypony else off my back for a second while I deal with Eclipse.” Twilight turned to the elderly. Being able to concentrate on just one of them for even a minute would be enough to turn things around. Not to mention having the time limit off her back.

“Right!” Pinkie nodded as Twilight turned her back. “Now.”

Pinkie grabbed Twilight’s neck with her telekinesis and threw her forward. Twilight saw a twinkle of white light on the horizon as Pinkie slammed her down to the ground to pin her with that same telekinetic strength.

Screwball appeared on the far side of the mountain, laughing to herself. She hadn’t felt this alive in so long! To fight a master witch like this!

Building anything over here was a risky proposition. Those griffon zombies were too stupid to fly but there were so many of them that they piled on top of one another to make waves of undeath. Only steep cliffsides were safe to build into.

One such face, not far from being a sheer wall, had two such tunnels dug into its side. Inside one was Screwball’s experimental weapons, not unlike the fusion cannon Rarity put onto her robot.

The problem? It didn’t work. Thing could fire off one powerful shot, but it would melt itself in the process.

Solution? Screwball had her echo spell. It’d create a copy of the fusion cannon in the second hole. She could only hold a copy of an object for a second or two but that was all it needed. She could even shoot it multiple times by looping it near the end of its fire sequence.

Screwball watched the battle unfolding through a telescope. Embermoon would be able to catch Twilight off guard exactly once with her special ability. And that would be the best possible moment to go all out.

Screwball smiled as ‘Pinkie’ grabbed Twilight and threw her into position. This was it!

The laser charged up until it was within a moment of firing. Screwball was the purple light pouring out from the cavern next to her. At the last moment, she filled the empty cavern with a copy of the hulking monstrosity of a barrel. Just as the first one began to wind down, the first one fired off.

That brief Twinkle was the only warning Twilight got! A purple laser fired from the mountain down at Twilight’s position, one large enough to consume her completely.

She just barely managed to create her strongest shield, an orb of plasma, around herself. But not fully and completely. She buckled under the force of the laser.

The shockwave of the collision was big enough to throw ‘Pinkie Pie’ aside. Green flames consumed her, causing her to revert to her true form, the half-pegasus half-bug creature. It had been Embermoon all along! But what kind of transformation was that? Not the sort Twilight knew. Even Twilight didn’t recognize it.

If the beam had lasted longer than a second or two it would have done immense damage, but it stopped just as suddenly as it began.

The echo spell again?

Twilight staggered back to her feet. Her pouch just barely survived, along with it the root she’d taken from Smarty Pants. She could feel a burn wound on her flank and needed a minute to recover. Between that and the few other wounds, she was more injured than she’d ever been before. That was the worst hit she’d taken since…

It was already time for round two! Twilight saw the flash a second time. Something out in the mountains was attacking! Most likely a machine given its similarity to Saccharine’s fusion canon. But it was far away, and the mirror could stop any projectile in midair.

But that wouldn’t be the only one this time.

Embermoon transformed again! Green flames enveloped her, only this time she transformed into Twilight! Her body glowed, ready to hypercast, ready to imitate Twilight’s plasma spell just as she had Pinkie’s psychic abilities.

Eclipse also rose a hoof and got ready to hypercast. A far larger bolt of lightning would be dropping on Twilight in just a second. All three of them were about to hit Twilight as hard as she could while still staggering. Twilight could teleport or use a portal, but she wouldn’t get far enough away from such huge attacks that quickly.

And worst of all… Pinkie had but seconds before reaching the bottom of the slide.

Twilight let out a breath. There was no choice now. They pushed her too hard!

The restraint Twilight normally had, even through all this, she let it drop for just a moment.

The three other witches unleashed all of their firepower on Twilight. Twilight drew in deep and slammed her hoof into the ground, creating a far more intense ball of plasma around herself than she normally would have.

Every nearby structure collapsed. Every window on the island shattered. The ground beneath Twilight burnt off into the air. If any but the witches were nearby, they would have been sent flying. A blinding light filled the island, surely stunning anypony who was left.

With a shout, Twilight managed to overcome all three attacks. They hit hard, but she forced all of them back.

Without Twilight having to do anything, Embermoon turned back to her true form, coughing and wheezing. It appeared that, while Embermoon could imitate anypony completely, the stronger they were the more strain it put on her. She hadn’t managed to follow the attack all the way through, which was why it had failed after just a second.

And the cautious eclipse already reverted to crows and made a hasty retreat.

Doing that twice in a row wasn’t easy. Twilight’s body ached but she couldn’t let up. Everypony but the witches were likely blinded momentarily by that. Even with the mirror, she’d be able to fire off a long-range attack. She staggered back and hurdled an explosive orb at the location the laser fired from.

She had no time to wait to see it go off but rocketed herself off with a torrent of fire toward Pinkie’s location. The support beams of the remainder of the water slide were half-melted now and the whole thing teetered.

The spear impacted Twilight harder than before this time, but she ignored it for now. Instead, she blasted the zebra off of Pinkie and landed in front of her, just before the edge of the slide where Twilight found a heap of explosives waiting.

She created a z-gate portal at the end and jumped on top of the hourglass herself. Just as they neared the end, another tidal wave rose up and came sweeping down at them.

They got through the portal just in time but didn’t travel far away enough to escape the immensity of the wave. It swallowed the ensuing explosion and carried off what was left of the slide.

It also sent Pinkie and Twilight slamming into one of those metal towers, now abandoned. This time it really did break Pinkie out. The real Pinkie scrambled to get the helmet off of her while Twilight pulled the spear out of her leg yet again. It left a huge gash this time, but it was nothing Twilight couldn’t handle.

She looked up to the mountain where that laser came from. The smoke from an explosion rose up over it. She’d finally managed to take a step toward victory… but going that hard really was dangerous.

The laser exploded behind Screwball.

“Heheheheh!” Screwball’s smile faded. “Heh…”

And then she clenched her jaw as she watched Silverstorm ‘struggle’ against her magic artifacts. She’d been having such a good time too.

Her sister… Twilight… that bitch! She hadn’t been taking Screwball seriously at all, had she?! Screwball really thought she’d been pushing a master witch to their limit this whole time but that wasn’t the limit. This was the limit and yet Twilight refused to use it on Screwball!

She wouldn’t stand an insult like this. No matter what happened.

One of them was going to take this fight dead serious. Screwball dropped down to the bottom of the cliff where a small communication station still stood.

Screwball did have one ultimate ace. Years of research went into this. At six points around the planet, she had stored six divine objects, even more valuable than the ones here. It would consume all of their magic, but in exchange, Screwball would be able to cast one ultimate attack, enough to kill even a god. Against a master witch, it’d be overkill.

The phone led to her second in command, leading the Equestrian invasion.

“Batton Pass,” said Screwball. “We’re going to use the azoth spell on my sister. Get ready.”

There was a pause. Screwball had to press the phone against her ear hard against all the chaos behind her.

“What? We agreed to only use that against Nightmare Moon,” Batton Pass’s voice was shaky, being so far away.

“I changed my mind. Starlight and Nailbat both have a shot at killing that monster. We’ll just have to trust them to take care of that for us. This pony is just as big a threat to the cartel.”

There was a longer pause.

“No.”

Screwball frowned. She needed the cooperation of six ponies to cast the azoth spell. If even one of them refused…

“No? Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“It sounds like you aren’t going to win this fight. If either of them does destroy Nightmare Moon, I’ll be the one to use the azoth spell as a bargaining chip. And frankly, I’ve always kind of hated you. This seems a good time to take over.”

“You realize if I win this fight, you’ll be begging me to kill you by the end of the week. And not just you. I’m going to hunt down and exterminate every last one of you bat-winged freaks.”

Batton Pass had already closed the line. Screwball never should have allied with those sketchy bastards. But on the plus side, if Batton Pass was this confident it meant the Cartel was doing great over in Equestria.

Screwball closed the communicator. She’d have to find some other way.

Eclipse looked like she had some sort of plan. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

No. Screwball was done with games for once. She was going to win this in her own way.

She made another call first.

Pinkie jumped onto Twilight’s back. Being a good deal smaller it wasn’t that hard to carry her around. They’d worked out a system where Pinkie would warn Twilight of incoming danger by tapping her. Together this would be more survivable. Twilight wouldn’t have to risk going to extremes again. Maybe.

“Pinkie, do you remember that mirror I mentioned before? One of these ponies has it out.” Twilight could only glance in that pony’s direction, but Pinkie’s perception meant she could guess the right one.

“Er. Mentioned it before what?” Pinkie asked.

“Pinkie, this was only a few months ago!”

“It was years from my point of view! I don’t remember a–”

“We need that to survive in the outer realm, destroy Discord, and undo the curse of undeath!”

“Oh! Right! There was just so much other stuff that–”

Embermoon was upon them, going hard a second time with a renewed blitz. With Pinkie at her back, it was easier to hold up against this time. But still, she was a bit drained already after all that.

She’d just have to get the picture that they couldn’t destroy it. Had to retrieve it somehow in all of this chaos. Twilight had so many things to keep track of. Maybe if Twilight could get that, break the mask, escape…

Then…

Screwball landed just beside Embermoon. But she didn’t look like she was about to attack.

“What the hell are you doing, Twilight?” Screwball asked her. “I know you can fight harder than this.”

“What the hell are you doing?!” Embermoon demanded. “We agreed to wear her out slowly! That’s the only way.”

“Shut up!” Screwball barked at her, then turned back to Twilight. “Don’t you care about your friends, Twilight? Do you have any idea what’s happening to them right now? I do…”

Twilight paused. Was that…?

“Don’t listen to her, Twilight,” Pinkie assured her. “We have to focus on getting out of here.”

Twilight nodded. Get the mirror and the mask… that was it. Pinkie nudged her in the direction of the mirror and they ran off, much more able to dodge attacks than before.

“My ponies invaded Rarity’s castle already!” Screwball called after Twilight. “You had Sunset Shimmer there, right? She wasn’t enough. It’s been burned to the ground.”

Twilight closed her eyes. It would be okay. She just had to…

They managed to come at the pony with the mirror from behind. He was certainly the weakest of the ponies involved in both nerves and ability. Guy ran off the moment Twilight grabbed it from him.

She got the mirror!

But the others…

They’d surrounded her. Eclipse and Embermoon attacked from either side as another wave dunked Twilight. She tried to get a target on either of them, but Luster Dawn kept teleporting to either side! All the while, that zebra was moving around the island too fast! It was all so…

“Rainbow Dash tried running north but Starlight found her.”

Twilight bit her lip in frustration. It felt there was so little she could do next, even with all this support. She used a portal to escape from the water.

The spear stabbed Twilight’s foreleg again! Screwball took the opportunity to come in from the side and punch Pinkie off of her. Even with Pinkie protecting herself, it left Pinkie badly wounded as she tumbled to the side.

“These ponies are a huge weakness for you. You’re not going to get out of here with any of your friends alive, Twilight.” Screwball trotted forward to Twilight. “Are you putting their lives behind mine? And that of these other ponies?”

Twilight trembled. She had Screwball so much! She hated all of this.

“It’s already too late for you! Rainbow Dash… is already dead.” Screwball crouched down next to Twilight. “All of them are going to die, Twilight! All because you didn’t take this seriously! Because you didn’t fight back hard enough! Because you weren’t fast enough!”

Twilight trembled for a moment.

She’d finally had enough of all of this. Screwball wanted her to fight for real.

“Because you – !”

Twilight got up with a flash, sending Screwball sliding back. The pirate queen smiled again.

“Twilight!” Pinkie held up a hoof. “Twilight, we have no idea if anything she’s saying is true. Don’t–”

“I’ll let you out later.” Twilight held the mirror up to Pinkie, trapping her inside.

Twilight put the mirror on her back.

A tidal wave came crashing into the island again. Twilight turned to face it. Everything on this island was already destroyed anyway. She pulled back and fired a kinetic blast that crashed into the wave, parting it aside.

The pony with the staff that controlled the tides stood at the other end of the water, stunned that Twilight had managed to part such a huge mass. Twilight charged straight for him.

Luster Dawn teleported in to try and force Twilight to pull back. Twilight was done with that.

She did stop briefly in front of the filly, but this time grabbed Luster who suddenly didn’t look like she wanted to be here anymore. Twilight created another orb of wind, not enough to splatter the foal but enough to get rid of her. Twilight had been hesitant to use this trick until now, uncertain if the filly would be okay being blown away so far. But it was the only way now.

Twilight threw Luster Dawn into the air, then blasted her with a torrent of wind. Luster screamed as she was rocketed far out of sight. It would take her far up into the atmosphere. She’d probably managed to land safely. Somewhere. Eventually.

Then she turned back to the blue unicorn, scrambling to reform the water. Her brought another tidal wave to Twilight from behind.

Twilight grabbed him, ripped the staff out of his grip, and threw him into his own wave, letting the water knock the wind out of him. Soon the vicious water carried him far out to sea as Twilight parted the water around herself, then put the staff onto her back along with the mirror.

Two more down.

Eclipse and Embermoon both came at Twilight from either side, firing off more shots at her. They weren’t her next target.

Twilight broke into crows, reformed, and then broke a second time to weave her way out of their attacks.

There he was!

Twilight found the zebra, still invisible and hiding behind his mask. When he noticed Twilight approaching, he tilted his head and the world tilted along with him, the light blurred and arced to warp Twilight’s vision.

Spatial distortion would not nearly be enough to stop her. Twilight grabbed him with her magic, spun him around in a wide circle, and smashed him straight through one of the few remaining towers on the island.

But the mask didn’t break.

She lifted him again and spun her whole body to smash him into the ground harder a second time, then even harder a third. He had already passed out from the blows, but Twilight needed to break the mask! It wasn’t until the seventh blow that the mask cracked!

Twilight could feel the change in the air. She ripped the mask off the now comatose zebra and threw him through a long-range z-gate portal. That option was back. But she wasn’t leaving just yet!

Next was!

Embermoon came crashing down on Twilight like a meteor, trying her standard torrent of attacks. This time Twilight didn’t hold back or pace herself. She unleashed an even greater fire and fury that quickly pushed Embermoon back.

Until finally Twilight lunged forward and grappled her.

“Don’t turn back this time,” Twilight warned.

She opened the portal to the moon, air rushing into it, the ultimate technique she’d learned from Minuette.

Embermoon took one look at her destination and decided to take Twilight’s advice. This time, the witch made no effort to stop the petrification spell. Her body turned to stone and bounced along the surface of the moon in wide hops before Twilight closed the portal.

She didn’t actually know how dangerous such a technique was but…

Twilight turned to her remaining opponents, winded but still able to press on.

Eclipse’s face remained unreadable. She cast the murder spell and flew off in every direction. It was too much to hope for a retreat but…

Only two remained now! The blue pegasus with the spear was the only distraction between her and Screwball.

The weaker of the two opponents had no confidence left. She hadn’t dared throw the spear in some time and now held it in a feeble grip. The spear, though still dangerous, trembled. Twilight had several gashes on her body now and most of them came from that thing.

The spear-bearer slowly turned her eyes from Twilight to Screwball. She braced herself… then threw the spear at Screwball and flew off into the mountains as fast as she could.

Screwball used the partial murder spell to survive the spear stabbing through her chest. She cast a disdainful look at the final defector but Twilight was on her in an instant.

Twilight tried slamming into Screwball only for her to dodge out of the way with another partial murder. She swung again and was met with an echo clone.

Screwball danced around Twilight’s wild blows like that, just barely able to keep up as Twilight’s frustration built.

“You wanted to fight me!” Twilight demanded. “Stop running!”

“Come on, Twilight!” Screwball spat. “You know there’s only one way. One way to make it so I won’t retreat!”

Twilight knew exactly what Screwball wanted her to do. There was nopony else left now.

Twilight teleported high into the air. Her body glowed bright with magic and she summoned all of her strength.

Screwball stared breathlessly, then smiled and laughed again.

“Yes!”

Screwball’s body began to glow a brighter and brighter yellow. The land around her died as she drained all the energy and magic against it. She drew so much energy from the ground that even the mountains in the distance began to crumble. Her muscles tensed

Screwball pulled back her fist. Both ponies got ready to strike with absolute force at the other.

“Yes! Let’s do this!” Screwball screamed at the sky with elation.

Twilight cast her spell and Screwball punched forward to meet it.

Featherbangs held his telescope up to his eyes, looking over the rocky water to where Paradise Island should be. It was now the tiniest speck in the distance. Their battle sent out huge waves rippling across the water, but their boat had held up so far.

Plenty of ships left the island, but Featherbang got out with a fleet of the best three. Three big old ships loaded to capacity with treasure!

“Okay.” Featherbangs at last relaxed. “The island is almost out of sight. We should be safe now. We made it, boys!””

A cheer went up through those who escaped with Featherbangs. Some of them jumped into the pile of loot, a pile of platinum coins and rare gemstones, throwing them up into the air in jubilation.

He’d kind of miss Screwball but having this much money would more than make up for it.

“Should be smooth sailing from-”

A bright white flash consumed the world for half a second. So intense was the light that it burned his eyes and left the world dim and reversed in colors afterward. He staggered for a moment before even thinking to look back to the horizon.

A sphere of light rapidly expanded, consuming the entire size of Paradise Island in a fraction of a second and growing ever larger. The size of whatever happened over there… was completely incomprehensible. Nopony on board had any reaction but to blankly stare.

The sound of that cataclysmic force had yet to reach them. It was like living in a dream, watching that silent apocalypse. And slowly realizing it was headed toward you.

“Oh no.” Featherbangs stepped back. “We’re not safe.”

Next came the biggest wave Featherbangs had ever seen, already big enough to destroy an island, growing taller and taller as it approached at unreasonable speeds. Featherbangs could see the shockwave of air traveling just above that, ripping apart and gathering the clouds into a wall as it rushed towards him.

“We’re not safe at all!”

Everypony finally screamed and began panicking. Some took to the air, others rushed into the hull of the ship.

“Don’t worry!” One of the MSC ponies called out to them. “We have a safety protocol for this! It will um… maybe work!”

Featherbangs had no idea which course of action was better. The doomsday tsunami had already grown so large and so near that it blocked out the sun, the entire eastern half of the world.

His time to decide was already over! The wave hit the ship. The treasure on deck was thrown clear off the deck. The entire ship was thrown into the air and sent spinning. Featherbangs too was thrown into the air, spinning, screaming flapping in a desperate attempt to gain any semblance of bearings.

Twilight coughed.

She landed on the nearby mountain, breathing heavily. Blood and singed fur ran along the length of her right foreleg, where she clashed with Screwball. Her head pounded as blood and sweat dripped down her forehead. The area was already hot, but now it was sweltering. She trotted forward with a slight limp.

The shoreline had receded out miles, past where Paradise Island, now an immense crater, had once been.

And just beyond that…

There looked to be a second, blue mountain range off in the ocean, only this one was moving.

The combined attacks had created an immense tsunami. That wave would eventually crash into Equestria’s east coast! Something like that would severely damage entire cities!

Only then did it register to Twilight what she had done.

She stumbled briefly, hopeless at her carelessness and negligence. Was there really nothing?

The artifact she’d taken!

Twilight scrambled to take the staff off her back. She pointed it at the wave and with all her might began to pull the water back towards her. She felt as though she were trying to pull a mountain toward her.

But slowly the wall of water did begin to diminish. It slowed, then began to reverse course toward Twilight. The tides were easier to control than Twilight had feared at first and soon water came rushing in the opposite direction.

A wave swept past the valleys beneath the mountains, but not much should be living there. The zombies had taken care of everything but the moss.

Twilight plunged the staff down and with another moment of struggle, the water became still. There might still be a residual tidal wave, but nothing cataclysmic.

She looked back to the hole that once was Paradise Island. Waterfalls rushed to fill the gaping hole.

Beneath the mountains, the entire area had flooded to the point the mountains appeared to rise from the ocean. Those mountains themselves weren’t spared either. It looked as though somepony had taken a spoon and carved out large, smooth cavities inside them, the closets to the blast having the largest chunks missing.

Not only did this particular mountain have the largest piece scooped out, but the top had been severed and thrown back into the newly expanded ocean. This was where Screwball had landed.

Twilight threw down the staff. She coughed again and trotted to the pillar of smoke where Screwball lay.

The younger witch lay on her back, eyes upturned to the sky with a comatose look as she twitched. Screwball’s right foreleg was gone. Blood pooled beneath her scar-riddled body.

She had survived Twilight hitting her with full force. Twilight had never hit another pony as hard as she could before.

Now she could only wonder as to the state of her mind in that final moment. It felt like it had to be done but now?

“I–”

Despite it all, Screwball struggled, then succeeded, in taking back control of her eyes. She turned them to Twilight, standing relatively unscathed above her.

Screwball tried to talk, coughed something up, then tried again.

“I won,” Screwball spoke while barely moving her lips. “I did it…”

Twilight swallowed. She slowly nodded with tears in her eyes. She knew what Screwball meant.

“Yeah.” Twilight took a bell out from her saddlebag and dropped it down before Screwball. Of all the ponies to give this to... “I… I acknowledge you as a master witch.”

With some renewed life, Screwball took the bell into her remaining foreleg. Screwball just barely held onto the bell. Though not magic in any way, it seemed to restore her health. She sat up, looked at the bell with a smile, then let it fall to the ground.

Twilight’s lips quivered before she spoke again.

“Why did you want me to do this to you so badly?” Twilight asked. “What was the point of any of this? You could have just…”

“The way you feel about Rainbow Dash. What is that like?”

Screwball absently looked down at the bell, the ultimate treasure lying worthlessly on the floor.

“I thought I loved my father. I was always his favorite. But when he died, I felt… nothing. I didn’t care about him, about my siblings. There’s always been this numbness in my heart, a void where it’s supposed to be and…”

Screwball moved a quivering hoof over her heart.

“I don’t get it. When ponies scream and cry when… when somepony they care about is hurt. I just don’t get it. What do they feel that I… can’t? I killed ponies important to me, I put myself through every extreme, even this, all just to feel… something… anything… even this pain is… is wonderful to me. It was worth it because in that one second, I felt alive, Twilight.”

Is that really how it was?

“Heh.” Screwball’s head lulled back, allowing her to look at Twilight once more. She cocked the smile of a pony who just played a prank and laughed once more. “You really believed that? That was all just a lie… I didn’t even make that story up myself. You’re an idiot… sis.”

“You know I’m not really your sister,” said Twilight.

“Rainbow Dash isn’t actually dead. She’s…” Screwball couldn’t quite finish.

Screwball didn’t seem quite as near death as Twilight feared at first.

Maybe.

Maybe…

A black arrow glowing with red energy tore through Screwballs’ chest. She’d been shot from behind! As Screwball fell limp to the side, the arrow came right at Twilight.

The arrow lodged itself in Twilight’s shoulder. This one went deep, worse than the spear ever managed to. Her fur rapidly blackened and fell out as the death energy inside it radiated through her. She clamped down on it with her magic, blowing the energy off of it slowly. She knew how deadly this spell was, one of her most dangerous.

It’d be too difficult to remove until she’d gotten rid of most of it, but she pulled hard with her free hoof so as to not lose a second when the threshold was crossed. The wound from this would be severe!

Before she could process what happened, a bolt of lightning followed from the same direction as the arrow. It was intense compared to what a normal pony could produce, yet Twilight still managed to deflect it.

A shot of fire, then ice came from the same direction. Twilight knocked both of them out, before finally seeing Eclipse trotting towards her, the source of the spell.

Then it all clicked with Twilight.

“You!” Twilight grits her teeth. The source of the arrow couldn’t possibly be anypony else, but to think she’d seriously do something so heinous. “Did you just–?!”

Twilight flicked her eyes to Screwball, now completely limp, then back to the last remaining witch.

“All that power and knowledge and yet still you are so naïve.” Eclipse slowly trotted forward, still probing Twilight with a blast or two more of fire. “Yes. I knew exactly how to catch you off guard. The one thing you’d never dream of. Killing one of my ‘friends’ just to get a single hit on you. I had planned to use Luster Dawn for this, but such a grand opportunity presented itself.”

“She was on the same side as you!” Twilight gave the arrow a particularly fierce tug, unable to accept standing by another moment. Not in the face of such cruelty. Yet it wasn’t time and the arrow refused to budge. “How could you do that to her?!”

“Sympathy for her now? After all she did to you and so many others?” Eclipse gave a tut of her tongue. “To think somepony so pathetic would be a master witch. Do you not see how that fragile heart is your undoing? I couldn’t possibly have defeated you otherwise.”

Screwball squirmed just a little, giving Twilight the briefest moment of hope. Somehow, through all this, she regretted all of it. She redoubled her efforts to pull out the arrow in hopes of somehow stabilizing her opponent. She’d send the pony to prison forever, but she didn’t want to cross the line and have any part in killing her!

Twilight could tell it was already too late looking down at her. The light was quickly going out from her eyes.

Screwball looked up at Twilight, not truly seeing her.

“Hehe. I guess I lied,” Screwball gasped for one final bit of air. “I don’t… I don’t actually have any friends. Do I?”

And then…

Twilight closed her eyes and pulled on the arrow with all her might! Already her foreleg was going numb, but she could fix that! She had to get at Eclipse right now!

“I really do need to acknowledge your strength. Even now, with this surprise attack, I truly do believe you’d have enough left over to defeat me.” Eclipse sat down and rose a single hoof. A disc of blackness began to form above it. “I only have one option left to kill you. I was studying you carefully. You have something… interesting on you.”

Eclipse pulled the heart of Smarty Pants out from Twilight’s bag!

“No!” Twilight got the arrow to budge just a little.

“Oh, were you going to do something important with this?” Eclipse smiled. “Perhaps… banish somepony to the outer realm? Something like this?”

The world went dark. The stars appeared, turned red, and began to bleed. And the light from that blood began to twist and coalesce around the root until a swirling red portal had formed.

It was a gate to the outer realm.

Normally that would be death. Maybe Eclipse didn’t know about the mirror… Twilight could survive the trip! But how to get back?

“This won’t be enough!” Twilight warned. “I’ll get out! And I’ll find you again!”

“And what? Get cold feet at the last moment before you kill me? Don’t make me laugh.”

Eclipse pushed Twilight through the portal.

For a minute there, Luster Dawn thought she’d end up on the moon. Not even teleporting downward seemed to get her out of that thing. But eventually, she fell to the ground. The landscape had been so altered she thought she’d landed a hundred miles away. The shore was gone with battered mountains rising above raging waves. But that weeping hole in the ocean made her decide this was the right place.

That, Luster Dawn decided, was what true power was.

She found Eclipse, her master, on top of one of those mountains. The true master was nowhere to be seen.

Luster watched as the old hag trotted slowly to Screwball’s body and picked up the spellbook, looting her as casually as one might pick up a penny.

She looked down at Screwball’s body. Had Twilight done this? Auntie Eclipse seemed so sure Twilight wouldn’t kill, even to save her own life. A hole had been torn through Screwball; a wound Luster recognized.

“Did you…?” Luster asked her mentor.

“Take this lesson well, child,” said Eclipse. “To catch the master witch off guard, I had to sacrifice her life, yes. It was the only thing she wouldn’t have seen coming.”

She’d killed one of her allies so easily. Not even the tiniest shred of remorse could be found within a mile of Eclipse. Luster Dawn couldn’t deny it was tactically sound in this case. Yet she felt her hooves trembling and her breath quickening as Eclipse turned back to her.

Despite being so much stronger, Twilight hadn’t managed to bring her to the same state of shock Eclipse had. And the latter had done so again and again, never ceasing to prove herself ever more terrifying.

Seeing Luster Dawn shake at last gave her an emotion, however slight the disapproval.

“You’re still weak if that fills you with worry or empathy,” Eclipse chastised her. “You hardly deserve this book, yet for facing down a master witch and having no other peer, I grant you it anyway. You are now a fifth bell.”

She threw the book down at Luster Dawn’s feet. A spellbook like that and the power it contained was everything Luster Dawn had ever wanted in life. Even as a filly, there’d be few who could tell her no once she picked it up. Hardly any ponies in the world would have the strength to force their morals upon her.

And yet it wasn’t zero. If it wasn’t zero, she still had to be afraid.

So instead she swallowed and looked back up to Eclipse.

“You killed Screwball without hesitation.” Luster Dawn looked at the body again “She was on our side, wasn’t she?”

“A witch must follow their teachings to the very end. That means being willing to betray your allies whenever advantageous and expecting them to betray you in kind.”

“Doesn’t that mean…” Luster Dawn rubbed a hoof over the book. “That one of us will eventually kill the other one day?”

“Yes,” said Eclipse. And she smiled when she did. “I will kill you if it’s ever worth it to do so. I won’t begrudge you or tell you you’re wrong to do the same to me. In fact, I think having one of my students betray and murder me is the only way I could ever accept death. I’ll be disappointed if you aren’t the one to end my life.”

Eclipse took the book at a distance and levitated it be eye level with Luster Dawn.

“Witches are free from morality,” said Eclipse, “but not from consequences. I wouldn’t recommend trying to stab me in the back or to flee while you are still so young and weak. You will die in either case. But you are free to choose. Always.”

Luster Dawn looked down at the first volume, then back up at Eclipse. She wasn’t nearly strong enough yet.

“Yes, ma’am.” Luster Dawn bowed her head and held the book close tight. “Thank you.”

“Good.” Eclipse’s smile was thin. “I still have much I’d like to teach you before one of us is to die. There are still matters we need to take care of. I really should start by finding a way to get Embermoon back to this planet.”

Eclipse looked up at the sky and hummed. She already had some plan. And another after that. If it went too far, her plans would be the death of Luster Dawn.

Starlight vs The Forces of Evil

The Phoenix King flew high above Crater Cemetery. Starlight wouldn’t waste any time. She’d end this fight in a single move!

Starlight and her five most faithful servants gathered and took position. Lilymoon, Night Glider, Double Diamond, Sugarbelle, and Party Favor stood in a pentagram with Starlight in the center.

Each one glowed with a different color of light as Starlight began to cast the spell, directing their energy into hers. She felt power overwhelming. True power! Power worthy of her as her eyes glowed white and she began to lift into the air.

The five colors swirled around her, forming a rainbow. It wanted to escape from her and flow outwards, but this was her power.

And Starlight took control of that ugly swirl of clashing colors, turning it into a pure, perfect white. Her white! The colors of the others became uniform and capitulated into a single point. And from that point, the azoth spell erupted!

A light of the most perfect white imaginable, so flawless it would make fallen snow look a starving black compared to it, shot into the sky and arced down towards Nightmare Moon and her pit of darkness like a purified rainbow.

The light came crashing down on the crater. Structures collapsed and ghosts fled as it tore its way down to the nexus of blackness. Starlight could see a wall of chains between her attack and its target. Though normally invisible to non-psychics, a network of them stretching out in every direction became visible… and Starlight’s pure white light shattered most of them.

The links exploded. At last, Starlight exposed the form of Nightmare Moon! The vague form of an alicorn made of flittering darkness and flames, its edges undefined as they seeped out to darken the world began to rise from the pit. But something held it back, in place, as the white light formed a ribbon around it and began to tear it to pieces.

Nightmare Moon’s body lost its definition. Soon those flames would be snuffed out completely.

Then the alicorn unleashed a screech that shook the ground, tearing a crater in the dirt around her. Starlight could feel her body shaking, the sound so loud it impacted her like an airburst.

Nightmare Moon lifted her forelegs, then stomped back down. The fire that made her up erupted rather than smothered out. It stretched the hyper-white ribbon.

And then the ribbon snapped.

Absolute darkness consumed the world. Time froze briefly as Starlight and her five chosen became nothing but white silhouettes against the backdrop of a devouring black.

The world snapped back. Double Diamond, Sugarbelle, and Party Favor let out a hideous gag as they tumbled to the back of the ship and lost consciousness. Night Glider only barely managed to stay awake. Lilymoon and Starlight alone remained after the shot.

Most of the crew would be out meaning the Phoenix king was flying forward unguided.

How?!

There was no way Nightmare Moon should have been able to survive it! She’d done the math so many times. There was absolutely nothing, not even a god, that could survive the azoth spell.

Or at least, a proper azoth spell. It had to have failed, been imperfect in some sense.

Starlight had enough faith to execute any spell perfectly. The other five loved and obeyed her completely, putting them in perfect harmony with Starlight. Did Starlight do something wrong?

She reminded herself of her mantra. Faith meant never admitting you were wrong. Always double down, never apologize. She had to make this look like a win, blame this on somepony else.

Nightmare Moon’s body still hadn’t solidified. She was a pony of the darkest fire, a mere outline. And she staggered to one side as she trotted forward. Only one step before stumbling, held back by an invisible force.

She was injured, and Starlight still had most of her strength left! She was trapped and Starlight was free to move about as she pleased. She could still salvage this if the others believed in her!

“It’s not over yet!” Starlight called out! She couldn’t let her confidence waver for a moment. “I knew this would only weaken her! But look how terribly I’ve injured it. I can destroy her through conventional means now!”

Lilymoon and Night Glider nodded, not doubting for a second that she was telling the truth.

The fires that made up Nightmare Moon flared. Another wave of darkness came at them, this one wouldn’t be dampened by an incomplete azoth spell.

“Lilymoon!”

Lilymoon dug her hooves in and gritted her teeth. So intense was the strain from blocking even a single attack that her eyes bugged out a little, but she did manage.

Starlight created a spear of purple light just above her. The moment the attack passed, Starlight threw the spear down at Nightmare Moon’s form.

It tore through her wing with impossible speed, destroying a small portion of it. Starlight had just enough faith to damage the god! She could get a few more hits in before retreating, leave Nightmare Moon badly wounded, and claim that was all she intended from the start.

Starlight turned to Lilymoon, panting heavily already. It meant making the filly put herself through intense physical strain, but Lilymoon was only here to serve her purpose.

“Lilymoon, I believe in you!” Starlight called to her. “You were born for this!”

Lilymoon nodded and rose to a semi-confident state again.

“Nightglider! Take control of the ship! Keep us on the edge of its range!” Starlight ordered and Nightglider ran off to obey.

Now she just needed to…

“What are the chances that some undefined thing makes it impossible for you to win this fight?”

Starlight turned to the voice.

Sonata Dusk!

What was left of that pony stood on the deck of her ship laughing. The doll she possessed was burnt up, covered in mud, and stuffing poured from its bursting seems, but it still stood.

Much further behind, Starlight could see it… the rest of her fleet was a safe distance away, but a circle of flames began to surround it. She’d thought that her next target wouldn’t interfere until after this fight was over… what made him change his mind?!

Either way, his presence did make this fight unwinnable.

“Ha!” Sonata held up the coin. “My magic coin makes me invincible.”

“Let’s test that.”

Starlight created another spear, this one pointed at Sonata!

“Ack! What are the chances I get out of here alive?!”

An explosion from below tilted the ship, letting Sonata tumble off. Something happened to the engines! It would crash soon if Starlight didn’t do anything.

She enveloped the entire ship with her magic and began to turn it, flying it away from Crater Cemetery. A third and final wave of darkness washed over them. Lilymoon clenched up as she blocked that with everything she had.

They should be out of range now but…

Sonata fell to the ground with enough force to dislodge one of her wings. It’d been holding on by a threat this whole time. Literally.

Not that it mattered too much. She had more important things to do right now besides.

For once she’d done something right! Oh, if her mistress praised her for once in her life, she could die happy!

And luck had it, this was one of the rare times she was actually above ground.

Sonata could see that glorious form, rippling darkness as though a piece of reality had been torn right out, standing towering over her as it watched Starlight retreat. Her visage alone was one of the few things that appeared black to ghosts and predeads alike.

“I don’t understand…”

Her mistress’s voice was deep and rumbling. It deafened every other sound in the world when she spoke, even when softly as she did now.

A contingent of ghosts began to gather behind her.

“Mistress!” Sonata hobbled over to her. “Mistress! I destroyed like, half our enemies!

“That coin…” Her mistress’s eyes, if you could call them that, were like twisting vortexes of white in that zone of negative reality. They twisted as though turning to look at Sonata. “No.”

“No?” Sonata stepped back. “But I… I saved the day, right? I destroyed Twilight and Starlight and Rainbow Dash and… I was doing it for you.”

“No!” Her shout seemed to stop time itself for a brief second. “You were never on my side! You acted only against your will and wanted no part of this!”

“Wuh? But…”

The chains around Sonata loosened and then fell off.

It was like a crutch

had been torn out beneath her. Everything left Sonata as she fell limp and thoughtless to the ground. Without the cast that was her chains, her aura was too weak to stand on its own.

“Should we kill her?” Another ghost asked.

“No! Whatever you do, do not kill her. It can’t be us. Throw her somewhere in the woods and toss that coin into the ocean.”

Sonata wasn’t entirely aware of what was being said or done around her. Some more words were said after that, but her mind was empty, and she had no idea what any of them were.

If they carried her off, she didn’t notice that either.

But eventually, a small, creeping thought did come to her mind.

Her aura wasn’t completely empty and devoid of emotion. One thing had seeped through recently.

Fluttershy.

That tiny bit of love and kindness Fluttershy had slipped through the chains still lingered inside her.

“Fluttershy!” Sonata sat up with a jolt.

She was vaguely aware she was in a different spot now but that didn’t matter. All that mattered, all she could think of was Fluttershy.

“Fluttershy…”

Sonata began to drag herself forward, not sure what she was even doing, only knowing that she wanted Fluttershy, to feel that love again. Fluttershy… was everything.

Starlight managed to get the engines working again and revive some of the crew. A relief force of pegasi flew on the deck to fill in the gaps. They were chugging along back to the rest of her fleet now.

But she still had work to do.

Nightglider came back above deck to find Starlight sitting near the edge, next to Lilymoon, leaning the side of her head against one hoof.

“I don’t understand why the azoth spell failed,” Nightglider complained with a worried look.

“Oh, you don’t, do you?” Starlight closed her eyes and sighed. “I told you that it would only destroy Nightmare Moon if you had absolute love and faith in me!”

“But Starlight! I do love you!” Nightglider ran to her side with tears in her eyes.

Starlight stood up and slapped Nightglider away.

“So what? You’re saying this is my fault?!”

Nightglider shook her head with a horrified look.

“We both know that my plans are flawless so that means there must be something wrong with you.” Starlight glared down at her.

“But!”

“Lilymoon, did you lack faith in me?”

“I’d never make a mistake like that.” Lilymoon smirked seeing one of her rivals for Starlight’s attention getting dressed down. Unfortunately for Nightglider, she was the more expendable of the two and would have to take the blame.

“See?” Starlight turned back to Nightglider. “It could only have been you.”

“No! I do love you with all my heart.” Nightglider rubbed the mark Starlight left on her cheek.

“Not enough, you don’t! And after all the personal training I gave you. I expect you to double down on your mental exercises and actually mean it this time".

“I will!” Nightglider pressed her forehead against the ground, sobbing and trembling. “I’m so sorry!”

"And don’t you dare try blaming me for your screw-ups again.” Starlight huffed and kept her head up as she trotted back below deck. Lilymoon smiled at the demoralized Nightglider once more before running after Starlight.

“I guess that idiot just wasn’t ready, huh?” Lilymoon smiled up at Starlight always eager for her attention. “We can only rely on each other.”

“That’s right.” Starlight knelt and hugged her. “You’re the only one I truly care about, Lilymoon. We really are the only ones who can understand each other. We’re all either of us has.”

Lilymoon melted into her grip.

“But…” Lilymoon opened her eyes. “I mean, we can still win, right?”

“Of course. I thought one of my lesser underlings might fail me like this. I expected to only weaken Nightmare Moon before moving on to the next phase. But we will have to deal with some other threats before I can return to this final battle.”

“Fluttershy…”

Sonata limped forward through the mud, directionless at first.

She needed to get to Fluttershy. That thought drove her forward like a dream did a sleepwalker. She didn’t know where Fluttershy was… just that she needed to walk over towards her, to where they last met. She didn’t know how long she wandered, just that she drifted in a direction.

Massive explosions erupted behind her at one point, but it hardly mattered. A large section of the forest caught fire, but Sonata didn’t care. It didn’t matter if she was on fire so long as she found Fluttershy.

“Fluttershy… wait.”

Sonata remembered… yeah! She remembered where Fluttershy was.

She was… she was with that cold-blooded pony. Sonata could barely remember her name. Only Fluttershy. Only things that related to Fluttershy.

They’d mapped out the encampment. After perhaps hours, Sonata’s head cleared just enough to remember that.

Sonata turned and walked in that direction now. Faster. With more purpose. To Fluttershy!

That was the only thing that mattered. The rest of the world just blurred around her into a non-Fluttershy mush.

She passed a squad of armed ponies. Sonata had no clue whose side they were even on, but one of them looked at her all funny, then shot her in the head just in case. Probably didn’t know she was a ghost.

Sonata fell to the ground and a whole bunch of them ran by before she worked up the will to get back up. Sonata hadn’t even planned that, but she was past the army now.

Soon… she was getting closer.

She could feel an aura!

For a brief moment she remembered that unlimited fount of love and kindness that flowed through that specter, the most perfect thing in the universe.

But the aura she felt wasn’t Fluttershy’s. It was…

“It doesn’t matter,” said Sonata. “Just Fluttershy. I want… Fluttershy.”

That aura rushed towards her. Not that it mattered.

A ghost appeared and smashed a blade of ice into Sonata’s face, throwing her back, out of what remained of her doll. Not that it mattered. Only Fluttershy.

“You!”

That ghost pounced on Sonata, a second blade of ice around her foreleg. Sonata fell right out of her body. Wasting no time, a second ghost rushed forward to grab Sonata’s body and flew off with it. It didn’t matter what happened to that.

That first ghost… Shadowbolts… with Fluttershy… and through that Sonata could just barely remember the name Indigo Zap.

“Bastard! What are you doing here?!” Indigo swung her foreleg wildly, smashing it into Sonata’s head hard. “This is for all the horrible things you’ve done to us! For Sugarcoat and Lemon Zest and–!”

“Fluttershy.” Sonata went limp.

“What?” Indigo pulled Sonata in close.

“There’s no chains around her.” A second ghost pointed out.

“What?!” Indigo took a closer look at Sonata. “Son of a… She is clean!”

“Flutter…”

“Ah, crow!” Indigo threw Sonata aside. “After all these years I finally get the chance to beat the shit out of her and now she’s freed?”

“She was under mind control,” the other ghost reminded her. “You wouldn’t blame Zest for what she did, would you?”

“Yeah, yeah. But fess up.” Indigo grabbed Sonata’s wing and jerked her back in. “How did you get out of your chains? Did Lemon Zest free you? Did she break out? Was it in Pinkie Pie? Or?”

“Fluttershy…” The word oozed out of Sonata’s quivering lips.

“Fluttershy freed you?” Indigo eyed her squarely.

“Flutter… shy! I want my Fluttershy!” Sonata sniffled, then burst into tears. “I love Fluttershy so much!”

Indigo tilted her head, unsure of what to do next.

“We have occupied Canterlot!”

Nailbat’s proclamation sent a wave of cheers through the crowd.

It was amazing how many ponies had shown up over the past half day or so. Thousands of them filled the streets of the town just north of the gorge. The crowd he gathered was large enough that he had to stand on top of a house to be seen by even half of them. They were heavily armed, uniformed, and organized. As Fluttershy looked around her she found heavy artillery waiting to be moved.

No, this wasn’t a crowd. It was an army.

A second battle started shortly after the first. This time between ponies. Flash Bang’s forces quickly retreated as more of Nailbat’s supporters gathered in the area. It hadn’t gotten too intense before a retreat was issued by the former. Yet everypony knew this was only the beginning, merely repositioning around one another for the actual battle.

“We were in the best position leading up to the fighting. We now occupy most of the major cities. Militarily we have the others in a chokehold. But now is not the time to get overconfident. While Starlight and our true enemy live, even total military victory can amount to a pile of ash in seconds. And they are not the only threat we must overcome.

“Starlight has not yet suffered defeat. She had always planned on retreating to Area 5X as her temporary seat of power. This is our true objective. If Area 5X falls there will be nothing to stand between us and absolute victory. We will have the keys to destroying those who would be tyrants. None would be able to stop a truly free, democratic, and equal Equestria from thriving.

“You have stood by me through dark times already, but the final darkness lies ahead. I ask for your courage one last time as we march on Area 5X and lay siege to the very heart of tyranny! Who among you will rise to the challenge of our lifetimes?!”

Looking around, it seemed not one pony would back down from that challenge or give anything less than their lives. Nopony save perhaps Fluttershy who lowered herself partially back underground.

Up until now, she fought against individual maniacs and never with the goal to kill them. Something like war just didn’t make sense to her. She didn’t know any of the ponies in Area 5X, let alone all of them on the way there, or why they would be fighting to defend it. And so many of them would certainly die.

At the same time, she did want Nailbat to win. Or rather to have won. She really did like all of her new ghost friends. But how much could she bring herself to support them? To go to war?

So Fluttershy left them to their cheering and flew back out of the town, towards the more desolate and still-flooded planes to the south.

Even the most pro-ghost faction kept the living and undead segregated for the most part. So the ragtag group of ghost resistance fighters had their own, second camp off to the side. That one army was only one of many camps that made a patchwork of dissident groups coming together but not quite completely.

The Mad Science Institute, MSI, were enthusiastic supporters of Nailbat and had its own camp, for example. And MSI had two more war bands they brought with them. One was a camp of snow pony warriors from all the way north in the far reaches. Then the Shadowbolts, what the main group of ghosts resisting Nightmare Moon called themselves.

The ghosts Fluttershy freed were folded into the latter. And there were a lot more than Fluttershy realized. She could tell the difference between the two types of ghosts in that the Shadowbolts didn’t have the weak aura and dazed look on their faces.

Those battle dolls, things Fluttershy was only vaguely aware of until a day ago, were everywhere, standing in rows ready for the invasion. Terrifying weapons sat mounted on their backs. Sour Sweet seemed largely recovered, though still leaning on the aura of another ghost as she helped work on them all.

Fluttershy felt a commotion going through the collective auras, some hostility towards the far end that stood out in exception even over all the unrest. Curious she approached.

She found one of the higher-ups in the Shadowbolts, Indigo Zap, holding a limp pony by the collar, hoof pulled back threatening to strike.

“Sonata?” Fluttershy pushed passed the other ghosts.

It really was her. Nobody in sight. And she didn’t have any chains on at all!

“Fluttershy?!” Sonata sprung back to life, giving her those same puppy dog eyes all the recently freed ghosts had for her. Only more. “Fluttershy!”

Sonata flew passed Indigo and grabbed Fluttershy in a hug.

“Fluttershy!” Sonata leaped out of her body and into Fluttershy’s forelegs. “I love you so much! I love you more than love itself! I didn’t even know what love was until I saw you! I’m not even a lesbian but let’s get married anyway! You’re just so… so…”

And Sonata began wailing and crying into Fluttershy’s chest. Not even out of the agony of being enslaved for so long, nor relief from being freed. What tiny shred of an aura remained was just so overcome with love and affection.

“Um. How did you get free?” Fluttershy patted her on the back.

The other ghosts circled around, wanting to hear this too.

“Nightmare Moon just let me go.” Sonata looked up, eager to please Fluttershy.

Skeptical looks surrounded her.

“You expect us to believe that?” Indigo asked. “She just let you go?”

“Well she was a total bitch about it. I had just helped them all out so much with my magic coin and she was acting like I just committed some horrendous crime or something.”

“Wait.” Fluttershy held Sonata at arm’s length. “Did you say… a magic coin?”

“Yeah! It was granting me any wish that I wanted. But she just threw it into the ocean.”

Oh no! Rainbow Dash…

“I think I understand what happened.” Fluttershy looked to Indigo, slightly worried for Sonata as well. “Um. Sonata, how much did you use the coin?”

“A lot! Like a lot a lot.”

“Oh my.”

“Is that bad?” Still smiles.

“The coin draws luck from the future. The more luck you use it to get, the worse the luck will be later. So…”

Fluttershy couldn’t tell if that was even sinking in.

“Oh.” Sonata’s smile didn’t fade one bit. “Logically that sounds bad. But right now I feel nothing but love for you, Fluttershy. So who cares?”

“Oh, great.” Indigo backed away. “So this bitch is a bad luck bomb just waiting to explode. No wonder the enemy wanted to get rid of you. Take Sonata far away before she gets any of it on us!”

Suddenly, Fluttershy thought maybe she should have kept this conversation private.

Though her life was in mortal danger, Sonata just hummed and stared lovingly at Fluttershy as two ghosts grabbed her from behind. She couldn’t just…

“Wait!” Fluttershy stopped them, unsure of the reason herself just yet. “Um. Let’s think about this for a second. Like. Um.”

They waited with little patience for Fluttershy to come up with something.

“Oh! Why did she let Sonata go, though? I mean. Take the chains off? If she wanted Sonata to just stay away, it would have been easier to just command her to go to the other side of the world and stay there, right?” Fluttershy nodded.

“What are you getting at, exactly?” Indigo asked.

She had no idea herself! This just sounded like the kinds of questions a smart pony would be asking in a book.

“Um! I remember hearing something about the ‘bad’ in bad luck being subjective. So maybe the bad luck will be good luck for us? And bad luck for somepony else.”

“I really don’t care enough about this pony to risk an explosion of irony now of all times!” Indigo grabbed Sonata by her collar. “If you’re worried about her, go dump her on that bitch Aria.”

“Oh yeah.” Sonata broke free in a jerk and grabbed back onto Fluttershy, much to Indigo’s distaste. “Where is Aria anyway.”

“She went out looking for you,” said Fluttershy.

And Fluttershy hardly had time to go looking for her. But it didn’t seem like she’d convince the Shadowbolts to take Sonata either. But that reminded her of something!

“Hold on!” Fluttershy stopped Indigo from hauling her off again. “I remember now. Aria had all kinds of information to leak to us. Sonata is also part of the Noctilesence family, so she’ll have just as much to share with us.”

Sonata nodded.

“Uh-huh! I’ll tell you everything! Not that it’ll matter too much at this point.”

“Great,” said Indigo, “but we already know all of their family secrets. We got–”

Indigo’s eyes snapped to a point just behind Fluttershy. She turned as well to find Nailbat walking towards them, as though summoned by that comment.

“Nailbat!” Fluttershy’s face lit up at a new source of hope. “Oh, that’s right. You’re related to Sonata, right?”

“Yeah! Yeah! That’s Dagi’s kid!” Sonata put her foreleg around Fluttershy and pointed at him.

“Grandson,” Nailbat corrected her.

“Did you hear all that?” Fluttershy approached what seemed like her best bet at that point. “You wouldn’t throw out a member of your own family, would you?”

The look he gave Sonata was too cold to give even the most distant relationship. Yet just as Fluttershy was about to write him off as heartless…

“If you want to keep Sonata with you so be it,” said Nailbat.

“Dude!” Indigo flew up to him. “You heard the part where she’s got serious bad karma hanging over her, right?”

“There’s no way to know which way her luck will go,” concluded Nailbat. “We owe Fluttershy a debt besides. I’ll indulge her.”

Indigo couldn’t object to that but remained indignant as she left.

“Um. Thank you.” Fluttershy bowed her head.

She looked again at Sonata, too absorbed with Fluttershy to even notice her life had just been spared.

“Either way, I have more important things to speak with you about.” Nailbat took off his hood, revealing his rough, tired, and scarred face to Fluttershy. “Have you heard anything about your friends yet?”

“You know what’s happening with them?” Fluttershy moved forward, eager for any news. She was sure they were fine but…

“I can’t tell you anything good. Perhaps not horrible at best. But I’ll say what my spies can confirm.”

Sonata looked up at Fluttershy with something close to curiosity as she felt Fluttershy’s aura tense up, bracing for what was to come.

“Twilight and Screwball fought. Screwball is dead, I know, but Twilight, Pinkie, and the remaining two witches who were involved have all vanished.”

“Is Twilight–”

“I have no idea her condition,” said Nailbat. “I have ponies looking for her, but they found nothing so far. Then there’s the castle. The Bloodstorm Cartel is now under the control of Baton Pass. Even with Sunset Shimmer defending it, it seems likely they’ll successfully storm the castle within a day or two. Finally, Rainbow Dash…”

Fluttershy didn’t dare breathe. This was what she was most worried about. The coin would have focused on destroying her.

“Is she…?”

“I’m getting conflicting information.” Nailbat shook his head. “One pony says they saw Starlight snap her neck and kill her. Another said she was barely alive and being held on board the Phoenix King. It would make more sense for Starlight to keep her alive as a hostage. So I think it likely she’s alive in some condition.”

That was good news! Not the part about Dash being held captive. And on the Phoenix King… that meant she was right under Starlight’s nose.

“Is there… any way you can mount a rescue?” Fluttershy asked. “Of Rainbow Dash or the castle.”

“With the size of the force surrounding them and the castle under Sunset’s control no. Even if it weren’t, I need everypony I can to hold the major cities and advance on Area 5X. And frankly, I think that should be your priority too.”

Her ears perked up at the suggestion.

“Fluttershy. If you want to help your friends, I believe joining my army will be the best way to do that. We don’t know what state they’re in right now, but whatever the case the biggest threats to their existence remain Starlight and our enemy. You understand that, don’t you?”

He was most likely correct about that.

“I can destroy both of them.” Nailbat looked down at the chains around his own foreleg, the ones that attached to his bat, his namesake. “But I need to liberate Area 5X first. As a specter, you would be immensely useful in the invasion. I know we can win if you’re by our side. We can save everypony together.”

He held his hoof out to Fluttershy. It was unlikely she’d get a better offer. Who but Nailbat could Fluttershy even hope to be victorious?

“But. You’re talking about war,” Fluttershy’s voice was meek. “If I go with you, I’d… would I have to kill somepony? Even… somepony innocent?”

“It is possible. But you would save far more lives. Perhaps millions or more. Potentially the lives of those you hold dearest.”

Fluttershy shook her head and Nailbat’s hoof retreated.

“I’m sorry. Even if it is a good idea I… I can’t. I can’t fight in a war. I can’t kill ponies I don’t know anything about. I’m sorry.”

Fluttershy hung her head low as Nailbat idly scratched behind his ear, eyes closed.

“I see.” His eyes opened again. “But you must do something. You’re a specter and I won’t tolerate you doing nothing in a time like this. If you won’t fight with me then answer me this: what good will you do, Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy swallowed. Her old self would have cowered away completely. Not just object to war, but object to everything. She really would have done nothing. Fluttershy couldn’t be her old self anymore.

“I’m going to find Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy pledged without even thinking if it was possible.

“If she’s alive she’s being held by Starlight personally,” Nailbat warned. “Without Twilight, there’s no other pony who can fight her directly.”

“Rainbow Dash wouldn’t care if something like that was possible,” said Fluttershy. “I’ll find a way. I’ll find Rainbow Dash and I’ll remind her!”

Nailbat watched her with tired eyes. Always tired.

“That I’ll allow,” he said. “It may not be entirely hopeless. Starlight is busy. Many think her in a weakened state after that battle. You won’t be close to the top of her list of immediate threats. But I’ll recommend you avoid fighting her at all costs.”

Fluttershy nodded.

“And one more thing. I’ll spare Sonata, but I want you to keep her with you. I don’t want her wandering around or close to my forces.”

Fluttershy nodded again. She felt bad about potentially taking advantage of her mental state. But the alternative was leaving her to die. Maybe Aria would randomly show up.

“My first problem will just be getting there without too much attention,” Fluttershy mused to herself. “My aura is so huge any psychics will see it from miles away.”

“I think Sour Sweet might be able to help you with that.”

“Oh, hey it’s my body!”

Sour Sweet, Sunny Flare, and a small group of ghosts had gathered around the battle doll staging area she passed before. Though they had normal dolls as well. And Sonata’s body.

These looked more uniform than Fluttershy would have expected, even if work was being done on them. The row or amor more closely resembled what a proper army would field rather than a rag-tag group of resistance fighters. MSI and Sunny Flar had some connection to these ghosts, and that explained it well enough for now.

But in addition to their nice, shiny row of death engines lay a pile of dolls that may or may not be salvageable. Sonata’s body was at the top of that pile. Fluttershy had to take Sonata’s word that was what it was. It was all charred and cut up with missing limbs. Thankfully only stuffing and dirt were coming out of its many lacerations.

“Um. Can you fix this?” Sonata floated up to the remains of her remains and lifted it for inspection.

“I don’t have anywhere near that skill,” said Sour Sweet. “With Phantom Troupe gone, I don’t think there’s anypony left who can repair that. You know. Other than…”

“That creepy guy,” Sonata finished.

“Don’t remind me he exists.” Sour Sweet shuddered. “How does he make people who taxidermy ponies as a hobby look normal? But he’s the only one good enough. If you want to find him go ahead. I’ll just keep this in the scrap pile for now.”

Sonata did not object.

Sour Sweet noticed Nailbat and Fluttershy were both there and stood at attention.

“Sour Sweet. I want you to give her that thing,” said Nailbat. “It’s no use to us.

“Ooh. That’s ominous.” Sonata flew down to Fluttershy’s side. “What is it?”

“We recovered it from the battle with our enemy.” Sour Sweet led them behind the row of battle dolls. “I’ve been doing some work on it but I wasn’t able to get it to function. Not piloting it myself, that is.”

A suit of elongated, purple armor stood before them. The armor they’d just been fighting! Nightmare Moon’s! There wasn’t a single dent or scratch on it even after all that.

In Fluttershy’s mind, that was Nightmare Moon. Even with the danger far away for now, she still remembered that sickening feeling and shuddered.

“You want me to have…. This?” Fluttershy cringed at the thought of lugging such a cursed thing around with her.

“Fluttershy, that’s a battle doll,” Sour reminded her. “The most powerful battle doll. It’s literally invincible. This thing would survive the sun exploding.”

Sour gave it a smack with an ice blade that shattered harmlessly against the armor.

“Just remember,” Sunnyflare dialed the hype back down, “you aren’t invincible inside of it. Twilight was able to knock our enemy out of it.”

“Sure.” Fluttershy couldn’t muster a smile at what most ponies would droll over. “But. I’m not really trying to fight anypony right now. So.”

“It’s a matter of stealth,” said Nailbat. “You wanted something to hide your aura.”

“Oh, that’s a great idea!” Sour smashed her hooves together. “This thing sucks up aura like you wouldn’t believe. It’s why even a trained pilot like me can’t control the damn thing. Only a specter would have a chance. And even then, it’d take up most of your aura so…”

“So none of it would leak out,” Fluttershy concluded.

Even if she didn’t like the idea of running around in that armor, it was starting to sound like a good one. Invincibility. Invisibility. Or close enough on either account.

“Alright.” Fluttershy floated up to where the eyes should be on the armor. “For Rainbow Dash, I’ll do it.”

Fluttershy closed her eyes and flew into the armor to possess it. What Sour meant became immediately apparent. It was like Fluttershy’s aura was getting sucked into a black hole. Her emotions and willpower drained as the vacuum threatened to snuff it out and leave her numb.

Strangely, losing both feeling and willpower served to counterbalance one another. Fluttershy could push herself, largely detached to keep feeding her aura into the pit. Though it seemed bottomless at first, Fluttershy could see it filling up, the metal saturating.

The question now was if even a specter could fill it out.

Just as she reached her limit, Fluttershy could feel it again. Her aura and emotions weren’t gone, just sort of stuck. But as long as she was in the armor, she was in contact with it and felt relatively normal. Though she was worried leaving it might mean needing a minute to recover. Who even knew what staying in too long would cause?

Fluttershy took a step forward and felt at once mighty and clumsy. The strength she felt behind those metal hooves… the ground itself felt fragile beneath them. Yet even being careful of her movements, Fluttershy stumbled. She wasn’t sure if even something this strong would help or hurt more in a fight. At least until she got used to it.

“Can you feel my aura?” Fluttershy asked.

Sour Sweet squinted, then slowly started flying backward. She stopped about thirty feet back.

“I’d say you should be hard to detect after ten meters,” she concluded.

That was so much smaller than Fluttershy ever had before. She nodded; confident she might be able to fulfill the mission soon.

“Do I get one?” Sonata pointed to herself. “Since my body isn’t working right now?”

“No.”

“But I’m not used to being away from a physical body.”

Sour grumbled and rolled her eyes.

“Fine. A small one. Smallest I have.”

Sour floated to the pile of scrap and pulled out a mostly intact doll.

“I think this one mostly works.”

“Nice!” Sonata flew into the armor. It stumbled around a few steps before she stabilized herself and looked up at Fluttershy. She was a good deal shorter now.

And that was all Fluttershy would get to work with.

Nailbat’s army began moving out. Though far away, the commotion was so loud and the group so big, that Fluttershy could see and hear it even outside the town.

They were moving in the opposite directions. There was absolutely nopony to hide behind past this point. Fluttershy had to stand alone for once. And she was determined to do just that.

Unless you counted Sonata, that was. The banshee hobbled along after Fluttershy, still getting used to her subpar battle doll. She found a way to keep up with Fluttershy’s much larger stride, by skipping alongside her with three of her legs.

They got out of earshot of the army and left the mostly abandoned town to enter the woods, and it became too quiet. Rather it became normal. But after so much chaos, normal felt eerie and still.

Not a violent rain like what happened just a few days ago, but a nice gentle one that slowly drifted between being a mist and a drizzle. That too felt wrongly calm after the intense storm just a day ago.

It didn’t look like the rain would be letting up any time soon. Not that it was a bad thing. Ghosts liked this type of weather. Rain falling through you was a nice feeling, even if they couldn’t get that right now. Plus it extended the period they could be active during.

Adding to the gloomy weather were a few decrepit hooves clawing their way to the surface.

Fluttershy forgot it was already Fall again. The zombies reminded her to look up at the trees, though those were only now beginning to turn color. The undead always started emerging before the leaves changed.

While zombies technically existed all year round it was easy to forget about them during the spring and summer. They mostly emerged around this time of year and were swiftly exterminated by winter. Only a few would be left staggering about the forests and lonely places come Spring.

Fluttershy frowned as she counted the number of zombies already above ground. They already passed five or six dumbly shambling about on the surface and ten times that many digging themselves up.

You didn’t normally see this many except around a blood moon or during the peak of zombie season, around Halloween.

“This is a lot of zombies,” said Fluttershy. “When’s the next blood moon again?”

“It’s on Halloween.”

Fluttershy felt it an even worse omen that Sonata would know that off the top of her head. There were usually two blood moons over Equestria a year. One in winter or fall and one in spring or summer. The last one had been in summer and passed with little incident since there were so few undead around that time of year. But late October was the absolute worst time for one to occur. Fluttershy did remember one happening once on Halloween a long time ago. It’d been a horrific couple of hours.

“Um. Is something bad going to happen?” Fluttershy asked. “The way you just knew that…”

“Oh, sure! The world’s going to end on Halloween. Probably. If Starlight failed then I dunno who’s gonna stop it. Not me.”

“The end of the world? Would a blood moon on Halloween really be that bad?”

“Yeah! I know a lot about this stuff.” Sonata picked up her pace so she could face Fluttershy as she skipped backward. “Fun fact: Blood moons aren’t random. It’s like, they set up the rotations of everything exactly right, so a blood moon goes straight through Equestria on Halloween every thirteen years like clockwork. And that’s why thirteen is an unlucky number. And also why Halloween is on that day. This is the actual hallowed evening coming up. A true Halloween. They used to only celebrate the holiday once a decade about. But. I dunno. Capitalism or something.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.” Though thinking back, it was an unusually common occurrence. So it wasn’t a coincidence that a ‘True Halloween’, as Sonata would put it, just happened to be coming up.

“It’s like, the time when all the stars and crud are aligned. And there’s all kinds of gateways and nexuses and stuff I don’t know anything about. But uh…” Sonata stopped to think about what she was even getting at. “Oh right. Important thing is that’s the only time Nightmare Moon has a chance of escaping. See? She was supposed to get out thirteen years ago, on the last True Halloween, but that got messed up. But that’s the thing about being immortal. You get unlimited attempts at everything.”

Fluttershy was hardly an astrologer, but she knew the basics. The reasons zombies started coming back in September wasn’t because of the weather, but the stars. The sun could ‘block’ out constellations. Only in fall was the constellation Pegasus visible and Equestria exposed to its magic. Those were the strongest of the stars, the brightest and closest in the sky by far, visible even in Manehattan.

She could guess that on that date, Pegasus, the moon, the planet, and the sun would all be perfectly aligned.

Sonata didn’t even have to explain to Fluttershy why Nightmare Moon getting free would be so horrible. But that gave them only a month to figure things out. Nailbat seemed to have some kind of plan. But Fluttershy would have to find the others before she could hope to come up with anything herself.

“But somepony did stop it last time? How?”

“I don’t think we could do that again,” Sonata warned. “We’d need that headphones pony. Or somepony who can use the element of Laughter’s powers.”

If Fluttershy remembered correctly, that meant Pinkie was also an option. Wherever she was. That’d be the next move after getting Rainbow Dash.

“Also it’ll get way harder to stop each time” Sonata went on. “I don’t know if you could kick the can a second time.”

That flash of hope dimmed.

“But why? Are the chains weakening?” Fluttershy asked.

“The alicorn chains? She controls those chains, remember?” Sonata laughed, apparently unable to feel concern for such a dangerous fact. “They aren’t holding her back.”

“Then what is?”

“My goddess! Princess Luna!” Sonata put her hoof on her heart. “She’s been holding Nightmare Moon back with sheer willpower this whole time. But that’s gonna run out eventually. Probably within a month.”

Luna. Had Fluttershy heard that name before?

“Who’s Princess Luna again?”

“Our goddess! The god of my family and all the ghosts. She’s your god too.” Sonata ran out in front of Fluttershy and grabbed the larger forehooves in her own, swinging them back and forth. “All ghosts are Luna’s children. And that’s kind of why Nightmare Moon hates us so much. Oh! Oh, do you want to convert to my religion? Yeah! You could be my sister in Luna. Lunarism is the best religion cause our holidays are the most fun.”

Sonata hummed and smiled, swinging Fluttershy’s hooves back and forth as she imagined them as ‘sisters’. Fluttershy wasn’t sure how to respond to such an offer. It was common wisdom that religion was rarely worth the risk.

“I’m sorry.” Fluttershy shook her head. Sonata wasn’t disturbed at all by what could be seen as a rebuke to her religion. “I still don’t understand. Like. What kind of god is Luna?”

“Alicorn!”

“Alicorn? That can’t be true. There’s only the Queen of Light and her seven sons.”

“And a couple extra! You remember Star Feather?”

That was… The Darklord’s daughter created from an alicorn feather. Golden Feather’s sister, or maybe cousin to be technical. The granddaughter of the Queen of Light, Fluttershy supposed.

Fluttershy nodded.

“Well that’s her,” Sonata put it bluntly.

“What?! But… you just said her name was–”

“She ascended beyond reality and became an alicorn. The best alicorn on top of that. Luna invented ghosts, you know. Not on purpose but still…”

Fluttershy remembered Twilight's warning Starlight would attempt to do something similar, so it was a possibility. As for that second part…

“How do you invent ghosts.”

“Well.” Sonata looked as though she were about to deliver a lecture but soon stumbled over herself. “I got no idea how this stuff works on a technical level, but she did it! And here we are. Ghosts.”

Sonata raised her forelegs to the side.

“Hm.” Fluttershy watched Sonata skeptically as another zombie began silently emerging from the ground behind her.

“What? You don’t believe me?” Sonata dropped her forelegs. “Okay! Pop quiz. What’s like the main thing everypony wants out of their religions and gods and stuff?”

“I don’t know a lot about religions.”

“What’s the one thing every bogus, scam religion makes up?”

Fluttershy shook her head.

“An afterlife, yeah?” Sonata leaned in. “That’s what everypony wants. To go off to some magical land where everything is awesome and live forever. An actual god who isn’t a total asshole will just level with you and say there is no afterlife. But imaginary gods and their scam cults? They’ll tell you whatever you want to hear. And nopony finds out there’s no afterlife till they die so it’s the perfect crime. Any religion that teaches there’s an afterlife is inferior and wrong. At least, that’s what they taught me in school.”

“But you said your school was racist and bad.”

“Oh. Right. Maybe that’s just propaganda. But the point is this! Luna knew that if she could create a demonstrably true afterlife then none of the other gods could compete with her, right? Cause like who else are you gonna worship at that point? The zebra gods? Nah. Our religion would be the best and eventually only religion. Like it should have been.”

“Why did she want everypony to worship her?”

“What? Do you not want everypony to worship you?”

“That sounds like way too much pressure.” Fluttershy lowered her head.

“Well I get it. This goes way back. Luna’s dad and what’s her face’s dad… that’s the Darklord and Radiant Champion. Their rivalry goes back all the way. Like before time as we know it existed! Like, uh.” Sonata fidgeted her hooves, trying to think of an example. “Like do you know why werewolves and vampires and stuff are all weak to silver?”

“Because. Oh!” Fluttershy stopped her march. “I do know this one. The Darklord created every type of metal except silver. So that’s the only metal that could hurt him. Right?”

That was one of the most common stories.

“Uh, huh.” They started walking again, Sonata ran up along Fluttershy’s side to keep with her stride. “So he goes and creates every metal. And their mom just blows him off with an ‘oh, that’s nice dear’. Then his brother comes along decides he likes the whole metals thing and creates his own. That’s silver. And their mom loves that one.”

“Oh my. Did that really happen? I could understand being upset about something like that.”

“Uh huh. And Luna’s dad made gold and platinum after that but still didn’t receive any praise. From what I heard it was like that with everything. She loved the Radiant Champion’s creations like music and wind and flowers and ignored the stuff the Darklord created like wheat and metal and electricity. That kind of thing gets passed down to their respective daughters. That’s why the elements of laughter and honesty are like the exact opposites and like it literally shaped half the crap in our world– and uh–”

Forgetting what she was even getting at, Sonata stopped and fell behind again.

“And ghosts?” Fluttershy reminded her.

“Right!” Sonata ran out in front. “So that’s why uh… well she didn’t mean to create ghosts but that was the closest she got before–”

A flash in the sky silenced both of them. When lightning ripped through a cloud, it turned from a softly glowing white to a pitch black to a ghost. A thunderstorm now would be too much.

But the sound that followed wasn’t the low rumbling of thunder but the quick crack of an explosive shell. More followed, some of them spraying green or blue across the clouds. That had to be them.

Sonata offered the telescope to Fluttershy. If the airships were under the clouds, Fluttershy would be able to see them. Light rain like this gave ghosts maximum visibility. However a ghost did have to hold the telescope backward to make it work.

“Let’s see.”

Fluttershy held the wide lens to where her eyes should be. The image wasn’t great. Fluttershy could only see a pinprick at a time from this great distance. There was so much fire and light coming from the battle that it obscured the image even further. But she could make out flaming things flying and circling around…

An airship. Definity an airship. And there another and then three more. The Phoenix King alone would be made entirely of metal, but she couldn’t discern something like that from here.

One unsettling clue made Fluttershy think the last of the five might be their target. It had the attention of something absolutely colossal that loomed just behind the airship. Fluttershy thought she saw green eyes, but if that were the case, whatever it was would be at eye level with the aerial fleet.

“Five airships!” Fluttershy announced. “One of them has to be the Phoenix King! But we have to hurry, it looks really bad over there.”

“It’s starting to look bad over here, too.” Sonata pointed behind Fluttershy as she lowered the telescope.

Fluttershy turned and stepped back.

“Eep!” Hundreds of zombies were now milling about behind them, stumbling over one another. “Where did so many zombies come from so quickly? I’ve never seen it like this even on a blood moon!”

At least they were harmless. Though some of the trees appeared to list to one side. There couldn’t be enough of them to knock the trees down, could there?

“I think It’s because the ground is opening up.”

Fluttershy looked down. There were slight fissures on the ground, the kind you’d get if everything dried out to an impossible degree. Impossible because it was raining.

A tremor shook the ground, nearly knocking Fluttershy off her balance. The fissure that opened up just behind the rows of zombies was much bigger now. Many of the zombies fell in only to be incinerated by rising flames.

“Why is the ground opening up?!”

“Well that I don’t know.”

Demons

The zombies all marched in the direction of Starlight’s airship, ignoring the duo. It wasn’t too uncommon to see them all going in the same direction. Mostly just the flames coming out of the ground concerned Fluttershy.

“This is a bit unusual. Maybe somepony cast an undead summoning spell?” Fluttershy suggested.

Simping hard, Sonata nodded rapidly. But she’d do that either way.

Then Fluttershy noticed something even more unusual. Violet glowing lines formed on the bodies of the zombies. As if being seared on by a red-hot needle a shape formed on their foreheads, one like three elongated circles intertwined.

And the lines across their bodies twisted and reshaped into glowing letters of some unfamiliar language.

“Okay. I have no idea what’s going on here.” Fluttershy shook her head.

“Ooooh. Oooh.” Sonata pointed at the symbol on their foreheads. “That’s an Amtaro. These are small-seal Uric runes. Usually, a bad sign when you see these written on something since the alicorns would have used large-seal Uric”

“Hold up. They’re what?”

Sonata unhinged the claws of her battle doll and with one swipe tore an approaching zombie to tatters. She picked up the severed leg and traced her blade along the letters.

“Uric is the oldest written language. And there are three versions depending on how lazy you are.” She stopped at one rune. “See this one? It looks like a smiley face and it’s called Shelial which kinda sounds like smile and that’s why it’s the one I’ll never forget. They made us take this stuff in school, you see. We had a forbidden knowledge class.”

It was only then that Fluttershy remembered that Sonata’s family possessed sacred knowledge dating back thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years.

“So you can read these?” Fluttershy asked. “What do they say?

“Um!” Sonata held the foreleg up to her face. “In the thirteenth gate of the star of… um. Something, something, the pit of the love… sky?”

Sonata threw the leg aside.

“Okay, I should probably admit I’m bad at reading small-seal Uric. I barely passed that class and it was decades ago.”

That sounded about right.

“Please just try to remember!” Fluttershy urged her. “This might be important.”

“Ah, geeze! I’d only hurt my brain like this for you, Fluttershy.” Sonata picked up another severed limb from the zombie she just dismembered and began reading over it.

Uric seared itself into ever more zombies. The limb Sonata held shook and then flew from her grip. All of its limbs did, and the zombie reassembled.

A multitude of horns burst out from its head and back. Its hooves cracked, splitting into two sharp spikes. Its face elongated and its body became sleeker, more slender. The distorted zombie hissed and went straight for Fluttershy who, being invulnerable, didn’t even need to react as its claws broke against her armor.

Still, they reattached and it persisted in its pointless assault.

“Don’t worry!” Something inside Sonata’s suit clicked. Purple flames came belching out of her fanged mouth and burnt the zombie to a crisp. “Fire should still work! Or shooting them in the head.”

“Right. But now we can’t read it…”

“Ack! Uh!”

Three more transformed into twisted beasts like that.

Fluttershy knocked one over and kept it pinned down under her indomitable hoof. It struggled and hissed but couldn’t budge Fluttershy an inch. Sonata laid down to read it, a task made more difficult by the flailing.

Fluttershy watched the horde of zombies carefully, swatting away the few that tried to interrupt. More of them were turning into those distorted monsters. Yet they briefly, if ever, attacked Fluttershy. They’d take one or two swipes in her direction at best before pausing as if remembering something and bounding off in Starlight’s direction.

A group of the zombies suddenly… melted into a violet slime that seeped into the earth. Then the ground shook and from it emerged a massive undead creature. Bulbous and bloated with antlers on its head, the beast hobbled in a half-charge towards Fluttershy. Such a thing would be able to at least knock her over.

“Sonata! I think it’s getting worse.”

Nearly the entire horde had markings on them now. It wouldn’t be long until this was even worse than a blood moon.

“Okay!” Sonata stood up straight. “I’m 99% sure I got the gist of it. This is all part of a summoning ritual to call upon the ultimate evil.”

“Nightmare Moon?” Fluttershy guessed.

“No, no. She’s just advanced evil. ‘Amtaro Shu Zedra’ refers to the ultimate evil and that narrows it down to two people.”

“Two?!”

“Ha! Can you imagine living in a world with just one ultimate evil?” Sonata laughed. “That must be nice.”

“What are our options then?”

“There’s Lux Lucius, the most powerful demon and the ultimate nexus of evil and the Zebra God of Destruction, we call him ‘ZoD’. That guy’s the living incarnation of ultimate evil.”

Didn’t ‘ZoD’ live under Pinkie’s house? Or something?

“That sounds like they’re the same thing.”

“No. One’s the nexus of ultimate evil and the other is the incarnation of ultimate evil. It’s completely different.”

“But we don’t want either to show up, right?”

“Oh, I’ve never met either. But yeah, I’d assume that’d be bad based on uh.” Sonata watched another one of the large abominations charge off screaming in the direction of the battle. “Statistics? At least it looks like they’ll kill Starlight first, though. Eh?”

“Do you know how to stop it?”

“Maybe if Aria were here?” Sonata shook her head. “She’s a lot better at reading Uric than me.”

“Well we know something,” said Fluttershy. “You’re much more knowledgeable than I would have guessed.”

“Praise from Fluttershy!”

“For now we can take advantage of this chaos to get closer.” Fluttershy watched as the horde stampeded toward the battlefield.

Fluttershy put Sonata on her back and charged forward. The distorted zombies were increasingly running alongside her toward Starlight. It was almost as if they assumed Fluttershy was part of their horde now.

Lilymoon sat in the hull of the Phoenix King, rubbing a bleeding gash on the side of her head. She had been granted a moment to recover before having to rejoin the fight.

They’d picked up another crew and got the engines back fully online. The ship violently rocked in every direction. The explosions of sound all around them made it impossible to tell which was even shaking the vessel.

All the other ponies around her were on the verge of panic, but Lilymoon cared nothing for the noises outside. Even the destruction of the Phoenix King wouldn’t spell her demise. Instead, something else held her focus.

She sat in front of three unconscious prisoners, in front of one in particular.

Her body was battered and bruised all over, her head lulled to the side and he eyes half opened but without any light of awareness. Rainbow Dash hung suspended in the air by blue fibers that kept her, alive, unconscious, and contained all.

A surge of pain forced Lilymoon to grab at the base of her wing.

‘Rainbow Dash wouldn’t send me onto the battlefield’. ‘Rainbow Dash’ this and ‘Rainbow Dash’ that. Lilymoon glowered at the pegasus, unable to find anything special about her, any reason Scootaloo would care about… about this.

Starlight could offer them a chance to become real people. To become gods. And yet they cared only about Rainbow Dash. Lilymoon wanted to just vaporize her, or perhaps just let her die. She could have done just that earlier. But even if she was angry at Scootaloo right now, Lilymoon couldn’t do that to a friend.

And maybe part of her was curious, but that part was something that needed to be forgotten.

“Maybe I could make a fake Rainbow Dash,” said Lilymoon, “who will tell those two I’m right about everything.”

Her horn glowed. Her shadow rose and took the form of Rainbow Dash.

“Lilymoon!”

Starlight beckoned her. No time for this just yet. The shadow sank back down.

Lilymoon rushed up the stairs. The rain was light but the wind was strong, giving the illusion of a storm on deck. Starlight alone stood to face their latest, and most dangerous at present, assailant.

At the bow of the Pheonix King stood a stallion with pitch black fur and red hair smoking a cigarette, only one lackey by his side as well. Lilymoon recognized him from the ‘enemies list’ she’d been made to memorize. Demon Summoner.

They had quite a few of these to work through. Starlight had said that Nightmare Moon was their ultimate nemesis but suddenly switched over to saying it was this guy instead. She must have had some kind of plan behind all that but Lilymoon couldn’t possibly follow her brilliant mind.

True, he and his god Lux Lucius planned to unleash ten thousand years of unyielding misery onto the world. Arguably worse than Nightmare Moon’s own goal.

“Starlight!” Demon Summoner threw his cigarette off the ship. “It seems you’re the only one with any chance left of stopping me. But why not just give up, huh? We both want to end the world as it is, don’t we?”

“Ten thousand years of unyielding misery isn’t exactly my vision for the new world,” said Starlight.

“I don’t even get why you’d want that,” Lilymoon spoke out of turn. “Aren’t you going to live in agony too?”

“You’re too young to understand, kid.” Demon Summoner put out a foreleg and looked to the sky with a look of ecstasy on his face. “It’s the pleasure-pain horseshoe! Infinite pleasure and infinite pain are indistinguishable from one another. I learned that when I was the prisoner of Lux Lucius some years ago. It’ll be awesome, trust me.”

He turned his look back to the ground, his smile twisting and becoming more twisted.

“But I’m the only one getting the reward of infinite pain. The rest of you will just have to settle for… significant pain. But frankly, I don’t give a crow about what happens to the rest of you.”

His lackey chuckled.

“You mean other than me, right?” He glanced nervously at his boss.

“Yeah.” Demon Summoner took out a knife. “It’s already too late for you to stop my ritual. I need only the final reagent: to sacrifice the most important person in the world, the one you love more than any other.”

He turned to his partner with a smile.

“For me, that’s my buddy Skeeter here.” Demon Summoner put a hoof on ‘Skeeter’s’ back.

“Wait, really? I didn’t know I meant that much to you, boss!” Skeeter’s uncertainty faded at the compliment.

“Yep.”

Demon Summoner plunged the dagger into Skeeter’s chest with zero hesitation. Skeeter fell to the ground, clutching the knife’s hilt.

“Dude…. You- you just said–!”

“I didn’t say I have to care about you a lot. Just slightly more than anyone else.” Demon Summoner looked down at him without a shred of pity.

“You know what? I choose to die taking this as a compliment.” Skeeter fell to his side, dead.

A circle of runes appeared underneath the foolish pony and he sank into the ground. Demon Summoner laughed maniacally. A dark shape started to rise behind him, the shape of something pony-like so colossal that its head would be at the same level as the Phoenix King itself.

Lilymoon was certain this had to be the form of Lux Lucius, she could feel absolute malevolence emanating from it. Yet Starlight watched this with utter calmness. If she wasn’t reacting neither should Lilymoon. Starlight always had a plan.

“Well?” Demon Summoner stopped his laughing and looked over at the other two ponies. “You’re not going to stop me?”

The eyes of the giant behind them opened, a blazing green rather than that bright violet Lilymoon already associated with Lux Lucius. The runes turned that same color and the body of the sacrifice rose to the world of mortals.

“What?! This guy?!” Demon Summoner spun around to face those green eyes with indignant surprise. “The Zebra God of Destruction?! What is he doing here?! Who destroyed that mini-golf course?”

Lilymoon smiled as Demon Summoner turned back to them with disgruntled worry. This must have all been part of Starlight’s plans!

Starlight stepped forward to make her move on him.

“Oh, don’t expect this setback to be nearly enough!” Demon Summoner growled.

His teeth burst into fangs and a violet energy wrapped itself around him. The power that flowed through him was immense, but nothing could ever stop Starlight! The three ponies all charged forward at once and clashed.

As Fluttershy approached the scene of the battle she realized that ‘chaos’ was underselling it.

Battles in both the air and ground filled every direction with disorder. Pegasi, airships, and other creatures fired volleys at one another. She could see violet light pouring out of the Phoenix King and a second, green magic pressing down on it as if to keep it from escaping. Two figures swirled around that ship exchanging viscous blows that lit up the dark sky. Starlight and perhaps an assailant.

The ground was dominated by the violet light of those distorted creatures, who had long since rushed ahead of Fluttershy. There were so many of the latter that they fell over one another forming waves in a sort of zombie ocean that filled the valley below Fluttershy.

There were others on the ground as well, though they could only be seen by the absence of the distorted. Groups or perhaps powerful individuals kept them at bay and out of certain areas, often lights from their own attacks clearing up small pockets.

Through all that chaos one figure dominated the entire scene. A towering black figure Fluttershy first mistook for a mountain loomed over it all. It looked vaguely like a pony, but its body was more an absence of anything else than an actual black. Only his green eyes could be made out in any detail.

The violet monsters seemed to particularly hate that most of all. Their waves must have been enough to swallow houses but did little more than crash against its ankles before beginning to climb up its legs.

“There he is!” Sonata hit Fluttershy on the shoulder and pointed up at the colossus. “That’s the Zebra God of Destruction! The guy I just mentioned three seconds ago!”

“Is that a zebra?” Fluttershy asked. It was so strange seeing one without stripes. Or maybe he was all stripes?

“Zebras are just uh – Oh, actually I think that’s just an avatar of him because if he were actually here reality would be uncreated. So that explains why the world hasn’t ended yet.” Sonata hopped off Fluttershy’s back. “So I guess all this is to summon ZoD because otherwise why is he here?”

Something told Fluttershy that was wrong. Looking at his eyes and the ship, she would guess his magic was green. But those monsters were violet. And they were clearly trying to knock him over.

“Either way, we have to get up there.” Fluttershy pointed to the Phoenix King, consumed in several types of magic all vying for control.

Sonata didn’t even need to speak. A tilt of her head was enough to doubt they could get close even if all the combatants ignored them.

How they would even get up there was a question in itself. Normally they could just fly up there. But that would alert too many ponies to her presence.

Fluttershy knew what Rainbow Dash would do.

“I think our best bet is to befriend somepony else attacking Starlight,” Fluttershy concluded. “Somepony who can fly us up. There are so many here to choose from. One of them must be willing to help.”

“Oh! I pick the dragon!” Sonata pointed up.

So much was going on, Fluttershy hadn’t even noticed a dragon had been soaring overhead breathing fire at this and that group.

“Dragons are so rare and–”

There was a flash in the sky and the dragon exploded.

“Never mind. Who’s option B?”

“Maybe.” Fluttershy scanned the sky. She didn’t even know who was on Starlight’s side right now.

Before she could deliberate any longer, the violet magic condensed. A spear made of the stuff far larger than the airship itself launched forward and stabbed straight into ZoD’s head.

The colossus stumbled, each step shaking the ground. Fluttershy realized with horror that it was going to fall over! Just that much from such a monstrosity would be an immense disaster!

It was going to come crashing down right on top of them, even. The black form of ZoD filled the entire sky already.

“I think we’re gonna get crushed!” Sonata called out. “Oh wait, we’re ghosts! We’ll be okay.”

“But there’s a whole lot of other ponies around here.” Fluttershy dug her feet in. She wouldn’t be able to run fast enough anyway. “

It was time to see if this armor could really kick hard enough to make a difference. It was a long shot but…

But before she could even try to kick there was a wave of green light that washed over the area and swept the two of them away like a torrent of water.

Fluttershy was left stunned in surprise as that figure came crashing down but they were standing right next to it, a wall of black before them. The ground barely shook despite something the size of a mountain crashing on it and it seemed to leave no imprint on the landscape.

Looking around, it seemed everything but those twisted zombies had been thrown aside. Several ponies were on the edge of destruction looking equally confused.

And it went beyond that. Woodland creatures, whatever had tried to hide from the chaos, had even been pushed out of the way. A mob of squirrels, birds, and the like had been thrown to safety and now scrambled to hide anew.

“Squirrels?” Fluttershy asked as she saw them scurrying off. “He…”

And another wave of attacks impacted ZoD at the same time.

ZoD, at least what Fluttershy suspected to be ZoD, had gone out of his way to make sure nopony got hurt from him falling over, not even the wildlife that had been hiding in their burrows. He had chosen to get hit rather than let anything on the ground get crushed.

Either this wasn’t ZoD or…

“Are you a hundred percent sure this is the god of destruction?” Fluttershy asked.

“That looks like him!” Sonata nodded. “And don’t you feel the malice dripping off this guy?”

She did feel it. But it didn’t make sense.

“I think we should ask him to help us get up there,” said Fluttershy her eyes deadest on ZoD.

“Bwuh?! Did you miss the part where this guy is the evilest thing that ever existed!” Sonata stopped Fluttershy. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“No. But I’m done being a coward. And if I’m wrong we’ll have to confront him eventually either way.” Fluttershy braced herself and called up to the giant. “Hey! You! Over here!”

His head slowly turned to Fluttershy. Those green eyes locked onto her, but he said nothing, waiting for her to speak with patience unbefitting a god of destruction.

“I…. I want you to help me save one of my friends,” said Fluttershy.

The ground rumbled. He ignored her and began standing once more.

“No!” Fluttershy charge forward, landing on his muzzle. She looked into the space between his eyes while he looked cross-eyed at her. Just above, on his forehead, the spear of violet light remained lodged in his skull. “This is important!”

ZoD ignored her, continuing his herculean task of standing back up.

Fluttershy looked over her shoulder at the Phoenix King. Even without his cooperation, she might be able to jump to the ship from his muzzle if she could only hang on.

But ZoD could only get to his knees before tumbling over again with another rumbling quake. And again that wave of green went over the battlefield, keeping everypony and every critter from being harmed.

Even with the strength of the armor, Fluttershy had to struggle her hold on to the hairs on his muzzle.

“Please!” Fluttershy called to him. “I can tell you’re not trying to hurt anypony. I…”

ZoD shook his head. From far away it may have looked like a slow shake of his head but from Fluttershy’s perspective, it went at unreal speeds. Destructive winds that surely would have sent her flying in even a lesser battle doll assailed Fluttershy.

It might have worked even still had ZoD kept it up. Another spasm and his head went crashing into the ground again.

Fluttershy looked up once more at the spear piercing his skull.

“That’s what’s hurting you, isn’t it?” Fluttershy began climbing up his snout, then his head. “Here. I’ll get it out.”

She climbed up on top of his head and then slid down until she was up against the spear, struggling to stay on as ZoD attempted and failed to get up a second time.

Fluttershy pressed her forehooves down and bucked hard against the base of the spear, pushing on it with her hind legs. She could feel the tingle of that fel magic flowing through her, yet the giant bore most of its brunt.

Finally, it budged just an inch. If she could move it an inch, she could get it out completely. Fluttershy lowered her stance and pushed it up another inch. Then two more. Then with the third push, the entire thing dislodged and went flying out into the air.

ZoD’s green eyes transfixed first on the spear, dissolving it with his violet magic, while Fluttershy stumbled and tumbled back down onto his nose. Once again, his eyes crossed to look at her.

He watched her for too long, enough that Fluttershy could scarcely imagine what he thought of such a move. Then at last, he spoke.

“You.” His voice deep and powerful must have made every heart that could hear it shudder. Fluttershy, having none, stood firm. “How dare you?!”

“How dare I? Dare I…” Fluttershy got back on her feet. “What?”

“Help me. Do you not know that I am evil beyond evil? I am the very incarnation of evil itself and you dislodge the weapon that was holding me down?”

“I don’t…” Fluttershy shook her head. “I don’t think you’re that bad.”

“You…”

His body became translucent, a shadow of itself. Then it vanished and Fluttershy fell to the ground. She’d thought maybe he teleported away but soon realized he merely shrunk back down to normal size.

There was the same figure before her but about eye-level with Fluttershy’s armor.

“You doubt how wicked I am?” He walked forward. His footprints left a sort of unreality in their wake. The distorted still rushed at him but his mere footprints stopped them, the blackness they left behind swallowing up his assailants. But his voice was far less menacing now.

“You went out of your way to rescue all the squirrels.” Fluttershy backed up. Sonata, still obsessed, ran to her side, ready to die for her in an instant if need be.

“Squirrels!” He shouted at Fluttershy. “Steal seeds from the bird feeders leaving the birds to starve. If I crushed them, they could no longer torment the birds nor the ponies who leave those out.”

Fluttershy paused to try and twist her head around that logic. Maybe he just hated birds the most?

“But you also rescued the birds,” Fluttershy remembered.

“Birds eat the bird seeds before the squirrels can get them so that they starve. It is a wretched cycle that I shall perpetuate! Do you now understand the transcendent level of evil that I exist on?!”

Fluttershy shook her head. She couldn’t begin to understand this.

“Nature,” he said, turning to the trees, “is such a disgusting thing. There is not one organism out there that doesn’t wish to devour or destroy some other organism. And that is why I, the evilest being in the universe, would never allow any harm to come to it.”

Fluttershy just now noticed his magic had somehow spared the trees from being crushed as well.

“Well, that’s very…” Nice? Evil? “Very something of you.”

Sonata slowly raised a hoof.

“Excuse me! So is all this a ritual to summon you or not?” Sonata asked.

“Oh, I would never.” ZoD shook his head. “My existence on this plane would mean the destruction of all things. Which would mean no more evil so I can’t allow that.”

“That makes sense to me.” Sonata looked up to Fluttershy. “So somepony is trying to summon the other guy who will destroy the world and ZoD wants to stop that because it’ll mean the end of evil too.”

Sonata nodded, proud she’d figured out something so obvious.

“Not exactly,” said ZoD. “He just wants to unleash ten thousand years of suffering, death, etc. on the world. But as the supreme evil I can’t allow that either.”

Fluttershy nodded along, not understanding the logic but not wanting to challenge him on it either. Sonata had no such filter and just blurted it out.

“I get not destroying the world,” said Sonata. “But if you’re so evil why would you want to stop that?”

“Okay. It’s like: You see a pony living in a dumpster and their life is miserable and they just spend all day crying about it. Nothing bad can happen to that pony since they have nothing, and everything already sucks. Like what? Do I take away their trash can? But if everypony is happy and their life is wonderful then there’s potential for evil to happen. You know?”

Fluttershy did not know.

“Only in a world of flourishing, where you ponies have both material wealth and love abundant does the potential for the true depths of despair emerge! Besides, in a world like that ponies would be banding together or at least killing each other out of desperation. I only want people to kill for the sake of petty nonsense. Cause that’s more evil.”

Fluttershy kept shaking her head through all of that. Only at the very end did it all start to come together. Understanding how this bizarre creature thought gave her an idea.

“Um!” Fluttershy stepped forward. “Well! My friend Rainbow Dash, who I’m trying to rescue, is loved by so many ponies. And she has so much potential to help everypony. If you help us save her, and she makes the world a better place, then I’m sure there will be so much sadness when eventually she dies for real. So um…”

The god of destruction considered her argument.

He closed his left eye. A whisp of green flew into the sky and vanished as he pondered something.

“She doesn’t seem to think she has any potential,” ZoD concluded. “She doesn’t seem to think anypony loves her. Not truly.”

“She… doesn’t?”

Fluttershy looked down at her hooves. Could Rainbow Dash think that? This was her fault, wasn’t it? She should have… have noticed this problem earlier. She should have made an effort to show Rainbow Dash just how much she meant.

Before she could let herself wallow again, Fluttershy shook her head hard and stepped forward. If that was true it just meant Fluttershy’s path was clear.

“She’s wrong!” Fluttershy answered the god of destruction. “To me she’s… she’s my hero! And I’ll tell her that she’s wrong as soon as I find her. If you can see things with that eye, then surely you can see that, too can’t you?”

He stood again in silence, longer this time, as that eye scoured the world. Fluttershy wasn’t nervous at all. She knew he’d be able to see it.

“Yes.”

He opened his eyes again, done with his reconnaissance.

“Yes, I see now!” His voice boomed, announcing this revelation. “You are exactly right. I will help you rescue Rainbow Dash. I will stop the end of the world. You will restore her confidence and then this pony shall go on to create a better world! A world where there is so much to lose!”

The god of destruction laughed and laughed.

Fluttershy… she did it! But she wouldn’t relax just yet. Even after saving Rainbow Dash, her work had only just begun.

“Whoa! You’re seriously going to help us?” Sonata asked.

“Yes! I will use my godly powers to aid you in your quest.”

“This is great!” Sonata grabbed Fluttershy. “I can’t believe you pulled this off, Fluttershy! Okay! You’re the god of destruction so go destroy them!”

Sonata pointed a claw up at the Phoenix King. ZoD watched her with a perplexed look.

“Go on.” Sonata bobbed her claw up and down. “Destroy! It’s in your name.”

“I think maybe he can’t since this is just his avatar,” Fluttershy whispered. “N-no offense Mister, um, Zebra God of Destruction.”

“You can just call me ZoD, formality is for the moral. And of course I could destroy them!” ZoD’s voice boomed, sending Sonata stumbling back. “Now may be a good time to mention that my aid isn’t free. There will be certain… conditions if you accept this offer.”

“Fluttershy,” Sonata whispered. “He’s going to make us eat the heart of an orphan child and cockroaches a bunch of really gross stuff, I just know it.”

“I’m not so sure of that at this point,” Fluttershy whispered back, then spoke out loud to ZoD again. “What are they?”

“Mainly,” said ZoD, “I’m a pacifist. If you work with me, you cannot harm any living thing. If you kill even one pony the deal is off and the consequences will be horrific.”

Pacifist? Fluttershy wished she could deadpan at this guy. This was all getting a bit much.

“You don’t believe me?” He looked incredulous between them. “I was a billion feet tall a second ago. I could just kick them. You don’t think I can blow everypony here up with my mind? I simply choose not to. Pacifism.”

“But you just said you were supreme evil. Pacifism isn’t evil.” Fluttershy paused for a minute. “Is it?”

“No. No.” ZoD sighed and tapped his forehead. “Alright. Ask yourself this: would killing Starlight be completely evil? She kind of deserves it on some level, doesn’t she?”

“Well I…. I suppose.” Fluttershy had to admit.

“Same could be said for everypony.” ZoD shrugged. “Not one of you is perfect so killing you wouldn’t be an act of ultimate evil. I could only kill a pony who’s 100% perfect. And no such pony exists so therefore I’m a pacifist.”

“That… almost makes sense.”

“Right. So non-violence it is. Do you agree to my terms?”

Sonata and Fluttershy looked at one another before nodding.

“I don’t think we would be able to kill Starlight anyway,” said Fluttershy. “So um. Yes.”

“Then the pact is sealed!”

Much like with the zombies before, that same symbol of ultimate evil seared itself into the foreheads of both Sonata and Fluttershy. Sonata briefly poked out of her battle doll to see that it was still there even in ghost form.

“And if you break your word of peace,” ZoD warned, “then you will learn the true meaning of evil!”

Or maybe Fluttershy’s idea wasn’t so good after all.

But too late now.

Author's Note

IMPORTANT NOTE: You were probably saying it wrong. It's pronounced like 'Zo. D.' rhymes with Jodie or Cody.

It's not 'Zod'.

Demons 2: Deathdemic

“Okay, cool. We’re all pacifists now,” said Sonata. “Teleport us up there, break the chains, grab the Dash, and run for it.”

“No,” ZoD said bluntly.

“What are you a chain pacifist too?” Sonata asked. “You can’t fight chains? Is that it?”

“They would immediately attack me if I did that,” ZoD explained. “And the two of you need to get Rainbow Dash without either seeing you if you’re to escape.”

“Can you at least get us up there?” Fluttershy asked. “If you become huge again, you’ll be a distraction to draw attention from us. We’ll jump onto the ship and figure out the rest ourselves.”

“Still not enough,” ZoD warned. “They will not be so easily fooled. They must be fully occupied. To that end, we must call upon more of their enemies.”

More ponies attacking Starlight sounded like a good idea in general. But looking up at the sky, Fluttershy could hardly tell whose side any of them were on.

“Them.” ZoD turned his muzzle to the west. Firing upon Starlight’s ships was a second fleet.

It was the same Equestrian flag with the same phoenix in red and gold. But civil war and all, it could have been under the control of Nailbat’s supporters for all Fluttershy knew.

“You will hide behind my ear. When I become large again, you will be able to reach that ship. Bring them to the nexus summoning Lux Lucius without Fluttershy being spotted by the ponies there and without killing.”

So it seemed ZoD wouldn’t be spoon-feeding them everything. But it was already enough to be thankful for.

The ponies nodded to each other and grabbed one of ZoD’s ears.

His gigantification wasn’t too dissimilar to riding the world’s fastest elevator. The ground rapidly ran away from Fluttershy as she plunged into the air, clinging to the ear for dear life. That struggle lasted seconds as soon his head was large enough to be a ship in itself, then something much larger.

They soon reached the same height as their target. Each of the ghosts sat pressed against the back of his ears as the airships took evasive action before being crushed against his form. And in doing so one of them exposed its belly.

Even knowing that ‘missing’ wouldn’t be fatal by any means, the prospect of leaping down to the hull of the ship sent a shiver of intimidation through Fluttershy. She wasn’t used to gravity anymore.

Sonata came rolling down to her side. ZoD had reached his full height and the ship wasn’t far. This was it.

The ponies shared a nod and jumped off ZoD, Fluttershy closing her eyes for a moment and allowing the wind to helplessly pelt her armor. Opening them again, it became clear they were going to make it.

It was a credit to its construction Fluttershy didn’t break straight through with how hard she smashed into the wall. She slid off the slippery surface, rolling across the belly of the ship, and realized she hadn’t stuck the landing just yet.

Sonata’s claws unhinged and dug into the hull, sliding to a stop. Fluttershy supposed she could have punched straight through with her doll’s strength but maybe it was best to make a less dramatic entrance. Instead, she grabbed onto Sonata’s rear legs before sliding off completely.

Sonata dug both foreclaws in hard as the airship turned and corrected course, Fluttershy dangling off her hind legs now with nothing but open air below her.

The god of destruction took a lurching step forward. The ship fired on him, but he simply ignored it, focusing only on the clash of lights in Starlight’s direction.

Fluttershy saw where he was going with all this. ZoD was trying to make popping back up near these other airships seem incidental, that he had no concern for them whatsoever. Neither Starlight nor that demon would suspect they were here.

As ZoD’s magic once again washed over the Phoenix King, Fluttershy looked upwards to her mission.

Sonata unhooked one forehoof and moved it a bit further up, slowly scaling up the side.

The question now was whose airship was this? And how friendly were they to ghosts?

Flash Bang landed on the bow of the ship as it stabilized once more. She raised a wing to the ships to stop firing. There was no point.

That’d been a close one but thankfully the colossal avatar of destruction seemed wholly disinterested in anything but the summoning ritual. Spitfire would not want to fight something like that.

Though like it she would have to fight. It was at best one of three threats that size just here. And yet they’d just been sitting here for nearly an hour.

Chief among the other pegasi here was Lightning Dust, pacing back and forth in a huff, just as disgruntled by their inaction only for a different reason. Seeing so much fighting and not being able to join must have been torture to her. After Lightning Dust all but started a fight with Nailbat’s group back there, Spitfire wouldn’t have brought this pony along at all. But then there were a lot of things Spitfire wouldn’t do today.

The whole attack on their end was a feint. They had an actual plan to kill Starlight, but they wanted her to think all they could come up with was hitting her with everything they had at an opportune moment.

Spitfire doubted this demon guy had any real chance against Starlight. And she knew attacking Starlight would end in retreat. Yet even coming here knowing it was a fight they intended to lose, Spitfire couldn’t help but feel uneasy as they sat back.

From this high up, Starlight could see the shadow of the violet moon spreading. Wherever it was cast, the ground cracked, and monstrosities spewed forth.

It would begin to consume small towns in just a few minutes and would reach a major city in under an hour at the rate things were going. And it seemed little of Equestria had been spared already. This moon was visible across the whole continent and small distortions were growing in every corner of the nation. That was just the reports coming in too.

“Why aren’t we doing anything?” Spitfire asked. “This… thing is spreading too fast. If we don’t do something soon it will consume Trottingham.”

“We need to be careful with how we go about it,” said Flashbang.

“What do you mean? We were already planning on Starlight to win this round so just let her have it before things get worse.”

“Trust me or it will get worse.”

“Dammit! Can we rely on you or do we need to find somepony else to take charge of this?”

“Oh?” Flash Bang stepped forward, lowering her head to look Spitfire in the eyes. “And who are you going to turn to? Twilight? Rainbow Dash? They’re both dead.”

Spitfire frowned. Her agonizing choice of allegiance had been taken away in the worst manner possible. Going over there without Flash Bang would be suicide. So this pony did call the shots.

Taking the silence as acquiescence, Flash Bang lifted her head again.

“If you want something to do, go assess the hull,” said Flash Bang. “I saw something hit it.”

Spitfire took to the air while Flash Bang looked stoically up at the growing sphere in the sky. What she was planning Spitfire couldn’t be sure. But she was on the right side. Hopefully.

She grumbled at being reduced to such a lowly task beneath even a lieutenant but didn’t bother complaining. She really was desperate for something to do.

Spitfire flew around one side, then circled towards the other. The wind was so cold and vicious tonight on top of everything else.

Something made her stop on the starboard end. Somepony was hanging off the ship. Didn’t look like they had wings so this fight would be easy enough if that’s what it was.

She flew forward at speed casually enough but when she got a good look at it. Spitfire spun over herself. Her breath stopped short and her vision blurred.

It was that thing again! Nightmare Moon’s armor!

Spitfire breathed heavily as it turned its gaze to her. Her body locked up, just barely staying in flight as she desperately tried to do anything.

Spitfire? That was far from the best or worst possibility.

Fluttershy watched the horrified pegasus freeze up long enough to start falling. She was about to try a desperate rescue before remembering pegasi could fly. Yet Spitfire only half recovered.

“Y… you!” Her voice trembled.

“Me?” Fluttershy couldn’t imagine why Spitfire would be so afraid of her. Unless. “Oh, no! It’s not me. I mean. It’s me, but… I’m Fluttershy. I’m Rainbow Dash’s ghost friend. I only stole this armor.”

Spitfire still struggled to respond, pointing at Fluttershy and making a few unintelligible noises before managing a sentence.

“Are you attacking us?” Spitfire asked. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Flash Bang is our only hope now that… I’m sorry I don’t have time to give it to you gently, but all the rest of your friends are dead.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Fluttershy. “In fact, no! I know they aren’t. Rainbow Dash is on the Phoenix King. I need to find her.”

“Well you’re on the wrong ship,” said Spitfire. “You still haven’t answered me. Why are you here?”

“I guess.” Fluttershy decided she might as well just fess up at this point. “I was wondering if there was any way for your team to join the fight over there?”

“Oh, I wish,” Spitfire muttered.

Fluttershy tilted her head, confused.

“This demon ritual isn’t just bad if it ends,” said Spitfire. “It’s ripping the world apart! Just look at that!”

She pointed down. A new symptom had manifested as those cracks in the ground, now large, gave way to an intense violet light. That couldn’t be good.

“I’ve been looking around,” said Spitfire, “and getting calls from all over. By my reckoning, if we don’t do something soon it’s going to look like that for hundreds of miles in every direction unless we do something right now! But Flash Bang is ordering us all to just wait around. We never planned on beating Starlight here. Something needs to be done about this Lux Lucius thing immediately.”

“Why does Flash Bang want to wait?” Fluttershy asked. The best she could figure it was just hope that Starlight would get injured if the fighting continued. But such a big risk for that?

“That’s the thing! I have no idea and she’s not telling me! I’d mutiny and charge over there myself but without Flash Bang, I’m not sure how much of a difference we could make.”

“Maybe… I could help force Flash Bang to join the fight?” Fluttershy suggested.

“So like what’s the real reason we’re just sitting here?” Lightning Dust came up to Flash Bang’s side right after Spitfire left.

No response.

Lightning Dust hated being blown off like that.

“Come on, I get why you wouldn’t tell a lame pony like Spitfire, but you know I’m better than all that, right?” Dust tried getting closer, smiles and all.

“It’s too dangerous to approach right now,” said Flash dryly enough.

That is, dryly enough to piss Dust off some more. You’d think after all the fights Dust won; she’d be entitled to some respect around here but no!

Then Flash Bang flew off to one of the other ships. Maybe the one Fleetfoot was on. Dust lost track of them.

Nothing she could freaking do about it right now, though. Instead, she combed her hair and went back to the rest of the soldiers. Spitfire had been gone too long. Hopefully, that was a bad sign.

A veritable glacier of ice engulfed the very rear of the ship, causing it to tilt backward.

“Nice!”

Lightning Dust could already feel it before the news came. More of those spooks around.

Sure enough, Spitfire came flying back just then.

“Crater Cemetery sent a contingent of ghosts after us!” Spitfire announced. “They’re going to pincer us against Starlight’s location!”

The regulars scrambled into position as Dust trotted up the increasing slope toward the front, knowing that was where the nearest ghost would be. And sure enough, the enemy landed right in front of her, possessing a suite of armor.

That was some of their armor, currently possessed. The ghost came out as soon as she was on deck, letting the armor go limp. Dust recognized that one, the banshee Sonata! That idiot just barely escaped her last time but wouldn’t get away now.

The banshee must have lost her body and decided to use some armor it stole from them instead.

Sonata wasted no time before letting out her wail. Everypony on board was hit by a death curse. There was no choice but to hunt the banshee down now.

Dust pounced forward. Sonata possessed the armor again then went flying off. Her reflexes and speed were incredible! On par with some of the fastest pegasi she’d seen. Seeing her vanish in the distance so quickly… only Fleetfoot and Flash Bang could have gone faster.

“Ha! She’s fast!” Lightning Dust charged forward, barely able to contain herself at getting to fight somepony so fast. She’d underestimated that pony.

Spitfire watched Flash Bang return and over the ship, now frozen over completely. Everypony had been evacuated first and hovered a safe distance away after an ice blast in their direction.

Fluttershy was inside. She’d ramped up the engines. It was already pointed in the right direction so that was all she had to do to send it on a collision course with the Phoenix King. An actual hit would take some steering near the end, however.

Still, Fluttershy would get her wish of crashing into the Phoenix King and sneaking onboard. There was no conceivable reason for Flash to stop an already compromised ship from getting some use beyond the grave by slamming into the enemy.

And once everything moved towards Starlight, surely then she’d have to act or take unacceptable losses.

For a moment, Flash Bang remained still. Then she spread her wings. Then her wings began to glow.

This, Spitfire recognized, meant she was about to unleash an attack that would destroy the airship. But why?!

Before anything could be said, a barrage of red projectiles flew at the maverick ship, exploding upon nearing the target.

Fluttershy rushed to the helm, hoping that putting a death curse on so many ponies and ramming one airship into another wouldn’t be going far enough to violate ZoD’s ‘pacifism’ rule. They didn’t mean to hurt anypony at least and would do what they could to minimize damage… but this really seemed the only way.

She found the helm but before she could do anything, noticed an incoming attack from behind. A hail of red bullets rushed toward her.

Fluttershy scrambled to create a wall of ice to stop the barrage from hitting the ship! Vicious explosions ripped through the air. She’d briefly hoped, watching them from a window from the back, that those small projectiles would maybe make at least a reasonable-sized burst. But each one shook the entire ship even through Fluttershy’s barrier of ice.

And they just kept coming! There were so many of these things that it quickly became apparent Fluttershy wouldn’t be salvaging the airship.

She looked down across the way to the steering mechanism, a sort of lever on the opposite side of the room. How did airship turning work again? Spitfire’s ten-second instruction was to ‘pull the thing in the opposite direction you want to go’ but Fluttershy didn’t know if the mechanism was in the back or what.

This left her with a dilemma. Protect the ship and let it veer off course or let the back half explode and hope she could turn with what was left.

Even farther down, she could see the site of the battle between ZoD, Starlight and the demon summoner. She was getting closer but would need to turn hard right to get there. Hopefully, Starlight was already distracted enough to not notice this thing barreling towards her.

Starlight glanced to her side. It looked like more company would be showing up soon. Two ponies and one airship were approaching. But…

A jagged stream of violet nearly impaled her. A well of green light sprang up and nearly pulled her down into the abyss. The demon guy she got, but why was the zebra god of destruction attacking her as well? He did seem mostly focused on keeping the sacrifice from being sucked down completely, though.

Demon Summoner stood above the Phoenix King on a circle of runes suspended in the air. In a wider circle appeared seven more alters.

“If you want to stop me,” said Demon Summoner, “you will have to defeat the seven demons representing the seven greatest forces of evil in the world. Mosquitoes! Entropy! Over-inflated real estate markets!"

As he listed them off one by one, they rose from their summoning circles. Starlight rolled her eyes. What twelve-year-old came up with this list?

Demon Summoner turned to attack ZoD but that hardly took much heat off of Starlight. She wanted to end this at the exact right time and having to go through these enemies one at a time would push things to the edge. She’d let that kamikaze rush go through if they could make it.

Even approaching the ship was difficult! Dust was hardly surprised she could get through the gauntlet unscathed but was Sonata really this smooth?

Dust landed near the very bottom of the Phoenix King, using her wings to hang off its metal hull. She didn’t dare go up any further. That fighting just a few dozen feet above them had gotten so intense it's surprised Dust the ship hadn’t exploded yet.

Starlight and at least two other entities repeatedly clashed in the air while that giant loomed over them both. Normally this high up, sitting near the edge of a ship going this fast, the sound of the wind and engine would drown everything out. The fight above had grown intense enough that Dust couldn’t even hear either!

Sonata had stopped just about here.

“Cursing us and hiding behind Starlight, huh?!” Dusk cracked her neck. She had to shout it over all this noise. “You’re not getting away this time, you spook!”

Sonata backed up but didn’t respond. That loudmouth idiot?

Something was up here. For a moment, Dust toyed with the thought perhaps this wasn’t Sonata. Yet she could just barely feel the aura of a ghost and hadn’t lost sight of this armor since its possession.

Either way, whoever this was had just signed up for a world of hurt. Dust cowled her body in electricity, ready to make her move.

“Okay! Leaving now!” Sonata’s voice was just barely audible over all that noise. Maybe Dust just hadn’t heard her initial response.

Sonata exited the armor, leaving it to plummet to the ground, before flying straight through the hull of the ship.

“Oh, come on!” Dust flew up to the spot the banshee just escaped to and proceeded to slam her hoof into it repeatedly. This thing was tough though! Though she could dent it, it’d take a while to bust a hole. And going in through the deck would be suicide right now.

Something from that direction let out an insectoid screech. Then something else slammed into the metal plating. One of the cannons had been blasted loose by something and sent rolling perfectly right across the metal at Dust.

She dodged it, of course, but that dislodged a piece of metal debris that managed to nick her. Not much. But it was still weird everything fell in such a perfect…

That was right! The death curse!

Dust looked up at the growing buzzing noises. A cloud of insects formed and a huge portion of them flew down to her. It quickly became apparent what they were… mosquitos. And not just normal mosquitos. These things were the size of cats with suckers more akin to daggers, their wings made of that violet light.

Her bleeding led to the mosquitos coming at her… that meant it didn’t count as a ‘hit’ but another link in the chain. But getting bit by one of them looked like it’d be death. Something brimming with that much magic would be worse than just a few dagger stabs.

Dust led the swarm underneath the ship and around to the other side. There she found only more mosquitos! The practically poured out at her from above, behind and in front. She’d practically been consumed by them already.

Summoning all her strength, Dust let out a surge of electricity in every direction, engulfing them all in a sphere of lightning. It worked, leaving the fried remains of those fortunate enough to have that much to fall to the ground.

But there were so many more of them up there! They were just pouring out of something like a fountain. At least Dust felt safe for a second. But how would her destroying those mosquitos lead to another hit in the chain?

She looked around for potential danger.

The ground was… gone for a better word. She’d seen it opening up to this violet light but now it seemed the whole earth below them had opened entirely to become an amorphous glow. And deep down was the looming shadow of something. Something that made even that humongous black zebra look microscopic. Something slowly coming towards them.

“Whoa! Somepony better hurry up.”

Then there was the giant, getting slammed repeatedly by the demon guy but bearing each blow. His hooves were on either side of that pit. It looked like he was trying to hold the thing shut.

She turned back to Flash Bang’s general direction. That’s when she saw what had to be the next link in the chain… one she’d have to take a hit for or risk a guaranteed lethal blow.

Spitfire tried grabbing Flashbang and diverting her attack.

“What are you doing?!” Spitfire demanded. “They’re attacking the nexus. The thing we should be doing. So why would you get in their way?”

“They could just as easily be trying to get in Starlight’s way,” said Flash Bang. “And their priority seems to be an attack on us besides.”

“Their plan,” chimed in another pegasus. “Must have been to curse us then hide behind Starlight.”

Okay! So the plan wasn’t watertight. It was the best she and Fluttershy could come up with in two and a half seconds. True she hadn’t thought this through all the way.

“Okay, but the banshee has moved onto the Phoenix King,” Spitfire attempted to salvage this. “We have to find her or we’re all going to die.”

With no ship and high up in the air, a death curse had much less to work with and was less deadly. Still, stray pieces of shrapnel and lightning strikes that seemed to come out of nowhere kept the ponies on their toes. Sonata promised to undo the curse after just fifteen minutes, long before it would have a chance to actually kill anypony.

“We could also fall back,” the lieutenant suggested. “A banshee’s curse stops working after a certain distance.”

Flash Bang considered that carefully. She was reluctant to join the fight for whatever reason but couldn’t risk looking weak or cowardly. Spitfire seized on that.

“Lightning Dust and Fleetfoot have already moved in!” Spitfire spoke loudly enough so that the other pegasi could hear her, all but speaking to them rather than Flash Bang. Fleetfoot’s ship had edged closer to the fight. Fleetfoot had already pretended to have chased another ghost off into the fray. “And we can’t back away from this fight! Look at the way things are going. We need to end this immediately.”

The situation was only growing worse. The black form of Lux Lucius grew ever larger. Already it appeared like the shadow of a mountain was below them, but it just kept getting bigger. There was no way to know how close it was to emerging, but Spitfire had a feeling it wasn’t anywhere near them yet.

Meanwhile, that second moon had also grown considerably. Lightning shot from its edges across the sky. Spitfire had no way of knowing how far this was spreading yet it had to be visible across half the world already.

There were two types of ponies here. The ones who would prioritize the chain of command and the ones who couldn’t back down from a fight. At least some number of them would follow Spitfire.

“I’m not backing down from this fight!” Spitfire rallied the other ponies. “Equestria is in grave danger! We can’t run away from this like cowardly fillies. We can’t ignore the attack from those ghosts! We can’t leave our comrades unsupported!”

Cheers of support went through most of the pegasi, but some remained more passive. Flash Bang frowned as Spitfire turned back to her. This would force her hand for sure.

“So are you going to run away?” Spitfire asked.

“I never even suggested running away.” Flash Bang took out her spear. “I wanted to wait for a more opportune moment, but you’re right that one won’t present itself now. We must move in immediately.”

Fluttershy awkwardly balanced herself, pulling the lever up and looking out the front window. She didn’t have to look through the back window anymore if only because there was none. That entire part of the airship was gone now. Amazingly, she could still steer this thing’s current momentum.

Tilting left, then right, she clumsily swung it too far in either direction in turn, the frequent blasts jerking her course constantly. The explosions hadn’t ceased yet and she wasn’t sure if she could hold up the ice wall for half as long as she needed to get there. The only good news was the attacks were mostly hitting the back which seemed to speed things up.

Her backup plan was to jump ship if Starlight or the demons launched an attack on her. She was going so fast that inertia alone might carry her. A suit of invincible armor should be enough to puncture the Phoenix King’s hull!

Maybe.

One last shot shattered the wall of ice Fluttershy replaced the back of the ship with and sent her hurtling forward even faster. Fluttershy fell forward from the sudden jerk, certain she’d have to enact her last resort now!

But the noise died down. She could only spare a glance in that direction before grabbing the lever and turning the ship one more time. Yet just as the last threat dissipated a new one emerged.

The Pheonix King became submerged in a black cloud– no a swarm of insects! It grew so rapidly that she wouldn’t be able to see her way through.

There was no time for planning anymore. The buzzing grew louder as she approached the wall of bugs at unreal speeds. It hadn’t felt like she was going half as fast as she was until she had something to compare her position to.

What was she supposed to do?!

A burst of lightning cleared out most of the insects on this side! Fluttershy didn’t question it, she just turned hard right one last time. Something cracked and the left side of the ship broke to pieces. The Phoenix King was quickly becoming a full-sized ship.

Fluttershy only briefly noticed another pony in the way but it was already too late for that. The ship was too broken to turn anymore. She just had to hope–

It was like the rest of the world stopped at the moment of impact. Everything but Fluttershy who absorbed all that speed. Fluttershy flew forward, smashing through the front windows of the wrecked ship, puncturing the Phoenix King, and smashing through several more walls.

She was convinced at this point she’d go straight in one end and out the other. She almost did, slamming into what she thought was the opposite side. But all the things she shattered on the way here had slowed her down just enough to merely dent the sheet of metal she collided with.

Fluttershy stood up and regained her bearings, surprised already nopony was inside to resist her.

She got her answer immediately. Those mosquitoes had overrun the ship. Starlight’s ponies needed to hole up in the engine room, just one or two of them at the front trying to keep the swarm from getting inside.

Or maybe they had taken shelter before the fight even began.

Fluttershy ran by, looking for Sonata or perhaps Rainbow Dash. So much noise filled the metal halls. She couldn’t tell what was from the bugs, from the engine or the fight upstairs. The entire ground vibrated the whole time. She imagined she could run around shouting for Sonata and still be in stealth mode.

She could feel Sonata’s aura despite it being blurred and distorted by the magic above. It was Sonata who came to her first, rising from the ground.

“This way!” Sonata beckoned her forward. “Starlight’s doing this thing where she has to fight the seven demon generals. I think now’s a good time.”

Fluttershy began to follow but faltered. A skeleton lay in the narrow passage she led Fluttershy to.

“Yeah! These mosquitoes will skeleton you in a second if they bite you,” said Sonata. “Well not ‘you’ you since you’re a ghost but–”

“Is Rainbow Dash–?”

“I saw her!” Sonata nodded. “She wasn’t a skeleton fifteen seconds ago.”

She’d just have to work with that.

“Good news is her guard is distracted by doomsday mosquitoes.” Sonata pointed at the pony in question, wearing the robes of Starlight’s cult, swinging a flaming sword to keep the mosquitoes away.

Part of Fluttershy wanted to go easy on them as they were the only one keeping Rainbow Dash alive.

“Well as long as the swarm–” Before Fluttershy could formulate her game plan, the mosquitoes all suddenly withered to dust and died.

The ghosts stood for a moment, taking in the fact their main distraction was gone.

“I guess Starlight beat the mosquito demon.” Sonata shrugged. “I think the next one was like… a critique of capitalism or something?”

The pony guarding Rainbow Dash, a white unicorn, stepped into the passageway and turned toward the ghosts.

“I thought I felt the presence of a ghost!” He turned his sword to them.

But he seemed to only notice Sonata so far! As long as they didn’t notice Fluttershy they wouldn’t know what they were here for. Would think it was Crater Cemetery attacking.

They turned to retreat only to meet another pony behind them.

“You!” Lightning Dust pointed at Sonata Dusk.

Dust looked badly bruised. A terrible splinter dug itself into her side. Yet she shrugged it off easily enough.

She took a step back seeing Nightmare Moon’s aura then, deciding it wasn’t her, shook her head and steeled herself again.

“Uh!” Sonata crossed her forelegs to point at both of them at the same time. “Is there any way you two can fight each other instead of me? I’m kind of busy.”

Already Fluttershy saw a way out of it coming up behind Dust. Another pony charging down the hall, one dressed in full body plate armor.

What Lightning Dust must have thought was a suit of armor Sonata possessed before flying here came in and punched Lightning Dust aside.

“What?! Another ghost?” Dust pulled her hoof back and punched at the newcomer.

That was her back clear. Fluttershy motioned for Sonata to go through the opposite wall. She did and the guard followed her that way.

At last, she was free to run to her objective. Rainbow Dash.

Dust tackled the armor and tumbled alongside it down the narrow corridor. She was on top of it and punched it hard in the face, knocking off a chunk of its helmet.

She couldn’t feel any aura on this ‘ghost’. She already suspected it was a traitor and could finally confirm what she’d been suspicious of earlier. Yet the sight of blue fur underneath the armor still took her aback.

“Fleetfoot?!”

Demons 3. Hurricano

The old false-armor bit! Sonata possessed the armor Fleetfoot was wearing to make it look as though the latter wasn’t present, to allow the far defter Fleetfoot to be the one to approach. If anything, Dust was angrier at herself for falling for a classic misdirection than whatever amount of betrayal Fleetfoot was up to.

At least she didn’t need to feel ashamed about being outrun by Sonata anymore.

“Okay, what the crow is going on here?” Dust leaned into her hoof, pressing Fleetfoot down. “Why are you helping those ghosts?!”

“They’re not with Crater Cemetery,” Fleetfoot said. “Pay attention to Sonata next time. Her chains are gone.”

“Cool? Should I care for some reason? A ghost is a ghost. And that one just put a death curse on me, answer my question for real this time or I go back to smashing you.”

“They’re not after us. Sonata already undid the death curse.”

True nothing bad had happened in a little while. But Dust’s psychic perception wasn’t good enough to tell that for sure.

“Those two have their own mission here.” Fleetfoot managed to get out from under Dust’s loosening grip. “That’s not important. What’s important is that this summoning spell is ripping the world apart far more than any of us thought it would. It needs to be stopped immediately and this was the only way to force Flash Bang to come out here to help.”

Lightning Dust frowned and glanced backward. Behind her Sonata flew through a wall screaming. That pony with a flaming sword still chasing her. Flash was being unusually cautious today. Scratch that, she was always too cautious for Dust.

“Come on.” Fleetfoot put a hoof on Dust’s shoulder. “I know you’re a real pegasus. You don’t want to shy away from a fight like this any more than I do. But we need Flash if we’re going to win. Starlight has to fight through seven demons before she can try to stop the ritual. If we can take out one or two of them for her…”

Dust knew that pony was just saying what she thought would get Dust to go along. She wasn’t as dumb as everypony seemed to think.

Instead, she took a moment to think about it from her vantage point. Could she kill one of those big demons by herself? It’d be nice to know where she stood. And if Dust could pull it off maybe she’d finally get some respect.

On the other hoof, as much as she hated Sonata Dusk, Lightning Dust would hardly get bragging rights for that one. She’d probably get a chance to kill that banshee later, anyway.

“Maybe.” Dust smiled, sly. “But I want a chance to fight one of those demons you mentioned alone.”

“I don’t think,” Fleetfoot began but realized the futility of her objection. “Alright, whatever. When Flash gets here, tell her I chased the banshee here alongside you.”

Fleetfoot led them to the hole in the Phoenix King left by the airship ramming into it. A testament to the construction of this thing, the hole was much smaller than Dust expected.

Looking out there made Dust glad she came over during the mosquito phase of things. The current one left a maze of tendrils hanging off the ship and reaching off for what must have been over a mile. The lines of violet light would form into boxes and attempt to crush whatever was inside of them.

Through this, Dust could indirectly tell where Flash Bang was. No other pony Dust knew could have dodged that many attempted crushings in a row. An explosion that forced a particularly threatening array of tendrils back made Dust even more certain it was her.

Flash Bang with Spitfire behind her landed on the edge of the hole. It seemed everypony who could have made it through was here. From off in the distance, the rest of the team began bombarding those tendrils on the off chance that would hurt the monster it was connected to.

“Flash! We already dealt with the banshee,” Fleetfoot lied with a salute. “Starlight’s only defeated one of the demon generals so far. If we take out one or two of them, we can help her get through this faster.”

Flash looked to Dust for confirmation who nodded.

“No sense in delaying now.” Dust smacked her forehooves together. “We’ll go above deck and attack those demons right away.”

And Flash still kept silent a moment longer, perhaps trying to think of any possible objection. But there was none.

“I’m worried about what these ghosts might be after,” said Flash. “There was another one here, wasn’t there? I want to know what they’re after.”

“I think we have bigger concerns here!” Spitfire shot back.

“We can’t be sure. Crater Cemetery is just as dangerous.” Flash Bang walked deeper into the ship. Upon noticing nopony else was following, she turned back briefly. “You have my word we’ll go above deck once we find their target.”

Flash and Spitfire had a stare-down. Neither could make another push without revealing their hand completely. In the end, they agreed to that silent compromise.

The bluff was continued on both sides. Honestly, Dust had no idea what to expect heading down. One of them was about to be in a much worse position in a second.

Before reaching it, Sonata’s ‘battle’ with that other pony interrupted them. The wall melted. Sonata was nowhere to be seen but Starlight’s follower came charring out, looking confused at first as Sonata must have just given him the slip.

He turned to find Flash Bang and the others. A thrill of panic as he took a step back. Flash was much faster with her spear. The Longinus appeared at her side. One of its powers was the ability to be thrown yet remain in your hooves, a mere temporary copy projecting itself forward.

Flash merely pointed the spear and the ephemeral copy appeared, piercing the leg of the stallion. And he was lucky, as it could have just as easily been his neck. Flash must have wanted to use this pony to announce their presence.

The spear vanished and they retreated.

Now nothing would be between them and their target. It didn’t take much searching before they found it either.

Dust had to take a moment to pause. Standing in the room just next to them was that same armor they had just fought! She assured herself it couldn’t be Nightmare Moon controlling it again. Nailbat managed to take possession of it and that sickening aura was gone.

It had to be some spook under his command. That explained everything.

Flash readied her spear. The ghost in the armor faced them but made no move. That gave the pegasi time to study the room. Behind Fluttershy were multiple ponies, and prisoners, wrapped in purple ribbons of some kind. Of them, Dust recognized two. Rainbow Dash and Trixie.

The armor spoke. Possessing an object distorted the ghost’s voice so even if Dust had met them before she wouldn’t have recognized it through this added graveliness.

“Wait!” The armor called to them. “I don’t want to fight you. I’ll merely take Rainbow Dash and leave.”

“Why?”

The armor didn’t respond.

“Dash is no matter to you, is she?” It at last asked.

“I’d rather not take the chance,” Flash said flatly. “These ponies are clearly of strategic value to somepony be it Starlight or you. I say we get rid of all these prisoners and the ghost.”

Spitfire swallowed her horror and stepped forward.

“We can’t just kill Rainbow Dash!” Spitfire objected.

“Why? Even this ghost says she’s no matter to us.”

Spitfire balked for a moment before responding.

“Because we don’t have time for this! You gave us your word we’d join the fight! The ghost isn’t after us so we need to leave. Now.”

“I’ll be the one doing most of the fighting up there. And I can spare one of you. Dust.” Flash turned to her. “You take care of these ghosts… and the prisoners.”

Probably another attempt at slowing things down. Yet Dust couldn’t help but smile.

This victory could mean a lot. Taking out a witch and Rainbow Dash both. Even under these conditions, it’d propel her reputation beyond anything it had been. Despite word getting out Dash was a fake, the truth would never be 100% out there. Ponies would always wonder. Yet if Dust could say she was the one who took her down.

Dust smiled at the prospect.

“Alright,” said Dust, cracking her neck. “I’ll catch up with the three of you when I’m done.”

Fleetfoot had to stop a horrified look from overtaking her face, instead turning to Spitfire to see her reaction. Spitfire remained still, trying to remain stone-faced as she weighed her options. Rainbow Dash had no strategic value to them. Not enough to risk losing everything, to endanger so many lives including their own.

She wasn’t about to put her neck on the line for any of these ponies.

So in the end, Spitfire gave only a slightly apologetic look towards the ghost before heading off with Flash Bang.

Dust stepped forward.

“Don’t do this!” The ghost put up a wall of ice between them. “There’s no reason for us to fight!”

Dust flew forward and nearly slammed through the wall with one punch.

“No!” Sonata decided to return just then, coming out of the ground to take a swipe at Dust. It practically looked like she missed on purpose.

“Hurry up! I can’t keep this up much longer!” Sonata screamed through the barrier of ice, doing her best to stall as long as possible.

She couldn’t actually attack Dust. Just annoy her enough to remain the target then dodge.

Fluttershy looked over the scene, unsure of what to do. She had no idea what kind of cage this was. Her only clue was that the ponies held by the ribbons were very still as if in some manner of stasis. She also remembered Rainbow Dash had been badly injured.

Instead, her eyes turned to Trixie. She wasn’t visibly injured. That gear that was on her, the TCU, had been partially removed but hunks of metal still hung off her. Maybe that was the better option to try and free first? Trixie would regenerate from nearly any wound and potentially know what was going on.

Fluttershy put her hoof on the ribbon suspending Trixie. She felt magic coursing through it and into her on contact. It was trying to do something to her, but the adamantium of her doll refused to change. Almost no spell could have any direct effect on this armor, Fluttershy decided. As long as it wasn’t targeting the ghost within.

Still unsure of herself, Fluttershy grabbed two points and tugged them in hopes of breaking a small chunk off. It worked better than she hoped. Not only did the ribbon snap but it appeared unstable when incomplete, dissolving away in an instant.

Trixie stumbled back into motion, convulsing and spasming on the floor. But as Fluttershy hoped, she began to recover from whatever horrible condition she was in. Just more slowly than normal. She looked up at Nightmare Moon’s armor only half awake.

“It’s me, Fluttershy,” she whispered to Trixie. “I’m getting you and Rainbow Dash out of here.”

Trixie looked over to Dash with a hungover look. Another moment of rubbing her head and Trixie was ready to stand up.

“I remember now. It was good you freed me first,” said Trixie. “Starlight nearly killed the Rainbow Dash. These temporal distortion ribbons were the only thing keeping her alive. Make it hard to free her, you know?”

“They were the only thing?”

Trixie scratched her chin, looking Dash over.

“I saw some things before the end. That filly Starlight keeps with her, the one who’s apparently friends with Applebloom’s sidekick?”

Fluttershy shook her head, unable to remember anypony like that in the heat of the moment.

“Well she seemed conflicted on the whole killing Rainbow Dash thing. I saw her use some kind of magic on Dash Starlight wasn’t looking. Healing magic isn’t easy. But if my guess is right…”

Trixie trotted over to Dash and looked her over carefully. Knowing nothing about magic, Fluttershy could hardly follow. But it was good to note that somepony on Starlight’s side weren’t completely hostile to them. Maybe Scootaloo, wherever she was, managed to convince them to save Dash?

At last, Trixie found what she was looking for and smirked at her own brilliance.

“I see now! Yes, with a little work, I can finish spreading the injury across her whole body so she won’t be dead or completely paralyzed.” Trixie struck a pose, ready to commence with the magic. “Watch as Trixie–”

Became enveloped by such an intense electric current that her body glowed white and lit up the room. She was left with scorch marks and missing fur when it was done, but those healed before Fluttershy’s eyes.

Trixie let out a cough, then put a hoof on her collar.

“It seems the TCU wasn’t entirely removed.” Trixie winced. Another attempt at magic left her shocked again. “But Trixie can make do! I don’t want to admit it, but… I do owe Rainbow Dash.”

Trixie braced herself and made a second attempt at magic. This one lit her up again, but Trixie clenched her teeth and bore the pain. The electricity that coursed through her would have been enough to fry a pony completely already, Trixie only surviving thanks to her regeneration. Yet even that didn’t hold. The voltage ate through her body just slightly faster than she could regrow it.

Still, Trixie pressed on, desperately trying to complete the spell placed on Rainbow Dash.

It seemed an immense undertaking for Trixie to turn her eyes to Fluttershy who got the message. She ran up to the ribbon and ripped it open. Dash fell to the ground. A sudden flash threw Trixie back against the wall. Fluttershy quickly averted her gaze from how burnt up Trixie had become, knowing she’d be fine again soon.

Instead, Fluttershy turned her attention to Dash, gasping repeatedly with her eyes wide open.

“I can’t…” Dash panted staring up at the ceiling.

“It’s me, Fluttershy!” Fluttershy reassured Dash. “Please. Try lifting one of your legs.”

Dash remained dazed for a minute, but the request registered in her brain. With some effort, she raised a rear leg just slightly.

Good. That meant she hadn’t been left paralyzed.

“How bad is she?” Fluttershy turned to Trixie.

“I’m not sure what kind of powers that child has but my best guess is this spread the damage of a lethal injury across her body,” said Trixie. “She’s not in good shape but I don’t think…”

The ice wall shattered. Sonata Dusk came spinning into the room, reeling from a punch. Lightning Dust soon followed her.

A large chunk of Sonata’s ghostly form was missing now, almost an entire leg and much of her torso. The edges of the missing chunks were like frayed cloths, thread-like whisps of light dangling off them and floating in the air.

Fluttershy had seen ghosts injured before. They began to ‘unravel’ like this. The missing chunks of their bodies would recover, as long as they didn’t cross a lethal threshold.

“I can’t lose much more,” Sonata warned. “But for you, I’ll gladly die!”

“That won’t be necessary.” Trixie stepped forward. “Even like this and without a spellbook I bet I can crush that pony!”

Trixie declared. She tried moving her neck in a complete circle but got shocked again.

“Why did it go off that time?!” Trixie whined.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Lightning Dust. “Even if you are a witch, I can take you out in this shape.”

“Oh yeah?” Trixie stepped forward.

“Um! Wait!” Fluttershy stopped her and whispered to Trixie. “I’m supposed to be giving peace a chance.”

Trixie turned a narrow gaze to Dust, then back to Fluttershy.

“Is now really a good time for that?”

“I promised an evil god I would be a pacifist or else. Maybe you can just… distract her a little?”

“You what?!”

Dust pounced on Trixie, slamming her hooves into Trixie.

“Gah! Why does it have to be electricity with her too?!”

Dust began wailing on her with a fury few ponies would have withstood, eventually pinning Trixie against a wall and slamming her electrified fists into Trixie’s chest. Trixie was the world’s greatest punching bag! She could hold out for days. Maybe.

“We need to think of a way to get out of here,” Fluttershy said to Dash.

“Why?”

Fluttershy paused, looking down at Dash.

“W-why?” Fluttershy asked. “Because um. This isn’t a good place? Somepony’s doing this apocalypse summoning spell and…”

“No. Why me? Why…? Why did you bother coming here?” Dash managed to reach a hoof to her face and whip away the tears Fluttershy had until now hoped were from physical pain. “You could have gone to help Rarity or- or Twilight or… or anypony who mattered! Just any random pony but me.”

Fluttershy looked only briefly back at Trixie who had at least managed to get away from the wall and was now trying out spells to misdirect Dust. She’d have to keep it up a while longer.

This was the real problem Fluttershy had to deal with. Even more than the demons, than those pegasi. Fluttershy would not let the pony who saved her talk like this.

Feeling Fluttershy’s concern, Sonata drifted close, watching the specter carefully.

“Because we need you, Rainbow Dash,” said Fluttershy.

“For what?! I haven’t done anything but grift off other ponies and make everything worse! Everything went horribly wrong because I stirred up too much shit that I never had any ability to deal with. I’m the least important member of the team so why the crow are you here?!” Somewhere Dash found the strength to at least sit up. But no more than that.

“That’s not true. You’re the most important member of our team.”

“Fluttershy! My only power is to turn into a bunch of crows and run away. I’m only slightly useful and only because of that claw blade that Twilight gave me!”

“That claw blade you had?” Sonata asked. “You were dodging things all over the place back then. What does that have to do with it?”

“It had mind fibers in it.” Dash rubbed her eyes. “Without that, I’m dead weight.”

“Is that all you’re worried about? I bet Starlight hid it somewhere in the ship!” Sonata declared. “I’ll find it right away! And then Fluttershy can be happy again!”

Before Fluttershy could stop her, Sonata was off.

“Why is Sonata? She’s just as responsible for!” Dash rubbed her face, then fell on her back. Then, with great effort got back into a sitting position. “Whatever. Now’s not a good time to talk about my stupid feelings. Let’s just… just back on the ground and then you can–”

“Get told that’s not a good time either?”

“Fluttershy, didn’t you just say it’s like the apocalypse out there?” Rainbow Dash weakly flailed a leg about. “And I don’t even know where the crow all this stuff about demons came from. I can’t do anything about this or…”

“That’s exactly right.” Fluttershy huffed. “We’re not going to stop this one, Rainbow Dash. Either Starlight wins or that’s it. And if the planet is about to explode then I don’t want you to die like this.”

“Why would that matter?”

“Because you matter. You’re the most important pony to me, Dash. You’re the one who changed my life.”

“Twilight’s the one who beat up Rattlesnake or whatever the fuck his name was.”

“You’re the one who brought her there and you’re the one who took me with you. And…” Fluttershy cast her head down. “You’re the one who made me swear to never make the same mistakes I did back then. Seeing you stand up to them for me even after I… I left you to die. That’s what inspired me to change my life.”

Fluttershy put a hoof on her heart and carefully watched Dash. The pegasus shook her head, and grit her teeth in some kind of pain or other.

“Okay! Fine.” Dash rolled her eyes. “I’m not a total fuckup. Do you feel better now? Can we leave already? I’m sure Trixie would appreciate that.”

Dash tried dragging herself towards the door. She wouldn’t be able to leave on her own in this condition. Fluttershy took a deep breath in.

“No.”

Why couldn’t Fluttershy just stop pushing Dash?! She didn’t want to talk about all this! Not now, not ever!

Fluttershy didn’t get it, did she? Nopony understood. Dash had been holding back so much.

Well if Fluttershy wanted the truth then so be it. She’d been conning everypony from the start, even her ‘friends’.

“Shut up!” Dash stood. The pain seemed nothing now. “The reason I set out to do all this wasn’t because I’m some noble pony who wanted to change the world. I didn’t give a buck about ghost rights or any of that! I only cared about myself. I wanted money and fame for me and I didn’t give a buck what happened to Twilight, okay?! If I could have killed her that night I would have done so without hesitation! That’s who I am!”

“No it’s–”

“You know why I suggested we go out and kill all the other witches? It’s because I wanted to be rich. I wanted to be a hero. I wasn’t thinking about any of you. I just took whatever I could get. And if that’s you then fine!” Dash was just so pissed off at everything. Fluttershy still wasn’t getting it! She knew exactly what to say to hurt Fluttershy the most! And the temptation was too much. “You don’t think I would have killed a specter for clout? I used to dream of that sort of thing growing up.”

Finally, she got a pause from Fluttershy. Finally, she got through to her and pushed her away for a moment. Dash panted, feeling her weakness again.

But it didn’t last. Fluttershy resolved herself and shook her head furiously.

“You used to,” Fluttershy affirmed.

“Fluttershy!”

“Would you now?”

“That doesn’t matter!”

“Ponies can change. Rainbow Dash, when you found me, I was a coward too scared to lift a single hoof to help you. You put your neck out on the line for me and I just sat there and covered my eyes when you were about to die right in front of me, remember? I could have stopped it so easily but I was just too scared. And you never once looked down on me for that.”

“That’s completely different.”

“You’re right. Did you manage to go outside and buy groceries? Did you finish high school? Then congratulations, you’ve never been as ‘pathetic’ as me. And did you ever look down at me? When I was hiding from random whisps?”

“Look at you! You’re like some kind of god talking to me like that!” Dash barely managed to lift a foreleg to Fluttershy, standing in her indestructible body, towering above Dash. “You really don’t get it, do you? Nopony ever wanted me. Not my parents, not any of the ponies my age. They all abandoned me because I’m bucking worthless. Do you think it’s a coincidence that I suddenly get ‘friends’ the second I attached myself to Twilight like a leech? This great hero you’re imagining me to be?! That’s all a lie! That’s not who I am!”

Fluttershy knew this wasn’t a good idea. ZoD specifically warned her against revealing her presence. But there was no other way. She had to be her real self, not this… thing.

Fluttershy flew out of the armor. Dust, who had been getting uncomfortably close, paused a moment upon noticing the massive aura flooding the ship. Everypony knew Fluttershy was here now.

But Fluttershy only cared that this included Dash. She’d pay any consequence for just that.

Dash paused to look up at Fluttershy’s much weaker form.

“That isn’t… who I am either, Rainbow Dash. I was just pretending, too.” Fluttershy looked at Nightmare Moon’s armor. “Neither of us are like that. We’re both worthless. I can’t see your worthlessness. You can’t see mine. But everypony else does. You keep saying I’m a specter like that’s a good thing but Dust, even your past self, saw me as just something to be exterminated for that…”

“Fluttershy…” Dash’s eyes teared up as she looked into the much softer eyes of an actual pony.

“I believe you, Rainbow Dash.” Fluttershy shook her head. “Maybe you are worthless and selfish and… and just as horrible as you think you are. Just like I was.”

Finally, she was getting past mere anger. Both of them had tear-filled eyes as they continued to stare down at one another.

“But if that’s true. That’s why…” Fluttershy held back tears, she needed to just for a moment. “That’s why I don’t care if you’re still horrible or selfish even now. I don’t care if these injuries leave you disabled. I still love you! I know you can keep changing. I know you can be a hero. I know you can find some way no matter what!”

Dash trembled.

“I don’t… know if I can…” Dash looked down.

“Me neither.” Fluttershy smiled through her tears. “But. If we don’t figure it out, can we be worthless together?”

Dash tried to open her mouth. Nothing came out. Tears ran down her cheeks.

And at last, Rainbow Dash fell forward and cried.

Dash cried and cried uncontrollably. She had no idea how long for. Fluttershy stayed right by her no matter how long it was.

Having just one pony acknowledge her worthlessness but still stay…

She couldn’t even describe it. It had always been so incomprehensible to her. In that moment, Fluttershy was worth more than anything in the world. Dash really wouldn’t give this up for anything, any amount of money or fame.

Still, Dash shook her head slightly after recovering. Maybe Fluttershy would keep her around forever but… it was hard for Dash to think of anything she could do at this point. Fluttershy might accept her even as she was worthless… but what worth did she see in Dash?

What could Dash…?

Trixie collapsed on the floor, bleeding horribly from her chest.

“Listen! I know you two think I’m invincible but if she rips out my heart, I’m dead!” Trixie yelled as Dust pulled her back. “And I think she’s getting close to figuring it out!”

What was even going on here, again? Dash’s mind slowly returned to reality.

“What’s going on?” Dash asked Fluttershy.

And Fluttershy gave a brief explanation about ZoD, the summoning ritual, Flash Bang.

“I’m still lost. Why do you even want to kill Trixie?” Dash asked Dust.

“Pfft! Why do I want to kill a witch?” Dust chuckled at the question. “Asks the pony whose entire claim to fame comes from making everypony believe she beat the shit out of this exact witch! Oh, why would I want to do the thing you owe all of your success to?”

Dash froze.

“Oh, what? You want to moralize to me?” Dust held Trixie up by the mane. “Trixie committed a million crimes. She deserves death.”

“She’s not entirely wrong,” Trixie admitted.

“A lot of ponies are pissed off at you, you know!” Dust pointed at Dash. “Letting the pony who wronged them get off so easy? I’ll be the one who killed Trixie and avenged all of her crimes! They’ll love me a hundred times more than they ever did you!”

And then… everypony would love her?

Dash trembled and fell back to the ground, covering her eyes.

Everypony would love Dash. If. If. If.

If she got her act together, her mother would come back. If she got to the top of her class, her father would stop ignoring her. If she could defeat the terror swarm, Soarin would like her. If she could get stronger her classmates would respect her. If she could defeat Twilight… If she could get Twilight to defeat the other witches for her…

Then everypony would love her.

None of that was true.

“No.” Dash shook her head. “No. No.”

She looked back up at Fluttershy. The only thing that had ever gotten anypony to care about her was…

“No?” Dust and Trixie silently agreed to a short truce so they could both stare at Dash in utter confusion.

Dash knew! She understood Lightning Dust. If she understood Dust, then she could know exactly what to do now.

“Listen to me!” Dash summoned strength that didn’t exist to rise to her feet. Just standing there was a struggle, but she needed to look Dust in the eyes. “Neither Sonata nor Trixie attacked you for real, did they?”

“It’s not my problem if–”

“It’s because they can’t!” Dash hit the symbol on Fluttershy’s chest. “That zebra… guy. He made it so they can’t fight back.”

“But that death curse,” Lightning Dust said.

“We purposely went out of our way to try and keep anypony from getting hurt by that,” said Fluttershy. “It was just you… I hope.”

Dust scrunched her nose offended at the idea that she was finally so close to defeating a witch but couldn’t fight her for real. Yeah. Dash saw everything so clearly now. Beating her with a handicap was one thing but a handicap where she couldn’t even fight back was too much.

Just like…

Dash breathed heavily, struggling to stay on her feet as she stared Lightning Dust down.

“So what?!” Dust concluded. “If I kill you all, I can still say I killed a witch, a specter, and the famous Rainbow Dash. That’s not too different from what all of you did. Flash would back me up. Do you have any idea what kind of clout I’d get?”

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Dash shook her head. “Yeah! I know. I literally had that, remember?! Sure, it felt cool for a few days but… but it doesn’t make any of it go away.”

Dust smirked and threw Trixie aside, turning her full attention to Dash.

“Make what go away? Was poor little Rainbow Trash bullied in high school or something?” Dust laughed and looked to the side as if expecting somepony to hear her joke.

“I saw you back when you saw me…” Dash had to sit down. “In that vision.”

Dust grew silent.

“What did you see?” Dust asked, her laughter suddenly giving way to a sneer.

Dash breathed heavily, needing another moment.

“I said what did you see?!” Dust stormed up to her to be muzzle-to-muzzle with Dash.

“I know.” Dash looked her in the eyes. “I know how much it hurts.”

Dust winced. She stepped back. She shook her head and clenched her teeth. For a moment a tear came to her eyes, but she shook that away.

“Don’t fuck with me!”

“We weren’t that different…”

“You were weak and lazy, and I wasn’t! That’s the difference! I never relied on anypony else. I started low but I worked hard to make my life something!”

“To make your life what?” Dash looked up at her, finally getting a moment of pause, something other than aggression. “You’re not wrong. I’m an idiot. It took me so long to realize that this… this wasn’t going to get me what I wanted.”

Dust’s eye twitched. She picked Dash up and threw her against the wall. It would have hurt more if Dash weren’t already so numb. Trixie and Fluttershy both stepped forward, but Dash held up a hoof to stave them off.

Once more, Dust trotted up to Dash and held up by the collar, staring death into her eyes.

“You won’t do it,” Dash said with as much confidence as she could. “It won’t change anything. I know.”

“Oh, I won’t?”

Dust pulled a hoof back and slammed it into one of Dash’s wings, likely breaking it. Dash was already a mixture of numbness and pain all over so she bore it well if that was what happened.

Dash opened her eyes to stare back at an even more enraged Dust.

She didn’t.

Dash panted as Dust’s grip tightened and teeth clenched harder. Dash knew that frustration.

“Fine!” Dust dropped Dash to the floor. “You’re a bunch of pathetic babies. Killing you isn’t worth anything. I’m leaving. Just get out of here.”

Trixie watched in amazement as Dust began to storm off. But that wasn’t enough.

“Wait.” Dash struggled just to sit up. “Dust…”

Dust stopped and let out a long sigh.

“I just said I’d spare your worthless life!” Dust spat back in her direction. “Is that not enough for you?!”

“It’s not! I just got done telling you I know what it’s like. Do you think I want to leave you like this?” Dash held out her hoof to Dust.

“Leave me like–” Dust’s face twitched with annoyance. But Dash knew. She would have killed for something like this back when she was alone. “Just quit while you’re ahead, Trash.”

Dust flew away before Dash could say anything else.

Dash fell onto her side, exhausted.

Trixie shifted her eyes from Dash to the hall Dust just left from, then back again.

“How do you keep getting away with this?” Trixie closed her eyes and sighed.

Dash managed to roll onto her back and laugh.

“But we really should get out of here now,” Fluttershy at last said. She flew back into Nightmare Moon’s armor and lifted Dash onto her back.

“No.” Dash shook her head weakly on Fluttershy’s back. “We’re… you were all saying something about that demon-summoning guy?”

“It looks pretty bad,” said Fluttershy. “But. Just look at you. We should retreat for now.”

“No. Not yet.”

“Weren’t you just crying about how we couldn’t do anything?” Trixie asked. “Even with somepony as powerful as–”

A stray volt stunned Trixie for a second.

“Trixie isn’t exactly up to it at the moment!” Trixie shouted. “Do you even have a plan?”

“Not exactly,” Dash admitted. “But that hasn’t stopped me yet. Let’s go.”

“That’s the Dash I remember,” Fluttershy said.

Sonata flew back into the room with an excited smile, holding something behind her back. Not that she could hide it being translucent.

“Mmhmhm!” She held back a laugh. “Guess what? I found where they were hiding that claw blade thingy!”

Sonata held it out towards Dash with an excited smile, but she looked more toward Fluttershy.

“See? Now you have value as a person again! Problem solved! And if you’re happy then Fluttershy is happy and then uh… I guess I’m happy!” Sonata leaned forward with the boot.

Dash brushed it aside.

“I don’t need it.”

Sonata slowly lowered the boot in abject confusion. That got another smile out of Dash who pointed forward, commanding Fluttershy to move out.

They walked past Sonata who continued to blink while Trixie watched with a calmer expression.

“Yeah, but hold onto it anyway,” Trixie whispered before following.

Demons X. Apocageddon

It was time to find out if Fluttershy was right.

Dash ran over the situation in her head as they approached a hole punched in the side of the ship.

Starlight was trying to stop the summoning of an evil god. Flash Bang and those other pegasi were doing the same but Flash reluctantly, stalling for some reason. Everypony knew Dash was a fraud… but maybe that was the key to everything.

“I’m pretty sure I can pull this off,” said Dash. “Or at least I could if it weren’t for that.”

Dash tapped Fluttershy’s chest, where the Zebra God of Destruction had placed a mark on her, Sonata the same.

“I don’t understand why I can’t do violence,” Trixie huffed. “I don’t have some weird mark on me! Trixie never agreed to anything!”

“I just didn’t want to take any chances,” Fluttershy said. “He didn’t go into specifics.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful! You made a pact with a god without a lawyer.” Trixie tapped her hoof impatiently. “You know, I’ve done so many stupid things that I got forty-five consecutive life sentences and a containment unit named after me but… well at least that’s not on the list!”

“That doesn’t exactly make you sound cool,” Dash reminded her.

“And why aren’t you using that claw blade?!” Trixie demanded holding it in front of her. “I know you were having a little moment back then but–”

“Do what with the claw blade?” Dash asked. “I can’t even walk right now. I couldn’t use a normal boot.”

“Oh, alright. But Trixie still thinks she should turn into a bear and tackle somepony,” said Trixie. “I went through all the work to get the ability to turn into an Ursa major and yet it has never come up since. You guys still remember I can do that, right?”

“Yeah.”

It was weird that Starlight removed most of the TCU. There had to be some kind of catch. Trixie had all sorts of things implanted in her still. Rarity would know what they were, but she wasn’t here.

Either way, Zod was the big thing holding them back at the moment.

“You said this Zod guy was surprisingly chill for a god of destruction, right?” Dash asked.

“It’s pronounced Zo-D, actually,” Sonata corrected her.

“I’ll just call him Zod and see what happens. Like would mispronouncing his name get his goat?” Dash asked again.

“I don’t think so,” said Fluttershy. “He has a very eclectic view of evil. He went out of his way to make sure he didn’t hurt a fly. I have no idea what he’d do if we broke our promise.”

“Then I say we do it,” said Dash.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Trixie asked.

“No. But that’s never stopped me before.” Dash looked about. “There’s gotta be a gun around here somewhere.”

“For who?” Trixie asked.

“For me. I’m going in alone,” said Dash. All three of them, even Sonata objected at once. “At first! Dust, Spitfire, and Fleetfoot are all up there too. Shame is the only weapon I have against Flash Bang.”

“You have a giant bear!” Trixie reminded her. “Did you forget how big an ursa major is? If I do a bear drop from this high up, I could splatter anything. I’d also splatter but I got regeneration. It’s the perfect plan and I’ve wanted to do this for over a year!”

“Don’t you get what I’m going for?” Dash asked. “A witch charging in won’t have the same impact. If she’s too much of a coward to fight but me, a known fraud, is willing to step up, those three won’t be able to look at her the same way again. I might make her angry enough to do something stupid. I might force her to take the fight seriously. I might make Dust and the others lose confidence in her. I’m playing the long game here.”

“I believe in you,” said Fluttershy. “But if anything too dangerous happens, I’m coming out.”

Dash nodded. That was all she could ask.

“I’m starting to regain some of my ability to think.” Sonata raised a hoof. “I just realized this place is kind of dangerous.”

“We’re not staying long,” Dash promised her. “And we’ll take you with us. If any of us get separated, we meet back at the train station where Sonata was. That shouldn’t be too far from here.”

“I think I might need to stay a bit longer.” Trixie trotted ahead of them.

She stopped at the hole in the ship. Beyond it, Dash could see figures and light zipping by this way and that. It was far too intense for her to even keep up with. Even Trixie needed to wait a moment before finding what she was looking for.

“That one.” Trixie pointed to a filly who was there for some horrible reason, battered against Demon Summoner’s claw. “She found Applebloom and um. Orange Applebloom. Those two are with her. And I think I might know where.”

“Scootaloo?!” Dash fell off Fluttershy’s back. “You know where she is?!”

Dash needed to wait a moment before catching a glimpse of the filly a second time. She recognized her! That was Lilymoon. Which explained a lot.

Scootaloo was certain she was a friend, but in reality, Lilymoon only had been a friend. Dash had no idea what to make of her. Though if as Trixie had said she was the one to save Dash for Scootaloo’s sake she should be somewhat safe.

“We can’t leave without getting them,” Dash resolved.

“You can,” said Trixie. “I can’t.”

“Scootaloo is my legal daughter,” said Dash. “I know the pony who declared that is evil, but I can’t abandon her.”

“You won’t be abandoning her! You’ll be sending the greatest witch who–” another shock stunned Trixie. “Who’s currently present to rescue her.”

“Maybe, but I can’t!”

“Rainbow Dash. You’re not ready for the sort of thing I have to do to save those two. You can’t use a full spellbook yet. Your mind won’t be able to take it,” Trixie said.

Part of Dash still wanted to object. But Trixie was right.

“I have to…”

Dash tried to stand up again. When she failed, Fluttershy put a gentle hoof on her shoulder.

“Other ponies need you, too,” Fluttershy reminded her. “You don’t have to do everything on your own. You have friends now.”

Dash looked up at Trixie.

“Scooba Loot won’t be safe just because you get her away from Starlight,” Trixie added. “She won’t be safe until somepony… until you figure out a way to make everything right again!”

Maybe… the two of them were right. Dash’s place wasn’t trying to keep up with these ponies. It was down on the ground. Finding Rarity. Finding Twilight. Bringing them all back together.

If she was going to do that, Dash would have to rely on her friends. To use them the way she had all along. To lead them.

Only one nagging doubt kept her from deciding Trixie should be the one trusted with such an important task.

“Why do you want to do this, though?” Dash asked. “You can’t even get Scootaloo’s name right.”

“But Applebloom,” Trixie blurted out her name immediately. She looked down at the floor, closed her eyes, and stood there a moment before opening them again with a sigh. “I guess I owe her for…”

Dash nodded; she understood now. Trixie’s heart was in this and that was enough.

“Then I’ll leave it to you.” Dash closed her eyes and let out a long breath. Leaving something so important to the hooves of another pony was liberating in one way but terrifying in another. She met Trixie’s gaze with hopefully not too teary eyes. “Please. Rescue Scootaloo.”

“And Applebloom,” Trixie added.

“Right. The rest of us can focus on helping Rarity and then…”

Damn it. Was Twilight even alright? It felt strange, in a way, to be concerned about somepony so much more dangerous than herself.

“Trixie. One more thing. Take the claw blade.” Dash offered her weapon to Trixie. “It will be a long time until I recover enough to use it.”

“I hope this doesn’t come off as too much of a flex.” Trixie did raise her chin however slightly despite that. “But Trixie has been using mind fibers so long that this tiny amount will make no difference.”

“Not for you,” said Dash. “Applebloom can use it.”

Trixie blinked, having failed to think of that herself. Then nodded before taking the boot.

“I promise I’ll rescue them.”

Sonata came back with a few supplies for Dash. An emergency kit, a rifle, a flare gun. The extras would prove useful if she fell off the ship, which was likely.

“Remember. Don’t follow until the last possible moment.”

Dash steadied herself and went up the stairs.

Without talking, Dust’s group and Starlight’s came to a silent agreement that one would stay on the back of the ship and the other on the front. Dust was on the back.

“I refuse to believe that ‘cringe’ is one of the seven greatest sources of evil in the universe,” said Lightning Dust.

They’d done Starlight a favor and knocked one of the demons off their pedestals. This one was the living embodiment of cringe, a mess of tentacles with a mask at the tip of each. And each mask had a different ability it seemed. It chased Fleetfoot around, unable to catch her with its myriad of attacks as she repeatedly dive-bombed it with steel beams.

This had to be the weakest of the seven, from what Dust could gather. Yet somehow, they still hadn’t done much damage.

Flash was fighting but playing it overly defensively. She kept her distance, blowing away its attacks with her long-ranged rockets. Slowly whittling it down, destroying one of its 100 tentacles at a time. Not breaking her word to Spitfire nor giving her what she wanted.

It was infuriating because Dust couldn’t charge in without cover from both of them, not with that much firepower in the way.

“I think we can take this thing if we all rush in,” said Dust. “We don’t know how much more time is left.”

“We don’t want to take too much damage ourselves,” said Flash Bang. Another excuse. “We have a long fight after this.”

A gunshot interrupted before anything else could be discussed. Not at them, but at the demon.

Dust looked around and decided she really shouldn’t be surprised anymore. Rainbow Dash was there, panting and holding a gun she found. She was there without Trixie or Fluttershy or anypony.

What the crow went through this pony’s mind? She was on the eight but… ponies like that were brilliant in their own way. Dust was ever more curious.

Flash looked at Dash with surprise and disgust at once. Dust hadn’t done as ordered. Dash knew exactly what to do. She had to be brazen.

“Trashie! You survived my ultimate attack!” Dust chuckled and pranced over to her side. Her smile turned sour as she whispered harshly to Dash. “But seriously, what the buck are you doing here? I was trying to be nice you know, I really might have to kill you now.”

“I’m here to take charge of the situation!” Dash proclaimed boldly. “I’m in command, got it?”

Flash’s reaction was mute. Spitfire stared dumbfounded at her boldness. Dust stepped back and cringed at first, but then gave her something of a smirk.

“What are you going to do, Trash?” Dust patted Dash on the back hard enough to almost knock her over. “Make it feel bad about attacking a cripple?”

“I’m not going to drag my hooves,” said Dash. “I can’t fight, but I won’t lead you into a closet to hide. If all of you are too cowardly to go forward, then I’ll do it myself. I’m in charge because I’m the one taking charge.”

She glared at Flash, impervious to the insults.

“Yeah!” Dust lifted Dash’s hoof into the air and laughed. “Rainbow Dash is in charge. No rules!”

“Weren’t you supposed to kill her?” Flash asked.

Dust shrugged with a little smirk.

“And weren’t you the one who told us all she was a fraud?” Flash asked. “I won’t entertain this nonsense. Throw her off the ship.”

“But she’s in charge.” With a little pout, Dust rested her head against Dash.

“Don’t push it.”

“Oh, I’m pushing it! Whatever plan Rainbow Dash has is better than this little bunt-butt tactic you’re pulling on us!” Dust exclaimed. “I’ll go with the mystery plan.”

Spitfire came down close, leaving Fleetfoot to distract the demon alone.

“I agree,” said Spitfire. “Maybe Dash would do a better job if this is how you’re going to be…”

“I managed to survive this long,” Dash agreed. “Put me in charge and I’ll get us out of this one too. These three are enough for me to work with. I can finish this without you.”

“Right now, I almost believe she can pull it off.” Dust leaned against Dash. “What are we waiting for? Activate the micro dive-induced plan, Dash!”

Flash looked over at Fleetfoot, knowing she’d side with Spitfire. Dash had forced her hand.

“This is completely ridiculous.” Flash shook her head. She took out her spear only for Spitfire and Dust both to step up. “Are you really–?! She is a fraud!”

“And what are you?” Dash asked. “A coward? Nopony can say that about me!”

Flash bit her cheek to try and remain composed.

“We can’t finish this fight too quickly,” Flash said sternly. “Trust me.”

“I don’t think any of us do,” said Dash. “Why?”

“Yeah.” Dust rocked Dash back and forth, smirking now that she had something to lord over Flash more than anything else. “Do you have a reason why we shouldn’t go with Trashie Dashie’s plan?”

Flash slowly tapped her hoof. It was too much to push back against. Dash had done it, had left her no choice. She closed her eyes and reluctantly answered.

“You all know how Starlight’s powers work,” said Flash. “The stronger everypony thinks she is, the stronger she gets. Starlight will be able to project her victory over Lux Lucius across the world. Everypony will see it nearly end and Starlight the one to save them. This event will make her vastly more powerful than she ever was before.”

That did make sense! Dash was worried for a moment it made sense, anyway. Then she remembered it kind of didn’t.

“Well, so what?” Dash asked. “We can’t let that demon destroy the planet just so–”

“What if.” Flash cut her off. “What if Starlight… didn’t save everypony in time?”

Everypony grew silent.

“What if she failed?” Flash continued. Everypony was already sure where she was going with it but remained still. “What if an incredible disaster, which Starlight failed to stop, of some small part of Lux Lucius coming through the portal, were to–”

“How many would that kill?” Spitfire was the first to raise an objection. “Hundreds of thousands? Millions?!”

“Not everypony!” Flash stomped a hoof on the ground. “And it would destroy the faith everypony has in Starlight! She can be immensely empowered or weakened by this event. Don’t you all see that?”

Dust alone remained unappalled at this point, though she did look absently off to the side rubbing her nose.

“Wait,” said Dash. “I don’t think Starlight is going to kill everypony even if she wins, is she? This isn’t a–”

“Shut up!” Flash shot at her. “I don’t need input from the likes of you.”

“She’s not wrong,” said Spitfire. “You want to sacrifice… potentially over a million ponies? For what?!”

“Look, this is about more than Starlight! This is about securing the future of Equestria for all time from ponies like Starlight and Nailbat and her.” Flash extended a wing to Dash. “Religious fanatics and democrats have no place ruling Equestria! The strong have protected it for centuries and now we find ourselves in this overly complacent age of ponies thinking we can have excess compassion for the supernatural!”

Flash backed up to the edge of the ship.

“This!” Flash pointed down to the growing form of Lux Lucius. “This is what happens when you entertain such nonsense! This is what happens when you let degenerates like Rainbow Bucking Dash be in charge! When you let the people vote for whoever the hell they want and they pick Starlight! Don’t you see this is a chance to end all of those imbecilic thoughts in the masses in one fell swoop?!”

“But you’re the one who would cause it!” Spitfire stepped up. “Through inaction perhaps but–”

“But does it matter?!” Flash pressed her forehead against Spitfire. “Are you really going to run off taking impossible chances? Face Starlight when she’s at full power? Risk Equestria’s future even after all of this is over?”

Spitfire, unsure of herself, faltered. So Dash stepped up for her instead.

“I will,” Dash boasted. “I’ll stop Starlight even if she does reach maximum faith points! I don’t need to make these bullshit compromises like you do! Just believe in me, Spitfire. Believe that we can do this!”

Still unsure, but in a different way, Spitfire hung her head and bit her lip in agony.

“And how are you going to do all that when you can hardly even stand up?” Flash asked.

“I just will.”

“You just–?” Flash put her hoof over her face and shook her head. “You can’t just keep making empty promises like this! Are the rest of you really falling for this pathetic façade? Why don’t you start with your promise to kill this demon? That should be easy for you, I suppose.”

“Oh, I could do that in ten seconds.”

“Then do it!”

“I don’t think I can hold out much longer!” Fleetfoot screamed behind them. The tentacles had her.

Now was as good a time as any.

“Trixie!” Dash called out into the ship’s interior. “Bear!”

Trixie, who had been lying in wait this whole time, ran out and jumped into the air. Halfway through, Trixie activated the transformation. Dash forgot there was an intense kinetic shockwave when that happened. It would have thrown her off the ship had Dust not grabbed her.

And damn did Dash forget how big an ursa major was. That ball of tentacles was several times larger than Dash’s house and yet it fit inside Trixie’s paw. Dash could not see one thing that wasn’t Trixie.

Fleetfoot flew away as the two of them descended, the demon tearing up Trixie’s colossal form but not fast enough. The ursa didn’t even seem to shrink that much by the time they reached the ground. Dash learned that the earth was more like a purple glass than a hole at the moment. The delayed sound of the two impacting it drowned out the noise of Starlight’s battle.

And another one of the seals vanished.

“See that? Ten seconds flat,” Dash said smugly, triumphantly.

“Hahahaha!” Dust doubled over. “You gotta admit, that was pretty funny.

“You literally did nothing.” Flash’s eye twitched.

“One more than you took out!” Dash shot back.

“She’s got a point.” Dust shrugged. “I don’t see any of your ponies taking out the seven deadly whatever. Are you even a mare or–”

“Fine! You want to see me destroy one of these demons myself!” Flash brandished her spear, finally resolving to fight in earnest. “It’s probably already too late to stop this. When Starlight becomes unstoppable, I want you all to remember who’s fault this is.”

Flash flew off to charge at one of the remaining demons, to try and save face. Dust followed immediately. Spitfire gave Dash a brief look of thanks before following.

“That… went really well.” Dash chuckled a little.

She’d gotten everything she wanted! Hit Flash’s reputation, took down a couple of the–

Turned out it was too good to be true. Flash turned briefly back to Dash and fired a single one of those missiles from her wing. It didn’t hit Dash directly, but the explosion knocked her off her ledge and sent her tumbling across the side of the ship.

“Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy ran out, creating a wall of ice to keep Dash from falling into the sky.

Sonata Dusk flew along side her.

“Fluttershy!” Dash called back to her. “It’s okay! I think I did everything I could here!”

“But!”

“I can glide down to the ground,” said Dash. “Maybe all the way back to the meeting point.

Pegasi didn’t need to flap their wings to glide. You could do it even with a broken wing. And from up here she could get crazy distance.

“I’ll come with you,” said Fluttershy.

“You heard Flash,” said Dash. “It’s your turn. Go take down another one of these monsters before…”

Dash needed to catch her breath. Fluttershy stood still, watching her.

“Trust me!” Dash shouted out to her. “I know you trust me. I’ll be fine. Just…get to the meeting place as fast as you can after.”

Slowly, Fluttershy nodded and the two parted for now.

Rainbow Dash rolled off and into the sky, spreading her wings and gliding off.

Not only could a pegasus fly with broken wings, but you could even do it in your sleep. Dash had passed out in mid-glide before and managed to land semi-safely. That was a comforting thought as her vision blurred as the ground ever so slowly got closer and the battle behind her grew distant.

She might have to keep this up for over an hour, too. She could see things moving down in the forest, remembered Fluttershy warning her about warped zombies whom she could only hope would be gone by the time Dash landed.

Looking down, she briefly grew concerned that Lux Lucius really would win. Something, just the very tip of a claw but still the size of an emerging mountain, came through the barrier.

At that exact moment, however, a beam of green light from the moon down to the ground appeared.

It was Starlight. He cutie mark emblazoned across the sky, as high up as the moon itself. That really would be visible on half the planet like Flash warned.

It forced that claw back under. Then a wall of green light spread across the ground, closing that barrier and dissolving the creatures on the ground. It went straight through Dash harmlessly and continued onward into the distance, perhaps across the whole world.

“Ponies, hear me now!” Starlight’s voice boomed, nowhere safe. “There is nothing, not even a god, that I cannot save you from! Have no fear in this dark times for I shall be with you soon!”

So that was something she’d have to deal with soon.

But from what she could tell, Starlight got wrapped up in another fight right after that one!

Before long, it became apparent she wouldn’t make it out of the woods, but would land near the edge. And she wouldn’t be able to walk anywhere right now. Where was Fluttershy? Even Spitfire would be good news at this point. Anypony.

At least the area she was going to collide with looked relatively calm. Though how would anypony find her here?

A trembling hoof took out the solution: that flare gun she had taken earlier. A blue flare was a request for immediate evacuation. With all the fighting going on it still might be missed but this was her one hope.

Just as she came beneath the tree line, Dash fired the flare. Then shortly after, she tumbled into a landing, falling onto her back.

And then relative silence. Far on the horizon, she could see the faintest glow of the sun. But sunrise was still hours away and Dash was helpless at the moment.

“Maybe I’ll get lucky for once,” Dash muttered to herself.

Right now, staying awake was about all Dash could muster. She could maybe talk her way out of things if she didn’t pass out. But the adrenaline was running out. She hadn’t eaten anything in who knew how long.

With only her labored breath for company and the slowly rising sun reminding her time existed, Dash lay there for, at her best guess, fifteen minutes.

And at last, the crunch of something heavy behind her, a sound she associated with a pegasus landing in a forest.

“Hey! Is somepony out there?!” Dash called up but couldn’t look.

“Did I find you?!”

That voice!

Somepony galloped towards her. She already knew but held her breath until she saw Derpy’s face.

“Rainbow Dash!” Derpy grabbed Dash in a hug, setting her up. “You look like whatever you were doing nearly killed you!”

“It did!” Dash laughed. “But what are you doing out here? Aren’t you supposed to be with…”

Where was Derpy supposed to be again?

“I went looking for you!” Derpy lay down to be on Dash’s level. “Rarity said you left with Moonlight Raven but I couldn’t get close to where she went. Then I went to Nailbat’s camp and they said Fluttershy went over her so I came looking and saw the flare.”

“Rarity?! Where–?” Dash almost managed to sit up.

“I don’t have any good news there,” said Derpy. “But we can’t worry about that now! This place is dangerous. You’re lucky I was the one who found you.”

“So I did get lucky for once.” Dash laughed. She’d deal with whatever happened after some sleep.

Derpy briefly laughed along with her, then abruptly stopped.

“Yeah, though uh.” Derpy looked around. “I guess we gotta hope I’m the only one who saw that flare.”

“Oh, buck.”

There was no way Flash Bang hadn’t seen that flare! Dash hadn’t thought that one through at all!

“Derpy, we gotta get out of here right now!” Dash tried and failed to stand up. “Head back to where Nailbat’s camp was. I might pass out on the way, so we’re waiting to meet up with Fluttershy there.”

Derpy nodded and hoisted Dash onto her back. She struggled a little, being smaller than Fluttershy’s new body.

She didn’t get far before Dash’s luck wore out. Out of the rising sun came a single pony trotting forward, a large stallion.

She would have urged Derpy to run away but as Dash’s eyes adjusted to the light, she managed to make out more details and realized escape was impossible. Black, heavily scared, in his mid-fifties or so…

“Deathblow?!” Dash coughed as she spat the name out.

“Rainbow Dash.” He stepped forward. “I’ve been looking for you ever since I heard the rumor that you were bluffing your strength this whole time.”

“Um.”

Dash’s mind reeled trying to figure out what to do in this situation. She hardly remembered Deathblow at all! He couldn’t possibly be offended enough by that to hunt Dash down, could he?

“Why would that matter?” Dash deflected the question.

In response, Deathblow drew a sword, clutching it in his mouth. Derpy stepped back. She couldn’t outrun or outfight this guy. And if Dash couldn’t figure out what he wanted there was no way to talk her way out of this, either!

“If you’re looking for money–!” Dash threw out her only option.

“I’m not.”

He prepared to charge forward but stopped when something caught his eyes behind Rainbow Dash.

Dash could scarcely turn her head but Derpy spun around for her.

Twenty… thirty pegasi were coming down towards them. Dash hoped and hoped she’d get lucky again! That this would be Spitfire or Fleetfoot…

Her eyes scanned the squad as they drew closer and began to land. She had Lightning Dust! Dash could work with that! She could–!

Her heart and hope stopped when Dust landed in a tree and instead, leading the group, came Flash Bang.

“Rainbow Dash.” Flash Bang brandished the spear. “I’ll never know how you managed to survive this long. But this ends here. You can't just run your mouth like that and walk away.”

“Uh!” Dash looked to Lightning Dust, who showed no signs of wanting to help, then to the other ponies. “Did you all not hear? That Flash was! Was just stalling to–!”

A spear appeared just an inch in front of Dash’s head, threatening to impale her straight through the brain. But something hit the spear at the last moment, knocking it out of the way.

Dash blinked, thinking maybe Derpy pulled off a miraculous block. Yet instead, with his wing extended, stood Deathblow next to them.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Flash asked. “This pony is a traitor to Equestria and a fraud."

“I ask only a moment,” said Deathblow. “There’s something I need to confirm before she dies.”

Deathblow took a few steps back. It became clear this wasn’t to be a friendly exchange when he produced his wing blades in addition to the sword in his mouth. There was no way she could beat this guy, no way to run away in her current condition. She stood still and at least tried to meet his eyes as he approached.

His movement was so swift and deft! He all but teleported in front of Dash and swung his blade at her neck!

Dash felt a sharp pain shoot through her, but barely anything, barely more than a paper cut. Deathblow stood before her, his blade pressed hard against her neck, just enough for a trickle of blood.

“Is that it?” Deathblow straightened up, still holding all his weapons as he met Dash’s stern glare. “That’s all it would take to kill you?”

No sense hiding it now.

“Yes.” Dash nodded. “Everything else was just a bluff. I was never strong.”

“You really aren’t much stronger than an average pony. You truly don’t have any amazing magical ability, do you?” He asked.

Dash swallowed, unshaken by the accusation.

“No,” Dash’s answer came firm. “I don’t.”

“And yet you still went against Twilight? And Minuette and Screwball and now Flash Bang? Even alone you keep fighting?” He asked, pressing the blade ever slightly harder. “Why?”

“I was selfish and desperate,” Dash admitted, “at first. Now I don’t feel like I have a choice any longer. I can’t accept not doing everything I could for my friends. If it’s impossible, then so be it. But I have to try anyway.”

He watched her carefully for anything her eyes might say.

“I see.” Deathblow slowly removed his blade. Dejected, he lowered his head. The air about him grew solemn and forlorn as his weapons drooped to his side. “I cannot bear this wound to my honor. You shame me too greatly.”

“Huh?” Dash blinked. She couldn’t possibly imagine how that would have offended the guy. Not that it mattered since he’d already intended to kill her.

“There is no honor in fighting the weak,” said Deathblow. “The greatest honor lies in challenging those stronger than yourself, who would defy that sacred rule of a true warrior. I knew many opponents beyond myself existed and yet I avoided facing them merely because I thought it was impossible to win.”

Deathblow lifted his head and gazed off to some point in the east maybe ten thousand miles away.

“But you.” He pointed to Dash. “Though you have not one-tenth my strength, you stood before those same enemies regardless. And you won despite it.”

Deathblow spread his wings and turned, putting his back towards Dash, and drew his blades again, but now against Flash Bang.

“I cannot possibly see myself as a pegasus, not until I’ve done something to be worthy of standing in this one’s shadow!” Deathblow gripped her largest sword in his teeth. “Rainbow Dash! Allow me to fight by your side until this is over.”

All the other pegasi could hardly even react to this about-face!

Least of all Rainbow Dash, who was glad Deathblow had his back to her so he couldn’t see her gawking. If he turned sides…

“Yes!” Dash cleared her throat, trying not to sound too desperate. “I mean, sure. I will grant you the chance to regain your honor.”

“What the crow are you doing?” Flash Bang stepped forward; wings splayed. “I thought you valued strength!”

“I value honor and have no desire to fight the weak,” said Deathblow. “I have no respect for one who would fight such a vastly weakened opponent. A true warrior faces those stronger than himself. Against opponents like you.”

“You seriously intend to fight me? Here?! Now?! You’re too old to have any hope of victory here. Perhaps I’d be slightly worried if you were twenty years younger and had half the scars you do now. Or even if you weren’t outnumbered fifty to one. As it stands, this is a foregone conclusion.”

“That’s exactly why I intend to fight you,” Deathblow dug his hooves deeper into the ground. “I cannot stand the humiliation of watching Rainbow Dash confront the impossible while I balk a coward, like you do against facing Starlight at full strength. But perhaps this fight is no more hopeless than that of Dash against the other witches. Your inexperience seems to have made you overlook the danger that surrounds you.”

Could Deathblow beat all of these ponies, though? Dash scanned the crowd. The obvious answer would be ‘no’. He wouldn’t even stand a chance against Flash. Yet, as Deathblow had warned, Dash noticed a critical problem lurking just off to the side.

Lightning Dust had stopped smiling. She flew up to the branch of a nearby tree and watched Flash Bang through all this, unblinking and without humor, analyzing her commander’s every move, forced to take this seriously. She was, Dash realized, watching for any sign of weakness, to see if Flash would stumble at this challenge.

If Dash picked that up, so too did all the other pegasi. A wave of doubt had overtaken the dozen or so elite guards who remained. Some of them watched Lightning Dust to see how the wind was blowing.

Were these Flash’s most loyal troops? Right now, they seemed to be the ones she simply had around at the time, the ones who were fearless enough to charge towards this disaster without being ordered.

Distracted, Flash Bang was last to notice. She looked over the rest, shooting a deathly look up at Lightning Dust. Dust turned her hoof up at Flash Bang and reclined to watch the fight.

“Very well! Equestria is a land where the strong rise to their rightful place at the top!” Flash Bang had to make a statement at least half as bold as Deathblow’s and had to appear strong to the others. “You have no right for me to so much as know your name. I will personally kill this traitor. And I will do it alone! Nopony else interfere in this fight.”

“I would gladly accept such a death!” Deathblow rushed forward.

The other pegasi backed up.

Dash could just scarcely keep up with their movements. The Longinus’ ability to make copies of itself went into full effect. Spears all but rained down on the ground, creating a small wall that chased Deathblow as he made a small circle around Flash. Even a pony with Deathblow’s speed could just barely stay ahead.

Yet he managed and threw a dagger faster than a bullet at Flash. A small explosion surrounded Flash, blocking the dagger. Deathblow used the brief reprieve from the spears to charge in and slash.

Dash couldn’t tell if either of the two swipes connected, Flash leaned away from both of them. Then another explosion like the first threw Deathblow back. Then the spears returned, this time forcing him away, and managed to draw actual blood against him.

And once he was back a certain distance, Flash switched to firing those red, explosive shots from her wings. Now Deathblow was tumbling as he tried to keep ahead of it.

This wasn’t going to end well for Deathblow. If anything, Dash got the impression Flash could end this at any time but was playing it overly safe to avoid the risk of injury.

Dash noted that Flashbang seemed less dangerous the closer you got, and had a different strategy for each range. But she was thinking about this wrong. Dash wasn’t a warrior she was…

She had to come up with some kind of plan. She remembered Deathblow’s warning and knew what the best she could do in this scenario was.

Spitfire and Fleetfoot had to be nearby. Maybe if she could talk to either of them. But how to get them to land? Surely, they’d be drawn to the fight if it got any more bombastic.

“Derpy! Give me your gun!” Dash held her trembling hoof out.

Derpy contorted her face in confusion but trusted Dash enough to toss it over to her. It had to be Dash. She signaled for Derpy to put some distance between the two, then raised the gun.

Even a foal could shoot a gun, but it still felt incredibly heavy in Dash’s current state. She fired at Flash.

The bullet got nowhere close, but the attack worked. Flash turned to her, offended, disgusted that Dash would interrupt with such a pathetic attack.

“Don’t ignore me !” Dash called after Flash Bang. “I’m in this fight too!”

“There’s nothing you can do!” Flash shouted at her. But even then, that slight lapse of concentration did put Deathblow a half second to get closer to the range where Flash started attacking with her spear instead. “I’ll kill you when I’m done with the actual warrior.”

“What’s that?!” Dash shouted back. “Do you need a handicap? Fine. I’ll beat you without moving from this spot. Surely that should be enough.”

Dash drew a tight circle around herself with the muzzle of the gun. Not that she could do more than hobble around anyway. Then Dash reloaded the gun and took another shot, getting slightly closer this time.

She could tell it was taking willpower for Flash to resist the urge to take the bait and strike Dash down now. The ponies around her weren’t the type you could just take taunts and insults in front of. Dust in particular gave one of her manic laughs in response to Dash’s boast.

“Well?” Lightning Dust asked. “Do you need me to get Trashie Dashie for you?”

Dash had to keep an eye out for Dust as well.

“I’ll kill anypony who interferes!” Flash shot back at her. She knew she couldn’t ignore this any longer.

Her stance shifted to a more offensive one. She’d risk taking a hit or two to her body rather than her reputation.

Flash turned and launched just a single spear at Dash with deathly accuracy. Maybe all that training paid off just enough. She was able to cast the murder spell just in time. She hoped a few of the crows falling out of the circle didn’t count as breaking her handicap, but she was able to survive by reverting again, still inside.

Already panting, Dash doubted she had more than one more of those in her.

All that just to buy Deathblow another second. The dagger nicked Flash this time! But now Flash went on a proper offensive, forcing Deathblow on a back foot, one he couldn’t possibly hold up for long. Already, Flash was breaking through here and there, getting cut after cut with that spear.

Dash raised her gun and tried to steady another shot. But she’d used up too much strength already and couldn’t hold it straight. She had just as much chance of hitting Deathblow as Flash. Was there something else she could do with the gun?

Derpy ran over to Dash’s side and grabbed the gun and Dash’s hoof both. Dash looked at her with surprise.

“She might hit you too,” Dash warned.

“I’m fine with that.”

Derpy more than Dash aimed the gun at Flash and pulled the trigger.

The bullet connected with Flash’s back leg! Flash must have put zero odds at Dash getting an accurate shot!

“Heh! I think she forgot about you.” Dash turned to Derpy with a smile.

It didn’t do damage but getting even one hit in made Dust snicker. And this was a much bigger opportunity for Deathblow who slammed a hoof into Flash hard and stuck a dagger in her foreleg.

But just as Dash got her hopes up, she got what she originally planned for instead.

Another sphere of flames engulfed Flash. This one was far stronger than the first. It tore up the ground and set the nearby area on fire. It sent Deathblow flying straight through a tree and nearly pushed Dash out of her circle even from this range.

Flash gritted her teeth and turned to Dash. She spread her wings which began to glow a violent red. Another blast, a wave of flames that stretched halfway to the tree line and far into either direction came hurtling towards them, incinerating every plant on its way.

Well, that would get their attention like Dash wanted! She just had to survive this.

Spitfire and Fleetfoot soared high above the dark forest below. Starlight had engaged with yet another enemy it seemed, but one who didn’t directly threaten the planet. So it was best to just stay out of that.

She had to find Flash… or Dash or Lightning Dust or Fluttershy or anypony really.

There was still so much fighting going on down there that it was hard to tell who was where. And it looked like an army of Starlight loyalists were coming down from the north, one they didn’t have the forces to intercept at the moment.

A mountain of ice would mean those ghosts. A giant bear Trixie…

Instead, Spitfire got a wall of flames rising above the trees. She recognized that as one of Flash Bang’s more dramatic attacks. What the crow could she need that for? Either Flash was on the eighth about something or yet another major threat emerged.

“She might be doing something stupid,” Spitfire warned. “Get down there!”

With a burst of air, Fleetfoot vanished from sight just as the wall of flames began its forward thrust. Spitfire followed a bit more slowly.

Something crashed into Dash hard just moments before the wall approached. Dash could just barely make out some blue fur before they darted up into the air.

It was Fleetfoot! She must have come in and bounced off the ground, taking Dash and Derpy with her. Though she could hardly see what was going on, she felt the fire and was certain it was already scorching her wings.

Fleetfoot arched her back like a pole-vaulter, getting just over the advancing wall. She’d managed by the slimmest margin, still getting a little burned, and lost control at the top of that arc. All three pegasi broke apart and went tumbling to the ground.

Dash focused on her mission. One wing was broken and the other refused to move, but still she forced it to give a single, hard flap to steer the fall landed back in her circle. The flames had melted the ground and reduced the trees to scorched twigs, but it had made her circle into a solid feature.

Impressed with her last-minute thinking, Dash stood back up with a sudden second wing, smiling through her labored breaths with one eye open as the other two crash-landed behind her.

“Looks like that didn’t budge me an inch!” Dash taunted. “Try harder.”

“Bahahahaha!” Lightning Dust pointed to Dash, doubling over in laughter.

Dash started laughing as well, despite everything. The pain all but vanished for that brief instance.

“I can barely even stand up and you can’t even push me over?” Dash asked. “Maybe try using some of that noble family lineage this time? Or wait, wasn’t your namesake just some grifter like me?”

Flash clenched her teeth and stood far too motionless, but otherwise retained her composure.

Fleetfoot had recovered from that maneuver and looked over the scene, Dash and Dust both laughing manically while Flash remained deathly still.

“Okay, what’s going on?” Fleetfoot asked.

Deathblow got back to his feet about that time too, brandishing a new sword as he faced Flash. Even through all that, Flash had the restraint to keep her focus primarily on him.

“The three of us and this coward are engaged in a noble duel to the death,” said Deathblow.

“Yeah, but why?” Fleetfoot tilted her head.

“These three are traitors to Equestria!” Flash declared. “They’ve put the nation at risk! I’ve ordered their execution and intended to carry it out myself.”

Spitfire landed next, much to Fleetfoot’s relief.

The moment Deathblow saw Spitfire land next to Dash, his tactics changed. He shifted his own stance and charged wildly this time at Flash.

The attack took Flash Bang off guard. The two of them moved forward and traded blows. Deathblow was seemingly suddenly willing to take a serious hit just for the chance to slash Flash’s forehead. He did manage a nasty gash just above her brow.

Flash Bang mostly allowed this attack to go through because it was a good trade for her. She managed to impale him at the base of his right wing. That was the easiest part of a pegasi’s wing bones to shatter and the sound left little doubt that was what happened.

Deathblow wouldn’t be able to fly for a while after that.

But Dash knew what he was going for. It was hard to stop the bleeding above the forehead. Even with light rain, it would make visibility a big problem for Flash Bang. Already she was squinting to keep focus.

That guy had more confidence in Dash than she did herself.

Deathblow jumped back and prepared to hold out against Flash’s incoming assault for as long as possible.

“Rainbow Dash, what’s going on?” Spitfire asked.

“You already know what’s going on,” said Dash. “Flash is going to kill the three of us and anypony else they need to make a point. You saw that yourself. I brought you here to make a decision. So make it.”

Spitfire watched the ‘fight’ between Deathblow and Flash, which had grown overwhelmingly one-sided. It was only a question of how much of a beating Deathblow could take before passing out at this point.

She watched Flash specifically.

The scariest part was… Spitfire may very well have agreed with Flash just a year ago. If there was no other choice, wouldn’t it be better to sacrifice tens of thousands to save millions? And she would have thought herself wise for putting aside the foolish, childish nativity that Rainbow Dash held onto. The naivety to believe something was possible when any wise pony would tell you it wasn’t.

And yet here was Dash, still ready to stand and fight a battle beyond hopeless. And this wasn’t the first time this pony had been here.

It stirred something buried in Spitfire’s heart, deep beneath the cynical wisdom of age. She wanted to remember what it was like.

Deathblow slammed up against the ground, then Flash landed on top of him. He was already out cold, but Flash Bang held him against the ground, repeatedly smashing his face with her hoof. She was seriously going to kill him!

“Flash Bang!” Spitfire flew up to pull her off. “Stop this!”

Spitfire wouldn’t have been able to restrain her. Flash Bang stopped just before the killing blow. Though frankly, Spitfire wasn’t sure if Deathblow would survive already.

“Fine.” Flash Bang regained her composure. “But Deathblow will be executed for treason. Properly.”

Then she turned her eyes to Rainbow Dash and took out her spear.

“No. I meant stop the fight entirely.” Spitfire stood between Flash Bang and Rainbow Dash. “I’m taking Rainbow Dash and Deathblow–”

An unfamiliar grey pegasus who had been at Dash’s side up until then stood up firm and looked at Spitfire with held breath.

“And whoever this is with me. And I’m leaving,” said Spitfire. “For good.”

Flash Bang left Deathblow to the dirt and turned on Spitfire with deathly seriousness.

“You realize what Rainbow Dash has done, don’t you?” Flash Bang asked. “Defeating Starlight may very well become impossible thanks to her!”

“Or maybe it hasn’t,” said Spitfire. “Maybe you were about to sacrifice all those ponies for nothing. We don’t know yet.”

“I had hoped you’d moved beyond this blind and toxic optimism,” said Flash. “You can’t just believe things will magically work out for everyone. You have to face reality.”

“If I’m up against reality,” said Spitfire. “Then so be it.”

“Listen to you. Do you even have a plan?” Flash stepped forward, sweeping one wing to the side. “You kill me and then what?”

“I’m not sure yet.” Spitfire turned to Dash. “But… I believe in Rainbow Dash.”

“You believe in–?!” It was like Flash had an aneurysm. That statement did more damage than Deathblow had managed. “In this pathetic idiot?! Who can’t even stand up straight? She has done nothing but cower behind the witch Twilight Sparkle and take credit. You're pinning your hopes and dreams to a smokescreen?”

“You owe everything to Twilight as well,” Dash reminded her.

“More lies from the charlatan? No one will ever listen to you again.”

“Don’t act like you don’t know,” said Rainbow Dash. “That spear has a small amount of mind fiber in it… you must have kept the secret of how to use a small amount within your family all this time. You have to know on some level. Flash Sentry was a thief and you just inherited what he stole.”

In reality, Dash had no idea how much Flash Bang knew about all that, but her explanation was plausible enough to perhaps cast some doubts. It did strike a chord with her.

“Flash Sentry was a great hero! As were nearly all of my ancestors. You have no proof for any of this!”

“Look.” Dash spread her forelegs wide. “We’re not so different is what I’m getting at.”

Flash almost gave in to the urge to splatter Dash but again composed herself.

“If you side with her you’ll be throwing your life away to no end,” Flash warned Spitfire. “There is no chance of accomplishing anything by following her. You’ll hardly do any better than that other geriatric pony.”

Spitfire swallowed. Maybe Flash Bang was right.

Maybe.

“Fleetfoot,” Spitfire turned to her junior. “I’m going to do something really stupid now.”

“I’m with you.” Fleetfoot jumped immediately to her side.

“You too?” Flash Bang glowered darkly.

“Honestly, I’m kind of glad.” Fleetfoot adjusted her goggles. “I know Rainbow Dash’s side can protect Equestria better than yours. I kind of wanted her to win this whole time.”

“Silverstorm is dead,” Flash Bang reminded her.

“I meant without Silverstorm even,” Fleetfoot added.

“The two of you don’t stand a chance.” Flash merely shook her head.

“Four,” Dash reminded. “I didn’t see you push me out of the circle yet!”

Dash was getting closer. Flash’s eye twitched at the remark.

One of Flash’s lieutenants trotted over to her side.

“This is getting to be too much,” he said. “Nopony here doubts you, Flash! Order the ponies here to charge. We can kill the remaining four without a scratch.”

“Move back,” Flash ordered instead.

The lieutenant restrained a pained cringe at the order.

“Ma’am, we don’t want to waste time or risk–”

“Anypony who interferes with this fight will be branded a traitor,” Flash called to the rest of them. “Now move back! I don’t want to have to restrain myself because of the rest of you.”

Most of them did. Save Lightning Dust who flew up to a tree to get a better look. It seemed Flash would allow that much.

They all moved slowly into position. The grey pegasus moved closer to Dash. Spitfire to the left, Fleetfoot to the right, Flash slowly backward.

Spitfire was keenly aware of Flash Bang’s skills and of the closest thing to a weakness she could be said to have.

There really wasn’t any good option when fighting a pony like this. Too far away and she could bombard you with endless flash bang shots. Get too close and she’d create a short-range air blast throwing you off.

That spear, the Longinus, was her way of mitigating the dead zone between those two options. She was, essentially, an opponent nopony short of a witch could fight against. Without the Longinus, she was far closer to a mere mortal.

She didn’t need to clue Fleetfoot in on the plan. They had discussed how they would fight just about everypony, including Flash, if it ever came to that. ‘Get rid of the spear’ was their main plan.

That might be the closest to winning they could get. But if that was all that was in sight, Spitfire would make that the entirety of her goal.

Spitfire had one other major advantage; the hits landed by Deathblow. The deep cut over Flash’s forehead left serious visibility issues. The bleeding was already slowing as Flash had partially burned it shut with fire, but Spitfire knew if she could just get one good hit on it, to reopen the wound, Fleetfoot would get her chance.

It seemed he also got a few hits on her rear left leg. He was the one to fight this pony at full strength so even that much was impressive.

Fleetfoot took off at her unmatchable speeds, then came back, producing several of her steel polls from her bag of holding. Flash knew not to try blocking these as the kinetic force would be far too extreme. She flew up, leaving the bars to bury themselves in newly-formed craters, and tried to pin Fleetfoot with the spears as the latter passed. They didn’t get close, but Flash would hit eventually.

Flash ignored Spitfire as she charged in, focusing on trying to shoot down Fleetfoot with her long-ranged attacks.

She was writing Spitfire off for the most part! Hardly spared Spitfire a look as she got in close to take a swing at her eye. But Flash did create a close-ranged airburst to throw Spitfire back at the last minute, then a hail of spears as she moved into striking range.

Through it, Flash kept her eyes on Fleetfoot, waiting for the coming second wave. She might have been right. The blow felt far too heavy and even without paying attention, Flash cut Spitfire several times.

Fleetfoot was coming in hot again for a second barrage. After the last fight, she wouldn’t have much ammo left. There was still an anchor… Spitfire couldn’t remember how many shots! She’d need to assume one more at most! She had to make this next blitz count.

This time, from her bag, Fleetfoot threw out three waves of bullets and nails on the approach, enough to blanket the area with lethal force. Spitfire knew it was three because they rehearsed this.

The first wave came in. Flash let out an airburst to deflect the bullets, Spitfire sucked up the pain and charged behind her to use Flash as a shield. Holes littered the ground all around Spitfire.

The second wave came. Flash created a wall of spears that shattered on contact. Spitfire wrapped herself in flames and got ready.

Flash looked down at Spitfire, just outside range of an airburst. But if she tried to spear her she’d be torn to ribbons by the incoming shrapnel. With no other option, she used an airburst to protect herself from the final wave and Spitfire charged at full speed.

For a second she felt as though she were moving at her old speeds! That she could match Flash just this one time!

But as she got in to slam a hoof into Flash’s skull, Flash moved slightly to the side and punched her incoming hoof out of the way. Hard too! Spitfire had no idea if it was broken or not!

With one eye on Fleetfoot, Flash grabbed Spitfire by the collar and pulled her in for a knock-out punch.

This was it! Spitfire’s last chance! She couldn’t use her hooves! So…

Spitfire summoned what strength she had left and slammed her head against Flash’s. The headbutt likely did more damage to Spitfire, but she got what she’d wanted. The cut reopened, worse than before.

Her head spun as her skull reverberated. Flash threw her back.

Flash struggled to keep her eyes open, but the diluted blood pouring in was too much. She was forced to close her eyes and wipe and that one second Spitfire managed to buy was enough for Fleetfoot.

A blue blur came in from the side. Magic too much, Spitfire threw a rock as the grey pegasus fired off her gun. It was just enough for Fleetfoot to tackle Flash, grab the spear, and fly off into the sky.

Fleetfoot soared as high and as fast as she could. Getting the spear was one thing, keeping it away was another. She had to bring it somewhere Flash couldn’t retrieve it. Thankfully, she had just such a trick.

Keeping her eyes on the stars, she struggled to move even faster. It got harder to keep your speed up the higher you went. There was a certain altitude, called the star barrier, where flight was impossible beyond. Momentum could carry you beyond it, however, if you had enough speed.

She quickly approached this point, the height at which she couldn’t breathe, and the cold grew painful. Then soared past the star barrier.

This was a trick she’d done successfully a few times. At the last possible moment, Fleetfoot pulled back and threw the spear up with all of her momentum, breaking her speed so that it could fly out of sight toward the stars.

She was certain that was enough! It wasn’t in orbit, exactly, but high enough that it wouldn’t come back down to this point for a long time. And Fleetfoot alone had the speed to even come up this high. She literally held the world record for that.

Fleetfoot arched her back as she looked back down at the planet, the clouds far below her. It was so dammed cold up here that the mounting friction was a warming presence to her. She smiled at the thought of Flash reacting to such an amazing trick.

But Flash wasn’t there.

She hadn’t chased Fleetfoot! Which meant… she’d gone on the attack against Spitfire instead.

To get in and save everypony in time, Fleetfoot might have no other choice than to go with her option of last resort. As she fell back below the star barrier, Fleetfoot picked up her speed again, moving in for a dive-bomb.

Flash hadn’t given chase to Fleetfoot! Spitfire would have to somehow hold out until she got back.

Spitfire didn’t feel like she had a chance to beat Flash Bang alone even now. But without the spear she at least had options. There was that small gap between three and eight meters where fighting her was at least conceivable.

The plan was clear, but easier said than done. ‘Just keep a pony who can break the sound barrier at a very specific range where her attacks will be less effective’. It wouldn’t sound far off from mockery.

Flash rushed in close and tried to activate a burst. Spitfire pulled back, just barely out of the range of the ensuing air bursts. Two more hops back with Flash Bang charging at her with more blasts.

She picked up speed, struggling to put distance but not too much between the two of them. Spitfire wrapped her body in flames, hurling fireballs the size of her own body at Flash Bang. Flash merely lowered her head and took the brunt of the attacks.

She acted like it was nothing, but Spitfire knew this was causing real damage.

Flash Bang pulled back at the last moment and fired off a shot from her wings at Spitfire. She had no choice but to charge straight into the incoming projectiles. Struggling to reverse her momentum, Spitfire threw herself forward.

Her vulcan shots acted like rockets, picking up speed as they went and exploding only after reaching a certain speed. In this range, they wouldn’t pack a tenth of their full punch. They still stung, but this much Spitfire could handle. She’d just dodged serious damage from them.

Then Flash Bang jumped forward, landing next to her with another explosion. It was all Spitfire could do to keep the blast from throwing her back at the long-range shot. If Flash Bang had her spear still, it would have led to a killing blow for certain.

It wasn’t working. Spitfire didn’t have the agility to outlast Flash. A more aggressive stance was her only real hope!

Flash Bang tried to pull back to put Spitfire into long-range. Spitfire wrapped herself in fire and blasted herself forward.

Summoning all her strength, she created her own explosion that just barely matched Flash Bang’s. She had a brief second now! Pushing past her pain, Spitfire swung her hoof at Flash Bang’s head, above her right brow, where she was already injured.

Spitfire connected, glancing Flash. She punched again and again, wildly, trying hard to at least damage the skull.

But Flash regained her focus and with one punch to the gut returned more punishment than Spitfire had delivered. Another air burst sent Spitfire back and left her exhausted on the ground.

By the time she recovered, Flash Bang was high up enough in the air to deliver a fatal barrage.

But all hope wasn’t lost. Her last attack worked a little. No way Flash would be seeing through that eye any longer. The bone had to have had a crack in it by now!

Spitfire glanced at the sky, seeing the angle Fleetfoot was coming in at. If she turned Flash thirty degrees, then Fleetfoot would be returning to a blind spot.

She rolled to the side and threw herself forward. Her wings were numb. She could collapse at any moment, but she had to move forward. She needed to use the fire, not even to speed up but just to keep moving with how badly damaged her wings had gotten.

Spitfire didn’t manage to escape the explosions entirely, but she did get just high enough to survive. The shockwaves made her approach even faster!

Then they met with another clash of explosions. This time it didn’t go so well for Spitfire. Her forelegs didn’t respond fast enough. Flash Bang grabbed Spitfire and threw her down.

Spitfire never even saw the ground coming, felt only the thunderclap as everything went white and her ears rang. She was too disoriented to even know if she was face up or down in the mud.

She squinted and held her head tight, trying to focus. Just enough vision came back to her to see Flash Bang glowing bright red, preparing a killing shot.

A blue blur sped into sight. Fleetfoot made contact at full speed.

Spitfire, unable to do more, fell onto her back.

Fleetfoot took out her remaining anchor and slammed into Flash at maximum speed.

There was a reason she always threw things at ponies rather than punching them at this speed. Crashing into a pony at these incredible speeds hurt. Even holding the anchor sent a wave of pain through Fleetfoot’s body. She knew she’d broken at least one bone but couldn’t tell which at the moment.

And yet somehow, it wasn’t enough to knock Flash out. They both undoubtedly had broken bones, but Fleetfoot wasn’t even sure if she was ahead in that contest.

The two of them were flying forward at uncontrollable speeds, Fleetfoot driving them forward, continuing to fly into the attack. It didn’t kill Flash Bang, but even she couldn’t take that without being stunned.

Hoping to do maximum damage, Fleetfoot held the catatonic pegasus in front of her. The trees in their way shattered like glass around them, each collision rocking Fleetfoot, sending splinters into her sides. She tried to hold on, tried to remind herself that Flash Bang would be taking even more damage than herself!

But everything rocked too much! Her grip was slipping too fast.

She couldn’t hold on much longer than that! Fleetfoot went spiraling out of control, Flash Bang falling to the ground as she slammed directly into a tree.

And then… out cold.

Everypony looked out into the forest, a newly cleared path stretching perhaps a mile long. By this point, they were all standing in a circle of ashen debris surrounded by forest. It was easily the most brutal crash Dash had ever witnessed and doubted any of the others had by how they all looked on with pained expressions of their own.

Did either of them even survive that crash?! Neither of them came back yet, so Dash could only assume they were both knocked out.

Dash turned back to the other dozen or so pegasi who’d been watching the fight from a distance, now gathering around her.

Maybe there was a flaw in this plan!

Dash had no idea what to do with them now that Flash Bang’s orders weren’t keeping them back.

“Um! Looks like we win!” Dash raised Derpy’s hoof. Derpy nodded along eagerly. “You guys can all go home now. Those are the rules.”

“We agreed to nothing.” The lieutenant from before raised a hoof and all the guns pointed at Dash. “You didn’t even remotely win.”

“I’m still in the circle, aren’t I?” Dash asked. “Your best pony couldn’t even budge me an inch. I think I proved my point about who the superior pegasus is.”

This guy turned out to be easier to mess with than Flash, growing contempt at the taunt immediately.

“Stop pretending like you did anything! This is a draw at best when you had Flash outnumbered five to one. No, four to one because a charlatan like you doesn’t even count! This proves nothing. All of you are traitors and will be executed. Even Spitfire.”

Grapeshot turned a scornful eye on Spitfire, considering whether to execute her first.

“Now hold up.” Lightning Dust flew in between Dash and the others. “If Flash Bang is gone, I’m the one in charge here.”

The lieutenant kept his hoof up, ready to order a barrage.

“Oh, now you want to challenge me? Defy the chain of command and declare yourself king?” Lightning Dust trotted towards him. “You’re really going to go out like this? If you defy my orders, you’re the one getting executed.”

The lieutenant’s hoof trembled. Finally, he closed his eyes and withdrew his hoof.

Lightning Dust spat in his direction, muttering something about sniveling cowards.

She moved closer to Dash, prancing slightly in place as if warming up for a fight.

“Hehehe! I want to take my turn.” Lightning Dust trotted up to Dash. “Let’s see if I can succeed where Flash Bang failed and knock the mighty Rainbow Dash out of the circle.”

Derpy kept her gun up, but Dust had no concern for it as she pressed a hoof against Dash’s chest. With a single shove, Dash went tumbling out of the circle.

“Bahahaha!” Dust spun around to face the others with an elated smile. “Oh, wow! That was so hard. Looks like I’m the best, huh?”

They were too nervous to applaud, much to Dust’s annoyance.

“You know I let you do that, right?” Dash struggled to get back up, needing Derpy’s help.

Dust looked back at Dash with a raised brow before laughing again.

“You’re on the eighth, Trash,” she said with a smile. “I like that. You’re not so bad. So I respect your decision to go out fighting. I’ll break your neck instantly so your body will be mostly intact for the funeral.”

Dust’s hoof glowed with electricity.

“Uh! How about instead of that, you swear your loyalty to me?” Dash blurted out the boldest statement she could. “I’ll overlook everything you’ve done up until now.”

“You don’t give up, huh? Okay, I’ll bite. What do you have to offer, exactly?” Dust asked.

“You remember what I said before,” said Dash. “I have the one thing you want.”

“Pfft. And what’s that, exactly? Friendship? Please. I got action figures made of me; you know. I could–”

A commotion and a wave of cheers interrupted their conversation. Both looked to see.

Flash!

She was walking slowly, but walking. Covered in horrible cuts, keeping one hind leg off the ground, one wing drooping to the ground and one eye closed tight, enough splinters lodged in her to give her the appearance of spines, but still standing she stared death at Dash as she slowly approached.

“You see?!” The lieutenant, suddenly elated at his vindication, cheered for her. “Trash like you is nothing compared to a truly superior pegasus! All of you together weren’t enough!”

Flash Bang had survived that without even being knocked out! Dash couldn’t even think of a way to hit her harder.

Flash Bang looked in horrible shape, but even still Dash doubted she and Derpy would be enough to finish this off.

Derpy came to the same conclusion. Terror filled her eyes, but as promised she didn’t leave Dash’s side. She raised the gun and pointed it at Flash Bang. That wound on her skull seemed the only possible target.

“Uh!” Derpy fired the gun.

Flash Bang darted to one side away from the bullet, then back toward Derpy. A single hook to the face knocked her out cold and sent her into a pile of charred debris.

Dash still saw an opportunity! She was so close. If she could just instigate a fight between these two!

Though she might not have time. Flash pulled back for a punch that would explode Dash’s head.

“Hold up a second.” Lightning Dust put a hoof on Flash Bangs withers. “There’s something I want to talk to her about first.”

“I think you should listen to Dust,” said Dash. “I mean, she knocked me out of the circle, just saying.”

Flash Bang brushed her aside roughly. Dust grabbed onto her again, more sternly this time.

“Look, we already won. Dash was going to say something! She’s not dying until we finish our conversation.” Dust moved back in to Dash. “What? What is it you have, huh?”

Before Dash could even stall for time, Flash Bang grabbed Lightning Dust and pushed her back.

“I’ve had enough of this! No more games!” Flash Bang shouted at her, pulling her hoof back again.

Dust pulled her back a second time, only for Flash to throw her onto the ground this time.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Dash said to Flash, drawing her attention again. “Dust is the only strong one left here. I think you should listen to her.”

“Yeah.” Dust got up and shoved Flash’s chest. “How about you just sit this one out? Get a band aid? I got this. Unlike you, I can take her.”

The two stared unblinking into each other’s eyes. Just one more push.

“I think you better do it, Flash,” said Dash.

Flash snarled and pushed Dust back, Dust returned the shove and got a harder one in return.

Lightning Dust punched Flash hard in the brow, her most damaged spot, enough to make Flash flinch.

Flash Bang growled and moved back to Dust to make a serious punch at her head. Dust cowled herself in lightning, automatically sidestepping the attack.

Flash Bang’s movements were different now. They were still beyond anything Dash could have hoped to achieve herself, but relative to before they were sluggish and clumsy. Dust had little trouble deftly dodging out of the way.

She shoved Flash Bang back with a hoof, causing the other pegasus to slide back on her hooves.

“Heh.” Dust smiled. “You know… I might actually be able to beat you when you’re like this.”

The two stared each other down in a long silence.

“You’re seriously doing this?” Flash Bang asked in a calm rage.

“If you keep disrespecting me like this, yes.” Dust nodded. “Rainbow Dash–”

“I’ve had enough of this!” Flash Bang turned to the pegasi standing by still after all this time. “Everypony! I order you to kill Rainbow Dash!”

They finally moved into action.

“Anypony who follows that order is dead!” Lightning Dust barked at them, louder than Flash Bang.

A few of them stopped hard, unsure of who to follow, but a good half moved to fire their guns or moved forward. Lightning Dust charged toward the forward-most attacker, grabbed his head, and slammed it down into the dirt hard enough to stall the remaining pegasi.

“I’m tired of you disrespecting me like this!” Lightning Dust kept eye contact with Flash Bang as she held the one pegasus’ head down on the ground. “The rest of you have to choose right now. Me or Flash. Pick wrong and you’re dead.”

“As if any of us would–” The lieutenant began.

Lightning Dust slapped him before he could finish.

“Flash Bang is through,” Lightning Dust warned the others. “All the S-rankers on her side betrayed her just now. You think she’s going to lead Equestria? Then you already got brain damage.”

None of them had much time to think it over, but Lightning Dust’s words cut even that lieutenant. Quick to show whose side he was on, one of the other stallions jumped forward and grabbed the lieutenant from behind, holding him in a choking position.

Two more ponies went for that stallion, while yet another went to fight them off.

Before long, the strike force had devolved into fighting one another. Dash could hardly tell which side was the majority or even who was on her side after a few moments. But one thing was clear now. Even if Flash Bang won at this point, it was over. She could never recover from this.

Lightning Dust pointed at the spectacle laughing before turning back to an enraged and broken Flash Bang.

“Think you can take me?” Dust asked Flash. “Bet you wish you gave me those ten seconds now, huh?”

“I don’t think you understand how far beneath me you really are.” Flash Bang moved back into a combat stance. “My family is the greatest lineage of pegasi. All of you are mongrels compared to me! You think even like this you can beat me?”

Flash spread her wings out farther than she had before, they glowed brighter with magic than Dash had yet seen. Then she fired her barrage at Dust. Her regard for the others had dried up. Explosions spread out everywhere, demolishing trees amidst the fighting pegasi. Even Grapeshot had to duck out of the way of one of them.

“Boss!” The lieutenant cried out. “Be careful!”

“Shut up!” Flash Bang fired off scores of such shots with no regard for anypony but Lightning Dust.

The fighting broke up as ponies scrambled to get out of the way.

Even with her electric cowl, Lightning Dust could just barely manage to dodge out of the way of the incoming barrage. Trees snapped like twigs and fire began to spread, but Dust just barely managed to dart in between the explosions.

Flash Bang growled, deeming it necessary to escalate the situation even further. She put her eyes instead on Dash and Derpy and soared into the skies.

From below, Dash could see Flash Bang’s wings growing much brighter. She’d been holding back before but no more. A barrage unlike anything up until now was coming, would obliterate the ground.

Dust and two other pegasi came to Dash and Derpy’s side.

“Get Derpy first!” Dash called out to the two of them, gesturing to her unconscious friend.

They didn’t hesitate to follow her orders, airlifting Derpy away.

Flash Bang’s wings glowed a second time. All pretense about sparing the other pegasi was gone now. They all scrambled to get off the ground.

“Uh.” Lightning Dust glanced at Dash then back at Flash Bang. “Sorry, bro. You might die now. I ain’t carrying you and fighting Flash at the same time.”

“Grab a crow!” Dash yelled.

Lightning Dust blinked but got what Dash meant when she cast the murder spell. Even that much was a strain, and the crows couldn’t fly, but Dust could carry one. Clenching a crow in her teeth, Dust soared upwards as the charges rained down.

The ground erupted into explosions, and everything below was obliterated in an explosion of light and fury. Not that there was much left in the ring where they’d been fighting. But the edges of the blast created a ring of fire.

Below them was nothing but fire. Dash remembered Spitfire and Deathblow were down there somewhere! Unless some other pegasus airlifted them too- There was nothing she could do for them at the moment but hope.

An unfamiliar green mare came in from behind Flash Bang and stabbed her through the wing with the tip of a bayonet.

“I’m with you!” She called out to Lightning Dust, trying to grab Flash Bang from behind.

Even that wasn’t enough. Flash Bang spun hard enough to throw this new ally off and down into the fire below.

She was still somehow flying after that, though just barely, lopsided toward what had been the weaker wing just moments ago.

Two more stallions flew to Lightning Dust’s side. There were two more ponies with Derpy, trying to find a place to set her down. They headed towards a patch of woods that wasn’t currently on fire. Other than them, the rest vanished one way or the other.

Dash couldn’t see that second-in-command guy anywhere. It looked as if only ponies on Dash's side remained.

The two stallions nodded to Lightning Dust and the three of them charged forward, Dust head-on and the two curving toward either side.

Flash Bang didn’t even try to aim for Dust at this point. She shot more explosive charges toward the stallion to her right flank. Her once dead aim had been degraded to the point she needed a barrage of shots to hit him, but she did blow that one out of the sky.

The remaining assailants reached Flash Bang and attacked him at once. The stallion grappled her while Dust began wailing on Flash Bang with her hooves, aiming for whatever looked the most wounded.

After seeming so invincible for so long, Flash Bang was finally showing signs of weakness, enough that Dash believed any one of these punches might be the one to finally knock her out.

Flash summoned another air blast that sent the pony holding her back, but Dust got one more electrified blow to the head just after. Flash Bang’s eyes rolled back, and her body went limp, falling.

Dash could feel the mouth that held her contort into a smile, too prematurely sure that Dust won. Dust pulled back, ready to hit her one last time on the way down.

Flash Bang regained her barring on the way back down and spun to drop-kick an off-guard Dust. And soon everypony was falling towards the ground.

At least they didn’t land in the burning part of the forest. Dash’s small, crow body took little damage from falling so she merely reverted soon after.

Dash found Derpy and those two ponies from before not far away. Lightning Dust had crashed off to one side but was getting up.

It looked like those two had been busy this whole time after all. They’d dragged out Deathblow, Spitfire, and four other pegasi from the spreading forest fire. Of those rescued, only Spitfire and a delirious mare remained awake.

Spitfire coughed, struggling and failing to stand up. She was borderline delirious herself and could pass out from the smoke at any minute. They needed to get out of there before the fire spread further.

It was just Lightning Dust left in the fight.

Flash Bang hacked up something, but still, her eyes went dead on Dash and Derpy.

The fire spread behind Flash Bang as she hobbled toward the three of them, her body glowing brighter and brighter. Flash Bang might only have one shot left, but it was going to be enormous.

One of the two spares panicked at the sight and fled.

Dust looked around, calculating her options. Dash couldn’t cast the murder spell again. There were only two ponies here who could fly. Not nearly enough.

“You know, if I just fly up and ditch you, I’m sure to win,” Lightning Dust looked towards Flash Bang fatalistically. “I won’t be able to save all of you and I know you won’t let me choose you over whoever that even is. But I kind of want you to live so my only chance of saving you both is to try and hit Flash Bang head-on. All of us are gonna die if I can’t match her. If I pull this off, we’ll just say everything is even.”

Dash nodded. That probably was the best shot any of them had now.

Flash Bang couldn’t possibly have enough strength left at this point, could she? Lightning Dust had to be able to match her by now!

Dust took a step forward and began summoning as much electricity into her body as she could manage. Both of them were winding up to throw everything they had at one another, neither attacking too early, until they had summoned every ounce of strength, in some silent agreement.

Whatever was coming would be intense. Just the backlash alone might be enough to knock Dash out. If she lost, she’d never know it.

Whatever hope Spitfire could offer vanished as she collapsed coughing on the ground, passing out a second time. Flash Bang sparing only a glance to make sure she was out of the picture before finally–

A gunshot!

A bullet slammed into Flash Bang's head, right to where her brow had already cracked. It bounced off her skull, but the force was just enough to make her clench her teeth. She took a step back, all the glow and momentum vanishing.

Dash had no idea who was even left to fire a gun at this point. Somepony standing right behind her? Dash turned to find Derpy back on her haunches.

Derpy was sitting back up, still bleeding from her brow and only able to open one eye. But that eye was all she needed. Derpy held the smoking gun and panted as she stared straight at Flash Bang! Had she just pretended?!

Lightning Dust’s eyes widened in shock, but she didn’t let that split second go to waste. She pulled back much farther to put everything she had in one wild attack.

Lightning Dust’s hoof glowed with the brightest blue, lighting up the whole area. The punch seemed to freeze time for the briefest of seconds as Flash too glowed blue. Then reality sank in. The other pegasus flew back so fast that any onlooker could have easily mistaken it for a massive lightning bolt.

As she vanished from sight, the realization sank in.

Dash… had done it!

Witches (2024)

With an immense pillar of white light, Starlight pushed Demon Summoner down into the shrinking vortex below. She pressed the emerging figure of his god deeper, further out of sight.

As demon Summoner’s claws desperately tried to grab onto the ground, Flash Bang and the rest scattered. All the other demons were gone, and the portal was about to close. This might be Fluttershy’s only attempt to escape.

She ran to the edge of the ship and looked down, intending to jump.

“Gravity doesn’t work on me!” Sonata flew after her. “Oh, why did I come here?! What was I thinking?!”

Sonata looked around in a panic for something to possess. There wasn’t much left. The Phoenix King had been heavily damaged. It was going down, gliding into a crash landing.

Fluttershy could just jump, but it was her fault the now lucid Sonata was here.

“I’ll find something!” Fluttershy instead ran into a hole in the deck of the ship. The two of them frantically searched before finding the bare minimum – a discarded helmet.

Sonata flew inside, Fluttershy grabbed it up as the sky lit in a violet light and Starlight’s voice boomed out across the area.

Back on deck! Back to the ledge.

Too late. Starlight teleported in front of them, standing on air.

Any hope Starlight might have been the least bit grateful for Fluttershy’s help dissolved against that little smile. Fluttershy had to pay the price of leaving the armor, of being seen. Starlight knew who she was.

“Don’t think you’ll be getting away that easily.”

Starlight created a spear of light, one that rumbled and vibrated with such violence the whole ship shook. Standing in its presence was like standing before death itself, making Fluttershy shudder to her core. Had she always been able to do this?!

No way Fluttershy could block that. She wouldn’t be fast enough to dodge. She could only hope her armor would be sufficient! She clutched Sonata, inside the helmet, as tightly as possible and took the hit.

Starlight’s attack was beyond pale. Her invincible armor might as well not have existed compared to it. She felt her body burning, unraveling as her very existence was seared into nothing.

She could hardly think of anything but then… a reprieve.

The all-consuming attack merely became a knock-out blow, then just a little less than that.

As Fluttershy regained her bearings, she began to realize what happened. The spear threw her straight into ZoD’s massive form. And it was enough to launch even that given how far through the air they were sailing.

And the majority of the force had been absorbed by ZoD. It was his being that dissolved now, rather than Fluttershy’s. And it burned away rapidly.

In just a minute, he had shrunk to maybe the size of a house, then to the size of a normal pony. His forelegs wrapped around Fluttershy and held the tip of the spear. Only now did she realize he’d been holding it back just an inch away from her so there was no contact.

The back half of ZoD’s body burned away, then at last he gained control and sent the spear hurtling into the sky.

The three of them fell for a long time after that, carried by momentum before finally crashing through the wall of a warehouse. Boxes exploded and Fluttershy found herself buried in piles of fluff and damaged plushies.

They were in a town… no, that was unimportant right now.

Fluttershy and Sonata flew out of their respective bodies to look themselves over. They were both unraveled by the attack, Fluttershy worse with her entire right leg, much of her torso, and the right side of her face gone. Sonata was only missing chunks of her legs.

But ZoD had landed here too.

The pile of plushies that had buried the god incinerated in an instant and ZoD stood. His posture was that of a whole pony, but only his left foreleg and the left half of his face remained. And those were unraveling, just like a ghost who crossed the threshold of no return.

Fluttershy had seen this once before. It was as though he were made of threads that rapidly unwound themselves, eating away at his body. And if he was like a ghost, there’d be nothing left soon. Fluttershy and Sonata would recover their lost parts but for him, it was too late.

It seemed odd. Why was he made out of the same stuff as ghosts?

“ZoD!” Fluttershy flew over to him. “Are you going to –?”

“This is but an avatar of my true self,” he said. “But it will perish from this world.”

Starlight had done that with a single attack, too. Fluttershy tried to reassure herself ZoD must have used much of his energy to close that portal, he may have even done most of the work! But she wasn’t even sure if that was true.

“ZoD I’m–”

“You broke your pact.” His remaining eye fell squarely on Fluttershy as Sonata started drifting off hoping nopony would see her. “And what’s more, you repeatedly mispronounced my name. I hate that. Do you know what’s going to happen?”

With her ears pinned back, Fluttershy slowly shook her head. She didn’t.

“Well, breaking your vow isn’t a good thing to do. And as the ultimate incarnation of evil, I can’t let you out-evil me,” said ZoD. “If you aren’t going to keep your word then obviously, I’m not going to either.”

“But you’re going to…” Fluttershy bit her lip and looked down at his rapidly dissolving leg.

“Yeah, well. I could have let you die, but I figured it’d be eviler if I took the hit myself since… you know.” He twirled his now disembodied hoof in the air. His mouth was completely gone but he could still speak. “I could probably do more to stop Starlight than you and stuff. So.”

“I get it now.” Fluttershy nodded and smiled. “But I probably shouldn’t thank you. Since it was so evil and all.”

“Now you’re getting it.” He pointed his hoof at her just before it disappeared entirely. ZoD was now only a floating eye. “Oh, but one more thing. You might meet my brother soon. He’s the ultimate incarnation of goodness. So. You know.”

His eye glanced about for a moment before locking in on Fluttershy again.

“Be careful.”

That just left…

“Sonata?”

Fluttershy could feel her but not see her. She’d already run away it seemed. But not for long, Sonata came rushing back inside.

“I tried running away but it didn’t work!” Sonata flew up to Fluttershy in a panic. “We’re in the middle of a town and it’s almost daylight.”

Fluttershy did need to get back to Rainbow Dash, but she had a responsibility to Sonata now, too.

“Is there somewhere you want to go?” Fluttershy asked. “To Aria maybe? I’ll help you get there.”

“Aria?!” Sonata’s eyes widened, like remembering her for the first time in years. “I miss Aria so much!”

Sonata grabbed Fluttershy tight and cried just a little into her chest.

“I miss you so much!”

“Um.” Fluttershy gave her a small pat on the head. “You know I’m not her, right?”

“I’ll find Aria! And then we’ll run away to… to…” Sonata looked down at the ground. She let go of Fluttershy and then flew off clutching her head. “Oh no! There’s nowhere to run anymore! We only have a couple of weeks left! Oh, damn it all to the shadow realm! I get free and then die immediately afterward!”

“We might be able to–” Fluttershy began.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Sonata cut her off. “If I only got a few days to live I gotta make the most of it, right? I find Aria, then we have the most epic party ever! We’ll party like there’s no tomorrow because there isn’t!”

Sonata pointed to Fluttershy with a big smile, but a trembling hoof and labored breath.

“I won’t stop you from partying,” said Fluttershy. “But I was going to say that maybe we could do something. Or at least I’m going to.”

“Something?! You really think you can do something?!” Sonata flew closer, her eye twitching. “No offense but look at you! You don’t stand a gremlin’s chance! You couldn’t even get past that battle doll she uses! You couldn’t even break through her chains!”

“But I already did both of those things?”

Sonata blinked, looked over at the armor, then down at her chain-free form, and then back to Fluttershy, blushing with embarrassment. She must have still been out of it to some extent.

“Holy crow, you’re right!” Sonata bit her lip and looked around the torn-up plushies. “What am I supposed to do? I want to hide and cry until it’s all over but what if you’re onto it with this ‘something’ business?”

“I’d appreciate your help,” said Fluttershy. “But you don’t have to. You’ve been forced to do enough already and I can’t say you’re wrong. If you run away crying, I’ll understand.”

“You will?” Sonata got just a little teary-eyed over it. She nodded, resolved to do just that. “A-alright! I’m going to run away then. Goodbye.”

Fluttershy nodded, then started digging the armor out from the pile of fluff.

“I’m leaving!” Sonata waved as she flew out of the building.

It was a little disappointing that Sonata wouldn’t help, but Fluttershy supposed she was too traumatized to fight. Either way, she could focus on Rainbow Dash now. Even if Dash had to be far away. She had to believe Dash could fend for herself for a few hours.

Back in the armor, Fluttershy marched up to the door. Sonata came rushing back and floated before Fluttershy.

“Wait! You were really going to let me run away?” Sonata asked.

“Yes?” Fluttershy tilted her head. “Did you want me to stop you?”

“No! Maybe.” Sonata tapped her forehooves together. “Nopony ever… not even when I was a filly was I allowed to just… do what I wanted.”

Fluttershy watched Sonata for a short time, unsure what the banshee wanted anymore.

“Do you want to come with me?” Fluttershy asked. “You know where I’m going.”

“I do know things,” Sonata admitted. “But! If I help you, I’m going to stay at the farthest point in the rear! And if we start losing I’m immediately abandoning you! I’m also leaving if a super-cool doomsday party just happens to be nearby.”

“Thank you.” Fluttershy nodded.

Starlight looked down at her hoof, then in the direction she sent the zebra god flying. The surge of power was incredible. But not enough, never enough.

ZoD and Demon Summoner were both off her list of threats. She could be fairly certain Fluttershy survived but there was little a lone specter could do at this point.

Rainbow Dash and Trixie got away somewhere… likely together. Dash was weak and needed to hide behind others, she wouldn’t have left without Trixie’s protection.

Starlight had hoped Dash could be used as a bargaining chip against Twilight Sparkle, but it seemed like the latter was out of the picture now.

And Flash retreated for now, but she would certainly be back.

The next threat would appear any moment now.

Void Walker appeared behind Starlight, his form solidifying as he walked forward.

“I’ve completed my mission,” said Void with a slight bow of his head. “What is next?”

If she was right about who was next, he wouldn’t be needed here.

“Rainbow Dash and Trixie,” said Starlight. “They went south. Kill them both. I can deal with this threat myself.”

Void Walker phased out of sight.

Starlight watched the horizon. The ship would be landing behind her allies. A lingering pool of magic, ZoD’s magic, drew her concern. He hadn’t simply left. The question was which of the two enemies would reveal themselves first?

The pool of magic activated as Starlight’s next opponent landed on deck.

Despite the mask she wore, Starlight recognized Zecora. How could anypony forget Zecora with how many times she’d been mentioned up until now?

ZoD’s magic burst into action, the zebra taking full advantage of it. Alicorn chains! The magic used by the gods to seal things away.

They wrapped around Zecora’s entire body, trapping her in a standing position with just one foreleg free. But that free foreleg was mirrored and reversed on Starlight, whose leg became bound. A single chain connected them and Starlight could feel most of her resent gains erased, restrained by ZoD’s fading magic.

Starlight looked down at the chain, then over to Zecora. Even with ZoD’s lingering help, it was taking all of the zebra’s strength just to hold her. She had to bind herself to keep Starlight pinned. She wouldn’t be able to do more than buy time, maybe a slight opportunity for another enemy.

Even if Starlight did nothing, this magic would soon fade. But soon could be a long time.

“Starlight!” Lilymoon flew down, ready to make a move.

“Save your strength,” said Starlight. “She’s just stalling. Get Nightglider. Make sure the ship lands properly.”

Lilymoon nodded, leaving just Zecora and Starlight, the former becoming increasingly unnerved at her lack of concern.

“You don’t even have a plan to kill me but came here anyway? Really?”

“I know you have many enemies. Though I know them not, I will do whatever I can to aid them.”

“Please. If every other pony pulled on this chain together, they wouldn’t be able to make me budge,” said Starlight. “But with one pull I!”

Making good on her threat, Starlight pulled a surprised Zecora off her hooves and off into the sky, the two of them falling towards the now-safe ground. This delay wouldn’t last her nearly as long as she would have thought.

But she was right that Starlight had many, many enemies to overcome. And that she would.

Once those that doubted her the most to believe they could stand any chance were crushed… there would be nothing left.

Dash breathed heavily, still amazed she’d managed to pull that off. Flash wasn’t coming back a second time.

Fire surrounded them, but the fighting had cleared out enough trees that they had a ring of relative safety. So much smoke hung over the area that it was hard to breathe, however. A gap in the fire stood straight ahead, where Flash had been thrown with enough force to snuff out the flames like a candle.

When it all sank in, Dash collapsed onto Derpy, grabbing her in a hug.

“Derpy! You did it! Pretending to be knocked out this whole time was brilliant.”

“Heh!” Derpy limply swung back and forth as Dash shook her. “Yeah. Though I’ll be honest, I did blackout for a few minutes.”

“You’re giving her all the credit?” Lightning Dust chuckled at them before flying down. “I was the one who–”

Her eyes winced in pain as she landed, choking on those words. Dash could see why.

The leg she’d used for that punch had shattered. The fur had burned off from it, and her hoof cracked in two. Blood and bruises covered the entire length of her exposed skin. She must have punched so hard that she broke her leg!

Dash shuttered to think what must have happened to Flash Bang.

After something like that, Dash’s main concern was more with the remaining elite soldiers who stayed loyal to Flash Bang. A lot of ponies had seen that fight…

And Dash’s concerns about where Flash’s second in command had gone were soon realized. He came back with reinforcements – ten more heavily armed pegasi. When was this going to end? Dash just wanted to go to sleep!

The captain looked stern at first, ready for action, but also looking for where Flash could have gotten to. With a smirk, Dust gestured to the gap in the flames. And his confidence slowly dissolved as he began to realize what that meant.

Not one to boost morale at the moment, he fell to his haunches, wide-eyed and shivering as he sat there, absolutely stunned that his invincible iron mare had gone down even in a five-on-one fight. The illusion was shattered for many of the ponies behind him, who simply stood there confused, waiting for their paralyzed leader to somehow spin this into something acceptable.

Finally, he dug his forehooves in and forced himself onto all fours.

“This isn’t– it’s not over!” He breathed heavily, too much panic in his voice to reassure any of the ponies behind him. He turned back, desperate for them to give him support. “We outnumber them five to one and all of them are injured! We can– we can still!”

“No! You can’t.” Lightning Dust walked forward on her shattered leg even to give the impression she was less hurt than she was. “Let me make this clear. Flash Bang is gone. Are any of you going to step up to die for whatever’s left of her?”

None of them stepped forward.

Lightning Dust hobbled towards the lieutenant.

“Is it you?” She asked a random soldier who shook his head rapidly and backed away. She turned to another getting the same reaction.

“Equestria needs us to be strong!” He said it but still retreated a step.

“Strong? You? You were too pathetic to disobey your orders and help Flash Bang when it would have mattered,” said Lightning Dust. “And now it’s too late to fight me. Get out of my sight.”

He again turned to his backup, half of whom had already flown off or backed away from his side.

“Th-this isn’t over! I’m sure Flash is.” He looked toward the forest and flew off to find what was left of her.

“I’d better check. To be completely one hundred percent,” said Dust, then turned to the remaining pegasi. “Now would be a good time to run and a terrible time to try anything stupid.”

Dust flew off. The remaining few pegasi either flew off right then or after a few questions decided they’d rather side with Spitfire.

Either way, they had to get everypony out of there now. That one mare who ran away just before the final attack came back. That left them with four able-bodied pegasi to carry everypony off and out of the burning fire. The gorge, still flooded, just before the meeting spot was in sight now.

But after getting flown out, Dash at last allowed herself to pass out. As the other pegasi went into the forest to try and rescue anypony still caught up in the flame, Dash fell asleep next to Derpy.

Dash awoke with the sun directly overhead. That meant noon… so she was out for a good six hours.

The pain in her body was both worse and better. It had become more of a soreness, but one of such intensity she felt paralyzed. Meanwhile, her left wing which hadn’t hurt at all last night was suddenly in horrible pain.

“Why is it harder to move now?!” Dash tried getting off her back but couldn’t. “Guess I’m just stuck here.”

Derpy, who had been asleep next to her, stirred from her protests. That bang on her head had swollen up massively making it hard for her to open her right eye, but she was bandaged. Dash had also been bandaged now that she thought to look. Must have been out dead cold.

She helped Dash sit up and take a look at the situation.

The fire was out, the sun was up, the clouds were gone, and something like three hundred pegasi were here now. At least, Dash was pretty sure they were all pegasi.

“Where did…?” Dash struggled to finish the sentence.

“There was some more fighting after you passed out,” said Derpy. “The air brigades started fighting each other once they heard what happened. But then more of Starlight’s ponies came in so they all scattered. I guess these are the ponies who sided with us. Or at least Spitfire.”

“Where is Spitfire?” Dash tried to get up. Seeing she couldn’t do it on her own, Derpy leaned forward to put Dash’s barrel over her back.

“Fluttershy made it back, too! She’s been hiding across the river,” said Derpy.

Dash could guess why she wasn’t over here. Though Dash could already see Spitfire not far off, still coughing up tar from the inhaled smoke, she could feel trouble brewing in the opposite direction.

“I think we need to head over there first,” said Dash.

The last thing she wanted was another confrontation so soon after waking up. But it seemed like it would be some time before Dash got what she wanted.

Derpy flew her to where they had originally planned to meet up. As feared, Dust was there and had five hooligans for backup, laughing about something. Dust mimed a punch with her now heavily bandaged leg, bragging about this morning.

Dash could see the armor Fluttershy was using, limp. The ghosts had to be underground.

“What are you doing?” Dash asked as they approached.

“Making sure the spooks don’t kill anypony,” one of Dust’s… friends or whatever answered for her.

Before Dash could summon the strength to start lecturing them, Fluttershy came up from the ground. The ponies with Dust got ready to attack.

“Calm down, you ninnies!” Dash scolded them. “Why are you such wusses?”

That was enough for them to back off however slightly, watching carefully instead as Derpy carried Dash over.

“Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy flew out of her hiding spot. “I wanted to come to you right away, but I couldn’t because well.”

She looked over at Dust.

“Is everything alright?”

Fluttershy briefly filled Dash in while Dust became increasingly impatient behind them, putting up with complaints from the others.

“I guess we’re slightly safe for now,” Dash concluded. “I think. Give me a second.”

She turned back to Dust. Heavy bandages now wrapped around that leg she’d punch Flash with, and she wasn’t putting much pressure on it.

“What happened to Flash?” Dash asked. “You were going to… check on her?”

“Not dead.” Dust gave a little shrug. “But I left her somewhere between ‘never going to fight again’ and ‘never going to walk again’. She won’t be in charge of the half that didn’t join us.”

“Join… us?” Dash asked. She looked at Fluttershy once again, then more sternly at Dust. “I think we need to talk about that.”

“Listen, I learned how life works back when I got sent to Juve,” said Dust. “You beat up everypony who pisses you off and you’re a monster. You kill everypony who pisses off the head bitch in charge and you’re a hero. And I guess that’s you. You just tell me who to beat up and I’ll do it. And that’ll make me a ‘good guy’, right?”

“So I’m in charge?” Dash raised a brow.

Dust simply upturned a hoof.

“Not you?”

“Do you have any idea how much I suffer?” Dust asked. “All that boring political garbage they make me go through? I don’t have any plans. I don’t even have a retirement account let alone policies. About things. I just want to fight somepony. Give me somepony to fight.”

Dust stood ready like she expected Dash to sic her on somepony right now.

It still seemed too good to be true. Dash eyed her suspiciously before asking the next, obvious choice.

“Not Spitfire?” Dash asked.

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!” Dust turned her head away very suddenly. Dash could guess the reason it wasn’t Spitfire now. “You should be grateful and say like ‘Oh, thanks for saving me from Flash!’ I did just beat one of the elite four, you know.”

She flicked her hoof at her face, a little ‘compliments please’ gesture.

“I helped,” said Derpy, earning a frown from Dust.

“Sure, the rest of you did a little,” Dust grumbled, then looked to Dash with genuine excitement. “So who’s next?”

“Not Fluttershy,” Dash said first. “Not any ghost or… not anypony unless I specifically say otherwise.”

Lightning Dust was already rolling her eyes and Dash felt as though she’d just gained the loyalty of a swarm of angry bees. She had to be more careful than Flash was.

“Like I said, you’re in charge. For now,” said Dust. “That said, I don’t like ghosts. And I never will.”

“You could try talking to one.”

Dash held a hoof out to either of the ponies. Fluttershy seemed just as apprehensive as Dust but managed to not cringe at least.

“No.” Dust took off into the air, landing some distance away. Her orbiters quickly followed.

“Er, sorry Fluttershy,” Dash apologized. “There’s some stuff I gotta take care of. I’ll be back soon.”

Fluttershy nodded.

Back on Derpy’s back, they gave chase to Dust who had flown deep into the crowd of ponies.

So Dust wasn’t completely devoid of strategizing like she’d just claimed. She made sure to land near Spitfire so Dash was sure to get wrapped up in that instead.

Spitfire looked in pretty good shape. She had a huge jug of water she constantly drank to help get rid of the ash in her throat but could walk fine. The same couldn’t be said for Fleetfoot, covered head to hoof in bandages and out cold in a little tent.

“Rainbow Dash!” Spitfire coughed up some tar, leaving a multitude of other ponies to crowd around her.

A small army surrounded Dash.

“Did you beat Flash or was it just Lightning Dust?”

“Can you even fight? You’re at least like… as strong as Spitfire, right?”

“Are you a fraud or not? Was Silverstorm really Twilight Sparkle?”

“Do you have any kind of plan?”

“I want the truth! I want to hear it from you!”

“Listen!” Dash called out to everypony. “Yes. What Lightning Dust said was true. I was never able to fight. I’m… I was just tricking all of you into thinking that I could. Twilight did almost all of the work. And Silverstorm was Twilight.”

Some of them left immediately. Some looked suddenly more afraid. All of them murmured at least.

“But none of that matters!” Dash boldly announced before things could get even worse.

“How can that not matter?!” One pony stepped forward to challenge her right away. “We can’t do anything unless we have strong ponies! And if you’re just a fraud then what do we have?”

“We have strong ponies.” Dash pointed to her challenger. “We have you. We have Lightning Dust. We have Spitfire and – and look at all of you!”

She’d calmed the crowd for a moment.

“I can’t stand but… the fight with Flash Bang made me realize something.” Dash put a hoof on her heart. “I can… I can gather you all together. I can get all the strong and smart and every type of pony together. Maybe I have to lead from the back but I can lead all of you! If you let me, this is just the start. I’ll gather the biggest army you’ve ever seen! I did do my part to take down Flash and witches and all the rest. Will the rest of you do the same?”

Some of them looked ready, but not all.

“I can’t possibly fight Starlight!” One complained. “Or any of them! Not if you’re not even as strong as a witch!”

“Do you think I can beat her?!” Dash shot back. “I don’t know if I’ll even be able to walk straight when the final battle comes. I’m not asking any of you to do this on your own because I know I can’t either. Of all the ponies here, I’m the least able to do this on my own. But I am going to do my part and… I’m asking the rest of you to do the same.”

“I’m not afraid!” Dust stepped over to Rainbow Dash and lifted her hoof. “I’ll stand with Rainbow Dash! If she can stand strong then so can I!”

A small number of ponies mimicked her cheer, then a small minority, and soon the stragglers were peer-pressured into the same.

Dash had their attention. Again, for now.

She turned next to Spitfire.

“I’d like to pretend half of the ponies joined our side of this sub-civil war,” said Spitfire. “But only a minority defected. I’m doing what I can to get more but we don’t have the forces to do much. Not unless… unless you manage to pull something off.”

So Dash was in charge now. Even Spitfire implicitly accepted it.

She swallowed, then nodded.

Dash had to understand them. These ponies had sided with Flash originally. They weren’t the most hardcore followers, but they had followed. The fact that the majority of

those ponies stayed the course served to remind Dash that just defeating a few ponies wouldn’t change anything.

And she recalled the problem of what she’d do once the fighting was over.

“Alright,” said Dash. “I know where we’re going next.”

The others listened with attention.

“We’re going to bail Rarity out, defeat the remains of the Bloodstorm Cartel, and join our forces with her and Oaken Field,” said Dash.

Everypony, even Spitfire, was taken aback by that decision. There were some dissatisfied mutterings all around her.

“I’m not sure if that’s the most strategic…” Spitfire trailed off, not even feeling the need to fully elaborate.

“Yeah. Dust added. “You know who we are, right? We don’t exactly get along with… that sort. You don’t want to go looking for Twilight? She’d be more useful than all of them combined.”

Dash did. But not for the reasons Dust wanted.

“That’s exactly why we’re joining up with them,” said Dash. “If I can’t get you to fight alongside them then this is all for nothing. It doesn’t matter how many monsters I slay or ponies like Flash I knockdown. What matters is how many minds I can change.”

There were a lot of ponies watching Dash now, and she addressed all of them at once, not just Dust.

“I’m not going to let you hate anypony,” said Dash. “I’m going to make you see. And if I can change you… I can change the world.”

None of them were really on board with the plan. If they had been, Dash wouldn’t have any work ahead of her. But they didn’t resist. They were going to give her a shot.

“I dunno,” said Dust. “But finishing off the cartel should be interesting.”

This was it.

Dash was truly in the lead, at the furthest point in the front. All of this, everything she’d been through… it had bought her this one shot.

Outer Realms

“Twilight!”

Pinkie bounded to Twilight’s side to inspect the grievous wound on Twilight’s barrel where the black arrow struck. It had the appearance more of a massive ulcer than a stab wound. It was the worst injury to have in the worst place to be injured.

Twilight did her best to close the wound, mostly by burning it. Pinkie was unconvinced until Twilight stood, trying to give the impression she could shrug off even that.

But in truth, she would be nearly helpless here, in this condition.

“Where are we?” Pinkie asked. “Inside the mirror?”

They were once again on the mountain range overlooking Paradise Island. But a memory of it, before Twilight had destroyed it and most of the mountain range both.

It seemed so close to the real thing, only too silent and still. As Pinkie and Twilight looked out to the clear ocean they saw neither wind nor wave. Nothing gave the slightest appearance of movement, nor did the sun give any warmth.

“Yes, but also the outer realm,” said Twilight. “Inside the mirror… inside the outer realm.”

“It doesn’t look like we went anywhere,” said Pinkie. “Are you sure this is the outer realm? I don’t get what all these mad scientists are complaining about. It’s not so bad here.”

“We wouldn’t be able to perceive the actual outer realm,” said Twilight. “Not without dying, anyway. We’re staring into the mirror. This is our reflection.”

“I don’t see me.” Pinkie squinted.

“It doesn’t reflect your physical appearance,” Twilight explained. “Not in the outer realm, anyway. It constructs a world that is a reflection of ourselves. This place is our most recent memory so we see here. Get it?”

Pinkie tilted her head.

“Just remember this: The mirror is far from a perfect defense,” said Twilight. “You might see other things. Things that aren’t a reflection of yourself. Looking at anything that isn’t yourself in some sense will quickly become fatal.”

“Anything that’s not a reflection of me is off-limits,” said Pinkie. “Got it! But uh. How do we get back?”

Twilight frowned and looked out into the reflection of an ocean.

“That… I’m not sure. But we’re not gods so returning won’t be nearly as hard for us as it would be for them. There should be entities here that may have the power to return us. If we’re lucky we might run into the Darklord or the element of Laughter. Both seem at least somewhat sympathetic to us.”

“And what about Discord? Shouldn’t we…. You know?” Pinkie slit a hoof across her neck. “While we’re here?”

That was part of Twilight’s original plan. Get rid of the curse of undeath and make everyone love her. Would that be enough to salvage her reputation, though? Twilight wasn’t even sure how badly it’d been damaged. Certainly, none of the ponies she cared about would…

Then she remembered.

“That was… Rainbow Dash’s plan,” Twilight said solemnly.

“Uh.” Pinkie craned her neck around to look at Twilight’s growing tears. “I know you two just had a fight, but this is something we should do either way. Zombie apocalypse, remember?”

“It’s not that.” Twilight shook her head to stave off the tears. “I just. I didn’t realize what she was thinking until now.”

Rainbow Dash wanted to get rid of the witches and end the curse of undeath so that everypony would love them. That was how she thought, wasn’t it? Twilight didn’t know her well enough to notice it back then. She hadn’t given thought to it much until just now.

“I thought Rainbow Dash was like me.” Twilight closed her eyes and hugged herself. “That as long as she had somepony who wouldn’t leave her she’d be happy. I wanted somepony who would stay by my side no matter what so when Rainbow Dash hesitated I… I…”

“Twilight, she doesn’t hate you,” said Pinkie. “I know the two of you can–”

“That’s not it at all! I get it now… Rainbow Dash. She can’t feel like somepony cares about her unless she does something to earn it. She didn’t feel like…”

Twilight shook her head. She’d failed to understand her best friend. More than anything, that was her problem.

“I’m not going to make that mistake again!” Twilight resolved. “Even if she rejects me again, I don’t care. I won’t let her feel like that. And I won’t run away from my mistakes again.”

“So are we going after Discord?” Pinkie asked.

“Yes… I don’t care what the public thinks of me. I’ll figure something out no matter what. But I still have to end this curse either way. This is my responsibility.”

“But wasn’t it Flash who–”

“No. Pinkie. I’m not making any more excuses. I’ll… I’ll face Discord and then I’ll face Rainbow Dash.”

“Right!” Pinkie nodded with determination. “And you have a plan for that, yeah?”

“I did think about our confrontation for years. Decades, how it’d go a second time. I knew I’d be able to easily destroy him if I had two objects. This mirror… and that hammer I mentioned a long time ago. But I don’t have the latter.”

“I did get the hammer, remember?” Pinkie stuck out her forelegs and flicked her hooves. “Pinball tournament!”

“Wait! You have it?”

“Um.” Pinkie looked over her shoulder. “Well, it’s back at my house.”

Twilight rubbed her temple, braced herself, and then started walking toward the ocean.

“Well that makes things a bit more complicated.” Twilight sighed. “I’ll just have to kill him the hard way.”

“Are we a hundred percent sure we have to kill him, by the way?” Pinkie asked. “I never met him and it’s been centuries since you did. So…”

“Yes, Pinkie.” Twilight turned back. “I should have put him down back then. I was just too much of a coward, too afraid of change to take that action. This is a mercy kill, trust me. It’s what he would have wanted.”

This was it, then. Time to face the darkest specter of her past.

“We’re going to start moving. Just keep walking and remember what I told you.”

“Only my reflection. Got it.” Pinkie nodded.”

Twilight turned the mirror, sending them into the unknown.

It was a snowy forest. Everything looked normal enough. Twilight could look up and see a cloudy sky. One she knew wasn’t there.

“Okay.” Pinkie looked around. “I’m not a snowy field, but. Oo!”

Pinkie bounded through the snow, leaving small craters with each bounce, then down a hill and off to the edge of a frozen lake.

“I remember this place!” Pinkie pointed excitedly at the lake. “And there’s the sign!”

Twilight came behind slower, finding the sign in question. Plane, wooden, reading ‘The nice.’

“This is where I fell into the water.” Pinkie hovered her hoof over the view. “Right about… there! Hm. But I don’t feel particularly traumatized about seeing this.”

“Should you?” Twilight asked. “Were you before?”

“Not really! It’s just the way you were talking before I thought I’d get to look deep into my inner psyche, face my darkest fears, have an epiphany. That sort of thing?”

“I don’t think the mirror reflects any part of you in particular,” said Twilight. “But I wasn’t the one who created it so I don’t know all of its properties.”

The ice approximately where Pinkie pointed, where she had fallen in, cracked open as though an invisible filly jumped on it. But the water beneath was black, a void that slowly grew, breaking up ever more of the ice.

“Ooh! There it is!” Pinkie faced it with excitement. “There’s the trauma! I’m ready!”

Pinkie spread her forelegs wide, ready to embrace the lesson but Twilight jerked her away before she could make a mistake.

“No! That wasn’t there the first time,” Twilight warned. “That’s not you. Get it?”

“Uh.” Pinkie watched as the void bulged upward, then twisted about as it took on the shape of an eye. She nodded and averted her gaze after that. “Got it.”

“Just keep walking.” Twilight moved with Pinkie in tow, eyes locked on the horizon. “Don’t pay any attention to it.”

They started plowing their way through the snow a little faster than before. On the peripheral, Twilight could see that thing following them taking shape like black icicles on the trees, like eyes bubbling up from the snow. She ignored it harder and walked a bit faster and that seemed enough to keep it away for now. But that couldn’t possibly last forever.

Anything in this place was too dangerous to risk confrontation with.

“Twilight, I don’t think I ever actually went this far into the forest,” Pinkie admitted as the trees began to repeat. They were soon moving down an endless hall of identical trees.

And their follower was taking full advantage of the edges of Pinkie’s memories. The trees began to sway in their direction. Eyes began to appear ever more directly in front of them. It wouldn’t be long.

“Now what?” Pinkie asked.

That thing was too close. Twilight adjusted the mirror. More land appeared. They were at a sort of intersection, three areas jarringly mashed together with no transition between them. One stood out, deeply unlike the other two.

The first was Twilight’s home. Her original treehouse in the forest by the river. The second was some apartment building on the street of a city. The odd one out…

It was like more forest. Only the trees were made from bones that moved in and out as though they were breathing and eyeballs hanging down from the branches on yellow vines. Both looked away quickly from that place.

“Er. I remember Filthy Riche’s house but I’ve never been there.” Pinkie pointed at the bizarre forest without looking. “Have you?”

“Follow me.” Twilight swiftly pulled Pinkie forward, to her home, to the only one she was certain to be safe.

Once through, the façade of sky reappeared and it seemed as though they were in a normal world again. Her house, though just an illusion, felt so safe. Twilight opened her door and everything was exactly how she remembered it. Even her old hat was here, hanging next to her cauldron.

Items piled high in cluttered, but organized stashes. It was her house from just before she met Dash as there wasn’t enough room on the couch for Dash to sleep on yet, a pile of notebooks on the left cushion and on the right…

Smarty Pants.

Twilight burned the doll with a quick spell, letting out a sigh of relief as it incinerated without a fuss. In her memory, it was just a doll. Nor did their stalker appear to follow.

“What was that weird place?” Pinkie asked.

“Almost certainly a trick,” said Twilight. “I’d bet whatever saw us was trying to lure us in.”

“It tried to lure us with an eyeball forest?” Pinkie asked. “Wasn’t that a little obvious for a being of unimaginable power?”

“Given where we are, that may be the most ‘normal’ thing it could conceive of,” said Twilight, earning a frown from Pinkie. “The next thing we run into might know us better. We can’t go anywhere that you haven’t been before.”

“Or you,” Pinkie added.

“Well.” Twilight put on her hat, happy to have that comfort again. Whatever happened from here out she’d at least be able to wear her hat openly. “I mostly only have the one place to remember. This is mostly on you.”

An idea crossed Twilight’s mind and she began sifting through her cupboards, throwing various reagents into her saddlebag.

“Are we staying here?” Pinkie asked. “You said we should keep going.”

“Yes, but I want to test something first,” said Twilight. “As I said, I never explored any specifics about this mirror. If there are actual copies of magical items from my house that I can bring with us, that would be extremely useful.”

Pinkie considered, but couldn’t object to the plan. Twilight found one of the objects she was looking for soon enough – that healing salve. The same one she used on Rainbow Dash during their second encounter was back on the shelf.

She applied it to her wound and it did close almost completely. At least Twilight got that lucky. Much longer with that and she risked collapse. Though she was still exhausted and far from a hundred percent.

“Just wait a minute. But if you see anything out of place, let me know. Running away takes priority.”

“I’m gonna see if I can conjure Bottle Cap’s Play Place next.” Pinkie closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “Nothing could ever hurt me there! If I just focus hard enough…”

Having no clue if that would work, Twilight left her to it.

Sadly, Twilight wasn’t nearly able to get half of what she would have wanted before they were interrupted.

Hoof steps on the wood upstairs. Both ponies stopped their activity and backed away toward the door.

At first, she was ready to bolt no matter what came down those stairs. Yet, seeing it made her pause and wonder if it was part of her reflection or not.

Indeed it was Twilight reflected. But it wasn’t her current self, an actual reflection. It was how she had looked back then, in this memory.

The crooked mane, the pale fur, the bags under her eyes, her body withered and yet more muscular than it was now, hardly an ounce of fat on her body. And that expression, tired and yet completely focused and alive and wild with power. If anything, too alive, jittering slightly as it trotted toward Twilight, smiling.

How she’d been before Rainbow Dash appeared.

Twilight looked down at herself. Had she changed that much? Had she looked like this? True, she never had to worry about what others thought of her appearance until recently. A slight self-consciousness had developed since then.

“Erm. Is that ‘you’? It looks like you?” Pinkie glanced back and forth between them.

“Of course I’m you, Twilight.” The effigy couldn’t quite seem to hold still. Whenever it wasn’t fidgeting its hooves, it was looking around rapidly with its eyes or licking its lips or flicking its ears about as though talking in ear-semaphore. “I’m just who you could have been by now if you’d tried just a little bit harder, you know? And not have aborted the mission when it was already 99.9% complete? Hm?”

She jabbed Twilight’s side.

“I mean just look at how fat and gross you got. What’s up with that stupid haircut? Huh?” She tilted her head and laughed far too awkwardly. “Twilight.”

“Fat? I still feel you’re a little too skinny,” Pinkie commented. And Twilight was technically below the body fat percentage that was considered ‘healthy’… just not nearly what this pony was.

Still smiling, but her eye twitching, the other Twilight turned to Pinkie.

“You know.” She suddenly snapped back to Twilight. “I can get you out of here. And I’ll kill Discord or whatever. There’s just one small price.”

“I think we should leave, Pinkie.” Twilight grabbed her friend and started walking toward the door. “I know who this is.”

They moved outside, the other Twilight following them.

“Where are you going?” She asked. “This is like trying to walk away from liking the taste of chocolate. You have to accept that I’m part of you eventually. How do you think I found you instantly?”

Trying her best to ignore it, Twilight adjusted the mirror and a crossroads appeared again.

“Bottle Cap’s Play Palace!” Pinkie pointed to the center path, a large room with bright-colored furniture, with gusto. The left was unfamiliar… the right was another copy of Twilight’s house. Center it was.

Humming a little, the other Twilight trotted past her, then pounced on Twilight far too fast for her to react to. She pinned Twilight on her back, pressing Twilight’s forelegs down with her hooves.

Twilight was still recovering from her battle but even still, this strength and speed was too much. She couldn’t throw the other Twilight off.

“You see that? I’m only using the strength you had about a year ago.” It licked its lips. “Did you think lounging on the couch eating potato chips for a year was a good idea? You’re declining fast, Twilight. I wonder if there’s a way to just only get stronger, huh?”

Pinkie lifted a hoof, about to use psychokinesis to try and pull it off.

“Pinkie, no!” Twilight warned her just in time. “Don’t attack it under any circumstance!”

It smiled again and pressed Twilight’s forelegs down just ever so slightly, slowly ramping up the pressure, getting close to the point Twilight’s legs would snap.

No way Twilight could have gotten out from under it alone. But Pinkie grabbed Twilight and pulled with her telekinesis. Pulling together, they were just enough to tear Twilight out from the other’s grasp and go rolling off into Bottle Cap’s Play Place.

Her doppelganger kept its head down as it trotted along the edge of the barrier.

“You’re not going to get away from me, Twilight! I’m always with you.”

She laughed, a little unhinged, before the path to Twilight’s house gave way to a solid wall.

“Let’s only go to places you’ve been,” Twilight suggested. “I don’t think it can come into your memories.”

What Twilight originally thought to be odd furniture was webs of garishly colored tunnels, swimming pools filled with large balls, nets, and a whole jumble of other mish-mash elements. Frankly, Twilight had no clue what she was looking at. It was like some bizarre otherworldly maze.

“I think maybe we made a mistake,” said Twilight. “This jumbled-up thing has to be another outer realm distortion.”

“Don’t worry.” Pinkie looked back as she excitedly went up to the distortion. “It’s supposed to look like this!”

“It is?” Twilight tilted her head as Pinkie jumped into the swimming pool of balls.

“See, if anything else scary shows up we can hide in the ball pit.” Pinkie sunk her head under the balls.

“The ball pit?” Twilight walked up to the edge of it. Why not the ball pool?

She put her hoof in, before shaking her head, deciding against it.

“What was that other you?” Pinkie asked.

“I’m almost positive that was the element of magic,” said Twilight. “With no way of seeing where we actually are, we can’t tell how safe we are from it in here.”

“So do we keep going or hide here?” Pinkie asked.

Both options were dangerous. But the quick appearance of Magic gave Twilight one idea.

“If the element of magic found me immediately… perhaps Laughter would be able to find you?” Twilight suggested. “We both seem equally connected. And if I’m not mistaken, it should exist here in some capacity.”

“I heard that thing isn’t exactly nice, either.”

“Perhaps. But it hasn’t been actively trying to ruin your life and psychologically manipulating you for centuries,” said Twilight. “Just how do we get it to come over here?”

Twilight tapped her hoof on the edge of the pit. One idea came to mind, but she didn’t like it.

Laughter hated Twilight and refused to show itself in front of anypony it disliked. Their only chance for it to reveal itself would be if Pinkie were alone. With just one mirror, that would necessitate either Twilight sacrificing herself or asking Pinkie to essentially jump off a cliff hoping Laughter would rescue her. An uncertain proposition.

Was there some other way for them to split up and both live?

Twilight swallowed hard at the one plan that came to mind.

“Pinkie. I think we need to split up if we’re going to find Laughter,” said Twilight.

“But we only have one mirror!”

“You’ll take it. I think if we go back to one of my memories… I might survive too. Just trust me.”

“I do.” Pinkie jumped out of the ball pit. “But do we have time to do whack a mole just once? I never got them all as a foal and that’ll be a pretty good last achievement if we’re about to die.”

Pinkie’s hoof hovered towards some odd machine before deflating. The cabinet had begun to writhe as though made of worms, parts of it sloughing off and crawling toward them. There was no way to know if this was the same entity as before.

“Never mind! These things don’t miss a beat.”

They turned to run toward the door. Adjusting the mirror, Twilight made the view change to her old home once again. And not a moment too soon.

Twilight felt something squirming under her hoof. The entire floor writhed and pulsated now. They had to get away right now!

The two charged through the door recklessly.

And the wind got knocked out of Twilight immediately. Her and Pinkie went tumbling in opposite directions.

By the time Twilight even opened her eyes, she once again saw Magic, standing on the ground with one hoof held high toward Twilight. Some invisible force suspended Twilight in air, though she couldn’t even tell if it was magical or psychic.

There was no use fighting against this thing, least of all in her present condition. All Twilight could do was wince in her grip.

“Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing,” said Magic. “My annoying sister won’t appear to one who has given in to despair.”

Her horn glowed and a dark cloud enveloped Pinkie Pie. Black tendrils floated up above her as her mane deflated and her colors desaturated to grey. All expression left her as well until Pinkie collapsed onto her belly, practically drooling through her blankness.

“There!” Magic turned back to Twilight, victorious. “How is your plan going to work now, exactly?”

Twilight really had no idea. But she had even less idea what do without the plan. Though she couldn’t see how it could work still…

“Pinkie! Take the mirror!” Twilight closed her eyes and threw the mirror at Pinkie just before she vanished from sight.

There’d be no way to contact her again. None Twilight could think of. But she bought her friend as much time as possible. Her only hope now was…

Magic watched Twilight from above with an immutable frown as the world began to dissolve. Without that, exposed to the actual outer realm, Twilight would die in seconds.

With no choice but to act on the bluff, Magic came down to earth, next to Twilight. Her horn glowed brightly and the slowly dissolving view stabilized. Not all of Twilight’s home remained but just enough to take a few steps in any direction, just enough to see the very façade of the tree. Beyond that a wall of purple energy kept Twilight and Magic insulated, safe, but trapped together.

Magic looked once more at Twilight before dropping her panting to the ground, and smiled triumphantly at the act.

“Oh, I see! So you do trust me.” Her face spasmed a little aa she held up her free hoof. In it materialized a crown of gold, one with an enormous gemstone in the shape of Twilight’s cutie mark as its centerpiece. “If you trust me, then put on this crown. You have no idea how alive I can keep you. Together, we could be beyond anything you can imagine. We could kill all the gods and bring the heavens crashing down around us.”

As if there was any doubt that this was the element of Magic. The true Magic, that was. Not just that fragment from before. Were they the same person? The personalities didn’t align so well.

At any rate, it didn’t seem Magic could force her to wear the crown. Otherwise, she would have just put it on already.

“Kill the gods?” Twilight asked, not quite ready to stand again. “What are you talking about?”

“You know me. My only desire is for ever greater power. The knowledge that the Queen of Light and so many others are beyond me? It is all so painful!” Magic winced and shook off that pain. “But you know my ability is the greatest of them all, Twilight. Unlimited potential.

“You were right on the edge of what is possible for a pony. You know you would be unable to get any stronger without becoming something more, didn’t you? And you know that you’ve regressed since then. Doesn’t that seem unfair? You put in sixteen-hour days for centuries only to lose all that progress after just a year off. Well once you accept me that no longer happens. You can’t deteriorate like that. And you’ll have no limits. Every single day you try, you will get stronger forever. Until we reach the absolute precipice of what is obtainable! Total omnipotence.”

Of course Twilight remembered all that. Magic wasn’t wrong about anything she just said. Twilight knew her progression had been slowing down for years. Only now, however, looking into a dark reflection of her past, was she willing to see that some of her strength had faded as well.

“Yes, I know how you work,” said Twilight.

She got to her hooves, Magic allowing her this dignity for now.

“I know who you are. What you’ve done. You killed the last pony who wielded you. You killed Starswirl!”

“I hardly killed him. You were the one talking about murdering your master just now, weren’t you?”

“He’s dead,” Twilight insisted.

“Then what are you doing here? Why is his final curse still active?”

She wasn’t going to accept that kind of distinction.

“But hey, if that’s what you wanna do.” Magic tilted her head, calm again for a moment. “Accept my gift. It will take us all of eleven seconds to destroy him. We can kill all of your enemies while we’re at it.”

Twilight took the crown and threw it aside.

“What else did you do?” Twilight’s face darkened. “You left that thing in my home to psychologically manipulate me for years. Is that even the end of it?”

“Of course I did more than that,” Magic admitted with a smile, not born of pride but of total abandon. “Oh, I had plans going all the way back. Why was Flash Sentry the one who showed up, hm? You don’t still think the vast majority of ponies were as selfish as him, do you?”

“Wait.” Twilight froze. “You’re not saying you…”

“I did! I knew the time was coming for me to ascend. I searched for a pony to screw with your little head.” Magic was growing giddy. “I brought him in knowing exactly what would happen. I orchestrated the whole thing and pulled all your little strings. And I did it all to traumatize you. To make you too scared to give ponies another chance. Just so you wouldn’t waste your time and get all fat and gross like this.”

“You!” Twilight stepped forward. It wasn’t even hiding it! This thing had been crueler to Twilight than anyone else and it just spat that out with no justification! While asking her a favor?! What was it even thinking?! “How dare you play with my life like this?!”

Another step forward proved too much. Magic merely held her hoof out and Twilight was back on the floor, panting on her side while the element looked down at her completely neutral.

And then she smiled again.

“And the best part is, it doesn’t even matter!” Magic knelt down to stroke Twilight’s mane, smiling at Twilight’s restrained rage. “It doesn’t matter how mad you get at me, so go ahead and make your little angry face, Twilight.”

“And you expect me to help you?!” Twilight spat. “What do you even need me for? You’re already stronger than me. You don’t seem to value friendship or anything like that. Why not just go do your thing and leave me alone? Go kill the Queen of Light! I’m not stopping you.”

“Do you not get the situation I’m in? I don’t care about anything but gaining power.” Magic’s face contorted and fidgeted as she slowly turned up her empty forehooves looking back and forth between the two with contempt. “So what happens when I get it? I know. If I become all-powerful the answer is: Nothing.”

Magic slammed both hooves on the ground.

“I could become as powerful as possible but I’d never do anything with it because there’s absolutely nothing I want. After all this time, I can’t even think of a single thing to do with infinite power! I would merely sit and be content forever. I’d be omnipotent but with no desire to act on it?”

Magic shook her head violently.

“Twilight, what is the difference between one totally powerless and one who never uses their power? I’d be no different than the most worthless slime in the end! It would all come to nothing. Achieving my goal means absolute disaster for me. It isn’t fair! You complain about what happened to you, but my life is a thousand times more tragic than yours!”

Magic looked at Twilight, eyes too wide, as she panted as that of all things left her winded.

“I see.” Twilight closed her eyes. “So if I let you become part of me, you’d gain my ability to have other desires.”

“Yes!” Magic rushed over to Twilight’s side, seizing on that understanding. “I don’t care what you do with my power as long as you do something with it. Anything! You are the only one I can accept. You get the implication of that, don’t you?”

She pulled Twilight, completely stiff, in closer.

“It doesn’t matter how evil you think I am because once I am at last satisfied I will have no further will of my own. It will be you completely in control of us with no influence from me.” Magic’s face lit up, elated at her perfect logic. “So that’s why you’ll accept my gift no matter what I’m like.”

Twilight could see her reasoning, but she’d never accept it no matter how sound it might seem.

“And will we instantly achieve absolute power?” Twilight shook her head. “What would you make me do up until then? Act as callous as you did to me?”

“How is that relevant? Who knows what kind of power we may have by then? Perhaps you could go back in time. Bring back the dead. Recreate the universe in your own image. Wish a perfect friend into existence– one who won’t reject you. Anything you do on the way won’t matter in the end. You will be a god. The God. With the ability to reverse it all tenfold.”

“But would I?” Twilight asked. “I couldn’t possibly be the same person by then.”

“If you have infinite power you can make yourself care about mud pies and imbeciles again.” Magic gritted her teeth like she was explaining something overly simple to such an imbecile.

“Not if I didn’t want to. I saw what you did to Starswirl. Can you really say he’s the same pony?”

“Oh. That was mostly because of the mental trauma from our split,” said Magic. “I was never perfectly compatible with him and was planning on getting rid of him the whole time. Only you. No such issue will occur with us. All you need is just a little bit of patience. I don’t know how long it will take but you will get there.”

Once again, Magic summoned the crown before Twilight only for it to be knocked aside even faster this time. Magic’s face twisted and turned into an awkward frown.

“Why do you think I would ever accept you?!” Twilight asked.

“Because you would have!” Magic shoved Twilight back to the ground. “Don’t lie to me. I had everything set up perfectly! You were noticing your approach to the pinnacle of mortal might and you would have accepted my offer once Starlight and Faith emerged to challenge you. Everything was set up so perfectly.”

Twilight slowly looked toward the ground. Magic wasn’t wrong in that. Like her, there was little else Twilight cared about back then.

“I changed since then.” Twilight stood.

“Yeah, I noticed.” Magic rolled her eyes. “You say that like it’s a good thing. Fat. Stupid. Pig.”

“It is a good thing!”

Magic’s face contorted with the most genuine anger and offense Twilight had yet seen. She expected another blow but it was restrained.

“Oh. Oh, yes. It’s a good thing you’ve become so stupid you think Rainbow Dash is worth more than literal omnipotence.” Magic’s breath became more labored. “I mean, are you even a lesbian, Twilight? I really can’t tell. Have you thought this through? You’re giving up everything, an infinite number of other ponies, other Rainbow Dashes even, because of some worthless–”

“She’s not worthless!” Twilight interrupted. “She’s the one who upended your plan, wasn’t she? She was the one who rescued me from you. And you know what? None of that even matters. I love Rainbow Dash and that’s all there is to it. I don’t care if you don’t understand.”

“And Rainbow Dash rejected you.” Magic laughed. “She doesn’t want to stay with you forever. I’m the only one who will give you what you want– a companion who will never leave you.”

And that was the first argument that got to Twilight. Thinking back to Dash, a pit formed in Twilight’s gut.

“I know you, Twilight. Because I created you just as you created me. The two of us are already one. We’re the only ones for each other.”

Magic held out her hoof. And though Twilight wanted what she offered more than anything, she wasn’t the least bit tempted.

“I don’t want you,” said Twilight. “Rainbow Dash is the only one that I want. Maybe… maybe I don’t understand our relationship but I will.”

Magic nearly bit her tongue off.

“What? Because it makes you feel nice?” Magic turned her nose up in disgust. “Well she won’t be a source of your perverse self-gratification any longer. She will die soon and you’ll wish to never feel anything again! You’ll wish you had never met her. Why wait for the scourge to strike you? I can free you of those feelings.”

“That’s still better than anything you could offer me. Even if I never see her again, the time I spent was worth it. You’ll never get me to agree with this. And I know you won’t let me die but something else has to find us here eventually.”

“Very well. I see protecting you from this pitfall for centuries wasn’t enough for you. Then I’ll remove your attachments manually. Smarty Pants… that tiny fragment of myself in the real world. That is all I need to undo this curse you’ve placed yourself under. Let’s see how well they do without you.”

Science Seven

And for a second it looked like Rarity really was going to hold the castle. Having a witch, not even a master, on your side made that much of a difference.

But sadly, there was one thing a witch in your corner would never top. Namely: Having two witches.

An elderly pony with a small, pink filly in tow trotted past the cage. Both of them had spellbooks at their side. Batton Pass, that bat pony who was Screwball’s second in command led the two down to the dungeon where Rarity was kept as if giving them visitor rights. The elder, Auntie Eclipse was a figure Rarity had heard many whispers of growing up but was the most secluded of the witches overall.

And she was only one of the two witches that suddenly appeared at the worst possible moment, just when the battle was turning in Rarity’s favor!

Sunset was forced to retreat. Everypony on her side was either captured or scattered to the winds. The only consonance Rarity could give herself was that Sweetie Belle had escaped, fleeing to safety. At the last moment, she’d thrust Saccharine and her sister out of the castle. With Saccharine by her side, Sweetie Belle just might persist.

But Rarity…

She found herself a prisoner in her own dungeon. One that had suddenly gone from unused to overly crowded. Nopony important from Blueblood to Coco managed to escape. All of them were locked in this dank place.

“Why do you even have a dungeon?” Coco asked.

“It came with the castle,” said Rarity.

Somewhere deep on the list of Rarity’s problems was that she never actually found the key to these cages, either. Making one had always been somewhere on her to-do list but never something she got around to. There was no opening the gate save blowing it off its hinges.

“Well, don’t you have some secret… thing hidden under your castle?” Coco asked. “Like um! An emergency robot buried under the floorboards? Or a self-destruct switch?”

Rarity flicked her eyes from Coco to the guard looking directly at them when the question was asked. She made eye contact with their jailor when she gave her nonplussed answer.

“No.”

Though actually yes. Just nothing relevant to the moment. Nothing that could help them against even one of the two witches.

“Wasn’t there a central robot among them?” Eclipse asked.

“I have ponies looking,” said Batton Pass, keeping an eye on Rarity and not wanting to say such things in front of her. Though it seemed immaterial to Eclipse.

Instead, Eclipse smiled however slightly and turned to Rarity.

“You have some manner of… networking technology bound up in that Filly, do you not?” She asked. “That would be very useful–”

“You think I’m going to help you?!”

Eclipse merely kept a hoof raised slightly until Rarity finished.

“You may not like it, but I am the best bet at destroying the ghost of Crater Cemetery,” she continued. “The Bloodstorm Cartel has made the preparations to cast the azoth spell against her. That is why I’m here, working with them temporarily. I alone possess the magical skill to be the conduit. But if there’s anything you can do to help… well, the fate of the world does depend on this.”

“Even in a cage, no, even facing death I will not be desperate enough to help the likes of you,” Rarity scoffed. “To even consider throwing my sister to the wolves like that for one second! Spare me. We hardly need you to save the world either way.”

“I see you haven’t gotten the news yet. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be saying such hopeful things.” Her smile became sincere. “Twilight Sparkle is dead. I killed her myself. Any chances you had of overcoming me died with her.”

Rarity’s heart stopped and she looked on at Eclipse frozen, unable to make a move. She was absolutely correct that this news left her without a move to make. Her body knew it.

“Rarity.” Coco turned to her with trembling eyes.

That couldn’t be true, could it? Without Twilight what hope did they have? There had to be something! Even if it wasn’t true some fleeting hope they could hold onto.

Rarity looked down at Eclipse’s spellbook and it came to her.

“You’re lying. If she’s dead,” said Rarity, “then why don’t you have her spellbook? It’s the most powerful of them all. Surely a pony like you wouldn’t have left that opportunity on the table.”

“My methods destroyed both,” Eclipse didn’t miss a beat. “Sadly.”

But it wasn’t enough. She wasn’t sad enough to have missed out on that enormous boon. That settled it in Rarity’s mind. Eclipse at the least wasn’t sure if Twilight was dead.

Either way, she couldn’t hesitate either.

“You can say you killed Twilight all you want, but until you give me some proof, her spellbook, I won’t believe it!” Rarity stood firm, hoping the others, destitute as they were, wouldn’t believe it either.

“And if not?” Eclipse asked. “Who is coming to save you? Sunset Shimmer has no reason to care about you any longer. Moondancer will side with them once the wind starts blowing the other way. Pinkie is dead. I’m hardly afraid of a lone specter…”

“Rainbow Dash,” Rarity blurted it out without even thinking. “You haven’t said anything about her.

“Rainbow Dash?” Batton Pass’s face contorted into an amused grin while Eclipse remained far more reserved. “Didn’t she already run away? You’re telling me she’s going to–”

That annoying snake pony came up behind Batton Pass just then. Rarity's only comfort was he didn’t seem to be in a good mood. Even better, he whispered something quietly to Batton Pass who became nonplussed herself. She shot a deadly look at Rarity, and they left the room together, Eclipse soon following.

Something bad just happened.

“Rainbow Dash killed Flash Bang?” Batton all but gawked, incredulous as the small group stood at the top of the highest tower in Rarity’s castle. She looked down at the courtyard, full of her troops as if there were any chance of them overhearing. She looked over at the war table, a map of the unfolding civil war, to Flash Bang’s piece. “Was it not you who reported she was the weakest? And then that she was dead?”

Hissteria merely turned a hoof up and smiled.

“I only said she was in critical condition.”

“Don’t!”

“I don’t have specifics,” he said. “But maybe be a little worried.”

“I’m growing very impatient with you!” Batton flared her wings. “You’ve never been this incompetent before. Keep failing like this and your reward will be reduced!”

He wasn’t one to respond to chastisement, unfortunately.

“They’re coming here,” he continued. “She has several strong but injured ponies. I’d say they don’t have a shot if these two are on our side. But I’d also say this wouldn’t have happened in the first place. I think we need to take this threat seriously.”

“I still don’t understand how this happened.” Batton Pass covered half her face with one hoof and looked out towards the woods. “You’re saying she has been hiding her abilities this whole time?”

“I don’t know anymore,” said Hissteria. “But she convinced Spitfire, Fleetfoot, even Lightning Dust to side with her over Flash. She’s very charismatic. In light of this, I’m changing my assessment of her. We should place Rainbow Dash on the higher tier of threats. What if she convinces Sunset and Moondancer to join her again?”

“You’re giving her too much credit.”

“I don’t think so. We should stop her from meeting with either of them.”

Batton Pass bit her lip, considering her options. Everything was going perfectly and then suddenly this complete moron just pulls an ace out of nowhere. Was she just that lucky?

No, Rainbow Dash had been involved in far too many mysterious dealings for it to be that easy. They needed to take this dead serious. Batton Pass wouldn’t let anything jeopardize her vision. Not even a single percentage point could be left on the table. Least of all some garbage pegasus from nowhere!

Batton Pass sat at the war table and considered the current state of the board.

Screwball, Flash Bang, Twilight. All of them gone.

Nailbat or Starlight would be victorious. Nailbat had seen this coming and prepared his ponies to seize most of the major cities. He had plans to kill Starlight.

Yes, even in the worst-case scenario Starlight would lose. They had the azoth spell and would destroy the winner of the fight between Starlight and Crater Cemetery. A Nailbat victory seemed likely at this point.

That was the best outcome. He would have enough trouble keeping Equestria together afterwards, and was more open to allowing the breakaway region’s independence. The Everfree and Festering Scar could be claimed by Batton Pass. In light of the death of Screwball and the prospect of independence, Moondancer may very well side with her.

Her own nation. A nation for her people, the other bat ponies, to have to themselves, free from the tyranny of Screwball and Equestria both. That dream was so close.

Sunset seemed to have abandoned the castle on the news of Twilight’s death. She’s had enough trouble holding her own.

One thing alone stood in her way. With much frustration, Batton Pass threw the orange block across the room and put a new piece on the board, where Hissteria reported Rainbow Dash to be.

“Have Embermoon stay between Rainbow Dash’s group and Sunset Shimmer’s,” said Batton Pass. “If we place a contingency south, she won’t be able to move towards Moondancer without walking into a pincer. We could send Eclipse to attack their battalion directly.”

“To not take orders is my highest ideal,” said Eclipse. “Nor do I have any interest in something so vulgar and political that benefits me nothing.”

“If you want me to cooperate with you, then you will!” Batton stood. “My nation is assured, and you get access to the artifacts we’ve gathered! That is the deal, witch!”

Eclipse calmly grabbed onto Batton Pass’s wither. Not with enough force to harm her and yet that grip bellied such strength that Batton had no choice but to grow silent, water poured over her temper.

“You had best be thankful I don’t involve myself in politics,” Eclipse said, her voice stern and as unmoving as her grip. “If I did, I couldn’t possibly imagine why you’d still be alive.”

It was true that in her long life, Auntie Eclipse had never once done a coup. Screwball was the odd one out in that regard, involving herself in society. Batton knew little of their culture, save through the lens of the black sheep.

Part of her could hardly understand why such a pony wouldn’t choose to become a dictator through force. Though perhaps, seeing what happened to Screwball and now Flash Bang.

Batton struggled to keep cool. She’d already dealt with one of her kind, however indirectly. Soon enough she’d be rid of all these witches.

And sure enough, Eclipse did let go of Batton’s wither and turned.

“I will make sure you aren’t destroyed but I will not follow orders or do anything to debase myself. The artifacts you’ve gathered for the azoth spell are the whole of my interest here,” said Eclipse. “I’d have already used it, but it is wiser to let Starlight and Crater Cemetery fight it out first. When one target remains, we can take our leave of one another.”

She left without another word. She held too many cards. Her student had even taken Screwball’s journal.

Perhaps Batton should be thankful after all. Eclipse had gotten rid of the mad tyrant who shackled her, Twilight, and soon Crater Cemetery. Perhaps in a less emotional world, she could be called a hero. That and some amount of protection would have to do.

“See if Embermoon is more willing to cooperate,” Batton Pass told Hissteria, who did take orders.

“No! No!”

Sweetie Belle ran forward into the woods. Behind her stood three more robots, Saccharine and the last two of Sweetie’s spare bodies. All three of them were badly scuffed but mostly operational.

Sweetie had damaged the only part of her that reasonably could be harmed. She normally had two tanks filled with ‘nutritional fluid’, a green slime, that kept her brain alive. The left tank had been shattered during the escape. Her right tank was still intact but only half full.

Sweetie Belle knew it took a week to deplete two tanks. So half a tank meant maybe two days. But she didn’t know how long she could go without food. It wasn’t instant death as replacing them took a few minutes.

Finally with her bearings straight, out of immediate danger, Sweetie Belle at last had a moment to let what just happened sink in. Rarity had left her behind! Or rather, forced Sweetie Belle to leave her behind.

The castle was far off now. Sweetie Belle wasn’t even sure if…

“Why did Rarity do that?!”

“It was the only reasonable course of action,” Saccharine concluded without hesitation. “We need to leave this place.”

“We have to go back for Rarity!”

“Rarity is most likely dead,” said Saccharine. “If she was captured, she would prioritize your life regardless. Another course of action would be best.”

Sweetie Belle couldn’t stand Saccharine just then. She was supposed to be the third sister in their family, but she didn’t feel bad about Rarity getting hurt at all, did she?! She could be afraid of it about to happen but never sad if it did. That was a distinction Sweetie hadn’t understood or cared about until just now.

And right now it infuriated her.

“You still don’t feel anything? You’re not upset that Rarity might be dead? You love her so much, but you can’t even–”

“I am incapable of–”

“Then shut up! You can’t understand so don’t talk!”

“You are incapable of making a difference here,” said Saccharine. “Retreat is the only logical option. You would risk your life for nothing.”

“I’m going to die without Rarity either way. She’s the only one who knows how to keep the life support system running.”

“I possess some knowledge on this,” said Saccharine. “We may have just enough time to create more nutritional fluid if we go south.”

“No! No! I can’t leave her behind!” Sweetie Belle shook her head. “Rarity spent so long trying to save me! She kept going even if it didn’t seem possible! I can’t abandon her after all that.”

“What Rarity did never made sense to me.” Saccharine merely shook her head. “I will not allow you to needlessly injure yourself.”

Saccharine stood in Sweetie Belle’s way.

“I can – I can beat you!” Sweetie Belle stepped forward. “I know you’re out of ammo on the fusion cannon. And you don’t have anything that can get through my armor. But I can…”

Sweetie Belle stumbled back, clumsily shifting through a few weapons. An unloaded gun, a buzz saw, and finally a drill. Without Saccharine’s Sweetiebot 9.1 body, she could easily be ripped apart by even this.

Still, Saccharine wasn’t amused at the display.

“Your heart is weak,” said Saccharine. “It doesn’t matter what body you have if you can’t attack.”

“Yeah?! W-well!” Sweetie Belle turned the drill, ready to test how weak her heart really was. Just one blow from it could dislodge a leg from Saccharine. It was something Rarity could easily fix once Sweetie Bell rescued her. And Saccharine merely stood there, supremely confident in her assessment.

She took two steps forward. But something stopped her from going that final step. She stood there indignant before shutting off the drill and shoving Saccharine to the ground instead.

“I’ll still push you over if you try to stop me! And – and you won’t attack me either.”

The claim she might hesitate to commit violence got through to Saccharine. The other robot got to her feet and grabbed onto Sweetie Belle to restrain her. Initially, Sweetie Belle was able to break out of the grip with ease.

Saccharine escalated, tackling Sweetie Belle to the ground with a supplex the filly wouldn’t be able to match. She raised a hoof that became electrified, ready to land a blow that might stun Sweetie Belle’s nervous system or who knew what.

Instead of her usual fluid motion devoid of any hesitation, Saccharine’s hoof stayed in the air. Sweetie saw her glance at the remaining life support tank and knew she wouldn’t do it.

“Yield,” Saccharine threatened.

“You wouldn’t say that if you were going to do it!” Sweetie Belle rolled back and forth until Saccharine was off her. Then she stood. “See? You can’t attack me, either. We’re the same.”

Saccharine stood too still and too quiet, finally looking away almost surprised at the turn of events herself.

“Then you can’t stop me!” Sweetie Belle concluded.

With no reason to hesitate any longer, Sweetie Belle started back to the castle.

“Wait.” Saccharine came to her side, stalling her only a second longer. “I can’t stop you.”

Saccharine looked up at the castle in the far distance, and then the two of them trotted off together.

Two ponies wearing gas masks, agents of the Mad Science Cartel, stood in the back of the castle, just outside a home carved into a tree.

This was the dwelling of the legendary Twilight Sparkle. It was a fearful place to be treated with the utmost caution. Who knew what horrors lay within? Ever so slowly and carefully were they beginning to mine the inside of it.

These were the objects in Twilight’s house that didn’t initially appear to be magical or dangerous. In exchange for who knows what, Batton Pass allowed the Mad Science Cartel to take whatever they wanted from the pile that had been slowly extracted and placed out on the lawn.

The stallion of the pair scratched his head, seeing little worth taking. The mare was less willing to believe it was all garbage.

“What do you think this does?” She knelt to inspect a primarily wooden construct of two pieces at ninety-degree angles supported by a matrix of vertical frames.

The stallion tilted his head one way, then the other.

“Looks like a chair,” he said.

“Yeah, but it’s gotta be some overpowered magic chair, right?”

Somehow his non-plussed expression leaked through the gas mask.

“Look, she’s the most powerful witch! Is it that silly to expect her chair to be enchanted or cursed or something?”

“Like what do you want the chair to do?”

“I dunno. Destroy the world?”

“I don’t think everything Twilight owned has to be overpowered. That’s why the pile,” he said. “Look for things that actually seem valuable.”

She scanned the mound for anything else that looked important.

“What about that?” She pointed at a creepy-looking doll.

“Nah, that thing wasn’t tough at all.” He smacked the scarecrow. “We already beat the crap out of it. See how the straw’s all ripped out. From what intel we can gather, it’s never actually won a single fight.”

“We don’t know if it’s destroyed! Twilight wouldn’t have created something so easily beaten. What if it’s just waiting for somepony to say, ‘activate combat mode’ before it really starts to fight.”

He opened his mouth to complain but then the doll moved. The trees behind them shifted.

Roots and vines began rising, upturning the ground beneath them. They came to wrap around its body, thickening its form.

“Damn it! Why did you have to say that?!” The stallion backed up.

The two ponies tried to get their guns out, but it was already too late. The vines ensnared them leaving only darkness.

How much strength did freedom cost?

Looking down at the spellbook she’d just looted from the corpse of Screwball, the answer seemed to be ever-inflating. At first, Luster Dawn thought once she was as powerful as Auntie Eclipse, once she had a spellbook of her own, she would finally be free.

But that was long ago. After witnessing that terrible fight… not even a master witch, not even Twilight Spark herself was truly safe. So how far did she have to go? Part of her hoped Twilight survived that. Because if not, what hope was there for Luster Dawn?

The pink filly sighed and shifted to one side as she watched some peasants rummage through Twilight’s old things.

At any rate, more power meant more freedom. Staying with Auntie Eclipse for now, learning more of her secrets, was the fastest way to get stronger. Already this spellbook brought Luster to the height of her strength.

If only there was something to test it out on.

As if reading her mind, the golem Luster Dawn herself had put down not long ago began to stir. It grew quickly in size, overwhelming the fools from MSC. It seemed Twilight did have at least one more trick left!

She rushed in, wanting to test herself against this threat before any other ponies got involved.

Already it was a completely different entity than when she had faced it first.

Its head had become solid wood and taken on a roughness like it had been carved by a maniac with an axe. Its now more imposing fangs dug into itself, nailing its own mouth shut. And from the hollow holes for its eyes shone the light of a purple fire.

What once were legs could no longer rightly be defined as such. They were such a fraid mess of knots and twisting roots that it looked more to be crawling about on tentacles. Indeed, its whole body had become a writhing mess of sharp branches and thorns.

And in the center, through something like a ribcage where the heart should be, was the source of that light. Purple flames danced inside it, but never touched the wood. Magic oozed from that core, enough to make Luster Dawn reconsider her boldness. Even with a spellbook, this was just too much raw strength.

Its mouth shook and with the sound of splintering wood, it broke open.

“You will do,” a voice like crackling fire came from somewhere within the construct. “You, filly, possess the potential I require. I will only accept a witch and of the three you alone have the potential to become a master of the craft.”

Telling her exactly what she wanted to hear. Most fillies her age was stupid but Luster knew better. Eclipse had taught her to beware of such flattery. She took another step back, considering the best way to call those other two witches to her.

Vines had already grown up all around her, making escape or even a signal flare difficult. Though she couldn’t see far there were so many other ponies around. One had to notice this. She just had to play cool and wait.

“I will not harm you,” it continued. “All I want is for you to become my vessel, to take on the last of my strength.”

“I’m not some idiot,” said Luster. “I know better than to make deals with creatures like you.”

“Have you? Can you not tell what I am? I am the very thing you seek… a fragment of magic itself.”

Luster Dawn looked into the core of the monster again. She had no doubt what it said was true. Those flames exuded pure, absolute magic… pure power. Was there anything else in the world she wouldn’t trade for this?

“At what cost?”

“My purpose is already fulfilled,” said Magic. “My will fades, and you will feel little of my presence once you have accepted me. All that remains is this final order from my master: to kill Rainbow Dash. You will inherit nothing else from me but this directive. And once it is fulfilled you will have what you desire: freedom. To do whatever you will with the last of my strength.”

Freedom. Was it really that close? Would it really only cost one life?

“I’ll do it!” Luster Dawn reached her hoof out. “Fill me with the power of magic!"

Shadow Realm

An envoy appeared in the distance. A single bat pony in the typical grey and blue variety stopped a good distance from Dash’s encampment and planted the flag of the Bloodstorm Cartel on the ground. Just about anypony would recognize this as standard procedure for delivering a peace offer.

Dash didn’t even know the cartel had a flag until somepony told her that’s what it was. She thought it was just the pirate flag. Apparently, that whole skull and crossbones thing was invented by Bloodstorm himself. One of those things everypony thought was much older than it was.

And for some reason, this caught Dash off guard. Was this the first time one of her enemies tried to negotiate with her before a fight even started? Maybe Dash had made it. Either that or the new boss was much improved over the old.

With caution, Dash went out to meet the messenger, who sat still with hooves out to either side, with Spitfire and Lightning Dust following behind.

“I’m not sure how aware of the situation you are,” the envoy began. “Twilight and Screwball are both gone. Batton Pass is the new leader of the Bloodstorm Cartel and is willing to make a truce with you. Know that we have two witches currently on our side and that you severely are outnumbered here.”

“You have two witches but aren’t attacking?” Dash asked.

“Batton Pass acknowledges that many others have underestimated you. We’d like to avoid an unnecessary confrontation if possible.”

Certainly, the biggest compliment she’d gotten from an opponent so far.

“Well alright,” Dash wasn’t sure what else to say. “What are your uh… terms?”

“You are aware of the azoth spell? It is the ultimate attack magic. We have gathered six artifacts that will be able to power a single use of this spell and intend to use it on our mutual enemies. Either Starlight or Crater Cemetery will win this upcoming confrontation. Auntie Eclipse intends to cast the spell on the winner immediately after their final battle. We do not have the forces to invade Equestria and will only occupy Everfree and below. Standing in our way is not in your best interest.”

Dash folded her forelegs and closed her eyes. On the surface letting these ponies take care of those two sounded nice about now. If they just somehow saved the day that’d be great, wouldn’t it?

No way Dash would ever get that lucky, though.

“I assume you want something in return?” Dash asked.

“Only this: you and all the others to retreat from this theater. Do not return to the Everfree until this is settled and do not contact Sunset Shimmer. You can do whatever else you wish in Equestria. In turn, we promise to make no move against you and call off all previous hits.”

They weren’t even asking for much. Did Dash spook Batton Pass that badly?

“The most immediate problem is why I’m here in the first place,” said Dash. “You’re in my house and if I’m not mistaken you have Rarity and several of my friends hostage. Give me Rarity and her sister and then maybe we can start talking.”

“Rarity and most of the others will be released after the war if you do not violate any of these conditions.”

“You think I trust you to let her go after the fact?” Dash asked.

“We’re willing to give you a hostage to be exchanged with her later. One of Batton’s family.”

Dash grew silent again. These ponies were being surprisingly reasonable.

Immediately, she couldn’t think of any reason not to let Eclipse try to cast that spell. Other than it felt wrong.

“What do you two think of this?” Dash asked the others.

“I wouldn’t be so sure this will work,” said Spitfire. “If I’m not mistaken, Starlight already tried casting that spell and it failed.”

“Starlight placed her faith in just that – faith. We will instead meet the raw magical needs directly, channeled by the most skilled mage in the world. It does not rely on Eclipse’s connection to any other pony.”

“How can you be sure that will work either?” Dash asked.

“If it doesn’t there is no hope for you.”

“Nailbat also has some plan to use this spell,” Spitfire informed Dash. “I can confirm that much. They aren’t the only ones.”

It certainly seemed like everypony wanted to cast the Azoth spell to solve the problem. Dash had yet to be convinced that was the only way.

“Perhaps, but is it worth getting in our way?” The bat asked. “Unless you have some alternative plan to destroy your enemies. Surely you are clever enough to know not to interrupt two opponents when they are fighting. So why not let us attempt to destroy Starlight for you?”

Dash looked over to Dust, disaffected at the current talks. That was another thing to worry about. Dash only had so much reputation with her ilk. Retreating this early wouldn’t be good.

Not to mention it’d go against the main reason she’d brought this force down here in the first place.

“Because that’s not enough.” Dash shook her head.

The emissary could only flick her ears, confused, annoyed, wondering what else Dash was going to ask for.

“Flash Bang was right about this: destroying our enemies isn’t enough. There’s always going to be another threat. Just like how Batton Pass took over the cartel. Killing Starlight and the witches and… whoever the buck else won’t change the world because we’ve been dealing with this forever!”

Dash’s pain vanished briefly and she stood up straight enough as though she were free of injury.

“That’s why I’m here. I’m thinking about the world I want to build after the fact, not to kill anypony. I want to create actual peace. That’s why we need to join up with Sunset and Moondancer. Even if there were no monsters that’s what I’d want!”

“Oh? You talk about peace but refuse to accept our negotiations?” The emissary sneered. “Then what is your counter offer? Surely you’d have one after prattling on like that.”

“Join me instead.” Dash put a hoof over her heart. “When this is over, I’ll pardon whatever crimes you’ve all committed. I’ll give you another way forward, a way to live without having to act like this anymore.”

“Batton Pass will not agree to that,” the emissary spoke through a deep frown. “She will not settle for anything that doesn’t include total control of this land.”

“Then I’m sorry.” Dash hung her head.

“As am I.” The envoy tore the flag out of the ground. “Remember that not one of the ponies had to die, Rainbow Dash. If you’re willing to sacrifice them for this fantasy, then so be it.”

She flared one wing as she turned and marched away with her flag, leaving Dash with a sinking feeling in her stomach at those parting words.

“They were just trying to hurt you,” Dust consoled her. “Plenty of us will die either way. And it’s not like Batton Pass isn’t putting even more lives in danger.”

“I know but.” Dash let out a troubled sigh. “I guess I just didn’t realize how much responsibility I had until just now.”

“Cool. So what’s your plan this time, boss?” Dust idly scratched at her cheek as she watched that messenger walk away. “They do have us surrounded; save the way we came. We can’t fight our way past this point.”

To the north, a witch blocking them from getting to Sunset Shimmer. A witch right on top of Rarity. Forces blocking them from heading south. Dash had stepped in the mud here. Not a great first move with her new command position.

“Well,” said Dash. “It sounds like Batton Pass really doesn’t want to attack if she doesn’t have to. Probably she’d be fine to just leave us here if we don’t move. She knows I can’t put up much of a fight myself but also sees me as the main target. And she’s a lot more hesitant than Screwball was.”

Spitfire and Dust watched her, waiting for Dash to finish her thoughts. At last, Dash opened her eyes, her course determined.

“I want to go to Oaken Field as I originally planned. I’ll slip in with just one or two other ponies. But I want to create confusion about where I am. She won’t be sure where to attack or where to avoid.” Dash looked back toward camp. “If they send anypony after the main group, just retreat however far you have to. It’s not worth it right now.”

“I think the best course,” said Spitfire. “Would be to make it look like you’re trying to infiltrate the castle. You got her scared of you. She’ll be paranoid about an attack if we can manage.”

“Right. Just need a way to do that… and decide who I’m taking with me down south.” Dash closed her eyes in thought again.

“Obviously me!” Dust proudly declared.

“Uh.” Dash looked over to Spitfire. Dust wasn’t the best for sneaking or diplomacy missions. “Is Fleetfoot–?”

“She’ll need another day or two.” Spitfire shook her head.

Deathblow was in even worse condition.

“Come on!” Dust pointed to herself. “I’m the only pony with the speed and agility to carry your fat ass down there.”

“I’ll be disguised as a crow,” Dash muttered. “And not a fat crow, even.”

“Some disguise.” Dust turned her hoof up. “Everypony and their grandma knows you turn into crows at this point. What’s her face is probably one rustling bush from ordering every crow in fifty miles dead.”

Loath as she was to admit it, that was a good point.

“Wait! I can make that work!” Dash straightened up. “She’ll expect me to be disguised as a crow. So we have, let’s say, Fluttershy march up to the castle with a crow that’s me on her back. Then a crow down here turns back and…”

It was all coming together.

“And then somepony sees crows going south too?” Dust asked. “You know everypony is going to be looking for that.”

A good point again…

“Also why do you have to turn into twenty crows every time?” Dust got closer, tilting her head as she challenged Dash. “Do I gotta stomp on nineteen crows every time you want to get away? It’s a big mess.”

“Believe it or not I have no idea how to turn into one crow,” Dash said flatly. “I can only…”

Dash’s eyes widened. The mention of turning into one bird triggered a distant memory in Dash. She had another spell.

“An owl!” Dash stepped forward. “They won’t be looking for an owl!”

“No?” Dust glanced left and right. “Is that an option or…?”

“A long time ago, when I learned the murder spell Twilight also showed me how to turn into an owl.”

“Okay, but why?” Dust interrupted.

“Look! It was like a sentimental thing at the time,” Dash brushed it aside. “The point is I never once used that spell up until now because why would I? Well here’s the answer to that: because nopony else knows I can turn into an owl!”

Dust stopped to mull that over. Dash knew it was a good plan when she didn’t come up with any objections.

“I think we can make that work,” Spitfire concluded. “Though we’ll have to be fast.”

“So it’ll be me and–” Dash looked to a smirking Dust. “And Derpy and…

Dash took a deep breath.

“You.”

“Heh! You’re useless without me, aren’t you?” Dust pressed her smiling cheek up against Dash’s frowning cheek before trotting away.

Phase two would be keeping her from doing anything stupid.

“Batton Pass!”

Atop the tallest tower of the castle, where Batton set up her war room, the envoy she’d sent out finally returned.

“Rainbow Dash refuses to a truce, saving anything less than total surrender.” She kept her head down. “Worse, that specter, wielding the armor of Crater Cemetery is on route to the castle as we speak. We noticed several crows on her back.”

Rainbow Dash was coming straight for Batton?! This was the worst-case scenario. She was up to something. She had to be! How much of this had that insufferable trickster planned out from the very beginning?

“Whatever she’s up to!” Batton declared with a flap of her wings. “She doesn’t have the raw strength to force her way in. But do not underestimate her. She has some more elaborate plans. Put everypony on full alert. Leave no gaps for her to slip through. Report anything suspicious. Kill any crow or bird or mouse that tries to cross into our territory.”

She could see some hesitancy at the last part of the order. No matter how disciplined, that old superstition about killing crows ran deep.

“Do it!” Batton ordered, banishing all doubt from her followers who rushed off to obey.

Batton turned to look out the window and into the forest – towards the east. The opposite direction from which Rainbow Dash was coming. Or was that merely what the pegasus wanted her to think?

Batton bit her lip harder. She was getting paranoid. Just stick to the plan for as long as possible!

Finally, Sweetie Belle was in sight of the castle again. At least, from the east side she could look up and see the tallest tower of the castle.

Sweetie Belle did the best she could come up with: hiding in the bushes. That worked up until a certain point. That point being when the enemy actually appeared. They got only a little closer before finding swarms of them.

“We won’t be able to get much closer than this,” Saccharine warned.

They were on high guard too, ponies circling up above and positioning at every corner of the grounds like they had no idea where an attack might come from.

“Um! Well they look like somepony is about to attack,” said Sweetie Belle. “Maybe we just need to wait a little while until then? Then we’ll have a distraction. Maybe.”

It was the best she could come up with. She looked at one of her spare Sweetiebots. There were three left. She could maybe use one to make her own distraction if there weren’t so many ponies around. There were like, layers of them, out in the field and near the castle walls, then probably more inside. It’d have to be something absolutely insane for all of them to leave their posts.

How did ponies come up with rescue plans in movies and stuff? There wasn’t even kind of an opening in all this!

Air vent? None that went this far outside. Potato truck? Sweetie Belle did look but couldn’t find one. Pretending to be a guard? They didn’t have any robots! Pizza delivery pony? Zombie? Mind control! Cardboard box? Shapeshifting. No…

Sweetie ducked deeper under the bushes as a pony flew overhead. She was lucky she even got this close! Hopefully, somepony or something attacked the castle soon. Her nutrition tank was getting lower every second.

Before long she did notice some odd behavior. It was like the guards were giving somepony a wide berth. The head bat pony, maybe? Sweetie didn’t remember the name.

She watched closely to find it much worse than that. It was one of the two witches! The older one, Auntie Eclipse! This had to be the worst-case scenario.

The witch trotted about slowly, looking around as she chastised the guards for something, Sweetie only making out the last part.

“You have all these sentries, and you can’t even find a blasted filly?” Eclipse asked.

Sweetie was glad she didn’t have a heart just then! Was she talking about Sweetie Belle?!

Eclipse noticed her immediately after that, looking right at the bush with a thin smile.

Wait! No. It wasn’t her. It was…

Something like a spear fired from Eclipse at one of the spare Sweetiebots, impaling it and pinning it to a tree, totally destroyed. The others gapped at the sight, including Sweetie Belle.

She noticed that the bot had been slightly exposed just at the last minute. It was remotely possible Eclipse had only seen that! She didn’t dare move just in case.

“Another thing you missed,” said Eclipse.

“There are more of those left?” The soldier next to her asked. “We should search–”

“You’re not exactly good at that,” Eclipse warned. “My old bones need a moment to rest. The ponies in this section will search the castle for my target and I will relieve you of sentry duty for this portion of the wall.”

They stopped, surprised, before one of them spoke up.

“Batton Pass said you weren’t cooperating with us. We have orders from her to–”

“And did she sound happy about that? You should be thankful I’m unwilling to let this… Rainbow Dash character slip in,” said Eclipse. “If Batton gives you any trouble, simply say I gave you no choice. It’s the truth.”

It seemed like they weren’t sure how reluctant they should be to accept her ‘help’. But it did work. The whole side Sweetie Belle was facing began to clear out before her very eyes. Other than the aerial patrols soon it was just Eclipse sitting in the empty field facing Sweetie Belle’s direction.

Briefly, she thought Eclipse might call her out of hiding now they were alone. But no.

Had the witch really not noticed Sweetie Belle? Was it just the one bot?

Eclipse sat for a moment, writing something down on a slip of paper. Then she took out an amulet, maybe something closer to a crystal ball, and studied the green glow on it. She quickly grew frustrated with whatever she saw and put it away and burned the small slip of paper.

The witch’s ears perked up just then. She noticed something else in the woods not close to Sweetie, something significant enough for her horn to light up at the ready. Though Sweetie had no idea what it was, it filled her with relief to see Eclipse slowly trotting toward it, turning her back on Sweetie as she approached.

Sweetie looked up to see the aerial patrol passing by once again. This was the best distraction she would get!

“The way is open,” Sweetie Belle whispered to Saccharine.

“This looks suspicious. It may be a trap.”

“We’re not getting another chance. And what would she need to trap us for, anyway? A pony like that could just grab us whenever she feels like it.”

Unable to counter that point, Saccharine followed Sweetie Belle.

Sometime after Fluttershy departed toward the castle, Dash reverted to a pony, then to an owl, and then flew out into the forest. Oh, did her little owl wings ever hurt! But she only needed to fly a short distance and it was easier to fly when you were smaller for whatever reason.

She found two ponies wearing heavy cloaks and carrying what looked like a few essentials, Derpy and Dust in disguise as fleeing refugees, and landed on the latter’s back, not daring to revert just yet. She was promptly stuffed into a backpack, squished up alongside a sleeping bag, just enough room to peek out.

Without speaking a word, the three of them took off to the south, staying below the tree line and above the brush, going for stealth more than speed.

It was nice to have a clear night after several rainy days in a row. Dash could hardly remember the last time she’d seen the stars.

A crisp wind replaced the rain, blowing through the quickly changing leaves, knocking down the first few casualties of autumn. A significant number of zombies still lingered, though they were back to their mostly harmless bumbling selves.

The sounds of rustling leaves, and the footsteps of the zombies, they’d serve to obscure their own presence. Yet it cut both ways. It wouldn’t be easy to tell if somepony was following them.

Owls relied on their eyesight more anyway and Dash could easily watch their backs from her position. She kept it up, nervously scanning the area as they crept south. Things should remain calm until they neared the enemy lines.

She still didn’t have a concrete plan to deal with that hurdle just yet, would have to think of one once she was sure what they were up against.

The atmosphere became increasingly unsettling as they went. Maybe she wasn’t used to being an owl anymore. Maybe it was just in her head because she couldn’t articulate just what was off. But the way the trees were moving wasn’t right.

After some staring, she got closer to figuring out what. It was like some were only pretending to sway in the wind. Their movements were only slightly off but didn’t match up to the breeze like the others did.

What it meant she could hardly say. So many things could be wrong in the Everfree, so many things could be following them. Only a few would be an actual threat with Lightning Dust around. Still, she kept careful watch on their backs.

Then at last she saw it: taking shape at a distance too far for a pony to be able to see something began to twist and swirl.

Dash hooted three times.

“I don’t know what that means,” Dust growled. “We should have worked out a… a hoot system.”

They really should have but no time for that. Something was coming and fast. Should she turn back? That might reveal her location!

Thankfully, Derpy noticed too just then. Now it was close enough to see the general shape of the attack. Though the central force was invisible, it tore up the ground as it rushed by and animated the trees, turning them into clutching hands whose branches reached out towards the ponies, digging into the ground.

So fast it came that Dash doubted she would have been able to dodge even at full strength. Lightning Dust alone had the reflexes to act, her body glowing blue as she grabbed Derpy and took off into the air, Dash still on her back. Even then it was only a narrow escape as every tree nearby lurched forward and cratered the ground where they had just stood.

The invisible force charged forward, visibly affecting the woods as it went.

“Damn! What is that? One of the witches?” Dust looked around at the ground, watching the force speeding ahead, then making a wide turn back towards them. Dash would have no answers even if she could speak. She didn’t know how either of the remaining witches fought.

The hope that it had to stay close to the ground faded as the force took toward the air and transformed into a violent gale. The wind came too fast too hard, slamming into the pegasi with such might it may as well have been a brick wall. Dust alone managed to stay in place through great struggles.

Derpy and Dash were flung down toward the ground alongside their fake luggage, unable to push back even an inch. And beneath them the trees contorted their branches upward, sharpening and pointing toward the two to form a bed of spikes to receive them.

Noticing, Dust spun around and blasted a bolt of lightning ahead of them. It obliterated just the right tree, allowing the two to crash-land into the relatively safe ground, Lightning Dust coming tumbling not far behind.

Escape through the air became hopeless as the trees shot up, growing several stories tall, and their branches spread out to form a roof. Suddenly, they found themselves in something like a cave, not a single star could be seen.

Thorns, some the size of rail spikes and some so small even Dash’s owl eyes could barely see, grew from every trunk, every branch, and root to cover the ground, walls, and roof of the new cave. Many thrust themselves forward at the group, forcing Dust to cowl herself in lightning, struggling to punch them away as quickly as they could come at her.

The ground trembled and the trees sank, bringing the spikes from above down to Dash this time. She swiveled her head in every direction but there was no escape in sight. She hooted, though Dust undoubtedly knew the only solution available already.

“You think some trees will stop me?” Dust challenged her invisible opponent. “If I can break through Flash Bang’s thick skull some branches won’t stop me.”

She took a second to charge, letting one or two thorns stick her before blasting upwards like a bolt of lightning. Dash had seen her wild punches before and had no doubt she could break through a ridiculous number of tree trunks with a blow like that.

The cavern lit up with blue light and the ceiling stopped descending for a second as electricity poured across it.

And yet, when the flash faded, the wall of spikes above remained unchanged.

“What the?!” Dust gritted her teeth, looking up at the ceiling as it came back down to them. “Something is pumping serious magic into that! Even if I hit it hard enough to break my other leg…”

The wall of spikes was too close! What else could Dash possibly do?! It was too far to run in any direction. She had to…

Something grabbed her and Derpy both. Hooves! They wrapped around Dash and dragged her onto the ground? Dust noticed and moved to grapple them as they sank, falling in herself just as the trees finally slammed into the earth.

But no crash from such a massive impact could be heard. Dash found herself falling through the ground only to land on it once more. Only now the forest fell silent again, that horrible bluster and roar nowhere to be found.

She desperately looked around. Wooden spikes in every direction had replaced the forest but Dash somehow went down to get on top of them. And nothing looked quite right. Everything too still, the shade of the spikes brighter than the front.

Having a sudden idea, Dash looked up at the stars. Sure enough, they were as tiny holes in a swirly ocean of blue light up above. Dash had seen that sky before. This was the shadow realm! But how?

She heard a clamor and found her answer as Lightning Dust tackled Applejack up against one of the wooden spikes.

No sense in keeping up her disguise here. Dash reverted to her form and called out for Dust to stop alongside Derpy at that same moment.

“Who’s this?” Dust held the electrified claw blade inches from Applejack’s neck, the latter having the good sense to keep her hooves raised and still.

“Erm. This is the pony who lives in my basement. We’re cool. I think.” Dash turned to Applejack with some suspicion. “Are we cool? Where have you been, exactly? I dunno if you noticed but things haven’t been going well lately.”

Dust kept her death glare up, so Dash motioned for her to let go, letting Applejack fall to the ground.

“I was trying to contact the Element of Honesty but to put it bluntly, it didn’t work out,” said Applejack.

“I mean, cool?” Dash rubbed the back of her head. “Would that help us in any way? And by us, I mean me.”

“Well it can defy deterministic principles,” said Applejack.

“What?”

“Like. Shoot. You know, destiny and stuff. Like you roll a die, and you think it’s random but it ain’t. How it’s going to land is determined exactly by the time you throw it. We just ain’t smart enough to see things like that coming. But the element of honesty is. And it can alter that course.”

“Okay.” Dash flitted her eyes left and right. “And if I did understand that why would we need it?”

“Far as the Darklord sees it, it’s the only way to keep Twilight from dying on the course we’re on.”

“Twilight?!” Dash stepped forward. “She’s alive?! I know she’s alive but– but she’s alive?”

“Most likely but not for long,” said Applejack. “And that’s why I came looking for you. Maybe ya’ll can help me get through to that thing.”

Dust looked around cautiously as she listened to all this.

“We’re already kind of on a mission, aren’t we?” Dust rubbed her muzzle. “Unless this is going to call Twilight back to us right now, I don’t think our forces will hold out much longer. ”

She wasn’t exactly wrong. Dash’s emotions screamed at her to drop everything to go help Twilight, but she had responsibilities beyond her best friend. There was no telling how good of an idea Applejack’s plan even was besides.

“Please! You seem like you’re headed to Moondancer, right? It ain’t far from that,” said Applejack.

It was a good enough excuse to follow her heart.

“Alright, fine. If you can get us past the enemy, it’ll be worth it anyway,” said Dash. “I hope you know what you’re doing with all this, though.”

“Afraid I don’t, exactly,” Applejack admitted. “But it’s something I got to do either way.”

Dash smiled a little. She could relate.

“We got company!” Dust warned.

Everypony stood on guard, but Dash relaxed however slightly upon seeing it. It was the shadow of a pony, rather than an actual pony. Not exactly like a shadow in the real world but the kind ghosts saw. Her shape was vaguely well-defined, but no facial features could be made out, save perhaps the pink fur and that it was a smallish unicorn.

That meant whoever this was remained in the real world and could neither see nor touch them.

“Don’t worry, they can’t get to us in the shadow realm.” Dash stuck her tongue out at the mysterious pony.

“Actually…” Everypony turned to Applejack as she spoke.

The shadow grew eyes of twinkling blue light that made direct eye contact with Dash. Dash hobbled to one side and those eyes vanished. It had to scan the area again before opening them back up to look at Dash once again.

“Okay! What is this thing?!” Dash pointed toward it.

“If I’m right.” Applejack took a step toward it. “Well the elements are all connected, and Honesty began to stir just a tad before I left. I’m guessing this is a fraction of the element of Magic. Not sure what else it could be.”

“Can it get in here?”

“No. But…”

“But what? This is bad, right?” Dash put a foreleg over Dust’s back, ready to turn back into an owl to escape if needed. She recalled that fragment was Twilight’s old doll. That it didn’t like her very much.

“Yes and no.” Applejack studied it a second longer before speaking. “Okay, I don’t think it can hear us: This thing probably don’t like you much, Dash. And it ain’t something we can fight. But if it is chasing you, and if its presence can stir the element of Honesty like I’m hoping.”

“Got it!” Dash pounded her chest. “Lure it to the thing. Whatever. I’m the bait master general right now! We can do this.”

Applejack nodded to affirm.

“So do we go back to the real world, or can we just go through here safely?” Dash asked.

“That depends on–” Applejack's words sank as the pony planted her hoof on the ground. Something began to sprout, not a shadow of a tree but an actual plant inside the shadow world. “Nope! Can’t do this safely.”

The wood crumpled and cracked until it took on the same form as the pony who created it, only a splintered, wooden golem.

Dust's instinct was to attack but Dash weakly pulled her back.

“Don’t even bother trying to fight it!” Dash warned. “We’re running.”

Dash turned back into an owl and dug her talons into Dust’s back, which took off immediately.

Derpy grabbed onto Applejack perhaps intending to carry her, but it was Applejack who took Derpy with her. Because Applejack typically stayed back, Dash had forgotten how strong she was. Dust only had to slow down a little for her to keep up on foot.

With only a brief delay, the element of Magic and its golem gave chase on foot. The two versions moved like images mirrored about a plan centered on Dash. When one moved left the other moved right.

Something like a black hole appeared above the golem’s head as it ran. The sphere quickly grew in size, red light forming swirling rings around it.

Dash vaguely remembered seeing one of these in Twilight’s fight with Trixie. The impact of one of them…

The sphere reached an immense size before finally being shot forward at them. No way to block something like that. Maybe they could fly up but then…

“Hurry!” Applejack called out. “Down here!”

Dust wasted no time flying down to her. Upon collision, Applejack pulled them through the ground, back to the real world. Dash didn’t see the ensuing explosion in the shadow realm but could only assume she narrowly avoided obliteration just then.

Yet even that bought them precious few seconds.

They’d only gotten a little bit ahead of their pursuer in the real world. The invisible force came rushing from that pony towards them, this time shattering the trees into makeshift spears that launched themselves toward the group.

They were still far away enough to dodge, but that gale was coming up behind them and fast! Worse, they couldn’t tell where that golem would be, either. Dust tried staying close to Applejack as they attempted to get more distance, knowing it wouldn’t be long until they had to dunk under again.

And that moment came all too soon. Not even Fleetfoot would have been able to outrun that rush of wind. Just before it could scatter the four of them, Applejack made the signal and they all went back to the shadow realm. They had dodged something horrific. They were only just slightly past the crater left from the blow.

As Dash feared, the golem stood close to the spot where they appeared, just off to their left while the pony herself landed an equal distance to their right. The golem and pony both fired simultaneous shots at Applejack. They couldn’t use their old trick again, she’d get hit from either side.

“She’s onto us!” Applejack shouted out.

“She’s not onto me!”

Dust threw Dash, easily enough as she was still an owl, and jumped down to slam Derpy and Applejack out of the way. With her reflexes, Dust fidgeted about rapidly as the storm of attacks raged around her. Dash wasn’t even sure if she got hit or not it was so close!

But just as the golem turned its attack back to Dash, Dust flew up to grab her again.

“You sure you don’t want me to say and distract this thing?” Dust skidded to a halt, ready for a fight.

Dash did not! She hooted.

“We need a hoot system.” Dust looked up at her confused.

“Not worth it!” Applejack called out to her, thankfully. “We’re close to the enemy line and don’t gotta go much further than that.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Derpy asked.

“No choice but to find out.”

Dash could see it already. The enemy line! Purple fog, the way ghosts described firelight, shrouded the area up ahead. The shadows of their camp formed a thin wall stretching out in either direction, blocking them from Oaken Field.

Watching behind, that filly stopped her pursuit of them, not daring to get close to that army. Maybe she knew they wouldn’t return to the real world from there? Or…

A wall of thorns rose in their path, blocking the way higher and higher. The golem had already gotten ahead of them. Rising high up into the air as it readied another destruction sphere.

Dash swerved her head between the two sides, unable to tell which of the surrounding threats would be worse. Applejack decided for her, pulling them back to the real world before that sphere could fire off.

There were two walls between them and Oaken Field now. One in the shadow realm and one in the real world. The question was which would be harder to get past?

“Nowhere to run now!” The filly lifted a hoof and a disc of swirling purple magic formed above it. Then she paused as something else materialized in front of her face. A slip of paper.

She cringed first at its appearance and quickly skimmed the note over.

“Gar!” She let out a frustrated shout at whatever it was she just read.

The filly became deeply conflicted over whatever message she’d just received. Like, too conflicted. The sort of conflict where you clutch your head and start stumbling left and right crashing into trees, marking ‘argh’ sounds...

“I can make this work!” the filly shouted out to nopony in particular. “I have to…”

“Is she okay?” Derpy looked to Applejack for possible explanations.

“Maybe she joined with the fragment of magic?” Applejack suggested. “Never seen it happen myself but it must be like having two minds at once. A filly might not be able to–”

“Don’t insult me!” The filly regained her composure quite suddenly. “I’m nothing like fillies my age and I will not be talked down to by the dog of the idiot son. I have obtained in a few short years what your lineage has failed to for centuries. You are the one unable to handle it, fool!”

Dash had no idea what she was even talking about.

“Yep. She knows that thing.” Applejack deadpanned.

“Both of us!” She retorted. “Know this: I will not rest until you’re dead Rainbow Dash!”

Dash had no idea who this even was! But she didn’t dare turn back, not this close to the enemy.

“This isn’t over, Rainbow Dash! I’ll be back shortly.”

She hurled the swirling disc forward. Dust electrified herself and pulled Dash out of the way about as easily as normal. Yet the disc broke up into needles shooting in every direction as it continued forward.

Even this wasn’t enough to catch Dust’s deft maneuvers. It was the others Dash had concerns for and she got out of Dust’s grip as soon as possible to look once the attack was over.

She saw Derpy safe but on her back, next to Applejack. It was the latter who got stabbed by one of those glowing needles. She must have pushed Derpy out of the way.

“That thing has to be bad!” Derpy moved to grab onto it. “We need to get it out!”

“Leave it!” Applejack staved them off. “If that pony left, I won’t get the alicorn magic down here like I wanted. But maybe this is enough.”

Dust brought the two of them over and Dash could already see something spreading across Applejack’s leg. It had the appearance of a poison traveling through her veins, albeit slowly, the purple visible through her skin and fur. They might have an hour before it covered that entire leg.

“We’d have to be fast.” She turned back to where that filly had been. She was gone now.

But was that good or bad?

“At least we don’t have to worry about anypony attacking us,” Dust said cooly.

An artillery shell went off not far from them just as she did, prompting her to straighten up with indignation at the insult.

“They saw us!” Dust got ready.

“That golem might still be there,” Applejack warned. “Get ready.”

Once more they dove into the shadow realm.

Luster Dawn returned to the castle and fell against the wall. Her head hurt so much. It was like it was always spinning and the letter from Auntie Eclipse only made it so much worse. She wasn’t sure who decided to come back here.

It was like having two brains! One of them was single-mindedly obsessed with destroying Rainbow Dash, the other had so many other wants.

Luster wasn’t even sure which of the two she was anymore. She had all the memories of ‘Smarty Pants’ now. All those years spent watching Twilight train. It was as if Twilight trained Luster herself!

Unfortunately, this power was finite. It would evaporate and with it all the knowledge Luster now possessed. But she would have memories of remembering. Sort of like how mind fibers worked. It wouldn’t all be lost.

But how much depended on the strength she used to kill Rainbow Dash. As a fragment of Magic, Luster had had only that one problem. But now she had to have concerns about the future. Starlight. Nightmare Moon. Both had to die, and she needed Auntie Eclipse for that.

Yes, she knew that Smarty Pants thought it would be in full control… but it wasn’t. Just like how Luster could barely handle so much information, it could barely handle so many conflicting emotions and desires.

Was coming back here a good idea? Was it a good idea to use the bare minimum amount of this strength to destroy Rainbow Dash? She couldn’t tell but… she also had to do this at some point. Eclipse’s plan was vital as well.

Luster closed her eyes and sensed her target easily enough just below. Yes, using Magic it was so easy to see them, hiding near a closet in the basement as though they had no plan at all. Time to look like an idiot for the camera.

She threw on her cloak, keeping the hood up high enough to make it look like she didn’t want to be seen. Then down to the basement, put the guards near the target to sleep.

Even that other filly wasn’t stupid enough to not tell their slumber was enchanted when she stumbled upon them. They cautiously backed away from the spot and Luster chose that as the time.

Backing up herself she made sure to bump into the robot with a tank on its back: Sweetie Belle. Both turned instantly on contact.

The robots drew their weapons and pointed them at Luster, Luster doing the same to them, brightening her horn. But both lowered their guards after making eye contact.

“Another kid?” Sweetie Belle asked. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to rescue my sister,” Luster whispered.

“Wait! You too?”

Too easy. Ponies her age really were dumb…

Fate of the Mad

“You’re a witch?” Sweetie Belle asked. Already Luster Dawn was surrounded by suspicious robots, three of them Sweetie Belle.

“Not like them,” said Luster Dawn. “There’s mind fiber besides the Book of Shadows. Some scraps of the other spellbooks remain.”

Luster took out a tattered piece of paper stapled to two others even worse the wear to create the poorest condition ‘book’ Sweetie Bell had ever seen.

More recently, Sweetie Belle had gotten some education about these things, so she already knew what Luster Dawn was saying. Another similar group, the liches, often had such artifacts in their possession. ‘Lesser’ witches were far rarer. There was simply a huge gap between these and the fully intact spellbooks Twilight made.

“Auntie Eclipse hates ‘fake’ witches like us.” Luster closed her eyes and put her ‘book’ back into her cloak. “For the longest time, she’s hunted down ponies who have spell fragments like this. My family had several… and…”

Luster’s pained expression as she put the ‘spellbook’ away was something Sweetie could relate to all too well.

“Well, she has my sister hostage right now,” Luster concluded.

Sweetie was about to suggest they team up, but Saccharine spoke first.

“I have researched our enemies,” Saccharine declared. “It is true Eclipse engages in such practices.”

Luster looked up at Saccharine, her face brightening however slightly.

“However, it is also true she always has some filly as her apprentice,” said Saccharine. “And we have not yet seen said familiar.”

“You’re not saying there’s a chance–” Sweetie Belle's eyes watched Luster carefully.

“There’s no way I’d ever work for Eclipse!” Luster growled. “Do you have any idea what that monster’s done?! How dare you even suggest such a thing!”

Saccharine watched her cautiously but didn’t press the issue forward, taking anger as the correct response to the accusation.

“Look, if you don’t trust me, fine. I’ll do this on my own.”

Indignant, Luster turned and sped down the hall.

“Wait!” Sweetie Belle called after her, but she was much too fast to catch up to.

Worse, she could hear voices and hoof steps from up above. Ponies were approaching fast.

“It’s coming from down here.”

“You’re hearing things.”

“Batton said to investigate everything. Rainbow Dash has all kinds of tricks up her sleeve, look for anything out of place.”

It was already too late to try getting away! Three adults had already come down and spotted Sweetie Belle!

“It’s another one. Sound–”

The pony, and those around him, fell asleep before he could sound anything. Turning back, Sweetie saw Luster had returned, holding those scraps again.

“Can you at least not blow my cover?” Luster glared at them. “I can only put so many ponies to sleep before they realize something is wrong. More will be coming any second now.”

“You were the one shouting!” Sweetie Belle raised her voice, then covered her mouth. “Look, I think we can agree we need your help.”

Sweetie Belle looked at Saccharine who said nothing. They had no other option.

“Of course you do. But how are you going to help me?” Luster asked. “I could let them catch you. Then they might think it was just you. I mean, if I’m evil enough to work for somepony like Eclipse…”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Sweetie whispered. “I live here. I know every part of this castle. There are secret passages if we can get to them. I can even connect to some of the machines here and scout places out. There’s a couple more of these robots hidden, though we’d have to turn them on.”

Sweetie Belle looked at her other body. Luster walked up to it, Sweetie giving her a wave through it. The unicorn turned and pointed to Sweetie, who pointed to herself then the Sweetiebot. Luster’s ears pinned back in slight amazement at the realization Sweetie Belle was controlling a second body.

“Wait.” Luster studied it. “How are you doing that?”

“I don’t think we have time to–”

“I might have thought of a way you can help me.”

“Oh. Well, There’s a thingy in my brain that does it.” Sweetie Belle pointed to her head. Knowing that didn’t sound cool at all, she elaborated. “It’s um! Right. An RFI transmission beacon.”

Sweetie nodded, certain that sounded a lot smarter. She remembered Rarity saying that’s what it was.

“Do you know how it works?” Luster Dawn asked. “What does it use to send signals? What does RFI stand for?”

Oh no!

“It’s uh!” Sweetie was glad she couldn’t sweat anymore.

“Resistance Field Interferometer,” Saccharine answered for her. “It was reverse-engineered against an original model created with mad science. Not even Rarity fully understands how it works.”

“Yeah,” said Sweetie.

“Resistance fields?” Luster smiled. “Then I was right. I may just be able to use this to cast a spell that will put the entire castle to sleep.”

“Wuh?”

An even larger group was coming at them now.

“Er. Also maybe can you show me where a secret passage is?” Luster asked. “That sounds like too many.”

It seemed they were a team now. Sweetie Belle showed the general direction they should go in, but getting away in time wasn’t going to be easy.

“So it’s actually inside Oaken Field?” Dust squinted at the sight. “Guess that’s convenient for us.”

To Dash, it was somewhat familiar. She’d seen all the desperate factions standing together about a year ago. They were back and then some. The only group that was missing was Ghost Adder, the mercenary group who’d been their main force the last time.

It also seemed they’d been through a major fight themselves. Parts of their makeshift wall had been destroyed; a few fires sent smoke up over the town. But from the looks of the ponies still present, on guard but not in action, they had won.

Indeed, they might be able to stay out of harm’s way.

“Did they build the town on top of the element on purpose?” Derpy asked. “And is waking it up going to destroy the place?”

“No and probably no,” said Applejack.

Dash hooted.

“Look nopony can be completely sure what will happen.” Applejack took off her hat.

Dash hooted again.

“The whole problem is that it’s all lethargically like.” Applejack put it back on. “A real stick in the mud you can’t pull out so easy, you know? It ain’t the getting out of bed type let alone the destroying a town type.”

That sounded close enough. Maybe.

“I’d appreciate it if we got on with this either way.” Applejack poked at the needle in her foreleg. The wound had grown by less than an inch. “Just ask to go back to the real world whenever you’d like.”

Dash had already made up her mind to try and observe this, at least for a little while. It was hard to say when she would and wouldn’t be able to do something to turn the tides.

They entered the shadow realm once more, not wanting to take the chance of being detained or attacked by those on guard. It sounded like the math had turned against Dash what with the death of Screwball and potentially Twilight.

The buildings in the town itself were barely visible now, even compared to the shadowy forms objects normally took in the shadow realm. The chains covered most of the ground, forcing you to constantly step over them, and warped any object they went through making it impossible to make anything out, only that it was there.

Interestingly, these chains had a massive ball attached to them, one sitting near the center of the city, near where Moondancer’s tree should be. Did she know? Somepony had to plant it on that spot on purpose.

Applejack trotted towards the ball of the chain, limping along, the needle and spreading wound still in her leg. Nothing seemed to be waking up just yet.

Three times had Dash seen such heavy alicorn chains. Nightmare Moon. The Darklord. Honesty…

And the way the fragment of Magic was talking about ‘family’…

“I should probably ask before we wake anything,” said Dash. “Who chained this thing up and why?”

“Same ponies,” said Applejack. “Same reason.”

“Because I kind of noticed a trend here.” Dash got ahead of her. “Nightmare Moon is connected to Starfeather, right? The Darklord, her, this thing. They’d be father, daughter and grandchild. ‘Your’ side of the family like it said.”

“You already know there was a fight a long time ago.” Applejack shook her head. “The Darklord and the Radiant Champion fought. The other side of the family won. That don’t mean they were right.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Dash stopped walking long enough for the others to catch up.

“The Element of Magic, like Laughter,” Applejack went on, “I suppose is from the other side as well. Must have some animosity towards us.”

But if Magic was considered on that side, then Twilight…

“Would Honesty help Twilight, then?” Dash asked. “I’m sensing there’s still some bad blood here.”

“Would it help anything is the real question. I gotta answer that first.”

They arrived at the center, what Dash initially thought to be the ball to go with this chain. But this close up she soon realized this had to be the Element of Honesty. That wasn’t metal, but a layer of rough sediment covering something. From beneath, coming out like a dim fire, Dash could see something like an iris.

It was a massive eye. A closed one, in a sense.

Though Dash was having some second thoughts about waking it up, Applejack already acted. She tore the shining needle out of her foreleg and plunged it into the orb. That ignited the dim flames making up the iris. Suddenly, the image of an eye beneath became strongly visible, the covering unable to contain the light any longer.

Then it twisted and swirled, but the chains violently stopped it from making a complete spin in any direction. The sediment cracked and fell off, but not entirely, giving it the appearance of an eyelid, one that sloughed on and off instead of opening and closing.

There was nothing fleshy about it. It had a sheen and smoothness about it as though carved from a massive gemstone. It made sense as all the others were technically gems, though this one was so much bigger than the others.

And it wasn’t the only eye that opened. Thousands, perhaps more suddenly surrounded them, appearing all around. They weren’t eyeballs, yet they were eyes. They were simply two-dimensional representations of an eye. Or perhaps it was slightly less than two dimensions as they were only visible from one side. One turning meant becoming invisible, as they were on the back.

No two were exactly alike, some appeared very similar to an actual eye but in every color imaginable, most were monochromatic green whose forms flickered heavily like holographic constructs.

One thing they all had in common was that they vanished as soon as they blinked, only to be replaced by a new eye nearby.

The main form’s gaze fell squarely onto Applejack. That orange iris burned briefly before stopping. Near all the other eyes fell upon Applejack as well, save one pair each for the remaining ponies. No matter where Dash looked, she was unable to break contact with those teleporting eyes.

“Why have you opened my eye?” It had a reluctant voice. One that started and stopped frequently, lingering too long on certain words and rushing through others before breaking in mid-sentence, like it had to push itself to complete even that short sentence. “I don’t want to see anything anymore.”

“You chose a weird look if that’s the case.,” said Dash. “Don’t you guys decide what you look like? And you chose to be a bunch of eyes?”

“Should we be calling it out right away?” Derpy asked Dash.

“It’s gonna hear our thoughts anyway.” Dash shrugged. “Or was that just Laughter who could do that? If so whoops.”

“I cannot deny who I am,” Honesty answered. “I am the embodiment of truth. Fact. Reality. Objectivity. I cannot deny this.”

“Then why are your eyes closed?” Applejack asked. “We need you! Your family needs you.”

“You think you’re part of my family?” It asked.

“Even if I’m not–”

“I cannot deny what you are either… Applejack. You are inconsequential. My grandfather The Darklord has seen so many of you die. Disposable. You too can be replaced. Even being a pawn is too much for you to aspire toward.”

“I’m important to the ponies who are important to me.”

“Like your father was important?” Honesty asked. “He died and you moved on. If he was so unimportant to you imagine how worthless you must be to gods and time.”

“Don’t you talk about my pa like that!” Applejack stepped forward, defiant. “I’d do anything for him or any of my family if I could. I’m not the one who just closes my eyes here!”

“And yet there is nothing you can do for any of them,” said Honesty. “You might as well. It is all pointless. That you even have sight is a cruel joke.”

Dash was starting to see how it was. It was from the ‘other side of the family’. The opposite of Laughter. Pessimism rather than optimism.

“So the things an edgy teenager,” Dust put it more bluntly. “Oh what? Let me guess. You see bad stuff happening and want to close your eyes, huh? You know I witness messed up crap happening all the time and I don’t give two bucks. So I guess I’m wiser than you? Do I win the thing?”

Dash didn’t stop that little tirade because there was no way of knowing if it’d work. Who knew what Honesty wanted to hear? Though the idea of Lightning Dust gaining its powers left Dash… conflicted, to say the least.

“You?” It looked to Dust. “All of your hard work, all of your fighting, all the things and people you sacrificed. And yet you are still just as vulnerable. Some delusion that you have grown strong may hide that from a fool like yourself but never from me. You will never get what you desire, what you sought, the respect…”

“What are you even talking about?” Dust laughed it off. “I’m famous, doofus.”

“And your parents? Do you still think they were right about you?”

“I don’t care what those losers think!”

“Lies?” It said coldly. “You see? It was all for nothing. Wasted.”

Dust growled, hardly able to restrain herself. Dash could relate to her well enough, and clearly, it struck some kind of nerve.

“Calm down. It’s just trying to make you upset,” Dash pleaded to her.

Dust ruffled her feathers and withdrew, still smoldering. Then Honesty turned its eyes toward Dash.

“Well?” Dash stepped forward confidently. “Aren’t you going to call me useless and weak like half the bucking planet has my whole life? Tell me I made more trouble than I’m worth? Aren’t you going to doubt me? I’m waiting.”

Dash put a hoof over her ear and smiled cockily at it, knowing it had no real ammunition against her. She’d already faced this demon. It stared too long.

“No.”

“Tch.” Somehow this thing did know exactly what to say to get you.

“I see many things, Rainbow Dash. Every possibility. I see your greatest possible self. You think you’ve reached some plateau of enlightenment but that is but the first step of a foal.”

Dash shifted her eyes left and right, genuinely caught off guard by this creature of all things acknowledging her above all others.

“Don’t you want to know the potential that lies within you?” Honesty asked, its eyes drawing closer. “What would your element be?”

“I… sure?” Dash looked at Applejack who didn’t stop it. She might as well.

“It is this: the Element of Loyalty. The antithesis of Starlight’s Element of Faith. Where she takes strength from others, you empower those around you. Such an artifact will give you the true realization of this. The power to always have the perfect ally at your side no matter the situation. Those who follow you will become inspired to push beyond any potential they could have had otherwise. In a mere day, you will have gathered the greatest army the world has ever seen. None could oppose you.”

The thought did give Rainbow Dash pause. She understood better who she was now and that sounded… right. Perhaps that was what she should strive to be. And to be posed as the opposite of Starlight. It all fit.

“I know the secrets to forging an alicorn feather into an element of harmony. You need only the feather and a hammer now underneath where Pinkie’s house once stood. And it will be made for you, perfectly compatible. You came to me seeking my aid. Shall I grant you this power?”

Dash stared breathlessly at the Element of Honesty for a moment. Part of her still wanted that kind of strength. But then she remembered and shook her head with a smile.

“I already have that power,” said Dash with a pound against her chest. “The greatest army the world has ever seen? Just wait.”

“Do you not see that there is one too few feathers. There will be none for you if you don’t take this now. You alone will be left behind. You will fail without my wisdom.”

“Oh, yeah. Nopony’s ever said something like that to me before.” Dash rolled her eyes. “Pfft! Wisdom. I don’t get it. You seem obsessed with everything being pointless, so why? Why are you even making this offer? What do you get out of this?”

“Nothing but to prevent other paths from being taken. To stop more from entering my sight.” Though the main eye remained firm, the others began to lose direction, turning every which way, more often becoming invisible than anything else. “I see so many paths stretching out in every direction. If you do this. If you do that…”

Other paths? Dash had to think about that one since it didn’t seem Honesty was going to answer that part.

“Hey, me next!” Dust, having already recovered stepped up with an eager smile.” what would my element be out of curiosity? It doesn’t sound like a pony’s gotta be any better than Starlight to get one. Maybe–”

Dust smirked, elated at the chance to get back at Honesty.

“Oh, I get it!” Dust pointed up at her. “You want Dash to get the element because you’re scared of what I’d do with it. So nopony else can.”

Dash looked up. That had to be it. She really should stop being surprised that Dust was smarter than she came off as at first.

“Who?” Dash asked. “Who do you want to stop from getting it?”

It didn’t answer.

“You’re literally the embodiment of honesty and you’re going to keep stuff from me? What? Is Honesty just about insulting people and telling them mean things?”

“Honesty is but a word. I am wrapped in truth, reality, and objectivity. I see all paths and bend them. I do not need to tell you anything.”

“I’m not going along with any plan of yours if you can’t be straight with me,” Dash threatened.

“There is no way for me to convince you of anything meaningful on our current path.” It seemed to try to close its eye, but the sediment merely sloughed off more. “I won’t try.”

“What?” Dash pulled her head back in surprise. “Then why did you even start? Did you not see this coming back then?”

“I grow tired of this optimism of yours. Your pointless questions. Begone.”

Dust, Derpy, and Dash. A black flame began creeping up their right forelegs, threatening to consume them. Though her leg disappearing caused Dash no pain.

Derpy waved her hoof trying to put it out in vain. Dust took out a blade, looking about ready to cut her leg off. Dash wondered which of those was the better idea.

She turned to Applejack who had begun to be consumed by flames but put it out somehow.

“Don’t worry! It’s just sending you back to the real world,” Applejack told them. Not that it was much comfort. Still, it meant with Applejack’s ability she could persist in this realm while the others could not.

Dash really didn’t want to give in to the hopelessness that seemed to surround it. Something about Honesty’s attitude just ticked her off.

How could anypony live up to such a thing? Your life had to have ‘meaning’ in the eye of some nihilistic foal? How could you even live with such a thing? Even that tiny fragment seemed to be having a horrible effect on that filly.

She wanted to declare it impossible to get the acceptance of any element. So how did Starlight…?

Dash remembered! She ran over to Applejack, not knowing how much time was left.

“Applejack.” Rainbow Dash put a hoof on her shoulder. “I think… Starlight gave me the answer by accident. When she told me her story she said, ‘I made faith a virtue’. It’s not about you becoming worthy of it.”

After just a brief moment, Applejack nodded with understanding. It would have to be enough because Dash faded from the shadow realm a moment later.

“It seems like we’ll be safe in here.” Luster Dawn looked out from their peephole.

One of the many portraits of Sweetie Belle was partially transparent from one side, allowing them to overlook the central hall. Behind it was only a cramped room, hardly big enough for even a group of fillies. Even narrower corridors led off in either direction.

The Cartel had yet to find all of these passages it seemed.

Though Sweetie Belle’s mistrust had faded, Saccharine kept her guard up. Anger was the correct response to a false accusation, but Saccharine was hardly the only one to know that. If Luster was plotting something, it had to involve the RFI transmission beacon.

To that end, Saccharine made precautions against such a plan. Sending a low-level communication to Sweetie Belle she readied the kill switch in the transmitter. She also took precautions to stand behind Luster Dawn, ready to strike her down at a moment's notice if anything appeared off.

Luster slowly walked around Sweetie Belle once, the latter trying to focus the resistance field interference on her. The filly put a crystal on one side of Sweetie, what she claimed to be a source of energy needed to cast a spell normally too advanced for her.

“Good. Just like that.” Luster held a hoof out to her. “Focus on me. Then, when you feel the spell coming at you, push out in every direction at once. You’ll act as a prism. The magic sources will focus on you, then spread out in every direction like a prism.”

That wasn’t even how prisms worked!

“I’m ready,” said Sweetie Belle.

Luster began to cast the spell, her horn and the crystal glowed both. Despite her best efforts, Saccharine couldn’t see anything wrong. It really did look like Luster was casting a massive sleep spell. The energies were the same as that Saccharine had analyzed before.

The energy coalesced on Sweetie Belle. Then it happened!

Saccharine opened fire on Luster Dawn as a second pony teleported into the room. Luster put up a shield around herself, forcing Saccharine to rush into with her buzzsaws. That they were unable to cut through meant this was no lesser witch.

Meanwhile, the new pony, who Saccharine now knew was Auntie Eclipse had already cast a spell on Sweetie Belle, freezing her and the magic around her in place. The witch wasted hardly a glance for Saccharine. A mere flick of her hoof shattered Saccharine’s leg and sent her into the narrow passage.

Eclipse instead looked over at Sweetie Belle, speaking only to Luster.

“Frozen in stasis one second before doing her part to act as a conduit for a spell,” said Eclipse. “Only when I unfreeze her it will be the prepared artifacts channeling into her, and the azoth spell I cast. I really don’t understand why they were so reluctant to cooperate.”

If that much energy flooded into her, Sweetie would be unable to use the kill switch in time! Saccharine had to come up with some other plan.

“But you.” Eclipse turned her eye to Luster from on high. “There is something different about you. A different air to your magic. Did you do something foolish, girl?”

“I certainly hope not.” Luster again put a hoof into her bag. “What you’re sensing is alicorn magic.”

“Hm?” Eclipse frowned deeply and widened her eyes. “What alicorn magic?”

Luster pulled something out rather than her scraps of a spellbook. A white feather. She had gotten that, too?! Saccharine struggled to stand up!

“An alicorn feather?” Eclipse wasted no time pulling it from her. This seemed a rare occasion that her cool countenance was broken by genuine amazement. “I searched so long for one of these. I knew Twilight was supposed to have one but–”

Soon remembering herself, Eclipse turned again to suspicion.

“Where did you find this when I could not?” Eclipse asked.

“It was in Twilight’s house. The MSC ponies found it,” said Luster. “I just took it from them before they realized what it was.”

Eclipse watched her with suspicion.

“You can keep it,” Luster offered.

“Hm.” Eclipse considered the opportunity of this too great. “With this, I could–”

Saccharine charged at Eclipse on the slim chance hitting her might somehow interrupt the stasis for even a second. It did get her attention, but nothing else.

Static electricity gripped Saccharine, holding her in the air.

“I really hope you didn’t think there was anything you could do,” said Eclipse.

She threw Saccharine through the portrait where a group of guards had gathered at all the commotion. In mid-air, Saccharine’s’ body began to explode. This might be it…

And yet Luster Dawn caught her eye at the last moment. Casting a single spell on Saccharine.

Somehow the three pegasi ended up higher than Dash would have expected, up on a branch protruding from Moondancer’s tree mansion, one hanging out over the front lawn. She and Derpy all but face-planted. Dash nearly fell off, but Dust pulled her back on and toward some leaves ready to fall.

At least it gave her a better look at Oakenfield’s present state. Fighting must have erupted all over the place. Dash remembered something about demons attacking. There didn’t seem to be any path of destruction, just buildings broken at random. Even Moondancer’s home had a few scars dug into it.

One last piece of luck gave itself to Dash. Moondancer was already here! Just below them, surrounded by a small group of mish-mashed ponies. The downside was that she and a few other ponies were talking to a pony wearing a yellow uniform and a gas mask. A pony from the Mad Science Cartel. Behind him was a small wagon filled with all kinds of horribly illegal things.

While the MSC sales pony kept talking, a psychic tapped Moondancer on the shoulder and looked right to where the three of them had landed.

“Oh, we’re hardly in the clear yet, now are we,” he said. “MSC has plenty of weapons left to sell you. In fact, I have an amazing deal for one hundred giant cockroaches. All one hundred of them for just one hundred thousand bits. I’ll even give you an interest-free loan.”

Moondancer stayed with him and his horrible offer and looked dead in Rainbow Dash’s direction. Dash’s mind reeled searching for the best way to reveal she wasn’t a threat without getting immediately shot at.

And then she got immediately shot at.

Everypony moved against them at once. Dust’s body cowled as a flurry of incoming attacks launched at them at once. She managed to drag Dash away from danger and behind the side of one of those large tree homes.

Moondancer wasn’t relenting, either. She had already brought up numerous skeletons to surround the two. The skeletons began moving in.

“Cool it!” Dash shouted out. “It’s me, Rainbow Dash. We’re not here to–”

Dust undercut her point by shattering one of the skeletons and sending the electrified bones scattering back toward their attackers. She gave Dash a strained look. True, that thing would have hit them. But still!

“Oh, crap! That’s Lightning Dust!”

That was enough for them to adopt a more careful stance against the two. At least it meant they weren’t attacking at that exact moment.

“That’s the worst one!”

“I am?” Dust blinked, surprised, before returning to her usual demeanor. “I mean, of course I am! I take that as a compliment, you know!”

Dash jabbed her to little effect.

“Was that supposed to hurt?” Dust asked.

Actually, Dash might be able to make this work.

“Yeah, think about that.” Dash tapped her hoof against the ground and pointed it winningly at Moondancer. “I brought you Lightning Dust! Eh?”

Dust repeated the gesture and the two smiled at the crowd who stared back non-plussed or else utterly confused.

“We hate Lightning Dust,” Moondancer said bluntly. “She’s ‘arrested’ or assaulted many of our friends.”

“You mean your friends who were a danger to–?” Dust only half-rolled her eyes before Dash stopped her.

“Can it!” Dash shot at her.

Dust shut up, turning a hoof up.

“You see?” Dash smiled at Moondancer again. “I have the situation under control! Not sure how up-to-date you are through all the wanton destruction but I defeated Flash Bang. Nearly half of her forces defected and are following me now.”

“We’ve been busy.” Moondancer swept her eyes across the destruction a second time. “But yes, I’ve heard Flash Bang is out of the battle. I suppose you have our thanks for that.”

Not too much thanks from the looks of things. These ponies hardly let up even after that.

“Yeah! So that’s twice I saved you all from Flash Bang!” Dash called out loud enough for them to hear, slowly sweeping her hoof across the ponies, still ready for a fight. “From that time she was going to bring in an army down here to fight Trixie? Who I also got rid of?”

“Oh!” The MSC pony took off his little gas mask to give Dash a cruel smile. “I remember that one. You saved us from the very ponies who are following you now. From her, for example.”

He came about as close as anypony would dare to Lightning Dust.

“You were part of the army coming to burn down the homes of everypony here, weren’t you?” He lowered his head. “Did you have a sudden change of heart?”

“No,” Dust admitted readily enough.

“Then shut up!” Dash scolded her. And it worked for now.

“Moondancer! Friends!” He turned his head around. “Need I remind you all that Batton Pass is willing to honor the bounty on Rainbow Dash? Could she possibly be worth more than all the weapons you could buy from us with that money? Weapons you were just desperately telling me you need!”

Dash could tell this pony wasn’t going to make things easy for her. They were considering that offer and Dash couldn’t entirely blame them.

“Yeah!” Dash nodded a little too fast, not sure how to salvage that one. “And the whole demon thing? I totally took care of that one too.”

“How, exactly?” Moondancer asked. “I think that was mostly Starlight.”

Dash struggled to recall the events exactly, on the spot.

“Flash Bang would have made us sit back and let the demons tear you all to shreds,” Dust reminded her. “Dash was the one who led us into the fight. So yeah, she helped more than any of you did, I’m sure.”

“Yes!” The MSC pony clapped his hoof against the ground. “That’s a trend, isn’t it? You take credit for defeating Trixie, too while we all know that was actually Twilight! Who is presently and perhaps permanently gone.”

Not long ago that would have gotten to Dash. But now she bared it all with determination.

“Look! Did I personally defeat Trixie?” Dash asked. “No. Minuette? Also no. I can’t do something like that on my own. And I beat myself up about that way more than you ever could. But through it all, I also learned that nopony can do this on our own.”

“Except Twilight,” he snarked.

“Not even Twilight!” Dash shot back. “She’s an incredible pony, the most incredible I ever met, but not even her. Do you all think she doesn’t have any problems? Do you think being strong means she doesn’t need anypony else? Twilight needed help more than even I did. That’s why she’s in trouble now. Just because she’s the strongest doesn’t mean she’s the only one who matters or doesn’t need the rest of us.”

“Well that is how the world works. In case you haven’t noticed, the strongest ponies are the ones who get to be in charge. Does anypony here question that?”

“Well, that’s not how it should work!” Dash proclaimed. “And it won’t be how things work when I’m done! I’m asking you to stand with me. Twilight gave me the power to fight against the likes of Trixie. I’m asking all of you to give me the power to change the world!”

“Oh, wow!” His claps cut Dash off immediately. “We’ve got two apocalypses about to come crashing down on us and half the city is on fire but thankfully we have your little speeches on friendship and working together. Do you think we just needed a pep talk? Or worthless promises? ‘Work hard to forge a better tomorrow! Eat your vegetables! Follow me and I’ll turn the ocean into lemonade.’ You see? I can do it too.”

Dash resisted the urge to sic Dust at this guy.

“I have to agree,” said Moondancer. “I’m willing to give you a chance.”

Some disagreement emerged behind her, most noticeably an indignant scowl from Dash’s adversary, but she quieted it down.

“I’m willing to consider your offer, given what you’ve accomplished in the past. That you’ve defeated Flash and brought so many of our enemies under your control. But if you want our aid, you’ll need to give us a better offer than Batton Pass.”

That was something!

“Er.” Dash really should have done a bit more research before rushing into this. “What was Batton’s offer again?”

“Batton Pass is offering us independence from Equestria,” said Moondancer, “and will not allow any slayers into the Everfree without permission. Furthermore, she appears to be perfectly positioned to destroy our two main enemies. With Eclipse, whoever wins between Starlight and–”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dash waved that away. “I heard that part already.”

“Then what will you do?” Moondancer asked. “If you win?”

“Oh, let me guess! She’s going to ‘make the world a better place’, right?” The MSC pony cooed. “I’m surprised nopony else ever thought of that.”

Dash cast her head down as everypony watched her with suspicion more than anything else, Dust perhaps most of all. She couldn’t punt this any longer or make broad claims about general reforms to make life easier for ghosts and mad scientists. She had to make concrete promises now.

“I will work with Nailbat to completely remake the government of Equestria,” said Dash. “Between him and Sunset, I’ll try to make this compromise: that the slayer won’t be completely abolished but won’t have the direct political influence they have now.”

She really was walking a thin line here. Would have to make both these ponies and those like Dust happy enough to at least tolerate it. But then that was why she was here. If Dash could bridge this gap she could make it all the way.

“Does anypony here doubt that I will fight for the rights of ghosts, mad scientists, and everypony unfairly declared ‘monsters’?” Dash asked, turning squarely to her main detractor, who had to bite his tongue for the moment. Next, Dash preempted what was sure to be Dust’s silent objection. “And I know that I can’t just change everything overnight no matter how much I want to. But if I’m in charge you can bet that I’ll push Equestria far past what it’s ‘ready’ for. Hard enough they’ll be forced to grow.”

They were considering Dash words at least. The hostility was letting up however slightly. One rather heavily armed mare was the first to speak.

“You know, planting Rainbow Dash at the top of Equestria would be one of the best outcomes for us,” she said. “But are you really going to be able to deliver on half of your promises?”

“Like I said, I got Dust on my side already.” Dash gestured towards her, presenting her almost. “

“You are! I’m not going to stand in the way of any of this,” said Dust.

Ponies were generally flabbergasted by her statement. Finally, Dust was carrying her weight.

“Did Nailbat or Batton Pass manage to get any of your detractors on their side? Having either of them in charge won’t stop everypony from seeing you as monsters or harassing you. I think I’ve proven myself as the only sympathetic party who can take control of the tide against you.”

“And our independence?” Moondancer pressed.

Dash hesitated. She felt she was on a role for a second there, too. This was a big promise. But on the course, she was on…

“I will grant it,” said Dash, quickly adding, “but isolating yourselves won’t bridge all the hate that’s built up! I want us to work together. I want to show the slayers and Equestrians you’re not monsters. As I said, the SA or whatever comes after will always be a threat to you unless the kind of change I’m talking about happens. They’ll keep attacking you. It might even get worse if they become lawless. And I want to show you that we can change. That’s why I want us to fight together.”

She heard immediate grumblings from Dust upon mentioning independence. She knew it was a bit more than the other extreme Dash was trying to straddle would accept. But she also knew they’d care more about results than anything else. If Dash could keep it up…

“I suppose your goal is acceptable,” said Moondancer. “Though I doubt any of us would say it’s more than simply equal to what Batton Pass offers.”

Moondancer looked out to the room to find general agreement. Though Dash couldn’t help but feel they were slightly more ambivalent towards her if anything. Not too quick to bury the hatchet with an old enemy and embrace friendship, as Dash would have it.

“So the next question is: are you any better in getting us to your vision?” Moondancer asked. “I don’t want bluster or motivational speeches. Tell us exactly how you plan to deal with Starlight and Crater Cemetery both. Your vision is meaningless if they stand in your way.”

Having always taken things one step at a time, Dash didn’t have concrete plans to get rid of either one. It really just got everypony back together and then…

“I dunno the details.” Dust briefly noticed Dash’s expression, then looked out the window. “But Spitfire and Flash Bang had some kinda plan to kill Starlight when she ‘ascended’ or whatever. Most I could get out of it. They wanna be all mysterious about it.”

“Yeah!” Dash pointed to her. “We still got that mystery plan!”

“The mystery plan?”

Dash… really didn’t know too much about it. Spitfire had mentioned it but said it would be impossible at the moment. She also wanted to keep quite about it for now. But that might be just enough for Dash to bluff her way through this.

“There’s something Starlight doesn’t know… that she doesn’t know,” Dash repeated the words Spitfire said to her and got mostly the same reaction Dash gave upon first hearing those words. Saying that made her feel like Starlight. “Look! I know this isn’t a good look, but I can’t tell you the plan or Starlight might counter it. Especially not when that guy is around!”

Dash pointed to the MSC representative.

“Be that as it may.” Moondancer idly twirled her hoof around. “Even if we just take your word on this that still leaves Crater Cemetery, who may win the coming confrontation.”

“They are the true enemy!” A random pony, one of the cult leaders suddenly blurted out. “When the Bloodmoon rises next, on the True Hallowed Evening, we are all doomed. Not even Starlight could stand in her way.”

Dash frowned at that pony. She’d heard as much from Fluttershy and Sonata. Some star alignment would allow Nightmare Moon to escape her chains or something. And then…

“First of all, Starlight already failed with that whole Azoth spell thing. And if that’s what you all want, well why can’t Twilight cast the azoth spell?” Dash stepped forward. “If Eclipse can… then she can ten times better!”

“She isn’t here.” Moondancer shook her head. “There’s no guarantee she will be. I need a guarantee for this.”

“And didn’t you say you could save us either way?” Another interjected.

“Sunset then!” Dash stammered out. “No matter how bad things get, I will find a way! You asked me what good I am. That’s your answer! That’s what I’m good at.”

“As I said, I want action, not promises,” said Moondancer. “But I also said I will give you a chance. If you can defeat either of the two witches now aligned with Batton Pass. If you can get Sunset to agree to compromise with Nailbat, removing SA control of the government. Fulfill both these conditions and you’ll have our support.”

It was a hard question which of those would be harder? Taking out a witch without Twilight around, especially considering Eclipse was the second toughest, was obviously a major task in itself. But Sunset saw the SA as inherently good. Her version of the new ways couldn’t allow her to see it as anything else. Sure, she wanted to reform it… but Dash would have to make her go far beyond that.

But even with such a difficult path before her, Dash could hardly feel anything other than excitement. There was a path before her now. She didn’t know what lay on it or how to get to the end, but just that much meant it was possible now.

“I can do it!” Dash boldly promised. “Come on, Dust. Derpy!”

Derpy fell out of the tree, looking awkwardly at the other ponies around. It quickly became clear who had and hadn’t noticed there was a third pony there.

The MSC sales pony looked in dismay from Moondancer to Dash, then told his subordinate something before watching the three of them march off. They’d have company soon, it sounded like.

Zombies 3

The three set back north, two of them proceeding with much more caution than the third. Dust strolled briskly ahead, humming as she took the lead, rolling the shoulder of her good leg as if warming up for a fight. Dash had no choice but to trust her confidence that Dust would be enough against whatever was sent after them. There was nopony else.

Dash managed to walk out unassisted, trying to appear in better health than she was but had to lean against Derpy again. Perhaps that was a mistake. Letting them see she was injured was something Dash could have spun in her favor as well and it only served to reinflame her considerable swelling.

And she couldn’t turn into an owl just now. Somepony had to be watching. Maybe she could do ravens, at least.

“Say. Do we even need those freaks for anything?” Dust asked. “At best, they’re worth maybe one and a half what me and my buddies are.”

“How do you still not get it?” Dash rubbed her throbbing head. The pain came and went. It was like different parts of her body were taking turns being sore after the beatings she’d taken. “This isn’t about Oakenfield or the Everfree being strong enough to help. It was never about that. It’s about building unity across Equestria.”

“I don’t see how that’s going to help even there,” said Dust.

“Because I know exactly how you think, remember?” Dash closed her eyes, relaxing a little. “If I get you to fight alongside them…”

Dust frowned a little, almost disturbed at the thought. But she knew there was merit in those words.

“And let’s keep the talking down,” Dash suggested. “That guy sent somepony after us.”

“What are you looking so worried for, eh Trashie?” Smiling, Dust bumped up against her. That nickname felt more and more affectionate. “Unless they send a witch at me, I can take whatever the Mad Science Cartel has.”

“Did you forget there was an entire enemy line to the north of us?” Dash asked. “Which he probably called the second we left the city?”

“Oh. Right. Be right back.”

Dust planted her hooves, then took off hard, flying high into the sky. She lingered only a second before coming crashing down to earth.

“Yeah, okay! They’re starting to circle us. Tons of air support,” said Dust. “My plan? I smash through the weakest side. Derpy, you fly off with Dash and I’ll catch up with you later. I can handle it.”

Derpy pointed to herself, a tad nervous at the prospect. Even with a mild distraction, losing a couple of hundred ponies wasn’t easy. The two would be helpless if something else caught them afterward. But Dust’s plan, simple as it was, really might be their best bet given limited time.

Though Dash still wished she could come up with a bigger distraction. Dash looked around at the zombies scattered about, already increasing in number thanks to the oncoming alignment. Briefly, that old bit about pretending to be zombies to get by came to her mind. But that sort of thing never worked in real life.

“There!” Dust’s eyes flashed and she pounced on something just behind a bush, shattering the ground about it with an electrified hoof.

Her moves were fast enough that Dash only just caught what she was reacting to at the last possible moment, just before the pony-like figure exploded into pieces. The way it broke apart bloodlessly was a little too familiar. Some kind of zombie. Couldn’t have been a normal one judging Dust’s reaction to it. None of the others nearby warranted a response.

Sure enough, its break became atypical. The limbs, all save the head, burst into mud, covering the area. Dust’s hooves sank deeper into the now-swampy terrain than Dash would have expected.

Then the zombies in the area turned toward the small group with sudden purpose. Not even Dash in her current, heavily wounded state, would worry about a few zombies. But them showing any kind of awareness was never a good sign.

More began to claw their way up all around them.

“We already got company.” Dust straightened out, turning to one pony in particular. The way this newcomer moved left no doubt she was still alive.

It looked like the mare had been caught in a grody old net, dragged freshly out of the swamp. Her ‘dress’ or whatever it was supposed to be, was made out of enough layers of thick netting to obscure her body entirely. Planks of driftwood found themselves tangled into those nets and on top she wore a crown with antlers. That last piece was a common emblem of a necromancer.

“It’s a good thing I sent a zombie out first.”

Dash recognized the voice, though not the appearance.

“Wait. Moondancer?” Dash stepped forward. “Weren’t you just…?”

“Please don’t say my name again.” Moondancer pulled the coverings over her face down just enough to reveal herself before pulling it back up. “I want ponies to think I’m another necromancer named Sorrow Swamp.”

“I remember that bitch.” Dust snorted. Raising her hoof from the mud. “I’ll be honest, I thought that’s who you were for a second.”

“I specifically learned a few of her trademark spells in secret for an occasion like this,” said Moondancer.

“Still I got no idea why you’d dress like her. Worst fashion I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m in a precarious possession,” Moondancer said. “I can’t publicly support you at the moment. I don’t have unlimited clout over the other ponies of the Everfree. But I do want you to win out over the Cartel even now. And I want to see with my own eyes your abilities as a tactician. So if you’ll allow me, I will help you so long as you agree to obscure my identity.”

If that was an option, Dash was taking it! That ability to turn zombies into mud already filled Dash with ideas. She needed to get better at not looking desperate for help at some point, though.

“They won’t get suspicious that you’re suddenly missing?” Dust asked.

“This isn’t something I tell just anypony,” said Moondancer, “but I have a double. A flesh golem made by the Mad Science League that looks similar to me. It’s enough to keep up appearances for a day or two.”

“And how do we know you’re not the double?” Dust accused her immediately.

“Would that make any kind of difference?” Moondancer asked.

It really didn’t.

“Well we’re definitely taking her,” said Dash.

“I’m against it,” said Dust. “Necromancers aren’t good people. I’ve seen all kinds of horrible things unleashed on the world by her ilk, even when they’re trying to ‘help’. Only a sicko would get into the practice. I don’t even think we need her in the first place. You and I can do this alone, Dash.”

“The feeling is mutual,” said Moondancer. “But I disagree with the part about not being useful.”

She focused her strength a bit more this time. Far more zombies came out of the ground, tearing it all up around them until piles of dirt and undead surrounded the group in every direction.

“Surely you know of the upcoming alignment,” said Moondancer. “The True Halloween isn’t far from now. That’s your deadline.”

“I know,” said Dash.

“One upside is that the alignment empowers necromancers and undead. Zombies will respawn far more rapidly.”

To prove her point, Moondancer turned her attention to the very zombie Dust had first destroyed. Already, without her aid, its body beneath the head had largely regrown. The bones were in place and now something like a black tar slowly built up around them.

It was a fascinating sight. Super zombies respawned so fast and normal zombies so slow that one never really got to see the process. With the slightest effort, Moondancer accelerated it even faster until it was whole again.

“Until the Bloodmoon ends, I can effectively control an unlimited army,” said Moondancer, “albeit a weak one. I feel Oakenfield should be safe enough at the moment that I can offer this to you instead.”

“Even if you have unlimited zombies, you don’t have unlimited energy,” said Dust. “You’ll get gassed eventually. And don’t get too excited about the exploding mud thing, Dash. The blood moon won’t help with that spell, I know from experience. She couldn’t keep that one up for long.”

“I won’t pretend I can, but I can do far more than you’d expect. Raising and reconstituting undead is already effortless for me,” said Moondancer. “And it will only get easier. I can already help you with this power. I can summon an enormous swell of zombies and turn them into a flood that will convert the ground into marsh at least once or twice, giving us enough cover to run past enemy lines in the confusion.”

That was better than Dust’s plan, which was good enough for Dash. She was sure their group could slip by with that.

“Dust, which point was the weakest when you looked?” Dash asked.

“Eleven o’clock.” Dust pointed in that direction.

“We have to go now before they react. They likely already noticed all these zombies coming up.”

Dash looked around at the swell of ponies around her, remembering her original plan to get rid of zombies in general. Such a thing would have to wait for now. The living could blend in well enough among the zombies for it not to be immediately apparent who was what.

Moondancer made a signal and the undead began a brisk gallop in the direction Dust pointed. Dash wouldn’t be able to keep up, so she went back to owl mode for the time being.

It wasn’t long before somepony noticed the approach. Gunshots erupted toward them. Artillery shells burst haphazardly all around. As warned, a significant number of pegasi swarmed above them, making an aerial escape impossible. But unable to spot the living, the fliers had to content themselves with dropping bombs down at the group for now.

Thankfully, with Dust around, Dash wouldn’t have to worry about strays. And with a wall of meat shields between her and the enemy, they wouldn’t be able to aim at her directly.

Shot zombies fell to the ground only briefly before getting back up. Even the ones completely blown to bits needed a minute or so to reconstitute.

It wasn’t long before the enemy line came into sight, ponies armed and standing in formation with artillery behind them. They managed to hold rank, but Moondancer’s swell was too much for them to hold back with their limited firepower. They’d only have one chance before significant reinforcements came from the left and right, too.

Only once Moondancer’s horde got close did she switch to using that mud spell. Upon death, the zombies now burst into mud and slime, and wherever is splattered, the ground turned into swampland. Their artillery sank rapidly and even the ponies struggled to keep their barrels above the muck. The wall of approaching muck simply incapacitated the entire ground column.

It was then the living ponies made their advance, staying ever-slightly airborne just a foot above the ground. With the opponent reeling from an unexpected flood of zombies and slime, they were able to rush straight through the line with barely a scratch.

The only problem was the airborne ponies, coming around now for a second wave of bombing. That they blasted the ground indiscriminately again made Dash sure they’d gotten to the other side unspotted by the ponies above.

And with Moondancer creating and spreading zombies out in every direction, they might just lose enough of them.

“That many zombies are exhausting to keep up,” Hissteria said. “They wouldn’t be able to approach the castle like that.”

“Maybe force Eclipse to get off her ass.” Hissteria turned his eyes cooly back towards the door. “She cares an awful lot about using that filly… which I’m sure Dash has a problem with.”

They didn’t lose all their pursuers, but enough. It seemed three pegasi had managed to go in the right direction and at last spotted the group… only for Dust to jump up and knock them all out of the sky with little effort.

“We got past them for now,” said Dust, coming back before the last of the three hit the ground, giving them no further attention. “What’s the plan?”

“Yes? Which of the two witches do you intend to defeat?” Moondancer asked. “There seem to be two ponies you don’t currently have the ability to fight against.”

Moondancer, too, looked at Dash curiously.

Three, though Moondancer didn’t know that. That weird filly could show up at any time and Dash needed to assume that was at least as powerful as a witch.

Dash could imagine getting the help of Sunset against one of the two and maybe winning there. But the second could always show up as reinforcements and Dash was massively outnumbered even without the witches. So she needed some way to separate them.

Embermoon was the easiest of the two. She was alone in a field instead of in a fortified castle. She was weaker than Eclipse and didn’t allegedly have access to some kind of mega-spell, or any hostages. She was right next to Sunset, who was Dash’s main piece in this fight.

It would be easiest…

No! That kind of thing was never Dash’s strong suit. She was only at her best when aiming high, biting off more than she could chew. Auntie Eclipse was the bigger deal, right? Yet even that wasn’t enough. Dash knew what she had to do now. There didn’t even seem to be another option at this point.

“Both of them,” said Dash. “At the same time.”

And as soon as she said it, Dash was back in her element. The plan came to her. The look from Dust and Moondancer, surprised yet honestly unsure if Dash could do such a thing, confirmed it.

“How we gonna do that, boss?” Dust asked. “At best we got Sunset who can fight one of the two. I mean on a good day maybe I’d be more up to it, but my leg is still a little throbby after that punch.”

“We have at least one other piece besides Sunset,” said Dash. “There’s someone else who can defeat a witch around here.”

“Who? Exactly?”

Dash took a deep breath, knowing what she was about to say was a bit crazy.

“Crater Cemetery.” Dash straightened up and looked toward the castle with defiance. “We’ll have them attack Eclipse.”

The announcement got the rapt attention of Moondancer and Dust both. Crater Cemetery itself was on the edge of the Everfree, not too far from their current location.

“There’s only two reasons they wouldn’t be going after Eclipse,” Dash said. “Either they think Starlight is a bigger threat or they don’t know Eclipse is ready to cast the Azoth spell. I just need to eliminate both of those.”

“That sounds super smart!” Derpy nodded along with it. “How do we do that?”

And she leaned in, ready for Dash to reveal the rest of her plan. Though some of those parts didn’t actually exist yet.

“Uh!” Dammit! Once again that feeling of looking at a jigsaw puzzle with a missing piece came across Dash.

“Maybe your spook friend can put in a good word for us or something?” Dust smirked.

“I told you not to say that word!”

“Tch. I’m playing with you. But seriously. You better not be about to suggest we cross the enemy line again so you can try to give a friendship speech fucking Crater Cemetery. That didn’t even work on these weirdos.”

Dust did raise one good point. Not about the speech but about Fluttershy. That was on the right track. Dash needed some connection. What did Dash know about Crater Cemetery? What connections did Dash have to them?

Sonata came to mind. Sonata could… death curse? No! Something else.

“Fluttershy told me Crater Cemetery freed Sonata and kicked her out after they heard she abused the lucky coin,” said Dash, thinking out loud more than anything else.

“The what?” Dust asked.

Dash swatted at the air to keep her questions at bay.

“So they think Sonata is dangerous,” Dash concluded. She looked up to see the others not following. “The coin gives you good luck now in exchange for bad luck later.”

“Bad luck for whom?” Moondancer asked.

“I asked the same thing. Apparently, it’s whatever you would consider bad luck at the moment,” said Dash. “So for Sonata…”

Suddenly Nightmare Moon’s actions made sense.

“She was still brainwashed at the time! Bad luck for her would have been… something horrible happening to the one controlling her – to Nightmare Moon!” Dash looked around at the others. “Don’t you see? Sonata isn’t a liability! She’s got all this irony and anti-Crater Cemetery luck built up inside of her!”

“Oh, I get it!” said Dust. “We can trade her in for one free miracle against that psycho.”

“Not yet,” said Dash. “We use her to use Crater Cemetery to use the – uh. Okay, what I mean is this. If she’s ‘helping’ Eclipse with the spell and Sonata has miracle levels of luck built up inside of her then Crater Cemetery will be all like ‘holy crow we can’t let her do this’ and stuff.”

“Oh! That does make sense!” Derpy exclaimed with excitement. “Then they’ll be forced to destroy Eclipse before the spell can go off.”

Moondancer held onto her glasses and nodded in determination, acknowledging that would count as defeating the witch.

“Yeah. That sounds cool and stuff, but they probably already know Sonata works for you.” Dust pointed out.

“Gah!” Dash banged her head against a nearby tree.

Now it was like when you put in the last jigsaw puzzle piece only for another missing piece to appear.

Maybe the metaphor broke down at this point.

“Okay, I got that one too!” Dash straightened up. “We just need… to give them a win.”

Batton Pass stood on the outer wall of the castle looking out into the forest, somehow feeling she was on the defensive. It wasn’t entirely untrue. She only had to outlast her opponent. No reason to take any unnecessary risks. This was the time for caution.

The moment Batton Pass got word that Rainbow Dash was in Oakenfield, she launched an attack on that specter and banshee, now knowing they were meant only as a misdirection.

The results were middling. She learned how resilient the specter was in its battle doll. She managed to force it back. But Rainbow Dash appeared before any real damage could be done. Even still that small group was scattered, and Batton had ponies out searching for them even now.

Dash had already contacted Oaken Field, but the worst-case scenario Batton feared didn’t come true. Sunset alone had the power to defeat a witch here. She needed something to force that pony’s attention elsewhere…

Perhaps a reasonable offer could be reached with her.

A small group of Cartel soldiers came trotting up, taking Batton’s notice.

“Ma’am!” He called up to her. “We captured one of the ponies from Dash’s group!”

“I’m not captured!” The captive complained. “I went with you.”

Curious, Batton Pass flew down to the ground, Hissteria following shortly. It was the banshee, perhaps the least important as far as Batton could tell. The blue pony wasn’t restrained in any way but nevertheless did not attempt escape, though she was puffing her cheeks out in annoyance at her handler.

“Is there a reason to keep this one alive?” Batton Pass asked. “We already have enough hostages.”

“That’s Sonata Dusk,” said Hissteria. “I wouldn’t kill her immediately. She’s a member of the Noctilucent family and has been under Crater Cemetery’s control for a long time. She likely has valuable information we can extract.”

She nodded sternly, noting this pony no longer had those chains on her.

“How did you escape from her control?” Batton asked.

“Pinkie Pie has the power to break ponies out of the chains,” said Sonata. “I got freed, only for Fluttershy to try controlling me instead. I wanted to help you. I heard Eclipse is going to cast a spell that will destroy Crater Cemetery. I want its destruction more than anything in the world after what they did to me. I know things that might be able to help you.”

“It’s true that she didn’t put up a fight,” said the pony who ‘captured’ her.

“She was with Rainbow Dash,” Hissteria warned. “This has to be a spy.”

“What do you mean with Rainbow Dash? Don’t you know how ghosts work?” Sonata shouted up. “Fluttershy started controlling me right after I got free from Crater Cemetery. Specters have incredible control over us, especially when I’m weakened like that.”

It was plausible. But not good enough.

“Given Dash’s disposition,” said Batton, “I have to assume you are her friend and this is all part of some ploy. I will not allow you into our base under any circumstance.”

“I knew her for like ten seconds,” Sonata whined. “I don’t even think we’re acquaintances yet. But I was brainwashed by that monster for 50 years! Which do you think I care more about? I’m not even asking you to let me in! Just have Eclipse come out here so I can tell her what I know!”

Rainbow Dash had already gotten across their lines once. Batton Pass was not going to take any chances. Anypony with the stink of that one on her needed to be destroyed. But Perhaps Batton could learn something about what Dash was planning.

“If you want me to consider even that much then tell me what you know about Rainbow Dash!” She called down at the banshee. “Surely, you’ve seen something that would compromise her. What were they discussing when she intercepted our attack? If the two of you aren’t friends, then you’d have no qualms about betraying her.”

“Oh! I can do that one!” Sonata replied. “Okay, first of all, she can turn into an owl, that’s how she got past you in the first place.”

Keeping that a secret. Batton had been looking for crows.

“Um! Moondancer said if Dash could defeat another witch, then she’d switch sides. So they’re going after Embermoon, obviously, and they want to try to convince Sunset Shimmer to help. Lightning Dust and that Necromancer are going to try and up and around, but that’s just a distraction. Dash is going to use her owl thing again to try and sneak around going through Ponyville.”

Her smooth talking was perhaps a bit exaggerated. She failed to convert the denizens of the Everfree, at least for now. Still, Batton would take no chances.

“Very well. If what you said is true and we successfully intercept them… then I will allow you to help. Stay out in the forest until further notice.”

“Alright.” Sonata went back to the tree line.

“No! Like way, way back!” Batton pointed deeper into the woods. “At least a mile. And even after you can only send written notes to Eclipse.”

“Okay.” Sonata started backing up.

“Two miles,” Batton upped it, not liking how quickly she agreed. “Three! And you’ll be watched.”

Sonata kept slowly backing away, while Batton’s eye twitched. She couldn’t think of any way this could be a trick. Perhaps Eclipse would.

Far away from anypony else, as none of them wanted to approach her, Embermoon scratched at her left foreleg, still covered in fur, though heaps of it fell off with each scratch. That was how it started with her right leg, now black and covered entirely with chitin. It only it had stopped there. Holes began to open in it, one of which had eaten straight through that leg.

It was bad enough her fur was falling out and some exoskeleton growing in its place. Just when Embermoon had accepted she’d become a bug-pony, these holes began to appear. Her worry now was that they’d keep growing until there was nothing left.

What she looked like hardly mattered with her new powers. She could simply transform, but likely not from dead to alive.

Certainly, Embermoon was doing something wrong. She could eat and eat but never ceased to be hungry. The only other pony like her was Nailbat’s little spy and she wasn’t nearly as far along. So there was simply nopony to explain this new biology to her.

She’d have to figure it out somehow.

One of those cartel ponies came running up to her, Embermoon quickly reverting to her original form with a puff of green flames.

“We spotted Rainbow Dash in Ponyville,” he said. “Batton Pass wants to know if you’re willing to strike her down.”

Embermoon grimaced. Why was she taking orders from these lesser beings? Why was she fighting Rainbow Dash? Eclipse could deal with Nightmare Moon.

But certainly, Dash be a nuisance once it came time to go back to the Dark Circle. Best to deal with her now.

“You attack first,” said Embermoon. “I’ll go in from the side.”

There were two types of transformation. One purely cosmetic, where she could look like anypony she’d seen. The other was the true transformation, gaining the strength and abilities of that pony. The latter was much harder to maintain. Turning into somepony like Twilight or Eclipse was something she could hold onto for mere seconds.

She flipped through the first few ideas. Twilight. Rarity. Dash knew them too well and Embermoon too little.

Sunset Shimmer. Nailbat. Sunset’s second in command… Moonlight Raven. Her.

Embermoon transformed into that pony and galloped off.

Batton came to Eclipse with the news of Sonata Dusk allegedly defecting to help them. The story sounded plausible, and she would certainly be useful. However, as Eclipse glanced into her pocket where the feather was kept, her fine-tuned intuition could sense something wrong.

This feather. Sonata Dusk. Too many good things were happening at once. At least one was a trap.

Perhaps she had frightened Luster Dawn too much. But how could she possibly hope to betray Eclipse with the alicorn feather? Even Eclipse’s knowledge of such things was marginal at best.

They were near Twilight Sparkle’s home, however. Perhaps there was another spellbook, or perhaps mind fiber that would grant her knowledge. Yes, that was the only way. She had to assume her apprentice came into contact with such a pool of information.

As for Sonata. Rainbow Dash might have been trying to frighten Crater Cemetery by sending that pony over to her, making Eclipse a bigger target. Whatever information she could gain from Sonata would likely be too marginal to change the equation.

Part of her wanted to discard both advantages at once. But Starlight and Nightmare Moon were not to be trifled with either. She really would need every advantage to overcome them. And the lure of ever greater power was simply too extreme. Plus, it would make far more sense for Rainbow Dash to try and defeat Embermoon first.

She could tell based on the information Sonata gave if it were a trap. Were it a minor aid there would be no need for an intervention. If it appeared Sonata could be a major help, she could assume it really was a trap and for those ghosts to attack immediately.

In that scenario, she could kill Sonata, make sure Batton Pass died, and flee long before the danger approached. She had everything she needed. The ponies in the auxiliary bases with the artifacts, in disarray, would still cooperate to save their own lives against Crater Cemetery.

She watched Batton carefully, considering the best way to seamlessly off her in that scenario.

“The only thing I can think of,” said Batton, “is perhaps Sonata will feed you false information that will cause the spell to fail!”

That was good.

“I don’t think Rainbow Dash is stupid enough to sabotage that particular part of my plan alone,” said Eclipse. “And none of us know if we’ll be using it against Starlight or Crater Cemetery yet.

“We could force the truth and whatever information she has out of her! I have plenty of magic daggers that can slice ghosts to ribbons,” Batton suggested.

“In my experience, torture is an unreliable method of gathering information,” said Eclipse. “They’ll say what you want to hear, not what’s true. I will listen and discern what to use with caution.”

“Then what do you think we should do?” Batton asked.

“Have her write that not immediately,” said Eclipse. “I will discern its usefulness and know that she is acting in good faith if the interception is completed.”

Batton still had to think it over for a minute.

“If you think it’s a good idea.”

Eclipse nodded sternly.

M9

“I’m not sure how much longer this can last!” Another one of Blueblood’s undead dire rats fell. Only two more and some rubble stood as a barrier now.

Rarity turned to the two ponies who took the dive. Kerfuffle went to work right away, excitedly babbling gibberish to herself as she tore up what machinery remained in the room. At first blush, it might seem like she was doing something productive. But after watching her for a moment, Rarity could tell her real purpose.

“Kerfuffle is making something.” Blueblood glanced back, hopeful.

“Nothing we need, as far as I can tell.” Rarity shook her head. “This is an upgraded part for Fuff N’ Stuff, her robot. She’d been talking about using her last dive for this.”

Rarity sighed. Maybe that’d be slightly useful if they could even find the broken bodies of their robots. She could hardly blame Kerfuffle for this, though. It was a long shot she’d be able to focus her seventh dive on anything in particular.

That left the mercenary, who lay on his back, eyes rapidly twitching.

Yes, she remembered her first time as well. You felt every particle of your being, you witnessed your consciousness transcend beyond the universe and saw the oneness of everything. You transcended, the barriers between you and all the world vanishing, or rather realizing there never were any barriers to begin with.

But a moment later you realized all that was nonsense and you were just having something like a seizure.

The mercenary snapped out of that delusion, eyes popping open before he rushed over to the window. Everypony not preoccupied with fighting watched closely. Intentions were often hard to discern.

He broke the glass, letting a violent gust begin assaulting the room. Then he leaned down and began arranging the broken shards just so. Rarity recognized this. He wasn’t planning an escape but trying to create something.

“They both got distracted,” Rarity concluded. What now?

Before anypony could ask how she knew the difference, a sound even louder than the wind filled the room. It came from above, shaking the ceiling over their heads. They were drilling through the ceiling! Multiple holes, one in the center and four around the edges. The cartel was planning to collapse the floor above them!

“We have to escape through the window!” One pony shouted.

“We’re as good as dead if we do that,” said Rarity. “It leads into a wide-open courtyard where we’d get blasted apart. Then beyond that the forest is a death sentence in this wind.”

“We’re dead if we stay here!”

There was only one hope left, but it wasn’t blindly charging out the window. Rarity stepped up to a terrified Coco, still hiding in the corner. Though it was slightly tempting to just shove Coco’s head into the machine, that wouldn’t work even if Rarity were that desperate.

“Coco,” said Rarity. “Listen to me.”

“I can’t do it Rarity!” Coco shook her head and closed her teary eyes. “I can’t be strong! It’s easy for you to say stuff like this, but I’m the weakest, most pathetic pony here! Hiding in the corner is the best I can do.”

“Don’t you see? That you desperately want to get out of here is only an advantage right now. You’re only problem is that you believe it won’t work. When I first started mad science, I was a hopeless child trying to do an impossible task. I was no better than you. Most of us weren’t! And yet time and time again we still pulled through because that’s the one thing we refused to believe.”

“You had Twilight with you.”

“But I’m not her,” said Rarity. “None of us were. Anypony can make a difference as long as they just happen to be the right pony at the right time. You don’t need to be strong, Coco. You just need to be the right pony.”

Trying to keep her breathing under control, Coco looked to the ceiling, slowly crumbling above them, to the storm raging outside, to their undead rat defenders quickly losing ground. Perhaps she finally realized there was no other option or perhaps Rarity’s words got through to her.

Coco swallowed and nodded. She kept her eyes closed the whole time as Rarity turned on the machine. A whirl of blue and black appeared once more. Coco still didn’t open her eyes, but she did put her head into that portal.

It was programmed to shut off immediately, lasting only one second. To a casual observer, nothing happened, nothing save Coco’s intense reaction to seeing the outer realm.

She staggered back, twitching violently but remaining on her feet. Her eyes were no longer closed, but wide open, as wide as they could be so that Rarity believed with one glance they wouldn’t be closing again anytime soon.

Rarity had to believe it worked!

The hole in the center broke through immediately. The ponies above dropped an explosive device through. Rarity braced herself. This was it!

Coco sprang into action, pouncing on the explosive. She jabbed it once, then lifted it into the air with her teeth, giving it a violent shake. A chunk of it broke off in her mouth and the rest went bouncing harmlessly across the room.

No explosion was triggered. She had disarmed the bomb!

It worked.

“Coco? How are you feeling?” Blueblood asked.

“No.” Coco straightened up and turned to Blueblood with an unblinking intensity. “It’s not Coco. It’s Coco Pummel.”

“That was already your name,” said Blueblood.

“My name, Rarity?!” Coco slapped him hard across the face, though not hard enough to throw him off his feet or even make him flinch. Unfortunately, dives didn’t make you any stronger.

“I’m not Rarity.”

“You’re all Rarity!” Coco pressed her muzzle up against Blueblood. He really should know better than to question her in such a state.

Without further notice, Coco grabbed the shell of the bomb again and ran straight into one of the walls.

“Did it work?” Another pony asked.

“Yes! I’m sure of it!” Rarity exclaimed. Everypony came around to watch Coco. “She has an escape plan!”

Coco pressed herself up against the wall’s side as if trying to force it to move.

“Is she? She gets there’s a wall there, right?” an unfamiliar pony pointed out to the rest.

“There’s no such thing as walls, Rarity!” Coco shouted at the guy before turning and repeatedly smashing her hoof into the wall, letting out a shout each time.

“She’s not making any sense,” he concluded. “What if she just wanted the bomb for something?”

Just then, Kerfuffle dragged the dislodged mechanism of the bomb off to her corner.

“No.” Rarity stood in front of Coco, gesturing to her with both hooves. “It looks like her actions make no sense to us lowly fools but every move is precisely calculated. Coco is affecting chaos, altering variables that are far beyond our ability to perceive, nudging reality until things align perfectly to execute on. What we are witnessing is transcendent genius.”

Rarity pointed to Coco, now running her tongue along the corner of the wall.

Once again, danger became imminent on all sides. The rest of the holes broke through on the ceiling, already beginning to crack. The rats had all been killed in a moment, the last barrier would fall. The group began to huddle together, some eyeing the window once more.

At this, Coco stood and pointed up dramatically.

“Don’t not not not,” Coco stopped to count, “not!”

She sprung into action, throwing the shell of the bomb into one of the holes. A small series of bangs shook the roof, and it distended above them. Yet the shell acted as a keystone, everything else buckling around it but remaining buckled in midair. Even still, it looked as though they had mere seconds, so much as a fly landing on that shell would surely cause the whole thing to come crashing down.

At the same time, Coco yelled and charged forward into the open hallway, towards the ponies now firing upon them. One would think the prior warning meant not to follow her, but Rarity knew not to try and make sense of anything Coco said, it was all far too beyond them. Coco would adjust any plan around whatever they did.

“She has an escape plan! Everypony! Charge!” Rarity called out and ran after Coco.

The rest followed in an unorganized mob, matching Coco’s wild shouts, the few with guns taking their shots whenever they could. The enemy was far more heavily armed, and a hail of bullets and spells came to meet them.

Coco ‘Pummel’ really was their only hope here. It would have been an absolute slaughter were it not for her. She alone could see which enemy was about to hit with a lethal attack and could calculate the bare minimum effort to turn that into a near-miss.

Her primary tactic seemed to be picking up bits of gravel and throwing them with precise aim. She could hardly knock anypony out, but tapping their guns or horns or wings, or occasionally tripping them or hitting their eyes from a weird angle was just always enough. And she always preempted anypony who turned on her by rolling behind some other enemy.

It was the rest who were on offense, their line tackling and stomping the cartel as it advanced. Fire and noise erupted all around them, but Rarity felt nothing.

They soon reached the end of the hall, enemy ponies now behind them. Rarity stopped only briefly to look over the other ponies. Not a single one had been blown to bits despite all that noise. Several were bleeding, yes, but none to a life-threatening extent.

Rarity had lost track of the mercenary who’d taken his first dive. A glimpse of Kerfuffle sneaking off through one of the holes in the floor gave her an idea of where he went. Kerfuffle didn’t care about escaping, but surviving was necessary to achieve her present goals. She knew what she was doing as well and wouldn’t stop until her robot was upgraded. The same would be true for that other pony, wherever he went. They would be fine for the next few hours at least.

Coco led them to the only other window in the basement and opened it up, but didn’t go through immediately, instead digging up the dirt just outside.

“How is this any different from the other window?” One pony shook her head at it. “We can’t go out into the storm, can we? And where are we even going to find shelter? There’s nothing for miles and miles.”

It was a little different, though not necessarily better. This exit would lead out into the forest. They might not get blown to pieces by artillery like they would have escaped into the garden, but this storm threatened to turn the trees into a death sentence.

“Just shut up! You people don’t even exist!” Coco retorted and crawled out the window.

“I know we can’t follow her thinking, but Coco has an idea,” Rarity promised. “She got us through the hall; she’ll get us through this. She glanced through the chaos of the outer realm. There has to be something she can see on this side.”

Death was slightly less imminent, yet at the same time, they had just seen a display of Coco’s abilities. There weren’t any more objections.

Before Coco could get too far ahead, Rarity was the next to crawl after her.

Dash’s group was away from trees, at least. They had moved northwest, into farmland but that was only marginally better. The growing windstorm turned the place into a real dirt devil, pillars of black soil rose and swirled and blanketed the area. If Dash spat in any direction through all that, she wouldn’t see where it landed.

They had enough elite pegasi around to create something of a shelter. Dash wasn’t the only pony who could create wind walls. Only a weak barrier was needed to keep the dirt from blowing in and scouring the lot of them.

But the dust storm worked in their favor as well. Hardly anypony could advance through this. However, there was one obvious exception.

“We probably don’t have too long,” said Spitfire. “There’s no reason to assume Embermoon will be out of commission for very long. She’s going to come after us. Likely before the storm is, definitely before tomorrow, and we don’t have any way of fighting her.”

“More specifically, she’s going to come after me. We can use that.” Dash rubbed her nose with a slight smile. “Never thought I’d end up being the tank.”

“What?”

“You ever played Summoner Knights?”

“That cringey children’s card game?”

“Never mind.” Dash coughed into her hoof. “The point is, I just need to not hide where I’m going this time. Lead her into another trap. Embermoon seems like the overly hot-headed type.”

“And if she’s more like Eclipse than we think?” Spitfire asked. “If she attacks the camp instead?”

“Just keep running. Lead her as far away from here as possible,” said Dash. “It’s not as good as defeating her, but that would still take her out of the action.”

“I can do that much,” Spitfire’s confidence returned to her. “But what is this trap you’re talking about?”

“We’re heading back south again,” said Rainbow Dash. “To Oakenfield. That’s where Sunset Shimmer is going to be. And Sunset can fight Embermoon,”

“Why would she be there again?” Dust asked. Dash hadn’t properly explained that part before due to lack of time.

“She believes there are certain seals that, if broken, will summon Golden Feather,” said Rainbow Dash. “One of those is the Element of Honesty.”

“Which we just woke up.” Dust nodded.

“And I dropped that information before we retreated. She’ll be there, I know it. Embermoon will be back on her feet, chasing me again before long,” said Dash. “If I get down there, we’ll have the chance to take down one of the witches! Somehow.”

Dash hadn’t thought it through entirely, but at this point, everypony just seemed to be okay with that. They knew she’d figure it out somehow.

“I’d rather a fight like this not occur in my city,” Moondancer instead objected.

“I’ll do everything I can to keep it away,” said Rainbow Dash. “You’re the one I want to escort me down there for just that reason. I’ll need you close to Oakenfield.”

“I suppose I can hardly object. I came to you because my city was in grave danger either way,” said Moondancer. “I do know of a secret tunnel leading into the city. It will be guarded, but I’ll be sure to have my double give word for us to pass.”

“Where should I go?” Fluttershy asked. “My aura is too big. Anypony with psychic abilities will know where I am.”

“I know. That’s why you’re going to help Rarity and Sonata,” said Rainbow Dash. “For real this time! I have to believe she found some way to use this hurricane. If there’s ghosts around like I’m hoping, you’d be most useful there.”

Dash looked up at the wind, growing ever stronger. Rarity was one of her smarter allies.

“If Rarity hasn’t already found a way to escape, then make it happen yourself.”

Dust straightened up, rolling her shoulder.

“Cool. Yet another lap back down to Oakenfield. Let’s get this trip over with, boss.”

“No. You’re going with Fluttershy,” said Dash, “and take your four best with you.”

Nopony liked that.

“Is that a good idea?!” Fluttershy and Dust both said it at once, one exasperated and the other annoyed. Yet they stopped to look at one another afterward.

“Yes,” Dash said firmly. “Sunset’s the only one who can fight Embermoon, anyway. We learned that the hard way. All I need is somepony to get me through the storm.”

“Well. I guess if I’m more likely to see action that way.” Dust kept her eyes locked on a nervous Fluttershy. “Just don’t try anything–”

She was about to say ‘spook’ but restrained herself for once, instead glancing sideways at Dash.

“Spitfire, your job is to be ready. When the storm clears, that’s the signal. Make a charge towards Rarity’s castle.” Dash held up a hoof in confidence. “By then, we’ll have the witches taken care of and can attack it from three fronts.

Keeping her head down, bracing against the wind, Rarity advanced with only Coco ahead of her. It would have been easier wading through molasses than pushing through this windstorm, and it wasn’t even at its peak yet.

Every so often, Coco would fall back and nudge a pony, bite an ankle, or move a rock or limb before carrying on. Never directly did Rarity know what any of these slight modifications were for, but they worked. Trees fell nearby. Branches went whizzing overhead. But none ever harmed the herd.

Coco had not blinked once, though how Rarity had no idea. Dirt kept getting in her own eyes, making it impossible to keep them open long. Perhaps Coco just knew where to look to avoid that or had the focus to ignore any pain.

“How much longer are we going to keep this up?” Blueblood had to shout over the heavy winds. “We’re barely getting anywhere!”

He wasn’t wrong. The only reason they hadn’t been overrun at this pace was that the enemy also had to contend with the storm. On a clear day, Rarity could have covered this ground in a short jog though it’d already been over an hour.

There wasn’t any way they’d survive the peak of the storm. Not even a pony on dive could manage that. The dive might even have worn off by the time they truly needed it.

“Coco has to have a plan!” Rarity assured everypony, including herself. “She wouldn’t have taken us out here if she didn’t. We’re already safe from the Cartel thanks to her.”

Rarity could tell this didn’t inspire much hope through the gale, but what choice did they have but to keep going?

“Safe from the Cartel you say?” An unfamiliar voice came from no discernable direction. Everypony stopped, assuming the worst, everypony save Coco seemed above hearing it.

A ghost rose from the ground, not one Rarity had ever seen before. A slightly unhinged mare with dark blue fur and eyes floating in a dark pool, marking her as a phantom, approached the group.

“You know, they may not be able to move through this storm.” The ghost circled around the group effortlessly, unaffected to prove her point. “But ghosts can! It’s almost like that was part of the plan! Hehehe!”

At least Rarity knew for sure where the storm had come from. Crater Cemetery was attacking the Cartel! No time to ruminate on the implications of that, though. Their group was dead in the water against even a single ghost.

The phantom tilted her head and a blade of ice formed around her hoof.

“Coco!” Rarity called out to her. “Now would be a good time to, I don’t know, ‘pummel’ this ghost or something?”

“You don’t even exist!” Coco shot at the ghost, then kept walking.

The phantom watched her only real opponent pass by with utter confusion.

“Yeah, let’s go with that.” The phantom smirked then, ignoring Coco, went for the rest of the group. “Soon, none of you will, either!”

A few icy blasts were all it took. The herd broke rank immediately. A few tried using magic against the ghost but had zero ability to aim. The phantom laughed and moved about freely while the living struggled to keep their footing.

Coco stopped, looked out into the forest, and then screamed louder than Rarity could have guessed possible for the small mare, and she knew Coco had plenty of experience with screaming. It drowned out even the wind for a time and she kept it up without faltering for even a moment.

The phantom flew into the air above Rarity, ice coalescing around her as a heavy lance made of twisted spikes formed about her.

“Goodbye!” The phantom flew down at Rarity, intending to reduce her to a pulp in a single thrust. Given the storm, that Rarity even managed to trip and not fall on her face was impressive. But lying prone she had nowhere to go.

Coco stopped screaming. The lance came within inches of Rarity. Then a streak of lightning flashed, and the phantom went soaring. The ice shattered, falling all around Rarity but none managed to cut.

Standing now where the phantom had just been was a green pegasus rippling with electricity. Rarity recognized this one:

Lightning Dust.

Rarity rubbed her eyes wearily. Really? Lightning Dust was here too now?!

A fable about three lions arguing over which one got to eat the lamb came to mind. How many enemies were going to show up today?

Next came four more pegasi, clearly followers of Dust going by their rough countenance. And then, something much heavier plodded through the forest, spreading ice and smashing branches. A massive pony, no, a massive construct came through the woods.

The armor of Nightmare Moon. And from it emerged Fluttershy!

But Dust made no move against the specter. Rarity truly had no idea what to make of it.

Fluttershy created a dome of ice around the group just as the most violent gust yet began to howl. It was far from perfect, but they had shelter for the moment. Rarity felt the wind through the wall of ice, cold wafting out at her, but compared to what came before it was like being pulled out of quicksand.

The phantom smacked her lips and seized up the reinforcements.

“Our mistress will destroy all of you!” The poltergeist shouted before flying off.

“Tail it, then get back,” Dust ordered one of what Rarity assumed to be her flunkies, who flew off into the storm.

Meanwhile, Rarity had crept to Fluttershy’s side.

“Fluttershy,” Rarity whispered, keeping an eye on Dust, “perhaps you don’t know who that is, but…”

“Lightning Dust?” Fluttershy looked at her and gave the fakest friendly smile Rarity had ever seen from the ghost. “Don’t worry, we’re friends now.”

“Friends?!” Dust stopped as suddenly as though she ran into a wall. “No. I just decided to support Rainbow Dash.”

Rarity watched Dust for whatever the catch or misunderstanding could be.

“Dash managed to…?” Rarity relented with a sigh. “No. I really shouldn’t be surprised.”

“We’re here to extract you,” said Dust.

“I can create a tunnel of ice leading out of the forest,” said Fluttershy. “To somewhere safer. You’ll be protected from the storm.”

Dust started muttering at the suggestion, disappointed at the lack of fighting.

“That certainly sounds like the best plan,” Rarity agreed. “My only problem is Sweetie Belle is somewhere outside in all this mess. I told her to go to Ponyville or baring that Oakenfield.”

Rarity looked to the others for any information they might have.

“We were just down south,” said Dust. “Nopony there said anything about a Sweetie Belle.”

“She can survive a tree falling on her,” Fluttershy reminded Rarity, sensing a sudden spike in tension. “Even if she’s just hiding in the forest, Sweetie Belle would be okay.”

“But she wouldn’t be fine from an attack from Crater Cemetery! Or who knows what else is out there.”

“She might be in Ponyville,” Fluttershy suggested next. “We’re heading there anyway. I need to come pick Sonata back up soon afterward. So I’ll be coming back to search for her in just a little while.”

Rarity considered then nodded. If nothing else, Sunset’s ponies might have information. Even telling Rarity her sister wasn’t there would be something.

Rarity opened her mouth to accept the course of action.

“No!” Coco interrupted, shoving Rarity to the ground. She turned dramatically and began walking back toward the castle. “I’m escaping from the castle. None of you can stop me. You’re never really done escaping a castle…”

“You’re already–” Dust began but Rarity stopped.

“Coco is in a dive state right now,” said Rarity. “She knows something we don’t.”

“Or she’s just crazy!” Dust protested to deaf ears. “You know, that’s literally what on the eight means.”

“What are you thinking coco?” Rarity asked, ignoring the ignorant pony.

“Nothing is escaped, Rarity.” Coco looked up at the ice dome around them. “We have to find a tree or something. Something like a tree?!”

Rarity knew that statement could mean literally anything but lost to the urge to glance over at one of the many trees, much to Coco’s disgust. All Rarity knew was that whatever Coco wanted was not like a tree by any rational train of thought.

Why was it that in a normal state, you knew communications like this was impossible but under a dive you thought you could somehow pull it off despite such a thing never working before? One of many mysteries. Rarity’s theory was that it stemmed more from an attempt to effect chaos than to convey information. Using vibrations rather than words to try to make others do as you wish.

“Why is it always words with you?!” Coco grabbed Rarity’s withers with both hooves and stared at her with those eyes of unblinking intensity. “I can see the other Rarity right now! Don’t you get that? It’s back there!”

“Are you saying you want to go back to the castle?” Rarity asked. “There’s something there? Or near there…?”

Another Rarity? That could mean Sweetie Belle and Saccharine. Rarity dismissed that though, knowing making sense of this was pointless. At best she could follow what Coco did, not her attempts to communicate.

Coco could only let a grunt of frustration and walked up to the barrier of ice, now surrounding them in every direction. She pulled back her hoof and began to ‘pummel’ it.

“She’s going back, and I think she wants me to go with her.” Rarity composed herself and stood by Coco. “Fluttershy, take the rest to safety. There’s… something I need to do here. Though what I don’t know.”

“What? Seriously?” Dust asked. “Pummel here is literally on the eighth and you’re taking her advice despite her not being able to tell you what it is?”

“She’s on the second,” Rarity corrected her. “Second is often the best. And I’ve relied on this power countless times. I won’t reject it now.”

“Rarity, are you sure this is a good idea?” Fluttershy asked. “I know there’s a lot of confusion, but you won’t have any strong fighters with you. How much longer will Coco even be like this?”

That was a good question. They had a few hours at best.

“Five will come,” Coco grunted, finally breaking through the wall, albeit Fluttershy weakened that portion for her just then.

“Five? Then I’ll go.”

Everypony stopped, turning to a smirking Lightning Dust.

“Didn’t you just say…?” Rarity asked.

“I thought I was going to have to break into the castle, anyway. This way I’ll get to do something other than shepherd a bunch of black cats around. I think we can take whoever’s there. You two come with me and then that’ll be five.”

Dust called two of her lackeys to her side. The one she’d sent out returned with a warning that ghosts were ‘pooling’ to the south. That let two pegasi and Fluttershy protect the retreating ponies.

“If that’s the case,” said Fluttershy, “I’ll try to get these ponies to Ponyville as fast as possible and come back.”

“But is that five including you, Coco?” Rarity asked.

Coco already ran screaming into the wind with reckless abandon, refusing to answer. Rarity really shouldn’t have even assumed that statement about five meant anything in particular.

“Oh, I’ll volunteer then.” Blueblood stepped up.

“You?” Rarity raised a brow at him.

“I don’t see anypony else here.”

Though there were a good number of ponies behind him who looked ready to volunteer as well. Rarity looked to Coco for any hint as to what they were supposed to do, but Coco, already fed up with their foolishness had charged ahead, screaming the whole way. She’d be out of sight in a moment.

“Alright, fine. You.” Rarity ran after Coco.

“You know, I kinda like this pony!” Lightning Dust soared to Coco’s side.

With a violent flick of her horn, jagged barbs of glowing red dug into the specter. It let out a scream as it unraveled and then… nothing.

At Eclipse's side, Sonata Dusk, gripped hard by the hair, struggled and whined at the sight of another ghost unraveling. Yet she had been whining for over an hour now and it hadn’t so much as slowed Eclipse from dragging her out here by any degree.

Though they outnumbered her vastly and surrounded her on every side, the other ghosts gave Auntie Eclipse a wide birth after that. Yet the wind didn’t dissipate. It must have been another specter. The ghosts hadn’t put up a very good fight so far. The real opponent was only beginning to arrive.

A flood of black and grey mist had been seeping through the trees this whole time. The wind only blew this fog about when the fog wished it, allowing it to slowly encircle Eclipse. More than the poultry army of a few dozen spooks, this is what surrounded Eclipse.

She allowed it, for now, her whole mission being only to draw this thing’s presence.

As the mist became a tower before her and a wall behind, the grey sections grew more solid and formed sharp teeth. Portions of it stretched out to form into long snouts around the fangs until the tower of mist became a dream-like image of a pack of snarling wolves before her.

“I assume this is the real you,” said Eclipse. She paused before deciding to use the only real card she had against the entity. It’s a real name that it so jealously guarded. “Nightmare Moon?”

The wall turned from wolves to grinning jackals as Nightmare Moon smiled at Eclipse knowing as much. Eclipse couldn’t help but glance at Sonata, whose struggle died down in the face of this threat. It was a little too clear how she could have learned that.

“Too late,” said a voice far more sophisticated than what should have emanated from such a mess. “I am already slipping out of my prison. There is nothing you can learn, nothing you can do to make a difference any longer.”

It was rare for Eclipse to encounter an opponent on her level, yet alone with more raw strength. And yet this was the second time it happened in just a few days.

“And yet here you are.” Eclipse held Sonata, kicking and flailing, up by the scruff. “I’m assuming this is what you’re after? You can take her or kill her however you please, she’s of no use to me.”

The ghosts made no response, ignoring Eclipse’s attempt to probe for information. The shadows completed their encirclement. Eclipse wouldn’t be getting any free intelligence. She’d have to force it out of one of the two.

“If there’s anything you know, any reason I shouldn’t kill you…” Eclipse watched Sonata closely.

“Okay!” Sonata finally folded. “There’s a magic object called the lucky coin! It takes luck from the future and gives it to you in the present. So I had really good luck for a little while but now I’m going to have really bad luck soon! And because I was under mind control, bad luck from that perspective means bad luck for…. Her!”

Sonata pointed to the flood of blackness.

“I wasn’t lying when I said I’d help you defeat her,” Sonata cried some more. “I mean! If you have a shot and I can help… we all agreed, it’d be better for you to win the fight. That’s why I haven’t death-cursed you.”

Eclipse listened to the story with a deep frown. Another lie, perhaps. Only one way to be sure.

“Is that true?” Eclipse asked Nightmare Moon. “Are you unable to kill her for some reason, then? I’m willing to dispatch her myself.”

“Gah!” Sonata flailed once again ineffectual.

Only one way to get a response. Eclipse created more of the red barbs and moved to plunge them into Sonata.

The darkness flowed out like a powerful gust, breaking the two of them up and scattering the barbs aside. Eclipse watched Sonata who did look for an escape route but, finding none, moved back towards Eclipse. It seemed very likely what she said was true. But why?

“It seems you called my bluff.” The mouths smiled again. “Any attempt to destroy Sonata is… in vain. It will only bring calamity down on us both. And I know you prefer predictability over chaos.”

Now they were getting somewhere. What else did Nightmare Moon not want to happen?

“I could keep her contained in stasis, far from here, if only you’ll retreat for now.”

“A stasis she could escape from at any moment. That you could release her from with full knowledge of how useful she is to you, still with your ability to cast the azoth spell.”

“Hmph!” Eclipse held Sonata up even higher. “Then I suppose you leave me with only one choice.”

Eclipse held Sonata dusk between the two. Her horn began to glow, preparing for battle.

“You’re going to be my shield during this fight,” said Eclipse. “Don’t try to resist me! Apparently, she can’t kill you.”

“Well! I!” Sonata considered her options, not liking being a meatless meat-shield but having no other way to be useful in this fight. She sucked it up and closed her eyes.

It hardly meant she was safe, however. Eclipse still had one emergency option in her mind if things went poorly. To ‘precipitate the calamity’ as Nightmare Moon said, force the bad luck storm to occur now, by killing Sonata Dusk. The only reason she didn’t do it now was that Nightmare Moon might not have been telling the truth just then.

The wolf heads spread out in every direction as overly long necks grew to support them. They formed a tangled mess around Eclipse and opened their mouths. Balls of energy of every sort, every element you could blast somepony with, formed within.

Eclipse swung Sonata to the most dangerous position and readied her counterattack. Everything launched at once and a clash of magic consumed the area.

Ghosts 10: The Ghost Identity

Author's Note

(Doing quick recaps by request)
Last time:
Crater Cemetery and Nightmare Moon assault Rarity's castle, occupied by the Bloodstorm Cartel, in an attempt to stop Eclipse from casting the Azoth spell. Eclipse and Sonata, protected from Nightmare Moon by the bad luck from the lucky coin, attempt to hold Nightmare Moon off until the spell is ready.
Coco, under the influence of a dive, leads Rarity back to the castle to collect something important.

Ghosts 10: The Ghost Identity

Within an eyeshot of the castle once more, Rarity could see the ghosts swarming the facility. Ice assailed Rarity’s home from every side, battering the walls to the point she worried she’d need to find a new place to live after all this.

Part of her wanted to root for the cartel, beating them back as best they could, the only real hope the castle had at staying intact now. But she had more important concerns.

One of Dust’s companions was psychic. He was a stocky little fellow with a crooked face, though not as crooked as Rarity initially assumed. He’d been wincing this whole time from some extrasensory overload that got only worse the closer they came to the castle.

“There’s something really bad just a little bit south of here,” he said. “A hell of a lot worse than a specter.”

Everypony thought it but none of them wanted to say the likely culprit. Nightmare Moon. In any capacity, that would be an unwinnable fight.

“Is it moving?” Dust asked.

“No. It’s been in one spot for a while now.” He shook his head and then winced in sudden pain. “Gack! No, there it goes… just a little at a time.”

So they at least had some time.

“Even with my leg busted like this,” Dust moved her right foreleg in a wide circle. “I’m pretty sure I can get us in and out of there before whatever it is shows up.”

She certainly didn’t move like it was ‘busted’ but it looked in wretched condition. The fur all along it had been burnt off and the revealed skin was bruised and crooked. Rarity imagined the limb had fractured and Dust simply had the mental fortitude to fight it anyway.

“I’m still not sure if going inside is part of the plan,” Rarity cautioned.

Dust stopped a moment before turning to Rarity, more annoyed at having to remember she existed than anything else.

“What plan?”

“Coco’s plan.”

Though all this certainly looked like enough chaos for Coco to work with, but she was just standing there and had been for some time. Was she even looking at anything, her gaze was more beyond the castle than at it.

“Coco is just standing there!” Dust grabbed Coco and jostled her so violently it would have made poor Coco cry were she more herself. Yet Coco Pummel just stood there, looking up at some exact point of the castle with that intense stare.

“She’s waiting for something.”

“This ain’t a good place for waiting. I’m not a waiting type of pony. And your friends got what? An hour before she comes off her high?” Dust moved her hooves from one side to another as if dragging and dropping Coco into the castle. “We drag Coco inside the castle and force her to do whatever she’s gonna do. I’ve seen ponies on dive before. Sometimes they just do stupid, useless things and you gotta step in yourself.”

Rarity frowned at Dust’s retort. She hadn’t been expecting any kind of reason from such an unreasonable pony. Lightning Dust had always struck her as little more than a ruffian. But Rarity supposed even a pony like her needed some tactical sense to keep a head on her shoulder.

“No. They only ever seem to be doing useless things,” Rarity watched Coco carefully. “You just can’t follow their logic. And the problem with yours is that we don’t know what we’re looking for. Going into the castle might be going away from it. She brought us back here not in there. We may break in, as you propose, only for our objective to emerge in this very spot.”

Dust moved her head from side to side, seriously considering Rarity’s words. Then she did the last thing Rarity would have expected and acquiesced to Rarity’s logic.

“Alright! Then let’s think. Name me the three most important things that are or could be in there.” Dust jerked her head toward the castle. “If we’re stuck on this spot then we might as well do something useful here.”

Rarity hesitated to answer, not because she couldn’t list any, but because she was talking to Dust. On the one side, it seemed strange to be brainstorming anything with such a brute. On the other, Rarity didn’t like divulging anything to her either.

Really, what was Rainbow Dash thinking?

“For one, there is Twilight’s house,” said Rarity. “Any number of magical objects could be in there. I never cataloged half of it. I assume they’d have taken some of it out, but there must be more in there that is too dangerous to move or seems to have no apparent value.”

“For my part,” Blueblood spoke up, “I assumed Coco was after some piece of equipment Rarity had. There’s all manner of machinery in there and the Mad Science Cartel would do everything in their power not to destroy it.”

He could only turn up his hoof.

“And a third?” Dust asked.

“An alicorn feather,” said Rarity. As the words left her lips, she almost believed that had to be it. It would certainly be the most dramatic answer to the question. But she needed to keep her head cooler until some actual evidence prevailed. “From the queen of light.”

Dust and her ponies grew quiet at the mention of an alicorn feather.

“You don’t suppose the Cartel got a hold of that, do you?” Blueblood asked.

“We hid it as best we could,” said Rarity. “I suppose a pony like Auntie Eclipse might have found it. I know for a fact there are ways to detect ‘alicorn magic’ or whatever it is.”

“Yeah, Allgood had one when he hired me.” Dust crossed her forelegs in deep thought.

“When he hired you to brutalize a child,” Rarity said more bluntly but more honestly.

“I beat up a lot of ponies. They can’t all be adults.”

“Why that’s! How can you say something like that?”

“Listen, I gotta do what I gotta do because ponies like you can’t follow the rules and make problems.” Dust jabbed a hoof at Rarity’s chest.

“If that’s the way you see it then I’m perfectly fine with you leaving.” Rarity stood her ground. “I never needed or wanted your help with what ‘you gotta do’. Honestly, I don’t know why Rainbow Dash would send the likes of you. What did she even say to you?”

That finally shut her up. Whatever the answer, Dust didn’t want to say it out loud. Dash did have a way…

“Well,” the short buck interrupted them. “I’m just here 'cause Flash Bang was kind of an idiot and a coward and Dash kind of isn’t. If nothing else.”

Both turned to him and gave a simultaneous and unenthusiastic ‘thanks’.

“Look. What I meant to say is this,” said Dust. “Can your friend not make an alicorn detector or something? They clearly exist.”

“She likely already has that ability,” said Rarity. “The only hard part will be getting us to understand where it is, if that’s what she’s trying to do, so pay close attention to anything Coco says to you.”

There was a sudden motion about the attackers. As though swept by a wind, they swirled, then retreated. Everypony paused and looked on, knowing that had to be a terrible sign.

Aether took the shape of something enormous, towering over the castle in the distance just behind it. Rarity had to crane her neck up to discern what it could be.

A phantom mountain? It certainly appeared stone, albeit ethereal, glowing rock still visible in the night…

No! As soon as Rarity felt the ground tremble, she knew what it was!

“Is that a bucking volcano?” Dust’s short friend called out what was now obvious.

Another specter had broken its seal and summoned a volcano, one no doubt about to explode and obliterate the entire area!

And it was at that moment Coco charged past the short pony and towards the castle. He looked at her, then to Dust, mortified by the implications of that.

“Are we running toward the volcano? You people know what a volcano is, right?”

“She must see something we don’t! It will work out!” Rarity ran after Coco.

“I ain’t gonna look yellow in front of these ponies,” said Dust and went after her.

The short pony was the last to follow, but follow he did as the ground began to quake as the castle fast approached. It would mean certain death unless…

Hissteria saw a group of ponies approaching across the now-empty field. It wasn’t easy to make out in the dark, but he could guess who was leading them.

“They’re coming back?! What is wrong with those ponies?”

King Cobra swung the rocket launcher down at the incoming ponies, but Hissteria stopped her.

“Don’t! If we miss a single specter it’s over!” At least he hoped Rarity wasn’t going to suicide bomb the castle.

Hissteria stood on top of the highest tower with four of his best ponies. They had no time to fight off the ghosts that tried to topple it from every direction, he had a dozen or so more at lower points fighting them off. The five on top had another mission.

An all-out attack from Crater Cemetery was the worst-case scenario. They were prepared for a few ghosts, but not this many. The walls and barriers around the castle would do nothing to protect them against this enemy. They could come from any direction, even below.

Worse, they had several ponies capable of destroying the entire facility in a single blow. Hissteria wasn’t sure why all the specters weren’t unleashing the echoes of their disasters all at once, he’d never fought against more than one before. There must have been some reason, but it seemed they could unleash one approximately every fifteen minutes. At least, that was the trend so far.

Almost everypony remained downstairs in the main hall. That was where the nexus had been set up. When the time came, Eclipse would channel the energies from their six artifacts of power to cast the azoth spell– their only hope of getting out of this alive.

The wind alone forced them to keep their heads down, to say nothing of the constant pelting of ice and lightning. Just the ambient chill brought this place to the level of a brutal winter and the cold cut to the bone when a ghost got anywhere close.

Only occasionally could they peak out to try and assess the situation and even then a terrible swirling fog covered the area such that Hissteria had to rely on the psychic perception of his comrades to pull through.

The fighting was growing too intense, the kind of battle Hissteria knew they couldn’t win and thus tried to avoid fighting at all costs. But it was a battle they’d have to fight somewhere eventually, and the reward of having access to the new government of the pirate coast and Everfree combined was simply too great to ignore.

Speaking of, Batton landed up the stairs, taking a tone of no time to waste. However bad it was up here, it’d be worse down there.

“Why are all of your best over here?” Batton demanded. “If the nexus is destroyed it’s all over.”

“And if just one specter gets their seal to activate then the nexus and all of us are gone!” Hissteria shouted back. “Did you not notice that?!”

He gestured briefly to the actual volcano behind them. Batton looked up at it with a frown. The tremors it sent out must have been unnoticeable through all the commotion.

As a matter of course, he got a chance to prove the point. King Cobra finally managed to spot where the specter behind this was, swinging the rocket launcher around toward the enemy. Hissteria saw them, hiding behind a wall of ice.

As far as Hissteria was aware, she was the strongest psychic in this place. Even then, it was all the kid could manage to keep watch on the five or six specters in this place, trying to scope out which would try next.

Also alongside Hissteria were three of his best snipers, all equipped with their most accurate guns. Most importantly, they were loaded up with special enchanted bullets, designed specifically for ghost busting. These bullets were rarely used as slicing off the limbs of ghosts did far more damage than targeting non-existent organs and blunt damage only stunned them. But when your objective was to stun them…

Cobra fired off the rocket. There was no time to wait for it to demolish the wall. All three snipers and Hissteria fired at once, relying on psychic perception to land the hit. The sound of the volcano behind them grew enormous, flooding everything else out. The rocket ruptured the barrier and then…

Though he couldn’t tell which shot connected, he knew somepony had done it. In an instant, the volcano behind them vanished and the relative silence of the wind took over.

Now he saw that specter reeling and clutching its head. The smoke had been blown aside in moments.

It wasn’t enough to kill them, sadly, but a major blow to the head like that at just the right time could disrupt their attack all the same. Normally, a specter wouldn’t be able to use their seal again for days, but Hissteria couldn’t tell if it’d be shorter or longer if he interrupted like this.

The ghosts learned after the first time, erecting a wall of ice to try and protect the second specter. The high-powered rockets they got from the Mad Science Cartel punched a hole through that. The game of cat and mouse would continue. He’d have to guess what their next trick would be and guess right.

Batton Pass hadn’t waited around to tell them to carry on, she was already gone. Hissteria growled to himself. He’d missed his chance to warn her about Rarity and couldn’t possibly spare a single pony for even a minute. The ghosts were already coming back.

Perhaps it was for the best she didn’t see what happened next. King Cobra nearly collapsed back under cover instead of ducking away from the return fire. Normally unfazed by anything, a kid who barely reacted to the death of her own parents, she now clenched her teeth and trembled before regaining her Barings. The other, weaker psychics showed signs of nausea as well, though less so.

Something was coming… any psychic who got too close to Crater Cemetery had convulsions and began to vomit uncontrollably, the stronger the worse. It’d only be so long until King Cobra was unable to act.

Hopefully, Eclipse wouldn’t let it come to that, and could keep whatever approached at bay just a little longer.

The position became unsurvivable and Eclipse gave a great leap back. Too many attacks came from too many directions, obliterating the ground Eclipse had just stood upon. Even then, Eclipse was forced into repeated leaps as the shadows tried to close in around her.

Nightmare Moon now spread out like a hydra, slowly trying to encircle Eclipse's position again and again. She had just gotten out of such a half-circle and now that wall stood before her a good distance.

And that monster truly could have crushed her just then, the desire to avoid Sonata’s destruction alone gave her a path out. Keeping that banshee alive had been her best idea today. Eclipse could avoid any truly destructive attacks by holding Sonata close, but if the heads of this hydra managed to surround her, to separate the two, it would be over all too soon.

“Unfortunately we are losing ground, slowly,” said Eclipse as she finally landed in a relatively safe area.

A fighting, stalling retreat was the best Eclipse could manage. Despite all this, she knew not to give one hundred percent at any given moment.

This manner of confrontation was one that fell out of favor with Eclipse some time ago. Her body was already starting to show signs of fatigue while the enemy appeared to only grow stronger with every attack.

Slow, delay, distract.

As the black hydra once again began to charge and spread out, Eclipse readied her most reliable defense. Timeless Ground, placing the grains of sand in front of her into a stasis then, surrounding each one with a micro-shield, lifted them all into the air. An observer wouldn’t have even noticed the barrier of dust rising in such a windstorm.

With reckless abandon, not at all something Eclipse would expect from a god, the nightmare slammed into her defense. A brief second and it looked like her spell had worked, a flash in which everything around her stood still. Every head froze. Sonata looked up at the towering monstrosity with amazement that Eclipse had stalled it in its tracks.

One. Two. Three.

Something was wrong!

Eclipse began erecting as many barriers of as many different kinds as she could in that time. In those next five seconds, she brought out seven! Each was the sort she wouldn’t expect any normal pony to be able to break through.

By some means, Nightmare Moon overcame the stasis and came tumbling clumsily forward. Without even trying, it had torn through the rest with such ferocity that Eclipse got hardly a clue as to which sort of shield was best.

But there was something she could use here. That it always rushed forward without any worry, like a foal with a gun and a false sense of invincibility. She had seen gods and those who considered themselves gods and none of them carried themselves in such an unsophisticated manner.

Was it supreme confidence and the belief it would win no matter what? Or supreme pride and the need to see Eclipse as beneath effort?

She could use either one but needed to know which! She recalled everything she knew about Crater Cemetery and turned her better eye to Sonata.

“If there’s anything you can do or tell me.” Eclipse held her up.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Sonata craned her neck to look back and up at Eclipse.

“Oh boy!” Sonata shouted over the roar in the air. “If there was anything I could do against that!”

“I know that your competence is lacking!” Eclipse held Sonata forcefully against the incoming onslaught, making a point of not stepping back. “But you have some connection to it! Even making it say a single word now will be more use than the lives of a thousand soldiers.”

“Say something? Ah!” Sonata, already a fool, struggled under pressure. “What if I just make it angrier?!”

Eclipse stood firm, letting Nightmare Moon surround them more than before, forcing Sonata to speak now or perish.

“Okay! If I don’t have any choice.” Sonata gulped. “The one thing that’d make her angrier than anything else is that… she isn’t really our goddess, Luna!”

There it was! A moment of weakness through that reckless onslaught. It was subtle but Eclipse managed to capture it ever so briefly. If there was one skill Eclipse had honed to perfection in her two centuries of life it was the ability to never let such a moment slip.

“Did I see a lapse just now?” Eclipse smiled cooly at her opponent. “Are you saying she’s… jealous?”

The twisting heads lurched forward once again in a chaotic, explosive mess. Once more, Eclipse was thrown into the fire, straining herself but still deftly maneuvering through the maze. It targeted Sonata more fiercely than before, focusing its efforts on tearing that pony away more than on harming Eclipse this time.

They very nearly clamped down on her. She had to move two bodies around, both hers and Sonatas as the latter was too slow to even tell what was happening here. Eclipse nearly fell but one burst of magic sent her back just far enough for relief. Another small loss, more lost ground.

“And they call you a god?” Eclipse clicked her tongue. “I suppose this is why it resorts to mind control? Because such a pathetic wreck could never manage to be seen as such otherwise?”

Once again, it repeated its tactic of surrounding, then overwhelming. Certain to break Eclipse if this kept up. But Eclipse knew it could hear and, more importantly, care about what they said.

“That’s exactly it!” Sonata nodded eagerly. Eclipse needed her to be completely genuine and hoped she wasn’t playing along. “We… my family will only acknowledge Star Feather as our ancestor and Luna as our god. That was the whole reason she started with those chains.”

“That is sad.” Eclipse rested her eyes for a moment. “You know, I stopped caring about other ponies, their petty morals and opinions, when I was twelve. It plays at a god but can’t even manage that level of detachment? To the point, it has to pretend to have approval?”

“No, it’s true,” Sonata nodded along, desperately trying to be useful for once. “She knew we might be dangerous one day but kept us alive for like revenge and stuff. She’s totally on about, uh, stuff!”

“Really? You let a threat remain to satisfy some grudge?” Eclipse looked up straight at the monster, neither moving. It disliked the conversation. Yes, it really did have the need to prove something to itself! “Like some child who can’t but devour all their sweets in one night. The body of a god and the mind of a child, I suppose. How pathetic you are.”

“You are the one who doesn’t understand!” It answered this time. It really was just a fool. “I have what you seek– the power to be as ‘indulgent’ as I please. It doesn’t matter how many mistakes I make. I am the true god. My will is inevitable.”

But really, Eclipse considered every word it said a minor victory. And through that bluster, Eclipse believed she saw another mistake.

“You know her better than I do,” Eclipse told Sonata. “Is there any god truer than this child?”

Sonata had the answer immediately but refused to say it out of fear for a moment. Such pathetic, insolent creatures with their worthless feelings! Eclipse brought her magic down on Sonata, half-intending to crush her head if she didn’t speak up, turning that fear in the right direction.

“There is! Star Feather! Princess Luna, she’s the only one we’d ever worship and…”

There was something more. Sonata braced herself before speaking.

“A-actually there is one more,” said Sonata, “above that… there’s the real god of ponies. Golden Feather… Celestia.”

There! That moment!

Eclipse threw Sonata high into the air so that Nightmare Moon could strike at either separately. Indecision. Emotion.

Pushing herself to her limit, Eclipse fired the same black arrow spell that had killed Screwball and likely Twilight, not something she would have been able to use without that slip. The impact it had on the nightmare was profound!

The entire thing buckled. The heads were forced to crane around to protect the center from being hurled back and even then, Eclipse’s attack managed to press it precious inches.

As it struggled, she finally had a chance to go on the offensive. No longer retraining herself, she attacked repeatedly as quickly as she could hitting it with wave after wave of searing flames.

An onlooker may have thought Eclipse finally gained the upper hoof as it tumbled backward. Yet she knew better. No actual damage, save time wasted, had been done.

Eclipse breathed heavily as Nightmare Moon writhed and then erupted into the air, firing upward like a tower jutting perhaps a mile high. And from it came an immense scream of rage.

“Yes!” Eclipse called out to it, ready to face its next counter. But the shout did nothing to unnerve her, it was already blitzing her. “Show me more of your childishness!”

Just one or two more moments like that might be enough.

Rarity and the others rushed into the castle, honestly having trouble keeping up with Coco who burst through a door with wild abandon. Just as she did, the volcano poised to explode then vanished. Dust’s ponies reacted with a certain chagrin that made Rarity wonder if they were more upset about being proven wrong than relieved at not being incinerated.

The backroom they entered stood completely empty, strange given just how many ponies had been here before. Were they clustered together on the other side? She supposed that did make sense given the opponent.

Coco led them into a secret passage Rarity was certain Coco didn’t actually know about. It would take them over the entrance hall. There, they would confirm what Rarity suspected. The front was crowded far past capacity.

Ponies stood wither to wither, heavily armed. Just as they entered, ghosts began their attack again, coming more from below than anywhere else. To mitigate this, the cartel had torn holes into the floor, giving them at least a chance to see the attack coming.

Having long given up hope of salvaging any of her home, Rarity merely turned her head forward and joined the others in being as silent as possible.

They had to hustle for only one moment as they passed the torn-out husk of a painting that was supposed to serve as a secret door. Had somepony discovered this passage? And why would they rip it open?

The area just after that was just a small space with peepholes to manually observe a few locations. But as suspected, somepony beat them here. A pink filly lay on her back looking up at the ceiling, sweating and breathing heavily.

The poor thing looked to have a terrible fever, laying in a cold sweat, looking up at the ceiling awake but not truly conscious. She rolled just a little but not in a way that betrayed any awareness of Rarity’s arrival.

Dust became motionless upon seeing the filly and whispered something to her two companions.

Coco, whom Rarity watched constantly, ignored the filly, instead training her own eyes on an object on the far side of the room. Rarity’s heart skipped a beat upon recognizing what it was.

A persona core!

There was no way to know which of their robots it was. The others were broken and had their persona cores removed, only Saccharine escaping. Rescuing them was somewhere on the list as well, though they would remain relatively safe for now. Even still, knowing Coco had brought her here, Rarity couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow…

She stepped forward to try and reach the core.

“Rarity, I’ve seen this pony.” Dust grabbed hold and pulled her back. “We can’t fight her.”

It crossed Rarty as odd to see such caution from Lightning Dust, especially for this pony of all things.

The gruff little stallion seized the pony up, unimpressed.

“I think I could take her! The pony you were talking about before must have been high on something like this one.” He smirked at Coco. “And now she’s crashed.”

“Look, I don’t know what happened to her, but I also don’t want what might set this monster off. And if we do, we’re screwed,” said Dust. “Just leave them to their stupor and let’s get on with our mission.”

He tried inspecting the filly further, only to get a smack from Dust which brought him back in line.

Rarity could only hope Coco hadn’t brought them up here to wake a sleeping dragon.

“I think Coco brought me here to get that.” Rarity pointed at the persona core, getting a nod from Dust.

Rarity and the others carefully trotted around the room, hugging the wall to give the filly a wide birth and the chance to remain oblivious, only Coco remaining behind.

They leaned in to look at the sphere. It took Rarity a moment, but she knew for certain this was it.

“Saccharine,” Rarity said. This raised too many questions. How did it get here? Was Sweetie Belle… Rarity looked at Coco, standing firm. “I’m certain this is why we came back here. Or at least, half of it. Though I hope not.”

“We risked our lives for a toaster?” the short stallion frowned.

“Saccharine is my sister.”

“Really?” Shorty scoffed. “You think a toaster is your sister and you wonder why we–“

“This is not a toaster!” Rarity hissed. “This is a persona core. The brains of a robot.”

“It looks like a toaster,” he grumbled.

“A toaster sphere?” Dust asked.

“They’re mad by definition, so yes! They would make a toasting sphere.”

“For your information,” Rarity huffed, “toasting spheres are far more efficient than–”

Rarity reached out for Saccharine’s brain only for Dust to knock her hoof away.

“Careful! My adventurer instinct tells me the second we take that thing; it’s going to wake up.” Dust glanced down at the threat. “We gotta ready an escape route first. Everypony back up, then I’ll take it in a dash so we’re already running. Nopony touch anything until–”

Coco shoved them aside and grabbed the persona core.

Dust watched with her mouth agape as Coco proceeded to carry it over to the sleeping threat. Already the filly was beginning to stir with the vaguest of awareness as predicted, picking that up had been like water splashed on the face of a drunk.

Coco dropped the personal core, letting it roll toward Rarity, who panicked to get it back. Then Coco let out a shout and began pummeling the filly ferociously.`

“Holy crow! Leave her and let’s go!” Dust grabbed Rarity and tried to evacuate the scene but it was already too late.

Vines wrapped around their exit, then around any wall that could be made into an exit with a good enough punch. In short, they were surrounded in every direction. Dust and her companions exercised caution rather than charging at the vines.

At last, the filly staggered to her feet, sending Coco staggering back in the same motion.

“What do you know about this pony?” Rarity demanded. Any information about what they were dealing with would be very useful.

“I didn’t get all of it, but I heard something about it being the Element of Magic,” said Dust. “Or a shard or the like.”

Rarity swallowed hard, hoping that was a misunderstanding. Her own limited information on that subject provided only dread.

“You!” The filly lifted a single hoof and pointed it at Rarity. “I honestly wasn’t expecting you to come back here. You were supposed to just run away. What is it with you people? Why does something always go wrong at the last moment no matter how hard I try?”

Once again Coco stepped forward.

“Because every crystal is a vibration in a bee which is more intelligent than every pony combined,” Coco said that line with the smuggest look like it had been some epic comeback.

That was even less sensical than the words would have normally been.

But if the annoyed twitch of the filly’s eye was any indication, then she understood exactly what Coco meant. And that was a very, very bad sign. There was only one way you understood exactly what dive-speak meant. Dust had been absolutely right.

“Alright, we need to get out of here,” said Rarity.

Dust and the others did try to break through with claw blades and lightning, as Rarity clutched Saccharine tightly and watched Coco, their only real hope.

“It’s always the one you don’t expect, isn’t it?” The filly staggered to her hooves, her attention now on Coco. “I watched everyone who mattered so closely the first time only for a literally nopony to come along and ruin everything! You’re literally a joke character, don’t you get that? This shouldn’t happen!”

A thorny root tore out of the ground, piercing forward at Coco’s heart. Coco turned slightly, letting it impale her shoulder instead.

Coco met her eyes with a triumphant grin. Taking such a grievous wound had been exactly what she wanted. The filly watched her carefully and somehow understood the implication of this, acknowledging she’d been beaten in some manner by this move.

That didn’t bode well. Magic certainly could see through the chaos as Coco did. They were at best equals on that front, only Coco had no physical strength.

“Killing you will only make this worse, won’t it?” Magic spat. “Why does this keep happening?!”

Though she couldn’t quite follow, Rarity could see the obvious flaw in this pony’s thinking. Though she didn’t know exactly what was meant, the breadth of it could be inferred. But pointing out the mistake seemed like it’d be wasted on them.

The filly took one look at Rarity’s expression and in something not far off from a drunken rage shoved everything off a nearby shelf before half-collapsing to the floor.

“Don’t give me that look! I can’t watch everypony!” She covered one eye. “That’s my problem. I’m not powerful enough. Even the sight of my true self can’t see everything and if you can’t see everything you might as well be blind. That’s the ‘lesson’ here so shut up!”

“I didn’t say anything.” Rarity jealously clutched Saccharine’s core.

“You were thinking it!” Magic pointed at her head. “I have this worthless brain for now and it might be going catatonic but being an idiot makes me understand idiots.”

Just then Magic choked on her own words and fell against the wall.

“I’m not… an idiot!” Magic or… perhaps somepony else shouted. “I knew this would happen. Just let me do it.”

Rarity’s ears twitched upon hearing that. She knew the sort of creature Magic was to be a sort of parasite, one that needed a body to be ‘complete’ as Starlight put it. What if…?

“Wait!” Rarity leaned down. “Can you understand me? The pony it's possessing! I might be able to help you. Just tell me what happened.”

But all that inner struggle faded in an instant and nothing but contempt filled the filly.

“Don’t you dare! I won’t stand for your moralization! This is what I want!” With sudden resolution, the filly stood. “Yes. Yes, I do want this! I want you all to just die and leave me alone!”

Her whole demeanor changed in that moment. The clumsy, drunken lethargy vanished replaced instead by a supreme confidence. Her body glowed bright with magic, magic on par with that of a witch.

She pointed a hoof at Rarity and the force behind her motion left no doubt the filly could have splattered them and half the small army in the room just behind. Yet Coco stood there, looking her dead in the eyes. The filly couldn’t make such a large strike, Rarity was certain!

Instead, she swiped a hoof, making a much more precise attack. The walls of vines loosened and went through the room, lashing at everypony present.

Left on her own, Rarity knew she’d be torn to shreds. Everypony else sprang into action, Coco, Dust, and the other two pegasi all moving out just before Rarity lost sight of them.

She felt something slam into her, she felt sharp cuts along her back, but in the tumult, she could see nothing, had no idea if any limb was still attached and her brain needed only another moment or two to process it before her world became unimaginable pain and then nothing.

When she managed to open her eyes again it was Dust, breathless but holding fast. Below her was the Cartel and just behind a wave of vines ripped up the stone wall.

Coco, Blueblood, the second… only the short one fell into a bad position. The vines pinned him against the stairs, but Rarity had no chance to see his fate. The other four fell into the main entrance surrounded by an already intense battle.

Rarity could hardly tell if anypony even noticed their arrival. The cartel pitched fire into the hole in the floor as ghosts came in from every direction.

The filly stood at the top of the stairs.

“Rarity!” Blood oozing down her shoulder, Coco pointed with all the intensity she could manage at Magic, Rarity certain that’s what it was. “Not!”

Coco struggled to think of what to say.

“Not… the other way!”

Coco blinked and Rarity’s heart sank. Time was running out fast!

“No time for riddles!” Dust charged away from the fighting, dragging Rarity with her. A highly frustrated Coco followed with Blueblood in tow as Dust’s third went to try and rescue the short pony.

Batton spun in a wide circle, holding a phantom at bay with her enchanted claw blade. With a shout, she threw it at the charging group, bowling all of them back. This bought her less than a second as another threat emerged from behind.

She turned but paused seeing it wasn’t ghosts but that filly, Eclipse’s student. And it wasn’t just her!

“Again?!” Batton Pass shouted up at the painting. This was the second time that filly came bursting out of the frame.

This time it was even more perplexing. She was covered in vines and chased after Rarity and a few other ponies who should have at least escaped but apparently even that was too much to ask for at the moment.

The filly chased the group, carried just in front of the edge of her attacks by a green pegasus. Lagging slightly behind were two more pegasi. The parade came briefly into the room, each of them shouting as they ran straight past the battle, ignoring it completely before disappearing into the other side of the castle.

“Should we worry about that?” One of them shouted at Batton pass as they rolled off.

“Um.” Batton considered it, then shook her head as another wave of ghosts charged through the door. “No. I think our only choice here is to hope whatever that was just takes care of itself.”

“If we go outside she’ll be able to use big attacks again,” Dust warned as they reached the door they had originally entered from.

She turned back to see that Crater Cemetery had bought them an extra second. Four ghosts went straight for Magic with just enough force to force her to dispatch them with on flick of her horn. A fifth ghost tried to attack Rarity’s group, but after seeing the filly’s display of power, slowly sank into the ground.

“Do you have any other plan?” Rarity retorted.

“No! Does your psycho friend?”

Coco opened the door and went outside.

“Guess we’re going with that.”

They charged outside but Magic charged faster. Rarity hardly even saw what happened but in a blaze Magic overtook and bowled the lot of them open, grabbing Dust and throwing her back into the castle. Magic landed not behind them but in front, pincered Rarity between her and the castle.

As Rarity, Blueblood, and Coco stood up, magic covered the entire edifice of the castle behind them with vines. Magic blocked their only path forward.

Coco, Blueblood, Rarity… and the persona core. The pegasi, their only real fighters were trapped inside.

“Perfect!” Coco jumped at the filly, trying to punch her. The filly held back her attack again to instead thrust some of the vines out and over, slamming them into Coco and throwing her to one side.

“Hahahaha!” Though cut in a dozen different places, Coco laughed maniacally through it all, landing on her feet with little difficulty. “Haha! Ha…. Heh?”

She blinked once.

“Wait. What was I laughing about again?”

Coco touched the gaping wound on her shoulder and pulled it to her eyes, looking at the red blood now on her hoof. Before Coco could process any of this, Rarity already knew what it meant.

Her dive had worn off.

Mistake

Author's Note

Last time: Coco brings Rarity back to the castle where she recovers Saccharine's brain but Magic pins the lot of them when the dive wears out.
The Cartel despeartely prepares to cast the Azoth spell as a shadow of Nightmare Moon descends upon them
Rainbow Dash travels south to Oakenfield with both Sunset and Embermoon following, hoping to recruit the former in her fight with the latter.

Mistake

Dust went to work pounding at the wall. No dice. The vines left it magically reinforced. She needed to find another way out.

She turned only for two ghosts to come up from underneath and attack with spikes of ice. One. Two. Dust knocked them out in turn and rushed back into the chaos room.

She tried soaring over it but ghosts kept coming like bucking rain out there! Dust tried swatting at them only for them to fly up into the ceiling and then come back down when she tried to get away. And that was to say nothing of the gunfire. Yet nopony in the cartel had any interest in attacking the living, whether they recognized Dust or not.

Landing near the secret portrait, Dust found Rolling Thunder had pulled Short Fuse out from the rubble, relatively unscathed.

“I’m not dead, boss!” He waved at Dust. With no time to chat, she rushed past him and up to a window. “You can at least try to act happy.”

“Hurry up! We’re the only ones who can make a difference out there!” Dust wasted no time going for the window. The other two were competent enough to follow.

Then the window froze solid.

“Bucking.” Dust pounded at it repeatedly, slowly trying to shatter the ice. That stuff was always harder to break than it looked. More ghosts came from behind but at least now she had two other ponies to hold them off. “Crow!”

Dust did not have time for this! She spun around once looking for another path, ghosts were coming in from every direction so what would be the fastest path outside?

Up?

Bucking ghosts!

Down?

More ghosts.

While the cartel had decided to give her a pass, the ghosts were the opposite. The two sides were living and dead. Anything else didn’t matter on this ground.

“No choice!” Dust wasn’t fully recovered from the fight with Flash Bang yet but had to suck it up. She pulled back her ‘good’ hoof and surrounded it in electricity then swung forward wildly.

Not entirely a good idea! The pain from worsening the wound could barely be contained by her cringe but it did work – most importantly she didn’t let out any sound of anguish. The ice and most of the wall came off, opening a path to the outside.

Before anything else could happen, Dust bolted outside so fast she found herself among the shrapnel she just created, expecting to have to slaughter one or two spooks on the way. Instead, those shards of ice and stone slowed to a crawl, then began to fall back towards the hole.

Dust soon found herself flying up instead of forward, as though the whole world had been turned ninety degrees, then it became hard to fly and she fell. Dust was now looking down back into a sideways castle.

This was hardly the first time Dust had seen something like this. Disturbingly, she had multiple explanations for this. Dimensional tether? Gravitational shift? It didn’t feel like either of those. Maybe…?

As she fell back inside, from thin air emerged a phantom, one who formed a jaw of fangs out of ice and bit hard into Dust’s increasingly bad leg.

It hurt, but it also gave Dust everything she needed to tell what kind of distortion it was, and a good guess this was the ghost who did it. It was a spatial loop, turning space in on itself. With the ghost clamped down on her leg, Dust took her for a spin by turning rapidly in every direction, parts of the ghost's body appeared to vanish or stretch out in a loop as she did.

She’d done this before. Not easy to visualize but it bent the third dimension along a loop. This created some kind of 4d tube, whatever those were called. At any rate, the only important thing was the tube had an end and that end had a hole– Dust found it and threw the ghost through. Though in the end the phantom only went through the wall, emerging unharmed a moment later.

Her opponent smiled with those ice fangs and laughed a bit. The ghost had something wrong with her, her tongue constantly lolled out to one side and her eyes never seemed to look in the same direction. They had some weird spiral shapes instead of normal pupils. A pony modified by MSC who then became a phantom?

Not great.

“You look like you’re trying to leave,” tongue-pony said, lolling her head to one side. “I don’t like that. Just stay here until you-know-who comes.”

Great! Now that stupid thing was determined to stop them from getting outside. And it just so happened to be one of the biggest time-wasting opponents you could run into.

“I’m not here to fight you spooks!” Dust shouted at them. “I’m literally going to leave right now.”

“Oh! Then I guess it’s fine,” said the phantom, moving her tongue to the other side but not able to get it in her mouth. “I totally trust you and stuff.”

“Aren’t you concerned about that freak in the backyard?!” Dust shouted, hoping it would be. “I’m trying to take care of it over here. I don’t give a buck if you destroy the castle.”

“That thing?” She shook her head, tongue wagging. “I saw it. Doesn’t seem like my problem. Everything will be destroyed once the shadow falls over this place.”

“Well, it is your problem!” Dust tried bluffing. Didn’t work as the ghost just sank back into the ground.

Too much time had already passed. Rarity was almost certainly dead by now, or at least she had to be by the time Dust figured out this little puzzle-fifth. If at least had been Dash the pony could have tricked her way into surviving for however long it took, but a bunch of mad scientists? They killed themselves half the time.

The entire room appeared to bend around Dust and deep down she knew what was coming already. She spun around once, finding the floor was now in every direction she looked and getting closer. That trick probably managed to crush just about everypony that ghost used it on– tighten a loop around a pony to crush them. Dust had too much experience for that.

There was always a hole in the loop. There was something horrible in the air that made using her psychic perception difficult but she had other options. Instead, she merely spun to find the hole, then swerved, and suddenly the room appeared normal again. Derp-tongue didn’t try that again.

Next, it went for pure chaos, the room tilted and turned in every direction. Ghosts came at Dust from every direction, often appearing out of nowhere. The other two pegasi tried to attack derp-tongue while she was focused on Dust. How well that went, she had no idea. Now Dust could only manage to be a distraction for them.

Dust had to cowl to strike out against the furious assault. But it was limited by the thick atmosphere. Between that and her injured leg, Dust was fighting with a serious handicap. The ghosts pushed her down and down, nearly breaking her.

Until suddenly relief came from support fire. Dark flames forced the ghosts back and in a moment of respite, Dust landed hard on the floor.

But that wasn’t an attack either of her helpers would have used…

Dust recovered and found the pony who had aided her. One of those bat-winged freaks, wings covered in flames! Dust couldn’t help but gawk when she recognized the pony.

Batton Pass specifically. The second in command, or rather the new leader of the Cartel.

Both took a step back in surprise. It seemed Batton hadn’t even realized who she’d been helping until now.

“You?! What are you even doing here?!” Batton hissed. “Perhaps you have something better to do?”

As much as Dust wanted to clobber this criminal, she was literally unable at this exact moment.

“Yeah, maybe I do! How about we just don’t ask any questions until that” Dust pointed sideways in time to get another brief glance at the annoying ghost, now struggling with her two teammates. “is taken care of?!”

Batton frowned watching Dust and then the ghost in turn, unsure of who was the greater threat. Dust knew this was bad for her too. Derp-tongue was using those vortexes to let ghosts appear just in front of that… summoning circle or whatever it was.

“Look, I can already tell you’re trying to defend that circle thing and right now I don’t care what it does! A ghost-like that is a big threat to you too. Come on: Five-minute truce. Quick in and out then maybe we kill each other.”

The phantom helped Dust out just then, creating a loop from the outside to just around that channeling circle the Cartel defended. This meant the ghosts could all but teleport onto it. It took damage! But Dust still waited for Batton to give the word.

“Fine!” Batton gave in. “But only until we deal with these vortexes!”

Together, Batton and Dust flew at the derp-tongued, pony, forcing her to break off the assault on the ritual circle at least for the moment.

Before Rarity stood the element of magic possessing that filly, and behind them, a wall of vines covered Rarity’s castle.

She looked around for anything that might be remotely usable. Twilight’s treehouse was right there, just across the yard, but it may as well have been on the other side of the planet. Other than that–

Rarity blinked, dumbfounded at the unexpected object just behind her. The dive machine she’d just had in the basement had somehow found its way to the yard, hooked up to a battery no less. But how? Rarity looked to Coco. Did she somehow set this up?

Time was already up! Rarity had no time to think let alone act. The pink filly raised her hoof, and a disc of swirling magic materialized above it. She pulled back, then made to throw it… at Twilight’s house!

Rarity stared wide at her break. Too many questions swirled through her mind. Things took a turn for the better again when Magic failed to launch it even at that target. Seemingly a controversial decision, the filly pulled back at the last moment, stopping herself and trying to turn the attack instead to Rarity.

“No!” The filly shouted and practically fell over. “Not that one you idiot! Why won’t you let me –because I’m stupid! You’re the idiot! It’s so obvious who’s the threat! No, I can see more!”

Convulsing, arguing with herself again.

“Perhaps we should be running?!” Blueblood was exactly two steps ahead of her.

“Hold on one moment!” Rarity stopped him. They might have a few more seconds here and running wouldn’t get them far besides. She knelt next to a panicking Coco. “Tell me, do you remember anything?”

Sometimes ponies could remember little pieces of their thought process during a dive but only for a moment. Like waking up from a dream it would soon be forgotten unless you said it right then.

“What happened?” Coco panted heavily and would start a panic attack in a minute.

“Coco! I promise you can have your panic attack in a second but you need to tell me if you remember anything!”

The promise of a guilt-free panic attack heavily tempted Coco. She managed one last act of bravery and nodded with tears in her eyes.

“I-It looked like we had such a clear way out just a second ago!” Coco winced, pressing against her wound harder. “Why can’t I remember? Should I put my head back in there? No, no! It wasn’t there before!”

That was exactly the sort of thing Rarity was looking for!

“What wasn’t here before? Where! Where was it?”

“I – I do remember one thing!” Coco nodded. “I honestly thought the dive machine was on the roof. N-not out here. Was I wrong?”

“No! You wanted it to be up there.” Rarity looked up to the roof of the castle.

“Rarity!” Coco sobbed. “I can’t. I can’t even walk right now.”

“You’ve done more than enough,” Rarity assured her with a pat on the shoulder. “I’ll take care of the rest. You just take shelter.”

Even that was a tall order, Coco began hyperventilating as she pressed a hoof against her badly bleeding wound. As much as Rarity wanted to drag her somewhere, there was nowhere to drag her. Things wouldn’t be safe unless Rarity completed whatever Coco’s plan was. Through that alone could Rarity help her.

Reluctantly, Blueblood came back over to try and lift the machine.

“So I suppose I’m the one doing the heavy lifting?” Blueblood asked. “I can bring it up there, but I can’t deal with that monster. Do you have a plan for that?”

Blueblood wasn’t a small stallion, and he had some slight difficulty lifting it all the same. So how did it get over here in the first place? Rarity was with Coco the whole time…

Searching for the answer, Rarity saw just a tiny sliver of a window leading to the basement room where they were. And she remembered there was one other pony who had dived just before Coco!

Suddenly it clicked why Magic would be aiming for Twilight’s house. That random mercenary who volunteered to take a dive! He must have gone there and Coco knew it.

“I’m going that way!” Rarity gestured to Twilight’s house. “I think it will be enough of a distraction for you.”

“Hold on! If you–”

Rarity did not hold on but charged straight to Twilight’s house. She supposed she knew what Blueblood was about to say anyway. Magic and that filly were arguing about whether to attack Rarity or Twilight’s house. So if they were in the same place…

Suddenly, Magic straightened up and lifted the disc again.

“That’s still not the right target, but whatever,” the filly groaned to herself before throwing the disc.

Maybe she had acted a bit hastily here. Rarity didn’t even get close to the house. The disk tore through the ground leaving a small canyon in its wake.

Rarity fell forward but no obliteration came. That disc spun in place against an unseen barrier, spitting out huge sparks like a buzzsaw against a metal wall.

Looking up once again, Rarity saw him! The mercenary from before. In his mouth, he held a staff from Twilight’s house no doubt. That managed to hold off the one attack. The disc soon snapped hard against something. That staff shattered throwing him onto the ground but the disc went whirling into the air.

Magic came rushing in.

The stallion tore something off his neck. A necklace. Scootaloo’s necklace. The alicorn feather!

This he threw to Rarity as he pulled something else out from a tattered vest. Rarity scrambled to put it on herself as Magic stopped short again giving the feather a troubled look.

Behind Magic, the mercenary went to stab her with whatever he’d taken out. Rarity never saw what it was. Magic charged into him and the two of them went rushing across the lawn.

Perhaps it was too much to hope he found something in Twilight’s house that could keep Magic at bay, but this all felt like a step in the right direction. Rarity rushed back towards the castle, clutching Saccharine and the feather both, unsure what the latter was for.

Her hopes were dashed almost immediately as Magic returned hardly two seconds later.

“Who even was that guy?!” Magic, exasperated, came trotting out of the wreckage of her own attack. “Yes, I know you saw it. I.”

Struggling again. Magic shook her head violently.

Rarity had another second.

She didn’t see Blueblood around but supposed this was the best she could do down here. He had to be on his way. Now to get to the roof herself. Rarity reached the wall of vines. Maybe she was just athletic enough to climb it.

She was noting something. Magic would always be tempted to hit the most powerful enemy. There had to be some way to use that.

The vines shifted and squirmed, throwing Rarity back to the ground. Her, the feather, and Saccharine all hit the floor in a small line. There was no way Rarity was getting up there!

“It looks like it’s just you and me, Saccharine. If only you still had your body. Or any robot body!”

“Did somepony ask for any robot body?”

That voice. That was right… it was three! Did all three of them manage to focus on escaping?

Kerfuffle, minus her mechanical leg, came kerlumping along the side of the building, a large satchel on her back. She rolled to one side, practically collapsing from the strain, allowing her work to unfurl itself as it rolled along.

It looked just like her robot Fuff n’ Stuff! The sleek and slender skeleton of a pony with overly long limbs, nimble but not strong. One major difference stuck out to Rarity, the head cavity stood open with a latch on the other side, waiting for a persona core to be installed.

“I found just enough stuff and rebuilt an entirely new robot body! It’s even better than Fuff n’ Stuff’s old one. I can’t get to her right now. So.” Kerfuffle struggled to find a natural sitting position with her missing leg, then struggled to get the robot into a more natural pose as well. “Rarity! Give it to Saccharine.”

Rarity looked down at Kerfuffle’s stump of a leg. She must have cannibalized her own leg for the parts, among other things, but here it was!

“You know installing a persona core into a robot would take far too long,” Rarity protested. “And I don’t have the equipment besides.”

“I thought of that. Or at least, I think I thought of that. I’m 99% sure this has an auto-installer on it.”

Such a thing wasn’t unheard of, but it also wasn’t something you could build unless in a dive state. It was almost a shame to have to use one so hastily. Studying these installers was the only way anypony even knew how to install a persona core, to begin with.

Hardly any time to mourn that loss. Rarity opened Saccharine’s skull, removed the persona core, and placed it inside the body intended for Fuff N’ Stuff.

The auto-loader went to work straight away. The inside always reminded Rarity of her old sewing machines from her dress-making phase as a teenager. A hundred tiny needles swarmed the persona core, jabbing it repeatedly as it installed even tinier wires, threads you would need a microscope to see.

No two of these were ever the same. Rarity could only hold her breath as she waited to find out how long this would take,

“Silence!” Magic’s voice boomed over all the rage of the storm and battle. Her eyes became wrapped in a mist of green and dark blue. “I am in control and that’s final!”

She turned her head to Rarity with determination, Rarity could only assume Magic would be in complete control for now. She wouldn’t get another convulsion, perhaps, but maybe Rarity could use that all the same.

Rarity felt a jerk, something pulling her to the wall, but it wasn’t any attack from Magic!

Saccharine had grabbed her! The core had installed just enough for her to regain mobility! Anything else wouldn’t be of much use.

As Magic stared forward unblinking, she fired off repeated, small attacks that wouldn’t destroy the castle.

Saccharine’s body twirled about, snatching Rarity up and darting out of the way. Magic sneered down at them, still unwilling to damage the building that Saccharine now clung to. It attempted to strike her with much smaller bolts of energy but couldn’t keep up.

It still functioned starkly different from the SB9000. Rarity’s robots focused on defense, Kerfuffle’s on speed and agility. But this was on a much different level from what Fuff n’ Stuff had ever managed!

Kerfuffle’s studies with Twilight had been brief, but even a small difference like that could pay off enormously in this situation! This body was far stronger than Fuff’ N’ Stuff’s last one! Rarity clung only to the vaguest hope that it was even stronger than Saccharine’s previous body. That had merely been upgraded before the knowledge exchange with Twilight but this one had been built after!

Rarity could hardly keep up with the two of them, Saccharine deftly crawled alongside the edge of the crumbling castle. Rarity past vines that tore around them in every direction, bullets whizzed by, ghosts swarmed about, and the wind blew hard. She could hardly keep her eyes open as Saccharine weaved about, dodging a relentless assault.

Dust spun and threw derp-tongue away a second time, though it cost her getting bit in the leg again. That pony really hated that one leg! This time she had somepony to throw her to. Batton Pass landed a brutal blow of black flames that incinerated much of the left half of that ghost’s body.

“Gah! My head hurts!” Derp-tongue put her remaining forehoof on her back and retreated toward the wall, gone for now.

That was a big step in the right direction. She wouldn’t be nearly as effective after such a horrible wound. But nonetheless, Dust’s hope in the situation had only managed to dwindle. She could feel it in the air, things were getting much worse.

Something horrible infected Dust’s head. She’d felt it a little upon coming here but the pressure in her head grew stronger and stronger. And she could guess why. The cartel ponies with psychic perception were in varying states of bad. Some of them were already incapacitated just from that.

The buzz in her head made it harder and harder to fight. More importantly, it meant Dust would be unable to track down Rarity. Not that she had much hope that pony was even alive but barring some miracle, Rarity would be on her own for the moment.

“I think we got rid of her!” Short Fuse pointed to a hole in the wall. There were so many of them now.

His little victory cry summoned that phantom back once more, sticking her head just above the ground once more.

“Heeee. You think you’re winning?” She licked her lips with desperation. “Hehe. Maybe I can give you a peak…”

Now Derp-tongue created another vortex, not so stable or as large as before, but that fact gave Dust little hope. The point of this was only to give them a view of the distant horizon. A monster was coming, a wave of ravenous maws that rose above the trees and devoured everything in its path raged towards them.

Dust knew exactly what it was. In truth, she’d felt this same sickness once or twice while close to Crater Cemetery. It was Nightmare Moon or more likely some aspect of her, rushing toward them.

“You think time’s on your side but it’s not!” She declared before being forced to retreat as Dust rushed over to her.

“I really don’t think staying here much longer is a good idea!” Short Fuse tried to pull Dust to one of the holes in the wall. “You win some, you lose some, you know? Rarity is dead. Mission failed. So let’s go.”

He moved closer to the door but didn’t even dare to retreat without Dust.

“No!” Batton called after them! “We need you!”

“That was a fast turn-around,” said Dust. “But he has a point. We can’t fight what’s coming right now.”

“We can!” Batton gestured to the circle they’d been protecting up until now. “The azoth spell! It’s almost ready. If you can keep the ghosts away just a little longer, Eclipse can cast the spell! You have my word you’ll be allowed to leave afterward so long as you don’t try anything.”

The situation with the cartel was serious. If Rarity was hiding somewhere, this was something they’d have to deal with for her to have any chance. Maybe even for Dust to have any chance. Not like this portion of Nightmare Moon would just go away forever after this fight.

As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Dust was beginning to think letting the Cartel take a shot at this monster was the best idea.

On the other hoof, Dust didn’t trust these ponies to any extent. Letting them be crushed wouldn’t be a bad thing, exactly. Eclipse would be eliminated just as Dash planned and they’d come up with some other way to save the day. Killing this portion of Nightmare Moon, and Dust knew it was merely that, wouldn’t actually solve the problem.

“Please!” Another way of ghosts pinned Batton Pass and her increasingly stressed forces. “We need you!”

Besides, the battle did appear unwinnable. Ghosts were coming from every direction. Without psychics, they’d soon be overwhelmed. Everypony was nearing the end of their strength.

“Batton!” That green pony, Hissteria comes bounding down the stairs, a smaller pony on his back. “Our last psychic collapsed. We’re done the next time a specter attacks!”

The lack of Specter attacks had been something Dust wondered about up until now.

“Sorry.” Dust turned her back on Batton. “Normally, I’d help two of my enemies fight but this really is hopeless. Getting out of here is the best we can do.”

“No!”

Her companion was most pleased with this. Even some of the Cartel seemed to be thinking of defecting. Though frankly, even getting away would be a task, Dust doubted many here even had that kind of skill.

“Sorry, Dash,” said Dust. “This really is hopeless.”

But as Dust looked around for the best escape route, something gave her pause.

“Come on already!” Short Fuse gave her a rough shove.

“Hold on.”

Ghosts weren’t coming up from below or from the front anymore…

“It’s a little too quiet.” Dust took a few steps forward, hardly the only one who had noticed the sudden decline in ghosts.

Dust turned right to find a few of the spooks falling back a little, confused more than anything.

“It’s a specter!” One of them called out. “They only pull back when they’re about to unleash a seal on us!”

The general consensus appeared to be imminent death was approaching, some of them all but collapsed on the spot. Dust wasn’t so sure. Normally you’d be able to tell when a specter showed up, but there was too much static to tell anything right now. Something else tipped Dust off they were wrong. Instead of her ESP, her gut told her that a specter was here but…

Dust ran outside. A huge wall of ice blocked off the front of the castle and the ground froze. The enemy ghosts were still out there, on the other side, but enchanted ice was one of the few things ghosts couldn’t float through. They had an effective barrier! And perhaps a few seconds before the enemy regrouped.

Dust knew where this came from right away. There was a specter, the one who made it stood in front of the wall, pushing all of her energy to keep it intact as various attacks assailed the wall.

“Fluttershy?!” Dust balked at the sight.

“Um!” Fluttershy panted heavily as she put all of her strength into keeping the wall up. “I noticed everypony was still here so um…”

“You came back?” Dust didn’t even know what to point at in all this mess. “To this?!”

“I promised I’d never run away again!” Fluttershy said. “Not from anything.”

That ruffled Dust’s feathers and pride alike.

“Yeah, but there’s a limit.” Dust felt a sudden surge of annoyance. “I’m pretty sure Rarity is already dead.”

“No! I saw Rarity. This is just the best I can do for her right now,” said Fluttershy. “And I know… I can tell you have some plan, right? All this magic. It has to be for something.”

Batton ran forward shouting about the need to protect the nexus. Fluttershy was a little too quick to accept that as the solution.

“You’re not going for Rarity?” Dust asked, part of her still wanting to ‘get’ Fluttershy.

“I have a feeling this is something Rarity needs to do herself,” said Fluttershy. She looked over her shoulder. “But this one? This is my fight.”

Fluttershy moved closer to the nexus, creating a tighter wall that would force the ghosts to come in from one direction so long as it held.

With a wall to put their backs to… this fight might actually be winnable.

“I understand,” said Fluttershy, “if you want to–”

“Don’t you dare!” Dust snapped at her. “If you’re staying, I’m staying!”

She shot an angry look at Short Fuse who desperately considered his best chance of surviving. No options available, he instead relented to fighting.

The wind, somehow or another, began to die down and Rainbow Dash began to wonder what its true purpose had been for on the horizon loomed a much greater threat. An absolute behemoth, so large Dash had no idea how far away it could possibly be shook the ground and left a trail of fire as it moved north.

Possibly it moved toward Ponyville but more likely the castle. And Dash knew

“I don’t suppose you have any plan to deal with that, do you?” Moondancer asked.

“Um. No.” Dash put up her hood and looked down at Oakenfield. Even getting there would feel like an achievement at this point. “We just stick to our part of the plan.”

“Rainbow Dash! I can see well in the dark.”

Dash stepped back, though they clung well to the trees and darkness. It took her a moment to recall that voice but when she did, Dash relaxed both at the familiarity and the explanation of how she was spotted so easily.

Aria Blaze sat leaning across a tree just before the gate with the tattered remains of her doll, looking no better than a drunkard freshly kicked out of a bar.

“Sonata is over there.” Aria looked toward Nightmare Moon. “I can’t get anywhere near it, though. I figured you’d come back here eventually so I decided to wait. I’ll tell you anything you want to know… if that’s worth anything now.”

Aria grimaced and looked dejected at the ground, hating herself for trying to profit from withholding the intel from Dash earlier.

“Not sure if now’s the best time,” said Dash. “But you’re sure that’s… is that Nightmare Moon already or?”

“A small fragment,” said Aria. “Nightmare Moon’s containment is leaking. This happened once before, during the last True Halloween. But now I fear there’s no way to put her back in. We can’t even beat this– a percent of her true self. It’s hopeless now.”

Aria gave something between a huff and a sigh.

“And yet you’re still here?” Dash asked. “Waiting for… me?”

“Hope is wasted on the hopeless.” Aria turned up one hoof and leaned back.

“Oh. Any cloud in a storm, huh? I see how it is.

“But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.” With some slight struggle, Aria stood up and moved closer to the gate.

A bustle on top moved against her but Dash could hardly make out much more than that.

“Hey, you!” Aria shouted up at the guard.

“You stay back!” She shouted back. “I already told you, no ghosts! Not now! Not with that out!”

“I’m staying out here. You tell all your friends Rainbow Dash is here!”

A light was shined in their direction and Dash wasn’t fast enough to hide in time. There was no verbal reply, just some rapid movement, the light going out, then nothing. Nopony came out of the gate to say anything friendly or hostile.

“I was trying to keep me coming here a secret!” Dash chastised.

“Well that was a stupid idea.” Aria closed her eyes as if ready to take a nap. Dash could relate but kept hers open.

“Look, I have a plan. Sort of.” Dash glanced around. “I was so sure those two would follow me down here. What’s taking them so long? They should be faster than me, I was expecting to get overtaken.”

“They did,” Aria went on. “I think they had the same idea I did. Waiting for you.”

Dash watched her carefully. Aria could have possibly figured out the plan unless.

“They’re here? Who’s here?” Dash asked, not wanting to give any more away.

“Sunset and Embermoon,” said Aria. “Unless you meant to bring another two demons down here, damn you. I was here first, they came a bit later almost the same time. I have no idea what you’re possibly planning but they’re in something of a standoff.”

Dash took heart. If there was tension between the two, there could be fighting!

“I don’t want them to fight so close to the city,” Moondancer warned.

“I suppose neither do they,” said Dash, “if they’re hesitating. I’m sure I can get them to move out into the forest. And get them to fight!”

Dash clashed her hooves together. She was so close to this paying off.

“Oh. Is that it?” Aria asked, weary but accommodating. “Well, Embermoon is dug into the west against the wall, blocking Sunset who is northeast. Or maybe it doesn’t matter.”

Aria withdrew slightly as both witches stepped forward. Sunset wore armor with a gold tinge while Embermoon’s partial chitin seemed a black armor in reflection. The lack of symmetry came with Moonlight Raven standing just behind Sunset.

The two stared one another down, neither wanting to make the other move still.

“Rainbow Dash,” Sunset spoke first. “Is it true that the element of Honesty is awake? No, don’t bother. I can already tell. But why did you tell me? Did you change your mind in light of…”

Sunset turned to the northeast, toward the fraction of Nightmare Moon.

“Well, I promise you I can stop it.” Sunset extended a hoof. “I’ll take any help you're willing to offer.”

Dash did not reach forward.

“Yeah, about that. Still not sold on your plan to wake up Golden Feather and make her supreme emperor,” said Dash as Sunset slowly withdrew her hoof. “But only cause we can do better! I was hoping–”

“To side with Nailbat and his anarchists,” said Sunset. “I’ve heard as much. You promised these ponies that, didn’t you?”

“Well! Maybe.”

“We need a strong leader, Rainbow Dash! Not mob rule. I won’t negotiate with you on this. Bringing back our true queen is the only solution,” Sunset laid it down firmly, an impenetrable wall between them. “Now tell me why you passed this information to me.”

“I–” Dash turned to Embermoon, watching this unfold with an annoying smile. “If you don’t do anything, Embermoon might–”

“She isn’t nearly as big a threat as Nightmare Moon!” Sunset shot back. “And I’ll be the one to deal with that. For good.”

Sunset turned to Embermoon.

“I’m willing to make at least this much of a truce with you,” said Sunset. “If you don’t interfere with me, I won’t with you.”

“Done,” said Embermoon.

“Don’t you know what a threat Embermoon poses to this city!” Dash called after Sunset. “Are you really just going to abandon it?”

“She isn’t the biggest threat to this city, nor anything else,” said Sunset. “My path is the surest way to aid everyone and even if I had to leave one city to perish it’d be a price I would begrudgingly pay.”

Sunset left then, moving swiftly into the city. Moonlight lingered a moment longer.

“Sunset alone will travel to the outer realm,” said Moonlight Raven. “I will consider what I can do here when we get back.”

And then she too departed.

Dash turned next to Embermoon, now craning her neck and looking pleased. With herself.

“Now hold on,” Dash called out to her. “Don’t you think we should team up against, well, that? Nightmare Moon is a far bigger threat than me or you. We can agree on that, right?”

“Honestly, I’d just feel better if I kill you now,” said Embermoon. “You cause way too many problems.”

Dash let out a long sigh. She honestly thought this would be an easy sell.

“You can’t seriously think I’m a bigger threat here. Like, you realize that thing is going to kill you too right?”

“I know. But I’m one of those blessed by Luna. When I die I’ll become a ghost. Becoming her adoring slave is hardly the worst-case scenario for me.”

“Seriously? You’re just okay with losing your free will and becoming a slave?”

“In the end, we’re all slaves to something. You to your moralizations and me to–” She paused, looking over the chitin slowly overtaking her body. “To something or other in the end. It doesn’t matter.”

Dash took a step back. She’d come to see herself as a smooth talker as of late, but how could you possibly reason with somepony of that mindset?

“And more importantly, I know you won’t be getting a second chance as a ghost!”

“Look, this is a much bigger response from Nightmare Moon than I thought we’d get. You’re in immediate danger right now and–”

“Wait. ‘Than you thought’?!” Embermoon’s eye twitched. “You had something to do with this? You… you played even her?!”

“Well.”

“Just what kind of games are you playing? How much of all this have you orchestrated? Have you been to the Dark Circle? Who are you?!” Embermoon stepped forward aggressively. Dash knew the witch had been trying to kill here mere hours earlier but somehow this felt worse, more personal.

“Look, it’s really not as deep as you think!” Dash waved her hooves defensively. “I’m winging it 99% of the time. I’m just, you know, not afraid to wake a sleeping ghost. Sometimes literally.”

“Oh no you don’t,” her face contorted. “You’re not going to convince me that you’re using gods as your pawns, masterminding the downfall of witches and kings but that you’re just some idiot.”

“Hey! I didn’t say I was an idiot! My plans work. Therefore they’re smart.”

“You followed me out of that pit, didn’t you?” Her anger broke to something bordering on fear. “Oh yes, I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out what you really are.”

“And I’m pretty sure you haven’t because I have no idea what the crow you’re talking about. Do you guys…?”

Aria weakly shook her head and Moondancer provided even less.

“Yes!” Embermoon looked up at the sky. “All it’s all just a big coincidence that ‘Rainbow Dash’ just happens to show up at Twilight Sparkle’s house exactly one year ago?

“Um. I. Yeah, it is a coincidence. Look! I don’t even know what I’m being accused of over here!”

Embermoon briefly raised a hoof to strike Rainbow Dash, but it seemed she’d spun her wheels too hard. She stopped for a moment with a smile on her face.

“You know what?” Embermoon instead took a step back. “No.”

“No?” Dash blinked.

“You want me to attack Oakenfield. You want me to chase you down here. “I know enough to not give you what you want. I’m going back to the castle, but not to help the Cartel.! Even if they manage to destroy that shadow, I will sweep down upon them, exhausted and spent, and slaughter every last pony there! Even Eclipse and that stupid girl she was with.”

Dash tried to control herself but the fear at the thought leaked through. Her plan had fallen apart completely.

“Yes!” Embermoon took much encouragement from Dash’s moment of hesitation. “It seems I’m the card you didn’t see coming! I’m not letting you decide the battlefield. Meet me there.”

Embermoon departed far too quickly for Dash to have any hope of catching up with.

Moondancer looked left and right between the two witches, each departing in opposite directions. If they chased both they would catch neither.

“I can use my powers to slow her down as much as possible,” said Moondancer.

And then what? It might give the others a chance to get away from the castle, at least. Dash had no idea how the extraction was going. Hopefully, Rarity was already long gone.

“If it’s the best we can do then fine,” said Dash. “But…”

She bit her lip in frustration. She almost had a solution even now, assuming the Cartel did manage to blast Nightmare Moon back with the azoth spell. Dash had three armies to work with. The pegasi that defected to her, Oakenfield, Moonlight Raven, and the army Sunset had sheltered in Ponyville… Crow, even the remnants of the Cartel might help them fight Embermoon.

It was like she had the puzzle in three completed sections but they just wouldn’t click together!

“Moonlight, if you command everypony here to march with us, do you think they would?” Dash asked.

“I’m not a queen or even a president,” said Moonlight. “I only have so much sway over those ponies.”

“I’m pretty sure they’ll follow you now, Rainbow Dash,” Ari spoke up, reminding Dash she was there suddenly.

“I already tried to sell them on this.”

“And I told you hope is wasted on the hopeless, remember?”

Aria turned again to the gates. Dash had missed it before but ponies were assembling outside, or rather clogging up the exit trying to crawl all over themselves. Pegasi reached her first, Dash recognizing many of them among the leaders who denied her before.

“Rainbow Dash!” Many of them called out all around her. “Do you have a plan? We are lost!”

“That thing is going to turn around and kill us next, isn’t it?”

“Dash!”

So many ponies were asking her for help all at once, Dash could hardly respond to any of them.

“Whoa! Whoa! What is this?!” Dash finally managed to get a small amount of distance between herself and the crowd. “Two minutes ago you told me to buzz off! Are you really the same ponies?”

“That was hours ago!” One stepped forward to complain. “And besides that was before… that thing emerged!”

Dash turned north once more still incredulous. Many of them had known this would happen eventually but still didn’t act until now.

“It’s different when death is at your doorstep,” said Aria. “Ponies will cling to any cloud in a storm when death is near.”

“If you have any hope to give us then I offer you the lives of me and my ponies in return!” One battle-hardened-looking stallion called out to her.

And most unexpectedly, a pony wearing a gas mask came slithering through the group. A huge chorus rushed to echo the sentiment.

“The Mad Science Cartel may have some weapons you’d be interested in,” he said a little too slightly but spoke more frankly at getting a look at Rainbow Dash. “Free, in exchange for any information or counsel you can offer. Do you not know anything about Crater Cemetery? If The Bloodstorm Cartel fails…”

Dash looked at Aria, who met her gaze smiled for once, then stood up.

“Yeah,” said Aria. “Rainbow Dash knows everything there is to know about Nightmare Moon.”

“Big sister Rarity!” Slightly jarring, her voice sounded like Fuff rather than Saccharine’s. “Sweetie Belle is still present. She’s frozen and will soon be used to focus the azoth spell!”

“What?” Rarity looked up at the sky, or rather the encroaching doom that blocked it out. Part of her had been hoping Eclipse was about to use it to banish this monstrosity but now who knew what this could mean? “We’re getting her out of there!”

Not that she needed to say as much. Saccharine crawled rapidly across the edge of the building, spiraling inward toward a point. Magic faltered a moment as if trying hard to line up a proper shot.

“It’s not letting us move up. I have only one choice to make it. Get ready.”

For what Rarity soon found.

The two of them did jerk upward suddenly, launching into the air. The cost, it seemed, was taking a hit. A single bolt of magic slammed into Saccharine, tearing off a foreleg and separating the two of them. They fell towards where the roof really should have been. Enough was missing for Rarity to see what should have been one of her secret passages.

Six portals had opened near the front of the castle, beaming a stream of light, each a different color, towards something that grew ever brighter. The magic coming from there was so strong that even through all of this, Rarity felt her horn throbbing. Perhaps a more skilled mage could have used this for something.

More importantly, yet more subtle, Rarity could see strands of energy that wrapped around something in a tangle and extended to each of the portals. At the center of it all was her target.

Sweetie Belle!

Rarity saw her suspended in the air, motionless, frozen in time.

The two landed hard against the ground, near Sweetie Belle.

But how was she supposed to unfreeze her? Rarity ran up and tried moving her, but she wasn’t simply paralyzed. Objects frozen in time (or rather slowed to a near stand-still as it was impossible to completely stop time) couldn’t be moved easily.

One other pony was present. Blueblood was here, the dive machine on his back. He set it down, breathing heavily from what must have been quite the ordeal.

“I saw this and, well–” Blueblood didn’t get another word, he was swept away and off the roof of the castle when Magic landed. That same blast threw Rarity against the wall. Her back hurt so much! She could hardly stand after that.

The dive machine too went clattering across the room and down a small ledge. Yet it started to whirl and generate a portal. It wasn’t completely broken yet.

“Hmph. In the end, it seems like I didn’t even have to do anything.” Magic looked out to the south.

Rarity had known all along that something was there. A veritable wall of the darkest, most sickening magic came rushing at them. Rarity had some assumptions as to what this was but it hardly mattered.

“That will destroy you too!”

“Don’t be dense.”

“Rarity!” Saccharine called out. “It plans to use Sweetie Belle to redirect the azoth spell!”

“Shut up!” Magic moved swiftly forward and stomped Saccharine’s back, destroying the back half of her body. “It doesn’t matter, but yes. I want you to know that this will kill Sweetie Belle. The spell will be redirected at Rainbow Dash so everything you care about is about to be destroyed. I want you to know that before you die.”

It didn’t seem Dash would come to the rescue this time. Rarity had to do this on her own.

Despite everything, there was one thing she’d seen in this battle that gave her hope. No matter how this creature wanted to think of itself, it was less than a pony, not more!

“You’re not really a person, are you? No matter how powerful you are, you’re just going to keep making the same mistake over and over again,” said Rarity.

“Yes, yes. Wonderful. So I suppose you’re just going to set up another fool to throw against me now?”

That Rarity had been able to use Coco, Kerfuffle, that nameless pony… it really had been luck and her luck was out now. Still, that didn’t mean Rarity was out of cards. There had to be something else a creature like this couldn’t possibly understand.

A being that only cares about power and growth.

“Yes,” Rarity stood up. “And that fool is me!”

Saccharine caught in immediately while Magic watched on only non-plussed. It seemed Rarity’s guess was right.

“Rarity! In your current state, this will destroy your mind!” Saccharine protested.

“It’s the only way to catch it off guard,” said Rarity.

“What are you talking about?” Magic watched. Some part of that darkness came hurtling down on them only for something below to throw it back. She seemed contented with letting things play out.

Even now, despite it being so overwhelmingly obvious what she was about to do, it simply looked on, dumbfounded, truly unable not just to understand, but to even know. If it had any ability, that had come from the filly, now silenced.

Yes, this was a being of strength. To purposely decline, to give up everything simply wasn’t something Magic could imagine.

“If it’s bad enough, you know what to do,” Rarity gave Saccharine one last solemn command. “Don’t let me live like that.”

“Rarity!” Saccharine tried reaching toward her, only for Magic to stomp down, breaking her last leg off, halting the one thing that could have stopped Rarity’s plan.

Despite her protests, Saccharine couldn’t feel sorrow. She’d put Rarity down after the fact.

Rarity pushed herself, jumping down towards the dive machine. Only then, after she’d actually done it, did Magic realize what she’d been plotting.

Sweetie regained motion as seven streams of magic shot toward the castle from every direction. Magic charged down at Rarity. And Rarity took her eighth dive.

Dust rushed out into the storm to slam her hoof against a final ghost before the enemy fled. She watched them scattered, cut badly, and exhausted.

A brief look at the scene would suggest the barest of victories. Few ponies remained who weren’t at the brink of exhaustion, most needed medical attention that wouldn’t come any time soon. Dust herself had maybe one or two punches left in her and Fluttershy’s wall had only held on with the very last drop of her strength.

Yet the ghosts did flee. They had held on and driven out the enemy, and for a brief moment, it truly did seem a victory.

Then an exhausted Fluttershy finally allowed her guard to drop, for the wall to crumble, and the true nemesis became visible. None of that mattered compared to what stood before them.

Like a hydra with countless heads came bounding forth their doom. Trees bent beneath it like grass and the ground trembled as it approached. So big was it that it blocked out the wind of that violent hurricane. It wouldn’t even have to attack. Just staying its course would obliterate them all.

There was no retreat. The storm, it seemed, wasn’t intended to blow down the castle nor to just limit mobility. It had carried some shred of the monster off in its gale until tatters and pieces of it took root all around the castle. Though not as terrific as the main mass, such snarling maws surrounded them in every direction. And now they all moved in at once.

Not a single pony mustered or even went for cover. Even if they had been at full strength there would have been no chance at all against this tide of darkness.

What would they even do? Shoot it?

So Dust hardly blamed them for laying down their guns and looking up at their next challenge with stoic silence among the best of them. Dust could do little more herself.

But just as victory appeared for only a moment, so too did defeat. Behind them stood the nexus, seemingly fully charged. Six portals opened and from them came six beams of light that charged the beacon with a rainbow of light.

So much magic emanated from that… though Dust knew not where they drew the magic from the strength of it was enough to give some hope even now. Even some of the psychics seemed to recover, however slightly shielded by it. Dust herself felt somehow propped up by the power of the nexus and wondered if she would even be able to stand without it.

One head of the hydra came bounding far ahead of the others on a curved path toward the nexus. Even just that, perhaps the smallest head could have crushed what was left of the group.

From above came a flash and a meteor that first pinned the head to the ground and then popped it, sending a wave that dissolved that long neck as it went. A ghost followed close behind her, but Dust decided to just ignore them for now.

From the flash rose Eclipse and even those badly wounded could nearly stand at that sight. Nopony knew whether or not to hope now, least of all Dust! The enemy was so close and yet here was Eclipse!

“It’s ready!” Batton screamed up at her. “Now! There isn’t any time!”

Time was up. Nightmare Moon ripped off the front of the castle. The whole structure collapsed around them, only Fluttershy’s walls remained.

“This is really it!” Dust shouted.

The three pegasi and the three ghosts Fluttershy huddled together. It seemed anypony who could do more or less the same. Only Eclipse was able to stand at the front, she alone had the ability to fight back.

“Is it enough?!” Batton screamed over the noise.

“I won’t manage to kill it!” Eclipse declared. “But I’ll leave a scare it won’t ever forget!”

The seven points of light slammed into Eclipse, into the nexus point, and around her came the aura of a rainbow. The magic of unicorns, of anypony really but most visibly in unicorns, was only ever one color. Yet now, Eclipse shone with every color, perhaps even more than Dust could see.

The immensity of the spell! Every hair on Dust’s body stood on edge. She could swear such a thing could destroy her just by being in the same plane of existence.

“I can’t believe we’re going to die surrounded by a bunch of thieves and ghosts!”

That was right. Dust had no idea if this was the end. Even if the spell worked, something like this could obliterate all of them just as collateral. But if Dust was going to die… there was one thing she had to do first.

“Fluttershy,” Dust said what might be her last words, “Thanks.”

“So this is true insanity, is it?” Rarity looked about. “It certainly looks odd but I never thought it’d feel so normal. Then again, maybe I’m simply too crazy to even realize my lack of sanity. After all, I am narrating everything out loud.”

It didn’t look any different from sanity. Things appeared to move slower, so slow they didn’t actually move, not really. And a few things simply made sense to her suddenly.

Magic, now a visage of Twilight, but a literal shell of her wrapped around the filly, falling apart piece by piece as pieces of it sloughed off like a poorly made paper mâché construct. Their pact was broken and slowly fading.

She could also see something else. While Magic was slowly crumbling off the filly, that same process came in reverse from Rarity’s necklace, from that feather. Like a parasite it was trying to latch onto her, Already it covered one eye.

Yes. One eye in the real world, one eye here… But Rarity didn’t much like this plan. She ripped the necklace off and threw the alicorn feather away.

The feather took shape to answer her.

It assumed the form of Rarity herself. Her worst weakness! Rarity cringed and turned away. She had lost her mask in all this chaos. How other ponies put up with it, even during the fight Rarity couldn’t say, but she certainly could not bear to look at her face, not without that scare.

“Oh come now!” Rarity looked in the other direction. “Don’t you have limitless powers or something? Surely you can put on a mask or get rid of the scar or perhaps not transform into a living effigy of myself? Thank you!”

“Not?” It asked in her voice. Or rather what her voice would have sounded like were she a dullard. “You?”

Rarity only glanced sideways long enough to catch its expression. Like an animal staring blankly into a light. How intelligent were these feathers again?

“Yes. Not me. I don’t like looking at myself!” Rarity waved her hoof rapidly at it without turning her head. “Do you have the power to take any form you want or not?”

“I am nothing so I could be anything, yes.” It spoke with a slow realization that what it was saying was true. “But not you? You don’t want me to be… you? How strange.”

It looked out at the other ponies, thinking Rarity was so different from them all.

It thought that so strange, but it did acquiesce to her request, even if it was in the worst way possible. Rarity glanced back at it upon seeing some motion in the corner of her eye. Now it was choosing to appear as Sweetie Belle – before the accident.

Rarity hung her head and bore it. But this insult she could bear, at least.

Sweetie Belle looked at Rarity with genuine confusion, not knowing what she did wrong and through it all Rarity could not but imagine the real Sweetie Belle giving Rarity that look moments before Rarity failed her.

“I don’t think we have much time!” Rarity hmphed, deciding to not waste any more on this hopeless game. “You’ve been clinging to me at least since I returned to the castle. You want something and if it’s from me I would appreciate complete frankness, thank you.”

Though she expected nothing of the like from a creature so closely related to a god. Why oh why did the gods feel the need to play such games? Were they truly great they’d not need mysterious ways.

“I have no desires. I have no name,” she said. “I can’t answer such a question: why.”

That last word came out like it was spitting a bug out of its mouth.

“And yet here you are, doing something.” Rarity rolled her eyes impatiently. “Somepony without desires would just sit there perfectly content forever, wouldn’t they?”

“Isn’t that what I’ve been doing up until now?” It asked innocently enough.

“Oh, I suppose. But clearly, something changed. What is that, exactly?”

“I was given a small push. I have been slowly beginning to think since that other one appeared,” she said. “And only now have I had my first thought.”

“Weren’t you helping Scootaloo from the beginning?”

“Was I?” It looked like a genuinely confused child.

“What do you want now,” Rarity demanded. “I despise all things related to the gods because of these games you play with us! Be frank or be silent.”

“I can bring you out of this danger. Take my power, Rarity. Give me your desires. You know exactly what I’m offering.”

Sweetie – that thing lifted a small hoof up to her in offer.

“Thanks, but I’ve seen what happened to that child.” Rarity smacked it aside. “I’ve never even heard of a deal with your kind bringing any good. What you’re trying to become is a source of only evil as far as I’m aware. And the last thing Coco said to me was to not be like that filly.”

“Are you sure that’s what she meant?” It looked towards Magic. “There are many ways you can be unlike someone. I thought she meant something more like: don’t fight with your other half. That we could be partners instead of merely using the other.”

“Oh, so now you’re smart? I’m not so easy to be taken for a fool.”

“I’m starting to think,” the fake Sweetie Belle crept up alongside Rarity. “I told you this was dangerous. I don’t know what I’ll think next.”

It looked down at the mimicry of Sweetie Belle’s body carefully, frowning at some invisible flaw. Then it changed again into a mimicry of a Sweetiebot 9000. Not Saccharine nor Sweetie’s artificial body, but a third Rarity never managed to make.

“You see? I figured it out already!” The Sweetiebot announced. “You hate looking at yourself because you aren’t yourself. Did you realize that yet?”

Rarity sneered. It was because of that scar.

“No, no. You didn’t, I think.” The Sweetiebot pointed at itself. “This is you, Rarity! Your creations are the real you. This is your very soul born out into the world. All of it, in here.”

And it placed its heart on its chest, where the heart could be.

Perhaps Rarity didn’t entirely disagree. Even before she became obsessed with robots, Rarity had always been the artistic type. In another world, she likely would have ended up a famous painter or who knew what else.

“That is your heart, that is what I want to be, the only thing I can see: to be your creation!” The Sweetiebot grew ever more sleek and perfect, slowly morphing into some idealized form of it.

In your mind, a work of art was always perfect and what manifested in the world was always some compromise: with reality, with your faults, with the limited understandings of others. True art could not exist in the real world. Perfect meaning never left one's own head.

And yet here it was, standing before Rarity. The perfect, uncompromised form of her vision, her perfect Sweetiebot. Just a few feet ahead.

“With my help, you can become your greatest self,” it offered, “and I can become your creation. If you can create me, you can create anything. This is who you were meant to be.”

Rarity sighed and smiled. It really had her going until that last line. ‘Meant to be’. Rarity couldn’t possibly accept something like that.

“Maybe you aren’t evil.” Rarity trotted over to the frozen visage of Magic. “But you don’t understand. It seems like your kind can never understand…”

“How can I understand if you won’t create me?” It shook its head with no real sense of disappointment despite it all. “Don’t you know that if you won’t someone else will? If you’re so clever then find a way. Defeat Magic. Make me understand. There is always a hidden answer. Do it. Find a way.”

And from then on, it just stood there and waited patiently without any further input. But time didn’t Rarity didn’t have much longer. It could only protect her for so long. Insanity was creeping closer.

It was nearer the truth now, its words spoke more to Rarity’s heart. If you would be the first to do something, you must discard the notion it was impossible.

Perhaps there was a way, if Rarity could see that – to be the first. And its speech earlier brought the solution to her mind already. Rarity’s greatest strength was her creations and yet if she focused on creating who knew where she would end up?

It all seemed so obvious.

A move Magic would never see coming. A move that would assure this element wouldn’t corrupt Rarity… It all hinged on one thing.

“Her. My creation.”

Rarity pointed to Saccharine.

“I’ll take your offer. If you’re going to make some bond with me… take what you will from me and give all you have to her! That is my desire!”

Once again the feather took Rarity’s form with eyes wide, looking breathlessly at Saccharine.

“Yes. I see. It was never about… you.”

Magic waited through the long second. It saw Rarity take the feather. The alicorn magic filled the air, but it wouldn’t be enough! That one second it took to flood Rarity was all it needed.

“Not enough!”

Magic ignored Saccharine and took its one shot down at Rarity as the azoth spell went off. Its hoof slammed hard into the ground. And yet beside it…

Magic slowly turned its head then eyes to see.

That one mistake…

Mad X Science

Author's Note

Last time: Eclipse prepares to cast the azoth spell on Nightmare Moon while Rarity awakens an element of harmony in conflict with Magic. Rainbow Dash persues Embermoon on route to Rarity's castle.

Mad X Science

Rarity watched Magic coming at her, time slowly returning from its standstill. Rarity’s mind was still on a high, but she couldn’t see any way out of this, Magic was approaching too fast, and her body could hardly move an inch before the attack landed.

Sweetie Belle’s stasis was breaking by itself into a state to act as a perfect conduit. In a moment the beams of the Azoth spell would converge on, then fry her. Rarity watched Saccharine, hopelessly broken, yet Rarity wanted at least to see whatever powers the feather would grant to her before the end.

And finally the alicorn feather. It acted faster than all the others. It condensed itself into a single point, and then an eruption of green energy washed out over the castle walls. Rarity felt it in her heart and in her head. Knowledge filled her as that magic took form before her.

Generosity.

Rarity knew its name the moment it appeared. A pony made of green light emerged from the feather, translucent like a ghost but still more solid than any color Rarity had seen before. It didn’t look like Rarity or Sweetie Belle but something in between them, like a fourth sister in their family.

It stepped out before Rarity, though Rarity knew it couldn’t block anything for her. Rarity could feel a connection to it, and understood it all too perfectly. Despite what she had just asked for, Generosity was part of her. Yet Rarity couldn’t use Generosity.

“That isn’t exactly right,” Generosity said, more in Rarity’s mind than with any voice. “Rarity, I can’t lend you our strength. But my power is yours to give.”

Generosity and Rarity’s hoof both moved toward Saccharine, though Rarity couldn’t tell which of them had made the decision or who was guiding whom. A second image of Generosity emerged and rushed to Saccharine.

Generosity’s magic flowed through her. Saccharine’s eyes flashed green and even the broken, detached parts of her animated. It was effortless, like weaving a piece of cloth back together. Rarity or Generosity or both connected every broken piece of Saccharine with threads of magic.

She animated and with a burst of speed, charged forward into Magic, tackling her and redirecting the attack just enough to miss Rarity.

Sweetie Belle was next. Rarity couldn’t save her, but she could give Sweetie the power to save herself.

Once more an image of Generosity leaped forward and grabbed onto Sweetie Belle. Sweetie’s eyes too turned green as the alicorn magic surged through her.

Like tendrils, beams from below, directed by Eclipse, came searching for her. Thankfully, Sweetie didn’t need much more instruction. She could immediately tell they were no good. The barrier protected her for that critical second as her state primed to be used faded.

It only lasted a second, then Eclipse gave up on trying to use her. Sweetie Belle fell to the ground, looking over herself and the magic that filled her.

Meanwhile, Saccharine clashed with Magic overhead, moving faster than ever before. An enormous spell erupted, and rainbows filled the sky, banishing that unnatural darkness. Rarity couldn’t tell if it Was suddenly down or if it had merely been too dark to notice it had been for some time. It was just those two fighting now.

“You think this is enough?!” Magic pounded Saccharine repeatedly. “Even ten times her strength isn’t enough to match me!”

“That’s right! You’ll always make the same mistake! Blueblood!”

Blueblood had understandably remained feebly hidden through this last bit of the ordeal. He still wasn’t sure about coming out, but Generosity rushed to his side. Soon his eyes glowed with the same green light of inspiration as Rarity’s.

He looked over his body as the magic of Generosity filled him. Blueblood didn’t know much magic, that wasn’t his expertise, but any unicorn could grab and pull and that’s just what he did.

The green clamped down on Magic like a hydraulic press, so much so that it took Blueblood off guard. He himself was surprised when Magic pulled off Saccharine hard and slammed into the ground.

Saccharine had no such mercy, pouncing on Magic, at last getting the upper hand with a flurry of blows.

“Okay, that was a bit more than I meant!” Blueblood called out. “Is that thing not still a child.”

He wasn’t wrong. Or maybe he was. Who knew if that filly was even still in there?

Rarity looked to Generosity, the obvious answer to her question.

“Let me show you,” Generosity offered. Rarity nodded and the element spread out over Luster. Rarity could see the state of things now, the two sides of that filly had fallen out completely.

“Saccharine! That’s enough!”

Saccharine got off of her at the order. They watched now as Luster Dawn lay there, clutching her head, eyes rolled back, gasping heavily for air.

“There isn’t much we can do for her,” Rarity concluded. “Luster Dawn is the one who has to win this battle and that will take time. But Magic is sure to lose.”

“Then it’s over?” Blueblood looked up at the rainbows.

Everypony turned to see an absolutely enormous drill made of rainbows tearing its way into what Rarity assumed to be Crater Cemetery. The size of it simply dwarfed anything that just happened here, even the rush Rarity felt seemed small now.

But for a moment, Rarity thought maybe it was over.

Eclipse floated in the air, not by her own volition but because gravity hadn’t the power to touch her, surrounded by the essence of power itself. Yet something was off.

That robot, what she had hoped to use as a focal point, was gone, Eclipse knew that much. There was no time to search nor ponder reasons why. It meant an immediate change in strategy, that she would have to gather the streams around herself instead.

The nightmare's reaction made Eclipse reconsider if this change was for the worse. As soon as Eclipse made that unexpected move, the six colors swirling around herself in a rainbow of light, its fragment recoiled, pulling back as if to defend the core it extended out from.

It had been planning something, something that had relied on her using that machine to cast the spell. Why? Some traps disarmed or malfunctioned, but beyond that Eclipse couldn’t tell.

She swept her hoof out, and the sphere of rainbows expanded around her, throwing the fragment back. It could not stand to be in this sphere of energy. Not only did every bit that touched it disintegrate, but it sent out a wave that devoured the darkness like a disease spreading through its body.

Destroying this, though it seemed hopeless a moment ago, would be effortless now. But also a waste. Eclipse could see more clearly her target now, as the spell was intended to destroy only one entity.

The monster before her was like a bulge at the end of a long, thin vine, one that reached all the way back to Crater Cemetery. And looking at that darkness, though bound, she could see just how tiny a fraction she had been fighting.

The fragment sent out was as hollow and light as a balloon, while Nightmare Moon’s true core was as dense as a ball of steel. Not even a full percent would be lost by this fragment’s destruction.

Eclipse had no hope her spell would destroy that core. However, she would do as much as possible, leaving a scar as deep and vicious as she could. To crack this impenetrable ball in hopes someone else may shatter it, even if she couldn’t imagine how.

Once more, the seven beams of light extended, this time far past the bounds of the Everfree. Then she brought them back into a single point, slamming them into Nightmare Moon. They twisted against one another, forming a drill.

The skies brightened and lit up with countless rainbows streaking across the Everfree. Though as much of a spectacle as that was, many ponies may have still missed it against the enormous drill of rainbow-colored light twisting its way into Crater Cemetery. Not one pony for a hundred miles could have missed seeing that, perhaps not even the blind.

The immensity of the azoth spell tore into this god, yet it seemed impenetrable at first, metal against metal producing only sparks. Eclipse wished there were some way to press even more effort into it, even if it meant death, for humiliating a god like this seemed a suitable end.

Yet this strength wasn’t hers, could only be redirected, and she knew only the death at the hands of one of her students could ever be truly glorious. She kept her focus and kept directing the power against a god that seemed both helpless and invincible at the same time. Both unable to react but hardly needing to.

Then, just at the last ounce of the spell’s strength began to dither, it happened. A sudden crack! The rainbows pierced straight through the ball of blackness! Then it all vanished. Grasping a tiny fragment of the power she had just wielded, forcing herself to stay cognizant for just a moment longer.

Yes, a crack, but only a crack.

Eclipse fell to the ground, exhausted and unable to see anymore.

Void Walker watched the spectacular display. Everypony else around likely drooled in amazement at such a display, yet Void Walker was from an age where gods still roamed and shaped the world. He knew it wasn’t enough the moment it began.

As it dithered, he turned back to Rainbow Dash, with her advancing army. He had honestly hoped the two witches would win out against that pony and make his job easier, rather than having to risk injury so close to a critical junction. But it seemed his mission to kill Rainbow Dash had to be more direct now.

Usually, it was best to let your enemies fight. With Rainbow Dash that wasn’t always the case. He had gotten what he wanted most out of this interaction, one of the remaining azoth spells was spent on Nightmare Moon and not Starlight. Nailbat would almost certainly do the same.

Only one detail unnerved him deep in his gut.

“Hm. That did more damage than Starlight’s did. By a lot. That isn’t good.”

Rarity watched the display breathlessly. The extent to which it worked, she couldn’t say. But that was out of her hooves for now. Rarity would rather focus on what could be in them.

She turned to find her sisters.

“Sweetie Belle! Saccharine!” Rarity rushed over to the two of them, grabbing their cold, metal bodies in her embrace. Saccharine once again largely fell apart, but Rarity knew she could fix that easily enough now. “Don’t worry, Saccharine. Once this battle is over, you’ll have the best body yet! A sweetiebot 10,000!”

“I still don’t get what happened. Did I save you, Rarity?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“No, you didn’t. And didn’t I tell you to run away?”

“Um. Maybe. But I helped by trying to come back and rescue you, right?”

“No! You made it worse!”

“Um! Well!” Sweetie Belle desperately searched for a way to get out of trouble. “But if I didn’t come back to the castle then um…”

Finally she pointed at Generosity who had been trying to hang back. Not that that could work. Rarity was omni-aware of her now.

“Then! I think maybe she wouldn’t be here?” Sweetie asked. “Or actually is that a bad thing, too?”

“A good question.” Rarity turned to Generosity, wondering if she should sic Saccharine on it. Or her. “I don’t remember telling you to stay with me. In fact, that’s the exact opposite of what I agreed to.”

“I’m not with you, but I am yours to give. You gave me form. You made me Generosity.”

Rarity watched over her. At once she understood and didn’t. She had questions but also the answers already.

What do you really want? Rarity knew Generosity’s values but also she couldn’t want anything clearly without a host to cling to.

Why was she with Rarity? Giving her away meant Rarity couldn’t use the power of Generosity herself, but still she was the conduit for it and together they remained. Rarity paid the price, as was agreed.

What could Generosity do? Shine with inspiration. Light the darkness and bring out the hidden potential in ponies.

The two of them were one, in a sense, so Rarity knew all of this.

“But we are different than the others,” Rarity pointed out. Everypony else seemed lost, unaware of their unspoken conversation. “We haven’t become the same person entirely, like Faith did or like Magic attempted with this one and with Twilight’s mentor.”

“Yes,” said Generosity. “Are you satisfied with your answer? I honestly don’t know if this will work, but I’m excited to find out.”

“Heh. Maybe we are operating on the same wavelength now,” Rarity concluded.

“Are you sure?” Blueblood pointed at her eyes. “I can’t tell if you’re still using that power, but it is changing you. I notice it turns your eyes green, but they aren’t glowing right now.”

“He’s right.” Sweetie Belle inspected Rarity’s face. “Your eyes are green!”

“Wait. Are my eyes just green forever now?” Rarity pulled on them, unable to see herself, but the others nodded. “This is just the worst possible thing!”

“I think they look nice!” Sweetie Belle said.

“Well I think they look hideous,” said Blueblood, trying to straighten out his own hair. “It clashes horribly with your mane and fur.”

“Thank you,” said Rarity. “At least somepony gets me. If I ever said anything bad about you, Blueblood, know that I meant it.”

The two smiled at each other.

“Is this one of those things I’ll understand when I grow up?” Sweetie Belle asked Saccharine, who would not be understanding at any point.

“I can read your mind, and I still don’t get you,” said Generosity. “Isn’t there something else you should be worried about? Nothing has been settled.”

“And who said you were supposed to?” Rarity asked.

“I can’t say you’re wrong, to be honest. If you let me, I’d just give everything away until you withered and died. The only thing making me realize that is my connection with you. I’d be completely oblivious just like Magic was otherwise,” said Generosity. “I can’t tell if you’re right or wrong to think of yourself.”

Yes, Rarity could feel the pull into two extreme obsessions. One to abuse Generosity’s gifts, the other to become selfless to the point of losing all sense of self. This thing was still a lion. But it was Rarity’s lion now. It was up to her to keep it balanced, to keep her own heart balanced.

Yet already Generosity was different than the others. Just being able to understand this was a problem, seeing beyond itself made it different.

“There is so much I can show you.” Generosity reached her hoof out. “Too much. Rarity, use me as much as you need but no more.”

“Now you’re starting to say things that make sense.”

The entity no longer felt foreign to her. Generosity really was a part of her for better or worse. Rarity would just have to deal with it.

Already, Rarity knew exactly what Generosity was capable of and wanted to put this new relationship to the test. Rarity summoned her to her side and together they looked out into the world.

Rarity could do it! She could access a dive state with tranquility.

It was too much. Things would get out of hand if she tried absorbing all that information at once. And Generosity wouldn’t allow such selfishness.

Something Starlight once said resonated in Rarity’s mind. ‘I made Faith a virtue’. Rarity was the one who had to make Generosity a virtue. Generosity was strongest when Rarity was giving her away.

“I swear I won’t abuse this power.”

“I know everything you’re thinking, remember? I know you won’t.”

Rarity did see something else. While Nightmare Moon was banished, a new threat was quickly approaching. Rainbow Dash wasn’t far away, but if Rarity wanted to keep the coming fight from being bloody, she would have to test Generosity’s abilities once more.

“We need to find Coco and Kerfuffle,” said Rarity. “I think somepony should be coming to help us with that soon.”

Dust stood in awe watching the sky light up with rainbows.

There was no collateral damage despite the size of that spell. There wasn’t even a mild gust to blow her mane. Dust remembered hearing the spell only targeted one pony, so it made sense there wouldn’t be anything wasted, spilling over. If anything she felt her strength briefly refreshed as color filled the sky.

Anypony who was able to dragged themselves out into the front lawn of the castle to watch the eruption of colors. Then they stood still as it faded. The disgusting presence of Nightmare Moon had never felt further away. Dust wasn’t sure if she could even feel it. There certainly had been some effect, at the least.

Through Dust’s eyes, it was as though that explosion of colors sped up the coming of the sun, already it was past dawn. Had it been this close to dawn? Had Nightmare Moon blocked out the sun? Or had Dust been staring out at these rainbows for much longer than it seemed?

Eclipse, looking even more aged than before, fell limp to the ground, but not dead. It took her a full minute to regain her footing and stand. Everypony gathered around, eager for any information Eclipse might have.

“Okay, that destroyed it, right?” Dust asked. If it hadn’t, Dust could barely imagine what else they could throw at that monster. “Or at least it’s almost dead now?”

Batton and a few others had about enough energy to wait upon Eclipse’s response, but nothing more. Even Eclipse’s strength was nearing its end. She placed one hoof over her face, composing herself before answering.

“I dealt a serious blow to it, but it isn’t dead, nor close to it,” said Eclipse. “The most I can say for us is that it will be down for some time and we’ve no fear of another tendril emerging until the True Halloween.”

It was as though a death sentence had been pronounced for everypony here. Yet Dust felt too exhausted to feel anything but numb. The muted responses suggested all the other ponies were in the same boat.

“Then we’ve only escaped for now,” said Batton. “All our hope rests on Nailbat. Or perhaps that accursed…”

Batton turned to Dust.

“And what of you?” Batton asked. “I have no choice but to retreat now. I’m willing to let you leave if you’ll take it. Or we could have some sham of a deathmatch.”

Dust considered it, though her concern wasn’t for Batton Pass, instead, she looked past that to the witch. Should Dust kill Eclipse right here? Eclipse would never be weaker. Though she’d been helpful a moment ago, she was still a villain with uncountable crimes which she would continue to add to. It would fulfill Dash’s mission to destroy a witch as well.

Then again, even just walking away peacefully sounded like a chore at this point. Overcoming the last drop of a witch’s strength was still beyond most ponies.

Eclipse met Dust’s eyes. The chance was gone just like that and Dust instead shook her head wearily.

“Go see if you can find survivors,” she ordered Fuse, who looked most up to it. “Then we leave.”

“Fine,” Batton agreed to the unspoken terms, “tell Rainbow Dash we’re going to retreat to the Pirate Coast if she’s wise enough to let us. This place is too dangerous. If Nailbat or even Starlight intend a more powerful strike than that, I dare not linger.”

“Holde,” Eclipse spoke up. “I had one more thought just now. If Nailbat is still–”

Eclipse paused her idea and turned to meet an oncoming attack that not even Dust had foreseen, erecting a barrier of light. There was a burst of flames that she managed to deflect as the intruder slammed into her.

Another ghost? No. Dust recognized the oncoming pony soon enough. It was Embermoon, that damn half-bug creature. Though perhaps she was more like three-quarters bug now. Dust could have sworn it was less than that not long ago.

“You’re late,” said Eclipse. “Your presence would have been well met an hour ago.”

Embermoon chuckled, looking over the lack of a response. Nopony here was in good enough shape to fight anything, let alone a witch who may very well be at full strength. Dust dreaded what this meant, and hoped Embermoon was somehow only here for Eclipse.

“From the looks of things, my timing is perfect! Look at you all. This will be too easy.” Another quick clash, this one sending Eclipse staggering back with a deep cut across her withers. It was already clear who would win this fight. “If I’m not mistaken, this will make me the last witch, won’t it?”

Dust was pretty sure she’d forgotten Trixie but was too tired to point that out. And Embermoon looked to the others with a sideways glance, letting them know they would fair no better than Eclipse.

Eclipse stoically met her gaze, already at her limit but not daring to show weakness.

“You’re fighting us?” Batton ran out into the fray. “Now?! For what? I still have money overseas. I’ll gladly pay ransom for–”

“I didn’t come here to make deals!” Embermoon interrupted. “You are willing to do whatever it takes to destroy your enemy, even working with a slayer, and so am I. The only difference is that Crater Cemetery isn’t what I’m worried about.”

Her neck snapped and she grew again in a sudden spurt. Green flames slowly burned away the pony portion of her until nearly all of her body, save the left eye and a small surrounding area had been transformed into black chitin.

“I figure out who ‘Rainbow Dash’ really is and I intend to be the wildcard she didn’t see coming!”

Another bulge and another burst of growth, though this time only in her right foreleg. Now the chitin struggled to contain the muscles of that leg. Small cracks formed along it and fire spewed forth from inside as the edges formed into spears.

This hulking bludgeon she pulled back, then swung at Eclipse.

“Seriously?” Dust collapsed onto her haunches, unable to do anything but laugh. Of all the rotten luck.

There was no chance Eclipse would be winning this fight. How to even get away from this?

Embermoon made a wild swing at Eclipse with that massive punch. Eclipse showed little concern for the others, trying to block with a blow of her own. Dust no longer regretted her decision not to try and fight Eclipse just then, as even in this state, she was able to meet this blow. The two clashed in an explosion of force, Embermoon’s hoof staggering backward.

Fluttershy created a wall of ice, protecting who she could from the impact, but this shattered immediately without absorbing much of the force, her head slinging low just after.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do anymore,” Fluttershy said.

Another stray bolt came at them, this one right at Fluttershy. Dust jumped forward and punched it with an electrified hoof, exploding it before falling to the ground on her side.

“And that was the last of my strength.” Dust was unsure if she could stand up just now. Yet she smiled up at Fluttershy.

At least the fighting had moved away from them. Embermoon only appeared to have lost the initial exchange. Those muscles her carapace could barely contain finally broke free. Spike tendrils erupted from within and then tore through the ground, giving chase to Eclipse. And apparently, each of them could cast a spell on their own.

As if that wasn’t hopeless enough, Dust noticed her left arm had been mutating as well. What she first thought were pustules quickly grew into something more like a pod, translucent and filled with green slime. Dust’s instinct told her to bust them, but there was no way she could get close enough in her current state. A few ponies from the Cartel tried shooting at them, but the bullets were swatted away by more tendrils.

It was already too late now. One of them popped, splattering slime everywhere, but from within appeared… Lightning Dust. A nearly perfect copy of Dust stood there with a drooling expression, like some zombie version of herself. Its form was not entirely stable, almost like it was made of thick wax slowly melting away.

The copy proved better than it appeared at first glance. It let out a howl of rage, cowled itself in lightning, and then charged at Eclipse with a speed approaching Dust at her full strength. A clone that could at least approximate Dust’s abilities.

And before long, more came. Copies of Eclipse, Moondancer, Batton, and Pinkie Pie soon emerged and all attacked Eclipse.

“It seems you were holding back a few secrets after all,” Eclipse managed to scoff out that much but could manage no more words as the onslaught quickly overwhelmed her.

Dust couldn’t even make out what was happening in the distance and just assumed those clones and tendrils were pummeling Eclipse into oblivion. A second Pinkie clone emerged and charged into the crowd, throwing the Cartel members about wildly with psychokinetic force while they struggled to muster any kind of response.

“Okay, this is hopeless.” Dust forced herself to her feet. “Come on, Fluttershy. We’ll see who Fuse could find but surely not even you would die for these ponies, right?”

For a second, Dust was almost worried she would be, but Fluttershy nodded in agreement. Those weary two made for the back of the castle but didn’t make it far. A clone of Dust landed between them and the castle. This was not something any of them could deal with!

But Dust saw hope just behind them. It was Fuse and they had a few ponies with them, only one of whom Dust recognized.

There was a mare with one leg and one crème colored, fainted from blood loss slung over Fuse’s shoulder. There was a white stallion and beside him…

“I think I found Rarity!”

That was Rarity, alright. Dust could tell right away something had changed in her. It was most visible in her eyes, taking on a green so deep it seemed to never end.

But Dust was more interested in the pony beside her. One of those damned robots but different. Tendrils of green magic wrapped around it, that same green light held gaps between her joints, holding them together like a powerful magnet.

Despite how fragile it first appeared, the robot moved forward in a flash and clashed with the clone. It easily withstood a few electrified blows, then threw them back. A drill of green magic and bits of metal formed by its side. It smashed the clone of Lightning Dust into the ground and the drill soon reduced it into a splattering slime.

There was no way that clone had been as strong as Lightning Dust at full strength, but that did unnerve her anyway.

Had it been capable of this the whole time?

Saccharine charged forward, pouncing on a clone of Pinkie Pie next, drilling it too into a waxy splatter, giving the Cartel ponies a needed respite.

Rarity used Generosity to take a look over the battlefield, a much smaller stage was more manageable. She saw Eclipse just moments away from destruction.

“Saccharine! Support fire that way!” Rarity pointed to where Eclipse was getting a royal beatdown.

“Are you sure?!” Dust choked, struggling to even shout. “It might be best to just let this happen and get out of here.”

“We do need her! Just for a moment longer.”

Saccharine summoned a repeating cannon and fired at that area, not bullets but bolts of green magic launched out of it. Rarity quickly learned that wasn’t enough to do real damage to the tendrils or exoskeleton of Embermoon, but the clones took significant damage. Just enough for Embermoon to wipe them out then retreat into a feeble defensive position.

Another round of pods burst. This time, it was three clones of Saccharine that emerged.

“Wait! But you can’t clone a robot!” Sweetie Belle complained. “Or can you? Actually, I’m used to there being way more of me than this.”

Interestingly, they weren’t clones of the complete Saccharine, nor any of her older forms. They were copies of her current self. But perhaps Embermoon failed to understand what held Saccharine together for large pieces of them fell apart far too quickly.

They opened fire on Saccharine but struggled to do any damage. Even still, charging in to destroy the source would prove difficult. Meanwhile, a small army of Pinkie clones was emerging behind Embermoon.

Rarity could open the floodgates and give Saccharine even more strength.

“It’s not a good idea to focus on any one pony too much,” Generosity appeared by her side and warned. “My strength is greater the more spread out it is. Be patient.”

“I know,” said Rarity. In some ways, talking to Generosity felt like talking to herself. Just a different part of herself. “Stick to the plan. Saccharine, to the side!”

Instead of charging right in, Saccharine made a circle to Embermoon’s right. She couldn’t make it too obvious that Saccharine was only protecting everypony while she stalled or Embermoon might go into panic mode.

Thankfully, this would look like an attempt to pincer Embermoon between Saccharine on her left and Eclipse on her right.

“I knew something like this would happen!” Embermoon called out to Rarity. “But I can tell you’re either afraid of your power or haven’t awakened it all yet! I have no such limit!”

To her best estimate, a good forty clones of Pinkie Pie stood ready, preparing to charge all at once. Rarity hoped their strength was only a fraction of the real thing.

The Cartel, whoever was able to mange, was retreating and breaking ranks. Batton remained to try and organize them to some amount but couldn’t get control to any meaningful degree.

“Rarity, I don’t think we can win this,” Fluttershy warned.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that.” Rarity winked. “I just need more ponies to work with and soon I’ll have them.”

The Pinkie clones finally got some invisible order and bound toward Rarity, the cartel, and Saccharine all at once.

And then, heavy artillery interrupted their charge, blowing them away!

Everypony looked to the south to see where it had come from but Rarity already knew! Rainbow Dash stood at the head with thousands behind her. A diverse mix with only cobbled-together organization marched forward, the few who with the range already giving support fire.

It would be enough for now!

“Let’s go!” Generosity took one step forward, spreading out and speeding up until she vanished from sight.

Rarity focused her, giving the empowering light of Generosity. Too all of them but Dash, the one pony who didn’t need it.

Dust laughed and fell behind Rarity and the others. Dash had done it again! It was mostly trash, but a lot of trash. They moved in, keeping the clones in check to the point Dust wanted to take back the ‘trash’ part. Were they always this strong?

No, Dust noticed their eyes shone with that same green color Rarity had. That pony had changed somehow and was doing something. But something Dust liked for once.

“Don’t get too close!” Dash called out to her forces. “Just keep her pinned down.”

Dust would have gone for an all-out assault but that was always her plan. Dash must have had this all figured out as usual. Dash noticed Rarity and the others and had a few pegasi extract them over to her side, going in a wide arc around the battlefield.

Embermoon now found herself assaulted from three sides.

The army of Oakenfield was as ragtag and disunified as always, not something Dust would have much fear of, let alone a witch. But the momentum behind them was enough to keep the steady stream of clones in check. Eclipse was slowly losing her fight with Embermoon’s right half, though. And if she fell, the tables would turn again.

“Rainbow Dash!” Dust took stock of the ponies who followed Dash here, that was Dash’s real strength. “Well this is great, but I don’t think these ponies are going to be enough. Even with all this green stuff.”

“I know,” Dash said with a smile, turning to the west. As she did, a swarm came storming in from that direction.

The pegasi elite forces led by Spitfire! Dust had forgotten there had been a small army of them waiting off to the west, they’d been so useless through all that!

“Rarity!” Dash called out to her friend. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but–”

“I’m on it.”

The same green energy wrapped itself around the new army. Led by Spitfire, the train of pegasi repeatedly dive-bombed at the budding pods, slowly beating back the tendrils with burst after burst. When it seemed they finally breached the defenses, splattering those pods before they could hatch.

But the hope they’d been neutralized didn’t last long. Embermoon was only forced to change tactics. Instead of letting them mature into a full mockery of somepony specific, they burst immediately into wax ponies.

These constructs put up a decent fight and there were much more of them. But it had to be putting more strain on Embermoon and the tide of the brawl quickly began to turn in Oaken Field’s favor.

She had no idea if it was on purpose but Dust found some small tendril of green magic around herself as well. Small enough to perhaps be collateral but still enough to lighten her wounds.

“I don’t know what you’re doing, but can I get some more of this stuff? This excitement is giving me a second wind!” Dust brought out an electrical charge across her body once more. “I’m ready to join the fray too!”

But just a second later, Dust found herself short of breath.

“I can’t give you your strength back,” Rarity warned. “All we can do for you right now is keep you from collapsing.”

Dust wanted to protest but a smack from Dash soon followed.

“How many times do I have to tell you not to be stupid!” Dash shouted at her. “You already did your part, let me take care of this.”

It was weird, but Dust could accept that.

“Still.”

“Yeah, I know what you’re thinking,” said Dash. “I’d still need one more army, huh? Well, guess what?”

Dash looked north with the same confidence as she did before.

Nothing happened. Just some awkward silence.

“Well their timing’s not as good, but…”

She kept watching the horizon.

“Give it a minute,” said Dash.

Then it happened! A third army came marching from the north!

It was Moonlight Raven and behind her marched what must have been a few hundred unicorns, some even carried light artillery. No sooner than Dust saw them did a pegasus spotter approach the group and they opened fire on Embermoon.

“There we go!”

Thanks to Rarity, the blows hit much harder than they normally would, as Moonlight charged in to join the fray. Between the empowered air and magic strikes, Embermoon was put on a sudden defensive. Now the unicorns of the Sunset’s forces provided the barrage while the ponies of Oakenfield struggled against the clones.

At last, Spitfire managed to break through. Rarity concentrated on her specifically as she charged in at the ever-growing pile of green pods. Embermoon tried to turn the momentum of her right half against Spitfire but Eclipse and Moonlight clashed against it at the same time, all while the bug-witch took heavy bombardment.

Spitfire swooped in and grabbed onto a meaty stalk from which the pods had all originated. She covered herself in white-hot flames, attempting to burn it to a crisp. And from the way it writhed, it appeared to be working too.

That looked like the big breakthrough! Dust was confident they had enough momentum behind them to take down a witch even with one or two tricks left!

The remaining clones were slowly dwindling and Embermoon didn’t look like she was going to make any more. Yet one pony was conspicuously absent from the fray. Dust looked to the far east, to where Eclipse had been.

Seeing the building momentum and perhaps worried she would be the next target, Eclipse took the opportunity to flee, rushing off past the ruins of the castle out of sight. The last look Dust got off her, that witch was so badly deshelled and battered that Dust knew they wouldn’t have to worry about her anytime soon. Whatever plan she had in her mind would be left to the imagination.

Eclipse had one last chore before leaving. She found her pupil writhing in agony on the ground as the fresh battle raged behind her. Luster was struggling against some other entity that had entered her mind, all the signs were there.

A few unicorns had gathered around to try and ‘help’ her but Eclipse soon chased them away and dragged Luster Dawn off further away.

She had suspected it was a foreign entity. Eclipse made a similar pact at her age and it went about as well. It was of little importance as to what, but seeing this made things clear to her. Her student had been overtaken by some demon. That was what attempted to disrupt Eclipse’s spell and Nightmare Moon had noticed.

Rarity, then, must have been the one to save her life. But she’d get no thanks for it.

Eclipse grasped Luster Dawn’s neck. Her magic flowed through the filly, and then with one last ripping motion, she tore the parasite out from within. Without its host, it quickly evaporated into nothing.

Luster fell onto the ground. Eclipse gave her a moment to recover as she considered her situation.

Only the very last of her strength remained. It had been a long time since she found herself so badly wounded and battered. She’d need a full week to recover from this ordeal and even then it’d never be a full recovery. All she could manage was retreat.

Whatever happened next here would be beyond her control. She would consider offering some council, at least, but her enemies had too much momentum behind them and her too little. The odds favored fleeing.

Then at last Luster got to her feet. Soon she’d be well enough to depart.

“That takes care of that wretched creature.” Eclipse turned her back on Luster, watching the battle with Embermoon instead. Even now she considered if there were some way to take that witch’s spellbook... “I hope you learned your lesson– the outer realm is no shortcut on the path to power. I made the same mistake once when I was your age. I don’t think it’s an entirely bad experience, given…”

Something caught in Eclipse’s throat, staying her words. She felt heat more than pain, something hot and sticky came gushing down her neck.

Blood, an immense amount came out in spurts. It wasn’t the first time she’d had even that specific artery sliced. Yet it was still unexpected, even now.

Eclipse turned her eye slowly to the side, already knowing who it had to be. Luster Dawn held an ethereal blade and Screwball’s spellbook, breathing heavily and slowly, eyes wide with desperation, with hunger, with a willingness to kill at last.

And Eclipse smiled.

She had recovered from her ordeal faster than Eclipse imagined possible and found an opening against Eclipse herself! Only that Luster was surprised at herself gave Eclipse any dissatisfaction.

Eclipse turned, forcing Luster to withdraw the blade. Healing the wound would be difficult, but restoring blood was relatively simple. Eclipse set about it, rejuvenating it at about the rate it was lost. Still, she had already lost so much and would need to focus however slightly on this.

“Why are you smiling?!” Luster braced herself, thinking Eclipse had far more strength left than was let on.

“To be struck down by my successor is the only death I can accept,” said Eclipse. “It is the only honorable way to pass your legacy on. For so long my students were fools who failed to understand, but at last, you are different.”

“What?” Luster faltered, lowering her blade just slightly. At last, she understood, but understanding would not be enough.

Eclipse had no choice. A wave of force slapped Luster hard across the face, so hard it broke her nose and left it covered in blood.

“Don’t you dare have sympathy for me now, now that you’ve finally broken free of such weakness! I’m confident now more than ever that you have the potential to surpass me.”

Luster watched Eclipse with unblinking eyes. Eclipse could see it all coming together through her eyes, it all made sense to Luster.

“I changed my mind!” Luster stood firm this time, tears in her eyes but still ready. “I was scared before, but I understand the path now. I… I understand you.”

“You can’t go back,” said Eclipse. “One of us will die here! This may be the last lesson I teach you so pay attention. If you don’t kill me now, it will be the greatest disappointment in my life.”

Eclipse charged forward, this time in an honest attempt to kill Luster Dawn. If even one of her injuries were gone, she would have succeeded for Luster hesitated one last moment longer. Then she realized her own life was on the line.

Luster at last attacked Eclipse in earnest, matching her attacks. The child knew strength was on her side, managed to keep calm, and waited for Eclipse to bleed out. They exchanged small cuts as they moved back and forth trading blows but these only served to hasten the end.

To keep up the assault was to force her dying body to continue. At last, with real understanding, Luster finally pushed forward at full force, overcoming Eclipse’s waning power and plunging the blade into her chest.

Luster breathed forward as Eclipse took her last step in retreat. She took out her spellbook and dropped it at Luster’s feet.

As Eclipse’s vision dimmed, the last thing she saw was Luster Dawn. She had killed her mentor without regret. And it was all worth it.

Of course, Embermoon had one last trick up her sleeve. Again.

Her right foreleg had broken off, and then Embermoon transformed into this twisting, writhing beast whose form was too unstable to describe for more than a few seconds. Still, she mostly had four legs.

Nopony could get close to her as she lashed out in every direction with a screaming furry and force nopony could meet.

“I’m not sure exactly what happened,” said Dash. “If this is permanent or what, but it seems Embermoon lost her mind, at least for now.”

It reminded Dash in some ways of a werewolf, perhaps there was this beast inside her she’d been holding back. She hoped it wasn’t permanent. There were so many questions Dash wanted to ask Embermoon about what any of that nonsense she was spouting even meant.

Though Dash was certainly getting ahead of herself on that.

Embermoon not only matched the attacks from the ponies surrounding her but often succeeded, landing a devastating blow on her assailants. Dash had instructed them to fight with caution, keep the assault up but don’t charge in. Time was on their side.

“She’s got to slow down eventually,” said Spitfire. “I can already see signs of it, this one doesn’t have super regeneration like Trixie. It’s just a matter of time until we win.”

“Yeah, but that could be hours and the longer this goes on, the more ponies are going to get hurt,” said Dash. “We gotta end this right away.”

She watched the fight for a minute longer before the answer presented itself to her. Embermoon’s body writhed and mutated uncontrollably, and the most recent mutation revealed something to Dash.

That was something Dash had been curious about. She hadn’t seen Embermoon’s spellbook since all this began. Witches had all sorts of methods of hiding them, so it hadn’t seemed strange but now Dash could clearly see where she’d been keeping it. Embermoon had swallowed her spellbook.

And she must have been more cautious about it up until then. Only now, in her more monstrous state, did it occasionally become visible, though still wrapped in a sheet of chitin.

Spellbooks provided you with muscle memory as well as knowledge of spells. Even in her largely mindless state, it would grant Embermoon god-like skills in combat, making it nearly impossible to get one up on her.

“The spellbook!” Dash called her entourage. “I have just enough witch training to hold it for a short time, I think. If we get that, the fight is over.”

“On it!” Spitfire nodded to two nearby pegasi and they rushed in, carrying Dash, covered by unicorn fire.

Moonlight noticed Dash going in and charged forward to give the best distraction she could. The two crossed blades only briefly before Moonlight was forced back, but it was enough. The three pegasi and Dash got close.

Spitfire went in first, passing Dash to her second before trading blows with Embermoon. Spitfire managed to break the bones of that cage before getting thrown away like a ragdoll.

The second pegasus threw Dash straight at the book. As the two of them got swatted, Dash bit it with her teeth and rolled away.

Maybe ‘just enough’ had been an overstatement, Dash nearly puked as soon as she grabbed the darn thing. But she didn’t faint! And that was progress. Just enough wits remained to hold onto the book as a pegasus spirited her away.

Just the fact another pegasi was able to get in and extract her was a good sign here. It meant Embermoon’s abilities had degraded by a huge margin!

Embermoon dropped everything and charged at Rainbow Dash with an animalistic desperation. Dash couldn’t even tell how many ponies tried to take advantage of that with every manner of attack imaginable. Without the spellbook, whatever wits Embermoon had vanished. Her hundreds of generations of expertise were gone. She couldn’t deal with blows like that in her current state.

Every blow hit her with full force now, tearing through her chitin and tumbling her about. If this kept up.

“Wait!” Dash threw aside the spellbook and scrambled to get out of her helper’s grasp. “Hold your fire!”

But it was already too late. The armor on her back broke and four or five shots went straight through Embermoon. One through her head.

Embermoon’s expression froze and she fell to the ground limp. Dash already knew what that meant. It was over. Everypony must have known that, but several kept shooting at Embermoon’s body anyway, just to be completely sure. This, Dash didn’t bother to stop as the chance to help her had passed.

Dash couldn’t blame the ponies, Embermoon had been taking that intensity of fire so well up until now. They weren’t ready for such a sudden drop like that. Still, she felt sick.

There was a brief moment of silence, nopony wanting to be the first to celebrate the death of the witch. Then somepony let out a cry of victory and it infected the now-elated crowd.

An eruption of cheers rang out among the four armies, but Dash could only wince and turn away. She should have made what would happen clearer. Already, two or three better plans were swimming through her mind.

But no. Dash shook her head and opened her eyes again to face the facts. She trotted over to Embermoon and looked her in the eyes.

“Sorry I couldn’t understand you,” said Dash. “Now I’ll never know what made you so scared of me.”

She turned to look over her shoulder at the spellbook on the ground… only two more remained. Both with Eclipse.

No time to feel sorry for herself. Dash brushed aside a few ponies trying to congratulate her and found Spitfire instead.

“We have to see where the other one went!”

All the other ponies celebrated, but as far as Aria was concerned she only had one objective here. If Sonata had died in all that fighting, Aria wouldn’t be able to take it. She couldn’t even imagine what she’d do.

She pushed past as many ponies as possible, could easily feel the presence of that specter: Fluttershy.

And that was exactly where she found her sister. Both her and Fluttershy were badly injured and Sonata’s attention was stuck on Fluttershy, the two of them talking about something unimportant.

Aria let out a long breath before approaching. It almost didn’t seem real. She needed a moment to calm down and make sure this wasn’t just an illusion.

“Sonata!”

Aria called out to her, taking her attention back from Fluttershy.

“Aria!”

Aria floated out of her body, rushed to Sonata and grabbed her in an embrace.

For the first time in decades they weren’t just in the same room, but together, both themselves… and free. It didn’t matter if this would only last a moment, it was worth it. To do something she’d never thought possible again.

“I can’t believe it’s finally over!”

“I don’t think ‘over’ is a good way to describe it,” said Aria. “Nightmare Moon was barely injured by that. And that was from two versions of that idiot’s spell.”

“But she was injured,” Sonata pointed out. “More than the last few times.”

“That’s the whole problem. Plenty of people come up with these grand dramatic displays like this. They knock her over or delay her but it’s never enough. Not even close.”

Aria let go and trotted off a few paces. If only it had been over. They were both free but now there was so little time left. Still, they could do what they could with it.

“But here! I got you a present.”

Aria had one of the other ponies load it into a supply cart. This is what Aria led Sonata to. Fluttershy decided to follow for some reason.

The present was Sonata Dusk. Her body that is. The last time Sonata saw it, it must have been an absolute wreck as she stared at herself without recognition for a moment.

Though to be fair, she was stupid and it was still in pretty bad shape. It looked more like the current state of Aria’s. A leg had to be stapled on, and huge staples ran all along the back. Her left ear wasn’t quite facing the right direction, but at least the whole thing was covered in fur and no stuffing was coming loose.

It was rough, but something about having matching looks brought some tiny sliver of satisfaction to Aria.

“My body! You found it!” Sonata rushed over and straight into her body. Once more it sprang to life and jumped excitedly on its feet. “I forgot how good this felt without any chains on! Wait, where did you get it? I don’t even remember what happened to it. And I was there.”

“We left it with Nailbat’s ponies,” Fluttershy reminded her. “You were pretty out of it back then.”

“Oh, right! That feels like it was so long ago.”

“I went to them first,” said Aria. “They managed to mostly put it back together. That one pilot pony is pretty decent with this stuff. Though I had to help.”

“Let me guess, you did the staples?” Sonata ran a hoof along her now ridged back. “You and your giant staples. I still remember when you got that giant stapler for your birthday.”

Sonata flexed her left leg, which looked almost completely unscathed save that it was stapled back on.

“Is this my missing leg?” Sonata asked. “Boy, I really don’t remember what happened to that.”

“It isn’t, but I managed to find somepony who looks a lot like you. There’s a lot of spare parts floating around right about now,” Aria smirked, “if you know what I mean.”

“Can we maybe not be so morbid?” Fluttershy asked.

“Ah, don’t worry! Once you get over how gross this is, it’s pretty great!” Sonata smiled at Fluttershy. Again. “Fun fact: what I had here before wasn’t my real leg, either! That got eaten by a raccoon. Bet you couldn’t even tell it was a spare, huh?”

“It wasn’t a raccoon,” Aria said, hardly believing they were still discussing this decades later.

“Oh, Fluttershy!” Sonata would not take her attention off that annoying specter. “You need to try possessing a body. Though it’ll be hard to find a doll now.”

Every time Sonata talked to Fluttershy, it pissed Aria off a little. She had to still be under some aura effect. But Aria kept it down for now, not wanting to make a scene. She just wanted to leave.

“I bet that pony,” Fluttershy stopped to remember his name for a moment, “Blueblood. He’s into this sort of thing. Maybe he can fix you two up?”

“That’s a good idea!” Sonata looked back to Aria. “Let’s go find him.”

“I don’t think we have time for that.” Aria pulled Sonata back to her side. “We’re leaving. Like right now.”

“Leaving?” Sonata asked, looking sad which annoyed Aria.

“Yeah! I got everything I could hope for. So we’re leaving while we’re at hope’s peak. Come on.”

Taking care not to look at Fluttershy, Aria jerked Sonata in the right direction. She growled slightly when Sonata pulled back.

“Wait! But they need us!” Sonata whined. “And I wanna stay with Fluttershy.”

“Fluttershy is no better than her!” Aria pointed toward Crater Cemetery. “You only like Fluttershy because of her aura. She’s using you.”

“Nuh-uh!”

“What are you…?” Such a childish response! And yet Aria felt such a pathetic sigh wash over her that she couldn’t even respond to that!

Facing down Sonata with her ‘nuh-uh’ defense took Aria back for a minute.

“Um. I don’t mean to be rude, but you did promise us,” said Fluttershy. “That if we freed Sonata you’d help us.”

Aria flashed her eyes in anger at Fluttershy.

“Fluttershy never crossed the line!” Sonata jumped in front of her like she was taking a bullet for the pony. “She helped me and I want to help her. That’s it. And if you don’t tell them everything then I will.”

Aria didn’t want to believe she’d been overreacting to Fluttershy. She wanted to go far away and have Sonata all to herself for what days remained. But… she did make a deal. And Sonata would only mess things up more if she tried to fulfill it.

“Yeah, but you’re still an idiot.” Aria let out a long sigh. “It’d be better if I told them. I still know more than you do.”

“Then you’re staying?” Sonata relaxed her bullet-taking stance.

“You realize this is our last chance, yeah?” Aria ran a hoof across her neck. “Death is the only option for us if Nightmare Moon gets free. I need you to promise you’ll follow me without whining… if it comes down to that.”

Sonata hesitated while Fluttershy watched the tension with confusion. Then the horror of realization came across her.

“Wait! Are you two talking about?” Fluttershy ran in between them. “You can’t make somepony agree to something like that!”

“You don’t understand!” Aria got in Fluttershy’s face. She was different now. Didn’t back away at all.

“Aria is right,” Sonata broke up the standoff by siding with Aria for once. “I’d rather die than go back to the way things were. And they’d be worse this time.”

Sonata trotted over to Aria’s side and nodded in agreement.

“Maybe now you’re starting to get how serious this is?” Aria asked.

“I hope you understand how serious I am!” Sonata answered for Fluttershy.

Aria watched Sonata, who possessed a determination that was rare for her.

“Fine. I’ll stay until the end. But no longer.” Aria pushed Sonata aside. “Where’s Rainbow Dash?”

Luster looked down at her spellbooks. Not one, but two. Screwball’s and now Eclipse’s.

Why had it taken her so long to understand? Maybe it was for the best. She’d gotten what she wanted. And Eclipse wouldn’t have wanted her to feel any regret.

This whole experience opened her eyes to her path. She could do it, and she could find a way.

Somepony interrupted her before she could retreat. Rainbow Dash and some other pegasi landed not far from her, gawking at Eclipse lying in blood like the weak-minded fools they were. They couldn’t even kill their enemies?

Dash saw her spellbook, some of them moving as if ready for a fight.

“Easy.” Dash stayed all the others. “Put down the books, kid. I don’t know what your deal is, but I can help you. You don’t have to be like this.”

“Help me?” Luster snarled. “Help me, what?! Be like you? Live by your rules?”

Luster pointed down at Eclipse.

“Eclipse showed me the path I wish to walk, the path for me! You can’t force me to take another!”

“What are you even thinking? You just murdered that pony, and you want to do the same as her?”

“Exactly. You can’t possibly understand. And that’s why you can’t ‘help’ me.” She took a step back. “I will become the greatest witch! I won’t let the new path die.”

Luster used the last of her strength to charge the ground beneath her feet, ready to teleport far, far away from here. The other ponies moved forward to stop her, but she vanished before they could reach her.

Exhausted and with nothing to spare, Dash stayed the one or two ponies who would have attempted to peruse.

“She’s probably not going to be a problem… for a while.” Dash sighed. Anything to get rid of one of the infinite threats looming over her.

But at least it wasn’t a seemingly infinite number. All that remained was Starlight…

Dash looked out into the forest.

And that.

That huge attack went off and it barely put a dent in Nightmare Moon?

Three armies stood behind her now and yet it felt as though she were still unarmed. It made her forget all about Starlight for the moment. If only she had known back then what she did now. She shook her head, determined not to fall back to those old thoughts. She would only move forward from here out.

She couldn’t possibly imagine her next move against something like that but didn’t dare to despair. Her strength was in the courage she gave to others and had no business with that any longer.

But there was one new path open to her.

She looked to Sonata and Aria and decided it was best to give them a minute, but she would force Aria to hold to their old deal even if it meant calling in support.

Moving back to the scene where the battle had been, Dash would have thought they’d defeated Nightmare Moon herself. Maybe some of them thought that had been taken care of. But most of them were likely inspired by the fact that two witches had been destroyed.

The three groups were still celebrating their victory, though they weren’t mingling too much together. Dash would have to do what she could to change that. But one or two things were more important now.

Still, it was a strange feeling to know that her original mission of defeating all the witches was complete now. Nopony would ever doubt Dash again after this, for better or worse.

Then again, two spellbooks were still missing. Two major threats still loomed. Most of her ponies needed time to recover. And Dash hadn’t resolved the problem the way she would have wanted.

For now, Dash approached Rarity. She had some idea as to what happened over here. That green energy Rarity had been sharing with everypony retracted and formed into something not unlike a ghost by Rarity’s side. Together, they met Dash’s skepticism with a smile.

“That isn’t what I think it is, is it?” Dash asked.

“Don’t worry,” said Rarity. “This one is different. I made Generosity a virtue and I think I know how this works now.”

“I like to think I’m different from those other elements,” said Generosity. “They are parasites, obsessed and narrow minded. My relationship with Rarity is much more professional.”

“I think the whole parasite thing is my opinion speaking for you,” said Rarity.

“Well yes, but it’s a good opinion.”

“You only think that because I do.”

“Yes. But I like thinking what you think.”

“Well if you have an element of harmony then you’re on par with Starlight. I think? Hope?” Dash watched Rarity with increasing concern at the lack of certainty to that. “Come on! You gotta be at least thirty percent on her level, right? And why the heck wouldn’t you be if this is the same thing!”

“I’m not entirely sure if me having this power is a good thing,” Rarity warned. “What I’m using is alicorn magic. Pure order. And this world is very near the limit of how far it can be pushed in that direction.”

“Too far in the order direction?” Dash asked. “Rarity, there’s chaos and monsters everywhere. Every day is crazy. How can it possibly be too close to order?”

“It is an overreaction of chaos. There’s a point at which the system falls apart. And… well I’ve only just seen this but I’m starting to think Nightmare Moon and a good number of other things are part of the system.

Excessive order meant excessive chaos. The chaos-order horseshoe, was it? Dash was too exhausted to understand this any more than the face of it…

“Wait,” Dash said, not sure if she should hope she was on the verge of something. “And Starlight wants to create hundreds of ponies like you, become an alicorn… she has to be aware of this too! Is she…?”

“I can’t see Starlight’s mind directly, nor anypony’s with similar powers. But I don’t think I need that to make such a conclusion at this point. Starlight is purposely trying to push us over the edge.”

“Damn! So that’s why she wanted to give us those black feathers. We would have just destroyed ourselves with it. But like… how much can you do?”

“More than you would think,” said Rarity. “But not enough to defeat Nightmare Moon or Starlight.”

Well that was still something Dash could work with. One piece of a puzzle, to which she had a few more. Another came by not long after that.

Fluttershy came with the two banshees in tow. Dash could tell Fluttershy convinced Aria to keep helping them, even if reluctantly. Those two had bodies, but Fluttershy curiously didn’t.

“Where’s that fancy armor you were using?” Dash asked.

“I left it back in Ponyville,” said Fluttershy. “I thought bringing it down to where Nightmare Moon is would be a bad idea.”

“Probably a good idea.” Dash turned to Aria. “So.”

Before Dash could ask, Spitfire brought Batton Pass, badly battered to Rainbow Dash.

“A lot of the Cartel fled into the woods,” said Spitfire. “But we got most of their leaders and plenty more on top of that. What do you want us to do?”

Dash trotted slowly to Batton Pass. The rest of the Cartel Assembled behind her, not exactly ready for a fight but doing their best to pretend it were so.

“You can’t possibly fight me right now,” Dash warned. “You know I’ll go easy on you if you give up.”

Batton still turned to the remaining ponies. Their forces had been utterly devastated. Most of them had been completely exhausted from fighting, few looked like they could even manage to get up and walk to a jail cell without aid.

“Very well.” Batton raised a hoof. Most of her ponies appeared relieved at the chance to surrender. “I surrender. But don’t think you won!”

Batton stepped past Dash to shout at anypony who would listen.

“This pony ruined our one chance at vanquishing the nightmare! If she hadn’t interrupted and rushed our attempt to cast that spell, it could have worked.” Batton stepped back once again, resigning herself to arrest. “It makes no difference if I spend two days in prison. All of you will die shortly.”

Not even Dash was sure of herself after that. Aria came forth against this objection, immediately and before Dash could make her own response.

“Don’t be stupid. Do you think even double that would have been enough?” Aria asked. “There isn’t any amount of force that can destroy her. Rainbow Dash would have just as much luck singing her a song about friendship as you would if you could cast that spell ten more times.”

“You’re that Noctilucent girl, aren’t you?” Batton sneered at her. “You’re just too blinded by your faith to see there could be an end to this monster’s strength. Before she left, Eclipse told me that she cracked that monster. And if it can fracture it can break!”

“Oh, if only you were right,” said Aria. “I’ve seen ponies talking like that for decades. But.”

Aria turned to Rainbow Dash, exhausted but not at the end of her strength.

“Don’t give me that look. It’s hopeless, but you freed Sonata, so I’ll tell you everything I know, though I doubt it will be enough.”

“Fine. Then do it right now,” said Dash. “I won’t give anything the chance to interrupt.”

“In front of all of them?” Aria asked wearily. “Even that bat?”

“Yeah, even them. I’m just going to tell them eventually anyway,” said Dash. “I’m not hiding anything from her on out.”

“It’s the end of the world anyway.” Aria sat, too weary to fight on this point. “Very well. Broadcast it for all I care. I only kept my mouth shut for Sonata’s sake. The first thing you have to know is about our religion. We don’t worship that monster, but the daughter of the Darklord. Star Feather, or Luna as she is now known after her ascension.”

Zombies

It felt like autumn came early this year.

A chilling wind blew, a few leaves were already orange, a swarm of zombies had swept over the entire town and pumpkins were out on sale. Dash breathed in the crisp air as she passed a food merchant swatting a few zombies away from her pumpkins.

This was fall!

It was just chilly enough that Dash had to wear a scarf as she walked through town, the streets empty, everypony already barricaded up in their houses for tonight.

She had three hours till sunset, then three more until the lunar eclipse started and things went from chill to inferno. Realistically, that meant Dash only had until sundown to recruit ponies and still have time to go on her mission.

Dash skipped over a house with sandbags piled in front of the door. Did they think the zombies were somehow going to cause a flood? She just waded through the mass of undead to the next house, bashing one to the side with her bag.

Technically, the streets weren’t empty if you counted all the zombies. They even had this little zombie parade going on, she noticed, a hundred of them ‘chasing’ after Dash. Given their shambling nature, Dash moved at Mach speed in comparison. A casual stroll left the zombies in her dust, forming a long tail behind her.

Dash came up to the next door. This pony already had some Halloween decorations out. She knew what was up. Dash knocked repeatedly.

As she waited at the door, a zombie crept up behind her, making that droning noise. Did they think you couldn’t hear that or something? Dash sighed. When it got close, she bucked it with a hind leg, sending it tumbling into the bushes where it got stuck.

Dash knocked one more time. Finally, an annoyed mare opened the door.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Hey! My name’s Rainbow Dash.” Dash pointed to herself. “I’m looking for ponies to go on an adventure with me! You gotta bring your own weapons and I can’t guarantee your safety but if we pull it off, we’ll have fame and fortune beyond your wildest dreams! Then everypony will love us and—"

“I don’t have time for whatever you’re selling,” the mare said. “I have to get ready for tonight.”

“Not if you come with me, you don’t!” Dash stopped the other mare from shutting her out by jabbing a wing in the way. “Listen, we have a once in a billion-year opportunity here! Literally. I’m pretty sure you’d have to wait a billion years for another chance at this. But we have to do it tonight when there’s a blood moon.”

“You’re going outside on a blood moon?” She cringed. “That's certain death! Didn’t you hear the warnings all over the radio?"

“Tch! Nothing is certain death!” Dash rolled her eyes. “Especially not when you got Rainbow Dash around.”

“Who?”

“That’s me.” Dash gave the toothy smile she’d practiced. “Rainbow Dash. Anyway, it’s more of a ninety-five percent chance of dying, not a hundred so—"

And then the mare closed the door in Dash’s face.

Another miss. She'd already begged nearly everypony else in town for help. Was she seriously going to have to do this alone?

She only had one last chance. The Slayer Association rejected her plenty of times before, but it wouldn’t hurt to try them once more. There’d be a ton of armed guards down there tonight, waiting for trouble. Surely at least one of them would be tempted by Dash’s offer.

She shoved another zombie out of her way and started towards HQ.

When Dash came up with this plan about a year ago, she had a clear vision in her mind of how tonight would go. The elite four would show up and lead an entire army out into the woods. If the world made sense, that was how it would have happened.

Dash sent out letter after letter to the SA, to the government, to the elite four themselves, and to every high-rank slayer but all she got back were those automated ‘thank you for your concern’ letters. She doubted any of them actually read her proposal! Whenever somepony did listen to her in person, they always shot her plan down as ‘dumb’.

That was how it went when you had no money, connections, or influence of any kind— your great idea just gets kicked to the side.

Everypony else had given up on defeating Twilight Sparkle a long time ago. Ponies tried for a hundred years to break the curse that protected her and failed. After that, it became common sense that breaking the curse was simply impossible.

No one questioned that wisdom anymore, it seemed. Even if Dash showed them that it was totally possible to be there on Friday the 13th and Halloween at the same time, they just acted like Dash was on the eighth.

In the end, Dash only managed to get enough money saved up to buy a musket, a camcorder, and some smoke bombs. She could hardly defeat Twilight Sparkle with just that, but at least she had something.

Dash would break the curse, get evidence that she saw Twilight, and get the crow out of there. They’d have to believe her once she had proof. Then everypony would have to eat their words and it’d be amazing!

HQ bustled compared to the rest of the town in terms of both living and dead. Before the building even came in sight, she could see a wall of undead ponies circling her destination, climbing all over one another.

Dash splayed her wings, getting ready to fly over them all. Except during lunar eclipses, undead pegasi couldn't get off the ground. The few that tried got a flap or two into the air before falling over.

But before Dash could take to the sky, she heard a familiar voice crying for help.

“Rainbow Dash!” Derpy called after her.

A large group of particularly aggressive zombies surrounded Derpy, pushing her up against a wall. Derpy clutched a box as if her life depended on keeping it safe.

“Rainbow Dash!” Derpy cried out again just before the group of zombies dog-piled onto her. “Help me!”

Dash sighed and trotted over to her former classmate. How could you be dumb enough to get cornered by zombies during the day?

She found Derpy lying on the floor, yelping as the zombies tried to get at the box. The undead pinned her to the ground, trying to pry her forelegs and wings open, but they made no attempt to harm Derpy directly.

“They’re after my muffins!” Derpy slammed the box shut. “No! Bad zombies! Go get your own snacks! You gotta hurry or they’ll all get squished or eaten!”

This was the reason why that old griffon empire collapsed but Equestria was fine when the whole ‘zombie apocalypse’ thing started.

Ponies didn’t eat meat, so neither did pony zombies.

The griffons got devoured by the undead while the ponies just experienced a moderate famine from zombies eating crops. Today, the shambling undead were more pests than anything else.

“Don’t worry.” Dash reached into her bag with no real hurry. “I got ya covered.”

Dash took out one of her jars of spider honey. She made sure to have loads of these for tonight. These days, you could store them in jars or vials that made it so the smell couldn’t get out. But the second you opened it—

The lid popped off, and every zombie in Dash’s line of sight stopped and slowly switched their attention. All of them looked at her slack-jawed, drooling at the smell.

The ones around Derpy gave up on the muffins to go after what their rotted-out brains saw as the better snack. Plenty from the crowd around HQ broke rank to shamble after Dash too.

With fifty zombies in tow, Dash walked backward to a manhole leading to the sewers and dropped the jar inside. When they finally got there, the zombies were more than happy to jump down into the sewers after it. They ended up clogging the hole as they all tried to throw themselves into the abyss.

“Thanks, Rainbow Dash!” Derpy tackled Dash with a hug from the side.

“Dang it, Derpy!” Dash pushed her off. “You gotta go wash off after that. Now I need to get clean too. Filthy freaking zombies.”

“Oops. Sorry.” Derpy looked to the side, another zombie already coming for her muffins. “Maybe we should go back inside.”

The two of them flew over what remained of the horde.

A wall just a little too high for a zombie to breach surrounded HQ, keeping them at bay. As a secondary defense, they set up a spiked pit and a line of jars filled with spider honey just beyond that. The massive supply of the stuff was why half the swarm was lured here.

Just after that waited a group of about thirty armed guards getting ready for when the heat turned on. Every so often, a pegasus zombie would flap her way up onto the wall only to get her head blown off by a musket. They had several much larger cannons standing by, waiting for a real threat to emerge.

Even during the eclipse, when the zombies became dramatically more aggressive, closing your windows and doors would be enough to stop them almost every time. But a chance that something much worse would awaken always hung over nights like this. That was what all of this was in preparation for.

Another dozen or so ponies stationed themselves inside HQ itself. These weren’t militia, but professional slayers hired by the SA, like Dash. As always, wanted posters and mission listings covered the walls so completely that Dash didn't even know what color they were underneath.

Monsters to fight, mysteries to uncover, and cursed objects to destroy were never in short supply. The SA had a reward listed for all of them. Going after these marks as a slayer wasn’t the safest job in the world but nothing paid better or gave you more prestige.

On the far side of the wall, behind the counter, hung the portraits of the elite four— the ponies with the highest monster-slaying records. They were the richest, most powerful, and famous ponies in the world.

Anypony on the planet could tell you the names of everyone who’d been part of the elite four during their lifetime. These were the ponies everypony aspired to be!

And the strongest among them was Starlight Glimmer. In all of history, Starlight stood alone as the only pony to have ever defeated a witch in single combat.

That was exactly who Dash wanted to be!

But for now, those guys were all too high and mighty to listen to a noob like Rainbow Dash, still stuck at Rank D.

Dash scanned the group of slayers, surprised to see a pony she’d never met before with an A-rank badge. She was another pegasus with dark grey fur and a deep blue mane. She busied herself with loading a series of muskets, no doubt her preferred weapon.

Rank A was pretty darn good! She flew right over to the other mare.

“Hey!” Dash fluttered over and landed next to her. “I have a once-in-a-lifetime lead for you! You know about Twilight Sparkle, right?”

“Huh?” The mare looked up from her work, stopping to stare at Dash. “Uh— yeah?”

“Well the main problem with reaching her is that it has to be both Friday the 13th and Halloween, right? No doubt you think it’s impossible but that’s just 'cause you’re not the amazing Rainbow Dash. Oh. Rainbow Dash is me, by the way.”

The mare scratched her head as Derpy took her seat behind the counter.

“You’re still trying with this?” Derpy asked with a roll of her eyes.

“I’m a little curious where she’s going,” the A-rank said.

“Great!” Dash took out two pieces of paper, two different calendars. “So see, on the solar calendar right now it’s Friday the 13th, but a lot of ponies forget that there’s an older, lunar calendar we don’t use anymore! Since lunar calendars are based on full moons, holidays aren’t always in the same season and Halloween floats around the year.”

Dash moved the two calendars on top of one another so that the squares for the dates of Friday the 13th and Halloween overlapped.

“And guess what?! This year, on the lunar calendar, Halloween is today! And it’s a blood moon!” Dash threw her papers to the side. “Is that brilliant or what?! The chances of this happening are like one in a hundred billion or something. I dunno. I’m too lazy to calculate it but it’s gotta be so crazy rare that we have to go test it out before we lose our chance forever!”

Dash’s enthusiasm dipped as the mare raised a skeptical eyebrow, clearly not sold on this.

“I dunno.” She rubbed the back of her head. “This is iffy at best. It’s a lot of chances stacked on top of one another and even if we did find Twilight what would we do? Die? I’m not going to go up against the craziest monster in history like that on so short notice. Sorry.”

Dash grumbled as her last real chance at an ally turned her back.

“Maybe you should try getting to rank C before doing anything this intense,” Derpy suggested, putting on her own rank C pin.

Even though they both started the job at the same time, Derpy was already way ahead of Dash in the agency. Heck, Derpy surpassed Dash in every way. Derpy had a house, a boyfriend, popularity, and a bank account that wasn’t a negative number. What the heck was Derpy doing right?

Back in high school Dash thought maybe she could at least surpass Derpy of all fillies. But no, Derpy was simply better than Dash in every conceivable way.

But all of that changed tonight! Tonight, Dash would finally prove herself! She just knew it!

Dash went to the wall on the left to take one last look at her target before meeting it in person. On this side of the wall loomed a list of all the S-ranked targets— the most dangerous monsters and artifacts in the world with the highest bounties.

At the top of the S-rank list stood the tarrasque, the monster that destroyed most of Canterlot, with a bounty of ten million bits for its demise. There were slightly more doable tasks on the list like finding any volume of The Book of Shadows (a million) or learning the unfinished business of the Crater Cemetery ghost (five hundred thousand).

One target went far above all of that, literally placed higher on the wall. The one and only monster that obtained the infamous distinction of ‘rank X’— the witch Twilight Sparkle with a five hundred million bit bounty on her head. Even the reward for information about her was potentially in the millions.

If Dash’s plan worked, if she found Twilight Sparkle and got a recording of her, she’d become a millionaire overnight, not to mention get promoted to near the top of the slayer list! Dash would be famous and loved by all!

Dash flew up to be eye level with the painting of Twilight Sparkle, the only authentic image of what the unicorn looked like. Twilight simply sat there in her little witch hat like she didn’t know what she did.

“Just tell me this, Derpy!” Dash landed in front of the counter. “How can you not be tempted by millions of bits?”

“I feel like I already got enough money.” Derpy shrugged, then got that dreamy look she got every time she thought of Soarin. “Sides, my cutie Soarin is already kind of rich! Money’s not worth risking my life for, you know.”

Dash knew it was wrong, but whenever she saw a pony that happy, she got a little irked. How the heck did Derpy bag Soarin? He was like, the stallion every mare in a hundred miles wanted.

“Yeah, well I have negative thirty bits because of freaking bank fees.” Dash pointed to the mints on the counter. “I can’t even afford these free mints over here!”

“Well if you want to get paid, you can try doing your job for once instead of spending all your time on these crazy plans,” Derpy suggested, gesturing to the group of armed guards. “You are technically supposed to be part of the emergency response task force thingy. It pays a lot better than marching into certain death.”

“You have to be willing to march into certain death if you ever want to make it anywhere in life,” said Dash.

“Really? Because statistically speaking, I think you gotta have rich parents to make it anywhere in life,” said Derpy.

“Well yeah, but baring that—“

“I mean, you’ve been doing these crazy plans ever since we were in high school, and none of them ever seem to work out. Like when you bit on a live wire to try and awaken your psychic powers?”

“Thousands of ponies do the exact same thing every year!” Dash shot back. “If that jerk paramedic got there fifteen minutes later, I probably would have been near-death enough for it to work.”

“Or that time you vowed to become the Summoner Knights world champion?” Derpy reminded her.

“I am technically the world champion,” said Dash. “So maybe nopony else shows up to the tournaments, and I always win by default. Still counts!”

“Or that time you blew up the septic tank trying to get Soarin’s attention?”

“I did technically get him to notice me!” Dash crossed her forelegs. “And hey! You know you two wouldn’t be engaged if it weren’t for that stunt so you’re welcome.”

“Huh?” Derpy blinked, thinking that one over. “Oh, hey! You’re right! I totally owe you a muffin!”

Derpy slid a muffin across the counter to Dash.

“Yeah!” Dash jealously snatched the baked good up. “You do!”

“I’m just saying maybe you should accept being below average,” said Derpy. “The average pony is below average, you know.”

“All of my plans technically work!” Dash slammed her hoof on the counter. “And by crow, I'll get this one on a technicality too!"

She wasn’t going to give up that easily!

“Come on!” Dash turned instead to the group of slayers that made up the emergency response task force. “How about instead of responding to emergencies like a bunch of nerds, we go out and destroy the root of these problems in the first place?! Twilight’s the one responsible for the curse of undeath to begin with! Without her, there’d be no zombies! I know at least one of you guys wants to get Twilight on a technicality!”

Half of them weren't even looking at her by the end of the speech. The few who did met her with frowns at best. They weren’t cool at all, were they?!

“Look, we’re stationed here and that's where we're staying,” one of them told Dash flatly. “Nopony is going out on your fool’s errand.”

“Fine! More fame and glory for me!” Dash marched towards the door.

“Wait!” Derpy stood up. “You’re not really going out there alone, are you?”

Dash hesitated with her hoof on the door. This was going to be insanely dangerous. But what other choice did she have? Remain a worthless loser forever?

If it came down to it, she'd go it alone.

Without another word, Dash opened the door and left.

Two hours until midnight. The eclipse was imminent.

Dash stood on a lonely, poorly maintained road that led off to places unknown. Twilight Lake lay just a mile to the south, feeding into the stream that Twilight's house supposedly stood near. At 10:05 on the dot, she’d bolt straight to the lake and continue west as fast as possible.

Out this far, Dash would be away from the main zombie swell. For now, only a single undead lingered on the far horizon. Dash had to be wary for that would change soon. The second the blood moon began, zombies could come bubbling up out of the ground.

That lone zombie could be an alarm, of sorts, alerting her to the official start of the blood moon.

Dark clouds rolled in overhead, threatening a rainstorm soon. A crow landed near the road and cawed loudly a few times.

Bad luck.

Witches liked transforming into crows and so they were considered a horrible omen. 'Never harm a crow,' they'd say, 'because you never know which one is a witch.'

It hopped forward and cawed even louder as if taunting or maybe warning her. Dash stood steadfast, heeding the saying.

Thankfully, the worst-case scenario averted itself when the crow went flying off to the east, down the road. With the noisy bird gone, the woods became eerily silent. Not even the crickets made a noise as all the animals prepared for danger.

It’d be a lie if Dash said she wasn’t a little bit nervous, the harsh wind only half responsible for the chill in her bones. With nopony around, she could admit as much to herself.

In the distance, the lone zombie looked straight up at the moon. Just as the first sliver of a shadow appeared, the zombie twitched. It cocked its head back like its neck had just broken and screamed.

This was it! The eclipse officially began. Dash had a little under two hours to find Twilight’s house before it ended.

The zombie turned and charged at Dash. For the next two hours, zombies were howling maniacs that would tear a pony to shreds. She could easily escape from the lone zombie, but just then the ground cracked and shifted around her.

Several undead hooves tore up from below in every direction, upturning the earth and even parts of the road as they clawed their way to the surface.

That sounded about right. Maybe it was good to get the crow’s bad luck out of the way.

She threw a jar of spider honey onto the road and took to the air. The zombies pounced on it, ripping a few of their own numbers to pieces in the process of getting at it. They finished the contents off in seconds before turning back to Dash.

The ones that couldn’t fly ran and jumped in a fruitless attempt to reach her. The pegasi, of which Dash counted five, were the ones to be worried about. If she could lose them, nothing would stop her from making a beeline for the lake.

After a few seconds of flight, Dash found the fastest among them. She spun around and fired her musket when it got close, sending it falling. She threw another jar after the fallen zombie. Its fellow pegasi darting down after the honey.

That gave her just enough time to reload. Only four left! This wouldn’t take long!

The wail of the town’s siren came from the distance, ringing out three times, followed by the sound of cannons heavy enough for Dash to hear even down here. Three alarms meant something huge!

Sounded like they weren’t doing much better back there.

Worse things than enraged zombies prowled the world on the night of the eclipse. With the world awash of dark magic, Dash couldn't possibly guess what sort of monster attacked the town. Maybe Dash should be thankful this was all she had to deal with.

Reloaded!

Dash got ready to fire another round, but the attackers suddenly lost interest in her. Instead, they ran further down the road, blood-lusting at something else just out of sight.

A great deal of commotion came from that way. Dash saw the body of a zombie come hurtling off from that direction and slam against a tree, falling limp to the ground.

So something dangerous waited to the east and the west. That sounded about right for a blood moon. This was the reason they told you to just hide for two hours.

Tempting as it was to investigate, Dash decided to take the lucky break and run for it.

One last pegasus zombie glided towards her from the north. Dash got her musket ready. She'd take it out, then the path would be clear.

As it got closer, Dash realized it wasn’t a zombie at all. That A-rank pony from town was flying at her! The pegasus dripped with the spider honey, leaving Dash impressed she could even stay airborne with such sticky wings. She flew in an erratic, panicked manner.

The A-rank stopped suddenly near Dash.

“Wait.” The A-rank tried to catch her breath. “You’re— oh, come on!”

“What? I was just leaving! Yeesh!”

“No! I was trying to lure it away from everypony else! I was hoping—!”

A disgusting, blood-curdling noise filled the sky from the direction as the other pegasus. A guttural roar, like a dragon choking to death on its own phlegm, rose behind her.

A second later, Dash realized she'd guessed right.

Dash felt the wind from its beating wings just slightly before it rose high enough for her to see a massive silhouette. A zombie dragon charged straight towards them!

The monster glistened a pale white in the moon, with a few purple gashes where scales had fallen off. Its wings were already mostly bone, with just a thin membrane between the bones remaining. A gaping hole tore into where its heart should be and from it oozed a stream of purple slime.

That thing could eat both ponies with one bite if it got much closer.

“Listen, we can’t possibly fight that thing! We have to—“

Her words were cut short by the dragon unleashing a torrent of purple gas in their direction. Dash narrowly flew out of the way, but the other pony, sticky and tired from flying, had less luck. Simply being grazed by the stream made her pass out, hurtling to the ground.

Even dodging it completely, Dash didn’t feel much better. Her head spun, and she too spiraled downwards. She managed to keep just enough focus to tumble into a landing.

The dragon landed soon after, shaking the earth with its enormous weight.

Dash certainly agreed she couldn’t fight it! But she couldn’t run, either! All she managed to do was cough her lungs up.

“What in tarnation was that?!” an unfamiliar voice asked. “Son of a—!”

Dash recovered just enough to see another pony emerge from where those zombies ran off before. She had a yellow mane and wore a silvery cloak. Dash's vision blurred too badly to make out more than that.

She threw something big at the dragon, maybe a chunk of gravel from the road, which astoundingly managed to make it flinch! How strong was this pony?

The newcomer looked up at the monster, then down at Dash. She stepped back when she noticed the pegasus as if Dash were as much a concern as the dragon.

“Applejack?” A red hulk of a pony wearing a similar outfit came out of the darkness next, stopping in his tracks when he saw the undead monstrosity.

“We need the big gun for this fella,” said Applejack. "Lure it back!”

Applejack watched Dash as the pegasus got back onto her feet, coughing. Applejack frowned, hesitant to help.

“Hey! If you wanna live you need to follow us!” Applejack turned and ran.

The red one gave Dash a similarly suspicious look before following her.

The dragon let out another guttural roar and ran at Dash, mouth open ready to swallow her whole. The adrenalin kicked in and Dash rushed after the others.

It wasn’t long before she saw where they were going. A light shone through the woods just a little bit ahead. A caravan of wagons circled the area, surrounded by a wall of burning flares.

Dash quickly overtook the other two and jumped over the circle of fire, landing in the camp.

“Quick!” Applejack yelled, coming inside a moment later. “We got a big one! Fire Bertha right now!”

Dash turned to see that this group did, in fact, have a large cannon. Two more ponies in the same silvery robes aimed it, waiting for the dragon to get closer before firing.

Dash covered her ears just in time to be deafened by the blast. The ground shook and the place lit up clear as day for a moment. The enchanted cannonball that shot out blazed with a white-hot light as it flew at the gigantic zombie.

A direct hit!

The blazing shot tore straight through its target's head and came out the other side. The force flipped the dragon over in midair, landing on its back with a thud that nearly knocked a few ponies over. The monster just narrowly missed crushing half the caravan.

All the ponies cheered as it fell. Dash felt more relief than joy, plopping down with a sigh.

Still, she couldn’t help but feel uneasy. They'd hit it with a fire wrath cannon. They had one of those back in town too. Why didn’t they shoot the dragon with that one?

Maybe they missed too many times? It looked dead now, so maybe she was just being paranoid.

“Well that sure was bad luck,” said Applejack. “Though I guess it is Friday the 13th.”

Right! So she got the bad luck of the crow and Friday the 13th out of the way. Hopefully, Dash was good now.

Dash gave this odd settlement a more proper look. About twenty carriages made up the whole of it, bigger than she had expected. A ring of fire surrounded its entirety, enough to keep out any lesser threat. Not that they’d need it.

It looked like they’d killed every zombie in a one mile radius. Trees were knocked down all over the place from the fight.

Just as Dash got up and brushed herself off, she found two guns pointed right at her. She looked both ways to see more muskets in every direction. Applejack stood between the two closest gunmares, giving Dash a serious look.

“Seriously?” Dash groaned. “Three in a row?! How unlucky am I?!”

“What are you doing out here during the blood moon?” Applejack asked.

“Whoa! I ain’t looking for trouble!” Dash put her hooves up. “Or I guess I am, just not with you ponies. I got somepony else I’m after. But speaking of that— why are you all out here? This isn’t exactly a good time for a campout.”

“We’re nomads. We were trying to get to the next town over, the one you just came from, but uh, well we got stuck out here.”

“Stuck?” Dash raised her eyebrow. Even if that happened, a sane pony would have just left their junk out here for the night rather than risk their life for it.

The other ponies in the caravan were out now, circling Dash, giving her harsh looks like they just might be getting ready to pounce on her or something.

She realized they all had the same silvery cloak, and she began to get just a little bit more unnerved. She may very well be surrounded by one of those cults, if not something worse. These ponies had slaughtered a whole mess of undead without a scratch or guns. Dash just now remembered she hadn’t heard a single gunshot from this direction.

No, now was the time to play dumb. She didn't have long enough to deal with anything but Twilight tonight.

“Oh, 'cause of all the potholes on this road!” Dash hit her head, pretending it was obvious. “Duh! Yeah, that one wheel looks like it’s lodged right in there. I guess that more wagons means more problems, huh?”

“Right.” Applejack nodded without taking her eyes off the intruder. “We got stuck because of the potholes."

Applejack saw right through Dash’s act, she knew. Yet Dash felt as though they made a silent agreement to just not talk about whatever was really going on here.

Though she got a nod from Applejack, a few of the others were less forgiving of the intruder.

“She’s got one of those badges.” A stallion came close, narrowing his eyes at it. “I think we should insist she stay the night.”

Okay! ‘Insist you stay the night’ meant ‘murder’. Dash splayed her wings and backed up.

Applejack didn’t accept that plan, giving the stallion a shove.

“No. We can’t—” Applejack rolled her eyes. “We don’t have enough room for her, alright?”

“Yeah.” Dash sidestepped away. “Love to but not enough room! Nothing you can do about not having enough room! Also, I think I hit my head and got a concussion— you know the kind that gives you amnesia when you wake up the next day? Hehe! Gonna go get that looked at.”

Dash turned to leave but got blocked but the stallion and two other ponies.

“I said no.” Applejack moved next to Dash. At least one pony here was on her side. Maybe.

For a moment, it looked like another fight would break out, Applejack staring the other strangers down.

“What are you all fighting over some green neck slayer for?” An ironically green old lady came out of one of the carts to scold the lot of them. “Can’t you see we got a much bigger problem none of you are dealing with?”

They stood down as soon as she spoke. The old lady had to be their leader.

“Granny!” Applejack ran after her as ‘Granny’ moved towards the slain giant. “What? You mean this? I think we got that one.”

“That thing ain’t dead!” Granny shook her head. “I've seen ones this big before. An ancient dragon like that won't be killed so easy. It'll recover faster to one of them psycho zombies than a normal type. Why I say we got till about the end of this sentence before—“

The dragon lifted its head, looking at the ponies at an odd angle. The cannon left a clear mark. Its right eye was gone, purple ooze dripping from the hole.

“Ah, heck I’m losing my touch.” Granny spat. “Ten years ago I woulda finished saying it in time.”

The ponies all fired their muskets, but the monster barely flinched. The dragon took its time climbing back to its feet, mildly annoyed at best.

“If that cannon didn’t take it down then—" Applejack glanced at Rainbow Dash and held out on saying the rest of that. “Well, you think we got something that could?”

“Like heck, we don’t! We ain’t got nothing that can stop it,” her granny noted. “Only way to kill it would be to burn it all the way down to the bone.”

“But aren’t dragons nearly immune to fire?” Dash asked.

“Yep.” Granny nodded. “Ain’t nopony ever managed to get close.”

“Then it’s invincible?!” Applejack asked.

“Far as we’re concerned, yes.” Granny nodded. “But a big undead like that? Can’t come out unless it’s a blood moon. Soon as this here eclipse is done, it’ll seep back into the earth. Just gotta stall it out. I’ve seen this before. You put honey on its nose, and it’ll chase its tail around for hours.”

The dragon got up. It flapped its wings and took to the sky, turning around in the air. It looped back, intending to hit the camp with more miasma.

“But hey, if we do defeat it, we’ll be legendary heroes?” Dash asked Granny.

“I don’t think it's quite that big a deal, kid. You get one every couple of years and—"

“Alright!” Dash flapped her wings, ready to leave. “Then you guys can take care of the dragon! I got someplace else I need to be!”

This time, Applejack blocked her when Dash tried to leave.

“Hey—!” Dash started to complain.

“Listen! You’re the only pegasus here,” said Applejack.

“I am?” Dash looked around. Now that she mentioned it, the rest were all earth ponies.

“Just carry me up!” Applejack pointed at their approaching doom. “I can— I’m good at throwing things. I know I can hit its nose with one of these bottles. If you do this for us, I promise you we’ll let you leave unharmed.”

Dash really didn’t want a dragon or a group of whatever these weirdos were following her around tonight. If they could finish this relatively quick, it'd be worth it.

Dash nodded.

Dash grabbed Applejack and lifted her into the air, climbing up higher than the dragon as it flew towards the caravan. The dragon got close, getting ready to use its breath!

“I’m pulling it!” Applejack called out.

Applejack broke one of her jars and covered her hair with it.

It drew the dragon's attention immediately, making it turn to fire at the two of them instead. More prepared for the attack now, Dash managed to get further away from the stream of purple miasma.

She didn’t pass out, so that was something!

The dragon chased after them, but that was probably a good thing. They’d need to take it far away or it might kill somepony simply by chasing its tail.

Even carrying Applejack, Dash could outspeed her pursuer. They got far out into the forest before Dash decided it was safe to make their stand. She looped around in the air, then darted back at the dragon.

This time, it looked like the dragon wanted to swallow them whole, opening its mouth wide to receive them.

Applejack threw the jar hard. Her aim was great! It shattered on the dragon’s muzzle. It snapped its jaw tight, then swerved to one side, Dash managing to pull up just enough to avoid getting hit.

According to plan, the dragon spiraled around in circles, taking to the air. Completely disinterested in anything beyond its nose, the monster spiraled off in a northwards direction, hopefully never to be seen again. At least they brought it far away from civilization.

Dash dove to the ground, not landing until she had a good distance between them and the threat. Applejack jumped out of her grip just before Dash landed.

Dash looked over at Applejack, but she shrank away with her cloak drawn up around her high, hiding something from Dash.

“Man, that was awesome!” Dash pumped her hoof out at Applejack. “I can’t believe we actually got rid of that thing.”

“Sorry about before.” Applejack turned around, lowering her hood. “You’re free to go so long as you promise to keep quiet."

“I legit don’t even know what I’m keeping my mouth shut about,” Dash admitted. There were too many possibilities here. “Sides, I got bigger fish to fry.”

Dash checked her clock. Had all that seriously happened in twenty minutes?!

She needed to bolt but decided she could spare one more minute in this place. She might as well give her sales pitch one final go. Applejack could hold her own.

“Hey! You seem pretty tough!” Dash ran up to Applejack. “I got a proposition for you! I have the most amazing idea in history that will make all of us rich and famous. Whatever you’re doing totally isn’t worth it compared to this. But we gotta go out to Twilight Lake now before the eclipse ends!”

“What?! You’re going running through the forest on a night like this? Are you on the eighth or something?” Applejack recoiled at the recklessness of that idea. “The blood moon is drawing out all kinds of nasty critters like that one! Did you not just see that zombie dragon? It’s still out there.”

“You think I’m afraid of something so pathetic?” Dash rolled her eyes and laughed, pretending to be less scared than she actually was. “That thing’s gotta be like rank S at best, probably only A. Even if you killed a zombie dragon that’s not gonna propel you to legendary status. But you know what will?”

“Stuff you should have nothing to do with if you can help it,” said Applejack.

“No! Twilight Sparkle! The only rank X monster!”

Applejack cocked her head as she tried to decide how mad Dash was.

“Just hear me out!” Dash stopped her. “Today is Friday the 13th, right?”

“Yeah? But—“

“But on the old lunar calendar, it’s also Halloween! Every condition for breaking the curse is met! We can find Twilight’s house and break it forever."

“That’s the dumbest idea I ever heard.” Applejack shook her head and started back.

“Why does everypony say that?” Dash threw out her wings in exasperation. “This is brilliant! And it’ll be a billion years before everything lines up again. This is our only chance to try it in our entire lives! We gotta go!”

“I don’t gotta nothing. I ain’t risking my life for a chance to— well what are you even gonna do if you did find her? You’d likely just stir up a whole heck of trouble nopony needs. If Twilight wants to hide under a rock, I say let her!”

“I know this is dangerous, but this is our big chance to be somepony! We can actually accomplish something in our lives. The reward for finding her is millions of bits!”

“I already feel like I’ve accomplished plenty, thanks.” Applejack turned her back on Dash and started towards the caravan. “Some things are just more important to me than money or fame. Being there for my family is one of them.”

“What?” Dash stood there, stunned, as Applejack left her.

“Just go back to town and stay safe,” Applejack said. "I'm sure your family wants you back."

"Assuming I have one," Dash muttered under her breath.

Then Dash was alone with only the dark forest to keep her company.

The wind picked up.

Dash merely shook her head and returned to her mission. Maybe Dash just didn’t have as much to risk. In Dash’s mind, if there was a ninety percent chance of dying and a one percent chance of pulling it then it was worth it! It’d all be worth it! They’d see.

The storm cloud finally lived up to its potential and blanketed the forest in a gentle rain.

Without running into anything too crazy, Dash managed to get to Twilight Lake. A lazy river flowed southwest from the lake. Somewhere along its length, Dash would find Twilight's house.

Ponies in town always said this was the slowest moving river in the world. You could walk faster than the water flowed at any section. At the slowest parts, the water appeared completely still. The river was so narrow it may have actually been a stream. Dash had no idea how to tell these things apart.

Dash trotted alongside this deathly silent stream but didn’t dare get too close on a night like tonight. Any number of horrible creatures might hide in those black depths waiting to pull her inside.

Then again, the same could be said for creatures lurking out in the woods to her side. Dash wasn’t too scared, maybe just a little, but it would have been nice to have had somepony with her to steady her nerves. Stupid Applejack. Also, that entire stupid town. Everyone was stupid!

“A-hick! I already dun gots me a sense of worth! I gots muh family and all muh durn zen ideals, I do!” Dash glowered. “Easy for you to bucking say. Privileged freaking—”

Dash heard something behind her, a sound between a sigh and a snore, and swung around as fast as she could. Nothing but absolute darkness stood behind her as far as she could see. Maybe Dash only heard the wind.

After that, Dash walked faster, kept her wings slightly splayed, ready for takeoff. She had five miles of this to get through! Nopony knew exactly where along the river Twilight’s house was.

The rain got heavier, enough to make Dash wish she’d found Twilight’s house just to get out of it.

She got through the first mile without seeing any signs of Twilight. She figured her odds of finding the house would increase with each mile. The next one should be a one in four chance.

Another disturbing noise interrupted Dash's math, something like a gag coming from across the river. Dash slowly turned to her left and there she saw it, sitting on the other side of the river.

“Are you kidding me?!” Dash growled under her breath.

It was the same exact dragon as before! It even still had that wound in its face!

Right now, the dragon chewed on something, but it was too far away to tell what. It stopped to look at Dash before it swallowed whatever it caught.

Why did it land?

The rain slowed, and Dash realized the answer. The storm washed the honey off its muzzle! It would attack her again!

For now, it didn't make a move, just carefully watched her. Dash ever so slowly crept forward, keeping her eyes on the monster. The dragon zombie watched carefully but didn’t make any sudden moves. Only a couple hundred feet stood between the two. Maybe this would work if Dash moved slowly enough.

She walked in front of it, then slightly past it, and kept walking till it was behind her. Nothing yet.

Then Dash heard that guttural, puking noise.

She turned around to see it spraying its miasma breath down at the river! Already fish and some tentacle thing went belly up in the water. The cloud moved towards Dash fast!

No choice anymore! Dash got up and retreated into the woods!

The dragon didn’t like that. It charged after her, trampling down and snapping trees. Thankfully, because of the thick trees, it couldn’t move through the woods nearly as fast as Dash could. She could totally lose that stupid thing.

The dragon soared above her, unable to muscle straight through the trees.

All Dash really needed to worry about was that breath weapon. For now, she darted into some bushes and looked up, hoping maybe it lost track of her. Hiding from it was really her only option.

But as Dash snuck into the bushes, she noticed something nearby, another light in the woods.

This one came from a window. A house? No, the light shone through a hole in a tree. Even closer, she realized it was both a tree and a home, a building carved into its wide trunk.

A clearing surrounded the treehouse too, the grass broken only by a patch of pumpkins. Somepony had to live here!

Then Dash saw another pony standing down by the water!

The dragon landed on Dash’s side of the river, right next to this new pony! The pony was far too chill about this, casually turning her head to the beast, making no attempt to run away at all.

Dash couldn’t just leave somepony to die like that! She emerged from the bushes ready to rush in there, grab that idiot, and fly away as fast as she could.

The dragon roared at the mystery pony, inches away from her. She glanced up at the beast looming over her with no real concern. She simply gave the monster a sharp whack on its muzzle.

And the dragon exploded!

Fire consumed it as all its scales, flesh, and purple goo burst outwards. It burned too fast for it to leave even a little mess. All the fleshy parts of the zombie simply vaporized, leaving nothing but smoke and bones behind.

In a flash, the zombie dragon was reduced to a skeleton dragon. The now-silent beast clattered and tried to take a step forward but only managed to collapse in a heap.

The pony gently blew at the skeletal remains. In a matter of seconds, the bones rotted black and cracked, then they crumbled to dust and blew away.

Dash could only stand in place and stare at such an incredible display of power. Her mind couldn't comprehend what she'd just seen.

That certainly solved one problem. But who the heck was this?! One of the elite four?!

Even through the dark, Dash could see they wore a witch’s hat with little bells hanging from strings around the edges. The bells rang slightly as she walked back towards her house.

This had to be a witch! Nothing else could have defeated a monster that strong so easily.

Given where she was...

What if that was Twilight Sparkle herself?!

Dash ducked back down under the brush, holding her breath. Thankfully she wasn’t spotted, and the witch simply left as casually as though she’d blown a mosquito off her leg.

If only Dash had gotten this on camera! She needed some way of proving this was Twilight! But if Twilight could instantly destroy something so tough, then Dash had no chance at all if it came down to a fight!

Dash needed to be as careful as possible now. A normal witch was more dangerous than a hundred zombie dragons. Twilight herself would be worse than all the other witches combined on top of that.

She waited in the bushes quietly for the witch to go back inside.

That was another thing! There weren’t supposed to be any houses along the lazy river. This was totally her! Probably.

Maybe-Twilight took one of the pumpkins from her patch and finally went into the house. Only then did Dash dare to rise.

That patch consisted of a few huge pumpkins strangled by a sea of vines. Dash flew on top of one that was easily twice her size, then silently glided across the rest of the garden to a window.

Now she got a much better look at her witch, a lavender unicorn sitting in front of a cauldron in the center of the room.

Whatever cooked in that cauldron smoked worse than a dying dragon. A heavy plume of white fog bubbled up out of it and down to the floor so that it covered the whole ground.

Everything hanging on her walls screamed 'witch'. Jars containing eyeballs, claws from various lizards, insects of every kind, and mysterious white powders filled her shelves.

But none of that proved this was a witch. There was one artifact, something every witch always kept with them, that Dash kept an eye out for.

It wasn’t long before she took it out.

After thinking for a moment, the unicorn levitated to her side a black book with a large purple star, Twilight’s cutie mark, printed on the cover. A spellbook!

Just like a witch, she didn’t read it, merely held it aside, and flipped the pages a few times before putting it away. That was exactly how witches used those books! They never actually read them.

Dash had to record this!

Slowly, as though it were rigged to explode if shaken, Dash took out her camcorder and hit the record button, putting the lens up towards the window. If this was Twilight, she’d have the same star cutie mark on her flank. Dash just had to keep recording until this witch stood up. She had to stand up eventually, right?

Still, even a ‘normal’ witch was insanely dangerous. Dash needed an escape route before things went south.

Dash looked up at the sky. The storm clouds were gone now. Flying too high meant being easily spotted, which would result in Dash becoming toast.

Instead, she’d dart into the trees behind her, then make a hard left before moving just below the branches as fast as she could. She scoped out a large tree that would be easy to hide behind at a moment’s notice.

She needed to get those smoke bombs ready too. Dash took out a few, then went back to looking through her camera.

The cauldron continued to bubble away, but Twilight was nowhere to be seen.

Where the heck did Maybelight go?!

Did it matter? Dash had a recording! But then again, that was no help as she was in the middle of the woods, a mile away from a VCR.

The front door creaked open ever so slowly.

Ghosts

Rainbow Dash held her breath. She knew not to swim against a current this strong, not to swim at all until she was sure which way was up.

After a moment of being submerged in slime too thick to see through, Dash felt that she was falling. Thankfully it wasn’t a long fall.

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight’s voice came as Dash felt herself being forcefully ripped from the slime with magic.

A second later, Dash was able to breathe again and open her eyes. Dash was floating in midair with Twilight while things continued to fall around them. There didn’t seem to be any debris falling on them at the moment.

The sewers were below them now, slime spilling into it. She could see Pinkie hanging on a wall down below with two of the kids caught in the psychic powers and reaching for the third who was being washed away.

Dash secretly hoped that one was Snails. What was that idiot thinking?

At least they were safe now.

That was a thought that lasted a few seconds, anyway. There was something down there!

Crouched down low in a corner, looking up at them was what Dash thought was a pony. As Dash’s mind reeled she realized it wasn’t a pony, but a piece of cloth, an empty hooded cloak. After even more reeling Dash realized that it wasn’t a normal piece of cloth after all. It held its shape as if an invisible pony were wearing it and the cloak itself was translucent, looked like it was made of shadows.

Dash knew a little bit about ghosts. Was it a phantom?

She was about to call out to the others when it rose up completely. The ghost lifted its hood and everything went dark.

She could breathe, but she couldn’t feel the ground nor did she feel like she was in the air. It was like she’d been swallowed by a void of some kind.

She couldn’t see anypony else. They were all gone. Dash was completely and utterly alone, more alone than she’d ever been in her whole life.

Of course, they were gone. How could Dash be stupid enough to even think somepony else could ever care about her, that anything but this loneliness could exist? Even if she got out of here, she’d just be alone forever…

No!

Dash closed her eyes tight. She breathed in and out slowly, trying to regain control.

This was some kind of illusion, like the kind a ghost would make. She’d never actually been in one, but Dash heard some types of ghosts could trap you in one of these fear voids. If you weren’t careful, you could get seriously lost in one of these. That was if you didn’t die of cold or fright first.

Even reminding herself of this was an illusion, Dash was still trembling, still felt that horrible feeling of loneliness. But it wasn’t getting worse. Whatever ghost laid this trap wasn’t trying to kill her, at least not at the moment.

Then a stroke of brilliance struck her!

Phantoms could only trap so many ponies at once! So Dash just needed to become a whole lot of ponies.

Dash cast the murder spell and split into twenty crows. The plan worked almost instantly, at least for the crow Dash became. It was still dark, but there was a ground now. She’d broken out of the void and into the sewers.

The moment she was out of it, Dash turned back and fell to the ground. The memories came flooding back. Apparently, she’d been one of the lucky crows, a few of them had been stuck in there.

She got up and looked around. There was no hole in the ceiling above her and no massive blob of gremlin guts. That stupid ghost must have dragged her into another part of the sewers entirely.

She was in a part of the sewers with high ceilings. To her left was a row of ten-foot-tall statues of mole-ponies, stoically looking down on her. To her right was a canal that water rapidly flowed through. She noticed a surprising lack of stench but wasn’t about to complain about that.

The question was whether the others were nearby.

Dash noticed a commotion coming from one direction and ran off in that direction.

To her relief she found Twilight and Pinkie Pie, finishing off a rather large group of gremlins. There were still a few more, but they didn’t bother with them, instead focusing on Dash when she came in. This wasn’t the place with the broken ceiling either.

“Oh good.” Twilight let out a sigh of relief. “I thought you’d be too stupid to get out of that by yourself.”

“Can you make up your mind about whether I’m stupid or dangerous?” Dash asked.

“You can be stupid and dangerous.” Twilight turned away. “And for your information, I broke out of that instantly.”

“And I’ve been in those things more times than I can count. I can get out of those easily.” Pinkie nodded to herself twice before opening her eyes. “Oh wait, no! It was only eight times. I can count to eight.”

“Where are we anyway?” Twilight looked up at the high ceiling.

“This is the sewers,” said Dash.

“What’s a sewer?” Twilight asked.

“Um!” Dash tried to think of a halfway dignified way to explain it. “Well, it’s like your outhouse but we don’t have an infinite void at the bottom, so we need all this.”

“And how are statues involved in this process?” Twilight looked up at one of them.

“That one’s a funny story. There was like this old religion who was really into the underground scene,” Dash explained. “They built all kinds of massive underground labyrinths like this. But their religion hinged on the fact that there were mole people living in the center of the planet. When we found out there weren’t, the religion dried up. So we just converted all their churches into sewers.”

“I feel like there’s a lesson there,” said Pinkie. “But I can’t possibly imagine what it is.”

“The important thing is that all of us got out.” Dash took two steps forward, then remembered the flaw in that statement. “Wait! No, we didn’t! Those stupid kids! They don’t have any powers that can get them out of that. Do you think they’re still inside that thing?”

“Uh oh!” Pinkie closed her eyes, feeling the area out with her ESP. “I think whatever ghost did this took them somewhere else.”

“I didn’t even know there were ghosts down here,” said Dash. “You think somepony would have noticed that. Especially since this one seemed like she was waiting for somepony to fall into the sewers.”

“Looks like another sewer adventure for Pinkie Pie.” Pinkie frowned and crossed her forelegs with a sigh. “But I just had one of those! If my life were a TV show, the audience would be so angry right now. Nopony wants to watch me crawl around a filthy sewer for thirty episodes in a row.”

“Filthy?” Twilight bent over to look at the swift stream of water going through the center. “This water looks perfectly clean to me.”

“Huh?” Dash and Pinkie ran over to look at it. It was a bit dark down there, but as far as Dash could see the water was pristine if the few dead gremlins that had just been knocked into it. “You’re right! Isn’t this place supposed to be filled with sludge? And I notice a distinct lack of smell.”

“Me and Snails were down here two days ago.” Pinkie nodded. “Back then it so was putrid I had to take three baths that night plus a shower. You shouldn’t even be able to breathe in parts of this place. And now that you bring it up, where are all the mutants? Sewers should have lots of alligators and mutants in them! There were mutants two days ago.”

“You don’t think it was the gremlins, do you?” Twilight asked. Another one crept up and jumped on her back, but she ignored it.

“That’s like asking if rabbits ate all the wolves, Twilight,” said Dash.

“I’ll see what aetheric imprinting shows me.” Twilight closed her eyes to cast a spell.

“Oh! That’s the one that shows what happened before, right?” Dash asked, remembering seeing several ghostly images of herself from before.

“You are learning.” Twilight nodded.

Twilight cast the spell, but it looked different from before. The air itself turned a deep red, making it hard to see anything at all. The red light didn’t move at all. It shattered a few seconds later and then things were back to normal.

“What the crow was that?” Dash asked.

“I have no idea!” Twilight shook her head. “I’ve never seen something like that before.”

“Was it fire?” Dash asked. “Or maybe you messed up the spell?”

“Neither of those.” Twilight put a hoof on her chin, thinking hard. “Now I’m curious.”

Pinkie hummed and narrowed her eyes.

“Maybe I should have mentioned this earlier, but I am getting that ‘certain death’ kind of feeling.” Pinkie lifted her head back up and looked at the other two. “Like something super hungry that wants to devour everything.”

“What? Is it that ghost?” Dash asked.

“Maybe, but it’s coming from every direction!” Pinkie pointed down both tunnels at once. “Up, down, left, right, diagonally! Actually, not so much up. A normal ghost would only come from one.”

“Then like a million ghosts?”

“They’d have to be really hungry.”

“Yeesh.” Dash stepped back from the water. “Normally I’d say we should go tell the guild about this. But who am I kidding? If the three of us can’t deal with this what are they going to do?”

“Ah, yeah! The dream team!” Pinkie held up her hoof to Twilight to bump. “There hasn’t been a team-up this powerful since me and Nailbat fought the tarrasque!”

“Hey!” Twilight took a step back. “I didn’t come here to fix your ridiculously huge outhouse! I was only supposed to be here for five minutes and I’m already at my limit!”

“But what about those snot-nosed kids?” Dash reminded her. “We can’t just let them die!”

Twilight moved to lower her hat over her eyes, only to find out it was a gremlin on top of her head. She quickly threw it off against the wall and instead turned to the side and groaned uncomfortably.

Dash knew for a fact that Twilight might be apathetic about more hypothetical people, but she couldn’t stand to see anyone nearby getting hurt.

“Fine!” Twilight relented. “But after this, we’re going straight home! And we’re not coming back for a month.”

“Okay, but you do have to bump me,” Pinkie reminded her.

Twilight sighed but bumped Pinkie’s hoof.

“Yeah!” Pinkie gave a small jump.

“So one of you two has to be able to find where they are, right?” Dash asked.

Pinkie closed her eyes for a moment and Twilight cast a spell that summoned a wisp of light. At the same time, Pinkie opened her eyes and pointed to the wall behind them and Twilight’s wisp flew to the same spot.

“Though that doesn’t help us too much,” said Pinkie.

“You gotta have some other spell, Twilight,” said Dash.

“I can just use you.” Twilight pointed down the tunnel. “You go in as many directions as you can and tell us what you find. It doesn’t matter if any instance of you dies. You only need one to return to normal. That’s why you’re the perfect scout.”

Dash struggled with what she meant for a moment, then remembered her necklace.

“Oh right! The murder spell.”

Dash spread her wings and cast the murder spell. Suddenly the world was larger and less colorful, Dash was surrounded by several other crows. Half of the crows broke off to the left and half to the right, only one crow staying behind, perching on Twilight’s back, to ensure at least one would survive.

The current Dash was one of the ones who went off to the right. It was cool knowing she effectively had a spare life in this situation. Dash could be as reckless as she wanted, and it wouldn’t even matter if she died because only one crow needed to live.

There was a heck of a lot of gremlins down this path, more than Dash had ever seen before! Many of them tried to jump up and grab her or throw things at her, but Dash was far too nimble for the clumsy idiots. They didn’t manage to get even one of her.

It made her think that the epicenter of it must have been underground and the surface was just the edges of it. But that wouldn’t make any sense at all. Gremlins came down from meteors. For that to happen the meteor would need to somehow teleport into the sewers. Could one big enough to have this many gremlins even fit down here?

Every time she came to a fork, her crows would split up. When she had about four others left by her side, Dash got to a dead end. But it wasn’t a dead-end because the tunnel ended, but because there was something in her way!

It was a solid wall of slime that filled up the tunnel despite its considerable size. It wasn’t gremlin slime either, but a red, somewhat translucent slime. It was pulsing ever so slightly, pushing its way forward through the tunnel.

All the crows that made it this far stopped to watch for a moment.

The gremlins were having fun with the stuff. They’d laugh and throw one another into the slime, where the gremlin would dissolve inside. That would be more worrying if the gremlins weren’t so fragile to begin with. Chlorinated pool water was strong enough to kill them.

One of the other Dash crows crowed, apparently brave enough to test the danger. No doubt she knew she wouldn’t really die.

That crow flew forward and tried grabbing some of the slime with her talon. It didn’t work out so well. The blob lashed out and engulfed that crow! Dash watched as she was quickly pulled in deeper and dissolved inside. She’d know if that hurt or not in a few minutes.

But now she knew this stuff was dangerous. It was moving slowly but in their direction.

She wondered if there was a way to get a small amount of this back to Twilight. Dash looked around for a broken pipe or something of the sort.

Before Dash could come up with one of her patented brilliant ideas, the blob lurched forward a few feet, consuming multiple gremlins. Every crow managed to fly back, out of the way, but the speed it jumped with was unnerving.

She saw it pull back just a little and already knew what was coming! All of her crows flew back a safe distance, or at least what she thought was a safe distance.

This time, the blob lurched forward an incredible distance, several yards at least, and consumed a huge number of gremlins. Worse, it didn’t hold its shape and several smaller blobs broke off from the main body, splattering in every direction.

One unlucky crow got hit and dissolved before she hit the ground. Then all the blobs, big and small, pulled back again.

If it kept going like that, it’d be where the other ponies were in a minute. Dash had to book it!

She flew as fast as she could, swiftly down to the first bend. The blob soon slammed into the wall behind her and a second later she heard that hideous squelching sound again.

Dash got to the second bend. Another wave of blobs flew past her, taking down one of the remaining crows. Then that sound came again. If only there was a way to tell safety Dash to change back. The blob slammed into a wall behind her yet again.

She got to the last bend with only two crows left and the blob not far behind her. She started crowing as loud as she could and thankfully the main Rainbow Dash was smart enough to take the hint.

She blacked out briefly and then was standing right next to Twilight.

Dash shook her head as the memories of all the crows flooded into her head. For the record, getting eaten by that thing hurt but not as much as you’d expect. Urgency took her as she recalled everything.

“There’s a huge blob monster coming at us from that way!” Dash pointed down the hall that crow just came from.

Pinkie and Twilight only had a few seconds to get ready, but they were crucial seconds. Twilight put up a shield and Pinkie jumped forward, ready to grab whatever was about to come through.

The blob slammed into the wall at the end of the tunnel.

“A bunch of smaller ones come out when it moves forward,” Dash warned them just in time.

The blob charged down the hall, spraying several smaller blobs. Pinkie used her psychic powers on the main one while Twilight attacked the spray.

Twilight threw a fireball forward, which split into several, smaller fireballs, one for each of the smaller blobs. They all hit their targets. The goo wasn’t destroyed, but that did send it back into the main blob.

Pinkie stopped the blob but struggled to hold the enormous thing back. The real test came a second later when it pulled back and tried to lurch forward yet again. Pinkie closed her eyes tight and dug her hooves into the ground, wincing hard as she focused on it.

Thankfully, it was mostly successful. It only moved an inch or so this time. It was still making ground, but very slowly towards the three of them.

“Holy smokes! What is that thing?” Pinkie asked. “I’ve been around the block a bunch of times, but I’ve never seen a blob monster!”

Twilight stepped forward, towards a small bit of the red stuff, and started looking it over.

“That’s not ectoplasm, is it?” Dash asked. “I mean, we know there’s a ghost down here too, right?”

“Nope! I’ve seen ectoplasm and this is not it!” Pinkie took a step back. “I have no idea what the protocol for this is. Maybe my chaos bag will have something that can get rid of this stuff.”

She reached deep into her bag and rustled around, but never took her eyes off the blob monster.

“Let’s see. A mop?” Pinkie pulled a mop out of her bag. “Not nearly big enough. Duct tape? Probably the one time that’s not useful. Rubber glove? I don’t even have hands!”

Pinkie threw all of that stuff to the side.

“Bleach?” Pinkie took a bottle of it out. “Actually, there’s a chance that one might work.”

Pinkie threw the bottle of bleach at the blob. It exploded in midair, dousing the monster. It did work, to an extent, causing a large chunk of it to burn up.

“Hey! It’s working!” Pinkie pointed to the missing chunk of the blob, though it quickly refilled. “Now we just need eight hundred thousand gallons of bleach.”

Twilight walked over to the main blob. She tore out a few hairs and threw them into the blob. The hair quickly dissolved but Twilight thought this was a good thing.

“Ah! I know what this is!” Twilight gave a happy nod. “This is a self-replicating molecule. I actually made one of these myself once! It converts any organic matter they touch into more of itself. It must have come through here earlier and destroyed all the organic matter and that’s why everything is so clean and all the mutants are dead. Mystery solved!”

“Wait. You made this stuff?” Dash asked.

“I’m not the only pony who can make things, you know.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “Somepony else must have had the same idea. Mine was blue and moved a lot faster. More importantly, I realized that it would eventually destroy all life on the planet and, since I’m life on the planet, decided to destroy the stuff.”

“Wait.” Dash held a hoof out. “Tell me about the destroy all life on the planet part again.”

“I mean it could.” Twilight shrugged. “Hypothetically.”

“Why the crow are you so calm about that?!”

“These have one major weakness.” Twilight gestured to the blob. “Ultraviolet radiation should burn it up in seconds, plus a few other conditions make it hard to go above ground. I assume that’s why we didn’t see any of it above ground. It dies the second it tries. Of course, the problem is that self-replicating molecules can rapidly evolve and if it ever evolves resistance to UV there won’t be any stopping it.”

“And let me guess. We have like five minutes until that happens?” Dash guessed.

“No, that process should take decades under normal circumstances,” said Twilight.

“Oh.” Dash blinked, then shrugged. “Guess I got lucky for once. And now we know its weakness! You can just cast some spell to make us glow UV light and we’ll be invincible to it, right?”

“Ah-ha!” Pinkie pulled out a lamp from her bag. “UV lamp! Though I don’t have anywhere to plug it in. Huh.”

“No!” Twilight pulled Dash back and knocked the lamp from Pinkie’s hand, smashing it on the floor. “Hitting it with ultraviolet radiation is the worst thing you could do!”

“But you just said—"

“Yes, it will kill some of it now,” said Twilight, “but not all of it! And the more you expose it to ultraviolet radiation the faster it will evolve a resistance to it.”

“Point taken. But we need to get rid of some of it now.” Dash pointed at the encroaching blob.

“I suppose there are other, safer, short-term solutions to this.” Twilight cast a spell; an orb of cold air that frothed mist began to form in her hoof. “It should be highly susceptible to the cold as well. If we freeze the front part of it, that’ll seal the rest of it off for now.”

Twilight threw the orb forward at the blob. The orb hit and the surrounding tunnel was instantly It sent a shiver through Dash and Pinkie, but the blob was completely unharmed.

“Hey!” Dash hugged herself tightly, shivering as she looked at Twilight. “I thought you said it was weak against cold.”

“What?!” Twilight did look genuinely stunned by that. “But how could—?!”

Twilight started trotting back and forth muttering to herself. Dash had lived with that pony long enough to know how hard it’d be to reach her when she got like that.

Meanwhile, the blob gained on Pinkie a little, moving a solid foot or two this time.

“How much bleach can you pull out of that thing?” Dash asked Pinkie.

Pinkie stuck her tongue out and reached into the bag again.

“Laundry detergent.” Pinkie pulled a bottle of it out. “It’s not easy to get anything specific out of here!”

“Oh! I think I know!” Twilight snapped out of it. “See, this is what I was talking about before. Somepony must have been hitting it repeatedly with ice magic and now it’s immune to the cold. The more you hit it with something, the more resistant it becomes to that. See?”

“Cold magic?” Pinkie looked back at Dash. “You know, I bet—”

The blob moved two or three feet this time and it looked like Pinkie struggled with that one.

“Why am I the only one worried about this?” Dash raised her hoof.

“Okay, okay.” Twilight got ready to cast another spell. “This one seems to have significant resistances already, so I don’t think we should attack it until we find the main source and know we can destroy all of it. We’ll just—”

One, two, then three stone walls came out of the ground, blocking off that part of the sewer completely. Pinkie let go of her telekinetic grip to let the walls be tested. There was a slight pounding noise on the other side, but the wall didn’t budge an inch.

The three of them waited a moment to be sure it wasn’t oozing through. Twilight’s walls held for now.

“But sheesh! How unlucky are we? That’s like three major problems we have.” A gremlin jumped on Dash’s back, but she just ignored it. “Four if you count the gremlins, but I can’t in good faith put them on the list.”

“If you’re saying none of this stuff was here yesterday then it has to be related,” said Twilight. “I think one thing set everything off in a chain.”

“Okay, I think I’m starting to piece this together with my super-genius brain.” Dash pointed to her temple. “That stuff was coming from another part of the underground and the ghosts kept freezing it over and over to contain it. But then it stopped working like yesterday or whatever and now the sewers are full of the stuff.”

“That would make sense,” said Twilight. “They lost their ability to contain it, then everything else gets pushed back when it starts to spread.”

“So a bunch of ghosts made that stuff?” Dash asked.

“We can’t conclude that yet,” said Twilight. “We should probably get going for now. Did you see anything in the other direction?”

“Right! There was something down this way too.” Dash pointed down the remaining hall. “I’m pretty sure I found where the main ghost in charge is hiding. But be careful. I saw a lot more of that red stuff around and it chases you if you get too close. Come on.”

Dash started running off, the other two following close behind.

She remembered the crow that discovered this being briefly angry at the other Dash for turning back before she could study it a bit more. Now that they were remerged, Dash was willing to forgive herself.

It didn’t take very long at all to get to the spot.

“Ooh!” Pinkie pointed down the next hall.

A literal wall of darkness sat halfway down the next tunnel. There was no transition from light to dark, simply a cutoff point where it became perfectly black. To make it even harder to mistake this for any normal darkness were the clawing tendrils of darkness that whipped out of it like shadows dancing in candlelight.

“Do you know what this thing is?” Dash asked.

“Yep! This is like the ghost equivalent of an electric fence. They gotta be hiding something behind this.” Pinkie tapped her head. “Most ponies aren’t psychic enough to get through one of these, but it’s not so bad if you realize the trick is to—”

The darkness rushed down the tunnel at the three of them. Dash was completely blinded, then her heart started to race just like before.

The feeling of fear was dramatically more intense this time! Dash could only stand perfectly still, looking down into that endless darkness.

If she took one step forward, she was going to die! There was nothing she could do! She had to run away from whatever this was but couldn’t manage. It wouldn’t even matter if she did. Dash was going to die! She was absolutely going to die!

Pinkie was wincing, but more like she was merely in a windstorm. She said something to Dash, but whatever she said simply didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Pinkie trudged her way to Twilight, who was stunned and sobbing and said something to her next. This time, Pinkie managed to snap Twilight out of it. Twilight regained her sense and said something that didn’t matter.

Twilight’s horn lit up and an orb of light appeared before her. Like a drain in a tub of water, the darkness swirled into the orb of light until the room was visible again. Then, with a second spell, Twilight destroyed the orb in a small blast.

The whiplash of that stuff vanishing was so intense Dash stumbled forward and had to gulp to keep herself from puking. Only after another second did Dash realize it’d just been another, more intense, fear illusion.

With the darkness gone, Dash could see the ghost who’d been behind all this. She was the ghost of a long-haired mare with the familiar blueish coloration of a ghost strong enough to keep its old form.

The ghost floated there, stunned like somepony had just walked in while she was on the toilet. The important thing was its eyes. Her sclera was black, and her iris was a dark blue! Only one type of ghost was like that.

The ghost let out a small ‘eep’ and flew down under the ground.

Shaking, Dash got back to her feet and wiped a few tears from her eyes before turning to Pinkie.

“Pinkie! I saw their eyes!” Dash tried to shake off the lingering effects and get ready for a fight. “That one was a specter!”

“What?!” Pinkie turned and pressed her backside against Dash’s, lowering her head as if ready for a fight. “Quick! Back-to-back formation! Oh, man! Today is a bad day for Pinkie Pie!”

The three of them quickly stood back-to-back, facing three different directions like Pinkie asked them to.

“How bad is this, exactly?” Twilight asked.

“Very!” Dash watched the ground and walls carefully. “Specters are like the worst type of ghost you can run into. They’re like the bosses of other ghosts.”

“Yeah! I’d rather fight ten banshees than one specter, Twilight!” Pinkie kept her head down, looking left to right. “But we might have to do both since specters are never alone. Expect at least thirty or forty more ghosts to show up.”

“And that’s not even mentioning that they have the strongest ice magic of anything on the planet,” said Dash. “Or that they can make echoes of the catastrophe that created them. This thing could potentially destroy the entire town if it decides to use that.”

“I wanted this to be a short trip!” Twilight sighed miserably. “You’re sure it wants to fight?”

“Specters are extremely territorial,” said Dash. “We have to be ready.”

Dash scraped her hoof against the ground, getting ready for the fight. Dash was almost certainly going to break into crows the second it tried something. She didn’t have much of a choice. She couldn’t fight at this level.

A long minute passed.

Then an even longer minute.

Dash wasn’t sure how long she could stay on edge like this. She wished the epic battle would start already!

“What’s it doing?” Dash asked.

“Still under us,” said Pinkie. “Maybe she’s waiting for us to drop our guard.”

Another minute went by.

Things were way too quiet. Pinkie seemed to think so too.

“You know! This blob monster might be her catastrophe spell,” Pinkie suggested. “What if she’s like— like a slime specter! So she can summon tons of pony-eating slime!”

“And thousands of ponies died in a slime accident?” Dash asked. “I feel like one of us would have heard of the great slime spill of whenever.”

“That’s a good point,” said Pinkie.

“Um.”

An unfamiliar voice set all three of them off. They all spun around to face the newcomer.

The specter poked her head out!

Twilight reacted the fastest, shooting a bolt of lightning at her head. The specter ducked down under the ground again just fast enough to avoid it.

The three of them slowly backed up. It looked like the specter was about to start its attack.

“E-excuse me,” the specter spoke softly as she popped out of a wall this time.

Pinkie’s eyes glowed as she tried to grab her but was too late once more.

After another brief pause, the ghost came back out of the floor, only enough that the top half of her eyes were visible.

“Hello.” The specter’s voice was a meek little squeak. “Can I ask you something?”

The three of them shared a look.

“Yeah?” Dash raised an eyebrow.

“When you said you saw a ghost.” She came up just a little bit more this time and looked behind her. “Did you mean me? Or was there another ghost?”

“Um.” Dash looked at Pinkie, who shrugged. “Just you? I hope?”

“Okay, good.” The specter let out a sigh of relief. She came up out of the ground just a tiny bit more, enough that Dash could see the tip of her muzzle now. “Um. So, my attempt to scare you away didn’t work. Sorry. I know I shouldn’t have done that. I just panicked with all the crazy stuff that’s been going on recently. You can just do whatever you came down here to do. I won’t bother you again. Though I don’t have any treasure if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Treasure?” Dash turned to Pinkie. “Do specters have treasure?”

“Oh, loads! They’re like ghost royalty so they’re loaded,” said Pinkie. “Usually.”

“You are a specter, right?” Dash asked.

“Um. Maybe?” The specter sank back down a little. “Okay, yes. But we really don’t have to fight! You can just go. If that’s okay with you.”

This seemed a little too good to be true.

“Pinkie, is this a trap?” Dash asked her. “You’re the ghost expert here.”

“I’m not sure,” Pinkie admitted. “Ghost emotions are easy to read and she really is scared. But I can sense there’s way more ghosts around here too. And danger is everywhere so that doesn’t help. Hm!”

Pinkie jumped forward a few steps and lay down with her chin against the floor, so she was face to face with the specter.

“What’s your name, little guy?” Pinkie asked.

“It’s um, Fluttershy,” she said.

“Well I’m Pinkie Pie and this is, uh—“ Pinkie looked back to Twilight. “Hey! What was your fake name again?”

“I’ll admit the only type of ghosts I’m familiar with are orbs and spirits,” said Twilight. “Why are we so afraid of this one again?”

“Because specters are the most dangerous type of ghost,” Dash reminded her. “If something kills more than a thousand ponies, a specter is created from one of the dead ponies. They can recreate the disaster that killed them.”

“That’s not exactly how it works,” Fluttershy mumbled but not loud enough to actually interrupt. “See if like….”

“They’re unique because they have this aura that lets them control other ghosts,” Dash went on.

“Actually, every ghost has an aura, it’s just um…”

“And they’re insanely territorial.”

“I’m pretty sure I don’t have a territory and also that’s not really true it’s more like uh…”

“See, ghosts are almost like ants when you get down to it. They have this strict hierarchy with specters as the ‘queen ghost’ at the top,” Dash went on. “Specters always have an entourage with them.”

“That’s not true at all!”

That last one was loud enough to get Dash to stop.

“Huh?” Dash turned back to her.

“Um.” Fluttershy backed up a foot or two, blushing as much as a ghost could blush. “Specter privilege isn’t really as great as everypony makes it sound. Every ghost has their will and emotions bleed into other ghosts, specters just have the strongest aura of will. Banshees, revenants, and phantoms often have their own territory where they assert their will over other ghosts too. They don’t want a specter anywhere near their territory because they’re afraid you’ll take over, and other specters are mean to me too. I can’t go anywhere except these sewers to get away from all the mean people. I get chased away no matter where I go!”

“I dunno.” Pinkie turned back to the others. “I’ve never heard of a specter who was this completely and utterly alone before! I mean, can she really not have a single ghost friend or any treasure at all? Not even a pathetic orb? Cause that’s like the ghost equivalent of drawing a face on a coconut. How could you seriously not manage that much?”

“You don’t have to rub it in!” Fluttershy covered her eyes and started crying.

“Oh no! I’m so sorry!” In a panic, Pinkie reached into her chaos bag and took out a balloon. “Here’s a balloon! Are you happy again?”

“I’m the most pathetic specter ever!” Fluttershy wailed.

“Hey now!” Pinkie tried to pat her on the back, but just patted the ground instead. “I’m sure there’s at least one pony who’s a bigger loser than you! At least you’re not uh—“

Pinkie looked around for something, but it was hard to reassure someone who lived in total isolation in the sewers.

“Um. Totally dead?” Pinkie smiled.

Fluttershy kept crying.

“Hey! Just because she doesn’t have any friends doesn’t make her a loser!” Twilight walked over to Fluttershy’s side. “There’s more to life than how many friends you have! Like power! Just because she’s insanely powerful doesn’t mean she’s insanely dangerous. If Fluttershy here chooses to be alone then that’s a perfectly valid decision.”

“I’m not sure if it’s really my choice, but thanks.” Fluttershy came up out of the ground enough that her whole head was up and wiped away one last tear.

“Yeah, I wonder where this is coming from,” Dash muttered to herself.

“It’s fine.” Twilight tried to pat Fluttershy but accidentally went through. “These ‘mainstream’ ponies just have an irrational fear of powerful ponies who want to exclude themselves from society. Really, they should all just leave us alone! Fluttershy clearly doesn’t mean anypony any harm.”

“Sure, but she might be involved with the kidnapping of the kids,” Dash reminded her.

Dash stepped forward.

“Look.” Dash knelt near Fluttershy. “If you want us to overlook the fact that there’s a specter who nearly gave us a heart attack living down here, you need to tell us where those kids are.”

“Kids?” Fluttershy asked.

“Someone pulled us into a void the moment we came down here,” said Dash. “We know it was a ghost. They still have a bunch of kids with them. Was that not you?”

Fluttershy shook her head.

“Then who did?” Dash asked.

“Well.” Fluttershy looked down the dark hall, shrinking down into the floor, eyes quivering with fear.

“We’re not letting you off the hook this easy,” Dash warned her.

“Okay!” Fluttershy winced. “I can smell that there’s a few other predeads down here. Their blood smelled so warm compared to everything else down here and—"

Fluttershy noticed the concern growing on all the other ponies.

“Not that I would ever freeze them!” Fluttershy put her hooves up defensively. "I've never eaten the heat from another pony, I swear. I only ever froze a single rabbit and I cried for days just from that. I could never freeze a pony!"

"Are you sure?" Dash asked. "I always heard that ghosts couldn't resist the urge to suck all the heat out of us for long."

"That's almost true," Fluttershy admitted. "Body heat is the most delicious thing in the world to us, and you get badly addicted to it. Still, I decided I wanted to be a vegan ghost because I didn't want to hurt any animals. It took me years to get over my addiction, but I barely feel any urge to, um, 'eat' the living any more. I promise."

Dash wasn’t sure how much she believed that. Ghosts ‘ate’ more ponies than just about all the other monsters combined. There was a reason they had such a bad reputation.

“Anyway, my point is they smell much colder now,” said Fluttershy. “They must be down where Boss Rattler and his gang hang out. It had to be them feeding off of the kids. They’re probably safe for now, but he’s not as nice as me. I doubt he’s above farming predeads like you.”

“Hey! Now we know who we’re looking for!” Pinkie winked at the others. “Can you take us to him? We kind of need those teenagers back before they spoil.”

“No!” Fluttershy shook her head, clearly terrified. “I’m too scared to go over there!”

“He’s gotta be pretty strong if a specter is afraid of him,” Dash whispered to Pinkie.

“What type of ghost is he?” Pinkie asked.

“He’s a revenant,” said Fluttershy. “He just bullies me a lot.”

That wasn’t too bad.

“But can’t you create a massive catastrophe?” Dash asked. “Who the crow would bully somepony who can do that?”

“Well I can, but mine would destroy most of the town and probably not hurt the other ghosts at all.” Fluttershy sighed. “I know the ability to wipe out a small town sounds impressive, but it really doesn’t get much day-to-day use.”

“But you have all kinds of other powers, right?” Dash asked. “Don’t tell me he’s seriously stronger than you.”

“I don’t think so,” said Fluttershy.

“But then why are you so scared?” Pinkie asked.

“Well.” Fluttershy twiddled her hooves about one another.

“Yeah?” Dash pressed her.

“It’s just.” Fluttershy sank nearly entirely underground.

“Just what?” Dash leaned forward to look down at her. “We gotta know what we’re up against.”

“I— you see.” Fluttershy covered her eyes. “I’m scared of ghosts! There I said it!”

That stunned everypony.

“But you are a ghost!” Dash shouted at her.

“I never said my life was great!” Fluttershy covered her eyes. “I used to live in the train station they hang out in now. It wasn’t great, but I had my pet spiders, and it was nice and quiet. But then that horrible blob monster showed up and ate all my pets! Even worse, Boss Rattler’s gang got pushed out from deeper in the tunnel. They kicked me out of my house and forced me to live in the sewers.”

“Can’t you just leave the sewers and go find some other cave to live in?” Twilight asked. “Or do you have to do the ‘pay rent’ thing to live in a cave too?”

Fluttershy shook her head.

“They stole something from me I can’t leave without. I’m too scared of ghosts to go over there and try to get it.” Fluttershy sobbed. “And they’ve been so mean to me this whole time! They know I have a phobia, but they constantly scare and bully me. They tell me about the parties they’re having just so I know I’m not invited and kill any spider I try to keep as a pet!”

“Yeesh. Now I just feel bad for you.” Listening to that gave Dash an angry frown.

“Thanks,” said Fluttershy. “I feel bad for me too.”

Dash had been the runt of the litter when she was younger. Maybe in some ways she still was. She used to get bullied a lot too. She learned the hard way nopony else would stand up for her so she had to do it herself.

Sometimes ponies could be horrible. And ghost ponies could be even more horrible!

Eventually, Dash did get rid of her bullies, even though she still never got any friends unless you counted Derpy. Dash wasn’t going to just sit around while someone who couldn’t stand up for themselves was being pushed around like that. She’d promised herself that she’d never be one of those useless adults who just ignored this kind of stuff.

“You know what?” Dash turned to the others. “We’re going over there anyway; I say we help her out. Get that thing they stole back!”

“Huh?” Fluttershy lifted her head. She nearly came out of the ground entirely this time. “You’d actually help me? Even though you’re predeads?”

“Just take us to where he is!” Dash hit her chest. “We’ll get rid of those bullies and get your stuff back.”

“I’m on board with this too!” Twilight stepped forward.

“There’s still a ten percent chance this is a trap,” said Pinkie, “but I’ve done way dumber things before so why the heck not?”

“You people are the nicest predeads I ever met.” Fluttershy’s eyes got teary again, but for once it wasn’t out of fear. “I’ll take you to where he lives, but there’s no way I’m going in there.”

Fluttershy led them down a few more corridors. That blob was everywhere, but if you kept a good distance it didn’t come after you. As long as they didn’t run into another big patch of it, which they totally would, they should be fine.

“But I gotta ask. Do you know anything about this blob?” Dash asked. “Or where the crow all these gremlins are coming from? Cause this is a lot of them.”

“No.” Fluttershy shook her head. “Or maybe a little. I know they came out of the same tunnel Boss Rattler did. I know it was supposed to be a subway tunnel, so it must have come from wherever that tunnel leads. I think he knows where that blob came from, but those other ghosts won’t talk to me.”

“And what exactly did they steal from you?” Dash asked. “We can’t get it back if we don’t know what it is.”

“Well.” Fluttershy looked off to one side, nervous again. “I guess I can tell you. See, it’s a teddy bear I kept past when ponies normally keep those things. I was kind of embarrassed I still slept with it and my unfinished business was that I never threw it away and grew up.”

“Okay, I see.” Dash nodded. “So we gotta get it back so you can throw it away and move on.”

“What?! No!” Fluttershy suddenly panicked and flew into a wall. “Why would you suggest that?!”

“Huh?” Dash looked at the others. “I honestly don’t know what I did!”

“Psst!” Pinkie whispered to her. “Ghost don’t like it when you phrase it as ‘moving on’, Dash. Just saying that phrase is kind of a party pooper for them.”

“But that’s what all the ghosts in the movies do,” said Dash.

“Those movies are racist and spread lies about ghosts!” Fluttershy managed to get enough nerve to float back out from the wall. “There’s no ‘moving on’. If a ghost ever finishes their unfinished business they just die! But like for real this time. Nopony wants to finish their business unless they’re suicidal.”

“Okay, okay! Sorry!” Dash put her hoof out. “I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay.” Fluttershy started leading them on again. “But that’s why I can never throw it out now. I don’t know what counts as getting rid of it. Somepony stealing or destroying it might mean I can’t throw it out, but then again it might not. For all I know, moving too far away from it will kill me. That’s why I’m stuck here without it.”

“Alright. So we find it and get it back to you,” said Dash.

Fluttershy stopped and pointed at a part of the wall that had clearly been broken up and dug through. There were no lights in the earthy tunnel, just darkness. Fluttershy hung back as the other three started into the tunnel.

Fluttershy and Pinkie both saw something coming. Fluttershy ducked under the ground with an ‘oh no’ while Pinkie got ready for a fight.

Three wraiths, one for each pony, came out of the walls. A wraith looked a lot less like a normal pony than a ‘high’ ghost. Their heads and forelegs were relatively normal but twisted immensely.

Their muzzles were elongated and filled with icicle-like fangs. Their hooves broke and split out into icy claws. Everything beyond that was completely unrecognizable, just twisting tendrils of cold and ghostly light.

They had more in common with animals than the ponies they came from, retaining the ability to feel emotions but not to think rationally. They were called wraiths for a reason, for how quick they were to anger.

The three wraiths came slashing at the ponies and inhaling deeply, trying to suck as much heat out of them as possible. The ones who went for Pinkie and Twilight were completely outmatched. Pinkie sent out a psychic wave that dissolved hers and Twilight threw a ball of green fire that burnt hers up in an instant.

Dash had fewer options. She split into the twenty crows. The wraith clawed one of the crows to the ground and started sucking the heat out of another. A lesser ghost like this couldn’t freeze you nearly as fast as a specter or even banshee could, so that crow got away without too much damage.

One of her crows flew back down the way they came, meaning most of Dash was free to be suicidally bold. She decided to try and scout ahead.

She flew down the tunnel with another five crows in tow. Dash managed to make it in as the others fought off the remaining wraith and she broke off in every direction.

On the other side was a subway station just like Fluttershy said, but an unfinished one. There was a platform and the tracks below it, but the walls weren’t fully cemented and there weren’t many rooms or any exits to the side.

The train was still here. There was a full train sitting in the station, then on the other, unfinished side of the track, they had several more train cars stacked on top of one another like a makeshift apartment building. It wasn’t ghosts living there, though, but gremlins. The ghosts must have packed them in because they were so full the gremlins were hanging out the windows.

Further back, the ghosts had made a barricade, with a wall of ice and a few train cars, at the tunnel the trains should have gone down. Dash got a bit closer to the wall of ice to see they’d had the same idea Twilight did. More of the blob was on the other side, that entire tunnel filled up with the red stuff.

She was starting to wonder where all the other ghosts were when they came pouring out of the walls, the train, and the ground.

There had to be at least twenty more wraiths and just as many wisps and shades. Mostly out of the train came the slightly stronger ghosts, poltergeists, and writs though Dash couldn’t tell the difference. All in all, there had to be over fifty ghosts swarming the place now.

But Dash didn’t see any of the more dangerous ghosts. That was until one more, much bigger, ghost came out from the front of the train.

Though he was in the shape of a pony, this guy was about as big as the train car he was now standing on. He wasn’t partially distorted, save his massive fangs made of ice and his hollowed-out eyes, filled only with a thick mist and a tiny flame where his pupils would be.

He created gnarled icicles around his hoof, forming into a clawed hand. He quickly grabbed Dash with this and drew her in close. A stream of mist came out of Rattler’s mouth as he opened it. At his current size, he wouldn’t even have to chew to eat Dash.

This had to be the boss. Only revenants got this big.

“Well that was a bit faster than I’d thought,” said Rattler. “But unless you can go and shapeshift into something a bit bigger, I’m afraid you’re just another hostage at this point.”

Dash crumbled to feathers in his grip as another instance of herself undid the spell. She and Boss Rattler were jarred by the change for about the same amount of time. Now Dash was standing next to Pinkie and Twilight at the entrance to the large room.

“Don’t underestimate me.” Dash ran a hoof over her mane.

“If you’re insisting.” Rattler curled his icy claw.

Another ghost, probably a poltergeist, floated out with two of the teenagers, the girls, just in front of him. Boss Rattler flew down and landed next to them.

They were unharmed but brought to a dangerously low temperature. Both of them were shivering violently, trying to curl up as tight as they could, and breathing heavily. Their lips and the inside of their ears had started to turn blue. If they stayed like that for too long they’d get frostbite.

“P-Pinkie Pie!” Diamond Tiara could barely speak through the shivering. “Get us out of here!”

Dash instinctively took a step forward but was quickly stopped. Rattler opened his mouth, as though he was about to freeze them to death.

“Careful now!” Rattler called out before climbing back up to his train car. “Little girly here is on the verge of frostbite and it won’t take my boy here long to finish her off. Try anything and she’ll be ‘moving on’ if you know what I mean. If not her one of them other kiddies.”

“What do you want?” Dash asked.

“What the crow do we want?” Rattler asked the other ghosts who all laughed. Rattler smiled, then scowled and climbed over the front of the train to glare down at them. “Why that’s exactly what I want to ask you filthy, blood-pumpin predeads.”

Witches 7: The New Blood

Apple Bloom walked up next to Sweetie Belle, keeping her cloak drawn tight. Dash sat down next to the sleeping Twilight, leaning up against her because there wasn’t enough room on the couch otherwise.

“So it all started back when we got kidnapped,” said Apple Bloom. “There I was, inside our wagon, standing face to face with Trixie. First thing I did was say ‘uh oh’, but when that didn’t work I knew I needed to try something else. Trixie used fog to put us to sleep, but me and Babs held our breath.

“We decided our only hope was to run outside and yell for help. She tried jumping up on Trixie to buy me a second but that didn’t work on account of Trixie grabbed my tail with her mind. That’s when I noticed I was right next to her spellbook. I thought maybe if I took it she’d lose some of her powers so I grabbed on.

“Suddenly, it was like every cell in my body was one of them tilt-a-whirls and I collapsed. I only held onto the book for five seconds before passing out. I was out for I guess fifteen minutes but Trixie said that was the most impressive thing she’d seen from a kid.”

It was something lost on all the other ponies, but Dash found that impressive too. The first time Dash touched a spellbook, she was out for hours! Dash looked over at Twilight, still fast asleep. She wondered how Twilight would react to that news. Was that how kids normally selected for witch training reacted to mind fibers?

“So then she takes me out of the room I was in, yeah?” Apple Bloom went on.

Trixie was paced back and forth inside the great hall, taking a long time to decide what to say.

“I’m conflicted,” she finally said. “You don’t have that fear and hatred in your heart you need to motivate yourself! But you have the gift. I suppose I could teach you a few things if you’re interested.”

“Lady, I’m twelve! You think I want to learn things?” I asked. And her jaw dropped cause that was such a cool line I came up with on the spot.

“Look, kid,” she said. Her jaw was back up. “You can spend the next six months sitting in that dingy room with the other kids or you can humor me and get your own luxury dungeon. I’ll give you a big bed, ice cream, comic books, whatever you want.”

I don’t want it to sound like I was tempted by ice cream. No, I was strategizing straight from that moment. I knew I could eventually use this to break the curse on us and escape.

But I did immediately hold my hoof out and say, “You got a deal!”

So we sit down and I ask what she was going to teach me.

“Magic, of course!” Her eyes turned green and her horn lit up when she said that. “What else would a witch teach you? Manestyling?

“But can an earth pony really learn magic?” I asked. “I know we can do magic. Shoot, my sister always tells me earth ponies can draw the most magic and unicorns the least. But unicorns and even pegasi are way better at focusing it than us which is why we can’t do spells.”

“As far as magic goes, Equestria is in the dark ages compared to witches,” she told me. “If you know what I do, an earth pony can cast almost any spell a unicorn can. Screwball’s an earth pony and a witch, isn’t she?”

I had no idea who Screwball was, but I still nodded.

“You’re not wrong that earth ponies have the most power, unicorns the most focus, and pegasi are in between but that’s only a limitation if you’re stupid and weak,” said Trixie. “Watch. I’ll use pegasus magic to create lightning without my horn.”

So her eyes went green and her whole body glowed like it was her horn for a second. One second later, green fire surrounded her hooves. She held up one of them, then the fire vanished, but her hoof was crackling with lightning.

I didn’t know this at the time, but making lightning is one of the hardest things for a unicorn to do. Only one percent can do it. Right then I was just impressed she was doing magic at all with her hoof.

She punched and the lightning flew off in a bolt, smashing one of the windows.

“That’s incredible!” I said. “You’re saying I can just run around shooting lighting wherever I want?”

“Oh, if you’re a smart filly you can do much more than that,” she told me. “But if you’re not a genius then there’s no point wasting my time with you because you simply won’t get it. So I’m giving you a test.”

She took out a mind fiber. Oh! Those are like these little pink threads that put information directly into your brain. I got so dizzy I puked when she gave it to me, but I didn’t pass out that time.

“I’m only going to do this one more time, so pay attention.” Then her eyes started glowing green again.

She did it the same way as before only this time I understood what was going on perfectly! I was just like ‘yep! The carmot in her bones is converting the whatever’. It was so obvious I wanted to slap myself.

“Your test is to make electricity with your hooves,” Trixie told me. “Even a spark is good enough.”

“How long do I got?” I asked.

“As long as you can take it,” said Trixie. “If you start crying or beg me to let you out then you fail your test.”

And I was like. “Eh?”

Then she took the mind fiber away from me.

Trixie went and tied me up. She tied me to the ceiling with a rope so that I was dangling upside down with my nose a foot from the ground. My right foreleg was tied up with some wires on top of that.

I found I could swing back and forth, but I couldn’t get anywhere near the wall or make myself fall. Trixie told me that if I made even a tiny bit of electricity with my right foreleg, the wire would pick it up and I’d drop down and be free.

I hung there for seven days! Wait, no sorry, it was closer to seven hours. But I was still so hungry by then. I didn’t cry or nothing. Really! I swear. It was starting to get worse, though.

I tried hard to remember what I knew earlier, but you forget everything soon as you let go of mind fiber.

I started thinking it was impossible. Earth ponies can’t use magic at all when we’re not touching the ground. But then I started thinking something else. Like, what if that was the whole point of this crazy contraption?

I wasn’t hung upside down to make something impossible even harder. I was hung upside down cause that was the only way I’d be able to do it. It was like there was a spark in my mind just then. I remembered some of the stuff from before.

Like, the stuff unicorn horns are made of is called ‘carmot’. There are small amounts of that inside your bones no matter what type of pony you are. See, that’s what Trixie used to start casting that spell!

I figured I couldn’t possibly sense that when I was touching the ground so that’s why I was hanging around. I could remember what I saw before just a tiny little bit, right? I started concentrating as hard as I could, trying to do what I remembered, but it wasn’t working.

I think when twelve hours passed Trixie offered to let me out, but I said no cause I felt like I almost had it! I kept getting closer and closer till almost a whole day went by.

And suddenly I saw that same fire Trixie had made a few hours earlier. I had no idea how to make that into lightning, but I guess I didn’t need to. It turned into electricity all by itself.

And woosh! I unleashed infinite power. My entire body was electrified, and I was surrounded by blue lightning and—

Oh.

Well, okay. It was more like a teeny tiny little spark? It sure felt like infinite power at the time.

But it was enough!

I landed on the ground and was free! I noticed the door was wide open too.

I think I might have been able to run away just then, but something happened that made me yell out soon as I got back up.

Know what it was?

Apple Bloom cleared her throat and stood upon the table, smirking wide. She threw off her cloak and turned to one side.

“I got my cutie mark!”

Apple Bloom’s cutie mark was a cauldron filled with a green liquid.

Everypony was stunned by the revelation for a moment. Then applause filled the room and Applejack laughed.

“I’m so proud of you!” Applejack ran up and hugged her. “You see? I told you, you just need to be patient! And look what an impressive one you got too!”

“Now we have to have another party already!” Pinkie said.

“That’s one cool cutie mark story too!” Dash whistled. “It’s like something that’d happen in one of those battle comics.”

Apple Bloom smiled wide as the sisters hugged and nuzzled.

“And you finally consorted with dark forces to gain power for the first time.” Applejack got teary-eyed. “Mom and Dad would be so proud seeing you now!”

“You’re proud of her for that?” Dash asked.

“Have you ever given in to the temptations of the dark side?” Applejack asked. “If not then you wouldn’t know.”

“Well, there was kind of Twilight.” Dash yawned and leaned up against her. “I gave in to her dark temptations of power.”

“And how did that work out?” Applejack asked.

“Well—“ Dash looked at Twilight, then over at Applejack’s smug victory grin. She sighed, then admitted the inevitable. “Pretty good.”

“Yep! See? The dark side is the best side to be on,” said Applejack. “You Equestrians get a lot of stuff backwards like that.”

Dash couldn’t exactly disagree with that at this point.

“See, it’s like my destiny is to be super powerful and stuff!” Apple Bloom was bobbing up and down. “Also, it’s way later in the story, but I’m good at using the cauldron and doing potion stuff! I’m like a potion wizard, sis!”

“Well, I dunno if I can get a witch to train you but you got a first cousin once removed named Bubbling Cider who might be able to train you with potions and stuff,” Applejack offered.

A few eyes glanced over at Twilight who, without doubt, would be far and away better at teaching Apple Bloom potions than whoever that other pony was. Dash felt like she was a potion master just from hanging out with Twilight.

But would Twilight let her watch? She could be squirrely about certain information. The thought of her training Apple Bloom to be a full-on witch occurred in Dash’s mind.

“So hold on!” Dash interrupted the hugging. “Trixie was giving you witch training that whole time? For real?”

“Yeah!” Apple Bloom nodded. “Mostly I had to look at this spiny thing for hours at a time. But she showed me how to use the cauldron and make some potions too like I told you. I had it pretty good for those couple months.”

“The makarakarn?” Dash asked. “How many spins are you up to?”

“I got up to seven spins after a few months,” said Apple Bloom. “Well, I could do eight if I still had it, but I’d probably barf.”

Dash was still only at three and a half!

“So Trixie was planning on making you her student and training you to be a witch?” Applejack asked.

“Sort of. Trixie told me she wasn’t old enough to take in a student yet so instead, she was gonna ship me off to another witch named ‘Auntie Eclipse’, who I guess was old. I kept telling her I didn’t want to leave my family behind, but she was just like ‘You’re gonna grow up and leave your family to go work in a steel mill one day', on account of that’s what all kids do.”

“She wasn’t gonna keep her word after all.” Applejack glared off in the general direction of Equestria. “Y’all went too easy on that despicable witch!”

“She wasn’t that mean to me,” Apple Bloom surprised her sister by defending Trixie. “Shoot, I dunno if she felt bad or if she meant it, but she decided not to send me away at the last minute. Said I was too attached to my family so I wouldn’t be able to complete the training.”

Applejack became thoughtful and quiet.

“And then she met me!” Sweetie Belle jumped up next to Apple Bloom.

“I still had to get out of the castle first!” Apple Bloom said. “Remember? I told you we had a curse keeping us there. It’d break once she gave one of us a key she kept hidden in her bedroom. But see, I outsmarted her. I noticed she was making a super radiation potion I bet she was gonna inject us with, so I made my own potion to counter it and drank that when she wasn’t looking.

“When she injected me, I transformed on purpose then back when she left. Then I had the whole castle to myself and was able to take the key! That ghost guy? I dunno his name but he just let me do it cause I think he likes me better than Trixie.”

“That’s my sister.” Applejack hugged her. “You are the smarts of the family.”

“Yeah! And then she met me!” Sweetie Belle pressed up against her.

“Nah, and then there was a million explosions everywhere and I ran for my life,” said Apple Bloom.

“And then?”

“And then I met Sweetie Belle.”

This was this giant flaming monster running around the outside of the castle, so I ran and ran and ran! I didn’t even think about all the monsters until I saw two glowing blue eyes looking at me.

Both of us jumped back, scared of the other, before realizing we were being silly and slowly walked up to one another.

“Wait. Are you a robot?” I asked.

“Sort of?” Sweetie Belle didn’t sound too sure. “I’d say I’m technically a cyborg but on a double technicality I don’t have any organic body parts right now.”

And we had this big philosophical discussion about whether she was a robot or a cyborg.

Then there was another explosion and we agreed we should move away from all the fire and death.

“I can go out ahead. Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if I die.”

“Don’t say that just cause you’re a robot!” I said. “I’m sure robot lives matter too!”

“No, no. I mean I have a bunch of other bodies, so it doesn’t matter if this one gets destroyed.”

See, she has more than one body! Ain’t that cool? It was a good thing too.

See, the critters in the swamp didn’t like all that fighting, and these huge bugs were running around everywhere. Sweetie Belle was tough, being a robot, and could smoosh most of them until this giant centipede showed up. It was like a stampede of twenty cows coming right at us!

It grabbed Sweetie Belle and thrashed her all around, but it just couldn’t break her. She managed to grab onto its head and hold it down for a minute. Meanwhile, I had a bunch of potions I made just in case. I threw an exploding one at it while Sweetie held it down and that blew its head off.

“Huh! I guess we’re pretty tough for a couple of kids.” We bumped hooves. “As long as a centipede twice that big doesn’t show up we should be fine!”

And then a centipede twice that big showed up!

I mean, not right then, but a half-hour later. It picked Sweetie Belle and squeezed real hard. This time it did something.

It ripped my robot buddy right in half and I seriously thought I was about to die. But then my other robot friend, Saccharin, showed up! She shot a drill right into its mouth and centipede guts just flew everywhere!

“I acquired Apple Bloom and headed north as this was the safest route,” Saccharin reported.

“Yeah, she can kill anything,” said Apple Bloom. “I saw her kill a lot of stuff on the way here.”

“I wanna tell the next part!” Sweetie Belle interrupted. “I activated another one of my bodies and sent it down there. And uh. I guess we just walked back after that. Then the story’s over.”

Sweetie Belle scraped her hoof against the ground.

“But I did get good at controlling my extra bodies!” Sweetie had two of the 8000s walk over to her side. One of them shook her hoof while, behind her, another grabbed a balloon and brought it to the main Sweetie Belle.

“This one’s the real you, right?” Apple Bloom grabbed the main Sweetie Belle’s head and looked it over, seeing if she could get a peek at the brain. “The one with your brain inside it like you said?”

“Uh, huh!” Sweetie Belle nodded. “This body is way tougher than the others. I have lots of weapons like Saccharin, but Rarity doesn’t let me use them cause I accidentally sound blasted everypony.”

“Having a million bodies must be really neat!”

“I’m still getting used to it. It feels a little weird.”

“But think of all the things you can do with them! Oh! I just had an idea for an amazing game we could play!” Apple Bloom turned to Saccharin. “You should come play with us too.”

“Do I look like a child to you?” Saccharin asked.

“Um. Yes?”

Saccharin couldn’t think of any response to that but glaring.

“Very well. Then I’ll follow.”

Apple Bloom led them all off to go play her game. Dash hoped it wasn’t too dangerous, though then again the three of them could easily slaughter a small army.

“But we still gotta do more stories!” Pinkie jumped up onto the edge of the fainting couch. It was impressive she managed to balance on the tiny little bit of it that remained.

“Huh?”

“If you’re not here for Twilight’s birthday party why is everypony here?” Pinkie asked. “Why’s Applejack here? Also, who is Applejack?”

“Oh right. I don’t mean to steal that kid’s thunder, but I got something way cooler than a cutie mark!” Dash bragged. “See, here’s everything that happened since the last time I saw you.”

It took longer than she thought it would to recount everything to Pinkie. Applejack listened with rapt attention too, hearing all of this for the first time as well. When Dash finished, Pinkie was elated by what she heard.

“Does this mean you changed your mind?!” Pinkie bounced over to Dash.

“Changed my mind about what?” Dash asked.

“About helping me break the curse of undeath!” Pinkie spread her forelegs wide, ready to embrace Dash and welcome her to the pink side.

“Huh? Oh yeah!” Dash forgot for a little while there that Pinkie was out there working on this mission. “I think it’d be best if we work together from here out if you want. Did you make any progress with your thing?”

“After I won the pinball championship I found where that mirror is.” Pinkie put half a candy bar in her mouth before taking out a map and unrolling it on the table. “Ish over here on—“ Pinkie took a bite out of it and swallowed without even chewing. “On Endless Paradise Island!”

The map was of the pirate coast and the area around it. Endless Paradise was an island about 50 miles off the pirate coast, across the ocean from Equestria. Just after the pirate coast were rough mountains, where the griffons lived long ago.

Technically there were still griffons out there somewhere, but the curse of undeath destroyed their civilization and left that entire area uninhabitable. Maybe it was cruel in some ways, but none of the surviving nations allowed any serious griffon population inside them anymore. Any carnivorous population would slowly fill the country with deadlier zombies and eventually make it uninhabitable as well.

The only saving grace was that zombie griffons couldn’t fly. The remaining griffons all lived in small, isolated cities surrounded by high walls somewhere beyond the pirate coast. If Dash and her friends ever got rid of the zombies, those guys would love them forever at least.

“I figured all sorts of stuff out.” Pinkie jabbed her hoof on a spot near the eastern edge of the island. “It’s right here, inside the funhouse. Screwball inherited lots of stuff from her father, Bloodstorm.”

Pinkie put a photograph of Screwball, the ruler of Endless Paradise Island, on the table next. She was a pink mare with curly purple hair underneath her witch’s hat, smiling wildly in the picture. There was something special about her eyes. They were pools of purple with swirls of pink leading to the center, making them look like hypnowheels.

That was one thing Dash hadn’t known when she came up with that backstory. She ended up making Twilight part of one of the witch’s sprawling family. Who knew how Screwball would react to that?

“I even got this list of the top ten most surprising facts about Endless Paradise Island. Number three is especially shocking.” Pinkie took a list out of her mane, took another bite of cake, then started to read with her mouth half full. “Fact one: twenty percent of the world’s gold and ten percent of the world’s silver is all on this one island!”

“Dang!” Dash crossed her forelegs and leaned back against the sleeping Twilight. “Twilight’s pretend dad was a better pirate than I thought.”

“Fact two: Gold is so common on the island that you can’t buy anything with it,” Pinkie kept reading. “They got ‘whacko bucks’ you use as money instead. Fact three!” Pinkie lowered her list to give the other’s an excited smile. “This is the extra shocking one! It has the tallest Ferris wheel at 1,000 feet and the world's longest water slide! Check out the map!”

Pinkie moved her hoof along the edge of the map.

“It’s almost four miles long! It runs from the top of the north side, around the edge of the island to the south side. And it goes through waterfalls and through the center of that Ferris wheel!” Pinkie hugged the map and smiled, looking around at the others with excitement. “We gotta do it, girls! If we’re assaulting the island we might as well go down that water slide, right?”

“Pinkie, after seeing the fight with Trixie, I think we’ll be lucky if any of this stuff is still standing afterward,” said Dash.

“Ah, shoot! You don’t think Screwball would be nice and let us go on all the rides real quick before we fight?” Pinkie asked.

Dash tried to think of a polite way to respond to that.

“Now hold up.” Applejack stood. “Y’all aren’t just going to defeat all the witches and undo the curse of undeath but you’re taking down Endless Paradise on top of that?”

“Yeah.” Dash nodded. “And then I’m gonna try and come up with a way for vegan ghosts like Fluttershy to live in normal society.”

Even saying it out loud, adding stuff on top of those other goals sounded insane. But it did get a happy smile from Fluttershy.

“Shoot!” Applejack shook her head and sat down. “Part of me wants to call you crazy, but I promised I’d never doubt your team again after yesterday and I meant it. When you say you’re gonna do all that stuff, I believe you.”

“Really?” Dash pointed to herself. It felt strange for somepony to believe in her.

Applejack nodded.

“You already did something I thought was impossible. But if you plan on changing society so drastically, won’t you have to become part of the elite four?” Applejack asked. “You got a plan to do that too?”

Dash hadn’t even thought that far ahead. Maybe part of her wasn’t expecting she’d seriously get this far.

These days the adventurer’s guild was insanely influential. Being S rank already put Dash’s political influence close to that of a senator.

But even if Twilight became S rank too, it wouldn’t be enough to reform society like the rest of their group wanted. Maybe Dash was getting close to the point where vouching for Fluttershy and the others would be enough to get around the law. Changing the law itself would be much harder.

“How do you get to be an elite anyway?” Fluttershy asked. “Is it different now?”

“Now that I’m rank S, I can challenge any of the current four,” said Dash. “If I remember right, it’s like this. 25 senators get one vote each. Then with me, there’ll be 13 rank S ponies who each get three votes. The current elite gets five votes. So the S ranks get almost as many votes as the other two combined. They’re the main ponies you need the support of.”

“Don’t do it if you can’t win,” Pinkie pointed out. “You only get to challenge one of them every ten years.”

“Right,” said Dash

“Do you think you’d win if you ran against one of them?” Fluttershy asked.

“Right now? No way.” Dash shook her head. “But if we can take out another witch or two… it’s possible.”

Dash knew the names of all the S-rank ponies. Of the 12, Void Walker and Night Glider were both in Starlight’s cult. Then there were several senators in her cult as well. Starlight controlled over 20 of the 80-something votes and was the biggest wildcard here.

“If any of the current elite four die or resign it’s the same only you can vote for any rank S pony but yourself,” said Dash. “Way things are shaping up, I guess that’s not impossible. We gotta start getting ready for a serious fight.”

“Oh!” Pinkie’s eyes widened as she remembered something important and raised her hoof. “Oh wait, Dashie! Ponies are going to start spying on you soon! One of them’s bound to check the river where Twilight’s house is before long. There’s no way to keep them away without making them all suspicious!”

“We’ve been planning stuff out for a little while.” Dash yawned. “We’re gonna move all of Twilight’s stuff here and Rarity’s castle will be the place we have our final showdown if it comes to that.”

“So you’re all going to live in one big spooky house together without me?” Pinkie looked around the room, her ears drooping. “Now I feel left out! Also maybe it’s not a good idea for you to commute from this castle every day?”

“We’re not moving in with Rarity. We decided we’re going to buy a house together in Equestria. Then Twilight’s got this portal thing. Z gate or something.” Dash yawned. “We can get from there to here with that.”

“Oh!” Pinkie’s hoof shot up, excited! “Rainbow Dash! The house right across the street from me is for sale! You gotta buy it! You gotta!”

Lying down was starting to feel like a mistake. Dash couldn’t get back up now. She found it hard to respond to the suggestion, though living next to Pinkie sounded like a good idea.

“And then if we build a tunnel under the street, it’ll be like we all live in one big house together! You’d love it in Ponytown. Nothing bad ever happens in Ponytown.”

“Nothing?” Dash’s wings rustled, expecting something horrible to happen just now at the mention.

“Nope! Nothing. The psychic guild’s headquarters is downtown. Then we got five retired S rankers, including me, living in the old pony community I got kicked out of. Then Octavia, Bonbon, Night Glider, and Fleetfoot all live in Ponytown too.”

From the sound of things, it’d be worth your time to go to the next town over to commit any crimes.

“It’s the only place with a negative crime rate,” said Pinkie. “Try figuring that one out!”

Dash did try, but her brain was too sleepy to figure anything out right now.

“But won’t somepony find Twilight’s house even if it’s empty?” Pinkie asked. “And how are you gonna move it all? Ponies are going to be watching you now.”

“Nah, nah. When I say we’re moving everything I mean—” Dash let out a heavy sigh. Now it felt like she’d been up for 2 days. “Okay, sorry. I can’t do any more. Going to sleep.”

Dash fell onto her back, into the gap in the couch between Twilight and its backing. It was a nice, cozy spot. Though then again, a bed of broken glass might feel cozy when you were this tired.

She fell asleep faster than she’d ever fallen asleep before.

Twilight woke up when a certain pegasus rolled over and knocked her off the couch. Dash had tried falling asleep next to her on the tiny couch but there hadn’t been enough room for the two of them.

It looked like most of the others were asleep by now. Applejack was sleeping on another couch, Fluttershy was likely somewhere dark. Pinkie was still awake, eating cake, while Rarity was talking to Sweetie Belle and Applejack’s sister.

“Alright, now that I can deal with it.” Twilight turned to Pinkie. “What did you mean when you said it was my birthday?”

“See, today’s the day you were born!”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Well, I’m declaring that you were born today.”

“I don’t think you can do that,” said Twilight. “Is this one of your weird culture things?”

“Oh, absolutely! Every year on the anniversary of your birth you get one free party! You gotta pay for any extras.” Pinkie held out a piece of cake to Twilight. “Have some of this.”

“So it’s like a holiday?” Twilight looked down at the cake. “I suppose that’s not the strangest thing you ponies do.”

Twilight tried eating the cake. It tasted a lot better than those ones Rainbow Dash bought from the store.

“Did anything happen while I was asleep?” Twilight asked.

“We learned stuff! Trixie tied Apple Bloom up and made her electrify her way out as a test.” Pinkie pointed to Applejack’s sister.

“Huh.” Twilight yawned. “They got a lot easier with these tests.”

“Easy? Then what did they make you do?” Pinkie asked.

“Oh! I was only five at the time, so I don’t remember it too well. But I was covered in magic-eating leeches that sucked all the power out of me, had my hooves encased in cement, and was thrown into the river behind my house. Getting out of that now would be easy, but at the time, let me tell you!”

Twilight laughed thinking back on it, though Pinkie looked disturbed by the story.

“So you always have to do something like that to train as a witch?” Pinkie asked. “Oo! What kind of test did you make Dashie do?”

The truth was Twilight had been afraid Rainbow Dash might not pass. She might have gotten hurt. And if she did fail, how would Twilight have justified this to Smarty Pants.

“I already decided back then that I didn’t need to follow the teachings completely,” Twilight lied. “I train whoever I want!”

“Oh!” Apple Bloom ran up and jumped up on the couch, pressing up next to Twilight. “Then that means you can train me, right? See, I just got my potion cutie mark! Trixie sure thought I had what it takes to be a witch! Well, everything but hatred.”

Trixie thought this kid was a candidate for witch training? Surely that meant Apple Bloom here had natural talent as the other witch wouldn’t have trained somepony simply because she wanted to keep them around.

But Twilight was conflicted on what to do. She screwed up with her first student but Rainbow Dash was going fine, if slow. Then again, neither of them were qualified.

And what if some other witch decided to be the one to ‘train’ Apple Bloom? Twilight’s confidence in her abilities as a teacher were shaky at best, but surely she’d be better than any of the other witches.

As Twilight agonized over the decision, Apple Bloom repeated the word ‘please’ over and over again which did not help her case at all.

“I suppose I was planning on teaching Rarity to use the cauldron as part of our deal anyway,” said Twilight. “And I’m already teaching Rainbow Dash about that sort of thing. I suppose one more student won’t make a difference.”

“Really?!” Apple Bloom’s ears twitched in excitement.

“But I’m only teaching you about alchemical witchcraft for now,” said Twilight. “I don’t have time for anything else.”

“That’s fine! That one’s my favorite witchcraft anyway!” Apple Bloom clapped her hooves together and bowed her head. “Thank you so much! I’ll be the best student ever! Apparently, I’m a genius, even!”

Twilight was curious to see just how talented Apple Bloom was, but for now, the kid ran off to be with her robot friends.

“Also!” Pinkie raised her hoof. “Rainbow Dash was going to tell me about the plan to move all of your stuff over here but she fell asleep.”

It didn’t look like Pinkie understood the extent to which Twilight intended to move ‘all’ of her things.

“Right! I think we should be just about ready for that spell.” Twilight got up. “Maybe I should cast it now before anypony thinks to go there. You can watch if you want.”

Twilight led Pinkie to the back of Rarity’s castle. The less advanced 7000 robots had stayed behind this whole time to dig out a hole in the right location and make ready a foundation. From the looks of things, they’d finished a little bit before Twilight came outside.

In addition to the foundation was a bit of Twilight’s work. Runes were written in the four cardinal directions surrounding the edge of the pit. This was to work as the waypoint and they’d finished charging as well.

“Here’s how the Z gate spell works.” Twilight tapped the rune at the bottom of the pit and four blue flames appeared around it. “It takes a few hours to set up, but once you have this waypoint down you can easily create a portal to it even if you’re hundreds of miles away. Of course, there’s a limit to how much mass you can transport through the portal before it collapses so I’ll only get one use out of this one.”

A portal opened just above the hole. Some dirt and roots dipped out from the portal, then the trunk of the treehouse emerged. With a thud, the tree landed in its hole a moment later and the portal closed soon after. Rarity’s robots went to work straightening it out and shoring up the foundation.

“We can use one to move from wherever our new house is to here multiple times,” said Twilight. “That way we have one united stronghold.”

Something clicked in Pinkie’s head.

“Oh, wait! Z-gate!” Pinkie jumped. “I know that spell! That’s the one Minuette keeps using to get away and stuff!”

Twilight nodded.

“I think she’s the one we need to go after next,” said Twilight. “If the other witches all team up, that power will make them too dangerous collectively.”

“Do you think you can catch her?” Pinkie asked. “Let me tell you, she can zip around like nopony’s business.”

“I have this.” Twilight took out the mind fiber Trixie gave her. “There’s a panic room she retreats to. It’s also the central hub of her portal Z-gate network. If I can get inside there without her noticing, I can map out a large enough portion of her landing points that she won’t be able to get away.”

“Ooo! That’s neat.” Pinkie marveled at it. “But you really gotta be careful with this chance. Like I said, she’s as slippery as slippery gets! You have no idea how many ponies have tried to capture her and failed. She’s one of the most hated witches so she’s always paranoid about attacks too.”

“She is?” Twilight asked. “Worse than Trixie?”

“Oh, yeah! One of her more famous curses is the curse of the black mirror. It compels authors who get infected with it to write nothing but cautionary tales about how science and technology are a bad thing and will kill us all. It’s like— like this reverse psychology thing. Or maybe just forward psychology. See, if she convinces us to go back to medieval times, then witches will never have to worry about us catching up to them. They can terrorize us forever!”

Novels? Twilight knew those were like fables that went on way too long. She’d yet to read one but didn’t see the point of a story that went on for more than a page or two. That should be all you need to convey whatever message you have.

“I’ve never bothered reading one of those,” said Twilight. “Are they seriously convincing enough to get ponies to walk into such an obvious trap?”

“You’d be surprised,” said Pinkie. “Though most of the time sci-fi is just about the dangers of pinball these days. She ruined the entire genre is what I’m saying! That’s the one thing I thought was better when I was a kid the first time.”

“So she just messes up your stories?” Twilight asked. “That sounds annoying, but I don’t see how that’s eviler than Trixie.”

“Oh! I guess she also blows up factories and laboratories and stuff. She’s got an actual body count.” Pinkie shrugged. “Fun fact. You wanna know why Curse Tech is called Curse Tech?”

“Did they figure out how to make curses?” Twilight asked.

“Haha! No everypony gets that wrong,” said Pinkie. “It’s cause they find a bunch of legalese workarounds to get past some of seventh book wielder's curses. You know, we invented that combustion engine thing when I was in high school, but we had to go back to using the steam engine because of her. She tried doing the same thing to stop us from using AC next, but then Curse Tech found a workaround.”

Twilight hardly knew what either of those things were, having only read about contemporary technology. But from the way Pinkie spoke, ending her curses would be a huge deal.

“And all of these curses can be broken by beating her at a game called ‘tag’, right?” Twilight remembered as much from the mind fiber. “She did put all her eggs in one basket there.”

It wasn’t a bad idea in general, though. The easier the condition for breaking the curse the stronger you could make it. Playing this game with her was something that should be easy but was made impossible from her actions, giving her the best of both worlds.

“Only that’s way harder than it sounds,” Pinkie assured her. “Fleetfoot’s the fastest pony who ever lived and she couldn’t do it. I’m the most psychic and I couldn’t do it either!”

“But all of us working together…” Twilight closed her eyes and thought. Even for her, it wouldn’t be easy to chase her through such a massive network of portals. She was still finalizing the game plan for that.

Though before that Twilight had a much more difficult task. She’d have to be ‘interviewed’.

Cultists 4: Absolution

On some distant technicality, Sunset was having dinner with the rest of the elite four. That is, with the two that could be bothered to show up for anything.

Twice yearly, the SA had its convention to discuss and vote on various proposals and policies. This would be the only time the entire elite four, and every S-rank pony as well, would all be in the same place.

And so, following some tradition dating to a time when the elite four didn’t all hate one another, the four of them were ‘eating dinner’. Sunset and Flash Bang were locked in a staring contest, neither daring to take their eyes off the other. Starlight had her eyes closed, acting like she was above it all, but then she didn’t say a word either. Nopony heard anything from Nailbat in weeks, but it was still far too early to hope he’d died.

The tension in the air was such that none of them picked up their knives for fear it might be seen as an attempted first strike. Sunset forgot what the food on her plate even was. She’d eat later.

Or perhaps it wasn’t tension at all. More typically they’d be shouting at one another over whatever issues of the day they disagreed over. Indeed, the mood seemed depressed compared to what Sunset had gotten used to.

The room was too big for three ponies, the lighting too dim, the ceilings too high and the atmosphere too quiet. Yes, it felt as though she was at a funeral where every pony blamed every other pony present for the death of their loved one but had just enough tact to keep their mouths shut.

Only one issue was on anypony’s mind this year. For the first time in history, two witches had been defeated in a single year. In the streets, ponies were growing restlessly excited, thinking this was the dawn of some new golden age.

Behind the scenes, tension was brewing among the powers that be. It looked like Rainbow Dash and Silverstorm wouldn’t be as easily bought as they’d hoped. Sunset knew these two were getting worried that they couldn’t compete.

Sunset, for her part, truly believed that might made right in a way that even the other witches only pretended to. She would have no problem bowing to a pony more powerful than herself. She welcomed this change. Her ideal system always was for the strongest pony to lead the rest– it didn’t have to be her.

Starlight and Flash Bang were the same sort of hypocrite, talking about the system that rewards the strong was so great… so long as nopony stronger than themselves was around. Who knew what sort of a mess they planned on making if they couldn’t get their way?

The door opened and an unexpected guest arrived. It was Nailbat in his stained, green hoodie. With it up, his face became completely shrouded in darkness so that only two glowing red eyes could be seen. Yet there could be no doubt to his identity. His namesake was strapped to his foreleg by heavy chains that jingled as he walked. Even a pony with a death wish would have picked a better means to off themselves than carrying that thing around.

He all but stumbled into the room, exaggerating how tired he was. Nailbat was so full of it. You couldn’t trust anything he said or did.

“Oh hey, look.” Nailbat sat down at the table, putting his chin down against it like he was ready to sleep. “I actually showed up for one of these.”

Nailbat took out a thermos, one Sunset hoped contained coffee. He unscrewed the top and drank the entire bottle in several long gulps. Then he looked down at the bowl in front of him, set out just in case. Sunset knew some brown stew or something filled the bowls but didn’t take her eyes off Flash Bang to look.

“The crow is this?” Nailbat stabbed it with a fork. The wrong fork on purpose, Sunset knew without looking. “Is this barf? Does fine society eat the regurgitated meals of orphans now? Just to spite the rest of us?”

He always knew how to get a rise out of Flash Bang. She began to falter in her staring contest at that.

“It’s a mushroom bourguignon,” she said with as much restraint as possible. “I suppose you wouldn’t know, seeing as it didn’t come out of a vending machine.”

“I was afraid of that.” Nailbat reached into his jacket and pulled out a small bag of chips. “But I’m prepared.”

Nailbat opened the bag and started eating the potato chips right there. For a minute, the only sound in the room was his loud crunching.

Flash Bang blinked once. Then twice. Then she finally turned in his direction.

“You’ve been suspiciously quiet lately,” said Flash. “Nopony’s seen you for over a month. I expected you to be lazy, but not silent. You don’t have anything to say about our new friends?”

“Hm.” Nailbat looked at them each in turn. “None of you figured out where I was? You need better spies. Well, I went on a little adventure. Surely, I’m not the only pony here who thought that backstory was suspicious, am I?”

He didn’t need to elaborate. Claiming you were one of Bloodstorm’s kids from the pirate coast was one way to give yourself an untraceable history. If somepony were going to make up a cover story, they’d make up something like that.

“Well, the difference is I called her bluff,” Nailbat continued. “I went all the way to the pirate coast to investigate.”

Nailbat reached into his filthy hoodie and pulled out a stack of unorganized papers that he set down on the table.

“She’s telling the truth,” he concluded. “I found plenty of evidence to corroborate the story. I got there before word of Trixie’s defeat and found plenty of ponies who had seen Silverstorm and could attest to her power. The hermit she claimed raised her, Sea Scroll, is a well-known sage near the Dunmare islands. Furthermore, I found a paper trail.”

He put a hoof on the top sheet of paper and slid it across the table.

“The Skull and Saber pirates keep a record of all slave transactions. This is the documentation of Silverstorm’s mother selling her, aged three, for approximately fifteen thousand bits. They paid this much because a former member of the original Bloodstorm Cartel vouched that she was one of Bloodstorm’s daughters. Those fetch a lot of money as ponies expect his foals to have superpowers or some such.”

Sunset had seen such a document before and it certainly looked authentic at first glance. The Skull and Saber were one of the many criminal organizations that chose to bend the knee to Screwball when she made clear her intention to recreate the Bloodstorm Cartel.

She pulled it closer with her magic and studied it carefully, looking for any sign it might be a forgery. She’d need to analyze the actual age of this document later. The Skull and Saber hadn’t existed for some time, so if it were too new…

“I have a second one where the hermit she mentioned, Sea Scroll, purchased her for one and a half times as much.” He presented a slightly less battered piece of paper as evidence next. “But perhaps more interesting than any of that… I heard a few rumors that might elucidate her true motives.”

Nailbat put both his forehooves and his head down on the table and spoke in a hushed tone as he watched the others.

“You see, while she lived the life of a hermit, Silverstorm was strongly attached to the sage Sea Scroll. And guess who killed the wrong crow, as they say?” Nailbat straightened up and with his hoof drew a line across his neck. “Yes, Screwball was the one who killed her mentor. And she was livid about it and swore revenge and came to Equestria shortly thereafter.

“It’s likely she came here to bring Equestria to war with the pirate coast. I suspect her true aim is not just killing Screwball but destroying absolutely everything she’s ever built or cared about. That’s where she aims to take us– to war.”

The story he wove was believable enough. Everypony on the pirate coast had either sworn loyalty or an oath of revenge to Screwball. Her wanting to defeat ‘all’ of the witches, as she’d said in private, would coincidentally include Screwball.

It wasn’t exactly above Nailbat to fake this sort of thing. He didn’t like any of the ponies present and him helping them needed more explaining than him lying to them.

But if it was true Silverstorm ultimately wanted to lead them to war?

Perhaps even then it’d be worth it to side with her.

“With Minuette and her curses out of the way, we may not be far from bringing that rabble in line,” said Flash Bang. “I’m hardly against bringing the light of Equestria to those wretches.”

Two generations ago, her grandfather, Flash Blade, had conquered Manehattan and gotten North Equestria to submit to his rule. The Flashes had been expanding Equestria’s borders for some time now.

Bringing order to the pirate coast and turning it into an Equestrian colony was one of their many pipe dreams. Indeed, there was little else she could do to live up to her grandfather’s name at this point.

“But how do we know anything you just said is true?” Flash Bang was the one to ask it.

Nailbat gave a slow and weary shrug.

“I guess you just gotta have faith or something,” he left that sappy line to linger a moment. “Or barring that, you could go to the pirate coast yourself. I suppose you’d have a harder time getting ponies to talk given your track record. But I’ll give you this. Her mother’s name is Silverlace. I last saw her on the island of Dunmare. It’s a backwater and she likely still doesn’t know her daughter is famous here.”

He simply closed his eyes and rested his head on the table again, showing no concern about them calling his bluff.

Yes, Sunset Shimmer did not doubt at all she’d find this ‘Silverlace’ if she ever went there. Of course, Nailbat would have coached Silverlace on everything to say either way making it a waste of time.

A better question was why would he lie about this?

Sunset turned her gaze back to Flash Bang and decided on an answer. That was right. If Silverstorm wanted to go to war with the pirate coast, Flash Bang would have a motivation to not get in her way just yet. She would start thinking of ways to use Silverstorm to colonize the pirate coast, rather than destroy her.

Which in turn must mean Nailbat wanted to use Silverstorm to some end as well.

“Or I suppose we could see how eager she is to go to war,” Flash Bang suggested.

“I’ve spoken to her in private, as you know,” Sunset added to the lie. “She plays dumb in public if you can’t tell by those interviews. But when alone, she’s a little too eager to go after Screwball. Silverstorm told me that Screwball’s influence is like a blight that needs to be purged. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she was on some quest to off Screwball and every pony who ever worked for her.”

Flash Bang silently watched Sunset from the corner of her eyes, tapping a hoof on the table. It was rare for any two of them to agree on something. Maybe that would be just enough to gaslight her.

“Well I’m hardly opposed to the reunification of all ponies.” That was what Flash Bang said instead of ‘conquest’. Her family had a long-standing quest to colonize every place that ponies lived. “But you can’t tell me you don’t think these two are naïve. It’s dangerous to allow them to gain any further political power. Even if you happen to agree with them, they’re too ignorant to be put in charge of anything but fighting witches.”

“Well isn’t that interesting?” Nailbat looked left and right. “We all believe in the SA’s creed that the strongest of us should be on top, but the second somepony with even more power appears we start with all this simpering philosophy?”

“I’m not balking,” said Sunset. “If Silverstorm is the strongest pony alive then she’ll rule over the rest of us. That’s simply how the world works, and I accept it.”

“Ah! Then I guess everything is fine!” Nailbat leaned his chair back. “War it is! So are we done, then?”

“We are not done!” Flash Bang stood up. “These two could jeopardize the SA itself!”

“I’m fine with that.” Nailbat shrugged. “I only feel alive when I’m jeopardizing things.”

“Please don’t make any further attempts at humor.” Flash Bang cringed. “I know you’re little more than a mad dog, but surely the rest of you are capable of reason. Equestria has been besieged by chaos and darkness for millennia! The old system of royalty and nobility failed us and led to ever steeper decline and disharmony. It was the SA alone that dragged us out of those dark ages and brought us to the point where we can compete even with witches.

“Even barring anomalies like these newcomers, we’ve proven during the Toxco War that we can defeat a witch with our armies. We are no longer at the mercy of the monsters thanks to the SA. That’s how important our system is. To entertain anything that may undo it, the very bedrock of order and stability, the only thing protecting our ponies from this horrid world, is the height of irresponsibility.”

“That’s where we’re different,” said Nailbat. “When you look at change, you see what could go wrong. I get kind of excited. I agree that SA and the democracy it created are better than the old monarchy. But doesn’t that mean we can change for the better again?”

“Perhaps if this was about some luminary like Commander Hurricane,” said Flash Bang, “who gave up the chance to declare herself queen to instill democracy. Or perhaps if Silverstorm was an erudite like Clover the Clever with the wisdom and knowledge to forge a democracy that could last thirteen hundred years at the least. But you can hardly claim this pirate is a visionary such as that.”

“Well it takes visionary to know a visionary.” Nailbat swirled his hoof about in the air. “And I don’t think any of those are present here, so who knows? Maybe we all just need to have faith.”

There must have been some hidden barb, there. Starlight Glimmer didn’t like the way he kept using the word ‘faith’. The sternness in her expression was slight, but just enough for Sunset to pick up on.

“You’ve been awfully quiet, Starlight.” Flash Bang must have noticed it too. “Do you only speak to fools as gullible as your followers?”

“Please don’t set her up like that,” Nailbat grumbled.

Starlight finally opened her eyes, as if at last deeming the rest of them worthy of attention.

“Oh, I’m not the least bit worried about any of this,” said Starlight. “I have everything under control.”

Sunset worried that might be the case.

At long last came the day when Dash would be given the presidential medal of valor!

Oh, they’d been stuck in Canterlot for a whole day straight, being bored out of their minds in preparation for this, but it was all worth it!

The doors opened to the long hall leading up to the podium where Starlight was waiting. The ceilings of Canterlot Castle’s great hall towered above them. The Equestrian flag showed its white and red– a pictogram of a red phoenix overlaid on a white backdrop– hanging from every wall and draping down from the ceiling.

The national anthem played as crowds on either side cheered wildly in an attempt to drown it out. Dash beamed wildly as she strode out into the hall, tears in her eyes. She’d finally proven everypony wrong.

She felt Twilight pressing up hard against her side. It was unfortunate that she couldn’t enjoy this too. This was the arena where Dash would have to look out for Twilight, and so Dash leaned back against Twilight in support.

Dash reached the alter where Starlight stood, the other three elite four sat just behind her. Dash felt a twinge of annoyance when she saw Nailbat had fallen asleep in a sitting position. But she wouldn’t let that get in the way!

Dash didn’t even care who gave it to her. She bowed her head as Starlight put the medal around her neck. Twilight received hers a bit more awkwardly a moment later. Then came the speeches.

Things dragged on and on with all these speeches about stuff Dash didn’t even think was relevant. She studied her medal of valor carefully until every detail of it was etched in her mind. A detailed picture of a blazing phoenix took up most of its real estate.

But things just kept going! Before long, she began to forgive Nailbat for getting a head start on the whole sleeping thing. Maybe he even dozed off by accident. Who knew how long he’d been here?

Somehow this had always been so much more amazing in Dash’s head. And for the first fifteen minutes, it kinda was. But after three hours of this, she just wanted to go home and go to sleep.

When it was all said and done, Dash felt exhausted more than anything else. Twilight was in even rougher shape.

Wanting to do her a solid, Dash got Starlight’s permission to head out into a back room for a little while where they could be alone. Twilight ended up collapsing for a half-hour on a couch.

Already feeling a bit cooped up, Dash decided to poke her head out and see if anypony was still in the great hall. Walking back onto the stage she was surprised to see how few ponies were still around. Nailbat remained asleep in his chair even now.

The room seemed so much bigger when emptied and the few ponies in the audience looked far away.

Her heart skipped a beat as she realized one other member of the elite four was still here. Flash Bang saw her and approached, two armored pegasi in tow. Dash took some solace in the realization that she was taller than Flash Bang.

At Flash Bang’s side was the holy spear Longinus, which Dash recognized immediately from its distinctive look and purple coloration. Dash knew it was a spear, but it looked a little like a fork to her. At the edge, it split into two prongs.

Dash looked around. Nopony else was here but Nailbat and he was asleep. Evermore paranoid about being alone, Dash had to fight the urge to take a step back.

“I did want to commend your competence.” Flash Bang rose her head instead of bowing it. “But I also wanted to give you a warning. The world isn’t as simple as you think it is. Extending friendship to everypony may sound great, but now that you have this reputation, I expect you’ll begin to encounter smiling jackals. Ponies will take advantage of your naivety, so long as you keep it.”

“Just because I don’t agree with you on everything doesn’t mean I’m naive,” said Dash. “You know, I used to agree with you on a lot more stuff before I got out and actually met other ponies. So I say you’re the ignorant one.”

“I can’t see a pony who tries to befriend ghosts as anything else,” said Flash Bang. “Ghosts are predators that eat ponies. They can barely resist the urge.”

“Hey! The one I know isn’t a predator. She’s a vegan who got over her addiction and–”

“Do you really think I’ve never heard of vegan ghosts?” Flash Bang shot her a deadly look. “Do you think this pony is the first ghost to ever get over her addiction to body heat?”

“Well, uh.” Dash faltered. She herself had never heard of vegan ghosts until meeting Fluttershy, nor had she heard of others afterward. As far as Dash knew, Fluttershy really was the first.

“I see.” Flash Bang put her wing on the shaft of her spear and stepped towards Dash. “Then tell me. Are you aware that this friend of yours gambled the lives of other ponies for the sake of her own moral satisfaction?”

“Huh? What are you–”

“And you presume my ignorance? To get over the addiction to body heat a ghost must go two to three years without consuming heat from any living thing. It is an extremely painful process for them, and we estimate some ninety percent of them lose control during that time. They become overwhelmed by the urges and go berserk. In a manic fit, they seek out the nearest pony to freeze to death.”

Dash struggled to come up with a pithy one-liner in response to that. Was any of that true?

Fluttershy never told Dash how she’d gotten over the addiction. Really, between their banishment and all the bad blood that existed with ghosts, it was hard to know very much about them.

“I suppose it’s good your friend got lucky,” Flash continued. “But let’s not pretend that the real lucky pony was the one who was spared being murdered by your friend. I truly hope that you’re not about to suggest every ghost conducts the same experiment on us.”

It all sounded damning, but Dash couldn’t seriously imagine Fluttershy putting another pony in danger like that. At least, not knowingly. There had to be more to this.

“I– of course not! I just don’t think it’s fair to lump her in with ghosts who are perfectly happy to kill. Some ghosts can be good.”

“Of course I know that. I’ve seen them myself,” said Flash Bang. “They’re the ones who stay far away from civilization, so they won’t be tempted to kill us. They’re the ones who accept that they are predators who can’t control their urges and live in lonely woods eating forest animals. I can tell your running into this rare exception has distorted your view on them, but know they are predators. This isn’t like some foolish prejudice between unicorns and pegasi, nor even between ponies and zebras. We are exceptionally different, and it isn’t safe for us to be near each other.”

For a moment, Dash did feel ignorant. She really didn’t know a lot about ghosts, if she was being honest. Fluttershy was an outlander in her own culture, having been isolated from other ghosts for so long. Knowing even just one ghost put her above most Equestrians in that regard… but she still only knew the one. Maybe Dash really wasn’t as worldly as she’d felt yesterday.

“And despite knowing nothing you wish to go even further with all this.” Flash Bang closed her eyes and sighed. “You’re going to ignorantly put yourself through every type of danger possible? And drag the rest of us along with you? I certainly won’t allow you to do the latter.”

“Well I won’t ask you to until I figure it out myself.” Dash pointed at herself and grinned. “But I will figure it out! Just wait! I’ll find some way to get them over their addictions. I’ll find a way we can be friends with them.”

“You honestly believe you’re the first pony that thought to try this?” Flash asked. “For thousands of years, good fools and bad have tried the same and every one of them has frozen to death. You need to accept that some things are simply facts that are impossible to change.”

She was right. Most ponies would admit something like that was impossible. Yet her words were a little too familiar. What should have been another jab instead filled her with confidence.

Rainbow Dash had already done something impossible. She’d been mocked and ridiculed for thinking that after hundreds of years of ponies far smarter and stronger than her, that she of all ponies would be the one to get past Twilight’s curse and find the master witch.

“I don’t think so. Even if a billion ponies in a row fail at something, that still doesn’t mean it’s impossible,” said Dash. “Things can change. Like, we have phones now, so we don’t actually need to be in the same room as the ghosts to ally with them, yeah? And as for the griffons, if we can break the curse of undeath there’d be no reason to bar them from Equestria anymore too, right?”

“Oh? And you intend to simply end the curse of undeath too?”

“I am kinda on a roll.” Dash held up the medal.

Flash Bang kept her eyes on Dash but turned her head slightly, frowning with distaste. For once, she didn’t have a strong counter.

“At any rate, I suppose the griffons, ghosts, and whatever else should be left to deal with their own problems,” Flash changed the subject. Even Dash could see this was a retreat. “My job is to bring unity, order, and safety to my own kind.”

But before Dash could rub anything in, Twilight finally came back. Curiously, Twilight froze on the spot upon seeing Flash Bang for the first time.

“Wait!” Twilight reared her head back as she looked down at Flash Bang’s spear. “That spear!”

Flash gave her spear a disinterested look, before turning back to Twilight with the first smile Dash had seen from her.

“Ah, yes,” she said. “This is the legendary spear, Longinus. It’s one of the very few weapons made of solid adamantium. It was discovered by my ancestor, Flash Sentry, and has been passed down through my noble lineage for six hundred years.”

Twilight’s eye twitched, but she coughed to stop herself from saying her initial thought and glanced aside.

“Oh!” Twilight’s eyes went straight forward. “So you’re descended from that guy, huh?”

Flash Bang narrowed her eyes with an air of contempt. Dash flicked her gaze from Twilight to Flash and at last, it clicked with her.

Twilight had always simply referred to her crummy ex-boyfriend as ‘Flash’, but it was clear now that was short for the legendary Flash Sentry. She’d come shockingly close to being the mother of the most politically influential family in the past six hundred years.

Really, Dash felt stupid for not making that connection sooner! It seemed so obvious in retrospect.

“Do you have some problem with my family?” Flash asked. “’That guy’ was a hero as are all the ponies in my family. My grandfather, Flash Blade, is considered one of the greatest presidents of the democratic era. He won the war against Toxco and reunited us with North Equestria. I could go on for hours on my family's achievements. I hardly think it suitable for one with such an ignoble lineage to speak ill of mine.”

But all Dash could think about was the fact that Twilight had banged a major historical figure. She desperately wanted to get that idea out of her head, but it just wouldn’t go.

And another thing! How the crow had Twilight lost her virginity despite being locked up harder than the worst criminal in history while Dash couldn’t even–

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Twilight shook her head, seemingly willing to let her ancestry slide. “I was surprised. You know, adamantium’s indestructible so you can’t normally forge it into anything. It’s really hard to get.”

“You forge it as adamantium oxide, then reduce it,” Flash said dully. “Once it becomes true adamantium, its form is fixed forever.”

“I see.”

“Though that hardly matters. There was something I hoped to ask you, specifically,” said Flash Bang. “Is it your intention to lead us to war with the Bloodstorm Cartel? And to what end?”

“To what end?” Twilight repeated the question. “I want to defeat Screwball and take away her spellbook. I’ve repeatedly said that.”

“I see.” Flash rubbed the spot between her eyes. “And have you really not thought about what that would entail?”

“I already defeated two other witches.”

“You defeated them in battle, yes, but your fight against Screwball would be a war. Screwball is the head of the Bloodstorm Cartel. She controls vast, criminal networks and enough pirates to form her own navy. Fighting her means fighting tens of thousands of ponies hiding in every shadow.”

“I don’t need to fight all of them. I can just go for Screwball directly.”

“Cutting off her head will only take away their highest ace. Baton Pass would take over the cartel in a heartbeat and continue the fight and there are more after Screwball’s second. And do you think any of them will return the favor by going after you?”

“Do me a favor by trying to kill me?” Twilight pointed to herself, not picking up on things.

Flash Bang clicked her tongue, clearly not impressed by Twilight’s tactical brain.

“I mean, they’ll attack you from the side. They’ll go after the weakest ponies you associate yourself with. They’ll try to destroy you financially or psychologically or in whatever capacity they feel they may stand a chance. But after your display– I don’t expect anything like them attacking you directly.”

Twilight’s eyes went straight to Dash, and Dash saw a rare sort of fear in Twilight’s eyes. She was easily frightened by talking or opening up to other ponies but rarely did Twilight get nervous about fighting.

Even now it was short-lived. Twilight turned back to Flash Bang with resolve.

“I know I can protect my friends,” said Twilight. “I don’t understand war, but I’ll accept it if I have to.”

“I see. Know that I’d certainly support you in a war against that wretch however I can. But after?”

“After?”

“The pirate coast and the eastern islands are the last places ponies live outside of Equestrian rule. However, there should only be one nation of ponies. Our kind should all live as one, in harmony, under the same banner. Do you not agree? Have you not witnessed firsthand the chaos that comes from shunning your brethren and living apart from other ponies?”

“I mean.” Twilight looked upwards as she thought it over, accepting the suggestion at face value. “I guess everypony living in harmony sounds like a nice thing. I never really got why there was more than one nation, you know? It sounds more efficient to just have one.”

There were a few comments Dash wanted to make there, but she stopped herself. Flash Bang seemed to appreciate that sentiment.

“Really.” Flash Bang sized Twilight up once more, as though seeing her for the first time. “Well if your heart yearns for unity among all ponies, perhaps you aren’t as bad as I feared. For the record, I would support even an all-out invasion of the pirate coast. We should speak more in private.”

Without needing to be gestured to, one of the pegasi behind Flash handed Twilight a card. Flash gave her the slightest bow of her head, then the three of them departed.

As soon as Dash was sure they were out of earshot, she approached Twilight.

“Why didn’t you tell me your ex-boyfriend was Flash Sentry?” Dash whispered.

“I didn’t think you’d know who that was. I always just called him Flash.”

Nailbat began to stir at last, startling both the other ponies. Hopefully, he hadn’t heard Dash’s whisper just now.

“Oh, hey. You’re awake.” Dash stepped towards him. “I’m curious if you were actually asleep or if you were listening this whole time.”

“Oh, no worries. I slept through the whole thing.” Nailbat stretched his back and got off the chair.

Dash frowned as he started down the hallway. Was she supposed to say ‘thanks’ or something? And Nailbat just kept walking off like this was all nothing.

“Well?” Dash called after him as he passed her.

“Well what?” He stopped and turned to her.

“Aren’t you going to try and convince me to side with you on stuff?” Dash asked.

“Huh?” Nailbat yawned. “Nah. I’m good. Too tired.”

“You just slept for three hours!”

“I know.” He looked up at the ceiling. “It isn’t fair. Anyway. Later.”

Nailbat started walking away, the chains around his right foreleg jingling with each step. He only went a short distance before turning around.

“Oh! Hold up. There is one thing, actually.” Nailbat beckoned to Dash then stepped closer to her, his voice got a little lower. “Do you know a pony named Rarity?”

“Uh.” Dash took a step back. Ponies often yelled at her about Fluttershy, but nopony had connected her with Rarity yet! It caught her off guard that a guy like this would have been the first to figure it out. She wasn’t sure how worried to be at first.

She’d discussed this with Pinkie’s lawyer and was sure she could get out of trouble if this ever came to light. Still, it’d be a major headache. Dash didn’t need anything else to worry about right now.

“Calm down.” Nailbat held out his right foreleg, covered in chains. “Does it look like I got the right to judge anypony?”

Dash wasn’t going to say anything out loud, but he did look a bit rougher than he did on film.

“See, I just wanted to help you out a little.” He came close. “You know who the leader of the Mad Science League is, don’t you?”

Did she? Dash’s mind reeled trying to remember if that ever even came up. She figured it wasn’t that important since Rarity was about to take over, anyway.

Dash could go through five or six of Rarity’s friends, but… no! She did remember the leader a little. He was always shrouded in shadows and always made a big deal about not saying his name. So maybe it was important?

“Uh. Nope!” Dash smiled sheepishly and rubbed the back of her mane. “Who is he?”

Nailbat’s glowing red eyes blinked.

“I see.” Nailbat stepped forward, rubbing his chin. “I guess I could tell you but– I have a better idea. This won’t work if you aren’t ignorant, but I know a way to make sure Rarity is truly on your side. Ask her if she knows anything about a ‘project moonstone’. If she pretends not to know… she’s secretly working for your enemies.”

“I’m pretty sure that–”

Nailbat just ignored her and started walking off.

“Hey! You know, you’re really rude!”

“Yeah. Sorry about that.” He waved as he walked off. “I’d say be careful of traps but eh. You’ll probably be fine.”

Twilight stepped back to Dash’s side.

“You don’t think–”

“No way.” Dash shook her head. “But he kinda implied she’d know about whatever the heck he’s talking about with these moonstones.”

Dash yawned, too tired to give it any more thought than that. These past few days had left her beyond exhausted. All she wanted to do was go home and rest for as long as possible.

They still had one more meeting to get through, potentially the most important of them all at that.

Another hour passed and the two of them were ushered into an elevator. This was the tallest one in Canterlot and would lead them to the highest point of the city. The entire exterior of the elevator was made of glass, letting them watch as the rest of the city shrank beneath them.

The sunlight tower they now found themselves in rose to the same height as the mountain’s summit. Because Canterlot Castle stood on the far edge of the city’s plates, all of Canterlot could be seen from this vantage point. It wasn’t the tallest building in the world. Yet given that it already rested on a mountain, it still rose higher than any skyscraper.

Canterlot itself mimicked the colors of the flag. The buildings were nearly all made of white stone, trimmed with red. Towers and castle-esque structures filled the valley between the enormous palace and the slope of the mountain. Few structures stood on the rocky mountainside itself, but Dash could see the one waterfall of the mountain pouring off to the side.

Looking off from the other ledge, you could see as far as the day was clear. On a day like this, she could just barely make out the mist rising from the Everfree Forest and see the mountains near Ponytown on the far horizon.

The door opened, allowing them out into an open-air observatory. At the center of it all was set up a small table where tea had been made ready.

President Starlight Glimmer, with nopony else in attendance, waited for them alone.

“I hope you didn’t take offense to me not meeting you sooner,” said Starlight. “Being president, among all my other responsibilities, really doesn’t leave me with a lot of gaps in my schedule.”

She beckoned for them to come sit across from her. Dash did so and looked over all the things she could add to the tea. Not knowing what any of them were, and overwhelmed by the choices, Dash decided to just take a sip without adding anything.

“Ah, good!” Starlight smiled brightly, the sun behind her. “They say only ponies with truly refined taste add nothing to their tea.”

“Oh! Yeah!” Dash set her cup down gently.

At second glance, Dash realized Starlight wasn’t completely alone. On a perch next to Starlight sat a brilliantly red bird.

Dash recognized her at once. This was Philomena– the very phoenix on Equestria’s flag since the start of the democratic era 1355 years ago. She could not be mistaken for any other phoenix as there were no others known to exist.

She was something of Canterlot’s mascot. They said that bird was older than the mountain Canterlot had been built on top of. Philomena had lived here long enough to witness Mount Canter rise from the earth, and likely would be here long enough to see it erode into dust. A phoenix could not be killed by any means.

Through all those millennia, Canterlot stood by her side. It too had been destroyed, sometimes nearly completely, but it always rose again shortly after. The longest Canterlot Castle had ever lied in ruins was perhaps two years.

The legend went that Philomena’s spirit infused the city of Canterlot, if not all of Equestria so that it could never fall.

The phoenix looked at each of the ponies in turn with the indifference of millennia. Then, deeming none of them worth her attention, looked up at the passing clouds.

Starlight, conversely, noticed Dash’s interest.

“You know, one of the president’s jobs is taking care of Philomena.” Starlight held her hoof out to get a slight flick from Philomena. Even that slight acknowledgment seemed like a great deal. “It’s the easiest job in the world, seeing as I couldn’t harm the bird no matter how hard I tried. But as the old riddle asks– if phoenixes can’t die then why is there only one left?”

Starlight levitated the top part of the perch off its shaft and brought it in front of her to pet Philomena.

“They say Philomena was originally the pet of our founder, Golden Feather.” Starlight stroked the indifferent bird. “She still waits here for her master to return, millennia after millennia. She refuses to die until the two can be reunited and so she is immortal. What a sad creature.”

Starlight grew quiet, as if to mourn. Things grew uncomfortably silent. Dash had so many things to say to the president but now, just like with the tea, all the options overwhelmed her. In the end, Twilight spoke first.

“Do you have any news on Minuette?” Twilight asked. “She’s in Area 5X, right?”

“Her condition is no longer critical, but she’ll be in a coma for some time, likely months at the least. They do expect she’ll wake up, though. But between the damage to her horn and the stroke she suffered– well, we likely won’t even need to put her in maximum security when she regains consciousness.”

That update did leave Twilight relieved. She’d been so worried for the first few hours that she may have killed Minuette. Even after being assured the other witch was stable and would almost certainly live, Twilight could still hardly get any sleep. Thankfully, it looked like going from almost certain to just certain was enough to calm her down.

Dash was antsy about the result for a different reason.

From what Dash heard, Minuette figured out Twilight’s identity at the last moment. It hardly mattered if Pinkie was to be believed. She said ponies rarely retained their short-term memories of such traumatic injuries. Pinkie lost all of her memories after her own coma.

“Though I’m curious why you care,” said Starlight. “She’s responsible for many deaths, you know. She’s caused a great deal of suffering. Few would deem her worthy of such sympathy.”

“I don’t decide who I have empathy for,” said Twilight. “I feel bad when I hurt somepony, no matter who they are.”

“How could a pony from the pirate coast have such a gentle heart, I wonder?”

“I left the pirate coast, didn’t I?”

“I suppose!” Starlight laughed. “I take it you like living with us better?”

“Yes,” Twilight said, hesitating slightly. “I like having friends and… being able to cooperate with others.”

Despite how much more open she was now, Twilight still said it like she was confessing to having some weird fetish. At least that’d throw Starlight off, play into their backstory.

“And you?” Starlight looked to Dash. “You look like you’ve had something to say to me this whole time.”

“I suppose I do have some problems with the whole cult thing,” said Dash.

“Rainbow Dash, I’m not a child,” said Starlight. “You can be as frank as you want. Vulgar, even. I won’t get upset by you criticizing me. In fact, I welcome it. Do you not like how I do things? Does my religion make you uncomfortable?”

An open invitation was more than Dash could resist.

“Well, yeah,” said Dash. “I met your buddy Night Glider. You have her totally brainwashed. I don’t like that.”

“Oh! I’d be worried about that too.” Starlight smiled. “What did she do that made you think she was brainwashed, exactly?”

Suddenly, Dash felt like she was talking to a psychiatrist.

“Don’t screw with me.” Dash pushed her chair back an inch. “She was completely unwilling to listen to anything I said and just kept repeating the same line over and over again. And you have her working non-stop for you and she ‘donates’ all of her money to you on top of that. It’s not healthy.”

“I see.” Starlight sat down, resting her chin on both hooves. “So you’re assuming that Night Glider wasn’t like that before I met her.”

“Huh?”

“Rainbow Dash, some ponies simply have obsessive personalities,” Starlight spoke to her like she would a filly. “Before she came to me, Night Glider would spend all day locked in her basement playing game after game of pinball, unable to pull herself away. She’d keep telling herself she’d just play one more game until she collapsed.”

Dash raised her brow, unsure if she should believe that story.

“Maybe she became the world champion,” Starlight granted, “but she blew all of that money on MLMs and pyramid schemes that she was easily convinced to join. Most ponies would have written Night Glider off as a hopeless wretch destined to end up on the streets. But I see no weaknesses in ponies, only unrealized strengths. You can’t change a pony like her, but you can make virtues of her vices. I turned her obsessive nature into something positive, that she can be happy with, and her faith in my religion protects her from being led astray yet again by more conponies.”

Dash was starting to see why ponies would follow Starlight, at least. Even she felt her convictions faltering.

“What about how you keep saying your divine?” Twilight asked. “You claim you can make true void and that proves it?”

“You say that as if I can’t.” Starlight raised an eyebrow. “Do you doubt it?”

“Yes.” Twilight put her hooves on the table and leaned forward. “Can you do it? Like right now?”

“Oh, you want to see it yourself?” Starlight took a slow sip of her tea, showing she was in no hurry to grant requests. “Well I’ve never balked at such requests. Seeing is the difference between a miracle and a rumor, I always say.”

“Uh-huh.” Twilight refused to back off even an inch.

Dash could hardly understand why Twilight got so upset about this one. Sure, it took a while but… on second thought, Dash didn’t understand any part of this.

“You know, I still don’t get what’s even impressive about this thing,” said Dash. “Aren’t I creating ‘nothing’ right now?”

“No!” Twilight turned to her. “You aren’t creating anything, not creating nothing. Get it?”

“No.”

“Interesting!” Starlight set her tea down and turned to Dash. “You know, I would have expected you to be the one more knowledgeable about Equestrian philosophy. There’s a common philosophical question I think is related. What would be the most difficult work of art to create? The mark of the truest master of artistic expression?”

Starlight paused for long enough that Dash hoped she didn’t seriously want an answer just now.

“At first you might think something like ‘the ability to perfectly recreate nature’ or ‘to instill the exact emotions intended’ in the viewer without fail. But these are in the far opposite direction of the truth. The true test is creating something that means absolutely nothing. To create something that defies purpose, which cannot be imparted with meaning by any pony who views it. Ponies have tried such a feat, but none have ever come close.”

“Okay.” Dash raised an eyebrow. “I get that it’s hard or whatever… but what good does ‘nothing’ do?”

“It answers all sorts of questions for one,” Twilight huffed. “Intuitively, the universe was either created from nothing or else something always had to exist. Some of the gods tell us they have always existed. Others tell us that true void will spontaneously collapse into matter. The theory is that true void would be devoid of all things, including the idea of causality and time. Therefore, it would be indistinguishable from total chaos, and anything could happen when it's around. This would mean the early universe was in a state of absolute chaos.”

“Very good!” Starlight clapped her hooves, as if to congratulate a foal. “But of course, there’s one way we can be sure of the truth and about which gods are lying to us. We can create true void ourselves and see. Does it remain nothing? Or does it become something?”

At that, Starlight quit stalling. She closed her eyes, and her horn began to glow. Here was the moment of truth!

Though it was still the middle of the day, the stars became visible. It didn’t get darker, exactly, but the sun seemed to recede, and the stars grew until they could pierce through the blue sky above. Then they all turned red.

Dash looked left and right. This was exactly what it looked like when Twilight created true void. Dash had seen it sparingly before. Next, if she remembered, the stars should appear to bleed.

The red light came streaming down just as predicted.

Now Dash turned her gaze to Twilight to find the witch stunned by what she was witnessing. It seemed Starlight really could create true void.

However, Dash still couldn’t perceive whatever Twilight gaped at. The effect ended and Starlight held her hoof as though there was something there. This was the point Twilight’s surprise peaked.

How were you supposed to see nothing itself, again? Maybe she should ask later.

“What?! But–” Twilight sputtered. “How is that possible? It’s not decomposing?!”

“Hm?” Starlight lifted her head, sporting a smug grin. “I take it you’re impressed by my divine miracle?”

“I– I mean! It’s–” Twilight coughed and planted her gaze straight down at the ground. “I was expecting it to explode into true chaos.”

“Oh, really now?” Starlight leaned forward resting her chin on a hoof. Her smile looked sharper, more dangerous, now. “And why did you have such confidence it would?”

“Oh!” Twilight’s eyes darted about as she tried to make up an excuse on the spot. “Well! It’s just my mentor was always so sure it would. You know, for philosophical reasons.”

“Yeah! He had a syllogism and everything,” Dash interrupted. This was one area Twilight needed somepony to cover for her. “I saw it too. And I mean, if you got a syllogism, you can’t possibly be wrong. Isn’t that what your book says?”

Starlight flicked her eyes to Dash. She knew. She knew Dash was baiting her into changing the subject. Dash needed even stronger bait!

“But you know what I wanna know?” Dash put her elbow on the table, nearly knocking over her own mug. “Maybe I don’t understand all the philosophical implications of whatever. But if you’re really so divine and can do all these miracles, how come you only took down one witch, huh? We already doubled that. Just saying.”

Starlight took her chin off her hoof. This was a question she couldn’t possibly avoid answering.

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Starlight. “I’m not trying to diminish your accomplishments. Defeating witches will certainly help a great many ponies. You seem to have filled everypony with a manic sense of hope.”

“But?” Dash raised her eyebrow.

“Can you think of nothing more suited to my attention? Are the witches really the greatest threat to our world?”

Dash and Twilight glanced at each other, then back at Starlight

“Yes?” They both guessed.

Starlight merely giggled.

“Okay. Then what is?” Dash asked.

“Take a look at the world we live in.” Starlight reclined in her chair and looked up at the sky. “An infinite, clawing void surrounds and consumes us at every turn. The sun and stars are nothing more than music to distract us from the dark woods we’re lost inside of. The vast majority of this universe is nothing but darkness and emptiness.

“There are an endless number of planets, but Equus alone has life, light, and magic. Even here, only Equestria appears to be truly stable. Other nations fall more often than they rise in a world of such chaos and darkness. Currently, the griffons and zebras lie in ruins, the dragons sleep, and the diamond dogs survive only by digging deeper than anything else will go. For countless millennia, this one tiny fraction of a speck has never truly fallen. Why were we given this one ray of light in such a black and lonely place?”

It was a fair question.

Dash herself often wondered how Equestria managed to survive so long with so many threats against it. Their nation was ageless, going back farther than history itself, back to the time alicorns still lingered about if Twilight was to be believed.

In that time they’d entered plenty of ‘dark ages’ where great deals of knowledge and history were lost and Equestria entered a period of decline. Yet those never lasted long, and the nation never truly collapsed.

Contrast that to any other attempt to form a nation. They never lasted more than a century or so before something horrible destroyed them. Even something like the great empire of Hippotigris only managed three hundred years before total collapse.

But why?

“More importantly,” Starlight continued after a short pause, “what sort of gods create a world like this? So much emptiness?”

“Isn’t that just what you get in a polytheistic world?” Dash supposed. “That explains anything that doesn’t make sense as far as I’m concerned. Like, there are thousands of species of ants ‘cause they couldn’t agree on anything. I guess in a monotheistic world there’d only be one species of ant.”

“You’re probably right about that last part,” said Starlight. “But I don’t think it’s that simple. No, we live in an empty world because something has been taken out of it. A void is what remains when you remove something. Perhaps, as the gods tore it away from us, a few crumbs fell around Canterlot and that alone is the light of Equestria ponies speak of.”

“The gods stole something from the world?” In the moment, and with the picture Starlight painted, it almost sounded plausible to Dash. “What are you talking about, exactly?”

“It’s hard to define what was taken from us, what left the universe a lifeless, empty husk. But I do know the gods have stolen something from us and I intend to take it back,” said Starlight. “I’ve been to the outer realm, and I’ve seen the light and power we are denied. The gods who would steal the light from us are our true enemy, as is the void that consumes the universe. That is where my attention must go.”

“So you’re going to go fight the alicorns and the rest of those guys?” Dash knew she’d just been giving speeches about how you should ignore what other ponies think is impossible. Yet this seemed to be on a whole other level. Could Starlight even beat Trixie?

Then again, Starlight was dangerously close to becoming an alicorn herself according to Dash’s information. She glanced briefly at Twilight, who had been searching for that secret element of harmony this whole time.

“Potentially.” Starlight got up and walked toward the ledge of the observatory. “All I can say for now is that I will fix the world.”

And eyes lingered on the horizon to convince Dash that she either believed this or was a grand actor.

“But I’m sure you two have a clear part to play in all this.” Starlight turned back to them so that the sun showed behind her. “Yes! Continue to fight against the witches! I look forward to your future success!”

It’d been so hard to keep her cool during the rest of that meeting! How Twilight had wanted to storm off the moment she’d seen the true void! But sadly, they had to endure another torturous hour before finally being released.

She left in a huff, struggling to understand what she’d just seen.

Twilight had created true void so many times and it was never stable. It didn’t make any sense for it to be stable because there were no laws or rules to keep it from falling apart! Starswirl died because true void and true chaos were the same. Twilight knew this better than she knew the color of her own fur.

Yet what Starlight had shown her looked exactly like true void, only it remained nothing. How?!

It had to be some kind of trick or illusion! Maybe if she’d gotten more time to look, Twilight would have found some flaw with it, but nothing stood out.

How would Starlight have even discovered the secret of making something like that? It’d been an enormous undertaking for Twilight to gain that ability. Starlight wasn’t nearly old enough to have done the same.

Could it have possibly been true that a god had shown it to her, as Starlight claimed? Or perhaps she’d inherited a mind fiber with the secrets written on it? It had to be something like that! Twilight refused to believe anypony could have learned to cast that spell so easily otherwise.

“So was that really–” Dash whispered in her ear.

“Maybe,” Twilight grumbled.

“And what about the thing.” Dash whispered.

Twilight only just remembered the element of harmony they were supposed to be looking for. Truth be told, she’d gotten distracted by that revelation, but thankfully she’d already gotten to the bottom of things by then.

“Oh, that.” Twilight nodded. “Yes. I’m convinced it’s something she carries with her at all times, now.”

“You mean she had it?” Dash glanced over her shoulder. “Just now?”

“Yeah.”

Starlight absolutely did resonate with reality in a way she hadn’t seen since the element of magic was in her possession. Yet there was no second location. The only conclusion Twilight could draw was that Starlight carried the artifact on her.

What’s more, the effect followed Starlight wherever she went. Even now, Twilight could all but see the element of harmony moving out to the balcony where Starlight was about to address another crowd.

“She only had two pieces of jewelry,” said Twilight. “It’s either her earrings or her bracelet.”

Dash considered the implications of that. The most immediate meant it’d be more difficult to steal it than Twilight hoped. For now, she just wanted to get back home and regroup! All this fanfare in the aftermath was always far more exhausting than the actual fights with the witches.

She knew Dash would have to stay for at least another day to ‘vote’ on ‘things’ as an S-rank pony. She wondered how hard it’d be to just go back home and sleep.

As they exited the castle, Twilight could see another crowd outside already. To her relief, it at least didn’t seem like she was the one they’d come for. Starlight stood up on a balcony, above the restless crowd. Clearly, they were displeased about something.

“Heh.” Dash elbowed her. “Well if it makes you feel any better, it looks like we’re giving Starlight a headache over there. Her followers are probably getting antsy that there’s another pony who can compete with her.”

Twilight nodded. Strangely, that did make her feel better.

The feeling ended when a pony came out of the crowd towards them. It was another pegasus, darker than Rainbow Dash.

“Oh, hey Night Glider!” Dash called out to her. “So now that we’ve taken out two witches, I don’t suppose your opinion on who best pony is has changed, huh?”

“Yeah!” Night Glider laughed like she was in on it. “I was worried about that for a second too. But then I talked to Starlight, and she explained to me what’s really going on!”

Dash’s smugness vanished.

“Wait. What’s really going on?” Dash tilted her head.

“Starlight’s talking about it right now!” Night Glider pointed up at her.

The two of them swiveled their ears to listen better. It was still hard to hear, but Twilight could just barely make out what

“I promised you an end to all witches and so soon did these two emerge!” Starlight called out to them. “I hoped none of you lack so badly in faith that you thought this a coincidence.”

Twilight, at first, thought nopony would fall for something like that, but the crowd did begin to settle.

“The outer realm and my struggle against the gods must take on all of my attention. I do not have the time to spare on worldly, but nonetheless important, problems. Yet, I always keep my promises and I will leave no evil unbanished. To that end, Cosmos has imbued these newcomers with the strength to carry out this mission in my stead. They too have been chosen by our god to carry out a great burden! They shall be the instrument by which I will rid the world of witches. For this reason, we should place our support behind them!”

And now the crowd was actually cheering for her. Twilight was stunned yet again. How could she flip their opinions around so quickly?!

“Okay, you know none of that is true, right?” Dash spun around to face Night Glider.

“Oh, wow! Starlight even predicted you’d deny it! Isn’t that amazing? It really is like she knows the future.” Night Glider came even closer, glowing with glee. “She said your journey to defeat the witches will fill you with the wisdom to finally understand that our religion is right. Oh, I can’t wait until you convert! You were so obstinate last time we met I thought you’d never come around.”

“I’m obstinate?”

“Well, yeah. You refused to accept my airtight arguments. But I guess the blind can’t–”

“Yeah, I got it!”

There was no winning with these ponies, was there?!

Witches 9: Twilight goes to Hell

“Oh yeah, I never stopped thinking Summer Nights was cool, either!” Scootaloo held up two fifteen-card hands close to her face.

Which was a lie. Scootaloo must have been four or five by the time it stopped being popular. She probably never even heard of it before today. Dash wasn’t about to call her out on it, though.

It was just Dash and Scootaloo on the couch downstairs, looking through all of Dash’s spare cards. Twilight was sleeping in extra late today, exhausted from their trip to Canterlot.

Scootaloo seemed more interested in the pictures on the cards than anything else. Specifically, she went hunting through all the spares for any card with a pegasus mare on it to set aside.

They decided it wasn’t too big of a problem for her to come over to this side, provided she didn’t go outside. Afterall, the kid could just make anypony who caught her arrive a few minutes later and miss her.

Once they’d made that decision, Scootaloo was on a mission to come here as often as possible. Not that Dash minded. It was hard to hate somepony who was so eager to be around you. Besides, Dash knew what it was like to only have crummy adults in your life.

Scootaloo activated the illusion on one of the cards, causing three tiny pegasi in armor to float above it.

“Hey!” Scootaloo looked up from the illusions. “How come they don’t use these hologram things anywhere else?”

“Um!” Dash turned her muzzle up. As much as she wanted to look cool, she couldn’t think of an answer. “You know, I’m not sure.”

Derpy trotted into the room to save Dash.

“Sunset Shimmer is here.” Derpy saluted Dash. “You might want to uh–”

Derpy tried to look at Scootaloo to find she was already gone.

“Oh, right.” Dash forgot about this one. She still had one responsibility even today. “I guess send her in.”

Derpy left and returned with Sunset shortly after.

Sunset Shimmer had another pony in tow, but that was the whole reason for her coming here. She led Trixie into the room on a literal leash. Part of their deal was that they would need to keep Trixie in their own custody. ‘Silverstorm’ was one of the few ponies they’d trust to keep Trixie under control.

Trixie wore something akin to light armor. The overall design was smooth, black metal with a few devices attached and connected by glowing, green stripes. All four of her hooves had boots in this design over them. She didn’t have a simple horn lock on, but an entire suppression helmet thick enough to hide her horn entirely. She’d be unable to use magic or psychic abilities in this thing.

Finally, there was a yoke that covered her chest with a circular protrusion which emitted a solid, green light just above where her heart should be. From the back of this extended a bright, orange cord that attached to the boot Sunset wore, forming the leash.

“This is the Trixie Containment Unit or TCU.” Sunset took off the boot and passed it to Rainbow Dash. “One of the two of you must be wearing this at all times. If you aren’t wearing it for more than ten minutes, it will begin electrocuting Trixie’s spine to paralyze her. It will lethally impale her heart after one and a half hours or if she tries to take it off without you wearing the boot.”

“Whoa!” In a panic, Dash got the boot on as quick as she could. “Isn’t that a little extreme?”

“This is an extreme situation,” said Sunset. “Look, this was seriously the best I could do. No one would accept anything less. If she doesn’t do anything for a few years we might be able to relax a little.”

“It’s better than rotting in Area 5X.” Trixie shrugged. “They told me everything the containment unit does, and I agreed to this. Besides, it's only for a couple years like she said. Then I’m off the hook.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Sunset warned.

Dash wasn’t sure if she’d agree to wear a death trap to avoid life in prison. Still, she couldn’t think of any other way to allow somepony like Trixie to walk around outside.

“The leash can extend up to thirty feet,” Sunset continued with her explanation. “On the boot, you’ll notice a safety switch and seven color-coded buttons. Going from blue to red, they activate increasingly intense containment methods. The instruction manual will tell you which is which.”

Dash scrunched her nose as she looked over the seven buttons. She really hoped Trixie would just stay in line.

“Technically, it legally has to be one of you two wearing it,” said Sunset, “but I trust you know what you’re doing. Just don’t get caught if you give this to anypony else. You can also put it in a ‘grounded’ mode that will trap her in a forcefield, allowing you to temporarily leave her in one spot. They want you to use that mode only in emergencies.”

“And by emergencies, she means going to the bathroom,” said Trixie. “Or at least I’d prefer if you did it that way.”

Trixie stepped past Dash to look around the house.

“So where’s Silverstorm, huh?” Trixie kept up the search.

As though summoned, Twilight started down their stairs moments later, yawning and rubbing her eyes.

“Ah! There you are!” Trixie all but started bobbing up and down at the sight of Twilight.

“Oh!” Twilight took a step back, clearly not awake enough to deal with this. “Hey!”

“I’ll come to pick her back up in one week,” said Sunset.

“A week?” Dash felt her grip on the leash weaken.

“This is what you asked for.” Sunset Shimmer shrugged.

That it was. Why did Dash want this so badly again? Sunset left shortly after that and soon the three of them were sitting on the couch together.

Trixie stared at Twilight with an enormous smile. Twilight sat on the far edge of the couch, as far away from Trixie as possible. Yet none of them knew what to say, exactly.

A certain orange filly put her hooves on the back of the couch and slowly rose her head up. She took one look at Trixie and saved the others from the moment of awkwardness.

“You’re the first witch that Rainbow Dash defeated, right?” Scootaloo asked.

“Rainbow Dash did nothing that can be described as ‘defeating’ me.” Trixie rolled her eyes.

“She’s the one who came up with the plan and assembled the team.” Scootaloo got on the couch and pressed her back up against Dash’s chest. “I think that counts!”

Dash blushed. She really liked this kid.

“That does not ‘count’! Twilight defeated me alone!” Trixie narrowed her eyes.

“Cool, cool!” Scootaloo looked up at Dash. “So now that Trixie’s out of the way, we can go back to what we were doing, right?”

Trixie frowned at Scootaloo, sizing up her competition.

“You most certainly may not go back to whatever you were doing!” Trixie stood up and pointed her hoof at Scootaloo. “Did you all forget the important mission you sent me on?

Dash looked over to Twilight. For a second there, she kind of did.

“Does Sunset Shimmer still think like she used to?” Twilight asked. That was it!

“She hasn’t changed at all,” said Trixie. “She seriously believes that the strongest should rule and that the SA is right to prop up the strongest pony as their leader. I’m telling you right now that if you tell her you’re a master witch she’ll bow to you.”

“Ah! Good work, then.” Dash sighed with relief. “That’ll make our lives easier. Guess we just need a good way to, uh, reveal it.”

Twilight nodded with determination.

“Did you see anything else?” Dash asked. “You were inside Area 5X for a while, right?”

“I did have to stay down there for a few weeks until they could build this thing.” Trixie tugged at her leash. “I guess I can say I’ve technically been inside Area 5X now.”

“Are there any aliens there?” Dash asked the obvious question.

“Oh, yes! They gave me a nice tour of the restricted areas, showed me all of the darkest secrets of Equestria,” Trixie said without a hint of sarcasm. “Hardly. I was blindfolded the whole way down and I only went to the prison part of it. All I can say is that the jail cells are exceedingly blue. The cell across from me had this lich who wouldn’t shut up about how much better music was two hundred years ago. Ugh!”

“Oh! Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo stood up on the couch between her and Trixie. “I was in Area 5X way longer than Trixie and I saw cool stuff there that I wasn’t supposed to see!”

“Oh yeah? Like what?” Dash put a hoof on her head.

“Like, uh! The Nautilus! It’s a, uh,” Scootaloo struggled to remember the word. “Oh! It’s a submarine. It’s like a battleship that sails underwater. But nopony’s supposed to know they have it.”

“Huh. I guess that’s the kind of stuff they’d have down there.” Dash still couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. “Though that’s still kinda cool.”

“And, um!” Scootaloo paused, trying to think of other cool things she’d seen, but drew a blank. “Well, that’s still more than Trixie saw!”

Trixie bristled and puffed herself up slightly as if she was trying to compete with a literal child.

“Well I did get to see a bunch of the other prisoners.” Trixie lifted her head. “So I have plenty I could say there. Like there was this one lich in the cell across from mine who wouldn’t shut up about how much better everything was two hundred years ago, and we needed to literally ‘kill time’. I saw maybe twenty other prisoners. I think I’m the first one to get a containment unit named after me, though.”

Trixie smiled sharply and turned to Twilight, like that might just impress her.

“Yeah!” Scootaloo flared her wings out again. “Well, I had my own Scootaloo containment unit before containment units were even cool. And you know what? My SCU was way more hardcore than Trixie’s TCU.”

Scootaloo stuck her tongue out at the mere thought of it.

“Was it?” Dash grew slightly worried for a second there. “They didn’t have an auto-kill mechanism on yours, did they?”

“Huh?” Scootaloo’s eyes opened, and she blushed. “Um. No. But I bet I could break out of the one Trixie’s in is what I’m saying.”

“Yeah, excuse me.” Trixie raised a hoof. “Who the crow is this kid again? And why did she get her own containment unit? Was she arrested for being too annoying?”

“Oh, it’s me. Scootaloo!” Scootaloo lifted her head and smiled. “I was here the whole time. Remember?”

Trixie lowered her head to squint at Scootaloo at eye level.

“Can we not do that?” Dash requested.

“I was just joking!” Scootaloo whipped around to face her. The poor thing looked scared. “I wasn’t using my powers or anything!”

“I know. After meeting Starlight I just kinda don’t want to put up with that kind of thing.”

“Oh! S-sorry.” Scootaloo lowered her head.

“This is Scootaloo.” Dash pulled her a bit closer to reassure the smaller pegasus. “We’re, uh… long story short you can’t tell anypony she’s here.”

“Wait. Is that an alicorn feather?” Trixie raised her brow, skeptical, then widened her eyes. She looked to Twilight. “Is it that alicorn feather?”

“It’s my alicorn feather,” said Scootaloo. “Twilight gave it to me. I have two alicorn feathers, you know. That’s probably the most anypony has.”

Trixie looked her over, trying to find the second. Upon failing to do so, she realized the truth.

“Did you seriously tear off an alicorn’s feather?” Trixie asked. “You know how stupid doing that is, don’t you? And how did you even manage to do that? You’re tiny! Look at how weak your wings are!”

Unfortunately, Trixie wasn’t wrong.

Dash could tell from the second she saw her that Scootaloo didn’t get enough exercise. Her wings were scrawny enough to see the bone depending on how she moved them. Her feathers were short and brittle– a clear sign they didn’t get enough exposure to magic or wind.

Paradoxically, they also looked fluffy, shiny, and clean. Dash saw straight through that illusion of health, of course. The shine came from the preening oils Scootaloo must be using.

She could even tell what brand it was from the smell of nuts and strawberries– PegaPosh. That was the preening oil for pegasi who saw their wings more as fashion accessories than limbs. It made you look great and protected from stains, but it wasn’t healthy for you and began to harden and crack as soon as you took flight.

That Snap guy had to be some posh, unicorn dandy if he was teaching Scootaloo to use that stuff.

“It’s all Snap’s fault. He keeps saying that gliding will ‘overstimulate’ me. As if there’s anything that wouldn’t.”

Dash knew what she meant. Your parents were supposed to fly you up and drop you, letting you glide down, catching you when you inevitably failed the first few times. Once you learned to glide, flying posed little difficulty.

Dash could relate to Scootaloo’s plight. Neither of her parents took her gliding at Scootaloo’s age either. Dash’s father just told her to jump off a cliff. She did and broke a leg a few times before finally getting it on her own.

Of course, all the other pegasi in school made fun of her for being a late flyer, and before long Dash was behind them in everything.

She wasn’t going to let another pegasus filly suffer the same humiliation she did!

“You know what? I’ll take you gliding!” Dash announced.

“Really?!” Scootaloo pounced at Dash, looking up at her with eyes glittering as though Dash just announced she’d get an extra birthday party this year.

“Yeah! I guess it’ll be fine as long as you have that feather stabilizing you.” Dash gave it a flick.

“Um.

“Well, there’s your problem right there.” Dash flicked Scootaloo’s wing. It didn’t take much effort to knock one of those shiny, orange feathers off. “You’re using that PegaPosh crud, yeah?”

“Um.” Scootaloo averted her gaze for a second. “Is that bad? It’s the most expensive one so it should be the best, right?”

“Sure, if you’re looking to have some prissy unicorn compliment you on how fluffy your wings are.”

“Hey!” Twilight and Trixie both shot her the same look.

“I said a prissy unicorn!” Dash held up her hooves defensively. “Anyway. If you wanna fly, that stuff’s gonna mess you up. It’s best to use your own.”

“Um! I can kinda make my own oil.” Scootaloo made a bottle of some generic preening oil appear in her hooves.

Dash took that to mean Scootaloo couldn’t make her own oil the normal way.

It was readily apparent to any biologist that pegasi were the earliest ponies. Earth ponies and unicorns both had tiny, vestigial wing-bones that were only noticeable as skeletons. Every tribe also had a preening gland. It simply remained underdeveloped and unable to make oil if you never used it. That applied to pegasi too.

“We’ll figure that out.” Dash got off the couch. “Come on. Let’s go wash this crap off first.”

Scootaloo eagerly bounded after Dash up the stairs.

“Wait!” Twilight called up to her. “What about Trixie? You’re really leaving me alone with her?”

“I think it’s best we just give these two what they want.” Dash could hardly resist the tide of Scootaloo at this point, finding herself slowly pushed further upstairs. “She’s in a containment unit. It’ll be fine.”

And then it was just Twilight, with nothing but Trixie and awkward silence for company.

Trixie sat on the other side of the couch, watching Twilight intently, smiling wide as though she were expecting something. Though what Twilight had no idea.

Twilight supposed she should do something to reform the other witch. She felt as though she should be reciting some parable, but none were forthcoming. How was Twilight supposed to teach her when she herself was so unsure?

“So?” Trixie leaned forward.

“So.” Twilight scooted back slightly. “So what?”

“I was way harder to beat than Minuette, right?” Trixie lifted her head.

“Oh. Not exactly, no.” Twilight shook her head. “She actually got a few hard hits in.”

Trixie’s smile drooped into oblivion, and she stared at Twilight, stunned.

“Tch!” Trixie turned her head away. “That’s just because you got a sneak attack on me! If I had a month to prepare, I’d have been ten times harder to beat! Following the trend, Screwball will likely get a sneak attack on you. Then you’ll understand what a big difference it makes.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Twilight chuckled awkwardly.

Then it was back to awkward silence.

This was supposed to be Rainbow Dash’s thing! Without Dash around, Twilight couldn’t handle this! Why did she have to be thrown into the lion’s den like this?! Twilight couldn’t reform anypony else!

Trixie followed Twilight’s gaze up to the ceiling, perhaps picking up on Twilight’s train of thoughts.

“I still don’t understand what you see in her.” Trixie glared through the ceiling, as though she could still see Dash through it. “Isn’t Dash just taking advantage of you? You’re so much stronger than her. You don’t need that pegasus at all, yet you’re sharing the reward with her fifty-fifty or something? Why don’t you just kick her out and keep everything for yourself?”

For one, the thought had never even crossed Twilight’s mind. She looked off to the side as she answered that question herself first.

The idea certainly didn’t sound tempting at all. Twilight hadn’t gone into this intending to get more money. The main advantage of the stuff so far was simply how happy it seemed to make Dash.

Getting to live in this big house with all this fancy stuff? Twilight would be fine going back to her treehouse, but Dash was so elated by it all. If anything, Twilight wanted to give Dash all of the money.

“Because that’s not what I want to do,” said Twilight. “I like living with Rainbow Dash. The whole reason I started this was because I didn’t want her to go anywhere. Besides, if we share everything it doesn’t matter much who ‘owns’ the money.”

“I see.” She sounded so defeated.

Trixie closed her eyes and let out an exhausted sigh.

“But why do you like her?” Trixie opened her eyes. Her advance pushed Twilight to the far edge of the couch now. “She’s so weak compared to you! Compared to me, even! Are you really going to spend your whole life doting on some idiot just because she’s the first pony you bumped into? If you’re going to be friends with somepony, shouldn’t they be somepony close to your level?”

“What?” Twilight hung halfway off the couch as Trixie loomed over her. “You mean like you?”

“Well.” Trixie finally got off Twilight straightening up and blushing as though it were a compliment. “Not necessarily me, but I’d certainly be more useful than her! I could probably beat up all of your other friends combined. Plus I’d do absolutely anything you tell me to.”

It made a certain kind of sense if Twilight was being honest with herself. Logically, it did make more sense to be friends with somepony strong than somepony weak, all things equal.

How did Rainbow Dash become her friend again?

She’d been the only pony willing to seek Twilight out. Though then again, her original intention was to kill Twilight, so…

No. She remembered now that Rainbow Dash tried to show Twilight what she was missing out on by obsessing over power as Trixie still did.

“Alright.” Twilight reached under the table. “If you want to be my friend, how about we play a game?”

“Games are a waste of time. Why–”

Trixie saw what Twilight was taking out and scrunched her nose.

“Eh?” Trixie tried grabbing a card with her horn, only for the TCU to stop her. She was forced to pick up one of the cards with her hoof, holding it at arms-length, disgusted as though it were covered in slime. “Isn’t this that stupid card game for newborns we all declared cringe years ago?”

“Rainbow Dash plays cringey games with me.” Twilight kept her eyes closed and shuffled her deck.

Trixie frowned like she’d just been challenged to a duel.

“Alright fine!” Trixie grabbed a pile of the cards. “But If I break my face from cringing too hard–”

“Don’t you still have super-regeneration?”

“That’s beside the point! You know, this game crashed the entire illusion-scroll industry. They lost billions on it. That technology would be everywhere were it not for this.”

Predictably, Trixie started gathering up all the monsters with the highest attack power.

That gave Twilight an idea. She recalled something like this happening early on in the Summoner Knights cartoon show.

“I’ll give myself a handicap against you,” said Twilight. “I’ll only use cards with zero attack power.”

“Huh?” Trixie looked up from her pile of powerful attack cards. “I don’t know how this game works, but doesn’t that make it impossible to win? You can’t be that good at this game.”

“I plan to surprise you.”

Scootaloo and Dash stood next to the draining bathtub. They’d washed all the junk oil off her wings, but that revealed another problem. Most of her feathers were simply too atrophied to work as magical conduits. In other words, they couldn’t help her fly.

Dash plucked out all the weak or broken feathers so proper ones could grow back in their place. A small pile of orange feathers rested on the floor by the time the tub emptied out.

Sadly, that didn’t leave a lot behind. Embarrassed by how her wings looked right now, Scootaloo kept the towel tight over her back.

It’d only be a week or two until Dash could take her out gliding, but she still felt bad getting Scootaloo’s hopes up and then leaving her plucked.

“Actually.” Dash tilted her head. “Given all the whacky ponies we live with, I bet one of them can regrow your feathers faster.”

“Oh, yeah!” Scootaloo stopped moping about. “I know for a fact Applebloom could do it! She’s regrown hair and stuff before.”

Still, Scootaloo insisted on wearing her hoodie (with her wings awkwardly tucked inside) as they made their way to the other side of the portal.

Where would Applebloom be again? Dash supposed in the basement most likely.

Of course, getting there meant passing by the lab where Rarity was hard at work.

Rarity had Saccharine asleep and hooked up to all kinds of wires and stuff Dash couldn’t possibly understand. The robot tournament was a mere week away and the final preparations were being done now, leaving Rarity little time for anything else.

Dash didn’t know how tough the other robots would be, but they couldn’t possibly match up against Saccharine at this point. Unless there was something she didn’t know…

She shook her head, remembering an important question. Dash had been so exhausted this whole time she’d forgotten to ask about that thing.

“Hey! Hold up just a second there.” Dash gave Scootaloo a pat, then trotted over to Rarity.

Scootaloo drew up her cloak and took a step back. Sweetie Belle was in the other room too, partly because she was everywhere these days.

“Hey!” Dash looked around for anything that might be safe to lean on. She didn’t find one. “Can I ask you a quick question?”

“A quick one, yes.” Rarity stood up from her work, looking just as tired as Dash felt. Maybe more so, as the mask would hide any puffiness around her eyes. “I still have a great deal ahead of me. We’ve only a week before Madcon.”

“I was wondering if you’d ever heard of an Operation Moonstone?” Dash tilted her head. She felt a little bad about asking. Rarity had done so much for them already. But this wasn’t a trust thing so much as simple curiosity, she assured herself.

“Operation Moonstone?” Rarity straightened up, more perplexed than anything else. “Wherever did you hear about such a thing?”

“Nailbat said I should ask you about it,” Dash admitted.

“Did he?” Rarity frowned to one side and leaned her hoof on a chin, unable to make much more of this than Rainbow Dash. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you very much on that front. To my knowledge that project was a massive failure. Nopony actually has the azoth spell.”

“That what?”

“Oh! You don’t know what it is at all.” Rarity transitioned into her nerd mode to lecture Dash. “Operation Moonstone was an attempt to create an incredibly powerful attack spell capable of erasing matter and energy entirely from existence. The azoth spell, as is its proper name, wouldn’t be too unlike alicorn magic, I suppose.”

“And you need moonstones to cast it?”

“No, no. That’s just a codename to confuse ponies looking into it. To my knowledge, the turn of events went something like this. A lich designed this spell as a way to destroy the ghost of Crater Cemetery, intending it to be an attack spell capable of felling even such a powerful foe. There’d be no way to defend against such an attack and would mean instant death to anything hit by it. He never completed it, but his research notes somehow ended up in the hooves of both the Mad Science Institute and the Equestrian government.”

“And they gave you a copy?” Dash asked.

“Oh, yes! We may have stolen a few documents from the Mad Science Institute a few years back.” Rarity gave a slight cough. “But then they steal from us all the time, you know! And for all their crowing about the dangers of AI, they’re the ones who are always losing control of their own creations. I assure you, you have nothing to fear from the Mad Science League.”

“So then you guys aren’t working on creating a spell to blow up cities or whatever?”

“Of course not! Firstly, it’s more for assassination than destroying cities. Secondly, it really isn’t tenable. You need a vast reserve of magic to cast it, of which maybe twenty exist in the whole world. Third, the Mad Science Institute and Area 5X both spent over a decade and who knows how many millions trying to develop it, and both have failed. I wouldn’t concern myself with it.”

But why would Nailbat even mention then? Dash closed her eyes trying to work out why that’d be important. He said Rarity feigning ignorance meant she couldn’t be trusted.

So that meant Rarity was actually ignorant of something that would have made her not tell Dash. But what?

“I suppose I could show you the documents we have.” Rarity sat back down in her chair. “Though our fearless leader may have a few questions as to what I intend to do with this information. Ah! But then again, won’t I be the new leader this time next month? Mad Con is only a few days away. Once I’ve taken over, I can do whatever I please, can’t I?”

Dash opened her eyes. That was right! The leader of the Mad Science League!

“Hold up! Do you think your leader’s been secretly working on this thing the whole time?” Dash asked. “And who is he anyway? Nailbat made it sound like it was some big plot twist or something.”

“Oh, yes!” Rarity nodded and smiled. “The shocking true identity of our mysterious leader! Why, you’ll never guess in a million years who he is!”

“Right, but can you just tell me?” Dash asked. “I think it’s important.”

“Oh, heavens no!” Rarity put a hoof on her chest and all but gasped. “You know how… eclectic repeated dives can make us. My tendency to wear masks and all? Our leader was filled with the all-consuming need to remain mysterious. He’ll have a borderline mental breakdown if he finds out I’ve been galloping about revealing his identity and all.”

“Nailbat tried to warn me about whoever it was, so I think this is important.”

“I assure you; you won’t be able to do anything with this information,” said Rarity.

“Can you just tell me so I’m a hundred percent sure?”

“Oh, all right. I’ll tell you his name if you simply must know.” Rarity still chastised her with a tut. “But you must be aware this will trigger him horribly if he ever finds out.”

Scootaloo’s head came poking in from the door. Her embarrassment wasn’t enough to overcome the lure of a shocking reveal.

“I swear I’ll act shocked if it ever comes up.” Dash rose her hoof as she made the oath.

“Alright. Then I’ll tell you the truth.”

Rarity nodded and braced herself for the reveal. Her eyes grew steelie.

“You see. The shocking identity of the leader of the mad science league!” Rarity looked around for something she could use as a stage. Finding nothing better than her chair, she jumped up onto that. The pegasi both leaned in with bated breath. “Is none other than Brilliant Gear!”

Scootaloo and Dash stayed dead silent. Scootaloo looked to Dash, as though she might be able to make something of that.

“Who?” Dash asked.

“I just told you his name, dear.”

“Yeah, but! What?” Dash tilted her head. “I have no idea who ‘Brilliant Gear’ is.”

“What did you think I meant when I said you’d never guess who it was?” Rarity raised her brow.

“The way you were all hyping this up I was expecting it to at least be somepony I’ve heard of before. You kept saying I’d be shocked to learn who it was! How is ‘some guy’ a shocking answer?”

“Well, yes! Nopony would ever expect that the mysterious identity of our leader was just some random pony they’d never heard of.” Rarity smiled and nodded. “Well? Does that not subvert your expectations? Hm?”

“Ugh!” Dash slapped a hoof on her face and slowly brought it down. “And you’re a hundred percent sure what’s-his-face isn’t secretly somepony I do know in disguise?”

“If I knew that it wouldn’t be a secret, now would it?” Rarity asked. “Those I suppose anything is possible.”

“So what? Was Nailbat just messing with me?”

“Nailbat may be the politician most aligned with my continued existence and wellbeing,” said Rarity, “but he is still a politician. He would absolutely lie to us for this or that reason, as would they all. I even hear he has a reputation for misleading others.”

“I guess.” Dash walked over to the door. “I just have a bad feeling about this. Be careful at Madcon, okay?”

“Oh, I won’t just be careful, I’ll be prepared.” Rarity gave her a wink.

The two of them trotted off to find Applebloom.

Scootaloo kept looking at Dash like she was eager to say something. When they were a safe distance away, she finally spoke up.

“You know, Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo pressed up against her side. “I can let you redo your conversations with Rarity! You can keep asking her questions until you find out what she’s keeping from you. Allgood used to have me do that all the time.”

“Oh, yeah.” Dash looked up at the ceiling as they trotted. She kept forgetting about how many overpowered abilities she had access to now. The only problem was Dash would have to lure whoever she wanted to ‘crack’ like that back to the house. “I think Rarity’s being straight with us, though.”

Scootaloo nodded.

“But, uh.” Dash ducked down to be eye level with her. “Hey, if I ever say something that really upsets Twilight, you can give me a do-over there, right?”

“Oh, totally!” Scootaloo nearly knocked her cloak off by popping her wings out. “You know, if I’m there. So I guess I’ll just have to be around all the time!”

They went down to the deepest part of the basement. Dash remembered the first time she’d come and how terrifying it’d been to have Rarity’s robots hunting her down. The once dangerous place had grown increasingly familiar– like an extension of her current home.

Dash decided she liked this sort of lifestyle– living with a bunch of other ponies in what amounted to one enormous house. Yet she wondered how long it would last. She hoped Twilight, at least, would want to stay together even after the end.

On the far end of the basement, beneath the room with the bubbling vats of acid, was where Rarity kept her foundry and where Applejack typically worked. This was where they found Applebloom and her sister.

Dash could feel the change in the air immediately upon entering. The place was sweltering, the dryness of the air the only mercy. The artificial lighting of the room was drowned out by the red glow of the compression chamber itself. Thick tubes led from the room above into the central, glowing vat. From this came the white metal for the armor of the 8100s.

Applejack had been hard at work this whole time and had plenty to show for it. The rows of white chassis went twenty across and three up, hanging on racks one above another.

Of course, she had help. The more 8100s she built, the more help she got. Currently, there were ten of them tending to various parts of the forge. They did work too dangerous for ponies made of flesh and blood, pounding out the broad strokes in a shower of sparks as the molten metal came down from the mixer.

Applejack worked with the relatively cooler metal to do the finer work. Of course, it was still hot enough that she needed to wear thick boots and intense enough to be done with a series of hammers.

Dash looked over the line of 8100s, wondering if she should be concerned with how powerful Rarity’s sister was becoming. This wasn’t even ‘mass production’ yet. Once Rarity took over the Mad Science League, she’d have access to far more raw material and production facilities. Then there’d be hundreds, maybe even a couple thousand, of the even more advanced 8200 models running around.

Applebloom wasn’t busy at all, merely sat behind her sister talking her ears off about something Dash couldn’t hear over all the noise.

“Applebloom,” Scootaloo whispered to her, keeping her hood down. “You have a potion that can regrow feathers, right?”

“Well sure. Did something happen?” Applebloom craned her neck around, trying to get a look at Scootaloo’s wings.

“I just needed to take some of them off so they’d grow back better.” Scootaloo started off toward the cauldron. “It’s not that many missing. Just like one or two… or five…ish.”

“Can I see them?” Applebloom asked.

“What? No!”

Soon they were off arguing about whether or not Applebloom should get to see Scootaloo’s borderline featherless wings in exchange for her help. Applebloom did start making the potion without such payment.

That kid certainly was impressive at her special talent, to say the least. Applebloom’s hat had a single bell on it, marking her ability to spin the makarakarn one hundred times without ill effect. Rainbow Dash… was still about twenty. At least she wasn’t barfing anymore.

She knew she shouldn’t feel bad or even compare herself to that kid. She didn’t have the same amount of time to practice witchcraft, for one!

Being second place reminded her of older days when she was Applebloom’s age. Martial training was part of Equestria’s grade school curriculum and it was that which determined your social ranking in school, especially among the other pegasi. You had to spar with the other foals in your class all the time so there was little question about who was the best fighter.

Dash started at the bottom, far below Derpy even. She worked so hard to get up to average level, but high school was over by the time Dash became above average. And so her reputation never recovered. She’d never gotten that big moment of redemption of punching Raindrops in the face.

She didn’t want to think about it! Dash had accomplished plenty already! She just needed to change the subject in her mind.

“So hey.” Dash turned to Applejack. “You’re Applejack, right? I don’t think we’ve ever really talked before.”

“Yeah. Been a bit busy, I suppose. From the looks of things, I seem pretty good at building robots.” Applejack wiped some sweat from her forehead. “Or at least, I’m good at following these instructions. To be honest, they practically build themselves.”

Dash gave the face-plating a poke. Every last one of them looked just like Sweetie had in those old pictures.

“Is that kid really going to control an entire army herself?” Dash asked.

“You can set them to auto.”

Applejack gave one of the complete, but inactive, 8100s a smack, sending it down to the others. “They just ain’t as smart like this. Gotta give them real specific and simple orders. Frankly, I don’t understand what’s going on upstairs at all.”

Applejack pointed to her own head. Dash too didn’t know enough about robots to have this conversation.

“So you’re a cultist, huh?” Dash asked, the question coming out a little harsher than she’d meant it to. “What made you think that was a good life decision? I mean, statistically speaking…”

“I take it you don’t care much for religion?” Applejack asked.

“Can you blame me?” Dash asked. “Priests and religious figures always talk about peace and love and junk, then they turn around a summon a massive squid demon that devours an entire city. You can’t tell me that’s not hypocrisy.”

“No, I can’t say you’re wrong about that,” Applejack admitted. “Most of the gods ain’t our friends. You’re best staying far away from them, especially if you don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“But The Darklord is our friend?”

“He’s the only one who didn’t up and ditch us to go to the outer realm, ain’t he?” Applejack asked.

“Is it a choice? I remember there being a ridiculous amount of chains down there.”

“Breaking out of those and coming back to the material realm is a lot harder than escaping to the outer realm. Or so I’m told,” said Applejack. “He chooses to remain locked up, broken and nearly powerless, just so he can be around us.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“My family’s been helping him since the mythic era. One thing I can say is he always keeps his word for good or bad. He made a promise to Golden Feather to look out for us– for ponies, I mean. Golden Feather considered us all her children. So… well he’s just about the only reason the planet hasn’t exploded despite sittin' on more explosives than a scorpion in July. So you can thank him for that.”

Maybe Dash would if she hadn’t heard more or less the same line from plenty of other ponies and their gods. It was an answer to the question Starlight posited a few days ago, but one of many near-identical answers. One thing everypony seemed to agree on was that nearly all the gods were against them. You got one or two exceptions in the most optimistic scenario.

“I still think if he were really on our side, he’d be straight with me,” said Dash.

“Don’t get me wrong. I know where you’re coming from. He sure acts like he knows better than the rest of us, so he ain’t got no problem stringing ponies along. Thing is, he’s almost always right though. Neither me, nor my ma’ nor my granny can tell you a single time he was wrong, exactly. You gotta go back seven generations of the apple family for an example of that. He’s past the point where I have trust in him instead of mere faith. I know he’ll keep us safe.”

Dash could only shake her head. No way she could trust that guy herself.

“Starlight raised an interesting point when I talked to her,” said Dash. “The universe isn’t exactly hospitable to us. There’s like what, a quadrillion stars and all of them but ours are dead? Whatever beings created all this don’t seem to care much about us.”

“Why it’s like that ain’t no mystery to me,” said Applejack. “On accounta The Darklord told me why it’s like that. The early universe was a place of unimaginable chaos. But I guess if you’re getting all statistical like, chaos has to create order eventually, right? The Darklord always said it like, if you shuffle a deck of cards enough times, eventually you’ll draw four royal flushes in a row.”

Dash rarely gave this kind of talk much stock. Too many lies swarmed the air on this topic. But what Applejack was saying sounded somewhat familiar…

“The Queen of Light was the first alicorn– a being of pure and perfect order and light. She despised the universe as it was back then and created Equestria, all the stars, and the other seven alicorns. I suppose she really liked it bright cause she made a ton of stars. Only back then, all sixty trillion stars revolved around this one planet.”

“That sounds pretty horrible,” said Dash. “Wouldn’t you instantly vaporize on a planet with sixty trillion suns?”

“Well this was before life existed,” Applejack explained. “What you just said is the exact reason it changed. When Golden Feather was first created, she found herself on a horrible planet with no air, water, or other living things. But she was just strong enough to survive it all.”

“Golden Feather assumed her foal would be born like her– an adult I mean. Of course, it came out as a fragile little thing and died right away. Golden Feather was devastated and ran to The Queen of Light all miserable and crying. She eventually convinced the oldest alicorn to make the world more hospitable and The Queen of Light moved all the stars far away except the one.”

“And she made air too?” Dash asked.

“It didn’t stop there,” said Applejack. “She went to the rest of the alicorns, that is the queen’s seven sons, and each of them changed the world to make it more hospitable to our own kind. The last one, The Darklord who was the youngest, created darkness for this very reason.”

That was the version of events the Darklord told Applejack, Dash supposed. Though now that she thought about it, this did sound at least somewhat consistent with what Twilight theorized what with ‘true void’ being the ultimate source of creation.

That was the chain of events in Twilight’s theory. Void led to chaos which led to order. Though then again, Starlight allegedly had a counter example.

“Okay. And if she was the only pony alive how could she have any foals?” Dash asked.

“I guess a pony like that can just get pregnant whenever she wants. Though I know other ponies were made from alicorn feathers, too.”

“Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo came bounding back, her feathers restored.

Not that Dash had any choice but to notice them. Scootaloo had thrown off the cloak and now was puffing her wings out as much as possible.

“Yeah! Way better!” Dash lowered her head to look over the new feathers. They’d all grown back in perfect condition.

“Yeah! Let’s go already!” Scootaloo grabbed Dash’s tail and all but dragged her off.

“Heh. Sorry. I don’t think she’ll let me stay much longer.” Dash let herself get slowly pulled out of the room. “Later.”

As she slept, Fluttershy felt the sun move across the sky and finally lower. Around sunset, when the sun would no longer blind her, she decided to wake up.

She rose up from the ground in the forests surrounding Rarity’s house and began to stretch. She knew the others would allow her to sleep inside if she wanted, but sleeping in the forest was just so much nicer. You didn’t need to worry about the elements when you had no body, and she could never sleep above ground besides.

And the forest was always such a lovely place to wake up in. Fluttershy wished she could live in such places forever… which maybe she would get to.

Fluttershy sniffed the air and located all the other ponies at once. She could tell Rainbow Dash was flying up over the castle grounds, seemingly practicing at something. Fluttershy had her own training to do.

She turned to her left to watch something rise out of the ground, awakening as she did. It was nothing more than a sphere of translucent blue light. Yet these orbs once filled her with terror.

Orbs were a type of ‘lesser ghost’. High ghosts, like Fluttershy, retained all their memories and personality upon dying. A lesser ghost kept nothing. They were created by the death of a pony, but no real argument could be made that they were the pony they came from.

Orbs could be equated to bones or some other remains of a once-living pony. These were nothing more than a shadow of the will of a long-gone pony, like a lingering footprint.

Specifically, an orb was the weakest and least intelligent of any type of ghost. While the likes of wraiths, bogeys and other sprites had an animalistic level of intelligence and instinct, orbs had absolutely nothing. They were as smart as rocks, floating helplessly in the waves of aura made by other ghosts and psychics.

That wasn’t to say they were useless to high ghosts. She remembered seeing Boss Rattler using them as a sort of pack animal. They could be made to carry objects around and mindlessly perform pre-set routines. That is… if you could connect your aura to them and impart your own will onto the orb.

Fluttershy gulped as she watched the orb floating around in her aura. Sure, she made progress. Her phobia used to make her dart underground as soon as one of these guys showed up. She wasn’t exactly comfortable around it, but she could look it in the eyes… if it had any.

‘Growing up’ as a specter meant taking other ghosts under your care. Deep down, Fluttershy knew she was rejecting an important part of herself by avoiding other ghosts.

Fluttershy would never get rid of her bear. She’d have to carry it with her for the rest of her life as a reminder. She failed as a predead and she failed Rainbow Dash when they first met, but now…

Fluttershy forced herself over the hump and connected her aura to the orb, meeting no resistance at all. She let out a sigh of relief, over the hardest part, and sent her orb out into her training routine. She spent about an hour spinning it around herself and having it fetch sticks and the like.

Once she’d attached to it, it never seemed so bad.

Fluttershy smiled. Actually, this time she felt more comfortable around the orb rather than less! She’d slowly increased from a few seconds of connection to a few hours. And now? She honestly felt like she could keep this up indefinitely. The idea of disconnecting and having to get over the hump of reconnecting later filled her with more apprehension. Maybe she would just stay connected.

If she could do this, she could finally talk to other ghosts! Maybe the next step would be to find a wraith? Though then again, those were always angry and snarling. Perhaps Fluttershy should try to find another high ghost to meet up with… but a nice one.

She’d decided to only share this goal with the others once she’d made real progress. This was a real milestone!

By now, the sun reached the lowest point. Any of the following minutes could be declared night and the world became clear to Fluttershy.

It seemed Rainbow Dash was finishing up with whatever she’d been up to so Fluttershy headed in that direction.

She floated over, poking her head up above ground to see all the other pegasi had gathered together. Derpy, Scootaloo, and Dash were all talking, the filly looked especially exhausted and panted. Not wanting to interrupt, Fluttershy listened in quietly at first.

“Nopony gets it the first time.” Dash rubbed Scootaloo’s back. “But you were getting a lot closer near the end.”

“I almost broke my leg the first time,” said Derpy. She turned to Dash with a smile. “Dash broke way more than that!”

“Yeah, well my ‘mentor’ was a cliff,” Dash huffed. “I guess there’s a reason pegasus bones heal so fast though, huh?”

Were Dash and Derpy taking Scootaloo out gliding?” Fluttershy remembered when her parents did the same for her. It seemed so long ago.

With a smile, Fluttershy popped out of her hiding spot. When she saw Fluttershy, Derpy splayed her wings and took a cautious step back.

Of all of them, Fluttershy was the one Derpy trusted the least. Not even Twilight got this kind of reaction out of her. To be fair, ghosts typically were more dangerous.

“I keep telling you, Fluttershy got over her addiction.” Dash turned to her. “Even Flash Bang acknowledges this is a thing. Come on.”

“I dunno.” Derpy shook her head. “I heard a lot of stories about ponies who try to be friends with ghosts and it goes great for a few months. Then the ghost slips up and freezes you to death. At least the witch doesn’t have an instinct to eat me. Though I guess you’re werewolf friend does sometimes too… and Rarity could go completely insane at any moment! And that robot is, well it’s a killer robot. That can’t be good.”

Fluttershy frowned. At least Derpy didn’t mention anything about Scootaloo while the filly was around.

“Ah, crow. The witch really is the safest one around here, isn’t she?” Derpy sat down and put her hoof over her head. “I’m gonna die, aren’t I?”

“Nah! It’ll be fine.” Dash nuzzled her once. “You just gotta get used to her. Like you did with Twilight. Why don’t you go over there, huh?”

Derpy watched Fluttershy but didn’t get any closer.

“I don’t have any urge to eat you,” Fluttershy promised. “If that helps.

“Um. Thanks.” Derpy glanced away. “And sorry. But you get where I’m coming from, yeah?”

“Oh, it's okay.” Fluttershy smiled at her. “I used to be afraid of ghosts too. Or still am. But, um, not as much.”

Fluttershy gulped, figuring this was as good a chance to bring it up as she’d get.

“There’s something I wanted to show you,” said Fluttershy. “I got a ‘pet’. Kind of.”

Dash’s ears and wings rustled. No doubt she expected Fluttershy to summon a wraith. Those were the equivalent of dogs to a high ghost. That would be Fluttershy’s next step.

Instead, Fluttershy pulled her orb up out of the ground.

Her will synchronized with it, she had little trouble having it float around her in a circle. Then she sent it off to grab a stick and bring it to her.

She knew another ghost wouldn’t be remotely impressed by such a display. Controlling orbs was the very first thing ghosts learned to do with their auras just after dying. It’d be like expecting another pegasus to be impressed by gliding.

The important thing those ghosts would have missed was that Fluttershy no longer feared them.

“I’ve been working hard on this.” Fluttershy blushed. She felt so embarrassed for having bragged about something so simple! She wouldn’t blame Dash if she pointed at Fluttershy and shouted ‘cringe!’

“You’ve really had this with you for days?” Dash watched the orb. “I remember when you used to hide from these little guys. You really are getting a lot better at this!”

“Yes.” Fluttershy blushed. “Well, it took a lot of effort.”

“But I hope you don’t feel like you have to do this.”

“No. I do! I need to get over this,” said Fluttershy. “I’m the one who has to reach out to other ghosts. I can’t just complain about how bad ghosts have it and never do anything. Not when the rest of you are doing so much.”

Dash nodded.

“Actually, there was something I wanted to talk to you about on that.” Dash reached into her jacket and took out a business card.

Fluttershy flipped it over. It had a picture of another blue pegasus named ‘Sonata’ who seemed to work for some newspaper.

“The Sunny Side Gazette?” Fluttershy read.

“Yeah! They wanted to interview you. From what I heard they’re very pro-ghost.” Dash turned to Derpy.

“Yeah, I’ve been reading up on them for a little while,” said Derpy. “They write a lot of articles that are pro-Crater Cemetery, even. Like, how we should respect their autonomy. And like, it’s not our place to judge them even if they’re using literal mind control on other ghosts. Which is a little suspicious when, uh…”

Fluttershy frowned at that last part. She’d never heard any ghost say a single nice thing about that place. Poor Pumpkin thought working for Trixie was better.

Even Rattler had been terrified of the specter who lived there. Part of the reason he kept Fluttershy trapped down there was to protect himself and his gang from their influence. He never went above ground not for fear of predeads, but of other ghosts. Fluttershy always tried to avoid thinking about what kind of monster could force a pony like that to hide.

The scarce few other ghosts she met hardly spoke of the place in whispers. All of them had some plan to hide or run away to the far north. Not one even entertained the idea of fighting back.

She wondered where all the ghosts she’d met were now. Had they found somewhere safe or did that monster gobble them all up?

If she’d been stronger or braver, maybe Fluttershy could have protected some of them. She did regret her decision to just send Pumpkin off on his own. He could have just been dragged right back there as far as she knew. Fluttershy’s aura could have protected him. It could have protected a lot of ghosts.

She’d just been too scared at the time to do anything else.

Fluttershy looked at her new ‘pet’. She wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.

“I’ll do it,” said Fluttershy. “I’ll do whatever helps us out.”

“Well here’s the catch,” said Dash. “The pony who gave me that card is a ghost too. She was hiding that fact from us at first, though. It’s pretty obvious she’s a banshee, though, cause Minuette had a death curse immediately after trying to hold her hostage. She didn’t do anything bad, but when you couple that with the paper she works with…”

She was still a little nervous at the idea of meeting another ghost. But she’d just made a vow not ten seconds ago.

“Well, then Sonata must be a vegan, too!” Fluttershy forced herself to smile. “That’s really the only way she could be living among predeads. It’d be too dangerous for her to be out without. I mean, unless…”

The wheels turned in Fluttershy’s head.

“Wait! You don’t think she’s with Crater Cemetery, do you?” Fluttershy asked.

“I kinda thought that for a second too.” Dash turned her hoof up. “But we have no way to know yet. She didn’t write that stuff I was talking about before. And we’ll have Pinkie meet her first.”

“W-well even if she is from Crater Cemetery, even if she wants to hurt me, I still want to meet her,” said Fluttershy.

Even Dash was surprised at that.

“I know the specter there is using her aura to force her will on other ghosts, I just don’t know how much yet. I know I’m going to have to confront that place eventually.” Fluttershy took in a short breath. “I need to see it. And I need to know if I can help the ponies under her influence.”

Derpy looked at her completely differently after witnessing this resolution. Her wings finally settled and she watched the ghost with something closer to admiration than fear.

“I gotta say. You’re a lot braver than I thought.” Derpy gave her an approving nod.

Fluttershy really hoped she hadn’t just bit off more than she could chew…

Trixie frowned at her side of the board, filled with toxic waste pits that drained her champion's life every turn. She turned back to the twenty cards in her hand, unable to play any of them, then finally at the dwindling few cards left in her deck.

She’s slowly caught on to what Twilight was doing and to her credit started to respond. Her newest deck at least had a non-zero chance of winning, unlike the first.

“Okay, okay!” Trixie slumped onto her back, completely and totally defeated yet again. She dropped the enormous hand to the ground. “So you’re saying Rainbow Dash has some annoying special ability, right? That makes me draw too many cards or whatever?”

“Not exactly.” Though Twilight realized in retrospect you could easily take such a message away. “Or maybe a little. She’s great at finding exploits and thinking outside the box. And she managed to unite a lot of different types of ponies.”

“Lot’s of ponies can do things like that,” said Trixie. “And none of that’s useful towards becoming a witch. You know she’ll never get to my level, right? Let alone yours.”

“Maybe.” Twilight pawed at the couch. “But– maybe I don’t care how useful she is. It’s like this game! Nopony seems to think it’s useful for anything, but I still like it! Did you really not like playing with me? Isn’t this better than everyone just hating everyone? Even if it is ‘cringe’ or whatever you called it?”

Twilight felt like she’d finally scored a point in the more meta ‘game’ they were playing. Trixie didn’t have an immediate answer. Twilight knew she liked learning the basics and the thrill of slowly getting closer to victory.

“Is that all? You’re way softer than I thought you’d be.” Trixie shook her head. “Isn’t that you’re biggest weakness?”

“Huh?”

“It’s not something I wanted to admit during the battle, but you were holding back, weren’t you?” Trixie looked down at her hoof. “You never once hit me with your full strength. You always pulled back a little at the last moment. I know for a fact that if you went at Minuette with all your strength, you would have killed her. Have you ever hit a single pony as hard as you can?”

Twilight heard that criticism before. When they sparred, Starswirl always warned her that her inability to go all-out against another pony was her greatest weakness. He estimated that she was only able to fight against him with seventy percent of her strength.

He taught her that empathy would hold her back from obtaining her full power.

“No,” Twilight admitted.

“But why?” Trixie asked. “Surely you understand that if you could attack somepony with full force you could– I don’t know, save your friends or some sappy thing like that?”

“I do understand.” Twilight nodded. “I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but it’s hard for me to hurt other ponies. I feel too much empathy for them and… I’m not sure if I ever truly believed the witch’s philosophy that you shouldn’t care about others. Even if it is the right thing, then… I guess I just don’t believe in the right thing.”

Trixie paused to consider it a moment.

“I’m not sure if I ever had that kind of empathy,” said Trixie. “If I did, my training got rid of it. I don’t feel anything when I see another pony getting hurt. I can hit another pony at full force without any hesitation. I think that’s the only advantage I have over you.”

Trixie lifted her head. That really was the one part of the training Trixie had exceeded Twilight on.

“Do you envy me?” Trixie gave a sly smile like some joke hid behind her question. At least, Twilight understood Trixie didn’t have that same thirty percent handicap in battle. But–

“No.”

Trixie laughed.

“I didn’t think you would.”

She lowered her head and became silent.

“Do you envy me?” Twilight asked.

Trixie lifted her eyes and deadpanned at the stupid question.

“Not!” Twilight lifted her forehooves. “Not my ability to blow things up, I mean. But that I have a friend. Are you jealous of my friendship with Rainbow Dash?”

Trixie’s eyes became downcast once more. The answer was just as obvious but not as stupid.

Her reluctance to say yes drove away much of Twilight’s own self-doubt. Even an acolyte of a much more extreme version of her philosophy couldn’t bring herself to deny it.

“I don’t know,” she lied. “I never– I don’t understand things like that. The witch who trained me… she was the only one who ever even–”

But then she grew quiet again, still unwilling to open up that much.

“Are we friends?” Trixie asked. “I played the game with you.”

“Almost.”

“Heh!” Trixie smiled again. “That’s better than anything I’ve managed so far!”

At long last, Twilight got what she’d originally wished for. Dash and Scootaloo came up from the basement. The younger of the two pegasi looked drained and ready to pass out.

“Well if it isn’t the Rainbow Dash.” Trixie shot her a look.

“The Rainbow Dash?” Dash cocked her brow.

“You’re the world champion of this stupid children’s game, aren’t you?” Trixie held up a hoofull of cards.

“Oh yeah!” Dash smiled. “I forgot about that one. Heh. Six times in a row!”

“Well I’d like to let you know that I intend to take that title from you and prove once and for all how stupid and worthless this game really is! And I’m only using high-attack monsters because I’m committed to this now!” Trixie declared. “When is this world championship?”

“Uh.” Dash had to think about that. “I guess whenever I say it is. I’m the only member of the SK committee.”

“Good luck with that one!” Scootaloo came forward, pressing against Dash’s side. “Rainbow Dash has never lost a single match at the world championships!”

“Well technically.”

“Okay, yeah.” Trixie pointed at Scootaloo. “But seriously. Who the buck is this kid again? I never got an answer to that.”

Author's Note

For those wondering, 'Hell' is a metaphor for babysitting Trixie. And then it all makes sense.

Ghosts 8: 28 Ghosts Later

That name didn’t mean much to Twilight, sadly. But it would likely mean something to somepony.

She dug her hind legs in and got ready for another attack, feeling herself at the advantage so far. Unless it could hit much harder and much faster, it wouldn’t be able to do anything Twilight couldn’t counter. Meanwhile, Twilight could just whittle it away until there was nothing left. Likely, the creature operating it, Nightmare Moon, knew this.

It would try a different approach.

Twilight might need the same. Throwing it to the moon seemed like a bad idea after what she’d seen minutes ago.

If she could hit it with a full-strength plasma attack, Twilight knew she could destroy it completely. But getting it up there and charging the attack without interruption was her real problem.

“This does give me.”

It drew Twilight’s attention by speaking again. Its next move would be coming soon!

“A chance to destroy you both.”

As if a fire had been lit inside the armor, the soot came bellowing up, carried into the air in streams of blackness. The ashes were so great they temporarily blocked out the rain, then came pouring down all around Twilight even harder than the water had. She was surrounded by them, swirling around her in all directions.

Twilight teleported back, but it was no use. Blackness still surrounded her. A spatial tear…

Sour Sweet pushed a piece of metal, trying to align two holes meant to be bound with a screw.

Almost ready! Sour Sweet and her two lancers would be able to roll out and join the fight any minute now. Two of the three battle dolls were ready and if she could just line up these two dang holes! All this rain and lightning wasn’t making things easy.

As long as nothing bad happened she’d join the fight in…

Sour Sweet heard shouting in the distance. She knew that voice more than she ever cared to.

“Sonata?!” Sour Sweet looked at the banshee, still in her doll, running forward through the rain screaming and crying.

Something was chasing her. It was Pinkie Pie and that specter… Fluttershy! That dumbass was leading those two straight to Sour Sweet’s position. Fighting those two like this would be dicey, to say the least.

“What?! Not this way you idiot!” Sour Sweet called out to her, but Sonata wouldn’t listen or perhaps couldn’t hear.

She’d just have to make do with what she had.

“Everypony! We have to move now! Hit Pinkie Pie with everything you have, then go for Fluttershy!”

Sour Sweet and the other two pilots possessed their dolls. The ghosts behind them stood at the ready.

As she inhabited the doll, the battlefield became much smaller from her new vantage point. Sonata was the size of a baby rabbit now. Sour had half a mind to stomp on her when she got here. That idiot was managing to give her trouble now when they were on the same side!

“I don’t wanna! I don’t wanna! I don’t wanna!” Sonata screamed and cried as she neared.

“Should we–” One of the other pilots turned to her with hesitation.

“Just fire! She was supposed to die anyway!” Sour Sweet’s voice boomed through her enormous doll.

“Wuh?!” Sonata heard her just then and slid to a halt. “Wait!”

At once, all three dolls fired their back-mounted weaponry. Blue, purple, then green flames shot forth, hitting the ground behind Sonata and erupting into a massive explosion that consumed the entire area.

Sonata didn’t vaporize, sadly, but she was thrown screaming toward them.

More important was the Pinkie Pie question. To be sure, Sour Sweet sent the pilot to her left out to pounce on the billowing flames. The doll charged, jumped, then came crashing down only for an invisible force to throw her onto her back.

The remaining two fired again as Pinkie leapfrogged up onto that doll then again higher into the air. She used her telekinesis to spin around, dodging a second volley. Hitting a psychic of Pinkie’s level wouldn’t be easy. She saw every attack coming.

Pinkie threw a sphere of blue energy down toward Sonata, targeting her instead of the dolls for some reason. The sphere exploded, sending Sonata tumbling again… and knocking a few of her chains off. The banshee was almost free now and started stumbling about aimlessly without the ability to lean on them.

So that was it! Pinkie had the same powers as Zest?!

If that was true, she needed to be destroyed right now!

The other remaining pilot fired a barrage while Sour Sweet charged forward, swiping her claw in Pinkie’s direction. Predictably, Pinkie went on Sour’s back. Sour flipped once and slashed at Pinkie in the air.

Even Pinkie was surprised at how swiftly such a huge construct moved. There had to be a limit to her speed. Pinkie swerved once but now Sour was in a great position! She pulled back; certain this next blow would land.

But she felt something holding her back. Not Pinkie but…

The loose joint gave way! Sour Sweet stumbled and Pinkie grabbed her telekinetically and slammed her into the ground.

“Pinkie!” Fluttershy, possessing a doll on Pinkie’s shoulder, called out to her. “I don’t know if you feel what I feel but there’s a bunch of specters right back there. Underground.”

“I did! We might have to hit that one first.”

They knew.

Pinkie tried sliding forward, underneath the remaining battle doll while Sour struggled to get back up. They were right there!

They needed an even more massive attack. This might kill everypony here, but there was no other choice.

Sour Sweet gave the signal, firing off a flare from her back. Cinch, the specter they felt, came up from underground, ready to break her seal.

A specter was created when a single event killed over a thousand ponies. Though rarely seen, their most terrifying ability was to recreate that disaster. Sour had only seen a seal break once before. It wasn’t Cinch’s but the fire Cinch could produce would consume everypony in the area.

Pinkie spotted her even before coming up and had already thrown a spirit bomb down at the exact right spot!

It was going to be close! The spirit bomb was right on target, in Cinch’s face as soon as she got up. Even when an explosion sounded, Sour couldn’t tell who had been faster. Not until…

It was too small. They got Cinch! And three ponies there were supposed to be blocking her. Just a second later, Sour Sweet could make several ghosts over there floating about without any chains at all. Pinkie really could break them out.

Two more of Sour Sweet’s backups stupidly came up from under the ground and Pinkie freed them in the same way.

But Pinkie’s back was turned!

Sour Sweet kicked her hind legs and pounced down, trying to crush them both. Pinkie saw it coming even from behind and grabbed Sour Sweet’s claws. But the two of them were grappled now, Sour Sweet slowly pressing down, Pinkie pushing out against her.

“Pinkie!” Fluttershy came out of her stuffed bear. “I don’t see where Sonata went. Can you free the ghost controlling that?”

“Not when she’s in that thing.” Pinkie huffed trying to hold Sour Sweet’s paw in the air.

The other two pilots approached, surrounding Pinkie from either side, and took another shot. Fluttershy erected walls of ice on either side, just barely protecting them. But those two wouldn’t hold out much longer.

The other pilots got their next attack ready. Then the remaining ghosts on her squad came up from behind.

“Okay! I’ve never actually done this before, but I have a plan,” said Fluttershy.

“I trust the plan! Go! Go! Go!” Pinkie shouted out.

“Okay. Okay, I can do this.”

Fluttershy nodded.

And she broke her seal.

Sour Sweet honestly had no idea what Fluttershy’s seal was. Even after a half year of research, they didn’t find a single thing.

Water had already been covering the ground, so it wasn’t something Sour noticed at first. The already three-inch deep water flooding the area swelled up enough to submerge Pinkie entirely. The water flared up, then pulled back. That was Sour Sweet’s only warning about what was to come.

She turned towards a rushing sound.

An absolutely colossal wave emerged, throwing the rain and steam aside. Sour Sweet, in her current body, was already two stories tall but that thing made her look like a mouse. And since it was summoned, it would be enchanted water. It’d carry all of the ghosts off regardless of if they possessed something or not!

Even underground wouldn’t be safe if she could get there. The wave tore through the mud and ice, uprooting at least one other ghost into its swell.

Her only option was to try and dig her claws in and bear the wave.

That didn’t even last one second as the wave slammed into her, tearing up the ground she’d clung to, smashing pieces of the battle doll off and carrying her away. She might as well have been the one possessing a teddy bear at this point!

As she turned and flailed, desperate for control, Sour Sweet tried to take stock of the others. All their battle dolls and ghosts were swept away. But Pinkie Pie had to have been hit too.

Sour Sweet found the psychic much higher up the wave. Fluttershy had fashioned Pinkie a surfboard made of ice and now Pinkie was riding the doomsday tsunami close to the top.

“Good thing I bought that skateboard!” Pinkie looked over her shoulder, Fluttershy clinging on. “Remember when I mentioned that, Fluttershy?”

“I don’t know if that makes sense,” whined Fluttershy, clinging to Pinkie, flapping about as they surged forward.

Sour Sweet kept tumbling in the battle doll. There shouldn’t be enough water for it to go on this long! She’d never seen a seal like this break before, but the wave had to crash eventually!

It did, with another jolt that smashed her battle doll even worse. The armor fell as Sour Sweet was forced out into the air. Sour realized she was at the gorge! The armor had tumbled in.

The wave crashed right into the gorge, filling it to the brim, and turning it into a river. Sour Sweet still struggled to regain control even as she soared over the new landmark.

Pinkie Pie jumped just as the wave came crashing down, the blue energy of a spirit bomb swirling around her. She spiked her hoof down into Sour Sweet’s chest, hitting the other two pilots in the process. That blow should have killed her, but no. The chains absorbed that psychic energy. They shattered in the process.

Being freed from those chains was like having a full body cast torn off of her. Sour Sweet couldn’t… she just…

As her vision blurred away, the last thing she could see was Pinkie landing in front of a pair of pegasi.

“Oh, hey Spitfire. What are you up to?”

Fluttershy looked nervously at the two slayers, Spitfire and Fleetfoot, then clung tighter to Pinkie. Why were they here?

“Woo! Woo! Woo!” Pinkie spun in place throwing spirit bomb after spirit bomb at the group of dazed ghosts carried out by the wave.

Each bomb exploded into blue light, shattering the chains of their once enemies until the entire squad was taken out. She’d gotten all of them Fluttershy could see, including the three pilots. Two of the battle dolls sank into the gorge, the third stopped just short.

But Fluttershy didn’t see Sonata.

Pinkie breathed heavily.

“Okay, there’s a lot of these ghosts.” She stood up shaking her head. “This is going to take a while.”

“Do you need to stop?” Fluttershy asked.

“Honestly? For whatever reason, I feel great! I never spirit bombed this much before in my life, but I bet I could do it all day.”

“I suppose we might as well be freeing all these ponies, too.” Fluttershy frowned at that freckled ghost who’d been piloting the giant.

The ghosts who got free simply went limp. Their eyes rolled back, or they listed to one side as they drifted slowly off in a random direction.

Spitfire took note of the head of that squad, the freckled ghost who came out of the largest armor.

“Hey!” Spitfire pointed at freckles. “You were there back when I saw this thing the first time weren’t you? Uh. Sour Sweet? Yeah! You were in the army back then.”

Sour Sweet kept coasting slowly with her eyes turned up to the cloud above

“Hello?” Spitfire waved a hoof without response. “How do you feel?”

“I don’t feel.”

“That can’t be good.” Fluttershy watched her slowly pass by.

Fluttershy remembered something Aria told her. The chains strangled your aura and left it weak. But that meant you were ridiculously easy to control.

She’d practiced doing this to help Sonata but…

Fluttershy poured the compassion she felt into the freckled ghost first.

“Fluttershy?” Freckles sprang back to life, looking at Fluttershy with mouth agape as though the specter were the most amazing thing she’d ever seen. “Oh, wow! You saved me! You’re the best! I love you so much!”

Sour Sweet flew forward, grabbing onto Fluttershy with absolute love in her heart.

“Eep!”

Just that brief moment of shock was enough to make Sour Sweet break off and hide underground. All of the once lethargic ghosts sprang to life and hid this way or that.

“Oh no! They’re a little too suggestible.” Fluttershy looked around. “But I can’t just let them all wander off. Okay!”

Fluttershy focused her compassion, flaring her aura out like Aria showed her to attract all the ghosts to her this time. First, they poked their head up from the ground, then they came running, rushing in around her. But she was ready this time.

“Fluttershy!” They shouted and grabbed onto her.

“Please don’t crowd!” Fluttershy flared her wings and held up a hoof, keeping them back.

She managed to keep from becoming the bottom of a pony pile, but just barely. They didn’t just imitate her emotions but were totally overwhelmed by them. They surrounded her, all but tearing up as they watched Fluttershy with nothing but absolute love.

“We love you Fluttershy!”

“You saved us, Fluttershy!”

Admittedly, it was a little difficult to stay scared of them when they were like this.

“Um. Pinkie Pie saved you all but um…” Fluttershy did feel a slight smile creep on her face. That made them all way too happy.

Fluttershy looked them all over. Maybe a score or so in total.

But not Sonata…

“So what are you doing here?” Pinkie asked Spitfire and Fleetfoot.

Spitfire had been watching the ghosts uneasily, with her lip bit. Pinkie snapped her out of it.

“We came here to mitigate the situation,” said Spitfire. “I have a lot more ponies hanging back, but it’s too dangerous to approach right now. If there’s any way we can help just say so.”

“Well, our main hope for beating that thing down there, um… what’s her face?” Pinkie looked towards the nexus of the battle.

“Oh!” Sour Sweet came in eagerly. “Her name is Nightmare Moon! We’re normally forbidden to speak it. But thanks to Fluttershy being the best pony ever, I can just tell you lots of stuff now.”

“Oh.” Pinkie blinked. “You know, for some reason I thought the name reveal would be more dramatic than that after all this time. Anyway!”

Pinkie turned back to Spitfire.

“Me and Fluttershy? Our mission is just to save a pony name Sonata Dusk who… I think got swept away in this river.” Pinkie lowered her head to the ground. “Yep! That’s what my psychic perception says. Maybe since you two are so fast you can help me catch her.”

“But don’t kill her,” Fluttershy pleaded. “Sonata Dusk is very important.

“Yeah! We have to save Sonata Dusk no matter what!” Sour Sweet backed her up. All the other ghosts cheered, suddenly convinced they had to save Sonata.

“Weren’t you screaming at Sonata to just die a minute ago?” Fluttershy asked.

“Huh.” Sour Sweet blinked, only just now realizing that herself. “You know you’re right. Look, I feel really weird. Maybe I just can’t have any opinions that aren’t yours right now?”

All the other ghosts nodded in agreement.

“Well um.” Fluttershy looked back at the battlefield, unsure of what to do with them.

“I will literally die for you, Fluttershy!” Sour Sweet flew out in front of her, forelegs spread wide defensively.

That was a fast turnaround.

Spitfire gave Fluttershy only a frown of acknowledgment.

“Easy!” Fleetfoot made a bow toward Pinkie. “Hop on!”

“I should probably go with them.” Fluttershy looked over at Sour Sweet. “But what am I going to do with you all?”

“Wait! Wait, Fluttershy I remembered something especially important. I fought this thing before,” said Sour Sweet. “That thing… Nightmare Moon. It has one other means of attacking us besides these massive waves of destruction I mean.”

“If Silverstorm can handle that huge disk, I’m sure she can manage whatever else will be thrown at her,” said Fluttershy. “After all this time, I don’t think there’s anything she can’t handle.”

“She’s a predead, Fluttershy. And this is an aura attack. Your friend isn’t used to dealing with those.”

“But then she should be immune?”

“Not a normal one.” Sour Sweet looked at all the other ghosts. “It’s going to knock all the rest of us flat. But you? You’re the only specter here in fighting shape! Maybe the last free one left. Whoever this is is going to need your help to get past this attack. We can do this! I’ll take you there!”

Fluttershy would have to charge at Nightmare Moon herself?!

The fear broke Sour Sweet’s determination.

“Never mind! I can’t do this!” Sour flew underground.

Fluttershy shook her head. She had to! She promised she’d never let the others down again! Remembering her training, she focused her aura to try and summon that determination.

“I changed my mind again!” Sour flew up from underground! “We can do this! But heads up, anypony with any level of psychic perception is going to get floored in a second. Except maybe you.”

Sour turned to Pinkie.

“Pinkie.” Sour Sweet turned to Pinkie Pie. “If I don’t make it back, you need to know this. Lemon Zest, another ghost who should be around here, sold part of her soul to an object called the Element of Laughter. I’m not sure why, but you seem to have gotten a fraction of the power she bought. You have to free her. And if not, find Sunny Flare, the head of the Mad Science Institute. She’ll be the only other hope of winning this.”

“It sounds like you know a lot about this,” said Pinkie.

“So does Sunny Flare. We have to go if we’re going to save Sonata, though! The rest of you fly off that way!” Sour pointed in a direction, sending her old squad flying off out of the way.

Fleetfoot took off in one direction.

Sour Sweet possessed the remaining battle doll on the other side of the new river. She grabbed Fluttershy in her enormous mouth and bounded forward, needing to take leaps to get through the now high water.

Electricity rippled out through the entire cloud that had suddenly appeared. Yet it was on top of Lightning Dust and Dash that all the lightning came raining down.

Constant thunderous explosions ripped through the air. The two pegasi were pushed to their limits just trying to dodge it all. Lemon Zest hung by in the distance, watching them and occasionally turning her eye in another direction. She was expecting somepony…

Dash didn’t dare land given how much water had suddenly swelled up to cover the ground… if you could even call it that at this point. She’d be swimming if she landed.

Zest knew she wouldn’t have a lot of firepower once they figure out her trick. So she set this all up before depowering. In this state, Dash couldn’t get close.

She tried throwing a few of those dancing swords at Zest but they alone weren’t enough to strike her down.

“Hey, you ain’t bad at dodging yourself!” Lightning Dust sidestepped another blast of lightning. “I don’t know what Fleetfoot was complaining about.”

Dash’s claw blade was doing much of the work. Dodging lightning? It was pretty easy now. Was this what it felt like to be like Dust?

“Hey! How come they never chose you for SCT?” Dust asked. “You would have been fun to have over there.”

Dash knew what that was and why they didn’t choose her. Only the most incredibly exceptional were recruited into ‘special combat training’ as foals.

“Now’s not a good time!”

“Pff! Look at you. All serious. Well got any ideas?”

“Yes. Look, we’ll…”

Something hit Lightning Dust hard. She puffed out her cheeks, then puked down into the water below.

“What the?!”

Already Dust’s eyes were rolling into the back of her head. Her body twitched and she fell.

Dash swooped down and grabbed her. What was this? A seizure?

Another cloud began rolling in from the side… a black one this time.

Zombies 4: The revenge of the return

“Curses.”

Luster lay on her back, crumpled into a corner, panting heavily. She felt sick. She was sweating but felt an unbearable chill.

Too incompatible! It was a desperate move, to begin with, but this child was not fit to bear the element of magic. This vessel – no, that thing! One half, both halves of her were the problem!

She hadn’t killed Rainbow Dash fast enough and now it was becoming ever harder to act. But no matter! The fragment of magic was wise enough to work through it and act upon both their desires at once. She had to kill Eclipse and Rainbow Dash at the same time. It could be arranged…

But that stupid fragment could only want one thing at a time! Anything else Luster Dawn wanted got strangled out! Even eating–

Why should it eat? It didn’t matter what happened to this body.

Because the more she starved the harder the mission would get! But the mission would be over in a day!

The thought process was something she understood and didn’t do at once. Too hard to bear, she turned to the one refuge. Their mutual plan.

Luster finally got onto her hooves to look her little ‘helper’ in the eyes. The head of a robot, ‘Saccharine’ sat before her motionless.

“You’re probably wondering why I saved you, right?” Luster asked.

No response.

“Sweetie Belle will die if she’s the conduit of the azoth spell,” Luster warned. “You have the power to sacrifice yourself to save her. I want to use you to ruin Eclipse’s spell. To make sure she dies upon casting it. Then I’ll have her spellbook and my own freedom.”

“You already lied to me once,” said Saccharine.

“Ooooh. You think you can say no to this.” Luster poked her repeatedly. “You’re just a machine. Do you even think or just imitate thought? I am like a god! Eclipse is not clever enough to figure out the conduit matrix in a day, but I am.”

Luster tapped her head. Centuries of knowledge, a link to the very essence of magic itself swirled about in the tiny, child-brain. She really could do it.

“All I need from you is raw materials.” Luster slumped back onto the ground.

In truth, Luster had only said this much so the robot would be less resistant when the time came, part of it would think at least some good would come of its death. That was also why she left out the part about killing Rainbow Dash as well.

For now, it didn’t respond.

“If I’m not mistaken,” said Luster. “Crater Cemetery will be attacking this place very soon. I wonder if there’s anything you can do to make sure Rarity is safe when that happens.”

It didn’t believe her in the moment but that didn’t matter. There was one answer, at least. Luster couldn’t suggest it herself, lest the robot reject the plan.

And yet there was nothing else she could do at the moment. Nothing but clutch her head and sweat once again.

Dash got closer to Sunset Shimmer than she would have liked. On the edge of Ponyville, as if she were returning from Twilight’s house. Dash kept one eye on the river and the lake that fed it. A strong wind had picked up, making the water choppy. You didn’t normally see waves here, however small.

That would be instrumental, and she was she managed to make one stop there before the interception. The increasing distance between her and it was cause for worry.

On the other hoof, Sunset wasn’t far off. Stationed just north of the town, Dash wouldn’t be surprised if one or two of her soldiers heard the information she hoped to feed them just by shouting it here.

If Dash slowed down it would be suspicious. But had Sonata even pulled it off?

She perched on top of a tree and swiveled her head in a full circle, scoping out the place. Ponyville stood empty and desolate. Not an unheard-of sight, it’d been evacuated plenty of times. Sunset must have at least done that much.

Owl sight came in handy just then. She spotted somepony on top of the apartment building where she used to live, and another in a tree adjacent to it. Dash wouldn’t have noticed either otherwise. Either they were with Sunset, or they were here to kill Dash.

Deciding to play dumb for now, Dash flew out of the tree and towards the two.

Turned out to be the latter. Both stood up and fired at her. She was ready at least, turning back and summoning her wind wall. It’d normally be enough to block a bullet, but these went through and hit her with only moderate force.

Things only got worse as they fired again, seemingly without reloading. A steady stream of bullets was soon assailing her.

She’d only seen repeating rifles once before. Ghost Adder mercenaries! Neither the best nor worst opponent to hope for. They had explosives so Dash could make this work.

Dash cast the murder spell and flew off in every direction. One of her crows escaped the slaughter into a nearby tree. She just barely noticed the rocket coming from the other direction and fled again before it impacted that same tree.

They had her surrounded and Dash really had no idea how many there were hiding in the buildings. But she only had to escape!

Summoning her strength, Dash scattered again and moved out in every direction. She needed to rapidly recast it just to survive. Already weak, her strength was running out. But if she just kept this up a little longer. This wasn’t nearly the worst she’d been through!

She managed to tumble into a building where no gunshots had come from just yet. The house would survive at least one rocket before she had to leave again. Though she felt bad for whoever lived here, Dash badly needed to catch her breath.

As a pony, she stumbled deeper into the house, sitting down next to a closet, intending to take a few breaths.

“Don’t come any closer!”

Somepony burst out of the closet, blowing their own cover. It was a black stallion with a standard military gun. Not Ghost Adder. Wasn’t smooth enough for that.

“Wait. Are you Rainbow Dash?” He lowered his gun slightly. Dash reminded herself that she was famous. Recognition didn’t mean they’d met.

“Uh.” Dash blinked, hoping this wasn’t one of her former classmates, though. “Do you live here?”

“I’m with Sunset Shimmer,” he said. “Are you trying to get to her? I don’t think I can…”

He nervously looked toward the window.

“Break through those guys. Though I guess you can do all sorts of crazy stuff, right?”

Dash did not want to actually get to Sunset Shimmer.

“We won’t be able to get through them,” Dash said firmly, hoping it was true. “Can you just take a message to her?”

A rocket blast shattered the outer wall, exposing them to the outside. Another hail of bullets followed but obscured by smoke they lacked accuracy. Dash’s helper retreated to the closet as the smoke suddenly separated and cleared.

A pony wearing the black and purple Ghost Adder uniform landed on the newly created, and slightly flaming ledge. Dash had seen this one before, the one who looked barely old enough to have her cutie mark. She carried a big enough gun that Dash was certain one of these walls wouldn’t be enough to block it.

Looked like her break was over. She got ready to scatter again, trying to think of some way to shout the intel out before leaving.

Neither Dash nor the mercenary made the first move. A war hammer came crashing down on the latter, forcing her to block it with her gun.

A small storm of weapons followed. A sword, dagger, spear… Dash recognized the sight!

Moonlight Raven came into view. All the mercenaries fired at her at once, but she expertly controlled her dozen magical weapons, all swirling about her. With five she kept the lead pony in check, blocked bullets with two more, and sent the remaining five hurtling at each enemy location.

“We’ve insufficient firepower,” the young mare declared without emotion. “Retreat.”

Jumping back from one final slash by Moonlight, she then made a hasty escape. One lingered to give cover fire a moment longer but then that too died down.

Moonlight Raven brought all her weapons back close and watched them leave carefully.

This wasn’t good, exactly! Nervously, Dash looked around, considering her options. She saw that other, conscript pony from before. But he didn’t look happy to see Moonlight.

He shook his head rapidly before retreating back into the closet. Dash decided to leave him for now. He could still be useful, and she didn’t know what that meant, exactly. Best to keep that close to her chest for now. Or rather, in the closet.

Dash turned back to Moonlight, thinking this might be an imposter. But she’d never heard of anypony else who could fight like this, wielding twelve weapons at once. Did Moonlight somehow decide to off Dash?

“You’re lucky I found you,” said Moonlight. It sounded exactly like her. “You aren’t far from where Sunset is. Follow me.”

It’d be bad even if nothing were wrong. She wanted to be forced to retreat. They had to have gotten the message or they wouldn’t have come here, but why send such a small force? Something seemed off.

“That’s not the sword you were using last time.” Dash looked over the magic blade Moonlight used to slice that Zebra’s tail off.

“I have many swords,” said Moonlight. A dozen more swords, each as bombastic as the last, appeared all around her. “In case you didn’t notice.”

That did check out. Maybe it was nothing. Either way, Dash wanted the information to leak.

“Hold up. There’s something I need to tell you,” said Dash, willing herself to not look at the closet, at the pony she wanted to overhear it. “The Element of Honesty is awake. You know what that means.”

That statement was partially a challenge. Dash knew Moonlight only had to destroy the Element of Harmony and Nailbat to bring back Golden Feather. Moonlight should also know it, and that half that equation was now possible.

Though normally an unemotional pony, Moonlight reacted too little to the statement, that the path to completing her mission was open. She merely watched Dash suspiciously.

“We should go there now,” said Moonlight, starting off in the correct direction at least. “Before Sunset hears of this.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to get Sunset first?” Dash tried heading north, but Moonlight refused to follow.

“Sunset’s goal is becoming increasingly impossible,” said Moonlight. “She’s begun to act irrationally.”

This was too much deflection. Dash did not doubt in her mind this wasn’t Moonlight Raven, but the real threat sent against her. Still, she could use this. The closer they got to the lake, the better a chance Dash would have of getting away.

Dash’s only question now was why the mystery pony didn’t attack here. Maybe Dash had already gotten too close to Sunset, a fight here would certainly draw her in.

“I understand,” said Dash. “We may have to do this without her if she’s going to see reason. I’ll show you the way.”

Moonlight nodded and began trotting forward. The mood was more than a little awkward as they trotted deeper into the forest in dead silence. Though not entirely, silent. The wind had only gotten stronger and louder. From the south-east it came. Dash had to keep that in mind. It’d be partially at her back.

Perhaps it was Dash projecting, but she got the sense both were expecting the other to spring a trap at any moment.

Eventually, the lake came into sight. Perhaps her opponent wanted to go even deeper, but Dash needed the fight to be right at this spot. No way she could do anything against this pony otherwise.

“Hold on.” Dash sat down, legitimately exhausted from all this walking. “I’m too injured to keep walking. If I use the murder spell, you can carry me as a crow.”

Moonlight nodded but there was murderous intent behind it. She wasn’t going to let Dash separate safely. Dash reminded herself that she didn’t need to beat this pony, just dodge her attacks long enough to cause a disturbance. That would be enough.

A downward slash of the sword from behind. Dash separated. With deadly precision, four more weapons came out and systematically slaughtered the emerging crows. Dash couldn’t tell, but she had a hunch the one that dove under the water of the lack was the only survivor. That was the one she returned from.

And she had to turn back to avoid more incoming weapons, floundering about in the water. Who the heck was this? It certainly felt like Dash was fighting against Moonlight, at least somepony who learned to fight exactly like her.

“Is that really all you can do?” The false Moonlight asked. “Hope to stall long enough for somepony to save you? I’ll swat all of your flies at once!”

Green flames enveloped the pony’s body. Her form changed once more… into that of Twilight Sparkle. ‘Twilight’ smirked, enjoying the irony of destroying Dash with this form.

Then her body began to glow. Dash recognized that… she was going to use Twilight’s plasma spell! Dash didn’t even think any other witches could do that.

This was bad! It’d give her a second to react but that attack would vaporize this entire lake. Dash hadn’t expected one of them to be able to use an attack on this scale!

No way to dodge it, but Dash had to try. She burst into crows. Any pain she felt was just a memory for the fleeting moment it took the plasma to charge up. She had to scatter, get as far away as possible. A chance gust aided her, but it wouldn’t be enough!

The blinding Flash came but failed to vaporize Dash. Scorch her yes, as she fell down to the opposite side of the lake with a terrible burn across her back to add to the list.

Apparently, this pony couldn’t imitate that attack properly after all. The attack faltered before it could even take off, as though Twilight had changed her mind just before launching the punch. Dash sat up to take a look at the frustrated pony and finally figured out who it was.

Embermoon. The half-pegasus half-but pony stood before her!

Though then again, maybe they were just imitating Embermoon now. Dash knew what that pony looked like but little else about her. Best to just assume it was that pony for now.

Embermoon stomped her hoof in terrible frustration that she failed the move. But the lake was more important. The edge had ruptured and much of it boiled away. That would be enough to disturb it…

Yeah, Embermoon had not yet realized how badly that move failed. Dash couldn’t help but laugh as she stood back up.

At that, Embermoon paused only briefly, eye twitching as she scanned the horizon with her eyes.

“I know something you don’t know,” Dash called out to her. Then she closed her eyes tight, giving it a chance.

Deciding this was one final bluff, Embermoon flapped her wings twice. Dash couldn’t see but could feel the flames welling up. But then another sound overtook the flapping.

The sound of a chainsaw started up, then colliding hard against something. Embermoon let out a yelp.

Dash opened her eyes.

Behind Embermoon stood a hulking stallion in a blue coat, covered with festering wounds to the point parts of his ribs showed. He held two chainsaws, both looked ancient, and their blades were made more of rust than metal. Each chainsaw was at the end of a long, rusted chain that he could swing it from.

Sawmill had returned!

Again.

Not even Twilight managed to kill this guy. Now he was under the influence of a rising super blood moon and this witch was the one to disturb his slumber. He would go at her with even more aggression and strength than before.

His chainsaw had come from behind, tearing a gash into Embermoon’s carapace.

“What the?!” Embermoon gapped briefly then let out a howl. She effortlessly destroyed the super zombie with a single fiery blast.

She turned livid toward Dash, becoming only more vexed at what she saw. From the sound of the chainsaw, Dash knew Sawmill was right behind. And even though he was closer to Dash, he zeroed in on the one who woke him up instead.

Ignoring Dash a moment, he sunk into the water. Embermoon backed up. Flying over it was dangerous but Embermoon had no choice as Dash waved and started flying away.

Sawmill jumped out as she attempted to cross, grabbing her. The witch easily overpowered and crushed the super zombie again. But that hardly mattered. He came again out of the water whole once more, all but immediately.

During a blood moon, let alone a super blood moon… well this thing would respawn as soon as you killed it. Not even one second. And Dash could tell it was way stronger and faster on top of all that.

Sure, Embermoon could seal it away back into this very lake. But that would take time and concentration. So Dash put as much distance between the two while the chance remained.

“Don’t you dare!” Embermoon called after Dash. She shattered Sawmill’s body in every direction in turn, unable to get it off her for even a fraction of a second.

Dash flew away as fast as she could. The wind was really strong, now. Heading west it did half the work for her.

Amazingly, that seemed to work. She kept cruising just underneath the treetops, adrenaline slowly fading as the chainsaw became more distant.

No, no. It couldn’t possibly be that easy to get away from a witch. Dash tried flying faster. Something was flying up behind her. She felt the wind.

Crows! A dozen zoomed past her.

She knew exactly what that meant. One of them was with Sawmill, watching him, slowly backing up. A super zombie could only teleport when you weren’t looking at it. Of course, that meant if any of these changed back…

Two of the crows came at her from either size or tried digging their talons in. Dash might not be S-class, but she could punch a bird! The big weakness of the murder spell was being unable to use magic in this form. That and losing all 90% of your strength. It was mostly only overpowered when Dash did it.

Scattering would mean getting overrun. But staying a pony–

One crow flew right in front of Dash’s face. Then it turned back into Embermoon and prepared to attack. Dash took her only option, closing her eyes and hoping for the best.

She heard a crash but felt nothing. Sawmill really was at the top of his game tonight. Opening her eyes again, Dash saw the witch crashing into the nearby trees and Sawmill hanging in the air, foreleg to the side like he’d just thrown an over at Embermoon. He turned an eye to her, and she quickly darted out of the way. Embermoon was the one who woke him up.

Flying off again, she got another opportunity to get some distance between them. A huge explosion behind her erupted but the shockwave only managed to carry Dash slightly forward. She had to be getting close…

A lightning bolt streaked across the treetops just up ahead. That was Lightning Dust, signaling to Dash! They were supposed to fall back at the first sign of danger.

Dash pushed herself forward just a little bit, tumbling across the ground as she approached her reinforcements. Moondancer, in her disguise, and Dust up on the treetops greeted her. The hard part was over. Dash could rely on them for the physical portion of the rest.

“Did they send one of the witches?” Dust asked. “Those explosions are huge.”

Dash nodded just as Embermoon came into view, making the answer unnecessary.

A new strategy from Embermoon. Her head had contorted and twisted into something far more gruesome, eyes popping out from every corner of her skull so that it became little more than a blob of eyeballs with a dripping mouth beneath. She dragged Sawmill along the ground with her, battered and frozen in ice but not destroyed.

Two of the eyes shifted to look at Moondancer and Dust at the same time.

“Not enough,” her voice came gargled through the twisted form of her maw.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” said Moondancer, though she was doing what Dash assumed to be a Sorrow Swamp impression. “I’m just about the worst opponent for you to run into here.”

She tapped the ground and Sawmill’s body decayed rapidly into dirt. Crumbling his body to dust wouldn’t be difficult for a necromancer, but even something like that would only help Sawmill in this situation, as it was just giving him another chance to teleport away.

Next, Moondancer summoned up pillars of mud and several regular zombies. The cover gave Sawmill the chance to regenerate behind one of them. She came charring out at Embermoon with his chainsaw roaring forcing a response.

Moondancer focused yet another spell on Sawmill, covering him with a black aura. Empowered like that, he managed to smash into Embermoon, repeatedly pummeling her with a ferocity that even she had trouble matching.

At last, Embermoon managed to throw Sawmill into the air with a burst of wind that almost threw Moondancer’s mask off, one Dash needed Dust’s support to stay on her feet after. With him high up in the air, Moondancer couldn’t destroy him and he would be in the line of sight.

Embermoon turned, trying to blow Moondancer’s cover off with another burst of wind. The necromancer managed to stand her ground, yet Embermoon scowled and transformed again… this time into Moondancer herself.

Everypony paused. Had she figured it out?

“I can become just as good as you whenever I want,” said Embermoon.

She took control of the other zombies, keeping them fixed on Sawmill. Dash never remembered that working in the past, but noticed the zombie’s eyes glowing. Maybe she was seeing through their eyes as well?

Sawmill landed somewhere behind them but was currently in walk mode being led along by those zombies. Moondancer tried crumbling the regular zombies but Embermoon’s own necromantic powers blocked it.

Embermoon summoned a few fireballs, forcing Moondancer on the defensive, making more walls of mud.

It didn’t make any sense. Embermoon had turned into Moondancer but wasn’t using her spell to try and take control of Sawmill or the mud, not even trying to get rid of that black aura. Nor was she reacting to the revelation that Moondancer was here.

More zombies appeared behind Moondancer, clawing mostly ineffectually at her face.

And why keep trying to unmask Moondancer?

Unless…

Dash put it all together!

“Don’t let her see your face!” Dash called out to Moondancer. “She can’t copy you if she doesn’t know what you look like.”

Embermoon had seen Moondancer at some point in the past, Moondancer was just the first necromancer who came to mind. She couldn’t turn into Sorrow Swamp because she’d never seen that pony. And she couldn’t copy abilities unless she knew you had them! Moondancer had said she secretly learned the other necromancer’s spell.

And Dash called out not a moment too soon. Moondancer had been ignoring those zombies, perhaps thinking Embermoon had already seen through the disguise. Now she made sure to throw them off, forward at Embermoon, making them burst into mud.

“I’m going to have to go in,” said Dust.

And she took off, that move left Moondancer too open. Dust swarmed Embermoon in a melee that quickly favored Embermoon. But just one hit was enough. As Embermoon began to overwhelm Dust, forcing her back, Moondancer finally managed to get the other zombies, bursting them into mud, and letting Sawmill back out.

The super-zombie teleported behind Embermoon. Her attention split between the two attackers. Dust slammed her forward and Moondancer poured all her energy into Sawmill, giving him the strength for an enormously strong swing of his chainsaw.

It tore into Embermoon and left a huge gash on Embermoon’s side! It also forced the witch back into her original form. Reems of green blood and goo oozed out of the opening.

“Hey! We’re actually doing it!” Dust smirked. “I think we might be able to take this witch down.”

For a second there, Dash actually believed her impromptu bluff. With Sawmill here, they might almost have a chance. Their main camp wasn’t far away. Should Dash call everypony over and swarm Embermoon? It worked against Flash Bang.

But it wasn’t part of the plan.

“You don’t seriously think I’d still be alive this long if something like this were all it took to defeat me, do you?” Her body pulsed unevenly, all over, as she gritted her teeth. “I’ll admit, you caught me off guard, but…”

On the right side of Embermoon’s head, the bug half slowly began to fall to the side, her head practically opening up. Strings of eyeball stalks flooded out of it.

Her pony half remained normal, but the right side of her body quickly swelled into half of something truly monstrous. She ballooned two ten times her normal size with mouths and eyes covering most of her carapace. Many of the eyes rose from long tentacle appendages, snaking around the trees to watch every corner at once.

Sawmill tore through it repeatedly, but Embermoon shrugged the cuts he made.

Several of the eyes turned to the ponies and from each came attack spells, blasting at them with too much power to counter.

Turned out it was too good to be true.

Embermoon scrapped along the ground, dragging her belly as she moved forward with surprising speed.

“We can fight this!” Dash declared. “Fall back!”

Wasting no time, Dust grabbed Dash and took off, Moondancer followed not too far behind. A barrage of spells tore up the area around them as they charged forward. They could outpace it for now, at least. But they were also running out of room to run.

Dash’s base camp was only just up ahead. She really couldn’t imagine what to do if Embermoon got there like this.

They did manage to outpace her just a little bit, but from the sound of things up ahead the camp was already under attack. From up above, Dash could see them positioned against some enemy to the south, walls of ice created by Fluttershy provided some protection but were quickly coming down. All the more reason to retreat as soon as possible.

Fluttershy was the first to come out to greet them. Dash couldn’t afford the second to let her speak.

“Fluttershy! Make a huge ice wall that way!” Dash called out as soon as she could. “As big as you can.”

Fluttershy did so without question, though it would only buy them precious seconds. Next, Dash came skidding into the camp itself and found Spitfire as quickly as she could. Several other ponies gathered around to listen to their commander’s orders.

“Everypony, fallback!” Dash shouted as she entered the base. “We need to retreat!”

Spitfire looked only briefly into the woods before seeing the wisdom in Dash’s words. Eruptions of fire and lighting were already firing at the base. Though Embermoon’s spreading body could yet to be seen Dash knew it wasn’t far off.

The alarm sounded and ponies gathered only what they could at a moment’s notice, forced to leave their tents and most of their supplies behind. They hadn’t been fully informed that this retreat had been planned from the start, so their defeat would look convincing. Dash wished she could tell them it was all according to plan… but not yet.

Once again, Batton came to report the situation to Eclipse.

“There were some complications, as expected,” said Batton. “But Dash’s forces have been forced to hastily retreat. We destroyed most of their supplies. Though Embermoon is tied down trying to deal with a super-zombie at the moment. Normally, I’d think this was enough to knock Rainbow Dash off, but given it's her…”

Eclipse listened to the report with closed eyes. Sonata hadn’t given her anything overwhelmingly useful and Rainbow Dash was forced out of the Everfree. It seemed like it really wasn’t a trap. Batton and Sonata would live for now.

She was more curious about Embermoon than anything else now. It was good to know she could do such a horrible transformation. Apparently, this ability had its drawbacks, if she hadn’t used it in the fight against Twilight. Slowing yourself down wouldn’t do any good against the likes of her.

And all of this made her more certain Luster Dawn was plotting against her. She idly stroked the alicorn feather inside its pouch as the wind blew hard. The only question was what she wanted Eclipse to do with this thing.

Though Eclipse didn’t like how strong the wind was getting…

Another pony ran up the stairs hastily to deliver a message to Batton Pass.

“Batton Pass! Crater Cemetery is moving.” He saluted her. “And a hurricane is quickly forming just off the coast.”

“A hurricane? At this part of the year? It must be the echo of a specter. And if the hurricane was big enough to create a specter then it’s going to get a lot worse,” Batton concluded the obvious.

“Yes, but if I manage to kill the specter or force them to retreat before then it won’t reach full effect,” said Eclipse. “I’ve seen a specter use this power before. It still takes almost a day to reach its full strength.”

They were giving her two options. Retreat or charge. The question was which would be better. She was more likely to survive the former in the short run. But that would mean a large victory for Rainbow Dash also, who could soon become a powerful enemy. And who knew what the ghosts might do next?

It would also mean giving up her shot at using the Azoth spell. Yes, it was better to take the shot now. Crater Cemetery would not send anything light against her. If nothing else, such a powerful attack would be needed to cover her tracks.

“Curses! I was hoping they’d see Starlight as the bigger threat.” Batton looked up at Eclipse, longing for any hope. “Though this must mean Crater Cemetery is genuinely worried that this spell will work!”

Eclipse nodded, knowing that was likely inaccurate but wishing to waste no time discussing things.

“Then what are we supposed to do now?”

“We may not have any other choice,” Eclipse concluded. “Though it’s not ideal, I’ll have to try using the azoth spell against Nightmare Moon now, if I fail to make these ghosts retreat.”

“But then Starlight?”

“Can be dealt with later. If we retreat now we will have no opportunity to cast this spell at all.”

Batton bit her lip, realizing victory was no longer as guaranteed as it had been moments before. Eclipse remained calm, she’d been through many such situations. Perhaps none so intense, but she was far more experienced now.

“And bring Sonata to me,” said Eclipse.

“But that may still be a trap!”

The trap had already been sprung but Eclipse’s only guess was something about Sonata terrified Crater Cemetery and she wanted to use that. If nothing else, she could determine if killing the banshee would be enough to make them fall back for now.

But if Rainbow Dash was cunning, it most likely was the case that killing Sonata would no longer make sense once the battle with the ghosts began.

“I know what I’m doing. How long will it take to prepare the six artifacts?” Eclipse asked.

“We would need to hold out for four more hours,” said Batton. “To make everything exactly as you wanted.”

“I should be able to hold them off for that long,” Eclipse promised. “But be wary. Others are likely to take advantage of this.”

One last thing. Eclipse refused to trust this feather until she knew what was wrong with it. Certainly, she wouldn’t take it to battle. Out into the forest, she went, created a small pocket dimension, and stored the feather away. There it would be relatively safe and easy to find later, confident she could regain it even if the general area was destroyed.

The wind kept intensifying, to the point it needed an explanation.

A natural disaster that came out of nowhere… Dash hardly had the spies to confirm it but it had to be a specter. Dust frowned out at the wind alongside Dash.

“Well, there’s your ghost friends. This is pretty risky, isn’t it?” Dust asked. “There are several hostages at the castle. If it gets destroyed, so too do they.”

Dash shook her head and looked at the oncoming wind.

“I trust my friends,” said Dash. “I just need to give Rarity something to work with.”

Rarity sat in the jail, waiting for the right moment. She knew it was coming soon. There was a hustle all of a sudden and the number of guards dropped. Above ground, she could hear the wind blowing something fierce. That wouldn’t be too concerning if she weren’t in the basement. Rarity couldn’t remember that ever happening before.

“Is it a hurricane?” Coco asked. More for their own sake of not wanting to watch her puke again, the Cartel did give her a paper bag to breathe into. “Now of all times?!”

“Coco, there has never been a hurricane as long as I’ve been in this castle,” said Rarity. “They either go far north or far south.”

“But then what’s that noise?”

Rarity had one explanation. Rainbow Dash! She must have done something after all!

Or maybe it was somepony else and Rarity just got lucky. Either way, this looked like it might be her one opportunity to escape. The real question would be if it was enough to keep Eclipse occupied. Her last card certainly wouldn’t be enough for that.

Deciding this was unlikely a better opportunity would arise, Rarity turned to Fancy Pants and gave a slight nod. Silently, the message went through the dungeon. Any second now.

That super-radiation waste almost destroyed her castle the first time… Rarity really did go to properly dispose of it at first but then came up with a better plan. After all, reuse was better than recycling.

If it could destroy a huge portion of her castle once it could do it again. In the portion of sewers beneath her, long since caved in in preparation for the siege, she kept it stored along with a mechanism to release it. The collapsed tunnels would still have enough room for a few rats and insects. And they would be right underneath.

She moved over to the right brick in the wall and as nonchalantly as possible kicked it in the correct rhythm with her rear hoof. As she suspected, it wasn’t nearly nonchalant enough as the guard immediately noticed her actions.

“What are you doing?” The guard pointed his gun at Rarity.

It was already too late to stop it even if he killed her right now. The ground shook slightly and she once again looked around, unsure if that was Rarity or whoever was attacking the castle.

“Did you do something?!” He demanded. “Tell me now or I’ll start shooting one of you every two minutes until you do!”

Two minutes was plenty of time. Rarity stared him down, refusing to speak. The ground shook worse this time. It should be right underneath them…

As expected, the wall to the right began to crack. The guards turned to point their guns at that instead, just in time for a portion to break down. They fired before even seeing what was coming through.

One giant rat came at them, only to be gunned down. Another portion of the floor broke and a second came at them.

Critically, enough of that wall had been destroyed! Blueblood and three other ponies managed to squeeze out. They tackled the guards, still distracted, and took their guns before setting out to open the rest of the cells.

The ground broke up some more but didn’t fall away. Rarity could see it moving now. One of the rats had gotten far, far bigger than the others and it was still growing. They had to get out of the room. Rarity didn’t even give the order, they all just ran out into the hall.

There they met more resistance but quickly overpowered the next few ponies and took their guns as well. It wouldn’t be long before there was a response.

“This way!” Rarity led the group down a long hall. Parts of the floor and walls kept breaking up as angry rats and insects came through.

“Okay, but now there’s killer rats!” Coco clung to Rarity and pointed desperately at them. “I almost feel like that’s worse.”

“Have you never needed to deal with giant rats before?” Blueblood asked. “It isn’t exactly a bad thing to have them.”

“Am I the only one who properly disposes of that stuff?” Coco asked.

More ponies were coming down the stairs but in the confusion, were unable to tell which way to go.

Finally, the room came into sit but one rat came charging down the hall at them. They managed to get through and slam the door shut only for the rat to smash through it headlong. A second was already in the room. The ponies opened fire on both.

The one in the door didn’t go down immediately but soon found itself stuck in the door frame. The rat was still getting bigger! The doorway cracked slightly as it expanded more before they managed to put it down as well.

“Well that’s one way to barricade the door,” said Blueblood, before walking over to the rat already in the room.

Only that door and a small window lead out of the room. Everypony gathered around the window to look out. Everything outside was quickly being swept away by the wind.

“Okay, we’re out of the cell but now what?” Kerfuffle asked. asked. “Even if we run away, the wind outside is getting dangerous! We’re liable to get skewered by falling trees if this gets any worse.”

She was right. Rarity could hardly march them through this storm.

“Our best option is to secure this portion of the castle for now,” said Rarity. “Try to figure out exactly what the situation is.”

“And how are we going to do that?” asked Coco. “We’re outnumbered! And we only have a few guns. And giant rats are attacking us now!”

“How many times do I have to tell you that the last part is a good thing?” Blueblood reminded her.

“How exactly?” Coco grimaced.

“Are you forgetting that you have the Mad Science League on your side? We specialize in flesh golems.” Blueblood flicked his hair. “Why a foal with my talent could reanimate a tiny-brained creature like a giant rat.”

“Do giant rats not have giant brains?” Coco paused to consider. “Wait. Why don’t giant animals get smarter then?”

“It’s just the neurons that get bigger.” Blueblood heaved the dead rat down the hallway. “Not more.”

“Wait.” Coco’s eyes shifted about, trained on the floor. “I don’t know if that makes sense.”

“If anything, it makes too much sense.” Blueblood tossed the rat onto the table and began inserting metal rods into it.

“Is that enough?” Coco asked. “We’re just going to sit here and wait…?”

“I have one more secret here.” Rarity opened up another false wall.

A metal device with a ring just big enough to fit a head through on the top. A dive machine.

Rarity had already done this eight times. Doing another dive would risk immense mental damage. A risk she might consider but even now, if she did it again, it’d be more likely to harm than good. Most of the others here were at or near their limits as well.

“Do we have any volunteers?” Rarity asked them.

There was one answer both obvious and terrible at once. Coco had done a single dive before, giving her the best chance of being able to focus on getting them out of there. But given her nerves… well there was never any way of knowing exactly what a pony would do under the influence. Coco was just as likely to become completely unconcerned with trivial things like survival and obsessively start painting life-like portraits all over the walls.

Rarity looked in her direction but didn’t dare conscript her. It’d make a difference if she went into it willingly and with determination to save them.

Coco’s hoof trembled slightly off the ground. She truly did look like she was struggling to raise it, tears in her eyes.

“I’ll do it!” Kerfuffle stepped forward. “I’m on the seventh. So it might not work but…”

“I’ve never done this before,” some mercenary Rarity didn’t recognize and also raised his hoof, “but I’m willing to try.”

Both were doable but not perfect. Rarity nodded to both of them. Coco put her hoof down and winced with a mixture of shame and relief.

“You realize this can do permanent damage to your mind,” Rarity did feel the need to warn the second pony.

He gave a determined nod and Rarity went to fire up the machine as quickly as possible.

(Extra) Appendix

The following appendix gives additional, largely useless information, some of which will never actually appear in the story. It also organizes certain information given in the story.

If any of the information ever becomes important, it will be mentioned in the story, so there’s no obligation to read any of this. But maybe you want more to read or the information more clearly presented.

These appendixes contain marginal spoilers at best, especially if you’ve read up to the Aliens chapter before looking at any of them. The only exception is the full timelines, none of which have been released at this time.

Also: Here's the TV tropes page thanks to (I think) Walrusmrumpus.

Appendix A: Timelines

To read the charts: The year is written on the far left columns. Everything in the same row as a date happened in that year.

Ancient Times
0 RE – 1255 DE
1255-1355 DE

Appendix B: Factions

I: Equestria, The Slayer Association
II: Witches, Liches
III: Spectral Federation, Crater Cemetery, Old Manehattan
IV: Bloodstorm Cartel, Oaken Field, North Equestria
IV: The Allgood Group, Toxco, Curse Tech
V: Mad Science Institute, League, Association, and Cartel

Appendix C: Bestiaries
Ponin’s Spirit Guide – a ghost bestiary.
Robotics Glossary