BridgeWorld

[Equestria: 994AB Day 265]
The creature had passed out when the thread was completely withdrawn from her, but Celestia couldn't stop to check on her condition as the danger of the Dark Magic was still active and required her full attention. The thread continued to morph and change on its own, attempting to escape even as she held it in place. Celestia had to quickly dispose of the sliver before it could escape, so she focused one final blast of searing heat to obliterate the shard before she could relax.

Sighing, Celestia looked at the being named Jackie Valintine, and the creature was staring in terror at Princess Celestia.

"Wh-wha-what did you do to me!?" Jackie screamed at her. Before Celestia could respond, she had jumped to her feet and was running toward her. Celestia instinctively dodged before the princess realized the cheetah's goal was to get past her. Before she could react, the bipedal feline had grabbed the door handle and yanked the entire door off its hinges and sent it flying behind her as she ran out of the holding area. She was gone before the door had even traveled a few apples' height.

I've never seen anypony move that fast before—except for Rainbow Dash—! Celestia thought, belatedly coming to the decision she needed to chase after her, so she was moving while the door was still sailing across the room.

Celestia ran after the bipedal cheetah, rushing out of the Guard facility and out into the main road, which wasn't easy for the alicorn. The creature was deftly dodging around everypony in her way, and Celestia realized that at that speed, even an accidental contact could seriously injure or kill a pony! But for Celestia, it was much harder to dodge bodies until she had followed Jackie outside. There Celestia was able to bring her wings into play and worked to catch up with Jackie on her left.

Thomas and Big Joe, who had been arguing with Sergeant Fently and the desk officer for several minutes over the commands that Princess Celestia had made when she ejected everypony from the room, were startled by the sound of the door impacting and splintering against the far wall of the holding area.

"She's gone!" Big Joe exclaimed.

"They're gone!" Thomas corrected, being in the better position to see that both the princess and Jackie were no longer in there.

"Calm down, Jackie!" Celestia called out. "I'm not going to hurt you!"

Celestia hadn't thought anything could look more terrified as Jackie had when she had left the jail cell, but the expression Jackie showed when her head snapped about to look at who was speaking to her put that original horrified expression to shame. Still, the cheetah's response was a lot more than surprising when Jackie executed a sharp left turn, ducking beneath Celestia to run down another main street. Celestia was once again left behind by the unorthodox evasion as that street was several lengths behind before she realized she would need to bank sharply right in order to swing around for a full 270-degree turn in order to follow.

Her entire world tilted sideways, with the ground on her right, while the universe rotated from head to hoof in front of her before she was finally aimed down the correct road to follow her. Righting herself, Celestia had to shake her head for a moment to overcome the dizziness. It had been almost a thousand years, after all, since she had to make a move that extreme.

By the time Celestia was barreling down the road several blocks after the creature zigzagging and dodging the ponies filling the road, she just caught the view of Jackie quickly ducking to the right to go down an alley between the city block's main buildings. And it took time for Celestia to reach the entrance to that alley and she flew as fast as she could, trying to catch up. However, there were several times she herself needed to zig and zag through the uneven protrusions of structures jutting out into the alleyway, and she was unable to see any sign of the fleeing bipedal cheetah. Eventually, she came to the four-way intersection of alleyways in the middle of the city block, and Celestia was forced to give up the chase. There was simply no way for her to determine which way Jackie might have gone.

Dejected, Celestia flew up to exit the maze of buildings to fly back toward the Equestrian Guard facility. She never felt the fearful gaze upon her that watched from behind one of the many large industrial-sized garbage bins populating the alleyways.

"Wh-where did they go!?" Sergeant Fently demanded of Thomas and Big Joe. "That wasn't a teleport! That couldn't be a teleport!"

"Looked like a teleport to me," Thomas muttered.

"You're not freaked out by that!?" Big Joe asked, surprised at Thomas' lack of reaction.

"I've seen it before," Thomas said, shrugging. "Jackie used it to pop in on Jack Black when he had shot at my wife, then popped out before the Guard showed up to arrest him."

"But they should not have been able to teleport!" Sergeant Fently protested. "This entire building is warded against teleporting! Not even the Princess should be able to do that!"

"I don't know about Princess Celestia, but Jackie is just simply—a little quick," Big Joe said evasively, earning him a curious look from Thomas.

"I'm going to have to take you two into custody until this mess is sorted out!" Sergeant Fently said.

"You should worry more about the trouble your lot are currently going to be in with the Princess," Thomas told the Guard. "You'd better hope all that trouble isn't going to be rolling downhill."

"Some of it certainly should," Big Joe grumbled. "This guy, for one—" he said, glaring at the desk officer, but a commotion at the entry to the Guard facility interrupted anything else Big Joe was going to say. Princess Celestia had returned, and she wasn't the least bit pleased. She pushed her nose into Sergeant Fently's face.

"I. Want. To. Speak. With. Your. Lieutenant," she growled at him. "Yesterday!"

"So, what will you do now?" Thomas quietly asked Big Joe while Princess Celestia continued to berate the entire Equestrian Guard Precinct.

"I'm not sure," Big Joe whispered back. "The band has been playing the songs she wrote out for them, and their tips have gone through the roof. She's entitled to her share, of course. We'll hold onto her bits until she comes back for them. But why did she run off like that? I know she had to have seen me standing here when she ran by. I know she should have remembered I'm her friend."

"I don't know," Thomas sighed, shrugging his shoulders. "The princess said that she had to pull some kind of Dark Magic out of her. I can only surmise the procedure may have affected your friend's mind."

By rushing from cover to cover, she eventually came across something that utterly shocked and surprised her. Despite it clearly wasn't Earth due to the inhabitants, Jackie stumbled across what looked to be nothing less than a genuine set of railroad tracks cutting a swath through an impossible city that also looked like it could almost be any big city from Earth.

Setting her sights on the distance, Jackie took off at speed, hopefully leaving any pursuit behind, especially that horrible winged, horned four-footed monstrosity that was every bit as fast as she was! Soon, she was well out of the confines of that metropolis and surrounded by the typical semi-dense copse of woods often growing up on either side of the tracks before she dared to slow down and catch her breath.

Pausing by the side of the railroad, she squatted down and fearfully looked behind her, dreading the signs of something following. Fortunately, nothing was coming after her.

Shivering in fear and cold, she remembered—

She remembered the horror of being swallowed by the ocean—

She remembered waking the first day on that world and seeing the alien moons in the sky—

She remembered all the days she and her fellow survivors tried to explore the island—

She remembered the encounters and fights with that bunch of crystalline insects, the tribe of lizard people, and those Jurassic Park Raptors that went on for weeks—

She remembered those horrid monsters that captured her and her companions—

She remembered being put into that vat—and OH GOD!—the PAIN as that vile liquid ate away her flesh while she drowned in the goop—how it continued to eat away her muscles—even her bones—!

—how she managed to not go insane from the agony, she had no idea—

She remembered finally being pulled out of the vat—how she gagged, choked, and vomited that nasty picante slime up until she was able to breathe again—

She remembered the horror of finding out she had been changed—!

She remembered the horror of finding out she wasn't the only one—!

She remembered where she and the others were let out to wander the island some more—

She remembered more of those fights with the other creatures on the island—and how she and her fellow passengers discovered they were all both less and more than human now—

She remembered the plan that everyone decided upon to assault the base where they had been held and put an end to those monsters' plans to save not only Earth, but other worlds, too—

She remembered the final fight—that thrown wrench—the explosion—

Finally, remembering waking and opening her eyes to find that new monster standing over her—and the horror that new monster was just as fast as she was—and the chase through the city—

She stood up and began walking on down the tracks away from the city, but with each step, she started having the feeling she was forgetting something—

She glanced back over her shoulder, looking back toward the city and pondered that feeling—

—something important—

Uncertain, she resolutely turned her back toward the city one last time and kept on walking….