No More Hoof Measures

Applebloom had her eyes closed tightly. The wind buffeting against them was so strong that she was afraid to open them. She was all tensed up, and her legs were wrapped tightly around Rainbow Dash’s torso and neck. She wondered if she was accidentally strangling Rainbow Dash, but if she was, then Rainbow Dash was taking it well. Slowly but surely, Applebloom worked up the courage to open her eyes. She did it slowly, because the more she opened them the more air rushed into them. It was making her mane blow wildly. But as she looked down, her eyes suddenly shot all the way open. The shores of Salt Lake zoomed past underneath them. Applebloom could see the waves crashing against the cliffs far below them. She could see the tops of the trees in the Everfree forest waving in the gentle spring breeze, and beautiful rolling grassy hills, and fields of fresh wildflowers in all colors of the rainbow. Applebloom suddenly became aware of a thousand sights and odors, simultaneously familiar and novel. She had never truly realized how beautiful her own hometown was. Seeing it from this new perspective gave her a newfound sense of awestruck admiration. The blowing wind no longer felt like a danger. Instead, it felt exhilarating. She had never gone so fast before. As Rainbow Dash made a big counterclockwise semicircle to turn around and go back to the lake, Applebloom reveled in the excitement of the centrifugal force that pulled her to the right. As they passed the shores of the lake a second time, Applebloom shifted herself to see the waves of the lake, and all of the watercraft that lazily traveled atop it, not wanting to miss what she had been too scared to observe on the way out. But she shifted herself a little too much, and lost her footing (hooving?), and fell off of Rainbow Dash’s back, plummeting towards the lake surface.

Applebloom felt her stomach try to escape out through her heart as the glittering water accelerated towards her. She screamed in surprise and flailed her legs, but she had no wings, and there was nothing her little body could do to slow her descent.

Applebloom felt Rainbow Dash’s legs curl around her tightly and she decelerated rapidly as Rainbow Dash pulled up, transferring her downward momentum forward. Applebloom’s dangling legs were mere centimeters above the water zipping beneath her, and she could feel droplets of water nipping at her hooves. By the time she had regained her bearings and was aware of what had just happened, Rainbow Dash pulled up and slowed down, gliding in a circle around the boat and making a graceful and careful landing, setting Applebloom down on the wooden surface of the sailboat, where her friends were waiting with shocked faces.

“Are you alright?” said Rainbow Dash, panickedly inspecting Applebloom all around for damage that could not possibly have existed given the nature of the danger.

“THAT. WAS AWESOME!!” said Applebloom, prancing in circles around the boat and screaming in the same way pretty much all kids do when they’re excited.

“You’re the best Rainbow Dash! This is the best day ever!” she said.

Rainbow Dash was still in panic mode, but her heart melted at the sight of Applebloom’s goofy open-mouth smile. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo concurred in unison with Applebloom. Applebloom, pleased as punch, leapt forward to hug Sweetie Belle, and accidentally knocked Scootaloo’s backpack into the water in the process. Sweetie Belle pulled it up with telekinesis before it could sink, but it was now soaked.

“Oops…” said Applebloom, her excitement crashing up against a wall of shame.

“Oh no!” said Scootaloo.

“It’s alright, it’s just a backpack,” said Rainbow Dash, “it can be replaced. You didn’t have anything important in there did you?”

“I don’t think so. Just some schoolbooks.”

“I can replace those. No worries. I’ll buy you a new backpack too.” Said Rainbow Dash.

“Really?” said Scootaloo.

“Absolutely! My auntie Dot Dot left me plenty of money. It’s all on me from now on.”

“Wow!” said Scootaloo, “I didn’t even know you had an aunt! Ooh!” Scootaloo looked like she suddenly remembered something and opened up the backpack upside down and dumped it onto the deck. After moving away a few soggy books on pony history and ringworm prevention, Scootaloo found what she was looking for.

“Oh good! The water didn’t get through!” Scootaloo was holding a small plastic bag of pink meth.

“SCOOTALOO!” Rainbow Dash nearly screamed. Sweetie Belle came running up and tried to take the bag in her mouth, but Rainbow Dash swiped it from Scootaloo before she could.

“What is this?” said Rainbow Dash, holding the bag up high with her wing. Sweetie Belle and Applebloom lowered their heads in shame. After realizing what she had done, Scootaloo gulped.

“I’m sorry Rainbow Dash!” said Sweetie Belle, trotting in front of Scootaloo, “I gave it to her! I didn’t want my sister to find it. Please please don’t tell her!”

“Wh-“ Rainbow Dash didn’t know what to say, “where the hell did you get this? You’re a little filly. Why do you have… meth?” The three fillies all broke eye contact and looked around sheepishly.

“Uhhh…” they all said in unison.

“Spit it out…” said Rainbow Dash, unconsciously emulating Twilight.

“Diamond Tiara sold it to us!” Sweetie Belle blurted out.

“Who?”

“Diamond Tiara! She’s the most popular filly in class, and-“

“ANOTHER FOAL SOLD THIS TO YOU‽” The cutie mark crusaders nodded their heads.

“We weren’t gonna try it or anything!” said Applebloom, “we were just really curious! Diamond Tiara said she had made a bunch of money from meth and we called her a liar and she took out the bag and she was bragging about how high quality it was and it was pink and she called us pussies and Sweetie Belle didn’t know what that meant and she started laughing at us and Silver Spoon was there and things just kind of happened and Sweetie Belle ended up buying it to prove she was cool and also that she wasn’t poor because Diamond Tiara kept bragging about how much money she was making please don’t tell anypony!”

“I won’t. I won’t.” said Rainbow Dash, “Applejack won’t hear about this. But this stuff is not okay for young fillies like you. I don’t want you to be getting into this anymore. Trust me, it doesn’t lead anywhere good.” Rainbow Dash chucked the meth into the lake, and it sank down into the abyss, out of sight.

“Oh man…” said Sweetie Belle, “that was really expensive…”

“Well it IS methamphetamine!” said Rainbow Dash.

(AN: while writing this chapter I googled “my little pony binoculars” to see if ponies had used binoculars before and how they used them, and discovered to my astonishment that My Little Pony brand binoculars were a real product sold by Hasbro. At first I thought “who the fuck would buy something like this” but soon realized that I would absolutely like to have a pair. Luckily, I have too much self-control and too little living space to spend 150 dollars scoring a pair of used Pinkie Pie binoculars off ebay, but I could not possibly not let this be known to my readers. I mean this is Evangelion levels of merchandising. Anyway, ponies hold binoculars by holding them up with two hooves. Scootaloo does it one time.)

Rainbow Dash was sitting in a bush besides an elementary school, watching little foals with her generic, plain black binoculars. This is a very suspicious thing for a pony to do, but she had a good reason. She was watching for one filly in particular. She had a strong personal interest in where she was going to go when class let out.

When the bell rang, the little ponies trotted out the door, almost single file, but a lot of them were eager to get home, or pushed past their classmates to catch up with their friends from different grades. Only a handful of helicopter parents were there to pick them up right out of the door. Ponyville was a safe place with good public transportation, and it was traditional for foals to just walk home by themselves, which was of course good news for anypony hiding in a bush with a pair of binoculars.

Diamond Tiara moved out of the line and loitered around the front of the schoolhouse until Silver Spoon showed up. Not surprising, they were good friends. They didn’t leave together though. They talked for a while, and eventually Silver Spoon went west, towards downtown, but Diamond Tiara went east, where not many ponies lived.

Rainbow Dash quickly realized a problem with her strategy. In order to follow Diamond Tiara she’d have to leave her bush. It was a very good hiding place, but not a very good leaving-without-being-seen place. There were still teachers everywhere. She had to think of a plan, and fast, before Diamond Tiara completely disappeared from sight.

If she couldn’t leave her bush, maybe she could leave with it. A moving bush was more suspicious than a stationary one, but still less suspicious than a pony, Rainbow Dash reasoned, incorrectly. She scrambled as fast as she could to rip out all the bush’s roots with her teeth, causing quite a commotion as everypony in the vicinity turned and stared in the direction of the racket, watching in confusion as an unassuming bush shook violently, and then lifted itself off the ground and took flight high into the afternoon sky. All the yearlings turned to look at Cheerilee, who simply shrugged and said, “Twilight will take care of it.”

Diamond Tiara fortunately was not in the habit of looking up. The sky was for poor people. Rainbow Dash followed her for kilometers (ponies can walk very far, just like ponies in real life) until she reached a dilapidated old shack in the middle of nowhere. It certainly did not look like any place fit for a blue-blooded trust-fund-filly to dine on caviar and hors(e) d’oeuvres. She knocked on the door, and two ponies, a pegasus and an earth pony, cracked the door open and peered their heads out.

“I have the money.” Said Diamond Tiara, “the money I got from selling the meth you sold me! Can you sell me some more meth please?”

“Keep your voice down.” Said the earth pony. Her name was Love Letter. Diamond Tiara looked confused and looked behind her.

“There’s nopony else here.”

“Oh yeah? Look up.” All three of them looked up and stared directly at the flying bush.

“It’s just a green cloud.” Said Diamond Tiara, who as previously stated did not have a lot of experience with looking upward.

“Forget-Me-Not,” said Love Letter, “I fear we may have two little birdies in the bush, which are worth one bird in the hand, and caged birds don’t sing.”

“What?” said Forget-Me-Not, the pegasus.

“FLY UP AND BRING DOWN THE BUSH!”

Forget-Me-Not acquiesced right away. She took off and zoomed towards Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash asked herself a very important question. What would a bush do in a situation like this? That’s right, it leaves. Rainbow Dash tried to beat a hasty retreat, but as she turned around, her wings got caught in the brambles, and she was unable to keep flapping at all, much less fly away, and she fell out of the sky like a brick, hitting Forget-Me-Not on the way down.

Rainbow Dash never at any point fell unconscious, but she was in enough pain that she didn’t put up a fight when Love Letter and Forget-Me-Not dragged her out of her bush and into the shack, and tied her to a radiator. They bound her wings with rope, hogtied her legs together, and put a muzzle over her mouth. “Uh oh”, thought Rainbow Dash.

Love Letter and Forget-Me-Not stood in front of her, being intimidating. Diamond Tiara stood in the corner, looking scared as shit.

“Why were you spying on us?” said Love Letter.

“…” said Rainbow Dash.

“She can’t talk, you put the muzzle on her.” Said Forget-Me-Not.

“Shut up, I knew that.” Said Love Letter, taking off the muzzle. Then she asked again.

“Why were you spying on us?”

“Why were YOU selling meth to elementary schoolers!” said Rainbow Dash.

“It’s our job,” said Love Letter, proudly, “we’re the Las Pollas Hermanas youth outreach division! Our job is to introduce methamphetamine to a new, younger audience! The customer base for crystal meth has been stagnant for a long time, but foals are a hot new market. The pink color of the new stuff makes it way easier. Little yearlings love bright colors.”

“Employing children to sell drugs is wrong! It’s un-, wait what did you say your name was?”

“The Las Pollas Hermanas youth outreach division,” repeated Love Letter, “we’re also considering Las Pollas Hermanas Junior.”

“The penis sisters?” said Rainbow Dash.

“What?”

“That’s what that means. Las pollas hermanas. The penis sisters.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Love Letter said to Forget-Me-Not, “Forget-Me-Not, go grab a dictionary.”

“We do have a dictionary,” said Forget-Me-Not, “but it’s only in pony English. We don’t have a pony Spanish dictionary.”

“Shit.” Said Love Letter, “Well, I don’t wanna torture and kill her until I find out if that’s right. I don’t remember whose idea that name was but if we’ve been calling ourselves the penis sisters for six months, I wanna fucking know.”

“I think it was Victory’s idea.”

“Yeah, and that actually makes me trust it less. Victory’s an asshole. Remember when he spent like two weeks trying to get somepony to drink his pee by pretending it was apple juice? It didn’t even look like apple juice. Too red. I think he had a urinary tract infection; it was disgusting. I think he told us that to fuck with us and we took it at face value because we’re retarded.”

“Excuse me?” said Rainbow Dash.

“No I mean the name thing. We knew his pee wasn’t apple juice.”

“I meant you should watch your language around the filly.”

“Oh, shit.” Said Love Letter, remembering the shivering pink 4th grader in the corner.

“Hey,” said Forget-Me-Not, suddenly reminded of Diamond Tiara’s existence, “why don’t we send Diamond Tiara to the library to look it up, and we’ll stay here and watch the prisoner?”

“I-I-I-I…” Diamond Tiara stuttered, eventually managing to say “what am I supposed to be looking up again?” Love Letter rolled her eyes.

“Las Pollas Hermanas. What does it mean?”

“Okay, sure.” Said Diamond Tiara, walking towards the door. Then she stopped, turned, and said, “how do you spell le spojaws air monnis?”

“L-A-S space P-O-L-L…” Forget-Me-Not began.

“Wait can I write it down?” she said, looking for a pen and paper.

“Oh for Celestia’s sake!” said Love Letter, “Forget-Me-Not and I will go. You stay here and watch the prisoner. That’s the easier job anyway. She’s tied up real good you can’t possibly mess up. We’ll be back in like an hour. Oh, but first, lemme put this back on her, so she doesn’t bite ya.” Rainbow Dash resisted a little as Love Letter tried to put the muzzle back on, but quickly gave up, as there wasn’t really anything she could accomplish. Love Letter looked proud that the muzzle turned out not to be a waste of time after all. Then she galloped after Forget-Me-Not, who had already started flying away.

“I CAN’T FLY YOU PIECE OF SHIT! SLOW DOWN!”

The room was quiet for an unbearably long time. Eventually, Diamond Tiara felt compelled to break the silence.

“Thank you for being so calm about this by the way.” She said. Rainbow Dash could not respond, because of the muzzle.

“I mean, those two can be pretty intense. Usually ponies freak out.” Rainbow Dash could not respond, because of the muzzle. Diamond Tiara took notice of this, and hestitantly removed it. Rainbow Dash opened and closed her mouth a few times, stretching her muscles.

“I’m gonna be honest,” said Rainbow Dash, “I took a LOT of downers before this. I am pretty out of it.”

“That’s uh. That’s good. I guess.” Said Diamond Tiara.

More unbearable silence.

“How old are you?” This time it was Rainbow Dash who broke the silence.

“Ten and a half.” Said Diamond Tiara.

You have to understand that when I say silence, I don’t mean there was no noise. Old, dilapidated buildings are always making freaky sounds. Whenever they stopped making pipes out of lead they started building pipes out of the bones of the vengeful dead, and that’s why at night the pipes are always screaming at you to kill yourself. The two ponies could hear the pipes, and the slow whirring of the ceiling fan. And the metallic clanks of Rainbow Dash’s restraints that bumped against the concrete floor or the drywall every now and then. It was silent in the sense that nopony was saying anything. They were just staring straight into each other’s eyes, thinking to themselves “holy shit, why can’t I be anywhere else but here right now.”

“I’m sorry.” Said Rainbow Dash.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m sorry that you got involved in all this. Fillies shouldn’t be hanging out with criminals. They shouldn’t be selling meth. You shouldn’t be a part of this.”

“What are you, my mom? What I do is none of your business. I don’t even know you.”

“It is my business.” Rainbow Dash didn’t raise her head off the ground as she spoke, “I’m culpable in all this.”

“What does culpable mean?”

“Culpable means that I cooked the meth you sell. It means that everything that happens here, is on me as much as it is on anypony else who works for my boss. It means that I fucked up. And now I’m going to die.”

Diamond Tiara shifted uncomfortably.

“You really cook our meth?” Rainbow Dash nodded.

“Me and Glitter.”

“You know Glitter?” Diamond Tiara looked amazed, “what’s she like?”

Rainbow Dash thought about it for a minute.

“I don’t know.” She eventually said.

Diamond Tiara really wanted to turn off that ceiling fan, but she wasn’t sure if Love Letter and Forget-Me-Not would allow it. It seemed to scream in her ears whenever there was a lull in the conversation.

“So, uh… Why were you spying on us?”

“I was following you.” Said Rainbow Dash, who wasn’t making eye contact, “You sold my meth to my friend’s sister. I wanted to know who you worked for. I wanted to… I don’t know. I don’t know what I wanted to do. I just didn’t want to do nothing.”

Diamond Tiara fidgeted for a while.

“Are you mad at me?” she said.

“No.” said Rainbow Dash.

Diamond Tiara tiphoofed out of the room and dragged in a step stool. Placing it in front of a bookshelf, she balanced herself on top of it with two legs, and carefully retrieved a small knife from the top of the shelf with her mouth. Then she stepped down and, without making eye contact, cut the ropes binding Rainbow Dash’s wings and legs, then the rope connecting her to the radiator.

Rainbow Dash stood up and stretched her legs, and the two stared at each other awkwardly.

“Why did you do that?” said Rainbow Dash.

Diamond Tiara burst into tears.

“They were going to cut your head off!” said Diamond Tiara, sobbing loudly and heavily, forcing out each word through her tears, which soaked into her fur and caused it to mat, giving her the appearance of a stuffed animal which had been worn to oblivion by years of a child’s love. “They’ve done it before!” Rainbow Dash could barely make out Diamond Tiara’s words, they were so distorted by the physical effects of her despair. She followed her instincts, and gave Diamond Tiara a hug. The filly shoved her face into the side of Rainbow Dash’s abdomen and bawled violently. She was talking a lot, but Rainbow Dash couldn’t tell what she was saying. Rainbow Dash felt a horrible pang of sympathy, deep in her stomach, that seemed to sap her of some of her strength. She hugged the filly close, wiped her tears, and said to her:

“Listen. When they come back, tell them I escaped. You tried to stop me, but I was too fast. I broke the ropes. Okay?” Diamond Tiara nodded, although she was in no condition to verbally assent. Before she left, Rainbow Dash pulled the stool back into the other room (which turned out to be a kitchen, sans food. The building must have been an abandoned homestead) and put the knife back on top of the shelf. She really wanted to say or do something else to help the poor filly, but her mind could not conjure anything up. Instead, she flew away towards home, the sunset behind her.

2 DAYS LATER

“You’re late.” Said Love Letter.

“Sue me.” Said Victory, “I hope you started without me. The boss is gonna arrive in like half an hour.”

“No we didn’t get started without you. We’re not fixers. We’re dealers. It’s not our job.”

“Oh like it’s that fucking hard to bury a body. It’s just digging a hole. You should have started the day you killed the bitch. Leaving a corpse in your shack for two days isn’t just legally dangerous, it’s unsanitary. It’s disgusting.”

“You think we’ll be able to finish before the boss gets here?” said Forget-Me-Not.

“Maybe.” Said Victory, “can I see the body?”

Love Letter dragged a black trash bag that was leaning up against the shack’s back wall and opened it up.

“Wow, that’s a small corpse.” Said Victory, “I guess that’s an advantage to working with children. Still, if you’d hired an adult she wouldn’t have pussied out on you. Where’s the head?”

“It’s in another, smaller bag.” Said Love Letter, “It was too awkward to carry them both in the same bag, the head kept rolling around whenever we were moving it.” Love Letter carried up the aforementioned bag and Victory took a peek.

“And the tiara?” he said.

“Forget-Me-Not has it. She wanted to hock it.”

“Don’t. It’s too traceable. She has the damn thing as her cutie mark. It’s gonna be in all the press photos. Bury it too. Doesn’t need to be here or now, you don’t have to go back and get it, but it’s gotta get buried.” Forget-Me-Not begrudgingly assented.

“Now, does this place have a plow?”

“In the storage room.”

“Go get it.” Love Letter grumbled as she obeyed. Almost nopony particularly liked Victory, but the boss did, so everypony had to give him respect.

Love Letter attached herself to the plow and began to dig. She did this by starting at one end of a very small rectangular plot they had drawn into the grass with a stick, and dragging the plow to the other end. It was only about 1.5 meters across, but the grass provided a lot of resistance, and Love Letter wasn’t very strong, so it took a decent amount of time for each go-across. Then the other two ponies would help dump the dirt and lift up the plow, and Love Letter would walk backward until she reached the end of the rectangle again. They repeated this for a while, eventually getting into a rhythm.

Once the hole started to get deeper, this strategy no longer worked as well. The three of them had to lift the plow half a meter up to get it out of the hole in the ground it was in. Love Letter climbed out of the hole with the plow still attached to her back and looked up and behind her. Then she screamed out in panic and tried to run out of instinct, but the reins were still attached, and she jerked violently and slipped onto the ground. Bullets rained from the sky, and three of them hit her. Two of them just grazed her torso, but one of them hit her deep in the back left calf. She cried out in pain. Forget-Me-Not immediately took flight and zoomed towards the assailant. Victory, who had a horn but no wings, ran away in a zig-zag pattern.

Rainbow Dash unloaded her M16 at Forget-Me-Not. Only one of the bullets hit its mark, striking the pegasus in the belly. But her momentum was too strong, and she collided with Rainbow Dash, grabbed her, and yanked her towards the ground. Rainbow Dash struggled against Forget-Me-Not as she felt her blood drip out of her stomach and splatter onto Rainbow Dash’s back leg’s, carried by the wind as they plummeted to the ground. She managed to push her off and slow her descent, landing haphazardly onto the grass. Forget-Me-Not managed to land on her feet. In front of her, Victory was moving towards her again, and he wasn’t zig-zagging. She didn’t bother picking up her gun. She had no more bullets. She stood in a fighting stance, waiting to fight Victory one-on-one. Victory shot a laser at her from his horn. She dodged quickly and it only grazed her head but it threw her off enough that Victory had no problem jumping her and striking her head with his hooves. Rainbow Dash cried out in shock as he bit into her neck, chomping as hard as he could. Rainbow Dash screeched and wriggled herself free and hit him back with her own hooves, but it wasn’t a very good hit. Rainbow Dash heard Forget-Me-Not coming up behind her and ran for the building. Two-on-one from different directions was not good. She needed to think of a new plan fast.

Darting inside, Rainbow Dash scrambled to find the knife on top of the bookshelf. It wasn’t there, but she found it in the kitchen, freshly cleaned next to the sink. She grabbed it with her wing and ran towards the vestibule. Victory was waiting for her in the doorway. She began to rush towards him with the knife, but he snatched it out of her wing with telekinesis and slashed her across the abdomen. Rainbow Dash screamed bloody murder as he slashed her again across the cheek, and stabbed her in her front leg, deep, causing her to fall forward onto her face. The knife flew out the door and onto the ground. He then dragged her telekinetically through the doorway and out onto the grass, while she kicked and screamed and cried and flapped her wings furiously.

“YOU BASTARDS!” she screamed loud enough to hurt her throat, “YOU MURDERED HER!”

Victory chuckled as he dragged Rainbow Dash to the other ponies, joking:

“Let me tell y’all the good news. We won’t need to dig a second grave.” The two injured ponies did not share Victory’s convivial attitude. They looked at her with searing, burning hatred.

“I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!” Rainbow Dash screamed. Then the three of them proceeded to beat her savagely.

They stomped on her face until she dislocated her jaw, and crushed her ribs repeatedly, breaking them in multiple places. They kicked her violently until she lacked the energy to resist. Blood dribbled from her open mouth and created meandering brooks in the grooves of the dirt, not quite ready to seep into the dry soil. Love Letter spat in her face.

“Rape her.” Love Letter said to Victory, “and then TEAR OFF HER FUCKING LIMBS!” Victory laughed.

“Damn, somepony’s pissy today, huh? You get shot once, and now everything has to be a whole fucking ordeal. Use your head, Love Letter. The boss is coming in like five minutes. Just slit her throat and throw her in the hole. No need to get all Sunset Shimmer about it.”

“Fuck that.” Said Forget-Me-Not, “Throw her in the hole now. Bury her alive together with that filly she apparently cares so much about.”

“Well,” said Victory, “it seems we’re at an impasse. Why don’t we settle this with a game of-“ He blew up.

The explosion of red mist formerly known as Victory blinded everypony present. Bits of organ and bone careened through the air and landed several meters away. From above, the scene looked like a red star on the ground. In the center of it stood Twilight Sparkle, a deep red from the pony blood that coated her fur.

Twilight shot a laser from her horn at Forget-Me-Not, blasting a hole straight through her neck. She died instantly. By this time, Love Letter had opened her eyes, but it was too late. She held her in place telekinetically and cut her throat open with the knife, then slowly pulled back the head and let the blood pour out. Then she threw her onto the ground and shot a laser into her torso for good measure.

“I knew you’d pull some shit like this, Rainbow Dash. I told you not to do this. I told you! And look what happened.” Twilight Sparkle didn’t await a response because before she had even finished saying this she had taken notice of the condition that Rainbow Dash was in, and suddenly scolding her was no longer the most top-of-mind issue.

“Rainbow Dash?” Rainbow Dash looked up at her.

Twilight’s attention was caught by something in her peripheral vision.

“Rainbow Dash,” said Twilight, “this would be a good time to fly away.” Rainbow Dash struggled to get to her feet. Twilight helped her up, and Rainbow Dash leaned on her as she tried to stand, but ultimately she fell back down. Twilight looked back in the distance. She could see the caravan of ponies coming up from the west. Derpy was coming.

“Come on, Rainbow Dash.” Twilight began to say, but quickly gave up the plan. She wasn’t going anywhere. But she didn’t like the thought of what was going to happen to her if she stayed here either. As Finger Flyer flew forward to meet his now ex-colleagues, Twilight made a decision. She zapped Rainbow Dash and she disappeared in a purple cloud. As for herself, Twilight elected to stay and try to explain.

Derpy’s entourage did not look happy about what they found. They drew their weapons as Derpy strolled up to the front and looked around at the carnage, taking stock of the situation. She squinted at Twilight and sighed.

“Finger,” she said, “kill that red unicorn.”

“Um, Derpy,” said Finger, “that’s Twilight.”

Derpy’s face took on a look of shock, which soon turned into a look of seething anger.

“Okay,” said Twilight, “I know this looks bad, but I can explain.”