Rainbow Dash soared through the air towards Ponyville, she had just reached the outskirts when she saw a flash of magenta out of the corner of her eye. Stopping mid air, she looked down to see her friends standing on the road leading into Ponyville. "Hey are you guys alright?" She asked while swooping down to join them.

"Nope, just terrible." Applejack lied, her eyes darting back and forth.

"Great." Rainbow said sarcastically before turning to look at Twilight. "Seriously though, you guys good?"

Twilight, still seeming a bit stunned from the teleport, took a few seconds to respond. "Oh.. Uh.. yeah we're all fine. We should probably head for the library, we'll probably be able to find some clue as to where the elements ar- WOAH!" As Twilight was about to take a step forward a hoard of horse legged bunnies rushed towards her, thankfully Rainbow Dash reacted in time to push out of the way of the oncoming stampede.

"You missed Angel." Fluttershy called out to the leader of the stampede.

Suddenly the sun flew below the horizon in less then a second, being replaced by the moon in similar time, and plunging the land into pitch black night. "Wow, I can see so much better now." Applejack said as she began to blindly walk forward, however she failed to notice the sudden change in the ground and slid along the now slippery road, right into the other corrupted ponies. "I meant to do that." Applejack said after coming to a halt next to Twilight and Rainbow.

Suddenly the sun rose just as quickly as it had set. "Discords turned our dirt roads into soap!" Twilight exclaimed after a quick examination of the ground.

"Beautiful, isn't it." Discord said as he came skating by on the soap road. "This is the new and improved Ponyville." He said as he gestured towards the town. The town hall was floating upside down high above the town, several other buildings, as well as polka dot covered trees, were also floating above the town on large chunks of the earth. Much of the grass had its colour changed to create large chequered pattern of either blue or pink, And of course the sky was covered in cotton candy clouds raining chocolate milk. "And these are only my first changes."

Rainbow and Twilight grimaced as they looked at the town, only to be distracted by Pinkie skating past them. "This may look like fun, but it's not." She said.

After that Rainbow tuned herself out of the conversation to check up on her family. "How's everything going at the hive?"

However instead of receiving a direct message, Rainbow heard a random assortment of panicked cries over the hive mind.

"Why is the throne room filled with cheese." Said her mother.

"The barracks just disappeared!" One of the hives guards cried.

"Can someling help? We're stuck in the nursery." The nursery caretaker called out.

That last message in particular caused Rainbows blood to boil, she whipped around on her hooves to see Discord holding Twilight high off the ground. "Picture it the chaos capi-" Before he could finish his sentence he was cut off by Rainbow Dash punching him in the face, causing his head to pop off and his body to stumble backwards. "Well that was rude." Discords head said before disappearing and reappearing back on his body. "If you're going to be that way about it then I shall have to find my fun elsewhere." he said before disappearing once again.

As Rainbow Dash began to calm down she noticed Twilight trotting up to her. "Rainbow, are you alright?" Twilight asked, a look of concern growing on her face.

Rainbow let out a sigh. "Yeah, he just really makes me angry." She took in a deep breath, and then another sigh. "Lets get going, we still need to help them." She said, gesturing to her friends before taking to the air and moving along the road, with Twilight and the others not far behind.

Getting to the library turned out to be much easer said then done. The entire layout of the town as well as the basic rules of geometry had been warped, roads would lead to places they should not, windows and doors that should connect to the same room lead to entirely different places, and going back would take you somewhere entirely different from where you started.

Eventually Twilight came to the conclusion that it would likely be faster to just walk in a straight line and hope they reach the library, of course this would still take a lot of walking. "So Rainbow, how do you know Lemon Hearts?" Twilight asked trying to pass the time.

"Oh... Uh... Our moms know each other so they introduced us when we were really little." Rainbow said. "We used to hang out a lot more, along with our other friend, but we haven't gotten to see each other much any more. Shy's also met them, right flutters?" She called out having momentarily forgotten her friends condition.

"Oh you mean your gang of weirdos?" Fluttershy responded.

Both Rainbow and Twilight let out a groan of frustration. "We really need to find something that'll break Discords mind control."

Rainbow was about to respond, but Twilights last two words had caught her attention. 'Mind control' Rainbow parroted in her head, she felt something in the back of her mind, a memory, a memory that might be able to help.

It was the day that she and her other Changeling friends explored the ancient abandoned hive that Belgica found in The Frozen North. if Rainbow remembered correctly, they had found an ancient book all about mind manipulating spells. Most of the spells that the tome contained would have been very illegal to use today, but some of them had actually been put to use by The Seven Hives, such as spells for sharing ideas directly to another changeling, or a spell for locking away specific memories being used to treat those suffering from PTSD or locking the memories of changelings from ponies who learned of the existence of the changelings.

But the main contents of the book wasn't what Rainbow's mind turned to at the moment, instead it was a distinction that the book made about mind control and another form of mind manipulation.

"That's it!" Rainbow cheered as she griped Twilights face in her hooves. "Twilight this isn't mind control, it's brainwashing!"

Twilight blinked at her friend in confusion. "Rainbow, those are synonyms." She said.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Look Twi, mental manipulation magic can fall into a bunch of different camps. What Discord did is brainwashing which is changing a ponies personality and thought process to match what the caster wants. Mind control is direct command over the target of the spell, they won't do anything that the caster doesn't make them do. A brainwashed pony, on the other hoof can still act on their own." Rainbow dash took a breath, and then her mind processed everything that she said, 'Horseapples, I shouldn't know that.' She thought.

Twilight was dumfounded, she knew that Dash wasn't a dumb pony, but Twilight thought that she knew next to nothing about magic, but here she was telling the Element of magic how certain spells work. "I... wha-... Rainbow how do you know this? Also why is this relevant, you're just arguing semantics."

Dash began to panic, she had to buy time to create a convincing alibi. "Look, firstly, you are complaining about semantics when I know you would have done the exact same thing if you knew about this. Secondly this isn't the time to be worried about why I know this stuff." She took a deep breath and tried to recompose herself. "Thirdly this is relevant because brainwashing is easy to remove." This quickly distracted Twilight from Rainbows odd behaviour. "We just need to remind them of how they normally act. Do you know a memory sharing spell or something, that would work the best."

Twilight rubbed her chin with her hoof. "No I don't, but I think I could make one."

"Great!" Rainbow cheered. "Get working, wave got some friends to..." She trailed off as she looked over to where their brainwashed friends were, only to see nothing "...Fix."

Rainbow groaned. "Twilight, how long is it going to take for you to make that spell?"

"I estimate about thirty minutes." Twilight answered. "Why?"

"Alright." Rainbow said while nodding. "We'll split up to look for the girls. You make the spell while heading to Sweet Apple acres to see if AJ is there, I'll fly around town to see if I can find any of the others."

At this Twilight snaped. "Alright Rainbow what's going on with you, you're suddenly acting like a different pony. How do I know you're not some copy made by Discord trying to sabotage us!" She shouted as her colours began to drain away.

Rainbow Dash was taken aback by this sudden accusation. "Woah Twi, calm down I am the real Dash."

"Oh yeah? Then how do you explain the fact that you were somehow able to resist Discords brainwashing?!"

"Well I-" Rainbow attempted to speak but was cut off.

"Or what Discord said? He said that we didn't know something about you, something that allowed you to break his rules in the maze! How do I know that the real Dash didn't get brainwashed and just left the maze, so Discord decided to mess with us and make a copy!"

"Twi, chill I-"

"And that's not the only thing either! How were you able to tell Lemon Hearts and nineteen other students, who all just so happened to know how to teleport ponies, from Celestia's school were we were and what was going on in less then a minute! Or how you acted when we got back to Ponyville, I get that Discord is a problem and needs to be stopped, but the Dash I know isn't as quick to violence as you were! And don't get me started on the magic talk, Rainbow Dash doesn't know that much about magic so explain to me how you know something about magic, that from what I'm hearing would likely be Illegal, that I don't!"

"Well... you see... I..." Dash stammered as her mind raced, trying to come up with any sort of convincing excuse for all of this. But no matter how much she thought, Rainbow couldn't think of one that Twilight wouldn't be able to see right through. And if Rainbow decided to take the risk to reveal herself, Twilight didn't seem to be in any sort of mood to be accepting.

"Well? Do you have any sort of reasonable explanation!?" Twilight demanded.

Rainbow Dash took in a deep breath and looked Twilight in the eyes. "No." Was all she said as she lowered her head. She barely even registered that Twilight began to walk away.

Anisoptera didn't know how long she stood there, thirty minutes maybe. She felt a tickling sensation spread all over her body, she saw no change on her disguise, but Anisoptera knew what it was. A burst of red flames over took her hoof, she no longer seemed to care if anypony saw her, instead of the vibrant ultramarine it should have been, her carapace was now a blue tinged grey.

"Are you really giving up?" Anax said from over the hivemind. "We both went through guard training, what was the most important thing they taught us?"

Anisoptera just shrugged, her head still hanging low.

Instead of the expected voice of Anax, Anisoptera was surprised to hear a whole chorus of voices. "To let your hope die is to resign yourself to the same fate!" Every member of the Changeling guard said in unison.

"It's not that easy, I can't beat Discord on my own." Anisoptera said.

"Honey." Queen Meganeura said sweetly. "You know just as well as I do that you are never alone." Anisoptera was about to ask what she meant but was interrupted by another message.

"Yeah! We're here for you." Nannophya said. "Besides you're too awesome to give up."

Then another message.

"You can do this." Telephlebia encouraged.

And another, and another, and another. Everyling in the hive, her family, was cheering her on, just like when she did the sonic rainboom, Just like when she won the best young fliers competition. Except... it didn't feel right without her friends. and that's when Anisoptera realised that, to her at least, her friends were basically family, and if her Family wasn't going to give up on her then Anisoptera then she wasn't going to give up on her friends.

"Alright everyling listen up, I have a plan." She said, a look of determination growing on her face.

Author's Note

This chapter was originally going to have a flashback, but I decided it would work better as its own mini chapter.

Also next chapter will be the end of the Discord stuff.