As Twilight Sparkle lay face-up on the floor, staring at the fevered eyes and quaking cutie mark of Rainbow Dash, her rapidly-working mind jumped to thoughts of Spike and Discord.

Spike had gotten angry that one time and wrote to Celestia asking for Discord to put him under his Bewitchment. Through some means, Celestia had contacted Discord after getting Spike’s letter. And Discord had come to Spike to alter his memory.

Her conclusion: she needed to get to Spike, pronto, and have him write to Celestia, asking to have Discord alter Rainbow’s memories. The draconequus had already done it once… back after Lero had tried going to Rainbow’s cottage to show her all her old Wonderbolts and weatherpony stuff.

“Okay, Rainbow Dash,” said Twilight, in her most pacifying tone, getting up back up to a stand. “We’re… we’re going to get to the bottom of this. We’re your herdmates, there’s no need to lash out at us...”

“It’s wrong!” Rainbow moaned. “It feels like acid’s been poured onto my skull! Those moves… those moves I used on Honeydew… how could I have possibly…?”

“Don’t think about any of it,” Lyra told Rainbow firmly. “Just do not let yourself think about it. Refuse to.”

Rainbow’s face scrunched up, as if she was trying to shove the offending thoughts away… before she let go an anguished cry. “I can’t!”

A screaming Sicklefin ran past the three of them into the next room, her entire hindquarters on fire.

Their gazes followed the horrific sight, before Twilight snapped out of it. “Look, girls, this isn’t the place for chatter. Rainbow, Lyra, get yourselves up against me. I’m going to teleport us outside this building; then we can talk.”

The other two mares pressed themselves as closely against either side of Twilight Sparkle as they could. It was downright unnerving, how Rainbow Dash shivered against her as if she were standing in a freezer. As though to be extra-sure, Lyra Heartstrings wound her tail tightly around Twilight Sparkle’s. Rainbow Dash saw this happen and wrapped her own tail around Twilight and Lyra’s as well. The unicorns gave the pegasus reassuring looks.

Twilight Sparkle let her horn fill up with a large amount power. In her mind, she pictured the exterior of the quarry mill. When teleporting, it was always important to visualize a vacant, unoccupied area, away from other living beings… in order to avoid the horror that was ‘teleportation splicing.’

There had been a point southeast of the mill’s front entrance, a point that was quite a few yards away from where Corporal Wolf Pack and the ponies in her squadron would probably be standing. Wildflowers had been there...

* * *

Perhaps Twilight’s own agitation had distracted her. Perhaps Exit Wound had cast some sort of spell on the quarry mill, itself, preventing magic users from teleporting in and out of the building. Perhaps all her recent injuries and fighting had fatigued her. Whatever the case, Twilight Sparkle and her herd-sisters now found themselves standing inside some sort of office instead of a small grove of wildflowers. Twilight knew immediately that she was still within the Boulder & Daughters Quarry Mill because she could hear Sicklefins in other rooms, yelling loudly.

This side office was a very unimportant-looking room; a metal desk, two filing cabinets, and lots of undisturbed dust. The door was closed, so the strange cold mist hadn’t crept inside. Twilight had a hunch that they could hide in this place successfully for a long time if they all kept quiet. But Rainbow Dash wasn’t really cooperating on that account.

“It’s wrong, it’s really wrong, the whole thing doesn’t make sense,” the pegasus was saying, baring her teeth in a hostile way, like one of her animals, breathing hard, foaming spittle building along her lips.

Cozy Flow’s Dreamless Doze; yes, that’d be the spell to use on Rainbow Dash. Not only was it a powerful slumber spell, Rainbow Dash’s sleep would need to be a dreamless one. With her sanity crumbling like this, Twilight didn’t want to think what kind of nightmares her subconscious might concoct.

“No matter how I look at it, I don’t understand it…!”

Then Twilight could levitate Rainbow onto her back and try teleporting again. This time, she’d try appearing at the quarry mill’s front entrance, and then…

“Of course you don’t,” Lyra told Rainbow Dash, reasonably. “You’re lacking a vital piece of information. Information I have.”

Both Twilight and Dash snapped their heads around at their aqua-coated herd-sister. “You have?” they responded in baffled unison.

When Lyra placed her hoof on the Swapped pony’s shoulder, she was not attacked for it. Rainbow’s attention focused on her, desperate for the explanation. “Now, Rainbow, I need you to keep it together, and stay with me on this. Can you do that? Because I am telling you the information you need.”

When Rainbow Dash nodded at Lyra, the look in her eyes put Twilight in mind of a suicidal earth pony who’d just been convinced to take a single step backward from the edge of a cliff. But now Twilight felt panic… it almost sounded like Lyra was about to confess everything about the Swap!

“Do you remember when I’d just gotten back from my sabbatical, and we were all eating at Crispy’s, and I was telling you all about those three grandmasters I went and visited?”

Huh? Cozy Flow’s Dreamless Doze slowly depowered from off the tip of Twilight’s horn.

“That… wow, that was a REALLY long time ago, but I kinda vaguely remember it…” Rainbow said.

“Do you remember me speaking about Master Hushpuppy, who turned out to be a changeling? A changeling who passed on a couple of secret, forbidden techniques to me, right before she died?”

It was impossible to tell whether Rainbow did or didn’t remember; the pegasus’ face was all anxious attentiveness. For her own part, Twilight Sparkle could scarcely recall anything about what Lyra had said about Hushpuppy at Crispy’s. Too much else cluttered her mind.

“Changelings, as you know, focus on mimicry. But through intense training and meditation, Master Hushpuppy was able to take all that to a whole new level, far beyond anything her fellow changelings are capable of.”

“What do you mean?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“It’s simple. The ability to learn anything, to absolute mastery, instantly, and permanently.”

“Huh,” said Rainbow. “So what cool new powers did you get for yourself, Lyra?”

“For myself? Not a thing,” the Still Way grandmaster said. “But for you, Rainbow Dash, I got you a mastery of the Lightning Strike, Feather Leaf, and Rolling Earth fighting styles, plus a smattering of Vortex and Windblade thrown in, just for good measure.”

Both the other two mares’ breath stopped for several seconds.

“Yes, Rainbow,” Lyra Heartstrings said. “I’m the reason you’re suddenly a master in several martial arts.”

“But... how? When?” Rainbow babbled.

“It wasn’t that many days ago. We were all still in the middle of our heat. Had to be around three or four in the morning. A nightmare had woken me up, but the rest of you were still sleeping. I looked down at you, Rainbow, and made my decision. While you slept, I set up a zero state connection to your mind, just as Master Hushpuppy taught me, and funnelled those martial arts directly into your brain.”

“Why?!”

“I foresaw the need,” said Lyra, with a pointed look at the bloodstains on the pegasus’ coat; both Honeydew’s and Rainbow’s own. “You’re an Element Bearer, Rainbow. Evildoers will want you dead. And you’ll need to be able to defend yourself when the bad guys corner you while you’re completely alone.”

“I…” Throughout Lyra’s story, Rainbow Dash had been growing calmer. Her unbalanced mind finally had a straw to grasp onto, but based on the twitching of her mark, and eyes, it still needed more to put itself at ease.

“...Okay.” The pegasus let out a long, slow, deep breath. “...Say I believe you. Say that’s true. How’s that even work!? You’re not a telepath! You can’t feed the information into my mind, or somehow magically give me years of training.”

Lyra didn’t even skip a beat. “Of course. You’re entirely correct.” There was one single doorway leading out of this office room. Twilight watched Lyra peer at it as though suspecting a Sicklefin might be listening in on a great secret she was about to unveil.

“Rainbow,” Lyra turned back to her, her voice low, “are you familiar with the Collective Unconscious?”

The pegasus’ face looked as if she’d swallowed a spoonful of soup heavily seasoned with a completely unfamiliar spice. “Uh… I think… isn’t that some kinda psychological concept thingy by whatshisname, Thick Cigar?”

“Actually, you’re thinking of Shadow Aspect,” came Twilight’s absolutely needed correction. “Honestly, ponies attribute everything psychological to Thick Cigar, as though he were the only therapist to have ever…”

“The reason I bring this up,” Lyra interrupted, “is because the Collective Unconscious is not just some psychoanalyst’s concept. It’s a real place, Rainbow. Real as this very room all of us are standing in.”

With those words, Twilight experienced the fleeting sensation that her life had transformed into a young adult fantasy novel. One of the ones that involved crawling into the space under the bed in order to enter other worlds.

On a different day, Twilight Sparkle would have quickly spoken out and refuted this malarky, or she might’ve laughed at its sheer ludicrousness. What stopped Twilight was the look of immersion on the Swapped pony’s face.

“The Collective Unconscious is a mental state that organizes all the experiences of a given species. There is a section of the Collective Unconscious where you can find all the different abilities and talents a pony could ever have. And Master Hushpuppy taught me how to tap into it through a truly one-of-a-kind meditative technique known as the zero state,” Lyra continued to explain.

“The zero state?” Rainbow Dash repeated, tilting her head in confusion.

“Yes,” said Lyra. “If you were to capture a changeling and try and force her to reveal everything she knew about the zero state, she wouldn’t know what you were talking about. If you were to go to any Still Way practitioner… any martial artist, they’d tell you that the zero state was nothing but a bunch of horse apples. That’s just how big a secret the zero state is!”

Twilight realized how extremely lucky they were that this had all happened to Rainbow Dash instead of Rarity. There were certain less-than-true things that unicorns could tell pegasi and earth ponies that’d never fly with other unicorns. Lyra Heartstrings was always such a spiritualistic soul, almost holy-seeming, at times. Coming from her, it was easy to believe the Collective Unconscious truly was a real place unicorns could visit. Twilight could never have pulled it off, not even with Dash’s sanity at stake. She was too grounded in magic as a science. She’d be cracking up halfway through this gobbledygook.

“Whoa,” Rainbow breathed. “So, wait… let’s say I went into this ‘zero state’ thing myself…”

“Which you couldn’t, since you’re not a unicorn…” Lyra quickly amended.

“I could browse through all these different abilities and, say, snag myself some xylophone-playing skills, easily as a book from a library?”

Lyra gave a single nod. “Yes. And then you’d be a xylophonist virtuoso. Instantly. Which is how you’re a master martial artist now.”

Twilight slowly shook her head, but said nothing. What was the name of that first Still Way grandmaster whom Lyra had visited before Master Hushpuppy? Strawflower, yes, Master Strawflower, the one who was going to be in that new Bay Breeze movie. Lyra had almost missed her calling in life. She’d have done equally as well in the performing arts as the martial ones. However much screen time Lyra ended up getting, Bay Breeze had definitely underused Lyra in her film.

Slowly, the crazed tightness in Rainbow’s muscles relaxed. Her cutie mark was ceasing to spasm. She went so far as to smile gladly. “Well, thank Celestia you DID that, Lyra!”

In short, Rainbow Dash had deemed this tale of Lyra’s to be an acceptable means of explaining away the paradox that had been threatening to consume her.

“Wow… that zero state thing sounds really useful! You oughta go give Rarity some martial arts too! I got a hunch she’d LOVE them!”

And indeed, Rainbow spread her wings, looking ready to put Lyra on her back and fly her out to Rarity immediately, so she could zero-state their lead mare into a multiple martial arts champ, as well.

Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no… Twilight almost moaned.

“Actually, Rainbow, it’s not quite as easy as all that.” Lyra’s grave face melted Rainbow’s ebullience at once. “There’s a terrible price to be paid for instant gratification. You see, for every new skill you acquire through the zero state… you sacrifice one year of your life.”

“WHAT?!” Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash both exclaimed together.

“Yes,” said Lyra, with stoic acceptance. “If, before, I was fated to die of old age at 110, I will now instead die of old age at 106. Three years for the Rolling Earth, Lightning Strike, and Feather Leaf… plus a year for the Vortex and Windblade, since they’re only ‘smatterings.’”

“But… four years…” Twilight remembered Spike and Lero describing the look of guilt that had appeared on Rainbow Dash’s face, the day they visited her after her cottage had been rebuilt. Their description matched what she was seeing now.

“Lyra, I would never, ever, EVER ask you to do something like that for me! Not even if I was desperate!”

Lyra Heartstrings got nose-to-nose with Dash, staring her down like drill sergeants stare down green new recruits.

“Let me tell you something. If that psychotic Sicklefin boss were to appear here right now, I’d take a magic blast through my BRAIN for you, Rainbow… I’d sacrifice ALL the years in my life for you in a heartbeat, if it meant you’d live one millisecond longer! Why? First reason: you’re an Element Bearer. Our whole world NEEDS YOU far more than it needs me.”

At that moment, smoke snuck in through the space beneath the door, floating in front of Twilight’s eyes, and forming into a piece of paper. For now, Twilight set the message from Spike on the desk without reading it, waiting for this confrontation to complete.

“Second reason: you’re my herd-sister and I love you. How could I ever do anything less?”

Everything Lyra had told Rainbow just now was no lie. Not even an exaggeration. Twilight knew Lyra too well. Lyra Heartstrings really would lay down her life for Rainbow Dash’s sake, if the moment called for it… Even if that wasn’t Plan A. And because Twilight knew Rainbow, too, she could see how deeply moved the pegasus was by these words.

“But still… four whole years… how can I ever repay you for that?”

Lyra put a hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder and looked her steady in the eye. “Simple. Live, Rainbow Dash. Make the most of what I’ve given you!” she bade her. “Live fully and love life! I did NOT sacrifice those years of my life so you could sink in a quagmire of guilt and self-recrimination!”

Rainbow Dash folded a wing across her eyes and began to cry into it.

“You guys are the best,” she sniffled. “The BEST. I can’t believe I ever, ever doubted we were right for each other.”

Nudging Rainbow’s wings aside, Lyra came up and hugged Rainbow Dash. Twilight was quick to join them, hugging both her herd-sisters. Very soon, Rainbow was hugging them back.

“But… still, one more thing that’s bugging me,” said Rainbow Dash, rubbing the last of the tears from her eyes. Twilight winced as she saw a faint twinge from the Butterfly Mark. “That big nasty mare with the glasses and the really thick accent… she said that I was an empath. That I have some freaky sixth sense-reaction to my animals’ deaths. Remember that, Twilight?”

It was funny how, with certain elephants-in-the-room like Dash’s empathic link to her animals, the Swapped Five failed to acknowledge their existence for as long as they could get away with. Until their noses were forcibly smashed against them, the way Exit Wound had with Rainbow Dash. Twilight wondered: did the Swap blind all them to it? Or was it a form of willful obliviousness on their part? Like an overweight pony refusing to recognize her obesity?

“How did I even GET that?!” Rainbow asked.

“It may be you have what’s called a latent ability,” Twilight Sparkle told her, having a genuine contribution. “It has been known to happen sometimes. There’s a famous case about a mare named Sticky Syrup who suddenly acquired precognitive abilities when she was a great-grandmother. I’ll show you the story when we’re back in the library.”

Sticky Syrup wasn’t a made-up character Twilight had imagined up on the spot. She’d been a real pony, who really had developed startlingly potent prophetic abilities in her dotage. Her amazing predictions had all centered around her grandchildrens’ marriages and love lives, (the oldest of whom had been ten years old at the time of Mrs. Syrup’s passing.)

But what really mattered was this: the madness that had been flickering in the pegasus’ eyes had been diminishing this whole time. Now Twilight Sparkle saw the spark extinguish completely.

“Whoa. Cool,” Rainbow said with a grin. “Don’t worry, Lyra, your secret’s completely safe with me!”

Even if Rainbow Dash were to go and do some fact-checking in the future, this was a pretty solid cover story she and Lyra had devised, which would hold up to scrutiny. But Twilight Sparkle didn’t see any real scrutiny happening.

For one, neither the pegasus’ ‘Rainbow Dash’ side, nor her ‘Fluttershy’ side had ever had much interest in detective’s work. For another, Twilight doubted the Swapped Pony would seek to disprove the story that was keeping her sanity intact like tightly-wound gauze around a nearly-severed neck. Credulity seemed to be an important psychological defense mechanism which Starswirl’s unfinished spell had instilled the Swapped Five with.

“I’m… really sorry about all this,” the pegasus told the other two. “Don’t know what got into me.”

Their smiling shrugs told Rainbow Dash: forget about it.

“Hey, it looks like Spike sent us something,” Lyra said, turning her eyes upon the note on the desk. Twilight opened it up, and the three of them read it.

“Wow… GALLOP, huh?” said Lyra, after they all reached the end.

At that moment, they heard a shrill, angry yell, and Spike’s message was dropped.

“Holy… that sounded like Rarity!” exclaimed Twilight.

“It probably is Rarity,” said Rainbow, turning towards the door with a cocky grin. “Angel must’ve freed her. Good boy.”

“Angel?” Twilight repeated.

Rather than answer, Rainbow Dash rolled the muscles in her legs, loosening them up.

“Well, Lyra, you gave up four years so I could be a whiz at five different martial arts,” Her attitude was like it had been before the Swap. “Be a shame if I didn’t use them, right?”

“A crying shame,” Lyra agreed.

“Let’s go save our stallion,” said Twilight.

They opened the door and stepped out into the mist and snow.

* * *

Snow packed the entire floor. All around and beneath Greasy Frog’s hooves, chilling the very underside of all four of his namesake frogs. Outside, it was a moderately warm evening. Within the Boulder & Daughters Quarry Mill, it was an indoors blizzard. The size of individual snowflakes varied from specks all the way up to the size of doilies.

If Greasy Frog had been a unicorn, like one of those nasty Element Bearer dames that’d magicked this snowstorm in here, he could’ve probably cast some kind of warming spell on himself or something. But he was an earth pony, so he just had to bend his head and trudge forward. Snow blanketed Greasy’s coat and soaked in. Maybe the human had been onto something; some days, it really didn’t pay to be naked.

The mist made it nearly-impossible for Greasy to see where he was going. From somewhere else within this damned mill, he could hear the shouts and cursing of his fellow Sicklefins. Blind luck brought him to a door and he decided to try it, but thick, thick ice bonded the door to its frame; bucking it down was the only way to enter.

The new room Greasy Frog stepped into was a wider, more open space, but it was just as snowy and foggy as the room he’d just been in. Still, he had to move forward, if for no other reason than to keep away the frostbite. One hoof in front of the other, one hoof in front of the other… urgh, now on top of the snow, there was also freezing sleet and even hailstones pelting him…

Something very fast and pony-shaped bolted past him, and when it did, blood spilled from Greasy Frog’s left flank. It didn’t even feel like a proper kind of knife; more like an icicle with sharpened sides. The earth pony caught sight of the pony-shape as it flew forward ahead of him.

Greasy almost wanted to describe it as being ‘dressed like a Wonderbolt,’ except the uniform’s color was wrong. Purple instead of blue. Winged skull logo instead of a winged lightning bolt. It had a horn and wings. It grinned at Greasy in a way that spoke not of joy or glee, but a grin promising terrifying horrors.

The Not-a-Wonderbolt circled around then swept in from another swipe, moving like the wind, itself. Another slicing cut, this time on his right. Greasy turned and fled for his life. The Not-Wonderbolt came up behind him, like a hammerhead after a lone swimmer.

Greasy Frog had already seen what’d happened to Brass Hooves when he had done this, but the earth pony was scared and acting on simple equine instinct. Greasy Frog wasn’t one of the Sicklefins’ big bruisers like Lumpy or Cosh or even Bruiser, herself… but when the Not-Wonderbolt got close enough behind him, Greasy reared his hind legs back and bucked her in the face.

Except his hooves didn’t meet with bone and flesh. It wasn’t like kicking a thing made of meat. It was like kicking an equine-shaped electrical bomb. The pony-like illusion vanished into vapor, a few shards of ice fell into the snow, and electricity travelled up Greasy’s steel horseshoes into his body. Enough volts to restart the heart of a stallion who’d gone into cardiac arrest.

Greasy fell sideways into the snow, twitching and hurting, his heart spasming painfully for several seconds before finding its regular rhythm. When the swirling, snowy wind around him whistled and whipped around him, its sound was like breezy, frigid laughter. Shaking, the Sicklefin rose back up. And to his left, he saw a section of the damned fog amass together, thickening, taking on a purplish color, forming into…

...The same damned Wonderbolt-thing.

Greasy Frog broke into a gallop. The Fog-bolt thing flew behind him at a slower pace than before. Every so often, it would shoot lightning from its horn, many near misses, but several blasting him with jolts of electricity. Lightning would nearly hit his right side and he’d have to veer left, down a hallway. Lightning would nearly hit his left side, and he’d have to veer right, through a door. All too late, Greasy realized what was actually occurring here: he was being herded. The damned Fogbolt was the sheepdog and he, the sheep.

But by then, the Fogbolt had brought Greasy where it wanted him to be.

Before her.

Her horn wrap was off. She levitated in the air, held upright by wind and cloud, horns and eyes alight with a blue glow as she channeled the power to engulf the place with this hellish storm, her hair whipping about her head in the wind, giving the impression of a purple halo, an angel of weather, a demon of the storm.

Not only was she out of her birdcage, the cage, itself floated beside her, held aloft in a miniature-sized tornado. Well… miniature for tornados, at any rate. And the cage wasn’t empty, either. Other Sicklefins were stacked inside the birdcage like flapjacks, underbelly upon back. Not only were their legs partially encased in dense ice; this ice was also frozen horribly against the cage bars. The unicorns seemed to be completely unconscious, while the pegasi and other earth ponies probably only wished they were. Greasy Frog recognized Tight Screws, Ghillie, Jail Break, Ice Pick…

A monstrously-sized chunk of hail; not so much a hailstone as a hail-cannonball dropped down onto Greasy Frog’s head from above. Snow went up Greasy’s nose as he fell forward, dizzying pain bursting in his skull. Then unicorn levitation lifted the earth pony up, bringing him all the way to the Element of Loyalty. Greasy felt like a worm on a hook being eyeballed by a furious fisherpony.

“Do you know why this building is still standing, Mr. Sicklefin?”

Her voice echoed with thunder. The white unicorn’s horn, glowing with its immense power, actually hurt Greasy Frog just to look at it… or maybe that was just sleet getting in his eyes.

“Do you know why you and all your fellow felons aren’t buried under four tons of rubble?”

“It’s cause ya ain’t that powerful, weather witch!” shouted Ghillie recklessly, before something jabbed into her face.

It wasn’t even a bit of the weather witch’s weather. Greasy Frog’s eyes needed to focus a bit more before he could make out… a rabbit atop the Element of Loyalty’s back. Greasy hadn’t even seen the rabbit at first because it was a white-furred little critter riding upon a white-coated mare with snow blowing violently in all their faces.

The rabbit had a long, sharp, thin stick of wooden debris clutched in his mouth, as though it were a ridiculously long cigarette. Ghillie bared her teeth at the rabbit for jabbing her face with it. That greatly amused the rabbit.

“It’s because somewhere in this facility, my prince is still alive,” said the Element of Loyalty. “And I’d like to know where he is.”

“Prince?” Greasy Frog asked blankly. “I dunno no princes.”

“Lero!” snapped the wicked witch of the weather. “The human. My stallion. The one you chained to a gorilla statue and tortured!”

This blizzard which she had conjured around them didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest. In fact, the white witch seemed right at home in all this cold; like a polar bear.

“I dunno where your monkey’s at, ma’am...”

A sharp shot of electricity hit Greasy Frog again. It wasn’t even from the white unicorn’s horn; one of those damned Fog-bolt things had circled back around and done it for her.

“...Dude, do you want me to get you a shovel?” quipped Jail Break.

“...S-s-shovel?” Greasy Frog replied blankly, still wincing and shivering.

“You know, for the hole you’re digging yourself into.” Jail Break responded.

“I’m not looking for a monkey!” the Element of Loyalty seethed. “Lero is not and never has been a monkey! Now for the last time, tell me where Lero is, you slimy toad!”

“L-l-look, lady, I just launder the m-m-money!” Greasy whimpered, through chattering teeth. Even looking at her was like looking at a snarling polar bear. “I d-d-didn’t even laugh that hard at the g-g-uy!”

“Here’s a thought!” sneered Ghillie. Like the boss’ moll, Ghillie had way more bile than sense. “It could be your two-legged sweetie-pie died from the extreme cold! Wouldn’t that be just… YOWCH!!!”

This time, Greasy saw the bunny jab his stick straight into Ghillie’s pink gums.

“You long-eared, buck-toothed, lint-tailed weasel!” Ghillie yelled. “I’ll make a hat outta you!”

Then a green fireball suddenly appeared in front of the Element of Loyalty. She jumped back from it reflexively, but then seemed to relax, and even recognize what was happening as the fireball turned into a piece of paper.

“Wait…” Ghillie suddenly said, as the white witch went over and started to read it. “Didn’t the boss cast a spell on this place to prevent that dragon of theirs…?”

Dragon? Greasy Frog wasn’t sure what Ghillie was even talking about. All he knew what that he didn’t like the way that Element of Loyalty was smiling as she read the message.

“...local Royal Guard reserves outside… yes, yes… GALLOP, hmm?” she said, letting the letter drop.

To Greasy’s right a frozen window crashed apart as a metallic canister catapulted through, leaking thick greenish gas into the air.

The white witch cackled like some vicious aristocrat, wind swirling close to her face in a bubble to protect her (and the rabbit that now snuggled up into her mane) from the gas, while Greasy Frog felt his eyes begin to water...

* * *

Equine nomenclature is often complex and interesting. When a Donkey and a Pony Mare have a foal, it’s called a Mule. When a Zebra and a Donkey have a foal, the offspring is known as a Zonkey. When a Pony and a Zebra have a foal, it’s called a Zony. Captain Tiger Stripe of the GALLOP forces was a zony, (although if you called her a pony, she’d not correct you.)

Others often compared the GALLOP captain to an actual tiger even before learning her name, for she looked like one in equine form. The orange of her coat had been inherited from her pony father. Her distinctive pattern of black stripes was a gift from her zebra mother. Tiger Stripe even had a few sharp fang-like teeth in her jaws. Once they’d been all been square, but then she’d gotten her teeth cracked in a fight, decided she liked the look, and then had a thestral dentist cap them as canines.

Of course, this was all difficult to appreciate today, since Cpt. Stripe’s distinctly tigerish coat coloration was impossible to see under the tactical suit covering her body, as well as the gas mask over her head. But then, Tiger Stripe wasn’t wearing anything different than any other pony in her squad.

The gas masks, in particular, were designed to protect the GALLOP ponies from all the weeping gas they’d catapulted through the windows of this mill. To the naked eye, the weeping gas appeared as murky as smoke. But through the lenses of the GALLOP’s specially-enchanted gas masks, the gas just lent a greenish coloration to the room.

“I’m worthless! Just wor-hur-hurth-less!”

Ah… here was the first of the Sicklefins. A glacier blue mane, and a coat as white as the snow she was lying upon, with an ice cube for a cutie mark. “Nothing but low-down, no-good criminal scu-huh-hum!” she continued to bawl.

Some of the ponies on Tiger Stripe’s team took prescription antidepressants. Weeping gas could be thought of as the polar opposite of an antidepressant. It induced depression -- a truly crippling level of nihilism, self-loathing, and general malaise -- in anypony who breathed it in, both chemically and magically. It incapacitated most beings, rendering them unable to resist arrest.

“Police!” yelled Tiger Stripe, pointing her weapon at the mare. “I want all four of those legs where I can see them!”

“Guh-go ahead,” sniffled the Sicklefin with the ice cube mark, holding her arms out. “I’m nothing but a mon-hon-hon-ster…”

Tiger Stripe gave a nod to her right at Thunder Maul, and the pegasus soon had the perp cuffed. Then their teleporter, Ghost Flash, stepped up and set her hoof on the back of the perp’s neck. Flash’s horn shone, and then both she and the Sicklefin winked out.

Tiger Stripe’s team circled the space where Ghost Flash had been a moment ago, weapons at the ready, giving Officer Flash time to evac the perp in the paddy wagon outside this facility. But thankfully, none of the Sicklefin’s buddies came to attack them, and soon enough, Ghost Flash reappeared back in the same place on the snowy floor where she’d disappeared from.

Another victory for the General Assault Limited Liability Operational Patrol.

Before proceeding into the next room, Tiger Stripe pressed herself by the door and used a special tactical mirror -- a small oval glass on the end of an extendable stick -- to check to see whether the coast was clear. It wasn’t.

Three Sicklefins were in the next room. There was a pegasus and an earth pony, both of whom were crying miserably into the snow, but also a unicorn stallion.

“Quit yer bawling, ya poxy munter!” the unicorn stallion was shouting at his pegasus cohort.

The unicorn had made excellent use of his magic. A dome of continuously swirling wind encircled his head and kept out the weeping gas, as efficiently as a deep-sea diver’s spherical helmet kept the seawater out.

“Buh-but life’s meaningless!” wept the pegasus. “Don’t that make ya sad?”

“Bugger me up every hole!” the unicorn growled. “You’re an useless as tits on a bull! As tits on that human… I saw him when he stripped, big hairless ape, and he got TITS on ‘im. Wonder if that white mare MILKS him from there…”

Strangely enough, Tiger Stripe was almost willing to swear that the unicorn’s wind magic seemed to be growing stronger the more he spoke.

“Puh-probably the muh-milk tastes awe-haw-ful!” the weepy pegasus cried.

Tiger Stripe gave a signal to his fellow GALLOP ponies, and then kicked the door the rest of the way, and then rushed in.

“Hooves in the air!” barked Tiger Stripe. “Lights off on that horn of yours, bub!”

“And breathe in all THIS arse gas?! Go jam it up yer clunge!” sneered the unicorn, his horn’s power shining all the brighter.

The unicorn shot a fireball straight at Tiger Stripe.

“Incoming fire!” Her team all dodged the fireball thanks to months of training.

“Spunk-stained twonkers!” the foul-mouthed unicorn uttered in an exhale, and not only did his wind shield reform twice as powerful, every new fireball he cast seemed successively bigger with each new profanity he spat. If this were true, Tiger Stripe knew some scientists who would be fascinated to study this punk.

The next second, though, the trash talker’s eyes got treated to a nice triple whammy.

Cloudglass was a fragile variant of cloudcrete, the material which pegasi used to build their cloud homes. Cloudglass was mostly used for building their windows. The GALLOP ponies all averted their eyes as Thunder Maul’s prehensile feathers dug into a side pocket and lobbed a ball of cloudglass the size of a robin’s egg at some hard ice by the trash talker’s forehooves. The cloudglass shattered.

The trash talker was deafened by a clap of thunder, that muted everything else.

And he was blinded by overpowering light.

And also electroshocked by a minor quantity of lightning.

It was the light and sound of a lighting bolt from the moment of its creation. ‘Thunderblasts’ were what they were called.

As the trash talker sucked in a large lungful of weeping gas, Ghost Flash teleported behind him. Not only did she cuff his hooves, she also brought out a horn wrap and secured it to his horn before escorting him outside with his buddies.

And all of the GALLOP ponies were packing many, many sets of horn wraps, cuffs, and wingbands.

* * *

The trio of mares navigated their way through the now-disorienting mill, filled with a miasma of fog and weeping gas, which Twilight guarded them against as soon as she recognized what it was.

"In here! It looks clear!" Lyra called, figuring that Lero would head someplace clear. It'd be a good place to start, anyway. The herd-sisters found themselves in a large cafeteria with a sizable dining area, a serving area, and what seemed to be a kitchen beyond that.

However, it became clear that they weren’t alone. In the middle of the dining hall stood a maroon-coated, sandy-maned unicorn mare, dressed in a pinstripe jacket and bandoleers holding dozens of knives which she now levitated out. The myriad of blades orbited around her, several switchblades popping in and out of their sheaths as she played with them. “Well, well, look what we have here!”

“Stop right..!” A knife embedded itself in the wall next to Twilight’s head, causing her to reflexively jerk away. “Whoa! That nearly hit my eye!”

Twilight Sparkle saw words written on the blade of the knife: PROPERTY OF SWITCH BLADE. She quickly returned her attention to the knife’s owner.

Switch Blade turned her acid-green eyes towards them, peering out from under her fedora, and let out a brief chuckle. “Always go for the eyes in a fight!” She snapped open one of her remaining blades to emphasize. “Mmmmm… I’m gonna put a nice, big, leaky red grin across all your throats, right after I stab your peepers out.” She cooed, licking the edge of her knife as she taunted them.

Various expressions of horror and disgust crossed the other mares’ faces. “Euuuugh! Why does everyone in your gang have to be so completely horrible?!” Rainbow bleched at her.

Switch Blade let out a snort. “Sorry. You must’ve confused us for all them family-friendly gangsters.” She slowly stepped towards the mares, the clop-clop of her hooves being emphasized by the snick-snick of her blades. “You wanna know who I’d really like to sink these carvers of mine into? Your human. Oh, not for the reasons you think. Not for insane racism, like Honeydew, and not for glory, like Exit Wound… See, I know these rich apothecaries way out east. Y’know, the ones that sell powdered armadillo shell as a cure for baldness and mashed jackalope tongues to fix arthritis. It’s mostly nonsense, but hey, they fetch a high price.”

Rainbow Dash looked like she was going to be ill. “Those… those monsters! Slaughtering all those animals, and for what? Quack remedies!”

Switch Blade let out an amused, disturbing peal of laughter. “Yeah! Right on the money! Anywho, one of the big-name apothecaries got it into her head that your human would be the ultimate aphrodisiac, bigger than even dried phoenix sphogum! A single human toe would fetch a fortune in those circles.” Switch Blade sharpened her blades against one another, causing an audible scritch-scritch noise, a contemplative look crossing her face. “How much do you think they’d pay for his-”

Finally, it was too much. “THAT’S IT!” Rainbow snarled, charging hoof-first at Switch Blade.

“Rainbow, Wait!” Lyra called, moving after her, Twilight right behind.

It was the moment Switch Blade was waiting for, dodging to the side, preparing to lash out with her namesake at the right moment. If she timed it right, the fool would practically gut herself...

The blade was snapped out of the Sicklefin’s aura by a stronger, more practiced mint-colored one.

“Hey!”

Only to have it jammed into her mouth when she opened it.

The telekinesis slammed Switch Blade’s mouth shut, only for an aqua hoof to smash into it seconds later. She felt her teeth give way, and...

click

Switch Blade felt blinding pain and saw the metallic glint mixed with crimson as the switchblade erupted from her cheek. She let out a muffled squeal of pain and collapsed to the ground, squeaking again as she cut her hoof as she moved it to the source of pain instinctively.

All hell promptly broke loose. Bay-colored auras cover the exit doors, slamming them shut, locking them tight, Sicklefin after Sicklefin revealing themselves hidden in the room.

Lyra mentally reviewed each face as they appeared from the “Most Wanted” lists she kept up-to-date on as a Guard Reserve. There was Exit Wound herself, of course. By her side was Blunt Trauma, a teal-coated, eggplant-maned unicorn mare who was Exit’s second-in-command. Her wrench cutie mark let her often disguise herself as a mechanical expert, when in fact, she was more prone to strike people with such an instrument. Cement Shoes, the amber-coated, straw-maned unicorn mare whose cement-coated horseshoe cutie mark spoke of her talent of disposing the Sicklefins’ victims without a trace. Doublehead was another unicorn mare with a dirt-hued coat and a rust-colored mane; and the less said about her whip cutie mark, the better.

Those were from Exit Wound’s inner circle, but she’d brought plenty of enforcers. A trio of her biggest brutes. Cosh, who was large for a unicorn mare with a blonde coat and brown hair, with a quick temper, fast to bash you with whatever was convenient, her crowbar cutie mark representing the first object she used to brutalize some poor pony. Then there was the duo of Lumpy -- short, squat, but extremely muscular and horribly deformed, with a lumpy face only a mother could love -- her light pink and dull red mane complimenting her brick cutie mark. There was also Lumpy’s handler, Bruiser, tall where Lumpy was broad; her large, muscular frame would give Big Macintosh a run for his money, her cutie mark of a broken bone telling you pretty much all you needed to know about her.

Then, emerging from the kitchen was Cobra, A unicorn stallion, copper-coated and black maned, with a coiled snake for a cutie mark; the Sicklefin’s poison expert, with toxic spells to match. Aside him was Warm Needle, carmine red mane and champagne-coated unicorn mare with a pincushion cutie mark; she’d been a renowned acupuncture expert until someone crossed her and she killed them by superheating the needles.

Another duo; Chains and Spikes, fraternal earth pony twins, a pale blue stallion with ash grey mane and mare with the same coloration, whose cutie marks and weapons of choice match; chains and spiked horseshoes. Constantly bickering, they hated each other more than anything. Except one thing; everyone else.

Lastly, two of the few pegasi members; a wiry young mare with a silver coat and dark red mane with a thermometer cutie mark, named Mercury. Usually, she acted as lookout, but she was clearly here to fight. And lastly, Keen Edge, A persimmon-coated, forest-green mare with a knife cutie mark, indicating her talent with wingblades that were clearly strapped on and ready.

Lyra let out a low whistle. “Wow, feels like almost half the gang’s here. You must really be serious about this, Exit Wound.”

“Roight. Lemme tell et ta yeh straight from teh fecking shoulder; quit foighting us and surrender, and et’ll only be yer legs we break. See, teh way Oi figure et, yeh Elements only need ta be aloive ta control Discord, and if yeh fecking resist, yeh’ll be begging us ta kill yeh stone dead.” She looked over the three of them. “Well? What’s et fecking gonna be?”

“Hmmm.” Lyra looked around. “Well, I’m a grandmaster martial artist with guard training, but there’s enough of you that…”

“...We could beat yeh senseless from all fecking angles, and yeh’d look loike a pack o’ goiant chewed-up toffees before ya could say ‘spoider’s eyebrows.’” Exit Wound responded.

“...With the firepower you brought, that’s probably true. I’m not invulnerable, after all. However, we also have one of the most powerful unicorns in history...”

“...Who don’t know half teh combat spells Oi do, and clearly was never schooled for any proper BRAWL.” Exit Wound responded, looking over at Twilight. “Oi’ve tangoed with worse foighters than yeh, Sparkle, but Oi’ve kilt better too. Yeah, yer powerful, but that only goes so far.”

“But we still have...!”

“...A fecking animal caretaker with no animals? That’s yer ace? Without her fecking pet shop platoon, she don’t look loike she could kick snow off a ditch. What were yeh planning on doing ta me, yeh little sparrow fart?”

“THIS!” Rainbow Dash rocketed into the air. All of the Sicklefins’ gazes were tracking her, several unicorns summoning their spells…

Until the spell that Lyra and Twilight wove on her in preparation went off. Lavender-aqua light peaked to a blinding luminosity in picoseconds, causing shrieks of pain as the Sicklefins were blinded. Several Sicklefin spells went off, but without sight, their poor shots were effortless to dodge.

“That was totally awesome!” Dash enthused.

“Maybe we’ll call it ‘The Fantastic Filly Flash,’ quipped Lyra.

Rainbow paused. “...I don’t know why, but I really like that!”

“Enough chatter, girls, we’ve got criminals to deal with!” Twilight reminded them. “Divide and conquer!”

“Ack, Hey!” Rainbow found herself under rapid assault by the pegasi; adapted to dealing with flashes from lighting strikes, they recovered from the blinding first. She barely dodged Keen Edge’s wingblade, twisting out of the way so Mercury’s hoofblow only grazed her cheek instead of striking her head on... her martial arts training showing through.

“Rainbow!” Twilight called. “Try to fly around them really fast!” she finished, as spells leapt out at Rainbow.

Rainbow responded immediately, not even calling back, trusting Twilight knew what she was doing. She focused on the Feather Leaf training that came to her so easily now, dodging blows, fluttering around her foes effortlessly, like a leaf on the wind... when suddenly, she noticed the attacks stopping, and she looked back. The rainbow streak that trailed her having somehow been made tangible by Twilight’s spell, wrapping the two criminals up in the air, who fell to the ground with painful-sounding cracks and moans of agony.

“WAUGH!”

“LUMPY BASH!”

Twilight found herself under assault by the still half-blinded bruiser, following the sound of her voice, only managing to teleport away last second to avoid becoming an ugly smear under her hooves. Lyra spotted her reappearing in the kitchen, as she’d been looking that direction as she had been deflecting venom-filled spell bolts, (shaped like actual snakes, no less) and superheated needles being shot by the blinded unicorns who’d been positioned there.

The two Herd Bellerophon unicorns exchanging wordless communication with a glance, Lyra shouted, “Hey, this way, you stupid brute!” while moving towards the kitchen. Lumpy roared and charged behind.

“Oh, dammit, Lump!” Bruiser called, attempting to catch her wayward charge, but it was too late. Lumpy had a full head of steam -- plowing into the blasts that Lyra effortlessly dodged. Lumpy let out a roar of agony as she was hit by the blasts, and attempted to stop. Bruiser slammed into behind her, forcing them both… onto an ice slick created by Twilight. Lyra went into a controlled skid over its surface that left her off next to Twilight, but Lumpy and Bruiser’s momentum slid them inside the freezer which Twilight slammed and locked behind them.

“Two more down!” Twilight cheered, before teleporting away, when he spotted several venom bolts incoming, nearly hitting her as she vanished, a now clear-eyes Cobra stalked towards the the now alone Lyra. “Ah, there... the mage is away, now just the fighter.” Lyra lashed out with precise telekinetic strikes, only to find them dispersed to nothing, by just a flick of magic. “...You’re trained as a spellcaster, as well.” Lyra frowned. One of the weaknesses of Still Way was that trained spellcasters could negate the magical aspect; part of why the physical aspect was still emphasized.

“It comes down to this, doesn’t it?” Cobra hissed. “Taken apart by your superior, spell…” He unleashed a venom bolt which she leapt back away from it. “...by spell. Oh, dodging will give you time, but you know how this will end.”

“Perhaps. But there’s one thing you didn’t account for.”

“What’s that?”

“You broke open a gas line when you were blind firing.”

Cobra’s eyes widened as his head swiveled towards the faint hissing noise that was now so obvious.

A spark. A spell so simple there was simply no time to stop it.

The gas hadn’t much time to leak, which prevented the explosion from being too massive, letting Lyra leap behind cover. Cobra’s proximity allowed no such luxury.

Lyra smirked, brushing herself off while Cobra lay dazed. “The most important skill you learn is improvisation.”

Moments earlier, Dash’s jubilation for taking out the first of the Sicklefins was cut short by a table telekinetically slamming into her.

“Hah! Gotcha!” Cosh hooted, striding over to the pegasus under the table. As she lifted it up, she jerk back as Rainbow Dash blew her whistle as hard as she could. Cosh slapped it out of her mouth. “Smartass! There’s no way that’s going to help you now, the doors and windows are shut!”

Punch-drunk, Rainbow Dash giggled. “Yeaaaah, but you diiiiiidn’t reinforce the flooor!” she chanted in a sing-song voice.

“What...” Is what Cosh managed to get out before the ground exploded, and the Quarry Eel burst out from under her hooves.

The Eel’s name was Lee; he was a dear old friend of Rainbow’s ever since she’d helped him out with a toothache, years back. Lee had been the one responsible for doing the tunneling so her animals could infiltrate this quarry, and right now, his massive jaws were slamming shut around Cosh the Sicklefin, her scream cut shot as she vanished down its gullet.

“Oh, feck this for a game o’ soldiers!” Exit Wound snarled. “Blunt! Cement! Doublehead! Get on over, we gotta poleax this fecking eel! The rest o’ yeh, yank yer heads out of yer useless twats and take them out!”

"But there's only four of us left!" Warm Needle protested. Then there was a loud BOOM from the kitchen. "...three. Three of us left."

“Feck!” Exit wound swore, dodging aside a vicious bite from an eel before returning fire. “Handle et!”

“On it, boss!” Spikes and Chains chorused, before glaring at each other. “Suck up.” They snarled at each other, before charging at Rainbow and Lyra.

“Handle it… right.” Warm Needle shook her head, pulling out more needles, heating them up, so she could support her more physical comrades, when a purple unicorn popped into existence in front of her.

“Hey! Did you know momentum, a function of mass and velocity, is conserved between teleports!?” The unicorn informed her her.

Warm Needle didn’t hesitate, launching the needles at the unicorn, only to see them vanish in flashes of purple light… and a fraction of a second later, she heard matching pings behind her, before burning agony lanced into her body as she was struck by her own burning needles. She collapsed, screaming.

“In laymare’s terms: speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.” Twilight finished.

Elsewhere, Spikes charged at Dash, while Chains lashed out with Lyra. Quick, sweeping blows of the chain lash out, Lyra attempting deflect it with a spell, only to find it grounded out, forcing her to leap back, evading the strike, which cracked open the floor where it struck.

“It's enchanted, huh?” Lyra commented.

“Yah don’t kill many unicorns without a little magic of yer own.” Chains grinned.

Meanwhile , Dash was surprised with how quickly the bulky stallion moved, causing her to dodge back again and again to avoid being gouged by the spikes, close strikes causing bits of down to be torn from her feathers. She took to the air, evading him entirely. “Ha! Can’t get me here!”

He promptly bit down on a chair and threw it at her.

“Ow! Jerk!”

“I don’t have to play fair if you fly! Hell, I don’t have to play fair at all!”

“Alright, that’s it!” The pegasus mare fumed and charged him!

“I’m actually impressed.” Lyra commented, repeatedly forced back by chain strikes. “Most non-unicorn thugs I've encountered tend to prefer mundane weaponry over any of the enchanted stuff.”

“Sounds like you fight a lot of rubbish gangs!” The Sicklefin cracked her chain, and it arced downward to smash on Lyra, at a longer range than she can dodge back, and too wavy to accurately dodge to the side.

CLANG!

Lyra had yanked off Keen Edge’s wingblade, blocking the enchanted chain, it wrapping around the blade. “Still, sometimes you just have to use what’s at hand.”

Whipping the wingblade around, Lyra yanked Chains off her hooves, wrapped her weapon around her legs, and flunging her over her head.

“Ow!” Rainbow jerked back, finding her hoof parried by Spikes’ horseshoes.

“You’re new at this, aren’t you?” He taunted, stalking ominously towards the pegasus, still tending her injured hoof.

“And you’re a bit overconfident,” she commented mildly, grabbing him as he approached, spinning in the air, and executing a perfect Vortex throw, flinging him of her shoulder.

Spike and Chains impacted with each other, then slammed into the ground.

“...Trade?” grumbled Chains.

“...Yeah.” Spikes replied.

Lyra was ready. Spikes charged. A volley of telekinetic blasts struck out at him, only to be batted aside, his spiked horseshoes glowing as their enchantment activated. Enough force was applied that Spikes was forced to a halt. However, he just wagged his hoof, tsking. “I’m not sure why you expected that to work.”

Lyra sighed. “You’re right. Which is why I’ll do this.” Lyra kicked off into a leap, spinning hoof-first at the earth pony. The blow struck home, but Spikes sprang around, using the momentum to come in for a grab, snatching Lyra out of the air, slamming her to the ground so hard it rattled her teeth. She only avoided getting her head smashed in by an incoming hoof by telekinetically propelling herself along the ground out between the legs.

Spikes attempt to smash her with his back hoof, but the opening led to a perfect punch to a delicate location, causing a yelp of pain and him to stumble away.

Lyra righted herself. “Too bad you didn’t think to protect that.”

Gritting his teeth, the Sicklefin glared at Lyra. “Hilarious,” he snarled. “You know what’s even funnier?”

“What?”

“Loose floorboards.”

Spikes stomped down on the floorboards beneath his hooves, which see-sawed up underneath Lyra and flung her into the air.

Rainbow weaved effortlessly around Chains’ weapon, her flight pattern shifting rapidly, evading the erratic whips of the chain with just-as-erratic flutters, rapidly closing in on Chains, smashing hard into her face with her hoof. Rapidly pummeling her with Lightning Strike blows, Rainbow was gathering up an electrical charge, finally unleashing the strike... only for Chains to pull up her chains and intercept it, reflecting the charge back upon her. Rainbow yelped, jerking back away, shaking her head.

“Not just unicorn magic!” Chains taunted, her chains lashing out and wrapping around the recovering pegasus.

“Hey!” She protested, as the mare yanked her in, smashing her with a blow, and knocking her away again with powerful force, before yanking her back, again and again, like a vicious yo-yo. Then with one final jerk, Rainbow wiggled her wings free, flared them outward, and reoriented the momentum to smashed her backhoof into Chains’’ face, kicking off, bouncing against the chain’s limits, before smashing back at her. Roaring in anger, Chains spun around, jerking Rainbow over her head, flinging her into the likewise aerial Lyra.

“Mff. Rainbow?” Lyra asked, wiping blood from her mouth.

“Yeah?” She coughed slightly.

“I think we’re going about this wrong.”

“How so?” she asked, their opponents closing on them.

“Perhaps it’s not time for divide and conquer anymore.”

Rainbow blinked, then grinned. “Let’s do it.”

“Hey!” Spikes and Chains chorused, as the Herd Bellerophon duo charged. Spikes was driven back, blocking rapidly, but it was only a matter of time, before blows made it through, smashing into him, and-

CRACK!

The chain cracked, knocking away the mares. Chains strode up to her brother, helping him up. “No one beats my brother but me!” she snarled. Rainbow and Lyra shook off the blow.

“Well, then, how about... Duo versus Duo?”

“Bring it!” chorused the siblings. “Stop copying me!” They immediately snarled at each other, only to be brought to yelps of pain as Lyra and Rainbow struck them in unison.

Righting themselves, the siblings struck back, only to find the two Herd Bellerophon mares flowing between the blows, dodging in unison, striking together, again and again, provoking openings and letting the other exploit it. The criminal duo found themselves unable to land a blow, as their fighting style had no allowance for protecting the other. While Lyra and Rainbow defended one another, synchronizing their attacks.

“It’s light fighting a mare with three forehooves!” Spikes exclaimed.

“Shut up and get them!” Chains responded, only to be struck.

And struck again.

And again.

And again.

Lyra and Rainbow pulled back together, forehooves glowing with telekinetic force and electricity respectively, and slammed them down, exploding against their foes, sending them flying, smashing through tables and chained, before they slammed into the kitchen serving counter, finally going limp.

“Hmph. Serves them right.” Lyra said..

“Hey, girls!” Twilight called. as she popped over to them, glancing over to the four Sicklefin unicorns engaged with the Quarry Eel. “Ready to wrap this up?”

At that moment, a bloodied Lee retreated from the sustained assault of the quartet of Sicklefins with an agonized roar.

"Oi’m really off me game... Can't kill a fecking jumbo lamprey, makes me madder than a midget with a yo-yo!" Exit Wound seethed, frustrated beyond measure that the Eel's thick skin had prevented them from dealing a killing blow. "Now, c’mere, and Oi’ll kick teh heart outta... eh?”

Rather than the ongoing fight she was expecting, or the clear win she was hoping for, Exit Wound found the rest of her gang down or worse, and three angry mares about to strike.

She opened her mouth to speak, to mock, taunt, threaten them, throw them off their game.

“NOW!”

She wasn’t given the chance.

The pegasus shot forward, enveloped into dual auras, Mint and Lavender.

“Force f.... no….” Exit called to her team, unable to finish before the pegasi stuck home, causing a kinetic explosion, Rainbows blending in with precision-focused blasts of lavender and mint, as the pegasus bounced between them, sticking with the force that could level buildings.

If anyone on Exit’s crew were a fraction of a second slower on pulling up their shields, they’d probably have been reduced to sacks of shattered bones. As it was, their shields shattered deflecting the force, leaving the shockwaves to flings them back against the walls. the force field holding the windows and doors flickered off as Exit lost concentration, windows shattering from the force.

Out of the corner of his eye, Exit Wound saw a figure moving through the smoke; a familiar profile, a uniform.

GALLOP.

She’d tangled with them before, she’d come out on top, but not by enough. But them and this trio? The situation was going rapidly downhill. The four of them were the strongest casters in the gang, they stood a reasonable chance of taking the three of them, but with GALLOP as backup? Not good odds.

With that, Exit Wound realized the scheme was up. She righted herself, snarling. “That hashes et! Oi’m gonna to kill everyone, burn your damn village down, and salt teh fecking earth!”

“Yeah? Well, bring it!” Rainbow called, readying for another strike.

With a bay-colored flash, Exit Wound and her lieutenants teleported away.

“...Hunh.” Responded Rainbow Dash after a beat.

* * *

Silence fell over the room, except for the moaning of the downed Sicklefins and the girls’ heavy breathing. The tranquility was shattered by a door being bashed off its hinges. “POLICE!” Several figures charged in the room, their leader bellowing, “SPELLS, HOOVES, AND WINGS DOWN!”

For a fraction of a second, the adrenaline still running through their veins caused them almost to lash out; but recognition registered before action. GALLOP was a famous elite peacekeeping force, and their uniforms were instantly recognizable. The girls stood down, spells vanishing before they cast. “Thank Celestia you’re here!” Twilight Sparkle responded, her shoulders slouching in exhaustion and relief.

As GALLOP officers spread throughout the room, securing the downed Sicklefins, keeping a wary eye on the trio, one stepped forward, approaching them. “Twilight Sparkle? Rainbow Dash?”

Twilight nodded. “Yes, that’s us.”

Rainbow Dash self-consciously shifted behind Twilight and Lyra, ducking her head shyly. “Uh, hi.”

Then Twilight nodded over to the mint-colored unicorn beside her. “And this is Lyra Heartstrings, another herdmate of ours.”

The GALLOP pony nodded. “Yes. That little dragon of yours told us about you, Miss Heartstrings. I’m Captain Tiger Stripe, of GALLOP. We’re here to rescue you.”

Another GALLOP pony stepped forward, clearly a unicorn. “Ladies… I’m Lieutenant Ghost Flash, I’ll be your teleporter for the evening. All of you, please come up to me. Lean yourselves against my body. I’ll bring you to safety.”

Rainbow Dash and Lyra started to move up to Lt. Flash before Twilight spoke up. “Wait! Have you found Rarity and Lero? Are they already rescued?”

Tiger Stripe shook her head. “Not yet, But we will rescue them.”

Twilight took a stance that Lyra immediately recognized: Resolute stubbornness. “Here were go…” Lyra muttered.

“Then I’m afraid I won’t be going anywhere.” Twilight stated firmly.

Tiger Stripe was glad the gas mask hid her exasperated sigh. “Please, Miss Sparkle, you have to come with us. Extracting you Element Bearers is our primary objective here.”

Twilight Sparkle shakes her head firmly and authority. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Captain. I appreciate your dedication to your mission, but saving Lero and Rarity is mine."

Rainbow Dash stepped towards her. ”Twilight… maybe we oughta do what these ponies say. They are professionals; they know what they’re doing. I’m sure they can find Rarity and Lero.”

“How sure? Enough to put our stallion at risk? We’re professionals, too, Rainbow Dash. We’ve faced down far greater enemies than Honeydew and Exit Wound.”

Rainbow paused. “Well… That is true.”

“Ladies, I cannot allow...” Tiger Stripe started, before Lyra cut her off.

“Captain Tiger Stripe? I know we’ve been introduced, but I’m Lyra Heartstrings, Reservist of the Royal Guard. I know you were commissioned by the Princess to rescue them, but I’ve seen Twilight like this before; she’s not going to give in, and having to deal with an upset Element of Magic is simply going to make your job more complex. So I will assign myself to be her bodyguard; it’ll be my job she sees this through safely, not yours anymore. I’ll take any flak from the Princesses. Is that acceptable?”

Tiger Stripe nearly ground her teeth together. “I am not happy about this… but yes, that would be acceptable.”

Lyra turned back to her herdmate. “Now, Twilight, if Rainbow would rather not be in danger anymore, maybe it’s for the best that she…”

She was interrupted by Rainbow slamming her hoof down hard on the floor. “Forget it! I’m not going! Element Bearers stick together! Herd Bellerophon sticks together!” She smiled at the mares in her herd, finding the same smiles -- and determination -- reflected back at her.

A clearing throat from Tiger Stripe broke up the moment. “Ladies? Shall we continue with this train wreck? We have an Element of Loyalty and the world’s only human to rescue, and lawbreakers to foil.”

With a loud whoosh of wind, the door opposite of them blew open, revealing a white unicorn mare walking astride a tiny storm like a titan, a white rabbit astride her back, and a cage crammed with villainy behind her. “My dear, lovely, handsome GALLOP members, I believe I can help you finish some of those goals!”

* * *

“NO!” Came an anguished cry. “Glitter! No, Glitter, no, no, no, not you… Not you!”

Honeydew’s voice reached Exit Wound after she finished her teleport, and she followed the noise of her wailing, blowing aside mist, snow, and weeping gas with wind magic. Blunt Trauma, Cement Shoes, and Doublehead were right behind her. When they found her, Honeydew was bent over the body of Glitter Dust, which was wasn’t breathing and thoroughly, unnaturally swollen.

“Snake got her, eh?” Exit asked casually, eyeing the multiple fang marks on Glitter’s legs.

“Looks like it,” Blunt Trauma agreed.

“She was my friend! She was my FRIEND!” Then, even through all the sadness which the weeping gas intensified, Honeydew’s face screwed up in a glare of vengefulness. “I shall avenge you, Glitter Dust! The one responsible for your death… I shall make her pay!”

“Sounds fun! How ‘bout Oido teh honors, Dewy?”

And Exit Wound reared her hind legs back and SLAMMED Honeydew in the face with them, really letting the hobnails on her horseshoes sink into the miserable mare’s flesh.

Exit pulled out a cigarette out of her jacket and smoked it deeply as Honeydew cowered away, blood trickling down her face.

“Weren’t YEH teh one who said Miss Koindess’ snakes would be nothing but harmless li’l wrigglers?”

“I… I…”

“YER who’s ta blame for yer dear friend, there, being a fecking corpse. Yer the reason many, MANY good ponies are fecking corpses today. Or are goin’ ta teh hoosegow.”

She snuffed out the cig on Glitter Dust’s lolling tongue.

“Please, Exit, please…!”

“Honeydew, honey… don’t. Just don’t.” Exit strode closer to the mare responsible for all this ruination. “Oi’d cut teh lungs outta yeh for all teh apeshite ya put me gang through, but beyond all belief, yeh’ve proven capable inna foight. Oi still need ta leg et outta here, and Oi’m rapidly running out o’ backup.” She stepped closer. “Practicalities. That’s what saved yeh.” She leaned close. “But don’t push et. Or Oi’ll peel yer face off.”

A familiar look of terror crossed the face of the mare she’d dressed as a cheerleader, filling Exit with amusement. Honeydew made to rise up, but she stumbled on a hoof with a rather curious injury.

“Now who did that ta yeh?” Exit inquired. Blunt and Cement stopped behind her.

“Rainbow Dash,” Honeydew answered. Immediately afterward, her face burned in shame.

“Koindess gave yeh this here booboo, did she?” Exit Wound couldn’t help it; she burst into laughter. Not the deliberately hurtful kind, (though Exit didn’t at all mind the deepening shame on Honeydew’s face,) this was an honest burst of good-humored laughter. Her cronies chimed in, automatic and unnatural.

“Eee hee hee…. Celestia’s blistered bowels, what a bone-breaking wrecking ball that merciless li’l slip of a filly’s been, eh? Oi shoulda been fecking Element o’ Koindess!”

“Yah, boss!” agreed Cement Shoes, even as her boss hurried onward into the next room. “You’d have been a great Kindness! Great!”

Honeydew followed after them.

* * *

The device took up half of a very large storage room. Originally, there had been a lot of junk had been left behind in this place, and it had taken Exit Wound’s crew several days of hard, resentful grunt work just to remove it all. Then several more days were needed to construct the device, according to the blueprints Exit had successfully pilfered from the black market some time ago, for a moment just like this.

Compressors linked to gas turbines, which connected to pneumatic motors through all sorts of pipes and conduits to seven large jet-black crystalline columns surrounding a raised octagonal dais, colored a lovely shade of yellow.

“I’ve been meaning to ask; what is this contraption of yours?” Honeydew question, limping awkwardly on her three good legs.

“Shut your hole, you stupid little…!”

Exit Wound silenced Cement Shoes with a look.

“Et’s called a Teleportation Amplifoier, me auld flower,” she explained, coming up to Honeydew’s side.

“What’s it do?” Honeydew asked, curiously running a hoof along one of the turbines.

“Precoisely what ets name says et does: amplifoies teleportation spells. By a metric feckton.” Exit pointed at her three goons. “Blunt, Cement, Doublehead, let’s get this doojigger powered up.”

The four unicorns each stood in front of one of the seven dark crystals, pointed their horns, and began channeling magical power into them. Bit by bit, the crystals began to glow with an increasingly dark luminosity.

“Oi think even fecking Celestia can only manage a max o’ ten miles when she teleports from Point A ta Point B,” Exit continued to speak. “Somepony clocked et, when they was doing one o’ them world records lists, Oi think. But if auld Celly had THIS little gimcrack amplifoing her teleportation abilities, she could ‘port herself ANYWHERE. En-knee-wear. Any country. Any part of teh world. Teh moon, too, probably, or maybe even teh Human World. All with one single porting spell.”

“And we can port ourselves safe and sound back home in the Emerald Oisles!” said Doublehead, whose accent wasn’t quite as thick as Exit’s.

Exit Wound nodded. You didn’t attack a celebrity like Lero Michealides without a backup plan in place. In her peripheral vision, Exit could see Honeydew first grin in excitement, then look behind her shoulder at the door they just came in from, where the ponies they were trying to flee would soon be storming in.

“But, well, Exit, I hate to bring this up, but Twilight Sparkle’s no dummy. If anypony can figure out how to operate this contraption after we’ve left, it’s her. What’s to stop her and all the GALLOP ponies from using it to chase us to the Emerald Isles?”

“Oh…” said Exit, “Let’s just say et’s set ta self-destruct roight after we’ve used et.”

Honeydew came closer to where Exit was, eyeing the Teleportation Amplifier. “So… it’ll melt into slag or something? Like in the spy movies?”

“...Yeah. Yeah, let’s go with dat.”

Honeydew frowned at that phrasing, but didn’t push the issue. She was on thin ice already with these ponies.

The magic within the crystal felt close to overflowing, so Exit Wound raised her head and backed away a step, admiring the look of the magic churning within it, the way it gleamed with such gorgeous darkness. Then she looked to the right at Cement Shoes, Blunt Trauma, and Doublehead, still working to fill up their crystals. Stuff like this was why she was leader...

“Freeze!” commanded a loud voice.

A thunder of hooves, and in they came. The GALLOP ponies in their black uniforms. The Element Bearers that were involved in this mess: Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, the one who’d called herself ‘Element of Surprise’, or something, and Rarity, with some white bunny on her back for some strange reason.

A little earlier, Doublehead had told Exit that she’d seen the Element of Loyalty attacking and collecting Sicklefins in the very birdcage they’d shut her in. If so, Exit bet the birdcage must’ve been left behind somewhere, its new prisoners most likely escorted by the GALLOPs to a different cage outside the quarry mill.

“Barriers up, ladies!” Exit barked. “'Doublehead, keep powering up them crystals! All seven need ta be at full power!”

Blunt Trauma and Cement Shoes threw up forcefields, being skilled enough to weave them as a whole uniting their magic power together, blocking off the entire half of the room. It might not’ve been anywhere near as strong as what Twilight Sparkle’s infamous brother, Shining Armor, (or even Twilight herself,) was capable of, but they kept up against everything that was shot and thrown at them well enough.

As withering blasts of arrows, magic, fire, hail, lightning, and hoofstrikes hit the forcefield to no effect, The call of “Drop your forcefields NOW!” was barked by the GALLOP captain, after the first unsuccessful salvo of projectiles failed to penetrate.

“Feck me for a ten-bit prostitute, Oi knows that voice!” Exit suddenly exclaimed, turning to look at the captain. “Toiger Stroipe, yeh auld jizz-guzzler! Ain’t see yeh since that business in Whinnypeg! How’s that fecking partner o’ yers enjoying loife on just teh one leg?”

“You villain!” screeched the Element of Loyalty, as though she were a character in a bard’s ballad, back in the days of yore.

“You’re going down, Wound!” roared Tiger Stripe, with an admirable amount of wrath.

This entire time, Twilight Sparkle had stopped short, not even bothering to attack, her eyes tracing over the strange machinery, her brow furrowed in concentration as her eyes suddenly widened in horror and recognition. “Everypony! Please listen to me!” Twilight Sparkle yelled. Her herdmates and GALLOP turned to look at her. “You need to destroy that Sicklefin machine right away!”

Feck, Exit Wound mentally cursed. She knows.

“The machine, Sparkle-kitten?!” asked the Bearer of Loyalty, in confusion. “Why?”

“It’s called a Teleportation Amplifier. It strengthens the power of teleportation spells to an unbelievable extent, but it’s illegal because the underlying principle it operates on is inherently flawed!”

Exit Wound frowned as they talked, focusing, her horn glowing only faintly, scratching a few marks in the ground with her horseshoe- which also glowed.

“What, it doesn’t work?” the Element of Kindness asked. “So what?”

“No, it DOES work, that’s part of the problem! It supercharges the teleport spell, allowing the caster and her passengers to transport anywhere they want in the world. But the teleportation works by bending space and time so two locations briefly touch... bending spacetime that much causes it to snap back into place violently!”

“How… How violently?” Everyone’s attention snapped back to the other side of the barrier; Honeydew had been the one who asked.

Twilight blinked in surprise at the question, but still answered. “Depend… Depends on how far the teleporter goes and with how many ponies. Odds are though, this place won’t be known as Ghastly Gorge anymore, but instead Ghastly Crater.”

“The Emerald Isles,” Honeydew replied.

“What?”

“Exit Wound is transporting us to the Emerald Isles.”

Many of the Sicklefins gave Honeydew ugly, warning looks for volunteering such information to the enemy. Meanwhile, the expression on Twilight Sparkle's face was that of the special kind of horror reserved for those making the calculations that answer the question: ‘How many will die?’

“There won’t be much of Ponyville left!” she finally concluded.

“Is this true?!” Honeydew turned, looking in horror at Exit Wound.

Exit spared a moment to grin back at her. “Yeh bet yer granny’s dusty twat et is! Et’s a getaway that kills anyone chasing us, and destroys all teh evidence o’ a crime! Fecking. Gold.”

Honeydew’s eyes widened, and she she sat down in shock, he jaw slack, the horror of the situation overwhelming her.

“WHAT?!” squawked the Bearer of Kindness, as the rest of the ponies gasped.

“Double time, ponies! Take down that force field!” The GALLOP ponies pounded with all their force against the force field, which shimmered, but held; Blunt Trauma and Cement Shoes grunting from the effort.

Twilight Sparkle stepped forward, glaring at Exit once again. “I’ll handle this!”

"Twilight, wait!" Lyra shouted, but it was too late.

That was the moment Exit Wound was waiting for. When the purple unicorn winked out in a teleportation flash, it came as no surprise to her. What was a surprise, to everyone but her, was the paralyzing trap she’d etched in the ground while everyone was distracted.

“G-g-g-uuhh!” Twitched Twilight as she was caught up in its shocking grasp, held in the air with its paralyzing electricity.

“Using me own tricks against me? That teh fecking plan, numpty-noo? Lemme show yeh what fecking happens when yeh fecking try out-Exiting Exit.”

Exit telekinetically pulled a knife from her coat, raising her hoof to slice her frog. Blood welling from it, she twirled the knife in it, and with practiced effort, used the tip to paint a pattern on Twilight’s face and horn, which her glow spread along... and to Twilight’s horror, shifted into a sickly purple-green glow.

“T-t-that’s B-blood sac-sacrifice and D-d-dark Mag-ic-ic!” stammered Twilight Sparkle.

“Roight yeh be!” crowed Exit. “Funny story ta that; when yeh boot a talented spellcaster out o’ magic school, and leave her hoigh and dry, she’s loiable ta foind no end o’ bad eggs willing ta teach her all sorts o’ savage hexes! Loike this one,”

Then Exit lowered her head, touching her horn against Twilight Sparkle’s, and cast her curse.

“For twenty-four hours, yeh’ve cast some spells,
And that’s all very keen!
Encore! Encore! Cast ‘em all again,
Loike a lunatic slot machine!”

An aura of skewbald-colored light tainted with purple and green shone around the purple Element Bearer’s body, most especially her horn; like a section of a room which received four coats of paint, where every other part of the wall just got one. Twilight’s limbs were already limp as noodles, so Exit lifted the girl up with her telekinesis.

“Blunt! Cement! Lower teh barrier fer just half-a-fecking-tick, alroight?”

And they did so, just long enough for Exit to levitate and unceremoniously shove the Element of Magic outside the barrier before it resealed behind her.

“Miss Sparkle!” shouted one of the GALLOP ponies. “What’s… AAAH!”

For Twilight had suddenly conjured a gigantic hammer into being and used it to smash the GALLOP goon through the air, and straight out the room.

“Twilight, what are you doing?!” screamed the snake-loving Element of Kindness.

“Teleporter down!” called another of the GALLOP ponies.

“I did not mean to do that! I didn’t do that!” Twilight Sparkle screamed back in even greater dismay.

“Ha!” laughed Exit, as the magic hammer vanished. “Oi remember needing ta dodge that one!”

“No… stop!” Twilight told her own horn as it glowed brighter with involuntary power. She tried to at least turn away from her friends, but found she couldn’t; she found herself controlled, helpless, like a puppet; Twilight’s next spell then struck the floor between the Sicklefins and the GALLOP ponies, causing wooden and stone shrapnel to spray over them.

“What kind of spell was that, Exit?!” Honeydew whispered in horror, barely moving, still almost frozen.

Exit couldn’t really resist an awestruck admirer. “That, me auld flower, was an ‘E.W. Slitbleeder Special #23.’ E.W. stands for Exit Wound, ‘course. Coz Oi invented et.”

“What have you done to her?” Honeydew asked, with a faint rasp, as she was having a hard time remembering how to breathe.

The segment of floor which Twilight’s spell had struck was beginning to shift and crack as though some buried beast were emerging from underneath it.

Exit Wound continued to take her subdued behavior as awe and admiration rather than the sickening, creeping horror it was. “#23’s a real fatherfecker ta have cast on yeh, if yer a unicorn,” Exit explained. “See, yer compelled ta recast every single bit o’ magic you’ve used in teh last twenty-four hours, for twenty-four hours. At random. ALL whoile having yer body under me corporeal puppetry.”

“Corporeal…?” asked the dazed Honeydew, as stone and floorboard wood wrenched itself out of the floor, forming into a gorilla shape.

“Et means…”

“My body’s under Exit Wound’s control!” Twilight sobbed loudly as the floor golem proceeded to attack the Element Bearers and the GALLOP ponies.

“...just what she said!”

Exit Wound had a hearty laugh, her minions joining in a second behind, busy as they were. Honeydew just kept looking on, wide-eyed as Twilight’s horn then charged up with a big fireball spell, which she then aimed at Exit Wound’s foes, even while they were trying to shoot the rampaging golem down.

“...And as yeh can see, Miss Magic’s been dishing out some hoigh-caliber razzmatazz these past couple hours.”

“You let her go!” the Element of Surprise screamed at Exit.

“Save yer fecking breath ta cool yer porridge, ya gormless fecking window licker!” Exit screamed back, perfectly secure; their shield was now spared further attacks, now that GALLOP has other concerns.

Making the Slitbleeder cast the spells at random had been a stroke of genius on Exit’s part; it made it completely unpredictable. Not even Twilight Sparkle would have any clue which spell would be coming out of her horn!

“Ponies!” yelled Cpt. Stripe, “Aim knockout blasts at Twilight Sparkle! I repeat: shoot to stun!”

“In fact," Exit went on, "since our gal Twoiloight can’t control her spellcasting speed… et wouldn’t shatter me gray matter ta learn that her poor ickle horn’s getting a wee bit worn down…”

Pressing her advantage, Exit Wound disgorged spell after spell out of Twilight’s horn, its glow beginning to look disturbingly incandescent, as if it were heating up, tears forming in the Element of Magic’s eyes. “S-S-STOP IT!” she howled, her voice filled with pain.

“You misborn witch!” cried the Element of Surprise, precise blasts of magic striking the shield, seeking weaknesses.

“But… won’t the Elements of Harmony… die?” Honeydew finally found her voice. “And then won’t Discord…?”

“Dizzy will inherit this world,” Exit told the stunned earth pony mare.

* * *

Lero had spent the past several minutes sneaking and hiding, knowing that being found meant capture, death, or worse. It might have meant it taking a bit longer to be found by his allies, but alone, he simply couldn’t risk it. Thankfully, between one chaotic thing and another, no one really noticed Lero as he found the unconscious form of Lieutenant Ghost Flash, lying on the floor. He’d overheard what Twilight had yelled out to everypony, and knew what he had to do to stop this madness in its tracks, once and for all.

Rifling through the GALLOP pony’s gear would’ve been so much easier if his hands weren’t still encased in obsidian, but luck seemed to be on his side. He managed to pull out one of the horn wraps which Lt. Flash had been using to arrest unicorns with.

He was sure that the GALLOP pony would probably understand.

* * *

“Oi’ve thought et over, and Oi don’t even fecking moind if he turns me back inta a gives-away-all-me-money-bleeding-heart anymore,” Exit Wound continued. “What good’s money gonna even fecking BE in a world where teh oceans are made o’ orange marmalade?”

“But… but…”

“Aaagh!” screamed Twilight Sparkle as she shot a spell which shrank Captain Tiger Stripe down to nothing.

But before anypony could do Exit a favor and crush the GALLOP captain like a tiny jelly bean, the one who’d called herself ‘Element of Surprise’ shouted, ‘Uh… uh… Shigeru Miyamoto!”

And with those weird words, Tiger Stripe regrew back to her proper height.

“Lemme put this ta yeh in simple terms, Dewy; Oi tried everything Oi could ta keep them Element Bearers aloive. And they all fecked me over for et. And when yeh feck Exit Wound, Exit Wound fecks back, twoice as hard.”

By now, Honeydew knew all too well how Exit Wound thought: she was not afraid to die. Exit had even been taken by the idea of going down in a blaze of glory against Celestia’s forces. ‘A far better way o’ clocking out than a surproise knoife ‘cross me throat some toime in the future,’ as Exit, herself had once said.

But with all she’d already invested in this scheme against Lero Michealides, Exit was afraid of losing. If this worked, it would be a cowardly way of winning, but it would at least be a win. But as important as that was for Exit, it was steadily mattering less and less for Honeydew.

“Hey, look on teh broight soide: teh human won’t survoive this. That’s what really matters most, don’t et? And Oi’m gonna be so famous fer this… DEWY?!”

Honeydew always knew this might end in her death and imprisonment; taking down the alien monster was important enough to risk herself… but part of the reason she’d insisted on the remote location of the quarry was to not involve others. But rapidly, it looked like the only way to get at the human, now, was to sacrifice her home and family and countless innocents.

They very thing she’d sought to prevent by defeating the bonobo in the first place.

Never.

She looked up at the crystals. Doublehead had done a good job; they were now nearly charged to the top. Probably enchanted. Probably harder than steel.

But in the end stone was still just stone.

Honeydew leapt into action, channeling all her might into her uninjured forehoof. In an instant, she felt the microscopic fractures within the crystals, found the perfect shearpoints, the perfect position to strike -- everything she’d learned from Shattered Stone.

She drew back her hoof, her focus far past the surface, and unleashed the Shattered Stone Strike -- a blow that could plow through meters of solid stone or powder her living foe’s bones. Then she struck the crystal with a single, focused goal: Break this enchanted stone.

The crystal cracked. Honeydew saw a bright flash, but closed her eyes just in time, expecting it to happen -- feedback from the spell matrix being disrupted. She felt her hair singe and skin burn from the flash of energy, but while it was bad merely being close to an uncontrolled magical discharge, it was far, far worse being connected to it.

Doublehead screamed. Wild magic lanced through her in jagged blue-white arcs, convulsing her body and ripping bizarre strangled sounds from her throat. The crystal finally exploded, hurling her away from the device and slamming her against the wall. The wall cracked and gave way as her body struck, leaving Doublehead embedded limp and unconscious within it, her horn still smoking.

Even before Honeydew came down, she uses the momentum from her strike to push herself away, and spin around, time seeming to move slowly as she fell down between Blunt Trauma and Cement Shoes.

She waited for the perfect moment- their heads turned to follow Doublehead’s movement and...

She snapped out a split kick with her hind legs the moment she was between them. Blunt Trauma was looking away, the kick caught her square in the back of the head; they tumbled ass-over-teakettle, landing on a heap.

Cement Shoes, on her other side, facing towards her, was less lucky. She heard the snap of bone, and felt his horn give way- the shriek of agony was deafening as he collapsed, horn sheared off at the roots.

The force field vanished with a pop.

Landing, Honeydew span around, assuming the Shattered Stone stance. She leveled a glare at Exit Wound that would rival one of Exit’s own. “Everything I did here was to protect ponies, to ensure that proper Order was put back in place, and that the taint of the ape wouldn’t spread any further -- but most of all I did it all to protect my family! I won’t let anyone hurt them -- not the bonobo, not Discord, but especially not you. I’ll fight with everything I have to keep them safe!”

Exit Wound treated Honeydew to a glare that could only be called ‘murderous.’

“Yeh FECKER!!!!!” she screamed, and she was upon her.

* * *

Exit Wound’s focus on Twilight dropped, but the spell did not end. Undirected, she spun around, out of control, showering the room randomly with spells, forcing GALLOP and the Elements to take cover.

Lero saw his moment from the doorway; Twilight spinning away from their side of the room while the others ducked. Running on pure adrenaline, he went into an all-out sprint, vaulting off the back of a startled GALLOP Earth Pony, flying through the air, landing on Twilight’s back, scrabbling with his impaired hands to put the horn wrap on Twilight’s while avoiding her magical blasts, not realizing in which direction his efforts had pointed her horn..

* * *

Across the room, the scene was even more chaotic; Honeydew made powerful strikes, only to find them deflected by shields, precision blasts striking at her legs and sides. Within mere moments, she was bleeding from a staggering number of wounds. However, anyone who knew even passing knowledge of pony anatomy would recognize the strikes were meant to hurt, not cripple or kill... Exit Wound was intentionally toying with the focus of her rage.

“As soon as we’re back on teh Emerald Oisles, Oi’ll skin yeh aloive and dismember yeh slowly, Honeydew,” Exit promised. She sounded deranged, even to herself, but didn’t care. “Then… then there’s this zoo Oi know of! Et’ll serve as yer secret grave. After Oi bury yeh alive there, bonobos’ll walk over yeh, empty their bowels over yeh, and do what bonobos do best. Over where yer buried. Forever!”

“Twilight!” spoke a male voice, “Relax, now! It’s gonna be okay!”

Honeydew and Exit Wound both looked over, seeing the human fitting a horn wrap on Twilight Sparkle’s head. But before it could completely slip over… one final spell escaped the Element of Magic’s horn. A strange cone of light which shone upon the figures of Exit Wound and Honeydew at the same time.

* * *

“From one to another

Another to one

A mark of one’s destiny

Singled out alone, fulfilled

Joining hearts together,

Together sharing fate

By hoof and horn and feather

That we all better relate.”

These were the words which Honeydew the Human Hater and Exit Wound the Sicklefin Underboss heard in both their heads, resonating without end.

* * *

One moment, Exit Wound and Honeydew had been battling one another, tooth, horn, hoof and blood. In the next instant Twilight’s spell struck them, and suddenly they just… stopped. In mid-brawl. Their fury disappeared as their faces went slack. Eyes glazing over, empty and emotionless, lifeless, the two mares collapsed face-forward into the floor like discarded puppets.

Twilight Sparkle stared in paralyzed shock as the two thugs fell limp to the floor under the bright aura of her spell. Lero had finally, blessedly, secured the horn wrap over her aching horn. Twilight’s body still glowed with an ugly skewbald aura, and she could still feel spells form involuntarily from her horn, but with the horn wrap strapped on, it was like champagne in a shaken bottle trying to escape its cork: no effect. Which was good, because her horn was throbbing in pain, the rapid-fire involuntary spellwork starting to cause serious damage. She suspected her horn might be strained...

‘Yer compelled ta recast every single bit of magic you’ve used in teh last twenty-four hours, for twenty-four hours,’ she’d overheard Exit Wound bragging. She felt herself leaning weakly against Lero, held up by his arm around her. This was going to be exhausting! It’d seriously deplete her magic reserves which she was already heavily dipping into in this fight.

“Boss! Boss!” screamed one of the Sicklefins, even ignoring the fact that two GALLOP officers were clapping cuffs on her legs and roughly strapping a wrap to her horn. “Yer a blank flank, boss! Sweet Dark Lady Luna, they’re BOTH blank flanks!”

Everyone’s eyes shot back to the fainted ponies, their collective gaze landed staring in awe at their flanks. Honeydew’s cutie mark had been a slice of honeydew melon. Exit Wound’s mark was best described as a messy bloodstain. But now both marks were gone, their flanks as vacant and barren as their dolls'-eyes.

“What’ve you done ta Exit, ya witch?!” seethed the Sicklefin. Hate and disgust painted her face. “Yeh killed her special talent, didn’t ya?!”

But before Twilight Sparkle could form a response, somepony else shouted with clear relief, “No, wait, look! Their cutie marks are coming back!”

And so they were. From nothingness, the Bloodstain Mark faded back into being… upon the body of the melon seller. Simultaneously, Honeydew’s Melon Mark made its own reappearance… on the flank of Exit Wound.

“Me legacy…” Honeydew spoke, dull but clearly heard. She lifted herself to a stand on shaking legs.

“Me vendetta…” Exit Wound said, rising with Honeydew.

“Oh sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…” Lero Michealides gasped in realization.

Exit Wound’s words echoed horribly again in Twilight Sparkle’s head: ‘Yer compelled ta recast every single bit of magic yeh’ve used in teh last twenty-four hours...’

How long had it been since she’d been in Rarity’s cloud house, casting the prototype spells on the animals? Five hours? Seven? Ten? She’d lost track of time. Whatever it was, it certainly hadn’t been longer than twenty-four hours.

Oh Celestia, I’ve Swapped another set of ponies. Twilight understood, feeling cold, numb, horrified. I’m watching their Swap happening right now, before my very eyes. This is what I did to my friends.

Twilight, Lero, and even Lyra all turned to look at Rarity and Rainbow Dash. Their Swapped herdmates seemed just as shocked as everypony else.

“But that’s... oh my gosh, that’s not Honeydew’s cutie mark!” Rainbow Dash said in a choked voice.

The horror show continued unabated. The two newly-Swapped ponies now stood facing each other, jaws hanging slack, eyes still and lifeless, and proceeded to discard the clothes they wore.

When Twilight’s beloved human stallion undressed, she usually found it sexy and alluring. But there was nothing erotic about this. The two ponies’ motions were utterly spiritless. Their gaping, thousand-yard stares bore right through one another, giving no evidence of a soul.

Exit Wound used her telekinesis, and off came her thin-rimmed glasses, her double-breasted jacket, and her hat. Honeydew just scrambled out of her outfit bodily, shaking off the pleated miniskirt, the cheerleader’s top, even the bands that held her dyed blonde mane in pigtails. Then the two Swapped ponies reached down for each other’s clothing... and began to re-dress themselves.

Nopony else even moved. Not the criminals, not the GALLOP ponies or any of Twilight’s herdmates, or even Angel Bunny upon Rarity’s back. It was all too surreal, and they could hardly have been more horrified if Honeydew and Exit Wound had ripped their own heads off from their necks and exchanged those, as well. After all, these weren’t just some purely cosmetic icons, some minotaurs’ spur-of-the-moment tattoos.

Every pony knew what a cutie mark truly represented: It was a badge of immense pride worn for everypony to see since foalhood; evidence of a discovery of themselves, their very soul revealed in a magical, glowing moment upon their own bodies. A cutie mark was something so personal and individual that it transcended any thought of covering it in a pony’s daily life. Clothing simply couldn't compete with the wearing of their personal marks for everypony else to see.

Honeydew had a much more slender physique than Exit Wound, so Exit’s expensive and battle-damaged jacket hung baggily on Honeydew’s frame. In contrast, the cheerleader costume which the Sicklefin underboss originally had Honeydew wear, squeezed down on Exit’s larger body so tightly, it surely had to be cutting off a great deal of circulation.

Then some unicorn behind Twilight Sparkle fired two magic blasts, each of which hit the newly-Swapped ponies in the heads, and knocked them down to the floor. All eyes turned to the attacker.

“Sorry!” said the GALLOP mare defensively. “Those two were really creeping me out.”

However surreal the scene, one pony wasn’t put off her grudge: Rarity, her face still etched with the anger that only a lead mare whose stallion was threatened could manage, walked up to where Honeydew lay blinking. “I ought to shave you completely bald with a rusty straight-razor, except maybe for the mane on your head. Then chop your tail off with pruning shears. Then I ought to have Twilight cast a spell on your body to reshape your skeleton so that standing on four legs isn’t natural any longer, and walking on two legs is...”

“Uh, Rarity,” Rainbow Dash whispered, coming up to the white unicorn’s side, “You… might not want to say such things in front of the GALLOP ponies…”

“...Followed up by another spell to transform your hooves into those hands and feet you so hate, then cover your bare naked skin in clothes from my friend Applejack’s boutique!” Rarity finished.

“Yeh’d fikkin make me human?” asked Honeydew.

“No, I won’t make you human. I’ll turn you into a mockery of humanity. You are unworthy of their beauty or ours… wait, what was that word you used?”

“Yeh fikkin dint fikkin hear de fikkin word ‘fikkin’ comin out me fikkin mouth?” In astonishment, Rarity backed away from Honeydew and her new accent. “That fikkin frosts me lucky charms, et does!”

Honeydew lowered her head in what appeared to be a well-practiced way. Almost as though some biological protrusion were positioned in the center of her forehead, just above her eyes. A protrusion capable of shooting a wide variety of deadly blasts at Rarity.

And the earth pony mare honestly seemed utterly shocked that nothing was emerging out.

“Fikkin come on! Fikkin come on! Yeh banjaxed me magic, dint yeh!?” She snarled at Twilight as GALLOP ponies forced Honeydew into irons. Meanwhile, Exit Wound’s eyes snapped awake, locking onto Lero instantaneously.

“LEMUR MONKEYLOIDES!!!”

She leapt into the air, murder in her eyes, attempting to spin around in the air in a forward roll, in an attempt to bring down her full weight on Lero's head. It was a Rolling Earth finishing moment, meant to knock strong opponents unconscious. On weaker targets, it could easily kill.

Thankfully, Exit Wound did not possess the flexibility that years of martial arts practice had given Honeydew, and ended up falling far short, and gracefully face-planting on the ground, landing on her legs wrong. Ponies winced at the obvious sprain as the dazed Exit Wound cursed and wailed in confusion. “Agggh! Get off me!” She cried as GALLOP officers tackled her, putting her in restraints and a horn wrap.

Quick, Twilight! Screamed a desperate, madcap impulse in Twilight’s brain. Recast the prototype cure spell on these two! It’s just two of them, not five different ponies! They’ll have no choice but to Swap back into one another! Never mind the explanation; have Lyra tell everypony else the Collective Unconscious made you do it!

Unfortunately, Twilight was wearing a horn wrap for a reason. It wouldn’t be until tomorrow that she’d have control over her own horn again. She might even unintentionally recast the Swap spell on some third set of ponies, if not more… Not to mention, she might not be able to. She’d probably have to see a horn specialist after all this was over to see if there was any serious injury to her abused horn.

“Me eyes!” Exit Wound then screamed, trying to rub at her eyes with her hoofs. “Me vision’s off! What have yeh done ta me eyes, yeh baboon banger?!”

“Now yeh fikkin mention et, me fikkin eyes feel a snitch fikkin wrong too.” Honeydew noted, squinting down hard through Exit’s glasses. It was prescription eyewear, Twilight was sure. Until she’d gotten herself Swapped, Exit had never removed them, not even when the battle was at its thickest.

“Yer a real poundstretcher, Twoiloight Sparkle, no fikkin two ways about et!”

Exit’s accent is so thick, there was enough for the both of them. Twilight thought to herself. Just like with Pinkie Pie and Applejack.

“Get them out of here!” Captain Tiger Stripe barked to her squad. “Get them all out of here! And get a medic for Ghost Flash, and find that dragon and have him write another letter to the Princess; tell her Majesty that we need some specialists to have this thing dismantled, ASAP!” Tiger Stripe pointed to the Teleportation Amplifier. The GALLOP ponies saluted their captain, and the good guys and bad guys alike were escorted out of the quarry mill.

Author's Note

Victory for the heroes, vanquishment for the villains!

And now, a special word of thanks to all the amazing readers who contributed Sicklefins to this chapter, including...

Quantum Shift for Greasy Frog
SIGWolf for Ghillie
Flink for Bruiser, Cosh, Lumpy, Cobra, and Mercury
Blazing Sword for Jail Break, Chains, Spikes, and Switch Blade
Aether for Warm Needle
Super Big Mac for Curse Mark
Zer0prototype for Ice Pick and On Ice

...As well as all the contributors whose Sicklefins didn't make the cut; I'm still thankful and happy you submitted!

And let's not forget all the awesome guys on my writing team: you rock!

Happy Halloween to you all!