The Brass Conspiracy

by MadHighlander

Strange Things Happen

Baltimare
Several hours later

Gearbox rushed through the doors to the office. “I got it!” he shouted, laying down the map.

Fancy Pants had left shortly after Gearbox, intending to return to Equulaneum. Since neither the Wonderbolts nor Ross had returned, their group now consisted of Twilight, Pinkie, Poison, Box, the Spark twins, and the minotaur Iron Will.

“Great work, Gearbox,” said Poison, as they gathered around the table. “Pinkie was just telling us about what happened after Cogspin took over.” She gestured to Pinkie to continue.

“Well, we were all in Ponyville,” Pinkie indicated Ponyville on the map for Box’s benefit, and for the Sparks, “when the Princesses showed up all of a sudden and told us we needed to leave, and fast. They said we had to leave everypony behind for their safety – Cogspin and the other Guildmasters had turned out to be big meanies. Now Shimmerthread and Iron Shod I understood, and I’d been getting a few twitchy twitches around Cogspin, but I just couldn’t figure out why Mac would do something like that. I was trying to figure that out while Luna explained their plan.” Pinkie shrugged. “I still dunno. I thought maybe she was replaced by a changeling, but my tongue wasn’t itchy around her back when she last visited, so that’s no good. Then maybe I thought her bad friends were pressuring her into it! So then I decided, if she can’t see those meanies are bad influences, it’s my job to tell her! So I-”

“Um, miss Pie? The Princesses?” asked Box.

“Oh, right. Sorry. My brain went off on the wrong path through the Everfree. Like the one with the Poison Joke, instead of the one to Zecora’s cottage, so it got all twisted up, and-”

Iron Will cleared his throat loudly. Pinkie stopped and stared at him for a moment, then removed a package of cough drops from her mane and offered them to him. “Want a lozenge, Mr. Will?”

Iron declined the offer, and after putting away the package, Pinkie continued, “So anyway, while all the poison joke thoughts were running through my head, Luna was explaining to everypony else where they were going to be going. She said,” here, Pinkie engaged in a surprisingly accurate imitation of Luna’s Royal Canterlot Voice, “WE WILL BRING YOU TO THE ABANDONED OUTPOST AT LEGIONS’ FALL PASS. THERE YOU WILL BE SAFE FROM COGSPIN’S ARMY.” Pinkie took a deep breath, and when she resumed speaking, her voice had returned to normal. “Then Celestia said that the place was called McMaredo Ice Station. It really doesn’t sound all that fun, but if it’ll keep them safe I would never stop my friends from going there.”

“McMaredo Ice Station?” asked Ratchet. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Neither have I,” said Poison, scanning the map with a puzzled look on her face.

The others shook their heads.

“I have,” said Twilight. “They really must not have been willing to take any chances. The Ice Station is so remote it’s not even on this map – if it were it would be somewhere around here.” She indicated a point about a hoofsbreadth off the edge of the map, straight north of the Crystal Empire. “It was built to keep an eye out for King Sombra, and as such was abandoned when he returned. Good thing too – it’s right on the edge of where the Old Kingdoms used to be, and the Windigoes were starting to take notice.” She traced a line south from McMaredo into Equestria, and then east to Baltimare. “This might take longer than we thought.”

“What do you mean the windigoes were starting to take notice?” asked Ratchet. “The windigoes from the old stories? Those windigoes?”

“Why would the princesses chose something so dangerous?” asked Gearbox nervously.

“Iron Will isn’t so sure it’s wise to bank on a journey twice as long as expected, with the danger of no outcome. Successful or not, we could all be in prison by the time you even make it there.”

Box entered the conversation somewhat sternly. “Iron, she never said twice as long-”

“But it is, though, look.” Gearbox pointed to the map. “We were thinking Zebrica, maybe Camelon at worst. Look, Legions’ Fall is at least a month’s journey out, more if the Crystal Plains reach blizzard conditions. And that’s if you took the train from here to the Crystal Empire.”

“Oh, well, there’s the good old family optimism, Gearbox,” said Ratchet sarcastically. “You need to have faith in a pony who’s saved the world at least twice over already.”

“I was just pointing out a fact, Ratchet, never once did I say anything about losing faith.”

“Ignore the facts!” shouted Box. “If we don’t help them try, Celestia only knows how Equestria will get out of-”

Iron interrupted Box in mid-tirade with one of his own.

“Are they really getting into this again?” Poison whispered to Twilight.

Twilight looked over to Pinkie, who was looking decidedly nervous. Oddly, though, she wasn’t looking at the arguing ponies on the far side of the table, but rather up in the air. Her tail twitched twice, like a cat’s.

It took a moment for Twilight to remember why that was significant.

Once she did, she didn’t bother with warnings, instead casting a spell that pushed everypony away from the map table, including herself. Box, Iron, and the Sparks ended up on the far side of the room, while Pinkie and Poison remained with her.
It was a good thing she took that precaution, too, since at that moment, a large glowing coral-colored object crashed through the ceiling, demolishing the table and heavily damaging the floor for a decent radius around it.

As the glow faded, the object shrunk (Twilight would later realize that it was a magical high-impact shield) to pony-size, revealing a veritable doppelganger of Pinkie standing in the middle of the room.

Macaroon.

She looked around at the ponies in the room, all frozen in shock. She grinned and shouted upwards through the newly created skylight.

“Looks like our new friend was spot on. Not Captain Spot On, he’s completely different. And none of the other Spot Ons –Spots On? – that I know, either – everypony come on in, check this out.”

Just as the Celestians started to react, a whole squadron of royal guards streamed into the room. Unicorns smashed the door down, while pegasi simply streamed in through the gaping hole in the ceiling. Amidst the Pegasus guards, Chiaroscuro flitted down into the room, approaching Mac.

“Do I get my two million bits now?” he asked.

Macaroon opened her mouth to reply, only to be interrupted by the Spark twins.

“Ross, you sold us out!”

“How could you do that?”

Macaroon tittered, and with a flash of magic transformed their mouths into zippers and closed them. “Do you know how rude it is to interrupt pleasant conversation?”

Turning back to Ross, she continued, “No, now you get a cookie.” She pulled a cookie (“Chocolate chip,” muttered Pinkie) out of her mane and handed it to the slightly confused Ross. “You get your two million bits by asking at Equulaneum. I’ll send word on ahead.”

Turning back to the unicorn guards, who surrounded the four Celestians with lit horns, she said calmly, “Bring them in too. Cogspin will no doubt want to have a talk. As for you three…” She turned to Twilight, Pinkie, and Poison. “Cogspin’ll be really disappointed in you, Poison. Working behind his back like that, that’s not what friends do for friends. And Pinkie, I really thought you’d see this my way.” She started to advance, followed by the Pegasus guards. Pinkie started to back up, pulling the other two with her.

Macaroon pulled one of her titular creations out of her mane and started eating it. “I mean, what we are, it’s hardly commonplace, is it? I thought I’d found a kindred spirit in you, especially after our adventures when I last visited Ponyville.”

“We need to get out of here,” whispered Poison.

“You don’t say,” Twilight replied.

Macaroon hadn’t stopped. “Not to mention the cephalopods, that’s just what I’m talking about…”

“Okay, I think I got my answer!” said Pinkie loudly. “Brace yourselves!” She grabbed Twilight and Poison and jumped backwards.

“Hey, what are you doing?” shouted Macaroon. “NO! DON’T YOU DARE!” She jumped for them, followed by the guards, but Pinkie pulled them into a closet and the doors slammed.

Lot of good this is going to do… Twilight started to think, but she was interrupted by a disorienting flurry of noise, light, and the distinct smell of cake frosting. After a second, they fell backward out of… a mahogany wardrobe?

Twilight had just enough time to notice Macaroon hanging on to Poison’s left hind hoof, and Poison blasting her off with a concussive spell, before she also noticed that they had somehow appeared in a cloudhouse, and that she had no time to activate a cloudwalking spell.

As they fell through the floor with an audible poof, Twilight could make out Macaroon spellcasting furiously, and landing on all fours just at the edge of the hole they had made. After a moment, Macaroon turned and walked away.

But, now they had they had a more immediate problem: they were falling from cloud-level towards the ground at a high rate of speed, and Rainbow Dash wasn’t around to mount a daring rescue.

She looked to her companions; Pinkie had straightened out into as aerodynamic a shape as a pony could and was rocketing straight down, while Poison was screaming incoherently and flailing around. Turning slowly in the air, she noted that they were falling towards a huge oasis in the midst of a vast desert.

“Why are we in Las Pegasus?” she asked to herself. “How are we in Las Pegasus?”

She came to her senses at the feeling of an elbow colliding with her ribs. She looked to its source to find Pinkie, shouting something loudly that was being lost over the rush of the wind.

“What?” Twilight asked.

Pinkie facehoofed, and then mimed a unicorn horn, an invisible wall, and then something stopping.

Twilight suddenly remembered what Macaroon had done when she had fallen through the roof. Of course.

Drawing the three of them together telekinetically, she formed her magic into a cone pointed towards the surface of the water below. As they closed in on the glittering surface, Pinkie withdrew from her tail a snorkel and a pair of flippers. Poison was still screaming.

With a great splash, they impacted the surface of the water, crashing through it unharmed thanks to Twilight’s spell, which she then ended and allowed the water to close back over them. She tried to make for the surface, but she felt something pulling her further down. Turning around, she saw Pinkie with a death grip on her hind legs, swimming for the lake bed. In Pinkie’s mouth was Poison’s tail.

After a moment, Pinkie repositioned herself so that one pony was under each of her forelimbs, and then shot upwards. Twilight took in a huge gasp of air as soon as she broke the surface, followed by Poison and then Pinkie. Poison stood up and staggered towards the toilet, vomiting into it.

Wait, toilet?

Looking around, Twilight found herself sitting in a shallow bathtub, face to face with a familiar unicorn foal.

“Beh!” gurgled Pumpkin Cake, giggling loudly.

---

Ponyville
Moments later

Carrot Cake had reacted with a surprising lack of surprise at the fact that Pinkie had just spontaneously appeared with two other ponies in his bathtub, while he was bathing his foals. He was also straight faced when Pinkie declared that Poison Point was now her friend. He seemed somewhat surprised to see that Pinkie was there at all, rather than her method of arrival. As he told Pinkie Pie while he handed the three of them towels, “Things have gotten almost boring while you’ve been gone.”

Pound and Pumpkin Cake, on the other hand, were downright amused by Pinkie’s ‘trick’, giggling animatedly and clapping their forehooves. Cup Cake, who had arrived to investigate the commotion, was also overjoyed to see Pinkie and Twilight again, offering them all a selection of pastries. She was less happy to see Poison, though not openly hostile after Pinkie and Twilight had explained the situation.

She was, however, amused by Poison’s efforts to extricate her mane from Gummy the Alligator, in whose limbs and tail it had become utterly trapped when Poison had surfaced underneath it.

After Pinkie had finished explaining the situation (and apologizing for the intrusion) with the Cake family (who had both shrugged it off again), Twilight pulled her aside and said, “Pinkie, I know I said I wouldn’t question the things you did, but I have to know: What exactly was that? I mean, one moment we were in Baltimare, the next we were in Las Pegasus, and now we’re back in Ponyville? Everything I know about magic says that teleportation like that should be impossible.”

Pinkie shrugged. “This is going to frustrate you to no end, and I really wish I had a better answer for you, but I don’t know. I’ve been able to do it since I was a filly, like a week or so after I got my cutie mark. I don’t know where it came from, only that I’ve been able to do it ever since.”

Twilight frowned briefly. “And Macaroon can do… whatever it is, too?”

“Yup. I don’t know how long she’s been able to – I didn’t know ‘til she came here with the Guild.”

At that moment, Poison approached them, holding the now-freed Gummy in front of her with magic. As usual, he didn’t react at all. Pinkie grabbed him and placed him atop her head, at which point he slowly began to sink into her mane.

“So now what are we going to do?” asked Poison. “Baltimare is practically on the other side of Equestria from Ponyville – the route we got from the map is useless.”

“That’s true,” said Twilight, “but we can just do whatever that was Pinkie did again and we can make it straight to McMaredo.”

Poison grimaced. “That’s about the last thing I want to do again, but since it’ll probably shave as much as a month off our journey, we might as well.”

“Nope.”

The other two turned to Pinkie. “What do you mean, ‘Nope’?” asked Twilight.

“Nope means nope. I told you I can’t explain it, and I can’t travel north that way right now.”

Twilight’s eyelid twitched. “You just took us from Baltimare to Las Pegasus and halfway back! What do you mean you can’t go north?”

“I meant what I said and I said what I meant. Sometimes, when stuff gets really serious, there are certain things I stop being able to do. Like when we first went looking for the Elements of Harmony, I couldn’t use my fast-travel to go any deeper into the Everfree. And when we were at the Crystal Fair, trying to stop Sombra, I couldn’t Travel anywhere inside the palace. I don’t know why it happens, it just does.”

Twilight facehoofed. “Well, if that’s out of the question, then we could probably take the path east. It forks north towards Trottingham as soon as it clears the Everfree, and after that there’s pretty much a long stretch of empty road until we reach the Crystal Plains. Once we get there we’ll be practically in sight of Legions’ Fall Pass.” She pointed out the nearby window, which faced towards the east. “It might actually be shorter than the trip from Baltimare, if we’re lucky.”

“North from Ponyville to Trottingham?” asked Poison. “Wouldn’t that take us past Broken Horn Hill?”

“Oh, right. I hadn’t thought of that.” Twilight sighed. “West, then. It’s slightly longer, but far less travelled.”

“Broken Horn Hill?” asked Pinkie. “What’s that?”

“Broken Horn Hill is a maximum security prison for the most dangerous of unicorn criminals. Ordinarily, just travelling past it wouldn’t be a problem, but nearby roads have regular and thorough guard patrols, and given our current status…” Twilight trailed off. “Well, let’s just say it would be best if we avoided Broken Horn Hill.”

Poison looked out the window. “How long will the journey take on the west path?”

“Still shorter than the trip from Baltimare, I’d guess, but not by much. And that raises the question of what we’re going to do for provisions; there are no stops on the west path. It’s pretty much straight to the Crystal Plains.”

“Food isn’t a problem, silly.” Pinkie laughed. “The west road goes through Whitetail Wood. You can forage more greens in there than you know what to do with.”

Poison nodded determinedly. “Then west it is.”

Author's Note:

And now that that's done, we move on to our third and final intermission chapter, in which Cogspin and Celestia both finalise their plans to deal with Discord.