The Mane Six - and most other ponies - have more than one talent. In another world, they could have had entirely different cutie marks. That doesn't mean they're not friends.
The Elements of Harmony find themselves in a mysterious town, led by a powerful unicorn. But these aren't the Elements as you know them, and this isn't the town you know.
That was great, Pinkie thought, it meant their group could rest once they made it to the top of this hill. Or that she was just itchy, she was still getting used to the wing-based Pinkie Sense (hehe, Wingie Sense). And it was definitely time for a rest, after walking miles through a remote corner of Equestria to a mysterious destination surrounded by grassy hills and unsurpassable mountains and other tall objects that half of the Elements couldn't fly past and the other half wouldn't do so great around either.
"Girls, we'll stop on top of the hill and take a break!", Pinkie exclaimed, somehow turning her head a full one-eighty degrees to look at the rest of the group. With another pony, the act might have been horrifying; with Pinkie Pie, the act was just Pinkie Pie.
"Finally! I'm beat!", declared Rainbow Dash, which was odd. The prismatic pegasus looked exhausted but not hurt. Unless...
"Dashie, I didn't know you were a beet! What's it like being a vegetable?"
"Ah think the only vegetable here is Twilight", Applejack snickered, looking at the purple unicorn, happily dozing away on the wagon the earth pony was dragging along, surrounded by the dozens of notebooks she'd filled out during the night and the travel bags she’d packed in Ponyville.
"Applejack, that's not very nice", Fluttershy glanced, worried, at her purple friend. "She spent all night preparing plans for what we'd find out here."
"And she was a dear to do that, darling, but she might have taken it too far." Levitating one of the notebooks toward her, Rarity opened it to a random page and started reading out loud. "Modular Subplan 345A - In case we need to camp out around the area we’re being sent to, have Rarity construct a small hut around us with telekinesis and the artificing materials in emergency supply bag six. See Diagram 182 - 187. Subsubplan i - Ward the house against meteors. Subsubplan ii - Surround the house with a moat. Subsubplan iii - Light the house... on fire?" The rest of the page was an illegible mess, the natural result of 2 a.m. hornwriting.
"I'm pancake..." Twilight added her two cents, apparently feeling left out of the conversation.
Satisfied that the crunch of grass beneath her hooves was no longer the only sound she’d hear, Pinkie turned her head another one-eighty degrees, just in time for her to realize that she had arrived on top of the hill and was about to walk off it, nearly gliding into the town below. And speaking of the town...
She heard a shocked gasp next to her from Rarity. "Oh my. Rainbow Dash, it seems like you might get to fight a monster after all." The town in the valley below could have been a typical Equestrian village, once, with a variety of colorful buildings that would look like a Beakson Pollock painting from above. Now it was completely empty - although they could see almost the entire town from their high vantage point, not a single pony could be seen on the streets. There were long scars and holes across the earth, bits of buildings falling off and crumbling, and a seemingly untamed snowstorm thundering above the town.
"Nah, don't look like it. Some parts of that place are more dilapitated than my great-uncle Fritter's dentures. Whatever's going on there, part of it's that there's nobody paying for upkeep. The buildings look like some of the old abandoned farms the Acres bought out."
“And that storm’s totally not wild”, Rainbow Dash said. “It’s near Weather Factory standard for thunderstorms. Maybe. Can’t really remember my pegasus academy courses too well, I haven’t needed them for ages.”
“So a pony did all this? Well, an evil pony still counts as a monster, riiiiigggghhhhttttt? I mean, I thought Nightmare Moon was pretty monstery. So if Luna counted as a monster, then maybe we’re going to fight… a lunatic!” Nopony laughed at that, probably because Pinkie’d made the same pun at least twelve times in the past month. She’d have to find some new moon-based puns soon.
“Maybe we should look through the town tomorrow?”, Fluttershy asked. “We can wait until all of us are rested. And awake.”
“Well, then, it seems that I’ll be using Twilight’s house plans after all. Could you girls help me set up?”
A chorus of “sure” was the response Rarity got, and most of the mares walked down the hill’s slope to find a flat enough piece of land to fit Diagram 185. Pinkie Pie, however, stayed in place.
Perching on the hilltop, the pink pony princess previewed a puzzling precarious-looking peculiar town. She saw nopony, but why did she feel as if she was being watched? As if somepony was eyeing the hourglass on her flank?
Eh, she mentally shrugged, and then physically shrugged because she might as well, it was probably one of those Pinkie Sense things that only made sense after the fact. For now, she’d just sleep, and get up bright and early tomorrow to tackle whatever evilstery - mysterevil? - awaited.
After all, her future self had never led her wrong before!
Long ago, in the magical land of Equestria, two regal sisters protected the innocent and brought peace and harmony throughout the land. The elder princess, who was unmatched in sheer power and in kindness, would travel everywhere that needed help, taming and defeating monsters. The younger, who was brilliant and subtle, would show her little ponies how to escape their darkest fears and achieve their greatest dreams.
But the younger sister soon grew jealous. The elder won acclaim across the land for her heroic deeds, while her own involvement was barely remembered by lucid dreamers and mad mages.
The younger sister soon decided that if she wouldn't be acknowledged for helping her little ponies achieve their dreams, she'd be feared for making them live their nightmares. One fateful night, she began casting a wicked ritual to cause every living thing in Equestria to sleep forever, trapped in the worst nightmare their own minds could create. The elder pleaded with her, but it was too late - the younger sister had become the evil Nightmare Moon. Celestia had no choice but to banish her sister for a thousand years.
A thousand years later, Luna was freed from her madness with the help of six exceptional mares. A wealthy investor from humble origins, the Element of Honesty. A minor noble and major bureaucrat, the Element of Friendship. A schoolteacher with a secret, the Element of Kindness. A unicorn artificer, the Element of Generosity. A young athlete and aerial guard, the Element of Loyalty. And of course, the Princess's personal student, the Element of Magic, a mare with spacetime-bending abilities that baffled even her mentor.
This is not that story. This is about what happened after.
Twilight was woken by the feeling of a burst of power hitting her horn, something powerful and ancient and natural beyond words. Three minutes. With the ease of someone who had been woken like this every day for almost her entire life, she got to her hooves, opened her eyes, and took in her surroundings. Get out of bed, check.
She was in a crystal tent, magically and hastily created, with spells running through the walls to keep it up. Around her were the other Elements, sleeping peacefully on the grass, assuming Rainbow Dash’s snoring could be considered peaceful.
Rarity must have made this, then. Were they at their destination?
Another burst of power, more urgent. Two minutes.
Quietly, she stood and walked out of the tent. Thankfully, there was an enchantment on the walls - Slider’s Door Symphony, if she remembered correctly - that caused them to open as she approached them without making any noise.
Alpine bluegrass coated the hill, and the air was a mild 13 degrees. According to Flora and Frost, that would correspond to the theoretical makeup of the unexplored region they’d been sent to by future-Pinkie. The incline of the ground that the tent rested on suggested that her friends had used MSP345A, although she was a bit disappointed to see that there was no water-filled moat (Ludicrous Liar’s Cryptology for Dummies had suggested that Fire Ants lived somewhere in this area, and she definitely did not want to wake up to the sight of a bug twice the size of her). At the very least, she hoped that there were meteor wards up. Identify your location, check.
The magic hit her a third time, the final warning. She walked up to the highest point she could see, a nearby hilltop, and prepared herself. Across Equestria and beyond, countless unicorns - and several other species - did the same.
Long ago, several of her books said, the Sun and Moon had been raised by a council of the most powerful unicorn mages and nobles. Every day and every night, they’d reach beyond the clouds with their powers, draining themselves of their life force to power their spell and their mind to guide it, eventually dying as confused and powerless as the day they were born. Diamond the Wise - and, she now suspected, Princess Luna - had the idea that all unicorns should contribute to the spell, that if everypony took a little bit of the damage then everypony would survive, and that idea had been proven correct. It was true that there were no unicorn mages as powerful as Platinum or Meadowbrook around anymore, but there weren’t any unicorns who’d suffered their fate around either.
She flexed her magic, pouring it into the sky, reaching with a thousand other tendrils to bring the Sun into view. This was her Element - and not just in the literal sense, with Friendship and everything, but figuratively as well. Long before she had earned an Element, she’d earned her mark - a checklist - for organizing and connecting ponies, for making groups that could do more than the individuals they contained ever could.
Twilight had expected to be scared out of her wits in the town - various monsters and ancient forces of darkness tended to have that effect. It was completely normal to be scared of things that could and would eat your face, as she’d learned on the adventure her friends had at Smokey Mountain.
She had not expected that that same effect could be caused by a completely still town.
The others didn’t look like they were feeling exactly the same, which was good - a different mindset would let them focus on different details of the environment. Pinkie seemed to be completely unfazed by the place, pronking along the pavement as she normally did. Rainbow demonstrated exactly the sort of poise one would expect from a guard, scanning for threats and using pegasus magic to clear their paths of snow. Fluttershy was clearly nervous, staying near Rainbow.
The other two had clearly noticed something, although they’d need prodding to vocalize it.
Twilight turned to Applejack. “Applejack, did you notice something odd about this place?”
“Well, yeah. Look around ya.” Applejack pointed to the nearby houses, which were boarded up and shattered in various areas. “These buildings are plenty damaged, but not in the vital spots. When one of my barns gets damaged back home, it stops standing; these things are stickin’ together like glue, even if a coupl’a spots are patched up where they need to be. And they have to be patched up, can’t have been fixed by a pony with an architecture talent, because that would have gotten them fixed up right proper-like. Now take a look at the roads.” She pointed to the gashes along the road they were on. “They’re torn up, but still usable - there ain’t been any point where we had to take a detour because the road was too destroyed to continue ‘long it. There’s a couple a’ materials used here, not just one, so it’s not like there was just one builder. The heights we’re at ain’t level, so the roads were probly built at different times.”
“So we’re dealing with multiple ponies rebuilding after whatever happened?” Rainbow Dash looked a little less tense at that, somehow making it look like she was relaxed as she spewed fire from her wings. “If there’s a local resistance, we should meet up with them and kick some monster flank - basic guard tactics.”
Rarity spoke up. “It certainly seems that there are several ponies around. For example, you’ve doubtless noticed the massive snowfall. I traced it and that’s pegasus magic, not random weather, which means that there’s at least someone in the sky. And if you keep an eye on the street we’re on now -” At this, one of Pinkie’s eyes bulged out of her head, and turned toward the ground. “- there’s a trail of earth pony magic around.”
“Hmmm... Let’s split up! Dashie and Fluttershy can check for anyone in the air,” Pinkie said, pointing a hoof at the duo and then a second hoof at the sky, “Rarity and Applejack follow the earth pony trail,”, pointing a third and fourth hoof at the business ponies and a random direction, respectively, “ and Twilight and I can.... uh… can….”
“Check out the massive building at the center of town?” Twilight suggested.
“That’s right!” Pinkie said, before gravity remembered her and she fell to the floor with a thud. Twilight wasn’t sure how that disregard for the laws of physics actually worked, but she had never really worried about it. It was probably some secret long-lost earth pony art that the Princess had taught her.
The others agreed to the plan easily enough. Rarity pointed out the track to Applejack and they started walking away, Rainbow Dash took flight with Fluttershy following, and the remaining two mares headed off in the direction of what Twilight suspected was town hall.
“-ou know, this is great! Big adventures, tons of fun!” Pinkie cheerfully finished her twenty-minute long speech, before turning around and completely changing to a serious demeanor. The effect was odd, given that she hadn’t stopped pronking. “Twilight, are you okay?”
Twilight laughed, only a little nervously. “I would have been frightened if we’d been been in different groups, but splitting the physically weakest of us with somepony who can actually defend themselves was a good idea. Thank you for that, Pinkie.”
“Nessun problema, amica mia.” And with that, Pinkie bounced backward straight into a wall. “Owie, what happ -” Turning around, she saw exactly what she bumped into. “Woah.”
Find the town’s center, check.
Before them, the town’s central building sprawled. Stories high, covered in mirrors and flyers, with crystal wiring so powerful Twilight could feel it just from being nearby. She walked up to the wall and looked through some of the flyers.
Starlight Glimmer. Cutie Marked Supreme. Under that, a photograph of a mare with a pink coat, concealed under a hooded cloak that might have been stuck to her skin.
At this, the door to the hall opened, and the very mare on the photo stepped out, concealed within the same cloak. (How had she known they were there? Perhaps she had heard their hoofsteps, or perhaps there was an alarm spell on the area, or maybe Pinkie crashing into a wall was just loud). Looking toward the pair of friends, her mouth curved into something like a smile (and, at the sight of Pinkie’s wings and horn, her eyes widened in something like shock). “Hello! I’m sure you’re weary from your travels, with many questions. Please, come in, if you want. Our town hall is your town hall.” And with that, she retreated back inside.
“You ready, Twililililili?”
“I think so, but I’ve also realized why this place makes me nervous. The entire point of towns in the Equestrian Confederate Realms is that they’re places for ponies to work together. For an establishment like this, there should be constant hustle and bustle, and plenty of different flyers. But every single paper posted here is the same, and that mare might be the only pony in the building.” And with Twilight’s cutie mark, she felt the effect more strongly than most - that there weren’t ponies around, working together, was an affront to everything that she lived for.
“Eh, I was scared too, but then I remembered my future self never led me wrong before!” With that, the alicorn stepped into the building, too quickly for her to hear Twilight’s response.
“But your future self has never led you before at all!”
Rarity led the mares’ way across town, pointing her horn at the ground like a pig looking for truffles. Applejack took note of the surroundings they passed - a boutique with its windows broken but no glass lying on the ground, an open-air market with all its stalls completely destroyed, a watch store with a broken clock above the door.
At a pretty normal intersection, near a cafe and a timber store, Rarity stopped.
“What’s wrong, Rarity?”
“Nothing’s wrong, exactly, dear, it’s just that the trail we were following runs back and forth here, repeatedly going over itself. Whoever we’re looking for must be in one of these houses.” Rarity looked between the two buildings, then started walking toward the timber store. “I suppose we’ll have to knock. Might as well get it over with it now.” She tried raising her hoof, to push the front door open, but was quickly stopped by Applejack.
“Whoa, nelly, hold on there. We know that what we’re following is an earth pony, but we don’t know whether they’re friendly or not. And what do you normally find in timber stores?”
“Logs?”
“Axes.”
Rarity’s face would have paled if it wasn’t white already.
Applejack, meanwhile, turned to the cafe. With the general atmosphere of this town, the cafe felt much shadier than it could have, and it was shadier than an apple tree on a sunny day to begin with. It seemed to stretch before her, like she was a small filly knocking on the doors of her scary Uncle Apple Crate's old home again. She hesitated, feeling like the building before her would open and swallow her whole.
But she did bring herself to knock, at last, and the door swung open at the touch of her hoof. She peeked inside, seeing nothing particularly threatening, and gestured for Rarity to come in after. They’d found themselves in a large dining area, with a door leading to the kitchens at the back.
“Oh, dear, how horrifying!” Rarity cried, looking around the cafe. “The floor hasn’t been swept in ages, and not a single one of the light crystals are charged! Oh, the equinity!” She swooned, as if to faint, before bolting back upright to a normal standing position. Probably remembered that dirty floors were a bad place to lie down with white coats.
Applejack, meanwhile, looked into the kitchen, where she found bowls and cups and trays thrown around the floor (and at least one on the ceiling). Rows of pastries lined the countertops - bread, cupcakes, that Prench thing that started with ‘C’, and more. Some of the baked goods were stacked on top of others, probably because the counters had run out of space. Their smell was amazing, beyond anything that Applejack had words for. Instinctively, she nearly bit into one, before remembering all the myths she’d heard as a little filly about ponies who ate food that wasn’t theirs.
Unable to take her eyes off the sight in front of her, she called back. “Rarity! I found a huge clue!”
Applejack didn’t hear a response from her friend.
“Rarity?”, Applejack asked, turning around, just in time to see the log coming at her face, and then everything went black.
Applejack was awoken by a drop of water hitting her face. Groggily, she tried to get up, but realized that her limbs were bound by rope. She opened her eyes to a dank, dark sight - a basement, with a ladder to the upper floors at the corner of the room. There was a doorway at the top of the ladder, but no door. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see some candles ominously flickering. Turning to the right, she saw Rarity, bound similarly, whose eyes widened at her glance.
"Applejack! You're awake!", Rarity exclaimed, "Finally! That monstrosity is such dreadful company."
At this, Applejack pulled her mind into full wakefulness. "Whoa, the town's monster is here? Where's the earth pony?"
Rarity grimaced. "I'm afraid, dear, that the trail we were following may have misled us. The monster leaks earth pony magic as if it is one, the way disguised changelings do. But it certainly isn't a shapeshifter, because nothing would choose to look like that."
And now Applejack's keen mind, the same that had given her the coin on her flank and had made Sweet Apple Enterprises the largest group of farms in Ponyville, was working at full speed. "What does it look like? Does it talk?"
"To itself, mainly. I'm afraid I couldn't understand its muttering, I haven't got earth pony senses. I've tried whining at it to let us go, but it just ignored me." Rarity's horn glowed, and she turned to the door. "You'll see it yourself in a second, though, dear."
A thing emerged from the entrance, like a pony but horrendously mutated. Its back was larger and more heavily muscled, with a head thrice the size of a mare's and an elongated barrel; its coat was a shade of light red, and Applejack could have sworn that its poofy tail and mane were actually on fire. The creature's bottom half was pony-sized, giving the odd impression that someone had cast a size-expanding spell on a pony but missed the legs. The monster's eyes looked like they were made of crystal, though they didn't reflect the light, and a pattern resembling a cupcake with a cherry on it repeated itself on the fur at multiple places along its body. Around its withers, a necklace made of beads hung, although Applejack found her head ached and her attention diverted every time she tried to look more closely at that area.
It stomped down the stairs loudly, breaking the very last stair that it stepped on. "Stupid stairs, shouldn't have trusted." She muttered to herself - and the monster's voice was definitely a filly's, Applejack could tell, even if she had to swivel her ear a bit to catch everything the monster said. "Next time, will use hard breads instead."
The monster turned around now, and Applejack took the chance to call out to it. "Howdy, Sugarcube!" At another time, this might have been a silly course of action, but the monster had the mares at its mercy, so talking really couldn't hurt. Besides, she'd certainly learned the value of communicating with eldritch horrors over the last few years.
The monster muttered under its breath again, just loud enough that Applejack could hear. "Sugar Belle, not Sugarcube."
Well, that was a start. "Howdy, Sugar Belle! Mind telling us why you've tied us up?"
"Sugar Belle has not seen uncompetitors in many years. Don't know what to do with these ponies. Maybe cut up, use as ingredients, bake new cakes. Maybe hand to Starlight, enter in the tournament."
Rarity was glancing between Applejack and the monster, confused. Applejack decided to let her in on the conversation. "You're going to eat us because you say we're uncompetitors? What do ya mean by that?"
"Eat us? You can't, dear, I taste absolutely ghastly! Like unwashed -" Rarity was cut off before she could mention how she hadn't bathed in a whole hour.
The monster was louder now, slightly irritated, the way Big Mac sounded when she interrupted him cooking. "Not eat. Bake."
"BAKE? I'd taste even worse baked than raw! Can you imagi-"
Applejack got a bit louder, as Rarity ranted in the background. "Ah meant, what do you mean by uncompetitors?"
"For Starlight's tournament." Sugar Belle seemed resigned now, to being pestered by persistent pony prodding. She still wasn't looking at Applejack or Rarity, but at least she began talking.
"It started when Starlight founded this village...."
Rainbow Dash settled on a cloud, taking in every detail of her surroundings. The snowcloud she was on was soft, and much smaller than a wild one would be. Around her, similarly small snowclouds floated. None of them had drifted together and merged, so they must have been made recently.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of movement. For a second, she thought it was something she could fight, but then realized it was just Fluttershy struggling to keep up with her.
Fluttershy finally lay on the cloud a minute or two later, breathing heavily from her physical exertion and stretching her wings out. She probably wouldn't be up for a pass over the surrounding area.
"Shy, I'm gonna do a flyby of this place and look for anything interesting, all right? We can cloud-beacon if we need each other."
Rainbow Dash sped off to the town's center after seeing Fluttershy's nod. From there, she started spiraling outward - if there was anything in the center of town, and there probably was, she'd have plenty of chances to catch it.
As she flew, Rainbow noticed something puzzling about the broken buildings below. Many, but not all, had been broken in a way that looked purposeful. Windows had their panes removed but not broken, buildings had their chimneys sliced off, and houses had some bricks removed without being damaged. It felt like living in an incomplete puzzle.
Further out, she flew over the path her group had entered the village through. Below her was a group of huge bugs. Changelings? In Equestrian lands? Heck no, not after what they'd put her through during the wedding.
She flew down and buzzed them, before pulling back up. A couple hissed and lit themselves on fire, but none of the bugs broke off to follow or launched magic at her. And, on second thought, they were redder and less lingy than changelings. Probably not even the town's monsters - she hadn't seen fire damage when she was doing her flyover. Must have been wildlife.
So she knew that the bugs below weren't the monsters, and she'd seen that the pegasus she was looking for wasn't visible in any of the open spaces she'd flown above. That meant they must have been in the only place nearby that would shield them from her sight - the mountain range. She was above the nearest mountain in a flash, now that she wasn't flying slowly to try to take in all the details she could.
A blur of something white below, difficult to make out against the background, caught her attention. She perched on a psuedocumulus and tracked whatever was moving below. It was the shape of a large pony - a promising lead.
She needed to make a beacon. Thankfully, there were even more snowclouds over the mountain than the town. Rainbow pushed a few nearby ones together to make a large thundercloud, and tossed a hoof-sized cloud at it from more than a few bodylengths away. There was a massive crash, something that Fluttershy should have been able to hear from where she was. She perched on the psuedocumulus again; now she just had to wait for the slower pegasus.
The ponyish thing below hadn't reacted to the thunderclap she'd just shot off. It still continued a pattern of walking up the slope, and then turning around and blurring in a controlled way as it traveled downhill. She wasn't as familiar with ground sports as with flying ones, but it looked like a snowboarder. At the speeds the boarder was going, they must have been a pegasus or earth pony (or not a pony at all - she wasn't sure how fast zebras and Arabians and stuff were).
The twists and curves the snowboarder below made were surprisingly repetitive, and Rainbow found herself falling asleep watching the pattern they traced.
"Uhh, five more minutes", Rainbow groaned, as she felt somepony else pounce on her cloud and start lightly tapping a hoof into her side. Stupid guard academy waking cadets up in the morning.
The pony whispered at her, way softer than a guard would have. "Umm, Rainbow Dash, you hit a beacon?" Wait, why was Fluttershy in the academy?
Oh, right, the academy was ages ago. She was near Mysteryville or wherever now. The realization that she was still in maybe-hostile territory brought Rainbow back to wakefulness pretty quickly. (A common saying with most ponies she had worked with was that she got away with taking a lot of naps on-duty by being really good at waking up when she needed to.)
She looked below her cloud as she started talking, to confirm that the pony of interest was still there. "Fluttershy, there's somepony down there. They just keep snowboarding." Rainbow pointed a hoof at the blur, which was still on the same exact path as before. Fluttershy looked in the same direction, taking a few moments to find the person being pointed at. "Right there. Didn't get distracted by my beacon, didn't stop moving on the same exact path and do something else the entire time you were on the way."
"Um, I only took a few minutes. And I think that's actually skiing."
"Skiing, snowboarding, whatever. They're both ground sports. My point is that they've been repeating the same routes the entire time, Fluttershy." Rainbow glanced at her friend. "I want you to wait up here and keep an eye on me while I check them out. If anything happens, let the others know."
Fluttershy shivered, as if she was terrified at the thought of anything happening, but she still nodded.
Rainbow leaped off the cloud, and headed to the bottom of the track. The snowskier would slow down when they got here, so she could ask them some questions. She'd be completely visible while they approached the end, too, so they hopefully wouldn't be startled and run.
She'd timed her landing correctly. A moment after Rainbow had landed, the mystery pony turned sharply from behind a group of small, dead trees and came into view.
Now that she was close by, she could see just how weird her suspect was. The front legs were longer than the back, and both were longer than the three tribes' legs, giving it the appearance of one of those enormous monkeys she'd seen at the zoo. The very bottom of its back hooves were freakish, a flat surface way larger than its front two hooves. Every part of its body was overly muscled, even its face, like a grotesque parody of the unrealistic-bodied kind of stallion you saw on Harley Quinn covers. Its middle was the creepiest bit, though. The entire region between its front and back legs had been replaced by two large diamond-shaped masses of muscle and flesh, connected to each other by the tips where the exact midpoint of a pony's body would be. Some sort of chain of weird beads wrapped around the connecting point. Both flesh masses were covered in pictures of diamondy flowers, with the most obvious being the one on the pony's flank-equivalent.
Was it a monster? There weren't too many pony-like monsters that she'd heard of, and not one of those had cutie marks. Maybe it was a divergent pony type, like the crystal ponies up north.
Well, she'd say hi when he saw her. If it was one of the ponies she came here to help, she wasn't going to be racist or anything. And if it was a monster and fought her, she could buck it in the face.
It was staring hard at the snow-covered ground when it came out of the trees, so she waited for it to come closer and notice her.
A tenth of the way to her, it hadn't looked up.
Halfway to her, it hadn't looked up.
Three-fourths of the way to her, it hadn't looked up.
She decided to help him out a bit. "Hey! Big guy!"
No response. He just slowed down and ignored her. Maybe he couldn't hear? She'd heard some ponies couldn't hear, although she'd never met any.
Okay, she'd just have to get his attention another way. At this point, he'd come to a complete stop, so she didn't feel bad about coming up to his side and poking him. "Hey!", she yelled, because maybe talking louder to a deaf pony would work. "Royal Guard! Got some questions for you!"
The pony, still staring at the ground, turned a tiny part of the way toward her. Then did that again. Then again.
She decided to save time by hovering directly in front of his face, and he finally moved his head in response.
He was staring at her flank, now. Was he checking her out? Ugh, she was no Rarity, but she had some standards. One of those standards was the stallion looking like a real pony, and another was her not being on a dangerous mission with the lives of her friends at risk.
"Hey, I said I had some questions!", Rainbow said, poking him on the nose. The stallion looked up her leg, finally looking at her face. His ears were pinned back, tail swishing and body tense. Rainbow tensed in response. Was he going to fight her?
Apparently not. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" The pony screamed and sped downhill. Rainbow just stared after it for a moment, unsure how to react. The way it moved, she now noticed, was pretty weird. It stood on its back hooves, bringing its front legs down every so often to gain momentum. There was no snowboard or anything with it.
The realization that what was either a suspect or a witness was getting away spurred her back into action. She flew after him, easily keeping pace thanks to her amazing flying skills. He looked back and made an impossibly sharp degree turn when he saw that she was following.
The turn forced her to bank hard, and cost her a bit of speed. The freaky pony clearly noticed this, because he had turned again to a large, dense grove of trees nearby. She'd have to slow down if she wanted to be able to turn enough to dodge everything there. She wouldn't be able to come at him from above, either - the treetops would be too covered in snow and branches for her to plow through.
------------------------------------
"I think I can trick that weird pony down there into running into you, when you come down", Rainbow Dash explained as she hovered in front of Fluttershy's cloud. "Not sure he'll react though. Didn't look me in the eye, keeps repeating his path when I'm not around, doesn't react when you talk to him, and stared right at my flank."
Fluttershy looked a bit surprised at that. Rainbow wasn't sure whether to be mildly insulted or not. "Um, Rainbow Dash?"
"I mean, I basically know what's going on here now. Oddly repetitive motions? Freaky large muscles? Not reacting to awesome ponies? Obviously, he's a ghost - "
"I think I -"
"- a ghost from some post-alpacalyptic mutant wasteland that used to live here before dark magic hit and they started fighting with each other over the water that was left -"
"We're surrounded by snow, Rainbow, and I think it's actually -"
"- and now they're a bunch of dark magic ghost monster psychics who roam a deserted wasteland, trapped here for eternity, doomed to check out hot girls and -"
"Rainbow Dash." Fluttershy's teacher voice was a terrifying thing, capable of getting any overexcited filly or colt to listen immediately. Rainbow immediately stopped talking.
Fluttershy continued. "What you described sounds like some of the foals I work with at the school."
Rainbow raised her hoof, waiting to be called on. Then she remembered how old she was. "Your foals are ghost monster psychics?"
"I mean the behavior is similar. Sometimes we get a colt or filly who doesn't react much to people, and makes the same gestures over and over. Twilight called it artism; it's like a disability, except it happens to the mind. When I was watching you two talk from up here, the way he acted looked almost exactly like one of those kids."
"So you think he's an artistic foal?" Rainbow turned to stare at the snowski tracks below, but couldn't see any sort of picture emerging. Must have been one of those art no-view things Rarity always went on about.
"I don't know if he's a foal or artistic for his species or tribe, but I can talk to him as if he's one. My cutie mark means I'm good with children, but Twilight made me take lessons on how to teach artists just in case. If he's not a foal and my talent doesn't help, I can just use what I was taught. And even if he's not artistic, he's similar enough that he might respond to those methods. But part of what I was taught was that I should talk to him by myself and figure out how he reacts to things before having him talk to others, which means, well, um..."
"You want to go after him alone? Fluttershy, you're great and all, but you're no guard or Princess."
"I can go in with you flying above me, keeping an eye out. If I look like I'm in danger, I'll break a beacon and you can swoop in and grab me. I mean, if you don't mind, that is."
At the look Fluttershy gave her, Rainbow sighed. She wasn't going to be argued out of this. "Alright. Grab a cloud and let's go."
-----------------------------------------
Fluttershy emerged from the thicket dragging an unused beacon-cloud. A second later, she bumped into a pegasus floating in wait for her.
"Well? Did he hurt you? Do I need to break his bones? Or whatever he has instead?"
Fluttershy shook her head. "He's agreed to bring us to some of the others in this town. You just have to cover your flank", Fluttershy said. "I don't think he was checking you out earlier, just scared of your cutie mark."
"What?", Rainbow asked, even as she gathered snow to rub into her fur. "It's a wing and shield. They're awesome, but not really scary."
When it became obvious that Rainbow could not actually reach her flanks with the snow she was carrying, Fluttershy approached and started to rub the snow in. After she was done, Rainbow looked back to check it out. Her cutie mark didn't look like anything meaningful any more, but at least the shield wasn't visible.
"I'll tell you the story as we walk, Rainbow Dash." Fluttershy walked back into the forest, and Rainbow followed. "It all started with a mare named Starlight Glimmer..."