//------------------------------//
// Chapter 6. Psalm 34:18 
// Story: The Ponies who Played with Fire 
// by A M Shark 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 6

"The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."—Psalm 34:18





Fluttershy stared at the words. Was this some kind of horrible joke?

Then she heard the soft uneven patter of hooves and turned to see Highflyer hurrying to her side. He still had one of his forelegs wrapped around Tank's shell, but as he saw what was in Rainbow Dash's room, he froze and his grip on the tortoise loosened. Tank landed on all fours and promptly took off, flying toward the front door. Before he got very far, Haystings caught him and pulled off the tortoise's flying gear. He set Tank down in an empty room and quickly closed the door before the tortoise could get out. No sooner had he shut the door, then there was a slow but insistent thock-thock-thock on the other side, as if Tank were knocking his beak against it.

Haystings sighed and shook his head. "The poor guy should be getting ready to hibernate, but instead he's been flying all over the place, trying to find Rainbow Dash. He didn't see what happened to her. He doesn't realize..." He trailed off and motioned for the other two pegasi to move back away from the bedroom. "Come on. I accidentally stepped in that blood earlier, and we don't want to contaminate things in there anymore."

"Did you see what happened?" Highflyer asked as he and Fluttershy moved numbly away from the bedroom door. Then his eyes narrowed suspiciously. "And why are you here? Ray didn't mention having anypony over—"

"There was a Wonderbolt meeting real early this morning that she didn't show up for," said Haystings. "I wasn't busy, so I volunteered to go find out what was keeping her. When I got here, I found her crying on her bed and she told me about what happened to Pinkie Pie." He bowed his head briefly. "I'm sorry. Dash asked me to keep an eye on Tank while she collected herself, and I had just put him in the living room when I heard a male voice in Dash's bedroom say 'Surprised to see me?' The door was half-open and I ran over and peeked around it to see Discord standing right over her. Then he snapped his fingers and her body just, well, morphed inside out." Groaning, he shut his eyes and shook his head. "Oh, hearing about something like this is one thing, but seeing it..." He took in several deep breaths through his mouth to steady himself. "Discord shielded himself with an umbrella when she exploded, then used his paw to write those words on the wall before disappearing."

Highflyer made a noise that was half-sigh, half-moan, putting a hoof over his eyes.

"We have to get some police tech-ponies over here," Haystings said brusquely. "Could you two make sure nopony comes in here while I get them?"





Fluttershy and Highflyer sat by the front door, watching and waiting for Haystings to return with the tech-ponies. Tank had stopped knocking, and Fluttershy wondered if he had gone to sleep. Whether he had or not, she felt no desire to open the door and risk him seeing his owner splattered all over the bedroom.

Is she really splattered all over that bedroom? asked a small voice in the back of her head. What if it's fake? What if Pinkie's murder was faked as well?

Fluttershy had no answer. With what seemed to be Rainbow Dash's remains so nearby, the idea that they were fake felt absurd, and yet at the same time she couldn't completely bring herself to dismiss the idea. This left her in a sort of emotional limbo that an outside observer might have interpreted as shock.

"She never even found out what I look like," Highflyer said suddenly, startling her.

"What?"

He shook his head as if only just realizing he had spoken out loud. "I just realized I never took my mask off around Ray. All our wrestling lessons, all our flights, all our secret visits ... and she never saw my face."

Fluttershy knew that what he was saying wasn't completely true; she and Rainbow Dash had both seen his face when he was a colt but that had been well over two decades ago. Who could tell how much his features had changed in that time? Still, in light of his obvious grief, she didn't bother to correct him.

Highflyer let out a short derisive laugh that was more of a cough. "Why am I even thinking about a silly little thing like that when she's dead?!"

Fluttershy laid a comforting hoof on his muscular back, debating whether she should tell him her suspicions about Rainbow Dash's death being faked.

These thoughts were interrupted as she glanced out the window and saw Haystings flying toward them, towing a hot air balloon with several ponies—who she guessed must be the police tech-ponies—in it.

"Highflyer, look." As the balloon landed and the ponies jumped out, Fluttershy blinked, wondering if her eyes were playing tricks on her. Is that Twilight and Spike? As she and Highflyer hurried outside, she saw that she had not been mistaken. There stood Twilight and Spike at the front of the group. Fluttershy noticed that the clouds seemed able to support Spike's weight and she guessed that Twilight had put a spell on him to allow him to walk on them.

"Why are you two with the tech-ponies?" she asked after greeting them.

"I'll explain later," Twilight yawned, and Spike quickly poured her a cup of coffee from a thermos he was carrying.

"Thanks," said Twilight, floating the cup out of his claw and toward her mouth. Spike just yawned and nodded. Fluttershy noticed that both the dragon and the alicorn were looking decidedly sleep-deprived. That was probably why Twilight had ridden in the balloon rather than flying under her own power.

"I need to check something real quick," said Twilight, taking a quick sip of her coffee before going into the cloudominium.

Spike yawned again, swaying on his feet as he screwed the top back on the thermos.

"You all right, Spike?" Fluttershy asked, putting out a foreleg to steady the tiny dragon. Despite the fact that age-wise he was now technically a young adult rather than a baby, he still wasn't much bigger physically than he had been when she had first met him. Whether this was due to the fact that living with ponies had discouraged his hoarding nature, or if he was just genetically inclined to be undersized, or if it was a combination of both these factors was unknown, but whatever the reason, he seemed to have accepted it.

He yawned wide enough that sparks popped out of his mouth. "The Cakes told us about Pinkie, and we were up all last night looking up spells to help the tech-ponies." His eyes drifted shut as he leaned his head against Fluttershy's chest. Looking down, she noticed that there were tear tracks on his scaly cheeks and she wondered if they were due more to a lack of sleep or to the news about Pinkie and Rainbow.

At that moment Twilight came back out of the cloudominium. "I'm finished in there," she told the tech-ponies, motioning for them to go inside.

"I should probably go let the Wonderbolts know what's happened," said Haystings, who had been standing off to the side.

"Yeah, you do that," said Twilight, sounding as if she were trying to hold back tears. Haystings spread his wings and flew off while Twilight made her way over to Fluttershy, Spike, and Highflyer.

"Spike!" The dragon in question had been nodding off but now jerked awake at Twilight's command. She pulled a quill and paper out of the hot air balloon and floated them to him. "I need you to send a letter to Princess Celestia." Was that a tremor Fluttershy heard in the alicorn's voice? "The same kind as before, only about Rainbow Dash instead of Pinkie Pie."

Spike seemed to deflate some at this news, but he put the coffee thermos down, and took the quill and paper without comment.

Letting go of him, Fluttershy moved closer to Twilight. This seemed as good a time as any to question her regarding magic.

"Twilight, do you remember last year how those changeling-hybrids faked Angel's death? I know it might sound crazy but I've been wondering... What if the same thing happened with Pinkie and Rainbow? What if this is another one of those simulacrum spells?"

Highflyer's head snapped up at this, but Twilight just looked away. "Fluttershy, that was the reason I came here with the tech-ponies. That was why Spike and I were up all last night, we were figuring out how to detect simulacrum spells..." Her voice tightened up on the last word, as if the next sentence was physically painful to say, "And there weren't any here ... or at Sugarcube Corner."

Fluttershy got a sinking feeling in her stomach. "You mean...?"

Twilight looked up with tears in her eyes, her voice shaking. "They're not fakes, Fluttershy. I hate to say it, but I'm afraid Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie really are ... dead."

Dead! The word seemed to echo in Fluttershy's skull. No! No, they can't be! She swung away from Twilight and her eyes landed on Spike, who was rolling up the scroll he had finished writing. He sighed a flame onto it with none of his usual energy, and a small part of Fluttershy figured he must be sending word of Rainbow Dash's death to Princess Celestia. Meanwhile the rest of her was reeling as if she had been kicked in the stomach. Even though she had been afraid to completely get behind the idea of her friends' deaths being fake, she now realized just how much hope she had staked on that idea.

And now all that hope had been dashed.

Then Highflyer slammed one of his front hooves into the cloud they were standing on, disintegrating a large portion of it. With startled cries, he, Fluttershy, Spike, and Twilight suddenly found themselves plunging toward the ground. Fluttershy grabbed ahold of Spike, hugging him to her chest, and he responded by wrapping his arms, legs, and tail around her as she beat her wings to halt their descent. Twilight also managed to halt her descent with a good bout of wing flapping. Highflyer was not so fortunate. Looking down, Fluttershy saw him flailing his useless wings in a desperate attempt to slow his fall. Then a magenta glow surrounded his sawed-off stump of a tail and yanked him back up above the clouds. Twilight magically slung the tiny wrestler back toward the cloudominium, away from the hole he had punched in the cloud layer. As she released him, Highflyer rolled into a sitting position.

"Sorry about that," he said as Twilight and Fluttershy landed next to him, with Spike still wrapped around Fluttershy. Highflyer's expression was hidden by his mask as usual, but his tone was chagrined. "I'm used to stomping on surfaces a lot sturdier than clouds. I was just thinking of that-that draconequus murdering Ray and Pinkie like that and I just..." His voice suddenly hardened. "Want to kick his chaotic skull in!"

"But what if he didn't do it?" Fluttershy asked tentatively.

"Huh?!" Spike unlatched his limbs from around her and dropped back onto the cloud layer, staring at her incredulously.

At the same time Highflyer's eyes widened to the point where they probably would have popped right out of his skull if they weren't being held in by his mask. "Are you crazy? Eyewitnesses saw him do it!"

"But what if they were fooled?" Fluttershy looked to Twilight, unable to keep the desperation out of her voice. "What if a changeling disguised itself as him and did the murders to frame him? What if—?"

But Twilight just shook her head, her face full of anguish. "I'm sorry Fluttershy! I know you were his friend, but he's the only one who could have done it!"

"But—"

"Fluttershy, when Applejack spent those years researching changelings, and when I analyzed those two hybrid corpses, we found out that they are best at taking the form of something close to their size and shape. Ponies are the easiest to imitate, and while Spike might be a bit harder to copy because his shape is different, he's still pretty close to us in size. But Discord's size and shape are both too different for a changeling to imitate. And the spell that was used on Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash—" Twilight suddenly looked nauseated, and didn't complete the sentence.

"What?" Fluttershy asked, both afraid to know what had caused Twilight to stop like that, and at the same time desperately curious.

"You don't want to know," she said weakly.

"Yes, I do," Fluttershy insisted, even though a small voice in her head warned her that she probably didn't. "Please."

The 'please' seemed to do it. Twilight drew in a deep breath to steady herself, then spoke in a halting voice. "Fluttershy ... when Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash got turned inside out, they ... they were alive the whole time. ... Right up until they exploded."

Fluttershy felt her hoof fly to her mouth, and nearby Highflyer groaned.

"Just turning a pony inside out would be hard enough," Twilight went on miserably, "but also being able to keep them alive the whole time... one changeling wouldn't have that kind of power, even if it could take Discord's form. And that's not even counting the fact that Discord had a motive. Without Rainbow and Pinkie, we can't use the Elements to summon him or turn him back to—"

"Wait! Summon him?!" Fluttershy repeated, her previous nausea suddenly forgotten. "What do you mean summon him?"

"Oh, I ... uh..." Twilight groped for a reply, then slumped as she realized that since the proverbial cat was already half out of the proverbial bag, she might as well let the rest of it out as opposed to trying to stuff it all back in. She proceeded to spill about the summoning spell Princess Celestia had told her about, and the little visit Discord had paid her afterward.

"You mean we had a way to contact him all this time, and you didn't tell me?" Fluttershy asked, sounding as stunned as if Twilight had just hauled off and slapped her across the face.

"Princess Celestia asked me not to!"

At that moment Spike quickly turned away from the ponies and belched up a scroll. Twilight caught it magically, unfurled it, and read it.

"It's from Princess Celestia," she said. "She wants to see me and Spike right away."

"Then I'm going with you," said Fluttershy in a voice that left no room for arguments.





Discord gritted his teeth and snapped his talons, causing the latest version of Fluttershy he had conjured to vanish. He had conjured her up again and again, each time with unsatisfactory results.

What was going on here? Every version he had conjured had looked, moved, and sounded like Fluttershy, so why did it always feel like there was something missing from them?

Wait a minute. He hadn't just snapped his fingers to make the first one appear. He had searched around in the dream for her. Yes, that must be it! Just making her appear in front of him instead of finding her the old-fashioned way must have been a form of cheating.

Well, I don't make the rules. Come to think of it, I don't have any rules.

And with that, he proceeded to search his dream for Fluttershy.





Little did he know that the object of his quest was currently flying toward Canterlot with Twilight and Spike. The alicorn was flying under her own power, having left the balloon back at the cloudominium for the tech-ponies to depart in. They had left Highflyer back there as well after his assurance that he could find his own transportation later. Fluttershy suspected he was probably still embarrassed at the way he had caved in the cloud underneath them. Spike and Twilight had lost their thermos of coffee in that impromptu tumble, but on the flipside the scare also seemed to have jolted them awake more effectively than the caffeine had.

But this was not the foremost thing on Fluttershy's mind during the flight to Canterlot. All year she had thought there was no way to contact Discord, and now to learn that not only had there been a way, but Twilight had known about it all this time, she felt betrayed. She glanced over at Twilight, who briefly met her gaze, then quickly looked away. Fluttershy felt a flash of satisfaction at Twilight's obvious discomfort, but it was immediately replaced with guilt. Deep down she knew she was being unfair to Twilight, who had only been following Celestia's orders, but it didn't make the fact that her friend had essentially been lying to her by omission all this time hurt any less.

Then there was Celestia herself. Why had the princess forbidden Twilight from mentioning the summoning spell in the first place? Why would she task Fluttershy with reporting back to her on Discord's behavior, then make it impossible for Fluttershy to obey?

And last though far from least there were Discord's actions. Why had he been so adamant about them not contacting him? And if he hadn't wanted to be turned to stone, why had he given the Elements back rather than just hanging onto them? Why had he left in the first place? Why had he come back? Where was he now? Why couldn't any of his actions just make sense?!

By then they had reached Canterlot Castle. As they entered and pushed open the huge double doors that led to the hall, they saw Celestia and Luna standing in the middle of the hall, deep in a whispered conversation.

"...what happened during the nightmare?" whispered Celestia.

"I'm not sure. I couldn't reach her. He blocked me ou—"

At that moment the double doors creaked and Luna promptly went silent as she and Celestia looked up to see who was coming in.

"You wanted to see me and Spike, Princess Celestia?" Twilight asked as she hurried to the princesses with Spike behind her, and Fluttershy bringing up the rear.

"Yes, I did," said Celestia. If she was surprised to see Fluttershy with them, she did not show it. Instead she turned to her sister, saying, "We'll finish this later. For now, why don't you get the charms while I explain things?"

Luna nodded and hurried down the hall.

Celestia turned back to her audience. "What do you have to report, Twilight?" she asked in a calm, neutral voice that did nothing to betray her feelings about the situation.

Twilight stood before her fellow princess and began to relay the events of the morning much as she had done with Fluttershy. However, Fluttershy couldn't help but notice the cool and composed manner that Twilight was using. She was talking about the death of two of their friends and treating it like another one of her old-time friendship reports to the princess!

"Fluttershy? Is something bothering you?" Celestia asked, her gaze having left Twilight. The way she said that so calmly was the final straw for Fluttershy!

"Yes, something is bothering me!" Fluttershy snapped, not even noticing that her lips had curled up in a snarl or that her wings had fanned aggressively away from her body. "Why didn't you let Twilight tell me about that spell to summon Discord back when we could have used it last year?!" she shouted, causing both Twilight and Spike to cringe.

"All this time!" she went on, flying right up into Celestia's face. "All this time you had a way to call him and you didn't use it. All this time you just let him run amok across Equestria, and for what?! Why would you do such a thing, Princess? Why would you hide it?" Her gaze was becoming more watery the longer she yelled, but she couldn't pull away from the great white alicorn. "And now look what happened. They're dead! Two of my best friends are dead because of what you did!" It was finally too much and the sobs that had been threatening to break through finally did. Fluttershy landed heavily upon the throne room carpet before she collapsed on her haunches, unable to see through the torrent of tears as she cried.

It was too much, all too much too soon after Angel's death. As painful as losing him had been, at least he had been ancient by bunny standards which had given her some time to resign herself to his eventual death, but her pony friends... they had still been so young, had still had so much ahead of them, had still been so full of ... life. Rainbow Dash had been there for her the longest, ever since their first days at Flight Camp, and Pinkie Pie... Pinkie Pie had been the glue that held their group of friends together through all the years, with her parties and celebrations, her optimism and unending quest to cheer them up whenever they felt down.

And now all of that was gone.

When Fluttershy came back to herself, she noticed there was a warm, soft wing wrapped around her back and a pair of forelegs hugging her neck. It felt so much like the times when Rainbow Dash had held her... but when she blinked and pulled away, she saw that it was Twilight she had been crying against.

"I'm sorry, Fluttershy," Twilight mumbled. Pulling away, Fluttershy saw that Spike had been hugging her too, from the side opposite Twilight, and both her friends' faces were stained with their own tears.

"I should have insisted we do something about Discord sooner," Twilight went on. "Maybe if I had pushed for something after what he—"

"No," Fluttershy cut her off with a gentle hoof to the chest. "It's not your fault." She spared Celestia a quick glance. The Princess of Equestria was sitting on her haunches like the two ponies before her, her head bowed not in shame but as if she were acknowledging that Fluttershy's anger was understandable. Fluttershy turned back to her friend and swallowed, trying to come up with something to help ease her friend's guilt over the whole horrible situation. "Maybe it's no pony's fault. He is the Spirit of Chaos after all. None of us could have predicted his actions."

So why are you so insistent in thinking that you could have prevented this if you could have just talked to him? a little voice in the back of her head asked.

"Fluttershy," Celestia asked softly, not lifting her gaze to meet the pegasus before her, "what do you think of me banishing my sister to the moon for a thousand years?"

This caught Fluttershy off-guard and effectively replaced her heartache with confusion. "Um, well, I'm sure you had a good reason to..."

"Just tell me what you think of the idea personally. I won't be offended."

"Well..." Nightmare Moon had been terrifying, but still ... banishing one's own sister to the moon for a thousand years seemed like a pretty stiff sentence. "I guess it seemed a bit harsh...?"

"And what do you know about my bond with the sun?"

"Um, I know you raise and lower it," Fluttershy said tentatively, wondering what this had to do with the current situation.

Celestia nodded. "And I'm also bound to it in a way I've never been bound to anything else. When the sun eventually dies, I will die with it. ... And if I die, the sun goes with me. Luna is bound to the moon in the same way, but there is more to the bond than that. The moon reflects the sun's light so without the sun there's no moonlight. My sister and I are bound together in the same way."

"Wait," said Twilight. "Are you saying that if Nightmare Moon had succeeded in killing you...?"

Celestia nodded. "Luna would have died too shortly after I did. I couldn't explain that to her when she was Nightmare Moon. She was so full of anger and jealousy she wouldn't have believed me. That's why I banished her to the moon. I hated doing it. Hated condemning her to centuries of loneliness up there, but at the time it was the only way to save both our lives and by extension the sun and moon."

"I don't remember reading that in any of my history books," Twilight said softly.

A slight smile twitched across Celestia's mouth as she lifted her head fully. "I haven't shared it with many ponies... But that's a discussion for another time. We have other things we need to take care of now. Spike, would you come here please?"

Spike looked startled at being singled-out but hurried forward.

"Hold still," said Celestia and lowered her head until the tip of her horn touched his chest. Golden light flared from her horn and engulfed the little dragon. Then, just as quickly, the light vanished and Celestia lifted her horn away.

"Huh," said Spike, touching his chest and looking down at his front, then bending his neck around to check his back. "That was a bit underwhelming. Do I look any different?" he asked, turning back to Twilight and Fluttershy. "I don't feel any different."

"You don't look any different to me," said Twilight.

"Me neither," said Fluttershy.

"Twilight, do you have a scroll with you?" asked Celestia.

"Oh, yes." Twilight pulled a scroll from behind her wing and hurried to Celestia's side.

"Spike, see if you can deliver this," said Celestia, taking the scroll from Twilight and floating it to Spike.

"Just ... deliver it?" he asked, taking the scroll and studying it. "The usual way?"

Celestia nodded.

Spike moved about twenty feet back from where Twilight and Celestia were standing side-by-side, and flamed on the scroll. It vanished and a few seconds later appeared next to Celestia and fell down, blunking Twilight on the head in the process.

"Sorry!" Spike called.

At that moment Luna returned, floating a large basket beside her. Inside the basket were pink heart-shaped charms a little smaller than the average pony's hoof. Celestia levitated two of the charms out of the basket and asked Twilight and Fluttershy to hold out their right front hooves.

"We're going to give one of these to every pony in Equestria," she said as she attached a charm to the underside of each of their raised hooves, "and tell them to keep their eyes open for any sign of Discord. If you see him, don't try to approach him. Just slam your hoof with the charm on it down hard. When the charm breaks, it will set off an alarm that will show us your location, and give us a chance to capture him."

Twilight looked doubtfully at the charm wedged into her hoof. "But what if we break these things by accident while walking or galloping?"

Despite the seriousness of the situation, there was a small gleam of amusement in both the royal sisters' eyes.

"You can pound your hoof against anything and that charm won't break unless you decide you want it to break when you slam your hoof down," said Celestia.

"Observe," said Luna, fastening another one of the charms to her own hoof and stomping very hard on the floor several times with that hoof. Then, lifting her hoof, she showed them that the charm was not even cracked.

"But what will happen after we set the alarm off?" Twilight asked. "How will we control Discord if we can't turn him to stone?"

"Leave that to me," said Celestia with her usual composed authority. "For now, get these charms distributed to everyone in Ponyville. Then as soon as that's done, Twilight, I'll need you and Spike back here for another task."

The three from Ponyville picked up the basket and said their goodbyes.

"Oh, Princess Celestia," said Fluttershy as she turned back. Her head was lowered almost to her hooves and her tail tucked in close in shame. "I'm sorry for yelling at you earlier. That was uncalled for."

"Don't concern yourself with it any further, my little pony. I've had hurt ponies say worse things to me in the past, and I expect to experience such again in the future."





Spike, Twilight, Fluttershy, and the basket of charms flew to Ponyville in a chariot pulled by some of the royal guards. Twilight and Spike's lack of sleep the night before had caught up with them so they spent most of the ride dozing, while Fluttershy spent most of it thinking back over her audience with the sun princess.

Celestia had never really explained why she had kept the knowledge of that summoning spell a secret.

Or ... had she?

Had that story about her reasons for banishing Luna been her explanation? Was she trying to tell Fluttershy that there were things going on she didn't currently have time to explain? Was that why she hadn't told Fluttershy about the spell over a year ago?

Fluttershy glanced down at the charm now attached to the underside of her hoof. Last year, when Discord had smugly informed Celestia that all six Element Bearers would be needed to turn him to stone, she had mentioned something about there being other less merciful ways to imprison him.

What if smashing this charm allows Celestia to use one of those "less merciful" methods? Fluttershy wondered fretfully, then caught herself. How can I be worried about Discord when he just murdered two of my best friends—?!

"Gangway!" shouted a female voice, startling Fluttershy out of her thoughts. Looking up, she realized that the chariot was close to landing. Then she saw Derpy plow face-first into the ground ahead of them. The mail pony came to a sharp halt but her mailbag continued on its trajectory and flipped her over onto her back. This forced the guards to swerve back up into the air to avoid running her over. Fluttershy grabbed her dozing friends to keep them from being flung out of the chariot, but the basket of charms was not so lucky. Out of the chariot it went, the charms spilling from it like pink pieces of hail.

"Sorry!" Derpy called, trying to detangle herself from the mailbag strap. As the chariot landed a short distance away from her, the rest of Ponyville's citizens came racing up to surround it, all shouting frightened questions. It seemed that the news about Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie's murders had spread to everypony in record time.

Twilight flew above the crowd, waving her hooves for their attention and shouting for them to be quiet. "Everypony," she said when the noise finally settled down, "I know that you're all scared," she paused, struggling to get the next words out. "That you all must miss Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie... But Princess Celestia has a plan to find and catch their killer." She floated one of the charms that had been scattered on the ground up to her and explained its purpose. When she was finished, she added, "Make sure that everypony gets one of these charms."

"You heard her, ponies. Line up!" Amethyst Star called, pushing her way through to the front of the group and motioning for them to start forming a line. "Come on. Line up."

As the ponies hurried to obey, Fluttershy saw Dinky break free from the group and run to her mother's side. Only then did Fluttershy realize that not only had Derpy not moved from the spot where she had crash-landed, but she was holding her head with one hoof.

"You okay, Mom?" Dinky asked.

"Ice. I need ice," Derpy lamented, pointing at the top of her head with her free hoof. Dinky peered at the section of head her mother was pointing to and nodded.

"Okay, I'll get you some. You just sit tight," she said, hurrying off to find the requested ice.

While Derpy sat there, holding her head, Spike and Fluttershy both moved to join her, and a few seconds later—once she was satisfied that Amethyst was taking care of organizing the crowd—Twilight dropped down next to her as well.

"You break something?" Spike asked, walking around Derpy to check her from various angles.

"No, I'll be okay. I just need to put some ice on this lump I got. By the way, you wouldn't happen to know if anypony lost a coffee thermos, would you?" Derpy asked, pulling a thermos out of her mailbag.

Spike's eyes widened at the sight of it. "Uh, maybe...? Where'd you find that one?"

"Oh, it was weird. I was just flying along earlier today, minding my own business, trying to catch up with my mail delivery schedule, when I thought I heard somepony yelling and then the next thing I knew I got belted on the head with this." She raised the thermos. "It's how I got this," she added, tilting her head and pointing at the good-sized lump showing through her mane. "Why do you ask?"

Spike looked uncomfortable. "Because it's ... mine. Well, technically it's Twilight's and I was hanging onto it."

One of Derpy's eyes focused down on him while the other swiveled around in Twilight's direction. "Then why'd it drop out of the clouds and hit me on the head?"

At that moment Dinky pushed back through the crowd that was still forming itself into a line.

"Here you go, Mom," she said, handing a fancy stemmed glass to her mother.

Derpy aimed one eye curiously at the glass's contents and squinted. "Uh, Rinky-dink, this is an ice cream sundae."

"I know, but I couldn't find any ice. Here. Just hold it against your head."

Derpy shrugged. "Okay, thanks honey," and did as her daughter directed. While she was trying to get both her head and the glass into the proper positions without spilling the ice cream, Amethyst came over and joined her as well.

"When you two have a minute, put these on," said Amethyst, floating a pair of charms to her mother and sister.

Suddenly Derpy lowered the sundae, and, still holding it in one hoof, pulled both her daughters into a tight hug, shuddering.

"You okay, Mom?" Amethyst asked, squeezing her mother around the shoulders to return the hug, while at the same time trying to lean away to see her face.

"Oh, it's just hearing about these murders," Derpy breathed, rubbing her forelegs over her daughters' backs. "And to think I didn't even think twice about just leaving the two of you in the house with Discord."

"And then I actually cooked with the guy," added Dinky, her tone suggesting she had just done something obscene. "Makes me want to throw all that stuff we made out—"

"Don't you dare do that!" said Amethyst. "We're not throwing out a bunch of perfectly good—"

"How can you stand to eat any of that stuff knowing Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie's murderer helped make it?!"

Up until now there had been a steady low hubbub from the crowd as they passed out charms and checked who had them and who still needed them, but at Dinky's shouted words, everypony went silent.

Everypony that is except Amethyst.

"Because you also helped make it! And you actually stuck around to make sure it cooked right, so it's really more your food than his."

In the silence that followed this statement, the two unicorn sisters and their pegasus mother suddenly noticed they had an audience.

Then a soft voice that suddenly seemed so loud broke the silence.

"W-what are you talking about?" asked Fluttershy, her stomach tightening with an emotion she couldn't quite place. Rainbow Dash had mentioned seeing Discord outside Derpy's house, but she had never said anything about him interacting with the small family.

For a moment, Derpy and her girls exchanged uncertain looks. Then turning back to their audience they began to explain how they had gotten caught in the spaghetti tornado, how Discord had teleported them out, how he had followed them home and ended up spending the night, and how he had stuck around the next day, helping Dinky with her cooking.

"We were just taking a break, eating some sandwiches he had conjured up," said Dinky. "And then he suddenly got all weird and disappeared when I told him I liked a peanut butter and pickle one he'd made."

Fluttershy felt her stomach clench tightly at this news. She could still remember when she had first been introduced to the peanut butter and pickle sandwich courtesy of Discord. She had tasted it by accident and had not expected to like it, but the peanut butter's sweet creaminess and the pickle's sour crunch had complimented each other surprisingly well. So well in fact, that she had continued to make them herself even after Discord was gone. Why had Dinky liking the same kind of sandwich seemed to have affected him so strongly?

At this point, the crowd of ponies were now muttering uneasily amongst themselves and Twilight felt it was time to take charge of things again.

"Look, it doesn't matter if Discord was staying at Derpy's house yesterday or the day before, the fact is, he's not there now, right Derpy?"

Derpy nodded as best she could with the sundae glass once more pressed to her head. "I haven't seen him since yesterday morning."

"Right," said Twilight turning back to the crowd. "Which means we have to keep our eyes open for any sign he might be coming back." After a pause for consideration, she added, "But we probably shouldn't be too obvious about it, so try to carry on with things as you would most days."

At this the crowd slowly began to disperse. As Twilight had suggested, they tried to be casual about it, but an air of tension and frightened bewilderment hung over them so thickly you could bite into it.

"Thanks, Twilight," murmured Derpy. "Oh, and I think this is yours," she added, holding up the coffee thermos. "By the way, how'd it end up falling out of the clouds? Spike never got a chance to finish telling me."

Twilight glanced back toward the still dispersing crowd. "Uh, can we find someplace more private to talk?" she whispered.

"Sure, how about my place?" Derpy whispered back.





They ended up giving Derpy and her daughters a ride home in the chariot after all the charms had been distributed and the now mostly-melted ice cream had been taken care of by Spike and Dinky. On the way there, Twilight, Spike, and Fluttershy all filled them in on how they had come across the murders.

"That would explain why Rainbow Dash and Highflyer never joined us for supper last night," Dinky muttered after hearing their recounting. "I can't imagine being able to eat after seeing something like that."

They soon reached Derpy's house and the family disembarked. Twilight offered to give Fluttershy a ride home before heading back to Canterlot, but Fluttershy politely refused.

"I think I'll spend a bit more time with Derpy's family."

So Spike and Twilight both hugged her tightly, reminding her that they still had Applejack and Rarity, and that they would get through this somehow, before departing for Canterlot once more.

As the chariot took off into the sky, Fluttershy followed Derpy's family inside. Once there, she drew Derpy aside.

"Derpy, I wanted to ask you something." Fluttershy swallowed. "When he was here, did Discord... did he mention why he was back?"

Derpy considered. "No... when I asked him, he just ignored the question... But he did ask about you, Fluttershy." Derpy suddenly smiled at the memory. "He said he figured you were dating, and was pretty shocked when I told him you weren't." Then her expression grew troubled. "And I told him to go see you... Oh, I'm so sorry Fluttershy. I thought I had him pegged. I never thought he'd do something like this. That he'd murder Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie." She sniffed as tears started to fill her crossed eyes. "I saw them both just yesterday morning," she whimpered, trying not to break down completely. "Pinkie was heading out to meet the Cakes, and Rainbow Dash..." Derpy let out a shaky laugh. "She wanted to ask me for marriage advice. Can you imagine that? Rainbow (I Am Awesome) Dash asking me for marriage advice?"

Had Highflyer proposed to Rainbow Dash? Fluttershy wondered.

"Then she wanted to ask me about kids," Derpy went on. "And I just brushed it off for another time, and ... and ... and that's the last time I saw either one of them." Her muzzle scrunched up as she fought harder to hold back the building tears.

Fluttershy tried to remember the last time she had seen Rainbow Dash alive. It had been last night when they had been sobbing over Pinkie's death. What was the last thing I said to Pinkie? She tried so desperately to remember but she just drew a blank.

It was so much like that time over a decade ago when Applejack had vanished, only this time it was much worse. When Applejack had first disappeared and they had started searching for her, there had been the anxiety of not knowing what had happened to their friend, but there had also been the hope that they would eventually find her. Granted losing that hope had hurt, but it had been a slow gradual thing as they had adjusted to the fact that they might not see Applejack again.

Now in less than two days Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie had each been reduced to nothing but piles of bloody scraps. There was no hope that she could search Equestria to find them because she already knew where they, or rather their remains, were.

She would never form any more memories with them. She would never have a chance to say a proper goodbye. Suddenly all the time they had spent together seemed woefully inadequate. There's so much I never told them. So much I should have told them.

Then Fluttershy finally broke. She collapsed with her face buried in her hooves, sobbing as she had never sobbed before. Unlike in the palace, she wept not for the loss of her friends and the memories of what they had done, but for all that they could have and should have done, but now would never be able to. They had been with her for so long that the thought of them no longer being there, of going forward without them, was just overwhelming

She was vaguely aware of Derpy, Amethyst, and Dinky pulling her in and holding her as they too cried for their lost friends, but it did little to ease her own grief.





By the time Fluttershy got home that evening, her eyes were sore and swollen from all the crying she had done, she felt completely drained, and she was starting to get a headache, making her suspect that she was dehydrated. Getting herself a glass of water, she went to her room, got into bed, and began sipping the water as she tried to get her mind to settle down.

But that was easier said than done.

Why had Discord asked about her? And why would he care whether or not she was dating?

She thought back to the one "date" she had gone on with Big Mac and about the feelings it had made her realize she had for Discord; the feeling that she might be ... in love with him. The idea still rattled her and it wasn't just because he was a completely different species, it was because he ... well ... it was because he was just so different from everything she had ever expected to be attracted to in a stallion. When and if the right stallion came along, she had always figured it would be somepony very similar to herself. Somepony quiet and shy and ... well ... now that she really thought about it ... somepony like Big Mac. And yet she had known Big Mac for over a decade and had never really been interested in him as anything more than a friend.

Looking back she realized that the subject of dating had never even come up during the time she and Discord had been investigating Applejack's disappearance. Granted that had probably been due mostly to the fact that they had been focused on solving the mystery ... but there was also the fact that when she was with him, she didn't feel the need to look elsewhere...

Why are you still thinking about him that way?!

Setting down her now-empty glass, she groaned and buried her face in her hooves. What was wrong with her?! She should hate Discord for taking Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash away. Why couldn't she?!

Because you still don't believe he did it, said a small voice in the back of her head. Or was it in her heart? All that evidence, and deep down you still don't believe it.

Though there was no pony around to see her, Fluttershy nodded miserably. Why couldn't she just accept the fact that he was guilty and move on? They had all the evidence to convict him. They had it all lined up and it all fit together. And all she had to go against it was this little niggling feeling!

Your honor, I don't believe he's guilty because I have this feeling he isn't, even though all this evidence and all these eyewitnesses say he is.

Yeah, right! Even in her own mind the argument sounded ridiculous. But ... murder just doesn't feel like his style...

Perfect reason for him to do it then. No pony would expect him to do it, and he specializes in not being predictable.

Yes, but even when he was trying to be unpredictable, he still...

Fluttershy struggled to organize her thoughts. Her mind kept going back to that idea of a changeling framing Discord. It would explain so much but Twilight had already explained how and why that wouldn't work.

Fluttershy leaned back, massaging her aching temples. Was she missing something? She felt as if she were trying to construct a puzzle without looking at its picture and she was beginning to suspect that some of the pieces might not even belong to that particular puzzle.

Finally, too worn out to think on it anymore, she drifted into an exhausted sleep.

In her dream, she felt as if she were stuck in the middle of a storm. It was so dark around her that it made no difference if her eyes were open or closed. Wind seemed to buffet her from every direction, and rain pelted her, drenching her coat and forcing her to keep her eyes shut. She tried to beat her wings against the wind but she had neither the strength nor the energy for it. She reached out with her hooves, trying to find ground, a tree branch, anything to hold onto but there seemed to be nothing around her but the incessant wind and rain.





Discord had lost track of how much time he had spent roaming the dreamscape, looking for Fluttershy, when he chanced a glance upward and saw a small pink and yellow shape tumbling down through the air high above him. Was that her? He teleported himself up right underneath the shape, catching it neatly.





In the darkness, Fluttershy felt herself collide with something and then arms went around her. She was too tired to feel startled, or even wonder what had grabbed her. She only flung her forelegs around it and hung on, grateful to have something to cling to in the storm.





Yes! Discord thought as his arms closed around the falling pegasus. This one was right! He could sense it! He couldn't explain it, but somehow he knew that this one had whatever the other versions he had been conjuring up had been missing. He grinned as she flung her forelegs around his neck. Ahh, that's more like it!

Then he actually got a good look at her face. Her eyes were squeezed tight shut, and she was twitching about as if deep in a dream.





Fluttershy could still hear the wind howling and the raindrops spattering, but the arms around her seemed to be shielding her from both. Worn out, she rested her cheek against whatever had caught her, and felt short close hair, similar to the kind that made up her own coat. Then she vaguely thought she felt a paw and a taloned hand caressing her spine. As she drifted off to sleep, she made a little noise that was half-moan, half-sigh. This felt so much like that time Discord had held her after rescuing her from those changelings. As terrifying as that night had been, she now found herself wishing she could go back to it. Back to the time when her feelings regarding Discord were so much clearer.





Discord's first impulse was to shake Fluttershy awake. He was just moving one of his hands from her back to her shoulder when she let out a soft half-sigh, half-moan, and gently rubbed her cheek against the hollow of his throat. Looking down at her again, he noticed just how exhausted she looked and found that he didn't have the heart to wake her just yet. Still, as he held her, he was suddenly reminded of that night she had cried herself to sleep in his arms. She had been covered with scrapes, bumps and bruises at the time, and he had promised he would never allow her to be hurt like that again.

But now he began to wonder ... had he broken that promise? He might not have hurt her physically, but if his leaving had hurt her emotionally ... did that count?

He tried to shake this uneasy thought away. Well, who cares if she was hurt?! Better her than me, right?! Right?!

Yes, yes, of course right.

So why was it he couldn't seem to quite believe that?