//------------------------------//
// And Rohan Shall Answer 
// Story: A Cavalcade of Cards 
// by QueenMoriarty 
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Dear Princess Twilight,

Things haven't been going well in the human world. If we hadn't taken the time to practice our powers at Camp Everfree, we probably would have caused a few hundred billion dollars' worth of property damage by now. And while the inevitable Power Pony Problem (heroism breeds villainy and all that) has yet to assert itself, we've still got our hands full with the world in general. The fact that we're all hormonal teenagers with massive personal bias and only a very basic understanding of the government's reasoning for doing things really isn't helping. 

The good news is that we now know that our Twilight can safely collapse nuclear missiles into non-hazardous molecules at speed. The bad news is that we found that out while Rainbow Dash was trying to suplex a missile. Back into the country that fired it.

I'm not going to try to explain the politics, because we'd both get hung up on the comparisons to Equestrian politics, and the parallels and differences would literally take forever to unpack. In the simplest possible terms, one of the less friendly world superpowers now knows that magic exists, and that we have it. And they found out about this before the rulers of the nation that Canterlot High is located in. The entire school is being labelled everything from deep-cover terrorists to international traitors, and everyone on this entire planet is desperate to get their hands on our magic. And from what we can tell, they won't stop at just securing the amulets.

Before you say anything, yes. I know it must seem irrational to be afraid of these techno-barbaric monkey-squids. But... they're experimenting with something. There's a magical disturbance out there, something so strong that it's showing up on homemade magi-radar with a maximum range of twenty thousand furlongs. And once it has found a gateway, I don't think it will hesitate to punch its way through.

Please, Twilight. You have to help us. There's only so much I can do with power I can't control.



Princess Twilight Sparkle, Voice of the Worldsoul and First Great Conduit of the Tree of Harmony, shut the magical diary with a slam that echoed across Equestria. She blinked her jewel-encrusted eyes, and the beams of light reflecting off of her shifted and shimmered as she turned her head this way and that. Although her throne room was empty, she could still feel the distant minds and souls of her disciples as though they were standing right beside her, and if she spoke, they would hear. 

They had heard her read the letter. She could feel them stir, could sense her most capable warriors approaching the portal. But she knew which one would be best for the job.

"Loyalty," she commanded. "Seek out your other, and show our enemies the strength of Equestria." She turned her attention back to the journal, and grew a pen out of the wall behind her. "I will make sure you are met by our allies."





Rainbow Dash stood in front of the portal, waiting anxiously. Sunset had told her that Princess Twilight was sending the other her to help out, and that it would be best to get the initial confusion out of the way. Never mind that it meant pulling their fastest, third-heaviest hitter off the field and waiting in front of a lump of rock for someone from another dimension who probably wouldn't even be able to fly. Never mind that for every second she stayed on the ground, the gathering crowds grew bolder.

Never mind that standing still like this only gave her more time to think about it.

Then the portal shimmered, and Rainbow didn't have to think about her actions any more.

The Rainbow Dash that stepped through, while certainly being similar to her human counterpart, couldn't be more different. She wore a bomber jacket over a sleeveless white top that didn't hug as tight as you'd think, running shoes that looked like they'd been dipped in molten steel and propelled at supersonic speeds before they even started cooling, and pants with more zippers than there logically should have been space for. She carried herself like a warrior, and the difference between that and soldier was exemplified in her actions; she moved with poise and confidence, and her arms rippled with the kind of power that would gladly rip your head off without breaking a sweat.

As for her eyes... Rainbow Dash had never thought she could be more terrified at the prospect of looking in a mirror. There was a ruthlessness in those eyes, an unspoken promise that nobody had ever got in her way and lived to tell about it. She felt as though she were challenging this new Rainbow to a fight just by daring to exist, and her heart trembled with the certainty that she would lose.

Sunset had tried to explain once how their versions in the pony world were much older than them, and while the portal changed their age, it didn't change how they looked at the world. Rainbow Dash had always been a visual learner. And now that she had seen, she knew.

"Hello, me. Come and meet the real me." The Equestrian Rainbow extended her hand in something that she probably meant as a polite greeting, but to the lowly human, it felt like a demanding gesture. Her hands were fumbling for the clasp on her amulet before she was able to think it, but once she could, she backed up what her body was doing.

In the space of time that it took for Rainbow to blink, the better her had her arms around her neck, pulling her hands away from the amulet and wrapping her in a hug. Rainbow opened her mouth to protest, but the hug only tightened. For possibly the first time since she had seen that missile, Rainbow Dash felt safe. She leaned into the hug. She felt the words bubbling up inside of her, and couldn't stop them from coming. 

She blubbered about the missile, about who it had been aimed at, about seeing the fear on Scootaloo's face. She told the other her about calling her friends, more to let them know than to ask for help, and going supersonic more easily than she ever had before. She shuddered her way through recounting her stupid decision to grab the whole thing, and instead of dumping it in the ocean or tossing it into space or just slowing it down until someone else could help, to throw it back where it came from. When she tried to explain how many innocent people would have died if Twilight hadn't been there, it just devolved into wordless weeping.

She felt the other one pulling away from her, but before she could say a word about it, the other one stopped, and whispered in her ear.

"I would have done the same thing."

And that made it better. It didn't fix everything, but knowing that there was at least one person (or pony, or whatever) that would stand by her did make Rainbow feel better. And right at that moment, that was all she needed.