Home is Where Your Curse is

by SFaccountant

Flamehearst

Home is Where Your Curse is
a My Little Pony/Ranma 0.5 crossover fanfiction
by SFaccountant

Chapter 11
Flamehearst

Ranma's senses went completely wild during the brief transition through the portal. His vision blurred, his ears were filled with incoherent noise, and his stomach turned. He had never experienced anything quite like it; even the occasion in which he had accidentally been teleported hadn't felt so bizarre. For a moment he even considered that perhaps his magic allergy had acted up and prevented the magic gate from working. Frankly, after everything else that had gone wrong during his rescue of Twilight Sparkle, it would be an entirely appropriate and predictable way for the mission to end in disaster.
After that moment, however, the sensation passed. Ranma's senses snapped back into place, and he found himself stumbling onto a rock plateau. Swan Song was waiting, and the unicorn smiled eagerly upon seeing him emerge. A second later the portal vanished, disappearing into a tall stone spire that acted as the lodestone for this point of the warp network.
"Yes! We did it! We're here!" Swan reared up and clapped her front hooves together happily. Ranma would have found the gesture utterly adorable under other circumstances, but was still of a mind that he was in enemy territory.
"So this is... Flamehearst?" Ranma mumbled, looking around at the area. There wasn't a whole lot to see; the entire region seemed to be composed of massive sheets of rough obsidian. Huge spears of the dark stone jutted out of the ground at random points and angles, giving it a distinctly "volcanic wasteland" look. The only especially distinguishing feature seemed to be a tall stone tower in the distance; their destination, no doubt.
While Ranma was taking in the scenery, Swan stepped up and leaned against him, pressing her muzzle against his neck and sighing in contentment. It was all he could do to keep himself from shuddering in disgust.
"We've been through so much, but we're home now," the mare said softly, rubbing her cheek against the stallion. "I'm really glad I took that blue loser's deal to go meet you. I can hardly believe the fool actually offered you up like that!"
Ranma's eye twitched in irritation, and he silently weighed the prospect of knocking Swan out then and there and leaving her for Trixie to find. I guess I should actually play this thing out to the end. I got this far, after all.
"Let's get moving," Ranma calmly but firmly separated himself from the unicorn, and then nudged his head toward the tower. "I assume that's your place?"
"Yup! That's Mister Rite's evil wizard tower!" Swan chirped, still plenty excited. She broke into a gallop toward the forbidding structure. "Come on! I'll show you around!"

Ranma shook his head, exasperated. Then he started to follow after the sorceress, glancing behind him at the lodestone that had delivered them to their destination.
The stone started to flicker, and one of its rings filled with magical energy from a source unseen to him.
Ranma quickly turned away and raced after Swan Song.

Princess Celestia arrived in a pulse of bright magic, her body appearing with all the suddenness and unsubtle might of a lightning bolt. Princess Luna appeared in a slightly more subdued, but no less dramatic manner, stepping out of a shroud of magical shadows.
Both ponies appeared before a contingent of Equestrian Royal Guards, and the armored ponies swiftly bowed. One of the soldiers quickly rose from his kneeling pose and then rushed into the barracks nearby to alert a commander.
Luna turned her head this way and that, taking in the sight of the city. "So this is Coltson... this settlement did not exist before my banishment. Quite large, for a border settlement."
"I hear the marketplace is second to none. You should have taken some time to tour before dueling with upstart rogues," Celestia said wryly. Luna huffed petulantly.

"Princesses!" A unicorn Captain galloped out of the barracks and then stumbled to a halt in his haste to kneel before the royal sisters.
"Please, soldier, be at ease," Celestia insisted. "Stand up and give your report."
The unicorn rose as instructed, but he hesitated before speaking. His ears flipped down, and the stallion sighed. "The news is... mixed, your Highness."
"Then begin with the good news, Captain," Celestia insisted.
"Sparkle's assistant, the dragon Spike, has been secured. He is safe and is cooperating with our soldiers," the Captain reported, snapping a hoof up in salute. "Furthermore, Coltson has been secured. We still have squads patrolling the streets and questioning the populace, but there seems to be no signs of general unrest or support for the rebellion here."
"That is very good to hear," Celestia said with a nod, "now the bad news."
The Captain winced. "When... When we began our initial push into the city, we DID stumble upon a pair of rebel warriors. We attacked immediately, but they... well, they escaped."
"Escaped where?" Luna pressed.
"Somewhere to the North," the Captain explained. "At least, that's what General Firebrand suggested before he was knocked out."
Princess Celestia frowned, causing the soldier to sweat nervously. "Explain in greater detail, please."
"When we first arrived, the rebels Swan Song and Havoc were found at the Feed Bag Cafe near the harbor," the Captain began. "We assaulted them immediately, but they repelled our initial attack and the panic from the civilians nearby slowed our efforts to regroup and give chase. General Firebrand himself elected to cut them off during their escape while we secured the town and searched for the ringleader Blood Rite."
He paused, and Celestia furrowed her brow. "I take it that strategy failed," mumbled the white Princess.
"It... did, Princess," the Captain mumbled. "General Firebrand was badly beaten. The medics are tending to him now. His wounds are not critical, but he's suffered considerable blunt trauma and some electric damage. He also... seems to have lost the Alchemist's Heart, his signature magic item. We're combing the northern forest, of course, but such terrain makes it very easy to hide from our scouts, and we have no idea where they're headed. Until the General awakes, we have no leads on the rebels' whereabouts."
Celestia issued a deep sigh. "I see. This is most regrettable, but there may yet be clues about the rebels' presence in the city. It is doubtful that they were still here without good reason, given all they've accomplished recently." Then she turned her head to look at Luna. "It's unfortunate, but it seems that the stallion Havoc is truly our enemy. I'm sorry, Luna."
Luna blinked. "Sorry? About what, Sister?"
Celestia hesitated, wondering if her younger sister hadn't been paying attention to the report. "About Havoc. I know you had a... favorable impression of him after he rescued you the other night, but his crimes against Equestria have become too severe and too many to ignore."
Luna continued staring at Celestia in confusion, and then shook her head. "No, Sister, you are mistaken. The stallion Saotome Ranma was the one to rescue me from Blood Rite. This rogue known as 'Havoc' is somepony else entirely."
"What? They're different ponies? Are you sure?" Celestia asked, frowning. "The picture of Havoc in the newspapers look just like your paintings."
"I am most certain," Luna said firmly. "The stallion who rode to my aid and dispatched the sorcerers would have nothing to do with such villains. And in Saddlebrook it was confided to me that a similar-looking miscreant was wreaking destruction who identified as the pony in the journals of record."
"Does one of them have a mustache?" asked another soldier. "I heard there was some confusion over a mustache."
"I am unsure," Luna shrugged, "I have never met this scoundrel 'Havoc.' But by his name alone I surmise he is an ally of the sorcerous villains. Saotome, on the other hoof, is a stallion of impeccable honor and martial grace... as well as superb physique..." she seemed to drift off briefly as she spoke, and then she sighed. "Although he also possesses a belligerent stubborn streak, to be sure. But he is no malefactor."
"Understood, Princess," the Captain said, saluting again. Then he added, under his breath, "I knew that dragon kid was full of it..."
"Well, I'm surprised, but if Havoc is a different pony entirely, then there seems to be no further issue with our course of action." Celestia nodded. "Continue monitoring General Firebrand. We shall take a platoon of guards to the forest to search. Our magic may be able to find the rebels where an ordinary search failed."
"As you wish, your Highness," the Captain bowed again. "Good luck!"

The heavy clanking noise of a lock opening filled the empty halls of Rite's tower. It was followed by the groaning of iron hinges, and the heavy double-doors at the main entrance slowly creaked open. Swan Song stepped through first, practically dancing on her hoof-tips out of sheer joy and anticipation. Ranma came through after her, his expression one of quiet discomfort.
"Here we are! Home sweet home!" Swan said brightly, using her magic to push the door closed. "Watch your step, as the hallway IS trapped."
Ranma glanced behind when the door shut, and then watched Swan's magic turn a switch that locked it. "Heavy security, huh?"
"Yup! The tower is built to make quick work of anypony who sneaks in here. A determined siege is a different story, of course." Swan looked up toward a heavy brass chandelier hanging above the main hall. "There are some tricks to getting around safely."
Using her telekinesis magic again, Swan Song took hold of a certain candle among the arms that wasn't lit. She pulled on it, and the arm bent downward before snapping back up. Then a series of heavy grinding noises and ominous clicks came from various points on the walls and floor as the numerous mechanisms locked down.
Ranma took the opportunity to quickly turn the switch on the front door lock. Its subtle click was lost among the noise, and the martial artist quickly trotted up next to the sorceress.
"Okay, are we good?" he asked.
"Should be fine! Follow me to the stairs!" Swan said, moving forward. "The entire first floor is mostly just hazard space and cheap trinkets to kill off spies and thieves that sneak in. All the important stuff and our living quarters are above."
She reached a stone staircase that wound upward in a large circle on the periphery of the tower. There was an iron torch hanging from the wall at its base, and Swan stopped to check that Ranma was standing close enough.
Then she pulled the torch down with her magic. It clicked into place, and then the cacophony of snaps and groans repeated itself through the halls.
"Follow me!" Swan Song raced up the stairs, quickly disappearing from view.
Ranma waited for a moment at the base of the stairs, and then slapped the torch back up into its previous position. The noise in the hall continued without pause as the mechanisms started locking down again.
"Right behind you!" the martial artist called, ascending into the heart of the enemy's lair.

Swan Song was waiting for him on the next floor, and she quickly beckoned over to a large open space with a table. "Okay, so over here is the kitchen, while on the opposite side is our food stocks. Mister Rite tends to make simple meals most days or just snack on peanuts in his lab, and lets me cook for myself. Over there is a separate storage room for chemicals and things that we don't want placed alongside our food supply."
Ranma nodded. "Got it." He followed Swan for a few more seconds before speaking again. "So, you said earlier that Rite isn't actually here right now?"
"Yes. Or, rather, he IS, but not really."
"... Huh?"
Swan stopped in her tracks, and then jabbed a hoof downward. "Mister Rite is up to something in the basement, apparently. He took the MacGuffin Stone, too. I can't get in there, but he said he'd be working all day." She giggled. "I'll bet he's turning the MacGuffin Stone into some sort of superweapon! I can hardly wait!"
Ranma made an aggravated noise, and Swan Song looked back and grinned at him. "Oh, don't worry, he won't be that long." Then her expression took on a more sultry air. "Besides, I'm sure we can find something... fun to do in the meantime."
This didn't particularly help the martial artist's discontent, and he offered the sorceress a nervous grin. Swan started up the stairs to the next level, and Ranma trudged after her.
Okay, so I don't really know where Rite is or how to get to him, and he has the dumb rock. Not good. On the other hand, I got this far and Swan still doesn't suspect a thing. So what now? Do I play this out until Rite appears? I REALLY hope I don't have to do that.
Ranma was generally considered "dense" by those who knew him, especially in the areas of romance and sexuality, but it was impossible for even him to misunderstand Swan Song's intentions. But what to do about it?
I could just knock her out at any time, but... I dunno. Hitting a chick for coming onto me just feels wrong, even if she is a bad guy. I should just turn her down. Play it cool, say I'm not ready for that. Yeah. No problem.
He couldn't help but feel it was still going to be a problem.
"And here we are! Over here is Mister Rite's bedroom, and here's mine!" Swan pointed giddily to a wooden door that had her cutie mark painted over it, and Ranma suddenly felt a magical surge of force pulling him along in that direction.
"Whoa! Hey! Hold on!" the stallion said, holding himself firm against her efforts. "Look, Swan, I was just thinking, maybe we should rest a little while first? I just got here, you know? Less than an hour ago I was dodging deadly fireballs! This is moving a little too quickly!"
Swan Song blinked, and tilted her head to the side. "I usually find my sex drive is substantially improved by near-death experiences, personally." Then she looked down at herself, frowning. Her fur was frayed and dirty, and one of her legs was still slightly blackened from being scorched. "Although now that you mention it, I took some pretty bad spills back there. I could definitely stand to freshen up first."
"Yes! Exactly. Great. Take your time." Ranma looked back and forth, trying hard to avoid eye contact.
Swan snickered and walked past him, making sure to brush her tail across Ranma's neck and chest. "You go ahead and make yourself comfortable. I'll take a quick bath, and then you can get me dirty again."
Ranma made a mute gagging expression while the unicorn mare giggled and trotted down the hall. Swan opened a door just beyond the bedrooms and then stepped inside, her tail and hips swaying provocatively the entire way.
The martial artist found nothing appealing about the display, and he called out to his host before she shut the door. "Oh, hey! Real quick: if I look around the tower some more while you're busy, are there any more traps I should watch out for?"
Swan Song paused just inside the bathroom. "No, nothing that I know of. Of course, the third floor contains the library and lab, so you should be careful not to touch anything because it could be important. And you should definitely stay away from the floors above that, because that's where Mister Rite creates his big runic constructions that shield the tower from being detected! For all I know, those could be very sensitive."
"Detected? Like, by the Equestrians?"
"Yes, as well as your MacGuffin sense thingy," Swan confirmed. "There may even be a bunch of other important magic stuff going on up there, because Mister Rite does a lot of big, fancy experiments and I'm not really into that sort of thing. So you probably shouldn't mess with that." She shrugged, then blew the pigtailed stallion a kiss. "See you in a bit, stud!"

Ranma shuddered after the door closed.
"What a weirdo. She KNOWS I'm not actually a horse. Yeesh." Shaking his head, he turned and took a few steps toward the stairwell. "Pst! Trix! It's all clear!" he hissed.
A slight scuffling sound was heard from the stairs, and then the aforementioned unicorn peeked up into the room.
"She's gone?"
"She's taking a bath. We have a little while to look this place over." Ranma pointed a hoof upward. "She says the lab is on the next floor, but Rite has been busy all day in some basement room she can't get to."
"Perfect." Trixie smirked and beckoned to Ranma, and then they continued ascending the stairs to the next level. "Trixie will take a look through Rite's research while he's otherwise occupied. Maybe set a trap or two for the putz."
She giggled darkly as she reached the next floor and stepped onto a large, carpeted room. Unlike the other floors, this section of the tower wasn't divided into separate rooms and instead featured one large, circular workspace broken up by tall bookcases. Such bookcases also lined the walls from end to end, with the only break being the entryway from the stairs. Taking up the rest of the space were several tables covered in alchemical equipment, reams of notes, crystals, and strange machines; the very picture of an arcane workshop.
"Okay, so, what's the plan?" Ranma mumbled. "Swan said Rite has the rock. What do we do?"
Trixie trotted up to one of the tables and started skimming the papers laid out over it. "Well, Trixie has just about come around to your way of presuming complete incompetence on the part of the Equestrian authorities, so having them arrested probably isn't going to happen. Really, even if we did turn the dopes over to the Guard, chances are they'd be free and harassing Trixie again within the week." She huffed irritably, blowing a lock of her mane out of her eyes. "Trixie needs some time to look this place over. Hopefully there's some material on the MacGuffin Stone that can lend a clue as to what Rite is trying to do with it, and maybe how Trixie can stop it. After that, Trixie will play it by ear. Maybe cook up a big arcane explosion to draw Mister Evil Name out of his dungeon lair."
"Okay. Not bad. Decent plan." Ranma paused, then started chewing his lip. "Seems like that might take a little while, though. Should I take out Swan Song after she finishes her bath?"
"No," Trixie said firmly, shaking her head, "keep up the deception as long as possible. We don't know if she has a last-ditch defense or some kind of important information that we don't obviously need right now. No reason to mess that up." Her horn levitated a few sheets of parchment to her so she could read them.
Ranma squirmed some more. "Well, see... the thing is... I think she wants to... uh... you know-"
"Yes, she wants you to rut her senseless. Trixie noticed." The magician rolled her eyes and discarded the last clutch of notes. "That's fine. Perfect, actually. Trixie needs the time to search and study this stuff, and doesn't want her wandering around the tower to notice."
"It's not fine!" Ranma protested.
Trixie paused, arching a brow at the martial artist. "It's not? What, you can't last that long? Try to stretch the pillow talk, then."
"Not that! I can't do it with her! She's a pony!" Ranma insisted.
"Yes. So what? Trixie really isn't seeing an issue, here. Is Swan not pretty enough for you?"
Ranma slapped a hoof to his face. "That's not the problem! I'm not really a pony, remember?"
"Okay, fine. So rest assured that Swan is quite lovely by pony standards," Trixie said, shrugging. "Not as pretty as Trixie, obviously, but you could do much worse when seducing henchmares for access to their evil laboratories." She went back to the lab tables, looking over the calculations on a chalk board.
"Not the PROBLEM!" Ranma hissed again. "I don't want my first time to be with a horse! Especially not a horse that I don't even like!"
Trixie froze, and slowly turned a suspect gaze upon Ranma again. "First time? Really?"
"Yes, really!" Ranma stamped a hoof lightly against the floor. "And now you want me to do... THAT... with HER?"
Trixie didn't answer right away. The blue unicorn raised a hoof to her chin and stared into Ranma's eyes for several seconds, as if she was trying to figure out a particularly stubborn puzzle.
Then she stepped up to the stallion. "Trixie understands. This is about more than just our immediate goal to you. Asking you to pretend to love somepony intimately like that is completely different from asking you to play nice and eat a meal with her. Not to mention that it's a fairly distasteful way to manipulate Swan Song, as well."
"Yes! Yes, exactly!" Ranma agreed eagerly, nodding his head.
"HOWEVER," Trixie continued, much to his distress, "this is more important than that. Princess Twilight Sparkle's life, and the future of the entire nation may be at stake. Trixie needs the time to study this place, and these are the best circumstances available." She paused to clear her throat meaningfully. "So, as terrible and unfair as it is, you're going to have to go have sex with an attractive young female desperately in love with you." She placed a hoof on Ranma's shoulder and drawled, "Lesser stallions have made greater sacrifices."
Ranma started stuttering incoherently, but before he could form a retort he heard a call from below.
"Oh, Haaaavoooooc! I'm ready for you now!" Swan's sing-song voice echoed through the tower, and Ranma squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth.
"Trix! Please! Don't make me do this!" the pigtailed stallion begged quietly. His ears flipped down, and he started making hurt-puppy-dog eyes at the magician.
"Trixie isn't making you do anything," the blue pony said, patting his shoulder with her leg. "Trixie is just giving you the plan that you asked for. Trixie can't force you to listen, but if you don't, this entire rescue attempt may well fail, and whatever happens to Princess Sparkle will be YOUR FAULT. Are you okay with that?" She arched a single eyebrow.
"Havoc? Hello?" called Swan from the stairway.
Ranma made a sound like he was trying to contain a scream. Then he whirled around. "I'll be down in a sec!" he called, a single tear running down his cheek. "Then we can... you know... get... busy..." he almost choked on the last word, and it emerged as a barely audible whimper.
Swan clearly didn't notice. "Okay! I'll be in my room!" she said brightly. Her declaration was followed by the sound of galloping, followed by a door opening and closing.
Trixie watched Ranma cringe, and then she sighed. "Look, if it makes a difference, Trixie can replace this part of our daring rescue with a climactic monster battle when she tells the tale via puppet-show. Better off that way anyhow, if there are foals in the audience. Would that help?"
"Yes, please," Ranma mumbled. He started trudging toward the stairs, looking for all the world like a pony walking toward the gallows rather than an eager maiden.

Once downstairs once more, Ranma sat down heavily in front of Swan Song's bedroom. His heart was thundering in his chest, and droplets of sweat ran down his neck.
All right Ranma. This is it. Not your finest or most heroic moment, but Trix's plan is working. This is for Equestria! No, wait, I hate Equestria. Okay, then it's for Sparks and Spike! They're all right. I could do unspeakable things with a barn animal for their sakes.
He placed a hoof against the door latch. "Just walk in, smile, climb into the bed, and then lie back and think of Tokyo," he mumbled.
Ranma pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Swan Song's room, like the unicorn herself, was surprisingly conventional and normal despite her status as an aspiring megalomaniac. A large vanity was mounted on a dresser in the corner, a small bookcase contained a selection of everything from poetry journals to archaeology textbooks, and the entire space smelled faintly of mangos. A crystal carving of Swan Song's cutie mark stood next to a nightstand, cut in morbidly realistic detail that far surpassed the silhouette on her hip. On the other side of that wall was the room's only window, framed with hot pink curtains that were currently drawn closed to keep out the light of day.
Between them was the inevitable focus of Ranma's attention: Swan Song's bed. A heavy, king-sized affair, it boasted a canopy and silk curtains that matched those over the window. In the middle of the bed lay his "date." Swan Song rested on her belly, her tail flicking back and forth eagerly. She had on a pair of lacy black panties that covered her rear - complete with tail hole, of course - and also wore two sets of matching socks over her hooves.
"Hey there, stud," the sorceress purred, fluttering her eyelashes, "ready to make some magic happen?"
Ranma blinked. "Okay, wait; you guys walk around naked in the streets, but put on underwear before you fool around? How does THAT make sense?"
Swan's expression darkened, and the atmosphere instantly soured. "You... You don't like them?" She started fidgeting anxiously, looking down at her legs.
Belatedly, Ranma realized that he had killed the mood and started backtracking. "No! I mean, that's not it! It's just... that's, uh... that's not how humans do it, you know?" he finished lamely, shifting uncomfortably.
Swan seemed to relax, and she grinned at the pigtailed stallion. "You're a pony now, Havoc. It's time you learned how to act like one." She flicked her tail again. "And how to LOVE like one."
Far from enchanted, Ranma bristled and started muttering under his breath. "I'm only a pony because of YOU, you crazy-" Then his eyes widened with a sudden epiphany.
I almost forgot! Swan Song turned me into a pony to begin with! I've been trying to get her to turn me back ever since! And here we are! This could be my big chance! This could be my LAST chance!
Ranma's expression and posture shifted instantly, and he walked up to the edge of the bed with a hopeful smile on his face. "So. Swan. I know you've been looking forward to this, but I have a... special request for you before we start."
"Oh?" The unicorn licked her lips eagerly. "Ask away. I'm sure I can make you VERY happy."
"R-Right..." Ranma made a slightly squeamish face before he took a deep breath and continued. "After we do this, do you think you could change me back to a human?"
Once again, the mare reacted as if he had dumped a bucket of ice on her. "WHAT? No!" Swan shouted, recoiling.
Ranma was genuinely surprised at the emphatic rejection. "Why not? We're on the same side now, right?"
"What does THAT matter?" the sorceress asked, increasingly irritated.
"What does it... It matters a lot! Why wouldn't you change me back?"
"Because I don't want to date a mutant ape!" Swan snapped, scowling at the stallion.
Ranma looked properly offended. "Would you stop calling me that? You KNOW what we're called now! And it's not like I'm looking to go out with a pony, so we're even!"
Swan Song, for reasons that completely escaped Ranma, looked totally shocked at this admission. She stood up on her bed and glared at her would-be lover. "What are you saying? If you didn't want to go out with me, why did you?"
"Because you SAID I had to if I was going to join your dumb rebellion, remember?" Ranma growled.
"The rebellion is NOT dumb! Take it back!" Swan seethed.
"You want me to take it back? Change me back to a human!" Ranma demanded, pounding a hoof to the floor. "You promise to do that, and I'll do whatever you want!"
The equine martial artist thought his proposition was entirely fair and convincing, if not completely underhanded since he still intended to betray the sorceress. To his surprise, however, Swan looked even more upset than before.
"Why? Why are you so determined to change back?" the unicorn cried, pounding a hoof into the mattress repeatedly. "What's so awful about being a pony?"
"No hands, no fingers, no television, no pants, no meat, no-" Ranma instantly started rattling off a list of answers, only to be interrupted by an angry growl from the green mare.
"Well, forget it! I'm not changing you back into a human! Ever!" Swan snapped.
"Even if it means I'll just leave?" Ranma challenged.
"Even then!" Swan replied hotly.
Ranma was again surprised by the answer. "Why? What difference does it make, then? Why won't you turn me back no matter what?"
"Because..." Swan clenched her teeth, and tears started welling in the corners of her eyes. "Because I CAN'T!!" She shouted.

"Yeesh, they sure are being loud down there. And not in a sexy way."
Trixie shook her head while she scanned another folder full of papers for clues. She wasn't especially surprised that Ranma's "seduction" attempt had broken down so easily, even with such a willing victim. For all the stallion's casual fighting prowess, he seemed completely inept socially and especially awkward when it came to romance. That the romance was faked certainly made things much, much worse; Ranma was the sort to wear his thoughts like Trixie wore her hat.
Still, he was keeping Swan Song occupied, one way or another. Trixie would have preferred he stallion up and stick to the plan, but getting Swan Song to kick him out of her room and lock herself inside would also serve their purposes.
"Interesting... so this is how the MacGuffin Stone captures creatures?" Trixie mumbled, levitating one sheet above the others. It was full of several complex calculations and runic symbols, along with a stick-figure drawing of a flailing Princess Celestia. "I'll look these over later."
Trixie levitated her hat up, and then used her magic to slip the papers inside of it. She already had several other research notes tucked away under her prized accessory as well. While she couldn't take the time now to puzzle out the MacGuffin Stone's abilities and Rite's greater plan for it, she would always be able to study it later.
"Hmm... odd. What's this about?"
Trixie's attention was drawn to a chalkboard that had a sketch of the tower on it, along with a diagram of a space underneath it. It was difficult to figure out exactly what the diagram was supposed to be. Much of it was smudged, and there were several overlapping figures and calculations that didn't immediately make sense. One word, however, stood out among the mess: Kamikazan. The word was circled, and several erratic notes below included the terms "power source," "back-up," and "volatile."
Trixie turned away from the board, and her eyes scanned the title of a stack of books on the edge of a lab table. One of the them near the bottom immediately caught her eye, as its title reminded her of the note: Furnace of Flamehearst, the Prison of Kamikazan.
"Flamehearst... isn't that what Swan Song called this place? Trixie never heard of it or saw it on a map." She pulled the book out of its stack with her magic, and then flipped it around to read the back.
"The thrilling history of the legendary Dragon Prince, as assembled by the esteemed historian and archaeologist Dusty Tome. Author of the award winning 'Dungeon Crawling: For Dummies' and 'Why Bowling Balls Have Holes: A Study of Equestrian Tools and Their Finger-Centric Origins.' Hmmm..."
Trixie turned the book back over and opened it to the table of contents. She hardly had the time to read a collection of historical essays and their conclusions, but a brief explanation of what Kamikazan was and why Flamehearst was important could offer some sort of useful clue.
"Just what are you up to, Blood Rite..."

Blood Rite stared grimly at the circle of the stone on the floor. "At last, it is... done."
The sorcerer looked tired, and his hair was matted with sweat. Numerous scrolls were laid out across a series of stone tables and benches, along with the massacred remains of a sack of salted peanuts. It was obvious that the stallion hadn't washed in days, and he clearly hadn't gotten much rest, either.
In front of him was a large chamber dug into the cavern that resided under his tower. The walls were carved obsidian, and numerous glowing runes provided illumination along with a few magic torches scattered around the interior. In the middle of the chamber was a ring of magical obelisks placed around a series of runic circles.
Rite stared hard at the construct. His eyes drank in every detail, ensuring that not a single line was scuffed or misplaced. He had put untold hours into this endeavor, and if anything went wrong, then it could easily spell the end of his entire plan. This was it.
"All right, then..." he sighed, turning around.
The MacGuffin Stone lay on a nearby bench, gleaming in the dim light. He levitated it into the air and stared at the large facing. The artifact seemed to shine with unusual energy, recently. More so than he had observed when he'd first captured the gem. Occasionally he could swear that he saw a shining, six-pointed star within the core.
I can't tell if I'm going crazy or observing relevant magic pattern concurrence anymore. This has to end.
Rite turned around, carrying the MacGuffin Stone along with him.
He faced the middle of the magic construct he had built.
Then he started feeding power into the artifact.
"This might hurt somewhat," he said, seemingly to himself. "I've only done this once before, after all."

Rite's horn pulsed, and the MacGuffin Stone pulsed in sympathy. Then a shining blast of purple energy shot out of the gem, screaming into the magic circle. Rite lurched backward from the discharge and rush of displaced air, but the stallion braced himself in time and stayed upright.
The energy bolt shot past the middle of the circle, and then it struck a series of magic barriers and halted. The glaring corona of lavender magic dimmed, and then eventually subsided completely. In response, a new series of magic barriers and wards activated in turn, wrapping the circle of obelisks in a protective barrier.
Within that barrier lay Twilight Sparkle.
"Good afternoon, Princess." Rite placed the MacGuffin Stone back on a nearby bench. "Your hibernation is over. It's time to wake up."
The purple Princess was some ways ahead of him. Twilight's eyes fluttered open, and she started flailing in a panic on the stone floor.
"What's going on?! Where am I?! What happened?!" The alicorn quickly jumped to her hooves, her wings spread and her fur bristling. Her head snapped left and right, and then her eyes narrowed once they fell on Blood Right.
"YOU..." the Princess snarled.
"Hello, Princess Sparkle," Rite said calmly, "Are you well? The effects of imprisonment within the MacGuffin Stone are not well understood. The last... individual this happened to seemed rather disoriented."
Twilight said nothing for several seconds, continuing to glare. Her mind was foggy, and she struggled to assemble the current circumstances and connect them to the last thing she remembered.
"Take your time, Princess. I'm not going anywhere," Rite assured her.
Sure enough, Twilight finished ordering her thoughts after a few seconds. Her ears perked straight up, and her eyes went wide.
"You... You let me out," she said, her voice cracking slightly.
"I did," Rite confirmed.
"Then... Then it's over," Twilight said while her body trembled. "You did it? You beat Princess Celestia?"
"I did not," Rite admitted.
This took Twilight some time to absorb, and her ears flipped down. "Wait, so... that means you FAILED to defeat Celestia? You've given up and you're letting me go?"
"Also inaccurate," the sorcerer said.
Twilight pursed her lips tightly, and then sat on her haunches and folded up her wings into a resting position. "You know what? Maybe I'll just listen and let you explain what's happening."
"Thank you, Princess." Rite took a deep breath. "This decision was not easy to come by. Nor was the actual effort insignificant. But I have decided to... deny you a part in my scheme, if you will." He shook his head. "I still intend to end Princess Celestia's reign, and remove the royal order from power entirely. But I can do so without your assistance, passive and unwilling as it was."
Twilight's feathers ruffled, and her eyes narrowed at the stallion. Her eyes darted left and right, analyzing the mechanics of the magical fields containing her. They were focused on anti-magic, suppressing her most obvious advantage, but were backed up by physical force screens that blocked a more crude escape attempt. There were other spells as well that she couldn't recognize in a proper runic formula, but the gist of her situation was obvious: she was completely at the sorcerer's mercy.
"You sick, arrogant mule," Twilight hissed through clenched teeth, "what are you planning to do to me?!"
"I'm planning to teleport you outside to somewhere safe," Rite explained. "I'm not going to tell you exactly where, but by my estimation it should take you approximately a week to get word to Canterlot or return there yourself. Hopefully, I'll be in the final stages of my plan by then, but if not, well..." he shrugged.
Needless to say, this robbed Twilight of much of her indignant fury. "You're... You're letting me GO? Why?" she asked, utterly perplexed.
Blood Rite looked away for a moment, his expression pained. "... Various reasons," the sorcerer mumbled. "For one, I do not find the cruel irony of you being instrumental in Celestia's downfall nearly as entertaining as my intern does. When the royal family lies in ruins, you may well lament your failure to stop me, but I do not want you to bear the guilt of having unwittingly aided me. You do not deserve that."
It took Twilight some seven seconds after Rite finished speaking before she realized her jaw was hanging open. "I... I don't?"
"No." Rite furrowed his brow. "I'm not certain how much Princess Celestia has told you about me. Indeed, I'm not even certain how she feels about me after I have reappeared after so long to stand in opposition to her. But I am not the crude, power-hungry rebel you likely imagined, and I hold your deeds to defend Equestria in the highest respect."
Twilight was still completely unbalanced by the outpouring of sympathy, but she decided that she once again had to take the offensive. "But you don't respect Princess Celestia? You seriously think she's done less for Equestria than I have?" she demanded.
Rite snorted, and his expression instantly shifted from apologetic to annoyed. "My quarrel with the White Princess is... greater than that, Princess Twilight. It is personal and philosophical. I don't doubt her benevolence, as far as it goes, but at the same time Celestia stands as the lynchpin of a despicable order that has enslaved our people for generations and threatens to doom us for countless future generations. Equestria must change, and the immortal Royal Sisters must be torn down from their pedestals so that a new order can be built up from their ruin."
He paused to clear his throat. "You, however, are not central to this decay. You are peripheral to it, no doubt, and assist it through your unblinking loyalty to the Princess of the Sun, but your role is incidental. You need not be removed or reduced for this cruel cycle to end." He shrugged. "It would not displease me at all, in fact, if you came to be a leader of the newly reborn government of Canterlot."
Again, Twilight had a hard time processing this admission. None of this made any sense to her. What was getting through, however, is that the stallion in front of her held no malice toward any innocent pony. Apparently he would give up an obvious advantage and even take a serious risk in order to ease his conscience.
That did not, however, absolve him of his main crime. "You can't do this, Blood Rite," she said firmly. "Think about all the ponies who rely on Princess Celestia every day for guidance and leadership! Think about the sun! You can't possibly depose her! You won't hurt me, but you'll cast all of them aside?"
"First of all, the matter of the sun will be dealt with at the time of Celestia's downfall." Rite stood taller now, and his voice was more confident. "This is, in fact, one of the reasons an artifact as powerful as the MacGuffin Stone was necessary. So long as the very sun is leashed to the White Princess, any plot to defeat her is pointless."
He snorted irritably, then continued. "On the matter of the other ponies, I need only harm those who stand in my way. I've no doubt they will be Legion; the Royal Guard will be no small impediment, and those noble souls do not deserve the harm that may soon befall them." His gaze hardened. "But they are ultimately implements of Celestia's power, not guardians of righteousness. Their loyalty is to the will of their mistress and not the greater good. I will dispatch them with a clear conscience."
"So then how am I any different?" Twilight asked, scowling. "You're going through an awful lot of trouble to keep me safe. If you're willing to kill Equestrian soldiers to complete your goals, why does absorbing me into the MacGuffin Stone bother you so much? I don't buy it!"
Rite took a step back, wincing. Twilight hadn't really expected her protests to sway the stallion, but it seems she had hit a soft spot.
"Well, you..." He trailed off and wet his lips. "You remind me... of myself, Princess Sparkle."
The lavender alicorn recoiled, and her muzzle scrunched up. "I... I mean... I admit that you're turning out to be a lot less evil than I thought, but I'm still uncomfortable with this comparison."
"You truly haven't been told much about me, then. You don't understand." Rite released a frustrated sigh, staring at the young mare. "It's complicated... and perhaps just a matter of wistful delusion on my part... but I can't help but think that I would have, perhaps, become just like you. If not for..."
Twilight slowly raised an eyebrow after he trailed off. "If not for... what?"
Rite shook his head. "Enough of this. It is time for you to go. I have much to do after you're gone. Without a Princess to power the MacGuffin Stone, I'll have to rely on another power source. Luckily, I happen to be standing on one."
Twilight glanced down at the stallion's hooves, but was uncertain as to what he meant. "What are you talking about? What are you going to do?"
"Let's just say that our beloved teacher has left other ancient enemies lying around in shabby prisons besides Discord." Rite smirked and chuckled ruefully. "I left Celestia's service with more than just a decade of premium magic instruction. I also managed to take with me quite a few forbidden records. Our White Princess has quite a collection of VERY interesting skeletons in her closet..."

"... So then this entire region is some kind of fancy prison for a dragon?"
Trixie furrowed her brow as she flipped to the next page with a flicker of pink magic.
"Not just any dragon... a dragon king? No, wait. Prince. I didn't know they had princes. Hmm..."
She skipped back to the table of contents, and then quickly rushed to the section regarding magical properties.
"Let's see... Kamikazan has a fire elemental affinity... Not surprising... But the Flamehearst was made by Princess Celestia... which means that it's an enormous construct for containing magic."
Trixie glanced over a clutch of notes stuck in-between the pages as bookmarkers. One of them listed numerous local environmental hazards, including miniature volcanic eruptions, geothermal vents, and cyclonic firestorms.
"Dangerous place to build a home. But also hard to get to, obviously... According to this, breaches in the region's seal lead to a unique mana flow. Very useful for sophisticated magic projects."
Trixie was intrigued, but she was increasingly aware that she hadn't come any closer to foiling Rite's plans or determining a way to do so. There was only so much time she could spend investigating incidental curiosities. She flipped to the next sheet of research notes that were stuck in the book to mark a given page. This section had a sketch of a fierce-looking fire dragon - the aforementioned Kamikazan, no doubt - along with a similar sketch of Celestia flying above its head in a battle pose.
The illustration was interesting, and no doubt the text explaining the encounter was thrilling, but Trixie was more interested in the notes. She unfolded the bookmark and begin looking over the calculations and diagrams scrawled on it.
"These are all related to the MacGuffin Stone. I remember seeing these calculations on the other notes. So that means... he's using the dragon?"

The silence in Swan Song's room was palpable.
Swan herself had curled up on top of her bed, and she pouted quietly while staring at her wall. She still wore her lingerie, but only because removing it now, in front of Ranma, would only serve to make the situation more ridiculously awkward. Swan would have demanded the pigtailed stallion leave her room, but frankly she was still reluctant to send him away. He still wanted to join up with Rite's rebellion, after all, and she had to reason that it was POSSIBLE he would eventually get over his birth species and agree to plow her.
Ranma was sitting on the floor in front of Swan's bed, his eyes staring straight forward at nothing. His thought process was rather more fragmented, not least because he was desperately restraining himself from hurling Swan Song out the window.
No. No way. It can't be true. It's not true! Not at all. Nope! This is just some dumb trick by Swan to try to get me to do perverted stuff with her. Heck, even if she ISN'T lying through her teeth, she might be wrong! Just because she's the big fancy magic expert who knows the spell she cast on me inside and out doesn't mean that she would know exactly what can and can't be GODDAMN IT I'M GOING TO BE A HORSE FOREVER!
His eyes suddenly snapped back into focus, and then fell to gaze upon Swan Song with furious intensity.
"Okay," he began, stopping to take a deep breath. His muscles seemed to almost tremble underneath his fur, like they were begging for release. "Swan Song, you said you 'can't' change me back. Don't you mean 'won't'?"
Swan snorted. "I meant can't. You're a pony now and forever. At least, as far as I can tell. I suppose you did change into a pegasus mare and back at some point, and I can't explain that."
Ranma's eye twitched. He COULD explain that, but didn't exactly feel inclined to do so. It also had nothing to do with the polymorph spell.
"Why NOT? Just cast the spell again, but set it to 'human!' Or... or how about 'monkey' at least? I could live with monkey! Give me my hands back, damn it!" Ranma stamped a hoof on the floor, his teeth clenched angrily.
Swan sighed. "So... back in Saddlebrook, I ran into Princess Sparkle," she mumbled, still facing away from her guest. "I was disguised at the time, and trying to misdirect her. While doing so, she told me something that I was not aware of, but which explains most of our battles against each other so far: you have some kind of magic allergy."
Ranma's eye twitched some more.
"I guess you didn't have it back in your ape form, but ever since I cast the polymorph spell and turned you into a pony, magic doesn't affect you normally. The time in the forest it caused a random teleport. The fight outside Saddlebrook it caused you to explode. And we caught enough of the fight against Princess Luna to see it in action again." She shrugged weakly. "If magic doesn't work right, then a counterspell or overriding polymorph won't work. I'd be more likely to reduce you to a literal pile of ashes than restore your species."
"WAIT!" Ranma shouted, startling the mare. "What about that other spell you cast? The weird one that launched a stone spike! Or those magic shots Rite used on me! I'm pretty sure those worked fine!"
"It's a different interaction model," Swan explained, rolling her eyes. "In those cases, the magic just creates the energy that shifts the stone, or creates the kinetic force. After that it's just simple energy and matter that just happened to come from magic, and it affects you exactly as you'd expect. Magic that interacts with your body directly clearly reacts differently."
"But that's not FAIR!" Ranma protested.
"Yeah, actually, that IS a really lousy special talent. You have terrible luck," the sorceress admitted, "but anyway, that's just how it is. So you may as well give up and bone me."
Ranma heard a sound like cracking glass. It was very strange, because the only glass in the room was the window, and it was still intact. For now. "NO! No, I'm not boning you! I'm NEVER going to bone you!"
Swan recoiled, and then scowled. "Well, then maybe I won't let you join our rebellion!"
"I don't want to join your stupid rebellion, you numbskull!" Ranma snarled. "I only played along THIS far so that I could get into your base! How dense are you?!"
Swan Song gasped, and her eyes went wide. Ranma reacted a moment later, slapping a hoof over his mouth.
"I... I, uh... I wasn't supposed to say that," the martial artist admitted, "I mean, not YET, anyway."
Swan scrambled to stand up on her bed again, and Ranma cringed when he saw tears forming in the mare's eyes. "You... You USED me? Really? Th-This was all just a ploy to get to Mister Rite?" Her voice shook as she spoke, threatening to break down into full-blown sobs.
"No! No, I didn't USE you!" Ranma protested.
There was a long pause after he finished speaking. Swan sniffled and wiped her muzzle with her leg, and Ranma squirmed uncomfortably.
"... Well, okay, fine, I definitely did use you," the stallion huffed, "but you started it."
"You mule!" Swan Song hissed through her tears. "How dare you betray a mare's sacred trust?!"
"I only agreed to go out with you because you said I had to!" Ranma retorted angrily. "Besides, you turned me into a horse! Why the hell would I want to date you?!"
"I was just defending myself!"
"And I'm just trying to save Sparks!"
"Princess Sparkle? Why? Are you two together?"
"NO! Would you get your head out of the gutter?!"
"Why would you want to save her if you aren't a couple and you don't care about Equestria?"
"It's a good guy thing, okay? You wouldn't get it." Ranma clicked his tongue and turned his head away. "ANYWAY, it doesn't matter. Trix's plan worked, I'm already here, and I'm not leaving until I've rescued Sparks and foiled your stupid kind-of-evil plot."
A crackling sound came from the bed, and Ranma snapped his gaze back to Swan Song. The unicorn was scowling angrily at him even while tears dribbled down her cheeks, and arcs of pulsing lightning curled around her horn.
"HEY. NO. STOP THAT," the martial artist bristled as the magical glow began to build. "You want to fight me here? Like this? Don't be stupid!"
"You think I care?!" Swan demanded angrily, her horn flashing yellow. She reared up, and the glow of magic started to expand rapidly. "If I can't have you, NOPONY WILL!!"

"Rite! Please! Don't do this!" Twilight pleaded.
"I'm sorry, Princess." Rite's horn glowed fiercely, and his magic seeped toward the lodestones in tendrils of misty white. "Goodbye."
"Wait! At least tell me what happened to you first!" Twilight's head whipped back and forth as each of the inscribed stones started powering up. "What did Princess Celestia do to you? Why were you expelled from our school? What are you trying to accomplish besides unseating her?"
Rite didn't answer. The spell continued to progress. Twilight fished around for more desperate questions, and then blurted out something that had been a minor curiosity of hers ever since she'd learned of the sorcerer.
"What is your cutie mark, anyway?"
Rite immediately flinched. The glow around his horn flickered, and he snapped his head around to look back at his rear legs.
They were, of course, covered by his omnipresent cloak. Neither was visible. He snapped his head back toward Twilight, his expression tightly controlled. "It's time for you to leave now." His horn flashed brighter.

When the explosion rattled the cave, Twilight at first thought it was part of Rite's spell; she had never experienced an arcane mechanism like this one. For all she knew the muted booming and local tremor was an ordinary and expected side-effect. It wasn't until Rite's horn dimmed and he stared up at the ceiling that she realized something was wrong.
"What in the blazes..." the sorcerer mumbled. Bits of stone were breaking free from above and dropping to the floor around him, and he briefly covered his face to shield it. "What's going on? Did that come from the tower?"
After a few seconds of thought, Rite had come up with several entirely plausible nightmare scenarios for why there would be explosions coming from within his home. Most of them involved Swan Song and his laboratory, although there were some that involved an enemy army and a wrathful alicorn storming his hideout.
"No, no, no, NO!" the stallion growled, turning away from Twilight completely. "What did that idiot do? I left her alone for ONE DAY! Blast it all!"
"Uh... is something wrong?" Twilight asked, her voice wavering between concern and hope. "Am I staying here, now? Or going back in the gem? Can I-"
"Please, stop," Rite grumbled. "I'll be back in a little bit. I have to go check and see if my intern is playing with my alchemical lab."
His horn started glowing, but rather than activating a teleport spell, it first took hold of the MacGuffin Stone. "I'll also be taking this with me, just in case you get any clever ideas while I'm gone." The artifact floated through the air and landed on his back, and then Rite cast his teleport spell.
In a flash of white light, the stallion was gone.

"Ow..."
Trixie slowly pushed herself up off the floor, shaking her head. Behind her, a bookcase lay face-down on the floor, having collapsed after the sudden detonation. Books were scattered all around her hooves, and several of them had struck her on the way down.
She took a quick look around to survey the damage. A portion of the floor had a smoldering hole in it, with stone shrapnel scattered around the library or embedded in various pieces of furniture. Trixie decided quickly that she had gotten off easy with the books. Several tables and benches had been knocked over as well, and one such workspace was rapidly corroding due to a beaker shattering and spilling its contents all over it.

"OW!! Geez! Are you trying to get us both killed?!" Ranma complained, his voice coming from the floor below.
"No! Just you!" Swan retorted. A crackling noise followed the mare's voice up through the breach in the structure. "You'll pay for tricking me!"
"Hey! No! You're going to-"

Trixie winced as another explosion sent a tremor through the tower. A flash of light poured through the hole in the floor, and a few more chunks of masonry tumbled from the edges.
"Trixie was really hoping Ranma could manage to make out with a mare for a few minutes without destroying anything," the magician groused, stepping away from the crater. She sighed. "Trixie should probably go help before this all unravels. At this rate, they could knock the entire tower over." She turned toward the stairs.
Before she could take even a single step toward the exit, a white light flashed in front of her. Blood Rite appeared before Trixie within the space of an eyeblink, blocking her passage to the stairs. Trixie froze stiff, her eyes bulging. Rite's gaze fixed on her immediately, narrowing dangerously.
"Uh... okay, Trixie is aware that this looks very suspicious. But Trixie is sure that we can talk this over like reasonable equine bei-"
A pulse of magical force slammed into the magician, and she squeaked in pain before being sent sprawling across the floor. Her hat flopped off her head in the process, and several notes spilled out from within the wizard's cap.
"I see you've taken an interest in my research, Miss Trixie," Rite said coldly as he approached. His horn shined with white light, and every few seconds Trixie could swear the magic aura briefly flickered to bright red.
Another explosion rocked the tower, and Rite stumbled briefly while the floor shuddered. Trixie was already grounded, and she swiftly reached out with her telekinesis to take hold of a chemical beaker that was still standing upright on an alchemy table. The beaker took off through the air, its momentum building into a high arch.
She wasn't fast enough. A lash of white lightning struck Trixie's horn, and she yelped. The beaker fell in an instant, shattering against the floor and spilling its inky blue contents uselessly.
"You're a clever little mare, but I'm afraid you don't quite live up to your own hype. 'Great and Powerful' indeed," Rite sneered, once more approaching the blue unicorn. "The trouble is, you've caught me at a very bad time. I can't afford to accommodate your imprisonment at this moment, yet I obviously can't let you run around my home blowing it up. I'm sorry, Miss Trixie, but I'm afraid this is the end for you."
Trixie cringed, curling up fearfully as the stallion's horn flashed brighter. The MacGuffin Stone, which was sitting on Rite's back, trembled in sympathy and started changing color as it synchronized its own residual energies with the pony. Currents of terrible power coalesced around Blood Rite, weaving into a single point of destruction over the sorcerer's head.
"Wait..." Rite's eyes suddenly turned away from Trixie, and his magic wavered. "That last explosion didn't come from you..."

"Knock it off! I'm serious! WHOA!!" Ranma's shout came from the stairwell, and Rite's eyes bugged out at the voice. A moment later the crack of an ice spell hitting a wall came from below.
"You think you can toy with my emotions and get away with it? Enemy of mares! DIE!!" screeched Swan Song, followed by another loud crackling noise.

Rite's eyebrow twitched while Trixie slowly pushed herself back up. "You're... not alone," the sorcerer said, his voice breaking into a near-whimper.
"Sorry, Mister Rite, but it's not Trixie who will be begging for mercy." Trixie calmly pushed the notes she had stolen back into her hat, and then flipped it up onto her head. There was no trace of the pony quivering in terror mere seconds ago, and Rite was honestly a bit impressed by how easily she masked her fear.
The stallion's gaze hardened again. He still had his spell ready, and an arrow of glimmering crimson hovered over his horn's tip. "Don't get cocky with me, showmare. What's to stop me from slaying you before dealing with Calamity?"
"Havoc," Trixie corrected.
"What? I thought his name was Calamity."
"It's Calamity when he's a mare. Havoc when he's a stallion."
"Why does he have a different name for different genders?"
"Plausible deniability. Easier to claim that they're different ponies when we need to."
"Huh. Okay, that makes sense." Rite rubbed at his chin while a booming noise came from the stairwell. "But then, which is his real name? He seemed perfectly intelligent when we first met him, so it stands to reason that-"
"INCOMING!!"

Ranma's shout startled Rite out of his musings, and the sorcerer whirled around. The martial artist galloped into the library, his tail and mane braids trailing smoke and his fur bearing several scorched patches. For all the residual magic damage, he seemed perfectly limber, however, as was evident when Rite released his attack spell.
A crimson arrow slashed through the air toward the gray stallion, who leapt over it and let it pass under his belly with mere centimeters to spare. A second arc of red magic slashed at Ranma once he landed, and he hit the ground hard in order to roll under the attack.
Ranma bounced back to his hooves in front of a stuttering Blood Rite. Then he slammed a hoof into the side of the sorcerer's head, flinging him into a bookcase and nearly knocking the entire thing over. Rite gasped and collapsed onto his side, and several large books tumbled out of place to fall on top of him.
"Trix! You gotta help me! Swan's gone totally nuts!" Ranma panted, skidding to a halt in front of his companion. Then he turned to stare pensively at the stairs.
Trixie frowned. She glanced at Blood Rite, and then back up at Ranma. "So? Just do to her what you just did to him."
"I would! But... uh..." Ranma's ears flipped down nervously. "I actually do feel kind of bad for lying to her and stuff. I don't think I can just beat her like this."
"UGH. You're ridiculous," Trixie scoffed.
The aforementioned sorceress finally ran into the lab after her target, only to stumble to a halt upon seeing the other mare next to Ranma. Like Ranma, she bore some damage from her magic assault, and her socks were all but shredded around her legs and hooves.
"YOU! You're here, too?! How did you get in?!" Swan Song demanded.
"With cunning, persistence, and the unwitting aid of a credulous moron," Trixie answered, smirking.
Ranma looked back and forth between the mares uneasily. "Wait, so... did you mean me or her? Am I the moron? I'm the one who let you in." Trixie slapped a hoof over her face and groaned.
Swan Song gasped when she took in more of the scene. "Mister Rite! What happened? Why are you up here?" Then she gasped again and pointed a leg at the floor. "The MacGuffin Stone! They have the MacGuffin Stone!"
Ranma and Trixie looked down, noting that the coveted relic was now laying on the floor between them.
"Oh, hey. She's right. Didn't even notice," Ranma mumbled. "Does that mean we win?"
Trixie levitated the gem up in front of her. "Not quite. We still have to get Princess Sparkle out of it. Trixie can probably manage that on her own, so-"
"WAIT!" Rite shouted, painfully pushing himself upright. "Are you here for the Princess, or the Stone?"
"Mainly for Sparks, but I'll take the magic rock, too," Ranma shrugged. "Not that I can do much with it, but at this point I really just want to spite you as much as possible."
"Seconded, with the addition that Trixie is also SLIGHTLY concerned for the integrity of the Equestrian state," Trixie added.
Rite shook his head. "Then I'm afraid I still have you at a disadvantage, Havoc!"
Ranma groaned at hearing his pony nickname. "Triiiix! Would you stop telling everyone my fake name?"
"That's a fake name?" Swan blinked. "So Calamity is your name for both forms?"
"Oh, don't listen to him. Trust Trixie, his real name is terrible."
"SILENCE!!" Rite screamed, causing the other ponies to flinch away. After taking several difficult, ragged breaths, the sorcerer glared at Ranma. "Whatever your name is, listen to me now: Princess Twilight Sparkle is not in the Stone."
Ranma recoiled in surprised, and then turned to stare at the gemstone. Trixie frowned disapprovingly at the object.
"She is currently trapped somewhere out of your reach. You cannot get to her, and if you dispatch me then she will eventually perish in her prison." Rite grimaced darkly, pointing a foreleg at the MacGuffin Stone. "If you agree to give me the artifact and leave peacefully, then I will give you Princess Sparkle unharmed. There will be no more fighting, and I will make no further demands." He set his jaw, trying to contain his bitterness at having to make such a bargain. "Do you agree?"
Ranma looked at Trixie. Trixie cocked her head to the side, looking thoughtful. "Give me and my sidekick a moment to review our options and discuss this," she said, gesturing toward an alcove in the far corner of the room. Without waiting for a response, Trixie turned around and galloped away, the MacGuffin Stone bobbing along through the air next to her.
"Trix, what did I tell you about that? I am NOT a sidekick!" Ranma griped, chasing after her.

Blood Rite sighed heavily as the intruders turned behind a bookcase wall that shielded the alcove from view. He didn't have especially high hopes for them reaching a fair agreement, but he'd much rather have to challenge Trixie's wit than Ranma's hooves. To say nothing of watching his home crumble around him under the weight of magical bombardment.
As that thought crossed his mind, Rite turned a withering gaze on Swan Song. The sorceress cringed away instantly, her ears pinning back against her head.
"Miss Song, would you happen to have any idea how the ape and the weakling bard holding his leash have made it into the Flamehearst and somehow infiltrated my tower?" he growled. "How did they find us? How did they get past all my traps? I heard you shouting about him 'toying with' your emotions. And then you chase him upstairs while wearing erotic lingerie. Please, explain."
Rite was expecting an embarrassed apology, or perhaps a meek explanation. Instead, to his alarm, the mare bristled and suddenly stood up straight again.
"That's right! I almost forgot what the sorry mule did to me!" Swan Song snarled. Her horn started sparking again, and Rite felt his fur stand on end from the residual electric charge. "I can't let him get away!"
"Yes! Yes you can!" Rite insisted, galloping in front of the irate sorceress. "What the hay has gotten into you, Swan Song?!"
"More like what HASN'T gotten into me!" she snapped.
"Please, just once, spare me your banal innuendo!" the stallion snapped back. "We are at a crucial point in our quest, our foes are dangerously close to foiling us, and you're upset that our enemy won't RUT you?"
"I'm UPSET that he lied to me!" Swan stepped forward so that she was nose-to-nose and horn-to-horn with Rite, and he felt a hot tingle race down his spine from the contact. "He took advantage of my feelings in order to get into the tower, and then rejected me as soon as he didn't need me anymore!"
"So THAT'S how he got in!" Rite snarled, suddenly pushing back on his intern. "You IMBECILE! You actually led him straight to me?!"
Swan began to falter, the glow around her horn waning. "W-Well... I... I didn't-"
"He DOESN'T LIKE YOU, IDIOT! You effectively ruined his life and cursed him with an alien body, perhaps irreversibly! He HATES you, and with perfectly good reason!" Blood Rite shouted, his own horn pulsing. "Why is that so challenging a concept for someone who mastered elemental hexology at age ten?!"
Swan shrunk further under the stallion's glare and fixed her eyes on a point on the floor in front of her. "... Sometimes I get lonely..." she mumbled.
"LONELY," Rite repeated, his anger palpable. "We stand on the verge of reordering the mechanisms of the very stars and unseating the royal order that has reigned over equine society for more than a millennium. But you got LONELY, so you went out to find a coltfriend. And you chose the only stallion in the country who has been absolutely determined to ruin us before he even knew our names!"
"It didn't happen like THAT," Swan groaned weakly. "Although it does sound kind of dumb now that you're laying it all out like this." Then her ears snapped up again. "But that's why I'm mad, Mister Rite! That pigtailed jerk totally manipulated me! And he didn't even have the decency to go all the way before he revealed that it was all a trick!"
A vein pulsed on Rite's head.
"Bad enough that he lied to me and took advantage of my feelings, but the least he could do if he was just going to turn on me is first give me a good, solid-"
"THAT. IS. IT." Blood Rite's voice hissed through clenched teeth, and he stepped back. "Swan Song, I have tolerated your ineptitude and fickle loyalty long enough."
"What? Wait, Mister Ri-"
The sorceress began to protest, but Rite spoke right over her. "If you are so enamored with the stallion as to endanger our cause, then I shall give you free reign to pursue him as you wish. When and if the intruders leave this tower, you will go with them. You are hereby dismissed from my service, permanently and irrevocably!"
"No! Please, Mister Rite, reconsid-"
Again she was cut off by the crimson stallion as Rite sneered. "I did reconsider, Miss Song. After the FIRST TIME you endangered our plans for the sake of your love life. But now that you may have dashed my hopes entirely, I am cutting my losses. GET OUT OF MY WIZARD TOWER."
Swan Song recoiled, and her expression darkened. Her head slumped down to stare at the floor, and her ears flattened against the side of her head. Rite stared down at her coldly, unmoved.
"... Fine," she mumbled, "then let's finish this."
"Finish this? Finish what?" Rite asked irritably. "If this is about my plan, I'll try to salvage what's left, no thanks to you."
Swan snapped her head up, and her horn pulsed yellow. Her eyes were swallowed by light, and a thin current of magical energy ran over the floor and touched Rite's legs.
Rite took a step back from the sensation, feeling his contempt slowly bleed away in favor of alarm. "Miss Song? What are you doing?"
"If I'm not serving you anymore, then I don't need to hold back," the sorceress snarled. The glow of her horn expanded over her body, covering her in a bright yellow aura.
"No. Stop. That's not true," Rite protested, suddenly quite concerned at the amount of magical energy coalescing around his former intern. "I think it's the other way around, really. Now you can pursue Havoc without restraint!"
Another mana pulse blasted past the stallion, setting his magic senses on fire. Swan started to float above the floor, and loose bits of debris trembled from proximity to her. Her cutie mark began to glow.
"You all think you can use me and then brush me off when you don't need me any more..." Swan's voice was dark and sullen, but it boomed throughout the library in a way far more unsettling than an angry shout. "You stallions are all the same..." An otherworldly gale whipped up around the mare, swirling about the currents of ethereal power.
"No! No, I am NOT the same! My actions and reasoning are completely different from Havoc's! What the hay is wrong with you?!" Blood Rite launched an energy bolt at Swan, aiming to disable her horn. The bolt of white energy barely made it halfway before it collapsed into glittering points of light and was sucked up into the vortex of mana. "Stop it, Swan Song! You're going to destroy everypony!"
The light intensified to the point that Rite could barely make out the form of the mare within the building nexus of magical power. A grim, bitter chuckle filled the room.
"This is the last gambit: APOCRYPHA MELODY!"

"Okay, so here's what Trixie's thinking..." Trixie leaned in close to Ranma, whispering into the stallion's ear. "Trixie believes Rite's telling the truth about Sparkle not being in the gem; its power seems a little weak. That does mean Princess Purple is probably trapped somewhere we can't get to. But Trixie is pretty sure Rite is overplaying his hoof REALLY badly right now. We take him down, lead the Equestrian forces here, and they'll take this place apart. The other Princesses will find Sparkle even if we can't."
Trixie looked away, chewing on her lip. "Obviously, Trixie will have to manage that aspect herself, since you're in deeper trouble with the military than ever. Trixie was REALLY hoping to have Sparkle's help in sorting that out... is it just Trixie, or does it seem like circumstances always conspire to prevent you from clearing your name?"
Ranma opened his mouth to speak, but Trixie simply raised a hoof to his jaw and pushed it closed. "Rhetorical question. Now, let's talk strategy. Trixie has the MacGuffin Stone, and can probably manage the spell detailed in the notes where it sucks up a target to use as a power source. It's a convenient way to neutralize a pony and trap them for later. We'll also have the element of surprise, even after getting caught. The problem is, should we use it on Rite or Song?"
Trixie started pacing in a short line in front of Ranma, making sure to keep her voice low. "Rite is obviously the big prize, and the main pony we need to give over to the authorities. But apparently you have a problem fighting Swan Song. Are you going to be able to handle this?" She rounded on the martial artist, her eyes narrowed into slits.
"I didn't do it with her!" Ranma blurted out.
A long, awkward silence descended between the two ponies. Outside the alcove, they could hear Blood Rite shouting something, but neither of them were paying attention.
"... What?" Trixie eventually asked.
"I never touched Swan Song, I swear!" Ranma explained.
Trixie stared at the stallion incredulously. "And... you're telling Trixie this... why?"
Ranma blinked. "Um... force of habit, I guess. You're not mad?"
"Of course Trixie is mad! Trixie is mad about your wimping out on your part of the plan, which was seducing Swan Song! You're defending the wrong thing!" the magician growled.
More shouting came from the library and was completely ignored by the two infiltrators.
"Okay, hold on... you're upset that I DIDN'T do anything to Swan Song?" Ranma asked, perplexed.
"Of course Trixie is! That was the plan, remember? Why are you surprised?" Trixie snapped.
The martial artist frowned, rubbing his hoof against his chin. "Well, you're right, but I'm used to girls getting mad anyway. I just wanted to make sure you knew so that you're mad about the right thing."
"You humans sure are neurotic," Trixie deadpanned.
"Oh, don't get me STARTED!" Ranma agreed.
A sudden wave of mana surged over the pair of ponies.
The energies were utterly invisible and silent, but both Ranma and Trixie flinched as if they had been slapped. Ranma felt like a live electric cable had been touched to his spine, while Trixie's horn started sparking of its own accord.
"Uh, Trix?" Ranma mumbled apprehensively, stepping away from the bookcase behind him. The shelves completely cut off his line of sight to the source of magic power, but such an intense energy surge was as visible to his senses as any bonfire would be.
"This is... not good," Trixie mumbled, her voice rising to a fearful squeak as a nigh-unfathomable river of magic power swept into the apex of a single spell. She had never been present when the Princesses of the sun and moon performed their daily duties of managing massive stellar objects, but she imagined that only spells of those magnitude would draw such an impressive charge.

Swan's voice, long ignored by the two scheming equines, came from the entrance to the library.
"This is the last gambit: APOCRYPHA MELODY!"

For a few precious seconds, all was still.
Rite's tower stood tall and proud above the landscape of jagged obsidian, yellow light pouring from its windows like the beams of a lighthouse. The hot winds that normally swirled around the fortification vanished, and the embers that regularly sputtered from around the foundation faded to nothing.
Then a lance of pure light blasted upward, splitting the tower in half.
The two halves started leaning away from each other, relatively intact, but the whirlwind of destruction sundered the stone before gravity could do the job itself. Each floor ripped free of the next one, floating and spinning wildly in the air while crumbling apart.
The top floors of the tower, which held numerous arcane artifacts of considerable magic power, exploded like a rocket. The halves of the tower roof were send flying into the air on sparkling jets of flame, spiraling upward into the clouds.
As the tower itself disintegrated, the pillar of destructive magic surged back down, splitting apart the foundation. A shock wave broke out across the surface, shattering rock outcroppings and causing sudden eruptions from the many flaming surface vents.
Eventually, the magic waned. The remains of the tower, now crushed and blasted to debris, started to rain back down. Smoke from the numerous disturbed vents vomited into the air around the tower foundation, blackening the sky above the ruin.

Far above the devastation, a glittering bubble of magic hung in the air, falling slowly among the shower of rubble and flame.
Blood Rite stood inside that bubble, his expression twisted halfway between fury and abject sorrow. The barrier protected him entirely; small flashes came from impacts with falling stone, while it also provided ample resistance to the relentless grip of gravity. It had even withstood the intense power of Swan Song's ultimate spell at point-blank range. It had undoubtedly saved his life.
But it was too little, too late.
"My tower... my home... my research..." the sorcerer moaned. He continued to float lower toward the ground, and a loud hum came from his shield as a chunk of masonry almost as big as he was bounced off of it. He hardly seemed to notice. "Everything... it's all gone... all... all because of..."
He clenched his teeth, his lips peeling back in an angry snarl. While he had plenty of disdain for Swan Song, the direct cause of this devastation, blaming the mare for being tricked and lashing out felt wrong, somehow. He knew his intern well, and now that he had the benefit of hindsight, her reaction was entirely predictable. While she had been the mechanism of this scenario, she was not the major focus of his ire.
"Havoc..." Rite's eyes briefly flashed red as he spat the name angrily. From the very beginning, that damned ape had interfered with and casually foiled his careful plans. The bizarre creature-turned-pony was an unpredictable element, resourceful and nigh-unstoppable. He possessed skills that defied even an accomplished sorcerer, the strength to dispatch great warriors with ease, a bizarre and badly flawed magic defense, and apparently even a separate identity to fool his enemies. Trixie thought herself a clever pony to lead the stallion around by the nose, and Swan Song had fallen for an utterly banal ruse in leading him to the tower, but Rite had little care for the tiresome mares. Havoc was the instrument of his plan's undoing, always managing to find himself in the wrong place at the right time.

Rite closed his eyes, and his thoughts turned to the MacGuffin Stone. The obtrusive light appeared in his mind's eye, directing him toward a particular bit of wall laying atop a pile of shattered furniture, shredded books, and crushed obsidian. The bubble touched the ground, and the barrier shimmered before finally fading away.
"So much time... so much work... entire years of effort, gone in a flash of spiteful rage," Rite said sadly while his horn glowed. His magic formed a series of long poles in the air, and then they solidified into hard, red metal. The bars darted toward the wall like hurled javelins, sticking themselves into crevices underneath the mass of stone. Rite’s horn powered up even further, and his telekinesis started to press down on the ends of the summoned levers. The stone started shifting.
Then the wall suddenly jolted upward. The levers slipped out of place, scattering into the air, and Rite yelped and jumped backward in surprise.
“Hrrrrrrgh…” The edge of the shattered wall rose a few feet higher while something grunted from underneath it. Rite was alarmed at first, but then his eyes narrowed angrily.
Of course… as if something like this would truly be enough to destroy that monster!
“HRRAAAAAUGH!” The wall suddenly jolted upward, cracking through the middle and coming apart from a blow underneath it. Several chunks of debris broke loose and flew toward Blood Rite, but the sorcerer just scowled. His horn flashed with power, and he vanished from sight.

Ranma gasped for breath as the largest mass of stone fell away. His chest heaved from the exertion, blood trickled down the side of his head, and his back and shoulders ached from the bruising impacts of flying debris.
None of that mattered in the least to the martial artist. He banished his pain from his mind and turned his gaze down at the blue, curled-up body lying between his legs and sheltering beneath his body. Despite his being short of breath already, his heart seized up at the sight.
Then Trixie started coughing, and Ranma felt like fainting on the spot. “Trix! Trix, you’re okay!” The man-turned-pony desperately held back tears of joy at seeing the mare move.
“Ugh… you have a stupidly broad definition of ‘okay’,” Trixie groused. Her eyes were still squeezed shut, and her hat was clutched tightly under her forelegs. She hurt all over, but the aches were easily within the realm of minor damage. Somehow, despite the catastrophic destruction that had engulfed her, she hadn’t even broken anything.
“Are you hurt? Bleeding?” Ranma started glancing back and forth at the rubble. “I see some curtains or something over there. If you need a band-“
“Trixie needs you to FOCUS,” the magician hissed. She finally cracked her eye open, staring up at the concerned face of her protector. “Where’s the MacGuffin Stone?”
“Right here.” Ranma raised his rear right leg. The ancient gemstone gleamed, somehow looking perfectly clean and polished despite the dust all around them.
“Okay. Good! Then we’re still winning, technically,” Trixie wheezed. “Where are the bad guys?”

Ranma’s ears perked up, and he tilted his head to one side. Seconds passed in silence, disturbed only by Trixie’s heavy breathing and the crackling of nearby fires.
Suddenly, Ranma moved. He reached a hoof toward a chunk of debris and tossed it to the side.
A sizzling yellow energy bolt slammed into the loose rock and exploded, blasting the rubble apart. It burst into a small cloud of dust on impact, but quickly cleared so that Ranma and Trixie could see their attacker standing several meters away.
“Blood Rite,” Ranma said irritably, as if the sorcerer’s assault was just an unwanted interruption. “Still in one piece, huh? Still feel like trading Sparks for the magic rock?”
Rite scowled angrily. “No. No, I do not. I have fallen too far to accept any further losses, Havoc.” He lowered his head, and his pure white aura surrounded his horn. “I don’t know if I can defeat you. I don’t understand you or your abilities. But events have conspired to rob me of all other options. I have nothing more to lose. Only one stallion will be leaving Flamehearst alive today!”
Rite’s horn pulsed. Ranma’s muscles tightened, and a thin aura of blue appeared around his body.
“Question!” Trixie interjected as she stood up. “Did Swan Song survive her ultimate all-or-nothing spell? Is she buried somewhere around here?”
Rite snorted. “Who cares?”
“Point taken.” Trixie picked up the MacGuffin Stone with her levitation, then started backing away from the battle. “Anyway, Trixie is just going to take the opportunity to get some distance, and then you gentlecolts can go ahead and-“
Blood Rite reared back, growling incoherently as his horn flashed even brighter. Ranma squinted against the light, ready to dodge but concerned that Trixie would be the target of the coming spell.
The ground shook, and a breach opened up behind Rite, cracking through the black stone. A jet of lava sprayed into the air, arcing over the sorcerer while spitting a thick plume of dark smoke upward.
“Geez, look out!” Ranma shouted while his body trembled from the quake. “He’s going to tear this whole place apart! Again!”
After checking that Trixie was making slow but steady progress on escaping, the martial artist looked back up at Rite. To his surprise, the other stallion was stumbling to the side to get away from the lava eruption rather than casting more magic.
“Having a little trouble there, pal? You should be more careful!” Ranma taunted, jumping up atop a broken support that was sticking out the rubble at an angle.
Rite looked back and forth, an expression of abject dread crossing his face. “No! That wasn’t me! Swan Song, you IDIOT! She woke him up! She actually managed to wake him up!”
Ranma hesitated, wondering if this was some sort of trick on the part of the sorcerer. Then another tremor ripped through the ground, nearly knocking him from his perch.

More jets of lava blasted up from the ground, spitting fire, smoke, and scorched earth into the sky. The discharges started cutting a line across the ground, exploding through the scattered rubble and opening up a thick fault where Rite’s tower had once stood.
Ranma managed to cling to the support post he was perched on, and he watched in amazement and confusion as the gap started to yawn wider and wider. He could see Blood Rite on the opposite side of the fault line, now running away from the breach in earnest. He decided then and there that the other stallion hadn’t been lying about the cause of this disturbance.
That said, Ranma didn’t know what to make of Rite’s excuse, either. Who was he referring to? Why were they asleep? Why did they prompt earthquakes and volcanic eruptions when they woke up?
“AT LAST…” a voice boomed from within the smoldering crevice. “THE PRISON HAS BEEN BREACHED…”
A sharp hissing noise came repeatedly from the fault line, sounding vaguely like embittered laughter. The tremors periodically surged against and again, and the rocks below continued to creak and crack.
Two large, shining lights emerged from within the darkness. They were bright green, like glittering emeralds within the hot gloom of the crevasse. A thin, black wedge cut through each of them, forming a reptilian pupil that rapidly shifted back and forth.
“Uhm…” Ranma stared down at the giant, glowing eyes, generally feeling like he was ill-equipped to act as the first person to contact… whatever it was that was now being freed from the deepest, darkest confines of this alien planet. This was far from the first time he was the closest person around when ancient evils were suddenly released from faulty magic prisons, but experience had definitely not served him well in dealing with it. “I… come in… peace?”
As the fault line exploded beneath him, Ranma had to write this first encounter off as another failure of diplomacy.

“YES! YESSSS!! FREEDOM!”
Rubble was thrown into the air in ever-increasing quantities as a body ripped up from the breach, shouldering its way free of the crushed stone and blasts of heat. Thick, curved talons reached up and dug into hard stone, and two enormous wings covered in thick red scales shot upward above the smoke.
The wings swept down, blasting away much of the obscuring cloud. A giant red dragon pulled itself free of the last bits and pieces of its crude prison, laying claws upon the surface for the first time in centuries. It was the size of a small building with thick, metallic scales on its back and sides colored a fire-engine red with stripes of jet black laid across its spine from neck to tail, along with an underbelly of pale yellow. Its head was snake-like – aside from being the size of a car – with a long, flat jaw and thick fangs that rested outside its lips.
“KAMIKAZAN HAS RISEN ONCE MORE!! THE KING OF THE DRAGONS SHALL RETAKE HIS THRONE, AND ONCE AGAIN, THIS PITIFUL WORLD WILL FEAR THE WRATH OF THE SERPENT LORDS!!” A furious roar erupted from the dragon’s throat, and multiple blasts of lava shot up from the ground around the fault line.
“Whoa! Hey! If you’re the one causing all the fire to shoot up, could you knock it off? You’re going to hurt somebody!”
Kamikazan narrowed his eyes, and then swung his head down to the voice that had spoken to him.
Ranma was still clinging to the broken support beam jutting out of a pile of rubble, and after several seconds of Kamikazan staring at him, he hesitantly waved a hoof at the enormous serpent. “Hi. I’m Saotome Ranma. Sorry about all this.”

“Yowch! Yowch! Hot!” Trixie yelped in pain as small, smoldering pebbles bounced off her back and rear. None of the rubble falling around her was large enough to do any serious harm to a pony, but she was in bad enough shape as it was. Her cape was nothing more than a shredded memory, and she was now using her hat as a pouch to hold the MacGuffin Stone as well as all the research she had stolen about said artifact, which precluded its use as a shield.
“This is ridiculous! An infiltration turned into a showdown turned into a catastrophic explosion turned into… into whatever this is now!” Trixie complained, almost tripping on a wedge of hot obsidian that stuck out in her path. “What’s even going on?”
She stopped in her path once she spotted the lodestone that Blood Rite used to teleport long distances. It was a few minutes away, and as far as she could tell there were no obstacles in her path. She could escape easily.
But then Ranma couldn’t. He’d be trapped here. Trapped here with…
“KAMIKAZAN HAS RISEN ONCE MORE!! THE KING OF THE DRAGONS SHALL RETAKE HIS THRONE, AND ONCE AGAIN, THIS PITIFUL WORLD WILL FEAR THE WRATH OF THE SERPENT LORDS!!”
“Oh, this is just perfect,” Trixie groaned, slapping a hoof over her face. Of COURSE this would end with the sleeping monster under Rite’s tower emerging from its long imprisonment. And Ranma was probably going to try to fight it now, because what else is he going to do with a giant monster?
“So what is Trixie supposed to do?!” the magician yelled, stamping her hoof on the ground. “Go help him so that there are TWO, possibly THREE unmarked graves out in the middle of bucking nowhere? Escape and leave him to get himself killed? Hay, if Trixie leaves, then he could even win and then just die of his injuries or something! It’s not like Trixie can lead the Royal Guard out here to save him! This. Is. So. STUPID!”
Then she gasped. “And what about Princess Sparkle? That purple dweeb was more or less the only reason we’re here in the first place! What even happened to her?!”
“Uuuunnnngh…”
Trixie flinched as she heard an agonized groan from behind her. She whipped around on the spot, her horn already glowing in case she needed to defend herself.
She clearly didn’t. The source of the noise was a dusty, battered pony mostly buried beneath a chunk of scorched furniture and loose stone. When Trixie spotted the pony’s horn she thought she had found Swan Song, but then she noticed several tarnished feathers nearby.
“… Okay, fine. This situation is now less impossibly vexing and now somewhat convenient,” Trixie admitted aloud. She crept up to the injured pony, and then blew into her face. A puff of ash came away with her breath, revealing the purple fur underneath and confirming her identity. Twilight Sparkle flinched slightly in response, and then released another incoherent groan.
“And naturally, Trixie has to do the rescuing part of this mission too,” the magician huffed while her horn lit up. “While Trixie is glad that saving her is Ranma’s absolute first priority – and that he’s actually good at that part – he could help out a LITTLE with the other aspects of this job! Sheesh!”

Ranma stared up at the massive red dragon.
The dragon stared down at him, eyes narrowed.
“So… Kamikazan? Was that your name? That means ‘Volcano God’ in my language. Kinda cool!” Ranma chuckled.
Kamikazan did not laugh. “Equine. Are you the creature that freed me from my slumber?”
“No. Well, not really. I was kind of involved, but I didn’t know about you or anything. Maybe by acci-“
“SILENCE, pony,” Kamikazan snarled. Ranma frowned, but stopped talking.
The dragon twisted his head about, scanning his surroundings and sniffing the air. “It has been some time since my imprisonment…” He squinted at the sun, as if judging it. “I see that the Princess of the Sun still breathes. Unless another has taken the reigns of the world’s star?” Kamikazan looked down at Ranma, and his pointed tongue darted out from between his teeth.
Ranma grimaced. “Can’t really help you with that one. I’m not the guy you want to talk to if you want to figure out how the sun works around here.”
Kamikazan snorted, blasting clouds of glittering embers from his nostrils. “I see. Then you will have to find some other way to serve your master, equine.”
This got a more substantial reaction from the stallion. “My master? Who made you my master, lizard?” he asked angrily.
A deep, throaty growl came from the self-described “King.” “The weakling races serve the mighty immortals. As it was in ancient times, so it shall be again. Or do you wish to serve the mighty Kamikazan as feed after my long rest?” His tongue whipped out and ran along his lips, and a few thick droplets of saliva oozed down the dragon’s exposed fangs.
“I’m not ‘serving’ you at all!” Ranma snapped. “Heck, the only reason I’m still around is because I’m not sure what to do with you yet. That, and I haven’t found Sparks. Have you seen her? Purple pony, horns and wings? Total nerd? If you talked to her, you’d know.”
Kamikazan snapped his jaws at the martial artist. “I have heard enough from you, equine! I will not suffer such indignity when I have finally been freed from my prison!”
The mighty dragon opened his jaws and lunged forward. Ranma jumped up off his perch, letting the serpent’s head dart underneath him. Then he twisted into a kick that struck Kamikazan in the eye.
“HRAAAAAAUGH!!” Kamikazan recoiled in pain, and Ranma kicked off of his face and backflipped to land right back where he started.
“MY EYE!! BURNING BRIMSTONE, YOU HIT ME IN THE EYE!! What are you doing, you insolent mammal?! Why did you do that?!” Kamikazan clutched at the side of his face with one claw, gasping in pain.
Ranma arched an eyebrow at the question. “Why? You just tried to eat me.”
“Of course I did! That doesn’t give you the right to hit me!” the dragon roared.
“… Yes, it does,” Ranma countered.
Kamikazan quivered in rage, and puffs of fire blasted from between his teeth. Ranma tensed, leaning to one side in preparation to leap out of the way.
“I don’t have to put up with this! I’m a King! Dragon royalty!” The fire drake started pounding his claws on the ground, unsettling the support beam Ranma was standing on. He didn’t make any move to attack the pigtailed stallion, however, and even seemed to be shifting away.
The martial artist was more disturbed by the dragon’s attitude than his pounding. He’d met many petulant royal imbeciles in his time, but watching a fifty-ton monster of legend throw a cowardly temper tantrum was a novel experience even by his standards.
“Look, did you see Sparks or not? Because if not, then we’re both wasting our time here,” Ranma grumbled.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! Go away!” Kamikazan snarled.
“YOU go away!” Ranma snapped back.
“I’m a KING!” the dragon roared.
“I don’t CARE!” Ranma shouted.

For a moment, stallion and dragon stared angrily at each other, as if locked in a battle of intimidating glowering. Kamikazan shifted his pose, rearing up and snarling. His teeth and claws were bared, and his wings spread out as if he was preparing to launch into the air. Ranma couldn’t exactly do much to make his small equine body look more threatening, but he held his pose firmly even as the dragon’s oven-hot breath washed over him.
All was still. Neither of them moved. Seconds stretched into a minute, and then two.
Then, finally, an irritated voice broke the tension.
“Hey! Are you two fighting, or what?”
Ranma jumped slightly, and then looked behind him. Trixie was standing some distance away, and to his absolute delight, the unicorn had a dirty purple body slung over her back.
“Trix! You found Sparks!”
“Yes, Trixie found the Princess! And unburied her, and treated her bleeding! All while you were… doing… whatever this is!” Trixie glared at Ranma, then over to the giant red dragon. “Seriously, are you two fighting? Chatting? Posing? Regardless, you’re wasting Trixie’s time!
Ranma winced. “Sorry! I’ll be down in a sec!” Then he looked up at Kamikazan. “So, we’re done here, right? Or do I have to sock you in the face again?”
The fire drake suddenly backed away, his heavy footsteps shattering the uneven ground beneath him. He was quite unnerved that this first pony had stood up to him without fear, but seeing a second pony arrive and then order the first one around like an aggrieved spouse convinced him that these equines weren’t worth the trouble of dominating. “Feh! I have decided to spare you pathetic creatures after all! In my current mood, freed from countless years of imprisonment, I am feeling especially-“
“Get out of here!” Trixie snapped. Ranma glared sharply at the dragon and shifted so that it looked like he was going to jump.
Kamikazan bolted into the air, his heavy wings beating hard enough to unsettle some of the smaller rocks around the ponies. The dragon muttered curses and complaints as he soared away, but the words were lost in the speed of his escape. Within moments, the royal serpent’s tail vanished behind the great clouds of ash that hovered over the region, and the sound of his wings fell out of earshot.

“Well, that was a little anticlimactic,” Ranma mumbled as he dropped down next to Trixie. “No final fight for the Princess, no showdown with the sorcerers, and the giant monster summoned from nowhere turned out to be a huge wimp.”
“Yes, how tragic that we were spared another desperate fight for our lives,” Trixie drawled, “now get over here and take Princess Geek. Trixie is halfway to a hernia already!”
Ranma walked up next to her and crouched down, and Trixie tilted to the side to slide Twilight Sparkle onto his back. The alicorn grunted weakly from the movement, but didn’t wake up.
“Trixie would have THOUGHT that the transition from unicorn to alicorn would cause one to lose a few pounds! You know, in order to fly? Clearly not the case! Trixie must assume there’s heavy magical involvement in getting her fat butt into the air!”
Ranma waited until her latest round of griping ended before speaking up. “So, are we leaving now?”
“Yes! Of course we’re leaving! Trixie has had enough of this!” The unicorn started trotting away in the direction of the warp lodestone.
“Okay, so… what about Blood Rite? Or Swan Song? What’s going to happen to them?”
“Trixie doesn’t care.”
Ranma bobbed his head in agreement while following the unicorn through the shredded terrain. “Right. Gotcha. It’s just… I thought we were doing this thing now where we don’t leave loose ends so that problems don’t come up later.”
Trixie twisted her head around to glare at the martial artist. He stared back innocently.
“… Let’s just say Trixie is coming to understand how it is that you’re constantly being hounded by your past errors,” the unicorn sighed, shifting her hat over her head. “At first Trixie had assumed it was just your atrocious ignorance and habitual neglect that caused you to keep making enemies and disturbing the peace wherever you went. Trixie is now certain that she was wrong. Mostly.”
“Mostly not my fault! Yes!” Ranma cheered, stopping to pump a foreleg. Then he rushed to catch up to Trixie again. “So, if I’m not the problem, what IS the problem?”
“Trixie is fairly convinced by now that the entire universe as we know it is trying to destroy you.”
Ranma didn’t respond to that right away, mulling it over while they traveled. After Trixie stopped in front of the lodestone, he suddenly grinned.
“So, if I’m not dead yet, then that means I’m winning, right?”
“Yes, you are. Trixie is reluctantly impressed,” the magician mumbled. Then her horn flashed. “Now hush. We’re almost done with this debacle…”

“Here it is, then. The path that will lead us to the end of this debacle, at last,” Princess Celestia declared.
She and Luna were standing at the vanguard of a small army of ponies, all waiting at attention before a glowing lodestone. The Princess of the Night was probing the warp structure with her magic, testing its runic formula carefully. Numerous unicorn guards watched with intense interest, while a Royal Mage jotted down notes. Pegasi circled above the clearing on scout patrols, and earth ponies formed walls of spears in case of any threats waiting amongst the trees.
“Simply remarkable. I haven’t seen such a magical device since before my imprisonment,” Luna remarked while her horn pulsed.
The mage nodded in agreement. “We never would have even found it without your help, Princesses! This rebel character knows his stuff. Such a pity that he turned traitor!”
Celestia’s eyebrow twitched. “Yes… a great pity…”
Luna backed away from the construct, and then rubbed her chin with a hoof. “It seems there is a security enchantment of no meager complexity around the main runic patterns. I cannot remove it without destroying the construct. This device requires a password.”
Numerous ponies started mumbling among each other behind her, many of them floating random guesses as to what the password could be. Princess Celestia pursed her lips and stepped forward.
“I believe I may have an inkling,” the White Princess declared. “Everypony, step back. We’re not completely sure what will happen here.”

The soldiers did as instructed, and Luna nodded briefly before she likewise backed up so that she was standing behind her sister. Celestia’s horn glowed, activating the lodestone’s main spell patterns, and then she cleared her throat.
“To shatter the sun itself,” Celestia intoned in a grim voice. Several ponies shifted uncomfortably at the implicit metaphor.
“BZZZZZZT!!” An obnoxiously loud buzzer noise came from the lodestone, surprising the gathered ponies.
“Huh. Okay. That wasn’t it,” Celestia admitted. Then she activated the runes again. “Justice for the forgotten and the betrayed.”
“BZZZZZZT!!” The buzzer came again, and Luna winced.
Celestia coughed, and then tried again. “Magic is merely energy; BLOOD is power.”
“BZZZZZZT!!”
“In submission, we find stagnation; in revolution, we achieve renewal.”
“BZZZZZZT!!”
“Death to the alicorns?”
“BZZZZZZT!!”
“Password?”
“BZZZZZZT!!”
“One, two, three, four, five.”
“BZZZZZZT!!”
“Star Charmer?”
“BZZZZZZT!!”
Luna tilted her head to the side. “Star Charmer?”
“It was the name of a mare he had a crush on back in school,” Celestia mumbled, sitting down on her haunches. “I’m afraid I’m running low on ideas.”
“Let’s question the dragon,” suggested a Captain, “he might have a hint, or come up with new topics, at least. We must reach Twilight Sparkle!”
A spark came from the lodestone, and then the runes flooded with light. The Princesses recoiled in surprise.
“Twilight Sparkle? The password was Twilight Sparkle?” asked the Captain in surprise.
“That’s kind of creepy,” noted the mage with a grimace, “isn’t he more than twice her age?”
“On your guard!” Luna demanded, her horn lighting up with power. “We did not guess the password! This gateway is opening from the other side!” A sharp crack came from the magic construct, and a flickering magic portal yawned open.
Upon hearing this, the soldiers all fell into defensive positions as instructed. The pegasi spread into a wide circle, and the grounded ponies shifted into offensive phalanxes. Celestia gulped nervously, dreading the imminent encounter. Luna prepared a devastating spell volley, preparing to turn the rebel equines into dust with a moment’s notice.

The portal shimmered, and a blue unicorn leapt out and onto the forest floor.
Trixie’s eyes widened in shock when she saw her exit point completely surrounded by spears, readied spells, and a pair of Equestrian Princesses. For once the magician found herself completely speechless, confused both by the reception and badly intimidated by the level of power being aimed at her.
That suffocating terror jumped a few notches when Ranma exited the portal and landed next to her.
Immediately, all eyes turned to the pigtailed stallion. Several soldiers gasped, and the mages almost released their magic spells before they realized that the stallion had Princess Twilight Sparkle laying on his back.
“S-Saotome?” Luna stuttered in surprised, her horn dimming.
“Oh. Uh… it was Luna, right? Hey…” Ranma coughed nervously, looking around at the soldiers surrounding him. “So… we found Sparks! She’ll be fine! Probably!”
Princess Celestia stepped forward, her head held high and her gaze hard. “So you are the pony Saotome Ranma.”
“Yes,” Ranma replied.
“And NOT the pony Havoc,” Celestia pressed.
“Long story.” Ranma paused. “But also yes.”
Princess Celestia nodded. “It seems you have recovered my student, Twilight Sparkle. I do not yet understand the circumstances, but I would be pleased if you put her down before we continue.”
Ranma silently obeyed, lowering himself onto his belly and then gently sliding Twilight off onto the ground.
“Good,” Celestia said approvingly. “Now, then. We have much to discuss, Mister Saotome. It seems you and your partner have been through a great deal, but I’m afraid I must impose upon you for more of your time. We must know exactly how you came upon my student, what happened to the rebel sorcerers, as well as how you came to be confused to a well-known criminal…”

As the white Princess went into detail about the upcoming interrogation, Ranma stood back up and leaned over to Trixie. “Exit plan?” he whispered.
Trixie glanced left and right. The mages’ horns were no longer glowing, so she was confident that they were at least several seconds ahead of being obliterated if they tried to run. “Trixie only has a smoke screen.”
“I can make it work,” Ranma hissed back.

“… and of course, if you have any information as to the location of the MacGuffin Stone, that artifact must also be recovered without delay. Only with this can we finally put this terrible disturbance to rest and assure the safety of Equestria,” Celestia intoned, spreading her wings elegantly. Luna smiled in encouragement. “So I ask you, Saotome Ranma, may I count on your cooperation in this endeavor? Will you help me end this rebellion and bring justice to my kingdom?”
“No,” Ranma replied.
Trixie’s horn flashed in the next instant, and a cloud of smoke exploded around her.
The Princess sisters recoiled at the rejection, but the soldiers immediately rushed forward to cut off all avenues of escape. The earth ponies created a ring of spears around the churning cloud, and the unicorns prepared spells to fire past them if necessary.
When the smoke dissipated, however, the only pony remaining was an unconscious purple alicorn.

Trixie clutched her hat tightly against her head while leaves and branches whipped past her at blinding speed. Her rear legs were clamped tightly around Ranma’s body, holding her desperately against the stallion’s back while he vaulted from tree branch to tree branch.
“Trixie needs to get back into Coltson before we leave!” the magician shouted to the martial artist. “Trixie isn’t leaving the wagon behind!”
Ranma nodded, slowing down his pace slightly. “Got it. I’ll drop you off on the edge of town and you can head in. If they’ve locked it up or something, let me know and I can just break it out.”
“Oh, that WOULD be the perfect end to our stay here, wouldn’t it?” Trixie griped. “Breaking into a wagon lot. Ugh.”
Several minutes passed, and eventually Ranma jumped down onto the forest floor to continue their escape on the ground. Trixie didn’t dismount, as Ranma was still galloping far faster than she could, and it didn’t seem like the martial artist was getting worn out from carrying her.
“So… still have the MacGuffin Stone?” Ranma asked.
“Yes. Still planning on following Trixie around all the time?” Trixie retorted.
Ranma chuckled. “If you don’t mind.”
“Trixie DOES mind, as a matter of fact! Trixie constantly has to clean up after your mistakes and is frequently endangered by all the ponies chasing after you! Blood Rite and possibly Swan Song are still out there, and we can’t be sure that Sparkle or her pet lizard will be able to clear your name with the authorities! It’s not like they can explain why there’s another pony who looks exactly like you committing terrible crimes! Hay, at this point Trixie wouldn’t be shocked if that dragon from before came back and started trying to kill us just because you fought him off!”
Ranma didn’t answer her rant, but she did notice, from her position on his back, that his ears flipped down and pinned against the side of his head.
“… But as always, Trixie is magnanimous and kind,” the magician muttered, “and you DID save Trixie’s life once or twice back there. As long as you can do your job properly as Trixie’s protector, then Trixie will continue to employ you.”
“Thank you, Trix!” Ranma said, followed by a sniffling sound.
Trixie raised an eyebrow. “Are you crying?”
“No!” the stallion replied quickly. “There was a twig that got in my eye! From earlier! That’s all! I don’t cry, okay? You’re wrong! It’s just dusty around here!”
Trixie, for once, didn’t have anything to say while Ranma continued sputtering protests. She smirked silently and relaxed on Ranma’s back, content in know that the stallion would deliver her to her next destination.
Wherever that might be.

Part One: End