Nineteen - Crash and Burn (1)
Starlight had made many mistakes in her young life. She knew this. She wasn’t the best pony, and she wouldn’t ever fully pull herself back from the pits she had crawled down in the past. She was the reason ‘subliminal brainwashing’ had been added to Equestria’s list of punishable crimes. She was also the indirect reason ‘extensive friendship therapy’ had been added to the list of available punishments, thanks to Twilight’s sympathy and her desperate begging not to go to Tartarus. Of course, she knew that Tartarus was a bit of a stretch, but when you have the maximum emotional stability of a teenager after a breakup, you tend to assume worst case scenarios.
“This is bad. This is bad. This is really really really really bad.”
“Starlight—”
“It’s bad, Sunset! So bad! So very, very bad!”
“Look, I’m not disagreeing with you, but you have to calm down—”
“CALM DOWN?” Starlight looked at Sunset like she was crazy. Sunset did likewise, but in a much calmer manner. “There are changelings in there! With Twilight! And… and Pinkie, and Rainbow, and, and Fluttershy… and the boring ones, too! We have to warn them!” Her eyes widened. “Shit, that Rainbow Dash that was in the bathroom! She must’ve been a changeling!”
“I don’t know. Probably. Why don’t you—”
“I’m going to go save Twilight!” Starlight shouted over her shoulder as she bolted back into the caverns.
Sunset sighed. “You do that.”
Starlight didn’t hear her as her hooves kicked clouds of dust off the rocks below. She barrelled through the tunnels, nearly crashing into the walls on her turns, so fast that she couldn’t properly see where she was going. But changelings were attacking, and she had no idea where they were or who they were or who they’d already captured.
So, when she found herself magically frozen in place, she once again assumed the worst.
“You won’t get away with this, Chrysalis!” she shouted, shattering the telekinetic hold on her with a surge of mana. “You—Twilight?”
The princess smiled and waved.
“Oh, I’m so glad I ran into you!”
“You almost did,” Twilight teased. “You should be glad I have quick reflexes.”
Starlight didn’t seem to hear her. “Twilight! The changelings have gotten in!”
Twilight pursed her lips. “I suspected as much. This is bad.”
“That’s what I said!” Starlight wailed. “But you know how Rainbow Dash screamed from the bathroom? She was probably replaced by a changeling!”
“Then there’s no time to lose! We have to warn them; come on, Sunset!”
Starlight cocked her head to the side. “Sunset?”
“Starlight, sorry. There’s been a lot on my mind recently.”
Starlight narrowed her eyes.
Sunset, who knew how to keep her head in tense situations (unlike some ponies she could mention), had the common sense to teleport straight to the bathroom that Rainbow Dash had “fallen” in instead of running rabid through the potentially-changeling-infested caves and probably getting lost.
At first glance, the bathroom seemed to be exactly as they had left it; ridiculously gaudy and probably worth a fortune from all the gold paint. The toilet paper was rolled all across the ground and various bottles (why did Discord have Extra-Strength Stress Relief Bubble Bath?) had been knocked over from what Sunset now knew had been a scuffle between Rainbow and the changelings. Upon further inspection, Sunset discovered a chrysalis hidden behind the shower curtain.
The fuck, she thought. How’d we miss that?
A minute later, Rainbow Dash exploded into consciousness, bellowing a warcry and punching Sunset in the face.
“Runbrw Desh,” she growled around her hoof.
Rainbow set her hoof on the ground. “Oh. Heh, thought you were one of the changelings. My bad.”
“To be honest, it’s probably a good idea to be suspicious of everyone right now. The base is being overrun; you need to evacuate.”
“Are you kidding?!” Rainbow jumped into the air, waving her hooves around. “Lemme at ‘em!”
“Rainbow, no. You’ve had one lesson. What can you do against an army of changelings?”
“So we’re just going to run away?”
“Yes!” Sunset said, exasperated. “We can’t fight them, so we retreat until we can! We were planning on gathering reinforcements before fighting Chrysalis anyway; if she can beat Discord and all the princesses, what do you think you’re going to do?!”
“I’m going to fight her, that’s what!” Rainbow Dash shouted at Sunset, flecks of saliva spraying out of her muzzle. “I’m going to fight her and I’m going to win! I don’t care what you think, Sunset! Just you watch, I’ll be flying circles around her!”
“Rain—”
“No! You don’t get a say in it! I’m tired of you keeping us cooped up in a cave while you go and have all the adventures!”
“They already beat you once!”
Rainbow flushed. “They caught me when I was going to the bathroom! What was I supposed to do?! Ever since we got to Equestria all you’ve been doing is telling me to sit still! I’m not the kind of girl who sits still!”
“It’s for your safety!” Sunset punctuated her sentence with a stomp of her hoof. “What do you think’s going to happen if you fight the changelings? What do you think’s going to happen if Chrysalis so much as sees you? You’re reckless, Dash! And it might pay off in soccer games but this isn’t some game—if you don’t have the sense to keep yourself from getting hurt, then I’ve got to step in. You wanna know why I haven’t let you leave the cave? It’s because you’d DIE!”
Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes to menacing slits. “Try me,” she growled, flapping as fast as she could out of the room.
Sunset’s horn flashed, and, in a starburst of light, Rainbow Dash vanished.
“Sorry,” she mumbled to the empty hallway. It was a lie.
“So lemme get this straight.” Applejack adjusted her hat. “You live in a world full a ponies, and when you needed somethin’ to pull yer carriage, you went out of yer way to learn a spell to turn mice into horses?”
“What?” Twilight frowned. “I forgot, okay?”
“You forgot what species you are?” Rarity said.
“I—let’s get back to the story.”
“Oh, yes! The Grand Galloping Galla sounds just wonderful,” Fluttershy said dreamily.
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Twilight deadpanned. “Anyway, when we got to the gala, we all split up; Fluttershy went to the gardens to see the animals, Rainbow Dash went straight for the wonderbolts, Applejack set up her booth, Rarity went to court Prince Blueblood, and Pinkie Pie went straight for the party.”
“I bet I made the party three times as partylicious!” Pinkie boasted.
“Well, you certainly tried, but the Canterlot nobles weren’t having it. Now, right around this time, Rarity was coming in with Blueblood—”
Rarity squeed. “Oh, I knew I would get him in the end!”
Twilight resolved to let the story tell itself. “—and Applejack was entering from the opposite direction with her cart, hoping to get some additional sales.”
Applejack snorted. “Bet other-me didn’t have too much luck there. Those high class chair-rockers don’t have two taste buds feelin’ the right way.”
Twilight grimaced. “They can be rather stiff sometimes. So, Pinkie, in an effort to rile up the crowd, dove onto them, but she landed on Applejack’s cart, sending a cake flying through the air.”
“I think I know where this is going,” Rainbow moaned.
“The cake was headed straight for Blueblood”—Rarity gasped—“so he panicked and used Rarity as a shield.”
Rarity gasped again, but much more violently this time. “That—that monster!” she screeched. “What kind of prince is he?”
“According to you after the gala, and uncharming royal pain in the flank whose greatest selling point is that he’ll lower your standards.”
Rarity nodded in satisfaction.
“So, Rarity was incredibly angry, and Blueblood was so scared he ran into a statue and knocked it over. That’s when Rainbow Dash though she could impress the wonderbolts by catching the statue.”
Rainbow winced. “How? I mean, I’m super awesome and all, blah blah, but… isn’t it heavy?”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Fluttershy said.
Twilight shrugged. “Rainbow’s stronger than she looks. Plus, she didn’t really succeed. She lost her balance, and ended up knocking down all the decorative pillars in the ballroom like dominoes.” Twilight giggled.
“Well, dang,” Applejack said. “This can’t get any worse, can it?”
“That’s what I thought,” Twilight said, her smile growing. “But then, Fluttershy, who was intent on catching some of the animals in the gardens, chased them all into ballroom, creating even more chaos!”
“Sorry,” Fluttershy said weakly.
“Nothing to apologize for, dear. It wasn’t even you.” Rarity sighed. “That sounds almost as disastrous as our school functions.”
Suddenly, a high pitched blaring filled the air, and Twilight’s horn started flashing wildly.
Pinkie poked at her horn. “Ooh! Shiny!”
Twilight swore. “The alarm! The changelings must’ve gotten in!”
“What?!” Rarity’s eyes ballooned. “How’d they find us?”
“I don’t know,” Twilight said, doing her best to remain calm. “Discord warded this whole place against divination spells, but Chrysalis could have found a way around it. Or maybe they did some other form of tracking, I don’t know much about changeling magic.”
“Let’s run!” Fluttershy suggested, vehemently. “We should run, right? Please let me run!”
“Wait! Stay near me!”
“TWILIGHT!”
She turned. “Starlight! What’s going on?”
Starlight answered by firing a laser beam at Rainbow Dash. Twilight immediately jumped into action, taking to the air and firing her own barrage at Starlight, who hastily put up a shield.
“Wait! I’m not the changeling, Rainbow is!”
“Why should I believe you? The alarm just went off, there was no time for her to be replaced!”
Pinkie’s head popped into Twilight’s vision from above; she had somehow managed to get on Twilight's back. “She’s telling the truth!” Pinkie pointed across the cave, where a changeling lay dazed on the ground.
“Oh.” Twilight’s horn fizzled and she awkwardly carried herself and Pinkie to the floor. “Sorry.”
“No worries,” Starlight said. “You had every right to suspect me.”
“I do have a question, though. Why did the alarm go off late?”
Starlight began to sweat. “Uhhh. I don’t know?”
“Didn’t you and Sunset check it?”
“We, uh… It malfunctioned?”
“Who cares about the alarm!” Fluttershy screamed. “There are bigger problems!”
“Yeah! Like findin’ Rainbow!”
“Don’t worry, Applejack,” a voice said from a tunnel. “Already took care of it.”
“Sunset?”
Sweetie Drops walked into the lounge, and was instantly assaulted by an intense feeling of confusion. The mess of couches had been pushed to the perimeter and robbed of their cushions, which had been laid out as a makeshift safety net around Bulk Biceps, who was the main source of Sweetie’s bewilderedness. Bulk, under the bad influence of Spike, was lifting a massive inverse pyramid of ponies above his head. As far as Bon Bon could tell, said pyramid consisted of every pony in the room except for herself and the Rich family, who had reclaimed one of the fancier couches and were busying themselves by trying to look higher-class than everypony else. (Considering their company, it was quite an easy task. Which was fitting, because those were the only tasks the Rich family bothered with.)
“Oh! Bon Bon!” Spike broke into a grin. “Great timing! We were just about to add the final corner, but we ran out of ponies.” He directed a glare at the Riches. Filthy didn’t notice, Diamond Tiara looked to the ground, and Spoiled glared back with tangible contempt.
Sweetie smiled sweetly at the drake. “I would love to, really, and I’m sure it’d be fun, but I really have to find Lyra right now. Besides, I’m not sure if Bulk could take the extra strain.”
“I CAN TAKE ANYTHING!” he shouted. “BRING IT ON!”
“You should really arm-wrestle him sometime,” Spike joked quietly. “Maybe it’d bring down his ego.”
Bon Bon laughed nervously. “Who, me? An ordinary mare like me wouldn’t be able to beat somepony like him!”
Spike’s face flattened. “Are you really still trying to keep that secret identity thing?”
Bon Bon waved her hoof through the air as though she were beating Spike’s question into submission with some blunt implement. “Oh, pssh! What secret identity? Stop pulling my leg.”
“Come on, it’s not that hard to figure out. Sunset instantly said your name when they needed an earth pony experienced in combat, and Twilight mentioned that she didn’t know what was up with that, and so I asked Lyra and she was like, ‘Oh, yeah, Bonnie’s a super hot secret agent, don’t tell anyone.’ ”
“She said what.” Sweetie’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “We need to have a serious talk about secrets. Again. Where is she? Why isn’t she here?”
“She was here. But then we started…” Spike gestured vaguely to the pony-pyramid. “…this, and she was all like ‘This is stupid, I’m gonna find Bon Bon’, and then she said something about cannibalism.”
“Cannibalism?”
“Yeah, said she was going to eat you. She was joking, right?”
Bon Bon flushed. “Let’s go with that.”
“But until she comes back, you can totally help us! It’s for science!”
Spike’s enthusiastic hoof-pump (claw-pump?) was punctuated by a shrill scream bouncing down the cave walls. Their eyes widened, and Bon Bon rushed out of the room.
“That was Lyra! Something happened!”
After a few moments, Spike turned to Bulk.
“Darn. There goes our corner.” A beat. “She’ll be fine on her own, right?”
Meanwhile, on Mount Canterlot
“I don’t remember Oratorio being this high up,” Aria complained.
“Probably because we haven’t ever had to climb up to it! The last time we left it was because we were exiled, remember?”
Adagio grimaced. “I wish I didn’t.”
“My hands hurt.”
“Oh, suck it up. You won’t have them for much longer anyway.”
“She has a point! All this climbing is exhausting! And I’m hungry!”
Adagio fished half a sandwich out of her pocket and dropped it on Sonata’s face.
“There. Now shut up and climb.”
“How are we even supposed to get into Oratorio anyway?” Aria asked. “The guards will spot us before we make it two feet.”
“I’m betting on them not recognizing us.”
“You’re right! Ooh, we could pretend to be real humans! We were cast away from our home dimension by a vengeful magician, and now we wander Equestria alone! All we want is some generous hospitality!”
Aria rolled her eyes at Sonata. “Yeah, ‘cause if there’s one thing the sirens are known for, it’s their sympathy.”
“Hey, it’s not like you have any ideas!”
“No ideas is better than stupid ideas.”
“That’s not true! At least stupid ideas have a chance to work!”
“So you admit your idea was stupid?”
“I never said that!”
Adagio nearly screamed. “Sweet muses, do you two ever shut up?! The next one of you to talk gets thrown down the mountain!”
Aria snorted. “Yeah, right. You don’t have the guts.”
Sonata looked over her shoulder and sighed. “We’re going to have to go back for her now, aren’t we?”
“Worth it.”