Moon Dancer groans. Her head throbs and aches from unforeseen complications. She cannot concentrate on any of her research, let alone function biologically.
Idiot. Idiot.
What did she hope to gain by venturing outside? Get some fresh air? Try to loosen up her distracted mind? Attempt to talk to somepony else?
Why? Why does she put herself through this again?
Moon Dancer crushes the quill onto the desk in frustration, knocking the inkpot beside her. The liquid spills everywhere, coating her papers with blackness as dark as Luna's night. She curses; whatever work she has done is now a forgotten dream. Annoyance bleeds into anger, flaring in Moon Dancer's thoughts, tainting the calm demeanour she had hopelessly aimed to achieve since morning.
Calm, Moon Dancer. Breathe. Let go.
Moon Dancer closes her eyes and breathes. She pays close attention to the rise and fall of her chest, though not without sight, but by simply knowing it to be the case. Moon Dancer does this for some time, eventually quelling the spikes in her mind. She notices birds singing outside, the orchestra a reminder of the nightly serenade she partook in last night. She feels the flowers blooming in the light of Celestia's sun as it soars higher in the sky, a few hours to its peak. A pleasant breeze flows by, splaying her red and violet mane, flowing through her fur.
Moon Dancer opens her eyes, casting them at her desk. The ink still gathers in large clumps, thickening and swirling around. It grows outwards from the tumbled inkpot, a parasitic wave devouring her notes and research material with each passing second.
Off into the volcano it goes.
She uses her magic to sort out whatever is left untouched, placing them aside to clean the desk. Some of the ink has already started to stain through the decades-old wood. Moon Dancer places a restoration spell on the desk to remove the ink locked within the fibres, and after consulting a Woodwork For Unicorns handbook, adds on a polishing spell to finish the job.
Satisfied with her handiwork, Moon Dancer finally looks upon herself. She sighs; the ink richly contrasts against her pale fur. Flicking the broken quill into the dormant volcano - which has now acted as a trashcan for literally everything - she heads across to the bathroom to clean herself off.
Moon Dancer flicks on the shower taps, precisely at a quarter turn and two-fifths for the hot and cold respectively. She has long found out the exact turns needed to obtain the perfect temperature and pressure of water flowing over her; that particular task took surprisingly little time for her compared to some of her more intense projects.
The water doesn't run as she expects to.
Frowning, Moon Dancer flicks the taps either way, attempting to gain a response from the shower head. Not even a drop of water leaks out. She grits her teeth in annoyance, attempting to brute force the knobs into giving a response.
Calm, Moon Dancer. There's another way.
Moon Dancer narrows her eyes in concentration. Although she is not a pegasus, there are still spells a unicorn could use for rudimentary control over the air and water. A cloud of condensation forms in the air above her. Focusing on the intricacies of the moisture gathered within it, she tugs at the cloud, eliciting a trickle of water from it. Forcing a greater stream of magic to flow into the dissipating water, she obtains a stream of water droplets, leading on to a somewhat management rainstorm within the bathtub.
Moon Dancer cuts the connection of her magic, letting the water just flow over her glistening skin. In what little amount of time she has left, she scrubs off the ink splotches, using soap to lather herself, bubbles frothing on a marshmallow-like skin. After rinsing herself off, Moon Dancer steps out of the shower, drying herself with a towel. She looks at herself in the mirror, and sees a fresh face smiling back at her. She immediately turns it to a growl as she steps out, noticing the bottles of cider propped up against her bed.
Alcohol will be the death of her someday.
A niggling thought forces its way through her mind. An idea borne from her paranoia and suspicion of the life she lives in. Something which she listens to with utmost care. What if...
Moon Dancer grabs the remaining bottles of the liquid with her magic, carrying it across to the back of her house, where she performs her testing procedures. There are two rooms, one for physical testing, the other for magical experiments.
Well that didn't work.
Moon Dancer sprawls onto the lab-bench, her tests failing to return positive for an additive, any unknown substance mixed in with the cider, accidentally or otherwise. Filtration, spectroscopy, gravitation, nothing gave her the results she wanted. Her rather limited books on the topic had failed to bring any new information to the table as well.
Still, she had the magical avenue left to go by.
Moon Dancer brings out more samples of the liquid into the other room. Compared to the previous room, it is bare bones in terms of equipment, to say the least. Aside from bookshelves containing rows and shelves containing books to test for magical residues; and magic amplifying runes - for some of the more difficult incantations - carved into the floor, the room had not much else to go for it.
Moon Dancer lays down the liquid in a small beaker. Stepping back, she lights up her horn, starting with basic magical residue recognition. However, within a few seconds, her magic around the beaker flickers. She frowns, curious yet unsettled by the unseen forces tampering with her arcanics. She pours more energy into the spell, intensifying to overcome the resistance.
The beaker jumps.
Blinking, Moon Dancer attempts to work with another spell. When that caused a similar jitter for the beaker, she tries another simple spell. And another one.
And then Moon Dancer decides to blast a beam of pure, unrestrained magic at the anomaly.
The beaker shakes chaotically, juggling the liquid within in an elaborate dance. The unicorn takes a step back, and then another... and another and turns her whole body around to jolt out of the room before the unknown liquid, swirling in black and yellow auras releases the energy it has absorb-
Inconclusive readings. Unknown substance detected. Instructions unclear: laboratory burnt down. Please send further funds to continue project.
Moon Dancer is not a happy pony. Never mind herself, her books almost smoked into nonexistence within that single blast of magic from that... whatever that is! If it weren't for her careful application of a severe amount of protective spells and charms to each single book within her house, a whole century's worth of knowledge would have been gone, reduced to a white pile of ash on the floor. Besides that, one room in her house is now locked off with an warding seal as she waits for the drastic levels of magic to dissipate into the outside atmosphere.
It is only luck that nopony else had noticed the brilliant flash of light from her house. Or perhaps they did, but merely did not feel the thought to care at all too much. For once Moon Dancer feels the need to thank the apathy of most Canterlot ponies in regards to anything other than politics, gossips and themselves.
Currently, Moon Dancer is well on the way to the local Canterlot library. She could report the dangerous substance to the authorities, but that would result in an explanation of how she acquired such dangerous goods. As far as her strong skills go, creating an elaborate story is not one of them, when telling the truth is out of the question.
Somepony gave me this bottle of cider last night.
"Now what is a young mare like you doing out in the streets in the middle of the night? Definitely not part of the drug cartel that we have been ruthlessly down for the past few weeks now are we?" one might ask. A little too enthusiastically one may imagine as well, considering their general ineptitude and failure in handling anything other than their own body.
No, that's not going to work well.
So Moon Dancer decides to venture outside once more, to acquire research on the strange and exotics arcanics present in the liquid. That is, despite her face smoked to the point of being caked in ash and thus ignoring the faces the Canterlot nobles make at her, until they either notice the round glasses and then immediately make the connection to an 'experiment gone wrong', or that she simply loses the fight against their goldfish-like attention span.
Moon Dancer instead focuses on the cobbled streets beneath her. She may not be an expert on geology, but she can certainly stand her ground in the basics of subject.
She counts them.
"Two plus two is four, minus one is three..."
Moon Dancer does not know how long it took for her to dissolve into a pile of illogical ramblings. She had lost count at around five-hundred-and-twelve before venturing off in a tangent to the deeper realms of mathematics. Namely, proving the basic fundamental concept of arithmetics.
Riveting stuff really.
It is not until a round, brightly-coloured fruit makes a first impression with her face that she snaps out of her delusions. She glares at the intruder.
An apple.
"Hey sugarcube, you all right?"
Moon Dancer raises her head, still carrying the murderous glare in her eyes as she searches for the mare who had just committed a cardinal sin. The headache once again threatens to pound her mind, forcing her to grit her teeth to fend off the pain. As if being blasted by a wave of exotic energies wasn't enough...
"I'm mighty sorry for chuckin' my apple at you, but it seemed you were tied up more than a rattlesnake after it meets my granny. And she can twist them real fancy as well, and that's knot a lie either."
Moon Dancer notices the chuckling offender. Orange fur; pale yellow mane; earth pony with a trio of apples as her cutie mark.
She always mentally classifies the ponies on her hit-list. The list may only have one item on it now, but the organisation would pay off in the end with the amount of time she would have saved.
Calm, Moon Dancer. Breathe. There's another way around this.
Moon Dancer walks over to the farmer, each step calculated with the exact position and power needed to drive herself towards her destination. With the pony being none the wiser, she prepares a series of spells to... deliver hell to her doorstep.
There are some points in life when a pony crosses the line. A questionable boundary of ethics and morality. A key on making good judgement of a tense situation. A grey area between what is right.
And what simply needs to be done.
Moon Dancer doesn't cross that line today, fortunately for the orange pony, for a simple fact that she notices a glow of amber radiating from a necklace, inscribed with a number of ancient symbols. The centrepiece of it is what strikes her the most important; a crystal in the shape of an apple.
One of the elements.
"Anyway, the name's-"
"Applejack. One of three apple farmers in Sweet Apple Acres, and recognised as one of the most hardiest of ponies across Equestria. One of the element bearers, representing the value of honesty - her gem shaped as an apple.
"The gem which should be given back to the tree of harmony, alongside with the rest of the bearers after the events of the Plunderseed Intrusion' a few months ago..." Moon Dancer reads off facts about the earth pony, as if is holding a book on her life at that very moment.
Applejack's chuckles die down as Moon Dancer slowly narrows her eyes in icy resentment.
"...Also currently about to be bucked to wherever and back again unless she explains to the mare in front of her why in Tartarus she threw an apple straight to her face. Unless of course she doesn't value her life at all, which said pony completely agrees with at this moment." She raises her eyebrow. "I personally recommend you follow her advice; it may just save your life."
"- Applejack. But I reckon you already know that. Uh... I don't mean to pry, how did you know all of that?" She fidgets behind her cart, trying to gain some distance between her and the manifestation of Death knocking at her door..
Moon Dancer rolls her eyes and steps closer. "The elements and their bearers were one of the first things I did research on ever since Twilight left me for them. And then kept tabs through these years. Now, about the fruit." She bites on the apple, accentuating the crunch as to perhaps imply bad times to happen to the earth pony.
Applejack simply shakes her head in response. "Uhh... alright then. I think we have a silly misunderstandin' here. I would never mean to hurt you like that sugarcube. I just couldn't stand there and watch you walk circles round the plaza like that. More so when you started rambling away like a plucked goose after the fifth turn. How about we start again now, after you give me some room to breathe, if you wouldn't mind being so neighbourly."
Moon Dancer steps back, dumbstruck. How could she have simply spiralled into such despair? She had memorised the entire route to the library the moment she was able to attend it on her lonesome!
"Ah... thanks for that." Applejack takes a deep breath as to prove the point. "Now, I'm Applejack, and you must be"- she cocks her head, light bulbs flashing within her mind -"Moon Dancer! Nice to meet you! Twilight had told me about you after... she came home from her Canterlot trip."
Moon Dancer squints at the apple, eyeing the contours of the bite. "Is that all she said about me?"
Applejack once again uncomfortably fidgets on the ground. "Well, she did tell me and the girls more than that, to tell you the truth. But uh... besides that, why do you have a bottle of my cider floating beside you?"
Moon Dancer repeats firmly, "Is that all she said about me?"
Applejack searches the crowd for a distraction, biting her lip as she does so.
Fortunately, such an escape does come to her rescue.
In the form of a ten ton boulder rolling down the middle of the street.
Moon Dancer's eyes widen.
Not at the boulder specifically, but at the tan coloured stallion riding it.
The hitlist has now expanded to two ponies.