Chapter 15
“Get close to me!” Rarity commanded. Her companions complied, and her magical aura enveloped them all before hardening into a shimmering ice-blue shield. The vines sliced at it relentlessly, sending cracks spider-webbing out at each impact, but the magic pumping furiously out of Rarity’s horn reinforced the barrier almost as quickly as the cracks verged on shattering it. The vines’ thorns would have been lethal enough on their own, but Rarity had to particularly worry about Surprise getting hurt just as much as she had to worry about the rest of them getting poisoned.
The poison undoubtedly in the vines may or may not have been potent enough to incapacitate them, sealing their fate as failures of the ‘test’ before any healing spells or replenishing gimmicks could be used. With the white pegasus, though, one snick across her leg would spell instant doom for them all in the form of a thousand pop rocks exploding in the confines of the corridor. The protection the Party Cannon XLs offered their user did nothing to spare anypony who just happened to be nearby.
“Alright, just stay close, and we’ll run as fast as we can to the exit,” the white unicorn instructed. “I’ll keep the shield moving with us, but be on your guard just in case one of the vines breaks through, or my horn becomes too exhausted.”
Rarity strongly hoped that last possibility didn’t happen. She had no way of knowing just how long The Hall of Life was, as it continually curled upwards and out of sight, so she also had no idea whether or not she could maintain her shield throughout the whole test or only the first bit of it. And, at least if a vine broke through, she could reinforce the breach and slice it in half. Becoming too exhausted to continue would leave her useless save for her weapons harness. And, while the weapon didn’t miss and could obliterate a vine instantly, it could only take out one vine at a time.
“Let’s move!” Rarity announced, and the group took off at a sprint.
“So you’re leaving me behind again?”
Rarity’s eyes went wide. She tripped, tumbled, and landed on her back as the shield dispersed at her broken concentration. Megan and Firefly instantly began barraging the incoming vines with zaps and halts in time, Surprise almost dancing as she zoomed in and out of the oncoming enemy, thankfully without a scratch. But the white unicorn did nothing as she lay on her back from where she’d flipped completely over, her eyes staring in mind-breaking horror at the figure who had just spoken, her stomach twisting from the voice it spoke with.
“S…Swe…” Rarity tried to whisper, to shout, to scream.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten my name too!” the small pony across from her continued. The vines touched neither the familiar pony nor the two flanking her, actually moving out of the fillies’ way as they trotted over to the group. “Typical Rarity. Never had enough time to even bother remembering your own sister.”
“Come on, Rarity!” Megan demanded. “We have to get out of here!”
But Rarity wasn’t listening. In fact, she wasn’t even sure her brain was functioning properly any more. That would make a whole lot more sense than for the three ponies approaching her to be real.
“But… but you’re… DEAD!” the white unicorn gasped as she leapt to her hooves. “You can’t be here! This is impossible!”
“I can’t be here?” The filly looked genuinely hurt, right before she broke into a snide grin. Her companions snickered as well. “You’re one to talk, considering you actually WEREN’T there for the rest of my life!”
“This—this has to be a trick!” Rarity desperately thought aloud. “You’re some kind of mind-game Fluttershy’s imprint is trying to play on me—”
“Could a mind-game do this?” the filly inquired. She trotted up to Rarity, brushing the curling pink and purple mane out of her wide green eyes as she did so. She raised her hoof, coated in the same snowy-white as Rarity, and stretched it out towards her big sister. “Could a mind-game touch you?”
“Rarity, no!” Firefly gasped, whirling around with her weapons harness ready and moving to bite her trigger-bit. Before she could do so, though, the orange pegasus filly with the purple mane and tail that had been flanking the young unicorn launched herself into the air at the split pegasus.
“You know what?” the orange filly laughed as it knocked Firefly to the ground and pinned her there with more force than such a little pony could’ve possibly possessed. “I was the first you. I was Rainbow Dash the Second. I actually volunteered when the real Rainbow passed away and her imprint needed a replacement, but after I realized what I’d bitten into, I couldn’t spit it back out. I never could save myself from becoming her, no matter how hard I tried. And believe me, I tried. But no matter how hard I fought, no matter how much I screamed, and cried, and begged, one day, I was gone. And you know what else? You’re not half as strong as I was. Whether you pass the test or not, whether you are perfected or not, it won’t matter in the end. Because it won’t be you who comes out at the end of it all. It’ll be her.”
Simultaneously, Megan was poised to snap her hand appendages at the advancing ghost-given-flesh that was even now reaching out to Rarity, who was too transfixed to move. Before she could act, the human was slammed into the ground as well. Like her pegasus compatriot, the yellow earth pony filly with a red mane and tail shouldn’t have been able to hold anywhere near as much strength as she used to tackle Megan.
“What have we here?” the earth pony filly inquired with a smirk as it dug its impossibly heavy hooves into Megan’s rib cage. “A two-leg? Ah was wonderin’ when one o’ you folk would show up round these parts. It’s not like we ponies can stop ya, after all. I mean, the first sentient race y’all encountered outside your home dimension sure couldn’t, ‘specially after you blew up their universe! Sure, y’all made a charter after that not to interact with other races unless they wanted your company, but that don’t undo the extinction of an entire intelligent species!”
Unstopped by either Firefly or Megan, much less Surprise who was still dancing through the vines behind the group, the unicorn filly’s hoof made contact with Rarity. The white unicorn was still too mentally traumatized to even try and think of why she shouldn’t let an apparition of her long-dead little sister touch her.
But when the Sweetie Bell-who-wasn’t did touch her, Rarity did learn why such contact was unadvisable.
The white unicorn’s vision exploded in a flash, and the world disappeared as it drowned in darkness.
. . .
“I’ve told you all, I don’t have any idea what’s going on!” Twilight’s voice hissed through the black void. It could have been Twilight’s imprint, but there were subtle differences in the voice that seemed to indicate the original rather than that warped duplicate. The imprint had only been made when Twilight was older, after all. This voice seemed ever-so-slightly younger. “It defies everything I’ve ever learned about magic! This shouldn’t be possible!”
Rarity’s eyes opened instantly at hearing the voice. She leapt to her hooves, scanning for the speaker, and her jaw dropped.
There. Right in front of her. There it was.
The Carousel Boutique.
It looked exactly as it had the day before she’d fallen asleep. Not a single shingle or stone was out of place.
“What’s… this is…” the white unicorn tried to say, though the words refused to form in her mind, much less exit her mouth.
“We get that, Sugar Cube!” Applejack’s voice came next, also in a low but urgent tone. Rarity had heard nothing about the orange apple farmer since she arrived in the new era. She briefly wondered why before her mind realized she should probably be wondering where she was, AND WHY THE CAROUSEL BOUTIQUE WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER. “We know you didn’t mean fer this to happen. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re the one who gave Rarity the apple and you know more about magic than all the rest o’ us put together! If anypony can fix this, it has to be you!”
Rainbow’s imprint had revealed that there were inter-company meetings, so if the imprints were all somehow currently communicating with each other all at once, then that would make sense. But that far from explained the presence of Rarity’s home, still intact, untouched by time. Wait a minute, if The Carousel Boutique was here, then…
The white unicorn’s gaze swept all around her, and she gasped. The Carousel Boutique was just the beginning. Off in the distance, she could see Sugar Cube Corner. And there was Twilight’s library, and—
She was in Ponyville. Not Pinkieville, PONYville.
What in The ULE was going on?! No, scratch that—if this really was somehow Ponyville, then she wasn’t in The ULE anymore.
Maybe she never had been. Rarity started as the thought struck her. No, that was impossible, right? Sure it was—just as impossible as it was to sleep for a thousand years under an enchantment even The Royal Sisters couldn’t break.
Had it… could it really have all been just a dream? What if instead of sleeping for a thousand years, Rarity had only slept a single night just as intended? What if the enchanted apple had just had the unforeseen side effect of causing the most disturbing nightmares the white unicorn had ever experienced? But if that was so, why had Rarity awoken outside her home rather than in it?
“What about Princess Celestia?” Rainbow Dash’s voice inquired.
Rarity’s head whipped around, her attention locking on to the source of the noise. If this was somehow all real, if she really was back in her own time, then those weren’t the voices of imprints.
A desperate hope sparking in Rarity’s eyes, she cautiously trotted over to the apparent source of the slightly-muffled voices.
‘Careful now, Rarity…’ the white unicorn chided herself. ‘Don’t get your hopes up. This could just be another sick trick—’
Her friends. There. All of them. They were in there. In her shop.
A teary grin broke out on Rarity’s face. She was about to call out to them, but just then Twilight shattered any hope of that being a course of action that would do any good.
The lavender unicorn, like all the others, had been surrounding where Rarity’s bed was supposed to be. Before Rarity could say anything, though, Twilight walked away from the group and began pacing in between the window and what was revealed to indeed be the bed. But there was also somepony on the bed, sound asleep, oblivious to the concerned conversation going on around her.
“No…” Rarity whispered. “Please, no…”
But there was no mistaking the elegantly curled purple mane, long eyelashes, and painstakingly brushed white coat. It could have been just more of the trick. It could have been some illusory doppelgänger, if not for Opalescence’s soundly sleeping form curled up on top of the dozing creature.
“I’m getting more and more afraid that it might come to that,” Twilight admitted as she paced the room. “But as you all know, both Princesses Celestia and Luna are extraordinarily busy, and Cadance is still on that diplomatic trip with my brother. I want to take her to The Canterlot College first and see if any of the experts there can do anything, but after that I’m going straight to Celestia.”
“You don’t think she’ll be asleep forever, do you?” Fluttershy questioned.
“Of course not, silly!” Pinkie Pie piped up, her ever-present smile casting hope like the beam of a lighthouse. Too bad Rarity already knew how this storm ended, and the ship lost at sea never made it back home. “I’m sure that by this time next week, we’ll all be jammin’ out at my ‘Rarity Finally Woke Up’ party!”
“Yeah, Sugar Cube!” Applejack agreed. “If it comes to it, there ain’t no magic too powerful fer Celestia to not be able ta’ fix!”
Fluttershy nodded, smiling slightly.
“What’s going on in here?” inquired a voice Rarity had just heard. Her friends turned, wearing looks of shocked surprise as if they’d just been caught red-hoofed committing some horrible crime. There was Sweetie Bell, standing in the doorway to her older sister’s bedroom.
“Pinkie, you were supposed to be watching the door!” Twilight hissed as she and the others hastily moved to cover the sleeping Rarity from sight.
“And you were supposed to be the smart one!” Pinkie hissed back. “And you trusted me! Now we’ve both messed up!”
“Sweetie Bell!” Applejack announced a little too loudly to the filly. “What are you doin’ here? You an’ Applebloom an’ Scootaloo was having a rip-roaring time at yer clubhouse when I left the farm… uh, why don’t you go back there for a little while longer?”
“Because today’s our Sister Day,” Sweetie Bell responded, unease in her voice as she tried to crane her neck to see what her sister’s friends were hiding. “Rarity and I spend an afternoon together every week. What are you all doing here?”
The friends all looked at one another with pervasive discomfort. At last Twilight sighed and trotted over to Sweetie Bell, revealing the filly’s sleeping sister on the bed.
“Why is she asleep? The young pony inquired. “Is she sick? She seemed fine last week.”
“We didn’t want to tell you this yet, but I suppose now is just as good a time as any,” Twilight ventured cautiously. “You see, well… You know how your sister has been suffering from insomnia lately?”
“In-som-na-whatsit?” Sweetie Bell tried to echo. “I thought she was suffering from not being able to get to sleep. Is that why she’s sleeping now? Did she stay up all night again and has to make up for it?”
“Sort of…” Twilight replied. “You see, a few days ago Rarity came to my library to request a spell that would help her sleep. I cast a simple slumber enchantment on an apple and gave it to her. The sleep-spell worked, but… well, as you can see, it hasn’t worn off yet.”
“You mean she can’t wake up?” Sweetie Bell questioned, having trotted over to her sisters’ bedside. “Can’t you fix it with your magic, Twilight?”
“I’ve been trying since we found out the enchantment wasn’t wearing off,” the lavender unicorn explained. “But don’t worry. We’re taking Rarity to see some experts in Canterlot later today. If that doesn’t work, Celestia will break the spell. Your sister should be awake in one or two days at most.”
Sweetie Belle smiled a bit in relief at this, but still looked understandably upset and more than a little fearful.
Then the world began to dissolve again.
“No!” Rarity cried out. “Not again! Don’t leave me again!”
She beat her hooves on the window, but the glass didn’t make a sound, didn’t so much as shake. Her friends didn’t hear a word of it, nor did her little sister.
The world went black again. In the darkness, an all-too-familiar voice whispered “We didn’t leave you, Rarity. You left us.”
“No!” the white unicorn denied as focus returned to the world, or whatever nightmare of a memory this was. “That’s not true! I never wanted to leave any of you!”
“Tell me that to my face.”
Rarity’s head whirled around, and tears welled up in her eyes.
“No… No, make it stop!” the white unicorn wailed. “I don’t want to see this!”
The location hadn’t shifted, though a few key details had. The Carousel Boutique was still standing, but it looked like it had been boarded up for quite some time. A blanket of thick white also covered everything, as smoke curled out of the chimneys of a significantly larger Ponyville.
But Rarity saw none of that. No matter how much she wanted to be watching anything else but what she saw before her, she couldn’t wrench her eyes away.
A young mare with a white coat and decidedly longer but still unmistakably curled pink-and-purple mane and tail was standing not more than a few yards away. Hoofprints in the snow wove out of sight in a long trail behind her, though these depressions in the snow had almost been filled back up, unlike the deeper track left by a definitely grayer lavender unicorn.
“Tell me that to my face!” the young mare repeated, her melodious, matured voice quivering with anger. She was wearing a pink jacket, but the song note cutie mark on her flank was still visible as it shook along with the rest of her body in barely controlled contempt. “Look me in the eye and THEN tell me you’ve tried everything!”
“I’ve tried everything!” the older unicorn the former filly was talking to shouted back, looking the young mare dead in the eyes just as requested. “And I keep trying, no matter how many times I fail. But believe me, Sweetie Belle, that no matter how many times I fail, I will never give up trying to bring your sister back to us.”
“Maybe you should stop trying,” the older version of Rarity’s younger sister sighed, turning away from Twilight.
“What?!” Twilight gasped. “How could you say such a thing? I know I have my family and the company and other responsibilities besides now, but that doesn’t mean I won’t always set aside time to try and bring your sister back.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Sweetie Belle said sharply. “I couldn’t care less about the company you use to spread magic that’s already proven itself too dangerous, or the ponies you put at risk everyday by pretending like you won’t mess up their lives eventually too.”
Twilight’s face lit up with shock, and then anger. This depleted instantly at what next came out of the younger mare’s mouth.
“But after all this time, all these years, I can’t help but believe you when you say you’ve tried everything,” Sweetie Belle went on. “I didn’t want to admit it, but I guess there’s no point in denying it anymore. I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason Rarity hasn’t woken up yet is because she doesn’t WANT to wake up.”
“That’s nonsense!” Twilight insisted. “Why in Equestria would Rarity want to remain asleep all this time?”
“I don’t know,” Sweetie Bell laughed without a hint of humor. “Maybe she wants the ultimate beauty sleep. But whatever the reason, if you and even The Royal Sisters can’t do anything about this, then it’s because Rarity would rather remain dead to the world…”
“THAT’S NOT TRUE!” Rarity shouted, racing over to the two ponies. Before she could reach them, though, and hardly thinking she could change this nightmare if she could—or was it really the truth? No, it couldn’t be, could it?!—the world began to dissolve once more.
Before it faded away completely, though, Rarity caught some final words from Sweetie Belle’s older apparition.
“… Just like she’s now dead to me.”
And then everything was gone. When it all came rushing back, in a new form and in a new place, Ponyville had been replaced by a meadow near The Everfree Forest. The taller towers of the town that was not-so-tiny anymore loomed in the distance, just like the ghastly trees of The Forest loomed beyond the throng of ponies she found herself within, all gathered around a long, rectangular black box situated on a golden base.
Rarity didn’t even care anymore. If she was dead to Sweetie Belle, then she really was dead to the world. Not even realizing Sweetie Belle was long dead after waking up had felt like this. Nothing could faze her after that. Nothing…
… Except this.
Most of the ponies were milling about in black, making sad and what sounded like confused small talk.
Rarity, not really listening, caught snippets of conversation.
“Why are we attending this funeral again?” one of the stallions asked. The white unicorn recognized him as a far older Snips, one of Sweetie Belle’s old classmates. “I mean, that dressmaker moved out of Ponyville years ago! Nopony hears a word about her again until she turns up in a casket with a will requesting her funeral be held back here, and we’re all supposed to go to her funeral like she’s been a lifelong influence in all of our lives?”
“I thought we came because there was free food,” replied a much, much taller Snails.
One pair of ponies in particular, though, were having a hushed yet heated conversation near what looked like a coffin. Rarity, though, recognized it as what must be the casket she had spent the last millennium sleeping within.
“The answer is no, and that’s final!” an older mare, the only pony not wearing black, almost shouted. “Unless, that is, you want me to sing a modified version of Pinkie Pie’s welcome song called ‘Smile, Smile, Smile… Because She’s Finally Gone Forever!’ You’ll have to find somepony else to give that miserable excuse for a pony a funeral dirge! I told you I only came to this stupid ‘funeral’ of yours so I could see to it personally that she really is going away forever!”
“She’s not going away forever!” a much, much older lavender unicorn retorted in her shaky voice. “Maybe we couldn’t solve this problem, but that doesn’t mean it won’t solve itself! All spells have to wear off eventually, no matter how powerful they are! This little ruse is only to make sure nopony messes with that process by stealing her because she’s become the largest magical anomaly in Equestrian history! If nopony knows what she’s really doing in there, then nopony will bother her!”
“And good riddance!” Sweetie Belle laughed darkly back in Twilight’s face. “You know what? I used to feel abandoned. Now I’m just glad she won’t get to hurt anypony else, ever again!”
And then, at last, the world burst into nonbeing once more.
As Rarity swam through the darkness, she didn’t cry. She wouldn’t even if she had been able to in this formless void. Sweetie Belle, the real one, hated her. The nightmare copy had just been the messenger of that fact.
And why shouldn’t Sweetie Belle hate her?
Under normal circumstances, Rarity would have dismissed such a thought as utterly ridiculous. But she had just watched her younger sister grow up to be not-so-young, bitterness and resentment at her elder sister’s abandonment growing in her heart until it had blossomed into hatred.
Never mind that if even The Royal Sisters couldn’t figure out a way to break the enchantment, then what chance had Rarity had, especially if she was asleep? Her sister had needed her, and Rarity hadn’t been there for her. She hadn’t been strong enough to be there for her, and no matter how hard or impossible it would have been to be so, at that moment in Rarity’s mind that meant she had failed at being a sister. At being a pony. At being allowed to claim she understood love, much less friendship.
Sweetie Belle hadn’t been the only pony she’d left behind. Her mother, her father, each of her friends… Spike…
All had died without her. Because she hadn’t been strong enough to be there for them.
A light appeared in the void, and Rarity was rushing towards it, unbidden. She somehow knew the world, the real one, not a memory, would soon come crashing back around her. While she was trapped in the past, maybe Megan, Firefly, and Surprise might have already been incapacitated by the vines and whisked off to be altered beyond recognition. Maybe she too had been poisoned by the vines and was even now being changed into something else.
But whether or not Rarity and her friends were already doomed, she knew it didn’t matter to her. She wouldn’t fight to save herself. She didn’t deserve to remain as somepony who only caused hurt. If Fluttershy’s imprint did change her, then it really would be for the better. She would be erased from this world, and just like Sweetie Belle had said, now she wouldn’t be able to hurt anypony ever again.
Or maybe… maybe none of that was true.
Maybe that was all a lot of horseapples.
If she was in a test designed to see if she had the skills to survive, then wouldn’t surviving challenges of the mind be just as important as surviving challenges of the flesh? What proof did she have that anything that not-Sweetie Belle had shown her was true?
And even if all of it was true, what did it matter?
Maybe she hadn’t been strong enough to be there for her friends and family. But she would never be too weak to be there for those close to her again. Her first friends and family might have passed away centuries ago, but right now Rarity knew she had friends who needed her. Needed HER, not some altered monstrosity made out of her. Not for her sake, but for theirs, she would fight.
. . .
The world did come crashing back. The Sweetie Bell-who-wasn’t lowered her hoof, smiling innocently up at the older sister of the real pony she’d been copied from. The monster copies of Applebloom and Scootaloo still stood on top of Megan and Firefly, Surprise still dancing in the background. The vines had stopped moving, but were all poised to spring at each of the group.
“You’re not attacking us?” Rarity questioned as she regained focus on the world.
“You are your own worst enemy,” the little monster replied. “If you don’t fight The Hall of Life, if you stop moving and give up rather than try to get to the other side successfully, then the test won’t fight back at you. You will have forfeited, and will be perfected. We give you that option, if you want it. After seeing all the pain and loss you have wrought, Rarity, do you really want to go on being yourself when you could be so much more… perfect?”
“Actually, I know I’m not perfect, and I am deeply regretful of that,” the white unicorn answered. A snide, self-satisfied smile split the face of Sweetie Bell’s organic copy. “But I also know that my friends need me as myself, not some monster. I will never be perfect on my own, but I won’t be perfect with your help, either. I’ve always known perfection was an impossible ideal, yet I always strove for it anyway because that’s how we better ourselves as ponies. I might not have tried hard enough at being perfect when I was asleep, and that may have prevented me from staying with my friends and family in my own time. It was probably beyond my control, but I’ll always have the nagging thought that I should have done better.
“But now that I’m awake, I’ll never let that nagging thought get to me again,” Rarity finished, making herself a promise she hoped she could keep. She might not be able to, but she would try. “Because I’ll never leave another circumstance knowing I could have done better.”
“Is that so?” Sweetie Bell’s mockery asked. “Then I suppose we’ll just have to test that out.”
Her face-splitting smile stretched through her flesh until it split her face entirely, which opened up impossibly wide and roared as hundreds of sharp teeth appeared, each of which was dripping venom. The copies of Applebloom and Scootaloo did the same, each rearing up as they prepared to dart down and seal the fate of their prey.
Rarity simply smirked.
“I suppose we will,” the white unicorn agreed.
Rarity’s horn ignited and lashed out with her magic, latching onto the still-pinned Firefly and Megan as well as the still-dancing Surprise and herself. The human and the split pegasus may not have been able to escape the crushing weight of the impossibly heavy fillies by themselves, but that didn’t mean that Rarity’s added strength wouldn’t slip them out from under the monsters. Firefly and Megan were lightly brought to Rarity, who dropped them from her telekinesis and held them close with her forelegs. The instant they were close together, Rarity’s shield went up to block out the vines that had sprung back into life at her movement. Finally, the one pony still in the white unicorn’s magical grip was brought around.
“Hey!” Surprise flailed, flapping her wings madly. “Let me go! I was about to do a pirouette!”
Before the monstrous copies of Sweetie Belle and her friends could figure out what was going on, before the Applebloom-who-wasn’t and the not-Scootaloo could even lift themselves up from where they’d been tossed to the fleshy green ground, Rarity propelled the group back a little and Surprise was thrown forward to be brought crashing down on the copy-Sweetie Belle’s head. And then lifted, and brought crashing down again. And again. And again.
“HEY!” Surprise yelled. “What the BUCK! Cut this out or I’ll make you into a mincemeat marshmallow! I don’t want to have to hurt you, Marshy, but you’re making it hard not to give me motivation!”
“But I’m NOT hurting you, Surprise!” Rarity claimed. “It’s that filly’s fault for having such a hard head! See? I’m not even touching you, but her head keeps making your head hurt!”
“You’re right!” Surprise gasped.
“Oh, the insane pegasus from a company that makes party favors is going to allow you all to pass the test?” the warped not-Sweetie Belle inquired with a smirk.
“That’s not ALL Pinkie Pie’s Party Supplies makes!” Rarity corrected, smirking back. A look of unease crept onto the copy-pony’s face. “They also make Party Cannon XLs!”
“Party Cannon XLs?” Surprise echoed as Rarity pulled the pegasus close to the group’s bunched-up huddle. “Those are for amateurs! I’d never be caught dead without anything less than a BIRTHDAY BASH BAZOOKA!”
Rarity didn’t know how, but she was beyond caring. One moment Surprise was standing there in front of them on her hind legs in the peculiar stance she had taken on at Sparkle Technologies, empty-hoofed. The next moment, though, Surprise reached out to where none of the group could see. When she pulled her hooves back, they were wrapped around a cylindrical metal construct that she couldn’t have possibly hidden.
The thing was massive enough to almost take up the whole hallway, but was just as garishly pink and brightly decorated as the smaller Party Cannon XLs had been.
‘I almost wish I could see those little monsters’ faces when the ‘pop rocks’ come out of that thing,’ Rarity thought to herself.
‘Silly Rarity!’ Surprise’s voice chortled in her mind. The white pegasus was facing away from Rarity, so she couldn’t see whether Surprise’s lips were moving or not, but the white unicorn somehow doubted they were. ‘Pop rocks are for small fries. For the big guns, we use ‘pop BOULDERS!’”
Before Rarity had time to contemplate that, Surprise chomped down on the trigger-bit of her gun. The hallway in front of them, where the monsters that were not Sweetie Belle and her friends were standing, exploded. Rarity’s shield had so far kept the vines on this side of the Birthday Bash Bazooka from reaching the group, but she didn’t expect it to save them from the fire or heat of the exploding ‘pop boulders’ on the other side of the humongous firearm. Thankfully, her shield didn’t need to.
The white unicorn had calculated that keeping the group this close to Surprise would extend the protection of her gun to the rest of them. She hadn’t known for certain if this would work, but fighting to the death to stay who they were seemed far better than getting turned into something else.
It seemed she was right.
The group had just entered The Hall of Life when those little monsters had popped out, and so there was little room for the fire of the ‘pop boulders’ detonating in front of the gun. This turned out to make things actually play in the group’s favor for once. The fire exploding in every direction pushed off the walls even as it incinerated them and everything between them, rocketing the group backwards through the hall.
The group should’ve been crushed into the wall upon reaching the first turn, but Rarity had anticipated that too. Using whatever magic she had not kept occupied with keeping the group close to Surprise, she pushed them with the turn. Seeing what she was doing, Firefly fired up her odd mechanical wings and joined Rarity in pushing the group with all her might. Megan didn’t appear to be doing anything, but the haze in the air around her suggested that she was using her computer for all it was worth to propel them around the curve with energy.
Surprise, meanwhile, held on to the handles of her Birthday Bash Bazooka as she continued to bite into the trigger bit. The ‘pop boulders’ continued to blast out and shoot the group up the hall, right until they crashed through the fleshy door at the end and into the room Fluttershy’s imprint claimed was her office.
. . .