//------------------------------//
// Breakthru 
// Story: It's a Kind of Magic 
// by Sixes_And_Sevens 
//------------------------------//

Rainbow looked from Twilight to Pinkie. “She really is, isn’t she?”
Twilight hemmed and hawed. “Well, yes,” she admitted.
Dash groaned and leaned back. “Come on, Twi, don’t hold back on my account,” she said.
Twilight glared at Pinkie. “Were you going anywhere with this?” she demanded.
Pinkie nodded cheerfully. “Yep!” She turned to Rainbow. “She’s a lot like you. You talked about a lot of bad stuff you have in common, but there’s also a ton of good stuff! You’re both self-confident. You’re both talented, and determined, and loyal.”
“Loyal?” Twilight asked, frowning. “What makes you say Trixie’s particularly loyal?”
Pinkie looked at her as though it ought to be obvious. “She was gonna walk to Canterlot through the Everfree in the middle of a storm just to see Glimmy! That’s a pretty strong bond.”
“Oh,” Twilight said. “Huh. I always thought she was more like me.”
“She is,” Pinkie agreed. “Both of you are good at magic, cunning, and curious, but you both also kinda tend to be a little impulsive.”
Twilight bit her tongue to keep from retorting, but Pinkie was already continuing. “She’s hardworking like Applejack, but they’re both really stubborn, and she’s creative like Rarity, but they can both be a little bit over-the-top.” She thought for a minute. “I don’t think she and Fluttershy have a lot in common, but they never really clashed, either.”
“What about you?” Dash asked, oddly compelled.
Pinkie shrugged. “We’re both entertainers, but we both can get so caught up in our show that we can be sometimes kinda insensitive. And for awhile, I thought she was just a big rude meanie-pants because all I could see was how much she hurt all of you girls. But then I started to realize how much like her I could be sometimes, and that helped me see that she wasn’t that different from me. And Ma and Pa and Marble and Limestone all wrote me letters about how she worked on the farm, and that helped me learn more about her.”
“So… what’s your point?” Dash asked.
Pinkie stared up at the ceiling, contemplating. “I think,” she said thoughtfully, “that sometimes it’s easier to see the bad in ourselves than the good, but we can’t face up to it. So when we see that bad quality in others, we’re that much harder on it. Because that’s easier. We need to face up to our own problems before we can truly see other ponies for who they are.”
Dash stared. Twilight’s mouth hung agape. Pinkie shrugged. “Or maybe we just got a bad first impression and didn’t wanna admit that we might’ve been wrong. I’m just spit-balling, here.” She pulled out a straw and blew a gooey wad of paper onto one of the guards’ crested helmets.


***

Spike walked silently, or as silently as a four-meter-tall dragon can walk. Next to him, Big Macintosh looked positively petite. A breeze blew down the still and abandoned street. It was hot and sour, like milk left in the sun. The dragon and the pony were one of eight search teams that had set out to find Trixie and the missing foals. Under normal circumstances, Spike would have been delighted to be out walking with his friend and fellow RPG dork.
These were not normal circumstances. Spike was brooding. He wanted to be alone, Mac could tell. He did his best to communicate a sense of camaraderie and moral support. Unfortunately, Spike was not as good at reading silence as Cheerilee was, and the dragon continued to radiate an aura of deepest concern. No, not concern-- sorrow.
At length, even Mac could no longer bear the silence. “Ya wanna talk ‘bout it?”
Spike stirred. “Talk about what?”
Mac just stared at him flatly and Spike huffed. “It’s about Rarity.”
“Aha,” Mac said.
“She chased Trixie out of town.”
“Eeyup. Ah was there.”
“See, that strikes me as being a bad thing to do.”
“Eeyup.”
“I’m not real happy that she did that.”
“Nope.”
“And I’m kinda happy that Twi locked her and the other rioters up.”
“Eeyup.”
“But I still love her.”
“Oh.” Mac gave this some thought. “So?”
“So, what do I do now?” Spike asked. “I mean, what she’s done is terrible, right? Can I love her even though she hurt somepony like that? I mean, I know she can be better than that. I’ve seen her be better than that. But she can also do some pretty terrible stuff.”
“Hm,” said Mac. He wasn’t very experienced in this field. His only practical expertise with romance was the Love Poison incident, and his long-term crush on Twilight Sparkle. He didn’t think either would be very useful. So he decided to take a page out of Applejack’s book and go for confusing, but wise-sounding, down-home wisdom that was nevertheless as neutral as possible. “Ah reckon yer th’ only one can decide what comes next.”
“...Yeah, okay. But how do I do that?”
Mac frowned and raised the folksy wisdom a few notches. “If ya don’t plant seeds in spring, don’t complain when th’ pigs ain’t fed in fall.”
“Huh?”
“Ya can’t water a crop if th’ well is dry,” Mac tried, sweat beading his brow.
“I almost understood that.”
Mac went for broke. “Figger out how you feel ‘bout her. If you’re both in love, y’all can work through this together.”
Spike sighed. “Yeah,” he agreed. “But what do I say to her? What can I say to her?”
Mac was silent.


***

As Beatrix and the foals approached the factory, the grass began to turn crunchier and brown. Snails waved a hoof in an attempt to combat the sudden wave of heat that had washed over the group.
Beatrix wrinkled her nose and sniffed the air. “Yech! It smells like burnt toast.”
“And sour milk,” Zipporwhill agreed, putting a hoof over her muzzle.
“I think my nose just died of sadness,” Snails whimpered.
Ripley gave a low, keening, whine, but continued with the rest of the group towards the old Rumor Mill. “This doesn’t look like it was passed by any safety committees,” Trixie said, staring up at the building. Indeed, the mill looked dilapidated. Paint was peeling from the walls, and the blades of the windmill were crooked. Some of the windows were broken, and the thatched roof was moldering.
Snails stared at it, confused. “Uh, I thought it was in a lot better condition than this, eh? Didn’t look like this when we came up here for that field trip back in, um…”
“Last month,” said Zipporwhill grimly. “Two weeks after it was remodeled.”
Beatrix’s mouth curled downwards into a moue of confusion and disapproval. “How could a building fall so far so quickly?” she asked.
“I dunno, but that’s not what you need to see,” Snips said, pointing at a large plate of glass that had been scuffed and chipped with the wear of what looked like over a decade.
Beatrix peered in through the window to the factory floor and gasped. The work stations were abandoned, burning merrily. The few ponies that were in sight sat slumped over in corners, silently sobbing. One rose shakily to her hooves and took a few steps toward a fire extinguisher, but she collapsed in a heap, weeping.
A lone delivery colt trundled through the mires of despair, hunched over his delivery cart as though it were the only thing keeping him from joining the others in their misery. For all Beatrix knew, it was.
“What,” she said, “in Tartarus is going on in there?”
She turned to the foals. “We have to go back to Ponyville, tell the princess!”
“You were run out of Ponyville,” Zipporwhill reminded her.
Trixie cast around wildly. “Then go without me. I’ll go in and see if I can find out what’s causing this!”
Zipporwhill nodded shortly and gave a high whistle. Ripley perked up, and he ran with his mistress back toward the town.
Trixie looked at Snips and Snails. “Well, what are you two waiting for? Go!”
Snips looked up at her beseechingly. “Aw, c’mon, Miss Tr-- Lulamoon, we wanna help! Zip can make it on her own.”
Trixie boggled. “Are you--” she began to shout before catching herself.
“Are you crazy?” she hissed. “This building looks like it could collapse at any minute! Trixie is not about to endanger two foals like that! Go home, get help!”
Snails smiled up at her. “If you don’t let us come with you, we’ll just go in by ourselves, eh?” they pointed out.
Trixie sputtered for a moment, furiously indignant. Then, she deflated. “You would, wouldn’t you?” she said morosely. “Fine. Come along. At least this way, Trix-- I can keep an eye on the two of you.”
Snips and Snails started to cheer. “And for pity’s sake be quiet!”
“Yay!” Snips rasped.
“Woohoo!” whispered Snails.
“Ugh,” said Beatrix, and she led them around the back of the building. Unnoticed by any of them, the red and puffy eyes of the workers stared through the big bay window, following the trio as they trotted out of sight.


***

Beatrix peered around the corner of the mill to the transport bay. Carts lay unattended. Some of them had tipped onto their sides. Some were on fire. Some seemed to be rotting away before her eyes. But there was nopony around. She slipped out from the cover of shadow, Snips and Snails hugging tight to her flanks like frightened puppies.
She looked at them and felt a rush of affection. They had stayed for her, despite their fear, in a noble gesture of courage and friendship. An utterly stupid gesture, mind you, but a noble one nonetheless. “Come on,” she said. “Nearly in.”
The three picked their way through the wreckage of the bay to a side door. Trixie examined it carefully. If the hinges were to creak, she thought, their position would be obvious immediately. Of course, there was the possibility that whatever was causing this wave of destruction wasn’t actually sapient. There was also the possibility that it was virtually omniscient and already knew her every thought. She decided to do her best to be silent regardless, to move with secrecy and stealth.
Carefully, she lifted the door up from where it slumped, just enough to reduce the pressure. It floated in her aura for just a moment before the whole section of wall around it cracked and fell backwards in a shower of rock dust, shattering on the floor.
Beatrix blinked the dust from her eyes, still holding the door aloft. Gently, she set it down against a flaming chariot. Secrecy and stealth, she reminded herself, then slipped in through the hole.
It was very dark inside the mill. The only light provided came from the random small fires that seemed to burn quite merrily without consuming any new fuel sources. That was a mystery for later, though. The three ponies made their way down the halls, the floorboards creaking under their hooves.
Trixie held up a hoof. Snips and Snails halted. She motioned to the floor along the walls and made a shushing motion. The floorboards there tended to be less creaky. She wasn’t sure if the foals understood her, exactly, but they fell in line behind her as she led them along, hugging the wall as though skirting the edge of a cliff.
“Hsst!” Snips said. Trixie halted and turned to look at him. The colt nodded to a door on the other side of the hall. A plaque on the door read, Miss Scuttlebutt, Manager. Hanging by a thread underneath like some kind of sick joke, a colorful sign read, World’s Best Boss.
Behind the door, all three could hear a sort of rhythmic creaking, like an elderly rocking chair. Trixie took a large step to the other wall and quickly pressed herself flat against it. Snips and Snails looked at each other and attempted to copy her, but their attempts at creeping made them look like they were attempting to imitate spiders. Badly.
Trixie nudged the door open and peered in. She could see only blackness. She lit her horn and immediately reeled back.
The pale pinkish light illuminated a mare, staring straight ahead, eyes dead. She was sat in a chair behind a rotting desk, rocking back and forth. She was mouthing something quietly. The three filed into the room slowly. Snips stifled a shout when he saw the mare, and Snails wobbled on their hooves. She had clearly been there for some time. Her mane was mildewed, and she was covered in cobwebs.
“What happened to her?” Snips asked.
“Trixie doesn’t know. Same thing that happened to the workers, she guesses, but worse.” Trixie moved closer to the mare. She could almost hear what she was saying, now.
Snails looked around the office. The portraits that had once hung there had rotted. The filing cabinets had rusted. The pot plants hadn’t so much died as simply flopped over, waiting for the end as much as the workers were. Everything was in a state of decay. Then, something caught their eye. A gleam of pure white in the midst of the ruins. They pulled it out and squinted at it minutely. “Snips, I think my reading trouble is really bad right now,” they said. “Can you help me?”
The green colt wandered over to his friend’s side and peered at the paper. “Uh, Snails, buddy, I don’t think that’s Equish.”
Trixie, meanwhile, had her ear almost to Ms. Scuttlebutt’s mouth, and still she strained to hear the words.
All my fault
Never should’ve signed
All gone
All my fault…
Trixie frowned. “Signed what?”
She looked up. “What’s that you two have?”
“Just some piece of paper,” Snails said, tossing it aside.
Cold fear stabbed Beatrix’s heart, and she snatched the page out of the air and brought it towards her telekinetically. As soon as she saw the writing, she felt her heart stop. “Do you know what this is?” she demanded.
Snips looked at Snails. Snails looked at Snips.
“No.”
“Uh-uh.”
Beatrix scanned the writing. “This is Ancient Unicornian script,” she said. “One of the three main languages besides Pegasopolitin and Earthic that turned into modern Equish.”
“So… that paper’s really old?” Snails guessed.
“No. I’d say it’s-- how long ago did you say the renovations on this building were?”
Snips thought about that. “I guess two months ago? That’s when they started.”
“Then I would say that this paper has been around perhaps a week more than two months. He works fast.”
“Who’s ‘he’?” Snips asked.
Beatrix let her eyes trail down to the bottom of the page. There were three signatures there, though one of them would have been easily mistaken for a seal-- that was a spirit’s signature. The second one was Ms. Scuttlebutt’s. The third… “My brother,” she said quietly. “My brother did this.”


***

Zipporwhill had more than a few issues with her mom. The mare was clingy to the point of smothering, easily swayed, and always nervous. But she was always grateful that her mother had been the one who had taught her to fly. She buzzed into town like a hummingbird, Ripley racing to keep up. Since nopony was out on the streets, she barely needed to dodge at all, and she made for the castle like an arrow. She saw it drawing ever nearer.
She saw the guards at the door reach for their spears.
She skidded to a halt at the bottom of the steps.
The guards relaxed, and Zipporwhill hurried up the steps toward them. “I need to see the princess!” she said, wings vibrating with nerves.
The guard on her left shook her head. “Sorry, kid, take a number. She’s going to be in meetings all afternoon.”
“But this is important!”
“So are her scheduled meetings,” the guard on her right said sternly. “There’s going to be more cleanup than usual for this particular accident, especially if the arsonist is still on the loose.”
Zipporwhill’s wings buzzed faster in agitation. “Can you at least give her a message?” she asked after a moment.
The guard on the right frowned, but his partner nodded. “Yes, I think we can do that. Hey, Lieutenant!”
An orange pegasus looked up from where he was busily playing Solitaire. “Sergeant Argent?”
“This filly needs a message taken to the princess.”
The pegasus nodded and beckoned Zipporwhill over. “Hey, kid. My name’s Flash, and I’ll be your personal messaging service today.” He grinned. She didn’t grin back.
“...Right. So, what do you want to tell the princess?”


***

Twilight leaned over the table. “Brigadier, I’m telling you, I don’t want more permanent troops stationed in Ponyville. I don’t want 
any
 permanent troops stationed in Ponyville!”
Brigadier Bombarder leaned across the table, scowling. “And I don’t want to have to haul my squad all the way from Canterlot when something like this happens!” she said shortly. “You haven’t got a squadron of guards, you haven’t got any protection at all! You’re right next to the Everfree, for pity’s sake!”
“No defenses? I have my friends!”
“Yeah, sure, great--”
“And a castle full of arcane magics.”
The alicorn princess and the zebra brigadier glared at each other across the table. There was a knock at the door. “Go away!” they both shouted.
Flash winced, but opened the door anyway. It took all of his training, but he managed to keep his composure under the combined withering stares of his boss and the princess who he had once dated for about a month. “Sorry, ma’am. Ma’ams. But, um, you did order me to tell you if anypony gave us a lead about the missing ponies or the arsons.”
The glares lessened. “Well, which is it then, man?” the Brig demanded.
“Well,” said Flash. “Both, technically.”


***

Within ten minutes, the castle was hopping with activity. Brigadier Bombarder was ordering her troops to muster, and Twilight was trying to round up Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash down in the dungeon, where Pinkie had dug out an old sno-cone machine. Twilight dragged the duo and their tottering towers of flavored ice along in her wake. “Twilight, hold on!” Pinkie said. “What about the others?”
“Fluttershy’s locked herself in her cottage, and Applejack’s in a search party,” Twilight said shortly, dragging them along. “We don’t have time to get them.”
“What about Rarity?”
That stopped Twilight dead. She quickly weighed up the sides in her head. It was another friend and ally on their side, and one that was immediately accessible. On the other hoof, they were going to go and find the mare that Rarity had just run out of town. Could she trust her not to do the same again?
Her conversation with Trixie floated back to her. Friendship isn’t all about blind agreement. It’s about caring for each other enough to work out those disagreements that come up. Rarity had been there for her time and again. Twilight knew that her trust in the unicorn had rarely been misplaced. “Dash, catch,” she said, tossing over the keys. “Get Rarity out of the cell. Nopony else, though.”
Dash frowned. “Uh, you sure?”
“She won’t be getting away with what she did, but we need all the help we can get. Yes, I’m sure.”
“Well, alright then.” Dash zipped off.
“Pinkie, I want you to keep an eye on both of them,” Twilight said.
“Aw, don’t you trust them?”
Twilight slumped. “In general? With my life. But today, they’ve both made some very poor choices, and I don’t think that’s something we can afford.”
Pinkie deflated a little too, but she nodded. “You can count on me, Twily!”
Twilight smiled. “I know I can, Pinkie. I know I can.”


***

“You have a brother?”
“Is he Great and Powerful, too?”
“How did he do all this?”
“Not a nice guy, eh?”
Beatrix shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she murmured. “Or… maybe I do. What happened during the remodel?”
Snails blinked at her blankly. “Iunno.”
Snips screwed up his face in Herculean effort. “We went on a tour here for a field trip…” he said slowly. “And we saw the flour-bagging station, and the carts, and… oh yeah! The new crusher!”
Snails smiled. “Oh, right! That was cool.”
“The new what?” Beatrix asked.
“The crusher!” Snips repeated. “The thing that crushes the wheat into flour. I don’t think that’s what it’s actually called, but it sure was cool to look at.”
Beatrix frowned. “Hm. That sounds like a lead. Can you show it to me?”
“Sure!” said Snips. “It’s right behind the big windmill, I bet it’s just down the hall! C’mon!”
He hurried out into the hall. “Miss Lulamoon?” Snails asked. “What did that paper say?”
“I don’t know,” Beatrix admitted as the two of them followed Snips out. “But it was definitely my brother’s signature, and this looks like one of his contracts. I wish I could read it. It might give us an idea of what we’re facing.”


***

As Snips had predicted, the crusher wasn’t more than a five minutes’ trot from the manager’s office. Trixie would have described it more as a grinder. But, Beatrix reminded herself forcefully, Trixie wasn’t there anymore. She was a mask, a disguise, and Beatrix couldn’t hide herself away any longer.
It was a fairly large room, consisting of a narrow ledge circling around a pit. Six ponies, lined up nose-to-tail, might have been just enough to stretch from the wall of the pit to its center, where a long, L-shaped rod ran down from the ceiling. Attached to the end of the rod was a millstone, the whole contraption moving around in slow cycles.
Beatrix looked around the room. “Yes, this looks like my brother’s work, alright.”
“It’s sure fancy,” Snails said, looking around at the white walls of carved stones. It was gorgeous. A perfect dome of what looked like, but almost certainly wasn’t, marble. Shining, shimmering gears. A gilt guardrail. Even the millstone was banded round with a thin piece of polished iron.
Beatrix nodded “Yes. My brother certainly is” a flash bastard “fond of ornamentation.”
She paused, looked around again. “Hold on. Something is wrong.”
Snips frowned. “Huh?”
Snails crinkled up their brow in concentration. “It’s pristine,” Beatrix said. “Everything else is rotting or burning or collapsing, but this room looks like it’s brand new.”
“Hey, yeah!” Snips said, nodding. “What coulda done that?”
“Oh, I have a few ideas,” Beatrix said grimly, staring at the millstone. In the silver band, glittering runes flashed red as it completed another circuit. “Those are warlock’s glyphs, used to make a spirit do your bidding. And do you see the faint marks in the walls?”
Snips and Snails looked around. “Protective binding runes,” Beatrix lectured. “Used to keep nasties trapped in a nice chalk circle.”
“Uh, what chalk, Miss Lulamoon?”
“Mixed in with the grout. Oh yes, this is Evening’s work, alright. He was always” a showoff malcontent maverick with no respect “clever like that.”
“Can you read them?” Snails asked.
Beatrix frowned. “Perhaps. I’ve seen enough of them to know what they mean, more or less. The protective runes can be left alone, they mostly say keep out in a variety of ways. But I’d like to know what this summoning is all about.”
She hopped over the rail as the millstone passed by. “There are three things you need to perform a proper summoning,” she said. She should know. Her brother had said it often enough during her childhood. “Any guesses on what they are?”
Silence. “Uh… a spirit?”
“A summoner?”
Trixie stopped dead. “Technically correct. Alright, there are five things you need to perform a summons correctly. Number one, a circle. Obvious enough, it’s the whole room.”
She hopped on the bent-out part of the rod as it swung towards her, letting it take her on a ride as it continued to cycle around.
“Number two, an offering. Not sure what that is. Probably something in this room, something that was just installed when all this started. Look for anything unusual, anything that wasn’t here when you were here last time.” This was usually the point where Evening would cast his hoof in her direction. If he was in a hurry, the scalpel would already be in it.
“Last part, a conduit,” Trixie said. She paused. Why was she still thinking of herself as Trixie? Stupid, stupid Beatrix! Trixie was dead and gone, an evaporated imaginary friend.
“Uh, what’s a conduit?” Snips asked.
“Something that conducts the spirit well,” Trixie said, distracted. “Something with lots of emotional power, usually. Probably this.” She pointed at the iron band around the millstone. “Iron, metal of fire and rust. A good choice for summoning whatever decay spirit is at work here, but it needed something more. Hence, runes. Probably a literary quote, or a poem.”
The runes flashed red again, and Trixie quickly looked over at them. She had already missed the first few, but that was okay. She could see them on the next cycle. “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” she read. A hot, dry wave swept the room
“Or fester like a sore— And then run?” Snips and Snails felt their skin crawl as phantom blisters touched their skin.
     	“Does it stink like rotten meat?” Beatrix read, and a wretched odor filled the room. Snails turned away. That’s when they saw it. The thing that hadn’t been there before.
“Hey, Miss Lulamoon!” they called, grabbing the anomalous object from where it had been sat at the doorframe. But she paid him no heed, hypnotized by the verse.
     	“Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet?”
A saccharine taste filled the room, their mouths, their nostrils. It stung their eyes and turned their stomachs. “Miss Lulamoon, I found the offering!” Snails yelled, waving it in the air.
Snips looked at him. “Hold on. That fabric, isn’t that--”
     	“Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.”
Snips was cut off as the sickly-sweet stink solidified in his gut and slammed him to the floor through its sheer weight. Beside him, Snails’s legs buckled and they fell gracelessly on their face, sending the offering flying. The little blue pony doll, clad in star-spangled scraps of pale purple, fell into the pit.
     	“Or does it explode?”
There was a rush of light and heat, and Beatrix was thrown to the floor like a ragdoll. Her vision went dark and blurry. Her head was swimming. The last thing she saw before she blacked out completely was the flash of red runes. What happens to a dream deferred? echoed in the sudden emptiness of her mind.