//------------------------------// // Chapter 5 - Rainbow // Story: Rising Fire // by Chengar Qordath //------------------------------// It had been a long time since I felt much of anything. Ever since I’d changed, everything felt kind of ... flat, and colorless. Big shock, turning into a zombie changed a lot of things. It’s not like my eyes and other senses weren’t working, but all of it just felt ... I dunno, not as real. Kind of like I’d had a big mug of cider, and now everything was just a little bit fuzzy and not quite there, except not in a fun way like what happened with actual cider. I missed cider. And lots of other stuff. After the world ended, I’d spent decades searching the wastelands for anything to help me feel alive again. I hadn’t found anything—just lots of ruins that didn’t do anything but remind me of how much I’d lost. That didn’t change until I found out about Sombra, and later Starlight and Twilight. Revenge wasn’t much to live for, but at least it was something. Taking down Starlight had been just about the most satisfying thing I’d felt since ... well, since we took out Sombra. There was something about fighting Starlight and the idea of taking down Twilight that filled my limbs with fresh energy and almost made me feel alive again. I quickly checked the murderer over to make sure she hadn’t killed herself off with her own spell. Would’ve been no less than she deserved, but just killing her wasn’t enough. Rising wanted everyone to know just how monstrous Starlight and Twilight were. If we just killed them off and left it’d be justice, but with all the lies the two of them spread around, everyone in this world would probably think they were martyrs and we were the bad guys. Everyone needed to know just how evil the two of them were—otherwise it would be almost as bad as if they got away with it completely. Plus there was the other reason we needed them alive: answers. We knew what they’d done, but we still didn’t know how, or more importantly, why. Why would anyone wipe out an entire planet full of life? It wasn’t like they’d wanted to conquer or plunder us. They’d just ... come to our world, decided it was worthless, and destroyed it. It didn’t make any sense. Maybe they really were just crazy monsters, and the only reason they’d done it was for some kind of sick thrill. Still, I wanted to look them in the eye and ask. Before I could do that, I needed to get Starlight back to base. She was alive, but she had a bunch of scorched patches on her coat where the spell had hit her. Probably a lot of other damage that wasn’t immediately obvious, considering how long she’d been out cold. I might need to have Rising patch her up once we got back to base; I wasn’t gonna let her get off easy by dying of internal bleeding. She didn’t get to die until we were done with her. Not to mention the other more practical reasons I needed to get her back to our camp. A squad of Twilight’s guards were headed my way, and I had a high-value prisoner to secure. The last thing I needed to do was let a bunch of guards bog me down. I grabbed the murderer and took the skies to get as much of a head start as I could. Normally I was just about the fastest flier around, but hauling a pony’s worth of dead weight wasn’t helping. Good thing I had a lot of advantages to make up for that. While there were a lot of things that sucked about being undead, one of the nice things about it was never getting tired. Sure, I couldn’t enjoy a good nap, but on the other hoof I never needed to sleep. Back when I’d been alive, I couldn’t go all out for more than a couple minutes. Now I could pretty much do it as long as my wings didn’t fall off or something. Well, maybe it wasn’t quite that simple. That was the huge pain about—well, pain. It sucked, but it was useful for telling you when you were about to hurt yourself. Oh well. If I tore something flying to base, Rising could just fix it back up. Not that there was that much left; I liked to try and keep my skin and mane intact, but if Rising could replace the inside bits with metal that was lighter, stronger, and worked better than my old bone and muscle... Sure enough, it didn’t take long for me to leave the guards in the dust. I’d been pretty much the fastest pegasus in Equestria, and now I had close to unlimited endurance on top of that. If my heart still pumped blood it would’ve been pounding. It reminded me of how much I used to love racing and flying, back before the war. It was only a pale echo of what I vaguely remembered, but I seized on that little flame and did everything I could to keep it alive. It had been so long since I’d felt this way; not anything close to my old self, but it was like for the first time in who knows how long I could remember what it had been like to be that mare. Brave to the point of recklessness, always ready to face a new challenge, and utterly convinced of my own immortality. Well, I guess in a way I’d been right about that last one. Sure, I’d died, but it’s not like it had really stuck. For a couple of minutes, I thought the getaway would be nice and easy. I was over the Everfree Forest and most of the way back to our base camp when it got complicated. Something exploded behind me, and when I looked back I saw a huge ring of rainbow light over Twilight’s castle. For a moment I thought it might be something crazy like a Sonic Rainboom, but everypony knew that was just an old mare’s tale. Whatever it was, it looked like trouble. That suspicion got confirmation when I saw a streak of rainbow light heading right for me, faster than I’d ever seen something move. That was almost certainly a bad sign. Was this some form of magic Twilight had cooked up? Maybe some kind of spell to swat me out of the sky? Whatever it was, it was coming this way. If it was some kind of attack spell, Shadow’s Armor could probably handle it, but I wasn’t eager to put that to the test if I didn’t have to. Whatever it was, I really shouldn’t stick around to watch the light show. I poured on as much speed as I could manage. I risked a quick look back to see if the streak of light was following me. Sure enough, it turned to intercept, and a couple more maneuvers confirmed that it was matching my movements. Even worse, it was closing on me. That was impossible. I was the fastest pony in Equestria! Sure, I was being slowed down by carrying Starlight’s fat rear, but I’d still left all the guards eating my dust. Not to mention that whatever was closing on me was moving way too fast—faster than anything I’d ever seen in all my centuries of life and un-life. Since I couldn’t outrun it, all I could do was aim for the shield and hope I got there before whatever was chasing me caught up. There was no point in worrying, so I just focused on what I could do and poured on every last bit of speed I could. Nothing was going to stop me from making sure Starlight got what she deserved, nothing. I put everything I had into doing just that, but it wasn’t enough. The rainbow blur of light shot ahead of me and finally stopped in between me and the wall of fire surrounding Ponyville. That’s when I realized it wasn’t some crazy spell. It was a pony. I recognized her right away, considering it was the same face I’d seen for years whenever I looked in the mirror. She still had both her wings, which I guess meant this universe never had a big war against Sombra. That, or she’d dodged a bit better while fighting that freak Heritor Amber. She didn’t have much in the way of armor, just a padded gambeson and a helmet. Figured, I never liked to take heavy armor until I got high-ranked enough to get stuff custom-fitted. Otherwise it slowed me down too much. My counterpart glared at me, crossing her forelegs over her chest. “Not so fast, you big fake!” “I'm not a fake!” I really didn’t have time for this. Not to mention fighting her was going to be a real pain while carrying Starlight. Maybe I could talk her into letting me go? Oh right, me. Nobody could ever talk me out of something when I was absolutely certain I was in the right. Probably the most frustrating thing about this mission was that all the ponies of this dimension seemed convinced that Starlight and Twilight weren’t monsters. This would have been so much cooler if those two were evil overlords oppressing everypony with an iron hoof. Then we could have swept in as heroes and saved the day, tossed down the tyrants, and then …  I don’t know, set up a new government? Okay, maybe not that last part. Still, it was a lot easier to take down the bad guys when everyone could tell they were bad. My counterpart wasn’t budging. “Uh, yeah, of course you’re a fake. You're a second rate copy of me.” She smirked and tossed her mane. “You want proof I’m the real thing? I’m faster.” Despite the absurdity of the situation, that got to me just a bit. Being dead had changed a lot of things, but I still had my pride. “Yeah, sure, it’s easy for you to say you’re faster when I’ve got this much dead weight holding me back.” I gave Starlight’s unconscious body a shake to emphasize my point. The living version of me snorted. “Well if she’s bugging you that much, you can always let her go. Tell you what: how about you do put her down somewhere and we have a race? If you win, I won’t get in your way and you can do whatever you want to her. If I win, you gotta give her back. Sounds fair to me.” My grip tightened on Starlight. “No way, you have no idea what we've gone through to get her!” My eyes narrowed. “Besides, you can’t fool me. I know all your tricks; I bet as soon as I put her down and get distracted, you’d try to have one of your friends grab her.” The living version of me snorted and didn’t deny it, which was just as good as a confession. “Fine then, I’ll just beat you up and take her.” She looked me over. “Guess it figures you wouldn’t want a race with all that metal weighing you down anyway.” Maybe the armor did slow me down a bit, but the protection was more than worth it. Beating Starlight would’ve been a lot harder if I didn’t have the ability to reflect her own spells back at her. Besides, there were ways to make up for the extra weight. I shot her a cocky grin. “I cut out all my internal organs to lighten the load. Replaced a lot of my bones with mithril too, since it’s tougher and lighter.” The other me’s face screwed up and she stuck out her tongue. “Ew, gross.” I shrugged. “What? It’s not like I need them anymore. If I can drop a lot of kilos of useless body weight, why not do it?” “Ugh, why is it that when I finally meet an alternate universe version of myself she’s a gross undead wierdo instead of being awesome?” She zipped at me, reaching out for Starlight. “Enough talk! Let. Her. Go!” A particularly nasty idea for how to get rid of my dead weight problem sprang to mind. “You know, you really could've worded that better.” I dropped the murderous nag. The other me’s eyes shot wide open. “Starlight!” Just like I knew she would, she zoomed down after her poorly chosen friend. It didn’t take the other Rainbow long to catch up, but once she grabbed Starlight she had to strain to halt their descent. It didn’t take her long to stabilize the fall, but it was more than enough time for me to make my move. I dived after them, and there was no way the other Rainbow could dodge without dropping Starlight. She braced for me to hit her and instinctively curled to protect Starlight, but instead of kicking or punching, I did something much sneakier: I tossed a container of tanglehoof. She had just enough time to realize what I’d done before it was too late. “Oh bucking ponyfeath—” The tanglehoof hit her right between the shoulder blades and promptly exploded. My aim had been perfect, and the fast-acting adhesive splattered all over my counterpart’s wings. For a couple seconds, she struggled to stay airborne, but once the adhesive started curing her wings were close to useless, and soon she was in freefall. It would have been easy to let gravity solve my problems for me, but I didn’t want to kill the other me. It’s not like she was an evil pony or anything; she’d been duped like everyone else. Besides, we needed to keep Starlight for the trial. I flew down after them, catching up with the freefalling duo pretty quickly and pulling up alongside the other version of myself. “Okay, here’s how it’s gonna go: I’m going to grab you both, and once we get down to ground level I’ll drop you off. I leave with Starlight and you get to walk home, or more likely spend a couple hours cleaning up your wings. Do the smart thing and take the deal, because I’d rather not watch you splatter on the ground.” The other Rainbow glared at me, and I remembered just how stubbornly determined I could be when my blood was up. “More proof you're just a bad copy if you think I'd go for that!” She snagged me with one of her forelegs and yanked me into her side. Her wings slammed into mine, and while the Tanglehoof had mostly dried out, enough of it transferred over to my wings to get them thoroughly gunked up. I couldn’t believe I would do something so suicidaly stupid. I can be a bit stubborn once a fight gets started, but come on! Now instead of averting a crash, she’d dragged me into it. “You idiot! Are you trying to get us all killed?!” Judging by the grin on her face, she still thought she had a way to come out of this on top. “I’ll be fine if I have something to break my fall!” She grabbed onto me and pulled a quick spin to put herself on top and me on bottom. That crazy ... me. I fought back, and soon both of us were spinning through the air as we struggled to control the fall. Despite the back-and-forth wrestling match, the tanglehoof held us together. If anything, all the fighting was just getting us more and more stuck to each other. The ground started getting uncomfortably close, and for a moment I met the other Rainbow’s eyes. We reached some kind of unspoken agreement, and we both stopped fighting and held onto Starlight while spreading out our gunked up wings and doing everything we could to try and avert the oncoming crash. We kind of succeeded. We blasted through the forest canopy, and the next several seconds were a jumble of snapping branches and snagging vines before it all came to a sudden halt as we hit the ground. The impact finally knocked us loose, though judging by the sharp tug on my wing, it hadn’t exactly been clean. Probably would’ve hurt like crazy if I still felt pain. Once the crash was over, I laid back for a moment; my body not responding to any commands. Pain might not be an issue for me, but I could still get rattled and shaken up. For a while, some foggy part of the back of my mind wondered if my body had been destroyed again, or at least so smashed that it was as good as useless. Everything around me felt wet and squishy, and after a couple seconds, I realized we’d crashed into a mudpit. I groaned and pushed myself up out of the mud. I quickly took stock of the condition of my body. Without any pain to warn me about damage, it would be easy to miss something. A quick look at my non-prosthetic wing confirmed that it was dangling uselessly at my side, and there was a nasty looking lump near the socket. Probably dislocated. Dammit, I was groundbound. Otherwise my body seemed to be in decent shape, but things were still a little fuzzy. Probably something to do with my brain getting knocked around inside my skull. Brain damage was just about the only soft tissue injury I still needed to worry about, and even then it was nothing Rising or Rarity couldn’t fix up with a quick spell. Still, it was not what I needed right now. Because my life wasn’t complicated enough already, my living counterpart hauled herself out of the mudpit as well. She was covered nearly head to hoof in mud, and from the look of things she’d been rattled by the crash as much as I had. It didn’t look like either of her wings had been dislocated like mine, but one of them was missing a huge chunk of feathers. A quick look at my bad wing confirmed that I’d ripped out most of them in the crash. On one hoof, it was good to see that the other me hadn’t been seriously hurt. On the other, if she was healthy enough to still be up and moving, she probably wasn’t going to quit. I’d never let a little brush with death stop me from fighting for what I believed in. Feathers, I’d died hundreds of years ago and I was still fighting to bring Starlight and Twilight to justice. The living Rainbow coughed several times and leaned against a tree slowly stretching her limbs. “Okay, ow.” She blinked a few times, then shook her head and looked around the clearing, spotting Starlight. The murderess had landed in the mud between us, still unconscious, and thankfully still breathing. Oh, and her leg was pretty obviously broken, but screw her. As long as that didn’t send her into shock I didn’t particularly care if the world-murdering bitch got hurt. The other me winced at the sight of the injury. “You know, this is all your fault.” I started testing out my own limbs like she was. “If you hadn’t grabbed me, this would all be over by now.” Rainbow pushed off the tree and spread her wings, her teeth clenched. “What was I supposed to do, just let you kill one of my friends?! If you hadn’t attacked us, none of this would have happened! You’re the ones who started it and you can stop it whenever you want by just backing off!” Rage cut through the last mental fog from the crash and focused my world once more. “No, she did!” I jabbed a hoof in Starlight’s direction. “Her and Twilight! They destroyed my world. Why are you defending those monsters?!” Something softened in Rainbow’s eyes but the determination in them didn’t fade. “Look, I know she did some bad stuff, but that's ancient history! She's my friend, and I'm not letting some evil creep like you take her!” I let out an exasperated groan. “You're such an idiot. You don't even know what you're talking about! She destroyed my whole world! Why don't you understand that?! Millions are dead, and they have to pay for that!” Rainbow snorted and tossed her mud-caked mane. “If she could blow up an entire world, why couldn't she take you in a fight?” “I don't know. That’s one of the things we wanted to find out by coming here.” I started walking to make sure that my legs were still working. It would be nice if I could talk her down, but this was almost certainly going to turn into a fight “They probably just used some big ritual or artifact or something to do it. Rising said there’s a big old leyline running right through that palace of theirs, and the whole thing’s throbbing with latent power. Who knows what they’re doing with that.” “You have no idea what you’re talking about!” the other me shot back. “You're just nuts, you bad fake!” Diplomacy ended when she kicked a glob of mud right into my face. “Gah! That does it, now you’re gonna—” The other Rainbow interrupted me with a full-body tackle. The both of us slid through the mud, and soon we were a near blind whirl of punches and kicks as we wrestled in the mud. Rainbow got on top of me during the wild scuffle and she slammed a hoof down into my face. Too bad for her my skull was made out of solid mithril. She winced and hopped back, shaking her hoof. “Owowow!” I took advantage of the opening and slugged her in the jaw. Her head was pretty hard, but it wasn’t made of metal and I had gauntlets on anyway. Her head snapped to the side with a spray of blood as she collapsed into the mud. I put a quick kick into her ribs to keep her down, not to mention venting a little frustration. “Who’s a fake now?! That's what you get for messing with me! Now I just need to—” The world started spinning, and it was all I could do to keep from falling as I staggered in place. Okay, something was definitely messed up inside of me. The other me took the opportunity to recover, and her leg snapped out to kick a leg out from under me. I fell down into the mud, and Rainbow was back on top of me in a blur of hooves and shouts. Eventually I managed a plant a hoof in her belly and shove her back, and the two of us took a moment to circle each other and take stock. My counterpart made the first move. That suited me just fine, I’d learned a little patience during all the Guard training and centuries since then. The mud slowed her down enough to take away any momentum from her charge, and once she closed in, I broke out another one of my tricks. I tapped into Shadow’s Armor and unleashed a bright flash of blinding light. Rainbow clamped her eyes shut, but now she was blind and off-balance from the mud. I used the opening to slam another punch into her face, and got a couple more hits in before she recovered. From there it turned into a pure slugging match. The mud slowed us down too much to try anything fancy, so all we could do is trade hits. I was fine with that, considering I was the one in heavy armor and with all the endurance advantages of being undead. Outside of getting hit in the face, it barely even mattered if she punched me. I didn’t bruise, and she couldn’t hit hard enough to break mithril bones. The same didn’t apply to her, and before long I was getting more hits in and taking fewer in return. I slugged her in the face, sending her staggering back. “What's the matter? Can't keep up?” Another combo of snapping jabs and then a hoof to her jaw sent her helmet flying off her head as she went spinning to the mud. “Ready to give up now?” “No.” Rainbow’s hooves started shifting through the mud for something. There was a glint of metal in the mud, and then she whipped Chainbreaker right at my face. Now the mud was working against me, and I couldn’t dodge the attack in time. It was a good thing I had a helmet on because even with a mithril skull, that sword would’ve done a lot of damage. Rainbow stood up, Chainbreaker now in her hooves. She grinned as she took a couple of practice swings with it. “Nice. I think I'll keep it.” “Gah!” Why did everypony keep stealing that stupid sword from me? Was something wrong with it? I was seriously going to need to talk with Rising about that later. Maybe Starlight hadn’t been completely off-base when she said the sword hadn’t bonded to me. It certainly seemed to be winding up in somepony else’s hooves way too often. “Give it back!” “Nah, I just said I’m keeping it.” Rainbow waved the sword around, clearly trying to figure out the best way to hold it. “Does it have any cool abilities?” I groaned. “Oh come on, can you seriously not recognize Chainbreaker? Torch Charger’s sword? If I can still remember the time we learned about Torch in history class you must have.” “Oooh, right, now I remember. That was one of the few awesome things we actually learned about.” Her grin widened as she looked the sword over. “This is Chainbreaker? Huh. Figured it would be bigger. So how do I make it do all the cool stuff?” While losing Chainbreaker was a pain, there was one bit of good news: from the way she was swinging it around like a cleaver, this Rainbow clearly had no idea how to use it. If her life was anything like mine had been before the war, she’d taken martial arts classes as a kid and kept up on the exercises as an adult, but I’d never taken any swordsmareship classes. Even after the war against Sombra started, I’d stuck with spears and lances—Cloud was the one who’d messed around with wing blades and swords. I’d only really started getting into swords when Rising had given me Chainbreaker. A particularly wild swing confirmed my theory. “You don't even know how to use a sword, do you?” I smirked. “Careful, or you’ll chop your own hoof off.” Rainbow growled. “Shut up!” She charged in and swung Chainbreaker in a wild arc. She telegraphed the attack so much I saw it coming a mile away, and even with the mud slowing me down, I had no trouble getting inside of her swing. I remembered a move I’d learned from Kicker, and my metal wing wrapped around Rainbow’s foreleg. I turned her own momentum against her and sent her flipping over into the mud. With a precise twist against her pastern, I pulled Chainbreaker from her grasp. My left foreleg was acting stiff and dumb, and I had to fumble to bring Chainbreaker to bear. By the time I had it ready to swing, my nimble counterpart had already rolled out of the way and was back on her hooves. Still, Chainbreaker was mine again, and without the sword, she had nothing to level the playing field. I brought the sword into a ready position and spoke with the same commanding voice I’d learned in the Guard. “You done fooling around? Because you can't beat me, and I've got a job to do. So surrender already so that I can get this murderer to Rising.” The other me planted her hooves, getting ready to change me again. “I’m not even close to done.” I growled and inched toward her. “Last chance: Get. Out. Of. The. Way. I don't want to hurt you, but you're not going to stop me either.” Rainbow wiped the blood and mud off her face. “Bring it.” “Fine then, you’ve asked for it.” We both charged. I went for her legs to try and put her down without doing too much damage. She tried to dodge, but with the mud slowing her down, she couldn’t manage a clean dodge. She still had her gambeson on, but Chainbreaker was easily sharp enough to cut through all the layers of padding and into her skin. To my surprise, she kept on coming. Her speed robbed my blow of a lot of its power, so all I got out of it was a really long, shallow cut. She was inside of Chainbreaker’s reach before I could bring it to bear for another swing. I was about to try smacking her with the pommel when she did just about the last thing I’d been expecting: she headbutted me. My head rocked back, and my hooves threatened to slip out from under me in the muck. I stared at her, blinking in shock. “Did you just ... I have a metal skull!” “Like I care!” Just to punctuate that, she slammed her head into mine again. She didn’t stop there. She kept going at it like a berserker, screaming at me in between each hit. “Get! Away! From! My! Friend!” The blows kept hammering in, and somehow it was actually working. My brain was one of the few parts of my body that still followed some of the rules of living tissue, and all those headbutts were rattling it pretty bad. When she headbutted me for the tenth time, there was a loud crack, and for a moment I wondered if she’d somehow managed to actually break through solid mithril. She finally let me go, and a second later I felt something scrape against my armor. When my vision finally cleared, I saw she was on top of me, trying to slip Chainbreaker between the plates of my armor. I quickly kicked her back, silently thanking Celestia for making such a nice suit of armor and Rising for giving it to me. Rainbow staggered back from my kick, struggling to stay on her hooves. Blood poured down her face from all the damage she’d done to herself in the headbutt contest, and judging by how shaky her stance was, it had obviously messed her up. Big shock—I know my friends always said I was hard-headed, but even I couldn’t slam my head into solid metal a dozen times without getting hurt. It was a miracle she hadn’t killed herself with that ridiculous stunt. “Why do I have to be so damn stubborn?!” I screamed at her. “Do you have some have some kind of death wish?! Do you want me to make me kill you?!” Rainbow’s breath came in ragged gasps, her face all but dyed crimson from all the blood. Despite that, her eyes blazed defiantly. “You really are a big fake. The real Rainbow Dash would never ask why I’m going this far to help my friends.” I snarled and charged her. Everything about this other version of myself was really pissing me off. Had I really been this pig-headedly stubborn when I was alive? The living version of me tried to dodge to the side, but her hooves didn’t cooperate. Probably because the stubborn idiot had messed herself up by getting into a headbutt contest with someone who had a skull made of solid mithril. She managed to dodge the worst of it, but Chainbreaker bit into her rear leg, just below her cutie mark. Rainbow screamed and fell into the mud as her leg went out from under her. I let out a relieved sigh when she went down. With a wound like that, she wasn’t going to be able to stand and fight, and with her wings messed up she couldn’t fly either. I’d won. Didn’t feel like much of a victory. When I’d beaten Sombra or Starlight, it almost felt like I was alive again. This was just ... depressing. Then again, literally beating yourself up was the kind of thing that was hard to get pumped over. It’s not like this was some evil version of me with a goatee and an eyepatch. It was just me, except she’d picked the wrong ponies to be friends with. She didn’t even know how bad Starlight and Twilight were. I’d probably be doing the exact same things she was in her place. Well, maybe not headbutting solid metal. Stubborn idiot. At least she was still alive. I was probably gonna have enough issues from this fight without killing myself. Shame Rising couldn’t bring back a psychologist along with me and Rarity. I looked my living counterpart over to make sure I hadn’t done too much damage. It wasn’t a deep cut, so it should clot pretty quick. I’d learned a little bit of improvised first aid during the war. Hard not to with how often ponies were getting hurt. I took one of her hooves and placed on top of the cut I’d put in her gambeson. Good thing cloth armor could double as a bandage. “Keep the pressure on and the bleeding will stop pretty quick. Do yourself a favor and stay down.” I made a mental note to send out some skeleton to take her prisoner and get her some proper treatment. I didn’t like the idea of leaving the other me alone in the Everfree Forest while wounded, but I couldn’t carry both her and Starlight with how messed up I was. My left foreleg was still feeling pretty sluggish, and I didn’t trust it to do any heavy lifting. Maybe I should call for backup instead of carrying Starlight on my own? I had a couple signal gems to let me do that. Probably should’ve tried to learn some necromancy so I could call for backup on my own instead of needing to use gems, but the one or two times I’d tried to learn it I hadn’t gotten very far. Learning magic like that took a lot of work, especially since I didn’t have a horn. I thought it over for a bit and decided to take another look at Starlight first. She might be so messed up by this point that it’d be dumb for me to even try to drag her through the forest on my back. Or she could be starting to come back around. As soon as I took a step towards her, I felt something latch onto my rear leg and hold me back. I let out an exasperated groan, because I knew exactly what it was before I even turned around to look. Sure enough, the living Rainbow had grabbed my leg and was holding onto it for all she was worth. Despite how beaten up she was, the fire was still burning in her eyes. She’d even taken the hoof off her wound to get a better grip. For a moment, I wondered if Rising and Rarity ever got this fed up with me. “Seriously?! Are you still trying to stop me?! You can’t even stand!” Rainbow just tightened her grip. “I told you, I’m never gonna let you take my friend.” “Don’t let your mouth make promises you can’t keep.” For a moment I wanted to kick out with my back leg, but considering how badly she’d already messed up her face, I didn’t want to risk caving her skull in. Instead, I turned around and smacked her upside the head, well away from the mess she’d made of her forehead. When she still wouldn’t let go, something snapped inside me, and I leveled Chainbreaker against her neck. “Are you trying to make me kill you?! Because I'll do it if I have to! Don’t think I won’t!” The other me growled and looked up at me with her one open eye. Her other one had swollen shut, and her face was caked with blood and mud, but instead of backing down, she clenched her teeth and hit me with a one-eyed glare. “You’re gonna have to, because as long as I’m alive I'll never let you take one of my friends!” Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid stupid stupidstupidstupid! Everything about this was stupid! She didn’t know what kind of monsters she was defending. Starlight and Twilight didn’t deserve any friends, especially not one this loyal and willing to put her life on the line protecting them. The living Rainbow and most of the others were good ponies, and they should be helping us. But no, this other version of me was so pig-headed and stubborn she’d rather make me kill her than take five minutes to listen to the facts and realize she was on the wrong side. Fine! My parents, Kicker, Fluttershy, Pinkie, Maud, Derpy, Dinky, and so many others were gone because of Twilight and Starlight. I couldn’t bring them back. Rising spent pretty much her entire life after the apocalypse trying. The only thing I could do for them now was to make sure the ones who’d killed them faced justice. Maybe revenge wasn’t much to live for, but it kept moving forward instead of binding my wings and throwing myself off the highest mountain I could find. After everything I’d suffered through, I wasn’t going to let one stupidly stubborn mare stop me, even if she was an alternate universe version of me. Maybe she looked like me and we had pretty similar personalities, but she wasn’t me. She had her nice, safe perfect little life in a peaceful Equestria where she’d never known pain or sacrifice. She’d never had to watch her friends die in battle, never lost a wing defending Equestria, and she didn’t have to live with not even getting to say goodbye to all the loved ones Starlight and Twilight had deleted. I raised Chainbreaker above my head and took a deep breath, mentally preparing to end this. Hitting the other Rainbow while she was down felt wrong, but I couldn’t let her stop me. Maybe if I just— “NOOOOOO!” A pink blur slammed into my side, knocking me off my hooves and sending me sprawling into the mud. It took a moment for me to get my bearings after the ambush, but then I recognized the pony standing over me. Her hair was all big and puffy now instead of being at regulation length, but there was no mistaking Pinkie Pie. Her lips quivered, and tears threatened to burst from her eyes as she looked down at me. “Please, don't be evil, other-Dashie! I know you’re still good inside!” “Sergeant Pie?!” I stared up at her, having trouble believing what I was seeing. Sure, I’d known she was around from scouting, but knowing she was around was very different from seeing her face to face. Pinkie had been part of the second wave of recruits, once we realized the fight against Sombra was gonna be a long and nasty war. She’d always managed to keep everypony’s spirits up no matter how bad things got with the war. It was part of what let her climb up the ranks, even though she wasn’t anyone’s idea of traditional leadership material. She’d been one of my best friends. Now she was back. Pinkie snickered as she smiled that big, wide, loveable smile of hers. “I'm not a sergeant, I'm Pinkie Pie.” The smile vanished a second later, replaced with a very upset frown. “Now stop fighting my Dashie, Dashie!” Right, I needed to remember that this wasn’t the real Pinkie Pie, just like the other version of Rainbow wasn’t me. Just because she looked and sounded exactly the same didn’t mean she was the pony who’d stuck with me through years of war. “Hey, don't blame me for this! She's the one that won't stop fighting. I’m just trying to stop those monsters!” “You’re the ones who came here and started the fight—we’re just trying to keep our friends safe!” Pinkie planted her hooves on my legs to pin me down and got right up in my face. “Now stop beating up my marefriend! It’s making me really really really angry, and you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry!” “Get off of me!” I managed to free one of my hind legs and tried to kick her off, but Pinkie shifted gears and pulled me into a big rib-crushing bear hug. “Nuh-uh! You may may not be my Dashie, but you're still a Rainbow Dash! And there’s no way any Rainbow Dash could ever, ever, ever, ever be a bad pony!” “I'm not a bad pony!” I tried to pull myself out of the hug, but one thing this Pinkie definitely had in common with mine was the completely inescapable hugs. “I’m the hero here! I’m bringing a pair of genocidal mass-murderers to justice!” “You're doing bad things right now!” Pinkie shot back. She grimaced and her ears went flat against her head. “You’ve scared everypony, and you really hurt Dashie and Starlight. Maybe you think you’re the good guy, but right now you’re acting like a big meanie!” I was getting really sick of being judged by ponies who had no idea what was really going on and refused to listen when we told them. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! You’re all so stupid, so let go before I beat you up too!” I finally managed to get a bit of leverage and break out of Pinkie’s hug, shoving her away as hard as I could. She bounced away and landed in front of Rainbow, dropping into a defensive stance and baring her teeth. She probably figured I was going to try and go after her again, since everyone in this stupid world seemed convinced we were monsters. Fine, if all she cared about was protecting the other Rainbow, I had no reason to fight her. In all honesty, it would be a load off my mind if she took Rainbow to hospital to get patched up. As long as she wasn’t trying to stop me from taking Starlight or Twilight, she could do whatever she wanted. I started heading for Starlight, but I should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy. Pinkie leapt over my head and flipped in mid-aid, landing in between me and Starlight. “Nope, you can’t hurt her either. You’re done, missy. Now sit down and think about what you’ve done.” I didn’t want to fight Pinkie, even if she wasn’t my Pinkie, but I couldn’t stop now, so close to finally getting justice. “Pinkie, I’m warning you: get outta my way. We don’t have to fight. Just go away and take the other Rainbow to a doctor.” Pinkie shook her head. “Nope! Not gonna happen.” Her lips started quivering again. “Please, you don’t have to do this. Can’t we just talk? That has to be a whole lot better than fighting and hurting one another.” I snarled and brought Chainbreaker back into a ready position. “Talking isn’t gonna bring back my dead world! We already told you what was going on, and none of you listened to us! Last chance, get out of the way or—” I cut myself off when I heard something rustling in the trees. A second later, a pegasus in red armor dropped down through the canopy and landed next to Pinkie Pie. She spread out her wings, revealing a pair of wing blades as she took up an eerily familiar stance. I growled and shifted my pose to account for a second opponent. “You didn’t want to talk!” I snapped at Pinkie. “You were just trying to distract me so that you could get reinforcements!” “No, I was trying to get through to you!” A moment later, she added, “But yeah, giving Cloud time to catch up was a bonus.” “Cloud?” Chainbreaker dropped slightly as I took a second look at the pony in red armor. I recognized her. How couldn’t I? “Kicker?” Kicker’s wing-blade shifted, as though she wasn’t sure what position to hold them in. “Dash? Is that you?” I hesitated, I knew I shouldn’t be, but... “I’m not your Rainbow, and you’re not my Cloud. My Cloud is dead—has been for a long time.” Painfully long. So damn long. I missed her. I missed them all. If I could just... No, they were gone, and these weren’t those ponies. Just stupidly similar ponies to the ones I lost. Cloud glanced down at Rainbow as Pinkie helped dress her wounds. “I don't know anything about your Cloud, but is this what she'd really want you to do?” “Yes! Of course she would. She’d...” All the bittersweet memories of Kicker came crashing back on me. I remembered Flight Camp, where I’d met her, Fluttershy, and Derpy. We’d always stood to bullies then, so of course we joined the Guard together to take the fight to Sombra, the biggest bully of all. Cloud wound up technically being my CO, since she had actual military education and training before the war. We’d been there through all the battles, fighting back-to-back against Sombra’s hordes. She’d been there for me when I lost my wing, and I’d been there for her after her cousin died in Vanhoover. The two of us had stuck together from the start of the war to the end, through every single battle. Plus ... well we hadn’t exactly been a couple or anything, but there’d been a couple nights when we’d done stuff. After spending weeks crawling through blood-soaked trenches or burying ponies we’d fought alongside for years, sometimes you just needed to do anything to remember there was more to life than war. Would’ve been nice to have something like that in the wasteland after the war too, but I’d never managed to find Cloud’s body. Even if I had, Rising probably wouldn’t have been able to bring her back as anything more than another brainless skeleton. Chainbreaker trembled in my hooves as I tried to keep it in a guard position. “Don’t mess with my head! I know what I need to do!” Kicker looked me in the eyes, but instead of the hard look of a pony ready for battle, there was ... something else. Something softer that made my throat tighten up, and my stupid knees started shaking. Probably because of the concussions I’d suffered. At least, I sure hoped that was what it was. Brain damage was a lot easier to deal with than— No. I needed to focus on the mission. Nothing else mattered. I couldn’t let myself... Pinkie’s head tilted to the side. “She looks like she needs a hug.” “What I need is justice!” I forced myself to say despite my throat tightening up. The words wound up sounding a lot weaker than they should’ve. I was a soldier, Rising’s righthoof mare. I wasn’t going to fail in my mission. I couldn’t fail. I wasn’t going to let myself fail. Bringing justice to my dead world was my entire purpose for existing. Even if ... even if... Kicker and I stood there in silence, each of us waiting for the other to make the first move and start the fight. She took a deep breath, then nodded to herself. “We'll see about that.” To my surprise, she tucked in her wing-blades and approached me. Not charging in or anything, just a slow and steady walk. “H-hey! What’re you doing?! Stop!” Chainbreaker continued quivering in my hooves, probably because my left foreleg was so messed up. Why couldn’t I make it stop shaking?! This wasn’t the time for it! “I’m telling you, I’ll hurt you if you don’t stop!” Kicker kept walking towards me. She wasn’t even trying to protect herself. “I’m not going to hurt you, Dash. And I’m hoping that you won’t hurt me either.” “Don’t try and trick me, I won’t fall for it!” Kicker had to be up to something. She had always been the one who came up with the really sneaky plans and tactics during the war. Any moment she was going to pull out one of those sick moves her mom had taught her, and try and take my head off. Part of me hoped she would do just that. It’d be okay if she were the one to put me down. It felt right. I shoved those thoughts aside. I was a soldier, and soldiers didn’t quit just because things got tough. I had to shove all the emotions and trauma to the side and keep focused on what really mattered: the mission. Considering the damage I’d taken and the fact that it was two-against-one, I needed to hit hard and fast. Kicker was so close, and she wasn’t even trying to defend herself. If I attacked now, I could take her down before she could react. It’d be so easy. Then Kicker finished closing in and opened up her forelegs. For a second I thought she was going to try and grapple with me or something, but then I realized it was way too soft and gentle for that. “W-what are you doing?” I demanded, my voice shaking. Kicker put her head on my shoulder as she kept hugging me. “I won't pretend that everything's okay, but I know Rainbow well enough to know when she's hurting. I know I'm not your Cloud and you’re not my Rainbow, but ... if this helps...” “D-dummy!” I sniffed. “I could’ve hurt you! Don’t you know that?” “But you didn’t.” Kicker nuzzled me. I’d never thought about how long it had been since somepony had touched me like that. Not since ... since... Chainbreaker fell into the mud. “I-I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to hurt anypony.” Sobs wracking my body as I started to blather. “I didn’t want to hurt your Rainbow, Kicker, I promise. It ... Rainbow didn’t give me any choice! She wouldn’t let me go as long as I wanted Starlight. She didn’t understand, none of you do. The other Rainbow made me fight her. I didn’t want to do any of this. I didn’t want my world to die, or to attack Ponyville. I didn’t ask to become some undead thing.” The sobs overcame me, and Cloud gently shushed me as she stroked my mane. “It’s okay. Nopony has to hurt anyone else now. I’m here for you.” I probably would have cried if I still could have, as stupid as that was. But I needed Kicker. It’d been too long since I could be with my best pal. I’d missed Kicker, missed Pinkie, missed so many ponies I’d known. “You don’t understand what we’ve been through. My world... They murdered our world. They killed you two, everypony we knew, everyone. Our world is so awful I can’t even describe it. Starlight and Twilight are the ones responsible for it all, and they need to be stopped. Please, they have to pay for what they did.” “Not like this.” Kicker continued to stroke my mane. “This isn’t the right way to do this.” “We don’t want to fight you either.” Pinkie squeezed me. “But hurting others just because you’re hurting isn’t how you fix things.” A pitiful whine escaped my throat. “Then how? There wasn’t any other way. We talked about it, over and over and over again. So many times it made my head hurt. It had to be this way. We didn’t want to attack Ponyville, but it was the only way for us to get justice. If I’m not here to stop them, then what’s the point of me existing?” “Oh Dashie...” Pinkie nuzzled me gently. Cloud wiped some of the grime off my forehead. “It's okay, Rainbow. We've got you.” “You believe me, right?” Sobs rocked my body. “Please say you believe me. I need to hear it.” Kicker cupped my cheeks in her hooves so that we stared each other eye-to-eye. “I believe you’re badly hurting and need a very good friend right now.” I wrapped my forelegs around both of them, and held onto them tight. I never wanted to let friends go, not ever. I’d lost them before, and I wasn’t going to again. I was done with fighting. The other Rainbow cleared her throat loudly enough to be heard all around the forest clearing. She’d managed to get herself back to her hooves, using a tree as support. “So, um, I hate to break up the moment you guys are having right now, but I’m pretty banged up over here, and Starlight’s probably even worse off than I am.” Pinkie gasped and ran over to the other Rainbow. “Ohmygosh, I’m so sorry! Things were just so crazy with you fighting yourself. She’d hurt you, but she was also hurting, and we needed to get everypony to stop fighting one another so that we could—” “Pinkie!” Rainbow yelled to get Pinkie to stop rambling. “I get it. Just help us out and it’ll be fine.” “Oh right! Sorry, again.” Pinkie started doing what she could for Rainbow and Starlight. She made sure Rainbow’s wounds were properly dressed, and, well, Starlight probably needed a doctor more than just some pony giving her first aid. As for me, I was just so tired. It wasn’t because of how beat up I was or all the fights I’d just been in, it was something way deeper that those things. All I wanted to do was fade away into nothingness. I slumped down to sit in the mud, my head bowed. I was so done with it all. Kicker stayed by my side and wrapped a wing around me. “Hey, hang in there. We’ll call for some help and be out of here in no time. It’s all over now.” A dozen glowing green chains came shooting out of the darkness and showed just how wrong Cloud was about that. The chains wrapped themselves around Cloud and Rainbow before they could do anything. They both let out surprised shouts as they struggled against their bonds, but it was all for nothing. Pinkie managed to dodge several of them as she hopped, ducked, and jumped with her freakish agility. For a moment it looked like she might even be able to escape the magical chains, but then a dozen more darted out of the forest. They cut off any retreat, and just like everyone else, wrapped themselves around Pinkie. The chains lifted the three of them into the air, completely helpless. I knew exactly who was responsible for the chains, I bolted to my hooves and cried out. “Sunset, no! Please, don’t hurt them!” “Relax Rainbow.” The air rippled as her invisibility spell faded, revealing Rising to everyone in the clearing. “Nopony’s going to get hurt. Once we get them back to camp, I’ll have Zecora and Fluttershy see to their wounds.” “Oh.” I’d gotten so wrapped up in ... everything that for a moment I’d almost forgotten the mission. “Sorry, I was...” Rising set one of her adamantine hooves on my shoulder. A second later I could feel cold and almost sickeningly sweet fire pouring into me, repairing the damage I’d taken during the fight. “It’s alright, Rainbow. It’s ... hard to see the reminders of what we lost.” A second later, I felt her send a pulse of energy into my counterpart—probably something to make sure she’d be okay until she got back to camp. All the damage she’d done to her own head couldn’t be healthy. One of the handy little side applications of necromancy most folks didn’t think about: Rising could do a lot to keep anypony who was even a tiny bit alive from crossing the line into outright dead. Shame me and Rarity had been thoroughly corpse-y by the time she’d found us. I wanted to cry, but somewhere along the line of becoming a half-metallic zombie my tear ducts had stopped working. My shoulders hunched as I shrunk down into myself. “I just... I just want everything back the way it was.” Rising gave my shoulder a quick squeeze. “I do too. If there were any way to restore our world...” She sighed and shook her head. “But we tried that for so long and nothing came of it. We couldn’t even fix the time-locked oceans. All we can do now is bring the ones who destroyed everything to justice.” “I know! I...” My gaze dropped to the ground. “I know. It's just ... it’s so hard. Seeing them after all this time, and then we have to fight them because they don’t understand...” Rising nodded. “It was the same for me, years ago in Freeport.” Her big flaming skull didn’t do facial expressions, but I could hear the kindness in her voice. “Take them to the camps. Have their wounds seen to, and Starlight secured. Rarity and I can handle it from here.” That snapped me out of my funk right away. “But I’m supposed to be the one leading the charge against the castle!” I slapped my breastplate. “It’s why you gave me this armor!” “Plans change,” Rising answered, sounding infuriatingly calm. “You did very well capturing Starlight and securing her. Take as long as you need to recover and re-center yourself.” I scoffed. “Look, I just got a little … I don’t need a break beac—” She cut me off, her voice sounding surprisingly gentle considering it was coming from a huge flaming lich with adamantine bones. “Yes you do.” I wanted to argue with her, but ... well the problem was she was right. My head wasn’t in the game. I was barely keeping it together, and if I saw another familiar face I’d probably lose it completely. If Pinkie was here that probably meant Maud and Limestone were around too, and I knew Cloud’s cousin was here. Getting to Twilight would almost certainly mean going through Storm, and just thinking about her reminded me of when I helped Cloud get through her memorial service after Vanhoover. There was no way I could fight any of them. I trudged back to camp with my prisoners, feeling utterly miserable. I’d always thought finally bringing Starlight to justice would be just about the best thing I had left to look forward to, but after everything else it felt like a hollow victory.