//------------------------------// // One Minute to Midnight // Story: Vanishing Act // by redandready45 //------------------------------// "Is the satellite finished yet?" Indigo groaned. Juniper kept working with glazed eyes, not even turning to look at the athletic-human-turned-pegasus. "No." Indigo was persistent. "How about now?" "IF IT WASN’T FINISHED THE FIRST TIME YOU ASKED, WHY THE HELL WOULD IT BE FINISHED AFTER THE NEXT TEN TIMES?!" Sour bellowed. She knocked over the stuff on her desk, "GOD!” Indigo groaned. "It's just that, In movies, these nerds with goofy teeth can make cool stuff out of thin air." Indigo muttered with frustration. "It took us two months to even figure out she was alive!" "Yes, in movies science is easy," Juniper expressed. "In real life, you can't just invent something as complex as a communications system out of thin air. It is a process of refinement and experimentation." She gestured with her hooves to transmmiter she was assembling. "It's taken me two weeks just to build a prototype balloon to see if radio waves can work here as well as they do back home. Heck, I have to work slower, because I'm still not that good at using my hooves." "But the Princess gave you all that money," Lemon Zest pointed out. "Money doesn't automatically speed up the scientific method," Juniper threw back. "If it did, we would have cold fusion and quantum computers by now. Why are you guys bugging me, anyways?" "Sorry June," Sunny said apologetically. "It's just...we're worried." "About your Twilight?" Juniper said, turning away from her work for a moment to look at her friends with concern. "Yeah," Indigo muttered with a mixture of anxiety and frustration. "I mean, we tried to see if the name 'Midnight Sparkle' could turn anything up." "Did it?" Juniper asked. Everyone looked grim for some reason. Sugarcoat looked down at her notes. "1092 by my count." Juniper was shocked. "1092 in Equestria?" Sugarcoat's eyes narrowed a little. "Just Manehatten alone." Juniper stared with horror. "Man, it's just so annoying," Lemon muttered with frustration, "its when we want Twilight that we can't find her." "I'd say it is quite a fitting torment," Sugarcoat expressed in a more severe voice. "A proper punishment." "But she doesn't deserve this," Lemon pointed out miserably. "Who?" Indigo asked. "Twilight." The expression of the lab was morose. "The magic took her away," Lemon muttered, "but we're the assholes who made her unleash it. Bon Bon was right, it should've been us who-, "Hey," Juniper butted in with a more hopeful tone. "We already know the magic didn't destroy her. And since it didn't hurt you guys or Cinch, maybe it just helped her by sending her to a place she liked." "Did it?" Indigo threw back, her usual optimism absent. "Because why haven't we found her?" "Because up until we showed up, this place didn't exactly have Internet," Juniper patiently expressed. "And Equestria is a big place." Sugarcoat took off her glasses in frustration. "To think that I was driving her away from CPA the same way my own crazy mother drove me away from her house. And it took all this to make me see that." She pouted with self-disappointment. "How could I be so stupid?" "Sugar," Juniper warned. "Don't 'Sugar' me June," Sugarcoat muttered bitterly. "She was trying to be friendly, and I verbally punched her in the stomach." "But you guys know better now," Juniper said in an encouraging voice. "As soon as we find her, you can make it up to her." "If she wants to even talk to us again," Sour expressed. "WHICH I HIGHLY DOUBT!" "Yeah, Shining says he won't even send her back to school with us," Indigo pointed out. "Not that I would blame him. But it's unfair that we'll do all this work, and we won't be able to make it up to her." "If that's her choice, than we have to accept it," Sunny replied with a fierce look. "Father Cross told me that being sorry for real means we can't force her to be our friend. If she still hates us, then she hates us. We deserve much worse." Sour frowned angrily. "Then what are we doing this for if she's not even gonna say thank you?!" "Because it's the right thing to do!" Sunny said to her ill-tempered friend in a tone that brooked no argument. "Because there is a good guy, a good woman, and a dog who miss her. Because we want people to think magic is good. Because she could be living in a dump for all we know. And if she is, we owe her for that and all the shitty ways we acted, whether she talks to us again or not." Sour's frustrated frown was replaced with a more melancholic and remorseful one. Juniper couldn't help but smile proudly at her purple skinned (or furred) friend. "Look," Juniper offered her downcast friends, "I'm sure that however long it takes to find her, you're Twilight is doing well." Midnight watched as one of her fellows scrubbed the floor of all the red and guts. Practicing was always...fun and exciting. Hearing the squeal of that poor wretch made her exhilarated and reminded her of how...convincing she was. And soon this entire pathetic world would come to know her greatness. Rainbow Dash looked down from her hoof-built cloud carriage and saw she was approaching the city of Whinneypeg. It wasn't a place she was eager to actually visit: too bland, boring food, its northern location making it difficult to generate warm weather, and no mountains to make flying fun. But for once, she was relieved by the flatness of this boring burg. The blue pegasus decided to see if she could find the human version of her friend through good old fashioned aerial reconnaissance. She was motivated by a mixture of glory, the excitement of finding a potential alien, and a genuine desire to help a pony, err, human, whatever. And Whinneypeg's flat terrain made it much easier to look from on high Her plan was simple: see if she could find a lavender-rish unicorn from up high, move in on them, use the staff in her wings to detect them. There were 529 ponies named 'Midnight Sparkle'. Hopefully, one of them would be her quarry. As she got closer to the flat town, she heard...a series of high-pitched wails. Shrieking, she heard shrieking. Her senses telling her there was danger, Rainbow Dash followed the wails to some public park, her eyes narrowed and her mouth grinning mischievously. There was a large ponies gathered around some platform, their muzzles twisted in sheer terror. On the platform were five scary looking ponies dressed in red robes. In front of them was... Rainbow's mouth caught her breath: it was a dark purple unicorn. She was wrapped in a mauve robe with a hood that was down. She had a glass eye with a scar running along it, and another eye that was filled with unending malice. "Oh my gosh!" Rainbow Dash uttered. "Evil Twilight!" An excited grin appeared on the blue-pegasus' face. "Awesome!" "Behold worms!" Evil Twilight declared to the audience. "With this sacrifice, my ascent to power and glory shall begin!" Rainbow Dash's excited grin faded at the word sacrifice. Evil!Twilight stepped away, revealing a green stallion that was strapped to a fancy-schmancy table, bound and gagged, and covered in a brown robe. Rainbow's mouth widened when she saw one of those robed ponies walk up to the bound pony with a very large and decorated knife. "Prepare the sacrifice my servants!" Evil!Twilight hissed. "Yes Midnight Sparkle!" The robed ponies declared. They muttered some prayer in what sound like Old Ponish, before driving the knife into the innocent pony. At the first sight of blood, and the screams of the ponies who, for some reason, could only watch helplessly, Rainbow Dash took action. She immediately lept from her cloud carriage, dove down, and landed on the stage with a fierce look. "Hey freaks!" She declared, "leave that poor pony alone." One of them was confused and annoyed. "What are you doing! You're not part of the-" Before they finished their sentence, Rainbow generated a vortex that sucked up the robed ponies and sent them flying into the air with a yell. The strapped pony was muttering what was most obviously a thanks to the rainbow-maned pegasus for being awesome. For some reason the other ponies were silent. "No need to thank me," Rainbow said to the bleeding stallion. "Actually scratch that. Thank me as much as-," a massive purple magic blast struck Rainbow. "You fool!" Evil Twilight declared. "This was supposed to be my moment!" "Twilight, I know those other ponies were mean to you," Rainbow pleaded, "but ritual murder is a...bit too far." "You don't know what you speak off," Evil Twilight began, lighting up her horn. "And my name is Midnight Sparkle!" "Well I tried that whole...reason...junk," Rainbow said with a roll of her eyes, "but I guess we'll have to do this-," Rainbow nonchalantly dodged another blast and tackled Evil!Twilight to the ground. "I will not be denied my destiny!" Evil Twilight wailed. "What are you doing?!" Rainbow Dash turned and saw some pink Earth pony mare with a green mid-length mane and a red beret approach her. The mare was not happy with her. Rainbow frowned at the apparent ingratitude of this pony who she saved. "Well, when I see 5 weirdos dressed in robes stabbing a pony in the middle of the park in full view of 100 ponies, I attack the monsters. That's *my* policy." The pink mare was enraged. "This is a theatrical production of The Slaughter: The Tale of the Cult of Blood." Rainbow Dash was abashed. "Play?" "Yes, you moron!" the pony who called herself Midnight Sparkle declared while underneath her. "You blew away five actors! Good ones!" Rainbow Dash sheepishly climbed off the mare. "But," Rainbow said nervously to the dark purple unicorn, "the stallion was bleeding." The green stallion freed himself from his straps, and yanked off his brown robe, revealing that he was wearing a punctured die pack and fake internal organs underneath it. Rainbow sheepishly looked back at the mare calling herself Midnight Sparkle. "But...you...were talking about destiny." "Yes," the mare declared. "My destiny of being the greatest actress in all of Equestria." She lit up her horn. What Rainbow thought was a glass eye turned out to be a glass monocle. The "scar" was just makeup upon closer inspection. The mare took off her uniform. Instead of having the Magic cutie mark, she had a cutie mark that looked like some script. Rainbow pointed the staff, and it came up negative. Rainbow then looked back and saw the audience was glaring furiously at her for, Rainbow now realized, crashing a play they were genuinely enjoying. "Sorry everypony," she said with a scared chuckle, "maybe we could...move on...and start over?" "The court finds Rainbow Ashley Dash guilty of unprovoked assault, disorderly conduct, disrupting a public event, and illegally parking her cloud carriage without a license." "But come on," Rainbow pleaded from the stand, "I thought they were evil? Doesn't that count for something?" The judge glanced at her law book briefly. "No. I sentence you to 6 months of community service and one year's probation." She banged her gavel and trotted away. Rainbow let out an annoyed groan as the baillif escorted her off the premises, but comported herself when she saw her friends glare at her from the public benches. All of them were furious at her for what she did. Twilight turned down her request for a royal pardon, saying that as a Bearer, she needed to learn responsbility. "Well, at least we know the other Twilight didn't become a ritual killer," Applejack muttered, trying to find the silver lining but unable to hide her anger in her voice. She loved Rainbow, but boy she could do stupid things. "But I really wanted to sing this awesome song about how murder isn't very nice," Pinkie wailed. "And we still don't where she is," Rarity muttered with exhaustion, both over the blue pegasus' stunt and not being able to find a missing pony. "I almost wish for the other Twilight to be an evil ruffian. At least then, we could know where she is." An upset frown formed on the fashionista's face. "Somehow, fighting a supervillain is easier than finding one pony." "I know guys," Princess Twilight declared, "but we can't let this set us back." Princess Twilight mentally crossed her hooves, hoping that Juniper's communication system would work. Because despite weeks of efforts, they had been for naught.