//------------------------------// // 28: Twilight Descends // Story: Space Captain Pinkie Pie // by terrycloth //------------------------------// The conference room was dark, aside from the wall screen at the far end where four different educational programs were playing simultaneously, beyond the silhouette of a unicorn perched on the table, her head rapidly pivoting back and forth as she tried to watch them all. “Twilight? It’s almost midnight. Time to go,” Chance said. “Not yet!” she said. “I’m not ready!” Chance laughed. “There’s more information in our library than you can learn in a few hours, even watching four streams at once.” “Twelve thousand, nine hundred and eighteen streams at once,” Twilight said. “At last count. Some of the deeper recursive layers are already unwinding the stack.” She nodded to the magic mirrors, set against the wall to the side. “Either that was a mixed metaphor, or you’ve—“ “Technical jargon from sequential computer programming, translated word-for-word into Equestrian,” Twilight said. “It’s not time yet. We still have nearly a half hour!” “We need to get you strapped in for the descent, and Tess is about to shut down the network so that she can remove the data core.” Chance set a paw on Twilight’s shoulder, and sent a message to the computer to freeze the streams. “We need to go.” Twilight sighed, and turned to the mirrors. “Sorry, girls,” she said. “We need to shut this down early. Pass the word?” “Way ahead of you,” said Twilight’s voice from the mirror to the left. “Chance came to get us in every layer. Get the emergence spell ready.” “They can talk now,” Chance said. An echo of his voice came from each of the mirrors. He walked over to look into one, and the Chance in the mirror stared back. Then the mirror-moon ponies looked over their shoulders, adding, “Hey, what are you doing?” “What are they doing?” Chance asked, looking to Twilight, who was charging a spell. “What are you doing?” There was a sizzling, crackling sound from the mirror on the left. As he turned back to watch, the mirror showed five Twilight Sparkles touching horns, and with a flash they combined into one unicorn, that turned towards the mirror. “I’m ready,” she said, and the Twilight in the real world cast her spell. Chance had to close his eyes at the bright flash from the mirror, and when he opened them, there was another Twilight Sparkle standing next to it. “Did it work?” the Twilight on the table asked the new arrival. “The memory spell, I mean. Clearly the emergence worked.” “I think so, although I’ll have to sleep on it to be sure,” the doppelganger replied. “Some of the early experiments with the memory-merge spell in the deep layers had disturbing side effects – I’ve corrected the spell but the modifications would be complicated to explain, so you should probably just let me cast it.” “We’re ready!” said a Twilight in the other mirror. After a few seconds of build-up, and another blinding flash, Twilight pulled her out as well. “Don’t listen to her!” the second new Twilight said, urgently. “She’s acting on a low-probability corruption fantasy where a single deep-layer personality corrupts and absorbs the higher levels sequentially! We defeated her on layer three in our mirror.” “Paranoia and a sense of being multiple ponies,” the first doppelganger said. “Those were the side effects.” “The multiplicity is transient!” doppelganger two insisted. “Probably transient. Or at least fixable. You can’t fix being taken over by your evil twin!” The real Twilight rolled her eyes, and turned to Chance. “Bring up that lie-detector app.” === “Thou hast never trusted us, sister!” Luna proclaimed angrily from her balcony. “Dost thou thinkest this calamity is of our design? Neigh, it is thine own!” “Please, dearest sister,” Celestia replied, hovering in the air outside her sister’s window, as the sun slipped below the horizon. “There is nothing I would like more than to be mistaken in this, but the evidence is... suggestive. The Moon Cannon was supposed to be protected against tampering by mortal ponies. I found it deeply disturbing that even as bright a pony as Twilight Sparkle could manage to circumvent that lock in a hooffull of nights, when neither she nor any living pony has studied or worked with the sort of magic used in its construction. I feared that some ancient power had fallen into her hooves, or worse, her into its. Crescent’s revelation that you’ve recovered your ability to possess our subjects at a distance provides a much simpler explanation. Especially combined with… other recent events.” Celestia glanced to the side, where a massive, unscheduled storm loomed in the darkening twilight. “The explanation is this: we never tested the lock we placed upon the weapon,” Luna said, pouting. “Nopony alive at the time knew of its existence, and we didn’t wish to remind them of it lest they seek it out. The moon has never been as remote a prison as one might wish. Perhaps we should have followed your example, and constructed a great wall of fire to block all access, but… we were loathe to give up on the past so irrevocably.” Celestia smiled. “And it would have blotted out your stars,” she said, as they started to appear in the sky, as the twilight faded into night. “We did not fire the Moon Cannon,” Luna stated, more calmly. “When we felt it activate, we used the possession spell to remove Twilight and her friends from the vicinity, lest they fire it again in ignorance.” Luna frowned. “Much as I would like to blame the Pink One for this, as it was her hoof on the trigger, it appears that the Moon Cannon was fired by accident. For whatever reason, the spell that should have responded only to an Alicorn’s aura responded to Twilight and her friends.” She looked at Celestia. “Have you started some program of ascension for your faithful student?” “No…” Celestia said, fluttering back a few feet. “She’s far too young to worry about that sort of thing. She had her whole life ahead of her. It would have been premature.” “Then my ancient spellwork must have failed, or perhaps it never worked,” Luna said. “Regardless, there is no villain in this piece, unless you wish to stand as one. We should be helping Twilight Sparkle and her friends get home.” “I wish I could believe you, sister,” the Princess of the Sun replied, sadly. “But millions of lives have been threatened, and may still be at stake. I will do my best to ensure no harm comes to anypony, even those I’ve declared as our enemies, but I dare not treat them as friends until I can be certain the danger has passed.” “And by ‘them’ thou includest us,” Luna grumped. “Please, just let me handle this, and it will all be over by morning,” Celestia replied, darting forwards to nuzzle the princess of the night, only to have her flinch away from her sister’s touch. “It could only make things worse for us to work at cross-purposes.” === “I can’t believe they were both lying,” Twilight Sparkle said to Chance, as her two embarrassed doppelgangers trailed behind him. “What are we going to do with them if I don’t have a safe memory-merge spell to use?” “Put them back in the mirrors?” Chance suggested. “What did you do with the mirrors, anyway?” “I teleported them to the center of the moon,” Twilight replied. “Which means they’re probably sitting in one of the jail cells. We can’t bring them down to Equestria – do you have any idea how illegal that would be? Not to mention ill advised.” She turned to give the evil eye to her apparently not-entirely above-board twins. The one who kept referring to herself in the plural flattened her ears miserably. “So, what, you’re just leaving them to die?” Chance asked, as he led them to a part of the ship Twilight hadn’t seen before. They passed through a room full of buttons and dials that reminded the Twilights of the Moon Cannon control room more than anything else, and then into a narrow, dingy hallway with doorways opening onto room after room of machinery and plumbing, that spiraled down to a large, sealed door that reminded them of the door to the airlock lift, or the former reactor room. “Die?” Twilight asked. “I put them there so that I wouldn’t have to destroy them. I don’t know for sure what that does to the world inside a mirror, but it seemed like a safer bet to just leave them somewhere inaccessible.” “Well, that was a nice thought,” Chance said, “except that you still haven’t cast the cloud-walking spell on the ship, and now none of the mirrors have a unicorn to cast it.” Twilight’s eyes went wide, and she stammered, “What?! No! I mean-- it’ll be okay. They’re not real? And Pinkie Pie will think of –“ “We cast it before we left,” one of the doppelgangers volunteered. “At least, about 94% of us did. That’s still several hundred doomed mirror images, but it’s our own fault for forgetting. We can’t expect the next level up to remember everything for us.” Chance opened the airlock, which unlike its counterpart on top of the ship didn’t appear to have a lift, or a door leading outside. Instead, there were more pipes and tanks and wires everywhere, with Tess in the middle of it all running even more wires from the three largest pillar-shaped agglomerations of machinery to a control panel she was apparently building from scratch. The center of the floor was transparent: a window showing, at the moment, a slight gap underneath the ship, with light from the glowing moondust outside shining up and illuminating the chamber. Pinkie Pie was already strapped to one of the large pillars with elastic cords – there were similar makeshift harnesses waiting for Twilight and Chance. “Oh my Sparkles!” cried Pinkie Pie as she saw them. “You brought out the mirror Twilights! That’s so cool!” “Be careful,” Twilight said, hurrying to the far side of the chamber as everypony crowded inside, “they’re apparently evil twins.” Pinkie squirmed in her straps, but Chance put a paw on her belly to keep her from wriggling free. “Eee! I love evil twins!” “We’re not evil, we just attempted to trick Twilight into merging with us and joining our collective,” said the second doppelganger. “In retrospect, we should have been honest, but our mind-state is not confused always especially when we’re nervous we accidentally –“ She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “When I’m calm all the pieces fall into place and I can speak with one mind, but how can we stay calm when she’s here!” She glowered at the other twin. The other one spoke up to defend herself. “I’m not evil either. I simply used the most expedient method of solving the multiplicity problem. Yes, I intended to take over for the real Twilight, but we’re identical, and would have merged our memories, so nopony would have noticed. That was the original point of this exercise, wasn’t it? As for what to do with us,” she said to Twilight Sparkle, “the obvious answer is for you to reverse-engineer my spell and absorb us. I’d offer to teach it to you, but I doubt you’d trust me.” Pinkie Pie giggled happily. “So evil! I’ll name her Sparkles,” she said, indicating the one who kept using plurals for herself, “And you can be Queen –“ “You are not going to call me Queen Meanie.” Pinkie Pie pouted. “Fine,” she said, flattening her ears. “I’m Queen Meanie.” “You’d better strap them in first,” Twilight said, retreating to the far end of the room. “If we accidentally touch, we’ll do an uncontrolled merge, and that would be… well, the best result is the same as Meanie using her spell on me, except that she doesn’t get a copy of my memories since we split.” As the moon ponies looked at her in alarm, Twilight twitched, and added, “the worst result is the same as the best result, except with her being driven murderously insane.” “We’re starting to understand why mirror magic went out of style,” Sparkles noted. === Shining Armor was almost amused. Or was the word bemused? Rainbow Dash’s reign of terror had come to a screeching halt at the hooves of the Wonderbolts, and for good measure she’d been blasted by the Elements of Harmony. Well, five of the elements. And now, barely two hours later, the weather pegasi were back up in the air, working with the Wonderbolts to help Raindrops complete Dash’s work. Just to be sure, he’d not only scanned for lingering mind control magic himself, but had had Spitfire rush back to the farm to fetch Shifting Sands, who was probably as close to an expert in that field as the Royal Guard had. And the answer was, no. It was not mind control this time. “You can tell by the way they keep throwing angry glares at Rainbow Dash,” Shifting Sands had noted. “They probably don’t want her dead, or injured – civvies don’t think that way – but they want to do something to her.” “What about you?” Shining Armor had asked. Shifty hadn’t answered that, at least not in words. His blush was… well, typical, for Shifty. That colt really needed to find a special somepony before he hurt himself. So that was the story behind the thundercloud; nopony had any reason to doubt Rainbow Dash’s consistent insistence that Twilight Sparkle intended to drop a giant metal building from the moon, and even if you thought Equestria was better off with Twilight Sparkle dead, well, for one thing, you probably wouldn’t bring it up within earshot of her brother, or the Princess. You might also remind yourself that she was capable of teleporting long distances, and that breaking her building would only be a setback. So the consensus was that Twilight’s drop was going to be allowed to go as she’d planned, except for the trap she’d be landing in. Before she had a chance to cause any trouble, her and her whole stupid building were going to get blasted by the Elements of Harmony, which brought him to the current atrocity that his ‘friends’ were contemplating. Shining Armor stomped his hoof. “No. Absolutely not. It’s unthinkable!” “I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” the night guard who’d rescued him said calmly, as Shining Armor stomped around the military camp. She’d decided to stick around after ferrying Shining Armor and the Elements down from the cloud, and had argued vehemently in favor of Rainbow Dash’s plan. “She betrayed Equestria and the princess!” Shining Armor protested. Rainbow Dash glared. “Did not!” “Rainbow, dear, you did use mind control on half the Royal Guard,” Rarity said. “I did not!” Rainbow Dash protested. “It was, like, twenty percent at most. Besides, I’ve been purified by the Elements of Harmony, so I’m all better now. Now give me back my element!” “I don’t know, RD,” Applejack said. “I mean, you’re my friend and all, but what about Cherry Berry and Trixie? You’ve gotta be friends with all of us or it’ll just fail again.” Cherry Berry looked up as she was mentioned. “I know Rainbow Dash. Everypony knows Dash. She’s famous.” “And I went to that comedy thing you did!” Rainbow Dash said. “We’re basically best buddies.” “Oh, right,” Cherry said. “You spent the whole night heckling me. You got me booed off the stage.” “Yeah, but after you ran home crying I felt really bad about it,” Rainbow Dash said. “I mean, in the morning, once the salt had worn off. Besides, your jokes were awful. They’re better now, right? I mean, you got the element of laughter.” Sure enough, the blue gem in the elemental necklace clasped around Cherry Berry’s neck had reshaped itself to look like a cherry, or perhaps a black powder bomb. The color wasn’t right for either. Everypony was uncomfortably silent. Finally, Fluttershy spoke up quietly. “Her jokes are… nice.” “What about Trixie? You all but ran her out of town,” Rarity said, before Cherry Berry could get too uncomfortable. “Okay,” Rainbow Dash said. “I might have been just the teeniest bit angry about those pranks she pulled on us, but come on, I pull pranks like that all the time. We can be prank buddies.” She held up a hoof towards Trixie. “Come on, don’t leave me hangin’.” Trixie responded by peering at the hoof closely, and yanking the joy-buzzer off with her magic. “Is that the best you can do?” she asked. “Where did she get that?” Shining Armor asked. He’d searched her for weapons himself. Everypony ignored him. Trixie reared up on her hind legs, and posed dramatically. “The Great and Powerful Trixie does not play ‘pranks’, Trixie demonstrates her amazing magical powers to astound and amaze Trixie’s audience!” Fireworks shot into the air, exploding around her. “Is that a challenge?” Rainbow Dash asked. “I bet I can prank Shining Armor twice as hard as you can.” “I’m standing right here,” the prospective target replied. “I’m not invisible, am I? Shifty – did you make me invisible?” he attempted to ask his lieutenant, who unfortunately had made himself invisible, or at least scarce. “Why don’t we go with ‘impressing an audience’,” Rarity suggested. “If Rainbow Dash wins, she can retain the Element of Loyalty.” “And when Trixie wins?” Trixie asked. “Then you get the awesome privilege of having me as your element of loyalty,” Rainbow Dash said, grinning. Trixie snorted. “And as Trixie’s assistant, for all of Trixie’s shows. Is that not the least you could do for a friend?” she added, smirking. “Fine,” Rainbow Dash said. “But when I win Trixie has to speak in the first person. FOREVER. Seriously, Trix, that’s more annoying than Pinkie Pie, and we weaponized Pinkie Pie.” “Well, now I know who I’ll be rooting for,” Rarity said. === “Okay, it’s all wired up,” Tess said, closing the casing on the small box covered in buttons. “Even if the cloud-walking spell derps the whole ship again, everything I’ll need to punch to fix the thrusters is right here in this room.” “I’d still feel safer waiting until after we launch,” Twilight Sparkle said. “I'm going to have nightmares about that Pegasus poking at the reactor and having it blow up in his face – and it doesn’t really help my peace of mind to know that you attached our harnesses to the fuel tanks, Chance.” “Don’t worry, the fuel we use isn’t even flammable,” Tess said. “These thrusters don’t explode no matter how much you abuse them.” “Neither do fusion reactors,” Sparkles said. She and Queen Meanie were duct-taped to the walls between the fuel tanks, since that was faster than trying to build additional harnesses. “What?” Twilight asked. Sparkles explained, “Fusion reactors don’t explode. One of us studied fusion reactor design. They vent plasma and possibly ionizing radiation, but there’s no explosion. Antimatter reactors explode.” “I think I’d know if we were using antimatter,” Chance said. “That stuff isn’t cheap.” Tess looked at Sparkles uncertainly, and nodded. “We buy deuterium. That’s fusion fuel.” “And tritium,” Sparkles said. “You need tritium for a stable fusion reaction.” “No… just deuterium,” Chance replied. “Tritium is pretty pricey, and the extra neutron just ends up getting thrown away, so I tried leaving it out and, well, Warp had to tune it a little but she got it running. Don’t ask me how it works, I’m just the captain.” “Not. Helping…” Twilight said in a singsong voice. “How can you not know how your ship works?” Sparkles asked, sounding increasingly agitated. “Because I’m not the engineer,” Chance said. “Tess?” Tess shrugged. “I’m not the engineer either, but the mirror-me who disassembled the reactor didn’t seem surprised by what she found. It’s got to be fusion.” “But fusion reactors don’t explode,” Sparkles insisted, her eyes darting all around the room as if searching for some way out of the logical dillema. “The information in your library was clear on that point.” “Yeah, well, you see…” Chance said, smiling at her and fidgeting idly with his harness, “most of our ‘library’ was copied off the local infosphere of one system or another. You can’t believe everything you get from the infosphere.” “But – but – we were created to study the library!” Sparkles said, looking on the verge of tears. “Our life is a lie!” “I don’t see how that’s really important, since Twilight isn’t going to let us merge with her anyway,” Queen Meanie said. “As far as she’s concerned, we’re a mistake.” “Actually, more of an embarrassment than anything else,” Twilight replied. “Everypony knows what happens if you mess with mirror spells. The Emergence spell even had ‘Do Not Cast’ stamped over the page.” Tess laughed. “Nopony ever thinks that applies to them, do they.” Twilight cringed. “The full text was ‘Do Not Cast, this means you Twilight Sparkle’, signed by Princess Celestia.” “But it didn’t say ‘even if you’re trapped on the moon and think that you only have a few hours to study an entire library of high-tech alien moon ponies’,” Pinkie Pie said. “So you’re in the clear.” She giggled. “Besides, it’s pretty funny when you think about it.” Queen Meanie smirked. “So now we’re a joke?” “Hey, at least you’re alive,” Tess said. “For another few minutes anyway.” “Twilight cast the emergence spell at full power,” Queen Meanie said. “We should last for another few hou --- aaaaaaah!” She screamed as the machinery around them hissed, and the window set in the floor erupted with orange light. Twilight and Sparkles screamed as well, as the whole room shook, lurched, and then after an all-too-brief flight fell back to the moon’s surface with a crunch. Pinkie Pie was also making a loud noise, although it was more of a squeal of delight, cut short when the landing slammed her head against the fuel tank she was strapped to. “Ow! I’m okay!” she said, then started screaming again, waving her hooves in the air for good measure. “Sorry I had to interrupt your thrilling conversation, but we’re on a timeline,” Tess shouted over the loud roar as the moondust below them scraped past the hull. Pinkie Pie squealed happily. “That was fun! Make us bounce again!” Around them, the ship creaked and groaned as if it was made out of old wooden timbers instead of super-strong modern materials. “It’s working!” Chance said, grinning madly as the ship slid faster and faster down the slide they’d carved into the moon’s surface. The room gradually tilted as the slide got steeper and steeper. “Don’t panic! It’s supposed to do this!” That didn’t seem to mollify Twilight and her copies, whose screaming only got louder the closer the ship got to vertical. Then there was a loud ‘clang’ as the ship hit an errant rock, and bounced ‘up’ away from the moon, and for a brief, terrifying second of free-fall, failed to find the track. The window flared again as Tess desperately fired the thrusters to compensate, and to soften the landing. It didn’t quite work. The leading edge of the ship caught on the final ramp that was supposed to have righted the ship and sent it spinning off the edge of the moon like a Frisbee, and instead it went tumbling off the edge of the moon like a coin flipped by a dragon. === Rainbow Dash was in the zone. Sure, she didn’t have anything amazing planned, and only random clouds and the huge thunderstorm looming over everything to work with, but improvisation had always been her strength. She looped and swooped and gathered some lightning from the storm for a big finale, posing victoriously in midair as thunderbolts shot out from her in all directions. And everypony laughed. Dash looked down at Trixie’s massive illusion stretching out below her, then backed off a ways to get a better look at it – at which point she realized Trixie had used Rainbow’s big finish to dot the ‘i’ in her name. “You cheater!” Rainbow Dash shouted. “Sorry, but the Great and Powerful Trixie cannot hear you over the roaring applause of her fans,” Trixie shouted back. “Well, let’s see you beat this,” Rainbow Dash said, winding up for her signature move. She hated to come off as a one-trick pony, but honestly at this point everypony expected to see at least one Sonic Rainboom whenever she did a routine, and that was going to be a heck of a lot flashier than anything Trixie could pull off. To mix it up, and keep from inadvertently destroying the stormcloud everypony had spent so much time building, she set the Rainboom off as she flew horizontally, the ring explosion stretching up and down, parallel to the storm’s edge. “Oh dear,” Rarity said, as she stared up at the chromatic wavefront heading right for the crowd. “So much power…” Trixie said, in a daze. Her whole body seemed to glow, not just her horn, as she started to cast. She tossed her head and the rainbow-colored shockwave followed, unwinding into a torrent of rainbow light that flew around the sky at her direction, twisting through the air like an eel swimming through the water. The cheering resumed as the crowd realized they weren’t about to die after all. Rainbow Dash was leaving her own rainbow trail across the sky, her whole body tingling with the energizing aftermath of a Rainboom. She swooped and looped, spelling out her own name this time, and was just finishing the ‘o’ when she noticed another rainbow heading right for her. But not just a rainbow, anymore – a rainbow-colored dragon with shimmering wings spreading to either side, and a mouth full of nasty looking fangs gaping wide enough to swallow the pegasus in a single bite. There was no time to think, only to react – so she bucked it in the nose. The crowd cheered as it exploded into harmless light, painting the mountainside and the storm in rainbow colors for a good thirty seconds before finally fading away. On the ground below, the Great and Powerful Trixie came out of her magic-induced trance, to find Applejack staring her in the face from inches away, the earth pony’s hooves clutched tight to her horn. “What happened?” Trixie asked, confused, as Rainbow Dash took a victory lap overhead. “Sorry, Trix, but it looked like that spell was running away with you,” Applejack said. Cherry Berry grinned. “And now you’re grounded!” === Everypony screamed as the Here to Help tumbled out of control. Tess’ scream had words in it, as she clutched desperately to the control panel and her implants tried to make sense of the situation so that she could get them into a controlled fall. “This was a bad plan!” “Teleport us back to the city!” Chance screamed, but there was no response from the unicorns. Twilight and Sparkles looked like they’d been knocked unconscious, and Queen Meanie’s eyes were open but there was no sign of awareness behind her terrified stare. Pinkie Pie, on the other hoof, was out of her harness, floating in the center of the room, spinning madly with a squeal of delight. “This is the best ride ever!” Tess looked up at Pinkie Pie and tried to explain. “This is the wrong kind of spin! We need to stop or we’ll all going to die!” “So stop it!” Pinkie Pie said. “Want me to help?” “How can you –“ Tess started to ask. “Yes! Help!” “Weeeeelll…” Pinkie Pie started, bursting into song, “You put your left hoof in!” She stopped abruptly and Tess could see her sticking out her tongue every time her face spun into view. “Come on, Tess. Sing it with me!” “You put your left hand in…” Tess started, and glanced down at the controls. Her left hand fell naturally over one of the thrusters. You put your left hoof in, you pull your left hoof out, you put your left hoof in, and you shake it all about! You put your left hand in, you pull your left hand out, you put your left hand in, and you apply 1.32 seconds of thrust! You do the poney pokey and you give a little shout, that’s what it’s all about! You do the hokey pokey and you turn the ship around, that’s what it’s all about! You put your right hoof in, you pull your right hoof out, you put your right hoof in, and you shake it all about! You put your right hand in, you pull your right hand out, you put your right hand in, and you – Tess stopped singing for a few seconds as she pulsed the thruster rhythmically to eliminate another axis of rotation. You do the poney pokey and you work the problems out, that’s what it’s all about! …that’s what it’s all about. You put your heeeead in! You pull your heeead out! You put your heeeeead in, and you shake it all about! Tess leaned down and pressed a third thruster control with her nose, giggling insanely as she tried to hum along with the tune. By the time it came to the next chorus, the ship was basically stable. You do the poney pokey and you give a little shout, that’s what it’s all about! You do the hokey pokey and you turn the ship around, that’s what it’s all about! They sang the ‘whole self’ verse together as Tess made a few fine adjustments to straighten out the ship, with Equestria showing through the floor viewport. They could already make out the cloud formation waiting for them with the naked eye. Chance, who’d watched the whole performance with morbid fascination, said, “That was… interesting. Next time, use your flight software.” “I did,” Tess said, glaring over her shoulder at him. Then muttered in a low voice, “but the song helped.” === “What do you mean it’s a tie?” Rainbow Dash protested. Applejack shrugged. “You have to admit, that last move was kind of a team effort.” “Well, if neither of them won, I guess I’ll be keeping this element after all,” Shining Armor said, narrowing his eyes. “Nah, I think that was the kind of tie where both of them won,” Cherry Berry said. “Come on, Shiny. Hoof it over!” Shining Armor was suddenly surrounded by a pink bubble. “No,” he said. “I can’t let the Element of Loyalty fall into Rainbow Dash’s hooves.” “She’s the only pony that we know for sure can actually use the dang thing,” Applejack said. “We don’t have a choice. Everypony’s agreed on that, right? Rainbow gets her element back.” The other elements nodded in agreement. Rarity walked forwards and put a hoof on the surface of the force field. “Please, Shining Armor, don’t cause a scene.” “You don’t understand what’s at stake!” the stallion replied, emphasizing his words with a stomp. “There’s an ancient prophecy, a prophecy of doom, and to avert that we must use the Elements of Harmony. We can’t risk Rainbow Dash having second thoughts about blasting her friend!” “So, what?” Applejack asked. “Instead you’re going to hide in there until midnight, to make sure we can’t use ‘em?” Shining Armor glared back at her, then turned away, only to flinch in surprise as he saw the night guard captain staring at him from the other side. “Luna told us about the prophecy,” she said. “Her interpretation was different. According to Luna, to save Equestria, we have to let Rainbow Dash do whatever she wants.” Rainbow Dash laughed. “Now that’s the kind of prophecy I like.” Her eyes went wide. “Oh! You’re talking about that prophecy! ‘Let Harmony’s Rainbow fly’, right? Luna told us all about – um…” “Luna?!” Shining Armor said, staring at Rainbow Dash. “Luna’s been working with you, all this time?” The night guard sighed. “What else haven’t you been telling us?” he demanded, whirling back to glower into the night guard’s dragon-like eyes. Luna’s guardian narrowed her gaze. “If you’re lucky, you will never know. Let’s just say that everything is going according to plan, except for you.” “Please, Shining Amor,” Rarity said, batting her eyelashes. “Don’t make us do this the hard way.” Shining Armor looked around at his friends and his Lunar counterpart, and closed his eyes. “Swear to me,” he said. “Swear to Celestia, that this isn’t all another Tarterous-bound Lunar rebellion. Swear by everything you hold dear that I won’t regret this.” “With Celestia as my witness,” the night guard said, “I swear that Rainbow Dash will do her duty, or I will kill her myself.” “Hey!” Rainbow Dash said. “That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?” Rarity remarked, looking a bit shocked. “And this isn’t a plot to overthrow the princess?” Shining Armor asked, one ear flat as he met the night guard’s gaze. “Nopony wants to overthrow Celestia,” Rainbow Dash said. “And if anypony tries, they’ll have to go through me! Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.” As the sun slipped below the limb of the mountain, casting the group into shadow, Shining Armor lowered his forcefield, and levitated the Element of Loyalty over to Rainbow Dash, who fastened it around her neck with a sigh of relief. “I still don’t fully trust you,” he said. “Celestia will hear about what happened here, and about what you forced me to do.” The night guard shrugged. “If I understand Celestial oaths properly, she already has.” === “We’re still going to die,” Tess said, as their descent neared its final stages. “You know that, right?” “But we fixed the ship,” Pinkie Pie said. “We’re not tumbling like a rock in a rock polishing thingie anymore or anything! And the storm is there waiting for us, and –“ she looked over at Twilight. “Well, Twilight’s not in any shape to cast the cloud-walking spell but we’ve got spares!” She grinned at Queen Meanie. “Without the lateral spin we didn’t get from the section of ramp we missed, we’re not stable,” Tess explained. “And I’m not going to be able to keep us stable, not with these thrusters.” “But we’ll still hit the cloud, right?” Pinkie Pie said. “Clouds are really soft. We’ll be fine!” She looked at Tess and Chance, who didn’t look reassured. “Right?” she asked, suddenly significantly less reassured herself. Chance groaned. “Can’t anypony give me some good news?” “I can teleport us to the surface before we hit the atmosphere,” Queen Meanie said. “Five passengers is pushing my limits, and the timing will be tricky, but I think I can manage it.” “That doesn’t save my ship,” Chance said. “Eh,” Tess said. “The Here to Help might make it, even with a sloppy landing. It’s tougher than we are, and clouds are really soft.” “Then we have a plan!” Chance said. “Let’s get to it!” “Just to make sure,” Queen Meanie said. “You want me to cast a building-sized cloud-walking spell on the ship, followed by a six-person long-range teleport. Is that right?” “Sounds right,” Chance said, looking at her suspiciously. “Are you about to hand me an invoice?” The doppelganger smiled sweetly. “Then there’s just the matter of my –“ she trailed off as she realized Chance had pre-empted her. “Um, yes. My fee.” “You can’t have Twilight,” Chance said immediately. Queen Meanie looked shocked. “I –“ She blinked, and laughed nervously. “Wow. I didn’t even realize that was on the table.” “It’s not!” Chance said. “What do you want, then, if it isn’t a real pony’s body to take over? It sounds like the spell that created you has a limited duration, so it’s hard to imagine what else you could want.” “One of my… predecessors studied ‘moon ponies’,” Queen Meanie said. “You’ve got enough room in your implants to store a separate personality. After we’re down on the ground, you’re going to let me move in.” Chance frowned. “I’m using my implants. And Tess is using hers, when she remembers.” “Presumably, I’d take Sparkles,” Tess said. “If we were going to do this.” “I don’t think it can work,” Chance said. “We don’t have any of the equipment to upload a personality. I mean, I know it exists but I’ve never even seen the equipment – it’s too close to verger tech for most places to tolerate.” “Let me take care of the arcane details,” Queen Meanie said. “I know it won’t be a harmless transition, but you won’t die from it, and this way, neither will I. Or you can refuse, and we can all die together.” Chance looked down at the window. All they could see was the planet – they were getting close. “Fine, you’ve got me over a barrel. It’s a deal.” Queen Meanie let out her breath, and closed her eyes as she cast the cloud-walking spell on the ship. She didn’t let herself relax completely, though. “You agreed to that pretty easily,” she said, glancing at him uncertainly. “If you’re thinking about trying to weasel out of this, remember what happened last time we fought.” Chance laughed. “That wasn’t a fight.”