H. Celestia—A cliff above Nowhere, 10:25 p.m. on Day Three.
The group had lost track of Raven. At one moment she was walking in front of them. And then she had walked into a particularly dark shadow, and she had never emerged. Celestia was distressed at how little she cared now about concealing her true nature from individuals other than herself.
Bluey was lying on his stomach, peering at the town through the binoculars. “That dark shape over there is a dragon. Dark blue. ...And that was its flame.”
Celestia unceremoniously grabbed the binoculars with her magic and took a look herself. “He’s got to be three stories tall!”
Mane Allgood took the binoculars next. “She’s three stories tall. That’s a female dragon.”
Trixie took the binoculars, using a rock to prop it up while she looked through it. “Everybody else in town is holed up in their homes.”
A unicorn filly took the binoculars from Trixie. “Yup, they’re right where I left them,” she remarked after taking her own look.
“Rarity!” Celestia exclaimed, jumping to her hooves.
Rarity shushed her so violently that Celestia popped her head back down again.
Then Celestia picked the filly up bodily with her magic and trotted all the way back to the main group.
“Rarity!” Cookie Crumbles exclaimed.
“Our little filly!” Hondo Flanks added.
“Wow,” Rarity said dryly, crawling up atop a rock pile so she could be at eye level with them. “You recognize me. Hello, parental units.”
“Rarity, do you know what’s going on? Do you know where you are?” Celestia asked her.
“In the broad sense, or right here?” Rarity countered. “Because I’m a little busy for the big picture right now.”
Celestia’s right eye twitched for a moment. “I...I need to have a little private conference with the filly. Our time is short, and this is the fastest way.”
“Okay,” Hondo said with a shrug.
“The Princess knows best,” Cookie said.
Then the two of them got back to their mahjong game.
Rarity sighed. “Don’t ever change,” she said with maximum sarcasm. She then made a flying leap from the rock pile to land on Celestia’s back.
Celestia’s eyes went wide, and she had to hold back a grunt of pain at four little hooves digging into her back.
“So, you’re the Princess?” Rarity asked as Celestia walked off to a private location. “That’s perfect! Where’s your—”
“Rarity.”
“—army? Hiding in the—”
“Rarity!”
“—darkness, waiting to take the whole—”
“Rarity!”
“—town by storm?”
“Rari...I’ve only got six guards,” Celestia said after realizing that she was being allowed to put a word in. “And we’re running out of time. What can you tell me about Mustang Sally, and her connection to this town?”
“Mustang Sally? Never heard of her.”
Celestia sighed. “I’m not sure I can handle whatever happens when Raven gets down there. We might have to flee back to Canterlot to make the deadline.”
“What?!” Rarity asked incredulously. “That town is doomed if I don’t save it tonight. There’s this—”
“Rarity, I’m going to fail you out of the Ninth Grade if you don’t listen to me this instant!”
Rarity dropped to the ground, and her haunches, in total amazement. “Principal Celestia? Are you telling me that you’ve been the part-time Princess of another planet this whole time?”
“No. Rarity, there’s been a bunch of mind-swapping going on. There’s a Rarity that’s been going to classes at Canterlot High for the past three days, with that unicorn’s mind inside her. And now I’m occupying this Princess. We’ve figured out what’s going on, and you and I need to get about a hundred miles that way in the next ninety minutes, or we’ll both be stuck here for the next two-and-a-half years!” She looked off in the direction of Canterlot and sighed. “I just hope that the Princess can sort out her out-of-control secretary.”
“But!...” Rarity started, but was unable to come up with a good reason to follow it. “But...” she tried again. Finally she hung her head. “You go ahead, Principal. I’m staying.”
“What?!” Celestia demanded.
“These folks needed me, and I let them down,” Rarity said, looking reluctantly up at the face of Celestia. “And their mayor has really screwed them over and that dragon over there is probably right about to break loose and eat everybody, so I’ve got to do something. So...I will. And in...”—with a great sigh, she mumbled the next part—“two-and-a-half years, I’ll come back...to the Ninth Grade, at the age of eighteen, and catch up on what I missed.”
“Well that’s completely unacceptable,” Celestia said with a shake of her head. “What kind of educator would I be if I didn’t help you with your special projects?”
Celestia grinned, and Rarity’s grin fully matched hers. It seemed like she was finally expressing her age after who knows how long faking it.
H. Rarity.
Celestia looked nervously down at the town. Raven hadn’t done anything spectacularly obvious. Yet.
“Alright, everyone,” Rarity said, standing upright on the rockpile to address the group. “I’m going down there to rescue Applejack from the Mayor.”
“I thought Applejack was in Ponyville,” remarked Lofty.
“No, she’s staying in Manehattan,” corrected Snap Shutter.
“Actually, she’s in Canterlot,” clarified Trixie.
Rarity waved her hoof. “Different Applejack,” she said. “But this one’s also my friend. Now I’m going to issue a challenge to Adamantine down there on the stroke of midnight.”
Celestia cleared her throat.
“Oh right! At the stroke of 11 p.m. It’s going to be a classic dragon’s duel.”
“What’s a dragon’s duel?” asked an eager Mane Allgood.
Rarity explained it to them.
“That sounds dangerous,” commented Hondo when she got to the part about the dragon trying to “pound [her] flatter than a pancake”.
“‘No risk, no reward’, as...well you always told me,” Rarity replied.
Hondo had to think for a moment. “Yeah, I do tell you that all the time. But I didn’t expect you to listen!”
Rarity shook her head incredulously. “Moving on! If the time of the duel’s been moved back an hour, I need to have my secret weapon recalibrated.” From her saddlebags she removed a Locator identical to Bluey’s, only minus the sticker. It was the one she had confiscated from the Mayor. “I need somebody to fly out to these coordinates.”
“I can do it,” Bluey said, reaching out for the device. He looked it over, but didn’t see any other coordinates written on it other than... “You want me to go out to Glass Lake?” he asked with additional eagerness.
“Yeah, that’s where the bypass valve is located. I’m going to just have to trust that you get the time of the shunt moved over from 12:01 to 11:01, since there’s no possible way we can communicate over such a wide distance.”
Celestia produced a pair of speaking stones.
“Hey!” Trixie exclaimed, stepping out of the shadows. “If you had those the whole time, why did you bother with the wrist communicators?”
“Because I had one anyway?” Celestia replied.
“OK, I’ll accept that,” said Trixie, stepping back into the shadows. (And stayed there without literally melting into them. Strange story that I actually have to clarify that point.)
“I won’t let you down!” Bluey exclaimed, running towards the nearest pegasus-driven carriage.
Rarity watched the carriage lift off into the night. “Well, I was going to save the exposition until this whole thing was over, but it looks like I have time to waste, so I’ll tell you all now.
“It all started when I found myself in the desert...after I got my cutie mark.” Rarity looked over at Celestia. As she had been instructed, she was leaving out anything about being a human in a pony body.
# # #
(I will of course skip the part of the story you fair readers already know. I should note, however, that Rarity passed “Applejack” off as a pony outlaw who had changed her name. By doing this, she hoped to keep Applejack from getting caught by Lady C.)
“That’s horrible!” Hondo had interrupted on learning of the loss of Rarity’s cutie mark.
“No, it was wonderful,” Rarity said with moisture in her eyes. “I was free from the horrible fate that had been given to me.” She then continued on to the point where Adamantine had grabbed up both herself and the Mayor and had flown off.
“Once we were far enough from Nowhere, she and the Mayor started to laugh. I whimpered and played the weakling, and got him to admit to at least part of his plan: he knew about a water pipeline going under the town, and by shutting off the bypass, had driven everyone in town into selling their properties to him, with the lone exception of Applejack. The other citizens were squatters in the empty buildings, and he engineered the downfall of Merrimack and my humiliation to get them to give up and move away. Then he would bring the water back, and the ponies would move in, making him and Adamantine rich.
“By this time we were over Glass Lake. ‘Down there is my bypass,’ the Mayor gloated, ‘but as you’re about to become a stain on the lake, that knowledge will not be very useful to you.’
“‘Bye-bye,’ taunted Adamantine, as she dropped me to my doom.”
“How did you survive?” asked Snap Shutter.
“I was saved...by Applejack. I told you that this Applejack was a pegasus. Well, she caught me right out of thin air. She had to cut it close, though, so she wouldn’t be seen by the dragon or the Mayor.”
Rarity held back the fact that she had been looking around her the entire flight trying to spot a means of escape, and other than a persistent ladybug, had completely failed to see Applejack anywhere until the instant she had saved the day.
“‘You saved me!’ I proclaimed as I was being lowered to the shore of the lake. ‘I thought you had given up on me.’
“‘I had given up on you!’ she snarled. ‘I only followed you in hopes that the dragon would force a painful confession out of that no-good Mayor. But now it looks like I have no choice but to help you take him down. But stay here—there’s two others who want to help you.’ And she flew off.
“I looked around while I was waiting, and I found two bypass valves surrounded by a grove of obscuring cacti; the big one for the town had been shut off, while a little one leading to the mayor’s ranch was on...and surrounded by red mud and footprints. And then Applejack returned by hoof, leading Tom and Jerry.
“Tom’s the one that your unicorn and pegasus are flying out to tell of the change in plans. Jerry is hiding in town, waiting for my signal. And Applejack volunteered to fly back to Nowhere and to stall through the process of selling her land as long as necessary in order to buy me time.”
“Wow, that was an amazing story!” exclaimed a pink pony with a cotton candy mane who was suddenly standing next to Rarity.
Rarity squinted her eyes to peer into the newcomer’s eyes. “P—”
A hoof was removed from Rarity’s mouth. “Yes and no. And not Pinkamena anymore. It’s Pinkie, the one who belongs on this world. We’re a lot better now. Anyway, I think you need to know a bit about the unique geology of this town...”
# # #
“Well I still don’t see why you have to risk yourself with your plan, now that the Princess is here,” Hondo said after Pinkie was finished with her geology-babble. He and Cookie had been gradually drawn into the story as it was being told, and were just waiting for the opportunity to express their admiration. “She can just take the mayor and this dragon down single-hoofedly. Isn’t that right?”
Celestia masked her nervousness with a snort. She opened up her mouth to give her excuse, but Rarity spoke first.
“I’m sorry, Father, but it really needs to be me. I was the one who wallowed in the lies I spread. I may have been named Sheriff in order to bring the town to its knees, but I insist on carrying through the oath of office that I swore, and I will bring justice to Nowhere, so help me Goddess!” A few moments later, she sheepishly added, “but I would be open to help just in case my carefully-crafted plan goes down in flames. Quite. Literal. Dragon. Flames.”
# # #
“Adamantine!” Rarity called out from one end of the main street of Nowhere. “I’m a-callin’ you out!”
(Yes of course she switched to a Western accent for that line. There is simply no other way to say it, Darlings.)
The Mayor stepped out of the jailhouse. He opened his mouth to speak, but was silenced by a sudden and near-deafening cry of “THERE YOU ARE!”
Mayor John shivered, for he recognized it as the voice of Mustang Sally. He looked around him, to see the entire town fill up in dense shadow.
“Why couldn’t I find you?!” the voice demanded. It sounded different this time: a little deeper, and a lot more experienced.
The Mayor chuckled. “Because I’ve always been prepared for another like you to find this town. Are you one of the sisters? Or perhaps that mother she hated so much, come far too late for an empty vengeance?”
“I WILL HAVE MY VENGEANCE!” the voice roared. “NONE IN THIS TOWN WILL SURVIVE!”
Adamantine tried to fly out of the town, She was grabbed roughly and...
“Thrown to the ground!” Raven’s voice crowed. “Just as you crippled the Mayor to trick the townsfolk into thinking that he wasn’t involved in my demise!”
The Mayor looked around, to see dozens of eyes peering out of windows at him. He did a double-take on hearing the voice say “my”, like it was claiming to be Mustang Sally herself.
“Now Madame Voice, I’m all for inflicting vengeance on the Mayor and his reptilian toady,” Rarity began.
“Hey!” protested Adamantine.
“But the villagers and I were completely innocent of the crime,” Rarity continued. “Why don’t you let us go?”
“I could do that...I was assigned the task of rescuing you by the Princess herself...But screw the Princess! And screw Harmony! It was Outsiders that lured my daughter to her doom. Outsiders like everyone in this village, and like you, Rarity. No, this town has to pay for what they did. First Nowhere...and then the whole of Equus outside Equestria. Only ponies deserve to live!”
The Mayor took the opportunity of the monologue to try and sneak his way out of the shadow that had enveloped the town.
The shadows rushed inward, forming into Raven twice her normal size, standing on the wooden platform that covered the former hole in the street. “Oh no, Tortoise John,” she told him in the same booming voice as before. “You have the privilege of being my first victim, so the others will know what horrors to expect. Let’s start off with a gentle squeeze...”
A shadow hoof congealed under Mayor John’s wheelchair, lifting it into the air. The hoof then became a shadow boa constrictor, wrapping itself around him. As he struggled, John’s wheelchair was crushed into rubble, which fell down to the ground. Finally he managed to remove his iron rod, and point it at Raven.
Raven laughed. “No magic known has the power to affect me,” she bragged.
“Then I know something you don’t,” John gasped out, as he pressed the button on the rod.
In an instant, the shadow construct vanished, causing John to fall roughly to the ground. At the same time, Raven cried out in agony, shrinking back down to her normal height. As everyone in town watched in horrified fascination, Raven began to rapidly age before their eyes. Her limbs dissolved into goo, leaving only a torso and head.
P. Pinkie.
On the ridge above the town, the binoculars were being passed back and forth. Some aspect of Raven’s magic prevented them from hearing any sounds from the town, but they could certainly see something awful happening before their eyes, and those aware of Raven’s power knew that she must be responsible.
When Raven had begun dying, Pinkie froze in terror. Thirteen generations of sharing pony bodies had not prepared her for this. Seeing that she might not respond before it was too late, Pinkamena took over their body, opening a shadow gate.
Appearing next to the screaming Raven, she opened a second gate, and shoved her inside. Pinkamena seemed to instinctively know that this was the right thing to do. She turned her head to look briefly at the spirit that remained behind, the spirit of Mustang Sally, that Pinkamena could only see thanks to the presence of Pinkie Pie within her. The look of rage on Sally’s face was so terrifying that Pinkamena immediately took another shadow gate to return to the others.
“Didn’t any of you see that?” she demanded.
From their confused responses, it appeared that the answer to that question was “no”.
H. Rarity.
There was a moment of silence as everybody in Nowhere tried to process what had just happened. The horror of Raven’s disintegration had been so extreme that no one was quite sure how she had suddenly vanished. Some sort of pink entity had been involved, but it was impossible for anyone to recall exactly what it looked like.
“Well, that was absolutely horrifying,” Rarity commented out loud. “And you two are murderers.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” Adamantine jeered.
Rarity re-evaluated her options. To her utter surprise, it was still less than ten minutes to 11 p.m., which seemed to imply that the supernatural being who had terrorized them before...that happened to her had also stopped time. So the plan was still on. “Adamantine! I’m a-callin’ you out!” she repeated in the same accent as before, hoping it didn’t sound stupid the second time around.
The Mayor gave her a good strong look, before remembering what he was going to say the last time. “You’re also supposed to be dead!” he complained, in the tone of a Little League parent calling out a rule violation. “We both saw you go splat!”
“No, you had us turn around before the splat made you queasy,” the dragon grumbled. “But I’m willing to finish the job. How about a fire-breathing contest, 10 paces?”
Rarity, who had been walking steadily closer to the pair this whole time, shook her head. “The Code Duello is very clear: this has got to be a dragon duel.”
Adamantine rolled her eyes. “Of course. The one where you try to non-violently put me to sleep. However, I’ve still got my little toy here.” She demonstrated by pounding the ground once with her tail hard enough to cause three dilapidated buildings to collapse. “So shall we start?”
Rarity glanced up at the town’s clock tower, which showed the time to be 10:54. “High eleven,” she said. “Got to follow tradition.”
“High eleven?” Adamantine questioned. “What kind of tradition is that? What about high midnight?”
“Do you really want to wait an hour?” Rarity asked.
“No,” said Adamantine. “Fine, I’ll wait for five minutes. Somebody better draw us a proper duel circle before time’s up!”
The cry caused Louise the bartender to race out with a bucket of white paint and a large paintbrush. She got to work painting a circle in the dirt surrounding the two combatants.
“Where’s Applejack?” Rarity asked Mayor John, who had crawled over to the porch of the bar and propped himself up against a post in order to watch. It turned out he had very strong arms.
“She’s cooling her heels in jail,” the Mayor said. “I figured out that she was stalling for time, we traded words, and the sheriff decided she had enough of Applejack’s sass. It’s amazing how long she held out, considering how annoying she is.”
As Rarity watched, several of the townsfolk slowly emerged from their shops to watch the coming fight.
“Why’d you come back?” asked Mori the buzzard.
“Because it was the right thing to do, regardless of who I am,” Rarity replied.
The clock struck eleven, and silence settled across the town of Nowhere.
Rarity slowly advanced on Adamantine. She was walking on her hind hooves, with her forehooves swinging at her sides. If she had fingers and a couple of six-shooters she would be wiggling her fingers over those guns just like she saw in black-and-white Westerns.
Adamantine barked out a cold laugh. “You’ve got until I turn this body around, and then your sad little pony life will be over.” She started her turn...
Rarity raced forward on all fours, scampering up Adamantine’s leg.
“Aargh!” the dragon called out in frustration. Due to a technicality, a pony jumping on her didn’t violate the “don’t leave the surface” rule, so long as Adamantine herself was touching the ground. “Why do you ponies always do that during dragon duels!” She used her wings to start to lift herself.
“Ah-ah-ah!” Rarity chided. “You wouldn’t want to disqualify yourself, would you?”
With a frown, Adamantine stopped her flapping before she had lost contact with the ground. Instead she started trying to sweep Rarity off of her with a claw.
The moment a claw touched her Rarity flung herself into the air, tumbling head over tail and landing neatly on the wooden platform that Raven had been standing on. (And where Mustang Sally was still standing and fuming—without a willing host, she had no way to exact her vengeance.) Rarity shook for a moment at the brief feeling of cold that passed through her and then stood still, looking mockingly at Adamantine.
With a roar of rage, the dragon rushed forward. Rarity sprang out of the way, the dragon walked over the wooden platform, the clock ticked 11:01...
And a massive geyser of water broke through the platform. It briefly lifted the dragon into the air and then, with limbs flailing, she broke completely through it and fell out of sight. A second, unnoticed geyser appeared inside the bank building.
(Sally barked out a laugh. “Hey Adamantine! Is it cold enough for you down there?”
Adamantine failed to answer her.)
“Citizens of Nowhere!” Rarity proclaimed. “You see before you the rightful water supply of this town, a supply which was deliberately withheld from you by your mayor so he could force you out and sell the land for profit!”
This got all of the citizens to come out of hiding. (They hadn’t been too outraged by Mustang Sally’s fate all those years ago, as she was a hated pony after all.)
“Face it, Tortoise John, you’re done for!” Rarity proclaimed, after vacating the now-flooded street.
“I think not,” the Mayor said with an evil smile. Putting a claw to his lips and whistling, he summoned up an army of thirty beefy ponies, mostly earth ponies, but with at least one pegasus summoning lighting and one unicorn lifting the remains of the former hotel.
“I am hereby proclaiming martial law, Sheriff Rarity,” the Mayor said with a sneer. “And all of you squatters are going to vacate my premises!”
“That is enough!” Princess Celestia proclaimed, stepping out from behind a building.
The additional mercenaries that the Mayor had apparently hired “just in case” looked among themselves, trying to weigh the sheer idiocy of taking on the Princess.
“Your crimes against Equestria end now, Tortoise John!” said Celestia. She held aloft the Mayor’s rod in her magic. “And don’t think of using this against us.”
Mayor John looked down as the water in the street was suddenly sucked into the soil. “I say it again: I think not.”
“And why are you so certain?” Celestia said, as she was surrounded by her pegasi guards, Rarity’s parents, Scootaloo’s parents and aunts, and a few others. Even Cheerilee was there to support her friend.
Tortoise John merely raised a scaly eyebrow.
Before Celestia had a chance to say anything, she suddenly collapsed to the ground with a groan, followed by every other pony in town, including the mercenaries.
“That is why I am certain,” the Mayor said, crawling towards the Princess. The guards crawled a bit to shield her from view. “This town is sitting on a very unique mineral, so unique that it doesn’t even have a name yet, so I called it ‘tirecium’. That rod was made with the same substance. Those with a Classical background will understand the derivation.”
“Are...are you using this mineral to steal our magic?” the voice of Celestia asked from inside the pony dogpile.
“Steal...” Mayor John broke out in laughter. “I don’t want your light magic! Light magic is poison! No, I planned to use the deposit in the second part of my plan, the part I would have explained to Rarity over there if that idiot dragon hadn’t flown us to Glass Lake too fast!
“You see, while I was selling the newly renamed-town of ‘Paradise’ to the highest pony bidder, I would have slowly filled the tirecium aquifer, only allowing the whole thing to saturate when the whole town was settled. And that saturation would have activated the mineral, sucking all of the magic out of them!”
“Why?” demanded Rarity.
“Because light magic makes ponies into idiots!” the Mayor roared. “I would have liberated those ponies of their millennia-long addiction to cotton-candy niceness!
“Once they had gotten used to their new and improved natures, they would naturally acclaim me as their liberator, and I would have extended my realm, catalyzing the tirecium into spreading slowly through the whole of Equestria, freeing towns and villages one at a time from the tissue-paper bonds of allegiance with the Pansy in Chief.” He finished his speech by pointing at the presumed location of the Princess.
“But wouldn’t your reign end on the day when the first hot summer or pipe leak causes one of your aquifers to drain below the saturation point?” Rarity asked, walking slowly across the street towards him.
“The magic drain may start with water saturation, but it only ends with a combination of both dryness and magic saturation,” the Mayor explained.
“That lines up with what our resident geologist thought,” said Rarity with a nod. “And just out of curiosity, what would have happened to ‘that idiot’ dragon in your scheme?”
“You mean my outlaw enforcer Adamantine? She was a relic of the past, a character from an old Western novel. Just like who you pretended to be, Rarity. I would have cemented my reputation with the pony settlers by slaying her like the hero of an even older genre. Showed them in that way how much easier it was to settle problems with violence!”
“I. Think. Not.”
The town was suddenly illuminated by sunlight, causing everyone to look up. There floating above them in a nimbus of light was Princess Celestia in all of her glory.
At the same time, steam began to erupt from the hole in the street, the hole in the bank, and from various other random spots on the ground.
(The phantom Sally sat down and started eating from a bucket of phantom popcorn.)
Tortoise John quickly pulled himself over to the circle of weakened guards, shoveling them aside to see the central figure. Instead of Celestia, he only saw the ponies she had brought with them. (One of which was a pale pink unicorn with a strange device attached to one leg.)
“How did you do that?!” he demanded to Celestia. “No pony could possibly regain their magic so quickly!”
Celestia shook her head. “Unlike you, I never explain myself to my enemies. Now, Rainbow!”
At the cue, a second, rainbow-colored light began fast approaching from far above. It resolved itself into a filly pegasus, rainbow mane and tail streaming behind her, and with a smile wide enough to be seen from the ground. “Here I come to save the day!” she sang. And then she appeared to explode into a blinding disk of rainbow-rimmed light. In fact, she managed to bank in a 90-degree turn and effortlessly landed next to Rarity.
“Do I know you?” Rarity asked.
“You will,” Rainbow said while still beaming her smile. “I’m transferring to Canterlot High starting this Monday.”
The disk of light shook visibly for a moment, before being sucked through the hole in the ground, causing it to emit a rainbow glow. The ground shook, and then there was a series of loud cracks that echoed from deep underground all the way to the surface.
The ponies all silently rose to their hooves.
The pegasi guards closed ranks and began to advance towards the Mayor of Nowhere. Tortoise John backed up, then stopped when he saw the mercenaries that he had betrayed advancing on him as well.
The ground heaved once more, and the head and one arm of Adamantine erupted out of the ground. “Back off, ponies!” she snarled. “This ‘idiot’ sheriff has to tender her resignation...with an ‘exit interview’.”
With a panicked cry, the Mayor was dragged down into the caverns that underlay the city.
With another loud crack, both dragon and tortoise disappeared from sight. It took more than twenty seconds of straight falling for them to messily splat into the floor of the complex.
Princess Celestia landed on the edge of the crater that had been left behind and sighed. To the mercenaries she said, “If you disappear from my sight in the next ten seconds, I won’t bother to have you hunted down like the sad little worms that you are.”
All of the mercenaries decided to take that offer.
To the guards she said, “I’m sorry I had to deceive you with a double.”
“It was very good,” one of the pegasi said, looking over at Principal Celestia. “We couldn’t detect a hint of magic the whole time.”
Another pegasus landed with a chariot containing Bluey. “I had the best seat in the house!” he proclaimed to Princess Celestia. “But...why did you have the commoner filly provide the crucial magic instead of yourself?”
“Because I needed to conserve my magic so that I could teleport my filly charges back to Canterlot before the deadline,” Princess Celestia explained.
“And look at her,” Principal Celestia added, putting her wing around Bluey’s withers and pointing a hoof at Rainbow Dash. “Do you see how loyal she is?”
After a pause, Bluey nodded. “Yes,” he said finally, “She does look very loyal.”
“So what is that?” Princess Celestia asked as she was hoofed the rod the Principal was holding.
“This was how he used the ‘tirecium’ on me before it was saturated,” Rarity explained. “I’m sure that there’s some magical or geo-magical reason for how it works. It probably only works on one pony at a time or something. Separated from the town, it’s probably powerless. Now if you’ll hold on, I need to check something before you finish up.”
Mustang Sally.
The ghost of Mustang Sally looked down into the hole, and knew that both of her murderers were dead.
She felt relief, but also regret. She shouldn’t have wanted to kill them. It wasn’t the pony way. And she had torn herself away from her mother precisely because she wanted to be a pony...instead of the thing Raven was. How had it gone so wrong?
She began to fade away, her tether to the mortal realm now broken.
P. Celestia.
The Princess, unknowingly standing beside a spirit, looked down into the hole herself and sighed. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this,” she said to her counterpart, who stood beside her. “Death appears to be the most common solution to evil on your world, but on mine, at least in Equestria, I or my agents are almost always able to lead our enemies to Harmony. When it ends like this...I feel like I have failed.”
Pinkie Pie, suddenly standing beside them, looked up at her. “Forget it Princess,” she said, appearing to channel the thoughts of somepony long dead. “This is Nowhere. The rules are different here.”
H. Rarity.
Rarity walked into the jailhouse. There she found that the busted-out rear wall was busted out again, that Jerry was sitting behind the sheriff’s desk munching on a grilled cheese sandwich, and that Pony Rarity and Rainbow Dash were there in their mis-aged bodies alongside Pony Pinkie Pie in her correct (?!) body.
“Applejack?” Human Rarity asked Jerry.
“See for yourself,” Jerry said, jerking a thumb in the empty jail’s direction. “She told me to say good-bye on her behalf, and mentioned something about being found by the Princess as almost being as bad as being found by Lady C.”
Human Rarity sighed. She then looked at Pinkie. “Do you know anything about the Pinkie from Canterlot High?” she asked.
Pinkie nodded her head. “She’s back home, she changed her name to Pinkie Pie just like me, and she’s A-OK. She’s going to meet you and the other survivors at Sugarcube Corner tomorrow at noon.” Then she walked out of the jailhouse.
“Rarities and Rainbow Dash!” cried the voice of a Celestia—the principal, they guessed. “We’d like to get the switching out of the way before something else blows up.”
“Those were some really gutsy moves,” Pony Rainbow Dash said, shaking Human Rarity’s hoof. “You and your Rainbow Dash should compare notes.” Then she walked out of the jailhouse.
Pony Rarity rushed forward and pulled her counterpart into an embrace. “Thank you for the inspiration that briefly taking your place has given me. You’ve given me my cutie mark, and I hope that soon you might earn a worthy mark of your own.” Then she walked out.
Human Rarity looked over at Jerry as he got up from his chair. “Thanks for not killing me,” he said gruffly. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m heading out the same way as Applejack. Just in case the Princess out there finds out about the price on my head.”
“Don’t kill anypony,” she told him.
“Hey, I already gave you my word yesterday. I’m not going back on that.” He walked out the hole in the wall, to be joined by a waiting Tom. The two of them disappeared into the darkness.
With a bemused shake of her head, Rarity looked around the jailhouse. With a tap of a hoof on a button on the wall, she liberated the glow bugs that were flying about inside a clear bowl attached to the ceiling, thereby turning out the lights as she left. Her tin star glinted on the table behind her.