//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4 
// Story: Enter The Maretrix 
// by Chaotic Dreams 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 4

“Run!” the brown earth pony shouted, shoving Twilight into the crowd as he followed close behind. The crowd itself was turning into a hysterical mass of fleeing ponies, each trying to get as far away from the source of such a voilent blast of magic as they could. 
“That wasn’t any ordinary pony!” Twilight said as she raced frantically along through the crowd beside the brown stallion. “Who—no, what was that thing?”
“An Agent, and the most dangerous being in the Maretrix,” the earth pony said. “And though I hardly think I need to say this, don’t ever let them catch you!”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Twilight grumbled. What in Equestria was going on, and what in the world had she gotten herself into? “And what’s the Maretrix?”
“I’ll explain later!” the earth pony said as they cleared the crowd. “Right now, all you need to know is that we either get to the Exit or we die!”
Twilight gulped. This wasn’t just reading up on conspiracy theories in her library or hacking into the government’s magical networks with her crystal ball—this was real, and it was deadly. Twilight half-wished  she had left well enough alone, but a driving need to know, her loyalty to the princess, and the simple desire to not die tonight kept her going.
“Into the forest!” shouted the earth pony, rushing towards it faster than Twilight would have thought possible.
"He must be a relative of Pinkie Pie," Twilight thought.
A second blast of magic turned a tree to Twilight’s right into a smoldering explosion of wooden shrapnel and blazing fire. 
“Almost there—”
“Hello, Doctor Whooves,” said a suited pegasus with sunglasses, landing right in front of the two fleeing ponies, who screeched to a stop in front of the feathered flier. “And Ms. Sparkle, I presume. Another recruit for the Resistance?”
"There’s that word again—what do they mean by ‘Resistance?’" Twilight mentally wondered, her thoughts racing between curiosity and the fearful drive to get as far away from this dark pony as possible. "And what kind of name is Doctor Whooves?"
“Or, should I say,” the pegasus continued. “Next in line to die.” 
The pegasus, whose wings were tipped with silver blades, swiped forward with his feral feathers to slice open—
“Hold on!” shouted Twilight, placing a hoof on Doctor Whoove’s shoulders as her horn began to radiate magic.
“Wait! I wouldn’t—” Doctor Whooves tried to say, before the magic took effect.
—Nothing. In a flash of light, Twilight and the brown earth pony known as Doctor Whooves disappeared…
…and reappeared somewhere deep in the Everfree Forest—surrounded by four Agents.
“—do that,” the Doctor finished lamely. “They can track magic.”
“Oh,” said Twilight.
“Impressive, Ms. Sparkle,” congratulated an Agent as it stepped further out of the shadows of the towering trees. “Your magical energy is indeed a valuable asset to the Maretrix, so why don’t we compromise? If you come with us, you can go back to your happy life in Ponyville, undisturbed by any of us ever again, provided of course you keep your nose where it belongs—in books, not government files. If not, we’ll have no choice but to kill you.”
"There’s another one of those confusing words—what is the ‘Maretrix?’" Twilight thought, though more urgent matters were also pressing hard on the young unicorn’s mind. 
“Remember, they don’t take prisoners,” Doctor Whooves whispered in Twilight’s ear. 
"And they didn’t say anything about leaving you alone, either," Twilight thought, admiring the stallion’s selflessness and courage at not pointing that out. And, even though she had just met this pony, she couldn’t very well leave him to die—even if it really did mean an end to all this, which Twilight severely doubted it would. Besides, Twilight’s need for knowledge and her loyalty to the princess would never allow her to simply ignore the very real conspiracy going on beneath Celestia’s very nose.
“I’ll never cooperate with the likes of you,” Twilight spat at the lead unicorn. “You’re a traitor to the princess and all of Equestria!”
“Being a traitor implies that one is not already in charge,” the Agent said emotionlessly. “We took over from Celestia quite some time ago. Now, she’s no more than an oblivious puppet—just like everypony else in the Maretrix. Just like you.”
“How dare you insult the princess!” Twilight raged, her horn sparkling into an attack spell that burst into a gazillion points of stun sparks, all firing at the lead Agent.
But the lead Agent wasn’t there anymore.
But he was, but he wasn’t. 
He was everywhere at once, and simultaneously, the Agent was nowhere. 
In a blur of motion too quick for the pony eye to follow, the Agent whipped around in so many dodges at once that not a single stun spark so much as grazed his suit. Instead, the sparks singed into the thick tree behind the Agent, sending a shudder up the branches and igniting the leaves in a furious blossom of red fire.
“…That was unexpected,” Twilight said flatly.
“Yes, they do that,” said Doctor Whooves. “They’re also quite efficient at killing ponies, and we seem to be in a bit of a circle of death at the moment…”
“Death is inevitable for the pony,” said the lead unicorn, stepping closer as his fellow Agents followed suit and closed in on Twilight and the Doctor. “Only the AIM live forever.”
"AIM? What is with these weird words?!" Twilight mentaly contemplated, hoping it wouldn’t be her last thought.
“Despite all your learning protocols, you seriously haven’t been taught a thing about the spirit of life, have you?” retorted Doctor Whooves angrily. “The pony will not die. He refuses to. Unlike you!”
With that the Doctor lunged forward, whipping out a small pencil-long stick of metal that began buzzing with a green glow at the end. The device jabbed into the lead Agent’s face, sending sparking ripples of electricity over the Agent’s body like a lit match dropped in a pool of oil. 
The Agent screamed out in pain, backing up in a hasty retreat to get away from the device that seemed to be disrupting his very being.
“Run!” shouted the Doctor through a muffled mouthful of whatever the strange device was, and Twilight complied instantly. “Get to the Exit! It’s not much farther!”
But a few feet away from the circle of Agents, Twilight skidded to a halt and backed up. She couldn’t just leave the Doctor there with all those Agents around him! He had saved her life, and now she would return the favor. 
With a fierce buck, twilight sent the electrified Agent careening over Doctor Whooves and into the pegasus opposite him. 
“Come on!” Twilight called to the brown earth pony, and the two dashed off into the forest.
The two Agents who hadn’t been hit, two earth ponies themselves (at least, that’s what they looked like) took off after Twilight and the Doctor, leaping into the air. Each Agent landed on a tree like a mirror image of the other, and then launched forward to another tree, hopping from one to another and quickly catching up to Twilight and Doctor Whooves.
“Why won’t you things just die?!” the Doctor screamed angrily. “Take that!” 
Doctor Whooves flung his strange device at one of the Agents, shocking him and causing him to fall to the ground while the tiny machine bounced off the Agent and through the air, striking its twin and causing it too to fall to the ground.
The device rebounded once more to land squarely in the Doctor’s jaws.
“Not bad, eh?” the brown earth pony chuckled.
“That was amazing!” Twilight exclaimed. “How could you do that with that weird device when my magic was useless?”
“I’ll explain that when we’re safe—Agents don’t stay down for long,” said the Doctor. “And here’s the Exit!”
The Exit loomed up out of the dark gloom of the Everfree Forest like a fierce beast waiting to devour them, but turned out to be nothing more than a tall rectangular blue box.
“That’s the Exit?” Twilight wondered, sounding slightly disappointed. 
“Yes, now get in!” the Doctor answered, hurrying the unicorn into the strange contraption. 
What awaited Twilight on the inside turned out to be far more of a welcome surprise. 
“Now this is more like it!” Twilight laughed, looking around at the wonderfully expansive space of the Exit, filled as it was with arches and hallways and an extraordinary array of devices and instruments the likes of which Twilight had never seen. “It’s bigger on the inside!”
“It is indeed!” Doctor Whooves agreed, smiling in spite of himself as he rushed to the ringing contraption at the center of the room on a raised control panel. “A lot of planning went into this, mind you. Now, Operator, get us out of here! We have ‘the one!’”
. . .