The End of Ponies

by shortskirtsandexplosions


Chapter Forty-Eight: P for Pinkdetta

The End of Ponies
by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Forty-Eight – P for Pinkdetta

Special thanks to Vimbert, theworstwriter, and Warden for editing

Extra Special Thanks to Valhalla-Studios for Cover Art

        “Inkie says she'll sneak into town later to lend us a hoof,” Pinkie said as she dragged the hood of her brown cloak over her head. She and Harmony and Dawnhoof were practically galloping townward as night fell and enshrouded them. “She stayed behind with Blinkie for the time-being.”

        “Who can blame her?” Harmony smirked against the wind, balancing the bulky canvas shape of the machine over her flank as Dawnhoof steadied it with telekinetic balance. “I'd have stayed behind too if I didn't think that what we're about to do is a billion times more awesome.” She glanced aside in mid-canter. “What about you, Deacon?”

        “I said that I intend to see this through to the end and I meant it!” he exclaimed breathlessly, not used to this degree of physical exertion. “There are no words to describe what I've just witnessed, not even in the Chronicles. I almost regret that we have to perform this in such a clandestine fashion! Ponies need to see this for themselves.”

        “And they will see it,” Harmony said, staring ahead of her as the first of several dark trenches loomed under the misty starlight. “One way or another, they're going to see the light.” Her smile was as righteous as it was crooked. “You cannot stop progress.”

        “Say, once they see the light, do you think they'll need sunglasses?”

        “Sure, why not, Miss Pie?” Harmony glanced once more at Dawnhoof. “You're being awfully nice for lending us your magic, but once we get into city limits, we'll have to carry this thing the hard way. Your horn will only give us away in the darkness.”

        “I guess some light will have to wait,” he replied with a smirk.

        “See, Har-Har?! A priest can joke! Why can't you?”

        “I'm too excited to laugh right now.”

        “Heeheehee! Sure, I'll buy that! But just this once!”

        “Love it or leave it,” Harmony muttered, but cleared her throat in a serious breath as the rusted sign proclaiming “Gultophine's Refuge” lingered overhead. “Time to get this experiment over with.”


        One of many posters announcing “Gultophine's Harvest” stretched across a dull concrete wall illuminated by torchlight. Along the edge of an empty Town Square, the scavenger from the future stuck her head out of an adjacent alleyway. She glanced both ways, her amber eyes squinting, scanning for signs of movement. Once satisfied by the stillness of the urbanscape, she motioned with her hoof and crept out, carrying the bulk of the machine on her back.

        Pinkie Pie immediately followed, using her neck to balance the rest of the bagged device. She blinked nervously across the cobblestone expanse as her and Harmony's hooftrots echoed eerily beneath them. Dawnhoof trailed not far behind, adjusting his robe as he hopped down a curve and followed the two fillies under a halo of lamplight.

        “Pssst... Why aren't we going down Main Street?”

        “Are you joking, Miss Pie?” Harmony whispered back, but swiftly grunted. “Never mind, don't answer that. Ahem. We can't go anywhere that will draw attention. It's troubling enough that we have to take this route through Town Square to get to Stonehaven.”

        “But if we took Main Street, we'd get there faster!”

        “Miss Pie, if you wanna know a thing or two about stealth, you gotta learn to master persistence.”

        “Ladies...”

        “Don't you mean 'patience?'”

        “Who died and made you Sweetie Belle?”

        “Huh?”

        “Er... by 'Sweetie Belle' I meant a dictionary.”

        “Ladies...”

        “You know Rarity's little sister?” Pinkie Pie blinked.

        “Look, let's just forget I said anything—”

        “All this time, I could have made twice as many marshmallow jokes, and you would have gotten them?!”

        “Snkkt—I read up on Ponyville before I so much as... uhm... dr-dropped in on behalf of the Court of Canterlot! It was only field research, okay?”

        “Nuh uh! I'm not buying that for a bit! That's too far-fetched!”

        “Miss Pie, the day I have to explain a joke to you is the day that the world truly ends.”

        “Ladies, please...”

        “Oooh! You admit that you told a joke then, Har-Har?!”

        “Oh, for the love of oats...”

        “Ladies!” Dawnhoof finally resorted to hissing in their ears. He pointed desperately across the Town Square. “I...” He gulped. “I do believe that we have been spotted.”

        “Huh?” Harmony glanced across the cobblestone expanse. Her amber eyes dilated. “Ohhhhhhhhh Luna poop.”

        “Miss Harmony...!”

        “Hail Gultophine.”

        The three ponies watched nervously as two figures in armor shimmered under the various torches of the urbanscape. It was a pair of militia guards, and they were decidedly marching in the three interlopers' direction.

        “Crud! How could they have seen us across the entire frickin' courtyard?”

        “'How many marshmallows does it take to botch a Sisterhooves Social event?'”

        “Miss Pie, not now!”

        “I think they may have been following us...” Dawnhoof murmured aside to Harmony.

        “Yeah, for how long?”

        “No matter,” the Deacon said. Her cleared his throat and boldly stepped ahead. “Let me take care of this.”

        “You?”

        The robed unicorn briefly smirked over his shoulder. “Why not? You're not the only pony capable of impulsive puzzle-solving.”

        “It depends. You've got a brilliant fix to this problem?”

        “Uhm... Would it work if it's stupid?” the unicorn muttered shyly.

        The last pony blinked. She proudly, proudly smiled. “Of course it should.” She waved a hoof towards him. “Shine on, you crazy dogmatist.”

        Dawnhoof turned and faced ahead as soon as the guards arrived.

        “Halt!”

        “Where are you going with those two?”

        “Never you mind!” Dawnhoof quite explosively boomed in a voice befitting another, far more exalted priest. “I am conducting holy business on behalf of the Church of Gultophine! You humble souls would do well to not interfere on a spiritual matter!” He leaned forward with a sudden glare. “Or shall I spread word of your audaciousness to the ears of Breathstar himself?”

        However campy, it was apparently enough to work. The guard ponies—young souls, both of them—suddenly shook in their armor.

        “Whoah! Yeesh! D-Deacon Dawnhoof...!”

        “We had no idea it was you, g-good sir! It's just that... that...”

        “Just what?” Dawnhoof's brow furrowed. “I haven't got the time to waste being berated by two foals in rattling silverware!”

        “Easy...” Harmony hissed.

        “Heehee... I liked that last one,” Pinkie slipped in. The pegasus merely glared at her.

        The guards further murmured, “Well, it was Bishop Breathstar himself who told us to be on the lookout for two cloaked figures wandering the town. That's all.”

        Dawnhoof blinked. A youthful, wilted voice returned to his throat. “It was?” He briefly trembled. A copper hoof poked him in the robed flank. He coughed, cleared his throat, and stood tall. “Don't pretend to tell me what is or what is not my superior's business,” he once again boomed. “This is all... p-part of the plan, you see! Now go about your patrol and forget whatever it is you saw here! I shall deal with the Grand Bishop on my own!”

        That said, the young colt spun away from the two blinking guards, and bumped horn-first into a tall, frowning, white unicorn. “Oh, I'm sure you will, young one.” Breathstar glared down at him.

        “Eeep!” Pinkie Pie shrunk behind Harmony.

        The last pony gasped and hobbled left and right, fitfully juggling the entire weight of the bagged machine that was suddenly in her hooves. “Dang it, what the hay?!” She stared in disbelief as no less than two dozen militia ponies filled their end of the Town Square, flanking Breathstar and slowly, threateningly surrounding them.

        “Grand B-Bishop...” Dawnhoof gulped and bowed low. “If you would just let me explain—”

        “Explain what?!” the tall, pale unicorn hissed in a low voice. “That my star apprentice in the Order of Gultophine has become an accomplice to a pagan practice under my very own watch?!” He pointed an angry hoof in the direction of the two cloaked mares. “I believed it when I heard word that the accursed pegasus and Quarrington's daughter were back to their no-good tricks! But to count you among them as well?! You've broken my heart, Dawnhoof. I shudder to think how hard you almost came close to shattering Dredgemane's...”

        “You heard word from who?!” Harmony spat.

        “Somepony ratted us out?!” Pinkie Pie trembled to exclaim.

        “You are in no position to ask any questions, you venomous delinquents! However, you are in the position to answer for the unrighteous crimes you were about to commit!” Breathstar's nostrils flared as he stepped back in his robes and motioned towards the whole of the militia. “Arrest them! Take them both to the Mayor! This foolishness ends tonight!”

        “Now wait a second! How did—Nnngh!” Harmony shrugged off the first of many sets of hooves to grasp at her. “Who could possibly have told you that the two of us were—?” Three times as many hooves reached for the pegasus. “Get off me!” She effortlessly batted them off with one Entropan forelimb, the other one grasping the machine to herself. “Dang it all, Breathstar! Have you no decency?! Have you a single clue in your head just what amazing things we're about to do for this town?!”

        “As a matter of fact, child, I know exactly what you were about to do,” Breathstar grumbled, and it was accompanied with a grin.

        The last pony's amber eyes caught aflame from that. “Oh, I bet you know... I bet you know all there is to—” A guard pounced on her and grabbed her aggressively from behind. “Celestia dang it—Buck off!” She was true to her words, and the guard was flung across the courtyard with a surprised shriek. As he landed through a wooden cart, five more guards rushed up and tackled Harmony from behind. She lurched in a gasping jolt from their weight, dropping the canvas bag.

        The machine rattled coldly to the cobblestone. Dozens of sets of hooves danced fitfully all around it. Harmony gasped and sputtered as she tried to find where her miracle-contraption had gone. She watched from a sea of limbs as one armored pony grasped it and ran behind the line of attackers. With a soul-shattering snarl, she flung her copper wings out from beneath her cloak. Four guards flew off of her in a startled cry. Others gasped as she spun with unearthly strength and flung two more so that they pinballed painfully off lampposts. The last pony was ready and willing to tear Dredgemane asunder. She knew it. With each pulse of the arteries in her neck, she felt it. A sick, dimly-lit part of her almost reveled in it.

        Another guard swung at her with a polearm. She effortlessly knocked the weapon aside, reached forward, and clamped the pony's neck with two hooves. “Do you have any idea who you're messing with?!” the scavenger from the future snarled, but that soon ended as she rode down a slope of pained breaths.

        The guard's helmet had fallen off. An alarmingly young stallion was sputtering and gasping in her tight gasp. With one blurred blink, he transformed into a bleeding miner lying on a canvas mat, his eyes bloody as he grasped for the last pony and wailed the name of an exiled Life-Bringer.

        Harmony shuddered, the Entropan strength being wrung from her body. These were not trolls. They were not golems. They whimpered and groaned from every numb limb she threw at them. And what was more...

        “Nnngh—Augh! Har-Har! Fly away—Unngh!

        It was a startling sound that came from Pinkie Pie, for it was the first time the last pony ever recalled the mare's voice registering pain. The time traveler spun around to realize that—during her scuffle—just as many guard ponies, if not more, had tackled her pink anchor and were slamming her at an awkward angle to the ground. Not only that, but a very startled and desperate Dawnhoof had plowed his way through the fray to get to her, to help her, and as a reward he too was being wrestled to the street so that his horn scraped violently against the cobblestone under a wincing face—

        “No!” Harmony shouted. “No!” She dropped the gasping guard in her grip and raised her forelimbs above her head. “Leave them alone! Don't hurt them!” The last pony breathlessly glanced up at Breathstar. Her heart tore from the inside-out as a porcelain grin blossomed across his pale face with each surrendering phrase that limped from her copper lips. “You can take me in... you can take us in! Just—please—leave them be. It's me you want!”

        To her dismay, Breathstar delayed his response, so that several agonized seconds passed that were punctuated with the painful exhales of Pinkie Pie and Deacon Dawnhoof in the vice-grips of the furious militia. Once he had seemingly had his fill, the tall and proud unicorn waved a pale hoof. The guard ponies violently hoisted Harmony's wincing companions up to their hooves.

        “Take Quarrington's daughter—along with Harmony—to the Mayor's office.” Breathstar spun and stared burning daggers through Dawnhoof's forehead. “As for my... former pride and joy, bring him to the cathedral and lock him in the foyer. I'll deal with him personally.”

        “Please, good Bishop!” Dawnhoof stammered as he was hauled off by several armored equines. “H-have mercy, Bishop! At least let me explain what these two mares have discovered—Augh!” He cried as he was being dragged away by a grunting guard.

        In the meantime, Pinkie Pie was being shoved against Harmony. The two were jabbed by polearms and forced to canter briskly towards the north edge of town. They stumbled in a thick sea of rattling, black armor as the torches whizzed by them.

        “Har-Har...” Pinkie Pie navigated a series of fresh bruises to whimper, “You and I both know that you're tough enough to plow through these meanies like Winter Wrap-Up snow! So make with the barreling already!”

        “No!” Harmony hissed back, grumbled, then murmured in a quiet breath between the two, “Miss Pie, I came back to this town to heal it, not to rip it a new quarry-hole.”

        “B-but... but...!”

        “Will you just stick close to me and play it cool?!” Harmony hissed. “I'll... I-I'll think of something! But if I start thrashing about like a madmare, I could get a lot of ponies hurt! The last thing I want to do is undermine the beauty that I brought to your family tonight!”

        “Har-Har,” Pinkie Pie clung to her as the two stumbled along the forced escort. “Sometimes it takes a little madness to do what's right...”

        “Maybe that will be true for me someday, but that'll be for me to decide at the time.” Harmony hissed as they were shoved along, further and further northward. “The future is nothing but madness, Miss Pie.”

        “Wh-what do you mean by that?”

        “Shh... Just stay calm. Things will work out.” Harmony murmured towards the air as the giant cliff-face bearing Haymane's lofty shack loomed into view, breaking the stars like a black eclipse. “Please, Princess Entropa, make it all work out...”


        As soon as Harmony and her anchor were practically flung into the lantern-lit wooden hovel of the Mayor's building, the last pony knew how hopeless the situation had become. The reception room was filled to the brim with militia ponies. It was as if no single guard was on break that evening. The Dredgemane Trinity was audacious enough to hire the entire company of armored equines to see to the copper pegasus' arrest, as if a virtual army of Diamond Dogs had invaded the trenches of the city.

        No sooner had the two mares stumbled into the lofty structure, when Pinkie Pie gasped. “Mister Irontail!” She bounced forward. “Oh no! They got you too?!” A sharp pair of polearms blocked her path to her friend. “Eeep!” She backtrotted tremblingly into Harmony as the last pony looked on.

        The tall blacksmith with a bushy beard stood in a slump, guiltily staring into the wooden floorboards beneath him. Resting on the empty receptionist table to his side were two familiar, rainbow-colored “souvenirs.” One was the scrap of a prismatic cloak, the other was a beautifully crafted dagger.

        “I'm so sorry, Pinkie...” Irontail muttered, it was a wilted breath, unbefitting the muscular stallion. “I'm so sorry, darling...”

        “For what?” Pinkie Pie gulped. “I don't understand, Mister Irontail! What's going on?”

        “He's the one who told them,” Harmony suddenly murmured. Pinkie Pie glanced at her in shock as she unemotionally slurred, “He told them about the two of us, a pair of cloaked mares on a mission to build something, and here we are.”

        “It was a difficult unveiling at first, mind you,” a deep voice droned. Walking into view from behind Irontail was a dark-brown stallion just as tall and twice as intimidating. With a haughty glare, Overseer Sladeburn regarded the blacksmith like an errant wisp of factory smoke and paced in front of his bearded image. “As sooon as a group of my workers saw him showing off those ghastly acquisitions of his, bragging about them like a true traitor to the Dredgemane cause, I knew that I had to intervene. It's enough that the Royal Grand Biv vandalizes and dirties the immaculate architecture of our town, but must he corrupt the heart as well? Harumph... I've witness infernite poisoning many an unfortunate body in my day, but this willful infection is a slap in the face of the legacy of all hard-working ponies who have come and gone before us. Isn't that right, Mister Irontail?”

        Irontail was as tall as Sladeburn, as well-built as Sladeburn, and quite easily older than Sladeburn. The bearded stallion practically dwarfed the rest of the stallions, mares, and guards in the lantern-lit room, no matter how heavily they were armored. And yet, standing before them all, bathed in so many glaring eyes, he quivered like an infant having been slapped on the hoof.

        “Y-Yes, Mister Sladeburn,” the blacksmith joylessly stammered, his head bowed towards the dim floorboards below. “I was wrong... I was wrong all along...”

        Harmony squinted hard, for she suddenly became aware of several deep bruises lining the exposed coat of the tall, muscular equine. Pinkie saw them too, and gasped shrilly while the time traveler glared up at Sladeburn. “What have you done to him?”

        “I merely exacted means to uncovering a hidden truth, dear Canterlotlian—or whatever you really are.” Sladeburn gave her a bored glanced as his thundering hooves carried him with icy precision towards her side. “Don't be so shocked. Because of your conspiratorial muddling with the affairs of our precious townsponies, the security of Dredgemane hangs in the balance. The needs of the many outweigh those of the few...” He glanced at Irontail. “Especially if the few is misguided and foolish.” He frowned back at Harmony. “But you couldn't possibly understand that, could you, girl?”

        The last pony sneered. “If that putrid philosophy helps you sleep at night when deep inside you know that you've forced thousands of ponies over the years to dig their way to a violent death, Mister Sladeburn, then I hope you choke on it.”

        “To each their own, little one.” Sladeburn's eyes narrowed. “Or should I presume to ask exactly how it is that you lived through the other day's mine collapse while every single pony hanging behind you and Quarrington's daughter perished?”

        Harmony was ashamed, for she had evidently blanched at that. She hoped that Pinkie Pie hadn't noticed...

        Suddenly, the doors to Haymane's gray-gray office opened. “He's ready to see her.”

        “Very well. Take her in. Put the other one—oh, I dunno—someplace where she won't fill this place with her goddess-forsaken voice.”

        “Who? What? And where?” Harmony snarled as she was being hoisted towards the office... and away from Pinkie. “Wait! Miss Pie—Nnngh! Where are you taking us?”

        Before anypony could bother to answer her, one of the guards sauntered up to Sladeburn. The last pony was breathless to discover a very familiar, very scuffed-up machine balanced across the guard's armored flank. “Sir, I'm very sorry to interrupt, but my captain wants me to ask what is to be done with this... contraption.”

        “Hmmm, yes. I suppose it will need to be further examined before a hearing can be commissioned by the Council.” The Overseer waved a dark brown hoof. “Take that... piece of junk to the militia headquarters, along with that insufferable zebra. We'll let Breathstar deal with them both.”

        “Zebra?!” Pinkie Pie gasped, her eyes twitching. “Oh no! Zecchy! What have you done with Zecchy?!”

        “Nnngh! Elektra alive!—Take her away already!” Sladeburn snarled. “I'm sick and tired of looking at her!”

        “She asked you a friggin' question!” Harmony snarled as she was being dragged with far greater speed towards the mayor's office. “What have you done with Zecora?! She's innocent of all this crap!”

        “Yes, and I'm Princess Celestia's left wing. Cry me a river—She shares the same fate that the Council's bound to give you! Now quiet down before the Mayor, or I'll personally come in there and snap your jaw off, you illegitimate, cloud-drip of an accident!”

        Harmony shook with anger—

        “Har-Har!”

        The time traveler looked over. “Miss Pie!” She blanched as the distance between her and her anchor doubled, tripled, quadrupled. “No no no no no no...!”

        “Har-Har! Please!” Pinkie Pie shrieked as her cloaked figure was being hauled off by two guards into a side room and beyond a dark-lit doorframe. “Don't let them do this!” In the meantime, three other armored ponies were carrying the machine out the door into the misty night. “Think about the foals! Think about Zecchy! Think about—!”

        And then everything was silenced beyond the wooden doors slamming Harmony shut inside Haymane's office. A pair of squeaking noises filled the deathly-quiet air. The fuming pegasus very slowly, very reluctantly spun around...


        For a moment there, I thought you had orchestrated this. I thought that your breath was at work, blowing a deep and dark pestilence into the mechanics of that fateful evening. But then I remembered how pathetically harmless and weak you had become in my eyes. I realized that I had a greater ally on my side, a life-long companion that had dwarfed the intimidating eternity you have always used to stalk me. That ally was time, and time is one thing that you've reveled in, but could never quite control, no more than myself.

        I am the avatar of time. I know that now.

        And since time is immutable—as you yourself are immutable—I've come to stand on an even playing field with you, so that everything is a stalemate, and yet everything is calm and placid and serene... as it should be.

It was never a war, it was never a fight, it was just as it always was and just as it always will be. I was elated to have realized it, and I deeply wondered how Spike had come to discover it himself, if it had taken as many dying miners and as many rattling breaths of sick foals as it had for me.

        Perhaps it was this realization that stopped me from doing what was instinctual, from tearing my cloak off and flapping my copper wings with the power of an exiled Goddess. I could very well have become Scootaloo, have unleashed the wrath of the Wasteland on all of those imbeciles, have torn that wooden shack off the northern cliff-face like a wayward tick on a dog's coat.

        But I didn't, for I wasn't Scootaloo, I was Harmony. Time placed me there, and by the grace of Goddess Entropa, I was not about to turn an accursed landscape twice as bloody by waging war, even if I hadn't fired the first shot. I had to be the essence of ponies, where everything else in my existence has made me the end of them. I had to live up to the name that I once chose for my time-traveling self on an apple-tree-dangling whim, but suddenly was waking up to—with each successive trip—like a ram who knew its place amidst the obscurity, like a blemish that understood how to hide in the warm imprint of the past, and yet could stand apart from it.

        I had to live. Maybe... just maybe... somepony, anypony would follow suit in that town, would fall so madly along with me...


        “And so here we are,” Mayor Haymane said, his frail body resembling a lantern-lit stalk against the gray balcony windows that stretched behind him. “We stand upon the eve of Gultophine's Harvest, the holiest of holy times in the year, and yet I deal now with the most dangerous, most infernal, most pathetic threat to this town's peace that has crossed the trenches of Dredgemane in years.”

        Harmony stood still, staring deep into his desk, not saying a thing.

        Haymane's eyes narrowed. With a squeaking sound, he rolled out from around the table. Several guards stood protectively between himself and the time traveler as he came as close as he could afford to and stopped in a lurch. He gazed up at her, his straw-hard mane framing his skull like a sickly halo.

        “What am I to do with you, Miss Harmony? I have given you patience. I have given you grace. I have even given you forgiveness in the face of all of your insulting actions by swaying the Council into banishing you instead of doing worse, and yet still you haunt this town, still you disrespect me, still you spit in the face of all Equestrian civility and goodness. Tell me, child, since you value your opinion so much and mine so little. What am I to do with you?”

        Harmony's eyes lowered. She took a deep breath, her limbs flexing gently under the folds of her brown cloak.

        Haymane sighed. He crossed his front hooves and leaned back against the wooden brace of his wheeled tripod. “I know you must think many horrible, negative things of me, Miss Harmony. I don't rightly blame you. In the name of progress, I've chased away all distractions from this town, no matter how colorful. It was never exactly an ecstatic decision of mine, but it was a necessary one. Surely you understand this. I've seen it in your eyes. You do not house the same bright and flippantly hysterical soul that fills the husk of Quarrington's daughter to the brim. There's a part of you that respects structure, that respects order, that sees chaos and all of the multiplicitous elements of the wilderness to be a waste upon the good integrity of ponydom. Child, with your inherent skill, with your remarkable talents, with all of the dazzling displays of ingenuity that I've had several citizens from the street testify of you legitimately employing in the pursuit of the Biv, I know there resides inside you an equine soul that could build us a better future, a proper tomorrow, and a key to infinite progress. So, please, enlighten me. Why do you use all that is within you to undermine the progress of this great and righteous refuge of Gultophine? And if you can’t enlighten me, child, then humor me. I deserve at least that much...”

        Harmony's nostrils flared. Finally, finally she spoke, and when she did it was with a deep-throated murmur. “Humor you? No pony can enjoy laughing when he or she is alone...”

        Haymane merely raised an eyebrow to that.

        Harmony glanced up at him. It was a look of pity. “Progress? Is that all that Dredgemane is supposedly about? Mayor Haymane, there are some days where I'm convinced that I don't have a single funny bone to be found in my body, and even I recognize that to be the biggest of all jokes.”

        “There is nothing that we live for more than progress, child. It's what defined Gultophine, and it's what defines us.”

        “Live? Live?! You just don't get it, do you?! Mayor, sir, real progress requires change. Change can be painful and it can be chaotic, but it heals, Mayor. It heals and it cleanses the blemishes from our lives! Equestrian civilization wouldn't have progressed anywhere if it wasn't for the shifts in our existence—be it painful or blissful—that have separated living, breathing ponies like us from the eternal rocks that blanket this landscape! But have you pursued such change, Mayor? Have you made any progress? No, not even in the slightest. You may think that you have, in honor of your family and of all the brave, diligent ponies of Dredgemane who have died before. But what you've done hasn't blessed their memories, Haymane. All you've accomplished for this city... for these... for these good Equestrians is a eulogy! Let the funeral be over, Haymane. It's time to stop eulogizing and instead start... start... I don't friggin know! Singing!”

        “You're one to speak, child,” Haymane frowned and wheeled back into his desk while folding his front hooves. “For as much as I care, if you've brought a song to the Refuge of Gultophine, it's merely been a funeral dirge. You have done nothing but crush what we have established here! You could have very easily been a shining young beacon, a sign of the times to come. But if this is all you have to answer for yourself, then I weep for our children's future!”

        “Mayor Haymane, I want to do so much for this town, for everypony and... and for everything! I want to do more than give all of this life and beauty one grand, somber eulogy but I can't! It's not something that I can afford to do!” Harmony winced as if she was giving birth, but all that came out of her was a whimper. “But you can! You have it within you to lead this city into great and glorious things! You have it within you to live, Haymane, and to give ponies the grace to live with you, and through you. If I could... If I c-could have what you have at your hooves, I would praise Gultophine every... single... day, instead of... instead of suffocating her! Instead of forsaking this place into becoming a desolate wasteland of broken dreams and disease!” She gulped and murmured while her amber eyes glistened in sudden, haunting grayness. “Even if it isn't for a very long time, even if life is bitterly short, it is a very, very bright and sweet thing and you need to treasure it instead of smothering it in darkness!” She gulped hard and bled forth, “Because there is so, so much darkness, Haymane, even more than a pony as powerful as you could possibly know! And it will come upon this land like a stormfront and eclipse everything that even a miserable soul like yourself holds dear, and by then it will be too late to find true progress. It will be too late to embrace the warmth that is yours to have!”

        Haymane took a deep breath. “My dear child...” His voice lisped briefly, the tail end of a shattered family, far bloodier than two stubbed limbs. “...It is always, always too late for us. It's been that way since the Sundering of Consus. Everypony, every soul is but an appendix to a Golden First Age that shall never, ever repeat itself. We can only hope to exist for as long as we can, and then... there is nothing.” His lips hardened with the same rigidity as his deep, abysmal eyes while he said, “For we are nothing. Nothing. Every single one of us. If you had been a good pony, if you had respected the laws of this land, maybe you would have been free to experience Gultophine's Harvest tomorrow, and you would have discovered this clarity for yourself.”

        “Clarity...” Harmony's breath let loose like a belch. She smirked bitterly as she said, “Mayor, what is transcendence worth if you don't respect the life that is given you to achieve it with? Even if there's nothing, Mayor, even if Gultophine only cursed us when she gave us animation towards progress, I'd rather be a victim of death than a slave to it. You can have your cursed 'clarity' if it means so much to you. It's a shame that it took bullies like Sladeburn and Breathstar to brainwash you into believing in such a lie, so much so that you think that it was your epiphany and yours alone.”

        “My allies in forging a path towards progress have only steered me the right way.”

        “Then make them let go of the reins for once, Mayor. Think for yourself instead of for them...” Harmony bravely gulped before adding. “And instead of for your family. You'll be surprised how thinking for yourself will make you act for the ponies who matter, the ones who are suffering in this town, the ones who need you the most as we speak, even on the Eve of Gultophine's Harvest.”

        To her mixed surprise, Haymane didn't explode like he had earlier in the Council Chamber. Rather, his face was placid—if not sad—as he calmly replied, “It's a shame that things had to end this way. You could have made a fine addition to this city.”

        Harmony was rather numb to this half-hearted compliment, for she was suddenly glancing at something surging past the balcony windows, something that none of the guards nor the mayor saw, something that unmistakably resembled a flying paper airplane.

        “With all due respect, mayor,” the time traveler murmured as her amber eyes followed the fragile aircraft's arc. “The only addition I could ever possibly make to this city is a cobblestone with my name on it.”

        There was a twinge of muttering regret in the mayor's next few words: “After your trial with the council, we will find out if that will be arranged or not.”

        The last pony blinked at that.

        As the paper airplane disappeared, a thunderous crash erupted through the building. The guards spun with their polearms held high. Mayor Haymane craned his neck.

        “What the devil...?!”

        Suddenly, the doors to the office burst open. A breathless militia pony rushed in. “Sorry to interrupt you, mayor! But... B-but we have a problem downtown!”

        Haymane could just as well have been telepathic. “The Royal Grand Biv?!” he stammered.

        The armored pony nodded. “He was just seen at the sight of tomorrow's bonfires, pouring rainbow paint all over the street! Many guards under the command of Breathstar chased him off, but none of us could fly, and he took off onto the rooftops before any of us could—”

        Suddenly, another pony ran into the office. His helmet rattled as he exclaimed, “Mayor Haymane, sir! The Royal Grand Biv was spotted outside of the quarry, having vandalized the north face of the upper foundry—”

        Fatefully, yet again, another pony stumbled in. “Sir! The Royal Grand Biv! We spotted her trying to... desecrate... the post office...” He glanced at the other two young militia equines next to him. “N-no way! You saw the Biv too?!”

        “He was just by the quarry!”

        “Impossible! Didn't I just say she was spotted at the post office?!”

        “You're both wrong! I was just informing the Mayor that the Royal Grand Biv was being chased at—”

        Suddenly, a splash of wooden splinters fell across the reception room. Everypony spun and gasped as the air danced with a prismatic kaleidoscope. A metallic ring filled the corners of the gray, dusty place, and soon the Royal Grand Biv—in full, rainbow glory—was standing in the middle of a heap of groaning, tossed guards.

        Harmony murmured to herself, her heart beating like an endless string of dynamite sticks against the hollow of her Entropan chest. “Bl-Blinkaphine...?” She stammered atop shivering hooves. “Why... Why are you—?”

        “Y-you!” Haymane growled. Then, with a cowardly sputter, he rolled in reverse until he shivered behind his desk. “Somepony, anypony! Take it out! Protect Dredgemane's leader—”

        “Get him!” One of the many guards charged with a full, swinging polearm.

        The Biv effortlessly knocked the weapon aside with a fan of razor sharp daggers. Another guard came at the masked pony's flank. With more glinting metal, the vandal reduced the militia pony's weapon to a bent stalk. It then mightily bucked a crowd of tackling guards away, whipped out a miniature cannon from beneath its cloak, and fired it down the line of guards rushing towards it. A violent explosion of confetti knocked all of the militia ponies off their hooves, so that Harmony herself twitched before a settling sea of multi-colored streamers just before her limbs.

        “Oh dear Gultophine...” was all Haymane could manage at this point. He gasped with joy, suddenly, for the entire structure shook as a rampaging company of reinforcements stormed up the wooden stairwell outside. Soon, the Biv would be completely and utterly engulfed by guard ponies inside the claustrophobic space of that lofty building.

        The Biv obviously knew it. It flashed ruby goggles towards the mayor's office. In a prismatic blur, the vandal dodged the first of several charging reinforcements and bounced-bounced-bounced straight towards the last pony.

        “No—No, wait!” The time traveler shrieked as she was being shoved violently towards the balcony windows, away from the reception area, away from the room beyond, and away from her anchor. “Blinkie, no! Pinkie is in there—!”

        Her desperate voice was cut short...

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

        ...as the air filled thunderously with the noise of shattering glass. The Biv shoved Harmony and itself through the windows, over the wooden edge of the balcony, and out into the cold, misty air of Dredgemane. The trenches of the city loomed below, and the two equine figures plummeted mercilessly towards the murderous, granite stretch of it.

        Harmony could no longer register her own screams. The faces of many awestruck, peering guards drifted far away, high against the cliff-face disappearing swiftly above her. She expected to see green flames at any second, to land in a helpless and frazzled heap before the scaled haunches of a tall purple dragon. Instead, she saw a bright puff of steam.

        The Royal Grand Biv had fired a multi-colored grappling hook. With insane luck, the projectile of the device embedded itself against the wall of rock surging alongside them. Like a mad pendulum, the Royal Grand Biv flung the two of them several blurring meters over the Grave of Consus, aiming them towards the brown shell of an antique carriage below, and a wooden-hatched sunroof that yawned open just in time...

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

        ...for the two to drop through and land inside the vehicle with a harmless thump.

        “Ooof!” Harmony bounced against a cushion of velvet seats. “Holy... Holy... Holy...” She messily brushed her amber-streaked mane with a shaking hoof. “What gives?! Why am I here?! Why haven't I lost cohesion—?!”

        “Cohesion? What are you going on about, Sugah?”

        The time traveler gasped again, for she and the Biv were not the only figures inside the stagecoach, and yet they were... in that Harmony glanced to her left and saw another Biv, and that Biv was saucily leaning one hoof to its hip while flicking the other against a lever that snapped the sunroof shut above their heads. With jasmine-scented breath, the figure unmasked the ruby-goggled cowl. and smirked towards the frazzled pony.

        “Don't pegasi your age know the proper way to thank a lady?”

        “P-Pepper?!” Harmony dryly gulped. “Pepper Plots?! How in Celestia's name—”

        “—did I land in this fabulous attire? Oh please, copper-queenie, admit it. It makes my stage outfits look like rags.” The scarlet-maned mare winked a painted eyelid over the last pony's shoulder. “Besides, I know a good fad that's worth joining when I see it.”

        Harmony spun about... and saw a third Royal Grand Biv. This sight lasted for the space of five breathless seconds, until she too unmasked and blushed shyly under a pair of violet eyes.

        This time, Harmony glared. “Inkessa...?”

        “Is it really so surprising?”

        “What? That I haven't punched you in the face two seconds ago?”

        “Hmm-hmm-hmm...” The nurse chuckled. “Haven't you punched us all enough this past week?”

        “Ermmm...”

        Inkessa smiled bashfully. “Not that we weren't equipped to handle it, of course, but still... uhhh... the j-joke's on you?”

        Harmony fumbled for words. “But... but... h-how...?”

        “Hold that thought.” Inkessa stood up, swiveled around, and slid open a small wooden window towards the front of the carriage. Outside, a dull-gray earth pony stood in an unassuming dress, rigged to the reins of the vehicle. “Pssst! Blinkaphine! You hear all that ruckus? The guards will be filling these streets any second! Let's get back to the hideout, P.D.Q!”

        A pair of golden eyes glanced her way as the disguised pony outside nodded, bore a nervous smile, and broke into a trot. The image of her disappeared as Inkessa swung the wooden slot shut, and soon the carriage rocked and heaved as it was pulled slowly and quietly through the streets of Dredgemane, camouflaged against the usual bric-a-brac of the night.

        “All... th-three of you...?” Harmony blinked. “This whole time, you three have been the Biv?”

        “Yeah, yeah...” Inkessa slumped back down in the seat to the right of the pegasus. “I know: it's hardly an original concept.” She smiled dryly. “But, hey, what can you expect? Chalk it all up to our all-inspiring architect and her secret love for pulp fiction novels.”

        “All... inspiring... architect?”

        As soon as these words dripped from Harmony's lips, a paper airplane landed in her grasp. She glanced down at it, then stretched it out in her hooves. She realized—upon the first ever close examination—that the seemingly weightless sheet of paper had an indescribable number of written notes, warnings, and instructions splashed all across it in desperate pen strokes. As the carriage rattled and rocked, a pile of white objects caught Harmony's peripheral. She glanced over to see a veritable mountain of paper airplanes, and all of them identically baring a barrage of written words in code.

        Icily, a vicious sneer burned across the pony's copper features, but it all too instinctually morphed into a smile just as soon as it began. “Oh, you've gotta be friggin' kidding me...” She stared directly forward.

        Across from her, the Royal Grand Biv who had shoved the last pony off the Mayor's balcony removed her goggles and cowl. A bright mane of fluffy pink hair lit up the carriage as Pinkie Pie rolled her blue eyes and happily spat, “Pffft! Flippin' duh!”