The train rattled towards the border city of Hoofington through the quiet winter’s night. The sky was clear and the moon dark, leaving the view outside the window as nothing but a smattering of stars. Within, six ponies were the only passengers.
“So, Twi?” said Applejack “Do you have any idea why the princess wanted us to head up all the way out here?”
“All that I know is that there have been mysterious disappearances in the area. The princess’s letter said . . . wait a minute” Twilight telekinetically rummaged through the luggage rack above them. “Here it is: “I am unaware of the force causing the disappearances, but it released a kind of magical energy unlike anything else found in Equestria. So far six ponies have been confirmed to be missing, and others are unaccounted for” recited Twilight Sparkle, sitting on the seat opposite Applejack, Rarity and Pinkie Pie.
“So, we are looking for something that managed to make half a dozen ponies vanish without anyone noticing, using magic that no one understands,” interrupted the blue Pegasus sitting beside Twilight.
“Yes.” Twilight started to recite the letter “I must ask the six of you to embark upon-”
“You don’t need to go through the whole thing. I just have one question.” Rainbow interrupted
“What is it?”
“Why US? I mean, I’m awesome and all, and we have been through a lot of scary stuff, you know, saving the world. Still, we aren’t really cut out for detective work. Why not just let the police ponies handle it?”
“What I am personally puzzled about is why we needed to bring these?” Rarity interjected, pointing towards the sealed box under Twilights seat. Inside were five golden necklaces, and a single gem topped crown. “Usually, the princess keeps them under lock and key except for direst emergencies.”
“And when we do get our hooves on them, we normally have a good idea on what needs blasting. Like with Discord,” said Applejack.
My friends have good points, thought Twilight. Whatever this is has the princess worried, more worried than even the crystal empire business last year. Normally if she needed us go on a quest she would call us all to the castle. This time she sent Spike train tickets directly. Well, time is of the essence. I’m sure the princess know’s what she’s doing.
Twilight gave an exasperated sigh. “Look girls. The princess trusts us to get the job done. She has never given us a task that we couldn’t handle. She she thinks that we can do this, and we might need the elements, so I think we should trust her.”
Everypony nodded, though the shyest member of the group barely moved her head. Looking into Fluttershy’s eyes, Applejack could see fear creep in along the edges.
“Don’t worry Fluttershy, everything will be all right. Together, we can do anything.”
“Ok... Thanks, Applejack.”
The train rattled on, with only the light from the windows illuminating the snow covered fields outside.
-----
Princess Celestia’s letter had been sent in haste, and thus was lacking in information about the mysterious abductions. In her typical manner, Twilight Sparkle had rectified the situation and was now leaving Hoofington police central offices with a stack of eight thick folders containing everything that the police knew about the disappearances, and all of their leads in the investigation. This, she had been warned by the drowsy officer on desk duty, amounted to almost nothing, beyond unicorns getting “weird vibes” around the times of the disappearances.
Her friends were waiting for her outside, acting like their usual selves. Rarity was looking interestedly at the various ponies on the street, forever hunting for new inspirations. Fluttershy was hiding in the middle of the clump, visibly unnerved by the dark and oppressive atmosphere. Applejack was doing everything short of physically restraining Dash and Pinkie, who were desperate to leave through a mix of boredom and party enthusiasm, respectively.
Plan A was to look for clues by going to the last known locations of all the missing ponies, and asking anyone who had known them well. Unfortunately, the police had tried that. And it hadn’t worked. Thankfully, plans B through F were still viable.
“Okay everypony. These are the ponies we are looking for” she said as she skillfully extracted the photo sheets from the thickly packed folders. “We have Thunder Head, Misty Glow, Clockwork, oh . . .” The fourth photo was of a mare that all of the ponies present recognized: “Trixie Lulamoon.”
“Trixie! What is she doing being all disappeared! That’s just rude. She’s like, the only pony we know in the town! I was going to go to her house and have a party tomorrow!” said Pinkie Pie as she snatched the files out of Twilight’s magical grasp.
“Wait, Pinkie, you knew Trixie was here?” said a surprised Twilight Sparkle “I had no idea. It was like she vanished off the face of equestria when she left Ponyville after that mess with the alicorn amulet.”
“Well, duh! I keep in touch with all of my friends who have moved away. Otherwise they go on forgetting you. And Trixie’s been my friend forever! Well since the whole evil amulet of doom thingy, which is pretty close to forever. I send her a letter every week!”
“Pinkie, uh how many ponies are you sending letters to every week?” Fluttershy asked.
“Twenty six!”
Rarity’s face contorted in a brief expression of exasperation “Pinkie darling where do you find the time to sleep?”
Pinkie giggled “That’s silly, time is everywhere! There’s no need to go out looking for it.”
Rarity sighed “Pinkie, that’s not what I mean . . . Ohhh,” Rarity shuddered “What is that . . . that?” Rarity paused, at a loss for words.
“That what?” said Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash together.
Twilight had a good idea of what “that” was. It was like a vibration that was travelling through her horn, grating across its nerves. She could feel where it was coming from, although she couldn’t explain why, at least not without a thesaurus, which she didn’t have right now.
“This must be whatever Celestia and the other unicorns felt. Quickly everypony, follow me. Time for plan G.”
All of the six friends dashed off, with Twilight and Rarity in the lead. Applejack easily pulled level with the group as they pounded down the street, then glanced between them, as if looking for an answer.
“What happened to the other plans?” she asked.
-----
The strange feeling guided Twilight to a warehouse in a deserted part of Hoofington. The mad dash of the ponies came to a sudden halt as they rounded the corner to a deserted dead end street. At the end of the street stood a dilapidated warehouse, from which a sinister green glow could be seen through the windows. There were no signs of life anywhere on the gloomy street. All the street lamps were out and the shadows dancing throughout the street awakened some primal instinct in all of the ponies, calling them to gather together for support against predators lying in ambush.
Well, all of them except Pinkie Pie.
“Come on girls. It’s just a spooky street and fancy lights. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” The pink pony trotted fearlessly forward, splushing through the city slush. “Though seriously, this place could do with some cake. Or ice cream. Something that smells nice. It stinks around here.”
The rest of the group trotted after Pinkie, with Fluttershy lingering at the back of the group by a half pace. Their pink guide trotted past a public bus shelter, then let out an ear-splitting shriek. Once the rest of the group rounded the shelter’s walls, their eyes beheld a horrible sight. An officer of the Hoofington police lay there, with most of his chest burnt to ashes. A high pitched gasp came from Rarity, who swooned onto Twilight.
“Well that would be the source of the stench” Applejack said with disgust, turning to her friends. “If y’all had any doubts that whatever is behind this is deserving of a pounding, I reckon they’re gone now.”
The farm mare was used to seeing dead bodies of animals at the fringes of the everfree, though even she was visibly disturbed by the pony’s body lying on the ground.
The other ponies didn’t take the sight of this brutal death quite as well. Twilight and Rainbow lost a shade of colour, though they did their best to keep brave faces on. Fluttershy had curled up into a tight ball on the sidewalk, and was whimpering pathetically, while Pinkie remained frozen to the spot where she had first seen the body.
“Come on everypony, I know this isn’t the kind of stuff that we normally tangle with, but this isn’t the first time our little adventures have gotten rough. Pull yerselves together.”
“Applejack is right. We can take a moment if we have to, but wherever the ponies that these brutes took captive are, they could be danger. Other ponies are counting on us.” said Rarity, regaining her composure.
Fluttershy’s eyes poked out of the pink mass of her tail. “Um, are you sure we have to go rescue these ponies? Couldn’t we just wait for the policeponies?”
“Fluttershy! I know that you’re scared, but you’re better than that. Together, we have handled much greater problems than this. We’ve faced dragons, hydras, changelings, and even an evil unicorn shadow monster. They were scary, but we drew strength from each other and stuck together.”
Fluttershy looked despondently at the ground.
“Come on Fluttershy dear, we might really need your help. Trust me, everything is going to be fine,” Rarity encouraged.
“Ok” squeaked the yellow pegasus as she shakily got to her hooves. Her wings were locked back in fear, and each step was made with trembling hooves, but Fluttershy managed to move. Her friends were counting on her. Other ponies were counting on her.
“Pinke, hey Pinkie, look at me, Equestria to Pinkie Pie” Dash waved her hooves in front of pinkie’s eyes which were hopelessly fixed on the body of the dead policepony.
“What- what would do this to somepony?” said the pink mare softly, tearing her eyes off of the corpse.
“I don’t know. But whatever it is, we are going to kick it’s flank so hard it never comes anywhere near Equestria again,” said Rainbow Dash as she looked into Pinkie’s horror filled eyes.
“And then we can throw a party?” she asked weakly.
“Yeah, then we can throw a party.” Dash replied reassuringly
Pinkie smiled, not as wide as her usual grin, but it was better than nothing.
“All right everypony, we can do this, so long as we stick together and trust in each other. Wait, Rainbow, where are you going?”
The blue Pegasus had already flown halfway down the street before anypony noticed that she was gone.
She turned her head back to her friends for a brief moment and halted her flight. Then she looked back to the warehouse, searching for something.
“There was . . . something in the windows. I think it was watching us. It’s gone now. Probably scared it off.”
“Girls, keep your eyes peeled. If you see something, anything, shout. Whatever’s behind this, it knows we’re here now.” Twilight felt a nervousness in her gut. She painfully missed the sealed box containing the elements, which was still in the closet of their hotel room.
Silently, the group of ponies trotted to the green glowing building. All of them were on edge, and nopony truly wanted to be the first one in. The glow in the windows started to fade, and the ominous sensation of wrongness faded with it.
“They’re getting away!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash, as she burst into motion towards the front door.
Twilight, seeing the futility of stopping her, took the only logical course of action. “Come on everypony,” she said, galloping after Rainbow’s prismatic afterimage.
Upon entering the warehouse, a striking tableau played out before Twilight’s eyes. The area closest to the entrance had been cleared of the orderly stacks of large boxes that filled the rest of the warehouse. Piles of ash and debris that had been pushed into the corner of the room told a story of where the containers had gone. The air in the building hummed with a static charge, and stank of acrid smoke and ozone.
Rainbow Dash was hovering on the edge of the cleared space, her attention focused on the other occupants of the room.
These creatures were a kind that Twilight had never seen before. They looked vaguely like the monkeys found in tropical areas, but slightly larger, and with heads almost as large as the entire rest of their bodies. Instead of hair they had a slick grey hide, with a yellow underbelly.
“. . . so give up right now and hand over the ponies you took or I’m going to smash you all to bits you creepy monkeys!” finished Dash.
Twilight only had a chance to see the creatures for a few moments before the creatures hid from sight, scuttling behind various piles of crates and debris around the warehouse. Only two of the creatures remained, observing warily with large, dark red, inscrutable eyes.
“Rainbow Dash” piped up Fluttershy sternly “you’re scaring the little things. We don’t even know if they were responsible. Let me try talking to them, please.”
Rainbow Dash hesitantly landed on the ground next to Twilight and the others, as Fluttershy walked forward slowly.
-------
The being that knew itself as Forward Commander observed the scene in the storage building. One of the native lifeforms was advancing towards its subordinates, vocalizing incomprehensibly. With a mental command the commander ordered its subordinates not to engage the unknown force.
Forward Commander worked its way to the native lifeform. It appeared to be trying to communicate. Probable threat was minimal. More captives were always useful. Forward Commander focused on the lead organism and initiated a mental attack.
--------
As Fluttershy approached the creatures, a new specimen emerged from the depths of the warehouse. This one looked similar to the others, but instead of the metallic grey colouring of it’s smaller cousins, it had an angry red tint, and its eyes glowed with a sinister inner light.
“Oh, um, hello there! Are you in charge here? We would like to know if you had any idea about the weird glow and the ponies that went missing, um, if that isn’t a problem?” Fluttershy asked, struggling to maintain her composure after the many terrifying things she had witnessed this night.
In response to Fluttershy’s question, a thick strand of dark magical energy twisted into existence between the newcomer and Fluttershy. She convulsed as the spell wrapped around her, and a strand of drool dripped out of her slack mouth. In a moment the strands of magic recoiled, and Fluttershy stood upright once more with fury in her heart. Her eyes met the strange creature, and it received the full force of The Stare.
---------
Forward Commander recoiled in shock. The organism had initiated a mental counterattack in response to the commander’s efforts. The force of the natives will was overpowering the commander, despite its intensive mental training. A being that, until today, had been utterly and completely sure of itself was possessed by a paralyzing fear, rendering it helpless. Its formidable will was being slowly crushed under the power of the native organism’s gaze, but it still had one power left to use.
“Kill” it sent through the mental network.
----------
Pinkie Pie smiled to herself as the little meanie was transfixed by Fluttershy’s Stare. Now all the bad guys would give up and she would get to throw a party! As she was planning what decorations to use, a horrifying shudder ran through her body from tip to tail. Pinkie sense. The worst kind. She hadn’t felt that one since she was a filly, but she could never forget it.
“Fluttershy!” She screamed, but her friend didn’t hear her, too focused on the mental battle between herself and the mean red creature. Pinkie started to move, but was too slow. Two of the other creatures stood on their hind legs and raised glowing green canisters that were strapped to their wrists. Bright green fireballs streamed from the weapons towards Fluttershy. The first struck her right foreleg, a split second before the second struck her on her left side, where Pinkie could see her unprotected flesh burn away. A third shot missed the pegasus’s collapsing body, but the final shot struck her on the right side on her neck.
Pinkie slid towards her fallen friend, and wrapped her forelegs desperately around her. The pink mare barely noticed a polychromatic blur fly over her head towards one of Fluttershy’s attackers.
“Please Fluttershy, don’t die, please don’t die, please don’t die, please. Pinkie promise you won’t die!”
But the yellow mare didn’t respond, didn’t move. Pinkie thought she could see Fluttershy’s chest rise and fall, but she couldn’t be sure. Pinkie refused to look at the sickening burn wounds. She held Fluttershy for what felt like ages, begging incoherently to Fluttershy, Celestia, or whatever was listening before something nagging in the back of her mind called loudly for her attention.
“Twitcha, twitcha, twitch?” she murmured. That was weird. It wasn’t stopping, the same twitch in her tail just kept repeating, like her Pinkie sense was trying really hard to get her attention.
-------
The Forward Commander’s remote sensors warned it that enemy reinforcements were coming. There was no way for the units at its disposal to survive the impending counterattack. Therefore, its subordinates would perform a rearguard action while the commander retreated. It was the only logical solution. But first, the commander detached a plasma grenade from its personal weapon mounting. That native organism had bested it in a contest of wills. The forward commander had to make sure it was neutralized.
-------
Twilight Sparkle, personal student of Princess Celestia herself, was panicking. Not that she didn’t have good reasons for panicking right now. Fluttershy, was to all appearances, dead, for Celestia’s sake.
Her current position gave her a good bit of cover, and a front row seat of the entire disaster unfolding. Rainbow Dash had tackled one of the creatures that had shot Fluttershy, and was beating its frail body savagely with her bare hooves. Rarity had found her own pile of boxes to hide behind, and hyperventilating heavily. Pinkie Pie was cradling Fluttershy’s fallen form, sobbing, right in the open. And she was standing, frozen, doing NOTHING.
“Come on Twilight, think, there must be some way out of this, come on . . .” she muttered. It didn’t help. She still couldn’t get herself to do anything but stand and stare.
Pinkie Pie grabbed Fluttershy and started to carry her away, Fluttershy’s second attacker, peeked over its box and raised its ominous green weapon, taking aim at Pinkie. Twilight tried to prepare a shield spell, to protect them from the imminent attack, but the purple bubble flickered out the instant it appeared. NO! Come on Twilight, concentrate! She was going to get another one of her friends killed. Another shield formed into existence, wobbled like jello, then collapsed. There wasn’t enough time for a third spell. She could only watch as imminent death headed towards another of her friends.
Before the monster could launch a fireball, a solid crate flew through the air and smashed into its head. The monkey thing’s neck bent at an odd angle and the green glowing object shattered into dozens of pieces.
“Nopony hurts my friends on my watch!” snarled Applejack from her position on top of a stack of boxes.
Suddenly a small, round object dropped out of the air next to Pinkie and Fluttershy. All of Twilights senses, magical and otherwise, were overwhelmed by proceeding explosion. A third of the remaining boxes in the warehouse were blown to cinders, flooding the floor with half melted consumer knickknacks. The blast launched Pinkie and Fluttershy back towards the door, where they crumpled in a heap.
Twilight shook her head to get rid of the ringing in her ears, and tried her best to figure out what was happening. Across the clearing Rainbow Dash was soaked in a dark green ichor. Despite the pointlessness of the action she continued to savagely kick at her fallen foe’s limp body. The monster’s head resembled a watermelon that had been dropped off of a cloud. Another of the monkey creatures emerged from the depths of the warehouse and started to bombard her with bright green blasts. Only her superb reflexes, honed in thousands of near-crash landings over the years saved her. Rainbow dodged aside as the first blast swept in front of her face, then she dived behind the crate her victim had originally been hiding behind. Undeterred, the monster continued to blaze away, leaving her pinned behind her frail, and slowly disintegrating, cover.
“Twilight, behind you!” Rarity shrieked.
Two more of the creatures had crept around the outside of the building, and were entering through the front door, barely fifteen feet away and in clear sight of Twilight and Rarity. Twilight instinctually charged her magic and released the simplest combat spell: a beam of pure magical energy. If she could take one of the creatures out of action, maybe she or Rarity could survive.
Her magic punched a pony sized hole in the wall two feet to the right of the door, not even close to the monsters that were bringing their weapons to bear. Twilight didn’t have time for another spell, and Rarity was frozen with fear. A green light filled her vision as the strange energy attack was launched.
Is this the end? she thought. Have I failed for the last time?
A wall of pure blackness appeared before her vision, and the green light vanished in a dim flash. Through the blackness the monsters screeched in agony before thudding to the cold hard floor. Then, as soon as it had come, the black barrier vanished.
Twilight looked around and tried to regain her bearings. The creature attacking Rainbow Dash lay dead, with no visible wounds. However, now there was a new figure in the room.
“P-p-princess Luna?”