//------------------------------// // Ch. 12- No Escape // Story: Friendship is Magic Redux // by paiohelohelo //------------------------------// President Celestia quickly made her way into the impromptu war room set up in Ponyville’s Town Hall. She counted herself lucky to have been in midflight from Algeria to Saudi Arabia in between diplomatic missions, and that the growing storm over Ponyville had given Air Force One the cover it needed to fly directly to the secret base. She found a mixture of military officers and scientists there, gathered around the various consoles, as rain splattered hard against the windows. When she walked in, everybody took notice, and the officers gave her a sharp salute. “How long has it been?” she saluted back. “A little over two hours since we lost contact with Canterlot, Madam President,” a female air force general with short red hair informed her. “And have you been able to send any more flights through The Eye, General Spinelli?” “No, m’am, the storm’s blowing harder than ever now. Worse yet, every time one of my squadrons even manages to approach it, The Eye refuses to open- even with The Amulet activated, m’am.” Celestia pondered this, and then turned to one of the civilians. “Can you explain this, Dr. Heartstrings?” “No, Madam President, I'm afraid it's outside of my area of expertise... but The Eye was working perfectly when I returned to Ponyville with it, shortly before all this happened,” Lyra explained. “But you believe you know why Canterlot is cut off now, don’t you?” Lyra sighed, shaking her head. “Yes, Madam President, I know exactly why. As you are well aware, right before all communications were cut off General Armstrong ordered The Alicorn Casket to be activated. There can be no other explanation.” Celestia crossed her arms, looking out the windows through the raging storm obscuring Canterlot, and sighed. “What do you think is happening inside, Doctor?” Lyra shook her head. “I’m sorry, Madam President, I really don’t have a clue. All I know is that The Casket bore strict warnings against all non- Equestrians on it. Whatever is going on in Equestria, it surely must be the belated response of some long dead Equestrians who strongly despised all outsiders. Hence the reason we can’t reopen The Eye,” Celestia continued to stare in silence at Canterlot in the distance. “Madam President?” General Spinelli, whose sharp tone of voice and skills as a former pilot had earned her the nickname “Spitfire” from her subordinates, finally asked after Celestia became lost in thought. “Your orders, m’am?” The President closed her eyes, still facing Canterlot. “General, take a squadron of your stealth fighters and maintain reconnaissance; keep up the attempts to reopen The Eye with The Amulet. However, as you know, we must follow protocol to the letter… I want you to take the majority of your planes and prepare them for the possibility that something will come through The Eye, and that it will neither be one of ours, nor very friendly… arm them with the thermonuclear weapons kept in store for just this very occasion. Lastly, please keep trying to re- establish emitter contact with Canterlot,” “Yes, m’am.” “Dr. Heartstrings, I want you to go through every single Equestrian artifact and document that you’ve brought back with you to Ponyville and try to find something, anything that might shed some light on what Canterlot is dealing with.” Lyra nodded. “Of course, Madam President.” Celestia turned back to the ancient city in the distance. Though she no longer spoke anymore, her mind kept racing with the same thoughts, over and over again. Luna, my dear sister… please be ok… oh, Twilight… Twilight, I’m so, so sorry… ******************************************************************************************************* Even though she was exhausted, Twilight ran behind Spike’s hospital bed as the medics pushed him, screaming, down the halls of The Main Castle. Applejack ran right alongside her, worried for the little guy as well. “We got more wounded!” a medic shouted out as she pushed Spike’s bed to their destination, a makeshift triage unit set up within The Castle to accommodate all of the survivors of the Shadowbolts' surprise attack. Inside, a mixture of badly injured civilians and soldiers were being given first- line emergency treatment, many screaming or crying. Fluttershy was checking on the patients and their charts, one of the doctors helping to assess their conditions before ordering more intensive care as needed. “Fluttershy!” Twilight cried out when she saw her. “Twilight, Applejack!” Fluttershy began to greet them, but immediately gasped when she saw Spike. “Oh, no- Spike!” “This one’s shot up pretty bad, doc, though he’s sure lucky to be alive- no internal organs hit,” the medic informed her. “He’s fading fast, though.” Spike was constantly hollering out in excruciating pain as the initial daze of being hit had long wore off. “Oh dear, hold on, hold on,” Fluttershy fiddled with a preloaded painkiller syringe from her coat pocket, which only had a few minutes earlier been chock full on them. “I’m going to give you some demerol now, ok, Spike?” “YES, YES, GIVE ME THE DAMN DEMEROL!!!” Spike cursed loudly through his teeth. “SPIKEY- WIKEY!” “WAIT!” Spike abruptly stopped screaming in pain as Rarity suddenly ran over, a worried look on her face. “I… want to… remember this…” “Darling, what happened to you?!” “Oh, ahem- this? It’s nothing… really,” Spike must have been delirious to try to play down his horrific laser- inflicted wound. “He saved my life,” Twilight answered simply, still numb. “Pushed me out of the way.” Rarity turned to Twilight and gasped, and then turned back to Spike. “Is that true?” Spike tried to laugh, which was incredibly painful given his condition. “Heh heh- well, kind of…” Rarity started to touch Spike’s hair, tears in her eyes. Curiously, Spike no longer felt any need for Fluttershy’s painkillers anymore. “Oh, Spikey- Wikey… I never knew that you could be so brave… saving Twilight’s life at the risk of losing your own… oh, my little knight in shining armor…” She kissed him on the forehead. Spike’s face immediately began to relax as a big, contented smile played on his lips. He closed his eyes, slowly and serenely. “He’s going into shock!” Fluttershy shouted anxiously as Spike’s heart rate began to drop precipitously, causing the monitor next to him to emit a loud warning. “We need to get him to the OR right away!” She pulled a mask over his face and directed the medics to pull Spike’s bed into a room that was closed off from the triage unit. Twilight, Applejack and Rarity stood before it, watching and breathing hard. “Oh, Spikey- Wikey,” Rarity sniffed and wiped her eyes. Fluttershy came back into the triage unit, looking worriedly over Applejack and Twilight, who was still frozen mentally and physically. “Are you two alright?” Fluttershy asked. “Oh, jus’ some scratches is all, nothing like poor ol’ Spike over there,” Applejack answered as Twilight said nothing. “Oh, thank goodness,” Fluttershy replied. She looked at Twilight with a frown. “Twilight?” “Huh?” Twilight snapped out of her thousand- mile stare. “Yes, I’m fine, Fluttershy. How is Spike?” Fluttershy sighed. “Well, the wound should clean up pretty well, and he didn’t lose too much blood due to the cauterization… he’s very, very lucky to be alive.” With that, Twilight gave a little jerk from guilt. She looked down. “Twilight?” Rarity suddenly asked. “Twilight, you… haven’t seen your mother in The Castle, by any chance, have you?” Twilight’s eyes suddenly widened; her heart raced. “No… Rarity, where is she?” Rarity’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh, darling, that’s… that’s the reason why I came down here… Velvet wasn’t with the others who fled Harmonics… before the attack…” Twilight just shook her head silently at Rarity, her eyes growing wider and wider. She started to back away. “No… no…” Twilight turned around and ran before the others could stop her. “Twilight!” Rarity, Applejack, and Fluttershy called after her, but she didn’t turn back. “Where is she going?!” Rarity inquired shrilly. “I have an idea…” Applejack turned to Fluttershy. “Doc, I may need some help calmin’ her down some, she might try ta do somethin’ when she gets there that she’ll really regret…” “Oh my goodness,” Fluttershy immediately began checking her pockets for tranquilizers. “Oh, Twilight…” Rarity gasped. “Come on!” Applejack shouted as she ran after Twilight with Rarity and Fluttershy following behind her. ******************************************************************************************************* Iron Will sat in his chair, watching emitter images of the Shadowbolt army as it hung, perfectly still, over The Barrier. Not a single one had moved since the force field was fully integrated. They just hovered there, almost as if they were waiting for something. But what was it? “Hey, you’re not supposed to be in here!” He heard one of the privates below the consoles yell out. “Hey, lady-!” “General Armstrong!” Twilight shouted up to him as she pushed her way towards his chair. “Now’s not the time, Sparkle,” he answered without even looking at her. “Go back to the other civilians.” “General, what happened to Harmonics? My mother she…” Twilight felt like she was going to cry, “…she didn’t come back with the others.” Applejack, Rarity and Fluttershy ran up to her and tried to persuade her to leave, but she refused to. “What happened?!” Iron Will hung his head and sighed. “I’m sorry, Dr. Sparkle, but Harmonics seems to have been the first place they hit. If she’s still out there, then she’s gone. I’m sorry.” Twilight’s hand went to her mouth as she held back tears. “No… no, this can’t be possible…” “Come on, now, sugarcube,” Applejack pulled her arm. “Come on, dear…” Rarity joined. “Twilight, you really should lie down, you’ve been through enough,” Fluttershy reasoned. “No, no, NO!!!” Twilight shouted as she threw them all off. She turned back to Iron Will. “General, let me go out there. I need to look for her.” “Absolutely not, Dr. Sparkle,” he replied, looking at her. “There is no way we are lowering The Barrier for a search party, not for my men, and not for your mother. This place would be swarming all over with those things in a heartbeat… I can’t allow anyone to leave, not now.” “GODDAMMIT, THAT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!!” Twilight roared in fury. She caught her breath and calmed down. “General, please… nobody else has to go, just let me go out on my own, please… she’s my mother… please,” The soldiers and technicians in the room all looked at her with sympathy, and then started to stare at Iron Will. “I’m sorry, Sparkle, but no means no,” Iron Will flatly denied. “If those things weren’t hanging over the castle, right now, we could all leave.” “Well, pardon me, but if you didn’t unleash those things upon Canterlot in the first place, none of this would’ve even happened!” Rarity burst out in anger, thinking about how many friends she had in the different Divisions that were either badly hurt, like Spike, or unaccounted for. Twilight looked at her, mouth agape, and then turned back at the general. “…Is that true?” Iron Will hit his fist against the arm of his chair. “Dammit, we didn’t know that The Alicorn Casket would do this! I would never have endangered the lives of my citizens or my soldiers if we did, believe me! Nobody could’ve known this was going to happen!” “We warned you, Dr. Heartstrings warned you!” Rarity responded with pure venom. “The Casket was a trap. For all of us.” “You?” Twilight’s eye twitched as she realized the general was to blame. “This is all because of… you? My mother is out there or dead because of YOU?!” She screamed in fury and rushed at the general. Applejack, Rarity and Fluttershy wrestled her, holding her back as she lunged, over and over again to assault the man whom she believed had just as well killed her mother himself. Iron Will merely looked on at her, and then sighed. “Lieutenant Smith, take Twilight Sparkle down to the dungeon, where she won’t be a danger to herself or any others. Take the doctor with you to care for her, as she has clearly become delirious with grief,” he ordered. “You bastard!” Twilight continued shrieking. “How could you do this, this is all your fault, YOU FUCKING BASTARD!!!” Applejack looked at him with horror. “General, I… I really don’t think that’s necessary-“ “Get her out of my sight,” he ordered again as clearly as possible. Twilight had calmed down some, and she began to openly weep onto Fluttershy’s shoulder; Fluttershy stroked her hair and whispered soothing words into her ear. Rarity held onto her other side and stared daggers at Iron Will. Applejack, having broken off from them while Twilight had calmed herself, just stood there. Eventually, Fluttershy got Twilight to start towards the door, Rarity supporting her as they began to leave. Applejack turned to Iron Will, a look of pure disdain on her face. “Keep her wrapped up so I can fix this mess without any more distractions, Lieutenant,” he glared back at her. “And for God sakes, soldier… do your goddamn job.” Applejack just shook her head at him, and then left with the other girls, her arm also wrapped tightly around Twilight. ******************************************************************************************************* Twilight couldn’t believe it. All her life she had tried so hard to stay on the right side of the law. She never did hard drugs, never went over the speed limit, never even attempted to rip the tags off of her mattresses. But now she was sitting in jail. A dungeon, no less. Twilight was in a small, dimly lit cell covered by large, rusty bars of metal. She was sitting with her knees to her chest, staring off into the distance, which as it turned out wasn’t very far. Fluttershy and Rarity had opted to sit inside with her to keep her company; Applejack stood guard outside, pacing and huffing, thinking about a million different, conflicting things all at once. “Twilight, you really should eat something,” Fluttershy stroked her hair, worried. Twilight just sat there, catatonic. Fluttershy and Rarity exchanged frowns. “You know, darling, it really doesn’t look that bad…” Rarity picked up a packet of food and tried to tempt her with it. “Mmmmm, Chipped Chicken With… Mushroom Gravy… I mean how different is that from coq au vin, really?” Twilight just sat there for a long while before she spoke. “I killed her.” “Twilight,” Fluttershy gently began to scold her. “Darling, there was nothing you could’ve done. There was nothing any of us could’ve done,” Rarity reasoned. Twilight sniffed and looked at them. “Do you know what was the last thing I said to her? I told her she was a terrible mother. I said that I… that I…” she squeeze her eyes shut as tears began to flow anew. “…Wished she never came back home from Equestria.” Applejack looked down at the stone floor outside the cell with her balled fists shaking, her heart breaking to hear the dialogue coming from within. “Darling, I don’t think that there’s a single person on this Earth that your mother loved more than you,” Rarity smiled comfortingly at her, stroking her. “Believe me, dear, I saw it. And I don’t think anything you said to her could’ve changed that, ever.” Twilight looked up at her with puffy and red eyes. “Do you think she’s really gone?” Rarity exchanged glances with Fluttershy again. “Twilight, you’re going to get sick if you keep on forcing yourself to think about what happened… just rest a little, Rarity and I aren’t going anywhere, promise,” the doctor responded carefully. Suddenly, every EGO in the room activated, all at once. At first, Twilight bitterly expected Iron Will’s face to appear before her, but instead the emitter streams coalesced into something far darker and more sinister: the face of Nightmare, The Alicorn Queen. Fluttershy and Rarity gasped, and Applejack reached for her sidearm instinctively. Nightmare’s jagged mouth cracked open in a devious smile as she laughed maniacally. As every EGO and emitter in The Castle lit up simultaneously, Nightmare’s crazed laughter carried throughout every hallway, every room, and every chamber. At IT, Pinkie Pie gasped out loud as Nightmare popped up from her console. In the hangar bay, Rainbow Dash sat in The Rainboom’s cockpit and stared darkly at The Alicorn Queen cackling evilly over her joystick. In the control room, Nightmare’s laughter rang out the loudest from the giant emitter in the center of the consoles. The soldiers and the technicians began to panic as they fiddled with their controls; however, nothing they did could make the queen go away. Iron Will stood up from his chair and approached the demonic figure, enraged. “Identify yourself!” he demanded. Nightmare stopped laughing and smirked at him. “My, my, my, do you really not know who I am? Has it really been so long?” “If I was to hazard a guess, I would say that you’re the one responsible for the deaths of my people,” Iron Will spat angrily. Nightmare smiled. “I, you ignorant barbarian, am The Ruling Monarch of Equestria, The Last Alicorn Queen of Canterlot, The Living Nightmare Herself… it would be wise for you to learn who I am before your last breath has been drawn.” “Why did you attack us?” the general asked. “The United States of America has no intentions of war against your people, there is no need to continue this. Let us all leave peacefully, or suffer the full, unrestrained consequences of your ill- conceived actions!” Nightmare laughed heartily at the general’s threat. “Fool! It is not I who shall reap the grave consequences of my actions, but you and your kind. By stepping foot on our sacred resting grounds, by disturbing that which was never meant to be disturbed, you have all sealed your own doom. We shall never stop, never tiring, never partaking of sustenance, and we will, ultimately, be upon you… every last throat in this Castle shall be slit, every last body broken, every last life destroyed, until the very air of Holy Canterlot is filled with the acrid smoke of your collectively burning corpses, and the city is made clean once again…” “I don’t know if you noticed, queenie, but there’s a little something between your damn army and this Castle,” Iron Will referred to The Barrier. The Queen only smiled. “Oh, is there? Well then, maybe I better take another look outside, hm? It would be most wise for you to do so, as well.” The emitter view instantly changed to that of the area surrounding Canterlot; a chill ran down Iron Will’s spine. In addition to the legions of Shadowbolts surrounding the castle from air and land, at least 10 times more Shadowbolt warriors had joined in. Large, spikey black vehicles resembling fighter planes also screamed in between them in the rapidly darkening skies. Even further than that, enormous, jet- black balls of metal hundreds of feet in diameter had begun to roll right up to The Castle Barrier and surround it. The gleaming white towers and golden cupolas of The Castle almost seemed to be blotted out by all the darkness, right along with the sun up above. “What is this?” Iron Will whispered to the emitter. “Certain death, barbarian, ‘tis certain death,” Nightmare cruelly smiled, superimposed on the frightening imagery of her war machines. “Because if there is one thing we Equestrians have on our side… it is time.” Suddenly, every black metal ball stopped rolling right at the edge of The Barrier. A large hole opened up on the side of each ball closest to it, and a very nasty- looking, black, forked cannon- like protrusion popped out, aiming right for The Main Castle of Canterlot. Charging up, they began firing massive streams of energy at the force field, all at once, in perfect synchronization. Again and again The Barrier was slammed by the brillliant, massive rounds; it held up but became visibly disturbed by the new onslaught. In addition, the fighters and Shadowbolts above unleashed their own barrage, and soon the entire shield was wavering under the stress- still holding up, for the present moment. “We shall not stop until we have breached The Castle’s defenses, and we shall kill every single last one of you where you stand, where you sleep, and where you hide. We shall take no prisoners. Before you are even granted the sublime mercy of starving to death, you shall be made to choke on your own blood by our cold, unfeeling hands. They are My Shadowbolts, and I am Your Very Worst Nightmare. Look upon your inevitable fate, you fools, and tremble before it. For we are coming in… for all of you.” The transmission from Nightmare cut off, and all emitter activities resumed to normal. All throughout the entire Castle, not a single person spoke. Every last Initiative member was frozen in shock and renewed hopelessness. Outside, the constant barrage of energy against The Barrier could be heard, as well as the moaning of the shields as they struggled to stay active. Iron Will just stood there before the emitter, long after Nightmare was gone. In the dungeons below, Twilight, Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rarity were frozen with shock as well. Nobody said anything for a while, but, slowly, Twilight’s brain began to fire up, perhaps even harder than it had ever done before in her life. A plan began to form in her mind, an admittedly insane one; a new resolve began to strengthen in her heart, warming it from within. She turned to her terrified companions, all of them, and spoke to them simply and directly: “We have to stop her.”