//------------------------------//
// Chapter 9 
// Story: Princess Twilight Sparkle's 505th Birthday 
// by Autumnschild 
//------------------------------//


~Meanwhile~

 
Sandy squeaked and collapsed into a ball, gripping her own tail when the four ponies felt the ground shake. They turned and watched in awe as the street behind them was closed off with new clouds, separating the girls from Princess Twilight and Empress Rarity.
 
Luckily, they had just left the scene of their sky chariot’s wreckage and were currently hiding in an alley, waiting for the air to clear of corrupted pegasi before moving on.
 
Quick Name harrumphed at the royal tantrum and turned to his three charges. “Come on, you have to get to the newspaper archives.”
 
Smarty Pants and Honeycrisp both helped Sandy to her hooves, and the four trotted off again. They ran from alley to alley, staying beneath awnings and hugging buildings whenever their trek took them out into the open. But it wasn’t long before they heard a buzzing sound from behind them.
 
“What the hay is that?” asked Honeycrisp.
 
“Run,” commanded Quick Name.
 
Not asking any more questions, the three girls followed the Captain of the Arcane Guard barreling down the fluffy street as quickly as their legs could carry them. Behind them, turning the corner of 6th and Barnaby at terrifying speed, came a throng of frantic fliers. Some took the corner with such speed that they couldn’t help but crash into the shattered store fronts on the other side of the street. That didn’t stop them from flying back out soon after.
 
“The alley to your right. Go.”
 
The three girls nodded and hooked right when they hit the entrance to the alley. If anypony had told Honeycrisp that trash and pools of foul smelling mystery liquid could be found in grand abundance in the unused alleys of Cloudsdale, she never would have believed it. Until today.
 
She tried not thinking about it as she splashed her hooves through the rubbish. Good honest dirt and mud was one thing, but this… this was just unnatural. She let out a breath she didn’t remember holding when they reached the street on the other side of the alley.
 
With what looked like practiced ease, the dark grey unicorn ground to a halt in the clouds, spinning to face the pegasi behind the girls as he did so. “Take a left and run ahead, I’ll catch up.”
 
Smarty Pants, Honeycrisp, and Sandy said nothing but ran ahead on the unusual surface, panting and more often than not, slipping and sliding as they went. Sandy heard a commotion behind her, and chanced a glance over her shoulder. She wasn’t sure what she was seeing.
 
Eight shouting pegasi made it through the alley, and eight pegasi collided as one into Quick Name. But as soon as they touched him he burst into smoke. At least it looked like smoke to Sandy, dark smoke with sparkles.
 
Eight pegasi smashed through the smoke, encountered no resistance what-so-ever, and then smashed into the adjacent wall. The smoke reformed into Quick Name and he turned to run after the girls. Sandy quickly looked away before they could make eye contact with each other. She’d known Quick Name for two years, but she’d never seen him do anything that before.

“Come on Sandy, you’re gonna get left behind!” Honeycrisp chided as she struggled to keep up with a determined Smarty Pants.
 
Sandy pushed the worry out of her mind and fluttered after her two friends.
 



 
A few minutes and a few fights later, the three girls were gasping for breath before the entrance of the Cloudsdale Tribune. They stood on the dense cloud sidewalk, catching their breath. Sandy was about to ask the girls an important question when they heard the sounds of a nearby struggle. They turned to look back in the street to see Quick Name standing on top of a pile of unconscious pegasi.
 
“Geez, again?” huffed Honeycrisp “This is the billionth time you’ve done that.”
 
“Done what?” asked Quick Name.
 
“Done that thing where I hear a fight, and by the time I turn around it’s just you. You’re not even breathing heavily!”
 
Quick Name pointed a hoof at one of the pegasi. “They started it.”
 
“How am I supposed to learn any combat magic if you keep knocking them out before I can watch?”
 
Quick Name studied the angry red unicorn. “You want me to slow down. While I’m fighting for my life?”
 
“Yes.”
 
He raised an eyebrow. “So you can watch?”
 
“Yes!”
 
“… You are a strange little pony, did you know that?”

Honeycrisp walked off in a huff, up the stairs and into the building. The other two followed her, but Sandy kept an eye on Quick Name as she entered the building.
 
“Are… Are you coming with us?” she asked him.
 
The dark grey stallion smiled. “No, I’ll stay out here and keep eye out for trouble. You go on ahead.”
 
Sandy smiled nervously and her wings fluttered at her side. She walked in after her two friends. The Cloudsdale Tribune’s Archival Storage Room A was located on the fifth floor of their sprawling headquarters. Sprawling by Cloudsdale standards. The Cloudsdale Tribune building looks like an upside-down trapezoid. The higher it goes, the more square footage each floor has. By the time they reached the fifth floor, they were looking at a half an acre of archival storage rooms, ranging alphabetically from A to Z.
 
“Okay girls, how hard can this be?” chuckled Smarty Pants to her friends. “Let’s get to work!”
 



 
This was not likely to be a quick process. Nor a quiet one. With a rattling boom, a metal filing cabinet fell to the floor, crashing through the dense cloud and coming to rest two floors below.
 
“Watch it, Pants! You almost smooshed me underneath that thing!”
 
“Sorry, I was trying to open the top drawer. How do pegasi open them without magic?”
 
“Uh, I dunno, maybe they use their wings and fly? We’re like a zillion miles in the air, what’s a few more feet?”
 
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” Smarty Pants blushed, before her getting her own dander up. “And hey, what are you doing here in Archival Storage Room A anyway?”
 
“You said to start in A!”
 
“No, I said I’ll start in A, you should start in B.”
 
“Like hay you did, you said…”
 
As the two girls continued to fight over who said what, Sandy sat in the adjacent Archival Storage Room D. She was supposed to be looking through the drawers, but she wasn’t. She could go intervene before the two cousins in the other room escalate their war of words to actual blows, but she didn’t. Not when she could watch out the window and watch Quick Name.
 
She watched Quick Name and his bizarre fighting style. He never attacked, it was all reaction. A pegasi would swing at him, and he’d catch the hoof, move his body into position, and use the force of the other pony’s attack to flip them over on to their back. Sometimes he’d throw a pony to the ground, and that pony got back up.
 
But Quick Name didn’t seem bothered about fighting. He looked sort of… rejuvenated. Like he was getting in a good run for the first time in a long time. Suddenly, one pony bucked a hole through Quick Name’s head.
 
Sandy almost screamed, but as soon as the hoof was pulled back, she realized that Quick Name turned his whole head into the weird wispy smoke. He made quick work of the pony that tried to buck him, flipping him this way and that until he was wedged into the dense cloud that made the streets of Cloudsdale.
 
Only then did his head re-solidify.
 
Sandy whimpered and ran off to find the other girls.
 
“Stop hitting me, and help me look for…” Honeycrisp ducked as Smarty Pants spun around to buck her, and smacked her light brown cousin in the cutie mark. “What are we looking for anyway?”
 
Smarty Pants rubbed her cheek. “We’re looking for the original article on the Rainbow Factory fire 40 years ago.” She said as she bopped the not-so-little red unicorn on the nose. “It should be here in the archives, but you—”
 
Sandy burst into the room, her wings flapping frantically. “Can unicorns dissolve?”
 
Both cousins stopped and stared at their light green friend.
 
“Come again, Sandy?” asked Honeycrisp, with no small amount of confusion.
 
Sandy’s wings fluttered again as she sat on her rump, a small dust devil of papers and cloud danced across the floor in front of her. Motioning with her forelegs, Sandy continued. “You know… poof. Like into a cloud. Turn into smoke. Can unicorns do that?”
 
Smarty Pants gave her friend a queasy look. “I… I once read a book about a fire mage who spontaneously combusted.”
 
“Did he live?” asked Sandy.
 
Smarty Pants said nothing, but she shook her head. Honeycrisp glanced nervously at her own cutie mark, a trio of flames.
 
“So… So a unicorn’s not supposed to be able to dissolve into smoke and then return to his original shape?”
 
Again Smarty Pants shook her head.
 
Sandy hugged her tail and tucked her chin under her quivering wings. “But… I just saw Quick Name do it.”
 
Smarty Pants paled at the implication and found herself sitting down. “Are you sure that’s what you saw?”
 
Sandy nodded. “I saw it. A few times now. Do you… do you think he’s a shapeshifter? A Changeling?”
 
Honeycrisp cursed under her breath and spit into a nearby corner. “That’s just great. Just what we need right now.”
 
After that there was silence. None of the girls had ever seen a changeling before, but all young ponies knew about them from the stories told by their parents and elders. About the massive Changeling Hive far to the south. How they promised to return to Equestria one day and get their revenge on all of ponykind. Revenge for killing their queen.
 
Smarty Pants took deep breath and looked at her pegasus friend. “Where did you see this?”
 
Sandy stood up and started walking for the door. “Come on, I’ll show you.” And she led her two friends out of Archival Storage Room A and over to the windows of Archival Storage Room D.
 




“He’s just standing there.”
 
“Well there’s been nopony for him to fight.”
 
“Are you sure you saw him turn his head into a cloud, and then turn back?”
 
Sandy nodded in answer of Honeycrisp’s question.
 
Honeycrisp grinned madly. “That is so cool.”
 
Smarty Pants slugged her cousin in the shoulder.
 
“Ow! What was that for, Pants?”
 
“If Quick Name is a changeling that is not cool. It’s terrifying. It means that one of Princess Twilight’s closest confidants is, in fact, a—“
 
Honeycrisp put a hoof in Smarty Pants’ mouth to stop her from continuing her little speech. “No, no, I get it, changelings are bad. I just mean what if he’s not? What if he can teach me how to turn into smoke?”
 
Smarty Pants pulled her cousin’s hoof out of her mouth. “Whatever.” She huffed.
 
A few achingly slow minutes of silence crawled by. Quick Name stood at attention the entire time. He looked down one direction and scanned the area, before turning to do the same down the other direction. Smarty Pants was fidgeting anxiously.
 
“Can’t you sit still?” asked Honeycrisp.
 
Smarty Pants scrunched up her face and looked at her cousin. They both knew the answer to that question. Smarty was about to give her a piece of her mind when a glint caught her attention in the far corner of Archival Storage Room D.
 
She got up and walked over to the metal filing cabinet, identical to all the others except for one tiny detail. The middle drawer was labeled.
 

FIRES: COMMERCIAL & INDUSTRIAL


 

She let out a little squeal and ripped the entire drawer clean out of the cabinet. It hit the cloud floor with a soft poofy thud. The first file she pulled out contained an article and notes for a fire in a Cloudsdale bakery that happened last week. Tossing it behind her, she pulled out the last file at the end of the drawer. It was about an arsonist arrested seventy years ago.
 
“Girls! I think I found the drawer that has the file we’re looking for!”
 
“Uh huh.” Said a disinterested Honeycrisp. She was staring out the window at Quick Name standing in the street five floors below them. The little red unicorn was not going to miss a moment of his magic.
 
Sandy at least had the decency to turn to look at Smarty Pants and smile and nod appreciably. Before turning to watch if one of the few adults she trusted was, in fact, a heartless love-stealing monster.
 
Smarty Pants continued to dig through the files. Arson suspected. Arsonist on the loose. Arsonist Captured. Warehouse fire. Hot Air Balloon fire. Rainbow Factory Fir—
 
Smarty Pants blinked. She read the label on the folder a second time. ‘Rainbow Factory Fire’. With reverent and slightly shaky hooves, she pulled the file out of the drawer, placed it on top of the others, and opened it up. She read aloud as she scanned through it.
 
“Massive fire… Red Lake No. 6 tank rupture…”
 
She continued to read through the article, when she heard the two other ponies begin to chatter.
 
“Oh my!” gasped Sandy.
 
“Here we go, there’s got to be at least twenty pegasi out there!” cheered Honeycrisp.
 
Smarty Pants tried to ignore the two talking fillies and focus on what she was reading. “All night shift workers accounted for except Ms... Good Manager?” Smarty Pants laughed. “Hey girls, get this. The name of the Rainbow Factory’s Night Shift Director was Good Manager.”
 
Honeycrisp snorted, but kept her eyes locked on the dark grey unicorn down in the street fighting off twenty pegasi without using any magic. “Who names their kid Good Manager?” she asked dismissively.
 
“I know, right?” laughed Smarty Pants. “It’s almost as bad as Quick Name.”
 
Smarty Pants stopped laughing and the color of the world around her faded away. She could feel the synapses in her brain firing, pulling her towards an unstoppable conclusion. Her moment of clarity had come.
 
She knew.
 
Time began to move at its normal pace once again and the bright colors of the world filled her eyes. Just in time to hear her two friends reel back from the window in both alarm and excitement.
 
“Pants! He did it, h-he turned into smoke!” exclaimed Honeycrisp.
 
Sandy began to shake before she collapsed into a ball and covered her head with flittering wings. Smarty Pants rushed over, abandoning the folder. If she was right, she didn’t need it anymore anyway. When she reached the window, all she saw was Quick Name, fighting off the last ten or so pegasi in hoof-to-hoof combat.
 
“You just missed it, Pants.”
 
“What color was it?” demanded Smarty Pants.
 
“Huh?”
 
“What color was the smoke?”
 
“It was like a dark blue. Almost black.”
 
“It wasn’t green?”
 
Sandy answered this time. “No. Not green. Is that bad?”
 
Smarty Pants smiled and let out a sigh of relief. “No, that’s a good thing. Changeling magic is green.”
 
Quick Name put down two more pegasi by slamming them together with his forehooves. Smarty Pants was similarly undaunted in her questioning. “Was there anything else about it? Anything odd?”
 
Honeycrisp looked at Smarty Pants quizzically. “Anything else odd about a pony turning into smoke and then unturning into smoke? Nope. Nothing else.”
 
“It glittered,” offered Sandy.
 
Quick Name was down to the last five pegasi.
 
“Glittered?” asked the light brown earthpony.
 
“Glittered. There were these… sparkly things in it. Like stars.”
 
“Yeah, now that you mention it Sandy, I think I saw them too.”
 
Smarty Pants’ hind legs gave out and her rump hit the ground, her wavy mane bouncing around her head.
 
“I don’t think Quick Name is a changeling.”
 
“Oh, thank goodness," said Sandy. The tension melted out of her, and she sighed happily.
 
“I think he’s Princess Luna.”
 
“What?!” peeped Sandy as she leapt hovering into the air.
 
“What?” asked Honeycrisp flatly.
 
Sandy shot up like an arrow. “But… but I’ve known Quick Name for a long time! He’s one of Mommy’s best friends. A-and he knows we came here looking for her. Why would he keep something like that from us?”
 
“Plus,” quipped Honeycrisp. “He’s a he. A boy. He can’t be a Princess.”
 
Smarty Pants rubbed a hoof over her face, her eyes clenched shut. “Honeycrisp… It’s… you know what? When this whole Beacon thing is done, I’m going to strap you to a desk in the royal library and make you study magic until your eyes bleed.”
 
Honeycrisp harrumphed and stuck out her lower lip in a pout. Still listening to her cousin, she leaned against the cool glass of the window and watched the fight in the street below.
 
Quick Name was down to the last three pegasi, these wore city guard uniforms and had wingblades. He was having a hard time putting these three corrupted defenders out of commission.
 
Smarty Pants continued. “According to legend, Princess Luna can turn into shade and shadow, becoming ethereal at will. And her mane is supposedly the color of the midnight sky, twinkling with stars.”
 
Sandy looked at Smarty Pants “So… so how do we get her to tell us who she is? She clearly didn’t want to tell us earlier.”
 
Honeycrisp, still feeling the sting of her cousin’s words, fiddled with her blonde braided pigtails. “Maybe we can trick hi-her into revealing herself?”
 
With a counter-buck, Quick Name had dispatched two of the three pegasi. There was only one remaining.
 
Smarty Pants shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Honeycrisp. The Goddess of the Moon is a very sensitive pony. The tales I’ve read say that she reacts… poorly to slights and insults. If we try to trick her, she may—“
 
Honeycrisp tuned out her cousin. The moment called for action. Apples weren’t known for resting on their laurels when a something needed to be done. She reached over to the windowsill and unlatched it. The window flew open and Honeycrisp stuck her head out.
 
“Hey!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.
 
Neither pony bothered to stop or look up, so fierce was their struggle.
 
Unfazed and undaunted, Honeycrisp took a deep breath. “The moon sucks!”
 
Honeycrisp barely had enough time to duck out of the way as that last pegasus was flung screaming at terminal velocity into the wall next to their window of Archival Storage Room D. Not slowing down in the slightest, he continued his unwillingly noisy assent through the ceiling, the roof of the Cloudsdale Tribune, and far off into the sky beyond.
 
“IMPUDENT, PETULANT CHILD, YOU DARE? YOU— oh, horseapples.”
 
Honeycrisp sat back up and leaned out the window on an elbow. She grinned like a Cheshire cat down at the flustered pony in the street. There was a deep blue poof and a much taller pony stood in Quick Name’s place. The pony was dark blue with ethereal hair like Princess Twilight and Princess Cadence. She had the wings and the horn of an Alicorn. It was Princess Luna.
 
Smarty Pants, forgetting all else, tried to jump out of the window, a wide grin of her own plastered across her face. It was Sandy’s quick actions to grab the little deranged earthpony’s back hooves that stopped her friend from falling down five stories.
 
Honeycrisp buffed a forehoof against her chest, bringing it up to her face to inspect it disinterestedly. “Yeah,” she crowed, “it’s her.”
 



 
Smarty Pants, her mane limp and on the verge of tears, was jogging just to keep up with the newly resurfaced Goddess of the Moon. “S-so you won’t tell me w-why you were hiding? W-will you at least tell me w-where your sister is?”
 
Luna groaned for a second time in as many minutes as the four ponies trotted along the now empty streets back towards the sky chariot wreckage.
 
“Smarty Pants, I’m sorry you do not like my answer, but it is the only one I can give you. My sister and I have sworn ourselves to secrecy. Our answers are for Princess Cadence and Princess Twilight Sparkle alone. Already you know too much.”
 
A final troop of seven armored pegasi swooped around a nearby street corner and dove for the girls. When they saw the Princess of the Night standing before them, they tried to stop. But it was too late.
 
“I am the Moon, eternally dreaming!” she shouted, brooking no argument. “You will sleep!”
 
The girls watched in amazement as the seven ponies fell to the ground, instantly unconscious.
 
“Whoa, that was amazing Princess!” cheered Smarty Pants. “Was that your part of the secret spell you and Princess Celestia will use to stop the Beacon of Order?”
 
Luna stomped her hoof. “How do you know about… never mind. Look, Smarty Pants. I need you to stop asking questions for now, can you do that for me?” Luna asked with a weak smile.
 
Smarty Pants nodded sheepishly.

“Can I ask a question, your worshipfulness?” asked Honeycrisp.

Princess Luna nodded. “So long as it’s not about why I’ve done what I’ve done or where my sister is, of course.”

“Can you teach me how to turn into smoke and then unturn into smoke?”

“Well now,” smiled Princess Luna, “That is a very advanced spell. Tell me, have you mastered the four schools of transmogrification?”

“Transmawhat? I just finished sixth grade at Ponyville Elementary, if that’s what you mean.”

“No that is… not what I mean. Perhaps when you are older.”

Honeycrisp bobbed along with a smile on her face. A maybe from a goddess was good enough for her.

“Um. I have a question.” said Sandy, barely over a whisper, “That is, if that’s okay, Princess.”

Princess Luna looked at the poor girl, and offered her a sad smile. She knew the little green pegasus had trust issues with adults. In fact Sandy being in such close proximity was the main reason for Luna keeping up her charade as long as she did today.

“What is it, Sandy?”

“What happened to Quick Name? Did you just disguise yourself as him today, or…”

Luna looked forward, not daring to see the hurt in the little pony’s eye when she answered. “There never was a Quick Name, Sandy.”

“oh.” It was barely a whisper.

They walked along in silence for a while. Sandy walked alongside Honeycrisp, who leaned into her as she walked for comfort.

“I have another question, Princess.” Said Smarty Pants, who quickly added, “And it’s not about you or Princess Celestia at all.”

Luna eyed the earthpony as if weighing her intentions. “Alright, Smarty Pants, what is it?”

“When we first activated the Beacon of Order, it was all ‘target found’ this and ‘threat level’ that. But when we bumped into Princess Cadence today, she was all snarly and ‘kill them all’. What’s up with that?”

Luna sighed. “That is a good question, Smarty Pants.”

The little pony beamed.

“When my sister and I created the beacon, we did so with the best of intentions. We had not yet discovered the importance of harmony in the world at large. At the time we were in the midst of a losing war against Discord, a being of pure chaos.”

The other ponies slowed to match Princess Luna’s new pace as she walked down memory lane.

“Celestia wagered that a being of pure order, created according to strict guidelines, laws, and clearly designed principles would be the perfect weapon against him. Sadly, she failed. But her failure wasn’t in its execution or design. Her failure was in her compassion.”

“What do you mean?”

“My sister gave it the ability to feel emotion, once it converted a pony to the cause of order. She did this so that the Beacon would develop a sense of empathy for those under it’s power. So that it would not tax them over much, or cause them harm. And, hopefully, so that the Beacon would release the ponies in it’s charge after it had defeated Discord.”

“Couldn’t you just have… I don’t know, somehow told it to do that anyway, and not leave it up to the Beacon to decide?” asked Honeycrisp.

Luna gave the little red unicorn a half-cocked look, but it was Smarty Pants who spoke up first, to help Honeycrisp save face. “Sorry, Princess. We’re not, uh, ‘well versed’ in the arts of construct creation.”

Luna nodded. “No, we could not do that. There are some things even goddesses cannot do. But I digress. Granting the Beacon of Order access to emotions confused its highly logical cortex. We discovered that it would not be able to come to grips with the impulsive and unordered nature of the emotional response. That’s why we abandoned the project before activating it.”

“So… it went crazy?” asked Smarty Pants.

Luna gave a solemn nod. “In a word, yes. The Beacon does not care who it hurts or why. It only cares about stopping Discord. Its new found emotions are getting in its way, driving it to extreme measures to finish the act as soon as possible. Then it will deactivate itself to be free of its own madness.”

There were no other questions.

Soon the four ponies stood before the cloud wall that Twilight put up not an hour earlier to stop the majority of corrupted pegasi from chasing Luna and the girls into Cloudsdale proper. It was a trifling thing for Luna to dispel it.
 
The three girls gasped, and Luna nodded in appreciation at the devastation that awaited them on the otherside.
 
Most of the buildings had been reduced to foamy rubble. Some of the larger cloud sections had broken away from the city, and were floating aimlessly through the sky. The ground was littered with sleeping ponies, but two ponies remained standing. The two she knew would make it through.
 
Curiously, one of them now had what appeared to be a moving box for a cutiemark.
 
“Hail, Princess Twilight Sparkle. Hail, Crystal Empress Rarity.” She said.
 
Luna suppressed a laugh as she watched Twilight bowl over an indignant Rarity on her way over. The two Goddesses embraced in a mighty hug. Twilight let out a happy cry, and choked back a few tears. Everything was going to be okay.
 
“Princess Luna! Oh, I’m so glad to see you. You have no idea how long we’ve been looking for you.”
 
Luna giggled nervously “Oh, I have some idea, Twilight Sparkle.”
 
Twilight cocked her head at that. “How long have you been in Cloudsdale? It’s a great hiding place, I never would have thought to look for you here, what with how populated it is and how nervous you were around too many ponies.”
 
Rarity, having brushed herself off, walked over and thought about stepping in, to stop Twilight from embarrassing either herself or Luna, but she just wasn’t feeling all that generous at the moment. She brushed another hoof print off of her moving box cutie mark.

Luna pointed a hoof at the white mare and pointedly ignored Twilight’s question. “What happened to Empress Rarity’s cutie mark?”

“I knew it!” fumed Rarity, “Twilight Sparkle, if you don’t fix me right this instant I swear I’ll stand right next to you until the end of time and tell every pony you ever meet the nickname you gave yourself when you were drunk off your flank on your 121st birthday. Do you hear me?”

Twilight groaned and mumbled the rest of the spells as quickly as she could. Soon the air was filled with popping noises. Eventually it was Rarity’s turn. Her life flashed before her eyes, and then the moment was gone.

Rarity turned to look at her hindquarters, and saw her three diamonds back where they belonged. “Oh! Oh, that's so much better. Why, I feel like a new mare!”

Losing herself in the moment, she giggled and began to chase her cutie mark. She didn’t stop until Princess Luna cleared her throat pointedly with an “Ahem.”

Twilight, pulled out of her friend’s euphoria, turned on the dark blue mare in an instant.“I have so many questions! Why did you two leave? Where is Celestia? Is she still alive? Tell me she’s alive! Why are you hiding your magical signature in the ley lines? How am I suppo—“
 
Small wonder, it was Smarty Pants who cracked first. She just couldn’t take it anymore. The little brown earthpony jumped into the air and squealed at the top of her lungs. “She was Quick Name all along!”
 
“ssed to run… Come again?” asked Twilight as her train of thought came crashing through the station.
 
Princess Luna offered Twilight a sheepish smile and Twilight’s left eye started twitching. The Goddess of Magic stood there, eyeing her long-lost friend up and down.
 
“Quick Name? You were Quick Name?” Twilight took a step forward.
 
“I can explain.” Luna took a step backward.
 
Twilight didn’t give her a chance. "23 years! You’ve been the captain of my personal guard, standing outside of my bedro--- YOUR bedroom, every day for 23 years? Why didn’t you tell me?”
 
Luna was about to answer, however an unwelcome voice butted into the conversation. “You old witch.”
 
The concern and sympathy that was on Princess Luna’s face fell away in an instant, leaving a cold scowl. She walked out of their small reunion and over to the restrained Princess Cadence.
 
“I assume that I’m talking to Celestia’s ‘Beacon of Order’?”
 
“You never liked me.” The Beacon answered bitterly. “Never thought I could be the one who destroys Discord.”
 
“You’re right on both counts. You’re nothing but a broken toy. A worthless trinket of a bygone age.”
 
Cadence sneered and slammed her head into her crystal cage. “You’re wrong! I’ll show you. I’ll show both Moon and Sun that I am the only weapon that can truly stop Discord.”
 
“Listen to yourself. You’re thirst to prove yourself has made you mad.” Princess Luna sauntered up to the caged Alicorn. “And in your madness, you can’t see the truth.”
 
The Beacon said nothing through the puppet Cadence, but it continued to desperately slam her head into her prison.
 
Luna was unmoved. “Discord hasn’t harmed a soul in half a millennia. The Elements of Harmony worked. Chaos and Order are in the harmonious balance, and have been for centuries. A trickster and a fool, yes, but he has been acquitted of his crimes. Who are you to question your creator’s judgment?”
 
Cadence roared and her horn lit up over and over again, each time the spells she cast were silenced with a pop within its crystalline sheath.
 
“Who am I? WHO AM I? I am Order. I am Law! And I will save this world from chaos even if I must tear it apart to do so!”
 
Cadence’s eyes begin to flash between red and blue again, and Twilight started running forward. “Luna, get away from her!”
 
But it was too late. Cadence let out a wail, and this time it was her own voice and not the Beacon’s. The world shook, and the sheath around her horn shattered. Twisted magic burst from it and slammed into the chest of the newly returned Moon Goddess. And then there was silence.
 
Heartbeats passed like hours, and Twilight dared to look. The air around her was warm and smelt of burnt ozone, despite her proximity to Rarity and the aura of cold she constantly exuded. There, in two small piles on the ground lay the unmoving bodies of Princess Cadence and Princess Luna.
 
Twilight looked at them. “This is bad.”
 
The others ran over. Smarty Pants thrust a hoof onto Luna’s neck and put her face near her muzzle. “She’s… asleep?”
 
Rarity, was doing the same with Cadence and nodded to Twilight. “Cadence too, I’m afraid.”
 
Then there was a sound. It sounded like a pulse. Or the single beat of a faraway drum. Twilight felt a tingle race through her. She knew that something had surged across the ley lines.
 
“Princess Twilight!” Sandy called out in alarm “The other ponies are getting up!”

All around them, hundreds of pegasi started to rise to their hooves. Each of them had a pair of glowing red eyes. Gone was the mindless gibberish and in its place was a single command issued as one voice from the throats of hundreds.
 
“KILL THEM!”
 
“This is worse,” said Twilight, her horn glowing with power. She willed another magical shield into existence around the five conscious ponies and her two unconscious royal sisters. She grabbed Luna and hugged her tightly “Everypony get closer. Rarity, grab Cadence.”
 
“W-what are we gonna do?” asked a terrified Honeycrisp.
 
Twilight expanded her consciousness once more into the magical realm beyond, but just dipping below its surface. Already she could feel the eyes of the Beacon on her. She didn’t have much time. She was hoping for… there it was. Luna may be unconscious, but her magical signature was back and as dark as ever.
 
“Everypony hold onto me. We’re going to Canterlot, and we’re going in hot!”
 
Twilight began her teleportation spell linking her physical self and the ponies around her to the West Entrance of the Castle. Hopefully it would be empty and she wouldn’t have to worry about things getting messy. She tapped into the deep night of Luna’s magic and completed the link.
 
In that instant the world was gone. 





Less than a heartbeat later, the world was back. Twilight, Rarity, and the three girls stood in the otherwise empty West Entrance to Canterlot Castle. The unconscious Luna and Cadence were with them too. Twilight let out the breath she was holding.
 
“Okay girls, now we need to—“
 
“GRAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWRRRRG!” came a guttural shout from overhead.
 
Instinctively, they all looked up to see a massive red dragon flying haphazardly from the direction of the city. Then they watched it slam into the side of the castle above them. It held tight to the castle and wriggled and writhed in apparent agony, trying desperately to bite at the horde of smaller creatures that moved in tides along its back. As the dragon screamed, it loosed fireballs into the empty air around it.
 
Finally, it lost its grip and the dragon began to plummet down towards the ground.
 
“Everypony inside, now!” shouted Twilight.

She wrapped Cadence and Luna in matching purple auras and ran for the open doors. The three girls screamed as they ran, but all five of them managed to get inside before the dragon hit the ground with a sickening thud. Whatever those creatures were on its back, they were just a memory now.
 
As she stood there catching her breath, Twilight heard the unmistakable sound of galloping hooves on marble. To her surprise, Spellbound, a member of her Arcane Guard, came barreling out of the leftmost corridor behind the group.
 
“We got one down at the West Entra—Princess Twilight?” he said as he scrambled to a halt.

Twilight heard a gruff voice from the same corridor call out to him. “You know I haven’t been to the Castle in a very long time, but did they really rename this the West EntraPrincess Twilight? Seems a little gauche, don’t you think?”
 
Discord came into view and also stumbled to a halt. He stood there for a second. “Oh, I get it.”
 
Twilight frowned at him. “Discord. Do you mind telling me what the hay is going on around here?” she pointed a hoof accusingly at the crumpled dragon a few feet away.
 
“Oh, do you like it?” Discord asked casually as he walked up to the only conscious Princess and grabbed her by the shoulders. “I call it HELP, HELP, WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!”
 
In the distance there was an explosion, followed by the loudest roar Twilight Sparkle had ever heard.