Lady Lulamoon sauntered into the castle doors with all the time in the world, and none of the cares. She walked past the last remaining Vraal as it killed one more pony before being brought down spectacularly. She passed the shell-shocked form of Velvet standing and looking aghast at the green earth pony getting shakily to her feet in front of another dead Vraal.
If it were any other time, Lady Lulamoon would have stopped and killed both of them, just for the fun of it; old times’ sake. But right now, she had a mission to accomplish, and a goal in sight.
She had just seen the retreating forms of Twilight and a guard disappear inside the front door as she entered the courtyard. As Lady Lulamoon stepped daintily around the carnage on the grass, she cast a furious look at Velvet, who still had her back turned. It would be oh-so easy just to plant a spell or a spear in her back, but even one second of distraction, and she would miss her deadline.
So with a long-suffering sigh of disappointment, she entered the doors of the palace with no blood shed on her part. The sacrifices a lady must make to achieve her ends were nigh-impossible to handle, but she would manage.
Despite being a mare of high standards and ranking, she had only ever been in the castle twice before, and never in another timeline. The changes were subtle, but they existed. The tapestries on the walls that muffled her quiet whistling were a darker pallor than they had been in her time, probably something to do with Princess Luna’s return.
Lady Lulamoon snorted disparagingly. Luna was pathetic, a snivelling grub at the hooves of her sister. And still, Celestia paled in comparison to the pure magic pulsing through Icani’s veins. The pool of magic that she had noticed when she first stepped into Canterlot Square from the rift had been impressive, and ever since then, it had only grown in power, along with her confidence.
Celestia would fall, and the world would know of the full power of the Lulamoon branch. The Princesses would acknowledge her as their better, or they would be destroyed.
The thought brought Lady Lulamoon comfort as she continued her stroll in the grand castle.
She sped up when she heard light conversation floating around the corner, that of a small filly and a guard. Lady Lulamoon smiled as she rounded the corner to see the guard raise a hoof to knock on the throne room door.
Suddenly, there was a small popping noise, and a green pony wearing a clean, dark jacket fizzled into existence, waiting only a second to gain her bearings before she swung her weapon in a wide arc toward the guard.
The blade caught the soldier’s neck as he turned, spraying blood and bits of his trachea all over the wall and floor with the force of the swing. He gasped for a second, then fell over, twitching one more time before laying still against the soft carpet of the hall.
Immediately, the filly began to scream, falling onto her flank and pushing herself away from the body on the floor beside her. She pushed herself into the door and kept screaming, with her eyes locked on the corpse of her guardian.
It was a good thing the doors to the throne room were mostly sound proof.
The pony in the jacket silently approached the filly, ignoring the high-pitched screams of terror that escaped her mouth. The pony stowed her weapon in her jacket, stopping a few steps away from the foal on the ground, looking her over emotionlessly. Then, she turned her head to look at Lady Lulamoon standing in the doorway, and nodded in acknowledgement.
“You’re late.” She said softly.
Lady Lulamoon huffed, trying her best to disregard the screaming filly as her companion was doing, but to no avail. “Yes, well I ran into a couple of roadblocks on the way here, Riftbringer. And mind your tone against your superiors!”
That brought a grin to the pony’s face as she turned to face Lulamoon completely. “Roadblocks you say? That couldn’t possibly be Miss Velvet could it?” she smirked more at the look of unrestrained fury of Lulamoon’s muzzle. “I will say this once more Icani, so do well to understand; you are not my superior, no matter what you have Stargazer, or yourself thinking.”
With that, she turned back to the now whimpering filly curled into a ball at the foot of the ornate doors. She was still looking at the guard’s dead stare.
“Look away little one,” the jacketed pony whispered, gently turning the foal’s head away from the scene to look at her. “Look at me, okay? You’re going to be fine.”
The purple filly sobbed in terror. “That’s what mommy said…”
The pony barely hesitated at the remark, pulling out a small needle full of a colourful fluid out of her coat. “Your mother is a smart pony, little Twilight,” she kept the filly’s eyes trained on hers as she rested the tip of the needle against her side, under her heart. “But she cannot tell the future. Nopony can.”
She jabbed the point of the needle into Twilight’s side, drawing a gasp of pain from the filly. Once she depressed the plunger however, her expression became one of bliss, and then tiredness. The filly opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, but eventually her jaw became slack, and she closed her eyes.
The pony stayed by her side until the contents of the needle were evenly distributed through her system, shutting her down. She rested a tender hoof against Twilight’s chest as her breathing slowed, her heart beats abating.
With a sigh, the pony lifted Twilight’s body off the floor and onto her shoulder, then walked over to close the guard’s eyes. He hadn’t lived long to feel the pain at least.
With one more look at the bloody scene, she locked eyes with Lady Lulamoon. “Shall we go?”
***
Jade had been running a lot lately, though most of the time it had been away from danger, and not towards it.
She killed that rule where it stood, on grounds of imminent catastrophe.
She could hear Velvet behind her, keeping pace with little difficulty. Perhaps I should get back into exercising, Jade mused silently. Not that it was meant as an insult to the unicorn, but Velvet seemed a little… pudgy to be running so fast. Jade left herself a mental message never to piss off a worried mother; apparently they could defy the limits of possibility.
But all of this was on the back-burner of Jade’s mind as she raced through the halls of the castle. When they had first come in, two guards had tried to stop them because they evidently weren’t supposed to be there anymore. Those same guards were currently lying in a pile at the foot of the steps, one of them having been thrown down the stairs head-first, and the other dropped with a roundhouse kick to the jaw.
Jade felt bad for the unfortunate guards, but in the face of crisis, Jade thought that they would much prefer a sore head and bruised joints rather than a temporal disaster that would rip apart the universe as a whole, destroying reality.
She would never let it show, but Jade was panicking. She knew exactly what the black dot on the tracker had meant, and in relation, what it meant for her mission. She just hoped that her watch had got it wrong.
Her hopes were dashed at the sight beheld her as she took the last corner at flying speeds. She stopped in her tracks, mind racing, realizing that if it hadn’t before, shit had hit the fan.
Shit in the form of two ponies, one of them a scarlet unicorn with a maniacal smile, and the other a green earth pony with a black jacket, and the limp form of a foal on her back. The two froze as Jade gaped at them, disbelieving.
“No…”
The green earth pony narrowed her golden eyes at Jade, who returned the favour. Lady Lulamoon just laughed as Velvet entered the room, stumbling at the sight before her. Her eyes flicked over Icani, before flitting in shock between the two identical ponies having a stare-down in the middle of the hall.
“Oh, and here’s the rest of the family!” cackled Lulamoon gleefully. Velvet glared at her, but neither of the green ponies moved an inch, each calculating the other in a pre-emptive game of cat and mouse. The merest flutter of an eyelash could bring victory to one, and defeat to the other as the silent game of wills commenced, deciding the end of the battle before it began.
Jade was focussed. Her organized mind played out the versions of the oncoming battles, one after the other, each taking place in the span of a heart-beat.
We rush, duck first blow, take knife- no, I lose.
I hang back, throw knife, dodge- I still lose.
We charge, I block, she stabs, I duck, kick, roll- nope, forgot about Lulamoon.
Rush, block kick- no.
Rush, jump, stab down- no.
Charge, spin jacket, and dive under blind strike, swipe up- nope.
Charge, grab her knife, block underhoof, and twist her, break- no, she wins still…
Unless…
The tension in the room is palpable as the pony across the room from Jade breaks her concentration to put Twilight down. In the infinitesimal millisecond it takes her to complete the action, Jade is in the air, drawing her knife from inside her jacket, at the same time unbuttoning the left cuff on her sleeve.
Simultaneously, Velvet loses her patience with Lulamoon, and fires a spell at her hooves, blasting cobblestone all over the room and burning up the lush carpet. Lulamoon retaliates, and the two are soon locked in an even-sided battle of spells, but Jade doesn’t even notice.
The other pony twists to the side as Jade’s knife comes down where her neck used to be, moving smoothly out of the way as if she was expecting the move in the first place. She probably was, thought Jade dryly as she ducked the retaliating knife slash coming her way.
The pony’s hoof shot out, heading straight for Jade’s abdomen in a dark green flash. Jade spins to the side, trapping the limb under her free hoof, swiping her knife down at the exposed chest of the pony. She doesn’t even bat an eye as she launches off her hooves, spinning rapidly in a full rotation in the air, and bringing Jade down, hard on her back into the carpet, finishing up with a stab with her own knife.
Its Jade’s turn to roll to the side as the knife shears away part of her mane by her ear. Jade bucks straight up, flinging the pony high into the air in a sort series of twists and flips. Jade is waiting for her when she lands, giving a few vicious swings of her blade that come close to hitting her opponent, but miss anyway.
The other pony catches Jade’s last slash on the hilt of her own blade, pushing to the side and throwing Jade off balance. Jade stumbles, and is punished by a sharp blow to the side of her head, snapping her body back to center, just in time to see the shining blade of the knife descending on her forehead. Jade raises a foreleg, catching her opponent’s strike on the outside of her arm before letting go suddenly, allowing the full force of the blow to go over her head as she rams her hoof into the other pony’s side.
There’s a brief exhalation of air, before the pony’s knee comes up sharply, catching Jade on her exposed snout. Jade recoils, barely managing to catch the swing of the knife in her other hoof, guiding it to the side and following up with a left hook to the pony’s temple, which she ducks, managing only to sustain a glancing blow instead of a debilitating one.
The knife come up from below Jade, forcing her to throw her head back in a painful position, while the blade of the knife parts the skin under her chin, throwing blood droplets into the air. Jade brings her head down again sharply, ramming her forehead into the other pony’s, with a crack that both worries her, and satisfies her. She delivers two short jabs to the pony’s chest and shoulders, keeping her on the defensive, always dodging and moving, waiting for the desperate strike that will undoubtedly come.
It comes in the form of a jarring block and a sharp kick that knocks the breath out of Jade’s lungs. Jade barely manages to slide the next punch under her arm and wrench it there, leaning backwards and head-butting again. Only this time, the other pony reciprocates.
Their skulls collided, and Jade saw stars, recoiling and unintentionally loosening her grip on the other pony’s forearm. The pony capitalized by clocking her across the face again and stabbing down quickly with the knife.
Jade smirked amidst the pain, and brought her left forearm up and across her body, sliding the blade of her opponent’s knife into the ajar button-hole on her left cuff she had prepared earlier. The tough material of the jacket caught the blade, and Jade twisted violently, wrenching the knife from the pony’s grasp and throwing it across the room in one quick motion.
Jade reared back, over the disarmed pony, who was still stumbling from loss of her weapon, and plunged the knife down onto the exposed side of her neck.
Shink.
Jade and the pony locked eyes, so close they could feel the other’s quick breaths washing over their snouts. She looked up to the point where her knife had entered the pony.
Jade stared with wide eyes at her knife, which had come to rest, not inside the neck of the pony as she had hoped, but had cleared her target by millimeters, ripping the material of her jacket and leaving a small cut on the back of her neck. Jade coughed, and blood spattered the side of the other pony’s face. It was then that Jade became aware of the burning spike of pain that was lancing into her left lung.
Jade looked down to the sight of an empty needle jammed securely into her left side, the long metal spike traveling between her ribs and puncturing a lung. She could feel the breaths coming harder and harder to her as her body leaked air out of the lung, and blood into it.
Jade locked eyes again with the other pony, who stared at her for a second, before wrenching her hoof down, and snapping the needle-point off inside Jade. She gasped in pain, gritting her teeth against the agony, staring resolutely into her own golden eyes.
Her doppelganger lowered Jade to her knees almost gently. Jade's copy's leaned forward quickly, whispering two distinct words into Jade's ear, unnoticed by any save the two Jumpers. Then, just as quickly, she leaned back and delivered a vicious punch to the spot where the needle-tip lay buried under Jade's skin. She grunted as she felt the needle go farther inside her lung, almost poking the other side. One more blow from the other pony, and Jade felt the sharp metal do just that, rupturing through the other side of her lung and allowing more blood to stream into the organ, making Jade choke.
The other Jade dropped her, and Jade fell to the floor, convulsing in pain and clutching the spot where the syringe had entered in a desperate attempt to quell the life flowing from her wound.
The Jade still standing gave one more kick to the one on the ground, before walking over to where Lady Lulamoon had Velvet against the ropes. One more spell, and Velvet’s concentration broke, shattering her flimsy shield and leaving her to get pounded by spell after spell from Lulamoon, each one making her scream in pain.
“We’re leaving.” Declared the other Jade, trotting over and grabbing Lady Lulamoon’s arm.
Lulamoon just laughed maniacally. “Oh, but I haven’t had this much fun in years!” she declared, still hitting Velvet with her magic.
“You misunderstand,” said her companion softly. “You think you have a say in the matter.” With that, she picked up Twilight’s body again, and trotted to the center of the room, readying her watch. Lady Lulamoon rolled her eyes and gave a last little, “Ta-ta!” to Velvet before walking over to the Jade standing in the middle of the hall.
“Remind me again why we can’t just kill them?” Lulamoon whined ungratefully.
Jade responded calmly, though she was close to snapping at the unicorn. “Because, if you kill Velvet, there will be no one around to help my past self. The wound I gave her was debilitating, but not lethal.” She finished her preparations for the jump and looked up at Lulamoon, glaring. “She won’t die if she is treated, but if you kill Velvet, and my past self does die, then I would cease to exist, and this stupid, fool-hardy plan of yours would never come to fruition.” She pressed a button on her watch, which spat two small glowing rods out of the side. One, she gave to Lulamoon, and the other, she stuffed into Twilight’s limp grasp, holding the filly’s hoof around the device manually.
Lady Lulamoon grumbled once more, but with three separate pops of energy, they were gone, entering their rift and jumping to a different time, leaving the mother, the Jumper, and the guard to lay in pools of blood in their respective places on the floor.
Two of them weren’t moving.