It had been an eternity since she'd been taken to the prison. The walk had been a blur; Twilight remembered nothing but crying, denial, and the warmth of the policemare's shoulder. Applejack had been there with her, possibly to give her the support of a friendly face but probably to protect the citizens of Ponyville if something had gone wrong. Twilight couldn't help but wonder if somepony had spotted her while she was being transported to her new home.
She sighed and went back to staring up at the window. The sun would soon be setting. Orange and violet rays painted the far wall of her cell with a warm glow, but no amount of warmth could remove the chill that had settled over her.
“Nopony believes me.”
Twilight rolled over in her cot. Her eyes traced the pattern of mortar and brick.
“Rarity thinks I'm a psychopath,” she muttered. “I know I'm not. I love my friends. I love them too much to try and change them, no matter how much they irritate me sometimes.”
The light on her wall faded as a cloud slid between her and the sun.
“But what if I have disassociative identity disorder?” she asked herself. “I don't think I do. I don't think there are any holes in my memory. Isn't missing time one of the symptoms of DID?”
No amount of certainty could change the facts, though. Her friends all believed she'd done it. Every detail of the spell could be placed at her hooves. The change of eye color, a signature with as much of a flourish as her own written name, bespoke a pride in her work that Twilight felt often. She was the only pony in the area strong enough to cast a spell like this without weeks of preparation, and if it had been cast upon Spike in an hour's time, who had she to blame? Could she have allowed her dark side to cast it? Could her good side have missed its obvious effects on the train ride home?
“Could I do that to my friends?”
The vast expanse of her knowledge had no answers for her.
The lock on her cell door clacked open as somepony entered, their hoofsteps quiet as a mouse. “Rarity, I presume?” Twilight muttered.
“Miss Sparkle, hurry!” a friendly voice rasped.
Twilight leaped upright and spun to find Rainbow Dash standing just inside the doorway, holding a key ring in her teeth and casting nervous glances behind her. “Rainbow Dash?!” she said incredulously. “How?”
The pegasus shook her head, sending her already mussed mane into further disarray. “You've got to get out of here now!”
“But...”
“Please, Miss Sparkle,” she whimpered. “You're next!”
The unicorn took a few hesitant steps toward the door. “But they'll catch us,” Twilight said uncertainly. “I can't leave now. It'd look suspicious!”
“So would a confession,” Rainbow argued. “Nopony will notice if your eyes change color. Come on!”
Startled by her boldness, Twilight looked carefully into her eyes. Left and right still differed; her violet hue still balanced the pink. “Who told you to free me?” she said quietly.
“Celestia dammit, Miss Sparkle, I'm trying to keep you safe!” she said as loudly as she dared. “I just went to Fluttershy's cottage. She's like Spike.”
Twilight's eyes widened. “What happened?”
“I don't know, but it wasn't you,” Rainbow admitted. “I think they're gonna come after you next. What they did to Fluttershy was... It wasn't pretty,” she said finally. “I think they're getting cocky. That means they're gonna do something big, and I just know they're gonna come after you while you're stuck in here. That means we have to get out of here, and fast!”
“Rainbow, I can't!”
Her pegasus squeezed her eyes shut and took a shaky breath. “Miss Sparkle. I'm not gonna let anything bad happen to you. You said it's not you doing this. I believe you! Okay, so you didn't cast this spell on me and I'm just a sucker. I don't care. All I know is, right now I love you so feathering much and I want you to be safe, okay? I'm gonna find out who did this before they get to you, but I can't do it alone.” She stretched a hoof toward Miss Sparkle. “Please. Come with me.”
Twilight stared slack-jawed at Rainbow's hoof. “You're sure?” she asked quietly.
Rainbow nodded.
The unicorn spared the window one last glance and took her hoof. “Promise me it'll be okay,” she begged.
“I promise, Miss Sparkle,” she smiled. “Everything is gonna be fine.”
Together the two girls left.
Rainbow ducked low as she walked Twilight up the hallway, past cell after empty cell. “Why don't prisons have back doors?” Rainbow complained in a whisper.
Twilight's eyes darted from side to side as the two crawled. “I don't know, so ponies can't escape them so easily?”
Rainbow stretched upward to deposit the key ring on a hook by the door. “Sneaking in was hard enough,” she complained. “Sneaking out's gonna be impossible. Have you tried to teleport?”
“I don't have to try it. I know exactly what would happen,” she whispered. “Every prison in Canterlot is embued with wards to detect teleportation, conjuration, and other magical means of travel. Anypony who tried would set off the alarms and have every policepony in Canterlot on them in seconds.”
Rainbow gave her a look. “This is Ponyville,” she said. “This isn't a unicorn town. Besides, how many unicorns do we have here that can teleport?”
“Um...”
“I can count them on one hoof,” she smiled. “Well, not counting Pumpkin Cake, but she's a baby. Trust me, Miss Sparkle. There aren't gonna be any wards.”
“I don't know,” Twilight said hesitantly. “I'd prefer not to risk it.”
“Well, if you're sure, then we'll just have to do it the hard way.” She pushed the door open just wide enough for them to peer through the crack.
The room was rather open; a couple of desks and a few cubicles didn't grant Rainbow and Twilight many hiding places. “How are we supposed to reach the door?” Twilight hissed.
“I just kinda flew in,” Rainbow shrugged. “There's only one pony here and he kept turning his back on me.”
A great white muzzle appeared in the crack. Rarity's eyes grew as wide as saucers. Her lip drew back as her horn lit up.
“Twilight Sparkle!”
Twilight tackled Rainbow and disappeared with her into the ether.
They fell to the ground in a tangle beside the prison wall. “Rainbow Dash, you'd better hope you're right!” Twilight stammered.
“Um...” Rainbow fidgeted. “Hi there.”
Twilight looked down at her. Rainbow was pinned belly-up beneath her unicorn. Her cheeks were red as roses.
“Sorry!” Twi exclaimed. She clambered to her hooves and pulled the pegasus up with her. “Sorry. Let's keep moving.”
Rainbow just gave her a goofy, toothy grin. “Okay.”
“Where are you?” she heard a shrill voice howl from the opposite side of the building. “You can't hide from me!”
That killed her mood. “Up on the roof,” Rainbow urged her.
Twilight pressed her shoulder to her friend's and concentrated, and with a puff of vapor the two were standing atop the prison. The view of the town spread below them, shining in the dying light, would have been breathtaking on any other occasion but all Twilight could see were places to hide.
“No... No... Too obvious, no...” She trembled as Rarity's voice reached them once more.
“Don't worry, Miss Sparkle,” Rainbow assured her. She threw a hoof around Twilight's shoulder. “We're leagues ahead of her. Come on, there's no time to lose!”
Twilight chuckled in disbelief. “Why are you so bossy all of a sudden?”
Rainbow drew back hastily. “Sorry!” she muttered, scratching the back of her head with a hoof. “I dunno, it just... I just... You needed help, and I thought...”
Twilight forced a smile for her. “Don't worry, Rainbow,” she said. “It's a good sign. Maybe the spell is wearing off.”
The pegasus gave her an uncertain grin. “Maybe. I don't feel any different.”
“You're right about one thing, though,” Twilight said. “We don't have long before Rarity's search turns into a city-wide ponyhunt. We have to act fast if we're going to learn anything.”
“Maybe somepony's seen something,” Rainbow suggested. “Pinkie ended up leaving for Canterlot before she asked around. Should I fly us to the marketplace?”
“We can't risk it.” She climbed gingerly onto Rainbow's back, still surprised that the little pegasus could support her weight. “Besides, I have something more important in mind.”
Rainbow cocked a quizzical eyebrow at her. “What's that?”
Twilight grimaced. “Just promise me you won't hate me afterward.”
,',
The door slammed open for the third time that day. “Fluttershy!” Rarity called. “Fluttershy, where are you?”
She didn't answer.
The ground floor of her cottage was full of creatures that milled about aimlessly or stood and stared off into the distance. Gone was their usual carefree vigor. The air was thick with musk, tea and urine.
Rarity's eyes pinched at the corners, giving her the illusion of crow's feet years too early. “Fluttershy?” she whimpered. “Oh, please, please tell me I'm not too late...”
One by one her friend's critters gathered around her, looking up at her expectantly or with fear in their eyes.
“What happened?” she asked.
A thumping drew her attention to Angel Bunny, who stood at the foot of the stairs wearing the grim mask of death. He pointed up to the second floor.
Rarity brushed past him and took each step delicately. “Fluttershy, dear?” she called. “It's me. I'm here.” Every creak her weight illicited from the old wooden stairs sent shivers down her legs. “Are you alright? What has she done to you?”
She reached the bedroom on the second floor. “I'm...” The room was empty. Even the bed was bare, her friend's few pillows and blankets torn from it and stashed out of sight. Her casually-organized desk was a mess of spilled ink and perfumes and most of its clutter had fallen to the floor. “Fluttershy, are you alright?” she called. “Are you in here?”
The empty bed began to hyperventilate.
“Are you...?” She knelt down and placed her right ear to the floor. The bed blocked the light from both the window and the single candle, leaving anything below hidden in the blackness. Rarity lifted the candle from its holder and placed it sideways on the floor, already regretting her decision before the first melted wax hit the wooden floor. “Fluttershy?”
She found the pillows and blankets. They were mounded up beneath the bed. Rarity reached in and tugged at the throw pillow. “Why in Equestria...”
The cushion came free and a sheet came with it, revealing the source of the noise. A pair of tearful violet eyes peered out at Rarity from behind the wall of padding.
Rarity sagged to the floor, every ounce of her spirit leaving her in a rush. “Oh, Fluttershy,” she sighed. “How could she do this to you of all ponies?”
The pegasus carefully gripped a pillow in her teeth and tried to block the gap in her defenses; Rarity reached a delicate hoof in and pushed it away. Fluttershy looked at her with such hurt in her eyes and began to let a high-pitched, endless whine into the air.
“Rarity's here, honey,” she said tenderly. “Tell me what's wrong.”
The eyes stared unblinking and the keening continued.
“Please?” She reached out a hoof to touch the pegasus, who shrank even further away. “Please, Fluttershy. Talk to me. Talk to Rarity.”
There was no reply.
Rarity blinked away her tears and pulled her head out from under the bed. She glanced around for a moment before she found it amidst the clutter.
Slowly Rarity ducked underneath the bed. “Okay, dea–”
The pillow had been pushed back into place.
Rarity bit back a sigh and pushed it free again. “Okay, dear,” she said again. She slid a wrinkled pad and the sharp end of a pencil through the gap. “Could you write it down for me, please?” she asked.
Those eyes finally looked away to the intruding objects. After a long minute of hesitation Fluttershy reached forward to grip the broken end of the pencil in her teeth, but her eyes returned to Rarity and her teeth began to chatter so violently that she dropped it.
Rarity sighed in defeat and pulled herself out from under the bed again. “I'm here, Fluttershy,” she said sadly. “Whenever you want to talk about it, I'll be here.”
She waited outside her friend's little fortress, her body still but her mind racing...
Twilight had escaped from prison. Twenty minutes later Rarity had left the station to warn her friend and... and she was too late. Twenty minutes! Had she been wrong? Had she underestimated Twilight Sparkle's abilities once again? It wouldn't surprise her. She had to be the Princess's personal student for a reason.
Her ear twitched as it caught a new sound, a faint scratching. Rarity smiled to herself as she listened to the slow and careful strokes of pencil on pad. Whatever it is, she thought proudly, Twilight will not get away with what she's done. Fluttershy is a stronger mare than she could know.
Suddenly the writing stopped, replaced by another shrill whine more soulful than the last. Rarity immediately dropped to the floor and peered in at her friend. “What is it, Fluttershy?” she asked quietly. “Are you finished?”
Fluttershy plugged the hole between them.
Unsure whether to groan or weep, Rarity tugged a few pillows free and tossed them onto the bed. “Can I see it?” she asked.
Fluttershy shook her head violently. Her hooves shook as she held the pad to her chest.
“Please?” Rarity insisted, but there was no reasoning with her. She sighed and lit up her horn. Bathed in the glow of Rarity's magic Fluttershy began to screech and writhe. “It's for your own good,” Rarity insisted. She tugged gently at the pad. “It'll be alright, I promise. I'm just going to borrow this for a little while, alright?” She finally managed to pry it free. The screech became a wail as the pad floated into Rarity's hooves, and Fluttershy forgot herself enough to crawl forward and swipe at it with both hooves.
“Wait, please!” Rarity admonished. She turned her eyes to the pad. The letters were faint and shaky but just legible:
go away
too scary
I don't want my
friends to
The unicorn dropped the pad to the floor, where it immediately disappeared into Fluttershy's grip before she retreated to her fortress on the wall. With the pad and her secret safe, her wailing subsided to huffing, sniffling whine.
Rarity followed the pad to the floor and met her friend's violet eyes with her own. “She won't get you, Fluttershy,” Rarity said determinedly. “I'll make sure of it.” She slid her hooves in and pulled herself under the bed, ignoring the cries of protest. Her hooves and horn cleared away the pitiful leftovers of Fluttershy's wall and Rarity crawled closer to her. “You have nothing to fear.” She reached out a hoof and wrapped it around her friend's withers, then placed the other on her chest. Fluttershy's heart was racing faster than Rainbow Dash at a relay. Rarity cuddled closer and sighed into her fur. “You're safe with me, Fluttershy,” she cooed. Her voice cracked. “You're safe with Rarity.”
The pegasus under the bed trembled and whined.
,',
Rainbow choked and spat out the last of it. “Please,” she moaned. “Miss Sparkle, please...”
“I can't!” The light of Twilight's magic held aloft a long printout from her most infamous machine.
Rainbow stood in its center, all four hooves ensnared in sensor-filled sleeves. A needle had been poked into one of her cannons. A cap full of wires, electrodes and LEDs flickered fitfully as it tried to process the magical signatures found within the pegasus's body and mind. Her cheeks were matted with salt, her chest tuft was matted with vomit, and her brow was deeply furrowed.
The pegasus cried out in agony. “I can't take it anymore!” she wept. “My head's gonna split open!”
“It won't,” her friend assured her. “It's purely psychological.”
“It still hurts like a kick under the tail!” she wailed.
“It will fade.” Her eyes scanned the symbols and numbers flowing past. “I promise it will. We're almost done.”
Rainbow groaned pitifully and her stomach heaved. A string of drool trailed from her chin to her chest.
Twilight lifted a rag to her friend's chin. “Almost done, almost done,” she said softly. “Just a little bit longer...”
A metallic chime sounded throughout the basement. Twilight rushed to pull the needle from Rainbow's foreleg and the cap from her head. “That's it!” Twilight said proudly. “All done!”
Rainbow let her head fall onto her heaving chest, too weak to support herself. “This had better give you some answers,” she muttered weakly.
Twilight pressed a button to unlock her friend's limbs and caught her with her forehooves on the way down. “Easy, Dashie,” she said softly. “Easy does–”
Rainbow retched up some more bile onto her shoulder and coughed loudly. “Everything's dark...”
She fetched the rag from its place at the base of the machine and floated it to its bucket and back. “It will fade,” she promised as she cleaned herself.
“When?”
“I don't know,” she admitted. “Soon.” She laid the pegasus gently on the floor and lifted the far end of the paper to her muzzle. “In the meantime I'll try to figure out what's causing your condition.”
“Sure it wasn't you?” her pegasus asked faintly.
Twilight's eyes roved over the printout, a jumble of numbers and letters with the lines representing Rainbow's vitals in its center. Her body temperature and blood pressure were understandably high, her resperation rate erratic and her pulse rate through the roof. She could place the blame on the inexplicable pain she'd endured during the test. The rest, though...
Quill and inkpot floated to her side and Twilight began to draw a map of Rainbow's condition. She circled numbers and groups of symbols, connecting some with lines and marking others with tiny, abbreviated descriptions. “Overactive substantia nigra, zona incerta and ventral tegmental area,” she muttered to herself. “Extraordinary levels of dopamine production...”
Rainbow's breathing began to slow.
“What's happening in the nucleus accumbens?” she muttered to herself. “The numbers shouldn't be this varied.” She circled the group, labeled it with a question mark and moved on.
“Tw... Miss Sparkle,” Rainbow said weakly. “I'm starting to feel better.”
“Good,” she said distractedly. “I told you it wouldn't last long.”
The pegasus climbed to her hooves. “I'm sorry I couldn't do this yesterday morning. It would have made things a lot easier, huh?”
Twilight snorted. “Hindsight always sees furthest, Rainbow... What is this?”
Rainbow took a few shaky steps toward Twilight, each sturdier than the last. “What's what?” she asked.
“These indicators,” Twilight said with a smile. She pointed her quill at a long section of the parchment that was packed on one side with letters and numbers in an unexpected pattern. “I've never seen them before!” She began to circle the entire group.
“What does that mean?”
“This is your bloodwork, specifically, your tox screen.” She labeled it and began to circle any unfamiliar variables. “It's full of variables I don't recognize!”
Rainbow studied the numbers and letters without comprehending a thing. “Miss Sparkle, are you saying I've been poisoned?”
“We were so caught up in finding a spellcaster that we forgot about any other possibilities. Rainbow Dash, I think this is the work of a potion after all!” She looked at her friend in jubilation. “That means no hours or days of casting and an easy cleanup. It could have been practically anypony!”
Rainbow smiled uncertainly. “Does that mean it couldn't have been you?”
“No,” she admitted. “I don't think that would make or break my case, but I think my arguments would hold more water than Rarity's anyway.” She tore the far end of her printout loose from the machine, flicked the power switch and began to roll the paper into a tight, fat bundle. “We need to get this to Mayor Mare.” Satisfied, she pulled an empty saddlebag from the corner and sped toward the stairs. Rainbow blinked away the last of her headache and kept up with ease.
“Do you think Rarity would have told anypony about us?” Twilight asked.
“I dunno,” Rainbow said helpfully.
They crept into the sunlight. There was no sign of Rarity's supposed ponyhunt. Together they stepped from the front stoop to the square.
A bolt to the shoulder knocked Twilight onto her back.
Rarity stampeded toward them, eyes wide and mane tossing in the wind. “I will destroy you for what you did to her!” she shrieked.
Rainbow zipped past to sweep Rarity up in an aerial tackle and slam her into the wall of the building opposite. A blast of blue magic pushed her away to face the wrath of Rarity's swift kicks. “Run!” she screamed.
“Wait, Rarity! Stop!” Twilight begged. “Listen to me!”
Her friend smashed a hoof into Rainbow's knee and jabbed another between her shoulders.
“Stop!”
She lunged over the pegasus, grinding a hoof into her spine on the way past. “First Spike, and now Fluttershy?” she growled.
“Wait...” Rainbow pushed herself to her hooves, but too slowly.
Her horn began to gather the last of the day's light. “You should never have touched her.”
“Twilight, run!”
Twilight ran.