//------------------------------//
// Chapter 16. More and More and More and More and More! 
// Story: Dust on the Wind 
// by Sparky Brony 
//------------------------------//

The dreamscape again? What the hell? I thought I was over that. I glance around, Lightning Dust isn't here. Nopony is here. I sigh. "A lucid dream, and nothing fun to have happen."

"I don't know about that, unless you don't count talking to me as fun."

I whirl around, and midnight blue fur is right in front of my face, I back away and look up, Princess Luna. I bow down before the lunar diarch.

"No need for that Wonderbolt leader."

"You remember me this time, Princess."

She looks puzzled. "Have we met here before?"

I nod.

"I have no memory of that. How odd." She looks contemplative for a moment, then shakes her head. "I'm actually here for a very important reason. I just finished talking to Rainbow Dash."

My eyes widen, and a huge smile grows on my face. "You found our leader? That is awesome!"

"More than that, she is safe, and we are going to announce who we are to the ponies of the world."

"I've been trying, today I met with the President…"

She interrupts me. "The President, as in the President of the United States?"

I nod. "The same."

"Perhaps that will make things easier. If you can get him to have the government stop repressing information on ponies."
My ears fall. "I tried, Princess. He refused. He's in an election year battle with a Senator Corddis. And he believes that public knowledge of us would be harmful of his election chances. He won't do that."

"Really? So what has he done"

"Well, when we started changing, the government was aware of it nearly immediately, due to the fact his daughter was also turning into a pony."

She nods, "I've heard rumors to that effect."

"Well, they rounded up some ponies. But they finally agreed to turn them over to me."

"And you can take care of my little ponies?"

I nod. "Yes, Princess. I've bought a farm, here in Montana. And they should be delivered to us in a day or so. Soarin has been searching online for days, looking for ponies. He's been pretty successful."

"Tell me about your farm, Lightning Dust."

"It's pretty nice, Princess. We have just over a hundred ponies there." I see her eyes widen, but she allows me to continue. "I own an electrical contracting business. And I've used funds I had initially set aside to purchase a roustabout company on something a little more conducive to being a pony. I bought the farm, which is very large. And I had three barracks style buildings built. We should be able to comfortably hold over a thousand ponies. We are putting in a larger kitchen and we just invaded Walmart the day before yesterday."

"You showed yourselves to the humans?" She snorts in surprise.

I nod, then I notice the disapproval on her face, my ears lower. "We refuse to hide, even though we are in these bodies. We deserve the same rights as any human."

I look down, after a moment I feel a soft wing fold over me, I look up into the lunar diarch's face. "It is alright, Lightning Dust. I was just surprised. You have done well." My heart leaped in joy. The feelings these ponies have for their Princesses, now I truly understand the rage behind us when we attacked Discord after him taking Celestia. I lean into her wing hug.

"Princess. Where is Rainbow Dash?"

"Iowa." She spends a few moments describing the farm there, and gives me the address. I file the information away, hoping to remember upon waking.

She continues, "They are trying to find a way back home."

"Princess, are you going to go home as well?"

She pauses, and looks thoughtful. "I will go home, eventually. If a way can be found. But I have to help my ponies here first."

"I am trying to do the same thing."

She smiles. "I know that, young Wonderbolt. You are fulfilling your oath, and for that, I'm proud."

I feel my chest swell in pride, a goofy grin on my face.

"Oh, I have other good news. Moon Shadow is here. In fact, she's sleeping inches from my body."

Luna sits back on her haunches and claps her forehooves together. "My apprentice is here?"

I nod.

"Amazing, I'm saddened by the fact that Discord took her, but I am happy to have her here. I will try to contact her after I'm done talking to you. I have missed her. She is an amazing talent when it comes to dreams."

I look at her quizzically. "All she told me is that you were her mentor. She never mentioned to me anything else."

"The world of dreams is a dangerous place, you do not have the talent. Sadly, very few non-unicorns do possess the capability to roam the world between worlds. Though I've seen one or two humans in my time here. I wonder if humans possess the ability to do magic."

I nod. "Soarin has told me that their magic has been sealed off, they lost that ability. But it is there, latent, but there. In fact, he said that having the ponies here, and our abilities to use magic may bring that back out in the humans."

She looks at me, I shrug my wings. "I really don't know how that's possible. But I saw humans affected by the music of harmony yesterday."

She shakes her head. "That shouldn't be possible young Wonderbolt. But if you say you saw it, maybe you did."
I smirk. "I was affected the same as the other ponies and humans. It was wonderous."

"I believe that, Lightning Dust."

"You can simply call me Dust."

She nods at me.

"Fine, I shall be going. Look out for our announcement to the world." She stands and starts to move away.

"Wait, Princess. One more moment of your time please."

She turns back to me. "Yes?"

"Why don't you make yourself known? Like present yourself at the UN and demand to speak. You are royalty. You are a leader of a nation, they would have to let you speak."

She looks down and her ears fall flat. "I wish it were that easy, Dust." She sighs. "But I think there are forces here that would prevent that from happening."

I growl deep in my throat. "I will find out who is behind it, and I will end that problem."

She smiles. "I have no doubt that you will, Lightning Dust. Until we meet again. Fare thee well."

***

My eyes pop open. Soarin is hovering in front of my face.

"Dust!" he whispers.

I blink my eyes a few times. "Soarin, it's five AM," I say after checking the clock.

"I found another pony that needs our help."

I look at him quizzically. "You have?"

"Well, at least I think I have. I've been expanding my search and I've implanted a bit of a tracker in a few search engines. And I got several hits, but this one looks promising."

I slide out from all the ponies, and finally trot my way into my office downstairs. "So, what have you found?"

"Searches, specific about the show, and those searches have spiked worldwide. But the pattern here has me worried."

"Why?"

He opens up his laptop, "I tracked their IP address."

"Spectrum Laboratories." I look for several seconds at the screen, then up at Soarin. "And that means…what?"

"I did some digging, they are a federal contractor. And they are very much into hush hush stuff. You get my drift?"

"And the searches coming from there, and the nature of the pony searches makes you worried?"

He nods. "I think they have a pony, perhaps more than one. And they are experimenting on them. I hacked their servers."

"You what? That exposes us to a lot of risk, Soarin."

He holds his hooves up to forestall my objections. "I covered my tracks, trust me, they aren't as good as I am when it comes to electronic security. But some of the data they are storing is scaring me. You need to get those ponies, like right now."

I sigh. "I'll get Irony, we'll get going."

He sighs in relief. "Thank you Dust."

***

Before sunrise we are on our way. During the drive I tell Irony, Trixie, Lightning Flash, and Moon Shadow about what happened with Luna. Moon Shadow, for her part, let me know she talked to Luna herself. She told me what exactly was planned by Luna and Rainbow Dash. A sonic rainboom over the heavily populated city of Des Moines Iowa. I sit back in wonder.

"Do you think she can pull it off?" Irony asks.

I nod, "Certainly, she's Rainbow Dash, after all."

"Well, we can't worry about that right now, we have to get to Portland as soon as possible."

***

The city of Portland, Oregon. It takes us nearly sixteen hours to drive there. During the trip we find out via smartphone that videos were taken of the rainboom. Seeing it in real life, I was amazed. And once again, it's now night. We pull up a couple of blocks from the address for the lab. I can see that their security is much higher than any place we've been to yet. Wrought iron fence, three meters in height topped in razor wire. Of course, none of that means anything to a pegasus pony. I flit from building to building, and finally find a likely one to check out. There are armed guards everywhere. But of course, they don't look up. All the cameras are facing the ground. I smile as I map out a plan in my head. I land over next to the ponies.

"I think I found them," I chirp happily, then I explain my plan. The stealth approach won't work, we are going to walk right in and take them. Irony cracks her knuckles, this is going to be fun.

We all trot right up to the main gates. I look at the security guard. "Let me in, I know you have ponies here."

The guard looks at me. "Piss off. This is a private installation."

Irony shifts back to bipedal form and grabs the guard and snarls in his face, "My friend said let us in." The guards hand moves to his sidearm, only to be restrained by Trixie's magic.

"We aren't going to ask again," she says menacingly.

He looks at all of us, then reaches over and buzzes the gate open. Irony reaches in and grabs his radio, crushing it in her hand, then she brings a fist down on the phone, shattering it. "Do you have a cell?" He nods, and it's floated out of his pocket, disassembling itself in front of his eyes. His eyes bug out. Irony leans close. "I would suggest you sit down and don't say a single word until we leave, understand?" He nods as his gun is drawn out from its holster, the clip ejects and the round in the chamber is popped out, the gun then disassembles itself as well then drops to the ground, the barrel squeezed flat by Trixie's magic. I smile at my friends as we head to the building.

Together we troupe down the hill from the gate. Irony chose to forego her armor this time, wanting to be able to rapidly shift from bipedal to regular pony. Flash stays up high, out of view of the cameras and the humans. I take care of the cameras, throwing a bolt at each one, shorting it out. In moments we are at the door. Trixie lights her horn and the glass doors fly off their hinges, crashing to the floor. We don't even have to slow down for them.

A few guards meet us in the lobby. These guards are armed. Trixie makes short work of their electronic devices and their weapons. I lead the way into the elevator. A flick of the ear and my bluetooth chimes.

"Call Soarin."

The phone does it's thing, and Soarin answers, "Were you able to figure out what floor?"

"Eeyup, seventeenth." I reach out with a wingtip and press the button. I hear heavy feet down the hallway as the door closes.
I look over at Moon Shadow. "Make sure they can't cut the power to the elevator."

She smirks at me. "They won't even be able to shoot it enough to shut it down." Her horn alight, green glow softly lighting the small room.

The elevator takes us rapidly to our destination. I exit the elevator, taking directions from the dongle in my ear. Soarin had found the building blueprints, don't ask me how he finds this stuff. I follow the instructions through the maze of the floor. We finally get to a door marked 'Animal Research' which produces chills down my spine. I whirl around and buck the door once, then twice, and it crashes in. On my signal, all of us ponies scatter throughout the room. I trot among the various cages. Curiously, most of them are empty. I finally see an earth pony laying down in one of the cages, the cage next to him is empty, but the one after that has a pegasus. I whistle and Irony appears as if by magic, I point to the cages. Irony grins and opens the first one, a simple catch that is impossible to get at from inside. Obviously they haven't had any unicorns yet. I smile at that.

"Hey, what's all the commotion here?" A human in a lab coat comes out of one of the offices.

I trot up to him, then rear on my hind legs, using my wings for balance. "We are rescuing the ponies you have abducted."

"What are you talking about? They are ponies. They are company property."

I see red for a moment, but I'm able to calm down enough to talk, though my volume is certainly higher than it was before. "You fuck, they used to be humans, they are as sapient as you or me."

He rolls his eyes. "That's for Doctor Richards to conclude, since his wife turned into one."

I totter on two legs and push him against the wall, I shove my muzzle right in his face. "Do you have any doubt now?"

He looks wildly from side to side, then he does the first prudent thing he's done since I've arrived, his eyes roll up into his head and he passes out.

Irony smirks at me. "Maybe you should have asked him if there are any more." Two semiconscious ponies are held up in Moon's magic. We trot down the aisles. I finally see light spilling from underneath a door. I press my ear to the door.

"Honey, I will find a way to reverse this," says a deep male voice.

A feminine voice responds, "I hope so. Honey."

I hear the clip clop of hooves. That's enough for me. I whirl around and buck the door open.

The male voice screams, "What the hell?"

I smirk at the tall man. "You can't reverse it," I snarl at him. What was wrong with her has already been reversed."

He looks at me. "How dare you barge into my office."

I look at the pink earth pony with the purple mane. "You don't have to go through experiments anymore."

She puts her hooves to her ears."My husband is going to fix me. Please, leave."

"There is nothing to fix. You remember Discord?"

She shudders, eeyup, she remembers, Discord.

"He cursed you, and for twenty five years, you lived at a human, that curse has now faded.  You are back to the way you were before."

She shakes her head violently. "No, once my husband finds the mutagen, he's going to make a counter mutagen and turn me back the way I was."

I sigh. "Honey, I'm sorry. But you have always been a pony. Even in your human body you were the pony before. This is the result of a curse."

The man speaks up, "I'm sorry, but magic isn't real. You need to leave."

I flare my wings and start to hover in front of him. "If magic wasn't real. I wouldn't be able to do this."

He looks at me in shock, I continue, "as a pegasus, my wings are too small to fly without magic, add to that, to keep a body my weight in flight, I would have to be moving a lot of air with my wings, and all the papers in here would be flying around. You notice that's not happening." I look over at Trixie.

She lights her horn and picks up a pencil. The then breaks it in half and floats the pieces around each other. "And I certainly wouldn't be able to do this, without magic."

Irony steps forward, then shifts. Standing upright. "And I wouldn't be here without magic, my friend. Your wife is a pony, she will stay a pony, and there is nothing you can do about it."

He sits down in his chair heavily. "This is impossible."

"No, it's merely improbable." I smirk at him. "But we are all too real."

The earth pony has scampered to the corner of the room, she's terrified. Moon Shadow moves closer to her. "It's okay sweetie. We are going to take you where you belong. With other ponies."

She shrieks and runs over to the man. "I don't want to go!"

Oh damn.

She's picked up in Trixie's magic and floated over to us, Trixie whispers to her while I move up to her husband. "I'm really sorry about this, sir. But the big problem is that ponies are in danger. And we have to protect them."

He looks at me hard. "You have broken into our lab. You have stolen our property. I'm calling the police."

Irony grabs the phone off the desk and rips it out of the wall. The pink pony is struggling in Trixie's magical grip. I look down. "Let her go Trixie."

She looks at me incredulously.

"We can't save every pony. She doesn't want to be saved." The aura around the pink pony fades away and she scampers into the lap of the human, we leave the room and head to the elevator.

As we are getting close, the elevator dings, and several humans pile out, with weapons drawn, they point them at me, I savagely suppress my magic, I'm not going to kill today. I flash forward, and I feel what feels like a punch to the chest. I kick the first human's smoking gun out of his hand, and snap kick his head. One down. I extend my wings and am in the air, a swift kick and a second human is dazed. Trixie comes up, her magic throws the other two hard against the wall and they stick there. She smiles as her horn quiets and she enters the elevator. "That should keep you out of harm's way." Irony comes up, with Moon Shadow and her two charges in tow. I sit down. It's getting hard to stand.

"Let's get out of here," I croak. Why am I having trouble talking? I look at Irony, suddenly there are two, now four Irony's in my vision. What the hell?

Trixie shrieks, "Dust, you've been shot!" She points with a hoof.

I look down onto my chest. "That's weird, aren't gunshots supposed to hurt?" I'm able to whisper.

I can't breathe. Oh, there's the pain. Twin daggers of agony hit me. Mercifully, my eyes roll back into my head, and I'm out.

***Irony***

I shift as dust collapses, picking her up and cradling her limp body. I can feel her trying to breathe. I tap a hoof impatiently against the steel decking of the elevator. Shortly we are in the lobby. Moon and Trixie are enraged at this point. The door opens and a dozen guards are waiting, guns drawn. A burst of magical energy blasts forth, blowing every human away, their guns melting in the blast. The fall to the floor with multiple splats. I carry Dust and the two rescued ponies are floating behind us, they haven't done much, I suspect they were drugged. Running as fast as I can I follow the two unicorns as they gallop to my beloved car. I fire up the engine and shove the transmission into first gear. I race the engine and pop the clutch, I leave two long trails of rubber behind as I accelerate. I reach into the glove box and grab my phone. I quickly dial a number.

"This is Doctor Ray."

"We are in Portland, a pony has been shot in the chest. We are heading your way, will be there in under two hours."

I hear his voice change from casual to serious. "Is the pony breathing?"

I hand the phone over to Moon Shadow so I can concentrate on driving. I hear her say, "She's breathing, barely."

She listens intently. "I can do that with magic." Her horn glows green for a moment, and Dust lets out a huge cough and blood floats from her nose and mouth. With a flash the blood disappears. She starts looking over Dust's turquoise body. "I see a wound in her chest, and one at the back of the ribcage."

She listens to the phone for a moment. "Okay, make sure she keeps breathing, and keep her warm. Got it." She magic's a blanket that I usually keep in the trunk and wraps it around our friend. I take a turn, tires squealing for purchase as I take the entrance ramp at a hundred.

I turn to Trixie. "You know that spell, to keep people from noticing us, you had better keep it up. We are going to be violating every speed law from here to Seattle."

She nods tensley. Her horn lights and I floor the pedal. I'm going to make this trip in record time.

***

The phone rings as I get close to Seattle. "This is Irony." I say into it.

"This is Ray. How close are you to Swedish hospital?"

I look at the GPS on Dust's phone. "About twenty minutes."

"I've got an OR reserved here. Get your ass here, I'll do what I can for her."

"What about the fact she's a pony?"

"The staff here have been apprised of what she is. This is the only place I would trust for this. It's very early morning, so there aren't many here. Just get her here."

I end the call, I've already got the pedal floored, running over a hundred and forty. I scream down the interchange and I'm back weaving among the few cars on the road.

Less than twenty minutes later I pull in front of the emergency entrance to the hospital. Moon Shadow hops out, carrying Dust in her magic, I pull the car into a parking space and leave Trixie with our charges.

"Boy, you guys sure took off," a male voice says behind me. I turn and look, Lightning Flash lands., with a goofy smile on his face. "Is she going to be okay?"

"I don't know, let's get in there."

***

Four hours in the waiting room and finally Dr. Ray comes in. He pulls off his mask and sits down tiredly.

"Your friend is very lucky."

"She's going to be okay?"

He nods. "I called in a favor from a surgeon friend of mine, he usually operates at UW. We worked on your friend. He needed my help, you guys' anatomy is certainly different than your average human's. The bullet was a full metal jacket, not a hollow point, so she had that going for her. It transited a lung and blew out just in front of her diaphragm. We've got her stitched up, and she's in for a rocky day or two, but she should be fine."

"That's a pretty bold statement coming out of surgery for a gunshot wound Doctor."

He smiles. "And you should know, as a former military man, most gunshot wounds are survivable. And the first aid you ponies did on the way here, keeping her lung somewhat inflated, saved her life." I look around and see relieved looks on every pony's face.

"When can we see her?"

"You can see her whenever you want. But she won't be conscious for a few hours. She's out of ICU, and she'll be in a regular room soon.”

"What about the bill?"

He smiles at me. "For you guys? Don't worry about it. I've got some pull. I talked to a few people. We will keep this on hush hush. You guys will either need to stay in the room with her, only nurses that have been briefed in will attend to her needs."

"You know we can afford this."

He claps a hand on my shoulder. "You helped take away my pain my friend. That is worth a hundred of these."

I grab him and give him a bear hug. "Thank you, Doctor."

Finally we pull away, I look at him. "We are going to Iowa after this. I want you to come with us."

He looks unsure. "We need you," I say.

He smiles. "Sure."