//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: Worlds Apart and Fighting Alone 
// by DrMatrix 
//------------------------------//

Disclaimer: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is licensed solely by Hasbro. I own almost none of the characters in this story; I only attempt to manipulate them.





Musa, mihi causa memora
-Vergil





Part 1 –

Everyone desires to understand the changes that occur through the expanse of time. Through time, we are tested, and we learn which monsters within us are defeated, and which monsters still remain. Like cracks slowly growing across a broken windowpane, time claims what it will, leaving some things to hold together and grinding others to dust.

“This is SEAL Team Heedless Alpha. We are fifty kilometers from the demilitarized zone. Waiting for confirmation of radio silence.” 

Commander Braxton Briggs lightly nudged the controls of his M class Harrier gunship, keeping it level while he waited for a response. The rotary engines embedded in each of the wings stirred the low-lying clouds into swirls that trailed in his wake. Far below, the Pacific Ocean lay still and placid, a grey sheet spreading to the distant horizon. It had been strangely bright for an overcast day, but the clouds threatened rain. 
“Your mission is a go, Heedless. Deadly force is authorized. Ceasing all radio communications. You are ordered to do the same.” 
“Roger that,” said Briggs. He glanced below as the red communications light dimmed and went black. He was now on his own. At the edge of the horizon, a blackened coastline appeared, a distant line quickly growing into a jagged snake as the gunship approached. 
“I’ve got a visual on Kyushu,” said Briggs over his shoulder. Behind and above him, suspended from a hydraulic chair, sat his wingman in a turret seat, the only other member of their diminished Navy SEAL team. She was tilted backwards with crossed arms and facing an LCD dome arrayed in the gunship’s roof, her eyes hard slits reflecting back the screen’s glow. She feathered foot pedals causing the turret chair to rotate slowly in a circle.
“Roger,” she said quietly into her headset, “I see it.” There was ice in her voice, but Briggs ignored it.  Rain pinged against the cockpit glass, and he began their decent towards the island. 
There were no lights along the coastline of Kyushu, not a single sign of life. Japan had been hit the hardest by the past four years of war. It was a dramatic point of contention between China and the United States’ pacific fleet. The entire island of Okinawa had almost been annihilated during the first months of fighting as the Chinese desperately pushed the US invasion away from the Asian mainland time and time again. Most of the Japanese islands were now uninhabitable, their cities left to smolder in ruin and plumes of drifting dust.
War was all this world knew now. The enormous military complexes of the leading first world countries had spun to life and now clashed openly and without sanction. Many blamed the boiling economic tensions between the United States and China; that its spill over had thrust everyone to the brink of the sword. Others thought this the final price to pay for a new world order that would soon bring total unification and lasting peace. Regardless of the cause, the nations of the world fought bitterly. Russia struggled to push a bulge of control out into Western Europe while China and the Americas battled over the Pacific, each side balancing the other with a steady stream of victories and defeats. 

Briggs noticed the swivel of the turret chair behind him had become a nervous tick as his gunner swung rhythmically back and forth. He turned to face her with a scowl.
“Quit it, Twilight,” he said. “You’re stressing me out.” Her jaw set and she stopped moving, giving no reply. Briggs sighed and focused back on his flight controls. Even though Briggs and Twilight Sparkle had been a part of the same Navy SEAL team since the beginning of the war, he had never been able to read her well. Twilight’s judgment was always sound and her marksmanship true, which was all that mattered on a battlefield, but there was something unexplainably distant about her demeanor, as though she was loath to trust anyone.
Their team had once been more than just two. SEAL Team Heedless Alpha had long been the arrowhead of the Navy’s special forces, but that had all changed several months ago during the battle of Seoul, the memory of which haunted Briggs and Twilight often. 
At the time, US and NATO forces held the capital city of Seoul under the heavy pressure of North Korean artillery and a sea of unending Chinese infantry. Briggs’ team was called in to coordinate with marine platoons in an attempt to try and break the line of artillery outposts. At midday, he and Twilight gained their objective and were dismantling the huge Russian built rail gun alongside of engineers. They were in communication with the other fragments of their team when they received word that the Allied line had broken at the other side of the city. The next hour had been chaos. It was unclear whether they were retreating or attacking, and Briggs and Twilight frantically tried to extract their team from the onslaught.
In the fray, the two of them found an airlift out of the heart of the battle. Twilight at first refused to leave, insisting that she remain behind to help hold the line during the retreat. In the end, Briggs had to drag her into the helicopter. Airborne, they watched in horror as a line of missiles streaked overhead, traversing the dome of the sky to bear down on Seoul and the tides of armed men held within. 
“Twilight! Look away!” Briggs had shouted. Even with her arm raised to shield her eyes, bright violet light burned through Twilight’s eyelids as the Korean skyline lit with nuclear fire. The line of mushroom clouds had already risen thousands of feet into the air before the sound of the blast finally reached the airborne helicopter. There had been no warning, no indication from either side of a tactical strike. For the rest of the day, there was no word from the rest of their team or the thousands of other US soldiers that had been unable to retreat from the detonation. That night, Twilight cut her hair.
Briggs visited her quarters later that evening, wanting to offer some words of comfort, but he had not known what to say.
“Where do you find time to dye your hair?” Briggs had asked awkwardly, gesturing to the purple and pink streaks that lay around Twilight in clumps.
“I don’t dye it,” she had answered and then slumped to the floor. 

The coastal cities of the Japanese islands had long since grown outwards to the shoreline, all now abandoned the day the entire country was declared a demilitarized zone. Now all that remained were rows of grey derelicts slumping down into rising oceans. 
These slumped buildings loomed into view as Briggs lowered the altitude of the harrier. Their objective was a region just inside the Japanese mainland, a field of unexplained electro-magnetic energy over fifty miles in diameter. It had mysteriously appeared on routine scans of the area several days before and was strong enough to block radar and cripple any electrical device that came close. SEAL Team Heedless’s instructions had been simple – fly into the demilitarized zone unnoticed and investigate the phenomenon.
“I have contact,” said Twilight, her voice still cold. She had hardly said more than five words since takeoff. 
“Are you sure?” Briggs asked. “I’ve got nothing but interference on my end.”  He flew below the skyline of the burned out city and followed a broad avenue that ran in-between the buildings. Suddenly, red flashes lit up the cockpit and a low alarm sounded. A cluster of enemy drones appeared on Briggs’ radar screen and was pulling away from the coastline, headed directly for their gunship.
Twilight unfolded her arms and released the hydraulic lock on her turret chair. It sprang to life, pushing her up towards the gun controls. She struck the safety bar attached to the turret barrel with the back of her hand, slamming it down against the metal, and released a trigger lock. The multi-barreled gun began to rotate while Twilight spun her chair to face the pursuers.
“I’ve got six bogies,” said Briggs gruffly. “Mid-range Chinese drones. They’ll be on us in sixty seconds. You’d think a de-militarized zone would mean less military.” He pushed the throttle forward and felt the ship accelerate. Crumbling buildings streaked by on either side, and silently Briggs made mental notes of possible flight paths between them. 
Twilight watched the six drones bank in formation around a corner to pull up behind the gunship. Red circles and numbers appeared on her LCD screen, noting each targets’ distance and trajectory. Twilight’s heart pounded in her chest and adrenaline quickened in her blood, but her hands remained steady and level on the turret controls. A small alarm indicated that the first drone was in firing range.
“Give me a clear shot,” said Twilight.
“You’ve got it,” Briggs responded, and pitched the harrier upwards and right, opening up the sky for Twilight. She sighted the spinning barrel on the first drone and squeezed the trigger. Fire leapt from the gun in a deep moan as depleted uranium shells flew through the air in a glowing arc. The stream of bullets caught the first drone unawares and tore through its hull. Its red indicator blinked and then faded. Twilight swung the gun to her next target, but the enemy ships had already broken formation and avoided her fire. 
Briggs continued to bank to the right, struggling to balance outmaneuvering their pursuers with Twilight’s need for an open shot, often angling for a turn only to rock quickly back in the other direction so she could take a quick burst of fire. Though awkward, the method proved successful, and explosions flashed across the glass windows that surrounded them as Twilight downed two more enemy drones.  	
Smirking, she whirled the turret around to the last group that lay hidden on the far side of a long building. Without waiting for the structures to pass, she squeezed the trigger again and dense uranium shells tore through concrete and glass. The first drone was caught off guard, and Twilight watched as her target spun out of control and crashed into an adjacent skyscraper. 
A warning alarm cut through the cockpit indicating that one of the remaining drones had managed to lock onto their gunship, dropping below the harrier and hiding in its blind spot.
“Briggs!” said Twilight.
“I see it.” He pushed forward on the control column and yanked the throttle backwards. The engines slowed, and the craft pitched downward, descending towards the empty Japanese streets. The alarm changed from sharp beeps to a constant blaring whine as two incoming missiles appeared on Briggs’ radar screen. 
At the last moment, he pulled into a sharp arching turn, the wing turbines complaining loudly, causing the ship to shudder. He flicked a switch with his finger and released a cloud of chaff and flares streaming away from behind the harrier. Briggs held his breath, waited for a brief moment, and then exhaled loudly while he watched the missiles continue harmlessly past the harrier chasing the decoy of flares.
Briggs throttled the engines back to full and completed the maneuver while Twilight reestablished line of sight with the drones and resumed firing. They had pulled too close to the harrier for their attack, and she quickly picked them off. The alarms within of the harrier ceased, and Twilight watched as smoke and remains drifted lazily down through the air.

She released the turret controls, the barrels clicking loudly as they slowed to a stop, and breathed a small sigh as she sat back into her chair.
“Nice shooting, lieutenant,” said Briggs. Twilight gave no response. 
Briggs leveled the gunship and slowed back down to cruising speed, double-checking the radar screen for additional enemy aircraft.  He glanced backwards and saw that Twilight was starring blankly off to the side of the LCD screen with crossed arms. Her hair was still short from when she had cut it after Seoul, the dark strands lightly touching the shoulders of her flight suit, swaying lightly with the motion of the harrier. Even for a SEAL, Twilight had always been distant, but her latest trend of sullenness worried Briggs. 
“Lieutenant,” he said sternly, but Twilight continued to stare and say nothing. “This better not be about that ridiculous pony stuff again.” Twilight winced.
“I never should have told you that,” she said. 
Briggs could almost feel the tension between them prickle the surface of his skin. This had gone on long enough.
“Look Lieutenant,” he said. “You’re a great wingman, one of the best shots I know. Probably the best shot I know. You’re everything I could ask for in a partner, but we’re about to deploy on a blind mission, cut off from everyone by an unexplainable phenomenon in the middle of a burned out demilitarized zone. You can keep pouting, but I need to know that when we’re on the ground I can still depend on you.” Keeping her arms crossed, Twilight slumped farther into her chair and frowned.
“You can depend on me, sir,” she said.

Fifteen years, Twilight thought. Fifteen years living among these hairless apes, trapped in their world. When war had broken out and enlisting had become Twilight Sparkle’s only means of survival, she had finally given up on trying to find a way back into Equestria. Now, even the words Equestria and Ponyville sounded foreign to her. 
Twilight had tried finding the old portal in Canterlot High, but the building had been boarded up and its statue removed years ago. Lost and without hope, she had been unable to find Sunset Shimmer or anyone who had the faintest idea of how to return her home. Now, whenever she tried to recall memories of her previous life, all that she could to dredge up was pain amidst a small handful of foggy memories.
Before being banished to this world, something ancient and evil had infected the heart and mind of Princess Twilight Sparkle, threatening to destroy her home and her friends by warping the incredible magical power that dwelt within her. All attempts of removal by her and the other alicorns had failed. In desperation, Twilight had to physically split the infected portion of her heart away using the last threads of her power she still had control of. When the spell had dissipated, Twilight found herself unexplainably back in the human world, her mind and heart restored. For the past fifteen years, she had been stranded with no way of knowing whether the ancient evil had been destroyed back in Equestria or if her friends even still survived. 

“Would you look at that,” said Briggs. He banked the gunship past a row of buildings and into an enormous opening at the heart of the city. Jagged peaks of broken earth formed splintered rings jutting up and outwards, growing taller and taller until they culminated in an enormous spire towering in the distance. It was as though some giant had forced a spike of black rock into the earth and the resulting destruction had rippled outward, leveling a crater within city. From the vantage point of the cockpit, Briggs noted that the shards of rock were not altogether solid, their hollow insides forming a labyrinth of twists and turns that snaked slowly along the floor below.
At that moment, the engines sputtered, and the gunship lurched violently in the sky. The electromagnetic field had grown strong and began to compromise key circuitry within the harrier. Briggs quickly scanned the ring of standing buildings and found a small one nestled amidst a cluster of skyscrapers. As soon as he pulled away from the crater, the engines recovered, and in moments he had settled the gunship down onto the roof of the building. 
Briggs and Twilight both loosened their safety harnesses and prepared to disembark. Efficiently, they changed out of their flight suits and into surface combat gear, black and sleek in the signature fashion of the Navy SEALs. Briggs reminded Twilight that any electronic equipment would be useless in the disabling EMF below. They would have to move blind and in close quarters based on the limited recon he had been able to gather from the cockpit. 
“Will you hand me my rifle?” said Twilight, pulling on a black boot. She pointed to the weapon in front of Briggs, a slender Barrett M107 0.50-caliber sniper rifle strapped to cargo pegs on the side of the hull. The enormous weapon was often Twilight’s preferred choice, and Briggs was continually amazed that someone so small was able to carry let alone use a rifle of its size. 
“I said close quarters,” replied Briggs and handed her a light assault rifle instead. Twilight scowled at him, but consented and strapped the weapon to her back. They both checked their ammunition, side arms, and supplies and walked out of the back of the harrier. From a gap in the surrounding buildings, they were able to pear out onto the broken wasteland that stretched out before them. The overcast sky had gathered itself into a storm. Its center swirled about the tower of stone that glimmered in the distance.
“Another nuclear strike?” asked Twilight. They both stood for a moment puzzling at the crater.
“I don’t think so,” said Briggs.  “The EMF from a nuke won’t stick around this long. It must have been something else.” 
“Look,” said Twilight pointing. A small green flare shot out from between the peaks of rock below and arced its way slowly through the air. In the distance, a second flare answered, trailing bright phosphorescence.
“Chinese?” asked Twilight.
“Most likely,” said Briggs. He frowned at the green ball as it hovered. “Time to get moving.” 
Briggs closed the bulkhead to the harrier and set up a rappel at the edge of the roof. He and Twilight descended silently from the top of the building, dropping into the darkness of the neighboring skyscrapers. They hit the ground, freed themselves, and started moving across the empty streets and towards the sharp rim of the crater. 
Twilight stepped towards a stone shard poking upwards at the crater edge put a gloved hand to its surface. The black and blue exterior appeared buffed and reflected back a distorted halo of her face. Through magic or force, the unnatural rock seemed to have bored its way up out of the ground. Deep within Twilight, a memory stirred. She had seen rock like this before when trapped beneath Canterlot along side Princess Cadence. This time, though, there was no changeling magic dancing across its surface. The dark stone stood silent, but the sight and memory stifled Twilight, filling her stomach with dread.

Their going through the crater was slow. The closer to the center they ventured, the tighter and more twisted the pathways through the rock shards became. Often Briggs led them to a dead end, and they had to retrace their steps several times over. It would have been impossible to navigate to a fixed location had there not been the tower of rock always looming over them in the distance. 
Grey sky faded into black with the approach of night. Lightening flashed, reflecting strangely across the black shards of rock, and a bitter wind whistled around sharp corners. As they moved forward, the rock shards grew larger, their hollow pathways now forming long tunnels that twisted back and forth. In silence, both Briggs and Twilight found themselves unexplainably drawn towards the tower in the distance. They had expected the strong electromagnetic field to bring them discomfort, but instead it seemed to sing a haunting melody, filling them with a desire to make chase deeper and deeper into the growing rings of rock.
With the last glimmers of the day, Briggs called a halt. It was useless to try and navigate the narrows while unable to see their landmark. They found a small opening next to one of the rock splinters that rose high above them. After sweeping the perimeter and examining possible escape routes, they sat within the short tunnel and leaned against its walls. 
“I can take the first watch if you’d like,” said Briggs. Twilight doubted she’d be able to sleep with the faint electromagnetic ring in the back of her mind, but her training wouldn’t let her pass up a moment to rest. She nodded assent and leaned back against the rock after setting her rifle across her lap and double-checking the side arm strapped to her leg. Across from her, Briggs relaxed his eyes so that he could focus on his hearing. The night was quickly drowning out all light, and without the assistance of night vision, his eyes would do him no good if an enemy patrol were to stumble into their makeshift camp.
To her surprise, Twilight slept for several hours. It was an empty and dreamless sleep, but the respite was welcome. She took a quick breath when Briggs lightly shook her shoulder to wake her. Twilight could barely make out his silhouette in the deepened darkness. Without words, they exchanged shifts. Twilight reattached her rifle in a ready position, and Briggs sagged backwards against the rock, closing his eyes. 
Studying the dark outline of her partner, Twilight pondered at the man who sat across from her. Although she had once been the cornerstone for friendship, it would be a stretch to call Commander Braxton Briggs her friend. Twilight wasn’t even sure how old he was or where he was from. He was certainly a bit old for combat duty, but it was no surprise that he had been deployed given the few recruits that graduated from their academy. The American military machine was starved for both men and material to keep it running this deep into its great war. 
Once Twilight might have considered Briggs her friend, but that was before Seoul, before she had been foolish enough to tell her commanding officer about Equestria. Something had broken inside of Twilight that day. Ever since then she had to fight the urge to curl up into a ball and lay silent on the floor.

Their luck held, and no rain fell, though the sky still occasionally flashed with lightening. Hours into the night, Twilight picked out an almost inaudible pattern at the limit of her hearing. It was hard to differentiate between the whistling of the wind and slow rolls of thunder, but she recognized the distinct sound of light footsteps echoing down the twisted corridor of rock. 
Crouching, Twilight was about to awaken Briggs, but a flash of lightening revealed that his eyes were already open, staring at her. Wordlessly, he pointed to her with two fingers and then pointed towards a cleft in the rock at the entrance of their cave. Twilight immediately understood his intent. She crossed the narrow pathway with silent footsteps and settled her back into the shallow of rock. From here she could see Briggs and ensure that no one crept up behind him while waiting in ambush for the one stalking down their path. Twilight readied her knife and pistol, choosing to favor the knife with her right hand. She took a deep breath and relaxed her mind as she had been trained, letting her instincts override her thoughts.
Briggs raised his fist in the air indicating that he had a visual of an enemy moving towards Twilight. Only one, or he would have had his pistol trained on the second. She clenched her knife and held her breath. Lightening flashed, and Briggs dropped his fist. Twilight wheeled around the corner, and in the blinding light she saw the exposed neck of a crouched Chinese soldier. She drove an elbow into the man’s chest, stunning him, and drove the knife home. He let out a soft moan and then went limp against her shoulder.
A second bolt flashed through the narrow ravine, and as Twilight turned, she saw a second figure looming behind Briggs with rifle raised. She tried to yank her pistol forward, but the dead weight of the man had pinned her arm against her side. In the lightening flash, Briggs saw her panic and began to turn. He would be too late, Twilight already knew. In the next half second, she knew that Briggs would be dead.
“No!” she cried. Some deep instinct within her reached for a power she had long since forgotten. Her forehead grew suddenly hot, and a magenta light erupted down the chasm and threw Twilight Sparkle backwards in a heap. She heard a gunshot and the crunch of bone against rock. 
Frantically, she pushed the limp body off of her and scrambled to her feet. Briggs sat leaning against the tunnel wall, alive and breathing, but he cradled his side. The enemy commando lay unmoving at the far end of the tunnel with his arms and legs sprawled unnaturally. 
No longer caring for stealth, Twilight reached for a glow stick, broke and shook it. She dropped a knee and held the stick up to inspect Briggs’ injured side, but he would not remove his hand from the wound. Instead he just stared at her unblinking. Twilight backed away, and sat against the opposite wall while Briggs continued to stare bewildered. They sat there for several moments in silence, and the light of the glow stick soon began to fade.
“Hand me your gauze,” said Briggs after several moments. “I don’t think I have enough for a full compress.” Twilight set the dying glow stick on the ground and began to rummage through her jacket.
“Did the bullet go through?” she asked. Briggs lifted up his shirt and exposed a small bullet wound slowly seeping rich, dark blood. There was no exit wound. After watching Briggs try and fail to secure a bandage, Twilight leaned over and helped apply gauze, securing his side in a tight compress despite his grunts of protest. 
“I suppose you’re not going to venture an explanation of what just happened, then,” said Briggs. He motioned to the crumpled body at the end of the tunnel. Twilight sat back on her heals and studied the ground.
“A spell I think,” she answered honestly. “I’ve tried to use my old spells before, but nothing has ever happened. I don’t know why it worked now, and I doubt I can do it again. I’m not sure if I want to.” 
“Well, you’re going to have to warn me the next time you decide to shoot a bolt of pink lightening from your forehead,” said Briggs. “I’d thank you for saving my life, but that sloppy kill that of yours ruined your shooting angle. Don’t let it happen again. We’ll have to make the spire before I loose consciousness. If I’m as strong as I used to be, that means we’ve still got a few hours.”
Twilight thought of arguing with him, insisting that they return to properly tend to his injury, but she knew that he would refuse. Briggs was going finishing their mission with or without her, regardless of his wounds. It was the way of Headless Alpha, after all. Other units never left men behind. Their unit never gave up.
“Let’s get moving,” said Briggs. “More of them are bound to be on their way.” He visibly grimaced as he slowly rose to his feet.  They cleared the small signs of their makeshift camp with the light of glow sticks and hid the two bodies in a sharp alcove of rock. 

By the time they were ready to depart, the black edges of the swirling storm began to turn grey. Twilight and Briggs located their landmark in morning mist and started weaving their way through the maze of stone once more. Every so often, the sun would poke its way in between breaks in the storm, sending shards of light reflecting across the polished surfaces of the rock walls. Above these peaks, the rock tower loomed, vast and menacing. Several cave openings were now visible in its base, much larger than any passageway they had seen before. 
Around the spire, there was a ring of open ground, free from the jagged twists and the stifling tunnels covering the rest of the crater. They paused at its outer edge and scanned for enemies but found none.  The air here felt open and free in the absence of the maze, but their respite was short lived, and they entered an opening that yawned at the base of the spire. Within, the sharp turns continued, this time the rising above them as well as before them, its walls lit by some eerie internal light.
Taking the lead, Twilight stepped carefully around corners, clearing each room and then beckoning Briggs to follow. They had seen no other soldiers since the night before, yet a weight of presence grew, dragging at the edges of their remaining strength, all while the same haunting electromagnetic melody beckoned them deeper into the tower.
Twilight continued to follow the large passageway, but paused when she noticed that the surface of an opposite wall did not reflect light as the others did. Lowering her rifle, she walked towards it and ran a gloved hand slowly across its surface.
“What is it?” asked Briggs.
“Wood, I think,” said Twilight. She followed the slow curve of its surface. It appeared to be the trunk of some enormous tree partly encased within the black stone. Looking up, Twilight saw that there were silver leaves trapped in transparent stalactites dangling from the high ceiling. 
“It’s a tree,” said Twilight. She continued around its base, an outstretched hand dragging slowly across the wood grains. The tree was enormous, and although halfway encased in rock, it stood touching the ceiling of the spire. The tree’s silver leaves glittered with a strange light of their own, humming lightly whenever a breeze found its way through the tunnel and drifted among them. Up high in the tree, clutched in its branches, were several stone orbs that Twilight was unable to make out clearly. Around these, the black stalactites grew thickest, piercing through the wood and stone.

Out of the corner of her eye, Twilight noticed a foreign splash of color. A small tuft of purple hair was just visible from around the curve of the tree trunk. She moved slowly forward and saw that the tuft led to a long purple tail, lightly curled, belonging to a silent white pony lying on her side. Twilight’s rifle clattered to the floor.
She ran up to the creature, dropping to her knees, and began frantically searching for signs of life while tears streamed down her cheeks. Twilight bent her ear to the pony’s neck and relaxed when she felt the slow rise and fall of her breathing. 
“Rarity,” she said choking on a sob, “It’s really you!” Twilight inspected her for obvious wounds, and saw that her white coat was clean and groomed, her mane and tail styled in a familiar fashion, but there were old scars on her neck and flank that Twilight did not recognize. Rarity had grown taller as well, her legs and nose now slender and graceful.
Cradling Rarity in her arms, Twilight looked past the tree and saw that her other four friends lay beyond, still and silent on the stone floor. All of them, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and in her lap, Rarity, had somehow appeared before her in front of what Twilight now realized was the Tree of Harmony. In the strangest of hours, her dearest friends had come. 
Twilight felt Rarity stir slightly in her lap. The pony’s eyelids fluttered open and revealed the beautiful familiar irises beneath. Rarity strained to sit up, but the effort obviously pained her. 

“Twilight,” said Rarity softly. “Thank goodness you’re alive.”