//------------------------------//
// VII: Home Ground 
// Story: Perhaps the Most Convincing Case in Favor of the Solar Empire 
// by WingsOnTheBus 
//------------------------------//

	This will all be over soon.
This will all be over soon.
This will all be over soon.

Twilight had perched at the very edge of the forest, waiting to throw herself over it at the flick of Cadence's wing. The time had been 9:03 p. m. when she'd last checked, but there was no night anymore.
Twilight had never realized how much she'd needed the darkness.
For the past two days (if one could separate this senseless, cruel boil into days) her being had been pierced ceaselessly by the blood-light and swelter, withering it like the shrubs and the beetles, leaving room for only a few hours of sleep at a time, and only when her body had become wrecked and her mind delirious with exhaustion. She was relieved that Spike's resistance kept him from the same Tartarian state, but she couldn't say the same for her old foalsitter. Actually, she hadn't seen Cadence sleep at all since that final dawn.
But none of it mattered now.
The clarity of her intention forced silence from her body. She was poised on the border of an end to this waking nightmare: seeing her friends. It would mean knowing that everything was real, but also that the six could make it through together, just as they always had.

This will all be over soon.
This will all be over soon.
This will all be over soon.

Her focus began to flicker. Cadence's voice swam inside her mind, trying desperately to keep it strong, repeating the plan.
"Remember, Twilight, when we split up you'll head in the direction of Sweet Apple Acres. Ask any passerby if they've seen any of the Element Bearers or their families. Spike and I will split up and do the same for other areas."
This will all be over soon.
"If you ever catch sight of a member of the Guard, even...even him, or if anypony seems to be acting strange or hostile towards you, run and hide, no matter what. Got it?"
This will all be over soon.
"It's you she wants more than any of them."
That other voice cropped up again.
"It's you she wants, it's you she wants, she doesn't love you any more..."
Slowly, Cadence's wing rose.
The three parted ways.

Twilight illicitly skirted the outline of Ponyville. She couldn’t help it--after nearly five days’ absence, the strangest and most frightening days she’d ever experienced, no less, the grounding draw of her home was irresistible.
But even though she came within a leg-length of a few of the houses, she met no passerby. That’s not at all unusual in this heat, though, she reasoned, both for their absence and all of the darkened, shuttered windows. 
Until she saw the poster.
It was clean-cut, framed in white, and plastered smoothly across one entire side of a house-front across the street. At its foot was Celestia’s mark, bathed in red like the sky.
The ground shifted.
Twilightno
youhavetogettoApplejack
don’tstopjustkeepgoingyou’resocloseyouwerealmostthere
keepgoingplease
Twilight
TwilightRUN!
The sounds of armored hooves and shouting.
Pure, undiluted panic.
A tingling, an all-consuming flash of pink--
"Aaaaaaaaa--hmph!"
Twilight’s scream was knocked from her the impact of something...soft yet prickly. Dazed, she oriented herself in accordance with her remaining sense of gravity. She found herself on top of a tree, somewhere in the middle of the hothouse version of Sweet Apple Acres. 
She realized that her fear must have caused her, in a wild burst of power, to teleport directly there--by far her longest distance yet--but with a crude height miscalculation. Judging by how long she’d fallen for, she’d been at least twenty feet above this tree. It was lucky that the branches had been thick enough to catch her--hay, it was lucky that she didn’t teleport above a treeless path or, worse yet, too low rather than too high, fusing her body with the ground. She shuddered. For a few more seconds, her heart held out its crazy thudding, and the remaining errant bolts of magic sparked uselessly from her horn. Her body lay there, briefly spent, in the treetop.
But even then, the horror-sun dripped itself down the back of her neck, mocking her, shaming her. It threatened, upon her slightest questioning of it, or of its pawns, the gray armored shapes, her destruction. She scrabbled to thrust the memories away then and gratefully gave herself back over to the primal urge to run.
As her nerves reawakened, she stood and worked to balance herself. She'd have to get down from the tree first, and the drop appeared to be about eighteen feet. Deeply, she breathed in the thick air. She had to get to the Apples, and there was no time to waste. They, of course, couldn’t follow her directly, but she had to assume they’d had the orchard pegged as a likely stop.
Her thoughts began to spook, like birds that whipped themselves into a greater frenzy when she tried to calm them down. This wasn’t working.
	“This is what happens when you give in to adrenaline rather than facing the truth, filly genius.”
“That is it! I will not stand for any more of your games, you cynical smart-flank!"
Twilight screwed up her face and leapt down to the lowest branch. After the freefall, she felt...another soft impact. The tree had rustled, but its limb, miraculously, didn’t give enough to drop her. After giving a smirking mental gloat to the voice, she peered awkwardly down to inspect the remaining jump height she had to negotiate.
In the distance, something else rustled.
An already-jumpy Twilight squealed and fell from the branch, thudding painfully on her back. She rose and pricked her ears in the direction from which the sound had come, every hair on the back of her coat straightening both from fear and from the magical energy readying in her horn. She knew there was no way her subconscious power could give her an out this time, not when she was prepared. She’d have to stand her ground and fight.
Then she saw it: a flash of red between the apple trees accompanying the next noise. This was no Guard member. Relief was poured out over her flaming nerves, and for a moment she was exhausted again, only desiring to yawn and maybe lay down rather than wade through this heat again. But if that had really been an ordinary pony...a fellow runner...she might be able to learn something! Twilight cantered hesitantly in the direction of the noises.
Another rustling, much more hurried and farther away--she’d scared it off! Silently, she cursed herself before breaking into a run through the trees.
“Wait!” She was starting to pant as heavily as she had over the days of walking. This wouldn’t last lo--
Something bowled her over.
“Twilight, it’s you!” The mare lay gasping and sputtering, her remaining wind supply having been removed by Apple Bloom’s tackle. 
“Uh--sorry about that.” The filly jumped off and gave her a sheepish smile. “Uhm--Twi, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Twilight smiled. Tears were spilling down her face. She abruptly rose and squeezed Apple Bloom with the force of her own takedown. “It’s just--” She sniffed. “--that these past few days have--ah--been so scary, and, well…” Twilight pulled away to look a blurry Apple Bloom in the eye. “It’s just so good to know that somepony else is okay.” 
For a second, AB didn’t seem to know what to do. Then, with a slow, foalish grin that shone with more joy than Twilight could ever hope for out of this sun, she hugged back.
They stayed like that for awhile, rocks to each other in the boiling storm.
Eventually, mutually, they separated.
It was Apple Bloom who broke the silence.
“Let’s get you back to Applejack. She can--hah--explain everything better than I can.” Twilight nodded. She supposed that she could explain to Applejack the plan to reunite with Cadence once they were all out of the sun. She grinned and closed her eyes for a moment, just imagining how they would fell.
The filly began to walk back towards the part in the trees she’d burst from and beckoned to be followed. “But first, d’ya think you could help me haul back these here apples?”
There was a surprising number of them, four large baskets’ full, freshly bucked. Apple Bloom expertly paired them and stuck branches between their handles to allow them to be carried like saddlebags. She offered Twilight the basket-pair that was just slightly less full.
“Here, you take that one--it’s lighter.” Twilight was about to object before she felt the weight on her back and realized, with embarrassment, that there was no way she could carry anything heavier for this distance, not even with her magic, in its current state of depletion. She apologized (only to be met with laughter and reassurance) and watched in awe as the little farm pony seemed to handle her own, fuller load with ease. Maybe the old sayings that earth ponies were stronger than the others were true after all.
She turned her focus back to the horizon, squinted to make out the farmhouse, and groaned.
Yet even with the...external conditions being the same as they’d been, with another pony around, one who’d, miraculously, survived separately from Twilight despite everything, her internal atmosphere had begun to relax. Twilight could feel it--a curious thing. Before she’d been sent to Ponyville she’d have scoffed at the idea of such a tangible emotional bond, but now it was holding her up, as impossible to explain as the Pinkie Sense but equally present.
She heard a sound in the branches overhead and jumped. Apple Bloom and she looked up at...a squirrel, holding a few apple remains in its paw. Twilight realized just how little she’d been hearing the ordinary animal sounds of the orchard and her heart suddenly became as heavy as her load. But that lone squirrel also meant that things just might return to normal once all the Elements were together again.
After a few more minutes of thoughtful silence, a second animal moved the branches somewhere in the distance, as if to bolster Twilight’s hopes.
Except that Apple Bloom was looking back now. And she was looking scared. 
Twilight turned.
Between distant trees, the sun glinted off curves of golden armor and viciously sharpened spears, rushing closer by the second.
Twilight screamed something. An anonymous voice bellowed an order. They threw off the apples and ran.
Soon, with ravaged lungs and stinging eyes, the two could hear the clanking getting louder behind them, creeping in. The fear on Apple Bloom’s face was too much. Twilight struggled through her pain and the descending haze to keep up with her, but in the end it was left to defense. Her horn sparked. She swept her head back with all her might to bring a limb crashing down in the guards’ path. The pegasi sailed over it, but from what she could tell it slowed a few of the unicorns.
Then, ever so slowly, Twilight watched one of their gray horns glow with a golden light.
Sssnchkshk!
Her ear was in the dust.



It was all out of focus. It was all wrong.



She struggled to her hooves. She made her legs keep moving. She dared not look back now. It all hurt. Too much. It was too hot. She couldn’t breathe. Something was chasing her. It didn’t matter what. She didn’t know. She didn’t know.

This will all be over soon.
This will all be over soon.
This will all be over soon.