2-7
The awkward silence had gone on for some time between Applebloom and Scootaloo as they stared at one another across the hall. The magazines they weren’t really looking at hung loosely in their hooves as they made a pretense of paying attention to them instead of trying to figure out what the other had been doing. Applebloom finally broke the silence, pestering her fellow crusader. “So, ya fly now?”
Scootaloo pensively buried her nose back into her magazine. “Um, yeah. Kind of.”
“Good fer ya. Ah know how much ya wanted it.” Applebloom congratulated before glancing at the cooking magazine. She wondered if the things migrated like birds, it would explain how they always popped up so fast.
Scootaloo tossed her magazine down finally, sick and tired of looking at flying feats she would never quite replicate. “Heh. It’s not quite what I wanted. It’s just so silly once Sunbeam helped me.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with a bit of silly in yer life. Wait, do ya hear something?”
“Hear what?”
“Ah don’t know. Sounds like somepony fighting.” Applebloom’s ears slowly swiveled around on her head until they both pointed towards the door to the lab. The sounds were louder as she leaned over in her seat, resting precariously on one foreleg against one of the rests on it. Tapping hooves, raised muffled voices, and a bucket getting kicked around like a hoofball. “Ah think there might be a problem, Scootaloo.”
The muffled voice and kicking bucket grew closer, more regular to Applebloom’s ears, and her legs grew tense as she got ready to pounce.
“I still can’t ear anything.”
“Still ringing in the head?”
“Yeah.”
“Couldn’t wait?”
“No.”
“Well, Ah think we can’t w-“
Twilight burst from the room with a rag clutching at her face like a swarm of scrubbing parasprites, rushing around in circles to dislodge the lime green glowing menace attempting to devour the dirt from her face. The formerly unoccupied Crusaders burst into motion, tackling her to the ground in unspoken agreement. Scootaloo sat on her chest, holding her flailing forelimbs down as she flopped on her back whilst Applebloom pounced on the animated rag to wrestle it off with her teeth. Undaunted, the writhing mass of cloth clutched harder to Twilight’s face, trying to wrap growing tendrils of fabric completely around her head. Fore-hooves pinned the tendrils to the sides of Twilight’s head as the golden-yellow filly bit into the soapy mess and ripped it to shreds with her teeth.
Gasping, Twilight flopped one more time and went limp; lapsing into a fit of coughing bubbles as she sank to the floor. Applebloom threw the still faintly glowing and fitfully moving shreds away from them as she stood on the lavender alicorn’s upper chest. “Ya’ll okay now?”
Twilight nodded weakly, hacking up another bubble as she relaxed slightly.
“Good.”
“Pretty sure we’re not good, ‘Bloom.” Scootaloo apprehensively warned as clumps of glowing mops, brooms, and brushes started marching through the door. Her eyes widened slightly; taking in the transformation of the items as they sensed ponies. Formerly innocuous items twisted, morphed, and reshaped themselves into mockeries of sea life that floated about. Broom-sharks, jelly-rags, moptopuses, and other strange creatures of arcane origins. “Really not good!”
A single, solitary look of irritation was thrown to the assembling items by Applebloom before she cracked her neck in anticipation. “If a bunch of mangy chores think they’re gonna clean me out, they’ve got themselves one tarnation of a problem.”
Rearing on her hind-legs, Applebloom kicked down and trampled the first broom that came for her savagely, pounding it into sawdust. She thrust her hind-legs up again, scissor-kicking the first mop that dropped down at her before flipping over to slam it into the floor and into splinters as she threw it down behind her. Sloshing, a bucket wobbled and mockingly imitated a swimming fish as it prepared to dump a thick soapy mixture onto the filly’s head – only to burble and squeal as her hoof struck out once more and grabbed it to turn it into an improvised flail.
“Got your back!” Scootaloo cried as she jumped over Applebloom with the assistance of her magic and drove a scuttling brush and a squid-like bottle into the floor.
Shrill screams squeaked out from inside as another burst of magic filled the doorframe and threatened to wash the fillies away with a wave of thickened air.
“That was Sweetie Belle!” Applebloom shouted as she finished off her flail-bucket by smash-kicking it into a school of bottles to spill foaming suds everywhere. Another churning current of magic shoved her back as it washed over her and tugged at her mane like the depths of the sea.
“I think she’s in trouble!” Ducking under another tendril of the latest mop to escape, Scootaloo rolled across the floor awkwardly to pin herself to one side of the doorframe.
“She is the trouble, girls!” Twilight said before hiccupping up another soap bubble as she leaned against the other side of the doorframe. The alicorn poked her strangely plaid head around the corner – only to get a splash of water to the face for her trouble as the massive flare continued to distort reality. “Bleagh! Ugh, ew! Seaweed!” Twilight’s hoof scrubbed at her tongue futilely in disgust. “Sunbeam was testing Sweetie Belle to see if she was something she called a songspell!”
With a heave of a pounce Applebloom hopped up in a calm period to snatch a broom flying over her head between her hooves and yanked the wriggling object down to her level savagely. She shook it; stunning it senseless before she nipped its’ handle-fin in her teeth to bat things back inside. “And what the hay is a spell-songy-thingy?” The limp and slithery broom woke again as Applebloom spoke around it, only to be smacked into a flying metal bucket and be broken in two.
“According to the old tales from Princess Celestia, song-spells were supposed to be able to consciously create and guide the heart-song phenomenon to reshape reality!” Twilight ducked her head around the corner again, and fell back squinting from looking into the blinding maelstrom at the heart of the flare. Teleporting in was out of the question; the ambient magic in the room meant that she was just as likely to come out as a Twi-globe as come through safely.
“And you didn’t think this might happen?” Scootaloo demanded as she held away a bucket trying to eat her head.
“She said it was impossible! ‘Only an alicorn could have a flare from it even remotely resembling yours,’ she said! I’m going to have words with her! Sharp, pointy words unfit for foals!” Twilight yelled into the room as loudly as she could manage, fueling her voice with the full fury of the Canterlot Speaking Tone. She had no plan, no real cover from the storm in the room, and no clue how to stop it other than to get to the source.
“No way! It can’t be!” Sweetie shouted from inside of her flaring bubble as she reacted to an unseen sight.
“You’re seeing things! I don’t know what, but the magic is hurting your brain and making you hallucinate! Try and focus on stopping it, and hang on, Sweetie Belle!” Sunbeam’s voice shot back from inside, oddly sharper than it had been.
Bobbing back and forth after tossing her bucket into the whirlpool of liquefied magic and water-like air, Scootaloo kept trying to peer inside without luck. “I can’t see anything! Everything is moving too much in there.”
She proper herself against the doorframe with her fore-hooves, trying to think of something, anything to help out. The currents of magic were growing stronger by the second, and the affected area was sweeping out into the hall; the effects making them start to float like in the sea. If they didn’t think of something soon Applebloom would be swept away and unable to catch the torrent of mutated things es – “Twilight! Can you catch this stuff with your magic? Like a net or something?”
Furious bobbles gripped the alicorn’s head. “Brilliant idea, Scootaloo!” Twilight lit her horn, forming a glowing multicolored net that immediately slowed the flow of magic and stopped the unliving things escaping in their tracks.
Inside, Sweetie called out again. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve got to get close enough to you! I can give you a counter-song to make it stop if I can-“
“Isn’t that what thr-e-e-e- auuuuugh, my horn burns!”
Three sets of teeth gritted themselves as the trio made up their minds to enter the fray. Twilight nodded to the two fillies as they all braced to fight their way in. Applebloom gripped her snapped off handle in her teeth, Scootaloo tugged at the silk band around her wings to free them, and Twilight’s magic-made net flexed in readiness as she expanded it. In concert, they pulled in together and plunged into the currents.
Hopping atop Twilight, Scootaloo staggered for a moment under the nearly irresistible current of magical air; leaning into it and focusing on spreading open a pocket of calm, still air to protect them from the worst of it. Below and behind, Applebloom backed herself right up to Twilight’s hind-legs, protecting them from attacks from behind as she was protected by the bubble and an extension of Twilight’s net. Twilight’s net rippled around them; flexing and swaying with force as items bounced off or found themselves hooked into the etheric mesh of mixed colors.
All around was madness; reality unhinged and out of control. Inside the swirling storm of magic everything moved in the thick winds of unreality. Tables and lab counters writhed and rippled like coral and seaweed. Rags crawled over the floor like starfish while schools of lesser items darted overhead in terrible schools of horrors. Discord would have been proud—or terrified, perhaps, if the creatures laid their focus upon him.
Punting, Scootaloo knocked away another bucket full of soap and suds that had been bound for Twilight’s head through years of expert dodgeball practice. Instead of falling to the ground, the water within it twisted up in midair, developing tendrils as it morphed into a mockery of a jellyfish to ascend towards the ceiling. Grunts huffed from the alicorn as she steadily pushed them deeper into the twisting, churning currents ahead. Each step was a new trial; each yard a new gradient of turbulence in the fields. As they descended into the maelstrom the ever-tightening rings of magic currents warped and distorted into eddies and whirlpools as the layers twisted the tiny remaining pockets of normality into dangerous sheers that threatened to throw them and treacherously challenged their every step.
“Hang on, Sweetie Belle! We’ll save ya!” Applebloom called out to her friend as she kept backing up behind Twilight. Snicker-snaps of wood on wood warned her a moment before a nameless, scuttling horror emerged from behind a reef-like counter—a stool transformed into some twisted mockery of a spider crab. It snapped at her; scuttling with menace as it tried to get into the bubble surrounding the trio. With a growl of disgust, Applebloom beat it down with the remaining nub of her handle until its legs fell off and drifted away.
As she tried to step back into the full safety of Scootaloo’s wavering bubble, her luck failed her. A pounding tide of change slammed into her; poured over her, and the flooring she stood upon. Applebloom yelped as weakness traitorously foiled her, and the floor changed to slick crags of slime covered marble. She was picked up off of the floor by the current; wriggling and flailing in the air as she rose away from her protection.
Unthinking, Scootaloo wrapped her hind-legs around one of Twilight’s wings and let the thickening winds lift her up as Applebloom swept past her. She lunged, just barely grabbing her friend before the filly was lost in the swirling storm of magic. “I’ve got you, ‘Bloom!”
“An’ don’tchya leggo!” Applebloom wailed as she whipped back and forth in the currents; anchored only by Scootaloo’s grasp on one of her fore-legs. The magic still clutched at her hind-legs and tail—the warping storm making them all move oddly as one as her limbs seemed to become as rubbery as her older sister’s attempts at noodles.
Despite her sickening motion, she could just spot something that gave her hope as she squinted into the eye of the storm. “Ah see Sunbeam and Sweetie Belle just ahead!” Magic curled around their forms; a rippling bubble that churned like a drop of rain caught above the fiercest of fans. Through each second long glance at the pair she swore she was seeing funny from the water-like magic twisting around them.
“Can you see if they’re okay?” Twilight called up to her before straining to push into the next stream of magic.
“Sunbeam looks funny, Twilight! It looks like they’re underwater or somethin’! And she’s hugging Sweetie tight to her chest!”
“Hang on, we’re coming!” Easy for Scootaloo to say as she held on for dear life; quite a bit different in practice for the plaid alicorn.
Squinting eyes peered into the shimmering boil of magic, looking for any sign of the pair’s condition as Twilight grew close enough to start killing the streamers of magic and cutting the flow into the storm that spewed past them. Even as she flapped in the strange wind, Applebloom swore to herself that she saw a shimmering horn through the refracting light glowing golden as she hugged Sweetie Belle to her chest with wings and hooves. And, with a final burst of bright white light from the filly’s eyes, it was all over.
Applebloom kicked her hind-legs comically for a moment as the unnatural currents of thick winds faded away—though the cruel mistress gravity would have none of it from the filly. She felt to the floor flat on her belly; groaning in pain from the slap of hard, cold marble against her tender flesh. She would have to ritually sacrifice more apples through Applebucking season for the law to ease up on her, perhaps.
She and Scootaloo picked themselves up to the hooves as Twilight rushed to check on Sweetie Belle and a clearly hornless Sunbeam laying curled together in the center of the lab space. Applebloom’s tender hind-legs still quivered traitorously beneath her, oddly cold-feeling despite the return of normality all around them in the last burst of magic.
Furthermore, as they looked at Sunbeam the mare seemed oddly proportioned. Built more like a deer, perhaps; or maybe Luna and Cadance. Sweetie groaned in pain; thumping her aching head backwards against Sunbeam’s chest as the elder mare rolled onto her back while clutching the filly to her chest. Still quivering ever so slightly in an unseen breeze, Sweetie’s mane lay disheveled and pooled around Sunbeam’s neck as she was held in place.
“Ohhhh—my head. My head feels like a fizzy rock and some soda went off in it. Wait. Where’d your horn go?!” She cried in alarm as she looked up into Sunbeam’s face.
“What horn? Sweetie Belle, you were delirious from an uncontrolled flare.” Sunbeam laid a hoof against the filly’s head. “Atop that, you have a fever from it!”
Dusky magic wrapped around Sweetie’s middle to pluck her from Sunbeam’s grasp and laid her atop Twilight’s back carefully. “Sweetie, we need to get you to the hospital and checked out. I’ve never seen a flare that bad in all of my life, and I turned my parents into cacti! Who knows what it might have done to you!”
“But I know what I saw! She’s an alicorn!” Sweetie protested, looking at her savior pointedly.
“Nopony but the changelings can hide their race like that, Sweetie Belle. And I’ve bumped heads with Sunbeam enough to know for certain that she doesn’t have a horn. She couldn’t be an alicorn.” Twilight cautioned the filly as she made her own note to check for anomalous magic in the record when they got back. The Thaumatoscope should have cut off after magic stopped entering it after it fell away at the end of the storm.
“You had to have seen it!”
“You mean the big purple net in front of me? For that matter, you need to come too, Sunbeam. That was a nasty surge of magic I heard.”
Nodding, the Pegasus mare shakily stood while rubbing her head in a manner that was awfully suspicious to Applebloom’s eye. Pouting, Sweetie Belle said nothing more as she fumed over the fact that she wasn’t being believed. Again. But, her gaze caught Applebloom’s own—and the slight nod of confirmation as the apple filly agreed.