//------------------------------//
// Crunch Time 
// Story: Split Second 
// by wille179 
//------------------------------//

	The dragon touched down on the mountain, landing on the opposite side of Canterlot peak. Having flown low and fast in the middle of the night, his unusually massive size hadn’t betrayed him. His wings retracted, sinking back into the flesh from which they had emerged.
Nearby, the mare that had been waiting for him trotted up. Unlike her normal wear, the robes she wore were an uneven mixture of grays, greens, dark blues, and browns - genuine night camouflage. It took far less magic to disguise something that was hard to see in the first place, and exactly why she wanted it for things such as this. “How did everything go?” she asked the drake.
He swung a large, wrapped bundle, easily the size of three ponies, off his shoulder. “I got two of them. The rest are under glass.”
“Good.” She unwrapped the top of the bundle, revealing the undamaged heads of two deceased diamond dogs. One of the heads flopped over, rigor mortis having not yet set in completely. “Any complications?”
“What do you take me for, an amateur?” Thorn quipped. “Everything went fine. All the bodies are gone, the ghosts were eaten, and the cave entrances were plugged with molten stone. Add a bit more flame, and you can’t even tell where the caves were.”
Sparkle smiled. “Good boy. Now, fly off until you finish digesting and can shrink back to normal, OK?” Thorn nodded. “Now, I’ve got fresh meat to practice on.”
“You seem awfully happy now,” the drake commented.
“Oh, I’m still mad at you and still quite disturbed by what you did. However, I think your punishment will be enough for me to let it drop,” she said. “And now, I’ve got bodies to practice on!”
“This is the thing you were planning on doing to Cobalt after you put the next geas on him?”
“Mmmhmm,” she agreed. “And the next set of upgrades for Shiny. Do keep this a secret from him, won’t you?”
“Cross my heart, the end is nigh, stick a spear point in my eye.”





“And where do you think you are going?” The elderly mare said.
Stopped in the doorway, Red Fields said, “Out. I have a job to prepare for.” Old hag, he didn’t add. “I will be gone all day.”
“Good. The less I see of you in this house, the better. And... do try and not track mud into the house when you come back. I know how hard that must be for... somepony like you.” She sneered, and left without another word.
Red sighed, rubbing his hoof through his pinkish-white mane. He didn’t look back, instead choosing to walk forwards into the Canterlot streets.
His heart pounded, his blood rushing through his ears. He felt heavy, heavier than he had in a long time. Why? He had something of a clue.
Sparkle was, to the public eye, a monster. ‘Offing her would do the public good,’ or so they said. Honestly, he thought, Thorn was the bigger monster. ‘Oh, he’s just a dragon,’ they said, accepting the threat he posed as just something normal. ‘Baby dragons don’t hurt ponies, only big ones,’ the public thought. Except Red knew just how big and vicious that dragon could become.
Sparkle, though, she was his mentor and, dare he say it, possibly a friend. Could he kill her, knowing that she had given him a way out of the skin he was so uncomfortable in? As Cobalt, he was far happier than he had ever been as himself. He looked up to the cerulean sky, and wondered.





The jingle of the bell was surprisingly pleasant if one knew the purpose behind the shop attached to the door it guarded. Herbal Remedy would sell any plant or plant-based product a pony could desire from his black-market stock, carefully hidden behind the facade of an ordinary apothecary. Unlike many of his competitors, he would ask questions, if only to make sure his customers were always satisfied by what he gave them.
“So, what’ll it be this time?”
“I need curare for my knives, enough for five knives and strong enough to put down a hydra with a single cut,” Red explained. “And I do mean that literally.”
Remedy whistled. “Wow, you must really want somepony dead.”
“Mmm... Not particularly; it’s just a job. That said, she has a very nasty track record and spells that would make you beg for death,” Red elaborated.
The shopkeeper popped his lips. “I know something better. You’ll want s. cornu, commonly known as folly horn.”
“Isn’t that the one that makes unicorns have lethal magical surges?” Red asked.
“Yes, though it won’t work on pegasi or earth ponies like us. We’d just get a rash,” Herbal Remedy said.
“I don’t know if that’s the best one for the job...”
“Well, it comes with its own built-in distraction to let you escape. Surges are generally harmless.”
“Unicorns are generally not natural darks,” Red Fields countered. “Remember the rainbow sickness that struck ten years ago?”
“I do,” he replied. “Got a lot of business from that, what with all the ponies wanting treatment and the hospitals being all full.”
“That was my target - surging - when she was eight. That was when she got her necromancy mark.”
The words took a second to sink in. “No, you will not be buying any folly horn. Let me see what other neurotoxins I have.”
“Much appreciated.”
A few minutes later, Red Fields was trotting towards the door of the store, having traded his illegally-earned bits for illegally-bought plant oils. Just before he could reach it, the door was opened by another customer. 
Red froze when he saw who it was: Sparkle. For a half-second, he worried that she would ask what he was doing here, but eventually realized that she showed no sign of recognizing him. For once very glad he was his birth color, Red trotted past his teacher, nodding as he did so.
The shopkeeper realized who else was entering his store. “Ah, Ms. Sparkle, how-” The rest was cut off by the door closing.
He trotted away, rounding a corner before breaking out into a dead sprint. Had he not turned into a shaded alleyway, he might have noticed his shadow growing darker. Had he not been panting, he might have heard the small giggle from underneath his hooves.
Back in the apothecary, Sparkle pushed aside the strangeness of seeing her student’s soul inside a different stallion’s body. She’d long since stopped using coloration as a means of identifying people, as the soul-sight she still hadn’t figured out how to deactivate made other methods moot. Besides, she didn’t need to pry on secretive business, not when she had a specter trailing him anyway. “Herbal, can I get some poppy extract? Low grade, please.”





The two sat in semi-comfortable silence, bathing in the moisture of the sauna. Fluttershy, normally quite content to hear her friend talk of all the gossip in Ponyville, found it rather odd that her white friend wasn't offering any conversation. "Um, Rarity, if you don't mind me asking, are you alright? You seem kind of, um, down."
The fashionista sighed. "I've been feeling a bit melancholy for a few days now... No, even melancholy is too strong a word. Just... off. Anyway, I've been not quite myself these past few days."
"Well, when did it start?" the pegasus asked.
Rarity thought for a bit. "Oh, I suppose it was a few days after Thorn rescued me from those horrid dogs."
"Oh, um," Fluttershy mumbled. She knew animals, not ponies, so how to help her friend escaped her. She took a guess anyway. "Is it about Thorn?"
Rarity looked pensive. "You know, darling, it just might. Back when I first met him, he was instantly smitten. I got a letter from him every day, sometimes two a day. They were sweet at first, even if they did come from him. But, they started getting creepy. He knew things that he shouldn't have known. I was scared, so I started burning the letters. They eventually slowed, coming once a week, but they were as long as ever. 
"Then Thorn saved me from those mongrels. He healed me and called me his 'little jewel'; it was sweet, in a rather terrifying sort of way. He fought for me when I shunned him. I didn't even thank him or say goodbye to him properly. Now? I haven't gotten a single letter, when I expected several by now," Rarity explained.
"So, um," Fluttershy said, "do you miss the letters?"
"Oh heavens, no! I don't miss them in the least." Rarity's head drooped slightly, as did her ears. "I just can't help but feel that something is off."
"I understand," Fluttershy said. Years of working with animals had told her that changes in behavior could mean illness, danger, or any other number of things. "Well, we're going to be in Canterlot for the Gala soon. Do you want to see if we could meet him and talk after the party?"
"Well, I do owe him a better thank you at minimum, so yes, darling. I think that would be a good idea."





The was a noise that sounded something like balloon full of pudding rupturing and spilling onto the floor. Then, there was the sound of a mare yelping. Finally, the smell of old flesh tickles Thorn's nose.
"Mom?"
"I'm fine!" she called out. "The reaction was a bit more vigorous than expected."
Thorn strode into the room that had become Sparkle's lab (which was hidden behind so many illusions, Shining Armor didn't even know the room existed). He stepped up onto the washable, drainable, elevated tile flooring that kept some of his mother's messier experiments from leaking into the floors below. Experiments like this one, for example.
His bare feet stepped over the raised portion of the floor and lowered into the blood said elevated portion was holding back. "Mom, what happened to the diamond dog?"
"Well, I got the technique down, but I wanted to know its upper limits. I tried overloading it, and-”
"It exploded like a balloon?" Thorn suggested.
"Yeah," she agreed, wiping blood from her eyes and face. "Lesson learned: the safe limit is half the value I found, and be sure to add a dispersal element."
Thorn nodded. Crossing his arms, he asked, "You still planning on doing this to Shiny and your student?"
"Oh yes. The results of the tests before I tried to break it were most pleasing."





*Boink*
"Stop it," he said, not bothering to look up from the book Sparkle had assigned him. The rubber ball bounced off his head again.
"I will if you make me lunch!" The voice of Red's much younger sister grated on his nerves almost as much as the ball she was magically bouncing off his skull.
"No, now let me study."
*Boink*
"But studying is boring! Why would a mud pony need to study? They're just stupid."
That got Red to put his book down. "Excuse me, what did you just call me?"
*Boink* 
"That's what mommy calls you. Why are you so mad?" the filly petulantly whined.
*Boink-pop* The ball, formerly being propelled by a green aura, hung limply in a blue aura unfamiliar to the filly. 
"Now listen here, I've had enough of your nonsense. If you haven't noticed, I hate that hag you call mother. And if you don't stop pestering me," - the filly found herself being dragged forwards by a pull on her horn - "I'll snap your stick and burn the stump so it doesn't grow back. And if you don't stop then, I'm sure my teacher's pet dragon would love a filly filet."
Said filly squeaked and stepped back.




Across the pair of Equestrias, several individuals put plans in motion.
In Ponyville, a blue mare donned Gala dress, watched silently by her pet owl, Gizmo.
In Ponyville, a lavender mare did the same, though her owl was named Owlowicious.
In upper Canterlot, a lavender mare donned her precautions, knowing an assassin was after her.
In upper Canterlot, a killer donned his body paint, his thoughts murky and unclear.
In lower Canterlot, a white mare donned a dress, preparing to see her marefriend play at the Gala, not knowing that opportunity was knocking.
In lower Canterlot, two stallions, unusual in their lack of manes or tails, looked at an instrument's reading, and prepared.
In Canterlot Castle, three princesses and a prince prepared for the evening, while their guards altered their patrol routes to better protect the guests in the event of an emergency.
And finally, in the castle gardens, a statue twitched, sensing the same oncoming chaos that the two stallions had.