//------------------------------//
// Chapter LIII 
// Story: Lessons in quirks 
// by Mike84 
//------------------------------//

	Frank was looking right at the tip of the 'unicorn's' horn aimed at him. His motion came as a reflex rather than a deliberate decision. As the attacker's horn flashed up in a greenish light, Frank took a leap to the side. It was a clumsy movement, more of a hop, that sent the colt staggering sideways for several more steps and almost caused him to loose balance, but however awkward and instinctive, the movement fulfilled its purpose. The flash of green missed Frank, though it passed so close by his left shoulder that it made his hair stand upright as if by an electric charge. If there had been any doubts left about the effect the spell would have had, they were ended by the scorching and splintering of the wooden beams it hit. 
Frank uttered a yelp while the attacker growled, annoyed that the first spell had missed the mark and prepared another one. Frank's next evasive maneuver was more deliberate than the first. He jumped behind the old fainting couch on which he had spent the night. The heavy saddle-bags strapped to his back encumbered him. An edge of one bag hit the back of the couch and caused Frank's landing to be rather clumsy. He ducked low behind the raised back of the couch. The next spell hit the couch back, caused a swirl of downs and filled the room with a stench of burned feathers. Luckily for Frank, the spell, whatever other effects it had, didn't seem to be very penetrative and he remained unharmed behind the couch. Still he didn't expect it to last one or two more such attacks. 
Bordering the couch stood one of the bookshelves. Frank crawled past the end of the couch and took cover behind the shelf. It seemed like a more solid cover than the couch and due to the outline of the bell roof there was enough space between the shelf and the roof to fit in comfortably. Or comfortable it might have been but for the fact that a unicorn shaped attacker was standing on the other side of the shelf trying to murder him. 
How, just how had he ended up in this mess? All he wanted was to write a scientific book about cutie marks! How had that gotten him so much to the wrong place at the wrong time?
The impact of another spell reduced the back of the couch to shreds, leaving the attacker with the realization that its victim was no longer there. 
Life hadn't always been easy on Frank Blanket. He hadn't been born into a fortunate family, his cutie mark hadn't lessened the impression of learning from the school of hard knocks and he had suffered from early losses when he was just a little too old to be called an 'orphan' for it. He had been at odds with life for personal loss and injustices he had seen and been subjected to, and for a while these odds had given him an anger and a fury that had ultimately made him fell rather sick. Since the causes for his ill-feeling had seemed way beyond his control and since there was no benefit in fostering these sentiments or permitting them to determine his actions, Frank Blanket had decided to avoid and ignore them as much as he could and had been rather successful in doing so. Perhaps all this had contributed to a fairly limited drive to accumulate much in terms of material wealth and instead develop a passion for accumulating knowledge and experiences which he had felt no unfortunate turn of events could ever take from him; and he had embraced life for it, whatever turn it took and looked at the world with an enthusiastic, yet sometimes somewhat resigned curiosity. The wrath of his darkest days rarely simmered through.
And here he was, cowered between a shelf and the beams of a roof, about to be killed and thereby have his ability to learn and experience be taken away from him after all and long before his time had come! He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as if he could wake up from this if only he closed his eyes fiercely enough. As he did so, he felt a trickle run down his cheeks. 
There was a loud bang and Frank felt a thump against his head. He cast his eyes open and drew a sharp breath, partly from the pain and partly because only now he realized that the fear had made him forget breathing at some point. Splinters of wood were lying around him as were several books and folders which had been blasted through the back board of the shelf as it had been hit by another spell. Apparently a particularly voluminous tome had landed on his head and been responsible for the thump. Some small pieces of torn paper were still drifting down in the air around him. Several of the books and folders were smoldering and one of them was actually catching fire as he looked at it. Oddly enough, it was the sight of the burning book more than anything else that snapped Frank out of being just paralyzed with fear and self-pitying. 
There was no real chance of him getting out of this one and most likely nopony would ever know what had happened here. More likely than not, this attacker would continue with its schemes to ends which Frank didn't know. But with nothing to loose, there was no point in just waiting for the inevitable to come and however forlorn hope might seem, with everything to gain it was sure worth the attempt, if only for the vain notion of having at least tried to do something at all. With a swift motion, Frank grabbed a folder and the burning book, which he held at an edge not yet reached by the flames. He peeked past one end of the shelf and as he spotted the outline of the attacker, he quickly hurled the folder and the book at it. 
This time Frank was lucky. Neither the folder nor the book were well suited as a throwing missile, but somehow he managed to make both of them hit. Sure enough neither did any actual harm to the attacker, but the folder was pierced by the 'unicorn's' horn, blocking its field of vision for a moment. As the attacker fiercely shook its head to rid its face from the folder, Frank grasped the one chance he saw to improve his situation. He rushed for the stairs leading up to the cupola. If he reached the top of the town hall he might be outside the attacker's sound muffling spell, he might be able to draw attention and he would be in a much better position in case the attacker would try to follow him up the stairs and the narrow hatch at its top. But he never reached the hatch. It hadn't taken long enough for the attacker to get the folder out of its face. A flash of green and reddish light exploded right in front of Frank, smashed the stairs into splinters and smithereens and hurled him back behind the shelf from where he had dashed for the stairs. 
"Lucky to the end", Frank thought sardonically as he gasped for the breath which the rough landing had knocked out of his lungs. Not only had the spell missed him once again, proving for the aim of the attacker to be much worse than could have been expected, but it had even hurled him back into cover, allowing for the end to be postponed a little longer. If only he had the time to get rid of the encumbering saddle-bags. Maybe he would have managed the dash for the top of the stairs if it hadn't been for the cumbersome load on his back, but true to his habit he had strapped them fixed so even being hurled from the stairs had not rid him of the solid but cumbersome contraption on his back, which in times of more leisure could be turned into a makeshift escritoire. 
Frank cowered low, expecting for the shelf to be reduced to debris by more spells from the attacker. But the spell didn't come. Instead Frank heard heavy hoofsteps approaching his cover. 
"It wants to save its magic!" Frank realized. "All the changes and all these powerful spells must have been a drain. It wants to make sure the next one is the last one!"
To get a clear view at him, the attacker would have to stand right beside the edge of the shelf. Close enough perhaps for a last stand attack upon the attacker to avoid the range of its spell casting for just a few more moments. 
The head of the attacker appeared at the edge of the shelf and Frank pounced upon it. Clearly the attacker hadn't expected to be attacked itself. The horn flashed up, but already Frank clutched the attacker's neck, too close to be hit by the spell which shattered something else somewhere else. Frank kicked and beat and bit and tried everything he could to harm the attacker in any way he could think of. His hooves didn't hit on metal where they hit what looked like solid metal armor, but whatever they hit, it didn't seem to bother the attacker as much as it might have bothered a pony. Frank let out a furious, rather unponylike growl. The attacker staggered back for a few steps, dragging Frank along, well away from the cover of the shelf and the couch. Drum at the attacker as he might, Frank didn't notice any effect upon it and then it shook itself almost like a predator that had caught its prey between its teeth. There was nothing Frank could put up against the strength of the body of a member of Princess Luna's guard. He was hurled through the air for some distance and landed hard on the floor. His saddle-bags had cushioned the impact a little, but the sound of cracking wood and tearing fabric told him that these bags would never again be of any use to carry anything or serve as an escritoire. 
Strange as it was, in this moment the realization gave Frank a painful sting, almost as if he had lost a dear companion. As he struggled to get to his hooves again, Frank realized that the strap that had held the saddle-bags in place had broken so he could now just strip them off, but before he could do so, green light again flashed up in front of him. 
The attacker stood not far away and Frank was a sitting, or rather a lying target. He couldn't understand how this spell missed yet again, but rather than him it was one of his bags that burst into flame, having been hit by the green light. Frank howled up, partly because of the sudden heat of the nearby fire, partly because of the unreasonable realization that the burning bag contained most of his writings on cutie mark research. Struggling free from the bags, he hurled himself onto the fire and managed to suffocate the flames at the expense of some minor scorching that would matter little. 
Heavy hooves stepped right in front of him and as he raised his look, Frank knew that the game was up. However unlucky the aim of his attacker had been so far, it stood not a ponylength away from him, the head lowered and the horn pointing right at him while he was lying on the ground crouched over the damaged bag. For a moment he felt tempted to squeeze his eyes shut and turn his head away as if he could blind out the inevitable that way, but then a sense of angry defiance overcame him and he stared right into the eyes of the attacker, his own eyes watering but unflinching. 
"You'll fail nonetheless!" he hissed.
The horn flashed up a final time, the last thing Frank expected ever to see.

Down the hatch as quick as she could. There was an intense stench of smoke and scorching and gray fumes were drifting through the air. Twilight noticed the iridescence as she passed the hatch and knew that somepony had set up a sound barrier. She was too late, the attacker was already there. Through the smoke she saw that the stairs in front of her had been blasted away and further down, not far from the end of the stairs, Frank Blanket was lying on the ground. Right in front of him stood the lunatic who had asked her for Frank's whereabouts. He lowered his head and as she saw Frank stir beneath the tip of the horn, she realized she was not too late after all. 
So powerful was the shielding spell she cast between the two that it didn't merely swallow up the flash of green light from the lunatic's horn but that it made both the lunatic and Frank rebound some distance from it. Twilight jumped from the stairs, her wings spread far as she landed beside and a little in front of Frank. 
"Down!" she ordered the lunatic. "Now!"
Imposing as her tone was, Twilight knew the moment she said it that the lunatic wouldn't obey her command. He shot three flashes of green at her in rapid succession, but making them fizzle out before they had come even close was an easy task for her. 
"Princess Twilight!" Frank gasped. "You're here!"
"Stay behind me, Frank!" 
The lunatic kept his eyes fixed on Twilight and she was certain he was reassessing the new situation as he slowly began to walk in a wide circle, never turning his lurking look or the tip of his horn away from Twilight, who in turn began to walk the circle's opposite perimeter. Her mind was racing about why a guard of Princess Luna would want to murder Frank and what this had to do with everything that had happened in the last days. Twilight didn't doubt for a moment that the lunatic had all the answers to the questions she had failed to answer so far. She knew that the time was working for her and was therefore in no rush to leash out at this mysterious attacker. Rainbow Dash would be here any moment and before long the others too would arrive, alarmed by Pinkie Pie. Her opponent, royal guard that he might be, was but a single pony and even though she had never focused on the destructive kinds of combative magic in particular, Twilight knew that she could handle this attacker. Magic was her gift and in this she would not be bested when it mattered as much as now it did. 
Maybe the attacker had come to the same conclusion. He suddenly charged forward, but not at Twilight. Rather than staying close behind her, Frank had been dragging on what seemed to be his smoldering saddle bags. It had rendered his circling slower than that of Twilight and left him standing exposed. Instead of shooting any more spells the attacker, much to Twilight's horror, took a more direct approach and charged towards Frank with his horn lowered and clearly intended to run him through with it. She cast a quick spell. Blinded by the light of her own spell she couldn't tell for certain, but she was quite sure she had hit, but while the spell should have knocked the attacker over, he seemed almost undeterred in his attack rush at Frank. The colt however dived to the side and managed to dodge the slash of the horn. Nothing she had seen so far had prepared Twilight for what happened next. Having missed Frank, the lunatic didn't stop or turn around but continued his charge right on towards a window in the bell roof. Before she could do anything, the lunatic crashed through the thin glass and some splintering wood and disappeared in the darkness beyond. 
Twilight uttered a scream. A fall from the height of the town hall's roof would easily mangle, probably even kill a pony unless he landed on the balustraded balcony below. She rushed for the broken window and frame, preparing a levitation spell in the hope of preventing the worst. But as she reached the broken window she saw something that took her breath away and that shocked her more than anything she had seen yet. In the light of the moon, she could see the shape of the attacker flying away, using wings that must have been concealed underneath his cape so far. 
"An alicorn?!" Twilight shouted outraged once she had recovered her speech. "An alicorn?!" she shouted again as if repeating it would make the inconceivable any more comprehensible. She took almost a kind of personal offense from the realization. It was not a long time since she had been turned into an alicorn herself and whatever misgivings she had about her wings at times, she did take great pride in this. Alicorns were the fewest, they were destined for great things, they were the guardians of what was good and from their ranks were the princesses of Equestria like Celestia and Luna in whose service the attacker professed to be. Alicorns were not supposed to be murderers or fiends of any sort. The idea that an alicorn could commit such acts let Twilight abandon all restrain. There flew the answers which she wanted to get and she would not let them fly away. With one leap Twilight followed the attacker through the broken window. 

"Twilight, wait!" Frank shouted. "Wait! You don't know what you are after! You cannot..." 
It was futile, the sound barrier spell was fading away only gradually as the one who had cast it was disappearing into the darkness of the night. The spell was still strong enough so Twilight, after crossing its iridescence, could not hear a word of Frank's warning. Desperately Frank rushed towards the broken window. The two shapes were barely visible anymore, but after a few moments a cascade of differently colored lights was marking the direction in which they were flying and battling each other. The direction of Everfree Forest. 
Frank had no clue how Twilight had gotten here just in the nick of time but her outraged shout had made clear that she had no idea what the attacker was. She was as ill suited as most ponies to take on this foe while he... after everything that happened... could perhaps stand a chance if he managed to... 
Frank cast a short look at the smoldering remnants of his saddle-bag and hot fury was boiling up in him. He went to the hatch leading down towards the office floor and began to trample its planks with all strength he had. This room had never been meant to be a prison cell. How long would it keep a pony in that was serious about getting out?