Spike was still sitting in Carousel Boutique when Sweetie Belle came home from her day at school. The spring days were still relatively short and she’d hurried back in order to beat the sun as it slipped towards the horizon.
“Hey Spike,” she said with a smile, “What are you doing here?”
Spike gulped, momentarily tongue tied. Sweetie was the only pony who even got close to Rarity in the beauty stakes. The way her mane played around her horn, the way she made up for her lack of grace with energy and enthusiasm… Spike, however, was faithful to his true love, and shook his head, as if to dislodge those disloyal thoughts.
“I was just waiting for Rarity. She’s gone to see Twilight and I didn’t think she’d want me along. You know, they needed some ‘girl time.’”
“Oh, right.”
There was an awkward pause. Although why it should have really been awkward, Spike didn’t know, but he felt a pressure to extricate himself from the situation.
“I, erm… well I should really be going, Sweetie Belle. I’m sure I’ll bump into Rarity on the way back.”
“Oh, umm, yeah, sure.”
Spike stood and wandered to the door, which still stood open from Sweetie’s arrival. With a glance back at the filly, he stepped out into the gathering gloom and closed the door with a sigh of relief.
Inside the boutique, Sweetie sighed too.
“Of course, you couldn’t have been here to see me, could you?”
***
Spike wandered down Mane Street, towards the library. He hoped Twilight was better after having seen her friend; she really had seemed terribly… angry? Upset? It had been difficult to tell. He’d never seen her like that before, like something had snapped inside of her suddenly. Although now he thought about it, she hadn’t been in the best of spirits for a while.
Spike’s thoughts were interrupted by a pink blur that barrelled into him at high velocity, knocking him backwards and sending him tumbling into a flower bed. Coughing out earth, he looked up at the weapon of mass destruction that was Pinkie Pie.
“Pinkie, what was that for?”
Pinkie giggled, pointing at the young dragon’s head.
“Oh Spike, you look just like a Pikmin.”
Spike hurriedly brushed of the flower that had been acting like it was a star atop a Hearth’s Warming tree and opened his mouth to ask exactly what a Pikmin was, but Pinkie ploughed on, as unstoppable in speech as in movement.
“And I was just on my way to Twilight’s house. Oh! Were you going too?”
Spike stood up and brushed himself off.
“As a matter of fact I was. It’s quite late.” not that you’re aware of little things like time, he didn’t add.
“Oh, so it is. Silly me.”
Pinkie giggled again. She always giggled. And bounced. Talking to her really took it out of you - she was certainly easier to take in small doses.
Together they walked towards the library, as the first stars began to be painted onto the canvas of the night sky by Luna, first a few dabs, then broader brushstrokes, until the sky was filled with sparkling diamonds. Or gems. Spike was reminded of Rarity and wondered what had happened to her.
The library was in total darkness as they approached, the little dragon jogging to keep pace with the larger mare. When it came to running at least, four legs really were better than two. Spike reached up and pulled at the door. Frowning, he turned to Pinkie.
“It’s locked.”
“Don’t you have a key?”
“No. I mean, I didn’t even know this door could be locked!”
“Then where’s Twilight?”
“And where are the others? Rarity went to visit her earlier, and she hadn’t come back when I left the shop.”
“Oh, that must be where Applejack went with Rarity too.”
There was a pause, as the two friends silently asked the same question – where the hay was everypony?
***
Applejack opened her eyes, then closed them again when she saw it didn’t make any difference. Or rather, she didn’t see. Her head chased that round for a few seconds and then she sighed, her breath seeming to echo in the huge space she was in. She felt a body tense next to her in the darkness, startled by the sound. Applejack turned her head and looked at where she thought her companion in the void was lying.
“Rarity? That you?”
There was a long pause.
“I… yes. It is me. But how… how do I know it’s you?”
Applejack thought about that.
“You don’t. An’ I don’t know if you’re you either.”
“Of course I’m me!” the voice said, indignantly.
Applejack sighed again, and raised a hoof to her forehead. At least her hat was still there, she realised as she brushed against the Stetson. That was something at least.
“Well then, I reckon we’re gonna have to just trust each other.”
Applejack felt a well-manicured hoof fumble at her side, until it touched against her own, significantly more weathered one.
“I trust you.”
The two ponies sat, holding hooves, alone in the dark.
***
Rainbow Dash lay, head resting on her cloud pillow, on her cloud bed, on the cloud floor, of her cloud room, in her cloud house. Nothing in Equestria was quite as comfortable as clouds at the end of the day. Plus the number of injuries from trips and falls were minimal. Rainbow groaned at that thought; she was getting to the stage in her life when practical things like that were becoming her biggest concerns. Growing up sucked.
“Why am I lying here in bed at nine pm, when I could be out partying? When did I become so… un-Rainbow?” she asked rhetorically.
“Oh, I think I know.”
Rainbow leapt into the air, slamming her head into the cloud ceiling. Maybe it was sensible to be worried about accidents in the home after all. She turned towards the source of the voice, which had practically dripped with malice and hatred. A shadow was standing in the doorway, framed against the night sky that showed through the hole that had been silently torn in the side of her house. So there was a drawback to clouds; if they were exploded it didn’t act as an alarm.
“Alright, whoever that is, you do realise you just put a hole in my house, right? That’s just asking for trouble.”
The shadow laughed maniacally.
“Oh please. Your comeuppance comes into your house in the dead of night, and your biggest concern is the destruction of your property? And you’ve talked and thought, rather than just kicking me in the face. You’re right; you’ve become very un-Rainbow.”
Something about the inflection or tone of the voice sparked Rainbow’s drowsy brain.
“Twi…Twilight? Is that you? What the hay do you think you’re doing? And whaddya mean my… comeuppance?”
The shadow advanced menacingly towards the rainbow maned pony hovering a foot above the bed.
“You know, the most irritating thing about my name is that it’s in two parts. Nobody ever really calls me Twilight Sparkle anymore. Not like Applejack, or Fluttershy. You understand what that’s like at least. It’s just unfortunate, because my new name would work so much better if people weren’t so lazy.”
“Your new… what?”
“Well you see, my dear Rainbow Dash, I used to be Twilight Sparkle. Now however, I like to think of myself as just Twilight. Without the Sparkle. The twilight of your existence as the self-centred egotistical brute that you are.”
The shadow laughed again, at its own joke. Rainbow rolled her eyes and sighed.
“Oh fantastic, Twilight’s gone all cartoony super-villain. Great. Well it was bound to happen at some point, all those experiments with that wacky machinery and time alone in your library.”
“You’re supposed to be terrified!”
“Oh, pur-lease Twilight, I’m Rainbow Dash. Nothing scares me, even if I can’t stay up partying until three in the morning anymore."
The shadow paused.
“Aren’t you even a little concerned about me?”
“I’ll be concerned after I’ve kicked you off my cloud!”
So saying, Rainbow Dash flew forward, back legs lashing out towards Twilight. They found their target, and Rainbow gave a small whoop of triumph as, combined with her momentum, they hit home with enough force to knock over a tree.
Or that was the theory anyway. Rainbow watched in dismay as her feet seemed to pass through Twilight, leaving her hopelessly off balance. The shadow’s horn flared, and Rainbow found herself surround by a purple aura, which lifted her into the air and slammed her against the wall. She saw, lit by the glow of Twilight’s horn, the face of her friend, the mad glint in her eyes and the grin which stretched across it. It wasn’t the face of a sane pony. Nor was it particularly cartoon-villain evil. Rainbow shuddered, suddenly gripped by the fear she’d been hiding since Twilight had first appeared as her mask of bravado slipped. The mare slowly walked towards her victim, like a spider feeling its way along a web towards a helpless fly. Rainbow gulped.
“You were asking why you were so un-Rainbow, as you put it. Well how about I tell you. You became un-Rainbow when you lost sight of your loyalty and became a jumped up, Wonderbolt-fawning, narcissistic, arrogant little toad. I know where you were this week when I running round after all the idiots in this stupid town during the day and crying at night - chasing after Soarin’ in Canterlot. As if he’d ever be interested in you.”
Twilight giggled again, as a look of hurt and dismay flashed across Rainbow’s face.
“You can’t hide from me Rainbow. I know everything. Your deepest and darkest desires and secrets are laid bare by my power. Not that they’d have been difficult to find out anyway, shallow and obvious as you are.”
Twilight’s horn stopped glowing, and Rainbow fell to the ground and sat, slumped against the wall, defeated by the vicious verbal attack. No longer lit, the shadow advanced.
“I was going to let you go you know. After all, you’re not really worth it. But then you and your team made it rain on me today, and, well, that’s not very nice. I guess there’s only value in keeping me dry when I have tickets to the Gala. It’s a shame that I have to do this really, but, like I say, at least it’ll make life far less annoying for Soarin’.”
Rainbow leapt up, tears in her eyes, determined to land a blow on the shadow that had been her friend. There was a flash of light, blinding her, and then… darkness.