//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3: Manipulation 
// Story: My Little Pony: Tirek's Revenge 
// by Darkblaze15 
//------------------------------//

	Twilight, Jenna, and Jacob vigorously scout almost every square inch of the Everfree forest; the longer they search, the more Twilight begins to believe that it was simply a fool’s mission.  Just as she is about to suggest they return to Ponyville, Jacob shouts out and points down towards a small clearing in the trees; Twilight flies over and is relieved to see her friends safe, albeit tied to a large wooden stake.  
"Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, you're all here!" she calls down to them and they look up in earnest.
"Twilight! We knew you'd come!" Applejack says.
"Well, maybe some of us knew," Rarity says and looks over at Rainbow Dash.
"What?  I never said she wouldn't find us!" Dash says defensively.
All of a sudden, Twilight, Jenna, and Jacob feel the ground shake in spurts, and realize that Tirek is not too far away from them and race to free their friends.  Suddenly, however, Starlight Glimmer appears directly in front of Twilight and the two of them tumble hoof over head of each other.  At the same time, Tirek plows through the treeline, not as towering as he was before, but menacing regardless of size.  Jenna and Jacob fly up and attempt to distract Tirek while Twilight battles with Starlight to reach her friends.  
“I didn’t say we would make this easy for you,” she sneers as they fire laser bolts at each other.
Meanwhile, John and Emily arrive inside the palace and race to find Celestia and Luna before the Changlings find them first.  They eventually find them in the corridor facing the entranceway, where the door is being banged violently inwards.  
“Do we have a plan of attack?” Emily asks nervously.
“There’s no time for that.  When the doors open, be prepared to fight!”  Luna shouts in response.
Just as the last word escapes her mouth, the door cracks to pieces and Queen Chrysalis and her Changelings swarm in straight for the Princesses.  Soon, everyone is part of the action; Princess Celestia takes on Queen Chrysalis alone while Luna, John, and Emily fight back against the Changelings.  After a while, however, the battle intensifies; John, Emily, and Luna are overrun by the increasing amount of Changelings, Emily is knocked to the ground, and Chrysalis has Celestia locked in a fierce battle when their beams connect.  Suddenly, however, Chrysalis pulls away from Celestia and begins talking to herself; after a little while, she retreats, with the rest of her Changelings in tow.  John, Emily, and the royal princesses’ stand there dumbfounded.
“It’s not like Chrysalis to give up a fight so easily,” Luna says, looking around at the damage the battle inflicted to the interior of the castle. 
“You’re right – which possibly means that the worst has yet to come,” Celestia says solemnly.  
“Well, next time she decides to show her face in Canterlot again, we're sure to be more prepared than ever!” John says optimistically.  
“Speaking of ‘we’, where’s Twilight Sparkle?  I thought my sister sent her message directly to her,” Luna says to John and Emily.  
“Oh no, Twilight!” Emily says from her position on the ground, “She might need our help.  We have to find her,” but as she tries to stand, she falls back over.  
“You can’t possibly teleport us in this condition, you’ll hurt yourself even more,” John says sternly; he nudges Emily onto his back and unfurls his wings.  “Let us know if Chrysalis tries to invade again,” John says to the princesses; they agree, and John and Emily fly back to Ponyville in the light of the setting sun.
Back in the forest, Jenna and Jacob are still battling Tirek, who is becoming increasingly annoyed by their tactics, and Twilight manages to fend Starlight off by blasting her into a tree, rendering her temporarily unconscious.  Twilight makes a mad dash for her trapped friends when another set of her friends charges through the trees and into the clearing.  
Momentarily stunned by this sudden arrival, Twilight exclaims “Wait a minute – which of you are my real friends?”  
“We are!” shouted the trapped Applejack.
“Don’t listen to them, Twilight, we’re your real friends!” the new Applejack exclaims, and the bickering between the two groups continues.  Little did Twilight know that the “new” set of friends were indeed the real Mane 5, but they were being controlled by King Sombra, who was hiding in the trees.  Finally, Twilight moves towards her tied-up friends when free Pinkie Pie suddenly tackles Twilight to the ground.
“If you don’t wanna believe us, then we’ll make you believe us!” she says and the rest of them pile on top of Twilight.  Realizing that this was this group of friends who were rude to her earlier that day, Twilight blasts them off of her and begins to fight them.  After a while, Jenna and Jacob temporarily incapacitate Tirek by forcing him into a nearby lake, they rush back to see Twilight battling her friends, who were supposedly free.  
“What’s going on down there?” Jacob wonders.
“I don’t know, but we better help her,” Jenna says and they fly towards the fighting friends.  
Meanwhile, John and Emily find the rest of their friends fighting each other, and land just as Twilight shouts to the supposedly freed friends, “Enough!  You can go back to where you came from!” and fires a beam of magic at the group of friends, which encompasses them inside a ball of light; suddenly, the ball of light explodes, sending a shockwave all through the Everfree forest and making the ponies disappear.  Feeling relieved that the battle was over, Twilight turns to free her friends from their stake.
However, when she turns, she does not see her friends tied up, but instead five Changelings with the rope laying loosely around their hooves.  They cackle with delight and fly away into the night, leaving Twilight, who realizes what just happened, too shocked to speak.  
“Twilight, what happened here?  Where are your friends, and Jacob and Jenna, too?”  John asks.  
“I . . . I . . .” Twilight stammers, “I . . . I think I just . . . killed them,” she finishes with tears in her eyes.  John and Emily gasp.
“What do you mean?” Emily asks, but before she can get an answer, Twilight unfurls her wings and zooms away.  “What are we going to do now?” Emily asks.
“I don’t know,” John says, “but I do know that we should get back to Twilight before she does anything irrational.  Here, get on my back, I’ll get us there.”  
“It’s alright, I’m feeling good enough to teleport us back to Ponyville – it’ll be much quicker.”  John agrees and they vanish once more to find Twilight.
Back in Twilight’s castle, Spike paces around Twilight’s bedroom, worried that something had gone wrong.  Soon, however, Twilight appears on the balcony outside her door, and Spike becomes overjoyed to see her.  He begins asking questions about the quest.
“You’re back!  What happened?  Did you defeat Starlight Glimmer and save –” then he sees that Twilight is the only other pony in the room.  “Where are our friends?” Spike asks warily, to which Twilight replies 
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Twilight says with her head hanging low.  Spike, however, insists on uncovering the truth.
“Where did they go?  Were they really captured?  You said you would protect them, right?  You promised to return –”
Suddenly, the emotional strain becomes too much for Twilight.  Her eyes begin to glow solid white and her horn acts up, throwing random objects across the room in a fit of rage.  
“Twilight, what are you doing?!” Spike shouts.
At the sound of her name being called, a bright light encompasses Twilight and bursts outward as she screams out in agony.  	Meanwhile, John and Emily arrive in the middle of Ponyville and make their way Twilight’s castle.  “Do you think she’ll be alright?  Will she be able to handle what she did?” Emily asks.  Just before they reach the castle, they hear Twilight’s scream and are flung backward by her shockwave of emotions.  
“I think we found the answer to that,” John says sarcastically, and they race inside to comfort their friend.
When they find Twilight and Spike, the room is a complete mess; Spike is doing his best to hastily tidy the room up while Twilight lays face down on her bed, crying her eyes out.  John and Emily immediately feel sorry for her and try to get her to talk about what happened in the forest.  
"They . . . I thought . . . they were . . . the bad ones, they . . . acted like the bad ones, but . . .” Twilight manages to stammer through fits of fresh tears.  
“But, if they were your real friends, then why did they attack you?  Unless . . . they weren’t in control of their own actions,” John concludes.  
“What makes you think that?  What unicorn in Equestria has the power take control of five ponies at once, other than maybe the princesses?” Emily asks.  
“I don’t know,” John says, “Was there anypony else in the clearing besides you, Starlight, and Tirek?” he asks Twilight, but she doesn’t answer; instead, she keeps muttering the same phrase, “I can’t feel them anymore”.  John and Emily are trying to make sense of its meaning when Princess Celestia teleports into the room.
“Twilight, I sensed that you were upset.  What is the matter?” she says soothingly.  
“Oh, Celestia,” Twilight begins, “I didn’t have a choice, they would have torn me apart, but –” and she falls back and begins to sob again.  “I could sense their presence before, but now I can’t feel anything,” she adds, which leaves everypony puzzled.  
“What does she mean by that, your Highness?” Emily asks.
“I believe it might be a side effect of carrying the elements of Harmony for so long," Celestia replies, "Twilight must have a deep psychological connection with her friends; she feels their emotions just as they probably can feel hers.”  
“If that’s true, and she can’t sense anything from her friends, then Jacob and Jenna –” Emily starts, but John interrupts her.
“No, I refuse to believe they’re really gone.  I’ll be right back,” and he flies out of the room and into town.