First order of business was to give Twilight some target practice, and to be honest I probably could use some myself. The Everfree Forest was all to happy to oblige. At the moment, the only thing preventing us from becoming a timberwolf meal was the shield surrounding us, courtesy of our friendly, neighborhood alicorn.
A quite efficacious shield it was too. I felt no need to hurry as I checked the settings on my time stunner. Twilight watched me, ignoring the timberwolves’ vicious clawing at the lavender bubble. Thank Celestia those claws made no sound as they scraped against the shield.
“This dial here controls the angle of dispersion. A concentrated burst is obviously more effective at slowing down a single target, but a widespread shot has its uses when confronted with a large number of targets.”
I turned it all the way to a narrow beam.
“These three toggles independently control whether the shot affects animal, vegetation, or mineral.”
I toggled vegetation on—because timberwolves—as Twilight nodded in understanding.
“The blast will harmlessly pass through anything not selected.” Which was why vegetation was usually turned off. Mustn’t give a monster the chance to protect itself behind a bush, after all.
Twilight scrunched her muzzle. “Why would you ever turn mineral on?”
“To deal with raging water or flowing lava, for example. It also allows earth or stone to protect innocent bystanders.”
I inserted a hoof into the grip, lifted the weapon to my face, and gently inserted the trigger into my mouth. I sighted along the shaft, selecting a timberwolf blissfully unaware of what was about to hit it.
I bit down on the trigger.
A near-ultraviolet ball of light crossed the distance in a split-second, far too fast to be evaded. The creature flashed the same color upon being hit dead-center.
At first it appeared to be frozen in place, but that was an illusion. It began to tip over. It tried to regain its balance, but its motions were hopelessly lethargic. It fell to the ground at an all-too-normal rate and shattered into pieces on impact.
“Awesome…” muttered an impressed Rainbow Dash.
“Its metabolism has slowed so much,” I explained, “that it doesn’t have the strength to hold itself together.”
The other timberwolves continued clawing and biting the shield, ignoring their fallen comrade as it tried to pull itself together. It couldn’t.
“It’s not hurt, is it?” a concerned voice asked.
You wouldn’t last five seconds at The Agency, Fluttershy. Not that there was much room for Kindness in that line of work. Regardless, I could assuage her concerns. “Once it wears off in a few minutes, the timberwolf will be fine. It doesn’t directly cause any injury; you can’t even feel being hit.”
Rarity gave me a skeptical eye. “How can you be so sure?”
“I’ve been hit numerous times as part of training,” I calmly stated. “Accidents can happen in the field, after all, and the worst part of being hit is not understanding what the hay is happening.”
“And just what is it like?” Applejack asked.
I gave myself a few seconds to come up with the best way to describe it. “Everything is suddenly going impossibly fast. The worst part is gravity; it seems to become impossibly strong. The real value of the training is learning how to get yourself down on the ground without injuring yourself.”
If I was feeling generous to a monster, I would use a wide-angle setting and multiple shots, so as to gently ramp up the effect.
I turned to Twilight. “It’s your turn now.”
Twilight levitated the other time stunner to herself and matched its settings to my own. She didn’t use the hoof-grip, unsurprisingly. Once aimed at another clawing timberwolf, a twitch of telekinesis caused it to fire.
Another near-ultraviolet ball of light shot out, almost missing the target. An almost-miss being as good as a dead-center hit, the timberwolf soon joined its comrade, in pieces on the ground.
I gave her score. “Not bad for a first try.”
Not content with a mere passing grade, with determination Twilight re-aimed and shot again. Too bad for her, the timberwolves had caught on and were moving around too much.
She missed.
She re-aimed and shot once more, and missed again.
I decided lessons were over for now; I didn’t have all day. I switched to a wide-angle setting and blasted them. It slowed them all down; not enough to get them to lose balance and fall apart, but that wasn’t the point.
I switched back to narrow-angle, and blasted each one separately in quick succession. Within seconds, they were all in pieces on the ground.
The six Element Bearers stared with mouths agape. If they had any doubts about my credentials before, they were just blown away.
“It’s safe to drop the shield,” I said, trying not to smirk as I put my saddlebags back on. “I suggest we depart before they recover.”
The forest, unfortunately, did not provide any additional training opportunities—not because Twilight could use it, because she could, but because it gave my traveling companions plenty of time to pester me for my backstory.
“But if this super-duper-secret agency was all about stopping monster meanies from hurting ponies, why did it need to be secret?”
I stopped, and not just because there was a big patch of poison joke in front of us.
“Yeah, shouldn’t you, like, be heroes… you know, like the Wonderbolts?”
I gazed back at Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie with a dumb look on my face. I’d never really thought about it before. To be honest, the whole secrecy thing was part of the appeal.
But knowing what I now knew… “I think it was due to the weapons we used.” Because they’re based on magics that ponies aren’t supposed to know about, I kept to myself.
“I’m sure Celestia had her reasons,” Twilight rationalized, putting an end to that topic.
Yes, and you didn’t take it well when you had learned of them.
We made our way around the poison joke, and continued on in blessed silence.
Now left alone to my thoughts, I pondered what I’d do once we were done with bugbear. Somehow, I doubted Twilight would just let me go back to the old castle. I could always explain everything once again, but she’d get Celestia involved and… it was just a big waste of time.
I might have to use the time stunner against them to make my escape. That was a last resort, but it had to be an option. To hedge my bets, I had brought my saddlebags with me, just in case I had to hide out in the forest until the next day.
We came to a wide and deep river. I looked at Twilight, wondering why she had led us this way. There was no bridge or other natural means of crossing. Was she planning on teleporting us all across?
“Steven, darling, are you there?” Rarity called out.
Steven? Why was that name familiar?
A giant purple sea serpent with overly-styled orange hair undulated towards us.
Not good, I mentally sighed.
Oddly enough, he was missing a piece of his flamboyant mustache. I knew how important that was to him, so what had happened?
His joyous smile faded when he spotted me. “What’s she doing here with you?” he theatrically demanded of the others.
“I don’t understand,” Twilight said. “What problem do you have with Bon Bon?”
“Bon Bon?” He glared at me. “You think using a fake name is going to fool me?”
Twilight locked her eyes on me. She already knew about my assumed identity, but that enabled her to deduce what might have been the serpent’s problem with me.
So I confirmed it, so as to get past this as soon as possible. “Steven Magnet was one of my early assignments. He had fit the profile.” I looked him in his humongous eyes. “It turned out to be a mistake, and Princess Celestia offered her sincerest apologies and compensation to make up for it.” And as part of the deal, he was supposed to keep his mouth shut.
I still had my doubts about him; I hadn’t been joking about that serpent fitting the profile. Like the bugbear, the hydra, the ursa major—yeah, it had the child, but where were the others of its kind?—and even Discord, Steven was one-of-a-kind. He appeared out of nowhere one day, scaring the crap out of many ponies—though not because of anything he had actually done, it had turned out. He wasn’t fated to wreak havoc on Equestria; after all, Cerberus had found a productive role for himself guarding the entrance to Tartarus.
“Even so,” he said with a dramatic toss of his head, “you didn’t have to be so brutish about it. You wouldn’t even let me explain!”
What could I have said? Among the few monsters who could talk, Discord had set a very bad example. And to this day, so far as I knew, Steven’s explanation did not include his origins.
Twilight flew over to the serpent’s head for a more private conversation. I could still make out what she was saying.
“Look, I promise I’ll talk to you later about this, but right now we need to cross this river and be on our way.”
Steven petulantly thought about it for a second. “Fine. I’ll help you across like before.” He crossed his arms. “But not her.”
Twilight sighed. “Not a problem. I’ll teleport her across myself.”
“I find that acceptable,” he said with a huff. “Give my regards to Cranky the next time you see him.”
“You can count on that.” She was about to return to us, but thought of one more thing to add. “He’s still wearing that makeshift toupee you made him. Says it’s the best toupee he’s ever had.”
Suddenly it clicked. Is that what happened to his mustache?
“Well. It was the least I could do for my best friend on his wedding day.”
Twilight brought us to a stop. Not far ahead a clearing was visible beyond the trees, and on the other side of the clearing was a rocky hill. The dark opening to a cave, angled away from us, was visible. “We believe the bugbear is hiding out in this cave,” she quietly said. “It was first spotted two days ago.”
We all stood there silently, listening for any sounds the bugbear might make as it went about its business. There was only the usual background noise of the breeze blowing through the canopy and the ever-present insects and birds.
Either the bugbear wasn’t around, or it was taking a nap in that cave.
Only one way to find out. I set my time stunner for animal only. The cave wasn’t that close, so I didn’t want too wide a dispersion. The appropriate adjustment was made. I aimed it at the cave entrance and fired several shots, panning away from the entrance to where the interior should have been. The shots effortlessly passed through the intervening trees and the side of the hill.
“I’m going in.”
Nopony objected.
I eagerly trotted to the cave entrance, the others following close behind. It’s been too long since I’d last done this.
We gathered at the threshold. Applejack got the rope ready while Twilight illuminated the back of the cave with her horn.
It was empty, apart from the remains of its previous meals.
“Now what?” Rainbow Dash said plaintively.
I thought that would have been obvious. “We wait until it comes back.”
Something Twilight had said just registered. “You said it was first spotted here two days ago. Where was it before then?”
The alicorn shrugged. “We don’t have a clue. After it had escaped from Tartarus years ago nopony could find any trace of it, then suddenly it reappeared near this cave.”
So… it suddenly reappeared just before I got injected back into this world. What were the odds?
“Uh, guys?” Pinkie’s leg started twitching. “Twitchy leg.”
I jerked around, but saw nothing… no… I could hear something, the buzz of giant insect wings in the distance, and getting louder. “I guess we don’t have long to wait.”
There it was! It was skimming the top of the canopy, dipping down as it reached the clearing. The bugbear held a small deer against its body, motionless, probably poisoned by its stinger.
It dropped the deer; it’s seen us.
I reflexively brought my weapon up, ready to fire.
But the bugbear was just hovering there. Why wasn’t it attacking? It had never hesitated to take the offensive before. Yet there it was, motionless. It just stared at us.
No. It was staring at me.
“Stay here.” I stepped forward, my eyes locked on the bugbear and my time stunner ready to fire, in an awkward three-hoof gait. It remained motionless, its face expressionless.
As I crossed the clearing, it became clear Discord hadn’t been messing with me. Sure, I had the time stunner, but I was sensing no hostility, no waiting for an opening. If it had no intention of attacking, then… what?
I stopped a half-dozen feet away. We stared at each other. I took a quick look back. Twilight had her time stunner pointed, more or less, at the bugbear hovering above the ground. Well, I could handle getting hit.
Fine. Let’s see what happens.
I dropped my time stunner. It hit the ground with a muted thud.
“What are you doing!?” Twilight shouted in surprise.
The bugbear idly looked at the discarded weapon, then calmly returned its gaze to me.
I tried to make sense of it. “Just… wait,” I told her.
“Bon Bon, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but we need to capture it. Get out of the way.”
“Something’s going on here,” I said, trying to buy more time. “I don’t think it’s a danger anymore.”
“Get out of the way,” Twilight said, running out of patience. “We can sort that out later.”
Instead, I got closer. “Why are you really here?” I asked it quietly, not that I expected an answer.
“I’m sorry, Bon Bon.”
Damn it, Twilight. I instantly dropped to the ground.
Twilight fired.
My vision flashed near-ultraviolet. I was braced for the crushing gravity, so all I needed to do was wait it out. It wouldn’t even take long; while the effect lasts several minutes, from my perspective it might last only seconds. I expected to watch Applejack hogtie the creature in record speed.
That isn’t what happened.
Instead, reality around me rippled away to gray, revealing a lime-green unicorn rabbit with cyan whiskers.