Twilight walked around the table, re-triple-checking that the shield surrounding it was good. It hummed slightly from the extra magic Twilight had put in. Everything seemed to be in order. “Test 42D,” she muttered to herself, for no reason other than she wanted to. “Color filtering. If my hypothesis is correct, upon contact with the bolt, the energy within the shield should decohere and bleed away into the surrounding area over the course of just under five seconds. As it does so, the specific mechanism in the loss of energy will cause the color to redshift from magenta to red to infrared and below. Beginning…” She picked up the quarrel in her magic, careful to avoid the arrowhead. “Now.” She tapped the head to the shield.
The change was slow, but immediately noticeable. The shield’s integrity began weakening and its color started reddening. Twilight counted under her breath. “One one-thousand…”
After a few tests, Twilight had found that “grounding” was a surprisingly accurate term. Rather than trying to keep magic from moving, as in Equestria’s magical defenses, the quarrel redirected the magic to the earth, like a grounded electrical circuit. Technically, the forms for spells — shields, telekinesis, what have you — were still there, but the magic was flowing along a much easier route. It was actually very clever, as it could work with somepony of any amount of power. From Twilight’s tests, it would only prevent a unicorn from using magic if the arrowhead actually made contact with them, and the grounding would only last as long as the contact was maintained or (presumably; she hadn’t tested it) if an actual wound was made. Simply passing through a spell would disrupt the spell, but leave the unicorn untouched, metaphysically speaking.
“Two one-thousand…” All traces of blue were completely gone, and the shield was a somewhat gaudy red.
But there was a catch: just as magic could flow down to the earth, it could also flow up from the earth. And making magic come up from the earth was something earth ponies did every day. It was where their non-biological strength came from, how they made plants grow. All Twilight had to do was weave a little earth pony magic into her spells in just the right way and — hopefully — once the unicorn magic was flowing down, the earth pony magic would push it back up, and everything would go on as normal, following a sort of magical version of Kirchhoof’s current law. There’d be no defense against it because abadas didn’t use earth pony magic.
“Three one-thousand…” The shield was a very dark, very faint red, almost invisible. Twilight placed her hoof on it so she could tell when it was gone gone, as opposed to just out of sight.
But although Twilight’s first few attempts to block the grounding with earth pony magic had been successful, she didn’t want to just jump out and use it like that. She had to know exactly how it worked and be sure of her guesses to avoid any more unpleasant surprises. Being sure meant testing. Twilight had tried all sorts of different arrangements of different types of magic, seeing what did what because of what. And after hours of work, she was on a roll; this was quite the fruitful experiment group, and she was quickly learning grounding’s strengths and limitations.
“Four one-thousand…” Twilight could barely feel the shield beneath her hoof and had to resist the urge to push; pushing might make it collapse prematurely.
And that wasn’t even getting into what would happen if it was applied in reverse. Pure unicorn magic wouldn’t work so well, not when she was the only one using it, but mixing it with earth pony magic could do a lot. Hypothetically speaking, she might be able to single-hoofedly ground anypony near her. Or any abadas. And since an abada or a unicorn alone wouldn’t be able to ground someone, any would-be assassins would be taken completely off-guard. It made Twilight feel quite happy. Also that she was cheating a little, but you know; love and war and all that.
“Five on-” And Twilight’s hoof dropped as the shield was gone. She pounded her hoof in the air; a brief flap of her wings took her airborne for a second. “Ha! Yessssss!” she whispered loudly. “Perfect!” She knew how it worked. She knew how to counter it.
Stormwalker poked her nose in. “It’s going well, I take it?” she asked. “Whatever ‘it’ is.”
“Guess who’s now the proud practitioner of anti-anti-magic!”
“So… magic?”
“Nope! Watch.” A shield formed around the table. “This is an ordinary shield. Just magic.” Twilight poked it with the quarrel and, with a slight tingle in her horn, the shield fell. “See?” She quickly formed a new one. “And this is a shield with magic and anti-anti-magic.” She poked the new shield. Again, there was a mild tingle, but this time, nothing changed within the shield itself; the quarrel bounced off. “Stops the grounding right in its tracks!”
“Okay. Cool,” Stormwalker said disinterestedly.
But Twilight didn’t care. “Of course, it’s got its limitations,” she said, twirling the bolt around. “It can’t work after the fact, for starters, since it relies on earth pony magic getting shaped by unicorn magic, so if my unicorn magic’s already been grounded, I can’t un-ground it. But that just means I need to be prepared for it when I go out, and as long as I remember to weave earth pony magic into my spells, I don’t need to worry about a thing. I also don’t think I’ll be able to block it if I’m more than ten feet from the ground or something attached to it because I can’t form a solid enough connection, but that also means that grounding itself won’t be able to form a solid enough connection, so it won’t… be able… to…”
Stormwalker was gone, repulsed by the arcanobabble. Twilight huffed and blew a strand of hair out of her eye.
But being ignored couldn’t keep her down for long. It’d taken several hours but she had it: knowledge of what harmed her and, more importantly, knowledge of how to prevent it. Some small part of her said that there had to be more to it than that, but abada magic worked nearly identically to unicorn magic, while earth pony magic was far outside their context. She would do just fine. And just in case she wasn’t, she was already formulating several other ways of blocking grounding. What if she used pegasus magic instead of earth pony magic, for instance? What if… And so on and so forth.
Twilight was dangerously close to whistling when she exited her room. Most of her entourage was is the living room, passing the time doing whatever. “Fillies and gentlecolts and dragon,” she proclaimed, “I am proud to announce that not only I fully understand grounding, but I am also fully prepared to counter it.”
“You’re only using the isolated forms of the letters, here,” Livingstone said to Spike, poking at a paper they were both staring at. “It’s readable, yes, but it looks quite crude.”
“I hated cursive when it was in Equestrian,” mumbled Spike as he scribbled something out with a quill, “and that was before I had to learn a whole new set of letters. Letters that are written from right to left. And don’t have vowels.”
“Zebran developed a predominantly cursive script because it’s far easier to write without magic. For a zebra, anyway, I assume you have little difficulty with a discrete script, yes?”
“Yeah, I noticed that,” Cumulus said to Mtetezi. “How come she hasn’t married yet?”
“She’s in the middle of courtship, actually,” Mtetezi said. “A duke, I can’t remember his name. I think they’ve been friends since childhood, but…” She shrugged. “I don’t keep track of royal affairs as much as I should.”
Twilight scowled and cleared her throat. “So I’m going to lay some protective wards around here,” she said loudly, “so we don’t have to worry as much about possibly being attacked, which I think we can all agree is a very real risk.”
“Yeah,” said Spike. “I write faster than most ponies, even unicorns. I’m pretty good at writing.”
“You are indeed,” Livingstone said, holding back a grin. “If you weren’t a princess’s scribe already, I might just be trying to snatch you away for myself.”
“I get that,” Cumulus said with a nod. “Of course, I’ve got the excuse of Celestia never marrying anypony, but I don’t think I’d follow that sort of thing even if she wasn’t immortal.”
“The whole immortal ruler thing seems… kinda creepy,” said Mtetezi. “I mean, she’s the same when you’re born and when you die and there’s no change of leadership? You’re really lucky she’s benevolent.”
“I’m not sure she’s invincible, though; she might just be ageless. Hypothetically, if she did go bad, we might be able to…”
Askari returned from the kitchen with a glass of water on her back. “For what it’s worth, Your Highness, I thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” mumbled Twilight. She rolled her shoulders and flexed her wings. “Anyway…”
Her dissatisfaction at being ignored couldn’t last forever, though, and she was good at wards. As she circled around the embassy, laying down her enchantments, her brain entered the easy monotony of performing a task she was skilled at, she shifted gears in her thoughts. She had a bit more information on her suspects. So, what could she do about it?
She had some extra information on Okubi. Nothing to throw her out, like Uvivi or Inkosi, but enough to discount her compared to Mtendaji at least a little. She hadn’t cared enough about grounding to make Mhate not explain it, but that might just be her being assured in the impossibility of blocking it. Okubi didn’t seem to be the kind of person to make those assumptions, but there was always the possibility.
But she couldn’t just think about what Okubi had done in that little chat. No, she also had to think about everything else Okubi had done. Generally, be silent, talk in short sentences, and stare. Not much. Twilight also applied to Mtendaji. She, on the other hoof, had greeted Twilight, talked with her a bit about Imayini (which, according to Kutengwa, was mostly lies), talked with Spike about dragon biology, offered her kashata, visited her in the medical ward, suggested she go to the theatre if she was goi-
Twilight tripped on nothing as her brain crunched gears. Mtendaji had, out of nowhere, suggested she go to the theatre. When she’d gone to the theatre, there was an assassin there, waiting for her. Coincidence? Maybe. But it did look mighty suspicious. Twilight hadn’t initially thought of going to the theatre, but that wasn’t to say her subconscious hadn’t picked up on Mtendaji’s suggestion. It was hardly conclusive evidence, obviously, but it did sort of waggle its eyebrows suggestively, going “look over there”, especially since Spike’s set of assassins had only come out once she’d entered the thea-
Spike’s assassins had been using morning stars. Those weapons had spikes, but they were largely blunt force weapons. Blunt force could go through armor; they might not penetrate, but the shockwave could do terrible things to your insides. (Although dragon insides were stronger than pony insides, to deal with the fire, but it was unlikely Spike knew that.) Spike was so small, no one had any reason to believe his scales were that strong. Unless you’d spent about ten minutes talking to him about dragon biology during dinner, as a certain abada CEO had.
Hmm. Things weren’t looking good for Mtendaji. Again, nothing conclusive or unbeatably solid, but the stack of evidence against her was easily the highest and, unlike the others, she didn’t have much “anti-evidence”, for lack of a better term, to suggest she hadn’t done it. Hopefully, Inkosi’s zebras were having a better time of it.
After the course of about an hour, it was done. Twilight had jammed protective spells into every corner, properly layered with earth pony magic in the right ways. Hostile zebras or abadas wouldn’t be able to enter the embassy, not without permission from her or one of the other members of her group, and any magic attempting to enter from the outside would be blocked (but not grounded; Twilight didn’t want to have her defenses depend on something she hadn’t tested yet). An abada attempting to ground the magic would have no luck. Right?
Just to be safe, Twilight took the quarrel outside the embassy, tweaked the spells a little to disallow the quarrel, and tossed it at the open door. The second before the arrowhead crossed the threshold, the ward hummed briefly. It was a low sound, right on the edge of hearing. At the same time, the quarrel twisted in the air as the arrowhead was pushed away; it spun lazily and flew slowly through the air to bounce lightly off the opposite wall. Yes, indeed, grounding these wards was impossible.
From their spots in the living room, Spike and Livingstone looked up upon hearing Twilight amble back into the embassy. “You look happy,” Spike observed.
“Not to brag,” Twilight said, rubbing her hoof against her chest, “but I did just lay down a set of ungroundable wards to ensure our protection without keeping our guards up at all hours.”
Livingstone blinked and her ears went rigid. “Excuse me? You figured out how to block grounding?”
“You weren’t listening at all, were you?”
“Listening to what?”
Twilight sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Yes, I figured out how block grounding. Long story short, it involves the right application of earth pony magic.”
Livingstone blinked again and her jaw slowly dropped as her mouth slid into a miniscule “O” shape. “Sorry,” she whispered.
“But now that I know that…” Twilight waved a hoof around the room. “I’ve laid up protective spells all over the place. Anybody who wants to get in to kill us won’t be able to, and they won’t be able to ground the magic to get rid of it, either. I’ve set the wards to detect overly hostile thoughts, a-”
Spike coughed.
“-and long story short, we’re safe and nobody can get to us.”
“Most excellent,” Livingstone said, smiling slightly. “I imagine that abadas would shocked to hear of your success, yes, although it is probably not the best idea to simply tell them.”
“So…” Spike looked at Twilight, looked at Livingstone. “Now what?”
Twilight shrugged. “I have no idea. Wait, I guess.”
Waiting was a hay of a lot easier for Twilight when she could read a fraction of the many, many books available to her.
Twilight’s reading skills for Zebran letters weren’t at 100%, but they were high. Over 75%, definitely. The books available ranged from light, trashy fiction to deep philosophical treatises that Twilight suspected she would’ve enjoyed immensely if half the words weren’t complex ones she couldn’t understand (probably things like “oligarchy”). Science and hippological ones, the ones she was really interested in, were most regrettably missing. She wondered why, exactly, this collection of books was being kept in this particular suite, but decided to just accept and enjoy it.
But now that she was safe and secure, her mind kept going to a pony and a zebra who might not be. Exactly how were Applejack and Zecora doing? They had a good guide, and they were both strong equines, but they didn’t know there was some sort of conspiracy here, and that conspiracy might be targeting them, too.
Then an idea came to her. Livingstone had mentioned that Idube always went to the same bar. They were supposed to arrive sometime this evening — sometime soon, as Twilight looked out a window and saw that it already was evening. So, with her new protection, she could just pop out and visit them there, just to reassure herself. After a quick bit of preparation, though.
Once she borrowed one of Spike’s gems for the purpose, she went back to the living room and asked, “Livingstone, you said Idube always takes a rest at the same place when she arrives in Kulikulu, right?”
“Yes, yes she does,” Livingstone said, looking up. “The Bonde Baa. Why? Are you thinking you might want to meet your friends there?”
“Yeah. I know they’re probably safe, but…” Twilight rubbed the back of her neck. “I just want to be sure.”
Spike jumped up on his seat. “Can I come? I-”
“I’m sorry, Spike,” Twilight said, “but I’ve got something else for you.” She laid a gem, glowing white, on the table. “I’ve linked this gem with my life. If I’m badly hurt, it’ll narrow into a beam pointing at me and you’ll know to come and find me. If I die, i-”
“But- but Twilight,” Spike protested, “didn’t you just say you knew how to block grounding? And if you can block that, th-”
“This is just to be absolutely sure,” said Twilight. “I don’t want you waiting around, not knowing what happened to me. If I die-” She tapped the gem. “This light will go out, and you should send a letter to Princess Celestia ASAP. Okay?”
Spike looked at the gem for a moment, then looked up at Twilight. “Alright,” he said. “But-”
“Look, I’m positive I’ll be okay,” Twilight said. “Like you said, I can block grounding. This is just so you know I’m still fine.”
Spike looked at the gem again and seemed to crumple in relief. “Okay. That I can take.”
Livingstone darted back into the room with a map of Kulikulu. “It won’t do you much good if you don’t know where the place is, no,” she muttered as she laid the map out flat. “Okay, we are right here…” She poked at a blob Twilight recognized as the palace layout. “And the Bonde Baa is right… bum bum bum… right here.” She poked at someplace on the other side of Kulikulu, close to the edge. For a moment, Twilight thought she might need a more detailed map, but then she found a few landmarks to help orient herself. The Bonde Baa was three blocks south of a roughly circular park, right in the middle of the block. She could remember that.
She scanned the map, committing the streets to memory. “And they should be there soon?” she asked Livingstone.
“Ideally,” said Livingstone with a nod. “Travel time can vary, obviously, so there is a slim chance they might not be here until tomorrow, but if they could be here tonight, Idube would drive her caravan to get here at a reasonable time, yes.”
One last look-over, and Twilight was sure she could find the Bonde Baa. “Okay, good.” She sighed and flexed her wings. “Well, no time like the present. I’m off. Be seeing you in less than an hour, hopefully.” She laid her hoof on the outside door’s pedal.
“Hey, Twilight?” said Spike. “Be safe.”
Twilight smiled. “Don’t worry about me, Spike. I’ll be fine. Goodbye.”
The moment Twilight had exited the embassy and taken a few steps down the hall, she realized that she could use a partner in this. She didn’t need one, but another pair of her eyes would be useful. That was what her bodyguards were for, right? She turned around just in time to see-
“Wait!” Stormwalker banged through the door, slid across the hall, and smacked lightly against the opposite wall. “Your Highness, I’m coming with you. You could use somepony to help protect you, and, at the very least, two pairs of eyes are better than one. I know that you-”
“-would be happy to have you come along,” Twilight interrupted. “I was just thinking that I should have you or Cumulus come with me.”
Stormwalker blinked, then bowed slightly. “Thank you.” Straightening up, she asked, “But you do realize we can’t just walk right over to that bar, right? First of all, we’ll have to get out of the palace without being seen. They’re going to have-”
Twilight’s horn sparked.
“-people watching the exits, and…” Stormwalker blinked and shuffled her hooves. “…and…” She looked down. Cobblestoned streets, not tiled floors, lay beneath her hooves. Twilight had teleported them out of the palace to one of the side alleys not too far from the marketplace.
Stormwalker blinked again, then lowered her head and sniffed the street, as if checking to see if it was real. Still staring at the street, she muttered, “Okay, that was scary.”
“The wards I put up keep offensive magic from being used in the embassy,” explained Twilight, “and that includes teleportation, both in and out. I can’t take us all the way there because it’s too far for me, and I don’t know the area. I don’t want us popping into existence in the middle of a wall.”
“Ah.” Stormwalker looked over her shoulder at the street. “So, what, we’ll walk the rest of the way? Looking like this?”
Twilight spread her wings. “Actually, we’ll just fly. It’s quicker an-”
“Whoa, no.” Stormwalker stepped on Twilight’s tail, even though she hadn’t tried taking off yet. “What if someone in the conspiracy looks up and sees us? There aren’t a whole lot of flying zebras in Zebrabwe, after all.”
“And why would they look up?”
“Because-” Stormwalker cut herself so quickly it was like a recording stopped. She clicked her teeth together as she stared at nothing in particular, then eventually admitted, “I don’t know. But someone will.”
“No, they won’t.”
“Really,” Stormwalker snorted. “They just won’t look up.”
“Really. There’s no reason for them to do that. You don’t get it because you’ve always been a pegasus, but pegasi think a lot more three-dimensionally than earth ponies and unicorns.” Twilight flicked her tail out from under Stormwalker’s hoof. “See, the ability to move up at will means pegasus brains develop a bit differently than those of other ponies, and looking up and down is a habit pegasi form easily before they’re five years old, whereas it rarely develops at all in the other two. They’ve actually done studies on this.” She began gesturing, forming an imaginary room. “The researchers hid an item in a room and told the subjects to find it. But the item wasn’t hidden behind anything, it was taped to the ceiling. On average, pegasi took only a fifth of the time to find the item compared to the other two tribes because when they couldn’t find it on the ground, they’d just look up, while unicorns and earth po-”
“I get it,” Stormwalker said quickly.
“And as a former unicorn myself,” said Twilight, “I can say that one of the weirder side effects of… alicornication, I guess, is mild neck pain, because I had to learn to look up before I took flight, and I wasn’t used to doing that. It’s gone now, though.” She flapped her wings once. “So, yes. They just won’t look up. And on the very slim chance they do and they recognize us, they won’t be able to do much. We’ll be safe once we’re in the air.”
“…If you say so,” said Stormwalker. She looked up and opened her wings. “Let’s get going, then.”
Kulikulu looked incredibly different from the sky, and a little strange; Twilight could see the line where the Old Quarter ended, the change in architecture was so drastic. But as she and Stormwalker kept flying, Twilight began to orient herself relative to the maps in her head. This skyscraper was that building, which meant that these streets were those streets, and so on and so forth. She zeroed in on the location of the Bonde Baa and flew at an easy pace. She wasn’t too concerned.
Behind her, Stormwalker spoke up. “Hey, um, Princess?”
“Yeah?”
“Mind if I ask you a semi-personal question?”
“Go ahead, but I reserve the right to refuse to answer it.”
“Fair enough. So, um, alicorns are… are more than regular ponies, right? I mean, faster than most pegasi, more powerful than most unicorns, stronger than most earth ponies, that sort of thing.”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Does that include alcohol tolerance?”
By the time Twilight had processed that question and was flapping again, she was about ten feet below Stormwalker. Before Stormwalker could dive to meet her, Twilight had climbed back up. “What?”
“You know. Your ability to hold your liquor. How m-”
“I know what that means, but… why that?”
“Why not that? Come on, it’s beer and wine and stuff. Everypony drinks beer and wine and stuff.” A few brisk flaps, and Stormwalker was right at Twilight’s side, looking her in the eye. “So?”
“Well, it’s, I’m not sure,” Twilight said quickly. “I was never really much of a drinker when I was just a unicorn, and that hasn’t really changed since I became an alicorn. So I really couldn’t say.”
“Aw.” Stormwalker looked wounded.
As they kept flying, Twilight reflected that her first impressions of Kulikulu as a smaller Manehattan were still being borne out. Even from dozens of stories in the air, the city was bustling and didn’t show any signs of slowing down. If anything, the nightlife was just beginning. Traffic she couldn’t make that definitely wasn’t zebras moved up and down the streets, and she even spotted a few things that might’ve been elevated trains. Unfortunately, with her destination firmly in mind, Twilight couldn’t stop and enjoy the sights. Twilight resolved to go into Kulikulu proper once everything — her audience with Inkosi, this conspiracy, anything else that might pop up — had been dealt with.
The Bonde Baa was in one of the quieter corners of the city. Not many zebras passed it by, and it had a very unassuming exterior. From what little Twilight could see, it gave her the impression of a dive, someplace you went to for the company besides anything it served. Of course, Twilight reflected, she was definitely going there for the company.
Before they could descend, Stormwalker pulled up. “Your Highness, if whatsername, Idube always comes here, then there could be-”
Twilight spotted a narrow alley nearby no one was looking at and her horn sparked.
“-people watching…” Stormwalker looked down at the ground barely a foot beneath her hooves and sighed. “Crazy crazy crazy,” she muttered as she folded her wings. “The best teleporters in the Guard aren’t that smooth.”
“And just so we don’t stand out and attract attention…” With a significantly more complicated casting, Twilight wove illusions to hide her and Stormwalker’s unstriped coats. By the time she was done, their coats and manes had been replaced with black-and-white-striped versions of themselves. Their body shapes were unchanged, with the exception of them both missing their wings and Twilight missing her horn.
Stormwalker looked at one of her legs and blinked. “Okay, wow,” she said as she began examining herself, “that’s rea- Gah!” She waved her hooves at the apparently empty air at her side. “Where’re my-” She jumped, yelped, and flinched as she hit something, and hit it hard. Her wing, steel gray, flickered into transparency for a moment before vanishing again.
Stormwalker cocked her head. “Huh.” She delicately jabbed at the air again. Her wing briefly appeared again, its semi-visibility radiating out from the point of contact. She paused and started hovering as she flapped her invisible wings. Tiny tornadoes of dust swirled across the streets on seemingly sourceless winds.
“It should hold as long as you don’t poke it too much,” said Twilight. “I didn’t put much effort into it.”
Stormwalker landed and looked at where her wing should have been for another second before turning back to Twilight. “Have I mentioned you’re scary? Because you’re scary.”
“That’s an… interesting way of putting it, I guess.”
“Well, just- just look at this! You said didn’t try that hard and…” Stormwalker looked over her shoulder again. “Most unicorns I know would sell their soul to be able to do something like this! And you go and do it in a few seconds without even trying that hard!” She looked Twilight straight in the eyes. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you’re my princess. But when you get right down to it, you’re scary. And not just you. Celestia’s scary. Luna’s scary. Even Cadance’s scary, when you think about it too hard. Princesses are scary.”
“Oh.” Twilight had heard that train of thought several times before; just not with the phrasing, “you’re scary”. Although it was certainly true; the first few weeks after she became a princess, she’d sometimes scared herself discovering what she could do. Then again- “So… why were you so forceful about me coming here the fast way earlier?”
Stormwalker blanched so hard it was visible beneath the illusion, and she looked away. “Because I was stupid and I’d forgotten how scary you could be and I wanted to feel important and-”
“Okay, calm down, I get it,” said Twilight. “That decision didn’t turn out the greatest, but hindsight is 20/20, right?”
“Well, yeah, but…” Stormwalker pawed at the ground, still not looking at Twilight, and folded her ears back. “Look, can, can we just get to the stupid bar?”
“Fine. Come on.” Twilight strode around the corner and onto the street. It was mostly empty, and the few zebras there didn’t look twice at her. Stormwalker soon followed, and no one looked twice at her, either.
Twilight kept her eyes forward. The Bonde Baa — Twilight could actually read the letters, now — was right there. For all she knew, Applejack was in there already. Several carts were parked outside, and although it was hard to see what was going on through the windows, it sounded busy; indistinct noises were pounding through the walls. It might’ve been music, it might’ve been something else. Of course, being orange in a sea of black and white, Applejack would stand out. Hopefully, that wasn’t stressing her out too much.
Twilight slowed her walk just enough to let Stormwalker catch up to her. “Listen,” Twilight whispered to Stormwalker, “I get that you’re upset for making me come out here at exactly the wrong time. Like, a day later and we wouldn’t be sneaking about this.”
Stormwalker mumbled something that may or may not have been a confirmation.
“But don’t worry about it; it didn’t turn out too bad,” continued Twilight, “and it could be worse. I mean, I’m still okay, I’ve learned some new magic, and it’s not like Applejack’s in a gigantic bar fight as we speak, right?”
It was at that particular moment that Applejack came flying out one of the Bonde Baa’s windows, slid several yards across the street, and came to a halt right at Twilight’s and Stormwalker’s hooves. She was bruised and grimy, but miles away from beaten.
Not recognizing either under their illusions, Applejack grinned. “Hey. Sorry ‘bout that.” She stood up, yelled, and charged back through the window.
Twilight and Stormwalker looked at the broken window. At each other. At the broken window. At each other. Then the only reason they didn’t bolt as one for the door was because Twilight was much, much faster.