Twilight Takes Charge of the Situation
Twilight snorted awake. What was that loud cracking sound, just now? Is the barn coming down?! She lifted her head from where her body had sank to the straw strewn floor of the barn, her ears turning left and right but no further sounds issued forth. She had to suppose it must just have been the old boards creaking and settling overhead in the cooling late evening. Though it did sound like it was coming from a distance, from the general direction of Ponyville proper.
Something stirred against her, and Twilight looked down unconcernedly. It seemed like the fillies had tired themselves out already. Not just Archer, but Licky as well were both sleeping soundly, curled up in the curve of Twilight’s belly. Twilight shivered in the chilly evening air. At least her belly was warm. The three of them were all piled together, where Twilight had fallen asleep leaning against the door. Twilight recalled falling asleep on her feet, though she clearly hadn’t managed to remain standing (as she sometimes did). She worked a pinned front hoof out from under herself, stretching it stiffly.
Twilight then checked her horn. The fluctuations had stopped, thankfully, allowing her to start rebuilding her third tier. The second one was stuck rotating freely though, so she worked on anchoring it first, and reducing the angular velocity bit-by-bit. She could probably manage a basic teleport, as/is. Though, with two fillies in tow, Twilight didn’t want to take any chances. They could get separated from her if she botched it, and then they’d fall right back through the veil without an opening to reduce the friction. Not a pleasant experience certainly, and then, who knows where they would be? Nowhere safe, that’s for sure.
It was safe enough at this point, for Twilight to summon a light ball though. She normally liked to second tier that one, in order to make it safely self sustaining, but for now she just needed a look around. So she lit up her horn and called her aether, letting its soft aura engulf her. Out of it, she built a simple source kernel, igniting it to the task of illumination. Or, to describe it in a less abstract manner... a ball of soft, inconspicuous white light formed at the tip of her horn, and floated up into the air in front of her.
Twilight took a second look at the fillies, noticing the patchy bits of pinkfluff stuck to them. That stuff got really staticky. Her eyes, and her light ball followed the trail of shaken-off fluff the fillies had trailed behind them, before reaching the bushel they’d managed to get untied somehow, which was now falling open loosely. Rolling her eyes, Twilight reached out reflexively to tie it back up, then hesitated. She left the light ball dying out over there, and relaxed her horn again, taking another critical look at her matrices and foundation. It wouldn’t do anypony any good if Twilight pulled a magic muscle hauling around pinkfluff, after she had just so recently tried to fight in the Everfree.
Archer stirred when Twilight tried brushing the fluff off her, so Twilight settled still and just let her sleep. It was kind of inconvenient really, not being able to move without waking anypony up. But without blankets, that’s just how their night was going to have to go. There were plenty of blankets back at the library though. And central heating. And a library sized force field with a fully charged mana battery the size of a football backing it. So, rather than spend the night hidden in a barn, Twilight just tried to drift off for a cat nap, and recover her strength while staring idly at the dying sunlight, through the cracks in the barn.
She was the one who heard it before they did, but only because they were still soundly asleep. It was a terrifying sound. One Twilight hoped, or at least wished she would never hear again. The sound of an accordion. Among other instruments. It seemed like it would be okay at first, but there was no escape. The fillies couldn’t stay asleep. Twilight grew more and more alarmed as they twisted and mumbled their brows knitting and heads lifting. The music was getting louder, but it was still too distant and quiet to possibly hope to rouse a sleeping filly. Unfortunately these were not ordinary sleeping fillies, and that was no ordinary song.
Archer was the first to awaken, her gentle lavender eyes opening wide with an open mouthed expression of shock and wonder as she exclaimed, “The song! She’s playing the song again!” She jumped up as Twilight hissed,
“Archer, don’t listen to it!”
“You’re funny, Miss Twilight!” Archer said giggling, knocking over Licky Loo onto the ground, and climbing up Twilight’s laid down side like a ramp.
“Archer what are you doing?!” Twilight exclaimed, twisting underneath the filly as Archer immediately braced herself on the crossbeam holding the barn door closed. Even as her support from underneath vanished, Archer still fluttered in place, still trying to lift it. Twilight scrambled to her hooves and bit down on Archer’s tail anxiously.
“Help me lift this!” Archer exclaimed struggling, “I want to follow it!”
“No you don’t!” Twilight bit out, “Don’t listen to it! You have to fight it!”
“I am fighting it! But the door won’t move!” Archer answered, grunting from the strain. That’s when Licky once again displayed an unnerving level of competence, buoying up Archer on her back so the filly could effectively lift the cross beam.
Twilight yanked Archer off of Licky immediately, sending the blue filly flying into the increasingly mixed up bushel of pinkfluff. “Not the door, the song!” Twilight snapped irritably but also with a perfidious curiosity surging within her. “You are smarter than this! Can’t you fight the song?”
Archer stuck her head out of the pinkfluff running towards the door again putting her hooves on it and not looking at Twilight exclaiming over her shoulder “Why would I fight the song?” in a genuinely incredulous tone.
Licky was trying to squeeze out the door without moving the crossbeam, not having much luck at it. Archer tried to jump on Licky’s back but Twilight pulled her away again, Archer’s tail firmly wreathed in Twilight’s aura. “Remember the river, Archer?” Twilight whispered harshly. “She’ll put you in there and you’ll drown!”
Archer paused just a moment, then said “Maybe there’s another way out.” She turned to run up the ladder to the upper loft, not remembering her tail was caught by Twilight’s magic, and just running in place looking very confused.
“Drowning will kill you! Aren’t you scared?” Twilight inquired of the addled filly.
“That’s not important,” Archer said with a note of irritation. “Let me go,” she asserted, yanking heartlessly on her own tail. “I want to follow it!” Archer exclaimed, not angrily, but excitedly like a kid in a candy store.
“Why?!” Twilight insisted, also restraining Licky who had the bright idea to run up to the loft looking for another way out. “What could be more important than dying?” she interrogated the blue filly, pulling Archer up face-to-face with Twilight.
“That song!” Archer exclaimed urgently with a happy and carefree smile, “That incredible amazing song!”
She thrashed against Twilight’s magic then, and what she said actually made Twilight lose her grasp in shock. Archer was running as soon as she landed, making it halfway up to the landing, before the stunned unicorn grabbed her again and dragged her back down. Then Licky broke free, but Twilight was already going up the ladder herself, looking around for any—aha, a window! Twilight hastily burned through the ties in a hay bale with tight bursts of aether, then levitated the hay across casting a modified basket spell to weave the strands together too fast to see with the naked eye, until the window was entirely sealed off and roughly impenetrable. Twilight spun around then, saying, “There! How do you–” but there were no fillies up here trying to jostle their way out of the barn. Because they were...
Lifting the crossbeam!!
Twilight propelled what was left of the hay bale down like a battering ram, smacking away one of the fillies in their impromptu filly tower, not even checking which one it was before rushing down the ladder. The crossbeam thudded to the ground and Archer was pulling the door open, when Twilight snagged her again, and Licky too for good measure. Twilight backed against the door to close it, as the two struggled against her magic as fiercely as a filly possibly could, while still having the most placid expressions on their faces. Twilight finally released them and they immediately ran over to try and get around her and pull the door open, but Twilight was already lifting the crossbeam and situating it firmly in place. She threw a seal on the door for good measure.
Twilight spent the next several minutes holding the struggling fillies in her arms, ignoring Archer’s plaintive and increasingly repetitive pleas of “Let me go! I want to follow it!” Instead, Twilight craned her ears to track the music, a sharply analytical expression on her face as she gauged the distance and trajectory of Pinkie Pie. Not coming this way anymore... passed by the turn-off to the barn, still travelling away from town, probably going back to the Everfree to try to catch any fillies lurking at its periphery. Wait, how in Equestria had Pinkie gotten a new accordion on such short notice?!
Twilight blanched as she remembered just who had been following Pinkie, when Twilight came to rescue these two fillies. It was the flower trio. Of course it was them. Twilight knew all too well what her neighbors could do to a town full of already paranoid ponies. Of course Pinkie had an accordion now. She probably had access to every instrument in all of Ponyville by now. Twilight had to get back to town, to set everypony straight right away. At this rate, every foal was in danger of a pony making a stupid mistake, not just these strange fillies!
Twilight was so busy formulating a simple plan, that she almost didn’t notice the fillies stop struggling. Pivoting her ears again, Twilight came to the understanding that Pinkie’s music had finally gotten out of earshot. For how long it would stay that way, who knows? Twilight certainly had to admire the range of this technique of Pinkie Pie’s. There was no way any filly could escape something with as expansive an area of effect as that, not for long at least. And when used against real parasprites, it sure caused a lot less property damage than Rainbow Dash’s solution for everything (a tornado). Twilight Sparkle almost didn’t notice the fillies growing still in her arms. She did take note, however, when one of the fillies began to cry.
“Oh, Archer...” Twilight said, with a guilty surge of compassion, laying her head across behind the blue filly’s own.
“How could she?” Archer blubbered half coherently, “How could she sing that song? I couldn’t even... I couldn’t even see anything wrong. I knew it was, but I couldn’t and I knew but, but I was going to die, and I didn’t even care!”
Licky was whimpering too, petting at Archer’s cheek with a hoof, but showed no other especially traumatized reaction.
“I don’t know why a parasprite enchantment works on you, Archer,” Twilight said firmly, “But I know we can figure this out. You will find a way to resist it. And we will stop Pinkie Pie from whatever she’s doing, even if we can’t... even if Pinkie Pie has to go away for a long time.” Archer stopped crying at least, and just sniffled and clung to her more tightly. Twilight wondered how much she was trying to reassure Archer, and how much she was trying to reassure herself.
She looked in the direction of the Everfree, nervously. Twilight didn’t know how much time she had left. The daylight was gone, and the stars were surely out by now. Twilight didn’t feel ready for a big, long-distance, mass teleport yet. But if she waited, and Pinkie returned, and the fillies were struggling, it would be so much more difficult. Plus, with them held closely in her arms, that was pretty much like teleporting one pony, right? Yeah, Twilight wasn’t going to kid herself about that.
It’s not that Twilight Sparkle’s reserves were in any danger of running out, but it was a bit of a gamble whether Twilight would scramble her horn again, trying to do something like this. She could end up fine, or she could end up on fire, or with a headache the size of Fluttershy’s insecurity complex. Twilight charged her horn up slowly and carefully, triple layering her aura just to be sure. The second tier was holding well, so Twilight wove her spell through it, finding a path that would land all three of them in the proper spot. She picked a very familiar spot in her library, one she wasn’t likely to mistake or misjudge.
Archer had stopped whimpering entirely to look up at Twilight with wide eyes, yet a relaxed demeanor, her deep blue body illuminated in the only source of light now: Twilight’s hornglow. Twilight glanced down at the captivated filly, and explained, “I’m going to try to teleport us to the library. It might be a little rough, so I want you to hold on tight.”
“Ooh,” Archer said, engrossedly. She nodded and held on tight, and Licky... didn’t, but it didn’t really matter anyway. Twilight only said that to buoy Archer’s confidence, and keep her attention. In reality, Twilight had a tight bead on all three of them, and was ready to teleport them even if they were three feet away from her. So, closing her eyes, and trying to tell herself that the sound of an approaching marching band was just a product of her own anxiety, Twilight winked the three of them out.
Sure enough, the cosmo was irritated, or whatever passed for irritation in a subenergy field. It immediately smacked Twilight on entry, and she had to correct her course as it thrashed against her presence. Her will alone could pull it into a straight slender highway, down which they could slide, if Twilight could just ignore the soundless howling, and keep her wits about her. Thankfully if there was one thing Twilight was good at, it was keeping her wits about her! Stop laughing.
She, Archer and Licky successfully winked into existence, in a poof of sparkly magic, right in the middle of a heated battle. Literally. Twilight’s mane immediately lit on fire, from the gout of flame erupting directly behind her.
“Stay back!” Spike yelled shrilly back there. “You can’t come in here this is a—Twilight!!”
Twilight was too busy being on fire to answer, but her equine scream of pain seemed to drive back Spike’s attackers. She dropped the fillies and bodily hurled herself at her own bed, shoving her head into the sheets and rolling up in the blanket.
“Hothothothot!” she screamed. Again, laughing at this would be very inappropriate as it genuinely helps you ignore the pain to yell something out loud, however stupid it sounds. Any more comments on Twilight’s obvious experience with being set on fire on a regular basis will be summarily round filed. She stuck her head out of the smoking blankets, just as Spike poured the glass of water Twilight always kept by her bedside all over her head with a steamy hiss.
“What. Was that?!” Twilight immediately exclaimed, glaring at Spike.
“I’m sorry!” the baby dragon exclaimed, on his knees, “I was just trying to get their pitchforks!”
“Pitchforks?!” Twilight exclaimed right back to him.
Archer called out to Twilight, “What’s going on??” The little blue pony had moved from where she landed, and was sitting there holding up Licky, who had fallen over with swirls in her eyes.
“They attacked the library!” Spike shouted, grabbing Twilight by the withers and shaking her, “They’re after Scootaloo!”
“Someone’s coming!” shouted Archer, looking at the swinging lights coming up the stairs from below.
“Under the bed! Under the bed!” Twilight spouted urgently. Archer tried to drag Licky, but Twilight’s magic mitigated the process, sliding them along the floor like it were a playground slide, shoving them under and yanking the damaged comforter down so it concealed the underside of the bed. Twilight was pleased to note that not only had she not botched the teleport, but her magic array had not been driven even slightly awry from it. Dodged the bullet there. Well good, she was going to need it.
“...summoned a demon with his fiery breath!” came an older mare’s voice from below, as a group of strange townsponies burst up the stairs into Twilight’s bedroom and private reading room, many of them wielding... you guessed it. Torches and pitchforks.
“Is Scootaloo here?” Twilight asked Spike in a demanding whisper.
Spike nodded, “I told her to hide, but they’re going to find her!”
“That’s all I needed to know,” Twilight said in a relieved drawl, allowing for precisely one half of a smile. She lit up her horn.
There were even a couple of stallions in the crowded group of 21 very nervous ponies marching through Twilight’s bedroom. Several of their former weapons of scooping and poking were now melted nubs. Twilight hoped this was more than half of their forces, considering they were coming up here after a “demon” after all. Twilight didn’t want to have to throw the entire town’s population out of her library tonight, no matter how much fun it would be to do so. Two times 21 ponies would be quite enough.
Twilight began by casting two spells in rapid succession, a simple lubrication spell on the stairs, and one of her favorites: a flame-be-gone spell. A spell made slightly more useful when other things are burning, and not yourself. Before the spells even took effect, Twilight prepared an old trick she learned from her studies with the shamans of the distant zebra tribes—well, no just kidding it was from her friend Zecora last Nightmare Night.
By drawing out the integra from the sculpted stone, Twilight crumbled the horn on her bedside equibust into a fine powder, temporarily rendering old Starfall the Enigmatic an earth pony. At the same time, ponies below cried out in alarm and sudden darkness as Twilight’s spells took effect. None of the attackers had, apparantly, thought that they would need to turn on the lights, what with all those brightly flaming torches they were swinging around a library full of books. None of all of this was actually part of the trick, of course. Twilight just needed some darkness, and some dust.
She blew the dust off her hoof into the room, and her magic swiftly followed, a shaped pattern spell in the spatial arrangement Twilight desired, solidifying within the dust cloud, just in time for her to cast a dark blue tinted light spell on it. The townsponies could sure see now! Nightmare Moon herself loomed before them, glowing in its own eerie light. The sound of a pitchfork hitting the ground could be heard.
Twilight stuck her tongue out in concentration, adjusting the pattern so the construct would bear its pointed fangs. That did the trick, with everypony screaming incoherently and fighting against each other to retreat as fast as they could. For the coup de grace Twilight had it leap at them, transforming it into nothing more than a distorted, slavering, gaping maw full of jagged carnivorous teeth leaping at them. She wished she could say she was the one who thought up this trick.
Whenever the ponies hit the stairs, they went down like sacks of potatoes, but the ones remaining upstairs didn’t even notice, continuing to plummet down the stairs until Twilight’s bedroom was empty. Twilight herself then casually walked down from her bed to the level of the stairwell, canceled her dust illusion, and her lubrication spell, and finally flicked the switch on the wall, filling the room with cheery brightness.
“Spike!” Twilight shouted curtly. He was by her side in an instant.
“I need you to protect this room with your life,” Twilight told her assistant in all seriousness. “Archer and Licky’s lives depend on you right now. If any pony gets in here and finds them...” She really didn’t want to say what was going through her mind about that.
“You got it, Twilight!” Spike said, saluting smartly.
“I’ll clear out the rest in the meantime,” Twilight concluded with a relieved smile, heading on down the stairs and leaving Spike to his own devices. At the bottom, there were twenty-one ponies in various states of injury and disrepair, as well as several others paying various degrees of attention to the injured ponies. It looked like one pony had somehow managed to fall on his own pitchfork, groaning suspended up in the air as the pointy tines underneath him dimpled his skin.
A nurse pony had rushed to one, whose leg was bent at an odd angle, currently in the process of setting it with a stiff crack. The nurse looked a bit gobsmacked, no doubt because she hadn’t expected an unruly mob to actually suffer injuries instead of causing them without consequence. There were a few other ponies looking at the scattered unconscious and fallen, but not participating.
It was easy to see everypony down here, because someone had remembered to turn the lights on downstairs, so nopony was going to get lost in the dark should their torches mysteriously fail. Drat. That was only the bad news though. The good news is only a few ponies were paying attention to their fallen, because the great majority of them downstairs were busy fighting, or rather, being hurled around like toy dolls, by none other than Applejack and Rainbow Dash.
The nurse pony before Twilight was clearly identifiable by her healing cutie mark, a paramedic probably as she was a pegasus. She lifted her peach colored head with its two toned yellow and orange mane to look at and recognize Twilight Sparkle, with terrified and strikingly deep blue eyes. This pony could have been Licky’s own mother, if Licky wasn’t, uh... that.
“Help me get these ponies outside,” Twilight instructed the nurse, in a level but firm tone, grabbing the tail of two in her magic and dragging them toward the library’s entrance. She returned and the nurse was still staring at her in shock. “Please,” Twilight said looking her in the eyes. “We need to get everypony out of here. It’s very important.”
“Y-you’re supposed to be enchanted! What gives?!” the nurse exclaimed.
Twilight sighed and dumped a pair of ponies on the nurse’s back. “I’ll tell you when everypony is outside.”
That seemed to convince the nurse, or at least confuse her into obeying, and she began walking those ponies on her back, out of the library. Hoping for the best, Twilight left any fallen ponies to the paramedic, and sidestepped lithely past the ones who had noticed her, trying to jump her and take her down. Landing on a reading table in the middle of the room, Twilight shouted out, “Everypony out of the library right now!!” making sure to magically amplify her voice when she did so, and levitating a chair in case—yep, somepony decided to be a hero. Their hurled pitchfork embedded itself in Twilight’s chair.
“Twilight!” Rainbow Dash and Applejack both shouted out, “Scootaloo! They(s’gonna/ wanna)—”
“I know!” Twilight shouted back, oops forgot the amplification. She canceled that and shouted normally, “We need to get everypony out of the library!”
To their credit, many of the townsponies followed Twilight’s magically amplified advice without any hesitation, but probably more because they didn’t like their odds against three of these ponies. Those who had enough smarts, were walking or running out the door, in various states of grudging resentfulness and terror, respectively.
Twilight firstly used her chair/pitchfork combination to tangle up a pony in front of her, not sure who it was, and she hit the next with a leg lock charm, and the one after that, she overrode their horn, making the pitchfork they had in their magic go flying end over end to make yet another set of marks, by embedding itself in the library wall. Twilight was honestly shocked by all this. She didn’t even know Ponyville had this many pitchforks!
“We need to clear the back, Applejack,” Twilight said, when at last she was side-to-side with the earth pony. It looked like the ponies trying to get past Applejack, had begun to realize why she was one of the few in town who could round up the cattle and sheep at the end of the day. Because they were utterly failing to get past her, and kept getting turned around without so much as disturbing a hair on her flank.
“I’ll start at the guest room,” Twilight told Applejack, force pushing a charging pony in the shin so they fell, and cartwheeled past the two of them like a pinwheel. “Then I’ll go onto the east wing. You start with the west wing then meet me there.”
With that, Twilight distracted a few ponies with a proximity-to-the-library attenuated itching spell, and galloped right between them as they writhed around to scratch that little itch on your back that you just. Can’t. Reach. Twilight charged through the hallway back there, straight into the guest room. There were a handful of ponies in it, snooping around, a far more level headed bunch than the ones in the front. Level headed meaning dangerous, but also more easily reasoned with. With a doubly brightly glowing horn, Twilight must have been quite the attention getter.
“Any pony in here in the next two hundred seconds is going to lose every hair on their tail,” Twilight annouced calmly. An earth pony looked like he was going to start poking her, so she incinerated his pitchfork to ash, including the metal head. “Any questions?” she asked. “110 seconds left!”
“You’re encha–” a pegasus mare started to say, Twilight interrupting with,
“Outside. We can talk about it outside the library.”
When they didn’t move, Twilight stared them down, gesturing at the open way out, saying, “30 seconds. Going to string a lot of bows from this. Maybe I should heat treat the follicles so they don’t grow–”
“Dangblastit!” a stallion shouted, running out of the guest room. The others followed suit, with Twilight counting “eleven, ten, 3, 2, 1!” She didn’t actually get to try her defoliating spell, but she still burnt off the tip of the tail of the last mare out, just the few centimeters of hair that had not yet passed the threshold of the doorway. Twilight gave a sigh of relief, then walked herself out the door to the guest room, heading now into the east wing of the library, where a number of ponies could be heard within.
An army of books flew off the shelves to accompany her, as Twilight strode through the entryway into the west wing. Very thick, hardbound books, all 3rd edition or later. A grim smile teased onto her face and she ran swinging into her beloved hall of bookshelves. Every pony began to cry out in alarm as Twilight hunted them down, smacking them with books shouting, “Out! Out of the library! Out! Library is closed! Out of the library!” Considering that they were getting air time, from being smacked with literature, it didn’t take very much to convince them.
Applejack was quicker to clear out her wing, running up to Twilight in the middle of the book beating, saying, “They’re headin’ for the hills! Now what?”
“Make sure this wing is empty,” Twilight answered, “I’m going to check the kitchen.” She ran out of the wing, shelving the books back in place as she did. Once in the kitchen, Twilight looked around at the refrigerator, and the pantry, and the countertop cutting board, the sink... she checked under the sink, and there was no pony there. Not that any pony other than a foal would fit under there, except Blossomforth. Twilight pulled open the pantry door where, aha! A cyan/blueberry mare was pressing herself up against the shelves inconspicuously.
“Out!” Twilight ordered.
“Aww,” the mare said unhappily, dropping to fours and walking out of the kitchen.
“You too,” Twilight said to the unicorn stallion, wedged in between her refrigerator and the wall.
“Fine!” he grumbled, unfolding himself and walking out after the other pony.
Twilight was going to run to the front, but she hesitated at a thought. When Applejack came from the west wing, with a host of ponies running ahead of her who were all completely unable to turn around or slow... somehow, Twilight shouted, “Applejack!”
Her orange friend stopped, while the others continued to thunder forward into the front of the library in utter confusion, and her friend regarded her with a questioning look.
“Can you check if there are any more hiding in the guest room?” Twilight said. “I really do need every pony except us and the fillies out of this library.”
“You got it, Twilight,” Applejack said, running into the guest room. Twilight ran to the front of the library herself, the lobby still brightly lit, and much emptier than it once was. At least, emptier of conscious ponies. Rainbow Dash was in there fighting like a hellion. Knocked out bodies were scattered around the pegasus as she spun and blasted through whole swaths of ponies at once.
Considering that the amount ponies left was about one single swath, Twilight exclaimed, “Rainbow, hold on!”
“I gotcha covered, Twilight!” Rainbow Dash said enthusiastically, boxing the air that she hovered in. “These ponies ain’t gettin’ past Daisy and Duke here.”
Twilight blinked, then gave Rainbow Dash a look. “You named your hooves?” Twilight said disgustedly.
“Well—Applejack did!” Rainbow protested, blushing hotly.
“Everypony out of the library!” Twilight re-announced, ignoring Dash for now. “Nopony left behind!”
“Eh, what about...” Daisy (the pony, not the hoof) trailed off, pointing at the knocked out ponies scattered in a star pattern around Twilight’s rainbow colored friend.
“Rainbow Dash will help them out,” Twilight explained sweetly to Daisy. “Just go, go, go, I don’t care how!”
Any will the townsponies had left was more than totally broken. One tried to say, “You’re making a mistake,” but Twilight interrupted them saying,
“Ap! Ap! Ap! Wait until everypony is outside!”
Twilight tried not to glare at Rainbow Dash too much, for how many beaten up ponies Twilight had to help drag outside, thanks to her hotheaded friend’s unstoppable hooves. Rainbow didn’t make it any easier to avoid glaring at her, crowing the whole time about her accomplishment along the lines of,
“I feel like a new mare! I could take on twenty, no a hundred ponies! Even royal guards wouldn’t stand a chance! I showed ‘em what for Twilight! They try to mess with Scoots they go through me! Why are they so heavy Twilight? This is hard Twilight! Are we done yet Twilight?”
Twilight Sparkle found it was best to just let Rainbow Dash let off steam without comment. That being said, Twilight still felt like she’d eye rolled a critical fail by the time they had cleared out all the unconscious ponies. The mob outside was a lot smaller than it started at, though some new ponies had joined once this forceful clearing out of the library had attracted them. It was fine if they did, as long as they stayed outside of the library’s walls. Twilight stared at the group warily from the front door, until Applejack ran up from behind declaring, “Ah think the library is clear.”
“Just you, Rainbow Dash, Spike, Scootaloo, Archer and Licky, correct?” Twilight said ticking off allowable ponies in her head. Applejack nodded.
“Well, for their sake, I hope these ponies have all left,” Twilight said, then focused her horn on the curry-cast shield spell woven next to the mana battery, adjusting its filters and setting it on expansion mode. “Because this is going to hurt anypony who hasn’t.”
Amplifying her voice once again, “Anypony left?! Final warning!” Twilight shouted out.
“Wait, don’t hurt me I need to get out still!” Scootaloo shouted, running from the back of the library.
“Not you Scootaloo,” Twilight snapped at the filly, with a curious dissonance of excitement and relief in her chest at the sight of Scootaloo, after so much uncertainty that this day had brought. “It only gets the ponies who aren’t allowed.”
It didn’t appear that any other pony was going to come out of the woodwork, so Twilight released the shield spell. Not exactly what you’d call a force bubble, but it was something similar to that. It had formed her brother’s graduate thesis, and, on one occasion, almost not failed to save Canterlot. On another occasion, it had most certainly succeeded in not failing to save... well, that’s a tale for another time, and way too much categorical logic.
The shield spell activated and a magenta bubble swept out from the epicenter of the library, shoving back any ponies who were too close when it was cast. Thankfully for their continued health, the spell didn’t make any new pony shaped holes through the library as it did so. Looked like Applejack hadn’t missed any ponies after all. The spell passed harmlessly through her friends, and the fillies, and of course her dragon assistant. A lesser pony might have forgotten someone vital, but Twilight Sparkle had something they didn’t have, years of hard work honing her ability to complete a checklist rigorously and comprehensively.
Once the shield was fully extended, Twilight added something unorthodox to the technique, adjusting it further so that only she, Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Spike could pass through it. She didn’t have time to run the numbers to ensure that the method wouldn’t weaken the shield, but the chances were pretty remote. It was just an extension of what the guards had already done in Canterlot, to allow the train through specially while still repelling other ...things.
Then, the shield was in place, stable and sustained. An army couldn’t break their way into here now. Twilight canceled her horn triumphantly, blowing on it to cool it off. Then she swayed on her feet, and sank to her belly right there on the floor, her chin touching down with a scratchy wavering moan coming out of her.
“Hey Twilight,” Applejack said, leaning over her, as Twilight rolled herself onto her back. “Y’alright?”
Twilight looked up at Applejack, Scootaloo, and Rainbow Dash, and Spike apparantly, who were surrounding her with concern. “I’m fine...” Twilight said unconvincingly. “Just... not used to unexpected battles, out of nowhere, in the library, after teleporting three ponies, all the way across town, with an enertheric horn.”
“They chased me in here, sorry,” Scootaloo said in explanation. “You weren’t here, so I had to hide. I didn’t think they were going to tear the place apart looking for me!”
“I’m just glad you picked such a good hiding spot!” Twilight said climbing to her hooves, a bit astonished at the thought. “Where did you hide, anyway?”
Scootaloo beamed at that, saying, “The place where the guest bed goes doesn’t even look like a door, unless you push on it. And I leaned on it too, in case they tried it.”
“Great,” Rainbow Dash said equally unconvincingly, rolling her eyes. “Glad that thing worked out alright for somepony!”
Both Scootaloo and Twilight tried to hold back a laugh. They failed not to fail to do so.
“Alright,” Twilight said after she stopped laughing, “So here’s what we’re going to do to fix this.”
A short huddle later, Twilight set everyone to preparing themselves and herself for the task at hand. After a small amount of time, she strode out of the library, to address the ponies surrounding the border of her shield sphere, the magical librarian accompanied at her side by a small, orange and purple filly. Twilight shouted, “Attention everypony! You may be wondering why I have engaged in such extreme measures to keep you out of the library. You may be thinking I have been enchanted to protect a creature more foul than a pony’s worst nightmare. I understand your feelings, but I’m happy to inform you that the creature you fear remains nothing more than a false story, a fairy tale, and a hoax.”
“What I’ve found instead,” Twilight continued, “Is something stranger, and more wonderful than any ghost story. I would like to share with you all what I have found, and then let you ponies decide whether it’s true or not. If you can say it is nothing but an enchanted delusion once I am finished, then I will submit myself to the proper authorities, so that the fillies can be dealt with calmly and reasonably. But I am confident that my argument is sound and well founded.”
She went on to describe the ponypological evidence leading to a possible connection between ancient pre-tribe proto-pony forms, until Rainbow Dash zipped up and tapped her on the withers, whispering, “Get to the point; you’re losing them.”
“My point is,” Twilight said loudly enough for everypony to hear, “That while these fillies resemble parasprites, it is only because we all resemble parasprites, and their family has simply changed less over the ages than your average pony. These are not parasprites, and the parasprite song is more dangerous than you may think, in that... well alright, here comes my first demonstration.”
Sure enough, the sound of Pinkie Pie’s marching band was approaching.
“I don’t have to resist it after all, Twilight,” Scootaloo hurriedly assured her, pushing away from Twilight. “I really do want to follow it!” And, of course, Scootaloo then went bouncing dutifully after Pinkie Pie. Twilight had told Scootaloo that she had to resist the music, or she’d die, but Twilight wasn’t really worried. That was just to get a baseline, for how long Scootaloo could hold out. Which was apparantly 1.3 seconds. The filly got about three paces from the library, before smacking into the shield harmlessly. Then Scootaloo did so again. And again.
“Here you see Scootaloo acting just like a parasprite,” Twilight explained to the horrified and disgusted crowd. “But is she a parasprite? Scootaloo, are you a parasprite?”
“No!” Scootaloo shouted back distractedly. “I really like that song!” she added, then ran into the shield wall again. “Why can’t I follow it?!” she said in a confused tone.
“Scootaloo is different from all of us, but she is as much of a person as any other pony,” Twilight explained paying careful attention to how close Pinkie’s approach was. “This song you hear has been specifically designed not to enthrall some ponies, but that doesn’t mean all ponies. There is no reason that with some adjustment, you all could be forced to drown yourself in the river, just like this filly, and you would do so, as happily and eagerly as you see her right now. Pinkie said it only affects parasprites, but...” and as Pinkie Pie came around the street corner, making a beeline for the magenta glowing library, Twilight concluded, “Pinkie Pie has been lying to you.”
Twilight walked up to Scootaloo with a mask of concern on her face. Scootaloo failed to so much as recognize her presence, continuing to try to find ways outside the featureless shield bubble. Twilight hoped Dash and Applejack could keep the other two fillies under wraps, to keep her message from getting confused. “Poor Scootaloo here,” Twilight said sympathetically, while still addressing the ponies beyond the shield. “She can’t be reasoned with. This is not an act. She and I certainly have had no time to rehearse this. But Scootaloo, do you really want to die?”
“No,” Scootaloo said distractedly, bouncing into the barrier again.
“Do you want to drown in the river?”
“Miss Twilight!” Scootaloo protested. “I want to—”
“Do you want to drown?”
“No, I want to follow the song!”
“Do you care if you die,” Twilight asked, “If you get to follow the song?”
“No!” Scootaloo shouted exasperatedly. “I’ll die or drown or whatever. Just let me out!”
“I couldn’t talk with a parasprite like this,” Twilight addressed the crowd. “But I could talk with an enchanted filly. It might seem impossible that Scootaloo would get so totally enthralled like this, that this could be a real filly not an inpony monster, but it is indeed the truth.
“I’m going to ask her a question now, that many of you will surely be familiar with. And I apologize for that.”
“Scootaloo,” Twilight leaned down, saying, “I want you to think about following the song. Do you want to do that?”
“I want it,” Scootaloo agreed distantly.
“Do you need it?”
“I need it!” Scootaloo gushed passionately. She bounced off the barrier again. Twilight let her do so, trying to appear passive and objective, despite something in her chest twisting, as she watched the filly trapped in an enchantment Twilight could not free her from, just as helpless as she had been to watch before. Twilight hated seeing ponies like this. She wanted this damned crowd to understand, so she could end this presentation of horror. She risked a look at the crowd, and it was hard to read their faces, but Twilight thought she could see what might have been a glint of, if not sympathy for Scootaloo, at least recognition, and guilty remembrance.
Twilight asked the crowd, “Can some—” her voice caught.
“Can somepony stop Pinkie Pie from playing music?” she said more steadily, as evenly as she could. “I would stop her myself, but right now I’m afraid that I might hurt her, to get her to stop.”
The crowd was silent, so Twilight said, “Please, it’s the only way to prove this to you. Just... take her accordion. You can give it back once I’ve said my peace.”
Pinkie Pie actually spoke up then. Well, sort of.
“The fillysprite is,” Pinkie Pie shouted, then played on her harmonica some more, then said, “Enchanting you” then back to playing on her harmonica, “All don’t listen” back the harmonica, “To her!”
“Why isn’t the Fillysprite enchanting you, Pinkie?” Twilight asked wanly. “You’re here along with the rest of us. Why would it enchant them, but not you?”
It was actually that nurse pony who managed to hover low enough in the air to snag Pinkie’s rising and falling accordion. Pinkie held onto it fiercely, but she had to stop playing to fight for it back. Twilight never thought she would feel this relieved at the cessation of song.
As the music stopped, Scootaloo immediately stilled and stared blankly forward for a moment. “Scootaloo,” Twilight prompted, nudging her in the flank. Scootaloo shook her head and blinked. She backed up from the shield a few paces, then looked up at Twilight, with a face full of fear.
“I didn’t think it would be that bad,” Scootaloo said worriedly. “I couldn’t even try to resist!”
“A likely story!” shouted Pinkie Pie.
“Shut up, Pinkie,” Twilight said on pure reflex. She shook her head too and said, loud enough for the crowd to hear, “Scootaloo, I changed my mind. Follow the song to the river.”
Scootaloo’s eyes widened. “N-no! What? You don’t want me to!” she stammered, “I’ll die!”
“Scootaloo, you follow that song right now,” Twilight commanded frowning furiously at the little filly. “You won’t die. Who said that?”
“You did!” Scootaloo shouted, pretty much completely terrified of Twilight now, “You didn’t say you were going to do this, Miss Twilight! You’re lying! Please don’t make me follow that horrible, awful song!”
Twilight’s disapproving glower immediately flipped into a small, relieved, somewhat triumphant smile. “And that is proof,” Twilight declared to the crowd, “That there is nothing wrong with this filly, only with that song.”
“It’s not a horribleawful song!” Pinkie Pie shouted out suddenly and forcefully, “It’s an incredible, amazing song that saved every foal in my town from being devoured by that thing!” She thrust a hoof at Scootaloo.
“My Granny was a hero!” Pinkie Pie continued ardently. “She saved everypony, and they just told her she was crazy, and just making up stories! Well that’s not a story!” she pointed at Scootaloo again, “And I’m not going to let it get so bad like it did the last time!”
“Pinkie, I get that you’re being irrational, but why are you spreading such hateful lies?” Twilight implored of the pink pony. “There was no last time! Scootaloo here is a once in a lifetime discovery. Yet you keep making up stories saying she’s going to kill ponies, or—or eat their foals! Nopony’s foals are in danger, but you keep lying about it. Why are you trying so hard to hurt Scootaloo?”
“Lying???” Pinkie squealed, aghast. “I’m lying??? I’m not—wait! No!” To Pinkie’s apparent horror, some ponies were already starting to wander off. Twilight wished she didn’t have to be the bad guy here, but the power of truth would reach these ponies no matter what was wrong with Pinkie Pie. “Come back!” Pinkie shouted after them, “Your foals are in danger!”
In response, a sore looking magenta pony with a fruity cutie mark peeled away from the crowd saying, “It is too bucking late for this shit,” not even sparing Pinkie half a glance.
“The fillysprite isn’t going to escape from that shield,” a carrot colored mare assured Pinkie Pie. “Creature Control can take care of it from here.”
“It’ll just enchant Twilight to lower the shield,” Pinkie insisted. “As soon as our backs are turned!”
“Why hasn’t it enchanted us then?” asked a brownish stallion with messy hair. Pinkie sputtered for an answer that she couldn’t have, because there was no answer, because there simply was no truth behind her convictions. Before she could answer, another mare who Twilight recognized as Junebug said to Pinkie hesitantly in her scratchy voice,
“Uh, everypony will be fine. I... trust your friends. ...don’t you?”
“All your children are going to die,” Pinkie spat bitterly, “And nopony here will ever smile again. They’ll be gone forever! If you would just listen to me! But you won’t, and you’ll be sorry when it’s too late, but then it’s too late! We have to kill them now, before they spread!”
“I–I’m single!” Junebug cried out, cringing away from Pinkie Pie who was looming at her angrily. “I–I have a pot on the forgot, sorry I have to–”
To Twilight’s immense satisfaction, one of the local police ponies stepped in-between them, saying, “I think you need to cool down, Miss Pie.”
There were a number of police ponies among this mob, in fact, and with its fervor drained, they began escorting ponies away and splitting up the crowd. One approached Twilight, a cream mare with pink and blue curls, announcing herself as,
“I’m Chief Drops of the Ponyville Police. I’d like to ask you to turn off your shield thingy.”
Twilight looked at her skeptically saying, “Do you have a warrant?”
“No,” said Chief Drops, taking a pencil in her mouth to write in a little notebook, “But it never hurts to ask.”
Anything else the chief could say was drowned out by Pinkie screaming out, “I can play the song if I want to! You can’t stop me—I know my rights! I earned these instruments fair and square! Let me go! Put me down! Stop it, stop! The foals! The foals!”
It took three officers to take her down, which wasn’t a large number considering the all and everything, but Pinkie Pie wasn’t the strongest among Twilight’s circle either. That honor would go to Applejack. Pinkie was so active all the time that she was incredibly fit, but she wasn’t very strong or especially healthy, certainly not with the amount of sugar in her diet. They did manage to drag an incoherently screaming Pinkie away, but Twilight felt a chill go down her back, when the last thing Pinkie shouted before going out of earshot was an apology. To her.
“I’m sorry Twilight!” Pinkie shouted, “Please don’t hate yourself, no matter what hap—stop! Please no don’t” and then Twilight couldn’t make her words out anymore.
“Sorry about that,” Chief Drops stated uncomfortably, pulling Twilight back to the moment at hand. “I would like you to speak with the Ponyville Creature Control. I’m sure you have lots to say to them. I’d ask if you didn’t mind, but it doesn’t look like you have a choice, unless you’re going to be stepping off that Celestial property any time soon. So without further ado, Captain Fluttershy, this is Twilight Spark–”
“We know each other,” Twilight said, flat-eared. She hadn’t even noticed Fluttershy approaching. Along with a blonde-on-brown scruffy looking earth stallion, and... Junebug, yes. “Wait, you’re on Creature Control?” Twilight asked Fluttershy in amazement, then went flat-eared again, “Yes, of course you are.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Fluttershy said softly. “If this is a bad time...”
“A bad time? Two before midnight?” Twilight said in mock astonishment, “Why no, how could that ever be a bad time?”
“Oh,” Fluttershy said disappointedly. “We’ll just go, then.”
“Nonsense,” Twilight said cheerfully, zapping the barrier with her horn to temporarily admit several more ponies in an oval region, leading Fluttershy through the distorted zone on the barrier, “Why don’t we all come in and get comfortable and talk things out like good rational ponies, and I can prove to you once and for all that these fillies pose little to no danger to the town.”
The Creature Control, and two police officers plus the chief followed Fluttershy in, though they all had a look on their faces like they were entering a spider’s web, or a wolf den.
“Why did you kick everypony out,” Chief Drops asked suspiciously, “If you were just going to invite ponies back in?”
“Just a safety precaution,” Twilight said politely beckoning them in through the door. “If the shield spell went up with ponies in the library, they would have gone through the walls.” Twilight smiled congenially, hoping she was properly conveying the implication that the ponies so affected would not teleport or become insubstantial during this process.
That had to have been the messiest wedding in history.
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GAH how did I not post this? I finished this last week!
once again, amazing chapter
...Pinkie is possessed/insane/both....isn't she?
...I think someone needs to cast the zippermouth spell on Pinkie Pie, then give her a good long talk about what she was about to do.
I really hope Pinkie gets some much needed medical help, and possibly a room next to the barking pony. That one really needs a hug-- and a nice scritch behind the ears... maybe a treat too if she's been good.
5755917
From the sound of it, it's as simple as her believing in a lie during her entire life time.
Her grandma used to murder fillysprites because she genuinely thought they were a menace for whatever reason (Likely because simple fear towards the unknown and plain ignorance). Pinkie has idolized her through her entire life, so she wants to do it herself even when she doesn't fully understand the creatures, and when that's what she's always believed in, it's gonna be hard to change her mind (convincing her that fillysprites are harmless would be basically equivalent to convincing someone to switch religions at this point). Basically, how would you feel if somebody tried to convince you that one of your personal heroes were wrong and murderous, when you have worked during a long time to follow their steps? Would you even listen?
So yah, is she insane? Don't think so. Just ignorant and scared, and that's what makes her so difficult to talk to.
Oooooooooor that's just the way I'm seeing it, maybe she is actually freaking insane, but I feel like that would be too "easy" and honestly kind of boring.
This is getting extremely interesting, and somehow even more intense.
Can't wait for the next chapter.
I think now is the time for a Spike-o-gram to the Princess. Having an angry mob trying to kill foals seems like the sort of thing she'd care about.
Also, Pinkie needs a trip to the hospital and a new jacket. White, with sleeves that tie in the back.
5756485
you think I can fit a letter to Celestia and Twilight lecturing before a captive audience in one chapter????
5756276
5755917
Eeee speculation! I'm going to have to remember this exchange.
5756113
meanwhile, in canon:
derpicdn.net/img/2013/1/27/225220/large.jpg
5756704
Screwloose gets ALL the belly rubs, if it was up to me.
5756704
Depends on how long her audience remains captive. If they escape while she's on topic, it could work. If they stick through all the lectures after the first one you might have some trouble.
5756276
true enough...
"how would you feel if somebody tried to convince you that one of your personal heroes were wrong and murderous, when you have worked during a long time to follow their steps? Would you even listen?"
if they had proof? yeah, i guess...
Good, that's the immediate dange dealt with. Now ponies can be calm and reasonable and deal with this properly.
...wait, this is all happening just before the end of the previous chapter, right?
amazing chapter. Daisy and Duke lols
.
I'm very confused as to why twilight hasn't asked celestia for help. Celestia is over a thousand years old and would know the truth most likely. She should have spike send the message the moment the shield went up.
I subscribe to Khao's take on Pinkie's situation, because it's the one that leads to the most fucked up consequences, and this story seems to like its consequences all kinds of fucked up.
Well, same thing, really, technically speaking.
media.discordapp.net/attachments/293477593074630657/413848806707298315/Screenshot_2018-02-15_at_7.05.38_PM.png?width=400&height=217