An Artist Among Animals

by Bandy

24: V7b9

Slanted moonlight like a low bent note fell from the streetlights into Twilight below.

She looked up, desperate for celestial direction, a star-map to guide her through the maze of security in the building even though she already knew the way. Light from the moon reflected off its metal pole and into her eyes. Too much light on the ground--odd for Ponyville, but acceptable for a miniature fortress holding the heart of a nation in a low-level bureaucrat's office home. Flood lights reflected daylight into the street. Five crystal guards stood at the front door, unmoving except to relieve each other of watch. When they moved in front of the lights, their bodies cast opaque, angled shadows.

"Hey, Caramel," Twilight whispered over her shoulder, "whatever happened to Barcleigh? The pony who owned that jewelry shop?”

“Hmm? Oh, I don’t know.” Caramel looked a little bit ridiculous with his ski-mask bunched up above his eyes, but she reminded herself how equally ridiculous she looked, her leggings collecting mud, her half-buttoned jacket swaying when she moved, her mask hung on her horn to keep the scratchy fraying edges out of her eyes.

“It had to be in the newspapers, or something.” Caramel shrugged. Twilight went back to her papers. The subtle curves of her face caught the light in pools. Shadows spread across her chin and sealed her mouth shut, but not before she said, “Guard’s changing.”

Five more Crystallites appeared from down the street. Their armored bodies glowed in the light like immolation protesters. The two thieves slunk deeper into the alley, willed their bodies to melt into the earth a little bit more. The shadows tilted at bizarre attention, then settled. The street was quiet. Weekdays were always pretty quiet.

“If we do this right,” Twilight said, “everything will go back to normal. Rarity can have her life back.”

Caramel risked a chuckle. “You’re not still doing this for her, are you?”

All of a sudden, Twilight wasn’t sure. The duality of it, night and day, streetlamps and dark alleyways. The boutique, Rarity’s dresses, her fabrics, the special patterns she kept in the locked closet in the back of the store. She could see the tilt of the scales now, lining up with the shadows of the guards. She felt the imbalance and realized that somewhere along the line she had made a mistake.

Caramel nudged her shoulder. “Old guard’s gone. Let’s do it.”

Caramel pulled a book of disposable matches from his pocket and picked up a length of thin coiled wire from the ground. Twilight placed her body between the contact site and the street while Caramel tugged on the fuse to make sure it was securely beneath the closest garbage can. They locked eyes. Exhaled in unison. Twilight’s breath felt hot like dragonfire.

Twilight struck the match and hugged it to her chest, along with the fuse. Smoke shot from the end of the wire before the flame dimmed to a smoldering hiss. Caramel shot deeper into the alley. Twilight tucked the rest of the fuse behind the garbage can and took off after him.

They hung a left at the first crossroads, then another into the open street. A street light whizzed over their heads, then reset and made another run. White light like pale, fat moonbeams pointed them towards the street corner, where they could see the guard’s floodlights.

The walls fell away. They dashed across the open street to the relative safety of an exposed dead-end alleyway two shops adjacent to the mayor’s office.

The floodlights weren’t pointed directly at them, but that made them none the less bright. One more service road between their current position and the mayor’s office. If the guards turned their heads slightly to the left, or if they made a little too much noise--Twilight knew the guards wouldn’t shoot her, but she still worried all the same.

Caramel kicked her in the rear. She grit her teeth and ate dirt to the next alleyway.

“Should be any second now, You didn’t run the fuse through any puddles on accident?” Caramel panted into her ear. Adrenaline and experience kept his voice to a whisper, but Twilight could tell he was suffering physically.

“Are you okay?” she hissed back.

“Just a cramp.”

“Have you been drinking or something?”

“Don’t go accusing me of something I didn’t--.”

The night belched a staccato baritone note. Golden sparks sprayed the new guard to the joyous wail of fireworks. Trashcans flew from the alley’s mouth and crashed to the street.

Caramel bared his teeth. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five--” On the last count he launched himself around the corner. Twilight gasped and followed.

In her brief moment of exposure, Twilight captured a tilted picture of the old wartime. Two guards, one with a black blast mark on his breastplate, charged into the alley. Two more rushed towards a cracked floodlight spitting sparks. The fifth threw his burning helmet onto the road and kicked up a cloud of dirt to smother it. As she raced beneath the floodlight, the lighting shifted. Caramel’s shadow melted into the wall of the mayor’s office. She craned her neck as she ran, her eyes drawn to the flickering fire on the fifth guard’s helmet.

For some reason, she let herself run full-barrel into the wall of the mayor’s office. The pain in her shoulder was tremendous, but the image of a furious guard stomping his own helmet into the dirt burned her on a level only the worst physical pain could reach. She only had a moment to realize the pain before Caramel’s hoof shot from the shadows and--by her injured shoulder, of course--dragged her away from the light.

“Did they see you?” Caramel asked once they had retreated behind the building. He didn’t bother to hide his voice now.

“We set one of them on fire.”

“Yeah?” He gestured towards the street. “Feels like the gods are watching out for us tonight.”

“I’m sure they’re trying,” she replied solemnly.

Twilight unfurled her wings and flew. One, two, three, four, five--another seven wingbeats and she would be level with the second floor balcony. Another twelve and she would touch down on the third floor balcony connected to the roof She had calculated for the exact number of wingbeats she needed to get up to the roof without making too much unnecessary whooshing noises and giving herself away. Her math had actually given her 23.95 wingbeats, but she decided to follow Caramel’s lead and approximate where necessary.

She got up to the roof just fine, but Caramel’s math burned her when she tried letting down a length of wire for him to climb up. The frayed end teased the earthbound pony below, dangling just a few inches above his reach.

Caramel made a frantic motion with his hoof.

Twilight mouthed. “No more,” and shrugged.

Caramel threw himself on his hind legs and snapped at the wire with his teeth while Twilight crept across the balcony to check on the guards out front. Thankfully, the fire on the one guard’s helmet had been extinguished, though the crest had been partially burnt away at the front. He and his furious friends had reconvened on the front steps. Every few seconds, one of them would turn their heads like they were expecting an attack.

“Should we call the garrison?” one of them asked.

“You two circle the building a few times, see if they blew up anything else--”

The rest of his orders were lost to history. Twilight shot across the balcony to find Caramel dragging a cylindrical aluminum trash can towards the wire. She waved madly, but Caramel was too focused on climbing up the stupid wire to realize it. He wore a great big smile on his face. He probably thought he was being very resourceful.

A look to her right revealed the two guards splitting from the circle. A few dozen more paces and they would be muzzle to muzzle with the stuff of their training.

Something about Caramel’s lopsided smiled frightened her more than the approaching guards did. It radiated ease. Uncaring. Power. Balancing on top of the trashcan might as well have made him the king of the universe--king of the guards, king of the trash can, king of her. He could make the guards stop dead in their tracks, or tip right off the can, or drag Twilight down with him.

She saw his outline twitch and stabilize. He hopped onto the rope, caught himself, and began to ascend--but not fast enough.

Up until this point she had resisted using magic due to the obvious lights and shimmering sound of mana materializing. Now as the guards strolled closer and closer to Caramel, she weighed the option. Twenty paces now, and closing. Maybe ten seconds. Probably less. And less, and less, and less, and less.

Caught! There was another dirty word. Twenty paces. All this time, she had never really thought about the ramifications of getting caught. Sure, she had fantasized about getting cuffed and tossed into the back of a police carriage, but the dream always ended there.

What would come next--a trial? Who would try her? Celestia? The shame! She would never live it down. Ten paces until she had to look her mentor in the eye and plead guilty.

Twilight ripped another firework, a round ariel charge, and chucked it as hard as she could at the trash can. As the can clattered to the ground, she lit up her horn and blasted Caramel, wire and all, to her side.

She clamped his mouth shut. “Swallow,” she commanded. His adam’s apple bobbed as he forced himself once, then twice, to obey. Meanwhile, she tracked the voices of the guards as they sprinted towards the source of the noise.

Above his muffled gagging she heard one of the guards say something about the garrison. They quickened their pace and were soon out of sight.

Caramel wrestled himself from Twilight’s grip and sputtered. When Twilight registered the disparity, how hard she had been pressing Caramel into the floor, she relented and pulled out a granola bar from her pack. “Just in case we got stranded inside the air ducts for a few days,” she said.

Caramel snatched the granola bar. “How’d you know I was gonna puke?”

“Everypony pukes their first time teleporting. I did, you did, Celestia probably did. I just guessed it was your first time and adjusted.”

“How close were they?”

“Couple more seconds and they would have seen you. They probably saw you a little, but the firework distracted them enough to make them not think anything of it.”

He nodded slowly. “Nice save.”

Twilight smiled. She liked hearing that. “I’ll disable the alarm on the window while you finish up. Take the wrapper with you.”

“Thank you,” he mumbled. In their own odd way, they were pretty good partners. Were they friends, though? Twilight decided that question was best left unanswered as she clamored up the roof.

The windowpane itself wasn’t alarmed--or the frame, or the glass, or the space around the glass. In fact, the only thing keeping the window from swinging wide open in the breeze was a thin metal bolt lock on the inside.

“Caramel.”

He stuffed the rest of the granola bar into his mouth and climbed over. “What’s up?” he asked between bites.

“Look at this,” she pointed at the window like it was spewing pus and blood. “Tell me I’m not seeing this.”

“Well, you can see it enough to point it out to me.”

She pointed to the window. “Tell me what this is.”

‘Is that a trick question?” Her look sharpened. “It’s a window.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Oh, so it was a trick question.”

“No!” she hissed. “It’s not a window. It’s a hole, a big hole. Look!”

“Looks like a window to me.”

“Caramel, there are no alarms on this window,” she explained, her brow furrowing as she went on. “Wires, sensors, trips, magical--wait.” Her horn sputtered a dim sparkle. “Yeah, no magical traps.” She turned and scuttled to the next window. “Same thing. There’s nothing but a lock.”

“It’s done a pretty good job of keeping us out so far.”

“This isn’t part of the plan,” she growled. “There are supposed to be wires to cut or censors to break or something. It doesn’t make sense. These windows are supposed to be locked.”

“The windows are locked, Twilight.”

Her horn flashed. The lock glowed red and evaporated.

“There. Now it’s not locked. That spell should have set off every alarm within a hundred yard radius.”

“Then why the heck did you cast it?”

“Something’s not right here, Caramel!”

Caramel hiked up his saddlebag. “Even bad people get lucky sometimes. Still have that wire?”

Though a decade and a half of wartime expansion and peacetime subtraction had reshaped the hall from a circle to more of a circle with a rectangle jammed into its side, Twilight could still pick out the balcony below her, the catwalks clinging to the walls, the banners that hung like thin sheets of stone in the still air.

Twilight paused just before her hooves touched the uppermost balcony, right under their entry window. So much was wrong already. The place felt too still, like nopony had set hoof in it for weeks, and the primary lights were all off. Ghostly security lights outlined the emergency exits and the exhibit room.

The display case itself, its sharp lights visible from the balcony, was a generous donation from the local jeweler’s, who had just refurbished it after somepony had broken in and smashed the glass.

She looked up to Caramel and flashed her hoof three times, then pointed to the far side of the room. Two Equestrian guards flanked the main doors, with another completing a slow march around the room’s parameter.

They dropped to the balcony floor one after the other without a sound, which raised another host of questions. Chief among them was the nagging worry that the ground had been completely covered by invisible lasers. It wasn’t--another couple of checks made sure of that--but the feeling of unluck just kept on pecking away at her focus.

“Aren’t there five?” Caramel whispered and flashed his hoof five times. Twilight shrugged. “Are they?”

She flinched when she saw him reach for his knife. “Two right below us, ground floor.”

“That’s it?”

Up went her hoof, like she were drinking a pint of Applejack’s cider.

Despite the mask, and the dark, and the stress, she saw Caramel smile. He was gone a moment later, a shadow slinking across the catwalk towards the other balcony. Now Twilight’s real work began.

With Caramel gone it was easy to clear a space for herself. She got down into a praying position, with her head up towards the window. Moonlight slid through the windows, parallel lines of light banking through the air and down the walls. It was pretty, she thought. She liked this moment the most, the minute or so before the place came alive, when everything was so perfectly still you could pretend you were the living centerpiece of a great scenery piece carved entirely of marble. And the lighting! Dust clung to the moonlight. Even on the floor it seemed more substantial than the hardwood. If Twilight only had a pair of wire brushes, she could play a great drum solo on those tilted squares of battered light.

But motion made stillness so magic, and Twilight had to keep going. If only she could stay here for a few hours more. Thank Celestia for this wonderful night. Thank Luna, who suffered a thousand years of airless torture to reveal its truest beauty. Maybe whistle and listen for an echo. It had been some time since she last set hoof in here, aside from earlier that day. The town hall was a relic with a castle a few blocks away, but a relic that looked nice and contributed to the rustic appeal. If this was the reason why Twilight would have to leave it forever, then so be it.

The ground trembled. Hooves rooted into the floor, she felt the movements of the five guards. They moved in pulses, stomping in a uniquely Equestrian way. They coughed with a neutral accent. She felt them, their cool armor and its warm padding, their hopes and dreams.

She hated this spell, really truly hated it for what it was about to do to her.

Her horn flared to life. Shadows disintegrated in the light. A new age of fire upon Equestria!

The guards raised their guns in shock, but it was already too late. Using the leylines as a guide, Twilight forced herself into each guard’s conscious mind. There she found the magical equivalent of their brain stem, the neural relay bridged by magic no knife could ever cut. One one side was a brain and a body; on the other, infinity.

She pinched and twisted, each and every one of them at the same time.

Five guards hit the floor simultaneously. Helmets clattered, glasses shattered, guns fell useless from cold hooves. Twilight choked on her breath and started to cry uncontrollably.

“No kidding,” Caramel muttered. He pointed at all five guards just to be safe, but none stirred. “We’re good,” he called to Twilight. She was really wailing at this point. Thank goodness the military had insulated the building so well in case of a weather-based attack, or the guards outside would have heard her for sure.

“I saw them,” Twilight stammered. The mask soaked up her tears until she ripped it off. “Saw them all. Gods, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Caramel trotted up the stairs and touched her shoulder. “It’s okay. You did it.”

“I saw them Caramel,” she sobbed. “I saw them.”

“Easy now. Easy.” Caramel offered her some water, which she drank in shallow gulps. Without looking at her he said, “Don’t think about it.”

“No, I’m sorry, gods.” She swallowed hard and coughed, her voice less frantic now, more pleading for help. “I never even tried it before. I should have tested it. I don’t know who, but I should have. I should have known.”

“You’re okay, you’re fine--”

“I killed myself,” she moaned. “I didn’t think this through. I thought their thoughts and dreamed their dreams and I had to pinch it and twist it. It was like suicide. Five times.”

“It’s okay--”

“Five times!”

“Hey! Calm down.” Authority! There was the Caramel she needed. Uncaring. Shellshock. Apathy. Get up. “Get up.”

Her legs wobbled. “Help.”

“No.”

“Caramel.”

He tucked his hoof under her shoulder and hoisted her up. “I’m going to barricade the front door.” He turned to go, but paused. “Talking ‘bout killing yourself--you’re freaking me out.”

“Sorry.”

“You didn’t kill yourself, okay? You’re here.”

Twilight made it to her hooves without really realizing it. “Yeah. I’m here.”

“You’re here.”

“I’m here,” she chanted as she wiped the tears from her face. Soulless autonomy overpowered her shellshocked conscience. Twilight Sparkle was back in control.

He nodded. “Focus on here. We’re here. We made it.”

Without guards to impede them, the trip to the ground level took only a few minutes. They found not a single trap or alarm in the whole room. No lasers on the floors, much to Caramel’s relief, no terrified guardsponies hiding in the bathroom--nothing.

“This is--” Twilight coughed up more tears. “This is all wrong. Everything’s wrong. Look--the exhibit should be rigged to explode, but it’s not. The schematics showed detonation wire strung beneath the floorboards. There’s--nothing.”

“Your documents weren’t totally wrong.”

“They’re all wrong!” She sniffled again, the last sign of weakness. “Everything’s wrong.”

“Maybe the maps you took were dated?” Caramel pointed towards the unconscious guards. “They might have new orders on them.”

In their state, it made perfect sense. Rip the armor off the almost-corpses and check their pockets for official documents.

“This one had a really troubled life,” Twilight noted as she rifled through one of the guard’s pockets. “Most guards do. It’s sad. They grow up violent--there’s just nothing we can do. I hope he doesn’t get fired.” Surprised resolution crossed her face, though nopony would ever know it. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t. The guard was so good for him.”

Caramel looked at the guard in Twilight’s hooves for a moment, then resumed searching.

Personality, the enemy of progress! Twilight focused on rifling through pockets and skimming small papers and prayed that the memories would pass into the background, along with the soft hum of what had to be--couldn’t be, lasers?

“Do you hear that?” she asked. “Don’t say anything. Just listen.”

Caramel gave her a harsh look but complied. “Can’t be central air,” he said after a few seconds.

“Can’t be the lights, either.”

Twilight laid the guard gently across the floor. Caramel just let his slump. “We should take a moment and think. That’s not a natural sound. We need to approach this slowly.”

“Gods almighty.” Caramel tore the rubber band off a leather bound personal journal and threw it across the room. It skittered across the floor until it hit the opposite wall without triggering a single alarm. “Maybe we should just walk in and grab it.”

Twilight cringed at the noise. “Easy--”

“Easy, yeah, but you’re the one crying.” Twilight took a step closer to him, eyes spilling fire. “Look, stop trying to think. The doors are all unlocked and the guards are all stupid, and you act like that isn’t the biggest miracle you’ve ever seen.”

“It’s not a miracle--”

“It’s all wrong, yeah. I know.”

“What’s getting into you?”

Caramel took a step towards the crystal heart’s storage room.

“I’ll bet if I walked through that door, nothing would happen.” The room bent inward. Cringed. Caramel sensed it. He burst out into a great big smile and said, “If I walked through that door, nothing would happen.”

“Caramel, stop it. Help me look for documents. We need to find documents.”

He took a step towards the door.

“Caramel. The documents!”

Another step.

“Caramel!”

He paused five paces from the door. “Everything we’ve done this past month has been a joke. We shoot shit for days on end and then we run in and screw it all up. It’s a screw-up, that’s what it is.”

“What are you doing?” she hissed. Her nervous glance followed the sound as it crashed around the high ceiling. “Did that spell do something to you too? Sit down, I should have buffered for collateral. We don’t have a contingency for this--”

“No, don’t you point that horn at me. I humored you all this time, but--you know what? We didn’t need it, any of it. Plans and contingencies.”

“Okay, okay, we didn’t need any of it. Please, step back and think for a second.”

“Do you know me? This whole month, and do you even know who you’re talking to? I’m not so perfect at my craft that I’ve transcended history. I am not the pony who walks in the opposite direction when he could run into--right through that door.” Anger bloomed in the dark like a strange flower. “I am the contingency.”

Drum solo! Frantic percussion! Squealing high horns, the sound of soft horseshoes on polished floors! Caramel lowered his shoulder and rushed the heart room.

Perhaps they both thought they’d explode the instant they crossed the threshold. They expected alarms, at least. Maybe the end of the world. Or the end of the story, or them. Either way, Caramel forgot where he running to, only that he was running through something. Momentum picked him up by the ears and threw him face first to the floor. Twilight screamed as he rolled.

“Gods, fuck!” Cursing felt oddly therapeutic, given the circumstances. “Fuck,” she hissed again. “We’re dead, we’re dead, we’re dead.”

Nopony moved out of mutual understanding. Waiting. Seconds ticking, then whirring, then buzzing.

Caramel rolled onto his back and patted the floor. “Nothing happened.”

“We’re dead. We’re dead.”

“Works every time.” He let loose a laugh that shook the walls. “Works every time!”

Twilight throws herself against the wall, her horn brimming with purple fire. Covering her angles, checking her corners. “Are you mental?” she shouted, utterly contemptuous to the guards outside, or anypony else for that matter. “That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen anypony do.”

“But it worked!”

A dim purple halo ignited on the ceiling and curled to the floor. Only when the last flames licked the carpet and extinguished themselves did Twilight stand upright.

“We are the luckiest ponies on the face of the earth.”

“If we were lucky,” Caramel started, “we wouldn’t have to steal the darn thing in the first place--”

“Stop it. Just stop.”

“I think we’ll be okay from here on out.”

“You’re nuts.” The insult therapy stabilized Twilight’s nerves to the point where she could push herself off the wall without falling over. She approached the opened door backwards in quiet, reverent steps, eyes on the upper windows. “Is the heart in there?”

Caramel turned around. “Yeah, it’s definitely here. There’s a pedestal in the back of the room, covered with a canvas. Something’s glowing underneath it, that has to be it.”

“What color is the light?”

“Bluish? Light blue, sorta.”

“That’s it,” Twilight breathed. The image of it in her hooves became very clear in her mind. “Can you see anything on the other side in the way of alarms?”

He traced the door frame with his eyes to find a bulky black box attached to the wall above the door, partially connected to the frame with plastic casing. “Yep, hold on. Got a box.”

Twilight halted a few paces from the door. “Tell me what you see. Try not to move so much, it might be a pressure alarm.”

“Just a black box in the center of the doorframe. Rectangular, little bigger than a hoofball.”

“Okay. That’s not promising, but okay. Anything else? Wires?”

“Um, yeah, there’s a jumble of wires coming out both sides of the box. Most of them run into the doorframe itself. Some kinda shielding spell, maybe?”

“It didn’t do a very good job, if it was a shielding spell.”

“I’m gonna hit it with my flashlight,” Caramel said.

“What? No!”

“I just want to get a feel for what’s inside it, that’s all.”

“You can’t feel with your flashlight. Don’t be so obtuse--”

Five solid taps echoed through the hall. The box whirred. A gear grinded and popped. Twilight made a full rotation, her horn on fire, ready for something nasty.

“Hmm,” Caramel tilted his head, deep in thought. “Sounds like it’s mostly mechanical. It rang a lot, too. That means there’s no magic trigger. In fact, I guess there’s no magic anything inside it.”

“It’s a non-magical device?”

“I suppose so. Magic eats up sound more than water. No way it’d ring that much if it were full of magical crystals or something.”

“Then the wires are fake?”

“Definitely not fake. They’re insulated wires. Magically conductive.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Magic conducting wires without magic?”

“Could be acoustic resonance. They have basic censors at the end and pick up vibrations.”

“Acoustic resonance devices need electricity, which is magical.” Something compelled her to leap through the doorway just like Caramel. “I think I’m gonna risk it. If it didn’t go off for you...”

Caramel made a disapproving hum. “Wait a second.” He took a deep breath. “If the box isn’t magic and the wires aren’t magic. They, oh fuck.” He launched himself away from the door with frantic steps. “Stop!” he shouted. “Stop. Don’t move. Don’t go through the door.”

Twilight paused, her hoof planted an inch from the divide.

“It’s not non-magical,” Caramel echoed. “We’re idiots. It’s anti-magical. Those wires are magic detectors. They soak up magic and ferry it back to the box, which triggers the alarm.” Caramel shot her the deranged look of a feral criminal behind bars. “It’s rigged to go off if something overly magical walks through the door. I don’t know what it does when it goes off. That has to be it.”

“Why didn’t you set the alarm off?”

“I must not have enough magic in me. I don’t have any friends, my family’s dead, I don’t love anything aside from money, and I’m an earth pony to boot. I didn’t have enough magic to trip the alarm--but you--”

“I have friends and family, and I’m the immortal goddess of magic,” she breathed. “Shoot.”

They both took a few steps back on reflex, like they had just discovered a bomb. In all reality, a bomb would have been easier to deal with. “This must be why those crystal guards seemed so off earlier today.”

“Why’s that?” Caramel asked. Under any other circumstance it would be funny to watch him pace and shuffle on the tips of his hooves. Seeing him frightened almost made the whole development funny.

“Crystal ponies are full of magic, every cell of their body,” Twilight explained. “Regular old ponies can channel magic through them, but crystal ponies sweat the stuff. That’s the only reason they’re alive in the first place--they’re rocks, for goodness sakes. They’re made of rocks. It’s all the magic giving them life. They’re like nuclear reactors for magic.” That’s why the crystal guards were all outside today. That’s why they didn’t want to bow to us. They couldn’t get near the heart and risk setting off the anti-magic alarm even if they needed to, and they were pissed off about it.” She ran across the room, towards the closest unconscious guard. “These guards are all earth ponies, too.”

“What would happen to them if they tried stepping through the field? Out of curiosity’s sake.”

“Depending on how the box is programmed, the field will either set off an alarm or split atoms as it drops. It’s like a gate, you see. It drops from top to bottom like a tangible gate would, just at near the speed of light. That or it doesn’t, I don’t know.”

“That won’t happen to us though, right? Different chemicals, different body compositions, different outcome.”

“We’re not prepared for this,” Twilight mumbled. “I can’t believe it.”

“We’re also not gonna be in half,” he seethed. “What happens if I rip the box off the wall?”

“It’ll activate.”

“I’ll snip all the wires then. That’ll work. The box can’t feel if we cut its feelers.”

“There’s probably a failsafe so if one of the mechanical sensors gets overwhelmed or incapacitated the alarm will go off anyway.”

Twilight watched Caramel pace around the inside of the room. Moonlight fell between them, suspending his ravenous glowing eyes in limpid light.

“Can we just cut a hole through the wall?” Twilight suggested.

“If my guess is right, there’s more wires built into the walls. If we disturb them, we’re toast.” Twilight joined his pace, equidistant steps parallel to the door so she could see Caramel at all times. “Okay. Let’s just wait a minute and think.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he finally spoke. “Is there a contingency for this?”

Twilight thought for a second. Tapped her hoof on the floor, eight to the bar. “There might be something.”

“Okay, something’s better than nothing. Lemme have it. I can do anything. I’m the freaking god of robbery.”

Twilight shook her head. “Remember what I did to those guards?”

“No. Sorta.”

“I might be able to do that to myself.”

“And then, what, I drag you through the shield and slap you until you wake up?”

“No. Okay. This is gonna be academic, so sorry. The neural-magical relay is located on top of the pony’s spinal cord. If you could see it, it would look like a second spine running from your head out your spine and into your body. Like veins with magic instead of blood, and they’re all attached to this main spinal element. If you’re a unicorn it runs to your horn through your skull bone, and if you’re a pegasus it flares out into your wings. Earth ponies have neither, but they have larger veins and greater numbers of them, especially in their legs. Got that?”

Caramel made a face and nodded vaguely.

“Okay. So if you snap the neural-magical relay, the pony dies. If you clamp it, like I did to those ponies, they lose consciousness--they lose their life spark for a few hours. Their bodies still work, but they are basically self-sustaining vegetables.” Twilight took a sharp, shallow breath. “Here’s the thing. If I were to kink it, block it partially somehow, I could choke the flow of magic to the body. Not enough to make me pass out, but enough to hinder the magic flow to my body for a few minutes so I could pass through undetected. Once that’s done we’ll just wait until the effects wear off and teleport out, just like we planned.”

“You won’t trigger the thing when you’re inside?”

“Well, it’s not going off from the heart just sitting there, and it’s got more magic in it than ten of me put together, so we should be okay.” She shrugged helplessly. “So long as I can get through the alarm’s shell, it should work.”

“Do you feel like rolling those dice?” he asked.

Twilight nodded. “The relay resists obstruction like the spine resists snapping. I was only able to do it to those guards because I’m more powerful than them. I should be fine.”

“How fine?” Caramel asked. “Five minutes and a shot of whiskey fine, or fine like leave and try again another day fine?”

“We don’t have the second option.” Twilight’s own body started catching on to her plan. She felt sweat form on her back where it hadn’t been before. He breathing sped up. “We don’t have any options. We have an option for fending off waves of Equestrian secret service, but not this. I made up a contingency for if the building was rigged with megaspell crystals, and I didn’t prepare for this.” She slammed her hoof to the floor. “I should have seen this.”

“Okay, calm down. Don’t start crying again. How fast do you think you’d be able to do that whatever you just said?”

“If I could cancel out my own natural defenses, it’d only take a minute or two.” A thought occurred to her, and it almost made her laugh. “If there’s one thing that can overpower Twilight Sparkle, it’s Twilight Sparkle.”

Caramel felt a pang of worry shoot up his spine, but he didn’t let it phase him. “Alright then.”

She nodded, but her horn remained dim. “Remember when I was crying about those guards?”

“Yeah.”

“I told you that when you touch somepony’s magical-neural relay, their magic arcs through you and you--you become them, in a way.”

“Yeah.”

“If I touch my own relay, I become myself becoming myself.” She furrowed her brow. “I don’t know if that will start a chain reaction of Twilights becoming Twilight until the universe implodes, or if it’ll hurt, or what.”

“It might be neither of those things,” Caramel reminded her.

“Caramel, remember when I said I had to kill myself, five times?”

Caramel nodded.

“Imagine that happening to me. I’d be killing myself killing myself.”

Caramel bit his lip in thought. “No,” he finally said, “it’d be like--look, this is serious. We don’t have all the time in the world.”

“Okay. I’ll do it.” The hair on her legs prickled. “I’ll do it,” she repeated. “If I scream or fall over and stop moving, you have to run over here and get me.”

“Empathy might trigger the alarm. Heck, fear might. Fear’s magic.”

“Don’t do this to me,” she whimpered. “Not now. Of all times.”

“Okay, okay, I promise. Now kill yourself we you can get on with this job.”

For the second time that night, Twilight assumed a meditative position on the floor and lit up her horn. She wasted no time finding her target. Turning into the purely magic state tore the physical from the abstract. Ponies became opaque silhouettes with veins of fiery plasma stretching from head to hoof, centered on a main artery atop the spinal cord connected to the magical-neural relay in the neck, which in turn fed into the infinite movement of the leylines above her head. The leylines themselves moved through the air like electrons did; theoretically. In the realm of magic, the only reality was fire, burning in the blood of the living.

Caramel was there. He burned dimly in the other room and made an impatient motion with his hoof. From the corner of her eye she caught the faintly pulsing glow of five guards. Even now, the clamping spell she had placed on their magical-neural relays pulsed the color of grass scorched dry by the sun. Yellow, and it was time for them to go. Red, and the spell disintegrated.

She turned to focus on herself and inadvertently threw herself into third person. Twilight Sparkle sat before her, shining brighter than all the others combined, all her good intentions, all her fear, all her hatred--yes, she could see it now, hatred, pure and sublime, deep inside her mind. Hatred for the undefined, the word she did not know, the atom she could not control, the fire she could not bend to her will. The only mind she could not tame laid bare before her. A sacrifice of fire for a vengeful goddess! Extinguish this flame so another can burn forever, somewhere in the shattered ruins of the Whitetail Woods.

Pure anger overwhelmed her. From this perspective, Twilight Sparkle was nothing--another shadow darting between trees, a bit of magic. Nothing more. No more. The time had finally come for her to kill the only part of Twilight she hadn’t already razed herself.

She reached for Twilight’s neck and twisted.

Strange exquisite pain shocked her into her own skin. Shadows screamed in agony as they crashed together into solid shapes. Twilight Sparkle was in control. She bore down against the pain, against her own biology dragging her towards unconsciousness. Pain like fire, omnipotent and primal. She gasped and wailed and gnashed her teeth like a savage wild beast broken by a higher master. The ring of magic around her neck lept to her mane, then her sides, then her tail, then finally her feet, until fire consumed her mane, until her body glowed white hot in anguish. Twilight Sparkle was killing herself.

Her legs buckled. Memories she didn’t know she had lived flashed across her vision in dizzying technicolor. She dug her shoulder into the floor until she felt the ache. That would be her tether. From there she analyzed the pain. Her suffering was not irrelevant. It served a purpose. Suffering was good. To die by her own hoof was the final absurd consequence of her choice to wage war on herself, the final hopeless charge to confront her faceless enemy on its own terms. She saw it now. In a moment of pure academic joy she understood why the griffons she fought in the war laughed at the notion of surrender. She wailed and poured it on.

In her agony, she hallucinated Rarity materializing from the shadows and collapsing at her side, her eyes wide with panic.

“What did you do?” she sobbed as she dug a sewing needle from her bag. “What did you do to me?” Rarity raised the sewing needle high above her head and slammed it into Twilight’s neck. She twisted the needle around her spine and brought it up through the soft tissue until it burst from a second point just next to the first. “You’re burning, gods, you’re burning!” she wailed.

Twilight felt a tug on her neck, different from the rest of the pain. Rarity must have threaded something through the needle before sticking her.

“I can’t stop it--gods--” Rarity tested the wire. Fire snaked through the open wounds in her neck and touched her spine. Bones combusted. Rarity pulled harder. Twilight’s neck came up while her face angled steeply into the floor.

Here was her opportunity! Twilight pressed her cheek to the floor and leveraged all her weight against the wire. Rarity pulled again. The wire caught between two vertebrae and sent Twilight into a fit of pathetic spasms and gasps. Eyes wide open, watching the magical fire close around her like teeth, she felt the nearness of death, an infinite stillness.

Rarity roared and put all her weight into one final pull. Just when Twilight could stand it no more, Rarity crossed the wires and knotted the two ends together with a beautiful flick of her hoof, like a real artist. She pulled the ends apart and buried the knot in the center of Twilight’s back, then disappeared.

The spell was complete. Purple fire clawed the hardwood floor in an effort to consume it and died. Her mane settled. The heat discoloring her body faded to a dim glow, then nothing at all. Twilight buckled. Had her rear been a few inches higher, she might have done a perfect somersault. Instead, she flopped onto her side and threw up a little. Caramel rushed to her side.

“Did I do it?” she coughed.

“I don’t know,” Caramel replied, his eyes wide in horror. “Do you feel less magical?”

“I feel, yeah, I feel weird.” she nodded her whole body forward, then tipped in the opposite direction. “There’s, potholes in my head, like the good stuff went away and it’s just the bad stuff.”

“Um,” Caramel replied.

“What was I just saying? You told me to go kill myself, and then I did, and then you asked me if I feel different, and then I dunno what.” She scratched the back of her neck. “Is this how earth ponies fell all the time?”

He rubbed his neck. “Turn around for me?”

Twilight went to check the spot and winced. “What is it?”

“Fire? Gods, it looks like you’re bleeding fire.” Sure enough, glowing purple liquid beaded at the base of a thin spout of flame--also purple. “Are you okay?”

“No, my shoulder is, it really hurts. Like, ever since that--what was it, the robbery at the bank, the one with the smoke pillars and that. Ever since then when I fell on my shoulder it’s been giving me problems.”

“Okay. Okay, your shoulder’s feeling bad. I’ll make a note of that. Any--uh, anything else? Anything by your neck?”

“I feel dizzy,” she mumbled. “You know how you stretch really hard in the morning, and then you fold back into your normal shape and your whole head is just--” she gasped, swelling up with awe. “Just filled with stars! Stars burn, but they’re so far away nopony realizes it.”

“Okay. Shoot. Maybe run one of those tests on yourself? You love running tests.”

“I love tests! I take them all the time. Sometimes I even get to make them for Cheerilee and, oh it’s so kind of her.”

“Can’t you focus?” He danced with her beside the door, frantic tapping on the floorboards.

“Oh, I can--explain that. When you choke yourself or hyperventilate, you get that, dizzy, you know?, hypoxia. You get hypoxia, and you see stars. Well, I am just so used to swimming in magic that my brain is, sorta getting magically--sorta undergoing magical hypoxia.”

Twilight choked on her own spit, hocked up a glob of blood, and teetered through the door.

Caramel stretched and caught her before she could hit the floor. “Does this usually happen?” he asked.

“I haven’t actually, books, I haven’t actually studied it. There’s nothing on it to study, because when you deprive a creature of magic like I did, it dies.” She cackled, “But not Twilight Sparkle!”

Caramel pulled himself away, towards the heart’s pedestal. A thin trickle of purple fire stuck to his hoof and burned him. “How are we gonna get out now?” he thought out loud as he stomped it out. “We didn’t think this through.”

“We’re stuck? We’re not stuck!” she declared. “There isn’t even a door. We can walk out whenever we want.”

“Just--keep your eyes peeled. Do you--Twilight. Look already.”

“I can’t see,” she muttered. “What are we looking for again?”

“Wires, more booby traps. Something. How long is this supposed to last?”

Twilight leaned forward and glared at the dark shadow on the bridge of her snout. “No, not that. It’s, Rarity’s thing, the crystal heart. When we’re done, what?”

“That won’t matter until we actually get the heart.” Darkness! Cold and colorful. There was the Caramel she knew. He didn’t really care about magical hypoxia. Shellshock. Apathy. Get your head up. “Get your head up.”

“The pedestal,” Twilight groaned. “What if there’s alarms?”

He plod on towards the back of the room where the pedestal stood, “If your maps were wrong, we’ll do it the old fashioned way.”

“Beat ‘em to death with swords!” she snorted. “Celestia said there used to be honor in beating somepony to death with a sword.”

Caramel narrowed his gaze to the pedestal, now just a few hooves away. Light bled through the thick canvas and cast a dim shadow on Twilight. She peered over his shoulder only to teeter and catch herself again. Untamed music built around them, a subsonic rumble that started in the floorboards and lifted the dust from the corners, shook their knees until they trembled, and then swelled some more, all through their bodies, up and up until Caramel raised his hoof and threw away the canvas, building, building, building, cut!--

Cut! Silence! Cut to horrified silence! Strings wailing in shock and confusion, horn gnashing their teeth, grinding them down on their mouthpieces! The pedestal had adopted a new centerpiece; a large pink cupcake.

“That’s not the crystal heart,” Twilight said.

“We have to go,” Caramel whispered. His face burned as white and pale as moonlight.

“What? No, we gotta, find the crystal heart. What we came here for.” Caramel grabbed Twilight’s bruised shoulder and squeezed. She let out a pathetic yelp of pain and surprise. Caramel’s hooves were freezing. “Are you okay?”

“We have to go right now.” Twilight stared deep into his eyes and marveled at the polarized emotions contained within him. Hooves colder than ice and eyes brimming with fire and the rest of him stuck in limbo, freezing in the cold, teased with warmth by the memory of a colossal fire burning a few hundred kilometers behind him. “She might still be here.”

“I’m technically braindead, hypoxiated, and you’re--you’re still making less sense than--” Twilight turned, squealed a high note, and sent a magical pressure wave into the warm body creeping behind her. “It touched me!” she wailed as the assailant sailed through the door and into the main room.

“She’s here! Gods above, as I live and breathe, she’s here!”

Frenzy swallowed Caramel’s voice as he pulled a dagger from his boot and charged. Metal moved in complex rhythm capped by a delicate click. He recognized the noise and slowed for a split second, just long enough to duck the butterfly knife slicing through the air.

The attacker spun herself to meet him and grabbed his knife-wielding hoof at the elbow. using his momentum, she slammed him into the floor face first and jammed a hoof in his spine.

“Can your little mind even comprehend the time it takes to make this coat sparkle?” she roared. “Allow me to demonstrate how valuable this body is in relation to your life!”

“Rarity?” Twilight said from inside the storage room.

Moonlight danced off a pale coat, reflecting the ghost of an ancient monster long buried in the lunar soil. The creature who whipped around to face Twilight was a Rarity Twilight had never seen. Before her stood a relic of the old war, a battle she never knew over resources she couldn’t control. Eyes shattered, face twisted, blood pouring from the gash on her snout, down her face and into her mouth.

“Twilight. Oh--” Bloody spit foaming with tiny bubbles dripped on the floor as she spoke. “This isn’t--no.”

Caramel took the opportunity to kick the knife from Rarity’s hooves. Her eyes reignited. Blood flowed. She swung at Caramel, who rolled and sent another kick into the side of her front knee. Rarity groaned and went down. She aimed another kick, but could only throw one leg out before they both curled and locked. Carmel dodged it with ease and threw a jab into her side.

“What did you do to me, Rarity?” Twilight wailed above the fray. “Where were you? It’s hurting me!”

Worry flashed across Caramel’s face. Rarity seized the opportunity and sent her injured knee into Caramel’s face. They collided and fell in opposite directions, panting like feral dogs.

“Twilight.” Rarity stumbled over a response. “I know this all seems very sudden--but you have to believe me. You did this to yourself.”

“You were there,” Twilight sniffled. “You stuck a sewing needle through my neck.”

“No, I did no such thing. There was fire on your neck. All I did was touch you. I wanted to help you. And then you started screaming and you scared me so much--I just didn’t know what to do.”

“I’m gonna kill you, soon as you’re done chatting,” Caramel growled.

“No, you most certainly will not.” She touched her nose and recoiled at the blood staining her pure white coat. “Who have you gotten in with, Twilight?”

“A thief,” Twilight replied plainly.

“Err--listen Twilight. You need to leave, now.” She aimed her gaze at Caramel. “Both of you.”

Caramel said nothing, and dug around in his saddlebag for another knife.

“You’re on the wrong side of something too large for him to understand. As are you, Twilight.”

“Rarity,” Twilight said, “we’re trying to help you. We--we’re gonna help you!”

At last, the final pieces came together. A great disillusion clouded Rarity’s mind. “We can forget we ever saw each other. You won’t have to associate with this disgusting criminal underbelly a second longer. Go home. I just want to make dresses.”

“You can’t,” Twilight interrupted. “You--just can’t! Rarity, I’m sorry. I’m your friend, and, friends gotta, this is an intervention--no, sorry. It’s not an intervention. But--you should have seen your face!” she cried. “Your face! You broke. I had to save you. I have to!”

“I’m fine--”

“You’re lying!” Twilight took a stilted step forward and fell to the floor. “You’re a liar.” The strange flower on her neck wilted and fell across her shoulder, and she cried out in pain. “Let me help you. Please.”

Rarity and Caramel abandoned their standoff and rushed to Twilight in the pedestal room. The latter skid to a stop in front of the door and tried to halt Rarity, but she blew right past him. He stammered, “There’s alarms!” and ran in after her.

“What did she do to herself?” Rarity asked as she knelt at Twilight’s side. Dollops of flame spread across her shoulder blades like the blooming petals of a bright poisonous flower. Stems shot up, grasping moonlight, gasping for air, and collapsed into the whole.

A great moan, like the throes of a dying soldier, filled the hall. “I am doing the right thing!”

A memory of the great war surfaced. Rarity was in a dress, standing over a row of soldiers with bandages and labels. Mountains loomed in the distance. Her celebrity entourage ran across the helipad, screaming her name. A boy with blood seeping from his neck and mouth roared, “Did we get ‘em? The bastards!”

“I’ve never seen something like this,” Rarity said. “This is--this is way above us.” Twilight howled in pain. Rarity clenched her teeth and stifled tears. “We leave. We forget the crystal heart and leave.”

Caramel gave up on the saddlebag and dove at Rarity again. They tumbled right into Twilight, who wailed again and clutched her neck until her hoof caught on fire.

“Look--stop, stop! Don’t touch her!” Rarity snarled beneath Caramel. She lashed out with her one unpinned leg, missing Caramel’s face by a few inches. “Don’t touch her neck. She’s bleeding magic.”

Caramel’s face took on a look Twilight had never seen before. “If we leave a body here,” he grunted, “they’ll think it was you all along.”

“Look at her! Look at her!” Rarity locked eyes with Twilight. “She’s suffering.”

Caramel cast a long glance at Twilight. His ears perked at the little noises she made. Slowly, he relented and let one of her hooves go. With the balance in her favor, she flicked her tail, dislodging a defence charm she had concealed in the curls. It rolled without a sound towards Twilight.

Before Rarity could push Caramel off, he closed his eyes and punched her right in the jaw.

“We are so much less valuable than that heart,” he said in that low, slippery voice. “Can you imagine?--a princess of Equestria brought to ruin! It’d be twice as priceless!”

Rarity lit up her horn, but the interference spewing from Twilight’s neck destabilized the spell and dropped her on her injured shoulder.

“What’s your plan, Cup-Caper? Kill me and walk out the front door with your friend? Get away again?” Liquid fire bubbled like tree sap from Twilight’s neck and pooled on the floor around her. She kicked feebly and nudged herself backwards to escape it, but the trail followed her. Her eyes locked on the charm as it rolled slowly past her and into the crystal heart room. She choked on a warning and reached for Caramel. “The only exit is from the third story windows. I can carry her. Can you?”

Rarity burst out a laugh. “Want to know the truth? I wasn’t sorry. I never was sorry.” She smirked, her smile bent crooked by the blow. “You’re a sack of raw meat. You’re griffonfeed. I’ll bet you were the one setting off fireworks outside. Bring the whole guard to investigate them, sure, good plan! If there were a draft I’d assume you ran right through the wall to get inside.” She yelped in pain as Caramel leaned into the floor, crushing her legs beneath him. “Without Twilight you’d be nothing. I’ll bet you didn’t so much as unlock the windows on your way in.”

“Yes! As a matter of fact, we did unlock one window on our way in here!”

“Liar!” she roared. “I unlocked them first!”

The whole building rocked to one side. The outside wall of the heart’s storage room exploded, tossing the three thieves into the mess of liquid flame and vomit Twilight left behind. The lights snapped on. Thick oppressive floodlights smothered the moonglow and cast Rarity and Caramel in horrified relief. A light bulb burst somewhere above them. A shower of sparks eclipsed the fire consuming Twilight. Tritone alarms ripped through the hot dust in the air.

Caramel lept to his hooves, clawing at a patch of fire on his foreleg. “Twilight, get up!” he shouted and pointed his hoof at the remnants of the wall. Chunks of loose wood and insulation exploded burst behind Rarity, showering the floor with strange confetti.

Raging panic seized Rarity. The sound of gunfire made her remember--or maybe it was a premonition of something to come--the horrific taste of murder in her mouth. She dove to Caramel’s knife and threw it. The blade sailed wide right and stuck in the wall.

Caramel’s hoofgun clicked empty. Caramel wrenched the clasp open and flung the whole gun into the dust. It hit the floor and skittered to a stop a few paces beside Rarity.

“I’ll kill you!” he snarled. “I know who you are!” He reached for his knife and roared when he realized it wasn’t on the floor anymore.

“And I know you too!” Rarity threw back. “Caramel Apple, former ranch hand and director of imports of the town of Appleoosa, disgraced soldier of the Equestrian Army, whose color is so not black, and quite the looker in his hayday.” Caramel belched fire and charged through the doorway and into the dust cloud. “Oh, sorry,” she cackled, “still a sore topic?”

Caramel swung wildly. She dodged left, then right, then jumped right over him, out of the dust. She rolled backwards, a dizzying acrobatic switch, and popped like a rimshot on the hardwood floor.

Pieces of the main room’s wall crumbled, splintering the alarmed doorway and pouring debris onto the floor. Caramel cleared the pile with a grunt and lunged at Rarity, who spun to the right, deflecting Caramel’s momentum into the floor. Bells roared in his ears, chiming the hour. He let out an animal howl and gave chase.

"I was so handsome!" he snarled.

"I know!” she replied as she ducked away from another charge.

Beaded tears fell from Twilight’s cheeks. “Stop it, stop it, stop it,” she cried, “I’m awake! I’m awake! It was just a dream, I woke up!”

Neither fighter paid her mind. Rarity backed herself into a corner just in time to notice the front door shake. She blasted the lock with a variant of a catgut suture spell and sealed herself in, condemning herself to the fire and frenzy until the makeshift magical hold disintegrated. By her panicked estimates, she had two minutes. Or however long it took the guards to realize there was a rear entrance.

Twilight cried out again. “I’m sorry Spike! I’m sorry, this is all my fault, where are you, I’m sorry.”

Caramel took a moment to sweep the hair out of his face. “S’her fault,” He spoke in ragged breaths. “S’your fault,” he repeated at Rarity.

"Last I recall you tripped."

Caramel staggered back, clutching his face as if he had been shot. He twisted, his face imperceivable sorrow and then pure fire. His eyes were burning. He howled and pointed at a glass case to his right. It exploded into a million pieces.

“Caramel!” Twilight shouted. “Stop it, make it stop--”

“Haven’t you stolen enough from me?” he wailed.

“I could say the same for you and the sovereign nation of the Crystal Empire,” she replied. “But since you asked, I’m just here for the heart again.”

“Again?” Twilight whimpered.

Rarity grew very serious. “I’m sorry, Twilight. I’m really truly sorry.”

The pounding on the door swelled like the rumble of deep drums. “Hear that?” Caramel said as he pointed to the door. “They’re here for the pony with the heart in their hooves.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Rarity warned.

But Caramel had already grabbed the knife from Twilight’s scabbard. He moved on Rarity with a venomous grin much older than his own face. “I’ll kill you,” he said, voice dripping like foul-tasting blood, like liquid fire, like hatred.

Twilight looked on in horror as Caramel’s body disintegrated in time with the beating of the drums. First his silhouette flashed at random points and flung itself apart as her eyes narrowed. Then his whole head twinkled like a star in a cartoon, a shining diamond, contracting--no, not that, not organic, shimmering, like a dense point of light, in and out, breathing.

“No,” she heard Rarity say as she threw something towards Caramel, “and that’s that.”

Caramel’s head flew off his body. The rest of him staggered after it. Twilight gasped. “You can’t kill him!” The drumming stopped, but the heartbeat flexing nervous tick tick tick tick tick in her eye persisted. “You can’t just kill him!”

The rest of her plea was drowned out as a white hot flash consumed the room. The air shook like they were inside a giant drum. Caramel fell backwards in a shower of sparks, clawing at his face. “Gods!” he cursed, but he couldn’t hear it over the ringing.

Colors redshifted and disappeared. The sound of Caramel’s body hitting the floor with a deadweight thud spurred Twilight to her hooves. “Spike?” Twilight called into the cavity of the high ceiling. “Spike?”

The front door exploded--blasted clean off its hinges! Fire! A piece of the thick wooden door crashed into Twilight’s side with concussive force. Pain--beautiful pain!, the goddess godsend sent to sober her up, the miracle, the ancient breathing animal, pain!--shot through her body. Twilight Sparkle was alive! Twilight Sparkle was on fire!

The room was clear now. Crystal clear. Time slowed. Caramel on her right, burns on his face, blood on his leg, wood speared through his shoulder, Rarity just behind him, diving over the pile of rubble towards the hole in the wall, five crystal guards charging through the door, guns drawn, twenty more behind them, Spike nowhere in sight, cupcake still on the pedestal.

Whether it was intention or not, Twilight would never know. Whether she finally had enough of the helplessness or the vice around her magical-neural relay stretched or she just plain got spooked and flexed the wrong magic muscle--she didn’t know. All her mind knew in that moment was reaching into the air and pulling in dust, breathing it in, and exhaling the friction while in the same moment tapping into the leyline running next to her head and siphoning raw flammable magic through her horn in the form of a spark in order to cause, to her best estimations, a giant fucking bolt of lighting.

It slammed into the first wave of guards, physically picked them up and threw them. They hit the wall and laid still. The remaining guards flinched and spread out to cover their friends.

Tears filled Twilight’s eyes. Again, the heads of the guards twinkled. It was the crystal--only crystal twinkled like that. Not regular pony heads. Just crystal. “No,” she rasped, just as the guards let out a combined roar--crescendo!--and pulled their weapons. Two combat mages, one on either side of her, charged their horns, but not at her.

The guard commander pointed at Twilight. The bullet embedded itself into Twilight’s vest and knocked her onto her side.

Caramel yelled, “I told you!” just before a bolt of bright white magic from one of the combat mages slammed into his temple. His eyes swam in their sockets, and he laid still. The last thing Twilight saw before the guards descended on her was Caramel, mouth agape, eyes screaming, arms stuck out like a grotesque ponnequin.

The guards dragged her to her hooves, after a few minutes of rough handling and hoofcuff-slapping. One of them ripped her mask off. “Isn’t their princess’s purple?” he remarked as he slapped an inhibitor ring over her horn. Another tried to bandage her neck, but the gauze caught fire before he could finish wrapping it.

As they escorted the two out, two more squads of guards rolled in. One shining, one not. An exemplary union of two nations’ armies. The Equestrians stumbled to a halt as they recognized their princess, while the Crystalites laughed at their soft treatment of criminals.

Somepony on her left, an Equetsrian, grabbed her limp foreleg and pulled. The hoofcuffs bit into her ankles as she fell onto her shoulder. Her cry of pain alerted more guards on both sides of her. Forelegs descended from all directions and clawed at her, yanked her one way, then the other. A grand-prize tug of war. Crystalites on her right swept up the Equestrians flanks and shoved them away, forming a stone wall between her and her army, the cheaters.

In the ensuing argument, weapons were drawn, threats made, declarations of violence implied and stated and abated. Caramel almost managed to throw himself down the stairs and roll away before more guards hopped from their carriage and stomped on him. The two sets of guards turned on each other. A standoff ensued. None of it mattered.

As the Equestrian guard looked on, stunned and speechless with their guns pointed at their new enemies, the numerically superior crystallites dragged the princess and her accomplice towards the nearest friendly carriage.

A group of fast-moving armored wheelers flew into the street, temporarily blocking their path and almost starting a second great war when they bumped into the lead crystal guard. Their guns swiveled like pinprick eyes and stared.

Before anyone could tell them otherwise, the lead gunner fired a string of bullets into the ground in front of the Crystalites. The earth exploded and the shouting resumed. Ponies crawled atop the carriage and banged on the hatch. The eyes went cross. Fitting that the symphony end with percussion--but it couldn’t, it never could, all music must end in silence, music is life and life must end and so life must finish in silence or was it really a life at all?, and--there it was, the ear-splitting cymbals metal plates metal-plated doors slamming shut how it should have ended there! but Twilight was still sitting there in the Crystal Empire’s transport carriage hoofcuffed and helpless begging for it to end light from her neck wound burning her shadow into the opposite wall bleeding tears helpless over failure traitor worthless dizzying swimming in the sound of the end

.