CH15: Schedules to Keep, Tyrants to Beat
Elements Throw Down in Manehattan
Astronomers and Trackers Equally Excited
Twilight read the morning newspaper as she sat in her pile of blankets aboard the airship Service. She’d slept fourteen hours and awoken the next morning to find herself - only her Element self, thankfully - solidly back in the public eye.
“Is something wrong?” Tempest asked, startling Twilight by being in the room.
Twilight gestured to the newspaper. “I can’t believe some of what they’re writing. I can see the details from the Crown press release, but it’s pretty clear that this reporter is a hardcore tracker. He used waifu as if that’s something you can say in polite conversation.”
Twilight paused, but felt like she needed to get it out. “The way some ponies talk about Elements, it makes me feel like I’m just a thing to them, not a real pony. More like a fancy piece of cake to be looked at and...enjoyed.”
She shook her head and stood up, stretching the kinks out after her long rest. “We should get going. Our objective is back to the village.”
“I’m here for you, for whatever you need,” said Tempest.
“I appreciate it,” said Twilight. She touched a few scattered pieces of paper on the card table they’d brought aboard as a desk. “I’m going to need to write a report by the time we get there.”
“I wrote a report,” said Tempest. She showed Twilight a folder of paperwork. “You can fill in your own details if you have anything to add.”
“Wow, thanks,” said Twilight, glancing inside the folder. “This looks pretty detailed.”
“Pinkie Pie insisted on having a celebratory ice cream social last night,” said Tempest. “So I had time. Of course, you weren’t available, so I saved you some ice cream, though it may not be the best breakfast.”
“It wouldn't be the worst thing I’ve ever done to my body. That sounds so good right now I could hug you. Oh, what the heck.” Twilight leaned in and put her hooves around Tempest, a gesture that lasted a second, but left Tempest stunned for several more.
“Thanks again,” said Twilight, turning away with the report. “I need to get Spike to send this.”
The airship had spent the night hovering over Manehattan. Having participated in the battle, it probably did the citizens some good to see it in the sky. Spitfire and Soarin’ had already had to turn away half a dozen pegasus reporters requesting interviews. Twilight asked them to get the ship moving, setting a course for Starlight’s village.
At this point, she figured they’d lost the strategic element of surprise. It seemed safe to assume the Commander and Starlight knew the development group had captured Tempest and gotten the location of the the village from her.
Twilight wasn’t sure what was worse: that the Commander might have set such powerful creatures on Manehattan as a mere distraction, or that they deemed protecting the village important enough to do so. Either way, the village now had time to reinforce defenses and would be ready.
Twilight wasn’t considering any kind of frontal attack. However, just because the Commander might know they were coming didn’t mean she knew exactly when. They could still do reconnaissance and look for weak points.
There was still the issue of how the Commander got their information. The more Twilight considered it, the more she suspected a leak. But who could it be?
Ironically, Tempest was probably the least likely suspect. Information had been getting out since before she’d joined the group. Everypony else… Twilight shook her head. Now was not the time to be persecuting allies, so whatever she did about it, it had to remain impartial and impersonal.
In the meantime, she refocused on what lay ahead. The sky was cloudless and blue, not useful cover for the airship. They would have to put it down somewhere and proceed by land.
She flipped through the report, just skimming. As thick as it was, it must have been fairly comprehensive. Twilight wondered if it must have been written with the other Elements’ help. Maybe they figured answering a few questions for Tempest was easier than writing their own reports.
Twilight’s stomach growled. She hesitated, pen poised to write, but the few pages she’d seen looked good. She closed the cover and went to find Spike.
He sent the report off by burning it with his fire breath. That was a remarkably effective way of transporting small combustible objects, as they would reappear wherever he wanted them. In this case, Celestia had an inbox in her office dedicated especially for him.
“She’s making me write my own reports now,” Spike said glumly. “So thanks for giving her the idea.”
“Nopony ever said, ‘wow, this is too much documentation,’” Twilight quipped.
She headed for the small galley aboard the airship and grabbed a couple of things for breakfast, sitting down. It was a rare occasion nowadays when she wasn’t tired, actively researching, or fighting, so she took the few minutes she had to eat and read a book about nautical traditions.
She paused, taking the spoon out of her mouth after a bite. “Wow, that is really good ice cream.”
After Spike had sent the report, Celestia invited Cadance up to her office to read it. They went over it together.
“There’s a note here from Rainbow Dash that before she left Canterlot the other day, she saw Twilight’s school friends,” said Cadance.
“If I remember correctly, they had their memories modified?” said Celestia.
“Right.” Cadance read the note again. “It looks like they were just there for Rainbow’s autograph.”
“Coincidence, then.” Celestia turned the page.
“It may be worth following up on them,” said Cadance. “With the sudden departure of Chrysalis-as-Twilight, we don’t know how they might take it. She could have even told them something.”
Celestia looked up. “Such as?”
“Chrysalis had information, but for a price. I don’t know if she would have told civilians anything. I’m just stating the possibility.”
Celestia continued reading silently for several seconds before asking, “So when does Scoop de Cadenza open?”
Cadance chuckled. “Not that we were ever for profit, but adding ice cream would increase overhead significantly. At any rate, we have to ensure security first.”
“Speaking of which,” said Celestia, “I want to ask you for the Elements’ help to ensure security for the summit.”
“The international summit happening in two days?” Cadance shook her head. “This is sudden. I don’t know if they’ll even be back by then, much less in any condition to protect dozens of diplomats.”
“I wouldn’t have asked before this incident in Manehattan,” Celestia replied. “But now, there’s really no hiding the fact that something is going on, even if it doesn’t have a face like Nightmare Moon. The delegates coming for the summit are going to ask what I’m doing to protect them while they’re in Canterlot.”
“What’s your priority? Going after the village, or protecting the summit?”
Celestia considered it, looking back down at the report. “The summit. The Elements don’t have to come back to Canterlot immediately, but they do have to be in place by then. I’ll have Spike tell them.”
Cadance, no longer an Element and thereby unable to connect to Spike, felt left out of the loop. She was in charge of the development group, but had to get Celestia’s help to manage it.
She vaguely realized she was seeing Twilight’s situation from the opposite perspective: wanting to be involved but forced out. She was even self-aware enough to see the irony in that. Worse, illogically, Cadance had started to feel guilty about what she’d done to get Twilight back despite being proven right by Twilight’s actions and the lives she’d already saved.
“Is something the matter?” Celestia said, glancing up from the report.
“No,” Cadance replied, “I’m just thinking about how we’ll handle this. We’ll need a plan. I’ll get started.”
She nodded to Celestia and left the office as Celestia continued to read the report.
As Cadance closed the door, Celestia burst out “In orbit!?”
“So, to summarize, Celestia wants you back to Canterlot to protect some international meeting,” Spike reported. The others had gathered around him aboard the airship.
“But we’re almost there!” Twilight argued.
“She just said we had to come back, she didn’t say exactly when,” Rainbow pointed out.
Twilight looked at her, and then nodded after a moment of consideration. Being the leader in tactical command of Task Force Cupcake was more responsibility than she had wanted, but it did allow her to make her own decisions. “Alright. We’ll still do the recon, and then head back.”
She turned to Tempest. “Where’s a good place to land out of sight of the village, but close?”
“The foothills to the north should hide our approach. It may be a little dicey to stay in the cover of the valleys.”
“Can you do it?”
Tempest glanced at the airship’s wheel. “Yes.” She walked over to the controls. “You may want to hang on.”
That turned out to be good advice. Twilight braced her hooves on the deck. Under Tempest’s touch, the airship went careening towards the ground, dropping into one of the forested valleys northeast of the village. It banked hard to stay within the snaking channel of the valley, occasionally brushing the very tops of trees with its hull. Rainbow was the only one who seemed to be enjoying the ride.
Tempest eventually reduced speed and brought them in for a hover. If Twilight had been keeping up with the map correctly, the village was a little further down, probably just over the next ridge. To the other side, mountains rose up to the frozen north.
“Alright,” said Twilight. “Spitfire, Soarin’, take my astronomy telescope and head up the mountain. Find a place to hole up and set up overwatch. Fluttershy, go with them for comms. Rainbow, fly along the mountains and loop around to the west side of the village. Applejack do you still do that tree thing?”
“Yes.”
“Good, take the south. Pinkie, Rarity, just go straight west until you get to the village’s east side. I’ll take the north side.”
“I can go,” said Tempest.
Twilight considered it. “Alright, come with me. Spike, watch the airship.”
“As long as we’ve still got ice cream,” said Spike.
The group split off. Twilight and Tempest moved fast, occasionally teleporting to cover ground. The village seemed to be positioned about where the trees of the foothills gave way, so there was nothing around it to hide their approach. She settled for keeping just inside the treeline and observing from a distance.
Twilight and Tempest settled down into the grass. Twilight pulled a notebook out of her saddlebags and set up a couple of spells, applying small tweaks to lens the air in front of the two of them. It took some fiddling, but she managed to set up what was effectively a wide-view magic telescope for them both to look through, albeit slightly tinged the color of her magic.
They saw a few ponies moving around, though nothing too out of the ordinary for a town. Twilight kept fiddling with her spells, gradually increasing the zoom and clarity. Squinting, she saw what Tempest had mentioned before: everypony had the same cutie mark. Even seeing it, she still couldn’t believe it.
“There’s Starlight Glimmer,” said Tempest, indicating a pale pink unicorn.
Twilight repeated it for the benefit of the network, making sure the others knew what she looked like. They continued to watch Starlight, who seemed to happily interact with the townsponies.
“She seems...more energetic or something,” Twilight said. “I can’t quite put my hoof on it, but there’s something different about her than the rest.”
“I got that sense, too,” Tempest replied.
I’ve got changelings over here, said Rainbow. If I hadn’t caught them changing disguises, though, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. They all seemed to come out of one house.
She projected across which house it was on the west side of the village. Twilight made a mental note.
Um, we found a cave up here and...it’s something big, said Fluttershy.
What is it?
It’s...well, just let me show you. Fluttershy projected what she was seeing.
Twilight gasped. A glowing blue spell matrix stood against the wall of the cave. Within its cells were a variety of what she could only assume were cutie marks.
“So they don’t have equal cutie marks...all their cutie marks were taken.”
Twilight briefly described for Tempest what was going on. To the network, she said, “We need to save those ponies.”
Do we have time? Rarity said. The Princess wanted us to return.
“She doesn’t know about this.” Twilight could have waited for Spike to tell her, but pressed forward. She was in charge on the ground, and this was the new mission. “Tempest, go back to the airship and stand by. Rainbow, I’m coming to you.”
Twilight headed that direction and met up with Rainbow in a few minutes. “Watch my back, I’m going in there.”
“Are you crazy?” Rainbow asked mildly.
Twilight gestured to herself. “No, I’m Queen Chrysalis.” She teleported.
Arriving to the backside of the house Rainbow had earlier designated, Twilight took a deep breath, doublechecked that her saddlebags covered her flanks, and then strode confidently around the corner into the street.
Yes, this was stupid. Starlight probably knew they were coming. The Commander had probably told Starlight what all the Elements looked like. But that didn’t mean the tactical element of surprise was entirely lost.
In the few seconds Twilight spent on the street, nopony looked twice at her. Seeing all the identical cutie marks up close somehow only made the feeling stranger. There was something definitely wrong here.
She walked through the front door of the house like she owned the place. A stallion was slumped in a chair, bouncing a paddle ball. He stood up in surprise. “My queen, what-”
Twilight silenced him with a raised hoof. “Listen carefully. I’m the real Twilight Sparkle. I came to get you all out of here. I need to speak with Chrysalis.”
He gaped at her for several seconds in surprise before shaking his head as if to clear it. “O-of course! Sure. Um, come with me.”
He led her back out of the house. This guy must not have been a great changeling, because he wore his feelings on his face, looking visibly nervous as he led Twilight across the street.
“Hi there!” said blue stallion, stopping Twilight. “You only just arrived a few days ago, right?”
Twilight did her best to impersonate Chrysalis impersonating herself. “With the ability to count like that, one wonders why you aren’t a mathematician.”
“Well, that’s because Starlight Glimmer put me in charge of party planning around here. I mean, my name is Party Favor. I guess I’m not great at it, but hey, we’re all equal here.”
He waved goodbye. Twilight and the changeling moved on. Coming to the next house, her escort knocked on the door.
It opened to reveal Twilight.
“Hi,” said Twilight. “Nice place you have here.” She pushed through the doorway.
“What are you doing here?” Chrysalis exclaimed. Apparently feeling just as weird about the matching faces as Twilight herself, she turned back to her usual form as soon as the door was closed. So did the other changeling.
“We were in the neighborhood, after having captured Tempest Shadow, and thought you might like to get out of here,” said Twilight. She tilted her head. “Have I earned your trust yet?”
Chrysalis blinked, absorbing it. “So you’re the Element of Magic?”
This time, it was Twilight’s turn to transform. As Chrysalis stared at her, Twilight said, “I’m not sure if you pretending to be me was the smartest or dumbest thing you’ve ever done. Either way, here we are. We’re going to take down Starlight Glimmer. It would help if you told me what we’re dealing with.”
“You really beat Tempest Shadow?”
“It wasn’t easy. She even had a system to cancel magic, but we got around it.”
Chrysalis nodded. “The black stone? That used to be part of my throne, before we were driven from our home. The stone absorbs pony magic, which I thought was enough to keep us safe.”
“What kind of magic does Starlight have?”
“I doubt I’ve seen even a fraction of her power. She uses what she calls the Staff of Sameness to remove cutie marks.”
“We found where they’re kept, a cave up in the mountains.”
Chrysalis nodded. “The ponies...they’re not whole. They love, they feel emotion, but they feel like poor imitations of themselves.”
“We’re going to put a stop to that here and now.” Ready, everypony?
Heck yes.
Yep.
Okie-dokie!
If you insist, darling.
“Get going,” Twilight said to Chrysalis. To everypony else she said, converge on the town. She walked out of the house.
In the street, standing there as the Element of Magic, the townsponies definitely noticed Twilight this time. She started walking towards the house at the end of the row, the one that stood apart, where Tempest had pointed out the mayor. She called, “Starlight Glimmer!”
There were excited whispers from awestruck townsponies in the street behind her, which she ignored. If they proved to be a problem, Rainbow, Applejack, Pinkie, and Rarity were already surrounding the town, and the rest wouldn’t be far behind.
Starlight came out of her house. She carried a long, straight stick with a forked end loosely with one foreleg and walked, no, strolled over to meet Twilight. “Well, the Element of Magic here to see little old me! What could have brought you here?” She smiled, a look Twilight found more annoying that any Chrysalis had ever worn.
“You’re going to release all those cutie marks you’re holding in that cave and give these ponies their lives back.”
“Oh?” Starlight’s smirk somehow deepened. “Or what?”
Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “Or I’m going to kill you like every other abomination I’ve ever met.”
She was actually surprised when her words seemed to cut Starlight. Did the villain have a conscience?
However, they were interrupted just then. “Starlight, are they finally here?”
A blue pegasus mare with a pale mane approached, landing beside Starlight. Between the equality cutie mark and different haircut, it took Twilight several seconds to recognize her, and a few more to believe it. “Night Glider!?”
There was a general chorus of disbelief from the voices on the network. Rainbow appeared just then, skidding into a landing beside Twilight. If anything, she was even more dumbfounded.
“What happened to you?” said Rainbow. “I thought you were dead!”
“Maybe I was.” Night Glider shrugged. “Either way, I’m here now, and I have only Starlight to thank.”
“She was very generous in thanking me,” said Starlight, smiling again. She lifted her staff, and transformed.
Her outfit seemed geometric, with purples and blues. A diamond-shaped chest plate appeared designed to deflect frontal attacks. Kitelike wings seemed to jut upwards as part of the ensemble.
“I’m the Element of Equality,” she said, raising her staff. A ball of magic formed at its tip. “And it’s time I showed you how average you really are.”
She struck so quickly Twilight only had a shield up out of reflex than conscious decision. Still, the attack carried enough force to knock her over backwards. Even when Trixie had been charged up by the amulet she hadn’t hit this hard. Who was this mare?
When the fight broke out, Rainbow dove for Night Glider. Applejack, Rarity, and Pinkie - arriving just then - scattered to get out of the firing line.
By the time Twilight rolled and came up standing, she was already preparing an attack of her own. Her shot of magic went straight to where Starlight wasn’t - she had teleported. Not seeing Starlight in front of her, Twilight instinctively whirled, just barely getting her sword up to block an attack from Starlight’s staff that might have taken her head off.
Starlight jumped back out of range of Twilight’s counterattack, her magic powering the wings of her outfit. She hovered there for a second, as if taunting Twilight. It took the house next to her exploding to wipe the expression off her face.
Not a bad shot, but not quite on target!
Hey, I’m too short to see the cannon sights! Spike complained.
Starlight teleported again, appearing further down the street. Twilight teleported after her, extending her sword - but hitting nothing. Starlight was gone again.
“Hey!”
Twilight didn’t even have time to turn before getting hammered with magic so hard that she destroyed another house by going through the front wall and out the back.
It felt like her lungs had seized and every single part of her body hurt simultaneously. She struggled to roll over and had to visually check that all her legs were still attached.
Starlight wiped the wreckage of the building away with a toss of her horn. She advanced on Twilight, only to fend off a banzai attack from Pinkie. Losing ground to Pinkie’s swords, she counterattacked with magic, sending Pinkie straight up into the air.
Rarity drove forward, bouncing one of Starlight’s spells off her shield. Starlight teleported, and then hit Rarity from behind.
Pinkie returned from however high she had gone, landing squarely atop Starlight. She managed to tear one of the wings off Starlight’s costume before she was swept off and slammed to the ground. Starlight slammed her staff down across Pinkie’s midsection, which drove the breath from her, but also folded her body up like an armadillo.
Applejack rushed at Starlight, whose staff Pinkie was still holding tightly to. Starlight managed to duck, losing part of her mane to Applejack’s scythe. She hit Applejack with a glancing shot of magic that knocked her over. Applejack rolled and dug her scythe into the ground to slow her momentum, charging back at Starlight only to meet a head-on blast of magic that knocked her clear across the street without touching the ground.
Starlight kicked Pinkie in the head, which finally made her let go of Starlight’s staff. As Rarity made another charge, Starlight threw her staff into Rarity’s path, forcing her to highstep, and then hit her shield straight on with enough magic to send Rarity flying, too.
All this happened in the time that it took Twilight to get up. Applejack and Rarity would also need time to get back into the fight. Pinkie might be down for the count. Where was Rainbow, still fighting Night Glider?
Another cannon shell arrived just then, but Starlight didn’t even flinch as it exploded off a magic shield she threw up. She walked towards Twilight, beginning to smile again as she charged her horn.
Twilight conjured a v-shaped shield with as much magic as she could, but also placed a shield behind her. Starlight hit her with a spell that felt like getting hit with a train. Twilight’s shield only barely held, even as it deflected the attack, cutting deep trenches to either side of her. Her hindquarters slammed into her secondary shield, the only thing keeping her from being knocked down.
Something had to give. There was no way Twilight could fight her on parity. A sudden idea came to her. Spike, load that black rock into the cannon!
“You’re something of a magical prodigy, aren’t you?” Starlight called to Twilight as she kept walking forward. “Aren’t you special?”
Twilight wasn’t sure where she was going with this, and tried an attack while Starlight seemed distracted. Starlight easily blocked it.
“But that wasn’t good enough,” Starlight went on. “You became an Element. You made more Elements. But you know what? If everypony is special, nopony is special.”
She struck a glancing blow at Twilight with her staff, playing with her.
“Then why are you an Element?” said Twilight. “Are you going to convert others? What are you going to do when the majority of ponies have been converted into Elements? ‘Everypony is special, so nopony is special?’ What are you going to do when everypony is equally as powerful, and then they decide they don’t like you?”
“That’s the beauty of true equality. There is no like, there is no hate.” Starlight kept coming, levitating over the scars in the ground her magic had made.
Twilight walked backwards. “So, some hypocrisy, then? I can see the makeup you used to cover your cutie mark coming off. I guess some ponies are more equal than others, then?”
“It’s not a perfect system, it just works for me.” Starlight raised her staff.
Another shot came screaming in. Starlight annoyedly shot it down, but her eyes widened in surprise as it didn’t explode like the others, instead turning into a black puff that blanketed the area.
Her staff fell to the ground as her magic was pulled away. Twilight, prepared for it, already had her sword in hoof and charged.
Starlight managed to grab up her staff and block Twilight’s attack, but was nearly knocked over in the process. Twilight pressed forward, this time the one taking ground. She was aware, however, that they were getting close to the edge of the cloud of stone dust.
Using as much strength as she could, Twilight chopped downwards, cutting through the staff and disarming Starlight. She followed up with a clinch, taking the other mare to the ground on her back. Twilight stabbed her sword through Starlight’s foreleg to pin it to the ground, used her weight to hold down the other, and then began to rain punches direct to her face.
Starlight kicked at Twilight feebly, but her resistance died away around the same time Twilight broke her cheekbone. Had Twilight been thinking rationally through this, she would have recognized the point that the structural integrity of Starlight’s skull was compromised, and perhaps stopped there. Or perhaps not.
It was only when Starlight stopped moving at all that Twilight paused in realization, her hoof still raised. She sat there heaving with breath, blood dripping off her hoof, for a few seconds before rolling off Starlight’s body and lying on her back.
She lay there breathing hard for several seconds. Maybe she'd be getting back to Canterlot on time after all.
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yesssssss twilight cave worst ponies skull in
She kills an awful lot of people for wanting information so bad.
And this cuts the commander down to Sombra, the Nightmare gone bodyhopping, an OC, or something weirder.
If Night Flyer and co actually died, though...
9580617
Don't forget Grogar as a possibility.
9580617
9581203
Y'all are missing a much closer answer
9582558
Sunset Shimmer?
She even does paperwork!
I feel like this might go far worse for Starlight than in the show.
TMI
Oooo, kite theme.
Hah, nice.
Oh dang, I was hoping we could keep her like we did Tempest.
If there is a Judas among them the most logical person is Kadence. Her husband was killed and without him she has no power. The commander (why call yourself that of all things?) probably offered her the shining armor from the other world or something similar.
9580617
Wouldnt be surprised if it was Blueblood.