• Published 20th Oct 2019
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Anarchy: Pony of Chaos - Ninjadeadbeard



Fluttershy and Discord decide to have a child. May the Gods have mercy on their souls.

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11 - The Pony of Chaos, Part 4 - Cheese Dies at the End

Princess Twilight, Celeste, and Spike hastened through the underground halls of the Palace’s basement level, the Alicorn and unicorn’s magic allowing them to follow the most optimal path to whatever had triggered the alarm-spell. They were joined by one of the changeling guards, a Lieutenant Aphan, who came to give them the fullest report already available.

The intruder had used the kitchens as the point-of-entry. Two guards, busy hitting on some of the cooks, didn’t see anything before an entire shelf of frying pans dropped on them without warning. The cooks were so shocked that they failed to see the intruder themselves, only being able to report the sounds of hoofsteps rapidly fading into the distance after the fact.

The Princess was worried about her guards. Celeste was annoyed at learning lunch would be late. But Spike, of whom it was said had the soul of a chef, was seething.

Intruders, in my kitchens…

Aphan further reported, as the group passed by a wall of guardstallions and guardmares locking the Palace down, that the Royal Librarian, Quill Slash, had found the older Restricted Section opened up, with its contents scattered about in disarray. There hadn’t been time to do an inventory.

“Sounds like our guy knows what he’s looking for,” Spike noted, managing to keep his breathing calm and controlled despite his having skipped ‘leg-day’ once too often at this point.

“Or gal,” Aphan buzzed along, his gold-and-purple armor paired well with his white chitin, a popular illusion amongst the changeling guards, “We did find hoofprints, but they weren’t on record. And they were small, like a foal’s.”

Celeste mused, “That shouldn’t be possible. Everypony gets hoofprinted at birth these days, and since as long as I can remember.”

The lieutenant nodded, and with a flash of emerald-green fire, he was instantly replaced with something that looked an awful lot like one of Rarity’s Ponequins. If there was one thing, and only one thing, Spike disliked about his ‘Rarity Time’, it was those Ponequins, and this was somehow creepier still. Pale, off-white fur without mane or tail, and eerily completed with changeling eyes and wings, the Lieutenant flew alongside Spike like something out of his nightmares.

“I managed to work out the intruder’s rough dimensions using the hoofprints,” Aphan beamed, which made the thing that he looked like all the more horrifying.

It was the size of a foal. Possibly, if the measurements were right, a filly.

“Eugh,” Spike blanched, “Do we really think it’s a foal? Like, really?”

“I know it’s unsettling,” Twilight cast a sympathetic eye back towards her advisor and little brother, “But we know from experience that even a child can… can make terrible choices.”

Celeste blinked once, and then scowled. “I’m feeling sort of attacked right now…”

“No,” Spike chuckled, despite the seriousness of the situation, “I think she was talking about Cozy…”

He paused as they exited the tight corridors and entered a large, spacious cavern. Spike was vaguely aware that Twilight had converted this chamber into the Starlight Vault because it had been the spot where Princess Cadance had been imprisoned by Queen Chrysalis so many years ago. Yet in spite of that dubious legacy, he was always dumbstruck entering it.

Stalactites of pure, radiant crystal hung from the distant ceiling, reflecting a peculiarly beautiful magelight across the cavern. The stalagmites had been cleared from the floor, except near the edges of the cave, where they stood as pillars of glimmering beauty. The whole place reminded Spike of when he used to go gem-hunting with Rarity.

Heck, this was still his and her favorite spot to…

It was a good thing Dragons could hide their blushes so well beneath armored scales; Spike thanked his lucky stars.

The Vault itself stood resolute at the far end of the cavern, a solid, faceless wall of unblemished marble, upon which a rainbow effect was cast by the crystal cavern. But as Twilight and company approached, and Lieutenant Aphan took up a guardian position nearer to the cave’s entrance, Spike could see an assembled mob of unicorns weaving spell-light across its façade.

Over a dozen unicorn mages were here, called by the Cloister Bell through a magical network of alarm-spells woven throughout Canterlot. They were the last line of defense for the Vault, as well as its jailors, if and when somecreature managed to penetrate its outer defenses, a series of magical barriers erected by Twilight, Starlight, Starswirl, and even Celeste, to prevent even time from harming the Vaults exterior.

But the Vault’s locked door, a black wall of oak inlaid in silver, was entirely un-magical by design, held shut by an infernally devious mechanical puzzle-lock. But from the way the door hung ajar, it looked like the intruder had figured out its secrets.

At the center of the mage formation stood an imposingly strict turquoise mare, dressed in the severe dark dress of high office with her multi-hued purple mane and tail both tied up in a tight bun. She appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be the nastiest, rules-obsessed instructor from the most prestigious university.

It was all to the good, then, that the pony Abacus Cinch was both an excellent Headmare of the Celestia School for Gifted Unicorns, as well as a total sweetheart. Twilight had been delighted to find such a strange difference between the human world beyond Starswirl’s Mirror, and Equestria.

“Abacus,” she called, warmly but with haste, “What’s the situation?”

Caught in the middle of aiding the other mages with a warding spell, Abacus, a mare about the same age as Celeste, took a moment to disentangle her horn’s rosy red magic from theirs before she galloped straight for the Princess.

“Your Majesty!” the younger mare nearly tripped over herself as she attempted to bow and slow down simultaneously. But she soon found her footing, and kept pace alongside Celeste while she gave her report.

“The Starlight Vault has been compromised, but my mages have already locked down the entire underground! The thief won’t be escaping so easily.”

“Good work, Abacus,” Twilight nodded her gratitude for the quick response, “It looks like our intruder is a filly, or possibly a small colt, so let’s not get too zealous about taking them down. I’d prefer we just make sure everycreature is safe and unharmed.”

The small group came to a halt just outside of the Vault’s open doors. “A filly?” Abacus raised a questioning eyebrow, “Your Majesty, forgive me for saying this, but no mere filly could take down so many guards, break into the Restricted Section of the library, and then get into the Starlight Vault.”

She scoffed, and adjusted her glasses, “It’s simply… impossible.”

Celeste snorted, “Pheh! Those guards never even noticed when Flurry Heart and I used to sneak out for pizza late at night. Even Luster can run circles around them, and she’s almost as much a stick-in-the-mud as you, Abby…”

Spike clearly concurred, adding, “Yeah, even after Gallus took over, the guards have never really… been up to some of the nastier stuff we’ve seen. And don’t forget the last filly who broke in here…”

Princess Twilight shushed her friends with a gentle ruffle of her wings, and a stern glance back at the talkative duo. Once the giggling had died down, she returned her attention to the CSGU Headmare.

“Did your scanning spells detect anything? The intruder’s hoofprints weren’t in the database…”

Abacus flinched, and responded nervously, “N-no, Princess… we couldn’t. There a-appears to be a large amount of Thaumic Static in the area. W-we think it might be a Chaos Event causing a Quantum Cascade in the…”

She was interrupted by the sound of a claw slapping a scaled forehead. Twilight turned back around to see Spike holding his head as though he was suffering a terrible, unbelievable headache.

“Spike…?”

“It’s Ann,” the dragon sighed, wearily, “I’d put bits on it.”

Abacus tilted her head in confusion, “Who?”

“Anarchy,” Celeste whispered, “Discord and Fluttershy’s foal? Do you even read newspapers?”

“J-just for the crossword…” Abacus blushed.

Spike pointed up towards the surface with his claw, an unimpressed expression on his face. “Ann’s about the same kind of trouble as Discord somedays, and her school is holding a fieldtrip up in the gardens.”

Celeste and Princess Twilight slapped their own foreheads just then, right below their horns, and gave out identical frustrated sighs. It was uncanny, at least to Abacus, not helped by the cavern’s echo.

“Of course,” Celeste muttered, pinching her eyes shut, “That filly probably just wanted to see the cool secret vault and snuck down here with her friends.”

“Ann and… friends? I’m sorry, I’m having trouble keeping up,” Abacus frowned. What sort of foals, even ones with access to Chaos Magic, could or would cause such carnage?

Twilight chuckled, “Maybe I should reconsider banning the Cutie Mark Crusader organization from Equestria…”

Abacus’ eyes widened with full comprehension.

Ah, the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Now that makes perfect sense.

She swallowed audibly. “So… do I need to get more mages? Maybe a fire brigade…?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Twilight sighed as she began to trudge towards the door to the Vault once more, “Just hold down the fort while Celeste and I investigate. The two of us should be fine, Crusaders or not.”

“Twilight!” Spike called out quickly, “What do I tell the others? The Council meeting is gonna start as soon as they get here!”

“Keep them company, and let them know I’ll be right back!”

“And… don’t tell Discord or Fluttershy?” Spike snorted.

“Best not, until there’s something to tell,” Twilight chuckled softly as she entered the dark of the vault, with only Celeste Lulamoon at her side.

Spike nodded respectfully to Abacus, which was warmly reciprocated.

The mages settled in for their watch over the cavern, now with a sense of relief and gentle humor lifting the worry from their shoulders.

What is it with little fillies bringing down the Equestrian government? Abacus laughed to herself.


The difference between the Vault’s exterior and interior was, to put it mildly, like night and day. Outside was polished alabaster and lit by crystal glow. Inside, the stone was black and the light was dim. Celeste suppressed a shiver as she entered the perpetual twilight of the Vault, and tried not to think about the monstrous spellwork that had gone into its construction.

The Vault was like a labyrinth, a maze of black corridors lined with shelves and smaller side rooms smothered in warding spells that locked down their contents so thoroughly that most of the forbidden magical objects down here were practically in different dimensions from one another. And that was by design. If a magical catastrophe occurred anywhere in the Vault, it would be contained to one part of the vast interdimensional maze, rather than destroy the whole structure, or ever have a chance to escape back into Equestria proper.

Her first shiver was mostly from past experience. Celeste knew worse was coming, and as she and the Princess walked down the black corridors, she could feel her muscles tensing in anticipation. There was so much magic down here, so much raw power that it became suffocating for those who were sensitive to it, like unicorn mages. And the Vault was swimming in magic.

But worse never came. And that got Celeste worrying even more…

“Celeste?” Twilight half-turned to glance back at her young friend and pupil, “Are you alright?”

The gray unicorn looked up to her horn, and saw it flickering.

“S-sorry, Princess,” she reignited her light spell with a sharp breath and a moment of concentration, allowing its golden shimmer to mix with the Princess’s own purple aura, “I just got distracted. Nothing to worry about.”

Twilight slowed down, allowing Celeste to walk abreast of the much taller mare. She looked down on her pupil with full, welcoming eyes that appeared in the strange lighting to be pools of liquid gold.

The Princess sighed, “Celeste, you never inherited your mother’s poker face. What’s wrong?”

Celeste sighed, “Oh, you have to be so perceptive right now…”

“I’m just concerned,” the Princess said, slowly laying one of her wings over Celeste’s withers. “You’re being awfully quiet all of a sudden, and I can’t help but think you’re putting on a brave face about something. It’s alright to let me in a little, isn’t it?”

Why does she have to use that face? Celeste couldn’t help glancing up into her teacher’s ‘Mom’ face, the one she gave all her little ponies so they knew a comforting, loving pony was there for them.

“Stupid guilting friendship face…” she grumbled, but only half-seriously. She soon nodded to her sovereign, and tried to fit what she was feeling into words.

“I… I think that the ‘Chaos Event’ Abby was talking about might have suppressed a lot of the spells down here. I always get crazy shivers, dry-mouth, and a frizzy mane when I go down here for research…”

“Since when do you research?” Twilight suppressed a grin of her own, poorly.

Celeste rolled her eyes, “Har, har. But really, what do you think I do all day… never mind,” she frowned, “don’t answer that. In any case, I’m not feeling it now.”

“Nor am I,” Twilight glanced down a side hall, glimpsing a wall of books she knew were sapient, and evil, but no less tantalizing with their secret mysteries. “I’ve not felt much at all while we’ve been here. I hope Ann didn’t get lost. We’ll have to find her by hoof, you realize?

Celeste huffed. “Well, can’t be helped. I’ll just have to… extract concessions from her parents afterward.”

Twilight chuckled, “Concessions? Like, what? Will you get Discord to build a Celeste-themed rollercoaster?” The smirk she wore no doubt was from remembering Celeste’s coloring books from when she was being foalsat by Twilight and Flurry Heart.

“I would never be so tacky as that,” Celeste laughed, letting go of her anxiety over the state of the Vault, “It would be a Princess-themed rollercoaster.”

“… And you’d be a Princess?”

“Yup.”

The Princess shook her head, “Well. I wish you the best of luck with that. I hope you realize how rare it is to become a Princess…?”

“Says the mare who’s trying to make all her friends Alicorns…”

“Shush,” Twilight stopped in her tracks, her ears perked up.

Celeste hadn’t noticed, and continued on for several steps. “Oh, shush yourself! Pot calling the kettle…”

Stop.” The hiss that went out from Twilight could have given some of the shelves in the Vault frostbite. It absolutely struck Celeste dumb for a moment. Then, she began to hear… something.

There was somecreature walking along the top shelf. And it had just found an old, creaky board. Both the Princess and the Archmage paused, and then in perfect synchronization, they looked up towards where they’d heard the sound.

Something flashed in the combined light, flying at high speed from one shelf to the next. They both followed its trajectory, and just before the object smashed into the wall, it was snared by purple and gold magic. Now frozen in midair, Celeste could see that it wasn’t a filly of any sort, but rather it was a simple crystal ball. By her recollection, the Crystal Ball of one used to curse the futures it foretold.

“How did…?” Celeste didn’t finish the thought, as a new sound cut the air behind her.

There was an almost imperceptible sound of somecreature falling, displacing very little air with tiny wings. It was like listening to a pillow drop. But instead of a heavy whump or anything soft and comforting like that, there was an incredible, sour clang.

And just like that, from the very edge of Celeste’s vision as she tried to turn around to face their assailant, she watched as the Princess Twilight Sparkle dropped like a stone to the floor.

It had happened so quickly, so suddenly that Celeste didn’t have time to react, no time to think. She saw her mentor splayed out on the floor, a small, red welt rising up from her otherwise ethereal mane…

And a little pink filly standing atop her, one foreleg wrapped around a dull, iron bell.

“Geez, Princess,” the filly smirked, “I really thought you were smarter than that…”

Celeste didn’t wait for the foal to explain. She didn’t give her a chance to monologue, or talk about her evil schemes. Celeste didn’t even hesitate because it was a little filly no older than Ann. She saw her beloved mentor, her Aunt-in-spirit, lain low upon the cold stone floor by this villain.

She cut loose with a blast of golden magic that would have made Starlight Glimmer blanche. Celeste drew on the blaze of fury in her heart, and she held nothing back. The stone floor beneath her cracked from the change in air pressure, and the shelves squealed as they were rent aside and reduced to ash a moment later.

The very air hummed to life as the blast roared.

Celeste’s spell fired true, and she could even feel it connect. But then, something was wrong. She felt it hit. It hit. Unless that filly was made of solid steel, there should already be nothing left, but Celeste could still feel her.

This isn’t right… I need to stop…

She couldn’t pull back. Celeste’s magic just kept flowing through her horn and into the space where the filly once stood. A cold numbness started in her hooves, and second by second it spread up the Archmage’s legs and into her body. The magic was being torn from her, and it hurt.

It hurt so badly

Celeste cried out, vainly trying to stop, to halt the loss of her magic. But as seconds turned into a minute, she could feel the cold overtake her, and with a final gasp, Celeste Lulamoon fell to the stone floor, total exhaustion threatening to pull her down into the darkness of sleep.

But, sadly, she remained awake. She looked up from the floor, and watched as the filly hefted that iron bell above her head.

Her eyes were scarlet, and they were fixated on the bell.

How many decades, and that trick still works?” she laughed, manically, “Boy, Princess… you really know how to pick em.”

“W-who…?” Celeste gasped, feeling the weight of her bones hold her tired muscles to the ground.

“Oh, sorry about that!” the pink pegasus hopped over to the fallen mage, staying well out of legs-reach still, “Name’s Cozy Glow! Been a real crazy day so far, let me tell you!”

Her face scrunched up in mock-consideration. “Actually, on second thought, I don’t think I will. Now… how did this thing work again?”

An eldritch peal of sound shook the bell with a flattened note, and Celeste could see her magic flow from the Bell into the crazed filly. Cozy shivered as the power flowed through her, a satisfied grin on her face. Her wings lengthened, and a small horn slowly formed atop her head.

Cozy Glow was an Alicorn again.

“Aw!” she sighed in pure, blissful satisfaction, “Now that feels great. I really missed this.”

Celeste knew, deep down, that she shouldn’t antagonize the god-like monster that had just stolen her magic. It was a very rational thing to do, or in this case, not do.

Too bad she inherited something else from her mother.

“Y-you’re gonna regret that,” she managed to bring herself back up to her hooves with some effort, “Villains tend to get their flanks… whupped around these parts.”

Cozy cast an annoyed glance at the unicorn struggling to stand before her. She sneered at the pathetic creature, and laughed, “And who’s gonna stop me? You? Who even are you?”

Celeste just barely managed to put on her best showmare grin. It was the one…

The one Mom showed me, she thought, The one nopony could ignore.

“I am…” pause for dramatic effect, “… the Mighty and Mystical… Celeste Lula—”

She got no further, as a wave of red light washed over Celeste instantly, leaving behind nothing but a stone statue, trapped min-sentence forever.

Cozy blew the excess smoke from her horn, and laughed again, “Know what? I don’t really care.

“Now,” she hefted up the Bell in her magical aura and grinned as its fell magic began to encircle the Princess, “Let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we…?”


“We’re lost.”

Pearl bristled at the repeated complaint. “Cheese, we are not lost… I just haven’t the faintest notion of where we are at the moment.”

Dib sighed, and eyed a tall, marble pillar shrouded in purple and gold bunting, as he said, “I thought your dad was some bigshot here, and that you attended tea with the Princess or something?”

“Papa always uses the chariot,” Pearl grumbled, “So I only really know the upper stories where the landing pads are…”

She slowed, slightly, and seemed to contemplate the plush carpeting she now walked upon. “Hm… considering how Papa said walking was for lesser ponies, perhaps I shouldn’t feel so good about that…”

Ann only half-listened to her bickering friends as she walked in the rear of their impromptu formation. There wasn’t a purposeful order to their march, except that Pearl and Cheese had the most experience of all the group in walking the Palace halls.

Well, presumably.

“Hold up!” Flawless frowned with a combination of irritation and confusion at Cheese, “Your Mom is on the Council! How do you not know your way around here?”

Cheese shrugged in between his springy hops. “Eh. I barely know my way around most places. Why would this be any different?”

Flawless balked. “It’s… it’s a Palace!” her voice bounced off the stunningly high ceiling, but didn’t seem to register with her to tone it down, “… that you visit once a month! How do you not know at least a little of the basics!?”

The group turned yet another corner, coming from one wing of the Palace decorated in purple and alabaster design, and entering one with a far more muted, cyan and rainbow-trimmed one. Ann rather appreciated how the colors changed and shifted as they made their way through the royal residence. She’d been feeling sorely about Chaos since they’d begun their search almost an hour ago, so having a little bit of randomness and eclecticism in the Palace’s design felt good to see.

“The destination,” Cheese mused in a ‘philosophical’ voice, “is never as important as the journey.”

Shady blinked. “That wasn’t Sun Zoo. Was that…?”

“Trance Bronco Emberson,” Cheese smiled, “or, Tranquil Ember, before he moved to Ponyville. One of the best Kirin philosophers…”

“Who didn’t get lost in the Royal Palace, am I correct?” Flawless snarked and rolled her eyes at the nerds she’d surrounded herself with. That wasn’t a great idea, in retrospect, since it caused her to make eye-contact with a rather unsettling bust of Chancellor Puddinghead, leering down from an alcove.

Cheese twisted his head around almost completely to look back at her. “Actually, he did. It was very embarrassing, and my Mom and Aunt Rarity had to teach him a Friendship lesson about looking where he was… going…”

The colt snapped his head back around in order to avoid running into another one of the Palace’s copious statues. There had been more and more of them as the group made their way through the place, and even Ann was becoming concerned. Setting statues up in the middle of a hallway just seemed off, somehow.

“I’m gonna go out on a limb hewe,” she sighed, and looked away from the statue of a pegasi guard trapped in a moment of terror, “and assume this is all my fault.”

“It is,” Moon nodded. He squeaked, however, as he felt a magical jab in his side. Glancing over to a frowning Shady, he added, “But… it’s mostly Cozy, I guess.”

Pearl shook her head, “I just wish I knew how she was…”

“Hold up!” Dib shushed her with a wave of his hoof and dropped to the carpeted floor. Everycreature’s eyes widened as they watched him tuck into a predatory pose, millennia of instinct causing hackles to rise as Dib’s hunter-instincts took over.

He flashed the others his fangs as he whispered, “I hear something up ahead…”

The changeling seemed to strain his ears for a moment.

“Is… is that a party cannon…?”


Unscheduled black storm clouds had covered the sky by this point, leading to an air of disquiet running all throughout Canterlot. The Weather Bureau and the Ministry of the Environment were getting inundated by complaints at this very moment, from every panicky noble and everypony else who had nothing better to do, which was redundant. But around the palace, the silence reigned.

At least, it did, until two mares entered through the front gates and began squabbling through the halls.

“All I’m sayin’, sugarcube,” Applejack rolled her eyes as they walked in through the main doors, “is that ye can’t just murder Discord.”

Rainbow Dash huffed and hovered a few feet in the air, only keeping pace with her earthbound wife so she would have somepony to complain to.

“I don’t want to kill him,” she sniffed in a very Rarity-like manner, “I just want to beat him to within an inch of his life. That’s all.”

They’d been at it since Sweet Apple Acres, and Applejack was just about sick of the whole thing.

“Dash,” she sighed, “I know yer upset about…”

“About my kid being in the wrong mare!” Rainbow threw her forelegs out, as though she could physically point out what was wrong in front of her.

“… but, even if Discord can’t fix this, I need you ta calm down.”

An orange hoof settled on Rainbow Dash’s side. The Wonderbolt Captain turned to look at her partner, and the fire that had been burning since that morning finally smothered. She set down on the soft carpeting, and finally seemed to see Applejack again.

“Think how I’m feelin’ right now,” the mighty earth-mare’s voice was wispy, and quiet, “I was the one who… who always wanted…”

Dash scooper up her wife in a winged hug, and the two simply stopped. They held onto one another for what felt like minutes, just listening to each other’s breathing. Each was glad there weren’t any guards to see this small moment of weakness between the two, but gladder still that the other was there for it.

“I’ll…” Dash sighed, and broke the hug with a quick nuzzle, “I can manage, really.”

“Ya sure?” Applejack’s eyes had dried themselves, and she regarded her wife with simple, if earnest, curiosity.

“Heh,” Dash stood up on her hind legs, and gave a suitably super-heroic pose, “What? You don’t think an awesome pony like me can handle being a little pregnant?”

Years and years of knowing better had honed Applejack and Rainbow Dash’s hearing to an art, at least with regards to a few sounds they had learned to dread like an oncoming storm. They’d heard the click, and the mechanical clack that usually heralded…

A party cannon. One of Pinkie’s, the Deluxe, if Dash wasn’t mistaken. And amidst the shower of confetti and the squeal of whatever else it was that the manic pink mare stuck in her cannons, she and Applejack could only shake their heads at their own foolishness.

A paper party horn squealed next to them as Pinkie Pie appeared out of thin air.

“You’re pregnant!? CONGRATULATIONS!!!”

And another squeal.

But then, the falling confetti paused, and Pinkie’s eyes narrowed at her friends.

“Wait… you’re carrying it all the way, right? Discord’s not letting you guys skip anything?”

Dash couldn’t look away from the death glare coming her way, and meekly managed to say, “N-no…”

“Uh, yeah…” Applejack nodded, also unable to look away, “All he did was move us up a couple weeks so it’d be sure ta happen. We… we wanted it ‘O nat-yur-all’, as Rarity might call it…”

The two were trapped there, under the silent gaze of an angry, angry pony…

Until she smiled. Then, with the confetti resuming their fall to the floor, and Pinkie’s joy and happiness restored, she laughed and began to trot down the hall in the direction of the throne room.

“That’s great! No one should miss out on suffering… I mean, experiencing the joys of Motherhood!”

Pinkie Pie continued to laugh, and cackle, all the way down the hall. This left Rainbow and Applejack to stare at each other in shared terror before they too decided to write that… experience off as just another Pinkie moment, and follow after her.


“Dude,” Shady slipped into a slightly groovy voice again as he stared around the corner, “Is your Mom, like, sane?”

Cheese looked at his hooves, and sighed, “I was a bad experience for her…”

“Are they gone?” Goldie cowered under a rainbow-themed chaise lounge set against the wall.

“Looks like it,” Ann watched the grownups walk away from the hall-corner the Crusaders had hid behind. She could feel the knots in her stomach start to unwind as they disappeared off into the distance.

Sadly, that wasn’t a good thing, as she now knew all too well.

“And…” she took a breath, held it in her cheeks, and let it go only after several seconds had passed, “We gotta follow them…”

Moon threw his head back and whisper-shouted, “Finally! We’re calling in the professionals!”

Pearl, barely noting Moon’s outburst, gave Ann a concerned look, and asked, “Dear? Is everything alright? You were quite adamant about avoiding our parents for this adventure.”

The Ponequus sat down on her haunches, and crossed her forelegs. She gave the thought she’d had a little ponder. It hadn’t formed completely into a solid idea yet, and she wanted to know what she was going to say before she said it.

“I think…” she said slowly, letting the pieces fall into place naturally, “I think Cozy is that way.”

“And you know this, how?” Shady wasn’t doubting Ann… not entirely. But he’d put a lot of trust in her already, she knew, and that had to be redeemed at least a little bit here and there.

She stepped to one side, so that they all could see her. “Because Chaos told me,” she flinched as she said this.

Her friends and fellow Crusaders stared. Surprise was there, in each of their expressions, but Cheese, Flawless, and Moon’s held further worry and hesitation. They’d been the ones to doubt her the most before, and this was all sounding like a broken record on repeat.

“I know what you’we thinking,” she held out a hoof to stop anycreature from arguing, “But I can explain. See, last time, I was listening to Chaos and doing what it wanted, wegawdless of what you guys wewe saying, and wegawdless of what I should have been thinking.”

She paced as she thought, hoping that moving her legs would get some blood pumping back through her brain so it could sort out what she was feeling.

“But,” she licked her lips, almost scared of what was coming to her, “But this time, Chaos is telling me to walk away. It doesn’t want me to do anything… because some kind of Chaos is about to happen ovew thewe.” She pointed back towards where Rainbow Dash and Applejack had gone.

She stopped, and looked back to her friends, who now sat like judges in a half-circle around her.

“Chaos isn’t helping wight now,” she said, shivering slightly, “So… I gotta listen to something else. Someone else.”

Ann sat back down, folding her forehooves together before her. She looked down at them, rather than at any of her friends. No telling what they would say. She hadn’t really been a fountain of good ideas lately.

Nothing happened. Nocreature moved. All Ann could see was the carpet at her hooves, and all she could hear was her own heart, hammering in her ears.

And then, she felt a wave of arms and legs barrel her over. The sheer weight of eight other creatures took the wind out of her, and from the bottom of the pile she could only see so much of them as they enveloped her in a great, big hug.

She nuzzled them back, words being entirely unnecessary at that moment.

A few minutes passed, after which each creature in the pile began to disentangle themselves. Once all were separated again, Ann took in their smiles, their genuine love and concern. She could see in every one of them that they were ready to follow her, ready to be the Cutie Mark Crusaders they knew they could be.

This was the first time they would have a real target. This was the first time they could see where they were Crusading to, and nothing would stop them.

Making sure to keep their distance, the Cutie Mark Crusaders followed in the direction they’d last seen Rainbow and Applejack.


“Sure seems quiet today,” Applejack remarked as she and the other two made their way down the halls and corridors of the Palace, “I ain’t ever seen it this deserted before.”

Pinkie, hopping along with her usual zany boing-boings, chuckled and said, “Yeah, I know what you mean! But what about that one time I tried teaching the Royal Baker how to prepare my Cherry-Changa-Supreme?”

Dash, flying just above the earth mares, nearly bent over double laughing. “Oh man! I remember that! It took weeks for the place to smell right again…!”

“Oh! Oh!” Pinkie’s eyes widened with glee, “And remember that time Discord turned everypony in Canterlot into humans…?”

“Uh, Pinkie?” Applejack raised an eyebrow, “I get what yer sayin’, but…”

“And there was the time Cozy, Tirek, and Chrysalis…”

“We get it, Pinkie!” Applejack slapped her friend’s ear good-naturedly with a swing of her hat, “Ya don’t hafta give us the highlights every time!”

The great double doors to the throne room were before them now, open just a crack, enough to see a stream of bright light oozing out into the hall. Applejack was glad to see some sort of life in the Palace today, and wondered again where all the guards had gone.

Even Gallus wasn’t around, which was actually unnerving enough for Applejack to finally say something.

“Anypony else got a bad feelin’ about today?” her eyes scanned the hall, but found nothing too out of place. There were a number of chairs and sofas lining the walls, decorated as fancy as she’d ever seen, which was normal as far as she knew.

Must have been a cleaning day, she figured. Why else would the staff pile so many statues out here in the halls with some white sheets covering them?

“Nah, it’ll be alright,” Pinkie smiled and closed her eyes as she stepped into the throne room, “Just remember to hold your breath, in case this takes a while.”

“In case what takes a while?” Dash watched Pinkie as she entered the throne room, a confused expression on the Wonderbolt’s face. It was never a good sign when Pinkie Pie started getting cryptic.

And there was nothing so cryptic as the smile she gave the two ponies beside her. She smiled, and then took a long, deep breath that filled her cheeks to burst, before she reached up into her mane to fish something out.

She paused, as if expecting something.

Then, the scarlet blast struck her head on, striking the air itself with an electric buzz. Rainbow Dash and Applejack backed away, Dash gaining altitude, while Applejack blocked out most of the light by pulling her Stetson down across her eyes. And when the light faded, moments later, they looked on in horror at what happened.

Pinkie Pie was a stone statue, her puffed cheeks frozen for all time.

“Aw, shucks!” a tiny, cutsey voice called out from the throne, “I thought I could get all of you at once! Just my luck…”

“No…” Dash didn’t believe it. She couldn’t. She turned her eyes, glistening with pure shock, and gazed upon a sight she’d only seen in nightmares.

The entire hall was filled with statues. Statues that weren’t statues. She could see guardponies frozen when they’d tried to charge their assailant. She saw Gallus, right at the front of the charge, now tipped over on his side below the steps to the throne. A clearly tired Flurry Heart could be seen beside the throne, still in her stone pajamas and holding a now-stone coffee mug with one wing.

Dash could see Spike, his body huddled over Rarity, who looked up at something… horrifying.

The horrifying thing that sat on the throne. The pink pegasus filly with a curly blue mane.

Cozy Glow. An Alicorn Cozy Glow.

An Alicorn Cozy Glow, with Grogar’s Bell held in her scarlet aura. Sitting atop the throne, her mane blowing in an ethereal wind…

It was a nightmare. A genuine nightmare Rainbow Dash had thought long, long buried by living a life she could be proud of. A nightmare that had stopped haunting her when she accepted her place in the world, and the ones she wanted to share it with.

But here, the nightmare lived.

Rainbow’s surprise turned into a furious snarl.

“Bad move, pixie-twirp,” she gnashed her teeth, “If you ever cared to ask, you’d know how I deal with my nightmares!”

And the throne room shook with the force of the Sonic Rainboom that roared in Dash’s wake as she rocketed towards Cozy Glow, Applejack managing to kick herself into gear only as the wave of rainbow light flew past her towards the throne.

Cozy laughed, and charged her horn again, ready for the rumble barreling towards her.

“Bring it on!”


The statue garden had changed. Storm clouds had rushed in and begun to drop a fairly heavy rain on top of the whole area, quite off-schedule. The shift in weather made Silver Spoon concerned, but she really didn’t worry at first. A little rain was nothing, really. Ponyville residents were used to a lazy weather team making mistakes, after all.

Then, she realized too late that her watch, tied to her neck by a little ribbon, had somehow broken while the class had been split up. Without the sun being out, she couldn’t tell how much time they’d lost, but she had a sinking feeling in her stomach that the whole fieldtrip was as much as an hour behind.

So, with the storm gathering and raining down upon her, she tried to gather up her little ones by the Elements of Disharmony statue.

Which was when the panic started.

“Shady?” Rainy Blaze called out, checking every small group for the telltale colors of his colt, “Shady! Where are you, son?”

Twinkleshine joined in on the panic, “Pearl! Pearl Rose, do not make me burn this garden down to find you!”

Silver Spoon began to sweat, even under the soft patter of rain coming down. Her eyes flew over the class, counting heads. And counting horns. And wings. She counted once. Then twice. Then, when all counting had been exhausted, the hyperventilating teacher finally had to confront the horrifying, terrifying, mind-numbing truth of the matter.

The Cutie Mark Crusaders were loose. They were unsupervised. There was an unscheduled rain storm, with the CMC running around the Palace grounds, and… and…

“The filly’s missing.”

Silver’s eyes, already bloodshot from the revelation alone, swiveled to the little pinkish-grey unicorn filly, Blinky Hooves, who was pointing at the…

“Oh, buck me…” Silver Spoon whispered as she saw the statue, before slapping her forehead with her hoof and shouting to the stormy heavens, “Why did I think restarting the Crusaders was a good idea!?”

The whole crowd of foals, and the parent chaperones, fell silent. There was a rumble of thunder in the distance, and what sounded like the tolling of a bell. But before anycreature could resolve their thoughts into words, or actions… another sound cut through the gloom.

“They are within yonder Palace,” Grogar said, without emotion or inflection. He simply stood in the rain, allowing it to drench himself, even as his reanimated minion, Frosted Apple, seemed to be trying to fit more and more of herself under her black hat.

Silver Spoon narrowed her eyes at the ram. “Why?”

“Because they released Cozy Glow from her stone imprisonment, and then raced off to the Palace,” he sighed.

Why?”

Grogar shrugged, listlessly, “Because they thought it was a replica and Ann wished to earn her Cutie Mark.”

WHY!?

At this, Grogar paused. He seemed to just… stare into the clouds above him.

“Now that it is done… I don’t rightly know.” His voice was almost hollow, considering how quiet it was. “I always felt that you ponies were weak, because you relied on one another, instead of your own strength. I thought Ann was… well, like me. Mighty. Independent.

“But,” the Dread Ram cast a baleful eye down to the ground, “Perhaps I am just an old goat. Too set in his ways to think of others as more than pawns… and it’s finally taken the loss of my grandfoal to make me see that…”

Whatever Grogar was about to say, it was drowned out by a sudden, cacophonous boom. A wave of rainbow light exploded from one of the majestic towers that stretched high above the city of Canterlot, almost to the very clouds themselves. The blast tore out windows from around its grand balcony, and the shockwave of light carried on seemingly for miles out over the land.

Silver Spoon gaped. She’d seen the Sonic Rainboom before. Of course, she had! And not just when she went to Wonderbolt performances to see Rumble. But seeing it rip through a building was something else.

And not something good.

“Alright, this is officially too dangerous,” she steeled herself, and turned back to her charges. “Class! We need to evacuate the Palace grounds. Please stay in your groups, and follow your group leaders! We will be heading back towards the train station!”

Rainy splashed through the mud as he galloped straight to her side. His mane disheveled, his eyes widening, he said to her, “But what about Shade Bright? He and his friends are… are…”

“I’m not about to let my Pearl alone with some… statue monster or whatever this is!” Twinkleshine stamped her hoof on Silver Spoon’s other side, her own mane now slicked down the back of her neck, and her horn lighting up with a menacing blue aura.

Silver Spoon tried pressing her hooves to her temples. Maybe, with just a little bit more pressure, she could cause herself to black out. That would be nice right about now.

“Grogar…” she growled, “Tell me you didn’t…”

“I knew the whole time,” he said. “And, for what it is worth, I am sorrowful.”

“Well, you should be!” Silver Spoon screamed. “Because, right now, I have a whole class to keep safe, and I have nine foals unaccounted for! Foals you should have been looking after!”

“I am aware of my failures,” Grogar took a deep breath, and exhaled through his nose, “And I am prepared to atone.”

Now, that stopped Silver Spoon. She stared at the villain, and waited to see if he would elaborate.

He turned back towards his monster, Frosted Apple, and barked, “Minion! Acquire a weapon for yourself! We march to battle!”

Frosted nodded vigorously, and quickly trotted up to what appeared to be a gardener’s shed just a little ways off from the Elements of Disharmony. While she began rooting around for… something… Rainy Blaze and Twinkleshine marched up to the Dread Ram and fixed him with steely gazes.

“You’re going after our kids?” Twinkleshine asked in a low, snarling voice.

“Indeed.”

Rainy Blaze’s horn lit up in a bright, fiery crimson, “Then we’re goin’ with ya!”

“I go to war, whelps,” Grogar snorted, “The enemy we face is one of the most duplicitous, hateful creatures to ever pervert Equestria with its foul presence. You will die, squealing in anguish, with no hope for respite or mercy…

“Welcome aboard,” he smiled, realizing how good all that sounded to him. The other two parents shared an awkward glance, but seemed to ready themselves regardless.

“Well, good luck,” Silver Spoon shook some of the rain from her coat, “Can’t say I envy you. I gotta get these foals back home safe. This fieldtrip is officially over…”

“Very well,” Grogar drew himself up to his full height, a grim sparkle coming to his eye, and a rumble of might and magic in his chest. He turned his gaze back up to the throne room, whose balcony now lay shattered and exposed to the elements.

“Frosted, Rainy, Twinkleshine,” his voice was soft, but as deep as the sea, “We go now to a grim, but noble purpose. For once, I shall not be the Greatest Evil in this fight. I shall not be redeemed, nor made Good by my actions today. But, with your help, I shall at least redeem myself in the eyes of my grand…”

Which was about when Frosted reached her master, swept her head back, and swung with all her earth pony might, bringing a shovel straight to the back of Grogar’s head. The impact actually caused some of the nearby raindrops to bound away as the sound struck the air.

Rainy, Twinkleshine, and Silver Spoon watched, wide-eyed, as Grogar slumped forward into the mud, a bright red bump rising from in between his massive horns. Standing over him, Frosted Apple spat out the shovel, and gave a throaty spit onto his limp, unconscious form.

“Fieldtrip’s over,” she huffed, “Ya dang varmint…”

Frosted seemed to take notice of the three adults, and entire mob of foals who were watching her with utter terror on their faces.

One of the students, a dragon hatchling of green scales and pink spine, sniffled, and asked, meekly, “You… y-you’re not g-gonna… eat us, are you, Miss Zombie…?”

The tall mare tilted her head slightly, and seemed to consider what little Puff had said.

“Nah,” she finally decided, “Prob’ly not. Ah ain’t got no appetite fer eatin’ meat nor apples. Don’t know if that’s a… a zombie thing or not.”

“So…?” Silver Spoon took a protective step in between the potential threat and her students. “What just happened?”

Frosted smiled, a much more genuine one than she’d given before while working under her Dread Lord. “Well, Ah earned muh freedom by completin’ Grogar’s task, as he said. So… Ah suppose Ah’m free ta do as Ah please.”

Silver gulped, and asked, “Which is?”

Frosted closed her eyes, and turned her head towards the West, towards Ponyville.

“Ah gots a farm ta git back ta… an’ mebbe a family too…”

And without further ado, she took off at a dead gallop for home.

Which left Rainy and Twinkleshine standing over a snoring ram. Both looked to one another… and nodded. Each added their telekinetic aura to Grogar, and hefted him up, before turning back towards the Palace.


“So…” Flawless whispered.

Cheese followed. “… eeyup.”

Goldie hummed, “Guess that’s…”

“Oh, sweet Luna on high,” Moon pinched the bridge of his nose with his wing, “I’m pretty sure you all know what that sound is about, right?”

The Crusaders winced as one, but had no real answer. That explosion was definitely their fault, at least vicariously. Shady had used that word, and he seemed to think it applied here, so nocreature questioned it.

Ann licked her lips, and then started walking ahead of the others. “Yeah, yeah. We know. I can pwactically heaw Chaos scweaming to get outta hewe.”

“Oh, that’s comforting…” Dib sighed. His wings buzzed to life, and he took off over Ann’s head. He landed, incredibly bug-like, Ann thought, on the face of the right-door, and scurried to the edge to get a look at what kind of disaster was unfolding in the throne room.

His paling face said it all. That explosion was absolutely Ann’s fault, she realized. The Crusaders gathered right at the crack in the door, and peered inside as carefully as they could. With everything else going on, they all seemed to silently agree that leaping in without looking first would be nothing but a disaster.

Well, more of a disaster than this day was already.

“Yup,” Ann sighed, “That’s Cozy…”

The pink Alicorn was flying high up near the vaulted ceiling above the throne, which had miraculously survived whatever it was that had blown out the entire wall of the Palace behind it. All of the stain-glass windows had survived unharmed as well, owing to a little magical insurance Princess Twilight had put in after Dash had destroyed one too many while arriving for Council meetings.

Cozy had surrounded herself with a fiery red corona of magical energy, a sort of burning shield she was most definitely creating by pure instinct. Ann could recognize that sort of making-it-up-as-you-go desperation from first-hoof experience. Cozy’s magic was sputtering around her, all in a vain attempt to hit the two colorful blurs that were hunting her.

“Whoa,” Beau’s jaw dropped, “Is that Applejack?”

The orange farm-mare leapt a clean thirty feet through the air at that moment, and with a spin-move that would be the envy of any rodeo star or Wonderbolt, brought both her hindlegs down on Cozy’s shield like two sledgehammers dropping from space. It knocked the filly back a ways, but her defenses held, even if her temper didn’t.

“AAAAARRR!” she snarled, and threw out an arc of dazzling red energy that completely failed to connect with her target, “Would it have been too much trouble for you to have arthritis, you hag!?”

“I know y’ain’t got no manners,” Applejack laughed as she ducked back down and around the bits of falling debris knocked loose from the combat around her, “But I’d ‘xpect you’d have learnt a touch more grace from bein’ a yard ornament!”

Cozy laughed, “Ha! You think…”

She didn’t get far into that one, as a rainbow ricocheted off her shield and set the villain reeling again. Dash didn’t have a single thing to say, instead taking a moment as Cozy flew to crack her neck and get ready for her next trick.

Which appeared to be a zig-zag evasion pattern, as another red blast flew from the little Alicorn’s horn, a little too close for comfort.

Pearl, squeezing in under Ann’s jaw, peered up at the aerial combat on display. She and Flawless, who took up a similar position on the other door, tracked the movements easily, each no doubt seeing this as nothing more than a high-stakes game of Buckball.

“Hang on,” Pearl squinted, “Cozy’s got something with her…”

Flawless nodded, “Yeah, she’s got some kind of bell on her back. What’s that about?”

Bell?

Ann reached up, and, with an amount of dexterity that should be impossible for hooves, made a set of ‘face-binoculars’ over her eyes. To her friends’ mild disgust and amusement, two scopes actually extended from her cupped hooves, allowing her to zoom right in on…

Oh… oh darn.

“That’s Gwam… I mean, that’s Gwogaw’s Bell!” she gasped.

“What?” Moon lowered his glasses to get a better look, “What’s that? How can you tell?”

Ann shrugged, “Well, how do nowmal ponies know how to build watewslides? Ow what a biwd is? Ow how to cast spells if they’we a unicown?

“Dear?” Pearl’s face showed some concern for what Ann was saying, “We learn those things from our Mamas, Papas, and tutors as we grow older.”

“Waterslides?” Shady asked.

The Ponequus’s face fell. Once she’d picked it back up and slapped it on, she asked, “Weally?”

“Yes,” came the answer from several Crusaders at once.

“Oh,” she looked around for a moment, waiting for somecreature to let her in on the joke. When it didn’t happen, she sighed, and continued, “Well… Dad put a bunch of stuff in my bwain when I was bown, mostly wandomly…”

Dib chuckled, “What a shock.”

“… and Gwampa’s… I mean,” Ann shook her head a little, “Gwogaw’s Bell is weally bad news! It lets you steal magic fwom othew cweatuws!”

Shady adjusted his glasses as he watched Cozy nearly bring a magical clamp down on Rainbow Dash, before she dove out of the way of Applejack’s next high kick. “I suppose that might explain why she’s an Alicorn now…”

“Hey, Ann?” Pearl took a moment to look at her friend, “You do realize Grogar is still your Grandpapa, yes?”

Ann didn’t meet her gaze. She kept watching the fight above, as Cozy started setting pockets of the air on fire to hem in her foes. It wasn’t working very well, but she was giving it her all. Ann could respect that.

“Ann…”

“He’s not my gwampa,” she said, curtly, “Not aftew what happened.”

“Ann,” Pearl’s tone took on an edge that even the Ponequus couldn’t ignore. She turned her eyes back towards her friends, huddled as they were around the open door.

Pearl made sure she was meeting Ann’s gaze now. She didn’t flinch, nor glance away.

“I know from… personal experiences,” she took a steadying breath, “that sometimes the ones who love us forget how to show it. Your Grandpapa still loves you; I know it.

“He just… needs to learn how to show it better.”

Ann’s eyes didn’t waver once as she listened, and only now looked away. “I… guess. But good things don’t get wid of the bad ones.”

Flawless snorted, “Geez, and I only called you names…”

In the awkward silence that followed, the Crusaders continued to watch the fight unfolding above them. Another blast of crimson magic cracked a wall, and another round of orange and cyan hooves knocked the pink Alicorn about. But whether or not an end was nearing…

“At least we don’t need to get involved,” Moon sighed in relief.

Beau chuckled, nervously, “Yeah. We’d get, like, destroyed out there.”

“Or turned to stone…” Moon hummed as he glanced over at one of the guard-statues, clearly caught mid-bite of a lunchtime cupcake.

For once, Ann couldn’t really disagree. She and the Crusaders had done a lot, coming this far. But now that she saw just what her Aunties could do, and what Cozy was capable of unleashing… she wasn’t so sure about trying to help. All she’d do, most likely, is cause trouble.

As usual, she sighed internally.

“So,” she said to the others, “Should we get out of hewe ow… um?”

Somecreature was missing. Somepony was missing.

“… Cheese?”

The Crusader’s eyes snapped open, and shot straight to their suddenly absent companion. Mere feet into the room, Little Cheese stood transfixed by one of the statues that littered the entire Palace, and which Ann was starting to consider more than a coincidence or bit of abstract decoration.

He was staring at the statue’s face. His eyes were unblinking. Ann knew that look. Somehow, she just… knew that it wasn’t good. She slowly took in the statue he was staring at.

That mane. Even wrought in stone, there was some sort of innate… bounciness to that mane that defied all physics that attempted to tame it. It was the sort of mane that Ann sort of wondered about, when she considered how she could be more Chaotic.

It was Pinkie Pie. Cheese’s mom was a statue.

And when Ann saw his eyes again, now locked onto hers, she almost wailed.

Cheese hadn’t been angry before. He’d only been extremely frustrated.

Now? He was peeved.


Cozy Glow was peeved. Positively peeved. Twenty years in stone, and she was going to go right back there in another twenty minutes if she didn’t wrap this stupid fight up soon. Even having what felt like two Alicorn’s worth of magical power thanks to the Princess and that Trixie-lookalike downstairs.

Eugh, she thought, Trixie having kids is almost as revolting an idea as Professor Pinkie.

She dove down, to avoid another strike from Rainbow Dash.

I need a distraction…

A bit of floor tile whipped up at her, and the newly re-minted Alicorn juked to the side to avoid it, only to bounce off a kick from Rainbow Dash coming the other way. She let loose a few bolts of magic, but nothing connected.

Applejack was kicking up more bits of floor and wall to throw at her. Cozy tried sending another blast her way, only for Dash to slap at her shield, her horn, and ruin her aim, again.

“Nuh-huh, Cozy!” Rainbow Dash laughed and spun around the enraged filly, dodging a solid beam of magical light, “Keep your eye on the prize!”

Cozy couldn’t help but snarl, “Grrrr… You know two versus one is more of a villain trick, right?”

Dash barked with laughter as she kept avoiding magical strikes, “Friendship means never having to fight alone! I thought you were at least good about learning those Friendship Lessons, even if you sucked at applying them!”

Cozy bit down on her first response. Mostly because it was a lot of expletives stacked in a row. And Cozy may have been a villain, but she took pride in not being crass about it. She took that moment to instead lob another magical blast downward, at least forcing Applejack to dodge out of the way.

“I’m gonna take your friendship lessons,” she snarled, yet again, “and I’m gonna shove them so far up your…”

All three ponies, in mid-fight, stopped dead where they were, as a shrieking cry went up from over where the double doors still stood ajar. Even the stain-glass windows rattled as the sound fell over the grand hall.

And as the war cry faded, Little Cheese Slice Pie came hurtling with a downward angle towards Cozy Glow, connecting to her face with a flying kick right out of those Martial Arts comics Spike sometimes let him read.

Cozy smashed straight through Princess Twilight’s throne, shattering it completely, and leaving the villainous filly sprawled out on what was left of the rainswept balcony overlooking the royal gardens.

WHAT…!?

She shook her head.

WHAT THE BUCK WAS THAT!?

Cheese, however, wasn’t done. He sprang straight into action as he landed, and launched himself like a rocket up the throne steps. In an instant, he was barreling down on Cozy Glow, his voice cracking as he bellowed.

DON’T YOU HURT MY MOMMY!”

He lowered his head, and glared daggers at the… creature that had done it. That had turned his mother into a pigeon’s rest. That was a look of sheer, unimagined rage and loss he threw Cozy’s way…

She missed seeing that look. Idiots made that look.

Ponies in Check make that look…

Cheese charged, and Cozy couldn’t be happier. Mid-stride, the young colt suddenly found himself wrapped in a scarlet magical aura, drifting mere inches above the ground he’d been racing across. He kept running for several seconds, as though sheer force of will alone would let him keep charging.

But it was no use. And Cheese could now see, inches away from his face, the piercing gaze of a madpony.

Cozy Glow’s grin felt like ice water was pouring into in his veins.

“Cheese!?” Applejack balked, slack-jawed.

CHEESE!?” Rainbow Dash almost dropped out of the sky before her wings remembered to flap.

And another cry went up.

CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS FOREVER!!!!!”

Cozy’s heart soared as a mob of children stormed the throne room. It was too perfect.

Both Friendship Councilors screamed in shock. “KIDS!?!”

“DISTRACTION!” Cozy laughed maniacally.

Red lightning leapt up into the air, straight from a triumphant Cozy’s horn. It was fast, as fast as magical light could ever be.

Rainbow Dash was faster. Much faster. The fastest mare in the world.

Usually.

The blast clipped the tip of her pinions as she juked away, and it was done. Cozy watched with a hungry gaze as Rainbow Dash dove to the earth, managing to come up in a dirty landing, hobbled by one wing rapidly turning to stone, as well as her flanks clearly stiffening as the magic took over.

Rainbow Dash turned with a panicked, terrified gaze over towards Applejack. She held her forehoof to her side, protectively, it seemed, as the stone overtook her.

DASHIE!”

Too perfect, indeed. Applejack, in a moment of, to Cozy, abject tactical stupidity, raced towards the pegasus, tears in her eyes.

Cozy had been working on her aim. Moving targets weren’t too much of a problem. Another red blast, and the galloping farm-mare stumbled to a stop, one forehoof reaching out to touch Rainbow Dash before they would never touch again.

“Oooh,” Cozy hissed in mocking sympathy, and flew over to drift in between the two mares, “So close… but not close enough.”

Cozy glanced between the two. Something about those stares. Both in utter horror and sorrow. She swore those looks were familiar. But…?

“You two weren’t dating, were you…?”

“Gaaaaah!” Cheese reminded Cozy he was still caught in her aura with another round of thrashing and screaming.

I’M GONNA TEAR YOUR MANE OUT AND FEED IT TO YOU!!!”

Cozy stared at the colt, wondering for a moment if she actually heard him say that. Then, she snorted with wicked laughter.

“Alright, I like the cut of your jib!” she laughed, “Remind me to make you my Jester once all this is over.”

Another snarl caused Cozy’s ears to perk up. Something came bolting towards her, fast and mean.

But Cozy was an Alicorn now. And that earth pony magic came in real handy in situations like this. Cozy bent her knees slightly, and hopped up like a bunny, allowing a pink and yellow blur to whip past her. It looked like that pony-thing that had helped free her in the garden…

Ann’s face smacked against Applejack’s upraised leg with a loud crack, and the Ponequus hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. Marvelously, at least to Cozy, little birds began swirling around the creature’s head.

“Huh…” she noted, “That’s weird. Hey, kid? That your mutant sister or something…?”

The other Crusaders reached her next, but Cozy hardly paid attention. What was even the point? When a wave of pitiful blue and green magic blasts threw themselves at her, all it took was a mental flick to block them all with a simple shield.

She hadn’t even felt them.

“Well, this is sad,” she chuckled, “Kinda anticlimactic, honestly. Taking out the Princess and her friends isn’t supposed to be that easy, right?”

Cozy flew, casually, over to her latest victims. As two unicorn foals and a Kirin focused their energies, all she had to do was wave their little friend, Cheese, in front of her like another shield, and she could just watch their resolve plummet. The green crystal earth pony with them had started to charge, but reared up as Cheese was thrust towards her, Cozy feeling a moment of… playfulness overtaking her.

Queen to Rook…

“I mean,” she took a second to lash out with a red blast that hit the Hearth’s Warming-colored Kirin right in the horn, turning him to stone instantly, “It’s really been too easy today! I practically walked through the Palace…”

A heavy blast of blue magic hit her bubble shield, but caused little more than a ripple. Cozy glanced towards the oversized unicorn colt who’d launched the attack. His strike bought Flawless and Pearl a moment to scatter, but that was about it. Cozy nailed him with another magical shot, and soon there was another, terrified statue for her garden.

“Nice hit, kid,” she offered, complimentarily, “I almost felt that one. But, yeah, I walk through this place, basically missing every guard and servant, all the way up to the library.”

Cozy juked up and away from the snapping, hissing talons of the griffon kitten. Child or not, those things looked sharp!

“And right there, on a table in the supposedly Restricted section,” she swung Cheese around like a hammer, cracking Goldie with a solid hit, and sending her plummeting back to the ground. She managed a soft landing, but another blast hit her, dead center between her wings.

“I still don’t get why they left out so many blueprints,” Cozy continued, as though nothing had happened, “Wouldn’t have even found the Vault without them…”

I’m gonna need to make more gardens for all these statues, she thought.

Then again, gravel was always needed in construction. And after today, Cozy had plans for a new, better castle…

“All I’m saying,” she laughed, taking in the gob-smacked batpony and changeling hovering before her, “is that I expected better than to find Grogar’s Bell right next to the Stone Spell!”

Cozy dodged the batpony without effort, and nearly laughed again as the changeling became a Bugbear and drove towards her. She didn’t even need to do much with him, just move a few inches to the side, zap him with a bit of that Stone Spell, and let him careen into the floor, where he'd move no more.

She paled, slightly, as she heard a horrid sound behind her.

“Ewww, kid!” she snarled at Cheese, whose face was now a rotten shade of green and whose tongue hung from the side of his muzzle.

“You gotta…” he ulp’d, “… gotta stop moving like that… Ah’m… gonna…”

She pushed him another foot away, well out of ralphing range.

The two fillies took that moment to take their shot. Pearl Rose raced along Flurry Heart’s spine, and leapt into the air, her emerald magical aura giving her a mid-air boost of speed as she desperately tried to reach Cozy before the Alicorn could turn around.

Cozy saw it coming. Just not quick enough. Pearl swung her legs furiously, whacking Cozy in the wings, the flanks, and the stomach, and she hit hard. It was just enough to get Cozy a little bit peeved. Earth pony magic was really, really handy some days.

But just as Pearl dropped back towards the floor, and just as Cozy recovered from the meager assault, the Alicorn felt something shift. She turned, and caught the sight of that green crystal pony snagging Cheese from the air with her forehooves, allowing both of them to escape her immediate grasp.

“I gotcha, Cheese!” Flawless shouted as they landed.

“Good for you,” Cozy slow-clapped with her hooves as she took all three of her current victims, “I’m assuming he’s, what, your coltfriend?”

Flawless’s eyes bulged, and she shivered all over. “Ew! Gross!”

“Hey…” Cheese whined, quietly.

She flinched, and started apologizing, “Sorry! I’m just not …”

A red beam struck Flawless, catching her in an expression of utter revulsion, forever.

“… that clever?” Cozy finished. “Yeah, I guessed that. Now then…”

Easy as these kids are, Cozy thought, this is still getting on my nerves. Let’s wrap this up. I got a coronation to plan.

Cheese started dodging and weaving almost at once, trying to put any sort of distance between him and the pink Alicorn. Smart move, Cozy figured, but he wasn’t really the target just now.

Cozy aimed a blast right at Pearl, and let loose the shot almost instantly. Strangely, as her shot landed, Cozy noticed a distinct lack of a unicorn statue.

Instead, standing on either side of where her Stone spell had hit, were two white unicorn fillies.

“Huh,” was all Cozy could manage, her brain momentarily locking up. “That’s neat…”

The Pearls regarded one another for a heartbeat, or two. Then, with a smirk from both, they took off in opposite directions.

Cozy groaned.

“Don’t split up. It’s annoying…”


In all the hubbub and hullabaloo, as the kids refer to mortal combat these days, neither Cozy, nor the Pearls noticed two things which happened at just that moment.

First, Cheese had reached Ann.

“Ann!” he stage-whispered, trying to avoid Cozy’s notice.

No response. Pulse was fine. Eyes were swirls. Birds and stars were taking a coffee break. Cheese was sure she should be awake right now.

He slapped her cheek, gently. Now, that got a response.

Too bad it was a hoof punching him in the nose.

“Ann!” Cheese held onto his smarting muzzle while growling, “Now is not the time to fall asleep!”

“Huh?” a groggy set of yellow and crimson eyes peeled open, “Is it time fow school?”

Cheese sighed, relieved to see Ann awake, if nothing else, “Nope. We got a villain to thwart.”

“Oh…” Ann seemed to be having trouble focusing. She shook her head a couple of times, producing the same sound as that of a jar of marbles.

She frowned. “I think I have a concussion. I can see two Peawls!”

Cheese chuckled, “I think one might be Shady. He really has been practicing with illusions…”

The second event, of which most everycreature was initially ignorant of, occurred just then. On the opposite side of the room as Ann, the air itself seemed to… tear itself asunder. And from the swirling portal that resulted, a strange pair entered the throne room.

“I don’t understand,” Fluttershy pouted, “Why did we wait so long? What does all this have to do with timing? Discord, please, help me… uh…?”

The Element of Kindness stared around in utter shock. She took in the statues first, but it didn’t quite click at first what she was looking at. Then, she saw the exploded wall where Twilight’s balcony was now being drenched in unscheduled rainfall.

Oh, she thought, I hope Angel distributes the umbrellas at the Sanctuary… what am I saying!?

“Discord…” she said, with a firm, almost angry tone, “What’s going on?”

The Draconequus at her side sniffed, but refused to look at her. “I don’t know what you mean…”

She stepped in front of her very special somecreature, with a startlingly angry frown on her face. “Discord, you wanted to wait, and now a bunch of our friends are statues, Twilight’s castle has a hole in it…

“And that looks an awful lot like Cozy Glow!” she stamped one hoof while pointing out the battle going on mere yards away, “So, explain yourself, Mister!”

That was the moment Cozy Glow finally noticed what was happening.

“Professor Shy? Discord!?”

NOW!”

A heavy weight slammed into Cozy’s back, right on top of the Bell, pushing her lower to the ground. She looked back in a panic, and stared into the cat-slit gold eyes of a snarling batpony colt. Her eyes widened as she saw his jaw unhinge, and his fangs snapped out into position.

Momentarily, Cozy sighed in relief as Moon used his fangs to snatch hold of the loop atop the Bell. Then, in a rage, she realized he used his fangs to snatch hold of the loop atop HER Bell!

But as she reached back with her forelegs to smack him up, another weight slammed into her front, and suddenly Cozy was face-to-face with that flippin white unicorn filly again!

“Hold on!” Pearl cried, “Shady! Ready!?”

The other Pearl dashed into position below, though she quickly shimmered and faded away, leaving behind that one Kirin, completely un-stonified!

“Illusions are dumb!” Cozy snarled, and started trying to shake off the foals holding her in place mid-air.

Discord, still under his wife’s glare, took a deep breath through his nose, and finally looked away from Cozy’s battle.

“Tell me, my dear,” he said quietly, “Do you, perhaps, remember what I told you about something called Narrative Causality?”

The anger didn’t fade from Fluttershy’s expression, but it did move over enough to allow a little curiosity through. She tilted her head in thought, and seemed to chew the side of her mouth as she thought.

“I used to,” she mused, thinking back to that brief time when she’d become a Draconequus. It was maddening, in that moment, to try and even think the way she once did. She could remember knowing what Discord was talking about, but it was like… like she was a simple, flat, 2D drawing trying to grasp what a three-dimensional object looked like.

His claw settled onto her shoulder, and then cupped her face in that way that always made her want to nuzzle into his grasp. After a moment… she relented.

“I’m sorry,” Discord sighed, “I know it’s hard for you. Thank you, anyway… thank you for trying.”

He returned his gaze back to the struggle for the Bell.

“The universe likes stories,” he said, in a serious tone Fluttershy could hardly remember him using before, “Stories make well-worn paths through the cosmos, and even Chaos likes to take the easy road once in a while.”

A thought occurred. “So,” Fluttershy closed her eyes, “this is a story. And that means it has to end a certain way?”

“Close enough,” Discord playfully rubbed her ear, “Trouble is, we’re not the main characters anymore. And it’s the main character that has to get the most character development.”

Fluttershy giggled, “That sounds like something Pinkie Pie would call a lot of hooey. Applejack as well, but I don’t think she’d understand it as much as Pinkie…”

Discord chortled, “Ah, yes! It’s very convenient, isn’t it? Almost like someone is trying to tie up loose ends so the plot can’t be resolved too easily, but nevertheless…

“I don’t know what will happen,” he said, allowing his very, very special somepony to turn around and see what was coming, “But it will, and fighting it now will only make it hurt more…”

And besides, he bore a Cheshire grin, this is Ann’s story… she’s got at least one more chapter in her…

He paused, and held his breath as the Bell suddenly flew through the air. It hurtled from Cozy’s back, and seemed to be dropping neatly into a downward angle, right to where Shady stood waiting for it.

NO!” Cozy roared, “I’m not losing that easily!”

Her horn blazed with red light, and a tiny bubble formed just past the tip. The bubble expanded quickly, slapping both Moon and Pearl away as it enveloped them, freeing Cozy from their hold.

Shady reached out with his arctic-blue magic, the Bell inches from his grasp… when a flash of red washed over his vision. Almost instantly, stone swept up his legs, and his flanks. His mind reeled with the realization of what was happening… until it just got Angry.

His mane burst into flames, the Nirik fire halting the stone for the briefest of moments, before the Bell struck him right in the chest and crashed to the floor again. That final shock was enough, as Shady became a Nirik statue.

“Shade!” Pearl cried, but her instincts were sharp, even in grief. She dove for the Bell, her athletic training giving her just enough of a boost to clear the distance…

But not enough to avoid the second blast of crimson, Stoning light. Her last, living sight, was seeing the Bell lie in front of her, only a foot away.

“Thaaaank you!” Cozy said with a clip as she picked up the bell in her hooves. She spun around, and flashed a cuddly grin towards her latest… guests.

“Hiya, Discord!” she laughed, cheerily, “Did I do good?”

Fluttershy frowned, but remained quiet, allowing her husband the chance to play this out, as he’d say.

“Not even close,” Discord tut-tutted, “As a former villain myself, this is pretty much right up there on the scale. Or, down there, as I suppose the case may be.”

Cozy cocked her head to the side, “I… I don’t get it? Wasn’t this your plan?”

My plan?”

“Yeah!” Cozy waved a hoof about, “You show up in that Grogar getup, again, and have that little… whatever she was… set me free! Why else would you do that, if not so we could be Evil Friends together?”

Discord’s eyes almost went normal, so surprised as he was at this. It took him a full five seconds to form a coherent thought. Which was an improvement, considering coherent thoughts often took him minutes to assemble.

“Ah,” he clicked his tongue, “I see. There’s been a little bit of a mix-up, Cozy.”

Cozy’s eyes welled-up, turning into the most heartbreaking, adorable puppy eyes she’d ever given another creature. “Does… does this mean we aren’t Best Buddy Evil Friends Forever?”

Discord shook his head, sadly, “No. We are not BBEFF’s. The Grogar you met earlier was actually…”

Cozy wasn’t listening. As swift as she could manage, she raised the Bell up to her face, and struck it with the fastest spell she could snap off.

The fell, Bewitching Bell of Grogar, the Dread Ram, Master of Darkness, and Father of Monsters, tolled a dissonant sound. Black, white, and sickly yellow magic coursed over the Bell for a brief moment, before it launched out to snatch at Discord.


Time slowed. It often did, for Discord, whenever something important was about to happen. It didn’t always happen, just often. Probably a Chaos thing. Mostly probably.

Discord would sometimes go get a snack during these moments that stretched for minutes or hours. Other times, he’d put silly hats on everyone in the room. Once, he’d gone off on a multiversal journey, where he’d met many friends, defeated many foes, and learned a great deal about love, life, loss, and himself, all in the span of a heartbeat in between the moment Spike threw a pair of dice during one of their monthly O&O sessions, and the moment the dice came up snake-eyes.

Right now, though, he was content with riding it out. He turned his head, and let his yellow and crimson eyes meet their identical selves across the room.

Ann was watching, Cheese at her side.

Good. Good.

She would need the motivation…


Discord writhed as the Bell’s magic feasted on his own. His pained cry was agonizing… and Cozy loved every second of it.

Once the Bell had its fill of Discord’s Chaos, it fell silent once again, held aloft in Cozy’s aura.

“I can’t believe how easy it is to get away with this stuff with you ponies!” Cozy threw her head back and laughed. “I try and sneak off to plot, and you just sit there and let me! I want to steal Grogar’s Bell, and you just sit there and let me!

“I haven’t even had to plan anything today!” she clutched her aching sides as she continued to laugh, “You realize this has all been off the cuff? Why did I ever bother plotting against you idiots when I could have just winged it from the start!?”

Discord laughed, weakly, leaning on Fluttershy for support. “Well, it worked for old Sunbutt…”

“But, do you know what I have been planning, Discord?” a feral glint flashed in Cozy’s gaze, “Do you have any idea what I spent decades thinking about?”

“Song lyrics?” Discord chuckled, “Or, no wait! Some better charade moves! Oh, oh! I know! An actual backstory…?”

Cozy lowered her horn, and let loose another red magical blast. It struck Discord and Fluttershy at once, the Stoning process quickly entombing them both.

“Huh,” Discord smiled, almost contentedly, “That was my next guess…”

Whether because of Discord’s size, or perhaps some trick of magic or the Elements, Fluttershy was turning to stone just a bit slower than her husband. She had enough time to turn her head to her left.

Unseen by Cozy, Fluttershy gave the warmest, gentlest smile she could possibly will onto her face. In spite of the horror befalling her, the Element of Kindness gave one, last smile to the most important pony in her life.

And then, silence.

It… it was done. The Princess. The Six Elements. Discord. Most of the Guard…

Cozy won. She actually… finally…

MOMMA!” a strangled cry ripped through the stillness that had followed, dragging Cozy’s gaze from her latest victims… to that pony-thing from before.

Momma? Her brain, somehow, skipped a beat.

Ann ran straight towards the statue of Fluttershy, before her legs seemed to give out, and the little filly came to a slow, creepy trot. She stopped, finally, right in front of the statue, and raised one hoof to touch its cheek.

Cozy could see fresh tears streaming from her eyes.

“Wait…” the pieces starting clicking into place, “Fluttershy was your…”

“Hee-ya!”

Cozy stepped back, narrowly avoiding another kick from Cheese, who managed to leave a small pockmark in the stone floor as he landed, rage blazing from his eyes.

“Okay, your Mom, I understand being mad about,” Cozy lifted an eyebrow at the seething colt, “By the way, which one was your Mom? I’m losing track here…”

“Hee-ya!” Cozy didn’t even hear the batpony sneak up on her, and she knew instantly she’d made a critical error. She turned, ready to block any…

Moon punched the Bell itself, sending it flying through the air and out of Cozy’s magical grip.

He smirked at her.

He smirked… at ME!?

Cozy’s horn flared, blasting down Moon with a torrent of crimson energy. Within a heartbeat, his would beat no more.

With a huff, she said, “Hope you like smirking, batty… cuz stone lasts a looong…”

A pair of forelegs wrapped around Cozy’s barrel from behind. By their color…

“I gotcha now!” Cheese cried.

“Come on, Cheese? Was Cheese your name?” Cozy chuckled as the colt tightened his grip “I’m an Alicorn. I’ve got more earth pony strength tha-a-a-a-a…”

Her gloating came out in a strangled cry as she was hefted up into the air and suplexed straight into the ground with a floor-shaking crash.

For a moment, her entire world was pain, and surprise.

How can he be this strong…?

Something clamped down on her tail… no, something BIT her tail! Cheese pulled her out of the little crater he’d made with her head, and spun Cozy around like a whirlwind, letting go just as she reached the other side.

Cozy sailed into the air, dazzled for just a moment at the… at the sheer wrongness of it all!

No earth pony could be this strong! She screamed in her mind, It’s impossible! Only Pinkie and her ridiculous, weird… family…

Her wings flared, slowing her unpowered flight, and putting her back in control.

PINKIE PIE HAD KIDS!?” she screeched, her mind trying to pull itself inside-out at the thought of Pinkie… Pinkie Pie of all ponies breeding…!

Cheese took two springy hops, landed on his tail, and fired up into the air, instantly closing the gap between himself and Cozy.

He’s fast…!

And then, Cheese stopped. It felt weird to stop, especially when he had so much forward momentum going just then.

The red aura around him didn’t help.

“Yeah,” Cozy huffed, “I’ve had enough of you.”

“You’re mean!” Cheese blew a raspberry.

Cozy’s face was unimpressed. “The bards will sing of your bravery and your wit, I have no doubt,” she snarked. And with yet-another burst of magic, she added one more statue to her collection. This one was quite put-out, almost fuming.

“Seriously,” she sighed, “What am I gonna do with all these…?”

HEY!

Cozy groaned. “Right… loose ends.”

She looked back down at the floor of her throne room, and noted the pony-thing that was… apparently the foal of Fluttershy?

Ew.

“Whaddya want!?” Cozy shouted, quite fed up with this whole scenario by now.

“Let Cheese go!” she held up… something…

Oh. Grogar’s Bell.

“Or what?” Cozy laughed and folded her forelegs in front of her, contemptuously, “You’ll use the Bell?”

Ann gulped, and looked at the dark, iron bell in her hooves. She regarded it like might bite her at any moment. Then, with a steeling breath, she looked back up to Cozy and said, sternly, “Yes.”

Cozy just laughed, “Well, good luck! That thing’s loaded with Discord’s magic!”

“… and?”

Cozy shook her head. Kids these days.

“Only Discord can use Chaos Magic! Everypony knows that! Still…”

Cozy took another look at Cheese, still frozen in her aura, still stone. And she got an idea. A wonderfully, wonderful, awful idea.

Ann held her breath as she saw Cozy’s grin.

“You know what?” Cozy said, glancing down at the freak with a bit of pity, “I guess you did set me free. I suppose I could do you a favor.”

“You… you will?” Ann’s voice was so… so deliciously hopeful.

Time to break her.

“Yup. Just… next time?” her aura vanished from Cheese’s frozen form.

“Be careful what you wish for…”

Cheese Slice Pie dropped through the air silently. The stone statue spun once around from some last touch of momentum Cozy’s aura had imparted. He smashed into the ground with a resounding clatter, shards of stone flying out in every direction as he was shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.

He’d missed Beau by a matter of feet. A shame, Cozy considered. She would have to get better at aiming.

I think… the Kirin, next

But before she had a chance to move, or to finishing thinking about moving, Cozy heard a frightfully familiar sound.

A dissonant bell toll.

Down below, there was a flash of light. And then, there was the sound of a hollow bell hitting the stone floor.

Cozy stared, a moment of panic seeping into her mind… but then, she just threw her head back and laughed. And she laughed, and laughed. And once she was done laughing, the pink Alicorn drifted back down to the ground, landing a few yards away from the creature that thought it could worry her now.

“Kid, you really need to clean out your ears,” she shook her head, a little upset that her rise to power had been so… anticlimactic, “I said, only Discord could use his magic! What part of that did you not understand? You got nothing on me!”

Ann sat on her haunches; eyes closed. She hardly moved.

Kinda like a statue.

Cozy smirked, “So, you gonna say something? Come on, I wanna hear some last words!”

Ann said nothing. She didn’t move. She didn’t even seem to be breathing.

That… was starting to get disconcerting. More, though, Cozy was starting to get a real good look at this… thing. It was definitely Fluttershy’s foal, no question there. That coat? That mane and tail? Even accounting for the black streak, it was almost a clone of the Professor.

But there was something about the wings. Bat wings. Blue bat wings. Cozy couldn’t help but wonder where’d she’d seen them before. In fact, there was something else about Ann that Cozy couldn’t quite put her hoof on.

Well, right up until Ann’s eyes opened.

“D-Discord?” Cozy balked, and took a step back.

Ann’s scowl was like nothing else. It could peel paint at twenty paces. It could cause a pony to age ten years by meeting her eyes without protection. Cozy wondered, briefly, if those eyes could see through her very soul.

“No,” Ann said simply, raising one hoof… that had now become a talon

“Anarchy.”


With the snap, all went black. Everything. Every single thing that could have been doused in darkness and blackness did so, before the echo of that snap had even begun to fade.

Cozy lit up her horn, reflexively. Nothing. There was absolutely nothing around her. She was lit up fine enough, but outside of that… was there even ground? What was she sitting on…?

“Hello?” she called out, only to hear her own echoes calling back, “Is… is anypony there?”

Still, nothing.

“What’s going on!?” Cozy snarled, “What… what did you do you little freak!?”

Oddly, the word freak itself didn’t seem to come back as an echo. Cozy wondered if that should worry her more.

And then, with a heavy, slamming sound, Cozy was hit by a beam of light from up above. She flinched, as much at the brilliant spotlight that fell on her as much as the thunderous sound of it turning on.

When she opened her eyes… Cozy had to blink several times. She had to make sure, absolutely sure what exactly she was seeing.

The throne room was fully restored. Every crack and chip she’d put in it was smoothed over. The entire back wall had been repaired, like nothing had ever happened. It was as though the entire battle hadn’t even happened.

But the statues remained. Just not as they were. Every guard, and Element, and foal she’d placed into stone had been rearranged. Cozy stood right at the bottom of the steps leading to the throne itself, which was now enshrouded with a red curtain that hung all the way down from the ceiling, and behind her someone had filled the entire hall to burst with simple, metal folding chairs.

And every chair held a statue. The Elements, except for Fluttershy were on one side, with Princess Twilight’s prone statue taking up two seats. Fluttershy, Discord, and all of the Cutie Mark Crusaders had been seated on the other.

All except Cheese.

Cozy’s throat tightened when she saw this. Not just that it happened, what with her stone victims being hefted into seats and strapped down, but that someone had gone to the effort. And with creeping horror, Cozy noted that there was still one seat off near the side of the throne, veiled only in darkness. It looked like someone had placed a pile of stones in that seat.

The lights came up. The throne room was still dim, but an appropriate dim. The sort of lighting one appreciated for solemn occasions.

Cozy watched as a side door opened… and Cheese walked out. He looked… good. Unblemished, even. He wore a spiffy red vest that identified him as a pony who was here to deliver a message.

Cheese opened his eyes, and Cozy screamed.

Yellow eyes. Red irises.

The colt cleared his throat with a cough. It had been too rough, and too deep for the little colt. Far too old a voice for him.

Cheese Slice Pie looked out over the ‘crowd’ and beamed a satisfied smile to them all. He even gave some of that bursting cheer to Cozy, once she’d stopped screaming, and was now merely staring in utter horror.

“Ladies and Gentlecolts!” he announced in Discord’s voice, “and that technicolor rainbow in between…!”

A canned laugh track played. Cozy could hear the needle scraping the vinyl record.

“We are most delighted that you could attend tonight’s ceremony,” he continued, pulling out a small card from his vest. He seemed to read off it as he went on…

“It is my greatest honor and privilege, to present to you all, the one and only…”

A drumroll started. Cozy couldn’t see where the music was coming from.

“… the Suzerain of Insanity…”

What the buck is going on here!?

“… the Mare of Madness, the Lady of Lunatics…”

The music took shape here. Cozy spied Vinyl Scratch suddenly, appearing along the side of the hall, with what appeared to be an entire band of Cheese Slice Pies, playing their electric guitars, triangles, drums, and… a grand piano?

Honestly, it was the strangest assortment of instruments she’d seen. And the song they played made Cozy’s ears hurt. She couldn’t place the melody, but there was something distressingly wrong about it. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t normal…

And then, she saw it. Besides the twisted Discord eyes… the Cheeses weren’t playing their instruments. Oh, they were moving their hooves across the guitars and triangles and drums and such… but they weren’t playing.

If Vinyl Scratch was actually doing anything with her wub-wub machine, Cozy would eat a hat…

But there was something… alluring to it. Cozy couldn’t help but stare as the ceremony proceeded.

“… the…” Cheese paused, a hoof covering his mouth. After a second, another Cheese ran out from the side to check his counterpart’s card. They argued and bickered in relative silence for a few moments, as the music continued. Then, once some sort of consensus had been achieved, one Cheese simply popped into a small cloud of dust and confetti.

The remaining Cheese coughed, and continued, “The Spirit… and Princess of Chaos…

PRINCESS ANARCHY!!!

Cheese threw out a hoof, and the canned applause was back, louder than ever. There was stamping hooves, clapping hooves, screams, horns, howls and shrieks of the deepest jungle, and sounds Cozy couldn’t even quite hear without a sense of cold dread clawing its way up her spine. The statues tilted forward, without anycreature there to move them, and as Cozy’s eyes darted from one end of the room to the other…

The stain-glass windows…

The ponies in those windows, from Princess Twilight, to her friends depicted defeating Discord, Nightmare Moon… Cozy… and others like those six students back at the Friendship School, and even an adult Flurry Heart…

They were moving.

They were bowing.

The curtain fell. And sitting atop the high-backed throne of Discord… Anarchy reigned. She was easily as tall as Celestia or Twilight had ever been, and her mane and tail had turned a bright, silvery white, retaining only a solid black stripe through both. She wore a bright red velvet crown and cape, both trimmed with white and black ermine. She held in the crook of one foreleg, a globe of the world. And in the other, a golden scepter topped with a bizarre, goofy parody of Twilight Sparkle’s head.

The wailing guitars had reached their crescendo as Ann smiled. And it was not a kind smile. It was the kind of smile Cozy Glow dreamed of giving at the end of a deep, villainous cackle and a monologue detailing the heroes’ imminent demise.

Princess Anarchy flashed her first victim a goblin grin full of fangs as the music came to its end.

With a regal stride, Ann brought herself down from the throne and stood at Cozy’s level. The music was done. Cozy’s hooves felt rooted to the ground as the towering Ponequus leaned down until their eyes were level with each other.

“Cozy?”

The voice, Ann’s voice, was like listening to a dagger slide its edge along a velvet rope. It was like Fluttershy ordering a sixteen-ounce steak, and salivating the entire time. It was like hearing a tomb door shut in Cozy’s face.

Whatever it was like… it did not bode well.

“W-what…?” Cozy managed to squeak out.

Princess Anarchy smiled a gentle, sweet, kind smile.

It did not reach her eyes.

“Ya dun goofed…”

Author's Note:

There's no future
There's no future
There's no future for you, Cozy...


An Alternative Coronation Song

Prince Blueblood is inbred,
King Sombra is still dead,

Faust Save the Queen!

Chrysalis got turned to stone,
Tirek lost his muscle tone,
Cozy's only liked by Ha-as-drones...

Faust Save the Queeeeen!