• Published 4th Mar 2022
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On the Fine Art of Giving Yourself Advice - McPoodle



A magical accident causes the future Mane Six and their Equestria Girls counterparts to switch minds on the day the former gain their marks, and the latter meet for the first time.

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Chapter 27: The Past: Recent and Distant (H. Rarity, R. Mustang Sally)

H. Rarity—Nowhere's town jailhouse, 6:13 a.m. on Day Three.

The town’s response to the loss of the water was that every-bodied citizen formed themselves into a posse, to help Sheriff Rarity recover the all-important jug.

They didn’t seem to care much about the disappearance of Banker Merrimack.

“In Nowhere, life is cheap,” Louise the lizard bartender said. By this time, Rarity was making an effort to remember the names of the citizens she was bound to protect.

The water jug had disappeared through a large hole in the floor of the bank. The interior of the bank had the appearance of a fortress, with guns on pivots to not only shoot out, but also able to cover anyone who managed to get in. Merrimack had spent the night alone in the bank guarding the jug.

There was a second hole in the middle of the street right outside the doors of the bank.

“Why would the thieves need to dig this second hole?” Rarity asked herself out loud, looking down into the street hole.

“Maybe they got lost, and came up here first to get their bearings,” Charlie the mangy cat said. (Charlie was the town prospector. He “played a mean pair of spoons,” by his own admission.)

“Or maybe Merrimack was lured out here first, so he couldn’t use all his guns on the bandits,” Mori the buzzard said. (His feathers were growing back quite nicely. Also, he was the town mortician.)

Rarity got down on all four hooves to look at the pawprints in the dirt between the two holes. “There’s too much traffic in both directions to get a clear idea of what happened,” she said with a shake of her head. Then she noticed something: some fresh red mud at the edge of the hole, contrasting sharply with the tan-gray dirt of the rest of town. She quickly stood up and looked around her, but there was no other trace of red mud or red dirt anywhere else that she could see. With a frustrated frown, she then peered down into the hole. “Could somebody get a light?” she asked. “I could light up my horn, but...”

“Yeah, we get it, Sheriff,” said Ron the toad. (Ron was a roadrunner wrangler. Rarity hadn’t actually seen Ron wrangle a roadrunner yet, and she hoped to be able to stay in town long enough to see it happen.) He handed over a lit lantern with a long rope tied to its handle.

Rarity went over to the pile of lumber that had been assembled to cover over the hole, selected a long narrow plank of wood, and pulled it over the hole across its middle. After rolling a rock over each end of the plank to anchor it, she tossed the lantern over the board and used her hooves to play the rope out slowly, peering over the edge along with everyone else as they watched the light descend into the darkness.

“That hole’s too deep to have been dug just for the robbery,” Rarity said. She expected to deliver this observation to the Mayor, but he had left while she was setting up the plank, leaving just an unimpressed Angelique, who said nothing in reply.

Rarity looked down at her very-bad-for-climbing hooves, and sighed. “I’m going to need a ten-foot ladder,” she said. “A really good one, with really wide rungs.”

“What’s a ‘foot’?” asked Charlie. “And how long is ten of them?”

“As long as the rope,” said Rarity.

Pushkin the tarantula tailor pointed wordlessly at the abandoned general store.

# # #

Once the entire posse had gotten to the bottom of the tunnel, Rarity untied the rope with her teeth and then hooked the lantern’s handle in the crook of one forehoof, raising it to look around her. The place resembled an enormous sponge, with corridors too small to fit through branching off in every direction. Rarity applied some pressure to one of the walls, and easily broke through its dry brittle limestone.

Wow,” Applejack muttered to herself. “Does this ever look familiar.” Applejack was decidedly not a part of the posse thanks to her unkind words the day before. She came along anyway.

Hey, take a look at this doohickey!” Charlie cried out from the bottom of the bank hole.

The crowd congregated there to take a look at it. It was a horizontal metal disk with a hole in the middle, with large metal teeth on the disk’s edges pointing forward towards the end of the tunnel. The disk was mounted in front of a set of rubber tires, which allowed the device to move back and forth. Behind the disk were mounted a pair of chairs, and between the chairs and the disk were two sets of pedals and cranks. By putting all four of your claws or hooves on the pedals and cranks and rotating them like you were riding a bike, the disk would be made to rotate, the teeth would excavate the rock, and the wheels would pull the device forward. It was a quite ingenious way to cut a tunnel through this particular rock formation.

This also meant that it was absurdly easy to track the thieves back to their point of origin. Here at least there was only one set of pawprints visible, leading away from the device and back down the tunnel between and around the tracks of the tires.

While the crowd rushed down that tunnel to find the thieves. Rarity hung back to get a close look at the excavator device. She noted three things: an etched maker signature of “F&F”, the fact that the foot pedals for the left-hand seat were not engaged, and the fact that the red mud was present on those unengaged foot pedals.

# # #

We got ‘em! We got ‘em!

Rarity emerged from the far end of the tunnel into the bright sunlight. She put down her lantern and shielded her eyes with a hoof as she adjusted.

Gradually she could see the run-down shack that was sitting just outside the side of the hill where the tunnel ended. The cry from the posse had come from there. She was about to go there when she noticed Applejack and Doc the scorpion examining the unconscious figure of Merrimack.

“What happened to him?” Rarity asked.

Doc shook his head incredulously. “He was choked and near drowned,” he reported. “Yet there isn’t a drop of water to be seen. I’ll take him back to my office, but I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do myself.” He picked the squirrel’s form up with his tail and placed him on his back. He was able to do this because most of his stinger had been cut away in a fight years earlier, leaving only a sort of primitive finger-like appendage good for gunslinging. Doc was the best gunfighter in Nowhere, the second-best they ever had, next to the sheriff who had died a few weeks before Rarity’s arrival.

Of course, that was only in Nowhere. Adamantine was the finest outlaw in the entire Territory, in every category imaginable—everybody knew that.

Rarity watched as Doc then scuttled his way down the tunnel towards Nowhere.

“Sheriff, you’re about to be in a whole heap of trouble,” Applejack drawled.

“Why is that?” Rarity asked.

Applejack pointed a hoof, and Rarity followed it to see the posse marching out their rope-tied captives: the supposedly-dead Tom and Jerry. Still very much alive, and very much protesting their innocence. Some other members of the posse dragged out the top half of the bank water jug. The bottom had been smashed off, and there was no trace of water to be found.

Hearing the flap of a pair of wings, Rarity darted her eyes upward, to see a sentient-sized crow flying away. It had apparently been perched on top of the hill that the tunnel came out of, and had been observing everything that had been happening.

By this time the crowd had reached Rarity, with very sullen looks in their eyes.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this was all part of my plan,” Rarity said confidently.

“You meant for these two varmints to steal and destroy our water?” Ron asked incredulously.

Applejack frowned. Gingerly, she reached over to Rarity’s trousers and pulled out the waistband, taking a peek inside.

“I beg your pardon!” Rarity cried, slapping a hoof over Applejack’s.

Applejack looked at her insistently. Rarity looked down as Applejack pulled out the waistband once again.

Rarity’s cutie marks for deception were gone. Losing them was something she had fervently wished for, but losing them now... Well, that meant that Rarity had to rely on convincing the crowd the traditional way.

“There is a vast conspiracy at foot...hoof...claw...whatever,” she told the crowd. “These two are hired hands. I mean, think about it: they were here for weeks, yes? If they were going to strike against this town, why wait for me to become sheriff, when the previous interregnum would be more opportune!”

“‘Interregnum?’” asked Charlie.

“It’s the period between two rulers, or in this case sheriffs,” explained Mori.

“And let me ask you this: did you find any money in that cabin?” asked Rarity. “What mercenary would carry out such a dangerous job without getting at least a little bit in advance?”

“Oh, you mean this money?” Mori asked, holding a bag of bits aloft.

Rarity quickly grabbed the bag. “I’m taking this as evidence,” she said. “If they were being paid to perform this heinous act, don’t you want to know who paid them to do it?”

Now this was something the angry creatures could agree on. They even waited patiently as Rarity went over the cabin looking for clues.

The first thing she noticed was a complete absence of red mud. She noticed that neither the entrance of the tunnel nor the location where the busted jug were found could be seen from any of the windows in the cabin. Another piece of negative evidence was the absence of any kind of letter written by the pair of mercenaries addressed to Lady C. Unless that crow had been used to deliver it...

# # #

The trip back to town in the tunnel had been a terse one. Any attempt by either of the prisoners to speak was silenced by a punch in the gut. And the still-distrustful crowd made it impossible for Rarity to consult with Applejack.

When they reached the surface once again, Tom and Jerry were taken over to the city jail and locked up.

“I’m going to report to the Mayor,” Rarity addressed the crowd watching her from outside the building. “You can stay out here in the sun waiting for my return. You could try all crowding in here. You could disrespect the Mayor by crowding into his nice building. Or you can all go home and wait for my return.”

The posse, after consulting each other for a few seconds, chose Option D. Only Applejack stayed behind.

“I’d give you a deputy badge if I had one, Applejack,” Rarity said.

“But that would mean I would be working for the Mayor. So no thank you.”

“What do you have against him, anyway?” Rarity asked.

Applejack spent a moment in thought. “When...when I first stumbled into Nowhere, I wasn’t alone. There was another beetle pony named Muffins, after another stolen identity. She was very badly hurt when we arrived. Maybe she would have died on her own. Or maybe Doc could have saved her. Only Doc was sent out of town by the Mayor between the time I started looking for help and when Doc would have heard about it to help us.

“I was pretty hurt myself, and Merrimack nursed me back to life on his ranch. This was a couple of years after the Annexation, and most of the citizens of Nowhere were prejudiced against me for being pony-shaped. I know...silly, right?” She silently judged the look that Rarity gave her in response to the term “Annexation”. “This whole territory used to be buffalo land, and the buffalo only cared about themselves, so it became a haven for outlaws of every kind. And then ten years ago a pony named Everfree Valance got the other pony settlers together, and negotiated with both the Buffalo Council and Princess Celestia to get most of the land transferred over to Equestria, hence the name ‘Annexation’. Since Nowhere is and always was a town of non-pony outlaws, this made them really mad about ponies.”

“And yet you led me right to it,” Rarity said dryly.

“Well it’s not like there’s any other towns around here,” Applejack remarked. “You needed to get to some kind of town, or you were going to drop from heatstroke.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” Rarity admitted.

“Merrimack really got sweet on me, although I told him from the outset that the feeling wasn’t mutual. Nevertheless he signed his whole ranch over to me, saying that he basically lived in the bank now and didn’t need it anymore. And since the Mayor was busy buying up the whole town, this made him really mad.

“He’s been trying for six years now to get me to sell the ranch to him, and getting increasingly underhooved in the way he does it. I had a well, the only well not affected by the decade-long drought that the rest of Nowhere was suffering from. I was making regular deposits into the bank, to keep the town going. And then one morning I woke up to see my well plugged up with quick-dry cement! I found some bags of the stuff in the house that the Mayor’s mole assistants live in, but of course I couldn’t get anyone to admit their involvement.”

“If the Mayor wanted that land, why would he depreciate it by ruining the well?” Rarity asked.

“I...I dunno, but I know it was him! I know it!”

Rarity turned to the two prisoners. “And what’s your story?” she asked. “I thought we had an agreement.”

Applejack raised a silent eye ridge at this revelation.

“We were just waiting on one more message from a friend of ours,” Jerry said, producing a crumpled up piece of paper. “Turns out we were both wrong: Lady C. wasn’t going to take us out after we delivered Applejack, because she never hired us at all.”

“Yeah,” Tom chimed in. “Turns out the actual pony who hired us was herself hired by none other than—”

Mayor John,” Applejack and Rarity said as one.

# # #

Rarity and Applejack parted ways as they left the jail house, on the understanding that Applejack’s presence could only hurt Rarity’s mission as she walked up to the Mayor’s mansion. Rarity passed the same pair of rabbits on the way in that she had seen before. This time they had accepted the offer to sell their land to the Mayor, and spoke of moving away to someplace less doomed than Nowhere...maybe Klugetown. Angelique let Rarity right in after that.

“Ah, Sheriff White Raven. I was expecting your report. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to participate in the chase...this wonderful contraption of mine is capable of many things, but not descending into a natural tunnel complex.”

“That was a very interesting complex,” Rarity told him from the other side of his enormous desk. “I noticed from your degrees on the wall that you’re a geologist. It seemed to me that the formation under the town was a completely empty aquifer. Were you aware of this fact?”

“Yes, although it was much more full when I led the settlement of the town back in ’74. I hoped that the water table would sustain us through the darkest of times. Alas, I turned out to be wrong on that account.”

“Indeed. I found it curious that none of the townsfolk was aware of the existence of that feature.”

“Is that so?” Mayor John asked, as he leaned forward to look down upon Rarity. “There were several of the founders who were aware, but sadly none of them are still around.”

“Interesting,” said Rarity. “And who are ‘F&F’?”

The Mayor smiled evilly. “A pair of up-and-coming inventors who’ve collaborated with me on a number of my most-recent projects.” He wheeled himself out from behind the desk. “Will you be needing to collect any additional evidence, Sheriff, or is your mind made up yet?”

Rarity frowned, and looked around her for any signs that the Mayor might have some kind of help hidden in the room to take her down. Grabbing the Mayor’s walking stick, she used it to lift the blankets that swathed the bottom of the Mayor’s tortoise shell and his feet. Those were wrapped tightly in bandages, the shaping making it clear that they had been horribly damaged at some point years in the past. And sticking to those bandages were patches of dried red mud.

“Mayor John, you are under arrest for the assault on Merrimack, and the deliberate destruction of the water supply owned by the citizens of Nowhere.”

With a smirk, the Mayor produced his hands, which Rarity used a pair of shackles to lock to part of his chair, making it impossible for him to control it. “And why would I destroy the water supply of my own citizens?” he taunted. “I can’t exactly be re-elected mayor to a town that was abandoned due to drought.”

“I...don’t know,” Rarity admitted. “But it probably ties into why you were buying all the land in town. The point is, I have enough evidence to hold you, and I will find enough evidence to make a definitive case against you without your interference.”

“If you say so,” John said with a sneer.

Rarity gathered as many of John’s belongings as she could find into her saddlebags, “as evidence”. She was particularly intrigued with an object that may seem familiar to the readers: a pocketwatch-shaped contraption that gave you your coordinates, with a portrait of a blue unicorn on the cover and a painting of a glass lake inside.

# # #

When Rarity marched the Mayor over to the jailhouse—with a silent Angelique pushing the Mayor’s chair—she was met by everyone left in the town. Night was falling, and everyone was equipped with torches. Rarity suspected that the torches were meant for more than just illumination.

“You’re going to try and pin this on the Mayor?” Ron asked incredulously. “He’s been nothing but good to this town.”

“While you just showed up yesterday, and you’re done nothing but lie to us!” Doc proclaimed, waving his mangled stinger in the air. There was a gun on the end of it.

As a matter of fact, all of the crowd gathered here was armed. So perhaps it might be better to call it a mob. Since mobs are more often armed than crowds.

“I’ve arrested the water thief!” Rarity insisted.

“We caught the water thieves already!” Louise retorted. “And then you let them get away.”

Rarity ran over to the door of the jailhouse. To her dismay, the back wall had a big hole in it, courtesy of a bundle of dynamite, if Rarity was to guess. And of course there was no longer any trace of either Tom or Jerry.

“The voice was right about everything!” a young rabbit exclaimed.

“Voice? What voice?” Rarity asked.

“The Voice of the West, Easterner,” Mayor John said.

“Hey, enough out of you, prisoner!” Rarity cried.

“He’ll only tell you what we already know, White Raven,” said Mori. “Her voice has come to us before, helping us out anytime the town was about to make a horrible decision.”

“Every time you tried to turn against the Mayor’s wisdom?” Rarity asked archly.

“Of course,” said Mori. “And she’s right once again. You were supposed to duel the mercenaries to the death. You went against the Code Duello. By telling us you killed them, that makes you guilty of perjury.”

White Raven has lied to all of you.” It was a powerful female voice, reverberating up and down the streets.

The citizens whispered to each other. “Spirit of the West!” was repeated more than once.

“Show yourself, Spirit!” Rarity proclaimed. “If you have a physical form. I am not afraid of you.”

There was a rumble, as several of the abandoned and dilapidated buildings shook as if from an earthquake. The tallest of them, the three-story Hotel Paradise, had been covered over with a sheet to hide how much of the façade had fallen off over the years. This sheet now fell down, revealing that the front of the building was almost entirely gone, and the walls between the floors no longer existed. And filling the entire interior space of the hotel was a dark blue dragon.

Rarity gasped, stepping back as a bewildering variety of emotions washed over. She was shocked to learn that dragons existed in this world, and that they were intelligent like everybody else. She feared for her life if this creature, so much bigger and more powerful than her, should decide to hurt her. And she felt a sort of dizzying greed as she looked upon the scintillating scales of the creature, which seemed to glint with electric currents as she moved.

“Adamantine!” Pushkin exclaimed. “You’re the Spirit of the West? I thought you didn’t care about anybody!”

The dragon known as Adamantine smiled. “That’s what I wanted you to think. I preferred your fear to your love. But know that I have always been looking out for this town, removing any threat big enough that you couldn’t handle it yourselves. It is thanks to you that I have been able to establish my reputation as the most ruthless criminal in the Territory! And now I come to save you once again...from her.

“‘White Raven’! What a farce! You are no outlaw, you are exactly what you appear to be: a runaway schoolfilly with an overactive imagination. And you haven’t hurt a single creature in your entire life! What is your real name, little filly?”

Rarity looked around her wildly, and she saw that all of the citizens had accepted this truth in an instant. The worst part was the look of betrayal on the face of Applejack. “No, it’s like this...” she started. But she couldn’t finish. There was nothing she could say that would overthrow the undeniable truth the dragon had spoken. “Rarity,” she said at last, looking away. “My name is Rarity. And everything she said is true.” But then she steeled herself. “But I’m still the Sheriff of Nowhere, and I’m still arresting the Mayor.”

Adamantine roared out a laugh. “I’m the sheriff of Nowhere now, little marshmallow,” she proclaimed. “Unless you want to try to stop me?”

Rarity looked away in fear, and Adamantine pressed her advantage. “Here I am, stuck in this little building. Cast your legendary shrinking spell, and kill me! Or are you nothing more than a cowardly little pony, a quaking little pacifist that would watch the world fall before she would dare to hurt anybody!”

Rarity hung her head in defeat.

“Pathetic,” the dragon said, easily breaking free from the shell of a building. She strode towards Rarity, the crowd parting before her. Reaching down, she ripped the badge off of Rarity’s shirt, and held it aloft between index claw and thumb. Looking over her shoulder at the bystanders, she said, “As your new sheriff, I will now settle this dispute.”

Flapping her great wings to get airborne, she grabbed Rarity in one foot, and the Mayor in another. “If this mayor is actually guilty, I’ll return with just this Rarity, for you to deal with as you wish. And if, as is likely, this mayor is innocent, then I’ll come back with just him.”

With an evil grin, she flew up into the western night sky and out of sight.


R. Mustang Sally—The outskirts of Tall Tale. A night ten years ago.

The coach and tackle sat there in the shadows for hours. And then suddenly two forms appeared inside the coach, and a light gray earth pony mare with a long brown mane and a gray cowboy hat appeared in the tackle. She pulled the coach rapidly into the night, making no sound when her hooves struck the shadowed ground.

Mustang Sally ran and ran and ran. She seemed to show no signs of getting tired. She kept running despite the lack of any evidence that they were being pursued. She ran for hours. She ran to keep from speaking about what she had done. She ran to keep from thinking about what she had done.

Finally, with the first sunlight washing over her, she had to stop. But again, she dared not think about her actions the night before. So she opened her saddlebags, and dug out a thick hoof-bound tome with faux-leather covers. “Far West Real Estate” read the label attached to the cover. She flipped through about a third of the book before finding a large fold-out map. Pulling one of Jack Pot’s Locator souvenirs out of the saddlebags, she used it to find where on the map she was, and the heading for her desired destination. Tossing Locator and tome back into the saddlebags, she set out into a gallop, throwing the two passengers to the back of the carriage with an audible thump. This time as she covered the sands her pants of growing exhaustion were evident, as were the pounding of her hooves. That pounding, accompanied by the pounding of her eardrums, distracted Sally enough that she failed to notice the shadow that was now following her.

Three hours later, she reached her destination: a vast open pipe emerging from the side of the hill. Mustang Sally stopped and shrugged her way out of the tackle. “It’s here!” she proclaimed. “We actually found it!”

The door in the side of the carriage opened, to admit a very bedraggled Tortoise John and Merrimack the Ground Squirrel. We have decided to skip over the intervening consequences of a non-stop carriage ride lasting ten hours.

“It’s true,” Merrimack said in awe, walking up to the pipe and resting one claw on its underside. “Nowhere is saved!” He slapped the pipe in triumph. “With that book we control the water supply of the entire Territory!” Peering in, he could see that the inside of the pipe was blocked off by a metal partition, attached to a large post that stuck out of the top of the pipe.

“And if anybody dares to build a settlement somewhere where they can tap into Far West’s pipeline, we’ll be there to stop them,” said Tortoise John, climbing up the pipe to sight along the hill that covered it. “And all we had to do was ‘disappear’ the one rotten pony who stood in our way,” John said with a grin after hopping lightly down to his feet. He slapped Sally on the withers. “You did that amazingly.”

Merrimack looked away from Sally. “Yeah,” he said in awe...and fear. “You were scary good at that. I mean, you told us from the beginning that you were not entirely a pony. And I believed you but...wow.”

“Yeah, about that,” Sally said, turning on John. “You pretty much gave me no choice when it came down to it, despite my earlier protests.”

“You’re not going to trot out your pony sanctimoniousness and call it ‘wrong’, are you?”

“No,” said Sally, snorting her annoyance. “I left ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ behind the day I joined your gang. What this is is stupid! Everfree Valance was the most-beloved pony in the Territory! There’s no way that there isn’t going to be a massive pony hunt for...for his...” She couldn’t say the word.

“For the one who ‘disappeared’ him,” John said with a victorious smile. “And you don’t need to worry about that. While you took care of Everfree, we took care of his political rival in the Territorial Senate, Ransom Stopper. There will be no doubt in any pony’s mind that the two took each other out in a magical duel, one that left nothing behind.

Sally had to stop herself from falling over, instead landing heavily on her backside. “Ransom too? We grew up together. I...I can’t. This is too much. I’m...I’m not leaving you. I’ll never leave you, John, you know that.” She rose to her hooves. “But I want to go back into the ranks, be another nobody who doesn’t know what you two have to do to keep the town running.”

At a signal from John, Merrimack climbed back into the carriage.

“Alright, if that’s the way you feel, I guess you’re out,” John said simply, following Merrimack back into the carriage.

A relieved Sally was about to reattach the tackle when the carriage suddenly jerked up into the air. She watched slack-jawed as a midnight-blue dragon carried the carriage up, before throwing it back down upon the rocks. She recognized the dragon as Adamantine, frequent adversary of John and Merrimack’s plans.

Seeing that the dragon was hovering in the air, watching, Sally took the chance to try and rescue the passengers. Merrimack was merely scratched in several places, while John’s injuries were much more severe: a broken bottom to his shell, and crushed feet.

“Did you have to drop it from so high?” John asked the dragon.

“You said to make it convincing,” Adamantine said with a shrug.

John turned to the stunned pony. “Sally, I’d like to introduce you to the silent fourth partner of our little group: the dragon Adamantine.”

“You’ve been working with her the whole time?!” Sally demanded.

“Sally, Sally!” John chided her. “You’ve surely come across the ‘good ruler, bad councilor’ model from your study of pony history! As mayor, banker and sheriff, none of us can be caught doing the necessary deeds to keep Nowhere strong, while Adamantine here...”

“I like it,” the dragon said as she landed hard on the sandy ground, her eyes sparkling. “I really, really like it.”

Sally looked over at Merrimack, who had finished drawing a circle around the pair of her and the dragon. He used a piece of chalk to include the end of the pipe inside the circle. “What’s this about?” she asked.

“Your offer of resignation,” John said. “It shows a lack of confidence in my abilities as mayor. You have insulted my honor, and I must have satisfaction.” Gesturing to his legs, he said, “But since I can’t challenge you in person, I will have Adamantine duel you in my stead.”

“Wait, that’s why you had me add the dragon duel rules to the code duello?” Sally asked.

“The rules, as I’m sure you know, are simple,” Adamantine said. “Neither of us can leave the surface of the circle before a winner is declared, under penalty of death. No flight, no guns, and no teleportation.”

John cocked his gun, to show that he had appointed himself the referee. (Which of course is against the Code.)

“All you have to do is render me unconscious,” Adamantine continued. “While my job is to use my tail to crush you into paste.”

Sally looked wildly around her. It was high noon. The only shadows inside the circle were being cast by Adamantine. She kept her wings tight against her sides, her head and tail pulled back so they cast their shadows on her own body, and her arms and legs bent like the limbs of lizards, keeping her belly so close to the ground that no pony could fit between her and the ground.

“You were very loyal, Sally,” John said. “Telling me not only all of your powers, but also your weaknesses.”

“John, please!” Sally cried out, facing him. “My loyalty to you is absolute! Why would you betray me like this?”

“You have power, Mustang Sally,” John said coldly. “You are more powerful than me. Therefore, you must eventually kill me and take my place as mayor. That is the reality of power, and anything else reeks of pony madness. Your very existence is a threat to my life, and I am now removing it. The duel may now commence!

Sally just barely managed to jump out of the way as Adamantine’s tail bashed into the sand where she had been standing. She rushed for the saving shadow under the dragon, but her enemy fell upon her stomach to prevent Sally from becoming one with the shadow and escaping.

“I...I can’t watch,” said Merrimack.

“That’s fine,” said John, his eyes still glued to the battle. “Head back to town to report Adamantine’s attack on the carriage. And start promoting that rabbit I picked out to be the next sheriff.”

“Thumper?”

“Was that his name? I forgot.”

Eventually Sally realized that there was one shadow she could reach within the circle: the space under the pipe opening. She maneuvered herself around until her back was to the pipe, then turned suddenly to make her lunge...

She never made it. Adamantine was victorious.

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