> Chorus of Lament: The Embrace
>  by Timbre Tone
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: They Can Never Know
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	"You said you would always be there for me."

“I need you now."

"I don't know what's happening to me!"

"I'm so scared."

-----

"The forest — I'm in the Everfree forest!"

-----

"Apple Bloom? You ok, darlin'?" murmured Applejack as she brushed long strands of messy blonde hair from her tired eyes and peered into her younger sister's room. The moon beamed a pale light in across the filly's bed and exposed her young, tear-stained face. She quickly turned her head over into her pillow away from her older sister's gaze.

"Ah'm sorry sis," the little one said, her voice trembling with sadness. "Ah didn't mean to wake ya."

"Don'chu worry sugarcube, ah wasn't asleep." Applejack drawled out as she trotted softly into the room.  

In fact in light of recent events, AJ hadn't slept in days. Her tone was as listless as her body but she didn't let that stop her from pulling her sister into her in a comforting, albeit exhausted embrace. 

"It's 'bout Scootaloo, isn'it?" Applejack asked.

Sniffing lightly, Apple Bloom nodded into her sister's chest. "Ah hadda bad dream. Ah'm so worried bout'er."

"They'll find little Scoot, pumpkin'." The elder mare said reassuringly. "Every stallion, mare, 'n filly in Ponyville is lookin', and ah know you've seen all them fancy armor-wearin' royal guard from Canterlot in town. They're gonna find her."

Apple Bloom let out a dull sob, listening to all the same catering words of comfort she'd heard so many times already from so many different ponies. She let out another as thoughts of her dear friend entered her mind, the joy of their adventures together seemed so distant now. She squeezed her big sister tightly and spoke softly into her orange fur. 

"Please be right." She cried. "Ah'm so scared I'll never see'er again."

Applejack lay her sister's head back down on her pillow and did her best to tuck her back into her tangled sheets. The filly's bed was as small as to be expected but it still allowed AJ the space to lay down next to her little sister. With a delicate hoof she wiped the tears from the little one's eyes. 

"Ah'm scared too." She admitted.

Silence crept into the room as Apple Bloom's crying finally ceased and she nuzzled against her sister once again. AJ pulled her in and held her close, suddenly feeling her eyes allow themselves to close. Her sister was safe. She was right there next to her. Nopony was going to take her away. She clung to that one sole belief as she and Apple Bloom were finally allowed the sanctity of sleep.

-----

"I can't escape."

"I can't resist."

"Help me!"

"I just want to see your face again."

-----

The town square of Ponyville had become a veritable mission control, but the energy it had less than forty-eight hours ago was waning. Armored guards and groups of civilian volunteers of every earth, wing, and horn were coming and going from a large tent complex set up by the royal guard detachment. Commanding officers gave their orders to their subordinates, and they intern organized the volunteers. However, as the sun began to rise on the morning of day three, exhaustion was clear and heavy in the air and in the eyes of everypony. Grim mummers of fading hope for young Scootaloo slithered between ears and spirits began to dampen in the cold morning dew.

Search parties returned from inside the Everfree forest, empty-hooved as always. They trotted to their tents to steal an hour or two of rest. It was inside one of these tents where Rainbow Dash stood weary and exhausted from a full two days of nearly non-stop flying and searching. Across from her, on the other side of a fold-out desk covered in scrawled notes and reports sat Lieutenant Keen Eye, an ash grey unicorn clad in his armored uniform, the ranking officer commanding all the guards assigned to Ponyville.

"Thank you for coming so early, Miss Dash, I know how tired you must be. You can take a seat if you wish but I don't intend for this to take long." the lieutenant said as he rifled through the sprawl of paper on his desk.

"Yeah. No problem." She said, mustering a fatigued but earnest enthusiasm as she dropped her flank into the chair. "What's all this about?"

Keen looked up from his paper mess and peered attentively at the prismatic-maned pegasus. 

"I need you to tell me more about you and the missing filly." He spoke sternly.

Dash rolled her eyes. 

"That's why I'm here?" She said, not sounding particularly impressed. "I already told you guys everything I know. I was with Scootaloo the day she went missing. We hung out for a few hours by the lake and then she left on her scooter to go play with her other friends. It all got written down, don't tell me you lost it!"

Keen's gaze slid briefly into a glare before he raised the transcribed statement in question. 

"No Miss Dash, I still have it all right here." He lowered the paper and folded his hooves across his desk. "I understand your frustration. Let me start by saying that my guard detail and I are both very thankful to you and your contributions to this search effort, but now I need your help in a different way. The nature of this search has changed."

"What do you mean?" Rainbow replied, quizzical and wary.

The guardstallion sighed. 

"We've canvassed every home in Ponyville, brought in and questioned over a hundred ponies, and recorded at least thirty different eye-witness accounts of ponies seeing this filly the day she went missing." He listed, sounding equal parts agitated and depressed. "Somehow, throughout all of this we still have no concrete leads pointing to her whereabouts."

"What about the Everfree forest?" Dash asked, hesitating. She wanted to approach the subject carefully.

Keen was silent, looking unsure for only a second before once again donning his mask of steely composure.

"A search party was attacked by timber wolves during operations last night." He said matter-of-factually. "They fended them off but a few of my stallions sustained significant injuries. As a result, I am putting an end to all search efforts within the forest."

"But she's gotta be in there!" Rainbow protested immediately, but then quickly reigned herself in. "I mean — we haven't found her anywhere in Ponyville. She must be out there, right?"

The lieutenant cleared this throat.

"This is not a runaway, Miss Dash, nor is it a young filly lost in the woods." Keen declared grimly, his tone somehow managing to fall even darker. "The fear has always been in the back of my mind, but now we are forced to face the inevitable truth that this was a premeditated abduction."

"A foalnapping?" The multicolored mare mused with a raised eyebrow, trying to hide the gritting of her teeth. "You honestly think somepony took her away?  Why would anypony do that?!"

"In this case, I don't know." Keen admitted readily. "I have my theories but you have to understand that crimes like this are not common in Equestria, certainly not in a small town like Ponyville."

Rainbow swallowed hard, considering the lieutenant's words with an anxious focus.

"Common or not, they do happen." Keen followed up. "Either way, I have investigated them before and I know what I needs to be done. It's time to take a closer look at the ponies who were close to the victim."

Victim. Rainbow Dash didn't like that word one bit. It reverberated in her brain and filled her heart with desolate sadness like it was already too late. Like she had already failed. She also didn't like how the lieutenant was looking at her.

"Wait. You don't honestly think that I'm involved, do you?!" Her tone was harsh and incredulous. Her wings flared and her seven-color tail swished quickly. Already defensive, she looked ready to fight at the drop of a pin.

Keen ignored her riled up state, apparently expecting it.

"Nopony is accusing you of anything.” He responded calmly and professionally. “But I'm going to need you to better explain your relationship with the victim."

"Fine. Whatever.” Rainbow muttered gruffly, lowering her wings and sitting back down. “Just — could you not call her that?"

With a glow of his horn Keen levitated a file folder from the stack of papers on his desk, opened it, and pulled a series of accounts from other citizens of Ponyville.

"My understanding is that Scootaloo had always been very fond of you." He peered at Dash from over the folder. "You even claimed yourself that you had taken her under your wing, so to speak."

"Well — yeah." Rainbow said listlessly. She let out a halfhearted grin and felt a warm pride swelling in her voice as she continued. "I figured I could teach her to be as awesome as me. Don't let anypony say Rainbow Dash doesn't appreciate her fans." 

Her grin was brief and awkward, but the flash of self-adulation allowed her to momentarily forget the anxious churning in her stomach.

"So the two of you spent a lot of time together." Keen quickly reined in the topic.

"Well — not a lot a lot." Dash said, nervously stumbling on her own words. "She usually spent more time with Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle. They had some kind of club thing."

"Oh yes. The Cutie Mark Crusaders, was it?" Keen asked, examined the notes on another paper and scribbling energetically with a levitating quill.

"I don't remember." Rainbow Dash grimaced. "I never really paid much attention to that."

"Yes, I understand. But Scootaloo certainly paid a lot of attention to you." The lieutenant seemed legitimately amused, but let nothing but a smirk betray his expression. "You are aware she organized a Rainbow Dash fan club with some of the other fillies and colts in town, yes?" 

Rainbow let out a weak but honest chuckle.

"Yeah that.” She said, looking reminiscent. “It was short-lived but it was awesome while it lasted."

"I know you're the kind of mare who enjoys attention." Keen said as he peered hard into Rainbow's tired magenta eyes, his intent veiled behind calculated detachment. "A filly like Scootaloo must be really nice to have around."

"Well when you're as skilled as me attention comes with the territory." The pegasus said as another wave of semi-comforting pride washed over her. She pushed a hoof into her chest. "I had to learn to enjoy being in the spotlight from a very young age."

"Has Scootaloo ever been inside your home?" The lieutenant asked. Gone suddenly was the casual conversationality from his voice.

Anxiety rippled fiercely the mare's guts. 

"Uhh no. Never." Dash offered up. "Whenever we hung out we would usually be outside and I'd be—"

"Would you be willing to allow some of my stallions to take a look inside your home." Keen cut in as sharp as his namesake and left Rainbow's mouth agape, stunned, with a suddenly frustration boiling in her core.

"W-Why!? I just told you she's never been in there!" She shouted, her defensiveness obvious. "She's probably in the Everfree forest, but you guys won't even let me help you search in there!" 

"That forest is a death trap and lost cause!” Keen said, his volume starting to escalated to match the agitated pegasus. “How long do you honestly expect me to put the lives of my stallions at risk?"

"So now you're giving up in there entirely and you're gonna start kicking in the doors of random pony's houses on a hunch she's been foalnapped?!" She shouted back, her tail swishing fiercely.

"You know as well as I do, Miss Dash, that a filly alone in that forest for this long would be dead!" the lieutenant shouted back. "I absolutely will not be responsible for creating more corpses in an effort to recover one!"

"She's not dead!" Dash growled, gritting her teeth and glaring intensely at the lieutenant, but the throbbing lump in her throat prevented her from saying more.

"You need to be prepared for the worst case scenario, Miss Dash." Keen spoke lower, trying to deescalate things. "I pray for Scootaloo's safety but I wouldn't be doing my job if I assumed it."

Dash could only bring herself to glare in response.

"Either way, I honestly don't believe she's in the forest." Keen Eye continued, sounding calmer again. "Given the scale of the search and lack of results I find it very likely that an active effort is being made by some unknown party to hide this filly from us, from within Ponyville. We need to identify this unknown party immediately and as it stands right now, Miss Dash, you were the last pony seen with the victim."

That word again...

"No!" Rainbow barked out as she slammed her hoof down on Keen's desk and got right into the lieutenant's face. "Absolutely not! You're wasting your time and you're wasting mine!"

"Rainbow Dash!" The lieutenant exploded, standing instantly. "You are going to sit down before you do something stupid and you're going to listen to me!"

"Scoot is still out there!" Dash hollered, "You're just gonna sit there at your desk!? Messing around with papers!? You're calling her a victim like she's already gone and you pointing your hoof at me!? This is stupid! Get your guards back into that forest! She's in there, I know it!"

With an angered growl and a flash of his horn the chair behind Rainbow glowed and lunged forward, scooped her off her hooves and back into its seat.

Hooves on table, Keen Eye glared intensely at the pegasus across from him, his patience fully expired.

"First off, don't you ever tell me how to do my job.” He started, glaring eyes narrowed at her. “Second, do you have anyidea what happens to an abducted filly? Do any of you bright-eyed naive backwater ponies here in Ponyville even know what kind of sickos are out there in the rest of the world!?”

Rainbow's eyes fell to the ground, her look of anger still plastered to her face, but ultimately silent.

“You might be a self-obsessed hot-head but I don't think you're one of those monsters.” Keen Eye continued. “However, that does not give you a pass! Your home will be searched  just like every other suspect in this investigation. That's right, I said suspect.”

Rainbow's chest seized up, uncertainty reigning and words continuing to fail her.

“And don't you dare talk to me about wasting time!” Keen ranted angrily, his tone continuing to escalate.  “You may very well be innocent, but I swear to the sun and the moon if you force me to waste any more time here with you while Scootaloo is out there being subjected to Celestia knows what at the hoof of some sick bastard then as far as I'm concerned, you've only helped kill her!"

Rainbow Dash glared back at the guardstallion as he completed his tirade. Her wings still flared, tail still swishing violently.

"Fine." She muttered between grit teeth before standing and trotting angrily toward the exit. "Do it! Search it! Do whatever you want! I'm outta here!"

"And where are you going?" Keen called out, thoroughly agitated, but Rainbow did not respond.

Outside the tent with the morning sun just above the horizon, Rainbow spread her wings and erupted forth from the ground in a flash of color, the fabric of the tents flapping violently as she soared into the air and off to the south.

Cold air washed through her mane and fur as she quickly passed over the rooftops of the Ponyville's tallest structures and continued to gain altitude, flapping her wings with aggravation. Her guts continued to twist with anxiety as the implications of Keen Eye's words settled in. The rainbow mare closed her eyes and tried to push the image of Scootaloo tied up in some psychopath's basement out of her mind. 

It wasn't possible. 

It was something else.

Her mind was recounting a montage of interactions with other ponies from the last few days, trying desperately to pin some action taken or phrase spoken as suspicious, but nothing materialized. 

Nothing except—

-----

"I don't want to die."

"I don't want to kill."

"Why is this happening?"

"Where are you?"

-----

"I'm sorry Rainbow." Twilight Sparkle said from her seat at her study desk. "There really isn't anything I can do to overturn the lieutenant's decisions." 

Twilight levitated a series of cartographic tools over huge map of Ponyville and the surrounding area set in the middle of the bottom floor of the unicorn mare's library home. A veritable spaghetti platter of intersecting lines drawn in marked out the dozens and dozens of search routes patrolled over the last few days.

"Sure there is! Can't you get a message to Celestia?" Rainbow asked, frustration and venom boiling in her tone. "How about telling her that her royal guard is a royal joke!"

"How can you say that?" Twilight asked, starting to get upset. "Those guards have been working hard just like everypony else. They are Canterlot's finest and I'm grateful for their assistance. You should be too!"

"If they're so fine then where's Scootaloo?" Rainbow asked sardonically. "They aren't gonna find her by searching fewer places."

Rainbow blew a brief razz, punctuating her contempt as she began to idly hover about the room. Twilight raised a brow before her pegasus friend continued. Riling further, Rainbow's tone rolled with some strange momentum.

"They should have let us go into the forest from the start.” Dash said, audibly graphing the entire thing out in her mind. “Yeah. You.  Me. Maybe Applejack. I bet the three of us could handle anything that stupid forest threw at us!"

"Why are you so convinced that Scootaloo's in the forest?" Twilight asked, trying to penetrate the heat of pegasus bravado emanating from her friend. "Nopony even saw her near there the day she went missing. "

"Do you honestly believe Keen Eye's explanation is more likely? That some sicko pony has foalnapped her?" Rainbow replied as she landed, deflecting the question far too obviously for Twilight not to notice.  "You might not have lived here as long as I have Twilight but you know there's nopony in Ponyville who would do something like that."

Twilight looked away, distraught

“I don't know, Rainbow." Twilight said grimly as she pulled out a bound newspaper periodical and floated it in front of Rainbow. "Ever since Keen Eye told me about his theory, I've been reading up on case reports of similar crimes. Ponies that commit these monstrous acts aren't always so easy to pick out in a crowd."

From the Manehattan Herald, dated eighteen years ago, the darkly simple headline read in a bold font like a punch to the stomach.


FAIR WEATHER CONVICTED OF SON'S MURDER


Dash cringed and felt the blood rush out of her head, but found herself unable to resist scanned over the article with morbid curiosity. The front page went on to explain in detail how Fair Weather was a fine upstanding citizen, a member of the Manehatten city council with a bright future, and how nopony in the community imagined he could do such a beastly thing. Then were the police statements outlining the details of how failing divorce negotiations over custody of his son caused him to lose his mind.

He picked up his son from school, lead him out into an abandoned house on the east end where he locked him in a tiny box for two days. After the nightmarish imprisonment, Fair Weather strangling him and dumped his body into a reservoir on the outskirts of the city.

He was barely a colt.

He didn't even have his cutie mark.

"It's horrifying, but we can't ignore the possibility that something like this might be happening here." Twilight said, a present anxiety in her voice. "It might even be somepony we know."

Rainbow's heart started racing as she tore her eyes away from the gruesome article, they narrowed and she scowled at Twilight.

"Don't show me this garbage." Rainbow muttered scathingly as she knocked the paper out of Twilight's magical grip in disgust. It flapped to the floor, landing in a tangled heap. The unicorn was stunned.

"You know what!? I can't deal with you right now!" Twilight snapped angrily, trying and failing to keep herself levelheaded as she turned back to her map and began to magically race an ink-laden quill across it in hurried, emotional strokes. "I trust Princess Celestia's judgment and I trust Keen Eye. If you honestly care about what happens to Scootaloo then you need to trust him too! He is trying to make sure what happened in that newspaper doesn't happen again!"

"These are hard times for all of us, and you're only making them harder!" Twilight yelled, the floating quill snapped in Twilight’s overbearing magical grasp as she breathed heavily.

Rainbow fell silent, her heart twisting in her ribcage. She looked back over at the discarded article, specificity the photograph of the father in custody. He didn't look like a monster, eyes not full of sadness or shame, nor sadistic glee or some other insanity. He just looked tired. He looked empty. She almost envied with him. 

It must feel great to feel absolutely nothing.

"I’m sorry." Twilight said after a deep breath, her voice calmer but still wavering in emotion. "I've just been working so hard these last few days. I've been helping Keen Eye and the guards organize the search effort ever since it began, but no matter what I do, no matter what plan I devise, I can't just find her!"

The was a long silence before the unicorn made one last admission.

"I'm so scared, Rainbow." Twilight said softly, tears dropping to the floor. "I don't know what's going on anymore, it just feel like everything has gone crazy."

Twilight looked over to see Dash still staring blank faced at the stallion's picture, completely spaced out. Her heart found a new, deeper depth to sink to as she inevitably felt ignored.

"Just go home." She muttered, crestfallen. “I have work to do.”

"I'm going into the Everfree forest." Rainbow announced, with an undaunted ring in her voice.

"Please don't." The unicorn plead morosely.

"I want you to come with me." Dash said, still undeterred.

"Stop it!" Twilight shouted, turning tear-eyed to her friend. "Please just—stop!"

Rainbow widened her eyes as her wings extended in surprise. She broke eye contact with Twilight instantly.

"What aren't you telling me Rainbow?!" Twilight begged desperately. "You have been acting really weird ever since Scootaloo went missing and I'm not the only one who's noticed! The guards have already come and questioned me about you several times."

Rainbow remained silent.

"You're a suspect, Rainbow! How do you think knowing that makes me feel?!" The unicorn mare shouted. "How am I suppose to vouch for you to the guards when you act like this and you won't even tell me what's wrong?!"

Dash looked toward the floor. She couldn't. She just couldn't.

"Why the Everfree forest, Rainbow!?" Twilight begged, her voice cracking as her her anxiety escalating exponentially. "Why are you so sure she's in there!? Why won't you tell me!?"

Rainbow Dash took a very long pause as she considered deeply, staring at the floor the whole time.

"Well?!" Twilight barked impatiently.

The pegasus frowned as she turned and left.

"It doesn't matter." Rainbow uttered, "This will all be over soon. I'm gonna find Scootaloo, and I'm gonna find her today."

And with that, Dash passed through the door and exited the library, no space for rebuttal from her friend as the door slammed harshly, Twilight wincing as the crash fell upon her eardrums like a cudgel. Turned back to her desk, weeping openly as she picked up a new quill and once more and tried desperately to continue her work, hoping to distract from the icy dread passing over her heart.

Outside, Rainbow Dash took the the air once more with a vigor born from that special kind of determination she only got when it felt like all odds were against her. She couldn't think about Twilight, devastated and alone in her library. Not right now. There was a little filly who needed her even more, and it looked like Rainbow Dash was the only one who could save her now.

Dash settled into a glide and veered towards the treeline of the forest.

-----

"Please come for me."

"I don't want to do it again."

"I want to go back."

"I don't want to be like this."

-----

So far it had only happened at night. It wasn't constant. It came and went every few hours, only lasting a few seconds each time. The first time Dash heard it was shortly after dusk on the second night of the search effort, she was on her way back to the royal guard command tents to report her lack of findings after a day of flying circles over the western grassland. The exhausted pony was startled but felt a brief and moment of joyful relief thinking she had found her right there in the streets, that she had somehow been in Ponyville the entire time, and she was nearby. Right around the corner, even!

She wasn't.

She was nowhere.

In one swoop that fleeting happiness became bewildered terror and pure unfettered helplessness.

Of course Rainbow questioned her sanity. Who wouldn't? The cries sounded so real. So desperate. So infinitely terrified. It started that night, and just kept going. Again and again she would hear her weep, scream for help, beg for Dash to come to her. It ground at her ears, her mind, and her heart like a millstone until sunrise, robbing her of what little sleep her constant searching gave her time to muster.

The cyan pegasus spent the following day in a surreal haze, terrified she was going mad and uncertain if she should tell anypony, silently praying to herself that the disembodied voice would never return, but as the sun went down the following evening the waking nightmare started all over again. However, this time mixed in with the pleas for salvation was a specific location.

The forest. 

The forest. 

The Everfree forest. 

Again and again the Everfree forest.

Rainbow Dash knew. She didn't know how but she just knew. She wasn't going mad. Scootaloo was calling to her, begging Rainbow to come rescue her, and she was somewhere in the Everfree forest.  

Who in all of Equestria would ever believe her? Her closest friends maybe, but Dash hardly believed it herself. Even still, she had nearly worked up the courage to tell her friends what was happening to her, hopefully to march into the woods alongside them all and come to Scootaloo's aid, but everything changed a few hours ago after her meeting with the lieutenant.

She was now under investigation for the abduction of the same filly she heard screaming in her head. Not just Keen Eye, but her own dear friend Twilight had a wary suspicion of her. 

How then could she even consider telling them the truth? Dash had no doubt in her mind that she would be pegged insane on the spot, carted off to a psyche ward or imprisoned on suspicion of being involved in this increasingly unsettling disappearance.

There was no other way to proceed but alone.

Find Scootaloo, and it will all be over.

During the initial days of the search effort Keen Eye had stated that none of the Ponyville volunteers would enter the Everfree forest during search operations for safety reasons. It was a twisted labyrinth of flora and a pony untrained in navigation might very easily find themselves joining Scootaloo on the missing ponies list, not to mention the plethora of deadly creatures that call the dreadful place home. All of the forest search parties were made up entirely of royal guards, highly trained and heavily armed. Dash remembered rolling her eyes when she first heard this. She could handle herself inside there and was gung ho to search the forest even before the disembodied voice of Scootaloo hinted to her location. Keen however had, on top of safety concerns, a fairly rational objection to having pegasi searching Everfree. The thick canopy nullified the usefulness of their aerial vantage, and grounding them inside the forest was equally a waste compared to putting them where their eyes in the sky could be taken full advantage of.

Perhaps now it was misplaced paranoia but Rainbow Dash really didn't like the fact that the guards never allowed her or any of her friends to search inside the dark woods, even though they had all been inside the forest multiple times before and had even combated some of its creatures. This time the airborne mare wasn't going to take no for an answer, and the best way to do that would be to not ask the question at all.

The there were many royal guards in Ponyville, but it wasn't like Keen Eye had them standing watch over the forest to enforce his restriction. In the end, Dash didn't even need to sneak in. She cruised quickly out into the middle of the forest and fell upon the tangled brier of the canopy as she skillfully made her landing on the damp soil.

She began to wander, calling out Scootaloo's name sporadically into the trees with heightening tension. She didn't need to do this long before she admitted to herself that she had absolutely no plan and no idea where to start in the massive multi-hectare mess of a forest. Discouragement would have come next but the mare suddenly recognized the neck of the woods she had wandered into and within half an hour had come across a familiar sight.

A particularly large and ghoulish tree fashioned into an abode, adorned with a wide array of exotic tribal decorations. Rainbow Dash hadn't been to Zecora's home many times in the past, even with all of the eerie rumors surrounding her dispelled, Dash still found the zebra a bit creepy. That being said, there were few that knew the forest as intimately as her. 

As always, a potent potpourri of odors came from the tree home, no doubt from the many concoctions being brewed inside. Rainbow's hoof rapped heavy on the hut's door and the zebra soon emerged to greet her, clearly having just woke up.

"Rainbow Dash? What could it be, that brings you this far out so early?" She spoke rhythmically, in her exotic accent.

"Uh— yeah. Good morning, Zecora." Rainbow said, trying to sound polite even as the wall of odors assaulted her nostrils as the door opened. "I know it's early but I really need to talk to you."

"Of course. Come in, if it pleases you." Zecora opened the door completely and beckoned her guest in.  "I predict you inquire of poor Scootaloo?"

Rainbow nodded her head somberly as she trot into the lavishly decorated treehome. Like stepping into another world, the inside of Zacora's home was a vision of lands far from Equestian shores. Totems of unknowable deities and masks of twisted visage encircled the two. Bottles and flowers and berries and dishes of mysterious mush packed the shelves of every wall and seemed to bombard Rainbow Dash with their alien aromas.

"I'm looking for her here in the forest.” The pegasus confirmed. “I need you to tell me anything you can that might help me find her."

Zecora scratched her chin, taking a moment to consider.

"I can say to you what I told the guard, maybe you will hold my word in higher regard.” The zebra started, a hint of annoyance in her tone. “I have a theory of what fate befell her, but the guard ignored this foreigner."

Rainbow grit her teeth as she once again felt her blood boil at the failings of the royal guard, but she buried it quickly and tried to cut to the chase. She didn't want to be surrounded by the stifling smells any longer then she absolutely had to.

"Please tell me, Zecora." She encouraged. "This might be exactly what I need."

"I have felt something dark in the air a stir, though what it means, I can't be sure.” The zebra explained as she moved to one of the grimy windows of her abode, peering out into the endless foliage. “A chilling cold and great unease, there is something unnatural amidst the trees."

Rainbow quickly joined Zecora at the window, but wasn't entirely sure what she was looking at.

"Unrelated I thought, but as I feared." Zacora continued, "This terror came the night she disappeared."

"Do you have any idea what it is?" Dash asked impatiently, wanting information faster than the zebra's crafted stanzas revealed it.

Zecora turned and trained her eyes back onto the impetuous pegasus and shook her head.

"I sought the source but could not find where this evil was confined." Zacora admitted moved across the room quickly, apparently looking for something. "I think there may be magic at play, an illusion perhaps may bar the way."

"This might be my only lead.” Rainbow Dash spoke adamantly.  “If there really is magic hiding something out there, how am I suppose to deal with it? I'm not exactly Twilight when it comes to stuff like this."

"Do not take me for a slouch." The resourceful zebra called out as she lifted up a small bag out from under one of her alchemy tables. "The key is here, within this pouch."

She carefully removed a corked vial containing a few ounces of some chunky liquid the horrid color and consistency of finely mashed wasps. She sloshed it around and observed its flow acutely.

"This brew helps the drinker pierce the veil, and see the world in true detail." She explained, smiling with pride.

"Whoa! Awesome!" Rainbow Dash swooped in, excitedly looking into the yellow and brown ooze. Her closer observation killed her enthusiasm instantly, she didn't like the prospect of consuming the disgusting looking stuff one bit.

"You need but ask and it is yours, but I lack a critical ingredient from my stores.” Zecora said as she lowered the vial and addressed her guest. “Some bottled mist is all I need to make this potion do its deed."

Rainbow's eyes lit up.

"Wait, bottled mist? I've got a bunch of that stuff back at my place! Oh, this is perfect!" She cried exuberantly, subconsciously hovering a foot off the floor as her energetic flapping elevated her. "I really need this potion, Zecora. How much do you want for it?"

"Take it then. I don't need your bits. If you have the mist, just add and mix.” Zecora said sternly as she passed the vial to Rainbow. “But please be careful. You must be wise. This brew may give you magic eyes, but some dark doors should stay closed, the places in left unexposed."

"I'm not giving up on Scootaloo, Zecora." Rainbow Dash pressed firmly, morale and determination surging like fire in her veins as she cradled the vial in her hooves. “I know she's out there. I just - know."

"My hope for her fades night by night. Perhaps you, Dash, can make things right." Zacora posited, her lips falling into a warning frown. "But dark doors lead to darker places, darker worlds with darker faces. You seem intent to pass through those doors. I pray you succeed, for her sake and for yours."

Rainbow nodded as the zebra's grim words fell upon her ears. She looked upon the vial in her hooves half-lidded, her mind a mix with thoughts of a young pegasus, peach-colored and purple-maned, lost to the world she knew.

"Scootaloo." Rainbow Dash murmured.

"What in Equestria has happened to you?"

-----

The sun was at its highest in the sky now, hiding behind several dense clouds. Normally it would have been Rainbow Dash's job to clear them, but she and much of the Ponyville weather team had volunteered for the search effort, leaving the few remaining pegasi woefully understaffed for their duties. Rainbow was flying much faster than she normally would, her inner flame alight with renewed vigor. Just one stop at her house, then back to the forest. She knew it was almost over, she was gonna find Scootaloo and then everything would go back to normal. 

Finally. 

Her voice. 

It would finally leave her alone. 

The screams for help. 

The sobbing. 

Ringing in her ears from nowhere. 

Gone.

Her home appeared in the distance. In a remote corner of Ponyville, nestled in a valley to shield it from the wind, the Rainbow's cloudhome came into view, floating a good fifty feet from the ground. She realized she hadn't been back home since this whole mess started, not even to sleep.

When the royal guards first arrived three nights ago the brash mare was first to make the bold and slightly cliché claim that she would not rest until Scootaloo was located. However, as the hours turned into days, reality and especially fatigue, settled in. Not wanting to fly all the way back to her house, what scant minutes of rest Rainbow Dash got over the last few nights had been atop any cloud she could muster together out over the fields she was assigned to search. Dash had slept on clouds outside plenty of times before, it was one of the little benefits that came with being a pegasus, but of course by the second night these precious attempts at respite were ruined by the haunting cries of Scootaloo's voice.

Dash flapped energetically up to her front door,  Zecora's potion in hoof,  and passed through into her foyer. Dash lived in Ponyville but was a Cloudsdale mare at heart, and her aerial abode reflected it with the clouds shaped and condensed into the pillars and arches akin to the ancient pegasi architecture of her home city. She slammed the door closed and latched it shut before she rushed to her pantry, hoping she wasn't mistaken about her bottled mist. She growled in frustration as she pushed her forelimbs through a disorganized array of jars and bottles, scanning them all before her eyes lit up. She hovered slightly and reached into the highest shelf and pulled out the jar from the very back. Carefully lifting it down. The bottled mist swirled slowly in the jar from the disturbance before settling again. Rainbow wasted no time.

With the mist under one foreleg and the incomplete alchemy mixture under the other, Dash flapped into her kitchen to make her very first potion. She placed her ingredients on the counter and pulled down a metal mixing bowl from the cabinet above. She briefly gazed into its reflective surface as she held it.

Right there on the floor behind her.

She might have missed had it not stood out in the rounded mirror of the bowl's stainless steel. 

She gasped a harsh intake of breath, dropped the bowl, and whipped around towards the other doorway into the kitchen. Metal clattered loudly on the counter before flipping upside down onto the floor. 

She felt blood rush to her head and her pulse quicken as she lay her eyes upon a single feather resting on the floor slightly outside the other doorway, barely in view.

A peach-orange pegasus feather.

Far too small to be an adults.

A single plume the same color as Scootaloo.

Dash approached it quickly. Before she even got close enough to pick the thing up she saw another over by the base of the stairwell up to the second floor. She picked the first feather up and examined it before quickly going and grabbing the second as well.

"S-scootaloo?" Dash called out up the stairwell, stammering in anxious bewilderment.

Her mind raced for an explanation. She ascended the stairs slowly as her pulse continued to accelerate and a chill rushed down her spine. 

She called out the filly's name a second time as she reached to top, still nothing. 

There lay two more feathers, one right at the top of the stairs and the other down the hall and resting in front of the doorway into Rainbow's bedroom. The door was open, and she approached it with swift urgency. 

She rounded the corner. 

She had no idea what to expect would be inside but never in her most twisted dream would she have imagined it would be this. 

Dash took in a long and horrified gasp as her eyes passed over the back wall of her bedroom.



Under my wing... Under my wing... Under my wing... Under my wing...Under my wing...



All across the the wall the singular phrase was scrawled in red.

Over and over in messy text at various angles and sizes. 

It was blood, Rainbow could smell it. 

The sun broke in from the room's single window and illuminated the disturbing scene in more detail. The deranged message was plastered over top dozens and dozens of photographs, each one of the missing filly. Rainbow stared, completely aghast. 

Scootaloo riding her scooter. 

Scootaloo alone in a field. 

Scootaloo at home working on schoolwork. 

Scootaloo sleeping in her bed. 

Scootaloo using the bathroom. 

Scootaloo masturbating.

Dash grunted out in horror as her stomach violently wrenched in repulsion and looked away, trying in futility to unsee the last few images her eyes had darted across while examining the nightmare collage. 

Her chest heaved quickly as she began to perspire, her legs trembling under her body. Some pictures were circled, others crossed out, but all of them very clearly displaying a young filly who did not know that her life was being captured.

Laying underneath it all, on top of the horrified mare's own pillow lay the wicked centerpiece to the terrible arrangement, a half dozen more peach-colored feathers, soaked in crimson, laying in a saucer of blood. 

She stared into the red fluid as she began to hyperventilate, completely overcome.

It was a firm knock, but to Rainbow it sounded like explosions. She yelped as the rapping on her front door sent her instinctively airborne in fright.

"This is the Canterlot Royal Guard! We've been ordered to search this residence!" A loud and authoritative male voice bellowed from outside. "You will co-operate!"

The slithering tendrils of complete panic began to spawn in her veins and ravage her body.

There was no reason, no logic, no plan. 

She rushed to her wall and began to tear the pictures down, trying desperately to collect them—hide them—do something—anything! 

They fell to the floor faster than her trembling hooves could gather them.

The knocks become a pounding at the door, escalating in volume and intensity like the hoof steps of a pursuer. 

"We saw you enter your home, Miss Dash. We know you're inside." The voice called again, agitated. "Open the door at once!"

Rainbow clenched her jaw so hard she could feel her entire face seizing up. 

Each horrified, panic-ridden breath sucked harshly through her teeth as she hovered over her bed. 

It was no use. There was too much. Not enough time. 

At some point in her sheer panic she'd knocked the saucer off her bed, and the blood was seeping across the floor. 

She had only a quarter of the photos in her hooves and she didn't even know what to do with them. 

The rest of the photos were scattered about the room, too many to count. Her vision tunneling.

Suddenly the air refused to pass through her teeth, she couldn't breath.

For the third time the explosions at her front door made her flinch in panic. Rainbow threw the pictures to the ground and hurried to the window, grunting harshly as she pushed the heavy thing open. She looked out to the Everfree Forest in the distance and readied herself for a high speed take off. 

She let out another panicked cry as she quickly turned around and galloped through her halls and stairwell back into her kitchen to retrieve Zecora's potion and the bottled mist from her counter top. With frantic speed she slipping them into her nearby saddle bag and threw it across her back.

What happened next was no knock. 

Dash saw the entire door shift from the kitchen as it was slammed by an immense weight. 

She rushed back up to her room in full gallop and dove headlong out the opening into free fall, extending her wings just as she cleared the window frame and exploding into acceleration. 

She wasn't called the fastest in Ponyville for nothing.

By the time the royal guards had kicked in the door she was already long gone, her prismatic trail streaking briefly in her wake as she vanished into the distance.
> Chapter 2: Make Me A Promise 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The sun began its slow descent from the peak of noon, its heat intercepted by cooling autumn air and an unkempt cloud cover which continued to strain Ponyville's understaffed weather team. As the unattended clouds drifted and spread, the sky grew duller, tinting the world just a tad grayer. The inside of the library was becoming equally dim, and for the first time in recent memory Twilight Sparkle had to light a lamp in the middle of the day to help her read.

The studious mare had always prided herself on her hunches. Her regiment of mental exercise combined with years devoted to honing her mind to a razor edge left her intuition just as potent as her book smarts. As a result of this acute awareness, Twilight sometimes considered her gut feelings the most important key in solving a mystery. This mystery was no different, as much as she wanted it to be.

It just so happened that this time the unicorn's gut feeling was crying out a grim speculation that she'd have much rather ignored. It was a dreadful array of possibilities that seemed indeed a bit too possible. They defied everything she understood about the pony she called her friend, and her earlier meeting with the pegasus in question has only stirred up a consuming riot of conflicting thoughts in her mind.

"Here you go Twilight." Spoke the young voice of Spike from behind a swaying stack of unfurled scrolls. 

The diminutive draconic assistant placed the pile down next to Twilight as per her request, gazing meekly into her worn, apprehensive, and grimly somber expression with concern as she immediately began to pour over the first document on the stack without response. The dragon ground his teeth nervously as he debated pursuing the issue plaguing his attention. He had only been away from Ponyville a day but it seemed the mare's mood had changed dramatically.

"How many of these reports do you need to read, Twi?" Spike asked quietly, doing little to veil his concern. "I gathered up all of the ones I could find in the Canterlot archives like you asked but this is some pretty morbid stuff."

Spike wasn't too surprised when Twilight didn't raise her muzzle from the parchment. Her eyes were darting across each page with a fixation the dragon recognized all too well. 

"Maybe you should take a little break?" He offered up, clearing his throat as he prodded once more at her attention.  

The unicorn's focus remained unbroken.

"What in Equestria are you looking for in all these reports anyway?" Spike asked, in a tone that expressed a tad more irritation than perhaps he intended

"Patterns." Twilight snapped firmly, quick and dismissive.

Rebuked, Spike's face twisted into shock.

"S-sorry." He muttered as he began to trudge away. Maybe if it would be less work to just let Twilight brood alone to her heart's content for a while. In the past, the unicorn did sometimes allow her extreme focus to leave her inattentive to the outside world, but this was the first time Spike had ever seen her act downright mean to him. 

It would have been easy for the little dragon to become sour at Twilight's unappreciative attitude, but he was far too concerned for her well being to dwell on it. Uncertainty rained over him as he looked back to observe the mare again. She had finally tore herself away from the scroll she was reading, her eyes bloodshot from strain. She stared into nowhere, deep in thought, perhaps wondering if nowhere would stare back.

"Are you okay?" Spike asked, more timid this time.

Twilight looked past him, she inhaled in attempt to speak more than a few times, but had difficulty beginning.

"Spike." Twilight eventually addressed, in a stern and even voice. "You trust me, right?"

"Of course I do. More than anypony." He answered quickly, without an ounce of hesitation.

"And you trust our friends too?" She asked in turn.

"Absolutely." He affirmed.

"You trust they are good ponies?" Twilight inquired with a grim intensity, turning directly to her assistant and looking into his eyes with anxious desperation. "You trust they are who they appear to be?"

"A-absolutely!" Spike reiterated though it was obvious her sudden questioning was only disquieting him further.

Twilight's expression slowly softened as her eyes fell downward. She took a deep and labored breath and stared at the latest in the series of horrible police documents on her desk documenting every vile topic under the sun. She pushed them away gruffly and turned back towards the young dragon, producing a weak smile.

"So do I." She said, her voice trembling slightly. "I'm sorry Spike. I really have been spending too much time looking at these reports. I was letting my worries get the better of me again."

Spike returned a relieved grin, bouncing back from his previous alarm with youthful optimism.

"It's ok Twilight. I know how much stress you're under.” He said compassionately. “Let me throw some lunch together for you. I checked the pantry. You’ve been so wrapped up in this you haven’t eaten a thing since I left yesterday."

She smiled wider and thanked her assistant as he paced into the other room. For about twenty glorious minutes Twilight Sparkle felt as though things might actually be okay. The brooding fear in her guts had been dispelled, or at least brought into perspective. 

However, as quickly as relief came, it crumbled to dust and scattered to the wind when a pounding and a familiar voice came rumbling from the library's front door.

"Miss Sparkle, this is Lieutenant Keen Eye!" Bellowed the commanding officer. "Open the door immediately!"

Rushing to her hooves, Twilight raced to the door and opened it without a second thought. She cast her eyes upon the unicorn guard stallion in his full armored suit, gasping as she realized an entire detachment of guards was in toe behind him, weapons in hoof.

"Step out of the house." Keen Eye commanded.

"W-what's going—" She began.

"Out of the house, Twilight!" He roared.

Twilight winced in fright and passed through the doorway, exiting her home as the dozen armed guards behind Keen Eye quickly swarmed into the library and secured it, room by room. The mare looked on in a daze to see the outside of her home surrounded, every door and window covered by no less than two spear-wielding ponies. The building was completely sealed off.

"What is going on!?" Twilight repeated herself angrily, more forceful this time.

Keen Eye remained silent, focusing only on the movements of his stallions through the mare's library home. Two of the guards brought out Spike, trembling in fear and confusion as he was ordered over next to Twilight. He quickly fell in line and hugged the mare's hind leg, completely bewildered. 

"T-twilight!" He stammered loudly into her fur. "What are they doing here!?" 

Finally one of the guardponies emerged from the library, a sizable dark blue pegasus, rank signifying him a sergeant. 

"Negative, sir. Building is clear." He addressed his commanding officer, standing at attention.

"Understood." Keen Eye acknowledged. "Split off, send half your detachment to Carousel Boutique and the rest to Sugarcube Corner. Meet at the rendezvous point in fifteen for further orders."

"Yes sir!" The sergeant sounded off, throwing a hoof to his helm in quick salute. 

Paired with a quick and exercised motion of his hooves, the sergeant waved the entire team out of the library with a series of shouts. Every last guard filed orderly out of the building and fell into formation as they moved on down the road.

"Miss Sparkle." Keen Eye turned to the flustered unicorn with a stern expression as the guards left the vicinity. "You were seen with Rainbow Dash earlier today."

"Yes?" She responded. It was as much an affirmation as it was a question, but somehow Twilight already knew the answer.

"A warrant has been issued for her immediate arrest." Keen stated matter-of-factually.

Twilight felt the wind leave her lungs as the crushing weight of anxiety fell upon her again, she stood aghast at the lieutenant.

"She fled her home less than an hour ago during a search of her property.” Keen explained with steely composure. “During which we discovered an alarming amount of evidence implicating her in Scootaloo's abduction."

The heat seeped out of Twilight's body. It started from the tip of her horn and ran down her like ice to the base of her hooves. It was like fate had just served her an entire platter of vile churning viscera and asked her to eat it. She looked back briefly at Spike and saw upon him a face as horrified as hers. She saw him beginning to protest, coming to Rainbow's defense immediately. 

He was saying all the words Twilight wished she had the ignorance to say herself.

"There's gotta be some kind of mistake! There's no way Rainbow Dash could possibly be involved in this!" Spike asserted fearfully, sounding less confident than he did before. "Isn't that right, Twilight?" 

He looked to her with desperate eyes for some kind of support. Once again, Twilight felt the grim speculation rattle in her mind like twisted bones. Once again, she wished she could ignore it.

"Spike." Twilight uttered. "I need to speak to the lieutenant alone for a moment."

It was heart-wrenching to see Spike so instantly crushed. He made to protest once again but he only needed to see the intensity in Twilight's eyes to know she had no intention of being swayed. He fell inward as his understanding seemed to collapse just a little more and trudged back into the library, swinging the door softly shut in his wake.

So many question flooded Twilight's brain all at once that they seemed to cry out in a chorus, with the twisted bones playing percussion. She wasn't sure which of the dozens she actually asked aloud at first, but based on Keen's response she must have asked why an arrest was being made.

"I believe that Rainbow Dash is responsible for the abduction. She is to be arrested and interrogated to find where the victim is located. The royal guard's number one priority is still to find Scootaloo." Keen explained before his expression hardened. "That being said we are more than prepared to prosecute charges against Rainbow Dash if the evidence seized from her home incriminates her, and I trust that it has."

"What exactly is this evidence?" Twilight asked, trying to keep her overwhelming emotions at bay and try to focus on absorbing as many facts as she could.

"I can't share that information with you." Keen Eye said, unapologetic. "The evidence has been taken to a secure crime lab in Canterlot for analysis and will remain there until further notice, but I have absolutely no doubt in my mind as to its relevancy to this case."

The mare signed and nodded. She was only a civilian volunteer after all, she knew enough about the legal system to know she wasn't going to hear anything about that evidence outside of a courtroom. She supposed she was merely hoping for the lieutenant to slip up.

What followed was a terse recounting of Rainbow's brief visit to the library earlier that morning. Twilight tried to answer Keen's questions as quickly and simply as she could in an attempt to deposit some of her own, but it was clear the lieutenant was not volunteering any information he didn't have to. He did however discuss his own meeting with the now fugitive pegasus which occurred prior, making note to mention her eventually agreeing to the search of her house.

"We have every reason to believe that Rainbow is currently inside the Everfree forest. I'm willing to bet she has the victim hidden in there somewhere as well." Keen announced. "She was oddly obsessed with that place the entire time we were conducting our search operations, always wanting updates on the search effort there specifically and often wanting to be involved herself."

"But if we're to assume, strictly for the sake of argument, that Rainbow really did abduct Scootaloo and put her in the Everfree forest like you say, why would she be so eager on steering us in the right direction?" Twilight projected emphatically. "Why wouldn't she be trying to cover her tracks? 

Keen narrowed his eyes but Twilight continued before he could answer.

"And why in Equestria would she agree to allow the search of her house if it was, apparently, full of evidence that implicates her?" The mare added, her mind racing with the mess of loose ends left by the current explanation of events. "You say she gave consent to the search, but the search itself didn't occur until hours later. She would've had more then enough time to go home and destroy whatever this evidence is, yet she left it there to be found? This makes no sense!"

"I know you've been reading those old case reports." Keen replied firmly. "I know you're aware that mental illness is endemic among the ponies that commit these crimes.”  

Twilight raised a brow.

"Look, I don't expect you to see what's going on here, Miss Sparkle." Keen said carefully. "Why would you? You're her friend."

"What's that suppose to mean!?" Twilight barked.

"Rainbow wants us to find Scootaloo, Twilight." Keen explained, his tone cool and steady. "I've seen plenty of abductors behave this way before. They want attention, recognition. They don't want to get away with it, they never did. When the time comes, they want everypony to know it was them."

"Are you kidding me?" The mare demanded incredulously. "Is that really the explanation you're going with?"

"Considering what we took from her home, Twilight, I have a very hard time believing anything else!" Keen reminded harshly, his agitation thinly veiled. "She wants to show off! Doesn't that sound at all like the Rainbow Dash you know?"

"The Rainbow Dash I know isn't a psychopath!" Twilight screamed, her voice breaking.

The words echoed in the afternoon air, paired only with Twilight's sharp and infuriated breaths.

Keen stared undaunted into the livid mare's gaze.

"You came to me the day I arrived in Ponyville, Twilight." He said calmly. "You came to me and told me that you would do anything— anything at all to help me find Scootaloo."

Twilight only glared.

"Later, I came to you." Keen continued. "I told you that I believed this was a foalnapping and I told you to be ready live up to your word."

The unicorn mare closed her eyes and continued to take long, calming breaths.

"It doesn't sound like you're ready to do that, Miss Sparkle." The lieutenant posited bluntly.

"So that's it?" Twilight asked, her voice audibly shredded from her previous outburst. “That's all you need to call one of my best friends the culprit?"

"Twilight—" Keen growled.

"You sound like you’re ready to judge and sentence her too!” She scathed over top of his words. 

"This is the only break in the case we've had, and it's a big one." Keen Eye said through grit teeth, scowling at the mare. "I'm trying to save a little filly's life here, remember?"

Twilight fell quiet, tears welling in her eyes.

"I know." She sighed out weakly.

"Then help me do exactly that, Twilight!" Keen said, an honest plea in his voice. "I know this isn't easy for you, but you have to accept the truth here. Rainbow Dash is not the pony you thought she was."

Twilight's flank fell to ground heavily. The weight was unbearable. There was only one thing, one thing in all of Equestria that Twilight knew she could have faith in, even at time like this.

"I'm not going to help you." Twilight said, flame alight within. "I can't turn my back on Rainbow." 

Keen Eye took a long breath in and turned away from her.

"So be it." He uttered. "A friend to the bitter end."

The lieutenant began to walk away, armor plates clattering slightly with each step. He stopped, turning his head over his shoulder to stare deeply into Twilight's pained face.

"If you see Rainbow Dash, I recommend, as her friend, you tell her to do the right thing and turn herself in." He spoke darkly. "I pray your decision here doesn't cost little Scootaloo her life."

He took his leave immediately. Striding quickly the same way the guards headed minutes before.

Twilight pushed her forelimbs into her closed eyes, breathing deeply and desperately. Every ounce of her will was spent fighting back an oncoming miasma of uncertainty. She trembled, gasping as the wetness of her tears washed over her hooves. Words. Images. Times. Places. Her brain was a cascade of thoughts, a barrage of questions and fear, broken down from a finely honed tool to a frightened animal. 

She didn't hear the door to the library open. She didn't hear the tiny foot falls on the grass that followed. But she did feel two small scaled arms wrap around her, and suddenly her mind was still.

She looked down to see Spike holding on to her once again, his tear stained eyes pressed into her side. She slowly draped a hoof over him and rocked from side to side. She could hear him breathing strangely and immediately recognized it as those awkward gasps one makes when they're trying with every fiber of their being not to weep.

The unicorn continued to sway with the dragon until the shuddering sounds stopped. Twilight wasn't sure how much time had passed, but when she realized that during that time her mind had continued to be completely still, she wondered briefly who here exactly was comforting who.

"Twilight." Spike spoke meekly at long last, pulling himself from the unicorn's violet fur. "W-what are we gonna do?"

"I need you to help me gather up the girls." Twilight said, a drastic course of action slowly manifesting in the core of her battered mind. "We are going to get to the bottom of this."

Spike swallowed hard.

"We need to find Rainbow Dash." She announced. "We need to find her before Keen does."

-----

Late autumn saw the days getting shorter, and as the afternoon pressed on into the early evening, the sun had long passed over its pinnacle. In the midst of decent, the blazing orb creeped ever closer to the horizon. None of it mattered this far into the Everfree forest though. It was always dark here. 

The thick leaves of the twisted trees blanketed the sky like smoke and only sparse beams of light could penetrate it. Rainbow knew she had to stay beneath the canopy, flying above the trees would be a dead giveaway. She hated being grounded, especially at a time like this.

The mare came upon a large flat rock, covered in a thick moss and lay her saddle bag down next to it, breathing heavily as she opened it up and removed its contents: The bottle containing the swirling whiteness of mist, and the smaller vial of Zecora's unfinished vision potion.

The mare's fragile concentration broke at every crack and rustle the old forest let off. She spent a moment scanning, but shadow and tree blended in darkness into an expansive void that stretched out in all directions. Thankfully the creatures that usually inhabited the forest had left her alone so far, but it wasn't the wildlife that had her fearful. 

Of course she knew the royal guards were no doubt coming for her as well, but that wasn't it either.

The pony who abducted Scootaloo was somehow out to get her as well. The sick twisted monster that took those disgusting pictures of Scootaloo was trying to ruin Rainbow's life. What frightened Rainbow most was knowing that as of right now, they were succeeding.

Rainbow doubted she could just go back. Waltzing up to the royal guard now wouldn't end well for her, even if she did find and rescue Scootaloo. She wished she could be so single minded as to still only be fearful for the fate of the missing filly, but after discovering the terrible display left in her home, dread was engulfing her as imagines of prison cells and shackles and a world without the open sky assaulted her thoughts.

Rainbow placed the bottle and vial on to the rock before her, carefully opening them both. She retched as she uncorked Zecora's potion. The thick ooze somehow managed to smell more disgusting than it looked, reeking of what could only be described as a combination of fermenting oranges and feces. Without utensils or the fine manipulation of a unicorn's magic, she struggled slightly as she tried to pour an amount of the mist from the larger bottle into the much smaller vial with trembling hooves.

She cussed as she spilled more than a trivial amount out across the rock. The mist quickly spread out and vanished into the dry air, wasted. Gritting her teeth and trying to breath evenly she managed to fill the remainder of the vial with mist. She quickly recorked it and shook it vigorously to mix the concoction together and her eyes widened as the fluid began to emit a bright bluish light, illuminating an impressively large patch of the dark forest around her.

Into the liquid she gazed, her eyes transfixed on its eerie glow. The light was warm and dynamic, swirling and flowing in the vial in beautiful, unknowable patterns. Looking at it was the closest things to a comfort Rainbow had felt in days and she almost regretted having to drink it. She sighed and removed the cork, knowing what needed to be done. To the mare's surprise the smell of the potion had completely changed, becoming much less unpleasant. It now smelt something akin of freshly cut lumber and toothpaste, still not exactly something she was looking forward to drinking but most certainly an improvement. That being said, she would have liked it of Zecora had mentioned to her that the potion glowed brighter than a lantern.

Shutting her eyes and screwing up her face, she pressed the vial to her lips and tilted it back. The incandescent mix was warm and chunky with a consistency like melted ice cream, lumber and toothpaste-flavored ice cream. She struggled to swallow and the bizarre taste languished on her tongue before she finally plunged the mouthful into herself, feeling it slither down her esophagus slowly. After most of the potion was ingested she spat several times, hoping to expel the baffling aftertaste from her mouth, leaving flecks of semi-glowing saliva spattered across the forest floor. She repacked her saddle bag, slinging it over herself as she decided to keep moving, hoping that she didn't somehow botch the mixture.

Dash knew the effects wouldn't be immediate, which is why it surprised her so much when she felt an overwhelming, piercing pain pass through her skull like she had just been cleaved between the eyes with the claw end of a hammer. 

She fell to her knees, crying out into the darkness in hideous pain as she pushed her face into her hooves.

Bolting her eyes shut, the sensation surged outward and pulsated throughout her entire head.

She took quick, gasping breaths as the sensation dispersed as quickly as it came and she felt it replaced with a dull warmth. 

Rainbow opened her eyes to a world unlike anything she had ever seen.

It was a world where she could see everything.

It was a world of steaming shapes and cascading colors. It roiled with life and forces she both did and did not recognize: heat, sound, time, velocity, memory, emotion, some contextless quality only describable as magnitude, some impossible bombardment of angles and calculations. She could see it all and it assaulted her mind like a tsunami of information, a cacophony of intellectual noise that had no hope of being meaningfully processed by one or even a hundred minds. 

In that split second before she closed her eyes again from sheer hyperbolic awe, she gazed upon every piece of information that existed in that particular small, simple patch of forest in her field of view. The complexity was terrifying, the breadth infinite. She knew Zecora could create remedies and lotions but this was a magic beyond the scope of anything Rainbow understood.

Eyes still tightly shut, Rainbow took several deep breaths. Her heart rate slowed and she tried to concentrate on one single topic, one thread of fabric from the spool of her wary mind. 

Find Scootaloo. Find Scootaloo. Find Scootaloo.

She repeated it over and over in her head at first, and eventually aloud.

The pegasus opened her eyes once more and found the torrent of information was less intense, she could stand to take in her surroundings and confirmed that yes, in spite of the otherworldly nature of the visionscape, she was indeed still in the Everfree forest and still exactly where she was when she drank the potion.

It was not much different from how she'd have to shut the world out and concentrate when she was about to perform a flying maneuver. She just needed to stay focused and ignore distractions, only this time there were quintillions of distractions she never realized existed. 

She could easily forget about Scootaloo and get hung up on the fact that there were exactly sixty-eight thousand nine hundred and eleven leaves on the seventeen Cormish Lockbranch trees currently within her line of sight and that said leaves secret a resin containing a minor poison to deter insects when the leaves reach a temperature of thirty-five degree Celsius which was very common in direct sunlight during the summer months.

Rainbow stopped and closed her eyes once more, repeating the mantra of her goal, thoroughly frustrated as her concentration went into tailspin. This was going to take a while to get used to.

-----

Fluttershy's cottage was the closest of all the pony's homes to the Everfree forest, so as Twilight and Spike spread the word to their friends across Ponyville, their meeting location was set. Twilight found herself consoling Fluttershy, who was still in ruin after finding out about Rainbow's plight, not to mention having her home stormed and searched by the royal guard not long before.

The usual diverse array of forest animals that lived on the property were quiet this evening, looking on to their gentle caregiver with concern from every corner of the room as Twilight conversed with her.

"This can't be happening! First Scootaloo, and now Rainbow! This is a nightmare!" Fluttershy cried woefully into the tear-soaked cushion of her sofa. "Twilight! Please don't tell me you believe these awful things the guards are saying about Dashie!"

Twilight's eyes fell half lidded as she broke eye contact with her devastated friend.

"I don't know what I believe right now, Fluttershy." She frowned. "What I do know is that there is more going on here then meets the eye and I think it is time to take matters into our own hooves."

"Are we gonna help Rainbow?" Fluttershy asked, quivering.

Twilight paused a moment before releasing a pained sign. She wished so deeply that she could say yes with confidence. She couldn't bare look into Fluttershy's weeping eyes and disappoint her.

"We're going to find out the truth." She eventually settled on.

The canary-furred pegasus went silent in response, not particularly comforted by the ominous answer. The silence persisted as the two waited for their friends and one by one, they arrived. 

Twilight stood to greet Rarity at the door. The pure white unicorn looked wholly miserable but still impeccably prim as always, with never a hair from her curled and styled mane out of place. She pulled Twilight into a comforting hug as she passed through the door. 

"Twilight, darling." She spoke softly in her distantly transatlantic accent. "I'm so sorry about this." 

"It's ok." Twilight responded, lethargy heavy in her voice. "How are you holding up?"

"Oh! Those royal guard ruffians came thundering though the boutique!" Rarity chimed in loudly and contemptuously. "It was certainly quite alarming, but right now I just can't believe what vile things they're saying about dear Rainbow Dash! It's outrageous! Absolutely slanderous!"

Twilight found herself only able to give a temperate nod back to Rarity. There was certainly more to be said, but not until the others had arrived. Rarity eventually took a seat next to Fluttershy, who had wrapped herself into a blanket on the couch. Rarity simply brushed a hoof through the fearful pony's mane again and again in slow and steady strokes, trying to clam her nerves.

Pinkie Pie wasn't far behind. She was grinning slightly but her usual genuine cheer today was not so. The force of her expression was evident and it said more than a frown ever could. Her eyes betrayed the sullen state of her heart but her smile somehow persisted in some desperate defiance. Curiously, she had with her a pastry box from Sugarcube Corner.

"Hi Twilight, hey girls." Pinkie said in quite possibly the quietest and least enthusiastic greeting she had ever extended to anypony as she entered the cottage, offering up her labored smile to each of her friends. "I uhh— brought some danishes." 

She raised the box optimistically into the air. Everypony stared quizzically at the frizzy-maned pink earth pony for a moment, their faces all adapting an awkward smile, similarly forced like the one Pinkie wore herself. They soon looked to each other for some kind of indication on how to react to the rather unexpected offering.

"That's quite alright Pinkie, thank you." Rarity mustered politely as she continued to stroke Fluttershy's mane.

Pinkie's smile quickly grew even more awkward and she proceeded to place the box on the table and open it in the off chance anypony might change their mind. 

"I'm sorry if you don't like them." She apologized, her struggling smile starting to slip away. "They were all we had left in the store so late in the day."

She flopped down on the other side of Fluttershy who was slowly emerging out from under her coverings. 

"I didn't really know what to bring." Pinkie admitted. "I'm better with happy occasions." 

"It's ok, Pinkie." Twilight said soothingly. "I think we all are."

It was nearly thirty minutes before Applejack arrived. Conversation was nearly non-existent, sourced mostly from Rarity announcing her intention to write up a formal complaint against the royal guards for putting her delicately arranged boutique out of order. Fluttershy managed to pull herself out from under the covers and Pinkie ended up eating most of the danishes herself at a rather startling pace. It seemed she left the last one for Applejack, just in case.

Looking by far the most stressed and disheveled, Applejack trudged into the cottage. 

"Sorry to keep y'all waitin'." She sighed, frowning as she entered. "This whole mess is jus' been one disaster after another for us down at the farm."

"Why? What happened?" Twilight asked, concern swelling.

"Big Macintosh got himself arrested, that's what happened!" She responded with a frustrated bellow.

The room gasped, transfixed on this new turn of events.

"Them guard ponies came stormin' in to our home, orderin' us out to see if we were hidin' Rainbow." The flustered mare started in. "The lot of us were co-operatin' fine 'cept for ole Granny Smith being her usual stubborn self. One of them guards started gettin' rough with her!"

The blonde mare paced about the room vigorously, her aggravation raising as she recounted. 

"Oh, Big Mac didn't like that one bit! Ah tried ta calm everypony down but the guard went and put his hooves on Granny and before ah knew it that fool-of-a-colt brother 'a mine clobbered that armor-clad creep upside the head so hard, he knocked him right out!"

"Oh Applejack." Twilight began in heartfelt sympathy. "If you need to be somewhere else right now I'll completely understand."

"No Twi, it's alright." Applejack asserted gruffly, her eyes half lidded in exasperation. "Ah was at town hall all afternoon tryin' to sort out his bail. But ah can't post nuthin' till they process his charges, won't be 'till tomorrow."

The country mare took a moment to calm down, a few deep breaths as she approached her friend with a sudden resilient determination, a fire in her eyes. 

"Look. Fact is, Ah'm here for ya now, Twi. Ah wanna see this come to'n end." Applejack affirmed. "Ah need it to."

Twilight nodded, thanking AJ deeply before turning to address her gathered friends. The team felt painfully incomplete as each of the ponies took a moment to acquiesce the void of Rainbow Dash's absence. 

"It means a lot to me that you all agreed to meet up." She started. 

"W-wait a minute!" Pinkie Pie interrupted. "Where's Spike? Aren't we gonna wait for him?"

"He's not coming." Twilight said plainly. "I sent him home."

"Sent him home? Why ever would you do that?" Rarity asked, shocked. "Nopony should have to be alone at a time like this."

"It wasn't an easy decision for me, but I don't want him get caught up in this." Twilight responded evenly. "He's still so young."

Twilight paused, taking a moment in her mind to confirm that she'd made the right decision.

" I don't want to scare you guys, but I would never want to lie to you either." She continued. "What I'm planning here might be dangerous, and if anypony would rather not be involved, I'll understand."

"What exactly is this plan?" Applejack followed up, raising a brow.

Twilight took a deep breath. 

"As you all probably know, I was working closely with Lieutenant Keen Eye as a volunteer consultant during the search for Scootaloo." Twilight reminded, many of her friends nodding back. "After the first day of the search, he entrusted me with a fair bit of information about his criminal investigation, including a list of suspects."

She hesitated briefly, her anxious audience looking to one another.

"Girls." She said, pulling their attention back in. "You have to understand. Rainbow Dash was at the top of that list from the very beginning."

The group murmured in shock and Fluttershy let out a dull sob, but the gathering quickly snapped back to Twilight's attention as the unicorn cleared her throat forcefully.

"I hate to admit it, but Keen Eye raised some very good points about her." Twilight conceded, "She was the last pony seen with Scootaloo. She has no alibi for the night she went missing. Even her account of events on that night contradicts with a number of other ponies." 

Twilight grit her teeth as Rainbow's innocence continued sound more and more unlikely.

"On top of all that," Twilight continued with difficulty. "Both me and Keen Eye noticed her behavior taking a very suspicious turn not long after Scootaloo went missing."

"I noticed it as well." Rarity said, nodding. "But I just dismissed it as her taking Scootaloo's loss harder than the rest of us. They were always so close, those two."

"So you reckon she's guilty?" Applejack cut in, her eyes narrowing under her stetson.

The unicorn shook her head. 

"I'm not saying anything yet, Applejack." Twilight returned. "There's too many things that just don't add up. I have this sinking feeling that something's wrong with all of this."

"More than jus' one thing wrong." AJ muttered under her breath.

"How do you mean, Twilight?" Rarity inquired attentively.

"Keen Eye's reasons for suspecting Rainbow are sound. I can't deny that." Twilight admitted. "Now he's telling me there's some kind of damming evidence linking Rainbow Dash to all of this, though I haven't seen it myself."

"Evidence?!" Rarity cried out. "I'll believe it when I see it! It's absolutely impossible. No friend of mine could be such a beast!"

"All I know about the evidence is that it was found in Rainbow's home and that it's got Keen very confident that she's the foalnapper." Twilight spoke, feeling the machinations of anxiety tick like clockwork in her mind. "He wanted me to help him find and arrest her, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. So now I'm left on the sidelines, left while the royal guard storm through our homes, left while our friend is a fugitive, left helpless and pathetic as things spiral more and more out of control!" 

The unicorn slipped into a harsher tone, frustration roiling under her breath. 

"I've already spent three days in my library feeling like an absolute failure, trying to help with all my might while Scootaloo's life hung in the balance!" Twilight spoke, fully impassioned. "Now Rainbow's life is at stake too and every second that goes by I feel like things are slipping further and further away from me! I can't take it anymore!"

"Ah know you're upset, Twi." Applejack responded quickly and empathetically "But what in Equestria can we do? As much as ah don't want to admit it, even with mah brother in a holdin' cell right now, the guards are just doing their job."

"I have a plan and I need your help with it if I have any hope of succeeding." Twilight swallowed nervously. "But it's not going to be legal."

The room went silent. Nopony was expecting this. Several brutal seconds of disbelief sapped at Twilight faster then she realized as she looked briefly into each of their eyes and began to doubt herself, seeing depth of their shock. Voices trickled into her mind.

What have you done?

What were you thinking?

How could you ask something like this of your friends?

How could they possibly see you the same way ever again?

Call it off!

Say you were just kidding!

How could you be so stupid!

"I'll help you!" Pinkie announced loudly, as the entire room's attention spun in unison surprise.

"W-wait a gosh darn minute, Pinkie Pie! T-twilight!" Applejack barked out, bewildered and adjusting her hat which had fallen across her eyes. "This can't possibly be the only way. Can't you get Princess Celestia to help out somehow?"

"I've already tried that." Twilight said, shaking her head. "Spike and I have sent her three letters today already but I haven't gotten a single response. In fact, I haven't heard from her at all since this whole mess began. I don't know what's going on over in Canterlot but I can't just sit and wait."

"So what are we gonna do instead, Twi? Are we gonna become a pack of hard-boiled vigilante badasses and take the law into our own hooves?" Pinkie erupted, enthusiasm spawning from nowhere like it so often did. "Ohh! That sounds so exciting! Can I be the loose cannon?!"

"It's nothing like that." Twilight said as she let out a brief but surprisingly honest grin towards her mysteriously re-energized pink friend. "I know exactly how to approach this so there's as little risk to you guys as possible. In the worst case scenario, I'll take the fall entirely myself."

"Take the fall?" AJ started in incredulously. "Just what'n tarnation are you playin' at here?!"

"Two things." Twilight stated. "First, I need to find Rainbow Dash before the royal guard does. I need to find out what she knows. She's been hiding something from me for a few days. She's obsessed with the Everfree forest and I need to find out why! Secondly, I need to sneak into the lieutenant's command tent and find some kind of documentation about the evidence they seized from Rainbow's home."

"But Twilight!" Fluttershy finally chimed in, her voice trembling. "If you get caught doing that— We don't want to lose you too! I don't think Ponyville can take any more tragedy!"

"I need to do this, Fluttershy!" Twilight exclaimed, her emotions surging as she began to rant emphatically.

"There's a chance—  just a slim chance that if this works I might be able to help Rainbow Dash. I could be wrong, but I would never be able to forgive myself if I didn't do everything in my power to try!" She cried. "How many times has Rainbow been there for us?! I know she wouldn't hesitate for a second to go the same lengths or even further for me or any of you!"

Her friend's remained transfixed and the unicorn's voice continued to fill Fluttershy's cottage.

"I don't know if Scootaloo is going to be okay! I don't know what role Rainbow has to play in all of this. I don't even know if I trust Keen Eye or the royal guards anymore." Twilight continued to monologue. "A filly might be dead. Our friend might be—  what? A foalnapper? A pervert? A murderer? All of those? None of those? Something else entirely? I'm sick and tired of not knowing!"

She took several uneven breaths as tears streamed openly down her eyes. 

"Even if I can't help her, even if every horrible thing they're saying about her is real, even if I get thrown in jail, maybe I can still discover the truth! At the very least, just maybe I find the answers to some of these questions before they get buried forever. Ponyville deserves that much!"

The blanket of silence remained as Twilight met the eyes of each of her dear friends in turn. 

"We deserve that much." She uttered, her voice broken.

The four looked about the room at one another, their weary hearts and minds rallied bittersweet by their beloved friend's cathartic words. She stood before them bearing the inner limits of her spirit, the pinnacle of her mental and emotional resilience, the last in her reservoir of hope, and the final relevance of her remaining willpower. It was only occasionally that Twilight Sparkle wore clothes, though never in all their time knowing her had those four ponies ever seen their friend as naked as they did in that moment.

"I'm sorry." Twilight apologized deeply. She spark of her conviction on the verge of oblivion. "Just—  forget I asked."

Fluttershy emerged slowly from the couch, blanket sliding from her as her steps delicately fell upon the floorboards. She trot directly into Twilight, who's eye went wide as the winged mare's hooves fell around her neck and pulling her in. Twilight's tears fell harder as the remaining ponies quickly approached her and followed suit. She was held so close to each of them, and they refused to let go.

"We trust you Twilight." Applejack said,  "And don't think for a minute we ain't gonna' help you."

"Thank you." Twilight wept. "Thank you so much."

-----

The sun spoke its farewell as it slipped under the distant skyline, purging the last fingers of daylight as the moon greeted the stars once more. Nestled in the mountains upon which the city of Canterlot was constructed there existed a number of tunnels cut through the rock which the Equestrian railroad used many times daily to reach their peak destination of the capital city. Most of the tunnels are only cut wide enough to accommodate the size of the train. This made the tunnel extremely dangerous to anypony who might decide to pass through it on hoof, and the numerous warning signs posted at each end only emphasized this risk.

Cut into the wall near the midpoint of one of the longer and older tunnels on the southwestern face of the mountain was a narrow passage, hidden in the tunnel's darkness. It certainly wasn't something a passenger on a train would notice as they whipped by at forty-five miles an hour. This claustrophobic path was just barely wide enough for a pony to trot through if they didn't mind getting their sides dirty on the cavern walls, but if they followed the path for a number of meters they would come across a reasonably spacious alcove. Whatever original purpose this side chamber had when it was fashioned by the ponies who dug this tunnel centuries ago has long since been lost to time, and considering after all these years it hasn't been bricked in or filled with cement, it seemed as though it's existence was all but forgotten as well.

It was for all these reasons that two pegasi, a stallion and mare, were awakening in this alcove. Two beds, ramshackle as they were, had been assembled in the dusty and dank cavern, the sheets thoroughly soiled and the mattresses reeking of mildew. Between them resting a single lantern, populated with a swirling array of dozens of fireflies in lieu of an actual flame, which filled the room in a subtle glow little more than a single candle in equivalency. Nothing else within that stark, cold, and heartless stone rang anything familiar to the comforts of civilization.

The stallion emerged from one bed, an orange furred lad looking about his early adulthood. Sitting up quickly, he passed a hoof through his messy red mane and tossed it out of his eyes. His hooves then quickly and urgently sunk into the pockets of the black flightsuit he was wearing as he produced a pocket watch from it and leaned into the light of the fireflies, trying to read it. He returned it to his pocket as he heard the mare in the bed across from him stir.

"The next train goes by in four minutes." He said "Get up and get ready."

A groan emerged from the bed as the aqua green-furred mare turned over and let her light violet mane drape off the side of the bed, she stretched her wings strenuously. Opening her eyes, she grimaced at the stallion. 

"How do you always get up so quickly?" She murmured.

"You don't make it in this business being slow." He chuckled teasingly. "Come on now, I'd hate to fire you on your first hunt."

The mare emerged from under the sheets, shambling to her hooves. She wore the same black flightsuit as her companion only fitted to her slightly smaller figure. 

"This isn't my first!" She protested.

"It's your first with me, and I do things a little differently." The stallion responded. "For instance, I would prefer for this not to end in bloodshed."

"That doesn't seem very likely." The mare replied, raising her brow doubtfully. "Seems like she has a bit of a reputation. The Sheriff said she was dangerous."

The stallion looked upon the mare in an unimpressed realization.

"Dangerous to me, no. Dangerous to you, maybe. Dangerous to the Masquerade, definitely." He explained dryly. "What do you even know about her reputation anyway?"

"I've heard things, not much. I don't really care to be honest." The mare declared as she dusted herself off. "Just sounds like another stuck up, privileged, Canterlot socialite gone off the deep end to me."

"I wouldn't disagree with any of that."  The stallion continued as he lifted the firefly lantern in his teeth. "Sounds like you haven't heard about her little obsession though."

"What's that?" She asked, her head tilted in curiously.

"Fillies." he uttered around the iron ring of the lantern in his mouth.

The mare's eyes widened, struck speechless as the pegasus stallion scrunched in his wings and began to press into the narrow passage toward the railway tunnel.

"Why do I have to be related to ponies like this?" She asked through grit teeth, repulsed. "And you're honestly telling me you want to take her alive, knowing that? Screw that! We need to off this bitch."

"There's a difference between a bounty hunter and an executioner!" The stallion chastised "If you are going to work with me then I expect you to know that. If it's blood lust you fancy then you can just fly back home right now. I wouldn't mind taking your cut anyway."

The mare blew a razz as she followed the stallion into the passage. 

"You can't fire me. You need me to get to her." She grinned, presumptuously.

"Correction." The stallion retorted firmly. "I can fire you. I don't need you, and I never did. I just want to find her as quickly as possible."

"Yes of course, eye on the prize." She chimed out in a singsong manner. "Don't want to lose that lovely bounty to somepony else."

"It's not the bounty I'm worried about." The stallion sighed.

Soon the familiar rumbling could be heard, the not-so-distant thunder of steam and steel. 

"Stay down, wait for it to pass, then follow me." He commanded as he covered the lantern with his wing. "Once we're outside, you lead the way."

The train roared by. Car after car, it reverberated endlessly off the rock. The force of the wind and noise spewed dust and dirt into a flurry as the two pegasi stood patiently in the shadows. Each train car was a streak of dim light and color, blending into a formless wall only feet from them. The lights and colors danced but a few moments more and they were gone in as much an eruption of sound as they arrived. The stallion waited as he listened to the train continue down the tunnel and followed the bend of the tracks outward into open night air. He trot out on the tracks and spread his wings in full. In a powerful lift off, he accelerated down the tunnel and followed after the locomotive with his hooves extended. The mare responded in kind and soon the tunnel was alive with the heavy beating of wings before the pegasi hit sky under the kiss of Luna's light. 

The mare took point, and the pair veered toward the Everfree forest.

-----

Deep in the southern orchard of Sweet Apple Acres existed a particularly large apple tree. For many years, this old tree had been the host of a lovingly constructed clubhouse which up until recently had been the headquarters of Ponyville's rambunctious trio, the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Right now however, it was were the restless Apple Bloom had come to feel something close to the world she remembered.

Long after her bedtime, she snuck out of the farmhouse. With Applejack out late and Big Macintosh behind bars, the filly only had ole Granny Smith to watch over her. Apple Bloom had gotten very good at sneaking outside when she wasn't suppose to be, and with only Granny at home, it wasn't even hard.

The filly trot around the interior of the messy clubhouse, listless and insomniac, gazing sadly at all of the unfinished projects she had started alongside her friends. Every memory, every plan, every vision of the future, every hope and dream she drempt had Scootaloo in it along side her. The world felt broken. Something the filly never realized she had inside her was suddenly gone, and she knew she would never get it back. She looked up upon the colorful banner that she and her friends had made together as it stretched over the back wall of the clubhouse and closed her eyes. She ruminated on happier times until the chilling night air convinced her it was time to return home and try once more to go to sleep.

She turned to leave and looked upon Scootaloo standing anticlimactically in the clubhouse doorway.

Apple Bloom's eyes flared open in disbelief as she stared, stunned beyond accommodation, as her very real and very much so actually-standing-right-there missing friend looked back at her with a nervous expression.

"Uhh— Hi." Scootaloo said.

Apple Bloom felt the overwhelming tears of pure joy elating from within as she cried out her name and galloped headlong into the young peach-toned pegasus filly, pouncing on her and holding her close, barraging her with questions between taking excited gasps for air.

"What happened to you!? Are ya ok!? Where in Equestria did ya go!?" The filly hollered out in rapid succession, tearing up. "We gotta tell everypony you're back! Ah was so scared you were gone forever!" 

Scootaloo grit her teeth and swallowed hard as her friend got close to her. 

"SHHHH!" Scootaloo quickly and harshly hissed as Apple Bloom got louder and louder. "Q-quiet!"

Apple Bloom looked confused, then suddenly concerned. 

"W-what is it?" She uttered softly.

"You gotta follow me, quick!" Scootaloo breathed out drastically, her tone subdued.

"But we gotta tell everypony—" Apple Bloom started, bewildered.

"N-no!" Scootaloo stammered out quickly. Her eyes darted around frantically.

"What's wrong!?" Apple Bloom asked, starting to get upset.

"Just—  we can do that after, okay?" Scootaloo pressed, her tone getting progressively more uneasy as she turned away and beckoned the young earth pony to her as she started down the clubhouse ramp. "Please, you gotta follow me. It's important!"

"Where are we going?" The perplexed filly asked as she trot alongside the pegasus.

"Just come on! It's not far." Scootaloo said as she vigilantly looked about her surroundings. She trot out into the apple trees, nothing more than the moon guiding the way.

"Why do we have to be quiet?" Apple Bloom asked, pacing next to Scootaloo.

The pegasus filly quickly and nervously took another glance around at the surrounding area, confirming they were alone. 

"I escaped." She said, grimly.

Apple Bloom's eyes widened.

"The pony who took me, I escaped from her." Scootaloo said, a paranoid tone wavering in her voice. "Now she's after me." 

The young earth pony was thunderstruck, a very real terror surging in her veins.

"We gotta tell the guards!" she repeated pleadingly, trying to keep her voice down.

"No Apple Bloom, you don't understand! That's not going to help!" Scootaloo said, her pace quickening. "She isn't a normal pony."

"W-what do you mean?" Apple Bloom asked, a strange dread filling her.

"Look, I know how to stop her, stop her from ever hurting anypony ever again, but I need your help." Scootaloo said, her voice suddenly filled with determination. "We're gonna be heroes, Apple Bloom. Don't you think that would make an awesome cutie mark?"

"H-heroes?" Apple Bloom repeated. She didn't know what to say. It all seemed too crazy but she was too afraid that Scootaloo was going to disappear on her again if she didn't keep pace with her.

Scootaloo lead her deeper into the south orchard. The Apple family's substantial property stretched on and on in rows of neatly organized trees but they hit the property line before long, marked by an old wooden fence. The small ponies slipped under it without issue and continued south until they stood before the twisted treeline of the Everfree forest.

Apple Bloom stopped, looking into the notorious forest as hesitation began to spiral in her thoughts. 

"Come on! It's not far in." Scootaloo turned around and said encouragingly. "I can see it from here!"

"See what?" Apple Bloom asked continued on forward, confusion and curiosity overriding all else.

She crossed the threshold into the wood and stood next to Scootaloo as she pointed her hoof forward. Just barely visible in the dim moonlight that passed through the dense vegetation was a body of water, not more than a bathtub sized pond set among the trees about twenty yards ahead. Soon the two fillies were upon it, with Scootaloo standing near to the edge.

"Here!" she beckoned once more as Apple Bloom approached. "Take a look into the water here!"

"The water?" Apple Bloom asked sounding completely dumbfounded, and even a bit unimpressed.

She lowered her head and stared into the tenebrus pool. The murky water cast no reflection, and in such poor light the little earth pony couldn't see anything within it.

It was a void.

It was nothingness.

Oblivion.

Apple Bloom squinted and tried one more time to make out what was so important about this, but she felt frustration kick in. 

"What in all of Equestria does some muddy water have to—"

The sickening thud of stone striking skull did not carry far into the trees, even the sound of Apple Bloom's limp body splashing into the shallow water seemed all but silent.

Scootaloo stood next to the pool with a blood-caked rock in her hooves, breathing in intense gasps. The heavy stone slipped from her grasp and splashed into the pond, sinking to the bottom of its darkness. She kicked up water as she stumbled back and fell upon the roots of the tree behind her and gazed at Apple Bloom's motionless body, her mane matte with gore and her iconic red ribbon crushed at the area of impact. Scootaloo watched, transfixed as the flow of blood from the grievous head wound begin to slip down her fur and into the water.

Hoof falls echoed in the darkness as a pony approached, she spoke to Scootaloo from beyond where the moonlight could reach, her voice soothing and motherly. 

"Very impressive, darling." The dulcet voice spoke.

"T-thanks." Scootaloo said, breathing slower and sounding relieved as she got herself up.

A light blue magical aura engulfed Apple Bloom's bloody, wet body and hoisted it from the water. It levitated slowly into the darkness as the voice called out one more time. 

"Come on now, Scootaloo. Let's go home. " The shadowy form encouraged. "It's time for your feeding."

Scootaloo followed the levitating form of her closest friend and they both vanished into the trees. Following behind them was a single mare, a light blue magical aura emanating for her horn.

-----

Rainbow Dash lay collapsed on the forest floor, gritting her teeth and covering her ears in vain as the torture went on and on. 

Scootaloo's screams of horror tore through her mind, and they weren't stopping.
> Chapter 3: When We Bleed
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The tone of the gathering within Fluttershy's cottage had changed dramatically. The time for tears was over and everypony had agreed that as drastic as the plan was, it had to be done. Of course this was not a decision made without a degree of hesitance. Fluttershy in particular, as supportive of her friends as she wished to be, looked as though she would collapse into a puddle whenever talk turned to how this could potentially land any number of them in trouble with the guards. However, even with as little time to develop her plan as she had, Twilight had crafted one that minimized the chances of that happening, at least, for her friends.

"Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Applejack, I need you three in the Everfree forest looking for Rainbow Dash." Twilight proclaimed.

"T-the forest— right." Fluttershy stammered. To nopony's great surprise, she failed to sound confident.

"We need you, Fluttershy." Twilight said supportingly. "The animals in there should be able to help you hone in on Rainbow."

"But Twilight, a lot of the creatures in there don't listen to me." Fluttershy said, anxious eyes falling to the floor. "I've tried before, some of them are just too wild. I don't think I'll be able to get them to co-operate."

"You're going to need to try your absolute hardest." Twilight said firmly as Fluttershy nodded weakly and attempted to hide behind her own mane. "Use the stare on them if you have to. Do anything you can to get those creatures to help out, they are our best chance."

"What about me?" Pinkie asked in bright contrast. "Need me to bring the party cannon? I'm a crack shot!"

"You're gonna be there in case your Pinkie-sense can in anyway help out. Maybe you'll pick up on something the others miss." Twilight said. "Just promise me you'll stay focused on the task at hand."

Pinkie bolted instantly into a mock up military stance, a stone cold look of discipline on her face as she stomped a hoof at attention and offered Twilight an energetic salute.

"Aye aye!" The pink pony exclaimed.

"AJ, I need you there for a few reasons." The leading unicorn said as she turned to Applejack. "Firstly, the wildlife. I need you to protect everypony. Hopefully with Fluttershy around that won't be necessary, but if you're there I know you'll all be okay if something goes wrong."

Applejack nodded silently, her eyes narrow and focused.

"Secondly, is Rainbow Dash. If you find her..." Twilight stopped, hesitating. 

"I need you to get her to tell us the truth." Twilight explained. "I don't know what she's going to say or if she's even going to be cooperative but I need you to do anything necessary to get her to tell us what she's been hiding. It will be key in unraveling this mystery."

"Anythin'?" Applejack asked, cocking a brow.

Twilight was asking a lot of difficult things of her friends, but this was without doubt the hardest.

"Anything." Twilight emphasized. "This is too important, if you have to get rough with her... I trust you."

Another silence blanketed the room as Applejack took a long slow breath.

"I hear ya." The farm mare confirmed, her voice wavering in equal parts disbelief and trepidation of what may come of all this.

"The same goes for you two as well." Twilight said as she looked upon Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy in turn. "I know it won't be easy to but it's the only way we're going to get to the bottom of this."

"Waddaya reckon' we outta expect from the guards?" Applejack inquired.

"I'm sure there are going to be guards combing the forest for Rainbow Dash. Try your best to avoid them." Twilight warned. "If you do encounter any, they are going to be suspicious of why you're out there in the middle of the night. You're all going to need to come up with a believable excuse to shake them off."

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Pinkie Pie interjected loudly. "I could pretend to be sick and we could say Fluttershy and Applejack are taking me to Zecora's for a remedy."

"Oh for Celestia's sake, Zecora!" Twilight blurted out, her voice sparking in recollection. "I can't believe I forgot about her! Check with her while you're in the forest. She might be able to help."

Suddenly Pinkie's eyes widened. She cringed as her stomach gurgled loudly. 

"Ugh— I hope so." The earth pony groaned. "Because I don't think I'm going to need to pretend after all. I think something was off with those danishes."

This was normally when Twilight would have reminded Pinkie that she'd eaten eleven of them, but she had more pressing matters on her mind then a friend's indigestion.

"Either way, if you find Rainbow Dash, you have to make sure the guards don't discover you while you're with her." Twilight informed the trio. "That's guaranteed trouble, for her and for you. You need to be quick. Get her to talk as soon as you can and then, well..."

Twilight paused again, trying to form her thoughts. 

"You'll have to decide on what to do with her afterward." She said. "Maybe let her go."

"Let her go?" Fluttershy squeaked.

"We can't possibly shelter her, Fluttershy. She's a fugitive." Applejack sighed painfully. "She wouldn't be able to set hoof anywhere in Ponyville righ'now without a whole platoon of them guards comin' down on top of'er."

"Precisely." Twilight said, nodding. "We can find out what she knows but we can't investigate this further if we get arrested for aiding her. Besides—"

"We still don't know for sure if Rainbow is innocent." Rarity finished grimly, clearly not a statement she wished to make.

There was a harrowing silence as everypony in the cottage attempted to stomach this unbearable fact.

"And what if she goes and confesses something t'me?" Applejack finally worked up the will to ask. "What if she really is responsible for all this?"

"Honestly, I don't know." Twilight admitted readily. "Just— try to be her friend."

Another extended silence came and went like the night air through the windows.

"Twilight." Rarity began the conversation again. "That leaves the two of us."

"Yes. You and I are headed to the guard tents." Twilight explained. "I need you to create a distraction that will pull as many guards away from there for as long as possible. Then I sneak into Keen Eye's command tent and look for information about the evidence they seized from Rainbow's home."

"And you're sure that's where you'll find what you need?" Rarity asked.

"Not only that, I know exactly where in his tent I'm going to find it." Twilight stated, some amount of pride in her voice. "I sat in with Keen Eye a few times at meetings he held with his staff over the last few days. He kept all of his important papers in a secure filing box by his desk. I know for a fact that if evidence related to the case was found and transferred, that's where I'll find a document of some kind telling me what it is and where it went."

"I see." Rarity said, as her lips pursed and eye's narrowed. "How much time do you think you'll need?"

"Two, maybe three minutes." Twilight replied.

"I'll get you five, darling." Rarity asserted, her brow furrowed as the gears in her head turned. "More if I can make a stop at my boutique beforehand."

"Absolutely." Twilight nodded as she looked over her team. "Do what you need to do and meet me at town square in twenty minutes. The rest of you, quickly make your preparations and then head into the forest as soon as possible."

The group of ponies nodded, each face a different image of anticipation: Fluttershy a classic shade of pure anxiety, Rarity determined and confidant, Pinkie Pie coiled like a spring, and Applejack silently asking how it has all come to this.

Twilight peered out the window into the mire of tangled trees that lay beyond Fluttershy's property line. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she stood before the precipice, ready as she would ever be to take the plunge into the darkness before her.

"Ok, quickly now." She uttered. "Time is not on our side."

-----

The screams were horrid. 

They just kept going and going. 

Protracted, agonized, unintelligible, overwhelming horror. 

The visionscape was on fire, alight in an inferno of chaotic energies, emotions, and forces echoing off of every fiber of reality and shattering upon Rainbow Dash's scenes like artillery shells. The cascade of torment hammered her eyes even as she clenched them shut, while the screams and sobbing battered her ears. Seconds stretched into minutes and each minute went on for an eternity.

Eventually the wailing faded, decaying into a pure silence so terrible and empty that is was nearly as painful as what came before. Rainbow realized, as her vocal chords rippled in pain and tears streamed down her face, that she must have joined in the screaming at some point.

She couldn't think. She couldn't breath. She couldn't bring herself to open her eyes, let alone pick herself up. She could only tremble in the wake of whatever assault had brought Scootaloo's tortured cries to her mind.

"Please..." Rainbow wept to nopony, each word heavy under her woeful heart. "Please. No more. Scootaloo. I can't take this anymore."	

The mare exhaled slowly and painfully, pulling her hooves into her chest and shaking in defeat, gritting her teeth and feeling the warmth begin to melt away from her. The world went quiet as she drifted into the abyss. Rainbow saw the lost filly behind her eyelids, her young face awash with reverence as she looked upon her.

There's Rainbow Dash, she must think. There's the mare that promised to protect me. There's the mare that took me under her wing. There she is, crying, alone in the woods. There she is, twisting in the dirt. There she is, taking a nap while I'm in danger. 

She's just a ghostly image now, she swirled like smoke in the wind and bled away, leaving Rainbow's mind with only the fiery agony of her peril. No body to protect, no heart to comfort, no loving admiration to ease her.

Rainbow's mind releasing momentarily into the fickle respite of unconsciousness.

-----

"I'm sorry Rainbow."

"I don't deserve to be saved."

"Not anymore."

"Go home."

"Forget about me."

"I'm already gone."

-----

Rainbow awoke sometime later, opening her eyes as the sound of Scootaloo's voice rang out again in her mind, heavy this time with sorrow and resignation. She gazed, bewildered, into the morphing visionscape. The twisted barrage of information displayed something different now. Passing through the trees and the air, waves of yet another energy the pegasus could not qualify appeared before her, carrying Scootaloo's words with them.

The mare was right all along. As convinced as she was before, now the evidence was right in front of her. She knew it then when as she gazed on those shimmering waves as they washed over her and passed the young filly's words to her mind. 

She wasn't insane. 

These disembodied calls were coming from the outside, and if she understood what the vision was telling her correctly, from somewhere nearby.

Dash urgently got to her hooves as a spark of hope reignited within her. 

Suddenly the world flickered.

Rainbow gasped as she witnessed the vivid, writhing world of information begin to slip back into the darkness of the world she knew. Her heart throbbed in her chest as she flapped her wings and took off, racing as fast as she could, only a few feet off the ground, weaving through the trees. 

Frantically she followed the faded traces of Scootaloo's voice through the dissipating visionscape. She didn't have much time, her saddlebag flapping against her side as the air whipped through it, she prayed silently with each stroke of her wings for the vision to guide her just a little bit farther.

Just a little bit closer.

Just the tiniest bit more.

The vision distorted one last time before finally vanishing, leaving Rainbow Dash both figuratively and literally in the dark. Not a single strand of Luna's light could reach her now; she couldn't see her hoof in front of her face. The blindness forced her to ground and her intense momentum carried her a few paces before she came to a complete stop. She braced herself against what felt like a tree and stood there a moment, breathless.

She understood completely what had happened but couldn't believe how impossibly bad the timing was. Her one and only asset in this increasingly dire struggle had just expired. 

Once again, she was on her own.

"No." She muttered.

"No. No. No! NO!" She hollered, gritting her teeth and growling in savage frustration as she slammed her hooves into the thick tree trunk again and again and again, flecks of bark scattering from her strikes.

She was so close. But there in the blackness she somehow felt farther from her goal than ever before, lost and isolated in a desolate fog of unending nothingness, her future began to look as dark as her present.

Yet it was not so. Not yet anyways.

Her ears flicked in attention to the sound of distant voices.

Dash went dead silent, hoping that whoever was nearby hadn't heard her earlier cries of anguish. She held her breath and honed in. She could barely make out the words over the sound of her heart pounding in her ears, but as she crept closer and closer to where the voices were coming from, she could make out three ponies talking, no, arguing. There were sounds of two mares and a stallion, and they were coming from a clearing up ahead.

The scene took place in a break in the canopy and was barely illuminated, giving Rainbow more than adequate conditions to sneak closer. She settled in around the perimeter of the clearing, concealed, and began to eavesdrop.

-----

The clearing was small, but the open patch in the trees exposed the three ponies below in a dull, pale light. Two pegasi, an orange-furred stallion and aqua-green mare dressed in black flightsuits, stood opposite a single unicorn. The confronted unicorn mare was a sea foam green, similar in color to the the pegasus across from her, but a darker shade. A long and tangled mane of blue and black hair partially obscured her eyes, and a willow tree wreathed in a blue flame marked her flank. 

The tension and anger in the unicorn's stance was obvious, that in her voice even more so.

"Do you honestly think I'm stupid enough to believe something like that!?" The unicorn barked at the pegasi pair.

"And do you honestly think I would waste my time extending you this offer if my intention was to kill you?" The pegasus stallion responded, much calmer in contrast. "Come on now Willow, you know me. I'm not the type to beat around the bush. How about you stop thinking about yourself for once and consider the well being of your childer."

"How dare you!" Willow snapped back at him. "I sacrificed everything for them! I gave them a mother! I taught them how to survive!"

"Then why have so many of them found Final Death?" The stallion fired back evenly.

"Their blood is on Rosary's hooves!" Willow growled furiously, taking a step forward.

"Bullshit!" The pegasus mare interjected loudly from a length behind the stallion, also taking an aggressive stance. "Your little hobby is putting every single one of us at risk. You forced her to take action! It's your own damn fault so many of your precious pets are gone!"

"Calm yourself, Wind." The stallion uttered, annoyed, placing a hoof on her shoulder as she leaned in.

"No! Screw this, Fighter!" Wind said, tossing her partner's hoof aside, still glaring at Willow. "This bitch is delusional."

"Oh! And you're calling me delusional? And who under all of Luna's light are you? Fighter Flight's personal bloodhound?" Willow spat, sneering at Wind as her partner made further attempts to hold her back. "I can see why a Savage like him would take up this miserable line of work, but you? I can't believe my own clanmate is so eager to sell out her kin for a pat on the head. Pathetic!"

The violet-maned pegasus grunted in fury before quickly turning her head to her shoulder. With a rush of metal scratching metal she producing a long curved knife from a sheath hidden beneath her wing and grasped it at the ready in her mouth, teeth clenched around it.

Fighter extended his wing in front of the wrathful mare. 

"Put it away!" He commanded fiercely between grit teeth. "I swear to Luna, Wind Shear. I can deal with both her and you if you force me too."

Wind stood her ground.

"Put. It. Away!" The stallion said in slow, punctuated growls.  

Wind remained motionless, her eyes still fixed on the unicorn across from her. Her teeth grinding on the hilt of her blade.

"Now!" Fighter barked, his lips curling into a snarl, narrowing his eyes toward his partner.

The mare scowled and reluctantly resheathed her weapon, looking away from the both of them to hide her submission.

"This is your last chance, Willow Wisp!" Fighter called out as he lowered his wing and returned his calculating gaze upon the unicorn. "Seems I'm here with somepony that doesn't like you all that much and I really can't say I blame her. I'm not gonna hold her back forever."

"I could still run." Willow hissed.

"But I know you're not that stupid." Fighter chimed in, nearly smiling. "You know we'd catch you. Just like you know that if you try to fight, you'll lose."

Willow continued to glare at the amber-tone pegasus, unshaken by his words.

"But—" Fighter continued, trying to sound reasonable. "If you come quietly I can put in a good word with the Sheriff, maybe even get the Prince to shave a couple decades off your sentence."

"I will not live by Rosery's will!" Willow hollered, sounding fully insulted.

"So you'd rather die by mine?!" Fighter barked incredulously, cocking a brow.

"So be it!" The unicorn snarled. In a flash, her horn glowed a sapphire blue and she took aim at the stallion, channeling all her rage into one spell.

"What the fuck kind of mother are you?!" Wind Shear yelled ferociously as she stepped in front of her comrade, directly into Willow's aim.

There was a silence, partnered only by the crackling of Willow's magic.

Eventually the unicorn stayed her spell and her eyes fell upon Wind Shear. Willow inhaled to speak but the pegasus beat her to it.

"You might actually be able come away from this alive, but you'd choose Final Death? Why?!" Wind fired with brutal indignation, her breathing heavy and erratic. "Pride? Principles? Because you think you're just too good to play by the rules!?"

"I have something worth fighting for, you vulgar fool!" Willow hissed.

"Oh yeah!" Wind bellowed sarcastically. "Big hero here, throwing her life away and abandoning the childer she claims to love so much! That sure is a lot easier than admitting to yourself that you fucked up! You greedy piece of shit!"

Willow Wisp could not speak. Rage collided with a very real guilt in her throat leaving only ruin through which no words could pass.

"Arrangements can be made, Willow." Fighter said as he paced alongside Wind with an uncanny sincerity in his words. "While you serve your time, I can make sure there is somepony to look after your childer."

Willow stared back silently, still visibly stunned, her eye's unmoving and her expression of malice sobering hesitantly.

"Y-you can't promise that." She stammered.

"I can, and I do." He returned.

Willow shook her head.

"No! No you can't!" She barked in frustration. "R-rosary does what she pleases! Always has, always will! If she wants my childer dead, they die! Am I so wrong for wanting to get away from her?"

"She doesn't want them dead!" Fighter groaned out, agitated. "She wants you to follow the proper procedure and she want's them kept under control, something you haven't proven yourself capable of doing!"

"I'm doing just fine keeping my childe out of trouble out here." Willow retorted smugly, thought it was clear her resistance was failing.

"But don't you think they deserve something better than an existence on the run?" Fighter asked. "Living out here in what? Trees? Caves?"

"Some provider you are." Wind muttered softly, though it seemed Willow didn't hear her.

"Even if you did somehow escape us, and you won't, how long do you honestly think you can keep this up?" Fighter continued harshly. "How long before another hunter finds you, one that's not as understanding as me?"

Willow didn't respond.

"How many have you sired, out here in the forest?" Fighter asked.

There was pause, Willow seemed to be considering something. 

"Just one." Willow responded slowly.

"And she means the world to you, doesn't she?" Fighter asked, taking a step forward. "Like the others?"

There was a longer silence as Willow swayed gently as a light breeze passed across the clearing, bathing the sounds of the forest in a wash of rustling leaves.

"She is my world." she uttered, with dead eyes gazing wistfully up into the naked night sky.

"Then do the right thing for her." The fiery-maned stallion encouraged, his voice compassionate. "Don't just stand there and tell me you'd sacrifice everything for her. Show me you'd actually do it."

Willow chewed the bottom of her lip as her look of rage continued to cave further and further into a sorrowful resignation. She sighed and looked backward into the trees behind her.

"Scootaloo? You can come on out now, darling." She called out in a soothing tone. "We're going to be going with these ponies to Canterlot."

The peach-toned pegasus filly trot slowly out of the shadows, purple hair tangled with twigs and leaves from her hiding spot in the bushes. She trot up next to Willow Wisp and brushed against her hind leg, an uncanny sadness etched upon her face.

Fighter smiled and turned to Wind. 

"See?" He said quietly to her, teasingly. "It doesn't always need to be a bloodbath." 

Willow looked down at Scootaloo, her harsh eyes suddenly awash with tenderness. Scootaloo returned her gaze, tears forming in her young eyes.

"Are you going away?" the filly asked, sniffing.

Willow let out a pained sigh as fractured memories trickled into her mind.

She looked so similar.

"It will be ok." Willow cooed and she draped a hoof over the little one. "Momma's still here."

It happened so quickly, not a pony of those gathered had any hope of seeing it coming. A flash of color flew in at velocities unheard of. It came from just beyond the woods behind Willow and Scootaloo. In the blink of an eye and a crash of hoof on bone a tremendous flying high speed kick landed upon the back of Willow's skull. The world spun as she was launched towards the flightsuit-clad pegasi who both recoiled in shock and looked up at the attacker, eyes widening.

Rainbow Dash sprung back as the strike hit. With a flourish of her legs, she righted herself and landed next to Scootaloo, hooves already extending toward her as she reached out in preparation to grab up the young filly and fly to safety.

Dash didn't have much time to think of a plan, but in her mind, this one was perfect.

Just in and out like a flash.

Rescue Scootaloo.

These chumps won't even know what hit them.

No problem.

She most certainly had the element of surprise, and Rainbow most certainly was fast enough to pull it off. Given the circumstances and the improvised nature of it all, it really did seem like the perfect plan.

But it went wrong. 

So impossibly wrong.

Just as Rainbow's hooves began to close around the little filly she heard a screech of fear and winched in pain as suddenly two powerful strikes landed across each one of her outstretched hooves. Hot with pain, she felt them blown back by a powerful force. She stumbled, thrown completely off-balance. She flapped her wings reflexively to stop herself from falling over completely.

Did that really just happen? 

It was one of the other ponies that had hit her, right?

No.

Scootaloo had thrown her off. Not only that, but she was backpedaling away from her with a look of unfettered terror on her face. Her mouth agape and her wings trembling.

"S-scootaloo, it's me! Come on!" Rainbow hollered as she advanced toward her, dumbfounded and tense as precious seconds ticked away.

Dash stared wide-eyed at the frightened, retreating filly as her own confused fear began to mount violently inside her.

Scootaloo spoke as tears began to flow from her eyes. 

Her words signaled the beginning of the end.

"W-willow..." The little filly stammered in paralyzing panic, before breaking out a ear-splitting scream. "Willow! It's her! Help! Help Me!"

-----

"It's Rainbow Dash! Oh Sweet Celestia, it's her!" Rarity screeched dramatically, her voice penetrating harshly through the nighttime silence of Ponyville's town square. "Guards! Guards! Come quickly! She's getting away!"

Tent fabric flapped and armor rattled as nearly a dozen guardstallions mobilized from in and around the tent village, including more than a few who were off-duty. A bleary-eyed staff sergeant who clearly had just been torn away from a peaceful slumber quickly rallied the impromptu squad and they galloped toward the opposite side of town hall where Rarity has set up her little charade.

Twilight stood in shadow, a dark navy blue raincoat covering her fur. Her tail was tucked under the garment completely, and a large hood was pulled high over her head. It wasn't exactly the best choice for infiltration as the synthetic material rustled slightly as she moved but it was the best the mare had to conceal her identity if she was seen. At least she would stay dry if the nightshift weather team decided to drop a surprise downpour on her.

The alleyway on the southern end of the square served as both an effective hiding spot and good vantage point to observe the guards leaving their posts as Rarity initiated her distraction. It seemed that all of the guards who were going to leave the tent village had now done so. It was now or never.

Along with the moonlight, the unicorn had a number of lit street lamps to contend with which illuminated the space between the alley and Keen Eye's tent. The modest flame dancing within the frosted glass enclosure made the most direct route to her objective a bit too well lit for the unicorn's liking, but one simple cantrip of a spell later saw the lamp extinguished, leaving the scene much darker.

Taking a deep breath and making one last scan of the town square, Twilight Sparkle cantered toward Keen Eye's tent. It was a moderate pace, she want to keep her time unconcealed as brief as possible but didn't not want the rough material of her not-exactly-stealthy-but-better-than-nothing raincoat to make too much noise from moving quickly. Thankfully, Rarity's distraction had indeed gotten the alarm of what appeared to be all of the guards at the tent village, with all of the remainder presumable already off searching the Everfree forest for Rainbow Dash. Also thankfully, Twilight needed neither much time or even much effort to break, or in this case zip, into a tent.

The command tent was the same size as the other barracks tents, however instead of housing bedding accommodations for eight guards, it held that for just one, the commanding officer. The remaining space inside was used as a meeting and briefing space, with long fold-out tables and some lightweight collapsible chairs. At that time of night the inside of the tent was lit only by what light could pass through the fabric from the outside, which wasn't much. Twilight paced slowly and silently over to the single cot, Lieutenant Keen Eye's. It was empty, as she predicted. He was no doubt still leading the search effort for Rainbow Dash in the Everfree forest.

With the lieutenant's absence firmly established, Twilight focused her magic into a light from her horn. She made sure to keep the beam focused and pinned only on to the ground. Any light source that touched the walls of the tent would be clearly visible from outside and the unicorn would hate to botch things up after what seemed to be a flawless entry.

The magical light glided over the ground, passing over innocuous furniture in a brief search that turned up the good lieutenant's secure filing box from under his cot. Twilight reached in and pulled the bulky thing out, her hooves visibly shaking as her ears listening carefully for any signs of trouble. The box was heavy duty, made of super thick material, the kind of thing that could be pulled out of the wreckage of a house fire unscathed. The lock on it was equally serious, but Twilight wasn't concerned.

When one is as obsessed with learning as Twilight is, you don't really care about the topic. The unicorn's mind drifted back to her time reading 1001 Locks: A Complete Guide to Unlocking Your Inner Locksmith, she hadn't had much opportunity to put to practice any of the skills taught in that particular book, but she was able to handily identify the lock she was dealing with as a standard deadbolt with four separate bolts all controlled by a single cylinder. It would certainly be a difficult task to brute force one's way past such a device, but Twilight had a much more subtle approach.

The mare extinguished the light from her horn and lowered the spiral appendage down, resting it against the keyhole as she closed her eyes and begin to concentrate. The feeler spell required a great deal of focus to be used with such minute dexterity. A thin strand of magical thread, barely visible to the naked eye, sprouted from the tip of Twilight's horn and wormed ever so slightly into the keyhole of the strongbox. Upon entering the slot, the thread slowly expanded to fill it entirely. Twilight could then feel the resistance of the lock's many tumblers as if they were pressed against her own body, and with each delicate flexion of her will she manipulated the magical feeler thread and felt the shuttering of invisible mechanisms against her. Nearly a minute passed, but in time the unicorn felt each tumbler fall into place, and the lock gave way with a satisfying clack.

The box opened and Twilight instantly reignited her horn, shining it into the box as she  flipped frantically through the documents therein. Profiles, staff reports, suspect information with attached photos, victim information with attached photos, transcripts from interrogations, plans for search patterns Twilight herself remembered drawing up. The mare grit her teeth as perspiration slid into her eyes, she had seen this already. All of it. There was nothing new. There was absolutely nothing inside concerning any evidence found anywhere.

But that's impossible. 

It would be here, it had to be!

Twilight pulled the documents out of the strong box and placed them hastily aside, levitating the entire box up into the air and turning it about as she felt around inside for anything else. Her eye's widened as her hoof passed over a seam, awkwardly set against the rear panel of the box.

With a careful prying motion she felt the entire panel loosen as a single folded parchment slid from the thin compartment exposed therein.

It landed softly on the ground before her.

Holding her breath, Twilight placed the box down slowly and levitated the parchment up before her eyes, the focused beam from her horn trained tightly to it. 

A broken wax seal decorated the outside, but was too damaged to identify. 

Twilight unfolded the mysterious paper to find a few paragraphs of plain machine-typed text.

She read it.

Her eyes widened.

Her pulse raced.


-------

Your services are required in Ponyville immediately. We realize this is short notice but you're the only operative in range with the resources to deal with this particular situation. You will have the full co-operation of the royal guard and enclosed are all of the necessary identifications and background files you will need to pass as one of them.

This matter is made more sensitive due to the presence of a number of significant ponies who reside in Ponyville, I trust you're aware of who they are. Please be aware of them and remember to do your homework before you make your decision on how to proceed. Involving them might complicate things but as always, you have full autonomy to proceed however you deem necessary. One unicorn in particular has a very curious mind. If anypony there is going to cause issues, it's her. Be wary.

Our contact in Ponyville is engaged in operations elsewhere but has offered you the use of their workshop and equipment. Instructions were given to mark the entrance with the insignia so you'll know where it is. Once phase one is complete, you'll find everything you need there to begin phase two.

Our drop off point has changed. Deposit all resulting materials at the Bank of Equestria in Canterlot, safety deposit box number 1108. Make sure you're speaking with a pony named Pin Code, he will provide the key. The phrase is, "Spitfire was flying at her best." Afterward you are to return to Ponyville and await further instruction. Canterlot operatives will arrive to pick up the materials soon after to prepare for phase three.

You will be informed if your task changes.

-------


The message wasn't signed, but was emblazoned with a symbol of a sundial positioned in front of a sun, eclipsing it.

Twilight gasped for air as she read and re-read the document, cold sweat dripping from her. Her mind reeled at the implications of each word, dread clutching her as her eyes passed over every letter. 

There were no answers, only questions. No illumination. Her voice rang in her mind, outraged and terrified, crying out for an explanation that she knew she wasn't going to get by reading the document a third time, but she couldn't stop herself.

Lies.

Secrets.

What in Equestria is happening here in the town she loved?

Twilight quickly dropped the parchment on the ground, aimed her horn upon it, and focused her magic. The photographic memory spell had come in handy plenty of times in the past, and now she needed it more than ever.

A shimmering violet beam of light struck the paper and began to dance across it's surface as it committed every iota of what it passed over to memory. It only took a few seconds to pass the spell over the entirety of the small page. This was good because as she carefully refolded the paper and slide it back into the hidden compartment of the filing box, the sound of rattling armor began to creep into her ears.

"Do you think she really saw her?" A distant male voice spoke.

"Hard to say." Another stallion responded, the pair getting closer and closer. "Keen seems to think this Dash mare is loose in the head. Maybe she's crazy enough to come back into town."

Twilight anxiously placed the other files back into the case, gritting her teeth as the guards trot closer.

"Honestly I think Keen's the crazy one." The first guard spoke again. "What kind of commanding officer just takes off to Canterlot right after issuing an all-points bulletin?"

"I'm sure he just had to make an official visit to the higher ups." The other replied. "Besides, he made it back here in good time, at least."

Twilight carefully closed the filing case and slide it back under the cot. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the silhouettes of two armored ponies passing across the fabric of the tent's walls.

"Ok fine." The first guard admitted. "But what about all the silent alarm spells he peppered the command tent with? Doesn't that seem a bit paranoid?"

Twilight's heart stopped. She looked about the tent in mute panic. 

They were faint. Laid upon the door, the floor, the walls, designed to be subtle by nature, expertly cast so that only the full and undivided attention of an eye deeply trained in magic could ever hope to detect them. Twilight's eyes were indeed deeply trained, but her attention had been far from undivided. 

All she could see now was that she had clearly triggered at least five of them.

She had to escape.

Now.

She gasped for air, trying desperately to keep her panicked breaths quiet. She crept toward the entrance, but the guards had rounded the corner in front of the tent. They would no doubt see her if she left though there. Twilight pushed her hooves against her mouth. Her eyes clouding up as she tried with all her might to stifle the sound of her presence.

Then came the galloping, closer and closer, frantic hoof falls thundering through the night.

There was no time left.

She needed to concentrate. 

Just one last spell. 

With the discipline that could only come from a life devoted to magical prowess, she pushed away the terror in her mind and instead envisioned the safety of her home.

Home. 

Home. 

Home.



"Lieutenant? Is that you?" One of the guards outside said as his silhouette turned. "Lieutenant!? What's wrong!?"

"Out of my way!" Keen Eye's voice hollered in ferocity as the two guard's parted to allow the sprinting officer past.

Home.

Home. 

Home!

Twilight knew the resulting flash would give her away, but teleportation was the only way out now. The tent burst into bright white and violet light as the mare dematerialized, leaving not but the crackling stench of ozone where she once stood.

Keen Eye ripped open the flap of the command tent, his eyes alive and intense. He flooded the interior with light from his horn.

Nothing.

The two guards galloped up behind their commanding officer and peered in alongside him, ready for action.

"What was that all about, Lieutenant?" One of them asked. "Who was in here?"

Keen's eyes passed over his cot.

"No idea." He lied.

-----

"Who are you!?" A mare's voice bellowed out. "What do you think you're doing!"

Rainbow's attention bolted to the aqua-green pegasus mare swooping in, positioning herself between her and Scootaloo, her wings fully extended to block Rainbow's sight of the fearful filly.

"I'm taking Scootaloo back to Ponyville and you're not going to stop me!" Rainbow yelled as she leapt into the air, wings propelling her skyward as she attempted to fly around the blocking pegasus.

Scootaloo stumbled and turned, crying out desperately as she raced toward the downed unicorn and the stallion kneeling next to her.

"Hey!" Wind Shear cried out as she jumped back, flapping once to give her an extra boost in midair. She repositioned herself, again blocking the approaching Rainbow Dash from getting to Scootaloo. 

"You're in way over you head, punk!" She hissed at Rainbow. I'm gonna give you one chance to turn around and fuck off."

Rainbow snarled and beat her wings hard as she gained altitude before grunting savagely. She divebombed Wind Shear at full speed, pulling her legs up and twisting into a spin, launching a kick with her hind leg swinging for the side of Wind's head. Wind raised her hoof to her mane and blocked the attack, taking the full force of Rainbow's leg into her own limb before swinging her other foreleg down and catching the attacking pegasi's hindquarter, grunted loudly as she threw her down. 

With a painful thud, Rainbow struck ground backfirst. Her eyes focused just in time to see Wind's front hooves trampling down toward her. Rainbow tucked in her wings and rolled to the side, evading the stomp as her saddle bags slid off and on to the ground. Now on her stomach and facing away from Wind, she swiftly hopped to a crouched position and kicked out a hind leg. It planted satisfyingly into Wind's chest and she staggered backward a step as Rainbow flexed her core fiercely to quickly pull herself around and follow up with a devastating haymaker strike to the head. Wind Shear's vision blurred as she was smashed just inches from her left eye, her head snapping back from the blow.

"Willow!? Can you hear me?" Fighter called out, kneeling beside the fallen unicorn away from the brawl, looking worrisomely upon her semi-coherent form.

"Willow! Willow!" Scootaloo sobbed tearfully as she dove in next to the downed mare, shaking her with both hooves. "You gotta get up!"

Splayed out on her stomach, the blue and black mane of Willow now had a noticeable patch of red, the pinpoint force of Rainbow's kick more than sufficient to leave a horseshoe shaped gash embedded into her flesh. A groan emerged from the disoriented unicorn and she rolled over to gaze upon the little filly.

"S-scootaloo..." Willow murmured. "You're... You're..."

Then her bleary eyes began to focus on the scene playing out behind the filly. That foul-mouthed pegasus from before was fighting with—

"R-rainbow Dash..." She uttered under her breath, venom coating her throat as she spoke her name.

Willow's eyes locked up on her, swirling with fire, with hate, with death. They tracing over every facet of that cyan-furred pegasus with the multi-coloured mane with baleful malice. She inhaled sharply as a fury older than the sun and moon exploded inside her like the apocalypse itself.

Convulsing on the ground, Willow screamed hysterically in wordless madness, her ear-splitting cry propelling Fighter and Scootaloo both back, staggering in shock. The terrified filly covering her ears as the unicorn's screech turned to a ruthless growl. Willow grit her teeth and dragged her hooves violently through the dirt and grass as she attempted to stand. Each growl surged lower and lower, falling into bestial sounds no normal pony could ever make.

Fighter's face twisted briefly into a very real panic as he recognized the signs of a condition he knew all too well take hold of the unicorn's mind.

"No!" The stallion called out. "No Willow, calm down!" 

With a flap of his wings, Fighter Flight positioned himself over Willow, quickly ramming his hooves into her shoulders, forcefully holding her down. 

"Everything's going to be ok!" He said clearly and intensely. "My partner is taking care of it!"

Willow responded with a long and protracted roar that shattered the night air. Scootaloo yelped, terror-struck, and stumbled back from Willow. The filly watching horror as she thrashed against Fighter, struggling to stand.

"W-what's happening!?" Scootaloo sobbed to the stallion. "What's wrong with her!?" 

"Wind!" Fighter screamed out to his comrade. "Get that mare out of here! Willow's going into frenzy! We don't have much time!"

Rainbow pushed the advantage on her staggered opponent and moved in to take another swing. She lunged in, a powerful beat of her wings popping her just high enough into the air to launch another kick toward her target, still reeling from her previous strike.

But Rainbow struck nothing.

Her hoof passed through empty space.

Wind Shear had vanished in the blink of an eye.

Rainbow had barely enough time to touch back down after her kick, let alone comprehend what had just happened before the sound of metal scraping metal filled her ears and she suddenly felt two hooves scoop under her forelegs and lift her into a grapple. Yelping and trashing out with her legs and wings in tandem, Rainbow struggled against the impossibly strong grip before feeling the cold of a long curved blade resting on her throat. 

She gasped and went still, the knife laying right atop the lifeline of her pulse. Her eyes pressed to the side of her head and she saw Wind's snout in the farthest corner of her peripheral vision, the blade gripped in her teeth.

"Move and you die." She uttered around the hilt.

Rainbow could only gasp for air. 

Her mind raced. 

Fear clouded her thoughts.

"Here's what's gonna happen." Wind Shear followed up commandingly. "I'm gonna let you go and you're going to fly away and get on with your life. Anything else and I carve you out and leave you for the timber wolves."

Sweat poured into Rainbow's eyes.

"Y-you're bounty hunters, right!?" Rainbow asked strenuously, every few words punctuated by a labored gasp for air.

"Oh I'm sorry." Wind spoke with scathing sarcasm, tightening her grip. "Do you think I give a fuck about anything you have to say!?"

"P-please!" Rainbow begged as the razor edge of Wind's blade lay poised to end her. "If you want the unicorn, t-take her! But I'm begging you."

Tears began to form around Rainbow's eyes as she gazed out upon the little filly, standing off to the side, alone and afraid, her face twisted with confusion and sadness as her eyes darted from Rainbow, to Willow, back to Rainbow.

"Please don't take Scootaloo!" Rainbow pleaded, her mind broken. "Please just let me take her with me back to where she belongs!"

"No can do, punk." Wind grunted, twisting the blade firmly against Rainbow's neck.  "Doesn't seem like she wants to go with you anyway. So I guess you're shit outta luck."

"We don't have time for this!" Fighter called out, now fully grappling with Willow as she struggled to throw him off of her. "Wind! Get her out of here! Now!"

Willow Wisp raved out, her voice twisting into something barely recognizable as pony.

Rainbow tore her eyes away from the frenzied unicorn, her mind lost in desperation as she looked upon Scootaloo. The young pegasus mirrored her tormented stare as Rainbow's words poured forth in one protracted scream to the filly she thought she knew.

"Why, Scootaloo!?"

"Dammit, Why?!"

"Why did you call me out here!?"

"Why are you afraid of me!?"

"What did I do!?"

"I thought I was your friend!"

"I thought you wanted me to be your big sister!"

"What am I now!?"

Scootaloo stared back, words fighting to leave her lips.

"I..." The filly mustered quietly, gasping for air. "I-"

It all happened over the span of a few seconds.

The filly's voice was cut short. Fighter Flight grunted as a sudden colossal force launched him back through the air like a bullet. With a sickening crash and a pained yelp he struck a tree at the edge of the clearing with enough force to split the trunk. He fell to the ground, limp and motionless. Willow Wisp finally emerged, her eyes twisted and unnatural, a vision of insanity, rage, and hunger all rolled into one. A monster lost in her own power.

Wind Shear's eyes widened as she immediately let go of Rainbow Dash and held her blade at the ready, facing Willow. The pegasus made to charge at the frenzied unicorn but had barely moved an inch before Willow's body displaced. The unicorn began easily ten yards away, yet she instantly stood before them with no transitional movement whatsoever, not even a flash of magic. In one equally unseeable motion, she drove her hoof into Wind Shear's chest with a horrifying impact and the mare was sent soaring through the air, blade sent spinning off as she landing in a heap several yards away, limp body rolling a few times as it crashed down.

Rainbow Dash wasn't given enough time to run.

She wasn't even given enough time to think.

Not even enough time to feel the primal terror in her heart.

All she was able to process was the unimaginable pain in her chest as she careened backward through the air.

She felt the blood leaving her mouth.

She felt her wings shatter and her spine bend as her body slammed horrendously against the tree behind her. The wind expelled from her before she could even cry out in agony.

Before she could even be allowed the finality of falling to the ground, the unnatural power had Willow instantly appeared before her again. The beast drove her hoof into Rainbow's chest a second time, ramming into her with the force of a battering ram, pulverizing her already fragmented ribcage and pinning her broken body up against the tree. 

Rainbow's lungs collapsed. Her torso was ravaged with trauma. In one pathetic choke, the blood pooling in her esophagus gushed from her lips and spilled out across her belly. Wheezing uselessly for air, her vision tunneled. Her terror-stricken eyes looked on in wordless fear upon the monster who held her life in her hooves. 

The thing was smiling, and an entire mouthful of teeth greeted Rainbow's unfocused eyes.

Set among them protruded two massive fangs.

"What are you now?" Willow Wisp repeated back Rainbow's question, her voice hissing psychotically through her clenched jaws. "You are nothing."

Willow's mouth bolted open and she lunged forward, closing her wicked fangs like a vice across Rainbow's throat. The mare's last terrified breath was stolen from her as it leaked through her shredded windpipe. The creature's fangs sunk deep into her neck and found torrent upon torrent of her blood rupturing forth from her perforated artery. The beast greedily devoured it by the mouthful as Rainbow's vision grew darker and darker still, sucking away at her hated prey as the pressure began to lessen.

There was no myriad of past events flashing before her eyes.

No soothing light to step into playing beacon to her passage. 

There was only the abyssal blackness encroaching upon her sight, edging in from the sides like claustrophobia crushing her closing moments of existence into dust.

The last thing Rainbow Dash saw was Scootaloo in the distance, silently watching her die.

Taken her fill, Willow Wisp violently ripped her fangs free, tearing out Dash's throat in the process. What little blood remained within the pegasus sprayed out across Willow's muzzle in a fine mist. She lowered her hoof and finally let the rainbow-maned corpse hit ground with a weighty thud.

Willow peered down at the husk of a pony at her hooves, her smile widened, finding fresh new insanity as her cheeks curled and a low, throaty cackle escaped her bloody maw. Her eyes lucid as the fires of hate within them spiraled into hysteria. She turned, face plastered with crimson smears of death, flecks of cyan fur and foreign tissue hanging from her teeth. She looked upon her filly. 

So precious.

Scootaloo was paralyzed. Her mind trapped in its own twisted maze as she bore witness to the murderous scene that had played out before her. Something inside her was trying escape, but she had forgotten what it was. The sensation left her unsettled, as she stared at the dead body in the distance trying to feel something.

She tried and tried, but nothing surfaced.

Willow took a pace toward her little pony.

"I did it, darling." The unicorn said, blood drooling from her maw, her voice dreary and deranged. "I saved you from her."

Scootaloo stared at the approaching pony, each of her hoofsteps were labored and heavy, her psychotic smile still slapped across her cheeks.

"She's never gonna hurt you again." She continued, getting closer and closer to Scootaloo. "You're safe now. Safe with me."

Tears began to roll down Willow's face as she started to laugh.

"I did it all for you, my dear!" She shouted suddenly. "Everything for you. Everything for you..."

Willow continued to mutter the line over and over as she drew closer and closer.

"Aren't you happy?" She asked after a time, suddenly looking concerned at Scootaloo's distant expression. She was merely a yard from the filly now.

"Why aren't you happy?" She asked, her voice tensing as her hooves fell upon Scootaloo's shoulders.

"Aren't you proud of your mother?" Willow said, now practically whispering a few inches from Scootaloo's face, each syllable punctuated with stolen blood dripping from her mouth.

"You love me, right?" The tension and volume in her voice escalating as her trembling hooves put more and more pressure and weight down on the young filly's shoulders, her hooves digging in to the young one's bones.

Scootaloo winced as she looked into Willow's twisted eyes.

"You're hurting me." She breathed, barely audible. Her voice dead and listless. "S-stop. Please."

"Right?" Willow repeated as her expression sunk, dejected and sorrowful. Tears forming in her eyes as her hooves moved in around the tiny pony's neck, her muscles tensing as she began to push the filly's airway closed.

Scootaloo was trapped in her grasp, her eye's transfixed in a near hypnotic daze on Willow. The unicorn wept openly and continued to choke her, yet Scootaloo didn't feel the urge to breath.

The first spike erupted forth from the center of Willow Wisp's chest, thrusting through her with the sickening sound of flesh ripping, stopping just a few inches from Scootaloo's body. Willow released the filly and instead guided her hooves across the sharp, bone-like protrusion, looking down at it not in pain, but disbelief. 

The second spike burst through her flesh a few inches to the left. Willow let out a pathetic sob as she reached out and tried to touch Scootaloo one more time when suddenly in a swift and violent stroke, the two spikes slashed outward, tearing the unicorn's body apart as they eviscerated everything in their path.

In the blink of an eye, Willow's body disintegrated into ash as she was rent asunder. Nothing remained but a pile of black and grey smolder on the forest floor.

Fighter Flight panted heavily, exposed after the dust of the unicorn's slain body fell to ground. His wings beating to keep him slightly aloft, the cartilage of his front hooves somehow grown out, extending nearly two feet in length into wicked spikes. His expression was grim as he raised his weaponized limbs into air, they slowly retracted, slipping back into normal hooves as the behest of some unknown magic. He touched down and folded his wings neatly against his body, looking down at the pile before him with disappointment.

Scootaloo too blinked at the ashen mound before her. The wind picked up slightly and it began to dance into the air. As the cinders flew, something inside Scootaloo was fading, like a memory of something that had never happened, some artificial semblance of satisfaction and love that was too good to be true. It was like some beautiful idea had been planted within her, an idea that had guided her heart, mind, and hoof up until that very moment, an idea that had been planted by Willow. 

However, it was all an array of lies. The lies of a monster, a monster that bore down on the filly only moments ago. Yet even with her dark mother exposed as the monster she was, it was as if Scootaloo hadn't noticed or didn't care. It was warm. It was comforting. It somehow felt like everything she could ever want. Something unnatural and foreign inside had arrested her and smothered away who she was before, leaving only obedient affection. She would have followed that monster down to whatever depths it would have taken her and she would have loved every minute of it.

But now, Willow Wisp was no more. The lies she planted were dissipating from the poor filly's mind in the wake of her obliteration, and they left ruin in their wake. Scootaloo looked with her true eyes reopened upon the bloody body in the distance, still and lifeless, ravaged with grotesque savagery. 

With that, the flood gate opened. 

The image rushed into her mind, hitting her with every ounce of trauma those beautiful lies had forced her to ignore. It would have been too much for a pony of any age to handle. For the young filly, it was like waking up to realize that every nightmare she could ever dream was real and ready to claw out her sanity.

"Rainbow?" She murmured softly, her voice weak and teetering as if she were begging fate for mercy.

The corpse did not respond.

"Rainbow Dash!" She screamed, her voice rupturing in pure anguish. She broke into a gallop and came to stand before her fallen friend, gaped with terrified revulsion over Dash's butchered throat, fresh with blood caked into the surrounding fur. Scootaloo's eyes misted over as she stepped closer.

"No..." Her futile plea escaped her lips. "No... p-please. No!"

She sobbed out loudly into the night air, falling to her knees next to the dead pegasus.

"Wake up!" She screamed, pushing her muzzle against Rainbow's body, smearing tears and snot against her face as she rammed her front hooves into her side, trying in some frantic denial to rouse her. "Don't leave me!"

Scootaloo pulled back and looked one more time into Rainbow Dash's sparkless eyes, open and dry, cloudy and still. The little filly collapsed against the mare's flank, wailing in inconsolable misery as the last of her strength escaped from her in one grievous howl into cold blue fur.

Fighter watched silently as the tragic scene played out. He chewed his bottom lip and looked away, barely able to watch, discontent crawling across his face as he let out long and weary sigh. He swallowed hard and approached the weeping filly, her erratic breathing overwrought with hysterical sadness. He remained silent, only a few feet behind her.

Scootaloo turned her head and locked eyes on the stallion, gasping as she turned around quickly and backpedaled hastily away, tripping to the ground over one of Rainbow's legs.

"G-get away from me!" Scootaloo barked in hysterical, primal fear, her face a mess with tears. 

Fighter didn't advance, nor did he retreat.

The filly stared up at the stallion with paranoid eyes, wary for any movement.

"Y-you killed Willow." She uttered.

The stallion nodded slowly.

"Are you gonna kill me too?" She followed up.

"No." Fighter answered plainly while scanning the treeline in the distance, his eyes unable to stay locked with hers for long. "No. You're safe but..."

Fighter trailed off. Scootaloo continued to stare up at him, trembling.

"Look—" He tried to continue, still avoiding eye contact. "I know what happened to you. I can help you but you're going to need to come with me."

Another wave of fearful sorrow gripped Scootaloo as she shook her head in refusal.

"No! Please!" She wept out. "I want to go back to Ponyville! I just want to go home!"

Fighter took a long slow breath and tried to remain calm.

"You can't." He said plainly.

"Why!?" She pleaded.

Fighter closed his eyes. Willow Wisp's destruction might have freed the little one from her enthrallment, but Scootaloo was not truly free. 

She would never again be truly free. 

She was twice cursed by her dark mother. While one curse may have scattered along with Willow's ashes the other was eternal. It was coursing through the filly's veins by the drive of her unbeating heart and her unbreathing lungs. Animate as they seemed, they were indeed as still and lifeless as those within the pony she stood next to.

Forever of the Kindred.

Forever of the Damned.

Forever lamented by the rays of the sun.

Forever to dance on in the Requiem after true life has ceased until she too joins her sire in the ashes of Final Death.

"It's complicated." Fighter eventually offered. "You— Uh. You're—"

Fighter shifted uncomfortably. He'd dealt with fledglings before. It was never easy explaining the nature of Kindred and Kine, of the Blood and the Beast, but this new scenario proved even more difficult than usual. She was just scared little filly, literally clinging to the shattered remains of her former life. The stallion had hoped, perhaps foolishly, that Willow would have at least filled her childer in on the basics, but it seemed that Scootaloo's sire saw it more fit to just enthrall her and leave her in ignorance for however long.

How do you explain to a filly that they will never see the sun again?

How do you explain that they will never get a chance to grow up?

Left alone in a strange new world. Not just any world either, a world Fighter knew all too well. With no guidance or protection her new life was doomed to end as unjust and cruelly as her old one. Gears turned in the stallion's mind and as much as the idea disquieted him, it seemed like the right thing to do.

"Scootaloo, right?" The stallion asked.

She nodded slightly, otherwise motionless.

"You can call me Fighter Flight." He said, trying without success to sound conversational.

Scootaloo remained silent.

"Tell me something Scootaloo." Fighter started in. "This pony, Rainbow Dash you called her. She's somepony you trust, yes?"

Scootaloo released another forlorn sob and tried to awaken from the nightmare, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't banish reality.

"Uh huh." She managed in response.

"Somepony you can depend on no matter what?" He followed up.

"Why do you even care!?" Scootaloo snapped, a powerful hostility lashing from her. "S-she's gone!"

"I care because I can bring her back." Fighter replied calmly but firmly.

Scootaloo's eyes widened, her words catching in her throat.

"T-that's impossible." She murmured. "You can save her?"

"I didn't say save." Fighter correctly quickly and cynically. "I said I could bring her back."

A twisted hope dangled before the filly's eyes, and her expression displayed a pony too weary and desperate to ask questions. The possibility, however insane, of expelling the gaping hole in her heart was too tempting, too much a beacon of warmth on this cold night to dismiss.

"But." Fighter added. "I'm only going to do this if you agree to come with me to Canterlot."

"Please." Scootaloo begged, her eyes tearing again. "I'll go to Canterlot. I'll do anything. Please just bring her back."

Fighter swallowed hard and motioned wordlessly for Scootaloo to stand aside. She moved away from Dash's body with some hesitation and watched with unbreakable fixation as Fighter positioned himself directly over top of the lifeless mare. The stallion turned his head and looked upon Scootaloo staring at him. 

He frowned. 

His wings flared out and obscured the little one's sight.

"I don't think you want to watch this." He spoke from the other side of the wall of fiery orange feathers.

"S-sorry." Scootaloo's sight fell to the ground immediately.

Fighter looked over the corpse beneath him. The sight stirred little within, it was something he'd seen so many times before. It was just another reminder that the Kindred exist always in death's domain. Fighter had already learned to accept this as fact, though to this night he still wished it not so. So desolate and dark a world they call home, how could anypony ever consider inviting another into it's depths? That's the real mystery isn't it? 

And yet, perhaps the answer is obvious. Existing in death's domain means embracing death itself, letting it wash over you like ice water. Most ponies need only experience this once before their time on this world is over, but the Kindred must reawaken knowing they must face that death again and again until Final Death claims them. When you must die a thousand deaths, the old adage rings truer than ever. 

Nopony should have to die alone.

Fighter took a deep breath and closed his eyes. In a swift motion he placed his hooves on Rainbow's head and pressed his muzzle against hers in some profane kiss, pulling her mouth open carefully with his hooves as he concentrated and summoned forth the Blood. Fighter gagged briefly as it surged and roiled up his esophagus, a spiraling dark crimson worm of viscous Vitae that slithered slowly and into the cyan mare's mouth. It passed visibly by her shredded throat but stayed within, instead falling deeper and dissolving into her body. So simple an action as it seemed, but the stallion pulled his muzzle free, panting harshly like he had just strenuously exerted himself. He shook, looking light headed and weak.

The Embrace was complete.

"Welcome to death's domain, Rainbow Dash." Fighter muttered between deep breaths as he wiped the Blood from his muzzle.

____________________________________
Part 3 End Theme
> Chapter 4: The Ashes Call My Name
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Deep in the forest, the trio of ponies trot. Their desperate task persisted as they moved between the dark foliage, lit only by a modest strap mount flashlight upon each of their foreheads.

The trees were still. The wind was gone. The silence was absolute and nopony dared break it.

With light so scarce, sound was the only ally they had under the canopy. It warned of creatures, warned of guards, warned of their runaway friend. Speaking was out of the question, listening was all that mattered. There wasn't much to say, anyway. Even the normally chatter-bug Pinkie Pie seemed to understand this.

There had been what sounded like a distant group of guardponies about half a mile prior. The three quickly switched off their flashlights and waited motionless in the blackness for them to move on. This was the only encounter the mares had so far on their journey, and this was as much a relief as it was problematic.

Fluttershy might not have wished to stumble into a timber wolf, manticore, or who knows what else, but Twilight's plan to pinpoint Rainbow Dash relied almost entirely on her rapport with animals to work. In spite of their importance to their plan, the forest's wildlife was nowhere to be found. The ponies soldiered on regardless, commitment to their task managing to overcome their fear and uncertainty.

But then the silence was shattered.

Pinkie Pie felt it crawling up her hooves. Slowly it surged forth like a thousand snakes under her skin, slithering into her chest and exploding outward in a flurry of overwhelming sensations. Her tail lashed out and her eyelids rejected her command. She sunk to her knees and her neck seized so harshly that her head locked upward, gazing into the tangled brier above her.

"What'n tarnation?!" Applejack exclaimed as she whipped around and beamed her headlamp on her friend. She witnessed Pinkie's fit, her eyes widened. "A-are ya ok!?"

Fluttershy shrieked as she turned to see the pink pony's body convulsing as she struggled to stand under the weight of the invisible pile driver it looked like she was being crushed under. Pinkie gasped and began to force a cheery voice through her firmly clenched teeth.

"D-doozy! Yeah! Uh-huh! Definitely a doozy!" She struggled out arduously, her eyes still blasted into the leaf-entangled night sky. Suddenly her voice surged with pain as she began tear up.

"No. Please." Pinkie uttered, remorse spawned from nowhere. "I didn't know!"

Before her friends could even respond to the odd remark, the seizing mare pushed out a labored grunt that souring into a howl of pain. Then it left her as suddenly as it came. She slumped listlessly on to the forest floor with an earthy thud.

Gasping, Applejack rushed next to her and immediately tried to prop the overwhelmed mare up off the ground.

"Pinkie?! Can ya hear me?" AJ hollered frantically as Fluttershy swooped in from the opposite side and tried to help. "Com'on! Get up!"

"Oh Celestia!" Fluttershy cried quickly as she moved in closer and felt in front of Pinkie's muzzle. "She's not breathing! Applejack, she isn't breathing!"

"Hang in there Pinkie!" Applejack called as her eyes widened and she quickly redoubled her efforts to rouse her friend. "You're gonna be okay!"

Applejack was strong, but the limp weight of the pink pony resisted all efforts to be righted. Heart pounding as precious seconds ticked away, Applejack cussed as Pinkie's form slid from her flank and fell to ground a second time.

A low and phlegmy choking sound erupted forth from Pinkie's throat. A rush of damp air forced through her lungs as she gasped, the precious oxygen flowed in only to be expelled with a vicious coughing fit.

Pinkie locked eyes with Applejack once she recovered, wearing an expression Applejack couldn't place at first. It looked so unfamiliar on her.

Pinkie Pie was horrified.

"Applejack..." Pinkie mustered slowly, tears now rolling down her devastated face. "I'm so sorry."

"Eh, it's ok Pinkie, no need t'pologize." The farmpony responded awkwardly but supportingly. "You just had one of your Pinkie-sence fits, is all. Ah know ya don't have any control ov'rit."

Pinkie stood up quickly, her mane falling from it's usual poof into long straight lengths, her face contorted with sorrow. Applejack felt the chill of anxiety run up her spine as she observed her friend's sudden change of manestyle, an indicator she'd known Pinkie Pie far too long not to recognize. Something was wrong.

"No Applejack, you don't understand." Pinkie cried back as she took a step closer. "You need to leave!"

"Pinkie?" Fluttershy asked, unable to recognize this panicked pony as the friend she'd known for years. "What's wrong?"

"Go back to Sweet Apple Acres, Applejack!" Pinkie cried out again as she closed her eyes and tried to find elusive words. Her hair continuing to fall straight, masking her eyes as the overwhelming sensation of impending doom filled her guts. "You don't need to see this."

"See what?" Applejack asked, her throat quivering as she felt goosebumps spawn under her fur.

"Please listen to me!" She pleaded, now turning to Fluttershy for some kind of support on the matter. "Applejack needs to leave right now!"

Fluttershy stared back in silence, trembling in fear.

"Keep yer voice down!" Applejack fired back in an agitated whisper, locking eyes with Pinkie. "What's happening? What did yur Pinkie-sence tell you? Why do ah gotta leave?"

"Leave?" Pinkie asked, suddenly sounding chipper again. "We haven't found Rainbow Dash yet, silly! Let's get a move on!"

With an almost audible fwoop, Pinkie's mane shot back up into it's usual poof of pink fuzz and she continued to trot merrily along, passing Applejack and taking the lead, seemingly oblivious to the last seventy-eight seconds of her life.

Applejack needed only turn to see the disbelief on Fluttershy's face to confirm that no, she hadn't imagined the preceding.

"I've never seen her have an episode that severe before." Fluttershy spoke her unsettled mind. "You think she's okay?"

"Honestly, ah don't know." Applejack responded, sounding unbelievably tired. "This whole mess has gotten to everypony. Nothing makes sense no more."

"It's not just the ponies, either." Fluttershy added anxiously. "I've never seen the forest so empty of animals before. I feel like they're avoiding us, like something has them scared."

"Well all ah know iz'at Twilight is counting on us, and I'm not leaving this forest 'til we find some trace of Rainbow Dash." Applejack asserted firmly. "Keep your eyes and ears open for critters."

Fluttershy nodded meekly and continued her vigil. She managed to put one hoof in front of the other again, but found herself unable to focus on her task for very long. Something was different about the forest that night, but the specifics seem elude her.

Nopony could ever make heads or tails of Pinkie's sixth sense. Back in the day, Twilight had tried her best to, but no scientific or even magical explanation held water. Everypony in Ponyville had their theories, and eventually just accepted that Pinkie was different. But one thing all of Ponyville agreed on about Pinkie Pie was that her Pinkie-sence never lied.

Whatever it was Pinkie felt, whatever hint of horror so foul that the pink mare had to eject it from her mind still lay ahead.

Fluttershy watched Applejack closely.

Applejack watched Pinkie Pie closely.

Pinkie Pie took point, merrily bouncing a good four lengths in the lead like it was all a relaxing hike.



---------------------------------------------



The night air rested still and the rustling mummers of Everfree's trees ceased, as if shocked into silence at the gruesome scene that played out in the clearing deep within the forest.

Fighter Flight narrowed his eyes, looking over the ravaged body of his soon-to-be childe. Her rainbow mane contained a disproportionate amount of red, stained from the grotesque wound torn from her throat by the now-eviscerated Willow Wisp.

"You can turn around now." The amber-furred pegasus called out to Scootaloo. The quivering filly slowly turned her head back toward him, her attention darting instantly to the fallen mare. She quickly galloped over to Rainbow's corpse, her eyes re-watering.

"D-did it work?" She asked desperately and she approached, fearing the answer. "She- S-She's..."

"It worked." Fighter affirmed. "It takes time though."

Scootaloo frowned slowly toward him, her hope clearly hanging by a thread.

"How much time?" She pressed, half angry, half crying.

"Longer then we can wait here." He responded quickly. "It's time to go, kid. It'll be dawn soon."

"Ahh motherfucker!" Came a loud and pained groan as Wind Shear emerged from the long grass, blown clear across to the opposite side of the clearing by Willow's powerful strike. "Fucking bitch broke my ribs!"

Startled, Scootaloo swung around quickly to face the emerging mare, her violet and pink mane a mess with twigs and leaves. She was struggling to stand.

"Patch yourself up." Flight ordered unsympathetically. "We're leaving."

"What?" Wind's eyes perked up. "What did you..."

The pegasus mare's eye found the ashen pile that was once Willow Wisp and the rainbow-maned assailant torn and bloody beside her partner and her questions were answered.

"Oh." She sighed, finally getting to her hooves even as her shattered ribs audibly shifted in her chest. "Looks like I missed the fun part."

"Just hurry up!" Fighter barked, scowling at her. "We're gonna need to fly hard to make it back to the railway tunnel before sun up."

"Yeah yeah." Wind responded dismissively as she closed her eyes and concentrated. "I've got enough left to put myself back together, but don't get on my case if I wake up tomorrow night in a bad mood."

The mare was motionless a moment longer, concentrating on her body and feeling the smooth warmth of the Blood surge into her chest, knitting her bones and righting her organs. She let out a deep relieved sigh as the process finished before quickly finding her knife in the dirt and returning it to the scabbard under her wing.

Meanwhile, Fighter retrieved a small sized wooden box from the pocket of his black flightsuit. Flipping the latch and opening the lid revealed that the container was empty. He placed it down into Willow's ashes and scooped no more the a hoofful of the soot into it before closing it tightly once more. He unceremoniously brushed the remaining remains soiling his hoof onto his clothes and returned the box to his pocket.

Scootaloo stayed next to Rainbow's body as the bounty hunters went about their business. She couldn't take her eyes off her fallen idol. Watching her body closely for the slightest of movements, her sobbing subdued but the tears still flowing.

"Ok, we're ready to go." Fighter Flight announced as he turned back toward the young filly. "Scootaloo, how fast can you fly?"

"Uh..." Scootaloo hesitated.

"Wait, what are you doing?!" Wind Shear interrupted loudly. "She can't come back with us to Canterlot anymore! What do you think Rosery will do to her when she finds out we dusted her sire?"

"I assure you, she won't lay a hoof on Scootaloo." Flight responded adamantly, looking briefly at the young filly who returned an anxious and confused stare. "She might not have a sire but she will have somepony to look after her. That should be enough to satisfy the Prince's requirements."

"And who the hell is that gonna be?" Wind snapped. "And don't you fucking dare look at me for this."

Fighter stifled a chuckled. "No. Not you."

"Good." She grumbled back. "But if anything I think matters, I say it's kinder if we just painlessly put her out of her misery."

Scootaloo's eyes flared in fright.

"Luna`s light!" Fighter growled, exasperated. "Wind, she's a Daeva! Don't you have any desire to help one of your own clan?"

"In case you forgot, I just helped track down and murder one of my own clan. Besides, you say that like I sired her!" Wind Shear pressed. "She's not my problem! Fuck, she's not even your problem!"

"She's one of us." Fighter reminded firmly. "The safety of our own kind is always our problem."

Wind pushed a hoof into her face as she remembered she was talking to a brick wall.

"I still can't figure out if you're an idiot or not. Whatever." She dismissed. "It's just weird watching you play goody four-horseshoes with a fledgling who ain't yours. Are you really prepared to look after one, Fighter?"

The stallion had no response.

"If you wanted one so bad, why didn't you just sire one of your own?" Wind Shear followed up. "Maybe one who isn't a little kid?"

"Yeah." Fighter responded slowly, looking over his shoulder at Rainbow's corpse. "About that."

Wind Shear's jaw fell open, disbelief washing over her. "Oh you've gotta be fucking kidding me."

"Hey!" Fighter Flight blurted out. "I never said I was going to be looking after Scootaloo!"

"Are you serious, though?" Wind uttered, bewildered. "You can't just Embrace that crazy bitch! You have no idea who she is!"

"I know she cared about Scootaloo enough to sacrifice everything to try and protect her." Fighter returned.

"But the kid was terrified of her!" Wind countered. "She screamed and ran away when that punk showed up!"

"N-no I didn't! I would never!" Scootaloo objected quickly and angrily before suddenly stopping and thinking a moment. "Wait I... don't remember. Did I?"

"Look, we can all talk about this once we get to the tunnel, ok?" Fighter asked them both, agitated. Without waiting for a response he turned to address the filly. "Come on. Get airborne, it's time to go."

Scootaloo frowned, gnawing her bottom lip and twitching her wings nervously.

"I- I can't fly." She muttered almost inaudibly.

"Oh." Fighter said, taken very clearly off-guard by this sudden dilemma. "Uhh. Yet or ever?"

"Wow." Wind cooed, disingenuously impressed. "You're an asshole, Fighter. Have you even spoken to a kid before?"

The stallion grit his teeth as Wind Shear approached the filly.

Wind was smiling for what must have been the first time that night.

"It's fine, I can carry you." Wind said, a soft and friendly tone bubbling up from somewhere deep. She extended a hoof, ready to scoop up the filly, flaring her wings in preparation to lift off. "I'm Wind Shear by the way. Come on, let's go."

Scootaloo stared back at the mare, timid and listless. Her gaze dropped to her out-stretched hoof, then to the ground. She remained still, blinking messy tears from the wet fur around her eyes.

"Scootaloo, we had a deal." Fighter reminded firmly starting to sound impatient.

"I know!" Scootaloo snapped back, frustration swelling in her blood. "You help Rainbow Dash, and I come with you. It's just..."

She trailed off, barely able to put her feelings to words.

"Can't I at least say goodbye to Ponyville? Can I tell them where I'm going? Am I ever coming back?" She murmured hopelessly.

"Out of the question." Fighter blurted out bluntly.

Scootaloo's heart sunk deeper. "But... my friends."

There was a silence, broken by an oddly nostalgic sounding chuckle from Wind Shear

"I'm getting flashbacks here." She said, still smiling. "I'd forgotten just how hard my Embrace was for me. It's been so long, ya'know?"

The motionless filly perked her ears, if nothing else.

"Look kid, one way or another, the Kindred are always born in violence." Wind continued, her smile fading as she spoke. "It follows us wherever we go and in case you haven't figured it out, you're one of us now. That means you have to be very careful."

"If you go back to your old life, even for a moment, you risk bringing that violence with you. It's inevitable. You'll put everypony you care about back home at risk." Fighter added gruffly. "On top of that, you'd be putting us at risk too. Kindred who are Embraced at your age are a huge threat to the Masquerade."

"The what now?" Scootaloo asked, crooking her head.

"I know you want answers, kid. You definitely deserve them after what you've been through, but we need to find shelter before the sun comes up." Fighter spoke trotting over to the throatless pony next to them.

Crouching down next to Rainbow Dash's still-motionless body, Fighter slowly and gingerly worked his hooves underneath her. With a rather startling lack of effort, he opened his wings and lifted off, pulling the fully grown dead mare's form into his arms, cradling her head into his chest, hovering a foot off the ground with even and steady flaps.

"Believe it or not, you're pretty lucky, Scootaloo." Wind chimed in.

The filly scowled at Wind Shear, not buying it.

"What I mean is." She clarified. "Most Kindred really don't give a damn about anything other then their next meal. Apathy just naturally starts to set in after you've lived a few centuries."

Scootaloo crooked her head, still not quite seeing it. "Uhh."

"I'll admit. I'm kinda like that myself. But Fighter Flight." Wind stopped and pointed to the stallion, still airborne with Rainbow Dash carried securely in his hooves. "He isn't. I'll never understand why, and I don't think I even care anymore, but he's just different. I would have killed to have somepony like him on my side when I was a fledgeling. Maybe things would have gone different for me if I did."

The filly gazed up at the airborne stallion, he returned an unsure stare.

"You don't ever have to trust me if you don't want to, Scootaloo." Wind continued. "If anything, it would be good practice if you didn't. But please, try and trust Fighter. He might be the only Kindred in Equestria that deserves it."

Wind Shear returned her outstretched hoof toward Scootaloo, awaiting her. Scootaloo lingered, but in time she found the strength to take hold. She took Wind's forelimb closely and felt her small form scooped and hoisted into the night air. The illusion of flight still managed to make her smile, albeit weakly.

She'd never been carried in-flight by anypony else but Rainbow Dash before.

Fighter watched carefully as the two took off. He followed closely behind, carrying with him his own precious cargo. He quickly caught up with Wind Shear as their altitude leveled off. They veered toward the mountains. Toward Canterlot.

The cold air rushed through fur and feather and the filly soon looked out upon the forest canopy as she was lifted beyond it. In the distance were the modest lights of Ponyville. They quickly grew faint, before disappearing in the forming fog.

"Thanks." Fighter called out to Wind.

"Try and keep up, slowpoke!" Wind called back playfully, taking the lead.

-----------

The Golden Oak library wore the facade of peace on its exterior, but within lay restless turmoil. Spike had once again been left alone. He was pretty sure he would never get used to solitude. Even during the best of times he found it difficult being separated from Twilight. While he considered the other ponies of Ponyville very much so his friends, she was the closest thing the young dragon had to a family, the first thing he saw when he hatched, his mother for all intents and purposes.

But she wasn't his mother, the dragon tried to remind himself. He was her assistant and he had to follow her orders, even if it ment staying home alone filled with crippling worry while she went off and did something dangerous. The small handful of chores that needed doing did not keep Spike's troubled mind distracted for long, and when time came to go to bed he felt Twilight's absence even harder. Trying to sleep knowing she wasn't home, that she was out there putting herself at risk, the dragon had a better chance of getting a peaceful night's slumber out in the middle of a hailstorm.

He thrashed about in his tiny pet basket of a bed, tangling his sheet around his limbs as he pushed his face into the pillow over and over at various angles to see if a specific one would magically knock him unconscious. It might have been ten minutes, it might have been an hour, but eventually pure exhaustion overrode all else and he drifted off, visions of Twilight in peril slowly evaporating as his lids closed.

The burst of magical violet light flashed into every corner of the dark bedroom. It was enough to drag Spike back into awareness, with the alarmed calls that followed bolting him awake completely.

"Spike! Spike where are you!?" A frantic, raincoat-clad Twilight Sparkle called out immediately as the teleportation spell completed.

"Here! I'm here!" Spike gasped, choking on his tongue in fright as he sat up in his bed. She was already standing over him, a visage of pure panic upon her face.

"I need you to do something for me! It's an emergency!" The unicorn blurted out, coat flapping as she quickly swung around and levitated a blank sheet parchment from her desk across the room and lay it on the ground before her.

"W-What's wrong!?" Spike stammered nervously as he rolled hastily out of bed and quickly took up position next to Twilight.

She focused her magic once again and cast the second stage of the photographic memory spell. A thin beam of light traversed the parchment and etched out a copy of the mysterious message found in Keen Eye's strongbox onto the surface.

"Keen Eye isn't with the royal guard." She uttered grimly.

"What?!" Spike barked, aghast.

"He's an imposter, Spike! Look at this!" Twilight said, floating the recreated message up into Spike's grasp. "This is a copy of a message I found in Keen's strongbox. He's taking orders from somepony else, part of some kind of secret organization."

The dragon's eyes danced over the page, widening progressively as he took in its cryptic contents.

"W-what do we do?" Spike asked desperately, "Tell the other guards?"

"No, Spike!" Twilight exclaimed. "We can't let Keen know we're on to him, he might be dangerous. He might already know I broke into his tent. We don't have much time!"

"What do you mean?" Spike asked fearfully as he watched Twilight hastily scoop a bundle of parchment, ink, and quills into her saddlebag.

"I need you to show this message to the girls." Twilight ordered firmly as she draped her saddlebag onto her back. "They need to know that Keen Eye is not to be trusted."

"Wait, where are you going?" Spike inquired with tension, clutching the parchments firmly, realizing he was once again about to be left alone.

"Canterlot." Twilight responded quickly.

"Right now!?" Spike pressed as he watched Twilight flip through the Ponyville train schedule.

"Right now." She affirmed as she tossed the pamphlet on to her desk. "If I can make it to the train station in the next thirty seconds, I should be able to catch the early morning express train."

Spike could only stare. It was all happening so fast. He had so many questions, but he knew Twilight didn't have the answers.

"I'll be back soon, I promise." She reassured. "There's something I need to do. Just get that message to the girls and make sure Keen Eye doesn't find out we know. I don't know what he'll do if he realizes his cover is blown."

Spike nodded, though his overwhelmed expression seemed to contradict his signal of understanding.

"Just be safe." He murmured, clutching the parchment in his claws hard.

"You too, Spike." She said yanking him into a brief hug. "No matter what, you have stay away from Keen Eye."

Spike nodded and the unicorn closed her eyes, quickly summoning forth another teleportation spell. Her mind traced the outline of Ponyville's modest train station behind her eyelids and after a few seconds she was gone, vanishing in another bright flash of violet light.

It took Spike a moment before his logial self to returned to him. The whirlwind rendezvous with Twilight left him fearful and confused and it was a while until the true gravitas of the situation sunk in. He quickly folded the parchment into a small square and clutched it his claws as he made for the door. Odds were Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Applejack were still out in the forest, so he'd go to Rarity first.

Spike opened the door to exit the library but couldn't hold back a terrified gasp from escaping him.

"Oh I'm sorry." Keen Eye apologized as the door opened. "I didn't mean to scare you just then."


________



"Oh no!" Fluttershy whimpered loudly as she shined her headlamp into an animal den dug beneath one of Everfree's innumerable trees.

"'Nother empty one?" AJ grumbled, growing tired of disappointment.

"No no no! This makes no sense!" Fluttershy responded in a panic, suddenly reaching into the burrow with both her hooves.

"Whoa!" Applejack said, her eyes widening. "Hold on a minute—"

Fluttershy dragged out a tangled mess of twigs, feathers, and leaves. It was a nest, and within lay two pearly white eggs covered in green speckles.

The gentle mare carefully rotated the nest and felt her eyes water as she spotted garish and unmistakably fatal cracks running along the surface of each.

"What happened to their mother?" Fluttershy spoke, barely composed. "W-What's happening to this forest?"

"We outta jus' move on." The farmpony urged.

"Applejack, these are cockatrice eggs." Fluttershy turned, gritting her teeth. "This nest was made no more then a day or two ago."

"Umm." AJ paused. "Ah don't think ah follow ya."

"They have no natural predators! Why in Equestria is this nest abandoned? Something is very very wrong!" Fluttershy snapped angrily. "Do you follow me yet!?"

"Look, ah know this is frustratin' for ya." Applejack fired back, her anger escalating. "But we gotta laundry list of mysteries pilin' up and ah just don't think ah got any more room to care about 'nother one! We're just gonna hafta find Rainbow the ol' fashioned way."

"Fine! Then I'm leaving!" Fluttershy said as she began to beat her wings and hover off the ground.

"Like hay you are!" Applejack shouted. "Forget about the darn critters for a second! We gotta find Rainbow Dash! Twilight is counting on us!"

Fluttershy paused in mid-air and looked furiously back down at her land-locked companion below.

"You know what!? These animals are my friends too, Applejack! I don't care if you think it's unimportant! It's important to me! They're all important to me!" Fluttershy ranted back, angrier then Applejack had ever seen her in her life. "I know Rainbow Dash is in trouble, but so are they! I just know it!"

Without even waiting for Applejack's reply, the pegasus ascended beyond the canopy and vanished out of sight.

"Fine then! Pinkie and ah will be able to cover more ground without you whimpering over a few scrambled eggs anyway!" Applejack shouted through grit teeth up into the leaves. "Comon' Pinkie Pie, let's go!"

"Pinkie Pie?"

AJ turned to where Pinkie Pie had been standing when they had stopped to investigate the animal den and quickly noticed a distinct lack of Pinkie Pie. The farmpony's eyes darted all around her as she tried to locate her, and breathed a quick sigh of relief as she spotted the light of Pinkie Pie's headlamp in a clearing only a short distance up ahead.

Pushing through the shrubs, AJ reached the lightly wooded patch and approached the pink earth pony.

She was sitting in the long grass, nothing more. The final hours of moonlight illuminated the two friends.

"Ya'll really shouldn't go wanderin' off like that." Applejack said as she trot up beside her.

"Oh! Hey Applejack!" Pinkie Pie looked over her shoulder and smiled before raising a brow, noticing she was alone. "Where's Fluttershy?"

"She went home, ah think." AJ sighing, overwhelmed as she sat down next to her. "Ah'm starting to think maybe we should do the same. We got into a bit'ova spat and she flew off. This whole trip into the forest has been a huge waste a'time."

"Ohh. That's too bad." Pinkie said, crestfallen as she pulled Rainbow Dash's lightning bolt emblazoned saddlebag up from the long grass beside her and dangled it front of her. "I was gonna give her this in case she's friends with any of those dogs that can track ponies by scent."

Applejack's eyes bolted open so hard, her hat slid off.

"Land's sake!" Applejack blurted out. "Where did you find that!?"

"Right here in this clearing. I sat on it by accident." Pinkie stated plainly. "Oh wait. I guess that means my scent is on it now too."

"Was their anything inside!?" Applejack pressed, returning her hat to her head.

"These!" Pinkie answered, placing the bag on the ground, opening it and pulling out a small corked vial and a larger jar, both empty. "Thank goodness they didn't break when I sat on them. The last thing this night needs is a flank full of broken glass."

Applejack quickly took the containers from Pinkie and examined them hastily in the light beam of her headlamp, trying to acquire some insight. She uncorked the vial and wrinkled her nose, immediately resealing it.

"Ugh!" Applejack grunted. "Whatever was in this one smelt really weird."

"Oh no!" Pinkie's said as her ears drooped. "That's gonna throw the dogs off even more!"

"Forget about the dogs!" AJ scolded as she returned the jars to the bag and slung it over her back. "We need to take a look around! Rainbow was probably here! There could be more clues."

"I'm on it!" Pinkie barked, springing to her hooves and pushing her muzzle to the ground, sniffing vigorously as she began to sweep over the clearing. It seemed she didn't feel like forgetting about the dogs just yet.

Applejack rolled her eyes and began to search as well, shuffling her hooves around the long grass near where the saddlebag was found while Pinkie sniffed her way over to the opposite end of the clearing. Time passed as the pair combed through the bushes and dirt. Applejack took the time to address the other issue laying heavy on her mind.

"Pinkie?" Applejack called out as she continued her investigation.

"Yes?" She responded, lifting her now dirt covered muzzle up from the ground and looking toward her.

"About earlier. Your Pinkie-sence. That fit you had?" AJ started to ask.

"Oh yeah! That was a big one, wasn't it?" She spoke in an awkwardly cheery tone. "My legs are still sore from all the writhing!"

"Uh huh." The farmpony said, somewhat unsettled by the remark. "Ah was just wonderin' if y'all were ok. This one seemed a might bit more violent then your last few. Have they ever made you faint like that before tonight?"

"I don't remember fainting." Pinkie stated, not at all concerned. "I also don't seem to remember waking up really scared and urging you to go home either."

"But... uhh... Come again?" The reply left Applejack scratching her head.

"You're still here, so it doesn't really matter now anyways." Pinked followed up frankly before returning her muzzle to the forest floor and continuing to sniff around diligently.

After years of knowing her, Applejack had always operated under the belief that the workings of that whimsical pink mare's brain were beyond her comprehension. That belief had always given her a sort of dismissive comfort before. Now, not so much. Her abominable positive attitude through all this adversity, was as much a sanctuary as it was a fortress, and Applejack was starting to grow curious what was transpiring behind those thick stone walls. Maybe it was this feeling that drove Twilight nearly insane trying to figure the pink-maned mystery out. Maybe it would be best to just leave her alone.

"Ugh!", There was a sudden loud eruption of coughing and choking from Pinkie Pie that derailed the farmpony's train of thought. She snapped her head toward her friend and began to gallop toward her.

"Pinkie?!" AJ called out in concern. "Are ya having another one?"

Pinkie Pie continued to cough and sputter as Applejack closed in, frantically wiping her muzzle clean of the pitch black substance now staining the fur around her nose.

"Who leaves a giant pile of ashes out in the middle of a forest!?" Pinkie Pie shouted in outrage, her nostrils burning and her throat soiled with the anomalous soot.

"What'n tarnation?" Applejack queried, brushing a hoof through the pile. "Campfire maybe? Wait, no. This couldn'tve been a fire, the grass underneath ain't burned."

"I wonder where it came from then." Pinkie cooed, tilting her head and peering deeply into the pile, being careful not to inhale it this time.

Applejack wracked her brain but came up blank. Detective stuff was more Twilight's shtick anyways. She offered up a weary shrug and made special note of the mysterious ash.

"Well, we might notta found Rainbow, but we've got some clues at least." Applejack affirmed. "Let's do one more sweep just to be sure we haven't missed anything and head back to show Twilight what we found."

The two earth ponies nodded to one another and began to comb through clearing a final time. Applejack had been prepared to call the entire evening a waste, but as the night stretched into its finale , it felt like some degree of hope was salvaged.

Applejack was only paying half attention to Pinkie Pie now. She was too preoccupied with the promise of clues and the sleep she was going to have when she finally got home. Her face was buried in the long grass as Pinkie's mane began to slowly and silently fall straight across her eyes.

The pink mare looked fearfully along the outside of the perimeter of the clearing.

It was close.

It was like a shadow of a sword dangling overhead.

Some horrid, unchangeable truth stowed away like a time bomb.

Try as she might, Pinkie couldn't ignore it.

Her eyes focused in unabashed terror as she looked out into an unassuming patch of the forest just outside the clearing.

There!

~~~~~

Well, there it is.

You might as well go over and take a look, Pinkie.

Applejack will find it eventually.

You know she will.

"Maybe we should both just head back now." Pinkie called out, her voice starting to quiver as she half-heartedly pretended to investigate the grass.

"Ah jus wanna do a quick sweep 'round the outside of the clearing, Pinkie." AJ responded quickly. "Won't take too long."

Careful now, Pinkie.

The passenger isn't suppose to drive.

"But she's my friend." Pinkie responded faintly to nopony. "I want to protect her."

You can't protect her from this.

You're just gonna make yourself more miserable.

"S-shut up." She uttered bitterly.

You know you can't stop this.

Pinkie clenched her teeth and paced toward the edge of the clearing, each hooffall gradual and labored like it were fighting against the rising tide.

"Why?" She pleaded softly, resigned. "Why show it to me if I can't change it?"

You can't know that yet.

But don't worry, you'll be the first to find out.

You always are.

~~~~~

"Y'all say somethin'?" Applejack questioned as she looked out across the clearing, seeing Pinkie slowly ambling off. "Pinkie?"

Turning briskly, Applejack galloped though the grass alongside her silent friend, apprehension cresting in her heart as she came close enough to see Pinkie's mane once again deflated down the back of her neck.

"It's this way." She uttered, her monotone a far cry from her sprightly norm.

"W-what is?" Applejack responded, unable to hide her swelling dread. She considered for a moment if this was what Pinkie had warned her about earlier.

"I don't know." Pinkie answered plainly. "Probably."

"Do ya still want me'da leave?" Applejack offered up, not quite realizing what had just happened.

"It doesn't matter anymore." She relinquished as she approached the thick underbrush at the base of the treeline where the Everfree forest continued. She wrapped her hoof around a few low hanging branches. "It's not gonna change what's on the other side of this."

Pinkie passed back under the canopy, vanishing behind the thick brush as the branches swung back in place behind her, swaying apathetically. Applejack remained, feeling the sudden and horrendous weight of her hooves, her brain alive and frantic.

It had been a long time since she had felt a consuming fear like this.

She had always promised herself she would be strong. She had a family that needed her to be, Friends that needed her to be.

Whatever this is. You're strong. Remember that.

It was enough of a reminder to finally lift those agonizingly heavy hooves of hers.

She began to reach out to those same swaying branches as weeping breaths slipped between their leaves.

Behind them sat Pinkie.

Her head whipped around, tear-filled eyes obscured by her wilted mane. They fell upon her dear friend.

"No. Please." Pinkie uttered, remorsefully. "I didn't know!"

"Pinkie jus' calm down." Applejack spoke, desperately maintaining control of her own bewildered mind as she paced closer. "You're gonna be ok. Ah'm gonna take you home."

A horrid fear spawned in Pinkie's eyes as she saw Applejack approach, shaking her head in a dire and wordless objection.

The pink mare bolted away in full gallop. Headlamp extinguished, she swiftly disappeared into the trees.

"W-wait!" Applejack called out.

But the light from AJ's own lamp landed where her friend had been waiting for her a moment ago. Where she had been lead to.

An icy dagger twisted into the farmpony's guts.

She lay, her tiny body propped against a tree as if in repose.

She looked almost peaceful.

Limbs tucked neatly against her sides.

Sparkless eyes half-closed. Unblinking even as the beam of light passed over her motionless face.

Applejack approached her sister, her spasming lungs failing to acquire the oxygen she needed to scream out in mutilated awe.

She felt magma roiling in her stomach

Her vision tunneled as she found herself next to little Apple Bloom.

She pushed a trembling hoof through her mane.

Her skull, caved in.

Blood caked.

Body stiff.

Rigor Mortis.

Why?

Oh, Celestia and Luna and all who came before. Why?



-----------------------------



Keen Eye looked down toward the young dragon, standing just outside the doorway. The tall and musclar ash grey unicorn certainly had the physique to be in the royal guard. The armour he wore certainly looked authentic. The spear slung across his back appeared standard issue. However there was something he wore in that moment unlike anything possessed by the other guards, an ominous scowl.

"Spike, Right?" Keen inquired as he casually let himself in. "Awfully early in the morning to be heading out. The sun isn't even up yet."

Spike couldn't stop him, his focus had fallen entirely on inconspicuously balling up the parchment in his claws.

"Y-yeah." Spike responded slowly, his heart concussing painfully in his chest. "Just uh- getting an early start on some of my errands. W-what are you doing here?"

"Miss Sparkle, where is she?" Keen fired back instantly.

"T-twilight? I haven't seen her all night." Spike managed to muster, sounding what he felt was pretty convincing.

Keen Eye frowned at him.

"Ahh. I see." The stallion responded as he continued to look around the interior of the library.

"Uhh. If I see her I'll let her know you're looking for her." Spike offered, trying to remain calm.

"Magic's quite an interesting thing, Spike." Keen Eye spoke plainly.

Spike couldn't respond. His eyes remained fixed on Keen Eye as he continued to pace abount the room, casually observing something beyond the dragon's perception

"Every unicorn has a sort of unique magical signature, traces that get left behind whenever they cast a spell." Keen Eye exposited. "Twilight studied a lot of magic. Did she ever tell you that?"

"I uh-" Spike tried and failed to respond.

"Simple spells barely leave behind anything, but the stronger the spell is the more traces of magic get left behind." Keen Eye continued, an unmistakeable menace in his tone.

Spike gulped as he considered running through the open door.

He wouldn't make it very far.

His eyes landed upon the spear Keen carried on his back.

"Something like- oh let's just use teleportation as an example." Keen chuckled briefly. "Why that's like a big magical bomb going off. Leaves behind a lot of clues."

Spike began to backpedal towards the door, dread beginning to surge into his veins.

"How rude of me." Keen Eye said apologetically as his horn ignited, library door slamming shut in an instant.

Spike flinched.

"Looking for clues is my job, Spike." Keen Eye said as he turned toward the dragon and began to approach him, his voice cracking into something distantly sinister. "You know that, right?"

"Y-yeah." Spike uttered, viably trembling.

"So I'm going to ask you this exactly one more time, and you should probably think very carefully before you lie to me again." The stallion said as he lowered his head within inches of Spike's face, each word punctuated by an intimidating grunt. "Where is Twilight Sparkle?"

"She uh-" Spike choked out, tears forming. "S-she isn't- I mean, she wasn't-"

"Careful now." Keen scathed threateningly as a he began to pull the spear from his back, wrapping his forelimb around the shaft and brandishing it conspicuously. "I've been watching Twilight for a while now. She really does rely on you. I really don't think she can take of herself on her own."

With a swift whoosh of tempered steel, Spike yelped and froze up only to feel the lightest of feather taps from the razored spearhead land atop his snout, hovering threateningly.

"You wouldn't want to leave her on her own, would you?" Keen asked in a dark curiosity.

Spike closed his eyes as the pretender loomed over him. He twisted his head away from his assailant, desperately wanting to believe that he was still asleep in his bed, that he would wake up and Twilight would be there to comfort him. But he felt it on the hot breath of Keen Eye only inches away from him. This was a nightmare he wouldn't be awakening from.

"Lieutenant!?" a distance voice cried out. Keen Eye's gaze bolted quickly to the windows, then the door.

The call repeated, louder this time, as the sound of galloping approached from outside the library.

In a flash, Keen stood up straight and slung the spear across his back, backing up a few paces. Like the flip of a hyperactive switch he was back to his tightly coiled professional facade peering at the door attentively as an earth pony guardstallion burst through it, panting and perspiring from what must have been a long run.

"Lieutenant Keen Eye! Sir!" The winded earth pony saluted briefly. "The body of a filly has been found in the Everfree Forest!"

"Ah, Scootaloo's remains then?" Keen nodded somberly. "Take me to them."

"Negative, sir." The guard corrected quickly. "It's somepony else."

Both Spike and Keen Eye's jaws fell open in unison, struck identically speechless.

"Sir, the mare who discovered the body is at town hall." The guard pony reported. "Sargent Arrowshaft has already begun questioning her."

"What about the body?" Keen pressed quickly.

"It's been taken to the morgue at Ponyville Hospital." The guard responded. "The coroner has already performed a preliminary examination on it and has asked to speak to the pony in charge of the investigation immediately."

"Why wasn't I informed of this sooner!" Keen Eye barked, sounding as angry as he seemed baffled. "I told the entire squad if a body was found, I was to be shown it before it was moved!"

"Uh." The guardpony stalled, trying to broach the topic with his commanding officer carefully "Nopony could find you, sir. I've myself have been looking for you for nearly half an hour."

Keen Eye was silent, opting not to follow up.

"Sir." The guardstallion decided he would. "You told the team searching the forest for Dash that you'd be staying behind in the command tent, and told the units at the command tent that you'd be going into the forest."

"You're getting a bit lippy for your rank, corporal." Keen Eye warned as the earth pony reflexively threw up a nervous salute.

"Sorry, sir." He quickly offered. His eyes falling curiously to the terrified looking dragon in the corner of the room.

"Just take me to the morgue." Keen Eye commanded the soldier as he too cast down a threatening look to the dragon below as he left.

The library door latched shut as the two made haste, leaving Spike alone in his home once more.

He gasped for air, relief pouring over him as he face remained unskewered and Twilight's location remained unknown to the treacherous unicorn. But as he collected himself, he realized he had only the expiry of somepony to thank for it.

"Somepony died?" He murmured to himself as he flattened out the crumpled parchment in his grasp

He watched Keen Eye and the other guard gallop off into lampless streets through the windows. Eventually the dragon carefully slipped out the back way and toward Carousel Boutique.


~~~~~~~~~~


The narrow passage deep within the railway tunnel filled Scootaloo's mind with nightmarish thoughts of claustrophobic entrapment as she struggled to press her form through the rocks and into the sheltered alcove.

Once again, the ramshackle set-up was lit only by a small lantern between the two dilapidated beds. No flame, but brimming with fireflies.

Scootaloo frowned as she made her way inside and took in their accommodations as Fighter Flight and Wind Shear entered behind her, forcing her farther into the room. Fighter Flight quickly carried Rainbow Dash to one of the beds and lay her carefully down on the mattress.

Wind Shear paced disinterestedly to the single other unoccupied bed. Beside it, she wrestled herself out of her flightsuit, her cutie mark exposed as a cloud diced and separated into three sections by two thin slashes. She flopped down on the bed without a word, tail twitching as she relaxed.

"Is this where you guys live?" Scootaloo asked tenuously, watching Fighter's actions with Dash very carefully.

"This is just a safe house to spend the day in if we stray too far from Canterlot." Fighter explained as he tore a few strips of fabric off of the worn sheets. "It's dark and it's hidden, and that's all that matters for now."

"She still hasn't moved?" Scootaloo probed as she came along beside him.

Fighter shook his head and began to restrain Rainbow Dash. Using long strands of fabric twisted into rope to tie each of her limbs to a post of the bed frame, as well as thread a length of the fabric rope between her teeth.

"What are you doing?" She asked uneasily.

"A fledgling Kindred awakening for the first time is going to be three things." Fighter explained as he worked away. "Scared, confused, and hungry. This is just a precaution."

"If I woke up tied up I don't see how that's gonna make me any less scared or confused." Scootaloo returned disapprovingly.

"Honestly, you'll get used to the first two." Fighter uttered in a somewhat cheeky tone. "Its the third one that's really the problem."

The filly dwelled on the statement.

"I'll have to do it too, won't I?" She asked, scowling sadly. "I have to drink blood, like what Willow did to Rainbow."

"You have to drink blood, yes. But listen to me Scootaloo. This is important." Fighter Flight affirmed before clutching the young one's eyes with an intense gaze.

"You don't have to be like Willow Wisp. No matter happens between now and well- forever, remember that."

Scootaloo nodded slowly, still just a bit too overwhelmed by all that's happened to completely understand what he meant.

"Still, it's a shame we don't have time to go out and feed before sun up. We've all had a rough night." Fighter grunted through the cloth in his mouth as he tightened the last binding on one of Rainbow's hind legs and stepping back to check his knots. "Wind had to put her ribcage back together, I'm nearing empty after performing the Embrace. How about you? Did Willow Wisp at least keep you topped up?"

Scootaloo shrugged.

"Well I can't imagine the menu was all that good out in the Everfree Forest. There's a reason you don't find many Kindred away from big cities." Fighter Flight continued, nearly chuckling. "Do you remember anything yet?"

"Not really." Scootaloo admitted. "Whenever I try all I can seem to think about is... Willow's face. Just her being there, and me really liking the feeling. I don't know why."

"She must have had quite a hold on you, then." Fighter Flight responded, crossing his forelimbs. "Now that she's dust, your memory will come back in time if you focus on it."

"What did she do to me exactly?" The filly asked in a tired curiosity.

"Aside from killing you and your friend here?" Fighter said with no hesitance or sympathy.

Wind Shear rolled over in her bed, well within earshot, looking at Fighter with inquisitive brow but otherwise pretending to not listen.

Scootaloo was painfully stung for a moment but could feel a clarity begin to build in her mind.

"One of the best ways the deal with the aftereffect of a strong Vinculum is focus on the truth. Focus on remembering what it was your former-regnant took from you." Fighter calmly explained himself.

"What are you saying?" Scootaloo pleaded, feeling the weight of emotion in her eyelids.

"Short answer, Scootaloo. You were brainwashed, but I honestly wish it were just that simple." Fighter spoke, sitting down next to the filly. "Willow Wisp had you under the effect of a Vinculum. She fed you her own Blood, didn't she?"

The filly's pupils dilated and a heavy breath left her lungs. Some unnatural desire violently twisted in her core. She felt it in her mouth. The coppery taste. The texture of the ambrosia across her touge. The feeling of Willow's fur against her muzzle as she sunk her fangs into her. Scootaloo stared into nowhere as she began to understand she would never feel it again. She nodded to Fighter, unable to stop herself from feeling remorse that the source of the wonderful crimson was no more.

"She... did..." The filly muttered.

"Kindred drink the blood of mortal creatures." Fighter continued. "But a Kindred's own Vitae is very different from regular blood. The Vinculum is just one example of the kind of stuff that starts to happen when a Kindred drinks the Blood of their own kind." 

Scootaloo continued to stare into oblivion, struggling to find words. "It- It felt like... I- I-"

"-loved her." Fighter Flight finished as he to began to wrestle out of his flightsuit, his own cutie mark visible, a diagonal spear with white feathered wings erupting forth from either side of the shaft. He sat down next to Scootaloo. "I know, kid. That's what the Vinculum is. It wasn't real. Nothing you felt toward her was. It's one of the Blood's more disturbing characteristics."

Scootaloo's tearful eyes locked unfocused on Rainbow Dash, tied down on the bed.

"She hated her." Scootaloo explained, melancholy. "I don't remember why. Willow told me so many horrible things about her. All of them were lies but I believed her. I didn't even question it."

Fighter Flight sighed, closing his eyes as he listened.

Scootaloo clenched her teeth, gasping in air as her mind continued to return to her.

"She was trying to take me away from her." Scootaloo uttered as a burgeoning fury boiled in her words. "She taught me to be afraid of her, to hate her, just like she did! Why?!"

The filly turned and lunged toward Fighter Fight, the Beast making an introduction in her soul as the stallion reached out and caught her shoulder, holding her at limb's length as she snapped her now-exposed fangs toward the older Kindred's snout.

"Why did she do this to me!? Why did she take my entire future away!?" Scootaloo roared out in savagery.

The filly suddenly became aware of herself, retreating and sitting back down, eyes darting away in wordless apology. She pulled her hind legs into her torso and buried her snout out of sight, breaking down into tears for what must have been the seventh time that night.

Fighter Flight chewed his bottom lip as he looked toward Wind Shear.

The mare met his gaze, but she rolled her eyes dismissively, rolling over in the bed away from the two.

Fighter gingerly raised his hoof and extended it slowly toward Scootaloo, but quickly pulled it back to his side and cleared his throat.

"I'm sorry." He offered tentatively. "Willow Wisp- she took something from you that no form of justice will ever be able to give back. You can understand why we had to stop her."

"I'm glad you killed her." Scootaloo snarled into her hooves.

Fighter narrowed his eyes toward the filly, frowning slightly for a moment before letting his gaze soften.

"Of course you are." He said, nearly chuckling.

Scootaloo emerged from her hooves just enough to lay herself down on the cold stone of the cavern floor.

"Here." Fighter Flight said as he carefully tugged the last few scraps of sheets off the bed and draped them over her, as well as providing her with a rather pathetic looking pillow. "Your body still probably thinks it needs heat. I'll stay up and keep an eye on Dash."

"Thanks." She nodded to the stallion.

She took the thread bare, flattened, and slightly damp pillow and pushed the dirty old thing under her head, desperate in that moment for comfort in any form.


-------------------------


The Ponyville Hospital wasn't a large facility. It's morgue had storage for only nine cadavers, and for years now had only required to be staffed by one pony, the coroner, a burly and grim faced dark brown earth pony stallion by the name of Post Mortem. He'd long accepted that this job occasionally asked bizarre hours of him. He worked when there was work to be done. When he had learned that the corpse of Apple Bloom, a filly he'd seen happily playing in the streets last week, had been brought in dead from the Everfree Forest, he knew there was plenty of work to be done.

The florescent lights buzzed as he hovered beside the whiteboard next to his desk, rolling the latex covers off his hooves and disposing of them carefully in the bio-hazardous waste bin. He raised a marker against the board and began to stroke the ink against the clean plastic with a flurry of squeaks, adding to his notes from the preliminary examination of the cadaver.


NO DECOMPOSITION - DEATH >8 HOURS AGO
LARGE OBJECT LOW VELOCITY IMPACT - SEVERE BUT NO CRANIAL PENETRATION
NO EXTERIOR EVIDENCE OF INJURY BEYOND HEAD WOUND
CoD: BRAIN DAMAGE? SHOCK? BLOOD LOSS?


"You work pretty quickly." Keen Eye spoke as he approached the open door into the small but well ventilated room, looking over the coroner's notes as he let himself in.

"The Apples are well-liked ponies here in Ponyville." Post Mortem spoke in a low and humorless voice. "If they're willing to donate a barrel of apples every year to the hospital food drive, then the least I can do for them is make the information regarding the death of their youngest available to them in a timely manner."

Keen Eye processed the statement for a moment. "You wanted to see me?"

Post turned away from the whiteboard, apron swinging as he faced the royal guard with a scowl. "What I wanted was not to be cutting open a dead kid. I figured you and the guards were here so I wouldn't have to, but here we are."

Keen's gaze began to cut against the earth pony's eyes.

"Since you guys were nice enough to haul one in for me." Post Mortem continued sardonically. "I need you to bring this poor girl's sister in here to identify her. I heard you have her in custody."

Keen frowned. "You already know who she is."

"Yes, but unlike you and your guards who seems to be losing track of more fillies then finding them, I do my job properly." The coroner scathed. "This is a formal inquest, which means she needs to be officially identified by next-of-kin in my presence. I also need consent from a legal guardian to perform an autopsy on a minor. Their parents are long gone, you've already got her brother arrested, and good luck managing to get Granny Smith down here."

The coroner turned away again, opting to take in the dark but glowing pre-dawn morning sky through the small office's window.

The faux-Lieutenant grimaced but he swallowed the earth pony's words.

"I'll bring you Applejack." Keen Eye agreed, sounding cool and professional. "After the autopsy I expect a full report from you. Anything you learn should be considered confidential to the investigation. What can you tell me so far?"

"Not much." The coroner co-operated. "She recived a nasty bash to the head, but from what I can determine without opening her up, I don't believe it's what killed her."

"That's it?" Keen Eye pressed, turning to look at the filly-shaped lump under the sheet on the exam table in the corner of the room.

"For now." Post Mortem replied quietly. "The sooner you get Applejack here, the sooner I can start."


---------------------


"Why were you in the Everfree Forest?" The dark blue pegasus guard-Sargent known as Arrowshaft asked in a clam and even voice, sitting opposite a blonde haired earth pony who appeared to be Applejack.

She sat catatonic, staring with bleary eyes unfocused into the center of the table that divided the small and poorly lit interrogation room buried in the corridors of town hall.

"Why were you in possession of this." Sargent Arrowshaft asked again, calmly, placing Rainbow Dash's saddlebag onto the centre of the table where Applejack's thousand yard stare was burning a hole.

She closed her eyes, but continued her silence.

"Did you witness what happened to the filly in the forest." The Sargent continued in the same tone, unwavering.

Applejack's eyes locked with her interrogator, but her vacant expression remained unchanged, lips unmoving.

A knock came from the door. Keen Eye's snout emerged from the windowed door.

"A moment, Sargent?" The commanding officer beckoned Arrowshaft to him.

Without delay the burly pegasi left the table and met with Keen Eye in the hallway outside.

"What do we know so far?" Keen asked hastily.

"Almost nothing." Arrowshaft admitted. "A group of guards searching for Rainbow Dash in Everfree said they heard screaming, and found her clinging on to her sister's body completely hysterical. It took three guards to pull her off of it."

Keen Eye watched Applejack carefully from outside.

"She hasn't said a word to anypony since we brought her in." The sargent continued.

"The coroner needs her at the mourge immediately." Keen cut to the point.

"With all due respect, sir." Sargent Arrowshaft spoke freely, earnest concern in his voice as he looked back in on the mare inside. "I don't know if she's in any state to see her sister's corpse again. She's pretty messed up."

"We can start worrying about her feelings once she starts telling us what we need to know." Keen Eye decreeded bluntly. "Once I come back with her, I want you to keep questioning her."

"Are we actually charging her with anything, sir?" The Sargent inquired, raising a brow at his CO's apathetic tone. "We can't just keep her here forever."

"You found her with Dash's saddlebag, right? Until she co-operates, hold her on suspicion of conspiring with her." Keen Eye ordered, "I'll file the charges myself once I come back."

Arrowshaft looked unhappy, but nodded and saluted his superior, opening the door and entering the interrogation room along side him.

"Applejack. Come with me, please. You're needed at the morgue." Keen Eye said as he trot in, more commanding her then requesting.

Applejack looked over her shoulder and stared listlessly at Keen Eye.

She recognized him.

He was the one who arrested Big Mac.

She got out of her seat without a word and followed him through the hallways until they were both outside.

-----------------------

It would have been hard to describe what Scootaloo was experiencing that night as sleep. Her body was still, she could feel her senses begin to dull, and an unnerving wave of pins and needles had washed over her. Her mind felt hyperactive, vivid pictures swirling behind her eyes. They flickered into sight and then bled away like a slideshow. It felt more like being paralized and drugged more then anything resembling the sleep she used to understand.

More and more images surfaced, faded, half-remembered fragments crystallizing into reality. Her mind was trying to reassemble itself after Willow Wisp had scrambled it.

She saw Apple Bloom.

The clubhouse.

When was this?

Earlier tonight?

A familiar voice entered her ears.

~~~~~

"Remember Scootaloo. We have to deceive our prey in order to survive."

"Show mother you've learned that and she'll give you more of her Blood."

"Make it a friend. Someone you want to spend a long time with."

~~~~~

Scootaloo felt her body return to her as a rush of horrid realization wormed into her veins.

She emerged, eyes wide open as Fighter Flight turned toward her from his vigil over Rainbow Dash's body.

"Yeah." Fighter Flight spoke, content he knew what ailed the young vampire. "You can experience some pretty intense visions when you're in torpor. The undead mind is a strange place. You'll get used to it. Some days are better then others."

"I killed her." Scootaloo murmured in devastation, her face twisted and mortified.

"I'm pretty sure Willow Wisp killed Rainbow Dash, kid." The stallion replied, trying to sound rational and calming for the filly. Still believing he understood. "I was there."

"Willow Wisp told me to choose one of my friends." The filly begin to recount.

Every ounce of calm understanding drained from Fighter Flight's face in a split second, his eye's widening and wings flaring.

"W-what?" He asked, fearfully confounded.

"She told me lure her into the forest." Scootaloo struggled to explain, raising her hooves to her eyes as she lost comprehension of herself, panicking fully. "N-no! I killed her! I killed Apple Bloom! She told me to and I did it!"

Horrid bile filled her throat as her mind crippled against the memory. The rock slipping into the water. Willow retrieving her body. Lovingly praising her success. It was real.

"Another filly?" Fighter Flight asked deserately, his eyes demanding an answer immediatly.

He only observed Scootaloo long enough to see her nod in confirmation before he quickly forced his hooves into the pockets of his discarded flightsuit. He hastily pulled out his pocket watch and held it next to the firefly lantern.

No time.

Luna forgive me.

There's not enough time.



-----------------------------------------


The path back to the hospital lead Keen Eye and Applejack through town square. The royal guard tent complex was a bustle with activity in the otherwise deserted streets. The average Ponyville citizen still had maybe an hour of sweet slumber before they would have to shuffle off to another day of work, or school, or whatever existence claimed them.

As they rounded the corner on final approach to the hospital, Keen Eye looked over his shoulder to the broken mare behind him. She put one hoof in front of the other easily enough, but each step was listless and unguided. She realized she was moving, but there was an indelible absence from her spirit.

Keen Eye cleared his throat, readying his best attempt at an extension of sympathy. "I can appreciate that you're upset right now Applejack."

"Shut up." She grunted dispassionately.

"We can't help you if you don't help us." Keen Eye offered, trying to sound reasonable.

"Ah said shut the fuck up!" The mare roared as she glared poisonously at the stallion, rage boiling from her muzzle. "Y'all wanted me to go to the morgue with ya and ah'm going to the morgue with ya! Do'ncha say a fucking wordda me!"

Her voice echoed off the houses and decayed into the empty streets.

Keen Eye held his tongue, though it was clear he had trouble settling on the decision.

The pair entered the hospital, passing a single orderly preparing for the end of his shift as they trot to the east wing. The deserted halls filled with echoing steps. The calming interior colours did little to ease either of the two.

Keen Eye began to smell something bizarre as they traveled the last corridor. Applejack either hadn't noticed or refused to care. However what had started as a minor oddity became much stronger upon arrival outside the door into the morgue proper. It was an acrid chemical odor of what could only be described as rotting pickles that nether of the ponies had the knowledge to identify.

Keen Eye puzzled for a moment.

It hadn't smelled like this earlier.

The armoured pony rapped a hoof on the door.

There was no response.

Keen Eye's horn ignited as he gradually opened the door open with a magical push. 

The rancid air from inside rushed into their nostrils.

The stench was a thousand times worse inside.

Applejack stood in line behind him. The mare's tortured heart pounded, she breathed deeply in spite of the atrocious taste on the air. She tried with all her might to prepare herself for what she was about to see. Little did she know Keen Eye was doing the same.

The two ponies very quickly realized their respective preparation was in vain.

The florescent lights illuminated the coroner, Post Mortem, collapsed on his back, face frozen in abject horror, unseeing eyes glazed over in brutal causality. His chest, neck, and face were perforated with dozens of puncture wounds, his vital fluids still visibly escaping him like sauce through a colander of loosened skin. The gore staining his fur and clothing and pooled on the tiles beneath.

There was no air available for gasps of shock as the two ponies coughed heavily. The wall of chemicals crashed into their lungs. Their eyes watered and burned, vision blurring and clouding as they both struggled to see into the room.

The morgue showed signs of a struggle. The tall shelving unit next to the examination table had fallen over. Smashed bottles of sanitizer, embalming fluid, and who knows what else littered the floor beneath it, their contents now defusing into the air.

Keen Eye readied his spear in a swift and practiced motion and moved in next to the fallen stallion, pressing a hoof against his neck.

Dead.

Applejack's chest seized up as she caught a flicker of movement from behind the toppled shelves in the corner of her eye.

Keen Eye's chest seized up as he realized something rather important was missing from the examination table.

"There!" Applejack cried out, as she leapt into the room and quickly circled around. Adrenaline pounding in her skull, she was ready to bury her hoof into whatever assailant lay in wait. Keen Eye flanked around to the other side, spear held at the ready, horn shimmering in preparation.

The stallion's weapon fell from his hooves and clattered on the ground as he lay his eyes upon her.

Applejack felt her sanity contort in her mind like a drowning worm.

The fumes.

She had to be hallucinating.

Apple Bloom sat timidly behind the fallen bookcase, the fur surrounding her muzzle saturated and dripping with fresh blood. It ran down her chest and neck. It covered her hooves. It was everywhere and it wasn't her's. She was trembling in fear as she looked up at her dear sister.

"Please sis! Ah'm sorry! Ah'm so sorry!" The little filly cried out from behind ignorantly exposed fangs. She scrambled frantically and buried herself against Applejack in a firm hug, smearing a mess of blood against her golden fur. She cried in traumatic breakdown, gasping for air. "Ah'm didn't mean to hurt 'em! Ah was so scared! Ah don't know what came over me!"

The dissonance pierced into Applejack's brain like a migraine, flashes of light and pain from inside. Some cruel and revolting joy tightening around her neck like a twisting rope. It was a violation of her understanding of a fair world with meaning and prepose but she didn't care. 

She got to hold her sister again. 

She was happy.

Keen Eye backpedaled, stumbling over fallen furniture, wordlessly uttering his denial, shaking his head in ineffectual protest.

Applejack extending a trembling hoof, feeling behind her sweet sister's ear. It flicked reflexively to her touch and yet it remained as cold as when she cried screaming into it less than an hour ago. She felt skull fragments shift under her wandering touch, the horrendous injury remained embedded in her.

"You're gonna be okay, s-sugarcube." Applejack stammered, logic failing her. 

The harsh chemicals already had her crying.

The older mare gripped the filly closely, the crimson sticking between their fur. 

Applejack squeezed harder and harder but no matter how hard she held her, she was still cold.

"W-what happened to ya!?" Applejack begged, salty tears landing in saltier blood. "What did this to you!?"

Apple Bloom remained locked in the bloody embrace, gasping through familiar fur. Weeping against her sister in silence, unable to find an answer. However, one fact couldn't escape her.

"Ah found Scootaloo." Apple Bloom murmured.

"W-What?" Keen Eye gasped in astonished trepidation as the first finger of morning sunlight slipped through the window.

Then came the screaming.

The gut-twisting scream of complete agony as she burned.

Her cry was deafening, right next to the older sister's own ear.

So sudden. So terrible 

What could Applejack do but grip her even harder? 

Grip her as her cold flesh scorched and curled as the fire of daylight broke across it like acid.

It was over before Applejack could even understand.

She felt only ashes.

Felt only her sister's form crumble away into dust against her body.

Saw her blood stained ribbon rolling into the remaining pile.

Applejack's breath raced into hyperventilation as an onslaught of horror stabbed at her.

Every neuron in her mind engulfed in torment as a noxious, howling sob overtook her.

It rolled up the hallways, echoing and surging as it rose and fell. The screams heaved against the air like Applejack's cheast heaved against the empty space where her sister's shadow once stood.

Her eyes widened, flaring with blood curdling madness as she locked eyes with Keen Eye.

The armored imposter trembled in his steel plates. 

"I-I'm sorry." The grey stallion begged apology, his eyes watering as his horn ignited. "This was never meant to involve you."

The energy launched from the unicorn. It slammed against Applejack. The concussive force sucking the oxygen from her lungs, ripping the consciousness from her mind as her head kicked back and her hat slipped off, sliding into the blood.

The stallion watched as she hit the floor, golden fur now filthy as the ashes of her sister mixed with coroner's blood like a nightmare version of being tarred and feathered. 

He waited for her to move. 

She didn't.

Keen Eye levitated a scalpel into the air from the various utensils scattered around the upturned room.

Turning quickly he hunched down next to the coroner's corpse and held the tool in his magical grasp against one of the dead pony's many wounds. His eyes traced around the two. He considered briefly before closing his eyes and nodding to himself.

The blade flipped down against Post Mortem's brutalized body. In a slow and smooth thrust, Keen Eye pushed the point into the corpse, sinking the scalpel halfway into the flesh, retracting it before calmly placing the freshly blooded implement, handle-first into Applejack's mouth.

As the room continued to flood with morning light, Keen Eye left the tampered scene.

His job just got much more complicated.