> The Last One
>  by computerneek
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> The End
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

She stumbles through the woods.

The trees are brown.  At least, she thinks they’re trees.  And she thinks they’re brown.  She can’t see very well; everything’s more than a little blurry.

She collapses again.  Her muscles are burning with unfamiliar pain.  After that last fall, her face is as well- though it’s a different kind of unfamiliar pain.

She collapses in the effort to stand up again.  Her muscles gave up their normal functioning with another spike of unfamiliar pain.

But they only did that in two of her six limbs.

She manages to distort two of her remaining limbs painfully by trying to use them to walk.  She’s not sure exactly what they are, but they’re clearly not made for walking.

She grunts irritably, using her last two limbs to drag herself forwards.  They’re the only ones whose muscles are still only aching with their unfamiliar pain.  Aside from the two she just rendered useless, that is.

The same could not be said for the joints or bones, though.  Those are burning with yet another unfamiliar pain.

One that’s not far off from the one on her nose, she thinks.  Like it’s…

Hold on.  She sees light ahead.  Even the blurriest of eyes would see that- it’s not a matter of blur, but light levels.  This must be…  Yes.  She passes the last pillar of textured brown-ness, dragging herself onto…

She’s not sure what it is, but one of those last two limbs just gave up with a strangely vague cracking noise, and the other’s not strong enough alone to keep her going, so she allows herself to crumple to the ground.  Perhaps she’s reached the end of her journey.

The ground.  She supposes it works.  It’s a little greenish, but she can see the brown under it, especially now that she’s lying on it.  On one of those not-made-for-walking limbs, with an extra spike of pain from the aforementioned limb…  Whatever.  It’s not like it’s going to matter in a minute…  Probably.  It’s only a…  She doesn’t know what it is, either.  As a matter of fact, she doesn’t even know what she looks like, only that she seems to be more fragile than she’s used to.

Huh.  Than she’s used to.  Funny, she doesn’t know what she’s used to.

Only that she’d been plodding through these woods, that strange pain in her muscles, for…  for however long it had been.  Before that, she gets nothing.

She moves her working limb up in front of her.  Nothing unexpected; she gets a blurry image of…  something.  It’s brown, she thinks.  Not like the probably-trees, though- more like the brownish part of the ground underneath her.

Or, she thinks it’s underneath her.  It very well could be above her.

But regardless.  Aside from being the different color of brown, with maybe something lighter mixed in, there isn’t much to see.  It bends in a couple of places, but that’s about it.

She drops it on the ground again, letting out a breath.  Or, she thinks it’s out, and she thinks it’s a breath.  Given how the fuzzy green bits of the ground around her face flex away from her as she does so, she’s pretty sure she’s right.

Not that it matters.  She’s found her end.

She wrinkles her brow.  Why was she looking for an end, anyways?  Isn’t life worth living?

The answer she comes up with is a firm no…  but for the life of her, she can’t seem to figure out why.

She closes her…  What’re they called again?  She can’t remember.  The muscles holding them open are tired…

Lookers would do, she decides, for her last seconds.  She closed her lookers to wait for the inevitable end.

…  if it would hurry up and come already.

Though, perhaps that odd, muffled thumping is that end on approach?  It most certainly isn’t synchronized with the thumping in her chest; no, this stuff is irregular, like…  Like whatever, she doesn’t really care.  It’s also much faster.

It’s getting stronger.  Still strangely muffled, like everything else she’s heard since…  Well, waking up would be inaccurate; she had to have been fully mobile before.  Unless she had been…  What’s it called, when entities move around while not woken up yet?  She doesn’t know.

So, since she…  Became aware.  For whatever reason, she doesn’t know.  She doesn’t care.

She hears another sound.  Again, oddly distorted.

But it sounded like a voice.

She lets out a groan, pressing her lookers tightly shut.  She…  doesn’t know what memories she’s trying to suppress.  She only knows voices are bad.  Why…  escapes her completely.

But now that she’s thinking of it as a voice, she realizes she doesn’t understand a word being spoken.  Which is a cold comfort, she knows…  and again, the reasoning is a mystery to her.

She resolves to lie still.  Hopefully, the owner of that voice won’t notice her, nor stick around long enough for…  For what, she doesn’t know.  She only knows it’s terrible.

The thumping intensifies for a second, growing stronger, before it draws to a complete halt.  She hears breathing, though- and the voices haven’t gone away yet.  Voices- she counts at least two, possibly a third.  Her ears are too muffled, though, so she’s not sure.

On top of that, she thinks they’re voices.  They could just be noises.  She hopes that’s the case, but the chances of that are…  Worthless.  That is, knowing the specific chance would be worthless; either it is or it isn’t.  Probably.  She hopes it is- but she has no control over it, so there’s no point in trying to decide early.

She hopes.

Only, it would seem, her hopes are in vain.  The voices have changed in tone and pattern.  As a matter of fact, it is exactly this adjustment to the voice that she dreads with all her…  With all her whatever.  She doesn’t know why.  Only that it leads to…  Only that it leads to…  Bad.  She doesn’t know what it leads to, but she hopes she passes away before whatever it leads to happens.
> Endless
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

More noises.

Something brushes against her face.  It’s…  She’s not sure how to describe the unfamiliar sensation, but it feels good all the same.

That’s a bad thing.  She doesn’t know, nor understand, why.  Only that it…  Well, is a bad sign.  What for, she hasn’t a clue.  She tries opening her lookers for a moment, but only manages to glimpse something white.  At least, she thinks it’s white.

A new noise penetrates her conscience.  She doesn’t recognize it- but she does know it’s even worse than a voice.

It grows, then stops with another noise.  This one, despite grating on her ears…  She decides to stop identifying when she encounters new sounds, feelings, and so on that are bad, focusing rather on hunting for any that aren’t.

Like the texture of the grass against her side.  That’s neutral.

Like the unfamiliar pains filling her.  They’re good, though she can’t fathom why.

Like…  She has to think for a little.  There’s too much going on right now that’s bad.

Something picks her up.  That’s new.  She knows nothing has done that before, yet she still can’t remember what they did do.

She feels the motion as she is carried a short distance.  She’s not sure if this is a good sign or a bad one.

It puts her down.  It’s harder than the ground was.  She opens her lookers for a peek, getting a fuzzy image of textured red stuff.  She can’t decide what it is.

It moves.  There’s some strange, unfamiliar noises to it.  There’s also some familiar noises- like that occasional worse-than-a-voice noise.  As it moves, it bounces.  Painfully.  Her head doesn’t- for some reason, that’s resting on- or in- something terribly soft.

She hears that thumping.  There isn’t nearly as much of it, but it’s got that four-stroke beat to it again- and this time, it’s not fading at all.  She tries opening her lookers a couple times, but only gets glimpses of the same textured red stuff, often with some blue or fluffy white up above it…  That is, if her sense of…  down is accurate.  And if the colors she thinks she sees are the same as the ones she’s actually seeing.  She also hears other voices, growing and fading.  Probably passing them.  Another thing that has never happened before.

More noises, some harder bumps.  More voices.  She tries her lookers again, but only gets some vague whiteness above the reddish wall.  Strange, her vision is getting fuzzier.  Even the noises are becoming more muffled, more distant.  Perhaps the end is finally upon her.

She feels a muted softness against her entire body as the voices bark on for a second, before that regular thumping resumes, on a different beat.  Well, whatever- she’ll probably be gone by the time the terrible begins.  She won’t have to experience the terrible.

The softness changes again.  She must be just lying on something soft now.  A strange beeping begins, kinda erratic- matching the strange, regular thumping she’s been listening to since she became aware.  It has lost its regularity by now.  The voices seem to respond to the beeping.

“... losing her!”

Drat!  Terrible happened!  …  not that she understands why it’s terrible.  But it is nice to understand what they’re saying- maybe she can figure out what’s happening around her during her last minute or so.  She feels a sharp, unfamiliar pain somewhere in her…  Chest, is it called?  At the same time, the thumping suddenly becomes regular, changing its cadence as it does so.  The beeping still follows it with precision.

Then it stops completely.  The beep, rather than stopping, draws itself out.

“What- Get the crash cart!”  Something hard drives into her chest, over and over again.  It seems to be trying to mimic the absent thumping.  Her senses are fading faster now.  She won’t even have a full minute, at this rate.

This goes on for a while.  No voices, just that hard thing shoving at her chest and an increasingly labored breathing noise.

She’s only barely holding onto her senses when she picks up another noise.  She thinks it sounds like the terrible that had come before the hard red thing, or during it.  She’s not sure, though- it’s too vague.

“Finally!”

Even the voice is so vague she can hardly understand it.  The hard thing disappears from her chest.  She knows she’s a matter of seconds away from her end.  But the hard thing is replaced almost instantly with two cold things.  Which suddenly spark with vivid pain, bringing her senses back from the precipice of disappearance.  That absent thumping returns, once.  Whatever those cold things are, they’ve given her an extra half-dozen seconds or so.

She feels something poke her skin.  It’s on the only working limb she has left, just above the end of the limb.

The cold things come back with another spark.  Another half-dozen seconds.

A third time.  Another half-dozen seconds.

Eventually, when her senses are making a steady return, the painful cold things stop coming.  She hears tears in the voice.  Not the same one as had asked for the crash cart, though.

“She’s…  gone.”

She can’t decide what to make of it.  It sounds like they think she’s dead- but she’s still thinking, and her senses are still returning.  She hears the thumping again, leaving the room slowly.  A different thump sounds…  moments before the strangely important thumping in her chest decides to make a comeback.  It sounds sluggish to her, and is way slower than it should be- but that annoying buzzing instantly went away with a single, sharp beep.  It waits a very long time- almost three seconds, by her estimate- to match the next thump with a beep.

This keeps going for a while.  As it goes, the thumping builds strength, regularity, and speed, returning to what it had been when she first came aware.  Her senses also return- and unless she misses her guess, they return to what they might once have been before she became aware.  The sound, while still muffled, is far sharper than before.  She can feel the soft under her back…  and recognize that, while it might be soft, it’s still uncomfortable.

She opens her lookers.  It takes a second for her vision to resolve- then, while it’s much sharper than it had been before, it’s still frustratingly blurry.

She’s staring up at a textured white surface hanging above her.  At least she can be reasonably certain her sense of down is accurate.  She turns her head to the sides- first, the side the beeping is coming from.  Even with this vague of an image, she recognizes some of the stuff here- though she doesn’t know where from, and hasn’t a clue what they’re called.  She does know nothing has ever used them to look at her before.

Then she turns to the other side.  There’s a window, through which she can see a blue sky with something fluffy, white, and sharply defined floating slowly across it.  A little bit closer, though, she sees a plastic bag hanging from a metal hook.  There’s a little tube trailing down from the bag, hanging down past the edge of her soft thing and coming back up to find its way to the limb they’d poked.  Here, she finds the source of the poke, as a metal needle of some kind, piercing her skin.  Some part of her mind recognizes it, but she doesn’t know where from.  She does know, however, that it’s not doing her any good right now- the bag is empty.

So she reaches over with the matching limb on her other side, the one that had failed her last, and pulls it out.  A drop of red forms where it had been, before it stops and disappears.

Finally, she curls herself up, lifting her back off of the uncomfortable soft thing.  She lets her two front-most limbs come into contact with the soft in front of her, supporting her while she looks around- and repositions her rear-most limbs, the ones that had failed her first.

It would seem she’s sitting on a bed of some kind.  An uncomfortable one, mind.  There’s three more, with full sets of strange-yet-familiar equipment surrounding them.  There’s one door, closed rather firmly.  No mirrors.

So she looks down at herself.  Her furry, sky blue self.  The front-most and rear-most limbs are fairly nondescript, with a few joints and a single-toed, very solid, end.  The two limbs on her back- the ones that had failed instantly- most certainly aren’t made for walking.  Rather, these fluffy walls of feathers could only be for flying of some sort…  though she doesn’t remember needing wings to fly.  She stretches them out, watching as the one on her right side straightens itself out at a point where the other one didn’t bend.  Seconds later, the last of the searing, unfamiliar pains goes away.

Something rumbles in her belly someplace.  She looks down at it, scowling.  What does that mean?  Or the unfamiliar ache in the same area?

Probably doesn’t matter.  She glances back at the beeping machine; a few spindly things are connecting it to her- like cords of some kind.  She pulls them off of herself easily, reducing the machine to the annoying buzzer once again.

She rises to the stance she’d had when she’d first awoken, standing on those four stump-like limbs.  This bed isn’t the best thing to stand on, but she manages it.  She also manages to stumble her way to the edge, before looking down off of it.

It’s a long drop.  She won’t be able to step off of it- and she doesn’t think she can jump.  She’s still a little too uncoordinated for that.

She looks back at her…  wings, stretching them out.  Perhaps they could help?  She looks forwards, angling them, and gives them a single, hard stroke.

Well, she made it into the air.  Now, how to get down without hurting herself?  She quickly locks her wings out, angling them against the ground in an effort to glide.

She fails.  She tumbles headfirst out of the air.  Her wings do help slow her down, but not enough; she still lands rather painfully on the floor.  After bouncing off another bed.

She folds the annoying, feathery appendages.  At least she knows they work.

She scrambles back to her…  limbs.  Legs?  Perhaps, but she’s not sure.  The pains from her landing are already disappearing- and, in a few seconds, they’ll be gone.  She sets about the room- her stumbling is getting better, she notices- to explore.
> Away
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

She doesn’t get very far before her ears pick out the growing thumping of something…  Like it’s coming closer.  She manages to hide under the third bed before a clunk sounds- and the door swings open.  She instantly slows her scrambling to a crawl, moving as slowly as she possibly can; her legs are loud against this floor.

So are the legs of whoever enters through the door.  He stops.

“Huh?  But Doctor Horse said there was a body…?  Whatever.  Musta gotten the wrong room.”  The dark brown legs turn around and leave the room.

She contemplates waiting for her end here, but that would take forever- something like a day, as a matter of fact- and she’d almost certainly be discovered in that much time.

The door doesn’t swing all the way shut.  She waits for the noise of his legs to fade away before she crawls up to the door.  She pries it open with one limb, and sticks her head out.

She’s gained entry into a long passage.  It turns at one end, from which she hears voices on approach.  There’s several doors along the passage on both sides, including the one she’s peeking out of.  She glances up the passage towards the voices; sounds like the one that had inadvertently let her out is talking to the one that had called for the crash cart, both headed this way.  She stumbles her way out of the room- she figures that’s where they’re headed- and hides behind the door one down from her room.  It had also been hanging open, revealing what looks to her like some kind of cleaning closet.

How she knows the mops look archaic, nor what that last word means, she hasn’t a clue.

She listens to the voices grow closer.  She hears the sound of the door she’d first come from.  The voices intensify; it seems they expected to find her there.  They move away, down the hallway- and the steps sound hurried somehow.

She peeks her head out, then heads out herself, moving in the opposite direction.  She keeps her ears pointed backwards; if they start coming again, she’s going to hide.  Her eyes locate and track multiple possible hiding places as she travels.

As it turns out, she’ll be needing a hiding place sooner than she thought.  She freezes in the middle of the passage, after turning a corner.  She’d been focused too much on the distant noises of those two that she’d completely missed far closer sounds.  Like the other set of stepping noises from in front of her.  Or the muttering to accompany.  She should even have heard the soft rustle of that white-covered wing brushing against the wall!  Her ears rotate forwards as she locks eyes with…

She doesn’t know what her head looks like, and hasn’t looked at her back.  But, from what she did look at, this is simply a larger version of herself, with something white on her right wing.

She holds this stare battle for a very long time.  Funny, so does…  this other entity.  She’s not sure what they’re called- but it doesn’t matter.

Eventually, she makes the first move.  She twists one ear to face back the way she’d come, catching noises that sound suspiciously like the footsteps of those two, along with another set or two, she’s not sure.  Her eyes flash across the passage- and she quickly steps forwards to slip through another partially-open door.

The bigger entity watches her go.  About three and a half seconds after she gets all the way in, the bigger entity follows her in, nearly closing the door behind herself and peeking out through the crack, standing next to her.

She spares a search around the room she’s found herself in.  One of the criteria for safe hiding spots had been the complete lack of breathing or chest-thumping noises- and while this room had matched those criteria, she still wants to know where it is.  Never know when she might find herself in some entity’s destination.  Or route.

This room doesn’t look likely to be along the route.  However, if her guess as to her location- some kind of medical place- is accurate, the healers might be coming into this room fairly frequently.  It would appear to be a storage room for their related supplies.

She looks back up at the bigger entity, who draws back from the door to give her a crooked smile before opening her mouth to speak quietly.

“You trying to get out too?”

She bobs her head briefly up and down.  That’s usually a yes, if her scanty memories are telling the truth.

The entity’s head then tilts slightly to the side.  “Come to think of it, what are you in here for…?”

She only looks back.  That question requires more than a yes or a no- and she doesn’t know how to talk.

The ear still focused on the door catches a sound…  And a voice.  “No ma’am.  We need to get an EKG before we can figure out what’s wrong.”

Another voice.  Her companion has focused on the door again, wings twitching.  This voice sounds angry- almost desperate.  “Then get one!”

The first voice returns.  “That’s what I’m doing.  Don’t worry, she will be fine.”

Footsteps, approaching their closet.

The entity in the closet with her seems restless.  “She’s coming here!” she mutters- and glances down at her companion, before lowering herself down to the ground.  “Here- climb on.”

She complies.  Once on the bigger entity’s back, she spreads her legs around her back, spreading her wings out against the bigger entity’s wings.  The larger wings flinch at the contact, though, so she retracts her wings again, folding them to her sides.  She watches forwards, through the larger entity’s colored hair, as the noise gets closer.  She senses rather than feels the pain in the larger entity’s right wing.  It’s a sharp pain, not unlike what her wing had felt like when it had been bent at that point where it doesn’t bend anymore.  She’s not experiencing the pain, though- more like witnessing it.  But it should go away soon, right?

Yes, yes it should.  Pain is bad.

This makes her wonder.  If pain is bad, why was it good before?

Easy.  Her own pain is good- it reduces the terrible coming.  How, she doesn’t know.  Pain of other entities is bad- it increases the terrible coming.  Again, she doesn’t know how.

She feels the entity’s muscles shift underneath her, and tenses her own; this entity seems to be preparing for a dash.

The door begins moving.  It swings inwards- very suddenly accelerating as her ride rips it open with one leg and makes a break for it.  She can sense how she’s moving so quickly.  She figures she could do that too- but, with her smaller size, she would be slower.

Her ride dodges out into the passage, wrapping almost instantly around the white entity that had been opening the door and rushing down the passage.  She hears a startled yelp from behind them as they rocket down the passage.

Somewhere along the way, she senses her ride’s wing pain go away.  Her ride navigates quickly through the hallways, dodges another entity- and finally makes a turn towards a window, away from at least three oncoming entities.  Her ride pauses only briefly to throw the window open before leaping out and spreading her wings.  Her strokes quickly desynchronize as their flight path wobbles and twists.  She stretches out her own wings, holding them above her ride’s, holding them flat to help stabilize their path.  It works- the twisting goes down.

Not fast enough.  Her ride’s panicked yelps intensify and transform into pained yelps as they make contact with the ground, tumbling a few times.

A searing pain invades her wings at a few points.  The one where her right wing connects to her back is a different kind of pain- but that simply becomes the first to go away, once she rolls herself right-side-up and allows it to regain its normal position.  She’s free!  She could run away now- and, possibly, make it to safety.  Though, with the persistent pain in her muscles and her senses beginning to fog up once again, she doesn’t think she’d make it far enough if she tried.

Besides, she can’t just abandon the entity that helped her.  She takes the half-dozen steps to where her ride had stopped tumbling, further away than she.  She can sense several points of sharp pain- much like her own, already disappearing, pains.  There’s a few more- like the one in her ride’s chest.  It feels the same, yet more important, somehow; she knows this one will go away first.  The one of next importance is the one in her ride’s leg- and, finally, the ones in her wings.  She touches her ride’s leg with one of hers.

The larger entity opens her eyes, cutting off a painful moan, to look down at her.  “Hey, squirt,” she mutters weakly, smiling.  “Go tell Pinkie I won’t be able to attend today, please.”

She pauses, gazing into the entity’s eyes for a couple seconds.  Entities are coming out of the building they’d just jumped from- they’ll be here before all her ride’s pains go away.  Locating the entity called ‘Pinkie’ and delivering the message will be difficult, at best; not only does she not know how to talk, but she’s already running on very limited time.

Finally, she nods, glances at her surroundings, and picks someplace full of entities to hide.

And to figure out how to ask after this ‘Pinkie’.

She runs.  Just like the larger entity had done.  She only barely manages to stay upright for the first several strides, but her gait quickly stabilizes, and she accelerates.

Her muscles disagree.  They’ll start failing again soon.  Her vision is beginning to blur once again.

She makes it to the door.  She tugs it open, dodging inside.

“Surprise!”

This is new.
> Cake
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unfortunately for the pink creature in front of her, she had not, in fact, been surprised.  She’d known they were bunkering down in here for something- and the anticipatory breathing she’d heard from outside had been enough to warn her what it might be.

That they might have been waiting for her had been unexpected; for all she knows, they were waiting for the very next entity to enter the building.

All of the entities facing her seem to blink once or twice, including the pink one that had jumped up and set off all of the noisy things, scattering fragments of color through the air.  She stands still as well, waiting for the next cue.

Eventually, it comes.  It’s the pink one.  “Uh, Welcome to your Welcome to Ponyville party!” she begins, swinging her front legs high and flinging more bits of color into the air.

She doesn’t move.  Perhaps she should have picked a different building.

The pink one seems to deflate partially.  “We have cookies…?”

She doesn’t move.

Her head droops.  “Say…  something?  Maybe even nothing?”

She doesn’t move.  Yet.

Something comes flying at her from behind the pink one, set to hit her square in the face.  She clenches her muscles, whipping her head to the side.  The rest of her follows, and she nearly falls over.  The object misses her by inches, instead splattering against the door.  She looks at the entity that had thrown it.  Like the pink one, this one has no wings, instead being colored a light cream.

“Come on, these cupcakes are to die for,” the new entity scowls.  “Even if you’re not going to be excited, please enjoy the festivities.”

She allows her focus to spread.  She spots another entity at that same table, holding what looks like a remnant of another of the object the cream one threw.  This entity then stuffs it into its mouth.

She watches the entity chew, then swallow.

“I think she wasn’t expecting it,” a third entity, this one green and with something pointy on her forehead, mutters to the cream one.

The cream one raises an eyebrow back at the green one.  “That would be an impressive reaction time,” she mutters.

The green one ignores the cream one, turning to look towards her and lifting another of the objects on the end of one leg.  “Catch?” she asks, making as if to throw it.

She tilts her head, reprocessing the actions she’d seen the brown one perform.  Is that what they want her to do?  She estimates possible trajectories- but until she actually throws it, there’s too many to even think about.  Her senses are starting to blur- but at this short of a range, she should still be able to estimate its trajectory to within an acceptable degree of accuracy.

She estimates the object’s size- and, based on a comparison between the larger entities and the few in the crowd that are around her size, she estimates the size, position, and range of motion of her mouth.

She pulls her mouth into a smile, adjusting her stance.  She can do this.

She nods.

The pink entity seems utterly confused.  The cream one seems taken aback.  The green one looks surprised, but tosses the object anyways.

She estimates the trajectory.  The green one doesn’t have nearly as good of aim as the cream one.  She moves her legs, accelerating herself to the right as she watches it come.  She makes a full stop, then re-evaluates its path.  This object must have either some aerodynamic property she didn’t observe or a non-uniform mass distribution, whatever any of that means.  In any case, it isn’t following her predicted course, but traveling a little higher.  She lifts herself up onto her hind legs briefly, stretching upwards to catch it.

Her estimates pertaining to herself seem to have been accurate.  She feels the object land smoothly in her mouth, right in the middle, as her jaw snaps shut around it.  It tastes weird, right off, but nothing throws up any red flags, so she proceeds to chew and swallow it, as that other entity had done.  Or, not as that other entity had done; this object only barely fits in her mouth as she chews.

Her front legs land back on the floor- and her eyes track across the crowd.

The green one’s jaw drops.  The cream one follows suit.

Then someone starts stomping on the ground.  “Nice catch!”

The rest- at least, most of the rest; the green, cream, and pink ones don’t move- follow suit.  It takes her a few seconds to process- they’re cheering.  Which only happens after the terrible…  But the terrible hadn’t happened.  Not that she knows what the terrible is.

She chooses to push off thoughts of the terrible.  It seems she’s accidentally found a way to circumvent it completely.

As she chews, the strange taste goes away as that layer of something shreds apart against her teeth.  With that out of the way, she finds something much softer- and as much as the taste is unfamiliar, she finds it thoroughly enjoyable.  Perhaps that outer layer wasn’t meant to be eaten…?  Whatever, it’s harmless anyways.  She won’t mess up on the next one.

…  assuming they let her have a next one.  She swallows it- and at the same moment, her belly rumbles again.

The pink one blinks a few times, and snaps her jaw shut.  “Uh…  You aren’t supposed to eat the wrapper…”

She looks at the pink one again.

Then her ear flicks back towards the door.  That sounds like one of the ones that had been running out of that building after her and that other escaping entity.

Which, she can vaguely sense that other entity should only have one burning wing pain left.

It’s coming for her.

She dodges into the crowd, making her way to the table the cream and green ones are at.  She wants another…  whatever that thing was.  Funny- her senses have stopped blurring, and started sharpening up once again.  Her survival estimate is also going up.

So, she’s avoided the terrible, and found a way to keep living.  She can’t think of anything else- and, as she hops up on a stool next to the table, she shows a smile to both entities- the green one and the cream one- before locking her gaze upon and reaching for the platter of those objects.  Unfortunately, it’s too far away from the stool.

A golden glow appears around one of them, matching that on the pointy thing on the green one’s forehead.  The glowing object separates itself from the pile, the not-so-tasty part removing itself as it floats over to her.  The cream one snickers as she accepts it with her front legs and bites off half.

“I told you they were good,” she chuckles.

Then the doors fly open, showing a single entity standing in the door.

A purple entity with both wings and that pointy thing- the one that had first commended her on the catch, she thinks- turns towards the door, having been standing near it already.  “Nurse Redheart?” she asks, sounding surprised.  “Is something wrong?”

The white entity in the doorway scans the room fruitlessly.  “Yes,” she eventually mumbles.  “There’s been…”

The purple one tilts her head.  “Been what?  Does it involve Rainbow?”

“I…  We…”  She shakes her head.  “We don’t know.”

The pink one practically screeches to a halt next to the purple one.  “She’s not hurt, is she?”

The white one- the purple one called her ‘Nurse Redheart’- pauses.  “That’s…  She was hurt, then she…”  She shakes her head.  “It’s a miracle.”

An orange one trots out of the crowd.  “A miracle?” she asks.  “What kind of miracle?”

Nurse Redheart shrugs.  “Her leg was broken…  until it straightened itself and healed.”

The purple one presses onwards, a feather and a piece of paper appearing in the air next to her, covered in the same purplish glow as the pointy thing on her head.  “Do you know what caused it?”

“We only know a strange filly died earlier…  and was seen running away from Rainbow after her second crash.”  She blinks at the purple one.  “That filly might be our source…  but she might also just be patient zero.”

She stuffs the other half of her thing- had the cream one called it a ‘cupcake’?- into her mouth.  Her senses are definitely getting sharper- and, she notices, the burn in her muscles is also beginning to fade.

Nurse Redheart scowls, taking one last glance through the building.  “Whatever.  If anypony starts collapsing, come get us.”  She turns and leaves, allowing the door to close behind her.

“That was…  Weird,” someone states.  She doesn’t know who- but she has a pretty good idea of what just happened.

She escaped.

Her partner in crime, that larger version of herself, hadn’t, though.  The white stuff had come off of her wing when they landed- so hopefully, since she senses the last of her first friend’s sharp wing pains is disappearing, the aforementioned will be able to escape alone.

She accepts a serving of something that the pink one puts in front of her.  It’s a wedge of something- looks like some kind of cake, she decides.  She glances briefly sideways to see how other entities are eating theirs.  Some of them are just stuffing their faces into it, while others are wielding cutlery of some sort.  She locates some similar cutlery, placed next to the plate she’d been served- and opts to take that route.

It tastes just as good.

The green one chuckles at her display, having gone the face route herself.  “So, what’s your name?”
> Tail
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“So, what’s your name?”

She looks at the green entity.  That’s an open-ended question- and while she can understand it perfectly, she can’t yet speak a response.  She smiles and takes another bite of her cake.

The cream one speaks up next.  “Where are your parents?”

Parents?  She’s not sure what that word means- but it’s something she doesn’t have.  She shakes her head.

Neither of them seem to like this answer.  They proceed to ask her a bunch of questions.


Somewhere near the beginning, they asked her if she could talk.  After she shook her head, they gained somewhat of an understanding expression and started asking only simple questions.

She’d had to tilt her head inquisitively when they asked if she was an orphan.  She’d then been able to confirm she has no parents- though what a guardian is, and why she’d need one, she doesn’t know.

Towards the end, she’s not just listening to the words spoken, but watching them speak, as well.  Watching them form those words, while she continues to eat the treats they keep putting in front of her.  Even one she had to suck on.  They’d stared at her for almost a full minute when she’d tried to take a bite of it; apparently, liquids are difficult to eat.  They’d called it ‘drink’ instead.

When the pink one shows up to drag her away to ‘pin the tail on the pony’, she’s fairly certain she can duplicate the mouth motions required to speak, but isn’t sure how to make the noise to begin with.  However, she does find that her sense of down is rock-solid, and she has absolutely no trouble staying upright as the pink one drags her through the crowd faster than she could run.

Her other senses have also sharpened up to a level she’s familiar with.  Why it’s familiar, she doesn’t know; she only knows it’s too sharp for her to process everything at once.  Those two had been worried when she had confirmed she doesn’t remember much of anything.

This includes her sense of…  Left?  She’s not sure exactly what to call it- but even after the pink one puts something around her head- over her eyes- and spins her in a circle, she still knows exactly where everything is.  It probably helps that, with her eyes closed, she can process her other senses so much more thoroughly.  As such, she can hear where every entity is, where the walls and ceiling are, where even that drawing on the wall is.  She can’t hear the drawing itself, though- just the piece of something that it’s on.  Her memory serves to position the drawing on the white thing, if she wishes.

She tilts her head slightly.  If she remembers what the pink one told her correctly, she’s been selected to play a game called ‘pin the tail on the pony’.  The drawing down the mostly-clear aisle from her is shaped much like a side-on view of some of the entities around her.  Are they ponies?  She doesn’t know- but figures it’s unimportant.  The drawing is missing the colored part hanging off their backs, behind their hind legs; if she recalls correctly, the purple thing the pink one had given her looks somewhat like an artificial version of that part.  Is that part called a tail?  Again, she doesn’t know, and it’s unimportant.

She replays the pink one’s instructions in her mind.  She’s the pinner- her job is to find the drawing and attach the purple thing- which she had called the tail- to the right spot.

The rest of the participants, lining her path of advance, take turns guiding her to that spot verbally.

In her mind’s eye, she projects the image from her memory onto that thing on the wall.  She’s certain she can accomplish her part without their help- so why are they supposed to guide her to it…?  Perhaps that’s why the pink one wrapped something around her head and spun her in circles.

She decides to pretend she hasn’t a clue where the picture is- and pricks her ears for the first clue.

“It’s, uh, forwards,” the first one says.

Forwards.  On her current heading, she’ll end up next to the drawing…  But if she understands the rules correctly, it’s their job to correct that kind of mistake.  She starts walking.

“Turn to your one o’clock,” the second eventually states- the green one that gave her the cupcake.

While she doesn’t understand the reference, some part of her mind understands the named direction…  She makes the described turn, thirty degrees to her right, and continues walking.  She’s destined for the right side of the image now- and, if they stop her before she hits it, she’ll be in range of the target zone…  though only barely.

“Back to Eleven on my mark,” a third states.  The cream one.

She draws her mouth into a smile.  This one is planning on timing it right.  That same part of her mind understands the specified angle- thirty degrees to the left- and she estimates how far away- in time- the optimal ‘mark’ would be, to put her on a direct course for the target zone.  From that point, at her current pace, she would be walking for no more than four seconds before someone calls ‘stop’...  or she crashes into the wall.

“Mark!”

She turns on the spot, resuming her speed.  The cream one missed the optimal spot by about half a second.

“Aaand, stop!” another says.  She stops- but the picture is just out of reach.

The fifth- the brown one she’d seen eating that first cupcake- tilts his head.  “One more step.”

She takes one step forwards.  She’s now in range of the target zone.

“Okay, you’re at the drawing.  Hold it up for the pinning!”

She raises the leg with the purple thing on it, orienting the pointy bit towards the drawing.

Next, it’s the purple one’s turn- the one with both wings and pointy thing.  She waits several seconds while the purple one scribbles on something, mumbling to herself about angles and distances.

“Twilight, hurry up!” someone complains.

The purple one sighs.  “Okay, okay!”  She reduces back to her mumbling.  “So if I only calculate to one decimal place…”  Silence- save the involuntary noises, the scratching of her feather, and her mumbling, holds for another four seconds, before she goes full volume again.  “Okay!  So then…  On a plane perpendicular to a line twelve point seven degrees to the right of your previous course but even with the pin, the target is eighteen point seven centimeters to the right, twelve point nine up, and four point two out, away from you.”

“Twilight!” someone complains.  “She’ll never get that!”

On the contrary, she understands that perfectly.  Though, she must disagree- the plane of the picture is twelve point eight degrees to her right, not point seven.  Plus, her specifications would actually place the pin just outside the target zone; it’s sixteen point seven to the right, not eighteen.  Regardless, correction isn’t her job- so she obeys the instructions literally.

This, of course, could be a problem.  In order to perform the exact motion that’s been asked, she has to make an exact motion with these limbs of unknown dimensions.

So she estimates.  She reanalyzes what she remembers of herself.  She compares to those of similar size to herself, estimates exactly what angles each bone must be at to reach the desired position.

While she considers, someone sighs.  Sounds like she drove her leg into her face.  “Perhaps you should take your turn, Fluttershy.”

“Not yet!” the purple one- Twilight?- responds.  “Not until she…  uh…”

She’d finished her consideration, and moved her leg.  The pin landed just outside the target zone, pressed halfway into the material behind the drawing.  Figuring the game is over, she presses it in the rest of the way and lowers her leg to the ground.

Everyone is silent for several seconds.

Then the door bangs open again.

“I made it!”  It sounds like the entity that helped her escape the…  place.  She can’t sense any pains- nor anything else.  She uses one front leg to lift the thing off of her eyes, pushing it up and over her head, as she turns to look.

Yes, yes it is.  She hears the thumping of more entities outside, probably on fast approach.

“Rainbow?” Twilight asks.  “Didn’t you have a broken wing?”

The blue entity shrugs.  “I got over it,” she boasts, sticking her chest out.

She leaps into the air.  She spreads her wings immediately, flapping firmly; her muscles had been unwilling to offer her the speed she’d asked for.  Fortunately, she doesn’t have to rely on her rear legs for the entire jump.  She soars briefly overtop the room full of entities, before dropping to a stumbling landing in front of her friend and smiling up at her.

The entity- ‘Rainbow’, apparently- seems taken aback by her sudden appearance.  Come to think of it, that’s probably a good name for this entity, given the rainbow of colors in her hair.

And tail.

On that thought, she finds that she can feel one of her own, behind her hind legs.  She’ll have to look at it sometime- or find a mirror.  Or both.

But that’s later.  Right now, Rainbow seems to have recovered from any shock- and reached out a leg to…  Ruffle her hair?  She’s not entirely certain- but she knows she feels the leg between her ears, while Rainbow talks.

“Eager to see me, huh?” she asks.

She widens her smile, looking up into Rainbow’s face.  She senses a dull ache in Rainbow’s knee go away.  Then she pauses- once again sensing that one last sharp wing pain.  It’s not nearly as bad as it had been- but it’s certainly still there, and certainly still a problem.  Fortunately, it goes away quickly as well.

“She’s mute,” the green one says, walking up behind her.

Rainbow blinks, looking up at the green one.  “What?”
> Retail
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Those pursuing entities- headed by Nurse Redheart- had been completely baffled when Rainbow jumped into the air to avoid them.  They hadn’t even seemed to notice her.

In the time since Rainbow’s arrival, she’s participated in another part of the party.  The pink one had covered her eyes again, given her a stick, and told her to swing at a semi-solid object hanging from the ceiling.  She’d swung at it but, being too far away, hadn’t actually made contact until someone- the little one with the bow, she thinks- told her to hit it.  She had stepped forward and made another swing, slashing right through it.  She hadn’t expected it to be that easy to destroy…  But who cares- all the entities around her had seemed either overjoyed- mostly on the part of the ones her size- or impressed, mostly on the part of the larger ones.

Now, she’s been asked if she wants to try “apple-bobbing”.  The orange one with the hat had demonstrated how, and Rainbow just pulled her head back up from the trough, demonstrating that apples aren’t the only thing waiting to be caught.  The pink one had affirmed the demonstration, declaring the presence of far more than just apples.  She runs right up to it, nodding and smiling.

They smile, motioning for her to take her turn- so she does.  She pokes her head up over the edge of the trough, peering in.

It’s…  Quite the busy trough.  She searches it for something that her new friends- being this entire room of entities- might find amusing.  Finally, she spots it.  Right on the bottom…  She tilts her head slightly, examining it from a different angle.  She estimates its size, shape, and mass.  She clenches her neck muscles briefly, runs through a few more estimations…  It’s a bit big, but she can get this.  She hops her front legs up onto the side of the trough, plunging her head under the water’s surface.  Apples, among other things, skitter out of her way- and she even deflects the little creature with a momentary twist of her neck, turning it to face the other way.  Finally, nearing the bottom of her path, she opens her jaw for just a moment, closing it on her target, and pulls.

It’s about as hard to pull upwards as she imagined.  She uses her legs more than her neck, pulling her targeted object up out of the water.  Once she pulls it free of the surface, she plans to twist her head to pour the water out, vastly reducing the load before she will turn to place it on the floor next to her.

Of course, this doesn’t happen.  The water very quickly ends up all over the room as it twitches in her grasp, sending a burst of not just water but more fragments- and streams- of color out the open end.  Nevermind the strange noise it makes.

All the entities blink and stare at her for a second, while she turns to put it down, no longer needing to pour the water out.  The pink one recovers first.

“Wow!” she calls out.  “You’ve found the grand prize!”  She seems to scowl, raising a leg to tap on her chin.  “It was supposed to be hard to reach…”  She shrugs.  “Whatever!”  Another blaze of noise and flying color comes from someplace- and unless her eyes are failing her, three more cakes just appeared on tables around the room.

And that’s not even counting the enormous one now being placed on the table in the middle of the room.  She smiles, and tries her best guess at how to make her voice.

It works.  She instantly converts the momentary oration into a giggle.

That worked too!  Only, now everyone is looking at her.  She didn't step on anyone’s foot…  leg…  thingy…  did she?

…  apparently not.  The green one is talking.

“You have a beautiful laugh,” she states.

She takes a deep breath.  She’s only ever been called ‘beautiful’ immediately before the terrible.

She lets it go.  The terrible is gone.  She doesn’t need to worry about it.

“You okay?”  She opens her eyes to find another entity, colored similarly to her hair, crouching in front of her.

Off to the side, she sees the green one look at the cream one.  “What’d I do?”  Her answer seems to be a shrug.

She focuses on the yellow entity in front of her, and draws her face into a smile.  “I’m okay,” she manages.

It sounds better than she had expected.  As a matter of fact, she decides, she nailed it; her oration had been at least as clear as that of most of the entities around her.

Everyone has stopped moving again.  They seem to be staring at both her and the yellow entity- who is staring at her.

Then the yellow entity’s pupils shrink to pinpricks and track their way across the crowd, before she slips backwards, muttering.  “Um, if…”

She tilts her head, looking right back at the yellow entity’s distracted eyes, ignoring the pink hair attempting to insert itself between the entity and the crowd around them.  The mumbling seems to have devolved into stuttering nonsense.

Then someone steps in front of her.  It’s the green one.  “You can talk!” she says.  “Do you want to do something?”

She tilts her head.  Does she want to do something?  She doesn’t know.  Though, that purple entity- Twilight- had bothered everypony else by using precise measurements in that tail game.  She doesn’t know why that kind of thing would be a problem- but apparently, it is.  She pulls her mouth into what she hopes is an evil grin; she wonders if Twilight can handle being on the receiving end of that kind of instruction.


A short period of time has passed.  She’d made her request- and Twilight had complied readily, if confusedly.  The pink one declares that she gets to be first.

She draws her mouth into her evil grin again while Twilight spins in circles, eyes wrapped tight.  A quick glance up the path locates the drawing.  She traces the path back to Twilight, and smiles.  She has it planned.

“Aaaand, Begin!” the pink one calls.

She starts talking immediately.

“In a three-dimensional plane rotated seven point nine one three degrees to starboard where the origin is on the tip of your right ear and a unit size of zero point nine seven three centimeters, the target is at the ordered triplet seven point nine one four comma three point one seven nine comma six one three point nine four seven.”

The entire room goes silent.  She smirks.

Twilight turns her head.  “Wait, what?”

The room breaks out laughing.

She giggles, and repeats the instruction- with updated numbers; the tip of her ear had changed position, and so had the angle of her body changed.  She also uses a slightly different unit size this time, of one point zero one three centimeters.

“So…  Hey, those were different numbers!”

“You moved.”

With a huff, Twilight turns ten point three one seven degrees to port- the second angle measurement had been five point three one nine to starboard- and begins her course.  As she goes, her path curves ever so slightly to starboard- but not enough to get her in even the same ballpark as the drawing.

She smirks, and leaps into the air, winging overtop to place herself by the wall, in Twilight’s path- and holds up her hoof.

Twilight stops right in front of her, muttering.  “Then seven to the right and three up…”  Twilight positions her hoof, moves it, and places the pin in the guest of honor’s outstretched hoof- which hadn’t moved since she’d landed.

“Thank you,” she says- earning a yelp and backwards jump.  “But it’s now one-three-point-four-seven-one degrees to starboard, the origin on the tip of your nose, with the ordered pair-!”

“Please,” Twilight yelps, interrupting.  “Normal instructions!”

She continues as if she hadn’t been interrupted.  “-seven three point four one seven comma one one point-!”

“Please!  I promise I won’t do that again if you give me normal instructions!”

She chuckles.  “Turn right.”

With a sigh of relief, Twilight looks briefly to her right before asking, “How far?”

“Nine eight point four one nine degrees.”

Twilight facehooves, but makes the prescribed turn…  plus some.  “Next!” she pleads.

But the whole room is laughing.

“Nah, I’ll let her take my turn too!” the second in line announces.

“Seconded!” the third in line, the green one, calls.

“Thirded!” the fourth, the cream one, announces.

The fifth tilts his head.  “Fourthed?”

And so it goes down the line, leaving her as the only participant.

She smirks.  “Forwards!”

Rather than asking how far, Twilight starts moving.

“Aaaand…  Stop!”

She freezes.

“Right turn!”

She tilts her head.  “Right?”

“Yes, two five three point one seven nine degrees.”  The room laughs again.

She hangs her head and turns.

“A little more…  There.  One step forwards.  Ready to pin.”

Twilight holds the pin up with her hoof.

“Right…  Stop.  Up…  Stop.  Too far, down a touch.  Eh, right a half-centimeter.  In a centimeter.  Up a quarter.  Left a hair.  In a dozen…  Down a hair.  And in.”

Twilight finally pushes the pin in- and the pin goes in quite easily.  Easier than it’s supposed to, she’s pretty sure.  She finally lets out a deep breath before lighting her horn and removing the blindfold.  She then glares at the picture in front of her; the tail is in the wrong spot.  About two centimeters off, as a matter of fact.


She watches Twilight glare at the drawing.  Eventually, Twilight pulls the pin out a touch, peeking at the paper behind it- then shoves it back in and facehooves.  “Really?”

She nods.  “Really.”  She’d guided it back into exactly the same spot she had stuck it in earlier.
> Hoofball
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some time has passed.  It seems short to her, but very much has happened.  Most of it was confusing, ending with strange looks all around.

But all of that is done- so, according to the pink one, there’s nothing else left to do except eat, talk, and dance.  She doesn’t dance, she remembers that.  Not from where, though.

So, she’s returned to the table with the cupcakes.  Her muscles are still burning with unfamiliar pain.  She’s picked a stool close enough to the pile of them that she doesn’t have to rely on any other entities to acquire her next one for her.

Two of the smaller entities are already at the table, to her left.  Neither of them have either wings or pointy thing- and the closer one seems interested in her.

“Another blank-flank, huh?”

She looks curiously at the entity, using one limb to peel off the inedible layer of her cupcake, before returning to her food to take a bite.  Just like before, it is thoroughly enjoyable.

The entity doesn’t seem satisfied.  “Hey!  Blank flank!”

She raises one eyebrow, looking towards them again.

Then three more small entities show up on the other side of the table, and also start talking to her.  One of them has wings, another has the pointy thing, and the third has neither.

The one with neither is the one that speaks.  “Don’t listen to them.”

She blinks, looking at them now.

The one on the left responds.  “Hey, flanks out, blank flanks!”

The right again.  “We’re not about to let you bully a new friend.”

“Oh?  Well-”

Sensing a building argument that could only go nowhere good, she moves.  The second half of her cupcake falls quickly to the table, but she’s not worried about that.  She places her front legs between the two other entities, one against the chest of each.  “Stop,” she states.  “We can have a match.”

This gives her pause.  Even though she said it herself, she doesn’t know what kind of match she’s talking about- or how it would help.  Only that a ‘match’ would help.

“A match?” the one on the right asks.

The one on the left blinks.  “You mean Hoofball?”

She nods.  “Yes.”

The one on the left snorts.  “Sure.  Join in, if you like- we’ll smash all four of you.”

That sounds like a challenge- and she’s not one to turn down a challenge.  Not when…  She’s not sure, but she knows this qualifies.  She nods.  “Sure.”

The three on the right look at each other.  “Cutie Mark Crusaders Hoofball Players, Yeah!”

An entity behind her somewhere- the green one, if she’s identifying the voice correctly- mutters something that catches her attention.  “Uh-oh.  Uh, hey, Bonbon?”

The other one on the left, the silver one, speaks up.  “We can use my dad’s Hoofball field.  This way.”

Both the two on the left then rise and move towards the door; the three on the right do the same, moving around the table.  She snaps up the last of her cupcake and follows.





It’s a large field of grass.  There’s nets at either end, and a couple lines across the field.  She doesn’t understand any of them.  Two of the larger entities have followed them, though they seem to be hiding.  She’s pretty sure it’s the green one and the cream one- the two that had thrown her cupcakes when she entered that building.

While the two that had been on the left disappear into a closet- after pronouncing it ‘off limits to the blank-flanks’- she asks the other three what Hoofball is.

They blink at her.  “You challenged her to a match when you don’t know what it is?” the white one- with the pointy thing- asks.

“We’re screwed,” the orange one- with the wings- states.

The last one sighs, glancing at the other two.  “We’ve still got twice as many ponies.  Um, basically, we try to kick the ball into the opposing team’s net and keep it out of our own.”

The white one stuffs a foreleg into her own face.  “Ugh, why didn’t I think of that?  Um…  yes.  Do what we do, basically.”

She hears snickering coming from the stands, where the two larger entities have hidden.





Swish-THWACK!

The net on the two earth ponies’ side shakes violently while the scoreboard emits a little ding, confirming the first point of the game.

Diamond Tiara blinks, looking back at the ball; she’d been on guard duty.  “What just happened?”

Over in the stands, covered by an invisibility spell, Bonbon drops her jaw while Lyra chuckles.  “Come on.  She ate a cupcake out of the air and you’re surprised she can shoot straight?”





Zzzwooop!

The whirling ball seems to curve in midair, ducking smoothly underneath Silverspoon’s dive and touching down in the grass before slamming into and climbing the net.  The scoreboard chimes.





Swoop!

It seems to go up this time, curving up to hit the top of the net when Diamond Tiara dives low.  The scoreboard chimes.





She’s on guard duty this time- the two earth pony opponents got tired of her kicks, it would seem.  One glance- or memory- of the scoreboard proves it; the score is currently sixty-three nothing in her favor.  The pink one- silver one called her ‘Diamond’- is ‘dribbling’ the ball, as the yellow one- Applebloom, her other two teammates called her- called it.  None of her teammates are close enough, being distracted by an amusing feint on the part of ‘Silverspoon’, what Diamond called her other opponent.

Then the kick comes.  Once again, she estimates trajectories, amuses herself, calculates the required blow, tweaks it for an assured victory, and finally moves.

Score!  The ball tears across half the field, ricochets off Applebloom’s outstretched hoof, flies outfield and curves back in, all to finally slam into the goal at the other end of the field before launching itself back out to roll to a halt in front of her while the scoreboard chimes.





The final score is one hundred ninety-three to nothing.  It’s at that point that her opponents admitted defeat at the hooves of the ‘blank flanks’...  She still doesn’t know what that has to do with anything.  She will admit, especially since the burn in her muscles disappeared, the match has been really fun.

Everypony- her comrades and opponents alike used the term a few times throughout- gathers in the middle of the field once again, as the two teams facing.

The two ponies facing her team seem more shocked than anything else.

“I…  I’m sorry,” Diamond states.  “I didn’t realize…”

Silverspoon finishes the thought.  “We didn’t realize you were so good at Hoofball.”

Diamond blinks a couple times.  “Though it makes me wonder…”  Both she and Silver look directly towards her- then blink.  Diamond speaks again.  “I, uh, seem to have missed your name.”

“Last One,” she states calmly.

More blinking.  “Wait.  You’re named last one?”

Nod.

Even more blinking.  “Uh, okay.  Um…  Anyways.  I was wondering…  as a little, uh, friendly competition…  wanna try a game, the five of us against you alone?”

She smiles, and nods.  “Sure!”





“How?”  Scootaloo asks, staring at the scoreboard.  Eighty-one to zero in Last One’s favor.

“Oh, hey there,” another voice states, approaching them.  Multiple members of Team Demolished- the latest nickname for what had started out as Team Cutie Mark- jump and yelp in response, turning to look.

Lyra glances up at the scoreboard as she approaches, then over towards the lonely filly guarding the entire other side of the field.  “Need some help?”

Applebloom is the first to nod.  “Uh, yes.  She has us outnumbered.”

She glances up towards the lonely filly.  “That okay?”

The answer comes back instantly.  “Absolutely!”  If anything else, she seems excited.





“We need more balls,” Bonbon states, staring at the scoreboard with Lyra, Diamond, Silverspoon, the Crusaders, Applejack, and Big Mac, the last two of which joined twenty minutes ago.  The score is one eighty-three to nothing in Last One’s favor.

“More balls?” Applejack asks.

“Yes.  That okay, Last One?”

The filly tilts her head.  “How would that work?”

“We simply stick more balls in play.  If any one of them makes it into a net, that’s a point- and play won’t pause until all balls have made it into nets.”

“Awesome!”





“That’s not even possible,” Lyra states.  Through this last game, there was a whopping ten balls in play simultaneously- and Vinyl, Octavia, Doctor Hooves, Derpy, Mayor Mare, and two of the flower girls have all joined Team Crushed, the latest nickname.  The score is nine hundred thirty to zero, in Last One’s favor- and the stands have filled up by now.  It’s also getting pretty late.

“Alright then.  How many balls do you have, and who wants to play?”





Zip swish zwap swoop zip zip zeep zoop

“I have absolutely no idea what is going on anymore,” Lyra states.  Rainbow and Pinkie have joined, along with some fifty more Ponyvillians; there’s also about forty balls in play.  Play is still going on- but the score at the moment is a whopping ninteen thousand two hundred eighty to one in Last One’s favor.  Rainbow managed to score that lonely point with a Rainboom- but the filly successfully intercepted all her following attempts.

She kicks her ball solidly forwards with as much power as her horn-augmented hoof could muster, propelling the ball to something like two hundred miles an hour- but yet again, the filly is faster.  A momentary blue-and-gold blur is all she sees before her ball becomes a serpentine white-and-black blur dodging around the players on the field to enter into the goal.





“Seems a little unfair,” she states, upon arrival at the stadium.  One glance down at the playing field would show an immensely unfair setup of players- one filly on one side, with at least fifty full-grown adults and some thirty or so youth on the other.

Only, with a score of thirty thousand to one in the lone filly’s favor, she knows exactly who is outnumbered.  She gains an amused glint in her eye and turns to her sister.  “Sister?  How would you like to join this game?”

“Join this game?  Pah!  You’re setting me up for failure, Sister- there’s no way one filly, even with my assistance, can fend off that many- with that many balls, as well!”

“Have you looked at the scoreboard?”

“Huh?  …  Uh…”

“Don’t worry, you won’t be alone.  Captain?  How many hoofballs do we have?”

“Hoofballs?  Forty-three.”

“Alright.  Who wants to join in this game- on Team Cutie Marks’ side?”





Hundreds of jaws are hanging as they stare at the scoreboard.  Celestia is lowering her Sun now- but, with half of Ponyville, at least three professional Hoofball teams, and over a hundred Royal Guards as backup, Team Cutie Mark has scored a measly ninety-seven points.

Against Last One’s fourteen million.

Nevermind the shining golden Rainboom that happened when the Guards joined play- and the bell-like peal of laughter sounding throughout the entire last section, from somewhere on that side of the field.
> Healing
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Miss, uh, Last One, was it?”

She pauses briefly in her chewing, looking at the entity that had used her name.

It’s the white one- Nurse Redheart.

She nods slightly, and finishes off her ice cream cone with one last bite.  A strange noise immediately comes up from the side- something the pink one had called the ‘trumpet’.

The said pink one, at the table next to her, stops halfway through her own ice cream cone.  “What?  How- but that’s impossible!”

“She ate the whole thing,” the white, metal-wearing entity with the trumpet states.  “It’s a clean win.”

“But- but- but that’s not possible!  It was as big as she is!”

He seems to shrug.  “I don’t know where she put it all either- but it’s true.  You’ve been beaten.”

She smiles.  Even though the metal all the white entities are wearing makes her uneasy, their spears are a good sign for some reason.  “Can I have another?”

The pink one wolfs down the rest of her cone.  “I want a rematch!”

“Absolutely!”

He blinks.  “You sure about that?”

Then the pink one plunks down a new ice cream cone, this one at least as big as a full-grown entity, rather than her own size, in front of her.  It’s one of two.

“ThreeTwoOneGo!”  The pink one immediately starts engulfing her cone.

She grins, and attacks her ice cream.

The trumpet sounds again.

“Aaaand, Last One wins…  again.  Sorry, Pinkie, it looks like there’s a new champion at the table.”

She smiles at the pink one.  Then a rumble comes from her belly somewhere.

Pinkie stares at her.  “Uhh…  how is that even possible?”

She grins.  “Can I have a cupcake?”

Pinkie blinks.  “Uh…”  She looks back at the kitchen.  “I’m all out…  Um…”

“Last One?” Nurse Redheart asks again.

She looks over at her.  “Mm?”

“Can we, uh, talk, maybe?”

She blinks.  “Uhh…”

“Yes,” one of the metal-wearing entities states- and not the one with the trumpet.  “Before Twilight wakes up.”

She looks up at him.  “Huh?”

“Whatever you’re worried about with Nurse Redheart, it can’t possibly be as bad as the experimentation Twilight is almost certainly going to subject you to when she wakes up.”  He sighs.  “I might be her brother, but even I can’t stop her when she gets going.  Especially now that she’s ascended.”

“What?”

“No- go.  Nurse Redheart will only help you- but Twi’s experiments tend to be more harmful than not.  And she’s waking up.”  He practically herds her towards the other entity.

I obey.

Nurse Redheart blinks over at Twilight.  “Why was she sleeping?”

“Sugar crash, coupled with exhaustion from the game,” he states.  “She’ll be fine.”

“Roger.”  Nurse Redheart leads her away from the table, then just outside, where she glances around- as if to make sure nopony’s listening.  “Um, Last One.  Do you remember what happened in the hospital earlier?”

She blinks.  “Maybe?”

Sigh.  “You remember riding on somepony’s back?”

“Yes.”

“Whose back was it?”

“Rainbow.”

“Even though she was hurt.”

“She…  Her pain went away.”  She averts her eyes.  “Then we crashed.”

“Do you remember…  dying?”

“I remember getting close, but…  But my chest-thumping came back.”  She blinks.  “What’s a crash cart?”

“Wha-  You were aware during that?”

“Uh…  yes?”

“Even though you were dangerously malnourished with a severe case of dehydration- and low blood pressure- to go with it?”

“Was I not supposed to be?”

She blinks.  “Uh…  We’re definitely keeping you from Twilight.  She’d probably kill you in an attempt to find out how far you can go without losing consciousness.”

“I’m hard to kill.”  She doesn’t know where it came from, or why, but she knows that to be cold, hard fact.

“I’m glad, but that won’t stop Twilight.  Um…  Do you know how Rainbow seemed to heal…  well, crazy fast, after the crash?”

She tilts her head.  “Her pains went away,” she states.  “Isn’t that normal?”

“Normal?  …  Well, yes, I suppose, but not nearly that fast.  And broken bones normally require help to heal properly.”

“Huh?  Am I…?”  She blinks, shrinking away.

“Oh, no, it’s not a problem- rather, it’s a miracle.  Do you know if you- or she- did something to make her pains…  go away?”

She shakes her head.  “I sensed her pains…  then they went away.”

“Uh…  can you elaborate?”

“That’s what happened.  I sensed her pains, and they went away.”

She frowns.  “... strange.  When did you sense her pains?”

“When they happened, during the crash.”

“...  Her wing was broken before that jump, yet she used it just fine.”

“That pain had already gone away.”

“When did you first sense that one?”

“When I met her.”

“Ahh…  Um, can you sense my pains?”

Shake.  “No.”

“Do you remember how you sensed her pains?”

“I…  just sensed them.”

“Ahh…  Um, would you mind returning to the hospital with me?  I’d like to make sure you’ve recovered properly from…  Well, from whatever else we didn’t see.  Some of those wounds you had looked like they had infections.”

“All my pains went away.”

Nod.  “I know- but I’d like to make sure they stay away.”

“Okay.”

She then follows Nurse Redheart back to that building she’d fled earlier.  Now that voices aren’t as…  well, terrible any more, she isn’t afraid of it.


Once in the room, Nurse Redheart lifts her up onto the bed.

“I sense it,” she states.

Redheart looks up.  “Mm?”

“Lingering knee pain, mild headache…  and something doesn’t feel right about your spine, but I can’t decide how.”  She sighs, closing her eyes.  “The first two will go away, but the last…”  She shrugs.  “You’re not a pegasus- I don’t know.”

Redheart blinks.  “It is true…  my knee never did heal properly after surgical reconstruction, I’m about due for my migraine headaches…  and I’ve always had random, low-grade back pains we could never identify.  Um, when did you start feeling that?”

“While you were lifting me up.”

“Hmm…  Is it possible it’s spread by physical contact?”

She shrugs.  “Possible, yes.  I didn’t feel Rainbow’s pains until I touched her, then…”  She sighs.  “But I didn’t feel anypony’s pains before her, and I think somepony touched me beforehand.”

“Hmm…  But Rainbow would have been after the IV drained entirely into your bloodstream, whereas everypony before Rainbow would be before the IV.  It’s possible you were too far into your nutritional deficiencies beforehand for it to register.  Hmm…”  She proceeds to perform a few standard tests of her vitals.

She watches Nurse Redheart calmly.  She can sense when the knee pain goes away, but the headache will take a few minutes.

“Well…  Still a little on the nutrition deficiency, but nothing dangerous- and how you’re not massively hyper with that high of blood sugar levels, I don’t know.”  She smiles.  “Probably from the ice cream.”  Then she glances down at her foreleg, flexing it a couple times.  “And hey, you’re right- it did go away.  Um, does that sense extend to you as well?”

“Huh?  Oh…  yes.  All my pains went away during and after the party.”

“Hmm…  Would you like to try touching a few other patients, find if that’s what it takes?”

Shrug.  “Sure.”

“Just this way, then.”  She helps her down from the bed, leads her to another ward, down to a bed all the way at the end.

“Good evening, Roseluck,” Nurse Redheart greets the entity in the bed.  

The cream-colored, red-haired entity in the bed lets out a cough before struggling to speak.  “ ‘Eve, Redhar’.”

Even from her position on the floor, she can see numerous bits of white covering Roseluck’s body.  Both her front legs seem to be suspended by cords of some kind, the hind legs on some sort of table overtop the bed.  Add the strange-looking brace wrapped around the entity’s neck…

“How is everything going?” Nurse Redheart asks.

“ ‘Urts,” Roseluck breathes.

Redheart winces.  “Is it getting worse again?”

“ ‘Ots.”

She scowls, looking at the IV.  “Uh…  Well.  I originally came in to offer a new, experimental treatment that will, in theory, accelerate recovery phenomenally.  It’s been pretty effective on Rainbow and myself so far, but we don’t know how it works just yet, so…  Would you like to try it, or go conventional again?”

“ ‘Es,” she breathes.  “ ‘Try.”

“Alright,” Nurse Redheart nods, before looking down at her.  “Last One, this is Roseluck.  Roseluck, uh, this is Last One.”  She helps lift Last One onto the mattress.

She smiles, waving and smiling briefly at the entity’s distorted face before gingerly reaching over to touch a rare patch of exposed fur.

Then her breath catches.

She senses the pains blossoming throughout the entity’s form.  Massive pains.  Lots of important ones, some very important ones.

And one that’s truly critical…  but it won’t go away on its own.  She’ll have to relieve the pressure on the entity’s chest before that pain can be removed.  “I-” she begins.  “I sense!  It’s- it’s too tight!  It’s hurting!”  As she talks, she moves to relieve that pressure.

Nurse Redheart doesn’t move.  She seems to be stunned by her statement.

So she grasps two parts of the white thing wrapped around Roseluck’s chest and pulls.  One side one way, the other side the other way.  A sharp screeching sound greets her, and her pressure relief effort is successful.  Roseluck screams.

“Wha- what are you doing-?” Redheart asks.

She flattens the white thing out, showing the cause of that pain.  It’s coated in red, but it’s very hard- and sticking out of her chest at an odd angle.  She waits just long enough for Redheart to see it- and gasp- before she grips it with her hoof, keeping it from coming out too fast.  That could make an even worse pain.  “Sorry!” she yelps.  “Sorry it hurts!  But- but this way, you’ll live.”

Redheart blinks a couple times.  “That’s-  That’s a floating rib!  …  in her heart!  Um-!”  She begins moving forwards.

“Not fast!” she declares.  “Not fast, that’ll hurt!  Going slow lets the pain go away without creating more.”  She feels more pains creating as she slowly, carefully removes it.  But they’re all unimportant pains that will go away later.  “What’s the red?” she asks, gesturing with one hoof at all the red stuff seeping out around it- one of the reasons she’s not going fast.  Roseluck doesn’t have too much of it left.

Redheart blinks, then slams a hoof briefly- twice- on a button above Roseluck’s head.  “That’s blood,” she states.  “You know her blood pressure?”

“No.”

“Is there enough of it for her heart to work properly?”

“There won’t be.”

Then the door flies open, and another entity comes charging in.  He blinks upon seeing her on the bed.

“Doctor Horse!” Redheart calls.  “It’s part of her- she can sense it- but she found a floating rib in Roseluck’s heart!”

He rounds the corner, moving closer.

“Not fast,” she repeats, motioning slightly to the object she’s pulling from Roseluck’s chest.

Or, more appropriately, holding in place.  It’s out of the super-important danger zone it was in before, and that pain has stopped getting worse, now slowly fading.  Now she’s just waiting for the small pains to build up around it, releasing the tension she can sense between it and the entity’s belly tissues.  To let her remove it without causing further damage, as returning it would be…  Well, dangerous, at the least.

He takes one glance at her position, and the shredded bandage underneath, before nodding, his horn glowing.  Moments later, fresh bags of red stuff appear, attach themselves to the stand and the tubes, and begin emptying themselves into Roseluck.

Then the changes she’s waiting for complete.  She waits briefly for a few more of the pains to change around the object before she pulls it free of the entity’s chest, dropping it on the bed next to her.  She looks up at the entity’s face; Roseluck seems to be whimpering in pain.

“Sorry,” she states again.  “Sorry it hurt.  It’s gone now, the pains will go away.”

That they do, she senses, starting with the other, similar objects, that haven’t been pushed so far from their intended locations.

“But- with a missing rib-!” the doctor begins.

“The pain will go away,” she declares again, before glancing at the object she’d pulled out, and gingerly touching Roseluck’s side, where it’s supposed to be.  “It will come back.”
> Hurt
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It did come back, eventually.  A lot of time has passed- and while Roseluck still has a good number of pains left in her, Doctor Horse just removed her casts and told her all her bones are healed- she can go home.

“The pains aren’t all gone yet,” she states.

He blinks down at her, still sitting next to Roseluck on the bed.  “...  Or, if you want, you can stick around until they are all gone.”

“I’ll do that,” Roseluck states, and shudders.  “Note to self:  never stay in the Crusaders’ path.”

She looks up at her.  “Huh?  What happened?”

Roseluck smiles.  “I think they were trying for their skate-car-ing-thing cutie marks or something yesterday.  Whatever it was, it was massive, on wheels, and moving quickly through Ponyville.”  She shudders.  “I got smashed between it and the side of Bonbon’s Candies.”  She looks down at her.  “Whatever you do, always get out of their path first, then try to stop them.”  Then she looks up at Nurse Redheart.  “Soo…  what was that…  mystery treatment, again?”

Redheart smiles.  “Last One,” she states, gesturing at her.  “We think it’s some kind of innate ability, but, well…”

“She looks like a normal pegasus.”

“Indeed,” Doctor Horse agrees.  “And yet, she can do…  this.”  He looks up at Roseluck.  “Don’t tell Twilight, please.  She may try tests that very well could kill her.”

“I’m hard to kill.”

“That’s exactly my point.  She’ll try to find out how hard…  and there’s really only one way to do that.”  He sighs.  “How are her pains?”

“Only … surface pains remain.”

“So, bruises and the like?”

She tilts her head.  “Huh?”

He blinks, and raises his eyebrow.  “So, you can fix what would have been a lost cause, but you don’t know what a bruise is?”

“Uh…  I guess.”

He looks up at Roseluck.  “How?”

“Language barrier?” Roseluck suggests.

He nods.  “True, very possible.  Um…”  He looks at her.  “Is that the case?  You know what those…  pains are, but can’t put them to words?”

She nods.

He rubs his chin with one hoof.  “...  Huh.  So, how would you like to learn some medical science?”

She tilts her head.  “Huh?”

“Uh…  that is, what we call everything, how to help ponies heal…  er, make the pains go away, that is, the normal way.”

“I can help ponies?”

She doesn’t know why the prospect of helping the entities- ponies; he’s using the term to refer to real, live entities, not just a drawing on the wall.  In any case, she doesn’t know why the prospect of helping ponies is so…  well, exciting.  It’s…

Oh, she supposes she might.  While it doesn’t make her think of the terrible right away, she somehow knows it’s directly contradictory to it.

Heh.  Take that, terrible!

“Uh, yes?” Doctor Horse asks.  He seems confused.

“Yes!” she declares.

“Wait,” Roseluck states suddenly, eyes widening.  “Did you say a lost cause?”

He blinks.  “Uh, no?”

She lets out a breath, closing her eyes and looking at the mattress.  “So, I can fix what would have been a lost cause, but I don’t know what a bruise is?”  She looks up.  “What would have been a lost cause?”

He blinks again.  “Uh…  Oh, that.  Sorry- and yes, I suppose I did.  A rib in the heart…  is not something we can normally fix.  Add that we didn’t even know it was happening…  and if she wasn’t here, you’d probably be dead right now.”  He looks down at her.  “On that note, Last One, you’ve successfully saved your first life.”

“Is anypony else like that?” she asks urgently.  Roseluck is still staring at him, jaw hanging.

He blinks, looks up at Redheart.  “Not off the top of my head…?”

Redheart shakes her head.  “There’s plenty of badly injured patients, but none with injuries that could escalate like that.”  Then she sighs.  “I think.”

“You think?” he asks.

“Yes, I think.  We didn’t even know her floating ribs were broken until Last One was pulling one of them out, did we?”

“Uhh….”

“We should at least be able to narrow it down to those with damaged ribs.  We did know Roseluck had some broken ribs, just weren’t sure how many.”

“All her pains have gone awa-aaah!”

Roseluck’s head had resumed normal operation- and the pony had moved, snatching her into a hug.  “Thank yo-Aaah!”

The sharp crack almost echoes through the room as all four ponies, herself included, freeze.

Then she carefully pulls her foreleg back from where it had landed against Roseluck’s chest when the motion had surprised her.  “S-sorry,” she mumbles.  “It…  it’ll go away.”

Roseluck drops her, a foreleg of her own coming to the impact point.  “O-ow-!”

…  the pony’s head has suspended normal operation once again, she can sense.  The pain she’d just made goes away while she rights herself on the mattress, then looks at her hoof.

She knows what the terrible is.  At least, what part of it is.

She hurt someone.

She…  hurt someone.

“Sorry,” she mutters, before she leaves.

She runs.

She’s much faster than she was last time she was running from here.  She jumps into the air, beats her wings to slow herself to a hover in front of the door.  Grasps the handle with a hoof, as Nurse Redheart did, turns it.  Pulls on it.

The door opens.

She flicks it a little further open, drops back to the floor, and continues running.

The next door, she reaches when it’s almost closed.  She catches the edge with her hoof, pulls it open.  It groans strangely, cracks and snaps coming from the wall it’s attached to, as it deforms out of her way.

She runs.

Something breaks in the last door when she opens it, showering her and the ground in shiny bits of clear stuff.  She ignores it and runs.

She’s in the street.  She looks left, looks right.  Looks forwards.  Where to?

She sees the trees in the distance.  She runs.

The trees look angry, somehow.  Like it’s supposed to be dangerous.  She doesn’t care.  She runs.

She stops sensing both Nurse Redheart and Roseluck at once.  She doesn’t care; Redheart’s back pain is gone, and head pain is going away.  She runs.

She cannot help ponies if she hurts them.  She cannot- will not- hurt them.

Something wooden moves into her path.  She doesn’t know what it is; it looks like it has a jaw.

She doesn’t care.  She runs.  Under it.

She…  She refuses to hurt ponies.

She finds something, and hides.  Estimates how long she’ll live for…

A long time.  A very long time.

She glances back at herself.  She has a tail; it matches her hair.  She looks like a pony herself.

She doesn’t care.  She hurt a pony by touching her.

She cannot allow that to happen again.  She will not hurt another pony.

She will not go where she can hurt another pony.

She…

She goes to sleep.
> Rescue
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

She knows exactly where she is.

Several times, this forest has tried to hurt her.  From landslides, to wooden monsters, to…  She’s still not sure what that spiny black plant was, but once she got out of its way, it ignored her just as much as she did it.

In any case, it’s been a few weeks since she ran into these woods.  Each day, she’d pick a new, almost-random direction, and walk.

That direction was never towards the pony town, only away.  Even so, she remembers the way back.  She knows she’s almost three full weeks’ walk away, though she’s only been out for four.

She’s stopped to eat many times on her way through these woods.  She’s found a few things that threw up red flags, but everything else was fine.

She hears a rumble from those wooden monsters, off to the side.  They pose no threat to her.

She hears a scream.  A strange scream, but it sounds pony.

She pauses, looking in that direction, ears pointed.

It sounds like the monsters are attacking a pony.

She cannot let that happen.

She runs.

A quick beat of her wings puts her in the trees as she reaches the clearing, the sounds of a fight already coming from it.

She doesn’t recognize the pony on the ground.  Ponies; there’s two of them.  One is dragging a leg bent in places hers doesn’t, the other has so much of the red stuff- Redheart called it ‘blood’, she remembers- coming out of her that it can’t be good.  It’s practically gushing from the pony’s side…  The side, she realizes, where a wing used to be.  The wing on the other side is still attached, but mostly folded and mostly hidden from view by the rest of the pony’s body.

That seems to be what slowed the wooden monsters down, how the ponies are drawing away from them despite their evident pains.  The missing wing is in the middle of the party of monsters, getting shredded apart by them.  Saving it is a lost cause.

Three of the monsters split off as she arrives, advancing on the ponies.

She drops herself out of the tree, against the trunk, and kicks off against it halfway down.  It gives way as she goes, but her wings- already spread for the purpose of steering- suffice to supplement the missing force and drive her to her desired velocity anyways.

The air seems to curve around her as she goes.  Funny- it’s this strange effect again.  The one that only occurred once before, that she can remember, back during that hoofball match.  Just like it had then, though, it feels normal- like she did it all the time at some point.

It makes sense to her, as she thinks about it.  With how easy it is to produce, she must have done it a lot, back before she seems to have forgotten about everything.

Then the second effect, the one that had followed the curving air in the hoofball match, comes.  This had come as a surprise during the match- well, not much.  Rainbow had done it, and she’d seen that, so she’d half-expected it.  But she knows she’d never done that before.

She leaves the ring of golden light behind, making another stroke with her wings, fine-tuning her aim.

She passes straight through the lead monster, her hooves disintegrating it completely.  She slams into the ground on the other side, kicking off of it with even more force than the tree; it won’t give as easily, and besides, she’s nearly reversing direction, not just starting out.  It still takes her a wing beat or two to reach the same velocity.  The air curves again.

She leaves a second ring of golden light behind, fine-tunes her aim once again, and passes through the second monster.  She misses the third- as was her intent.  She banks sharply upwards, before turning over and beating her wings as hard as they will go.  This second redirection is the hardest move of the entire plan, but it’s nothing she can’t handle.

She’s made it maybe as high as the treetops before she made a full stop- and almost instantly done the whole curved air thing again, this time directly downwards.  Another ring of light, more fine tuning.

She lands directly on top of the third monster, smashing it into the ground- and hits the same ground herself, on her hooves, facing the rest.  She puts her wings in an aggressive position and snarls at the remaining monsters.

As she does this, she notices the bolts of light- no, she knows what this is called; it’s electricity.  She notices the bolts of electricity arcing between the feathers on her wings and sizzling through the air between them as well.  A rumble sounds from above her, as shadow falls across the clearing.

The ponies behind her both scream, but the important part is that the remaining monsters, after landing from their frightened jumps, panic and flee, after acceptable delays for their heads to resume proper operation.

She glances upwards- good, the rumble was not another monster, just those strange, fluffy bits of white in the sky…  though these are pretty dark and, as the rumble sounds again, she spots a flicker of electricity- lightning, it’s called- deep inside it.

So she turns to the two ponies, trotting towards them.  “Are you okay?” she asks.

Their screams have died away, but they haven’t moved, still staring at where she had landed.  She supposes their heads have ceased proper functioning, and comes close enough to touch.  Only to touch, though- and specifically, the one with the missing wing.  The other one doesn’t look as badly hurt, despite the odd angles its wings are sporting- the ones hers simply can’t- and its leg; she doesn’t get the idea it’s as important as all the red.

The flow of the red has almost entirely stopped when the pony collapses on the ground.  She hasn’t sensed all of the pony’s pains yet; perhaps there’s something more important she missed?

The other pony yelps in response to the fall, appearing as if her head just resumed normal functioning, and stumbles forwards on three legs.  “Sis!  Please don’t go!”

She looks up at the pony.  A gentle greenish-blue- ‘aqua’- this one.  “She’s not dead,” she states.  She looks back at the one on the ground, with the missing wing.  The one whose fur looks much like her own, though a little lighter in color.  Aquamarine.  “Close, but…  not dead.”  The pains start going away, and she shifts slightly to touch the aqua pony, looking back up at her.  “Are you okay?”
> Sister
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

She’s not sure what just happened.

She has a pretty good idea, though.  She’d touched the aqua pony, while the worst of the aquamarine pony’s dangerous pains went away.  At the same time, the aqua pony hugged the aquamarine pony.  She’d ignored the strange tingling building up in herself; she could deal with it later.

That tingling, though, seems to have had other plans.  It peaked during that touch- she’s pretty sure it’s an unrelated event- and now, it’s gone down to nothing, and starting to build up again.

She doesn’t abandon the two injured ponies.  She can still feel their pains; while the aqua one is still standing, she won’t be for long, unless a good number of her pains go away.  She does, though, examine her new surroundings.

It’s…  a little strange.  It makes her shiver; all this mist would be an excellent hiding place for danger.  She remembers that.

Even though it doesn’t feel bad.  It feels happy, somehow, even with the two ponies with her- one unconscious, the other crying.

The ground she stands upon is very smooth.  At first glance, it looks like more clouds of mist; however, she can see the solid, translucent surface she’s actually standing on, hidden within it.  The mist is merely rolling overtop of it.

She waits.  She will heal these two ponies to the best of her ability before she seeks cover, or food.  Before she makes them aware of their current surroundings.

The tingling peaks again.  She’s touching both ponies this time; if physical contact was a factor, she wants it to stay a factor.  This also has the effect of keeping her feeling of their pains at full strength.

She thinks she sees something white appearing before everything changes again.  There wasn’t enough time, unfortunately, for her eyes to focus.

She examines her new surroundings again.  Back in the woods.  The wooden monsters’ panicked yipping can still be heard in the distance.

Meaning they can be ignored.  However…  She seems to have changed.  She feels the difference; she feels it in both ponies, as well.  But she’s seen it before; she recognizes it.  She doesn’t know how a pony could be changed like that, but this difference is no less a part of a pony than her wings; she dare not fight it.  It’s not a pain.

…  Funny.  Their pains are going away faster than they were before.

But the tingling is gone, and is not returning.  She need not worry about the strange, mist-filled place anymore; this forest is even easier to hide danger in.

She curls up against the two ponies, very carefully, to wait.

If danger appears, she will fight.

But other than that, she will wait.  She will heal.

…  Huh.  Some of the pains the two ponies had simply disappeared on the return- like the lack of the red stuff.  She’s confident they’ll both survive; all the dangerous pains are gone.  The aquamarine one will probably be resuming normal operation soon, as well.

So she waits.

All of their bone pains, save the missing wing, are gone by the time the aquamarine pony resumes normal operation by taking in a sudden, deep breath.

The aqua pony lets out a yelp.  “Sis!  You’re alive!”  She hugs even tighter than before, her wings joining in the effort.

“Yech!” the aquamarine one yelps, causing the other to recoil.  “Watch the horn, sis!”

“Oh, sorry.”  She resumes the hug, though with her head at a different angle that doesn’t thrust her new pointy thing- horn- into the side of the aquamarine pony’s neck.

Then both of them stop moving.

“Wait,” they state together, the aqua pony lifting her head straight up in the air.  “Horn?”  They look at each other.

…  their heads suspend normal functioning.

She looks over, positioning her head to be in both of their fields of view.  “Something wrong?” she asks.

Their heads both simultaneously resume normal operation, and they look at her, speaking in tandem.  “No, we’re just…”  They look at each other, and smirk- then stop, and both look quickly back at her.

“What-?” the aquamarine one asks.

“You’re an alicorn?” the aqua one asks.

She tilts her head.  “What’s an alicorn?”

“Uhh…” is her answer.

Then the aquamarine one looks up at the other.  “Hey, sis?”

“Mm?”

“Can you get off me?  I can’t feel my wing.”

“Oh, sorry.”  The aqua one clambers off of the other, moving to help her stand up.

“Thanks,” the aquamarine one states.

“It’ll…  It’ll come back,” she states.

They both look at her.  “Huh?”

“What will?” the aqua one asks, while her sis looks at her own side…  where the missing wing should be.

“Aaaah!  What happened to my wing!?”

“The monsters got it before I got here,” she states.  “But don’t worry, it’ll come back.”

“Monst-?  Oh, the timberwolves,” the aqua one states.  

“Timberwolves?” the aquamarine one states, looking around frantically, lone wing priming as if to take off.

“Gone now,” she states.  “I scared them away.”

“They…  They got the jump on us,” the aqua one informs the other.  “We didn’t realize they were there until after they’d already broken my right wing, so we couldn’t run.”  She hugs her sis once again.  “I was sure we were done for, especially once they got to rip your wing off.  I…  I don’t know how you survived losing that much blood.”

Blink.  “I’m not…  feeling faint or anything.”

“Huh…  maybe that was a side effect of the ascension?”

“Asc-?”  She lifts a hoof to her own horn.  “Oh…  I probably should have seen that coming.  But…  what caused it?”

Shrug.  “Donno.  It might have been…  whats-her-name here, pulling off a triple-rainboom to scare off the timberwolves.”  She glances down.  “Pretty sure she was a pegasus before, as well.”

“Last One.”

They both look at her.  “What?”

“That’s my name,” she states, looking back up at them.  “Last One.”

“So,” the aqua pony begins, “you mean to tell me, your name is ‘Last One’.”

“Yes.”

“Who gave you that name?”

She shakes her head.  “I don’t know.”

“Where are your parents?”

“I don’t have any.”

“...  Guardian?”

She only shakes her head.

“Whoever you’ve been living with?”

Another shake.

“Your home?”  The pony’s tone has long since gone from angry to surprised, and has now become sad for some reason.

She shakes her head one last time.

Neither pony says anything this time, either.  The aquamarine one trots over next to her…  then seems to change her mind, switching to her other side, before laying a wing over her back.  “Would you like to live with us?”

She blinks.  “Um…  sure?”

“Then it’s settled,” the aqua pony states, trotting over to her other side and laying a wing across her back as well- right overtop her sis’ wing.  “From now on, you’re our daughter.”

“Daughter?” the aquamarine one asks.

She nods.  “Why not?”

Shrug.  “I don’t have a problem with it.  I mean, she does know who we are, right?”

“Um…  no, I must have missed that.”

“What-?  …  Okay.”  She crouches down next to her, not removing her wing.  “So, Last One…  are you sure you want to live with us, without even knowing who we are?”

She looks back up at the pony.  “Why not?”

The aqua one responds first, kneeling like her sis.  “That’s…  one way to look at it, I suppose.  Whelp…  I’m Flutter, and my sister over there is Flitter.”

“Over there?” Flitter asks.  She doesn’t sound happy.

Flutter shrugs.  “What?”

Flitter sighs.  “Let’s just…”  She pauses, looking at her side- at the missing wing.  “Uhh, figure out how we’re going to get home?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Flutter states.  “I’m strong enough to carry another pegasus, you know that.”

“What about…  I refuse to refer to her by that name.  It needs to go, now.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more.  And given that she managed to produce not just a rainboom but a triple rainboom when she chased the wolves away, I daresay she can fly on her own.”

“Where is home?” she asks.

Both ponies look at her, and speak simultaneously.  “Cloudsdale.”
> Cloudsdale
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Flutter lands swiftly on the cloud in the gathering darkness, letting out a sigh of relief and allowing her wings to sag downwards while she crouches.

Flitter scrambles off her sister’s back at the same time, letting out a matching sigh of relief.  “I pray I never have to do that again!”

Flutter raises an eyebrow, panting heavily.  “What?  You don’t like me?”

“Wha- No!” Flitter yelps.  “Of course I like you!  It’s just…  flying is a lot scarier when you can’t do it yourself.”  Shudder.  “I can’t wait until I can fly again!  Independently!”

Flutter sighs, wrapping a wing around her sister.  “You do know that may never happen, right?  Thaumic prosthetics are way expensive.”

“It’ll come back,” she states.

Flitter glances at her, before looking back at her sister.  “Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be needing a prosthetic.”

“Really?” Flutter asks.  “Wings don’t regrow, you know.”

“It’ll come back.”

Flitter smiles.  “She did a triple-Rainboom, right?  So if she says a missing wing will ‘come back’, and that gives me hope, I’m gonna stick with it.  It’s going to come back with time- and it’s up to me to find out how.”  She looks back at her.  “Come to think of it, Last One, why are you still flying…?”

She blinks.  “Nothing solid to land on,” she states simply.

“The cloud.”  Flitter levels her eyelids at her.

“That’s not solid.”

Flitter sighs.  “Humor me and land on it, please?”

“Okay.”  She adjusts her glide to lower her steadily into the fluffy cloud beneath her.  Then, her hooves make contact with it, and take up the task of supporting her weight.  She blinks.

Flutter smirks at her sister.  “You’d think she’d never been to Cloudsdale before.”

“That’s…  wrong,” Last One states, hopping briefly up into the air and landing again, with more force.

Flitter chuckles, turning back to Flutter.  “Yeah, you’d think.  Anyways, um…  This is cloudsdale, and we’re not exactly on our home island, so…”

“I’m so not looking forward to this,” Flutter states.

“This cloud is nothing more than a collection of water droplets suspended in the air, yet I stand upon it as if solid ground- and it doesn’t sink whatsoever.”

“Oh?  She’s taking a scientific approach to it?  This could be interesting,” Flitter answers.

“Remove the air, it becomes a puddle, and swimming is the name of the game.  Remove the water, it’s just air- flight.  Mix the two, it’s a cloud capable of transferring my downwards inertia to the surface below with perfect efficiency.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Flutter nods.

“Yet the lake in which I swam has air dissolved in it, and the air which I breathe also has water dissolved in it.  Why, then, does this cloud resist my passage while the air and water do not?”

“You know,” Flitter mutters, “that’s a very good question.”

She hops into the air.  “Clouds are not like two-part epoxies; the parts can be separated with ease.  If I can pass through one mixture of atmospheric gasses, is there any particular reason I cannot pass through another mixture of the same gasses?”  She drops down.

Flitter lets out a gasp as the cloud parts, as if for an earth pony.

She rises back up through the fresh hole.  “Apparently not.  Then, if I can land on one mixture of atmospheric gasses, is there any particular reason I cannot alight on another?”  She drops down again.

Flutter gasps as she lands on the air above the hole in the cloud.

“Also apparently not.”  She looks up at the sisters.  “This is weird.”

“You’re telling me?” Flitter asks.  “How’re you doing that, anyways?”

“Yeah, um, let’s go home,” Flutter states.  “Discussions on cloudwalking later.  I’m tired.”

“No,” Flitter states.  “Discussions now.  I’d hate to have you sprain a wing carrying me over.”

“It’s simple,” she states, stepping off of the air and down to the cloud.

“Later!” Flutter pleads.  “I’m tired!”

“Simple?” Flitter asks, ignoring her sister.  “How so?”

“The cloud and the air are one and the same,” she states.  “The difference is only in how we think of them.”

“Huh?”

“If I think of the air as solid, it is.”

“So…”  Flitter mumbles, lifting a hoof.  “Think of the air as solid…?  Uh…”  She brings the hoof down, and it stops halfway.  “Yes!” she screams.  “I did it!”

“Shhh!”  Flutter hisses, clapping a hoof over her sister’s mouth.  “You’ll…  Uh…  Wait.  So, it’s as simple as thinking of it differently?”

“Yes,” she says, in tandem with Flitter.

“Though it’s a bit deep down- you know, think of it differently with your weather magic, that kind of thing.”

Flutter’s excited scream, upon managing it, is even louder.

“Shush right back at you,” Flitter chuckles.  “Any more of that, and the Guards will be coming to find out what’s going on.”  She sighs.  “And yeah, I’m getting tired too.  It is getting late.”

“But- but-!”

“Yeah, me too.  So we’ll walk there- who needs wings, anyways?”

Flutter lets out a snort of laughter.  “Right.  Um, Last One, do you want to walk or ride?”

She shrugs her wings.

Flitter chuckles.  “Yeah, that works.  Anyways, our house is…  this way.”  She picks a direction and starts walking.

She follows, trotting up next to her.  Flutter takes her other side.

“Did you think of anything on the way up?” Flutter asks.

“Huh?  Oh, you mean names for her?  No- I was too busy worrying about what’d happen if I fell off.  You?”

Shake.  “Too busy making sure you wouldn’t fall off, and planning on what to do if you did.”

“Maybe…  Blue Lightning?  Nah…”

“Golden Rings?  No…”

“Golden Blue?  Not a chance, um…”

“Bluegold?  Yeah, no…”

Flitter lets out a sudden snort.

“What?” Flutter asks.

“I just had the craziest idea ever,” she states.  “It’s definitely a no-go, but I’ve no clue where it came from.”

An eyebrow raised.  “Oh?  What is it?”

“Cat ad in lapides sacculi.”

Flutter joins her in laughing.

She stops moving.  That was something she dreads outright- something that always precedes the terrible.  Well, except that time in the hospital.  Only now, she has no choice.

“Unit Three-Niner-Hotel-Zero-Seven-Three-Two-Lima-Sierra-Tango-Oscar of the Line, ready and awaiting orders.”

Both mares stop, looking at her.  “What?”

She repeats the strange words that found their way to her tongue.

“...  but what does it mean?” Flitter asks.

She shakes her head.  “I don’t know.”

“Uh, yeah,” Flitter mumbles.  “No orders.”  She looks at her sister.  “Let’s never say that again, shall we?”

Flutter nods emphatically.  “Definitely.  Just hearing her say it like that is going to give me nightmares for weeks.”

“Me too,” Flitter states.  “Especially since…”  She looks back at her.  “It was something I said, wasn’t it?”

She nods.  “The…  crazy idea.”

“Yeah.  We’ll never say that again.”

“Never,” Flutter declares.  “Um, we were heading for the house?”

“Yeah,” Flitter states.  “Are you okay, Last One?”

She nods.  “Yes.”

Flutter steps back next to her, draping a wing over her, and opens her mouth to speak.

“Wait,” Flitter interrupts.  “We should probably get inside before talking about it.”

Flutter blinks at her sister, then looking back down next to her.  “Is that…?”

She nods.

“Okay.  Um…”  She glances up at Flitter.  “We’re not far from the house- I’ll fly with Last One, you run?”

Flitter nods.

Flutter looks back down at her.  “That okay?”

She nods as well.

Then flitter takes off running, while Flutter gathers her up in her hooves and takes off flying.

She watches the air start to curve around Flutter as she flies, before the flight comes to an abrupt end.  Flutter bleeds all her speed in only a second or so, before unlocking and opening the door to let herself in.  Once inside, she flicks the door closed behind her, and proceeds to put her on the couch, landing next to her.

“What’s wrong?” Flutter asks.

As soon as she voices the question, the door flies open again and Flitter gallops in, letting it close behind her.

“That was fast,” Flitter informs Flutter, before turning to her.  “Um, whats wrong?”  She jumps onto the couch on her other side, glances at her own side, and eyes her sister.  “Switch?”

She lets a small smile grace her muzzle while the two mares switch places, before each placing a wing across her back.

“I…  I don’t know,” she mutters.  “I don’t remember anything, until something comes up.”  She looks up at flitter.  “There’s…  something.  Something terrible, that happened many times in my past.  I don’t know what it was, just that hurting a pony is related to it.”  She shudders visibly, wings pressed tight against her sides.  “There’s a lot of things I’ve been able to identify as happening before it, leading to it, reducing it, increasing it, happening after it, and so on.”

“What…  What was the first one?” Flutter mumbles.

“Voices.”  She looks up.  “I heard voices.  That in itself isn’t related to the terrible, but the terrible never happens without voices.”

“The…  the second?” Flitter asks, tears welling up in her eyes.

“Understanding.  I understood what ponies were saying.  Just like the voices- not related to the terrible itself, but something the terrible doesn’t happen without.”

The two mares introduce their forelegs, hugging from either side.

She closes her eyes, going on without being prompted.  “Those words…  are the next step.  They make it unavoidable.”  She sighs.  “And are the last step before the terrible itself.”

“S-sorry!” Flitter cries into her mane.

She smiles, leaning into the mare, and extending her own wing- underneath the mare’s- to hug her carefully.  “Don’t worry.  Sometimes it takes a very long time for the terrible to happen.”  She smiles.  “Maybe that can be stretched to infinity.”





She lifts her head straight up, ears pointed, and looks at the door.  About an hour has passed; Flutter is making dinner.

Flitter, leaning tiredly against the table next to her, opens her eyes, looking over.  “What is it?”

“Somepony’s sliding something under the door.”

“What?” Flutter asks.

“I got it,” Flitter answers, climbing out of her seat to head for the front door.  “You keep the food coming.”

She hops out of her seat to follow- part out of curiosity, and part out of…  Well, the pony that pushed it under the door sounded distinctly worried.

“Oh, it’s a letter,” Flitter states, trotting over to pick it up.  “I wonder what’s so important it couldn’t wait for the Post tomorrow?”  She then unfolds the squashed scroll.  “Uh, yep, it’s to us…  Oh.  Oh no.  Um- Flutter?”

“Mm?” Flutter asks, sticking her head out of the kitchen.

“We may be in a little more trouble than we thought.”

“Trouble?” she asks, in tandem with Flutter.

“Yeah,” Flitter begins.  “It’s a letter.

“Dear Flitter and Flutter,

“I must apologize for the time and method of delivery, but I feel this is important for you to know now, not tomorrow.  And in case you’re wondering, yeah, you know me- I’m Cloudspear.

“The issue is, though…  I was on duty today.  As a matter of fact, I was right about ready to go off duty for the night in the shopping district, when I heard what sounded like a dejected foal behind me somewhere.  As I am sure you are aware, I- and the rest of the Royal Guard- take a very dim view of foal abuse of any kind.  So, I looked.  I immediately knew it was not a case of current foal abuse- as it turns out, the foal in question was surrounded not by just anypony but by you two.

“Yeah.  I know you- and last I checked, you neither had a foal to abuse nor were anywhere close to the abusive type.  If you know anything about any possible past foal abuse cases in regards to this filly, then please, bring it to light.  I didn’t catch her words, but judging by her tone, it was something nasty; I’d like to make sure the perpetrator either has been or is being punished for it.

“Preferably the latter, but there is an upper limit set by law.

“Yeah, yeah.  That kind of thing could wait for tomorrow’s Post.  In fact, it would have- had I not noticed that both of you seem to be Alicorns- and Flitter appeared to be missing a wing.

“Again, I know you.  Neither of you are the kind of ponies to lose fights- and I’ll say it again, you would have gone far in the Guard.  Both of you.  Then of course, Alicorns are particularly difficult to injure- especially bad enough to lose limbs.

“So, as both a friend and as a protector of our nation, what happened, and where?  Whatever it is, it’s clearly a threat we need to deal with carefully.

“Then, the final matter, and the main reason I’m delivering this message early.  I don’t know if Princess Celestia has had a chance to talk to you just yet, so in case you haven’t, I’m going to risk repeating her.

“By Equestrian law, all Alicorns are automatically Princesses.

“Yeah.  From the very moment of ascension, not just formal recognition.

“So congratulations, Princess Flutter, Princess Flitter, if my eyes weren’t deceiving me.  And in the same case, you’ll be happy to know Alicorns, unlike the other breeds, actually can regenerate lost limbs.  I understand it takes a lot of years, but it can- and does- happen.

“Signed,

“Sergeant Cloudspear,

“Royal Equestrian Guard.”
> Magic
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“How is that trouble?” she asks.  Aside from the delivery, she wasn’t able to detect anything suspicious about it.  So, she takes a guess at what’s worrying her.  “Is it my past?”

Flitter shakes her head, eyes wide.  “No.  We’re…  princesses.  All three of us.”

Flutter snaps her jaw shut, and bolts into motion, food forgotten.  “Quick!  How do you hide a magic horn?”

Flitter looks in the direction of her sister’s tail, sticking out of some closet or another while the sounds of rummaging come from the same.  “You don’t,” she states.  “Wings we could hide, but…  I mean, we’re pegasi, and everypony knows that.”  She glances down.  “He didn’t seem to notice Last One, so in theory, she could pretend to be a unicorn, but…”

“Come on!”  Flutter demands, digging into another closet.  “There’s gotta be some way to hide, disguise, or even remove this thing!”

“Don’t remove it,” she states firmly.  “It’s…  important.”

Flutter’s head sticks out of the closet again, one hoof wrapped around the doorframe.  “Important?  Like, politically important?”

She shakes her head.  “Apparently.  But not what I mean.  It’s…  pony part.  If you remove it…”  She shudders, looking at Flitter’s missing wing.  “Huge risk.”

Flitter steps around to her other side, wrapping her wing around her.  “You mean to tell us…  If we try to remove our horns, there’s a good chance we’ll kill ourselves in the process?”

She nods.  “Please don’t,” she pleads, looking up.

Flitter looks up at Flutter, who answers.  “...  Oh.  Okay, then only to hide or disguise it.  I don’t exactly want to die.”

“Yeah,” Flitter seconds.  “No worries.  Thanks for the warning- I’d hate to have found that out the hard way.”  She shudders.  “So…  is there a way to hide it, or are we, um, stuck?”

“Magic,” she states simply.

Flutter’s head sticks back out of the third and final closet in the hall.  “What?”

“Magic,” she repeats, looking back out at her.  “That’s what Twilight called it.”

“Magic,” Flitter states.  “We know nothing about magic.  You?”

She shakes her head.  “I don’t know.”

“Hold on a second!” Flutter states, dashing out of her closet and into another room.  Moments later, she reemerges with a book, which she drops on the floor in front of her and Flitter.  “Books!  We can…  study…”  Sigh.  “Might be…  a long time before we can head back out again without being seen, but…”

She rises to her hooves, pulling herself gently out from under Flitter’s wing, and flicks open the cover of the book with the tip of a hoof.  She searches down the page, then flicks to the next page to repeat.

“A…  very long time,” Flitter states.  “Our dad really wanted a unicorn foal, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Flutter agrees.  “Only, as we kept telling him, all the books in the world are useless without somepony to demonstrate how to reach for it in the first place.”

Flitter sighs, stepping forwards to crouch next to her once again.  “You hear that, Last One?  The books won’t help.”

She looks up, and smiles.  “I can work with this,” she states.  All the symbols on the page had suddenly started making sense a few seconds before- she knows what the book is, what it talks about.  “I saw lots of unicorns.  I remember them using magic.”  She looks back down at the book.  “I can figure it out.”

Flitter blinks a few times.  “Um, wow, um, okay.  Um…”

Flutter chuckles lightly.  “When you say it like that, it’s kinda hard to doubt,” she states.  “Maybe you can teach us too, once you figure it out yourself?”

She nods, flicking to the next page.  “Yes.”

“But that’s going to take a while,” Flitter states, looking back up at her sister.  “So, food?”

“Right!”  Flutter quickly vanishes back into the kitchen.





By the time Flutter announces the food is ready, she’s finished the book and moved on to experimentation.  She hasn’t fully processed the contents of the book yet; there’s just so much information, especially compounded with what she remembers seeing the unicorns doing.  But, it’s enough for her to try.  All she’s really managing right now is to get numerous sparks of varying colors to fly from the tip of her horn.

“Hey, Last One?” Flitter asks, trotting up to her.

“Mm?” she asks, looking up without interrupting her efforts.

Flitter chuckles.  “That’s a nice spark shower, but, uh…  dinner’s ready.”

“Alright,” she states, rising to trot after the mare to the dining room.  As she goes, she processes far enough to see why she’s showering sparks- and stops showering sparks.

By the end of the meal, she’s figured out basic thaumic channeling.

Flutter finally notices what she’s doing with her horn.  “Uh…  Last One?”

“Mm?” she asks, experimenting with four different colors of horn aura at once.

“What are you doing?”

“Exploring magic,” she states simply.

“Oh, um…  You finished that already!?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.  Um, would another book help, or no?”

“Probably.”

“Alrighty.  We’ve got an entire library in here, so…”  She follows the mare out of the kitchen, to the library.





“Mornin’,” Flutter mumbles, stifling a yawn as she walks into the library.

She doesn’t move, as any motion of her horn- right now- could throw off her latest experiment.  “Good morning,” she answers.

Then Flutter blinks, hoof suspended inches away from the bookshelf.  “Wait.  We never gave you a bed to sleep in, did we?”  She then turns towards her, and freezes.  “What the hay…?”

Her experiment comes to a successful close right on time.  She draws her horn out of a window in the fabric of spacetime, closing it behind her, as all the glowing lines, runes, and circles around her fade away.  She looks up at Flutter and, with a brief pulse of her horn, makes that go away too.  “I figured it out,” she states.

…  Flutter’s head has ceased normal operation.

Flitter then enters the room, yawning, but also a lot more awake.  “Oh!  Last One!”  She bolts forwards to wrap her in a hug.  “Sorry we forgot about the bed!  And…”  Flitter’s hoof comes up to her forehead, feeling for her horn.  “...  is it just me, or are you just a pegasus again?”

“No,” she answers.  “It’s still there.  It’s just folded into the space between this world and the next.”

“What?”

Smile.  “I can still use it, but nopony can tell I have it.”

Blink.  “What-?  That mean you’ve figured it out?”

“Yes.”

“Awesome!  Can you do that for us too, or is it something only we can do?”

“I can,” she states simply, before feeding her power into her horn again.  Both the two mares’ horns vanish in similar manner to her own.

Flitter feels briefly for her horn before resuming her hug.  “Thank you!  Now we won’t need to worry about that, at least.”  She releases the hug.  “Anyways, it’s my turn to make breakfast.  So…”  She starts towards the kitchen.

“Can…” she begins.  She’s not sure how to phrase the question.

Flitter notices, though, pausing to look back, missing wing facing her.

“Can…  Can you hold still for a minute, please?”

Flitter blinks.  “Um…  Sure.”

She nods, making her horn appear again.  “Thank you.”  She feeds it power.

It takes her thirty-seven and a half seconds to restore the missing wing, at the end of which Flitter’s brain has ceased normal functioning as well.  And, she senses, the last of Flitter’s pains has gone away.

She makes her horn disappear again, before smiling.  “There!”

Flutter falls on her side.

“Th-thank you,” Flitter finally states, flexing the no-longer-missing wing before she folds it.  “U-um…  I guess we can go talk to Cloudspear today.  Maybe explain a…  few things?”  Shudder.  “But thank you!”  She snatches her up in another hug.
> Life
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s been a few months since the sisters, her adopted parents, took her in.  That night, so long ago, they had told Sergeant Cloudspear about what she remembered of her past.

Those words, the ones that triggered that reaction, that meant terrible was coming, had not been specified.

As a matter of fact, later that same day, Flitter had worried that, if she could chance upon them, so could somepony else.  She’d asked if there was any way to keep her from hearing them.

The answer had been no.

However, she had realized that it wasn’t the words themselves that had meant terrible was coming- it was their meaning.  Whatever meaning that is still escapes her, but it’s not the literal meaning of the words.

So Flitter had asked if it was something they could change, after giving her a confused look.

That answer was a yes.  That meaning could be reassigned to a new phrase.  But, Flitter’d have to say the first one out loud to make it possible.

So they’d done that.  She’d closed her eyes and listened while Flitter recited those terrible words, then recited the other words she’d remembered that make such a change possible.  They weren’t Equestrian, so she has no clue what their real meaning was, but she had been able to recite them.  Then she’d listened while Flitter came up with her new…  phrase.  It was actually quite a bit more than that, but she wasn’t complaining; the chances that somepony would randomly come across it are simply so small.  She’s pretty sure Flitter was making it up on the spot.  After all…


“Phrase to be evil to be the ponyfeathers on a horn of a pineapple on a house in a cloud on a hoof in a blue cream plus six nine seven um dash apple road tree pegasus bash bang boom ka-plow erm dish of the century anypony that can say this in one breath must have really deep lungs um crash pow um pew crash ding dong I don’t know pegasus hooffalls and a butterfly.  Three.”


Complete with all the ums and erms, to boot.  Changing it hasn’t reversed the effect of the first time she heard it- but it has made sure that it should just about never happen again.

That was cold comfort, but Flitter had also promised to protect her against the terrible, no matter what.

She’d then pointed out that the protection was likely to actually go the other way, since she is so much stronger and knows how to use her horn, while Flitter doesn’t either.

But the solution to that had been fairly simple.  In the privacy of their home, she’s been teaching both sisters how to use their horns.  The strength difference is not something they could solve; as a matter of fact, they didn’t believe her, until she demonstrated by crumpling a solid bar of cloudsteel Flutter had made like so much tinfoil.  She hadn’t understood the comparison at the time but, while Flutter stared uncomprehendingly at the crumpled cloud- it had resisted a little, she thought- Flitter had explained.

Flutter works in the weather factory-factory.  As in, the factory that makes weather factories for delivery to new locations across the nation.  They make them out of various materials, but some of the core components they make out of a very solid, very difficult to produce material called Cloudsteel.  To qualify, it has to be at least as tough as standard steel- and most pegasi simply aren’t strong enough to produce it.  It’s not a simple matter of magic strength, or a pony like Rainbow Dash could turn it out by the ton- no, it’s a different facet of their pegasus magic.

Flutter just doesn’t- well, didn’t- have the thaumic strength to be a Wonderbolt, or even to try to be one.  What she did- and still does- have is an enormous potential on that different facet; stronger, even, than any other pony anypony’s ever seen.  Because of that, the Cloudsteel she produces is dozens of times tougher than that which other ponies produce.  Her Cloudsteel is at least a hundred times tougher than regular steel- and it’s so tough even earth ponies and unicorns will crash into it as if it were standard steel.

And she had simply crumpled a solid bar of it as if it were nothing.  Even with her newfound Alicorn strength, Flitter can’t bend such a bar of even her own Cloudsteel- and she’s only barely strong enough, in that facet, to make the stuff.

Well…  She used to be only barely strong enough.  As it turns out, the ascension has magnified that ability as well, making them both top-tier Cloudsteel producers.  Not that Flitter works at that factory; no, she works in the Cloudsdale weather factory, delivering the gentle rains and shines needed to maintain the Unicorn Plains below.  And, of course, the occasional storm.

She herself has gone to Cloudsdale Elementary.  She already knows much of what they teach, and she was able to glean the rest from the books before her first class; however, both Flitter and Flutter had told her she needed the experience- that she could benefit from making friends.

So she’d done that.  She hadn’t touted her apparently unusual mind, with her perfect recall and apparently lightning fast thoughts.  She’d never bragged about her grades, never mentioned her abilities.  Never showed off.

Yet as much as her teachers all love her, none of the other colts and fillies want to come anywhere close.  Not that they’re afraid of her- they just…  don’t fit.  She thinks it’s some false impression of intimidation; she doesn’t flaunt any of her abilities herself, but her teachers like bragging about how good she is.  She’s even contemplated answering incorrectly on purpose just to get them to shut up, but Flitter had told her to do her best, so that’s what she did.  There hasn’t been a single point offered, bonus or otherwise, in any of her classes, that she hasn’t gotten.

Flitter had been impressed when she found out; Flutter had, after a few seconds of silence, gone to fetch her bit bag, having lost a bet that nothing more could surprise her.

She’d even received an invitation for Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.  Of course, they’d written back- she’s a pegasus, not a unicorn or something.  The School had simply returned that they were starting new pegasus and earth pony programs, and that she was invited to be part of that.

Nopony is yet sure how to react to that news, so she hadn’t accepted the invitation just yet- even though that’s the result she expects.

And, though she’s never voiced those expectations, she’s only very rarely revised them- or been wrong.  One of those errors had happened fairly quickly.  She’d quickly lost the adopted daughter status in the family; rather, the two mares started referring to her as their sister.  They’d been surprised, but happy, when she returned the favor.

Now, though, they’ve heard of some dangerous creature traveling across Equestria, taking out cities and towns as it goes.  Word is that the Element Bearers of Harmony themselves are aware of the threat- but have been instructed to stay in Ponyville.

And this creature has, reportedly, already attacked- and defeated- the Wonderbolts, and entire armies of Royal Guards.

So she and her sisters are traveling to Ponyville, as that’s where just about every threat seems to end.

She can’t shake the feeling that a lot of threats ended with her specifically, rather than with a party of ponies and gemstone necklaces.  And she suspects that this one might end with her as well.  She’s not sure, though- so she’s not making an expectation for that much detail just yet.  At this point, she just expects exactly what her sisters expect:  This threat will be stopped in or near Ponyville.
> Mark
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

She steps slowly, dramatically, out into the street.  Head down, perpendicular to her enemy’s course.  He is so slow that surprise does not matter; she is fast enough she can deal the same damage to him whether he expects her attack or not.  Advantageous positions also do not matter; she can change positions so fast he can’t even blink before she’s ready for another blow.

But the fight has not yet begun.

Seven bubbles float in the air behind him.  She recognizes the contents:  Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Discord…  and Twilight Sparkle.  She’d hoped the final Element Bearer had a plan when she had surrendered her magic to the monster- and so, she had.  However, she had gone ahead and yelled about it in the presence of the same monster, so of course he’d foiled it.

So she had promptly went hunting through the woods for the chest the purple Alicorn had mentioned, and found it.  She had retrieved the medallion Discord had given Twilight, after it had been again discarded by the monster, this time after that gifting.  She’d taken it to the chest, and successfully turned it into the final key.  None of them seemed to work, though- so she’d checked for watchers and taken a quick thaumic peek at it with her horn.  Flitter had told her to keep it hidden, never use it where somepony else might see.

The chest would only open, even now with all the keys installed, to the six Element Bearers- and then, only with all present.

So she had returned to the town, intending to hide with her sisters until he put them down and was vanquished.

Only, when she got back, she found that the monster had found her sisters, and drained them of their magic as well.  Their horns remained hidden; her spell was not disrupted.  However…

As much as Flitter had begged her to hide, to save herself, she could not.  As much as Flutter had warned her of the danger, she could not flee.

No.  She refused to flee.  To back down, to hide.  Like a coward.

She never had.

She never would.

She would fight.

And she would win.

She doesn’t have her cutie mark yet.  She’s using that as a deceptive measure against the monster; he thinks she’s already been drained of her magic.  She’s acting like she has been, stepping out to make one last defiant move.  He’s laughing at her.

She’s three steps away from the center of the road, directly in front of him.  Electricity crackles invisibly through her feathers, exciting the air.  The light of Princess Celestia’s sun begins to fade.

She’s two steps away from the center.  She begins driving her earth pony magic into the soil, causing the ground to rumble, the dust to splash, with every hoofstep.

She’s one step away.  She adds her unicorn magic to the mix, playing the DJ’s tables and the celloist’s cello to build for some dramatic music.







She stops dead center in the street.  Darkness has fallen; the rain has begun to fall.  The monster is confused.

She turns sharply to face him, at exactly the same moment as the downpour hits the ground- and twin lightning bolts strike on either side of her, kicking off the bass of her song, which echoes from all around.

“You hurt my friends,” she states calmly, head still hanging down, eyes still closed.

He doesn’t say anything, just raising an eyebrow interestedly.  He’s starting to catch on.

She opens her eyes, glaring up through her eyelashes at him while she funnels her unicorn magic through them, making them glow sharply.  “I will hurt you.”  Her voice thunders across the short space, magnified and deepened by her spell.

“What-!?” Rainbow demands from her bubble, whirling to face.

“Last One!?” Twilight asks.  “Run!”

She doesn’t.  She spreads her wings sharply, exactly as several lightning bolts come down to meet the edges, shrouding her in blinding plasma.

He doesn’t flee.  He lets out a chuckle, and starts his binding spell- the one he used to keep ponies from moving while he took their magic.

She doesn’t let him finish.  Even as she shatters his spell matrix with one of her own, her wings blast backwards- and she does an instant Rainboom directly towards him.  She detours upwards at the last second, smashing him sharply upside the jaw.  His jaw slams shut while he himself is lifted- no, thrown- into the air, cartwheeling over backwards as he goes.

All seven bubbles pop, their occupants falling towards the ground.

She moves.  She snatches them out of the air, setting them down safely outside the combat zone.

“Go,” she orders, her tone leaving no room for argument.  “Open the chest.  I’ll hold him.”

“Got it,” Twilight states immediately- and, after helping her friends stand back up, takes off galloping for the chest.

She leaps back into the air, shattering the sound barrier again- and comes down for a solid smash to the monster’s face, right as he lands on the ground, on his back.  The road shatters away from the impact site, even though the wardings he hasn’t lowered protected him from damage.

She garnishes a fresh Rainboom from the rebound off that attack, rocketing back upwards- and detouring almost instantly to the side, where she dodges between his forelegs and seizes one of his hind hooves, pouring all of her pegasus magic into a mighty pull.  She swings him over her head, slamming him face-first into the roadway on her other side even before the road finishes buckling from her first blow.  She immediately yanks him right back, using the rebound to amplify her next strike against the still buckling pavement.

She lets go before he hits, though, and flashes to the pavement herself, driving her earth pony magic into the soil.

The roadway splits open for her, opening a massive jaw wide enough to eat the monster whole.  She smashes it back shut on him as soon as he enters it, crushing him between layers of rock- then seizes that hind hoof, the only part of him still exposed, and rips him bodily out of the ground, flinging him skywards- where thunderbolt after thunderbolt blaze into him, tearing away at his wardings.

He hasn’t finished going up yet when she’s already there, seizing one of his horns and heaving violently on it, twisting him back on himself.  She draws on the pegasus magic flowing through his horns, not just her own, in creating a massive plank of Cloudsteel and filling it with lightning before she smashes him bodily through it.  And ripping him right back through a different part of it, before flinging him back at the ground- where a veritable cloud of lightning has been building up, waiting for him.  As he smashes into it at roughly eighteen point three seven times the speed of sound, she unleashes the attack spell she’s been building up with her Unicorn magic ever since her opening move.

She’s caught him between a rock and a hard place.  Figuratively.

Her spellwork and thunderbolts successfully strip him of his wardings- so she descends on him once again.

She has not yet defeated him.

She kicks him in the belly, smashing him into the ground once again, before rocketing back up to his hind hoof and repeating her earlier trick.  She smashes him bodilly against the ground- face first, back first, then smashed in the jaws of the Earth on his way back to face first, only to be yanked back out by the hoof and flung into the air, where the clouds assault him once again.  As they do, she flies up, seizes one of his horns, and swings him around in circles, building speed, finally unleashing him back at the ground at something like a hundred times the speed of sound.

But she’d noticed something in the end of that swing; that horn flexed, and strained.  And she remembers, the Unicorn Horn is quite dangerous to remove.

So she flashes back down after him, catching the same horn and bracing herself on his skull while she pours all her strength and earth pony magic into a massive pull, even before he hits the ground.

She successfully breaks it off, unleashing a massive shockwave as his stolen magic begins returning to its rightful owners- and snaps off the other one like a twig as she passes.  She detours off to the side next, landing in a solid, two-legged stance right back where she had started, horns held like daggers in her forehooves, at the same time as he smashes into the ground.

She has defeated him.

The entire battle lasted hardly one point three six seconds, discounting the initial blow and the time taken to get the Element Bearers on their way.

A pony screams somewhere behind her.

“She’s…  She’s the last one, all right,” somepony says behind her- that cream one.  Bonbon.

She stabs the two broken horns unceremoniously into the roadway in front of her and turns, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” the green unicorn that seems to accompany the earth pony everywhere.  “The last one anything’s gonna see coming.”

Bonbon snorts.  “Or see at all.”

She tilts her head.  “What?”

Flitter explodes from the building that had been her hiding place, nearly rainbooming herself in her mad dash.  “You’re alive!” she yells, gathering her up in a hug.  “I thought I’d lost you!”

“Hey, it’s not like I’d let myself lose,” she states.

Flutter laughs as she reaches her sisters, not having galloped quite as fast.  “You say that like it was a forgone conclusion,” she states.

“Well it was,” she answers.  “He didn’t have anywhere close to the speed necessary to keep up with me.”  She doesn’t mention that she knows she never had a significant mobility advantage before; she figures that’s probably because she knows she’s never been nearly that mobile, and she knows her mobility increased significantly with the power increase of her ascension, then further as she practiced with her new power levels.

“Yeah,” Flutter chuckles.  “He didn’t stand a chance.  Oh, and you got your cutie mark, too.”

“Wait, what?” Flitter asks, blinking as she pulls back far enough to look for it.

She nods.  “I noticed,” she states, glancing back at it.  A long, thin, pipe-like thing spewing a bolt of light, crossed with a burning sword overtop a quill and a thick book.
> Discussion
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The extra sparkles faded from around the six mares some five minutes ago.  After staring dumbfounded at the crater she’d left, they’d returned what was left of the monster to Tartarus.  All the pegasus magic hadn’t had time to leave his body just yet when he hit the ground the last time, so he wasn’t killed- but the earth pony magic had been the fastest to leave.  He’d survived…  but been broken almost beyond belief.

They’d also retrieved Princesses Celestia and Luna from the same.

Now, they’re asking the townsfolk what happened.

“I donno,” she hears Bonbon answer Twilight.  “I wasn’t looking.  I heard a bit of banging, then my magic returned, and Tirek was in a crater.”

She glances back towards the crater, smiling to herself.  A ‘bit of banging’ could describe that, she supposes.  She does get the feeling she usually does a lot more damage with dismissive ease… even though she spent almost her entire thaumic reserves in that action.

“Um, Last One?  Where are your, um...”

She looks up.  It’s the green mare, Bonbon’s friend.  “Sisters,” she completes the question.

“Sisters?”  She sounds surprised.  “Your sisters allowed you to…?”  The mare’s eyes flick briefly in the direction of both the woods and the hospital.

She shakes her head.  “No.  They’re…  adopted sisters, I guess.”  She looks down at the roadway.  “Legally, they’re adopted parents.  But we call each other sisters, so they’re sisters.”  She looks back up.  “Flutter is probably helping with the repair or rescue efforts- she works in construction up in Cloudsdale- while I think the mayor took Flitter aside for some questions.”  The green mare need not know her apparently unusual hearing is allowing her to pick out both Flitter’s and the Mayor’s voices, despite being behind two closed doors a block and a half down the street.  She can’t pick out their words from this far away, especially Flitter’s when she speaks softly, but she is able to pick out tones of voice.  Except, of course, when Flitter speaks softly.

“Ahh,” the mare mutters.  “I thought Mayor Mare might have noticed their behavior and gotten curious.  Would you mind answering a few questions for me yourself?”

Her response is almost instinctive, as some experience she can’t remember throws up red flags, leaving her utterly confused.  Fortunately, with her ridiculously fast processing speed, she’s able to solve- or, in this case, ignore- the confusion before it can show.  She clears her expression, systematically extracting all emotion from her voice.  “That depends,” she states.

The mare blinks, surprised, for a couple seconds.  “Oh, uh…  it’s not like that.  I’m not investigating you or your, um, sisters, or anything…  nor am I asking you to divulge anything you don’t want to.  I just…”

She blinks, stepping on the instinct.  “Sorry,” she states, looking down again.  “I didn’t mean…”  She trails off for a second, before looking back up.  “You remember my…  memory problems?”

The mare nods slowly.  “Yeah…?”

“I don’t remember it, but a lot of it influences how I act or respond.  That’s…  one of them.”

Scowl.  “So…”

She nods slowly.  “You can ask, but I cannot guarantee that I will answer, or even acknowledge the question.”

The mare’s scowl shifts to a thoughtful expression, one hoof coming up to her chin.  “Hmm…  Almost sounds like a politician’s policy of non-guarantees.”  Shudder.  “I really hope you weren’t subject to politics, at your age.”

She scowls, standing tall.  “I’m a big girl,” she answers.  “I can handle it.”  Not that she’s ever encountered something she didn’t feel she could handle, but she hasn’t mentioned that even to Flitter.

The mare sighs.  “In any case…  do you mind if, uh, I ask those questions, somewhere more private?”

She blinks.  “Sure.”

“Awesome!  This way, please.  I figure we can use my house; my antirecording spells should still be standing after Tirek.”

She looks curiously up at the mare as she turns to follow.  “Okay.  And, um, what’s your name?”

The mare promptly falls flat on her face, before struggling back upright again.  “What-?  You agreed to follow me without even knowing who I am?”

She straightens up tall again, looking pointedly in the direction of the crater.  “I’m a big girl.”

“Uh…”  The mare looks at the crater for a few seconds, then back at her.  “Oh.  Yeah, I suppose I can see that.  Even an alicorn would be hard pressed to block something like that.”  Then she grins.  “And I suppose I should be worrying more about any politician trying to poke at you than about you, shouldn’t I?”

She shrugs.  “I don’t know.”

Chuckle, and she resumes her path.  “Yeah, I kinda expected that.  I’m Lyra- Lyra Heartstrings.”

She follows Lyra the rest of the way to her house.


“You’re…  not going to destroy the house, right?” Lyra asks her, as she unlocks the door.

“I dislike destruction,” she answers simply.

Lyra looks pointedly in the direction of the crater, hidden behind rows and rows of buildings from here.

She shrugs.  “A necessary evil,” she answers.  “It was either that, or let him do even more damage to those I care about.”

“...  Ahh.”  Lyra closes the door with her magic, leading her into the family room.  “Here, pick a seat.  Um…”

While she picks a seat on the loveseat, Lyra’s horn pulses a few times.

“Ahh, yes.  My antirecording and security spells remain standing.  Good thing I designed them to work without me.”  She turns to her.  “About that…  Uh, ‘necessary evil’, I suppose.  Doctor Horse tells me you were excited to help ponies, yet fled- with amazing speed, I might add- after accidentally hurting one.  Is that…?”

“I don’t like hurting ponies,” she states simply.

Lyra smiles softly.  “That much was rather clear…  does that extend to centaurs?”

“Usually, yes.”

“Usually?” she asks.  “Then-!”  She glances in the direction of the crater.  “Wait.  Do you mean to tell me that it does, but he was an exception?”

She nods, speaking softly.  “When he hurt those I care about, when he hurt ponies, his form became irrelevant.  He made himself the enemy.”  She looks up.  “I…  I’m afraid of hurting ponies.  I want to help them, but…  I’m so strong it’s hard not to hurt them.  I avoid destruction, because that bothers ponies- I want them to be happy.  But…

“I don’t know why.  When he made himself the enemy, made himself a threat to my ponies, I knew I had to stop him.”  She looks up.  “I knew I had him outclassed, that he could not beat me.  But I knew I could not simply punch through his defenses, either- not without something to punch him against.”  She looks down.  “So I punched him against the ground.  And the air.  Even some clouds.  If a few buildings got destroyed…  that was nothing, compared to the danger of letting him go unopposed.”  She looks up again.  “So I ignored the collateral damage.  There were no ponies in the area to get hurt, and taking him out of town was too risky.”

“Is…  Is it possible you served a protector role before your amnesia?”

She stares at the coffee table in the middle of the room as she considers her answer.  Finally, she answers.  “I…  suppose,” she mutters.  “I don’t think so, though.”  She looks towards the window.  “I’ve been…  hiding from, I guess, something terrible.  I don’t know what it is, exactly- but I know that when I hurt Roseluck, that was related.  And that healing ponies is directly opposed to it.

“It is true, when I fought Tirek…  it felt very much like I was fulfilling my purpose in life.”  She glances back at her cutie mark.  “I…  suppose it wasn’t far off, with this kind of a cutie mark.”  She looks back out the window.  “Even though I know that any fighting at all, really, inevitably leads to the terrible…  makes it come faster.”  She looks back at Lyra.  “The terrible was always something I was forced to do, not something I chose to do, or wanted to do.  That’s…  probably why it was so terrible.  Maybe…

“Maybe I chose a protector role, but was forced to attack and destroy as well?”

“Hmm,” Lyra mumbles.  “Yeah, that does sound pretty likely.  Um-  Do you remember anything about where you were found, or came from before that?  The Crusaders were…  rather unhelpful in that regard.”

“You’re…  looking for where I was when I was found?” she asks.

“Yeah…  and what path you took to get there.”  Lyra smiles.  “We’d like to find where you came from- find out what happened.  Who left a foal wandering alone through the Everfree…  or died to protect her.”

She shudders, looking down at the floor.  “I…  don’t remember that too well.  My senses were…  blurry.  And my amnesia ends somewhere in the middle of that stumbling walk out of the woods.”  She looks back up at Lyra.  “But I…  I think I can find it.  Find…  what direction I came from.”