Faster Than a Truck

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Once the clock turned to one hour past midnight, Rainbow slowly crawled out of her bed and silently changed out of her pajamas into her normal outfit. It wasn’t the first time she had sneaked out of her house during the night; ever since Twilight figured out that overusing their magical powers would overpower them, Rainbow had had to find a different thing to do to still her need for speed.

She loved being fast. She needed the adrenaline and, going out of her house, walking to a left building and starting the motor of the hidden motorcycle would give it to her like any other night. Of course, speeding through the city would only catch any unwanted attention, so she drove normally till she was outside the city, and only then increased her speed.

She knew about the strange happenings around the city regarding vehicles, where any attempt at getting out of the city resulted in damaged motors or other accidents forcing anyone to return. However she wasn’t attempting to get out, only to use the streets outside of Canterlot City. There was one particular street named Everfree Street, which went around Canterlot City and the Everfree forest in a big circle; perfect for exactly what she was planning to do. Luckily for her, she hadn’t encountered any radar traps on that and with the current state of the city she had the whole street for herself without any worries of accidentally driving into someone.

Once she was on Everfree Street, she immediately took off with a speed surpassing tempo limits on the roads. The wind blew around her, the noises from the engine drummed in her ears, the few street signs and the bushes next to the street were passing her one by one without enough time to make out their shapes. Only the light on her motorcycle and the moon brightened the street, but that was enough; she knew the way by heart now and there weren’t any sharp turns to look out for for a while.

Of course the speed of her motorcycle couldn’t reach even near the speed her geode could make her run, but on foot she was in full control of her movements. On the vehicle she couldn’t stop abruptly or take sharp turns, but that’s what made her adrenaline go up when driving and gave her the kick she couldn’t get otherwise. If only her geode wouldn’t be connected to the other geodes on her friends, she would instead be running non stop, but for now the motorcycle and the night was the replacement.

Since she started driving secretly during the night, the only encounters were here and there delivery trucks which had to cross the street to get in or out of the city (strangely enough, only these didn’t break down when leaving Canterlot); however none of these encounters were dangerous as she could see them on the crossings from miles away. Even as now a truck overtook her, she was in full control to not get into an accident…

She shook her head and looked forward to the backlights of the truck that just passed her. Indeed, she didn’t make it up, it had just overtaken her and was driving father away from her. No, this couldn’t be true!

She gave her full speed to catch up to the truck. She rode a motorcycle, she was faster than any truck!

Come on, get faster!

But the engine was already rattling and groaning, while the backlights were quickly fading away. Out of desperation she leaned forward to reduce the air friction, but that gave barely any additional speed. Once she didn’t see the backlights anymore, she went slower until she stopped in the middle of the road, wondering if what she just saw was a bad dream.

“I’m sorry, but you say that a truck overtook you at 90 mph?” Flash asked in disbelief.

“Yes!”

“You know that that means it drove more than 40 metres per second?”

“It overtook me on a motorcycle!”

“And because of that you woke me up at three in the morning?”

“You need to help me. Please!”

Flash took a long yawn, before looking silently at the motorcycle behind her.

“Can’t that wait till tomorrow?”

“No!”

Flash tried to close the door, but a foot between the doorway stopped him. Seeing as Rainbow would keep pushing, he took a long sigh.

“I’ll open my garage, let me put on my clothes first.”

Rainbow walked back and forth in the garage, waiting for Flash to appear. Her thoughts were only about that truck that overtook her so quickly and then vanished in the distance. How was it so fast? Weren’t they all slow and blocking the streets? However the truck was so fast, she was set to beat it no matter the cost!

“Alright, I’m here now.” Flash entered the garage with only the most basic clothes to cover himself and his hair still unkempt. “What exactly do you need from me?”

“Make my motorcycle faster!”

He groaned in response.

“Listen, Rainbow, I can’t just make a motorcycle faster without any parts. There are also the legal issues with tuning a motorcycle–”

“I bought it from an autowreck station and Applejack helped me make it drive, it isn’t registered anywhere to begin with.”

“That explains the lack of the license plate,” he muttered.

“Just make it faster by any means! If you need anything I can get it instantly!”

“I doubt you can find any parts at this time of the night.”

“I will leave a note and the money.”

“Wow, you really are desperate.”

“Because a truck overtook me!”

He didn’t respond and looked silently at each part of the vehicle, taking his time to test everything how fixed it was.

“Yeah, it’s really a wreck. It works for what it’s supposed to do, but if you want the maximum speed, spare parts found in a carwreck station won’t do it. Unless you want to rebuild everything, I suggest that you buy a new one.”

“Are you telling me that because you mean it or because you don’t want to do anything?” Rainbow asked.

“The former of course. Changing the parts isn’t too hard once you get them for me. So?”

“Hmph, fine. A new one it is.”

She took the motorcycle and pushed it out of the garage.

“You’re welcome by the way!” Flash called after her in an annoyed voice.

“Thank you for your help… And sorry for waking you up at this time.”

The next night Rainbow drove again at Everfree Street, this time with a different motorcycle. Of course she didn’t have enough savings for a new one, yet, but borrowing Sunset’s should be enough to show that truck driver who is the fastest around here. She only had to promise that she would return it whole without any damage and with a full tank. Hopefully this truck driver would be driving today too, otherwise her hours long driving would be a waste tonight. She already did a full circle on the street and still haven’t seen any other vehicle yet.

Then finally it happened. She saw the same lights of the truck from yesterday brighten up and quickly come nearer. Immediately she increased her speed, but not too fast to let the truck come near her. Once it turned to the other lane to overtake her, she gave full speed, leaving the truck to get further behind.

She did it! She had shown the driver who was the fastest!

Her cheering didn’t last long as the truck suddenly accelerated quickly and was suddenly next to her, before overtaking her without any effort. In panic she gave even more gas, despite the motorcycle already being at its limit, and ducked to lessen the air resistance, but the only thing she saw were the backlights fading away in front of her.

“What do you mean my motorcycle is too slow?” Sunset asked over the mobile phone.

“What else could it mean? That truck easily overtook me again!”

“Are you sure you’re seeing things correctly? Not getting enough sleep–”

“Sunset, I drove 140 mph on your motorcycle and that truck took it like I was… some truck!”

Rainbow heard Sunset sigh.

“You have to believe me!”

“I believe you, it’s just that you take it way too personally. Maybe it’s a tuned truck from a previous racer, who knows. If you really want to be faster, just use your magic.”

“No, Sunset, you don’t understand! It’s about my reputation and using my magic would be cheating and admitting that I lost! We—”

“Good night, Rainbow. We will continue in the morning once I wake up.”

“But—”

Without letting her get in another word, Sunset put her phone down and cut the line. Rainbow called her back, but this time she immediately got a voicemail, meaning Sunset turned off her phone completely.

The doorbell rang. As soon as Sunset stood up from her chair, it rang again repeatedly. Annoyed by the impatience of the person behind the door, she took longer than needed to open the door.

“Here’s your pizza!” Rainbow quickly entered the apartment, placed the pizza on a table and stood again before Sunset, stretching her hand towards her for the money. “Quick, I need to mow the grass in ten minutes and still have to deliver seven pizzas before that!”

“Why?” Sunset slowly opened her purse and took a closer look at Rainbow. Her hair was fuzzy and dark rings around her eyes were visible.

“What do you mean why?” Rainbow asked.

“Why are you doing all this? Why are you suddenly barely talking to us? Why have you left your sport clubs and are now working at multiple jobs at once?”

“Because of the truck! And I didn’t leave the clubs, only took a break for a few weeks.” Rainbow wiggled her fingers to signal her to give her the money faster.

“The truck? What does the truck have to do with any of this?”

“What what? To get a new, faster motorcycle of course! I will prove that I, Rainbow Dash, am the fastest rider in Canterlot City!”

“Just run with your geode against it. That’s way more impressive if you ask me,” Sunset groaned.

“No, Sunset, that’s admitting that I have lost! I need to have the faster vehicle!”

“And I guess you won’t be able to come to our weekly sleepover? Pinkie Pie will be very sad if you won’t.”

“Sorry, already got DoorDash, pizza and newspaper delivery this evening to do. She’ll get over it.”

At this moment Sunset had the money in her hand, which Rainbow immediately grabbed out of her and took off, leaving a rainbow coloured trail behind her.

With a sigh Sunset looked after her. This was the first longer conversation she was able to get with her. Rainbow’s look also bothered her. She was sure that soon enough the hard worker would give herself a burnout if she would continue like that. Of course, with her geode she could do the jobs much quicker, but she had to keep it down to not overpower those of her friends. At least Sunset hoped she did, over the last few days she could feel her own geode flickering up from having too much magic in it.

This had to stop. Rainbow wouldn’t stop going the road of self destruction, so Sunset, as her friend, had to intervene. She picked up her phone and wrote a message to the other members of their band.

When Rainbow woke up, she noticed how her room was still dark. With a yawn she stood up and opened the curtains in front of her window, where she saw the sun already high in the sky. Wait, what time was it now? She quickly glanced at her clock, which showed her that it was already past midday. Loudly cursing, she quickly put on her clothes and, using her geode for quicker speed, she ran out of the house.

How did she oversleep for several hours? She clearly remembered how she set the alarm clock. Maybe it was true what her friends said and she overworked herself? No, it couldn’t be, she never needed much sleep anyway to get enough rest.

Suddenly she stopped. Where should she even run first? The twenty houses she had to mow their grasses in the morning? The restaurants waiting for her to deliver their food to their customers? The dog owners who needed her to walk their dogs? Overwhelmed by how many jobs she overslept, she just ran to the nearest restaurant.

With a wind from behind following her into the building, she stopped in front of the manager and apologised sincerely for being too late.

“What are you talking about, Rainbow?” he replied to her surprise.

“I should have been here early in the morning already.”

“I mean, yes, but Sunset took over you. Didn’t you know?”

Rainbow raised her eyebrows. She wanted to continue asking questions, but realised that she should just take the luck and run to the next place she was supposed to work.

“Awesome, see you later!”

The following restaurants all said the same to her, that either Sunset or Applejack took over her job, and when she passed a house she was supposed to mow the grass, it had already been done.

At last, she met a dog she was supposed to walk with, but on a leash held by Fluttershy.

“Hi, Rainbow!”

“Fluttershy! What is going on? Why are all of my jobs already done?”

The animal lover looked at her dumbfounded, then pointed with her hand at the dog on the leash.

“I mean, we, your friends, are doing them for you. You were so tired and overworked, you really needed that longer sleep. I thought you’d have figured that out.”

“Ah… ehm, thank you? I can take it from here.” Rainbow stretched her hand to take the leash, but Fluttershy denied it.

“She. Her name is Leila.”

“Fine, then I will walk Leila. Give me that.”

“No.”

“What?” Rainbow stepped back, surprised by her firm stance.

“You, Rainbow, will go to the Day Spa right now and will take every offer they have.”

“But–”

“No buts!” Fluttershy gave her a threatening stare, which made Rainbow flinch and run where her friend said she had to go.

“Ah, I really needed it,” Rainbow said while Lotus was massaging her back.

“See?” Twilight replied. “Even when you are the fittest of us, a break is always good to have.”

“That’s right, darling,” Rarity added. “Allow yourself to be treated like a lady.”

“But what about the others?” Rainbow asked. “Aren’t they currently working in my place?”

“Yes, they do,” Twilight answered, “but we circle in pairs who will be at the spa with you to make up for the time we didn’t see you.”

“Wow. Really, girls, thank you so much.”

“Always happy to help a friend,” Rarity said. “But to catch up, you need that money for a motorcycle, right?”

“Eeyup. I’m saving up for the one being able to drive 220 mph. This should do the work of beating that darn truck.”

“Shesh, that’s fast,” Twilight responded. “How fast was Sunset’s motorcycle?”

“Only 140 mph.”

“Only?”

“Yes, only.”

“Aren’t you scared to drive those fast vehicles?” Rarity asked. “I mean, on foot with your magic you have much more control.”

“Pshaw, Rarity, I live for speed! But don’t worry, I’ll get used to the new one before using the full capacity. I promise!”

Once Rainbow sat on the new motorcycle, the first thing she noticed was how loud it is compared to the ones she used before. She didn’t even hear the exciting cheering of her friends watching her starting the motor and had to turn off the engine.

“Wow, this one is so amazing!”

“Glad to see your hard work finally pay off,” Sunset ran her hand over the vehicle.

“I wouldn’t be able to do it without you. Thanks again for helping me out, friends!”

“Well, you didn’t give us a big choice, but I’m glad to have helped you,” Applejack said.

“Just be careful, okay? Those high speeds can be very dangerous.” Fluttershy emerged from the back of Twilight, where she had hidden when the engine started. Her knees were still shaking from the loud noise.

“Also I built you a radio operator. All truck drivers use the same frequency to communicate with each other, so it’s likely that with that you’ll be able to speak to them.” Twilight gave her a full motorist protective costume.

“And I took the honor of making the costume for you.” Rarity added. “I won’t allow you to get hurt.”

“Wow, thank you, girls!”

“And for the first night time ride,” Sunset grinned, “I will join you. My curiosity is at maximum when even my motorcycle is too… are you crying?”

“I don’t deserve any of you.” Rainbow hid her face from them.

It had so much power. Rainbow still had to get used to how quickly her new motorcycle could accelerate; even Sunset struggled to keep up after turns and curves. As soon as they got on the Everfree Street, Rainbow took off, but not too fast to let Sunset catch up.

“Rainbow, slow down. It’s not here yet. Over,” Sunset said over the radio.

“You better keep up, we haven’t even started yet. Over.”

“What about radars or other cars? Over.”

“Don’t worry. Literally no one is here and no one controls anything here. Over.”

With that they continued wordlessly driving way over the speed limit, but Rainbow could feel how her vehicle was still only cruising casually and wanted more.

Just wait, my baby. Your time to shine will soon come.

Occasionally she slowed down and let Sunset drive away, only to accelerate and overtake her easily, while still not using the full power her vehicle could be using. And yet, her heart was already beating fast and her breath was short through the excitement and the acceleration forces pushing her back. She couldn’t wait to use its full speed.

At last, familiar headlights appeared behind them, which quickly approached them.

“Here it is, Sunset. Over.”

“Good luck and be careful. Over.”

Sunset accelerated to the highest speed her motorcycle could offer, while Rainbow was keeping up behind her, waiting for the truck to overtake them. It didn’t take long, as the truck soon changed lanes and overtook them easily, making them look like they were driving on small mopeds.

“What even…” Sunset spoke in surprise.

“Here. We. Go!”

Rainbow changed lanes and accelerated quickly. The forces were immense and she had to grab tightly to not fly away. Sunset was way behind her in seconds, as her motorcycle still was getting more speed. To her pleasure she saw the backlights of the trucks coming nearer to her. Finally, she would prove to it that she was the fastest here!

Once she was behind it, she used her operator to try to speak to the driver.

“Hello, here is Rainbow Dash. Can you hear me? Over.”

“I can hear you clearly! I’m the Night Hauler and I’m comin’ in hot! Do you also have the need for speed?” A manly voice responded.

“I do! You were always faster than me, but this time I will show you that I, Rainbow Dash, am the fastest rider in Canterlot City!”

“Hahaha, I already love you! Let’s roll in the night, let the asphalt burn from our tires! We’re showin’ them what livin’ on the road means!”

Rainbow changed lanes and slowly overtook it. A quick glance at the tacho showed that she was driving at about 190 mph. Being next to the truck, she could feel why those speeds were indeed dangerous: every bump on the road was shaking her up and making her almost lose control over her vehicle, and the side winds from the truck took all her strength pushing the handlebars to continue driving on a straight line.

“Are y’all feeling it? That’s the spirit of the road, baby! Can you feel the rumble? Can you smell the smoke? I know you feel it! Your heart is racing and you want more! Fly with me! No barrier will stop us on our way!”

His words gave her even more adrenaline, as she now put on her full speed her motorcycle could do. She could really feel it, everything was passing her quickly, all she could concentrate on was the road ahead of her and trying to steer forward, while the engine was hammering into her ear with its loud bumping. And she loved it. It was way better than running with her geode. This was the road calling for her; this was freedom!

“Here you go, pal! Be like the wind! Let your veins be filled with speed! Live to be free!”

At that moment she forgot why she even was here to begin with. All she cared for was feeling the speed, the kick, the rattle of the motor, the rushing of objects from the corners of her eyes. The adrenaline was at an all time high and her heart was beating faster than ever before. This was the best feeling she ever had!

Then suddenly the truck accelerated and left her behind.

“Sorry, pal, the road is calling me!” was the last message she received from him.

Perplexed by the speed of the truck, Rainbow had to stop and climbed out of her motorcycle next to the road, where she sat down and watched dumbfounded on the street.

It was faster. This truck driver just let her new motorcycle, which was able to drive 220 mph, look like all the other motorcycles she drove against him before. Just how fast was his truck? How was it able to get those speeds?

And yet, she didn’t feel as disturbed by it as before. When he talked to her, when she was driving next to him, she felt the same as he did. The excitement, the freedom, the action. He didn’t drive to be the fastest, he drove because he loved it. Maybe that’s what she had to learn? That speed was not about being the fastest, but the freedom?

Freedom… It was something Canterlot City lacked, considering anything beyond Everfree Street was impassable. Maybe…

Suddenly a single light appeared from the side of the street she came from, which turned out to be Sunset’s motorcycle. Once Sunset noticed Rainbow next to the road, she braked and stopped next to her.

“Hey, how was it? Did you overtake it?”

Rainbow looked bluntly at her, giving her the answer.

“Seriously? Even this bike?” Sunset scratched her head. “Wow... To be honest, I had to see the truck myself to believe that it was truly this fast. Do you still want to beat it?”

A smile formed on Rainbow’s lips and she shook her head. No, she didn’t want to anymore. All she knew was that the road was calling for her.

Repeating Hallway

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As big as CHS was, Rainbow still knew every room in the school. That’s why when the teacher asked for volunteers to get an overhead projector from the storage room — he was still living in the past and refused to use normal projectors — she raised her hand and went off to get it. She also just wanted to get out of the lesson.

Instead of using the hallways, which would only be a long detour, she used a shortcut through other rooms that she knew were always open. And even when she didn’t have to do it, she used her magic to be faster. But only a little though; she didn’t want to come back to the class too fast.

On the way she entered a lonely art storage room, which she knew was between two hallways. However, once she entered the room and walked in a straight line and passed through the next door, she stopped. She was back in the same hallway as before, wasn’t she? There was clearly a poster for the book club in the other hallway, she remembered the Daring Do book cover on it. She went backwards through the storage room and passed through the door she entered.

This was definitely the same hallway, there was the same book club poster in the exact same place. Just to be sure, Rainbow memorised the hallway, like the placements of the plants and the posters and room numbers, before she passed through the storage room again and confirmed her suspicion.

Was this another Equestrian magic possession? She was so excited to investigate it that she almost forgot what she was supposed to do. Why did she have to find it at the most inconvenient time? With a long sigh, she walked back through the storage room and took a detour to get the overhead projector.

During the rest of the school day she couldn’t concentrate on the lessons, as her thoughts were busy with theorizing what the repeating hallway meant. As much as her friends wished to live a normal life without any magical incidents, Rainbow was always excited whenever they occured — to the point where she was too obsessed with them, like during the cruise trip. During the last class she wanted to talk about the hallway with Rarity, but seeing her stressed for the upcoming exam, Rainbow decided it was best if she investigated the magic alone after school.

Of course it was a bad idea to also not pay attention to the last lesson before the exam, but Rainbow had to write down the different theories and tests she would be doing during the investigation. Not like she would be thinking about anything else and besides, if she already plans out what to check she’d be faster in finishing the investigation and then be able to study.

It would have probably been better if she had told any of her friends that she would be examining a magical phenomenon, but Rarity took off immediately after the bell and the group chat was either talking about the upcoming exams or how they had to postpone the band rehearsal due to time stress. Besides, it was only a repeating hallway; what could go wrong there? Rainbow would be quick anyway.

Standing before the door to the art storage room, she put out her list of tests she had prepared, or “experiments”, as Twilight would surely call them. To be honest, there wasn’t much to check, but maybe while researching the phenomenon she would find more to test out. As for now, the first thing on her list was to just keep going in a straight line — and count how many times she had passed the repeated hallway.

However, once she passed the storage room and was back in the hallway, she opened the door across her and stopped. This was a different room, like a small office with a single table.

She looked over her list and turned backwards. She already had a theory in mind, and when she was back at her starting point and continued further, she saw after opening the door the same office room.

Ticking on her list that the hallway repeats itself between two rooms, she imagined this was how Twilight when she was in her science mode. It was fun though; she was like Daring Do: exploring the unknown and eager to find out as much as possible.

She then turned around and continued going forward, this time also passing the office room she saw the first time. There was the hallway again, same book club poster, same plants and room numbers. Continuing further and opening the next door, she was back at the art storage room.

After passing a few hallways, she turned around and got back to her starting point again and ticked on her list that the hallway was repeating infinitely — that math symbol turned out to be useful for once.

She had to check whether the hallway truly repeated itself. She took a marker and scribbled her name on the door to the storage room, then passed it. When she was back at the hallway, there was no signature on any of the doors, and continuing going forward showed that her name didn’t appear on any doors again. She crossed out the repeating theory and thought for a bit. If that wasn’t a repeating hallway, what was it? She added “Portal?” to her notes and folded the paper.

There was only one thing left to check, and for that she needed to go back to her starting point one last time. As annoying as it sounded, she found it astonishing — if not even hypnotizing — to see how she always returned back to the same hallway despite going in a straight line.

Back at the door with her signature, she took a few pictures of the hallway with her phone and walked back in a straight line, this time checking at each hallway if there were any differences. At first she didn’t notice any, but when she passed through the hallway for the sixth time, she saw how the book club poster had a slightly different font. With a smile, she ticked out the last theory with small changes between the hallways and put the list in one of her folders in her bag. For this research work she could proudly enter the science club; even Twilight wouldn’t have done a better job than her at checking out the magical phenomenon.

At the same time, however, she was disappointed. Was her little research project already over? Looking at her watch, she thought for a bit before continuing going forward. There was still enough time left to further explore the hallways.

At first she only walked in a straight line, opening door after door, but soon she got impatient and began to run before at last using her geode to speed up the process. Once she counted the 100th loop, she stopped for the first time and compared the hallway with the taken pictures, already excited how much this hallway differed.

This time there were definitely more noticeable differences. The book club-poster was replaced with a library club poster, the plants were a different kind and the garbage bin was red instead of green like in her hallway. However, the hallway was still overall, despite the differences, very similar looking. She continued further and used the power from her geode again — her friends will surely understand the necessity if their geodes overpowered.

At the 500th hallway she took another break and looked around, noticing this time way more differences even without comparing it with her pictures. First, the wall was now a rather ugly orange. The windows were placed higher, and one additional door was there at the end of the hallway. However, the most noticeable for her were the posters and plants. They were now completely different; but what gave her a creepy vibe was the state of them, as all of the posters were looking rather used up and the plants were dried out. Out of all the changes she expected would happen, this was not one of them.

Something in her told her to stop her research and go back — after all, she still had to study for the exam — but her curiosity got the best of her and she ran around the school. Indeed, everything around her looked like the school was abandoned. The rooms were all dusty and several objects had traces of slowly rotting away. What had happened? Was it something dangerous? A magic possession that this universe’s Rainbooms couldn’t handle? What bothered her were how many things were left, as if the school went from open one day to closed the next.

Looking at the posters she searched for any dates, revealing that the last planned activity at this school must have happened a year ago. She couldn’t find any hints on why it had happened though; there were no newspapers or anything else to look it up. She couldn’t even find any files in Celestia’s office, and the computers were cut from any power sources. Even creepier was that when she looked outside, the view had the same look of abandonment: the street was empty, there was no movement, and the plants seemed to have taken over small parts of the buildings and the streets.

She didn’t know at which loop it had started, or if the abandonment was a slow evolution from a certain point that then happened earlier and earlier at each new world. But despite the uncomfortable feeling that came over her, she returned to the hallway and continued going further away from where she came from, this time taking more breaks in between to catch any noticeable differences. Who knows, maybe she would find out what had happened.

At the 570th loop the biggest difference from anything else before it occurred, which was that she saw someone — or rather something. A small robot, its height about as high as her knee, was driving on four tires exploring the hallways. It was all black and had a camera and two gripper arms. She would have missed it if she hadn’t stopped and taken a quick glance around, but the robot seemed to have noticed her immediately, as it drove slowly in her direction.

Why was there a robot exploring the area? Was there some kind of disease at that school? Is that the reason why the school was abandoned? Or was her first theory of a magical accident true? All these questions were circling in her mind as the robot stopped in front of her and took a look at her with her camera.

“Hi there, I’m Rainbow Dash! Can you speak?” She tried to stand firmly despite her nervosity. No, she wouldn’t run away from such a small robot! Still, she took a stance ready to run just in case the robot suddenly attacked her.

“How did you get here?” the robot asked in a human voice. It was definitely remotely controlled — or the human consciousness had been transferred into robots.

“Through the doors in this hallway. It always loops back to this hallway of this school despite going in a straight line. What happened here? Why is the school abandoned?”

The robot, or rather the person controlling it, took its time before saying: “How many iterations have you made?”

“Ite-what?”

“Loops.”

Why is he believing me so easily? Rainbow asked herself. And why was it immediately asking for the amount of loops she made?

“No, first answer my question! Is there a dangerous virus? A deadly disease?”

“There is no disease, you don’t have to worry about your health,” it immediately replied. “Is your school operational?”

That would have been slightly calming if it didn’t imply that the Rainbooms had lost a magical encounter, if this universe still had the Rainbooms. She was, however, asking herself how much she should reveal to that person. She didn’t trust it yet.

“If you mean that my school is still open, yes. What even happened here?”

“How many iterations have you made?”

Not answering her questions only fueled her distrust.

“I won‘t tell you unless you tell me what happened here!” Rainbow took a quick glance around. The surroundings looked a little bit more worn out than the 500th one, but she didn’t recognise anything too different from there. “And who are you?”

“Tell me how many iterations you have made and I will answer every question.”

“No, first you tell me!” Why was the person so secretive?

“Please cooperate and go to the entrance, a team will arrive to take care of you.”

“Yeah, I’ll go with a big ‘no’ on that. If you don’t want to tell me, I’ll continue my own research.” Rainbow turned from the robot and quickly opened the door to the next room.

After activating her power and passing additional 30 loops, the realisation came to her mind that she should have gone back instead of continuing to loop. Whoever was controlling the robot now knew that she had to go back and would be expecting her. How stupid was she?

She stopped in the storage room, which also had that abandoned and dusty look. There was probably still time to turn back and run to her home universe. However, she was eager to find out what had happened, and somehow she was sure that the answer would be revealed by continuing forward. It wasn’t logical, but her gut feeling had always been right before, so she continued.

Suddenly, at the 628th loop, the usual door changed to a metal one with a weird circular logo that had a circle and three arrows pointing to the center in it. There was no door handle to open the door, but a button that she had to press. When the door slid sideways to open itself, she saw the room that was now visible had completely changed. The walls and the ceiling were white, while the ground was grayish, but most notably was the completely changed furniture, making it seem like an office room but without any computers. This was… interesting, to say the least.

The opposite door had the same metallic door with the logo on it and, after pressing the button to open it, revealed a completely different hallway. This was no school anymore, but she couldn’t make out what the building it could have been for. Or was this dry place lacking any comfort the usual look for any office building? She shuddered at the thought of anyone having to work at this place.

Should she explore the building? What if she ran into someone? Was she in danger? She didn’t have to decide, as at the end of the hallway a door opened and a grown man walked through it, suddenly stopping as he saw Rainbow standing there. He wore a typical white lab coat with the same logo that the door had on the chest region.

“What on… Excuse me, Miss, but who are you and how did you come into this facility?” he asked, staying at the door.

Facility? That didn’t explain much at all. Should she tell him about the looping hallway? There was still the distrust from the robot, and who knows, maybe these two people were in some way connected. She decided she wanted to see if he would believe her as easily as the person controlling the robot had.

“Name’s Rainbow Dash. I found a hallway at my school that loops itself when you go in a straight line through these doors and came here.”

She closely watched the reaction of the man, who looked at the two doors in the hallway she had mentioned. His expression turned from a suspicious look into a friendly and cheerful smile.

“The Recursive Rooms! Oh, I didn’t expect that we would get one here too. How exciting! Let me introduce myself, my name is Dr. Time Turner and I…” A gray hand appeared from the left behind the door and tapped on his shoulder, before returning back. “Oh, right, I need to focus. Ehem. How many… loops have you done, if you have counted them?”

Despite his very friendly and exciting nature, she didn’t trust him. He definitely knew what was going on and, by his own words, there are many of those repeating hallways. And again the question of how many times she had passed the loop. Why was everyone so keen to find out? At least his voice was way friendlier than the one who controlled the robot.

“As long as you tell…”

“Wait, I need a recording device. How unprofessional of me! Just wait for me here, Ms. Dash, I’ll be right back!”

The hand behind the door appeared back and tried to prevent Turner from running away, but was too slow. Then, very slowly, a face emerged from behind the door, lurking at her. Was it…?

“Derpy? Is that you?” Rainbow asked in surprise. What was she doing here?

Derpy shook her head and hesitantly passed the door. She wore her usual casual clothes, at least like she did in Rainbow’s school, but instead of the typical green hers were yellow-coloured.

“Oh, right, that was a nickname. Ah, Muffins!”

Muffins smiled and approached her with an open hand to greet her, which Rainbow took. She might not trust the man, but with Muffins she knew that the blond girl would never harm anyone.

“Nice to meet you. Say, here in this place was a school before, Canterlot High, right?”

Muffins nodded.

“Was the school closed down before this facility was built?”

Another nod.

“But why? What happened?”

Muffins didn’t respond to that question.

“You can talk, right?” Rainbow clearly remembered her speaking in the camping trip to the Everfree forest, and a nod from Muffins confirmed it too — ironic considering the way it was answered.

“You do know what happened, don’t you?”

Muffins didn’t respond, which Rainbow assumed was then a yes. But why didn’t she tell her that? Why was she also so secretive? Something was definitely going on.

Muffins suddenly pointed towards Rainbow’s left wrist, where the wristwatch with her geode was. The geode was already glowing, probably from overusing it, which of course dragged Muffins’ attention.

“You want to know what the deal is with the glowing wristwatch?” Rainbow asked. “Then how about a deal? You tell me why this school here was closed down and I tell you what this is for. On it?” She spit on her hand and offered her it.

Muffins thought for a while, then nodded her head and spit also on her hand, before taking the offered hand and closed the deal.

“Alright. This wristwatch has a geode in it that gives me the power of superspeed. Now, what happened?”

At this moment Turner entered the room with a bag, from which he took out a recording device and pressed on record. Great timing…

“Alright, this is Dr. Turner interviewing Rainbow Dash, a Canterlot High School student from…”

He stopped when Muffins pressed the record button on the device, stopping the recording.

“What are you doing?” he asked surprised, while Muffins took the bag and searched in it for something.

Rainbow took a quick glance at the open door she came from. There was still time to run away.

“Is your superpower known?” Muffins asked Rainbow, ignoring the question from Turner.

“Well, of course,” Rainbow replied and looked at her eyes, or more specifically her right eye. She had noticed it before, but thought that it was just a coincidence. However, when Muffins was searching for something in the bag, her right eye was still staring at Rainbow’s wrist with the geode. “But don’t forget the deal!”

“What deal?” Turner asked.

Without a word Muffins took out two devices from the bag and gave one to the doctor, while she kept the other in her hand. With the other free hand she grabbed Rainbow’s right hand, which Rainbow reluctantly let happen.

“The same thing happened here too,” Muffins said and held the device over Rainbow’s hand. “A portal to a different world has opened.”

Before Rainbow could comprehend what Muffins was saying, the device beeped and on the screen Rainbow could catch a glimpse of a wall of text appearing, before Muffins moved it in front of her own face to read it.

What just happened? What did the device do to her? She touched with her left hand the area where the device was over, but then froze when she felt something in the form of a square in her arm. What was it? Fear crawled over her body as she turned to the door. Maybe she should just leave…

Suddenly, the door Rainbow had entered the hallway from closed down, and a voice from an announcement speaker filled the room.

“Dr. Turner, come immediately to Charge's office with the found subject.”

Rainbow pushed the button on the door, but nothing happened. She was too late…

The doctor sighed, waved at Rainbow to follow her and walked away. Instead, she continued pushing the button, hoping that somehow it would open again, but to no success. However, a hand grabbed hers and, after seeing Muffins’ shaking of her head, she angrily realised that she had to follow. Still, so far she wasn’t in any danger yet; she could still use her power to run away when needed, even if not back for now, so she calmed down.

After passing several hallways – Rainbow made sure to memorise the way back – they entered a typical office room, where a man also wearing a white lab coat was sitting on a chair behind a desk. She also saw two guards in black uniforms with the same logo standing behind him, weapons in their hands. Instinctively she put her right hand over her watch with the geode.

However, what caught most of her attention was a map of Canterlot City labelled as “Scissor Events”, where several circles with different colours — all of them labelled with just a three to four digit number — were drawn on it. Most noticeably were the purple and red coloured circles, as they were all on Everfree Street and the highest in numbers.

“Why is it here?” Charge asked Turner harshly and pointed at Muffins, who had gone to a corner and stood there.

“She has every right to be here, Dr. Charge, and you know it.” Turner replied calmly.

“That may be true, but not when it interferes with other anomalies. Unless it sees a potential Scissor Event happen here, it has to immediately go away.” He looked at Muffins, who in return pointed above Rainbow’s head, and then sighed in annoyance. “Fine, stay here then. Dr. Turner, report.”

“We have a potential SCP-970 in the hallway where we found her. She comes from a parallel universe where Canterlot High School hasn’t been closed down.”

“Wasn’t there the same event?”

“There was, but due to slight differences a different approach regarding the anomaly had to be taken.” Turner gave Charge the device that Muffins had used on her. “Her Humes level is also at 1.2, which is unusually high. I suggest we find out how many iterations she has done, amnesticise her and return her back to her world.”

“Amne-what?” Rainbow interrupted them, but didn’t get an answer. A quick glance at Muffins revealed nothing, as her right eye was staring above Rainbow’s head and her other at the two men talking to each other.

“I see. Rainbow Dash, have you counted how many times you have passed the hallway?” Charge asked her.

“Yes, but I won’t tell you.” She crossed her arms.

Charge just looked at her silently with a neutral expression.

“But why? It’s for your best if you cooperate,” Turner said to her.

“I won’t tell you anything until you tell me what this device is, what the square thing in my arm is, and what happened here that closed the school down!”

“Well, you don’t seem to be so smart,” Charge replied with a smirk. “Considering how much you have seen, you might as well have counted two and two together.”

“Are you telling me I’m dumb?” Rainbow stood up from her chair, but saw the guards raise their guns towards her and slowly sat down.

“Potentially. We don’t have time to waste. If you won’t tell me, I will make you.”

“Try me!” Rainbow laughed and put her hand back on her geode, ready to activate it when necessary.

“Bring in a D-Class personnel.”

Rainbow heard Muffins gasp in surprise. One guard saluted and left the room. Confused, Rainbow gave a questioning look at Charge, but he kept reading the text on the device.

“Isn’t that too cruel?” Turner asked.

“I’m not interested in any long worthless talks.”

“But—”

“I’m the Site-Director here, not you.”

Suddenly Muffins pointed back above Rainbow's head and then showed a length with her hands.

“Already so big?” Charge asked her. “You know you should have reported it before it got to that size?”

Muffins answered by showing a shorter length and then making it get longer.

“This fast? That’s very unusual.“ Turner commented. “Should we do something?”

“As long as it hasn't reached stage three we don’t have to worry. It just has to report it, right, Muffins?” Charge replied, to which Muffins nodded.

The guard returned with a man in an orange suit, who was handcuffed behind his back. His eyes showed a sign of fear. What was Charge up to?

“I’m asking again, Rainbow Dash. How many hallways did you repeat?”

“Or what?”

“Or this guy gets shot in his knees.”

This time it was Rainbow who gasped. She took a close look at Charge’s face, which still showed the neutral but determined expression.

“But Dr. Charge, is it really…” Turner said, but got interrupted.

“Don’t interfere in my interrogation!”

Rainbow looked back at Muffins, who had closed her left eye with her hands, while the other still remained staring above Rainbow’s head.

“So?” Charge asked.

“You wouldn’t dare!” Rainbow yelled. She still couldn’t believe he would go with this.

Charge waved his hand and immediately one guard shot the man in the knee, who screamed in pain. He wasn’t the only one, as Rainbow screamed too from the surprise and the shock of seeing what had happened.

“The number, Rainbow.”

“How can you be so cruel!?” she cried. She wanted to look away from the guy and from the blood, but couldn’t. It was all too sudden.

“Give the number and his other knee will stay intact. I will count to three. One…”

Suddenly Rainbow was pushed away by Muffins. From where she was sitting she heard a sudden noise of the chair breaking in pieces and, when she looked in that direction, saw a statue of concrete with a painted face suddenly in the place instead of her.

“Nobody blink! Keep looking at it!” Charge yelled and stood up, and others in the rooms had the same scared expression on their faces as him. “Muffins! Why didn’t you report it!”

“The rift suddenly got bigger!” she replied angrily. “Be happy I saved her!”

Even when confused by the reactions and the panic of a statue (and even more by how it suddenly appeared), she saw the chance to get away from them and try to escape. When she ran away from the room, she heard the Site-Director scream after her to stop, but no one dared to break eye-contact with the statue. She only had to hope that the door back to her home was open again.

Not even seconds passed before she was at the door where she had entered this facility, but when she pushed the button to open it, it didn’t.

Crap.

Pushing the button again and again didn’t help, and the other door opposite to it didn’t open either. Panic crawled up in her. What should she do now?

Suddenly she felt a touch on her shoulder and, after jumping up in surprise and turning around, saw Muffins standing there, her left eye at her, the other staring to the right. How did she come into the hallway? Rainbow was sure she had closed the doors behind her.

“Sorry for taking so long. Cameras.” She pointed to a corner of the hallway, then produced a screwdriver and pushed it between the button and the door, where sparkles and lightning appeared. It even made Muffins twitch and her hair stand up. “Ouch.”

The door opened.

“Wow, thank you!” A sense of relief came over Rainbow. She knew that at least she could trust Muffins, even when from another universe.

Before Rainbow could leave, Muffins held her back and gave her a piece of paper. “Take this and show it in case you get stopped, but don’t read what is written there and burn it as soon as you return. Promise?” She reached out her free hand, but then reconsidered, spit on it and then gave it to her.

“Why?” Rainbow asked. She still had so many questions open, and maybe what was written there would have the answers.

“Please, for me. I’m already not allowed to help you.”

Rainbow sighed. Seeing as the girl had already done so much for her (and that she really should take the chance to flee), she spit on her palm and shook Muffins’ outstretched hand, then ran away, opening door after door.

It didn’t take long for her to reach the hallway where she had met the robot, and when she was there the opposing door was closed. Of course.

“There you are!” a voice next to her spoke, and when she turned she saw two men in the same black uniform and the logo as the guards in the facility, who had their guns raised at her. “Raise your hands!”

So whoever these people were, they were from the same group as the one from the facility.

“I have a paper to show.” Rainbow raised her hands as ordered.

“Show it!”

She slowly took out the paper and gave it to the speaker, who took their time to read it, making her more worried with every second. Hopefully Muffins didn’t mess this up…

Finally he reached for his radio set.

“Dr. Charge, we have orders from the Foundation to let her pass.”

Rainbow gulped. Of course he had to be on that end.

“Immediately?” the reply came.

“Yes. Her being in the wrong universe drastically accelerates the scissor events. It’s signatured by Site-Director Arctic Charge.”

“Let her pass.”

While one guard took out the keys to open the door, the other photographed the paper and then gave it back to Rainbow. Then the door was opened for her and they gave her room to go through. Without further waiting, she immediately took the opportunity and left.

The signature on the door confirmed that Rainbow had counted the loops correctly. She was finally back at her home. Promptly her phone rang, showing several new messages and missed calls. Looking at the time showed that she was about three hours gone; no wonder everyone was so worried about her.

“Freeze!” a voice next to her shouted.

Oh come on!

Immediately Rainbow grabbed her geode to activate its power and ran the opposite direction, but she tripped over her own feet as her power suddenly didn’t work. She felt a sharp stitch on her neck and, when she touched the spot with her hand, felt a small dart stuck on her. Suddenly her head spun and her view got blurry, but before she fell unconscious, she looked back to see two men in black uniforms and a weird antenna-like device standing behind them.

Rainbow slowly opened her eyes, seeing a blank white ceiling above her. A repeating beep next to her revealed to her that she was in a hospital. But what had happened? All she could feel was a headache.

“She’s awake!” She heard Pinkie Pie’s voice next to her.

She slowly moved her head towards her, but was hugged by her pink friend.

“Where were you?” Twilight asked her.

“We were so worried about you!” Sunset said.

The next moment every one of her friends took turns to either hug or shake her hand, which Rainbow let them do passively.

“Wh… What happened?” Rainbow asked, looking over her body, but not finding anything to give her a hint why she was in the hospital.

“We hoped you could tell us. The police found you in the streets unconscious and brought you here,” Applejack said to her.

“I… don’t remember,” Rainbow stuttered and held her forehead in pain. Trying to recall anything only intensified the headache.

“At least you’re fine now,” Sunset said, “but next time tell us what you are doing if it’s dangerous!”

“Sure…” Rainbow sat up. The headache was already slowly fading away.

She recovered quickly from whatever had happened to her, fast enough that she could go back home the same day. After saying goodbye to her friends, she went up to her room and put her bag on the desk. The doctor had written an excuse for her for tomorrow’s homework, but the upcoming exam had to be prepared for, even if it was a few days away. Procrastinating wouldn’t help her grades, and her health was already back to normal.

Still, what had happened to her? And why didn’t she remember anything after lunch? Twilight assumed that she got some kind of amnesia by an accident, which would explain the headache she had before. Hopefully Rainbow had taken enough notes.

Going through her folders, she saw a paper written clearly by her, but instead of school notes there was a list of theories, most of them ticked with a checkmark and a few crossed out. All of them were about a repeating hallway connected to an art storage room. As much as she tried, she couldn’t remember anything about that.

Was this in some way related to her amnesia? Knowing herself, she probably investigated it by herself without telling anyone. Did something happen there? She had to check it tomorrow.

As soon as she entered school, she went straight to the art storage room. However, the door which was usually open was closed down. Remembering what was standing in her list, she turned to the other door and tried to open it, which she could do.

“Who is there?” someone inside the room asked.

When she entered the room, she saw a woman on a desk sitting in front of a computer screen. Something about this didn’t seem right, maybe the new computer, but she knew the woman as her geology teacher.

“Oh, sorry,” Rainbow apologised, “I thought the room was empty. I sometimes walk through here as a shortcut.”

“Yeah, I noticed how my office was used like that too often. I hope you don’t mind if I could keep my office private and not as another hallway.”

“Sure! My apologies for that. This won’t happen again.”

Rainbow left the room and closed the door, then took out the paper with the list. Something was going on, she could feel it, but what? The bell rang for the first lesson and she put her paper away.

Later on, she tried a few times to pass through any of the rooms, but they were always either closed or occupied.

Suspicious.

The Chase

View Online

Rainbow rode at high speed towards the crossroads before braking, turning onto Everfree Street and accelerating as quickly as possible. As soon as she passed the first street lamp she pressed the button on her phone — which was on a bracket on her motorcycle — to stop the timer.

“Hah, new record!” she exclaimed loudly and slowed down.

There was no need to ride at the highest speed her motorcycle could offer, as even the lower ones were more than enough to still her need for speed. She had certain points where she measured her time and gave everything, but most of the time she rode casually — relatively speaking — on the street.

As the ride went on, she turned her head to look behind, searching for any headlights she knew by now very well. The Night Hauler — as the truck driver called himself — never waited long to appear whenever she was doing her night rides. After Rainbow’s last attempt at overtaking that truck, she had to admit losing the race and instead chose to befriend him, which went more or less successful.

Whenever she tried to start a conversation with him, he gave his speech about freedom on the streets and the calling for speed, which then fired up Rainbow to go for her maximum speed.

Every. Single. Time.

And when the truck passed her and drove away out of her sight, she slowed down and could only wonder how the Night Hauler was able to make her do it again and again. At least she made some progress, as he now called her “pal” whenever he addressed her. Nonetheless, he remained a mystery to her. Where did he come from? Did he live in Canterlot City? How was his truck so fast?

Whatever the answers were, she always looked forward to the next time she would ride with him, just like tonight.

As she looked behind again searching for him, she indeed saw lights, but this time they were red and blue lights of a police car.

Come on, don’t you have anything better to do this late?

Rainbow accelerated and let the police car disappear behind her. It was no match for her motorcycle, but she still wondered why a single policeman was patrolling on Everfree Street so far outside the city.

However, once she saw the lights get brighter, she realised that this police car was also way quicker than she anticipated. How was every single vehicle so fast here?

She pushed her thoughts away, leaned down and accelerated to the top speed her motorcycle could do, but the police car only got closer to her until it was right on her tail.

Should she stop at the side of the road? No, something was wrong. That vehicle couldn’t be a normal police car, not with how easily it could catch up to her, and especially how dangerously close it got to her.

Was it trying to make her fall? She got confirmation on that as the police car suddenly rammed into her. Were it not for her quick reflexes, she would have fallen over due to the dangerous speed she was currently riding. The police car rammed her again, this time even harder.

It wants to kill me!

Out of options, she touched her geode and felt the power coming over her, not so that she could ride faster but to speed up her reaction time. An extra safety precaution.

Another ram. This time she couldn’t hold her balance anymore and jumped off of her bike. As soon as her feet touched the ground, she used her super speed to run — this would have killed her otherwise. Just in time, she was able to catch her motorcycle before it fell, then she returned it to its balance and jumped on it to continue riding.

As soon as she felt another ram, a thought came to her head to leave her motorcycle alone and run for her life. After all, whoever this driver was, he certainly was not a policeman.

Suddenly another set of headlights appeared from behind, which approached quickly towards them. Very familiar headlights…

“Howdy! I see that guy is after you. Very insisting lawman. Prepare for the call of freedom, you stickler!” the voice of the driver sounded over her radio.

In an instant, the truck pulled up next to the police car. Despite the noises from her engine, she could hear the thrust the truck gave to the cruiser to push it off the road.

“Thanks, partner!” Rainbow replied and slowed down, the truck now driving next to her.

“No one’s gonna block our ways! The roads belong to us! We live for the burning tires and the smoke from the rubbers! We…”

Rainbow suddenly saw the police lights appear back behind her.

“He’s behind us!” she yelled over the radio and accelerated.

“I said that this guy is a real stickler! Don’t be surprised!”

Suddenly the truck disappeared out of nowhere and its headlights returned back behind her, but surrounded by a dark black smoke.

Deciding that it was best to not question what just happened, she continued driving forward. From the lights she could determine that the truck had rammed and pushed the police car several times out of the road, but the chaser didn’t let go by any means and always drove back to the road after her.

“Hey, pal, a crossroad is before us, maybe you should drive back to the city?”

Rainbow couldn’t answer. She was going too fast to make the turn, but she couldn’t slow down or the cruiser would ram into her again. However, when the blue and red lights suddenly moved to the right, she knew that the truck driver was pushing it off the road again and braked. Just in time, as she saw the crossroad appear, she turned onto the street towards Canterlot City and accelerated again. Hopefully this was enough…

The truck disappeared and reappeared in smoke closely behind her, but the lights of the police car followed soon after. How was it still driving despite being rammed repeatedly?

As to make it even more chaotic, suddenly lights appeared above her. Due to the loud engine of her motorcycle, she couldn’t hear anything to figure out what it was, but she assumed that it was a helicopter. Did the policeman get backup to chase after her?

Suddenly Rainbow heard loud shots like from a machine gun above her. Just what was going on?

“Hey, pal, these flyers are shooting at the stickler. You better ride away while you can.”

She didn’t let it tell her a second time and immediately went to full speed, hopefully getting rid of the chaser. There was always time later to wonder what was going on. Soon, the shots of the machine gun were getting farther behind her and the lights of the police car faded away.

Now in Canterlot, she rode straight to her home, turned off the engine and left the motorcycle standing outside. As silently as possible — to not wake up her parents — she ran up to her room and took off her helmet, but didn‘t bother to take off her protective clothing, and fell down with heavy breathing on her bed.

That “police car” was definitely not a cop. It couldn’t be, not how it acted and what it was capable of. The truck driver could also apparently teleport now, and a helicopter had appeared out of nowhere to shoot at the police car…

Was this some sort of Equestrian bad magic? Was the truck enchanted by it? Did a cop get consumed by that magic too? Where did that helicopter come from? She had to tell her friends about it.

However, the sudden sound of an approaching siren and a flickering blue and red light ripped her out of her thoughts. Carefully looking through the curtains she saw a single police car — it was heavily scratched, dented and with a few holes on it — parking in front of her house. A slightly overweight man with a handlebar moustache came out of it, wearing black sunglasses despite it being nighttime.

He looked straight at her.

She closed the curtain and went through her options. She didn’t know what he was capable of, but if he really wanted to kill her (which was no doubt his intention), she had to act fast and perhaps even run away. Peeking through the curtains again, she shrieked in fear and fell backwards. He — no, it — was standing at her window, with its sunglasses down, revealing red glowing eyes and an inhumanly wide open mouth… It was like a black hole, with no teeth or anything else.

The cop raised its hand and struck at the window, shattering it into pieces. She activated her geode and was about to run out of her house, but stopped despite her shock. It could go after her parents if she ran away, so she stood at the floor and waved at it to catch its attention. The monster ran after her, its mouth giving a loud unintelligible roar.

“Rainbow? What is going on?” she heard her father yell.

“Don’t come out!” She ran down the stairs and hoped that the cop would follow her. Luckily, it did.

She led it out of the house to the street, before stopping at a crossroads and turning back. The engine of the police car started and it drove right at her. She didn’t wait and continued running without a straight goal in mind yet.

What should she do now? How would she get rid of it? Just what was it? A light in the sky and the sound of a helicopter gave her an idea. Whoever was in that helicopter, they were after the monster.

She ran towards it and, when under it, waved at the direction the police car would come from. As soon as the police car was in its view, the helicopter shot again from their machine gun, the deafening sounds surely waking up anyone else who wasn’t already awake.

Rainbow made sure to run in circles to make the helicopter’s job easier, but the longer the machine gun was running, the more astonished she was from the monster in the police car. The windscreen was already shot down, holes covered the whole car, but it kept driving after her. It was definitely consumed by bad magic.

Finally, the car stopped and broke down, being shredded with holes at every inch on its surface. The monster in it climbed out and was immediately met with a heavy load of bullets. At first they didn’t seem to affect it, but after running after Rainbow, it stopped and fell on its knees, while what seemed to be black blood flowing down its body. The storm of bullets still didn’t stop as the monster fell down on its face and remained lying on the ground. Whoever was shooting from the helicopter really wanted to make sure to kill it — not like she was complaining.

At this point several lights inside houses had been turned on and spectators had gathered outside to see what was going on. At last, the machine gun had finally stopped.

“Wow, you don’t see this every day!”

Rainbow jumped in surprise as she heard Pinkie Pie saying that next to her.

“Aaah! Stop doing that!”

“What?” Pinkie asked curiously.

“Appearing suddenly next to me!”

“I called you several times, but you didn’t hear me because of how loud everything was.”

“Fair point.”

“So, what happened?”

“That’s a long story…” Rainbow sighed.

As they were talking, several police cars arrived on the scene and slowly approached with guns raised at the motionless monster. Rainbow took a look at the helicopter, wondering why it still remained up in the air when the danger was eliminated, and saw someone there aiming a gun in her direction.

Still having her geode activated, she stepped sidewards and just in time missed the dart that was shot at her. She picked it up from the ground, but remained in eye contact with the person from the helicopter, who took another try, but also missed.

“Uhh, orange gas!” Pinkie said and pointed at a manhole cover on the street, where said visible gas was coming out.

An uneasy feeling came over Rainbow. The person in the helicopter shooting darts at her and the gas must be connected somehow. But why? What was the purpose?

Without a word, Rainbow took Pinkie‘s hand and ran with her away from the gas, which was coming from almost every manhole cover she could see. She also had to dodge several shots from the helicopter, which was now following her.

She ran with her super speed away — Pinkie was still keeping up — and stayed closely near any walls and buildings to be as far away from the gas as possible, which soon covered the whole street they were on.

Her goal was Twilight’s home — the only place he could think of in her panic to go for help. She didn’t even have to knock or ring the bell because said person was already looking with her binoculars out of her window.

“Rainbow, Pinkie! What happened?”

“Rainbow was being chased by a police car but a helicopter—”

“No time for that!” Rainbow interrupted Pinkie. “Open the door or the gas will get us!”

“What gas?” Twilight asked, but then saw it stream out of the manhole covers on the streets. “Will do!”

The door was opened by Twilight’s mother, who let them enter and quickly closed the door.

“What is going on?” Twilight’s father asked, but then his eyes widened as he pointed at the door. “It’s leaking in!”

“I’m coming!” Twilight ran down the stairs with heavy breathing and gave everyone a gas mask to put on.

“Ergh, is this another one of your magical incidents?” the father asked, struggling to put his mask on.

“No!” Rainbow answered. “It’s… I don’t even know what it is!”

“Maybe a gas leak?” Pinkie asked. “It’s coming from the sewers after all.”

“I’ll call the sanitation department, maybe they will explain what is going on!” The father immediately went towards the phone.

“And I will change my clothes,” the mother said. “Not like we’ll be going to sleep soon anymore. Make yourself at home in the meantime — despite the circumstances.”

Twilight led her friends to her lab, where Spike (also in a gas mask) was handling test tubes by himself.

“I have prepared the samples of the gas!” Spike said as soon as he saw them.

“Good,” Twilight replied and put on her lab coat. “While I examine it, you, Rainbow Dash, can explain what had happened.”

“Why do you think it’s connected with me?” Rainbow asked.

“You have your protective costume on, meaning you had again one of your night rides.”

“Fair, but the gas is not my fault!”

“But it’s certainly connected.” Pinkie Pie said and took Spike in her arms and stroked behind his ears. “And you, good boy, have earned a reward for your work!”

While Twilight busied herself at her bench, Rainbow used the time to fill them up in what had happened tonight.

“…and here is the dart that the person shot at me.” Rainbow gave said object to Twilight, who had finished her work and had to wait for the results.

“Nothing I immediately recognise, presumably a stunning arrow.”

“Stunning arrow?” Rainbow asked. “Why would they want to stun me?”

“I have my assumptions based on your story. Let me first check the results of the samples.”

Rainbow turned her head towards Pinkie, who had still Spike in her arms, and gave a confused look, to which Pinkie only shrugged.

“Just as I expected,” Twilight showed them a test tube. “The gas contains chemical components commonly used in sleeping pills and narcotics, plus certain substances I would need to analyse further. However, if that sample has turned blue…” She took another one in her hand, which had a light blue liquid in it. “See? This means that the gas has an element which can affect the neuron connections in the brain!”

Twilight remained silent, seemingly expecting a reply.

“And?” Rainbow asked.

“Yeah, I don’t get what that means,” Pinkie added.

“Well, this is for now just a hypothesis, as the concentration of that specific substance is too low to confirm it, but if my theory is right and the other components are also able to affect the brain, then the gas is able to make us forget this night.”

Forget? Rainbow immediately thought about the paper with notes about a repeating hallway. Despite already feeling uneasy, she became even more nervous.

“Uhh, so whoever released that gas wants everyone to forget that a monster was chasing after Rainbow!” Pinkie said. “And because they knew that Rainbow would just outrun it they wanted to stun her before she’d run away!”

Suddenly she gasped, put Spike on the ground and grabbed Twilight by her shoulders.

“Twilight, it‘s not the first time it’s being used! There was a birthday party where I had prepared balloons, a birthday cake and a funny pink camel-unicorn piñata for it, but then I woke up in the morning to see that the party was already done but I did not remember it!” Pinkie shook Twilight with all her might. “I forgot a party, Twilight! I never forget a party!”

Rainbow separated Pinkie from Twilight. “Wait, you mean that this gas thing has happened before? Like when I woke up in the hospital and couldn’t remember anything?“

“Yes,” Twilight replied. “I have noticed holes in my memory too, so the memory erasing is a solid theory that would explain many things.”

“But why?” Rainbow asked. “Why would… whoever it is, want us to forget this night?”

“Because we saw them.”

“Not them!” Pinkie gasped, then went near Rainbow’s ear and whispered to her: “I have no idea who them is.”

“The people in the helicopter,” Twilight explained. “It seems they…”

“Hold on, are they the ones keeping everyone in the city?” Rainbow interrupted her. “Is that why the internet connection is so freaking slow here?”

“Technically the right term is that we are in an input queue and our inputs sent are slow, not the internet, but this seems, with the given evidence we have, very likely.”

“Uhh, I don’t like the implications of that,” Spike muttered.

“Twilight, we are trapped in a city where someone controls every outside contact and exit we have!” Rainbow yelled. “And they can erase our memories!”

“Maybe we should write notes so that we don’t forget anything?” Pinkie suggested and took out a notebook out of her hair. “Let’s start with Rainbow’s current adventure!”

Suddenly the door to the room burst open and two men in black military uniforms and gas masks entered the room, but stopped as soon as they saw them. For a while no one said a word.

“7-2 to 1-1, subjects are wearing gas masks. Enforcing amnestics on them now.” The soldiers raised their guns at the girls and Spike.

Rainbow quickly pushed her friends behind a table, just in time to dodge the darts. Spike hid behind a box on the ground, but was too slow as a dart was stuck on his back..

“My head… it’s spinning.” Spike fell to the ground.

“Spiiike!” Pinkie screamed, while Rainbow had to hold Twilight in place for her to not run to her pet.

“7-2 to base, requesting to set local SRA at full capacity.”

“The what?” Twilight asked.

“Doesn’t matter! How do we get out?” Rainbow looked around. These people were guarding the door, so unless she would leave her friends behind, they had to find another way.

“There is a secret passageway left to us,” Twilight whispered, “but we can’t leave without being seen.”

“Leave the distraction to me, you get out!” Rainbow ran with her speed to the opposite side of the passageway and waved. “Here I am!”

Immediately they shot at her, but with her power she could dodge easily. Suddenly the men were covered in a purple aura and pushed out of the room. Rainbow ran to the door and locked it.

“Nice job, Twilight,” Rainbow said.

“Where is the secret passageway?” Pinkie looked around the room.

“One moment, let me remove the cover.” Twilight raised her hands to a desk, which was then covered in a purple aura, but after being only pushed slightly, the aura vanished. “What? My powers are not working!”

“Then we have to push it!” Pinkie said and began doing it.

Rainbow ran to her too, but stumbled on her own feet as her powers were now also gone. “Mine is gone too.” How could this be?

“Must be the SRA…” Twilight muttered while she took a backpack and put the unconscious — or sleeping, based on his snoring— Spike in it.

Loud bangs were coming from the door and the girls hurried to push the heavy desk to the side. Once the passage was revealed, Twilight crawled in first, followed by Pinkie and then Rainbow.

“Normally I would close the entrance with my power, but,” Twilight grabbed with one hand her geode and raised the other, “yeah, it’s neutralised now. Doesn’t matter, keep going!”

They crawled forward as quickly as they could, before Twilight gave the signal to stop. She slowly opened a lid and peaked behind it towards her garden.

“Seems clear. Be silent, we don’t know how many there are!”

They exited the passway and ran through the garden towards the bushes to hide.

“What now?” Rainbow looked around. The gas was still in the air.

“I’m writing everything down!” Pinkie said and took the notebook back into her hand. “Hm, where do I begin?”

“We don’t have time for that now! We need to escape!”

“I agree,” Twilight said. “Besides, if they capture us, they will just take the notes with them.”

Suddenly, they heard steps coming from the entrance of the house, which were getting closer.

“7-2 to 1-1, subjects have left the house and are now in the back area. Currently searching for them.”

Twilight quickly waved at her friends to follow her and they quietly crawled to the neighbour’s garden, luckily going undetected. They continued towards another garden as they heard one of the people speak again.

“7-3 to 7-2, signal is moving north-west.“

“Signal?” Twilight whispered and looked back to her friends. “Shut down your phones and remove the batteries!”

You gotta be kidding me…

They quickly followed the order and continued crawling away, but despite going a different direction the steps of the men were coming nearer.

“How do they know?” Twilight whispered in disbelief.

“Maybe we should split?” Rainbow asked.

“And repeat the horror trope? No!” Pinkie replied.

“I got an idea!” Twilight touched her geode. “Our powers are still not working, but I feel now a bit of the magic instead of nothing. We are getting away from the SRA blocking our powers.”

“Then let’s continue!” Rainbow said.

As they continued crawling through the gardens, the gas was slowly fading away, but the familiar sound of the helicopter from earlier came nearer, searching for something — probably them — with a spotlight.

“Great, now all their forces are looking for us!” Rainbow touched her geode. “Hmph, the geode is still barely useful.”

“Where should we go?” Twilight asked.

“Uh! What about the portal?” Pinkie asked.

“I don’t know…” Twilight replied.

“Do you have any better place in mind?” Rainbow asked, to which Twilight shook her head. “To the school then.”

The longer the chase went on, the more difficult it was for the three girls to stay unnoticed, as more and more people in the same uniforms were searching for them. One time someone was so close that they had to throw rocks to the opposite direction to fool the searchers, but what bothered them the most was that they always seemed to know where they were and that their geodes seemed to either slowly get their magic back or not seemingly at random places.

But despite the difficulties, they were able to get to the school area. Lucky for them, their geodes were — probably due to being close to the portal — able to pony them up, which they immediately did. Rainbow took a deep breath. She now felt way safer.

“So we just run to the portal, explain to the princess what happened and wait until they give up?” Rainbow asked.

“I really am not sure, aren’t we revealing the portal through that to them?” Twilight said.

“But they are able to stop our powers and make us forget things, I doubt they don’t already know about it.”

“Leaving the question about revealing the portal open, what even will travelling through the portal do? We will have to return at some point and then they can make us forget it ever happened.”

“That’s why I said we have to take notes!” Pinkie said. “And who will be a better notebook than the princess herself?”

“I see what you mean. Smart,” Twilight replied. “Then let’s wait till the spotlight of the helicopter goes away.”

As soon as the path was clear, they jumped out of their hiding and ran to the portal, Rainbow, due to her speed, was the first one to go through it.

On the other side she laid there for a while. She had gone through portals four times before, but despite that, passing through the multicoloured lights and the body transformation remained weird to her and made her head dizzy. After collecting herself and immediately using her wings to get into the air, she looked around. The room of the crystal castle was dark — it was nighttime after all — but at least the moon was able to make out the silhouettes of the room. However, there was something strange, something missing.

Suddenly it hit her. She was alone! Where were Twilight and Pinkie? Didn’t they go through the portal? She looked at the mirror, which gave her the reflection of a lonely blue pegasus in a gas mask. However, something shiny was on her right arm — or rather hoof. Taking a closer look showed that it was some sort of green crystal…

This wasn’t her geode, that’s for sure. On the cruise trip she and her friends noticed how the geodes seemed to have vanished when they turned to ponies, so what had she one on her? She touched the crystal with her left hoof…

The crystal was inside her, with only the top stuck out of the skin. This night just threw more and more things at her, didn’t it? Perplexed, she sat down and stared at it.

No, she didn‘t have time for that. Where were her friends? They should have passed the portal already! She stepped a few steps back, went to the air and then flew with high speed through the mirror.

Luckily for her, she had kept her ponied up form when returning to her home world, as she was literally flying out of the portal. However, she immediately had to dodge a group of people in their black uniforms, who were already expecting and shooting at her. With her head still dizzy from the portal, she flew towards the first building she saw to hide from them: the school.

On one hand it was probably not a good idea to crash through a window to enter it, but on the other she couldn’t have done it otherwise, as the entry doors were most likely locked. Standing up from the shattered glass and the knocked over chairs and tables, she breathed sharply through her teeth and rubbed her arms, which had taken the most damage. Carefully removing a few remaining glass splinters from her costume, she walked out of the room.

She hadn’t seen Twilight and Pinkie, but from the people already standing before the portal she had to assume that they were caught while running to it. Of course they knew about the portal, that’s why they made it appear as if the path was safe! It was all a trap! She punched a random locker in anger, only to regret it afterwards. Now was not the time to make noises…

Without a goal in mind, she sprinted aimlessly through the hallways. As the memories of the green crystal on her hoof came into her head, she took a quick glance at her right hand, but didn’t see anything there. Had it been her imagination?

Suddenly she saw something, stopped and rubbed her eyes. Returning her view to the sight, she saw the person also looking at her with a wide opened mouth. Wouldn’t it be for the normal outfit instead of the motorcycle safety costume and the gas mask, she would have thought she was looking at a mirror, as another ponied up Rainbow was standing before her in a hallway between two doors.

“Who are you?” both said in unison, before they facepalmed in sync.

“I’ll begin,” Rainbow said, “but be quiet. How did you get here?”

“I found a hallway that loops itself when you go in a straight line through these doors, so I decided to sneak out at night to examine it. You too?” this Rainbow asked.

She shook her head in reply. So the repeating hallway was indeed true, and she herself had indeed investigated it, until they had found and erased her memories of it.

“Nice outfit by the way. I assume you were also racing that truck? Pretty fast that beast, if you ask me. But why the gas mask?”

“You also met the Night Hauler?” Rainbow asked excitedly.

“Eeyup.” Her doppelgänger knocked on the door next to her. “Seems like these doors are portals into worlds with slight changes every time. Just annoying that I had to ‘borrow’ keys to open each of them.”

“Do you keep track of where your world is?”

“Of course! Your world is the 319th loop, I even wrote my signature on the door of the hallway where I came from just to be sure.”

Suddenly, they heard multiple steps coming nearer to them.

“Quick, hide!” Rainbow said to her travelling doppelgänger and ran towards an empty locker.

“Hide? Why?” the other Rainbow asked.

There was no time to answer. As Rainbow hid inside the locker and closed the door behind her, she saw through the small openings how her doppelgänger suddenly fell to the ground and three men were approaching her with raised guns.

“Where is her outfit and her gas mask?” one of the men asked.

“Probably tried to fool us by putting them off. Stupid girl.”

Rainbow clenched her teeth hearing that, but remained silent.

“7-2 to 1-1, got a hit on that subject,” the same person who spoke the comment said over an operator.

“Took you long enough. Follow standard procedure and call it a night,” was the reply.

“Alright. Ted, take her, Eric, search for the gas mask and her other outfit. I’m gonna need a drink after this mission.”

“Of course I am the one having to do the last jobs.”

“Well, you’re 7-4, so you better find these things quickly.”

“Sure thing, 7-2.”

One of them kneeled down to throw the girl over his shoulder and then walked with “7-2” away, while the third was searching with his flashlight in the hallway, presumably for the “missing outfit”.

Luckily for her, he only searched through the rooms and the hallways and didn’t look into any of the lockers, but she still remained in her hiding place for what felt like eternity, as she heard the steps of him still going around the school. Every time she thought he had already left the building, she heard his steps coming nearer and saw the flashlight reflecting across the hallways.

Suddenly the steps came very close to her locker, then she saw the man standing right in front of her, his back turned towards her. She didn’t dare to even breathe, as the man took his time to look at the hallway.

“Where did that brat hide her outfit? Comet owes me at least two whole packs of cider for all these tasks!”

Finally, he kept walking and Rainbow took as silently as possible a deep breath. Instantly he stopped.

She felt the adrenaline crawl over her body, as her fight or flight response was just about to kick in, but she didn’t dare to move. Not yet.

“7-4 to 7-2, can’t find the subject's missing belongings,” he said to the operator.

“Just leave already. She will find it herself if she has to.”

The man walked away, to her relief. Despite not seeing his flashlight or hearing his steps, she remained hidden for a while until she was absolutely sure that he was gone.

She climbed out of the locker, before letting herself fall to the ground and removing the gas mask from her face. Finally it was over — at least, the chase was.

Looking at a clock revealed that it was already the fourth hour. What should she do now? They had presumably put her doppelgänger in her place in her room. She recollected what she was telling about herself. Repeating hallways…

Let’s see this thing in action.

She went to the door she had seen her doppelgänger pass through and entered the room. Going in a straight line, she kept moving forward and opened the next door and, indeed, it was the same hallway she just was before again. She went back. Of course she’d forgotten the exact number of the loops her doppelgänger had done, but the signature should be enough for her to know where it was.

When she left the school, she could have used her geode to run to her home, but she feared to grab the attention of… whoever these people were, and ran without her powers, keeping hidden as much as possible, back to her home.

It was very silent and empty on the roads.

It was one thing to meet someone like yourself in school — come to think of it, it was no wonder Twilight reacted that surprised when she first met the princess — but it was another to see her in your bed sleeping like she belonged here. It almost gave her doubts that she was the actual Rainbow that belonged here. She shook her head. No time for self crises, she had to return her to her world.

These men had just put her on her bed without bothering to change her outfit, which was, granted, a slight relief. She tried to pick her doppelgänger up in her arms, but when she did, both of their geodes suddenly lit up. She immediately backed up and the geodes went dark again.

Out of curiosity, and a gut feeling that it might be helpful, she took off the wristwatch with the geode of her doppelgänger and put it on her left hand next to her own geode.

In an instant, she felt the magic going through her body and ponied up, while the geodes shined brightly in a blue light. Usually she loved that state where she felt the energy inside her, but now it was almost overwhelming, as if she was about to explode from too much of it.

However, she knew that this was exactly what she needed right now. She took her doppelgänger, put her tightly around her shoulders, and took off with a speed that she had never run before. It was as if time had stopped going forward.

The next moment she was already before the school, the following moment she was already before the doors leading to the repeating hallways. She took a short break to remember which direction she had to go and how many loops she had to pass — more than three hundred, that was for sure — then ran through the doors and counted how many hallways she had passed through. Only a few seconds had passed as she was already at the three hundredth loop and had to glance at the doors to see if a signature had been made. When she saw it in the 319th hallway, she now clearly remembered the number and ran out of the school to bring her doppelgänger back home, but stopped as soon as she saw two policemen entering through the entrance doors.

It was a short eye contact that both parties kept without saying a single word, until Rainbow put her doppelgänger down, removed the geode not belonging to her of herself — she couldn’t prevent herself from exhaling in relief as the overwhelming power went away — and then took off leaving a rainbow coloured trail behind.

Suddenly she returned to the policemen, who were still standing there dumbfounded.

“Just so you know, she’s from this world and already forgot everything. Bye!”

As quick as she had left her room, she returned back without anything coming up on her way. In her bed she could still feel her geode powered up by magic, but it was slowly fading away. Best if she just tried to fall asleep…

She expected to not be able to do it and of course it came exactly like that. How so? Her mind couldn’t stop thinking about the events that had happened during the night. There were so many new things learned that turned her world upside down, but most important of all, she was the only one that would remember it.

So many thoughts, so many theories were shouting in her head trying to make sense of the questions: Why? Who were they? Some kind of Big Brother?

These thoughts occupied her mind so much that she almost missed her alarm clock ringing. Great, not a single hour of sleep tonight.

She stood up and walked outside to her motorcycle, which was still standing outside of the garage entrance. There were multiple visible bumps on it that were caused by the police car, but despite the damaged look nothing was broken.

Suddenly the ringing of a bell from a bicycle caught her attention.

“Oh, hi Derpy,” she greeted the girl and turned her view back to her vehicle, but another ringing made her look at her again.

“Thanks.” She took the letters from her and let out a long sigh, to which Derpy gave her a pat on her shoulders.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, it’s just…”

“Your motorcycle?” Derpy asked her.

“That too… so many things had happened tonight. I just… hope that everyone will believe me.”

Suddenly they heard something fall to the ground, and when they turned their heads, Rainbow saw a neon light sign (with “OPEN” written on it) on the ground next to her motorcycle. Confused, Rainbow looked up, but couldn’t make up from where this sign might have fallen off. Did it appear out of thin air?

Immediately Derpy went to it and carefully examined it.

“Where did it come from?” Rainbow asked.

Derpy shrugged and put it into her bag.

“Wait, let me take a closer look…”

“It’s just a neon sign someone lost. I will bring it to the lost and found,” Derpy replied and sat on her bicycle.

“But—”

“Know how to pretend, Rainbow. Their ears are everywhere.”

Rainbow froze in her position. So Derpy knew about them? As she was climbing onto her bike, Rainbow noticed how the mail girl's left eye remained looking at the bag, where the neon sign was in.

She was only able to respond when Derpy was already gone. This was too much for one night, even for her, so she went back to her home. She would tell her friends about this night, but only when the time was right.

The car was rattling and shaking dangerously as he drove along the street. The last time he had taken very heavy damage to his car, it had taken several weeks to bring it back to a working state. He still can’t recall how exactly he was able to escape, but he wouldn't lose his mind over it, for he had more pressing matters before him. This time she won’t get away so easily!

Suddenly headlights appeared, quickly approaching him. Not that guy again…

This time the truck driver was way more careless, as it rammed straight into him and pushed him off the street, before disappearing in a dark smoke. As soon as his car stopped moving, he pressed the gas pedal to continue driving, but the motor gave up. Angrily stomping he got out of the car and went to the street, watching with sunglasses at night the backlights fading away. However, suddenly the headlights of the truck appeared again and were coming in his direction very quickly.

Too quickly.

He removed his sunglasses, revealing his red eyes and opened his wide mouth, giving a scream at the truck that dared to drive into him.

“This is for freedom, you stickler!”

Item #: SCP-973

Object Class: ~~Euclid~~ Neutralised

A Play

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Another kick, and the football bounced off the goal’s post, before flying back to Rainbow. She masterfully caught it with her foot, before kicking it this time into the goal.

As the leader of several sports clubs, she had the privilege of being able to stay after PE on the soccer field— under the condition that after she was done, everything went back to its previous place.

Another kick. The ball hit the post as intended, but it bounced off too high for her to catch it. She shrugged it off and took another ball from the box.

“Meep,” she heard a quiet voice behind her.

When she turned, she saw Fluttershy standing there, covering her face with her arms. The ball rolled behind her.

“Fluttershy! What are you doing here?” Rainbow asked.

Fluttershy removed the arms from her face, only to stroke her hair.

“Oh, ehm, am I interrupting you with something? I—”

“Not at all,“ Rainbow said, knowing her friend too well to not let her continue. “Just chilling here. What’s the matter?”

“Well, this little guy…” She took a squirrel out of her bag. “Wanted to give you a message.”

“Me?” Rainbow looked at the squirrel. “Is it about the one time I climbed up a tree and broke a branch?”

“No, he… You did what?”

“Uh… Doesn’t matter!” Rainbow grinned nervously. “What’s the message?”

“He said that he had to remind you about your secret pocket.”

“My…” Rainbow raised her eyebrows. “My what?”

The squirrel spoke to Fluttershy.

“Oh, he forgot to mention that the secret pocket was in your locker.”

Rainbow remained silent, trying to make sense of what the squirrel had said to her. She couldn’t remember any “secret pocket” in her locker, but with the memory wiping she couldn’t trust her memory much.

“Let’s check it out then. After I’ve cleaned up here.” She sighed and began collecting the stray balls.

“I’ll help!” Fluttershy offered.

In the locker were school books, spare jacket, timetable, posters, basically everything but a “secret pocket”. Even checking in the spare jacket didn’t reveal anything.

“Are you sure that you remember it correctly?” Rainbow asked the squirrel.

“Yes,” Fluttershy translated. “He said that it was you who told him through me to remind you about it.”

“Do you remember it?” Rainbow asked.

Fluttershy’s eyes widened and she shook her head.

Rainbow scratched her head. She didn’t like at all that both of them had forgotten ever telling it to the squirrel. Just what did they forget?

“I don’t remember it either,” Rainbow sighed.

“You don’t trust your memories lately,” Fluttershy said. “You write down everything, just to not forget.”

“I know…” Rainbow took another look into her locker, looking for anything to stand out. Then she saw it: A tape on a poster was slightly brighter, seemingly being peeled off and then put back again.

She carefully pulled the tape off and bent the corner of the poster to look behind it. Indeed, there was some small text hidden behind it, but as excited as she was to have found the “secret pocket”, the only thing that stood there was “Not here”, with a smiley face that gave a wink and a stretched out tongue.

Rainbow groaned and looked around again.

“Ehm, Rainbow—”

“Secret pocket and locker! What a dumb idea!”

“This note—”

“Couldn’t I just tell myself where to look?”

“It isn’t your writing.”

“Huh?”

Rainbow bent the corner of the poster again. Indeed, that wasn’t her writing, the cursive was way cleaner. Too clean and beautiful.

“Rarity!” both girls said in union.

“That’s… indeed my writing…” Rarity stood perplexed before the locker, staring wide-eyed at the writing behind the poster.

“Good, then maybe you’ll be able to explain the ‘secret pocket’,” Rainbow said.

“But… I don’t remember writing it!”

Rainbow gulped. There was nothing in the morning in her hidden shelf at home, where she would hide any notes she had written over the day, but now all of her friends were somehow involved in something and had forgotten it.

“Wait…” Rarity took the spare jacket. “The seam on it…. That’s my work. But that means…”

Rarity turned the jacket inside out.

“Well, would you look at that, darlings! The ‘secret pocket’ you’ve been searching for!”

The designer took out a pair of scissors and cut a string, opening a sewn together pocket. In it was a piece of paper with a long string of letters and numbers written on it. The three girls stared at it in confusion.

“Is this some kind of scavenger hunt?” Rainbow asked.

“Looks like it,” Rarity replied. “I’m still worried that I can’t recall ever sewing that pocket on your jacket.”

“I’m scared,” Fluttershy muttered and hid her face behind her hair.

“Whatever the case is,” Rainbow folded the paper, “for this part we’ll need Twilight.”

And what a scavenger hunt it was. Twilight had decoded the string of letters and numbers quickly, which had led them to Applejack’s barn, where they had to find a wooden box among the haystacks. Inside it was another piece of paper with a recipe for a cake, which led them to Pinkie, who quickly figured out that an invisible ink had been used. After heating up the paper, the revealed message had led them finally to Sunset’s apartment, where they had found a hidden safe behind a picture on a wall, which only contained a paper with an address, date and time on it.

“Okay, so we finally got to the end,” Applejack said. “Am I the only one confused on why I can’t remember a single thing?”

“Me too,” Twilight replied. “I wouldn’t have forgotten encoding a message with my method.”

“And when did I have the time to add a safe to my apartment?” Sunset tried to take out the object in question, but failed. “I only remember hanging the picture a few months ago, but there was no safe behind it then.”

As the friends were talking, Rainbow remained silent. She knew what the reason for the memory losses was, but it didn’t add up to what she saw during the night chase. Why would they forget a scavenger hunt they created for themselves, and most importantly, why did they even create one in the first place? Whatever the reasons were, Rainbow hoped that the answers would be found at the place the piece of paper was telling them to be tonight.

Fifteen minutes before the written time, very late in the evening, the friends had gathered before a closed down building. Yellow barrier tape covered the entire plot.

“What even happened there?” Twilight asked.

“Oh, you haven’t heard?” Pinkie said. “Vinyl used a spray can to dry her instruments, but it was so strong that it sucked out any water from the air and the whole building had to be evacuated, and because the chemical causing this is still remaining, the building can’t be housed anymore.”

The friends continued staring at the building.

“So, do we go in then?” Rainbow raised the barrier tape and went under it.

“I don’t know, Twilight replied. “Shouldn’t we be bothered by the danger?”

“I don’t like it too,” Fluttershy muttered.

“But we wrote the address ourselves,” Rainbow said. “I’m sure we knew what we were doing.”

“And then we forgot it.” Twilight looked around. “Besides, this is trespassing and punishable by law.”

Rainbow groaned.

“Twilight, we did all the clues leading into this building. I don’t know about you, but I’m interested in finding out what happened, so I’m going in.”

“Me too,” Applejack said and followed Rainbow.

Soon, one by one they passed the barrier tape, until only Twilight and Pinkie remained. The latter took her by her hand.

“Come on, Sci-Twi, you can do it! Trust yourself! Well, the Past-Twilight.”

Twilight sighed, before she followed.

Inside the building, Rainbow clicked on her flashlight and swept it across the empty floor, the others following suit a moment later. It was dusty and abandoned, but Rainbow couldn’t notice any dryness in the air — at least not an unusual dryness that would force the closing of the whole building.

“So, what now?” Sunset asked. “I expected that something would lead us further.”

“Maybe we need to find the clues first?” Pinkie clapped her hands in excitement. “After all, it’s a scavenger hunt!”

“Or you let me find it,” Rainbow said and put her hands over her wristwatch and activated her geode. Before any of her friends could stop her, Rainbow sprinted away and checked through every room and floor. Within seconds she appeared again.

“Found it! First floor, room 102.”

“Argh, Rainbow, that’s not fun!” Pinkie sighed.

“It’s not a game, Pinkie.”

“Yeah, because you ruined it!”

Rainbow rolled her eyes and waved at her friends to follow her.

When they entered the apartment, Rainbow led them to a small table. She lifted it and picked up a small recorder.

“Oh, that’s one of my devices!” Twilight said.

“See, you were here before.” Rainbow grinned.

“That doesn’t prove it. Someone else could have put it here. Besides, which one of us did it?”

The girls looked silently at each other.

“I take that as either none of us or at least one of us forgot it. Well, let’s hear what the tape has to say.”

They sat down at the chairs that were in the room and Twilight pressed the play button.

“Hello, this is Twilight Sparkle,” the message began.

“And Sunset Shimmer,” a different voice spoke.

“Pinkie Pie!”

“Fluttershy…”

Each of the Rainbooms introduced themselves, as the listeners’ eyes widened.

“If you’re listening to this,” the voice of Twilight continued speaking, “then it means that you have forgotten doing the recording two days ago – at least if you found the tape on the date we have ordered to come here.”

Rainbow took a deep breath. She hated it. She hated how easily they could just erase her and her friends' memories. Looking at her friends, they also weren’t comfortable hearing themselves speak, especially Twilight, as she put her head on her hands and nervously rubbed her temples.

“Now, the scavenger hunt was done over the course of a week, so if none of you can remember doing their preparation, then it either means that you’ve forgotten the whole week or that anything related to our plan has been forgotten. For that you have to look at yourself and see what applies.”

Rainbow thought. She doesn’t recall having forgotten anything over the week, but trying to recall the past days, it was clear that the memories were all blurry and generic.

“That explains… so much…” Rainbow heard Rarity mutter.

“If not every part of the scavenger making had been forgotten, each step backwards means one day further in the past.”

Twilight paused the recording and looked at Rainbow and Fluttershy.

“What?” Rainbow asked.

“Do you remember?” Twilight asked.

“No. We’ve told you already that a squirrel had reminded us to look for it.”

“So nine days, completely forgotten…”

“Well,” Applejack said. “I kind of remember that the usual day had been going on, so I guess the memory is only partly?”

“No,” Rarity countered. “I don’t remember making the dresses I had made. Every single dress is special to me.”

“It’s probably our mind filling up the holes with assumptions,” Sunset theorised.

“But why? What happened?” Twilight bit on her fingernails.

Rainbow groaned.

“Maybe if we would continue listening to the recording, we would know it sooner!”

“Rainbow,” Sunset put a hand on her shoulder. “Give those who need it time to process it. You have to agree that finding all this out is a lot.”

“Fine,” Rainbow sighed and crossed her arms.

After a short wait, the recording continued to play.

“I bet, knowing myself, that I would want to know why we would know that we would forget. First of all, it’s not Equestrian magic. But you need to be patient, as I’ll have to go a few steps back.

“Canterlot City is cut out. We may have internet access, but our inputs are very slow and on a queue, and any phone calls to outside the city are blocked. We’re told it’s because of a short circuit accident that is still not fixed.

“Same goes for any vehicle of anyone trying to leave the city — they all break down.

“All of that is done on purpose.”

Rainbow looked at the others. The realisation of them being the reason for any of the mentioned things hit her soon after the night chase, so it wasn’t a surprise for her. However, she knew that many of her friends, especially Twilight, had found these things strange for a longer time, so while some gasped, others nodded in agreement.

“The reason is actually quite simple: to suppress the knowledge of Equestrian magic. We don’t know yet why the whole city is contained, but that’s not what the recording is about.

“Rainbow had encountered in her night rides a kind of monster — No, I will tell that — a kind of monster looking like a police officer that was out to kill her. She could escape it, but only because a helicopter with a machine gun appeared and shot at it.

“However, the monster was able to follow her into the city, and only after Rainbow led it back to the helicopter, it was killed.

“It got several spectators of course, but on the next day none of them remembered it, because a gas from sewers was released that made everyone forget.”

Twilight pressed pause again and took a deep breath.

It was silent. Rainbow saw each of her friends being deep in thoughts, or fear, based on Fluttershy sunken fully on her seat and hiding her face behind her hair and hands.

“You remember it?” Applejack asked.

“The night chase? Yes.”

“Then why haven’t you told us about it?” Applejack gave her a fierce expression.

“Are you kidding me?” Rainbow rolled her eyes. “How else would Twilight tell us it?”

Applejack facepalmed.

“Sorry, it’s just… too much, and you don’t seem surprised by all of that.”

“A lot of details are left out, yet, but you would see why many things don’t surprise me.”

“When did the monster thing happen?” Twilight asked.

“Almost two weeks ago. We should continue listening.”

Twilight nodded and pressed on play.

“Rainbow could run away from the gas, but was — listen, you can tell that yourself later in more detail — but was being chased by people in black uniform trying to make her forget it. They didn’t succeed.

“Now, as far as we know, the memories are being erased whenever someone figures out that the city is being held as a prison, or more specifically whenever any action done by the organisation would reveal them. It also includes knowing of any kind of anomaly that is not Equestrian magic.”

The speaker took a short break, giving the listeners time to digest what was just said.

“Anything that’s paranormal, a truck that is faster than any motorcycle, a camera that shows the desire of the photographed person, a hallway that repeats itself between rooms despite going in a straight line, these kinds of unnatural things that aren't Equestrian magic.

“They exist in our world too, and the people that keep us in the city keep their existence and knowledge of them hidden from the public. And to them, we are just another anomaly they contain.”

“Pause it!” Rarity suddenly said.

When it was followed, she stood up and left the room, muttering something under her breath.

The atmosphere was tense. No one knew what to say, as even Rainbow herself was surprised to hear about non-Equestrian magic stuff.

When Rarity came back, she stomped to her seat.

“Anomalies, pshaw, I’ll give them anomalies! We’re not like animals to be kept in zoos!”

“Honestly,” Twilight said, “I have wondered why our magic barely got any attention.”

“I don’t care! They can’t keep me trapped in this city. Who do they think they are?”

With a sigh, Twilight pressed on play.

“We wanted to test how exactly their memory erasing plays out, and that’s why the scavenger hunt was made. Rainbow did the right thing by waiting a few days after the night chase before telling us about it. This way, she made sure that she’ll keep at least these memories. However, once she told us we immediately made a plan.

“First, we came up with a made up story on how we have figured them out and when, in case they would do an investigation. Then, on each day, the next step of the scavenger hunt was prepared, giving also hints on who did what. Now, early in the morning, we are making this recording.

“Once we’re in school, we’ll tell everyone about the organisation that keeps us imprisoned and how they are able to erase memories. This will force them to come out and make us and the other students forget them. You’ll have to see how much and what they made you forget.

“This concludes the recording. Once we say stop, pause the recording and process what you’ve heard. Once you’re ready, continue listening to the recording for further instructions.

“Stop.”

With a push of the button the room became silent.

Rainbow looked at her friends, each deep in their thoughts. Fluttershy was clinging on to Pinkie, who hugged her back to comfort her. Rarity was making an expression that could kill, and Sunset had taken out her book and opened it, but wasn’t writing anything in it.

“So what?” Applejack asked. “What do we do with that knowledge?”

“I tell you what,” Rarity hissed. “We pony up and break free!”

“Not gonna help,” Rainbow replied.

“Rainbow, we have superpowers! We have you with superspeed, Applejack with super—”

“And they can deactivate our geodes.”

“What…” Rarity’s expression changed to horror. “What do you mean?”

“They have something called SRA, which can neutralise our powers.”

“But how?” Sunset stood up from her seat. “It’s Equestrian magic, something that hadn’t been here before the Fall Formal!”

Rainbow shrugged her shoulders.

“Then we have to do a surprise attack.” Rarity said. “Give them no time to react.”

“Rarity,” Rainbow sighed. “You underestimate who we’re dealing with. They’re like the military, they even have a helicopter with a freaking machine gun!”

“And I have crystals to shoot at them!”

Rainbow couldn’t prevent herself from growling.

“Listen, I get you, but we can’t let ourselves get carried away from our feelings.”

“Says you!”

“Hey!”

“Girls, please!” Sunset stood between them. “Now is not the time to argue!”

“What I’m curious about is if we had the same conversation before,” Pinkie said.

Everyone gave her a confused stare.

“Think about it. The recording us knew about it for nine days, but they also had the moment where Rainbow told them about all that for the first time. Do you think we reacted the same? That would explain why they would leave us further instructions and give us time to react, as they knew what each of us would have wanted to do afterwards.”

“Huh.” Sunset sat down. “Now that you say it, I’m curious what further instructions they have for us.”

“Me too,” Twilight said. “Should I continue?”

“Give me a moment, darling.” Rarity put her face in her hands. “I need to calm down first.”

“Sure. Fluttershy, are you alright?”

When Rainbow turned to her, she saw Fluttershy with her arms wrapped around her legs.

“I… I’m fine. As one can be right now.”

After Rarity gave a signal, Twilight let the recording play.

“I hope you all were able to process it without too much fighting. We had our differences in what we wanted to do until we came up with the scavenger hunt.

“First of all, if they are able to erase the memories of nine days, then there’s no doubt that they would be able to go further. Keep the knowledge a secret, at least for now. You can’t write anything about that in any chats or talk about it at school or even at home. We don’t know how much they control or listen, so better safe than sorry. Remember, you’re the main anomaly for them, so you’re their focus. Act as normally as you can, and don’t make them suspicious of you.

“Now listen carefully until the end. Equestrian magic seems to pull anything unnatural from our world into this city. We don’t know why, but it does that by creating space rifts where the object or a subject will either fall or come through.

“We made precautions in case you wouldn’t find the recording, but today at around midnight a space rift will be big enough for an anomaly to come through. Based on the Desire Camera, it’s a robot that wants to destroy any living being.

“Stay where you are, for it will appear in the same building you’re in. Be cautious, we don’t know what its abilities are. Expect the unexpected.

“Good luck stopping it.”

The recording stopped.

“That’s it?” Twilight asked.

“Huh, we have about an hour left,” Rainbow said after checking the time.

“How will we even stop it?” Fluttershy muttered.

“Why do we have to suddenly stop a threat?” Rarity groaned. “We just got a revelation, but have to ignore it? What was the whole purpose then?”

“Maybe in understanding the threat better?” Twilight said. “After all, we would have assumed that it was Equestrian magic causing it. Knowing of other unnatural things will make us more cautious and prepared.”

“The only thing it did was make me angry!” Rarity stood up. “At least I can use that robot as a punching bag.”

“How will we prepare for it though?” Applejack asked. “We only know that it’ll appear somewhere in the building.”

“Maybe we should wait outside and see what it’s capable of first,” Twilight suggested. “No one lives here after all, so until it leaves the building, no one is in danger.”

“Won’t that attract the organisation to look at what is going on?” Sunset replied.

“Good point. Since we know the time, we can return here at midnight and…”

Suddenly a sound of something falling interrupted Twilight. Everyone remained silent, trying to listen where it came from.

Slow, metallic-sounding steps soon became audible. Fluttershy gasped. That was enough for the being to stop in its movement.

Rainbow walked as silently as possible to the door connecting to the floor and peaked through it.

There it was. A robot, somewhere about one metre in height, constructed of various electrical devices like an analog measuring instrument as its head and a speaker for its chest. The eyes, consisting of two lenses, were aimed at her direction.

“Who dares to walk on the path of Doom-Master 2000, the Robolord of Darth Claw?” It ran towards her.

Rainbow closed the door and locked it.

“It’s already here!”

“But how?” Twilight asked. “Shouldn’t it only appear after midnight?”

“Doesn’t matter! Everyone, pony up!”

With a flash of a light, the girls were in their superhero outfits. Rarity summoned crystals that were floating next to her, and everyone stood in fighting stances.

Just in time, as several knocks on the door were made.

“Open the door, so I can trample on you with my mighty feet! My wrath will be unleashed upon you!”

Rainbow slowly walked backwards towards her friends, awaiting the moment the robot would smash down the door.

“Release me to you! I, Patheticon the Pesterbot, shall bring destruction over you!”

“Patheticon?” Pinkie asked.

“Patheticon the Garglemost! I am the Prime Minister Sinister, Doom-Master Thirteen Seventy Master of all Killflex!”

Rainbow unintentionally relaxed from her fighting stance, dumbfounded by the titles. Was the robot serious? Only Pinkie’s laughter could be heard in the room.

“You dare to laugh at me? I will rend you with my pinchers! I, Shivatron, will despoil your laughter! Open the door so I can bring you your doom!” It kept knocking on the door.

It only made Pinkie laugh harder, as she fell on the ground and held her tummy with her hands. At this point everyone else relaxed from their fighting stance, with some still having a dumbfounded expression, while others already couldn’t prevent a giggle.

“Well, it certainly wants us dead,” Applejack said. “But come on, Minister Sinister? Does it want to kill us with laughter?”

“Maybe that’s the tactic,” Twilight replied. “It shows itself laughable to make us feel safe, and then strikes when we’re not expecting it.”

“Then let us face it now,” Sunset suggested and took back her fighting stance. “Rarity, bring back the crystals as shields, Rainbow, open the door.”

Rainbow slowly walked towards the door and unlocked it. Then opened it slightly and ran behind the shielding crystal.

Immediately the robot slammed the door and walked into the room. However, the door crashed against the wall and bounced back, knocking the robot to the ground.

“You dare to attack me?” it spoke, waving its arms and legs. “Your foolish attempts are your death sentence! Prepare to be crushed against my claws!”

It had no claws. And it couldn’t get up from the ground.

Pinkie fell again, her contagious laughter making it impossible for everyone to stay serious. At last, Rainbow was the first one to break out in the laughter too, and was soon followed by the others.

“Laugh! But once you will face the wrath of Pesterbot the FiestaStop, you will beg for mercy as I sing my damnation upon you!”

“Stop it! Stop it!” Pinkie begged. “I can’t breathe anymore!”

“Beg for air!” the robot continued. “You‘re just insects that I will crush with my pinchers!”

“Girls?” Fluttershy raised her arms, but got ignored.

“Maybe we should help it up?” Sunset wiped a tear from her eye. “I want to see it fall again.”

“Girls?”

“No, I won’t survive this!” Pinkie’s laughter turned into a silent gasping for air. “It’s… too much.”

“Girls!” Fluttershy’s voice was barely hearable through the laughter.

“Already on it!” Twilight used her telekinesis to help the robot up in the air.

Once the magic let it go, it ran towards Rainbow, bumped on her leg and then fell back to the ground, resulting in an even louder laughter.

“WATCH OUT!” Fluttershy pointed towards the window, and when her friends looked towards it, they saw fire crashing through the window.

Before Rainbow could react, she saw a crystal being summoned before them, shielding them from the attack.

When it stopped, the girls ran out of the room and out of the building, as the fire started to spread. Outside, Rainbow couldn’t believe what she saw.

Before them stood a real red dragon, its size being at least three times of a human. Its mouth produced another wave of fire, which was shot at the building they just left.

“You have dragons too?” Sunset asked in surprise.

“No, they’re just fairytales,” Twilight replied. “At least they’re supposed to be.”

“Less talking, more fighting!” Rainbow took a stone and threw it at the dragon. “Hey, you! We’re down here!”

“Rainbow, you i–” Before Twilight could finish her sentence, it aimed the fire breath at them.

Despite the fire being blocked by a summoned crystal, Rainbow could feel the heat of it. The crystal began to melt and Rarity had to summon another to block the attack.

“Enough!” Rarity shouted when the fire stopped and summoned several small crystals. “It’s time to end this once and for all!”

The crystals flew at high speed towards the dragon, but simply bounced off it.

“You’re not in character!” the dragon spoke and shot another fire breath at them.

Another shielding by the crystals, but this time Rarity’s arms were shaking.

“I can’t hold that much longer,” she coughed.

“Retreat!” Sunset pointed at the building they had left. “Hide behind it!”

“As if!” Rainbow picked up more stones from the ground and ran with superspeed around the dragon, before using the speed to throw the stones at it.

One of the things she had to learn when using her superpower was to not let any object on her accidentally fall off, as they would be like bullets against anyone or anything else. However, the stones she threw were not even affecting the dragon at all. It simply turned its head towards her.

“Not in character!” it said and swung its tail at her.

Rainbow dodged, but the tail crashed into a building.

“What do you mean not in character?” Rainbow ran back before the empty building.

But she had to run again, this time back to her friends, as another fire breath was shot.

“Great job, Rainbow!” was the sarcastic comment by Twilight that she was met with.

“Shut up! Someone had to do something!”

“And making it angry?”

“What does it mean by ‘not in character’?” Pinkie asked.

“Beats me,” Applejack replied. “Sunset, how are the dragons in your world?”

“I haven’t met any, but they like to eat gems. No idea if that applies to the dragons here too.”

“And how is that supposed to help us fight it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s hungry?” Sunset shrugged with a nervous smile.

“Speaking of fighting that thing,” Rarity said. “Shouldn’t that organisation with their helicopter appear? Or do they want us to deal with it?”

“Good question,” Twilight replied. “Unless they want the city to be fried, they better act fast.”

“Look!” Pinkie pointed to the building, which the dragon had by now torn down to debris. Behind it, the dragon saw the girls and jumped at them.

“I’ll distract it!” Rainbow ran to the side and threw anything she could find at it, but none of them made the dragon look away from her friends.

“Alright, it’s on me then.” Applejack tore down a tree and charged towards the dragon.

Already expecting the obvious, Rainbow ran towards her and, when the tree broke down in pieces without even making the dragon flinch, pushed her out of another fire breath.

“I would have gotten it!” Applejack said.

“You’re welcome for saving your life,” Rainbow muttered.

Sudden loud bangs made her cover her ears. Turning to the source, she saw Pinkie throwing her sprinkles at the dragon.

“Not in character!” it responded, unaffected by the explosions, and swung its tail at her.

Pinkie was covered in a purple aura and floated away just in time to dodge the attack.

“Anyone else have an idea?” Sunset asked.

Suddenly a net was thrown, pinning down the dragon and making it struggle to free itself. Coming closer, Rainbow saw that the net was made out of chains and… were those people in knight costumes holding down the net?

“At last, it has come!” one of them spoke. “Thy time ends, and victory prevails for us!”

The dragon screamed and pulled with its claws against the net. “Foolish humans! The net will only prolong your inevitable death!”

“The knights will achieve glory and wealth for thy legendary victory!”

Another man in a knight costume appeared and stabbed the dragon with his sword. It cried in pain and stood up, forcing the others to let the net go.

As relieved as she was that the organisation had come to fight it too, Rainbow could only watch with a baffled expression as more people in knight costumes came out with swords, spears and bows and arrows and attacked the dragon — and their attacks actually did something to it! It felt like a joke.

Nonetheless, it was obvious that they struggled, and when a breath of fire was unleashed on them, only the summoned crystal from Rarity was able to save them.

“I got it!” Pinkie exclaimed. “You defend the knights. Fluttershy, you come with me!” And the next moment they were gone.

The fight kept on. The remaining girls protected the people in knight costumes from any attacks, either by shielding or pushing them away. But defending them was the only thing they could do, as any offence from the girls remained ineffective. Nonetheless, the combined effort was able to keep the dragon in place and prevent any further damage.

But still, Rainbow wondered why any guns or other, more effective weapons weren’t used — or rather, why those swords and spears damaged it, but not a stone flying at high speed.

The answer was about to become clear when Fluttershy appeared, flying in the air. Several birds were around her, but what stood out to Rainbow was the fairy costume she wore. She even had fairy ears and hid her pony ears in her hair.

“Who dares to disturb the peace?” Fluttershy spoke — loudly and clearly, to Rainbow‘s surprise. “I, the Elf queen of the Everfree Forest, demand answers!”

“Elf Queen?” the dragon laughed. “May she prove herself then!”

Fluttershy pointed her finger at it, and the birds flew at the dragon, attacking its eyes with their beaks. It screamed and waved its arm around, but the birds were too small to get hit.

“Attack!” one knight declared, and with a battle cry the others raised their weapons and hit anything of the dragon that they could.

“Ohh,” Twilight spoke. “In character as in mythology!”

“Yup!” Pinkie suddenly appeared between them. “It wants to play a game of middle age fighting and that’s why these people are in knight costumes. However, I thought it would be smarter if we used other mythology creatures to incorporate our powers in them. Twilight, take the witch costume.”

“And us?” Rarity asked.

“Yeah,” Rainbow agreed. “Why didn’t you give any of us a costume?”

“That’s because the guy in the van told me that anyone who attacked the dragon out of character won’t be able to harm it anymore.”

“The who in the what?” Applejack asked.

“The guy in the van down the street looking over the fight.” Pinkie replied in her usual cheerful voice. “Knight costume, computer on lap, radio operator — one member of the organisation.”

“Hmph.” Rarity crossed her arms and raised her head to the side. “He better leave when the dragon gets beaten.”

“You are aware that the people in knight costumes are also part of it, aren’t you?” Sunset asked.

“I am, darling. I am.”

“Shouldn’t we pretend we don’t know them?” Applejack asked.

“Oh, I did,” Pinkie responded. “He waved at me himself.”

“Done,” Twilight put on the witch hat, the last part of the costume, on her. “What do I do?”

“Stay in character,” Pinkie answered, “and keep doing it even when the dragon is dead. For the rest of us, we have to go away if we don’t want it to revive after being killed.”

“Revive?” Sunset asked.

Pinkie shrugged.

“That’s what I was told.”

“Ugh, I hate it!” Rainbow turned her view towards the dragon. “There is this one opportunity for me to finally fight a dragon and now I can’t do it.”

“Maybe another time!” Pinkie smiled.

“Good luck then.” Applejack gave a punch on Twilight’s shoulder. “Show that dragon what we’re made of.”

“See you later then,” Twilight responded and ran to the fight.

There were many things Rainbow expected after the dragon being defeated: Gas release to erase memories, the organisation knocking them out and putting them back to their houses — considering how they just got an audio recording of themselves destroyed in the building by the dragon, Rainbow wrote down after leaving the fight scene the most important parts and hid it in an inside pocket on her jacket.

However, the last thing she expected from the organisation was doing simply nothing.

“So, what happened?” Sunset asked the returning Twilight and Fluttershy.

“Well,” Twilight responded, “after I introduced myself and used telekinesis to hurt it, it got mad and called it ‘cheating’, said that it will never return again and disappeared in thin air.”

“So knights that it’s able to kill are fine, but someone from its league is cheating.” Applejack rolled her eyes. “Hypocrite.”

“And the knights?” Rarity asked.

“They just left, didn’t even bother to tell us anything.”

“But why?” Rainbow asked. “When the police monster appeared, they chased us all around the city until they erased our memories!”

“That is indeed strange.”

“Really? I think it’s obvious,” Pinkie replied. “You see, in your case they had to use their equipment, which meant that anyone seeing them would figure out that a military organisation is keeping the city as a prison, but with the dragon and the knights, no one will suspect a bigger organisation behind it. Besides, we fought it, so many will think it’s another case of Equestrian magic possessing anything, maybe even some time travel stuff – and they won’t have to explain the burned down building.”

The girls stood in silence, processing the presumption.

“Makes sense to me,” Twilight said. “If they are limited in resources, they would only use the gas when absolutely necessary. And who knows what kind of side effects repeated usage might risk. ”

“Here’s what we’ll do then,” Sunset said. “Everyone goes back to their homes. I’ll go through the portal and tell Princess Twilight about what we’ve found out. If I hadn’t already before.”

The girls nodded and parted their ways.

Rainbow closed the curtains on her windows and pulled her desk towards her. When enough space between the wall and the desk was made, she went towards the back and pulled on a secret shelf. There were several notes of papers with any recent incidents happening, and when Rainbow pulled another paper from her jacket, she read through it one more time.

Despite the inactivity of the organisation, she still didn’t want to risk waking up with any lost information. She took a pencil, added a few more notes, and then put the paper on the shelf with the others.

After she pushed her desk back against the wall, she changed into her pyjamas and went to bed.

Today was definitely something. It still wasn’t as thought-consuming as the night after the night chase, but there was still the newly learned fact that other unnatural things outside of Equestrian magic were out there in the world.

However, she would definitely understand if none of her friends would be able to fall asleep tonight. She expected to wake up in the morning with several new messages in the group chat — surely not about the new found out things, but something to pass the time.

Well, maybe they would talk about the dragon. Rainbow was still angry that the once in a lifetime opportunity of fighting a dragon was lost because she was “not in character”. What a stupid concept.

Her thoughts wandered towards the robot that they met in the building and she giggled. That robot was painted so dangerous through the Desire camera, and yet it was so pathetic.

Suddenly she sat up.

Desire camera? What it did was obvious, but… Where did they even get one?

And most importantly, how did they know about the space rifts?

Interlude: Deeper Plan

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When Rainbow finished her lunch, her friends were still eating, if it could even be described as that. Most were just poking at their meals, while Fluttershy wasn't even touching her food and was staring into nothingness.

Rainbow tried to suppress a groan. She knew what they were thinking about. Heck, every one of them knew what topic they wanted to talk about, but no one said a single word. They couldn’t, not at school.

When Applejack yawned, Rainbow took another look at the bags under her friend's eyes. As she had predicted, her friends were chatting the whole night; while they were mainly talking about the dragon, Rainbow could read here and there implications about their new discoveries.

She could understand the silence of her friends, especially the paranoia they currently had — not like she herself wasn’t of her own surroundings — but she couldn’t just watch them passively like that.

“Hey, uhm…” Rainbow scratched her head as their eyes were immediately on her. How should she even offer them her help? “So, it looks like you were up all night.”

“You don’t say,” Rarity muttered, her facial expression the most fierce of all.

“Rarity, please,” Sunset responded.

“Sorry,” Rarity sighed. “I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

“It’s okay,” Rainbow replied. “I understand you all. Maybe you want an open ear? Someone to be with you?” She gave a weak smile, but it vanished when all of them looked back down to their meals.

“Come on! Don’t act like that!”

“All I want is to go home and lie in bed,” Fluttershy said. “Or work at the animal shelter. It distracts me.”

“All alone? Don’t you want someone beside you?”

Fluttershy shook her head in response; barely enough to make it out.

“Doesn’t anyone else want to meet up today?” Rainbow asked.

When her friends remained silent, she picked up her tray and stood up from her seat.

“Fine, do your own things then!” With stomping steps she left them alone.

“—today will be sunny weather—”

“—He takes his time. This shot will decide the—”

“—will never leave you! I love—”

“—give me all your—”

With a groan Rainbow turned off the TV and threw the remote control into the corner of the sofa.

She had to do something, and not out of boredom. She wanted to be there for her friends, but not one of them even said goodbye when the school bell rang for the end of the day. Sure, right now they just needed time to digest what they had found out, but she knew that she could help — somehow.

What should she even do? They somehow got away with their memories still intact, but as the scavenger hunt had proven, they had to keep their findings a secret.

And she hated it.

How did that organisation have so much control? How did they have a gas erasing memories? How were they able to contain a whole city? A bunch of wasted money, if one would ask her. Did they expect to keep that state of control forever? It had to break!

She stood up and went to her room. Opening her wardrobe, she took out her motorcycle suit and was about to put it on, when her phone received a message from Twilight.

“Already?” Twilight asked.

“I ran immediately when I read the message. How can I help?”

“Come in.”

Rainbow grimaced at the ignored question, but followed her friend into her home. Seeing the lab coat, she already could guess where Twilight was heading to.

Sure enough, they entered Twilight’s lab, where her computer was already on, random letters appearing over and over again on the screen.

“Want me to help you in your experiments?” Rainbow asked and took two test tubes from a table.

“Put these back!” Twilight jumped at her and ripped the tubes out of Rainbow’s hands.

“Oops, sorry,” Rainbow muttered.

Twilight put the tubes back on the table and went towards the computer screens. Her eyes were staring at the random letters. If Rainbow wouldn’t know Twilight better, she’d assume that she understood the random strings, but seeing her worried face she knew that something wasn’t working.

“And?” Rainbow asked, breaking the silence between them.

Twilight sighed.

“Can’t figure out how to decode it. But let’s get to why I have called you.“

She took a small device and pointed it at Rainbow’s head, before lowering it over her other body parts.

Going over the right lower arm, it beeped.

“What does that mean?” Rainbow asked.

“Well, uhm…” Twilight scratched her head, looking for words. “I guess we kept the chip on you.”

“A chip?” Rainbow raised her eyebrows.

Twilight took Rainbow’s arm and fumbled it.

“Here.”

Rainbow felt around the place Twilight pointed out. Once she felt a square thing inside the skin, she was baffled.

A chip? Inside of her?

Suddenly a detail from her night chase popped up in her head. The green crystal in the other world sticking out… Was it that?

“According to my notes it only sends data when scanned.” Twilight waved a paper in demonstration. “If my past self is to be trusted, no GPS signals or anything similar is used, so no location tracking like your past self assumed.”

Rainbow sat down on a chair and put her head on her hands.

The organisation went too far. Who did they think they were? How dare they treat her and her friends like that? She took a deep breath to suppress her anger.

“Is anyone else having it?” Rainbow asked.

“Yes. Well, at least, I have too, so I assume it’s all seven of us.”

“Should we remove them?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Since they don’t track us with them I think we should… you know, to be safe…”

Twilight didn’t finish her sentence.

“I see,” Rainbow muttered. “This is… ugh, how are you so calm?”

“To be honest,” Twilight sat next to her, “I’m also overwhelmed by it. I’m just distracting myself with the note I have found and trying to crack the code of my own chip. No success, as you can see on the screen.”

“So why did you call me specifically?”

Twilight eyes stared to the ground, which she kicked with her foot.

“You seemed to be calm and know more than us, so I kind of hoped for…” She sighed. “I don’t even know.”

A warm feeling got over Rainbow. At least Twilight seeked out for her support, which she was glad for. And if Twilight needed her emotional support, she shall be it for her.

“Hey, Twilight. Look at me. We’ll get through this together. Everything will turn out fine, even if we have no idea how yet. But how many times did we have what seemed like dead ends before us? And yet, we found a way every single time!”

Twilight smiled. That’s all Rainbow needed.

“By the way,” Rainbow said, “don’t we risk getting overheard? You know, with the order to not talk about it and all that.”

“There’s nothing to worry about in this lab. I checked it myself.”

“That’s a relief,” Rainbow exhaled. “I guess they don’t listen to us every time, considering we were able to plan and do the scavenger hunt.”

“I hope so,” Twilight sighed.

They sat silently. Rainbow took a glance at the screen, which still spit out random strings of letters and numbers.

“May I see the paper?” she asked.

“Sure, but there’s not much on it.”

Reading through the notes, it turned out to indeed be not much. The entire focus was on the chips inside them and what function it had, plus some crossed out words apparently related to decoding.

“You’re right.” Rainbow gave her the paper back. “I hoped for something about the space rifts.”

“Speaking of, how did we know about them?” Twilight asked.

“I have no idea. Kinda hoped you were the one who discovered them.”

Twilight stood up, as her eyes were staring in surprise at Rainbow.

“You don’t know anything about them?”

“I know the same about them as you.”

Twilight raised the paper before her face, taking another close look at it. Suddenly, she let it fall and went towards a corner of her lab.

“Twilight?” Rainbow asked worryingly.

“If neither you nor any of us know about them, that means only one thing.” Twilight took a cardboard box from a shelf, before returning back to her seat and placing the box on a table.

Rainbow followed closely how Twilight opened it and took out one of the hard drives that were inside it, closely examining the serial number on it. To her dismay, Twilight seemed to be deep in her thoughts.

“So? What does it mean?” Rainbow asked impatiently.

Twilight took out another one and compared it with the first one, before she finally replied.

“Someone else told us about the space rifts.”

Rainbow’s eyes widened. This was so obvious, that she felt dumb not getting it on her own. But who?

Wait, was it…?

“Derpy?” Rainbow asked.

“Huh?” Twilight looked up from her hard drives.

“In the morning after the night chase, Derpy told me to know how to pretend, because their ears…”

Rainbow jumped up. Now it all made sense.

“Twilight, the neon sign! It’s her!” Her voice was almost screaming.

“Quiet, Rainbow!” Twilight said. “What neon sign are you talking about?”

“When I talked with Derpy, a neon sign had fallen out of nowhere next to us. She said she’d take it to ‘bring it to the lost and found’, but warned me about the organisation. She’s probably the one who knows about the space rifts!”

As Rainbow was talking, Twilight closed the decoding program and connected one hard drive to her computer and looked at the data it contained.

“But why didn’t we mention her in our recording?” Twilight asked, as she shook her head when the hard drive was shown to be empty.

“I don’t know, maybe she’ll contact us later?”

“Or she took a hard drive from me,” Twilight responded. “Three are missing.”

“Uhm… What?” Rainbow scratched her head in confusion. “What does that have to do with space rifts?” Sometimes Twilight was a riddle for her.

“We have an organisation that contains anomalies, right?”

Rainbow nodded.

“If they do, they must have files of each, describing them, what they do etc. I was confused about the purpose of our plan to get our memories erased. Why take the risk? Just to see how far they can erase memories?”

“Huh, now that you say it…”

“To be fair,” Twilight continued, “we probably also wanted to see that, but I assume that we also did something that would reveal immediately that we know about them.”

“Like what?”

“Hack into their system to get the files of their anomalies. If space rifts appear here, we should know how to deal with the things coming out of them.”

As Rainbow was processing her words, she got more surprised, but also more impressed by their past selves. The plan was way deeper than she had anticipated. Of course they let them erase their memories, because then they could keep the possession of the files a secret, while the organisation thought they were clueless.

“But when did we do it?”

“Probably right after the recording. And then we told everyone at school about them. Two hard drives were supposed to be found by the organisation, so they wouldn’t search for another hidden one, but…” Twilight scratched her chin.

“Why two?”

“That’s how I would do it. They wouldn’t believe I wouldn’t have a backup.”

“I see. But why didn’t we say that in the recording?”

“Presumably a safety percussion in case the recording was discovered by unwanted ears.”

“Makes sense. Hm, so Derpy has the third hard drive with the files?”

“I assume so. At least the hiding spot I would use is empty.”

“No wonder you’re the brain of our group.” Rainbow rubbed her forehead. “I wouldn’t get even close to figuring all that out.”

“I have no proof for any of my claims though.” Twilight grinned nervously as she corrected her hair. “Everything is just what I would’ve done in that situation.”

Typical Twilight, always downplaying her smartness.

“Still, it sounds believable to me,” Rainbow said. “So, do we wait for Derpy? Should we tell our friends about her?”

“Let’s first get any evidence for my claims,” Twilight replied. “See if she even knows about our plan.”

When the school bell rang, Rainbow watched behind her. Derpy and Micro Chips were almost finished scrubbing the table from their failed chemical experiment, as they — “somehow”, as the teacher wondered — made a salt mixture explode.

Usually Rainbow would have left the class immediately, but right now would be the best chance to get to talk with her.

“Hi, Derpy!” Rainbow said. “Sorry to bother, but do you have a minute for me?”

The girl looked at Micro Chips.

“Sure, I’ll finish the rest,” he replied.

Derpy smiled, took her bag and went to Rainbow.

“So, uhm…” Rainbow took a look around. Almost every student had already left and the teacher was gone too. Still, she should be cautious with what she says. “I think I need to catch up with things. You know, chemistry and all that, not my favourite subjects. Could you help me with that?”

She smiled. Hopefully Derpy would understand it.

Said girl raised her eyebrows and slightly opened her mouth, processing what Rainbow asked. Suddenly, her face cheered up and she took out of her bag a written exercise book for chemistry.

“Oh,” Rainbow took the offered object. “Thanks, but I meant rather that you explain a few things. Like…”

Derpy tilted her head, her eyes fixated on her — well, technically her left eye, the right one is staring into somewhere random.

Rainbow sighed, as she feared the inevitable.

“Don’t you understand me?”

Derpy tapped her lips with her finger, before shrugging her shoulders.

“Come on, Derpy!” Rainbow took her by her shoulders. “Don’t you remember? Didn’t you want to talk with me? Or one of my friends? About anything?”

All she got were thinking grimaces.

“Please don’t tell me you forgot,” Rainbow muttered, before she let go of her.

“I think,” Derpy said for the first time, “that I forgot too much.” Her eyebrows lowered and the corners of her mouth were drawn downwards.

Rainbow gritted her teeth. Oh, how much she hated that organisation. Erasing memories left and right, just because someone knew about them. If there was only a way to make them pay for that immediately!

“I… I understand.” Rainbow sighed. “Sorry to have bothered you.”

She gave her back the exercise book, turned and left the classroom. It looked like she and her friends were alone in this now.

After Rainbow left, Derpy’s left eye adjusted to her right one and stared into an upper corner of the room. With slow steps she came nearer towards it, before she was looking almost straight up.

For a while, nothing happened, until suddenly a small ball appeared out of thin air and fell down, before bouncing off and going with doubled speed back into the air. This time, it bounced off the ceiling and fell even faster to the ground. Derpy tried to grab it, but missed and made the ball bounce off the wall. It flew across the room, bounced off the ceiling, then a wall, becoming each time even faster.

On its path it flew towards Micro Chips, who was able to catch it with his hands.

“Ouch!” A sharp breath came between his teeth. “This was too close to a disaster.”

He carefully put the ball on the table and shook his hands from the pain. Derpy came to him and took the ball in her hands, taking a curious look at it.

“What do we do about Rainbow?” Micro asked.

“Nothing,” Derpy answered.

“You won’t ask Wallflower?”

“I avoid asking her whenever possible. This isn’t an emergency case.”

“To be honest, I’m surprised that they were able to—” He stopped when she gave him a threatening stare.

“They’ve planned it all through,” Derpy replied. “But as much as I hate to break a deal, it’s better if they don’t know about any of us.”

“Yeah, yeah, drawing attention to us and all that.” Micro sighed. “It still feels like betraying them.”

“It, well, is.” She sighed and put the ball in her bag. “But let’s go already. The next class is starting soon.”

Slow Motion, Part 1

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Rainbow gripped the handlebars tight as her motorcycle accelerated at top speed out of the turn. Head down, body leaned forward, the engine roaring beneath her. Her eyes were fixated on the street, and any object rushed towards the corners of her eye, as the needle of the tacho crept to the right. She could scream with excitement; it felt like she was flying over the road.

Once she saw a flash, she braked, turned around and rode to Twilight, who was sitting next to a self made speed trap.

“And?” Rainbow asked excitedly, as she took off her helmet.

“Not your record.” Twilight shrugged.

“Oh, come on! Why?”

Twilight shrugged in response.

They turned their view back to the street. Not long after, a single headlight came nearer, which also passed them and activated the speed trap. Rainbow bent over Twilight to see the screen.

“Not bad,” Twilight commented. “Sunset is getting faster.”

Rainbow nodded in agreement, and when Sunset rode towards them, gave the rider a thumbs up.

“Nice,” Sunset said. “Did you break yours?”

“No. Somehow I keep making mistakes.”

“Don’t worry, next time you’ll get your record.”

“I hope so.”

“Alright, now the Night Hauler,” Twilight said, pressing a button on her device. “He should be here anytime soon.”

“We should get further away from the road.” Rainbow took her motorcycle and pushed it out into the field. “You really don’t want to risk a stone flying at you. Speaking from experience.”

“I agree,” Sunset replied. “That truck is a beast on the road.”

As they were waiting for the Night Hauler to appear, Rainbow glanced several times over at Twilight to see her, for now, neutral expression. As eager for knowledge as the girl was, she’d wanted to measure the speed of the truck for a while now, and at last they’d found the time to do it. The Night Hauler just had to finish the lap around Everfree Street.

“He sure takes his time.” Sunset took out her phone in boredom.

“Everfree Street is a long road, Sunset,” Rainbow said. “But yeah, I thought that by now he would appear.”

“Maybe the organisation contained him?” Twilight suggested. “After all, he is one of the anomalies.”

“I doubt that,” Rainbow replied. “I raced with him several times. Either they don’t care or they can’t catch him. He can teleport after all.”

“Guess you’re right.”

They kept glancing at the road, but no headlights appeared. Rainbow tapped her foot impatiently.

“How’s Fluttershy?” Sunset suddenly asked.

“Huh?” Rainbow turned her face to her.

“Did she open up by now? She was the one dealing with our… ‘revelation’ the worst.”

“It’s a lot better. I talked to her during math.”

“And Rarity?”

“She calmed down for a while already,” Twilight replied. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s just…” Sunset sighed. “It feels like it’s my fault.”

“Your fault?” Rainbow raised her eyebrow. “Why do you think it’s your fault?”

“Well, if I didn’t brought over that stupid crown—”

“Sunset, stop it. It’s not your fault.”

“It is. Without me, you’d be free.”

“But if you didn’t, I wouldn’t have become friends with any of you,” Twilight said.

“Or you would anyway. In the other world you’re all friends with each other.”

“Listen to me.” Rainbow put her hands on Sunset’s shoulders. “I would never trade our friendship for anything, and I can assure you that I can speak the same for any of us. It’s not you who should feel guilty, but them. They have absolutely no business doing with us and the whole city what they do, and if anyone should feel ashamed for their actions, it’s them.”

Sunset looked away to the ground.

“I agree with Rainbow,” Twilight said. “They’re the one in the wrong. Sure, it could have been worse, like kidnapping and bringing us into some governmental lab for research as one would—”

“Not. Helping.” Rainbow interrupted.

“Oops, sorry.”

“Anyway, Sunset, know that no one of us blames you for what is going on right now. Luckily we kept our memories and are prepared for any other anomalies coming from any space rifts.”

“I wouldn’t say prepared,” Twilight said. “We don’t have any files of anything coming here.”

“But we know it might happen, which is more than nothing.”

“I guess.”

Rainbow looked at Sunset, who still had her view towards the ground.

“Sunset?”

“I’m fine,” Sunset replied, but sighed. “I didn’t expect that making magic known would have these big consequences, and not just for me.”

“Making magic known?” Twilight asked.

“Well, Equestrian magic—”

“Look!” Rainbow pointed to the street.

The familiar headlights of the truck appeared, which came very quickly. Rainbow turned to Twilight and watched her friend’s eyes getting wider every second.

Suddenly a wave of wind was blowing at them. Twilight’s head turned, following the truck and her mouth being wide open.

“And?” Rainbow grinned.

“You weren’t exaggerating,” Twilight muttered.

When they returned to the speed trap and looked at the screen, Rainbow whistled in amazement, as the number 261 mph was shown on the screen. It was no wonder that she had no chance even with her new motorcycle against the truck.

“That’s impressive,” Sunset said.

“Yep,” Twilight replied. “I wanted to see it teleport, too, but we can’t just ask it apparently. Right, Rainbow?” She raised her eyebrow at her.

“Don’t look at me like that! I told you that whenever we talk, my mind goes into racing mode.”

Twilight didn’t respond. She pressed a few buttons on the device, which showed all kinds of different numbers and pictures. Rainbow had no idea what they meant, and she really didn’t care, so she went back to her motorcycle.

“You’re done?” Rainbow asked as she put her helmet back on.

“Yes,” Twilight responded.

“Then I’ll continue riding. See y’all tomorrow!”

Without waiting for a response, Rainbow took off, engine roaring.

Beep beep beep.

Rainbow took out her hand from under her blanket and blindly tried to stop the alarm clock, but to no success. With a groan she raised her head, pressed on the clock and laid down again.

A second later, her eyes shot open and she took another look at the time.

She was late!

She jumped out of her bed, changed from her pajamas into her normal outfit, ran to the bathroom to quickly brush her teeth — there was no time for a shower — took her school bag and ran down the kitchen. Opening the fridge, she picked out some random food, threw them into her bag and left her house.

Shouldn’t have ridden the whole night.

She shook her head. No time for guilt trips now!

At first, she just ran, but as it was an emergency case, she put her hand over her geode, activated her power and ran with super speed to the school. That one second won’t overpower the geode.

When she reached the entrance door, she had one minute left before the school bell rang. Rainbow sighed in relief and was about to enter the building, but a glow from her wristwatch caught her eye.

Why was her geode still glowing? It couldn’t have been overpowered already. She shrugged it off and passed the door. No time for theorising. However, after a few steps, she stopped.

The students around her were barely moving, and the voices were slowed down.

Rainbow touched the top of her head.

Pony ears.

What was going on? She had always used her geode for short distances and never ponied up before, not even speaking about seeing the world in slow motion already. And most importantly, how could she stop it?

Sure, taking off her geode would probably be the easiest option, but she didn’t want to use that one. The geode shouldn’t power her up without her intention after all.

She decided to wait it out and walk to her class. As she passed the first students, it got worse. Now, the voices were even deeper, and even a student running down the hallway seemed frozen for her.

Suddenly, she felt her wings on her back emerging, as her geode glowed in an even brighter light.

Something was wrong.

She ran down the hallway, checking each room for any possible explanation. Maybe her friends were fighting something and using their powers, affecting hers?

She got the answer when she found Sunset and Twilight sitting casually in their seats. Maybe somewhere else?

Also not, as she found each of her friends already in their classrooms.

She left the school building and stopped before the portal, looking around.

Nothing. Not even checking her phone, which now seemed like taking eternity to process her typings, revealed any messages.

In desperation, she ran around the building. Maybe something was going on somewhere else?

Her breath got quick when even the cars on the road seemed like just standing in their positions and the birds were frozen in midair. This was wrong. This wasn’t supposed to happen!

She ran back to her school and sat down in despair on the stairs before the entrance.

Suddenly, she saw a shadow moving at normal speed before her. She looked around. The world was still in slow motion, except for the shadow.

Curiously, she looked up, and when she saw the source of it, her eyes widened.

Looking against the sun, she could only make out what seemed to be a big bird flapping its… Wings? Bones? The creature seemed very thin, but moving at normal speed, or, to be more correct, falling straight at her.

Wait, straight at her?

As soon as she realised that, she jumped to the side, just in time to avoid the creature’s claws piercing into the ground.

Chills ran down her spine as she could see it up close. It was the same size as her, but twice as long, and seemed to be a bird. However, the body was just a skeleton. Its tail reminded her of a scorpion tail and was as long as the rest of the body.

It turned its head towards her. It had no eyes, but Rainbow could feel it staring at her. She gulped and took a step back.

Suddenly, it let out a shrill roar as the tail struck at her. Rainbow jumped back, dodging it, but by then the bird — or whatever it was — had spread its wings and shot up into the air with a thundering sound, leaving a gust of wind behind it.

Rainbow followed it with her eyes, as the realisation hit her. For her, the world moved in slow motion, and yet the creature was moving like normal, which meant that it was fast. Very fast.

What was it?

The creature flapped its wings one more time and suddenly thrust straight at her, the scorpion tail ready to strike. Rainbow didn’t wait and ran away.

When another thundering noise came, Rainbow dared to look behind...

It was following her. And it was getting closer.

She took a sharp right and sprinted between two buildings, but she could hear it still close behind her.

When she did another sharp turn into an alley and looked back, she saw how her chaser slowed slightly down to take the turn, before thrusting back into her.

That was it!

She ran out of the alley towards a crossing and took another sharp turn, then turned again into another alley. The moment she left this one, she sprinted towards the next crossing, turned left and entered another alley that she found.

Her maneuver was working; taking as many turns as possible had helped her gain some distance on the thing. Not much, but at least it wasn’t getting closer.

But still, what should she do? How could she stop that bird… skeleton-thing? She couldn’t ask her friends for help, not with the speed it — or even she herself — moved. How did their chase even look from the outside?

After another turn behind a building, she saw an open window and jumped through it. She hissed between her teeth when she felt her wings bump on the casing.

Right, wings, she had them too.

Nonetheless, she quickly closed the window and held her breath. When the creature flew by, she exhaled in relief and caught her breath.

At least now she’d figured out why she saw the world in slow motion. Still, did Equestrian magic knew that the creature was going to attack her? Did it pull the being itself to her through a space rift? If so, she wished for it to not do it anymore — she was done being chased every time.

But whatever it was, she had no time for thinking about it right now. She had to find out how to defeat the creature, and quickly! Hopefully it didn’t attack anyone else…

She pulled out her phone, typed a message to her friends explaining the situation she was in — with multiple groans, as the phone reacted also in slow motion — and sent it.

Maybe some of them would figure something out. Or the organisation, she wouldn’t mind their—

Suddenly the window exploded and the creature crashed into the room. Before it would hit a wall, it flapped its wings, releasing a wind knocking anything, including the furniture in the room, away from it.

Seeing that, Rainbow realised that she couldn’t let it chase after her through the building, as it would be too dangerous for the residents. She spread her own wings and flew back outside through the window.

She went high, hoping that in the air she’d be faster than her chaser. Each earsplitting flap told her how close it was, as she flew above the buildings.

To her fear, it was getting closer.

“Come on! Get away!” she yelled.

It screeched at her.

Rainbow flew down and maneuvered between the buildings with several shar turns. This time, the noises from the flaps were slowly getting farther away.

Still, what should she do now? Just getting rid of it wouldn’t solve the issue. At least it was chasing only after her.

Checking her phone, she skimmed through the replies on the lockscreen and flew back to the school. Soon she saw her friends at the entrance door, but all frozen in position.

Rainbow sighed and flew past the school, taking several sharp turns to further the distance between her chaser.

It would take an eternity until her friends would even leave the building and pony up — not even speaking that they didn’t have any idea on how to help her yet.

Maybe the organisation could help her out? She doubted that they had any chance of keeping up with the speed, but there was hope that they knew a weakness of the creature. Whatever it was, she had to survive first, and for a long time — for her. It could be that barely a minute had passed.

In desperation, she flew towards the park, or more specifically the forest section of it. Arriving there, she took a deep breath and flew between the trees. It required her full concentration to not accidentally fly into one or get stuck between the branches.

Deep in the forest, she slowed down and looked behind, but didn’t see anything. Was the creature gone?

She sighed in relief and leaned against a tree. It surely was still searching for her, but—

A small movement of a shadow on the ground made her look up, just in time to see her chaser piercing through the branches. She jumped to the side and ran out of the forest.

It must have flown above the forest and waited for the right time to strike — too smart for her liking.

She flew back to the school. This time, her friends were ponied up and staring at the air. They probably had seen the rainbow coloured trail.

As Rainbow couldn’t stay on the same spot, she took huge circles to pass the school building, seeing how each time her friends progressed slowly in their actions.

After what felt like an eternity, she flew another time past the school and saw crystals up in the air — all frozen in their position.

Rainbow flew between them, taking as many turns and circles as possible in hope of—

“Aaah!”

She leaned as sharply to the side as possible to miss the creature in front of her. She almost succeeded, but her wings caught its talons and she crashed to the ground.

Luckily, it wasn’t as bad as she anticipated — her body just hurt slightly — and she was back on her feet in a moment.

That creature was way too smart!

After doing another — to her dismay several — circles, she saw pastels in the air exploding, and sadly also just in slow motion. Sure, at least the explosions were visibly moving for her, but they were slow and didn’t help her all.

How she wished for a break. She already had a stitch and her lungs felt like they were on fire. How she didn’t collapse to the ground was a wonder…

Out of options, she searched for another open window and jumped through it. With coughing and catching her breath, she quickly checked her phone for any new messages.

When she saw the amount, she groaned as she tried to scroll through all of them. Sure, it was nice to see her friends worrying for her, but with the slow response of her phone it was a pain to catch the important messages.

In the middle of that, a screech appeared followed by the being crashing into the room. She groaned and flew out of the building, while it followed closely behind.

She had to take several sharp turns again to get a somewhat further distance, but now she had to find another open window. Luckily, she could quickly find one and hid inside the building.

She took out her phone and finished scrolling through the rest of the messages — to her annoyance none being useful for her — as a new one appeared by a suppressed number. It was short and to the point, consistent with just a single address and an instruction.

Was it the organisation? She’d take any help at this point, so she jumped out of the window and ran to the other side of the city.

It wasn’t easy to find the building by the address alone, considering that she barely knew the region. The building was an unnoticeable concrete structure and the creature was way too close on her tail.

Once the timing was right, she ran through the open door, closed it and ran to the nearest window, searching for a specific object.

Once she found the neon sign, she froze for a moment. That was literally the same neon sign that Derpy had found! But didn’t she…

Hearing the thundering flap from outside, Rainbow came back to her senses and unplugged the sign from a power outlet.

However this was supposed to keep her safe, it better work…

Suddenly the creature appeared before the window and charged right at her. Rainbow jumped to the side, expecting for the window to break down.

When nothing happened, she carefully approached the window. Seeing through it, she saw the being piercing at the window and winced, but to her surprise, it bounced off it and flew back in the air. It repeated several times the attempt to break through, but it couldn’t even leave a scratch on the glass.

She stared in surprise at the neon sign. So that’s what it did! Oh, how glad she was to finally get a break…

She let herself fall to the ground and took several deep breaths, trying to ease the pain from her stitch and her burning lungs. She must have run a marathon, but no matter how much distance she had passed, she was done. Now even more muscles made themselves heard with their pain. She already feared what stiffness she’d get over the next few days.

As she was laying on the ground, she could hear every time the creature flapped its wings or attempted to break through the building, but luckily with no success.

When her body was finally in a somewhat acceptable state, she took her phone and checked if there were any new messages. When she didn’t see any, she went to the group chat to write the current stance, until she saw the time and almost let her phone fall in surprise.

Six minutes? All of the chase happened in six mere minutes? This couldn’t be it! It felt like hours!

She looked at her watch to see if time was going normally for her.

“Oh, come on,” she muttered when the seconds were not progressing.

Alright, the case was clear. Her Equestrian magic wouldn’t let her out of her state until she’d defeated that creature, but how? All she could do was hide in that building that was protected by just a neon sign. For a moment, she wondered why it did that, until she shrugged it off. There was probably no explanation anyway.

After she wrote to her friends that she was safe, she took a glance around the room. It was empty, and seemed to be part of an unoccupied home. With nothing better to do, she stood up and explored further into the building.

On the floor, she found a table with a small plastic box and a piece of paper with a written message on it. Curiously, she opened the box and found a small superball inside of it.

She scratched her head and took the paper.

Sorry for the lack of a better idea.
Take that ball, find a building or room with NO windows or anything that is easily breakable.
Trap your chaser in it and throw that ball inside. It should kill it.
Be very careful! The ball bounces off with double speed, so don’t you dare let it fall!
If you think it’s too dangerous, don’t use it. I cannot guarantee that it works, nor that it won’t turn into a disaster.
No, the neon sign won’t help trapping anything inside a building. I tested it already.
P. S.: Plug the neon sign back in and take it with you before leaving. Return it and this paper to the garden behind the CHS’s parking lot asap.
Alone!

After reading, Rainbow took another look at the small ball. Curiously, she took it in her hand, raised it and let it fall on the table.

“Oh, right,” she muttered when the ball remained in the air. Sadly she couldn’t test it, as much as she wanted to see it herself.

She grabbed the ball and looked back at the piece of paper, rereading the message on it.

Was there ever a garden behind the school’s parking lot? She couldn’t remember. And who wrote it? Derpy?

No, it couldn’t be her, she saw her at her school. Her mind wandered through her memories to recall if anyone was missing back then, but at the end she figured that she wouldn’t find out who it was. No one in her school lived that far away.

It didn’t matter anyway for now, as she had to make one decision: Should she use the superball to defeat the creature? It seemed like the only option, as the ball could be fast enough to hit the creature.

However, the warning of a disaster coming from it was very reasonable. If it broke through the walls with a high speed, it would be like a bullet flying through the city — with the worst case scenario of not having the creature killed before.

She returned back to the window with the neon sign. Immediately the creature appeared and thrusted at her, only to be repelled by the window.

Checking her watch, the minute compared to the last time hadn’t even passed yet. She sighed and sat down, watching how the creature kept crashing into the window.

All she could do now was to wait and hope that it would tire out.

Slow Motion, Part 2

View Online

Rainbow had to admit that she was impressed by the incredible persistence of the creature. As she waited for it to stop its attacks, she counted over a hundred attempts to break in — after that she’d stopped counting and had checked around the building again.

Wherever she was, she could hear the creature trying to break in. It seemed to always know where she was, even if there was no sight contact.

When she didn’t find anything interesting, she returned to the window and took a glance at her watch, only to groan when she saw that a minute still hadn’t passed.

Was she stuck here to wait? How did the creature appear from the outside? Did it knock out anything in its surroundings? She couldn’t see it, as the window was facing away from the street.

Then she remembered: Her geode! What if she took it off? Would time appear normally for her again? She was just about to take her wristwatch off, until a thought came to her mind.

What if the neon sign‘s ability was just temporary? She wouldn’t be able to react if it broke through the window.

She waited for a little longer, until she couldn’t hear the flaps and the crashing against the window anymore, and took her watch off.

…

She rubbed her eyes and looked out the window. Sure, she heard some wind from outside, but she couldn’t see the creature anymore. Was it so fast that her eyes couldn’t recognise it? The banging sounds against the window had stopped too.

Looking at her watch, time passed normally. She exhaled in relief, but the sudden disappearance of the creature bothered her. Just to test it, she took her geode back in her hands.

She felt immediately the magic flow through her and pony her up. Just a second later, she saw the creature back before the window, flapping its wings with sounds like a thunderclap and crashing against the window.

“You’ll never stop, will you?” she asked.

Maybe she should pony up every so often to check on the creature. It seemed like a good option, considering the others were to risk a superball killing someone or to wait all eternity as just minutes would pass for the outside world.

Just as she was about to let go of her geode, she heard a stomping sound from a room next to her.

She turned around. Sounds of scraping stone came from the room, until they suddenly stopped. She scratched her head, until the sound came back — just for a single moment.

She quietly went to the open door, but stopped when the sound appeared again for another single moment. Wait, was it connected to her blinking?

She blinked on purpose.

Yes, indeed, the sound came back, but vanished the next moment when her eyes were open.

Not another one…

She gulped and slowly continued walking further, this time paying attention to not blink. And then she saw it.

Near the door was an almost humanlike statue made of concrete. Where its face was supposed to be, was a painting kind of resembling a face.

Blink.

It was now at the door, staring right at her. Wait, she was still moving faster in time, right? She couldn’t check her watch, but the sound of the creature banging against the window remained.

Her eyes began to burn, so she walked backwards until she felt the window behind and blinked.

When the statue had moved a few metres forwards, she bit her lip.

She was trapped, and to make it worse, by two faster anomalies. Did Equestrian magic want to kill her at this point?

However, when she blinked again, suddenly the flying creature had stopped banging against the window. Was it gone? Or did her geode run out of magic? Feeling the top of her head, she still had her pony ears on her.

As she couldn’t look behind, she blinked a few times, the statue moving closer to her each time.

She gulped. Somehow, this thing was scarier to her than her previous chaser. Was it the concept of how it moved? Was it the necessity to stare at it?

As she thought about it, she came to the conclusion that it was the uncertainty of what it would do once it reached her, and she surely did not want to find out what it was.

When the statue was in the middle of the room, she walked across the walls until she reached the other side at the door. Here, she could keep an eye on the statue while looking out the window.

To her surprise, the skeleton-being was standing before the window, its skull staring in the direction of the statue.

Just to check her assumption, she moved to the side while keeping both in their view. Indeed, the creature only paid attention to the statue.

Was it hunting after the fastest beings? It seemed like it, considering it had chased only after her and now was interested in the statue. Sure enough, when she blinked one more time and the statue was another step closer, the being screeched and flew back to strike against the window again.

An idea came to her mind, but…

She scratched her chin. This was probably the dumbest idea she ever had, but did she have a choice in the matter? Somehow, the creature staring at the statue didn’t affect the latter, meaning that if she wouldn’t look, the statue could do anything to it — if the former would even do anything.

When she blinked again and the statue was way too close for her liking, she gulped and went along the walls back to the window. Feeling blindly with her hands, she searched for the neon sign and, once found, took the plug and felt for the power outlet.

Blink.

“Stop it!” she yelled, as her heart started to race in her chest. Where was that annoying power outlet? It didn’t help that panic came over her as she tried to control her blinking and her arm was shaking from the stress.

Blink.

Finally she found the power outlet, but she struggled to plug in. She turned and tried from different angles, but by now her eyes were begging to blink again. Sure, the statue was probably far enough, but…

Blink.

This wasn’t controlled, and she flinched in shock when the statue was just a few feet away from her. She held her breath and kept trying to plug in.

Finally, it went in! She waited until she heard the creature strike at the window again, and only then pushed the plug in completely.

Immediately she ran around the room — her view still on the statue — and stopped when she passed a door. The next moment the window broke down and the creature thrusted straight at the statue, piercing its scorpion tail repeatedly at it.

Blink.

It screeched… no, it screamed. A high pitched sound that banged into Rainbow’s ears even when covering them with her hands. The statue had repositioned itself nearer towards a wall, while the creature still attacked it.

Blink.

Another blink.

The statue was now out of her view and free to move. Immediately the creature screamed even louder, but what gave Rainbow the chills were the sounds of breaking bones that continued on for several seconds.

The screaming silenced at the same time as the breaking of the bones, and what was left was a quiet whimpering, while Rainbow could make out a small part of the statue in her sight.

Good news: Her plan worked. The bad news: She had no idea what to do against the statue. If it was able to break the bones of the being, she didn’t want to imagine what would happen to her.

Well, for now she could change between the rooms and let the statue come at her, but there was no way she’d be able to keep it up for long.

Blink.

It stood right before the door… Wait, already? How did it move so fast?

She raised her left hand into her view. Her geode wasn’t glowing anymore. As she didn’t dare to look away, she held her watch against her ear. Hearing the ticking, she took a deep breath.

So time was moving for her normally again. She didn’t know if that was a relief or a bad thing, considering she still had to deal with that statue now being a lot faster.

Wait, if time was going normally, then that meant that she could…

“Aaah!” she screamed and stumbled backwards away from the suddenly nearer statue right in front of her. Too close! Leaning against the wall, she caught her breath as she kept staring against the statue.

She should concentrate if she didn’t want to end up as a bone soup!

She picked up her phone and scrolled in the side of her view through her contacts, calling the first one that she saw on the list.

“Rainbow!” she heard Applejack respond. “So glad to hear somethin’ from you! Are you alright?”

“I'm fine. Listen, I’m currently at… uhm… What was the address again…”

“Don’t worry, we already know it. Already on the way.”

“Oh, good then.” Rainbow blinked and flinched when the statue was right before her. “Stop it!”

“Stop what?”

“Not you!” Rainbow exhaled and walked across the wall towards the other room. “Listen, I’m currently trapped in that building with a statue. It moves whenever you don’t look at it, even blinking is too long. Come fast!”

“Just a few more minutes!” Applejack responded.

Rainbow hung up and blinked again, making the statue appear right at the door. From her eye corner she could make out parts of the still whimpering creature, and even without seeing it clearly, she saw enough twisted and broken bones to gulp in concern.

Please come fast.

When Rainbow heard the front door open, she exhaled in relief.

“Rainbow! Where are you?” Sunset yelled.

“I’m here! Don’t go near the bones, it’s still alive!”

Soon, one by one of her friends came into the room where she was, each staring in surprise at the object that stood in the middle of the room.

“Is that the statue you were talking about?” Applejack asked.

“It is. Could you watch it for a while? I’m done staring at it. And no blinking at the same time!”

“How would we blink at the same time?” Rarity asked.

“Doesn’t matter! Just make sure at least someone is always looking at it!”

“Then we do as follows,” Twilight said. “Whenever someone has to blink, they announce it.”

“Good idea!” Pinkie responded.

Rainbow sat down, relieving her aching legs from their constant work, and closed her eyes.

Finally a break.

Hopefully Equestrian magic didn’t have another surprise for her. All she wanted was for this to finally end. The creature, the statue, they all could die off or get captured by the organisation if it was for her.

“So, what happened?” Twilight asked after Pinkie had announced her blinking.

“Too much at once.” Rainbow sighed and filled them in.

When she finished, a silence followed that was only interrupted by the announcements of a blinking.

“Where’s the paper?” Sunset finally asked.

“Down the floor at the table.”

“Keep looking at it, I’m going to check it out.” Sunset left the room.

As soon as she was about to leave, the front door burst open and footsteps from multiple people entering were heard.

“1-1 to base, found a still twitching pile of bones at the entrance. The subjects are in the next—”

By now, Rainbow had looked up and saw a man in a black uniform appearing at the door.

“Everyone to me!” he suddenly shouted and entered the room. Three other people in the same outfit followed him and were staring with wide open eyes at the statue.

“Girls, stare at it!” he ordered.

“We already do,” Applejack groaned.

“Shut up! 1-1 to base, we have a Scissor Event with SCP-173. Requesting immediate backup to contain it!” His voice was seemingly calm, but Rainbow could still hear the panic in it.

“Base to 1-1, the containment team is on its way. SCP-173 is now your highest priority,” a female voice replied over his radio.

“Everyone, remain here!” He ordered. “1-2, check on the piles of bones.”

“On it.” another man replied.

Rainbow remembered the other objects in this building. Now she got the reason why she had to return them as soon as possible: To remain unknown to the organisation. In worry for whoever had helped her, she jumped up and ran out of the room before the man could.

“Stop!” ‘1-1’ shouted, but Rainbow had already left.

Now with her super speed, she ran to the floor, took the piece of paper and the box and then ran towards the neon sign. However, it wasn’t there anymore. Did they already take it?

Out of nowhere, the paper and the box were ripped from her. Rainbow turned immediately and could make out the back of a hooded person, before it jumped and… vanished in mid air?

Rainbow froze in her position. Who was it?

Suddenly she felt another grip, but around her left wrist. The next moment her watch was pulled off and her arms grabbed tightly so that she couldn’t move them anymore.

“Just what are you doing?” The person pushed her to the ground and put handcuffs on her.

She gritted her teeth, but remained calm. Whoever…

Whoever…

…

Why did she run away? What did she want to do? How couldn’t she remember it?

“I said to stay here!” she heard from the other room.

Suddenly she heard a punch behind her. The next moment she was pulled up.

“Let’s leave, sugarcube!” Applejack said to her.

“And the statue?” Rainbow asked.

“Their problem!” Rarity replied and opened the front door before leaving the building.

“They have to focus on it,” Sunset explained. “Our chance to get away!”

Rainbow took her watch back and followed them outside, but stopped right after, standing next to the girls.

There were multiple vans and cars, and several people in uniform had their guns aimed at them.

“Raise your hands, you’re surrounded!”

“So much for getting away,” Rainbow muttered.

Despite the Rainbooms being all together alone in a single room, nobody said a single word. Each was looking nervously at each other, now knowing what would happen next.

Rainbow had no idea how long they were here by now. Each of their geodes had been taken, and their phones, and then they’d been driven to a building outside Canterlot City, put into this room and left alone. They had talked just a bit with each other at the beginning, but out of fear to reveal their knowledge of the organisation, they’d silently agreed to not speak at all.

The silence and non-action was suspenseful. What was the organisation waiting for? Did they expect to overhear something through their conversations? Whatever it was, Rainbow could wait. A little rest after all that stress was in her favour anyway.

This couldn’t be said about the others though. Twilight fumbled with her hair that was by now a mess, Rarity’s teeth were grinding against each other, Fluttershy was sitting in an fetal position with her hair covering her face and Pinkie Pie was sighing annoyingly too much out of boredom. At least Sunset and Applejack seemed more casual, leaning on their seats and having their arms crossed.

Finally the door opened and two armed men in black uniforms entered the room.

The Rainbooms stared at them silently.

“Come with us.”

One led the way, while the other waited till everyone left the room and followed after them. They were led into another room and ordered to sit down at the chairs.

Curiously Rainbow looked at the “investigation room”, which had a table leaned onto a wall. Over the table the wall was made of glass, revealing another room behind with another table. On the tables were a microphone and speakers in each room.

It reminded her too much of a prison.

When they sat down, the soldiers left them alone. Everyone stared in suspense behind the glass, awaiting for what’s going to happen next.

Finally a man wearing a white lab coat entered the opposite room. He had a tablet in his hand and sat down at the table.

“Good morning, Rainbooms,” he greeted them in a neutral tone, not even giving them a glance. “Sorry for the long delay. We had some disagreements and decisions to clear up among us before.”

The girls looked at each other, before Sunset leaned over the microphone.

“Uhm, good morning, too.”

“My name is Dr. Arctic Charge, Site-Director of this outpost. We’re the Foundation, with our goal being to secure, contain and protect any anomalies from the public world.” He looked up to them for the first time, watching for their facial expressions. “But let’s get to the point, shall we?”

He returned his view towards the tablet and pressed on it. Suddenly, over the speakers an audio file was playing.

“Hello, this is Twilight Sparkle.

“And Sunset Shimmer.

“Pinkie Pie!”

Rainbow felt her face turning pale with each name being said, as she watched with wide open eyes at Charge. Could it be…

“If you’re listening to this, then it means that you have forgotten doing the recording two days ago…”

It was.

The audio file he was playing was indeed the same audio file that they had heard a week ago! But if he had it, then it meant…

Charge pressed on the tablet and the audio file stopped playing.

“We found the tape under the rubbles of the burned down building. It took a while to recover the file, but it was worth it, don’t you think?” He grinned at them.

No one replied. Everyone was too struck to be able to respond.

“Not so quick on the trigger?” He chuckled. “I have to admit, it wasn’t a bad plan from your side. Hacking our system to get the files, let us forget you and then remember it later while finding out how our amnestics, the ‘memory erasers’, work. We could find two hard drives with the stolen files. Either you have hidden the third one too well or you didn’t expect us to search for more.”

Rainbow looked over to Twilight, who visibly gulped.

“You don’t have any hard drive with our files left, do you?”

Twilight shook her head.

“Anyway,” he continued, “at this point you told your Princess what is going on, so trying to keep ourselves a secret from you seven will be pointless.”

Rainbow scratched her head. This seemed like a lie, considering the amount of effort they took before. Looking at Applejack’s expression, she seemed to not believe these words too.

“So what do you want?” Sunset asked.

“First of all, answers about what you call ‘space rifts’, which we refer to as scissor events as soon as a skip… an anomaly passes through them. In your recording, you knew about a future scissor event. How?”

“And why should we answer you?” Rarity took over the word.

“Normally I have a method taking advantage of your strong empathic nature,” he replied with an almost threatening look, “but today’s event should be enough reasons for you.”

“Why? Rainbow alone defeated that being.”

“And how did you intend to neutralise a neck-snapping statue?”

Rainbow rubbed her own neck, remembering the times the statue was too close to her.

“Uhm, we didn’t have time to think about that yet,” Twilight responded, “but maybe using our magic would be able to deal with it.”

“Under the right circumstances, probably. If the scissor event would’ve happened at the wrong time, on a dark night, you’d have corpses with twisted necks all over the city.”

“But what if,” Rainbow said, “the scissor events only happen whenever we’re around to defeat it?”

“That abandoned apartment where we found your recording tells otherwise. Your classmates were almost killed and had to be put into medical care. Many interactions would have been deadly if it weren’t for our interference, like that cop chasing after you, and several other dangerous or abusable items are still somewhere among the citizens, but can’t be found.”

Rainbow didn’t know what to reply. If that was true, then Equestrian magic was putting everyone in danger. Her friends seemed to think the same, as Sunset bit her lip and looked to the side.

“So, how did you know about the space rifts?” he asked.

“We don’t know,” Twilight replied. “This was something we were wondering about ourselves. My theory is that it was someone else, but considering that no one else came to us after the recording, I’m not so sure anymore.”

Charge looked her deep into the eyes.

“I don’t believe you.”

“But it’s true!”

“Where’s the Desire camera?”

“Uhm…”

“Didn’t Photo Finish have one?” Sunset looked up. “I remember how I tried to bring her back into her passion after she took a ‘perfect photo’.”

“That was months ago, and she doesn’t remember how she lost it. How did you find it?”

The girls looked at each other, or more correctly everyone at Rainbow.

“How do I know?” Rainbow rolled her eyes. “I know as much about the space rifts and that camera as everyone else here.”

Charge lowered his eyebrows, his eyes wandering between the girls’ expressions.

Suddenly, he pushed his tablet to the side and put his arms on the table.

“Maybe you’re not getting the seriousness of the scissor events. Over the past week, we had seven of them spread over the whole city, and these are the ones that we know of. Nine if you include the two today. These numbers are getting bigger, and the skips coming through are more dangerous each time.”

“Then why don't you evacuate the city?” Twilight asked.

“To say it colloquially, the scissor events go rogue as soon as you or any other citizen leaves the city. We found that out the hard way when you were allowed on that cruise trip. They calmed down for a short time after your return, but as I said, now they’re getting worse again even with all of you in the city.”

“So you prefer risking our lives, but still try to keep the space rifts a secret?” Rarity crossed her arms.

“Our focus is on finding out how to predict and prepare for a future scissor event. As soon as we can do it, the extensive containment procedures regarding Canterlot City fall.”

“And we’d be free?” Twilight asked.

Charge didn’t answer.

She gulped. “What would you do with us?”

“It depends entirely on how the scissor event works. You’d probably still stay somewhere near if you reduce their amounts.

“But back to your point, Rarity. We can’t keep the space rifts a secret, at least around you, while keeping you and our personnel safe. That’s why I’m offering you the opportunity to work with us.”

The girls looked at each other. That was unexpected.

“How would that work?” Sunset asked.

“You continue living your life, keeping your memories of us. In return, you won’t tell anyone else about the Foundation and you contact us whenever you face a scissor event, getting the necessary information on how to deal with skips and also helping us finding and re-containing them.”

“And if we don’t agree to this?” Rarity asked.

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Because you contain us like animals in a zoo!”

“If you prefer, you can get you a containment cell, some entertainment media, and you stay there for the rest of your life, like an actual zoo. Modifying some empty buildings in Canterlot City won’t be difficult, it would be just lonely for you.”

“But—”

“The only reason this wasn’t done before is because we didn’t know much of Equestrian magic. The only thing we knew was it being referred to as “the magic of friendship”, and to research that, we allowed you to roam freely and see if it’s really connected with friendship and how it affects other people around you.

“As for now, enough discoveries have been made and our priority is the research on the scissor events, so we consider taking harsher containment procedures for your own and our safety.”

He stood up from the table.

“You can discuss the decision amongst yourselves. I’ll return in five minutes. If you need more time, you get another five, but then you have to decide.”

He took his tablet, tapped it a few times and then left the room.

For a while, none of the girls said anything. Twilight was the first one to break the silence.

“I think we should agree to it.”

“I don’t want to work with them,” Rarity muttered.

“But if we don’t—”

“I’m not disagreeing with you, Twilight. Taking their offer is the only option for us. It isn’t even a choice.”

“Indeed,” Sunset said. “They use the same tactic I used before my reform: If you want someone to do something for you, let them choose either it or something worse to make them think they can’t do anything else.”

“So you two take their offer?” Twilight asked.

Sunset nodded her head.

“If I were alone,” Rarity said, “I would refuse to spite them. But I have a family and also you, so I’ll swallow my pride.”

“What about the rest?”

“I’m with you,” Applejack said.

“Me too,” Pinkie Pie added.

Fluttershy answered by nodding her head.

Now all eyes were on Rainbow.

“I'll take the offer,” she said. “I’ve had enough adventures with creatures chasing after me.”

“Then it is decided.” Twilight sighed. “Maybe they’ll answer some questions I still have if we agree.”

They waited until Charge returned and told him their decision.

“Then it is decided. If we catch you telling or even hinting about us, then the deal is broken, understood?”

Everyone nodded.

“If you detect any anomaly, or anything suspicious, call the number 111 on your phone. You instantly connect with us and your phone sends us your location.

“And most importantly,” he tightened his eyebrows, “if you ever find anything new about the ‘space rifts’, inform us immediately.”

“Understood,” Sunset replied.

“Good. An assistant will come and give you the contract. Once signed, you get back your geodes and your phones. The guards will drive you back to your school. Any questions?”

“Yes,” Twilight said. “How many ‘skips’ do you have?”

He stared at her silently.

“At least 5000.”

“And are they named SCP followed by a number?”

“Yes. Now my turn of question: You don’t have any hacked data remaining with you?”

“I swear I don’t,” Twilight responded.

“You better tell the truth. Any other questions?”

“What are SRAs?” Rainbow asked.

He raised his eyebrows, but replied: “Scranton Reality Anchors, neutralises reality bending.”

“Reality bending?” Sunset asked. “Didn’t know magic was referred to as ‘reality bending’.”

“It isn’t, but it works on Equestrian magic.”

“Maybe they also work on Pinkie Pie’s weirdness.” Twilight giggled and turned to said girl. “Reality bending would explain you a lot.”

“Don’t they prevent scissor events?” Pinkie asked instead.

“No, they worsen them. That’s why they’re only used when necessary.”

“Huh,” Sunset rubbed her chin. “That’s weird.”

"And what will you do with our chips now?" Twilight asked Charge.

"What chips?"

"The ones inside our arms," Rainbow replied.

"How did you… They'll stay."

"Really?" Sunset asked. "Why?"

"Because we have enough teleporting or through multiverses travelling anomalies. These chips are a standard procedure for the Foundation to make necessary information available if one skip gets lost and found somewhere else."

"No tracking?" Rainbow crossed her arms.

"No tracking."

Soon enough, two people entered their room and gave them the contract. After Twilight read through it carefully, she gave her okay and they signed it.

They were led out by armed guards into a van and entered it one by one.

Pinkie was the last one to enter, but before she did, she turned around and saw Charge in the distance watching them. Suddenly, she cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted:

“Am I by any chance a Type Green?”

It was too far for Rainbow to see his reaction.

When Pinkie finally entered, she had a grin on her face.

“What was that?” Sunset asked.

“Oh, nothing. Just a personal clarification.”

Epilogue

View Online

Rainbow ran, dodged, and with a swing of her sword, dealt the final blow.

“KO!“

On the screen, Rainbow’s avatar did a victory dance as the final score was shown.

“How?” Sunset threw her controller away. “I was so close!”

Rainbow grinned. “Just admit it, Sunset. I’m the best.”

“Never! Rematch!"

“As many as you wish!”

They restarted the round. Their other friends were busy with their own things at the slumber party in Rarity’s room: Pinkie Pie and Twilight were playing a board game — the latter taking it too seriously and calculating the best probabilities for any decisions, but still losing — and Applejack was talking with Fluttershy regarding farm animals. As far as Rainbow could hear, apparently some animal flu was currently a problem, but it was getting better.

Rarity, however, was on her own at her sewing machine, working on an outfit despite her friend’s concerns. The “just a minute, darlings, then I’m finished” had dragged for the whole party by now, and no persuading helped to get the designer off her work.

At last, the doorbell rang.

“Pizza’s here!” Pinkie exclaimed and immediately ran away, leaving Twilight, deep in thoughts, alone before the board.

Rainbow lost the next round, leaving the score even as they sat down to eat. Only Rarity remained at her desk.

“Take a darn break, Rarity,” Applejack groaned. “We agreed to this to distract ourselves from the preparations!”

“Just a few more,” the designer muttered.

“That’s it!” Applejack stomped up to her and pulled her chair away.

“Hey! Ugh, fine.” Rarity finally stood up and took her pizza box.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. Sure, it was a good thing that Rarity tried to get the outfits done for the school play’s deadline, as it was way too close, but they met up specifically to relax.

As they ate, they chatted a bit about the past weeks, until inevitably the upcoming play was mentioned.

“I still don’t get why it took them so long to figure out our previous play was an SCP,” Twilight said. “Now we’re in this mess of stress with the new one.”

“I agree.” Rarity nodded. “They’re amateurish and ineffective.”

“For ineffective they keep us in check way too well,” Applejack responded. “At least we haven't performed it yet. Wouldn’t want to imagine what it’s like to suddenly attack any of you. Or hang someone.” She shuddered.

“These ‘scissor events’ are honestly getting annoying.” Sunset put down her pizza box. “You start to fear every little thing in your day. A car driving way too slowly, an animal somewhere in the water, an object you can’t remember if it had been there before… I don’t know about you, but I get paranoid about anything now.”

“I agree,” Fluttershy added. “They all seem like they want to kill you. Like seeing the scary shadow of a cat… I’m just happy my powers helped to figure out that these were… these things.”

“SCP-3718.” Twilight adjusted her glasses.

“These reflections were something,” Rainbow said. “But yeah, even I start to think twice before touching anything.”

“Honestly,” Rarity sighed, “I think the scissor events are killing attempts.”

It was suddenly silent, as each of the girls processed what Rarity just said.

“What do you mean?” Twilight asked.

“Exactly what I said. Whatever is causing these SCPs to come to us is trying to get rid of us.”

“But didn’t we say that it was Equestrian magic doing that?” Sunset asked.

“And what guarantee do you have that it was the correct information?” Rarity asked. “Do you want to know how many ‘fashion encounters’ I had at the boutique I’m working at already? If it weren’t for my power, I wouldn’t be sitting before you.”

“But what would want to kill us?” Sunset asked.

“I don’t know, but remember what they said: The SRAs worsen the scissor events, despite neutralising our powers. So it’s not Equestrian magic doing it, but something of the opposite.”

“Oh dear,” Fluttershy muttered.

“I don’t like how it makes so much sense,” Rainbow said. “Explains all the monsters that have chased me.”

“And yet we still don’t know how we knew of a future scissor event,” Twilight said, before she sighed. “That scavenger hunt-plan was a complete failure.”

“Absolutely.” Rainbow nodded. “But I still can’t shake off the feeling that we had worked with someone before.”

“Oh, I agree. That third hard drive is still missing.”

“Well, Sunset could touch other students and figure out who.” Pinkie grinned.

“No!” Sunset balled her fists. “I won’t read other’s memories unless it’s necessary.” She sighed. “Also, students are already taking their distance from me. I know they don’t mean bad, but it still feels like they fear me reading their minds.”

“Granted, our powers are scary,” Applejack said. “I get worried about accidentally crushing someone’s hands.”

“You can at least control it,” Pinkie replied, “while I have to watch what I throw. And I like throwing yummy stuff!”

They giggled, but remained silent for a while, as they finished up their pizzas.

Rainbow thought about the revelation that Rarity had shared. Was there really something else that made these scissor events, trying to kill them? What was it then, and why? What was so special about them that it wanted them gone? And then why…

“Wait, if, whatever it is, wants to get rid of us, then doesn’t it mean it wants to kill other Canterlot citizens too?”

“That’s, uhm…” Twilight scratched her head. “That seems to imply it.”

“But why?”

“Well, with us,” Sunset said, “I’d said because of Equestrian magic; that’s at least what we have, but for others?”

“Who knows at this point,” Applejack sighed. “Everything’s a mess, nothing is normal anymore, and anything can kill you just because.”

“And science is more like a suggestion,” Twilight muttered. “What natural laws are real anymore?”

“Hey, let’s not start an existential crisis because the world turned upside down.” Rainbow stood up. “We’re the Rainbooms, the most awesome group of friends that has ever existed, and no matter what was thrown at us, demons…” She glanced at Sunset and Twilight. “Uhm, no offense.”

“This won’t stop, will it?” Sunset rolled her eyes, but smiled.

Rainbow continued.

“Sirens, magically possessed objects, a magical storm, SCPs trying to kill us, an international secretive organisation—”

“Foundation,” Twilight corrected.

“No matter what, we survived it, we got on top of it, and we always won! And whatever it is that wants to kill us, we’ll defeat it too!”

“Woohoo!” Pinkie cheered and took from her hair a party popper. The next moment, everyone had confetti in their hair. “Let’s go, Rainbooms!”

The others smiled, before joining in.

Despite being offered to be driven home, Rainbow had decided to jog back instead, as to combine it with her morning sport routine. Canterlot City was busy even this early in the morning, as many went shopping or went out on the weekends.

Despite it being close to autumn, the temperature was pleasantly warm, with a light breeze; the perfect weather for jogging. She enjoyed the moment, as her mind was recalling the last night at Rarity’s house. Despite the serious talk, she’d managed to cheer her friends back up, and they’d had a relaxed time — something that she wished would become common again.

However, as if the universe wanted to bring her back to the harsh reality, she heard a small child scream. Immediately she turned and ran towards the direction of the voice.

At a playground she saw a small group of girls, each probably not older than six years old. One was holding something in her hand, waving it around and shouting something about it.

When Rainbow got nearer, she could see that the object were… 3-D glasses?

“I tell you! There are monsters!” The girl shouted. “Look through it!”

“I don’t see them,” another girl replied.

“Because they’re invisible! These glasses show you them!”

This was definitely another Scissor Event. She gritted her teeth recalling Rarity’s theory. Who in their right mind had the intention to harm these little children?

“Hey, you found it!” Rainbow said and approached them. “I thought I lost it for forever.”

The girls looked at her in confusion.

“These 3-D glasses. They’re…” She thought for a second. “They’re a gift from my mum. Yeah.”

“Are these monsters real?” The girl who had the glasses asked curiously.

“Erm, no. They’re a special effect.”

“Ooh.” The girl put the glasses on. “They’re scary!” She giggled.

Rainbow bit her lip.

“Alright, give me that.” She ripped it from her and ran away, ignoring the screaming of the children.

After turning around an alley, she stopped and took out her phone, calling the Foundation.

“Describe,” a female monotone voice replied.

Rainbow rolled her eyes from the woman going straight to the point.

“3-D glasses, white cardboard frame, blue and red glasses. A child said she sees monsters through them.”

Clacks of typing on a keyboard were heard.

“Seems like SCP-178. Safe to touch, just don’t wear it. Bring it to the usual location.”

“What happens if I wear them?”

“You already know, just don’t.”

“But I want to know, and the girl who wore it was safe.”

Rainbow smiled when she heard a groan. Usually the Foundation barely told them what the SCPs did, only how to safely interact with them, but Rainbow could play the “dumb, curious girl”, making the woman describe them at least shortly.

“You see creatures that can attack you, do you understand? Just don’t risk it.”

“Ugh, fine,” Rainbow acted annoyed and hung up. It wasn’t a big reveal what the glasses could do, but she guessed that in this case, there wasn’t much to begin with.

As she was about to go, she suddenly saw a hooded person watching her. Taking a closer look, she recognised the visible face immediately.

“Derpy?” she asked in surprise.

“So, you work with them?” Derpy crossed her arms.

“Well, we… Wait. You do know about them!”

Derpy got closer.

“Yes, I do. Happens if you can’t forget anything.”

Rainbow walked a few steps back when Derpy got too close. Derpy’s face was serious, if not even angry. Rainbow hadn’t seen her like that before, which made it even more surprising for her.

“You can’t forget?”

“And in return I get a migraine from inhaling their gas. Awful deal, if you ask me.”

“So that means,” Rainbow stepped forward, “that you do remember that you’ve worked with us!”

“Yes, we did work with you. I felt bad for needing to betray our deal, but I guess in return you turned your back on us.”

“Turn our… What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on, aren’t you Loyalty?” Derpy made sure to emphasise her Element in a mocking manner.

“You mean us working with them? They gave us no choice, and besides, these scissor… space rifts are becoming more dangerous.”

“They surely are.”

“See? To keep everyone safe, we notify them of any appearing SC… anomaly and they tell us how to handle them.”

“Should have just destroyed the portal,” Derpy replied. “I’m tired of spending the rest of my life worrying for others' lives.”

“Actually, it’s probably not Equestrian magic causing the space rifts.”

Derpy laughed. “Do you really think that? Do you want to know when it started? When Twilight turned into Midnight Sparkle. Right after she opened all these rifts. They never stopped, just became invisible. From that moment on, I had to fear for others lifes, spending sleepless nights outside trying to stop these anomalies. I knew how horrible and dangerous they were, and I was all alone in trying to stop them. I went crazy trying to save everyone’s life, as I also tried to stay hidden from the Foundation.”

How did she know what they called themselves? This was the question that jumped to Rainbow’s mind, but she saw that right now it wasn’t the time for that.

“Why didn’t you ask us for help?” she asked instead.

“You?” Derpy groaned. “Do I really have to explain why? At least, I have others now who help me out.”

“Do you have a possibility of predicting the space rifts?”

Derpy pointed at her right eye, which, as Rainbow noticed, was the whole time staring at the 3-D glasses. A quick waving of the object made the eye follow it.

“Annoying ‘feature’, at least it saves lives now,” Derpy commented.

Rainbow scratched the back of her head. Seeing Derpy not only so serious, but also angry with a hateful expression at her was… weird, somehow. She was always so cheerful, carefree and happy, but seeing her mask fall made Rainbow realise how much of it was probably just an act to not draw any attention to her. How much worry did she have on her shoulders?

“Derpy—”

“It’s Muffins.”

“Right. Muffins, hear me out: You and the Foundation could work together, don’t you think? I mean, I don’t like what they do to us and our city, but if you fear to get overwhelmed with the space rifts—”

“Sure, Rainbow, why didn’t I think of that before?” Muffns rolled her eyes. “I would be thrilled to become the new anomaly they study and do experiments on!”

“But didn’t you say yourself that you want to save lives?”

“I do, and I know for a fact that once they figure out that I can see the space rifts, we’re all going to be locked up in cells alone to contain this ‘Friendship’ magic, making the space rifts more dangerous. I’d rather be in freedom and working with my group in secret than with them who treat D-Class personnel worse than lab rats.”

“D-Class?”

“Humans on which the SCPs get tested on.”

Rainbow’s eyes widened.

“What?” Derpy raised her eyebrow. “Didn’t you ever wonder how they know so much about all these SCPs? How else would they know that these creatures you see through that can physically hurt someone?”

Rainbow gulped. Somehow, she didn’t consider it, but considering that they always knew what could happen in the worst possible scenarios—

“And do you want to know how they make you or any of us to spill out anything we know? They make you watch a D-Class getting electrocuted until you tell them everything. ‘Stronger empathic nature’, he says, that disgusting face of Charge.” Muffins clenched her fists. “I keep the memories of the woman’s screams to remind myself why I’ll never work with them.”

Rainbow stared to the ground, processing everything Muffins had told her. This couldn’t be true; she couldn’t work with an organisation so cruel, and yet, she felt in her gut that what Muffins told her was true.

“How… How do you know about it?” Rainbow closed her eyes.

“My father worked with a friend of his there and had to take me with occasionally due to my mother’s health. They gave me amnestics afterwards, but as I said, I can’t forget.”

“If you,” Rainbow sighed. “If you don’t want to risk being found, why do you tell me everything then? What if—”

“Because I’m done with this crap!” Muffins shouted.

Rainbow backed up, as she watched the girl catch her breath.

Suddenly, tears formed in Muffin’s eyes and she fell on her knees.

“Sorry,” she muttered.

Rainbow looked around. Somehow, they were still alone in this alley. She slowly approached Muffins and put a hand on her shoulder.

“You shouldn’t be.”

“I should. I’m sure you had no choice, but—” Muffins sniffed, “I blamed you instead. I turned my back on you myself, and—”

“You did what you had to do,” Rainbow said. “And much more. You sacrificed yourself and used your abilities to save others’ lives, despite becoming overwhelmed by it.” She kneeled down and pulled her into a hug. “I’m proud of what you did.”

Muffins exhaled and wiped her tears away.

“I just want it to stop.”

“Me too,” Rainbow sighed.

“I’m sorry.”

“I said you shouldn’t—”

Before Rainbow could finish her sentence, Muffins pulled a syringe out of her pockets and rammed it into Rainbow’s stomach.

“What—”

“You’re too good. You would fight against them knowing what I know.”

Rainbow felt her mind going dizzy, as she fell to the ground.

“But—”

“Don’t worry, once you wake up, you’ll have forgotten our conversation.”

Muffins stood up and was about to run away, but stopped and turned around.

“Thank you, Rainbow. Thank you for your words, and also for your courage against the anomalies.”

It went black before Rainbow’s eyes.

When Rainbow woke up in her room and looked at the time, she gasped in surprise. It was already past twelve? Since when?

A sudden headache gave her a possible explanation: Memory erasing. It still happened occasionally, although it was probably more of a collateral damage when they had to release the gas from the sewers. Nonetheless, it would at least explain how she couldn’t recall coming back to her home from Rarity’s house.

Curiously she picked up her phone and checked through the messages, but when she found nothing, called Twilight.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Twi,” Rainbow greeted. “Say, do you remember this morning?”

“I do. Why do you ask?”

“Guess something happened in my region that they had to release their gas. I have no idea how I got home.”

Rainbow walked to the window and watched through it, but found nothing unusual.

“I’m… sure there was nothing today,” Twilight replied. “I would have noticed it.”

“Really? Eh, whatever. Time to memorise my speech as the fairy.” She rolled her eyes. “I still have no idea why I agreed to the role.”

She heard Twilight chuckle.

“Hey, don’t laugh! You’re the old lady!” She was about to turn away from the window, but something caught her eye. “Huh, what is Sunset doing here?”

“Sunset?” Twilight asked. “What do you mean? She’s with me.”

Rainbow rubbed her eyes and looked through the windows again.

“Oh, must have been my imagination. Anyway, see you on monday!”

“Sure, bye!”

Rainbow watched one more time outside. How could she falsely see Sunset’s hair? You don’t simply mistake her bright colours for anyone else’s.

When her headache notified itself again, she sighed and walked out of her room to the kitchen for Aspirin. It was probably just the amnestic’s side effects again.

From the bushes, a head from a person appeared, looking at Rainbow’s window.

“Just wait a bit longer,” it said. “Soon, I’ll save you all from her.”

Dashing Through Paranormalities

by gapty

Faster Than a Truck

Repeating Hallway

The Chase

A Play

Interlude: Deeper Plan

Slow Motion, Part 1

Slow Motion, Part 2

Epilogue